This morning, when I awoke my son, daughter and husband had already completed most of the housework, so we had breakfast, a very late breakfast I might add, and then the children washed and dried the breakfast dishes.

When they had finished the breakfast dishes, my daughter went off with her dad to collect firewood from one of the local farms, as a HUGE tree has come down in the paddock that they will be sowing very shortly. My son stayed home with me so that he could finish the vacuuming and mop the verandahs. He was still completing the dishes when I noticed fur bunnies along the skirting boards and the carpet near the skirting boards – aargh – this is why my asthma has been so severe, lately,  so I took hold of the vacuum cleaner, thinking that I could actually help with the housework. Silly me!

No such luck – I had nearly finished along the edges of the skirting boards in the loungeroom, and was vacumming one of the corners that didn’t look as if it had been vacuumed for a very long while, when it started. I coughed and coughed, my breathing became more difficult and then the wheezing started. My son was up in his bedroom, and I thought that he was never going to come down, but eventually he did, and I gasped, “Nebuliser,” at him. Of course, where was it? In the car. Where was the car? Not here! Darn it! Usually we are all together as a family, but the wood needed to be cut and the housework finished, and we couldn’t be in two places at once.

He wanted to call an ambulance, but living out here, the calls all go to Adelaide for ambulance, and by the time he had explained where we were, it would have been too late. He jumped on his bicycle and rode the  three kilometres to where my husband and daughter were cutting wood, and found them just arriving there after going to see about buying some oats. He threw the bike into the trailer, and they drove home and set up the nebuliser. I was so hot and unable to breathe, but somehow God sustained me through it all.

There were two lessons learned from this -

• Lesson one is that the nebuliser needs to be with me at all times, which was the reason that we left it in the car in the first place.
• Lesson two is that I need to explain to our children exactly how things need to be done.

Yes, it’s easier to do things ourselves – well, sometimes! It takes time and effort to show our children how we want things done, but how will they learn unless we teach them?

The things of God are learned in the same way -
It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me. John 6:45

My son is learning well, and this afternoon he has used the crevice tool to clean along the edges, and even went as  far as to shift the piano, which hasn’t been shifted for a very long time. Now all that we need to be able to do is to shift it back…  It weighs a ton! My husband and son managed to shift it back, and my son commented, “Now I have gorilla arms – they have stretched that far!” Now, I wonder, how often should we shift the piano???

I praise God that He strengthens us through times of trials, and He gives us His Peace – the verse that I remembered today was:~

Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,

whose mind is stayed on thee:

because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26:3

and He did ~ He kept me in perfect peace!

The other night my son and I worked on a custom Twitter bird to link to my new Twitter account, and he has done an excellent job of working out what I wanted. It is really easy for me to visualise what I want, but describing it to someone else is a very different story, and I can’t even draw it. Sigh! I wish that I had studied harder during art class, but between my brain and my hand there really does seem to be a breakdown in communication. I’m so glad that my son takes after his great-nanna, and his art skills and design skills are excellent.

If you click on my Twitter bird icon in the sidebar, it will take you to my brand new Twitter account – technology, don’t you just love it?

Isn’t this Twitter bird just the cutest? Don’t you just love his spiky hair and the headphones?

To the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever.