Momma Bean in the Mountains

Tempest tossed Worn and weary at the mercy of the cruel elements without an anchor and lost, hopelessly lost I remember one particular day - sunny and autumnal, brisk and wonderful flying through the mountains as a passenger of a sport utility vehicle. I remember no matter what was going on around me and outside of me I couldn't shake the doom and gloom and depression. I should be thrilled, enraptured with the splendor and majestic beauty around me. I sat despondent ... focused intently on the rearview mirror. For miles and miles we sat in silence as I watched things pass me from behind. I realized, with small tears forming in the corners of my eyes that this was how I had been 'doing life.' So focused on the past that I was sacrificing and losing the moment of now -- the present which is in fact a present, I left unwrapped and unopened in the backseat on the floor. It took a few years and a real encounter with the God of the universe to help me to re...

...and Absolute Crisis Reveals Absolutely. Not sure who coined that (I suspect it is from Art Katz)  but the other day while driving my dear sweet hubby quoted it to me.  Fifteen years ago I surrendered my life and my will over to Christ and cried out with all of my heart, "Take me I am yours." Over the years I have prayed many prayers, prayers of contrition, prayers of petition, prayers of joy and grief and sorrow and laughter and delight. I've prayed " Lord create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me ." I've prayed, " Let my heart be broken for the things that break your heart ." I've prayed, " Let us be one Father like you and Jesus are one ." "Give me passion." "Give me fire" "Give me a submitted and willing heart" "Give me grace, courage, strength." I've asked Him to remove anything in me that is a hinderance or block from our union. I've prayed from...

When I was in high school my procrastination was extreme. I would need to do dishes, for example, and I'd put it off and off an off I would stay up way too late and pull up a barstool to the sink and guess what? I'd FALL ASLEEP in front of the sink! Imagine my stepmother's frustration! I think this is perhaps why it bothers me so that my own children will wait until the night before school starts to finish their summer reading projects! I don't want them to do what I did - I want to help them have better habit/patterns/ways of doing things than I did.   My husband on the other hand backs off and allows them to do things the way they do them TRUSTING that they will learn from their mistakes. (Novel idea, right?) This frustrates me at times beyond words  I guess because I used to interpret my parents 'hands-off' approach to be a lack of concern. I always felt like they didn't care - so it probably makes me angrier then it *should* because I...

So in the past some of my entries have had 'points' or were meaningful in some way or another - this is just a head's up to any subscribers or those who stumble upon my page in blogoshpere that I will be posting days here. Jason Upton (my favorite musician) has a song entitled "Write Everyday Down" and in a way that's what I intend to do begin recording moments, days and seasons. Right now I am a homeschooling mother of five. I am only homeschooling our first grader and trying to do some preschool with our youngest. My children are 16 (11th grade boy), 14 (9th grade boy), 9 (4th grade boy) and at home are 6 (1st grade girl) and 5 (preK boy) I am happily married to the most amazing man I have ever met (truly I can say this) We live in Appalachia and we love it. Small town, lovely community and pockets of amazing people everywhere. I am currently in the Celebrate Recovery program of which I weekly say, "Hello, my name is Laura and I am a ...

I hope you never go through a severe and incapacitating clinical depression while attempting to care for five children, a husband and a house! I hope you never have to go through the mental, emotional and physical havoc this wreaks upon a body. I hope all of your days are blessed and filled with grace! I have been walking through a ROUGH SEASON in life. At times it's been gargantuan effort just to get out of bed. No joke. I've tried therapy, medications, prayer and fasting, Christian counselling - and it seems I just keep curling up in a ball and going back to sleep. I can't find a root cause or source. I've lost intimate and close personal relationships with others. I've lost my desire for social interactions in even the mildest forms. In the midst of this 'season' I think things were summed up when I shared with an old acquaintance recently: "2009 was the beginning of a great breaking (by the hand of the Lord). 2010 was a crushing to p...

Saturday was a busy day. Saturday was a long day. Saturday was divided into two major parts:            Celebration #1 - Party for PJB's sixth bday            Celebration #2 - Partying for Isaiah's fourteenth bday The former consisted of a conventional birthday party at our church -  complete with lots of food, lots of friends both school aged and adult, and cleanup/setup/and a full week's worth of six year old anticipation~! The latter was a slightly impromptu time of driving through the boondocks looking for Wharton Furnace to find Shephard Rd to take Isaiah and three friends to pick up two young ladies to bring along for a time of mall fun and dinner followed up by a movie. Well - said trip to the boondocks cut into my free time plan for when I initially dropped them off at the mall, so pulling out of the parking lot and feeling tired and unsure as to what...

God grant me the serenity  to accept the things I cannot change;  courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time;  Enjoying one moment at a time;  Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;  Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;  Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life  and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen. --Reinhold Niebuhr Since starting Celebrate Recovery, several months ago, this prayer has been read aloud and prayed many times. The first time I read it, it was like a snag on an old vinyl album ....scritchhhhhhhhhhhhhh accepting hardship as a pathway to peace? reasonably happy in this life? supremely happy in the next one? I didn't want to accept these things as true, I didn't want to even read them aloud. And I most certainly did not want to pray them! (YES, Y...

So I'm doing this "Celebrate Recovery" thing... And it's been a love/hate relationship throughout the process... But I'm getting to a place now where I am beginning to see some fruit. And I wanted to share with cyberworld an incident that occurred in my life directly because of Celebrate Recovery and how God and a person who loves God showed me "Great Grace." So, Celebrate Recovery is a twelve-step program (like AA or NA) that seeks to get to the ROOTS of the weeds of behavior patterns and "Issues" that we have and live with. It seeks to access heaven and involve God in our past/present/future and help bring health, wholeness and healing to your mind, will and emotions. It's a really great program. (and for those in the Markleysburg Area, it is on Wednesday evenings at New Life Covenant Church (beside A.J.) from 6:30-8:30.) So I was involved in a "Step Study" which is a more intensive branch off of the CR prog...

It's funny to look back on things and try and remember how they were when you are so different now from where you were then?! I was thinking about the old saying, "If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was." I remember wallowing in my teenage pain and misery ... the anguish of a breakup ... the utter despair in love lost. I remember well meaning adults quoting that old saying to me and I remember wanting to DIE just thinking the thought of the saying! I didn't care if it was TRUE! The hurt inside was so deep and so intense, I NEEDED this person. They were, afterall, my life support system. I was, afterall, a parasite. I remember a season in life where Chuck and I were having a bit of a rough patch ... miscommunication abounded and silent walls seemed built around me. We show love in different ways. I guess it's sort of like the "Five Love Languages" book --- you have to sp...

I remember over ten years ago, eleven, actually, when Chuck and I were really getting to know each other. I remember specifically asking him what his prayer was for the year? Apologetically, I don't remember what HIS reply was! BUT: I do remember what mine was. With great eagerness and anticipation I shouted out, "I want to be more structured, organized and disciplined!" I remember my soon-to-be husband grinning and with a slight chuckle and a twinkle in his eye, he said, "Isn't that about the same thing?" pshaw! Bite your tongue! Structure Organization and Discipline are three very distinctly different things and I lack each one, so I can give you personal testimony to how different they are! Structure would be the "system" Organization would be your ability to keep the "system" in and orderly fashion and Discipline would be the ability to live WITHIN the CONFINES of the system. Sometimes I think of myself as a s...