Forgiveness.....?

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."
— C.S. Lewis

Wow. 'Nuff said......

So, what kind of woman am I, anyways?

I got this in an email from a dear friend (Thanks, Mary) and had to share it here. Thank You Lord, for reminding me of just who You have called me to be.

"The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down." Proverbs 14:1 (NIV)

Boiling point. That is what I had reached as I sat on the floor in my office thinking, "How did I get here?" Was it the discovery of a third needed root canal in my son's mouth only one week before he started college? Maybe it was the discussion of who was going to take over his room when he left? It was also my daughter's new job which required me to provide transportation right in the middle of the day. I guess at that point it didn't really matter. I could feel a slow boil in my heart and I feared an explosion was nearing the surface.

Proverbs 14:1 instructed me that morning with exactly what I needed to hear, "The wise w oman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down" (NIV).

The choice was and is mine: to be part of the divine design or the devil's demolition. My kids don't make me blow up. My husband doesn't cause me to feel exasperated. Proverbs makes it pretty clear, it's my choice.

That is a lot of power. I think, at least in America where for years women have fought for equal rights, we've missed this enormous amount of power that we have held since Eve was created: the power to build a home.

We hear of women who build innovative businesses and women who build influential ministries, but how about women who build solid homes, investing in lifelong marriages and raising up godly children as the next generation? Proverbs says this woman is wise. Never mind what society says is valuable and praiseworthy. This power is of utmost importance. This tremendous power that is within us is the power to build or destroy and we, the women of the home, hold it.

Learning to wield this power isn't something that just happens. Jesus gives insight in Matthew 12:34 when He says that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. Our mouths are one of our primary tools. So, what is the mouth's source? Our heart.

That is why we have to be so careful what we allow to linger there. Is it positive thoughts about our kid's, their behavior, their future, their friends? Do we think good things about our husbands throughout the day, thankful for their hard work, grateful for their companionship?

If our mouths are currently being used to tear down instead of build up, it's time for a heart overhaul; time to get the thoughts that we dwell on lined up with the good that is right under our roof.

Friend, I hope you will join me, inviting the Holy Spirit to empower you today to build your home. Look for ways to invest and opportunities to hold back those words that tear down. He wants to make us builders. Let's say "yes"!

Lord, I want to build today. I can see what this day holds: driving in carpool, washing dirty clothes, making another supper and learning third grade math...again. Open my eyes and shut my mouth when my actions are leaning toward destruction. May I choose inspiration, not irritation. Make me a builder empowered by your Holy Spirit with strength and wisdom. Thank You for this incredible opportunity. May I make You proud! Amen.

My Grandfather's Flag.

Yesterday an American Flag came to rest at my home. Not just any American Flag but the Flag that covered my Grandfather's casket when he died in 1994. (William Broadrick a.k.a. Bill, a.k.a Papaw)

My sister Debby called me Sunday on her way back from Lakeland to tell me she had it. I was shocked. My Grandmother (Annie L. Broadrick)had died in 2006 and so much of what she had was lost or missing. I had not thought about that flag for a very long time. And yet here it was...on it's way to my house. My Daddy (Eddie) and Step Mom (Lisa) had what they could find of my grandmothers possessions in storage and were gradually going through it. They found the flag last weekend while Deb was there.

After Deb left I just looked at it. The memories came flooding back....

William Broadrick was a Drill Sergeant who served in the United States Army for 21 years. He served in the U.S. and abroad during World War 2. I lived with my grandparents from the age of 13 to 16 yrs. old. During that time I joined Army JROTC at my high school and that made him really proud of me. I really liked it plus it gave us a bit of a special connection. By the time I moved in with them he was retired and spent most of his days hunting, fishing and breeding and training bird dogs.

He was pretty hard core even as a retiree. He had a no-nonsense-take-no-bull attitude 24/7. Sometimes I was scared of him but I loved him very much. He stayed in my life consistently from my birth til his death in 1994. He also loved me very much but was not good at showing that kind of thing. That was OK. I KNEW he loved me.

One memory I have of him was when my sister and I had moved from Columbus Ga. to Houston TX. with my Mom (Linda) and Step Dad (Johnnie). Prior to that we stayed with our grandparents most weekends and we missed them so much. I remember seeing them after we got off the plane and running through the Atlanta airport into his arms. He saw us and started whooping and laughing and dropped to his knees as we began running. We almost knocked him over. Grandma said later that all he had talked about in the days leading up to our arrival was how much he missed us and couldn't wait to drive to Atl. to pick us up.

