the last day of the month before the last month of the year!

November 30, 2010 ~ wow, tomorrow is December 1st.  I am sitting here in Mountain Bean again, since I am in the city - this is the best wireless place to go to.  It has been a couple days since I have checked email, as we are temporarily displaced citizens!!  Just joking.  We are however living at Mom K's condo just for a few days while some things are being completed at Josh and Leah's loft. Our life is always an adventure, and I am really glad that we are able to go with the flow.  (I know sometimes my kids will say I handle the flow better than other times, but this is really quite fine.) 

It has been an experience living in Mom's condo.  Every time I open the door to go in - I am always disappointed when I realize again, Mom is not there.  Her house smells like TIDE powdered detergent.  I think I will always associate that with Mom.  The Tide smell wafts out of the container in the storage room.  Mom's house is a little in disarray.  I can't help but think she would be a little upset with us for having things a little out of order!  Mom was such a tidy housekeeper.  We are in the middle of packing up - and distributing her stuff among family.  In the meantime we have things in little piles.  The phone is disconnected, as is the TV which means that it is pretty quiet in there.  I miss her so much.

I came to the Bean to meet Kim and have a cup of coffee and catch up on friendship.  It was good.  And now - I can catch up on my blog.  It just seems like my return to work has caught me a little off kilter!  I am still working about 24 hours or so a day - but I am still zonked at the end of it.  (Although it is a long day once in a while - yesterday I worked 9:45 till 8:15).  I am loving it though.

I can hardly believe that tomorrow is December.  I just took a little stroll backward - looking through the blog from November 2007 until now.  Funny - some thing don't seem to be much different!  What does that say about me?  Perhaps that some things are very deeply rooted.  Not really proud of that, but I have to say - life has been both a journey AND a process!  And a hard one at that!

Regardless of what I have or have not accomplished ... I do know that I am a different person, and God is at work - and will be at work till my dying breath.  I have also realized that life IS hard OFTEN.  And, if you have not experienced that - believe me - you will.  It is not a matter of IF but WHEN.

It was a year ago that I erected the altar in the back forty at Anola!  I was thinking of that last Friday, when I heard Steve Bell singing HERE BY THE WATER when we were at the Siloam Mission Banquet.
Immediately the thoughts of the day that God told me to go and gather rocks and build an altar...
And my thoughts went to the memory of what I must have looked like - with tears in my eyes, and with Oreo my dog sitting quietly as I sang the same song to the Lord!

Later I took more rocks - and Alvin laid a huge one as well.
Later God instructed me to take a felt pen and NAME some of the rocks - which I did.
Later I wrote a Psalm out on one of them (only to find it gone after the spring thaw!)

Sometimes I feel like I need to build an altar again, although I have not received a word from God to do that physically again.  HOWEVER I know that somewhere along the way - I seem to have taken those rocks back upon myself!  I just need to lay them down again.... or perhaps it is a continual process of laying down!

Life carries on - and I continue to walk through the journey...
I know that it is only in HIS power that I can do this.
I know that it is only in HIS power that I can lay them down - and that HE makes them HOLY!

For as long as I live - I am sure the pile of rocks I lay down will make a mountain!  I just really want to keep laying them down. 
KEEP
LAYING
THEM
DOWN
because..... ONLY YOU (GOD) CAN MAKE THEM HOLY!