May 2, 2012 Greetings My Friend, “Sometimes you are the only Bible a person may ever read.” That statement is to me very sobering. I try to read my Bible daily. I try live what I read and sometimes I mess up big time. About now I think of King David and how he messed up and later confessed his sin and went on to live with God again. So I want to live for God and I realize that sometimes I will mess up and that is ok….well as long as I repent with a sincere heart. I am reading in the New Testament at present. The New Testament has a whole lot of great teachings. As I think on this I feel that the Old Testament lessons are mostly personal lessons and the New Testament seems to be more teaching lessons. Anyway Paul is coming to mind and his teachings. There is the 1Corithians 13 lesson on love. I really find it helpful. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Right after that it states “Love never fails.” Then shortly after that it states “these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” That section teaches me how to love. It gives me a good groundwork to begin to love my husband, my family and those I am in relationship with. For me on my own I tend to want to put the people I love on a pedestal and when they let me down I am so disappointed. When I start learning how to love as I see God love by how the Bible teaches me I then am able to enter into more healthy relationships. By nature I am an enabler as well. If I look at my relationship with God, God will enable me to do things but He won’t enable me to stay in dysfunction. I have had this discussion many times in my life. It goes something like this. “You had a good job and a lot of responsibility at work. Why did you not leave your abusive life?” That is true. I did have a job that required a lot of thinking and responsibility. The struggle for me was I was so insecure in my day to day life. I believed the lies that I would not be able to take care of a house and the repairs or the car repairs. I knew how to handle money. I wasn’t sure how to handle the day to day things of keeping life in order. As my children grew older I was not always sure how I would be able to discipline them. I felt I needed the firmness a father would give them. I did not want him to abuse the children but I also knew that a man’s stern voice often would turn a child around. I left my former marriage two times. The first time I left for a few weeks and went back to that marriage. I went home to my parent’s house. Dad asked for money the whole time I stayed there. The problem in that the ex would not give me money and I did not know how to make him give me any. I had no job and no car. I was scared and my parents barely kept enough food for my baby to eat. I went back to feed my baby. Eventually I went to college and I went to work. At work I learned how to do more and more. By the time the divorce came along I had begun to learn how to manage on my own. Now I know that God will guide me. If Junior was to die and I pray he won’t for a very long time, I will be able to take my fear to God. Back in the day I went to church but I did not know God intimately. I did not know how to listen to God. The other lesson I am thinking on is Titus 2. As I began my faith journey I struggled with what a woman is. Mom was a woman for sure but she adopted a more masculine approach to life as she went to work to support the family. I remember Mom being proud one time when she was on her CB radio and a guy commented that she drove live a man. She often repeated that comment. Mom had to be the bread winner and I guess she felt she needed to be tough in dealing with life. I was never able to be a tough as nails type of woman. I liked frilly things. I liked the idea of staying home and raising my children. I wanted to bake cookies and make the house smell good. I liked taking the kids for walks and doing art projects with them. So I was confused as to what a woman looked like. Dad stayed home with us kids. Dad cleaned and did laundry. Back in the late 50’s and early 60’s women generally stayed home and the men worked. As I read Titus 2 I began to learn how to be a woman. “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind and to be subject to their husbands.” Part of my desire in this blog is to teach women. It is something I have longed for in my life. My Mother-in-law comes to mind. She sat me down and began teaching me how to be a wife right from the start. She taught me to make meals for people who help us on the house fixing things. She taught me to help my husband. She even taught me that I need to write thank-you notes. My mother-in-law comes to mind often as I settle into retirement and am once again more homemaker than breadwinner. I often visualize myself being busy cleaning as I remember seeing her in her own home. I also visualize myself cooking like I remember her doing. I think times have changed as well and what she did is not what will work today. We have many more modern conveniences to keep a home clean and thus don’t need to spend as much time cleaning. At this point I see me being a home-maker and a writer. So again I am trying to learn and then hopefully as I learn I am able to pass on what I know to help the next generation along. May God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you. Love Janet