WINTER BLUES

As soon as winter hits my brother becomes the most irritable person!  He does not mean to become this person.  He experience the winter blues.  Scott has always had the worst moods at this time of the year.  Normally he is a truly beautiful person who shows great love and concern for others around him.  However when the blue mood hits he wants to do nothing but sleep and grumble about everything.

Scott along with 15% of all Americans suffer from depression once winter hits.  This year we plan on helping him thru this.  Studies show getting outdoors even if it is for 10 minutes everyday can help!  Opening the curtains in the house to bring in the sunshine and he needs to- get enough sleep.  We will be going to the gym and planning movie nights out to get him out and about.  trips to town to run errands is another great way to keep him feeling better.  Including him in activities so he does not just focus on it being cold and dreary.

We will be adding a pot on the stove in the living room to encourage water in the air and get the humidifier going to encourage our immune system.  Along with additional vitamin c, D zinc and magnesium which are great immune builders and mind healthy!

I too tend to really not like winter.  However I know that God has a reason for this season and I will be open to God’s plan.

Psalm 107:28-31 Yet when they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, the Lord brought them out of their distress. He calmed the storm and its waves quieted down. So they rejoiced that the waves became quiet, and he led them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his gracious love and for his awesome deeds on behalf of mankind.

 

Remembering Elizabeth Ann

It is Christmas Eve,  A very special time!  My heart is happy as I think of Jesus this morning is with my Mother in law Ann Petersen in heaven.  Elizabeth Ann know to all of us as Mom or Ann!  She never went by Elizabeth.  I never knew why not.  What a pretty name.

Ann was a good woman who had a great life with a man who loved her with all his heart all the days of his life.  Homer and Ann made Christmas special for their family.

This is our second Christmas without Ann.  It seems just like yesterday she was here.  She loved her daughter Lorie so much.  Ann loved doing things with Lorie.  When Lorie married and grandchildren were born Ann & Homer spent most of their time with Lorie’s family.   They attended the same church and for most of Lorie’s children’s life dinner was spent at Grandma and Grandpa’s Petersen’s home in Mitchell.  Lorie’s daughter Ashley was the favorite grand daughter of Ann’s.  Ashley brought into Ann’s life her Brooky!   Broklyne her great grand!  Oh Ann loved this  little girl.

Ann never went anywhere without coming back with gifts for Lorie, Ashley and Brooklyn.  They were her buddies.  When Ann passed Lorie was right there cheering her on to let go and ascend to heaven with Jusus!  At Ann’s funeral Lorie spoke of the beauty of the last moments with Ann as she left this earth as beautiful.  She was with Jesus.

I am thankful that we all got to love Ann and we will  miss her at our dinner table on Christmas day.  We loved her and it was my honor to have her as my Mother in Law.

The love she had for Christmas was special as the pies she baked for Christmas.

I will always be thankful for Ann & Homer Petersen as they gave our family love as they showed us what love looked like!

WHEN THE SNOW BLOWS

Our first Winter storm is  blowing across the Panhandle.   Today was the first day of Winter and we are now getting the first real snow!   It is quite flat with not a lot of trees to break the wind.  I always just want to cuddle up with a good book & a big cup of coffee.   It as if I am trying to escape the entire event out doors.

I think we all need a place to escape!    To be with our thoughts and things that bring joy to oneself.   I escape to my Master Bedroom where I have things surrounding me that I value.  Pictures of my family.  My books, my bible and things my husband has made. I  Look around the room I am comforted as I lay in our Sleigh bed looking at all the hand-made flutes my husband has made.  the shelves he has hung that holds the mementos of our lives together.

I am comforted by this place!  When the wind blows even the smell of our home is comforting.  It is a place that is my refuge.  It is a place where I know I am loved.  It is a place that is full of hope, faith and grace!  Where I can just be me.  No one looking to put me down!  No one to judge me!  This special room wraps me with warmth of my life with my family.  So many amazing memories wrapped in the space.

As I awake in this special place, It is the place I spend time with my Jesus.  I thank the Lord for my blessings and spend time in fellowship and end my day in fellowship.  It is my room where I held each of my children.  Have loved grandchildren and held the hand of my amazing husband.  Where he tells me he loves me and “God bless you to one another.”  Where ever I am in life this place is my space that my husband built for us.  This refuge I am thankful for because it is a place of peace.

“Blessed are all who take refuge in me”  PSALM 2:12 NIV reminds of God’s presence and never-ending love.  I am thankful for our first day of Winter and all the beauty this too shall bring.

Wishing you a place of refuge in all-weather and all storms.

SORROW OVER SIN

Oh how sin creates such sorrow.  This past has been filled with so much sorrow.  Loss of loved ones, living and gone.  The living lost hurts the most!  Hurt relationships or worst lost relationships.

This sorrow does have hope thru God’s restoration.  God heals our brokeness.  Getting thru the brokeness sometimes is the hardest.  We need to celebrate our victories and those we love.  To be strong and not give up when Satin is spinning his lies.  When I look at the sorrow that has been spun in my life, out of not giving God my life!   I am ashamed!   God is my father whom will chasten my life and behavior because I need to be held accountable out of love.  Satin will whisper lies and get me to question my decisions.

