Things I Wish They’d Told Me at The Naval Academy

Written by a fellow USNA grad – great advice for living life (and for getting through a service academy and military career a bit LESS unscathed. :))

Surprise!

This has something to do with the surprise…what is it??

So I promised a small surprise in today’s post, but first I must correct a few “discrepancies” pointed out to me by my husband found in yesterday’s post.

Apparently in my beat-down-by-the-marathon stupor I was unable to absorb all the details given to me by Christine and John about their day in DC.  Just Daniel was on the floor of the train in all his poopie glory.  And the man didn’t threaten to call the police on John – the man was, in fact, a policeman, and threatened to arrest him if he carried Greer on the escalator in the stroller.  So John had to take her out and carry her and the stroller separately, which is what he did again later.  I had thought it was someone giving him a hard time for trying to drive the stroller onto the escalator with Greer sitting in it, which is his usual modus operandi.  And that, instead of disobeying the man by driving her in the stroller, he picked the whole thing up and carried it with her in it.  But I guess when he tried to do that the police officer went off on him.  Last thing to correct is that John didn’t see Gabriel making the Lego “I love you” sign — instead, Gabriel came up to him and told him that he was making me a sign and that it was a secret.  This makes Gabriel appear at his cutest.  Even better. 🙂

I should update you on our eating over the last week — I don’t remember much of it but the tacos stand out in my mind – with my homemade seasoning and a mix of ground turkey and ground beef (Watching Biggest Loser just may be starting to affect my food choices a bit…) – and the rest of the homemade salsa.  I’ve got a bunch more tomatoes and jalapenos from the bag of food from an organic farm that I get each week (a sort of grab-bag of in-season veg), so more salsa is on the way, and I promise to make a report of the recipe this time. 🙂  We also had rotisserie chickens from Whole Foods one night because I had run over there for a few things and they were on sale – which led to homemade chicken soup last night using fresh corn on the cob (also from the organic veg bag – boiled up some mystery greens in with the stock from the bag, too).  I’ve been having 1-2 shakes a day as well because the idea of a chocolate-coffee frozen concoction is just taking over my life right now.  Depending on the time of day (is it replacing a meal, is it a snack, or do I really not need any extra calories right now) I build my shake in different ways.  Always the base is ice (in England I always had some overripe frozen bananas on hand which eliminated the need for ice and added enough sweetness for the whole shake) with enough milk — mostly almond with a little rice milk, and then if I want some extra (healthy) fat and calories, I throw in a bit of coconut milk — to cover the ice.  I will toss in between 1/4 and a whole scoop of protein powder, or just a handful of almonds (I put some pecans in yesterday with my pumpkin spice shake) for some staying power, and then the decaf instant coffee and cocoa powder (not all the time) and sweetener.  With the pumpkin, I am using pumpkin butter which already has sugar in it, with other flavors, I have a few coffee syrups which obviously have sugar – like Gingerbread or Caramel, etc – and I’ll use about a teaspoon.  If it’s just a mocha (cocoa and coffee), I’ll put in a little Agave nectar.  I never put in enough to make it sweet enough for me – so I supplement it with Stevia as well just to get it to “perfection” without the extra 60-100 calories of a real sweetener that it would have taken.  All these shakes are kind of overshadowing the other things I’ve eaten because they are so yummy. 🙂  I know I also had several salmon-salad sandwiches on my signature cinnamon raisin Ezekiel bread.  Can’t get enough of that combination!!

We worked on rearranging boxes in the house yesterday and today, and a few bookshelves, and things are looking much better.  Probably ten boxes were unpacked, so we’re still working on putting all that stuff away, but we are well on the way to “acceptable” from our three-week stop in “liveable.”  We’re still quite a distance from “comfortably cute and wonderful”, but I am so thankful for this house and our happy furnishings, no matter how many boxes surround us, especially when I think of all the people in the Northeast.  I think what makes it so hard for people right now is that 1)The people in New England don’t usually have this kind of a catastrophe in the back of their minds like those in the Southeast and on the Gulf Coast tend to do.  It’s more like something out of a summer blockbuster – New York City being flooded, the Jersey Shore being washed away – and it’s really hard to fathom that this has really happened up there.  Consequently, they were completely unprepared for such colossal damages. 2)Winter is upon us, and they don’t have much time to rebuild before New England will be experiencing colder temperatures.  Shelter and clothing for those who lost it all is an even more dire need than it might be if this had happened in, say, July.

So I feel a little lame writing about what we’re cooking and the boxes we’re unpacking, etc, when there are so many people who’ve lost their homes, and some even their loved ones.  Hopefully if you’re reading, you won’t mind a short diversion from the tragedies on the news and the election coverage everywhere else. 🙂  I also snuck in my first run post-marathon on Saturday – just 3.16 miles and nothing to write home about.  It was a comfortable pace, and nothing was sore, although it seemed a bit hard to keep going after about fifteen minutes, so I think my legs are still recovering.

A few things found in the boxes this weekend…tea party anyone? 🙂

So here’s the surprise I kept promising….

AFTER! Patience wanted short hair again because brushing it is always so much of a challenge…the rest of the pictures will be before – then after. 🙂

Claire – before – and she looks like she’s wearing lipstick, but it’s chapped lips that she’s been licking too much. 😦

Greer’s was the first one — and all the girls loved it and begged for the same!

Liesl’s working on losing that top front tooth…

So there you go – now you’ll still recognize us if you run into the girls and me some time this week.  It has been so cute watching them all frolic around the house with their little bobs.  Greer especially.  Super cute. 🙂

Louisiana On My Mind

WARNING – lots of cute pictures in this post – but you have to tread through deep waters to reach them…

It’s been difficult to write while visiting the family in Texas for more than one reason.  We’ve of course been keeping busy with all the fun people and places, but also I have been trying to rest as much as possible in my down time, and I just haven’t felt compelled to write much.  It’s hard to explain, but I don’t feel quite myself when I am back in the house with my parents, and I think most adults might agree with this — I see it when we visit John’s family – in John – and when we visit mine – in me.  It seems like I halfway revert back to who I was when I lived in their house.  That’s because when I’m there, I am a fulltime wife and mother still, but I’m also a fulltime daughter.  And when I’m in my own home – even when my parents visit – I feel like I’m more of the grown-up me, and less of the kid me – the fulltime daughter.  When I’m in my own element, and my parents come to visit, I’m the friend who talks to them on the phone and on facetime and who tours them around my town, takes them to hear my band, and introduces them to my favorite restaurants.  I like having the Grandparents come to enjoy my hospitality and to frolic with my children, and I don’t feel compelled to respond to them in such a parent-child way like I do when I’m at their home.  Anyway, I am not saying I don’t like visiting my parents (I know everyone likes being in his own home and showing his own brand of hospitality to friends and family, so it’s nice to visit people as well as to be visited.) — just that I am a different person when I am visiting them than I am when they come to see me.  And this different person doesn’t really feel like blogging 🙂  This different person who I am in Texas also doesn’t mind just lying around resting while my mom or dad is doing dishes, and also doesn’t mind “wasting” the day just sitting still. When I am in my own home, I can’t seem to stay on the couch five minutes without blogging, folding laundry, making lists, or practicing my chanter.  I always have to be doing something.  Also at home, I clean up my own kitchen most of the time and won’t leave it after a meal until either a child or myself is working on the dishes.  (I am totally not counting the times I’ve had help in the home – like my mom, Merriwether, Christine, etc, who are specifically there to help me with things when I’m very pregnant or have just had a baby :)) How is it that in my parents’ home I suddenly morph into this near-helpless person who can’t put a dish in the dishwasher? (In my own defense – I did at least rinse the dishes after meals :))  I am really curious to hear if others have noticed this behavior in themselves or in their spouses.

