January 2010

A pile of lovely research books came in the mail for me this week, and I’ve been diving into the study of ancient Mesopotamia, which will coincide with the next three books I’m working on in The Wives of the Patriarchs series. I love research books, especially those with pictures! (Perhaps I’m still a kid at heart.) But in truth I’m a visual learner, and pictures of places, geography, archeology, and artifacts of the era do a lot to help me see a story. So do books on culture and daily life – things such as marriage and funeral customs and what kinds of gods did they serve?

In searching through one of the books, I looked up death and funerary practices. (Not intended to be morbid, simply part of understanding the people of the time.) Archeologists have found cemeteries in Mesopotamia with male and female adults and children. Young children were sometimes buried in the same graves as adults, and in some cases there is evidence that the adults and children were related by blood.

“Babies, however, were normally not buried in cemeteries but either under the floors of private houses, often in cooking pots (sometimes with a hint of human sacrifice), or simply tossed onto rubbish dumps as if they were regarded as sub-human. Adults were also buried beneath the floors of houses, but only rarely on rubbish tips.” An Illustrated Dictionary Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia pg. 59-60. Emphasis mine

Abortion and infanticide are not new to our culture or our day. As Solomon so wisely said, “There is nothing new under the sun.” And in truth, apart from the grace of God, human nature does not change.

Isaiah 49:15-16 says, “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;”

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” Psalm 139:13-16 ESV

This Sunday, January 24, 2010, is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, the day set aside to honor human life, and to remind us of how many lives abortion has cost us.

God, in His timelessness, sees the babies who were tossed on those rubbish heaps or sacrificed in cooking pots in ancient Mesopotamia, and He sees the unformed body of every child’s unborn life today. Their names, which He knows even if they’ve gone unnamed by human parents, are engraved on the palms of His hands.

May we learn to value human life as much as He does. And may archeologists in future generations find a better story of our era than we have discovered from ages past.

Selah~

I’m always amazed at how fast time flies. Like the quote from a movie Julie & Julia about deadlines, “I like to wave at them as they whiz past.” (Not quoting that exactly.) Except I don’t like to wave at time passing me by – I like to enjoy each moment and don’t know how so many moments disappear while I’m not looking.

Oh well…

In other thoughts – I have a cat shoving his face into my shoulder and generally telling me to get out of the chair and do something or hug him or feed him or something right now! I still have not mastered cat-speak, but I can tell you he is being pushy. Probably wants me to put on music. They don’t seem to like a quiet house.

I’ve spent most of the week at home, but today I tackled the mall to return a scarf I ordered online (wrong color.) I also had two rewards cards ($10 each) from Godiva that were going to expire February 5, 2010, so of course, I had to use them! I got a dark chocolate raspberry frozen drink – sweet decadence in a cup – yum! Then I picked up a dark chocolate coconut macaroon for Randy and picked out a box full of dark chocolate truffles. I did try a free sample of white chocolate strawberry and actually liked it. But dark chocolate is better.

Then I went to the grocery/department store (out of salted butter – and unsalted on toast does not taste good) and also looked at new cushions for our kitchen chairs, but decided to wait and check other stores. I want something cushy and comfortable that won’t stain the first time someone spills food on it. I could be looking a while. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!

The next trip to the post office found me having to renew my P.O. Box and also found out that due to new security guidelines pre-stamped packages weighing over 13 ounces have to be taken to the window – can’t just be dropped in the box. If you buy the postage online, no problem, but if you buy stamps and put them on a box weighing more than 13 ounces, you get to stand in line to drop it off. I mail a lot of books and I buy stamps ahead so I could just drop them in the drop box. This guideline has been there before, I guess, but I didn’t recall seeing it. Fortunately, both Michal and Abigail weigh less than 13 ounces, so I’m safe! USPS won’t allow you to buy postage online for Media Mail, but supposedly stamps.com will. I’m going to check it out for future use.

Our son has gotten us hooked on a TV show that is free for Netflix viewers. Best characterization I’ve seen in ages for a TV show. The writers know what they’re doing – at least so far for Season 1. The show is Friday Night Lights, and while it doesn’t portray everything perfectly – as in it assume kids in high school will sleep with their boyfriends/girlfriends – there is a lot of good in it. It seems very true to small town life, especially a town too wrapped up in football. Check it out!

