Category Archives: 1 Christ is All

Jesus loves me, this I know. This category is about Jesus, the Living Word, my prayers to Him, my worship of Him, His relentless pursuit of my heart and His invitation to me to come to Him in Sabbath, my Savior, my Rest.

To the mom who made me Me!

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

Happy Mother’s Day, mamala!

Wow, I am blessed.  What a godly, gentle and guileless person you are.  What a good mommy you were to me when I was so little and you were so young.  I love that you always just wanted to be a mama.  I LOVE that I got to be first in making you a mom!  I love that there were 22 hand-sewn dresses waiting for my arrival, that you were so anxious to be a mommy you couldn’t stop that crazy exuberance of yours from preparing for me.

You taught me about heaven and end times (when I was four!) and the first two words I could ever spell were B-i-b-l-e and Oh, you can’t get to heaven without s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n because you sang me those songs over and over.   You made me cry telling me the story of Bambi and Roy Rogers’ stuffed horse, Trigger (housed, you informed me, in a Roy Rogers museum in Hollywood where you someday dreamed of going) and you made me listen to country music and though I eschewed it for years, I have come full circle and truly appreciate its place in my life now.  You told me where puppies came from and bought me the Christian book about sex called Almost Twelve when I was only ten.  But you only let me read 2 or 3 pages at a time, every few months, and it did end up taking me until I was actually almost 14 to finish it, but that doesn’t really matter since if that book  had been my only sex education, I still wouldn’t know what the heck was happening!

You taught me to cuss like a Christian.

“Oh, crap-a-dap!”

You were never too busy to stop and explore something fun.

I love how you are creative and so totally unpretentious. And I love how your life has been filled with you discovering new passions and finding new hobbies and you have just never gone dull.  There has always been something delightful and new to picque your interest.  I mean, you became an award-winning horse photographer after the age of 55 and had your work on magazine covers!  What a resourceful, inspiring, virtuous woman you are!  You are SO Proverbs 31!

You are long-suffering and always believe the best in everyone.  You let people walk on you ~  determined to win them over and though I advise you to tell them where to get off, you do, in fact, always win them over and there isn’t anyone I know who doesn’t love you.  And if there is anyone in the whole wide world who doesn’t love you?  I don’t even want to know them. Someday I hope I can be more like you, mamakins, because you are wonderful.

Mares eat oats and does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy
A kid’ll eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you? 

We’d lie across the bed and sing this and laugh our heads off.  It was years before I even knew what I was singing.  And wasn’t that the point?

As if being a good mommy to me when I was young wasn’t enough,  you are my most cherished friend and confidante now.  You are my biggest cheerleader and when you nag me about overwork and taking care of myself and hold me accountable for making every effort to enter in to that Sabbath rest that remains (Heb. 4), I naturally rebel or pretend all is well.  But inside I am happy that there is a human being on earth who takes the time to actually care anything at all about me.  I love you, mom.  Thank-you.  Thank-you.  Thank-you.

Then

You dreamed of me.  You planned for me.  You wanted me.  And you have never given up on me.  And though I even know as you read this you would say to me, “Oh, Jeanie, I am not perfect.  I have a lot of faults,” and perhaps this is true, the only thing that really matters to me on Mother’s Day and every day is that you are PERFECT for me!  You were the only woman in the world God could trust to be my mom and I am grateful He knew…

Now

One of my favorite remembrances ever shall be that when we found out the Roy Rogers Museum had moved from California to Branson – just 45 minutes from your house, I got to take you to see Trigger (whom you’d actually seen ALIVE when you were a young girl…doing his tricks and carrying your beloved Roy Rogers).  And just before the museum closed down for good, together, we got to see all the things you’d told me about in my earliest memories (3 or 4 years old) and we stood there singing “Happy Trails to You” in the fan room, me at 50, you at 70-ish – our girlhood fancies intertwined…We are from so long ago, it is as if we have always been.  You are my mama and I am your baby girl, forever and always.

On my last birthday you wrote this in an email:

“You just can’t know how very, very happy I was when you arrived in October 1959. Wow! My Dream had come true!!”

I am among the most blessed women of the world.  I have such great treasure.  I am rich in a way that most people can only wish – to have my mom say words like these to me.

