Reconciled to God

I think Christmas time in America is ironic. (It's ironic in Japan, too, but that's another story entirely...) In a day and age when it's not "PC" to be a Christian, when nativity scenes on government property are banned, and shop employees are instructed to use the innocuous "Happy Holidays," there is one strongly Christian part of Christmas that seems to have escaped the religious police...Christmas music. I was at the mall last Sunday for a final foray into the madness, and all the stores had "O Holy Night" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" mixed in with "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Baby."

Christmas music is possibly my favorite piece of the puzzle that makes up this most wonderful time of the year. The season doesn't truly feel like Christmas until my favorite CD, "An Evening in December," gets dug out of storage and put into a CD player. But...I'm also guilty of being mindless about the gems that are Christmas carols. It's so easy to get caught up in Christmassy feelings when singing in church or at home, that I forget to listen to the familiar words coming out of my ownmouth.

Hark! The herald angels sing!
Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth & Mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled

What marvelous words! What a marvelous truth! Christmas time has been all about marveling ever since the beginning. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the magi, Anna and Simeon were the first to marvel at this gift, Immanuel, God with us. This Christmas, I too am marveling at God with us...God and sinners reconciled.

Souls and synapses

I have just one week of Anatomy & Physiology 201 left! It's hard to believe...where DOES time go, anyway?

Was just trotting along on the treadmill (a desperate attempt to keep myself awake long enough to actually, you know, study), and I came across the following in the chapter about the central nervous system:

Researchers in the field of cognition are still struggling to understand how the mind's presently incomprehensible qualities might spring from living tissue and electrical impulses. Souls and synapses are hard to reconcile!

Amen!

Living or watching life

Look at them--(a wave toward the marvels of Grand Avenue) all of those glamorous people--having adventures--hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in American sits in a dark room and watches them have them!

-Tom in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

The start of 30 before 30

Two friends of mine who are a little further into their third decade than I am were discussing their "30 before 30" lists last Sunday. During the course of the conversation, one of them asked me what's on my list.

Umm...problem. I don't have a list.

Both of them were scandalized.

This may come as a surprise, but I'm not a hugely enormous fan of lists. I tend to put enough things on my "To-Do-Today" lists to last me an entire week. Disgusted at the end of the day with my seeming inability to accomplish this reasonable amount in a 24-hour period, I give up on to-do lists for a whole week or two. At the end of that time, I realize that I haven't yet gotten done what was on my original list. Filled with good thoughts and determination, I make a new one, containing all the undone things, plus some new ones for good measure. And so the cycle goes.

I realize, though, that lists can be good. A reasonable list keeps me on track. A just-slightly-ambitious list motivates me to push just a little harder.

Considering my tendency to slump into the hummmdrummm, I am thinking a "30 before 30" might not be a bad thing after all. Especially since I have less than 4 1/2 years before that fateful event. (And HOW did that happen, I wonder to myself? I can't really be THAT old, can I?)

So...I am considering creating just such a list. I know I don't want to get to the end of my life, only to discover a lot of my time was spent watching sitcom reruns on TBS.

Here's the plan...over the next two months, I plan to write down things that come to mind that I have always thought "Wow, that would be fun to do!" and compile my list near the end of the year. At the turn of 2010, hopefully I will have a workable list...in which I am already planning to include things I've already done...thus to encourage myself and, you know, keep it workable. There is nothing quite like a workable list to keep me kinda-sorta on track. We'll see what happens from there.

In the meantime, I will continue working on tying up the loose ends of my life. Do you have those? That one project you've been working on for a few months that just has the really boring part or the really hard part or the really confusing part left, but that you feel like you have to finish before moving on to something else? I have a bunch of those. Lord-willing, by the end of this year, my loose ends will all be tied, and I will be eager and ready to face a new year.

Care to join me?

Wordless Weekend: Sanzoku in Autumn

Fall 2005

Obsessed with death...and life

A visitor from a foreign country who arrived in my neighborhood in the last week might be stunned by this culture's apparent obsession with death. Just down the street, there is a house with a yard full of gravestones. Across the street, my neighbors have a skeleton hanging in their tree in the front yard and a coffin on the porch. A visitor from another culture who has never been exposed to the American holiday that is Halloween could indeed say this culture is obsessed with death. Why? they would wonder. Why this celebration of death? Why this focus on the gruesome? Why this obsession? What's wrong with you people?

