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Saturday, April 29, 2006

free day bliss

Debi asked what I did with my Free Day today. Well, I'll tell you.

(She's going to tell! She's going to tell! She's going to tell! She's going to tell!)

Pardon me, Monty Python moment.

Anyway. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous day. I would add a few more 'gorgeous's but I think you get the idea. C has been wanting to plant a garden for a few weeks; she dug up a spot for it but since a) our soil is awful and b) her chosen spot gets a lot of foot traffic and no sun I suggested window boxes or the like. So today we looked at the utter gorgeousness all around us and decided that This Was The Day. C noticed that we had the same sandals, and wanted us to dress alike. Everywhere she went she told people that we were "egelegant twins". I'm not sure if she meant "elegant" or "identical", and I wasn't going to ask because then she would stop saying it.

(the scene: Outside the hardware store
C: The only problem is that we are not the same height.
I: No, we're not.
C: Maybe if I jump. Here, you stand there [off the 3" curb] and I'll stand here and JUMP.
C: [hops maybe five inches in the air]
I: Still not quite the same height.
C: Taller! I was more than your height!)

We went to the hardware store for planting boxes and seeds, and to the feed store for a six-pack of plants that were already... started? I am so garden-techy, aren't I. We got home and LT helped us set everything up. He nailed the boxes to the railing so that they wouldn't fall off, and then (oh, the hardship, poor boy) helped fill them with dirt.

Any time I call these my herbs, C reminds me that they're OUR herbs. That's her own personal watering can. It cost $6 at this little landscaping store in town. And ... it stinks. Really. Might as well use the hose. But hey, it's photogenic.

C picked out petunias at the feed store. "Petunias" sound like the stereotype flower, don't they? I always want to say it in a shrill, creaky old-lady voice. Pe-tew-nia.

I think C's favorite part of the day was when I dispatched her and LT and their friend to the backyard to dig up worms for our "experiment" bed. It's actually an old leaky aquarium, which we filled with extra potting soil and then planted with the extra seeds (not pictured above, by the way, is the bed seeded with phlox and alyssum) and two petunia plants that wouldn't fit in the petunia container. We're hoping to see some root and worm action through the plastic. Here C is petting the worms. She LOVES worms like most girls her age love kitties and bunnies (to be fair, she loves kitties and bunnies too). I have a picture from last year of her two cute chubby little hands just OVERFLOWING with a worm family that she wanted to keep in her room. Observe my restraint as I refrain from posting it, to spare those of you who may be squeamish. (I like worms as long as I'm not sticking them on fishhooks, myself.)

After the gardening extravaganza (I really hope all those plants don't die just because I touched them. It has been known to happen) I took some pictures, and then went for a walk and took some more, and then barbecued chicken (mmmmm). And then we laid on a blanket in the backyard, all four of us, and watched the stars come out and quizzed each other about constellations and where the ecliptic was and all kinds of fun nerdy family stuff.

And THEN I came in here, finished Northanger Abbey, and took the time to blog about my day before going to bed so that I can pull this entry up when I feel unappreciated and frustrated. So, maybe ... tomorrow. :)

boring rambly sorts of things

So today the sun came out with a vengeance. I drove to the valley for groceries (for the next two weeks of carefully-laid-out meals) and I have an official Driving Sunburn.

Also, I remembered today that our car doesn't have A/C. (It should be fixed relatively soon. Please God please.)

Speaking of please God please, I lost something small tonight, and wouldn't it be nice if He would help me find it when He thinks it's appropriate and I've learned my little slacker lesson and all? It's not that big a deal (I keep telling myself). It's just the bracket that attaches my external flash to a tripod. I've no idea where it is. I thought it was sitting merrily in my camera bag waiting for me to read the remote flash section of the manual so that I could use it, and when I had done so, it was nowhere to be found even though I took the camera bag completely apart three times. (you all know the sign of insanity indicated here so I won't bother typing it.) The frustrating thing isn't that it's lost, per se. I can replace it, and it's not very expensive (although, see above re: two weeks of groceries, and even "not very expensive" doesn't mean "yippee, let's go buy it"). It's just that I discovered the loss at the precise moment when I was all set up to use it. Also, that losing things makes me crazy, and it makes me disgusted with myself, and blah.

