Listen...oh Beloved. Listen. and HEAR.

Oh God, keep us close to Your heart.

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them (Ephesians 5:11).

Before you watch, pray. In fact, we're commanded to pray without ceasing. Make sure your armor is on.,

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JMEKB2UUmac

Do they have any actual "proof" of healings? I have proof of my son's healing...but only after months of prayer, fasting, prayer and fasting. God healed him in the still of the night or the dawn's first blush -- I don't know which. But his healing is miraculous. And precious. A wonderful, lovely, loving testament to God's faithfulness. Not the byproduct of a carnival hawker's touch in the midst of a drunken frenzy. But in the stillness, in the quiet, God granted earthly healing to my precious boy. In His own good time. In His own beautiful way.

And had He never healed my son this side of Heaven, He would still be there in the stillness to comfort - to lead - to love. Because He is my Father. And I still would give Him all the glory - albeit with a heavier heart - for He alone is worthy to be praised. Not TB, not these "Angels" (fallen, I believe), noone! Only God!

I don't think I have ever been so busy...

The Lord is really blessing my freelance business these days...but wowzers am I busy! My hands had gotten soft since I left the paper, and today they are protesting at having to labor over a smokin' hot keyboard! LOL

I'll update later...after the smoke clears.

Political Me

Yes, I will admit it.

I'm a bit of a political junkie. The only problem is, I can't find a decent fix. As you can see at right, I'm a conservative...but I just can't get excited about John McCain. I suppose he's a good man. I know he's a bona fide war hero, but there are just too many issues on which we differ. With other elections I've had at least a couple of points of agreement to which I could cling. Not so much this time.

In the primary, I voted "Uncommitted". It was all over by the time we had ours, though I'd hoped Fred Thompson or Duncan Hunter would've done better so I could at least throw them a symbolic vote. There wasn't a space to write someone in, or I would've written in Ronald Reagan. Just because I miss him. I disagreed with some of his points - more so with Nancy's - but what a man!

Oh, I'll vote for McCain, alright. Preventative voting, you could call it. But I won't like it.

I'll be back! My desk is a little full at the moment...

What's that they say about Socialization?

My poor, sheltered, homebound son and his parents are absolutely running here, there and everywhere this week! Park Day with the homeschool group, Awana picnic, swimming with friends, field trips, playmates ringing the doorbell at 8 a.m....I could go on and on.

It doesn't pay

to irritate 2 million or so homeschoolers and their families.

HSLDA is pleased to pass along the following apology from Subway
restaurants.

To HSLDA:

We at SUBWAY restaurants place a high value on education,
regardless of the setting, and have initiated a number of programs and
promotions aimed at educating our youth in the areas of health and
fitness.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who feels excluded by our current
essay contest. Our intention was to provide an opportunity for traditional
schools, many of which we know have trouble affording athletic equipment, to win
equipment. Our intent was certainly not to exclude homeschooled children from
the opportunity to win prizes and benefit from better access to fitness
equipment.

To address the inadvertent limitation of our current contest and
provide an opportunity for even more kids to improve their fitness, we will soon
create an additional contest in which homeschooled students will be encouraged
to participate. When the kids win, everyone wins!

I think the apology is probably as sincere as they get these days. We'll be buying a meatball sub and a BMT with everything later this weekend! Thanks Subway!

We Won't Be Taking the Subway Anymore...

And we sent them an e-mail to share our reasoning. If you homeschool, I would invite you to do the same. This article, from Home Education Magazine spotlights Subway’s P.R. gaffe:

"By now, the Subway sandwich shop marketing division must know how bad of a decision it was on the part of whichever wonk who decided to expressly exclude homeschoolers from their latest contest. Email lists may not be utterly aflame over the exclusion, but there is more than one ***-off homeschool mom spreading the word. I’ve been reading their emails.

Subway contest: Every Sandwich Tells A Story

Enter the Every Sandwich Tells a Story Contest for a change to win great prizes for your child’s school!

Here’s what you could win:

1 Grand Prize Winner:

– Athletic equipment for your child’s school ($5,000 value)
– Scholastic Gift Bastket (sic) for your home
– SUBWAY Card ($100 value)
– See your story published on www.subwaykids.com and in Scholastic Parent and Child magazine.

6 Runners-Up:

– Scholastic Gift Basket
– SUBWAY Card ($50 value)

…

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. Contest is open only to legal residents of the Untied (sic) States who are currently over the age of 18 and have children who attend elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.

To be technical about it, according to this, homeschoolers in the “Untied” States are the only ones ineligible. Homeschoolers in the “United” States should be able to enter. But, as we all can recognize, I digress, with my tongue firmly in my cheek.

The presumed rationale for the exclusion is that the grand prize is athletic equipment for a school and that “home schools” aren’t organized schools and that the equipment is intended for a community, not a family.

