A Day of Sunflowers...

Just this morning, the first sunflower of the Atchley garden fully opened its bright, beautiful face. The timing could not have been more appropriate. In the language of flowers, the sunflower means, "I am proud of you!"

...and today is my identical twin daughters' 21st birthday. Their dad and I could not be more proud.

Happy Birthday, beautiful women!

Better Late Than Never...

I hate that I've been late entering the blogosphere. My reasons are good - number one being the fact that the computer I had was a used one, and constantly crashed. And the computer before that. And the computer before that. Fact is, until recently, I never had a computer that could have enabled me to blog. This one seems to work well now, and for that I am most grateful.

But the possibilities inherent in a blog are still being explored. In that sense, it is NOT too late, and so I've begun...

A couple weeks ago, I finished the book "Blog - Understanding the Information Reformation" by Hugh Hewitt. This book will inspire you to blog! The internet has truly become the Great Equalizer in terms of anyone, anywhere, getting their thoughts out there. But you do have to be quite good to even garner a single comment, much less continue blogging to anyone but your three best friends. Still, if I never got a single comment, I would continue to blog because it frees my thoughts. I have to "write it" before I know what I think about "it", whatever "it" might be.

And I am intensely grateful for the comments I receive. Every blogger lives for them! Yes, if these virtual pages are worthy of your time and brief attention, please do tell others to come visit me. I'll do my best to send them away blessed and encouraged, or at the very least, with some food for thought. Or a snack of an idea.

Choice bits from Hewitt's book:

"The blogosphere is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace, and a lot of the best mindspace is being claimed, but there remains incredible opportunity among the hundreds of millions who have yet to figure out that there is a better way to gain information than watching the tube."

"...None of us have time to understand everything, so we have to trust surrogates. People don't trust the old media with anything like the old level of confidence. "

"Change isn't coming. It is here. Information is being absorbed in new and startlingly different ways, from new, and until recently, unknown sources."

"...information is an essential element of freedom."

"From the 'big bang' of blogging, fifty thousand new virtual newspapers had been born, for that's what an "updated daily" blog is: a newspaper with one editor, and as many sources as he or she cares to link to."

"Anyone who wants a say can have it. Attention to that "say" must be earned."

"The genius lies not so much in the bloggers themselves, but in the transparent system they have created. In an era of polarized debate, the truth has never been more available. Thank the guys in the pajamas. And read them."

"(a blog is)...an agent of persuasion or dissemination."

"The blogosphere has been noticed by forward thinking people of faith!"

"Writers write for the same reasons today as they did in Homer's age. Blogging is just a new means of transmitting that writing, one that bypasses completely all editors."

"If you are a leader, then you ought to be blogging, and the folks you lead ought to be reading that blog. Every day, if possible. Most days, if not."

"Morning coffee will be shared by spouses not over the paper, but over the laptop."

"Fear or enthusiasm" (about blogging) "really doesn't matter. The blogosphere is a fact as real as a brick, and even though bricks can be used to build houses or hospitals or be thrown through windows or at heads, the reality of bricks doesn't change."

"The advantage of blogging is that it will oblige you to live in the world of ideas and debates, and to do so at the modern pace."

Well, I take issue with the last quote. I don't think everyone who blogs is obliged to live in the world of ideas. I've seen too many blogs that are little more than the middle-aged equivelent of the pink diary. All about "myself, my kid, my angst, my life, and what-I-will-be-doing-next-month", and very little in terms of ideas can be found on them. While a certain amount of "me, myself, and I" detail is tolerable, and even desireable; for a blog to become a prosaic personal diary is a poor use of a powerful medium.

I'm a late arrival to blogging. I should have been doing this four years ago. I hope I can catch up.

A Garden Visitor

Tiger Swallowtail...

on a hanging basket in the butterfly garden. We've seen lots of these lately - floating, flying flowers!

A Perfect Sunday

Missing church is not a good idea. The Lord gives His people "Kodak Moments" sometimes. You cannot orchestrate exactly when heaven will come down and transform your time together into a life long memory. This is why it is so important to value and cherish corporate times of praise and worship and hearing the Word. God, periodically, sovereignly transforms those times into a "Kodak Moment" for the church family. In our case, yesterday, it was a literal Kodak Moment...digital cameras all over the building materialized as if from nowhere, as saints snapped photos of the unexpected.

A move of God will sneak up on you, no matter how diligently you pray and prepare for it. The Bible is full of the word "suddenly". Kodak moments from God! How can I miss a Sunday? I never know when something wonderful will happen...

....like yesterday.

A teenage girl in our church was born again, the week before, while she was away at church camp. When she testified of what took place in her life, pastor Tim asked her if she wanted to be baptized. (We keep extra towels, and sweat pants and T-shirts in various sizes for just that occasion - unexpected baptisms. The answer to the question, "What prevents me from being baptized?" should be, in any church, "Nothing...nothing at all. Let's do it now!")

And so it was.

Our youth pastor, Matt Bailey, doing the honors!



..."Behold, all things are made new!"




After church, Tim and I had a lovely family to our home for lunch. It felt like a celebratory feast, with a roast, potatoes, peas, mac-n-cheese, dinner rolls, corn, and peach cobbler to finish it all off. We lingered for some time, at the table, laughing and just savoring the years of friendship we've shared. The younger ones were in the next room, at the "kid's table", perfectly content and well behaved. I'm telling you, nothing was allowed to interfere with that God-kissed Sunday.

