Category Archives: 6 Looking Back // Memories!

I’m at that age where you have lots and lots of memories. When I am waxing melancholy…

50 Things I Love about Dave

1 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think,
  1. His squinty eyes (that nearly disappear when he smiles).
  2. His brown skin.
  3. His deep dimples.
  4. His pearly white smile.
  5. His black, shiny hair.
  6. His hands.
  7. His broad shoulders.
  8. The way he can coax me out of grumpiness.
  9. All the private jokes we share.
  10. His never-ending movie-knowledge.
  11. He builds.
  12. He paints (art).
  13. He acts.
  14. He sings.
  15. He writes.
  16. He kisses really, really well.  He is just such a good kisser.
  17. The foot rubs, omygosh, the foot rubs!…!
  18. He gets me, and I am pretty un-gettable.
  19. He lets me choose the movies I want to watch.
  20. He is not threatened by chick-flicks because he understands the rewards of seeing them with me.
  21. He lets me choose the restaurants I want to go to.
  22. He cooks for me. 
  23. He knows when I just cannot face the kitchen and he feeds me food to soothe my soul.
  24. He buys me junk food even when I have sworn off of it and hides it until I really need it.
  25. He stashes candy bars around for emergency chocolate fixes.
  26. He secretly charts my months and knows exactly when to appease me entirely.  This is an art!
  27. His hugs, my safe place.
  28. Sleeping snuggled to his arm and shoulder, my other safe place.
  29. The backrubs (though he stinks at back-scratching, I am sorry to say).
  30. He washes my clothes and hangs them before they have a chance to wrinkle!
  31. He organizes my closet – by color!
  32. He plays with my hair while we watch TV.
  33. He threw out that shirt I hated!
  34. He was a we’re-in-this-thing-together kind of dad.  He never “babysat” our kids – he daddy’ed them!
  35. He changed as many diapers as I did.
  36. There wasn’t ever, ever: it’s-your-turn-with-the-kids, because it was always all of us together ~ a family.
  37. He loves me.
  38. He loves his family.
  39. He is the most loyal man I have ever known.
  40. He would do anything, lay down anything, pay any amount of money for me or our kids.
  41. When I was pregnant, he never let me vacuum or do laundry.  Sometimes we still play that game!  Or we play “Queen for the Night” and that is fun, too!
  42. He likes to hear me sing.
  43. He reads all my blogs.
  44. When I was having a total meltdown a few years back, he would quote scriptures over me until I could sleep.  He knows hundreds of scriptures.  Sometimes that was the only thing that kept me afloat.
  45. He prays for me.
  46. He hears from God on my behalf and speaks into my heart.
  47. Sometimes I will wake up in the middle of the night and hear him praying for our family beside me in bed.  Those moments make me love him more.
  48. He is humble.  He is sometimes too hard on himself.
  49. He is a finisher. 
  50. No matter how hard life gets, he keeps going and…he keeps staying.

Dave turns 50 on March 23.  You can tell him HAPPY BIRTHDAY here at the blog, or here: dave@daverhoades.com

Five Hundred

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

blogging

This is my 500th blog post!  Very cautiously and nervously entering the blog world in November of 2006, I find I can now blather endlessly about the minutia of my life, even sharing my most embarrassing moments in the mix.

blogging  blogging1

But still, I write it for my children and family.  That has always been the point.  And because my mom likes it.  But mostly for my children.

Because between the silly and the mundane, I have also exposed and cast down sin as it has been revealed to me.  I have spoken truths almost too unbearable to reveal in the light of day and I have written the things that someday they will look back on and read and see as an altar, a guidepost and landmark – the place where the truth of heaven was spoken and remembered in my life.  And it will become for them, eventually, if not now, the wisdom that will keep them on the right path.

“Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set.”  Proverbs 22.28 NKJV

The coolest thing now, though, is realizing a promise of God to me in my lowest hour – that there would also be spiritual children, that I would be increased and multiplied, that I will continue to be vigorous and bear fruit in old age.  And true to His promise, my family enlarges (it has even happened through this blog!).  My capacity to love is increased.

So, for the children I know and the ones I have yet to meet, I write.  And I write. 

And I write what I have heard, what I have seen with my own eyes, what I have observed, and what I have touched with my own hands in the hopes that these things will be received in the spirit with which they are given and that they will, in some measure increase your joy (1 John 1.1-4).  May your joy be ever full!

