I have to say that this is ANOTHER good prompt for Sunday Scribblings, even if I am a bit late getting it done!

Courage….what is courage?  Courage, to me, is ALOT of different things, depending upon the circumstances.

Sometimes, every day, ordinary people show more courage than is expected by overcoming situations that would have otherwise paralyzed them.  Fear is a BIG paralyzer that makes some people freeze and NOT do alot of the things that they would normally do if they weren’t afraid.  What are people going to think of me if they know I use an acne treatment?  What if they find out I have cancer?  What if they find out that I’m not as great a person as they THINK I am?  What if they meet my parents?  Oh, that’s a BIG turn-off for some people!

This entry is to celebrate some of the every day heros that are often overlooked….single parents….that nurse who REALLY loves her job…..the cancer and other disease survivors….the people who overcome their fears to do what THEY want to do, except for what Satan (the king of fear) wants them to do…..the people behind the scenes who grow our food, make our electricity, pump our water, protect the public…..Pastors and Preachers who are anointed by God because they are where they are SUPPOSED to be.

Take time out from your day and see if you know an ordinary human being who is a hero of some sort….and then go over and tell them…”GOOD JOB!!”

God Bless!!!

Ahhhh, what a prompt for this week!!!  So many different directions I could go with this entry!!!

I guess the fact that a friend of mine is in the process of making some of MY “big dreams” come true is a good way to go today!!!

I have ALWAYS wanted to live out in the country and train horses.  I always imagined that they were mine, and we aren’t QUITE to that point yet, but I can see it happening in the next 2 or 3 years, at the MOST, if we so desire it.  Granted, I don’t think I ever imagined starting out like we are now….stalls and pens and buildings needing cleaned out….weeds needing pulled (like the ones that I was pulling last Fall that were taller than I am)….pasture in pretty sad shape, grass-wise….buildings needing lights and repairs and such….NASTY trees needing cut before they take over the rest of the pasture….  But you know what?  I wouldn’t trade ANY of the last 6 months or so for the world!!!  Even WITH all of the hard work that we’ve done…and are CONTINUING to do with the Spring-like weather coming!!!  Granted, it may get to a point, this Spring, where it’s going to be a question of whether we will EVER get the place cleaned up like we want it, but I think it will be worth it.  That’s kind of like the last two days of warm weather….I took it upon myself the day before yesterday when I was out screwing around in one of the pens to take down some hog panels (a fence separating two of our runs), and dump a water trough that Lord only knows when it was dumped and cleaned last.  Well, I got it done.  Yesterday, since I had already started taking down the hog panels, I figured I might as well take the rest of them down.  So I did that, and pulled one of the posts out of the ground and filled in the hole.  I was on a role…the weather was NICE….and Lord knows that there is ALOT to do outside, including cleaning out the runs/stalls, so I grabbed a shovel and started shovelling manure over the fence.  It’s too muddy to get the wheel barrow out into the back pasture when it’s loaded, so I just started throwing manure over the fence, deciding that I could move it further out into the pasture at a later date….at the least stalls/runs would have a START towards being cleaned out.  I was out there for probably 3 hours or so…..shovelling manure over the fence almost the entire time.  I didn’t think about how much there was to do….I just kept shovelling…thinking about one shovel-full at a time.  Today was just about the same way, though I ache JUST a little bit from yesterday.  I grabbed a shovel and started shovelling again….for about another 3 hours today.  Would you believe there is concrete down about 6 inches in places out there?  I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.  I am HOPING that I can work on it some more tomorrow.  I actually got started in the stall area on one side today!!!!  Only 15,000,000 more shovel fulls to go in that one stall!!!  Shovelling sh*t is her “big dream”, you ask?  Well, let me put it THIS way….in a way…YES!!!  It gets me outside…and close to horses (which, with the two that are in our front run area, close is about all you are going to manage at THIS point), and it’s improving the living conditions for these two horses!!!  What can I say?  Achy muscles that aren’t used to being used….sore hands and joints….and a BIG pile of sh*t works for me!!!!

On a more private note, we had one of our ducks eaten by…something….the day before yesterday.  We suspect it was a coyote, but we aren’t sure….the possibilities are endless as to the possible varmits out here…..We are exploring the possibilities as to “varmit” control.

God Bless!!!

Okay, I’m not sure here, but there seems to be a trend forming for Sunday Scribblings.  This week, it is “When Pigs Fly” and last week was “Ethics”.

You’ve heard the joke that’s been going around about the President and the swine flu, haven’t you?  “When pigs fly, we’ll have a black President.”  That’s why we had a run of swine flu this year, or so the jokesters say.

When I read the prompt for this week and last week, I immediately thought about the political world.  Interesting, huh?

I think people need to be more careful about their words and how they say things.  People say “When hell freezes over” and such lines a little too often for my liking sometimes.  I’m sure there ARE things that will probably never happen, but then again, there ARE some things that will happen sometime in the future.  Back a few years when they were making science fiction movies like “Demolition Man” and such, people would say that “Hell will freeze over before we have voice activated lights” and such.  Guess what, people….that day is JUST about here.  They are getting the voice activated items more and more sensitive and more and more intricate.  A few more years, and voice activated lights and so forth will start becoming a “standard”, I think.

Have a GOOD weekend and God Bless!!!

Message…..BOY!!!  That’s a broad category in this day and age!!!  Give us something to write about why don’t you?

Hmmmmmmmmm….*thinking*….message….

