Hot and stormy fair 2012

Well, we couldn't get rain for a month and now we have gotten rain two nights of our fair!  Tonight Pat and I were celebrating our anniversary at the rodeo, and a big storm ended it early.  Here a hot Mary is getting acquainted with her show pig, Pepperoni.  It is now much cooler and I am ready to hit the hay.  WE are so grateful for the wonderful rain!  Thank you, Lord, and for our "hot and stormy" 34 years of marriage... just kidding... no not really.  Your rains of LOVE and LIFE have given us the lifegiving waters to help us grow evermore yours!  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barb

My guy is tough enough to wear pink!

"I will praise HIM for what He has done..." Psalm 34

How I LOVE to see all my family together... I added Joseph and Hallel to this one taken a few weeks ago at mass... In honor of our 34th wedding anniversary today!  This picture says it all for me!  Pat, I love you for all the LIFE and LIGHTS you have given to us!  "Proclaim with me the Lord's greatness; let us praise HIM together!" Psalm 34: 4   May we be blessed with many more years of giving HIM praise - Grand Hallel- together!  Jesus, we trust in you!  Bless-bless, Barb

Pray for Joe!

I have been given permission from Maria to borrow these pictures of Joe's last day with his family - the day he left for Alghanistan on June 28th.  He is in a dangerous place, and after losing 6 men just days after arriving there - the Lord is prompting me to pray without ceasing for his safety, and for all the men and women there in harm's way!

The tears rolled as I read the heartrendering parting of Joe from his wife and kids a little over a month ago.  I can sense in the kids and in Maria that they miss Joe, and are very concerned for his safety.  Please join me in praying for his safety... as well as all those serving to protect our country. 

John and I have started praying the 3rd decade of the rosary - Maria being my 3rd child, she has been given the 3rd decade for my prayers for her and her family.  We sit in front of the tabernacle, with Jesus inside of us, after receiving HIM in the Eucharist, and pray together Joe, and Maria's, and family's decade.  It just feels so powerful to place our Trust in HIM!  John and I were sharing how he will probably soon be meeting with the Bishop about his desire to enter the seminary. "Father made it sound like the Bishop already knows me quite well."  John commented.  I told him that this did not surprise me, as I know that he followed our caringbridge site, and wrote to us more than once with words of encouragement and support.  The most powerful and lifechanging for us was when the cancer had grown back through the chemo, and we were devastated and asking our prayer warriors for PRAYERS TO REACH UP TO HEAVEN!   He wrote to us - " When you are facing such situations repeat these words - 'Jesus, I trust in you.' "  Those words have never left me, and they have reminded us that we can and should Trust in his LOVE for us! 

"Thus says the Lord:  Let whoever is thirsty come to me and drink.  Streams of living water will flow from within the one who believes in me."  John 7: 37-38
Lord, we are filled with the wellspring of Truth... we know that we can, and should, trust in you at all times and in all circumstances!  You are God, and there is nothing that is impossible in this world - and foremost you LOVE us, and give us eternal LIFE.  No matter what, we are filled with trust!  Protect our Joseph and all men and women in harm's way.  Be with his little family and the new life - little Patrick- inside of Maria.  Protect all unborn life, Lord!  It is such a beautiful gift, and may many "lights" be allowed to come into the world, and bring it to YOU!  Jesus, we trust in you.  Amen and Hallelluia

Bless-bless, Barb

"You see, when I did not believe, I imagined that faith was merely autosuggestion, and that a person could come to belief simply by saying 'I believe.'  My reasoning was based on my feeling that understanding was impossible, and that the contradictions I thought I had observed.  I was sure that this reasoning was logical and true, and so it strengthened my conviction that God did not exist.

Now I no longer understand how I ever managed not to believe.  It all seems so far away.  The most judicious reasonings and deductions, which used to attract me, now seem vain and above all 'highly improbable!'

Because of this, I can see that faith is truly a gift of God.  One believes with the heart, without knowing why or even seeking to know.  The intimate certitude that fills one is enough.  Of all things, love is the most powerful."

