When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers,
they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be
burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you.

~ Isaiah 43:2 ~

I Remember…

September 2nd, 2010

I think it is one of the richest things about getting older – we have so many memories to draw on – that is when we can remember. While I often have difficulty with current things (what did I come into this room for…?) I have a fine memory for family times from the past.

Recently I was reminded about something my mother-in-law used to tell me after we would visit them. She would say she wasn’t going to wash her patio windows because from her chair she could see the handprints of our children, and they were such precious memories to her. She enjoyed just sitting there looking at them and remembering the different happenings from our visit.

Those were loving thoughts to my mother’s heart, knowing that she was finding such enjoyment in fingerprints on her windows, but I didn’t really understand her joy until I found myself doing something similar after my great granddaughter’s visit.

We were celebrating her second birthday and delighting in her antics. As we sat in the living room she rearranged my candles and decorative items so that she could lie down beside them on the coffee table. Then she took a decorative throw to cover herself with and pretended to sleep. We taught her how to blow candles “on” and “off” using the battery operated ones that light up and flicker without a flame.


The next morning I looked at the living room in disarray and found myself smiling as I remembered the fun from the evening before. I sort of laughed at myself as I walked away without straightening things up, but found myself drawn back to that room several times to reminisce about the previous evening.

We have a family room and our living room is used mostly when we have company, so it was a couple of days before anyone else realized that it had been left rather messy. Would you believe that someone had the nerve to straighten it up? That’s exactly how I felt when I stopped to look at it and everything was back in its proper place. I found that I had become just like my mother, or in this case, my mother-in-law.

I now understood to a greater degree the joy she found in childish fingerprints on her windows.

Proverbs 17:6a “Children’s children are the crown of old men…”

Handprints on my window
Reminders of laughter and joy
How quickly these days go by
It’ll be awhile before they can come again
Meanwhile, I have handprints on my window.
Finding Joy in the Journey,

Phyllis

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Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:

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© 2010 Phyllis Sather

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Some days I would like an opportunity to be bored, but then…

August 22nd, 2010

I remember long hot summer days – days that had plenty of time for pretend cooking under the back porch, which was one of my favorite shady, thus cooler, summer spots. I also enjoyed going into our grove behind the barn. There was one of my favorite things, an old horse driven plow. I would climb up into the seat and dream away the hours, thinking about the day when I would be a wife and mother.

There was jump rope, bike riding, reading, and of course, the necessary weeding the garden and doing chores, but there was also something else – time to get bored!

Just think about it for a moment. When was the last time you were actually bored? As I think about this I can remember brief moments of boredom, but they never lasted beyond checking my list, to see what was next. I don’t mean checking it for work, but actually having things on it that I enjoy and take delight in, such as a book I want to read, scrapbooking, calling a friend, time to write – not just articles for publication, but letters or e-mails to family, missionaries, and friends. Today’s technology allows us to keep in touch like never before. I find it exciting to be able to write a word of encouragement that won’t take days, weeks, or months to reach the person the Lord has brought to mind.

Lately I’ve begun thanking the Lord for all the fun things He has given me to do. Yes, there will always be the normal, everyday, responsibilities, but doing them “as unto the Lord” can even give new meaning to them.

I am so thankful to have enough interests and work to keep me from being bored – in fact; I’ve sometimes said I’ll need another lifetime to complete all the things I would like to do.

Aren’t you glad that the Christian walk doesn’t have to be boring? Aren’t you glad being a wife and mother doesn’t have to be boring?

Psalm 16:11 says:

You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

As a new believer, this was the first Bible verse the Lord ever made personal to me. I remember one particular time early in my walk when I was having serious doubts as to whether all I was experiencing and feeling was real. My thought was, “What if none of this is true?” Immediately this verse popped into my mind. It so described my life in Christ that it quickly dispelled all my fears. I said, even if it isn’t true, the life I’ve had with Christ is so much better than anything else I’ve had that I will follow Him forever.

How about you? Are you finding joy and pleasure in your walk with the Lord? Or has the Christian walk become dull and lifeless? If this is the case, read Psalm 16 again and ask the Lord to bring you into His presence and fill you with His joy.

Finding Joy in the Journey,

Phyllis

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Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:

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© 2010 Phyllis Sather

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Contact me at: Phyllis@Phyllis-Sather.com

Fear of failure got you down?

August 9th, 2010

I’ve been feeling a bit down the last few days. We’ve been doing a lot of fun things, but that has meant that we’ve been even busier than usual, which is difficult even for me to believe.

