My mother served as a nurse her entire life. She worked in an emergency ward in the inner city on the graveyard shift when I was young. She moved to a local health clinic to be a nurse for one of the General practitioners in town when I was a young teenager. That job lasted until after I was married. She finished her career working the critical care building at A Developmental Center a few towns over from our home.
Mom has always been a hard worker, with a firm but kind manner and an extremely sharp wit. Here she is at my daughter’s wedding a few years ago sitting with my son Joe.
These days mom lives with me, my sister and my oldest daughter at the Vicarage which has been our family home for something like forty-five years. She has created quite a legacy to leave to the world.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY MOM!
GRANDDAUGHTER REV. AMANDA LILLIE GRANDSON JOE AND GRAND DAUGHTER IN LAW JOSEPH LILLIE AND KRISTINE BARRAMEDA LILLIE
GRAND DAUGHTER MELANIE FRANKLIN GRANDSON IN-LAW JAMES FRANKLIN AND GREAT GRAND DAUGHTER DANIELLA BROOKE FRANKLINDAUGHTER REV. BRENDA J. LILLIE SON REV. J. LILLIE
Well this week I have not been as on the ball in the writing department as I would have liked, but I have done a lot of ministry work and a lot of gardening, so I guess it all balances out. Now however it is time to SHARE MY WORLD USING THE QUESTIONS MELANIE POSTED ON MONDAY MAY 4TH.
I have been trying a new blogging regimen these last several weeks. I am posting at least four blogs everyday and then doing what I call a blog blitz on the weekends. It started out I was posting a blog every hour. Now I am at the point where I am trying to find the most productive hours to post …morning, noon and night… to see where most people are on and reading.
Anywho…. Here are this week’s questions and my answers. When you have finished please take a jaunt over to Melanie’s site AKA SPARKS FROM A COMBUSTIBLE MIND and see how her other contributors have answered.
What can you break even if you don’t touch it? (yes there is a real answer to this. I’ll reveal it in the next week sometime. Still, answer how you would like – no right or wrong answer)
Oh there are lots of things you don’t have to touch to break. Here are a few: a trance, a sweat, a leg (in theater), a fast, a wind, a heart, and a spirit.
I am sure there are more things but these are what come readily to mind.
What’s the most useful thing you own?
I think the thing that gets the most use is my car.
What’s The Silliest Reason You’ve Ever Gotten Into A Fight With Someone Over?
Algebra. My sister ended up running away from home over it.
If You Were A Snake, How Long Would You Want To Be? No, size does not matter. 😛
I would want to be a hundred foot anaconda.
AND FINALLY…
Gratitude and/or uplifting? Please share. We can all use some of those.
This is the challenge where our hostess, Melanie, asks us 5 questions and in answering them we, her contributors, share our worlds. When you have finished reading my shares, please check out Melanie’s site, by clicking the link above, to see how she and all of our other Sharing friends have answered.
Now on to the questions:
Do guns protect people or kill people? Or both?
Guns are tools, inanimate objects. They can neither protect nor kill. Now people…people…. How I long for a return to innocence where killing and protecting were not things we did or ever had to do.
Is it more important to be respected or liked?
I think it depends who you are trying to get to respect or like you. I have wasted a lot of time trying to get certain people to treat me in ways they had no capacity for. I have discovered that “like” and “respect” are beggars wishes. Even if you get them you can’t long keep them.
Is having a big ego a negative or positive trait? (yeah I know. Duh. But there ought to be one “gimme’ in the pile)
Oye. We could do with a little less ego in the world right now.
Depending on your point of view, is death a new beginning?
Yes. In fact, aside from the second coming it is the real beginning.
THE WEEKLY SMILE is a challenge I have not participated in for quite a while. I came across it this week and something just grabbed m,e and said, “You must do this.” So here I am smiling with Trent this week.
Here are a list of the rules. You can click the link above to see who else smiled with Trent and what they all had to smile about.
Don’t make your smile about something mean or hateful. Keep negativity out of it.
Don’t make your smile discriminate against anyone for race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual preference, primary language, disability, illness, etc. You know the routine.
Try to keep violence out of it. If some selfless hero helps some people during a time of violence, sure, use that. If a family member received an honor for a wartime action, OK. Celebrating a person is fine, just don’t glorify the actual violence.
Keep politics out of it. Your uncle won an election? That’s something to smile about! You met a high profile politician? Sure, that is too. You want to have a political rant? Please do it elsewhere.
Careful with religion. You might smile about a religious service or something else that had a deep meaning to you, but don’t condemn other people’s religion or try to convert everyone. Keep it your personal experience.
Most people reading are adults. We can handle most of what you want to write. But please, if you wouldn’t want your 12 year old son or daughter reading it, you might not want to post it. Try for PG-13 instead of XX
Here is my smile for the week:
My family always makes me smile. We are a funny group of people. My son says often that the whole family is fluent in two languages: English and sarcasm. That would mean my daughter-in-law is fluent in five languages now (she’s a smarty).
