Category Archives: Stuff I Actually Think

Bo-Bear Turned 29 on the 29th

October 7, 20132 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Thinkbirthday blessing, birthday blessing for a son, family birthday, family birthday blessing, giving, reaping and sowing, rocky and jovan rhoades, rocky rhoadesJeanie

Happy Birthday to Rocky Rhoades, who turned 29 on September the 29th

My son – I am so pleased with you.

I have told you the story of your birth so many times, haven’t I? You arrived early and the doctor had told me not to leave town in case that happened, but I left town and I was so stressed out because I don’t like to get caught breaking the rules. And Tara just reminded me the other night how stressed she was, too, as a 5-year old, because we started on our trip, got halfway there, went home, and then decided to go anyway…and barely walked into the grandparent’s house before it was time for me to zoom right on over to the hospital. Well, I mean, I had planned to make it home so the doctor wouldn’t be any-the-wiser, but you were like, NOW! ~which is so still you. :)

And I have told you that you surprised me beyond anything I could have imagined. I could not believe I got the boy, THE boy I secretly hoped for even though in reality I was totally FINE with having a girl. I already had 3 girls, one more made such sense for balance and symmetry. Omygoodness – the words, “You have a boy” sent me into delirious happiness.

You looked directly at me, your eyes blinked in slow-motion and it knocked the breath from my body. I was dizzy in love, unable to even think about sleep that night, all night, as an oxytocin and dopamine cocktail surged through my veins as if it were coming directly through the IV drip. I had a boy…my very own baby boy!

And you may not realize it, but every time I ever see you, even now, I am thinking the same thing: THAT is MY boy!

I am so proud of you, Rock, not only for the man you are, but for the man you are becoming more and more everyday. This whole flood thing has been a devastation in some ways and an aggravation, for certain, in the life of your family, your ministry. There was loss that probably feels overwhelming and unbearable (as $40-50,000 plus time and effort and re-building will be). I know you look forward to getting your wife and baby girls back home, safe and sound. And then you’ll look and see the possibly long-haul ahead for replacing all the instruments and computers and sound equipment and the studio you’d spent time assembling ~ lots of time and money and hard work ahead.

Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness,while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God. For …this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God.. . 2 Corinthians 6.10-12

But it will come back to you. The things you have sown will take root and grow. And I have watched you and Jovan these past few years grow in grace and grow in giving and giving selflessly and giving big and making the conscious decision to live a life of giving and whenever it has been in your power to do so, you have given away anything and everything you could.

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows…whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6.7-8

And God isn’t unaware. He’ll see to it that the seeds of kindness and giving that you have already sown will grow and flourish and you’ll reap all that you have sown. Even when you didn’t know you’d need it – you were planting, you were dropping the seeds of compassion and kindness and generosity into the ground – and what you couldn’t see was that God wasn’t surprised by this thing that happened to your house, your home and belongings and He was smiling, I just know it, because He knew you were already doing what needed done – before it needed done. God knew you were planting for a harvest of big-time reaping, financially!

“The Lord then said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.'” Genesis 7.1

For Noah, for all mankind, the flood was a line in the sand. It was a before and after. It was : things used to be like that, then there was the flood, and now they are like this. The flood was an ending AND a beginning. Things were lost in the flood, but the promises of God are found there, too. Not just for an ark builder for thousands of years ago, but for a worshiper/songwriter right now, in Frederick, CO – man who leads his family and wants to write songs that literally bring healing.

Of course certain things had to die and float away for a dream, a calling, a vision like that. But it is all just so you’ll never forget that the LORD is the promise-keeper and you didn’t do it by yourself, because you couldn’t have. How many times have you told me, since you were 18 or 19, “God won’t share His glory.” You have pointed out highly celebrated, gifted musicians and singers and recognized the call of God on their lives, but watched as they held it for themselves. That is not the standard you are living by and this flood is just a yes and amen to deep-down determinations you have already made to give God all, everything that is His and His alone – you have already said it. The flood is a checkpoint – do you mean it, Rock-man? And I know you do and I know the healing songs are going to pour out from here, like flood waters for the glory of the LORD.

But [the time is coming when] the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord just as the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk 2.14

Do you know what I think?

I believe, and I actually know this to be true because I have known you every second of these 29 years+ and you have made me cry and worry and laugh like nobody’s business and also so very proud because you are forthright and honest and talented and thoughtful and honoring and you love your mommy. So this is what I think:

No one is more beautiful or handsome than my boy, my Rocky ~ from the inside out.

“Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Luke 6:38

This is the post-flood promise of God! On the occasion of your 29th birthday. It is coming back to you, all of it and more! I love you!

NOTE: Rocky and Jovan got flooded out during the Colorado rains in September. I have written a little about it here and here. You can learn more about helping them re-build {HERE}!

I want to be in charge

October 4, 20136 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Once Joe was born, I only remember my mom saying, “Jeanie, you’re in charge…”

Now I am sure my mom’s admonition to me, born first of 5 kids, was just a simple thing like, “You’re in charge of carrying the diaper bag or baby Joe’s bottle.” But all I heard was that I was in charge…the rest becomes hazy and glittery and fades into rainbows and blue skies like a dream… :)

So, from my earliest recollections, I always just wanted to run things: create very involved events for my siblings and neighborhood friends. Be. in. charge.

This was Nancy’s house, but oh, I can see the scheming and planning going on in my head during this little tea-party soiree. I had just turned 7. Nancy was 8.

I organized the neighbor kids

When the big Drake Relays were going on, an annual gigantic track and field competition in Des Moines at Drake University, I spent hours and hours over the course of a week creating ribbons for the winners and clipboard sign-ups for a Drake Relay event on my own block. Each neighborhood kid could sign up for three, but only three events – to encourage them to really excel at their chosen category. Then I required they attend practices to improve their skills before the actual event. Much jealousy ensued and everyone wanted first-place ribbons. Kids in the 1960s, I tell ya.

I innately understood that funds were necessary

When my best-friend-across-the-alley, Nancy, told me about how her Catholic school was doing a paper drive to get money, a lightbulb: What? You can collect old newspapers and magazines and get money for them? Well, then – we MUST have our own club and collect for our purposes. I wheeled the lunky 1950s baby buggy my mom had used with all 5 of us – not new when she started (back when there weren’t second cars in families so you might actually have to walk a ways to a store and needed a living-room sized “vehicle” to transport your Gerber-food fat baby) out of the garage and off we went.

We actually found neighbors with a whole basement full of Look and Life magazines (think Twiggy on the front!) and newspapers and they said we could have them. We figured it would be about 50 buggies’ worth to get them all. Our plan was foiled, though, when I approached the house with my very first full buggy and my mom incredulously asked “Where do you plan to keep those?!” She then forbade me to go back and the buggy had to be put away. I hadn’t really thought about needing a permit from the governing authorities (my parents).

Event leading is a process. *sigh.

I always had an idea up my sleeve

Fundraising was always in my sights, though. After a trip to the Des Moines River to “fish,” (the one and only time my dad ever took me because he was so perturbed that I had no interest in the pole or the bait, the fish or sitting quietly as long as there were shells and sparkly rocks to collect and woods to investigate), as soon as I got home, the across-the-alley neighbor girl and I carefully displayed all the natural treasures I’d found at the river in an egg carton and sold them door-to-door for 10-cents each. We quickly gave up sales, which can be very trying on little girls, when the really old lady in the tiny house across the way said she had all the shells and sparkly rocks she needed for now, but had been hoping we’d stop by because she had a couple of 50-cent pieces she couldn’t use and had wanted to give us each one. Off to the candy store we went.

Penny candy was already inflated to 2-cents each by this time and I am sure I was telling my friend how she should spend her 50-cent piece for best value, so I still want credit for running something.

There was a backyard circus

I organized various shows, over time, once a backyard circus (which vexed me when my dog refused to jump through my hula-hoop and I hadn’t even lit the flames yet). Also, the neighbor kids balked at having to pay 10-cents per ticket (I had purchased a partial roll of red raffle tickets at a yard sale nearby and they were as valuable to my scheming mind as gold) just because they were performing in the circus in one act or another. but still, I put my all into it.

I felt called to lead a choir

I led “Jeanie Moslander and the Voices of Praise,” wearing an Indian-print blanket as a choir robe, based very closely on Nancy Harmon and the Victory Voices, with one slight difference: I didn’t actually have a choir. I was the choir. I was loud enough to be heard two blocks down as I “played” my headboard as if it were a Hammond Organ – and oh, how I made that thing sing! I bet if any of the York Street neighbors in Des Moines are still alive, they haven’t yet gotten over the sound of a stick-skinny 8-year old preacher’s daughter singing “He washed My Eyes with Tears that I Might See” at the top of her lungs with her Hammond Organ fills and runs just permeating the neighborhood air. No sir, that is not something you can really ever forget.

