Master, the Tempest is Raging

"Master, the Tempest is Raging"

Master, the tempest is raging! The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o'ershadowed with blackness. No shelter or help is nigh.
Carest thou not that we perish? How canst thou lie asleep
When each moment so madly is threatening
A grave in the angry deep?

Chorus:

The winds and the waves shall obey thy will:
Peace, be still.
Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea
Or demons or men or whatever it be,
No waters can swallow the ship where lies
The Master of ocean and earth and skies.
They all shall sweetly obey thy will:
Peace, be still; peace, be still.
They all shall sweetly obey thy will:
Peace, peace be still.


Master, with anguish of spirit I bow in my grief today.
The depths of my sad heart are troubled.
Oh, waken and save, I pray!
Torrents of sin and of anguish
Sweep o'er my sinking soul,
And I Perish! I perish! dear Master.
Oh, hasten and take control.

(Chorus)


Master, the terror is over.
The elements sweetly rest.
Earth's sun in the calm lake is mirrored,
And heaven's within my breast.
Linger, O blessed Redeemer!
Leave me alone no more,
And with joy I shall make the blest harbor
And rest on the blissful shore.

(Chorus)

Text: Mary Ann Baker
Music: H. R. Palmer

Dear Reader,

How much the words of this hymn reflect our week's experience! Dear AnnaMarie, who has suffered from diabetes since she was eight, had a bout of high blood sugar/dehydration this week, which was a harrowing experience. If not for hymns such as the one above, and peaceful words from the Holy Scriptures, we do not know how we could have handled the period of watching her walk "Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death." Even though we had prayed fervently, exercising our faith that her blood sugar would go down quickly the first day, the Lord in His infinite wisdom saw fit to try our faith, gradually bringing her back to us.

How grateful we are, also, for the healing power of the Lord's herbs, which we constantly administered to AnnaMarie, through her skin and through "injections" given with a bulb syringe.

Do you know that the skin will absorb many life-saving things, such as pure olive or coconut oil, water, and herbs? And that the body can live entirely off of what is absorbed through the skin? Truly we ARE wonderfully made!

We feel that the body is made to heal itself, and that given the proper elements (Combined with right living), anything can be healed, even something as dreaded as diabetes. We are following an enzyme-rich diet as much as possible, and are seeking always new knowledge to encourage AnnaMarie's pancreas to be made whole.

Here is a list of some of the things we have learned:

Exercise is VERY important to lower blood sugar (But very difficult to do in winter in Idaho!)

Water alone can bring down the sugars, flushing them from the body.

A hot, soaking bath or sauna treatment will help the body to excrete excess sugar through the skin.

Starchy foods, such as pasta and potatoes, are as hard on the pancreas as white sugar.

Green blender drinks and juices are a wonderful way to reduce acidity in the body (Anyone with a major disease has an acidic body condition.).

There are many herbal foods which the Lord created to help the body produce its own insulin, which grow everywhere around the world.

Pancreas-healing foods include celery, cucumbers, huckleberries, tomatillos, and green beans (especially the pods).

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How thankful we are to have our sweet AnnaMarie with us, and for her putting up with being our "guinea pig", as we seek to find healing for her, as the Lord wills it to be so!

We love you, sweet AnnaMarie!

May you have a blessed Sabbath,

Love,

Marqueta

The Blessing of a Beautiful Day

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for stopping by our Merry Hearts Cottage-may you enjoy your stay! This week has been spring and winter, all in one; On Monday we spent some time outside, working on our nature journals:

Chickens count as nature, don't they?

AnnaMarie did a very find primrose study.

By Tuesday, it was a balmy 50 degrees! It was nice enough to tidy up some of the dead flower stalks we had left out for our little insect friends:

"O secateurs!"

The Mother's Magazine says to rub snow on your cheeks to make them rosy!

But, alas, winter returned on Wednesday, so we consoled ourselves with a little thrift-shopping:

A pretty cup for storing pens or paintbrushes.

A lovely vintage hat that called to us all the way from the back of the store!

Thursday was windy as could be (We were going to clean up all those flower stalks we trimmed on Tuesday, but the wind did the job for us! Hopefully our neighbors across the way don't think it was sabotage.):

With the rain comes . . . .

a rainbow at the end of the old Chevy!

And today we woke up to snow, which means a day of reading, creative play and an extra long bath for the little ones (And Mother, too, if she can sneak away!). May your day bring plenty of happiness, rain, snow, or shine!

Love,

Marqueta

Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter, fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind;
Quiet by day.

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mixed, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.

~Alexander Pope

Ideals and Their Value to the Parent and the Child

Dear Reader,

Good Monday to you! We hope that your weekend was both restful and well-spent. Thank you for taking the time to visit us, and for all your comments and support. They mean so much.

We would like to share with you a little article from the "Mother's Magazine," February 1909, which struck a chord, so to speak, with our little family. It seems that slander and gossip are standard fare in our society, and we strive to keep our home free from this pernicious habit. This article puts so beautifully forth the argument of striving to be above such things, that we have typed it in its entirety. May it bless your family.

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Ideals and Their Value to the Parent and Child

by R. A. White

It may seem a trivial use of a word which expresses so much, but it surely is using it as a lever to uplift human nature if, in a child's heart, can be planted some germ of attainment in opposition to its natural weakness; thus if, in a very nervous and timid child, the ideal of courage and fearlessness, of calmness in emergency, can be fostered and cultivated until it becomes his chief desire to attain something represents to us highest endeavor.