Graphomaniacally yours…Jeanie/mom

NOTE TO SELF: “It is written…” was even for Jesus, a touchstone of proof, a declaration of the “fixedness of the divine record” to the faithfulness of God.  Make my written words nothing less, Lord…

Awkward

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Imagine.  You’re the new girl at school, first week of school.  8th grade.  Still desperately searching for a face you know when you get there in the mornings among the sea of junior high-ers.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

There is a small group whose acquaintance I have made.  They have in no way made their decision on whether I may be seen with them.  One, the slightly more acerbic of the three, is showing the other two an ink pen on which is inscribed, “This pen was stolen from __________ ‘s Clothing Store.”  They all laugh.

I decide this is a good time to insert some wry humor, show them I can keep up.  I had just been at that particular store with my mom and though we bought a couple of things, it wasn’t “our kind of store.”  Seemed aimed at older women.  Seemed aimed at women with much bigger pocketbooks than my mom’s.

I take a breath to pace myself.  Here goes, I attempt to be low-key and nonchalant, as though I am not trying to be funny, but I know they are going to be impressed.  They giggle over the pen’s words, “This pen was stolen from __________’s Clothing Store,”  was still hanging in the air when I said,

“Well, you’d have to steal it.  Everything there is so expensive.”

That was it.  That was my profound oh-this-is-going-to-impress-them statement.  That was the best I had.  And I can truly tell you I  understand what a millisecond is because that is about how long it took for me to understand I had just said the worst, most awful, most insulting thing in the world.  I didn’t know why what I had said was so wrong, but I knew it was.

One of the girls said, of the girl holding the pen, “Meet Susie (not her real name) ___________.”  And you guessed it: it was her family’s store.

The other girl said, as they moved away from me, “Well, that was awkward.”

I stand alone near the vending machines with my wry humor  in the sea of junior high-ers, surrounded by, engulfed in awkwardness.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

NOTE:  Two of those girls ended up being great friends later and didn’t even remember that incident when I got the courage to ask them.  But the girl with the pen never, ever looked my way again, never had anything to do with me.  And now that I am not in 8th grade and not so self-focused about that moment, I can see I truly embarrassed her, hurt her feelings, and I am truly sorry for that.  The pen really was cute.

The Husband. The Friend and Lover.

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Our first kiss was like,  fireworks ~ angel choirs ~ intoxicating ~ dizzying.  I am sorry to tell you I cannot really let you re-live that moment with Dave and I, for it was ours alone.  And to talk about it too much would embarrass our children and probably make you blush, but suffice it to say, once our lips met (and many, many times since), I was thoroughly, head-over-heels, giddy, heart-palpitating, screaming inside, flipped out in-love, forever.

And I remember how he reeled me in and made me a Dave-fan for life.  I was serious, untrusting, broken in lots of areas.  I was ready to try to hold him at arm’s length and test his love, his loyalty – dare him to try and stay.  And he?  Would playfully and persistently stay close and relentlessly charm and comfort until he could coax a relaxed smile from me – the one that only came because I knew I could count on him for always.

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He is my Valentine.

Amy’s Antique-filled Abode – Home Tour!

6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think

I knew Amy like, a million years ago – or maybe it was just the early 90’s.  We were living in Norfolk, NE and going through one of the blackest nights of our souls.  She and her husband, Jim, pressed in to become extremely important friends and safe places for our hearts during that time. 

Amy Rhodes “found” me again via this blog almost 2 years ago now and I am happy to report she has agreed to share her very unique Nebraska home with us – and has even included a few very personal (for me) memories.  Thank-you for the smile and the sweet rememberances, Amy!

I have included Amy’s own descriptions as well as some of my observations:

porch-swing frontdoor stairway

AMY: A warm summer’s evening with a glass of tea or lemonade…my front porch swing beckons.  When we bought our house there was an ugly steel door here. We went to visit a guy that buys fixtures from old homes as they are torn down.  He has about 5 big warehouses that he keeps doors, windows, pillars, banister’s, heating vents, just about anything you could want!  This door used to greet customers to a bank.  The stairs – The first thing that ‘sold’ this house to us.  We love these stairs!  They are not narrow and steep.  They are so open and inviting.  LOVE LOVE LOVE the wood work!  (they were carpeted when we bought the house) And the little bench at the landing up top is from my uncle’s farm house that no longer exists.

