The Weather has Warmed Up . . .

But believe it or not we still have a little snow on the ground around the stone blocks we have stacked up for the porch we will be putting in come spring. I've lived in places where that wouldn't be unusual but this isn't one of them. At this time of year if it snows at all it's gone by the next day. I've never seen it stay for a week or more. I can't help wondering how that fits in with the idea of global warming.

I've been having a hard time this year with Christmas. Except for the year that my son died this has always been my favorite time of year. Around the end of October I get into full rev and am decorating and cooking. This year for some reason I haven't been able to get real excited until today. Today I needed to make cinnamon bread for the baskets our church is making for shut ins. Suddenly as I cooked I found myself getting excited. I guess I just needed to get off my duff and get to work. Isn't it funny how that works.

I had a long talk with a friend of mine after church. She was talking to me about her daughter with whom I am especially close. She said that she knew that her daughter and I talked about things, so she felt it would be OK to talk with me so that I would be able to pray for her a little more effectively. A lot of the stuff I already knew, some of it I suspected, a couple were worse than I suspected.

I think that one of her problems is simply growing up in a small town where everyone has lived their whole life and everyone knows everyone. Because I was in the military, and so was my husband and father, I have been able to do some traveling. This area was my fathers home when he was growing up. We moved back after he retired from the Air Force so I'm accepted. But because I've traveled away and come back people think I have a special knowledge some how. Strange. Anyway all that to say this. When you live in one place all your life with people who have lived in that place all their lives, sometimes it's hard to be allowed to grow up. It's like your parents; they have know you from day one and they always think of you as little Tommy or little Becky.

My Friend is almost as old as I was when we first moved back here. She is married and has two daughters of her own; yet people look at her as that young girl who was still in school. She is trying hard to take her place as an adult in our church and yet a number of the older women wont listen to some of the things she has to say because they see her as just a girl. It's hard for her. It's especially hard when the position you are trying to tackle and make changes to is one that was handled by a woman in her fifties who did the job for 20 years before she turned it over to my friend. Any changes she makes are taken personally and "can't possably work" because "we've nevery done it that way before". And anyway if "the way it was, worked well enough" why should we change. It's hard and my friend is getting very discouraged.

There are other things going on that I don't feel free to talk about but pray for her, she could really use it.