Looking back? Will you forgive me?

I am asking forgiveness of all of my sisters and brothers in the Lord and from all of those who read this blog. There have been a couple of posts here that I am very unhappy with but posted anyway, they were words straight from my heart typed out here and the Lord has dealt with me on some things that I feel I should type out an apology for.

Last Sunday our pastor preached and though the message was directed to other topics he made a statement about Lot's wife that dropped the heavy weight of conviction clear on my heart. Pastor said that Lot's wife was turned to a pillar of salt for looking back (duh, we all knew that already right?)....what I had never noticed before was that Lot's wife was leaving behind in Sodom children and family members that she loved deeply!! That poor woman was probably very very stricken with grief not only in leaving them behind but in leaving them behind to destruction and judgment.....as pastor said, who could blame her for looking back. Anyway, she was disobedient to the Lord in that she looked back upon the destruction of Sodom.

Well, if you read the "graduation day" post and a couple of others I'm sure you can tell that I've spent a fair amount of time "looking back". I made a lot of mistakes before I was saved and living for the Lord and so did Troy.....in fact both of our lives are very very sin scarred and though the Lord has brought us a very long way every single day is a battle of one sort or the other. I am so very thankful that the Lord saw fit to deliver us out of the "Sodom" that our lives had become and healed us of our sin sicknesses and I have no business wasting the precious time the Lord has given me looking back with such sadness and grief. I feel awful in how I must have grieved the Lord in those posts and I hope that you will all be able to forgive me for such wallowing. I am so terribly sorry to have allowed myself to become such an ugly example for anyone who happened across my blog!

I am trying to learn to let the past stay right where it is and trust the Lord to deal with family members and loved ones who don't understand why we live as we do now. It has been very hard for me to just keep going forward with the life the Lord has given me and not try to take a U turn to go back and correct my entire past......I honestly don't know if Lot's wife knew how to go forward and not look back. It has proven to be one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do. I've left behind so many folks that I truly cared for and known that they were only running to destruction with the sinful wicked lifestyles they chose, and I've left behind many loved ones who I simply didn't know how to reach once I was saved and our paths became so starkly different that they felt I'd lost my mind. Pray that I will be stronger in the Lord and stop looking back from the pit that God so graciously and mercifully lifted me out of......He truly delivered me from the very edge of death and destruction......pray that I will just continue forward and seek Him first and constantly in all things!!!

So far behind!

I thought I would post a quick picture of our latest kitchen project.....blackberry jelly!!! We have picked more berries the last few weeks than I want to try to think about. We've eaten a bunch, given away gobs of them and turned a couple gallons of them into jelly!! Tae and Caleb had a blast trying to lick the big pot clean.....they quickly learned that jelly pans are nothing like cake batter bowls.....Tae says they are still really yummy though and worth the sticky fingers. We like to heat it up and have it on pancakes and waffles or just like it is on top of ice cream is really good too! We are officially hooked on this jelly.




The big stumper of the day is how did I get so far behind? Do you ever just sit there and look around you and think that there is just absolutely no way at all that you can ever catch up on everything and that maybe the best solution is to have a huge weiner roast in the yard.....matches anyone??? I've spent the entire day trying to catch up on the house, the garden, the mail, the email, the bills, the blogs, the kids stuff etc.....and yet I'm at least 3 full days behind on everything except the laundry. I'm sure I will get caught up on everything in time, and I am probably not really as far behind as I think I am.....just getting older and a little more aware of how much time I lose when I can't find what I'm looking for around here.

Anyway, with the heat maybe the boys and I will be forced to stay in during the hottest parts of the day and work on this pig sty. I'm really wanting to get everything caught up and get some summer time schooling done with the boys. Tae, or Fred as she has come to be known by all of us here in crazyland, will be staying a few days with some very sweet friends of ours who have a house full of cute babies.....right up Fred's alley!! I'll miss my tater girl, but I'm happy that she will be able to be a help to our good friends and their sweet babies.

