Perspective
June 24, 2009
If you were here yesterday, you probably read my post about my less than stellar day yesterday, complete with a fussy baby, a wailing toddler, a whiny mother and a mini diatribe about a Father’s Day lunch gone awry.
I deleted that post because it suddenly seemed staggeringly trivial and self-centered after learning that a friend and his wife lost their 8-month-old daughter to a rare disease on Sunday.
Sunday was my friend’s first Father’s Day.
Nine
June 12, 2009
Dear Peanut,
Well, you finally made it! You are now halfway to adulthood and that much closer to moving out of our house and on your own, as you playfully like to remind me. But as I like to remind you, don’t feel like you need to move out at 18 on my account. Either way, I’m proud, amazed and delighted in the young woman you are becoming. I look forward to seeing where God takes you.
I must say, these first nine years have not been the easiest — for you or for me. You play the fortunate and unfortunate role of firstborn, just like I did. On the one hand you get to experience all the firsts of life before any of your siblings. It’s a good thing too because on the other hand, you fulfill the role of guinea pig and the one who has been subject to my on-the-job-training. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve needed A LOT of training. But if the last year is any indication, I have a hunch we are well on our way to a smoother ride. I would say this has definitely been our best year yet. You are getting more and more fun and I’m getting a lot less anal retentive. I think hope.
I’ve enjoyed watching you grow and mature the last 18 months, trying all sorts of new things. I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who more thoroughly enjoys a good game and a little competition. In fact, I don’t know that you’ve ever turned down a chance at winning something. I’m trying to figure out how I can work this to my advantage and award ribbons for washing the windows and scrubbing the toilet. You’d be all over that. Then again, if I offer to pay you to do those things, you’re more than willing since you’re always looking to earn a little cash.
Speaking of cash, you are the Lemonade Stand Queen, sitting out in the blazing hot sun for untold lengths of time in the hopes that someone will pass by and buy a glass of lemonade while dropping a few coins in your money jar. Apparently you’ve perfected your recipe because I’ve never heard of customers coming to the door after you’ve gone in for the day like they did the last time you set up shop. You can even persuade your brothers to join you on occasion.
Speaking of your brothers, I love those times when I catch you being unbearably sweet to them. I could have positively eaten you up the other day when we were at Costco and all of you spotted the Eggos (about 3 aisles away I might add) and Josiah started yelling at the top of his lungs (as he is prone to do), “Eggos! Eggos! Mommy! Eggos!” and you stealthily ran over to him & gently whispered in his ear, “Josiah, don’t scream or mommy won’t get Eggos for us. You have to use your inside voice and use your manners.” He understood instantly what you were saying and asked, “Mommy, could we get Eggos please?” And then when I agreed to buy the Eggos and his excitement turned to yelling once more, you so impressively channeled his energy by asking him if he wanted to help you put the waffles in the cart. Truth be told, I agreed to get the Eggos not because Josiah used his inside voice and manners, but because you were so adorable in the way you interacted with him. Your striking external beauty is only magnified by your delightful internal beauty.
Us girls have to stick together forever. Good thing it won’t matter if we live in the same house or not.
I love you.
Times infinity.
Mom
On murder
June 5, 2009
I’ve got 4 minutes…
You’ve probably heard about the abortion doctor who was killed this last weekend while at church. How complex.
As I’ve pondered it, I’ve been all over the map with questions:
- Did God send a hit man? Would God send a hit man?
- How does the man who shot & killed the abortion doctor compare to the influential Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who planned to kill Hitler? Can they be compared?
- What was it like the moment Dr. Tiller died and stood before God? What did God say? Were all the children that he aborted present at the exchange?
- Is it possible that he was really saved & repentant, albeit horrendously misguided, and therefore was welcomed into heaven? If so, what do I think about that? And if all sin is equal, am I really any different?
