If you are not aware of Pinterest or not a fan, maybe you are saving yourself A LOT of time. It’s addicting. Here are my favorite pins from this week (click on picture for origin):
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany
The Edge of the Sea, Bonifacio, Corsica, France
Kjeragbolten, Norway
chocolate cups using balloons
bleach pen tees
Cappadocia, Turkey
It wouldn’t have been possible for me to attend the Baltimore Beth Moore event without my wonderful husband and dear mother in-law who played with my son while my husband was at school. My mother in-law also makes it possible for my husband and I to serve the body of Christ as greeters at church once a month. It’s a special blessing to have someone watch your child who your child so dearly loves. His mee-maw.
I’m coming to a crossroads with my interdenominational Bible study. It’s about 25 minutes away and my son does not enjoy it. I know he shouldn’t always get his way, but it makes it difficult for me to enjoy it and concentrate when I have left him so upset. There are wonderful women from the particular church who volunteer, but it’s pretty far from the room we are in and you need a card for entry. You know when you just get a feeling that it might be over for a certain season/thing in your life? The good news is I might buy a Beth Moore Bible study off ebay and show it some where. We will see.
I am positively wild about the study (David, Seeking a Heart like His) I am doing that I might not finish. I wanted to share a few notes with you from our last video session:
No one has ever fully embraced the concept of “God alone” apart from grave disappointment (Ps. 62:5). God alone. A painful place to get. A beautiful place to stay.
We are never in greater need of humility than when we are confident someone else is wrong. We can go from right to wrong at breakneck speed with our pride.
Someone could not let me down, unless they at some point lifted me up. People can be fine people who can be trusted as people but they make terrible gods. There is a big difference between esteem (which we are called by God to do) and appreciation versus exaltation.
When in a conflict with a person, bow down so low to God that God can deal with it (Gal. 6:1).
We will either wrestle all our lives with unmet expectations or intentionally rest our souls in God.
I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would win this blog giveaway. I totally stumbled upon on accident. Or not. Probably not. God knows. Rachelle left a comment and I went to her blog and entered. I have never been more excited about winning.
This saw just became available in stores this month. Click on the word “saw” to read what it can do.
My very first, very own power tool. Watch out, Dave, there could be a lot of dust flying around our house.
Thank you so much, Rachelle, at Adventures in Creating. And Dremel. I am SO grateful. SO!!
{taken through the screen door}
Henry is VERY social. He doesn’t like to be alone. Therefore the best form of punishment for bad behavior is separation. Not always feasible when out shopping because the moment is long gone by the time we get home.
Henry feeds off the energy of other people. He is a true people person. Put him in a crowd and he goes wild. He just loves it. Unless he senses anger or fear. He is very sensitive. In fact, he gets scared very easily. He is very scared of elephants on TV. If we see a large powerful dog while I am jogging, he will tell me he’s scared of the dog.
That also brings us to the point that he is very dramatic and will do anything for attention. Like make himself throw up. Hmm. Reminds me of a very close relative. He also will constantly say he’s scared or hurt to get attention. It makes it difficult to discern when he’s truly having a problem or truly scared of something.
He’s so friendly and so dramatic and likes so much attention, he often physically attacks strangers in public. Like runs up to them a grabs their legs or slaps them on the back as I push the grocery cart by.
Fortunately, 95% of them think it’s cute. But, of course, we really need to tame this behavior. He just finds it so funny and isn’t really deterred by any immediate discipline I have used thus far.
Henry does self entertain and loves TV unfortunately. But for the most part would rather be with other people even if that means harassing Maggie or getting on top of Dave or me while we are in the middle of something. He now demands to sleep in our bed because he is afraid he will miss something. He has even quietly waited until after mid night to sneak into our room after a long night’s struggle to make him stay in his room.
He gags if he sees something on his plate he doesn’t like.
He loves garlic humus.
He doesn’t really like his food mixed.
Sometimes I let him eat dessert first because I find if I get him eating he will eat a lot more.
