This snow started about noon.  The road is the dark line beyond the farther tree, only that is covered in snow too.  It has been over twelve hours since the snow started and it has finally started to let up.  The plow came through but it really didn’t clear the road.  Perhaps they will call for a snow day tomorrow and the schools will be closed.

A little while ago the phone rang and woke me from a sound sleep.  It was my oldest son.  He needed me.  Whenever one of my children need me I have always tried to drop everything and be there for them.  He said he had been coming around a curve on his way home from fire school and hit a steer standing in the middle of the road.  He totalled his truck.  The road was snowy and he couldn’t stop fast enough so he hit the steer.  He assurred me he was alright.  I threw on some clothes and got in Doug’s car and started out.  Sure enough the roads were snow covered and slippery.  The snow is coming down fast and furious. 

Now comes the bad mother part.  I got exactly 1.5 miles from here and I couldn’t go any further.  “I have to go help him” warred inside of me with, “the roads are slippery and I’m going to get into an accident.”  What was I doing out on a night like this?  I have only driven Doug’s Blazer maybe six times.  It is lighter than my car and it doesn’t handle well in the snow at all.  When I tried to stop at the end of our road I barely was able to come to a full stop.  If anything had been coming from the other direction I would have hit them.  Reluctantly I pulled into the church parking lot and called Doug.  “I cannot do this.   The roads are too bad.”  He said to come home and he would call Ian. 

I sit here now with tears in my heart and a heavy heart and a sick stomach.  My son needed me.   He wanted my help and I couldn’t do it.  He, of course, understands.  That’s just Ian’s way.  He has always been sensitive to me and to my fears and my feelings.  But he should have had the support that he desired when he needed. 

Ian, I am here praying for you.  I am holding you up from home.  I just couldn’t do it.

Outside my window….. It is snowing!!!!  All weekend the lake effect bands managed to stay just north and south of us but now they have shifted and they are over us.  I do have to say that it is making everything looks so clean and fresh after all the rain and subsequent mud that we had over the weekend.  (I say sound nice about snow only because my car is in the shop and I don’t have to drive in it)

I am thinking…… about the sounds from the past that I “hear” in this house when I am alone here in the silence.  How, especially on days like this, with the snow falling silently outside, I hear the padding feet of my small children running to the windows to see the snow and exclaim about being able to make snow men and go sledding.  I’m remembering all the little nose and finger prints that I used to not wash off a certain window in our house because they were so precious to me.  How I wish those prints were still there.

I am thankful for…….. a wonderful, loving, caring daughter who sets good example for all around her.  When her housemates had a dinner that was supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving yesterday it became a tense affair because one member couldn’t be generous to the others about inviting others to the dinner.  The it became polarized with the black kids at one table with the white at another.  My loving daughter went from one to another serving all and talking and visiting with all because she loves no matter who or what you are and didn’t care if those at the dinner were residents of the house or were invited by the residents.  She knows what the true meaning of Thanksgiving is.  God has truly blessed this world with her presence in it.

From the kitchen……… lunch was leftover spaghetti from yesterday.  Supper will probably be beef stew with homemade bread. 

I am wearing…….. warm tights, white tee shirt, denim jumper, green sweater

I am creating……. Christmas gifts.  Mittens for the craft sale that we have every year at our church.

I am going…….. nowhere!!!!!!!!! Until Doug gets home from work.  Then we have to take the Durango to be fixed and I have to take his car to a parnet meeting for first penance at church.

I am reading……. Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot

I am hoping…….. that the back specialist calls this week to let me know about the CT scan on my back and when I am on the OR schedule.  The waiting to know is killing me.  Everyday I think I change my mind a dozen times about having surgery at all.

Around the house…….. it looks like a sweat-shop. There are sewing machines set up everywhere.  Matthew and I are making Christmas presents and Mary-Kate has left me a list of supplies that she needs for when she is home next so she can sew too.

One of my favorite things……… the thought that my son who is stationed in KS will be home in one month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to keep that thought in my mind…

A few plans for the rest of the week…….the Durango (much as I enjoy the enforced stay at home I need to be able to get out), Matthew needs a flu shot, my second grade religion class, groceries, go get MK on Friday HOORAY!!!!!

A picture thought that I am sharing with you…………

This is Matthew and Mary-Kate rolling up wire beside our road on Friday evening.  Matthew is just wearing a tee shirt.  The high temp that day was 64.  It really was quite a nice day.  Even I was comfortable with a jacket on.

