JUST A FEW WORDS

Kathy M. Dingus

Hi Erma:

This perfectly delightful note is being sent on paper I made myself to tell you what I have been up to. Since it snowed last night, I got up early and made a sled with old barn wood and a glue gun. I hand painted it in gold leaf, got out my loom, and made a blanket in peaches and mauve. Then to make the sled complete, I made a white horse to pull it from DNA that I just had sitting around in my craft room.

By then, it was time to start making the place mats and napkins for my 20 breakfast guests. I'm serving the old standard Stewart 12_course breakfast, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I didn't have time to make the tables and chair this morning, so I used the ones I had on hand.

Before I moved the table into the dining room, I decided to add just a touch of the holidays. So I repainted the room in pinks and stenciled gold stars on the ceiling. Then, while the homemade bread was rising, I took antique candle molds and made the dishes (exactly the same shade of pink) to use for breakfast. These were made from Hungarian clay, which you can get in almost any Hungarian craft store.

Well, I must run. I need to finish the buttonholes on the dress I'm wearing for breakfast. I'll get out the sled and drive this note to the post office as soon as the glue dries on the envelope I'll be making.

Hope my breakfast guests don't stay too long. I have 40,000 cranberries to string with bay leaves before my speaking engagement at noon.

Love, Martha Stewart

P.S. When I made the ribbon for this typewriter, I used 1/8 inch gold gauze. I soaked the gauze in a mixture of white grapes and blackberries which I grew, picked, and crushed last week just for fun.

Dear Martha:

I am writing this on the back of an old shopping list, pay no attention to the coffee and jelly stains. I'm 20 minutes late getting my daughter up for school, packing a lunch with one hand, on the phone with the dog pound, seems old Ruff needs bailing out, again.

Burnt my arm on the curling iron when I was trying to make those cute curly fries, how DO they do that?

Still can't find the scissors to cut out some snowflakes, tried using an old disposable razor . . . trashed the tablecloth. Tried that cranberry thing, frozen cranberries mucked up after I defrosted them in the microwave.

Oh, and don't use Fruity Pebbles as a substitute in that Rice Krispie snowball recipe, unless you happen to like a disgusting shade that resembles well, you know . . . (throw up).

The smoke alarm is going off, talk to you later.

Love,

Erma

I know these fictional letters from Martha and Erma sound funny and not very realistic (except maybe Erma's). But how often do we find ourselves looking at others and judging them from our viewpoint? I am not the consummate homemaker. I would like to be the wonderful homemaker, wonderful wife, wonderful lover, wonderful mother, wonderful professional office manager, wonderful friend and just plain old wonder woman all rolled into one. But how many of us are all of those things?

I don't think I could hold up under Martha Stewart's scrutiny for very long. Do you think you could? Maybe you could be one of those rare persons who can be all things to all people. But I'm not, and I don't think very many of us can be.

If we could have our choice as to what we would be, what choice would we make? Who would we want to please the most? Our husband maybe. Or maybe it would be our wonderfully professional boss. Maybe it would be our children. For some it might be their Father or their Mother. It could even be someone else I haven't thought of.

How about God? Where would He fit in this equation? Would we choose Him first? Now there's a thought. Choose to please God above my husband . . . my children . . . my parents?

Choosing to please God first would be like putting Him first in our lives. Loving Him more than anyone or anything else! I think we've heard about this before. Could we actually apply putting God above all others in our lives today? I think so.

It wouldn't be easy. But I think everyone would benefit from it, our children, our husbands and parents certainly would. Our employers would benefit too! By putting God first, and His will in our lives, we would be living the true way. By putting God first, and living the life He wants us to live, we would automatically start to become the kind of person that others would like us to be. We would be in the process of becoming that loving wife and mother, children who honor and respect their parents, become loyal and faithful employees who earnestly want their company to succeed, for the company's sake and not our own. We wouldn't have to worry about Mrs. Neighbor next door, and how she lives. We would know that we were living the best life possible. No guilt, no expectations not met, and no sorrow over time lost. We would make the most out of every moment.

Doesn't this sound wonderful? Kind of like the Millennium . . . and Satan being bound. His hand stayed from influencing us into the wrong and unimportant things in life. We can bind Satan and his influence on our life by actually deciding to live our lives by putting God first! First and foremost in everything!

Everything else will fall into place.

I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to put more effort into putting God first in my life.

Is there anything any better anywhere to devote our energies to?

Is there anyone more trustworthy and loving to surrender to? He has already given us his unconditional grace. Free of charge. What can we give him?

I think we can give him top billing in our life unconditionally! Love him with all our heart, our mind and our soul. If we care more about what anyone else thinks, more than we care what God thinks about our life . . . we're on the wrong track.

Let's start off this new year and spring with a new attitude . . . God first!

Just Loving Him and trying to put Him first!