Good Question

From John Piper:

"Do you feel more loved by God because he makes much of you,
or because, at great cost to himself,
he frees you to enjoy making much of him forever?

The point of that question is to expose
the deepest foundation of our happiness -
whether it is ourselves or God..."


They make much of you, but for no good purpose.
They want to shut you out,
that you may make much of them.

It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose,
and not only when I am present with you,
my little children...

Galatians 4:17-18

read more...

A Trail of Crumbs

Read this last night and thought it rather interesting:

"I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks."

That's from Daniel 10. This is the same Daniel who people in the church now write books about, you know the one who "refused the king's delicacies" when he was a new exile in Babylon. When Daniel and his friends were pressed into the king of Babylon's service, they chose to only eat "What Jesus Would Eat." (No, I know Jesus wasn't born yet, it's just an expression.) And at the end of that specific amount of time, their eyes were brighter and their cheeks were ruddier.

But here we see another verse, this one written towards the end of Daniel's career, with Nebuchadnezzar long dead. Daniel was no longer young. The exiles had been commanded by God to settle and live and thrive there in the land of their exile, and Daniel had probably lived there longer than he had lived in Israel. Things change.

I've been reading a thread of posts this evening that were all so good, and this comment from one of them made me laugh:
"The first thing a principle does is kill somebody."
(Dorothy Sayers)

I take it from the Bible verse above that Daniel's decision when he was taken into the king of Babylon's service was NOT some kind of lifetime decision, nor one that he probably would have ever thought people would be writing books about thousands of years later. Books that can be used as clubs from time to time by careless people.


John Calvin just celebrated his 500th birthday, did you know that? And you know what he said all those years ago? "Our hearts are idol factories." Somehow we even manage to make idols out of really wonderful things and ideas, as well as some really wise people.

If you want to follow the thread of my meanderings, feel free:

1. Tap Shoes and Making Time at the Happiest Mom, about the power of inertia and the importance of making conscious choices - and living well with them!

2. What Would Jesus Weigh? at Frog and Toad are Still Friends, about the gnosticism inherent in some of our thoughts and beliefs about food

and

3. Food is the New Morality at Swistle, about how food has nothing to do with the gospel.

Yummy. Enjoy.

Browsing Old Journals

I went looking for something yesterday, some words that I wrote somewhere, long ago when I first started homeschooling. I have two stashes of old journals upstairs: one stash is shut away in a cedar chest. I do not want to throw them away, but neither do I want to revisit them often. They are full of the insecurities and questions of a young woman who was working so hard to find peace. What an oxymoron. I read these journals from time to time to remind myself that I have changed and I am moving forward, after all. :)

The other stash I keep in a drawer. These are the journals of a grown up who is no longer the center of the universe. There are still moments of confusion or unsteadiness, but more and more there are moments of shining clarity - not brilliance on my own part, but the dawning of revelation and a growing acceptance of it. Often the words are not my own, but rather a thread of wisdom gleaned from other, often random, sources. That thread weaves itself into my own thoughts, those writers become part of my own biography, and when I read these journals it's like reading the beginning chapters of "The Story of How I Finally Grew Up." ;)

At the moment I feel like I'm living within parentheses. Pretty soon I expect to have a new chapter unfold (like it always does, beginning with "Now This."), but right now things are holding steady. With nothing new to report, I think I'll peruse some of my old journals with you here for awhile, adding my current thoughts as I feel inclined.

Here's a bite from 2 years ago:

"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you
sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded!
Lament, mourn, and weep!

LET your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
Humble
yourself in the sight of the Lord, and HE will lift you up."
James 4:8-10

It's no good forcing the "lamenting," - and it's no good demanding to be lifted back up!

"To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under Heaven...
a time to break down,
and time to build up

a time to weep,
and a time to laugh

a time to mourn,
and a time to dance...
Ecc. 3:1, 3-4

It's all a gracious mercy. And it's a mercy my faith is sustained and strengthened. It's a mercy I don't fall utterly. Yes, He MUST love me, He MUST have compassion for me, because my faith has not failed:

"By this I know that You are well pleased with me, because my enemy does not
triumph over me." Ps. 41:12

What a gift.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

That title is REALLY, really bad. I admit it. :)

We have a friend who recently finished cosmetology school. Actually she's the daughter of my friend, but now she's my friend, too. :) And isn't it HANDY to have a friend who knows how to cut hair? She's cute and young and fashionable and therefore the girls love to let her fix them all up.

What's even better than having a friend who is a hairdresser? Having a friend who is a hairdresser who lives two miles down the road and has a setup in her parents' basement. And younger siblings to play with my seven year old while I talk. The only thing better might be slashed prices and free coffee and YES, I do get both. Yay, me!