This is looking down the road to the same spot where they rolled up the wire on Friday.  What a difference a few days makes.  The temp is 33 and there is a light breeze blowing which makes it feel like 25.  The snow has been falling for about 1 1/2 hours. 

Days and days go by.  Sometimes even months and you can almost begin to forget that you have ever experiences the total, enveloping blackness.  You live an active life.  To those around you there is nothing seeming wrong.  To yourself there is nothing wrong.  You are almost carefree.  You have shaken it and, it seems, with the help of God, no drugs please, you have overcome the overpowering blackness, the nothingness.  You are on the other side.

Then it strikes again.  Some would say “out of the blue” but that is not where it comes since it is usually not on a bright sunny day.  The first indication that there is anything wrong is a profound heaviness of spirit.   My family notices long silences from the person who is the buffer, the one who keeps things moving and active.  When my husband finally catches on, you’d think he would after all these years, it is with annoyance.  With comments about “giving in to the devil who wants you to feel this way,” or “don’t pay attention to the weather, don’t let it get you down like this.” “Find something to make you think of something else.”  After all this time you’d think he’d realize that I know all of this and it doesn’t work.  That comments like these don’t help they hurt, really hurt.   That compassion from him is what I need, not censure.

So, I slog through the mire in my mind.  There is no light, only a very thick blackness.  My limbs are weighed down by a soup of something that I cannot describe and cannot escape.  I cast about for an escape and find none.  I fight the tears that are there constantly, trying hard to not let them fall.  No need to bring my children into this chamber of horrors.  At night in the darkness I fall deep into the pit of dark thoughts and even darker emotion.  I pray and it all is flung back at me.  Thoughts, dark black destructive thoughts come at me.  I cry out to my anchor and even He seems to have abandon me.  The only thing that keeps me from a total abandonment into the mire is the remembrance of an eventual escape.  I don’t ever remember how I got away but I know that I always do. 

I hope that it doesn’t last long this time.  I just know that it is made no easier by the lack of help from the one who should be my greatest help here.

no, wait I did over sleep until 7:00.  So Matthew and I didn’t make it to Mass this morning.  Maybe that is why the day went as it did.  Who knows?  Anyway it was all downhill from there.  We had our showers and did chores and had breakfast then got to work on projects that we had started this week.  Matthew is making a Christmas present and I had some buttonholes to make.  That was my first mistake.  The sewing machine was working fine but the cuffs were too thick and the buttonholes just weren’t going right and I had to tear them out twice so I threw that aside and decided to cut out another project that I wanted to start.

Then we got into the car to go out to lunch.  Last weekend I had made a cake for a friend’s birthday.  She loved the cake and everyone who works at her restaurant loved it too.  But the dishwasher broke the cake stand when he went to wash it.  So she offered Matthew and I a free lunch on her to replace the cake stand.  We had such a good time that it left not much time to drive to the next town to make it to our Holy Hour.  I do not like rushing when it comes to getting anywhere.

Then Matthew wanted to go to the fabric store and we had to wait in a very long line while we were there and they are going out of business which I find irritating to say the least.  So I was late starting out to get Mary-Kate. 

The final insult came on the way home from picking up Mary-Kate.  When we were 10miles from home the temp light came on in the car and chimes started to go off and the temp guage went sky high.  I pulled over immediately but I knew what that all meant.  It wasn’t good.  I popped the hood and there was coolant all over the place and it was spraying out from under the car too.  I called my oldest son and told him what was going on.  (the reason I didn’t call my husband first is because Ian works closer to where I was broken down and he is my mechanic)  Then I called AAA to get a tow truck on the way.  Ian left work to come and pick up MK and Matthew while I stayed with the car until the tow truck came. 

I observed something interesting while I was waiting.  Literally dozens of large trucks passed me in the hour and fifteen minutes that I sat there and waited and exactly three people stopped to ask if there was anything that they could do.  Although it was a back country road that I was stopped along there are three large farms on that road and a major gravel bed and a fuel oil business.  They have trucks going in and out of there all the time.  The guys in the trucks passed and waved but only three stopped to offer help.  I found it very interesting.  Since it was a relatively warm day, 64 degrees, and sunny and my children are grown up now, it didn’t bother me as it used to in the past.  But still I find it interesting.