This year I have seen many people who I know God removed. These people did not truly care about me.  They used me to get where they are.  Now I want my readers to know I am thankful that God placed me in these folks lives.  His reasoning for me to serve others is never a concern of mine.  I allow God to work thru me to serve others.  I trust God to help others.  I just really have never trusted my God to take care of all of me.

As I drove to work this morning, I was listening to Pastor Adrian Rogers talking about how we are called to give 1 tenth of our earning to the Lord.  We are do this because God provides everything for us.  My sorrow is over my sin of not giving to the Lord!  As Pastor spoke of the following passage.  I cried as I drove to work.  Primarily because I have sinned when it comes to giving to God and to being a good steward of what God has provided.  I prayed and cried out my heart to the Lord as I realized how I have not understood what I am to do in regards to what God has asked me to do.

Ten percent of my wage to God seems hard to reach when things are tough.  However I am reminded what Jesus did for me.  He did not hold back he took that cross for me.  A sinner!  God knows my heart and I will get there where I can commit to God what he is worthy of.  I tend to be very generous to those in need and people whom God has appointed me as a leader.  We are to confess with our mouth our sin.  I shared my sin with God and asked him to forgive me.  In doing this I also seek ways to serve the Lord.  This Blog is one way I can give.  I can be a testament of what God has done for me.  I can also humble myself to those who read my blog and know that I am a work in progress!

Thank you Jesus for being my savior and for allowing me the words to help others who may be struggling with their own sorrow.  God I know I can do better and ask you to help me do better.  In Jesus name AMEN-

“Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase; So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.” Proverbs 3:9-10

My Dads Christmas cookie

My dad was very traditional and every Christmas he would make this graham cracker log cookie.  I miss this cookie.  It was a refrigerator cookie that he would make.  Something that his mother made.  The cookie was the sign of Christmas in our home.  Along with the Juniper tree that he would go to the Mountains to bring home.  I still don’t understand Dad’s love of that particular Christmas tree!  Eggnog!

How I miss my Dad and those cookies.  I am so thankful for the memories of those special times with my Dad.  My twin sister has the recipe and makes these cookies.   I too have cookie traditions with my daughters.  I make sugar cookies with my daughters and decorate along with candy that we then give to our neighbors.  When I was young we did not take pictures.  I only have the memories of Dad in the kitchen making these cookies.

However we take pictures of our cookie day.  A part of our tradition that is important to our Christmas heritage.

OVERCOMING THE INDIGNIT MOMENTS

 

As I started my day I was reminded that we have a profound effect on others!  It can be the smell of a perfume, the way a person wears their hair.  A bad memory or a good one!

We affect one another everyday!  Reactions often come out of these places in our mind that are re awakened.  Sometimes these memories are not good and we do not want to revisit them.

Our ability to over come can be pushed to limits one cannot imagine!  We live in a world who will exploit our hurts at times in the quest to tell a story.  Recently in the news we have seen people who took horrific actions to make their points.

We have seen woman picketing and pointing out in public,  their abusers!  Our own former President of United States George W. Bush Senior has come out apologizing for behavior not becoming any man.  At first these women kept there secrets.  Maybe the action of one brave woman helped others confront the wrong doings of these men.

I believe that people choose not to speak of things that stripped them of dignity.   We all try to forget.  At times the victim cannot get over the incident.    The action another takes against them,  can stop their personal development!    It can actually impair the victim from being able to go forward!

Betty White played a character name Rose in the sitcom The Golden Girls.  The four come home to find their house had been robbed.  Rose was so distraught that she cannot function.  She even goes and buys a gun.  As the character Blanch and her date come thru the door,  Rose shoots missing them and hitting the Chinese Vase.  This portrayal lead to Rose needing to go to therapy and to learn to cope.

This show did such a good job of depicting what happens when your rights are violated.  Time has a way of healing horrible moments.  However these moments leave us different.  I am reminded that we should be able to forgive those who have caused us hurt thru their actions.   We are reminded that God heals our hurt.  We can feel like we cannot trust and even fall away as we are dealing with our pain.

In PSALM 147:3 NIV tells He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. When tough times come into our lives we need God more than ever.  Give yourself to mourn the wrong.  Never forget that you are stronger than you realize.

 

A Must!

 

I like to revist things I have written! January is a great month to reset yourself!   New year new goals!

Enjoy dealing in the middle!  It applies to new goals!

via IN THE MIDDLE

SIPPING & PAINTING

An afternoon in the country at the local winery sipping and painting!  What a great time.  My daughters and one of our dear friends went with us.  We had done this last year and it was so much fun!  What a glorious day to relax and to spend quality time with one another.  It was just very special to spend this time together.  we created very unique pieces of art!  I tend to be extreme with color.

It is amazing how each of us were given the same instruction and yet the way our art turned out was very different!  All unique like each of the people who was in the class.

It reminds me of how God works on us and thru us for his good.  Just as the paintings turned out similar they were individual pieces of art who reflected the person who created it.  Our identity was only for us as individual.   PSALM 119-73 says “With your very own hands you formed me; now breath your wisdom over so I can understand.

