Pretzel's Christmas Gift

Wow! What's this?

It smells good!!

Grab it.....

Mmmmmm, sniff, sniff, mmmmm....

Yea! Pig ear...yummy, the perfect Christmas gift ;-)

Merry Christmas

“God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning


I love gifts, giving them and receiving them, finding the perfect thing to say in a card and sending them to loved ones. Then there are the gifts that God sends in unexpected ways, a clear day in the middle of rain storms arriving just in time so that you can visit with your family. Hearing from someone you haven’t seen for awhile. All those little places where God meets you and you know you are loved. This is a picture of one gift I received from God earlier this month, not packaged in red and green, but beautiful none the less.

I call this one an Angel Hawk, because the wind was blowing the feathers up like angel wings ;-)

Tonight we remember the best gift of all, that God became man and lived among us because He loved us. Merry Christmas and love to you.....

Never Enough

There is something that those of us who have used drugs understand and it is this: the first time you get really high you will do whatever it takes to experience that one perfect high again. You will use more and larger doses chasing the elusive high, but it is never enough. The same thing pertains to drug money, people have this idea that all drug dealers get rich, what they don’t know is that drug money is an illusion just as much as the high the drug creates. Sure there are some dealers and smugglers that become wealthy and hang on to their money through violence and corruption, but on the whole most people in the drug world use their money to buy more drugs.


In California we are voting on legalizing marijuana and taxing it as a way to balance our budget. Proponents claim that there is so much money to be made off of marijuana that it will solve our statewide deficit. They also seem to think that it will stop the criminal activity that comes with illegal marijuana sales and distribution. Sounds like an easy answer, but if you look behind the smoke and mirrors you’ll see major flaws in this idea. Legalization would have to be world wide for it to stop criminals from robbing, maiming and killing people to sell it. As long as there is one country that wants it and can’t get it, there will be someone willing to break the law to acquire it. Also people who are loaded make poor decisions, such as driving under the influence, and stealing to get money to buy more drugs. Just look at Mendocino County, whose economy is dependant on marijuana, they allow growing pot for “personal use” and they have had an upsurge in criminal activity. Families are leaving, and users are pushing the boundaries when it comes to how much is enough: one plant, a yard full, or a warehouse is never enough.

As Californians we have tried to balance our budget in other easy ways. The lottery was supposed to help our schools and yet we are in worse shape now, shutting schools, teachers being laid off, and classrooms without basic necessities. I asked one teacher how the money is used, and she told me that she hasn’t seen the money recently; it was only during the first few years that they received small checks to help the classrooms. A few years ago we passed additional Indian gaming to bring in more cash. Where did that money go? Are we better off now?

To look deeper into the problem of legalizing marijuana, we only have to look at how the State implemented the use of medical marijuana. What sounded like a compassionate implementation of a law to give some long suffering cancer patient’s access was turned into a glorified candy store for drug addicts where anyone with an ache, pain or bout of sadness can get Dr. Feelgood to write them a prescription. The last time you had surgery did your doctor give you a handful of poppy seeds and tell you to grow your own morphine for pain management? And yet that is how medical marijuana is being handled. One reason is that some people think that marijuana is a benign drug, and yet when it is smoked or ingested it alters reality, perception, judgment and reaction times, and in some people causes paranoia. Why isn’t it being treated like any other prescription drug--picked up at a pharmacy with a legitimate prescription? And just as important, why do we pass laws in our States that go against our Federal laws? Think of our law’s as stop signs; some people are going to run them, but most will obey the law keeping themselves and others safe.

We need to stop before we make another poor choice. Let’s do the right thing this time. It isn’t that we lack money: we have some of the wealthiest people in the world living here, and we are talented and resourceful. Wouldn’t it make more sense to get rid of government waste; make better decisions on how to use what we have, and create jobs? Take it from someone who has battled addiction: the easy way always seems like the right way but in the end it is never enough.

Message from Heaven

Mom was gone. My husband John and I sat by her bedside in the hospital as she took her last breath. Gone in an instant was my prayer partner, my friend and the one person who shared my sense of humor. Prayed out, cried out, numb, the following weeks I just put one foot in front of the other and went about, with check list in hand, doing what needed to be done. Memorial-check, Rosary-check, funeral-check, burial-check and then onto pack up her house; to do this item on my list I needed to find some tiny zip-lock bags to store individual pieces of her jewelry. At home I looked through our office, tearing it apart, and finally searching through a plastic cart stashed in the corner filled with miscellaneous junk. Reaching inside one of the shelves I pulled out a small flat green box and a padded envelope. My breath caught as I recognized the envelope, inside was a photo album with snapshots from my childhood—an album that my step-mother had sent the year before, one that I thought John had accidentally thrown out. Unfortunately, the garbage truck had already left by the time we realized what had happened. John had been as devastated as I was, imagining my childhood memories buried under piles of trash at the dump. No amount of apologies could take away the sting I felt each time I thought about the lost photos. Now, holding the missing photo album I remembered crying to mom about the pictures, and how she had searched through her own albums to find out if she had any copies. When she found similar pictures she sent them right away with a funny note cautioning me not to throw them out.

