On the Right Track

by | Jun 1, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3: 5-6 NIV

 

We were lost, and from the bars on all of the store windows we were in one of the not so great sections of Philadelphia. And it was getting dark. My Mother had come with me to Philly for a work conference I was attending, and we had decided to go out for Chinese food for dinner. I should probably mention here that we are a little directionally challenged. If someone gives us directions and says, “It’s so easy, you won’t be able to miss it!” you better believe we will find a way to miss it! In fact earlier that day, my mother had dropped me off at the conference, and while just trying to get back to our hotel room, had made a wrong turn that sent her over a bridge into New Jersey! 

 

We had started the evening by searching for one Chinese restaurant near us and using our GPS had gotten there. That restaurant did not have the orange chicken, dripping with that tangy orange glaze that we were in the mood for so we decided to try again with one of the many Chinese restaurants in the area. The second restaurant didn’t seem that clean, but there was another restaurant 3 minutes away… next thing we knew we were in a seedy-looking area of Philly, where every restaurant and convenience store had bars over the windows. On top of that it was getting dark. 

 

We tried using the GPS to get back to the first restaurant we stopped at- general Tso’s would be just fine instead of orange chicken-  but the ramp we needed to get on to get back to our hotel was, and this may sound weird; blocked by a king size mattress across the road. Why was there a king size mattress on the road? We didn’t know but given the roads, we decided it was better to try another way than to try to get out and move it. Perhaps other people felt the same and that accounted for why a mattress was still on the road! Eventually, we were able to get back on track and we ended the night eating our chinese food, in the safety and comfort of our hotel room! 

 

This work situation has a lot of parallels to our spiritual life too! Take David for example: He was the man after God’s own heart, but he sure messed up along the way. He started off strong in his faith, rightfully giving God all the glory for the defeat of Goliath. He went into battle and gave God all the glory, he spared King Saul when he had the chance to harm him because Saul was God’s anointed king over Israel. Then David decided to stay home from a battle, perhaps he should have gone… Instead, he committed adultery, and instead of confessing what he had done, he furthered his sin by committing murder. 

 

Just like that David had veered off the path and was way in the weeds. God sent the prophet Nathan to call out David in his sin. David had two choices: he could confess and repent, or like Saul he could have hardened his heart and deny his wrongdoing. Thankfully David confessed his wrong and got back on the right track. 

 

We all face this same choice in our lives. We are human, making mistakes and finding ourselves in sin is going to happen. But when it does we can either confess and repent, or we can deny our sin, but denying our sin won’t bring us closer to God, instead it will drive us further apart, and like my mother and myself in Philly we will find ourselves making wrong turn after wrong turn, getting further away from God’s goodness and grace. However, if we repent, and get back on the right track, then we will find ourselves growing closer again to our heavenly father and the comfort of our Eternal Home. 

 

 

 

Disclosure 

Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too!

Other Posts You May Enjoy:

The Comfort of a Friend

 

Outdoor Decorating Ideas for 2023

by | May 26, 2023 | Homemaking

 love being outside. I love summer! And, I love enjoying the outdoors in the nice weather. We enjoy immensely and use our front porch/deck and our fire pit area in the summer. On our front porch, which faces west, we have an outdoor sofa and chair set which is great for eating dinner or dessert on warm summer nights. We also have a little bistro furniture set on our east-facing balcony that is perfect for drinking coffee and watching the sunrise. We shall not speak of my garden area as it is still a work in progress (maybe they will be fit for public consumption next year?!?!).

This setup works great for us because this is how we use our space. I am excited that we have been able to redo our fire-ring area this spring as it helps us utilize a great space that we have, but sometimes fail to utilize, since it needs fixing up. What I have found is that while yes, my gardens still need lots of attention and I am slowly making progress on those, putting a little bit of work into areas we use most makes the biggest bang for our buck and is the most gratifying. In this post I am sharing some different outdoor setups that I have seen. My hope is that one of these will spur a take away for you of how you can tweak the space that you have to make it work for you. So often we think we need more, different, bigger spaces but I have found that oftentimes we have what we need, it’s just a matter of tweaking it and getting creative to turn what we already have into our own little paradise! 

What Do You Need to Make the Space Work for You? 

