Spring Break 2013 - Myrtle Beach

After spending a few months trying to book a time share in Gatlinburg for our 2013 Spring Break trip with our granddaughters, I finally had to look for other options.  Myrtle Beach had an opening, and we grabbed it!  This was our third trip to Myrtle Beach, but the first time to take the girls.  It was a longer trip than we would have liked, mileage wise, but it worked out okay.  We met our son and granddaughters in Louisville, KY, where we spent the night, and then as he headed back home, we headed to the ocean...a 12 hour trip, allowing for stops.  

I had requested an ocean front room, since we had not had one on our previous two trips to Myrtle Beach, and we were not to be disappointed!!  We were on the 12th floor overlooking the ocean side pools and had a beautiful view of the ocean.  We could open the patio doors and enjoy the sound of the ocean waves and see the activity on the beach.  

There is so much to see and do in Myrtle Beach, even in the "off season"...which we were there the week ahead of regular spring break season...that we had to make a schedule of all that we hoped to do while we were there.  We almost got it all in, but the girls let us know that if we didn't do anything but get to the swimming pool and the ocean front, they would be happy.  Every day we took time to do just that, even though some of the days were a little cooler.  The pools were heated to a constant 85 degrees, so they were comfortable no matter what.  At the ocean front, we sometimes just braved it.

One of the things the girls like to do most was jump the ocean waves and get splashed.

Grandpa preferred the luxury of relaxing at the room most of the time, rather than joining us at the ocean or pool.  We were on the 12th floor of the building behind him.

Sunrises and sunsets were very picturesque.

Here are the girls dressed up for church, standing out on our balcony.  We spent Sunday afternoon at the resort, and then Sunday night we went bowling...something different we had not done before.

The girls chose to go to the pool behind our resort that had the zero entry and water sprays.  They had a lot of fun together, as you will see in the pictures below, and Sunshine was able to teach Princess to swim under water with her eyes open.  I do believe going to the pool was Princess's number one favorite thing to do all week.  It was a good thing the pool was heated!!  Our last day at the pool they played water volley ball with some other kids.

 

We went shopping almost every day, as there were so many cool places to shop....and we didn't even go to the indoor malls!!  We went to Broadway at the Beach, a shopping and entertainment mecca; Barefoot Landing, with lots of cool shops and tigers on display in cages; and Prime Outlets, where we got our best bargains.  Weary from shopping, we did go miniature golfing one afternoon.  You can see the ocean in the top picture, if you look closely, between the turquoise dome and the tall building.  This was a very challenging course!  They have maybe over 50 miniature golf courses in Myrtle Beach.

We went to Wonderworks at Broadway at the Beach.  It looks like an upside down house, but it's an entertainment complex with many things to do inside.  That's Sunshine at the railing.  She liked to take pictures of the ducks and birds and fish.  Broadway at the Beach, as well as Barefoot Landing, are both shopping meccas built around water, and you could cross over the water on boardwalks to more shops.  There was also several amusement rides for the younger children, and Princess rode a few of those.

Here are some of the pictures Sunshine took of the birds, fish, and ducks.

One night we dressed up and went to a musical show at Alabama Theater.  It was voted the number one show to see in Myrtle Beach, and there were many to choose from.  They presented music from across the decades and genres of music.  It was a long show, but all of us thoroughly enjoyed it!

On our trip back home, we divided it up a little instead of traveling one long day back to Louisville.  We stopped in Asheville, NC for the night.  The next day we drove on to Louisville, where we once again met our son to pick up the girls to take them back home.  After a wonderful week at the ocean front, they went back to a record snowfall and had a snow day from school!  Our spring break week at Myrtle Beach was all that we had hoped it would be, and all four of us want to go back some day.  It's hard to capture fun in pictures, and we had plenty of it!!!  It is always a very special treat for us to be able to have our granddaughters with us.  We are so grateful their parents allow us these times of making memories.  If you are a grandparent, you know what I mean!!

