When Ken got back from Vietnam and retired, we built a house.  I had designed the floor plan in such a way that my four kids could get to their bedrooms from either the back door or the front door without walking through the family room.  Without walking in front of anyone.

That certainly didn't work.  No one ever used the hallway that I had designed for them to walk through, of course.  So one day, I decided to take down one side of the hall  so that hall space could be incorporated into the family room.  Which I did.  I figured that if I could draw the plans to build the house, I could take down a wall.

I got a crowbar and a hammer and started tearing out sheetrock and studs, headers, wiring and floor boards.   The wall was more than twenty feet long, but I had it done by the next day.  It looked great.  I wondered why I had put a hall there in the first place.  (No, Ken didn't know I was tearing down a wall.  He was in Stillwater, at OSU going to school three days a week and  coming home on the weekends.)

And then, one of our friends stopped by to see what I had done and asked me a question:  "It looks to me like that wall was load bearing.  Did you check it out."
My reply:  "What is load bearing?"

I could design a floor plan, but I had no idea about construction details.  The whole thing could have caved in on me.  But God is good to the ignorant sometimes.
 
Proverbs 14: 1 "Every wise woman builds her house: but the foolish plucks it down with her hands." I don't know if that scripture was meant for me, but it certainly is relevant.

And yes, the first thing Ken asked when he came home that weekend was, "Did you check to see if it was load bearing?"  And no, he never cared what I did to our houses.  I'm pretty good with a hammer.

"Who-done-its" have always been one of my favorite kind of reading.  I love mystery.  I like to figure things out, or be in suspense.   I grew up on the "Bobbsey Twins" and "Nancy Drew."  I can remember when I was young, going to the library and getting six or seven books every week and reading them one right after the other.  (Back when I started blogging, I told you that my mother didn't make us do housework if we were reading a book.  So I made sure I was always reading!!)

But through the last ten or fifteen years, the language has become so bad that I am disgusted with all my favorite authors and have quit reading their books.  I have the same problem with television.  Where is Carol Burnett when we need her?

At first it was only one word, then two.  Now I can't find any mystery fiction to read.  I don't understand why they all seem to follow the leader down the slippery slope of vulgar language and misuse of God's name.  I have always said that a person who uses such language has a very poor command of the English language and a very limited vocabulary with meager adjectives.

Words count.   When they become common and lose their shock value,  our culture is the loser.  It is very easy to follow the leader when bad language becomes common.  Movies, television and books make it hard to avoid anymore.  But God expects better of us.  We don't need to do that!!  More than that, we are training the next generation to speak.  They speak what we speak.  And I think they are running out of bad words.  Words lead to thoughts.  Thoughts lead to actions.  Garbage in, garbage out.

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."

God is not only going to judge our actions, but He is also going to judge our words.

Colossians 3:8b "…now is the time to cast off and throw away all these rotten garments of anger, hatred, cursing, and dirty language."   Just do it.  

Back in the "good old days", when we went to Wilberton to see my grandmother, I would go outside to the well and draw water.  Everyone had a well in small towns in the early 1040's.  Hers had a wood stave bucket held together with metal strips and a handle  that was attached to a pulley.   There was a metal wheel over the well that had a rope that you used to "pulley" the bucket down into the well and when the bucket was full you pulled it up.  The wheels turned and the bucket came up full of water.

The taste of  that water was much different than what we get out of the tap in our houses.  It was spring water.  Clear, pure and really sweet.  No chemicals.  And very cold.  I can still taste it.

Gran also had a Jersey cow.  Jersey cows are known for the milk they produce.  She and I would go to the barn and Gran would get a three-legged stool and milk the cow every morning and every evening.  I remember a stray cat that would show up when she milked and sit waiting until Gran squirted a stream of milk through the air.  The cat never missed the milk.  I think Gran and the cat had an arrangement.  Gran would see that the cat got milk and the cat would keep mice out of the barn.

We would let the milk sit until the cream rose to the top.  Then skim it off and put it in the churn to make butter.  Everyone ate butter on everything back then.  And they all lived  past their eighties.

All of that is foreign to people today.  Nobody goes to their grandmother's house and churns butter.  Very few people will ever see a well.

Jesus was going to Galilee and had to go through Samaria.  John 4:6a, 10 "Now Jacob's well was there.  Jesus….being weary with his journey, sat…on the well;  Then a woman came…to draw water: Jesus said to her, Give me to drink."  The woman knew the Jews hated the Samaritans and asked him why he was speaking to her, a woman.  "Jesus answered and said, If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me a drink; you would have asked of him and he would have given you living water."

The living water is free.  All you have to do is ask for it.

This weekend, I am going to my high school reunion.  We do this every two years.  My classmates fall into two categories.  Those who wouldn't go if you paid them to go, and those like me who enjoy hearing what everyone has been doing.  I like to hear the funny stories we tell on each other.  We truly liked each other, and we still do.

"Popular" was always someone else besides you.  There isn't anyone in my graduation class that felt like they fit in.  We are all amazed at how shy we were back then.  Those years before the "Sixties" were the last years of innocence.  Very few people had a TV.  I had never heard anyone say a curse word.  Air conditioning was for rich people.  If you took the car anywhere, you carpooled to save gas.

We had a water fan.  You put it in the window, filled it with water and the blades blew cool mist into the house.  I remember lying on my bed, under the water fan, reading a book.  It was the only way to stay cool in the unbearable Oklahoma heat.

