Happy Half-Birthday!

Lily (my god-daughter) is now FOUR and a HALF!

And I'm tickled because she sent me a "happy happy happy Epiphany" picture yesterday. Oh boy!

Today's Laugh

It can be interesting to live with a person who has central auditory processing disorder. The standard definition of dyslexia is that the letters on the page seem to jumble around in whatever order. Well, CAP disorder is when the sounds jumble around in the brain. Sometimes things come out of Maggie's mouth that are confusing, sometimes funny, but usually something that we can puzzle out as to what she means. And if we don't get it, on the second or third try, the correct word will often pop out of her mouth, and then we're all good to go.

So today I'm dishing up bean soup for lunch. And Maggie says, "I only want a funeral."


Huh?
A funeral?
She wants a funeral?
Who died???

I question her. Again, she only wants a funeral. As soon as I said the word back to her, the right word came to mind: she only wants a spoonful.

She and I both laughed.

But when you think about it, over half the sounds in those words are the same, so I can see why it happened. But of course one of the brothers had to toss out, "Funeral? What? I know you don't like bean soup very much, but it's not like Mom put poison in it!"

Movies

In the first 24 hours after church on New Years Eve, Gary and I watched four movies. Is this a harbinger of laziness and increased tv-addition in the new year?

This was the third time I watched Return to Me, and I like it better every time. The first time I watched it, I was just following the plot. The second time I was still a little weirded out by how the animals reacted to the heroine in the story. But this time I just thoroughly enjoyed the jokes and the relationships -- especially all the old guys. I also noticed that this story is a good example of a nice balance between dating and courtship, and how a person is marrying into a whole family and not just the one person.

Circumcision

In today's collect we pray that God would grant us the true circumcision of the Spirit that our hearts may be made pure from all sins. In some of the hymnody for today, we sing, "Lord, circumcise our heart, we pray, and take what is not Thine away."

Have you ever been around when a baby boy was circumcised? They scream. It hurts.

And there we go, praying that the Lord would "circumcise our hearts." When He grants us our petition, we probably ought not be surprised when it hurts and we holler in pain.

Trusting Christ

We trust in God.
We trust Him for guidance in how to live our lives.
We trust Him for the power to do those good works.
We trust Him for forgiveness when we screw up.
We trust Him for daily bread.

Those are all things we ought to trust God for.
They are good things that He promises to give.

Interestingly, though,
these are also things the Pharisees trusted God for.

The thing that sets Christians apart from the Pharisees is that they trust in Christ and His blood-bought redemption as their rescue because they don't live their lives right, because they don't have the power to do the good works God has laid out for them, because there is often nothing but screw-ups, because we are ungrateful for our daily bread.

Christians trust in a merciful God.
Christians trust in forgiveness from a Savior.
When we talk about "walking in faith," that's what it's really about.

Snow Tally

Snow tally for the month:
8" on December 1
3" worth of shoveling drifts on December 2
6" on December 3
3" on December 6
4" on December 9
2" worth of shoveling drifts on December 10
4" on December 16
12" on December 19
2" on December 20
6" worth of shoveling drifts on December 21
6" worth of shoveling drifts on December 22
5" on December 23
4" on December 24
rain to shrink the piles on December 27
2" on December 28
½" on December 30

Newspaper reported 41" before the Official First Day of Winter.
They said it was the snowiest fall on record here.
(Can you see me rolling my eyes and sighing???)
Thankfully, we've only had a foot since then.

Grateful Hearts?

My friend Karl was telling us last week about his trip to Ghana last summer. He said that, after he returned to the States, it really strikes him how much we have here, and how ungrateful we are for our blessings, and how piddly and inconsequential are the things we worry about.

Yesterday I was chatting with a neighbor, and she mentioned that she got a phone call from the doctor on the morning of the 24th about a lump. She worried all through Christmas that this was her last one. The surgery and biopsy on the 29th showed it was benign, but she was telling me how those five days made her realize that her worries about a clean house or the number of presents under the tree are nothing, and that what matters is that she's alive and has her health and her family around her. She also acknowledged that she had a scare like this about a year ago, and appreciated the "attitude adjustment," but that her improved perspective wore off faster than it should've, and she went back to being consumed by all the regular American concerns.

