Catching Up…

Catching Up…

I’m alive. I really am. Just in case any­one was wondering.

Life has been insanely hec­tic lately. You too?

I was invited to go out to the Men’s Advance in Troy, MO, with Covenant Fam­ily Church to spend some time speak­ing with the wives and daugh­ters who accom­pa­nied their husbands/fathers/brothers to the week­end of teach­ing. It was such a blessed time for me. I brought my old­est daugh­ter, Pey­ton, with me. It was our first mother/daughter get­away. To a Men’s Advance. Haha… A tad bit ironic. She’s too young to be look­ing for a hus­band, and I already have one. Thank­fully, we had lots of women and girls to meet and spend time with. We both felt so wel­comed and loved.

Flying to Missouri

Fly­ing to Missouri

 

Then, we came home, and Mike took the fam­ily ski­ing. I tagged along, although I don’t ski. I have a bum leg, and can’t do dan­ger­ous, high risk things. And, if you know me at all, you know that any­thing that takes grace and skill is high-risk for me. I stayed in the lodge and worked while watch­ing the chil­dren careen down the moun­tain. Even Faith gave it a try this year. One so short shouldn’t be doing such crazy things. But, she loved it. She told me she has a new favorite sport. Ski­ing. Funny. I don’t have a favorite sport. The idea never crossed my mind.

We came home, and then my hus­band whisked me away to a cas­tle. We spent the week­end away for our church’s annual mar­riage retreat, which my hus­band orga­nizes every year. So roman­tic. We arrived to a snowy win­ter won­der­land {The photo above the post title is the view from the win­dow in our cas­tle room the night we arrived.}. Absolutely loved it. The next day, it was warm, much of the snow melted, and we were able to spend a cou­ple of hours walk­ing out­side, sit­ting on a bench talk­ing, hold­ing hands, learn­ing, grow­ing together. Such a great invest­ment! One of the assign­ments he gave the group was that we were to talk together and each make a list: some­thing we want the other to stop doing, some­thing we want them to start doing, and some­thing we want them to con­tinue doing. I really strug­gled to come up with my list, but once I got going, it seemed to flow. He also encour­aged that the con­tinue doing list can be 4–5 things to add to the encour­age­ment. We both learned a lot about the other, and what was on our hearts. Things we might not have known before. We laughed, cried, and grew stronger. I highly rec­om­mend this exer­cise. Be open, be hon­est, and don’t be afraid. Start. Stop. Continue.

marriage retreat small

Oh! And Faith was invited to par­tic­i­pate in a com­mer­cial for a local SEO com­pany. She had so much fun. She got to wear a tiara and blow pixie dust. What 7 year old lit­tle girl wouldn’t love that? It was right up her alley.

faith commercial smallSo, that’s been our life around here lately. Busy, full, good. I’d love to hear what you have been up to! Any­thing fun?

 

 

Busking at the Mall…And Anywhere Else She Can Think of

Busking at the Mall…And Anywhere Else She Can Think of

The girls were given an oppor­tu­nity to play their harp at the mall this past week­end. So, they have been prac­tic­ing and prepar­ing for their big pub­lic debut of harp play­ing. I sensed some nerves rat­tling around in the girls over the last cou­ple of weeks as the day drew nearer.

Except for with Faith.

On the way to their last harp les­son before the big day, Faith piped up from the back seat, “Mom? I have a great idea!”  {Oh, dear. I can only imag­ine what’s com­ing next…} “I think we should bring Peter’s fedora and get tips while we play at the mall!”

Two things ran through my head:
1. How on earth did she know it was called a fedora? and
2. Do they allow this?
and to be hon­est, there was a 3. WHAT?!?!? Where did she get this idea from?

As I attempted to sup­press my shock and the fact that I found this humor­ous, I decided to duck the ques­tion, and gave all blame and respon­si­bil­ity to her teacher. “You need to ask your teacher. You prob­a­bly won’t be allowed to do it.”