7 - My Story, God's Story - My First Marriage

March was a busy month for me.  We took a week's vacation in the middle of the month and took our two granddaughters down to Myrtle Beach during their spring break.  What a great time we had!! I'm sure I will do a post with pictures sometime soon.  For now I think I better get on another post of my life story before much more time gets away from me.

After I moved back to Michigan from Florida, I was able to get a job in a Savings and Loan institution, where my father often got loans for the houses he built.  It was a small bank, only four employees, including me.  I was the Assistant Secretary-Treasurer, and basically did teller work.  This was in the early 70's and when we moved from posting machines to computers, I was the one that was selected to train new employees as we grew.  I guess being the youngest one there (the others were old enough to be my parents), I had a mind that picked up on the new electronics.  How amusing that is to me today, as I have a hard time keeping up in the technical world...just ask my husband, or my sons, or my granddaughter!!

I liked my job, and Larry got back into church, and things were going pretty smoothly for us.  When he asked me to marry him, it seemed like the right thing to do.  He was going to be a youth pastor, and we were both very involved at church.  He had a lot of charisma, and the people in church liked him.  We got married in August of 1971, large wedding, rainbow colors, everything went beautifully.  We honeymooned in the Smokies and Chattanooga, TN.  (Little did I know I would one day live in that area!).

Larry and my father built our house on a one acre lot in one of my father's subdivisions.  We were both working, and I thought everything was going well.  A little after our two year anniversary Larry started acting aloof.  Then he started to convince me that he was not the right husband for me.  It didn't take long to figure out he was involved outside the marriage.  Within two months he wanted out, was going to get a divorce so I wouldn't have to.  He had the philosophy that "variety is the spice of life".  He had started drinking again, but I knew I had married for life, and even if I had to raise children in an alcoholic home, that was the choice I had made.  However, I did not have the final choice.  He took what he wanted from our material goods, left the house in my name, and he was out of there.  I told him if he left that he should never come back again.  I had taken him back way too many times, and this was the final straw.

He left.  As the door shut behind him, I crumbled on the floor in tears.  I took the Bible from the stand near by and asked God if He rejected me also, since I knew He didn't like divorce.  He led me to read Galatians 5:13, and I paraphrase:  "Carol, I have called you unto freedom.  Only do not use this freedom to please the flesh.  Rather, serve others with love."  In that moment, a miracle occurred.  The love I had felt for Larry totally dissolved and a brand new love for my heavenly Father filled my heart and soul.  I knew He cared for me deeply...He cared enough to relieve me of a marital mess, and set me free from it.  I didn't know what all the rest of the verse meant at that time...except to be careful in my future relationships, to keep them pure.

Shortly after that life changing experience, I found out that I was pregnant as I miscarried at home, alone.  Again, God sparing me from more heartache, I just accepted His will, His way, His love.  I felt so free, so clean, so full of life.  Even my co-workers commented that I was happier than they had ever seen me...that I was fun to be with.  I loved my job, I loved my church responsibilities, I was looking for where God wanted to lead me next.  I felt like I should sell my house and perhaps go back to college and get a business degree, perhaps working in the business office, or being a dorm mother.  So that became my plan.  Meanwhile, both of my parents ended up with cancer at the same time.  My house sold, but I moved back home with them to be their care taker, while I continued to work at the savings and loan.

There wasn't anyone my age at church...no one for me to hang around with.  There were the teenagers, and there were the young married couples with small children.  So I chose to hang around with the teenagers.  Our church had a softball team in a church league, and we would go out to watch the games.  There was one guy on an opposing team that was not only a great ballplayer, but very attractive to me.  I compared him to a cross between Tony Orlando (music world) and Mark Spitz (sports world)...very good looking, very well built.  So I started going out to all the ballgames just to watch him.  I noticed there was never any girlfriend waiting for him.  It was the last game of the season and I knew I wouldn't see him again, so as I drove out of the park, he happened to ride by me on his bike.  I said to him, "Nice game!"  I had a girlfriend with me who yelled out, "Carol!  I can't believe you finally talked to him!"  I was so embarrassed that I spun my tires to get out of there, and he never even saw who I was.  He just remembers the tires spitting gravel as I left.

