our Daniel

The summer is flying by. Daniel graduated on June 30th. It is official; I now only have two more years of homeschooling to go. I can honestly say I won't miss it. It has been and is wonderful and I am blessed to be able to homeschool our children. I wouldn't trade the last 24 years for anything anyone could offer me.

It's just that I have new interests now and I don't seem to have enough time to indulge in them. I am still working in our yard and the change is amazing. I absolutely love what God has provided and enabled us to do with what He's given and provided. My patio isn't finished, but I've decided I'm waiting for cooler weather. I've been harvesting vegetables from my first ever vegetable plot and it is so satisfying to eat what I've planted or set out (my tomatoes and peppers). Donald doesn't even like tomatoes, yet he's eating mine!! Of course there is no comparison between a store bought and home-grown tomato. The kids have enjoyed the okra and squash and I am loving the cucumbers. I've learned a lot with my small raised bed garden this year. Even Donald is talking about expanding our endeavor next year.

I am working part time and though it's not a lot of hours it has changed my little world drastically. I am thankful that God provided this job ahead of when I thought I would search for a part time job. I'd rather it come to me than look for it!

I love my God, my family, and my life. I'm so blessed!!

Liberated to Live

We get a devotional by Dr. Charles Stanley from Crosswalk.com. On February 12 the title was "Liberated to Live." Though I've yet to read the devotion, I have thought about the title he chose. Liberated to Live is what my Jesus Christ has done for me! You can "be alive" yet "not alive." If you live in depression, unforgiveness, bitterness, self-pity and other "suck the life out of you" traits then you are not living the life that Christ died to free you from.

I love the way The Message states Romans 8:1-7. Italics are mine.

1 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. 2 A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. 3 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. 4 And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. 5 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them - living and breathing God! 6 Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. 7 Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing.

I'm amazed at God's gift of His son to free me from myself.