Troy is right now this very minute as I type working on my chicken house!!!! I can't wait to get my chickens! It looks really good for the first ever effort he has made on a project like this too! Caleb wants to paint it like a barn....LOL. I may let him do it ....we'll see. I'll try to post pictures when I get a chance.

We are so blessed to have the life we have now. I was just thinking this morning while I was out picking more blackberries how far we are from where we were when I got saved and how far we are now from a year and a half ago when Troy got saved. The Lord has been so good to us!!

Rain rain go away

A ramble.

I'm tired of rain.... I know it really hasn't been raining all that long but these kids are so used to being outside all day and doing things that they are going nuts being stuck inside.
I've been such a bad blogger lately and had hoped to get some of that caught up today but the kids are bored. With the wind that's whipping up outside right now I have a feeling we'll be picking up leaves and sticks from the yard for at least a day....
I hope my tomatoe plants don't get killed....and the rest of the garden doesn't turn back into quicksand.
I can't wait to pick more blackberries.
My mending pile is getting overgrown.
Maybe I should bake some bread, that sounds good.
I don't know what to cook for supper....hmmm.
Maybe I could squeeze a nap in.
I think I'll make biscuts and gravy for supper, or toad in a hole.
I don't like tropical storms.
I think I'll let Caleb do some studying online to get him to sit still for awhile.
See ya

blackberries and bugs and chickens oh my!

We have been so so busy lately, but good things so that definitely isn't a complaint. We've been picking blackberries almost daily in hopes of freezing enough to eat them through the winter months....problem is we can't stop eating them now. I have made jelly and several cobblers and a few cheesecakes, we've had them on ice cream and just in a bowl all by themselves. I plan to make more jelly and pick as many as I can but with 3 hungry kids and a hubby who loves them we may not get that many frozen or jellied. My family is so easy to please.....just bring in a bucket of berries and they will all happily sit down at the table munching away and visiting!

Bugs....yuck, I hate them and they are making me miserable!! We went to the pond to go fishing last week and now I am covered...literally, with chigger bites. It's hard to believe how much they itch and how much sleep they are costing me but I'm still thankful that all bug bites is all they are....we thought chicken pox for awhile. I will always always always wear bug spray at the pond now!!

Me and Troy were up late last night trying to decide on the details of my soon to be built chicken coop!!! Yippeeeee, I get chickens!!! I can't wait. One of the sweet ladies at our church is giving me some of her bantams! I have to hurry and get them a house built or should I say I have to sweetly stand in the yard and try to not hurry Troy as he builds them a house. Whatever....I get chickens!!

Life is fun!

Graduation Day

My oldest son is graduating high school today!!! I still just can't believe how time has flown by me. It seems sometimes that he should still be that tiny little kid with the cottony white hair that was always always begging to go fishing. Joshua has always been such a joy to me and it truly has broken my heart in so many ways that I can't go and see him receive his diploma. He has worked so hard to earn it with little to no help or support from anyone else and I could not be more proud of him.

A little over 15 years ago Joshua's daddy and I were divorced...no lectures please, I know how awful it is and for the record it was never what I chose. After I was thrown (literally) out of the home and the process of divorce was begun I had gone to take Joshua to see his dad and older sister Jessi. During that visit another argument erupted between me and the dad and I ran with Josh to get in my truck and leave.....the dad followed me still trying to fight and reached into the truck and yanked Josh out carseat and all. Of course I chased him and tried to take my son back but he was handed off to a relative in the house who locked the door and kept my baby from me. I fought and screamed and tried my best to fight my way through the man standing between me and the door and my son. I ended up lying on the sidewalk with six broken bones getting my head kicked by a man who outweighed me by 125 lbs while a police officer informed me that I had to leave or be arrested. That marked the beginning of a 7 year long court battle for custody of my son.