Thus begins my introduction to Paul...the man who was to become my second husband (and last!).  That's another story.

6 - My Story, God's Story - More Memories from the Teen Years

Then there was the time when I was in 8th grade and I wanted something new to wear to church on Sunday. Since I was told I couldn't have a new dress, I decided to have a new hairstyle...I would put a blond streak in it.  So I washed my hair, rolled it on rollers, and then took yellow food coloring and poured in on one roller up on top of my head.  Back in those days we went to bed with wet hair in rollers, and by morning the hair was dry.  Sure, it was uncomfortable to sleep with wires poking your scalp, but it's what you did to have  good looking hair the next day.

Well, I woke up Sunday morning, and my yellow roller of hair had turned orange!  Maybe that's cool now, but not back in the 1960's!  I also had an orange forehead.  When Mom saw me, she knew I was punished enough just by having to go to church with part of my hair being orange.  What made it even worse, though, was that the orange even had an effect on my white furry hood on my favorite coat.  It was no longer white, but a dirty looking off-white/orange tint.  What a lesson I learned about pride that day!!  Mine was dented big time all because I had to have something new, something different.  I remember my boyfriend laughing and me feeling very stupid.  My hair and forehead washed out in time, but my white furry coat hood was never the same.  What's the Bible verse about learning to "be content"?  I learned my Bible lesson for that day!!

My brother was two years older than me and had his driver's license.  He also had a white convertible.  I don't recall the make or year, but I'm sure it was in the Pontiac line, as Dad only purchased Pontiacs...usually station wagons.  My brother had washed his car, and it looked really good.  It was also a sunny summer day and the roof was down.  I must have had a driver's permit or driver's license also, because for some reason I got in that car and drove it down a road in my father's subdivision...a dirt road.  It had been rainy the previous few days.  I got the car stuck in mud...my brother's nice clean white convertible, top down, stuck in the mud.  I am so glad that God erases some memories from our minds.  I don't recall the rest of that story, but I don't remember driving the car again.  So...there's a lesson I learned about "don't covet".  One of the ten commandments.

Eventually I had my first car, a 1957 Chevy.  Old and cheap.  Dad got a good deal on it for me, thus allowing a Chevy in our driveway.  Seniors were allowed to drive cars to school, and I do remember doing that.  I also remember driving down to Battle Creek (about 30 miles away), and getting out on the highway and giving semis the arm motion for them to blow their horns.  I was allowed to take girlfriends with me, and we would go shopping, and then go driving to flirt with the truck drivers...only wanted to get them to blow their horns though.  Teenagers do dumb things, don't you think?  It's like the time to have fun, not to think about the consequences.  I must have had an angel watching over me when I did dumb stuff like that.  I never did get in any trouble...never even got a ticket!

When I was a Junior in high school, a new boy came to our school.  He was a hired hand on a farm north of town, living there to earn his keep.  He had been in trouble at his previous school, and was trying to get a fresh start.  He was very good looking, always smiling and joking around.  Everyone liked him.  He could have dated anyone, and I'm sure he did date others, but he started giving me special attention.  I wasn't anybody special, not in the popular crowd, and the only extra-curricular activity I was involved in was church.  I didn't go to shows, I didn't go to school dances.  I hardly went to the sporting events.  I did join the library club that met during school hours.  So I considered myself a plain jane, nobody worth noticing.

Then Larry started noticing me...and I was thrilled to death!!  It made me feel like maybe I was something special. He asked me out on a hay ride they were having out on the farm, but in order for me to go, my parents said he had to come to church.  He agreed to do that.  He even became regular at church and very popular with the young people and old people alike.  He was just a likable kind of guy.  He always kept people laughing.

That was the beginning of an on-again, off-again relationship between me and Larry.  He still liked to live on the wild side, and couldn't seem to play the game straight.  When he was good, he was in church, he felt called to the ministry, and he led the youth group.  Then he would decide he needed to spice up his life and he would drink and run around and basically live in the streets.  I kept thinking some day he would settle things with the Lord, and we would have a happy life.  However, I spent five years waiting for that.  When I went off to college, I asked him to leave me alone.  I intended to look for Mr. Right, and I knew he wasn't it.  When I came home the next summer, there was Larry.  The next fall I decided to move to Florida with my parents and get away from Larry.

