heartbreak – Page 9 – Home's Cool!

Blessings of Habit, Health, Inspiring, Who's the mom here?, Wisdom

What to Do if You Are Under a Manipulator – Part 1

Posted on October 10, 2011January 20, 2015 by Katharine

If you and a manipulative person are thrown in together in a way where you cannot escape, what can you do?

First, realize this does not apply to your God-ordained authorities. This means your pastor, husband, parents (if you are young and single), boss, police, mayor, judges, etc. These people are supposed to have some say in your life and you should do what they say if it is not illegal.
Be careful of receiving gifts, compliments, invitations, etc., especially if they have implied debts attached to them (strings attached). You may feel that God wants you to accept the item, but always remember that anything given to you is yours to do with or about as you see fit. A gift is not a contract. If you did not say you would reciprocate with a certain favor because of what you have received, you are not bound to do so when such favors are brought up after the fact.
Seek God daily about your daily activities. Make God your daily planner, not the person who is trying to be God.
Plan ahead. Decide before the telephone rings how long you need to spend on the telephone today. Decide before you receive an invitation for dinner whether or not you are available to go out. Decide before the next time the person is trying to cry, just exactly what your response should be, then . . .
Do not back down! Make “no” mean NO. you can be very polite and still say “no” and make it stick. Do not worry about what the person will think; these people are not responsible for their thoughts and their thoughts are mostly irrational and unpredictable, anyway. No matter what you do, you will invoke base thought from a manipulator.
Be merciless with the sin of control; love the sinner. You can be very distant from a person for his own good, out of love for the person. You could deny an alcoholic liquor because you loved him, right? This time, you are the addictive substance that is being consumed to the point of abuse. Someone has to stop it.
Don’t major on minors. Allow a little control, if you see that it doesn’t matter, especially at first. Let the person choose your ice cream, parking spot, whatever will soften the initial blow of weaning. Save your insistence for choosing friends, movies, books, etc. Also, if the controller lies about the laundry, for instance, let it go, but if lies about your children pop up, expose them.

Hope this is beginning to make sense. More coming tomorrow!

Blessings of Habit, Brothers, Inspiring, Photos, Scripture, Wisdom, Womanhood

Been Unfriended?

Posted on September 16, 2011October 25, 2018 by Katharine

People can be complicated.

Friendships can be messy.

Knowing more can be scary.

With the knowing, the deeper truths, and the closer expressions of concern, can come the fears, the denials, and the silence.

The dark days of friendship.

A couple of friends once asked me if my young teen daughter could arbitrate between their two teens. I could hardly believe my ears. The three of us were close, so I shared my many concerns and said no.

The ramifications were astounding: a seeming total breakdown in all communication.

They literally continued being friends to each other without me and my daughter.

Wow.

A full year later, we were all at an event at a park. One of these friends had a newly-minted, biggest-baddest car-of-the-year and asked me if I would enjoy taking it around the park with her.

The shock!

Still the idea of sitting behind all 4 million horses under that hood was too tempting and we took her for a spin at park speed: 5 mph. Ha.

It was glorious and just destroyed my mini-van, in my eyes.

However, what happened during that drive was more. Far more. This dear friend apologized. She said she was wrong. She had thought I was wrong but she saw differently later. She thanked me for my dedication to truth and to our friendship. I thanked her for the same two things.

We are still friends, the kind that can be apart for a year and then take it up like we were just days apart. Which we did.

This was deep.

This was asking advice on children and giving it.

This was disagreeing and staying cool for a year.

This was trusting an apology would fix it.

This was forgiving wrongs. Deep, deep, deep, like few, few, few friendships ever can be.

The ancients called these types of friendships leb in Hebrew and philos in Greek, implying core understanding, brotherhood. This friend would visit a friend in jail. This friend would give up a year of pleasure for a friend. This friend would help a relative of a friend, if asked; would party and rejoice at a friend’s joy. Read about it in Ruth 2:13 and John 3:29.

But it can backfire.

Big.

All people have at their fingertips the ability to do wrong. This is what we risk in every relationship, but the closer we grow, the more we risk.

The closer we are, the more accurately we can aim our weapons.

And, oh, the more it hurts.

This is a call for caution.

Some people are broken and do not know how to be a friend. Befriending them will always be a lopsided venture, more give than take, like dancing with someone who doesn’t know the steps. Befriending them will always carry risk. Befriending someone who might backfire is a noble calling, not a picnic.

