So from previous post you probably know that we are getting quite the collection of animals around here.  I was looking at coop ideas on BackyardChickens.com the other day and a lady wrote something I could completely agree with. She was saying that they got chickens because, "I like animals, and he likes to be self-sufficient. Isn't that just the story of our lives? " I can completely agree because I like animals alot, and Gary is totally self-sufficient, as he often says, he doesn't need animals in his life to be complete, or anything like that.  We work on two different wavelengths.  I love animals, and want to give them the best quality of life possible.  After all, we get to go to heaven after this, they just die.  This is there one shot at life, shouldn't I try to make it good for them?  Anyway, if Gary wasn't in the picture I'd be that crazy lady.  I want two Siberian Huskies in the house, and I never meet a stray cat that I don't think should come home with us.

We already have 18 chickens (if you count the chicks too), we are about to get three more from a friend who is getting rid of a few, and of course we already have a mix-Siamese cat.  So the last thing we need is another cat.    On Friday, I thought I heard baby birds crying from a nearby tree.  We have a couple of bluebirds nesting in two bluebird boxes, a couple of cardinals in the bushes to one side of the house, and a bluejay who's made a home in our dead oak tree.  I didn't have time to check then, I was trying to mop when Gary had the short ones out of the house.  When Gary got home, he heard the crying and he walked over to a tree to find a black kitten not more than 6 weeks old, alone and stuck.  He picked it up and brought it to me.  I promptly decided to feed it and take care of it.  After all it's just a baby, and I don't think it will make it on it's on.  Gary agreed I could take a couple of days and try to find her a home.  She's had some soft cat treats, and some cat food softened up with water.  I hoping we find a home for her, because I know Gary HATES cats, and doesn't want any more.  As sweet as she is and as much as I would like to keep her, I won't do that to him again.  She was pretty nervous at first, but she has warmed up considerably.  She likes to play with the kids, and has even let Ruth hold her.  She's playful and snugly, and since I firmly believe all animals need names, I'm calling her Darcy till we find her a home.  After all she's a black cat, Darcy means dark, and I like the name.  Do you want a kitten, do you know someone who does?  Leave me a comment let me know.

















Our newest chick is the only one to hatch out of our last.  It came from our blue maran hen and rooster.  We had a 25% chance of getting a black chick (which I would prefer for a rooster), a 50% chance of a blue chick (like what we have, and what I would prefer for a hen), and 25% chance of getting a splash.  Chicken genetics are fun.  I always thought genetics were interesting.  Anyway, you can guess what we ended up with-  yup, a splash.  I think it's a rooster too.  We are holding off on naming it until we know that it is going to make it and what it is.  I will confess I'm already looking for general names just in case - I considered Marquis de Lafayette, the French general that helped during the American Revolution.  Think about it, Marquis fills my M requirement because it's a Maran, Lafayette was French just like the Marans are a french breed.  (I know, I know, I'm a total history nerd).  And if you think that sounds like a mouthful for a chicken just remember that Lafayette was his title not his name, his actual name was Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette.  Anyway, the new chick is doing really well considering that it has no nest mates.  I think it has decided that I'm it's mother.  It likes to sit nestled up on my shoulder, and surprisingly enough hug out there for over an hour on Wed while I sat reading a book while the kids played outside.

In other news, we rearranged our chickens Saturday night.  Most of our last hatch wasn't fertile, or at least didn't develop (truth be told Gary took care of the dud eggs this time, and he didn't check all that closely).  The "chicks" Aurora and Blanche are actually adolescent pullets now, about 9 1/2 weeks old.  The recommended time to reintroduce them to the rest of the flock is between 2 and 3 months.  They are big enough to stand the pecking order and are fully feathered with their adult feathers, but they aren't so big as to get into fights with the older hens. Since that would have put us up to 17 birds in a coop built for 16 and a run built for 13.  They are a bit crowded (we do plan to build a bigger run soon).  To fix both problems we've moved the rooster and his three ladies into the smaller pen.  This way I can guarantee fertile eggs for the hens we want chicks from.  And the younger birds went into the big coop.

Ruth is a bit accident prone.  It's rare for more than two or three days to pass without her falling, tripping, running into something and having a knot, scrape, or black eye to show for it.  None have been so bad as her last ER trip, but it's becoming a joke just how ungraceful she is.  Britt hasn't even come close in 3 years to the damage she's done to herself since she started pulling up and walking.

