Happy New Year - and don't say thank you in a foreign tongue unless you know who you're talking to

Welcome to 2009! My eldest is beginning his first job this new year, Robbie Knevil is about to make some kind of jump over a volcano and my children actually stayed up to say, "Happy New Year." It's kind of like when I turned 30 -- I looked in the mirror, said, "Oh, well, the face looks the same as it did yesterday when I was 29."

I can't help but feel a little hopeful for this new year, though. I don't know why, but I do. I feel this way twice a year...with the onslaught of a new year, and the beginning of a new school year. So, if you're planning a good year, may you place God first and foremost and may His plan come to pass for your life.

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So, a few weeks ago my family and I went to the mall. In the food court, there's a Japanese place; a man who worked there was passing out chicken. My eldest is learning Japanese, so a few words have rubbed off on me, and I wanted to try out my Japanese. So, I said, "Thank you," in Japanese. The guy looked at me like I was crazy. So I repeated "Aragato." There was the look, again. I asked, "Did I say it right? Did I say 'thank you' right in Japanese?"

He looked me square in the face and replied in a broken accent, "I no Japanese, I Chinese."

I should have eaten crow instead of teriaki chicken.

I need help

I need help. Right after I discovered the guy who committed suicide, I saw someone from the psychiatric field. I was in the midst of having wave upon wave upon wave of panic attacks the day after everything. He said the only thing that would help is time.

Time hasn't helped much. I have dreams where this person shows up, and I realize that he's not a living person anymore, and last night I told him to go away in my dream. Certain sounds will trigger what I saw, and it'll play -- uninvited -- in my head like a bad movie that won't go away. I can't stand driving down that road to the person's home -- especially at night, because it was night-time when all of this transpired -- it all plays back in my head.

Why am I just saying this out to no one in particular? My husband has the number for someone for me to call on Monday. I've got to call and talk, get help for this. The joy of the Lord used to be my strength. My gosh -- I cry over everything, anymore! Last week, my crock pot cracked, ruining my French onion soup at the church fellowship dinner, and I started sobbing! How embarrassing!

Why is this one incident getting to me like this? I've experience tons -- and I'm not kidding -- TONS of rotten stuff, lots of traumatic stuff throughout my whole life. My life would seem like bad fiction, and yet I've worked through it with the help of God. I need God to help me with this. I know He has been helping me. I just need more of His help in getting me through this.

I've lost a beloved aunt (the only aunts that I've loved like crazy are on my mother's side) to cancer this year, a mother-in-law, people who said they were friends and said they "loved me" only to turn around and stab me squarely in the back the first chance they got; that was only this year alone. I'm praying that the Lord Jesus will smile on my family this year and make this the year that will restore all that the locusts have eaten.

LIghts of Christmas

If I had to choose which holiday is my favorite, normally I'd say "Resurrection Sunday", as that celebrates the Savior overcoming death and the grave, which gives us hope eternal.

But you know, Christmas could easily be a tie. I'm learning to stop worrying about the commercialism, am almost over the fact that the true birthday of our Savior was more likely in July or August and am actually enjoying Christmas, the day that Christians celebrate the day that God cared enough about the human race to enter it in the form of a baby. Immanuel -- God with us. How wonderful God is, and how loving!

I love the Christmas music. Last week we went to one library for a hand bell Christmas concert. Last night, we went to a Christmas concert featuring a dulcimer player. It was wonderful singing and hearing songs celebrating the Lord Jesus!

Following the concert, we went in search of Christmas lights. We ended up at an establishment that goes all out to decorate their home, chocked full of all sorts of tinkling, blinking Christmas lights. They have a U-shaped driveway that takes you along through this Christmas wonderland, and it ends with a donation bin. Donations go to local charities. The children absolutely love the lights, and I marvel at them, too.