However.

Getting new tires on our car and getting them balanced seems to have removed the perplexing vibration that's been driving us nuts for the past few months. (Too bad we didn't try that before T spent a hundred dollars and a lot of hours replacing the front axles because he and most other people thought that was the problem. But still. It's fixed, and we needed new tires really badly anyway.)

And everyone in my house is healthy.

And... I have two Nikons. What kind of world do we live in where I get to have two Nikons?

And I've flossed every night for like two weeks running now. Yes, this is a record. I hate flossing but when you're 31 sometimes you have to do stuff you hate just because it's The Grown-Up Thing To Do.

And I have absolutely nothing scheduled to do tomorrow. I have a Free Day. That is if I can get over the guilt of not being caught up on laundry. I have this wild hankering to ride the bus into Yosemite and take pictures but that costs money (less money, however, than it would cost to drive, with gas at $3.30 a gallon here) and see above re: two weeks of groceries and tires and see the last post re: money in savings. Which we are Not Going To Touch. Especially for frivolous Free Day trips.

And I was going to stay up and watch the rest of the segments of the LBY session that I still haven't finished for this week (SO SO BAD I AM SO BAD) but my DSL is only working in patches and I am going to take that as a sign from God that I need to go lie down and read Northanger Abbey until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. Sometimes signs from God are super-convenient that way. Ahem. Right? Cough.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

turning over some new leaves, and other stuff

things we have done in the last two weeks to make our lives more organized:

1) all our bills are actually really truly completely totally 100% paid off for the first time in our marriage. This is a new development. AND, because this was T's "extra check" -- he gets two a year since we base our bill-paying schedule on two paydays per month and he gets 26 paydays per year and you should have SEEN me trying to prove to him that this really happened when we were first married; I looked like Ross Perot with the charts -- we actually have money in savings. For the first time in our marriage. And we have cancelled every form of credit we had, and please don't write and tell us how we need a credit card for our credit rating because honestly we are never going to buy a house in this state and if we ever go to move elsewhere, well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It's much worse for our credit rating and our life in general to have credit at our disposal. In times of weakness we tend to cave and do atrocious things with it.

So. No debt, and money in savings. Honestly, I don't feel like myself.

*****edited to add********
I should note that we have had retirement savings building up for years. At least we've been doing THAT right. This savings account is a contingency fund for things that pop up like car tires, hospitalizations, etc.

2) I made a meal calendar. I've continually sworn that I needed to do this. It's just four weeks of meals, and we'll repeat them. This way I'll know what groceries I need ahead of time and I won't need to wander the aisles of the local store every afternoon trying to figure out what I should make for dinner that night. (Yes, I really have been in the habit of doing that.)

What do you mean, it doesn't take normal people thirteen years of adulthood to figure this stuff out? Since when have I ever been normal? These are big steps for me. Next thing you know I'll have my house decluttered and it will stay clean for more than five minutes at a time. Or -- here's a concept -- I'll file papers as they come in, rather than stuffing them in a drawer until they won't fit anymore.

Don't hold your breath on those, by the way.

****************************

Um, other stuff. C has been sick for the past 24 hours. I have been feeling not-so-stellar, myself. We both slept for about an hour and a half this afternoon while LT played Civilization III and Falling Sand.

I am again behind on the LBY study. I'm also behind on laundry. No big news there.

We had a fantastic time at LT's birthday party on Saturday. Nineteen rocket launches, the aforementioned bb-gun shooting, and about six hours of running around outdoors playing boy games (including C, the one girl) made for some very exhausted but happy kids (and parents) by the end of the day. I made a cake shaped like a castle, and T and LT decorated it with Lego people and marshmallows, and we are STILL trying to finish off the leftovers, my gosh I'm so tired of chocolate cake.

I am SO READY for the eighty-degree days we're supposed to have this weekend. We keep having these dreary, gray, drizzly days, at a time of year when we've ordinarily had our winter clothes put away for weeks.

***************************

And there you have your post, Debi, is that better? At least it wasn't a meme. :) (that'll be tomorrow.)

