Rainy Day

Dear Folks,                              30th December 2015

   Our back deck is beautiful when it rains.  Not a simple rectangle, it speaks of original functional purpose in its design.  I do not sit on it; rather, I sit inside the sun room looking out on the deck and enjoy it intrinsically for its aesthetic appeal.  

   We have squirrels come on our deck.  I think I will collect a basket full of acorns and set them on the deck, if only to make it easy for the squirrels in their work allotment, coupled with the fact that I have no job and I love nothing so much as working.  

   There is a narrow walkway leading to the deck from the back porch.  And there is a fine crafted wooden bench in the middle of the deck, surrounding a hole where a maple tree rises.  

   My pulchritudinous, parsimonious better half would like to cut that tree, while I would persuade her to preserve it over time.  She fears it may grow huge and cost a lot to bring down.  I told her maples take a long time to get that big.  She asserts we will probably not have money for anything of that nature in the future.  

   Our immediate neighbor is a cheerful man, a horticulturalist.  He has large streams of runoff water coursing down through his pony and donkey pasture. There is nothing quite like living next door to a beloved donkey.  He erupts into a grand "Hee-hawing" session each morning.  I would not trade that for anything.  Plus, it is a sound which does not scold and anger my oldest son, who has psychosis and interprets each harsh sound as moral castigation of himself.  

   He has lately adopted an interest in bees and plans to raise them here. He should do well with them; he is an expert on raising mantises and cockroaches. My wife is pleased to see him discontinue raising cockroaches and take up some other insects, such as bees. I view honey production as a distinct difference between the two species.  

   I have honey in my Bengal Spice tea right now.  Raw, unfiltered honey would be better.  I raised bees in my twenties, and had a pollen trap on my hive.  People say bee pollen is good for you.  I have been blessed with health anyway so it is hard to say.  I do not eat much bee pollen now, but would not be averse to going back to that habit.  I would rather get it in the hands of people who prize it more, though, who could make better use of it.  

   There is a strong and wide network of believers here so I suppose I could donate bee pollen to some of them . . . for a small "rehoming fee."  I had never heard of a "rehome-ing" fee until a few days ago, when my wife was howling in great guffaws about it as she and our oldest son sat at the computer searching for hamsters to be given away on Craig's list.  People were claiming the hamsters were free to a good home, but they were asking for a "rehoming fee."  Never heard of that before.  But, I was gone to South Korea for 14 years and missed a lot of changes in the U.S. during my hiatus, which I like to call "the Rip Van Winkle effect."  


Here is a nice video about rhythm in Africa.  
    

Thanksgiving 2015

Dear Folks,                  Thanksgiving 

   Ashley and I are up early.  It is 9:00 a.m.  We are thankful that our God is one who does nothing halfway.  We are indelibly pleased to worship a God who is sovereign over all things, all nations, all people, all beasts, all of nature . . . all.

   We are pleased that our God is able to fight evil without us.  He says "Vengeance is Mine." That means to me that I should not try to get people back when they persecute me.  Jesus makes it clear in John 15 

(which I remember because I read it to my wife this evening in Sheetz during our annual Thanksgiving celebration.  We do not eat turkeys, or cook stuff at home for Thanksgiving.  We just go to Sheetz and get the two for a dollar hotdog deal.  It is great for us.  

Plus, we are neither picky nor fancy. Au contraire, we are easily satisfied with the most simple fare.  For us, the only thing that matters is that we walk with Jesus in all that we do.

    We know that other "gods" must rely on their believers to fight their wars for them.  For example, Dr. Heimbach, my ethics professor extraordinaire, tells us that Allah cannot fight, but needs believers to fight for him.  OK.  That sounds like a rather weak god, not one I would be pleased to worship.

    So, I am thankful that my God has all power, and uses it continuously in perfect accordance with His plan, meaning when we see what we think is evil, we know God allows it in His perfect response, a part of His perfect plan.  I pray we place ever greater confidence in that plan.

   Small Things:
   1. I am thankful that I caught the Lyme's Disease this past summer, and that it stayed with me giving me piercing headaches for several months.  That was the greatest blessing I can imagine, inasmuch as having a fine force to deal with and knock down my incipient pride wherever it threatens to rear its ugly pumpkin head.
   2. I am thankful that the Holy Spirit saw fit to use my oldest son's psychosis to bring him closer to the Lord.  He began singing hymns throughout the day, reading and memorizing Holy Scripture, and was endowed with a newfound willingness to read the Bible during our Bible study and worship sessions each night.  
   3. I am thankful that the Holy Spirit saw fit to work through my wife's GAD and SPD to bring her closer to Him.  She attended Small Group several times this past spring, until we made our exodus from the HOA home we formerly inhabited, up until July the 2nd of this year.
   4.  I am thankful to have a God who walks with me throughout the day.  I am thankful that He has seen fit to endow me with a wife who:
  A) has been a helpmate to me exceeding any I could have foreseen in accordance with my own, limited planning capacity.
  B) upon our first meeting readily agreed to follow the Bible as our basis of truth to sort out any future disagreements; 

  C) is the type of woman who is always interesting, a never-ending source of surprises, a fount of the unexpected on a quotidian basis -- for example, I did not expect to walk in the house yesterday afternoon after being gone all day, to discover that my intrepid better half had taken apart the wood stove, ash tray, stove pipe (into pieces), screws laying in a pile on the banister, and had been scrubbing the stove clean.

