Stalling

We have always been sticklers for early bed for the children, but all the rituals must be properly attended to or disaster would surely befall before morning. In my mind it is Lame Excuse Time. It is not unusual for the huggy child to come to my bedside when I am drifting off and say, “I think we forgot the kiss and the hug,” even though I clearly recall her nearly strangling me earlier. Someone might have a scratchy throat and need a throat drop. The one who chews her fingernails gets painful hangnails that require bandaids so they don’t catch in the covers. Sometimes after bed is when the fear bogeys come out and we need to pray again. The boys are hungry again with frightening predictability. It feels like it can drag on for the longest time, and it makes me so much more tired than I already am.

We have friends who let their children stay up until they drop, then they put them into their beds. “You make it too hard for yourselves,” they say. “We just don’t pick that battle.” I don’t know how long ours would keep going if we let them make their own bedtime, but I value the feeling of everything squared away and everyone tucked in enough to push through the daily dose of small rituals that cannot be ignored.

Today was action packed, with warm sunshine that had the children out shooting targets with homemade bows and arrows, and tea-partying in their play house. They procrastinated on their chore lists because it was “too nice to work”. There were still a lot of things not scratched off the list when supper was over. I had resisted the urge to just do them quickly myself. Instead, I strolled along on Instagram for a while before I balanced the budget with the credit card statement. I too, have my stalling tactics. Then I cleaned the bathroom. The living room wasn’t vacuumed, but the person responsible insisted they would do it just as soon as it gets dark. I can make them feel guilty by picking up the slack, but again I resisted and just stayed in the kitchen, washing the big dishes that didn’t fit into the dishwasher.

After my shower tonight, I saw a text from my husband at work, saying that some friends have overripe produce for our pigs. I went to pick it up, but apparently it had already been cleared away, being so late and all, so I went to the gas station instead and filled up the tank on the Sub. When I got back the smaller boy still had not found his Sunday school book and the middle girl was still playing in the tub with her hair not washed and the small girl was weeping about everything because she was so exceeding tired.

We mired through drinks and teeth brushing and repeated trips to the potty, because “What if I pee myself in the night?” Unfortunately when it was time to crawl in, the bottom bunk needed a complete overhaul because Rita left her bunny on the bed for a few hours while she ran out to play. It is not house-trained and made an astonishingly large puddle that penetrated all the way to the waterproof mattress cover. I told them to strip it and tossed them a clean sheet, then went to the kitchen to wash the eggs that the late chore-boy had brought in. He finally did his vacuuming, a little apologetically. Ten minutes later the sheet was still not on, because the “corners are impossible” and there were meltdown tears (not mine, theirs) and another potty break.

Tonight the nightlight wouldn’t work and the water bottle was empty and I did not let them listen to My Story Hour because it’s Saturday. The teddies were in the wrong beds and the favorite blankets were in the laundry basket and the hugs got kind of shortened. I wish I knew how to make it all sweetness and light. Sometimes I see those illustrations of a child falling asleep while the parent reads them a story in the serene lamplight and I wonder… Since I am often on my own at night, I could use some tips. Do you make it fun? Have time limits? Discipline dawdling? Please tell me how you do bedtime. I am genuinely interested.

At any rate, we will be delighted to see each other in the morning, all fresh and basking in the new mercies that we count on every day.

A Chilly Story

Bob the Penguin

Bob the penguin lived on the ice. He was happy except for one thing. He only ate icicles, chopped icicles for breakfast, raw icicles for lunch, and minced icicles for supper.

Bob was tired of icicles. So he went to the sea. He looked into the water. Sudenly he saw something flash past then he saw it agian. After a while he jumped in and swam after it untill he caught it he then eat it. Because all the swiming made him huggry. And to his surprise it tasted good.

So for the rest of his life he eat fish.

-written by Olivia on a cold and blustery day

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(pexel free photo)

(Can you tell where she got tired of checking her spelling? 😉 )

(Also, Olivia hates fish. I find that doubly amusing.)

