This chapter took a long time to record, and coincidentally on the same weekend as one session I chaperoned our high school’s homecoming dance.
Not the same. At all.
But sadly, still lots of believers of cleavage. (And the way teenage girls dance? I was worried about parts of anatomy escaping their flimsy coverings. Fortunately there were no disasters, but I have seen a couple in the past. I didn’t want to.)
Here’s the truth about life: nothing will ever change except we, as individuals, decide to change it.
Waiting for the government to make things right will never happen. (Governments are notorious for making things wrong in the first place.)
Waiting for someone else to step up and lead usually means we sit wasting time.
Waiting for someone to order you to do fix something only leaves us feeling resentful at being told what to do.
The ONLY thing that changes the world are individuals who decide, on their own (and inspired by Above, I believe) to do something for someone else.
Help that person who is suffering. Quietly donate more cash to that family or victim or grieving person than is comfortable for you, because they are in greater discomfort than you. Take the time to listen, to fix, to make, to love.
Stop thinking about yourself, and lose yourself in the service of others.
(Does anyone really believe any government can do any of that?)
“Giving a little to those in need engenders a sense of gratitude and loyalty; giving too much, however, creates a sense of entitlement.
And after that attitude has been placed, you have a spoiled child who throws a fit whenever he’s not given every last thing he wants. He’s no longer devoted to his benefactors, but he’ll quickly follow whoever promises to give him more.”
Ironically, I recorded this chapter the day the White House announced their plan to erase $10k of student loan debt for each “poor” person. (If they can actually do that remains to be seen.)
I will uncomfortably confess that complete erasure of student loan debt would be an enormous gift to me, personally.
For more than 20 years we’ve been paying pittance on a student loan, money going only to interest. What we started with in 1997 has now quadrupled. We owe hundreds of thousands because the US Govt. has charged us 8.25% interest, compounding every second.
And although we’re in Income Based Repayment, the fine print of it means we’re not going to see “forgiveness” for many, many years still. For a school teacher and her husband who is a manager of a small store, earning a combined income of barely $100k (for about twenty years we earned only $55,000), that spells continued financial disaster.
I wish could just pay the original debt; that, we’d have a chance at conquering.
Not the nearly $200,000 in interest that’s been tacked on to it. There’s definitely room to rethink and readjust a very damning system.
HOWEVER, I see a much more massive disaster for the entire country if all student loan debt was “wiped away,” meaning shoved off on to everyone else.
The insatiability of many citizens to be handed more and more “freebies” is astonishing. And this unconscionable overreach of unearned handouts will turn us all into immature children, and just as incapable of doing anything of good.
It’s going to lead to the downfall of this country.
(For interest, read Isaiah 19 and when he writes “Egypt” replace it with “America.”)
Leadership doesn’t want us to think.
They wants us to be preoccupied by possessions, money, and status.
As long as we’re distracted, they can manipulate us in ways that benefit their hierarchy. If we think, they no longer get to be leaders.
To believe that the “higher-ups” care for the rest of us is naive hope, which we ultimately learn the painful way was misplaced hope.
I feel that lesson is going to become much more acute and clear in the coming months and years.
School starts for me this week. I’m teaching in a new school and even in a new state! Steep learning curve ahead of me, again, but it’s a great school.
I had a couple of free hours (not really free, I just stole them because I needed to).
It was a productive week. Hope (pray) I have more!
Aaaaannd another one (I better not get cocky at my rate of recording–this pace will likely not last).
I’m so sorry it’s taken so long to get another chapter up. The past two months I’ve been in transition, leaving our rental house in one state, couch surfing with family and friends for six weeks, until my daughter and I could move 3,000 to our new rental house deep in the south of the US. (Last cross country move was 3,100 miles, from Maine to Utah, so this one was slightly shorter.)
I’m now “settled” and have a walk-in closet again, so I’m finally recording.
Heavy on my mind, as it likely is on yours, is the fact that our country–and world, really–is facing crises unlike any we’ve faced before, and a lot of people just aren’t noticing. Crops are failing, fertilizer is non-existent, droughts are rampant, even locusts have made a comeback.
We are dealing with future issues on biblical proportions, because the God of the Bible is trying to wake us up and get us to notice. These problems aren’t a result of global climate change (the climate has been changing for thousands of years), but because society has forgotten God. He’s trying to remind us before it’s all too late.
