7 Things that wear you out, but for good reason

1. Weeding in the garden, fertilizing the soil.  Hard labor in God’s creation.
2. Throwing big, joyful family birthday celebrations with homemade gifts and silly songs and specialty cakes and desserts and decorations to reflect the recipient’s interest – just going a little bit over-the-top to say I LOVE YOU!
3. Helping a friend who needs you even when it isn’t on your schedule, especially when it isn’t on your schedule.
4. Growing really, really good tomatoes.
5. Laughing your head off at ridiculous things: like finding out you are just as forgetful as your mother – right after you have made fun of her.
6. Two+ hours singing old songs at the top of your lungs with your mom and dad from the sheet music case in dad’s office: the songs he loved when he first found Jesus in the 50s (Ira Stanphill, Mosie Lister) and the ones he and mom and I sang together in the 70s (Lanny Wolfe, Dottie Rambo).
7. Laughing so hard you can’t breathe with people who love you enough to resuscitate you if you fall over cold from it

4 Things that drain the ever-loving life out of you and probably won’t be worth it

1. Working hard to be number one in your chosen field; being the first one to work and the last one to leave.
2. Being the best at everything.
3. A perfectly clean house, one where every single thing is in its’ place and where there are never ever kid fingerprints on the patio doors and no dog hair in the vacuum cannister and the laundry is always finished the day it is started.  You know-a house that reveals nothing of the people living there…
4. The burden of always being right.

Pictured: early morning from the patio.  Left, “Snow on the Mountain” near the pond trickles toward the house. Middle, an unplanned pot gets whatever flowers I haven’t used elsewhere and will declare its’ own identity eventually.  Today the white ruffly petunias are asserting themselves.  Right, white petunia to snow-on-the-mountain, “Hello.  How is it going down there?”

The conclusion of the matter~

All has been heard, all has been said and done; the end of the matter {the conclusion} is: Fear God [revere and worship Him, knowing that He is] and keep His commandments, for this is the whole of man [the full, original purpose of his creation, the object of God’s providence, the root of character, the foundation of all happiness, the adjustment to all inharmonious circumstances and conditions under the sun] and the whole [duty] for every man.

Ecclesiastes 12.13 The Amplified + other words I think fit

The Russian Sage, left, thinks it is ok to naturalize and extend its’ borders.  We will have to have a talk.  Balloon background, right, from Wrex’s birthday.

SENT TO ME IN AN EMAIL FORWARD, and o-so-true….There are five things that you cannot recover in life:

         (1) A stone…………..after it’s thrown,
         (2) The word……….after it’s said,
         (3) The Occasion….after it’s missed
         (4) The Time……….after it’s gone.
         (5) A person…………when they’re gone

When all has been said and done, most of what we worry our pretty little heads over (people’s opinions of us, status, getting ahead) won’t matter 5 minutes from now, let alone 10 years down the road.  I really want to figure out how to be tired for the “right” reasons.  The good kind of tired….