Thursday in the Life…

It was a thrill to look out at fairyland this morning after a restless night with a child who couldn’t sleep. Nothing is quite the same loveliness as a sticky snow.

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I packed my husband’s lunch, saw him out the door at 8, then dismissed my scholars for a late start at school, since we can’t seem to count on plentiful snowfalls anymore. It has tended to rain this winter, and the beauty of every surface outlined was inspiring for us all.

Our school started at 10, after morning chores, dishes, and a romp outside. I spent a few hours assembling my Usborne book stash for a party at school. Meanwhile my mom texted me to see if we want to come make donuts at her house. I ended up dropping the four younger children off with her while Alex helped me with my party.

The school children did a fundraiser where they got sponsors for a reading challenge: at least 30 minutes of reading a day for 2 weeks was the challenge. They blew me away with their diligence and tenacity in finding sponsors (suggested donation was 5cents a minute.) I promised prizes for anyone who got either 5 sponsors or raised $100. Out of 22 students, 14 of them hit one or both of those goals. The fun part was when the children got to make book choices equal to 25% of the funds they personally raised. It may have been a little chaotic for a bit, but there were root beer floats and salty snacks to tide over anyone who got tired of waiting while the book lady did the orders. 🙂

It took me until 4 PM to wrap that up, then Alex and I joined the others at my folk’s place for pizza. The donuts had happened while I was gone. I asked Mom if it was a little nerve-wracking, and she conceded that it may have been. Just a little. Ha. There is a reason I hardly ever make donuts.

We picked up our mess and came home at 6. The roads were still a bit slick in the back country, so I was going quite slowly, maybe 30 mph, when a deer with a death wish tore out and took a flip off the Suburban hood. Bummer. Now we have another crinkled dent and some broken plastic. The deer ran off, seemingly only stunned. I wouldn’t have minded butchering it and chewing it, but maybe tonight it was best if it did survive.

We had to attend to the animals and finish up the household stuff, like folding laundry. I had forgotten about my yogurt straining in a colander in the fridge, which means it was more like a brick than Greek yogurt. After I whisked some of the whey back in, it came out almost normal.

The children watched a movie while I entered the school children’s book order and got happy feelings about how much they will enjoy their rewards. Now I have a headache and sore shoulders, (it’s that deer’s fault) so I will hie me off to bed with some peppermint oil on my temples. If we are fortunate, my husband will be home soon! His shift is longer than mine.

Just another Thursday. Good night, all.

Growing up House-Humble

All those houses I lived in had two common things. We made do with what we had and they were home. Until we moved to PA, my parents moved about every 2 years from rental to rental until the new house was done, and then we only lived in it two years. When I look at it now, 30 years later, I realize that it is actually a very modest size compared to the norm for Amish homes. It was not extravagant in any way, except that the floors didn’t sag and the drywall was brand new.

Not once do I remember my mom consulting decorating magazines, to figure out how to make it a homelike place. I know she gave it a lot of thought and effort. She was always working on some project. She made her own curtains and throw pillows and even reupholstered our disreputable looking couch that still had a sturdy frame. The afghans were handmade and nobody worried if they “went” with the rest of the decor. They were for keeping us cozy when the cold winds blew, duh. We could use those afghans to make tents over upside down kitchen chairs and stretch them out as much as needed.

The only criteria for replacing a piece of household furniture was that it had to be thoroughly worn out. Think actual holes, broken springs, falling apart. We could do experiments on the table and not worry if something spilled or scratched a little. Nobody panicked when we tore around the house or bounced off the couch. In fact, our Saturday night tradition of playing bear with my dad and roaring around the house is among my fondest childhood memories. Sometimes stuff crashed off the walls, and mom would shake her head kind of helplessly until we wound down.

Oh, Mom was always cleaning windows and shining her cupboard handles and she ran a tight ship in the kitchen, with nourishment appearing at regular intervals. The mashed taters tasted just fine on the old-fashioned Correlle dishes with little green flower borders. We had to change our sheets every week and were not allowed to throw clothes or towels on the floor. Little things did matter, but it wasn’t so much for looks as for comfort or cleanliness. It was unloving to leave shoes right by the door for others to trip over, so we had to put them away.

