Update & Prayer Request..

We are guilty of many errors & many faults but our worst crime  is abandoning the children...Gabriela Mistra.

Many of you know my daughter, Liddy.  You know she has a heart for children & a heart for missions & the calling on her life is to minister to the street children of South America.

She applied to the mission field last year & was accepted ~ with some reservations.  Her age was against her ~ & the fact she looks about 12 instead of 21.  The fact she had never lived away from home counted against her & the fact that for most of her life her church home had been a little island church of barely 20 people.  She was asked to wait ~ & I can assure you that stung because not only was Liddy really sure of the call on her life  many of the mature Christians in her life were also very sure of that call ~ & told her so.  Still, wait she was asked to do & wait she did.

This week OM sent through confirmation of her acceptance.  This is a double whammy for me.  On one hand I am pleased & relieved because I am absolutely sure of the calling on Liddy's life.  I know without a doubt this is God's will for her life.  On the other hand I know that our time together grows short & that what is left will be filled to the brim with necessary things & little room to devote to her mother & family.  After all, she knows she can count absolutely on our love & support.

So there are some things I would ask the prayer sort amongst you to pray for:

1.  That her church missions would come on board with their support.
2. That all her financial support arrives smoothly.
3. That anything she needs to sort out with her church is sorted quickly & easily
4.  That her path will be made straight
5. That all the doors that need to open will open.
6. That despite the busyness her walk with God continues to grow deeper & stronger day by day.
7.  The last one is an odd one, but we wish to contribute to Liddy's cause as well [& also for Star's music career lol] despite my husband's disability & our financial situation so to this end Dearest has been busily putting together a home business out of his life~long hobby & could you pray for it's success so that we can meet the needs of both our girls.

Whew!  Exciting times.  Sad times.  Happy times.  I am planning international holidays. Waddya think, girls? Shall I buy a sombrero in preparation?

A day without radiation is a day without sunshine.

- A lot of people on my friends list never go outside, so this won’t apply to them.
I have a Facebook page.  Lots of you already know this because you're on my friends list.  I have Facebook because I have kids.  Liddy thinks it's easier to Facebook me than ring home ~ that aside it's the easy way to keep track of what my under age child is doing.  She's pretty good because basically she's a pretty good kid & I spend most of my Facebook time playing games.  I wanna talk, I come blog.
 
After 5 years or so I have a pretty random list of *friends*. Some actually are, some are on~line friends & some are...well, completely random.  And some are friends & family.  I'm not a huge fan of Facebook as a social network thing but as a social phenomenon it's weird.  How weird is weird?  Well, I have a *friend* I only know on Facebook.  She seems nice enough & she's a Christian & her posts are mostly kind & often interesting.  I don't often comment because she gets lots of males whose comments are downright harsh so I was shocked but hardly surprised when one gentleman derided another for the content of his Facebook page.
 
Now I have no idea what the content in question was ~ & I do not care ~ but it has raised a very interesting question for me.  I have noticed many Christians use Facebook to propagate their brand of Christianity &  they spend a lot of time arguing theology ~ which screws with my head.  I honestly don't see the point.  They hob~nob together in their own little enclave ~ & again, that is fine.  I do not care.  Why would I? But, huge but,  if the Holy Spirit has not convicted a person about something then condemning that person is a pretty useless act.  Thing number one.  Thing number two: I've logged onto my Facebook page some days & the comments that come up make my hair stand on end.  True.  Because not everyone on my friend's list is a Christian.
 
If you've read here long enough you know I'm not a big evangelizer.  I have a different sort of calling on my life & the Spirit rarely gives me opportunities to spread the word as such ~ not the way Liddy is always getting opportunities.  However here is the thing; I do get opportunities on Facebook to contribute a stray, gentle comment testifying to the Truth that resides within me ~ opportunities I would never get if I eradicated certain people off my friend's list. 
 