But how does a person get a better perspective? What if you can recognize that you have much to be thankful for, but nevertheless worry about all the failings? What is it that changes hearts -- other than being smacked upside the head with a huge loss (or seeing another culture's poverty)?

Giving Up

Halloween is October 31.
People carve jack-o-lanterns in October.
They light them for decorations for Halloween.

My pumpkin didn't get carved for Halloween.
Okay, we could put a turkey on it instead.
It didn't get carved for Thanksgiving.
Okay, we could put a Christmas decoration on it instead.
It didn't get carved for Christmas.
I was thinking we could put a New Years carving into the pumpkin.

But instead

I just threw it out a few minutes ago.

I feel wasteful.

But how dumb would I feel with a Valentine carved into a pumpkin???

Bekah and Gabe

I should've been taking pictures after the wedding when the families were gathered at the front of church. But no, there were cookies to eat in the fellowship hall, and I was socializing instead of snapping photos. So this was the best I could do of the new couple:

Hey, it's Wisconsin. What can I say? Is anybody in Wisconsin REALLY married until they do the chicken dance at the reception?


Laura has been saying all along what it's like to see Katie all grown up and married to Nathan and being a mommy, when she remembers Katie as a little little girl. And now I see what she means. Bekah's wedding was very different from my own daughters' who lived with me, or Naomi's or Bean's. I knew Bekah when she was little. And I watched her grow, not from the perspective of her mom, and not from a couple of states away. Nevertheless, I was going to be tough and strong and not cry. And then Philip walked down the aisle. Oh, yeah, the mom was maintaining control. The sisters/bridesmaids were smiling. But the brother.... oh, the love in his eyes and the emotion he was trying to hold in check. That did me in. And then the last pair to come down the aisle: Rebekah full of smiles, and Dad trying to keep the tears at bay. Y'know, I may have made it through the service without tears if it hadn't been for those two men brimming over with love for that lovely bride.




And for fun, here are some of the ones we had fun with at the reception: Wietings, Mays, Vrudneys, Burgesses, and the Fabrizii. I think we need to marry off more kids so that we have more excuses to get together and have parties and laugh and catch up on each other's lives and laugh!

Today's Laugh

An editing oops from The Scroll, the college newspaper at BLC:

The article is about an on-campus group that promotes "awareness, motivation, and action." This group covers topics such as alcohol, body image, stress management, and pro-life issues. The November event was an attempt to raise awareness of domestic abuse. But the editor supplied an antecedent (in the brackets) for a pronoun ... and it just didn't quite work:

"I was searching the internet for ideas on how to promote [domestic violence] because I wanted to do more than just have a speaker..."

Holy Innocents

Today we recalled the story of the little boys at Bethlehem who were slaughtered by Herod in his attempt to kill the Christ-child (Matthew 2). Matthew recalls the prophecy from Jeremiah about Rachel weeping for her children because they are no more.

Pastor talked today about that inability to be comforted. Of course there was deep grief over the heinous death of the children. But there was more.

The rumor mill had been going for two years or more by this time. That old priest came out of evening prayers at the temple, unable to speak. His old wife became pregnant. At the child's circumcision party, the priest is prophesying about the Messiah's arrival. Everybody was talking about it. Then there were those shepherds telling everybody about that business of angels in the sky, and the baby in the barn, and a savior. Tongues were wagging -- Simeon knew what day to show up at the temple so that he could meet Mary and Joseph and see God in their arms. And then there was that retinue of the magi who showed up and set everybody a-tremblin' because Herod got news of a rival king. (And they all knew that a ticked-off Herod would result in no happy thing.)

The faithful had been waiting for the Messiah.

The Jews had been waiting for their version of a messiah, one who would kick out the Romans and restore their nation.

Luke tells us over and over that these events "were made widely known."

So when Herod wiped out all the babies around Bethlehem, it wasn't "just" an atrocity (not unlike legalized abortion). But it also looked like he had thwarted God's plans to send His Messiah. No wonder the women were despairing. They had lost not only their babies, but it appeared they had lost also their Savior and all their hopes.

It reminds me of Abraham, being asked to kill the one who was his son, but who was also the one through whom the Savior would come.

And yet, both times, God knew what He was doing. It sure didn't look like it. It looked like He had reneged on His promises, letting His people down, and doing it in a most painful way.

And yet,
things are not what they appear.



(So why do I always tend to believe appearances instead of the Promise?)