I went to the Community College for a semester, but decided that school was not for me.  I got a job as a secretary/bookkeeper in a small manufacturing plant, and I worked weekends at Burger King.  I was one of the first females to be hired in the fast food chain.  I liked my life, it was meaningful and fun.  Then...Larry shows up.  He decided to move south also.  When Mom and Dad went back north for the summer, Larry and I stayed behind.  I had my first apartment, with a very snoopy landlord.  She would stand outside my window at night and watch me.  She turned her Christian radio on high volume so I could hear it also.  My apartment was the front half of her house, and I'm sure she was concerned about this single girl with a boyfriend.

After that summer I decided I didn't like living in Florida, and Larry and I both went back to Michigan.  Me...back to Mom and Dad's.  Larry...back to his wild friends and ways.  That pretty much sums up my tearful teen years.  I allowed one person to knock me off balance, and I never seemed to have the strength to break the cycle completely.  I spent a lot of time at the altar and at my bedside during those years, asking Jesus to help me, to forgive me, to show me what I should do.  The bottom line was that I allowed my emotions to override my spiritual life and common sense.  However, Jesus was faithful to ride through the storms with me.  He never gave up on me, although I know I disappointed Him many times.

5 - My Story, God's Story - Emotional Teen Years

I think I would rather just skip the teen years.  My memories seem to be based on boyfriends and tears...they always went together.  Mostly I experienced a lot of emotions, typical to teens, and I wish I could have "grown up", "matured", handled those years better than I did.  I'll just start down this hallway and see where it leads.  I hope God prompts some good memories for me.

When I was in seventh grade, my parents decided to spend the whole school year in Florida, and not make us change schools.  I have a funny memory from 7th grade.  I had a new purse...more like a train case, a popular style back then.  It was my first day to carry it, and it was sitting by my desk.  When a student to the right of me asked for a piece of paper, the student to the left of me handed one over to me to give to him.  But he let go of it, and it was floating back and forth in the air, headed to the floor.  I tried to catch it, and I fell out of my desk and landed on my purse!  I put a big dent in it!!  Can you just imagine that scene?  I was totally embarrassed, totally upset I had smashed my new purse, and totally struck by how funny it was for others to watch.  I still grin every time that memory comes to me.  Perhaps one of my most embarrassing moments.  Seventh grade girls can be so self-conscious!

I remember after lunch, just before art class, taking a dime to the Tropicana Orange Juice machine to purchase a box of orange juice.  I can still taste it in my memory today.  That was good stuff, and it didn't hurt that we could smell the Tropicana factory in the air.  7th grade was a time of lots of girl friends.  We would go to each other's houses on the weekends.  One friend had a swimming pool, but I don't recall swimming in it.  Another friend and I would ride bikes around her neighborhood.

I wrote a poem in 7th grade, and the words still come back to me:

In the year of '62

The war with Cuba might come true.

Are you right or are you wrong?

I don't care, just sing a song.

If you're wrong, you better get right,

Because the Lord might come tonight!

Okay, so I never really made it as a poet, but it's funny to me how that one poem has stuck in my head through the last fifty years.  I'm sure I must have written other poems, but none of them come back to me.  

Certainly church was an important part of my life.  Most of my girlfriends were from church, and there was a cute boy I really liked, but we were just friends, and I was happy with that.  At church I was on the Bible Quiz Team, and we studied the Gospel of John.  The one verse that I recall from that study is John 8:32:  "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."  I must have been impressed with that verse, for it too has stuck with me down through the last 50 years.  Certainly I am a person who thrives on truth, and cannot tolerate lies and deceit and dishonesty.  I have trouble respecting people who are dishonest in any way.  Certainly I keep my distance!

