Jane Eyre was shamed into a self abasement, which was dehumanizing...

in my opinion...

So now, we let children do as they like, for the most part in schools.

That is not the answer! Finding their handle is a hard job. We don't want to do it. We knock their handle off and give them a fake one, which is fear based.

I see children who are art motivated, letter motivated, building motivated, tactile motivated, taste motivated, etc., etc. They like certain things, but only certain things make them do their best.

My Dad had no other motivator, other than the whip or the "suzie Q". We spent our childhood running from the whip into the suzie q and back again. When that quiver of fear comes over me, I am not able to function at all. He absolutely overplayed the fear factor.

If you don't or do this or that...I will beat you within an inch of your life! etc.

We all had a ruler measuring our bodies to try to calculate how much an inch of our lives were. I still measure, whether I am within an inch of my life or not. Is this an inch away from death? etc. Do we want our children measuring their closeness to death for the rest of their lives? Our words have impact.

Lets teach them to run toward LIFE!

ie. I will kiss you until you find the tree of life!

I think that will work

A prayer for the souls of the dearly misunderstood head masters whom I know and don't know. May God great them true repentance and faith in their great task.

IJane eyre's serious blows to the sins of self righteousness.

The juxtaposition of Conventiality and self righteousness to morality and religion was Charlotte Bronte s great and well accomplished task.  The righteous need no physician and the self righteous seek no physician.  On the other hand, as parents of well reared children we fear for Theodore being taken advantage of by ill meaning soul thieves who would hang on their coat tails and vanquish their well intentioned neivite.  A life spent caring for a soul of someone who refuses the faith of Christ and doesn't allow you to pursue your faith is a torment which should and must be warned against.  I believe that Charlotte Bronte does both, warning and wooing people to a real and genuine profession of Christ.

{https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1260/1260-h/1260-h.htm.   }Link

Recently an obscure character has captured my imagination and I have considered how we express so little mercy for the Headmaster of the school in that story.  He has become a person of prayer consideration in my soul.  How many many well meaning instructors of righteousness may have missed the mark, as Talkative in "Pilgrims".  May God give me grace to follow the example of Charlotte Bronte and express my concern for their souls in some written form.  Amen.

September 2008. Repeat...

The bunnies were having devotions and they were reiterating for the most numerous of times, how God had delivered their species from destruction.  
As the bunnies tell it, an angel (and she doesn't know which) came and told all of the bunnies that it was going to rain and so many of them didn't believe, but their great....grand bunnies hopped directly to Mr and Mrs. Noah's house and waited for their brothers and sisters to follow. When God shut the door was when they knew that they would never see those bunnies again. Thank God for His preservative grace even to the creatures of the field!

Learning to Lean, when God calls you into a conference.

When I was a youngun, I complained and cackled before the Lord for every providential dissuasion from my plans. Why? Lord, don't you know that I had plans for that time that was lost to a flat tire. Oh so often, some great revelation of my children's lives would come out of the hours spent waiting for the tow truck or the help for our automotive distresses. We were privy to each other's every thought in the midst of a small car with 6 to 9 little people trapped inside on a highway or a major thoroughfare. I learned to see it as an opportunity to get to know the people that I was with, but yesterday it was a getting to know God in the sky. He has amazing moving pictures that are wondrous. I am grateful that the God of the universe entertains us in His mind and paints and designs ways to get our attention that are sometimes inconvenient, but always in His great love. Thank you Lord.

Heaven seems to celebrate with us...

The Sunday morning drive to church was filled with amazing cloud celebrations. I knew Heaven had heard my pray-do's of the day before and several portions of the sky seemed to dot stars and stripes in celebration of faith that God can clean us up.

Mr. Day and Mrs. Day seemed in charge of this celebration. Mr Day was holding up a plug and reminding me that he was anti electricity in his day. Beware of being the backward type of parent, he reminded me. The fact that I met him on the steps and he met me on the steps was an incredible occurrence. "These steps must be the cleanest on 5th Avenue, this is the way Mr. Day wants them kept." From the movie... We obstinate types have to stick together, he said to me. Spiritual obstinance and Bossyboots must stay on our knees in prayer, because we have a tendency to overdo them. He is grateful for the spiritual life that keeps him cleaning the steps to heaven. He wouldn't have it any other way. God is more meticulous than I could ever be and still more merciful.

My conversation with them was short and sweet. We have so much to talk about and they have so much to teach me having successfully made in into Heaven with 4 boy souls in an earlier generation. Mrs. Day is my heavenly godmother, so to speak. She understands what can make you miss heaven completely as a mother of so many children. There is a time for nursing them and there is a time to stop nursing them, she always reminds me. She never says to think about yourself, as is the theme of today's woman's movement, she always says try a new approach. I used scripture in measured doses, to the boys, she reminds me. You can't pour it all in there at one time. I know, but I just can't help it, I always keep pouring the scripture until I think they've gotten it. You aren't the Holy Spirit, Jayne. Just give the Holy Spirit something to use in their souls, that is all we are doing.

The flags were way above the clouds that were making me think of the Day family. There were faces, dotting here and there, through out the lower portion of the sky and I felt that there was a purposeful and settled comradery between the saints in Heaven and the saints on earth as we pursue the effort to make it to worship. There is never a more concerted labor between Heaven and Earth than when we are on our way to Worship. They seem to stick their hands out of the clouds to pop five at the beauty of people worshipping God for who He is on the Lord's Day.

The one's that I know, I have lengthy conversations in the celebration and the ones that I don't we just say is this a sacrifice of praise or a victorious day for you. They don't have sacrificial praise days, when their race is won, but they sympathize with our labor not being completed yet and they have so many encouraging exhortations that it picks you up from where ever you are. When we get to know the few people from the great cloud of witnesses that are encouraging us to keep on going and to do the labor that is set before us, we have greater tools to fight the good fight of faith.

Why is faith a fight?

I think that NC must have the cleanest steps in the country. I haven't been to every state, by any means. All I know is that Heaven seemed a lot further away in NY than it seems here. The seeds sown by Billy Graham of souls won for Christ all over the world seems to make it the pulley whereby God is pulling the earth to a greater knowledge of Himself. We can either work together with Him, or work against Him. I wouldn't want to be the person dirtying the steps of the Lord.

More than just a glimpse of heaven is the fruit of celebrating the Lord's Day. That isn't fiction!

Chapter 10 of Pilgrim's Progress is a wonderful expression of the earthly expectation of the Christian, when so much of suffering has past. There are seasons of refreshing and Derrick Thomas exposes this so very aptly, in his series on the Pilgrim's Progress, which I found on Prime Video's. I have been so blessed to hear these wonderful spiritual observations of a classic.

It is amazing and soul strengthening!

The Wonder of Sisterhood and Motherhood and how they mesh came clear in the new Little Women!

I guess that was where all my emotions went at celebrating the accomplishment of graduating from college. I hadn't thought that I would cry at the graduation. I thought I might have cried at the Markle wedding. The eyes were dry.

Surprise! there I am watching the Little Women series and I thought it was wonderfully done. The scene of the mother coming into the room and her extra giddy girls were whirling and twirling. I had been the girls, at one time. I had been the mother at one time and now my girls are fully women and past any of that whirly twirly stuff. How did I miss that passing? Where did it go to?