I love you, Norma J. Moslander, my mom.

J e a n i e

You have more than fulfilled the “prediction” in your high school senior yearbook, mom-ma!  You have pleased God.  It is certain.

“Give her the reward she has earned and let her works bring her praise at the city gates.”  Proverbs 31.31 NIV

earthday.

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think

This is in the church driveway today, about halfway to the building (on the way in to the Heaven Fest office for a meeting).  The earth.  The dandelions.  The rolling, dark clouds.  It was a beautiful day.

  

taken with a very inexpensive camera by a pretty terrible picture-taker. : )  Yet, kinda beautiful!

Thunder showers!  Lightening!  Started out raining like crazy (way, way-low visibility on the way to Longmont).  Cleansing rain, abundant moisture.    Then sunny, warm, bright and beautiful.  Then this gorgeous weirdness (dark on the south, sunny and blue on the north).  All fading into a deep reverberating-blue, spring evening.

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

Earth day = The LORD’s Day!

NOTE:  99 days until Heaven Fest!  www.heavenfest.com

Song for a Sunday, for THE Sunday!

1 Christ is All, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think

TRUE STORY. Happy-joyous-victorious Easter!

Because of this:

Isaiah 53 (The Message)
2-6The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field…
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong,
on him, on him.

Matt Redman sings one of my all-time favorite songs about what happened on the cross

YOU LED ME TO THE CROSS (Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross)

You Led Me To The Cross (double-click and open to listen)

VERSE 1:
You led me to the cross
And I saw the face of mercy in that place of love
You opened up my eyes
To believe Your sweet salvation
Where I’d been so blind
Now that I’m living in Your all forgiving love
My every road leads to the cross

CHORUS:
Jesus, keep me near the cross
I won’t forget the love You’ve shown
Savior, teach me of the cross
I won’t forget the love
I won’t forget the love You’ve shown

VERSE 2:
And there’s an empty tomb
That tells me of Your resurrection and my life in You
The stone lies rolled away
Nothing but those folded grave clothes
Where Your body lay
Now that I’m living as a risen child of God
My every road leads to the cross

Jesus died.  But death couldn’t hold Him.  He lives.  He lives!

And there’s an EMPTY TOMB
That tells me of Your RESURRECTION and my LIFE in You
The stone lies rolled away
Nothing but those FOLDED GRAVE CLOTHES
Where Your body lay
Now that I’m living as a risen child of God
My EVERY ROAD LEADS to the CROSS

NOTE:  Not sure why the last few seconds of the song are cut off, but you can finish it!  Sing this:  “My every road leads to the cross.”

google images

A WORD FOR ELIJAH

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

Go back the way you came

Sometime in to the “meltdown of ’06”, God decided to make me aware that not only were my circumstances and brokenness not unusual/out-of-the-ordinary nor “special,” but that those nice little Elijah-Sunday-School-stories I had heard so many times held more insight into my own turmoil and God’s plan for my deliverance than I’d ever realized.  I wrote about it months later as part of a series of things God taught me during that time (you can read about it here).  I remember feeling sheepish to say that as I read about the mighty prophet, Elijah, I truly believe he was depressed.  Clinically depressed.  What?  A mighty man of God depressed?  A man who could be God’s instrument to bring the miracle of oil to a widow who thought all was lost and then cry out to God over her dead son’s body and see life return, yet he, himself, scraping bottom, being unable to “pull himself up by his bootstraps”, unable to pray enough, fast enough, read enough Word to just “snap out of it?”

For me, even thinking that about Elijah seemed almost sacriligious.  I kinda grew up around a bunch of people who didn’t think true Christians could get depressed – unless they were doing something to deserve it.  Or maybe NOT doing something religious they should be doing.  (Brennan Manning has wisely advised we’d be better off if we quit “shoulding all over ourselves.)