He tried to make up for it this week though.  Tuesday night he was over at Memaw and Mister's house while Gary and I went to a Gator Networking dinner.  He was running around and playing with Lilli like usual and either tripped on something or ran into a wall.  Anyway, he fell on the floor and cracked his head on it pretty good.  He was crying and let Mister hold him, and ended up finally going to sleep, but he had a pretty good knot on his head after that.

The fun didn't end there though.  Wednesday, Gary was gone to an ag conference so to get all of us to Church we needed to split up.  The two kids rode with Mom, Dad and Lilli, and then Uncle Quintin and Aunt Joanna picked me up.  While everyone was in the lunchroom taking care of a few things before Church, the three kids were playing in the nursery and Britt came running, crying, and bleeding this time.  Britt says he hurt himself on a bench, Lilli says he ran into the wall.  In any event, he cut himself both under and above his eye.  He wouldn't let anyone clean it up with a wash rag or a bag of ice.  Last night he finally let me wash it up a little.  Britt may have a scar to match the one Ruth has now.

Believe or not the fun continued.  On Thursday, for the first time ever Ruth managed to fall off the hearth for the first time.  She landed flat on her face from the looks of it.  Britt wouldn't admit, it but I suspect they were fighting and pulling on a toy.  Britt probably succeeded in pulling it away from her, and she fell off.  I saw her run through the kitchen with Unca Matthew's old raccoon, then when I heard the crying and went back in the living room Britt was running off with it.  She's got a real bruise and a little cut on her forehead.  It's been the sort of week that keeps me hopping.  That's for sure!

One final post on our weekend with Grumps and Ahna.  Mother is usually the one who reads to the kids (and she did read to them alot on this trip with books and on the iPad).  She read alot to us when we were growing up, too.  There were always a few books that Daddy read though.  He read all the Dr. Seuss stuff because she didn't care for the nonsense stuff.  He read Uncle Remus stories to us, because he can do the Ebonics.  And my favorite... he always read the Winnie the Pooh stories to us.  Daddy had a real knack for those characters, and I still believe he has the best Eeyore voice ever.  I've been reading the Pooh stories to Britt for a while now.  A chapter at bedtime, not ever night, but enough so that we are nearly to the end of the books that we have.  In the last month or so Ruth has started laying on the bed to hear them too.  She doesn't always make it to the end of the tale.  If she wallows too much, or starts banging on the book, she is shuffled off to her bed.  Saturday night the kids were all kind of wild, and I knew there was no hope of just putting them in bed and turning off the light, so I thought I would let Grumps read them a Pooh story.  If they were good Britt might even get a second chapter, as he always asks, but rarely gets.  Everything started out nice and calm... until Daddy read the word bees.  For some reason Ruth has decided that word is facinating to say, and everytime she saw a picture of one in the book or heard Grumps say it she had to lean way over and repeat it over and over and over.  She liked the word balloon too, but not as much as she did bees.  In her excitement to say "BEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS" she would lean down and get spit all over poor Grumps, eventually he was able to finish the story, she wiped his chin all up with her monkey blanket, and it was all good as new.  The real surprise was after he finished the story, and they got their cups; they passed out.  We didn't hear another sound from them, and they actually slept in Sunday morning.

Watch the video, you won't be disappointed...

I'm one of those mothers.  You know the ones that don't let their kids going running through mud puddles because that means additional work for me in the form of washing clothes and shoes and scrubbing tile floors.  I have trouble with letting them do things that result in extra work for me.  Not to mention the inevitable colds the come from running around in wet clothes in cold rain.  Last Thursday the rain came in, and the kids were getting a little stir crazy, so when the weather lifted I threw them outside (of course with the supervision of Grumps and Ahna).  After I got supper stuff situated I headed out with them, thinking I had just enough time to go and pick a few oranges with them to feed the cows, and then I could finish meal prep and get them a bath.  Well in the middle of our impromptu trip, the rain started back up.  We all hid underneath Bro. Tommy and Sis. Barbara's pump shed for about 15 mins until it quit, but Britt had other plans.  He ran around in circles, jumped through puddles and yelled about how excited he was to be getting wet.  For once I let him.  I will confess when we got them back home, I stripped them outside and carried them to the bathtub.  After all there was no reason to have to mop the floor twice in one day.



Thursday night we were blessed to have Bro. Chris, Sis. Lydia, Grandmaw, and Mom over for supper with my parents.  Everything went surprisingly well, especially considering that I did the cooking.  I'm not the cook in this family, as everybody knows.  It was my first time to cook a ham, and we had green beans, strawberry spinach salad, and  Gary got home from working just in time to finish up the grilled squash and zucchini that he does so well.  For desert we had a pumpkin pie.  Mother makes the best pumpkin pies ever, and I was going to bake one from her recipe, but Gary talked me into using one of the frozen store bought pies we had at the last minute.  It was a good move, I couldn't have thrown any thing else together that day.


