New Improved Look at Blessings--the Best Kind

I remember a number of years ago, belonging to a home fellowship group. We were discussing how God provides for us, and one woman said how it was true...we have our homes, our cars; our kids have their educations. She reminded me in her satisfaction a little of (excuse me here) Winnie the Pooh smacking his lips after he'd had some honey. I couldn't help but point out that the provision God gives is just as true for the believer in a little hut in Africa. She got a confused look on her face, but her husband nodded and said, yes, that was right, the believer in the little hut is provided for by our God as well; he has just as much reason to rejoice in Him.
I think it was just yesterday I blogged, counting my blessings, trying to bring myself out of a funk of sorts. This morning I realized it probably sounds more like bragging if anyone lacks some of them, and for that I am sorry. And to tell the truth, it didn't really help that much in the long run. I have to admit, it was a fairly shallow list and I had an "epiphany" moment today regarding what was wrong with it. Do I find lasting joy in my house, car, food...? That's ridiculous! I realize it's not wrong to focus on how God has blessed me, but most of the things that came up as blessings, while they are blessings, aren't the ones that assure me joy in Christ.
What do I have in common with the believer in a little hut in Africa? These are the things that should assure me of eternal joy, infinite joy!
1. I have the assurance of my salvation! Not all believers believe this, and I think that's tragic. If I walked away from the faith, I would not have had a real understanding of all that God has done for me. His love restrains me from such an awful error.
2. I have a heavenly Father! Not having an earthly father makes this all the more precious. Not only that, He's perfect, and always ready to hear me and help me. And He has infinite love, incomprehensible, unconditional and unearned love for His children. He promises also to provide for His own, and this covers the material, spiritual, emotional...all aspects of life.
3. I have the indwelling Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit has been given to those who believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. He illuminates the truth; He gives wisdom and discernment; He helps us to know God's will for us. He helps us in prayer when we don't know how to pray, what to pray for. He comes alongside us and helps us in more ways than we probably know.
4. I have an incredible, enormous family of believers! My own family of origin isn't close, and God has more or less supplanted that one with the family of Christ, every one of them accountable to God; they should be able and inclined to show love and forgiveness and acceptance, and I in return should as well. This makes relationships workable and pleasant almost all the time. There are members of this family most anywhere I should go; most of them, I've never met yet, though I will someday in heaven. They are my family through all eternity!
5. I have hope of heaven! This is more a certainty than a vague notion that something might or might not happen. His Word assures me, and His Holy Spirit assures me. Heaven is to be greatly desired because it's, well, heavenly--pleasant and perfect; Jesus and all His own will be there; and when you consider that eternal torment in hell is the only other option, it's all the better.
6. I have been renewed! I am a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come! Praise God for that. I realized this week how it wasn't that long ago that I used to find delight not in eternal hopes but in winning conflicts and arguments, in things that trip up and bring down others. Now, instead, those things trouble me, perhaps more than they should, but at least I'm not embracing them any more, and I'm glad for that. It isn't something I've done, but something God has slowly shifted into a better perspective.
7. I have everything pertaining to life and godliness! If I'm not living according to that, it's my own fault. It's an amazing concept, but the Bible promises it to be true.
8. I have more promises in Christ than I can list here! Books that try to list the promises we have in Christ are a dime a dozen...they're everywhere, and all of them, though they have a good premise, are insufficient in that the Bible context can make them much more meaningful and understandable and our application of them more accurate. But these books do show one thing, and that's how there are a great many promises.

So there you have my improved list. This list of blessings, like the Bible promise books, is incomplete to say the least! (Still, how much more could a person want?) But it has a more accurate, more useful focus regarding where my eternal hope and joy are and how they help me. I think this list should help me more not be so funky. Ha. I hope it helps you too!

"Count Your Blessings!"

