Busy Being Squirrelly

This year while sitting in my deer blind I was able to observe some squirrels who practically wanted to join me in my blind.  For such little creatures, they sure can make a lot of noise.  The thing I kept noticing about the squirrels is that they would scrape and scrape and scrape, digging a little hole; however, they never put anything in the hole and then they would cover it up with leaves.  I watched a few squirrels do this several times.  I thought to myself, " these squirrels sure are busy doing nothing!" This made me think about daily activities. We are certainly a busy people.  We work, have our kids involved in numerous activities, volunteer for various activities, attend church and participate in its activities, participate in hobbies and take care of our homes.  The list goes on and on and I get exhausted just typing the list.  I'm reminded of Mary and Martha when Jesus stopped by their home to visit.  Mary took time to sit still with Jesus and wash his feet, while Martha seemed to get quite upset because she was "busy" around the house making preparations and Mary was not helping.  Jesus basically told Martha to settle down, chill, and quit being so busy.  I wonder how often we get caught up "Busy Being Squirrelly." One thing hunting has taught me is to be still, observe and learn from God's wonderful nature library.

Snow and Neighbors

SNOW. . . Today’s adventure is God’s outdoor library takes us out in the snowy weather.  What does snow mean to you?  I think most people either love it, or they hate.  There seems to be no in-between on how people feel about the fluffy, white flakes.  For me, snow is all about wonderful memories past and present.  I remember several years in the early 1980s when we got a lot of snow in our area.  My parents bought me and my sister a red, Radio Flyer sled that we used for several years.  We lived on the only double hills in Hartford and it made for great sledding adventures with our neighbors.  Many wonderful memories were made with Gallen, Sherri, Johanna and Billy Stokes.  We would meet at the top of the hill by their house and a couple of us would watch for cars while the others would sled down the hills.  Our moms, Shelia and Ginger, would always have hot chocolate and snacks ready for us when we would take a break to get warm.   A snow day was not complete until Johanna and I bundled up from head-to-toe and walked to town in the snow to buy food for our families.  I remember one snowy winter Gallen built an igloo and we all took turns hanging out inside, pretending we were Eskimos.  I think snowy winters, more than any other season, remind me of what great neighbors we had in the Stokes family.  It seems that in today’s society, neighbors like the Stokes family are few and far between.   As I cherish the memories of past outdoor snow adventures, today I continue making new memories with my family.

Creek Behind Our House

Our Snowman Has Fallen And He Can't Get Up!

No Fear

The date is quickly approaching for our family’s next great outdoor adventure in the mountains of Colorado.   Our ski adventures always include my brother-in-law, sister-n-law and their two kids. Our youngest son was 6, our oldest sons were in their early teens and our niece and nephew were 7 and 4 when we took our first Carroll family ski trip.  I will never forget how fearless all of the kids were when they strapped on their skis.  They did not worry about going too fast or wiping out.  I was the only adult in our family who was not an experienced skier and I was afraid to go fast and was worried I might break a bone if I crashed.  My husband, brother-n-law, sister-n-law and all the kids saw a lot more of the mountain on that trip than I did because they were not fearful of the steepness of the slopes or the moguls they might encounter.  If I want to see more of God’s beautiful mountain library on this upcoming trip, I need to approach the slopes with less fear.  We didn’t stop our kids from skiing challenging and fast slopes and the way our kids approached skiing on that first trip reminds me of how we should be with our Christian faith.  Just as Jesus doesn’t want children stopped from coming to him, nothing should stop us from sharing our faith. 

The Holy Bible
Matthew 19:14New Living Translation (NLT) ¹⁴ But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”

 

The Carroll Family

Tumbling Tumbleweeds

I will never forget the first time I saw a tumbleweed was when my husband took me to visit his family in his home town of Liberal, Kansas.   Bill told me about attending Seward County Community College and using a tumbleweed as a Christmas tree in his dorm room. I became fascinated with these rolling, rambling balls of jumbled up weeds.  I always get a souvenir from places I visit and can you guess what my souvenir was from Liberal, Kansas?  You guessed it……a tumbleweed!  Driving down the long, barren stretches of highway in Kansas, I kept my eyes peeled for that special tumbleweed I could take back home.  “Oh, there’s one” I would shout to my husband.  He would pull the car over and I would take off running along the highway trying to catch a tumbleweed.  I am sure if we had recorded my tumbleweed chasing adventures we might have won something on the show America’s Funniest Home Videos.  When I was finally successful in wrangling a tumbleweed to take home, I was shocked to find out that they are very prickly.  Also, they are a lot bigger than they look, especially when you are trying to fit them in the trunk of your car.  That beloved tumbleweed had a special place in our home for many years until I decided it was time to return it to the wild.

A tumbleweed is formed when a mature Russian thistle plant breaks loose from its roots.  As Christians we need to make sure we have strong spiritual roots so that we do not break loose from our faith and tumble aimlessly through life like the tumbleweed that rolls aimlessly across the land.

