by Roseanna White | Oct 24, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
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| Psalm 136 |
My daily reading has me in the Psalms right now, and I have always loved this book of ancient songs. I know, I know–I’m not exactly unique in that, LOL.
But do you know what I love most about them? That the songs speak to everything we experience. Joy, heartache, love, disappointment, hope, longing, fear, appreciation, pain, expectation, shame, victory…you name it. If there’s an emotion out there, one of the psalmists has written about it. It’s almost impossible not to find a psalm that expresses one’s heart at a given moment. A psalm that cries out your heart to the Lord.
That itself isn’t what I love though. It’s that through every one of those emotions, underscoring it and crowning it, is praise.
Through the Joy, the authors give all the praise to Him.
Through the pain, the authors wait with praise for Him.
I’ve read through the Psalms several times, and I’ve only ever found one song that only laments and doesn’t tack on praise. One–out of 150!
Some days it’s really easy to praise. Like yesterday, when my precious little girl turned 8, and we got to celebrate the day she joined our lives and made them oh-so-much fuller.
I can’t imagine, now, what life would be like without my Xoë. She’s a ray of sunshine, sensitive and sweet and smart and sassy, and I thank the Lord daily (literally) for her and her brother.
But we all know praise isn’t always easy. Some days, the world comes crashing in. Some days, all hope seems lighter than vapor. Some days, we just want to rant, rail, and cry out. To God, to man, to the universe–to whoever will listen…or because it seems no one will.
Sometimes we know how David felt, being hunted and sheltering in caves. Sometimes we feel like our son, our pride and Joy, has turned on us. Sometimes we feel haunted by our sin. Sometimes we feel forgotten.
But my eyes are upon You, O God the Lord;
In You I take refuge;
Do not leave my soul destitute.
I can’t pray trouble will never befall us–it will. We’re going to face disappointments. Persecution. Betrayal. Sickness. Pain. We’re going to lose loved ones. We’re going to stare darkness in the face and not be quite sure where–if–the light lies beyond it.
But I can pray that we have the hearts of the psalmists through it all. That no matter the trial, we keep our eyes on the One who can bring us through it. That no matter the tribulation, we remember that He is our refuge. And that no matter how low, how bad, how tear-drenched our day might be, He will never, never leave our soul destitute.
Today, I praise You, Lord, for all the joys bubbling up in my life. And today, Lord, I praise You for seeing me through the valleys too.
by Roseanna White | Oct 23, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
Who should be responsible for the poor? For the needy? Whose job is it to feed the hungry and clothe the naked?
And if one takes that responsibility…how should one go about it?
To the Quakers of Colonial Philadelphia, the answer to both was simple: this was a task that ought to fall to them, not to the government, and they were not going to feed mouths without feeding souls. More often than not, they felt, people arrived at low circumstances because of their own choices–often bad ones, morally speaking. And so, they needed to be taught. They needed to bettered.
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| A Quaker almshouse |
Quakers ruled the merchant class of Pennsylvania, and they had come up with an idea on how to at once raise the impoverished of Philadelphia from the murk and put them on a path of hope. The Bettering House was run by these merchants, with the goal to improve them in both body and spirit. Families moved into the House, where they were separated by gender. Once there, they received food, clothes, sermons, and gainful employment in the form of spinning, weaving, and dyeing cloth.
Up until this time, the city had been responsible for the poor, but their efforts were small–they provided a bit of food, what firewood they could. The Bettering House took this burden off the city’s shoulders.
But by the mid-1760s, unemployment was on the rise, and the weaknesses of the Bettering House became glaring. Families were separated, the work was hard, the pay was little, and the residents often resented getting “preached to.”
In 1775, a new idea formed, not by Quakers, but by well-educated but monetarily bereft men who shared a passion for bettering the plight of working men in general. With the ultimate goal of earning the common laborer a voice and a vote, James Cannon helped found a rival to the Bettering House–the United Company of Philadelphia for Promoting American Manufacturers…also known as the American Manufactory.
The Manufactory employed a radical new method–since British imports had been banned and the need for domestic-made cloth was on the rise, they saw a new way to provide fair, steady income to families without taking them from their homes and each other. Women could now work from home under the Manufactory’s authority, spinning and weaving at their own levels, and then delivering the cloth to the Manufactory for dyeing. The overhead for the company was low, so profits were high for all involved in the process. Families remained intact.
Though the Bettering House had a fine and noble goal, it’s no great surprise that its numbers started tapering off while the American Manufactory boomed. I love the idea of bettering the soul while tending the physical needs, but perhaps the elite misunderstood what those souls really needed–the love of their families, and the assurance that their voice was heard.
by Roseanna White | Oct 21, 2013 | Word of the Week
Saw this one when I was looking up acute from last week. 😉 If you recall, acute technically means “sharp.” And so it’s not great stretch for it to be applied to mental acumen as well as angles or illnesses.
What I didn’t realize is that cute is a direct shortening of acute, and its first meaning, in 1731, was “clever.” I’ve heard it used this way, but I had no idea it was the first and primary meaning.
Around 1834, American college students began taking the word and applying it to physical attributes, not just mental ones. And so cute moved from “clever” to “pretty.”
So there we are at the meaning we use most today, which leads us to clever little things our kids say, like Rowyn (5) claiming, “I’m not handsome yet, Mommy. I’m still cute.” 😉
Happy Monday!
by Roseanna White | Oct 17, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
Confession: this is a repost. But only because I looked down at my clock, saw it was 8:00 a.m., and realized with a start that it’s THURSDAY. Yikes! Need a blog post, stat!!! LOL. So forgive me. And enjoy. 😉
~*~
We love to torture our kids. And by
torture I mean tickle them, “eat” them up, chase them around, pretend
our hand is a monster . . . you know. Torture. The sweet kind. I
imagine that’s a fairly universal love of parents the world over, and
it’s no great secret why. We do it because we love to hear that belly
laugh, hear those delighted shrieks of “No, no! Hey, why’d you stop? Do
it again, do it again!” We love to see those huge smiles on their faces.
We love their abandon.
My
hubby will tickle me, too, but we often get a good laugh out of how he
does the same “gobble” to me he does with the kids, and I just look at
him. And usually say, “Um . . . sorry. I’m not as much fun as the kids,
am I?” Which yeah, makes us chuckle. But it’s not a belly laugh. Those
same simple things don’t result in such instant
Joy once we grow up.
Man . . . I sure wish they did!
The
abandon of a small child has its ups and downs. It results in those
moments of unbridled bliss, and it results in equally unbridled fits.
Laughter and tears in equal measures,
Joy and frustration, love and
rage. I’m sometimes amazed at how my kids can go from total contentment
in their game with each other to hitting each other and screaming at the
top of their lungs, then straight back to fun.
It’s something we learn to control as we grow up, something we teach
those kids to do. Self control is important, especially when it comes
to those negatives. And those who never learn it . . . end up with
reality shows on TV??? 😉 Seriously, that control is a must, yes.
But
what are some of your best moments from adulthood? Are they when you’re
sitting there, perfectly controlled? Are they when you don’t react to
something? No–our favorite moments are the ones where we regain a
moment of childhood abandon and embrace the
Joy of life. When we scream
our heads off on a roller coaster. When we laugh until we cry. When we
let it all go and just
live.
Sometimes
it’s hard to do that, especially in this stage of my life where I have
to keep the Mommy turned on. Oh, I can laugh with my kids. But I’m also
trying to make sure knees don’t collide with heads as we wrestle, that
things tossed up in
Joy come down in one piece. I’m trying to protect
and nurture and so can’t give my full attention to the game. I
have to do this. I
love to do this.
But sometimes I just wish I could let loose a belly laugh and not care.
And that goes for my prayer life too. That should be the one place I can
let go completely, but even there I’m usually trying to
protect–myself. I find myself praying, “Lord, you know I hope . . . you
know I fear . . . I’m trying not to hope too much because then I fear
I’ll be disappointed . . . I’m trying not to expect disappointment
though because that would be faithless . . . I don’t want to assume your
will . . . I don’t want to miss your will . . .”
