Unanswered Prayer this Christmas?

Merry Christmas!

We've been in Christmas "mode" for a couple of weeks now,

gathering greens, making wreaths, baking for early Christmas gatherings, and making gifts for our LARGE family. I'm sitting by a fire with Christmas carols softly playing...ahhhhhhhh! 

I was sitting here this morning sipping my green tea, enjoying the fire, and listening to the Holy Spirit teach me during my Bible time when He showed me something....something that has encouraged me and I pray will encourage you too.

I've been studying through the Christmas story with our family using Gather Round Homeschool's Christmas unit study Steve is teaching us this year, and we all love his comments and rabbit trails! In this study we've looked at each character in God's plan and contemplated how God used them in His great plan...and I've looked at WHY they are useable. 

When looking at Zacharias' role in the Christmas story  in Luke 1, I put myself with him in the story as our Pastor encourages us to do. I can't fully relate to Elisabeth and Zacharias's long prayed for desire to have children that was semmingly "denied", but I've seen the heartbreak in other's lives. By the time of Zararias' service in the temple, Elisabeth is in my stage of life...all hope is gone for that long prayed for child. 

When we see Zacharias going into the Holy of Holies to light the

incense, an angel told him his prayer for a child was answered!  He and Elisabeth would indeed have a child...a very special son that would be used by God the Father to "go before Him (Jesus) in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Luke 1:17.

I've been looking back at my prayer journal these past few weeks as

I pray for my family.  Many of my prayers are oft repeated, and seemingly year after year they are denied.  Lately this has been a discouragement until the Holy Spirit comforted me this week through Zacharias' story...God doesn't look at time in our limited way...just as He heard Zacharias' prayer, He hears mine! They're "tucked away in the anals of time" to be answered when He will get the most glory from the situation. His plans aren't as cut and dry as my imaginations! 

Do you often bring your heart's desires to Him in prayer only to wait and wait for the answers? We can REST in the FACT that God DOES hear us, and His plans take time to orchestrate. When that time comes God will get MAXIMUM GLORY!

While we await God's hand to move in our lives we must BE blessable...what? We must live in such a way that God can bless us.  Zacharias and Elisabeth were recorded as, "righteous before God, walking in the commandments and ordinaces of the Lord blameless". This moved me to closely examine my own life in light of this praise. Blameless here doesn't mean sinless, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" Romans 3:23. It means they consistently followed God. They had a testimony of obedience to God Almighty.  Do I...REALLY? 

I am righteous only because one night back in February of 1972 I saw myself a sinner that needed forgiveness. The burden of my sin was too heavy for me to bear alone. I was confused, hurting, and Jesus reached out His nail-scarred hand to tenderly wash away my sin. He didn't leave me alone, but came inside and has never left me. Becasue of His sacrifice on the cross I can stand boldly before the Father forgiven! Now daily I have His strength to follow his commandments, the greatest being to love Him with all my being, then secondly to love my "neighbor" as myself. There are many many lessons in living out those commands, but He has been my patient Teacher.

 He didn't save me (or you) for us to remain the same! He desires us to grow in our obedience, our service, and our love for Him and others. Am I and are you growing? Are we blessable?

                                         

My heart will still cry out to Jesus in prayer as this crazy year winds down, but I am encouraged that my prayers are poised to be answered in God's perfect timing!

 

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

 

We began making decorations for our bird's Christmas trees. These lil' ornaments and the large ring below were fun to make!

Bird Seed Ornaments

8C. Bird Feed Seed

1 1/2 C. Hot Water

2 T. Gelatin

1 1/2 C. Flour                   

   Combine water and gelatin in a large mixing bowl, whisking until the gelatin is dissolved. Add flour, stirring again. Add seed, stirring after each cup.

   Spray tiny muffin cups or Bundt pan with Pam type spray. Fill cups/pan half full with seed mixture. Add a string loop, pressing it firmly into the mixture. Continue to fill the muffin cups (I used a small cookie scoop) and press down firmly with a silicone spatula. 

   Let dry at least 24 hours. Gently release from the pan and let dry on a cookie sheet a few hours more before hanging on your bird feeder tree. 

( I wouldn't reccommend hanging these ornaments for the final drying as ours fell apart. Maybe a support is needed in the middle of the Bundt pan size to give it structure? At least let it dry flat thoroughly .All was not lost though as we can put the pieces in a bird feeder this winter.)

Cerina (my proof-reader for this blog) and I gathered greens in the woods to make our wreaths last week. What fun we had! Laughing with a friend is a great encouragment! 

I also made a few more lighted arrangements beside our fireplace and on our porch. 

Steve's been busy making up from lost time when he fell and broke his hand! He's made the grandchildren these tables and chairs and has put up faux beams in the living room, dining room and kitchen!