Emotional Christmas

Upon Cheryl's urging and Fritz's do-it-right-now reminder, I listened to a portion of the Lessons & Carols service from King's College in Cambridge. I see why they both like it so much. There's something about it that kinda chokes you up.

Pr Petersen cried while he was writing his sermon for Christmas. He noted that the tears sneak up on him more frequently at Christmas and Easter.

As I did exciting things on Wednesday (like clean the litter box and mop the floor and fold laundry and do an errand in town that involved driving past the Episcopal church) I pondered these things. (Nooooo. I was not pondering the cat box. I was pondering the Christmasy emotions.) Anyway, I had a thought. [Ta da!]

What is preached in Christian churches? Far too often the sermons and the Bible readings are about things like being kind those who are less fortunate, helping the elderly, giving more money to church and charities, even topics like politics and weight loss and "Christian" financial management.

But not at Christmas and Easter.

Even the churches that care oodles about making us into good little people tend to get it right at Christmas and Easter. They read Luke 2 and John 19-20. The sermons and hymns are about the incarnation, the passion, and the resurrection -- the historical events tied most closely to the forgiveness of sins in Christ's blood. (Now, don't go and give me counter examples. There are probably way too many. But, y'know, compared to other times in the church year, these are the times we particularly look at God's mercy instead of at ourselves.)

At Christmas and Easter, the Christian Church is ecumenically united in a way that cannot offend even the most conservative bronze-age Missourian. Furthermore, "it is necessary to everlasting salvation that a person believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Athanasian Creed) and, at these two high feasts, this is what we are all are focused on together.

So we listen to and sing about the most fundamental portions of the Creed, and we all do it together. Seems odd if that didn't bring tears of joy to our eyes.

Comfrey

After learning from a master herbalist that comfrey is totally awesome at healing cuts and other skin problems, I added a pound of comfrey leaf when I next ordered my spices and herbs. But I have no experience in making poultices. Whenever I try, I end up with all the poultice herb-gunk falling all over the place and not staying on the part of the body to which I presumably bound it. (Hey, lookie there, instructions that maybe even I could follow!)

Katie arrived a week ago for a visit of a couple of days. She had some sores on her hands. Alia had something on her eyebrow that looked like it might be a cold sore, but we're not really sure what it was. So we decided to experiment.

One shot glass, full of dried comfrey leaves.
Olive oil poured over the comfrey.
Heated briefly in the microwave for about 20 seconds.
We applied tiny drops of the oil infusion to Alia's cold sore, Katie's wounds, and a couple of itchy spots I had on my hands and arm.

WOW! That was speedy healing!
I don't know if plain olive oil would've done the same thing. But whatever it was, Katie and I were impressed.

She took home a baggie of comfrey leaves.

Stability

The nice post-master smiled at me today as I mailed some textbooks to ebay customers. I'm getting to where I recognize the clerks at the post office here.

When Gary and I were first married, we expected to be moving all over. Even though we had two years of college left, we took an apartment that we would be allowed to rent for only a year. The fantastic rental price and the neighborhood was worth it, even though we'd have to find a second apartment. We knew there would be the move to sem, the move to vicarage, the move back to sem, and the move out to his first call. It was all an expected part of his education, and everybody else in his class was doing it too, so everything stayed in a state of flux, and that was okay.

After about half a year in Wautoma, I realized that we couldn't stay. The situation was transitional from the get-go. We would either move to the village where Gary had the mission-start, or there'd be some other change. We knew the time in the parsonage, and just a block from Wietings and three blocks from the library, was going to be short-lived.

So when we moved to the next place, I yearned for it to be permanent. Even when the pay was low, even when we found out that pastors stayed there only 2-3 years before moving on, even when midweek services were practically empty, I eventually came to accept that God was going to have us live there till we died, and there is definitely some comfort in that kind of rooted-ness.

So now we've moved again. It's getting close to a year now. I recognize some of the faces at the library and the grocery store and the post office. I should be following Tammy's lead (a friend who moved here less than a year before we did, and for the same reason) and doing more exploring to find the streets and the stores and the restaurants that are around here, trying to make myself feel at home. But I don't. I just do what I need to do to get by.

People tell me that this feeling of instability is good. (Well, at least, some people do.) They say we should not be attached to this world, but always feel like pilgrims on our way to our heavenly home. They say we should not be "stuck" or settled or too comfortable in our home, but always be ready to go wherever the Lord calls.