And so dear blogging buddies, if you are unfortunate enough to come across some highly dubious content on Facebook do not for a moment think I endorse this way of life but in charity & for Christ's sake remember that these may provide opportunities for outreach & the spreading of the kingdom of Grace.  Ditto for others you may know.  That is all.

To sleep, perchance to dream...Hamlet

In one of those random conversations with my older daughter I learnt not everyone dreams in vivid full screen technicolour.  I can see there might be advantages to dreaming in B&W ~ but I don't. I spent most of my adolescence in war zones fleeing across exposed landscapes to flimsy barns whose walls disintegrated around me under machine gun fire.  My sleep was hardly restful.  I would wake exhausted having spent my whole night running from the enemy while my adrenaline went through the roof.

I am a connoisseur of bad dreams, from the ball of string that went on forever [courtesy of this book] to the terrifying drift past stars & planets & galaxy after galaxy into the grey nether land of eternity!  More mornings than I care to number I've woken with the grim taste of dust & ashes in my mouth & my blood thrumming with anxiety ~ or worse the voices in my head jabbering like mad.  For years I put it down to bad t.v choices just before bed, an overactive imagination, an out of control sub~conscious but just recently I have noticed something ~ & it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything I do ~ or don't do.

When God starts nudging me the dreaming suddenly gets very bad.  I become restless in my sleep.  I know because Dearest starts complaining.  He is used to me sleeping like a log.  Once I start tossing & turning & moaning his chances of a restful night dissolve rapidly.  I wake exhausted as if carrying a heavy burden & when I go into prayer tears pour forth like the proverbial deluge. I start avoiding prayer.  Weeping for I know not what  hardly makes me feel  sane.

And then it starts: the verse here, a quote there, the story I heard once from the friend of a friend ~ a slow slow drift of ideas that coalesces into a log jam in my mind  & beaver~like forms a dam holding back a gush of words.

Now I'm not normally shy about telling the Lord what I think & it occurred to me that I could perfectly well write without all the angst ~ & do a better job with my head screwed on right way round & the emotional trauma on hold.  That, however, does not seem to be the way it works.  For His own purposes the Lord wants me to experience something of His burden & His heart in the message He conveys & so we do this slow dance wherein I try & squirm away from the burden, the great depths of sorrow as our Lord grieves for the world He created & the people He loved enough to die for, & the sense of urgency that the time does indeed grow short, the harvest is ripening in the fields yet the workers dally in their pleasure gardens playing with toys.

I don't like this place which leaves me exposed, emotionally raw & very vulnerable.  My instinct is to curl up, curl away, throw up my defences & protect the soft, delicate tissues of my inner being ~ but this is not allowed either.  And so, dear friends, over the coming days & weeks while I grasp its tail & ride the tiger, if you can spare a prayer or two my way I would be most grateful. Muchos gratias.

THE RAIN is raining all around,

It falls on field and tree,
It rains on the umbrellas here,
And on the ships at sea. R.L. Stevenson

Yesterday Star had dance class, Dino had cricket training & Liddy went to soccer.  Today it is raining & I am off to make *American* Pancakes ~ which are not really American but the result of me not clarifing cultural differences.  The full works.  Walnuts.  Cream. Icecream.  Maple syrup. Yum. I feel my waistline expanding already. There won't be leftovers so don't ask. ☺

The great Prawn Race is on.

"Madam, I'll thank you not to insult the hot blood of Irish prawns" ~ the Spy who came in from the Cold.

The prawns are running.  They are arriving in my house by the bucketload & being fried up in a garlicky marinade.  Totally & utterly gross.  There is something quite sadistic about  tearing the head of something & peeling away it's skin before you eat it. So I don't.  Uh~uh, not me. 

Life as we know it has been turned upside down with both boys back in the house.  Even with all our busyness the girls remain serene but man~like the boys thump & bellow & make messes they fail to clean up & quite simply forget there are other people who also live in this house & do not necessarily appreciate their fishy endeavours though they are having some luck with the cats ~ if the prawns are cooked, scaled, de~headed & cut up into bite sized portions.

