The sacrifice of praise

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. ~ Psalm 100:4-5

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. ~ Hebrews 13:15

I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing. ~ 2 Samuel 24:24

I know that You are strong
I know You're more than able
to save me from whatever, ever comes my way
I know You are a Healer
I know You can deliver
I know that You can rescue me

But even when I cannot see Your hand
when You move in a way that
I would not have planned...

Still I will worship You

I will worship You
in the midnight hour
I will worship You
when I'm in the fire
I will worship You
when all hope seems gone
I will stand and proclaim that
You are my God
I will worship You
I will worship You
~ Curt Coffield

Thank you Lord for teaching me the meaning of a sacrifice of praise. Even when I feel so beat down that I can't even take another step, I will praise you - not because of everything you've done for me or for everything you've given me, but because you are the Holy Holy Holy.

~ me

Life

First of all, big thumbs up to angelfoodministries.com! We got food from them for the first time this past week and have now at least tried almost everything from the order. So far everything has been really good. We'll probably order from them again.

Last night Will and I were watching a DVD and about 11 pm we thought we heard a vehicle (we live at the top of six acres in the woods, so nobody should be driving up unless they're lost and miss the No Trespassing signs). Will had me pause the DVD and he poked his head out the door, then came back in and grabbed the 9MM. I asked him if somebody was out there and he said yes. So I grabbed the phone in case I needed to call 911 and sat there. After about 20 minutes I hadn't heard anything, so I got up and turned off all the lights on this side of the house and grabbed a knife out of the kitchen drawer and went around looking out all the windows to see if I could see anything. The motion light came on and I could see then that Will was standing out there next to a white truck talking to someone.

Hmmm. White truck. Just like the one that was "taken" from us a few months ago. Well, isn't that interesting.

I went and put the knife away and waited for Will to come in. Finally about 11:30 he came in. The guy was drunk (he's a "recovering" alcoholic who sadly doesn't seem too interested in sticking to the recovering part) and has been living in a camper trailer outside his brothers' house (the whole lot of them is a bunch of no-good drunks) and had a sob story about how he was planning to just drive out into the woods and shoot himself (and he had a gun in the truck) but he decided to come up here and talk to Will instead. Sad to say but I doubt any of that was really true, he was just looking for pity. But he did at least give Will back the keys to the old truck (that they were supposed to be fixing up) and the keys to his tool box. He said he'd come back this morning with the money that he owes us (for returning the parts Will paid for to the store) and that he still wants to help rebuild the old truck, blah blah blah. Will just evaded all the comments about wanting the guy to come back around and let him ramble until he was done.

Well the guy showed up today - twice - but neither time did he bother to come knock on the door. He just got into the old truck and took his clothes and stuff he had left out there but was too drunk to care about last night. Will drove down to his brothers' house today (they live in this area) and - surprise surprise - the guy didn't have the money to pay us at all, said he'd have it at the end of the month when his disability check comes in. So I figure we won't see him again for a few months, if ever. Whatever. We still have the title to the truck and the tags are due on it (and we had it removed from our insurance) so it's probably just a matter of time before he gets pulled over and the police take care of it anyway.

We called the church today and they're going to help us pay the electric bill that's due for shutoff this week, so that's a blessing. I HATE that we even have to ask for help, but I know that we'll either pay it back in the offering plate or pay it forward when we're able to, so I try not to get too down about it.

And Will got turned down for the job he was really hoping for. Sigh. They do have some new listings up at the same place though, so he's going to apply for them too. They close at the end of this month.

The school called today and we had to go pick up Dana, she had a headache and a temp of 101*. She's felt fine at home all day though and her fever hasn't come back (nurse gave her Tylenol) so unless she's doing poorly tomorrow she'll go back to school on Thursday.

Nate brought home his report card today and has CURVY A'S! (No, we're never going to let him forget that one LOLOL.) And - he made top score for his grade in both English and Science! I'm so proud of him. His spelling still leaves a bit to be desired, but he reads more and more now so it will come in time as he's more used to seeing words in print.

