Monthly Archives: November 2008
Announcements
A couple announcements …
Heidi posted a makeover! Jump over to her site (Moms, Ministry and More) to vote on her new ‘do. Poor girl has been living for two years with a bad cut, just waiting for it to grow out. And now she’s letting the bloggy world decide what she’ll do next. After you vote, stick around on her site a bit. She has some super encouraging posts, some that will truly challenge your walk with Christ. It’s a good stop.
Also, next Tuesday I’m starting a weekly carnival! I’m thinking I’ll call it “Mama Loves”, but I’m not completely decided. Comment me some ideas. You don’t have to be a mama to participate!
The point of it is this: Take one post a week to celebrate the good. It’s far too easy to think of the negative side of things. I’m a stay-at-home mom and many of you are, too. The isolation (common to writers as well, which many of you also are!) can drive one crazy. The constant demands, monotany with simultaneous unpredictability can leave us in a funk. But God has better plans for us! He wants us to rejoice and thrive in this high calling He has given us — whether that calling be raising the next generation of missionaries, writing the next break-out novel or just finishing a mountain of laundry before your adoring husband comes home.
So, I’m setting up a way for us to focus on the praise-worthy parts of our life. What do you love about being a mama? What thrills you about being a writer? What’s the best part of fulfilling your calling? We can all rant and rave and use our blogs for cathartic purposes, but let’s offer one day a week (or at least one post!) for perpetual praise.
“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”
– Philippians 4:8-9 (The Message)
So hop over to Heidi’s site to vote on her hair, then come back for some positive thinking on Tuesday. I’ll have Mr. Linky ready for whatever Mama Loves.
It’s the little things.
The little things can make an ordinary day red-letter. Yesterday was one of those days for me and my editorial OCD.
Ellie started taking ballet in September. Since then we have scheduled every Tuesday around this event. Every Tuesday that I forget to pack a picnic, we have lunch at the Subway in the shopping center that shares a parking lot with the dance school. And every Tuesday I have entered that Subway hoping against hope that the manager noticed and changed a misspelled sign.
Since September, maybe longer, this little sandwich shop has advertised “unsweatened” iced tea. Seeing some of the characters that work there, I’m sure some of the tea may be sweat-in, so it’s nice of them to offer a no-sweat option.
I really wanted to tell someone, but the sandwich maker doesn’t speak English well and I didn’t want to seem critical or elitist. And every time I stepped toward the counter to make a stink about it, I thought of Lynn Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Armed with a giant apostrophe on a stick, she picketed the movie Two Weeks Notice. This drew more attention to her than to the punctuation error in the movie’s title. 
I didn’t want attention; I just wanted sweet instead of sweat.
Well, yesterday, finally, I saw a corrected sign. Hooray! Subway now sells unsweetened tea instead of unsweatened. I’m so happy! I didn’t have my camera and my phone battery was dead, so … I’ll just give you a picture of Ellie at ballet.
Mirrors (or "Sunday’s Leftovers")
Each week Spaghettipie does a “Monday Morning Leftovers” post in which she recaps a tidbit of Sunday worship that continues to resonate the next day. This is kind of like that since these thoughts springboard from something our pastor spoke about this week.
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.”
- James 1:23-24 (NASB)
What is the reason for a mirror? To see what we look like, of course, but why? So that we can see needs to be fixed and fix it, to evaluate what’s not right and change accordingly.
Ellie loves her reflection. She is constantly looking at herself — in mirrors, yes, but also in windows, TV screens, computer monitors, glass oven doors, even brass doorknobs! I am constantly asking her to look at me when we talk, but she’s far more interested in watching her own reactions and facial expressions. Like most of us, she studies her face, her hair, her nails. She always wants to be sure everything is just the way she wants it.
Now, how absurd would it be for her to spend all that time memorizing her every feature to turn around and forget she has curly hair? Or to ask me what color her eyes are because she honestly doesn’t know? It’s ridiculous!
And yet that is exactly what we do when we go to church and read the Bible only to fail in obeying what we’ve learned.
Now that’s all pretty standard stuff you’ve heard as long as you’ve been a believer. But think about this: the longer you go without looking in the mirror, the worse the problems get. Imagine if we only checked our appearance once a week. By Monday we’d have bed-head and morning breath. Tuesday will inspire the new Mach-17 razor. By Wednesday that piece of broccoli would seem permanently embedded in your gums and your coworkers might be asking for additional air fresheners. And your hair? Well, dreads might come back in fashion by Saturday. Come Sunday we’d have a lot of work to do.
