Janet's Blog

We went fishing today, just for a couple of hours.  We drove the pickup all the way to Terry's Lake.  It's close enough that we almost could have walked, but we drove, anyway.  After all, we had to tote all of our fishing gear, chairs, and a picnic lunch. When Bill and I were dating, he told me he loved to fish.  I think he may have been deceiving himself, at least a little; I think he really just enjoyed the time spent fishing with his dad, just as I enjoyed fishing with my family when I was growing up. Since we lived in a hotel, we didn't have a yard, so I spent countless holidays and Sunday afternoons with my family, fishing and lazing the day away at one of many lakes in southeastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas.  I loved fishing in the clear, shallow lake water, dangling a wormy hook in the midst of several small sunfish, hoping to entice one of them to lunge at my bait.  I think that sunfish are fun to catch and delicious, too. I've mis...

I bought Levi some ice cream today, not because he earned it, or because he did anything at all to deserve it, but simply because I know how much he loves ice cream.  I did it even though he made some poor choices at school today.  It might not seem like a big deal to some of you; we often buy ice cream for our kids.  But, Levi is allergic to dairy products, so I had to drive clear across town to the health food store and pay a big price just to purchase a small amount of non-dairy ice cream.  Parents do things like this for our children all the time.  We don't stop loving them when they mess up.  We don't withhold every good thing just because our kids have a bad day.  Sure, we give reasonable consequences for poor behavior because it is our job to provide guidance and discipline for the children God has entrusted to our care.  But we don't stop loving them when they do bad things.  I am always a little disconcerted when I discuss this i...

Bill brought me a box of frozen cream puffs today.  It wasn't a Mother's Day present but, in a way, it was even better, because it proved that he was listening.  I just happened to mention yesterday that I had been craving cream puffs, and that I might need to buy some the next time I saw them at the grocery store.  I certainly didn't expect him to come home with them today.  Sometimes it's the littlest things that mean the most. When I think about cream puffs, I remember my teenage years, when my friend Ellen's mom made cream puffs for us whenever we had a slumber party at their house. Those homemade cream puffs were amazing!  I think that making cream puffs must be a dying art; they are too time-consuming.  I don't know anyone who makes them anymore. The cream puffs themselves are worth remembering, but just the thought of them makes me think of related slumber party memories, like guarding our socks and unmentionable undergarments so some sneaky frie...

Sometimes life is hard, sometimes impossibly hard.  It is said that "into every life some rain must fall."  Why does it seem as if some people are cursed with one monsoon after another, while others complain about the briefest of sprinkles?  It doesn't seem fair. Today, I think of my brother's family, who still mourn the loss of my nephew, Lowell, four years ago today.  Lowell, who had so much to live for, was killed in a car accident at the age of twenty-four. I think of my sister's family; whose daughter, Kelly, died just a few weeks later, on her twenty-third birthday, in an ATV accident.  And, as if that wasn't enough to bear, my young great-niece, Ellie, died of cancer just a few months later. Sometimes life seems so unfair. It is tempting to blame God for life's inequities.  "How could he let this happen?  Why didn't he step in to prevent this tragedy?"  It is oh, so tempting to simply give up, to turn our backs on God, to ...