In the spirit of praising God, allow me to post a (partial) list of great things God has done in my life. It being Valentine's Day, this is also my love letter to God, more or less.
1. Unlike some people, I had awesome parents, who loved me.
2. They gave me the best possible religious upbringing, with both the sacraments and the focus on truth from the Catholic Church, and the community and focus on personal relationship with Jesus from the Charismatics.
3. He gave me my friend Kathryn.
4. I got to live with my grandfather for two years, so that I had the chance to get to know him well before he died. I also got to know other relatives better, while living in the beautiful city of Seattle.
5. God gave me Ken.
6. He healed my dog Saddle.
7. I got a good education - both at the private high school I went to, and for my bachelor's in college.
8. I had a beautiful wedding, that came together, despite my personal ineptitude at planning, in a beautiful way. (The church still had the Easter flowers everywhere - a particularly nice wedding present from God.)
9. God gave me Kyrie. And I got to share the experience of my first pregnancy at the same time as Kathryn went through hers. Thank you for that, God.
10. He gave me Elijah.
11. He gave me Savi.
12. He called us out to the Pacific Northwest again, and arranged a home for us here in the suburb of Portland. Only God could have arranged our blind leap into one of the few well-kept, pleasant, and affordable apartments in this neighborhood of crappy complexes. And just to make it particularly clear that this was where God wanted us to be, when I walked into the local parish for the first time, half a continent away from where I had spent most of my life, the priest greeted me by name before I had the chance to introduce myself1.
13. Through a set of crazy coincidences2, God hooked me up with friends here in my new home.
14. He led me to the charismatic prayer group at my parish. During one Life in the Spirit Seminar, I felt God telling me, "Look around. I give you these people."
15. He gave me Gabe.
16. My nausea with Gabe's pregnancy was worse than usual. Someone in the prayer group got a word for me, that God wanted me to sleep more. I started sleeping in, and my nausea decreased dramatically.
17. With guidance from the book Waking the Dead and from my prayer group, I began to learn how to hear what God is telling me. His guidance in even little things has been invaluable.
18. When I asked God if he wanted me to have an epidural with Gabe's birth, He healed me of a painful childhood memory that was inhibiting me from enduring physical pain. Then he gave me a sense of freedom at the thought of not having an epidural, and pointed me at some Bible passages about the pain of birth leading to glory. And then he made Gabe's birth a quick, interesting, and relatively easy one.
19. A person in the prayer group with a gift for discerning others' gifts informed me that I had the gift of understanding, which has greatly enriched my life and given me something to contribute to the group.
20. During a time when my husband was unemployed, God taught me how to trust that He would take care of us, and gave me repeated encouragements to help me do this.
21. He gave me Julie.
22. He gave Ken his current job.
23. When we visited Minneapolis, and Elijah left his backpack on the light rail, we got Pooh Bear back.
24. There's so many little things God has done in my life, and the overall effect of many of them is that I am slowly - ever so slowly - becoming a little bit more disciplined and growing in virtue. (I think; this might be an illusion brought on by not being pregnant for over a year.)
25. He gave me Mary to be my mother.
1. Turns out he was the guy who had taught my 7th grade science class, back in the Twin Cities. It took me 5 minutes of talking with him before I finally placed his voice and figured out that I hadn't recognized him because he'd grown a beard.
2. My brother Ben went to college in Texas with a girl named Hilary who has a sister named Ursula who lives in the Portland area. Through that, I met up with Ursula once, but I did not have a vehicle at the time to get together any more. Months later, a woman named Faith saw a comment I had posted on a blog, and we started chatting. At a gathering at her parents' house in Salem (I had a van by now), I met Faith's friend Sia, who invited me to a Moms & Tots gathering in Portland. I was pleasantly shocked to discover the gathering was at Ursula's house. I brought with me a book that Ben had borrowed from Hilary.
Showing posts with label What God Is Doing In My Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label What God Is Doing In My Life. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
First, See What You Can Do With What You Have
That's the other big theme of my life right now - besides Mountain Climbing.
Here's a bunch of examples.
