Wonderings in My Head

2003-08-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Well,well,well here I am back in the blogging world. I really don't have much to blog about cept to say we have finally moved into our new home. We are still in the midst of unpacking and sorting things out, hanging pictures etc. I am sitting on a box in my new computer/craft room(crap room as Todd calls it) typing this. I love my new kitchen. I can't wait to really get in there and do some cooking. We leave on Friday to drive down to S. Calif. We must get our daughter's friend home. We will meet with our church community on Sunday and then hit the road back to Idee-ho. Carol starts school on the 25th. Junior High for her. I remember when she started kindergarten!!! Time flies. We floated down the Boise River this past Sunday. What fun it was. Well not much wonderings going on in my head for now. Take care.

2003-04-02T00:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I arrived home Sunday afternoon after a two day drive through California and Nevada and on into Idaho with Jonathan, Carol Ann and my friend and mother-in-law, Jackie. We unloaded all our stuff and just about immediately went over to our under construction home to meet with the electrician. Then out to dinner and home to finish unpacking all the supplies I brought back from Trader Joe's and Henry's Marketplace and the Japanese market, Marukai. Only to wake up Monday morning and be wisked off (very willingly) to the Presbytarian church at 10th and State St. to sit at NT Wright's feet and listen to him talk about Resurrection all day and then meet with us Allelon folks for about an hour. I was surprised to see that I was able to follow his talking/teaching. I am in no way, shape or form an intellectual type person so I was glad that I made it through the whole day. Plus I have my hubby, Toddly to give me the "NT for Dummies" explanation about a few things. When he met with us Allelon folks Todd told him we were very much students of all he has written. Then he proceeded to ask him, in the light of that, how do we do "church"? NT did not give us an answer. That question is something I have been "wondering" about for quite some time. I have not been satisfied with what we did down in Calif. in our sweet community of folks down there. They are in the midst of great turmoil over this issue right now. How did the early church do "church". Firstly, I thought, each one of us, is "the church" not some building or order of service. I am a very simple and pragmatic person. This can't be that complicated. I by no means have the answer or even a suggestion on how to do "church". I think the answer is probably something very simple and uncomplicated. Maybe we should start with Loving God with all our hearts, minds and souls and each other. If we are the "church" then I would tend to believe that we would be doing "church" stuff wherever we are. Meaning, taking care of your family, helping your neighbor, visiting someone in a rest home who has no family,giving the homeless person you run into on the street some money without any expectations of what they will do with the money, holding the door open for the person entering behind you etc. etc.etc. I have a hard time believing Jesus came to cause us to be in such turmoil over this. I suspect the early church met together to eat, hear some teaching, sing songs, pray together, and to make sure the needs of any folks in their midst who needed help got the help they needed and share the stories of their days between gathering. I love being with folks, sharing what's happening in our lives, the good and the not so good, eat together, worship God together and pray for each other, staying in touch with each other in between gatherings by doing things together.

Ya, know, after re-reading this, I really do believe that this all comes down to Loving God and our neighbor. Jesus did. He spent lots of time with the Father and from there went and loved everyone he came into contact with. How come I can't do that?(You too, if it applies in your life) What things are so dang important that I put aside time with God? That's what I must beg God to help me do. Just be with Him. I think my wonderings are turning into pleas to God for help! So help Lord!!! Please, I am not asking for any advice, so please don't give me any "how to list". It will end up in the trash bin after being spit upon. BUT, I would love to hear your story about how you get yourslef to spend time with the Father. Blessings to you and on you with love, the Wondering Woman

2003-03-19T07:45:00.000-08:00

March 19
Abraham’s Life of Faith

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He went out, not knowing where he was going
—Hebrews 11:8

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the Old Testament, a person’s relationship with God was seen by the degree of separation in that person’s life. This separation is exhibited in the life of Abraham by his separation from his country and his family. When we think of separation today, we do not mean to be literally separated from those family members who do not have a personal relationship with God, but to be separated mentally and morally from their viewpoints. This is what Jesus Christ was referring to in Luke 14:26 .

Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason—a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world.