Again and again I did whatever I had to do (some things legal and some not so much so) to pay the outrageous legal fees at the ripe old age of 19 and after having been beaten so badly that I lost my chance at a career in nursing and ability to hold most jobs that I was qualified for because of the injuries. Again and again I showed up to court hearings alone because no one in my family felt the need to be there to support me and I had no one else in the world but them and my kids. Again and again I tried to explain to the judge that my age would not prevent me from being a good mother to my son and that he needed me as much as I needed him. Again and again I cried myself to sleep all alone in my apartment with the knowledge that my toddler son who suffered from asthma was in a home filled with animal waste and filth of every variety. Again and again I begged and pleaded with the dad to let me see him and Jessi ......to talk to them on the phone, anything that would help me feel the tiniest bit closer to them. Again and again I went back to the dad and tried to work things out, to be whatever he wanted me to be so that I wouldn't have to suffer the pain of losing my children and going through with the divorce and again and again he would throw me out all over again chosing his cheerleader girlfriend at the high school he worked at over having me there to raise the kids and be his wife.

I was so alone and in so much pain and I had no clue what to do about any of it! My father had committed suicide only 3 months before Josh was born, my mother was a college student with a 4 year old son and a boy in high school who was in constant trouble himself and she simply didn't have the energy left to help me in even the smallest way. Though I technically had a very large family they were all far away and very uninvolved with my life. I had no one left and no where to go for help and no one who cared to hear my cries. So I drank....A LOT. I drove around for days on end looking and looking for some way out of this life that I was stuck in and a way to escape the pain I felt. I was totally and completely lost and without hope. I gave up and caved in to every whim of the flesh. I became all that I had hated in life before then.

I watched my son do without so many of the parts of life that most kids take for granted and his dad took every opportunity to find ways to even further exclude me from the kids lives like refusing to tell me when they were in a play at school and being out of town with them when I was supposed to pick them up for weekend visits. Josh wasn't provided proper medical and dental care or even proper nutrition and suffers numerous health issues because of it all.....his dad just never felt like taking the kids to the dentist or doctor was important even though I offered to take them and we provided insurance for them.

It really hurts to see your children suffer needlessly and to be able to do nothing about it. It hurts even more when people who don't really know the ins and outs of the situation want to take every opportunity to tell me what a horrible mother I am for not having done better by them. I was recently lectured about not being there to attend Joshua's graduation.....if that person only knew the lengths I have contemplated going to in order to be there, but I must forgive them for speaking in ignorance. I have been told by other folks that his graduation is only a worldly tradition and that I shouldn't get upset that I can't go.......it is a worldly tradition that much is true, but is also yet another milestone in my son's life that I have to miss and feel guilty about for the rest of my life.....another one of those things that was important to him that I can't share with him that other people will rub my face in forever. I'm sad about it all today. I'm sad that he doesn't have me there to be in the pictures with him.......he said to me on the phone that he was going to have to bring his pictures when he gets to see me next time and see if we can photoshop me into one. Honestly I don't think that either one of us expected to be so upset today but we both are and I guess that sometimes it's okay to be sad.

To all of you who felt so secure in judging me for not being there today and feel so superior to me as a mother because you have your children with you.....take a minute to put yourself in my shoes. Your child is torn from your arms as you scream and cry and BEG to just hold him. You stand there and see him crying out to you with his arms stretched just as far as they can but you are helpless to help him. As you try to fight to get to him with every ounce of strength you have you can hear your bones being broken but you feel nothing but a raging need to hold your son.....until later on and then for the next 15 years as you watch him from a distance you feel every bit of that pain, physical and emotional every single day of your life and it is amplified as you go about your life (what is left) feeling that void where you once held that son and instead of the void becoming filled or less painful it grows with your son. Every time someone forgets to mention that child your heart feels as though it was scraped by a razor's edge, yet when someone asks how he is you feel the searing heat of judgement falling on you. Mother's day is the hardest day in the world to endure and family holidays are pure misery. He is the first person you pray for every morning and the last that you pray for every night. You live every moment not knowing anything about his life until after the fact and every second feeling guilty for not knowing where he is and what he is doing right at that moment. You always want to talk about him with your friends and family but tire of getting those looks of contempt and vague disinterest that are so thinly veiled by a gauzy layer of social civility. You went on with your life because you couldn't end it but are feeling constantly criticized and looked down upon and gossiped about by everyone you know for having done so.....and you always wonder what if it had been them instead of me. You feel permanently incomplete no matter what and you know that absolutely no one understands your pain, in fact most people don't think that you have the right to feel pain for that loss. Everytime you hear another mother complain about her children you fight the urge to scream at the mother and hug that child. Everytime you hear other parents talk about needing a break from their kids or time away from them you cringe inside and fight the urge to tell them how it feels to be stripped of a child for the rest of your life and remind them that their children won't stay children. Know that unless you have gone through what I have you can't possibly understand it and that you have no right to condemn me.

