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DiVoran Lites
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Do Frogs Come to Sunday School
8 DecMy Take
DiVoran Lites
I’ve had a couple of nature surprises in the past few days. Sometimes on the trail, I find things I’ve never seen before, leaves with perfectly round bumps, cocoons that look like fiber eggs, berries or plums growing on bushes.
Sunday on the playground the children came upon yet another frog.( I’ve been leery since a kid once threw a lizard on me and I had to sit there acting like it was nothing when I wanted to scream and jump and run. It’s not good for you to reign yourself in like that, it can give you bad breath.)
When the children find a creature I rush to supervise their investigations. One day they found a large green frog and were so enthralled with it that they wore it out in spite of repeated warnings to leave it alone, The next time they found a toad, they announced it, but pretty much did leave it alone after the lecture they got last time.
But Sunday’s frog was the absolute monster frog in every way, and everyone was 
interested in him. He was a Cuban tree frog like the one we have in our tool shedlette and he had ensconced himself inside our tube slide, in a way that made the slide unusable. I wouldn’t get a tube slide again, I have always been afraid there would be something in it that we wouldn’t care for.
It did keep us entertains for quite some time. It was much bigger than the one at home and as ugly as all Cuban tree frogs are with their neutral color and their fat sucker-toes.
The thing was everyone needed to see it and in order to do that you had to get down, by yourself, and crane up into the tube slide. Every time someone did that someone else had to poke whatever body part that was sticking out and yell, “Boo.” It sounded as if we were having our Halloween party right then and there.
I really wanted to see it, but I knew if they said boo while I was leaning into the slide exit I would jump and bump my poor old head that has already been bumped so many times it’s a wonder I have any sense left at all. I begged the children not to say boo. Have I told you how big he was? He was about the size of a dessert bowl.
The one on the left, maybe a bit smaller, but not much. I saw it for myself and I can hardly believe it.
Anyhow the kids didn’t poke me or say boo. They must love me a lot to do that for me. After I emerged, the boys kicked the plastic slide and hit it with sticks, even though they stopped every time I told them to stop.
The level of excitement was about the same as if someone had yelled big spider or snake.
Just a Snake
Banana Spider common to Florida
.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere came this blood-curdling squeal that made all the wiggling and kicking cease immediately. We looked at each other with big eyes, our hair standing on end. The boys wanted mohawks, anyhow, now they had them. The squeal sounded like a warning or a distress cry. It came again, only not so authentic sounding this time. Tommy was at the top of the slide, it could well have been him calling down the slue. He confessed that some of it was. So I was stuck. Can frogs really squeal like that?
We do know that frogs (and many other critters) come to Sunday School. Now if you want to know whether they squeal like banshees or not, click here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCAFAbldfSg
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Worries
1 Dec
My Take
DiVoran Lites
I’ve heard people say that they never worry, especially Christians since they condemn worry as a sin. They’re right, it comes from fear. But have you ever really met anyone who never worries at all? I haven’t. I sometimes worry about the strangest things. I worry about being useful to God. I worry about doing everything right so that the ones I love will love me, I worry about our health as we grow older, and here’s one that goes with love, I worry about being alone and lonely.
Lately, though I’ve been getting good results from praying about my worries as they come up. I pray that I will know the real truth of a situation, I thank God for it, and I let go of trying to figure it out for myself.
The number one human rule if you’re worrying is to do something good for somebody else. But you know what? I then worry about exactly what I should do. I wish I had not spent all the brain power I’ve spent trying to figure out what volunteer organization to join or who needs my help.
One day, I just said, okay. I give up. I don’t want to join a new organization. I don’t want to add to my should do list, and I don’t need someone else planning things for me to do for other people.
After giving up I told the Lord, it was his job to tell me what to do and when. I would watch for his His movement. Meanwhile I could stick with what I knew beyond doubt were my personal callings. For me it would be things like keeping my husband happy and well fed and both of us in the best health possible. It would be having my family’s backs, worship, prayer, writing, teaching Sunday school. That sort of thing.
But do you need to know what I’m called to do? I’d say no. I’d say you need to know what God has called you to focus on.
