In the early forties, during World War II, the government built a huge"Powder Plant" in Pryor to make ammunition for the military.  My dad, along with hundreds and hundreds of other men moved to Pryor because of the jobs.  There wasn't anywhere for all of those people to live.  Pryor was just a little town.

So people lived in tents, or two and three families to a house--depending on the number of bedrooms.  And that was if you could find a house to rent.  There were only a few.  My dad commuted to work from Tulsa where we were living at the time until we finally found a two room house to rent.  I slept on the sofa.  I was four years old.  I have no idea why memories from our childhood are so vivid when I can't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday.

The government stepped in and started building two and three bedroom houses for the town as fast as they could build them.  They were called "The court houses."  There were seven houses in each court.  Three houses facing each other separated by a sidewalk with one house at the end of the sidewalk. Group after group after group.  Hundreds of them.  Acres and acres.  And even then you had to get on a list until your name came up.  They couldn't build them fast enough for the influx of people.  Of course, that meant that hundreds and hundreds of carpenters moved here for the jobs as well, along with plumbers, electricians, etc. etc. all of them needing a place to live.

Each house in the court had shutters with cut outs.  Candlesticks, moons, and five other designs.  We lived in a candlestick house and were so thankful to have a home.  Everybody was in the same boat.  Nobody had enough money to live on, but you couldn't buy anything even if you had money.  Food, tires, gasoline, everything you needed--was rationed.  You had to have a ration book to buy anything and you only got a limited number of ration coupons to spend.  Everybody traded coupons.  They were better than money.  A tire coupon was worth a lot.  All the rubber had gone to make tires for the war.

John 14:2 "In my Father's house there are many mansions.  If it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you."

We won't have to wait for a house in heaven.  It is already under construction.  Continued….

Psalms 19:14  "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer."  Words.  Words.  Words.

Matthew 12:36 "But I (Jesus) say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of Judgment.  For by by your words you shall be justified, and by your words you shall be condemned."

I am tired of hearing God's name trivialized.  Why do people use His name to swear by.  Or use Jesus name.  Or Christ.  I would love to hear the media use the name of Allah or Mohammed just once as a curse.  Equal opportunity blasphemy.  But of course, there is no power in those names.  You can only defame the name of God, because:  He is God.  He is the only God.

Jesus said , "I am the way…."  He didn't say that he was one of the ways.  He is the only way.  The only sacrificial Lamb.  No one else has ever stepped up to the plate and said I will die for the sins of the world.  For you.  For me.  It's personal.

Jesus said we will be judged by idle words.  We will be condemned by idle words.  That is serious.  Some people need to have their mouths washed out with soap.  I, for one, am sick of the language that seems to be common today.  As Christians our mouths need to be very, very careful.  We are the mouthpiece of God.  We speak for Him.  Who will listen to you if your mouth is filthy.  If you have no judgement in the way you speak.  They may laugh, but they won't take your Christianity seriously.

You can't use your mouth one way on Sunday in church, and another way when you leave.

James 3: 10  "Out of the same mouth proceeds blessing and cursing.  My brothers, these things ought not to be so."

These things ought not to be so.  Jesus said: Matthew 1234b"…out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks."  Garbage in, garbage out.

I am so thankful that God invented color.  Because I love yard work, I have planned my flower beds so that in March (which in Oklahoma is still very cold) my flowers begin to pop up and something is always blooming from then on until October.  The blue hyacinths are first, then the lavender and pink creeping phlox, followed by the peonies.  The pink azaleas bloom,  followed by the red ones.  And then the lilies.  Burgundy, peach, yellow then orange.  Along with purple astilbe and purple iris.

Now that it is June, the late azaleas are blooming and the short lilies are in full swing.  And there are buds popping out on the day lilies.  The phlox is shooting up long stems for next month.  And the crepe myrtles are starting to leaf out.  They will bloom in August.  Then there are the chrysanthemums.

I love it.  It is God's way of reassuring me that after a long and sad winter of grief, that He is still in the business of creation and that He wants me to be joyful.  My flowers bring me joy.

When my children were growing up, I made a rule (which they sometimes kept) that every time you came in the door of the house, that you had to pull five weeds.  No more.  Just five.  It kept everything under control.  And nobody ever had to work very hard at it.

Sin is like weeds.  If you keep pulling the sin out of your life, it never gets a foothold.  But like weeds, if left unattended, it will take over your garden and your life.  And ruin you.  God doesn't make rules to make us miserable.  They are there so that we may live with peace and joy.  He knows what will make us happy in the long run.  It has taken ten years to get my flower beds in the order that I want.  It didn't happen overnight.  I am so glad that I stuck with it and kept pulling out weeds.

Matthew 6:28 (My version) "Why do you worry about what you are going to wear?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not work at it, neither do they spin cloth."  And they are all such pretty colors!!!

Isn't God good.

 Scott (my son) sent me this message--which I didn't know.  

He said that years after Ken retired, one of the old timers used to love to tell Scott the story of how the Mayes County Sheriff tried to get his dad thrown in jail…  the Sheriff knew it was Ken,  but couldn’t prove it.  The FAA needed a tail number.  (From the plane)

But at 575 mph (500 knots) and at 50 feet above the deck…Ken would be out of Pryor on final approach at Tulsa International Airport in less than 3 minutes…there was no way to get a tail number.  And back then you didn't have to file a flight path.  No one knew where you were.  There was no way to know who it was buzzing the town.

Scott said that for 3 months on Friday evenings, the Sheriff   stood on Main Street between six and eight o'clock waiting for Ken to come down to tree top level (going around 600 Mph… get that speed in your head…. The Blue Angels don’t go faster than 360 mph--ever.)