- How did he become a serving “longtime member” of his church? Was he ever challenged by his pastor(s)? How would I feel if I was a member of that church, interacting with him on a weekly basis, knowing he was responsible for the deaths of dozens (?) of babies every week?
- What if I was one of the women scheduled to have my baby aborted by Dr. Tiller on Monday morning, June 1, the day after he was murdered or another day this week? Would it make me think twice or would it harden my resolve? What will become of those babies?
- How many people will hear his story, view him as a martyr, become more sympathetic to the cause of abortion, push further away from God, essentially sealing their eternity in hell?
What do you think?
Nice. Reaaaal nice.
June 3, 2009
Computer died. Must now mooch off my husband who takes his laptop to work daily which means there is no computer on the premises between the hours of 7am and 5:30pm. Computer time is SEVERELY limited.
I suppose this is good for my character.
At least it will hopefully result in a cleaner house, what with all the time I have on my hands.
That is all.
Goodbye.
P.S. I told you about my book preferences and casually asked for book suggestions in my last post. A few of you have done so (thank you!) and now I WANT LOTS AND LOTS MORE! Because I understand and appreciate the value of reading. Not because I now have no computer. Ahem.
My life right now. In bullets.
May 29, 2009
Totally random thoughts:
- I like the photo above. It’s a fig tree. The things God makes are just plain cool. And I’m so glad He made people who can capture them in ways we can all enjoy.
- I was driving home last night from a Mom’s Night Out and there was a kitten sitting in the very middle of the road. I had to swerve way into the other lane and the little peanut just sat there with nary a flinch. Sometimes I wish I was that gutsy ignorant.
- I don’t just love God, I really, really like Him. And I’m totally diggin’ my treadmill moments with John Piper and his series Romans: The Greatest Letter Ever Written. That is deep, soul-grabbing stuff.
At this very moment I’m staring at my copy of Katt’s in the Cradle by Ginger Kolbaba & Christy Scannell. I was approached by someone at Simon & Schuster a while back and asked if I would read it and blog about it. Well, I read it, and I know I need to blog about it (other than this very brief mention I gave previously). It was never specified that I needed to dedicate an entire post to it, and internet friends, I don’t know if I got a whole post about it. The truth is, it was just OK for me. Actually, I should probably start by saying I’m really not a novel type of girl. Give me non-fiction over fiction any day, and the more heart-wrenching the better usually. I know, I know, I’m sick. What can I say? It’s just that I’m generally of the opinion that the tough stuff in life is the rich soil of the deepest and most profound growth. Anyway, Katt’s in the Cradle was a bit too light & fluffy for me. And the fact that the 4 main characters (PWs) in the book are not real made it hard for me to “connect.” (Can you tell I was not an imaginative child?) But still, I bet every PW could relate to at least a few things in the book. So, if you’re out for an easy, relatively quick read that provides a bit of the behind-the-scenes issues PWs and their families face, you might like it.- Speaking of books — and even novels — I loved The Kite Runner which I read recently. I’m also just about to finish the feast which is He Leadeth Me. Now there’s a meaty book. Now that you know my taste in books, anyone got a recommendation?
- Well, naptime has apparently ended, so this post has too. Have a great weekend internet friends.
Photo courtesy of marcello u.
Potatoes, how I love thee
May 21, 2009
If I was stranded on a desert island and could only have one food, it would be potatoes. I love them in any form, but mashed are absolutely my favorite food on this earth. We even had them at our wedding. I love, love, love potatoes. I could eat them every day. Yes I could.
But, as fate would have it, my family is full of rice people. All I want to know is, who in the world doesn’t love mashed potatoes? Huh? HUH? My family, that’s who. Yet another reason to make me question whether or not my children were switched at birth.
Needless to say, we don’t have potatoes around here very much. I grew up eating potatoes probably at least 3 nights a week, so you can imagine the withdrawals.
But I’m not bitter (ahem).
In any event, if my family were normal, I think the following tip just might change my life.
Train up a child: 10 things
May 8, 2009
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.
