Planted on the ROCK

My husband and I have a guilty pleasure to confess.  It is not anything that is detrimental to our spirits or disastrous for our physical bodies.  It is just wasted minutes spent watching a program where we learn pretty much nil except the value of someone else's junk.  We love to spend late nights peering into other people's garages, basements, and store rooms via "American Pickers".  The hosts, Frank and Mike, travel around the country in a van looking for valuable recyclables - Rusty Gold .  Their eyes light up and sweat begins to roll off their foreheads when they spy something they can transform from junk to treasure.  Rare bicycles and tin toys or porcelain cafeteria signs and oil pumps incite giddiness between them.  Mike likes to say "I'm just an ordinary guy looking for extraordinary things". Rusty gold, huh?  Their finds are covered in dust and cobwebs and years of grime, neglected  under a bottom shelf at the bac...

I have a 6 year old daughter with a passionate spirit .  Nothing is gray when it comes to her.  It's black or white, perfection or disastrous, sweet or sour.  Absolutely no in between.  She is the gift from God that keeps on giving - challenges, frustrations, laughter, hugs, smiles, and tears.  In her I see a future leader or ring-leader.  I see an amazing woman that God has created to inspire other people to act with vigor and vitality.  She has an infectious smile that lights up her eyes and the room she enters.  She has a heart that breaks at every infraction inflicted upon her by me, her brothers, and her sister. This girl o'mine is a challenge to home school.  She is the "Why Girl".   EVERYTHING under the God-created sun warrants an inquisitive comment.  Why is spaghetti called spaghetti? Why can't I have dessert at every meal? Why must I brush my teeth? Why did Abraham Lincoln chop down the cherry tree?  (By ...

Spinning a schpiel, you ask?  You know the people I mean.  You probably have at least one friend that comes to mind when you read "Official Schpiel Spinner".   The type of person that talks on and on about really nothing at all.  Or, talks only of themselves and never stops to take a breath.  Or, if they do stop it is to switch subjects of "me", "Me", or "ME". I recently met one such person.  She seemed nice enough and normal enough.  She used regular speech and made eye contact.  Her children were pleasant and it all seemed dandy.  Until, the schpiel began to flow from her never-closed lips .  Between the I've-been-there and I've-done-that and I'm-gonna-do-that was a cry of insecurity.  The woman was silently screaming "I'm insecure!"  "I'm lonely inside!". My first reaction was to cross her off my potential friends list.  I know what you are thinking!  Isn't it ugly to think I have such a list?  ...