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen things about my son (who turns ten in 54 minutes)

1. He has always loved having his head rubbed. When he was a newborn and we'd bathe him, he would scream the whole time because he hated being unclothed, but he would stop and look all little-introspective-mannish at us while we washed his hair. Nowadays he wipes off kisses but he will still snuggle up beside me and put my hand on his head, his signal to rub/scratch until I am permitted to stop.

2. When he was four he loved "bick hucks and tisses". He remembered what kind of huck each person in his family preferred -- whether that were a "pat huck" or a "squeeze huck" or both.

3. He is still better than anyone else I know at remembering people's preferences. I can ask him anything in this line -- "what does Nate collect? What is Charles' favorite color?" and he will know.

4. He likes to read the Hardy Boys, Beverly Cleary, C.S. Lewis, and books about ancient civilizations.

5. Over the past three years he has slowly grown from a boy who was afraid to be left at his friend's house four houses down for twenty minutes, to one who is miffed if he doesn't get to hang out there all day at least once a week.

6. He is such a big kid that we now have to look for his pants in the men's section. He wears a size 28/26, which is REALLY hard to find, I'm finding. But he's too big for size 16 boys' pants.

7. He adores, loves, is fixated and obsessed with elephants. African elephants are his favorites but he loves Asian ones too.

8. He has his own car, and has had for three or four years. (It's a 1967 Plymouth 2-dr, a drag-race style car, and it's next on the Major Projects list after his dad's Charger. It's to be a father-son thing. It actually needs less restoration than the Charger does.)

9. He was surgically removed from my body at ten in the morning after a failed attempt at an induction of labor, two weeks late, screaming like a banshee with angry trembling fists.

10. As an infant he looked like a little grumpy man with big curious eyes and with a "stork bite" birthmark that turned bright red when he cried.

11. He has a certain very cute silly grin that he makes at babies and he's over the moon when they smile back at him.

12. When his sister was born he thought she was the best thing ever. He cuddled and held her whenever I let him, and as she grew older, for years her kisses were the only ones he would not wipe off.

13. He wants to be an inventor when he grows up and he practices often.
    

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Living Beyond Yourself, Week 3: Rejection

Once again, this is mostly lifted from notes I took as I was listening to the session this week, and so it's got a kind of utter lack of coherence stream-of-consciousness flow thing going on. It doesn't help that it's 2:30 AM as I'm posting this. Um, yikes.

I know this is in the middle of the week -- too late for last week and too early for this week. It's my hope that I'll post again on Friday night with things I learn from the homework this week, and this will be a sort of makeup lesson for what I should have done last weekend.

I don't know if I ever made a conscious decision not to open myself up to people. I have noticed throughout my adult life that I have a very hard time getting close to people and making friends in real life, but I have always assumed this is because I am unlikeable, because nobody wants to get close to me. Which is definitely possible; I can be pretty annoying. But maybe part of the issue is that I find it easier to shrug and say "whatever", and avoid making the effort, because I'm afraid of the rejection that could well ensue (see above re: pretty annoying). What Beth said about loving the people we already love without adding any more actually rang quite true for me. Most of the people in my life who are close to me, from my family and my husband to my dearest friends, have known me for ages, in many cases since my childhood. These are the people with whom I feel comfortable, because I know they can't give up on me this late in the game. :) Actually, I'm close to a few people who live far away as well; I have more online friends than real-life ones. I have never tried to deny that this is at least partly because I'm more confident in online settings: I have time to collect myself, I know nobody's looking at my ugly nose or my upper lip that needs waxing or my stupid expressions. It isn't that I'm not myself online; it's just that I'm... maybe a slightly better version of myself. A slightly Photoshopped version, if you will. I'm more at ease, that's for sure. Overall, I have built this little life for myself, with a solid inner circle of people (husband, family, friends) who love me unconditionally, and outside of that there's this small cloud of friendly acquaintances who care about me but with whom I don't have the kind of relationship where I would feel comfortable, say, exchanging embarrassing secrets or letting them see me in a swimsuit, and then there's the rest of the world and I don't let myself be bothered by whether they care about me or not. And that's been the way of things since childhood, when the outside world (school) was a world of torment and the inner circle (home) was... well, not exactly perfect. But full of love and very, very safe. It's not even an effort to maintain this separation anymore. In fact I never even thought hard about it, until just now.

