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.
The daily grind of mommy-life can be exhausting. Between the endless laundry, pancakes, dirty sinks and kitchen floors, and the demands of homeschooling, it’s so easy to lose sight of why I am doing this.
“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
Romans 12:2 (The Message)
God, help me to place my making-pancakes, teaching-subtraction, folding-socks life before you as an offering. Help me to remember everything you do for me and to serve my family with joy. Bring out the best in me.
I have bought chore organizers, printed sticker charts, made complicated laminated/velcro/cards/to-do and done charts, yelled, gave up and did it myself, and every other variation you can think of. I am exactly what Auntie Leila is talking about when she says she writes for
People who would rather be reading than cleaning. People with lots of other people around. People who will stop whatever they are doing to hear a good story. People who like children and dogs, at least in theory.
Go here to read that entire post. Love her blog.
We have always had our kids do chores, but we have not always had an easy, consistent way of doing that. Until now.
Somewhere in blogland I read about Miracle Music. It seemed like a good idea, but a bit more complicated than we needed and I certainly wasn’t going to pay $40 for it. So I made my own version.
I plugged my little microphone in and recorded myself saying things like “time to make your bed!” and “go brush your teeth and brush your hair!” and “now put away all your clean laundry… in the CORRECT drawer.. and Viking, I will be checking!” in my most chipper mommy voice. I made an iTunes playlist and put songs between each job. I used upbeat piano instrumental music from a Vince Guaraldi CD. I have a playlist for morning jobs, noon jobs, and night jobs.
And it works. It does! It’s like a game to them. They go scurrying and we get the morning chores done in about twenty minutes and the evening chores in just under thirty.
Between this and our new homeschooling tool, my life just got a bit easier.
“Lord, I do not want to gather merit for heaven…
in the evening of this life
I will appear before You with empty hands.
For I do not ask you, O Lord,
in any way to count my good works.
Rather, I will clothe myself
with Your justice and receive from Your Love
the eternal possession of Yourself.”
–St. Therese of Lisieux
I rarely turn on the television in the day, but when I do, it’s usual the Food Network. I enjoy watching Barefoot Contessa and love her cookbooks. So today I turned it on and was watching when word spread through the house.
“Hey! Cooking shows are on!”
So two little people came scurrying to sit and watch with me. It just cracked me up – they are like little foodies debating recipes and commenting on menus. I have been commanded to make a certain salad with noodles and feta and peas, and they just loved the Asian grilled salmon we watched Ina make.
Naturally it makes Daddy very pleased when he hears Viking talk about Ina and the Neelys and Rachel Ray as if they were old friends… on the other hand, I love that my kids like more than just mac and cheese and PBJ.
