Freeeeeeeeedom!

After a six month hiatus, I now have my driver's license back, much to my son Nathanael's delight. And it only cost me $936.60 for two speeding tickets I got five years ago including the $75 renewal fee.

I am sure everyone is relieved to know that the roads are once again safe for me to drive on now that I have paid.

I feel so warm and fuzzy now when I think of the provincial government.

How Good and Pleasant it is....

...When brethren dwell together in unity.

Yesterday's Lord's Day was a feast of reason and flow of soul as well as a literal feast of food. We had our usual society meeting followed by a fellowship dinner at one of our member's home. This was followed by a group discussion on a chosen topic that kept us on track with devoting this day to the Lord. Such times as these are a small foreshadowing of the fellowship that awaits us in Heaven.

It is an encouraging thing to see sanctification happening not only on an individual, but also on the corporate level. Fellowship with like-minded believers is one of the main resources that God has given the Church for keeping ourselves unspotted from the world. This is especially important when we live in a culture that is more and more degenerate as time progresses, and also in a time when the Church at large is sunk in apostacy, schism, and judicial blindness. Things look bleak when we survey the horizon, even when we know that God has ordained these circumstances and is working out His will to His own honor and glory. These times of fellowship are what give us weak mortals the intestinal fortitude, hope, and joy in the circumstances that helps us to stay the course.

A Successful Dry Run

The cake turned out real fine. I have to tweak things a bit, like brushing each layer with a sugar syrup. I am thinking of making it a sugar syrup with orange zest in it. This will make the cake a bit more moist and flavorful and it will also prevent the bavarian cream filling from being absorbed out of sight. The icing turned out perfectly and is easy to work with. I am going to do a bit of practicing with it and see if I can master a few simple decorating techniques.

Martha Stewart may be a liar and insider trader, but she does know how to write a book with good directions on wedding cake construction.

Dry Run

Sunday is Elodie's second birthday, but because we don't celebrate birthdays on the Lord's Day (since that day should be reserved to the Lord alone), we will be celebrating it tomorrow. I am going to make a mini version of the wedding cake that I am making for the weddings in July, complete with the same type of filling and maybe similar decorations. We will see how it turns out and whether or not I can quit sweating bullets over this.

In the next few weeks I will be renting the cake pans, making the cakes, lightly freezing them, sawing them in half, refreezing them, and then setting them aside to await the BIG DAY. I am planning on assembling them the day before the wedding. One of the things I will be experimenting with is making the icing ahead of time. I am going to refrigerate it and then take it out to soften and see if it can still be worked with. If it does what I think it will do, it will allow me to make up a few gallons of icing a day or so ahead of time and store it in my fridge and then take it out in order to work with it on assembling the cakes.

I can't help wondering why I took this on sometimes. I am so afraid the cakes will turn out to be a total flop and will look dreadful. I do so want them to both look and taste good because the wedding cake is one of the best parts of a wedding if it is done right. If it looks good, I'll post pictures. I don't mind showing off pictures of cakes as long as I am not in them. :oP

OK! OK!

Those of you who want to see a picture of me in my hippy get up will be able to do so...

...When I lose about another 25 lbs!

Sorry, but I am incurably vain and don't like most pictures of me. You can all see me in Heaven when I am finally cured of this affliction.

Love of Money and All Kinds of Evil

"If it can be done, then why not do it?" appears to be the motto of many scientists and medical researchers. One area in which this type of thinking is moving ahead is that of doing facial transplants. Doctors at the University of Louisville in the US are planning on carrying out a facial transplant, despite the many ethical, moral, and physical impacts that such a transplant could have.

Of course, they have consulted with professional "ethicists" about all this before doing it.

As far as I can tell, the purpose of an ethicist is to move us from point A to point Z in small enough increments we are comfortable with to give us the illusion that we have actually measured our proposed actions against the Law Order of the Universe. Of course, no one asks the ethicists what their presuppositional basis is that guides their decisions on the morality of doing a proposed action.

In the end, pragmatism rules the day, just as it does in our churches and in every other arena you care to mention.

Do I sound cynical? I feel it.

Woo Hoo!