Joe and Kristine are newleyweds, married in January. I was so privileged to go and be a part of their wedding in The Philippines. When they got married both of them knew that the start of their marriage was going to take work. Both of them have contracts in different parts South Korea which require them to live separately until they can find work in the same area. While that seemed difficult they both felt it was workable and something inside them told them it was necessary.
Of course, what no one knew was that they were going to return to a country going into lock down. Joe and Kristine were kept apart for over a month after they returned to South Korea by the travel bans opposed.
They are able to travel to each other on weekends now which both of them are very glad of. Joe and I were talking about the timing of their wedding the other night. How providential it all was. Had they married the weekend before their chosen date, most of the guests would have been hindered from coming by the Taal Volcano.
Had they gotten married even a week later we all might have gotten stuck in The Philippines or turned away at the airport as The Philippines began to turn away travelers from mainland Asia the very day Joe and Kristine left to go back to South Korea. Had they waited until their current work contracts expired and they could move closer to each other the wedding may not have happened at all as many wedding plans have now been kiboshed indefinitely by our world wide pandemic. The divine providence behind their choices makes me smile big! Big! BIG!!
We read “His mercies are NEW every morning.” We hear “You learn something NEW every day.” We know He is doing a NEW thing and right now it is springing forth! NEW. Everything is made NEW! Today is a NEW day! We want NEW clothes, a NEW car, a NEW house, a NEW job! We…
— Read on notesfromthevicarage.com/2020/04/21/the-trouble-with-new/
Well I am only three days late IN SHARING MY WORLD. This is the challenge where our hostess, Melanie, asks four or five questions. In answering them we, her contributors, share our worlds. Get it?
Anyway you can find out more about Share Your World by clicking the link above and going to Melanie’s site.
Here the questions and my answers:
What do you do to get rid of stress?
I pray a lot. I guess that means I must carry a lot of stress. Oh and I nap. I love naps.
In the past people were buried with the items they would need in the afterlife, what would you want buried with you so you could use it in the afterlife?
I am planning on getting new everything in the afterlife so I won’t be needing the broken stuff I had here.
What’s the opposite of a koala? (this is strictly for fun. I know what I came up with as an answer, but it was nonsensical. Alaok. See? It’s okay to pass on this one too if you want)
Let’s see Koala’s look warm and fuzzy so……
Yep that is pretty much opposite a koala
What’s the creepiest tech out there? (My interpretation of “tech” is app or program. If you know what “tech” is supposed to mean, hey! Great! Educate us.
This looks really good for the purposes it describes, but the idea that all our currency and economies will be controlled by satellites owned and operated by who? Well that just sounds very weird and super Terminatorish. I am glad they did not call it SkyNet.
GRATITUDE IS AN ATTITUDE
What method are you using to find your smile right now? Please explain in detail so others might utilize the same ideas. Some bloggers have shared a daily (weekly sometimes) method that they are using to keep their spirits up right now. I’d love to hear from anyone who does and is successful at it! Have a great week and stay safe!
As I said I pray a lot. I am also connecting with a lot of people on line. Finally I have planned myself a fairly rigid schedule of activity: praying, exercising, housework, church work, art and writing….and of course eating.
It is time to once again SHARE OUR WORLDS! This is the challenge where our hostess Melanie asks four or five questions and by answering them, we her contributors share pieces of our worlds. You can see how everyone answered the challenge questions by clicking on the link above.
In the meantime, here are Melanie’s questions for this week and my answers:
If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make them?
I think I fear mistakes because of my fear of other people’s reactions to them. I know I have and have had people in my life for whom nothing short of god-like perfection is acceptable. I rebel against that and tend to go into hiding everything from these people especially my mistakes because I am afraid of their reactions to the real me.
How do we know that pleasure is good and pain is bad?
Ummm…… I don’t think that. There are a lot of things that are very pleasurable which are very very very bad. There are also a lot of things which are hard and even painful which are actually not only good for us but necessary.
What problem or situation did TV / movies make you think would be common, but when you grew up you found out it wasn’t?
I saw this on Facebook a while ago and I couldn’t have agreed more. “Growing up I always thought quicksand would be more of a problem.”
If you drive, do you speed when no one is watching? Have you ever run a red light late at night on purpose, particularly if it doesn’t seem to change very quickly? If you don’t drive, what minor law may you have broken?
My kids always make fun of how slow I drive. They call me a “Granny -Driver”. That said I have been stopped for speeding (going 45 in a 35) and running a stop sign and when I was in Ireland I got stopped for running a red light. Of course none of those things were “my fault”.
What positive things are you finding to do to occupy your time right now?