How I wish I had known Jesus then!!!! I often wonder what would be different now if I had known Him. The heartaches and soul scars that I could have been spared!! If only I had been told about the Lord what pain I could have saved not only myself but my children. The only comfort today comes from knowing that Josh and I are both saved by the grace of our Lord and that because He loved us we will be together again in Heaven someday and then no one will ever hurt us again.

Garden update

This was supposed to go onto the bottom of the page but it's here so isn't it cute!!! My first little cayenne pepper!



Now that I can walk around out there without sinking in and losing my shoes I thought I would post a few new pictures. We still have A LOT of work to do out there including some more clearing and lots of weeding and mulching and still planting but it has really come a long way from the pictures posted here when we were busy trying to clear it out in the beginning. http://jeanniet.blogspot.com/2006_03_01_jeanniet_archive.html

We have snow peas flowered and ready to start making pods, green beans getting ready to set on, corn growing, tomatoes flowered, and baby cayenne green on the plant. We also have planted 3 different kinds of canteloupe, 4 kinds of watermelon, 4 kinds of squash, 2 types of cucumbers and sweet potatoes, lima beans and black eyed peas. I still plan to plant potatoes, beets, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, more green beans, pole beans, more squashes, eggplants, pumpkins and whatever else I get in the mood to plant. I looks a lot smaller in the pictures than it actually is, and it's really hard to see the plants but they really are there and they really are growing.

Anyway, that's how the garden is looking these days. If all goes as I hope it does these pictures will change dramatically within the next few weeks as I haul in LOTS more mulch ( to avoid the quick sand incident repeating) and plant LOTS more stuff. We really have a lot of work to do but this winter when we sit down to eat it will all be worth every minute of backaches and blisters!

Pictures of our trip

My kids will never forget their first ever visit to an amusement park!! We all had so much fun. I thought I would go ahead and post a few pictures here so all you folks can see it too but silly me never stopped to think that there aren't many rides that go slow enough to take a good picture of the kids on. Troy took one of them riding the carousel though.
Okay, so maybe I will never really be enough of a techie to get pictures on this page the way I want them but that's okay by me.



They were all just plumb tuckered by the time it was all said and done! Ain't they cute!!!

Wow, what fun we had!!! The kids still haven't stopped talking about visiting their first theme park and roller coasters and all the fun that was had. I don't think I will ever forget the looks on their faces and it was all so worth the long wait for them to be the ages that they are before going....I know they will never forget it either. Some very sweet and very generous friends of ours blessed us with this outing and we really enjoyed the time with their family too. Just look at their smiling faces standing in the parking lot just before the park opened chomping at the bit to get in and ride the rides.

The Hamster is in the cage

Doesn't that just sound like something you would hear in a spy movie? I am very happy to announce that our visiting hamster friend is safely back in his cage after a brush with a very eager to hunt kitten. My hubby rescued him from behind the refrigerator and now he is happily munching on yogurt drops and most likely vowing never to escape again. Praise the Lord for answering prayers!!! My boys both just prayed and prayed that we would find the hamster before the kitties did so they could return him safely to his owner.

I wanted to post pics of my garden today but right now I just don't have the time. I am hurrying and hurrying to get all of my chores done today for the next two days, but the kids are happy to help this time so who knows I may actually get to it. Everything seems to be growing and considering that we only just burned off the brush and started working on this place a couple of months ago I guess I should be pleased with our progress.....but if you know me at all you know that I'm really only cracking the whip all the harder wanting to get more and more done. I would love to clear out the rest of the area back there and plant more stuff and get those blackberry brambles under control and turn some of the yard into gardens and plant fruit trees and the list just keeps on going. SIGH!