Well, lo and behold, her teacher thought it was a GREAT idea! Faith marched right into her harp les­son and asked if she could have a tip jar. No gig­gles or sur­prise from her teacher. Just nods of yes and encour­age­ment. Ha!

So, Faith got one of my mason jars with chalk­board vinyl on it and wrote out “TIPS” with a red chalk marker. She car­ried that jar to the mall, and stuck it on the floor in front of her harp. Of the three girls, she wanted to go first. She plopped right down in her chair and played “Away in a Manger” 6 times through. In a row. With her sparkly pink shoes show­ing under her flow­ing dress.

faith harp

And she col­lected tips. After some­one would drop a dol­lar or some change into her jar, she smiled and said, “Thank you!” And then kept play­ing. She delighted her audi­ence. And her mother, of course. And, her sib­lings as well. She does that to us.

Not to be out­done, her sis­ters took turns play­ing also. They seemed to enjoy this new ven­ture after they worked out their nerves, and were quite pleased with Faith’s Tip Jar.

duet harpThe girls had a won­der­ful time, the patrons at the mall seemed delighted to see such young girls play­ing the harp. It was so fun to see the older peo­ple and lit­tle chil­dren watch them. I saw quite a few twin­kles in the older generation’s eyes, and gaped mouths in the lit­tle ones. One sweet lit­tle girl even danced for Pey­ton as she played “The Holly and the Ivy”. And one adorable lit­tle boy wanted to give it a try also. Play­ing the harp, that is, not dancing.

So, tonight, we were enjoy­ing some fam­ily time. Faith and I played a game of  Skip­pity while the older chil­dren played Ticket to Ride with Daddy. She read The Princess and the Pea to me, and I asked her to play a song for me on her harp. She ran to get her tip jar, and she told me to go get my wallet…

See her tip jar in front of her harp?

See her tip jar in front of her harp?

Not so fast, you lit­tle stinker!

**The pic­ture at the top of this post is one I took of Faith out of our din­ing room win­dow. We have had a lot of snow over the last week, with tem­per­a­tures falling below zero most days. Faith won’t be deterred. She had Pey­ton bun­dle her up and out she went. Her bright col­ors really cap­tured my atten­tion, so I grabbed my iPhone to see if I could snap a few shots of her with­out her notic­ing. She was busy, hop­ping around from spot to spot, shak­ing lit­tle trees, dig­ging up snow, look­ing for adven­ture. I finally caught this one, and think she looks like a lit­tle snow elf. I really want to pack­age her up and keep her lit­tle for­ever, but I know she must grow up and become the woman God has in mind for her to be. So, we teach, train, dis­ci­ple her daily. And, like the sib­lings that go before her, we com­mit her and her future to prayer, that she will always have a heart sen­si­tive to God, long­ing to please Him, honor Him, and know Him more fully. I feel so unwor­thy for the task.

The Hope That Never Disappoints

The Hope That Never Disappoints

Have you ever sat there and won­dered what on earth God is doing?

I mean, some things just don’t make sense.

Like long-necked giraffes and mos­qui­toes. At least the giraffes are cute, right?

Some days I just can’t make heads or tails of things.

Last week we got word from our friends from back when we were first hav­ing babies and liv­ing in Oki­nawa. Their 18 year old son died in a hor­ri­ble roll over acci­dent last week­end. His mom and brother were in the car with him, and they are fine. This young man was a fresh­man in col­lege, with great hopes for his future. And now he’s gone so sud­denly. We grieve with them, and just can’t seem to fig­ure out why. Other than the fact that we know that God is sov­er­eign and that He pre­or­dained the num­ber of his days before there was one of them, like He has done with all the rest of us, too.

And then, my mother called this week­end. To tell me that she has breast can­cer. They are going to be aggres­sive with her treat­ment. The words all ran together for me as she was shar­ing her med­ical terms and sit­u­a­tion. It was hard to digest every­thing that she was say­ing. But I did hear that it has spread to her lymph nodes. They are doing more tests, more scans, and plan to start chemo soon.