He hunted and fished on the Ft. Benning Ga. reservation, Drove an Army green Volkswagen Thing and a huge Ram truck, and loved Krystal Sunrisers for breakfast. Actually he loved Krystal any time. Sometimes we would make a Krystal run before Grandma got home from work and would have to be sneaky about it because she would get mad we would spoil our dinner. He kept live quail in the backyard to teach his hunting dogs how to hunt, would bleed game by hanging it from the big tree by the back door, and liked to smack Grandma on her butt when I was looking so she would yell at him while he winked at me and laughed.

He liked hot toddies at night and an occasional glass of Blue Nun wine. He loved eating cornbread crumbled in buttermilk. He liked to hang out at the gas station where they did car repairs on our vehicles. He thought it was funny when I would kiss his sunburned bald spot on top of his head. He kept loaded rifles all over the house and liked pocket watches. He snored like a freight train. He had a great sense of humor and his best friends all served with him in the Army, Sgt. Acock, Uncle Montgomery, (not a blood relative but out families were so close we called him and his beautiful Japanese wife June our Aunt and Uncle) Sgt. Porter and others whose names elude me. He had a moonshine still on the Ft. Benning reservation and kept moonshine under the kitchen sink. I don't recall ever seeing him drink it but he liked to give it to others to drink when they visited. Sometimes Grandma and I would ride out to whatever Ft. Benning lake he was fishing at and we would fish a little bit with him. He wore camouflage a lot but what he wore most were pale blue or white button up short sleeved shirts and navy blue dress pants--always creased and starched.

One time he told me a story about being stationed in France with Grandma. They were fighting and he was so mad he didn't even want her to cook for him. He decided to make a pan of fried okra for himself. He got the okra ready, found a canister that he thought was cornmeal and used that for the breading. He heated the grease on the stove til it was ready and dropped in some okra. He said he knew something was wrong when the okra started sort of exploding all over the pan. Turns out that wasn't cornmeal. It was grits and Grandma had the last laugh in that fight. He said he never tried to cook for himself while he was mad again because he should have noticed something strange about that "cornmeal".

He loved cable T.V. Heehaw and Lawrence Welk were watched faithfully, along with TBS (Charlie Chan, The Bowery Boys, Little Rascals, Abbott and Costello, Three Stooges,) and Headline News. He read the entire newspaper every single day and retired from his second career at the Columbus Ledger and Enquirer Newspaper. I think he worked in the print department. I can remember driving there with Grandma to take him his dinner at sunset. He always came out and waved at me sitting in the car. Debby remembers Papaw making us hats out of sheets of newspaper and she thought that was the coolest thing. He was a Mason. His hands were huge. He had a very Georgia southern accent. His people were from Dalton Ga. and he had a book that showed where his great great great great (I don't know how many greats) grandmother was the first female school principal in the entire state of Georgia. He was very proud of that. I remember him and Grandma coming to Atlanta and watching me graduate, afterward going to the 57th Fighter Group restaurant to celebrate. I was 17 years old. I knew they were both so proud of me because I had been making some pretty stupid decisions and almost didn't graduate. Education was important to him.

I remember getting him in hot water one time with Grandma. She would leave for work in the mornings before I left for the bus stop. I would pass through the living room on my way out the door and he always had these aerobics shows on T.V. Skimpy leotard-you get the picture. Well one day I asked my Grandma why he just watched if he wanted to lose weight? Why not get up and exercise too? She got mad as a hornet (I understand why now but at the time I was not sure what the heck made her so mad) and when we got home she sure told him off. I felt really bad for him and it wasn't funny then but it's funny now.

I remember he outed my Aunt Bea's cooking one time. Aunt Bea was Grandmas older sister and quite a character in her own right. By "outed," I mean she didn't exactly tell me the truth about what I was eating. I never could get past the idea of eating rabbit or squirrel. I'm sure they snuck it past me but I never caught it til Aunt Bea visited. As we sat down to eat I didn't recognize the gravy covered meat on the table so I asked what it was. Before anyone could answer Aunt Bea said, "Pressed turkey." I believed her. And honestly it was delicious. At the end of the meal Papaw wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, "Bea? That was some GOOD rabbit." I almost died. I was so mad. She yelled, "Turkey! it's pressed turkey!" but it was too late. I got really upset and left the table. I eventually got over it but was a very suspicious eater for a long time. It is funny now though, the look of uh-oh on his face, Grandma laughing and Aunt Bea trying to recover.