Anyway, I was saying that I won't be posting pics today (probably) because we are getting things done so that we can go visit a theme park tomorrow!! My kids will be so excited! They have never ever been to an amusement park or a fair or circus or any of that kind of thing so this will be an extra great treat for them. We are being treated by friends and I'm probably one of the most excited people in the bunch.!! Hubby is taking the day off work so that makes it even more better!! I'll be sure to post pics of the trip.

I also wanted to thank Mr. Paul Jett for putting the information to subscribe to his wife Linda's newsletters in his comment. Mr Jett and his wife have a wonderful farm and store in Texas and absolutely beautiful gardens and blackberry bushes!! Check it out on their homepage and subscribe to the newsletter for more excellent informative articlesby Mrs. Jett.

To subscribe, send ANY message to: bbhfarm-subscribe@associate.com
"Bluebird Hill Farm Newsletter ArchivesWould you like to visit our Associate.com archives where our Bluebird Hill Farm articles have been archived since 2002? Go to http://freegroups.net/groups/bbhfarm You will find the messages are kept by the month. You can click on the month and get a listing of all the articles sent out that month or if you want to find particular subjects like Farm/Garden, Virtuous Women, Prayer Bulletins, Bulletin Boards, Recipes, Questions/Answers, and much more, just type in the "search box" the subject you want. Increase the maximum hits number and it will bring in more articles of that subject at a time to choose from.Our old archived articles are held in Topica.com http://lists.topica.com/lists/BBHFarm/read These go from 1999 to early 2002. The search engine in this one is not too good, but the articles are listed for you to choose from. Keep each page of 100 articles alphabetized by aligning the "subject" button and you can find articles relatively easy."Our website is www.bbhfarm.com .Pictures are in "The General Store" hyperlink on the main page. Contact information is there also.

That's all for now. See ya later.

A quick hello.....

And then we are off to church for the Wednesday evening meeting. Things have been a little slow going here the last couple of days as I fight off a migraine but thankfully there hasn't been anything too pressing or urgent come up. We are on the look out for an AWOL hamster that we are taking care of for some friends who are out of town....please pray that we find him and return him to the safety of his cage before one of the kitties finds him and decides to play taste tester with him.

I keep telling myself that I'm going to find the time to post a good long catching up post but no such thing has been happening. We have managed to stay plenty busy and seem to only find more to do. I learned how to make quicksand and now have a garden full of the stuff!! Yup, real honest to goodness quicksand is in my garden and I have now lost two pair of shoes in there and Tae has lost a pair too. After several phone calls to various "experts" I think that the only thing I can do to try and salvage what garden I have planted is to get several truck loads of mulch and put that on there ......hopefully that will absorb the excess moisture and donate some friction to the sand all without me having to dig up and transplant every single plant that we have in the ground. I'll try to get out and take some pictures soon and post for you. It looks like regular old sandy dirt until you step on it and then it looks like a waterbed mattress that someone has stepped on .....it waves under your feet until it sucks you down in the muck!

Now before I get a bunch of emails telling me how quicksand can kill me and suck me under the ground like in the movies let me remind you that movies are extremely expensive lies and that reality very rarely if ever is like the movie version. That said quicksand is truly only sand that has lost it's friction. It's rarely in the real world any deeper than a few feet and won't kill you or trap you in the muck....though it is a little hard to get loose from once you sink in to the calf. Both of my lost pair of shoes are a little over knee deep in that mess and I sure am not in a hurry to try fishing them out.....thankfully they were very old very cheap shoes in the first place. If you want a little lesson on what quicksand is really then try looking it up on www.howstuffworks.com

The only other really big news here is snakes. Everyone who knows me knows that they only thing that will scare me into running is a snake....or a banana peel that someone thinks looks like a snake and says "is that a snake?" I nearly stepped on a water mocassin last week and am still recovering from the shock I think. Now when I go out to the garden I wear my boots (steel toes.....hehe bit that snakey) and take my gun.....oh and did I mention praying the whole time that I don't see another snake. We are looking for guineas and will get some as soon as I find some for sale....praying that they will eat the snakes and ants and other creepy crawlies that I really don't need to have.

