I'm finally feeling good. I'm about 98% over my flu. My house and yard are far from recovering, though. I sure let things slide when I was sick. Whatever you do, don't pop into my house for a visit in the near future!!

I am trying to not do everything all at once because I don't want to wear myself down to make sure I don't get sick again. I need to make sure I mix sit-down jobs in with the others. As a matter of fact, I am working on this in bits and pieces this morning because it is a sit-down job. So, if you look and I am gone.... I'll be back!

The wind here is absolutely whipping! It started last evening with a soft breeze. It then got really hard. The worst part was it would stop every now and then throughout the night and start back up with a huge BANG! I've never known it to do that before. It usually just blows steadily for a few days.

A few times it sounded like it was lifting our roof. I kept hearing crashing and banging all night. Our neighbor has been collecting junk and it is piled up in her back yard. I could hear stuff banging around over there. Unfortunately, her junk is right outside our bedroom window.

Needless to say, I am tired. I don't think I slept longer than an hour at a time last night. Is it nap time yet?

Do you have a daily devotional book? I've found that some of them are very good and most of them have enough good stuff in them that it is worth doing.

A daily devotional has 365 individual devotionals divided up by day of the month. They generally start out with a scripture and then have comments on the scripture. One of my prayer partners and I have been doing devotionals for a few years and now we are able to trade books so we don't have to buy any more for a few more years.

I begin my morning time with the Lord doing the devotional. It gets me thinking about spiritual things. Then I begin to pray or I open my Bible and begin to read.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I had to learn a lot of things on my own because other people wouldn't share with me. For many years I didn't know there was even such a thing as a Christian book store with Christian books and things in it. Had I known there were daily devotional books I would have begun doing them a long time earlier than I did. That's why.

I finally got all my Christmas decorations boxed up today. I've had to get caught up on more important things and decorations were not near the top of the list. Now I have to clean clean CLEAN my house. I've been giving my vacuum cleaner a workout. I hadn't vacuumed since before I got sick.

As I am sitting here I feel like all my energy is draining out of my feet onto the floor. I wore myself out. I think today is an excellent day for a nap. Funny, I mentioned taking a nap in last week's message. Maybe Monday is nap day. As a matter of fact, I am going to go rest now. I want to give you my best and right now my best seems to have oozed onto the floor.

I have been thinking about things I'd like to do and have come up with a plan. One day a week I will go visit and help my mom. One day a week I will catch up on my correspondence and will visit with my friends.

One day a week I will work on making birthday and Christmas presents and catch up on my mending and ironing. One day a week I will work on the Clarion Call. One day a week I will work on catching up on my photo albums, scrapbooks, filing, and organizing.

One day a week I will spend in my prayer closet. Two days a week I will do laundry, shopping, cleaning, and other household chores. One day a week I will work outside in the garden and on other outside things.

Let's see, have I left anything out? I think I will throw in one day a week just to be able to do whatever else needs to be done, including relaxing.

Wait, I think I will have to double each of those days because I forgot to add in the time I spend cooking, taking care of my animals and plants, and taking care of other things on a daily basis.

There, that should get me organized and enable me to do all the things I need to and want to do.

Hmmmm.... Something tells me I have neglected to take something into consideration....

My house looks decent for the first time since before Christmas. I've whittled away at the piles of mail and put-away's. I've dusted and vacuumed. I pruned my roses and all the plants in the front yard. Oh, I've been a busy girl.

The next thing on my agenda is taking care of mountains of paperwork. I have to prepare our tax stuff, file last years stuff, and more. Plus, I have a long list of things I want to do here at the Clarion Call. I still have backed up email that needs to be read and some sent out on the mailing list.

I put my husband in charge of my health next Christmas. I told him to make sure I don't get sick. You should have seen the look he gave me. Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks I am crazy. LOL

There are so many times that I wished I could have many days in a row where I didn't have to do anything else but read my Bible, pray, and commune with God. I am so far from where He would have me be.... at least that is how I feel. I want to know so much more about Him and about spiritual things. I feel like I am trapped in my body and that it keeps me from being fully used by Him.

The things that I do each day feel like they are drawing me away from Him. Yet, I know that they are things that He wants me to do because they are things that affect my family.

I have to keep reminding myself that He has placed me right where I am... in this house, with this family, with these friends, etc. He laid the idea in my heart to create the Clarion Call. He's responsible for it being here. My ministry is my "sphere of influence" and nothing more. He is in charge of sending me or bringing others.

It's amazing how easily I get distracted. Monday morning I started working on this Bible study. I keep track of each week's Bible study on a chart. I fill it in manually for a while and then I type it up and save it on the computer. I filled in the last space and had to catch up. I couldn't find it on my computer so had to go to my last backup and find it. While I was at it I found some other charts I had done that needed to be updated. Soooo... that led me on a different track. One thing led to another and then it was Tuesday. I had to get my truck serviced on Tuesday and it took longer than usual because it was the 30,000 mile checkup. I sat down to work on the Bible study and I had to go run some errands. Next thing I knew it was Wednesday! Sheesh!

The Internet is a wonderful and an awful thing. As I was checking links I found some very very strange sites. Some people have some very strange ideas about God and about Jesus. Unfortunately they are apparently unaware that their opinions mean absolutely nothing until they get verification from God. They are numbering themselves among the different denominations, sub denominations, and all the rest of the groups that have different opinions on what scripture means.

I try to search for good sites using certain key words like edification, spiritual, and God. I get links to pages about satanism, New Age stuff, and fortune tellers. Lots of search engines have pages lumped into categories. The general breakdown I follow is "society, culture, or lifestyles" then "religion" and "Christianity." Then, once you get to Christianity there are more sub categories. It is amazing how many of them then list subcategories that have nothing to do with Christianity. Satan has his hand in the Internet in a big way, but we can get around him. Like it says in James 4:7, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." We just must persist.