After I grew up I joined the Navy and moved far away for several years but tried to get back there some. Papaw got cancer sometime during the late 80's early 90's but that information was not really shared or talked about.

In the early 90's I went to visit with my husband Chad (who was also active duty Navy) and Papaw called us aside and gave me a beautiful gold nugget ring with a solid gold Mexican peso in it. I was a little surprised because I wasn't aware of just how sick he was. He didn't look bad, just older and a bit tired. He said he knew I had always liked that ring and wanted me to have it. He also said that he was afraid if he didn't give it to me while he was still alive that Grandma wouldn't part with it and he really wanted me to have it. That threw me a bit. I shushed him and said he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon and Chad agreed. It was then that it began to dawn on me things were not going well with the cancer treatment.


I found out later that he had been given six months to live but he actually lived six years. It had to be the fact he was so hard core and no one tells an Army Drill Sergeant what to do, including giving up the fight to live. The last time I saw him and he was still at living home he was walking with a cane, miserable at not being able to hunt and fish and so unhappy about his lack of mobility. I found out later his cancer and spread from his prostate to his bones. An experimental chemo cocktail that he agreed to take had ended up doing more harm than good. His immune system shot, he succumbed to pneumonia in the summer of 1994.

I noticed he had mellowed in the last few years of his life. He began to say I love you more, hugged longer, became almost touchy-feely, which was so unlike the man I lived with. He became softer and easier to love. He was slower to anger, as a matter of fact his temper seemed to disappear altogether.

Chad and I had just separated and were discussing permanent dissolution of our marriage when Papaw died. It blindsided us both. Chad and Papaw had a great relationship and much mutual respect for one another. Our families did not know we had separated and Papaw's passing was not the time to tell them so we kept silent about it. Grandma asked that Chad do the military honors for my Grandfather and he did. At the funeral I watched Chad perform; under enormous emotional pressure, an act of service to my veteran Grandfather that I appreciate to this day. Even as our marriage was falling apart, with so many questions looming about the future of "us," and our two-year old daughter Alyssa, Chad brought honor, dignity and grace to my Papaws funeral and honored my Grandmother's wish that not just any soldier do the honors-she wanted him honored by Chad.

I found out something else I didn't know about my Papaw at the funeral. I did not know he was a man of God-that he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior before he died and it wasn't a deathbed conversion. He had been saved for a good while before he took a turn for the worst. Even though I was not a Christian at that time it gave me great comfort to know that he would spend all of eternity in Heaven. Six years later I totally surrendered my life to Christ and it gives me so much joy to know that I have all of eternity to spend with Papaw and Grandma in Heaven, making up for the time lost and wasted apart here on earth.

I wanted to put my memories of Papaw somewhere because it was important to me for many reasons. I want my younger siblings to know things about him that they never got the chance to experience first-hand. His wit, his patriotism, and even his mistakes. I wanted a preservation of what I knew of him and any other family members who want to email me your memories or pictures of him I will gladly post them here.


robinmcnew@aol.com

Yeah.....I love ya.......

Growing up, I did not tell the boys I dated that I loved them. Just a couple and we were serious. I did not toss "I love you" around like "hello" and "goodbye". Because. Well. LOVE was really a word that represented strong emotion and ties to me. And I didn't LOVE everyone.

I am a people person or extrovert…. I have always found people to be amusing and felt great fondness for some others but loved very few. (outside of family obviously)

After a radical salvation come-to-Jesus encounter I realized one of the ways God really changed me was He put in me a love for other people that I just do not understand but it is real. It is irrational, lol. It makes no sense to really love people you really don’t know. But it's REAL. I didn't toss IloveYou around before I got saved because it would not have been real--it would've been fake and a gross overstatement. Now I say it to lots of people and laugh when I say it because it just fills me with a lot of joy to share the love God has put in me with others….. I cannot deny what I feel nor do I think it is something God would have me to keep inside.

My love for others (which I do realize is a gift from God) spills out of me in sometimes awkward ways and I really don’t seem to be able to do much about it, lol. So……If I say I love you to you please know that it’s real, not trite or just a convenient phrase that seems to be everywhere….And I may not even understand it myself, lol…But I DO understand that I MEAN it when I say it and hope you understand that too….

and…

um…..