Do you need a big umbrella to provide some shade for you when you are outside? Is your deck or patio in need of some softness? Try adding an outdoor area rug to soften the area. Do you live in an area where the evenings are often cool? Add a throw (perhaps one you don’t care too much about) to that area so it is not one more thing you have to run inside to grab when you are trying to enjoy a few minutes of quiet on an evening. 

Maybe you just have a tiny little outdoor area that isn’t big enough to fit a table and two chairs—can it fit one chair? Maybe a little garden stool too on which to set a drink or a book? Some of us have large areas, some of us have tiny outdoor areas, but if you have even just a tiny balcony, adding a chair and a plant can bring your space to life.

Rehab and Refresh

Does your outdoor area just need a refresh or does it need some rehab? If the side of your house is turning black and green, it probably just needs a good power washing. However, if your deck is turning black and getting splintery then it might need some rehab. 

Power Washing

 

You can get your own power washer, you can hire professionals to do this, or you can scrub the side of your house by hand and then spray it down with a hose. No matter what course you choose to take, I think you will be shocked how much this can improve the look of your home.

Rehab

 

We have a wooden structure encircling our fire pit and from this structure we have hanging wooden swings. This year we had to reinforce this structure; while we were at it we realized how rough the chairs were getting. Not only was the stain starting to peel but the wood itself was getting rough. After talking with several people more knowledgeable about this than myself, I discovered that there are thick stains out there that will fill in the groves in the wood. The product I am using is Superdeck by Sherwin Williams, but there are similar products by other companies.  My chairs are turning out great! (Stay tuned for a post coming soon on the step-by-step process on how I refinished my chairs.)

In addition to this stain, there is also a product called a deck resurfacer which basically does the same thing but is made for a little rougher wear. These resurfaces will leave your deck with a rougher texture, like sandpaper, so take that into account, but it might beat rebuilding your deck if the wood isn’t too far gone! 

Add Flowers

 

Flowers are nature’s jewelry! Don’t underestimate what they can do for a space! Even just adding one flower in a pot on an outdoor table can improve the feel of your space and make you want to spend more time there. 

Add More Outdoor furniture

Do you have a table and chairs outside? If you have a partially covered outdoor area or just live in a mild climate, consider adding a china cabinet outside so you have dishware and other items right at your fingertips! 

Along those same lines, maybe you have found a piece of furniture at a yard sale or flea market that has seen better days; try refinishing it with a heavy duty stain or varnish such as Polyurethane, to make it suitable for outdoor exposure. Adding storage and making your outdoor space feel more homey will help increase its use. 

Lighting

Stringing a few Edison-style lights or café lights outside can make it feel like you are at a cute beach-side bistro. Of course, they are lights which means you’ll have more light outside—perfect for reading at night. You can attach poles to your railings to add height to string the lights between. If you have a patio instead of a railing, you can pour cement into cute pots to secure the poles to give yourself something to string the lights to and from.

Lanterns

Lanterns are another source of adding light; using a decorative lantern with a battery operated candle will add some ambience, while using a working oil lamp or lantern will shed some serious light on your area.

Tiki Torches 

For a more tropical feel, adding some Tiki torches will help to add some mood lighting to your outdoor area. Citronella fuel is one option you can use to keep the bugs away while lighting your area. Obviously though, you do need to be more careful around any source of light that houses an open flame. 

Other Posts You May Enjoy:

 

Ways to Use Your Outdoor Space More this Summer

Centerpieces for Late Spring and Early Summer

5 Historical Fiction Reads to Kick off Your Summer

 

Holding On

Holding On

by | May 19, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

 

It has been a year since I became a mother—a year of everyone telling me how quickly time passes, that I need to enjoy every moment, that I will blink and find that my baby is grown. I have thought about these things every night when lying my sleepy baby down for bed; I have kissed his cheek and intentionally held onto the moment knowing that, in less time than I care to think about, this little baby will be bigger than me, and not inclined to let me kiss his cheek so often! 

My son has had reflux—a moderately bad case. While we figured out around six to eight weeks of how to manage it, the first six weeks of his life he was held almost constantly unless not he was crying! Not just crying but scream-crying like he was in pain (which in fact he was) and while holding him still didn’t quiet him completely, it helped. For six weeks I was lucky if he took one good nap during the course of the day. I would set him down, tip toe away and do my  best to shower, prepare a meal, tidy up, or whatever else I wanted to do that day, knowing IF he went down for another nap, I’d be lucky if he slept for an hour! It is safe to say I held my baby as much as I could during this period. “Hold him as much as you can,” echoed through my mind as I held him for the majority of every day. 

