Well, I'm loving the warmer temperatures we've been having, but evidently my sinuses don't. I am struggling to get rid of a sinus infection without having to take antibiotics. I really hope I get to enjoy spring...
On another note, my husband doesn't want to go shopping with me today. I'm thinking about painting the boy's bathroom and getting them a new shower curtain. They have told me that their shower curtain is somewhat juvenile. The colors on it are pastel and they've had it for many years, so I think it's probably past time to change it, and today is suposed to be rainy. Off I go. I'll report back later with some before and after pics.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
My Day...
Today I got up early and saw my husband off to work. He had to go to Corning today, and I was not able to get back to sleep after waking and thinking about my mother in law's plant that I was watering at her house while she's in Florida for the winter. It's quite top heavy and I found it quite slumped over when I went to her house after work yesterday. The plant is very sentimental to her since it belonged to her dad, so I REALLY don't want to be the one to kill it. I decided to go there today and bring the plant home, and while I was at it, buy Steven a belt at the mall close to her house, since his broke. When I got the plant back here, I made two nice little popsickle stick stands to prop them up. :) I then got on the treadmill for a bit, did a load of laundry, some vacuuming, did the dishes, took a shower, and went to pick up Martha for our drive out to Newark to visit our brother Tim. He's been sick for a couple of weeks (Ecoli infection) and was in the hospital so we were anxious to visit. He seemed well, but it was very apparent that he had been quite sick since he lost a lot of weight. He looks good! He needed to lose a few pounds, however that's not a great way to do it. :P After dropping Martha off back at her house I headed for Wegmans where I bought some dinner stuff. Sage and Pecan Pork Tenderloin served over a bed of spinach, and drizzled with a blackberry vinegar drizzle, was on the menu. Since I am trying to stay away from potatoes, baked cauliflower with salt pepper and parmesian was served with it. It was quite tasty, but the next time I make that cauliflower I will spray it with olive oil rather than drizzle it, so as to get the parmesian cheese to stick better while baking. It was just the two of us for dinner, Dave and I, since Steven and Michael had to work. They'll be home later wondering "what's to eat?"
Michael has figured out what direction he's going for college. He has made the switch from Computer Science to Accounting. He will need to get a Business Administration degree at MCC before transferring for Accounting elsewhere. He's having a great semester so far and is signed up for 16 credits next semester and 2 summer classes.
Steven is busy working about 60 hours a week between McDonald's and Pittsford Wegmans. He loves to work and is quite the saver.
Well, off to do a P90X workout with my hubby, adios!
Michael has figured out what direction he's going for college. He has made the switch from Computer Science to Accounting. He will need to get a Business Administration degree at MCC before transferring for Accounting elsewhere. He's having a great semester so far and is signed up for 16 credits next semester and 2 summer classes.
Steven is busy working about 60 hours a week between McDonald's and Pittsford Wegmans. He loves to work and is quite the saver.
Well, off to do a P90X workout with my hubby, adios!
Friday, October 17, 2014
Friday, October 10, 2014
Serving God
Consider the way you’re to work for Him. The word heartily doesn’t mean frantically. It refers to an all-in attitude. It also anticipates the joy you can experience when you serve Christ wholeheartedly in things He has actually wired and gifted you to do. And the commitment to serve heartily requires you to be in God’s Word regularly. You cannot afford to wander away. Time in Scripture is like a briefing for the days’ activities in the place the Lord has called you.
People are counting on you to be a faithful servant, whether they realize it or not. You have an awe-inspiring privilege to work in Christ’s kingdom. If you open your heart to this, you will begin to see an array of service opportunities set before you each day.
When we start to feel weary, we must fix our eyes again on Colssians 3:24: “You are serving the Lord Christ.” Especially when we get discouraged, we can rest in the truth that our lives and what we do aren’t about us—they’re about serving the Lord.
Help me, Lord. I want to be a faithful servant.
People are counting on you to be a faithful servant, whether they realize it or not. You have an awe-inspiring privilege to work in Christ’s kingdom. If you open your heart to this, you will begin to see an array of service opportunities set before you each day.
When we start to feel weary, we must fix our eyes again on Colssians 3:24: “You are serving the Lord Christ.” Especially when we get discouraged, we can rest in the truth that our lives and what we do aren’t about us—they’re about serving the Lord.
Help me, Lord. I want to be a faithful servant.