As long as we remember each of us is able to fail, as long as we dedicate ourselves to befriending and not to collecting fun people, we can proceed. We can gently and lovingly share the truth in hope, not that the friendship will one day benefit ME, but that it will one day bring glory to God.

And that is where we all should be.

Comments? Read more?

The question is more than friending or unfriending. So much rests on your choice!

Believe it or not!, Blessings of Habit, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom

To Friend or NOT to Friend is NOT the Question

Posted on September 15, 2011October 25, 2018 by Katharine

Baskin and Robbins began as brothers-in-law. Holmes was looking for a roommate and Watson, an apartment; a co-acquaintance introduced them. Ben and Jerry met in a junior high gym class. George and Laura Bush met at a barbecue; she was a Democrat at the time.

You just never know!

Once we pass the stage of just smiling, waving, and discussing the weather; once we acknowledge this friendship has gone beyond mere mutual co-existence; once we begin missing someone and caring about his troubles, we slide into the third stage of friendship.

And we’d better have done our homework first.

What the ancients called ahab in Hebrew and hoi soi in Greek is that comfortable belovedness that we call familiar friendship. It’s that willing leaning into the yoke together, a certain smiling oneness that tells us “we like this.” Examples appear in Esther 5:10 and Mark 5:19.

It’s time for caution.

Friends come and go, but it’s a good idea to hang on to your soul, to make sure someone doesn’t carry off your personality while you’re not looking.

Some friendships are simply dangerous and the deeper we trust someone, the more it is imperative they be trustworthy. Therefore, the closer we draw to anyone, the more appropriate and vital our conversations become. Certain things must be discussed. As we work, play, eat, and rest with a friend, we who care must constantly ask, bit by bit, constantly seek that open door to deeper understanding of each other.

I know, some folks never talk about politics and religion, but really, how can we ever grow closer without that? Life goals, ideologies, and other matters about which we are logically careful, must be open to those with whom we are open. When we allow others to influence the fragile matrix of the core of our being, we must know where we stand, where the lines are drawn.

And yet . . .

What a glorious opportunity presents itself when we share openly with someone who has long desired a way to heal, a way to stand more firmly! Questions again become the food and drink of friendship and we find that if we can be strong, we can hold out a hand to the weak, extend a lifeline to the perishing. Our very presence can signal the hope like a lighthouse in a storm. Lives can spring back to life and new light can thunder in to glorious dawning.

An older man we know has befriended a young man for ages, taking him to public events, connecting at lunch occasionally, sometimes fishing with him. The young man’s marriage recently went through a severe test, but he is learning how to come out of this time in victory. He has drawn closer than ever to his beloved family, so opposite from what the enemy of our souls obviously wanted. Throughout this time, he has not failed to call upon the older man for prayer, advice, and simple acceptance. He is winning. He has come out on the other side, now. He has new strength. He grows daily.

All because of friendship, all from a good old comfortable friend who has touched God.

It’s what we need, what we crave; or it’s what we have, what we long to share; it’s why we aim at friendship in the first place.

Who among us has not been there.

Comment? Read more?

Believe it or not!, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

Texas and California Have Disappeared.

Posted on August 25, 2011January 19, 2014 by Katharine

Note: I wrote this long ago, but it is still true, today, except the number now is 55,000,000. That’s 55 millions. Look around you, folks; who’s missing?

Twenty-seven years ago, our Supreme Court nullified enough states’ laws that it effectively provided for the killing of the equivalent of 52 million US citizens. What kind of number is 52,000,000?

Try thinking about 17% of us missing.

Nearly the entire populations of California and Texas.

Gone.

More than all of New York, Florida, and Illinois.

Wiped out.

All of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.

Eliminated.

New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, Massachusetts, Indiana, Arizona, Tennessee, and Missouri.

Disappeared

Or, Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, and Iowa.

ALL GONE.

This is about whole states missing. All the people who built, spoke, taught, laughed, cried, worshiped, drove cars, doctored, nursed, grew trees, or developed technology, gone from more than one state. A wilderness, untouched by man, not even one firefighter to combat the effects of lightning.

And we don’t really notice.

They were enough to have replenished our teachers 2 or 3 times, our doctors, 78 times.

And lost tax revenue? $153 billion.

We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

Believe it or not!, Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers, Wisdom, Womanhood

Missing Children Found!

Posted on August 24, 2011November 10, 2018 by Katharine

How many children would you guess are homeschooling in the US, today?