ME: Nebraska is full of antiques and treasure-filled hideaways.  As a people, they have carefully used and preserved their belongings so you can still enjoy them today.  Amy-did you know the “family table,” of which I so romantically efuse, is the one I bought from your aunt?  It is the Ethan Allen she raised her children on, I raised mine around and I am now enjoying with my grandbabies!?!

 

anniversary-art inscription

AMY:  Remember this by chance?  It came from very dear friends!  The back reads: “The wonderous joy of a friendship ordained by God – is what we’ve found in you! May your marriage be ever strengthened by His love.”  The Bierers -Tom & Lisa  The Rhoades -Dave & Jeanie  Happy anniversary 1992.  And the little tag says ‘Victorious Custom Framing’ with the address and phone number!

ME:  We had a little shop with Tom and Lisa Bierer, a place to arrange and create and collect.  We added custom framing to Victorious and on Jim and Amy’s anniversary in 1992, Lisa Bierer painted this piece (which I believe has their names and the scripture reference from Ecclesiastes ~ a three-stranded cord is not easily broken…)  and Dave and I framed it.  Sure enough-there is our little, gold, Victorious label and my hand-written note.  A true relic and one-of-a-kind!

 

sugarbowl christmas-entry table

AMY:  My Antebellum sugar bowl is from Louisiana.  I do love that sugar bowl!  We saw one on a table in a mansion we toured in Louisiana and then found one in an antique store the same day!  Our 9′ tree in the foyer – Christmas 2008.   [The Table is] The gathering place.  Original legs but the top is old barn wood from an antique shop in Grand Island, NE

table2 estes-pic hutch-and-praying-pic

AMY:  This is an 1880’s gate leg table purchased from Victorious.  The photograph (middle image) was taken in Estes Park.  We were surrounded by houses and here is this herd of elk at 6:00 in the morning on my way out to RMNP to hike with Aaron.  It’s hard to see the sunrise on the mountain tops in a picture of a picture but it was so beautiful!  My most favorite place on earth besides ‘home’.  Maybe it will BE home some day!  The old-man-praying print above the hutch has hung there for more than 30 years, in my parents home before ours.  “Grace” by Eric Enstrom.  The top shelf in the hutch is home to my Fostoria collection started by Jim as a gift for Christmas about 10 years ago.  And my berry bowl set that I found at a garage sale after I searched for years to find the perfect ones!

AMY:  This shelf below  used to hang in a little neighborhood grocery store that my parents owned. It now holds my creamer collection (and some dust).  My Hoosier – jam packed with treasures from various treasure hunts.

ME:  We ALL have a dust collection!  But I promise everyone who is going to allow us a home tour, it won’t show at all IF YOU’LL RESIST THE URGE to dust even one thing!  As a newlywed in Kokomo, IN, I had a Hoosier (in a land of Hoosiers) and and no idea how wonderful it was outside the fact that I needed the space.  It even had a built-in coffee grinder – that you cranked by hand!  Wish I still had it!

creamercollection hoosier

Dont’cha love peeking in through other people’s windows?  In a good way!

Thanks for the tour and the memories, Amy!…Jeanie

NOTE TO READERS:  Let us tour your home??  Just share the little views that make your home home to you…Send me your photos and descriptions jeanierhoades@yahoo.com

NOTE TO CANDI,  CAROL ANN, TARA, AMY JO – ahem!

Previous Home Tours: Robin’s, Pearl’s, parts of my own

“Jo, how could you, your one beauty?!…”

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That is a line from the Little Women movie when Jo had cut and sold her hair for money to help the family. 

And isn’t it true our hair can actually make or break the day we are having?  There must be some glory there, or lack thereof on a “bad hair day.”

“…if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?  For long hair is given to her as a covering.”  1 Corinthians 11.15 NIV

When Tara was three, she cut her sister Stephanie’s hair – just the bangs right in front.  Stephanie was exactly one year old, had beautiful hair and now it had a”butched” area right in front!  I was sad, but a little time and cute bows and barrettes in the meantime kept her looking like a baby girl.

When Tredessa was almost three, she, whose hair was thick and curly and was already longer than waist-length when it was wet, lopped off a whole side of her hair.  I had just had a baby.  I sat on the stairs of our home and wept in deep sorrow (can you say ‘hormonal’?).  It grew back.