Beth talks about "taking off our rejection," as if it were a garment or (in her illustration) a pair of sunglasses. The thing is, rejection formed so much of the foundation of my life, I don't think I can "take it off". Hmm. I know Someone who can. But I don't know if I can let Him do that. Which reminds me of Eustace the dragon in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, even though that's a picture of sin and salvation. (sooner or later it all comes back to literature, doesn't it, Rachel.)

re: Rejection leaving a vacancy that we'll allow undesirable stuff in to fill: That is the story of my high-school love life. Do we need to go into more detail than that? I don't think so. Praise God for sending me this wonderful man early in my life before I had time to give myself any more regrettable memories in this department.

Beth talked at length about being rejected by people whom we have loved. I couldn't think of a situation where I've truly loved someone and they've rejected me, other than the traumatic-at-the-time-but-somewhat-silly-in-retrospect breakups with boyfriends when I was a teen. And I can honestly say that (probably thanks to the fact that I have such an amazing marriage and I know that this marriage and not those relationships was God's will for my life) I've never carried those around the same way I carry around the pain of the daily cruelty at the hands of my peers in elementary school and junior high. At first this inability to think of a rejection from a loved one sounds like I must be very lucky. But then when I really think about it, I think maybe it means that I shut people out before they can get that close. Thus far and no further; I can like you and you can like me, we can enjoy each other, but let's not go so far as love, I say to most people -- not that I ever have to say it out loud, because honestly not that many people want to come close. Which comes back to that unlikeable bit. But anyway. I think about attempting to let more people in -- about making the effort, about, I don't know, what do people in real life do? call up that other mom from the nursery and see about getting together for lunch? -- and my first reaction is, why would I want to do that? I have enough people who love me. Then I scratch a little below the surface and realize that the real reasons behind that thought are that a) I'm clueless as to how you do things like that and b) I'm scared stiff. Lord help me, I'm petrified.

Something to ponder: I had never thought about my painful childhood memories as a way to empathize with Christ's sufferings. It's not that I sit around dwelling on the awful stuff that people did to me at school -- well, not much of the time anyway, although it is something that affects many of my decisions and passions -- but in the future when I feel compelled to relive some of the more painful moments (hmm, would this be the dog biscuits in the lunch bag? The Rachel Germs on the playground? No, I know, it'll be the Xerox copies of the embarrassing crush letter -- with the picture I drew of the two of us dancing -- posted on every vertical surface at the junior high), I can remember: This, and so much more -- so AWFULLY much more, He endured, for me. And maybe that's part of why He allowed all that painful stuff to happen. Which, honestly, helps a lot.

Addie	Heather*	Carol
M	Rach	Jeana
Jenn	Amanda	MamaB
GiBee	Boomama	Maria
Blair	Heather	Nancy
Janna	Flipflop	Robin
Sherry	Patricia	Tara
Lauren	HolyMama!	Faith
Christy	Eph2810	Karin
Leann	Rachel	Janice
This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm - Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things I Could Have Blogged About This Week, But Didn't

1. Getting ALL CAUGHT UP WOO HOO on the Living Beyond Yourself study. And again I say WOO HOO.

2. How much I am hating the sight of my own face after ten days of this project.

3. The heartwrenching going-away party -- or at least the going away is heartwrenching, for the people they're leaving behind -- that we went to on Tuesday for a very good friend of T's and his family, who have also been good friends of ours.

4. The dadgumblasted nasty dull wet weather we've been having for like TWO MONTHS until today when I literally said THANK YOU GOD when I went outside and it was bright and sunny. If I wanted dull and gray for weeks on end I'd live in Washington thankyouverymuch.

5. The forty-eight hours or so during which a nasty-but-brief tummy bug made its way through (ha ha) all four of us.

6. The 1 a.m. puky-child episode involved with the above.

7. How expensive gas is here right now (between $3.09 and $3.29/gallon) and how the sight of our March gas bill made me want to claw my eyes out with my own fingers.

