Stray Thoughts and Links

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  • I can’t seem to get enough sleep this week. I don’t know if it is “recovery” from the holidays and a busy last week or what. Well…it might have something to do with staying up too late and then getting up at the regular time to get Jesse off to school. 🙂 But even then, on Wednesday I took a good nap in the afternoon and still dozed off a couple of times in church (sorry, Pastor — nothing personal!!)
  • I was looking forward to getting some other obligations done last week and then having most everyone back to school and work this week so that I could really dig in and get some things done. But with feeling sleepy — and unmotivated — and spending too much time at the computer — and not being able to decide which project to start — that didn’t quite happen. I did make a to-do list and have most of it crossed off, but didn’t get to some of the things that have been reentered on multiple to-do lists for months that I was hoping to tackle this week. I plan to get myself in gear, though.
  • I had my first MIRL this evening! That’s “meeting in real life” of another blogger. Actually, Ann of From Sinking Sand and I knew each other back in college but lost touch over the years, then rediscovered each other online. She lives about an hour away, and our respective Christian schools played each other in basketball tonight, so we got a chance to catch up with each other.

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Here’s some interesting reading from the last few weeks:

  • A Common Room, whom I seem to be quoting a lot these days, wrote about the difference between being against fornication yet supporting the choices of an unwed mother. One quote from it: “To me, an unmarried mother is a reminder to honor and say a special prayer of blessing for her and for those like her who make incredible sacrifices, sacrifices of pride, of financial standing, of self, in order to do the right thing and give the baby the gift of life instead of trying to hide the evidence of their fornication by dismembering that small human being in the womb.”

I don’t get political too often here, but wanted to share these few things:

On the crafty front:

  • I love these crocheted hearts. I can’t crochet and don’t know what I’d do with these if I had them but they’re sooo cute.
  • So are these felt heart ornaments. I am trying to think of other ways they could be used besides ornaments so I don’t have to wait til Christmas to hang them if/when I make them.
  • I might give this heart wreath a try — only in pink, of course.
  • Love this button tree.

Have a great weekend!

Whose life is it, anyway?

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It’s interesting how God brings something to my attention just as I need it. I had just been chafing under an area of service to another, a particularly minor service, when Michelle’s post about serving the Lord with gladness convicted me. That led me to thinking about serving one another in love. Then last night in Joy and Strength I read the following:

Let every one of us please his neighbor for his good.
ROMANS 15:2

Let us consider one another.
HEBREWS 10:24

LOOK around you, first in your own family, then among your friends and neighbors, and see whether there be not some one whose little burden you can lighten, whose little cares you may lessen, whose little pleasures you can promote, whose little wants and wishes you can gratify. Giving up cheerfully our own occupations to attend to others, is one of the little kindnesses and self-denials. Doing little things that nobody likes to do, but which must be done by some one, is another. It may seem to many, that if they avoid little unkindnesses, they must necessarily be doing all that is right to their family and friends; but it is not enough to abstain from sharp words, sneering tones, petty contradiction, or daily little selfish cares; we must be active and earnest in kindness, not merely passive and inoffensive.

There is no author listed for the quote: under it is just “LITTLE THINGS, 1852.”

Selfish as I am, I have to be frequently reminded my life is not my own. It’s His, and often serving others is serving Him.

Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. Ephesians 5:1-2.

Booking Through Thursday: The Best?

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The weekly Booking Through Thursday question for today is:

It’s a week or two later than you’d expect, and it may be almost a trite question, but … what were your favorite books from 2008?

(It’s an oldie but a goodie question for a reason, after all … because, who can’t use good book suggestions from time to time?)

The Bible. I really mean that: I’m not trying to sound trite or cliche or “spiritual.”

As far as other regular books go — I always have trouble with superlatives, but I’ll try to name one in each category:

Instructional:

Winning the Inner War: How To Say No to a Stubborn Habit by Erwin Lutzer, about…exactly what the title says, reviewed here.

Non-fiction:

Mistaken Identity by Mark Tabb, about a girl who was misidentified after an accident, reviewed here.

Classic:

Hard to choose between The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, reviewed here, or Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, reviewed here.

Christian Fiction:

Stepping Into Sunlight by Sharon Hinck, about a woman who experiences panic attacks after witnessing a violent crime, reviewed here.

My whole list of books read in 2008 is here.

You can find more answers to this question and join in with your own at the Booking Through Thursday site.

