A place to share my stories and thoughts about life and God while raising and homeschooling our six children. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:31:00 -0600 Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:31:00 -0600      I've never been much of a seamstress.  I never took home economics in high school.  I concentrated on more academic pursuits.  The few sewing projects I have attempted over the years have been full of much frustration and little success.  So I can't really explain why I've had this sudden desire to sew clothes lately.  Part of it is the lack of ready made clothing that is easy for me to nurse in, or has long-enough skirts for my older daughter.  But that doesn't totally explain it, because this time, I'm actually enjoying sewing.      So I decided that sewing clothes would be faster and easier if I had a serger.  Mind you, I've never even seen anyone operate a serger.  I know absolutely zilch about sergers.  But the instructions in my patterns make life seem so much easier with a serger, so Joel bought me one for an anniversary present.  I confess I was very intimidated by the contraption.  I can now thread my sewing machine quite quickly, but the serger has two needles and two loopers, with a separate tension dial for each.  I watched the DVD that came with the machine and felt I was up to the challenge.  Imagine my delight when I pulled the serger from the box to discover it had already been threaded at the factory!  The tension dials were all set and someone had already done a test with a strip of fabric and stamped O.K. on it!  (If I had it to do over, I would have written down those tension settings.)  I was all set to go and I didn't have to face the intimidation of setting up the thing myself!      Then, I turned my back a second too long on my little Mistress of Mischief.  By the time I look again, she had pulled the sample fabric from the serger, tangled all four of the threaded strings, and adjusted the tension dials to their extremes.   So I began the long and difficult journey of getting acquainted with my serger and learning by trial and mostly error what does and doesn't work.  After watching the video twice more, investing two weeks of effort, rethreading the machine multiple times, and pestering my serger-owning friends with questions, I finally succeeded in getting it to serge like the video!   (This time, I immediately wrote down the tension settings!)  I decided that God must want to work on my perseverance!       I recently read an article that was printed in 1917.  It said that the most priceless characteristic a woman can possess is poise, and the best way to develop poise was through sewing.  I scoffed, and thought, "How could sewing teach some one all that?"  Well, now I know.  When you realize you've sewn the sleeve on inside out, or the last two panels on your skirt were topstitched after the bobbin thread ran out, or you learned what "with nap" means after you cut out your dress wrong, or the bobbin thread freaked out and made so many loose loops your daughter's dress looks like it has a fur collar, you either scream or learn to be poised.      I'm making a lot of mistakes in my sewing, some cost me time, some cost me money, most cost me both.  But I'm striving to not make the same mistake twice.  My goal is to make a new mistake each day.  (I've given up on a mistake-free sewing project!)  I've discovered that once I accept fact that it won't be fast, it won't work right first time, and I'll absolutely positively have to use my seam ripper, it is a much more enjoyable process.  Trying to do well and be fast while learning a new skill is only an exercise in frustration and disappointment.  I've decided to give myself grace and rename "failing" as "learning".      Life is a lot like that too.   I am an unsatisfied perfectionist.  I'm much happier when I accept the fact that I won't get it perfect the first time right from the start.  I'm so glad that God extends His grace to us too in life, even when we are too stubborn or proud to accept it.        In today's culture of moral relativity, where a unified standard for all is ridiculed, one thing often strikes me.  Whatever standard a person holds up for himself as what a "good" person should do, he or she can not attain it.  When we're honest, we see that no one can say they don't have regrets or haven't made mistakes.  And that's just by our own human standards.  If we can't live up to our own self-defined standards, how could we ever hope to live up to a holy God's true standards?  What hope do we have of ever being "good enough" for Him?  Have you ever tried to please a perfectionist?  It can't be done.  Well, God is the only Perfect Perfectionist.  If we can't please human perfectionists who are themselves flawed (though we hate to admit it), how could we ever please Him?  This, friends is the bad news.  We must accept the "bad news" as true before we can take real delight in the "Good News" (which is what Gospel means).  The Good News is He knows we can never attain righteousness on our own, and so has provided His own righteousness for us through Jesus' sacrifice.      As I said before, I'm so glad He offers us grace.  I'm God's little Mistress of Mischief, interfering with His plans, sometimes innocently, sometimes willfully.  He could make much more beautiful creations without my "help".  Often, I tangle the threads when He could skillfully make the stitches even and neat.  Yet, in spite of my buffoonery, He lets me work alongside Him for the same reason I let my two-year old stay in the room with me when I'm trying to sew.  He loves me.  Relationships are more important than accomplishments.      I have now talked to my daughter about the dangers of touching mommy's serger and the need to not so much as breathe out forcefully on the tension dials.  