Author: Heather Holbrook

I found out that I have Autism upon having a son with the same disorder. Ironically, I was voted, "Most Likely to Succeed," by my high school classmates. But had I been born now, instead of 50+ years ago, I would have been considered a different sort of special. This site was started to encourage other Autistics and the people who love them .

Bible Defies Human Description

The past several Sundays our pastors have tried to teach us what the Bible is and where it gets its authority. And basically, I have come away with the understanding that, as humans, it is not possible to do that beyond stating the obvious – God wrote it through people and we are to obey what it says.

And I guess that makes sense. Since it was written by God’s Spirit through people, it, as an entity, is above our understanding. Yet, its teachings are simple enough that even the youngest child among us is able to understand it.

God says that His ways are higher than ours and His thoughts are higher than ours. And God asks us to become like little children to follow Him. So it makes sense that the Bible is above definition, yet is useful for teaching, rebuking and instructing in all righteousness.

It, as always, comes down to faith. Do you believe it? Do you plan to follow it?

As the old song goes, “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.”

Life was not created for death

On my way to work out this morning I started thinking about how there just seems to be no truly environmentally friendly way to deal with a deceased person.

Why was I thinking about that?!?!

Someone on the radio was talking about the importance of justice and that we need to be about justice, personally, not just support others who do it.

And how does that relate to the effects of death on the environment?

The two subjects have truly nothing to do with each other, at least in my mind. But the idea that we should do something, not just mean to do something was what triggered the following rabbit trail:

I was thinking about how environmentally conscious individuals try to be environmentally friendly in our approach to burial, but are often not any more successful at it than those who don’t try. As a matter of fact, sometimes we do more damage, accidentally.

And maybe I’m just not in the know enough; it isn’t a subject I spend a lot of time researching.

However, the last I heard, crematoriums are releasing all sorts of horrible chemicals into the air, not to mention carbon dioxide, because of all of the chemicals we have inside of us, many based on the marvels of modern medicine. Chemically cremating people also creates environmental hazards. And water cremation isn’t without its drawbacks – first and foremost, the use of water. I’m not saying that people should stick with caskets and huge holes in the ground. Those, of course, also have their drawbacks. It’s just that getting rid of remains seems to be very costly to the natural environment,

It got me to thinking about what the Bible says about the earth and its inhabitants:

God created the world to not experience death – to live eternally.

It’s human sinfulness that introduced death into the world, and we have been paying the price ever since.

No wonder it is so hard to deal with death. No wonder dead, decomposing organic matter creates so many environmental hazards.

My husband and I try our best to make environmentally friendly decisions; I think that’s the right thing to do. But I’m so thankful that this world is not my final home – and it doesn’t have to be yours, either!

Jesus came to earth, lived the perfect life we were all supposed to live, then died as a sacrifice for our sins, and came back to life so that he can forgive our sins and resurrect us, too, to life in heaven.

So let’s do our best to steward the earth He has given us while we are here, but also, make sure to love God and love your neighbor so that all of us can experience life as it was meant to be – with no death.

The American Dream works because American Dreamers work

I was musing this morning about how so many of us dream of getting rich quick and then taking it easy. We complain about being so tired in our 30s and 40s and wished that we could just be done working. I was one of those, dreaming about retirement.

Now, as retirement looms closer, I am realizing how much I actually enjoy working and how much I will miss it when I truly am too tired to do it.

Both Plymouth Colony and Virginia Colony started out as communes. Plymouth Colony was supposed to be a Utopian Commune with everyone holding everything in common. The Virginia Colony was supposed to encourage capitalism, but everyone was first indentured so lived communistically until their indenture had been paid.

Both colonies had a hard time flourishing, because those that could work hard had no incentive to when they received the same recompense as those that could not work hard. So three years in, Governor Bradford of Plymouth Colony decided to shift to capitalism. Within the year the colony was on excellent footing. About that same year, Puritans took over Virginia Colony and also gave colonists their own land to take care of, even though their indentures were not yet through. This also saved Virginia Colony.

There are some people who inherit money. There are some people who work extremely hard their whole life and barely scrape by. There are people who do run into horrible obstacles such as racism, ageism, disabilities not of their own making, and many other things. But in general, if you are willing to work, there is a dream to be had here. You may not have the grandest house, the fastest car, the fanciest clothes, the most lavish food or the most impressive vacations, but you can live a good life that includes sharing that goodness with others.