The final stage in the life of faith is the attainment of character, and we encounter many changes in the process. We feel the presence of God around us when we pray, yet we are only momentarily changed. We tend to keep going back to our everyday ways and the glory vanishes. A life of faith is not a life of one glorious mountaintop experience after another, like soaring on eagles’ wings, but is a life of day—in and day—out consistency; a life of walking without fainting (see Isaiah 40:31 ). It is not even a question of the holiness of sanctification, but of something which comes much farther down the road. It is a faith that has been tried and proved and has withstood the test. Abraham is not a type or an example of the holiness of sanctification, but a type of the life of faith-a faith, tested and true, built on the true God. "Abraham believed God . . ." ( Romans 4:3 ).

Oswald Chambers

2003-03-12T09:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally decided to blog. Actually, I am avoiding the tedious task of inputting my email address book. I tried to import it but to no avail. It's gonna take at least 2-3 hours.Life at the Hunter household is pretty good. Other than Jonathan and Carol Ann bickering at each other, me and Todd bickering at them to stop bickering at each other, and the little scare of the dog running loose about the apartment complex last night(it's hard to see a black short legged Scottish Terrier at night) things are pretty calm and peaceful. I am enjoying the slower pace of life here in Eagle. Our home is coming along slow but sure. It's fun watching it go from paper to reality. Me and the kids are taking a road trip down to Southern Calif. on the 21st. It is Carol's spring break and I told her we would go down so she could visit her friends. I know "E.D." (Ed) will emerge outta me once we are there.(E.D. stands for my evil twin: Evil Debbie) Southern California drivers suck!! They are always in a hurry to get one freakin car ahead of you and they are dumb asses about it. Then "ED" likes to tick them off even more by driving slower or speeding up so they can't pass.(There you go, "ED's" already here, actually Jonathan helps ED out quite a lot or even a rotten roll of the Yahtzee dice can do it). Enough true confessions. I really am trying not to let ED emerge so much. Ah, the flesh is so weak. Now before you go telling me to shape up be sure the log in your own eye is removed. (Was that ED or Debbie who typed that?) Only God knows my heart. Ok, God told me, it's both. I have had, of late, the knowledege of folks truly believing they are justified in being "God's policeman about everybody else's life cept their own. These folks sit in judgement about people's lives and expects them to listen to the critism and change their lives because they believe they are right, yet they have these huge-mongous logs in their own eyes. They can't see themselves because the logs have so blinded them. So now they feel shunned by everyone. If I were these folks I would take a look at the fact that it's EVERYONE who is avoiding them. Then I would think, ok, if it were just one person I would tend to think that maybe it's just an isolated thing between me and this person, but EVERYONE, I would think the problem lies with me.What have I done or what in me is causing people to avoid me? Why can't we love one another into being loving people? ED would say "because there are a whole bunch of buttheads out there, especially the ones who call themselves "Christians". Debbie says, Love covers a multitude of sin. Love, love, love, it all boils down to love. If we Love God with all out hearts, minds and strength, loving each other will happen. Cause when you are gaa-gaa over someone you will do anything and everything for that person to make sure they are happy and fulfilled. Now, if I could just get my sin nature to stay on the narrow road with Jesus maybe someday before I leave this life I will be able to love EVERYONE like that. Lord Jesus, help me cuz you know I need it.(i.e California drivers)

We finally saw Two Towers. What a great flick. I wanna see it again. At the end when Sam was telling Frodo that we know we have something worth living for and not giving up on.That line hit me hard. I got all choked up and was thinking "Ya, we have Jesus and all who He is!!" Can I have an AMEN out there?!?!?!?!?!!? On to inputting..............Blessings to You.

2003-02-19T13:12:00.000-08:00

I was "wandering" through Oswald Chambers and came across this. Seems it might set some of us free to move on.

I especially love the last line.

Taking the Initiative Against Despair

Rise, let us be going —Matthew 26:46

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say, "Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore." If we think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and lovingly says to us, in essence, "Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing." In other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.

There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright unthinkable thing—they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and said, in effect, "Get up, and do the next thing." If we are inspired by God, what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis of His redemption.

Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.

