After the Weekend

We've gone through another weekend. I hope yours was as relaxing and refreshing as mine was. I didn't do anything special I just kinda went with the flow. Speaking of flow, the flooding back east is heartbreaking. And then there's Dean to worry about. Right now it's poised for a direct hit to Mexico. It could veer north and hit Texas but I think it will probably make landfall in Mexico. But you never can tell with these huge storms. Even if it hits Mexico, Texas will still have to feel some of the lesser affects of it because it's such a big storm. My niece lives in Oklahoma and she really got the rain and runoff into her pond yesterday but she's okay. As I watched the news and saw the helicopter making its attempts to pluck someone out of the flood waters there in OK, I said a little prayer that it wouldn't be her. I love storms. I don't love their damage and destruction but riding out a storm is fun to me. (Of course I've never had to weather a really bad storm. I might feel differently if I had to go through one.) We had one storm, though, that was pretty intense last year or year before. (Time goes by so quickly I'm not sure when it was.) I've never seen it rain any harder. It was a monsoon for about 15 or 20 minutes. Water just poured off the roof like a waterfall. The gutters were doing all they could to vector off the rain but they just couldn't keep up with that volume of water. It rained so hard it washed away our sod lawn. But we don't get a lot of wind with our storms here like they do back east. And I guess I'm grateful for that. We had some roofing tiles blow off about 3 years ago but that was the last big wind we've had. And if I remember right, it wasn't even raining during that wind storm. But I do like storms. I like earthquakes too. Don't know what that says about me but I thought I'd be honest. I can remember when we had the last big quake we felt several years back. We were living with my son and daughter-in-law and she's terrified of earthquakes. We were in bed and all of a sudden this wild woman came screaming into our bedroom and jumped right in the middle of the bed with us, hair flying in all different directions. I thought it was really funny but I felt bad for her because she was obviously distressed to put it mildly. I think the reason I like earthquakes so much is that I don't live where the earthquakes are really our earthquakes. We don't have an active fault right under us so what we feel is really someone else's earthquake. The damage happens elsewhere. So I can enjoy them.

Yesterday's weather wasn't too bad at all. It didn't get nearly as hot as it has been but according to the news last night it's supposed to be heating back up today and tomorrow. I washed and dried our sheets and got our bedding changed yesterday. That's always nice. I love fresh, clean bedding. When we first moved to the Bay Area, I changed our bedding every other day just so I could experience crisp, fresh sheets more often. I hate to admit it but it's now a weekly chore for me; that's how lazy I've gotten. I love to take a shower and then slip between clean sheets. It's just the greatest feeling in the world to me.

I made it to church yesterday. I didn't play hooky again. Before services I was out mingling with my friends and one of them came up to me and said, "You got your hair cut." "Yep, I got it all cut off," I replied. "Oh well, it'll grow out," she said. And I was left with not really knowing what she meant by that. I laughed. I couldn't help but laugh. I like my hair even if everybody else dislikes it for whatever reason. But I thought her comment was funny and thought I'd share that with you.

Michael made me some business cards yesterday afternoon. They aren't really business cards but I don't know what else to call them. They just have my name, address, phone number, email address, and blogsite listed on them. He put three crosses on them in a grouping just to have some art on them. They look really nice. I'd asked him to make me some because people are always asking for my phone number or address. And I'm always giving out my email address because it's so much easier for me to read email than talk on the phone. So now I have nice cards to hand out when someone asks for my information. I had been using some old business cards from when I used to sell Avon and just crossing out the Avon part, because they had my phone number and email address printed on them and I had just handwritten in my blogsite. But this is so much nicer. He thought me using my old business cards was tacky. I thought I was being thrifty. I think he made them for me more because he was embarrassed that I was using old cards. He's so funny. He spent so many years as a businessman that he thinks everything has to be very business and official like. I have cards that are for my lay pastoring but they just have my name and phone number on them, no other information. But it's good now knowing that if I want to ask someone to contact me by email rather than phone, I have a nice card to hand out with all my information on them instead of having to scribble out the information on a piece of paper or something.

