A woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised. Give her the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates. ~Proverbs 31:30b-31I love hats. When I was a little girl, wearing a white hat and white gloves was very vogue on Easter Sunday. Even if my mother made my Easter dress, I got to buy a new hat just about every year.
I try on hats every Easter...although I haven't worn one on Easter Sunday for more than a decade. But, I have other hats. I crocheted myself a lovely little cap and scarf for winter. The hat reminds me of the ones flappers wore in the 1920s.
I also bought myself a straw hat for Christmas. It's a bit fancier than my worn-out gardening hat, but who says shoveling compost can't be stylish?
So many things demand attention every day, some times every hour of the day. As women our roles change from demand to demand. For instance, today I've already worn my chauffeur hat, my Dr. Mom hat, my personal shopper hat, my cat wrangler-dog feeder-chicken farmer hat, and right now my writer hat. It's only noon...
Still scheduled to be worn today are: my housekeeper hat, my chef hat, my publisher hat. I hoping to get in time to wear my redecorating-diva hat and I absolutely can't forget to throw on my quick-Pilates-workout hat (or headband) so I can stretch all the muscles that get bunched up doing all the other stuff. Since my son is sick with flu/bronchitis, I have to keep my nurse hat on under whatever other hat I'm wearing. Here is where the problem with being a hat lover comes in - stacking hats one on top of the other is certainly not very "vogue!"As women we tend to grab all the hats we have and try to wear them at the same time. So much begs our attention it can overwhelm us and become difficult to decide which hat needs to be worn at which time. We don't like to let people down and we hold especially high expectations of ourselves. A very important lesson to learn from the woman who had it ALL together, the Proverbs 31 woman, is-- as accomplished as she was--that multitude of things on her list of virtues and talents didn't get done all at one time. Her worth would not have been far above rubies if she hadn't learned to prioritize.
Some tasks will keep: laundry, dishes, vacuuming. Some will not: feeding the baby, paying the bills. Some are absolutely essential to our own well-being: relaxing with our spouse or alone, quiet time with God.
My sweet husband doesn't care if the hat I wear with him is just a ponytail holder, as long as I am fully engaged with him during our time together, even if we have to take our time in small increments.
I still don't have a hat for that last one: quiet time with God. I saw a crochet book that is full of patterns for prayer shawls. I have in mind a lovely white lace shawl to drape over my hair while I become fully engaged reading my Bible and talking with the Lord......
Lord, Make me realize how sweet my time with You is when I put You first. You will help me set my priorities in order, if I just spend time praying and talking to You about them.
: "There is nothing you can do to make God love you more; there is nothing you can do to make God love you less." Unlike humans who love according to mood, God loves perfectly according to His flawless character. If we want to love as He does, we must learn to love deliberately, purposefully, and unconditionally.
Actually, I'm pretty grumpy after a few days of camping without getting a proper shower -- and that is self-imposed lack. I've also been through ice storms and moving situations where it was more than a few days before we had power. I know at one point when I was given the answer, "It will be next week before the inspector can get to your house. We can't turn the power on until we get his report," I burst into tears and blubbered to the man on the phone that I couldn't go another week without electricity. This after playing "Little House on the Prairie for a week and a half...boiling water on a camp stove, cooking Thanksgiving turkey on the grill, and using a propane lantern and candles for light. It really was fun...for about a week. I borrowed the "Little House on the Prairie Cookbook" from the library and we worked our homeschool lessons around our situation. But even though we were in North Carolina, early December tends to get cold. Bath water doesn't stay very warm waiting for the next stock pot to boil and be poured in.
On Monday before the storms hit, my husband and son brought a large load of firewood home and stacked it on the porch. It is enough to last us well into February. And it burns well, so it is seasoned to be used just now at the time we need it. My son and I were able to get a water line break well on its way to being fixed before my husband got home from his long, icy mail route on Tuesday so all he had to do was help get the splices in and fill in the hole. Yesterday my son, daughter, grandson, and I were able to get out between snowy downpours and resupply our panty.
Today's featured post is a discussion of an 
