From a Cluttered Desk

I am Tammy Cardwell, she of the cluttered desk. (Hey, you think I'm kidding?!) I'm having a blast here in Blogland and invite to you to peruse my ramblings. Like a buffet, they offer variety - essentially whatever makes it to the top of the piles that sometimes clutter my brain. We'll eventually cover it all - homeschooling, God, our church, the Eclectic Homeschool Online, books I'm writing and publishing, conferences I speak at, the joys of grandmotherhood, and hopefully chocolate. Of course, this is only what's near the top now. Who knows what's in those piles?

I’ve finished my sixth readthrough of the Bible and, yes, begun the seventh. Once again, I come here strongly urging you to pick your Bible up and put some serious effort into reading it from cover to cover. I wish there were some way I could impress on every one of you the amazing things that happen when you do this.

For the benefit of those who have never read my blog, let me say that I read the Bible through repeatedly for many reasons, but the primary reason is that we are eternal beings and it finally dawned on me a few years ago that I was not truly prepared for the life to come. With that in mind, knowing that this is THE book we will live by for Eternity, THE Book that can make us intimately acquainted with the God we want to serve forever, I purposed in my heart to get to know it as well as I could.

See, God moves in types and shadows. You see it throughout the Bible – so much of what goes on in the Old Testament is a type and shadow of what happens in the new that it’s astounding. Well, it occurred to me long ago that school – that “wonderful” institution most of us gave 12 or more years to – is a type and shadow of this life we’re living now. And if it is…

Well, looking back on my school years, if I’d known then what I know now I would have put a lot more effort into them. I was a good student. I graduated in the top 10% of my class, which wasn’t shabby, but I had it within me to graduate a lot higher if I’d only put forth some real effort. If I had been more serious, both in high school and college, my life would have potentially been VERY different. And I’m not just talking school, either; had I taken seriously the fact that those years were my opportunity to prepare for the life I would later live, I’d have entered marriage knowing a whole lot more about the necessities of running a home – both physically and financially.

So if I had it to do over again, I’d approach things very differently, or so I believe.

One day it dawned on me that I DO have it to do over again, that in truth this life I live today is the “school years” that offer me a chance to prepare for the Eternity I will live tomorrow, that von Goethe had it right when he said, “Life is the childhood of our immortality.” I suddenly realized that I have a second – and humongously bigger – chance to get it right, and since to know the Word is to know God (John 1) I determined to get to know the Word as much as I could.

You get to know a person in many ways. You can talk to them, exchange letters with them, play games with them… The same holds true for the Word. Bible studies abound and I delight in them, but with Bible studies we pick and choose. I feel it is also necessary to read the whole Bible – yes, even the begats and the books we have a hard time understanding – if we are to wholly know God, or at least as wholly as is possible.

Think of it this way. I have many friends, and each of those friends knows a part of me, an aspect or perhaps several aspects of who I am. Rare indeed is the friend who knows the whole Tammy Cardwell. In truth, I’m not at all sure anyone but God DOES know the whole Tammy Cardwell. No one has enough time to spend with me doing and talking and being involved in all of the things that make up who I am.

And so it is with God. We say we know Him, but do we? Do we really? How can we know Him, really know Him, if we don’t spend time with Him, being involved with Him in all the areas we can? I’m talking a lot more than reading the Bible, of course, but reading the whole Bible is a large part of learning to know the whole God.

And I have determined that this is my goal – to know God as fully as I can possibly know Him BEFORE I enter the next phase of life, whether that phase starts at the Rapture or my own graduation (What others call death).

So there’s the biggest why of it.

And the way of it? Repeated reading works. I’ve found, through the years, that reading the same book over and over again makes portions of that book really stick with me, and that every time I read it I see more, make more important connections than I did before. In particular, reading the Bible through in a relatively short period of time keeps the words of the early books fresher in my mind when I reach the later books.

Most people feel good if they manage to read the Bible through in a year, and it is very beneficial to do so, but I recommend reading even more quickly. Reading the Bible through in 90 days and less (I’ve done this twice) was a revelation to me. It’s like the difference between reading a novel one page per day and reading it through in one sitting. Sound ridiculous? I assure you, it’s not. Challenge yourself to spend an hour or more a day just reading the Bible through and you will be astounded by the results. No one would read a novel at a rate of one page a day, for obvious reasons – you would at the very least have a hard time keeping up with the story. Well…

Yes, if you’re a Cluttered Desk reader (And my blessings on those who have stayed through the dry times of this blog!), you’ve heard much of this before, but as I read Leviticus again and am once more astounded by how much more I see in it now, I know it bears repeating.

