Welcome to this week’s edition of Aloha Friday.
In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that we take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response.
If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link . Don’t forget to visit the other participants! It’s a great way to make new bloggy friends!
Join up here
Join us here at Women Taking A Stand
I found myself feeling so well nurtured as I attempted to fashion this little corner of my yard.
Hi Donetta....stopped by to visit and so enjoyed reading your posts! I would really like to have more information about the laundry detergent and the recipe for the sourdough bread! Is there a post that I can link up to???
Bless you, sweetie!
Susan
Amish White
Sour Dough a beginning
Sour Dough
Many of these are Great Nieces and Nephews.
The Sewing room was so ready to receive some attention. 
This a new dress...it was a $65 dress I found for $12. so...
I worked in the garden this morning
Dash is out side on the patio drumming with two dowels he found, I went and joined him and we found fun in all of the different types of repercussions. Archer (Dove) is combing out her pretty "green" hair. Well thankfully we had the proper shampoo and it looks like we will eventually get it back to blond, I hope the texture gets better.
The joy of these mornings I dreamed of all those years will not be taken away or lost in the struggles around me. I have dreamed all long years to have the very life I have. I have the contentment of all that I have ever dreamed off. I have enough.
Like the waves of a torrent however the dreams we often have can hinder and change the outcomes of the dreams of those who walk our path along side of us.
The longing to travel is hindered for those who have a homestead, and the mortgage that goes along with it.
Every baby born is lead by a personality that is molded and groomed into what and who we have a chance to become in this life. It can be our best ally or our own worst enemy.
Like our life and our dreams our blogs find a place in the world. Some are built and groomed for sole purpose of gain of numbers for income. Some an intentional ministry. While others are like homesteads. Many are there to travel, to explore or implore the reader into an intentional setting or venue. All good and well as it is for each of us to find our place.
What if you were to gain the exact place you want in the world and it be apposed to the team you play with. Or at least in theory. Yes I speak in vagaries.
I would of never thought that the fulfilment of my hearts desire would be at the exclusion (or in part an exclusion) of an others. Or visa verso.
One side or the other has to give. Funny I have found that the joy my desire has given to the lives I share has been of times less than desired but non the less acknowledged sometimes as the best thing that could have entered our world.
There was a day when it was the joy of he who loves me to give me the world. His heart however has paid the price of years of self denial and being deferred. Even if... we defer our own self... if we one day see that we might have done well to make a way to do otherwise would we have regretted or been glad of it? Oft I am told glad of it. Now with all beauty and transperancy I am told that many things were not so however and that they are resented, or at best regreted.
Now WE have established a family, home, gardens and an estate that lives and breathes to me yet (in large part) suffocates my mate. His hope deferred now ...far too long ...and his heart has given up even the hope. How can that hope be restored? I know that feeling personally... intamatly... having waited 16 and 20 years respectively for the children of my dreams come true. Only thing is that... in the being forced to wait the reality of it differs greatly than the fantasy of what it might have been. So will it be I think for travel. Many of those things I/we desired and longed to satisfy my/our hearts with are a hindrance to others hopes and desires. Dogs were a desire in my youth to raise up with love and gentleness fondly enjoying the company off...yet now I have lost the very zeal that I imagined having for them because they hinder more than fulfilled. They are an anchor as are chickens and gardens... Some ships long to set anchor while other vessels long to raise it and to sail the seas in search of adventure.
I think it often must be the case in unions.
But what do you do will all the contentment and joy and accomplishment of success when it does not fulfill a mates wants of life. When it leaves a mate forced to become other than who he/she is, or depressed at the loss of his own (families) ships sail. It has been a long struggle that I have often tried to fix. Simple fact is two ships, two desired and compromise is in the un-available dollar or the letting go of self or desire. I had the struggle of letting go of the desire. I was longing 16 years to hold a babe in arms, only to let go and force myself to other persuits (undesired professional emplyment)to keep my sanity. Only then to have the desire fulfilled. It was hard to let go and even harder and more frustrating in some ways to recieve when it was such a hard ship to do so. Now this is the trial of my mate. It is a hard hard trial as I so well understand that it is not about me. I can not fix it. I too want to travel, but not so much as to let go of homestead. How do we do with the limited means. I think that there must be a blind sided third option perhaps. The desires of our heart are given to us by God so then as in the 16 years I had my desire denied or postponed....so is this desire only perhaps postponed. That urgency felt is from the depths...it is then up to God to make that way to see it too happen. What then?...the lessons I had to learn before the dream of my first child were for my best behalf and for my/our bennefet as were the lessons learned by he is that trial.
So this trial and this longing to set sail and explore and travel will be met I would think. Not knowing how that child might land in arm is little different that knowing how that sail might catch wind. It is in the trial of it though that the greater good if had.
Married now some 25 plus years much of what I/we worked for in hand has become a seeming millstone to my mate.
Once two years back I tried in all anger and internal frustrations to pack it all up and let it go by the way side to try to release him of all financial burden only to find great personal relief and satisfaction in actually setting my own anchor that security I long to offer us and our kids in following my vision. Growing children, food and family.