Friday, August 08, 2014
Monday, May 05, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
An Unexpected Reunion
As I was reading "Far From Home" by Joseph Stowell this morning, I came across this story that made me cry. It's a true story, and it's a great reminder to me how much God loves us.
Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09am Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, NY, where he caught a subway into the city.
On the morning of January 10th, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09am as usual. En route he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.
Accordingly at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend's house, and stayed until mid-afternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel's incredible story.
The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place.
I've been living in New York long enough not to start a conversation with strangers. But, being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people's faces, and I was struck by the features of a passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30's and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, "I hope you don't mind if I glance at your paper."
The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language, but he answered politely, "You may read it now. I'll have time later on."
During the half hour ride to town, we had quite the conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.
I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife had once shared. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family. As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling, "Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!" That means "Uncle Paskin". The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy's home and talked to his parents. "Your whole family is dead," they told him. The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz."
Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just 3 months before I met him.
All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later, she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946.
Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.
It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, "Was your wife's name Marya?"
He turned pale. "Yes!" he answered. "How did you know?"
He looked as if he were about to faint.
I said, "Let's get off the train." I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.
It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home, and after letting it ring for a while, she responded.)
When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address.
Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, "Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?"
"Yes!" Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling.
"Try to be calm, I urged him. "Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife!"
He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife's voice, then suddenly cried, "This is Bela! This is Bela!" and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn't talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.
"Stay where you are," I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical, "I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes."
Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again, "It is my wife, I go to my wife!"
At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no stranger should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya's address, paid the fare, and said goodbye.
Bela Paskin's reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya could recall much about it.
"I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray," she said later. "The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I know- that I was happy for the first time in many years...
"Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, 'Will anything happen to take him from me again?'"
Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall them. "Providence has brought us together," he says simply. "It was meant to be."
Skeptical persons will no doubt attribute the events of that memorable afternoon to mere chance. But was it chance that made Marcel Sternberger suddenly decide to visit his sick friend and hence take a subway line that he had never ridden before? Was it chance that caused the man sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Sternberger came in? Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting beside Sternberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper?
Was it chance- or did God ride the Brooklyn subway that afternoon?
Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09am Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, NY, where he caught a subway into the city.
On the morning of January 10th, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09am as usual. En route he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.
Accordingly at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend's house, and stayed until mid-afternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel's incredible story.
The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place.
I've been living in New York long enough not to start a conversation with strangers. But, being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people's faces, and I was struck by the features of a passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30's and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, "I hope you don't mind if I glance at your paper."
The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language, but he answered politely, "You may read it now. I'll have time later on."
During the half hour ride to town, we had quite the conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.
I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife had once shared. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family. As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling, "Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!" That means "Uncle Paskin". The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy's home and talked to his parents. "Your whole family is dead," they told him. The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz."
Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just 3 months before I met him.
All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later, she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946.
Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.
It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, "Was your wife's name Marya?"
He turned pale. "Yes!" he answered. "How did you know?"
He looked as if he were about to faint.
I said, "Let's get off the train." I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.
It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home, and after letting it ring for a while, she responded.)
When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address.
Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, "Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?"
"Yes!" Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling.
"Try to be calm, I urged him. "Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife!"
He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife's voice, then suddenly cried, "This is Bela! This is Bela!" and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn't talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.
"Stay where you are," I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical, "I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes."
Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again, "It is my wife, I go to my wife!"
At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no stranger should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya's address, paid the fare, and said goodbye.
Bela Paskin's reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya could recall much about it.
"I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray," she said later. "The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I know- that I was happy for the first time in many years...
"Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, 'Will anything happen to take him from me again?'"
Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall them. "Providence has brought us together," he says simply. "It was meant to be."
Skeptical persons will no doubt attribute the events of that memorable afternoon to mere chance. But was it chance that made Marcel Sternberger suddenly decide to visit his sick friend and hence take a subway line that he had never ridden before? Was it chance that caused the man sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Sternberger came in? Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting beside Sternberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper?
Was it chance- or did God ride the Brooklyn subway that afternoon?
Friday, March 14, 2014
A Symbol of Her Love
My beautiful afghan that Mom made me several years ago. I will cherish it forever.
Sunday, March 02, 2014
Saturday, February 08, 2014
Phil Wickham - Thirst (The Ascension)
I love this song.