1. Camera
I mentioned before that I will need a better camera to take really quality photos, but I did the 30-Day Photo Challenge to see what I could do with the camera I had.
2. Clothes
In a video-chat with my sister, she complained that I was wearing a man's flannel top. I explained that I had two blouses that umm... fail to go all the way to my jeans in the back; two sleeveless tops that were too cold for winter; and one other top that I had worn the day before. I have only 3 jeans I can wear in public, and 3 skirts, two of which will not fit me at the same time. We agreed that if she ever wins it big with all those lottery tickets that she never buys, she'll get me a new wardrobe.
Until then, I am learning what I can do with what I have. For instance... one cute sweater1 solves the too-cold and too-short blouse issues 2.
3. House
I dream of getting a house, and we will be looking into the possibility of buying one later this year, but in the meantime, I have been learning what can be done with the space we got, by getting rid of the clutter, arranging things nicely, and generally trying to make the apartment a more pleasant place to live.
4. Writing
I sense, too, that God has future plans for both my blog and for whatever book-writing I do, but that for now, I'm in the phase of learning and experimenting to find out what works best.
5. Gifts
I often have gift ideas in mind for people, but ever since I became an adult, I've generally been too poor to act on them. This year, I felt God leading me to buy my dad a gift on Epiphany. I think this betokens a dawning age in which I participate in this foreign ritual that other people do... but for now I still can't go crazy with it.
6. Skin Care
I mentioned I was working on taking care of my skin. After finishing off the bottle of vanilla lotion that I loved, I was frustrated by my lack of funds to buy more. Then it occurred to me that I should see what I could do with the lotion I already had. Turned out I had another four or five bottles of lotions, which nicely lasted me until I had could buy more last Friday.
7. Phone
I've been lusting after an iPhone lately, despite the fact that I really don't need one. I decided that if I ever want to be a serious cell phone owner, I should start by seeing what I can do with the little prepaid cell that I have. Things like...
(I also saw a version of this clip about appreciating the awesomeness of limited technology, which made a very good point.)
8. Bible
The various Bibles I had been using have been falling apart for ages. When Ken started RCIA, I bought him a new Bible, but didn't have enough money left at the time to buy myself one too. His was so pretty and the translation was so much better than the one I had been reading from 4, that I really wanted my own pretty Bible. I kept finding my money needing to go towards other things, however. When I got frustrated and prayed about it, I felt God's answer was essentially to see what I could do with what I had. So I started reading from Ken's. It turns out, reading from a Bible that's not "mine" forces me to practice being extra careful with it. So my next Bible, down the road, might not get destroyed so quickly as my past ones.
So what about you? Is God telling you to see what you can do with what you have, before moving on to a better version?
1. Ever so slightly like this one.
2. Other bits of learned wisdom: When cleaning with bleach, the professional thing to do is change into grunge clothes, to preserve the nice ones. And qhite patches in umm... protruding areas of a shirt, wink wink... get grubby faster than colored patches elsewhere.
3. Because I am one of the 5 remaining people on the planet with a home phone, the prepaid cell phone doesn't get much use.
4. Even though they were both St. Joseph Edition NABs. Two or three times, though, I would look up a passage on biblos.com to get a feel for the Greek, and find that the phrasing in the old NAB was distinctly lacking in nuance, but that the new 2nd-edition NAB that I bought Ken had captured it perfectly.
Here's a bunch of examples.
1. Camera
I mentioned before that I will need a better camera to take really quality photos, but I did the 30-Day Photo Challenge to see what I could do with the camera I had.
2. Clothes
In a video-chat with my sister, she complained that I was wearing a man's flannel top. I explained that I had two blouses that umm... fail to go all the way to my jeans in the back; two sleeveless tops that were too cold for winter; and one other top that I had worn the day before. I have only 3 jeans I can wear in public, and 3 skirts, two of which will not fit me at the same time. We agreed that if she ever wins it big with all those lottery tickets that she never buys, she'll get me a new wardrobe.
 |
| I need to catch up with Ken. |
Until then, I am learning what I can do with what I have. For instance... one cute sweater1 solves the too-cold and too-short blouse issues 2.
