Schroeder and Rowlf

Carl's mom got the girls a toy piano for Christmas.

Joy took to it at once (at least, at once after Mamma played a few notes and she realized what it was). She loves music so much that I asked all my relatives for child-sized instruments for her birthday or Christmas. (And I'm quite thankful that Lis held OFF on the maracas for now.) I definitely want to expose her to as many opportunities for making music herself while she's young, so that hopefully she finds an instrument she wants to pursue when she's older.

I was pleased that she wasn't inclined to just bang on it for the sake of making noise - she really likes to play the different keys and get some sense of a tune. Of course, she also likes crashing them together at times, too!

Gracie wasn't as into it at first, until she saw Sissy playing for a while. Then she decided it was great fun, too. Ever since we got home, not a day has passed without us hearing one or both of them plunking away at various times, accompanied by great giggles.

I love it.

(I'll leave it to you to decide which one is Schroeder and which one Rowlf.)

So Much

You all might have noticed I stopped doing a gratitude list quite a while ago. Probably you didn't. I didn't even really realize it until I had gone a few months without it.

Here's the thing. I know that people everywhere say that whenever you're feeling discouraged, depressed, frustrated, etc., to stop and "count your blessings," and you'll feel better. I don't. I still feel discouraged, depressed, frustrated, etc., only then I add guilt to the list, because now I keep thinking of all these things I ought to be thankful for, and what kind of a horrible person am I to be in such a bad mood when my life is so good?

(I'm also the sort of person who does better to ignore a sugar craving altogether than to eat a piece of fruit or some other "healthy" sugar, because then I just feel cheated and disgruntled.)

I'm strange.

So anyway, trying to keep a gratitude list was, conversely, only making me more depressed. However, as it is the day before Thanksgiving, and as my attitude overall has been much brighter the last month or so (undiagnosed anemia; it's a bad thing. Green leafy vegetables; Very Good Thing), now seems a good time for a post on Things For Which I Am Grateful.

Plus, I joined a blog carnival, and I'm afraid they won't let me play again if I wimp out the very first week.

I am thankful for my coffee grinder. I love being able to grind my beans fresh each morning. The coffee tastes so much better. One of the best birthday presents ever, Lis!

I am thankful for a hair straightener. This new cut would be a nightmare without it. With it, I actually manage to look something close to stylish. (And wouldn't you know it, that was another present from Lis. Maybe I should just do a post on how thankful I am for my sister and her unerring instinct for what would be a good present.)

I am thankful for my laptop.

I am thankful for my new phone. It's not a smartphone, but it's blue and shiny and the bluetooth works much better than my old one.

I am thankful for the new brand of lipstick I discovered a couple months ago. I never used to be a lipstick gal, and now I don't like to go out of the house without it, which has the added bonus of keeping my lips un-chapped.

I am thankful for my copper cuff bracelet, which Lis gave me years ago and is still my favorite piece of jewelry that I own. Next to my wedding ring, naturally.

I am thankful for Amazon. Cheap books are Very Nice. I'm even more thankful for Amazon.uk, because cheap books from Great Britain are Even Better.

I am thankful that NBC has been showing something of all the figure skating Grand Prix series this year. I love being able to watch skating with my girls every weekend! (Carl might not be so happy about that, admittedly.)

I am thankful that I am getting beyond needing a big diaper bag and can start using my old bag for my writing materials again. Apparently Joy is happy about that, too, as she is currently busily unzipping and zipping the bag and checking out all the new and exciting things Mamma's keeping in there.

Ultimately, I am thankful that I can write down a list of silly material things, and yet know in my deep down heart that if all these things vanished, I would still have joy, because my joy comes from within, and not from all these things. These are just icing on the gloriously rich cake of life, love, family, friends, and of course, God.

Well. It might be a wrench to lose the laptop.

Here's a list of other in the blog carnival - join in if you like!

---

Sara – yoyu mama
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
G – Not-A-Box
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Heather – She Flies With Her Own Wings
Melanie – usually, things happen

Holiday Traditions

We're doing our bi-annual Thanksgiving-Christmas with Carl's family next week, and while I am really excited about going and spending time with them all, I'm also thinking about how much I'm looking forward to being in Chicago, where coming back east for any holidays will become a much rarer thing, as opposed to every year.

Growing up, we always, always spent Thanksgiving with one or the other set of grandparents. We either travelled to Vermont to be with Mom's family, or, in later years, we went down the road to spend it with Dad's. And while I have great, fun memories from both, I also have absolutely no Thanksgiving traditions from my childhood. No specific foods, no things we did every year, nothing. All my Thanksgiving memories involve either a lot of driving (VT), or a lot of chaos (Dad's side) (he has seven siblings).