We always have a good time with our church family and this time was no exception.  Britt was so tuckered out that he managed to sleep through the entire thing, so Ruth got everyone to herself.  She filled up Bro. Chris's boots with toys, and he decided to try to teach her that Britt was Bubba.  I term I personally HATE, and that of course, she is saying clear as day now.  Supper was just a good excuse to visit together.

I like to sing.  I sing with Momma in the car.  I sing sitting on the bench in Church.  I even sing in the bathtub sometimes.  I know lots of songs.  My favorite song to sing is "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" because it is in Duck, Duck, Moose which is one of the books Britt likes to read to me.  I also sing "Twinkle, Twinkle" and "Ittsy, Bitsy Spider", though I'm not really good at the hand part yet.  I liked it when Ahna would rock me and sing with me.

My favorite part of this weekend with Grumps and Ahna was going to see the dinosaurs.  We've driven by Dinosaur World lots of times.  Just a few months ago, lots of long necks and a new building showed up where before there was only one Rex.  Momma and Daddy have been wanting to carry me there for a while, but it just hasn't worked out.  I told Grumps I wanted to show him the dinosaurs so he said ok, and off we went.  Momma said it was a little more expensive than she thought it would be, but I loved it, so she says it must have been worth it.  She says next time we are going to take Daddy and the stroller with us, and stay all day.
















Our first stop when we came in was the new dino playground.  I climbed all over it and went down the slides, and through the tunnel, while Ruth tried out the big swings for the first time.  She scared Momma though, because she kept letting go of the chain to point at something and tell her about it.  We didn't stay there too long, because it was time to go and dig for fossils.  I liked digging in the sand, I got a whole cup full of fossils.  Ruth was good at shaking her sand out and picking up her fossils too.  After we dug for about 15 minutes they told us that we could only keep three.  I kept a fossilized sea shell, a shark tooth, and a set of sting ray teeth. Ruth kept a fossilized plant stem, a shark vertebra, and a shark tooth.
















When we finished digging we set off on our "ba-venture in the jungle."  We saw lots and lots of dinosaurs, Momma said there were over a hundred.  Apparently that's like counting to 20 five times in a row!  I saw all the dinosaurs from the Land Before Time movies:  Topsy and Tria and Sara the Triceratops, and Little Foot and his grandmother and granddaddy, I saw Petree and lots of his brothers and sisters, I saw Spike the Stegasaurs, and Mr. Club Tail the grouchy old Euoplosophlus.  We saw some that I knew from the movies that weren't dinosaurs like Gredo the prehistoric bird, and we saw others that we didn't know.  We walked around in there for a long time almost three hours.  There was a place where you could touch and guess the dinosaurs, and a place were you could uncover dinosaur bones.  There was a place with a movie about dinosaurs, and another place where dinosaurs were eating each other.  They had a fish pond with some really big orange and black fish that Momma said were called Koi.
















After all that time Ruth was tired, and Momma said it was getting ready to rain so we headed back toward the car.  Our last stop before leaving was their new museum.  Inside there were lots of exciting things to look at but the most exciting thing was that we heard dinosaurs, and then all of a sudden we walked around the corner and there they were, all moving around and growling.  Ahna videoed me but it was dark and hard to see.  Ruth was really scared, she hid behind Momma and wouldn't come in the room.  When Momma started to walk in she cried, and Momma had to go back and pick her up.  I wasn't scared.  Ahna asked me if I liked the dinosaurs and I whispered "uuuhhhuhh" and nodded.  Grumps laughed at me, he seemed to think I was scared, but I was just holding on to his shirt really tight, so that he didn't accidentally drop me.  Infact, I went back in with Momma a second time before we left.  I started to run off when the dinosaurs started moving and talking again, but Momma picked me up and carried me.  On the way out to the car I asked Momma if we could go and see the dinosaurs again now, but she said, maybe another day.  I hope we go back soon, it's all I've been able to talk about since then.

For the third year in a row, Mother and Daddy came down on her spring break to see the grandkids.  They come down once, sometimes twice a year.  When they come we try to make it over to Anna Maria Island one afternoon to play, fly kites, and watch the sunset.  This year the visit was pretty short, but going to the beach was still on the agenda.  Friday afternoon we headed over to the island.  It was pretty overcast and a little windy that day, so the sunset was no go, but everything else was.