I know most of you reading this probably don't deal with serious deer hunting, but we depend on the deer Will's able to kill each fall for our red meat for the year, and it is SO frustrating for him to be out in the woods trying to hunt and have people's stupid hunting dogs that they can't be bothered to keep up with, yapping and running the deer all over the place. We have NEVER had to deal with people running dogs the way they do up here in any other places that he hunts, it is the one thing that we absolutely hate about living up here. They drop these dogs off and just leave them in the woods for weeks at a time, you'll see them wandering around the back roads and the highway mostly starved to death, too stupid and hungry to stay out of the road (so you see a good number of them dead on the side of the road). Or they're up in our yard, fighting our dog for her food, lazing about and pooping in our yard. UGH. HATE IT.

Has facebook been freezing up IE for anyone else lately? I can't even get in except thru mozilla, and then not all of the features are available. Frustrating.

This is me, rambling

I haven't checked to see how long it's been since my last blog. A while, I'm sure. I don't care. Sometimes I just don't feel like talking. Sometimes I feel like talking but I don't feel like having anyone listen. Sometimes I feel like having someone listen but I don't feel like having anyone talk back. That probably doesn't make any sense. I don't care.

I don't care. You'll probably hear that more than once tonight. In fact, you already have.

My husband, for the second time this year, is not working. He didn't get laid off this time though, he quit. That was probably "irresponsible" of us (especially since he's our sole source of income) but...I don't care. He was at work on a Friday afternoon, looking forward to the weekend (he had plans with his brother) after working 60 hours that week (plus driving four hours a day back and forth) at a job he despises, and around came the supervisor telling him he had to come in the next day. He said he wasn't going to. Super said yes he was. He said no he wasn't. And...he didn't. Monday rolled in and he didn't go in then either. And we felt at peace for the first time in almost three months. We drove up there together that next Friday to pick up his paycheck and turn in his safety hat and badge, and out of sheer joy we laughed at nothing at all for about five minutes driving away. That was two weeks ago? Three? Don't remember. Don't care.

So now we're looking at our last...$20 or so, with no idea when anything else is going to come in, and I don't care. You hear that? I. DON'T. CARE. Don't like it? Get over it.

Will's cousin is taking us to the state fair next weekend. She's such a doll. The kids don't know yet. We're going to the rodeo. I've never been to a rodeo, not exactly my idea of a great time, heh, but it will be fun watching the kids have fun. And hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can go out on his cousin's houseboat Sunday. Last time we went to visit her (after graduation) it was too flooded to take it out.

Dana is part of a dance and drama team with our church youth, they're performing at...something this Wednesday night if it doesn't get rained out. Hopefully the youth pastor gave them more info about it today, I'll have to email him if he didn't. He's a great guy, but he gets busy sometimes and forgets that the kids that just moved up into the youth group (5th graders) don't know all this stuff yet. Heh.

Will and I watched MST3K's The Brain That Wouldn't Die last night. Cheesetastic. I love netflix. We're going to have to suspend our service this month, but I think we've got time to get one more movie in and watch it before then. It'll probably be something MST3K also, we've been on a kick lately. Watching it on youtube is cool, but there's not as big of a selection and you have to get up and click on the next segment every 10 minutes. Gets annoying.

I made my first order through angelfood.com this past week, we go pick it up next Saturday. I ordered one regular box and one fresh produce box. I really hope it's as good as people have told me. There should be enough in there (along with stuff we already have at home) to feed us for a couple of weeks, along with some milk and bread and other fresh produce of course. I'll be able to get over $10 worth of free groceries during my next trip to Kroger so that will cover quite a bit of the "extra" stuff I need to get. Love how that works out. :)

We found out recently that the federal gov't does most of their new hires after the end of their fiscal year, which is this month, so do please pray that Will is at least considered for all the gov't jobs he's applied for. There's one with the Core of Engineers close by that would be really, really good. It would mean being able to pretty much pay off all of our debt within the next few months, replace our (old, worn out) vehicles within a few months after that, and then start saving up to build a house. And it's a job he's well qualified for, so that's not a problem. And it's about twenty-five minutes from the house. So...yeah. Please pray.

Speaking of praying, Jakey always wants to say grace when we eat now. This is what he says, pretty much every time - "Thank you Father for this awesome, incredible food. Amen!" Hee. I love this kid.