Prayer for mom

When I look back on this last year I realize that it's been a rough one. I say "I realize," because its also been a personal pilgrim's progress for my mom and me. I've seen new growth, patience and trust develop. I think the hardest thing a Christian has to do is to wait on God. Patience is a virtue because we must practice it to achieve it. None of us are born patient and in America we are far less patient than elsewhere.
Last year my mom was finally pushed out of her position as a Special Ed. Science teacher by her nasty boss. He had been trying for years to get her to leave after she filed sexual harassment charges against a friend of his. After all the mental and emotional strain, wondering what possible move he would take to make her life harder, he finally got her for her absences. Most of which were due to her bad back and consequent surgery or the panic attacks she suffered as a result of his treatment.
So today, almost a year later she is in a far better place and realizes just some of the wonderful things that God has taught her and the new heights that he has brought her too. Now she wants to work again. She says she couldn't handle teaching full time again but she has applied to be a substitute teacher. And today in about 30 minutes, she will be in an interview where she will have to explain why she was fired from her last position. If she explains to their satisfaction she can start subbing. What this means is that she will have to rehash the whys and hows of one of the toughest episodes of the last three years. She will also have to do it in a way that makes sense and that shows that she is competent as a teacher. So I have texted all my prayer warriors and asked them to pray for her and this interview. I trust that God has prepared a way for her. Yet the more voices I know are ascending to the heavens in her stead, the more confidence I have in the men and women judging my mother here on earth. So please add yours to the chorus.

Father God, please make a way.
Cause light, illumination and understanding

to shine around my mother.
Speak through her the words that you have

ordained her to say.
Allow the minds and hearts of those sitting in

judgement of her to be open, merciful and understanding.
Let us face the future you have for us with hope and trust.
Father, give us peace.

Father please be with my mama.
Amen.

"Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
The everlasting God, the Lord,
The Creator of the ends of the earth,
Neither faints nor is weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
Even the youths shall faint and be weary,
And the young men shall utterly fall,
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint."

-Isaiah 40:28-31

Spring Break!

Well Spring Break is almost at an end. I am not sure I used the break as productively as I could do. However, I am sure that I used it to refocus and to rest. Maybe being recharged, I can be productive in the days to come. *As needed.
I hope to finally bake some cookies for some wonderful friends of mine. It's a great recipe from TLC's Take Home Chef. They are Peanut Butter Chocolate cookies. So good! They are best the day after you bake them. The peanut butter flavor really comes to life.
I also hope to finish my around the house list, paint touch ups and furniture stuff. Well here's hoping I utilize the time I have, resting, working or cooking.

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients:
1 tsp. Baking soda
1 c. brown sugar
½ c. (1 stick) butter, softened
1 egg
1c. Organic Peanut butter (it really does make a difference)
¼ c. honey
1 ½ c. flour
1-5oz chocolate bar (I use Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar)

Preheat Oven to 350°. In medium mixing bowl cream together baking soda, brown sugar, and butter. Drop in 1 egg and mix thoroughly. Add peanut butter and honey, then mix. Scrap batter off beaters into bowl. Fold in flour with sturdy spatula or large mixing spoon. Break up your chocolate bar into desired piece sizes. Fold chocolate pieces into batter. Drop by rounded teaspoon full onto cookie sheet. Bake 6 cookies to a sheet. They bake up and out while cooking. Bake at 350° for 12-15 minutes, depending on how chewy or crispy you like your cookies. Let rest on cookie sheet for a few minutes when they come out of oven before transferring to cooling rack. When the cookies are completely cool you can really taste the peanut butter! Store in airtight container and enjoy!!

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These are really easy cookies to make. You use only one bowl and there’s not much mess to clean up after. Also feel free to use chunky peanut butter or different kinds of chocolate. My sister loves dark or semi-sweet chocolate pieces— to each his own! The broken chocolate pieces make them look a little more gourmet than the chip variety. Enjoy!

The Beach

Creation cries out, "Bless God!"

Today, me and mom went to the beach, near our house, to layout. It was a little chilly with the wind coming off the water. But otherwise it was relaxing. Going to the beach really makes this week seem like Spring Break. The beach near our house is nothing to get overly excited about. It could be great, but the water on our end of the island is like an inlet and all the ocean garbage drifts up on shore. There was old sand encrusted luggage, shoes and of course broken bottles scattered across the sand. Yet, the litter only took a smidgeon of the joy out of the day. I love the sun!