That was my mom going the extra mile and always making me laugh. Smiling, I looked down at the other item in my hand, the small green box, trying to remember where I had seen it before. Opening the top flap I realized it was a card, one of those recordable cards, I pushed the button and heard my mom’s voice singing “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Pammmm, Happy Birthday to you!”  I could just see mom laughing, as I sheepishly apologized to John for accusing him of throwing the album away. Somehow even from heaven she found a way to make me laugh.

This is a follow up to what I wrote in an ealier blog called loss, click on the link to read it....

mom ;-)

Beauty in Rough Places

This has been an emotionally tough summer, last week a friend of ours was in a head-on car crash; fortunately she survived but is looking at three months of rehab. Standing by her bedside in the hospital I wished there was more that we could do to help her recover, but healing is in God’s hands and we just need to give her our love, time, and prayers. Two weeks ago, an old friend died; Tommy had been fighting cancer for many years and was in remission. In December, while visiting my sister, John stumbled across Tommy’s business and we were able to spend some time catching up. Good things came out of seeing him again and we are thankful, even though we had hoped to see him again, it was not to be.


This has also been a hard year for my clients and their families, one recently died: Steve was 54 years old. Many of the others are suffering health problems due to aging and chronic illnesses. My prayer list is as long as my arm. I find myself doing more ministering to their emotional needs then to their hair…It is a blessing to pray for them, but I wish that every one of them could be healed and never have to put up with a body that is no longer young and full of energy. What we cling to, is our hope in God who promised to travel this hard road with us.

I wish that everyone knew that when our life goes through these rough places, that it is only one part of the journey. An artist knows it is the dark and shadow that endows their painting with depth and contrast to bring out its beauty, so it is that in suffering we draw close to each other in those moments of grace. Sadly, not everyone knows this. At the beginning of this summer my client was murdered by her husband who then killed himself. In her early 60’s, this beautiful vivacious woman had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was losing her energenic personality, and her husband had had cancer a few years before. On her last appointment, I spoke with him encouraging him to get all the support he would need for this dark time, I wish I had called to check on them in April or May when they were frequently in my thoughts, but I waited to long. Now I’ll never know if a kind word would have helped him through the darkness, and he’ll never know the beauty of God’s touch in rough places.

Discerning God's Will

If only I could discern God’s will as easily as my dog discerns when I’m going for a walk. He can be sound asleep, in another room down the hall, and he wakes up, runs over to me, sits by my feet and starts to whine “Take me, take me, please take me.” Wiggle, wiggle, wag, wag nudge! Quietly dressing, I haven’t said a word, and yet he knows. Maybe it’s the tennis shoes, maybe he reads my mind or could it be that he has spent so much time with me that he senses what I’m doing because he knows me?


We went for that walk this morning, exploring the neighborhood and enjoying the good weather. We didn’t hurry, I stopped to smell the roses—he stopped to smell the you-know-what. He didn’t even bark at some neighbors strolling by with their little fox terrier. That in itself is a miracle.

Earlier, before our walk, I had spent time reading the Bible. In Hebrews 13:5 it says “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” I think this is what God is telling me today, “Relax. You know me; I want what is best for you. Let’s enjoy the day. I have some great stuff to show you. Don’t worry about what you see as problems. They are just lessons, and you’ll discover the answers in good time.”

Today I have nourished my spirit with time spent communing with God. I exercised my body by walking and pulling weeds, and now I’m writing and problem solving to keep my mind energized. Bringing balance to these parts of my life keeps me healthy in spirit, mind and body.

Happy Easter

We have another Dove nesting on our grapevine this year, but she is so flighty (no pun intended) that she flies away everytime there's a sound or slight movement. She laid the first egg and flew off, then the next day laid another and settled in until she got spooked and flew off again. For almost a week we've watched her, then yesterday a male came by to help out, and their both sitting on the eggs....It's gonna take an Easter miracle to hatch these two little rewarmed guys, but the parents seem determined to try ;-) To read about what happened to the last Easter Doves read the post from April 2009.

 

More pictures from our garden. We wish you a Happy Easter.