Tracy Petry

Sometimes I post our available homes on Facebook groups, like, "Homes for Rent/Sale in Whatever County". Sometimes. I would probably do it more often except that nearly every time I post, some random former tenant will start tearing up the thread, accusing the company of having evicted them for absolutely no reason. For no reason. At. All. Because that's what landlords do. They find tenants who are paying their rent on time and keeping the property in good condition and they evict them , just for fun. Because empty homes generate lots of income for them. There was a highly offended couple who had to vacate their premises just two days. I walked through the home this morning. I wish their new landlords lots of luck. Click the link below to come on a video of today's tour with me. If you dare.... Take a Walk on the Parkside with me!

Another Sabbath has come and is almost gone - will be gone by the time I finish writing this. My heart is heavy this evening, thinking about the kids in my life. I never had any children of my own, and actually know very little about children. They just weren't on my radar. I don't have any regrets over not having any of my own, because some people are just not cut out to be parents. I'm one of them. Here's the problem - not everyone recognizes this in themselves. People who are not cut out to be parents are out there in the world, breeding like rabbits, and the kids they're bringing into the world don't stand a chance. And these are the adults of tomorrow. We already see an entitled generation coming of age; 30 year old "men" whose parents have to legally evict them to get them out of their basements. We like to bash the 30 year old for this, but really...  who made them that way? I'd like to introduce you to some of the children who break...

I've prayed for a lot of things in my lifetime. I've prayed for the winning lottery numbers - you can see how that turned out; I live in a trailer and drive a fifteen year old car (when I'm not driving my twenty year old truck). I've prayed for patience when I've been at my wits end - and I've been given the opportunity to practice patience. God answers every prayer. Sometimes the answer is, "No." Sometimes the answer is, "Wait." We don't always get the answer we had in mind when we said our prayer. There are times when we have to listen very closely for an answer at all. And then there are the times when our prayers are answered so immediately and so powerfully that there's no mistaking what's going on. There was a time about four years back when we were getting all jammed up, courtesy of a good deed gone horribly wrong. The thing I needed most desperately to save our situation was for someone to be revealed for w...

John 14:26   King James Version (KJV) 26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. This is one of my favorite verses. I imagine the three and a half years of Jesus' earthly ministry and how confused the apostles must have been during that time.  The apostles were Jews. They'd grown up in Jewish homes, reading the Torah and hearing the stories of the great prophets. They weren't scholars, but even fishermen knew their Torah. They were looking forward to the coming of a great Messiah who would restore Israel. The first Messianic prophecy in the Bible is in Genesis 3:15 where God warns Satan that the Messiah was going to "crush his head". There are prophecies throughout the old testament about the savior who was coming and he was going to be a KING. So, what did the Jews of the time think of when they thought ...

I was humbled by an eight year old today. I got up this morning, did a little more study for the lesson I was going to teach at church today and folded the bulletins I printed last night. I got dressed and ready, and we met up with our friend who lives a few doors down - she and her eight year old daughter have been coming to church with us for the last three or four weeks. Her daughter said to us, "I changed my mind today. I woke up and I was tired so I wasn't going to go to church, but then God told me to go to church." That blew me away. But then she asked us, "If you could choose, would you rather be a helper to God or would you rather be a regular person? I'd rather be a helper to God." This kid has been to church like three times in her life and this is what she comes up with. I knew that everything I was prepared to teach in church was going to pale in comparison to the lesson I got from the kid. Matthew 21:16 -  "Do you hear what these c...

Are you a writer? Is your daily reality a little... different? The other day my husband said to me that he noticed a home in our community looked abandoned. He takes our dog for a walk all around the park early every morning and he hadn't lately seen any cars there or activity. I started to take notice of the same thing after he mentioned it. The tenants aren't behind on their lot rent or anything, a payment was made online on the first of the month. But still...no cars. No one coming or going. No lights on at night. Just the porch light, which is on all day and all night. So...where are they? Are they on vacation? For almost a month? They don't have the kind of funds necessary for something like that. Are they in there? Have they all been murdered in their sleep? And if they're not in there, where did they go? Did they have to leave town, sneaking out in the middle of the night? Is there a body in there? Do you plot out the deaths of your friends and co-workers o...

Our pastor was talking during Sabbath School about the "casual Christian", and the thought just keeps popping back into my head. Casual Christian. I'm not sure that I've ever been a casual anything in my life. If I'm doing something, I'm doing it. Sometimes that's to my own detriment, of course, because I pick the wrong things to do sometimes. My husband and I started on this journey together shortly after we got together, about nine years ago. To be perfectly frank, neither of us was leading anything close to a Christian lifestyle at that point. I'd been in and out of different churches for about ten years, looking for one that felt right - looking for one that I thought was telling me what the truth was. Marty was what we call a Recovering Catholic; he'd been raised Catholic and the church had scarred him and turned him completely off religion. However, once he got his teeth into it again he was and is like a pit bull with a bone. The more w...