A Joyful Day

My family got together yesterday and had a great time!

Don cooked his first turkey. It was delicious! Everyone helped with the food, including my brother (pictured here, with Dasha, who hopes for a sampling of his wares).

Everyone got plenty to eat.

After dinner we all played Apples to Apples (Junior Edition), a really fun game!I am thankful to have a family to celebrate with, a home to gather in, food to eat and good health. I am very blessed, and I am glad for the opportunity to be reminded of it.

Harvest Blessings

It's a beautiful Thanksgiving morning, a bit chilly, but the sun is shining brightly. Don and I took a walk with the dogs, and then I went out to my garden to see what was happening. Obviously, it is winding down for the year, but we haven't had a hard frost yet, so there's still a little bit going on.

Sugar snap peas are a cooler weather plant, so I planted those in late summer, and we're starting to get a few. As you can see, there are a lot of blooms, so I guess it's a race against the clock to see just how many we'll get before it gets too cold.

Apparently when I pulled up the potatoes, I left a couple, which grew into new plants. If all goes well, we'll have a few more pretty soon.The celery didn't do too well (I don't think our climate is quite right for it), but I got a few skinny little pieces for our Thanksgiving veggie tray. Our bunny Heidi has been feasting on the leaves. I found these green beans this morning, obviously not enough for a meal, and they probably wouldn't be too tender anyway, but they will make good seeds for next year's garden.I figured out why sage is a popular herb at Thanksgiving: it's one of the few that's still alive and kickin' (as we say in the south). Of course, there's parsley too, another hardy herb.I am thankful today, for the goods our garden has brought us for many months, for my home, for my family that will come to feast with us on this beautiful day, and for all the many ways God has blessed me this year.

The Perfect Holiday

What is a perfect holiday?

When I was a child, it seemed there were certain standards that needed to be followed: We must get together with other family members. We must eat certain foods that were associated with that particular holiday. At Christmas, there had to be gifts. Everyone was to be festive and joyful and follow the traditions that had been set.

As I grew older, many of those traditions got blown out of the water. During college and the years following, I spent some holidays away from home but always managed to find someone to spend them with, some way to celebrate them, whether traditional or non-traditional. Later my parents divorced, which changed a lot of things. Some years money has been tight, and a feast or expensive gifts weren't an option. Sometimes family members have to work all or part of the day, and we have to plan our celebrations accordingly.

We still have family celebrations; they're just not exactly the same as they used to be. Many of the people I spent holidays with as a child have died, and others have joined our family, whether through marriage or birth. Sometimes we invite people we know who have no family to spend the holidays with, as others have done for me in the past. Sometimes we do non-traditional things or eat different foods than we ate when I was a child. Sometimes now I spend holidays with my in-laws rather than the family I grew up with.

And I have learned this: holidays are what you make them. Joy comes from within, not from a certain food or a certain tradition, or even a certain group of people. There may be sadness in missing someone or over some other circumstance, but there can still be joy (it may help to do something completely non-traditional in this case to take your focus off of "traditions").

As you gather together with your family, or however you celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I encourage you to take the time to thank God for the circumstances you are in, whatever they may be. I believe that there you will find joy, not in a "perfect" holiday, but in your gratitude for what you do have.

Standing for What We Believe

Recently a group of prominent Christian leaders got together and wrote what has come to be called "The Manhattan Declaration." It is summarized as follows:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1.the sanctity of human life
2.the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3.the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

They are calling on Christians and those who hold to Christian values across the country to sign this declaration. You can read it in its entirety and sign it here: http://manhattandeclaration.org/.

It has been signed by many prominent Christian leaders such as James Dobson, Tim Keller, Kay Arthur and Chuck Colson. At the time I signed it, nearly 70,000 had already done so, and it is growing by the minute. Hopefully if enough people sign it, it will get the attention of our leaders and of those who would try to convince us that these values are outdated. Hopefully we will make a statement that there are still a lot of us out here that hold to these truths that have stood the test of time throughout history.

Band Concert Videos

These are some videos from Cedar Creek Band's most recent concert. The first is the Star Spangled Banner, with the Mt. Juliet High School band joining us. I am playing piccolo. The second one is four pieces we did without the high school band. I am playing flute in that one. The quality isn't great, but you can hear what we sound like.

Craziness

Life has just been crazy lately. I'm thankful to have more work, so I'm trying not to complain, but it is hard having less free time. In some ways even that has been good, though, because it has forced me to prioritize the things in my life, i.e. what can go and what can't, and to make the most of the free time I have.

Thanksgiving is just over a week away, and the month following it is always a blur. Since I have a little extra money now, I am trying to get some shopping done ahead of time and have started making some of my gifts. It would be so nice to not have that added stress in December, since my calendar is already almost full with Christmas events. I always wish we could spread all those out over the year rather than try to cram them all into one month.

I'm rambling, but I did want to let everyone know that I am still alive and kicking, and if you don't hear from me too often in the next few weeks, it's because computer time has to be pushed lower down on the priority list than some other activities. But like I said, that could be a good thing . . .