I'm going to be a Grammy again! (And yes, Mom, you get to be a Great Grammy again too.)

No Sanctuary

Now men won't even safe from advertising when they use a public urinal thanks to this company.

Who Writes These Books???

A few weeks ago I picked up several pre-school workbooks to bring home for my four year old son, Garnet, to work on. These books also contained a CD Rom of pre-school games that were supposed to help the child learn what you would expect a pre-schooler to know.

Well, I must be really behind in starting these kids on school work because the books are definitely NOT pre-school stuff despite what the label on the outside said. Instead of starting with the rudimentary skills of number recognition and counting, the math games had them adding and subtracting numbers in the double digits. Why would anyone do this to a preschooler or their parents??

Funky Mama

It's that time of year again -- the time of year that makes me contemplate getting out the hemp and beaded necklace, ankle bracelets, and toe rings. That's right. Summer weather usually calls out the funky, hippy side of me. It has been creeping up on me in the past few weeks, but last night the funky mood got a huge shove with the help of a friend.

Dawn owns a modest home with a bazillion dollar view that overlooks the Nechako River. Last night I dropped by with a couple of my boys who are friends with her son, and we sat on a lawn swing in the setting sun and watched fish leap in the river below as our boys did a bit of fishing.

Dawn is one of my favorite people. She has assisted me as I brought the last four of my children into the world at home, and though she has had to become a bit more medically oriented in her practice, she still is the sort of midwife like you find between the covers of Spiritual Midwifery

Dawn was showing me her latest project, which is a book of daily affirmations that pregnant women can tear out to contemplate either during their pregnancy or as something to focus on while they are in labor. I sat there twiddling a piece of hair around a finger as I read and Dawn, who has about a half dozen strands of beaded hair on one side of her head, finally asked me if I would like one too.

I squinted at her for a moment. Crystal, pearled, emerald green, and gold beads shimmered on the side of her head. Before I finished saying contemplatively "I think so," Dawn had lept from her chair, grabbed her box of beads and pulled out some strands that she had made up already. I chose one of alternating pearl and crystal beads and now I have a single strand of them adorning my hair, just in front of one ear.

My Birkenstocks are at hand. Now all I need is some batiked Indian muslim dresses or skirts and I am all set for the summer.

You are a classical writer, taking after the forms
of Shakespearian sonnets and Emily Dickinson's
apparent lack of meter and rhyme. Your teacher
always told you that you should have been born
in 18th century England--and perhaps you should
have been! Then you could be a literary genius
now! Stuck in the classical-romantic era,
Shakespeare is your idol and role model. Your
favorite language is old English, and you're
actually quite fluent. Someone with class,
style, and quite a bit of intelligence as well,
I'll wager. :)


What's YOUR Writing Style?
brought to you by Quizilla

Such Mercy

she sings hallelujah
when all has become nothing
and her hope in the saviour
has colored all she does
and taints the way she loves

she sings hallelujah
and falls to the ground again
with hands stretched up to the sky
waiting for the day
she'll hear the father say...

...welcome home good and faithful one

Lyrics from a song by the Newsboys

Now if that isn't an expression of love too overwhelming to contemplate for very long, I don't know what is. How can He? How can God take such rotten, foul sinners as we, impute righteousness to us, ordain and enable us to do good works which He sanctifies through His Spirit, and then reward us and call us good and faithful ones?

Cast your crowns at His feet. They are His. To Him be all glory, honor and praise! Amen.

Thoughts of Death

Ever have one of those days where you spend almost the entire time you hear the sermon weeping? This was one of those days for me. Today we had a sermon by Thomas Watson read to us by one of the men in our congregation. The text was taken from Job 14:14 and it dealt with how we need to consider our ends and make preparation for our death.

The terror of death, for me at least, is not about my actual passing. It is the terror I feel over the possibility of some of my children or other loved family members or friends dying outside of Christ. While there is life there is hope, but it is a painful thing to see a child living after the flesh and know that if they were taken right now, their conversation, or manner of living, leaves no hope of eternal salvation.