Skatemama must be busy lately because she hasn't written a new blog in over a week. Hope she's not sick or something. But I would just imagine that with her little family she may occasionally have difficulty finding the time to blog. Once she starts homeschooling again for the year she'll probably find it even harder. But she's a lot of fun to read and I just love all the pictures she puts in her blog. Her children are so adorable. Maria will be having a birthday before too awfully long. Another month.

Well we grilled a bunch of burger patties on Friday night and then just ate burgers for the entire weekend. I thawed out some big pork steaks for dinner tonight. They're so big that I'm just going to cut one into two pieces for us for tonight and then I'll use the other one for pork fried rice tomorrow night. I thought since I'll have so much meat, I'll try to make a double batch of rice. Michael likes my fried rice better than the rice we can get at a restaurant. And I have to admit it is pretty good. But if I make a double batch of rice we'll be able to get more than one meal out of it. I'm kinda thinking about making pancakes to go with the pork tonight. Usually I make mashed potatoes and gravy but pancakes and pork steak sounds good to me this morning. I've never done that before but why not?

Dan's sermon yesterday was, believe it or not, on rejoicing or being thankful in our sufferings. It's that an amazing coincidence? Here I spent a couple days blogging about being thankful in our problems and then I get to hear a sermon on the same thing. But like Dan said, the rejoicing or thankfulness comes in the suffering not after it's gone. It's amazing how the Lord works with us. He gave me the verses to write about and then gave me a sermon to listen to. When things all come together like that I can really feel the Spirit in my life. Feeling the Holy Spirit is something I never did as a JW and wouldn't have understood if anyone had tried to talk to me about feeling the Spirit work in my life. But it really happens and once you feel Him, you can't deny Him. It's like Paul wrote to one of the early churches and said essentially, When did you have (feel) the Holy Spirit in your lives. Was it while you were so self-righteously keeping all the rules, regulations, and commandments? Or was it after you came to know and accept the Lord by faith? And now that you've experienced the Spirit apart from the Law, are you going to go back to all those empty rules? Once I experience the Holy Spirit in my life, I can no longer deny Him. I may be at a loss for words to explain Him but I can no longer go any other way. And I promise you this, once you feel and see the Holy Spirit in your life you'll never want to go back to whatever it was you had before that "claimed" to be the only true religion.

I talked to my cousin Betty last night from New York on msn. And she said the missions trip is going smoothly and they were going to get a lot of things done. Today they were supposed to paint a woman's house and maybe work a little getting her yard into shape a bit. Then tomorrow they are planning on going to Niagara Falls and Canada. She and a friend will fly home on Friday. I guess the others are staying a little longer. Either that or they just decided that they didn't want to ride in a van for another two days to get home. She just went on a missions trip to Russia in June. She's such an inspiration for me. She may be taking a contract job up in Canada for awhile, teaching people how to use a phone system or how to answer the phone for I believe she said an insurance or a healthcare provider. My memory is really getting bad. I'm just half guessing on everything I'm writing here. But now we know she can use her laptop so we'll still get to talk to each other everyday and she'll be able to keep up with her email and my blog while she's away.

Today's Bible verse is Psalms 11:4-5 and it says, "The Lord is in His holy temple; the Lord is on His heavenly throne. ..." That's a comforting Scripture to me. That no matter what's going on in my life, regardless of what trials or problems I'm having to deal with, the Lord is still on His throne. He's steadfast like a Rock. God is faithful even when I am not. He has promised me that He won't let me go through anything alone. He'll always go before me, stand beside me, and bring up the rear behind me. That's so encouraging to me. "The Lord is on His heavenly throne." Everything else may fall apart or disappoint me, but He is forever on His throne! No matter what happens in my life, God is on His throne and, by His grace, I am in His kingdom. I can rejoice in my struggles because God is on His throne. Nothing happens apart from Him. He is, indeed, on His heavenly throne.

I don't seem to be creative today (just newsy) so I think I'll let this be it for Monday. I have no plans for today except to get some dusting done. (I know. I said I was going to do that the other day but I let time get away from me!) Hope you have a great day today and I'll meet you here tomorrow morning.