This article isn't my last say on the subject. To read a better perspective, read my updated version, two blog entries up from here, which doesn't focus so much on the earthly things that God has graciously provided. I'm not so proud of this list, but I think if you read it and then read the other, it might help some in seeing the difference regarding one's focus. I amaze myself in how fast I can forget the real truth and even think I'm being meaningful in the process. It happens too often!
I'm not sure if there's one thing to attribute it to, whether it's a post-Christmas letdown, where the anticipation of a short-term delight is past; or the darkness of the days, and the messy remnants from snow and ice; or a disagreeable encounter I had a while back that still disheartens and confuses me; or something in the way of low energy and perhaps a need to get out and get fresh air...I think it may be all of the above. But I'm in a funk. I hate being there, it's so disheartening and disabling that the unpleasantness in itself is a great incentive to change from there. The weird thing about that feeling is the passing occasional urge to hunker down further into it. I hate it!
So I was looking at other people's blogs for ideas, something new to think about. I know, I have too much time on my hands and if I were only busier...well, I tried just adding busy-ness to my day by making a list and starting on it. Then I ponder as I work...I do have too much time to think when I can think and work at the same time!
Looking at blogs helped. After a few that just made me sad that I don't feel like reading some of their Christian books that seem so helpful, I finally found one that reminded me of something very simple that I already know: Count your blessings. Yes, that is what I will do. It sounds insanely cliche, something parents tell complaining kids that isn't likely to garner much response. Still, it works wonders. I've done it before when my feelings were challenging me, and after a half an hour, all I could do was rejoice!
Here goes:
1. I am loved by the Creator, the Maker of Heaven and Earth...the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He has redeemed my life from the pit, that big, long-lasting, mucky one that had been home for 29 years. He helps me on a daily basis, and better than any of that, He promises that I will be with Him forever in heaven someday.
2. I live in a family who loves the Lord. We all agree that church is the highlight of our week. We know that what the Bible teaches is the key to all good knowledge and love and peace. (Even with these good realizations, I acknowledge also that we don't live our lives as fully taking advantage of the goodness of these things as we should...yet at least the connection is there in our heads, and room for improvement provides a goal for anyone who will pursue it. Though I read the Bible regularly, my lack of knowledge, understanding and application of so much of it...well, there's room for improvement.)
3. I live in a family who I love and who loves me. How good is that! How many people can say that?
4. We live in a peaceful land. We've never heard a bomb go off, and never seen a real gun pointed at a person--in person, at least.
5. We have the freedom to worship as we see is right. We don't have to sneak to church and back, or fear death in the process.
6. Gary has a job. This is good.
7. We have a home. We have some friendly neighbors.
8. We have a church we love. Our pastor preaches truth, prays for us, reads and studies the Bible, and interacts with his flock. He is a shepherding pastor. He corrects me when I need it (I need it too often--I was telling him recently that I suspect I am a "high maintenance" member of our congregation.). We love the people there. I even love the funky little building where the word "collapse" is too frequently spoken. I even love the little town where it is located that has been called the meth capital of the world. Yes, we love our church.
9. We have a number of good friends, both fairly long-term and rather new, a variety of them, from various churches and other places, who are sources of encouragement, balance, interest and above all, love.
10. I have been an at-home mom since Katie was 2. I quit about a month after I came to Christ. I wasn't earning much after the cost of working, and the money I can save by being at home probably outweighs those earnings.
11. I have had the privilege of homeschooling both of our children--Katie from 1st through 12th grade; Tim so far, and he's in 5th. It provides that they get a Christian perspective in the things they learn; they are spared the secular perspective presented as truth; and their relationships with God and family have been greatly enhanced.
12. Katie goes to a Christian college in California in spite of our finances more than because of them. She has gained a number of good and wonderful friends, some of whom I've met, and she has the God-given good sense and trustworthiness that eases my mind in having her so far away.
13. We are able to get about in two vehicles. This is good in various ways.
14. I have various ways to communicate with friends and family: prayer (only to God), in person (my favorite earthly one and someday heavenly one), phone, cell phone, mail, e-mail, blogging, and now facebook. Our directories are always well-worn.
15. We all are healthy. Okay, some would differ with that, that we could lose some weight and be more physically fit, but we aren't dead yet, and we don't have medical insurance (the lack of which, I suspect, makes us healthier than if we were always pondering whether we had reason to go to the doctor). We have pretty good vision, hearing, and rarely need medicine...hardly had any colds or flus for two years. And additionally, if we did need medical care, there are boodles of hospitals and clinics in close range.
16. We have sufficient food for ourselves and to share. I like that share part. It's the best, bringing food to church, to friends, and having friends come and eat with us. I think of "Now He who provides seed for the sower and bread for food..." and rely on that verse to promise me that the supply will continue.
17. We can put on blankets and warmer clothes, or turn up the heat if we're cold. We can take a cold shower or shed clothes (to an extent) if we're too warm. Not everywhere can people say both of those things. Our region does not tend to be either extremely hot or extremely cold for an extended length of time.
18. We have books, newspapers, internet, television (a mixed blessing), video rental--even a public library close by--from which we can choose various forms of information and entertainment.
19. We have a huge choice of ridiculously big grocery stores within a short drive, each with their strengths, most with their realm of predictable bargains, all causing competition among themselves, a good blessing. And at these stores, there is an unthinkable variety of food from every area of the world, so I can easily "bring my food from afar," yet from close-by.
20. In fact, our little Marysville is so sufficient (aside from our church being elsewhere) that I hardly ever need to leave town other than Sunday to supply our family with its needs.
21. We have a garden, where I can choose to grow flowers and vegetables as I have the energy and inclination. Sometimes this is a mixed blessing, in that it's more work than I can do.
22. We get lots of rain here, which means lots of fresh-tasting drinking water from the tap, lots of vegetation greening up every view, and clean air...in fact it's been so rainy this last year or two that moss abounds here as if it were a rain forest. Rain, I remind myself frequently, tends to be a description of God's blessing in the Bible. Boy, are we blessed!
23. When the sun does shine, we don't take it for granted. We may need to buy new sunglasses because it's been so long since we wore them that we've lost them, but it's great to get it back again.
24. There are sidewalks on our street; we have a driveway; and we have a garage. I've lived in neighborhoods without some of these elements, and I appreciate them.
25. We have bicycles, which we use on a wonderful trail nearby; there are various scenic areas around here, for that matter; we live in a wonderful part of the world, near ocean and mountains and rivers and lakes.
Okay, for the moment I'm feeling much better. That will do for now. But do you see what it is to count your blessings? I bet you have some that overlap with mine. If you're feeling in need of a boost, let me say what your mom used to tell you: "Count your blessings!"