First item of business was to get the kites up.  Mother and Daddy brought Britt a Lighting McQueen kite, so they got it all put together and blown up (really, I had never seen an inflatable kite till this one, I guess it's suppose to make it easier to keep up or something).   Then Mother stood back with Britt and they let it go.  Britt wasn't sure what he was suppose to do next, but Daddy called him over, gave him the handle and they flew the kite together.  Britt seemed to like it and had fun.  Daddy told me that when he was done though, he just dropped the handle, haha.  Ruth really liked watching the kites too.  She would yell, and point and make sure that you saw that exciting thing too.  She has a new very clear word now - Kite!  Daddy put his box kite together after that, and he laid on the beach and flew his kite.

Today I'm going to introduce the last of our little flock to you.  The first two birds you see are Speckled Sussex.  They are typically a deep mahogany color, with a black bar, and then a white tip on their feathers, which is what gives them the speckled appearance.  I think they are incredibly beautiful birds, they have a deep irredesicent shine to their feathers, that most other hens don't have.  They were raised in Sussex, England for meat birds, but they lay 5 to 6 eggs a week all of a very pale brown.  Ours are a little on the small side in my opinion, but they are good regular layers.  They are known to be gentle, people friendly birds.  We've been pleasantly surprised with these two.  They are easy to pick up, they will hop right up in your lap, and seem to love being petted.  They both have very different personalities when relating to the other birds.  Suzy is on the left, and she doesn't take flack from any of the others.  She's nosy and checks out everything.  She's not on top of the pecking order, but no one gives her trouble now.  Sharon is on the right, and most of the day you will find her on that very perch.  She seems to enjoy watching all the chaos from above.  No one troubles her up there, and she knows every time I open the coop door that she'll be petted.





Finally the two newest members of our flock, who aren't yet big enough to graduate to the big pen are Aurora in the back and Blanche in the front.  Blanche is a Buff Orphington.  Eventually as the Rhode Island Reds quit producing I want to replace them all with Buff Orphingtons.  They like the RIR and the Barred Rocks fall in the prolific egg layer category producing 6 to 7 brown eggs a week.  They are widely considered to be the friendliest and most docile of all the chicken breeds.  They have been know to learn tricks, and yet they have no survival skills.  They need secure coops, and to be closely watched when free ranging, because they generally don't have the sense to avoid predators.  They have tons of fluff on their legs and backside, more than most other hens giving them the illusion of being alot bigger than they are.  Aurora named after Sleeping Beauty (one of Britt's current favorite movies), is a hatchery Ameraucana, or more likely will prove to be an Easter Egger.  An Ameraucana must lay blue eggs, if the eggs are green or pinkish then they are not pure breed and thus are classified as an Easter Egger.  We had two gorgeous EEs in the past.  I'm still guessing at the color for Aurora, but she is filling out nicely.  They are suppose to be a little more flighty than other chickens, but very friendly.  And that's our flock!

My favorite shot from our wedding.

So, back right before Gary and I got married, I asked several couples who had really good marriages or couples who had over come alot, what their advice would be to a couple getting married.  I got alot of good advice, I got some that doesn't seem to really apply to me and Gary, and I had a few people recommend a book by Debbie Pearl Created to Be His Help Meet.  I never got around to reading it.  Then sometime after we got married, someone gave me a copy of it.  I don't really remember how I got it, but a couple of weeks ago I thought, hmm, I'll pull it down and read it.

My first piece of advice is don't waste your time or money on this book.  I was most interested because someone had mentioned to me, that in the book it talks about how men generally fall into one of three categories, and that it gives some insight into each one.  This is so that you can tell which kind of man your husband is, and how to be better supportive of him.  I thought that was going to be the gist of the book, unfortunately it's only one chapter.  It describes the Command Man and the Visionary Man, both of who in my opinion sound like failures as men.  The Command Man seems to be given a pass at manipulation, micromanaging, and serves as dictator of his home.  The Visionary Man seems to be one who is very detached from most of what's going on around him, almost negligent, impulsive, and is not able to really handle day to day life.  The third kind of man is the Steady Man.  Maybe I only think he's the best, because it was a close description to Gary, BUT to me he's the only one that makes sense of what a husband should act like.  It gave a few useful insights into understand how his mind works.

