Genesis 1:29-30

Genesis 1:29-30



Then God said, "I give every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so.


What? Only vegetables and fruits! This would totally drive me crazy! I am a meat eater. No dead animal on my plate, not a real meal. I suppose if I didn't know any different it probably wouldn't bother me, but I have and it does. I tried being a vegetarian once just to see if I could. I didn't even make it a week. I'm not a rabbit. I'm a people. I eat meat. I walked into a pizza place and smelled the pepperoni, if you're wondering what did me in. Some people think that we won't eat meat in the kingdom, largely due to this and another passage in the bible, but it never says we won't eat meat outright, so I don't know.

Me, Sick, No Way!

Well, I've been sick the last couple of days with the flu. At least I think that's what I have. It could be just a bad cold. I've never been good at distinguishing between the two. All I know is I've had a sore throat and a stuffy nose and burning eyes and nose, achey and tired. Just plain miserable! And somehow I wrote yesterday's post in this state. Not bad, huh? Makes you wonder what I could accomplish the rest of the time if I really applied myself! Most of the time I'm just too lazy.

Genesis 1:28

Genesis 1:28

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Okay, I'm going to enter some controversial territory here. I do not believe that the first part of this commandment is for us. To "Be fruitful and increase in number." Notice the reason for it. To "fill the earth and subdue it." Now I would have to look up the word subdue to get the exact definition, but the earth in quite full! I don't know if anyone's noticed this lately. Why do you think we've had so many problems feeding people and the earth has had so much difficulty in producing enough food and enough jobs for everyone may be because it is overflowing with people! Now, I am not suggesting that no one should have children or that we should kill any people for a population control solution. I'm just telling you that you don't need to feel pressure to have a bunch of children because of this command. Look at the context. He's talking to Adam and Eve. If they did not have children we would be in big trouble. We wouldn't even exist! He only gives this command one other time in scripture, and that just happens to be to Noah and his family after the flood, when they're the only humans left on the earth. Again, if they did not have children we would not be here! Anybody else noticing a pattern here? Now, each of you as couples may have personal convictions about how many children you should have, but don't put that on anyone else! I think at this point it is an individual choice how many children you should have. Okay, now that I'm off that soapbox, I'm about to get on another one.

"Rule over". We are to rule over the other creatures that God created. Do we have more rights than they do? Yes, we do. Period. We are to control the population of the animals and be sure that we do not get over run with them. We need to be responsible about it, of course. We need to treat them with respect and not kill them all off, as well.

Genesis 1:27

Genesis 1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

You know, I'm wracking my brains and I think I'm just too tired. I got nothing. I think this is pretty self-explanatory. I mean, I know it doesn't mean we look like God, because I don't think we do. He just put something in us that needs Him, and something that gives us more value than all of the rest of creation. He gave us the ability to have relationships and to relate to Him. Okay, so I guess I did have something. Tell me what you think about this verse.

Sunday Church With An Extra Kid

My daughter's best friend, Maggie, spent the night last night and is going to church with us this morning. Josh is staying home, cause he has things to do to get ready for some Boy Scout thing at Living Faith Fellowship today. Okay, actually he's leaving now. I thought that was this afternoon, after church, but I guess he has to be there for church. Well, I think he's hoping to join them for church. Anyway, I'm taking all the kids to church with me and then taking Maggie home right after church.

Beautiful Chinese

I'm thinking I'm going to need to learn Chinese. I keep getting comments in Chinese. How awesome that I can communicate with people all the way across the world! Don't you just love the internet! It does sadden me that I can't understand what they said. I love people so much! People all over the world! If only we didn't have the language barrier to cross. Guess we can blame the tower of babel for that.

Mundane Stuff Of Life

Okay, this will be one of those posts on the mundane things of life. Chloe is listening to Point Of Grace on my ipod. At least that's what was playing when I gave it to her. I have it set on shuffle, so she'll be listening to all sorts of Christian music. We went to the church this evening and had dinner with my CR friends and got some books from the church library for the kids. Then, Chloe and I came home while a friend kept Angela so she could have fun with the kids downstairs. I didn't think Chloe should stay since she still has a stuffy nose. I sure hope she gets better soon. If she's not better by Monday, I think I'll take her to QuickCare to see if maybe she has a sinus infection. She's shown signs of possibly having one and she's had one once before. Angela's watching tv. I'm going to let the girls stay up since it's just us tonight and no school tomorrow. Although, Angela does have hockey practice in the morning, so I won't let her stay up too late. Share more later.