Another reason for being remiss with the blog is all the resting I was doing which was a result of 1) lots of running and 2) the whole family being sick.  These could be used as excuses, but really, I think the above explanation is more applicable 🙂  Speaking of the running, though, I got in quite a few runs while in Texas.  I’ll start with San Antonio and list them all for you, since I know you are so curious as to my running progress 🙂

Sept. 6: 4 miles – treadmill

Sept 7: 3.2 miles – treadmill

Sept. 8: 9.4 miles

Sept. 10: 3.2 miles

Sept. 11: 5 miles

Sept. 13: 3 miles

Sept. 14: 10.5 miles

I was pretty happy with the long run I did yesterday since my average pace was 10:45/mile, and I almost stopped while going up a steep hill eating my gel.  There were quite a few difficult hills, so I know my pace on those had to be pretty slow.  I’ll have to check out the splits once I upload it to Nike.  I was pretty psyched when my shipment of “Chocolate #9” showed up the day before my long run.  I had been using some I got at GNC the other day as an emergency stop-gap — Powerbar brand gels.  I would definitely NOT RECOMMEND these, at they were really hard to get down since the taste was so – harsh.  I tried the Latte, Strawberry/banana, and Berry flavors and hated them all.  I had hoped to get to a store to purchase the Chocolate #9, but the only reliable place to buy them is at REI stores.  So, I ordered them online on Monday and received them Thursday.  They are certified to be “slow-burn” energy and have a “Low Glycemic Index” because they are made only with Agave and Cocoa powder.  They taste like the fudge packet that comes in a box of Brownie mix “with fudge.”  Awesome Sauce, in a convenient little pouch.

I know it’s out of order, but I’ll be posting about the drive (through Louisiana – hence the post title, although the rest of the post has nothing to do with Louisiana!) today, and then tomorrow will recap our stay in a Condo on Lake Conroe, which was actually the middle few days of the time in Texas.  On our last few days, as I mentioned, we were recovering from a virus of some sort.  My dad was ill and had a really high fever for over 24 hours, and Liesl and Claire were very hot as well.  Neither of the children actually got sick, though, and they were over their fevers in less than a day.  Patience just woke this morning with a fever and feeling like she would get sick, but so far, with lots of rest in the car, she has held it together.  When I say fever, I mean that they’ve all been hot enough for me to touch them and say, “Whoa! You’re really hot!!” and to give them ibuprofen, which I normally reserve for fevers over 101 degrees.  I didn’t take their temperatures, but since my dad’s was almost 103, and they were burning up, I’m pretty sure they were over 102 as well.  We came back from the Condo on Tuesday afternoon and just laid everyone down to rest the remainder of the day.  I went out that night to my brother’s Astronomy Lab, which I wrote about here.  On Wednesday, John went out in the morning to have a duplicate drivers’ license made, since he holds a Texas license and had lost his wallet in Scotland a month ago.  I went out in the afternoon to register our Volkswagen Golf, with my dad as well since he had to sign the title back over to me (They had been holding on to the car for the past year for us.)  That was mostly a “movies in bed” day for the children.

Gabriel helped me bathe Daniel

On Thursday, after a short run and shower, we went out to The Woodlands Mall with my parents and all the children.  It was our first excursion all together in our new van which was kind of fun 🙂  It’s nice to have something large enough to take everyone around in style!  We were still a bit under the weather, so we didn’t stay out long – just popped in to a few stores, Barnes and Noble and the Lego store being the most notable (Grandpa had promised Gabriel a trip to the Lego store while he was here.)

At the mall — I noticed the “do not climb on rocks” sign when I went to snap this

This is always what happens at the Apple store — it’s a sad day when there are any other kids in there besides ours 🙂 (Daniel is even in the picture – can you find him?)

On the way home from the mall we stopped at James Coney Island for hot dogs because Grandpa had also told Gabriel it was on the plan (Gabriel kept talking about it since he loved it on our last visit to Texas.)

I went over in the evening to my brother Gerrit’s house – just me and some of the children, since John’s tummy was still upset – to attempt the model rocket launch that Gerrit had planned and for which they had built rockets earlier in the week.  Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side, and rain thwarted us.  They were, however, able to light sparklers and smoke bombs, which entertained the children probably just as much 🙂

Aunt Robin holding Daniel while her daughter looks on – she liked Daniel more than she liked the fireworks 🙂

Gerrit had ordered pins for all the children to wear when they launched rockets that were a set of wings that said “Rocket Scientist.”  He gave them all their wings Thursday night even though the launch was scrubbed – so here are the children showing them off for the camera:

Not sure who took this picture, but I just found it on the camera when I uploaded 🙂

I think my brother must have stolen the camera and put Woody’s hat on Daniel 🙂

Friday dawned early for me with the 10.5 mile run after Daniel’s 5:45am feeding.  It was made enjoyable by a different play list I made the night before, completely new scenery, and pleasant temperatures leftover from the night’s rain.  It was my first double-digit run since my Half-Marathon in March, so I was both excited and nervous before I set out.  My right calf muscle is feeling pretty sore from it, so I didn’t run this morning and am resting until Monday or Tuesday.  After the run I had a delicious protein shake with frozen banana and mango.  Then I quickly showered off and headed over to Conroe High School to visit Gerrit on his lunch break with his wife Robin and daughter Camille.  I also brought Liesl and Claire, and I love the breakfast burrito supplied by my mom (homemade with sausage, rice, and black beans – yum!)

Liesl, Claire, and Camille in Gerrit’s classroom about to eat lunch

I laughed when I saw this on my run around Conroe High with my brother last Saturday (I got the picture off the internet, but it was the same sign – the “foul ball” pole at the Baseball field :)) – Chick fil A sponsors the team’s scoreboard, too.

The theme for the pep rally that afternoon was the 70s – so I caught this bunch outside a classroom who were all decked out

The dance team window box “Conroe Golden Girls” – Robin was in this group

I think this is one of the “historical” costumes, but I could be wrong 🙂

The Marching Band uniform I wore my freshman year in high school

We were the Conroe Tigers.

After lunch, Robin, the girls, and I went to Starbucks for a short visit and an iced coffee.  My dad was out with Patience and Gabriel on a few errands when I returned from lunch, and my mom was napping on the couch with Greer down for her nap, so once I had Daniel napping and the other two girls watching a movie, I left John to supervise and holed up in the dark, cool bedroom for a delicious two hour nap.

This Barista asked why I had a nice camera – what were we out doing? When I told her it was just because I take a lot of pictures for my blog, I promised she’d be on it.