 "He avoids controversy... He will quietly ignore hypocrisy in others.  He will selfishly fight the wars that Mr. Visionary starts and Mr. Command leads.  ...His steadiness makes him the last to change... His lack of spontaneity and open boldness may look like indifference... However, he is like deep, deep water.  The very depth makes the movement almost imperceptible, but it is nevertheless, very strong."

She later describes Mr Steady as "a wonderful, kind, loving, serving man."   She talks about how when the wife is unhappy or discontent, his response is to serve more.  That is definitely true with Gary he doesn't talk things out, he does things.  I've often described him as a rock.  I can be high strung and all over the place, but it takes alot to get him riled up and moving.  That section of 3 pages in the 289 I read is the only decent material.

Most of her stuff I found to be absolutely appalling.  She goes on at length that women are to have no other drive, goal, or consideration in life but to meet each and every need of her husband, anticipating them before they happen, and ensuring his happiness.  To me what she describes is something sick, a woman who places her husband in a god-like position, and a husband who has acquired a slave.  She twist verses out of context to back up her views, and very often she shades a verse here or there just enough to make you wonder, and then builds her house of cards on top of all these shaded verses.

She goes so far as to recommend that you stay with your husband even if he is abusing you or if he chronically cheats on you.  Ever time she talks about a divorced woman she paints the most dark and depressing pictures she can come up with.  I'm not saying that they have a rosy life, but to teach that all divorcees experience these things to this degree is ridiculous.  For example she writes,

"Look around you.  There is a new breed of women today.  They serve your table at the local restaurant; they mow grass, work in the hospitals, and direct traffic.  There are thousands of these ladies;  they are everywhere doing anything they can find to do.  They are mostly single moms.  They dress cheaply; their hair has a ragged cut, and the dark circles under their young eyes testify to their faded hope.  They are a new army of workers.  Employers can underpay them because they are desperate for work.  You can depend on them because they would not dare take the chance of losing their job.  They are always distracted because they are thinking of their unhappy children or the baby sitter's new, weird boyfriend who comes over when she is at work. ...But all this was not your fault.  No, it was your husband who committed adultery, your husband who was angry or got into porn., but he seems to have a life of ease now with pleany of money compared to your miserable condition.  He takes the kids every other weekend and spoils them, making them hate you all the more.  He seems to be so vital, so alive and full of smiles.  He has money to entertain them, and they know you as a grumpy penny-pitcher.  They think his young girlfriend is really cool.  When you discover a lump in your breast, your teens don't care or understand the gravity of the situation.  You struggle alone with your fear and take yourself to the doctor, knowing that even though this might not end in death, it is the end of hope."

There are excerpts and asides all throughout the book like this. And anyone who knows someone who is divorced and has small children know this is far from the whole story.  She continually underlies everything with an attitude that you are nothing without your man.  One of the further insults that she continually throws at you is that to be a keeper at home, you must be home all the time with your children.  She is against babysitters in every situation whether to go grocery shopping or to work or for a day out, always insinuating that your child will be neglected or assaulted if you leave them alone.  She writes that she received an email from a young man that she knew saying that his wife was helping him with mission work and while with a babysitter, "their little girl, not yet one year old, had been molested, most likely by someone with a terrible disease."

 The most frighten part to me of what she has written indicates that women are to have no mind of their own.  She continually says that women aren't to be partners in marriage but help meets.  She writes about Adam and Eve, "God gave her to Adam to be HIS helper, not his partner.  She was designed to serve, not to be served, to assist, not to veto his decisions." (bolding in the original).  She continually says that the woman has no place, no right, to offer an opinion or to disagree on anything.  Her husband clearly lives this way, as she writes toward the end,

"When our first daughter was just two months away from getting married, she asked her daddy a theological question.  Remember now, she was a graduate of Bible college and had spent three years on the foreign field as a missionary.  But rather than answer her, as he had been doing for the previous 26 years, he told her, 'I cannot answer your Bible questions, for you now believe what your husband believes.  He will be your head, and you will follow him.  It is time to get adjusted to your new role.  Ask him what he believes about it.'"