How often do you look in the mirror of God’s Word? We check ourselves out several times a day in bathroom mirrors, but how much time do we spend reading the Bible? We can all say we don’t have time; we can all find reasons not to make time. But the longer go between looking, the bigger the problems become. Our selfishness snowballs into greed and covetous behavior while can catapult us into all kinds of despicable acts.
However, if we spend time each day evaluating who we are in Christ and what He requires of us, then our damage control is much more efficient. Instead of repelling others, we can attract them to the Truth.
Reason # 4713 why I Love Being a Mama
Monkey hugs.
Zach is the best at these. At almost three and a half, he can still give the most cuddly, melt-in-your-arms hugs. He’s never had the baby chub most kids do; he’s tall and lean. He doesn’t look squeezable, but he’s an expert, an irrisistible bundle of affection — when he wants to be. Sometimes treasures warrant their value by being rare. Oh, but I would revel in his hugs a hundred times a day, if he’d give them. Instead, he prefers the sneak attack. When I’m least expecting it, he’ll jump up and wrap his arms, legs, neck and head as tightly as he can around me. I don’t even have to hold on. He’s my little chimpanzee, using his whole body and soul to show his love.
I wonder … how different would my life be if I gave God monkey hugs? What would change if I wrapped my body and soul around His Word and His will? What if I offered uninhibited affection toward Him? Too often I reserve my praise for “safe” situations, like at home alone or only with other like-minded people. What if I didn’t think about what others thought before shouting honor to God? Before thanking Him for His blessings? For answers to prayers I was afraid to speak? What if …
As a sidenote, I don’t actually keep an itemized list of all the reasons why I love being a mama, but that’s not a bad idea! I always encourage new brides to keep a journal of the reasons she loves her man. On the honeymoon, it’s easy to remember how he makes your heart flutter, but I guarantee there will be days that make you wonder why you married him. The journal is for those short-term memory days when you need a little help seeing the best part of your mate. Mamas definitely have short-term memory days too! Why did I decide to quit my job and stay home? What possessed me to have more than one? How much longer until bedtime? Oh, yeah, there are definitely days I need to remember why I love being a mama.
If you’re a mama, what’s your favorite part? If you’re not, how do you give God monkey hugs?
21 Days
In good old Indiana, where I was born and raised, drivers immediately pull over at first sight of an ambulance (or a police car, fire truck or funeral procession). But things are a little different in Jersey. Here the traditional response is to speed up and outrun the emergency vehicle or proceed as normal until they catch up to you. Then most people pull over a few inches, just enough to let the lights and sirens squeak by. Some, though, never move over. I think it’s an attitude thing. If the guy really wanted to get to the hospital, he should have timed it better. I was here first. Besides, there are EMTs in the back of that thing; he’ll be fine.
When I first moved here, I held tightly to my Midwest training, but soon encountered the ridicule of friends and insults from other drivers who didn’t understand why I would inconvenience them and their schedules just because some poor fella needed medical attention. Before long, I too was complaining about being late. I would pull over several times a day for these noble reasons only to accosted by drivers who wouldn’t let me back in traffic! (This is why those who do pull over only do so a few inches. If you pull all the way onto the shoulder, you could be stuck there for hours until a gracious citizen admits you back onto the road or a nearsighted grandma decides to stick to the speed limit.) The lesson learned, I’ve acclimated to East Coast driving standards.
This week when I noticed an ambulance in my rearview mirror, I kept driving. I watched and waited. I didn’t want the kids to miss seeing the cool flashing lights. Eventually he caught up.
“Hey, kids! Look out Ellie’s window. An ambulance is coming by! Isn’t that neat?”
“Um, Mom? Shouldn’t we pray for the people inside?”
Nothing corrects perspective quite like a child speaking truth.
When Ellie was much younger, before Zach could talk, I taught her to pray every time we saw an accident. I haven’t done that in a long time. My mind has become cluttered with so many other things that I just haven’t thought about it. I am more enthusiastic about showing my kids flashing lights and super cool construction trucks than I am showing compassion and living an exemplary life of prayer.
They say it takes twenty-one days to form a habit. Ellie got it down in much less. She has a beautiful habit of prayer, a wonderous habit of compassion. Those disciplines are more impulsive than habitual with me. Hopefully, though, her habits (learned from someone …) can rub off on me (again).
Found while purging (‘Fro Me to You)
In a former lifetime I was an artist. A magnet school in Philly accepted me as a fine art major, specializing in drawing, painting and color theory. I even taught the subjects briefly at a boarding school in Switzerland.
But those days are long, long past. My portfolio and a random collection of works have collected dust in every home we’ve occupied. Well, we’re running out of space, so last weekend I started another round of purging. Extra sheets, never-used towels and too-small clothes were all tossed into the “donate” pile. Then I bumped into my box of past-life treasures. There, tucked randomly in a box of charcoal sketches, I found this:
Can you find me? It’s not terribly difficult considering there’s only one blond female in the photo, but, for those who really can’t tell, here’s a close-up.
I can’t remember exactly when this was taken, but I’m guessing around 1988. I think I was twelve or thirteen, but I really don’t remember and, unfortunately, there’s no date on the picture. But it had to be before fourteen. That was the age when I finally gave up the lovely Annie-like perm that was so popular back then.
Disregarding the date, here’s what I know about the who and where. It was a family vacation with his, hers and ours. That’s my dad. The little guy in front of me is my younger brother, Ted. (You may remember him from this post.) Sitting between me and my step-mom is my half-brother, Andrew. The rest (Melinda, Eric, and Kevin) were siblings I gained when Dad and Donna got married (and lost when they got divorced a few years later). We were in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The first week of our vacation was spent on a houseboat on some big lake down there. That was fun. The rest of the time was spent camping between Dollywood and the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.
We didn’t realize until after the photo was framed and hanging in the family dining room that certain animosities may have surfaced. Take a gander at the aim. Yup. Ted’s shooting Donna, Dad’s shooting me, and both my step-brothers are gunnin’ for my father. Huh. Well, at least we’ve got plenty of alcohol to tend the wounded and comfort the mourning.
For more blasts from the past or stories that make your family look like the Cleavers, check out We Are That Family and the ‘Fro Me to You Carnival.
Thank my mother
I want to say so many things about this year’s presidential election — about the campaigns, the candidates, the issues and the results — but it would be unwise for me to say any of it without further prayer. Fortunately for you, my mother called this morning. That poor, dear woman listened to me rant and rave for over an hour. This was after I had very loudly and passionately chased my husband around the house forcing him to endure my opinions. He had to leave before my thoughts were exhausted, so Mom became my next caged audience. Oh, she loves me so! If you see her today, thank her. She did you a great service! While I’m still feeling quite passionate about this, the steam has dissipated. Maybe some day I’ll share all of my thoughts, but right now only one thing seems important.
We must pray for President-Elect Barack Obama. Not just him, but we must pray fervently and consistently for all members of our government.
It doesn’t matter if we voted for them or not. God has given these leaders their positions and we must petition the Lord to help them handle the responsibilities with wisdom and moral responsibility. I really don’t think anyone truly knows what they’re getting into when they run for office. Maybe they do. Regardless, the trials will be great and every President needs help. Let us stand with our leaders before our Lord.
“Our God, your name will be praised forever and forever. You are all-powerful, and you know everything. You control human events– you give rulers their power and take it away, and you are the source of wisdom and knowledge. You explain deep mysteries, because even the dark is light to you.”
– Daniel 2:20-22 (CEV)
Go vote!!
I’m sick and pretending I’m not. My day’s plans include attempting to ignore a croaky throat, cotton-like mouth and impassible nasal passages and then going to vote.
Let me encourage you to get out there! Much is at stake with this election.
I’ll not tell you whom to vote for, but I will ask you to handle your civic duties with sobriety. I’ve heard many (my own husband even) claim our votes don’t count. Some believe the election is already decided. Others (like us) live in an area so thoroughly one-sided that, thanks to the electoral college, our votes will be counted, but will not given the right of impact. We can either vote with the majority or be drowned out by them. Some even joke that we should intentionally vote for the loser so we can claim it’s not our fault when the country goes further downhill.
All of this thinking bothers me severely. The campaign is over, but the election is not. Polls mean nothing. They’re “best guesses” and little more; they’re a few people’s opinions. But your vote, my vote, these mean something.
Get out there, rain, sleet, snow or 85 degree weather! Suffer through whatever you must. Voting is a privilege we Americans miserably take for granted. Yes, we have been granted this honor, so take advantage of it.