When children’s beliefs and practices differ from ours

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When you work with young people, whether as a parent, teacher, or just another adult with some influence in a particular child’s life, there comes a time when you’re dismayed to discover the child has a mind of his or her own and is not afraid to use it. 🙂 Of course we want our young people to develop and use their minds, but when they take views opposite to ours sometimes we wish for the “easier” days when they agreed with everything we told them and our primary care of them was physical (though at that time we longed for the days ahead when our kids could take care of themselves more.)

Let me encourage us to, first of all, keep the lines of communication open, and second of all, to choose our battles. I sometimes wince at that last phrase because I have seen some parents use it when they abandon training their children in some area that the child is resisting. But there are some areas of difference that are fine and just expressions of different personalities. For instance, if you like pastels and florals in your decorating, but your daughter likes dramatic colors and modern abstract patterns, that’s fine. God gave us different personalities to reach different people.

It’s a little harder when it comes to different convictions. We may hold strong views on courtship vs. dating or schooling or entertainment choices or any number of things, and we see signs that our children are not going to maintain those views in their adulthood. Romans 14 applies within families as well as within the church. I had to really wrestle with some of these things when we lived out of state and could not find a church that held to some of our convictions, though we found many with whom we agreed doctrinally. Unity in Christianity doesn’t mean we all do everything the exact same way. Roman 14 and related passages teach that good people can be on complete opposite sides of an issue and still be right with God, still doing what they do as unto the Lord, fully persuaded in their own minds that what they are doing is what He wants. So we need to discern whether the issue involved is a matter of core doctrine and truth or whether it is an issue that good people can disagree on. If the latter, as parents, teachers, authorities. or mentors, we can still insist that a certain standard be maintained in our home or classroom, but we don’t need to regard the young person with the differing conviction as a second-class Christian or as out of the will of God.

Still harder and scarier is when the young person does begin to question our core values, doctrines, and beliefs. Let me encourage us all not to shut down the questions. The first fundamentalist pastor I had was an old-school authoritarian who not only did not entertain questions but looked on the questioner with suspicion as a rebel. Even as adults we can sometimes wrestle with questions like “How do I know this is all really true?” I’ve often prayed for myself as well as my children, when those kinds of questions come up, that if there are answers, the Lord would help us find them, but also help us to be willing to take by faith what there are no answers for. One of the best messages I have ever hear along these lines was “God Is Wise and We Are Not” by Dan Olinger of the BJU faculty. I like that he says “God is able to handle our questions.” He doesn’t always answer them the way we’d like. But He’s not intimidated by them. And, honestly, I’d much rather have a young person wrestle through some of these things and truly make their beliefs their own and come out the stronger in their faith for it than to be swept along in a positive peer pressure without knowing why they believe what they believe.

The hardest of all, though, in this progression of differences between our beliefs and our young people’s, is when they outright reject truth. The Common Room a few weeks ago shared some remarks that started off my whole line of thinking here. The context of the remarks she has that I want to share had to do with a child of friends who was marrying someone the parents did not approve of. I’ve seen parents handle things the way she describes, a way that will make reconciliation all the harder, if not impossible, and I felt her thoughts here to be valuable:

I wrote last year about an unhappy wedding we attended (and that wedding has already ended), and while I wrote it specifically about a situation where a rebellious and wayward young person was marrying somebody most unsuitable, the general principles apply to several situations, and I’m reviving it slightly for this post:

I am seeing an awful lot of defrauding going on- and it’s the parents defrauding their children.

The time to raise objections, to point out possible character flaws, to object to a relationship that you believe may be toxic- even if you are right, dead on target, and absolutely correct in all your judgments is before there is a relationship to cloud judgment, before saying these things will cause a fatal wound in your child’s relationship with you, and especially if you allowed that relationship to develop in the first place.

Do not let your most fondly cherished hopes and dreams for how your child’s marriage will happen… come between you and your adult Progeny, whether they share those hopes and dreams or crush them under foot.

I have conservative views on mating, dating (we don’t believe in it) and courtship, views shared by my husband happily, still shared by our Progeny- but those views are not more important to us than our children themselves.

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love….

All my earnestly held beliefs in the world will not matter a fig if I conduct a slash and burn policy towards a wayward child and use my convictions as an axe against the root of our relationship in such a way as to drive my adult son or daughter away from me. In fact, in several instances I can think of, parents have attempted to bludgeon adult children into compliance with their own cherished convictions, only to see that weapon shift in their hands and become a catapult which only serves to launch that young person as far away from his parents as possible, often into the arms of any waiting other.