Of course dad never flew the same direction twice.  Doing that would get you shot down in Korea and Vietnam…. He wasn’t stupid…     

Except for a few such youthful stupidities, Ken was a model citizen.  A deacon for our church for over forty years.  A Bible teacher for over fifty years.  And lived to tell about it.  I probably saved his life when I told him I'd marry him.  He didn't buzz the town after that. 

Isaiah 2:2a, 4b  "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established……and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."  Thank God.

Today is D-Day.  Thank some service person for their time in the military.  It means a lot.

Once, when I was writing about Ken's life, I told you that every Friday he would get in whatever airplane he could find that--wasn't being used by the Navy or Marines for that weekend.  He was in Pensacola, and had decided to fly to Pryor and try to talk me into marrying him.  If you missed that story, go back to mid-February.

I forgot to tell you about the first Friday. After work, (teaching cadets to hook wire so that they could carrier qualify), he put on a flight suit, crawled in whatever jet was available and flew to Oklahoma.  The first Friday that he did that, he came in from due East flying into the sun, and dropped to fifty feet over our house going rather fast. (Which was illegal, but in the early fifties those Marines did a lot of things that would get them locked up today. Besides which, there weren't many restrictions.)

What he failed to realize, was that in the nine years since he had left Pryor, they had built a water tower a block west from my house.   He saw the tower in time to flip sideways and miss it by a foot or two.  Our romance was almost over before it began.  I asked him if that was the closest he ever came to killing himself.  "Not even close," he replied.

That story is one of the reasons people from town were saying, "Marry him, so we can get some rest."  Of course some people tried to catch him, but he was there and gone before the noise (as he broke the sound barrier) was over.  It finally got to the point that everyone was expecting the boom on Fridays.  And being a little town, they were tolerant.  But I think there was a sigh of relief when I said, "I do," and moved to Pensacola.

I thought he must have been the James Dean of Naval aviation until I met some of the other pilots.  They were all equally nuts.  I guess that is how they survived Korea.  I told you he got hit seven times in his first twenty-five missions.  Unheard of today.  And he was one of many.

1 Timothy 1:7 "For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."  
Ken was definitely fearless, flying a lot of power, in love, but the sound mind is questionable.  Who would do such a crazy thing.

Yesterday I wrote that Paul "Pressed for the mark."  He was running a race.  Eyes on the mark, the goal.  Letting nothing distract him.  Paul was racing against time.

I am not an athlete.  I never was, nor had any desire to be.  But somehow I had a bunch of kids who were.  All kinds of All-State and All-Americans.  It had to be handed down on Ken's side.  All that  it meant to me was exhaustion from sitting on benches to support my kids.  I wasn't even a fan.  I just endured it.  I never learned the rules of any of the games.  I truly don't like sports.  But I liked my kids.

The worst was baseball.  Double headers, hot summers, hard benches.   Not to mention sweat.  Who in the world likes to sweat?  I don't get it.  Scott started throwing things as soon as he could get a grip.   When he was small we had to take him off the baseball field many a time because he would get so mad.  (He had a temper)  He believed that the other guys weren't trying hard enough.  He just didn't understand why everyone couldn't do what he could do.  "They need to try harder," he would say.

God gives us different talents.   Scott finally learned that encouraging his team was much more effective than getting mad over things that they couldn't do.  He learned, made it to OU, got drafted, ruined his knees and shoulder and now stays in the game by umpiring girl's softball.  He loves baseball.  I don't get it, but admire his tenacity and longevity.  His knees are shot, but he still squats behind the plate giving those little girls the benefit of every doubt.  Encouraging them when they mess up.  Throwing parents off the field who berate their children.  In constant pain, happy as a bug.  He starts every game with, "God bless you, have a good game." You can still do that in Oklahoma.  He would do it anyway.

Proverbs 20:11 "Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right."  Ken's mother used to say, "A child's play is his work.  Let them play."

I am so sorry I missed two days.  I tried to blog on an IPad, but couldn't type on something small like that.  I am old school.  High School typewriter with a ribbon and a roll bar  for paper.  Having graduated to a Mac Book Pro, which has a real Keyboard, I am done with substitutes.  And I left my Mac at home when I went to Edmond last Thursday.  And did a bunch of things I shouldn't have done and landed in the hospital again.  Third time this year.  Same thing every time.

I stuck a broach pin in my right finger.  Accident, but nonetheless, pretty critical in my case.  I lost my superior and axillary lymph nodes in my right side (breast cancer, five yrs. ago.  Okay now) and when the lymph tries to get to the infection (to heal me) there is no way to get out.  So  I start turning  rosy pink with infection all down my arm and the right side of my body.  Which, of course, is not good.

I hate being sick.  I don't like people who always talk about what's wrong with them.  I've had enough of it.  It is so inconvenient to the people around you.  There is no way to treat this but to go get hooked up to stuff at the hospital, which I also hate.  So that is where I have been--because I didn't go when I should have.  My daughter Becky and her husband Craig made me sign a piece of paper saying I would never wait again.  I was out of it--I don't remember signing a paper, but I guess it is true.

My children think I am stubborn.   I think I am independent.   However, I admit that this "right arm thing" is discouraging because I know it's going to happen again.  I am really careful.  I wear gloves most of the time when I am using my hands to do anything.  My daughter Pat even bought me some of those "Dr. Oakley the Vet. calf delivering plastic gloves that go clear up to your arm pit," so I could pick okra--which brings me joy.  I am reminded of Paul, the apostle.

II Corinthians 12: 7-9a "Because of the experiences that I have had were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up by them; so I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me and prick my pride.  Three different times I begged God to make me well again.  Each time he said, "No, But I am with you; that is all you need…"

It is what it is.  And I'm going to do what Paul did:  Phillipians 3:13b-14 "…forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."