Often people will wonder what God's will for their life is. Paul told us in 1 Thess. 4:11 and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you. We make it so complicated. It's simple really. Keep your life simple. Keep your nose out of others business (translation; don't gossip). Do your work to support your family. When we keep our life simple listening to Hashem becomes much easier. Our mind has time to focus on him instead of all the things clogging your life. Making the one who should be first in our lives first. Deut. 19:11 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Ps 78:5-7 He established a testimony in Jacob and set up a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers to teach to their children so that a future generation-- children yet to be born--might know. They were to rise and tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands. There are a number of things we allow to clog our lives. I think the biggest one for families is so many extra-curricular activities. The focus on having the child(ren) in every sport, even to the extent of traveling teams, all year round is one way the evil one keeps our focus off what Hashem wants for us. When we are running kids here and there to practice and games where is the focus? On something that has some value but not in the eternal view. Hashem doesn't care if your child is the star of the ______ball team. Insert the type in the space. He cares about your child's character. Whether he/she can hit, throw, or run simply doesn't matter. What does matter is time spent together as a family with the parents (hopefully both) having devotions, talking about Hashem and his character, expectations. About Yeshua and the profound sacrifice he made for us. Those are seldom learned on a sports field. They are learned by spending quiet time with him. They are you leading prayer with your children. Sharing how difficult it can be to do the right thing no matter what. Discussing your challenges in living as we have been instructed to do. The believer's life is about much more important things than playing a game. Yes, I know valuable things can be learned playing sports. None are more important than the relationship you are trying to guide your children into. Only one has eternal consequences. All Scripture from HCSB
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Summer is over. Time to get back to writing and creating. Now is the time for me to develop new and exciting (hopefully) aspects to my live as an author. So... the new things I am adding are Sophie's Special Emails and Christian Author Interviews Podcast. Sophie's Special Emails - This will be a newsletter that goes out about once every two weeks. It will have exclusive content only for subscribers. Short Stories, Devotions, writings I do for coming books, that sort of thing. Fill out the form and click to sign up. Christian Author Interviews will be a podcast where I do exactly what it says. I will interview indie and traditional published authors of Christian fiction and non-fiction. It a chance for you to find out what the authors you know are working on, why they write, etc. Also you will learn who the new independently published authors are and where to find their titles. I've begun a list of authors who have agreed to being interviewed. I'll post more about them closer to the podcast launch date. I'm planning on a November time frame. Stones Creek will get a new book written this fall. November is NANO, writing 50K words on a novel during the month, and I'm going to be writing Chloe's story. She is Pastor Noah Preston's sister who was kidnapped back when she was young. She is now 28 with a 13 year old boy and 5 year old girl. Chloe comes to Stones Creek with a number of other ladies from Nugget Nate's Sanctuary Place where she has been living for the past 5 years. Needless to say, she carries quite a bit of baggage. So, who will be the leading man in this story? I'm not telling just yet. You'll just have to come back here to find out. Oh, those on the Sophie's Special Emails list will find out first and get special background stories for each of the characters.
I learned to sew at the age of eight. We went on a three week vacation to Connecticut to visit family. Along the way we traveled to different sites. I remember Niagara Falls and Sault Ste. Marie as well as my aunt, uncle, and cousins but that's about it. We traveled in a green station wagon. Mom, Dad, me, my sister, Cheryl, and brother Dave. She was 10 and he was 3. Car toppers hadn't been created for sale yet so my dad built one. It held our luggage, ice chest and camp stove. We would stop along the road at picnic areas (No rest stops back then.) then and Mom would make breakfast and do what cooking needed preparation for lunch. We usually ate in a restaurant or diner for supper.
This was placed in the back-back. We girls had our pillows, some toys, and we could sit or lie down as we chose. Mom did one last thing before we left on vacation. She purchased two dolls. The image isn't the doll I had but something similar. Mom also purchased lavender gingham check fabric and a pattern. She supplies us with a box of notions, bits of lace and ribbon. On that trip in the back-back two girls kept themselves busy making clothes for their dolls. I remember this as my first time sewing. I've been sewing and doing other needlework since. I've gone on to become an award winning quilter and wearable art creator. I began writing patterns years ago. They never got out of the computer. I'm going to get them ready and offer them on craftsy.com. The first is a free, very simple bottle hootie. Here it is. If you have any problems contact me at [email protected]. It is now September. One more day of hot weather. I drained the pool today. There are tomatoes needing canning. I'm starting blogging again today. I took two months off to enjoy the summer and spend more time with my granddaughter. I did just that. Now it's time to regularly post my ever inspiring thoughts and ... whatever. Okay, so my not so inspiring thoughts. I hope you enjoy and maybe learn a little bit from what I post here. I set some goals for these past few weeks. Write two devotions a week. Clean up the files on my computer. Play with my granddaughter a lot. Well, one out of three isn't too bad is it? Guess which one got accomplished. This summer had it's ups and downs. Mostly ups and the downs were minor. I put up a 12 foot round pool this summer. Sweetie and I played in the pool a good number of times. The summer was cool but we had fun. I overflowed it three times when I was refilling it. I really should set the timer when I turn on the hose. So now with September here and November only two months away I'm going to be focusing more on my writing. I plan to do NANOWRIMO again this year. The third book in the Stones Creek series will be my project. It will be the story of Chloe, Noah Preston's sister who was kidnapped from her family when the bandits attacked and Noah's father did nothing to protect his wife and daughter. There is no title yet but I'm developing the new characters and figuring out what is happening in Stones Creek in the summer of 1868 shortly after Chasing Norie ended. I'm hoping to have this novel ready by next spring. With the planning I'm doing now and at least 50,000 words written in November that should be doable. |
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April 2018
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