He is growing like a weed.
Everything Maggie does is hilarious. Especially chew up his toys.
He talks about his extended family members and friends all the time.
Every time he sits in his yellow chair he says sweetheart, because B.j. gave it to him a long time ago.
He calls Dave’s mom Mee-maw. If I tell him she’s coming, he cries all day to see her.
Today was the first day of the art club art class my friend Beth and I are facilitating at our Christian high school (we don’t go to school there. ha-ha. It’s part of our church ministry and Beth’s oldest daughter is a freshman). It was a step of faith. We made it to the class early by the skin of our teeth. We didn’t know if we were starting today or not until this morning. We did. And we got ALL of the supplies we needed today as well. It was a race to the start. But it started. Praise God.
We are using the old home ec. room. Slightly crowded and messy (used for storage) but a great provision for the beginning. And, since no one uses it, we are leaving all of our stuff out. Majorly cuts down on clean up time.
I really wanted to begin with a really cool project that would get them hooked and happy they signed up right away. We set up 8 place settings by faith because we only had one sign up by the time of the class. 13 showed up. We were short on supplies.
Canvases are very expensive and so are the pre-cut wood boards for painting at a craft store. So when I was working on my furniture a couple of weeks ago, I notice a large sheet of ply board for under $12. Today I purchased one at Home Depot and had them cut it into 8 pieces. It end up being less than $1.50 per board and they were about 2ft x 2ft in size. Quite the bargain.
We are doing a mixed media project on wood. Mixing paint and using random objects to stamp. We will also be modge podging some paper designs, wood burning on it and projecting words( if they want) so we can outline them and paint them in (all on this board).
Everyone was really excited and got right to work.
We also gave each student a block of pine to carve to make their own wood stamp. This does take a lot of time an patience, so I might grab some linoleum for the next class to carve and make stamps.
Some students had to double up because of the unexpected attendance.
My friend is the co-facilitator and is on the far left of photo with the dark blue shirt. She was helping with the art and making cookies. Our art class is going to be an outreach as well. We will be making things for someone suffering each week. Whether they have lost a loved one, have a health issue or caretaking for someone with a major health issue. This week the cookies went to baby Olivia’s family. We’re afraid they might have melted together because we didn’t start making the cookies until the end of class!! Oh well, we made it, we did, God is faithful! So glad to be doing this with my best friend!
These are photos of the students work so far.
The only boy in the class did the one pictured above.
Wow!
A group from our church which the most part is also part of an inter-denominational Bible study in a nearby church, went to the Beth Moore, Living Proof event in downtown Baltimore last night and this morning. We are not all pictured here.
Thanks to Pam Pazda and Patricia Kocarek and the generous staff and management at Residence Inn by Marriott on Light Street in Baltimore, we got a free upgrade from a standard room to a two bedroom apartment! Talk about a gift from God to us. We are all so thankful.
There were two beds in one room, a king in the other and a pull out couch. Being the youngest in the crowd, I opted for the pull out couch. We had two of these lovely suites for a group of 9 that decided to spend the night!
Pam Pazda works downtown and knows all the little restaurants. She introduced us all to Fresh!. This great organic lunch café that stayed opened a little later to accommodate our group.
It was so encouraging to walk down Baltimore Street and from a distance see this sea of women entering into the convention center. Sisters in the faith. The body of Christ.
Travis and the worship team ushered in the Presence of God.
There were 5,200 in attendance. Amazing.
Patricia and Pam getting ready to hear Beth Moore.
Beth worshipping on stage with the worship team after the Friday night session.
Funny group photo.
So what was the event about. Well, it wasn’t about going to a show to be entertained although it was well done. I firmly believe Living Proof Ministries and Life Way along with the women in attendance had a burden that God would speak to each person in a personal way, the Word of God would cleanse, the Word of God would release, the Word of God would heal and the Word of God would renew. That it did.
Just like the restaurant where we ate our spiritual meal was fresh.