Just as we spent the whole school year in Florida during my seventh grade, the next year, 8th grade, we stayed in Michigan for the duration of the school year.  In fact, Mom and Dad quit taking their trips to Florida until I graduated.  I wonder how much of a sacrifice that was for them?  I never thought about it until just now.  I know it was a lot easier for me to stay in the same school as a teenager than to keep changing schools.  I really think it was for Mike and me that our parents made that decision.  After I graduated, and Mike had graduated two years before me, they were back to wintering in Florida.

While I was in 8th grade, I had my first real boyfriend.  He was two years older than me and we went to the same church.  We could sit together as long as it was the pew ahead or the pew behind my parents.  We never really dated, but we attended church parties together, and rode the bus together to youth camp.  Because he was in high school, and I was in Junior High, we didn't see each other at school, and I started being interested in other boys my age.  Again, nothing serious, and nothing lasted long.  

I didn't actually go out on a date alone with a boy until I was 16.  Then I met Larry.  He was a delinquent, transferred in from another school, and lived on a farm as a hired hand as a means of helping him overcome his delinquency.  We were two opposites, for sure.  I must have appealed to him as a challenge he wanted to conquer, a good girl, a church girl.  Mom and Dad wouldn't let me date him unless he came to church, so he did.  As I look back on those years, I wish Mom and Dad had never late me date him, but they were trying to give me some latitude too, I guess. I think this is another chapter for another post.  It's a long story.  Not one I really want to share, but it is a major portion of my story, God's story.  So, until next time....

4 - My Story, God's Story - Elementary School Years

If I told you I attended a one room country school, would that give my age away?  I am so glad I was able to be in on the tail end of that genre of education, to experience eight grades all in one room, with one teacher.  When you reached high school (9th grade), you rode the bus into town and attended the public high school.  If you lived in town, you attended a public school...several classrooms, several teachers, but just one grade in each classroom.  However, if you lived in the country, and I was only two miles from town, you attended a one room country school, until it closed down...which is what happened to my school after fifth grade.

We lived one mile from the school, and I had to walk both ways...even as a kindergartner.  I can't imagine sending a five year old on a one mile walk today without a chaperon.  It's just not a safe world any more.  Usually you walked to school with neighborhood kids that lived near by, and that helped pass the time.  On a snowy winter day, you might stop and slide on some of the road banks.  On a spring day, perhaps you would stop to pick some dandelions along the way.  However long it took us to walk to school, or to walk home, it didn't seem so boring when you had friends to talk and play with.

In the school room, wet mittens were laid around the pot-bellied stove to dry off for recess.  Girls had a coat room and bathroom on one side of the building and the boys had their rooms on the other side.  There was a fridge for the milk bottles, which were delivered every day for lunch.  There was a little poem on the bottle, "We've come to visit, not to stay.  Return our bottles every day."  At lunch time we would grab our lunch pail and our bottle of milk (white or chocolate) and sit around desks with friends.  Recess came after lunch. We played soft ball, or group games like Red Rover, or played on the swings, slide, or teeter-totter.  There were several tall lilac bushes that were grown together and made like a play house inside them.  All ages all played together.  We had our reading groups broken down into classes by age/grade, but our music and square dancing was for all of us together.  We put on school bazaars and Christmas plays, and at the end of every school year we would all go to the Roller Rink on our last day, and have a picnic at the park.

Remember in an earlier post I mentioned that we would go to Florida in the winder so Dad could find work as a carpenter.  That meant leaving the one room country school behind, and being put in a large city school. Then, before school was out, we were taken back to Michigan to finish that school year.  I guess it didn't bother me too much, as I don't remember any fears.  Since we lived in different rental places each winter, I didn't always go to the same school.  At the close of my 6th grade, Dad and Mom decided to stay in Florida until school was out for the summer.  On the last day of school all of the classes assembled in the auditorium for a program.  I don't recall how it came about, but I do remember directing a play from Children's Bible Hour.  That was a radio program for children with Aunt Bertha and Uncle Charlie with character building stories (presented in dramas) and songs and Bible verses.  When the assembly was over, I headed out the door and got in the station wagon with my Mom, Dad, and brother, and we started back to Michigan.  Funny how that memory comes back to me after all these years.