Claire and Camille outside Starbucks

Friday was our last night in town, so Gerrit and his family came over for pizza and ice cream.  We also had a visit from two old friends — Robbie and Wes with whom we went to high school.  Gerrit had been friends with both of them since middle school, but I didn’t really get to know them til Conroe High.  Since then, Gerrit has kept in touch with them both, and they hang out quite a bit, helping each other with woodworking projects, going to Aerosmith and Kiss concerts, and generally goofing off.  The funny thing is, Wes knows my husband John because they were in Nuclear Power School in Orlando, Florida, together when John was enlisted in the Navy before the Naval Academy.  Small world!

Robbie was throwing the children around –

Claire, Robbie, and Camille

Grandpa and Daniel

Camille holding Daniel one more time – she loves babies!

That finishes out the big “trip to Texas” – all we did today (Saturday) was pack up.  We left around 1pm and plan on stopping a little after midnight in whatever town we can reach by then 🙂  Going to post this from the mobile hotspot while underway.  We miss you Grandma and Grandpa!! We miss you Texas!! We’ll be back before too long, though (only 17 hours away — that’s nothing!)

A last look at my parent’s house…until next time!

Do you feel like you turn back into a kid again when you stay with your parents? Does your spouse do it?

Guess how many states we’ve driven through in a month (We flew in to the US on August 14, so it’s been one month today!)

When was the last time you ran double-digits? Have you never done it? (When are you going to? :))

A Big Day for Little Daniel

So. This might not seem exciting to many people, and I’m not claiming it was exciting for me either – just kind of a big day in Daniel’s life.  We took him to the US Air Force Base that we always go to for his circumcision.  Here in the UK they have a “Circumcision Center of the UK” – there’s one of them, and it’s an hour and a half away.  We could have had it done there for about $150, but it was free on the Air Force Base.  They don’t do them at public or private hospitals in the UK unless it’s for a medical reason – and our reason would be considered “cultural,” since we choose to have it done because most people in America have it done.  They recommend in the US that if your baby’s father is circumcised then you should circumcise the baby so that he won’t be confused about why he looks different if he were not.  Over here, though, NO ONE has it done.  Some of the other wives of foreign students at John’s school were chatting with me when I went to the Royal Ascot a month ago, and apparently it’s a completely unheard of thing all over Europe as well.  I was aware that Americans were the only ones who still routinely did it (other than Jewish people – which is a “religious” reason for having it done, and also not one supported by the hospitals here), but I had no idea that the rest of the world absolutely doesn’t do it and thinks it’s weird.

That’s about all that needs to be said about the topic since it’s not one for which I can post a picture or anything – but the rest of the day was spent at the base as well.  We played around outside for a bit on a pretty lawn in the sunshine and then headed in for a late lunch at the Subway there, then over to the commissary for our last shopping trip (!) Hard to believe we are leaving here so soon!!  By the time we made it home it was 6:45pm, and I must admit to having become overstressed and a bit freaked out when I opened his diaper at feeding time.  This is my second boy, but I didn’t remember that I felt this sad for the little man the last time.  The kids played outside for a while and are now showering off their itchiness (incurred from some rolling around in the grass).  Since this post is mostly about Daniel, I decided to update you with a few Daniel pictures taken over the last couple of days…

Patience, Daniel, Claire, Gabriel, and Greer

Claire, Daniel, Patience, and Liesl

Greer, Grandma Rickwalt, and Daniel

Getting on time for bed now – just a few questions for you now!!

Did you/would you circumcise your son? (This is a big topic of contention in European countries right now, so it’s being discussed online here in America, too)

Do you drive long distances to go to a certain grocery store to save money or to buy certain things?

How long did you wait post partum (if this applies to you) to start running? I’m starting to feel the urge but know I’m not setting foot out there until I get a decent amount of sleep!

Our first outing – passport photos

Today’s post will be short because after getting up and getting breakfast, we all went out together.  Once we got back, I nursed the baby and put him down, and I slept for two hours myself, interrupted in the middle by a crying baby and a bit more nursing, but a solid two hours nonetheless.  After I got out of bed and fed him again, then it was time to work on dinner with my mom, and then we ate dinner.  Just about time to feed the baby again – and it’s 9:11pm!  Where has the day gone??  We got a bit of nice sleep last night, interrupted too early, though, BY THE LAWNMAN OUTSIDE.  Don’t you hate that when all things are perfect for more sleep and something silly like that wakes you??? I am thankful that the landlord takes care of our lawn in this way, meaning that we don’t have to do it ourselves, but today, I must admit, I was none too pleased with the noise.  Other noises that wake me too early sometimes – the trash pickup truck.  That’s another one for which I should only have gratitude, since when we lived in Maine we had to take our own trash to the dump and separate all the recycling really carefully so you had to use the city’s trash bags (for which you paid) for less of your trash.  Thankfully, the man delivering our organic groceries once a week has never woken me, so I only have love for him 🙂

Today we needed to go out because we had to have pictures taken of Daniel for his passport, since our appointment at the US Embassy in London is 8:30am Monday morning (that appointment slot is the only one available until August 23rd, by which point we hope to be back in the states already 🙂 ).  Two children needed fillings at the dentist so we just all went out – to the dentist first, then drive-thru for lunch, picked up a decaf caramel cappucino for me at the Costa coffee, then to the nearby Butterfly World and Craft Center – where there is a small photography business.  It all worked out pretty well, and the children even got to play at the playplace while we had the pictures taken and waited on them to be ready.  Tonight we had great lamb steaks that had been marinated in something yummy and minty (and brought to our door by the meat delivery man), along with some potatoes my mom roasted with rosemary from the front yard, and a bit of broccoli.

As I was rolling over in bed last I was reminded of how many muscles in my body were apparently involved in labor.  Every muscle in my core area was sore, exactly two days after labor, just like when you have a really tough workout and find yourself sore 24-48 hours later.  I wanted to look up and post pictures of the areas affected by pregnancy and labor, but I couldn’t find any good diagrams.  So just picture your whole body, and that about covers it 🙂

Yesterday evening after my nap we had several visitors which was nice because I always feel a bit secluded after giving birth.  Cabin fever sets in fast, and then I tend to go out too early and do too much.  Our first visit was from Karen who had watched the children while I was at the hospital.  As she was leaving the neighbors came outside and wanted a peek – Amanda, who lives int he house connected to ours, actually jumped in and watched the children for the three hours between us leaving for the hospital and Karen arriving – meaning she was the one who was here for the birth.  That was totally unplanned; my labor progression was just so much quicker than we had planned, and Karen had errands to run, etc, so we had planned on her arriving a bit later.  Just as the neighbors left, Stephanie and her partner Tom showed up, bearing gifts!  “Lollis” for the kids, another cute outfit (she’s the one who gave us that “Born in 2012” outfit), some hard ciders for John, and some candied nuts for me!  We had a nice long visit in which the kids pounced all over Tom and Stephanie got to have her baby-holding fix 🙂

Here are a few cute shots Stephanie captured on her iphone:

Just a few minutes after they left, our Pastor showed up for a nice chat, and he stayed for about two hours.  By then the evening was winding down (10:30pm!), and we all went to bed.  It was around 2am before I really got to my turn for a sleep, and I got to sleep until around 5am.  Then another feeding and rest until 8:30am.  Not bad for little man’s 2nd night home!!  Compared to all four of my girls, my two boys have been superstars at sleeping, from the beginning.   The girls have all slept eight hours through the night at around 8 weeks, but they have been tough for the first 7-10 days, born exactly backwards in their sleeping patterns.  I usually have to work incredibly hard to accomplish any daytime wakefulness with them, but not so with the two boys!! Yippee!!