Once we got invited to a fancy house for dinner. The lady was so kind and gracious, but she had deep plush carpets that were white, and her house really did look like Better Homes and Gardens. I felt anxious about breaking her China or ruining something the whole time we were there. I know it’s because we were little country bumpkins, but we were happy bumpkins.

Let me quickly say that I believe wholeheartedly in home-making. A house is a habitat, and the atmosphere in it matters. The attitude of the one making the home infuses whatever goes on in the house.

If the air is slovenly and muttery with unhappiness, it wafts around and affects the other inhabitants with its poison.
If the prevailing desire is for more and nicer stuff, the dissatisfaction permeates the home and nobody ever has enough.
If the homemaker is always fussing about not getting this dirty and not touching that fragile thing, the tenseness in the home drives the ones away that are supposed to feel at home there.

This is what I learned as I was growing up: Our houses served us. We didn’t serve them.

That long round-about way is just to give you permission, if you need it, to scorn the idea that your home isn’t right unless it is swathed in the latest of styles with a few pots of succulents on every sunny windowsill.

If your guests feel welcome and happy in your living space, they don’t mind if your carpets are a bit squashed down in high-traffic areas.
If you are glad of their presence and pour the coffee generously, they could care less that your mugs are all shapes and sizes.
If there are some cookies in the jar, your children don’t notice if the kitchen counters are made of concrete or granite or cracked formica.
If the little people are allowed to splash clean in the tub, that matters more than the towels matching the stripes in the shower curtain.
If you tuck the children in with hugs and kisses, I can guarantee that you won’t ever be accused of neglect because their dresser didn’t match their bed.

Because the story is only a little bit about the stuff and the rest of it is the relationships.

( free photo source:pexel. text:mine.)

Houses of my Childhood

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(painting by Grandma Moses)

When I was a tot, we lived in a tiny house that would probably be best described as a Kentucky shack. It was at the end of my grandparent’s lane and the only clear memory I have of that house, seeing we moved when I was about 2, is of my dad having to stoop a little when he came in the front door, and my mom washing dishes at the sink. All the people who really mattered in my life were right there.

The next house was an aging two story close to a rail road track, where my parents made their living with a barn full of brood sows. I have a few vivid memories of that house: the phone was a bright blue color with a long twisty cord. There was a dresser in the living room where I couldn’t reach my binky (Yes, you read that right. I remember my pacifier with fondness.) and I would stand there and beg at bedtime until my dad would get it for me. My older brother and I slept upstairs in a room that was small even for children. There was a heat register hole in the floor that chilled us with the possibility of a scary person we called Viola coming out to look at us while we slept. I remember that the wall paper was peeling and the floor boards were uneven. But my dad would pray with us and tuck us in, and all would be well. When the bottom fell out of the hog market in about ’81, we moved again. It had been so much fun to watch the trains go by. We missed that.

This time we lived in my grandparent’s basement for a while. I can still smell the damp of that basement and see the curtain-wall made out of an old blanket around our mattress. My brothers and I were big enough to bring the cows to the barn at milking time, but my uncles did all the other chores and we watched. When they sold out and relocated to Wisconsin, we moved upstairs into their house while my dad worked at a nearby pallet mill and built a new house just a mile up the road. My room upstairs was bright green, with matching curtains. My little sister’s crib was in my room, and she had a decal of a little sheep on the end of it. The attic steps were endlessly fascinating, the way they pulled out of a hole in the ceiling. Sometimes my mom would bring down a very special doll of hers out of the attic so that I could look at it and marvel at the beautiful clothes and shoes she still had for it, but it always had to go back up to the attic for safekeeping with the ladder folded and snapped shut. Right beside the carport there was a sprawling mimosa tree that I liked to sit in when it was fuzzy full of blooms. It was a good place to live, with mature shade trees all around.