Nets. Nets? Nets! I think this may have been the process of revelation or impartation when the theme was introduced. Nets. Okay. Wait. What? Nets? Then after we/you/I opened ourselves to allowing the Holy Spirit to examine us and our lives, it was, oh yah, NETS!
The memory verse was Psalm 25:15 ESV My eyes are ever toward the Lord for He will pluck my feet out of the net.
1. A net is something you don’t see coming.
In the Old Testament every one but on case a net is used in negative sense.
For the most part it comes around your feet. And people who set a net for other people can end up falling into the net.
Ecc 7:26 – If you live in a net long enough…
2. A heart can twist into a net.
Anyone can be a trap or net in Ecc 7:26.
- Can’t be just normal friends, has to be all or nothing, a friend who won’t let you go, ingratiate yourself to another, friendship goes beyond biblical need to human need, heart becomes like a net and obligates people to stay in life because only way can keep people.
Hab 1:15-17 making sacrifices to the net – the net life will end up costing us more than we have.
Where our feet go our emotions follow. Where we look has a whole lot to do with where our feet end up.
3. Shame can knot up an insidious net.
Isn’t that the truth. Shame can be social, sexual, vocational, financial, relational. We can bring shame to ourselves and others can bring shame to us.
Shame is mentioned over 150 times between Gen 2 and Rev 21 when God removes shame forever.
It’s a work of the enemy. Shame keeps us embedded in sin long after repentance.
We cause the enemy great laughter when remain stuck in the net of shame.
It keeps us from looking upward, tendency to look at feet and affects posture.
Ps 130:7 Biblical hope – not a wish but a full on expectation like a watchman sitting on a wall.
It’s not enough to diffuse the old situation. It’s not enough until God diffuses it and then uses it.
Difference between guilt and shame – guilt is when you know it and it leads you to repentance. Shame is when you wear it.
We are all called to such authenticity of life that if our worst sins were exposed publically it would live up to our testimony. “She always did say she was delivered from a lot.” Not living this life of hypocrisy, pretending we have never needed redemption. But not needing to expose the details of our past because that doesn’t bring glory to God.
We get comfortable in the net. We even love the net even though we hate it. That’s why some people never leave.
What is your net? Pride, negativity, addiction, shame, control of your family, fear, lack of trust in God, failed to make the cut in the call of God?
No one has out sinned the call of God. No one has out sinned His plan of redemption. No one has out sinned the Finished Work of Jesus Christ. If your looking at yourself to complete it, yes, you will always fall short. But we have a God who calls us and also does it.
That was just Friday night. There were two other sessions after.
Here is part II following this post.
Here is Maggie, our beloved Walker Hound Dog. From the earlier post you learned she is suffering from a yeast take over of her body. Something that is underdiagnosed, serious and that has happened before.
This photo is from this morning. Tuesdays and Fridays are Maggie’s bath day, and, as you can see, her skin/fur is clearly improving.
After Maggie’s bath, we give her one of these grain-free treats. Grain-free is of the utmost importance when treating a pet with a yeast takeover. Grain-free is much pricier than the junky counterparts but we limit to two or three treats per week as an incentive to get her bath which she loathes.
Treat time is quite a hilarious scene at the Umstead Homestead. Henry almost immediately after bath time asks if we can give Maggie her treat. He is always laughing so hard he can’t stand up straight. Maggie sits impatiently patient trying her hardest to be well behaved for the treat.
It’s complete mayhem.
Wilderness also makes a great grain free canned dog food. And spoiled dogs only eat canned dog food. It happens to be one of the least expensive at the major pet stores, but I was able to get by Nature online from Pet Food Direct for $1.09/ can which included tax and shipping. That is more than $1 less than any grain free in pet stores. I did google coupon codes. It came in two days or less. I bought enough for two months.
Henry loves helping feed Maggie. We feed her a can of dog food plus some dry food and add her Nzymes to her food. She also is allowed to clean up Henry’s low carb scraps which amounts to A LOT in a day.