No Need For a Reprimand and Update On Paparazzo Activities

I'm so glad to see that someone has commented on my blog in the last couple of days. I was about to have to post another reprimand on all my friends. Thank you, wholarmor. I appreciate your feedback. I won't think any less of the rest of you for not commenting as long as wholarmor keeps up the good work and makes sure that I don't have an entire page of 0 comments at the bottom of my posts. Anyway, everyone seems to be well today, except that Josh called me this afternoon and let me know that he managed to sleep on Alkaseltzer Plus and Nyquil last night. He's on his way home now. He said he'd have taken more Nyquil, but he's not supposed to operate heavy machinery while taking it. And he's going winter camping with the Boy Scouts tonight! He's going to regret that I'm sure. Jeremiah is going as well. It's called a Klondike Derby they're doing and it sound intense. I hope Jeremiah does okay. I'm probably just a paranoid mom and he'll be fine. It just sounds so strenuous, hiking with sleds and things.

Sick Girls

Now I have 2 kids home sick. I think they have what Jeremiah had last week. Angela has exactly the same symptoms, so I'm pretty sure it's the same virus. She's got a headache and she keeps asking me if we can go to the library. That child could practical being dying and she'd want to go somewhere! I don't get it. When I'm sick I just want to sleep! Heck, if it's before noon all I want to do is sleep!

Kangen Water

Well, Chloe's not feeling well, again. So, she's staying home. Hopefully she'll sleep. She has a hard time doing that during the day even when she's sick. Especially when I can't get her brother and sister to get ready for school QUIETLY! With her ADD she's very easily stimulated and they don't get how difficult (impossible) it is to get her settled down once they rile her up. They do this just before bed, too, when they're supposed to be reading or watching tv to quiet themselves before bed. They tease her and tickle her and stuff. She's their favorite play thing. I kept hearing her making noise this morning, so I'm afraid she'll wake up too much to get back to sleep and then she won't get enough rest and she won't get well anytime soon.

Speaking of health, my friend keeps wanting me to buy my own Kangen machine, so I can have all the different types of water that do different things including cleaning and dissinfecting! Unfortunately, even if I had the money, I'm not sure I would do it. Health-wise I really haven't seen enough results to justify spending $4,000 on a machine! It's the most ridiculously overpriced thing I've ever seen. It would have to create miracles for me to be willing to spend that much money on it. Sure the 11.5 ph water saved a shirt I was going to throw away because it was so badly stained. And I haven't been sick much this winter, which I'm usually sick all winter! Once I get a cold, normally I stay at least mildly ill until April, but look at Chloe. She's not well at all. It doesn't seemed to have helped her at all and it's very impractical for our lifestyle. We spend a lot of time outdoors away from electricity, I mean like days away from electricity. We're obviously not going to haul jugs of water out into the woods. Just tablets to filter the water. Okay, I don't go that far into the woods to where there isn't a water faucet at least sticking out of the ground somewhere, but I'm certainly not packing water to go camping. The idea is to pack light! And Josh and Jeremiah tend to like the sort of camping where they have to purify their own water without running water or electricity, so while this machine can do amazing things at home, it doesn't work for an outdoorsy family to drink it regularly. I think it's a little excessive to even expect people to haul their own water to work. It screams obsession to me and anything I have to obsess over to keep up cannot be all that healthy.

Blog Following

I'm wondering if ya'll are wondering why I'm following my own blog? It's complicated when you have 3 different blog accounts being managed on one computer. Apparently even the computer gets confused. Jeremiah hit the follow button while managing his blog and reading mine and it registered him as being me. I clicked as following myself privately, so it wouldn't clog my public following list, but then when I did that it registered him as following me privately instead of me, so everytime he tries to follow me now it tells him he's already following me, so he can't seem to register to follow me publicly. So, I'm still following myself publicly and he's still following me privately. Crazy, huh?

Planning

Well, school again tomorrow, so maybe I'll be able to get something interesting on here or at least started in the editing process, so soon I'll have something interesting on here. I got my new 2010 weekly planner today, finally, so that should make my life easier. Of course, now I have to learn to use it effectively. The last time I had one was in school so just school assignments went in there. That was my priority. My life is a little more complicated now. I have lots of priorities!

Blessing

Guys, I really do hope I can do a more interesting blog post soon. The kids have just been keeping me so busy when I'm not so tired I just want to collapse! I just want ya'll to know that God has been blessing Josh and I so much in our efforts to change. I'd tell you more details, but we've both felt that these are blessings that are just for us to enjoy and not to brag about or share in any detail. I assure you we are enjoying it and will continue to work hard on our issues, with or without the obvious immediate blessings.