But I want to be settled and stable.

Baby Pictures

From about 6-weeks-old

All giggly

Daddy's girl

Mommy's clone?

Blog-Worthy Accomplishment

I turned on the TV.

Yes, I did.
First time since we got the digital converter box last summer.

I wanted to listen to the Christmas music on PBS. Paul was in the living room. He gallantly jumped up to help his mother. But I insisted that he just sit down and laugh at my ineptitude, and give me minimal pointers only as requested.

And you know what?
I did it without his help!
Of course, I punched some wrong buttons and did some stupid things first. But eventually I got the television turned on AND the channel changed.

I think I deserve a big pat on the back.



By the way, smoothies made of raspberries, raw apple, pomegranate-blueberry juice, raw milk, raw banana, raw kiwi, and honey.... ooooooh, it makes your tastebuds happy. If only my tongue were as long as a giraffe's, then I could lick up the inside of the smoothie glass to savor every last drop. Mmmmm.

Cat Litter

Shooooot!

Poor kitties have to potty indoors because of the deep deep snow. I had to buy more litter and carefully scanned the boxes at the grocery store to ensure that I didn't bring home the stuff that "clumps." I have a septic system instead of city-sewer. It seems to me that flushing kitty-poops that have the clumpy litter stuck to it would be a very bad plan for my plumbing.

But today when I opened the new box to change their litter, I discovered the small print instructing me how to use clumping cat litter. Now what? We are accustomed to cleaning out the box every single time a kitty uses it. The kitties are too; they don't like a dirty litter box. But what am I going to do with poops that cannot be flushed? Right now, I am envisioning an environmentally-dangerous (and expensive) amount of plastic bags being used to dispose of smelly kitty-litter clumps multiple times daily.

Right now I am [perversely?] almost glad that Rosie accidentally missed the box when she gave it her first try. I picked the poops up off the floor next to the litter box and flushed them, and didn't have to deal with the nauseating smell remaining in the house. But then again, I really really don't want to be finding turds on the floor of the bathroom for the next month or so.

Today's Laugh

If something needs to be done right now,
do it yourself.

If you've got some time to do a project,
delegate it to someone else.

If you have forever to accomplish the task,
form a committee.

Big Sin

My pastor has often said that God hides most of our sin from us. If we could actually see the full extent of our sin, it would destroy us. We could not bear it; we could not believe that Christ's atonement could ever forgive the hugeness of our sin. And so God allows us to see only enough of our sin to know our need for Him and to depend upon Him for our salvation.

God seems to know that no one can fully discern his errors (Ps 19). He seems to be content to sanctify us a bit at a time, drawing us ever closer to Himself. He seems to think that there is no way for us to be made free from sin as long as we continue in the flesh in this earthly life.

And yet, Christians often take it upon themselves to point out to each other all their failings and sins.

IF they had the vocation to care for the souls of those they are crushing, that would be one thing.

And IF they had the real answer (Jesus' forgiveness) for those whom they have crushed (instead of telling them how they can fix their behavior and be better trusters, better servers, better Christians), that too would be a little bit understandable.

But when the business is to point out to others how they haven't quite measured up in "walking the Christian walk" and in "amending their sinful ways," you wonder where these people find their comfort in the end. If they're telling me what to DO to be a better Christian, then is DOING where they find their own assurance that they are God's people?

Rethinking Snow-Blowers

I never wanted a snow blower. It seems that shovels do a better job of clearing the driveway. And it's another machine to maintain. That alone is a bigger disincentive than the price tag on the snow blower.



Today Pastor called and asked a simple question. I had no idea what the answer was.

This evening, as Maggie was helping me shovel the driveway, she asked if she should go here and I should go there, or what. I had no idea what to decide.

It's hard to know which load of laundry to throw in next.

The futility of coping with all this snow, and knowing that we're not even 1/3 of the way through winter, is making it hard to think. That physical labor should not so thoroughly deplete my ability to make simple decisions.



The neighbors have plenty of snow in their yards. But the "cut edge" in their driveways are only about 2' deep. They have snow blowers. Snow blowers throw the snow waaaaaaay out there into the middle of the yard. The snow doesn't pile up next to the drive, as high as my head, only as far away as I have muscle to pitch it.

I may have to rethink whether maintaining another engine is worth it.