8. The fact that my son's 10th-birthday-party invitations say, "Bring your BB gun if you have one. There'll be shooting!" (yee-haw)

9. The way time has been going by so fast that something I 'feel' was two days ago actually happened two weeks ago. And let's not even get into the fact that I've been a mother (well, of a person outside myself, I feel compelled to add; I was a mother for nine months before he was born if we want to get technical) for one week short of a decade.

10. The excessive cuteness of my children.

11. The strength of the bond between myself and THE NIKON.

12. The fact that I decided I'd start taking night classes in the fall, and then got the college catalog in the mail and found that none of the things I will eventually need for a nursing degree are offered at our local campus extension that semester. See above re: gas prices and you'll know why that made me stick my lower lip out WAY FAR. :( <-- not illustrative enough since 80 or 160 miles/week for the sake of my higher education isn't going to happen right now. I had my hopes all up too.

13. This kid. Funnily enough, we've just been reading in LBY about how we should be forgiving and not keep an account of past wrongs and all that stuff. Otherwise, even though I am in a general sense really annoyed with our excessively litigious society, I might be inclined to say something along the lines of YEAH STICK IT TO THEM MAKE THEM PAY. Not that I have any bitterness about anything or anything. (cough).
    

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Living Beyond Yourself, Week 2: The Practicalities of Living in the Spirit

I'm actually on time. Wow. (I took notes while I watched the session and took a few minutes before heading for our Awana car race day to fill in gaps and post them.)

Being filled with the Spirit is practical in two different ways. First, being on fire for God changes your life. Living the Spirit-filled life is a completely different experience than living in the flesh.

Conversely, a life in the Spirit *requires* some practical differences. I can't be filled if I don't actually take the time and make the effort to allow that to happen. God will fill me -- that's His job and not mine -- but I have to let Him. I have to make it a priority for myself.

How do we get filled?

First, you can't be indwelt by the Holy Spirit without trusting in God, accepting his Son's sacrifice, etc. That's the indwelling of the Spirit.

The filling is a slightly different concept. That's a day-by-day thing. As Beth Moore put it so simply and eloquently, you have to have a pouring out (essentially confession), a pouring in (asking the Lord to fill me with Himself), and a pouring forth (going about living the Spirit-filled life). Practically. Daily. Without this, the Spirit still lives in me -- I can't shake Him -- but trust me I know from much experience that a life without this sort of daily interaction is a life where the life of the Spirit is on the back burner at best. It's rockier, emptier, more trying, more hectic. And far less fulfilling.

A couple other things Beth Moore said in this session that stood out to me:

• Nothing that sin can give us is worth what it takes from us.

• Rather than spending our lives 'squashing' desires, if we let the Lord, he will change our desires.
  

Also, I have to say, this getting-in-the-Word-every-day thing is doing me a world of good. It truly is. I've tended to stay away from "fill in the blank"-style studies, but this one really has you turning pages, and as I told my husband, it's almost like having a discussion. The book talks and I answer and then the book talks again. I can recommend it, even though chapter summaries have generally spoiled me for this method. :)

Addie	Heather*	Carol
M	Rach	Jeana
Jenn	Amanda	MamaB
GiBee	Boomama	Maria
Blair	Heather	Nancy
Janna	Flipflop	Robin
Sherry	Patricia	Tara
Lauren	HolyMama!	Faith
Christy	Eph2810	Karin
Leann	Rachel	Janice
This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm - Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things That Mean You Probably Don't Live In The City

1. You are really adept at steering the car around cow pies.

2. You get a flat tire a mile from home. It takes you 45 minutes to change it, and in that amount of time not a single car goes by. However, you see some neighbors out on their horses and they volunteer to stop off at your house as they ride by and let your family know where you are.

3. Your husband asks where something is outdoors and you tell him, "last I saw it it was by the transmissions."

4. Directions to your house include the phrase, "after the fifth cattleguard, the road turns to dirt, and you keep going for two miles until..."

5. You stop and look and go when it's clear no matter what color the traffic light is.

6. Ordering a pizza seems like a really exotic thing to do.

7. You go to the lumberyard and buy concrete for a project you're doing with your dad. Later in the day your dad goes to the lumberyard to buy concrete and the guy behind the counter tells him he doesn't need to buy any because you already did.