Then there are the things that go missing; like the egg flip & all my serrated knives.  So I approached Dino as the most likely culprit.  After all, the girls have been home on their own for years & my knives remained intact & the egg flip sat in it's pot. I was very polite.

"Have you seen my egg flip anywhere?" I enquired as nicely as I knew how because it is a well known fact round here the boys have thin skins & are easy to huff up.

"Why would I have seen your egg flip?  Why would you even think I had your egg flip?  You always say I've taken your stuff but why would I need your egg flip?"

"You didn't borrow it for camping?"

"I haven't been camping in weeks....Oh!" Yep, still at the bottom of his kit bag!  I didn't enquire what else was still at the bottom of his kit bag but I got  back a mug, a set of cutlery & one large plate.

A walk round the yard turned up most of the steak knives; don't ask ~ & Theo brought me my paring knife, found floating round the bottom of the boat.  It's not that they don't have their own stuff.  They do; they just can never find it.  Me, I put stuff back where I can find it,  [Yes, mother, there is a system to my chaos.] so the boys borrow mine because it is easily accessible rather than go look for their own.

I had quite a fellow feeling for Star when she enquired plaintively, "When is Theo going back?" working, I assume, on the assumption one is easier to deal with than two & Dino is far more susceptible to *The Look*.  Theo just declares war.  After all she is younger than he is, female, the baby of the family & this is his house too,  he is on holiday & entitled to the status of *House Guest*.  Hmmm.

At which point Dino arrives to take over the cooking before I charcoal it because he likes his practically still saying, Moo ~ a habit that does not endear him to Star ~ & Theo pauses on his way out the door to thank me for doing all his washing, bringing it in & putting it away.  In a century or two they may just have evolved into quite decent men.  What do you think?  Room for improvement but lots to hope for?

Ladies don't sweat, they glisten...anon

Today is a day of cloud & shadow.  It stormed last night & rained this morning.  Now the humidity is steadily climbing.

Liddy & Dino are down with a flu; the rest of us are treating them as the leperous unclean that they are!

Autumn, but not feeling much like it just yet except for first thing in the morning, before the sun bursts through the clouds, steaming us gently, like dumplings.  There we sit in our little island pot, glistening... Soon Star & I are going to go glisten elswhere.

Glisten, glisten little Star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above us plebs so high,
Giddy, giddy, oh my, my!

That's it from us, folks! The heat's fried the old brain.

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning. T.S. Eliot


You wake up some mornings & the day just feels so right, you know: kids still sleeping peacefully in their beds; cats sprawled in dappled patches of early morning light; the splashy sound of water hitting the beach & the air, mmm, the air delicately laced with golden light & crisply clean like fresh sheets strung on the line.

I like living where we do.  Each morning I am reminded that God's mercies are new each day because each day I see it played out before my eyes.  When God made Adam He planted him in a garden not in an urban sprawl.  Whatever troubles the day may bring, & some days bring plenty, this early morning hangs suspended "between the idea & the reality/Between the motion & the act"[t.s.eliot ~ The Hollow Men] without any shadow.  There's a reason that man's my all time favourite poet!

First thing the day is so quiet ~ yet not quiet at all.  Marlow's rumbling purr as he greets me echos like thunder. Kirby's chirruping sounds over loud & along the verandah rail the butcher birds serenade the new day with joyous carolling.  I like the twilight zones.  They are full of possibilities.  Perhaps today Star can do math? ☺

Therefore I will make the heavens tremble & the earth will shake from it's foundations at the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, on the day of His burning anger. Isaiah 13:13

Have you seen the news recently?  The whole world is in turmoil.    Nowhere is untouched by tragedy.  Where are the leaders of God's people crying out for repentance?  Who is raising up a Holy People?  When will there be an end to the compromise that has plagued God's church & made us a stench in the nostrils of the worldly because they see our hypocrisy?


