55 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 11-23-21”

  2. Good morning again.e
    I will be gone for a whil because the sun is beginning to shine on my screen.
    I could fix it, but that would require fixing again. Best to leave it alone.`

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  4. Good morning! I just enjoyed reading the posts at the end of yesterday’s thread. It made me again recognize the love I feel for you all.

    Today I put almond milk in my coffee, and I am enjoying that.

    When we visited Wesley, he used coffee beans from Aldi and ground them. That coffee did not seem to make me react so much with a jittery feeling.

    The ’emergency’ heat is on. With our heat pump an emergency happens when the temp is down in the thirties Hot air is sent through the vents instead of the recycled room temp air (that causes wind chill). Now I feel a sweat when the hotter air blows. Either way is uncomfortable, but it supposedly saves money.

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  7. Sunday evening I posted this cryptic comment: “I like the number 7, though this will make 8.”

    I then realized how close to 57 that was and made a series of posts related to those numbers. But now I can reveal their meaning. GD4 is going to be a big sister.

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  11. Lately I have found myself missing those who have passed on from my church family. Such good people I had the good providence to know and serve with.

    All of our current outreaches are done ‘out in the community’ so there is little feel of serving inside the church. Yes, it is serving and taking care of physical needs. I realize church is not to be only about serving the members, but sometimes it seems we have jumped from one extreme to the other.

    My frirnd, Karen, was surprised my church had no Thanksgiving related service. I said it might be next weekend, but see now we jump into Advent next Sunday.

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  13. Congratulations Peter & family.

    My last Presbyterian church, sister church to the one I belong to now but much smaller, used to have a special Thanksgiving morning gathering. We sang a few hymns, joined in corporate prayers, and had a time for people to share what they were thankful for that year. Most folks had turkeys in the oven an everything prepped so it was a good break for those juggling the day’s dinner.

    Kim, I’m almost afraid to ask how Mr. P is taking all of this? Will you be able to just fly out later in the day (I hope)?

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  14. Well, as you know, my friend M says I bounce back better than anyone she knows. I have now had my second rapid Covid test in 4 days for an additional $290!!!!
    We got on the phone with my friend the travel agent and she got to looking. I am currently getting updates from American Airlines. My 5:50 flight has been pushed back to 1 now. I haven’t turned off the alerts out of morbid curiosity. There was only 1 flight from Charlotte to Barbados today and only 1 out of Miami.
    We will try again tomorrow. We are booked for the same flights. The resort has moved our trip out to leaving on Tuesday. THAT is what is good about using a travel agency. I really wanted to go to Charlotte today, spend the night and fly out tomorrow. Since it’s a direct flight there wouldn’t be as many moving parts.
    Surely there is a lesson or something I am being protected from in all of this. May take me years to figure it out.

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  15. I miss that little church and our pastor, now long retired and recently widowed. I have kept in touch with him and his wife, he’s been at our church from time to time to preside over the Lord’s Supper in our pastor’s absence. He’s been on portable oxygen and I know must miss his wife so much now, they were such a dear and close couple.

    (He also handled my friend Norma’s estate, she was an especially close friend to him and his wife, so we enjoyed a few meals out together then. I loved those folks, and miss them, so I know what you mean, Janice. Life certainly does go by so quickly.

    He will always be my “favorite” pastor, ever.

    I was thinking of Kizzie’s estranged daughter, too. Chickadee doesn’t realize it, but these are the actions she will so deeply regret in her own life someday. Praying she comes to see how short-sighted and hurtful this all is on her part and how very much her mom loves and accepts her, no matter what, and is aching over this self-imposed separation (that someday will seem so petty and deeply regrettable to Chickadee, I fear).

    Life is too short.

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  16. You may never know, Kim, but it’ll surely give you some interesting (and funny) tales to share. What’s a vacation without a few mishaps right out of the gate?

    You’ll quickly make up for it all sitting on a tropical beach with a good book.

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  17. As luck would have it, I was sitting on the plane and had just pulled out my Kindle to start reading Aspire Higher but Ken Lindner and was reading the introduction where he was talking about his Positive Life Choice Phycology. :). Guess I need to read it.

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  19. Son: “We’re going to go on a big boat today and visit Alcatraz island.”

    Adorable, 3: “Oh, no! We need a sword in case we have to fight pirates!”

    He was apparently very upset.