So, now my poor Dodge is parked outside our shop with the dash taken apart and the diagnosis is a bad heater coil.  Not good.  I guess that I don’t need to go to morning mass for awhile.  Either that or I have to get up early and take Doug to work and then put up with his very stinky car all day long. (it smells like a free-stall).  I think I will offer up not being able to go to Mass.

Doesn’t shee look sad?  No nasty comments about Dodges from all of you Ford lovers out there.  We have settled that around here.  Only Dodges are allowed and an occasional Chevy, if it can behave itself.  Even my Ford loving son has a Dodge.  The son who actually has a Ford truck is flying in when he comes home and he will drive my Dodge.  This is Dodge country.

I copied this recipe from someone else’s blog site.  I like it and think I will try it this Christmas.  I don’t ordinarily like fruitcake but something about this one is appealing to me.
Betty’s Fruitcake

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
2 cups dried fruit
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown sugar
lemon juice
nuts
1 gallon good whiskey

Sample the whiskey to check for quality. Take a large dring of the whiskey again
to be sure it is of the highest quality. Fill cup and drink again. Repeat. Turn on electric mixer. Beat one egg in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 teaspoon sugar and beat again. Make sure wiskey is still okay. Cry another tup. Turn off mixer. Break 2 legs into the bowl and chcuk in the cup of dried fruit. Mix on the table. If fried fruit gets stuck in the
beaters, pry loose with a screwdriver. Taste the wisky to check for tonsisticity. Next sift two cups of something. Who cares? Check the wisky. Now sift the lemon Juice over your nuts. Add one table. Spoon. Of sugar, or something. Whatever. Grease the oven. Turn the cake tin to 350 degrees. Don’t forget to set the tuner. Throw the bowl out the window. Check the wisky. Gotobed. Who the hell likes gruitcake any ways???
Have a Merry Christmas, Ya’ll.

I have been reading a book by Elisabeth Elliot for a few weeks not.  One of the chapters in the book has made me think just a little bit more than all of the rest.  It is on a topic that is very near and dear to my heart.  It is something that bears repeating here so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to copy out the whole chapter (its not a long one) here. 

When I walked into a meeting room where ten men were seated, three stood.  Etiquette required only one to have stood, if a meeting had been in progress, but it hadn’t started.  The three were observing a ceremony, a formal act established by a custom as proper to an occasion.  The seven who sat did not observe it, because they didn’t know any better or because they knew better, but for reasons of their own, rejected the custom or because they were not paying attention or because–and this reason is a common one and reveals an important fundamental attitude– they didn’t want to look silly.

I asked a seminary class how many of those who were married ever helped their wives in or out of their chairs at the table if there was no company present.  There wasn’t a single hand.  The subject of my lecture that day was courtesy, so I “socked it to ‘em” for two hours about what courtesy ought to signify in a Christian home.  It it a lot of foolish and meaningless conventions that Christians, int he interest of honesty and simplicity, can well dispense with?  I don’t think it is, and I tried to show them why.  i gave them a week to think it over, and then i asked again for a show of hands.  “Is there anybody here who, as a result of last week’s lecture, has altered, in the smallest detail, his treatment of his wife?”  There was not one hand.  Perhaps you haven’t considered the rationale behind good manners.

courtesy is sacrificial symbolism.  We’ve been talking about sacrifice, which runs deep through all Christian truth.  “Every High Priest is appointed to offer gifts and make sacrifices,” Hebrews tells us.  As Christians, as “priests” to God, we, too, make sacrifices: our bodies, first of all; and our praise, our thanksgiving and our faith.  These are all called sacrifices in the New Testament.  It goes without saying that we human beings haven’t got a thing to offer up to God, except what we’ve been given; and your manhood is a gift that you offer back to Him.  It’s also a gift you offer your wife.  Without that offering, she is not free to be fully a woman; for to be fully a woman means to respond, to receive, to be acted upon, to follow.  You’ve got to give her the gift of your manhood—initiating, cherishing, leading.  This is what women want, in their heart of hearts.

I say that courtesy is sacrificial symbolism because each act is a very small sign that you are willing to give your life for hers.  When you pass the salt to her, you’re saying, “You first.”  When you help her on with her coat, you’re not saying, “You’re too weak to do it yourself”; you’re saying that you’re willing to take trouble for her.  “Good morning darling, how are you this morning?” is a convention, of course.  (conventions have only become conventions because they have worked and have meant something for a long time.)  But if you think about it, you could, by that conventional greeting, be meaning, “My feelings are not my primary interest this morning.  Yours are.”  Sir Walter Raleigh’s putting down his cloak in a puddle for the sake of his queen was an inconvenience, to say the least.  Love is willing to be inconvenienced.

