It's Thursday!

So let's get this party started.

Today we consider how in the past week, we succeeded. It's not always epic, but it is always vital, the work done to nourish hearth and home. Remember:

When you feed your children, you have fed the hungry.
When you change them, you have clothed the naked.
When you comfort them through colds, you have cared for the sick.
When you console them when they hurt, you are bringing peace.

So every day is living a beatitude, if done with love.
Little things with great love...that's what we're supposed to be about.
It seems simple.
We all know how hard sometimes giving that extra can be.

So without further ado,

This week I

1) took all who were eligible to confession. There were howls of I have too much homework...normally a fail safe get out of jail free card in my house, but the two who complained had watched batman that afternoon and been outside so I vetoed this objection.

2) helped with the rescue of a dog. There were 2 loose big dogs that attacked a little dog and my son ushered the littles inside, my daughter went over to help the owner with getting them off her pet. We came out with the only thing available. Bats. We didn't hit them, but we looked menacing and that combined with my daughter's fending them off a bit with her feet drove them away. It was scary but the dog that was hurt is on the mend.

3) Went to an online writing conference, it was like a breath of fresh air on my brain. Didn't realize it was so undernourished.

Now it's your turn!

Small Success Thursday

Little things with big love, big things with bigger love, that's the whole purpose of Small Success Thursday, to consider how in the past week, we lived out our vocation, how we fed the hungry, served the meek and ultimately, poured ourselves out.

This week I had the opportunity to comfort a friend, to be her ladder (see last week's post to understand).  I also made her laugh by sharing the extraordinary silliness of a dessert I found on a friend's blog, Picaken. It's a great honor to be her friend, and to make her feel less stressed by the world.

I also was a "MOTHER OF THE YEAR" for making said dessert for an 8 year old's birthday. I have 8 more requests for individualized versions of this monster delicacy and may have to take up cross country skiing while pulling trucks filled with anvils to survive having exposed my children to Picaken lunacy...they're already planning, pecan pie in German Chocolate Cake, blueberry inside lemon poppyseed, and multiple requests for cherry inside of chocolate.

What else happened? 

Well, I helped put together an auction basket for the Book Worm with a Kindle Touch, 100$ worth of books, a throw, chocolates, coffee and tea and a book light and it was successful.  At the auction, I played a game of chance and won a 40 inch LCD television. It was very funny and a great surprise.

I worked on Helen.

I delivered the papers for the taxes and I got a portrait done of my 1 year old. The lady kept cooing and touching her and it freaked out my 13 month old daughter and so she screamed, resulting in an amazing over the top DIVA pose where she's got her hands behind her head, her back fully arched all while wearing a red dress.  It says, "I can't work in these conditions, if you need me, I'll be in my trailer." So of course, I had to order one of those, plus the normal cute but not nearly as great a story shots. 

My son came home from college and I got to see him for the first time since January.

Finally, I also got to speak with a new friend (we've been blog-friends for years) and it was that lovely deep rich kind of conversation that tells you, this is a friendship you will savor. 

All in all, a great week despite gaining a pound and spending too much.  Much joy in abundance, and an abundance of joy in the muchness of it all.

Now it's your turn! And invite a friend or two. We want to grow this internet meme.

Small Success Thursday

I know. It's after ten and you'ld think with not blogging, I'd be more prompt. 

Well, it's funny.  Fasting makes you spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that you are NOT writing and my brain keeps teasing out ideas and thoughts from whatever wherever I am.  But I have discovered those things that get sacrificed when you spend a lot of time writing, like going outside, playing baseball with your son until it gets dark and a bit after, reading to the youngest six, each of them their own story, and my house is cleaner. 

But Sherry, aren't you just substituting one activity for another by filling up the time?  Yes and no. It is a new process, a painful and clumsy and difficult one, to limit my desire to spill everything out onto every page every day.  But Lent is about learning to be still.  And stillness requires wilfulness.  I am stubbornly active.  Many years back, I played a game called the Cube.  In it, you envision the following objects. 

A dessert.
In the dessert is a cube. (Set in your mind the cube).
And a ladder.
And a horse.
And flowers.
And a storm.

Got it? A dessert. A Cube. A ladder. A horse. Flowers. And a  storm.

The cube is you. 

Mine was this spinning sparkling thing that could only be reached by a ladder (in my case a steel staircase ladder like you use to deplane), and the ladder stablized the cube and made it stop spinning. 

The ladder are friends.
For the sake of those who might want to finish the image, the dessert is the landscape of your life, the storm is trouble, the flowers are your children and the horse is your beloved.


Going back to my own image, friends keep me from being dizzy, they focus me, they stablize me. I had allowed blogging to substitute for friends, allowing me to spin.  So that's why I'm taking this hiatus.  Nothing tragic. Nothing crazy. Nothing earth shattering. Just hoping to do some more internal spring cleaning, to get rid of the piles of clutter that have gathered since the last time I dusted in here.

Now, what did I do this week?

1) I cleaned out a bedroom...even under the beds.

2) stopped blogging temporarily.

3) was accepted to pitch Helen at a writer's conference at the end of the month! (Exciting).

4) returned to making a daily list of things to do...it just helps me every time I do it.

5) did my daughter's hair with the flat iron. My sister will be so proud. My idea of hair styling is a pony tail.

6) Thank you for the well wishes and prayers for my uncle. He is doing much better.  Thank you!

7) Took the bikes to be repaired this weekend (six of them!) and they'll be back the 3rd of April.

Now it's your turn.