    I advised my son he needed to better monitor the child’s viewing habits and reminded him we have a sword if he needed one. 🙂

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  23. Since Chickadee’s emotional/mental status has never been fully diagnosed from what I recall, and we only know there are differences in how she processes things, she may not truly be aware of the grief she is causing. That is my guess about the situation. I don’t see it as intentional, and I hope she won’t bear guilt over her actions this year.

    There are times I stayed away from family events because of my brother’s bad treatment of me. He gave an 80th birthday party for my mother that I did not attend. I knew my mother understood, but it had to be awkward for her in explaining my absence to friends. My brother wanted all the glory for the great things he did so I got out of the way. He could have said, “Let’s together give a party for our mother.” Never an option in his mind. He ordered me to clear out my and Wesley’s things we had at the house where we cared for my mom and homeschooled during the week while he worked. There was to be no sign of my stuff in my mother’s home for ‘his’ party.

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  24. Pilot’s do check lists before departure and people are on the plane during the check. I prefer they find a malfunction while still on the ground. One of ours, at Heathrow, found his seat belt was missing a part. Made for a long delay.

    Unless of course there was no pilot due to vaccination requirements.

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  25. It was something with securing the door. I’m glad they didn’t take off with it not secured. I just got an update, they are estimating takeoff at 1:30. I imagine they are boarding now. I’ve already missed the connecting flight so we will try again tomorrow.
    We just received our second negative Covid test. Mr.P is filling out all the immigration information, along with our negative results. We have had to say how long we will be there and where we are staying, and the purpose of. our visit. We have also had to download the BIM Safe app on our phone so they can track us for Covid purposes.
    I hate to be one of “those” people, but if it is this hard for me to go on vacation for 6 days, why do we allow any and everybody into our country.
    If you want to visit fill out all the information like I just have (well I didn’t. Mr. In Charge did. On a side note he did give me my passport back. :). He has now decided that both of them along with our vaccination cards are safer in my wallet, in my purse). Quite frankly, if I had to fill our all these requirements, I probably would give up and stay home.

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  26. I sometimes wonder if God is punishing me for they way I treated my mother, with BG. Then I tell myself, I am not an alcoholic, accusing her of all sorts of things that are untrue. Once, when I caught her sneaking out of the house, I did yell at her that at least I cared. I had had to walk home up a busy highway and bang on the window to try to wake her up to let me in. That was back before 14-15 year olds were given keys to the house. You can bet I got one the next day when my father got home. But on the flip side I dinged the car and convinced her she did it. So there is that.
    All flippancy aside, I do think our children break our hearts to teach us something. I have cried and prayed many nights over this one. Mr. P told me it was her “job” to break my heart. She is doing somewhat better now and still needs to go to therapy to figure some things out. That is why I will be good for her to stay here alone if we can every get out of her hair.

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  27. Wow, lots of hoops to jump through, Kim.

    And yes, you don’t want to deal with an open door on an airplane. Hair-raising.

    I presume the trip home will be less complicated. You can always just go to Mexico and cross the border, of course, assuming you have good walking shoes.

    _______________________

    I think i will go forward with replacing my missing pine in the back yard with the smaller size of a Canary Pine (but small isn’t tiny, it’s 7-9 feet I think). The larger size would be glorious but way, way more expensive.

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  29. My, too, Kim. In fact, I remember my dad telling me of the time he stopped down the road from our house to pull a tamarack tree out of the ditch. I only found out because he lost his teeth, which he had taken out of his mouth when he left our house and had put them into his shirt pocket. He got almost home (60 miles at least) and was going to pop them back in his mouth. Oops! No teeth. He deduced they must have flown out of his pocket when he jumped across some water in the ditch, so he drove all the way back. Yes, he did find them and he also had another very funny story to tell.

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  31. Actually, the original pine tree that was here had been a potted Christmas tree that the gardeners planted for the owner in the backyard. It was quite small when I moved in, it was probably 20 feet tall when it died for unknown causes (which still worries me about putting another one in, but cost of the tree comes with a 1-year warranty from the landscaping outfit).

    I suppose I could also buy a potted Christmas tree and have the gardeners plant it … it would be very little.

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  34. Janice, I’m sure chickadee isn’t aware of the grief she’s causing. Just as we weren’t aware, either, of the hurts we caused our parents or others when we were younger and our perspective was much more limited. It’s not intentional, but we see things in a much different light with a bit of maturity. And behind that is often regret and the realization that we could have or should have behaved differently.

