musings from a frustrating weekend...

Weekends. Argh...I prefer the week to a weekend any old day – somehow weekends are much more difficult and I get less done and am more frustrated.

Yesterday, while mowing the lawn, I frightened up a rather cute (fat with lovely thick blue-grey fur) mouse. He climbed into the container for my new tomatoes bed that I am creating. I tried to find him to kill him but couldn’t. I hate the thought of killing mice and would like to live in harmony with them but I have experienced what happens and don’t care for it. Anyhow...later as I was trying to put the cover on the bed (trying being operative) as it was very windy, Kira saw him...the mouse froze so I asked Tim to bring me the shovel – C did. I sent the girls to their dad and smashed the mouse. :(

Yesterday, I found myself in the position to consider anger and fear. Two recent events – one personal and one conveyed to my by a dear friend, reminded me once again how badly fear and anger erode our ability to deal with others. We may think we are holding it in and dealing with it ourselves and not allowing others to know but it always drips out – in different ways it sloshes over into interactions with other people.

I remember a sermon by our minister. To help convey to a group of students, the proverb that states that what we put in ourselves is what comes out when we are bumped he asked a big burly football player to come up, handed him a glass full of water and asked him if he could hold it with his outstretched arm without spilling it.
The student said of course. Pastor walked around him a few times and then pushed him from behind of course the water sloshed out. And once again we realize that what is in us is what comes out when we are bumped.

But what is most frustrating is we have to be completely full of the good stuff because it seems that if we having any anger, fear, or other negative or malicious feelings inside of us they are like oil and rise to the top so what gets knocked out when someone bumps us is the bad stuff and not any good that happens to be lurking at the bottom.

In the afternoon, I pulled out some embroidery and sat and embroidered and thought and prayed (embroidery is a great time and place of contemplation and prayer). As I prayed, I thought of how we are told to pray continually. And I remember a proverb that Mom had hanging in the kitchen when we were growing up. It said “A day hemmed with prayer, rarely unravels.” And I thought the reason we are to pray isn’t so much for the requests as it is for the reminder to us that God is there. Or at least that is how it worked yesterday...somehow praying and knowing he was there was more important than what I said.

In an attempt to make it easier for me to consider what is good in my life. And to consider my blessings, I’ve decided to start creating some samplers to hang around the house. I want to use the aforementioned proverb and that is what I started with last night...but then while looking through a catalog that I like to use for ideas I found a sampler that said this –

I have been driven
many times
upon my knees by the overwhelming
conviction that I had
nowhere else to go.
Abraham Lincoln

Be joyful always; pray continually.

1 Thes. 5:6-7

so that is the proverb on the sampler I designed. I am not sure but I might start after I finish the pillow I am embroidering for Grace.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Philippians 4:8