The Small Branch

  Have you ever noticed that it is the transition periods in life that seem to be the most difficult to navigate?   Maybe I think that because I am in one of those periods.   My kids are 22, 20, 17, and 15.   Only the youngest is still homeschooling and, while three of them still live at home, they all are very busy with their own lives.   This is a transition time for me.   I’m moving from full time homeschool mom to empty nester.   The big question for me is - what do I do with my moments?   On the one hand, I need to be home.   I still need to clean house, do laundry (although a lot less), make meals (anywhere from 2 to 10 or more people eat dinner at my house each night), keep up with the budget, etc.   I also still need to be there when my high schooler has questions or needs me to correct papers for her.   Everyone in my family still has the “Mom is able to drop everything and do what I need her to right that moment” attitud...

  I’m sure you’ve noticed the great divide in our country.   Culturally, and therefore politically, things seem to be spreading farther and farther apart.   I was thinking about this recently, especially while listening to The Briefing with Albert Mohler .   With a lot of political issues in the past, people have worked hard to come up with a bipartisan compromise.   Things like the budget and national debt, military presence and procedures, etc. have worked with compromises on both sides.   Why aren’t they doing that now?   Because there is no way to compromise on these issues.   Here are some examples: I believe that there are two genders, male and female, assigned at conception by the DNA God gives us.  If someone else wants to tell me that gender is something you can change or choose for yourself, I’m just going to tell them that they are wrong.  There is no room for compromise in either of our viewpoints.   Abortion is...

  Why did God give us an imagination?   What are acceptable uses for imagination?   The dictionary says that imagination is the ability to form new ideas, images, and concepts without immediate input from our senses.   This seems like a good thing, and it is.   But where is the line?   Our imagination gives us the ability to imagine.   Basically, this gives us the ability to make up fiction as well as solve problems in novel ways.   Is fiction okay?   I think so.   There are obvious lines fiction can cross that takes us into sinful thinking, but we should be able to recognize that, right?   Sometimes we imagine things that aren’t fiction.   Like, when you read imagery in Revelation and picture it in your mind.   Is that imagination?   Maybe not, because you are getting input to your senses from the Word.   I guess my point is, my imagination can run wild in lots of different directions, some good, some not so g...

  I have been thinking a lot about different manners of selfishness lately.   There are people that are very obviously selfish.   They are rude and obnoxious and everything has to be about them all the time.   But is there more subtle ways of being selfish that I need to root out of my own life? Being subtly selfish happens a lot.  I think it is a fine line at times.  Here are some examples I have thought of: Being willing to help someone out, but choosing to do what you want the way you want rather than listening to what they want help with and how they want it done Purchasing a gift for someone for a special occasion or even just because, but getting something you think is awesome rather than paying attention to the other person enough to know what he or she will enjoy the most Really, anything where you want to do something special for another person, but you are only thinking about what you would like other people to do for you rather than know...

  I don’t know that I truly appreciated the sunshine until I   moved to the Black Hills of South Dakota.   I spent the first 37 years of my life in the southeastern United States where it is often cloudy and always humid.   Here in western South Dakota, not only is it drier, the sky just seems bigger and bluer and the sun brighter.   Some of that is because there are less trees and the trees we do have are shorter than the very tall pines of Georgia.   Some of my appreciation of sunshine is because it does get a little cold here in the winter and I am grateful for the warmth.   Today, we went on our second hike of the season.  My daughter and I try to hike most weeks May-September (although we haven’t been good about sticking with it in previous years).  The Black Hills have many great places to hike, although I am partial to Custer State Park.  I am amazed at the difference in how I feel when we are being consistent with hiking....

  When I was first married I taught at a public high school.   One of the teachers there had been teaching throughout her children’s lives and they were now in middle school.   At the end of the school year, she announced that her kids needed her home now more than ever and she wasn’t coming back.   I was shocked.   She hadn’t stayed home when they were preschoolers, but now?   How naive I was . . . . When my first child was born, the decision to quit work and stay home was easy.  No way was I handing my precious boy to someone else to take care of each day!  I continued to stay home through three more kids until my youngest was ready for 1st grade.  We had homeschooled to this point, but I was burned out so we decided that everyone would go to Christian school and I would teach part time at the school the older ones were at.  Part time turned into full time, and six years later I was stressed and finally understood what my fellow t...