My serger and I have now come to an understanding, and I have completed my first project with it--a denim skirt.  When I opened the box to my new serger, I had no idea of all the lessons God had waiting inside for me--perseverance, grace, and most of all His love. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/661232/ Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:31:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/661232/      Moving around as much as we do, we have experienced many different types of houses.  Every house has had features I liked and some I didn't.  I've often dreamed of building our own home someday when we settle down and being able to design it in the way I think would function best for our large homeschool family and our unique needs.  Mind you, I know nothing of architecture or building, but I do know that most pantries are too small and laundry rooms are usually an afterthought.       Now suppose, we have the opportunity to build our own home someday.  Let's say I order some plans from someone who does know about architecture and building and has degrees and years of experience in these areas.  But when I get the blueprints, I don't like everything I see.  I think I can make it better.  So I cross off the beams I think are ugly and I move the walls to suit my tastes.  Then I build the house according to my own plans.  What do you think would happen, given my limited knowledge of building houses?  I shouldn't be surprised when my house falls down around me and my family.  I would be a fool and would reap a fool's reward.      Yet, how often do we do this very thing with matters much more important than house-building?  I'm speaking now of the Bible.  Often, while reading it, we come across passages that confound and perplex us.  We find it easier to ignore these than seek out their meaning.  Then there are the ones that make us uncomfortable because they highlight the little sins we don't particularly want to give up.  Maybe they speak of condemning actions our culture finds acceptable.  And sometimes most distressing, are the parts that paint God in a different light than how we want to see Him.  Wouldn't it be better just to cut those parts out?      But God is the Master Architect.  His wisdom and understanding are limitless.  My own, however, are frail and not to be leaned upon.  To pick and choose from the Bible what I'm going to believe and what I'm going to obey are just as ludicrous as altering the blueprints to my house.  Who are we to edit the Word of God?       Years ago, I heard of a group who got together to vote on which quotes of Jesus from the Bible were things he actually said, which were things he might have said, and which things he didn't really say at all.  How ridiculous is that?    In studying American History, we read how Thomas Jefferson, a Diest,  wrote His own version of the Gospels.  He actually did physically, what many people have done mentally and took out the parts he didn't like. (In his case, the references to the supernatural.)  In my thinking, these two examples reek of arrogance.  Who are we to tell God what He actually said and what He didn't?  Who are we to say how things really happened 2,000 years ago?  God had it written down for us precisely because we were not there.  We wouldn't know unless He told us and preserved for us a record.      If I worship the God I want to worship instead of worshiping God as He has revealed Himself, then am I really worshipping God at all, or I'm I just worshipping an imaginary god that doesn't really exist--an idol?  Idolatry is putting anything other than Jehovah-God on the throne of my heart.  I'll take that a step further and say idolatry is also worshipping God the way I wish He was instead of worshipping Him as He has told me He is.  How can I know anything of God unless He reveals it to me?  To tell Him who I think He should be is creating my own god.  God has created me, not the other way around.      There are many parts of the Bible that I'd like to skip, or I wish weren't true, or I don't understand, or I never will.  Yet, if I start throwing out the passages that are difficult or uncomfortable, where does it end?  Much like my house analogy, it probably ends with things falling down around me and my family.   "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.   --Matthew 7:24-25      How does the wise man build his house?  He trusts that the Builder knows what He is doing and will build a strong and sturdy house if he will but get out of the way and let Him.  http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/661230/ Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:42:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/661230/ I thought of this analogy in the middle of the night when I was up feeding Mary Faith.        Imagine that I have a small hand mirror, the size that would fit in my purse.  Not only is it small, but it's not a very good mirror.  The glass isn't smooth and the paint is chipping off the back.  It has a few small cracks in it.  The resulting reflection is wavy, cloudy, and distorted.  Now suppose I use this mirror and catch a reflection of a part of a person's hand.  I study the reflection very carefully and then decide that I know that person completely because I have invested so much in the study of that reflection.       Silly, right?  There's so much more to a person than what can be captured by a small and flawed mirror.  Yet, how often do we do that to God?  We try to make Him fit in a box that's comfortable for us, or reduce His workings to some manageable equation that we can understand.  We stare and stare into our little mirrors trying to see who God is, but He's so much bigger than any of that!  