3. House
I dream of getting a house, and we will be looking into the possibility of buying one later this year, but in the meantime, I have been learning what can be done with the space we got, by getting rid of the clutter, arranging things nicely, and generally trying to make the apartment a more pleasant place to live.
 |
| My latest obsession. Doesn't it just scream "home" to you? |
4. Writing
I sense, too, that God has future plans for both my blog and for whatever book-writing I do, but that for now, I'm in the phase of learning and experimenting to find out what works best.
5. Gifts
I often have gift ideas in mind for people, but ever since I became an adult, I've generally been too poor to act on them. This year, I felt God leading me to buy my dad a gift on Epiphany. I think this betokens a dawning age in which I participate in this foreign ritual that other people do... but for now I still can't go crazy with it.
 |
| Dad got a Kindle version of this. I'm not quite sure how my copy got so abused. |
6. Skin Care
I mentioned I was working on taking care of my skin. After finishing off the bottle of vanilla lotion that I loved, I was frustrated by my lack of funds to buy more. Then it occurred to me that I should see what I could do with the lotion I already had. Turned out I had another four or five bottles of lotions, which nicely lasted me until I had could buy more last Friday.
 |
| I don't think I'll use the baby oil again, except as last resort. |
7. Phone
I've been lusting after an iPhone lately, despite the fact that I really don't need one. I decided that if I ever want to be a serious cell phone owner, I should start by seeing what I can do with the little prepaid cell that I have. Things like...
- Charging it each night instead of waiting a week for it to die.
- Not putting it in the same pocket with my watch that will scratch it.
- Getting in the habit of silencing it at appropriate times, and then remembering to turn it back on.
- Actually, like, maybe using it some of the time.3
 |
| I put a sticker on it to tell it apart from Ken's identical phone. |
(I also saw a version of this clip about appreciating the awesomeness of limited technology, which made a very good point.)
8. Bible
The various Bibles I had been using have been falling apart for ages. When Ken started RCIA, I bought him a new Bible, but didn't have enough money left at the time to buy myself one too. His was so pretty and the translation was so much better than the one I had been reading from 4, that I really wanted my own pretty Bible. I kept finding my money needing to go towards other things, however. When I got frustrated and prayed about it, I felt God's answer was essentially to see what I could do with what I had. So I started reading from Ken's. It turns out, reading from a Bible that's not "mine" forces me to practice being extra careful with it. So my next Bible, down the road, might not get destroyed so quickly as my past ones.
 |
| Plus, his is just awesomeness layered on awesomeness. |
So what about you? Is God telling you to see what you can do with what you have, before moving on to a better version?
1. Ever so slightly like this one.
2. Other bits of learned wisdom: When cleaning with bleach, the professional thing to do is change into grunge clothes, to preserve the nice ones. And qhite patches in umm... protruding areas of a shirt, wink wink... get grubby faster than colored patches elsewhere.
3. Because I am one of the 5 remaining people on the planet with a home phone, the prepaid cell phone doesn't get much use.
4. Even though they were both St. Joseph Edition NABs. Two or three times, though, I would look up a passage on biblos.com to get a feel for the Greek, and find that the phrasing in the old NAB was distinctly lacking in nuance, but that the new 2nd-edition NAB that I bought Ken had captured it perfectly.
Friday, February 3, 2012
She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes
I used Jen's Saint Generator to pick a patron saint for this year, since last year's saint1 had seemed appropriate enough.
Woe is me.
I got St. Bernard of Menthon, patron saint of mountain climbers and other things that sound like mountain climbers.
This began my landslide into the terrible, horrifying world of getting lots of things done.
Of course, on account of this Urban Ranger thing, I thought St. Bernard's patronage would be quite appropriate for my walking efforts.
Little did I know just how appropriate.
It soon became clear that God had more in mind than just encouraging me to walk more. References upon references piled in about certain topics. Left and right, I would come across things that struck me in that particular HELLO. THIS IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. CAN YOU HEAR ME? HELLO? way. God gave me more and more to do, and I started to wonder if he was a little insane for thinking I could do this all. More than one friend suggested that the things I was doing were preparing me for greater things, and I thought,"Greater things? You mean there could be more?! Ohbleep!"
And then it would occur to me that what seemed to me to be impossibly difficult might actually be things that a normal person would consider the bare minimum of a healthy lifestyle. They might, in fact, be more equivalent to taking a 5-mile walk down straight and easy city streets, and not so equivalent to scaling the Alps, St. Bernard-style. Ah well. Such is life.
Here are some of my mountain-climbing, or not-so-mountain-climbing, efforts.
1. Cleaning
I've actually been trying to "intensely" work on cleaning my apartment for the better part of the last year, I think. And by "intense", I mean I was aiming to get in an hour of cleaning every day. And by "aiming" I mean that I was lucky if I got in an hour each week. Despite this utter failure of discipline on my part, my attempts did somehow manage to achieve minuscule forward progress instead of the steady backwards getting-a-bit-dirtier-every-day that had been the norm before. Over many months, this minuscule progress actually added up, and after Ken steam-cleaned the carpet before Christmas, I started to think that maybe the place could be mostly clean2. It certainly wasn't clean, and still isn't, but it at least has reached the general vicinity where I could at least imagine it being clean.
One thing I started just recently was washing Julie's hands and face off nearly every time that I take her down from the table. It always feels like such a chore, but then I end up not having as many little peanut-butter smears on my jeans and the furniture, so it really helps.
2. Exercising
As I was cleaning out old papers last year, there was this one little scrap of paper that I just could NOT throw away.
More than once I stood there, holding it in my hand, telling myself that I was an idiot for not throwing it away. It didn't have anything important on it. Why would I possibly keep this paper? And yet, as my brain was screaming at my hand to toss it, my hand just kept adding it back in the pile.
When I ran again into the 14 minutes of any kind of exercise concept, I thought of the scrap of paper, and thought, "oh. Maybe I should, you know, do that."
So I started dancing. Right that moment in front of my computer. No, I'm kidding. I started dancing in the morning for about 14 minutes. After St. Bernard showed up, I tried to make this "most" days instead of once or twice a week3.
3. Eating Fruits & Veggies
Or drinking them. See, it did not escape my notice that that scrap of paper also said "Vitamin B" on it. And the cuticle on my right pinky finger has been missing for some months now, which googled websites inform me may be related to vitamin deficiencies.
And then I ran into this Juicing 101 post. So I started making juices.
I've also discovered that I like steamed carrots with butter and salt, steamed broccoli with parmesan, and spinach in various forms. Did you know it's basically impossible to get too many vitamins from fruits and veggies?
4. Taking Care of My Skin
People always tell you to put lotion on after you shower. I tried that a couple times, and gave up. Putting lotion on your whole body takes for. ev. er. Especially when you, um... have as much body to cover as I do. But the thought kept bothering me, and I was taking a lot of showers on account of all that dancing, so I decided to give this another go. After a week or two, I was surprised to notice that my skin was softer.
Seriously, who gets surprised by that?
Here's a couple points I discovered along the way:
Now if I could just de-frizz my hair, I might look halfway cute. I plan on working on that, too.
5. Writing
God keeps giving mecommands hints about how to be a better writer, and apparently I'm supposed to actually write a book. Not only that, but he seems to be insisting I make a better blog, too. Specifically by (a) taking better photos and (b) being funnier5. That was why I did the 30 Day Photo Challenge, and hopefully I'll be able to keep including good pics in my blog posts. Although I'm frankly confident that I will shortly fall flat on my face in that regard, too. It's just a matter of time. Only God can do something about that. Hear that, God? It's all up to you, buddy.
As for being funny, if you can't tell that I was aiming for humor in this blog post, then I've clearly failed. In which case, you should tell me so, so that I can make it better. I will drown in bitter anguish at my loss of self-esteem and I will hate you forever, but it will all be worth it because it. will. make. my. blog. better.