Two Million.

That’s one in every 25 kids of school age.

empty desk What this means is that in every classroom that holds 25 children, one is missing. And it’s because of homeschool.

The schools don’t like us home educators very much because of it.

They feel they are losing too much money because of it.

But they forget two things.

They forget we don’t get that money. Their argument is with their own bought-and-paid-for legislators, not with us, if anything is amiss or missing in public education.
They forget abortion.

Abortion has killed far beyond 55,000,000 since Roe vs. Wade.

That is more than EVERY child in EVERY classroom currently in America.

Missing.

Dead.

We’ve killed that many.

Look around you.

Every child ages 5 – 18 has at least one counterpart who is missing. because he or she was aborted.

They could have doubled their money, had they thought about it.

Believe it or not!, Pre-schoolers, Who's the mom here?, Womanhood

Abnormal Children

Posted on August 14, 2011January 29, 2019 by Katharine

flirt, girl, pink I watched her as she sashayed down the aisle between rows of dining tables. She had just come from church, no doubt, from the appearance and timing of her family’s entrance. She couldn’t have been over five years old.

But from head to toe, and not just the exterior but somehow even the aura emanating from her, all was advertisement.

Her hair, held in a side-saddle pony tail with a frou-frou clip composed of fuchsia feathers, probably was naturally palest blonde, but crease marks from a hasty curling iron had been sprayed to stay in place during the normal cavorting of a five-year-old. The ear on the un-pony-tailed side offered a pink, diamond-looking, pierced earring.

She did not cavort; she swayed in a dreamy sort of notice-me way. Even her tiny fingers posed. And she flirted fake embarrassment from behind the frou-frou near her cheek while fuchsia-manicured fingers clumsily retrieved an escaping shoulder strap. That’s when I noticed it: the batting eyelids carried a heavy load: blue eyeshadow and brown mascara, to top off pink blusher, and an overload of pink lip-gloss.

Her dress, also hottest of pinks, shimmered as it clung, draped closely to her thin child figure, revealing the bone of her structure, the ripple of her musculature, the absence of pantyline. Ebb and flow of glowing fabric blared unmistakably: temptress.

The dress was far too short, as was Mama’s, but at least Mama knew how to walk like a lady. And Mama didn’t shimmer.

Actually, Daughter’s included a wrap application of an attempt at an empire style skirt that was not full enough to allow room for walking, so each step she took opened the skirt and revealed one long, tanned, and muscular leg and hinted at much more. When one fuchsia-tipped toe pushed against silver, strippy, demi-heel sandals as she struggled her little self onto the adult dining chair, an older man across the dining room dropped his fork on the floor and picked it up.

And looked.

And she noticed. And tried, not-enough, to conceal a knowing smile.

Rumpled and stale-haired, he approached their table and asked Dad if they didn’t know each other, occasionally glancing at Mama’s low-slung necklace. Dad searched his memory, clueless, finally blushing at not knowing, rose to shake hands and share a bit of social info. No, we live over in Dovegate Addition . . . don’t recall meeting you, but then, I stay gone on the road; field work, you know . . . the kids go to Dovegate schools so maybe we’ve passed during a PTA meeting? Oh . . . so sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . . well here’s our waitress; nice to meet you.

And as the older man turned to go, he patted Daughter’s shoulder ever so lightly, accidentally brushing a strap with one finger, saying, “Nice children.” And her shoulder straps really did fall down a lot whenever she was sitting . . .

____________

Of course it would have been highly unlikely to have found a photo that was exactly like this true life situation, but this one captures the sauce pretty well.

Inspiring, Photos, Wisdom

Weekly Photo Challenge: Broken

Posted on July 29, 2011July 30, 2011 by Katharine

Broken things lead to other broken things. They can be like dominos. An exploding lightbulb can knock over a fragile vase. A broken tree can break another tree as it falls:

broken tree breaking tree — Broken Tree Breaking Tree

These trees, near our chicken house, are probably going to fall onto the chicken yard fence and break it, too. Ever try to bend or move a tree? Think of the extreme power in a falling tree that it can bend, and even break, a tree near it.

When we humans break, we need to be careful how we fall. We have the above type of power over our fellow man, sometimes.

But look at this:

This poor old tree, though obviously having seen better days, someone has mended in hopes it will last a bit longer. I like its pluck. See how it seems to be trying to dance with the grasses?

May we all try to copy it!