Feelings

There is a beautiful, heartwarming story going around Facebook about a woman who asked her husband to carry her down the stairs every day for a month before she would consent to a divorce. The man agreed, and in the process of spending these few minutes a day with his wife, he discovered a renewed love for her. It is a moving story, and if true, it is the story of a very wise woman who had an almost super-human ability to control her passions. Nonetheless, the story, when considered closely, in efffect supports the false idea that romantic feelings are necessary for a couple to stay married. What if the husband had found carrying his wife to be a daily chore uneased by the feelings of love that lighten every burden? Would he then have been justified in carrying out his plan for divorce?

Emotions are given too high a priority in almost every sphere of modern life. I have nothing agaist emotions, and I think past generations have sometimes given them less emphasis than they deserve. God intends us to have feelings and to enjoy them, and they most certainly have their place. Nonetheless, feelings should never be allowed to become our rule of faith and practice. Our feelings should be consulted and heavily weighed when we are deciding whom to marry (a matter which God has left open to our own choice), but they should not be consulted at all when we are determining whether or not to stay married. On that subject God has spoken, and His Word alone should be consulted.

Poetry Book

In order to present Box T and the Choices That Made It God's Ranch to the friends of Box T Bible and Saddle Camp, I was forced to learn to self publish. It was actualy kind of fun and really not all that hard, so knowing now what to do, I have also published a book of my poems:

This book includes over 100 poems written between 1993 and the present. Most of them are spiritual poems on Bible themes. The book is available on Amazon where you can also take a look inside and see the table of contents and some of the poems.

Paperback Edition

Box T: God's Ranch

Nearly two years ago I started a memoir of Box T Bible and Saddle Camp. It is now available from Amazon:

Box T: and the Choices That Made It God's Ranch

The price of the book reflects Amazon's charge for publishing and distributing.

Anyone interested in buying quantities, please contact:

Nita Brainard

Prayer for Children

I thought myself safe when I posted a short article against the general tendency among some Christians to blame the mother when children rebel. I thought this because I have four grown children, none of whom rebelled. If I do not cast blame, neither can I take credit. The only credit I can take is that I prayed. Amidst many failures, I went to God through my Savior and asked for what I wanted.

The tendency to find fault often gets in the way of prayer. I do not want to discourage anyone from trying to be the perfect parent and the best imaginable example to your kids. Please do. Put all your heart and soul into it --- but in the end you will fail. And so will your spouse. Your only hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. The best parenting advice I have heard came from a man who had prayed his daughter back from rebellion. He said he had three words for people who asked his advice: 1. Pray. 2. Pray. 3. Pray some more.

Of course this assumes that you have such a standing before God that you can pray. Humbling yourself before him will secure that, regardless of what other failings you have.

~ Nita

Whose Fault Is It?

Authority and responsibility go hand in hand. This should go without saying. People in the workplace understand this with rarely a question. If you give a person authority to do a thing, he also has the responsibility to make sure it is done well. If he doesn't have authority, neither does he have the same degree of responsibility.

Nonetheless, when it comes to men's and women's roles both the world and the church seem to have lost sight of this basic principle. The world has stripped men of their authority in relationship to women --- and yet generally holds men responsible for all ills. The opposite is true in the church. Christians understand that the man has authority from God --- and yet they blame the woman for everything that goes wrong.

This was brought forcefully to my mind recently when I read an article about why children rebel. It was directed toward women who belittle their husbands. That this is in many cases a real problem, I do not deny. Many of us wives make it very difficult for our husbands to rise and up and be the men that they ought to be. Nonetheless, the man has been made the head of the family by God, and he is the one that God will hold responsible for the direction the family takes.

Whenever there is an unequal yoke, especially in spiritual matters, it will take its toll on the family. No  woman has a right to blame her husband for this. The Scriptural injunction "Quit you like men, be strong," applies to her as well as to him, and she has the responsibility to be faithful in her circumstances, to "see that she reverence her husband," and to walk humbly before God --- whatever her husband may do. 

But if it is wrong for the woman to blame the husband (and it is), it is also wrong --- and even more so --- for the man to blame his wife. It is wrong also for pastors and teachers to give women the impression that all the ills in the family are the fault of their feelings of disappointment. If the man is the head of the family (and he is), he bears the responsibility not only for his children, but for his wife also. She is the weaker vessel, and it is his responsibility to dwell with her according to wisdom. This does not absolve her of her own responsibilities, but it does relieve her of his.

 A printed sermon on the subject of the man's responsibility in marriage can be found here: The Husband Is the Head of the Wife.

~ Nita Brainard

 

More Animal Slippers

The little lovers of animal slippers have worn out and lost the bears and bunnies, and they want new ones to fit their growing feet and growing family.

To make new animals, I followed the basic pattern Animal Slippers, but knit them slightly bigger and didn't felt them down as much.

For the lizzards, I used stockinette stitch instead of garter.

I thought the lions would be puppies, but the orange yarn didn't felt, so I cut down the ears and added a mane.

 

The mice were going to be puppies, too, but they came out of the felting process looking more like mice, so mice they became.

On this set of slippers, I knit the ears on before felting, and they came out smaller than I anticipated.




The frogs are frogs.

It remains to be seen if these slippers are as popular as the originals.