So often I’m ruled by fear in my parenting — fear that I’ll damage them beyond repair, fear that they’ll make horrible choices and land up in horrible circumstances, fear that I’ll be picking up the pieces of my children’s broken lives all because I just plain screwed ‘em up.
I know they are fears, and (mostly) irrational ones. But still.
Train up a child…
Children need to be trained, not just told. That was an epiphany of sorts for me recently. I suppose if I ever stopped to think about it, it’s not a profound conclusion to come to, but I think I’ve missed it to a large degree. (Thank goodness for Brian who is an amazing teacher.)
So often I think we adults assume children know what we mean when we say things like, “Go clean your room,” or “Help your brother get dressed,” or directions of any kind really.
I have one child who melts into a puddle when I say, “It’s chore time so please go clean your room.” For a long time, the puddle-melting of this child made me crazy; I just assumed they were trying to get out of their work. It didn’t dawn on me until (I hate to admit it) only recently, that the response to the direction to “clean their room” was not because they were disobedient but because they were uninformed; they didn’t know how to clean their room. Consequently, they felt completely overwhelmed. And really, if you think about it, cleaning one’s room is a learned skill, not something one knows how to do innately.
Well, after a few “training sessions” in the art of cleaning one’s room, we have less puddles to deal with. So it is with other things we deal with regularly.
Like any good trainer — coach would be a good term to use too — I have to remember to:
- Train or teach them. Don’t just tell them, show them. Multiple times if necessary. I generally don’t learn something after seeing it only once either.
- Explain what needs to be done in a way that’s understandable and makes sense to a person who hasn’t learned it previously.
- Model doing it myself. In other words, practice what I preach.
- Be kind but firm in my approach. (Hat tip here to Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen. I love this book.)
- Don’t shame them for not knowing.
- Train patiently & genuinely, not with an air of disgust or frustration.
- Put myself in their shoes. How would I best learn if I was them? How would I like to be trained if I was the one learning?
- Accept that I’m not a perfect mother and despite my best efforts, I will make mistakes and there will be gaps in my parenting.
- Pray that God would fill the gaps.
- Know that these children are much more God’s than they are mine.
The Shack: My $.02
May 5, 2009
As promised (about 20 years ago), here’s my two cents on The Shack (aff).
The short story:
First cent: I did not like the first two thirds.
Second cent: It finished better than it started.
The longer story:
This is not the first time I’ve started this post and that’s because I just don’t quite know what to say. So, you’re getting my raw opinion.
I don’t claim to have any good, well-researched and well-thought-out reasons why I think what I think. I’m a “gut” person. In other words, things usually either “sit right” in my soul or they don’t. Sure, my gut feelings are certainly informed by what I know to be true, but I generally don’t formulate my opinions in any kind of academic, systematic way. It just doesn’t happen like that for me; that’s why I keep Brian around.
So, maybe I’m saying you should take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Anyway, as I said, I did not like the first two thirds. Dissonance. That’s the only word that comes to mind to describe my feeling. Try as I might — and I did try — I simply was not feelin’ it. (Strangely — and a random sidenote — I felt the exact same way when reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I was downright mad when I finished that book. But that’s another story.)
Where was I.
Right. Dissonance. The opening drama (my worst nightmare by the way) was somewhat engaging I suppose, but the way God was portrayed? Totally not into it. I knew there was controversy surrounding the book but purposefully avoided any commentary in an effort to approach it with an open mind.
I understand the idea that God presents Himself to us in ways that enable us to relate and be open to Him, but personally I don’t think He chooses to be untrue to His character in order to do it. After all, He’s God. He transcends anything we can imagine. He knows our brokenness and meets us in it, but He doesn’t conform to it.
Just curious…did anyone else think Jesus was a total cheeseball and the Holy Spirit a total airhead? And quite frankly, the interactions between the three made me roll my eyes on multiple occasions.
