My mother is my best friend. I am so blessed to have her in my life!!! Thanks, Mommy. 
It all began right under this light pole:
In 1973, my dad proposed to my mom in that exact spot in Springfield, MO. He was a dashing and wild-eyed young preacher; she was a sweet and loving student in nursing school.
Thirty-five years, four kids, and many grandchildren later…and they are still going strong.
…how gmail says “The spam in this folder has been deleted forever.” Forever? That is a nice thought…Spam be gone FOREVER!!!
If only there wasn’t 100 more spam messages waiting the next day…
Today I bought a new journal.
That may seem like a simple thing, but really, this is traumatic. I have ways to stay organized, but my journal becomes a place of more than just organization. Making lists in my journal doesn’t work, because it isn’t easily accessible, hence I make lists on pieces of paper (easily stuffed in the purse) and schedule notes on my calendar (in my phone, so it’s always with me). My journal is really a central place of spiritual input and creative output. It’s where every spiritual impression is recorded - sermon notes, devotion thoughts, words to songs, verses I’m memorizing, little tidbits that are passed on by others and I scribble them down so they aren’t soon forgotten. But more than just input, it is also where I output. Many blog posts start in my journal, often at strange times of the day. It’s where I brainstorm for articles for our ladies paper, and where I create silly rhymes or heartfelt songs. I copy quotes to use in the future, and sometimes whole sections of books I’m reading to return to later.
I like doodling, but I am not an artist, so I stick with what I know (not much). I’m usually pretty particular about the type of pen I like to use, at least when I am doing creative writing. It has to flow right, otherwise I spend too much time trying to ‘work’ with a jerky ink flow. When it comes to the journal itself, I can be pretty picky. It was really an evolution, I think.
I remember the very first journal I received. It was really a ‘diary’ with lock and key, and it had a picture of a castle on the front of it. I was about seven or eight years old when I received it, and I thought it was so wonderfully secure…for about one day until my brothers showed me how easy it was to break into. I don’t have it anymore (a bad mistake on a cleaning-out day) but I still remember what I wrote in it (I only filled up about four pages of that journal)! But even before that, I can remember making little notebooks for myself with construction paper and yarn, and though I didn’t put much original composition into them, I would fill them up with stories that I loved.
As I got older, I chose my journals based on their outward appearance. I loved the ones with puppies and cats, or flowers and goldfish. Once I reached junior high, I started to choose them based on their interior. I wanted journals with flowers or quotes at the bottom of each page. Since I spent most of my time looking inside the journal, I wanted a bit of beauty there.
Now, I am almost sad to say, I am extremely picky about what journals I will actually use. This is why I often give journals as gifts to friends. I am given a lot of journals, or I buy a journal and find it is ‘not right’ for me, so I give them away to others, because I realize most people aren’t as picky as I am.
I like my journal to be unlined. I love it best when the paper has a ‘homeade’ feel to it…kinda unfinished on the edges, some slight bumps and character to each sheet. It can’t be too bumpy, though, or the pen won’t glide smoothly. The outside doesn’t matter to me nearly as much. The one I picked today is just a plain black exterior. But the inside….oh, it was love at first sight. Actually, to be perfectly honest, it was almost exactly like the journal I had last, except it is a bit thicker and made by a different company. I have found that sketchbooks make perfect journals for me. But not too big! It has to be just the right size for the season I am in. And this often changes, because it really is an evolution. Next time, I may want a large journal with bright colors. For now it is small and thick, black woven material for the binding and a short elastic band to hold it shut.
Why all this fuss? Oh, I don’t know. I know that if the journal isn’t ‘just right’, I won’t write in it. I carry it around, but will often choose to just listen to a message rather than write some thoughts down. But when the journal is enjoyable…my hands practically itch to crack it open! I want to write in it…every message, every morning, every night, every prayer, every thought. I fill it up much more quickly, and strangely enough, I can think straighter when I am consistently writing in a journal. I think my mind just gets too bogged down with so much information, and if I’m trying to hold onto it without writing it down, it makes it hard to concentrate on other things.
When I start a new journal, I always carefully choose what will be on the very first page. Often it is an inspiring verse with some goal I am setting for myself. The whole thing is clean and new, like a fresh new day. It smells clean and each page is loaded with promise of things to come. I always save the last page of the journal as a ‘farewell’ page, because I really feel like I am putting an old friend on the shelf to retire. I like to write some sort of note to myself (disguised to myself, but really to the journal) giving a brief overview of how it has helped me grow. It’s closing a chapter of my life. Often I will come across an old journal (I have stacks of them, as you can imagine) and they are each so special to me. I could probably stand to throw some of them out, but the ones from the past four years especially record so much of my life, my thoughts, and what God has done for me!