It is time, & past time, for God's people to come out of the world as the cleansed & set apart vessels they were meant to be. for what use is salt that has lost it's savour?

Ten or so years ago I used to penfriend with a lady in N.S.W  who had 7 children.  The number of children we had was the common denominator because we didn't have much else in common despite the fact we were both  believers & we both homeschooled.  My friend, Dee, was affiliated with a Mennonite church in America & she was quite rigid in the application of her beliefs.  Despite the fact we didn't see eye to eye on a number of issues we maintained a friendship for more than 10 years until in the process of moving we lost contact with each other.

For most of my life I have been a chronic reader.  I'll read jam jar labels, the adds on buses, discarded newspapers ~ in fact anything at all that has the printed word on it & I have not been overly discriminating.  I also travel a lot.  Hours I wait on windy jetties for boats before the half hour boat ride home & I find it just about impossible to sustain a conversation over the heavy thrum of a diesel motor labouring through the channels although Star invariably tries to engage me in conversation.   It is a combination that had me picking up whatever stray magazine I could get my hands on so I had something to read & it didn't matter if it got crumpled in my bag or rained on or spattered with spray.  As the price of magazines skyrocketed & the information between the covers deteriorated God bore it upon my mind that this was not a Godly solution to a perennial problem & the renewing of my mind included cleaning up my reading material.  Which left one huge vacuum.

Now this was a problem I was sure would have an easy solution.  Surely Christians put out quality magazines full of sage & godly advice, meaty articles, stories that would uplift & encourage holiness. I tried Christian Woman.  The older ones were fine but then they changed publishers & modernized & I've decided I'm not a very modern Christian.  I'm not a very liberal Christian either.  The magazines had nothing to say to me. I don't believe women need to juggle family & work.  I don't feel the need to rampantly support women's ministry ~ I know, but Quakers have always supported women's ministry & it is never right for a Christian to demand their own way.  That is not the way of Christ. I tried Above Rubies. Better but...And I felt awful because I know lots & lots of lovely Christian women read, enjoy & get great benefit from these magazines but they drove me crazy.  They skimmed the surface so much. I couldn't believe how limited my choices were & I was really reluctant to tuck my expensive books into a tote bag when the weather was wild'n'wet.

And then Dee, in one of her cleaning frenzies sent An Encouraging Word my way. Now I was askance at first.  After all the publishers, all women, all covered!  Yikes.  I thought I'd been sent something from a cult ~ the Exclusive Brethren, maybe ~  but I decided to overlook the fact they all wore pinafore dresses [or jumpers if you're from the States] & bits of cloth on their heads & stated loudly men were the heads of their families & had a read anyway. 

I liked what I was reading. Firstly, & this is so important, even though I didn't always agree with their point of view they expressed their opinion with great gentleness & respect & they referred me to the original language & funnily enough I can cope with that.  Secondly they were very pro children.  When you have five & you've heard enough comments like: Haven't you discovered what causes that?[well yes, but do I really have to explain it to you?]; The number of children equals your I.Q [Then that makes me smarter than you, I guess]; or No~one needs that many children [so which one are you suggesting we dispose with?] then anyone who thinks having lots is a blessing rather than a curse is someone your likely to breathe a sigh of relief with.  Thirdly, at a time when I was already drifting slightly left of centre & out of the mainstream Christian thinking I found encouragement from others who were also questioning the direction today's Christianity has taken & were choosing a different path, a return to older roots, grass roots Christianity: homeschooling. home churching, home businesses.

Then disaster struck. The lady who distributed AEW in Australia ceased operations.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to renew my subscription.   I tried for 12 months.  It was like breaking into Fort Knox & my computer skills weren't equal to the task.  I mourned but accepted defeat.  Then Liddy, who was secretly reading my subversive mags, noticed they were no longer regularly arriving in the mail & went in to bat on my behalf.  A backlog, 2 years worth, suddenly arrived in a great swag.  I devoured them ~ but eventually I was back where I had started.  However both AEW & I had modernised & after a few little hiccuphs thanks to our common language I managed to renew my subscription on~line & I waited....& I waited....& I waited.  Today the first of this year's magazines arrived. 