    But when we’re young, and perhaps with other issues going on internally or in our little “worlds,” we don’t have that capacity.

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  35. In my yard in No Calif. I would go out and cut down 100 trees at a time. Most were very small, but they grew like weeds.
    Time to get ready for market. I have the van for market, then have to walk to school and someone will bring it by today so I can drive home. I will take all of the help that I can get.

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  36. oh, I have lost two students this week. One family goes home over the break for a medical furlough. Another family had to move somewhere else. Not sure what happened but I don’t need to know.

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  37. What DJ said. Often young people are so caught up in their own selves, they really are not thinking of anybody else. And a child with Asperger’s, even more so. And may never have any regret as they never realize.

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  38. I just got an invitation from someone to come over for pie on Sunday afternoon to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am so glad to have an opportunity to get together and give thanks.

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  39. I was surprised to see Annie Oakley this morning climbing up one of the large ficus trees in the back, then hopping over to the side fence crossbar and then back over and onto a heavy limb on another ficus, climbing higher to see if she could spy on the neighbor cats, LiLu and Betty.

    Now she’s inside napping on a pillow on the living room ottoman.

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  40. mumsee (4:11) well said.

    Glad you got a Sunday pie invite, Jo. Sounds like this is a very strange period for you and the area where you are serving.

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  41. Perhaps the young woman doesn’t know how to process grief over her father. Perhaps this is her way of avoiding the pain of not seeing him in the house?

    Honestly, so many of us need help knowing how to grieve. A lot of the inner healing I’ve had over the last year has come out of grief.

    I didn’t think I had that many things to grieve–I certainly didn’t grow up starving in Biafra–but it has weighed on me my whole life.

    Almost all the books I’ve written have grief or death underlying them, if not front and center.

    Grief support groups are important–I don’t know many widows who did not attend them.

    Despite being a lay counselor for so many years, it’s obvious I should have sought out a grief support group on several occasions.

    Counselor–you should know better than to try to heal yourself. 😦

    I put us all through a lot of misery not knowing how or dealing with my grief.

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  42. On another note, our “airplane prayer” always has been thus:

    “Lord, I pray you would be with ____________ as they fly today. If there is anything wrong with the plane, please make it obvious before they leave the ground rather than when they are in air.”

    As one woman in my Hawai’i Bible study said, “We’ve never lost a passenger with that prayer. But a lot of people have arrived late.”

    I prayed for you before I got up this morning, Kim.

    You’re welcome?

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  43. Good insight about the previous family loss being a possible factor, Regretful.

    I’m reading a book on the importance of learning how to lament biblically (which the author believes many of us have never grasped). So often friends are too quick to get someone to see “the bright side” (I’ve been guilty of this). Not in a superficial way, but to somehow encourage someone, with all good intentions, by moving the needle to a more positive spot, rather than sitting in the ashes with them and simply grieving alongside.

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  44. I think some of it has to do with the fact people have been pushing this absurd idea of “closure,” and “getting to closure” too quickly.

    We’ve talked about grief’s sine wave before, but so few of us know what to DO with the pain, that we try to avoid it. I think you’re correct, DJ, there is no DO, there’s simply BE.

    It’s hard to sit with someone who is grieving. It’s hard to sit with that pain.

    And yet, if you sit with it, really feel it, and experience it for what it is–loss, change of life, different direction, sadness, aloneness, wistfulness, and regrets–I think you may come out on the other end healthier and less overshadowed by it.

    If you’re a busy mother with far too many things to do and not enough time in the day anyway, “taking time out” to grieve, seems like an indulgence. So many people depend on you. So many people expect you to be there for them.

    For some of us, it became easier to set it all aside for another day–not remember the backside of the wave’s wallop is often harder than confronting it. (Mixing the metaphor there, thinking about body surfing at Torrance Beach, and learning about sand pain the hard way).

    And sitting with someone else’s pain–sometimes feels unendurable. See Job’s friends.

    And give them some credit: https://www.michelleule.com/2017/02/21/jobs-friends/

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  47. And it’s natural to tell ourselves it’s time to get up and get busy, move past the moment when we’re sad (and that does make us ‘feel’ better) ….

    It’s complicated.

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  49. I was in a prayer group last week. Each of the men who worked closely with nationals told about someone that they had worked with for years who had fallen. I told them none of you mentioned the grief that you are feeling. You need to recognize the grief you are feeling in this situation.

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