Just as we created our art today,  I was well aware that we started with a blank canvas and really did not have a full understanding how it would turn out.  It took time to see the picture come together.  I think we all start out as a white canvas and our lives and personal growth begin to start coming together with color!

I am still working to understand what God has in store for my life.  I know one thing for sure!   In God I Trust!

In him all my faith is full.  In him I am one!  He fills in the colors of my life with his knowledge.  He fills me with hope and gives me direction when I am not sure.  He opens me to new opportunity because he gives me with assurance that he is with me.  I am his!  God’s word assures us that “his presence will be with us and he will give us rest.”   Exodus 33:14

It was so much fun to have the art come together.  To see each of us in our group celebrate the joy of their art.  originals one of kinds!  Just as God has made each of us.

Wishing you a day to appreciation

CHRISTMAS FIFTY TWO

Life goes fast!  Really Fast!  It seems just like yesterday I was a little girl dreaming of Christmas morning with my twin sister.  We lay in bed and dream of what Santa was going to bring us!  Oh and the excitement of Christmas morning was the best!  We would all wake Mom and Dad up and we would all head to the Christrmas tree.  Filled with pure excitement for what was under that tree!  Time goes fast and I am reflecting on the fact that God has graced me with 52 Christmas’s.

As a mother I have worked hard to give our children memories of Christmas mornings and of course family herritage.  Our family values and this time is sacred to our family.

I was born in the month of January of 1965 to Clell Earl Cress and Jeanette Ann Noland Cress.  I was born in a snow storm!  My father was not at my birth because he was snowed in on the ranch that we was employed by.  On that day I was born along with my twin sister Cindy Iren.  Our father had planned on naming us Twila and Illa!  Thank YOU Jesus for keeping that from happening!   I am sure I would have been Illa!  Our oldest sisters Glenda and Brenda gave us our names.  Being four and five years old. They came up with Cindy’s name first. Naming her after the neigbor girl and then they came up with Mindy.   I will always be forever thankful for my name not being Illa!

Fifty Two Years Christmas’s of fun joy and hope!  Jesus has been so gracious to me.  I remind myself daily to be thankful for all the little things that his grace has provided to a sinner like me.  I came to know Jesus when I was 18 years old.  As I look back to that time, I know that God I needed.  Now at 52 I am so glad that I am saved and that the best is yet to come.

Our Christmas’s have always been a family matter with activities that include us doing fun things together.  Sledding down the hill by Orrs Conoco with our girls.  Christmas Concerts,  christmas cookies & candies, adopting a family for the holidays,  Christmas eve used to be spent at my husbands family unwrapping christmas gifts.  The girls always knew this was kick off to Christmas morning at our home.  Decorating of the house and of course Buddy reapears popping up here and there our traditional Christmas Elf!

Planning the Christmas Menu has always been important to our children.  In the past few years,  our girls really have contributed.   They love this part of the Christmas experience.  Last year we added a new tradition of doing Christmas in Cheyenne with my twin sister and her daughter’s family.  We all look forward to this time of playing with my nieces little boys!  This year we will start our new Christmas Eve tradition at our homw with our girls.

My memories of Chtristmas are really more about the joy of watching my brother Scotty on christmas morning and the girls open there gifts.  Now this year Jesus has enlarged our home with the birth of our grandson Jayson Carter.  With this new addition comes a new generation to watch love the magic of Jesus’s birthday celebration.

Children are the heritage from the Lord, offspring are a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in ones youth.  Blessed is the man whose quiver if full of them.  PSALM 127-3-5 NIV

So as I look over some of my past fifty two Christmas’s I know that I am thankful for each memory and look forward to all the memories with our families.  Most important is all the children that God has blessed our lives with.

 

ORDER

As I set down to write I am pleased!  The house smells of cleanliness!  Every inch dusted.  Every floor scrubbed.  Every rug shaken and washed and put back in its place to meet another week of hustle and bustle of work!  When I was young I could clean the house in a whirl wind.  the house takes me longer to complete these days.  The satisfaction of how great I feel when everything is in its place is so worth the work.

My family knows that when Mom is cleaning it is a good idea to leave!  I appreciate them doing this.  It leaves me with my thoughts and time to reinvent our home into a new space that welcomes each of us as a place of refuge.  I am that person who really loves order. When everything is in it place I am content.  I can think clearly.  It as if I have rid the house of all the negative and replaced it with all the positive.  I think it has a lot to with respecting what has been provided to me.

As I look around this room I see art created by myself, my daughter and my husband.  I love the huge wing back chair that adorns my office.  When I need a place to read.  It’s the chair I want to sit in.  The desk I write in. with my tufted leather chair welcomes me like an old friend.  Thru the door I can see my kitchen which really is my favorite space.  It is where my family gather as a family.  I am reminded how fortunate to live in the home.  Part of the order I love,  I want my children to want as well.  I guess time will tell if they will want order as well in their personal lives.  I reminded that God’s promise found in Samual 7:11 ” I’m going to give you peace from all your enemies.”  This is my home a place of refuge and order.   Here is wishing you order-