A Quiet Time Thought

Mark 6:1-6, v 6 And he marveled because of their unbelief

Marvel - to wonder at

Generally, Jesus is not surprised by the world and its workings. Usually others are marveling at Him - at His words, His power, His miracles, authority and preaching. This is, perhaps, in reference to the finite mind of man that cannot comprehend the mysteries of God. But when Jesus is marveling at the unbelief of those who have known him for years, this is no compliment. Is it comparable to when one of my children do something amazingly foolish, leaving me thinking, "Did that really just happen?" I'm often not "surprised" by their foolishness, but can experience incredulity as I witness certain actions. Is this how Jesus felt - amazed, though not surprised?

In the end, he left his hometown to minister elsewhere, because their unbelief hindered Him. Though Jesus is now raised on high, unhindered by all but his own patience, I want to be cautious about being a hindrance - I'd much rather the Lord work through me, rather than in spite of me. I'm sure I give him much foolishness to marvel at, but I pray that a habit of acting out of unbelief is not one of them.

Do the hard thing

Have you ever been faced with a decision, little or large, where you know what you ought to do but you don't really want to? I'm not referring to some great moral dilemma or anything, just really a niggling sense of needing to make a wise choice?

Recently, I had to make a decision about my phone. Since I've had a smart phone, I've always plugged it in at night on my night stand, where little fingers rarely came, where I could reach it for late night/early morning texts, use it as my alarm clock and general bedside amusement (autocorrects kill me). It's been great, but I've been noticing a trend in my phone use: alarm goes off, so I turn it off. The phone is now in my hand, so I can check email from under the covers. Then, I check to see if anything interesting has been posted on Facebook (seriously?), and maybe have a look at Pinterest. Perhaps a news story will catch my attention, so I'll take a quick look at that. At this point, I've blown at least a half an hour and have little time left for reading my Bible and praying before I hit the bike and shower.

In short, my phone has become a bedside distraction.

So, I have decided to evict my phone from my room. It now gets plugged in at my desk in the schoolroom at night, and I can pick it up in the morning. It takes some getting used to, but it's a lot easier to pick up my Bible in the morning now that my cheerful, little time-thief has been relegated to another room.

Sometimes, we just need to make the difficult decision, do the hard thing. What "ought-to" are you wrestling with right now? Whatever it is, get to it, while today is still called "today". It'll be worth it.

How it really is

I'd like to let you all in on a little secret: that homeschool family that seems to have it all together? They don't. Ask me how I know...
I think there is a simple truth that applies in almost every area of life - we only see what we are shown. To put it another way, we see what someone is willing to show us, and that's often the sweet, lovely, crafted, Photoshop-ped version of life. I do think, though, that there is a unique temptation within the homeschool community to idolize and hero-worship "that" family. Whether we actively homeschool or simply interact with homeschoolers, we need to be aware of this fact, because believing that the highlights (or gag reel) are the whole show does everyone a disservice. 
What am I talking about?

• The family who started school in July because the kids were so excited to get into their new books? Those kids still would probably rather ditch school to play in the dirt/leaves/snow/water, if given half the chance.
• The mom who taught her baby to sit quietly on her lap while she teaches her older kids? That baby still cries when she teethes, does horrendous diapers and wants to be held when there are no free hands.
• The oldest child who's a great help around the house? It took a lot of time, energy and dedication to train him, and that's still no guarantee that he will always do his best effort, every time, cheerfully.
• The husband who faithfully sends his wife out for a couple hours of alone time every week? He may still leave the toilet seat up, his socks on the couch, or forget their anniversary.
• That amazing lady who has a clean home, scrapbooks, serves in church and has great hair/nails/workouts? She works extremely hard to make it happen, probably gets help in some area, and doesn't do everything. Maybe she doesn't watch the latest TV shows, read a lot of books or get enough sleep. Anyway you slice it, she doesn't do something.

Why do I mention this? Because I think we are all so used to looking around and seeing our weaknesses and failures in someone else's strengths and successes, that we are unable to be grateful, we are unable to recognize God's working, and we are unable to bless.

Grateful - I might not scrapbook, but I'm sure thankful my mom does. She made me a scrapbook with all sorts of incredible family history in it. I couldn't have done it, and wouldn't have enjoyed it if I tried, but now I have this wonderful collection of family history to thank God for and show my children. I don't feel bad that I don't make a scrapbook for each of my children every year, but I'm grateful that my mom has those skills and passions.

God is working - Most of my kids are not self-starters and they often drive each other nuts, which makes it all the sweeter when one kid will read to the others, when one of them works extra hard at an assignment, or when one chooses to share with or encourage another. God is at work in their lives, even if it's not always obvious, because He loves them.