Jacques Fesch (1957) was a murderer who experienced a profound conversion before his execution in a French prison.  Here he addresses the Gospel for today - Matt 13- about the people's "lack of faith."  Lord, help us to hold our faith close to our hearts on the altar of our inner temple, and TRUST!

Joe's last moments in front of his home waiting to be picked up and taken on his journey to Alghanistan!  We know and Trust that you "Go with God, Joe!"

Maria and Therese and David by the lighthouse in Michigan just about 3 weeks ago... Praying without ceasing for daddy!

Here's a footnote - I just found this great picture of Augustine on Nancy's blog - http://thegreatgusadventure.blogspot.com/  It reminds me to pray for safe travels for their little family as they come down for family fair time! 

And with that said - I have to end with a picture from yesterday at the pig show, or...

two...since both Mary and Simon were showing this year in cloverbuds!  Super cute... Mary with her pig - "Pepperoni" - and Simon with Charlie! 

Each day is new... a clean page to write upon.

Sitting with the empty entry at 5:30a... not much to share.  The knowledge that today is set before us with all the elements that we are called upon to live out in the best way we possibly can!  I know that with my nursing job, that I am needing to be caring and thoughtful of the needs of the people I am caring for, and with all the meds and cares I am to do... it gets a bit frantic keeping up.  Lord, I am needing you.  I am wanting to have my love and knowledge of YOU to be foremost in all that I am and am doing.  Thank you, Lord, for the rain!  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barb

John is off to help Paul get the cow and calf ready to show at 8a - Good luck, Mary and Simon, and we are off to the start of showing beef and pigs!  I wish that I could be there, but I am off to work.  Lord, help this day to be humble, yet a story of faith, hope, courage and JOY!  May your name written in blood be upon each page!

http://www.inspirationalarchive.com/2882/the-file-room/... want to read a cool story?  Here is the link! 

Listening to the RAIN!!!

At about 4p, I went out to pick the garden and the thermometer said that it was close to 100 degrees!  I did it quick and got in to work on supper and get the fresh vegetables ready to eat in short order... I was surprised to see it get dark and to start to hear rumbling... soon Pat and John called me from the fair to say that it was pouring rain and hail.  It still hadn't started to rain here yet, but then it finally did!  Some hail too!  Now into the night it continues to start again and again.  I watched the temp drop from 100 to just around 60degrees!  Wow!  What a relief to turno off the AC and to open up the house!  It looks like Marshall is getting more, but we are finally getting a nice rain!  The free draft horse show had to be called off due to heavy rain and lightening, but after the desperate place we are for rain - Pat told me that he had never seen the water in the pasture this low for the cows - and he is hoping and praying that by morning we will have enough rain to give the cows water to drink!  Thank you, Lord, for the rain!

Someone watered their flowers and this sunflower especially caught my eye at the 4H exhibit!  It sounds like the rain is picking up intensity right now! Thank you, Lord, how we hope and pray for an all night rain! 

Simon's cute lego robot project! 

Mary's first of many geology projects... maybe find some smaller rocks next year, Mary.

Mary's photos for her first year in cloverbuds... taken at the zoo in Michigan - she called them "Animal Kingdom."  Simon's amazing drawing of tractors and impliments - he drew these while we were in Michigan too... he has studied so many books from the tractor stores of them inside and out... he surprised himself with the detail he could draw from his memory.  It is really nice to get away from TV and computer and spend time developing our God-given gifts!  The world is an amazing place and there is so much to learn and discover about it and ourselves if we only give it a chance! 

Snowball and Snowflake are now in a pen at the fair - they were thankfully protected from the pouring rain and hail.  The beef show is in the morning and I won't be able to be there and watch Simon and Mary show the cow-calf pair...   I have to work at the nursing home, but I will be able to watch the pig show tomorrow night. 

John had to check out another cow-calf pair - remembering his wonderful Bertha and all the years they spent together at the fair.  My kids just loved the fair and still have a place in their heart for the many years they had with beef.  Jesus, thank you for the times we have had and continue to have at the fair!  Jesus, we trust in you. 