God Has Blessed my Being a Stay-at-Home Mom

I try not to take my blessings for granted. Yet, I am blessed beyond what I can regularly realize! One of the best aspects of this is my being a stay-at-home mom. On our cul-de-sac of about 17 houses, I am one of two moms, I think, who continually stay at home with children and who don't work outside the home at all. The other one has tried to open a daycare at her house and not succeeded, and actually I'm not sure that she's at home all the time. I read sometimes about flack that stay-at-home moms get, and have to say that I have rarely received any of that sort of treatment from others.
When Katie was a baby, I remember hoping against hope that I would be able to stay home with her--but I went back to work when she was 6 weeks old, and left her with a lady from our church who did daycare in her house. She usually had ten kids there, and Katie would come home over-stimulated and over-exposed to every bug that came along. She was often sick, and usually irritable and exhausted--and so was I.
One of the women I worked with had two little boys, both in daycare. She earned less than it cost to have them there. I wondered at why she would do that, and she said that the daycare could raise her boys better than she could! That seemed tragic to me even then. Imagine thinking that daycare staff could raise your children better than you can. Most of them have no major qualifications for running a daycare; for that matter, the employees aren't bound to stay employed there any length of time; above all, they can't be expected to love your children as much as you would love them. It reminds me of the boy that used to live next door to us when I was a kid. He was raised more by the maid than by his mother. When the maid died, he grieved over her like a child would his mother, but in contrast he had very little respect for his own mother. He was socially inept and grew up getting in continual trouble with the law, on the premise that his lawyer father would continually bail him out. When I've helped in nurseries at churches, I have usually been able to tell which children are in daycare and which aren't; I see it in our neighborhood as well. The children I've seen who spend their weeks in daycare have a tendency to be more aggressive and less concerned about the other children. I have never seen that there is any optimum substitute for a parent raising a child.
While I was working at Boeing, Gary was trying to get into the sales field; he'd worked in an office for years and was getting nowhere. The sales field wasn't so easy to break into. A food broker would hire him full-time, then reduce him to part-time to avoid having to provide benefits. This happened with three jobs in a row! It didn't look like I would ever be at home with Katie. Gary's earnings were also at pretty much bare minimum to begin with. But I had recently come to accept Jesus as my Savior, and my life was in makeover mode in many ways.
I came home from work one day when Gary was on part-time. He had that day off, but still put Katie in daycare. I would have given my right arm to be at home with her, so it hit me hard that he'd pay to have someone take care of her while he was home. That day it became clear that my working wasn't very beneficial to the family; it was counter-productive. I was starting to add up all the costs of working, and comparing them with my minimal earnings. I figured I was taking home about $65-80 per month after all the expenses were taken out: daycare, gas, car insurance (higher the more you drive), convenience foods, dress clothes, higher tax bracket, office gift obligations...it wasn't the most worthwhile venture for me to be at work. Add to those things the physical strain I was under at the time, being anemic and worn out, constantly coming down with all the bugs Katie brought home; also not having the time to clean house like I would if I were at home (theoretically, at least). Gary needed to be the primary breadwinner, it was obvious. It wasn't the best approach that day, but I remember clearly and calmly telling Gary (not asking him--that would be an issue now) that I was going to give my notice at work. It wasn't because he was earning enough to support us; he wasn't! It was what I consider a leap of faith. I was convinced that God was showing me that I must be at home with Katie. I didn't tell Gary that I would give a three-week notice instead of two so I would get another month of medical coverage. Still, wow. I remember I could hardly wait until the three weeks were over!
I realize that not everyone would consider this the right approach. In some ways it wasn't, but the way I saw it at the time, it appeared to me to be the only thing I could do. The first day of not rising early to go to work, I remember how I felt like an enormous weight had fallen off my shoulders. I remember thinking, "I finally know what I want to be 'when I grow up'--a stay-at-home mom!" There I was with my daughter, not having to rush her through the early morning and pack her in the car to get her to daycare so I could be at work at 7:15.
Katie's attitude completely and suddenly changed from the day I started staying at home. We had dinner with some friends, and they remarked, "What has happened to Katie?!" She was no longer constantly demanding my full attention and raising a ruckus throughout the meal time. And my health started improving as I became more rested. I had just been informed that I had been anemic, and the iron was a great boon to my energy level.
Our finances were not in great shape. We really didn't have a penny to spare; still, it wasn't that different from when I was working. My work had never provided so much that we had spare funds, it just occupied all my time and made a very slight difference in take-home pay. I had moments when I felt a bit guilty, and then when I considered the math, the benefit to being at home was real--and in the other ways as well.
Gary was trying to get into pharmaceutical sales, but I was tired of all of his job changes. He had just changed to another food broker when I got a phone call asking for him; he wasn't home. When I realized it was regarding another job, I just ignored it rather than tell him. I didn't want him changing all over again! The man called back another time when Gary was home. Right over the phone, he offered Gary a job that he had applied for 6 months previously; the other candidate who had gotten the job had gotten fired. The pay and benefits were like we'd never had before. Did I feel foolish! But I was so thankful for God's grace.
Since that time, Gary has had various job changes and times between jobs. At first I worked as an office temp from time to time, but that didn't continue for very long. I've been at home completely for about 20 years now. We have probably had about four years of joblessness, total, scattered in amongst those years, and his salary has gone up and down depending on what job he was working. It has never been an enormous salary, but God has been faithful to us throughout that time. He has taught me to be careful with my spending, and He has been gracious with various creative means of providing for us. We've never been a charity case! I truly believe that most women could stay at home with their children if they were determined to do so, trusting in God as their Provider. If God has provided such for us, He can provide for anybody who will rely on Him.
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.