I know can­cer strikes so many peo­ple. It is an evil, wicked, curse from the fall. But, we have been mostly unscathed by can­cer in our fam­ily his­tory. And this seems to be a diag­no­sis that has come out of nowhere. We never saw this com­ing. But I sup­pose that nobody ever really sees it coming.

So we sit. And pray. And wait. And hope.

What else can we do? It’s at times like this that we real­ize how puny we are. How unable we are to ordain our days. How pow­er­less we are in the grand scheme of things. Life and death are not in our hands. Thank­fully, they are held care­fully by the One who cre­ated life.

I’m thank­ful that the Lord has opened our eyes and hearts to His truths and His love. We are able to cling to Him because we have the assur­ance that He hears us and loves us. It’s not an empty grasp­ing for some­thing, any­thing. I pic­ture Faith, in her sweet con­fi­dence run­ning to her daddy with open arms and a pucker on her lips for his cheek. That con­fi­dence she has that he loves her and will receive her with joy and com­plete accep­tance. That’s how we need to be with God. Hon­or­ing, yes. Respect­ful, yes. And com­pletely con­fi­dent of His ten­der care and love for us. He’s not some fig­ment of our imag­i­na­tion. He isn’t some great imper­sonal “intel­li­gent designer.” He is a liv­ing, per­sonal God.

Who is sov­er­eign over what­so­ever comes to pass.

We may never under­stand why God is allow­ing things to hap­pen as they are. We do know that tri­als pro­duce per­se­ver­ance; and per­se­ver­ance, char­ac­ter; and char­ac­ter, hope.

Now hope does not dis­ap­point, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. Romans 5:3–5

And that’s just the thing. The love of God. Poured out in our hearts.

That grief, that sor­row of the tri­als and death and can­cer. It pro­duces hope, which doesn’t disappoint.

Sure, it’s a process. We won’t nec­es­sar­ily be there at the begin­ning of a trial. But, we can choose to cling to the promise, can’t we? We can choose to trust that the One who formed us so care­fully in our moth­ers’ wombs will be true to His Word, as He always has been. We can hold on with those white knuck­les, refus­ing to let go, let­ting the fear slip from our hands in favor of the hope that is ours. Remem­ber­ing that tears are not a sign of dis­be­lief, but rather, are an out­let that the Lord designed for our good. They are cleans­ing, refresh­ing, safe. We can cry and hope in the same breath.

I love my dear, beau­ti­ful mother. I’m not ready for her to go just yet. I don’t know that I will ever be ready. I know my friend wasn’t ready for her son to go. The thing is, we don’t know the num­ber of our days. We don’t know that we have tomor­row. Death sneaks up on most of us. That hor­ri­ble, wicked thief.

Remem­ber to love your chil­dren, love your hus­band, love your mother and father. Love those whom God has put in your life. Today. I think we all need these reminders because we take too much for granted.

But, much more impor­tantly, love God. Rest in Him. Stop striv­ing against Him if you are. He is faith­ful and true. And oh, so forgiving.

We may never quite under­stand why God allows can­cer, gave giraffes long necks, or made mos­qui­toes. But, I trust He has a pur­pose in it all. I pray that this trial will pro­duce such a beau­ti­ful hope in our fam­ily. For my mom, my dad, my broth­ers, and my chil­dren. I pray that we won’t waste this one. If you think of it, please pray for us. That we will per­se­vere in love. That I will know how to min­is­ter to my mom. She lives so far away. And that her hope will never waiver.

I’ve linked up here: Joy­ous Notions, Cor­ner­stone Con­fes­sions, Sim­ply Help­ing Him. Be sure to visit these sites for more blog posts that might inter­est you!

It’s not about me. Or you.

It’s not about me. Or you.

Faith said some­thing to me the other day in pass­ing. It delighted my heart and gave me much to ponder.

She said, “Mommy, I can’t imag­ine you scream­ing. You’re usu­ally so calm.”

Ah. Well, while the Lord has cer­tainly done a huge work in my life, it hasn’t always been this way in our home.

You see, the Lord gave me three boys first. I remem­ber very clearly hav­ing three boys aged 4 and under. And hav­ing just moved across the coun­try. And being extremely frustrated.

