Enfin

Sorry I have not posted lately, but I guess it is no secret that I have been vacationing in the Slough of Despond for the last few weeks. I am now on my feet again and ready for life....And it has been good.

Thanks so much to Rick and Susanna for giving Dad such a wonderful holiday in NYC. He enjoyed it immensely, and we have both been refreshed through it. You are wonderfully hospitable, R & S - so lovely to spend time with you, always!

Last Monday Andrew, Pat and Maryanne,Grace and Justin came over so we could spend Memorial Day together. What a wonderful city this is for wiling away a few hours. We headed over to the fountain so the kids could play for an hour, ride the carousel, then went to Green Life for gelato...On home for a bbq...A lovely day.

Yesterday was my last regular day with the Ryans...They will probably have me back the odd time to babysit...The kids had a "National Mrs. Challies Day"...They really do love me, and I will miss them. At the same time, I do pray God will give me a more local way of making money. It has been stressful commuting such a long distance and has done the car no favors! Pray that God will lead me into something that will leave me enough time and opportunity to spend with my children and grandchildren - my ultimate desire. I love to be available to you kids!

As for the car, I continue to be caught between Charybdis and Scylla...Our car looks good, relatively speaking, has new almost everything relevant in the engine, and shows few signs of transmission problems. It truly seems a miracle vehicle. Anything we would buy to replace it would have, probably, 150,000 miles on it. Would we just be buying problems we have already addressed in our own vehicle? Theoretically, the transmission on such a car would be ready to wear out. WOuld we be any farther ahead? Yet putting $1,000 into our old thing does seem silly. I just go around in circles, and in the meantime we don't have a decent vehicle to drive! Pray God will protect us from making the wrong decision...

Some good news - Jane Frye connected us with one of her old friends from high school days - Babs Rymer. She and her husband have a large estate Dad has done some work on. They have offered him regular work there at a very decent hourly wage, plus would like him to take on maintenance work at their condominium - with a likely outcome of individual landscaping jobs with the various owners...A wonderful and timely opportunity...The Covenant groundskeeper job at Covenant has also come up again, but I think - all told - Dad would rather work with Babs with colleges so fragile at this point. Still, he has applied.

The local gang of us will celebrate Dad's sixtieth birthday tomorrow. Maryanne, and probably the kids, will stay overnight, them Sunday afternoon Grace's friends will have a shower for her here...Fun for all!...The next Wednesday, unknown to Dad, we will have a gag-gift birthday celebration at the mid-week meeting.

So ends my submission!

Post-War Kids

Just some silly doggerel that I have shared with you kids before, but I want to put on record the little ditties we post-war kids used to sing...All was so recent....

I was not a swearing kid. It just is not part of my besetting sin package...And Mom and Dad - though their own mouths could do it- would not have allowed us to say foul things...But the memories I have of putting up my arm in a Nazi salute and saying, H-ll, Sh-tler, and - I WAS ALLOWED TO DO IT!!! Heady stuff for a kid and an early lesson in nuanced thinking. I knew it was sort of wrong, but it was sort of all right, as well...

Aunt Peggy's contribution to our little collection of post-war kiddy-culture probably came straight from the mouths of marching soldiers:
Hitler has only got one b-ll,
Goering has two, but rather small.
Himmler is very sim'ler
And Mr. Go-balls has no balls at all!
Clever! But - how did soldiers of that time know Hitler had only one testicle? How do men always find out these things?

Dad's little ditty, sung when tiny:
Just whistle while you work,
Hitler was a jerk.
Mussolini bit his wienie,
Now it doesn't work!

Tidbits from our era....

Family

A young girl at church yesterday - nineteen , with a toddler...I have my own apartment now. I want better things for him than I had. That is why I am at church, and I want to come every week. I want him to know Jesus...I am taking courses to be an EMT; I work at Steak and Shake...I have dimples and make decent money, but it will be hard to pay the rent; however, I have paid two months ahead...My son's father told me the day that we found out he was a boy that he had got another woman pregnant...By the time he was born he was with her...I lived with my mother. She punched me in the stomach when I told her I was pregnant. She whipped my butt a few times during my pregnancy. I love her, she is my family, but I can't live with her anymore...My father is in prison and I haven't seen him for eleven years....Why is he in prison? For violating parole. I don't know what his original conviction was for...My aunt murdered some one with an axe...My uncle died of a drug overdose...I have two brothers, all of us from different fathers, but we don't think that way, We are family...

Teen Challenge

...Again, Heard on the Street...

Not really- at the Teen Challenge banquet from young people who had been ON the street...mostly in their mid twenties to mid thirties...

I was given the option of twenty-seven years in prison or Teen Challenge

I was given the option of fifteen years in prison or Teen Challenge

My parents divorced

I was sexually abused throughout my childhood

I started taking meth then manufactured it

I was physically and verbally abused, always

I have begun my life all over again

I had the college experience I didn't have as a teenager as I lived in the dorms

You (the sponsors) bought me the first pair of decent glasses I ever had - for the first time in my life I looked pretty

I graduated from Teen Challenge and had the prom I didn't have as a teen. For the first time in my life I felt pretty

And praise and worship...

And, finally,

WHEN THE DEVIL REMINDS ME OF MY PAST, I REMIND HIM OF HIS FUTURE!!!


Amen