“You may think you find peace in Christ when you have no outward troubles, but is Christ your peace when the Assyrian comes into the land, when the enemy comes?…Jesus Christ would be peace to the soul when the enemy comes into the city, and into your houses.”
― Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment
So my sister said something to me about my blog and for the space of a literal heartbeat I thought, “….huh?”
In the last year my life has changed in ways I just didn’t see coming and I am still working on finding the new normal.
If you had told me five years ago that we would be living in the US, with no plans to go back to the mission field, I would have been very surprised. If you would have told me that we’d be pastoring, I would have been even more surprised.
And in that same conversation, if you had told me that our children would be enrolled in school – I’d have been gobsmacked. I’m not sure what I’d have even thought if you told me I’d be teaching full-time in that same school.That was definitely not on the twelve year spreadsheet.
And yet, here we are.
Our children are halfway through first and fourth grades at a small, classical, Christian school, and they are thriving there. I teach fifth grade at the same school, which covers the tuition costs of our children attending the school and keeps me involved in their daily lives, albeit at a different level than when I was homeschooling them. The last time I worked full-time outside of the home was before Princepesa was born and when Jared was working on his masters degree. I worked 60+ hours a week in an IT group managing an end-user support team. I’m not even close to the same person I was then, and we are in a much different place in life, so finding the balance of caring for my home and family, teaching, and being a pastor’s wife has been challenging.
And so I go through my day, calling out those short prayers to God. “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25)
I followed a Facebook discussion this week on Christmas songs we love and hate. Some make our souls just soar – O Holy Night does that for me – and some leave us decidedly flat. I have a song, which I will leave unnamed, that makes me groan inside anytime I hear it sung. I was surprised, though, by how many people listed Little Drummer Boy as a song they really disliked, or even mocked. 
So here’s my Little Drummer Boy memory. This is what I think of every. single. time I hear the song.
I think I was in second or third grade when our overzealous teacher decided that we were going to sing this song, all eleven verses, for the Holiday Concert. The tune is easy enough, but the verses after verse after verse was just not sinking in.
We finally got to the week of the concert and everyone was really nervous about getting up and mumbling through all twenty three verses. Our teacher finally broke down and told us she’d have little cheat sheets ready for us that night, much to our surprise and delight. She was a bit hard-nosed.
So that night we all show up and meet in our room and march to the gym to wait our turn and finally as we walk onto stage she hands us each a little square of paper. Our cheat sheet.
The problem? It had no words on it. It only had the first letter of every word of all thirty four verses.
I remember very vividly standing there looking at this paper and thinking “how in the world is this supposed to help us?!”
So we clomped out on the stage and mumbled through forty two verses, all staring at a little paper covered with random letters and frantically trying to make sense of them, and then sat down in shame.
The End.
Ta Dah! Our new Advent pockets begin today, and the kids are itching to open the first one. I found the idea on an old blog post and just copied it. I did add some red beads – my mom’s idea that beads make everything better is catchy. As I was stitching I was thinking about how I could have modified it but I was halfway through it before I even started thinking about that, so my set is a beaded copy.
Anyway – I made little cards to put in each pocket with what we are doing each day. I planned a pretty even split between fun and traditional activities for us – putting up the tree, making cookies, watching favorite movies – and ways to serve others – things like taking food to a food bank, sending Christmas boxes to missionary friends, and taking dinner to someone who needs help. I have some gold coin candy to give them on those days and we are going to memorize Matthew 6:19-21 together.
Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
Our small attempt to make sure the focus of the season stays on giving rather than receiving, and learning about giving God the gift of doing something for the least of these. Eight and five is not too young to learn this, and almost forty is not too old to be reminded.
Last night we attended a reception honoring one of our elders and his wife. Ed and Mary have been part of our church leadership for many years and after his recent retirement, they decided not to enjoy a comfortable retirement. Instead, they have sold almost everything they owned, packed the rest into storage, and are taking off for YWAM training in Tyler, TX in a couple of weeks. They plan to spend their future working with YWAM around the world. As Ed jokingly told us, their financial planner did not think this was a very good idea, but they knew God had called them to do this and they answered the call.
Perhaps you’ve heard of, or even read, the book Do Hard Things. It’s a book by two impressive teenagers encouraging their peers to rise to any challenge and really make a difference, even if it seems hard. Ed & Mary typify this to me, and I came home last night thinking about their willingness to strike out and do something that seemed hard at a time in their life when they could be enjoying the good years, grandchildren, and time together.
When I was seven years old my parents sold everything, welded a hitch to the back of our car, loaded a small Uhaul trailer, and we set out across America. I was born in Idaho, but my father had gone back to college after returning from VietNam and now had been accepted into a Masters program at Westminster Seminary outside Philadelphia, PA. This was so far outside their comfort zone and family norm that I think everyone must have thought they were crazy.
The next ten years of my life, most of my growing up years, were spent in Philadelphia where my father completed a masters degree and then a doctorate. Those years changed our family story and left my sister and I with an unspeakable legacy of faith in God’s provision. Many of those years were desperately difficult for my parents and although kids are pretty oblivious to a lot of things, we knew we were poor but that daddy was studying because God told him this was what he was supposed to do.
