No Time for Anything Else!

   Last week, an older gentleman was asking me many questions about me and my family : D   I am quite used to this by now, and it is actually fun to me to answer such questions.  After all, when you are differnent than most people you have to be willing to answer lots of questions, or else go hide!  Being the sociable homeschooler that I am,  I prefer the first option .

The conversation went something like this...

"Where do you go to school?"

"We're homeschooled"

"Oh! That is good.  Especially with the way that the world is today. Have you graduated?"

"Yes" : )

"Are you going to college?"

"No" : )

" Are you working?"

"No" : ) Then I remember, oh yes, I do teach music lessons, and that usually satisfies most people who think it is very weird when you aren't going to college, and don't have a job : ) So I told him about that, and he said, " Oh great, great!"

   Now, he was being very nice, and wasn't trying to be unkind in any way, but I was talking to Leah about it later and said, "Now how come most people think that staying home and helping your mommy isn't worth anything, but if you tell them you are going to college, or working a job, they are so happy for you?!"    If you think about it, how does it really affect them if I decide to go to college or not?   Or if I have a good job?    I suppose that they probably have an idea in their mind of what "the best" is for you, and they want to see you have that "best" .   When they find out that you aren't going to college or working, then--oh my!--what is there for you to do all day?!  Well, here is my answer...

   Yesterday while I was shopping at Joann Fabrics (one of my favorite stores!) I came across a bin of scrapbooking stuff for a dollar each. I was looking through all these wonderful things, and came across a package of quotes. As I was reading them I found my new favorite quote, which happens to be by Emily Dickinson.

"To live is so

                                                                                                   startling,

it leaves little time

                                         for  anything else."

    This is very true of my life...I am too busy living to go get a job or go to college! I am not saying that to go get a job or go to college is "bad"...it's just not the best for me.  For me, it isn't living! Milking goats, sewing, cooking, gardening, knitting, helping sisters with math, and spending time with friends and family is living. For someone else this might not be living, but for me, it is : )

  Pollyanna cried out in dismay. "Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven't left me any time at all just to--to live."

"To live, child! What do you mean? As if you weren't living all the time!"

"Oh, of course I'd be breathing all the time I was doing those things, Aunt Polly, but I wouldn't be living. You breathe all the time you're asleep, but you aren't living. I mean living--doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr.Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding our all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That's what I call living, Aunt Polly. Just breathing isn't living!"

             ---from the book "Pollyanna", by Eleanor H. Porter

~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~

Fret Not

"Fret not thyself, it tendeth only to evil doing."  Psalms 37:8

                    Last night, I was reading in Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest" and the reading for that day was about not fretting.  And I have been fretting a lot these past few weeks.  I thought it was good fretting, because it wasn't neccessarily  fretting about whether I got the biggest piece of dessert and selfish things like that--I was fretting for a friend : )  I want her to have the best in her life spiritually, and somehow I thought that my fretting would help change her heart.  I know--it sounds very silly now that I look at it that way : )   But here I find that all fretting, is still fretting, and sin.  Which really is a relief to me.  I was getting worn down  with all this fretting!  It was also good for me to read at this time,  because with all the stress of the fair, it is VERY easy to begin fretting about everything that needs to get done, and whether others are doing their share .

          My Utmost for His Highest   -- July 4th

           "Fretting means getting out at elbows mentally or spiritually. It is one thing to say "Fret not," but a very different thing to have such a disposition that you find yourself able not to fret. It sounds so easy to talk about "resting in the Lord" and "waiting patiently for Him" until the nest is upset - until we live, as so many are doing, in tumult and anguish, is it possible then to rest in the Lord? If this "don't" does not work there, it will work nowhere. This "don't" must work in days of perplexity as well as in days of peace, or it never will work. And if it will not work in your particular case, it will not work in anyone else's case. Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself.

Fussing always ends in sin. We imagine that a little anxiety and worry are an indication of how really wise we are; it is much more an indication of how really wicked we are. Fretting springs from a determination to get our own way. Our Lord never worried and He was never anxious, because He was not "out" to realize His own ideas; He was "out" to realize God's ideas. Fretting is wicked if you are a child of God.

Have you been bolstering up that stupid soul of yours with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? Put all "supposing" on one side and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty. Deliberately tell God that you will not fret about that thing. All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God. "

     So last night I put my worries in God's hands.  I still pray for my friend, and think of her a lot, but it is so nice to know that she, and all her circumstances, are in God's very capable hands. : )  And He is exceedingly, abundantly able to do above all that I ask or think. 

       Then I thought of a song, "Commit and Trust", that I had heard by the Wissmann family that really spoke to me and goes along quite well with this thought : )   The link is actually by the John Marshall family--I couldn't get the Wissmann's link to work : )

Fret not!

~♥~♥~♥~♥~♥~