It is a mistake to dismiss customs by saying, “It’s only cultural.”  It is cultural, but it is within the context of our culture that we communicate selfishness or unselfishness.  Do you remember the story of Jesus having dinner at the house of a Pharisee named Simon?  When a “woman of the city who was a sinner” offered a gesture of adoration–washing jesus’ feet with tear, drying them with her hair, and then pouring perfume on them–the host was offended.  What a disgrace that this rabbi would allow such a woman to touch Him!  Yet Jesus rebuked him and pointed out that the three courtesies usually offered a guest had been denied Him.  Simon had neglected to give him water for His feet, to kiss Him, or to anoint His head with oil.  It is evident that Jesus valued these Eastern customs.  If they had meant nothing to Him, He would not have missed them.

When two angels came to Sodom, Lot observed the courtesies of his time: He rose from his seat, bowed with his face to the earth, and invited them to spend the night at his house and wash their feet.  When they accepted the invitation, he baked bread and made a feast.  He felt himself responsible for their safety when the men of the city would have attacked them.  “…..do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.”

Peter exhorted Christians to honor all men, honor the emperor.  Paul said “….outdo one another in showing honor.”  the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, says “Love has good manners…..”

In case Peter and Paul’s instructions seem irrelevant to today’s carelessly casual styles, we would do well to listen to what a modern philosopher, Eric Hoffer, wrote: “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

Courtesy has to become a habit, “a characteristic condition of mind or body, disposition; a ting done often and hence done easily; a tendency to perform in a certain way.”  Does this sound bad?  Is it necessarily hollow just because it’s a habit?  I don’t think so, for if you’re in the habit of being courteous, then, even when you’re not thinking or feeling rightly, you’ll still act rightly; and it’s action that counts with other people.  It’s this you’re responsible for before God, not for the vagaries of emotion or mood.  What you do to or for others you do to or for the Lord.      END OF QUOTE.

The only thing that I would add is that if we are all made in the image and likeness of God this should be requisite not optional. 

I have been reading not a few posts about Veterans day and what it means to people, encouragement about flying the flag proudly today, and about the cost of freedom.  There have even been a few with a history lesson thrown in telling about the fact that Veterans day originally started out as Armistice Day and, I think in Canada, it is called Remembrance Day.  But no matter what it is called or how it is “celebrated” I feel the need to throw my two cents in here. 

Veterans day is a day that was originally set aside to honor our fallen dead who had sacrificed their lives to keep this nation free from tyranny.  Very few of our young people are aware of the reason for Veterans day anymore, they are just grateful for a day off from school.  The whole concept of patriotism is no longer being taught to our youth.  There is a great deal of talk today about thanking the Vets for the price that they have paid for our freedom.  But if you ask young kids what freedom means you will get many answers that boil down to one concept; the ability to do whatever you want to without anyone stopping you.  That is most definitely not freedom and is not what our soldiers fought to preserve. 

Freedom, true freedom comes at a high price, and I am not referring to the giving of your life.  I am referring to the price that each of pays day in and day out who are striving to the freedom that God promises.  The freedom that comes from doing His will.  That is the freedom that our military fought and died to preserve.  The freedom to persue God’s will.  The freedom to, each and everyday examine our decisions in the light of God’s revelation and decide based on what He wishes for us to do.  The freedom to act according to His plan for our lives.  The freedom to work and play according to His design for our lives.  The freedom to form our consciences based on His teachings and then to follow our consciences.  This is what our veterans fought and fight for.

So, when we are encouraged to fly the flag proudly that is what we are seeing.  When we see a veteran who is working at WalMart greeting people wearing his war medals or sitting in MacDonalds having a coffee in an old style uniform, we shouldn’t just pass him by or give him a smile and then walk away.  But instead stop and extend a warm handshake with a heartfelt thank you.  Perhaps an inquiry and listen with interest when he explains his part in the history of this country, after all what does it cost you but a few minutes of your precious time compared to the risk of his whole life. 

That is what Veterans day means to me.  That is what freedom is.  That is what I see when I see a flag flying.  That is why I will hold up your line at the store to chat with that old man in a uniform.  This mom of three veterans.