Here is my list:
Praying A LOT
Reading the Bible A LOT
Contacting church folk by phone and facebook to see how they are doing
blogging
rewriting my book
doing some yard work
trying new recipes
watching a documentary on the history of England on Youtube
playing Skipbo and Uno with my sister and daughter
Calling my kids a lot
Doing a family Bible Study I taught to the church a while ago on Youtube with the Fam.
Well, I think I am back in full swing from my week to 10 days of sickness! I am not quite what you would call well, but well enough to get back into the swing of the pen.
I have missed all my friends in the blogosphere! I am so grateful to those of you who prayed me through this pneumonia and to those of you who dropped me notes telling me it was OK to rest. Honestly I couldn’t have done otherwise. I slept for four days! I have slept for a full day before when I was sick but to lose half a week!!!! I am also grateful to my sister who posted a few times on Notes From the Vicarage to keep our followers there updated.
Speaking of my sister, Brenda, you can now keep her in prayer because she has developed shingles and pink eye as well as an ear infection! She always was a bit of a competitor. 🙂
Anyway this is SHARE YOUR WORLD. While the update above does share my current world it does not answer the challenge itself which is to answer my friend Melanie’s targeted questions for the week. Soooooo……. Here are the questions and my answers. PLease check out Melanie’s site when you are done and discover how her other ccontributors have SHARED THEIR WORLDS.
On A Scale Of 1-10, How Strict Were Your Parents?
My parents were not what you would call strict at all morally. They expected good behavior and demanded personal responsibility on a very high level, but their thoughts on things like drinking, smoking, sex were pretty progressive. I was far more conservative when it came to those things than they were and maybe that was their trick of parenting.
What Wastes The Most Time In Your Day To Day Life?
Television is my biggest time waster. I am coming to hate it.
Do They Bury People With Their Braces* On? (* “braces” in this scenario are those metal bits they put on people to straighten their teeth. I realize “braces” are also some item of clothing that I believe men wear to keep their socks up or something. I’m talking about the teeth option).
I have no idea? I am interested to know the thought behind this question though.
Why Does A Round Pizza Come In A Square Box?
I can only imagine a round box would be harder to carry and mre expensive to make.
Gratitude: Share something you are grateful for right now. I know that’s a tough question. It helps to share those bright bits with folks though, because many of us are seeing through an increasingly dark glass.
I am grateful that the sun still rises on this world. I am also very grateful that my hope is not in this world. I am holding out for another life that is a whole lot longer than this one and where the problems of this world will not be known. As Paul the apostle said, “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!”
I just have to keep reminding myself that these present issues are temporary and that Jesus has something better for me which is coming.
Well it is March the month of snow, rain and mud. Sunday it was 25 F outside. Today it is 60 F. There is MUCH TO SHARE WITH THE WORLD.
This week our challenge hostess has asked five great questions and as we her contributors share our answers we share our worlds. So when you have finished reading about my world, feel free to jump over to Melanie’s site using the underlined link above and check out a myriad other worlds.
THE QUESTIONS:
Can you bake a cake? (credit for this question goes to Di, who asked it on her post recently. Thanks Di! After last week’s SYW, we needed a little bit of sweet and light!)
Not only can I bake a cake, I can bake one from scratch. I have a great recipe from my grandmother called Aunt Viola’s Chocolate Cake. What I can’t do is frost a cake neatly. It always comes out looking like a truck ran it over. My daughter says I am too impatient and frost it before its cool enough.
What’s one thing that can instantly make your day better?
PRAYER.
When you were a kid, did you eat the crusts on your sandwich or not?
My mother would not accept a sandwich as eaten unless the crust was gone. She used to tell me that the crust was where all the nutrients were.
What’s something your family would be surprised to learn about you?
I am pretty close and open with my family. There really isn’t much that would surprise them.
Please feel free to share some gratitude from this past week (or month or year). This is purely optional of course, but it does tend to uplift everyone (I happen to think) to read some happy and/or joyful thoughts or view some uplifting pictures. Thank you if you do so!
It’s that time again! Time to answer Melanie’s weekly questions and SHARE MY WORLD. Click that link to join the sharing family at Melanie’s site, Sparks From A Combustible Mind. Just an aside, this week she also posted another challenge with 20 questions! If your looking for another challenge that is surely one to look into.
Here are this week’s questions:
QUESTIONS:
How can someone win a gold star (i.e. win your approval and/or admiration) with you?
I am always impressed when someone acts in a way that dispels evil and promotes goodness.
If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?
I would read, write, pray and minister to people.
Do you have a favorite type of exercise?
I like to walk and also like to stretch.
Do you sleep with a top sheet? Why or why not?
Yes I do sleep with a top sheet. My body temp fluctuates throughout the night and so I often throw off the heavy blankets.
This week I am grateful to be back to a more regular writing regimen. I hope God will help me keep it up.
Lillie-Put 