Bless-bless, Barb

rain washed tomatoes... and everything else too! 

Hope

It is so hard to stand helplessly by and watch the drought hit us day after day... it was so nice to be away from it all in beautiful Michigan with much of my family, so today I am just going to allow myself to go back there and to remind myself that we must continue to have HOPE!  As I am sitting here writing this - I look out the window overhead and actually see dark threatening looking clouds on the horizon.  John and I just prayed for rain with our shared morning prayer, and we do pray with some hope and trust in the Lord's plan for us in our hearts.  We especially are aware of this fact in the journey called cancer/healing that we shared over the last 3 years.  John just prayed in thanksgiving for his cancer as well as his healing, and "how it brought me closer to you, O Lord."  Yes, John does certainly thank the Lord for his cancer, as it was an answer to his prayer of many years - "I don't know what I believe, because I have never had any hard things in my life.  I want to believe, Lord!"  His prayers were answered in the most crazy way!  As a parent there is nothing that can send shock waves through me much more than the thought of one of my children having cancer and cancer in the brain is too hard!  When I tell people that this happened to me and to my son... it still is just almost too much to believe!  I told John that this reading from morning prayer reminded me of the before John..."The lamp of the body is the eye.  If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.  And if the light in you is darkness, how great will that darkness be."  Matt 6: 22-24

Mary took her first of many geology projects to the fair this year... here she and her brother are posing on a huge rock with a fossilized sponge - Stromataporide- in it!   She will be able to impress people with her huge words at 6 year old!  Back to John and his eyes - about the only sign of his cancer was that he developed double vision,which got worse by the day.  Knowing of how dead he was to his faith and that his vision was affected... this verse just brought me to the place where the Lord snatched him out of his lethargy - he was very tired and sleeping all the time too- and his lack of faith and put the fear of death very much there in his face.  Yet, he was immediately aware of so many prayers and seemed to have so much peace and hope in the face of the Giant - brain cancer!  At the time we were going through the scariest times of his biopsy, chemo, regrowth, and radiation... we were reading about David - the young and wise and good looking youth, who was called by God.  He was the embodiment of courage as he faced the giant and killed him with a single stone in a slingshot - I Samuel 17 - Watching John's courage and calmness in the battle - I saw him as a David!  The prayers surrounding him, the sacraments of annointing, daily Eucharist, reconcilliation... as well as the Word shared in prayer and mass, the devotionals in the rosary in constant use, the angels surrounded him, as well as the saints in many relics, and visiting Our Lady in Lourdes twice!  I guess I can see where his courage came from, and it has never left him!  Now he is taking it a step further in considering his possible call to the priesthood!  It is very obvious to him that he has been spared for a higher purpose!

Walking to the lighthouse - a true symbol of Christ there to show us the way - come to the Light!  May we truly put all that we have into the "pearl of great price" which is our life with you!  We find so much happiness and HOPE in our allowing the Kingdom to take root within us.  Jesus, we are alive only in YOU!  We are weak and sick without your healing... May we embrace our Most Cherished Cross and follow after you.  "You are our way, our truth, and our life: - make us courageous disciples.  Open our eyes, O Lord, to the light of your love."  No matter what it takes - even brain cancer - we come to you and ask that we become totally and without hesitation yours alone!  We need the light to come and dwell within us and reveal to us all the ways that we need to love and serve you in one another.  May we share your LOVE most especially with those closest to us in our domestic church/family.  Jesus,we trust in you.  Amen and Halleluia

Bless-bless, Barb

"For the love of you, he has made so many other beautiful creatures, that they might serve you, and that they might remind you of the love which he has borne to you, and of the gratitude which you owe to him.  'Heaven and earth,' says Augustine,'and all things tell me to loev you.'  And when the saint beheld the sun, the stars, the mountains, the sea, the rains, they all appeared  to him to speak and say:  Augustine, love God: for he has created us that you might love him." 

St Alphonsus Liguori (1787), pray for us on this your feastday!