As I sat in my church's Lord's Supper service this morning, one of the brothers brought up the point that the same visitor might ask the same questions of us in that meeting. You're celebrating the body and blood of a dead man? You're singing songs about His suffering? You're meditating on how he was beaten and crucified? Why are you obsessed with death?

...but they simply had some points of disagreement with him about ... a dead man, Jesus...

They aren't new questions. Why celebrate this dead man, Jesus? Why the obsession with death?

The answer...

... whom Paul asserted to be alive.

We aren't obsessed with death. We are obsessed with life. He came, He died, He LIVES that we might have life, and have it abundantly. By proclaiming his death, we proclaim His Life. By celebrating His death, we celebrate His life...and ours.

(Scripture taken from Acts 25:19)

A Day in the Life

YLCF is doing a blog carnival this week, and this is my contribution...

*****

It's Friday morning, a few minutes before 7 as my alarm clock beeps. Anyone who has ever been around me in the morning knows I am *not* a morning person. Never have been. It's the way God made me. ;-) Thursdays are my late class night, and I don't usually walk through the door until 10:30PM...last night, true to form, I wasn't in bed until after midnight. I'm tempted to shut the ol' alarm clock off and go back to sleep for another half an hour, but there are things to be done. Instead, I groan in the same key as the floorboards above me that my mom is still stomping around on (she leaves for work at 7:30), and take a few minutes in bed to read my Bible (I'm in Matthew...what about you?), and a chapter of The Bravehearted Gospel by Eric Ludy. Hearing my sister emerge from our shared bathroom, I roll out of bed and head that way for my turn.

Bed made, clothes on, face applied, and hair done, I finally hurry upstairs at 9AM to help my sis finish getting her lunch bag put together. She knows more than to expect any conversation from me...I don't feel a part of the human race until I've had my tea in the morning. No time for breakfast or a leisurely tea sip, I brew my cup for the morning in my Japanese Starbucks mug, and we're out the door at 9:15. I don't usually skip breakfast, but this morning, we're going to try something new. Having seen dancing cows on streetcorners yesterday, my sister has told me that Chick-Fil-A has free breakfasts on Friday. I've never been to Chick-Fil-A for any meal, breakfast or otherwise, so I'm eager to check the place out. (And I feel compelled to mention also that I eat breakfast "out" so rarely, that I don't even remember when the last time was...probably a couple years ago...) Thankfully, there's a Chick-Fil-A on the way to my sister's job, so we stop there to pick up two of their cinnamon clusters, and I eat mine and enjoy my tea as I finish the drive, dropping my sister off at work.

After meeting her new co-worker, I head to our church. I am teaching one of their "creative home nights" this Monday...ten ladies in my group will be making gingerbread houses. I have never taught anyone to make a gingerbread house before...I always figured it was pretty intuitive. Anyway, we are assembling the houses from kits (horrors! ;-D) ahead of time. I meet two other ladies, and we spend the next three hours trying to figure out how to get very lopsided pieces of gingerbread to stay up long enough for the royal icing holding them together to dry. I chat for a few minutes with the church secretary about a babysitting situation that came up last Sunday, and then it's out the door to head home.

On the way home, it occurs to me I should stop at the fabric store. Now, I rarely need a valid excuse to stop at my favorite designer fashion fabrics store, but I actually have a reason today! This evening, one of my sister's former co-workers is coming over and we are going to design her wedding dress. I want to check what Denver Fabrics has in stock, so we can do some preliminary fabric discussion. I manage to make it out of the store without buying anything (an amazing feat for a fabric addict like me!), and, not being able to think of any more stops I should make, arrive home around 2 o'clock.

It's time for lunch! I'm in a hurry, so it's a bowl of shredded wheat while I fill out an online student opinion survey for my school. I grab some frozen hamburger out of the freezer to defrost for dinner, and then I do a little house cleaning to get my workroom, which doubles as my living room and computer room, ready for my customer tonight (and while I'm at it, I tidy up the kitchen, bathroom and my bedroom).

In the middle of a cleaning tornado, my guinea piggie starts begging for her afternoon vegetable, so I take a break to feed her and watch a program on the DVR. (Yes, I watch TV mid-day!) Then it's back to cleaning, which ends up taking much longer than I expected.

It's 5:30, and all the cleaning that's left is to vacuum the upstairs kitchen. I get dinner started, tossing my still-frozen hamburger in a skillet and digging out a can of refried beans, chopping vegetables, setting the table, and generally running around like a chicken with its head cut off. ;-) My working family will be home and hungry soon, and my customer is coming around 7PM.