When Christmas ends, I end up missing those multi-colored lights with emblazon the night sky. As I pondered this, the realization hit me: maybe those lights remind me of the Light of the world, who came to dispel the darkness. It's amazing how the birth of a baby over 2000 years ago would impact the lives of countless people through the ages. But then, any time God is involved, you can rest assured that even the smallest event in His scheme of things can become utterly amazing to us, our families, our country, and our world.

Light of the world, You stepped down into darkness, opened our eyes and let us see.

Action!

So I read in the news today where Hillary Rodham Clinton is not going to be paid as highly as her predessor, Condoleeza Rice; however, it will be an increase from her previous salary as a senator. Then I read how much a senator gets paid -- over 169,000 dollars a year. Now, what griped my cookies is that these poor senators are getting a PAY RAISE next year -- they will get paid $174,000!!

One-hundred seventy-four thousand dollars per year, all paid for by folks like you and me.

How many of us make that type of money? How many of us have top of the line health care, vehicles and the like taken care of, etc., etc.

I called up my senators tonight. The one senator's voice mail was full; the other was ready for me to state my extreme displeasure.

I am looking at families living on only 30,000 dollars a year, expected to make it -- AND to pay still MORE taxes as we as a country bail out the banks, Wall Street and the auto industry.

This makes me angry. It should make America angry, as well. If we're going to be expected to tighten our budgets, it has to start in CONGRESS. How can we expect the senate to see if what Detroit does is on the up and up, when they pass themselves raises -- on the tax payers backs?! The battle cry in 1776 was "No taxation without representation!"

Funny -- I don't think the modern state of affairs at Congress is what our founding fathers were thinking about when they made that above statement.

PLEASE -- I urge you -- call, write, do what you can to let your Senators and Representatives know that they need to take a pay CUT, and NOT a pay raise in 2009! Or we will vote in others who WILL listen! And then, you need to tell all those on your e-mail lists, your address books, your rolodexes and urge others to do the same. Tell Congress that We the People have HAD ENOUGH! Now is the time to take action.

Let American Ingenuity Shine Once more...

So the "Big 3" have made their second appearance at Congress, hats in hands, asking the American public for money, while it has been reported in news media that the average auto worker takes home almost 78 dollars an hour. First time they appeared, they arrived in private jets. Second time, we heard how they would only take home a dollar a year in pay, AND they arrived in hybrid cars. What is going to be done to change the situation? Make more hybrid cars! The hybrid cars are priced so high, that's it's not worth it -- you might as well buy the gas-eater, because you won't get your money's worth out of the hybrids. That's the way I've been understanding things.... I could be wrong.


I know this may sound gross as an idea (I say this because when I stated this in my vehicle, my teen-age son yelled, "EWW, that's GROSS!"), but why are we not looking at items that are considered waste products and try, instead to turn these products into sources of fuel? Take urine, for example... there are ions in urine that produce charges. Why are we not trying to figure out a safe way to utilize our own personal waste to operate our vehicles? Instead of telling our children, "Make sure you empty your bladder before we go," we could give them a big old bottle of water and tell them to hold it until we're on the road! Isn't there a way that any impurities could be burned off -- you know, in case someone has a sickness like AIDS or something like that -- by a vehicle running on urine power? Imagine the water that would be saved from not flushing this down our septic systems! Why is no one looking at solutions such as this? I assure you I would buy a car that ran on urine power!

I don't want the "same-old, same-old." America is a country known for inventing marvelous things that aided society. We are the land of the telegraph, the steamship, the Pony Express, the airplane, baseball and basketball, the telephone, the electric light; we're the land that actually discovered oil in the first place -- in Titusville, PENNSYLVANIA, of all places -- not a desert. When are we going to start putting our heads together and utilize that "good old American ingenuity" that we are known for, instead of holding our necks out and our mouths open for the government to feed us with our own tax money? Come on, America -- let's get rolling, again! Let's use this economic turmoil as a time to let the humble inventor to shine once again! I know we can do it. I pray we can do it.

Welcome to Christmas, 2008

I've always wished to do certain things in my life... like hang-gliding, basking in the ocean, getting on stage and singing. Some things I've actually accomplished with my life, other things -- nah. The other day, I got the chance to participate in an activity that I never planned on -- nor ever plan on taking part in again -- Black Friday.