Be a blessing - When I've looked at my friends with eyes of envy, I've failed to notice where they may be in need. Maybe the hard work of child training is discouraging, maybe she's exhausted from another sleepless night, or maybe, just maybe, she's simply needing to hear how much God loves her and that you'll be praying for her. Wouldn't you like to hear that, too?

Rather than spending my time thinking about how someone else's life looks and how mine doesn't quite measure up, I want to spend more time thanking God for the grace in their lives, looking for the grace in my own family's life, and seeing how God would have us serve and bless those around us. Cause no one's got it all together this side of Glory, and I don't want to miss all He's doing right here, right now.

This week

This past week was busy - evening meetings, full school schedule, places to go, people to see.
This week is also going to be busy, but a rather different kind of busy. Toby and I will be attending the Sovereign Grace Pastor's Conference in Orlando. Just to be clear, we will not be visiting the Magic Kingdom, but I suspect it will certainly be magical to spend a couple of days among adults, hearing some good teaching and relaxing in the sun. My children will be having a magical time with their grandmother, who's chief aim is to love on them and spoil them stupid.

A word about my mom...

I heard this story about my mom (from my mom) a while back. Apparently some neighbors had a squirrel problem in their attic, and the cost to have a guy come and "deal with it" was exorbitant. I'm not fully sure how my mom got called in, but it didn't take much to get her climbing up into a tight space with a hand gun. It seems there were no working lights in the attic, but there was a busted vent that she could tell was the squirrel's main entrance, which was also the only source of light. As soon as one of the little stinkers' silhouettes filled the hole, she fired.

When they found the squirrel later, they found one shot - right between the eyes. My mother shot a small, moving target in the dark, right in the head. She laughs this off, amazed at such a lucky shot, but I know better - I know my mom!

So when people ask me who's watching my children while we're out of town and if she'll be okay, I smile and nod. Six kids might be overwhelming for a lot of folks and she'll be tired by Friday, but I know she's got this under control. Clearly, there's not much they can do that I haven't already done, and there's not much she can't handle. She (and they) will do just fine.

Learning the humble

It was kind of a rough week, last week. You ever have one of  those weeks, the kind that seem to be a big dose of humility fertilizer? For instance:

• I did something to my back - not really bad, but bad enough to bring me up short when I twist or bend, enough to be a regular niggle.
• We've had teething kids, and with teething kids comes clinginess and horrible diaper experiences. Fun for the whole family.
• One night, I started to walk down to the basement, but somehow manage to slide halfway down on my butt, gaining a few colorful new bruises along the way. It was mainly funny, but rather painful. Every time I thought about the painful, I could just picture how funny I must have looked, surfing down the stairs, and I got the giggles again. It was so loud, too, that Abi came running downstairs to see what had happened. It's a rather humbling to have your 11-year-old escort you to bed.
• I somehow manage to overfill the reservoir in the coffee pot, not a few drops, but so that it overflows all over the counter. At this point, there was nothing else for it but to laugh. And mop up.

It's good to be reminded that I am I finite person with questionable depth perception and a tendency toward colorful bruises; it helps keep my tendency toward smugness in check. Here's hoping some of my ongoing lessons in humility are a little less painful this week.

Location, location, location

After I hung up a load of laundry outside, I noticed a wren flitting around with nesting material in his beak. I assumed he was building a nest in our canoe. Again.

 When I pulled the laundry off the line, I realized my mistake as soon as I put my hand in the peg bag...

 That poor bird must have worked awfully hard to stuff all that material into my peg bag in just one afternoon!

 

Thankfully, there were no eggs, but I still think the local house wren population needs a better realtor.

A fine family tradition

All families have traditions. Usually they have to do with how they spend the holidays or where they go on vacation. Not us, though - we like to crank things up a notch. Our tradition is...chin stitches. A couple summers ago, Anna was the first to split her chin, with Abi catching up the very next Saturday. It'd been a little while since that injury, so I suppose we were due - I'm honestly surprised it had taken that long...

This time, it was some rough play between the boys in the bathtub that resulted in a charming little flesh wound. It wasn't bleeding terribly, but in an awkward spot, so it was off to Patient First:

 The thickly-accented Russian doctor (who I believe also treated Anna) hooked Dan up with 5 little stitches, and Dan was good to go. Little guy went through the whole thing with nary a peep.

He was pretty good about the whole thing, though the following day he seemed to be doing everything in his power to earn himself some more stitches: jumping off things, jumping into things, falling off things, getting trapped between things...I'm happy to report, however, that Dan's stitches are now out and he is back in action.
Though the children seem to be doing their best to earn a few scars and war stories, it'll take a little more than that to beat my record. I continue to be the current reigning Stitches Champion, holding steady at more than 36 stitches (not including any delivery-related stitches). Long may it continue, children - you don't need to win this one.