To set before its mind a point which, if gained, confers on life its laurel wreath, is worth a thousandfold more than the study for which he may have struggled to bring home a maximum mark of approval.

To set about ridding one's home from the pest of slander and gossip may seem a small ambition, but let her who has determined that, under this flag, she will fight for one ideal point in her family life, be assured that she has turned into a path which it will take unremitting effort to tread. Should she be able to live up to her purpose, she has attained much. I know of but one household "Safe as altar e'en to foe," and of only one woman of whom her children can say, "I never heard my mother speak evil of anyone, and she never lets us talk gossip at our table."

To make our mealtimes hours of refreshment, in which the mind gains more than the body, is not an unworthy point of endeavor.

Could we take the testimony of a hundred heads of families, around whose tables the bright, eager, widely differing personalities of their children gather, we should find that argument and not conversation was the rule; that in at least half the households no endeavor was made to set self aside and devote these brief times of meeting to enjoyment and cheerful intercourse.

Where a father and mother have decided that under their roof this end is to be attained, they have set themselves a task to which they will unceasingly have to bend themselves with strenuous effort.

The father has to lay aside the weight of the day's troubles and fatigue, the mother to forget her vexations and disappointments, and the children from the earliest years learn to keep out of sight their differences and disputes. Reproof must wait other opportunity and discontent keep silence.

Ideals Worth Striving For.

It may be straining the ordinary use of ideal to put it among the things real and attainable, but there is no other word by which to indicate that which, being uplifted and above the common, is yet worth striving for, because it is attainable, and when reached, unspeakably precious.

We realize easily the poetic or artistic ideal, but to seek such influences in our own lives within the "trivial round and daily task," to which everybody call us, is not common, though through it the world would grow fast into a sweeter dwelling-place, and our nation and our generation would bear priceless fruit.

The beginning and the ending of married life without some such conserving, developing aim in the heads of the household, and transmitted through them to their children, are almost equally sad. A purpose, a definite aim, beyond the level of social success and material development, or even of intellectual attainment, is absolutely necessary to a perfect home life.

One does not mind a bruise or a stumble when the path leads always upward, and the wear and stress of the years only act as refiners. But to begin life together solely to live, to eat and drink and take what time sends, makes of every failure a wound, of every mistake a sore.

To end it, with a consciousness that out of the house has gone no added strength to the cause of good against evil, that the contribution of our lives to our time has been only to increase its craving for what is material and selfish, is to have "sown the tempest and reap the whirlwind." Nothing remains to us but regret.

We seem destined by our origin to be a nation of idealists; the whole sweep of possible good is our horizon. to what have we contracted that fair margin? Where is the brother hood of man, where the delicate simplicity of womanhood? Where is the readiness to live without debilitating luxury, the eagerness to enrich mankind?

Only through our homes can we give back to the world the hope planted by our forefathers in the minds of mankind. Let it be less a matter that our boys receive scholastic honors than that they know the value of mone as a trust and a means of living honestly and doing good. Let it be that athletic triumphs are small affairs beside the struggle for rectitude and to conquer a besettting sin.

Let our girls learn that their heritage of beauty frees them from the vulgar means of lavish display, and that it is permitted them in their untitled simplicity to emulate the noblest of women gone before and to establish a method of life exalting to their sex, without imitation of the convention usage or the splendor of articial rank.

Into the heart of the fair-haired girl upon her mother's knee can be dropped such pregnant seed of ideal motherhood as, once accepted as a responsibility, shall give to her generation a true benefaction. Into the romping boy, alive in every muscle and sinew with impatient strength, can be infused such sense of honorable manhood that he would not dishonor it.

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Love,

Marqueta

We Will Survive (or Springtime Will Come at Last!)

Dear Reader,

How nice of you to stop by today! We are enjoying watching the tumbleweed races going on in front of our house, as well as occasional snow flurries (I used the word "enjoying" tongue in cheek just there!). But we will not complain, for we know that there is a reason for everything, and it is just the kind of day that it is meant to be. Right?

See the snow in the distance?

At least we have nature to enjoy; even if it is just a little cat-face spider that decided to take up residence in our bathroom (Woebetide the fungus gnats in the plants!)~

Between Adam and Eve (Can you see her there in the middle?)!

And we can always look at our nature collection parked in the entryway!

So we'll stay inside and do some home learning, book and otherwise;



And try to not act like we have cabin fever!
Before you know it, it will be the end of another day in our little home, where the most important things ARE the small things, after all.

Love and blessings to you,

Marqueta

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter-and the Bird is on the Wing."

(From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)

An Invitation to Our New Blog

Good morning, dear Reader,

We are excited to launch a new little blog here from our home. If you've been here a while, you would have seen a post about "Wildlife Wednesday", which we were going to do weekly. We decided it would be better and more fitting to start a whole new blog; so that's what we've done!

I am glad to be able to honor my father, who was a real outdoorsman and nature-lover in every way.


We've just gotten started, so it's a little rusty yet, but here's the link: http://louisfranklinjonas.blogspot.com/

Feel free to pop over, and give us any feedback you would think would make the site more enjoyable.

Love,

Marqueta

Flower in the Crannied Wall

Flower in the crannied wall
I plucked you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

~Alred Lord Tennyson