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Three keys to having a peaceful dwelling — don’t lose them!

October 4, 2012 //
2

Becky Bittle

When I first imagined a series on making our homes peaceful dwellings, I knew I needed help. Already Rachel Doll has shared her heart with us and now I’m excited to share an insightful post by Becky Bittle. Becky is the author of Read My Chicken Scratch, a blog about chicken keeping, saving money, and being creative, all while enjoying her family and her rural Oklahoma home. So, settle in and let’s learn together. Shall we?

I love my home!  I love my chickens and hearing my roosters and my neighbor’s roosters crowing to one another.  I love the hammock swing that hangs under my favorite tree.  I love the train that makes my children and grandchildren laugh.  I love the honeysuckle and wildflowers that grow here.  I even love the weeds!  Sometimes it seems easy to be peaceful in a setting like this.  Sometimes…

But most of the time it takes a lot of work and prayer and patience to be peaceful.  It’s nice to think that there is a place where I can just relax and everything around me will be at peace, but that isn’t reality – at least not long term, everyday reality.

For me, having a peaceful home is not just a desire. It is absolutely necessary.  Our daughter Josie (25 with Cerebral Palsy) is very sensitive.  Tension and arguing can upset her so much that she cannot calm down without medication.  But even without a “Josie” in your home, peace is something to treasure in every family.  The world is a stressful and cruel place.  We need a soft place to land and be renewed, and home should be that place.

There are three keys to keeping my home peaceful.

It takes planning to keep a peaceful home.  Clutter is a peace-killer in my home and in my schedule.  All the “stuff” I have and all the “stuff” I do is really not about the “stuff”. It is about the people I am sharing it with.  I have a mission statement hanging in my kitchen.  It says “My greatest desire for our home is that nothing would distract from the relationships we are building inside of it.” That means I don’t want dirt on the kitchen floor to cause my husband to grumble, but I also don’t want to grumble at my son for walking across that freshly mopped floor. I want to plan enriching activities for my family, but I don’t want there to be so many activities on our calendar that they begin to feel more like a job than fun.

Need help?  Flylady.net has lots of resources to help keep you organized.

You know “if momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy”.  It is also true that if momma ain’t peaceful, nobody’s peaceful.  And to keep myself peaceful I need to spend some time every day laying my burdens down at the feet of my Father and then leaving them there for Him to work out for me.  The things I worry about are not in my control – but they are in God’s.  I am told to “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7) and cast doesn’t just mean hand it to Him gently and then keep looking back at it thinking how I might still fix it myself.  Isn’t that what we moms usually do?  Cast means to fling it off of me, like I would if I felt a spider on my shoulder.  Get rid of it and then let Him handle it.  Don’t take it back from Him tomorrow to worry over again!

I do everything  better with a plan – even prayer.  I use The 2959 Plan to help me stay on track.

The best thing I know for keeping a peaceful home is a nice shiny coat of Turtle Wax.  No, of course I don’t mean you should literally add car wax to your beauty routine.  But just like a good coat of wax lets the water and dirt slide right off my car, I need to let things that irritate me slide right off as well.  That is harder than it sounds!  But it is honestly the best thing I can do for my family.  I can’t take everything so seriously and so personally.  It helps if I can remember that a bad attitude may be directed at me, but it may not be about me.  Someone probably had a bad day and needs some extra love rather than an angry response.

Sometimes I lose my keys – my car keys, my house keys, and these keys too.  In the moment that a conflict arises, my emotions cause me to forget the things I know.  I put little notes to myself all over my home (like the “No Distractions” sign I mentioned) to help me remember.  Because if I can remember my keys, my home will be at peace.

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Categories Christianity, Religion

Mama’s recipe for chocolate gravy

September 6, 2012 //
0

Sometimes I think of myself as an Oklahoma food missionary — one who was sent to share great recipes with my friends in the north. This is one of those times.

I grew up eating chocolate gravy for breakfast, and I humbly suggest that you give it a try this weekend.

How to make the best chocolate gravy

Ingredients:

  • A box of chocolate pudding (the kind that you cook — not instant)
  • Canned milk (also called condensed milk)
  • Cheap biscuits (don’t get the big, flakey ones)

Here’s what you do:

  1. Heat the milk. (It doesn’t have to boil.)
  2. While the milk is warming, pour the powdered pudding into a bowl. Add a little water to make it runny.
  3. Pour the pudding into the warm milk and stir until it gets thick enough for you.
  4. Serve warm with just a little butter in each bowl.

     

    Then, of course, there are at least four different eating styles:

    The dipper…

    The pourer…The spreader…… and my bowl… Enjoy!

     

     

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Categories Christianity, Religion

10 ways to be an authentic Okie in New York

August 15, 2012 //
0

Sometimes when I’m homesick I make lists of things I can do to help myself — like calling Mama or streaming Tulsa radio stations over the Internet. But it’s been a long time since I’ve traveled the 1,200 miles to okra and lightening bugs and people who held me as a baby. Ten months seems like an eternity when you’re missing part of your heart, part of you that makes you you.