25 Years is a Long Stretch! So...What Has Changed?

Twenty-five years have passed since Gary and I got married on June 18, 1983. Things have changed...differently than the casual observer might think. I'm a bit (never mind how much a bit is) heavier...my hands and face are more wrinkled and I have some gray hair...our wedding presents are now antiques. (That's scary!) There are two more people in the house. Where did they come from? Oh, yes, I remember now. They grew on us! Ha! And my ankle hurts, and it didn't do that back a bunch of years.
Other than that, what's the difference? Oh, yes, new life! I'm alive! I was dead then and didn't know it. I remember that feeling of inadequacy, that huge hole in my middle. I remember that so well, and never thought it would subside. For a while it got worse! And now it's gone.
I know how to fix up things around the house. And I don't think I'd be as afraid to try a new job if I had one; I don't worry about what people think of me; I don't feel alone; my life is no longer meaningless; now, though, work is not my life; my life revolves around important things, things that matter eternally, like family life, and faith.
Still, aside from all that? I still feel like that 23-year-old, basically. There are a lot of things, I think, that haven't changed. Well, maybe. Well, maybe not. It's better! It's really good. Life is really good. God is really great! Other than aches and weight, I'm not just like when I was 23, I'm happier, more confident, more joyful, at peace, and I didn't even have a clue what joy and peace were back then.
How has Gary changed? In many ways, he too is still the same person he was; yet, he's changed of course too. Well, he has a work history in sales,and he will tell you all about it if you ask! He loves his work. He's a dad who takes pride in his kids. He values family life big-time. The church where his dad pastored back then, he called a "social club." And he didn't attend church back then. I don't think he'd call the one we attend now anything like just a social club!
Back then we lived in Portland, and hadn't really become part of a community. Now, having lived in the Puget Sound area most of these years, we have a huge community of friends, of sisters and brothers in Christ, who we love and cherish. I can't imagine having been without them all these years--and with every year it's only gotten better!
We've gone through some tough times, but God has brought us through them, and through those times, we have learned things about God and ourselves, and about what other people go through, that we never would have learned otherwise. God is truly great. What more can I say? I can only praise God for His goodness in our lives, for what He has done, for all that He has done to help us through these 25 years!

Scrabulous!

I've been enjoying facebook online since Katie went off to college. It's a great way to stay in touch with people with whom you might otherwise fall out of contact. Katie has re-established contact with various friends even from when she was in fifth grade. I, too, have enjoyed the benefit of this phenomenon, such as through contact with a sweet chum of mine who was in 4th grade when I last saw her, Grace. But I wasn't in 4th grade. I was the director of her Awana Chums club! She and her brothers were also involved in a homeschool music ministry along with Katie, a ministry which was attended by Tim for the first time this year. That music ministry has been run all along by Tina Riley, who now attends the Alliance Church in Granite Falls, the sweet tiny church we started attending last year. (We met Tina, and Grace, at our previous church.)
So Grace contacted me after all the four years since she moved away, befriended me on facebook, and invited me to a game of Scrabulous (a form of Scrabble) online, one of the many applications that are available on facebook. Scrabble is one of my favorite games! She almost hooked me right off the bat.
At first I didn't take her up on it, because of the time that it can take to complete a game, and the many other demands I might encounter in a day--but with this type of Scrabble, she told me that it can be finished later. (The nice thing with that, too, is that the game doesn't occupy the table until you can finish it.) She's really quite good at the game, too!
Now I can tell you, I am not too swift at how to IM and do other things at the same time; and then with the game, it has a feature where you can look up potential words you are hoping to use. They open up on another tab (or screen), and it gets a little perplexing if you get a few of these open--which I did. Well, I tried closing a few of those and accidentally closed the game too. So, since the Scrabulous feature doesn't yet show up on my facebook, I didn't know how to get back to it. By that time, my friend Grace had to go off to bed or something, and so we have an unfinished game. No matter. We can do it again at another time. I think I'll practice in the meantime and get all these little techniques down so I don't shut down my end of the game unintentionally again.
I ponder that, though. It isn't just the pleasure of Scrabble, but it's like drawing people residing in Tennessee and Washington together with only a table in between, covered with a game and a bunch of little square wooden letter pieces. It's like picking up from about four years ago, with a girl who's probably changed more than I have, but who is unusually able and willing to reach out from her world into that of an adult she knew what must seem so long ago to her. If our families hadn't attended the same church, or been involved in the same homeschool music ministry at the time, we wouldn't have known each other. Both things were functions of knowing Christ. So Christ is who drew us together to begin with, and He is our Sustainer; every good and perfect gift comes from above...including otherwise unlikely friendships that might have so easily unraveled but for His sustaining power and goodness.