Wash over me like a tidal wave
Clean out what pulls me to the grave
Nothing left that you don't love
Take me where your river flows
Heal the desert in my soul
Let it wash over my feet
All I'm asking for is just a drink
I thirst for you
Yes my soul it thirsts for you
Even as the deer is panting for the stream
Even though my soul is thirsty
I thirst for you
Spirit of the living God
Would you fall afresh like rain on us
Burst the doors and flood the halls
Into forgotten rooms inside our hearts
And we will all be swept away
In the current of your love and grace
Living water flow to me
All I'm asking for is just a drink
I thirst for you
Yes my soul it thirsts for you
Even as the deer is panting for the stream
Even though my soul is thirsty
I thirst for you
One thing I ask and I would seek
To see You there in front of me
With nothing standing in the way
Just me before You unashamed....
Wash over me like a tidal wave
Clean out what pulls me to the grave
Nothing left that you don't love
Take me where your river flows
Heal the desert in my soul
Let it wash over my feet
All I'm asking for is just a drink
I thirst for you
Yes my soul it thirsts for you
Even as the deer is panting for the stream
Even though my soul is thirsty
I thirst for you
Spirit of the living God
Would you fall afresh like rain on us
Burst the doors and flood the halls
Into forgotten rooms inside our hearts
And we will all be swept away
In the current of your love and grace
Living water flow to me
All I'm asking for is just a drink
I thirst for you
Yes my soul it thirsts for you
Even as the deer is panting for the stream
Even though my soul is thirsty
I thirst for you
One thing I ask and I would seek
To see You there in front of me
With nothing standing in the way
Just me before You unashamed....
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Words from Katie...
"The truth is, I saw myself in those little faces. I looked at them and felt this love that was unimaginable and knew that this is the way God sees me. The children would run to me with gifts of stones or dirt and I saw myself, filthy and broken, offering my life to the God of the universe and begging Him to make me into something beautiful. I sit here in a broken world, small and dirty at His feet, and He who sits so high chooses to commune with me, to love me anyway. He blinds himself to my sin and filth so that He can forge a relationship with me. And this is what he did for me with these precious children. He blinded me to the filth and disease, and I saw only children hungry for love that I was eager to share with them. I adored them, not because of who I was, but because of who He is. I just sat right down on that cold, hard floor and snuggled my nose into their dirty necks and kissed their fungus-covered heads and didn't even see it. I was in love."
Sunday, September 15, 2013
I'm all confused
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why everyone's picture is displayed on their blogs except for mine, even though all of my settings seem right. I probably spent an hour today trying to figure it out to no avail, so I finally just posted a picture and put my name above it. I really am all confused. :\
Thursday, August 22, 2013
My Day...
mother commented, "Well, we got that over with for another couple weeks!" It sounds to me like she's glad to not have to go back there for 2 weeks. :( I can't even explain my feelings about him and her and our visit...overwhelming? sad? confusing?
Today I noticed a touch of color to some of the trees already and the days are getting shorter. Could summer be ending soon? I wish it didn't go by so fast.
Monday, August 05, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Remembering Carefree Days...
Remember the carefree days of childhood? Me too. Sometimes I wish I was still a little girl and didn't have to make any big girl decisions. Life was much less stressful when I was younger, even just a few short years ago when my boys were toddlers and I didn't know that one of them had a learning disability that would cause him to struggle all through his years of schooling and beyond. All of us want the very best for our kids, and this isn't what I would have chosen, but God doesn't make any mistakes and He has a purpose and a plan for each one of us. My son has been struggling lately. It's difficult to understand, very hard to watch, and I feel just plain helpless. It's a good thing we know Jesus because He knows and understands all things, and this makes us all the more dependent on Him. I hope my boy is soon back to normal. These days it seems like there is one tough decision after another, not just concerning him and his needs, but other things as well.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Obama Phone
I'm sure that you have all seen this video by now. Obama is trying to win the state of Ohio by giving away cell phones to the poor on the taxpayers dime, in order to win their votes. The 1st video made me angry, but the second video someone made, made me laugh!
Monday, May 21, 2012
Words of Wisdom
If one’s not praying regularly, it’s only because something else is regularly loved more than God. -Ann Voscamp
The point is a house pinned together with sacrifice and Christ and love that can withstand any winds. -Ann Voscamp
Unplug often to get refreshed. You’ll see your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls not the glare of screens, -Ann Voscamp
Only speak words that make souls stronger. -Ann Voscamp
The point is a house pinned together with sacrifice and Christ and love that can withstand any winds. -Ann Voscamp
Unplug often to get refreshed. You’ll see your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls not the glare of screens, -Ann Voscamp
Only speak words that make souls stronger. -Ann Voscamp
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