There is nothing healthy or godly about such a relationship.  I think that a marriage is a wonderful thing.  I have a wonderful man.  God uses marriage to describe the relationship of Jesus to the Church.  The Church wants to follow Christ, he is a good leader.  It's not always easy to follow Him, but He never leaves us or forsakes us.  In a good marriage a wife is a help meet in any way that she can, but the husband is also to protect and care for the wife.  When it says two become one flesh, it doesn't mean that the wife disappears into the man that her husband already is, and that he never changes in any way.  It means that they grow and merge together, becoming entwined.  I've changed for the better for having Gary in my life, and he claims that he has as well.  We are growing together.  If all he needed was the woman that this book describes he could hire a cook and a housekeeper, and have a clean house, with far better meals and a much better price.  Gary values me for my ability to argue with him.  No, really.  We debate out the possibilities, we examine every angle together, we make all of our decisions together, because this isn't the Gary B and company show, it's our family.  I don't always agree with him, and sometimes he takes the gamble anyway, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't,
but he always knows where I stand.  A marriage is team work, we are yoked together.  I'm not the mule and him the driver with the whip.  We are together pulling.

I want to be a help meet for him, and I want him to be better for having me in his life, rather than me being a hindrance and a burden.  I'm sure there are other women that feel the same way, but if you are looking for advice as to how to get there, save yourself the time and effort, and stay away from this book.

I know lots of people, and I've been trying to tell everyone about it for months.  For some reason no one understands me when I talk.  Lately I've been alot clearer Momma says.  I know Aunt Shon (Joan), ManMan (Aunt Manna), Momma, and Da-e (Daddy), Bee (Britt), Yeye (Lilli), I can tell you Memaw and Nonah (Ahna).  I haven't figured out Mister and Grumps yet.  Momma's been trying to work with me on my uncles, Unca Matthew, Unca Nick, and Unca Benji.  Some times I say ick or Nick for Unca Nick, but watch to see just how well it's going...

Momma talked with Bro. Philip Conley when he was here for a visit back in February during the Fellowship Meeting.  She and Daddy had heard him preach about his daddy making them learn scripture to recite when they were very young, and they wanted to know more about it.  So Momma and Daddy started teaching me Bible verses.  First I learned I John 4:19, then Ephesians 6:1, and I'm learning my third one now, Proverbs 3:13.  I have the verses down great, but not so much the numbers that are suppose to go with them...

This past weekend was El Bethel's Annual Meeting time.  They had in Elder Ernie Stump.  We made it to both the Friday night and the Saturday morning services.  Friday night he spoke on "Justification by Blood," and Saturday morning he spoke on "Justification by Faith".  We weren't there Sunday morning, but he had intended to finish up with "Justification by Works."  Like oh so many things in the Bible, it requires proper dividing of the word to determine what kind of justification is under consideration.  Otherwise, it reads as if a slightly crazy guy with multiple personalities wrote the book.  I mean first it says you can't do anything to be saved and then you read where someone was saved by doing such and such.  For it to all make sense, which we know it must, as it is God's word, and not some sociopath's ramblings, you have to figure out the context of each situation.  Bro. Ernie used the analogies of courtrooms.   We were justified by blood before God the Father when the Jesus died on the cross.  He made one offering for sin, and was accepted by God.  In that heavenly courtroom, it was all taken care of, and should trouble us no more.  We are justified by faith, when we come to believe in these things.  We are not saved, and we don't get saved when we believe, Jesus took care of that some 2,000 years ago, but when we come to believe these things are so and have faith, it justifies us in our own minds.  For example, if you were to come and pay off all of our debt, the credit card company and the bank would be happy to take your money.  However, if I didn't know about what you had done for us, I would continue to be worried sick about where we are going to find money for the next payment.  When you tell me and I believe you it takes all the stress off my mind.  If you tell me and I don't believe you, I continue to fret.  HOWEVER, even if I think you are joking and I don't believe you, it doesn't change the fact that it's been paid off.  The bank is satisified, even if I don't know about it.  In the courtroom of my mind, faith justifies me.  We are justified by works, when we get up and do those things that we should be doing.  We are told over and over that we were saved in order that we would get up, follow him, and be about his business.  Now, even if I never do one thing I outta, it doesn't change the fact that He saved me.  Britt may never honor me by behaving, helping out around the house, and obeying me like he should because I'm his mother.  But no matter how that little boy acts, he will always be my son.  Not doing good works, doesn't make us any less God's child, but that doesn't show others that we are.  Think of an orange tree, unless you are a grower who knows alot about citrus trees the way you know it's an orange tree is that it bears oranges.  It's not only an orange tree the couple of months of the year it's bearing oranges, but that doesn't help me tell what sort of a tree it is.  There is an orange tree in our yard, that has never and probably will never bear oranges (due to disease), but that doesn't make it any less an orange tree.  God's children my not show forth good works (due to the disease of sin), but that doesn't make them any less his child.  However, when I see an orange tree with oranges or an individual doing good works, that is evidence to all who see what it is.