Now I will tell you something else about AEW.  Their magazines are always a *pay what you can afford* offer.  They will give away subscriptions if you genuinely cannot afford the money but want their magazines & if you subscribe they offer a *get one, get one free* deal so you can get one for a deserving friend as well. I don't know anyone else who makes these sorts of offers ~ & abides by them.  I know they do.  At times I have not paid for my subscription yet the magazines arrived faithfully every quarter.

Now I just have to figure out how to back order so I can get the mags I've missed.

When we talk to God, we're praying.  When God talks to us, we're schizophrenic. ~ Jane Wagner

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dearie, dearie me. We are so quiet here on our little island, toddling along in our little Puddleduck puddle while the world spins by but it was brought home to me last night, forcebly, that we are more than a little odd ~ & we scare people.

Have you been following along?    If not, in brief, my darling oldest daughter applied for the mission field last year & was accepted only there was a hiccup so she is still waiting on clearance.  Meanwhile she has been getting involved in other things & one of those other things has been the OM prayer meeting once a month on Thursdays.  Here you can read about OM.  Here you can read about the sort of opportunities they offer.

The OM prayer meeting is not the sort of place you would generally find me.  Now don't get me wrong; I believe in prayer. I believe in corporate prayer. I will even admit there is a time & a place for prayer to be verbalised but .... I am a Quaker.  I go about things a little differently.  I am a big picture thinker; I rarely, if ever, pay attention to the details.  That being the case I rarely inflict myself on more traditional congregations & when it happens I try to fade into the background because I dislike making people uncomfortable & it is hard to discombobulate me unless you really attack me ~ & most people are far too polite to do that at a prayer meeting.

Now you have the picture I was surprised when Liddy said I'd been specifically invited to attend last night's prayer meeting.  Ooookaaay..... No kameeze 'cause I don't know these people.  Conservative pants & top & a discreet covering, a nice little blue & white tie~dye bandanna that shouldn't alarm anyone.  Liddy did pre~warn me that I wouldn't be allowed to fade gently into the background because people were constantly broken up into prayer partnerships.  Mmmmhuh. And that was the first problem. Would I pray first?  Not a problem ~ only I found people expected me to say something straight away before I'd even managed to gather my scattered wits; I was constantly being nudged to get a move along.  Yikes!  All around me people were galloping along at a great rate of knots exhorting the Lord loudly & clearly for very specific needs while I was meandering along chatting amiably about the Big Picture ~ raising up workers, ripe harvests, salt & light, as I do but struggling because just when I was thinking I might about centre & do deeper into prayer there was a loud AMEN, indicating we were all to change partners & the whole process started again for another worker in another country.  How do people pray like this?  It was exhausting!  But you know, this is part of Liddy's prayer team & it's important so I tried to stay with the boat you know, & not drift sideways. 

So after two hours of this I was headachy & queasy so when one of the ladies who'd done the rounds with me asked about Liddy I was past being tactful.  As I used to tell the obstreperous boys who thought asking me embarrassing questions would disconcert me, "Are you sure you want to know because if you do I will tell you?"  So I told her about it being 10 years in the growing & about God having first dibs on Liddy & about the strange places He's led her wondering why she was starting to look a little wild around the eyes & as though I'd grown a set of horns & carried a little pitchfork ~ only to have Liddy inform me later this was the *church missions* lady & she had doubts about sending Liddy. *sigh* 

You know, it would be so helpful if, before offering an opinion & telling Lid what she should or should not be doing, people actually spent some time asking the Lord so we could all get on the same page.  Ever so helpful ~ & I could take my feet out of my mouth!