Tired Old Me

Well, I slept in and missed church today. I don't know what's with me lately. I'm just so tired. I can't sleep at night even though I'm really tired and then when I finally do go to sleep I sleep for more than 8 hours. It's crazy! I don't get it!

A Relaxing Saturday

It's been a wonderful Saturday to myself. Or at least most of the day. I slept until almost 11 a.m. and shortly after that Josh and the kids went to his Mom's house. I was torn between wanting to have a day to myself and needing to fold laundry and wanting to go see my niece that I haven't met yet. I did decide it would be best to stay home, although I mostly relaxed and read and watched tv and did things on the computer and did a workout for the first time in a while, so I'll probably have to do laundry tomorrow since I didn't get much done today. I usually try to avoid doing that sort of thing on Sunday. Only the necessary every day cleaning up messes when they happen. Not actual chores on Sunday. But this week, I guess I'll probably have to, cause I'm behind.

A Busy Wednesday

Well, Jeremiah is still sick. I have bible study this morning and then I have to drag him to my friend's house to get water and to the food bank. He just has to take care of himself and stay away from everyone else while I'm at bible study. He'll do fine. He's gotten to where he can get everything he needs when he needs it. Water or whatever.

My ipod

Did I mention that I got an ipod? Josh and I found a used one for a good price. And it was my favorite color at that! Not that it really matters, but it's neat to see how God pays attention to the teeny little details of what He knows would thrill you, as simple as they may be. And that was one of the things that was driving me crazy. Not having a way to listen to my music all over the house as I move throughout the house working. All I had before was my laptop, which you pretty much can't hear even turned up to full volume unless you're sitting right in front of it. Not very good speakers. So now my music goes with me everywhere! It's only a 1GB, but I can switch out the music when I want some new stuff from the library I have on my computer, on iTunes. It's quite enough for me, for now. Although, I still really want an ipod Touch. Someday maybe.

One More Sick Kid

Well, Jeremiah finally caught the cold me and the girls had last week. I'm hoping I'll be able to send him to school tomorrow morning. Otherwise, I'll have to miss bible study again, and drag him to my friend's house tomorrow afternoon to pick up our water and go to the food bank.

Surviving On Caffeine

Okay, I've survived today on caffeine. I'm real tired, though. I didn't sleep real well last night, either, cause my sinuses were driving me crazy! So much pressure and burning. Yuck! Can't stand it. There seems to be absolutely nothing I can do about it when that happens, either! What a pain! I sure hope to get back to Genesis here real soon. Hopefully before this week is up. My kids are home from school, so too many distractions right now. We're planning to have our cable turned off here soon, so I'll have lots more time, since all those marvelous crime scene shows won't be calling my name.

A Busy Week: Ready For Bed

Well, I'm very tired. Didn't sleep well last night. I hope I can make up for it enough tonight, cause I will be starting a very busy week first thing in the morning. Getting kids ready for school and then off to Step Study. After that, I seriously need to get caught up with counseling homework at home.

More Sickies

Ugh! Now, I have a cold and my daughter, Chloe. She's doing better. I'm not sure if I am or not. My throat is still itchy, which is why I didn't visit the hospital to see my new niece, Lydia today. Josh of course, got to see her and hold her. He just had to rub that in. But I wasn't going to expose the little angel. Chloe's anxious to see her as well, but I told her she can't either, until I'm sure she's no longer contagious. I called my pastor today, telling him I'd like to pursue individual counseling with him. He's available all day tomorrow, so I'll call him in the morning if I'm feeling better.

Sorry

I'm sorry I've been so disheartening lately and upset so many of you. I know you're concerned about me airing my dirty laundry, and especially my husband's dirty laundry and you're right. I shouldn't air my husband's dirty laundry. I can mention that we're struggling, but not drag out every detail of his issues on here. I'm working on not doing that. Although, let me tell you there are a lot more issues even more deeply personal for him that I will never share on here. Even if you begged me I wouldn't. But I shouldn't have even shared what I did. However, when it comes to my personal stuff, I don't really care who knows about it. There are some details I will never share with anyone, because it wasn't healthy for me to have that stuff in my head and it wouldn't be healthy for anyone else either, so I won't put that on you. It's bad enough that it's on me. Now with counselors I have, because it was necessary and they are professionally trained to handle that kind of thing. But not with the general public. It would mess you up! I promise you it would! God has been gracious in allowing me to completely forget some of the details of the abuse I have experienced, but a lot of it I just had to learn to think differently about it. I honest think, though, that if people see the stuff, even the ugly stuff, that goes on in my head, maybe they won't feel quite so alone. And that makes it worth it to me. It's not like they have my phone number and home address. I don't put that information online.