8. You can tell which way the wind is blowing by how the cows are standing in the field.

9. The sight of a really well-built fence brings a lump to your throat.

10. You're not afraid of bears, bulls, or one-lane dirt roads with a cliff on one side and a bank on the other. However, being in a part of town with bars on the windows gives you a panic attack.

11. The "letters to the editor" page is full of diatribes when a restaurant with a drive-thru is built in town.

12. Nobody has ever heard of your local grocery chain.

13. Google Maps has no idea how to find your house.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

This is still not my Living Beyond Yourself post.

I seriously have been thinking a great deal about the Living Beyond Yourself study. I have a lot of thoughts rattling around, and if I sat down and put them together, I think they'd make a pretty decent post about the fruit of the Spirit and what that means to believers, what it meant to me when I was first a believer (it was a husband-seeking checklist. I'm serious! and look how well that worked out for me!), and overall what it means to be a believer in the first place, in order to have the Spirit and hence have the fruit. But there are so many other things that want or need my attention -- my children, as I am in single-mom mode for a few days; this new photography project I'm doing; the actual homework for the LBY study; the laundry oh my gosh the laundry. So. As I do all these other things, I think. I stew, and I meditate, and I pray. And that might just be all the post you get for last week's LBY study. Or it might not be. I am not sure. We'll see what happens after the laundry-folding marathon.

The photography project I mentioned consists of a month-long 'challenge' sort of thing, just for myself (well, several of us from dpchallenge are doing it, but it's outside the site; it's not a contest, just a learning experience) wherein I post one new self-portrait per day for a month to this new photoblog. You read that right, self-portrait. Be afraid. Be very afraid. (I know I am.)

And with that I'm out of parentheses so I'm going to go watch the BBC P&P and fold clothes until I can't stay awake any longer.

Monday, April 03, 2006

Monday Positives

Just grit your teeth and write the post, Rachel.

• Um. It's still raining. We, uh, we really need the rain. Since the rain that fell pretty much during the entire month of March was not enough.

• T is gone on a (brief) work-related trip. This means... we get to eat pot roast for supper?

• The awful horrible nasty long wretched brain-eating data entry job I had is done. woo hoo!

• I am reading another Kazuo Ishiguro book. It is like I have Ishiguroitis or something; I can't stop. This one is The Remains of the Day, and as expected, it is awesome.

• That pot roast does smell really good.

• Now that the horrible nasty data-entry job is done, I can do my homework for Living Beyond Yourself.

• Did I mention the data-entry job is done? At this point the fact that I will get paid for it is almost a non-issue, as long as I just. don't. have. to. type. those. stupid. records. anymore.

• The kids and I are having a par-tee -- one of our usual really wild happening ones with brownies and ice cream, a family movie, probably a game of -- brace yourself -- a game of SORRY!. Or I might teach them to play rummy. Whew. Better rest up.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Living Beyond Yourself -- Week 1

Yesterday God made something serendipitous happen (as He often does) and as a result I am going to be participating in an online ladies' Bible study called Living Beyond Yourself. By virtue of having started late, however (everyone else started last Monday), I'm a little bit behind. It's my hope that by the end of the weekend or early next week I'll have today's post for this study ready to share, and from then on I'll try, by the grace of God, to be regular as clockwork (because, you know, that's just the way I am... not) and post my thoughts each Friday night or Saturday morning.

Addie	Heather*	Carol
M	Rach	Jeana
Jenn	Amanda	MamaB
GiBee	Boomama	Maria
Blair	Heather	Nancy
Janna	Flipflop	Robin
Sherry	Patricia	Tara
Lauren	HolyMama!	Faith
Christy	Eph2810	Karin
Leann	Rachel	Janice
This is a list of the women participating in the study and the links to their blogs. New postings on the study will be published for the next ten weeks, between Friday 8pm - Saturday 8am. Please feel free to visit each of us and comment. Everyone is welcome to participate in this discussion as we seek to live beyond ourselves. May God bless you richly from the hearing of His word.