You Can't Have Too Much Pink

There's a girl in this house who loves pink.

And there's a little girl in this house who loves pink, too.

Shockingly, her Easter dress was blue with white polka-dots.

But everything else was pink.

And in this family, with all that pink comes an equal amount of blue.

Got Pink? Go HERE.

My Last Shred of Sanity

Because having two 3-year-olds just isn't enough...

Because teaching obedience, respect, and brotherly love to toddlers is so easy...

Because I love potty training...

Because my house is too clean...

Because I have so much time on my hands...

Because I wasn't sure what I was going to do with that last shred of sanity...

...we got a dog. A puppy, really.

And not just any run-of-the-mill puppy. Nope. We don't do things the easy way around here. Ever.

We got a pure-bred German Shepherd who will need lots of socializing, lots of exercise, and lots of training before reaching adulthood in order to prevent that weird German Shepherd syndrome. And yes, I'm sure some of you are shrieking and wondering why we would get a dog that eats babies. But after some research, we learned they don't actually eat people....even small ones. We learned the reasons why they turn out to be weird, hyper, and stupid dogs....much like the German Shepherds I remember from my past. They are typically a reflection of their owners....or at least the efforts their owners put into their training.

And because I am never weird or hyper, this will be easy.

And no. I'm not in a sarcastic mood today.

When the Rooster Crows

The palm branches are visible underfoot, trampled and bruised, but still bearing evidence to the entry of the King only a few days earlier.

In the excitement, in the hustle and bustle, in the movement of the mob, did anyone wonder why the King of all came not on a stallion or a Lexus or a Mercedes but rather chose to come in on a humble donkey?

As people squeazed close to get a look, to toss their branch, to lay their cloak; as emotions ran high and spines tingled, did anyone wonder what a commitment to follow this King might look like?

Yes it was joyous to praise the King when everybody was doing it, when it was trendy, when it was "in." But how many of the people who shouted "Hosanna!" and tossed their branches with the mob at the beginning of the week (John 12:12-13), shouted "Crucify Him!" and crushed the branches beneath their feet with the mob at the end of the week (John 19:5-16)?

How do I react to the King when He's not in fashion? Am I following Him, or am I following the mob?

And when the rooster crows, what regrets will I have? (Matt 26:33-35, 69-75)

In Search of Spring

Spring has been a bit illusive this year.

A few warms days one week. Snow the next. Icy winds. Precipitation falling from the sky in every conceivable form. And an endless string of days with no sunshine.

But despite winter's lingering grasp on us up here in the northern portion of the Midwest, we are slowly noticing some signs of spring.

Crinkled rhubarb leaves emerge from the deep dark depths. It's just a taste of all the gardening glory to come, and I'm trying. to. be. patient.

We are slowly shedding layers of clothing....and replacing them with layers of mud.

We're venturing to the park,

and venturing down the road...

...in search of spring.

Spring's out there. I promise. Go see for yourself HERE.

Reasons to Smile

Lots of reasons to smile around here now that spring has finally arrived.

Just being outside is reason enough to smile. And having almost all of our snow melt in about a week and half gives us even more reason. One 65 degree day and one 71 degree took care of the last of the snow, and since these photos were taken, the grass has started to green.

Ava is back to "treasure collecting," one of her favorite pass times, and that makes me smile.

Despite the mess of it all, mud makes us all smile. And muddin' out in the driveway with a motorcycle is worthy of lots of smiles.....and laundry.

Other reasons to smile? Strawberry plants arriving in the mail. My beautiful garden drying off. Wearing flip flops to town. The way the husband and I are agonizing over whether or not to get a dog - we have never been this commitment shy - it humors me.

for more smiles, click HERE

Real Life

It's been awhile again since I've sat here pecking away at the keys, logging life, finding beauty, making sense out of it all, and laughing at myself.

There's a lot I could say, catch up on, and remember.......

....but do you know?

Sping is here! I've been soaking it up, getting muddy and wind-whipped.

And a weird thing happened in the past few weeks. I spent a surprisingly greater amount of time with people, lots of different people and their kids, in the past couple weeks than with the blinking cursor.

I've been taking part in real life, and speaking of real life, I met my first blogging friend in person the other day. We weren't total strangers as I know her parents, but if it hadn't been for this cyber-world, we likely never would have had the reason to meet. She blogged about our morning together HERE, and it was such a pleasure to see her smiling face in person and to watch her adorable two-year olds. She's another mother of twins, and you can read about her adventures over at loving on you.

