Tuesday Tea Time & Testimony ~When You Are Weary

We are joining our Friend Sandi over at Rose Chintz Cottage for another edifying and encouraging Tuesday Tea. She has some wonderful advice this week and that is to smile! I am wondering if God did not intend that little message for me hehehe!!


I have been reading and enjoying recently Devotionals with Laura by Dan L. White. As I look to the next several weeks ahead with my husband traveling for work I found myself feeling a little discouraged and overwhelmed facing the household and all my responsibilities. Laura Ingalls Wilder was a kindred friend in this, she to also faced days that seemed long with much work that needed to be done on the Rocky Ridge Farm.
Here is an excerpt from the devotional

Here are Laura and Manly's reflection on how hard their parents worked.

The Man of the Place and I were sitting cozily by the Fire. The evening lamp was lighted and the day's papers and the late magazines were scattered over the table. But though we each held in our hands our favorite publications, we were not reading. We were grumbling about the work we had to do and saying all the things usually said at such times.

"People used to have time to live and enjoy themselves, but there is no time anymore for anything but work, work, work."

Oh, we threshed it all over as everyone does when they get that kind of grouch, and then we sat in silence. I was wishing I had lived altogether in those good old days when people had time for things they wanted to do.

What the Man of the Place was thinking, I do not know; but I was quite surprised at the point at which he had arrived, when he remarked out of silence in a rather meek voice, "I never realized how much work my father did. Why one winter he sorted five hundred bushels of potatoes after supper by lantern light. He sold them for $1.50 a bushel in the spring, too but he must of got blamed tired of sorting potatoes down cellar every night until he had handled more than five hundred bushels of them."

"What did your mother do while your father was sorting potatoes?" I asked.

"Oh she sewed and knit," said the Man of the Place. "She made all our clothes, coats and pants, undergarments for father and us boys and well as everything she and the girls wore, and she knit all our socks and mittens ~shag mittens for the men folks, do you remember, all fuzzy on the outside? She didn't have time enough in the day to do all the work and so she sewed and knit at night."

I looked down at the magazines in my hand and remembered how my mother was always sewing and knitting by the evening lamp. I realized that I had never done so except now and then in case of emergency.

But the Man of the Place was still talking. "Mother did all her own sewing by hand then," he said,"and she spun her own yarn and wove her own cloth. Father harvested his grain by hand with a sickle and cut his hay with a scythe. I do wonder how he ever got it done."

Again we were silent, each busy with our own thoughts. I was counting up the time I give to club work and lodge work and yes I'll admit it ~politics. My mother and my mother in law had none of these, and they do use up a good many hours. Instead of all this, they took time once in a while from their day and night working to go visit a neighbor for the day.

"Time to enjoy life!!" Well they did enjoy it, but couldn't have been because they had more time.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

I was blessed to know an older more seasoned Christian women than I who God crossed my paths with a few years ago, and I adored her she was so full of spirit and life and I remember something she said to me that I do not think I shall ever forget she said "Speak it how it should be and not how it is!" wise words indeed. So instead of grumbling under my breath speaking how it is, I will dig out some of that joy from down in my heart and speak it how it should be! There is always time for Joy.



Laura Ingalls Wilder suggestion of what to read when you feel weary Matthew11:28 & Romans 8:31 to 39

Matthew 11:28-30
28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Romans 8:31-39
31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.