Just a thought

From iGoogle's Quotes of the Day:

In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is.
  - Gertrude Stein

I think this is part of why we find life here sometimes challenging.  We are used to the idea of space.

One place I'd rather not eat . . .

No. other. comment.

Random Thoughts

The weather has turned cold here.  Two nights this week have reached 60.  The children wake up and shiver, rooting around for blankets in the hidden corners.  How used to the heat we have become.  But the poor feel the cold most of all.  They do not - cannot - eat enough to produce extra body heat.

My garden is growing.  Beans are reaching for the sky, lettuce trying to peek through.  The tomato plants are gorgeous - sprouting new leaves nearly every day. But the carrots are being rebellious.  They seem to prefer dying underground to growing toward the light.

School is nearly finished for the year.  Songs and prayers, sums, wars, alphabets, and radish sprouts all studied, ingested, retold.  And we are changed for the doing of it.  Perhaps the teacher-mommy most of all.

A local girl, without a father, and with a mother whose new husband does not want her around, has found in me a soft spirit.  She is certainly in need.  Her grandfather, upon whom she relies for shelter, is badly disabled with leprosy.  But I am limited by how little of her need I can understand.  She had no shoes, it seems.  She has no sweater for these cool nights, or so she tells me.  It may very well be truth, but I can not read between the lines.  I can not see into her soul.  I must ask others to do this for me.  So I have given a little - our eldest's  sandals, too small for her by a bit, but something; a little food; some clothes for a younger sibling.  But mostly, I wait to see what our co-workers can discern of her true need.  It is hard to know how to help best.

A 4-year-old-girl's evening prayer brought a chuckle:  "Dear Jesus, thank you for Mommy and Daddy and me and everybody in the whole world and my brothers and the neighbors and my friends, and that man to get out of jail (she refers to a colleague).  And thank you that they live in a wood house and everything is ok. (??? perhaps the beavers in the Narnia book we are reading?) And Amen.  I said AMEN!

Little moments stitched together.  This is life.

Thankfulness

So many things to be thankful for, yet so few written down.  Here are a few from today:

49. Companionable silence

50.  Holding hands

51. Today's sermon

Letting go

of dreams of a picture postcard life is not easy.  We all have them, I suppose: those mental pictures, reinforced by the idol-images of Better Homes and Gardens, parenting  magazines, or even Today's Christian Woman and (dare I say it?) believers' blogs.  Someone called a brand of this "Mommy-porn":  perfect images of celebrity moms, perfectly fit, in their perfect rooms, cradling perfectly dressed and mannered children. 

But I think it is idolatry.  At least in my own life, these images, ideas, even dreams become idols:  my rooms should look "like this;" my children should behave "like this;" my meals should taste "like this;" my life should be lived in "this way."

Where is authenticity? Where is reality?  Life is a messy, complicated thing.  It is not, can not be picture perfect.  The ugly, the loud, the failure teach by His grace - as surely as do the beautiful, the  peaceful, and the gentle.  To live in the "someday my life will look like this" dreamworld is to miss the tangible evidences of God in TODAY. 

Yet the dreams persist, creep back again and again to tempt and to taunt.  The dream of "perfect" lures me away from being perfected . And still He calls, beckons me to leave my idols and return to Him.  What grace!


Grateful thanks to Ann whose thoughts and prayers led me to think and pray also; who shares the ugly along with the beautiful. And that is real.

Mother Ducks

I am awed and inspired, as usual, by these powerful thoughts from Holy Experience.

Morning thoughts

Keeping a consistent morning time to meet with God has never been one of my strong points. I am not a morning person, and any out-of-the-ordinary occurrence seems to upset my routines. Put more plainly, it is pretty hard for me to get up early in the morning unless I have had a good night's sleep.

This morning was a good one, and I am meditating on Ephesians 2:10.

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Though this is not a new verse to me, God showed it to me in a new light today. "Good works" always meant to me the work that we do that others see - like living overseas to work with those affected by leprosy. That makes perfect sense, and I think is an appropriate application of the verse.

But today's thought is that the good works which God has prepared for me to do are most often the hidden ones: parenting gently, preparing meals, holding a child's hand, welcoming guests, listening carefully to the concerns of my husband and children, praying . . .

I think that for this wife, mom, and home educator, these are my main tasks, and were every bit as prepared in advance for me to do as the seemingly larger tasks of my husband's work.

Father, keep me ever mindful that each task in my day pleasant or difficult, comes from your unchanging, loving hand.

Written a while back, this was not posted then due to internet issues.