If you read the comments on here you may notice one from a fella named Paul.....apparently he is Linda Jett's husband and read her articles on my blog! Hopefully Mrs. Jett isn't upset that I posted her wonderful articles here....I just love to share good information and couldn't help myself. If I get any information about how to find more of her articles etc...I'll be sure to post it here.

It's time for me to get ready to go so I'll E ya'll later.

More How to Save Money

This is more from Linda Jett on how to save money. I did not write it but am sharing it. Please keep in mind as you read this that *I did not write it* and *you won't agree with every single thing in it*. That said enjoy!!
How To Save Money Part 2

Eat sensibly! Eat more reasonably priced foods. Get off of the ridiculously priced foods and eat plainer, which is more healthy anyway! Try to see just how much nutrition you can find for your family for a month. At the same time try to see if you can cut the family food budget in half and then in quarter. I can assure you that most of you can do that, still have money left over AND have yummy satisfying meals that keep your family content because their nutritional needs have been met and they are satisfied. Women today are spending "their husbands time and money away" on foolish menus! Plain "country" food eaters are usually healthier eaters and seldom have large food budgets. The children also learn from infants to eat all the foods put onto the table. Picky eaters are expensive eaters and often fail to get good nutrition. How many folks do I hear "I don’t like that" but have failed to ever try to eat it! Quite often! But, how surprised they are as they try the required "spoon of everything" at our table. Plus remember, our taste buds change throughout the years and just because we didn’t like it several years ago doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like it now. You can also acquire a taste for foods by taking a bit of it for 21 days. Just like "it takes 21 days to change a habit", twenty-one days can acquire a new taste.

Grow some food.! The virtuous woman did and she fed her family well, got exercise, fresh air, satisfaction from working with the earth, and was well rewarded with the delicious, fresh food she had for her family. Her budget did exceedingly well from her labors!

"Work" instead of "work out establishments"! Work is fruitful, useful and God-instructed. "Work out establishments" are a costly way of doing things instead of more strenuous work that can benefit yourself and others. Why would we pay to work hard and almost abuse ourselves when we can "almost abuse ourselves" by doing harder, productive work that can be fruitful and even sleep well from it? Children who need these facilities are wasted assets. They can be given labor-intensive work to take the place of paying someone to "tone up" the body. I had boy cousins who did push mowing of several acres, hay field work, hoeing, fencing, working cattle, loading watermelon trucks to take the melons to market, and more and they were "toned up", muscular, healthy boys! They ate the fruits of their labors and were healthy and ruddy faced as the shepherd David. It is our fault today that we, and our children, are soft, flabby, and need somewhere to work out because we have become unfruitful and undisciplined. We need someone to make us "work out" or someone to pay, so we feel compelled to do what we are not disciplined enough to do ourselves. The woman who feels the need to go somewhere to "work out" has never read all of the requirements for the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31. Where would she ever find the time? Besides in her list of "to do" it says "She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms." Proverbs 31:17. Have trouble sleeping? Work harder! It is a wonderful cure for sleepless nights!

Learn to take care of your family yourself! Doctors used to be for emergencies. They used to fix bones or sew folks up. They were for life and death situations. Today they are the one the family sees until they are almost first name basis. Women used to pass on to their daughters how to take care of their families health and needs. There was not the constant doctor bills that folks live with today. With the vast amount of books, internet and other materials there is little excuse for not trying to get back to caring for our own families and saving the expense of minor medical bills for those things that are major.

Go to bed earlier – work better, save utilities! People who truly put in a WORKday are ready to go to bed earlier. They eat less, snack less and use less electricity. They don’t need so much to entertain them because they don’t sit around long hours, thus they don’t spend so much for entertainment or go so much.