Why wouldn’t they obey me per­fectly? Why did they have to make messes con­stantly. And dirty so many clothes each week? And DEMAND my time and emo­tions and work all.day.and.night.long? I had the baby, who stayed up until 3am most nights, want­ing to nurse and never sleep­ing in his crib. He would finally fall asleep and stay that way if I put him in a lit­tle seat. And then there was the strong willed two year old. He wrote the book on being strong willed. Don’t worry, I burned it. The book, that is. And then, the four year old was push­ing bound­aries, grow­ing way too fast for me.

I was exhausted. And ready for preschool to start so that I would get some of my old life back. I was so selfish.

I had a dear friend pop by one day. The boys were being lit­tle boys. I obvi­ously had not fig­ured out this par­ent­ing thing. In a moment of des­per­a­tion, I started count­ing to three to get my son to obey.

Seri­ously. And it embar­rasses me to think about how ridicu­lous I must have sounded.

My friend, oh how I love her and thank her daily for this — in my head, she has no idea how strongly she impacted our lives that day, said to me, “What hap­pens when you get to three?”

Blank stare.

I had never got­ten to three before. The obe­di­ence usu­ally hap­pened around 2 ½.

She sug­gested that I should require obe­di­ence just because I gave instruc­tion. I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops, stand on my head, or go through the rou­tine of counting.

Blank stare.

I never counted again for obe­di­ence. Now, I cringe when I hear moth­ers doing that. I won­der who is being trained. The mom or the children?

Slowly, I began to learn how to par­ent my chil­dren. How to teach them obe­di­ence, how to love them more. And patience grew.

And I real­ized that it wasn’t all about me. My chil­dren sin because they are sin­ners. They don’t do it to get me mad. They fell with Adam, just like I did. And so they will strug­gle with obe­di­ence and lov­ing and self­ish­ness. Just like me.

The Lord worked in my heart to give me com­pas­sion toward my chil­dren in this strug­gle. He man­aged to give me a joy in the midst of the strug­gles. It’s noth­ing short of a miracle.

And so, by God’s grace, my lit­tle daugh­ter thinks that it would be unusual to hear me scream. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for show­ing me a bet­ter way to be a mother, to love, to show them Your grace when they struggle.

And no, I don’t do this per­fectly. Not even close. But, my heart soars with joy and delight to think that my lit­tle Faith thinks it would be unimag­in­able to hear me scream.

Of course, her big brother said he could bring a snake by to show her what it would be like.

And that would do it.  I think I’ll pass.

I have more thoughts about this topic, but I think I will save them for another post. May the Lord bless you as you strug­gle through the days of rais­ing chil­dren. It’s no easy task, that’s for sure! I pray that they will be blessed as you seek the Lord for wis­dom to get through your days.

Remem­ber, it’s not about you. It isn’t about your com­fort, your ease of liv­ing, your per­sonal agenda.

But it is about your growth, your walk with the Lord, your cling­ing to the cross of Christ daily.

Walk in peace, in joy, in patience. You are rais­ing a gen­er­a­tion that will par­ent your grand­chil­dren. Let that sink in.

It’s not about me. Or you. It’s about Christ. And His children.

Bless­ings!

Routines and Flying {by the seat of my pants}

Routines and Flying {by the seat of my pants}

We started back to school last week. It felt good to get back into a rou­tine of sorts. The chil­dren seem happy to be back, and eager to learn their new sub­jects. Mostly any­way. Latin has been fun.

We’ve been using the same cur­ricu­lum since my old­est was in sec­ond grade. Our sixth child is start­ing sec­ond grade this year. And as far as we can tell, she’s our last. So, it’s the last time I will be going through this par­tic­u­lar rou­tine. It’s odd. And I find myself get­ting some­what sen­ti­men­tal about the whole thing. We put the phon­ics cur­ricu­lum away for good. The girls asked if they can use it with their chil­dren one day, so I’m keep­ing it. That just made me smile. They liked it quite well.