Apt

"Nor is the earth the lesse, or loseth ought,
For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto another brought:
For there is nothing lost that may be found, if sought."

~Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene,

Book V

Lessons

I feel too far away. And I feel on the outside of this. I didn't get to talk to him directly, and tell him I love him. I don't know why, but I needed to have my voice in his ear expressing love. More for me perhaps, then even for him. I know that things will work themselves out and eventually I'll hear that lovely voice on the phone again. I find myself in the odd moment with tears on my cheeks, waiting. I have to wait, till the wounded are ready let others in. I hate being an other, I wish love were like a ticket. You love enough and you have the right to know the inner workings, the right to whisper encouragement. Now I'm trying not to be selfish and pry my way in. I know he's being looked after, I know that God is there. I just wish I was too. Maybe this is the other part of my first love lesson. Maybe I can be better from this too. Maybe we both can.

Everythings okay

Everything's allright! My prayers were answered. My friend is fine. Mostly just a misunderstanding. Thank you GOD!

Scared...

I wasn't there yesterday when a friend needed me and now I am scared. Scared that he is not okay, that somehow I let him down. I now that we all make decisions and we are responsible for them, but I know too that the conversation of a good friend can tip the scales. Dear God, please be there as I could not and bring peace to us all. Thank you God for other friends and for you who stand in the gap.

SICK!

I am rarely sick, but today I am.
It could be the round of antibiotics I am taking for my ear. I'm not sure. Today I had a fever and was achy all over. Finally after hours of feeling just on the nasty side of sick I took a shower and now am going to take some Nyquill and pass out. Thank God for Nyquill!

A little garden poem...

My Garden

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
  Rose plot,
  Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot—
  The veriest school
  Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
  Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
  Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Thomas Edward Brown

A beautiful woman...

"A beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, planting tenderness, hope and eloquence in all whom she approaches."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dirt

I love the earth and everything that grows in it. Today we decided to add a little shopping to our regular 2 mile walk and go to the local nursery to pick up a couple of rosebushes for the front-square (to say yard would be an overstatement). I thought it was a grand idea. I had second thoughts on the way home. This was the first day this spring where the temperature reached the upper seventies, with no cloud cover and almost a mile left to travel home. And here we were walking a dog and carrying a large potted rosebush each. All the heat and sore arms aside, it was a good idea.

I love to plant things. I love to weed and mow and all the other things associated with growing things in the soil. In another life I would have been quite a capable farmer. We weeded and planted and pruned our front square. I was dirty, tired and happy! There is just something about having dirt under your fingernails, and nowing that what you've just labored over will potentially take root and grow. It's so amazing to see something grow where you planted it, that is supremely fulfilling. It must be only a smidgeon of the joy God feels as creator and redeemer. I hope to plant my herb garden in the back plot during spring break in a couple weeks. More dirt, Yeah!

I give up!

So... I am a selfish human being. I like to feel needed, important and someone special to others. Maybe this makes me only human, but right now it makes me want to throw in the towel.
All of my friends love me, I don't doubt this. But truthfully I don't often feel significant to them. Maybe it's being thousands of miles away, I'm not sure. People are sometimes fickle.
I don't know what I do to run them off, but off they run. One said I needed her too much and it was all she could do being needed as a single mom. I understood and thought she just needed some time, but even now our calls are strained. Another said I was too intense and made her feel too much. We were all we had for so long and it hurt tremendously to let go when we moved apart. So now she didn't want to get in deep again. Some don't say anything at all, they just move away and the time and energy it takes to keep in touch isn't worth it. I don't know...
Today it just jumped up at me from a blog page, and I realized I am and never will be anyones best anything.(Okay God, I know I'm your girl... but I mean here on earth nella carne.) I have often felt I will never be any guy's significant other. And today after realizing I was just an unimportant fluffer friend, I got it! If you make yourself vulnerable to people, you love them too much, or you care more then they care, you might just end up alone.
as I am writing I have an epiphany--------------------
I think, in some way, if I accept this I might break through a wall, being able to be a more humble servant of God.
Is that weird? Weird, that I am sitting here coming to grips with something really hard and hurtful, and yet these thoughts that if I just let go I could be someone better pop into my head? These thoughts have allowed me to stop tearing up and breathe deeply.
Would that mean that I am meant to care less? Or could it mean that if I let go I could love and care just as much, only I wouldn't need to look to them for any assurance of my worth? God, I hope so.
God, please let me do that. Let me be a better Danielle. A girl who can stand on her own. A girl who could love from the depths of my being, and not need or expect the love of others in return. Let me break through.