Crazy

I clearly have not communicated well. Either that or it is true that no one could possibly even begin to understand me. Someone who is incapable of doing anything but laundry. If I had the money to go visit people on trips I've been invited to attend I woudn't be able to go, cause I'd have to travel alone and even with all the help provided in the airport, I'd never find my airplane. I've always gone in groups and in total fear followed them everywhere like a puppy dog for fear I'd get lost, cause I've been lost so many times. I won't even go to the bathroom unless someone else needs to go, too. I did once cause I was traveling with my husband and the bathroom was right in front of me and I made my husband promise me he wouldn't move a single muscle. I'm telling you if anything ever happens to him I'll be institutionalized because I can't do a single thing. I can't even make sense of one single bill, can't talk to people on the phone. I'm not being funny. I'm being serious. Josh makes me look normal, cause he takes care of everything for me. But I'm not. I'm crazy. I'm not even safe to be out in the world.

Now For My Personal Problem

I know I'm not supposed to share my difficulties online, but seriously I can't talk about this stuff to someone's face. I'm too ashamed and I have nothing to protect. My kids are already screwed and so is my husband cause they got stuck with me.

I am absolutely convinced that there is not a more useless person on the planet. Every now and again I have mentioned the possibility of getting a job, at least part time while the kids are in school. You may be wondering why I haven't even tried to look for a job. Well, this is the story of my experiencing working, whether paid or unpaid:

I grew up on a ranch, so there was lots of work to be done and everyone had to participate. Of course, all the work I did someone else had to fix, because no matter how hard I tried I always messed it up. My parents complained that I couldn't do anything right, I wasn't very smart, I was too slow. As I grew up I got the same response from teachers and peers. When I went to college, for the purpose of getting away from home. I was hoping someone outside of tiny Wallowa County would see some potential in me. I did okay the first year of college. I then went to work for my dad. He had started a horse training business at this point. Again, too slow, and incompetent. We also added that I had no determination to succeed at anything, just because I was unable to successfully train a horse that I had to train that summer. Tried and I really wanted to, but at that point I was scared of the horses. I mean screwing up with them can be deadly! So I went back to school and got a job on campus tutoring Algebra. We had peer revues with that job, from the people we tutored. The consensus was that I was incompetent. Wow! I'm starting to see a pattern here. I graduated from the junior college I was at and got married. We moved to Moscow, Idaho to continue both of our educations at the University of Idaho. I didn't do very well. I struggled with using the computers for my more technical class that I was now having to take. Even with dummy sheets telling me exactly, detail for detail how to use the program I couldn't get it to work. I was failing miserably. I also had a job on campus at the daycare center. Not real good with kids, but they stuck me in the kitchen doing dishes, washing toys, and all that. I was never able to get my work done, too slow. They wanted to know why I couldn't get my work done faster. It wasn't that difficult. The next semester I decided to have a baby. Why not, I'm screwing everything else up, why not another human life! Besides, if I couldn't succeed I could always use the excuse that we'd decided it was best if I stayed home with the kids, for the kids' sake. That summer we went to a Christian camp in California, where I worked for the worst boss of all. He mocked and ridiculed me every day, complained I was too slow and treated me like a child who didn't know anything and couldn't think for myself. Needless to say at this point I'm thinking that getting a job isn't going to make me feel better about myself. I can't take another blow. And I can't take being useless, so I don't know what to do at this point. I'm afraid to even walk out that door and go to job services. I mean what am I supposed to put on an application? Which do you think is my best quality: stupidity, slowness, or incompetence? I want you to know I really was trying at all these jobs. I'm even afraid to do too much at home, because it will only raise my husband's expectations and if everyone else thought I was so stupid and incompetent what's to say my husband won't too. He told the kids to throw out the dinner I made the other day, cause it was disgusting. I really don't see how I'm really worth the space that I take up, the air that I breathe, the food that I eat, the clothes that I wear, the meds that I take, well you get the idea. If you can think of a way that a person who can't work at a desk or doing any kind of hands-on type work could be useful, please tell me cause otherwise I have a whole lot of pills in this house calling my name.

A Sick Monday

Well, finally the first day back to school and I'm still not alone! I have a sick child! Always on a Monday! Why is that? Does God have a vendetta against my step study? It just happens to be on Monday mornings and I've missed more than I've been there.

A Lazy Day

Josh took Jeremiah and Angela to his mom's house to work on their Pinewood Derby cars. So, it's mostly just been me and Chloe today. I slept in until noon. Now I'm really tired. Dragging all day. I think I slept too much!