It is possible to speak winsomely and gently of those convictions, to explain them sweetly when leavened well with humility.

But too often we prefer to pontificate proudly and strut and huff and puff about them, sure that we are producing a new breed, if only that breed will shut up and get in line, we mean, obey their spiritual heads, and then it is of no matter how pleasing to God the convictions themselves may or may not be, our hearts are poisoned in His eyes, and we are acting in such fashion as to poison any future relationships with unsaved in-laws and grandchildren.

It is a tragedy to see parents angrily but sincerely pleading, insisting, that their children return to the fold, something they truly desire with all their hearts, while all the time they are pleading, they are pouring gasoline on the bridge between them and their loved ones and then setting it afire.

There are times we do have to take a painful stand. But we need to remember that some of God’s tenderest expressions of love, some of the times He most reveals His heart for His people, are in those passages in the prophets where He is having to confront them with their sin. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” applies to loved ones as well as to strangers — perhaps even more so. The purpose of chastisement is reconciliation. We need to avoid destroying the relationship and making it all the harder for the young person to return to the fold while standing for truth. Let us not burn the bridges but rather, like the prodigal son’s father, gaze with anticipation down a clear path while we wait for their return.

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(Photo courtesy of the stock.xchng)

Works For Me Wednesday: Couponing once a month

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I have a love/hate relationship with coupons. Well…mostly hate. It seems so tedious to cut them out and file them, then most of the time I forget them before heading out to the store. So from time to time I sort through my coupons and toss out the expired ones and cringe thinking of the money I could have saved.

I was going through this ritual a week or so before the end of December when I decided to pull out all the coupons expiring at the end of the year to see if I could use them. I found many for grocery items I regularly bought, some $1 or more off, some for goods that I didn’t need yet but would use soon. I decided this time to shop around the coupons. I ended up saving $12 at Wal-Mart (where we usually but toiletries anyway because they’re cheaper and where I used the $1 off coupons that the grocery store would not double) and about that much again at the grocery store (which doubled coupons under a certain amount). That certainly provided motivation!

I decided that might be the better way to use coupons: instead of trying to deal with them every week and failing, it might be easier to go through them once a month and pull out all the ones expiring within the next month, and shop for those items whether I need them just then or not.

There is a limit to this as we don’t have a lot of storage space. Because of that I still avoid coupons where you have to buy an abundance of one product, and I avoid those requiring a complicated assortment as just taking too much time. But overall this method works much better for me than what I had been doing.

For an abundance of workable tips, visit Rocks In My Dryer most Wednesdays.

Quirky, random, and/or little known facts about me

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Before the holidays I saw a meme going around to list seven things about oneself — one had little-known things, one had weird or quirky things, one had random things. I can’t remember if anyone tagged me (and if so, forgive me, I’ve forgotten who) or if I just thought it might be fun to do. But I’m combining all these various types of facts into one list.

1. In the “You might not know…” category, I seem outwardly to be a mild-mannered librarian sort (I actually was a librarian in college), but I can be very competitive in games. Not cutthroat — but competitive. At least in games where I have some kind of skill.

2. Speaking of games, in the “quirky” category, I seem to have a penchant for getting three “I’s” in Scrabble trays, whether the board game, computer game, or Facebook games.

Scrabble trays

When I started noticing it, I began taking pictures. These are just 9 out of 17, and that’s just from the time I started taking pictures of them — who knows how many times it happened before that. Weird, huh?

(By the way, thanks to my blog friend Ellen, The Happy Wonderer, for telling me how to do collages. She often has great ones on her site. She told me if you use Picasa 3, there’s a button on the toolbar for collages….and there it was! Duh! I had never even noticed, but I was happy to learn something new today!)

3. I don’t like most flavored drinks, like different flavors of tea or coffee. Saves me a bundle at Starbucks, but I do feel sometimes I’m missing out on a cultural phenomenon.

4. I like iced tea (unsweetened, decaf), but not hot tea. I wish I did — it would add to the variety of warm drinks available in cold weather. But the smell makes me almost nauseous.

5. I don’t like angels. Well, the real angels, yes — they have a vital role in God’s kingdom, but not most art and craft depictions of them. Most are usually feminine or cutesy, far from how Scripture portrays them. If I am going to have angels in art, I want them this way:

guido-reni-archangel-michael1

(Archangel Michael by Guido Reni, courtesy of Art.com, here depicted in a battle against the devil.)