But on a positive note…
By the end of the book, I was tracking with it. Once I accepted the cheese, I really appreciated some of the explanations of deep God stuff. Mack was dealing with questions we all face, he wondered how and why things happen like they do, and I thought that overall, the author tackled them quite well.
It took me forever to get through the book — mostly because I almost quit several times — but I’m glad I stuck it out. I still think there are some serious flaws in the theology, but the nuggets of wisdom in the end made it worth the read.
What did you think?
How to know what to teach, or, what I want my children to know
May 3, 2009
How do you know what to teach?
This has got to be one of the most common questions I get from people who find out we homeschool. It was also one of my biggest questions when we pulled our daughter out of public school in 2006. I had no idea where to start.
Curriculum choices abound. And when I say “abound” I mean, the sheer number of possiblities is enough to make you go stark raving mad. Totally overwhelming. After hours of going round and round, I was getting nowhere; I needed a new approach. So, I simply asked myself this question: When it comes time for our children to launch out on their own, what do I want them to know? That’s how I came up with my Master List. I can’t say we’ll cover everything here between now and when they turn 18 or so (in fact, we probably won’t), but having the list has helped me at least figure out where we’re headed and things I don’t want to miss along the way.
Anyway, I thought I’d post my list here in case it might be helpful. (And maybe sometime I’ll post my Master, Master list broken down even further along with an explanation of how I use it…I just didn’t want to completely overwhelm you today!).
By the way, this isn’t only for homeschoolers. I am of the opinion that the public school system does not prepare our children well and feel strongly that parents need to take back full responsiblity for the education of our children, whether we choose public school, private school, homeschool or anything else.
Feel free to copy the list and change it so it works for your family. Credit and/or a link back is appreciated. I always appreciate a Stumble too!
Speaking of credit, two sources that were very helpful as I was compiling my own list were Old Fashioned Education’s Categories of Instruction and Doc’s K-8 Master Syllabus.
The Master List
Spiritual Formation
- Bible
- Morals & Character
- Personal Growth & Journey
- Church History
Math
- Arithmetic
- Algebra
- Geometry
- Trigonometry
- Calculus
- Probability & Statistics
- Advanced Math
Language Arts
- Phonics & Reading
- Handwriting
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Vocabulary
- Writing Composition
- Oral Presentation
- Critical Thinking
- Finding Information
Literature
- Genres
- Literary Devices
- Literary Skills
- Oral Reading
Fine Arts
- Art
- Music
- Theater & Dance
- Photography
- Film
- Architecture
Foreign Language
- Ancient
- Modern
Social Studies
- History
- Geography
- Civics & Government
- Business & Commerce
- Cultures
- People & Community
- Society
Science
- Life Science (Biology)
- Earth Science & Astronomy
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Scientific Inquiry
Health & Safety
- Emergency Preparedness
- Transportation Safety
- Personal Safety
- Weather Readiness & Safety
- Survival Skills
- Nutrition & Diet
- Exercise
- Personal Hygiene
- Common Diseases
- Sex Education
- Addictions & Abuse
Life Skills
- Swimming
- Keyboarding
- Test-taking Skills
- Household Management
- Personal Finance
- Driving & Auto Care
- Interpersonal Skills
- Child Care
- Job Hunting
- Carpentry & Repair
- Travel
- Handicrafts
My secret life as a pastor’s wife
April 28, 2009
Or, not so secret if you’ve followed this blog for any length of time. In any case, Part 2 of my interview is up at CLUTCH. Check it out!
keep looking »- Homeschooling for Free series
- My rock bottom
- I am delinquent
- Pastors' Wives Blog List
- Marriage according to Amy
- You know you're a pastor's wife when...
- My thoughts on women in the church
- What goes around... (parts 2, 3)
- Fishing
- 61 Random Things About Me
I'm Amy. I have issues. And I am was the pastor's wife. Here's what happened. Read more about me here or find out how to contact me here.
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