Pillows of Love Workday

Yesterday our Women's Ministry MerryMakers (our motto is "Spreading Joy through the Work of our Hands) had a workday where we made pillowcases for the Pillows of Love ministry. This is a wonderful ministry started by a lady in our area after hearing about children and women going to shelters often with their meager belongings gathered up in a trash bag. She felt God nudging her to use her special talents as a seamstress to make bright, cheerful pillowcases that could then be distributed to shelters for battered women and homes for unwed mothers. That ministry has now expanded to homeless shelters and to orphanages as far away as China.

Each pillowcase has a copy of the New Testament or a children's book about the Bible included in it. The pillowcases are given to the women and children and are theirs to keep. At the very end or wide cuff of the pillowcase is the verse "He will give you sleep, peace and a safe place to dwell." Psalm 4:8.

We had 3 sewers and 2 ironers at our workshop and after spending the morning sewing and ironing away, we had 27 pillowcases completed and another 13 pillowcases all finished except for the final seam around the 3 sides. Since each shelter receives about 40 pillowcases at a time, that was enough for one shelter. It's really awesome when God can use our hobbies to serve others. The morning was a joy.

If you would like to find out more about this much-needed ministry, check out www.pillows-of-love.com. Well, off to do some ironing of my own now so better cut this short. Practice some random acts of love today.

Crunch-time in Crisis Land

It's been one of those weeks, my friends. Have you ever felt hemmed in on all sides? On shaky ground and afraid that at any moment the bottom of your predictable little world was going to collapse and you were going to fall on your (unfortunately) substantial keister?

It all started last Friday when one of my coworkers asked me what my plans were for the weekend. Hey, I actually had plans for a change. My hubby and I were going to a retirement seminar at the Army post on Saturday and then to a big quilt show on Sunday after church with friends. It was going to be a great weekend! My coworker shared that she and her husband would be going to a party Saturday evening. Great! We were both getting out and about.

On Saturday I headed out to run errands prior to hooking up with my dear husband for the seminar. Soon it was time to go find him and head over to the War College. Off we went. Of course, you don't just drive onto the post anymore. You have to detour to the left and go through a gate guard before you can go on the post. So we drove up to the gate and I passed my military ID over to the guard. "Oh, oh...one of you has an expired ID," he said. "I'll have to confiscate this and ask you folks to drive over to the other guard station. They'll give you a receipt there."

"Ha, George!" I laughed. "Didn't you realize that your ID had expired?"

"Um, it's YOUR ID, Ma'am," the guard replied.

Gulp! Not only did the Army take my ID (with my picture looking 4 years younger and skinnier, to boot) but they also gave me a receipt that said "confiscated ID card." I felt like an illegal alien. It was hard to concentrate on the retirement seminar. While others obsessed over this point and that of health benefits, I kept fighting the urge to raise my hand and say, "They confiscated my ID!"

That evening, I decided to get our checkbook up-to-date so I'd know how much I could spend at the quilt show the following day. There was only one problem. I couldn't find the checkbook. I knew I had it with me that morning when I went to the bank. But from there I had gone to the post office, the fabric store, the local library and the optical shop. Gee, I kind of remembered the outdoor mail drop box at the post office making a clunking sound when I dropped in my letter. Could I possibly have absentmindedly dropped in the checkbook as well? Oy vey! Now I was really getting frantic. I grabbed the flashlight and looked in every nook and cranny of the car that I could reach. No checkbook!

I couldn't face the quilt show on Sunday. I just didn't feel comfortable going and spending without knowing who had our checkbook and how much we had in our account. So I stayed home and sulked after church. Well, sulked and ironed and logged onto our account periodically to make sure that I wasn't seeing wierd purchases showing up there. And I did a LOT of praying that the checkbook would show up.

Monday morning my husband went to the bank and sure enough, they had my checkbook. Apparently their policy is not to call you if you leave your checkbook. They wait for you to show up for it. DO THEY KNOW WHAT I WENT THROUGH OVER THE WEEKEND? I wasn't the only one. My coworker with the party plans was out sick Monday, Tuesday, and most of Wednesday. Both she and her husband came down with some nasty virus after attending the party, along with quite a few of the other guests. Looks like both of our weekends didn't go quite as planned.

On top of the weekend trauma, my return to the library on Monday was greeted by LOTS of student requests. The dam has burst, so to speak, and the rush has begun. It won't slow to a trickle now until right before Thanksgiving. I do all the interlibrary loans for our college and fill all the interlibrary loan requests sent to our school from other institutions. I've been so busy this week that for two nights, I didn't get home until after 7 p.m. It has been crazy at work. I've had constant indigestion.

 Good thing I'm on meds to help me cope with stress and anxiety. Because today, I had to leave work early to go get my new ID card at the Army post. My husband had to escort me there so I could get onto the base. Then I had to get a new picture for the ID. Drat! What kind of sick joke is this? Who put that old person on my ID card? On top of that, the clerk asked me to verify my weight. I seriously considered fudging since my husband was sitting right there and she had read my weight off the old form and I'm now 14 pounds heavier. But there was a scale on the floor right next to a mirror and I wasn't too sure if she'd make me stand on it if she didn't believe me so I decided that honesty was the best policy. Besides, I'd been seriously EATING fudge for the past 4 years so I could always blame it on my sweet tooth. So, there you have it. I'm legal in military circles once again. Humiliated, but legal. And I'm really hoping that this weekend is nice and quiet and restful.

Reeling in the Years

Well, the Summer Scrapbooking Challenge is finally over and I am happy to report that I finished the challenge with 303 pages completed. What a ride it has been! I did a heritage album of my mother's side of the family from my Gr.Gr.Gr. Grandmother up to my mother. I scrapbooked my mother's life up to her present day at 92 years young, I started my own heritage album and have just gotten through my Army years, and I finished the heritage album of my father's life.

Speaking of my father, it's been a bittersweet time. Dad died while I was on my honeymoon almost 27 years ago. He never met my husband although he did talk to him over the phone when George called him from Greece to ask for permission to marry me. We had planned to redo our vows back home once we rotated back to the States so that our parents could attend the ceremony but that wasn't to be.

Putting these old pictures into a scrapbook and writing down all the old stories has been very emotional for me. I've been reliving all these memories. Take this picture, for instance. My brother and I are posing next to Lake Superior while we were enroute to the farm in Minnesota. Notice the bloody bandages on both of my knees. With my usual grace, I had decided to run down a hill at a rest stop to get to the car and had lost my footing, skidding down the remainder of the hill and across half of the parking lot. Ouch! I still bear the scars on both knees. When I look at that picture and when I read the journaling about it, I can remember that day so clearly.

I think people still throw pictures in albums but not many write down the stories these days. We need to do that, even if it is writing it up on the computer and then printing it off and sticking it in your album. Every culture has had its storytellers. In early cultures, that's how they passed on the group memories and traditions. In our extended families, someone has to be the group storyteller because the older generations are passing on and as they do, many of those wonderful stories are being lost forever.

So I've spent some enjoyable time with my dad this summer, I've caught glimpses of my mom in college, and I've relived the triumphs of my college theatrical career, all through the combination of scrapbooking and memories. Not a bad way to spend the summer, if I do say so. But I must admit, after 303 pages completed.....I'm taking a break for a few weeks to do some knitting, crocheting, and looming.