If you have had children of different sexes, have you experienced differences in their sleeping patterns you attribute to their genders?

Do you get cabin fever? From what?

Maybe my last run for a while…?

Still not in labor (not due for 8 more days) but my run this morning was only 2 miles, and most of it I felt pretty uncomfortable, with just a few minutes strung together at a time of normalcy.  I read blogs of several pregnant runners, and they are just reaching the third trimester or are late in the second – and it is just amazing how different it was running back at 30 weeks! I mean, I’m not surprised that it’s this difficult to run at 39, just that running back then at 30 weeks and such was still so comfortable!

Today’s run was a 12:01 pace, and only two miles because after about a half mile I made the command decision to turn around when I reached a mile.  If I’m not in labor Saturday, rather than a run we may do a family hike – as strenuous as possible to still help labor come sooner – because something is better than nothing, and I may just not be able to run anymore with the baby having dropped like this.

Here’s a picture after today’s run:

Of course, some of the way I felt may have been due to my shortened sleep due to Greer getting me up again shortly after 7.  I have to say – not liking the earlier wake up, but VERY happy with her pottie training now that she can get out of bed by herself from nighttime and naptime.  We have had one soiled diaper since we started it (about a month ago) and she is now hopping on the little potties around the house on her own all day long.  We seem to have made it through the tough phase I mentioned a while back of doing her BM’s in her diaper during sleeptimes – and it was all because we were leaving her in bed too long apparently.  I knew this, but was feeling too tired to do anything about it – often resting myself during her naps and wanting to sleep in in the morning from all my nighttime pottie trips.  So thankful that all those months of pottie training up til now (22 of them!) haven’t been wasted by having her start going in in her diaper at this stage!! If you are at all interested in infant pottie training (also known as Elimination Communication – EC – please send me any questions because, although not an expert, we have successfully done it with 3/5 of the children 🙂  The two for which we passed it up we still did it for 9 months and 6 months (numbers 2 and 3) because, as anyone will tell you, 2 and 3 kids are 1)more difficult than just having one and 2)more difficult that continuing to have more.  It’s really the second and third that push the envelope, and although continuing to have children is not “easy,” it definitely gets easier since by that time the first one is a bit older.

After John was home early from work at 11, he went out for ice cream for me to make us all milkshakes — the FIRST pregnancy craving I’ve had when I’ve actually asked him to go get me anything. We all played outside on the kids’ scooters while drinking/eating said milkshakes, and now it’s quiet time in the house.  Ahhh….yummy day with milkshakes and rest time!!

I am stealing this idea from another blog I read today – coming up with a habit I want to start, beginning with August, and going for the next year.  Sort of like listing goals, but more operating on the principle that it takes 30 days to establish a new habit.  I am too tired right now (and need to get off the computer to take advantage of a sleeping baby for the next hour) to come up with goals for all 12 months, but I am going to start right now by posting the next quarter’s habits 🙂  I can come up with three really quickly, right??!!

August:  Put on clothes and makeup every day before breakfast (unless I’m running and then I need to do it by lunch time.)

September:  Declutter as I am unpacking in the new house, wherever we end up moving to — make it a habit to keep a box/bag in a few different strategic locations in the house to put things to give away that will be used during unpacking and will continue to be used throughout the year.

October:  Spend time in God’s Word daily, at some point before getting dressed.  Must establish my first habit of consistently getting dressed by a certain time, and then I can piggy-back this one off of it 🙂

Okay, going to lie down now and rest.  Not the best for inducing labor, but I’m tired, and I have the excuse of being 39 weeks pregnant to do whatever I want hahaha 🙂

Sunday Serenity – Reviewing “Give Them Grace”

Hope your Sunday is going well and that your are feeling refreshed!  I took a little nap on the couch after church and lasagna (which was from the freezer for when baby comes – but there were four casseroles, enough for one of those “baby is coming soon so I can’t bear to be on my feet making lunch right now” kind of days 🙂  It still amazes me when I think about it that Meriwether, John, and I were all able to nap while four children played quietly in the other room and Greer napped upstairs.  So thankful for the blessing of my sweet children!! Greer did one better by coming out of her room after her nap, taking off her diaper and pants (with a little help from Gabriel), pulling up the little ducky pottie, and proceeding to deposit her #2 into it, all while I lie on the couch cheering her on.  Good job baby!! I think I mentioned that she’s been in a bed that she can get out of by herself lately so she can get us up once she’s awake so we’ll take her pottie.  Only one poopie diaper in the two weeks since we started that, so I would say it is working!!  Now we’ve all had our dessert from lunch – cheesecake – as our 6pm dinner, and we’re settling in for the evening.  I love how much relaxing goes on on a Sunday at our house!  Normally we would be at our evening church service, but since about 7 months along it has been too much for me to go back out in the evenings on a Sunday and I was ending up exhausted on Mondays.  So this is working for us right now 🙂

On to the book — it is called Give Them Grace and was written by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson.  I haven’t finished it, and, unlike the last book, it is quite long and very “dense” with good things.  So I am just going to review about two chapters at a time for you.  It definitely is addressed to Christian parents, and does not seem to hold any other parenting advice aside from that view, although I haven’t made it to the “application” part of the book yet, so perhaps there is stuff in it later that would be more universally applicable.  There are only ten chapters altogether, but each one is pretty deep and takes a while to really digest 🙂

Here’s a picture from Amazon:

In the introduction alone I underlined quite a few quotes 🙂  The point of the book is about raising children from a distinctly Christian perspective which relies on the grace of God for our children’s behavior and salvation rather than from a moralistic perspective in which we use the Bible as a set of rules for them to follow without showing them the grace that saved us.  On the back cover it says, “Every way we try to make our kids ‘good’ is simply an extension of Old Testament Law – a set of standards that is not only unable to save our children, but also powerless to change them…We must tell our kids of the grace-giving God who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters.”  The author Elyse is the mother of co-author Jessica, and she freely shares how she raised her children in just such a moralistic manner, rarely speaking to them of grace, helping those of us who may have fallen into the same trap at times to see where we might improve our own parenting.  Here is a favorite quote of mine in the introduction, very long as most of the passages will be: “When we change the story of the Bible from the gospel of grace to a book of moralistic teachings like Aesop’s fable, all sorts of things go wrong…Good manners have been elevated to the level of Christian righteousness.  Parents discipline their kids until they evidence a prescribed form of contrition, and others work hard at keeping their children form the wickedness in the world, assuming that the wickedness within their children has been handled because they rayed a prayer one time at Bible club.  If our ‘faith commitments’ haven’t taken root in our children, could it be because they have not consistently heard them?  Instead of the gospel of grace, we’ve given them daily baths in a ‘sea of narcissistic moralism,’ and they respond to law the same way we do: they run for the closest exit as soon as they can.”