I remember having the measles in third grade.  I told Mom I didn't feel good, but she made me go to school anyway.  Then the school called her and told her I had the measles and to come and get me.  I remember laying in bed with sunglasses on and Mom waiting on me.  It wasn't much fun.  I would rather have been at school with my friends.

Those are the memories that come back to me tonight as I type this post.  I had a happy childhood.  I had lots of friends at school and at church.  I liked playing Dominoes and Old Maid with my Grandma.  Sometimes in the winter we lived together, as she and Grandpa (maternal grandparents) would go to Florida also.  Usually they stayed longer than we did.  The car trips were long, but I liked seeing the different states we drove through.  My favorite signs were "See Rock City", and sure enough...we would stop and "see seven states" from Point Lookout.  Never did I realize that one day I would live near Chattanooga!  That I would raise my children in East Tennessee.  Half way between my homes in Michigan and my homes in Florida.  So...am I a Yankee, a Florida Cracker, or a Hillbilly?  I guess I could say yes to all of them.  The Great Smoky Mountains, however, has the strongest pull on my heart.  Thank you, Jesus, for the variety of education and experiences you allowed me to have as I grew up.

3 - My Story, God's Story - Childhood Memories

When I came along, I was Mom and Dad's second child.  My brother was born two plus years before me.  I don't know if Mom's fall was the reason for not having any more children after me, or that's just the way it was.  I never asked, didn't even question, didn't matter.  My brother and I got along fairly well.  Probably most of my early memories come from watching the 8 mm home movies that Mom and Dad made while we were young.

I mentioned in my last blog that Dad was a carpenter, just like Joseph, the father of Jesus.  He was self-employed most of his life.  He would build homes in Michigan in the spring, summer, and fall, then we would go south to Florida for the winter months where he would build a couple of houses a year.  That kept him occupied year round, and believe me, Dad was a man who liked to keep busy.  He was honest, he was fair, and he liked to help young couples get started, so he sold his houses as inexpensively as he could afford.  He never made big money.  What he did make, he made sure he paid his tithe before anything else.

As I got older, Dad would help build parsonages and churches for those churches who did not have much money.  He did this in Michigan and in other states, and eventually he started going to the mission fields to donate his labor.  Rather than build houses in Florida in the winter, he would take his summer earnings and finance his trip and the materials to build churches and schools and whatever was needed in areas like Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Virgin Islands, and other South American countries which I cannot recall.  Sometimes Mom went with him, but mostly her health did not permit her to do so.  She would get his trips all lined up for him, and coordinate the crew that went along with him (other volunteers...friends, family, church people).  I say all of this to say Dad was an example of how to live for the Lord, giving way beyond his tithes and offerings...he gave himself.  He would sacrifice getting a new car if there was a mission work that needed him to come and help build.  That impressed my brother the most, for he cared more about new cars than I did.  We both knew, however, that with Dad, the Lord was first in his life.

Dad took time for us also.  I remember one time when he took my Mom to get a new hat, and I was with them.  Back in those days hats were kept in drawers at the dress shops.  The clerk got a hat out for Mom to try on, and then she leaned against the drawer shutting it.  Well, what she didn't know was that I had my fingers wrapped around the edge of the drawer and as it shut suddenly, there were my fingers caught in the drawer!  I just started crying silently...wouldn't say anything.  Dad looked down and saw me and saw my dilemma.  He quickly put me up on his shoulders and took me down to the corner ice cream store to get me a cone, knowing that would make everything better.  It did, but it is the memory that stayed with me that meant the most.  Dad was showing his love for Mom and for me that day, and I've never forgotten it.