What’s happening now is that I do have time to fulfill my calling or callings, but also He works divine appointments and divine interruptions gently into my routine so that life never gets boring. As a matter of fact, I’m having more fun, feeling less lonely, and enjoying more adventures than ever before in my life. So rules are okay, but divine inspiration and serendipities are so much better.
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Giving Thanks for Goats
24 NovMy Take
DiVoran Lites
This is the photo our mother sent to our father when he was in the infantry on the European front during WWII. The story is about the time just before he went away. He did come back, so the story’s not about that, it’s about goats.
In 1943, my family had a nanny goat. We called her Nanny. When she had a kid, we called him Billy. I loved the warm foamy milk Nanny gave and Billy was glad to share with me. This is all when we lived down in Crowley, Colorado and Dad worked at the tomato factory keeping their machines going. We lived in a “railroad apartment.” That’s a long house built with a room or two going back in a row like train cars and an indoor side hallway to enter them by.
Speaking of trains, we did have one rumble past, practically in our back yard, every day. When we heard it coming David and I would be waiting to wave to the conductor who was always there in his dark uniform and square looking hat to wave back. Something tells me he stationed himself on purpose to say good morning to the two little kids who were so glad to see him.
Anyhow mother had more jobs than kids, housework, and animals. She cooked dinner, which we now call lunch, for all the men who worked at the factory, so with that, and the care of children and animals, she was a busy woman.
When the tomatoes were ripe, dad would bring some home and I remember sitting outside, on the stoop in the sun, with a salt shaker and salting each bite of that delicious fruit before I bit into it. You can be sure I was “all over” tomato juice when I finished, but I was washable and so was my dress, so that was all right.
Sometimes, Mother would take my brother who was about two, and I over to the factory to see daddy. Everybody went, walking the aisle between tomato plants. Here’s the line-up. Mother, DiVoran (5), David (2), Red, the Irish setter, Nanny, Billy, and Chanticleer the rooster. The baby goat wasn’t so bound by the aisle that he couldn’t divert to where the newest plants lived under panes of glass. Mother said his little hooves went trip-trap, over the glass and he never broke a thing.
This Christmas I’m buying a goat in memory of Nanny and Billy, but I don’t have any place to keep her, so I am sending her to a far away country and the people who live there will keep her, breed her, use her milk. Did you know that goat’s milk is especially nutritious for people who have AIDS? I’ll see my goat and all her progeny in a big tribe spreading over the hills when I get to heaven, (after I see Jesus and my family, of course). I’m looking forward to the whole scenario.
http://www.heifer.org/gift-catalog/index.html
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
http://www.openbible.info/topics/feeding_the_hungry
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Talks with Johnnie Lord
20 Nov
Talks with Johnnie Lord
DiVoran Lites
I was in the first Sunday School class Johnnie Lord taught when she and Peter first came to Titusville. We met in the house next door to our church, the First Baptist, downtown. As I recall, it was a space-filled room with sunshine splashing through the windows and over the wooden floors.
Johnnie talked slow and southern. I, who had just come from California with my husband and two small children, was fascinated by her. She used her hands in teaching, and did I say she was soft-spoken and kind? No? Well, she was the kindest and wisest woman I have ever personally known. I am by no means alone in feeling this way.
One of the first things I recall Johnnie telling us was that a woman was responsible for dressing modestly instead of trying to draw attention to herself by wearing what might be called alluring clothing. That was the first time I ever heard that idea, although I’m sure my mother and grandmother had done their best to instill it in me. Of course she was teaching the Bible, but in a new and accessible way I’d never heard before.
The first time I knew Christian books, besides the Bible, existed was when Johnnie introduced us to, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, by Hannah Whithall Smith. It’s a wonderful book. I recently bought a copy to see what had helped me so much. Basically it’s about looking to God instead of to our own thinking- patterns for guidance. It was written in 1875, and is still very popular. I’d say the principle is more needed today than ever before.
Johnnie suggested that if we didn’t understand something or couldn’t put it into practice we might stop reading until we could. That was good advice, but once I was onto Christian books I gobbled them like a starved child. Blessedly she also gave us a hunger and thirst for scripture, and for time spent alone with God every day. Renie and Billy watched Captain Kangaroo first thing in the morning and I, a stay-at-home mom, got started studying the Bible and learning to pray. Peter’s 9:59 plan about journaling inspired me to write letters to God, which I still do today.
