love to paint

It's interesting to see how God begins to thread things together in my life to help me learn things and to teach my children.  I am continually amazed by how He brings to mind through conversations, articles, or things I've heard about different curriculums for me to use in homeschooling that together meet the unique needs and personalities of my children and me. One of the subjects I've been puzzling about over the past year is history.  I have to admit that I'm still on the journey, but I'm making progress.  History is my eldest daughter's favorite subject.  She loves to read historical fiction books.  When I was a child, I read the whole set of ValueTales about historical figures.  I found a set of them while I was teaching over 10 years ago and I've saved them all this time.  She started reading them this year and it was so fun to see her enjoy the books I loved when I was a kid. So, there have been a lot of pieces floating in my head that have...

I was driving Eli to the doctor on Tuesday when I pondered the conversation I'd had with my husband just before I left the house.  I know he was concerned with my heart and speaking the truth in love, but at that moment my mind pondered a tangent.   Why are current ethical and moral issues such a source of consternation to me?  Why does it matter so much to me that I feel compelled to sort out what I believe about these issues? I realized that it matters so much to me because I am the filter that my children see the world through.  I am the filter that guides what they learn in school since we homeschool.  I am the teacher that explains and helps them understand the world and things they don't understand.  If I don't understand an ethical or moral issue about society, how can I then explain it to my children? It matters what I believe.  Not only for my own heart and mind--because it guides my actions and words--but also because I am responsibl...

I have been pondering many issues this year that have troubled me.  I have found myself often upset.  I've written about several issues over the past few months... homosexuality and Christianity, women in church leadership, submission, Bible translation...  My thought life seems to move from one issue to another. A few days ago, my husband expressed his concern about what I think and believe.  After much discussion, I explained to him that I am honest with him so that I might sort out and that he might reflect to me where my wrong thinking is.  He is very helpful in this, but it can give him a wrong view of the final conclusions that I come to because he has heard more the of the turmoil than of the conclusion. This morning he said something to me which I thought was very wise.  He commented that it is important that we not lose sight of loving our neighbors.  It is easy to get derailed and focused on facets of life or parts of church doctrine an...

2 Corinthians 12:6-8 (NIV) 6  Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say,  7  or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  8  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. I have a thorn in my flesh that I have struggled with for many years.  Recently, I began reading a book on suffering that I've mentioned.  My hope in reading this book was that it would help me process through this thorn and come to terms with it. This morning I read an essay in the book by J.I. Packer about this passage.  The passage was addressing first the claim of many Christians that we should pray for healing and that if we are not healed, then we do not have enough faith.  Pac...

A friend of mine wrote me an email yesterday and mentioned she is reading Lies Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.  She said that I came to her mind about choosing people instead of my "to do" list.  As I read her very kind note, I felt compunction, guilt. You see, I struggle.  I often choose people over things that need to get done.  I love to check on people and see how they're doing.  But, my guilt comes because often it comes at the expense of my children.  Sometimes I lose sight of the most important people in my world--the ones that God has given me charge of--to care for every day and night. This morning I was sitting in church and asked myself what my children will remember about me and whether they will remember what I hope they will.  Will they remember Mom on the phone and the computer?  Or will they remember Mom reading with them? The other reason I felt compunction is that my friend was writing because she was talking about on...

"As long as we have only just started on the way to the cross, we fancy ourselves the main object at stake; it is our happiness, our honor, our future--and God added in.  According to our idea we are the center of things, and God is there to make us happy.  The Father is for the sake of the child.  And God's confessed Almightiness is solely and alone to serve our interest.  This is an idea of God which is false through and through, which turns the order around and, taken in its real sense, makes self God, and God our servant."                                                Abraham Kuyper in To Be Near Unto God On Sunday, I reviewed a book on Amazon called  Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality  by Wesley Hill.  When I like a book, I'm always curious about the negative reviews.  There wa...

Families are on one hand happy, loving things.  On the other, they can also be full of conflict, struggles, and trials.    Sometimes I get very impatient with mine.  I love my husband and kids, but sometimes I get frustrated. Four years ago, a friend lost his wife and two kids in a pedestrian accident with a drunk driver.  Every time I think of them, I choke up.  I was friends with his wife and with him.  They were on again off again for several years and then she played hard to get.  She even moved away, I think I heard.  Ultimatum time.  He decided he couldn't live without her, flew out to see her, and proposed.  They married and then had two children who would be the same ages as my oldest two.  It sounds like they had a wonderful marriage and enjoyed their kids a ton. It's so hard to understand such suffering that this friend has gone through over the past two years.  He's an old friend, so I really have no idea ...