“I know from experience you can be doing the work of God at a pace that destroys the work of God in you.”  Mark Buchanan in The Wild Goose Chase – Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God

I was afraid to ponder the fact that you can be working for God and hearing from Him and being used by Him, but get so physically depleted you become a danger to yourself, others and Kingdom work.  Yet, God, the God of the universe, actually seemed to have revealed it to me, for me, this Elijah-may-have-been-clinically-depressed thing.  He seemed to want me to know it happens.  As part of the human experience, there is sorrow and heartbreak and loss.  These are the risks we take for living, for entering relationships with vulnerability, for being alive.  There is, in living and loving, the good, the bad and the ugly.  There is receiving love and losing it, too.  There is joy, but there is pain.  There is acceptance and rejection.  It rains on the just and the unjust…

The Volcanic Eruption

The meltdown-of-’06 was a tumulteous time, a place of obvious disruption, a clashing cymbal’s worth of huge loss and pain coupled with bitterness and anger that would have made anyone say, “Well, no wonder you’re freaked out and totally empty.”  My skin had been melted by the molten lava of an ugliness that affected so many and the resulting ash permeated every gulp of air I tried to breathe.  Catastrophic to my heart, I could see no way out.  Until God…

The Slow Leak

But hopelessness and heartbreak,  despair and loneliness, or a blackness of the soul does not always happen during some volcanic eruption.  Sometimes there is a slow drain, a leak in the lifeline, an open door in your storehouse where bandits and thieves walk right in and begin emptying you of your resources and life.  It is quieter.  No one seems to notice. You ignore the signs yourself.   Then one day, you are in the darkness of your own soul and suddenly you hurt everywhere, inside and out, and your pain is hurting everyone around you.  The accusations and taunts of the enemy echoes throughout the hollow hallways of your heart.  You feel condemned.  Depressed.

How did a nice person like me end up in a place like this?

It can’t always be explained.  It just is what it is.  Sometimes there is no big upset to point back to, no huge event that would make people say “No wonder.”  Yet, there you are in the black void trying to act normal.   Attempting to “get on with it.”   Trying to fill it with something, anything.  Usually the wrong thing.

So maybe you know how you got here, to this place of bewilderedness because it was a monumetal event or extreme loss or ripping of your heart.  Or, you may not know how you got here bcause everything was fine, good actually and you were smack dab in the middle of God’s will when you woke up to find you’d crossed the border into a painfully lonely place, heavy and hurting, empty and parched.  The point is: it happend.  You are here. 

And just like Elijah, after going through the desert, through discouragement and fear, you are in need of refreshment.  Stop for a minute, maybe longer.  Just stay put and get some rest, healing. 

After his time of refreshment, the prophet Elijah was instructed by God to go back the way he came to finish the task of anointing the next king and get help (in the form of a young prophet) in the process. It can be a long way back, but God’s call on us isn’t finished yet.  There is something to be completed by the Author and Finisher of your faith story.  There are things you’ve yet seen unleashed for you and through you.  A surprise from God awaits you right in the very place you were once drained of life, the dry, and deserted path.  What was once barrenness will be different this time – water will gush forth and barren places will bloom.  Don’t miss it.  All is not lost.  God is not through with you.  His love will not let you go.  He is at work, even now.  Turn back.    The wilderness will rejoice and blossom…

THIS VIDEO:  From about minutes 2:30 to 5:00, you see an African desert become flooded by a mountain rainfall from over 100 miles away and the desert gets soaked and begins to bloom and is fruitful.  It happens there 2 or 3 times a year.  It’s what I see in my mind reading the words below.  And you can see how if it is true in that natural desert, that a place barren and dry and seemingly dead can come back to lush life unexpectedly and quickly, you can see it is true for you, too.  The desert and parched land will be glad…

Point me in the direction of restoration and recovery~

(adapted from a sermon from Grace Church in the UK and from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 35)

Go back the way you came…

The desert and the parched land will be glad

Go back the way you came…

Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert

Go back the way you came…

The burning sand will become a pool and thirsty ground bubbling springs.

Go back the way you came…

You’re not the only one

Go back the way you came…

Build in time for rest, food and drink

Go back the way you came…

What are you doing here?

Go back the way you came…

The wilderness will rejoice and blossom, like the crocus it will burst into bloom

Go back the way you came…

Be strong. Do not fear. Your God will come.

Go back the way you came…

May gladness and joy overtake you and sorrow and sighing flee away

Go back the way you came…

Build in time for rest, food and drink.  This is probably a Sabbath-season for you, a time holy to the Lord,  for you ~ from Him.