Yet the man I love finds need to sail (travel) and that need compels him into a frustrated state that all but misses the real voyage (his wonderful family and daily life). He has always felt lonely or alone...and I have laid beside him wondering if he knew how alone I felt in the same bed beside him. I never really stopped my own selfish ache to think that within his own wound is a life long loneliness that I can not fill. That only a fellowship with God can fill. Religion is a lonely thing. Relationships are most often stymied by religion. The most important of relationship, that with the Crater of our soul. Perhaps this trip within him is what will fill that relationship perhaps a devine appointment needed is not to be missed. Perhaps this time is come at hand . Like the adoptions not seeing how it could ever take place?
It kills me to think that one so dear to me is so very unhappy with his life. So very desperate to heal those wounds that leave gaping a seemingly easy fix that is denied him only through finance. Often though the things to learn are so much deeper than that. Often so much more unpleasant as well. The dross leads to a shine won often in no other way.
What if we all got everything we all needed/wanted?
I have gotten most all that my heart desired. However through the suffering of my hope deferred... it was it was received. The life, the husband, children, home animals and garden. Sewing machine and beads. Much favor and mercy has been shown to me yet a high price has been paid too. I am not a simple glutton of goodness.
Simple truth is the more that is given us the more is required of us. That is the real issue. Not wanting to be responsible to what is required of us once we received what we gain. This the child who is mad and then just refuses to do what is needed because he/she aint getting what he/she wants when he/she wants it.
That is the old counting of the costs. Perhaps in a union one mate has considered the cost and willingness to pay it without considering that the other mate is not as willing to do so. What then? Do we live resenting? May it not be so. Do we shoulder the weight and figure it is ours to carry?Wishing that it was a joint effort...well perhaps that has been my own method. I assumed in my life that it would be a mutual thing to carry. The sacrifice though to carry something you don't really want is perhaps too much to expectof, or ask of your mate.
So knowing now that the weight it too heavy on my own shoulder to I let it go and count to loss all the dreams that were within my grasps. I will try not too. I will hope and trust that there is a blind option yet to be discovered.
I was asked "what is it I do to comfort myself in times of struggle and suffering"? well writing has always been one of those things. Processing the thought and feelings of each trial. Seeing truth and error in my words that might be viewed and set in stone when only they were intended as a fluid process of role play as character develops or is rejected. Depending on the choice of what is then read back through the tears and/or laughter.
This is my place to do so. But the shelter of this refuge is being used by others to judge as if in stone I script, not it being a process of discovery. It is found to be satifying by some that I too suffer. Donot think that my life is without such. Nor is yours I am sure.
Many blogs are used to teach method of cooking, sewing, canning, "ministry" as in a direct intentional setting . Gardening or simple living. I have tried to find my niche or to explore the beauty of the diversity so many wonderful minds hearts and souls set out here. Often with a like mind or appriciative common ground.
Mine in a niche of honest living the round of it edged off and chiseled into a form that by design is dynamic ever growing (at least I would hope) . It is in the ebb and flow of talent and trial and skill and weekness.
If I be other than I am... less than who I am... I would appease the fear of misunderstanding and judgements. That is why these pages have been all but left blank for some time.
For in processing the things of late hearts other than my own have needed to be guarded at the cost of my own process. That I guess is a process of it's own.
Called a choice to love. In processing today it is in no less than a choice to love as well.
I long that the hearts around me be made whole, those under my roof and those in the seas that toss me ashore or against the stones some days.
Somehow in the midst of all of this The joy of my very own accomplished life has been let go of. It has become something I grieved to have inconvenienced the world around me with. Yet Oh I do so long to simply reward my soul with the gift that diligence and mercy and favor have gifted me.
I so long to hold onto that. It has become tenuous. It is very hard to do so.
When I think that my joy , my accomplishment had removed the opportunity for my mate to find his own it leaves me broken. For he is broken and it is not in my power to mend him. Even if I were to lift anchor to sail free into adventure that would remove all anchor it would I truly think destroy him. I am so sad that he is hurting. I only can hope for my love my friend that he find his joy. I am so very sorry that my joy has been gained at some of the cost of his very own.
For another to lay their life down for us is a very sad thing for they have lost them self at our expense. It saddens me to no end that I have gained at the expense of another. It is harder yet to have that rubbed in my face by others (not him) when it was a gift that was given freely to me.
I have written posts that have simply been deleted. Perhaps this one might be too. For this is for my process not for others pleasure , satisfaction or gossip. It is not for family to find satisfaction or condemnation of me or any one for that matter. It is not for a show of weakness's to be taken advantage of by arrogant deniers of truth.
It is for me who walks a road along side all of humanity. For all these things I know are not in a vacuum of some exclusive experience. We are many and perhaps this one simple voice of process can help speak for others too.
This is that great purpose of this blog.
I do not get paid for it that is not my purpose. (thought there is no judgement on those who have that purpose).
I do not proclaim this a Ministry of God either, though It is my hope that we all be ministered too by Gods compassion's.
So do I go back now and post a simple pretty image of life when I am pleased only. May it not be known of me to be so one sided as to only show you how good my life is...
Thank You Annette
Autism Awareness 
Total Egg count to date 4000 apx
February 2011 they are averaging 3-5 eggs a day
Only 5 birds since Prissy died.
Hens began laying again a few weeks back. The count is approximate
Winter of 2008/2009
Lemon Curd from the neighbors gift of fruit off her tree.
strawberry jam
sour dough bread from scratch
Laundry Soap a 1/2 cent per oz
I found the bar soap in an Asian $1 store, if you find it grab several
spring 2010