The rest of the real life I've been experiencing lately speaks for itself with this week's and last week's list:

I'm thanking God for:
#221. 4 sun-kissed faces sitting around the supper table
#222. cracking the window a bit during bedtime with the kids to lay and listen to the all swans camped out in our "back yard"
#223. toddlers re-discovering their little fenced in play area
#224. watching their adventures from the kitchen window
#225. Momma and Ava time watching an amazing high school production of Beauty and the Beast
#226. Daddy and Jack-Jack time playing working with tools and tractors
#227. the sweet smell of spring
#228. pushing, pushing, pushing toddlers in swings
#229. Ava singing, singing, singing while she swings
#230. the *squish* of the ground beneath mud boots
#231. snow melted off the garden!
#232. garden seed arriving in the mail
#234. grilling
#235. sitting on the deck reading a book
#236. the feeling of sun on bare skin!
#237. the endless chirping of so many birds
#238. the sound of the sliding screen door
#239. the sound of The Friend's piped out truck coming rumbling down the road
#240. so many little boys....do we realize, do I grasp that the next generation of men (and women) is playing at our feet and we're shaping them?

Book #2

The second book in my 5 in 5 project at church is (or I should say "was" - I'm currently trying to finish the 3rd book, and the 4th book is waiting! How the weeks fly by!) Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it by Ken Ham. Ken is the founder and president of Answers in Genesis, an organization specializing in Christian apologetics, particularly defending the accuracy of the historical accounts of creation as presented in the first few chapters of Genesis.

Compared to the first book I read for this project, this one was a page turner. The author started by telling us the bleak post-Christian state of Europe, explaining that in a matter of only 2-3 generations, the European Church went from a vibrant, authentic group of believers to nothing more than a shell, only a small remnant.

Convinced that many things point towards the same thing happening in America, Ken conducted a survey with the help of a respected research company surveying 1000 20-something year olds that grew up in the church attending Sunday school but now no longer attend church. He wanted to find out why these people left the church and what their current beliefs are.

The results were a bit surprising and seemed to point out that Sunday school as we currently know it isn't working. The Church is quickly losing relevancy in America, and Ken proposed some radical explanations for this.

A verse spoken by Jesus from the Gospel of John was frequently quoted throughout the remainder of the book. I apologize for not having the exact reference at the moment, but from memory it reads like this:

If they won't believe Me about earthly matters, how will they believe Me about heavenly matters?

This became the center of Ken's argument to back up the book's thesis that the first and most important step in restoring relevancy not only to the Church but also to Christianity is to reclaim the absolute authority of the Word of God. The Old Testament is not just a collection of nice stories. You can't just take the gospel of Jesus Christ from the Bible and allow everything else to be interpreted as is most accepted and tolerated by science and society. Ken gave convincing evidence that the European Church's decline began when church officials allowed Darwin's ideas of evolutionism and the subsequent Old Earth (the idea that the earth is millions of years old) theory to be accepted as possible truth in conjunction to the Biblical account. A compromise was formed by the church when they proposed that maybe those 6 creation days mentioned in the first chapters of Genesis were not just simply six 24 hour days but could possibly be longer and thus this could help explain the supposed millions-of-years old earth.

Basically, if we won't take God at His word in Genesis, how can we take God at His word in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John?

The author spent a good portion of his book reinforcing his idea that another part of the problem is that the church leaves science -biology, geology, palaeontology, etc- up to the public schools. When kids reach middle school they begin to, even if unknowingly, face an internal conflict. Their science teachers, who look professional and wear lab coats and give convincing evidence that evolution and the Old Earth Theory is fact, seem to have a practical grasp on the real world. Then, when Sunday school rolls around, however enjoyable it may be, the poor child is exposed yet again to another cutesy portrayal of Noah's ark with adorable cartoon figures and happy little giraffes and elephants poking their heads out of an over-sized bathtub. This worldwide flood, which explains so many things like fossil fuels, sedimentary layers, and the division of continents, is reduced to the equivalent of Disney's Finding Nemo. The child questions the truth of these stories, seeing that the schools have evidence and the church has cartoon characters. The authority of the Word of God is slowly eroded in this little person's heart. They begin to see school as the place to go to learn and prepare for the real world and church as a place to go to address more abstract and less tangible ideas of morality and spirituality.

If the church, parents, and Sunday school teachers were a bit more armed with solid Christian apologetics (i.e. Why do we believe what we believe? How do we know the Bible is infallible and not just another great religious book?), we could begin to restore relevancy to the Word of God and the Church.

The Hands & Feet

It's humbling when you walk around your home and yard and realize just how much another person has done for you, joyfully and selflessly.