Thankfulness

There is a challenge going around Facebook to write as your status something you are thankful for, a different one each day until Thanksgiving. I haven't actually participated in this challenge on Facebook, but I have been doing this off and on for years.

I challenge you to do the same: each day think of something you are thankful for. It could be an everyday thing: your family, your home, your health, or a special blessing God has given you that day: a beautiful sunset, a great chat with a friend, or a perfect fall day. Try not to repeat the same things over and over. Ideally write it down in a journal so you can go back and read it when you get discouraged. You'll be surprised at how your attitude changes as you start to look at all the ways God blesses you each day.

My Acting Debut

As I've mentioned before, my brother Andy manages a Cici's restaurant in Smyrna, TN, and today they were going to do a commercial featuring the up-and-coming band Kingbilly. My brother asked me to come, and I, along with my dad and my nieces and nephew, were "extras." Andy and Melissa had slightly more substantial roles. We all had a good time and got all the free pizza we could eat!

Vitamin D3

I learned an interesting thing recently: if you take Vitamin D3, it is (arguably) at least as good a protection from getting the flu as the vaccine is. It is the vitamin that we get from the sunshine, and it strengthens our immune system, which is why people rarely get sick in the summer. It's not found in many foods, though milk is often fortified with it, and it is in some kinds of fish.

It is available in capsule form. I haven't started taking it yet but have tried to make sure I get outside for at least for a little while every day when the sun is shining. There's nothing quite like the real thing, so, as the old song goes: "Step into the sunshine. Get out of the shade . . . " and forget the vaccine. Maybe I'll get on that soapbox another day.

God Provides . . . Again

Have you ever prayed for something and then started to think of ways that God might answer your prayer? And then get discouraged because you can't think of any possible way He could do it?

I'm guilty of this from time to time. But let me reassure you, God is creative! I was reminded of that this week.

On Friday morning I called to check my bank account balance to see if my paycheck had been direct deposited. It told me my balance was $99,000+. I figured I must have the wrong account, so I called again. Same thing. I went through my transactions, and they included a wired deposit on October 21 (8 days earlier) of $98,000+. Needless to say, I didn't remember making that deposit.

I pressed "0" to talk to an operator. They checked with the wiring company and called me back and told me it was my money. They told me where it had originated from. I would love to have just taken their word for it and enjoyed my $98,000, but I was pretty sure it was all a mistake.

I looked up the company who had sent it on the Internet, found a phone number for them and called them later that day. The man I talked to was quite surprised. After I gave him more details, he said it was indeed a mistake. He knew the exact amount of the deposit. He asked me to overnight him a check, minus $1,000, which I could keep for my trouble.

I called the bank back late that afternoon, and they told me definitely not to send him a check, but that it was probably a scam, and I needed to transfer the money to another account and close my account. I went to the bank the next day and talked to someone else. We did some investigating and found out that the account the man had tried to transfer the money to had a very similar account number to mine. After getting more advice, we decided to leave the account open, but she would call the man on Monday and see about getting the wire reversed or forwarding it to the intended recipient. She would also ask him if I could still have the $1,000 he had told me I could keep.

On Monday she did talk to him. The wire was reversed, and he agreed I could still have the $1,000, which he wired to me today.

So no, I didn't get to keep the $98,000, but I did get $1,000 out of it that I definitely hadn't planned on getting. God is providing for our needs, sometimes in very interesting ways. If I had thought about it for hours, I doubt I would have ever come up with this one!

God Answers Prayer

It's funny, when we pray, sometimes we wonder if God is hearing our prayers at all, but other times we just get direct answers that leave us no doubt they came from Him. I had one of those experiences last week.

We have been struggling financially for a while, but with my extra job at CBS, we've been making it okay. Still, with Christmas coming up, I was needing a little extra money to buy presents, so I prayed last Monday night and again on Tuesday morning that God would provide me with a job for 6-8 hours on Tuesdays or Fridays (my 2 free days).

On Tuesday afternoon I got a call from a temporary service I had signed up with, which had previously not been able to find me any work because of my weird schedule. They had a company who was looking for someone who could do administrative work one day a week for 6 1/2 - 7 hours. She wanted to check my availability. She called him back to see if Tuesday or Friday would work. He said Friday would, but he needed someone who knew how to use both Microsoft Word and Word Perfect.

The lady from the temporary service called me back to see if it was remotely possibly that I knew Word Perfect in addition to Word (a rare skill these days since Microsoft has taken over the world). Well, the truth is I love Word Perfect and much prefer it but never get to use it anymore. In addition, the information she had given me all came together for me, and I realized this was a man I had done some work for before through a completely different work situation.

She called him back, and he remembered me and was excited about it all, since he had an appraisal he had to get out on Friday, and he knew I could handle it.

So I went to work on Friday and will likely continue to work for him one day a week on a flexible schedule at least through November and December, and maybe my friends and family will get Christmas presents from me this year after all.

God is good.