 

ARISE [from the depression and prostration in which circumstances have kept you–rise to a new life]! Shine (be radiant with the glory of the Lord), for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you!  Isaiah 60.1, Amplified

Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.
And the ransomed of the LORD will return.  They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.  Isaiah 35.6, 7, 10 NIV

Cake Buns

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Think

Baby Bottom Cake

Or Diaper Cake

 

Or Butt Cake

Or Can Cake

  

Or  Baby-buns Cake

Or Bottoms Up Cake

  

Or whatever.

5 pounds of MM Fondant (I am such a novice and not a sculptor, but people like fondant), over almond-bouquet buttercream over dark fudge chocolate cake (2-layer), filled with Oreo/chocolate-chip/milk-chocolate mousse.  Created the baby’s bum and chunky legs from Rice Krispie treats because the thought of wrapping cake pieces made me hyperventilate.  Averi’s feet were my inspiration.

Did it for Jovan, with love, as we anticipate new Baby Rhoades, to-be-born in 2 weeks. 

Ruth 4. 15 For [my] daughter-in-law, who loves [me] and who is better to [me] than seven sons….

Neither Tredessa nor Averi could resist tickling the feet.  The main cake, for size reference, is a 12″ cake, about 4″ high.  So the baby is sort of a month or so old maybe, but with big feet?  I don’t know…ever-so-slightly life-like in size…?

Bad sign

1 Christ is All, Stuff I Actually Think

Not IF, WHEN….

Isaiah 43

Israel’s Only Savior

1 But now, this is what the LORD says—

he who created you, O Jacob,

he who formed you, O Israel:

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

2 When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

3 For I am the LORD, your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

I give Egypt for your ransom,

Cush and Seba in your stead.

WHO, the question seems to be, DAT?

1 Christ is All, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think

I recently announced my apparent connection to both 2010 Super Bowl teams. 

You can read about that here.  Not that I am taking credit for either team making it to the top, but I did live less than an hour away from both Indianapolis and from New Orleans at various times in my life.  I am just saying, I seem to be a common thread for football greatness.  Not the only one, but a common one.

So, the question is posed, “For whom will Jeanie root during the Super Bowl?”  I know this has caused much concern for many people, especially since everyone knows that not only do I not get football, I don’t ever even watch it except long enough to pass by and say “Those are some stinking tight pants,“…AND in light of the fact that I once had life-threatening food poisoning following a Super Bowl party.  Yes, there has been great speculation about my loyalties.  Which is really a moot point since I don’t do football, for crying out loud. 

Really, the question should be: who will win ~ And whether I have the ability to influence that outcome, and it is obvious I do and I shall.  So, my choice is?…

Well, people, come on.  I wrote that previous Super Bowl post, which was the first time in over 800 blog posts football has e-v-e-r been a topic, right after the Saints beat the Vikings in that fairly spectacular overtime win (the field goal ring a bell?).  And I added gold letters to the black font to leave a little trail, a clue as it were,  for the future.

THEN this week, an old family friend* from like ~  30-gazillion years ago (who once played Jesus for my dad’s Palm Sunday and Easter productions, first by riding up to the church wrapped in a white sheet on a donkey and later, hanging on the cross in possibly the same white sheet, before going on to utilize that divine-wig plus a red bandana at a church dinner-on-the-ground to emulate a Willie-Nelson-type character) sent me a Saints shirt {annonymously} in an effort to sway me.  Additionally, my brother Joe-the-pastor has been telling me the Saints are God’s team and very persuasively backing it up with scripture:

1 Sam 2:9  He will guard the feet of his SAINTS, but the wicked (Colts?) will be silenced in darkness!

Psalm 16:3  As for the SAINTS who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.

Psalm 149:4,5  For the Lord takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation. Let the SAINTS rejoice in this honor and sing for joy…

Daniel 7:18  But the SAINTS of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever- yes, forever and ever.

Rom 8:27  …the Spirit intercedes for the SAINTS in accordance with God’s will.

1 Cor 6:2  Do you not know that the SAINTS will judge the world…?

So who is it going to be?

Well…The Saints have that cutie-patootie, Drew Brees.  But the Colts have Peyton Manning.  I don’t know a darn thing about him myself, but several sportscasters seem to adore him.  I liked a lot of people from Indy when I lived there, though Louisiana boasts the most interesting of characters.    Hoosiers are good, middle American people.  The mosquito rules in the Bayou.  All these things must be weighed in the balance.