But
there I need to let go of the control. With the Lord, I need to be
unafraid of the extremes. I need to show him the highs and the lows. I
need to be unafraid of letting that kid inside me out before my Father.
I need to embrace the abandon.
by Roseanna White | Oct 16, 2013 | 17th-19th Centuries, Remember When Wednesdays
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| English Cannon by the Hudson River, Revolutionary WarPhoto by Michael Francis Studios (Michael Cook) |
In what spare moments I’ve had the last week, I’ve been reading a book I’ve had set aside for research for over a year now. One that, when I saw it pop up in my Amazon search at the genesis of an idea, I got so excited about that I bought then and there, though I didn’t actually need it yet, given that I wasn’t actually writing the book, LOL.
I need to put a smidgeon of work into the idea for my agent though, so out it came. To my immense delight. =) The book is Declaration: The Nine Tumultuous Weeks when America Became Independent by Willian Hogeland, and it’s turning out to be all I hoped. A non-fiction book that tells me stories. That presents the wit of the men of the day in ways that make me laugh.
That redefines my assumptions.
See, even after researching for two separate Revolution-era books, I haven’t quite plumbed the depths of how revolutionary this was, this idea that a group of colonies could just break away from its mother country. I can never quite shake the ideas I got in my schooling, that everyone just banded together, put to use their Yankee ingenuity and grit, and ousted the tyrannical government. All Americans for one, and one for all.
A lovely, patriotic picture. Except that “patriot” was an insult at the time. “Lovely” doesn’t begin to describe the fear and uncertainty that Americans experienced. And our people were anything but unified into one coherent picture.
The simple fact is that most people didn’t want independence. They didn’t even understand independence. To them, England was Mother. The king was awful, sure, he was a tyrant. But England…England was home. And just because you don’t like a few parts of it, that doesn’t mean you disown it altogether, right? It just means you try to fix it. And sure, if it comes after you, you defend yourself. So at Lexington and Concord they had no choice. But to seek war? To seek a break?
Unthinkable. That would be like looking your dearly beloved mother–they one who might not always be fair in your eyes, but who had loved you and nurtured you–in the eye and then stabbing her in the gut.
Not something a good person would do. And the leaders, the upright citizens, the majority of the day prided themselves on being noble and just. On holding high ideals, like the philosophers of old. To defend oneself was right. But to take the offense…that would cross a line good people did not cross.
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Painting of Benjamin Franklin, 1778
by Joseph-Siffrein Duplessis |
Most of the Continental Congress had strict instructions, as late as May of 1776, to steer clear of anything that even smelled of independence. To vote against anything that would be more than a vague remonstrance of England’s unfairness. Founding fathers like Benjamin Franklin didn’t come over to the cause until very late in the game–and only then after a decade in England and final humiliation before Parliament that put him in a rage.
It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t simple. And had King George not sent a fleet of hired mercenaries after us (think a mother hiring a gang to come teach her unruly child to listen when she tells him to clean his room), there quite possibly wouldn’t have been enough support to ever make that famous Declaration.
I’ve thought before about the bravery the Patriots showed by standing against the British on the battle fields. Ragtag farmers facing off against the best military in the world. But I’d never really paused to consider how brave (and quite honestly, reckless and heavy-handed) it was for the Sons of Liberty to challenge the prevailing thought of the day. To use guile, intrigue, and rhetoric to convince an unwilling people to follow them into a war most of them didn’t want. It took them decades of work. It took compromise and bullying. But they didn’t just redefine an ideal–they rewrote history. They made their cause so strong that hundreds of years later, school children just think That’s the way it was.
It wasn’t. Not until they made it so.
Do we believe that strongly today? Enough that we’re willing to work all our lives for a goal that most deem foolhardy? Are we willing to fight against prevailing sentiments? When the world says, “You’re crazy,” do we answer, “Maybe, but only until I can change the definition”? It’s a dangerous thing to be that determined. Scary dangerous. And about most causes, I would never dare to be so.
But I pray that when it matters, I could be so brave. So patriotic. So radical in a quest, if the Lord is the one who put it on my heart. I pray I’m cut from the same cloth as those who forged a nation.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.