Christmas, now, was only rarely spent at someone else's house, and I don't remember ever, ever being gone for Christmas morning. If we did travel at all, it was Christmas afternoon. And oh, the wonderful, beautiful traditions that I have from my childhood Christmases! Dad making breakfast, opening stockings in Mom and Dad's bed, the few surprises someone always managed to pull ... so much joy wrapped up in all our Christmas memories.

I don't mind sharing these early years with others. But I don't want my girls to grow up with their only holiday traditions being always going somewhere else. I don't want them only tagging along for Carl's family traditions, or my family traditions, every other year. I want our family to start forming our own traditions. I want to take bits and pieces from each side, blend with a few new ones, and have the girls start forming memories of their own, the rituals that make the holidays even more special.

I am so happy that we are able to share the holidays with our families now. But I'm even happier, though it sounds selfish to say it, that when the girls are old enough to really start participating in and remembering Thanksgiving and Christmas, we'll be in a place where, simply due to distance, we'll have to spend them at home.

Building our own traditions.

Last Christmas season - WHERE did the year go?

Reading List

I have a few good "seasonal" books I like to read around this time of year - not necessarily holiday books, but books that seem well-suited to these autumn and winter days.

Topping the list (and what I'm reading right now) is Jane Austen's Persuasion. For some reason, that book just doesn't seem at all right for spring or summer, but it is perfect for these dreary November days.

I love reading any of Miss Read's Thrush Green series in the winter. Again, I'm not sure why, since many of them are set in the warmer months, but they are perfect to snuggle under a blanket, with a cup of tea or hot chocolate (and if snow is falling outside, so much the better), and read.

I'm thinking North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell), with the overall dreary setting, might be another good November (or even February!) book.

Dorothy L Sayers' The Nine Tailors always makes me want to wrap up in a blanket - something about the massive amounts of rain in it, I think! So there's another one for my fall-winter list.

What books would you suggest? Some good cold-weather, short-days, possibly-snowing-outside books? I would really, really love to hear what you all have to offer!

(cross-post with my writing blog.)

November-ish

It feels like November today. Everything outside is hard and a little dulled around the edges. It's not snowing, but it feels like it could and you wish it would, just to soften things up a bit. Although as I'm typing a bit of sunshine is coming in the dining room windows and warming up my back, so maybe it's not as bad as I think.

(Just peeked out the windows again - nope, still November. Even the sun seems tired, and now the clouds are coming back.)

Inside, Joy has spent the last two and half hours at the dining room table, interspersing the occasional bite of biscuit with playing with her little plastic animals that Auntie Lizzie and Uncle David got her for her birthday. (Lis, I know you guys really wanted to get her the maracas and finger cymbals, but trust me, the animals were a stroke of genius. She played with them All Day yesterday while I was too out of it to do anything.) Gracie scarfed her food down in about five minutes, and has been spending the rest of the time either cuddling in my lap, looking at her animal book, or dancing to the music that's playing on the computer.

Gracie got a cold while we were at Mom and Dad's last weekend, and one by one, the rest of us have succumbed. I wanted to die yesterday, I felt so crappy. I had a mild fever, and I ached all over, and my throat hurt so badly I didn't even want to swallow tea or eat my frozen yogurt. I spent most of the day wrapped up in a blanket, watching Season 7 of Gilmore Girls with my girls. Not the way I'd usually choose to spend my Wednesday, but it was nice to have a down day. We had company over on Tuesday night, so we had plenty of leftovers for supper, and I didn't have to do any cleaning beyond washing dishes.

I'm still sick today, but feeling enough better that the thought of a shower doesn't make me want to cry, and I might even have enough energy to turn our leftover roast chicken into chicken noodle soup for supper tonight. Maybe even change out of my pajamas into real clothes! (Which would be good, since we have a chiropractor's appointment this afternoon.)

Nobody else has gotten it quite so badly as I did; Gracie is fine except for a runny nose, and Joy has just been a little tired and cranky with a bit of a drippy nose, and Carl seems to be more along Joy's lines except with added sore throat. I'm guessing my immune system has been shot by three+ years of poor sleep, and so that's why it hit me harder than the rest.

On the bright side, I decided (after spending almost an entire day watching it) that I don't hate Gilmore Girls S7 as much as I thought I did the first time around. I still think the whole April thing from S6 was completely ridiculous, but I think she developed into a bit of an interesting character midway through S7. And even the Christopher-Lorelai relationship - well, there had been foreshadowing of it ever since S1, so I can (grumpily) yield up my grievance on that. And I love Lane and Zach, even if there is NO WAY she or a doctor would have known she was pregnant within a week of conception. I still wish the writers had let Luke and Lorelai get married in S6 and spent S7 dealing with the complications of them settling to married life ... but oh well. It's still an awesome show, and the girls absolutely LOVE dancing to the theme music.