You all probably think I’m completely kooky now! My brother sat silently tonight as I excitedly unwrapped my new journal from its plastic sheath. I was expounding on the similarities and subtle differences between it and my last journal, and gushing about how excited I was to have found one. “You need to get a life,” he said. “You really need a life when you get so excited about a notebook.” Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps you think he’s right.
But I think not.
‘Vacation’ was a time of a LOT of sitting, an incredible amount of sitting. I think it will be a while until some of my muscles forgive me for it. To help break up the monotony of driving, we tried to make a few stops. Steak and Shake is always a favorite, but given a my dad’s new diet, we only went there three times. We made a slight detour through Kentucky to visit the Creation Museum. We had just over an hour before closing time, so we hiked through it pretty fast. We walked around the gardens a bit before climbing back into the van, and some of us were attacked by this dinosaur:
So the dinosaur shaped bushes were a bit odd, but I was just thankful to be out of the car.
Trying to kill some time in St. Louis, we decided to stop at the Arch. Now you have to understand: when I was younger, we went through St. Louis at least once a year, my family used to live in Missouri, I was even born in Missouri, but we have never been to the Arch. Can you believe it? I had been there once, but I was with some friends, so none of the rest of my family had been there.
My mom and I walked through the museum in the bottom while my dad and Sam went to the top. (I had already been to the top once, so I opted to stay with my mom who couldn’t be convinced to go up that high.) While waiting for them, we watched a movie about the construction of the Arch, which I found much more interesting. Even though they predicted that 13 men would die in the building of it, not one person died! It was pretty fascinating to see the way they rigged up their scaffolds. And, as an interesting side note, each piece of steel was forged in Bethlehem, PA, and shipped by railroad to St. Louis.
We finally made it to my grandparents’ farm near Springfield, MO. It is always so relaxing there, but I’m usually bored after one day. I might not be if it was actually a working farm, but they are retired, slowing down, and only have a few cows to chase. We basically sit in the house, drink sweet tea, and visit. Like I said, one day and I’m pretty bored.
No internet and no cell phone reception, which I must confess was actually very, very nice. We drove into town just about every day and would find somewhere to check e-mail, but that was it. I did find that if I walked to the top of the hill by their neighbors’ house, I could get one bar of signal on my cell phone to receive text messages. It was right by this fencepost, in fact:
All in all, it was a very relaxing atmosphere, but with people coming and going, and us coming and going to wedding things (the wedding was on my dad’s side of the family, we were staying with my mom’s side of the family), there really wasn’t much time to rest. I did have fun playing with the camera though. Ah…sunsets, fields and old barns. I would love living in the country…with internet, of course!
Katie was my constant companion on walks. My grandparents have had her for several years now, but I always forget from year to year how icy blue her eyes are. I love them! So I decided to take a picture for posterity’s sake.
After spending a few days on the farm, we headed for the conference where we did most of our sitting. There were about 30 messages total the whole week, so you can imagine how intense it was. But it was a good conference, all in all.
Now I’m home, and ready to get back to work!
Home is…
Where you can be silent and still be heard.
Where you can ask and find out who you are.
Where people laugh with you about your self.
Where sorrow is divided and joys multiplied.
Where we share in love and grow.
—Anonymous
And speaking of home, I will be away from home (and most likely Internet) for a couple of weeks. It’s supposed to be ‘vacation’, but it includes four days of driving, one family reunion, one wedding, one Sunday, and five days of missions conference, so I don’t know how much resting will be done. It should be a good time regardless!
Another bird post! But this one is completely different from the one about the untamed and free killdeer. This is about our pet bird, Benaiah.
He lives in a cage in our dining room, amuses us with silly antics, and cheers us up with his songs.
About two weeks ago, he became extremely moody. Never singing, puffing up his feathers like he was cold, hunkering down on one leg, eyes half-closed. We, of course, assumed he was sick. We adjusted his bedtime to give him more dark and quiet, added vitamins to his water and dried kelp to his food. We began enticing him with the best pieces of dark green lettuce (the part that has the most nutrients) and slices of hard-boiled egg (containing lots and lots of protein). He got so bad that he wouldn’t even touch his treats, just taking a few seeds from his regular food every day.
It made me sad to think we were going to lose him, but we really didn’t want to spend lots of money taking him to the vet, if you know what I mean. So we just did what we could, hoping for the best.
After about a week of strange behavior, it got even worse. He began losing feathers. There were feathers everywhere! Every time he would fly (or hop) from place to place in his cage, they would lift off of him and float to the ground like a cloud around him. Now he began taking baths three or four times a day, leaving the water littered with feathers. At first, we thought maybe he was just losing his winter coat, but then he began losing his pin feathers (on his head) and his wing and tail feathers too. By the time he was done, he looked plain ugly! One lone feather for a tail, bald spots along his neck, head, and belly, and you could see the ‘ribs’ of his wings, which are usually covered with a nice down.