Gavin was three when he got ahold of some scissors and cut his hair short-short-short right next to the scalp.  We had no choice but to shave that shiny, beautiful hair right off his whole head.

Saturday morning Guini came down to breakfast and gleefully announced to her mama, “Look at my haircut,” as she stood there, sans locks, but with freshly cut hair and glossy lips (she calls it “lip sauce”).

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Mommy brought her over for a pixie-haircut – which were very popular with my friends around 1967-68.  It is really short, but she actually did a pretty fair job of cutting it to the hairline without gouging out too may big swaths into her scalp.  So we were able to give her a nice short pixie (still-in-process) and her beautiful face is her glorious feature for now…

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These grand-kids keep life interesting…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Help the mommies strategize how to keep Gemma and Averi from the 3-year-old cut…

pictured: Guini with her very short bangs and baby sister, Gemma in the background

Where everybody knows your name…

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

Sometimes…

in this world

of strangers

and new-found friends

and doubtful dreams

and demands

and responsibilities

and troubles

and fast moves

and worries

and insecurities

a person wants to go seek out

the people and places that

knew what he used to be

what he dreamt

and what he hoped for

what he was and how he grew…

Sometimes a person just wants

To go home.

 -Rhonda K Langefield

 

 

“Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came…”  The Cheers theme song

pictured: google snapshot called “forgotten”

House Call

2 Mi Familia, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think,

What makes your home different from the neighbor’s (whose house was built by the same contractor and for all the fancy outdoor facades, from an aerial view, is just another rabbit hutch in suburbia)?  What is in your house that makes it uniquely yours and not just another picture from The Pottery Barn catalogue?

Here is how you might know you are in my house and not the neighbor’s:

I use old doors, vintage windows, worn fabrics and well-loved furniture-with-a-history to throw a little intrigue into all things new. And though these pictures don’t show it?  I am not afraid of color!  Not at all. 

I re-purpose what some one once decided to throw away in favor of the newer-latest-better-whatever into suprise uses (a beveled-glass, multi-paned door hangs horizontally as  room divider catching the light and starting conversations….doorknobs are picture hangers…). 

I cherish the story told in the things my parents and grandparents owned before me, though these are precious few (a dime store candy dish from my Grandma Baker, old Christmas ornaments my Aunt Rosie was finished with, but gave me to start our marriage, books my dad read, or the one he wrote for me with his story, pictures and stories with them from my mom-the-“photog”). 

There is a della-robia embellished, golden-yellow biscotti jar which holds tea bags and hot-chocolate mixes, never once a biscotti.  And I have never actually owned a cookie jar.  Hmmm.  We just bake them and eat them apparently.  Curious.

There are the “temporary” burlap drapes (satin-edged so they don’t look like a feed bag, thank-you very much) and a #10 roasted red-pepper can holding my serving utensils. 

I have books everywhere covering my interests from gardening to worship to business and back.  In the coffee table an Albert Einstein rests atop a Beth Moore.

There are paintings by Rocky in Kindergarten and silhouettes of the grandchildren Stephanie gave me for Christmas (a hot decorating trend right now). 

  

There is the family table with imbedded glitter from my children’s projects and now my grandchildren, fossilizing our existance in wood. 

While I refuse (or attempt to refuse) to be a “collector,” as I look around the kitchen, I see I have aquired several interesting rooster representations over the years, so one might surmise I am a rooster-lover, in the very French country, non-kitschy sense. 

Although my 70’s lamp and two over-sized 70’s chairs in one area could only be called kitschy (Dave and Tara asked if I was going to turn the family room into a 70s lounge – no). 

 

My vintage Di Corsi prints make me smile everytime I remember how inexpensively I got them because of the horrendous frames I discovered them in (super-gold-and-gaudy-in-plastic, anyone?), but whose colors and hues soothe and calm and have they not created the most amazing focal point over my very hip and modern headboard – oh, yes!