2003-02-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

Well, tomorrow I am off to California for some fun with me girlie friends down there. Plus I will get to see my folks and our church community we just left. My son will be returning here tomorrow night from the same place. He has been there since the 9th. We will be there for a few hours together. I miss that boy. I haven't said hardly a cuss word since he left. Please pray for safe journeys for both of us. I don't relish the thought of flying into LAX with all the"alerts" going on. Blessings on you all.......wAndering woman

2003-02-15T22:17:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday evening and I just beat Todd and Carol Ann in a game of Phase 10. I won last night, too!! I think the strawberry shake with banana's mixed in from Coldstone helped. Though I feel a sugar low coming on. Today we took a drive up to McCall. We wanted to explore a bit of Idaho today. McCall was do-able in one day. What a beautiful drive. Very relaxing, in fact it was too relaxing. I had to work real hard at not falling asleep. I wanted to see the counrtyside. When we got there we ate lunch at The Pancake House. It was okay. It's not near as good as The Origianl Pancake House in Yorba Linda, Ca. If you're ever down that way, go have breakfast there. Go on a week day. The weekends are packed. Not too many wonderings going on in my head today. Mostly I wonder what it will be like when we are completely settled in our new home. Right now it feels like we live in a hotel without maid service. I'm not complaining. It's just transitional living. Tonight at the community meeting we talked about baptism. It reminded me of the baptism scene in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Which ,if you have not seen, you must! I saw it 5 times in the theatre and now I own the DVD and can watch it anytime I want. I laugh hysterically at it everytime. Great flick about family. Well speakingof family, family I must blog off for now. Happy Sunday.

2003-02-14T20:23:00.000-08:00

I want to Thank my wonderful friend Winn for fixing my blog page!!! Weenie you are the bestest!!!

2003-02-13T22:24:00.000-08:00

Well, looks like the copyright police caught up with the Wonder Woman pics and took them away!!! Boohoo!! Now what am I gonna use? Got any suggestions or ideas? I love to cook so how bout pics of The Two Fat Ladies from the foodtv channell!!! And I will call it What's Cookin with Deb. Sounds corny. Any better ideas out there? HELP!!! Be nice Winnie, You too Eric. Happy Valentine's Day to Everyone.

2003-02-12T21:34:00.000-08:00

Howdy Everbloggers,
Well, today I heard the most hysterical thing I have heard in a very, very long time. I was in the Wal-Mart beauty salon(sounds like an oxymoron!!) Whilst I was waiting for a stylist to notice that I was there I overheard another waiting customer say to the stylist, "the reason we came this particular day to get a haircut is, since we have been into astrology for over 20 years, our moons are lined up just right and it said this would the best day for us to get a haircut!" Well by "cracky" I wonder if all the bad haircuts I have had in my life are because my "moons" were not lined up properly. Of course if you know me and my earthy nature, you would know that I have a very different idea of what a "moon" is. I wanted to say "so did you all line up and take a picture of your "moons" to see if they were indeed all lined up perfectly, like, were all the cracks and crannies all aligned just right? Sorry. Needless to say, I very quickly exited the "beauty salon" because I did not check my "moon" that morning. Butt, I was in to have my face waxed. So maybe my "moon" didn't matter.Or maybe since the moons were aligned I should of had my "moon" waxed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ewwwwwwwwww ouch ewwwwwww!!! Nite, nite......... wacky wonder whoa-man

2003-02-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Well, we sent our son off on his first airplane flight all by himself today. He made it to LAX without any problems.. ALL of his best buddies picked him up this afternoon. It's nice to know his friends love him so much. He will be 18 on Tuesday. We celebrated before he left. I am glad he will spend his birthday with his buddies. It was hard to let him go on his own. I guess one is never ready to let your babies go. I know he will be back. Since he is home schooled, he and I spend a lot of time together. I am gonna try and make good use of the time alone during the day. Who knows, maybe I will finish unpacking the last few boxes from our move into this apartment. I won't hold my breath on that one. Toddly got home safely at 1:30 am this morning. He wouldn't want me to say this to you all but tooooooooo bad.........they loved his teaching! Today we drove around and looked at open houses to get ideas for our house. Made some good progress and decisions. Tonight our community down south called during their time together. They all yelled Hi!! into the phone. Boy, do I miss them all. They have all taught me so much these past two and a half years. The youngers especially. Their ability to love and accept folks completely and utterly without conditions or judgements has been the biggest impact on me in my 26 years of Jesus following. I repent often for the way I judged and conditionally loved people. It has created this amazing freedom in my heart. I just have to love and let God judge and convict. Now if I can only get this to work when I am driving and people do stupid things in the name of driving. It was really bad when I was back in So. Calif. last week. There are some real jerks, idiots and arsholes on the road down there!! I have noticed when Jonathan is driving he has learned my model of reacting to these jerks, idiots and arsholes. Well, I must go and repent and pray for my son to be set free from my example!!! Nite,nite!! Debra Ann