Even though my friend has been to cosmetology school and even though she still does hair in her basement, she also has a job at a ritzy salon in town where they are making her go through the paces training her AGAIN. So she needs models and we are willing and able. So all 3 of my children have had the opportunity of their short lifetimes in the last couple of weeks, having THE WORKS done at a fancy salon for nada. Jack's favorite part was the shampoo bowl: he said, "It was so RELAXING." Deep satisfied sigh.

Aromatherapy shampoo, yes. Head massage, yes. Professional cut and hairstyle, yes.

Jack's looks like... Daddy.

Courtney's looks pretty much like it did before except MORE GLAM... and with bangs.

And this is Claire's newest 'do, which looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

But it totally suits her. Paige blew it all out straight and this is the result... but in reality Claire has a lot of cute little flippy curls in the back, and it's just the right cut for that. She looks cute in a bob, but if we had cut it in a classic bob I think it would have been frustratingly difficult to smooth out. It's a layered bob, layered heavily in back but not in front. It has lots of swing and when she lets it dry on its own it kinks and curls and flips around her neck and ears, which is perfectly youthful and sweet, just like her. With her summertime freckles, she's just a doll, happy with her new look.

Strangely, even though the cut makes her look older, this is similar to how she wore her hair until she was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, when she began to grow it out for ballet buns. I helped her fix it just so for church Sunday and had rushes of flashbacks from years past, and our daily ritual of curling her little bob under her chin for school or church. No more big bows to match her outfit, but that's ok... it's fun to feel her hair in my fingers again.

It's funny how the girls are so different and yet so compatible. They aren't two peas in a pod, they are more like 2 puzzle pieces with irregular corners that fit into each other's perfectly. Where Claire enjoys the spotlight occassionally, Courtney enjoys observing... and Claire makes that possible. Where Courtney enjoys a healthy social life, Claire is a little homebody. Courtney's blazing Claire's trail for her. Claire can talk a blue streak, but she's tight-lipped about anything too personal. Courtney is reserved and quieter, but she somehow still manages to wear her heart on her sleeve.

Silly how things like hairstyles communicate. There's Courtney with her mane of hair whipping around her head in wavy layers that refuse to stay in place. They lie close to her small face and she seeks the protection of a frame of bangs and layers - long layers she refuses to pull back, layers constantly being fed through her fingertips. I think to myself she will always be this way, restless, thoughtful, vulnerable, sweet, surprising, creative, warm and ready to love.

And then there's Claire with her bouncing bob curling up around her curling ears, floating away from her, refusing to be tamed. One minute it's all back off of her heart-shaped face, the next half of it is in a clip, and then I look again and it's all loose, or tucked behind an ear. I think to myself she will always be this way, young, smiling, quick-witted, freckled, perfectly content, private, loud, strong, fun.

And Jack? He will always want to be "just like Daddy," I'm certain of it.

Sometimes...

Tweet Tweet

I learned how to twitter this week. I signed up for twitter a long time ago, but never took the time to learn my way around. I had time this weekend, so I thought I'd give it a twhurl. ;)

Twitter is not intuitive, and there are lots of different ways to come at it, so I've spent some time surfing around trying to find something that works smoothly and efficiently enough that I might actually come to enjoy twittering. As with every new technological gadget or device, it's work learning your way around. The question is always the same: "Is it worth it?"

So, I don't know. We'll see. It IS fun to have short conversations with people from across the continent. The word people use is "connected." It makes you feel "connected." I can see why this would be a strong draw to a lot of people in our culture, since there is not a lot of "connecting" going on in real life these days. But this is both a positive and a negative for me - I'm pretty "connected" in real life. In fact, the fuses are smoking. Those connections are obviously important, and it's easy for the virtual-connections to become equally important, thus causing the fuses to BLOW. :)

So the balance is evidently to keep it FUN and not an obligation.

I'm wondering how "social networking" people got those computers implanted in their forearms. And how do they keep from becoming obese and blind? It's an interesting world out there in cyber-space.

The fear of NOT being connected looks more threatening from inside twitter than the Swine Flu. It makes my chest tighten just to think about the madness going on in some corners of twitter/facebook/other social networking outlets. The pressure! Yikes. That is one field that would stress me out - "social networking." That kind of job sounds to me a lot like perpetual high school. Yikes.

Oh and you know what else I read? BLOGGING IS DEAD. Apparently bloggers who tweet know this but refuse to die and continue to tweet about how we can bring it back to life. So, I'm already behind, evidently. It reminds me of real life issues like housecleaning, meal planning, and shopping. Just when I feel like I can take a deep breath and say, "ah, everyone has enough clothes for this season. Everything is nicely put away and hand-me-downs are handed down," I walk into the store and the next season's clothes are out and this season is 75% off. Anxiety attack ensues.

Or I come downstairs and put away dishes, make breakfast, and clean up breakfast... only to have the children ask, "what's for lunch?"

