Gravel Road Musings

I've been reading a book called "Bold Love" by Dr. Dan B. Allender and Dr. Tremper Longman III. I think I've alluded to it before possibly. The thing that has been sticking out to me this week is in a chapter called "Hungering for Restoration". Allow me to quote a few things that have stuck out to me. "To forgive another means to cancel the debt of what is owed in order to provide a door of opportunity for repentance and restoration of the broken relationship" "Biblical forgiveness is never unconditional and one-sided. It is not letting others go off scot-free, "forgiven," and enabled to do harm again without any consequence. Instead forgiveness is an invitation to reconciliation, not the blind, cheap granting of it." "Forgiveness involves a heart that cancels the debt but does not lend new money until repentance occurs. A forgiving heart opens the door to any who knock. But entry into that home (that is, the heart) ...

The sun is shining, the sun is shining. The sun is a beautiful thing!!!! After about 5 3/4 inches of rain, the sun is a welcome treat. Life just looks so much better when the sun is shining and when your man is home. D went for an overnight primitive camping trip. I stayed home and did things that I used to do, like stay up really, really late and then sleep in really, really, really late. It was great, but it is also very great to have D back home again. It's weird how it works. I used to get along just fine by myself, bragged about it really and now I love having my husband at home. I will admit though I do enjoy the occasional evening at home by myself. Last night all the "widow" ladies got together for supper. I went, but I would have been just as content at home by myself. Besides they all were mom with at least 3 children, most of them have 6 children, so it was a little out of my league. And I dont like coming home after dark that much with stuff to bri...

I try to be a fairly upbeat person, but when I come out to the kitchen at 5:00 in the morning and step in a puddle of water that is running in a straight line clear across my kitchen and can be traced under the freezer and then turns and goes along the trim to the door. If you lift the rug, you will find a well soaked and soppy floor. Oh and the newspaper that the tomatoes are laying on has the well-sogged look of wet newspaper. Then we go outside and our ditch is clear full of water and running down into the next ditch, which is running into the next ditch and so on until it reaches the culvert where it runs under the road. The area outside the door of the calf barn is a pool of water which requires strategic arrangement of the door, the truck door and the feet to prevent a foot soaking. Fast forward an hour and a half: we are returning from chores; the water has gone down considerably in the ditches, but alas a peak into the barn shows the poor calves are up to their shins in wa...

I'm not sure why this picture was taken, except maybe to show the clutter on the floor. We always keep leaves on our rugs. It gives the house more of an outdoorsy look!! Grandpa helping Ryan feed a calf the bottle. Ryan was very excited about feeding calves. He still remembers a little calf we had over a year ago that we had called Mikey. He has no fear. I'm sorry, there are lots of pics of Ryan. Blame Katrina, I got them off of her camera. I guess when you are little and cute and excited about life, you get lots of pics taken. Ross' version of helping with chores. He was busy combining corn. Shelling, that is the word I want. I couldn't think what the word was for getting the corn off the husk. Ryan seeing what some field corn tastes like. He soon gave that up; someone combined the corn and on the way home, they had fun throwing corn kernels at people. Headed out on a walk. Almost everyone walked down Sunday evening to where we were choring. Ryan bonding ...