Psalm 127:2 ESV  " It is in vain that you rise up early    and go late to rest,  eating the bread of anxious   toil;    for he gives to his   beloved   sleep. My husband has left for a few days and I was anticipating doing many long put off house projects, meeting with friends I usually don't have time to meet with, and generally being pretty busy.  Along with all of that toil was likely to come much less sleep.  I struggle with sleep anyways.  I haven't slept through the night for more than a night or two since I was pregnant with my oldest daughter eight years ago.   This morning in my Bible study, Becoming a Woman of Simplicity , Ms. Heald wrote about rest.  The first verses were about resting on the seventh day that we might be refreshed no matter the time of year--Exodus 23:12 and 34:21.  I knew these verses, but the next question and verse took me by surprise.  It was Psalm 127:2 that I'...

In my last post, I shared that I'm going to read through the Bible using a curriculum titled The Most Important Thing You'll Ever Study by Starr Meade.  Originally, I requested this curriculum to review because several families in the homeschool networks I'm a part of have been looking for Bible curriculums for middle and high school students.  I've reviewed three other books by Starr Meade this year (Mighty Acts of God, God's Mighty Acts in Creation, and God's Mighty Acts of Salvation).  I've been impressed by Ms. Meade's ability to convey difficult theological concepts at a very age appropriate level for elementary, middle, and high school students. One of the questions one mom asked me about this study is whether or not it was practical.  I think she wanted to make sure that it was practical, but not solely application.  Here is Ms. Starr's response on pg. 12 to that concern: "Certainly the Bible is not just any book, and our goal is neve...

I once had this impression that a hundred years ago, the preaching of the Word was dry and didn't apply to people's lives.  I think I got that impression from the culture we live in--old is bad and new is good.  Hymns = bad.  Modern worship songs = good.  At least that's what I thought until a few years ago when God placed my husband and in a traditional, hymn singing Presbyterian church.  As we struggled with the style of our worship and our misguided beliefs that what was most important about worship was how we enjoyed it, my mother in law sent us an issue of Moody Magazine.  The August 2002 issue was titled "Is there a Right Way to Worship?" This is a quote from an article by Rowland Forman from that issue, titled The Rest of the Service. "Worship is realizing God's supreme worth, followed by a response that reflects His worthiness.  It is declaring, by word or action, what we believe to be true about God.  It means giving God all He's wort...

I have had a lot on my mind this afternoon.  I think the biggest thing is that it's easier to keep my mouth shut than to guard what comes out of it.  I second guess myself a lot.  There is a risk in opening my mouth.  A risk that I will say the wrong thing around people it will offend.  Sometimes I am a bit blunt--aren't we all?  Sometimes I am also very opinionated.  When I say something that I'm surprised at, I usually try to think about what the seed of it was.  I think I see in myself how a little seed can grow a big plant and a big idea.  Maybe that's why I'm so concerned about what's being published and the overt and subtle messages of fiction and nonfiction books. Over the past two years, I've found that there are publishers that I trust more than others.  By that I mean, that I feel safer usually reading a book published by one of these companies.  I've found their books to encourage me more in my walk with the Lord and m...

This past November Crossway published a new edition of The Big Picture Bible with 2 audio cds that give a full reading of the text. I loved the original edition so I was very excited that they were making a new edition that would include audio to accompany it.  My girls are 5 and 7 and enjoyed the recording as we listened to it in the car yesterday. The recording is made to read the story Bible while listening so it has a small bell sound after each page to signal the child to turn the page. I think this Story Bible is best for 4-6 year olds. With the audio, it would be a great nap time diversion for children who need to spend some time in their room while younger siblings nap (like mine do). The voice on the audio is very easy to listen to. At times it almost seems a little slow, but if you are reading along, it's a good tempo. We were listening to it without the book last night, so that was why it seemed a little slow with the beeps for turning the pages.  The Story Bi...

