Tag Archives: memories

God’s Pleasure, A Prayer for Mi Familia

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

Before I forget ~ I love you, mi familia. That has been my heart motivation towards you from the beginning. Some days my motivations were obvious. Some days, I am certain, they were a total mystery, and had you scrambling to understand.

But if I could exchange, in your mind, the times you got the “mom look,” which made you squirm or feel anything less than the true brilliance I saw in you, if I could trade that out for the gazes you didn’t see, for the times I was pondering you in my heart and I was beaming out of sight when you were singing at the top of your lungs in your bedroom or being nice to that rascal-of-a-neighborhood-kid who needed a friend and I just thought, wow – my children are the most amazing ones ever...Yes, if I could trade some of those moments so you would know the depth of my admiration, my respect, and my abiding love for you (still, more than ever), so that there would never be a way for you to doubt how proud I am of you, well, then, I would. I would do it in a flash.

Meanwhile, this is true: your dad and I pray for you and we pray for your {JOY} because the JOY of the LORD will be your daily, ever-present, help-in-time-of-need, STRENGTH for all the life and living ahead! If you’re choosing between utilizing your own gifts, talents and abilities to achieve successful living, life and love (which you could do, because you have so much in you), versus living a Holy-Spirit-empowered joy-strengthened life, and an abundant joy-strengthened life at that, well, please, my darlings – choose the JOY-strengthened life for sure!

A & G, summer 14

What does that look like? It looks like when Averi and Gemma start doing cartwheels all over the lawn. Here they are, sweet littles and they just start going. And it takes all their arms and legs and gravity and muscle-control and trust and having their hearts and arms opened wide. But when they start and we clap and cheer, those two girls just keep going and going and going like it is nothing at all. They are filled with joy in the moment and the only reason they usually stop is that it’s time to leave or night has fallen. There is no worry about how they will feel tomorrow, for they know tomorrow, they will more joy-strength for many more cartwheels! That is some joy-strengthened living!

Let’s plan to get more {joy}. We are praying that for YOU!

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“Since we first heard about you, we’ve kept you always in our prayers that you would be filled to overflowing with the revelation of God’s pleasure over your lives. This will make you reservoirs of all wisdom and spiritual understanding. We pray that you would walk in the ways of true righteousness, pleasing God in every good thing you do. Then you’ll become fruit-bearing branches, yielding to his life, and maturing in the rich experience of knowing God in his fullness! And we pray that you would be energized with all his explosive power from the realm of his magnificent glory, filling you with great hope and {JOY} in the Holy Spirit!”
Colossians 1:9-11 The Passion Translation

AMEN! Oh, yes – Amen!!!

Before I forget to tell you ~ God is pleased with you.

And so am I. {mom}

 

The York Street House & a Song for a Sunday

5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , ,

If you have been on this blog over time, you know that 1723 York Street, my childhood home, still holds pieces of my heart.

The windows are all smaller now. Modern. The neighbors got closer. Some trees are gone…(googlemaps image)

The  Academy of Country Music just named this the song of the year.

 

The House that Built Me by Miranda Lambert


 

It’s like she was reading my mail.

Remembering

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

“How we remember is as important as what we remember.”  -Brent Curtis and John Eldredge in The Sacred Romance

“We view the present through the pasts glasses,”  -P. Arnold

Viewing the past through the chosen treasure of my heart rather than making a list, checking it twice just so I can remember who was naughty or nice…

I don’t have room in my head for everything.  For most of my life I had a “continuing -calendar” in my head.  You could name a date in my history and I could scroll backwards and tell you, because I could actually “see it” in my mind,  what day on which that date occurred, as well as related events and things that stood out from the time surrounding it.  I remembered every telephone number I’d ever had, addresses including zip codes (and if you know my moving history, you know this was quite a feat) and remembered birthdays and anniversaries for every relative we had, even “in-laws.”