Rain was a huge blessing.  People sat on their porches in the evening and talked about the weather.  Whether the wheat was going to burn up.  How much water was in their ponds for the cows. In the fifties, we weren't that far removed from the "Grapes of Wrath" and the dust bowl.  They still talk about the weather here, just not on the front porch.  We've lost something sweet because we sit in our air conditioned homes and watch TV.

I guess that is why people talk about the good old days.  For my generation, the days really were good.

Proverbs 7:10  "Don't long for the "good old days," for you don't know whether they were any better than these!"

You can't go back.  So keep on going forward.  We must live in the time that God placed us in.  Your time is now.

In 1944, before they changed the IQ tests, I was a genius.  It made my mother very happy.  Two years later, when I took the new test I was  just normal.  They had put much too high a value on math and spacial skills in the first test, which was right down my alley, so I had an unusually high score.  Those little round and rectangular odd shapes that you have to imagine "how they will fit together when you rotate them in space" were fun for me.  I love puzzles.  Algebra was my favorite subject.  All those x y, and z problems that you had to figure out were the best part of my day.  It's not surprising that I ended up at a college teaching math as a career.  It is wonderful when you get to work at something you love.

It is interesting how we categorize people based on what they are skilled at.  It is a poor way to evaluate a person.  We judge them the same way based on the jobs they have, how much money they make, what kind of car they drive, what kind of house they live in.  All are things that don't matter.  What matters most are the genuine characteristics that they have.

The thing I value the most is honesty.  You are either honest, or you aren't.  There is no such thing as a "little bit" honest.  Integrity would be very high on my list.  Do you do what you say you will do?  Perseverance would be high on the list as well.  Do you keep on keeping on even when it's hard?  Kindness.  That has to be on my list.  There is never any need to be rude or thoughtless when interacting with others.   Generosity.  My daughter Pat says that you have to help the poor people that God puts in your path.  You can't help the entire world, but you can help someone.

There are so many qualities that draw me to a person.  They never involve the things they have.

Galatians 5:22 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance."

I am working on making a good test score on those things.  Join me.

I am writing into a void.  I can't see you.  I don't know who you are.  As far as I know, I don't have any way to hear you.   I wish I could hear all of your voices.

Writing every day is cathartic.  It is like wringing out a cold wet washrag and wiping your face.  Refreshing. I started writing before the invention of the electric typewriter.  Being able to write on an Apple and have someone read it immediately is truly amazing.  They say it is sitting out there in a "cloud" so that generations to come can read it if they want to.  That is hard for me to imagine.

Someone once said that your life is forgotten if you don't write.  I don't want Ken's life to be forgotten.  If I can give him any lasting gift it will be for coming generations to know what a truly incredible man he was.  We were all so blessed to be a part of his life.  It was exciting.  Because of the gypsy life we lived, moving 19 times in 15 years, our children are extremely adaptable.  Circumstances demanded it.  Nobody had time to sweat the little things.  So we didn't.  And they didn't either.  They had to cope.

Ken always said, "Say 'yes' every chance you get.  There will be enough times you have to say no."  He was right.  Our youngest Jon was in the fifth grade when "The Boz" was playing for OU.  Boz had a radical haircut for that time.   When Jon saw it, he asked me to cut his hair that way.  "Sure, I said.  "Get me the clippers."  I cut three or four curved stripes down both sides of his head.   It was cool.  That afternoon all his friends came home from school with him so I could cut their hair too.  "I'll do it if you will get a note from your mom."  What difference does hair make in the long scheme of things anyway?  

Ken always said, "I want my children to obey me because they love me, not because they fear me.

That's what God wants as well.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and you will have nothing to fear.

I have written difficult things from the scripture the last couple of days.  So I will lighten up.   Last night I was so sore I couldn't go to sleep.  I had been bending over, pulling weeds and planting ground cover.  It was hard work. But it was made all the more difficult because among all those weeds was poison ivy.

I put rubber gloves on to protect myself and pulled and pulled.  Why do weeds grow so well when flowers have to be constantly attended to?  What is the purpose of poison ivy anyway?  It is rather like that black widow spider I got rid of last week.  A nuisance that can cause you a lot of harm.

There are many things that I can't figure out.  Like: Where is "space"?  How far does it go?  What is the purpose of a tornado?  Why do we have to get the flu?  Why  do we have earthquakes?  Why did God create us and decide to love us?  Why would anyone sacrifice their only child for someone else?    What is love anyway?  Why do we feel it?  Etc. etc. etc.  I have no answers to questions like that.

Some things I know because the Bible tells me.  But even the Bible doesn't answer all the questions that I have.  God didn't tell us everything.  Only what we needed to know to become his children.

When I get to heaven I am going to have a million questions.  I wonder if God will answer them?  Will I get to meet Paul and Peter?    Will I meet my ancestors and learn what they went through?  Things that had a direct impact on  my life.  My mind wanders when I'm trying to go to sleep, and I think of a million things I want to know.  I thank God for the things he let me know.  He answered an awful lot of questions which the world needs answers for.  I'll have to wait for the rest.

I suppose that I should quit pulling weeds for awhile so I don't get so sore that I can't sleep and lie there and think up questions.  But the weeds are still there and have to be pulled.  I'm going to get it done.

John 1: 1, 3b In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made."  I don't think He made weeds right off the bat.  That happened later when Adam got his punishment for disobeying.  Genesis 3: 17   "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit when I told you not to, I have placed a curse upon the soil…It will grow thorns and thistles for you…"  Too bad.