God is Good, and His Mercy Prevails Over our Plans

Sometimes it is in verbalizing something that I come to realize the truth of it. (I guess what I mean is that I think while I am yet speaking or writing, rather than beforehand--not always the best habit, but it's often how my thoughts come together.) My brother and I e-mail back and forth sometimes, usually in a flurry for a few days, then nothing for weeks. It happened this way after Easter. I like to hear from him; he's the only one in my family that is so communicative. It isn't that we share faith, or much in the way of interests. Sometimes our sense of humor has similarities, and of course we know the family we were raised in, but that might be most of what we have in common.
So when he e-mailed me after Easter and told me of the Easter egg hunt he provided for his three teenage girls, as if it were a burden while I know he actually loved doing it (it was probably his idea, not his daughters'), I e-mailed him back about our strange yet perfect Easter. I don't think I realized just how perfect it was, how wonderfully God had known our needs more than we had ourselves, but in the writing of it, it became clear. Our God is good!
I think of Easter primarily as a day of remembering God's goodness, in Jesus' resurrection that assures ours; it is the greatest goodness, an intrinsic trait of God that manifested itself so powerfully and visibly in Jesus' rising from the dead. It is a goodness to which much of the world is tragically blind, and yet God in His abundant grace still provided it while all of us were still blind and dead in our transgressions. And God showed His goodness to us this Easter Sunday, not in causing us to celebrate it in the traditional way that we would have, but in the way that He Himself prescribed for us that day, in rest.
I had been busy for the previous week doing all sorts of cooking and having people over. Our daughter Katie was home from college and various people had called saying that they wanted to see her. She also wanted to get together with her friends from college a few times during that week (and I protested the irony in this, that she comes home to be with family and runs off to be with her college friends, but I am truly glad for the strength of these friendships). Altogether it was one of the busier weeks I've had in a while, of people coming by and Katie going places. Since Katie doesn't drive, there was more driving than usual. This is fine. I enjoy having her in town, and enabling her to catch up on rest, on homework, and on social life, which is for the most part the focus of her time when she is home. I joke that when she comes home she goes from sensory overload to sensory deprivation, but she is becoming so adept at the overload aspect that during this break she didn't allow herself to really enjoy the quiet as much as she did at Christmas break. But I digress.
Besides the added busyness of increased hospitality and providing for Katie's needs, I was also preparing for Easter. We had made arrangements for a family with five children (other than one on a trip) to come over for the afternoon after church. In my usual way, I prepared lots of food: ham, a potato dish, carrots, cole slaw, green bean casserole, and a pineapple upside-down cake. All of this in huge quantity to feed the masses. Also a bunch of bags of Easter candy for our usual pagan aspect of the day, an Easter egg hunt. I was glad that now we have a refrigerator in the garage, and I could put this food out there in an orderly way, rather than in the soggy and doubtful nature of coolers on the deck. Not only had I prepared this Easter dinner, but a couple of pull-aparts for a brunch at church, and then Sunday morning, I prepared a rice dish for this as well.
We enjoyed the church morning, and after that the brunch potluck, but just as it started we received some daunting news: the family we had invited had two members who were feeling sick. The flu has been going around the area, and it is a ghastly bug that hangs on and leaves a person with bronchial problems for a while--and I was picturing this as what they had. A horrible picture, especially with so many little ones. The other aspect was the picture of the refrigerator at home, so full of so many big dishes loaded with food. What could we do? We made plans to call another family on the way home, a family with seven children who could probably plow their way through most of the food we had on hand and who would enjoy an Easter egg hunt.
We called that family, but they couldn't come either; their goats were having kids, and needed attending for that time. Later I found out they had ten new kid goats. Glad it's them and not me! We went home still pondering who could come over. Once we got home, though, and walked through the door, a wave of exhaustion came over me. Not just a wave, rather, a flood. The lack of friends, of children running through the house was a mercy, a blessing, a rest. God is good. Three of us slept, Tim watched movies, and we had a restful afternoon, not even eating our Easter dinner, but finishing off some leftovers instead.
It also turned out that the family who came down sick had only a short-lived, light bug and recovered pretty much by the next day, so though they were sick for that time, it isn't as though our rest came at such a great cost to them as we thought. As it was, Katie came down with a sore throat a couple of nights later; maybe our mutual isolations were another mercy; it's good we didn't all join our germs together for a big germ-fest and get each other all the more bombarded while we were all so weak.
The next night, we had another family over who were already scheduled to come, and we had our Easter dinner a day late. It was wonderful to serve a big dinner with a huge rest between the day of making it and the day of serving it. I could not have (or rather would not have) planned it that way, but God in His wisdom and great love planned us a strange Easter that we didn't have the wisdom to plan on our own. God is good, and I love Him.