There is nothing like contemplating death to help you get things in the right perspective. I have been extremely angry and hurt in the last few days over the way a fellow Christian has misrepresented me recently to others so that my integrity and honor have been questioned and damaged. As I was preparing for church this morning, the verses about needing to get things right with a brother or sister before bringing an offering to the altar came to mind. I couldn't do anything about the situation today, but I could, by God's grace, deal with my heart attitude in anticipation of dealing with things. And so I prayed that God would remove my sinful anger and replace it with a productive frame of mind that would allow me to find a satisfactory conclusion to the situation. And then came the sermon and I was crushed to think of how petty it is of me to worry so about my reputation and honor, as stained and soiled by sin and mixed motives as it is, when I could be called to account at any moment to face my King. Do I really want to come before him that way?

Man's chief and highest end is to do everything for his own glory and to enjoy Him forever. Death helps remind us of this. When Christ was falsely accused, he didn't rail against his accusers. Neither should I rail against mine.

This life is a warfare and all Christians die as soldiers, battling til the end. Not only must we prepare for our physical death, but we must also put to death sin in the flesh daily that we might live unto Christ.

The Tyranny of Women

In a recent post by Samantha, she linked to an article on Perverted Patriarchy that stimulated further thoughts in my head.

The article lays out the differences between a perverted patriarchy where a man, as head of the household, views his position as one of power to coerce circumstances and people to his service, rather than the Biblical and Christ-like model of leadership, which is to serve.

As I read through the article, nodding with approval, it occurred to me that this notion of servant-leadership is not one that is restricted to men. Women, too, need to remember this in their roles. When we think of leadership in the home, the tendency is to think of it solely in terms of male leadership, forgetting that women are authorities in the home as well, namely over their children.

Christian leadership is not about someone controlling others and asserting his will over them; it is about serving them. Serving someone is the very opposite of asserting one's will over them. A slave yields his will in order to serve his master. A Christ-like leader will yield his will in order to serve those under his authority. Jesus demonstrated this style of leadership in that He gave His life for the sake of those He came to lead.

Another way of saying this is that Christian leadership is more a matter of influence than control. God's kingdom advances in this world not by God's external control of people but by His working changes within people, making them want to obey Him. Jesus could have come and established His kingdom by the sheer exertion of power, demanding obedience and enforcing it with the sword. Instead He choose to serve those over whom He was Lord and to cause them to want to submit to Him. His leadership is not an external exercise of power; it is an internal influence, leading His followers to obey Him willingly.


The article is extremely well written. If you are a woman, read it with an eye to your position as an authority over your children and see if you have areas in which you are transgressing against them.

Wifely Submission

What follows is a comment I made on Samantha's blog I thought it bears repeating here.

Women are called to submit to their own husbands, which suggests to me that submission is something to be tailored to the specific man that you are married to, not to all men everywhere. Likewise, men are to dwell with their own wives "with understanding" meaning that his understanding is not limited to generic understanding of all women, but to his particular wife.

It goes without saying, that our ultimate submission is to God and His moral law. No husbands have the right to command a wife to sin against God. It is in the "indifferent" things where a wife's submission to her husband is to be manifested. And it is in "indifferent" things that a husband's understanding of his wife is also manifested.

People come in various flavors and shapes. We tailor the way we teach, to a certain extent, to our particular child, because what works for one doesn't work for another. One woman may be able to endure watching a movie that another wife finds too violent and nightmare causing. Some people have a weak and uninformed conscience about a particular practice, and it would be sinful to force them to participate in it until their conscience is rightly informed. IOW, there are no bright hard lines drawn for us when it comes to indifferent things.

Of course, it requires the acquisition of maturity and wisdom on our part in order to learn where and how to draw the lines for ourselves and those we are lawfully relating to in marriage and family. The unimaginative, the lazy, the immature, and the selfish will draw the lines in rigid ways and require everyone to conform to them in order to manifest *their* notions of what constitutes holy living. Mature Christian living is confined by God's Law, but fluid in its application, showing mercy, wisdom and sincere love of God and man. This is a high ideal to strive for. It would be nice if all of us could actually achieve it (self included).