It's a mad, mad world, spinning faster every day.

But on the plus side, it's been fun chatting wih Canadian friends and finding freebies and gleaning great quotes and learning more about how to use my own computer, ha ha. I'm determined not to become that old lady who is afraid of the debit machine. :) And so I now have unlimited texts and twitter on my iPhone. And that comes in handy when your daughter is away at camp for SIX DAYS.

"I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

The ironic thing is that I never feel like I'm enough, already... so someone explain to me why I have the desire to spread myself thinner? Hmmm, Freud or Jung might have a field day with this one. The correct answer is probably much simpler, though, and it would probably come from a very different Source. ;)

Happy tweeting!

The Fourth, Play by Play

It's midnight... could the fireworks actually be over? I think perhaps they could...

As John said earlier, surely no one had a better show put on for them tonight than we did. Front seats in our front yard to mindblowingly huge fireworks. We were so close that John got hit with firework shrapnel. Seriously. (not to worry, no one was hurt.)

We hit the pool to start out with, but it was a little stressful after awhile, trying to watch the fireworks from 360 degrees. I felt like I was getting whiplash.














We came back home and plopped down in the front yard for the 2 hour grand finale, and ate s'mores. Someone had to FIX the s'mores, so that would be JOHN.

Jack had a great idea:
"If only you could pause the world and eat s'mores. And then fast forward to see what happens!"

Then we ate the s'mores while we swatted mosquitoes and cheered for the fireworks. (I cannot help but cheer for each one. What is it about fireworks?) The pictures make them look small and far away... but in reality they were LARGE (most of them were bigger in width than the house in front of us, there that you can barely see, ah the joys of nighttime photography with an iPhone...) and loud (but not too loud to frighten the 7 year old) and overall very, very cool.




John said: "There are a lot of mosquitoes in the world." Yes, indeed.

And I learned to twitter and that was just big fun, feeling like I was partying with people from other neighboring countries (and their neighbors, who were having a REAL good time, evidently).

The kids had fun, and finally I even explained to Jack what the Fourth of July IS, anyway, and then they all went to bed, exhausted, and tomorrow will probably be SO much fun, yawn.

But as we picked up our creaking bodies off the ground tonight, John and I followed everyone in and agreed that we have a pretty good life, and we live it in a pretty good place, after all. Even if we can't go to the beach this year and often complain about all the idiots that live in Washington. ;)

There's nothing new under the sun, and God still sends rain on the just and the unjust. For that I'm very thankful tonight.

"Happy Birthday, America. We love ya."

Browsing

New post up at 1,000 Gifts...

For Readers: World Magazine recently printed an article titled, "The Best of the Last," which involved a contest for the best last lines of favorite books. There were plenty printed, enough to provide some pleasant entertainment on a hot summer afternoon. You might recognize some of them from your favorite books... and receive some motivation to go read some others, as well.

Ann over at A Holy Experience had some WONDERFUL posts last week on housekeeping, and mothering, and finding art and balance in both. The whole week is worth reading.

Nancy over at Femina had some great things to say on Pet Peeves and Modesty. She's got a lot of sense, as the Pet Peeve post proves, and the Modesty post might surprise you with its little spin.

My own youth pastor from a lifetime ago :) just finished his bike trip ACROSS THE COUNTRY! All 4,259 Miles. He retired this spring and took off on an adventure immediately thereafter. He took his wife (who drove alongside), and another young biker friend - and all of us who followed vicariously. Along the way they took lots of pics and Barry journaled enough to make me wonder if this might be a coffee table devotional one day... We hear a lot of negative stuff these days about the state of the Union, but Barry got to see it through a different set of lenses and what he has to share is not only fun but also uplifting and motivational. Makes me kinda want to get up off my sofa. It also brings me hope that when I'm 60ish I might just still have some energy left, after all. You can't help but smile when you read, so if you need a pick-me-up, go check it out.

Pioneer Woman brought her "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" to a conclusion after 40 passionate chapters. Makes you wanna go dress your hubby up in cowboy clothing and stick him out in the sun till he's brown and just a little sweaty, maybe. ;) What is it about our husbands when they are working hard that's so SEXY? I don't know, but the only sexier thing might be if he was getting soaked in the rain while he was working hard. Ahem.

Okay I think that's enough for now, since it's summer and we're all so BUSY being out of whack and all. Hooray for routines. And just so you know, it took me all week to actually read all of the above, so don't get the crazy idea that all I do is sit here and read all day. And that would be crazy. Although... it is SO blasted hot down here that that IS all I want to do, actually. How long can one state handle hundred degree temps, anyway, before we all blow up? My house is like a cave, with all curtains drawn, all doors closed to keep out the heat. Eee gads, the heat.

Stay cool, y'all.