I have another memory from my early years that I've never forgotten.  Mom and Dad washed my mouth out with soap for telling a lie.  I was four years old, not old enough for school yet.  My brother was in 1st grade and every day Mom packed a lunch for him.  I knew where she kept the candy bars...in a high cupboard that I could not reach.  One day Mom and Dad and my brother were all outside working in the yard, and I got a stool and climbed up and got a candy bar.  Somehow they knew, but when they asked me if I had taken a candy bar, I said no.  Well..the proof was in the pudding, and I was caught.  First time I remember getting my mouth washed out with soap, and the last time.  I was a quick learner!!  Somehow that stayed with me, and honesty became an all important character trait for me.  I didn't like to be lied to, and still don't.  Ask my boys and granddaughters if they ever had their mouth washed out with soap!!

Candy bars were a down fall for me, however.  I didn't tell another lie, but I did steal.  When I was ten years old we lived near a corner convenience store in Florida during our winter stay down south, and somehow I managed to steal a candy bar.  While we were back in Michigan the next fall, a neighboring church had a revival, and our family went to it every night.  One night I was under conviction about that stolen candy bar, and I went down to the altar all by myself to ask Jesus to forgive me and to give me a clean heart and live in my heart.  I consider that to be the time of my salvation experience, and it was when I was eleven.  I guess you might say it was when the age of accountability caught up with me, and I knew that I had to make Jesus my personal Savior if I wanted to go to heaven some day.  Well, Mom came and knelt down beside me to pray with me about accepting Jesus into my heart, and I knew I needed to tell her about the stolen candy bar.  I knew I needed to confess my sins to Jesus, but somehow I knew I Mom needed to  know also if I truly wanted to be saved.  Mom did not scold me, she just prayed with me and hugged me.

The next winter while we were in Florida, we were near that corner convenience store one day, and Mom told me it would be good to go in there and tell them what I had done, and pay for the candy bar.  Gulp.  Dad had a word for that...restitution.  Dad was big into restitution because he had so much to make right when he was a teenager and found Jesus as his Savior.  He knew that was the only way to get a clean slate and a fresh start.  So, they gave me a nickle to go in and pay for the candy bar, and sent me in on my own.  I went to the clerk at the check-out counter, and the owner of the store was there also.  I looked up at them and gave them my nickle and told them what I had done the year before.  It wasn't easy, but I know Jesus helped me.  I wanted to be clean all over, and it was something I needed to do.  The store owner was so impressed that a little girl would confess her crime and want to make it right that he took my nickle, and gave me two more pieces of candy for telling the truth.  Wow.  Does it pay to serve Jesus, or what!!!  Big lesson for me that day!!!  I was skipping and singing as I left the store that day!!

There have been other times in my life when I needed to make restitution, nudged by the Holy Spirit.  One was for taking a pair of scissors from my home economics class that wasn't mine. I rationlized it was okay to take the scissors because mine came up missing.  Later on, as an adult, I ended up sending the school a check to pay for them, and confessing what I had done.

Then there was the time I bought two rose bushes and the rain had washed the price out on the tickets.  What I thought was $3 was actually $8, I noticed when I got home.  So, I went back to the store to make it right.  You may think that was just human error, no big deal.  Guess what...Jesus knew.  I didn't want to get to heaven's gates and have Him say to me I couldn't enter because I had cheated that store way back when.  No...I wanted everything in my life in order so I never had to wonder, never had to live with guilt.  Do you know how freeing that is?  Restitution, making things right.  Thanks, Mom and Dad, for teaching me that when I was a child.

Mom and Dad taught me by their words and their actions how to live a Christian life.  That included being at the church whenever something was going on there, and volunteering at the church in any way we could.  On Saturdays we would go out to the country and visit some poor families, taking shoes or whatever was needed, and then on Sunday we would go back and pick up the kids and take them to Sunday School.  On Sundays we would sometimes go to the "old people's home" and visit elderly shut in people.  The smell was bad, and it seemed like such a sad place to live, but Dad and Mom would go, taking us kids, and we would read the Bible and sing songs for those people.  What a tremendous example was set before me in how my parents served the Lord...with their words, with their money, and with their actions.  My childhood memories are sprinkled with the love of Jesus as seen and felt in the lives of my parents.  I was so blessed, and didn't realize it at the time.  I took it all for granted.  Thank you, Jesus, for Mom and Dad!!