Decoys and Duck Calls

Today was the first time in a couple of weeks that I have been able to get outside and enjoy the outdoors.  The last weekend of rifle season our family started sharing a cold virus, which left us in bed instead of in the deer blind.  We have now transitioned from deer hunting to duck hunting and  while I do not go on duck hunts, I do go scouting with my husband.   Our outdoor scouting adventures cover several miles around Lake Wister (I cannot reveal the specific locations of the honey holes) and a lot of walking.  On our scouting adventure we had the chance to see some hunters working a group of ducks to get them into shooting range.  Well, we didn’t actually see them because they were so well camouflaged, but we did see their flapping wing decoy and hear them blowing their duck calls.  I started asking my husband questions about the different types of duck call sounds hunters make and why.  He explained that ducks are very social birds and basically the different types of calls are invitations for the ducks in flight to stop for a visit and join the party.  Some ducks fly right over the hunters and others decide to fly in and check out what’s going on.  Unfortunately for the ducks that fly in, they quickly realize this is a party they shouldn’t have joined and they end up on the dinner table. 

Our choice of friends and activities can parallel a duck hunt.   Just as the ducks fly around the sky deciding where to land, we go through life deciding which people to be friends with and where we want to socialize.  Also, just like the hunters who work diligently with decoys and calls to lure ducks into shooting range, there are many things in life that try to lure us away from our Christian walk.  We have to be like the ducks that fly true to their course and be careful not to be lured away from our faith by things that sound and look enticing.

Colossians 2:8 Don't let anyone lead you astray with empty philosophy and high-sounding nonsense that come from human thinking and from the evil powers of this world, and not from Christ.

 

This photo is of my husband and our three oldest sons in 2009.

 

CAMOUFLAGE

This year I have spent more time in the woods hunting than ever before and I have learned how important camouflage is to a successful hunt.  Visual and scent camouflage allow the hunter to enter the domain of deer without being seen or smelled and blend in with the natural environment.  Preparing my personal camouflaged blind and clothing for hunting brought to mind how individuals can camouflage themselves in daily life, especially through social media. 

I was a huge fan of social media when it first came on the scene and still believe it can be beneficial, if used appropriately.  I personally see social media as working much like hunting camouflage in that it allows individuals to portray themselves as something they are not. . . they are camouflaged.  None of our lives are without struggles, disappointments and achievements; but on Facebook and Instagram we can have the perfect life.  Now granted none of us want to air all of our dirty laundry, but more often than not we want to post and share those pictures and status updates that obviously show us only at our best.  Do we talk and act one way on our profiles and a different way in person?  Do we use social media to camouflage who we are to others?  There is an acronym known as WYSIWYG {What You See Is What You Get}.  Well, WYSIWYG is not always true with social media.  We all know those individuals; the perfect parent on Facebook, the young man who acts tough through the words of his tweets or the young girl who photoshops her selfies for Instagram.   Social media has created a new avenue for peer pressure for all ages allowing people to be camouflaged.  We have to decide how to use social media to project ourselves to the world.  Is it who we really are, or are we camouflaged in social media to be something we are not?

These are my two camouflaged hunting blinds. 

PERSEVERANCE

I think we would all agree that today’s society is one of instant gratification.  Living in this time of instant gratification I wonder if we have forgotten the understanding of perseverance.  The 2014 muzzleloading season was a great hunting season for me.  I was blessed with a small buck and a doe.  The buck was that of instant gratification.  I had not been in my blind over an hour when he appeared.  I took the shot and he dropped no more than 20 yards from where I shot him.  The doe was my personal lesson in perseverance.  I had been in my blind for a little over four hours and it was nearing sunset.  I was just about to pack up my gear when I saw the doe appear.  I watched her for a short time before she was in range.  I took the shot and saw her dart out of the clearing toward the woods.  I knew she was going to have to be tracked in the dark and this would be my first experience at tracking.  I text my husband and let him know I was going to need his help.  With coats on and flashlights in hand, we started the tracking adventure.  It is amazing how much different the woods look at night and it is very easy to lose your sense of direction, so we used trail tape to mark the blood trail.  We would track for a while and then lose the trail.  My husband was encouraging and told me we had to keep looking.  It was getting late, cold and past dinner time.  We lost the blood trail at least four different times and each time I would take a deep breath, sigh and think we had lost the deer.  Again , my husband was patiently encouraging and that is when the topic of perseverance came up.  He said that word kept coming to mind and that is when I got the idea for this blog post.  It took us over four hours to find the doe.  Once we found her that was not the end of the adventure as we then had to get her out of the woods.  My husband cut down one of the small trees and we tied her legs to the tree.  Each of us grabbed an end of the tree and started the trek of hauling her out.  It was a good thing we had left the “bread crumbs” of trail tape or I am afraid I would still be out there wandering around tying to find my way back.  That day of hunting in God’s outdoor library was over an eight hour adventure.  It was a great adventure filled with patience, teamwork, encouragement and PERSEVERANCE!

1 Corinthians 9:24  Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize?  Run in such a way as to get the prize.  (NIV)

Galatians 6:9  Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (NIV)