From the earliest dawning of intellect and affection, my attachment to her was strong, and her influence unbounded. Nor did they diminish with my advancing childhood and youth; for they were sustained and strengthened by a tenderness, a prudence, and a piety, the most uniform and watchful. Even now I seem, at times, to feel the gentle movements of my kind and anxious mother, as, amid the shivering cold of a northern winter, she came night after night to my lowly bed, long after my eyes were closed in sleep, and scarcely waked me from my slumber, while she carefully pressed the warm covering around my feet and limbs....Perhaps this is the most fitting account to end with, because it reminds us that consistent teaching, loving, and rebuke when necessary, is the task set before us as mothers. Only with the Lord's help can we continue from day to day! It is a staggering calling!
Punishment I could, perhaps, have borne, but her words and her tears broke my heart, though proud and rebellious. She made me feel that I had sinned against a good and holy God, and that my wickedness was greatly increased...because she had so often consecrated me to God. I felt ashamed and distressed that I had wounded a heart so pious and so affectionate, and robably while memory lasts I shall never forget the time and the place, the expressive countenance, and the earnest manner of my mother....
My mother turned upon me her full, dark eyes, kindled and yet softened by the emotions of her soul, and twice repeating my name, with a look and a tone strongly expressive of surprise and grief, conveyed to my heart gently, but effectively, the deserved rebuke.
Tomorrow evening we'll be heading over to the Ovens Auditorium here in Charlotte to watch the live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion." We're going with another couple who are parents to five children, so this is a landmark event for us. Babysitters are booked, the pre-show meal is planned, and the tickets have been purchased. I can't wait!!The cursed blast of slavery has, like a pestilence, withered almost every moral bloom. I know not how any person can feel a union with such a monster, such a child of hell. I feel a burning hatred against it and look upon it as one of the most odious monsters that ever disgraced the earth. The iron hand of oppression daily endeavours to keep the slaves in the ignorance to which it has reduced them.
After one of the jubliee services at Kettering, when the multitude had been thrilled with his eloquence, Knibb found me talking with friends, and, placing his arm within mine, said, "Stovel, I want you to go with me to my mother's grave -- will you go?" "With all my heart," was the reply; and with another friend, we walked together up the street, toward the church-yard. As we passed along, he stopped suddenly where the main roads cross in the town, and directed my attention to a window on a second floor, looking down the street to where we stood. "There," he said, "do you see that window with the muslin blind?" I replied, "Yes." "Well," he said, "my mother lived there when I left her. we had parted, and I had come down into the street here to go to Jamaica, to take charge of my brother's school, who was dead. She put her head out of the window, and called after me: 'William! William! Remember, William, I had rather hear that you had perished in the sea, than that you had dishonored the society you go to serve.' I never forgot those words -- they were written on my heart."
I began to scrub up: my hands smarted under the bristles. I held out my hands to the nurse to pour on antiseptic alcohol: I drew up my breath sharply at the stinging pain. And in my mind, a small voice of complaint started.
Why had God not arranged for another missionary...to see to the buildings...so that I could be free to give the people the best medical care of which I was capable?...
The following Wednesday evening, I mentioned all this to the church council and asked their prayer, that I might not become resentful. One godly man, after leading the group in believing prayer, smiled at me and offered a kindly rebuke.
"Doctor," he said, "when you are being a doctor, in your white coat, stethoscope round your neck, speaking French, you are miles from us. We fear you and all say: 'Yes, yes,' hardly even hearing what you said. But when you are down at the kiln with us, and your hands are rough as ours are: when you are out at the markets, using our language and making howlers and we all laugh at you: that's when we love you, and how we have come to trust you and can listen to what you tell us of God and His ways."
Andrew, Cameron, and Ben
Jonathan and Emma
Petting the barn cat
Emma“Some women go back to a pretty flat stomach and some don’t, some go back to their pre-baby weight and some don’t,” said Judy Norsigian, the executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, a health group in Boston, and an author of the book of the same name. “The question is, does that need to be treated with a surgical makeover?”
Where the bikers go to worship...the Harley store.
The parking lot of the Harley store
Our last dinner at the beach
Cameron looking at the cows
Watching the ibises eat
He blends in, but there's a river otter there
GIANT spider. Not part of the tour, but we stopped and checked him out anyways.
David attempting to hold back the sea
This vacation provided a great object lesson for this morning's Bible reading with the kids:
