Well, after yesterday's post, and subsequent outbursts in the comment section (just so you know, I'm talking about mine), I should probably tell you that I am fasting again. I wasn't going to say anything this time, not because I have some religious thing about not talking about my fasting.....I mean, gee, that's what I started my blog to talk about........but because I just didn't feel like it.

I have to say though that when I fast, whether it is total liquid for 40 days, or 'Daniel fasting', like I am doing right now, I tend to vacillate between very hyper and very tired. I generally sleep better at night, but my mind spins during the day. I can't stop it. I have said this many times but food is God's Prozac. Especially carbohydrates. That's why they call pasta 'comfort food'.........it calms us down and helps us relax. I have a hard time relaxing when I fast, in spite of the fact that I have more actual and true peace than I have at other times. It's a dichotomy, isn't it? The peace that passes understanding takes over but at the same time I get more stirred up about the things that REALLY matter in life.

Sooooo, if I seemed a little like the POH-POHnator, and not like the sweet and gentle POH some of you may have come to know and hopefully love, then that is why.

I don't have alot of time today. I am going to be on the road again in another hour or so and then I have company coming later. My company is a guy I knew from Youth Group when I was a leader 12 years ago and his wife. He was a great, but kind of mixed up kid from a very messed up family. He went into the Marines (with no encouragment from me, Whit, I actually refused to sign the reference form he needed telling him he should work for the "army of God, not the army of man") after high school and subsequently married an awesome woman who has provided much of the stability he presently enjoys in his life. How can I complain about the choices he made when he comes out from them in such a wonderful place in life? He is a full-time firefighter now and his wife is finishing up her undergraduate work before going to medical school to be a doctor.

And people think God doesn't answer Little POH'S prayers.

They should think again.

Well, I have no more time to write, so I am going to leave you with a post I wrote during a time of fasting in 2006. This kind of gives you an insight into long term fasting and into some of what God showed me during that time.

(btw, I have temporarily suspended my backgrounds because I did not want it to distract from my post yesterday and felt the same way today.......I'm sure I'll have another background to share one of these days, but probably not right away)




a common housewife in the fast lane

Monday March 27, 2006

My goal is to know Him

I’m not going to lie. I don’t like to fast. Part of me hates it. It is hard. Fasting is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my entire life. It is strenuous and tiring and sometimes I feel like I am going to go out of my mind with emptiness and hyperactivity. People who have never fasted don’t know what it is like. Food is God’s Prozac. I am naturally hyperactive to start with. When I don’t eat I can’t calm myself and I can’t focus.

For the record this fast has nothing to do with Lent or with Easter. I don’t follow those rituals. I don't esteem one day higher than another. The kind of long term fasting that I do is such a sacrifice for me that just fasting for the sake of Lent is a foreign concept.

Yet I know that God is calling me higher and for that reason I have learned to love it. Not love it in the same way that one loves a baby, or a puppy, or an ice cream cone. But to love it with the knowledge that in it there is something that is so secret from man and so open with God…. so tenderly precious toward my Jesus and so rock hard solid against the powers and principalities of the air.

I have been so misjudged in the past, and it hurt me so much. So much that at one time I thought I might die from the pain that just wouldn’t leave my heart no matter how I prayed and how I forgave. I never searched my soul so completely before or examined my own mind and motivations so thoroughly. It was a trying time that I never want to go through again. I will, mind you, if I have to, but I don’t want to.

The forgiveness is complete now. I know that it is. I know that if the ones that have wronged me came to my door I would welcome them, I would feed them, and I would love them. God has given me such a love, so deep down in my heart, that if they just came to me, even without a word, I would hug them, and I would kiss them with a holy kiss, and I would welcome them into my life. I would not allow them to abuse me again, the same way a wise woman would not allow an abusive husband to hurt her again even though she has forgiven him, but I would love them. I know I would, because I do. I do right now.