My mom comes home, and promptly leaves again to pick up my sister from work while I finish dinner. It's 6:30 before we all finally sit down. In days past, we usually ate every meal of the day together, but now between three full-time jobs and my school schedule, we're thankful to have three or four dinners together per week.

My customer calls around 6:45...she won't be able to make it until 8:30. I am both bugged and thankful about this because I know I won't be ready for her at 7, but it also means a later evening than I had anticipated.

We all work together to clean up from dinner, and then I get to work on a couple mending/alterations projects I have for other clients. I don't particularly enjoy alterations and mending (to put it mildly), but at this season of life, I am taking whatever sewing jobs I can get. Right around 8:30, my customer arrives, accompanied by her 16-year-old son, which surprises me. He turns out to be a quiet boy, though, who spends our appointment talking to my guinea pig and looking through my sister's cake photo albums. Meanwhile, Leslie and I thumb through my pattern books. She doesn't know what she wants beyond a 50's style, tea-length dress, but she says she'll know what she wants when she sees it. Thankfully, she sees it after only a few minutes of looking through my 500+ vintage patterns, and "it" happens to be one of my favorites! We set a date to meet to go fabric shopping, and they leave around 9:30.

Knowing I need to have my mending and alterations jobs done before Sunday, I get back to work. These things always take longer than I expect, and after fighting my sewing machine tension for a while, and ripping out a couple things and re-doing them, it is 11PM, and I am ready to be done for the night.

After a quick shower, I crawl into bed and thumb through my most recent High Country Gardens catalog while listening to the end of my current Out to Canaan audiobook CD. It's 11:45PM when I shut off my bedside light, remember a few friends "as brought to mind" in prayer, and finally go to sleep...

*****

Care to share a day in your life?

Sentimentality

Are YOU a sentimentalist? (Maybe I should make a Facebook quiz on this! Lol!)

Sentimentality is indulgence in emotion for its own sake, or expression of more emotion than an occasion warrants. Sentimentalists are gushy, stirred to tears by trivial or inappropriate causes; they weep at all weddings and all funerals; they are made ecstatic by manifestations of young love; they clip locks of hair, gild baby shoes, and talk baby talk. Sentimental literature is "tear-jerking" literature. It aims primarily at stimulating the emotions directly rather than at communicating experience truly and freshly; it depends on trite and well-tried formulas for exciting emotion; it revels in old oaken buckets, rocking chairs, mother love, and the pitter-patter of little feet; it oversimplifies; it is unfaithful to the full complexity or human experience.
~Perrine's Literature

Am I a sentimentalist?

Guilty.

;-)

Seasons of the Soul

It feels like the last three years have been a time of transition for me. I'm still not sure where I am or where I'm going. But...after the hot, lazy days of summer, the change in the air and the change in colors always makes me feel energized and hopeful for something. Something more. Something better. Just as I know that the seasons will change in nature, I choose to believe that life as it is now is only a season. Perhaps it is a season that will last for the rest of my life. That's okay. One day, the season will change forever, and I will be standing on the hills of home, experiencing the light of my Savior's face. What a marvelous day that will be.

As the azure skies of summer
Give way to autumn’s cold
‘Til all signs of life are buried
Under winter’s dormant cold
And the kiss of spring awakens
The hidden life it holds
So life fulfills its cycles
Such are the seasons of the soul

The season in the rain will end at last
The season full of pain will surely pass
The reason will be plain someday when love reveals its goal
Such are the seasons of the soul

Oh, you never dreamed you’d be here
Oh, you’re sure this can’t be right
And you feel you’ve been forgotten
Left alone here in the night
But the darkness hides a treasure
Forming diamonds from the cold
So pain contains a promise
Such are the seasons of the soul

The season in the rain will end at last
The season full of pain will surely pass
The reason will be plain someday when love reveals its goal
Such are the seasons of the soul
Such are the seasons of the soul

Like a child
In the womb
Like the Son of God
Concealed within the tomb
Light will come
Once again
Oh, the dark is just the middle
Not the end

The season in the rain will end at last
The season full of pain will surely pass
The reason will be plain someday when love reveals its goal
Such are the seasons of the soul

The season in the rain will end at last
The season full of pain will surely pass
The reason will be plain someday when love reveals its goal
Such are the seasons of the soul
Such are the seasons of the soul
Such are the seasons of the soul

~Unknown

A brief paper on holistic Christian education

I'm taking an English Lit class from Liberty University Online this semester. Our first assignment was to write a (very!) brief paper in support of or opposition to one of the first week's lectures. This is mine...