Putting up the 27' plus beams was a family affair! We're making precious memories!

This is the year of the granchildren! We're celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas again long distance with them. I made activities in a bag like we did years ago with our own little ones. (A planned activity with all the needed tools to complete it [scissors,glue,etc.]) Each day leading up to Christmas the Mommas will get a break from planning and the children will have a new activity planned by Gramma!

There is sooo much help online these days for preschool activities that we didn't have in the past. One of my favorite sites was Modern Preschool.

Cutting practice

Decorating Christmas Trees and Basic Counting

Matching the colored popscicle sticks to the pockets

Letter sounds with matching letter clothes pins

and sooo much more!

I also made lil' dresses for the grand-girls.

GINGERBREAD COOKIES

We love this recipe for gingerbread cookies that came from Rebecca at gatherroundhomeschool.com last year and is included in our unit study. I hope it's a blessing to you too. Don't be super careful with measuring the flour...it's a child's recipe. Scoop out your flour for correct amounts.

Dry Ingredients:

2 1/4 C. Flour

2 t. Ginger

1 t. Baking Soda

3/4 t. Cloves

1/4 t. Salt

1/4 C. Sugar (put in a seperate bowl)

(We use Monk Fruit sweetner.)

Cream Together:

3/4 C. Salted Butter

3/4 Sugar/Monk Fruit (separate from above)

1 Egg

1 T. Water

1/4 C. Blackstrap Molasses

1. Mix together your dry ingredients, reserving the 1/4 C. of sugar in a separate bowl.

2. Cream the next set of ingredients together with either a hand or stand mixer. 

3. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the creamed ingredients, and mix thouroughly.

4.  We separated our dough at this point and wrapped the two bundles in plastic wrap. We froze one for another day and thoroughly chilled the one we were to cut out soon.

5. The original recipe calls for rolling the dough into 2" circular balls, then flattening them slightly before dipping the tops into sugar. 5b. After chilling the dough we dusted the counter with a lil' flour and carefully rolled out the dough with a dusted rolling pin. Dust the cookie cutters also in flour before cutting out your favorite shapes.

6. Place onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment (that's the secret!) and bake for 8-10 minutes.

7. Let cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes (unless you overcooked them!) before removing to a cooling rack. They'll harden more as they cool. 

8. Frost cooled cookies with COLD Royal Icing (recipe found easily online) using Dollar Tree squeeze bottles for the most control. (We tried frosting bags but the freshly made Royal Icing was hard to control.) Once we put the same icing into the squeeze bottles and allowed them to cool in the frig we were suddenly Pros!

9. Store in air tight containers.

These make great gifts and freeze well (raw dough as well as baked cookies.)

We've baked cookies a couple of times for church events. Again Cerina joined us, this time for a cookie party...before we really knew how to decorate cookies well! We'll begin in earnest once the kitchen floor is finished being tiled...yes!!! I'm getting new floors in our renovated farmhouse for Christmas!!

If we look a bit confused here it's because this is our first ever artificial (aka fake) Christmas tree ever! It arrived in a narrow box, and had individual branches that needed fitted into the right slots...then 3 hours of fluffing....I think it's easier to cut a real tree down on the backside of the farm! (Only we sold that farm and only have hardwood trees here!) How I'm ever to get it back in THAT box is a mystery to me!

This is where we like to do school lately...in front of the fireplace! Along with our Christmas unit study we have Christmas journals/scrapbooks that we write in daily. We have been putting pictures in of our projects, recipes, and the kid's artwork is precious on their pages. (Don't tell them it's English Composition!)

During this time we're reading Two From Galilee by Marjorie Holmes. (A mature jr. high or high school level book.)

We've had snow and temperatures in the 20's the past few weeks, so I went out to cover my cabbage with straw. The hay bale was frozen solid, so I harvested 14 while covering two to see how this variety took the cold. The secret to harvesting in the cold of winter is 1. Plant cold hardy vegetables. 2. Plant in the late summer/fall so they'll grow to full size before the number of hours of sun deminishes. Then the cold will preserve them into the winter with minimal protection.

We've grown and now are "storing" vegetables in the garden under frost blankets. Weekly I go "shopping" in the garden to get what is needed for the coming week. See the leeks above....

Beets and their greens

Swiss Chard

Lettuce, Mizuna, Tatsoi, etc.

Brussels Sprouts

Parsnips

Charity and I are sewing and making gifts in and out of the kitchen, and enjoying every minute of it together. I've gone from a houseful of children to two...I'm going to enjoy the last years of child raising while looking expectantly for my prayers to be answered!

Abundant Blessings,

And Merry Christmas,

Val Colvin

I'm Hearing Voices!

