My parents are soon to be eighty and seventy-nine years of age. Their home which they dearly love is becoming more than they can safely manage, and they have decided to sell it and move to more accommodating housing. Because of a life spent in active ministry, this is the first home they have owned in over fifty years. They have lived in this home longer than any other place they have lived together. They are resigned, and yet often sad.

My role in all of this, and the role of my siblings, is to get the layers of time, dust, and memory organized enough that strangers can walk through the house. It is very difficult, because neither of my folks really wants this to be happening, and neither is really ready to allow us to "pack away" things, or do any kind of truly efficient decluttering or staging.

All this hubbub takes a toll on all of us, my dearest mother most of all.

God grant her peace, give me "wonder woman" like energy, and help me use only words which heal and never words that hurt. Amen.

Too many of us spend today planting flowers and mowing lawns. We should be thinking of the sacrifices made by those who lie beneath waving grasses and granite stones, just so we could cook out and plant flowers today.

I spent most of my day yesterday with my mother and father trying to help them decide some things about selling their home. I looked at piles of books, sermons, fabric, family photos, all representing untold years of memories.

I tried to be gentle and helpful and cautious as I listened and tried to think of simple quiet things I could do to help my Mom. My Dad is less enthusiastic about moving, and far less able to be of any help in the organizing and planning of the many years of accumulation still to be sorted and pared.

As I drove home I was again reminded of all the reasons that I wish to make my family my priority and how little joy I feel at the prospect of returning to the world of work. Charlie and I keep praying that somehow we will find ways of making our finances work so that I can still be available to our family. Send prayers if you got them.

One of my new favorite things to do is reading "frugal" blogs. I pore over them with a fevered intensity hoping somehow to find new ways of keeping me at home and away from the big, bad world of work.

I do not have the creativity that many of these bloggers have, but I certainly am willing to try new things...which is really trying "old" things. When my husband and I were growing up, everyone had a garden. People spent many summer days and evenings outdoors, not for exercise or recreation, but for the very pragmatic reasons on needing more economical food to feed large families. My mom made most of our clothes, and getting something handed down, remade, or used was really no big deal. The truth is that much of the furniture in our house once belonged to someone else, but I rarely ever think about that, except to remember whose it was with fondness. We have an entire bedroom set that once belonged to on of my husband's maiden aunts. It's green...so who cares?

In our 1950's gardens we grew corn, tomatoes, green beans, and cucumbers. More ambitious gardeners grew melons and more exotic vegetables. We "canned' in glass jars with lots of boiling water and the eminent threat of explosion. My grandmother had a huge freezer and nothing could compare with the frozen peaches and strawberries we ate when there was snow piled outside the windows.

Regardless of the old versus new argument, we need to use our property for more than a place to grow an overpriced, over-treated lawn which is rarely played upon. We need to grow food for ourselves and for others who do not have the luxury of space that we have here on our little suburban homestead.

I'll keep reading blogs, and trying to find ways to make the most of what we have. Reduce, reuse, recycle will be my mantra. I really want to be a homemaker. I just need to find lots of creative ways of cutting costs so that we can live on what we make. God, please bless our efforts.

It seems the caprice of the financial environment of our country, but most especially our household, are forcing me back out into the work world.

It is certainly not unusual for any of us to face strains in making the means and the ends meet, but I have a dilemma. For the past three years I have taken a natural (cheap) approach with my hair. It is very, very long, and very, very gray. At first I got lots of complaints from my grand girls. I just did not look like the well dyed lady they knew and loved. As time has passed they have kindly accepted the change. Baby Charlie doesn't know the difference, he has only seen me gray.

The question is whether tis nobler to be my really gray self and just expect the world to see me as capable, or to cave in to the real possibility that no one will get past the gray. I hate reality, don't you?