The American Christian Homeschooler and a Sense of Entitlement

Recently I blogged about how all cultures have their good and bad aspects. It was hardly an excellent piece; it was only a set of observations, rather rambly. I was thinking them up as I was writing; they hadn't consumed me and caused me to ponder long and research anything. So I was surprised when that article, of the many that I have written, became linked to a homeschooling website. My article only very briefly stated that one of the things that I don't like about other cultures is the control some exercise over parenting, that homeschooling for example is illegal in many places, but legal in every state here.
The determining factor that caused someone to link my blog entry to their website seems to be that very statement about the legality of homeschooling here. So I explored various links on their blog. The latest buzz on their blog is about the California issue where homeschooling is now under threat by their state judicial system. I had read a little about it, and at first thought it would blow over quickly. Now I am wondering whether it will be more of a lasting impact not only in California, but possibly throughout the whole country.
With the elections coming into swing, and the candidates from which we have to choose, my doubts about the future of homeschooling have been increasing. I am thankful for the many years that we have been allowed to do so; it has been a privilege, a wonderful window of opportunity for our family and a saving grace for many children across the country. Not only that, but I believe that it has been a boost for the less-than-ideal national resource of the intellect of our youth as a whole, and for the foundation of faith in Christian families across the country. For all I know, freedom to homeschool could still continue for many years, but I would be surprised if it won't be under strong attack.
The issue that struck me most vividly at the website that linked me was the abundant passionate commentary following an article they linked, these comments mostly by homeschoolers and also by a few who opposed them. My thought in reading them wasn't primarily about homeschooling at all, but about the sense of entitlement we develop by living in a country that provides far more than the average amount of freedoms. We seem to think that we are entitled to these freedoms--and a person could argue that we are entitled to them, by virtue of living in a country based on freedom, but the freedom to homeschool has been a recent arrival following the establishment of government schools. This entitlement, though, or any true freedom on earth, ought to be viewed as a temporary and unnatural blessing from our benevolent God, rather than from government. The Jews at the time of Christ were under oppression by the Romans, and the history of humanity has hardly been characterized by entitlement and freedom. I view freedom far more as a blessing that God chooses to bestow on a people for whatever sovereign purpose He might deem fit for that time; nevertheless, it is generally rare and fleeting that He might choose to provide such freedoms as we have had in the United States for these hundreds of years. What country on earth has enjoyed such freedom for such a long time as ours has, and such abundance and blessing? God has been good to us, but He is not required to continue in the same way.
What I found stunning were the indignant attitudes that were exhibited in these comments, many by people who professed faith, following the article I read! It troubled me to read the comments of those who would passionately defend the right to homeschool as an entitlement. A person could assume that many homeschoolers would be some of the most passionate people of faith, but many, though they refer to their faith, fail to exhibit Christ in their comments. So many instead exhibited their own wants, demands and fears driving them, with a combative and critical spirit, bragging about their own accomplishments. They ignored the fact that not too many years ago, homeschooling was illegal in every state. I realize our country was established for the sake of freedom, but it also is a country where even the freedom it stands for has in many ways been imperfectly realized; consider slavery and how long that lasted! We live in a country that was established in the name of freedom, but such a country is established on a very delicate principle. President John Adams stated such:

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governing of any other."
October 11, 1798 in President John Adams' address to the military, from America's God and Country, Encyclopedia of Quotations, by William J. Federer, pp. 10-11.

We have reached a point in our culture where we have to question the reality of whether the Constitution is truly adequate to govern our present society. Is it? Or will our freedoms disintegrate and by necessity be replaced by stronger cords of government, where freedom is hardly the aim, in order to govern a people who for the most part will not govern themselves? The removal of faith from public education, from the media, from government, from the public square removed the underpinnings that secure our freedoms. It is really more awesome that we have had the freedom to homeschool than it is shocking that this freedom should be under attack.
I look back to Daniel, and how in Babylon they did all they could to adapt him to their culture, to intimidate him from exercising faith...and still he was faithful. We need to pray that our children can and will be found faithful even if they should be forced into a Babylon-type culture. No biblical account promises and guarantees that we will have earthly freedoms, or that the culture will accommodate our faith, or that the government will allow us to parent as we see fit. The same Bible we read has applied to families under every type of government and every flag in the world. The only thing that no government can really force us to relinquish is our faith, our ability to petition the God of heaven to help us in our time of need. Maybe it is His will that our children be tested as Daniel was! Perhaps we should be glad of it, that our children be tested, that they would have to decide where they stand. Maybe staying comfortable at home in a sheltered environment will make them complacent. God is sovereign and ultimately wise, and we must entrust our children entirely to His care. He knows what is best for our good and for His glory. Don't get me wrong. I hope that we will retain the freedom to homeschool, but if not, we need to trust the God of heaven who controls governing authorities, and in any case, we need to pray for our children and those authorities.