 

As we head into our week, I'd like to "shout out" a WARNING that the Lord Jesus gave to me this past week...

I seemed to be in a fog after hearing/seeing the tide our nation was taking over the weekend with the election results while on a "day-cation"  our family took on Saturday.  The "silent" but all captivating monitor on the wall of the Chinese restaurant proclaimed to the world the triumph of Joe Biden. Then there was the  comments of the people around us, news on my YouTube feed, my husband's comments from what He was hearing, and the comments in church on Sunday. If you were like me, all these "voices" are running around in your head... along with the "what ifs?". 

As I sat in church Sunday night, I confessed my "fogginess" to the Lord...I couldn't part the waters of truth and lies myself...I couldn't hear HIS voice amongst all the voices running around in my mind, and I needed HIS peace. I needed to hear HIS VOICE. His voice is the only one that truly matters, and in this age I NEED TO TRUST HIM AND FOCUS even more on it.

 I must choose...you must choose who to listen to! HE is the only one we can fully trust to tell us the TRUTH that matters. There is so much corruption all around us as we're in "perilous times" as Scripture calls it. 

How can we focus more?

1. It's been important before, but IMPERITIVE these days to find a quiet spot to read the Scriptures DAILY. When our hearts are seeking TRUTH, He WILL speak peace and direction to our hearts.

2. Purposefully choose who to listen to! I've chosen to ignore the news media that has their own agenda. I am trusting my husband to tell me what is truely important. This is guarding me from the spirit of fear and untruths.

3. I'm not telling you what you need to do, but I've chosen this past year to walk away from social media. I don't need to hear about what you're making for supper, (though it's probably yummy!) or where you went today (It's probably exciting, but it can lead to discontentment in my life). I keep in contact with those that matter the most to me through other means...even a regular old fashioned card with a note tucked in seems peaceful to me these days! I don't need all the voices on social media cluttering my mind and robbing me of my time. 

You alone can pinpoint the "voices" that are coming at you. So take a moment and jot down the ways you get bombarded with news...national, local, even friends posts that are just one more thing that robs you of your time and clouds your mind. Choose a few blogs to follow that will keep you inspired in the areas you are wanting to learn more about. When I've learned what I want, I simply unsubscribe again.

 Here are the blogs/podcasts I follow: 

Farmhouse on Boone ~ Sourdough baking, keeping in touch with what young family life is like, homesteading

The Prairie Homestead ~ Gardening inspiration, Baking, Homesteading

Melissa K. Norris ~ Gardening inspiration, Baking, Homesteading, Self-Sufficiency

Now that I"m not in my garden as much I've stopped listening to podcasts, but I met these gals on my phone's podcast player and got inspired by them as I weeded, planted, and harvested this summer. Who knows? I may find different sources of inspiration this winter, but I find I need to limit the voices I listen to so the MOST IMPORTANT VOICE of Jesus Christ can be heard and heeded.

On our lil' homestead we're about done preparing for winter.... The leaves are piled to be shredded for mulch, 

Our cold-hardy but somewhat tender crops like lettuce, spinach, and our stir fry mixes are under frost blanket on cold evenings....

The last of the apples are made into sauce and canned...

We use a Champion Juicer to grind our apples, peel and all into a nuitrious apple sauce that needs very little cooking down because of the pectin in the skin. (We do core them first!) Then I waterbath them in my large Amish canner. Both of these have been great investments, and have saved me LOTS of time!

We grew one last iffy  planting of squash and zucchini. I covered the 75' rows with a frost blanket. We got a few pickings, but soon the number of hours of daylight inhibited their growth. I picked these babies right before our first killing frost. I made a gourmet meal, lightly sauteing them with some leeks.

On the home renovating front, Steve has installed our new mini-split heater! We've always heated with wood or propane but this super efficient heater will give us freedom in our later years when hauling wood will be too difficult. We have propane and wood heat still, but we're giving it a try this week.

He also began the large project of taking the rotten siding off our "new" home and replacing it with LP Smartside lap siding. This had to be done before the heater could be installed...we're finding this renovation project somewhat like a Chinese puzzle...move one thing to work on another...move it back to work on something else!

Now we're settling in for a long winter of home schooling, indoor crafts, baking loads of goodies,  inside renovating projects, and of course, playing games together as a family.

Banannagrams

As you are gift shopping for your family this year, look at Bannagrams! We love the fast paced word game that stretches our vocabulary and spelling skills...school really never ends for any of us!

May you too find peace as you choose which voice to listen to in these difficult days!

Abundant Blessings,

The Farmer's Wife

Val

P.S. Charity decorated my head with a zucchini leaf as we pulled the plants after a killing frost...how fun!