If it couldn't get any better, it did. After our guests went home, Tim and I had the house to ourselves, and we took a long, luxurious nap. I ended my day, ultimately, in my pajamas, reading glasses on the tip of my nose, reading a book, with the rythmic music of the cicadas, floating in through my open bedroom window, creating peaceful ambience.

Heaven. From beginning to end, our Sunday was blessed.

My Definition of Hospitality...

III John is a small epistle, one chapter, fourteen verses. In my personal journals, I have called it the "hospitality chapter". Easily one-third of it commends hospitality, followed by three or four verses describing how ambition is a force behind the lack of hospitality. "Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence...receiveth us not...neither doth he himself receive the brethren..."

The need for preeminence is always to be found behind the mentality that says, "Let someone else do the hospitality end of things." After all, at the very least, it puts our desire for ease and convenience as "preeminent" over and above the command of God to practice hospitality.

Tucked into the verses of III John, is the best definition of hospitality that I have found. I am sure this is written in a book somewhere, or has been taught by someone, but I have not read it or heard it.

..."whom, if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well."

To bring someone forward on their journey. The Godly-sort of journey. Sometimes pie and coffee and conversation are all that is necessary to bring someone forward. A night's stay and a good breakfast, followed by a brief prayer of blessing may be what another needs to bring them forward. Still yet, someone else might need a few hours of conversation, up into the night - long, laborsome, and patient dialogue in a safe place. And the result of all those hours of pouring out, may be but a half-step forward. So be it. Just bring 'em forward.

Then, there are the few, close friends, whose needs are simple: music and laughter. Please, just sit and play the guitar, sing a few songs, and let's laugh till we can't breathe. And they leave our home having been brought forward a country mile! Matter of fact, we all moved forward on this visit.

Come in! (Call first, if you can, so I can put the coffee on...) My prayer, till the day I leave this earth, will be that the time you spend here with me will somehow bring you forward in your Godly-sort of journey.

Be Still, My Soul...

The link between our emotions and our physical health is an established one. And science confirms it more and more with every passing year. "Stress", that ubiquitous, catch-all term, is the number one cause of illness in this country, when you consider the indirect causation, as well as direct. Mind-body connection has always fascinated me, mainly because Scripture speaks of it so clearly:

A sound heart is life to the body, but envy rots the bones. Prov. 14:30

For wrath kills a foolish man, and jealousy slays the simple one. Job 5:2

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones. Pr. 17:22

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Prov. 23:7

There are more scriptures than these...but neither of us have all day to be in front of this computer screen. It is more important now, than ever before, to walk in the peace of God. It is more important now, than ever before, to walk in faith-believing. After all, what we believe about a situation is what creates stress.

When we believe we are somehow the victim, we become jealous. When we believe that "this is too hard", it is. If we believe we are somehow in danger, our heart and our nervous system does not know the difference between the real and the perceived. I've a book on my shelf, entitled Deadly Emotions by Don Colbert, M.D.

Bits and Pieces:

"What one person may consider stressful, another person may not find stressful at all. One person may take planning a dinner party for 40 people...totally in stride, enjoying all aspects of the...process...another person may panic at the idea of giving an informal dinner party for six people. The difference in whether the event was stressful or not lies in the perception - it lies in what the individual believes....when it comes to stress, believing is the key."

"Fear, for example, triggers more than fourteen hundred known physical and chemical stress reactions and activates more than thirty different hormones and neurotransmitters."

"Stress occurs when our perceptions of events don't meet our expectations, and we don't manage our reaction to the disappointment."

"Researchers have directly and scientifically linked emotions to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diseases related to the immune system. Studies have also highly correlated emotions with infections, allergies, and autoimmune diseases."

Lastly, here is a link to an interesting article connecting stress with a woman's health issues:

http://www.womentowomen.com/emotionsandhealth/stressmanagement.aspx

Caveat: though I cannot agree with solutions such as "reiki" and some of the other so-called relaxation techniques mentioned; nevertheless, the information regarding the impact our emotions have on our health is well explored in the above article.

Do whatever you have to do, to reach a place where you can say, "It is well with my soul!" It is my quest, and it will take work...emotional work. We have to "labor" to enter our rest. The results will be well worth the effort. We'll save ourselves a host of physical pains and ailments.

On This Day...

On this day, July 24, 1866, Tennessee became the first state to be readmitted to the Union after the U.S. Civil War.


There are many things I love about my state. I love that we are known as "The Volunteer State" because of the record number of Tennessee men volunteering their "lives and...sacred honor" during the war of 1812. These same men were also noted for an uncommon bravery serving under General Andrew Jackson ("Old Hickory", also a Tennesseean) in the Battle of New Orleans - a strategic US victory in the war of 1812.

But the thing I love the most is that my state was the last to leave the Union, during the Civil War, and was the first to return to it, after the war was over. Say what you will about the War of Northern Aggression, about revisionist history, about the "real reasons" for the Civil War. I have heard both sides of the whole thing. My point is, unity is vital to the success of any endeavor.

It is true that to make a lasting peace, you sometimes have to fight a temporary war. I've seen this played out on the level of personal relationships, as well as the affairs of nations. But it is always the job of the strong and wise to be the last to break relationship, and the first to restore it, when the conditions for peace are met.

Last in leaving. First in putting the country back together. I so love Tennessee.