Thursday, September 20, 2018

The Word of God Is a Marvelous Word Quote J Vernon McGee

The Word of God
is a marvelous Word 
if you just let it speak to you.
Quote from Thru the Bible by J. Vernon McGee

Every day is a good day because it is the Lord's Day!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Please never think that you are not good enough, smart enough, or knowledgeable enough for God to speak to you through the words of the Holy Bible. 

God speaks to all who will listen with a message intended exactly for each individual person. Most often it will take reading the same passage many times, but it will come, or He will have you tuck it away in the back of your mind and bring it out just at the right time when you need it. 

Read because you want to hear. That's how it works.

The Word of God is a marvelous Word if you just let it speak to you. ~ J. Vernon McGee

Blog post by Mary Katherine May, co-owner of QualityMusicandBooks.com

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

What Will Put You in a Sunshine Mood Today? Nathaniel Hawthorne Quote


I cannot endure to waste anything so precious 
as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne ~
Hello Sunshine! by Mary Katherine May

> This blog post by Mary Katherine May of QualityMusicandBooks.com.
> Image created by Mary Katherine May photograph using Corel Painter Essentials 6
> Image is free to download and save for nonprofit use.
> Quotation from Passages from the American Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1868.

Where you are is there sunny sun out today creating the feeling of freedom and joy, energy and enthusiasm?  If not...make your own sunshine!  Think on something, do something that will put yourself in the mood.  Please, don't let weather control your disposition.

Every day is a great day because it is the LORD's day!

Monday, September 3, 2018

Spouse's POV Living with Dying Interstitial Lung Disease

Rick and Mary May
September 3, 2018
My husband is dying. I say it out loud far more than I should. It shocks people.  Maybe saying it aloud makes what's happening more real. Maybe it helps accepting the future. I don't know.

Blog post by Mary Katherine May

As a Christian I say that I am not afraid of death and am ready to die.  I now know the hypothetical is different than reality.  I don't believe I fear death, but I do know that being ready to die hypothetically is not even close to being true after hearing from the doctor my beloved is on his way to the pearly gates.

After nearly 45 years of marriage do I have the right to the feeling that it was shocking news? 

He is 68 years old and retired.  Does it mean I shouldn't feel grief but should expect it?

Interstitial Lung Disease is an awful thing.  The lungs fill up with stuff, choking the space where air should go meaning the unlucky recipient of scarring and honeycoming and whatever else dies by suffocating. 

We saw how it was with his Dad.  We know what's coming.

Living with Dying...how do you keep going? Every heavy, noisy breath he takes...I stop asking him if he is alright. He must be tired of hearing me ask.

I am working on being positive.  Some days it's hard work.  No one in their right mind wants to live anticipating death. The best way to live is to make every day the best and leave death waiting until in front of its doorstep.

Washing up dishes after dinner is tough for him and so is making his bed. He has to stop and rest. Bending over to put on socks and shoes is tough so to make it easier he got velcro shoes. He is not supposed to travel by air anymore.

One year after diagnosis, he has lots of pills, oxygen machine, and handicap card for the car. He rides the motorized carts at the stores. Tasks he used to do himself now are hired out. He has to watch someone else do them and sees he is powerless to make what's happening change for the better.


...and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Mark 10:8
Sometime during the past year it came to me about how the Bible says that in marriage two become one.  I thought, how does one live when half of me is gone? Others have gotten through it, so can I. 

The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
If Psalm 23 were only that one line long, it would say everything I need to hear.  I can't count how many times this one sentence has gotten my focus back to where it should be. 

Though I walk through the shadow of death
           ...thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Here is where my faith is my staff.  I lean on my staff to make the walking easier.  Living the faith that I believe means trusting God to handle it for me, and though I forget to do that, the time getting back on track is shorter and I am forgetting less.

Truth!  By experience, I know that in reading the Bible I have placed in my mind Scripture that comes to mind when I need it to sustain me.  It's the same with hymns.  
Leaning on the Everlasting Arm
What a Friend We Have in Jesus
God Will Take Care of You... He does.

As a bookseller, I go through a lot of books.  Part of the preparation for selling is to look at each page so I can accurately describe the condition as well as determine if there will be a profit and price.  This blog post has come from looking at a volume of Annie Johnson Flint poetry and discovering her thoughts about The Heaviest Cross. 


It is not His cross that is heavy;
It is those that our hands have made
That hinder us on our journey,
On our aching shoulders laid;
There is strength for the load He gives us,
And balm for the thorn He sends,
But none for the needless burdens
And none for our selfish ends.

We bear a burden of sorrow;
We carry a weight of gold;
We cling to some treasured idol,
And will not loose our hold;
We bend beneath troubles and worries;
We drag the load of a wrong;
And we cry that the cross is heavy,
And sigh that the way is too long.

Let us drop the sin that besets us;
Let us cast aside our fears;
Let us give our grief to Jesus,
And break our pitcher of tears;
Let us learn of the meek and lowly
Who giveth the weary rest;
Let us take His yoke upon us,
And walk with Him abreast;

For His yoke is easy to carry,
And His burden is light in weight;
He will do His share of the labor,
For He is a true yoke-mate.
Are we weary and heavy laden?
Are we anxious and full of care,
That is not the cross of His giving,
But the one that we make and bear.
Annie Johnson Flint Poems Volume One
Toronto: Evangelical Publishers, 1944

October 7, 2018
Something changed this past month--not in our situation, but in me.  One day I realized that I had stopped anticipating death and had begun living through the circumstance.

Two things occurred to me. First: It had taken a year for my initial grieving to pass (my eyes no longer tear up at any moment) which seems to me a very long time; and, Second: that it is possible to live as though nothing has changed, even though everything has changed. Maybe hearing the coughing, listening to the oxygen machine, seeing how exhausted he gets has all become routine. I don't know. For sure, everything is going to be okay.

Saturday, September 1, 2018

A Mushroom Outing in Minnesota

Mushrooms! Fungi! 
Minnesota!
This blog post by Mary Katherine May

It was a sunny day in September of 2016 that my husband and I went to the Sandhill Crane Natural Area in East Bethel, Minnesota.  It's just a wild place in its natural state. 

Going there means you will climb over fallen branches, walk through thick brush and over uneven ground.  We parked at an entry point which was the end of a cul de sac on a neighborhood street and walked in.  There never were any sandhill cranes in sight, but there was loads of fungi to photograph during the two hours (take or leave a few minutes) of exploration.  

I have been waiting to share some of the photos until I could put names to the mushrooms, and even bought a book but still having difficulties with identification. I am comfortable for the time being, however, with my pleasure at taking mushroom photos and will dig into identification at a later time. Fungi experts with ID skills welcome!

So...voila!  Here are some images from our Sandhill Crane Natural Area Adventure.