In His Image

Me and our youngest, Wayne, taken at 11:30pm because he wasn't sleepy. He had to share the joy!! 

As I entered my 20's, I started to see two different approaches to married life. One side seemed to focus more on their children and the other still went on dates and kept wooing each other. I watched my father start to date my Mom again and thought at the time that she acted rather giddy, like a teenager on a date, and during the day of, or after, her eyes had an extra sparkle in them. Thus when I got married, I didn't want to loose that fondness of pursuing each other. As a guy, I new that it would be very easy to start to see her as my Mom, there to do the laundry, cook the meals, wash the dishes, keep the house, and forget that she is the woman I wooed, the woman whose heart I had so diligently sought! Now it was mine, how would I treat it? So thus we try to go out on a date every two weeks. We often go to a little nicer restaurant and eat a leisurely meal and then go shopping if there is anything we need. Do we do anything glamorous? Not hardly! Unless you consi...

I have noticed something in my newness to the blogging world. There's Male blogs, and Female blogs. The male blogs tend to focus on controversy and things of weighty importance, while women tend to write from more personal, heartfelt emotions. Why is this? Maybe it is because God made us different. Us guys, tend to be somewhat like warriors! We divide and conquer! We show no emotion to feelings and tend to see things very strongly black or white. We must, if we are going to be strong and steady, and anchor in the storm, if you will. Why? Because God made us to love and cherish a woman, to protect her from the storms and be a rock for her to depend on. The female bloggers tend to write about personal happenings in their hearts and lives. They love to read what struggles other ladies have and realize their not going thru it alone. They seem to have no trouble acknowledging the fact that they blew it or struggling with something personal. Why? (shhhh.... only God ...

My children are constantly reminding me of my own halls of shame from my childhood. Take for instance this evening. The whole Stauffer tribe gets together every Saturday evening for supper and we take turns having it at each others houses. This evening went well with the men folk discussing septic systems and how to build your own chipper/mulcher. The ladies were likewise having a profitable time walking out amongst the flowers and talking over various gardening tips, and whatever else women talk about. My eldest son has just learned the neat trick of "going" outside. We are still trying to teach him the finer points of privacy and discretion in it's use. This evening tho, he decided the time had come to do #2 without the aid of anyone older than himself or any instruction in the matter. However, while he had learned to sit on a potty, he has not learned the art of squatting in such a way as to not fill ones own pants in the process. Thus he returns to the family, quite f...

Ok, time for something shorter! Today I had several blessings and one not so pleasant, blessing. I have to call it a blessing or it might be a curse and I wouldn't want to say that. First I went to Home Depot because I had received a letter in the mail saying that my rebate was denied because I was "ineligable." Huh? The local store helped me fill it out! I went in and nicely asked if there was anything they could do about it. They said that they could refund a portion of my original invoice if that would be ok with me? Fine enough here, it all spends the same way! But they had a problem, the computer kept wanting to give me $145 instead of the $105 I was due. They fussed around trying to get it to work and finally decided they didn't want to mess with it anymore and cheerfuly gave me a card worth $145! Praise God!! Secondly, we had gotten a newer van back in March, one with two sliding doors and needed to get rid of our older one. I tried to sell it for ov...

This afternoon I am rejoicing in the godly heritage that I have. For our afternoon service at our church, we had a “Singspiration” as we do every second Sunday of the month. This time we turned the benches around so that we were facing each other, and split into our four parts, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. The singing was just glorious and I realized again what rich heritage of Godly, inspirational music we have and often take for granted. The one song really touched me because it reminded me of the person who I first heard sing it. His name is Keith Yates, (more affectionately know as “Bear”) and he sang it for us one Sunday morning when he was visiting our church. Bear was born premature as one of a set of twins. The nurse made mistake in the amount of oxygen she put into his incubator and he became blind. His mother did not want to deal with a blind child and put him up for the state to take care of. Over the next 18 years, he was bumped around from one foster home to the next wi...

Last night we started to cut our supply of firewood for the winter. I know, I know, it's only May and we are still burning the wood stored from last winter. But I would rather cut wood now, than in the summer while being feasted on by our Minnesota state bird, the mosquito! It is different this year though because this is the first year that I am in charge of the job. Here's why. When I was 18, my father saw how easy it was for me to blow my money on things that don't really matter, ie. stereos, computers, hunting stuff. He encouraged me to build a "daughty house" on the back of our property. For those of you who don't know, a daughty house is a house that the newly weds move into after the wedding and then when their family gets too large for the house, the parents often have a empty nest and they swap houses. We started by tearing down two houses and reusing the lumber to start the new little house. It took 6 years to build but whenever I had some extra mone...

I still cannot believe that I am really doing this! For all of you blessed people that can just sit down at a keyboard and just let your thoughts roll out onto paper, I have one thing to say, I am not like that !!!! I can line up my thoughts as easily as you can train a chicken to use the privey! It gets worse. I was homeschooled my last 6 years and my parents said that for me to graduate, I had to do a term paper at least six pages long on the subject of my choosing. I started out fine. I did my interviews, read loads of information, but when I sat down with the paper in front of me to start writing, my thoughts all jumbled themselves up and then left! Without giving me their three week notice either! I am now 28 and still do not have a diploma. I confess I am a little embarrassed to go back and do it this late in the game. I mean, get real! Are they going to throw a graduation party for a married, 30 year old?!! How embarrassing! I can speak just fine! I can hold up three...

In my life as I grew up, Mother was always something of a fixture and that is how I often saw her. Just as you get light by turning on a light switch, so when you would get a skinned knee, Mother was there. When I would wake up in the middle of the night with a bad dream, or get hurt feelings when someone at school said something that wounded me, Mother was always there. It never occurred to me to wonder if she would have liked to be somewhere else, or if she would like to work at the job she used to. I never questioned why she always had breakfast ready when I got up, or supper ready when Daddy came home from work, that was what mothers were supposed to do! I felt that God must have given my mother to me instead of the other way around. Now that I am a new father and am watching the making of a mother before my eyes, I have a greater understanding and a much greater appreciation for all that is wrapped up in the word Mother . It had never occurred to me that it was a real chore to get...

Stauffer Tribe, July 2004