He defies definition.       Sometimes I think God is quite intentional about debunking our theories and formulas about how He must operate.  ( I think He created the platypus just to mess with our taxonomy!)  Just when I think I have Him "figured out" in some area, He does something that doesn't fit my paradigm of who He is.  I long to understand Him, yet I know that any so-called "god" that is small enough for me to understand is not worthy of my worship.      I'm not going to throw out my "mirror" or stop looking into it, trying to catch a glimpse of God's hand, but I must remember that I only see a tiny part.  He alone sees the big picture.  In the end, I must trust only Him and not my small ideas of how I think He should work.   Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. (1 Corinthians 13:12, NLT) http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/647092/ Sat, 17 Jan 2009 16:55:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/647092/      When my baby smiles at me, it brings such joy to my heart.  She's so tiny, and yet she lifts her chin and tosses her head back as if in laughter.  I'm "just" a stay-at-home mom, and I don't earn a salary, but when my baby smiles, it's a better reward than any paycheck I could receive for my work.  It's so fulfilling to see my little girl smile at me.  My heart feels so full.       Then I see her give the same smiles and coos to the ceiling fan, and suddenly I feel a little less special.  My husband and I were wondering if perhaps we caught a glimpse of how God feels about our relationship with Him.  God delights to be in relationship with us.  It warms His heart when we "smile" at Him with our love, adoration, and praise.  But then, so often we turn and adore the things of this world that are temporary.  We look to the "golden calf" and say, "This is what saved us."  We praise the created instead of the Creator.  How often in my life do I give my smiles and my heart to the "ceiling fan" when all the while, my "Abba Father", my "Papa", longs patiently for me to turn my gaze to Him and smile.  I'm his baby and even though my words fall far short to adequately describe how wonderful He is, He loves to hear me coo and "make a joyful noise".  I can just imagine Him looking down from Heaven and saying, "My heart is so full when my baby smiles at me." http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/647048/ Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:16:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/647048/ I came across this entry that I had scribbled in the back of my notebook. It was dated March '08 (pre-Mary Faith).  I'm not sure if it's poetry or prose.  I haven't edited it at all.  This is just how it poured out from my heart through my pen.  I feel like it is fitting to share this with you today, on Sanctity of Life Sunday as we acknowledge that all life, from conception to natural death, is sacred in the eyes and heart of God.   "How many children do you have?", you ask me with a smile. You have no idea how much that hurts. You can't see the grief I carry inside.   "Should I mention my son?", I wonder to myself, "The one who never made it to his birthday?"   Will you see him as a person, and grieve with me? Or will you shrug and say, "oh well", as if I didn't just share my worst nightmare with you? Or will you looked shocked and abruptly change the subject to more pleasant things?   Or perhaps you've walked this road before and I will find a kindred spirit in you. Can I confide in you? Will you accept my loss, my pain?   And what if I don't? What if I decide not to share, to treasure his memory in my mother's heart alone? Have I betrayed my son? Have I given into the world's opinion that he really never was a person at all?   God knows differently; and so do I.   I held his tiny lifeless body- there's no doubt of his humanity. I know he lives now by Jesus' side. I know I have another son! He waits for me in Heaven.   Do you know he's real? Do you care? Perhaps you've been here yourself.   "Five," I answer softly. "Two girls and 3 boys." But deep inside my heart screams to me, "No!  I have six!!  I have FOUR sons and I love them all!" You don't see the sixth, because he waits in Heaven for me, but that makes him no less real to me. I have six, and my mother's heart can not be convinced otherwise.   Do we believe life begins at conception? Why don't we act like it? Is God honored when we deny the existence of His tiniest creations, the ones He spoke into being and breathed the breath of life into?   Will you please let me acknowledge ALL my children and not think me strange or change the subject? Will you tell me you're sorry for my loss, and remind me of all my son has gained?   I may look "normal" to you. I may appear to have it all together. But please know inside I'm broken, because my son waits in Heaven for me. Please treat me tenderly. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/644219/ Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:42:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/644219/   I came across a hymn in my devotional book today that seemed to me to tie right in with my "Life is Like a Spinach Salad" entry.  "Day By Day" was written by Lina Sandell Berg in the 1800's after she witnessed the accidental drowning of her father.  Part of the first verse says:   He whose heart is kind beyond all measure give unto each day what He deems best lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure, mingling toil with peace and rest.      In the second verse, she says, "As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure."  (a reference to Moses' blessing in Duet. 33:25)    Lina has expressed it much more eloquently than I,  but I believe we are thinking along similar lines.  