I was talking with a friend the other day about how limited we can feel some times, but in a different way than I was describing in the post called Two Hands. It has more to do with the concept of enlarging our hearts, expanding our capacity to give and enjoy, to handle interruptions, to meet needs, to adjust to change, to give some more.

For example, some women adore having lots of people coming and going all the time, and it refreshes and rejuvenates them. Others can only take so much before they need a little time out. And some women are completely undone at even the thought of having company for dinner. It’s as though we each have a container of a different size, and we can only take in so much before we start to spill all over floor. Some have a teaspoon that is threatening to spill over any minute. Others have a gallon jug that can take quite a bit of jostling before it slops over.

The Christian life involves community, and that can’t happen without a lot of coming and going. Call it a blessed chaos. Mothers certainly have to have the means to deal with many things all at once all the time. I believe that God equips us to do all that He calls us to do, but sometimes we start thinking we have the resources in ourselves to do it ourselves. Ha! Those are the times that we trip up and slosh all over the floor. But God has infinite resources and He wants to give us more and more. So we should ask Him to increase our capacity, increase the size of our containers (so to speak), so that we can handle all that He gives us graciously and gracefully. Continue reading ‘Large Hearts’

Pssstt!! Would you be a dream and just dash over to the Fortnightly Purse and do one more quick survey? I promise I’ll stop with the survey thing . . . it’s just that I need some info at the moment. And if you do, you can get another entry for the purse . . .

Come on - you know someone who needs a coffee crock for their safari right? So get yourselves on over to The Fortnightly Purse to find out who won the last purse, and enter for this one!

A while back someone on here asked for some fall pics of our lovely Palouse. I took these today while out on a stroll with my good friend Jan, and I’m afraid they look pretty dull in these pictures compared to the real thing. We loaded up our pockets with leaves and acorns and crab apples to spread out on our Sabbath tables. This is why we love fall up here so much. This is also the reason we moved to Idaho back in 1970. Here is the evidence. Take a look.

I should preface this with a sort of disclaimer. I don’t know, to be honest, what kind of disclaimer could possibly cover this - but I’ll give it a shot. Here it is. My excuse.

I’m currently living in the house that ebay built. It truly is the funniest little hodge-podge of who knows what. I’m living overseas, and I know that it’s temporary. We’re sort of in scrounge mode - short timer’s mentality in a sense. Typical grad student story. And what this has done is give me one gigantic chance to sow my wild decorative oats. I can make this little English farmhouse as zippity-do-da as I want, and who’s going to care? I currently possess in my living room, a rasberry colored velvet sofa, complete with fringe, that I paid 1 pound for on ebay and we drove to London to pick up. Some killer curtains that were obviously made to fit a room with 15 foot windows . . . and they are yellow (and I mean YELLOW) with humongous pink cabbage roses. (Wicked cheap at a charity sale.) Then there is the court cabinet - a festive little unit that we have hidden a tv in. It’s a completely indescribable piece of furniture - I don’t think court cabinets ever made it to America. Well, definitely not to Idaho anyway. It has a carved cupboard door in the top, and big carved pineapple posts - and then drawers and cupboards in the bottom half. I’m awfully afraid that I’m about to do something unforgiveable to it - I’m thinking a super-glossy cobalt blue. (Maybe.) I also have not one, but two Welsh dressers that are about to get a coat of yellow paint. (I’ll keep you posted on how that one goes.) A beautiful oak draw leaf table with huge carved legs - I wouldn’t dare do anything awful to that. It’s too gorgeous - but was ridiculously cheap on ebay. Anyway, all I’m saying is that I’m feeling sort of free as the wind blows on my color scheme at the moment. And the more I think about it, the less does that excuse what I did to the piano - I think I may have just confessed all the rest of my decorative sins instead of explaining away this one . . .

Anyway, I just finished this little project. We bought this piano on ebay about a year ago, and since it was such a shabby little thing that no one would ever bother to look twice at, I decided to give it a dash of zing. So I painted it an incredibly glossy sky blue, and then thought it might need just a little bit of something extra. On went the branches and flowers. The trouble was, I did just enough on the branches to give me the satisfaction of seeing what it was going to look like . . . and then I just moved on to other projects. That left the poor red bird sitting there in the middle of nowhere for almost an entire year. I hadn’t gotten those branches done, and time wore on. So yesterday I decided enough was enough and it was time to give the bird a place to sit. So there it is. I finished. And now I can, without a pang of guilt, turn my attention to painting my Welsh dressers yellow.

Here’s my favorite part of this piano: the bit that says Oxford on it. Fun, eh?

And finally, here is a closeup of the bird that finally has a place to land. (It’s glossy paint - there aren’t actually white flecks all over it.)

Anyway, when we move back home to America and I’m the wife of a PhD and we’re settling in for a while - maybe then I’ll have worked all this sort of thing out of my system and will be ever so dignified in my decorating. Maybe if you came over for dinner then, you would find a house that is very solemn and mature and acting its age. Maybe then you would find muted colors and gold tassels and tapestry pillows. Maybe my home will be behaving itself, sticking to standard procedures, and tastefully avoiding glossy paint. Maybe.

I thought it was time for a little Thomas Watson on contentment:

There are three things which contentment doth banish out of its diocese, and which can by no means consist with it.

1. It excludes vexatious repining; this is properly the daughter of discontent: ‘I mourn in my complaint.’ He doth not say I murmur in my complaint. Murmuring is no better than mutiny in the heart; it is a rising up against God. When the sea is rough and unquiet, it casts forth nothing but foam: when the heart is discontented, it cast forth the foam of anger, impatience, and sometimes little better than blasphemy. Murmuring is nothing else but the scum which boils off from a discontented heart.

2. It excludes an uneven discomposure: when a man saith, I am in such straits, that I know not how to evolve or get out, I shall be undone; when his head and heart are so taken up, that he is not fit to pray or meditate, he is not himself: just as when an army is routed, one man runs this way, and another that, the army is put into disorder; so a man’s thoughts run up and down distracted, discontent doth dislocate and unjoint the soul, it pulls off the wheels.

3. It excludes a childish despondency; and this is usually consequent upon the other. A man being in a hurry of mind, not knowing which way to extricate, or wind himself out of the present trouble, begins to faint and sink under it. For care is to the mind as a burden to the back; it loads the spirits, and, with overloading, sinks them. A despondent spirit is a discontented spirit.

A couple of weeks before the Merkles left us for the UK,  Bekah made this beautiful dessert for our Sabbath dinner. Under the whipped cream is a chocolate pot de creme, and the big, fat blackberries were from a friend’s back yard. The espresso cups seemed just the way to serve it. Delish!