**********

What is Christian education? Is it “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic” with a little Bible study added for good measure? While a Christian education involves all these disciplines, learning them is of little or no value if what is learned is not applied and integrated into a Christian’s life, as discussed in Lesson 1. Indeed, a Christian should regard every concept and image he encounters, both in a scholastic environment and in daily life, as an opportunity to grow in his understanding of the world and its relationship to God.

Paul’s direction from the second book of Corinthians explains how a Christian can take what he is learning and use it as a tool to further his spiritual life. There, Paul instructs the believers to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This means that whatever enters the mind, including that which comes through non-Biblical sources, should first be examined carefully under the light of the authority of Scripture, and then be responded to in obedience.

A truly holistic approach to Christian life and education requires that Christians be willing to approach all of life as an opportunity to learn and apply God’s will in their lives. In his letter, the apostle James warns believers not to be like a man who, having looked at himself in a mirror, goes away and forgets what he looks like. The apostle encourages the believers to take what they have learned and act upon it!

The educated Christian thoughtfully examines every concept to which he is exposed, integrating into practice that which is true, while rejecting and refusing to practice that which is false. An educated Christian remembers what he has learned and is changed to be more like Christ.

**********

Now my job is to go over the other students' papers and write a response to one of theirs. I think I'm going to respond to the one that says we can learn "new truths" about Jesus from extra-Biblical literature. Hopefully, I can manage to be kind AND truthful!

Back and gone again

Just yesterday, I returned from the HomeschoolALUMNI national reunion in Larkspur, CO. In just a couple of hours, I'm heading back to the classroom to start the school year.

I discovered last semester that full-time school and blogging don't really mix very well for me. When one adds to that the fact that I am also being employed full-time as a homemaker, and will continue working part time as a seamstress, I don't see too much blogging going on in the coming months. Maybe *some* blogging...just not too much. ;-)

Happy end-of-summer, everyone!

More menus...

Because I know you (all three of you!) are always dying to know what will be on my dinner table all week...teehee...

Sunday:
African peanut chicken
Lime-pear jello
(And yes, I know Sunday is already over...the chicken was so-so, the jello was definitely two-thumbs-up!)

Monday:
Beef enchiladas
Taco salad

Tuesday:
Fried chicken fingers
Mashed potatoes
Melon-cucumber salad

Wednesday:
Italian stew
Spinach salad (recipe TBD...I was going to make a garden salad, but someone was giving away spinach at church yesterday, so I brought home a bag)

Thursday-Saturday:
I will be out of town, so the family will have to fend for themselves! ;-) There should be some leftovers...

A week of menus

Here's what I'm making this week...what about you?

Monday:
Honey baked chicken
Red rice
Tomatoes vinaigrette

Tuesday:
Green bean pie
Mandarin orange salad
Leftover honey chicken

Wednesday:
Homemade pesto (with basil from our garden!) on pasta
Italian sausage
Garden salad

Thursday:
Scraps (hehehe...I'm actually going to a picnic this night, so the rest of the family will get to dig up leftovers whenever they get home from work...)

Friday:
[I'm not cooking this day because my parents are going out for my dad's birthday.]

Saturday:
Japanese sauteed ginger pork
Lettuce & Tomato
Sekihan rice

Sunday:
African peanut chicken
Lime-pear jello

Ooh, pretty!

I've mostly given up on blog giveaways, mostly because I never win. Hehe... But! This one is just to pretty not to try for. The ladies over at marie-madeline studio are giving away this delicious quilt!

Isn't it lovely? I have never been brave enough to venture into quilting, but there are so many talented ladies out there making beautiful ones, and I'm excited about the chance to win this one! Pop on over to their blog for your chance to win it, too!

Tempest in a teapot

It was time for afternoon tea. The table was laid with delicate china and delectable treats. As the guests and their hostess were enjoying the repast, their discussion turned to a controversial topic. One guest became very agitated and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

After an awkward silence, another guest laughed nervously and remarked, "Well, he's gone."

"No he's not," the hostess replied, "that's a closet."

How often I do the same with God. Our "conversation" isn't going well. He isn't listening to my side of the issue. I get up and storm out, but all I'm really doing is going into the closet. I'll have to come out again sometime, and He'll be there waiting for me.