It took a while for our new house to get built, since my dad did a lot of the work himself. It seemed palatial to my 7 year-old self when we moved in. There was a blue bedroom for the boys, a green bedroom for the girls, a lavender guest room, and the kitchen was a sunny yellow. It had an avocado green toilet, sink and tub in the one bathroom because a friend offered them at a discount. A local carpenter had made the cabinets, very simple and practical, with a bar at one end where I sat every day to have my hair braided while I fussed and winced about the pain. The floors were linoleum, a pattern with little rocks that was genius for hiding dirt. There was a walk-in pantry, which was the ultimate in kitchen luxury! Mom did the laundry in an attached wash house, in a wringer washer. We stored our canned goods in the basement, and once when I went down for a jar of applesauce, I stepped barefooted on a little frog and slipped sideways on the slick concrete. The dirt in our new garden was bright red clay and my mom struggled to get anything to grow well. We planted a row of little maple saplings, but the house stood alone on a little knoll. The best thing about it was the neighbors who had children our ages. We all walked to school together and hurried through our after-school chores so that we could play. Then they all moved away and our neighborhood felt lonely.

After two years, we moved too, this time all the way to Pennsylvania. It was a huge step for my parents, to leave the Amish community and step out in faith. What we children really wanted was a small farm, but our new “temporary” home was a summer cottage along a creek. The former owners had closed in a screened porch with walls of windows, at one end of which my brothers had a curtained corner, 8 feet by 8 feet. When it became obvious that we weren’t going to find a farm right away, my dad built a wall for their room. My sister and I had a bedroom with wooden louvers in the doors, and we had to be very careful about placing our furniture so that we could walk around the bed. The house had paneling with pictures of antiques in the dining area. The living room was just tan patterned panelling and the drapes were a novelty for us, with chains to pull them shut. There was a teeny kitchen with mirrored panels over the sink where normally there is a window. We made faces at ourselves while we washed dishes, until my mom pasted up an inspirational poster so that we could only see the edges of ourselves doing dishes. For the first time we had a microwave and we thought it the easiest way to make popcorn ever. We also had carpet, a luxury for folks fresh from the Amish. It was mottled brown and orange and smelled like dogs. My mom shampooed that carpet repeatedly before she let us lie on it. For some reason it didn’t occur to them to tear it out. When there was a huge flood that came within inches of flowing in our doors, my dad hired a man to jack up the house and lay blocks to put it out of flood plain. Dad built sturdy decks so that we could spend evenings outside and hang our wet swimming clothes on the railings.. We ended up living in that cottage 7 years until a farm needing a lot of TLC came on the market. It had been amazing to live right there by the water. Our spot was the kind of place where other people went on vacation.

We children were ecstatic at the prospect of each having a bedroom after renovations at the farmhouse, but that had to wait.We cleaned and painted and moved in. There was a wraparound porch with a few holes that needed to be patched, and then we hung a swing. The storm windows came out of storage with the cold weather, but even so the curtains would waft gently when the gales blew across the valley. When it was time to scrape old wallpaper and tear down walls, there was plenty of help, since all four of us were teenagers by then. We eventually all got our bedrooms and a new kitchen, this one designed by a professional cabinet maker. We had lots of room to have the entire youth group over, plus a cabin on the hill for cookouts or camping, or dates even. It is a place I remember with great fondness; it was the house where we came home to after short flights of independence. Things stayed the same there, our space was our own, and enough of it to share. I left for good when I got married at 24, and that was good too.

Tomorrow I will attempt to get to the point. 🙂 Hang in there.

Scribbling in Your Bible?

I am a terribly forgetful sort of person, which is why I put bags of things right beside the front door when I am supposed to take them somewhere, so that I practically have to stumble over them on my way out. I also mark stuff in books and put post-it notes of inspirational sayings beside the kitchen sink. I know a few geniuses who never forget the punchline to jokes and can quote verbatim the sentences that impressed them when they were reading. Not me. Sometimes I can hardly stand not being allowed to underline key passages in library books, because it is so much more clunky to take notes.