And it hurts to watch that person hurt and face uncertainty. So you pray and pray and make food and send texts and visit and ask God to show you how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to these people you suddenly realize you care very much for.

Then you stand by in amazement as God answers prayer and performs miracle after miracle. And as only God can do, He brings beauty out of ashes - a deepening friendship with not just the one brunette and her husband but the other brunette and her husband, too.

After all this, you find yourself standing in a warm, pleasantly crowded church fellowship hall holding a gallon of milk and two carafes of coffee. You've filled cups and cleared plates and given cups of cold water. You look around at the community you are a part of........finally. Finding your place here took more than half a decade. You came here and everybody already knew everything about you - your husband, his background, his family, where you had gone to college, where you had lived. Their names you knew from wedding invitations and thank you notes and church directories and work schedules, but connecting all the faces took years. They knew you but they already had their own family circles and friend circles, and everybody is related to everybody.

The milk carton sweats in your hand and you are acutely aware of your right bicep supporting the weight of regular and decaf coffee. Each table in the room is adorned with the cross of Christ in preparation for Easter. Each cross is draped with a purple cloth, the color symbolizing His royalty, the wooden cross symbolizing the ultimate price. A pile of large ugly nails lay next to each cross, the nails that were driven into His hands. The King of all came down to be the Servant of all. And as the room bubbles around you, it isn't difficult at all to make out the hands and feet of Jesus, right here, right now.

You see them in the plaid clad cook, calmly preparing a meal for the expected 500 people.

You see them in the benefit coordinator, the aunt of The Friend, who stuck her head out there and said, "I'm doing this" and watched a flood of community support rise up around her.

You see them in the guy wearing the pink polo pouring milk and coffee. "Whoever gives a cup of cold water..." 

You see them in the guy wearing the yellow polo taking his table-clearing duty almost a bit too seriously.

You see them in the grandpa playing with the grandson in the pink polo like his dad, the adorable little boy who always has someone vying for his attention. "Whoever welcomes a child like this..."

You see them in the neighbor spending 2 hours in the steamy kitchen doing the most thankless job - washing dishes.

You see them in your husband cutting bars, buttering buns, laughing with customers friends, serving food with Mr. Pink Polo and Miss Boots 'n' Jeggings.

You see them in Miss Jeggings (who has now shed the boots) vacuuming, vacuuming, vacuuming.


Then there's The Friend, the coiner of the phrase, "I don't want to be possessed by my possessions." All this reciprocity, all this measuring back for him.

Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.  Luke 6:38

More counting today; so much of God's goodness; so much happiness in giving....

Linking up over HERE.

#207. the free will offering basket, pressed down, shaken together and running over
#208. the privilege, yes the privilege, to serve with all the others at the benefit
#209. kids having fun with Grandma while Momma and Daddy spent the day at the benefit
#210. a girls night with the brunettes
#211. three 3 year-olds together here all day
#212. playing with riding toys in the mud
#213. a pink pedal tractor
#214. taking pictures with a "real" camera (even though it belonged to someone else)
#215. finishing books
#216. homemade buttermilk brownies
#217. all the "thank-you's".....responding with "really, it was my pleasure"
#218. remembering the first Bible verse I memorized
#219. teaching it to my kids
#220. singing the verse to my kids before bed, that melody my favorite song as a child, watching them hushed and listening intently

Book #1

I was asked by our church to participate with a group of individuals in reading 5 books over 5 weeks. Then, apparently, this group will meet and discuss ideas regarding....something....maybe children's ministry? Or maybe a more wholistic approach; what could be coined "family ministry?" To be honest, I'm not really sure. Either way, I said yes to the project because I've never really been able to say "no," and you know what? I'm glad I said yes. I'm loving these books so far. I feel challenged and inspired and informed, and if nothing else, I think I may be just a little better of a parent because of all this reading.

But on that note, reading a book in a week is currently challenging for me. Even though I've set aside the other two books I'm personally reading, and even though these books are "quick reads" and under 200 pages, it's still a big task for me - finding time, finding quiet space, remembering the few sentences I read in between interruptions, etc.

The first book I was given, Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions by George Barna, had enough statistics in the first few chapters to kill a horse. I appreciate the decades of research the author has performed, but his writing style was very scientific and, well...brutal. It took sheer determination for me to turn each page, but I got through it and I'm very glad I did.

The basic premise of the book is that children matter and should be placed at a very high priority by the Church. If children aren't reached with and personally affected by God's truth at a young age, the chances of them embracing a biblical worldview later are slim - not impossible, because nothing is impossible with God, but statistically slim.