Even in the introduction – and all through the 3 chapters I’ve read so far – there are several instances in which they share a sample “conversation” about how to handle a situation with a child in a new way, which is always this looonnnnnggg conversation with the child about how they could have handled being angry at the sibling, or how they could have shared better, or what have you.  That would be a complaint I have about the book – sure, the example of some helpful words is nice, but as with many other parenting books I’ve read, they make it sound like you have all this one-on-one time available to spend thirty minutes discussing the issue with a child whenever he sins.  I think there is a place and a time in which you will find that you do have the ability to thoroughly cover a topic with your child, but in reality, these long, drawn-out conversations about the issue and what the Bible says about it etc, etc, are few and far between and certainly cannot occur whenever the child is misbehaving.  Maybe if I just had two or three children I would not feel like this is so annoying, but seriously, I find this all the time in the books I read (I specifically remember enjoying Don’t Make me Count to Three but constantly rolling my eyes at her super-involved discussions with the three year old about her shortcomings.) and there doesn’t seem to be the recognition that a lot of people who will be reading the book have a bit more going on since they probably have many children and are quite-likely homeschooling, so sometimes an abridged version is helpful 🙂  I know that the co-author Jessica had three children at the time of the writing and was homeschooling, but I’m pretty sure this means a baby, a toddler, and a 5-yr old learning her letters and not what is going on as you add to the brood and schooling demands increase.  Just my personal issue I know 🙂

The first part of the book, “Foundations of Grace,” has four chapters, so I will review it over two Sundays, Lord willing 🙂 The first chapter is called “From Sanai to Calvary” and is mostly about God’s law, and some different forms of obedience which we strive to instill in our children: “Initial Obedience” (which encompasses some concepts that will ultimately protect our children and which will help them “function within the family and society.” – Things like obeying the simple commands of “No,” “Stop,” “Come here,” “Put that down,” etc.); “Social Obedience” (basically learning to follow the “social conventions” (i.e. manners) of a particular culture – like saying, “Please” and “Thank you,” and refraining from burping in public – in America – or burping at the table to show satisfaction in some other countries); “Civic Obedience” (learning to be “law-abiding citizens” – something all responsible parents strive to teach their children like not beating others up, not stealing, and the like); and “Religious Obedience” (things that we teach children about living a life of faith, within the context of a family of faith, before they come to faith themselves such as: thanking God for our food, giving an offering in church, standing or sitting quietly at certain times during worship – basically outward conformity to religious exercises which are not a proof of “regeneration” – more on this in a minute.)

I didn’t underline much in this chapter – I think I was reading it one night at the ER with Greer after she had fallen down the attic stairs and wouldn’t stop crying to go to sleep that night, so I probably didn’t have a pen handy – but am looking back at it to see what struck me.  In this section about “religious obedience” the authors are careful to say that you shouldn’t be teaching your children that they’re being “good” if they are pretending to pray and that they are pleasing God with this behavior – rather, that we are thankful when they are obedient in this way because it means that God is helping our child learn to obey and that some day they will want to talk to God, but for now we are recognizing that they overcame a lot of temptation in order to obey our request.  Similarly, when they can’t observe our rules about worshipping together, we shouldn’t be telling them that are being “bad” but should explain to them how their disobedience is disruptive to others who are trying to pray, and that they have become a distraction to them and will be disciplined if it continues.

Elyse says, “There is a marked difference between this kind of gracious parenting and the moralistic parenting I did when I was raising my children.  I would alternately tell them that they were good when they sat quietly or tell them that they had to close their eyes and pray or be disciplined when they were bad.  My parenting had very little to do with the gospel.  I assumed my children had regenerate hearts  because they had prayed a prayer at some point and because I required religious obedience from them.  This resulted in kids who were alternately hypocritical and rebellious.  It taught them how to feign prayer, without pressing them to long for the Savior who loved hypocrites and rebels.  Religious obedience is probably the most difficult and dangerous form of obedience simply because it is so easily confused with conformity to God’s law.  It’s the place where most Christian families go terribly wrong.  Yes, we are commanded to teach the Word, prayer, and worship to our children, but their acquiescence to these things won’t save them.  Only the righteous life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ saves them.”

So to wrap up this first chapter, the authors go on to discuss something different for our children to obey – “God’s Beautiful, Holy, Good – and Crushing – Law.”  Paul talked about God’s law by saying (Romans 7:12), although it was “holy, righteous, and good,” it could never bring sinners to life because “no one could obey it.  He confessed that all his obedience (and it was extensive) had no more value than a pile of manure. (Philippians 3:8)”  They go on to quote the many places where Paul discusses this in the New Testament.  The book goes on to say, “These words about God’s law and our condition of lawlessness should make us stop and seriously question how we use the law in our own lives and in the lives of our children.  When we seek to have right standing (justification) before a holy  God through compliance to it, we are severed, cut off, separated from the grace and righteousness provided by Jesus Christ.  We are on our own…When we teach our children to do the same thing, we are drowning them in a ‘ministry of death.'”

One last thing from the chapter – “Even though our children cannot and will not obey God’s law, we need to teach it to them again and again.  And when they tell us that they can’t love God or others in this way, we are not to argue with them.  We are to agree with them and tell them of their need for a Savior.”  Anyway, you can see my point that the book has a lot of things to digest and that it says some things most of us Christian parents need to hear.  Now that I have gotten this far along, I think I will end this review with just the first chapter for tonight.  Hope this was helpful to you if this was a book you thought you might like to read but hadn’t had time for yet – or is one you might be interested in purchasing.  All for now, and we’ll back to the regular program tomorrow with some musical musings, a run, and possibly a recipe 🙂

 

Sunday Serenity – a Book Review for You!

I was not planning on posting today, but I just finished up one of my “Sunday books” and thought I would share my thoughts on it 🙂  I haven’t found a lot of time lately to read on Sundays since getting the family out the door and going to church and getting food for the family tires me out rather quickly so that I end up napping, but today I was able to read during lunch, since it was pizza on the couch, before my rest.  I had been perusing the book for a while and finally just read to the end because it is rather short.

It is called Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches, and was written by Rachel Jankovic.  It’s the sort of book that is supposed to be encouraging but can be a bit of a bummer in places because it can make you feel like you’re not doing enough.  I don’t usually give in to that feeling since I know I’m doing plenty of parenting over here, and I also like to read things with a little grace knowing that the author doesn’t carry things out in the way she recommends all the time either, and these are just the good tidbits of advice she has that she also probably needs to remind herself to follow at times.  So in some places this could be a brutally honest review about how I feel about the book, and in others could be trying to sell the book, so bear with me  —  or don’t, if this isn’t the type of book you’d even consider reading 🙂

I took this picture from Amazon, with the thought that the author wouldn’t mind the publicity 🙂

A little background – what makes this a “Sunday book” for me is that it is written from a Conservative Christian perspective and backs up its claims with Scripture for me to study and with which to encourage me.  So it’s a “Christian” book.  If this is not your particular bent, I will say that there is some helpful information that non-Christians could glean from it; however, there may be too much “Christianese” in it for your taste.  I don’t think she was heavy-handed in that realm, but I may just not notice that sort of thing enough anymore.  I’m going to point out some of the better ideas she had, though, and a few of the things that annoyed me, so then you can judge whether it might be something you would like, as based on my own humble opinions 🙂