He was still moody and cranky as ever, but the fact that he was losing feathers gave us hope that maybe he wasn’t dying, just had an unseasonabe molt. So we kept giving him lots of vitamins and protein, extended bedtimes, and short periods of sun-bathing. One day, the feather-losing stopped, and there were no stray feathers floating around any more. His mood improved greatly, although he still hasn’t started singing. He still looks odd and funny with only half of his feathers, but slowly, they are starting to grow back in.
So now the problem to be identified is why he molted now, instead of at the end of August. Canaries have three kinds of molt: a summer molt, where they lose and regrow all their feathers in the late summer; a seasonal molt, where they lose their extra feathers at the beginning of spring; and a ’stuck’ molt, where they constantly have a bald spot around their neck. A ’stuck’ molt can be caused by several reasons, like a lack of nutrition, stress or aggravation (like a cat constantly staring into the cage), or a draft that keeps him cold. Benaiah has been in a stuck molt for several months now, and never properly molted last summer, so I think for some reason his molting cycle has been thrown off.
So we are still hoping that he snaps out of this and is able to grow his feathers back quickly! Maybe this will be enough to push him out of his stuck molt as well, and he’ll be a pretty bird again and ready to sing. I’ve missed his song these past couple weeks!
And just so this post has somewhat of a point, go here.
Today I saw my first killdeer, skittling along the ground. Their long, spindly legs run, run, STOP, run, run, STOP. They certainly are funny creatures, and the sighting of them reminded me of all sorts of memories.
I remember the first summer I noticed the killdeers. It’s possible they had been there in previous years, but that was just the first year I paid attention. I was in the second grade. Killdeers build their nests on the ground from piles of pebbles and dirt, so they look for a place where it will blend in. As they flew over our property and saw a large area of gravel, I can only imagine their excitement at finding such a perfect home. Or was it?
That large area of gravel happened to be a parking lot. Not such a safe place to build a nest after all. But the killdeer family that happened to choose our parking lot every year never had such a devoted fan club and security team.
At the first spring sighting of the killdeer, my best friend and I would begin to observe them closely. We would watch what they were doing, where they were going. Usually they were just gathering food, flying around, and scouting out the area, sometimes for weeks. Just when we would be tired of watching them, they would almost seem to disappear. That meant they had chosen a location for their nest and laid their eggs. Now a killdeer, sitting on a rock nest in the middle of a gravel parking lot, is actually very hard to spot. Often, you would have to be right on top of it before you would see it. Often the parents would leave the nest altogether, as the rocks retained warmth from the sun and kept the eggs from getting too cold during the day. Without a parent sitting on the nest, it was almost impossible to find, especially in such a large parking lot. But we were determined, because we wanted to protect that nest. Too often had we found the nest too late, after a car had already destroyed the helpless eggs.
So we would run aroung the parking lot, getting ourselves all worked up in a desperate attempt to work one of the parents up. When we spotted one of them, we would walk towards it. The parent, leading us away from the nest, would hop in the other direction. We would play along for a while, then turn back and go the other way. The poor parent bird would suddenly become frantic, rushing in front of us with the old ‘broken wing’ trick. Again, we might play along for a little bit, then turn back. The closer we got to the nest, the more frantic the parent would become.
Sometimes it would take days of this psychological battle to locate the nest, but once we did, we would keep that area secure. We set up orange cones around the nest to keep cars away from it, and vigilantly watched that the other kids would leave them alone. Killdeer eggs are the prettiest I have seen, an off-white color with black and brown speckles all over.
Our hard work often paid off in the end. The babies would hatch, and they were the cutest little chicks! All dark and fuzzy, with their long legs sticking spindly out. Before they could fly, they would run all around on the ground following their parents. They were too slow, however, and we could always catch up. We would walk behind, then gently scoop the baby up and hold them. Not for long, but just enough to see how cute they were. The parents always accepted them right back, checking them over to make sure no harm was done. When the chicks could run faster than we could catch them, we knew they would be ready to fly away any day.
And then we would wait, until the next spring, when the killdeer would once again show up.
Maybe it seemed to take forever getting here since Easter was so early this year. Maybe I was just impatient for a nice Pennsylvania Spring. Whatever the delay, it’s here!
I forgot how all the grass goes green, seemingly overnight. One morning you wake up, and there it is! Soft green carpet covering the fields and hills. New buds on trees promise that soon the green will reach skyward as well!
Of course, nothing says Spring like the cheery yellow daffodils. These will make a beautiful centerpiece for our table on Sunday.
Spring also means being outside! The kids have enjoyed playing outside, running around in bare feet, playing in the sand, and building forts under their slide. Sam and I opted to take a nice Spring walk.
Happy Spring, everyone!
(And to all my friends in the north who are still mucking through snow, my sincerest apologies for making you jealous!)
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