My Father is rich in houses and lands.  He holdeth the wealth of the world in his hands! The words to this old hymn bring bittersweet memories. There was a season when this song triggered thoughts of both my Heavenly Father and my Daddy. He was born into poverty in Oxford, Pennsylvania in 1931. The fifth of thirteen children! Could you imagine??? And nine of them were boys. I heard many stories of their fighting and mischief- from stealing each other's clothes to stealing someone's car. At one point my Grandmother tied at least two of them to a tree for some peace and quiet. As a Mother of just four boys with the same DNA, I can totally imagine! Like many before my Dad, a childhood of poverty created a lifetime of motivation to be financially successful. "Everything I touch turns to gold" he once said. It was true. He knew very well how to generate passive income for himself AND he knew how to be frugal with it. That combination generated more wealth than he ever thought possible. He was rich with many rental properties- houses that normal people would burn to the…

This was originally posted to my Clover Valley Blog on May 13, 2013 The murder trial of Kermit Gosnell has made abortion worthy of front page news these past few weeks.  The details are horrific.  I’ve been praying that the murder of innocence would come to an end in this country.  As I read details of the trial online another news story caught my attention coming from Planned Parenthood of Wilmington, Delaware. https://www.lifenews.com/2013/04/10/planned-parenthood-closed-investigated-for-botched-abortions/ I was born at Wilmington General Hospital.  Years later I attended Delaware Tech along Shipley Street.  My brother owns a tire shop at the edge of the city.  My sister works in Little Italy.  My husband frequently services the HVAC systems of the various buildings of DuPont.  Many family members of mine live around Wilmington.  I know the area well.   So my heart sank when I read that just blocks from where I went to college a Planned Parenthood clinic was performing “meat-market style of assembly-line abortions…” In college I would walk down Market Street to hand out Gospel Tracts to folks on their lunch hour.  People were very receptive and I regret not doing it more.  There is a time to…

Prior to last year I had categorized Passover as a Jewish holiday and not at all significant to my faith in the Messiah. As I child I came to know Jesus at just the age of 4. Now approaching 40 I've come to know Him in new ways, like learning His Hebrew name is Yeshua, so that's how I'll refer to Him as you continue reading. The Old Testament feast seemed irrelevant in the modern world we lived in with the smearing of blood on door posts and all. In the Spring of 2019 I had the privilege of celebrating Passover not once but twice. It was hands down the most powerful and meaningful celebration I had ever participated in. Why hadn't I done this sooner? I am very grateful for where I come from.  My parents gave me a solid foundation, taking me to church every time the doors were open.  They didn't always have all the answers but they knew where to look for them - in the Bible.  I often felt dumb in church though.  Many of the other kids attended private Christian schools and I went to public school, so their…

As a child we were possibly the last family in the United States to own a VHS player.  It was very significant to go from being at the mercy of what the Big Three Networks wanted us to watch to having complete control of commercial-free programming.  The pause button allowed bathroom breaks, scenes weren't interrupted with KMart ads and we could watch our movies over and over again.  In 1992 McDonald's teamed up with Orion Home Video to distribute three movies over the holiday season.  "Dances With Wolves" was one of them, priced at only $7.99 with a food purchase and so it became our very first movie. Little was known about the movie other than it won countless awards and it was about Native Americans.  Indians had always intrigued me.  I turned my Cabbage Patch Doll into a papoose using crayons to put war paint on his face.  Leather moccasin slippers were my favorite shoes and it was so much fun to be an Indian girl for Halloween.  But the externals were dull in comparison to my yearning to live in a tribe.  The Story of Mary Jemison and Maggie Among the Seneca were…

Martha Stewart was recently interviewed and had this to say...“Who are these bloggers? They're not trained editors at Vogue magazine. I mean, there are bloggers writing recipes that aren't tested, that aren't necessarily very good, or are copies of everything that really good editors have created and done. So bloggers create kind of a popularity, but they are not the experts. And we have to understand that.”  She took a lot of heat for her comments from the blogging community.  Someone is out of touch with reality. Generations have thrived without chefs in white hats and food labs in New York City.  You haven't really cooked until you've made Whoopie Pies with a baby attached to your leg, kneaded bread to relieve the stress of the day or GASP...let you kids lick the brownie batter off the spatula.  Before the "experts" told us how to birth our babies, raise our children and feed our husbands there were Mothers, Aunts and Grandmothers.  Both my maternal and paternal Grandmothers left this world before I entered it.  All I can cling to are pictures, old recipes and the memories of those who knew them.  But it recently occurred to me that I didn't have any of those things for my paternal grandparents. …