First off, she opens the book by letting you know where she’s coming from, and for me this is important.  I know I shouldn’t base what I think about someone’s advice on how many children they have, how old they are, or whether or not their children are close together in age.  I know this.  When I had only one and had learned a few good things and was only 28, I wouldn’t have wanted someone to discount everything I said on the basis that “She doesn’t know anything yet – she only has one.”  I am sure some of you have been there — feeling belittled because you don’t have a ton of experience, but hey, even having one child is difficult and sanctifies you in some ways and brings you knowledge you didn’t have before.  We’re always learning about how to parent, from the first child to the last.  That being said, though, I do sometimes find myself rolling my eyes whilst reading a parenting book written by a parent of only two children, three years apart, telling me how to totally stop what I’m doing and have this looooooong conversation with the child who has just misbehaved, in order to get to the root of the problem and address the heart, etc, etc, etc.  I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater – I love to get ideas from any good parenting book to help me along in my journey – yet, I do know that some of the things this lady says really don’t apply to a family with 5 children all about 20 months apart.  I can’t always dig to the heart of every issue or the house will fall down around my ears, you know what I mean??  So hearing about this author’s background was helpful to me because it did give her a smidge more credibility in my biased mind, I am sorry to say.  But hey, which of us is truly objective all the time?  When she wrote the book I calculate that she had been married about 7 years and had 5 children — a 5 year old girl, a 4 year old girl, a set of 2-year old twins (a girl and a boy), and a 4 or 5 month old baby girl.  I think I have that right, but maybe the ages are a little off.  Either way, you can see she is really writing from way down deep in the trenches.

There are twenty short chapters, all about 2-4 pages, with succinct points and helpful anecdotes, some of which are a bit comical, but most of which are a little convicting – as in, you can see yourself in them and how you maybe should have handled a similar situation in a better, calmer way.  Here’s a good line from chapter two to show you what I mean: “You can’t be greedy with your time and expect them to share their toys.”  Ouch.  “You cannot resist your opportunities to be corrected by God and expect them to receive correction from you.”  So there you go – a few hard things to get you started….

In chapter four she makes a really good point that applies to our children and to us.  It’s about taking note of their progress — which runners should appreciate.  You may feel like this is really hard, and you’re worn out from all the child training and tantrums they throw and beating your head against a wall with trying to get them to understand why they should be kind to one another and all the messes they continually make — but you are making progress as a parent.  “You might feel just as tired,” she says, “but you are now running ten miles instead of two blocks.  Take a moment to remember what used to annoy you when you were single…do you see how totally unchallenging that looks now?”  The same applies to our children — maybe one of them used to have a problem with leaving a huge mess of the toothpaste and you were constantly finding it on a shoe or a piece of clothing when you least expected it, but now that same child has passed that test and instead has trouble with trying not to fight with her younger siblings over shared toys.  You may not have noticed that she is past that earlier phase and is doing such a great job with the toothpaste (and is cleaning up after herself in the bathroom, and in her bedroom, and in the place where she does schoolwork and has just generally become more tidy) because some younger child is now annoying you with the toothpaste, and this older child has moved on to new challenges.  I think she makes a great point here that I hadn’t thought of before — “As a parent it is very easy to demean their progress by demeaning the struggle.  Instead of praising them and pointing to their progress to encourage them, we ignore it….sometimes this is because the struggle just seemed so dumb in the first place….so when they quit doing it, we don’t recognize they’ve gained the victory over a very real struggle with temptation.  Oftentimes we don’t even notice that they aren’t doing it, because something else has replaced it, and we are now too busy nagging them about [that]”.  Great point.  I think I definitely have fallen into this trap.

There’s a chapter applying specifically to little girls and the fact that their emotions can often get the best of them – with some helpful advice for talking them through the process of reigning in their emotions.  “A well-controlled passionate personality is a powerful thing.  That is what dangerous women are made of.  But a passionate personality that is unbridled can cause a world of damage.”  Her point is to help your daughters along to the point of being able to have more self-control, not to squash their passion.

In chapter seven about “Thanksters and Cranksters,” I did find myself rolling my eyes a little.  She says how the obvious antidote for children being fussy is getting them to be thankful instead.   And that when our children are fussing in the back of the car and we’re frustrated about it, that we need to get our own hearts right (and switch to an attitude of gratefulness) before we try to get them to stop arguing with each other and complaining, etc.  Be thankful for the headache, “thank Him for the scuffle that your children are currently having over who unbuckled whom and why.”  Um, no thank you.  You can tell me over and over to thank God in every circumstance, and it’s still going to be impractical to apply to my real life as a technique for making my heart feel less grumpy and more grateful.  I see her point, and she says to practice it by asking them in other situations how an unthankful person would respond to something and doing some role-playing with the children, to practice being thankful by thanking God for the trees, and the birds, and the rain, etc, etc, etc. I am sure I do this sometimes with the children when they are complaining – about the rain (and we’ll talk about how things grow) or about the long drive (and we’ll talk about how thankful we can be that we have a working vehicle and the money to buy fuel).  But when they’re arguing and fighting and fussing about things in the backseat with each other, I don’t attribute it to unthankfulness – I consider it to be two siblings sinning against each other and in need of correction.  I wouldn’t want to say, “You should be thankful you even have a brother and that he just hit you, because you could be an only child.”  Instead, we’d deal with the hitting, and then the reaction to the hitting, and being thankful or cranky have nothing to do with it.  And just because I am a bit frustrated that they’re fighting and am working on how to sort it out with them does not mean that I need to stop and be thankful that I have two healthy children who are capable of hitting each other in order to correct my attitude.  So anyway, that may be a bit of a harsh take on that chapter, but I just didn’t agree with her points there.

In chapter eight she talks about language, and how calling things by certain names can really start to determine how we feel about those things.  How she had a problem after she had had the twins (keep in mind this meant she had the twins in diapers as newborns, a 2 year old in diapers, and a 3 year old) of telling herself she felt “overwhelmed” and how she just had to bar that from her vocabulary – even just in her mind – because it made her feel more overwhelmed to talk about it.  Well, really, I think she had a right to feel overwhelmed and to say it.  I feel overwhelmed at times, and my 5 are further apart than hers – the oldest turning 7 right before the 5th was born.  Now that I’m about to have 6, the oldest is 9, and the second youngest will be two a month later.  So am I a wimp for letting myself feel “whelmed” as we like to say in our house? I don’t think so. (But hey, maybe that’s just me wanting to be wimpy and wallow in my wimpiness.)  She does give a really good recommendation for a helpful way to get through such overwhelming times — look at the clock.  Tell yourself to “give it 20 minutes” and then put your head down and dig in to the work.  In 20 minutes the storm will have passed (probably) and you can have that diaper blow-out cleaned up with the new outfit on and the old one soaking, the twins nursed, and the broken glass and spilled milk cleaned up and the toddler down for a nap, or some other such combination of impossible tasks when you’ve just come in the door from doing errands with them all morning and all he** is breaking loose.  Yes, I agree, probably you can do it, and then -whew- you can sit down and rest and catch your breath.  But you know what, it’s still okay to feel overwhelmed at such a time.  You shouldn’t feel guilty if you do.  You’re a mom, and you need to make the situation safe and hygienic, so sometimes you have to push through it even when you do feel overwhelmed.  And I think we all know that.  But it still doesn’t make the feeling of the “whelming flood” insignificant or wrong.  There’s a hymn that says, “His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood.  When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.”  What I’m meaning to say here is that there are times in which we are overwhelmed and need to rely on some power outside of ourselves to push through.  Just because our “flood” may seem full of small tedious things rather than some martyr out in a far-off country or soldier in the field does not make the water any less capable of making us feel like we’re drowning.  I feel like when the author says, “no self-pity, no tears, no getting worked into a dither,” she is really telling someone who occasionally does have a few tears of frustration that she is just out of control and overreacting.  I think this is a bit like telling someone with depression to “get over it.”  I personally have never struggled with depression so I don’t feel like I can really speak wisely to the issue, and here is someone who HAS dealt with feeling overwhelmed (the author) and has found some coping mechanisms, so in a way, she is qualified to speak to the issue.  But that doesn’t mean that the issue can always be handled in that way or needs to be discounted as something to just “get over” basically.  In that vein, though, feeling overwhelmed constantly by the demands of motherhood is something that can seriously overtake you, and you do need to learn how to deal with it.  In a lot of cases, though, even if you THINK you can’t afford it, or you don’t want to admit you need it, the answer might be to ask for help.  REACH OUT in your time of need, admit your weaknesses, and ask for free help from friends and family, or hire the occasional – like $50 a week – help that might just get you through.  Or maybe you have parents who live really far away but who wish they could be there to help you – maybe they could help finance a little assistance for you?  I don’t know the answer for you personally, but I know that if you’re feeling overwhelmed, it’s probably legitimate, and it’s okay.

