Anticipation!

***Well, tomorrow's the big day! We've really been working hard this week, the store looks great if I do say so myself! Anxious and nervous about the Grand Opening tomorrow! Emily will be here - not sure about Johnny or Peter, I sure hope they can get off work! We have so many beautiful things on display, I know where I'll be doing my gift shopping from now on! I'm staying late at the store tonight because one of my vendors is coming to finish up her booth. Not a problem, there seems to still be plenty to do.

***Here's a timely article, "Nine Ways to Pray for Our Troops."

1)  Pray for safety.
That was always my number one worry while our son was deployed. I asked everyone to pray for his physical safety and for his mental safety.

I had weight-loss surgery recently and I developed a stubborn infection that turned a one-day hospital visit into a two-week stay. My family and friends rallied around me. Still, I was frightened. I asked everyone I knew to pray for me to heal, as Rick's post recommended. I posted my request on social media, talked to the hospital chaplain and my condition improved. When my husband had the same kind of surgery, I knew exactly how to pray for him, thanks to “6 Ways to Pray for the Sick”.               Guideposts Magazine Reader

2)  Pray for peace.
It seems an impossibility—peace during war. But what I’ve learned that is true peace comes in spite of circumstances, not because of them.
3)  Pray for joy.
The job our military is doing is hard. They experience a lot of things we can’t begin to imagine. I ask God to give them joy, even in the midst of difficulties.

More at the link.

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Song of Solomon 2:11-12 King James Version (KJV)

¹¹ For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
¹² The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

Spring has finally made it to our corner of Indiana!

***The High Cost of Fatherlessness.

In his book The Good Dad (Zondervan, 2014), Focus on the Family President Jim Daly describes standing on his high school football field on Dad’s Night. The announcer called out the name of each athlete and then the name of his father, who would run onto the field to stand by his son. 

But Daly’s father had died, and he’d forgotten to ask anyone to stand in as his “dad” for the night. So he stood there alone, feeling embarrassed and self-conscious. 

“Want to know how important fathers are?” Daly writes. “Ask the guy who didn’t have one.” 

Fatherless in America

Today, you can multiply Daly’s longing and loneliness by millions: 24 million children in the U.S. live apart from their biological father. That’s one out of every three kids. 

It’s no longer the norm for children to grow up with both parents in the home. According to the Fifth Annual Index of Belonging and Rejection, a yearly study conducted by the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, only 46 percent of teens currently between the ages of 15 and 17 have grown up with both their biological parents always married to each other.

 Broken homes are a huge problem in this country.

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A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright ;

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veil’d the pole:

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

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