Then I crashed.  I had a system blow-out.  The hard-drive in my brain fried.  My RAM was so full it exploded.  2006.  I became an unwilling recipient of a brain-erase, kinda like “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” but also sort of an emotional lobotomy.  It wasn’t pretty.  I didn’t want it.

I couldn’t keep it all, so I had to choose.

I started a trek to retrieve my lost memories: the good ones, the treasures, the fine times, the blessings.  Because keeping a record of absolutely-everything had caused me to melt-down, lose my way, hurt people and feel sick – literally sick.  I have to remember to remember blessing sometimes.  I have to be reminded to recall the good things, the rich, the treasure. 

The ways I want choose to remember:

1.

I HAVE TO REMEMBER With my eyes fixed on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of my faith.  He endured and I can endure, too {all things}, for the joy set before me.  For all the ways I have failed and sabotaged His call on my life, He has a plan to bring me out and set me right.  He is my Story-Writer, my Author.  He knows the whole plot-line of my life and it isn’t finished until He says so.  He will finish my story – I can’t wait to turn the page!

2.

I CHOOSE TO REMEMBER For the joy set before me.  There is life ahead (as there has been so much to be thankful for already!), there is laughter to be shared.  If I look back in sorrow I will miss the present.  The present is a gift.  So, I look back long enough to catch glimpses of the people who still matter and see that we have so much more ahead for us.  I joy in the God of my salvation and thank Him for all He has done and I go forward in that strength.

3.

I HAVE TO REMEMBER LIKE A GROWN-UP… because when I was a child, I thought and acted like a child…but now that I have put away childish things, I can see and understand the past more clearly, with the wisdom of years, with understanding and a heck of a lot more grace.  I can see that my reactions to some things of the past had some immaturity and needed to be readjusted in my heart.  I can, as a grown-up, let some people off the hook, now.  It frees both them and me.

4.

I WILL REMEMBER Redemptively – as part of the good work God started in us, which He is being faithful to complete.  There is a whole love story being played out.  I love seeing how God is able to use the sometimes-shattered fragments of my broken life to create a whole, cool thing.  Redemption is awesome.

5.

I WANT TO REMEMBER Aware of the accuser’s distortions of truth, careful to hear the Voice ( “My sheep know my voice”).  Some memories are torment.  I am asking the Lord to give me clear vision to see when the Accuser has used the past to cripple my present.  And to show me what He was seeing when all seemed lost…

6.

I AM COMMITTED TO REMEMBER so that the LORD might be glorified {the prayer God always answers}!  He is all, everything and I want my life and my memories to bring Him glory.  May He be glorified in my story…

NOTE TO SELF:  Choose to remember the faithfulness of God, the love, the people I can’t live without, the blessings, the miracles, and see even the pain and disappointments with gratefulness for their part in my redemptive story.  And remember, too, that He is the Author and the Finisher of my faith-story.  We’re just somewhere in the middle.  The ending is going to be fabulous!   (Make this a repetitive reminder on my life’s calendar from now until….let’s see…I get to heaven!)

~oooooo~

“…It’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember, the way we were…”

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

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

A Summer’s evening at the Neighborhood School Ball Park.

Baseball is summer’s game.  We didn’t have a TV most of my growing up years, but the radio was tuned in to St. Louis Cardinal’s games as the sun went down on summer nights.  The cracking sound of the bat hitting the ball and the crowds going wild, along with the rev-the-crowd organ music drifted through the open windows mingling with the sounds of playmates and I chasing fireflies and whirling hoola-hoops around our waists.  The screen door slammed, as in and out we’d go and beer commercials would ring out between innings.

 

Tools of the trade.

We don’t do it enough, but now and again, Rocky will get a group of us together to run up the street and play softball at the elementary school.  And each time we say, “We have to do this again soon,” because even my grown children, now, have become nostalgic as they remember the years they played ball all day every day with the neightborhood kids.