The discovery that they print Bibles specifically designed for journaling has changed my devotional life. It’s not really scribbling, but I don’t try to be profound in my notes to myself. The whole idea is kind of like the stones that the people of Israel took out of the middle of the river and piled on the riverbank. Every time they walked past them or stumbled over them, they were supposed to think about where they had been and where they were going and Who was taking them there.

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That is Bible journaling for me. If you have ever considered it, now is a great time to hustle over to Christian Book Distributors and check out their selection. They have a great sale on their Bibles today, with free shipping (use code SHIPBIBLES) on orders over $35. (This is pure sharing of the love. I am not being monetized in any way for this recommendation. 🙂 ) I have this one, because I love the English Standard Version for study.

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Bibles are not supposed to be ornamental. I take mine lots of places besides church. It has wrinkled pages from a leaking water bottle in a back pack, and I fear that coffee slopped on it once when I was rushing out the door in a hurry. A child wrote in it once and my pen developed a leak and spattered a page. Eventually I will get a new one and start fresh with marking the edge columns with the things the Spirit is showing me. I assure you, I would not remember half the things if I did not write them down. Those reminder ~~stone piles~~ markings give me courage and remind me of Who is in charge of the journey.

When I see my life as a story He is writing, and I parallel it with the stories recorded in the Word, it does wonders for my faith.

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I told you before about the pens I use, but just for love’s sake I will show you again what they look like. Maybe you are more of a colored highlighter sort of person, but these pens are fine point and enable you to write in tiny legible script. They come in different colors, so I had a bright idea and am using a different color each year, just as a sort of reference.

Why not do yourself a February Favor and order a journaling Bible today? (The sale and free shipping end today. Sorry to not give you more notice but I only just saw the promotional email myself.) Challenge yourself to find one thing to comment on each day in your readings, no matter how insignificant. I can assure you that it will invigorate your walk with Jesus, even if you aren’t a writer sort of person.

You are welcome. 🙂

Why We Grow Corn

Last summer I grew a new variety of corn for grinding into meal. It’s an heirloom variety called Bloody Butcher dent corn; the stalks were amazing, about 11 feet tall and the cobs were dark red. Only recently we shelled the corncobs that we managed to salvage from the squirrels. The kernals looked so pretty in their glass jar in storage, but they were decorative until I ground them into meal. Today for lunch we fried cornmeal mush to eat with eggs, and it tasted amazingly fresh, nourishing. (Buttery too. All THM folks may need to look away for a bit because it was a glorious mix of E and S.)

In my head I sometimes wish that the daily grind would be just pleasant aromas of coffee. I thought about this when I cooked that cornmeal. It wasn’t so pretty anymore, greyish with sprinkles of red, but it was in a form that has the potential to grow sturdy children and strengthen starving people anywhere in the world. That’s why we grew corn.

I would rather have life-giving qualities than pointless shelf life in a pretty jar, wouldn’t you? There are some relevant quotes that I copied a long time ago. Both were written by George Mueller. I think he knew what he was talking about.

“Self-denial…

not so much an impoverishment

as a postponement:

We make a sacrifice of a present good

for the sake of a future and greater good.

Whatever be done…

in the way of giving up,

or self-denial,

or deadness to the world,

should result from the joy we have in God.”

This second quote has ministered to me when I felt like I was pouring love and training and mercy into a child, yet the need wasn’t going away and the results were not instant like I wished. Why weren’t the prayers working, like they seem to for other people?

“One of the great secrets

in connection to successful service for the Lord

it to work as if everything depended

upon our diligence,

and yet not to rest in the least

upon our exertions,

but upon the blessing of the Lord.”

I need that restful place to live and work. No, I don’t get to quit my job and “just let God do it”. He expects me to keep on, to endure to the end. But He is really doing the work, and that is where the JOY comes in.

How my measly few kernels get ground into powder and turned into a source of life for others is His business, not mine.

All I have to do is submit myself to the grinding.