The author then turned the tables a bit, directing his attention and thesis style writing on parents. He made a very strong biblical case for what most of us know, parents are called by God to be their children's spiritual teachers. It's not the Church's job, although the Church does right in assisting, coaching, and encouraging. And it's not gonna happen by default because our trendy, humanistic, and self-centered culture is a very strong foe of the biblical worldview.

I get this. I know this. I feel this. I have a sense of the large-ness of this God-given task. And I try....and seemingly fail....and I try.....and seemingly fail.....and I try, try, try.

For me, this is the point where Barna brought it home. Whether it be me at home with my kids, whether it be my husband and I crammed in a little Sunday school room with a dozen 2-4 year olds, or whether it be church administration deciding what theme to have for Vacation Bible School, the spiritual training of children needs to be addressed intentionally. (There's that word again.)

Instead of throwing a bunch of cute Bible stories out there and hoping something sticks, Barna proposes setting goals, learning objectives if you will; identifying what's worth teaching our children, what's gonna put them on track for developing a biblical worldview. And at the core of intentionality is evaluation: what's working, what's not working, what can we do better?

I really wish I still had the book in front of me because there was a couple sentences that struck me. I've already given the book back to church and am working my way through the second book so I will attempt to paraphrase:

Think about the plan that you have for your sales calls, housekeeping, meal prepartion. You wouldn't think of going about such things without a plan. Isn't your children's spiritual training worth just as much, and more, preparation, planning, and intentionality?

I'm not entirely sure what is the best way to strategically address my children's spiritual training. I'm always trying something......and always wondering if I'm doing enough or doing it "right." I feel inadequate. And you wanna know the dirty secret about being intentional?  It's exhausting.  But here's what I tell myself: I'm exhuasted anyway. Why not be exhausted for the right reasons?

To finally wrap up this wordy post, I have to "quotes" from my Mother-in-law:

God didn't call you to be successful. He called you to be faithful.

God doesn't call the equipped. He equips the called. (In my words, God didn't give my husband and me these precious kids because we have what it takes to raise them up to be Godly citizens.  God will give us what it takes to raise these kids because He gave us these kids.)

The Wink

I have big goals for today.

My list includes grocery shopping in the "big city" an hour away in one direction and picking up the meat we had processed in the little town 15 minutes away in the other direction.....and all of this with the kids in tow. Plus, I want to stay on top of my usual Monday tasks.

One short little paragraph, just a few words, adds up to a big day for this mom.

But I will not be so short-sighted as to miss God's winks today.

Winks? 

Yesterday in church, our worship director shared a short devotional written by the president of Youth for Christ. I tried to find the actual devotion online but couldn't. I am assuming it could be found in THIS BOOK that has this great description:

FRAGMENTS Pieces of everyday life. The seemingly mundane and normal. But....what if you viewed the fragments of life with a divine perspective? You would be amazed to discover how God uses moments throughout your day to encourage, challenge, teach, and draw you closer to Himself.

In this book, you'll find yourself inspired by Dan's ability to connect The Almighty and His divine plan with the fragmented occurences of life. Work, marriage, family, and play all provide a unique perspective on life and relationship to God. Dan's honest reflections and confessions will challenge you to see how God is already at work in your life.

Anyway, the simple devotion talked about how this busy president would catch his wife's eye across a room during a gathering. Their eyes would hold for a second and she would wink, telling him without words that she was holding him in her heart. In a similar way during hectic days, he learned to notice God's "winks" at him - wordless moments in the day where he knew God was expressing His love. A brilliant sunset, a baby's innocent stare at the grocery store - just little things that this man learned to see as evidence of God's love for him.

This is not deep theology here, nothing earth-shattering here.....although God's love for us did nearly shatter the earth when Jesus hung on the cross, took his last breath, and the earth shook, tearing the veil to the Holy of Holies in half, allowing us all to experience the presence of God. (Matt 27:50-51)

God's love for us is bigger than we can fully grasp, being ultimately displayed in His Son dying the worst of deaths for us. Yet God is also intimately personal, expressing His love in a million little ways every day.

I'm on a journey to find just 1000 of those things.

So I'm counting a few of His winks today:

#201. a family walk on a springy Sunday afternoon ("springy" being used in it loosest sense here)

#202. watching the joy of tots throwing rocks in ditch water

#203. much less snow that a week ago!

#204. a cooler week to slow the melt down and reduce/prevent flooding

#205. mud!

#206. grass starting to peek through the snow!