2 - My Story, God's Story - The Beginning

I like that I was born in 1950, mid-way through the 20th century.  That's an easy number to work with when I am trying to remember how old I am.  When people ask me how old my kids are, I tell them I don't know, but I can tell you what year they were born in.  However, those years end in odd numbers, and doing the subtraction just isn't as easy as 1950.  Think what else came out of the 50's...."I Love Lucy", "Mighty Mouse", Annette and Frankie of the Mouseketeers, "Little Rascals", "Red Skelton".  That was what was on our black and white console television.  But you can be sure, the TV stayed off on Sundays!!  That was the day to go to church and take afternoon naps, or stay in our rooms.

Yes, I was born into a conservative Christian home, with parents that believed in starting each day with praying together, and saying the Lord's Prayer at the close of our family prayer time.  I am so glad Dad made that a priority for his family.  I cherish the memories of hearing him pray, and I never doubted that was speaking directly to God Almighty.  Dad wasn't raised in a Christian home, and he wanted his home to be different.

Dad was one of twelve children, six boys and six girls.  He was raised on a farm, and none of his siblings, nor he, became farmers.  At age 17 he found the Lord in a church revival, and after that he told the horses he wouldn't kick them any more, or be mean to them any longer.  Most of his brothers and sisters also became Christians over time.  His mother, my paternal grandmother, was a Christian, but she was so busy raising 12 kids and feeding thrashers, time didn't permit her to go to church.  Grandpa wanted nothing to do with religion.  But we would often go visit Grandpa and Grandma on Sunday afternoons before we headed to the evening church service.  Seems like Dad usually had prayer with them before we left.  And Grandpa always gave me and my brother a stick of gum from his overalls pocket.  He walked with a cane, and he played a harmonica.  He was always smiling when we were around.

My Mom was an only child of her parents, but she had two half-sisters and one half-brother.  She was her mother's only child.  I think that may be why Grandma always gave me special attention.  The other Grandma had so many grandkids, I never felt like she even knew who I was, but my maternal Grandmother and I were very always very close.  She also was a church-goer and a devote Christian, although her husband was not, and never attended church in all the years he lived, to my knowledge.  We would often have Sunday dinner at their house, and the first words out of my mouth when the prayer was said, were "Please pass the mashed potatoes!"  Grandma was quite a cook...homemade noodles to go with her beef, home canned fruits and vegetables (from their garden), homemade sugar cookies...huge soft ones.  Grandpa and Grandma also had a strawberry farm, selling their berries to the local grocery store.  We often had biscuits and strawberries for lunch (we would help pick the berries), and that would be the whole meal.  Even today that is one of my husband's favorite meals...just biscuits and strawberries.  Yum...

Mom and Dad were leaving her parents' house one Sunday after dinner, back in 1950, and Mom fell down the back steps to the garage.  Dad took her to the hospital, and before too long, I was born.  Until today I never thought to ask Mom if she had any injuries from that fall, other than hurrying up the labor process.  I do know that Mom had a history of severe falls, and in fact, her final fall, from which she never recovered, was at the bowling alley after throwing her third strike in a row.  She turned around too fast in her excitement, fell, and broke her hip.  Within a few months all of her other complications took her life.  However, God gave her to me for 47 years.  Many times cancer was out to destroy her, and God would restore her and give us more years together.  She was able to live long enough to be a loving Grandma to our two sons, her Buddy and her Punkin.

Well, this story is about me, but I had a beginning with two wonderful Godly parents.  They set the tone of the home, and made serving the Lord their number one priority.  There was never a time when I rebelled or turned my back on what they taught me to believe.  I am so grateful for that foundation.  I often say one of the greatest gifts God ever gave me was being born into a home with Christian parents.  I wish you could hear their stories...they were unsung heroes ..giants in God's kingdom work.  I miss them so very much, but I am so glad they are safe at home, reaping their rewards for their years of labor.

Oh...one thing Jesus and I have in common...our fathers were carpenters.  I like that.  I can identify with Jesus there!!