When I think of “message”, the first thing that comes to mind is ALL of the different kinds of messages that are in our lives these days.  We, as the general public, have been bombarded by them in EVERY form imagineable.  There are text messages, e-mail messages, voice messages….messages on billboards, in newspapers and on television and radio….messages in our mailbox…on our bills….on our bank website….and that is just the TIP of the iceberg on the sources of these messages.  These messages have advertising, business news, job news, jokes, bills and pictures…..we receive “nasty-grams” from the bill collectors if we’re late…we receive invitations to birthdays and weddings and anniversaries, as well as funerals….My, my, my….SOOOOOOO many messages to talk about!!!  Maybe I’ll do some more later!!!

Have a blessed weekend!!!

Ahhhhh, what a prompt this week…..milestone!!!  ALL of us have ALOT of milestones in our lives, so it’s difficult to talk about just one.  Forgive me if I talk about NUMEROUS ones!!!

I guess the biggest milestone I can think of right now is that I am working on some important personal issues, and I have come further than I ever figured that I would….with the help of a couple of VERY important people in my life!!  THANK YOU to both of you, for taking a chance to be friends with me…..AND for being there when I need you!!!

Another milestone that we are working on is being COMPLETELY debt free!!!  It will take a couple of months, and it will require some sacrifices on our parts, but it WILL be worth it in the long run!!  I have never really experienced being debt free, except for before I got married and incurred debt, but I am SOOOOOOO looking forward to seeing how it feels!!!  Needless to say, it means working more hours, and another job or two, more than likely, but in a few months, we will actually SEE our progress!!!

One of my other personal milestones is going to be accomplished over the next few months, as well, and that would be the fact that I can actually get PAID to work with horses!!!  I’ve always figured I MIGHT be able too, but didn’t have the connections to.  Now, though, I DO have the connections, and WILL be taking advantage of them as SOON as the weather will cooperate just a little bit better!!!

Ahhhhhh, sooooo many to list!!!!  Sooooo many possibilities!!!  I might just have to do another entry to list some more!!!

God Bless!!!

Ahhhh, WHAT a prompt to write about!!!  The good, ol’ days, without internet….without television…without telephones, fax machines, and e-mail.  The good, ol’ days of being snowed in, and not worrying about being snowed in for a week, ’cause you knew all your neighbors were snowed in too.  The good, ol’ days of kids being outside playing whenever it was daylight and they weren’t in school, instead of sitting in front of the television or game system or computer for the national average of SEVERAL hours a day.  The good, ol’ days when families actually ate dinner together and played together and prayed together.  The good, ol’ days when husbands and wives actually spoke to each other instead of being on separate computers doing separate things.  The good, ol’ days when wives and/or mom’s actually COOKED dinner and their “goodies” from scratch.  The good, ol’ days when “thank you” wasn’t a foreign word in our vocabulary.

What a wonderful prompt!!
God Bless!!!

This could be an interesting prompt to write about…..adventures.  It seems that EVERY day is an adventure around our house.  That’s probably because, even though we have a loose “plan” for the day, they rarely seem to follow that plan for the WHOLE day.  Seems like there is ALWAYS something that’s not on the agenda, whether it be a horse getting out or getting hurt, or the weather, or maybe just people stopping by.

One of the BIGGEST “adventures” out here in our new house is probably learning WHICH critters are running around out here and how close.  We’ve been smelling skunk off and on for about the last couple of weeks.  At our other house, I can’t really say we had too many skunk visitors, but we SURE had possums and racoons!!  We have those out here too, I’m sure.  We have yet to see them, though.  Wouldn’t be surprised if we find a fox or two at some point either, and we KNOW we have coyotes in the neighborhood.  The other night, it sounded like they were howling from the middle of the dirt road that goes in front of our house!!!

The adventure that comes our way is God’s way, I guess, of keeping us from getting bored with life.  I CAN say one thing…..it’s NEVER boring around our house!!!

Blessings to all on this rainy Kansas morning!!!

I thought this was an interesting prompt this week, even if I am a day or two late getting around to doing it.  Change….Or, in MY case…Change?

Life as a single Mother with one son who has a LOT of extra things going on in their lives has our lives FULL of change of various types.

One of those almost constant changes happening is with my son, who is growing up in so many ways, and not so much in other ways.

Another area of change is our religious life.  In the last few months, we have found that we REALLY have NO place to turn for answers and consolation through all that is going on, but to God.  People of this Earth don’t have any more answers than I do.  And some of this just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  With no place else left to turn, we have been turning more and more to God…for answers to our questions…for provision in ALL areas of our lives….for confidence and strength for the rough days.  We don’t claim to know how to get God to give us everything we need…yet…but we ARE getting some revelation every now and then, from reading the Word, and from talking and discussing things with a few certain people who have a little bit different insight into what the Word says.

One area that’s NOT changing, at this point, is the fact that I plan on remaining single for a LONG time to come.  Someone suggested that I ask a guy from church that I seem to have quite a bit in common with to dinner, just for the conversation aspect.  Good idea…maybe….for another time.  Number 1 problem would be that I don’t think myself socially skilled enough to have the courage to pull something like that off successfully.  Number 2 problem would be the fact that I RARELY see the guy.  He only seems to come to church when he’s assigned to be an usher, and he just did that in October.  Therefore, I can’t really see him in church again any time soon, unless something major changes his mind and touches his heart.  Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a GREAT guy just from the little I’ve been around him…but I’m just not ready to embark into anything more than a friendship at this point.  Some moral support would be WONDERFUL and VERY welcomed…but I don’t want to get anyone else tangled up in the mess we’re in right now.  Maybe down the road, though?…*raises her eyebrows in thought*

What’s that line?…The more things change, the more they stay the same?

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a ghost, and, for some reason, I just can’t grasp the idea in my brain good enough to figure out what I would like to do…hang around and haunt people, I guess.  Make them think they are going crazy by hiding things on them and then putting them in some place they have already looked in about 15 times.  Hey, I have that happen at my house regularly!!!  I wonder if a REAL ghost had the same idea I did?