Barbara Curtis's Blog, page 175

Obama lavish state dinner for Korea - your $$$

Don't even get me started on the inappropriateness of our First Lady's costume.  But then again, it's about her and not about the fact that she represents our country. I try my best to ignore her outrageous disregard for manners and protocol, but I find healing at MOTUS, the mirror of the United States, which does a good job pivoting from fashion to insightful political analysis.

What I found excruciating about this event - described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "an opulent East Room extravaganza"- was that it followed on the heels of Obama's official campaign tour - which raised over $70,000,000 million this summer - and his taxpayer-funded campaign tour, in which he did his circuit-preacher thing drummin' up class warfare and droppin' enough g's to send a man to the moon.

You, know, just your plain folks homey boy - so much easier for government dependents to identify with.  And I guess, in a manner of speaking, he is a government dependent, isn't he one himself?

And then his ridiculous and dangerous (can something be ridiculous and dangerous at the same time? Why yes, our president has proved it can) remarks expressing his sympatico feelings for the Occupy Wall Street mob - giving encouragement to radical leftists everywhere - after years of disparaging the right of Tea Party activists to assemble peacefully, even though they are nonviolent, articulate, do not poop and pee and have sex on the street, leave after a few hours to return to family and work, and clean up the premises.

What a hypocrite!  And what dangerous timess we live in when our leaders are not promising security to everyday Americans, but aligning themselves with the forces of destruction.

And is this why Obama Foodarama, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Obamas, 24/7 chronicle of White House glitz and glamor - also paid for with taxpayer dollars - has made itself a private club? 

I mean what if some of these angsty, misguided OSWers were to think for a few minutes about what difference there is between Wall Street fat cats and White House fat cats?  What if they laid seige to the White House as they French peasants laid seige to Versailles?

After all, Roasanne Barr has called for the rich to be beheaded, and mock-ups of a behaeded Goldman Sachs CEO have been spotted in the OSW crowd.  Sharpton is using implied threats of violence to keep his own personal money train rolling.

Better to take hide those State dinners.  Set up more Michelle photo ops at Target.  Roll up the sleeves and drop the g's.

No more vacations until after 2012.  By then Michelle will have quite a long list - payback time for all these months she's had to play it safe.  Well, most of the time.

Quit AARP - Join Generation America

Pass this on to all the seniors in your life:

For decades AARP had a monopoly on seniors - charging annual dues, providing group discounts and lobbying, supposedly in the best interest of seniors.

Like so many long-respected American institutions, AARP sold out - and that sellout became excruciatingly obvious during the Obamacare Juggernaut. Thousands of seniors cancelled their AARP memberships and thousands of upcoming seniors (like me) sent their AARP promo stuff back, marked "Return to Sender."

If you belong to, or have parents who belong to AARP, please talk to them about how AARP through seniors under the bus to kiss up to the Obama Regime. And you can tell them about an alternative organization built on conservative principles and integrity:

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Government overspending - visual aid

I can't think of anything more oppressive than a government indulging in unbridled spending while the citizenry struggle to support it - not by choice, but because they have to.

Isn't this wy we had the American Revolution?

Herman Cain - Ohio Christian U 10/13

Herman Cain - Republican Presidential Candidate - Ohio Christian University - Oct. 13, 2011

HT: Carol, Parenting Freedom

Herman Cain sings gospel: I Must Tell Jesus

Herman Cain sings gospel. "I Must Tell Jesus"

This was recorded at Herman Cain's tent during the September Straw Poll in Ames, Iowa. Another reason for the Propaganda Press to sic their dogs on him.

But I am more and more impressed at his authenticity. He is who he is and we can either vote for that or not.

It has nothing to do with his skin color - as Martin Luther King exhorted us to judge a man on the content of his character and not on the color of his skin. I think the fact that he is not a career politician, but someone who has a history of leadership and executive ability, is a real plus. One person can't know everything. An executive assembles around himself the brain trust he needs - that's what a president's cabinet is supposed to be about, though that is not how Obama has used his. And in the field of candidates we've been so privileged to get to know up close and personal through the debates the Propaganda Press hoped would shatter them, we have already seen the skills we need to begin the healing of our country.

I haven't quite announced my 100% yet, but I am very close. Putting away some money to support him if and when I do,

I Must Tell Jesus

Elisha A. Hoffman (1893)

I must tell Jesus all of my trials,

I cannot bear these burdens alone;

In my distress He kindly will help me,

He ever loves and cares for His own.

Refrain:

I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus!

I cannot bear my burdens alone;

I must tell Jesus! I must tell Jesus!

Jesus can help me, Jesus alone.

I must tell Jesus all of my troubles,

He is a kind, compassionate Friend;

If I but ask Him He will deliver,

Make of my troubles quickly an end.

Tempted and tried I need a great Savior,

One who can help my burdens to bear;

I must tell Jesus, I must tell Jesus:

He all my cares and sorrows will share.

What must I do when worldliness calls me?

What must I do when tempted to sin?