First Blood

That delightful but small window that occurs between when the spring leaves form a delicate green canopy overhead and the air is fresh with the scent of growing things and not a single bug is around to mar the almost heavenly beauty has now passed. I got the first of what is likely to be many mosquito bites yesterday.

I am feeling a bit of sympathy for the ancient Egyptians who suffered under the plague of flies. All of a sudden pesky houseflies are everywhere, despite the screens on all the windows and doors. I have to drape clean dishtowels over the food when doing preparations in order to keep them from prancing in it.

I am looking forward to the joys of summer, but look forward most to the summer of Heaven, sans flies!

Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get More Confusing...

...Some godless idiot comes along to prove you wrong.

On the Inappropriateness of Men doing Feminine Reproductive Health Care

Nikkiana raised an issue (and what will likely become a rant) for me when she commented in my last blog post about how she prefers seeing women doctors. I understand and sympathize with her views of this. If I am seeing a doctor for something that needs doctoring, usually I don't have a problem with seeing a male physician. There are certain body parts and procedures, however, in which I and most women definitely are NOT comfortable with having a male attendant. This is "light of nature" stuff folks and should be plenty obvious what I am referring to -- anything that has to do with the female reproductive system.

Now before any of you men reading this zone out here, I want you to sit up and pay attention, because you have a part in what I have to say. And I promise not to be graphic.

The demise of midwifery care in North America is largely the fault of women. Some time ago, I did some reading on the history of obstetrical and gynecological care of women in North America and it appears that the switch to male attendants began with women in the upper crust who wanted to ease the birth pangs with drugs. Male physicians were the source of these drugs. Before long, middle class women wanted these drugs as well. As more and more male doctors became involved, the push was on to crowd out and do away with the feminine health care model of midwifery and move women into the more "sanitary" and efficient hospital model where it would be easier for doctors to oversee the birthing process of more than one woman at a time, all managed tidily by nurses who could do most of the dirty work, and where it was easier and safer to administer the drugs.

Obstetrics is a lucrative and never-ending source of income for the medical profession, so the more inefficient, less expensive, and less sanitary appearing model of homebirthing with a midwife was portrayed as something done only by backward and ignorant people. There is an economic incentive to keep female health care in the hands of the medical profession.

As women were moved out of the home, they lost the traditional support that other women (mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors) during the birthing process, as well as the comfort that this provided. Birth became a sterile and frightening experience where "active management" took over and birth became, not a natural process that it normally is, with the odd complication, but rather a diaster waiting to happen. Moreover, hospital birthing practices are designed to make an inherently female and inefficient process conform as much as possible to a more masculine approach to efficiency, with disasterous results in terms of actual outcome and the ability to provide the best environment for mother/infant bonding. I swear, sometimes, in looking over hospital protocols for labor and birth, that the committees in charge of such things asked themselves what would be the most intrusive and disrupting procedures they could institute for birthing, and then implemented them.

Over 90% of babies born in hospitals today begin life with drugs in their systems. None of these drugs have been tested for safety on the highly vulnerable livers and brains of babies. This is highly ironic given the care most mothers take during pregnancy, to avoid toxic substances (the definition of a drug).


All of these interventions -- from the IV and electronic fetal monitor, to the episiotomy, forceps, vacuum extractor and cesarean surgery have short term effects on the birthing process and immediate and often long-term effects on the physical and emotional health of mother and baby. Things done that simply inhibit the natural and spontaneous behavior of mothers and babies and pose additional risks, for example: restricting what a woman eats or drinks in labor, restricting her movement during labor or delivery, not allowing her to touch her baby as it is emerging, and separating her from the baby at any time after the birth.

The simple act of placing a laboring woman in a room dominated by the presence of a clock and asking her to take off her own clothes and put on a hospital gown can unconsciously alter her behavior and change the natural rhythm of her labor. Parents make their decisions based on false trust in the medical model for birth and from a lack of accurate information...

...The result of our approach to birth is a strange mix of isolation combined with sensory overload, lack of privacy combined with deprivation of appropriate attention, and an undervaluing of the entire experience mothers and babies have.

