{My Prayer Notebook}

Lately I've been trying to come up with a more effective way of managing my prayer life. Perhaps this sounds very dry and rigid to you, but it really helps me to be organized in this way. It keeps my mind and heart focused, and it's always exciting to look back and see how the Lord has worked in my life and in the lives of loved ones.

I've used index cards and notebooks in the past, but I still found it hard to mark progress and remember where certain requests had been jotted down. So yesterday I asked the Lord if He would just bring along a method that would work for me. Of course He did, because He's so very dear like that.

I found a video tutorial through Pinterest that is very practical and "me," and set to work right away to recreate it and morph things a bit to be even more "me." (My version isn't quite so . . . intense.) My initial thought was, "Okay! Off to buy a binder and paper and dividers . . .!" But I realized that sometimes it's best to work with what we already have on hand.

So I looked through our mountains of supplies and finally found a perfect little binder. My mind tried really hard to come up with something easy in the way of dividers, and then it came to me. I already have some! Years ago, my sister made dividers for a home-keeping notebook for me. I've loved it to pieces, but lately found that, because of Pinterest and other online record-keeping methods, I just wasn't using it for that purpose anymore. So I'm in the process of updating them to become prayer dividers.

It was fun to look back through the tabs that once read, "Calendar" or "School" or "Shopping" and think that they will now become "Worship" or "Family" or "Friends" in my prayer life. It was especially funny to find the little post-it note that my sister had attached (ten years ago?) to the "Gifts" section, which I never removed: "The EXTRA LARGE section for the pages and pages titled: KRISTA!" (She likes presents.)

As it works out, that divider lands right where my "Family" divider will now be. So I'll keep her post-it note there, now devoting "pages and pages" to praying for her.

This morning I spent my quiet time copying verses, poems and hymns into the various sections: Worship, Me, Jamie, Kids, Family, Friends and Leaders. I look forward to this new season in my journey with the Lord.

* * * * *

The Lord has been teaching me lately to really dwell on the words of one of my favorite verses. A line of it, in fact, inspired my blog description:

Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; in Thy presence is fullness of joy.

Psalm 16:11 

I've recently been reading the works of Jim Elliot, and find his prayer life to be both humbling and inspiring. When he wrote of this same passage, I was all attention. He was referring to a decision that had to be made in his life and commented, "Yet I still cannot set down reasons for the decision, save this, that the Lord showed the psalmist the path of life, evidently by his simply lingering in His presence."

Oswald Chambers, too, wrote of a similar reality: "The questions that matter in life are remarkably few, and they are all answered by the words -- 'Come unto Me.'"

Spurgeon is succinct: "Dwell much with Him . . ."

And so, through this notebook, my prayer is that I might come, that I might linger, and that I might dwell. Because in His presence is fullness of joy.

Fall Haiku

Bethie has been reading Little Women this month. I'm thrilled to my absolute very core. It's one of my most favorite books, and I'm delighted that she's loving it too.

Now, to read Little Women is to become a Little Woman. It's impossible to hear about the antics of the March sisters without taking part. This means that Bethie is currently working on a play (to be performed on Thanksgiving) and producing a family newspaper (complete with contributors named Snodgrass and Pickwick).

Did I mention this thrills me to my very core?

Tonight at dinner, Bethie suggested that anyone in the family could contribute to the newspaper. Submissions are welcome! We thought a theme might be nice to give writers a bit of a framework. So we went with the most obvious theme: Fall. Which, naturally, led me to blurt out, "I know! Fall Haiku!"

We sat around the table, each attempting to compose our own Fall Haiku poems. (I still can't believe that Jamie is able to flawlessly compose Haiku without counting on his fingers. But it's true. He can.)

So far, Jamie, Aidan and I are the only ones who've submitted Fall Haiku for the paper. See if you can guess whose is whose. I know it will be a challenge.

Submission #1:
Autumn is now here
Dad is very sad today
Make it go away

Submission #2:
Fall is here today
They are potato chip leaves
Autumn, autumn, yeah!

Submission #3:
Scarlet, amber, drift
silently, carpet the earth
With their vibrant hues.

And I just stumbled upon this unfortunate contribution:

You are super gross
You like to burp and toot, too,
So I don't like you.

Although I'm somewhat heartened to see the 5-7-5 in tact throughout this piece, I do have some investigating to do.

Do you have a Fall Haiku to contribute? If so, please share! It's sure to land in a very distinguished column alongside Snodgrass' riveting (though somewhat plagiarized) tale, "The Masked Marriage."

P.S. But the real question in this: Can you Haiku without counting on your fingers?

Taste the Poetry

Before the work of the day, taste the poetry of the day!
Our poor, battered minds and spirits need the dawn. There is the calm of nature, the sanity of the earth, in each breath of scented air on a sunrise in June.

~Edwin Way Teale~

May you taste the poetry of this day, my dear friends!


Summer Woods by Joan Wolbier

{The Amiable Guinea Pig}

One of my favorite authors is Beatrix Potter. I was about to say, "One of my favorite children's authors," but I changed my mind. She's absolutely delightful no matter how old the reader might be. I love to snuggle up with Little Miss Avery Kate and read about Benjamin Bunny in his clogs and tam-o-shanter, the Fierce Bad Rabbit with savage whiskers, and the naughty kittens who sneak out to make "dear little muffins."

If you don't have her books sitting nearby, take a peek at this limerick. It will make you smile. I promise. Better yet, teach these clever words to a child. It's quite entertaining to hear a wee voice say, "amiable."



There once was an amiable guinea pig, 
Who brushed back his hair like a periwig --
He wore a sweet tie, 
As blue as the sky --
And his whiskers and buttons
Were very big.

Avery was four when I first read her this poem. She laughed so hard that we read it over and over and over. It wasn't long before she had it memorized. When she finally recited it to me, I realized why she had been laughing so hard. She understood the last line to read,

His whiskers and buns were very big.

We're still laughing.