6. Working on my Marriage
This one first came to my attention when I noticed that I was more or less attempting every single one of the items on Jen's list except "Put special effort into your marriage." I thought, huh, you know, maybe it's not the best idea to go around neglecting the love of my life and ignoring the one person who means more to me than anyone short of God. So when I came across a Romance Challenge by Betty Beguiles (her tweet conveniently pointed out when to start it so that it would end on Valentine's), I said, "Sign me up." Today's challenge involves "date night", which is ironic, because Ken has to work late tonight, and I don't know when he'll be home. But whenever he does, there will be date night.
1. St. Teresa of Avila, patron against headaches and against the death of parents, patron of people in need of grace and of people ridiculed for their piety. And patron of lacemakers. Not all of these apply to me.
2. With the exception of my bedroom.
3. Right now I'm on a two-week hiatus because my foot started to hurt after one morning of trying to dance tippy-toe-like. I made a few feeble attempts to substitute push-ups and crunches and squatting in the place of dancing, but that kept petering out. I hope be able to go back to dancing by next Monday, though.
4. I'm also grateful to LMLD for pointing out that if you shave your legs often, you don't have to be careful about it.
5. When I read Cracked.com every day, I'm not addicted, it's just research into how to be funny and make a poignant point at the same time. Really. I could drop it any time. Really. Why won't you believe me, anonymous reader?
6. So as not to make this an inside joke that no one understands except Gayle, let me point out that she is a friend from my prayer group, and after reading my short story about Agatha and the Young Man, she twice came up to ask me whether the young man in the story came back to Mass or not. Since I hadn't continued writing the story yet when she asked, I said I didn't know. Her little question has been a major impetus inspiring me to keep writing the story. When I say God wants me to write a book, that's the one I'm working on.
Woe is me.
I got St. Bernard of Menthon, patron saint of mountain climbers and other things that sound like mountain climbers.
 |
| Alpinists; Mountain Climbers; Mountaineers; Skiers; Travellers in the Mountains |
This began my landslide into the terrible, horrifying world of getting lots of things done.
Of course, on account of this Urban Ranger thing, I thought St. Bernard's patronage would be quite appropriate for my walking efforts.
Little did I know just how appropriate.
It soon became clear that God had more in mind than just encouraging me to walk more. References upon references piled in about certain topics. Left and right, I would come across things that struck me in that particular HELLO. THIS IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. CAN YOU HEAR ME? HELLO? way. God gave me more and more to do, and I started to wonder if he was a little insane for thinking I could do this all. More than one friend suggested that the things I was doing were preparing me for greater things, and I thought,"Greater things? You mean there could be more?! Oh
And then it would occur to me that what seemed to me to be impossibly difficult might actually be things that a normal person would consider the bare minimum of a healthy lifestyle. They might, in fact, be more equivalent to taking a 5-mile walk down straight and easy city streets, and not so equivalent to scaling the Alps, St. Bernard-style. Ah well. Such is life.
Here are some of my mountain-climbing, or not-so-mountain-climbing, efforts.
1. Cleaning
I've actually been trying to "intensely" work on cleaning my apartment for the better part of the last year, I think. And by "intense", I mean I was aiming to get in an hour of cleaning every day. And by "aiming" I mean that I was lucky if I got in an hour each week. Despite this utter failure of discipline on my part, my attempts did somehow manage to achieve minuscule forward progress instead of the steady backwards getting-a-bit-dirtier-every-day that had been the norm before. Over many months, this minuscule progress actually added up, and after Ken steam-cleaned the carpet before Christmas, I started to think that maybe the place could be mostly clean2. It certainly wasn't clean, and still isn't, but it at least has reached the general vicinity where I could at least imagine it being clean.
One thing I started just recently was washing Julie's hands and face off nearly every time that I take her down from the table. It always feels like such a chore, but then I end up not having as many little peanut-butter smears on my jeans and the furniture, so it really helps.
 |
| If I don't feel like carrying her to the sink to wash her off, she can just nap there! |
2. Exercising
As I was cleaning out old papers last year, there was this one little scrap of paper that I just could NOT throw away.
 |
| This was it. I'm pretty sure I had papers a lot older than 2003 in that stack. |
More than once I stood there, holding it in my hand, telling myself that I was an idiot for not throwing it away. It didn't have anything important on it. Why would I possibly keep this paper? And yet, as my brain was screaming at my hand to toss it, my hand just kept adding it back in the pile.
 |
| It was like a scene from Bodysnatchers. That's the one where people's bodies get taken over, right? I don't know; I don't watch horror movies. |
When I ran again into the 14 minutes of any kind of exercise concept, I thought of the scrap of paper, and thought, "oh. Maybe I should, you know, do that."