It would be hard to say whether inspiration came to us through Johnnie or through Peter. They were sometimes called the dynamic duo, and I know they depended on each other’s relationship with the Lord in leading the congregation. They had many a sore trial, but they eventually counted them all for good.
One time I was sitting across the table from Johnnie and jokingly told her I had stolen Bill’s Bible. She said, “If you stole it, you probably needed it.”
Johnnie would often quote Isaiah 26:3, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee: …” I didn’t get it, but it stuck with me, and after I actually asked Jesus to be my master and savior, I began to understand what it meant.
In the seventies, Bill and I had some trouble in our marriage, and we consulted with Peter. He helped us through it, and there is no doubt that much of his counsel came from what he and Johnnie had learned in their marriage. The idea was that most people, when left to their own thoughts will try their best to figure it out or battle it out, but that if they focus on God and His will, His Holy Spirit will do the work. The prayer we prayed was: “Lord, change this marriage, beginning with me.” Bill and I just celebrated our fifty-seventh wedding anniversary. I hate to think where we and our family would be now, if we’d never met Peter and Johnnie .
Recently I was talking to a friend who grew up at Park Avenue with our gown children. She and I are both deeply grateful that the younger generations of each family are now thriving in goodness. We know that would not be so if it hadn’t been for our beloved leaders, and for the dear helpers and teachers at the church.
Thank you Peter and Johnnie. We hope your crowns in heaven aren’t too heavy with stars. Ah well, you probably won’t wear them anyhow, neither of you was ever looking for personal glory.
Johnnie went to be with the Lord this week. I know He is delighted to welcome her home-
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Winter Begins
17 Nov
My Take
DiVoran Lites
Suddenly the nighttime temperature was 50 degrees, then 40. It was also time to set our clocks back and stay in our warm cozy beds for an extra hour. Bill got the cat beds down from the attic so our little darlings wouldn’t catch cold, but Jasmine and I both got the sneezes anyway.
Another sign that winter has arrived is that last year’s and the year’s before poinsettia plants on the porch are full and lush, and even have a few leaves turning to red. Isn’t nature is wonderful?
I got out a red plush sweater and a plaid flannel shirt to wear with my jeans. Soon I will reorganize my closet and drawers putting most of the shorts and t-shirts away, but not all. I do this twice a year, donating things I haven’t liked or worn and thus saving enough room for the ones I do enjoy wearing.
My winter stash yielded a velveteen, long-sleeved top with woven in flowers. I love that one, but each year when I wear it, a woman at church says something like: that top is so pretty. It’s to bad you can’t buy those any more. Well, okay, some people aren’t famous for their tact, but I’m not all sweetness and light myself – anyhow not always. Ask anyone. It’s the truth that counts. Am I going to let public opinion stop me from wearing something I want to wear? I’ll have to give that some thought.
New International Version
Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. http://biblehub.com/james/3-5.htm
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The Accidental Death of my Cell Phone
27 OctMy Take
DiVoran Lites
Did you notice the smudge on my new hot-pink purse in the picture in my last blog – the one about getting my new driver’s license?
Here’s what happened. Rebekah Lyn asked if I wanted to go downtown with her Saturday evening when they were having an algorithms art show down there. Please don’t ask me what that is, I still don’t know.
But, I’m usually up for an art show of any kind so I said yes, and I would pick her up. As I pulled out of my driveway I noticed that the hood ornament that rode home with me from the driver’s license bureau was waiting on a windshield wiper for another ride, a traveling brown lizard as common as a butterfly here in Florida where I live.
Gotta be honest. I’m not crazy about lizards, but I don’t like to see the cats get them or see them blown off a car only to get run over by another car. When I stopped in front of Rebekah Lyn’s condo, I reached for a spatula I’ve been meaning to give back to my daughter and 
tried to chase him off into the grass. He ran this way and that. Rebekah came out of her house laughing at me. Has she never seen a person chasing a lizard with a spatula before?
The window was open on her side and she said he was going to go in it. I knew she was right so I threw down my spatula, jerked open the car door so I could get to the key and put the window up and slammed the door, not thinking about having stuffed my purse in the door pocket before I left home.
