November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 9

Well, I'm behind on my Thanksgiving posts, again, so some of the next few entries will be short until I catch up.  I am thankful for my Sunday nap.  To quote an old friend, Pastor Joe Cude, "I love to sleep. I dream about taking naps,"  and there's none better than the infamous Sunday nap.  Church, food, nap.  Isn't that the natural order of things?  I've been doing it that way for so long that  I can barely hold my eyes open on Sunday afternoon any more just out of plain old habit.  Nice.

It IS Sunday afternoon , by the way, so I'll try to catch up on my posts a little later on today.  For now, I'm feeling a bit nappish.........

(photo credit)

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 8

This is going to sound silly, probably, but today I am thankful for the internet and social media, such as Facebook.  It may be a terrible time waster and whatever other negative thing people say it is, but for me, it keeps me in contact with my family and friends far away.   I don't know about everyone else,  but it almost makes me feel like we are still together. It's weird how it does that and I'm glad I have it.  Lord, help me not to waste too much time there.  :)

(photo credit)

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 7

OK, gamers, today I am thankful for leveling up.  
I know this may sound arrogant, but not everyone can handle pressure and stress the way I can.  I've grown into a strong individual.   I must have passed at least some of the tests in my life or I wouldn't be so tough.  I have been leveling up!  God must be grooming me for great things!  I want nothing more than to learn what He's trying to teach me, pass my test and move on to the next level.  I don't always like my tests, and I don't always pass my tests the first time, but thankfully we're allowed retakes.  Testing determines proficiency, right?  I must be learning something!

When times are hard, when the test is on, trust what you have been taught.  Psalms 16:7 says, "I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel: My reins also instruct me in the night seasons."  Your "reins" are your faith and your will. If you have learned from His counsel, it is time to trust what He taught you and hold yourself to it despite how you may feel or how things may seem.  In that night season it is hard to see what we are doing.  This is what we trained for.  This is why we are tested.  Hold to what you know!  If you don't quit you win!!

Some people quit in the middle of their tests.  They whine and complain because it's hard and they can't do it, only to find themselves back in the same test again another day.  "I know God said "     fill in the blank     " but you don't understand my situation," or, "I tried that, but it didn't work for me."  I hate to break it to them, but if you fail a test, whatever your excuse reason, you don't move on, you go back.  You retake it.  Stop failing!  Start passing!  It's not easy.  If it was easy everybody would be doing it, but it is worth it.  


(photo credit)

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 6

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 6



Today I am thankful for the Election Day!  Of course I'm going to talk about freedom, voting, rights, duty, patriotism, love of country, homeland,  mom's apple pie, whatever, and I certainly will: but not today.  Today I am truly thankful that all of the campaign ads and hostility between opposing sides is over for at least a little while.  

Does that sound trite?  I don't mean for it to.   The political process in this country has turned into a long, drawn out, stressful and ugly thing.  We as a nation need to stop and catch a breath.  This war between the blue and the red is tearing us up.  We need healing as a nation, and an awakening to the truth, not more mind numbing media propaganda and mud slinging which only instigates more division and more hostility between us.

I'm not deluding myself.  I know that soon the campaigns will start again.  They start earlier and earlier every election cycle.  I know that all the social media outlets will continue to have arguments and the winners will gloat and the losers will whine.  I know the news outlets will spin, spin, spin!  I know!  I know!  I know!  But, for at least a little while, as far as big media campaign commercials, national or local, paid ads, private ads and the roadsides being littered with signs and posters, we will be granted a reprieve from the inundation we've endured -- at least for a little while.  May it be more peaceful than thought possible and last longer than expected!

So let it be written; so let it be done!

(photo credit)

Mobility

Part 2 of Little House in Texas

Not all small houses are portable like ours.  We have a travel trailer.  It seemed most practical for us since we are en route to a different destination at the moment and we really didn't have time or the means to find or build anything else when we were ready to move.

Having a home that can go with us is quite a unique experience.  There is a real sense of being in touch with our freedom  like we have never experienced before.  Not only are we not anchored to a house on a fixed property,  we are also able to pretty much up and go on a whim.  My husband is really not an "up and goer" or a "whimmy" kind of guy (new word for the day, there)  but we could do it if we wanted to or needed to.

We lived in a "regular" home and had a "normal" life for many years before we made the change.  Any time we had ever moved prior to this move, we would have a different home, structure, neighborhood, all of that stuff, obviously.  It's expected and it's actually a big part of transitioning into a new area.  This time, when we left our home of eighteen years, we moved only about a block away.  We moved into the one we have now and we lived in it there for the better part of a year before we moved away.  For that stage of the move, really, only the size of the home had changed.

I'll have more to say about that stage of moving into something much smaller in future posts.

When the time came to move away from our town we simply hauled 'er off. I must say, it was an interesting experience.  To begin with, all of our worldly goods were in transit in one spot all together going down the road at high speeds sometimes, over bumps and through mountain passes.  That provoked a strange and stimulating set of emotions right there!  Then, when we arrived, we set it up, leveled it and BOOM!  Home!  Familiarity, comfort and convenience as if we had never moved.  It took a lot of the work out of moving to say the least.