I must tell Jesus, and He will help me

Over the world the vict'ry to win.

Facebook humor/inspiration stream #4

My Facebook News Feed is like a river streaming so much humor and inspiration, I plan to do roundups of the best whenever I have a minute. In the random order they appeared:

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See all my facebook humor/Inspiration streams

Giveaway winners

Just posted the latest winners for six giveaways - 22 in all.  The way I post is with a header on each giveaway post listing the winners - plus direct emails to the winners and the giveaway sponsor.  If you have won something and not received it, let me know.  I am committed to making sure my readers are taken care of :)

I still have a stack of books/DVDs to list, so look for more next week - just check the extreme right sidebar for status.

Motherhood and the Great Adventure

I know some of you get a little annoyed with my references to Catholicism - and am grateful for everyone who doesn't walk away from my blog in a huff. Believe me, I am grateful for my evangelical roots as they afforded me an opportunity some people miss in the Catholic Church (which is why they leave unsatisfied).

But 20 years of songs that became anthems and touchstones in my life are still very much part of me. Today, I woke up singing "Saddle Up Your Horses" by Steven Curtis Chapman, and I wanted to share with you why that was so important in my motherhood journey.

This is an excerpt from my book Lord, Please Meet Me in the Laundry Room: Heavenly Help for Earthly Moms (which I think is my favorite of all the books I've written), which starts in the middle of Chapter 4 after I described my born-again experience on March 21,1987. I hope it encourages you!

And so I learned the sweetness of surrender - that I could put my life in the hands of a Loving Father and expect that the outcome would be good. That if I stopped living for me and started living for Him, my life would be filled with joy.

I guess I could have surrendered my life to Christ and secured my salvation and come home and continued living for me. But after so many years of living without God, I was so grateful to experience His love, I really wanted to live for Him. This has meant going beyond simple obedience, but actually surrendering each moment to Him.

Not that I've always been perfectly on target, but since 1987 my life has been governed by the revelation that surrender doesn't mean defeat over anything but my own selfishness. And as my selfishness is defeated, my capacity for joy is fulfilled

Here's what I mean:

1 Samuel 15:23 says "To obey is better than sacrifice." But surrender is better than than both. To do the right thing in the right spirit - that's what it's really all about.

Surrender doesn't mean saying, Okay, if I have to, then gritting my teeth and clenching my fists and willing myself to be obedient. As a mom, I have so many things that elicit that response - things like muddy shoes and dirty bathtubs and getting up in the middle of the night to change a wet bed.

And I could go through the motions and do them without ever saying Yes! I could do them and be bitter, not better. I could be obedient and never feel God's pleasure.

Surrendering means saying yes with a smile, actively embracing whatever life sends my way each day and each night. Yes, God I'll do that!

One of the most important things I've learned is this: There are the big events in life and the big choices - Will we get married, will we move or will we stay, how many children, will I work or will I stay home?

But most of life is lived in between, in the little things. And most of these things you can't change. You can't change the last thirty minutes in which your toddler scribbled all over the wall with permanent marker or how many poopy diapers your kids will have this week.

As a wife and mother, you have a lot you could feel discouraged, frustrated, depressed, maybe even resentful or bitter about. Each of us, no matter how good our intentions, has these moments. God hasn't given me the task of writing books because I do these things perfectly, but because I've thought about them and tried to live them.

The important thing to know is that it is our choice how we feel about what we do. I can't change a lot of the circumstances of my life, but I can change my attitude. I can decide to fall in love with what I do - no matter how difficult it seems. And when God asks a little extra of me, I can say Yes!

A year after Jonny's birth, Madeleine was born. Since Jonny's development was delayed [due to Down syndrome], they grew up like twins - babbling, playing, taking their first steps together. But we knew it wouldn't be long before Maddy's progress would outstrip her brother's (still, to this day, they're close like twins, though - always looking out for the other). Tripp and I felt led to adopt another baby with Down syndrome to grow up with Jonny. And so we ended up in 1995 with our tenth child, Jesse Mateo. Which we thought would be the end, until in 1996 we were asked to adopt Daniel, and then in 2000 Justin.

People tell me, Oh I could never do what you do...you are so patient.... Really, I am no one special. I'm just a woman who has learned to say yes to God, a woman who's learned how to surrender.

But when I think back to the beginning, there were some things it took me quite a while to surrender to - things like not expecting my house to look perfect and not expecting to sleep through the night.

That's why I can tell you from experience that the sooner you surrender, the happier you'll be.