In which a change is not as good as a rest

The change: I'm sick. I hate being sick. I'm also a little dumb (that's not a change, though). When life gets busy and I get a little twirly, I think to myself, "Maybe I need to take a sick day. A couple days in bed nursing something not-horrible might be kind of nice." See? Not my brightest moment.
It started last week, with first Dan, then Caleb and Ellie coming down with coughs. The older ones managed to avoid it so far, mainly because they don't feel the need to get into everyone's faces the way the younger ones do. They passed it to me, I believe, in a dastardly attempt to get more TV time. Their plan backfired, however - don't they know that with warm weather and (for the first time in 15 years) a lack of doggy-deposits in the yard means they play outside? A clever move, my worthy little foes, yet I remain triumphant! :)
Now, I sit, still needing to keep with things/life in some measure, as it appears that you don't really get to stay in bed all day unless you are, indeed, suffering from something fairly horrible/contagious. For me, some sinus congestion and a sore throat do not qualify. Pity.
I ended  up having to miss my book club last night, which was so disappointing on two counts: 1) I worked really hard to get the book finished in time and really wanted to hear what others thought of it, and 2) I promised to make cake for those who finished. I will be sure to redeem myself next month! We'll be reading The Kitchen House, for anyone who's interested. I'll have to get a hold of it soon...
Hope you hearty and hale people are enjoying the spring; I'll be back out there myself, as soon I no longer need to be in arm's reach of a tissue at all times!

How it is

I may be the kind of mom that makes her kids eat oatmeal...

...but I'm also the kind of mom that lets them eat it with a scoop of ice cream.

I'm not all bad, then.

Big, Fat Timewaster

I am guilty as charged and feeling convicted. I've been wasting my time, and I, of all people, have little time to waste. In about 7 weeks, we will welcome our 6th child and my 3rd son into our family, and there's only about a gabillion things to do before then. There's the normal, every day, taking-care-of-the-basic-family-need things, there's the it's-summer-and-we-want-to-have-some-fun things, there's the projects that I've committed to (that might end up with me being committed), the meetings and the planning for next year and the getting ready for baby things. That sounds like a lot - and it is - but I really do have the time for it if I exercise a smidgen of self-control and stay off the stupid Internet! I could blame Pinterest and interesting blogs for increasing my project list, but that would be false - they are great tools if used correctly. I could blame Facebook and people posting about their lives, but who makes me sign on? And it's important to me to keep in touch with friends and family, which Facebook allows me to do with relative ease. I'm very tempted to blame the singular game on my iPhone for spending so little time reading and knitting, but really - I'm the idiot that installed the thing. No, the fact of the matter is I am choosing to fritter my time away on things of less importance because I don't want to invest the time and energy on the harder jobs.

Some might say I need to step back and re-evaluate my commitments and see if there's anything I'm trying to do that is best laid aside for now. That might be necessary, but for now, I can see the problem, and the problem is the lady in the mirror. I think what she really needs is a good stern talking to ("What do you think you're doing? You've got more important things to be spending your time on than beating your high score on Bejeweled Blitz 2!"), some prayer and repentance (my time, my life, is not my own, since I was bought with a price), and the practice to continuously choose to weigh the options of how I spend my time. I do not have the luxury of going into autopilot - I need to be fully here, exercising wisdom and making good decisions.

I know I'm not the only one who deals with this - I suspect it is a common temptation in this time and culture. My question now is Who else is noticing this trend in their own lives? and What are you gonna do about it?

Make your own...laundry detergent?

I've been making my laundry detergent off and on for a couple years now. I like how cheap it is, how well it cleans our clothes (and believe me, we put it through its paces!) and how little we need to throw away. Those big plastic jugs take up some room!
For a long time, I've been using SouleMama's detergent recipe and been very content. It's simple, inexpensive, the ingredients are easy to find and does what it's supposed to. I wanted to have a go at a liquid detergent, however - I generally prefer how it dissolves in the machine. So, off to handy dandy Pinterest to see if some clever soul out there has figured out how to do it. I was not disappointed.

This is the first recipe I found and liked - after all, I had half the ingredients already. It looked pretty straight forward. I also stumbled upon this recipe, which included oxyclean. I've never used oxyclean before, but it sounded pretty good, though the detergent was a powder. So, when it came time to make my detergent one quiet Saturday morning, I decided to try for the best of both worlds and make the liquid with the addition of oxyclean. Now if you're a chemical person (which I am not, but my husband is), you can probably guess what happened. I melted the soap - fine. Added the powders - no problem. Brought the mixture to a boil - and that's when it happened. Evidently, one of the things oxyclean does is fizz. A lot. As the mixture began to boil over, I lifted the pot, hoping that the absence of heat would allow it to stop bubbling all over the place. No such luck. This stuff went everywhere - all over the stove, into the oven, over the counter. In trying to get it to the sink to try to control the mess, it made it's way to the floor and splattered all over several cabinets. It took longer to clean up the mess than to make the stuff to begin with (isn't that always the way?).
Once my chemistry lab/kitchen was cleaned up and under control, I was able to contain and use the detergent, and you know what? I like it. It was worth the mess and fuss to reuse the plastic containers with something that works well without costing loads. I definitely plan on using it again when we run out.
One suggestion, though: Follow the ingredients carefully and don't get clever trying to mix and match recipes on your first try. Not unless you like cleaning splatters on your kitchen cabinets for the week to come. That's not really my idea of a party, but hey - whatever floats your boat, right?