And yet… did I hold him enough? I know the answer is yes. I remember the days not being able to set him down because when I did so he would cry that excruciating cry, and no, he wouldn’t just cry it out. So while I held him nearly all day every day, I still look back and would love to hold my sleepy baby again because here’s the truth—it’s never enough. 

It’s never enough. And it never will be. Mother’s Day—a day of remembering the ones we’ve lost, and a day set aside to intentionally remember and hold on a little tighter to the mothers we still have in our lives. But as much as we might cling to our loved ones in the time we have with them, in the end we will always wish we had more time.  I remember spending a lovely Father’s Day with my Grandpa the 36 hours before he passed, and it still wasn’t enough! I still wanted, still want more time with him. And even though I have taken advantage of kissing my son’s chubby baby cheeks every time I can, it’s not enough either. The year has still gone by quickly. And slowly. There were sleepless nights, followed by days that seemed like they would never end. There were days that seemed like months when all of us were sick with the flu. There were days we wanted to last forever and days that seemed to last forever.

Then there were the strings of average days—days that were just fine, nothing fancy, nothing special, but just a good normal day. On these days I would wrestle, as every new mother does, with the to-do lists and responsibilities, and spending time with my baby. I would find myself trying so hard to enjoy the moment that I started not enjoying it! Do you know what I decided to do? I decided to quit thinking about all of it. 

I decided to quit thinking about how much I should enjoy everything, to quit feeling like I was either doing too much, or not enough, and to just do what I wanted to. Then I started really enjoying life with my little one. 

Maybe (quite possibly) I am just a basket case, but I’m willing to guess you have felt a similar push-pull in at least one area of your life. While you are really trying to enjoy and hold tightly to a magical experience, you find it slipping through your fingers only to let it go and find that the last part is the part that you most enjoyed about the whole experience. 

This Mother’s Day, and all the days here after, my prayer for you is that you don’t feel the need to hold onto anything so tightly that holding on becomes the only thing you can think about. Instead, I hope you are able to immerse yourself in the moment, let your emotions go, and store away memories of being fully present in your season of life. I pray you are able to live all, or at least most days, filled with love for your life and those in it, and that that love spills over to those you meet, colors your days, and ends up looking like a life well lived. 

 

Other Posts You May Enjoy:

The Moments of Our Lives

Blessed

Who Are You Looking For?

The Interests of Others

 

Books Taking Place in the 1800s

by | May 9, 2023 | Book Nook

The Devil in the White City

This is the story of a serial killer and the 1893 World’s Fair. It was by a very close margin that Chicago was granted the privilege of hosting the 1893 World’s Fair; the last World’s Fair had been hosted in Paris and Chicago had a lot to live up to—what could possibly compete with such an engineering feat as the Eiffel Tower? The heads of Chicago’s World Fair are determined to find something… but they also have the monumental task of turning a swamp into a paradise—in less than two years! Paris had four years to prepare for the previous World’s Fair! Will Chicago be able to pull it together in time? Many are convinced they won’t be able to..

Meanwhile not far from where the World’s Fair will take place, young pretty girls are going missing, a conman constructs a creepy building with gas pipes releasing into rooms, and a sound proof vault in the basement… and a doctor who always seems to have a cadaver to sell to one of the many medical universities clambering for skeletons…..

The Personal Librarian

by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

Around this same time, in New York there is a young woman by the name of Belle Greener… or Belle Da CostaGreen as she is better known—a name invented by Belle and her mother to go with Belle’s new persona. Belle is a woman of color, although fairly light skinned, is going to pass into white society and into the role of head librarian for JP Morgan’s library. Belle is tasked with acquiring new volumes of books to add prominence to JP’s growing library. In such a role Belle is welcomed into New York’s society, a place only secured by the thread of keeping her true identity a secret. Will she be able to keep up the false front and keep her prestigious role? 

The Blue Tattoo: the Life of Olive Oatman

Just 40 years before the 1893 World’s Fair debuts such feats as the Ferris Wheel, westward expansion has led many to travel west in search of a better life. It is hard to believe such a short amount of time can make such a difference, but in the 1850s people were braving the elements, the unknowns of the trail, and Native American attacks to build a life for themselves in America’s west. Olive Oatman was one such girl. 