The lizard ran down into an opening where the windshield wipers go. I didn’t see him again until Bill and I ran errands in his van yesterday and he was there to ride along. Everybody likes Bill better than me, but I don’t let it get to me. I like him better too.
Anyhow, after we parked behind some businesses down town and I reached for my purse, I realized it had fallen out, so we got back in the car and drove back to Rebekah Lyn’s. We saw the purse lying in the street right where we’d left it, grabbed it and headed back downtown. However when I checked to see whether everything was still there I noticed one of the zippers was very stiff, then I noticed the tire marks on the purse. Then Rebekah Lyn asked how my cell phone, which was in a pocket was, then I got it out and it was d-e-a-d, dead. Old cell phone from long ago. I rejoiced. It was finally time for a smart phone. Lots of people have phones now that are smarter than they are, and I will no longer be an exception, except I suspect that my old phone was… Never mind.
That was it except that when I went to use my credit card at the pet store the next day, they said it wouldn’t work, so I had to buy ten cans of salmon with cash.
Our daughter and her husband are helping us with new cell phones. Bill gets one too. We’re getting I Phones 5 c or s I can’t remember which and I’m looking forward to having a good camera with me always so that when I get a lizard on car I can take his picture before I brush him off.
“A lizard can be caught with the hand, (not by me, and Rebekah Lyn wouldn’t catch him, either) yet it is found in kings’ palaces.” Proverbs 30:28
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I’m in the Hangar Again
13 OctMy Take
DiVoran Lites
I‘m in Bill’s hanger in the backyard with my two cats, Jasmine and Lily. I come out here when the flea spray man comes once a month. It’s a beautiful workshop with door sized counters on three sides where you can work, 117 framed pictures of airplanes, 67 airplane books and two shelves of three ring binders with airplane pictures in them, many airplanes, and a lot of equipment. Bill cleaned off a space for my computer, and it feels good to write someplace else for a change. The cats don’t like change though so I’m playing, “Through a Cat’s Ears.” In order to keep them calm. It helps me anyhow, even if they still aren’t happy.
Today we’re out here because we’re having our bathtub painted. We moved into our house in 1965 and the fixtures in the family bathroom were sea foam green as was the tile. About six years ago, when we got new cabinets, the toilet tank broke. Bill epoxied the toilet and it held together, but it now showed an ugly scar. Then the sink started rusting where the little metal stopper goes and I couldn’t get it clean.
Eventually, I got tired of the bathroom looking so bad and we started shopping for new fixtures. We could get a nice toilet and sink and have them put in, but we didn’t want to remove the tub and take a chance of breaking the tiles and having to replace them all.
So Bill called the company that had painted our friends’ tub. Today when the man called to tell us the techs were on their way I ventured the question I’d been pondering the past few weeks: how toxic is this stuff, anyhow.
Bill told me they had explained the whole process to him. They remove the grout, clean the tub, repair any dings, ETCH the tub, and spray on the paint. That did sound toxic, and I was right.
I asked the man with the beautiful Irish accent whether the stuff the tub people use is toxic or not and he said, “Ah, yea, it’s nasty stuff. Yea, best you go to another part of the house while they’re spraying. Afterwards, close the door and stuff towels under it, if you have a window, open it.”
“No window — exhaust fan?” I asked.
“Yea, that will help.”
So here we are in our safe place.
Epilogue: the new tub is beautiful and matches the other fixtures. The sea foam tiles all around are still sea foam. I intend to keep the bathroom the cleanest it’s ever been. And yea, I think I’m going to have to do something about the grout now, but what?
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The Science Project
6 OctWhen I invited my friend, six-grader, Natasha, to allow me to help her where she was stuck with her reading I never dreamed the connection might morph into that dreaded thing, a science project!
I don’t think I’ve ever done one. I would remember, wouldn’t I? My son turned out to be a scientist (biologist) so I suppose he did one or two. I taught him and my daughter to cook, does that count?
The first time Natasha and I worked on the science project after school was the first day I decided to have decaf coffee for my afternoon cuppa. My brain was totally fried, I was confused and had the beginning of a headache which later developed into a real zinger. In one place Natasha put her head in her hand with her cornrow braids and their big beads hanging down. I thought the gig was up for me.
We did get some things done and another day we worked on it some more, then yesterday I picked her up from chorus and we came to my house. I had my coffee this time. I’m going to have to break myself of it grain by grain, I guess.