Though I can't begin to understand the plans of God, I must learn to trust Him "whose heart is kind beyond all measure".      I just finished an excellent book called "The Shack" by William P. Young.  It has some similar themes.  I don't want to spoil any of the plot, but I highly reccommend the book to everyone.  It's a strange mingling of fiction and truth, creatvitiy and theology.  It's very thought-provoking.  I finished it in only two days, despite the fact that I'm taking care of 6 children.  I had a hard time putting it down.  Nursing babies are a wonderful excuse to sit down with a good book!  Read it and let me know what you think. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/644152/ Sun, 11 Jan 2009 16:01:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/644152/      I have long desired to have a peaceful home.  I have often despaired because I don't feel my home is peaceful.  We have a lot of people with a lot going on and quite frankly, our home can be quite boisterous and apparently disorderly at times.  Granted, there are times when the house is cleaned, the children are studious and curteous, dinner is delicious and on time, the clothes are washed and put away, the beds are made, and everyone is smiling--just not all at the same time!      So I was a bit surprised when my mother-in-law who stayed with us for 3 weeks during the holidays remarked about what a peaceful home we have.  I can fool people I only see a couple of hours into thinking I have it together but surely, after living in our midst for so long, she would know the truth.  She went on to describe the atomosphere of our home as "happy choas".  I realized then, that by "peaceful", I had always meant "quiet, subdued, & calm".  But there is a different kind of peace in our home.  One that is seldom quiet!  Though there are occasional tears and bickering as siblings do, for the most part our children are happy and good friends with each other.  This kind of peace is much better than one that is simply quiet.  http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638746/ Fri, 2 Jan 2009 10:44:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638746/      Here's my spin on Forrest Gump's "Life is like a box of chocolates."  I developed this concept while mixing "Green Smoothies" in my new Vita-Mix blender.         Spinach is a very healthy, but bitter-tasting food.  If you want to enjoy eating a spinach salad, you need to add some fruit for sweetness.  The fruit doesn't change anything about the spinach, nor does it negate its bitterness, but eating the them together is more palatable than eating the spinach alone.  As Mary Poppins is fond of saying, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down".       Like a spinach salad, our lives can have some painfully bitter components, but there are also sweet tidbits tucked here and there.   Just as fruits and vegetables both contain necessary nutrition, so too, both the bitter and sweet times can be part of a spiritually and emotionally healthy life.  Many lives and salads have nutty parts, and that's okay too.  A little zany-ness can be theraputic at times!      Having a new baby doesn't make losing the one before "all better", but the sweetness brings balance to the bitterness.  If life were all bitter, we wouldn't make it.  How wonderful that God knows our frame and remembers we are but dust and is merciful to us.  In His mercy, He brings sweet "fruit" to our lives.  In His wisdom, He doesn't fail to provide the "spinach" we need to grow strong in our faith.      I feel like I'm always quoting songs, but they just seem to say what I'm thinking and feeling better than I can.  I like Steven Curtis Chapman's song The Miracle of the Moment.  Here's part of it.   There's only One who knows What's really out there waiting And all the moments yet to be And all we need to know Is He's out there waiting To Him the future's history And He has given us a treasure called right now And this is the only moment we can do anything about So breathe it in and breathe it out And listen to your heartbeat There's a wonder in the here and now It's right there in front of you And I don't want you to miss the miracle of the moment And if it brings you tears Then taste them as they fall Let them soften your heart And if it brings you laughter Then throw your head back And let it go      God has designed life with both the bitter parts that bring us tears and the sweet parts that make us smile.  We must learn to embrace them both.  As Job said to his scornful wife, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?" (Job 2:10)      So enjoy eating this spinach salad called Life, knowing that God has prepared it with just the right mix of "flavors" for you! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638197/ Thu, 1 Jan 2009 19:28:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638197/      This year, I really wanted to make an effort to help the children focus on the joy of giving over the fun of receiving.  We had a wonderful opportunity to minister to a family in need through our church.  We signed up to prepare a holiday gift basket for a family dealing with AIDS and purchase Christmas gifts for their little girl.  Despite my earnest efforts to include the children, in actuality it was a grueling (from a child's perspective) 2-hr marathon trip to Target.   The only one remotely interested in selecting gifts for the little girl  was my eldest daughter.   I was trying to get all the various items on the list I'd been given and simultaneously keep 6 energetic and obviously "not-in-school" children from becoming a spectacle.  We did pretty well until we got to the cards.  The younger ones were grabbing the ones that make sounds when you open them.  