Wordless Weekend: Flowers and Water

A bit of history

For Mother's Day this year, our church did an historical wedding theme. They asked the ladies of the church to wear their own wedding gowns, or their mothers' and grandmothers' gowns for a "fashion show" of sorts. There are quite a few newlyweds in our church, and I think the ladies had fun getting their gowns out again to wear. Many of the...ahem...more mature brides aren't quite the same size they were 20 or 30 years ago, so many daughters wore their moms' gowns. (I was one of them. :-))

There were three truly antique gowns, all in incredible condition. The one you see above was purchased by a Denver bride at the Denver Dry goods store in 1914! It was modeled by a *very* petite lady from our church. This incredible gown is still in pristine condition, and complete with its box of tissue-wrapped underthings, handbag, and shoes, which actually fit the lady from our church!

The gown has the most lovely bead work down the sleeves and all the way around the underskirt. The sleeves also feature an intricate pleating pattern.



Made mostly of light, sheer cotton, it also has accents of fine cotton net, and the underskirt is in champagne colored silk. The back of the gown has two fabric rosettes at the waist.
The bodice is accented with lace and a beaded medallion at the neckline.

Pure loveliness!

The modern brides in their strapless, a-line gowns were, of course, all lovely and blushing in the remembrance of their special days not too long ago, but there is just something so alluring in a soft, elegant gown with timeless embellishment.

Finished pillows

I got the pillows all finished this week...I was waiting until our JoAnn's coupon went into effect to get the 18" pillow form, but then my mom discovered one under the guest bed! Heehee...

I had a minor disaster with the 18" pillow...I tend to get a leetle crazy with the serger and not pay attention to what I'm doing and... But! I think I satisfactorily solved the problem, and no one (expect me, of course!) should be able to tell.

Sewing projects of the day

I just finished altering four pairs of pants for a 92-year-old customer (and I thought my serger was a goner for a minute there, trying to cut through all those layers of elastic at the waist!), and now it's on to the fun project...a tote bag! I know lots of you make these all the time, but I've never made one. Here's my fabric:


It's vintage-y fabric that I inherited from my grandma who passed away nearly 20 years ago. The solid blue is for the outside and the plaid is for the lining. I'm thinking of using one of the embroidery patterns on my sewing machine to stitch a motif on the outside to dress it up a little. This is the pattern I'm using.

A garden full of thoughts...or something like that

There is something about gardening that it teaches me in many, many ways. Some ways are more profound than others. Some are simple life lessons.

The simple life lesson of late that I have discovered is that yes, April, you are in fact a flake. Sad, but true. Just ask anyone to whom I have ever owed money. ;-) This is my third summer as an American gardener, and I have at last come to peace with the fact that I am best suited to about 95% perennial gardening. I am just too much of a flake to deal with fussy annuals every year. Plants that are hardy and sprout themselves every spring are The Thing for me.

There is a garden center about 10 minutes from my house that has been family owned and operated for over 60 years, and all their plants are grown with organic fertilizers and no pesticides. Yayness! The only sad thing is that they are only open from March to July. Whoever would've thought that a planting season could end in July?! Not this sub-tropical baby. The garden center's last day is this Saturday, and all their plants are buy two, get one free. Can't pass up them sales, eh? My mom and I bustled over there bright and early this morning to partake of the saleness. I built up my perennial collection with Scabiosa, Canterbury Bells, Asters, creeping Phlox, and a big fat Echinacea.

I really really really wanted one (or, more specifically three...it WAS buy two, get one free, after all) of their delicious rosebushes, but I restrained myself. I have absolutely, positively, incontrovertibly no place to put one more rosebush, much less three. They were the most delicious climbing roses, too. ::sigh:: But...another thing I have learned in my gardening endeavors is that greediness when it comes to plants is just as unhealthy as greediness in any other area of life. Buying plants with no appropriate place to put them just makes me end up with a jungle of poor, weak, pathetic plants and less money in the bank. It's far better to buy only what you know you have space for and have a few beautiful, healthy plants. And so it is in life in general.

Isn't gardening educational?

What I'm doing today...

Several months ago, we had custom draperies made for our living room, dining room, and kitchen. I now work for the company that made them :-), but today, I'm doing a bit of freelance work, using the scraps that were leftover to make matching pillows for our living room. Figuring out how to use every square inch of remaining fabric was good exercise for my brain! I have a medium-ish sized piece of luscious gold silk and a small piece of multicolored stripe to use, and, if my figures are right (!!!), I should get three pillows out of it.