Speaking of the girls, I just put them both down for their naps (well, Grace is napping, and Joy is whispering to her animals on the couch, which is as close to a nap as she gets these days), and I am relishing the quietness. That is one good thing about November - everything is so still and peaceful as the earth prepares to sleep. Except, of course, at 2:00 in the morning when some cats or SOMETHING woke me up with their yowling outside. I was feeling less than peaceful then.

On second thought, it might have been some drunks leaving the bar across the street. I was a bit too sleep-dazed and feverish to tell for sure. In which case, can't blame that on nature. Except human nature, of course.

But with the girls resting and the house quiet, my stomach is reminding me that I was too busy drinking tea and reminding Joy to eat her breakfast and making animal sounds with Gracie to eat breakfast myself this morning - and now I'm suddenly ravenous. Which is a good sign health-wise, too, right? So I'll end this and go make myself some scrambled eggs and hot lemon and honey, and maybe take a shower after that. And then maybe I can justify watching the last few episodes of Gilmore Girls while I'm picking apart the chicken carcass.

(Some of the fun things about November)

Visuals

Memories

Psalm 5

On this Monday morning, a sleepy day of recovering from a full and delightful weekend with family, I thought it would be good to share another psalm. This fifth psalm, though simple, I found profoundly comforting and moving when I first looked at it. I hope it speaks to your heart this morning!

Psalm 5: A Morning Prayer (in Anticipation of God’s Presence)

This psalm acts as encouragement to those who are suffering adversity. “The prayer leads the worshiper of God into his presence and to a deep realization of God’s kingship over life’s circumstances.” David, as a precursor of Christ, was able to pray intercession on his people’s behalf, just as through Christ we can ask God for help in hard times, and trust to his righteousness even when the circumstances don’t change.

This is an individual lament, and shares traits with psalms of confidence and community lament.

Prayer for God’s Justice (5:1-3)

Words, the form of the prayer, are not as important as the heart. The Holy Spirit understands even our sighs, when our hearts are too full for words.

God is not just the King, the almighty sovereign able to save, but also Abba, the loving father who cares for his children’s personal needs.

“The ‘morning’ is symbolic of a renewal of God’s acts of love (cf. La. 3:23). The change from darkness to light brings with it the association of renewed hope.”

Affirmation of God’s Hatred of Evil (5:4-6)

While most other Eastern (and other) religions explored good and evil in the characters of the gods, Israel believed firmly that there could be no evil at all in the One True God - “evil exists apart from [God] and yet is under his sovereign control.” The psalmist knows that no matter how it might appear, God does not take pleasure in the evil being done on earth; indeed, he hates it.

Hope in Fellowship with God (5:7)

Though David knows he is not righteous in himself, he rejoices in God’s great mercy that separates him from the evildoers, and allows him to stand in God’s presence. It is hesed, God’s covenantal lovingkindness, that allows fellowship with him. The psalmist does not have to bow in fear, but rather prostrates himself in reverent worship before a holy and gracious God.

Prayer for and Hope in God’s Righteousness (5:8-12)

David prays for God to show his righteousness by both keeping him safe from evildoers, and by guiding him along the proper path. - “The removal of evildoers is an act of redemption that gives the godly reason for hope and praise.” 

The evildoers’ true wickedness lies not in their actions; their actions are merely outworkings of their hearts, which are in rebellion against God. The Lord will triumph against them by holding them accountable for their sin against him, and by removing them from the covenantal blessings enjoyed by the righteous.

As with the wicked, the righteous are not made so by their actions, but their actions spring from a heart that loves and worships Yahweh. In return, Yahweh surrounds them with his love and favor, and protects them from the wicked.

Note: passages in quotations are taken directly from the commentary - sometimes someone else has already said it best!

Never Forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Photo borrowed from flowersop.com

Re-post from Remembrance (Veteran's) Day 09

Ramblings on Theology and Love

When I was a teenager, I (like most teens) was pretty sure I had all the answers.

Except not about things like boys or future plans or anything like that.

Nope, where I had it all down was theology. I grew up spending family vacations at Bible Conferences (for which, by the way, I am still grateful, and which I still think was just about the best possible way to spend a family vacation, especially when one of those conferences was always held near the ocean so we could enjoy the beach at the same time we were learning about God - awesome), and so by the time I was sixteen, seventeen, I knew more theology than a lot of adults. My friends and I used to joke about making and trading preacher cards like baseball cards - "Oh, you have a Carson? I need that one - I'll trade you a Reisinger and a Theobald for it!"

We were decidedly not the cool kids. But we knew our theology. I could tell you all about the differences between Covenant, Dispensational, and New Covenant theology by the time I was thirteen.

And I'm not knocking any of that. I love the fact that my parents exposed me to so much good teaching when I was still so young, that I've had such a marvelous foundation upon which to build.