The Bible gives us many instructions on how to live a successful life. One of the first is in the very first few chapters. Exodus 20:9-10 tells us that we should labor for six days and rest on the seventh.

One of my ancestors, John Quincy Adams, worked toward his dream of having a country free of slavery, dying before he saw the dream, but dying trying. He had been a Senator, then the 6th President and finally, died working as a member of the House of Representatives. He did not let status get in the way of working for what he dreamed of. And because of his efforts, and the effort of many others, slavery was abolished just 15 years later.

Here’s to dreamers and the work it takes to realize those dreams!

But they are sooo pretty!

I love deep, saturated, shiny jewel tones. I guess it’s obvious that I grew up in the ’80s!

So a decade or so ago when I discovered vinca, I was in love! The smooth, gleaming, dark green leaves look expertly tailored and classy no matter the season. Early spring brings equally perfect looking violet flowers that come, then disappear with no messy pile of dead petals to clean up.

Vinca loves sun and shade and flourishes in the clay soil that covers our yard. It also seems to tolerate heat and dry soil pretty well, too. Sometimes it gets a little wilted looking in the heat of a July day, but perks right up once the sun goes down or after a bit of watering.

I started with vinca in the back yard around our deck. Very little sun reaches that area and after years of trying other plants, with very little success, vinca was the answer to my prayers. It spreads quickly and grows so densely that it is difficult for weeds to get a foothold. As I mentioned earlier, it always looks perfectly manicured, so it gave the deck the finished, cared for look I was had been trying to achieve.

I then decided to plant some vinca in the garden along the back fence as a way to tamp down on weeds and keep moisture in the soil so that the other plants had a better chance of growing. Finally, when the large pine tree in our front yard had to come down due to old age and needle blight, I decided to plant some vinca again as a ground cover to help the newly created sun garden.

So why I have spent a large part of this spring pulling my beloved vinca out of my front garden?

Not only does the vinca make it difficult for weeds to grow, it also starts choking out just about everything else around it. While that was a good thing around my deck because it is too shady for most things to grow, it is becoming a problem in the front garden where a lot of things could grow if they weren’t being attacked by the beautiful, graceful vinca.

Spending hours carefully untangling and uprooting the vinca from the plants I would like to keep has given me plenty of time to think. And I think that vinca is a lot like a lot of good things in my life that need to be kept in their proper place.

For instance, food is a wonderful thing, but if not kept in its proper place, it can destroy my life through obesity which can lead to diabetes, heart disease and a whole lot of other problems. Food, like the vinca around my deck, is a very important, necessary, beautiful part of my life. But it needs to stay in its proper space.

Thank you, vinca, for the great object lesson!

Perspective Matters

It’s been going well, but has been quite a chore, literally, to eradicate the once-beloved vinca from my front yard flower bed.

I have been noticing that sometimes I need to attack from soil level, wrapping my fingers around the stems or tunneling under the runners to pull the vines out, roots and all.

But sometimes it is very difficult to tell which stem I want to pull and which I want to leave. There are some clover stems that look similar – I am happy to pull those. But the anemone and creeping jenny I want to keep. And at ground level, all four stems are the same width.

The creeping jenny stems tend to be a little pinker, the vinca a bit greener, the anemone and clover a bit whiter. But the vinca can be surprisingly white or pink at times. The vinca tends to be smooth-stemmed, along with all but the anemone. But sometimes the anemone is surprisingly smooth.

The clover tends to be a bit curly. The vinca, anemone and creeping jenny tend to be straight, but the anemone is still very often curvy and the creeping jenny can curve around, too. The anemone and clover almost always grow up, while both the creeping jenny and vinca usually grow horizontally, but may also send a stem straight up.

So it can be really hard to know what to pull at soil level.

This morning I found that looking down from above often gives the best, most accurate perspective.

Each of the plants’ leaves are very different. So once I spotted the desired leaf, I could run my fingers down the stem and dig the errant plant out.

God’s perspective is higher and therefore wiser than ours. When we can’t make sense of all of the stressors around us, He is more than happy to help us find what needs to stay and what needs to go.