I'm Tuned in, and Tuned out...

Well, it's like Christmas all over again! Gary gave me an MP3 player for my Christmas present, and I'm so low-tech and slow that I just now got around to figuring out how to get things onto it. I wanted it so that I could listen to radio shows or music while I wander around the house and yard doing things. I go to oneplace.com and there is a great variety of speakers from which to choose--you can go to their archives and get a whole list of downloads for each speaker. Now I have John Piper playing on it. I've read some of his writings, but I haven't heard his voice that I recall. So I will become acquainted with that, and go on to other speakers as well. Elizabeth George is on there. I only have one of her books, and haven't heard her radio show.
So it will be like an ongoing Christmas, opening package after package as I hear these speakers while I go about my dishes, my taxes, my plumbing, my laundry. (Well, sort of. I'm very close to done with the taxes and plumbing, praise be to God! Dishes and laundry, well, those are job security.)
I gather you can even find language lessons that can be put on these things. So if I go around speaking Portuguese, don't think of it as miraculous. (Don't hold your breath, either.) And there are Scripture recordings for them as well. Maybe there are other "books on tape." I'm just starting to ponder the possibilities! Oh, and besides, did I say, you can listen to music?
One glitch--I haven't got anything to carry it in, except my pocket, so I find it turns off what I'm listening to, and perhaps goes on to the next thing. I'm going to have to find a solution to that (I think there are things you can fasten to yourself rather than carry it in a pocket), or it might become too much of an aggravation.
So if you're talking to me, and I don't answer, look at my ears. If they have little wires leading to them, I'm sorry, I've been tuning you out. It may make me less tolerable--it may make me more so. If I listen more and talk less, that may be an improvement.

A Few Hours of Fellowship over Lunch

Today I got to go to lunch with our pastor's wife, Kit. I'd been anticipating doing so for some weeks, and the opportunity just now presented itself, delayed in part because of her appendectomy and winter ills. It seems like church time isn't enough to talk with her and get to know her like I wanted to. We went to Collector's Choice, a restaurant I hadn't been to in about 7 years, I think...it was fun driving out there and seeing various sights that brought back this or that random memory from when we used to attend a church in the area. She took me by way of backroads and I learned various avenues that I hadn't seen before, connecting streets with which I was acquainted; it was a beautiful drive, with the snowy mountain peaks looming tall in the background against a beautiful, cold, sunny winter sky. I learned a shortcut to our favorite trailhead for the Centennial trail, the Machias stop (or conversely, learned what a "long-cut" we'd been taking all along otherwise). It snuck up on me and I was surprised to recognize where we came out to familiar territory.
While we ate our lunches and drank our tea, we got to reminiscing various things that women will, about life, marriage, hardships, children, parents...and found that though the specifics in our lives were entirely different, we had much in common. I suppose that would be true of most of us, if we got talking long enough!
We poked around in an antiques mall for a while afterward, and then we went back by another backroad--I think I was entirely lost by that time--and talked much more. She shared so many ways that they have related to the people of the church, especially being "grandparents" to the children there, since many of them, like ours, rarely see any of their own. Tim calls her "Grandma Kit" as do the other kids at church, and it feels a little weird to me, since she's maybe 10 years older than I am. Maybe "Auntie" Kit! But he delights in the feeling of a relationship there, too, often pondering aloud the things he loves about church, and it's things like using this nickname of hers that make him feel a part of it.
Anyway, I was able to share with her how much we delight in their approachability, how Sunday is a happily anticipated day for our family. To have gone out to lunch with the pastor's wife, and feel her friendship. I went home rejoicing in the fellowship we shared, the faith that unites us. God is great, is He not?

