“The RoseBouquet”

All of us have a longing to be understood and loved, to have someone better than us, validate us and say, “You are okay. You’re doing fine. I like you just the way you are.”

We want someone to confide our deepest thoughts and secrets to, but it must be someone whom we can trust utterly, who will never disregard or despise us for things we say or do, and who will speak encouragement and hope into our lives. This is intimacy on a spiritual level.

You may be a very fortunate person; you grew up in a home where your parents adored you, and were very close to you, and you to them, and you felt completely safe to be yourself with them. Or you have (or had) a marriage where your spouse was wonderfully affirming and thought the world of you, and was your greatest secret-keeper. It made you feel so fulfilled and complete to be with that loved one. You might also have had - or hopefully still have - a tremendous friend! Those are all forms of intimacy that are healthy to us in every way.

The problem is - not everyone is so fortunate. I grew up in a home where my parents did not know how to express affection and affirmation outright. I had to learn to read it from them in other ways. My mother was sickly so often and so long, that it got to be a way of life for her, and my life involved taking on her chores in the home from the time I was a young girl, and then returning later in life to look after her in Mom’s old age until she died November 11, 1997. When I read of other girls who could talk things over with their mothers, and go shopping together, I melted with envy.

For years I fantasized about a perfect husband. In a way I suppose those fantasies met a need for an intimate, understanding and loving companion. But the day came when I realized they were nothing but fantasies, and not prophecies. They would never come to pass.

Happily, I had also learned to pray as a girl of about nine, and carried on vivid internal conversations with a Lord and Best Friend, whom I knew to be always there, never putting me down, always ready to listen, no matter how much I had to say, and when I really listened to Him, or read His Word, I discovered that He spoke to me. Always ever so gently when He had to rebuke me for turning down a wrong path, but mostly with love and encouragement and wisdom and strength to go on and do what was right. It is only now in later years that I’m finally grasping how marvelous and wonderful that intimacy with Jesus Christ is!

The best part is that He is quite capable of having such a precious relationship with you too. He has the capacity to do this with every individual in the world, who wants to walk and talk with Him as the dear old gospel song,
In the Garden says. It has become a passion of mine to share this good news with others.

Yes! You can have this wonderful intimacy with Jesus too! A tailor-made relationship suited perfectly to you, and your needs, and the ways you can enjoy best. It won’t be identical to mine, but it will be every bit as special!

You might think that you don’t know just how to go about this. Especially if you’ve limped along without it so many years. That’s why in this particular site, I’m focusing on articles to help show how this relationship can be developed, and how it works. I do hope these pages will be a rich blessing to you!

One of the secrets to having this intimacy with Jesus and God our Heavenly Father, is to have a better grasp of what He is like, and how He operates in this great universe. To that end, I’ve written up an over-view in four pages;
Everything Starts with an Intelligent Designer
How God’s Agenda Unfolds for the Human Race
How I see the Future & Answering some Misconceptions
Time and Timelessness How Will You Spend Them?

Another secret is to spend lots of private time worshipping and praying to God, and reading the Bible. So you’ll find I’m continually adding page about — Intimacy Through Prayer:
Are you Tenderhearted? Easily Touched or Moved? Welcome!
Worshipping God Leads to Intimacy with Him
How Intimacy is Giving God Pleasure - This page defines worship as pleasing God, and discusses the various ways we can express our worship.
A Glad, Believing Mindset
How to Pray in a Panic

I’ve also written a novel to demonstrate what this kind of intimacy can be like. You can follow the heroine, Ruthe, around, and watch to see how it works out in her life. If you hunger for this kind of intimacy, believe me, you would find this book a wonderful tonic to you! You ought to order it and read it!

Naturally then, some of my pages reveal how this shows up in Ruthe’s Secret Roses, and offers explanations;
Ruthe’s worldview - as found in the novel.

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at the Index

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; order page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; the Booklocker.com page

When you know that company is coming that hasn’t been to your house before, do you suddenly see your surroundings in a new light?

That’s what’s happening to me these days. A pen pal from Vancouver, B.C. is coming for a visit Wednesday. (That’s why I’m writing this ahead). Although I do a usual cleaning on Saturday, my regular domestic day, I keep turning around and spotting things that would look messy or cluttered to Betty. For us they have just been handy lying there, but now they seem to be out of place. I did some extra tidying in the guest bedrooms and the kitchen yesterday. Today I’m baking buns again, and I’m noticing the floors and stuff piled here and there… so I’m snatching things up and tidying some more as I go.

Betty is in Saskatoon to check out some innovative methods of a nursing home there, for ideas to take back to her place of work, but tomorrow (Wed.) morning we’re go pick her up at her hotel, we’ll get in some shopping, and bring her home here for the afternoon and supper. Then we must get her back to the airport by 7:30 pm.