I never strayed from my first love: running church services

Besides early altar calls for sinful neighbor kids on the cellar door in the backyard when I was 4, on many occasions, I am proud to say – I organized very lively and revivalistic services for all of the church kids in our basement while our parents visited upstairs. We actually had donated theater seating and an antique pulpit down there. Many great testimonies came from those holiness-Pentecostal meetings, not to mention the shouting and devil-rebuking. We were a very demonstrative bunch.

They have that?

This is why, I am pretty sure, when The Love Boat series started airing when I was in high school, I was in awe: there really are jobs where you can plan what everyone else should be doing while you get to carry a clipboard around! Julie McCoy was an activities director on a cruise line and it seemed oh-so-glam! I was just sure it was my life’s call…for at least a year or two.

As I try to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life (I hope I still get to try lots of new things), I knowwwww I

(1) want to be in charge;

(2) will need a clipboard (or an iPad, whichever);

(3) will desperately need and follow after the Holy Spirit;

(4) am hoping I can sing sometimes, with a microphone and a choir, please (organ optional);

and basically

(5) want to ~~make~~ help people have a great (organized) time doing something worthwhile/purposeful/eternal and memorable!

Let’s have some fun, doggonit! Line up here…

Praying Amelie

October 4, 20132 Mi Familia, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Today on Facebook

Oh, Amelie-Belle! I love that you trust your daddy to seek God for you, for the things you need and for your little heart’s desires. And I love that, like the Caananite woman, you keep knocking on that door: Don’t forget, daddy – pray about it, OK, daddy? This will serve you well, sweet-pea.

xxoo Nonna loves you, Belle-Baby!

Oh snow you didn’t!

October 4, 2013Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

But oh yes, it did. A little.

A game for today, anyway, for the kiddos.

A World of Octobers

October 2, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”

~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

I am solar-powered. Grateful for these October mornings where the sun shines at an elongated angle, slightly more golden and slower than just a few weeks ago. At precisely 9:15 am, the entire east-side of my house glitters like yellow diamonds as the morning dances through the wide-open windows and doors and every possible object twinkles with importance to the hum of the Maytag dishwasher.

Oh look – of course some one on Pinterest had already used this quote on a graphic. :)

Of course!

Song for a Sunday // Your Grace Finds Me

September 29, 20131 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, Stuff I Actually Thinkgrace, mattredman, your grace finds meJeanie

It is not only Sunday, but also the birthday of the only boy I ever had (until the reward of Tristan, Dave and Ryan), but his birthday blog will com later.

Meanwhile, this is a song I shared with the birthday boy, Rocky, and his wife Jovan the other day. It has been a challenging couple of weeks for them, with three young daughters and flooded out of their house. They are worn out from everything you have to do to make your house livable again.

This song has amazing words and is full of hope and promise. It basically reminds us that no matter where we are, the GRACE of God (that empowering Presence of the Holy Spirit that enables us to be everything He called us to be and do everything He created us to do) will come and find us again and again.

…there in the sorrow and the dancing, Your great grace, Oh such grace…

How do we know this is true? Well, for Rocky and Jovan and any of us in situations beyond our control and overwhelming to say the least: we recall His goodness through the years, His faithfulness. In every good thing and bad, in the birth of our children, at our weddings, when loved ones have died, when we are rich or when we have been poor – always, every. single. time – His GRACE has found us, has come to us, has filled our lives with His great hope and joy. It all just proves the old hymn true, His grace is AMAZING!

From the creation to the cross, There from the cross into eternity Your grace finds me, yes, Your grace finds me

The fist video is Matt Redman leading the song live. The second is his intro about how and why he wrote it. Watch that and you’ll want to go back and worship along again with the live vid. :) Pretty simple song, you’ll be singing along after the first few lines. Listen for the strains of “Amazing Grace,” too.

So I’m breathing in Your grace and breathing out Your praise…

You are not lost enough that His grace cannot find you. I know this for a fact.

CLICK HERE to watch the video with the words and the guitar chords

Happy Anniversary, Matt & Elise

September 25, 20132 Mi Familia, 3 Celebrations & Festive Events, Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

Elise-the-Niece got married two years ago this week.

I had always imagined getting to go make her a cake, but I didn’t get to be there. *sniff :(

The other day, I was looking through photographs on my computer and ran across some images Stormie snapped while in Aberdeen for the wedding. I selected a few that are just tooooooo cute not to see. These can be inspiration shots for other brides-to-be.

Her venue in Aberdeen S. Dakota

The sign (held by the cutie-patootie, Christiana ~ sister-of-the-bride)

The truck: it held the gifts!