Travel and guests mean fun, but they also bring with it a sort of emotional letdown when they are over, and it can be difficult to get yourself back on track emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Usually my first reaction is that I must be failing because I’m not “feeling” like I think I should be feeling. Then I usually try to push through by pretending everything is fine, when it actually isn’t fine at all.

Recently I learned a valuable lesson. We had traveled over the 4th of July weekend, and returned with a house guest who stayed for a week. When she left my first instinct was just to collapse. I had a lunch date with several Christian homeschool moms who I really wanted to be with, but really didn’t feel like I had much to give so I thought I might as well stay home.

Thankfully my husband made the decision for me. So I was getting ready to leave, knowing that all three of our young adult children would be here to begin the clean up and preparation for our next guest who would be arriving in less than a week – after we went on a three day retreat. Yes, yes, we’ll talk later about overbooking yourself, or leaving a margin in your plans.

This lunch would require over an hour’s drive each way and I wasn’t looking forward to doing that alone, but I really didn’t have any other option. Then one by one our young adults came to me and said they would really like to go along. My first thought was if they all came along, who would be getting the work done?

Thankfully the Lord interrupted that thought to remind me that they were probably feeling as drained as I was and could use some down time to regroup too. So they all got ready in less than 20 minutes and we were on our way.

I spent some time listing to my friends share what the Lord has been saying to them, which was a lot on trusting the Lord and His faithfulness – things I really needed to hear. My young adults had lunch together and then spent time at a book store browsing and chatting.

On the way home we ditched our more complicated dinner plans in favor of something very simple and shared with each other about our time out.

I was surprised when we got home and everyone got right to work – without me asking them to – and I think they accomplished more than they would have if they had stayed home.

Today I read this article by Deborah Wuehler, titled “That Guilty Feeling:  Fighting the Spirit of Failure”.  She talks about homeschooling, and has some great points, but what grabbed my attention once again is that our fear of failure in whatever we are doing comes from expectations –regardless of whether they are of myself or others.

Her points on homeschooling can easily be applied to anyone:
- Everyone else has a better ________ than I do – fill in the blank.
- I am inadequate
- I feel guilty about not getting it all done.
- I feel guilty about ______ – fill in the blank.
- Others make me feel guilty because I (we) are different or don’t fit in.

We can all come up with reasons we think we are failing. That is when we need to take our eyes off ourselves and get them on the Lord. We need to hear what He is calling us to do and where He is calling us to go – regardless of how that looks to others, or sometimes even to ourselves.

Here is the cure for feelings of failure, found in Micah 7:7-8

“But as for me, I will look to the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation;
my God will hear me.
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,

the LORD will be a light to me.”

Finding Joy in the Journey,

Phyllis

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August! How Can it Possibly be August Already?

July 29th, 2010

Does this sound as impossible to you as it does to me? Where does the time go? This has been a different sort of summer for us.

It seems like more of our friends are having visitors and visiting others than in years past. I think it is partly due to the economy, since it is far less expensive when you visit someone and don’t have hotel expenses and costly meals out, and having friends visit is always fun. Often times we do things with visitors that we have never considered doing alone, or just haven’t taken time to do.

We used to live 10 minutes from Mall of America and only went there when we had guests who wanted to see it. Of course we aren’t big shoppers, but just looking around was fun.

So far this summer we’ve done a number of things with guests that we haven’t managed to do since we moved here five years ago. We discovered that our little county museum has an amazing amount of information for such a small town. We learned things we never knew about the area. For instance, this area was one of the biggest bootleg liquor areas in the state. Our Minnesota Thirteen bootleg whiskey was famous during that era.

We’ve taken time to play games, watch old movies, look at photo albums, swim and sit on the dock – things that there just never seems to be enough time to do.

To me this has been one of the benefits of a tighter economy. When I look back I realize that my family only took one real vacation in all my growing up years, and that was to visit family in Canada. I marvel at how we have come to expect expensive vacation trips as a way of life and despair when we find we can’t do it. Or worse yet, charge it on a credit card and then pay a high percentage of interest for months until we can pay it off.

Are vacations necessary? Do we “deserve” them?

No. We can get along without vacations, and yes, we all work hard, but “deserve,” I don’t think so.

What we do need is time to relax, kick back, be refreshed, and we can do that at home as well as we could on a vacation. In fact, I’ve come home from some vacations when I felt like I needed a vacation to recover from my vacation.

One summer we decided to visit all the Minnesota Historical sites that we could get to and back from in a day. Since we did this over the space of a couple of months we were able to really enjoy them. Yes, there were days when we returned home tired, but then we could take several days to recover before planning our next outing. I’ve lived in Minnesota most of my life and had never visited most of the places we visited that summer. I’ll bet that the same is true of you and your state.