There are signs. Are we paying attention? Are we comparing to The Writings which we have? We need to. We can’t change the world, but we can each be ready for what the world is about to face.
Ah-HA! I can record in my car with my laptop! Took me only months to discover that. (Gee, does anyone else sit in their cars and make recordings?) However, the sound is slightly different, and I accidentally muffled my microphone a few times–sorry. I’ll try to do better next time I hide out in a remote part of a parking lot, hoping motorcycles won’t keep riding by.
Mahrree says one of my all-time favorite lines in this chapter which, over the years since I’ve written it, has disturbingly become even more accurate:
When I see how often people have ignored the reality of a situation before them, and instead trust the media and the government for all the answers, I feel like sitting next to Mahrree to pound my head against a tree.
Hoooh, boy.
Over a month?! THAT’S how long it’s been since I last recorded?
Sheesh. That’s . . . that’s awful.
If you are frustrated with me, I hear you. I’m frustrated, too.
Would it help to explain that my life has been slightly chaotic? Yeah, I know everyone’s life is chaotic. But my recording “studio” is no longer even my possession.
Here’s the situation: we moved back to Utah nearly two years ago from Maine so we could be part of two of our daughters’ weddings and two of our sons’ babies’ births. When we moved back, I had a clear impression from God that we would be in our rental house for two years, enjoying these milestones in our family. And then . . . ?
The housing market in Utah is the worst in the country. I had been hoping for the past two years that it would cool down.
Nope. The rent on our house went up last year, but this spring it went up another $400/month. And prices for a mere two-story townhome in our county is $425k. Forget a regular house.
I’m a school teacher, making mid-$50k. My husband was an academic advisor at a university, making about the same. You don’t need to be a mathematician to realize the numbers don’t add up to us making Utah our permanent home again. We can’t even make rent anymore.
God gives me insights into my future, but only in snippets. After our initial two years here, He hadn’t shown me what would come next.
Probably because He knew I’d never believe it. That I had to be pretty desperate to do it.
And by March, we were feeling pretty desperate, with every last rental in the valley over $2,000/month, and out of our price range.
Cue the next plot twist.
(Yes, dear Father, I do love a good plot twist, but so many?!)
Last summer one of our sons moved to Florida to help his father-in-law open a few franchises. When the news of our inability to afford living in Utah was shared with our family, one of our adult daughters jokingly said, “Dad should go manage a store” for her brother. After all, my husband has managed big box stores in the past.
We laughed.
Then we thought about it.
And prayed about it.
And got ridiculously excited about it, even though Florida was never a state I’d consider moving to. (And God knew that. Not a mountain anywhere.)
That was in March. By April the decision was made, and for the past several weeks we’ve been packing, including my walk-in closet recording studio.
Three weeks ago I took off a few days of teaching and drove with my husband, sons, and a moving truck to Florida. I left them there. I flew back to Utah so my youngest daughter could finish her school. She has several camps lined up for the first half of summer here in Utah, and since my contract to teach at a residential treatment center requires me to work until July, that works out for her.
But leaves us rather nomadic for a while. We’re house sitting for various friends taking care of their pets while they’re away, crashing for a week here and a week there at our adult children’s homes, and waiting for the day we get to drive cross country (again) to live in our new home in Florida (where we could actually afford to buy something).
My hope is that I can get to recording again, once the dust settles (I’m still cleaning out the last bits from my old rental house this weekend, although I can’t live in it since the carpets were cleaned). I look forward to dull, peaceful days with nothing to clean or pack, just lessons to create for summer school. And maybe I’ll have a few free hours to sit in my car (or an unsuspecting friend’s walk-in closet) and record a few more chapters before my new teaching job at a private Catholic school in Melbourne, Florida begins in August.
I still plan to finish recording these books. I stopped mid-way through chapter 2 of The Mansions of Idumea and Perrin is pacing anxiously in the background of my mind, waiting for his chance to speak again, while Mahrree is more understanding about the hassles of moving 2,400 miles and tells him to just let me figure out where I’m sleeping tonight.
So please forgive my lack of productivity. It’s been shifted to more necessary tasks.
But good news: my new house in Florida does have a lovely walk-in closet.
Forestedgebooks.com 