Brown-paper bag lanterns.

The guest book table.

While the wedding party got pictures…

This one was from the actual photographer, of Elise and her maids.

Then the real celebration of love began…

So congratulations to Matt and Elise on two years of wedded bliss.

The P.S.

It was also Elise’s birthday this week. AND their baby, the darling-adorable little Blake Matthew was dedicated to Jesus this past weekend. He is 4 months of beauty and oh-so-beloved by all. They are loved and highly favored by God and their Aunt Jeanie.

Love you, Elise, sweet niece, you and you familia!

I thought this was Tuesday.

September 25, 2013Stuff I Actually ThinkJeanie

So, I know a bunch of you are happy it was hump-day and all that, but dang it! I lost a day somewhere!?

Abundance of Rain

September 25, 20131 Christ is All, 2 Mi Familia, Stuff I Actually Thinkazuza street, colorado, colorado flood, colorado strong, rebuilding, revival, revivals, rocky and jovan rhoades, rocky rhoades, water flowingJeanie

Here are my {humble and extremely astute, hahahaha!} observations on what happens when a lot of rain comes quickly…

Nothing profound or scientific here. Just my thoughts running downstream…

You may be praying for it (in arid, semi-desert areas, we often do), but it shows up in the night while you are totally unprepared, sleeping, minding your own business.

Rocky and Jovan had no warning, when at 3 am, their electricity was out and within 20 minutes they watched water rise from the second step to just a couple of feet from their main level, reaching nearly 6 feet high in their basement. They couldn’t drive out of their cul-de-sac because the street was already rushing and deep, but had to pack quickly for three baby girls. It can be sudden. It was in this case.

It rips your belongings from their places and they just float away.

The next day, Rocky went to his house and everything downstairs was just floating around on its side: furnace, hot water heater, washer, dryer, computers, musical recording equipment and sound systems. All of Rocky’s guitars and instruments (the ones he learned to worship on), were soaked and floating or submersed. Material things float away in a flood, in an abundance of rain.

It fills the creeks, the rivers, bursts through dams, flows down it’s normal contained path in ever-rising power then through streets and places that cannot contain it.

It gets dangerous. It shows up where we were glad to have it and where we weren’t. But it is the nature of abundance. It’s everywhere. It rains on the just and on the unjust, in good ways and in ways that we were not expecting and don’t know how to handle.

Everybody wants to claim they got more of it than some one else.

I don’t want to say too much about this for fear I’ll end up totally snarky. So let me just say, if you lost anything at all, if you are now faced with mold growing where the basement flooded and your childhood keepsakes are gone – it is a loss. It is horrible. And I hope you have some one in your life who will acknowledge that and let you say why the loss affected you and how sad you feel. I really do. But there were people whose houses stayed completely dry who acted like they had been banished to a completely undeveloped third world country because a road half a mile away couldn’t be transversed for 24-48 hours. Keep perspective and get into gratefulness. Maybe the next big tragedy will be all about you – won’t that be nice? There! See? I got into snarkiness. I cannot be trusted.

Some people will lose a lot and then be recompensed with piles of pious platitudes.

Mourn with those who mourn. Maybe what they lost didn’t mean anything to you, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything to them. They are tired. They have a lot of work ahead. When they say, “Oh-I just found out I lost {some, silly, ridiculous, sentimental, inconsequential thing} in the flood,” we should commiserate, we should sympathize, and maybe if we know what that is like, we should empathize. For how long? Until they are done. My conjecture is that if we’d stop and mourn with those who are mourning, their mourning would turn into dancing a whole lot sooner. Sometimes what is lost isn’t recognized right away anyway, in the shocking aftermath of a new normal, of material loss. Encourage, literally give them some of your courage. Listen, let them tell you why that {silly, ridiculous, sentimental, inconsequential thing} meant something. But refrain, pleeeeeease, from pious-sounding-cliches and especially from a “knowing look” that God sent this hard thing to work something in their lives that you totally knew they needed. Because you will not want that coming back on you!

The rushing water brings a cleansing, but cleansing strips away things we didn’t count on, too.

It is a heavenly do-over. Now what will we do with it? It’s a chance to right wrongs, fresh slate, build better, travel lighter, haul away the concentrated, contaminated mud for good.
But in the cleansing – I have one friend who lost everything including her home in Lyons. There is nothing for her to even go back to, her home and those who lived near – all gone. The land will be cleared and maybe eventually that will seem fine, safer for the future, but right now – it represents many families, people who have nowhere to call “home.”
So? A fresh slate can be good, it is also very empty – much work to do!