Anyhow, we had done some work on the botany-type project. We got our containers, and mediums and she’d written her hypothesis, and her question and we’d read the instructions – goodness how hard they are! I should have only read the numbered topics. Those I understood.
Before she came I was getting that tight feeling in my chest that tells me I’m anxious. Oh, what shall I do. I don’t want to be like this. I prayed. As always I asked God to show me the truth of the situation. The thought came to me that I might as well stop acting like a big-shot who knew everything and tell her I’d never done one before.
As it happens Natasha has done at least three of them. She was undismayed at my confession. I think putting our heads together did help her.
We got it all started, and then we took photos. I showed her how to use the digital camera and the computer to enhance and print them. We’ll take more sets of pictures as time goes on. She will measure the progress of the items ten times over a period of a couple of months. Her mom is going to have a baby soon. We talked about this project being Natasha’s baby and how she’ll have to think about it and write something every day, because that’s was in the instructions. We had fun. We talked about doing some art to go with it. We like to do art. Natasha said she has to do a graph. I nervously asked if she knew how. She described the process to me and then I knew I could lend aid whenever possible, but that she’s going to do a good job and I completely turn loose of it. What a relief.
I think I’ll look up the website printed on the instructions and learn something, http://www.sciencebuddies.org/ We’re on our way.
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Do You Read Self-Help Books
29 SepMy Take
DiVoran Lites
It’s confession time. Raise your hands if you like to read self-help books. I see not many of you have them up. Mine would be, though, if I didn’t have to keep my fingers on the keys. Yep, whether it’s The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, or How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, I love a good, well- written, intelligent self-help book. Some of the more modern ones I’ve read have been Inspired and Unstoppable, by Tama Kieves, and A Course in Miracles, which, not knowing that it majors on Jesus Christ and His Atonement, I avoided for years. I’m so glad I read them all. The list would reach all the way back to Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and The Feminine Mystique, which patrons recommended when I was working as a stylist for Magic Mirror Beauty Salons in Inglewood California.
Even now, I could give you the central idea from each book because they changed my life for the better. When I was a young mother I read Dr. Spock. I lived in that metropolis which is Los Angeles and had no one to tell me what to do with a brand new baby. In subsequent years we heard a lot of complaining about that one, but not everyone who criticized it had actually read it. Our children turned out so well, I was grateful for it. When I became a Christian I liked Dr. James Dobson’s books on child rearing. I’ve read books on psychiatry and psychology, religion, and Christianity, cooking, and cleaning. I’ve read How to dress, how to write journals, poems, novels and memoir. I couldn’t begin to tell you all the books I’ve read.
One that really stands out is, A Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, by Hannah Whitehall Smith. I’d recommend that one to anyone who wants to live a truly happy Christian life.
Long ago, I decided that I needed a standard for all these books. Oh, it wouldn’t matter, maybe about the cooking ones, but I wanted a solid philosophy to measure ideas against. I decided on the Holy Bible and it has never failed to keep me on track. I’ve read it over in many different translations and in different ways, such as topical studies, memorization, verse comparisons, and as straight story.
I majored for a semester to become a media specialist so I could work in a school library. It seemed people in the library world did not believe in censorship. That was a change for me, because I’d always been told in one way or another which books I could read and which ones I couldn’t. Books exist that could lead a person in the wrong direction, that’s for sure, but in general, I’m now of the opinion that I can read what I want because my wants are lined up with those of the Master.
I can’t imagine where I’d be if I hadn’t had all those wonderful and interesting books to read. It has been my major education and I’m deeply grateful for the much needed healing they have brought to me and to the ones I love because they have changed me for the better.
The one thing I’m seeing now is that I can read synopses and blurbs and decide whether I need that book or not. For a while, I was interested in various religious practices that show you how to live in the present, how to seek angels, etc. But I’ve found a wonderful secret now, I can short circuit all the hard work, study, meditation, that comes with that sort of thing and just ask Jesus to tell me the truth about anything and he puts thoughts in my head that because of my acquaintance with the Bible, I know are true, right, and good. These thoughts set things straight for me in a miraculous way and I thank the Lord Jesus Christ and His Spirit for being there for me.
John 8:23
You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free
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Old Things R New 