But as my teenage years slip further and further behind me (and thirty rapidly approaches - when did this happen and how did I miss it?), I find that my passions and priorities have shifted. It is no longer quite so important to me to preach NCT everywhere I go. I still hold (although more loosely now) to the basics of Calvinism, but I would not identify myself as a Calvinist.

One of the finest churches I've attended was a church that did not call itself Reformed, and yet the love that the congregation showed to each other and the world surpassed that of any Reformed church I've ever seen.

I've seen a lot of ugliness, a lot of pride, in the circles that I grew up in. Maybe it was always there and I just didn't notice it because I was a kid. Maybe I was a bit too full of pride myself to see it. But when a man is ostracized from the theological community because he is exploring a different view of limited atonement ... not even that he is denying the effectiveness of the atonement, just looking at some different ways of understanding it ... well, I lost heart, and lost a bit of faith in the beauty of our beliefs.

I still have passions spiritually, but they have shifted. I don't see myself ever losing my passionate belief in God's sovereignty. It affects every breath I take; it shapes my view of the world and of myself; I don't see how I would have the courage to live without that belief. Our God is the sovereign ruler of the universe; I do not, and have not, ever questioned that.

To love the Lord our God, and love our neighbor, does not, I think, mean clinging to the belief that we have the only true theology. It doesn't mean spurning fellowship, or looking down upon, those who view things differently. It can be okay even for Calvinists and Arminians to worship God together. That doesn't mean we can't have our theology, or even that we can't engage in healthy debate. But it does mean that love and respect should underly our every thought, word, and deed. It means that instead of condemning the world (which already stands condemned, really, and doesn't need help from us in that area), we should seek to show Christ's beauty and grace. Yes, most will reject it. That doesn't mean we stop showering it upon them.

To live justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. In its context, Micah is talking about what the Lord wants of his people - not elaborate and empty sacrifices, but a heart turned toward him. How God wants us to live is so simple (although so very difficult to live out - impossible without the Holy Spirit and grace).

Justice.

Mercy.


Humility.


Love.

Not all the right answers. Not the perfect theology that scorns those who disagree. (And those in the opposite camps of which I grew up are just as guilty - this is not an indictment of NCT, or Reformed theology in general. People with bad (ha ha) theology can be just as proud and stubborn as those with good.) A proud heart of any sort is despised by the Lord. Hateful speech, haughty attitudes, unloving hearts and actions - those are what displeases him. Not a few ideas that got tangled along the way.

Before I end, I want to say that there were and are still people in those circles I mentioned earlier who exemplify this. Along with examples of good theology and pride, I have set before me examples of good theology and gracious love. I would still rather have good theology and a loving and gentle heart than bad theology and those. But I would rather have bad theology and a loving and gentle heart than good theology and pride and ungraciousness.


The older I get, the less and less convinced I am that I have all the answers. God is so huge; I don't really think my human mind and heart will ever be able to fully comprehend all his facets. At least, it will take an eternity of perfect fellowship with him to get there.

But love, Love in the form of Jesus Christ, who became a human to save us from ourselves - ah, that I can see and respond to. And in looking at him, there really is no more room for pride in myself and my knowledge.

The only proper response to Love ...

Is to love.

Birthday Recap

The time change is killing us. The girls were awake and ready to play at 5:00 yesterday. I am trying desperately to keep them up for their nap until 9:00, but right now we're all dragging. The fact that it was a busy weekend isn't helping.

So, instead of a lovely, thought-provoking, in-depth post, I propose to share with you some picture from Joy's birthday weekend.

Our birthday tradition - blueberry muffins for breakfast.

Curled up watching Beatrix Potter while Mamma baked cupcakes.

Hugs and kisses on the stairs.

Three years old!

My lovely girl.

Make a wish!

I wasn't sure how she'd react to the skates, since we've only ever watched it on tv, but she was so excited, and she's been asking me ever since when we can go skating. Next weekend, with Aunt Lizzie, hopefully!

The beautiful jumper Grandma made for her. The best kind of gift!

A tea party with her new tea-set from GG.

Like I said, we're all exhausted today, but it's worth a little tiredness to give my girl a special, memorable birthday weekend!

Joy Fawkes?

Remember, remember, the fifth of November


...


Is Joy's birthday!

Gunpowder, treason, and plot indeed.

Happy 3rd Birthday a day early, beautiful girl.

The New Hair

It was supposed to look like this:

Instead, it looks like this:

Hmph. At least it grows.

Right?

(And the dyed part is ALL gone, so that's another plus. Looking on the bright side!)

Edit 11/3/10: I did considerable work with it today, and while it still needs another 1/2 to 1 inch of length, at least like this it is more similar to the original style. (Oh, and please ignore the expression; Carl was standing just out of sight of the camera and making me laugh. Husbands.)

Delight Is ...

Sometimes

it is

so good

just to play in the leaves

and remember

the freedom

in being a kid.