Those years are where I trace the roots of my gift of faith. My sister and I have both chosen to walk in God’s grace, and beyond that to marry men in full time ministry. I really believe that a lifetime of watching our parents struggle to walk a difficult path contributed to our character and faith, and that even though it was hard, we are all better for it.
So this is what I thought about as I lay in bed last night. What am I doing in my life that is hard? What lessons of faith are my children learning by watching our lives?
Granted, my Beloved and I have done hard things. We married young and both finished college and then graduate school for my husband with comparatively little student loan debt. We both worked two and three jobs and ate hot dogs and froze through winters together. After Princepesa was born we sold everything and moved to Bulgaria. As I’ve said before, we spent our entire married life working toward the future.
Our challenge is to find ways to continue to do things that seem hard. I love this church and this home and this life more than I ever thought possible, but I don’t want to get comfortable. I don’t want to spend my next years coasting. I want to keep digging in and working and making a difference.
Give us strength, Lord.
So we just finished a monster of a home project – 800 square feet of new wood floors. That means emptying rooms into other rooms and then into other rooms and then into yet other rooms, ripping out the old carpet, carpet pad, pulling up tack strip, staples, glued down linoleum, stapled down masonite, and that’s just the prep.
My Beloved took a few days off of work to do this with the help of a friend from church, Brian. Without Brian, this would not have gotten done. Period. Let alone look as beautiful as it does – and believe me, it’s be-yooo-tee-ful. (Can’t find the camera cord in the debris of room emptying and shuffling… will post pics when I do.)
So today as my Beloved was cutting baseboard, Brian was going behind him and nailing it up and caulking all of the gaps and basically making it look like a pastor didn’t cut all the baseboards a little wonky. Viking was watching him and so Brian asked him what he thought.
Viking: It think it looks OK.
Brian: OK? Just OK?!
Viking: Well, I mean, if that’s the best you can do…. (shrug and shake head….)
Pssssst…. Viking… be nice to the free help!
Fortunately it cracked Brian up.
Living in a metro area, you get used to spending time on highways. It’s just how you get somewhere when you live in and around a city. However, since we routinely strike out across the state, we get a much different experience by spending three or four hours on I-44 going to visit grandparents and cousins. Days like today, for instance.
<RANT>
I love it when semi truck drivers pull out in front of you to pass and miss your bumper by mere inches.
I love it when someone does not have/use cruise control and their speed varies by as much as 10 mph, depending on what they are watching or thinking about or which way the wind is blowing, making it a real pain for those of us to do have/use cruise control.
I love it when a lady in a big Buick decides that going two miles under the speed limit is fast enough for everyone, and refuses to leave the left lane.
I love it when some kid in a blue Grand Am keeps trying to pass just one more car before moving back over to the right, leaving a line of people behind him who wish he’d just move over for ten minutes and then try again.
I love it when a guy from mid-Missouri loads up the back of his beat up old pickup with pea gravel and then doesn’t cover it before he hits the highway, raining little missiles down on all of us in his wake.
</RANT>
I hope there’s some Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Heath Crunch in the freezer.
It’s about this time every year when I start to get really tired of gray days marching on without an end in sight. It’s only recently that I realized how much sunlight influences my moods and that knowledge has made a big difference, but still… enough winter already!
Fortunately this is the time of year when gardening catalogs start showing up and I can sit by the fire and look at pages of lush gardens and beautiful flowers and make lists and dream about playing in the dirt again.Last year was the first year I had real success with starting plants from seed, so I’m excited to try some new plants that way.
Princepesa informed me that she wants her own garden this year, so I’ll probably dig a little bed for her and let her go at it. Might do it in the back yard, in case it’s not so…. beautiful. I have Roots, Shoots, Buckets, & Boots – a great book on gardening for kids – so we could just pick a plan from there. I’ve always wanted to do a bean tent for the kids, so we might try that this summer too.
Off to dream of warm days in the garden.
Compassionate Lord,
Thy mercies have brought me to the dawn of another day.
Vain will be its gift unless I grow in grace,
increase in knowledge, ripen for spiritual harvest.
Let me this day know Thee as Thou art,
love Thee supremely, serve Thee wholly, admire Thee fully.
Through grace let my will respond to Thee,
knowing that power to obey is not in me,
but that Thy free love alone enables me to serve Thee.
Here then is my empty heart,
overflow it with Thy choicest gifts;
here is my blind understanding,
chase away its mists of ignorance.
Great God, in public and private,
in sanctuary and home,
may my life be steeped in prayer,
filled with the spirit of grace and supplication,
each prayer perfumed with the incense of atoning blood.
Help me, defend me, until from praying ground I pass
to the realm of unceasing praise.
Urged by my need, invited by Thy promises,
called by Thy Spirit, I enter Thy presence,
worshipping Thee with godly fear,
awed by Thy majesty, greatness, glory,
but encouraged by Thy love.