All of the above is by the way, and you can read more about it on the website that I linked to. It isn't my intention to spend this post on listing all the ways the modern obstetrical practices contribute to harming women and babies. What I do want to focus on is the way that having men perform medical procedures upon women does MUCH to offend and violate the natural modesty that women should have before strange men not their husbands.

Many of these procedures could be done on women by women -- namely midwives. I have been blessed in a friend who is a competent, licensed midwife, who does all my well-woman care. This, unhappily, is not the case for most women because of the way midwifery has been driven out of the mainstream and onto the fringes.

I think it is time that women started to demand well woman care for women BY women once again. And I also think that husbands ought to be demanding the same, in order to protect their women and girls. A girl's first introduction to specifically female health care should not be at the hands of a strange man!

And since I have been dealing with the topic of single women and career paths, I think becoming a doula or a midwife is an excellent occupation that will stand any woman in good stead when it comes time to having her own babies. Just be sure that you marry a man who is understanding about the strange hours you keep and the kind of passion that this type of work can inspire.

Testing my ability to post pictures of my Dainty Doodle and Kee Kee Boo. 

What's a Single Girl to Do?

A serious question posed by a young single lady was what I thought young women who want to marry and have children, but have no prospect for marriage and motherhood in the near future, should do?

This is something that I have given some thought to as I have a number of daughters, some of whom are older. Are single women supposed to sit at the parental home crocheting and looking domestic until some knight rides by to sweep them off their feet? Or is it possible to do something else with their lives, as they wait for Prince Charming, like get an education or a career? I think the latter is a valid direction for single women.

As a practical matter, as young women mature, they want their own space to govern and arrange. It can be difficult living in your mom's home and having to submit every creative idea to her oversight, particularly if you are entering your 20's. Women want to create their own spaces that reflect their personality and creativity. And if mom has been training her daughters into home management, they also want the space to actually manage a home too. Nor do I think unmarried daughters are to become the family drudges, spending their time serving Mom and Dad and younger siblings by doing the housekeeping and cooking. But what if no man is on the horizen, ready to take advantage of these desires? Must she languish forever in the parental home, frustrated by her training and not able to express it?

I don't believe so. Now, I do think that there are some limitations on what women ought to engage in career wise. I have a definite bias against women police officers, soldiers, firemen, and other occupations that benefit not only from greater masculine strength, but the inherent masculine authority that men have and women don't have that helps them to be successful in that career. If a woman feels she is definitely not called to celibacy and thinks she will eventually marry, I also have a bias against entering into a career path that will require long years of training followed by long years paying off the education debt, and which would be interrupted badly by marrying and having children. An example of this type of career would be that of a doctor. No woman who wants to marry should follow a path where she and others are likely to think she is "wasting" her education and training if she concentrates on the primary calling of being a full time wife and mother. Though she could lay this sort of thing aside, it would likely cause her to become more easily discontented. It can sometimes be tedious doing the daily round of hausfrau and I would think that the temptation of the "if only I had" or the "what if" scenarios are harder to withstand if you left behind an intensive career.

It is possible to find lucrative and satisfying work that doesn't require a great deal of preparation and training. My daughter was telling me today that the average wage of the top income earners at a local restaurant works out to $20 an hour when you factor in the tips. Not bad for a short term stint, and this is something you could easily leave when the time for marriage comes, and it can even be a good part time opportunity if the family ever needed a financial boost.

Ideally, if a woman wants to get educated and then have a career until she is married, one thing to keep in mind is whether or not it is something she could do from home while still fulfilling her primary role or if it is something she could pick up later when the children are grown. Technology has made it easier to do this for a variety of tasks: medical transcription, accounting, book-keeping, and network marketing spring to mind off the top of my head. (Network marketing is my personal favorite. It is an industry most people regard with loathing, mostly because we all remember the way it used to be in the "bad old days" when you had to deceive people into meeting with you, stockpile inventory in your garage, and use a great deal of hype to get anywhere. Things have changed drastically for the better though, and as an industry it is undervalued and its potential is not fully realized by many.)

In short, I see nothing wrong with working or getting an education or even following your dreams based on your talents and interests while waiting and praying for someone to come along. People who are productive and active are more likely to attract a quality mate than those who waste away at home, IMHO.