But the deciding factor for me?  The food!  Seafood Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, Roast Beef Po’ Boys, Jambalaya, Crawfish {pie…which I have never actually had}~Omygosh (or me-oh-my-oh, like the song says).  Hands down, the SAINTS are winning the Super Bowl and I give them my full support!  Yes.  Because of the scrumptious food.  I have spoken.  I may not watch the game.  But the common thread has decreed it so.

    

The crowd goes wild with approval (or whatever).

PLUS – no one from Indiana sent me a t-shirt.  That hurts.…Jeanie…WHO DAT?, indeed…

 

*”A Saints fan” from Robert, La-you know who you are…Thanks for the EXTRA-LARGE t-shirt. 

 

Pictured: Guini modeled the shirt in matching shoes.  There is a full roster on the back.  I have never heard of these people.

Keeping Watch

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, Stuff I Actually Think

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

But I will defend my house [realm of responsibility, family, home, God-given appointment]

against marauding [evil, destroying]  forces.

Never again will an oppressor overrun my people,

for now I am [keenly aware, eyes wide open, warily prepared] keeping watch.

  Zechariah 9.8

watchful synonyms: alert, all ears, attentive, careful, cautious, circumspect, guarded, observant, on guard, open-eyed, prepared, ready, vigilant, wakeful, wary, wide-awake

Happy Birthday to My Dad

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , ,

Happy Birthday, Dad~

Seventy-one years ago today Ressie Belle, widowed just weeks earlier by a tragic automobile accident, cradled you in her arms: a son who would carry on his father’s name, A. Ross Moslander.

That’s a tough start during hard times.  But you have done that name proud.  You’ve lived vigorously, for both yourself and the father you never knew.

No one in the world could ever doubt you were born for God’s purposes, papasan.  Since you found Jesus and He found you under that starry sky on Missouri farmland when you were 15, you’ve been on an adventureous journey of faith with all the Type-A, driven  energy of an Olympic runner, eyes set on the prize.

And you have spurred the rest of us along ~ thousands of friends and relatives and acquaintances and church members along the way, but especially your family, us kids.  And your zeal burns hot into the next generation, your impact is just getting revved up.  I am spending my life trying to keep up with my amazing dad.

You are the Psalms 127 and 128 man, dad.  You are the man in Psalms 112:  you are blessed and your children are mighty in the land.  Your heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.  Your family is fruitful and growing and you have received so much heritage from the Lord (talk about a full quiver!).  Your sons and grandsons are like arrows in your hands – the enemy does not want to contend with you when he sees this army you have unleashed in the land!  Look at your children and their children and now their children’s children:  we all love you, honor you, respect you and celebrate you!

Happy birthday, holy man.  Happy Birthday, my dad and my hero.  I love you….Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Call dad.  Wish him a happy birthday.

Youtube: Got together the other night for dinner and sang to you.  Stephanie and Gavin weren’t there, but the rest of us Rhoades-Kelleys-Powers were.  

GUEST BLOGGER ~ Robin Thinks…

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 4 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, ,

Read the rest of the post here.

 Robin is one of my favorite people in the entire world. And my sister-in-love.

Concerning New year’s Resolutions, Robin has decided to forgo the usual list of to-do lists to be tackled or goals to be mastered in exchange for pursuing the following:

Joy. I want to feel joy.

Moments. I want to ponder them.

Love. I want to love loving and not forget to do it.

Hope. I want to always hope because without it, the heart gets sick as the great book of Proverb says.

Stillness. I want to be still. Still enough to see the hurts of others, the milestones of my children, the twinkle in someone’s eye. Still enough to hear the voice of God.

Peace. Oh yes..the proverbial peace. But not world peace. It will never happen for the Bible tells me so (until that great day when the trump will sound). I want peace in this life that only Christ can give me as I really, really know and trust that He is the Keeper of my life. Those are the things I really want for my new year.

And one forever, encouraging thing about any new beginning is that we get them. I love new beginnings and I love even more that as long as I have breath, God’s mercies are new every morning. He gets it. He knew we would need a fresh start and so He tells us that it’s all ok with Him. Start fresh. Be renewed and free in the start of something new.