  

Uncle Rocky pitching to Gav-at-bat.  The cheering crowds.  DP up to bat.

When I feel the morning grass I let down my guard
Because love comes from the dirt in my own backyard
Everytime I think I’ve finished being young
I catch myself having fun

My husband, Dave, up to bat.

Recently, on one of those lovely evenings that make you wish summer could last forever, Rock got us all together, the fam and some good friends.  There is just nothing like some bats, a good, broken-in leather glove and bases to run around.  Good times!

  

Pepler.  Guini and Nonna (me).  Gavin hits it!

But the moment passes as the sun moves on
So I turn myself back to you…
And it’s depressing that I can’t forget the tune the organist played
La  – da da da da da da,  la  – da da da da da da…
 
Dave at bat.  The boys taking a breather.
Everytime I think I’ve finished being young
I catch myself having fun
But the moment passes as the sun moves on
So I turn myself back to you
Is our season over?  No four leaf clover?
 

The boys of summer:  just coming down “Front Street,” as DP likes to say.  Shirt by Stormie

 

Hunter and Gavin will climb anything.  Tristan swinging the pipe…as a lefty!

I feel it’s getting colder…
But can you still remember?
April to November
You and I were members
Of the best team in baseball
So we play our games…
Rocky…Serious about pitching.

Lyrics: Baseball

All of these pictures: by Stormie!

21 Days ’til Christmas ~ Holidays are Joyful!

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

“The lights on my tree, I wish you could see, I wish it everyday.”

I grew up with very traditional Christmas music.  The 1960’s were when you could purchase an LP for $1.98 at the supermarket full of all the classic songs like “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” and “A Few of My Favorite Things”  by various artists including Johnny Mathis or The Ray Conniff Singers.  Occasionally you’d buy an album by a stand-out like Bing Crosby.  I still treasure the 2 Christmas records I have by him.

“Merry Christmas, Darling,” by the Carpenters was my first sort of non-traditional Christmas pop-song.  I’d hold my dad’s little transistor radio (which I’d snuck from his second dresser drawer) to my ear, and, at barely 11, sing along with Karen, trying with all my heart to understand her longing.

Through the years more and more Christmas music has been added to the songs I love.  Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers have produced some great stuff.  Lee Greenwood sings a couple that always pierce my heart.  The Partridge Family album still makes me laugh and I even enjoy a Motown Christmas.  Harry Connick Jr. is great for seasonal cheery tunes as well as some sacred and I do love the 90’s Mariah Carey album.  And let’s not forget that Amy Grant, is a Christmas-music genius.

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Looking Back

But this year, I am feeling very traditional again.  I am reaching back to music I grew up with, the songs my mom played on the Hi-Fi during my early days.  I am less about the pop side of Christmas and anything that has been produced since 1970 and on, and sort of loving melodies that have been recorded so many times no one even remembers who did them first (like “Winter Wonderland”) and some that have been recorded a lot but the first recording is all that matters (like “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby).

The cool thing now is, of course, that “Merry Christmas, Darling” is a classic.  It IS one of the old tried and true songs of the season.  And now I understand the deep sentimentality.  For I wish, if I might “have the wish that I wish for tonight,” to gather everyone I love from near and far together during these long, dark winter nights to laugh and remember, to sing and make merry, to be close and bask in the 6-7000 lights on my tree.  And we could play Karen and sing…

That I wish you a Merry Christmas

Happy New Year, too

I’ve just one wish on this Christmas Eve

I wish I were with you, I wish I were with you. 

Bed space is limited here.  So if you are going to come and see me and make my wishes come true, please call in advance.

pictured: The Moslander family Christmas card, 1968.  Jeanie, Joey, Timmy, Tammy and Danny (Love love love to my siblings!  Please note: I was reading from The Children’s Book of Knowledge – which is why you are all so successful and smart.  You may thank me with a very nice Christmas gift.)