Actually. The trickier part is deciding which things from my work schedule can be bumped and which things I must do ahead because Wednesday all day is going to be a mini-holiday with Betty. As you can see, this RoseBouquet got a must-do place in the schedule.

By the way, spring has come to these parts. The roads are nearly dry. Today it was warm again and the snow and ice melted off some of the sidewalks. The big drifts of snow grow dirtier all the time as they shrivel and shrink and seep away. Dad has our rain barrels set up under the new eavestrough, and they are brimming over!

Make-over of sites continues. The end of the Ruthes-SecretRoses.com make-over may only be weeks away now instead of months or years. Hallelujah!

I’ve been using my novel-marketing hour to fix up the intimacy sub-domain. If I get the index done this week it will be ready for promotion and advertising. Adding more pages too, of course.

I confess I’m getting a little carried away with making sample templates up in the Azaleas section of the business site, but I thought I should show off my abilities. They have improved considerably since I made that first few sample templates..

The forms on the genealogy site still won’t give way to me. Hmm! I’ll conqueror ‘em yet!

My main focus at the moment is this one day holiday I’m taking for a Pen Pal of many years. I may have a photo story next week, who knows?

I’ve had a bone density test six years ago, and again two weeks ago. This afternoon (Tuesday) I went to see the doctor to find out the results. To prepare myself, I did some checking online. Here’s some helpful sites about osteoporosis;

This one is beautiful for simplicity of presentation and explanation, courses.washington.edu/bonephys

This one answers a lot of questions, www.nof.org/osteoporosis/faq.htm

This one has good answers too, www.osteoporosis.ca/english/home/default.asp?s=1

I like this page with the personal stories of people with osteo, http://www.osteoporosis.ca/english/personal%20stories/default.asp?s=1

P.S. Yes. I’ve got osteo. Do you have any idea what the prescriptions cost?!!

Every once in a while I find myself in a position where I have to explain again, why I gave up my job and home and friends in London, Ontario, and moved back to Hague, Saskatchewan to be a live-in caregiver for my parents. At that, with no guarantees but a bed, my meals, and a roof over my head in all seasons.

It’s a long story and has many angles to it. The super-condensed version is that when I was really willing to do anything God asked me, even go to Timbuktu (somewhere in Africa, I think), God began to gently, continually put before me the plan to go home, right relationships with my parents, and be there for them. He promised me that I would get to write, and I would have great joy in doing this. For more than that, I would have to exert myself to trust Him.

Have you ever trusted God for something really big? Or really impossible? If so, I bet you found it easier at the beginning when you first caught the vision of what you were going to do, but then came the slower slugging through one long day after another, right?

Keeping the vision polished and shiny bright, carries you along for a while. Eventually the times come when you have to re-affirm and re-assert your pledge of trust and faith in God. Otherwise, you end up falling by the wayside.

The strangest, comforting thing is that once you are a long ways down that path you can turn and look over your shoulder to see the distance you’ve covered ’somehow’ and realize that your faith has stretched and grown far beyond what you first ever dreamed or imagined.

I suspect this happens too, in marriages that have rocky starts, but both spouses hang in there, work through the problems, and eventually come to smoother spells.

If we ever think we’re going to develop a rich and living faith a few minutes after asking for it, we are looking through cheap rosy sunglasses. Ones that distort the truth.

Today I’m doing a bit of looking over my shoulder though, and gazing at the hills I’ve come over.

One. I see that I have learned to do without a lot of material ’stuff.’ Turns out I didn’t need it after all. Materialism has been exchanged for a spirit of contentment.

Two. My, but I have learned to make do, and make gifts out of the very stuff that lies around unused. It is also surprising how often someone slips me a bag of odds and ends because they remember that I like to make cards and gifts. I have more on hand than I can use up!

Three. Whenever I’ve stopped thinking something is hopelessly too expensive for me, and started praying for it, God has provided. If it was urgent, like a tooth extraction, the funds suddenly came in. Last year I prayed for 11 months for new glasses, but I had to start praying with patience, and true faith. When I did, I suddenly received almost twice the amount needed!

Four. When I review such stories of God’s faithful provision, and the perfect timing of His gifts, and when I express my gratitude, my faith is like a plant sprouting fresh shoots and new growth. There is value in remembering these things. I must make more of an effort to share them.

If you are afraid of what lies ahead in your life, let me coax you to make a deliberate decision to trust God. Study up on His promises in the Bible if you need reassurance, that He is well able and willing to provide all your true needs. Beyond that, apply some of the lessons I’ve learned;

1. Expect your faith to be tested. That’s the only way God will grow your faith - by stretching it.

2. Learn to recognize the things you don’t need, and let go. Stop pining for them. Relationships and spiritual treasures are worth far more than your “things.”