    I am thankful that God has been my bulwark in all adversity.

    My five children and I went on a trip yesterday to the local YMCA, where we juggled in the gym amidst basketball players, at mid-court off to one side, then later in a racquetball court, where we enjoyed freedom from interference by bouncing basketballs.
   I am thankful that we have a  YMCA which will let us come swim, do rock climbing, juggle, and whatnot for only 30 dollars per month.  That is a good deal, thanks to my low income student status.

   Here is a video of Gideon in his winter doggie hut.     

Sincerely, Nathaniel 

Here is Daddy Kissing Mamma at Sheetz

Father and Mother Together at Sheetz Thanksgiving 2015

Ashley and Jordan Playing a game

Whole Family Minus Jordan

Mamma and Nathaniel 

Ashley helps David Play the game

Our Whole family Thanksgiving at Sheetz 2015

Passing Clubs behind Sheetz 

Soul Food

Dear Folks,

   Since moving to our new home, 3813 Graham Sherron Road, I have found better ways of applying this Soul Food prescription more consistently and faithfully, with greater regularity.   

"Rx: one hour qd, doing something solo that you enjoy" (7th July 2014)
     Dr. Williams Prescription for me: "I want to continue to encourage you to find a way to get some time for yourself to feed your soul. That is important for you and also for your family, to see that you are not the indispensable one. I do understand that on a practical level this is difficult. But I do think it is worth pursuing." (Spring 2015) 


Gardening: Working in our garden has been most gratifying.  Too, I seem to relax more.
Reading:  I have been working on getting more time to read articles, visiting Facebook and pulling articles of interest to me.  My Facebook Friends are interesting, from all walks of life, and do me the unwitting service of saving me from having to ever surf the Internet to find the best of the best articles in just about every field.  I have Statist or Leftist friends, Conservative Friends, Back-to-Nature/Homesteading Friends, High Tech IT Friend, Environmentalist/Energy Conscious Friends, Theological Friends, and Musically Oriented Friends Galore.  

Prayer time.  I have been working on getting more consistent prayer time, and this has been a deep, rewarding pleasure.  

Property Perusal and Planning:  Walking around the property has been a source of deep and abiding joy for me.  I size up the trees, assess and memorize the boundaries, and decide where I will put what particular buildings and other structures in the future, such as fencing, tree houses (a major planning investment), walkways, benches, large trees, small herb/shade flower gardens, koi pond, Rock Garden, covered Picnic table, berry garden, vegetable garden, badminton and volley ball court, more benches, horseshoe pitts, baseball hitting cage and small zoysia grass field for throwing baseball, juggling and frisbee.

This house is the only home we have ever lived in that every member of the family likes and intends to make a permanent home for our current Long Yang Family.  Living in a permanent home makes all the difference in the world when you walk around assessing the property's potential.  Planning takes a lot of thought, and I love being involved in this development.  It is a rich stewardship pleasure of participation in optimizing the potential of this property. 
 

Joue au Bicyclette:  Biking is a deep and abiding pleasure and joy for me.   

Counseling Prescriptions To Husband: 
  1.  Source of Fears:  Try to discover the sources of your wife's fears.  I call these (SOFs), and have been listing them over time, as I discover them.  
 2.  Soul Food:  Get one hour per day to yourself.  If you cannot do one hour, do thirty minutes.  (I assume this means something like walking, stretching, or reading, if it is not an assigned text, to do something I enjoy. I assume biking with Ashley does not count, even though we do not talk much while biking . . . not sure.)  
    7th July 2014 quote "Rx: one hour qd, doing something solo that you enjoy"

   Follow-up a year later, Dr. Williams Prescription for me: "I want to continue to encourage you to find a way to get some time for yourself to feed your soul. That is important for you and also for your family, to see that you are not the indispensable one. I do understand that on a practical level this is difficult. But I do think it is worth pursuing."

At the Water's Edge

Dear Folks,                                    1st November 2015
   Life in Granville County is slower than that of Her southern neighbor, Wake County.  We tend to cultivate fewer soccer moms, enduring the hustle and bustle of Raleigh traffic to get where their children need to be for various academic and extracurricular activities.  At the same time we seem to cultivate relatively more time watching the sunset from our porches, and listening to the crickets in the summer evenings.  It is not such a bad life, but you must be in tune to the Lord, as there are fewer man-made stimuli to distract you.
   We may not sit in church many more hours per week, but His Words resonate with us more in our quieter moments, if only because we have more of them. And that resonance sustains a dear and cherished friendship.

   David, 7, is beside me, working on a castle to house a transformer of his.  He has just about got it finished.  We are sitting in the sun-room, on the southeastern side of our home.   

At the Lake

   Yesterday, David, Christopher (11), Nathaniel (17), and I went to a park.  I will upload a few photos from that time.
Here is Christopher on his giraffe unicycle:  

  And here are David and Christopher playing down by the water's edge.