Another good idea is to send for tourism information on your state – just like you do when you go to a different state. Often you get discounts meant to lure vacationers, but residents are welcome to take advantage of them too.

If you or your spouse doesn’t get paid vacation time, another good way to regroup is to follow this command:

Exodus 20:8-11 (King James Version)

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

We tend to forget that the Lord made provision for us to be refreshed – weekly. I don’t mean that you should do nothing on Sundays, but there are probably a number of things, which if discontinued on Sundays would provide you more of a day of rest. We don’t turn on our computers until later in the afternoon – we know people who don’t use them at all on Sundays. Taking a break from our normal activities can be very refreshing. I know people who take naps on Sunday – in fact I used to be one of them.

Finding Joy in the Journey,

Phyllis

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© 2010 Phyllis Sather

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Contact me at:Phyllis@Phyllis-Sather.com

Sameness: One of the Missing Ingredient in our Families

July 15th, 2010

This June marked the 20th year our family has vacationed at the same cabin that we’ve rented from the same family. That is the entire life span of our son Eric, who was just three months old the first time we came here. Our daughters were two and four.

We lived in the same house for fourteen years and went to the same church and after moving we have lived in the same house for five years and attended the same church. My husband had the same job for fourteen years and has been at his current job for five years.

Do you notice all the “sames” in the above sentences? Memories and a sense of security are built on the foundations of sameness.

Gone are the days of a father working for his entire career at the same business. Gone are the days of families who have lived in the same house for the entire life span of their children. Gone are the days of going to the same school with the same friends from beginning to end. We no longer have a family physician that not only delivered all our children but cared for them for their entire life. The vow we take at marriage “till death do us part” no longer seems relevant to most people, having been replaced with “until I no longer love you” or some other trite phrase.

During my lifetime I’ve had four different sets of friends – each time we change houses, employment, or churches we also change friends.

There can be some good in these changes. I’ve learned to be more flexible, I’ve learned how to develop new friendships, I’ve learned how to make an enjoyable life for myself in new situations, but I’ve also lost touch with old friends, and lost some of the sense of security that comes with having sameness in my life.

It grieves me when I think of the relationships I’ve left behind. Sure, some of them continue and when you get together once or twice a year it seems as if nothing has changed and you can readily enter back into the comfortable relationship that you had for years. That seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
The loss of sameness in our children’s lives leads to this same loss of security – only they are less able to compensate for this loss.

50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce, according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri.

This means that half of the children in the United States not only faces all of the above changes, but needs to adjust to living in two different households, switching every week or month as set up by their parents. They often have to adjust to having a new mom and/or dad and new sets of siblings in both of those relationships.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t imagine having to live in two different houses and two different families and switching places regularly. Yet this is what we have come to expect from millions of children all the time.

The other situation children of divorce often find themselves in is growing up without a father. Fully 40% of children with divorced parents have no father who is active in their lives.

Children who don’t have the coping abilities of adults are losing even their basic sense of sameness. Is it any wonder that so many of them end up with emotional, physical, and psychological problems?

We are often told that children are resilient and learn to cope with these losses. Single parenthood is promoted as normal on TV and in movies.

I contend that parents separating and leaving each other and their children is not normal, and that children of whatever age do not learn how to cope well, but that losing their sense of sameness leads to lifelong damage.

This is not a popular stand because if you are the one who is tired of your spouse or have met someone new and want to get out of a marriage, you don’t want to hear that you are going to damage your children irreparably. You don’t want to hear that the best thing you can do for them is to love your spouse – to make that relationship work. Yes, work – marriage is work, and most of them fail because someone is no longer willing to work at that most important relationship. We seem to have forgotten that love is not just a feeling, but a decision, and once we make that decision we need to be steadfast and be willing to work through the difficult times to make it work.

When I got married 25 years ago our pastors asked us to make a commitment to each other that divorce would never be an option. I’m really grateful for having been asked to do that and that both of us were willing to make that decision. I’m glad to say that even during the roughest times it never was mentioned as an option.

Would you be willing to make that commitment to your spouse today?  I think we as a society need to recognize what we are doing to future generations by removing the sameness in their lives, and be willing to take seriously our marriage vows. We need to give our children the years and years of sameness that they need to develop into adults who are healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally.

“Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?  He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” Matthew 19:6-8 (King James Version)

Finding Joy in the Journey,

Phyllis

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Phyllis Sather
Proclaiming God’s Faithfulness at:

http://www.Phyllis-Sather.com

© 2010 Phyllis Sather
All rights reserved