The older ones were reading the funny ones out loud and getting everyone to laugh.  I was continuously alternating between trying to put the cards back in the right spot, keep Jake from climbing up the card display to reach the ones at the top, quiet the 4-week old baby, keep Rebekah from climbing out of the shopping cart, laughing at the funny cards, and trying to steer the children clear of the inappropriate ones.  Who knew there could be so many off-color Christmas cards, of all things?  At some point, I realized that everyone who walked by us was staring, and that I had not been successful in being a non-spectacle.  Oh well!  By then, I was laughing too hard to care.      So, phase one of our project complete, I tried to include the children's help in wrapping.  It didn't really turn out to be practical.  We had a lot of other things going on.  I wound up doing most of the wrapping myself.  I did have some "help" unwrapping though.  Once while I was doing read-alouds with the older children, I was amazed at how nicely Rebekah was playing quietly in her room.  I should've known better.  By the time it finally dawned on me that she was likely up to no good and I ought to check on her, she had already carried not just one, but two pair of scissors upstairs and had attempted to cut into the cardboard boxes of three different presents.  Fortunately, I intervened before the damage was totally irreparable.  So much for instilling the joy of giving in my 2-year-old!  Strike one.      I decided I hadn't really accomplished my objective of getting the children excited about giving to others.  I discussed with my husband an idea I had heard about last year of having the children draw each other's names and buy for that child.  We ruled it out based on the inefficiencies of shopping individually with the children, not wanting to pressure them into "choosing" the gifts we already had in mind, and some other details.  Strike two.      The week before Christmas, the children came home from AWANA each with a bag of small gifts.  I wasn't sure what it was all about.  I hadn't been attending AWANA since Mary Faith's birth, so I was out of the loop.  There were many other things going on, so we stuffed the bags in the top of the entry hall closet, and I forgot about them.  (We didn't put any gifts under the tree this year until the children were safely tucked in bed on Christmas Eve, on account of the Mistress of Mischief.  It was also a weak attempt to imply that "Santa" delivered them, though I'm a horrible liar/pretender and my children have never really believed the whole Santa thing.  I don't consider that a bad thing though.  I was always a Santa-skeptic as a child too.  But, I digress.)  Christmas Eve, the children excitedly asked for their bags and eagerly made tags and wrote names on gifts and placed them under the tree.  Apparently, AWANA had allowed them use the "shares"  they earn for reciting their memory verses to purchase gifts for family members.  Then, some wonderful volunteers must have spent hours wrapping and numbering everything the children ordered.       So, here comes my favorite part!  Christmas morning, the children excitedly exchanged the gifts they had bought for each other with their own "money".  It was wonderful to see how they picked out things they thought each person would like.  It was obvious they had put some thought into someone else's preferences.  They were very excited about seeing their siblings open the gifts they had picked out.  Several times, the receiver hugged the giver and gave genuine and unprompted thanks.  I got some scented candles from the children.  When I burn them, our home fills with a sweet fragrance the way my heart was filled on Christmas morning.  In the end, it wasn't as a result of any of my plans or efforts that the children experienced the true joy of giving.  In fact, I did absolutely nothing--that was God's gift to me.  Homerun! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638146/ Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:22:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/638146/ I came across this poem and it really spoke to me about the joys and pleasures of sharing our lives with children.   LITTLE PEOPLE by John Greenleaf Whittier A dreary place would be this earth were there no little people in it; The Song of Life would lose it's mirth, were there no Children in it. No little forms, like buds to grow, and make the admiring heart surrender; No little hands on breast and brow, to keep the thrilling love-chords tender. The sterner Man would grow more stern, unfeeling nature more inhuman, And Man to stoic coldness turn, and Woman would be less than woman. Life's song, indeed, would lose its charm, were there no babies to begin it; A doleful place this world would be, were there no little people in it.   In our church's Christmas musical, they used a real infant for baby Jesus.  It was amazing to me what a difference it made in the actors--a difference that could be clearly seen even from the standing-room only balcony where we were.  "Mary" bounced the baby gently and kept looking down at her (yes, "Jesus" was played by a girl baby!)  "Joseph" kept fiddling with the blanket and peeking at the baby to make sure all was well.  You could tell with every subtle move that they were holding a fragile and important treasure instead of an inanimate prop.  Yes, I must agree with the poet!  Our lives are certainly made richer by sharing them with these Little People.  What treasures we have been entrusted with.  May we always remember to "Handle With Care"! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/628886/ Sat, 6 Dec 2008 17:43:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/grapesandolives/628886/