6. I don’t know how to type — not the correct way. In fact, in college, where most girls typed their boyfriends papers in the days before computers made such things so much easier, my boyfriend (now husband) typed mine. I mainly use my two index fingers, but I have kind of developed my own method. (Although, now that I actually observe myself typing, seem to use my two longest middle fingers the most.)

7. I haven’t figured out Sudoku. But then I have absolutely no desire to. I probably should exercise that part of my brain more.

If you’d like to share six quirky, random, and/or little known facts about yourself, consider yourself tagged!

Blue Monday

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Smiling Sally hosts a Blue Monday in which we can post about anything blue — pretty, ugly, serious or funny — and then link up to other Blue Monday participants.

This is one of my favorite “blue” pictures:

Jesse in hamper_001

Several years ago when we were home schooling, I had the boys more involved in the everyday housework. I had them bring their hampers from their upstairs bedrooms downstairs to the laundry room when it was time to do laundry. At some point after the clothes got dumped out, Jesse would often climb in one of the hampers while one of the other boys put another on top. It was just one of those weird but fun things that somehow got started that became part of the routine they looked forward to.

New Year’s Prayer

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Another year is dawning
With the chance to start anew.
May I be kinder, wiser, Lord,
In all I say and do.

Not so caught up in selfish gain
That I would fail to see
The things in life that mean the most
Cost not a fancy fee.

The warm, kind word that I can give,
The outstretched hand to help,
The prayers I pray for those in need–
More precious these than wealth.

I know not what may lie ahead
Of laughter or of tears;
I only need to know each day
That You are walking near.

I’m thankful for this brand new year
As now I humbly pray,
My hand secure in Yours, dear Lord,
Each step along the way.

-Author unknown

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Hope

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Theme: Hope| Become a Photo Hunter

Hope plaque

The verse on this plaque is Romans 12:12: “Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing steadfastly in prayer.”

I’m glad my hope is in the Lord.

My hope is in the Lord Who gave Himself for me,
And paid the price of all my sin at Calvary.

Refrain:
For me He died, For me He lives,
And everlasting life and light He freely gives.

No merit of my own His anger to suppress.
My only hope is found in Jesus’ righteousness.

And now for me He stands Before the Father’s throne.
He shows His wounded hands and names me as His own.

His grace has planned it all, ‘Tis mine but to believe,
And recognize His work of love and Christ receive.

(Words and music by Norman J. Clayton)

Friday’s Fave Five

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Susanne at Living to Tell the Story hosts a “Friday Fave Five” in which we share our five favorite things from the past week. Click on the button to read more of the details.

1. A quiet week. I love the Christmas season, but it was nice to have a quiet week at home. Both our New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day were pretty much quietly spent at home except for…

2. Going out for dessert New Year’s Eve. Our church had its usual midweek service on Wed. night. Our pastor doesn’t believe in “watchnight” services, and I am so glad. In the past when we’ve attended such things I’ve either fought sleep (especially when they show a film) or been cranky. Then I don’t like driving home after midnight when the alcohol-impaired party revelers are on the road. But on the way home after church my husband impromptuly (is that a word?) suggested going out for dessert. The service was veeerry slow, though the waitress was nice. But I thought at the time how much I enjoy being able to go out with near-adult children now and have such a good time talking and laughing. And we were still home by 10.

3. Inventory sale at my Christian bookstore. Actually I was quite perturbed with them when I stopped by about 5:20 Tuesday afternoon to get a 2009 calendar only to discover they had closed for inventory at 5 — and perturbed at myself because I had left that at the end of my errands that day: if I had gone there first, I would have made it. But, when I went back today, I got a whole new stack of books, some 40% off, some 60% off, on their clearance tables. There were some titles and authors I had seen mentioned often around blogland that I wanted to try, and I was glad find some of their books on clearance.

New books!

Add this stack to my TBR stack I posted a few days ago — and I’m going to be busy for a while!

The top one by F. B. Meyer isn’t one I have seen around blogland, but I have been wanting to read something of his. I keep seeing him referred to in other biographies I read.

4. Finding this plaque at the Christian bookstore — not on clearance, but I had a 20% off coupon! I’ve been looking for decorations for the family room with blues and tans and browns, and I love plaques with Scripture.

5 plaque

5. Filling in a new calendar. I take the old calendar and go through month by month to find the birthdays and anniversaries to record on the new calendar. I enjoy that quick look back over the events of the last year and looking at all those fresh, blank pages of the new year. It reminds me of Dr. Bob Jones. Sr., saying, “There are no stains on the pages of tomorrow.”