So I started dancing. Right that moment in front of my computer. No, I'm kidding. I started dancing in the morning for about 14 minutes. After St. Bernard showed up, I tried to make this "most" days instead of once or twice a week3.
3. Eating Fruits & Veggies
Or drinking them. See, it did not escape my notice that that scrap of paper also said "Vitamin B" on it. And the cuticle on my right pinky finger has been missing for some months now, which googled websites inform me may be related to vitamin deficiencies.
And then I ran into this Juicing 101 post. So I started making juices.
 |
| Mostly fruit-and-spinach juices. |
I've also discovered that I like steamed carrots with butter and salt, steamed broccoli with parmesan, and spinach in various forms. Did you know it's basically impossible to get too many vitamins from fruits and veggies?
4. Taking Care of My Skin
People always tell you to put lotion on after you shower. I tried that a couple times, and gave up. Putting lotion on your whole body takes for. ev. er. Especially when you, um... have as much body to cover as I do. But the thought kept bothering me, and I was taking a lot of showers on account of all that dancing, so I decided to give this another go. After a week or two, I was surprised to notice that my skin was softer.
Seriously, who gets surprised by that?
Here's a couple points I discovered along the way:
- It takes a lot less time to put on lotion if you do it fast. (It's amazing how dumb that sounds when I type it out. But it was a discovery for me how much less tedious it was when I just slathered it on as fast as I could.)
- Lotioning your legs is a lot easier if you keep them shaved4.
 |
| My skin-care regimen. The facial routine is a recent addition too. That Paula's Choice BHA has noticeably improved the little-tiny-red-acne on my forehead. |
Now if I could just de-frizz my hair, I might look halfway cute. I plan on working on that, too.
5. Writing
God keeps giving me
As for being funny, if you can't tell that I was aiming for humor in this blog post, then I've clearly failed. In which case, you should tell me so, so that I can make it better. I will drown in bitter anguish at my loss of self-esteem and I will hate you forever, but it will all be worth it because it. will. make. my. blog. better.
 |
| And 20 years from now, Gayle will finally find out whether the young man comes back or not6. |
6. Working on my Marriage
This one first came to my attention when I noticed that I was more or less attempting every single one of the items on Jen's list except "Put special effort into your marriage." I thought, huh, you know, maybe it's not the best idea to go around neglecting the love of my life and ignoring the one person who means more to me than anyone short of God. So when I came across a Romance Challenge by Betty Beguiles (her tweet conveniently pointed out when to start it so that it would end on Valentine's), I said, "Sign me up." Today's challenge involves "date night", which is ironic, because Ken has to work late tonight, and I don't know when he'll be home. But whenever he does, there will be date night.
 |
| I'm pretty sure I've had this since we were married 9 years and 10 months ago, and I never put photos in it. That will all change on Day 6 of the Romance Challenge. |
1. St. Teresa of Avila, patron against headaches and against the death of parents, patron of people in need of grace and of people ridiculed for their piety. And patron of lacemakers. Not all of these apply to me.
2. With the exception of my bedroom.
3. Right now I'm on a two-week hiatus because my foot started to hurt after one morning of trying to dance tippy-toe-like. I made a few feeble attempts to substitute push-ups and crunches and squatting in the place of dancing, but that kept petering out. I hope be able to go back to dancing by next Monday, though.
4. I'm also grateful to LMLD for pointing out that if you shave your legs often, you don't have to be careful about it.
5. When I read Cracked.com every day, I'm not addicted, it's just research into how to be funny and make a poignant point at the same time. Really. I could drop it any time. Really. Why won't you believe me, anonymous reader?
