postaday2011 – Page 38

Smile

Posted on January 7, 2011March 13, 2015 by Katharine

A smile is a funny thing. All it is, is a couple of muscles pulling the corners of the mouth up. Yet it can mean the difference between life and death, if a surgeon smiles. It can mean the difference between marriage and rejection if a girlfriend smiles. When a mother smiles, a child learns that all is well.

Do you smile? I think sometimes I do not smile enough. I’ve accidentally caught myself in my relaxed, normal look and it is not a smiley face surprising me from some unexpected mirror. Even though I’ve told myself many a time that I look better with a smile, I revert to autopilot and it’s not a pretty sight.

They say if you smile, then the world will smile with you. I think someone was hoping when that motto came about. Still, the good that usually comes with a smile makes people more eager to see you if you’re wearing one.

Sometimes I think about the things I say with a frown, and wonder what the results would be if I smiled, instead. You know the times when someone needs discipline or things don’t go the right way. What would happen if I said, “Dear, you must go to your room, now,” with a smile instead of a frown? At first the child surely would think I was either heartless or joking, but what if it were my normal practice to smile when I disciplined a child? Would the child better understand the love that backs the discipline? I don’t know.

What if when someone were mean to me, instead of crying, I could somehow manage a smile? What if I said, “That co-worker deliberately ignored my presence, today,” with a smile instead of a frown? Those who care about me would probably think I had gone crazy, but only because it is not the norm for me. But what if it were?

I know one thing: When I deliberately smile, when I think it’s not the norm but I smile anyway, I feel better. What if I’m not happy? So what?

I’ll tell you what: If I smile, I become happier, that’s what.

God has smiled on us all. Why shouldn’t we smile?

Home School, Inspiring, Pre-schoolers

Fifty-eight Thousand on THE WALL

Posted on January 6, 2011November 18, 2016 by Katharine

Just finished a good book by SQ. Rushnell containing a moving story about the Vietnam War and the damage it caused. It mentions the memorial, the 500-foot long black wall. It tells of visitors moved to tears by the more than 58,000 unlived lives and living heartaches represented there.

You could say they died to protect us. It would be a fair statement even if many disagreed.

You cannot say that about some others who have died. The aborted ones have no memorial to speak of. Oh, sometimes we display a few wooden crosses to make a statement, a temporary protest. When we put the crosses away later, we prove it is not a memorial.

But if a similar black wall existed for these dead babies, it would have to be at least a thousand times longer than the one memorializing the war dead.

Three million people visit the Vietnam War Memorial each year. At that rate, if the aborted ones had lived to visit the Wall, it would take them about 17 years.

To buy one rose for each MILLION would cost about $250.

To educate them, the public schools would garner about $550 billion.

Per year.

That’s where their money goes.

Pray.

Coffee-ism

Ike Stole My Coffee!

Posted on January 4, 2011November 13, 2013 by Katharine

We don’t live south enough to suffer much from hurricanes. The night Ike passed left us a surprise, though, the common calling card of storms.

The most surprising thing about it was that somehow, a tree could fall on the door to my coffee without me knowing it.

Since our stove is electric, the electricity was out, and it was coffee-time, I calmly felt my way through the dark to our guest house, where the stove is propane, where we always solve the electric problems. Lugging an old-time drip-through which I’d loaded with grounds in my dark kitchen, slipping down the hill on flip-flops through the wet world, hardly able to see yet always knowing the way, I bumped smack into bunches of limbs. Heh.

Could the woods that always so lovingly envelope us actually have thrown branches at us in the night? Perhaps.

Back up to the house for a flashlight. Back down to the guesthouse where the door should be. Zowie!

An entire tree.

In the way.

Of the coffee business. Heh.

Back up to the house for my trusty loppers and a discussion with Husband. Back down to the guesthouse for some pruning.

In the dark.

Before coffee.

Sure.

Finally I found space to get the door open just enough for me and the pot.

Candles lit.

Stove lit.

Tea kettle filled.

Burner on.

Promising sizzles from the wet bottom of the kettle.

Husband descends. “How do I get in?!”

I pass the loppers through to his bulkier self. It doesn’t take him long.

Shivering in the morning cool in this secret hideaway, we mumble through our personal morning fogs the slight chat of people who are comfortable with saying nothing. In their jammies. By candlelight.

Whistling. Pouring. Bubbling. Dripping.

Aromas of Colombian dark roast tantalizing.

The first sip. We smile.

Are we bizarre to grope and fight for such a small pleasure, while ignoring the storm damage all around us? I don’t think so. Pleasures worth having usually are worth working for. The adventure of wrestling them out of the wilderness is part of the pleasure, don’t you think?

Coffee-ism, Inspiring, Wisdom

Good Morning? Good Night!

Posted on January 3, 2011January 3, 2011 by Katharine

Maybe you just woke and had that first cup-o’. That’s where I am. Sorry I overslept.

I think of 2010 recently fallen asleep. Although the new year spreads out like an endless path before us, both inviting and scary, I’m looking back to that bumbling old thing I just put to bed. How was it with you?

My 2010 memories are amazing, filled with whole-house-cleaning for a friend, funerals, trying to hear God, birthday parties, gardening, trying to hear God, workshops, canning, trying to hear God, estate sales, college kids home, trying to hear God, a wedding, glorious concerts, trying to hear God, possums and snakes in the chickens, teaching ladies’ Bible study, trying to hear God, husband filling an interim over an hour away, 15 people staying several nights together, trying to hear God, losing opportunities, and trying to hear God.

Lots of it hurt. Much of it was so confusing. I’m glad it’s over.

At the end of the day, when it all shuts down, when the party’s over, when there’s no more silliness, when it gets quiet—when you cannot hear anything else but your own heartbeat, the next thing you hear will be…what?

Your dreams. What will they be? Where will they take you?

God only knows.