Oooh, I really liked chapter nine “To the Fifth Power.”  It’s about how we can tend to bunch our kids into this one big frustrating situation (think: trying to get everyone out the door on time to be somewhere, properly dressed and fed) and stop seeing them as individuals.  We can end up taking our frustration with a “situation” out on one child when that one comes into our sites having still not found his other shoe because he got distracted in the living room by a toy.  Then we snap at him because the whole situation is just spiraling out of our control, and a lot of it is really our own fault.  I can think back on countless Sundays when I have raised my voice at one child or another for not being able to find her sweater, and at a different one for not eating her breakfast quickly enough, when really I should have made sure the night before that their sweaters were ready and that all their shoes were together.  Last night I finally did just that – I had each of them get their own sweaters and shoes staged by the door, so it was not more work for me, and we got out the door a bit quicker today, without any fussing from me 🙂  I totally understand this principle, though, of the exponential growth of problems as more children are added — just how sometimes having them all come at you en masse can make it seem like there are ten children instead of five — and that we can’t blame THEM for this problem.  We’re the ones who had all the children, and we need to try to remember to treat them as individuals who deserve our respect.

The next chapter continues in this vein and is called “Know your sheep.”  It’s sad but true when she says, “A lot of children from big families discover very early on that their parents simply do not have time for their problems.  So they find ways to take care of themselves, usually through adapting to loneliness.”  And this one: “The fact that your children have learned to go with the household flow and do their chores does not in any way offset the fact that they spend all their available free time sulking in their room.  Christian childrearing is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge.”  Here is her take on it, and something to really take to heart if you have several children: “Be a pastor to your children.  Study them.  Seek them out.  Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues.”  There was a point in the chapter where I just had to say, “no way,” though.  She talks about how much they love being involved in the kitchen.  Check this out.  “It turns out that one child in a Baby Bjorn and four more [five and under] in the kitchen on chairs trying to help knead the bread can be a little overstimulating. But the thing that I have had to learn is that it is my job to figure out how to make this work….when there is a whole chorus of voices and a whole army of chairs moving into the kitchen, bringing out the enthusiastic welcome is a lot harder.  I have to adapt.  It is not their problem.  Individually they are being precious and curious and excited.”  You know what?  Just because I have five children and make homemade bread doesn’t mean I need to include them in the process every time or all together.  I can be discerning about the time I choose to make the bread and about whether I choose to include one or several of them, etc.  Perhaps the author really doesn’t mind the picture she painted, but I can tell you I would PULL OUT MY HAIR if that little scene repeated itself in my house.  I know I would.  Call me insensitive or impatient or 36 years old (I think the author’s younger than me), but I like to involve my children when it is a bit more convenient rather than at any time they think they want to jump in.  Sometimes they need to hear a patient, “No,” from me and don’t always need to be constantly on my coattails.  She does say that there are times she’ll tell her children that it’s not a good time for helpers, but that example she gives of all of them in the kitchen while she’s kneading bread, well, that would be one of those times in my book 🙂

Okay, two more quick points although I’ve only covered about half the book.  My “sitting on the couch” Sunday time is about finished, and I need to put in some “feeding the family” time.  There’s a chapter called “Me Time,” in which she agrees we all need some of this.  But she also talks a lot more about sacrificing yourself for raising your children than I would tend to do were I writing this book.  She talks about how our body is being spent and undone in the service of another person (our children) and that we need to not buy in to the propaganda saying we need to keep our bodies perfect like they’re treasures.  In fact, they are tools, and they will be well-used by the time we die.  In a sense I agree with this, but I think overall that this chapter could really turn someone off and be seen as just being over-the-top.  I can’t really put how I feel about this chapter in to words, it would seem, but it just gives me sort of a bad taste in my mouth.  Obviously, having had five children already and being a runner, I constantly cycle up and down in my weight for the sake of having my babies.  And this can be frustrating at times since I can often feel down on myself for the way I look.  But for some reason I still don’t see this as spending my body in the service of my children.  I think when you start to look at it that way you might tend to really “let yourself go” over the years as you raise your children – sacrificing your own health and fitness in order to have them at every event and be a “supermom” with a perfect house, etc.  She does mention that, as a tool, we need to maintain our bodies well for service, i.e. we shouldn’t just schlep around in sweats all the time after we have a baby, and that we should endeavor to regain our bodies in order to be better moms and people, etc.  But when she says, “Carry the extra weight joyfully until you can lose it joyfully.  Carry the scars joyfully as you carry the fruit of them,” I am just a little skeptical.  I think this lady must be a bit more of a “glass half full” person than me because I tend not to bear things quite as joyfully as her.  I think of this along the same lines as being thankful for a headache.  These are just not things that I think the Scripture is saying when it says to be thankful in all things or be always rejoicing.  There are things that result from hardships and ways that we grow through them that are, indeed, things to be thankful for.  And in that way I think we can be thankful for the hardship.  But I am human, and actually feeling “joyful” about something with which I am dissatisfied is just not easy for me, and really, is not what I think is being said in those verses.  I will be joyful always – but I will look for the reasons why I am joyful and not look around at things that are not awesome and then try to rejoice about them.  Am I making sense?

Last point now, is about chapter sixteen “Grabby hands and grabby hearts.”  I can summarize what I liked about this chapter without referencing the book directly because I’ve already been implementing it some today.  It refers to when your children are arguing over a toy – who had it first, whose toy it really is, who took it, etc – how you really need to get to the heart of it simply by realizing that the fellowship that used to exist between them has now been broken and needs to be healed, while, in the process, figuring out what to do with the toy.  She asks her children if the toy or the sibling is more important to them, and they come to see that they are putting the importance of a toy before the blessing of having a sibling.  They are putting their Polly Pockets before their sister.  Which one should matter more to them?  It becomes obvious, even to a 3 year old, which thing should be more important.  There’s a little dialogue, too, that helps give you some good ideas for dealing with such situations.

Okay that was a REALLY long blog post today – but I hope you found it helpful if raising kids is something which with you struggle 🙂 I mean, even running at 36 weeks pregnant is easier than figuring out why my 4 year old is sad sometimes!! 🙂

Jonah: Not just a Fish Tale.

Hope you are having a nice, relaxing Sunday!  We just returned from church and ate some pizzas from the freezer and are all snuggled up on our couches for some family quiet time.  We reflected on the way home about the sermon on Jonah which made we want to mention a few things about it here as well 🙂

Our pastor has been preaching through Jonah for about the last 2 months – yes, it is only 4 chapters – shedding new light on it for me personally and I think for the rest of the family as well.  He mentioned early on how there is only one verse that really talks about the “big fish,” yet, we often come through our childhoods (whether or not we ever attend a church) with the general impression that the story of Jonah is mostly about Jonah and the Whale.  Most children will remember only the whale mobile they made, or the paper plate whale, the finger puppet whale, or maybe even the ship tossing in the ocean during a storm if they did some sort of craft with that.  If the child does go to church and reads about Jonah again  when a bit older, the most that is usually noticed is that Jonah disobeyed God at first and then obeyed after God saved him from the “belly of the whale.”

I won’t go into the points he’s made in past weeks, although they were very helpful, especially because I don’t remember them well enough to do them justice.  But today, he was talking about the last few verses — about Jonah and his anger versus God and His inestimable grace.

Jonah was very angry it says that the people of Nineveh had repented and now were being shown grace by God.  The pastor compared this to most of us and how selfish we can often be – not being happy for other people when they receive blessings.  He mentioned how Christians can sometimes feel “put out” when people are converted on their deathbeds because – here is someone who has been indulging in whatever lifestyle he chose, and now he gets his free ticket to heaven; whereas, here am I, daily struggling to say no to sin, giving my time and money and resources to God’s church, and this guy who repents at the last minute gets the same thing I do??  Is this at all how we should feel or behave? Of course the answer is no, but we as humans are still selfish, and often envious, when we think others have gotten a “better deal” than ourselves.  In contrast, we should be thrilled in general and, specifically, we should rejoice for and with that person for the promise of heaven which is now theirs.  This is the struggle shown so clearly in Jonah – here he had wasted his time preaching to the people of Nineveh forever and they had ignored him (maybe treated him poorly) and now God was going to accept their repentance and extend them grace rather than destroying their city??  He was selfishly angry, and God calls him out for it.

Jonah was displeased with the salvation of Nineveh and cries out to God – explaining why he ran away in the first place (rather than obeying God and going back to Nineveh to prophesy to them) saying, “for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” (Jonah 4:2)  See, Jonah knew that God might withhold his anger, and Jonah hated those Ninevites!  In his eyes they didn’t deserve to live, so he didn’t want to give them that one last chance to repent.  The pastor brought up the story of the man in Norway, Anders Behring Breivik, who massacred a total of 77 people, apparently with great joy.  I mean, who would want to be the one to go to THAT guy in his prison cell, and to have to spend time with him day after day as he continues unrepentant (he apparently witnesses the testimony of survivors with no trace of emotion and was emitting shouts of joy during the massacre at a youth camp), telling him to turn away from his sin and to believe on Jesus for salvation from sin and eternal life?  What if you were a family member of one of the victims? You certainly would not want to go in there and preach to him of the love and forgiveness of God!  And yet, this is what Jonah was called to do essentially, and what Christians throughout time have been commanded to do.  All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, so we ALL need to hear this message, and none of us “deserve” to hear it any more than another.

The story in Jonah continues – in which God causes a tree to grow to give Jonah shade.  Then He causes a worm to eat it so the plant will die, and Jonah again is at his wits’ end – this time out of pity for the plant, the Bible says – to the point of saying that it would be better if he could just die.  God points out his hypocrisy in saying, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons” – basically you care more about the survival of this plant than you do about 120,000 human souls?? So Jonah’s anger was  towards the compassion God showed to people he thought unworthy, and because of the apparent “lack” of compassion God showed to this “innocent” plant.  The ridiculousness of the comparison shows the reader how out of place Jonah’s anger was, telling each of us in the same way that we are not to begrudge others of the grace of God.  We can see Jonah’s feelings all around us still, though, in people who appear to care more about animals and trees than they do about other human beings.  We can also see it in ourselves when we don’t feel happy for the blessings other people receive, especially when we think we are more worthy of said blessings than they are.  One of the points here in Jonah may well be to tell us that, even if there are people we don’t like or don’t think deserve our love or God’s grace or whatever, those people are still infinitely more important to God (and should be to us) than the most majestic plant or animal on earth.  They are human beings, made in God’s image, and if God commands us to tell them about His love, then we should, because all of us are literally in the same “boat,” doomed to be swallowed by a great fish if not for the intervening power of God’s grace in our lives.

Sunday Serenity

I looked up serenity to make sure that it would properly fit the bill for my aim of posting on Sundays.  “calmness, tranquility, peace.”  That sounds about right.  For us, Sunday is The Lord’s Day, a Sabbath for rest and worship.  We spend our days normally going to church, having fellowship with others, and resting, usually closing the day back at church.  So on The Lord’s Day, if I post at all, it will be as an aside to what I’m doing that day – something gleaned from the sermon, or from our fellowship, or from my rest time in the Lord at home.

Today is a bit unusual since my husband and I will be driving back from Huddersfield all day – so I will just reflect in the car on the way and tonight will post my deep thoughts from a full day on the highway….a day spent thinking and talking with my husband in a car by ourselves for 3-4 hours is always a nice gift, and it usually produces copious amounts of food for thought 🙂

Well, we have arrived in London safely with all the children and our friend Meriwether.  Not too much to report on the journey from the Huddersfield hotel to our home, but we had a bit of excitement getting to the London flat.  We had a one hour turnaround time at home while I finished packing and baby finished napping.  Then we drove a little more than an hour to a tube station outside of London so we could take the London Underground in to the flat that we are borrowing from our friend.  When we arrived at the train, we went the wrong direction on it first and then had to get off at the next stop and cross over the tracks going up stairs and then back down to get on the correct train – which pulled in to the station just after we disembarked our first train. We raced up and over, my husband carrying the stroller with the baby in it (and random things hanging off it, and his backpack on), Meriwether dragging her small wheeled bag and Claire along, and me running ahead of the other 3 with two bags to make sure they didn’t get to the train first.  I made it just as the doors were closing and was able to hold the doors for everyone else, and we were on our way.

We rode the train a ways and then got off at Baker Street (home of Sherlock Holmes?) to switch to another line – and that train arrived just as we were walking up to it, so that was nice 🙂  Just a few stops on that, and then we had to navigate over to the flat a few blocks away, open the lock-box, and viola!  Perfect place with a kitchen, living room, and bedroom, and lots of random places to sleep 🙂  We rested up a bit and then walked down to a nearby Spanish restaurant where we had paella and sangria, my two favorite Spanish exports 🙂

Yes, we almost licked the paella pan clean 🙂  Tomorrow we are off to tour the city with the children, and then Meriwether and I will split off to go to a few famous stores and more.  Trip report to follow on Tuesday 🙂 And tomorrow night I’ll tell you about the concert we went to last night and the show Meriwether and I are going to tomorrow night!! Lots of musical memories being made about which to blog…

For now I will leave you with a few thoughts from Proverbs:

Proverbs 3:4,5 “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 straight your paths.”