Top Picture Books My Children Love

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Occasionally I get emails from people wanting book recommendations. I know I have made these lists before and I have emailed many of them. They change a bit from time to time, but here’s a current one, starting with the little people. I believe staunchly that the best start to education is reading stories to our babies, instilling a love of words by looking at books with illustrations that capture their attention while you read the story.

I have a friend who said one of her children didn’t care if she read him gardening articles; he simply wanted to sit beside her and be read to. I am guessing that kind of child is rare. Ours look for the pictures, and sometimes there is so much crowding, “Move over! I can’t seeee, your hair is in the way,” etc, that I close the book and rearrange the crowd to more manageable positions.

When they are past the stage where they chew all their books, that’s when the fun really starts because the parent can enjoy this too. The best children’s books do not bore the reader any more than the listener. If you are reading Little Golden Books that make you want to pull your hair with their inanity, you should probably look further. Not knocking Little Goldens… I absolutely loved The Saggy Baggy Elephant as a child. And my own children loved Doctor Dan, the Bandage Man. They have their place, but some are distinctly sub-par and you shouldn’t be fooled just because of the gold wrapper on the spine.

What you want to look for in a picture book is content that engages the mind with ideas while the story is being told. Unfortunately, some children’s books simply tell. It’s not complicated. If you enjoy the plot, your children probably will. And then they will pick that book again and again until maybe you don’t enjoy it anymore, but by then they can “read” it to themselves from memory.

Here’s our list of books that I expect our children to collect for their own children some day.

One Morning in Maine
Make Way for Ducklings
Blueberries for Sal

All of those are by Robert McCloskey, and all are worth getting in hardcover, or in multiple paperback copies when they wear out. In fact, I have never met a McCloskey book I didn’t like. The stories are simple, charming, full of nature and caring for others. Most of the illustrations are beautiful pencil or pen sketches. (We used to make copies for the children to color.) All the stories contain clever little twists and masterful word play that I enjoy.

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

There are a lot of these books out there, all with variations on a theme of being happy with the life you have. The one we like the best is by Jan Brett. Her paintings can only be described as exquisite. When we go on walks in the woods, we speculate about holes in tree roots and which ones would make good country homes.

Abe Lincoln, the boy who loved books

This is a pint-sized biography with lyrical text by Kay Winters and really fun paintings by Nancy Carpenter. The story follows Abe’s love-affair with books throughout his early years and how this love changed our world forever. The concluding page has Lincoln sitting beside the fireplace at the White House, nose deep in a hefty tome, and these words:

“Abraham Lincoln- born in a log cabin,

child of the frontier, head in a book-

elected our sixteenth president!

From the wilderness to the White House.

He learned the power of words

and used them well.”

Little Bear
No Fighting, No Biting

These are two of Else Holmelund Minarik’s books, with illustrations by the famous Maurice Sendak. They are gentle stories, with bits of humor that tickle children and adults alike. No Fighting, No Biting has the exact scenario describing above, with children jockeying for the best seat at storytime.

The Biggest Bear

In my opinion, this is a book every child should have. Recently I discovered it in the attic with some other paperback books that I read hundreds of times to the boys and Addy was just as delighted as they were. There isn’t a lot of text, but it is such fun to read aloud.

Floss, Just Like Floss

The reason Kim Lewis can paint such amazing scenes with a sheepdog’s perspective is because she lives on a sheep farm in England. All of her books are works of art.

Moses the Kitten

Of all the Herriot stories for children, this is my personal favorite. We have the collection, but something about little coal black Moses suckling at the piglets’ milk bar is just wonderful.

Five O’Clock Charlie

This is such a compelling story about an old work horse who is still not done with adventure, even though he is put to pasture. Marguerite Henry is a master of horse tales, and as far as I know, this is the only one that is published for a younger audience than her line of chapter books.

Charlie, the Ranch Dog

I was delighted to find this book by the Pioneer Woman recently. She writes a rollicking good story and we look forward to more from her.