I know that they are not my enemy. They never were, even when I thought they were. They were the tool that Satan used to hurt me, and they were the answer to the prayer of my soul that God would allow me to grow up and show me how much He loves me. Had they not abandoned me, and slandered me, and left me outcast and emotionally bleeding, I would never have found His Spirit calling unto my spirit. His deep calling unto my deep. Never. I would forever have leaned on them. Not Him. Maybe others can learn these lessons a different way. I believe He knew this was the only way for me.

People are such fools. They sing these simplistic songs in church. They sing, “Make me like Jesus. Give me Jesus hands. Give me Jesus feet. Let me walk where Jesus walked.” What fools. Don’t they KNOW what they are saying? Oh my God! Don’t they understand what they are requesting? You better count the cost first baby! This is not a game and God means business. If He let His own SON go to the cross, do you think He will demand anything less from you? Not a literal cross maybe, but ask our brother Peter whether God may ask that of you. They hung him upside down!

We wonderful church going folk sit in our padded pews, with our nicety nice program, and our Sunday clothes on and we sing in these lilting, happy, sing songing voices. Oh, don’t get too excited Connie, don’t jump around too much. You might wreck your make up. You might start crying and your eyes will get red and puffy and your face will get splotchy. Wouldn’t THAT just be the WORST!? Wouldn’t it just be SO horrible to get SO full of the Holy Spirit that you lose control of your tear ducts? Heavens, what an embarrassment! Gee, you might make a complete FOOL out of yourself in front of all these respectable people. All these well-dressed country clubbers who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Where ARE we going? What ARE we doing? What kind of Christianity is this anyway? It doesn’t resemble ANY kind I ever read about in the Bible! Don’t worry my friends, I can be WAAAAAY more undignified than THIS!!

OH MY GOD! Jesus went through HELL! Have we forgotten that? Are we really so ignorant that we don’t realize that to grow up in Him….to TRULY walk, and talk and use our hands like Jesus did, we too are going to GO THROUGH HELL! His hands and feet had NAILS in them, have we already forgotten that?

We Christians have the NERVE to talk about Christ and His sufferings while we sit in our lazy boys and our brothers in China are on a cement floor at the bottom of a jail cell. Do you really think that guy in Afghanistan is the only Christian being persecuted for his faith? NO WAY! He is just the only one that made it onto TV!

The Body of Christ is being persecuted all over the world and we Christian Americans are watching American Idol and getting upset because our favorite got booted off this week. Has it occurred to anyone that the name of this favorite American pastime has the word IDOL in it?

Our brothers, our very own brothers are laying on the floor, right now, right this very minute, praying that God will just take them from their earthly shells and let them come to be where He is, and we are worried about what we are going to eat for breakfast tomorrow. Gee, will I have Cheerios or Froot Loops? Who CARES! They are existing on bread and water, when the guards actually feel like giving it to them, and we are planning the next spaghetti supper for a bunch of obese, slovenly, tired out, depressed and complaining so-called Christians.

I am on a mission. I am on a mission from God. I don’t know where I am going…I don’t know what I am going to do…I don’t even know exactly what I have been called to. All I know is I have been called. Called to pray, called to worship, called to intercede. For what I’m not sure yet. I will leave that with the Lord for now. But, take my word for it, I will know. I will. My goal is to know Him. To know Him only. To know Him in Spirit and in truth.

This is the dedication from the front of a book called Safely Home, by Randy Alcorn. I read it several years ago and now my husband and I are reading it together.

I don't know how many of you remember hearing about Graham Staines and his sons being murdered in India, but if you are interested in more information about it you can google him on your search engine or go to The Voice of The Martyrs website.


Dedication:

To Graham Staines,
who left his home in Australia to serve lepers in India for thirty four years.

To Philip Staines (age ten), and Timothy Staines (age 6), who at half past midnight on January 23,1999, as their father held his arms around them, were burned to death by a mob in India: murdered (not because of anything they did but) because of Whom they knew and served.

To Gladys Staines, who continues to minister to lepers and who said to all India, "I am not bitter or angry. I have one great desire; that each citizen of this country should establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who gave His life for their sins"

To Esther Staines, Graham and Glady's daughter (then age 13), who said, "I praise the Lord that He found my father worthy to die for Him".

To the hundreds of men, women and children killed for Christ each day, ignored by the world but watched by the eyes of heaven--those of whom the world is not worthy.

To my friends on the blogstream,

It is easy to judge Christ by a few people you might happen to know who are hypocrites. It is easy to get and stay offended at the cross of Jesus Christ because of something you heard that you didn't like, or a Bible verse that convicted you of your sin and you didn't want to admit it.

I am asking you, please, to stop viewing Christianity and Christians from your skewed perspective. There are people dying DAILY for their faith, mostly in other countries while we sit in our lazy boys, and pat ourselves on the back with how wonderful we are and complain that some show with the word "Idol" in it isn't on in the summertime. Persecution is not a Chinese word, my friends. It is a universal word understood by every tribe, tongue and nation. It's easy to put down, denigrate and bulldoze the faith of the Christians on the blogstream. Bloggers are doing it every day and still call themselves our friends. Christians in America think they are being 'persecuted' because someone laughed at the Bible they were carrying. THOSE are the people who don't know the meaning of the word persecution. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Hi you guys!

I wanted to post something about what I was reading with my husband last night but I forgot to bring the book with me and I can't find the exact passage on the internet so I am going to have to wait. I will try to post it tonight when I have the book again.

I changed my background because I happened to see this one and it is the EXACT replica of a rose I have blooming in my garden at the moment and I wanted to share it with you. I apologize if it makes reading hard. Don't worry, I'll probably change it up in a few days anyway, right?

This house sits on Main Street in my little town.  This is the backside.  I can't find a picture of the front which is even more beautiful with a covered porch.  I have loved this house for 33 years.  It is one of the few things I have truly loved about the dinky one-stoplight town I've lived in for almost 2/3 of my life.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to see the first floor of the inside.  Words do not do it justice.  The floors......the woodwork.....the stained glass windows......the butlers sink in the foyer.....the fireplaces......the staircase.......

I cannot find the words.  I am in awe...............

I always wanted to move away from this town................far away.  Now that I found out that this house may be on the market in the next two months my mind and heart are confused.............tell me it's just a house.




The Vary Best Colors
One couple's methods for creating a period paint scheme can work for many old houses.

Today the house sports a polychrome paint scheme that enhances, rather than downplays, the architecture. Though consistent with late 19th-century thinking, the colors and placement are unique and a satisfying expression of the owners' aesthetics. Photo Courtesy of Andy Olenick

By Steve Jordan

Choosing a new exterior paint color scheme can be a challenge. Get it right and you'll grin with pride every time you arrive home. Get it wrong and you'll regret your decisions until they're repainted to your satisfaction. The real problem, of course, is, there's no true right or wrong.

Influenced by centuries of aesthetics and seconds of whim, color choices are subjective. The options get even more intimidating with old houses. Should paint schemes be historically correct? Can you stay within your favorite color palette? Is it worth following a maven's latest predictions? Does the house's style, neighborhood, and region of the country matter? The more you think about exterior color schemes, it's easy to understand why so many houses all around us are painted in a neutral, bland, and safe manner.

If you face painting an old house exterior, there's no reason to settle for a "canned" or "dumbed-down" color combination. With a little thought and homework, there are ways to come up with a paint scheme that satisfies both the architecture of the house and your personal tastes. One approach is to get help from the many tools now available for making these design decisions. Another is to follow some of the steps Jan Barber and Doug Baker of upstate New York explored when they began thinking about painting their 1885, high-style Queen Anne house.

Thinking outside the Color Box
Jan and Doug's home is known as the Vary House because it was built by William L. Vary as a wedding present for his son. The house is one of several architectural gems—in styles from the Federal, Greek Revival, and Gothic Revival to the Italianate—in the historic village of Lima, roughly halfway between western New York's Finger Lakes region and Lake Ontario.