My own point of view is that the way the contest’s rules were worded is another indication of the increasing acceptance that children are creatures of school. This contest — a story writing contest — includes children who are “PreK.”

Do I really have to point out that three and four year old children generally do not compose “beginning, middle and end” stories?

Also, this indicates the trend that no longer are young children pre-schoolers, but they are pre-Kindergarten. Kindergarten itself used to be not only optional in the United States, but was considered a precursor to formal schooling. In German, the word Kindergarten comes from the words for ’children’ (Kinder) and ’garden’ (Garten). In meaning, Kindergarten is equivalent to “play school.” Note that in German the American use of Kindergarten is not der Kindergarten, but rather die Vorschule — preschool.

Obviously, in the United States, now both Kindergarten and what used to be called preschool are now ’school.’

For older ’school aged’ children, legislation tries to tie driving licenses to school attendance, sports for teens is all but wedded to schools, and daytime curfews during the ’school year’ are in effect when school is in session. (I’ve never figured out why there aren’t daytime curfews on weekends or during the summer.) In our collective mind, children who are ’school aged’ belong to a school. That’s just the way it is. Schools = children’s place of duty. Period. The Subway contest seems to reflect some of that line of thinking, which isn’t to malign Subway, but merely to reflect on our national mind-set.

The fallout

It’s too late to fix the wrongheaded concept that parents educating their children without the intercession of an institution are doing so as a school. That water is not only under the bridge, but it has gone out to sea, evaporated, and rained down multiple times.

Regardless of state laws that pigeonhole homeschooling under their respective private school laws, and regardless of whether parents officially/actively/or purposely ‘homeschool,’ all parents are their children’s primary educators even if what is ‘taught’ isn’t the least bit ‘educational.’ This is just family life. Lessons are learned, if only through example, regardless of their worth. Still, families in which children are expressly educated are not ’schools,’ so there is some logic to the exclusion by Subway.

Despite the logic, it was psychologically stupid to apply that logic so abruptly: No home schools will be accepted. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot. Those ‘million homeschoolers’ we always hear about equal how many potential customers?? Either the Subway marketing department is tone deaf, or somebody in the head shed doesn’t like homeschoolers.

Non-homeschoolers often complain that homeschoolers don’t live in the ‘real world,’ but the statement that ”no home schools will be accepted” indicates significant corporate ignorance about that ‘real world’ where real homeschooling families shop with real money.

J.C. Penney learned that in 2001.

Michelle Malkin, August 10, 2001: Publik skool biggotz
Until this week, Texas-based retailer J.C. Penney thought the “HOME SKOOLED” T-shirt was cool enough to peddle on its racks in the kiddie section. Only after a heated e-mail and phone campaign by home schooling parents did the department store chain send a notice to J.C. Penney stores nationwide Wednesday advising them to remove the T-shirts. “It wasn’t our intent to sell an item that is offensive,” a company spokesman told the Associated Press.


The fix

One of the more obvious work-arounds that the developers of the Subway contest could have included for homeschooling parents who entered on their children’s behalf, was for the equipment to be donated to a local park, or to a school of the winner’s choice. Problem solved – good will all around. Too bad that it didn’t play out that way.

I look forward to seeing how the Subway wonks handle their self-inflicted wound."

My Tightwad Testimony

I knew that I wanted the Complete Tightwad Gazette. So, I went to Barnes & Noble where I immediately began berating myself for wanting to spend money on a book about saving money! And anyway, the clerk said there was a copy in-store, but we couldn't find it. So I prayed. Right there in B&N. "Lord, if this is something I would use and from which my family would benefit, please make it available and ON SALE."

Within one minute the clerk returned with a smiling lady. She held the book out and chuckled, "I've carried this all over the store, but really had not come in here specifically for it. I'd decided to just buy it because I had it in hand. I really don't need it -- here." And she handed it over.

Well, that had been a two part prayer! I thought as she handed it over, "I hope it's only around $20 or I'll make a complete fool of myself by not buying it after all this trouble."

Do I need to tell you that I wept openly when I saw the $5.98 price on the sale sticker?

Pray for the Chapman Family

From The Tennessean:

Steven Curtis Chapman’s youngest child died Wednesday afternoon after being struck by a car driven by her teenage brother in the driveway of the family’s Williamson County home.

Maria, one of the Christian singer’s six children, was taken by LifeFlight to Vanderbilt Hospital, which confirmed the death, according to Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The 5-year-old was hit by an SUV driven by her teenage brother, she said.

Police did not give the driver’s name.The teen was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser down the driveway of the rural home at about 5:30 p.m. and several children were playing in the area, McPherson said. He did not see Maria in the driveway before the vehicle struck her, she said.“It appears to be a terrible accident,’’ McPherson said. No charges are expected, she said. The accident was witnessed by two other children; the entire family was home at the time, McPherson said.