Summer in Williamsburg

You may remember my Colonial-style Christmas decorations from last year. Colonial-style Christmas decorations are wonderful...at Christmas, of course. But as the months warm, the blood starts rushing to my green thumb (or something like that...). In any case, I start thinking about my garden. Yesterday, The Gardens of Colonial Williamsburg arrived in my mailbox (from paperbackswap.com, which I WILL shamelessly plug in probably nearly every blog post about books, since the only "new" books I get are from that source...you can still click in the link on the right to join yourself!). I know it's definitely too late this year to start a new garden plan, but it is so delicious to look through the illustrations and photos in the book and dream of changes I might make to my gardens next year! I know I'll never have a strictly traditional colonial garden...the climate difference between mild and humid Virginia will exclude plenty of plants from my high desert garden, but I know there will be principles and ideas I can include. That's the fun of it anyway, isn't it? To take elements from things you love and change them to suit your style or situation?

Book Review: Smart Women Finish Rich

Once I got past the slightly worldly title of this book ;-), it was definitely a smart investment of my time to read it! Not just for career women or singles, this book is really useful for every woman from the stay-at-home mom whose monetary income is $0 all the way to the CEO of a company. It explains money management for the perspective of a woman. We all know that men and women look at things differently...that's Biblical! David Bach explains to women how to manage their money (or get on board with their husbands in managing their family's money) in a way that is consistent with what women value. My favorite chapters were the ones on putting your money where your values are, the latte factor and what to do about it, and using the three-basket approach to financial planning.

Every woman should read this book, even women who are happily married and taken care of financially. Understanding your own or your family's finances really will give you peace of mind. I feel a lot more qualified to make smart financial decisions now, and I have already started implementing some of the suggestions from the book. More are to come in the future.

The book is really a fast read, and definitely worth your time.

(I got my copy of Smart Women Finish Rich from Paperbackswap.com. This free service allows you to swap books with other people around the country. My sister and I have gotten lots of great books through the site...click on my referral link over in the right column --------> to go to the site and sign up. I'll get a credit for referring you, too, and I will love you forever! ;-D)

First roses of the summer

We've had several weeks of thunderstormy days, but today felt like summer! My "Peace" roses celebrated by opening in a panoply of buttery petals! Both bushes are obscured this year by several "Malva" plants I had in the bed last year. I didn't realize they were perennials, and this year they're taller than my second-year rosebushes. Oops...I keep telling my mom that eventually, the roses will be taller. Until then, I'll just cut all the roses and bring them inside so we can see and enjoy them! I am so pleased by how vigorous "Peace" and her sister are this year. I can't say the same for one of my third-year rosebushes. It has produced the loveliest blooms for the last two summers...six-inch blossoms with a damask fragrance that would fill the house, but all the canes died this winter. All I have left is the new growth. We'll see if it survives the summer.

Spring is here

The first cut flowers of the season...stolen from the pots on the front porch.

The Closer I Get to the Cross

There is safety in the distance, out of sight and mind,
And life is unexamined out of fear of what I’ll find.
But once again in solitude, my soul is unfulfilled,
So I press through the crowd and I step toward the hill.


The closer I get to the cross, the more I clearly see
The holiness of You and the sinfulness in me.
There’s a beauty in the agony that draws me to this place.
The closer I get to the cross, the more amazed I am by grace.


There are times I want to turn my head so I don’t have to face the truth
Of everything You’ve done for me and what I’ve done to You.
But here my eyes are opened and it breaks my heart to know
Just how deep the roots of all my failures go.


The closer I get to the cross, the more I clearly see
The holiness of You and the sinfulness in me.
There’s a beauty in the agony that draws me to this place.
The closer I get to the cross, the more amazed I am by grace.


Draw me nearer, nearer, Blessed Lord, to the cross where Thou hast died.
Draw me nearer, nearer, Blessed Lord, to Thy precious bleeding side.


The closer I get to the cross, the more I clearly see
The holiness of You and the sinfulness in me.
There’s a beauty in the agony that draws me to this place.
The closer I get to the cross,
The more amazed I am by grace.

~By Palisade

Sew, girlie, sew!

I few months ago, I was able to purchase an industrial sewing machine to help me in my job and home business. I'm using it tonight to make a couple of pillows for my job, and I thought I would take a break to introduce it to you!

I am so thankful to know how to sew! It is great to have a flexible job so that I can work and go to school at the same time!