And please, don’t tell anyone yet, not until I know just exactly how to display and share this next delight in a way that Dave can tolerate (for he was even embarrassed when when I was making the hilarious purchase at The Goodwill Store), but, my friends, I bought a classic piece of Christian art, circa 1961, of Jesus knocking on the UN building (as if He were knocking at a door?)!  It was painted by the beloved Sunday-School-leaflet illustrator of the 40s, 50s and 60s, Harry Anderson (his is the art of my first Bible stories and visions of God).  The print I have was obviously framed and had been hanging somewhere since at least 1964, so I have an obvious era-based affinity for it.  I find it hilarious because I think Jesus would look at it and go, “I would not re-size myself to Godzilla-like-proportions to present myself to people.”  And I think He and I could have a great laugh about it, even as we expressed to the late Mr. Anderson* how truly talented he was and that no offense is intended.  Dave is afraid I will hang it and people will think we are taking it seriously as an icon of our faith or something.  For this reason, I may be forced to hang it in the office-ish part of our MBR suite, where only people who could truly discern would be allowed.

These are a few of the ways you might know you had wandered in to my house and not the neighbor’s house (in the re-reading, they sound more important than they probably are, but they are mine and me).  What about yours?  What makes your house special, distinct, yours-all-yours?  Do tell!

I love home!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF: Do the projects – the ones that keep making it more and more ours.

*Dave called Harry Anderson the Thomas Kincaid of the mid-century era.  T-hee.

Sister-in-Law

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Robin, my brother Joe’s wife, is one of my closest friends.  I wish I could explain why, in a way that would validate it and at least bring it some redemption, we weren’t close friends for about 23 or 24 years. Not even friends, really.  Just sister-in-laws with the emphasis on the in-law part. Intimidated by her smarts, her insights and my own stupidity, I held her at arm’s length.  Other than knowing the enemy didn’t ever want to see us in agreement, hearts filled with love in God-pleasing unity – there isn’t a good reason.  It was a waste of time.  I tell her now, “I am so sorry for the years we missed.  Please forgive me.”  Now she is a treasured friend, confidante and truly a sister of my heart (not to mentioned a really anointed and insightful Bible teacher).

 

She emailed me this encouragement yesterday (with just the tiniest bit of editing to protect the innocent):

I think you need to press on. That is my word to your from my own experience. I have allowed despair to thwart forward motion…despair paralyzes [people who] then tuck all hopes and dreams in a little pocket for the good times. It never happens. [The question is] how to rise above and do what we are called to do in the midst of hurt, hopelessness and despair, but I know we are to do it. I am not sure why this Scripture stood out to me this morning but I am thinking it may help both of us.

 Mt. 11:19 – “But wisdom is shown to be right by what results from it.” NLT

Contextually, John the Baptist, in prison, sends his disciples out to find out if Christ is really the Messiah.  Remember, he saw the dove. Why would he wonder now? I think John the Baptist is completely confused by the fact that he is in prison. Why me and why this. 

A little further on Jesus says, “For John the Baptist didn’t drink wine and he fasted and you say, he’s demon possessed. I, the Son of Man, feast and drink and you say, He’s a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of the worst sinners.”  Then he says “But wisdom is shown to be right by what results from it.”

Sometimes in life, nothing makes sense. Decisions we make to do something for God seem completely out of the norm and make no sense to the others…Just like Jesus said, they are going to say whatever, but in the end, the wisdom will prove itself by the results. I realize it is so hard to trust what you believe God is saying and just do it, but I say, do it. The results will prove the wisdom in it.

Anyway, just a thought or so….love you.. Robin

 

 

I am so blessed, Robin.  Thanks for hanging in there with me…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Beg God to restore the years the locust has eaten.  It is ridiculous to live without the beauty of the relationships we could be having…

pictured: some business cards Stormie was helping Robin put together.  Not sure which one she finally chose (or if i was a combination of a couple), but I obviously love the red one on the bottom and that charcoal gray and red one on the top right!

Wise Men Found Him

6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, Stuff I Actually Think,

Today is the Christian observance of Epiphany – sometimes called “Little Christmas” – celebrating the visit of the Magi to Baby Jesus.

Epiphany is also used to express a sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something amazing (like grace, or God’s love toward us, for instance).

I was alone in my bedroom at the age of almost-5 when I asked Christ into my heart (very sincerely and with tears, no less).  There was no one there to record the moment, though I was blessed with godly parents who discipled me to grow in the grace and admonition of the Lord.

So for me, Epiphany is a good day to remember and celebrate and light the last of the Christmas candles and plug in the lone tree’s lights one final time before the final packing away (all is gone now save the tree of my faith).  It is a good day to say:

I found Him!  My Savior, the Lover of my soul.  Light of the world came to live in me.

What an epiphany!  What a realization!