Olive and her family were on their way to their better life when they were attacked by the Apache Tribe. Olive and her sister are taken captive and the rest of her family is left for dead, brutally murdered before their eyes. After a year of being kept as slaves by the Apache, Olive and her sister are traded to the Mojave tribe where they are adopted and treated as daughters. Five years after their initial capture, Olive is traded back to the white people, her sister having died. Olive, who has assimilated into her life with the Mojave, as evidenced by the blue tattoo on her chin, now has to assimilate into white society, a task which is nearly impossible given her tattoo marking. This is a work, not of fiction, but of fact, drawn from only the facts known about Olive’s life and a very fascinating read about a resilient woman! 

Disclosure 

Please remember that this post contains affiliate links; that means if you click on the link, I will make a small commission at no extra cost to you. It’s a way to support my blog! I will only ever share an affiliate link if I love the product and think that you just might love it too! Support this blog here, The Devil in the White City, The Personal Librarian, The Blue Tattoo: the Life of Olive Oatman 

 

Life is Like a Batch of Peanut Brittle

Life is Like a Batch of Peanut Brittle

by | Apr 30, 2023 | Sunday Scripture

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

Lamentations 3:25 ESV

 

“The only thing harder than waiting is wishing you had.”

– Steven Furtick

 

I heard this quote the other day and it stopped me in my tracks; well actually it stopped me mid-scroll on Instagram. Talk about pressing into someone’s paint points!  There have been more times than I care to mention that I have rushed ahead only to wish I had waited….

 

The town I lived in growing up hosted a craft show every year; it was the kind of craft show where anyone who wanted to would open up their home and along with some of their neighbors, friends, and family display their handmade goods for sale; good ranging from baked chocolate chip cookies to stain glass kaleidoscopes! My mother and I participated in this show at our neighbor’s house. 

 

The first year we participated I made all crafts, no baked goods, and didn’t sell nearly as much as I wanted to (of course!). However, I saw that people were buying up the baked goods at a much faster rate than they were the crafts so the following year I decided to make some chocolate chip cookies. As you probably know, when you take cookies out of the oven, you should wait for them to cool, either by placing them on a cooling rack or waiting until the cookie sheet itself has cooled down. Well, I was in a hurry! The faster I got the cookies plated and in their bags, the more cookies I could bake and the more cookies I baked, hopefully the more money I could make…. In the end, I didn’t save time as my cookies that I plated when they were too hot, cooled into misshapen lumps which didn’t look appetizing and were hardly fit for public consumption! 

 

Years later I was still enjoying baking and we decided it was time for Grandma to teach me how to make peanut brittle! Making peanut brittle is a little bit of a tricky process… there is a lot of time stirring the sugar, Karo, and water together over low heat…. It can stand for a little bit but let it go too long without stirring and it will scorch! The thing about this process though is that it can’t be rushed… You can’t turn the heat up on high in an effort to rush it, and you can’t skip the time-consuming process otherwise the peanut brittle won’t get hard! 

 

After the peanut brittle reaches the hard crack point the scene changes! You want your peanut brittle to be crunchy- not just hard! It should have a quick crunch to it and be light and airy (though not soft of course) on the inside. To achieve this as soon as the peanut brittle reaches the Hard Crack stage you have to quickly add the baking soda and peanuts, stir just enough to combine them, and then quickly pour it onto a cookie sheet. If you don’t do this quickly the baking soda will have depleted its magic and you will be left with a rock-hard mess. 

 

The thing about this whole process is that while you are waiting, you are actively waiting. You have to be accurately tuned into what is taking place in the pan otherwise you will miss it! Isn’t this an apt metaphor for what waiting on God is like too? 

 

When we are in a waiting season it is easy to think, “Well I might as well just settle in and wait on God.” and we get so comfortable waiting that we stop looking to God and forget that this waiting too is just a season. We are to be actively waiting on God, still doing the next right thing in front of us; reading our bible, praying, ministering to others, using the waiting time as a time for God to do His work in us so that when the season of waiting is over, we are ready to do the work that He has prepared in advance for us to do! 

 

 

 

Other Posts You May Enjoy: 

Waiting for Patience

The Secret to Being Content

Sweet Recipes for This Christmas Season (for how to make your own Peanut Brittle)