The Conference Cowl

This is it (I think) - the last completed project update!

It was a great project. I had a ball of Malabrigo Rios left over from my Estelle and I needed a project that was interesting but not too involved to take along to the Sovereign Grace Pastor's Conference. This pattern and this yarn made for a beautiful pair.

I began on the car-ride down to Gaithersburg and finished the day we came home. Perfect.

Plus, I learned two things:

1. Blocking is so important. I already knew this, but the reminder was helpful. When it was first finished and I put it on, it looked like a large, blue caterpillar was attacking me. It was more than a little snug around my neck, and I was preparing to give it away. But once home and suitably blocked, the fibers really r  e  l  a  x  e  d, and there was a lovely drape to it. No more(wo)man-eating caterpillars here.

2. When you drop your yarn in the middle of a meeting and the ball rolls under the dozen or so rows in front of you, several things will happen: the yarn will pick up dust and fluff, people will turn and look at you, you will want the floor to open up and swallow you whole, you will have to ask a patient man to throw that ball of yarn back behind his feet so you can get to it, he will look at you like you have 3 heads as you scrabble about on the floor, you will feel like an utter moron, and you may never live it down. I'll get back to you on the last one.

For real. 

As before

So, the only "Anna's sixth birthday" photos we got look like this:

The book is really cool, and being used to identify all sorts of creepy crawlies. She also received a little field scope with which to view all her new creatures. To encourage the budding entomologist in her pursuits, Daddy has taken to bringing home dead bugs from work (though he does take care to only bring home the interesting-looking ones). He's nice that way.

And the exploding Sigg bottle? Here it is:

I gotta tell ya, I'm pretty impressed. I do understand the basics of freezing things and thought I'd left enough of a head in the bottle for expansion, but it appears that I was mistaken.

What makes me laugh, though, is the claim that this type of bottle is supposed to be "indestructible". It figures that it would be me who could destroy the indestructible.

Top tip

Should you ever find that someone has decorated your computer monitor with a Sharpie marker, color over with with a dry-erase marker and wipe off. It works beautifully - thanks to the very clever person who suggested this online. Thanks to you, our son shall live to see another day.

If you haven't encountered this problem yet, don't laugh, or we'll send Noah around with a Sharpie for a visit...

"Life's too short"

Warning: Prepare for a rant

We keep getting these fliers from a company saying, "Life's too short to clean your own home."

For one thing, I don't appreciate a mailbox-full of junk mail. But the big problem with this sort of thinking is what they don't say: "Life's too short to clean your own home, but it's all right if you clean someone else's." Don't get me wrong - I understand that there is a lot of value to having some extra help around the house, and there is certainly nothing wrong with paying for that help. It's the mindset that's the trouble. The mindset that says, "I'm going to take the easiest route, regardless of the cost." It says, "I have better things to do with my time than care for my home and family."

Why is life too short to clean your own home? Because it's work? So what? Do the work together, as a family. Sing songs together as you sweep. Laugh together as you do the dishes. Train your children to do these chores, to be your helpers, to prepare for caring for their own homes one day.

I'm aware that my thoughts are not exactly popular, and I may have stepped on some toes. If so, I'm sorry, but I refuse to be told that life is too short to care for my blessings. As far as I can tell, life is too short to continually abdicate responsibility to "the professionals". No one else is going to treasure my treasures like I will, no matter how well they're paid.

I'm an Idiot

What can I say? Trying to redeem the amazon gift card Mum sent for Christmas, I keep putting in the code, and it keeps telling me it's already been redeemed - aka "Someone's stolen our gift!". Get sulky and cross with amazon, emailing to find out how they're going to fix it all, when Toby realizes that the code that I'm using is for the gift card we received last year and has definitely been used (by us). With dunce hat firmly in place, email amazon back to apologize for such folly.
So there we are: a fool, with fun Amazon toys.
For those interested, the aquarium was great, especially when I managed to adjust the rucksack that Eleanor was in so it didn't feel like she weighed 100lbs on my shoulders. Everyone loved the dolphins the best, even though they weren't wooden. I think they would have been a little less dramatic, somehow.
I'll post some photos when I come up for air from my frenzied Christmas-making...