2003-02-08T00:37:00.000-08:00

Good evening fellow bloggers and bloggettes!! Toddly left about 11:30am to drive to Portland. I do believe he's teaching at George Fox University. He'll return tomorrow night very late. Jonathan flies down to L.A. Sunday afternoon. Todd wanted to be here to send him off. Tonight me and the kiddies rented some movies to watch. I got Barbershop. What a great movie. It was funny and was about community! I really enjoyed it.I think I might watch it again. Then I watched The Secrets of the Divine Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It was good also. It had an aspect of how love can cover a multitude of sin. Also how communicating can essplain so much and can save folks from going through a whole lot of pain for a whole lot of time. I have been having the sheer(fear!?!) pleasure of letting my soon(this Tuesday the 11th) to be 18 year old son practice his driving. Almighty Lord Jesus, HELP ME!!!! He actually does pretty good. Cept he won't listen to me till it's almost too late. I will survive! I don't know if I will let him survive if he doesn't start listening to my sound and totally rational and calm ( ya, right!) advice!!!!! Some might know that our new home is in process of being built. A lot of my time these days is spent making lots of decisions concerning said home. It's tiring and fun at the same time. I still can't believe we will be living in this amazing home. Apt life is not so bad. The family upstairs consists of a single mom with 4 or 5 little boys!! The ceiling noises can be quite scary!!! It has been some 24 years since Todd and I lived in an apt. We are all doing pretty good. By all, I mean: Todd, me, Jonathan 17.9 yrs old, Carol Ann 10 years old, Charity 5.5 years old, our scotty dog, our two birds: Lucky our beautiful 12 year old Sun Conure and Angel our funny 7-8 month old Cockatiel who whistles. All in all life in Eagle is sweet. We miss so many folks back in So. Cal. Knowing we are where we are supposed to be helps very much to make it through the loneliest moments. I really did not like living in So Cal even though I basically grew up there. It was relationship with so many wonderful folks that kept us there. The Priddy's and Keckies are awesome folks and I look forward to growing old alongside them in this journey we are embarking on. It is good to be on this journey with folks who truly understand what is so compelling about our desire to be authentic followers of Jesus. It's nice to talk to folks who don't look at you like you have two or three heads or a bunch of big green boogers hanging outta your nose.(most days I don't) So with that lovely picture I will sign off for now. Happy Wonderings to you all and lots of blessings too, Deb

2003-02-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Hey, so, now I can tell all that I am a blogger now instead of a Hi-dee-ho potato? Well, as sort of an intro, let me essplain the Wonder Woman theme!! Many years ago in a far,far,far very far away galaxy called Cal Poly Pomona where my hunky hubby Toddly went to college and played baseball............ We were at a bbq at one the coaches homes. Now in those far,far,far, very far away days I was a mere 98lbs and had long flowing all natural solid brown hair(meaning no highlights to cover the gray) and I do believe Wonder Woman was at the heighth of her glory days on TV. One of the host's little girls looked at me and turned to her mom and said "She looks like Wonder Woman". I, of course, laughed hysterically. Now-a-days some think I look like Roseanne Barr.Come to think of it, the last time I spoke at a women's retreat some of the well intentioned ladies said my speaking was like a "Christian" Roseanne Barr. Whatever!!!! (What does "christian" mean anyway these days especially when put like that?) Back to my essplanation!! Then a few months ago or maybe longer this past year some of the gals from our community in California were praying for me. One of them got a picture of Wonder Woman fending off the bad guys with her arms. They were praying against the fear that can come over me concerning the breast cancer I was diagnosed with five years ago and we all figured(as we laughed hysterically) I should be Wonder Woman and fight the fear like Wonder Woman would have!!(so if you see me flinging my arms around like I am hitting somebody, just walk the other way!!!or pray!!) Then the next week, Tonya,the gal who got the picture came across an old Wonder Woman lunch box that she just had to buy and give to me. She was here for the gathering last week and brought me a gift from her and her daughter Ashly. It is a Wonder Woman journal!! So you see, I have this Wonder Woman thing going on. I do have many "wonderings" going on in my head. Maybe someday I will write about my wonderings about this journey of being an Authentic follower of Jesus. For now I must git going. Gotta git the little princess to bed now that it's 10:49pm!!! Happy Jesus Journey!! Love, Wonder-ING Woman

2003-02-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

if todd can i can

2003-02-04T08:38:00.000-08:00

this is a self portrait test