I love you. <3

MTV 16 and Pregnant

How to Be 16 and Innocent


Does anyone find it just a little bit odd and humorously ironic that the show about the negative consequences on unwed and unwanted pregnancies is aired on MTV???
Just to put it in perspective:


In 171 hours of MTV programming, analysts found 1,548 sexual scenes containing 3,056 depictions of sex or various forms of nudity and 2,881 verbal sexual references. That means that children watching MTV are viewing an average of 9 sexual scenes per hour with approximately 18 sexual depictions and 17 instances of sexual dialogue or innuendo. (Source: www.parentstv.org)


So in other words, for 167 hours a week, MTV blares out a “Hey kids! Have sex and have sex, and after having had sex, have more sex! Oh and don’t worry about the consequences, because of course we’ll never show that part!”


Then one hour a week: “Look kids! If you’re 16 and pregnant, there’s a bunch of bad stuff that gets dumped in your life!”


Isn’t this sort of like a cable channel sponsored by the American Beef Council having a weekly show about the health benefits of being a vegetarian?

And in a related quirk of fate, MTV.com links to Stayteen.com, which links to Truelovewaits.com - which effectively is like finding a Bible inside a Maxim Magazine.


Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that someone out there is finally revealing the dozens of reasons why it’s a bad move to have a kid when you still are a kid. And if you’ve watched 16 and Pregnant, there is definitely a common pattern of “What the heck was I thinking???” moments.

But the other type of moments that the show regularly delivers is an “I can’t believe I’m pregnant” vibe from some of the girls. Now, perhaps I wasn’t paying attention in Health Education class, but doesn’t getting pregnant involve at least a couple phases that aren’t typically accidental? So for pregnancy to take someone by surprise is, well, quite surprising to me.

I think the shocker moments arrive when what started as relatively innocent affection transforms into an overpowering chain of events that the Creator of the Universe intended to occur in the context of marriage.

Which then begs the question: how far is too far? And if I had a dime for every time I was asked this question, I would be retired and living in a Cabana in Cancún.
Surprisingly, the Bible is somewhat silent on the subject of where couples should draw the line. Obviously God condemns sex outside of marriage because He wants you to enjoy and experience it to its full potential, but what about those “phases” we talked about earlier?

Well, perhaps you weren’t expecting this, but God’s Word is crystal clear on when to cool your jets:

It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathens, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8).

So how does this passage define the line? You have to look closely or you’ll miss it. Most people define “sexual immorality” as sex, but in fact it begins much earlier than the technical definition you learned in school and see referenced on MTV every 3.5 seconds.


According to God’s amazing blueprint for sex, sexual immorality begins the moment affection turns into lust, and yes, any “turned on” exploration outside of marriage is defined as lust. So in other words, it is “too far” when you follow your sexual impulses.
So what’s up with God? Is it so bad to violate His perfect plan? Well, when you think about it, His whole motive for having such a strict line before marriage is for your benefit and the honor of your future spouse. Every moment invested in feeding your illegitimate sexual hunger is a moment stolen from your future that would have bonded you with your husband or wife. Instead, you will pay a price, which is typically a feeling of guilt, and I can guarantee you it will start the process of your relationship disintegration.


Haven’t you noticed that when a couple starts dating, it’s all fun and enjoyment until they start getting physical? Then you see the fighting, the gossip, and eventually the break up.


So please consider the advice I’m giving you…you simply cannot go against God’s design for sex and win. You may be called names and considered an idiot because you’re not going with the flow of the hook up/friends-with-benefits crowd, but believe me, that flow is headed straight into the relationship sewer.


The best way to avoid sexual immorality is just that…avoid it. You know when the temperature is rising, and that’s the time to split the scene and leave it clean.
Trust me, God will bless you, your future spouse will thank you, and you can focus your mental energy on reaching your friends for Christ, instead of raising a baby.


Ask your friends how life would be different if they were suddenly given the responsibility of parenthood. Use that as an opportunity to ask them why they think Jesus used the term "born again" in John 3:3, as a description of the Christian life, and how God becomes our heavenly Parent when we trust Christ. Pray for an opportunity to share the gospel.


For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matthew 15:19).

Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy (Romans 13:13).

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18).

*this post courtesy of Dare2Share Youth Ministries. I find them useful and relevant in furthering the cause of the Kingdom.*