It was the easiest move ever, yet very weird.  All the familiar surroundings were evaporated before our eyes the second the window shades were opened in the morning.  It was very disorienting.  Not bad, necessarily, just strange.  Perhaps any move after living nineteen years in the same area would be equally disorienting, but it just seemed pretty weird to have the old familiar and the totally unfamiliar all in the same field of vision.  It was amazingly exhilarating, as well, even if it was a bit sad because almost all of the familiar faces, the friends and people I would normally have shared things like this with were over a thousand miles away.

Fast forward to today.  We have been here for almost four months.  It is still not exactly familiar, but I absolutely love the area.  It's a great location for us for now.  We are near a small town, but not too near. Our place feels very rural despite the fact that we are only about a mile out of town.  It's very green and beautiful and for the most part I can get to what I need to get to easily and quickly.  I am become oriented.  I know where east and west are at least, if I stop and think about it for a minute.  I know my way around well enough now to be trusted to be let out alone.  I still haven't met anyone, really, and I feel like the outsider I am, but all that stuff rights itself over time.  Church will be "family" again some day and neighbors will wave and holler.

So that brings us up to now.  This blog will deal with the different aspect of living in a small home, from my perspective, for as long as we live in one.  A few posts, because it will probably take more than one, will be in answer to the one comment I heard more than any other when people found out how we were living: "In less than three months you will all be on each other's nerves and you will hate it."  There will probably be a few to prepare you for what people are likely to say, or think, how to deal with your family and friends who react badly, or you expect might react badly.  Also, at some point, probably frequently, I will talk about travel trailers and the ups and downs associated with living full time in one.  I'll talk about issues of storage, power and lights, weather, buying a used RV, and whatever else comes up as I experience life here.

I would like to close on a high note and plainly say that I love it.  I really do.  It's an adventure!  It's different!  It's great!

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 5

Day 5:  I'm thankful for my pick-up truck.  Not just that it's pretty, which it is, and fast, which it IS, or that it's helpful, or a needful thing, or convenient or anything, but that it is a constant reminder to me that God answers prayer.  

Once upon a time a long time ago, my husband and I wrote a prayer list of things we wanted.  We prayed about them and tucked the list away.  I had completely, totally  forgotten about it.  I think he had, too, judging by the reaction he had when we came across it many years later.  We were getting ready to move and were going through some of the old boxes from up in the attic, and inside one of them was the list.  

When we wrote it we had very little money, and even though some of the items on our list were not really big items, we just didn't have the means to get them on our own.   I have forgotten most of what was on it, and I am sure I have probably gotten and gotten rid of some of them.  For instance, I remember a microwave being on it, and I know I have had several microwaves over the years.  

One thing I do know is that a Dodge Ram pick-up truck was on it.  That was huge for us, way out of the picture.   I vaguely remember talking about the fact that they are gas guzzlers ,and my husband said that when the time came that we could get a nice truck like that we'd be able to put gas in it, too, and we put it on the list.

So, anyway, the list was stowed and forgotten.

I am embarrassed to report that I didn't remember that list, and I didn't remember to give God proper thanks for it when we finally got it, brand new in 2006.  Now, every time I look at that wonderful truck it's a reminder that God is faithful even when I am not, and it reminds me to be diligent to give Him the glory in the small, easily forgotten things.

Psalms 103:2 - "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."

Deut. 8:1-10

November - 30 Days of Thanksgiving: Day 4

Yes, I already messed up.  Four days into my thirty days of thanksgiving and I have already missed a day, so I'm posting Day 4 and Day 5 on the same day this time.  Hopefully I only do this once this month.  I realize it's sort of cheating, but my husband was home and we were very busy goofing off.   Life takes precedence over blogging, especially when I have him around.

Day 4: I'm thankful to God for my husband.  

He's not as grumpy as this makes him look.   :)  He won't hold still for a picture, though. so it's hard to get a good one for posting.  I think this one is kind of cute.  

He's the greatest.  I am blessed!   He's the bestiest and he's my favorite!  I love the goofy little inside jokes and things that go unsaid because we both "already know."  Little gestures, habits we have, traditions we've established between us and the kids are what make life good.  We're awesome!  Sure, we have our moments where we get on each other's nerves, or we disagree or whatever, but those moments are fewer and farther between the longer we're together.

Some days it feels like we have always been together, and all of our shared time makes us comfortable and content.  Other days it seems like we only just met.  We couldn't have been married as long as we have, could we?  It flew by!  Sometimes I still look in his eyes like a teen age girlfriend and wonder how I can still be so silly in love with the big goof.  The length of time doesn't matter at all.  We will always be together.

He's cute, too.  That doesn't hurt.  =]

I don't want to stop soon so that it seems like I'm not giving him enough time or whatever, but there's not enough space on the internet to finish it, so I'll just have to stop.