  “The people will oppress one another, man against man, neighbor against neighbor; the young will act arrogantly toward the old, and the worthless toward the honorable.” -- Isaiah 3:5 (CSB) The young acting arrogantly toward the old.  We are definitely suffering from this problem.  Notice that, in Isaiah, this is a curse as a result of Israel’s sin.  Today, we don’t just have disrespectful teens, but disrespectful 30somethings, 40somethings, even 50somethings.  Our culture values youth and tries to hold onto it as long as possible.  We are reaping the results of this trend of “youth culture” more and more today. This trend started about a hundred years ago with the beginning of the “youth culture.”  Sometime after WWII, we started using terms like “teenager” and separating teens out from adults in all areas of life.  Teens were all in high school and activities with their peers, rather than spending these years learning to be adults by sp...

 There are a lot of things I wish I could tell my younger self.  I probably wouldn't have listened.  I mean, you are at your smartest from 15 years old  to 30 years old, right?  That's probably what I would start with (although the rest are in no particular order): 1. Listen to people.  You can always learn something  from  everyone.  You don't know nearly as much as you think you do. 2. It is almost impossible to get back to your "ideal" weight or to "get back in shape" so maintain and stay in shape.  This is especially true with flexibility. 😊 3. It is much easier to teach your kids the right way the first time rather than to go back and correct things you let them get away with because it was cute when they were tiny.  Set the standard from the beginning and do the work to teach them from the beginning.  It may seem hard, but it is harder if you put it off. 4. From the moment you are saved you should be studying Scripture, ...

 Life is a struggle.  The past few days, I have not been feeling great physically.  It is amazing to me how much I still let physical struggles make me lazy about what goes into my mind.  It takes too much effort to think only on things that are pure, right, excellent, praiseworthy, lovely, admirable, noble, and true (Philippians 4:8) so I just make excuses and let my mind go.  It is never a good thing.  Then I deal with guilt for thinking unkind, bitter, just plain wrong things, not to mention watching them on tv or reading about them.  This is not the life the Holy Spirit wants for us.  But the struggle is real.  We have to listen to His warnings, no matter how we feel physically, no matter how much stress is going on around us or in us.  That is tough.  That's why we have the Holy Spirit in the first place.  We CANNOT do it on our own.  Even submitted to God, we often have trouble hearing the Holy Spirit over our flesh....

 I've been reading Tamara Alexander's Fountain Creek Chronicles.     As I read, I have been pondering our sight.  We have a tendency not to see people, have you noticed?  Even our very closest friends and loved ones, we see through a lens that is tainted by our own thoughts, feelings, and ideas.  Sometimes, we see only what we wish we could see, the person we want someone else to be.  This means that we miss out on who the person really is.  Sometimes, we see through a cloud of judgement, not understanding a person's struggles and heartache.  This means we miss out on a relationship.   So how do we really see others?  We have to see them through the eyes of the Father.  We should be asking, in all our dealings with others, for eyes to see other people the way God sees them.  Then, maybe, we will have the humility to see who they are rather than what they've done or what we want them to do.

     Do you ever wonder what people are hearing when you are speaking?  I wonder that often.  I feel like I must be a terrible communicator because the responses I usually get don't really go with what I thought I was saying.  Sometimes, I wonder if the words coming out of my mouth are anything like the thoughts that go with them in my head.       Then, of course, that leads me to wonder if I am listening well enough to really understand what other people are saying.  How often am I distracted or trying to think of what I want to say when I should just be focusing on what someone else is saying?  Listening doesn't just involve being quiet.  Listening means concentrating on what others are saying so we can ask clarifying questions and really get to the heart of what the other person is saying.  In this "all about me" culture, listening is a dying art.       Lord, please grant me ears to hear and ...

Not that I think there are that many who read this, but, . . . I'm still here. Still here in Columbia,SC. Still waiting to find out our next assignment. Knowing that the time is ticking and the job is finishing here. Knowing that we have to move somewhere - staying here only happens without a job and we don't feel that is likely (yet). I am not a patient waiter. Perhaps that is why I find myself having to wait so much. Perhaps God is once again sanding away at my impatience. If you've been reading this, you know that it was almost a year ago that we first had moving preparations beginning. We were so excited!! Then, as you know, that didn't happen. Nothing else seems nearly so exciting. Nothing else seems to be the right fit. I can't help this nagging feeling (maybe just hope?) that we will eventually end up in the great north, but how is a much larger mystery than ever. I always think about Joseph and how long he had to wait for his dreams to be ful...