So, I’ve put together another list, a bigger one that should tide me over until I get these three little boys back to where my story begins, back to Oklahoma.

Ten things I can do to feel more at home:

1. Ask for more ice in my drinks.

2. Make my own biscuits and cornbread, just like Mama.

3. Feed more people, including new parents and neighbors.

4. Help my boys be better hosts by introducing them to the art of polite dinner conversation and the heart of serving others.

A young Benjamin helps feed calves at a friend’s dairy barn.

5. Spend time outdoors and at farms. Encourage my boys to get really dirty and allow my washing machine to earn its keep.

6. Worry less about organizing my house and more about organizing visits with people. Tend to friendships so they grow.

7. Linger on my front porch. Listen to the birds. Take a deep breath.

One of my all-time favorite pictures of Jessie. Taken by Lori Ostling.

8. Care about other people. Strike up conversations with strangers at the store, the post office and the repair shop.

9. Buy cowboy boots for the boys and turquoise jewelry for me.

10. Value wisdom in all of its shapes, sizes and ages.

What do you do to feel at home? What parts of your culture do you cherish? What do you want to pass on to your children? Share it here and maybe we can all learn something together…

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Categories Christianity, Religion

When your friend loses everything — except hope

August 6, 2012 //
1

Today I hear the pain in Tina’s voice as she tells me all that’s left of her house is a twisted piece of metal. Their 80 acres of trees used to be beautiful, she says, and full of wildlife. Now, you can see right through to the charred trunks and the ashes that fell like snow after the wildfire licked up the leaves and the underbrush.

This month was supposed to be one of celebration. She and Lee had planned to sneak away and elope in Eureka Springs, Ark., and then come back and start their new lives. In a year, they had hoped to move out of their trailer and build a new home right there on their land in Olive, Okla. — a little slice of secluded paradise for a country girl like Tina.

Now, she needs shoes for her wedding, and she doesn’t have a place to come home to.

She has flip-flops that she wore out the door, some favorite pictures and her grandma’s ring. But the other things, like a treasured Bible and a yearbook with scribbles and jokes from her high school friends, are all gone. Nothing is left and there’s no insurance to replace them.

She’s grateful to be alive, grateful for the hard-working firefighters and for friends who have already started dropping off donations at her parents’ house. Grateful because this is a blessing in disguise, she says. She’s sure of it, even now.

If you’d like to help, please pray for strength and wisdom for Tina. If you’d like to help by donating, her family’s most urgent need is clothing, especially for Lee and his son. Lee and Eric both wear a size 13 in shoes. Lee wears a 2X in shirts and has a 36-38 waist. Eric wears a large or 1X in shirts and has a 34-inch waist. Donations have already started to come in for clothing for Tina, but I’m sure she could use something other than flip-flops, especially for her wedding. She wears a 9 or a 9.5 in shoes.

They are staying with family members now but would love to borrow a travel trailer to use as a temporary home.

I’d also welcome suggestions for getting Tina another copy of our senior yearbook — and maybe even pictures from lower grades. Does Sapulpa High School keep old copies of yearbooks? Could we organize a yearbook signing of sorts? 

You can call Tina’s niece Krystal at (404) 771-3515 for more info as well. 

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Categories Christianity, Religion

Daddy was different — in all the right ways

June 14, 2012 //
1

When it comes to daddies, I’d argue I had one of the best.

I have pictures of him pulling me as a toddler on a sled, of the two of us standing together the year he coached my softball team and side-by-side again at banquets, proms and graduations.

I have just as many pictures held not in my hands but in my heart: The portrait of him urging other church members to build a bigger building and promising to pay the mortgage himself if he needed to. The snapshot of him in front of his employees explaining that the company was downsizing but not to worry because he had found each of them jobs at nearby businesses.

And then, there’s the uncomfortable picture of Daddy confronting our minister. It seems the minister didn’t like a visitor who stopped by church, so he refused to shake hands with him. That didn’t go over well with Daddy who believed God loves everyone.

At the peak of his career, the oil business in Oklahoma came to a near halt and other industries began to crumble. While others wringed their hands, Daddy was busy shaking hands with new opportunities. “Always be different, sis,” he’d say. “Always be different.”

The only thing that ever seemed to worry him was that something might happen to one of us three girls or to Mama. “They’d have to put me in the loony bin if I ever lost one of you,” he’d say.

I think that’s why he went first, before any of us. It has been 10 years since his heart gave out on him, and for a while, it felt like my heart stopped beating, too.

That same minister who wouldn’t shake hands preached at Daddy’s funeral. When former employees were asked to be pallbearers, they said it would be an honor. Other people literally packed the hallway and spilled out into the parking lot. Cars lined up for more than a mile to escort Daddy to the cemetery.

Person after person told us what a difference Daddy had made in their lives, what joy and inspiration he had brought into every situation.

He was different, that daddy of mine. Different in all the right ways.

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Categories Religion
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