Goals rather than Resolutions; Sinkless and Mindless

Well, it's 2008 and I haven't made any New Year's Resolutions. I don't really intend to, either. Goals are easier for me to comprehend, to stick with. This year my personal goal is to add 20 pounds--no, not add 20, but add them to the 18 pounds that came off last year as a result of not eating wheat! They came off so slowly that they'll probably stay off, and eating wheat hurts so much that there's no incentive to return to my old ways. That's a realization that's been refreshed by accidentally thinking a new cereal we had was wheat-free. Ouch! Takes a number of days to get it out of my system, and meanwhile I go around with an annoying limp.
Our family goal will be to get our house fixed up and sold. We're on our way, getting new cupboards and counters in. They will be really nice, but the meaning is a bit emptier in that while they're aesthetically pleasant, they're not intended as ours. The significance of the improvements is different when it's primarily to get the house sold.
After a couple of days of tearing out the old cabinets and disconnecting sinks... (I tried anyway--Dave the cupboard guy came to my rescue and helped me finish, bless his soul), my brain was gone and my muscles were sore for a couple of days. I'm beginning to speak in full sentences again, though--more or less.
All this is on the heels of Christmas. I'd barely gotten most of the Christmas mess put away before they started--there are still some ornaments and decorations to go, but I have to wait to do these until afterward, now. It's not the ideal scenario, but we wanted to get going with a bang after the holidays were done. Boy, did we!
So what was messed up before has more messes on top and we really have a lot to clean up once this remodel is done. Now we're sitting here with one sink in the house that's operational, downstairs where most of us hardly ever normally go. It's rather primitive, something like camping out except dryer and warmer. If you thought I was messy before, you should see the house these days! Uh, scratch that. Stay away for just a little while!
I'm not feeling very well-motivated yet--we will also have floors to be done, all the more since the edges of our old, cheap and worn linoleum are now exposed by differently shaped cupboards. You can see the subflooring underneath. This first stage of remodel will require us to rid the garage and basement of all those boxes of stuff and pieces of furniture that we've been intending to jettison, so that clearing the floors won't be such an enormous stress when that time comes. I guess it's a good thing, it will make for a much easier move.
Meanwhile we have a neighbor two doors down who has put her house on the market, and priced it quite lower than we thought would be the market rate. I knew the market wasn't doing well, but the house is vacant and they're in a hurry at this slow time of year to get it sold. They refaced the kitchen cabinets and added granite counters, and refloored the place--and it cost her much more, because while we have great Christian friends in the business, our neighbor went through a local warehouse store which subcontracted the work to various businesses that made many mistakes, went way past schedule, and blamed each other for everything that went wrong. We do feel very blessed. The men who are doing our work are just fantastic!
The friend doing our counters also came in one morning and told us that a previous customer of his had called to say he had a whole kitchen full of top-of-the-line appliances and a sink that he was willing to sell for the cost I'd seen for just a cheap range and fridge. (Most of our existing appliances are either broken or very worn, about 15 years old.) I think we've made some new friends. They are incredibly sweet. We looked at the appliances (they look almost showroom-new), and then they had us sit down and we talked for about an hour and a half. Their house overlooked the Puget Sound looking east, scanning a view from Mt. Rainier to Mt. Baker. They later called us at home with about three different offers of help to get the appliances to our house, at least a 45-minute drive.
God is good, life is sweet. I can't find anything around the house, but knowing God's goodness, I know we can get through it eating microwaved food with plastic and paper for the next week or so, and washing our hands in the shower.
2 Samuel 22:32-33 For who is God besides the LORD ? And who is the Rock except our God? It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.

I'm a Little Strange Lately...

I have hardly been able to contain my excitement lately. Life is so good! God is so great! And that is basically why I am excited. What more does it need to be? Of course, life is always good, because it is from God and we have so many good things going on that we don't even notice, and because of that alone we should be so happy...but now we're at a church we're thrilled about; Katie's doing well at college; our home life is really good; I'm getting rooms decluttered and more usable; my health is good and I'm losing weight--therefore I have a great deal more energy. Not all these things have always been true--in fact, most of them are something of a change. I feel like jumping through ceilings, I'm feeling so good.
It might be that my natural state is a little on the exuberant side. Back when I was a kid my brother used to call me naturally high; my sister-in-law used to call me hyper when I first knew her. I think those traits were tempered by various issues over the years and the highs and hypers kind of went into hiding. But lately there are times when I just have to move to use up the energy--I barely remember being like that!
So when just everything is going so well, then all the tiny things make me all the more happy. I got a package off to Katie today, so I get to anticipate her calling me having gotten it. We're getting a new fireplace in today, and even though we might not have gotten it just for us (we're fixing the house up so we can move into a smaller one), until we sell we get to enjoy it. Tonight we're hosting a little class here--so I'll make a dessert and coffee. We're anticipating a great Thanksgiving. Then there are the after-Thanksgiving sales--my only thing with that is that I normally go with Katie, but won't be able to this year; maybe Tim. Then there's Christmas coming, which I can hardly believe. Life is good.
Besides that are the things we really don't think about much: living in a peaceful land, having the freedom to worship God, having bodies with all the needed parts in their proper places. Having heat, clothing, a roof, food. We aren't suffering from horrible addictions. We're at peace with God--through Jesus Christ. That is the crowning touch of all. Even if the other things weren't all true, peace with God through Christ would be enough that we should be excited--we who trust in Jesus for our eternal hope have all our sins forgiven and are spared eternal punishment; not only that but we are given heaven besides. That is enough to leap through ceilings about! When I think of it, back when my health was really good about 20 years ago, I didn't have Christ. Therefore, I am now in the best condition overall that I have ever experienced. So if you think I'm a bit strange lately, maybe I am. The one thing that makes me a little more sober is that you couldn't be so strange along with me! It's really your option--what do you have to rejoice in today? If it isn't Christ, then you can change that--pray to receive Him and have Him change your life and fill it with joy. 2 Corinthians 6:2, Behold, now is "the acceptable time"; behold, now is the "day of salvation"!