A Tale of Two Beasts

What? You didn’t think I would write a book list without including at least one Uzzie? 😀 Let me explain why we think this is such a great book. The story is told from the perspective of a little girl walking in the woods, when she sees a little beast and rescues it. Eventually it escapes back to its tree home and tells its side of the story, how it was kidnapped and made to endure all this horrid petting, etc. When the children are fighting and have many sides to a story, I ask, “So which beast are you?” No Amazon link for this one, but if you are interested, you can contact me. 🙂

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As you may have noticed, I am experimenting with links for Amazon’s affiliate program. I have never made anything on my product recommendations before, but if it helps make ends meet, I shall try it. I don’t like a lot of flashy ads, so we shall see. If you hate it, or I hate it, the links will disappear. 🙂

The Feelings

I looked at my list of the events of yesterday long and hard before I posted them. It was all true. The events actually happened, and they even looked neatly compartmentalized. So why, I asked myself, do my days feel so chaotic so often? Why don’t I feel like the dance is elegant? What was missing in the listing?

Ah, the feelings. Yes, the days are event-full. It’s one thing after another, “Just do the next thing“, which is the probably the most valuable lesson Elisabeth Elliot ever taught me. The thing that poses the challenge, though, is the feelings. Faithfulness does not depend on them, thank God! Neither does effectiveness. Actually, they don’t really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Think about the people Jesus commended for living their faith in Matthew 25. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me,
I was in prison and you came to me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

This sounds so simplistic, but it has helped me a lot to deal with the repetition of life as a homemaker/mother to settle in my heart that my feelings are not what matters. It isn’t about me at all. Oooh, ouch.

Yesterday I woke up and felt hurried because it was later than usual. I felt kind of bothered until we had breakfast over. I got interrupted by questions about 15 times during the course of the school day. The pencils dropped on the floor with annoying predictability. Olivia and the dictionary were not getting along amiably at all, and her frustration seeped over me. I dislike ironing and mending when I stop to think about it. When it was time to go for a guitar lesson, my son was in the barn and couldn’t hear me calling him. A few people at the supper table smelled like goats.

I felt good things too. Gregory’s poem, the perfect cursive “D”, the feeling that algebra is connecting in our heads, gratefulness to have my husband home in the middle of the week, the quiet hour of chatting with a dear friend, the scent of clean laundry, the symmetry of rows of brown eggs in boxes, sharing a love of reading aloud.

It all mashes together in an ordinary day, and I no longer gauge the success or failure of a day by how I feel at the end of it. Well, sometimes I do. I am not that far above the tumult yet, 🙂 but I take heart in offering it all to Jesus.

“This is my worship, Jesus. This meal, maybe just this cold cereal… I offer it to my people because I love them and I love you. If a pack of flashcards and the timer can bring you glory, then here they are. This squabble I settle because I value peace and You love peace. Please, redeem this mess that I made with my impatience. Forgive my stinging words and give me humility to apologize to my children. Help me to move on in grace.

This day with its imperfect beauty is for You, Jesus. I will give it everything I have, and depend on You when I don’t reach around and I simply don’t feel it. Please, will you accept my homely gifts?”

He has never told me that it’s not enough.

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(source)

Thursday in the Life…

…of an ordinary woman who tries to be faithful in that which is least, but mostly it’s just stuff that has to be done so her people don’t starve or join the anarchists.

7:30-9:00

Wake up with a start and realize that the midnight chat with your husband after brothers’ meeting has you off to a late start already. That’s all good, because you signed up for this flexibility when you decided to educate the kids at home.
Get dressed, fill the teakettle with water for coffee, start the cream of wheat cooking because fewer people fuss about that than oatmeal.
Read your Bible at the kitchen counter while you wait for the water to boil. Discuss the parable of the rich man and Lazarus with your husband. Press the coffee.
Ahhhh. Coffee.
Call the children. Direct the kitchen helper to make toast and set the table.
Blend a protein berry shake and eat breakfast.
Hand out morning chores to the children and finish your coffee.
Brush and braid little girls’ hair.

