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Little Lions
After some substantial debate as to how spend last Saturday, our family ended up attending a festival held at our daughter’s school. It was nice. We ate BBQ, listened to story telling, looked at a few crafts, petted a goat or three and bounced in inflatable squares of craziness. But one thing we did not do while at the festival was let the kids get their faces painted. There was no reason really. It just didn’t happen. The line was too long or we were too hungry or whatever. I don’t know. But when we got home the kids could not stop talking about how all they really wanted was…
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Crazy Love: The Book Review
I’m not a bandwagon girl. I’m more of a if-everyone-likes-something-then-maybe-I-won’t-like-it-just-to-be-different girl. (I’m not saying that’s a good thing. It probably isn’t.) That tendency, however, explains the reason why I am just now finishing Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love. It was really popular. Last year. So I didn’t want to read it last year. I think there’s a reason why I read it now, instead of then. The full title is Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. And I have been discovering something about God’s pursuit. Because God works like that – you know? I had to plow through the first sixty pages or so before I was involved in…
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And Then The Cousins Came
We have been a busy little family. (“Little” is a word left open to personal interpretation.) After swinging a lot and enjoying Beth and her beautiful girls for a too-short visit I received a crazy little e-mail. It said something about a surprise and the name of our town and it was sent to me from my cousin Sherry. (Sherry was the flower girl in my parent’s wedding. I was the flower girl in Sherry and Willy’s wedding. Their daughter was the flower girl in mine and Kevin’s wedding. And we have plenty-o-daughters to be the flower girl in her Amber’s wedding.) But back to the e-mail. I don’t think…
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A Rite of Passage
Can it really be called a childhood if it does not involve a swing made of rope over a little creek?
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Wrong Again
I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but I have these little categories on the right side of this page. (You know, like a billion other bloggers.) And one of my categories is entitled “My Pursuit of God”. And I think I have just been realizing something. I have had that all wrong. Mislabeled really. This whole time it has never been about my pursuit of God. It has always been about God’s pursuit of me. There I go again – making it all about me. Because I can be such an idiot sometimes when it comes to perspective. This story, my life, has been entirely a picture of…
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What It Looks Like
It’s good to be in the same state, the same house, right now, with my friend Beth. We’ve been friends a really long time. (Like 19 years. Or something like that. Yeah – we met when we were two. Exactly.) She rarely comes to visit without carrying a container full of the best tasting cookies known to mankind. Crunkles. We have so many things in common. We attended the same school. (Go Cumberland!) We shared the same ratty blue and white trailer featuring blue astro turf on our porch during our college years in Kentucky. We changed the radiator on my little white Tercel. (This is my greatest – and only…
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Change
As far as our circumstances go, change is the only constant. The world in which I fall asleep is not the world in which I wake. And this is true every day. In good seasons and in bad. Which is endlessly depressing and eternally hopeful.
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Community
I am taking a crash course in community right now. Call it Community 101. Or something like that. And it’s beautiful. I don’t mean virtual community. (Although I think that’s pretty fun and actually, more helpful than I imagined it could be.) But I mean – flesh and bones, hands and feet, I will meet your needs – community. It might just be the first time in my life I am seeing what it looks like to let someone other than my family (or framily) rally around me and carry me when my legs are broken. (Not literally, alright guys?) And there’s a power in that weakness. And a peace…
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You Know What This Means
Piper Finnian is finally being allowed to climb into the loft bed in her bedroom. Do you know what this means? It means this little baby girl of mine is less of a baby girl today than she was yesterday.
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Fear
I have allowed fear to rule my heart for most of my life. I don’t mean that “most of my life” in a cliche way. Or even in a “most of my adult life” way. I mean most of my life. As in since I was eight years old. Around the time I was eight I developed some hyper-fear that my mother was going to die. I became obsessed. Obsessed. As in every night I crept down to my parent’s bedroom. I hovered beside my mother’s bed. And I watched her. Two sleepy eight-year-old eyes peering just over the bed covers at my resting mother. I just stared at her.…
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Next Subject – Science
You’ve already read about the routine. You know we eat scrambled eggs every Wednesday morning and that on Fridays we bake together. Pretty soon any number of you could run my household – more smoothly and efficiently than I myself can. (Ahhh, Master Plan is progressing nicely. Cue sinister soundtrack.) During my few years of homeschooling I have discovered that I really have to diligently schedule the subjects that I would gloss right over. (You know, I never have to remind myself to read to the kids or to listen to great music with them or to draw a daffodil or to paint a picture.) So around here –…
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The View From Here
Most days, this is what it looks like when I look down.
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The 3 R’s
It’s elementary, right? My favorite three r’s are not reading, writing or arithmetic. (Besides, I think it says something about American education that we ever even used the phrase “the three r’s” to describe three words of which only one correctly begins with an “r”. But maybe I’ll blog about that later.) And, despite my green efforts, I’m not even talking about reduce, reuse and recycle. Nah. There are three other r’s that have been changing and shaping and altering the life I know. Redemption. Reconciliation Restoration. Those are my favorite “r” words. I love them. And every day I feel as if my life is more defined by them…