3. Expect to exercise resourcefulness and creativity. See them as gifts God is holding out to you! You’ll learn new skills.

4. Whenever you feel you really need something, start praying about it. It will come about the time you really believe God is going to provide it. And it will almost always be in the nick of time.

5. Don’t keep God’s exciting provisions all to yourself. Tell others! It will revolutionize their faith as well as yours.

Note: in my novel, Ruthe has to exercise some faith too. In some areas it comes easier than others. But she grows as she throws herself into it. You could learn from Ruthe…

To read sample chapters of my first novel online, start at the index

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; the order page (or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; Comments (0)

You might have thought I only have one novel that I ever talk about, right? Well, “published” yes, but my imagination is filled with a whole series of them. I’ve just been trying to get the first one selling well before I divide my attention too finely.

I have been working on the next one in the series, which is where the heroine, Ruthe, finally gets romantic. Marriage and love and a new family come into her life here. Last year I could only take half days off on holidays to treat myself to a novel-writing block of time. This year I’ve assigned my Tuesday nights, when I don’t have meetings related to the tract mission, or other things that preempt that evening.

Last night I got back to it after two Tuesday nights being taken. Oh what fun. I felt like I was indulging in a bubble bath or some private pleasure. The first draft of the book is now more than half written. Naturally, I will be going over it several times as a severe editor, but this first time is when I get to write the story as it unfolds in my imagination, and though I’ve day-dreamed about it often, this is almost like a first-time experience. Such fun!

Who knows, maybe later I’ll find myself editing out these too-pretty scenes, but right now I’m writing for my own enjoyment.

This may be the part wanna-be writers think about when they say they wish they could be a writer. (Mind you, some I think dream only about the fame part that comes AFTER their great book is written). If you are one of them, let me urge you to set aside a block of time as often as you dare, once a month, once a week, or once a day. Write the kind of stuff you’d love to read, and you’ll get so hooked on it you won’t have any trouble sticking to your schedule when you start shifting into serious, professional writing. Give yourself a honeymoon at the start of your writing career (marriage).

Yes, I’m still doing reno (make-over) work on my website. But I think I see daylight breaking over the BouquetofEnterprises site. I may get that all done by the end of March. Then I want reassign that hour to promoting that site, and finding good places to advertise.

Just this week I’ve designed a new page header for the Azaleas section of that site. Doing so led to some interesting discoveries in my graphics program called GIMP. Mine doesn’t seem to connect to it’s manual, but I’m finding lots of sites out there that offer tutorials. So now I’ve learned to do drop-shadows on text that looks quite professional, and found out I can do text in a multitude of ways by clicking on items in a sub-menu off one I didn’t know what it was for all this time.

Playing with arts and design has me like a wee tyke in a sandbox, scooping it up in the air, patting it here, and ‘making’ this and that, and trying something new every few minutes. My work is my play once I learn a few new techniques in something like this GIMP program.

By the way, that Azaleas section, is where I offer my services for web design, e-book compiling, editing of manuscripts, or other creative works, and I promise to do them with my flare for imagination.

I had finished updating my book reviews section, and stopped a few days to start to research the old books in that box full I mentioned last week. The very first one I picked up was Phronsie Pepper, and it got me off on a whole morning of fascinating discoveries. I’ll tell you more about them, and what I’m finding out about Victorian era children’s’ series books and authors further down in the Ruthe’s Roses section of this blog/ezine.

What you don’t find when you are researching something else!
(People really do come to a site because of a Google link, spot a link off to the side, and go discover some surprise, which says it’s good advice to add links on most every page).

Here is artwork featuring a Laughing Jesus.

And I got held up a long time reading this very long page about the prophecies this Romanian man had about the future of America. WhatSaiththeScripture It will shake you up!

by Margaret Sidney, author of: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, D. Lothrop, 1881. Illustrated by Arthur Becher
Published by Grosset & Dunlap, New York. Copyright, 1807, by Lothrop Publishing Company.

That’s the information in this old copy I have in hand. Doing some research online I made some exciting discoveries about the author of the “Five Little Peppers and How They Grew,” a book that I received for Christmas shortly after I learned to read at about age seven, and I read it over many times to my younger siblings.

Until this “Phronsie Pepper” book came into my hands just before Christmas 2005 I had no idea that the author had written a series about this delightful family. I really knew nothing of her at all until I put her name into Google.

It turns out this woman was famous for writing a whole series about that poor Pepper family back in Queen Victoria’s day. She was part of the very begining of books written expressly for children, and in series no less! I had no idea!