Eager to get started on the right foot, Doug and Jan began by studying the few authoritative books and journals written about paint colors. "Begin with the body—the majority wall color," was a common caveat, "and then pick corresponding trim colors." Good advice, but not quite enough—especially when your house boasts a double oriel, barge boards, sunbursts, spindles, wheel brackets, newels, and crannies. Doug and Jan also skimmed piles of historic paint-color charts and reproduction house-pattern books to learn the theories behind historic color choices for window sash, doors, porch ceilings, and subtle-to-contrasting trim palettes. All were sound points of reference, but they still fell short of the needs of a complex house and owners with informed tastes.

After completing major repairs on the house, while tolerating years of the former owner's bland creams and whites, they knew it was time to reveal the building's outstanding architectural character and myriad details with a powerful color scheme. Though they appreciated historically accurate paint schemes, Doug and Jan weren't interested in a perfect reproduction of the original colors or a studious interpretation. At the same time they didn't want a fanciful "painted lady" approach that would highlight details through gaudy colors and striking contrast.

Colorful Help from Some Friends
There are many ways to pick exterior paint colors. The easy route is to stick with one of the many combinations of colors provided in brochures at your local paint store. Used as recommended, or tweaked to make them your own, these are usually safe bets, albeit mundane. For folks with color phobias or mental blocks, it's easier to hire a color consultant. Most metropolitan areas have consultants and designers that will work with homeowners to pick colors. Nationally, there are also well-known consultants that, when provided with photographs of your house and your likes and dislikes, will provide color schemes. The latest addition to the arsenal is computer software developed by paint manufacturers. After loading a photograph of your house onto a computer, this software allows colors from the manufacturer's palette to be pasted onto the various elements of the house, creating a glimpse of the finished product. Check out www.architecture.about.com/cs/paint/tp/paintsoftware.htm for a few of the inexpensive paint- selection software programs.

Jan and Doug began designing their paint scheme with only a vague idea of the original body and trim color and a few basic color preferences. Doug created color samples using his own pigments and tweaking sample quarts to accommodate his taste and the other colors in the palette. Slowly and methodically, he prepared an array of potential colors: stripes spread across pieces of cardboard that could be mixed and shuffled in a search for the perfect hand. Eventually, he and Jan chose a combination of late Victorian and Arts & Crafts colors that was compatible with the house, its time period, and the teak brown roof shingles that had been installed a few years earlier. Both of them preferred an olive green for the body color. The rest of the colors evolved from this choice—mostly subtle gradations of the main palette, saving a playful, cobalt blue for the unusual elements. White was totally eliminated from the scheme.

From Paper to Paint to Placement
With a basic palette of colors set in place, they photographed all the sides and details of the house to help Doug sketch the building and its parts in black and white. After photocopying these sketches, Doug and Jan used colored pencils in the approximate paint colors to create various color schemes. Trial color combinations and placements were reversed or substituted. For example, terra cotta could replace mustard on the upper body or blue grey could substitute for dark green on the shingles. When the plan began to jell, Doug took the samples to the paint store and had quarts mixed in each color.

The porches had already been turned into test labs for various color combinations, so the new colors were tried out on other areas of the house. The idea of a two-color, double-body treatment for the first and second storeys came late in this phase. Initially, Doug wanted a bright mustard color on the upper body while Jan favored a subdued ochre. They worked together selecting colors, spending many winter hours observing them in natural light to make sure they understood every nuance as it would appear outside. This process could have lasted indefinitely. However, once the painting contract was signed, Jan and Doug finalized their color selections over a two-month period (along with help from this writer) so the painting could start in the spring.

Finally Jan and Doug narrowed their choices to nine colors. Depending on the surface and areas painted, the paint sheens varied from matte to high gloss to create more vitality in the scheme and to highlight certain elements. They also enhanced details through the clever use of subtle color variations, such as the two similar reds on the porch railings, and color opposites, such as the cobalt blue moulding between the brown roof and red fascia.

Though their color choices were ultimately personal, the harmonious scheme behind them has its roots in historic color theory. The ideas of "harmony by analogy" and "harmony by contrast" were proposed in the mid-19th century by David Hay of Edinburgh, Scotland, and taken to heart during the Victorian era. Harmony by analogy might be achieved by using colors close to one another on the color wheel—olive green and ochre, for instance (see sidebar opposite). A good example of harmony by contrast would be the use of red with green.