Become better acquainted with the whole Word of God so that you will better know Him.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

Me, myself, and I had a pity party the other day. In fact, it was such an event that I had to stop at the dollar store and buy refreshments. (Yep, we’re talking chocolate.) Without getting into the gory details, let’s just say it was about “stuff” – specifically the “stuff” I don’t have. Mind you, this is stuff I need, though it’s definitely not necessary for survival…or I’d not have survived since losing pretty much everything all those months ago.

I got into serous sin, my friends. I’m talking… Well, I did say I wouldn’t get into the gory details, but I will admit to you that the party started at lunch and didn’t end until some point during church service that night. When I finally called a halt to the festivities, God spoke to me. Yep, He’d surely been speaking to me all along, but…well…we all know how loud we can be when we’re in the middle of a party, right? That still, small voice gets lost in the noise.

As soon as I repented, though – REALLY ended the party – I could finally hear what He had to say. Essentially, He told me to stop worrying about the stuff, that He is more than capable of giving me everything I need in all areas of my life if I’ll just be more patient about it. I KNOW this, of course, but…

BUT, I decided to stop the whining and get on with seeking first the Kingdom of Heaven like His Word tells me to and let those things follow as He wills. I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and envious of others. I decided to stop sinning in this area.

And things started happening.

Some of the “stuff” I need is kitchen stuff. One of the specific whines I’d been making to God was that I don’t even have what it takes to bake a cake. I love to bake – cakes, cookies, you name it – and I’ve been looking forward to baking (Let’s ignore, for the moment, the fact that my husband is an insulin-dependant diabetic, okay?) so the fact that to this day I don’t have the cake pan, measuring cups, mixer, etc., to bake with was really getting to me. So what happened?

I got a notice from Gilt. I posted about Gilt.com, including my personal invitation link (http://www.gilt.com/invite/tmcardwell), a long time ago and through time a few people have followed my link, signed up, and started shopping their sales. Every time a new person does this, I get a credit to my account. I actually still had some credit in my account from the last person, so when I got this most recent notice I immediately logged on to see if there were any bargains that would be especially timely for me. I was actually thinking about getting a gift for someone else at first, but what what did I find on sale?

Bakeware! This was among many other things, of course, but bakeware is a very rare thing for Gilt to sell. This stuff is top of the line and with my credit I was able to order – wait for it – a 9×13 glass dish and a four-cup measuring cup. Oh yeah!!!! And it didn’t cost me a thing! That’s kept me smiling for days, but I’m not done yet.

I had a gift to buy and money is, not surprisingly, quite tight. I had earned some Kohl’s gift cards, though, through my activities with MyPoints, and lo and behold Kohl’s was having a special late night sale that just happened to be going on when I got off work at the second job. So I headed over there, started scouting clearance sections (My favorite part of any store), and found the perfect gift. AND…

Another thing that has been bothering me is how sterile our bathroom is. With the exception of bath towels and two pictures that, though they are worse for the wear, we did manage to salvage from the house, our bathroom has been white on white on white. I have HATED looking into the bathroom mirror and seeing that white wall behind me. So, what else did I find in the clearance area?

Wall stickers. I’ve been wondering how such things would work in the bathroom (with the humidity) anyway, but would never have considered paying $20 for something that might well fall of the wall after the first shower. This set of four, however, was on sale for $3.99 and the other gift I got was so reasonably priced that I actually had enough money left on the gift cards that I could get these too. So now I look in my bathroom mirror and can hardly contain the grin. I love it!

What would have happened if I’d chosen to party on instead of calling the party off? Self pity is such a destructive thing. Pity parties have absolutely no redeeming features. They raise your blood pressure, ruin your mood, put limits on your productivity.. Oh…and…yeah…they’re sin, which gets between you and God.

Hopefully I’ll remember this the next time me, myself, or I decides to call such a party, and will respond to the invitation with a decided, “ARE YOU CRAZY?!”

Yeah. Party OFF!

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C

I never EVER thought I’d say these words, but I’m enjoying living in an apartment!

Admittedly, we’re in the ideal spot. We’re five minutes from my job in a very quiet, small, apartment complex that is run by a terrific management team. We’re in a one-story building, so there are no upstairs neighbors to bother us. We’re also on the corner, so only have neighbors one one side and back, and hardly ever hear either. Ours is one of the few apartments in our complex that has an exterior entrance, and I really like the exterior entrance…

An apartment was not my first choice, but it was necessity - both because of the condition of the house we’d been living in and Jack’s condition. He is improving, but can’t even remotely do anything like yard work or maintenance, so being in a place where all we have to do is call maintenance (And they respond very quickly!) is great. It’s also only one bedroom - read: small and much easier to keep clean. Since we lost almost everything to the mold, it’s not cluttered either, and I have made a commitment to never allow either of us to fall into packrat mode again.

You never know what you’ll end up liking until you try it, huh? One more well-known truth relearned.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C