I was kind of hoping we would go to the Auto Show this coming week, but am not sure that will happen. I haven’t been in years and have been thinking it’s time to do some things like this again – maybe visit the Detroit art and sciences museums and Greenfield Village is always fun. Maybe I’m just tired of winter and cold and need to get out of the house.

Discovered a free phone application that allows me to download like over 24,000 free books (hopefully all in the public domain!) I’m reading Alice in Wonderland on the phone, which is kind of fun. It does allow for much faster reading, which I suppose a Kindle would do as well. I would like to get an e-reader someday, especially for travel, but was waiting to see if they become a bit more standardized. A Kindle wouldn’t fit in my pocket though to take anywhere, which is the nice thing about the phone.

I better go see what we’re doing for dinner. Gotta check with my guys to see what they want. Get to see my sis and her family with my folks tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

Selah~

I am a pack rat. I’ve known this about myself for some time now. The tendency was not inherited. My grandmother had a saying, “If you haven’t used it in a year, get rid of it.” When my grandmother died, she left very little for her kids to go through. She had already divided up the things she had kept that mattered to her, which in the end were few.

My mom learned a lot from her mom. Several years ago my parents downsized and let us kids go through their house and take what we wanted. Some things Mom kept, but a year or so ago she went through them again and divided them among her three children. She is not one to hang on to possessions overlong.

My sister moved several times over the years and learned to get rid of a lot in the process. Some of it she handed down to me and to our kids. My brother has also passed on a number of household items. (They tell me this clutter problem is ongoing. The clutter has ways of disguising itself as needed items and they end up having to de-clutter all over again.) Apparently, the cure is to move a lot…

So after collecting things from my grandma, my mom, my brother, and my sister, because they were needed or cool or well, you couldn’t just throw it out…then there are the things we’ve collected from my in-laws, who were even bigger pack rats than I am…I must confess, we have accumulated much “stuff.”

(I once knew someone who tossed perfectly good “stuff” into the trash when she was through with it – nice stuff like clothes and such – stuff I would leave in a bag waiting to donate it for six months while she was clutter free instantly. I would have been clutter free too, if I’d driven to the Salvation Army drop box right away…but a person has to be ready to part with these things. It’s one thing to bag it up and a totally different thing to actually move it out of your house and release it into the “doesn’t belong to me anymore” world.)

The fact is, pack rats tend toward the sentimental and sentimental people save things. We look at nick knacks and pictures and drawings and old shoes and antiquated clothes and ancient furniture or magazines or books and we want to hang onto them, sometimes for posterity, sometimes for later research (we tell ourselves we are going to do) and sometimes just because the thing belonged to someone we are related to.

The reasons aren’t bad, but I’ve been thinking lately that we can’t take these things with us when we die, and most of it wouldn’t fit in a smaller home either. Seems like the bigger houses we live in the more stuff we get, whether it’s bought, found, or given, to put in every available space. (Maybe we secretly like to feel surrounded by things, though in truth it just makes life more crowded.)

I’ve noticed this is true in the bedroom I’ve been de-cluttering this afternoon. The room is a nice size, but over the years I’ve managed to cram more furniture, more books, more “I’ll take care of that later” clutter into so many places that my husband was complaining (good-naturedly) the other day that he could barely walk past one spot without stubbing his toes. Especially if he tried walking there in the dark. If I didn’t have so many “papers to look at later” stacked on the floor along with a stack of clothes on the chair, several stuffed animals that had lost their way, a purse, some shoes…let’s just say he had a point!

So I’ve begun to tackle my 2010 goal of de-cluttering and down-sizing all of the stuff in this house. By year’s end, I would love to be able to say I’ve completed the task. Unlike my grandma, my measuring stick for keeping things is more than a year, but there is some wisdom in her words. Still, there is no need to be hasty – I might need that unworn sweater a year from now…

My measuring line is “If you wouldn’t move it to a condo on the beach in California (my dream home), get rid of it.” :)

I’ll let you know how well it works as time passes…

Selah~