If the water gets stuck in one spot, it will become stagnant.

There is so much contamination throughout our state now, as the rain has ceased and the rushing has subsided and is sitting still. I have read about the revivals of old, Azusa, the Welsh Revival. Powerful moves of God flowing through and changing the landscape, were eventually dammed up, “named”, coined phrases were assigned to them for categorizing the flow of the Holy Spirit. The rains can be administrated and basically contained…to death. Choose life from this wet mess!

The bug population will suddenly be crazy after it happens.

Because even where the rains have made the grass and trees greener than ever in our state at this time of year, when the good stuff is increased, the annoying stuff {fatigue sets in, bickering, backbiting, distrust, unrest, eye-rolling, offense} increases around it, too. Be aware. Be wary. Be on guard. They seek to destroy the green-life we are enjoying.

See? Nothing profound or scientific. Just a bunch of thoughts rattling around, things I see.

The Bible says where the river flows everything will live. This will eventually probably be one of the most beautiful autumns Colorado has ever seen {both in the natural and because it is bringing people together to do good for one another}. It will take time to rebuild, to get “back to normal,” to regain what was lost. But even now, are we not seeing clearly the great grace and love of God, His heart poured out in love towards us, His great grace at work through His people. He is good. We know this now. But – in the looking back someday, how amazed we will really be, I am sure of it!

~~~~~~~~~~

Zumba, baby!

Meanwhile, the amazing Tammy Brown (the outrageously gorgeous woman married to the ineffable Lewis “Proxy” Brown, yes THAT Tammy) is doing a fitness-fundraiser {how fun is that?} to help Rocky and Jovan as they work to recover their losses! It’s a ZUMBA-thing! You should ALL come! Seriously! THIS kind of abundance – it’s a love-rain!

Thanks to so many who are helping so many others and especially those who are loving on my familia.

The devil in the garden

September 20, 20134 Home & Garden/Food & Seasons, Stuff I Actually Thinkevil in the garden, gardening, hawk-moth, hornworm-moth, hornworms, moths, sphinx-moth, the devil of the garden, tomato hornworm, wormsJeanie

He comes to kill, steal and destroy…and he is green ~ for at least part of his life cycle.

The hornworm. I have told you about him. He can chew through a whole tomato plant in 24 hours flat, engorged and gross, 3-4″ of huffing and puffing, swollen and green slimy-ness from the leaves he has munched through, poop piles littering his path below him as he climbs ever upward, destroying the tomato.

No leaves on the plant = no tomatoes. We HATE the tomato hornworm.

But a lot of gullible people think the moth that deposits the larvae into garden soil around your plants – which becomes the hornworm caterpillar is so cute.

It is all caused by the sphinx moth/hawk moth

But – people think it is a hummingbird. Because it is large, almost the size of a hummingbird. It has interesting coloration and design, not at all bland-blah like the gray-powdery june moth that sweeps through here from Nebraska in sometimes plague-like proportions. This moth flies sort of upright like the bird and has this feathery looking tuft of something or another and is really quite huge and monstrous. This moth is the enemy of the tomato and other garden goodies. the ENEMY!

In my efforts to truly be organic and not use bug killers in my garden, this year I have taken to carrying a fly-swatter with me to put the smack-down on moths which seek to lay eggs in my sweat-composted soil. ‘Tis better, I do think, to save my crops and eat the food I have determined to grow than to let the bugs have it and a little swat and down is better than spraying chemicals or poison sprinkling granules. I admit I may look a little crazy out there, swinging a plastic aparatus at a flighty moth – but I give it a go and some days have success.

But dang the “hummingbird moths.” A kick scan through Facebook and Instagram and 82% of everyone I know is posting a picture of it and celebrating it, thinking it is a hummingbird! People think they are cute!

The other day, while I was armed and ready for battle as 4 of them were sucking juice from my Hibiscus, I caught some eyes peering out the kitchen window from a house across the way. I was swinging away. I sheepishly smiled and waved wondering if she thought I was totally crazy?

A little later Dave happened upon a conversation about all the beautiful little “hummingbirds” in the neighborhood, resistant to the suggestion that they were moths. When he told me, we realized – someone in my neighborhood now thinks I beat the crap out of hummingbirds with a fly-swatter. The word is spreading.

Great. Just great.

sphinx moth = hawk moth = hummingbird moth = heavy-bodied, strong flying insects = from full-grown hornworm larvae = gross = evil = the devil in my garden = yes I kill them if I can.

Boooooooooo.