Be Careful What You Wish For!

Down here in Southern California it gets pretty hot and very dry for an extremely long time. So dry that you can taste the dust in the air and get very tired of dusting your house over and over. So hot that you don't want to move and can't stand to pay the a/c bill.
Yes, we are blessed by great weather most of the time, but the very hot spells are sometimes just too long and in need of a cool break. It's the dryness that I can't stand. There are just too many months that go by with no rain at all and we often get warnings of water shortages. Everything just feels so dry and dirty and the only way to fix that is to ask God to give us some rain from time to time.

The only problem is that when God does decide to give the rain to us he gives it to us all at once!

Guess what happens to land when it is so dry and suddenly a bucket of water is poured over it....yep, mud slides.
Guess what happens to trees that don't have deep roots in dry dirt....yep, they fall down.
Guess what happens to people who aren't used to rain, wind, lighting when they are driving....yep, accidents.
Guess what happens to roofs that haven't been wet in almost a year......yep, all the loose parts show up with leaks.

So as we try to be safe and not get swept away in the flooded areas or blown away by the 80 mile per hour winds or crushed by the falling trees or irritated by the expense of needed repairs - we need to be thankful for the rain.

Recipe Blog

Since January 1st Jim and I have been trying to eat healthier. I've been trying several new recipes. I have always gotten a little chuckle out of my hubby walking through the house saying "yum,that smells good" as I am cooking something. It may just be that I'm sauteing onions at the time but he always comments. So today as I'm cooking another new recipe he walks through with his nose up in the air sniffing away and saying how good it smells and the thought came to me to journal my efforts to cook healthier and what the results turn out to be.

I can't journal on paper due to the arthritis makes my hands hurt so instead I'm blogging it because typing doesn't seem to hurt as writing does.

Check out the link on the left sidebar.

Grief & Hope

Recently we received some very terrible news about a long time friend who committed suicide and took his wife with him.
My hubby has taken this news very hard. Over the past 22 years he had enjoyed many occasions of laughter and conversation with his friend. There was never any signs of such an tragedy to occur.

People have ups and downs in their lives. There are many obstacles in ones life that can be depressing or disappointing. There are illnesses and depressing events that sneak up on us.

But there is an invisible door. On the other side of that door there is a dark evil place waiting to swallow us up into the point of no return.

One must wonder what causes a person to open that door.

We all walk up to that door sometime during our life but then we must remember our many blessings and turn around and walk the other way. Sometimes it's a hard climb up the mountain to the other side, but it is worth the effort.

We need encouragement to keep us walking back over that mountain, strength to keep us there, and the knowledge that we are loved and cared for.
We live in this world but it is not of this world that we will find that amount of love.

"nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can't, and life can't. The angels can't, and the demons can't. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away. Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8; 38-39
We have hope in the knowledge that God has given us that love.
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