Using What I Have

For a couple years now I've been saving magazines and catalogs.  Cooking, decorating, kid, clothing.  It's become quite a stack.

They're stored in a blue crate near the craft supplies.  So as to promote creativity and self-expression when someone wants to put together a collage or something of the sort.

It's been two years and they haven't been used.  They've only increased in number and begun to overflow in the crate.  Until this week.

Two of the boys noticed the magazines and decided to try and stuff them all into a cardboard box.  They crammed nearly all of them in, and then left the box in the middle of the walkway.

A walkway we move through constantly during school.  Almost instantly I decided they must be recycled today.  I tried to lift them, remembering the rules for lifting heavy objects.  But as I began to carry them away the children protested.

These unused magazines suddenly held hidden treasure.  They were appalled at my plan.

We made a compromise.  Each child got to pick one magazine, the rest we give to Mr. Recycle Bin.

This week they've engrossed themselves in the pages, making up stories of the different people in the photos, sharing snippets of ideas with each other, marveling over the man's strong muscles in a work-out ad.

And I, beginning Lent with a fast, decide to put to use my own magazines.  Those promises mine for the taking.  The power within ready for the asking.

There's Moses and David, both nearly losing God's presence with them, begging for Him to stay.

There's me, looking around at the treasure I have, not wanting to let it set by unused, but employ and marvel at what's mine all day long.

...And if you're looking for a couple simple ideas on celebrating Lent with your family, I put a few together over at my cool cousin's blog...

There the angel of the LORD 

appeared to him in a flame of fire

out of a bush; he looked, and the bush

was blazing, yet it was not consumed.

Then Moses said, "I must turn aside

and look at this great sight."

Exodus 3:2-3

I'm dreading the day before the day's really begun,

so instead of marching right down to

the basement to begin our work

I propose a turn around the track.

No one argues with that, 

though getting all of us out there,

a mere thirty yards away is not without

its mishaps and crises.

Nothing is with five children ten and under.

I dread the moment that lost snake in the van

shows up while I'm zooming down I-5.

I still can't believe the cat 

survived a whole night in the freezer.

But we go on ahead, me weak and frail,

close to falling apart and yet,

the Spirit strengthening as I walk

towards the light.

We count the gourds on the plant growing wild

in the nearly dead garden.

We look at the red leaves and collect a few,

deciding we'll try to figure out what tree

it is.

We watch the funny chickens with their fluff 

growing wild.  Their friends the 

ducks are beautiful, and is that 

an egg?

No, we get a stick and find it is a snail.

We rehearse our Psalm...

"Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD,

Let us shout aloud to the rock our our salvation."

And we recite our Old Testament

books of the Bible.  Yes, 

we've just about got them all mastered.

Most of all, 

my heart has warmed.

My eyes have chosen to look

at the bushes burning,

and not at the sheep bleating.

Building, Part I

I've been thinking about that verse found in Proverbs 14.1:
"A wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears her down."

I've been trying to build that house well, so I can be wise, you know?

Get all the right materials...a good house, healthy food, good books, limit T.V., good music, strong education, proper resources and influences, and, and, and....

I'm tired.  Worn out.  Always feeling like I'm not building well enough.  That there are so many errors, some because I'm ignorant and others because I'm careless or selfish.

Rethinking the verse, though, has made me wonder if it's not so much about the materials as about being wise.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline." Proverbs 1.7.

I think maybe the woman who's building her house is living a life in pursuit of the Lord.  She's seeking wisdom from above, not from a parenting manual or a picture in her head of how things should look.

This morning I accidentally read John 8.9: "At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there."  (I was supposed to be reading John 8.19...)

Yet the verse struck me.  All her accusers were gone.  It was Jesus standing there alone with her and her alone with Jesus.  No one else.  Nothing else.

Then I turned to Ephesians 1, "he decided to make us holy in his eyes, without a single fault--we who stand before him covered with his love."

I am that woman.  I stand before Him covered with His love.

I seek His wisdom and trust by doing so my house will be built, even when I feel like I'm tearing it down with my own hands. 

Seek Him.  Seek wisdom.  And the building will come.

photos: cherry harvest 2011

True Learning

It's math time and I'm working with the eight year-old.  In the middle of the lesson his little sister comes to share yet again how awful her sniffles are.

The math-learning boy looks at her and tells her his are worse.   Plus he's got a scratchy throat.  She's not believing it, and attempts to convince him that her plight is truly more difficult.

My patience level is low and I want to get the lesson finished.  It's too nice to be in the basement working and before I know it I'm impatiently snapping at them both.

But quickly I stop, for I'm learning that the anger emotion can be a check engine light.  And just for fun I speak my thoughts out loud, for sister and brother to hear.  "This is not an emotional problem.  It is something we can learn about together.  I refuse to allow anger to run this situation."

They look at me bewildered and I smile, start again.  We spend a few minutes thinking about the possibilities of entering each other's skin.

What if I could get inside Raleigh's body and feel how scratchy his throat is?

What if I could truly sense just how stuffy Noelle's nose is?  

But we can't.  We can feel our own stuffy nose and hope the other person doesn't have to have one as bad as ours.  We can understand what they're going through and help them out.

We laugh, we talk, we understand.  We to some degree sense the absurdity of comparing our lot with another's.

And as we resume our math and finish our school work I wonder....

Which learning was more significant?  To tell time to the minute or learn the value of empathy?

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p.s...looking for a fun summer read with children?  We fully enjoyed The Search For Delicious (checked out at the library) by Natalie Babbitt last year...would recommend for five or six years old and up.  We still talk about it...wars being fought over the definition of delicious!