Have only one car! Families who have only one car pay insurance for only one. The wife stays home more. They save in gasoline, more home prepared meals, they have time to take care of the home and family better. They have time to grow some food to eat, make their own clothes. They become fruitful rather than "running the roads." The more they can run the roads, the more they can shop. When I was a girl each family (hopefully) had one car. Once a week one woman among neighbors or friends would take her husband to work for the day, or after lunch, and they would "car pool" going to the grocery store for the week’s groceries. Children held sacks, floorboards were full, the trunk was full, but they didn’t pay for an extra car, they didn’t pay for child care, they shared the gas, oil, and tire expenditures! Plus, they only went to the grocery store ONCE a week. Some families did only once a month shopping. Too many cars also encourage the family to be involved in too many things, clubs, circles, etc.! It is such an easier thing to be "a keeper at home" without the temptation of a second car. I haven’t driven in years and it hasn’t hurt us a bit. Only saved!

Wear your clothes until they are dirty or smelly! Too many people wash their clothes to death. If clothes are not dirty, stained or smelly they need to be reused. Often hanging something out to freshen in the sunshine for an hour will do wonders for things that still look clean. You save on the clothes that you are washing to death. You save on the washing machine, water, dryer, utilities, cleaners and TIME.

Use plainer soaps and cleaners! The internet is full of a world of homemade soaps and cleaners. Women pay many dollars for what simple vinegar, baking soda, ammonia or soap and water can do! The laundry soap recipe we have sent out for years and included into Volume II of "The Virtuous Woman" works great and costs about 1-2 cents per load, depending on the size of machine and loads you have. Most folks could save a lot on soaps and cleaners if they would but learn that soft water uses about half the amount called for in directions! Many of you have damaged glassware from the dishwasher from using too much soap. Some have clothes that are not lasting because there is too much soap built up in the fabrics or the washers are breaking down because of too much soap build up!

Get out of all of the clubs and "circles"! These use your time, energy, family togetherness and training time, apply more pressure for "fitting in" and having what others have. They encourage the family to be on the road and usually into fruitless time consumption. They have become excuses for dirty homes, needs for eat outs, more cars, and worse yet, baby-sitters! Invest your life more into everlasting investments. Many meetings or gatherings may seem worthwhile, but you really need to analyze these much more carefully in eternal worth and welfare. The Virtuous Woman in Proverbs 31 is not busy deserting her household responsibilities or gadding about even from one church event to the next all week long. Ina Painter says in her article "Sanctification of a Slob": " Look at what the Virtuous Woman does not do. She is not running here and there, giving the gospel or gadding about from spiritual group to spiritual group, ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth."

Jill Cooper also states in her article "Are We Depriving Our Kids?" "We have come to believe that moms should work outside the home so that children can have the most expensive clothes, education or material things. (Note I didn’t say best but rather most expensive since the most expensive doesn’t mean the best.) If a mom goes to work so a child can have all those things it’s not considered depriving the child of anything but it’s mom. Which do you think does a child more harm--being deprived expensive things or it’s mom? For you stay at home moms: Before you become too puffed up with pride be aware that too many social, church and school activities can deprive your children of you just as much as working. Do all things in moderation. Better to give your kids your values you have than the valuables you can't afford."

This is so true, I used to be at the church every time the doors opened until one day I stopped and looked to see that most of it was only "busy work"! I neglected my children, husband and home to be "busy"! When the Lord wants to use me He actually sends those in need straight to my door, phone or wherever I am! The Lord has so few volunteers He will send those in need to anyone, anywhere who yields themselves to be used! Just start the day with "Here am I Lord, use me!"

Learn more skills! How much more could be done, and even the spending thereof saved, if only we would develop more skills to do things for ourselves. How many hands are wasted within the home by just "letting children be children" as is the new saying today? Their hands could be learning skills and trades for the future and could be benefitting the family now (as well as into the future when the family can all be helping one another with each other’s skills!)