9:00-10:00

Send the older three children down to their desks to start their assignments.
Jot a quick note to a friend.
Wander through the kitchen and do a quick tune-up of crumbs missed on the countertops.
Wander into bathroom to brush teeth. Brush with right hand and do a counter wipe with left hand.
Dig wash out of the hamper where the short people can’t reach.
Go downstairs and sort laundry; start a huge load washing.
Settle at your desk and field questions; coach dictionary skills for the 3rd grader.
Organize the first grader’s papers and call her away from her drawing. Admire her picture of a farm, complete with canary cages on top of the rabbit hutches.

10:00-11:00

Teach first grader her 12’s addition and subtraction family. Work on her arithmetic until she can power along on her own with her worksheets.
Do speed drills; coach cursive writing.
Help the dictionary child again. Tell her brother to stop volunteering how to spell words. She is supposed to look them up!
Admire the poem the boy wrote and feel secretly amused because of how often he has protested that he doesn’t need to study Language since he will never be a writer.
Talk on the phone with Mom for a while.

11:00-12:00

Clean up the sewing area, (which is handily situated right next to the classroom) where a pile of mending converges with scraps from canvas slippers, stuffed foxes, and embroidery projects. Only the mending is yours; pull children one by one to clean up their own messes and send them promptly back to school.
Sew the L shaped tear in the flannel sheet. Alter the little girl’s Goodwill dress with some elastic in the huge neckline. Iron a patch onto the khaki cargo pants that are too nice to pitch.
Change the laundry loads, out of washer, into dryer, another huge load into washer.
Do some quick swipes with the iron and put it away.

12:00-1:00

Dispatch the son on kitchen duty to make quesadillas. Serve them with leftover chef salad.
Enjoy the sensation of all sitting around the table at lunch, chatting about the day.
Assign cleanup to the girls, since it’s just paper plates and forks anyway.

1:00-2:00

Take the boys back to class to finish up assignments.
Take your daily dose of algebra instruction. Find yourself pleasantly surprised at how it is starting to all make sense. Pinch yourself a little.
Quiz the 6th grader for his geography bee.
Change out loads of laundry again.

2:00-3:00

Sweep the kitchen floor before your sister-in-law gets to your house.
Sit and drink tea with your sister-in-law for a while. Snuggle the sweet little baby and chat about anything and everything.

3:00-4:00

Mix up a custard and put it into the oven.
Dress warmly and head out for a 30 minute walk.
Listen to The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias while you bask in the sudden rays that burst from the clouds.
Watch the turkeys in the field and the hawk soaring above it.
Wave at the neighbors.
Get home just in time to take the custard out of the oven. Scour the fridge for supper. No joy. Oh well, you have a plan.

4:00-5:00

Remind your son that he has a guitar lesson tonight.
Briefly connect with your husband and feel grateful that he is home so you don’t have to haul everybody across the mountain to the lesson.
Load up the milk jugs to fill at a friend’s place.
Stop for cheap cereal at the little discount grocery store en-route.

5:00-6:00

Drop your son off at the teacher’s house.
Browse at a nearby fabric store for the happy feeling it supplies.
Buy a lovely piece of twill with some Christmas money. Also white thread and black thread since the children have used up every scrap of it for their projects, which you didn’t know until you went to do mending and had to use bobbins and hope they wouldn’t empty before you were done.
Impulse buy a rusty tin sign that says, “Life is beautiful.” Because Christmas money.
Yawn and yawn on the way home. Listen as your son explains how spies can tell if someone is watching them by faking a yawn.
Arrive home to a surprise. The little girls have folded their laundry and vacuumed the living room. Praise them extravagantly.

6:00-7:00

Serve cereal for supper. Yup. Cold. Plenty of milk, plenty of Kix, and even some “chocolate frosted sugar bombs”. Everybody loves you.
Do dishes while your husband and sons finish the chores in the barn.
Fold the laundry that was too challenging for the girls to do.
Read stories to the little girls and record their reading challenge times for the day. Olivia: 2 hours. Rita and Addy: 1/2 hour.

Call it a day.