Disclaimer: (Note from my wise mother.) I tend to be hard on myself. Sometimes placing high expectations on myself, and also on the ones I love. I love hard and I am hard to please. It's what makes me what some call an "all or nothin' kinda gal." Hmmm, maybe I should have an epiphany about this too. God? Anything, anything? Maybe this is work that needs to take place on a different day. ;>

Jess

" …For decades we had shared a friendship with no secrets, no disguises and the wisdom to know that such a great friendship was rare. I remember reading once that your enjoyment of something doubled if you realized how lucky you were to have it. If everyone had a huge diamond on their finger, or if sunsets were universally scarlet and gold, then we wouldn't value them at all. It was like that with us."

-Maeve Binchy's Whitethorn Woods

It's like that with my friend Jess and I. She is so wonderful. She's beautiful inside and out. She loves people and all her friends will tell you that! She is a woman much loved. She loves God and right now feels like she is at the best place spiritually that she has ever been. She has been dealt some very serious blows over the years and she has come out on the other side depending on God more and more. She is funny as hell, and a wonderfully talented wordsmith. God allows the most amazing episodes of beauty and quirkiness to find her in the most unlikely normal places. She is constantly becoming surer of who she is and what she wants in life. She courageously reaveals her true self in her writing. She is unafraid to express the real desires of her heart. I only wish I could be that brave.
I thank God that in whatever we face in life he has given us each other. She will always be friend of my heart. I know that she only wants good for me and that I only want good for her.

My sweet friend know you are so loved!

This is one of the most beautiful manifestations of God's mercy to man, that we are able to have relationship with others.

"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

-Kahlil Gibran

My happy

It's slightly inexplicable, but I think I got my happy back.

At least I'm on my way there. I have been very unhappy (unlike any unhappy I've known before). I wasn't depressed, but sincerely grouchy, dissatisfied, hard and unhappy. This since just after Christmas. That's when I was told that I'd have to postpone my nursing rotation another semester. It's was like one incredible punch to the stomach, and my heart said no more, we won't be putting anymore happy on the shelf. All sold out here, try next door!
I knew I wasn't happy, but in all honesty I couldn't find my way out. So I just turned into a craven bitch. It didn't help that I was trying rather successfully to rid myself of my addictions. Unhappy, no helps = bad situation! So my exercise turned more regular and that kept me from punching unsuspecting new yorkers in the face. But my poor family, how they bore the brunt.
Then one day I realized I didn't like the world I had created. I hated the person that I was being. Something had to change! And right then the little happy makers stopped picketing and went back to work. It's been a slow process.
I'm not up to max. happy output yet, but I'm smiling more. People are actually talking to me since I lost my ever present scowl. I'm laughing more. My parents are considerably less tense and more loving, because hellooo, I'm less tense and more loving. So I'm on my way to happy, and that's a lot better than where I've been.

Hell-o happy, where've

you been all my life!!

I miss church...

I miss church. Or more specifically church in the south. I have been attending Redeemer Presbyterian here in NY. The preacher is excellent. His depth and intellect always challenge me to learn and grow. That is definitely what I look for in a minister. He knows how to set up a sermon in a way that I can follow, he rarely chases rabbits nor does he misuse texts to suit his own agenda. He's a peach!
Anyhoo, that's not what I mean by church. I miss the feeling of community. My friend Krystal and I were talking about this the other day. They are moving to Tyler and visited Green Acres church there. She said that she felt like an audience member. It's not that she didn't actively take part in the service but she still felt like she was just one of many, not a part of something. It's hard to explain. But summarily it's missing the sense that you are connected to the people around you.
I miss seeing familiar faces. I miss knowing the person sitting next to you, or at least a person sitting in the next row. I miss hugs and updates. I miss the little children I taught Sunday School. I miss the community. Here I love the church I attend but I am not part of it. Maybe that's how it feels to live in NY. You are here, but everybody else is too, so who cares?