We have some very dear friends who travel hours on end to visit us for the Thanksgiving holiday. I proceed to make home-made ice cream, pumpkin and apple pies -- the works. And every year they have awakened early the next day to venture out into the various venues to find -- the BIG bargains.

I have never been all that interested in facing scores of people just to try to obtain that one item for a few bucks less than retail. However, my hard-to-buy-for teenage son noticed an ad in the paper and said, "Hey, Mom -- you know how I said I only wanted money? Well, if I had the money, I'd buy this:" it was one of those rocking seats that allow you to hook up with a sound system. It was being offered at a savings of fifty dollars. I decided to go.

My husband knows I'm a night-owl; I HATE rising super early. He offered to go to the store to pick up this item; I was planning on picking up some hamburger, and possibly a gift for him, so I said that I'd go. So, I set the clock for 4:15 am, and went to bed.

In my Pollyanna-ish frame of mind that I sometimes possess, I imagined that I would arrive at 5:00, breeze through the store, get the present for my son, along with the hamburger, milk, and maybe a present for my hubby, and be out of there by 5:30. Au contraire!

A wise woman would have turned tail and run. I should have known when I saw the loaded parking lot. I never knew so many people lived in our town! The place was packed; it reminded me of those old science movies from school with those red blood cells travelling through the arteries -- only they all moved quicker than those in this store.

It took me ten minutes to move ten feet towards the electronics -- my initial destination. Then I heard that there were items in the produce section of the store. I asked a worker where the chairs could be found -- yep, you guessed it -- in the produce section. It took me about five minutes to back up to hit the main aisle. Scads of people were milling around, picking up this item and that, shoving them into already over-flowing shopping carts. I almost got caught up in the frenzy, myself, and thought, "Oh, I've GOT to go over there to see what they're all looking at!" Then, sanity was restored to my mind as I remembered that I was only in the store for a few items.

Then, I saw it -- the prize that I was going to bestow upon my son for Christmas. I made my way past a woman who had three of those chairs shoved into her shopping cart. I stopped at the frozen foods, and watched people pick up items that they otherwise would not even give a second glance, but because they had "WHILE SUPPLIES LAST" splashed in front of them, they got snatched up like precious treasures. As long as I stayed to the outside perimeter of the store, I could travel rather quickly. When I finally entered back into the fray to try to find the proper line in which to pay for my few items, one person bashed their cart into me without a simple, "Excuse me." However, most people were friendly enough, and some nice conversations were struck up with a few.

I noticed an item on sale that my younger boy mentioned, and encountered a person who liked the price, but had no idea what the item was. It was an airplane and a small, remote-controlled helicopter pack. She looked as though she were buying all things relating to grandchildren; she asked me while holding the gift pack, "What do you think this does?"

As I picked up one, myself, I looked at the outside box, where it said, "Fly indoors". I pointed to that, and said to the lady, "Well, dear, I think this is the way that children can destroy the items in your house that they cannot otherwise reach."

She looked at the box, said, "Hmmm," and gingerly put the box back on the display.

I made it back home -- finally -- sometime around 6:45 (after I made a stop to Sears -- didn't know what to get him there, either), changed back into my night clothes and said, "I will NEVER do that, again!"

"I warned you," my husband replied, "If it were me, I would have turned around and walked out of the store."

"And that's why I went, instead," I retorted, "because I wouldn't give up so easy when it comes to something like this for the children."

No sooner did I get to finally re-shut my eyes, my teenager came into the room, and said, "Uh, Mom, are you going to the store? Oh, never mind." He was mumbling about how he should have set the alarm and awakened me, himself. I just smiled.

Until Saturday. My son, daughter and I went into the store, and saw the same item that I went through the "shadow of the valley of death" to buy. There, taped onto one of the boxes, was a tag: "Special price -- $30.00."

My son just smiled.