As I grow older I'm more and more aware of the size of books and their print!  Oops!  I'm getting ahead of myself... I was excited to receive the new Christmas devotional that Tyndale published this year by Nancy Guthrie titled Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room .  I haven't read a Christmas devotional with my kids before so I thought this would be a good year to start.  I didn't glance at the size of this book before I requested it.  It happens to be the size of a 4 x 6 picture (almost to a tee).  It's a little hardback book with tiny print and tiny lines to write on. The devotionals are fine in and of themselves.  Nothing especially stood out to me.  Each devotional day had a story/thought and two or three verses.  She didn't reference passages to be read, but rather single verses.  Scattered throughout the book there are also reproductions of the music for several Christmas hymns and stories about them.  I enjoyed these stories...

I just wrote what I think will be a very unpopular review on Amazon for a book called Stephanie's Ponytail by Robert Munsch.  Here's the gist of my review... When I was in my 20s, I had a conversation with my dad once and he said something that has always stuck in my head. He said that if someone is mean to him, he's going to be mean right back--but even worse. I said, "really?" He asked me if I wouldn't do the same. I replied, "No! Because if someone is hurting me then that means that they feel even worse." Bullying is a big problem right now in schools, but I don't believe that teaching kids to trick bullies (and essentially bully them right back) is the answer.   None of the negative reviews of this book on Amazon have actually talked about the plot of this book. Stephanie goes to school and kids make fun of her ponytail. The kids say to her "ugly! ugly! ugly!" She calls them "brainless copycats". Being a school teach...

One of the fun parts of Christmas to me has always been Christmas movies and Christmas stories.  What I love about them is the sense of hope that is present in each one of them.  I love what Gladys Hunt says in Honey For a Woman's Heart when she talks about why women read.  We often read to learn new things and see outside of our worlds, but we also read simply for enjoyment.  Christmas stories are simply enjoyment to me. I've noticed that Melody Carlson has published a new Christmas fiction novel for the past few years.  Last year, she published The Christmas Dog .  I reviewed it and enjoyed it.  It was one of the rare books that was simply a good story but wasn't about romance the way many Christian fiction stories are.  This year, the Christmas novel she has published is titled Christmas at Harrington's .  This story is of Lena .  She is released from prison and is starting over.  She finds herself seated next to Moira on the b...

I got quite the surprise this morning when I tried to go on Facebook.  I was kicked off of it!  They disabled my account.  I think what happened is that I did not attach my primary email, but rather my secondary email, to facebook--for obvious reasons I'm sure y'all understand.  So a few months back, I opened an account with my maiden name to check on who had gone searching for my name on facebook.  I believe this was a violation--which I had no idea of until this morning when they disable the account I use.  Obviously, I wasn't trying to do anything wrong, but my what a surprise.  Somehow, they figured out that I had done that.  When I think about how they did that, it makes me anxious. Here's the kicker--in order to get my account back or rather--to apply to have my account reactivated, I have to upload and send them a copy of my federal id.  Obviously, I am NOT going to do this.  So, NO more facebook for me.  I'm sure God has a ...

Recently, I was considering what book to review next and as I looked through the list of several books I came across The American Patriot's Almanac .  It wasn't usually the kind of book that I review, but I wondered if it might be a great resource to supplement our learning of American History when it comes time.  It was published by Thomas Nelson, which is very interesting to me.  Thomas Nelson publishes a surprisingly wide variety of books. So, the book has sat on my desk for a week and a half.  I gazed at it and the heftiness of it.  Today I finally picked it up.  The reason I chose to preview this book was what I read from the first few pages online.  What I read made me realize how much I need to teach my children that they live in a country that is worth being proud of.  Often people praise our country and then detractors say that they're blind and ignorant.  So, I was curious if this book would prove to be blind or ignorant as people...

When I read a Christian fiction, I hope for a couple of things.  One of them is appropriate language used in how the characters think about each other and relate to one another.  Another is a sense of hope--it is the hope of Christ that I long for as I read the story in someone's life, whether at the beginning or at the end of the story, but I look for it somewhere in there.  We are called to be in the world, but not of it. The scripture says in Philippians 4:8 " Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."  We are to be wise about what we think about and so that is why I am very careful about what secular fiction I read.   I have very different expectations of secular fiction.  I read two of Jodi Piccoult's novels a few years ago and my stomach was left in knots at ...

During the sermon, I usually draw pictures for Sami, my 5 year old daughter, which she colors in.  I decided to have her trace words on Sunday, so I wrote at the top of her paper, "Jesus loves me." She took the paper and the first thing she did was write "Mr." in front of Jesus.  Well, she was right--he is a man and Mr. is a sign of respect, still it made me laugh! =)