Faith is learn­ing his­tory for­mally for the first time. She loves it. I’ve been down this road a few times. From Cre­ation through present day (we go chrono­log­i­cally through his­tory). So, I am savor­ing the teach­ing, watch­ing her see what new hori­zons are out there.

 

Faith working on her math.

Faith work­ing on her math.

I’ve been sort of on autopi­lot for the last cou­ple of years. You know, same song dif­fer­ent verse. Just do the next thing and keep going.

I recently asked on The Vir­tu­ous Wife Face­book page if peo­ple sched­ule their week or fly by the seat of their pants. I’m curi­ous about how peo­ple attack life (or ease into it, as the case may be…). Some­one flipped it around on me and asked what I do.

Ha! I don’t feel quite so “vir­tu­ous” by my real­ity. I like the idea of a sched­ule, but in all hon­esty, I tend to fly.

This year is dif­fer­ent though. I’ve returned to my old days of school­ing: I have a plan mapped out. Days on the cal­en­dar. Check­lists. The whole shebang.

And con­trary to what I assumed it would be, I find it to be quite lib­er­at­ing. I feel more in con­trol and like we can actu­ally do this thing well. No more guess­work. No more check­ing at the end of the year to make sure we schooled enough days {and run­ning into July to fill those missed days}. I know what we have to do. THEY know what they have to do. And they are as excited as I am. They love the idea of check­ing off their lists (I made lists for them also.). I feel like I actu­ally have more time in my day to do the other things that are impor­tant to get done. Like laun­dry. And cook­ing. And a host of other things that are impor­tant to the run­ning of my home.

So, what was my impe­tus to get orga­nized? Hon­estly, it is my desire to honor my hus­band. He is the clas­sic Type A guy. Super duper orga­nized, pre­pared, straight­for­ward guy. And he mar­ried a stacker, an “I’ll get to it later” girl. And, as patient as he is, I know it dri­ves him crazy. I know it. And I’ve ignored it most of our mar­ried life. Oh, I have dreams and desires to be more orga­nized. But, when the rub­ber meets the road, I’m busy fly­ing from task to task, hop­ing I didn’t for­get any­thing majorly impor­tant. Like din­ner. {They really do like to eat EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. What’s with that?} And I know that, while I get a lot accom­plished in a given day, I don’t get as much done as per­haps I could if I had a plan.

So I have a plan.

I orga­nized my laun­dry room and school room this sum­mer. It makes the task of putting things where they belong so much eas­ier, cut­ting out wasted time in search­ing for that one thing I can’t find because I don’t quite know where I put it. I can breathe again.

So, do you have a plan? Are you super orga­nized? I know some women who are incred­i­bly so. Do you fly from task to task, hop­ing noth­ing major is being for­got­ten? Good thing chil­dren and pets squawk when they are hun­gry, huh?

But, what would your hus­band like you to do? Does he have a desire for your home to be run in a way that is con­trary to how it is actu­ally run? Do you make his pri­or­i­ties your pri­or­i­ties? That’s the hard one. That dying to self and serv­ing oth­ers thing. I resisted for so long because I was afraid of los­ing con­trol over my sched­ule. What sched­ule? Well, the idea that I can meet an emer­gency that arose, or a friend who needed help or time. But the thing is, I was wrong. I actu­ally now have that free­dom because I know where I am. My chil­dren can stick to the plan even if I’m not sit­ting right beside them. They have it mapped out for them.

Don’t be like me. The stub­born part any­way. If your hus­band is ask­ing you to change some­thing in the way you run your home, try it. You might be sur­prised, like me, that his insight is actu­ally very wise and will be help­ful to you.

I’m thank­ful that my hus­band is very patient, gen­tle, kind, not demand­ing . He has never forced his way with this. He has encour­aged, sug­gested, requested, yet giv­ing me the lee­way to make the final deci­sion about my day. He is so under­stand­ing towards my heart in it all. But I wish I had made more effort years ago. He really is a smart guy. I don’t know what I was so afraid of.

Now, let’s see how long I will main­tain this new rou­tine and sched­ule. I pray it will be for good!

 

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