Today you might be tired because someone was up all night with an earache. You might be looking at four loads of laundry and the dryer just broke and Sears can't come out until Thursday. Your hyperactive daughter may be whining because she's hungry even though you just finished breakfast 37 and a half minutes ago. The phone is ringing and you wanted the answering machine to get it, but your son is bringing it to you proudly and it is on. Someone has a poopy diaper (at what point in our lives can we stop saying the word poopy?). There are dirty socks on the kitchen counter (you mothers of preschoolers need to know that no matter what kind of Godly home you have, no matter how tastefully decorated, no matter how firm your rules, it is a genetic thing with boys that they shed rolled up socks all day all over the house. If you have more than one boy, of course, you can never identify who the particular shedder of each pair is, but no matter who picks them up, your laundry time is increased fifty percent because of having to unroll each little sock ball before inserting it in the machine.) You need to go to the grocery store, but the baby's asleep, but by the time the baby wakes up, your husband will be home expecting dinner. Do you dare serve him fish sticks again?

Yeah, I have those days too.

To prepare for them, I psyche myself up for a day of mothering by blasting Steven Curtis Chapman's "Saddle up Your Horses":

Saddle up your horses we've got a trail to blaze

Through the wild blue yonder of God's amazing grace

Let's follow our leader into the glorious unknown

This is a life like no other - this is The Great Adventure

That's all I could include in my book, but here is the video:

Steven Curtis Chapman - Saddle Up Your Horses

and lyrics

I doubt if Steven Curtis Chapman was thinking about a mother's life when he wrote those lines, but I find them absolutely applicable - don't you? It is a life like no other. It is a glorious unknown, a wild blue yonder of God's amazing grace.

Motherhood is Our Great Adventure - the opportunity God has given us especially to learn the lessons He wants us to learn. When I'm distracted during the day from that purpose, just reminding myself can make me smile.

Emily Dickinson said "The soul should stand ajar, waiting for the ecstatic experience." I may not be able to write poetry like she did, but I can sure relate. Motherhood has a way of keeping my soul standing ajar. Having oodles of children can lead to lots of mistakes and messes, but it can also lead to miracles and merriment. I just need to be ready for them, take the time to enjoy them thoroughly, and remember to give thanks for these little reminders to stop taking things so seriously and to have more fun with the job God has given me.

G. K. Chesterton quotes

Faithful Families is the name of the column I write each week at St. Francis deSales in Purcellville. You can find them archived at the parish website. And if you are interested in having your church pick up my column, email me.

Here is last week's:

Chesterton Treasures

I'm on a campaign to read more G. K. Chesterton. Next on my list is Brave New Family: G.K. Chesterton on Men and Women, Children, Sex, Divorce, Marriage and the Family.

Chesterton (1874-1936) was a great English thinker whose writing included philosophy, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction.

He converted to Catholicism when he was 48 years old - surporising himself more than anyone else. In The Catholic Church and Conversion, he wrote, "I had no more idea of becoming a Catholic than of becoming a cannibal." As a 20-year evangelical convert, I identify with that.

Here are a few Chesterton nuggets to whet your appetite too:

• A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

• A room without books is like a body without a soul.

• War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.

• There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.

• Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.

• Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.

• Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

• No man knows he is young while he is young.

• The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

• The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

• The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.

• The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

• How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.

• Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution

• I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

• I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.

• It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

• The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

• When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

Ed Schultz: Cain proves right is racist

The minds of the Left - you know, the people who gave us "a woman's right to choose." who defended Clinton's sexapades, and who condone Obama's escalating warscape - obviously do not run on logic, but require something akin to the human pretzel.



Cain is sweeping the South in popularity. And he is a real black man, not an effete, biracial, Harvard grad who knows how to play the poor people and put on a show at State dinners. He is who he is. He's consistent. He's authentic. That's what people are responding to - not the color of his skin, but a refreshing change from the hypocrisy and narcissism of the last three years.

So insulting that the Left does not allow blacks the freedom to think for themselves.  I'd call that racism:

Schultz says 'break' is a 'southern racist term'
byJoel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer







[image error]MSNBC
host Ed Schultz believes that Herman Cain, pictured, is telling "white
Republicans who don't like black folks . . . what they want to hear." /
AP

Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC's the Ed Show, believes that
Republican presidential contender Herman Cain is pandering to "white
Republicans out there who don't like black folks" and accused Sen. Jim
Demint, R-S.C., of using racist langauge in his opposition to Obamacare.

On his show last night,
Schultz said that Demint, whom Cain has mentioned as a potential
running mate, repeated an "old southern racist term when talking about
defeating President Obama during the health care debate." Schultz's
example? He quoted Demint saying that "If we are able to stop Obama on
this [health care law], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." For
clarity, Schultz repeated the offending line, "It will break him."

Dr. James Peterson, director of Africana studies at Lehigh
University, explained that "break" is a racist verb, "a term that was
used to destroy, mentally and physically, slaves." Accordingly, the
Demint line demonstrated "how dark some of these racial discourses can
be in presidential politics." Peterson said that Cain, by naming Demint
as a possible VP pick, "gives those folks a pass" on racism.

Peterson's claim echoed and extended Schultz's conclusion the
previous evening that Cain, a black Republican, is appealing to white
racists in order to win the Republican primary. "You think about white
Republicans who don't like black folks," Schultz explained. "It's almost
as if this guy is trying to warm up to them and tell them what they
want to hear."

Read more at The Examiner