With nine different colors and many details to paint, Doug wanted to avoid confusion, so before the painters arrived he renamed all the paint selections and prepared 4?x 6? color swatches coded to photos and sketches. He also color-coded paint lids to prevent placement errors.

The painters chose to finish one side of the house at a time. As the work progressed, the Vary House took on a new character, as if a new house had been erected on the site. Assuming that such a well-tailored paint scheme was beyond the work of homeowners, some passersby commented, "Boy, the painters picked great colors, didn't they?" Other neighbors discovered elements they had never seen before, and a few speculated that new ornaments had been added prior to painting. Doug and Jan are very pleased with their "new" house and feel that the reinvented paint scheme rescues the lively character that was hidden by cream and white. Any way you look at it, the Vary House has undergone a startling makeover, and is well on its way to another century of splendor.

Historic Color Trends About the time the Vary House was built in 1885, exterior paint colors had evolved from the whites of the late Federal period to the drab earth tones espoused in the 1850s by A. J. Downing and his converts to the rich, dark colors so often attributed to late- Victorian architecture. Residential architecture from about 1870 until 1900 abounds with complex combinations of styles, details, and materials-all made practical and affordable by the new woodworking machinery of the Industrial Revolution. It is not uncommon to see at least five different types of siding between foundation and roof on a fancy Queen Anne house. In the same way, the new, manufactured paint-in-a-can in standardized colors, as well as a deeper understanding of the physics behind color, helped foster a fashion for multiple color combinations. Often called polychromy, placement of these colors was used to highlight and diminish building elements and textures. Furthering this concept were colorfully stained wood shingles, painted metal, and polychrome slate roofs. Colored masonry mortars and even bright canvas awnings completed the picture. By modern standards, various Victorian color schemes can be complex and beautiful or just plain gaudy. The Arts & Crafts Movement began at the tail end of the 19th century as a reaction to the excesses of Victorian architecture. While Victorians reveled in the use of novel materials and gimmicks made possible by the Industrial Revolution, Arts & Crafts devotees stressed the importance of fine craftsmanship—especially handwork—and harmony with the natural environment. The shift in color preferences was not really drastic but rather a lightening of the dark colors that had become unpopular. For example, dark olives were lightened to sage greens; dark ochres evolved into colors resembling Dijon mustard. All things Arts & Crafts are now more popular than they've been since their inception. Paint manufacturers offer Arts & Crafts color brochures and books have been published to help homeowners understand and choose an Arts & Crafts palette.

Project Particulars Painters Steve Worboys, assisted by brothers Paul and Stan Paint Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore Paint system Oil primer, 100 percent acrylic top coats Color-scheme body Medium Olive and Mustard, low luster Wood shingles Dark Olive Green, matte, used in other areas in gloss Trim Copper Red and Dark Red (purplish), high gloss Sash & storms Black Green, high gloss Porch ceilings Blue (darker than sky blue), low luster Porch floor and steps Medium Tan, high gloss (polyurethane) Porch handrails Dark Red, high gloss Decorative rod moulding Cobalt blue, high gloss Decorative ornaments Cobalt Blue, Mustard, Copper Red, Dark Red, Medium Olive Doors Dark Olive Green, high gloss

This little poem was sent to me by a brand new blogger named "opinionatedallen".  His blog is called Knocking on Hell's Gate.  Please visit his blog and welcome him to the blogstream when you see his blog on the updated list.

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Which is the more Beautiful ?

The sound of a great musician "singing his best"

OR the sound only a child  makes  the first time he says "I love you"!

 One we pay millions, pamper, and praise!

 
And the other we KILL, starve, and throwaway.

And because of our "CHOICES"  we kill

What God has made

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Here is his first post:

People tell me that I am calling God by the wrong name!!

If so why does God ALWAYS answer me? How have I a sinner, who lived in prison more than out, and hated people for the joy of hating and fighting, become a man with values and always willing to help and show love to others no matter who they might be?

It is simple when I called on the SON the Father touched ME.

the "masters touch"