First, I should say about this particular book, that I enjoyed it a lot. In this book, Phronsie, the cute baby in the Five Peppers book is grown up, but not married yet. Her romance is the centre of this story. However, there are little nieces and nephews in the book, so it is still very much a family book.

I guess I have grown up some over the last fifty years, and got used to our modern media, because I sure did notice the sweetness of the victorian touch, yet I found it strangely a relief from the bluntness and harshness of much of today’s literature.

Was I ever glad to see some godly parenting and teaching of moral standards woven right into the story as if it belonged there. No apologies.

In this book Phronsie Pepper ends up going aboard with Mr. King their long-time benefactor, who has become their beloved grandfather. He is trying to make up for the fact that he drove away the young man that wanted to propose to Phronsie, because he thinks he will be deprived of his pet. She ends up nursing that young man back to health, and of course, does marry him.

The further I read, the more I began to prize this book. The hard cover is a plain brown, and the pages are also browned with age, but it makes wonderful reading, and I shall treasure it until just the right niece or great-niece is ripe for it.

In case you have not “discovered” this author before, let me share with you what I’ve found.

Margaret Sidney was the pen name of Harriett Mulford Stone Lothrop. There is a delightful write up on her life and writings on the ReadSeries.com site by Norma Bright Carson, who interviewed Mrs. Lothrop herself. Carson describes how Lothrop entertained herself with the Pepper children in her daydreams for years before she entered a short story in a magazine, and then another, and then the requests began to pour in for a whole book. Then more books!

The Lothrops lived in the same house where Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott (at different times) had lived, and she did much to preserve the place, as well as other homes of well-known authors of that day. Her husband was a publisher, and they were very much a part of the publishing scene in New England.

I learned of the other titles, and I see that most of them have been published online at the Project Gutenberg. The Series by Margaret Sidney;
* Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1880) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Five Little Peppers Midway (1890) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Five Little Peppers Grown Up (1892) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Phronsie Pepper, the Youngest of the Five Little Peppers (1897)

* Stories Polly Pepper Told (1899)

* Adventures of Joel Pepper (1900) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Five Little Peppers Abroad (1902) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Five Little Peppers at School (1903)

* Five Little Peppers and their Friends (1904) Online at Project Gutenberg

* Ben Pepper (1905)

* Five Little Peppers in the Little Brown House (1907)

* Our Davie Pepper (1916)

I haven’t checked each book individually, but if it appears on the Gutenberg.org site, it is most likely in the public domain and you are free to put that book on your web site or create an e-book of it to give away. Or, I suppose you can sell it if you produce in a unique or special way.

ReadSeries.com/ collects OLD childrens’s series and has background info and lists. You can also get to read sample chapters at ClassicReader.com. I’m not sure but I think ALL of the “Five Little Peppers” book is on Acacia.pair.com! I found most of the chapters at any rate. Part of the “Joel Pepper” book is at online-literature.com.

Obviously, I haven’t come to the bottom of this. Now I must read the rest if I possibly can!

Perhaps you are such a thoroughly modern Milly, that you do not care for old Victorian era children’s series, but if you have never tried them, I think you ought to do the fair and tolerant thing, and read at least one or two of these books about the Pepper family. Give yourself permission to enjoy the moment by moment scenes or ordinary life in a family where the siblings love each other most of the time, and truly care for one another no matter what befalls them.

You are bound to come away refreshed and wishing for such kind relationships in your own life.

So far I haven’t discovered too exotic prices for these old books if you find one, except that on Amazon you can get a used one for over $30, and some in worse shape for less. However, you should feel free to download and read the free editions off of the Guttenberg.org site, and of course print them out if you prefer them on paper.

To read sample chapters of my first book online, start at the Order Page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

To order the softcover paperback from Booklocker use; from Booklocker

Whew! Here in Saskatchewan people were congratulating themselves on a fine, light winter. Not very much snow, milder temperatures and no blizzards. On March 1, that changed. We’ve averaged fresh snow falls, a whole day or more at a time, at least two or three times a week! This last week there were some strong winds involved, but I don’t know that it was a full blizzard yet.

Fortunately Dad and I don’t have to travel very often; we can be more relaxed. Still, we’ve had our share of snow to shovel.

To give you an idea I’ve prepared a photo story page, with snap shots taken with my mini-digital camera. They are not as sharp at a regular camera takes, and only 2 mega-pixels (4 is better), but these pictures will give you a clue as to what we are dealing with. March Snows.

They were taken last week Wednesday and Thursday. We had more snow on the weekend, but right now the sun is sparkling brightly back from the white snow, and the temperatures have dropped.

Hey, let’s look on the bright side. Today is the Ides of March, spring can’t be far around the corner!