6. So as not to make this an inside joke that no one understands except Gayle, let me point out that she is a friend from my prayer group, and after reading my short story about Agatha and the Young Man, she twice came up to ask me whether the young man in the story came back to Mass or not. Since I hadn't continued writing the story yet when she asked, I said I didn't know. Her little question has been a major impetus inspiring me to keep writing the story. When I say God wants me to write a book, that's the one I'm working on.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Day 10: Childhood Memory
In the 30 Day Photo Challenge series ...
Kyrie
Anna
Kyrie's picture is of the first toy she ever got. (Kris Sackett, if you read this, you're the one who bought it for her!) We call the toy "Ducky Bear". As for my picture, those are my journals. The one on the bottom of the pile started when I was 14, and they go all the way to the pretty one in front that I'm currently writing in. I thought it was an appropriate picture for a "childhood memory", since I recently came to the conclusion that God wanted me to go through and reread them all.
Kyrie took her photo in manual mode, which impressed me. She may be getting the hang of manual mode much faster than I did? I tried (as I have been on most days) a variety of settings - auto mode, portrait mode, various manual settings with and without flash. When I was flipping between settings, the wheel stopped for a moment on the shutter-priority mode, and I felt that little tug which seems to indicate God telling me something. It seemed kind of pointless, but I went ahead and took a picture in shutter-priority mode. And what do you know. When I uploaded all the photos, that is the only photo that came out decently.
The flash did not treat kindly with the shiny parts of the facing journal. The manual mode pictures also came out overly bright and yellowed; apparently I had the shutter speed too slow for how high the iso was. I'm guessing, but I think that the overly-bright aspect was not apparent from the camera's preview, but was definitely there in the uploaded shots. The lower iso and the slow-but-not-too-slow shutter speed that I got on shutter priority mode ended up being just right.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
30 Day Photo Challenge!
Through my cousin, I came across this 30 Day Photo Challenge.
To make a long story short, I'm going to do this. And Kyrie's going to do it with me.
A less-abbreviated version of this story is that God told me to be teachable, and then I came across a conversation online about how much blogs need stunning visuals, "eye candy". After some web research, I decided that I will probably eventually need a better camera to take the best possible photos, but for now I really just need to learn how to use the features on the camera I've got. When my cousin posted about the 30-day challenge, I knew that was exactly the kind of thing I needed.
And then Kyrie asked if she could do it with me. And pointed out that if we started today, we would do the last one on her birthday. I was planning to start tomorrow, but I can't resist that logic. And it would be good for her to learn how to take good pictures along with me, I think.
Update: I am adding links to all 30 days, to have them all in one place.
And here is my amateur's How-To for a Camera's Manual Mode that summarizes what I learned.
Day 1: Self-Portrait
Day 2: What You Wore Today
Day 3:Clouds
Day 4: Something Green
Day 5: From a High Angle
Day 6: From a Low Angle
Day 7: Fruit
Day 8: A Bad Habit
Day 9: Someone You Love
Day 10: Childhood Memory
Day 11: Something Blue
Day 12: Sunset
Day 13: Yourself With 13 Things
Day 14: Eyes
Day 15: Silhouette
Day 16: Long Exposure
Day 17: Technology
Day 18: Your Shoes
Day 19: Something Orange
Day 20: Bokeh
Day 21: Faceless Self-Portrait
Day 22: Hands
Day 23: Sunflare
Day 24: Animal
Day 25: Something Pink
Day 26: Close-Up
Day 27: From a Distance
Day 28: Flowers
Day 29: Black & White
Day 30: Self-Portrait
To make a long story short, I'm going to do this. And Kyrie's going to do it with me.
A less-abbreviated version of this story is that God told me to be teachable, and then I came across a conversation online about how much blogs need stunning visuals, "eye candy". After some web research, I decided that I will probably eventually need a better camera to take the best possible photos, but for now I really just need to learn how to use the features on the camera I've got. When my cousin posted about the 30-day challenge, I knew that was exactly the kind of thing I needed.
And then Kyrie asked if she could do it with me. And pointed out that if we started today, we would do the last one on her birthday. I was planning to start tomorrow, but I can't resist that logic. And it would be good for her to learn how to take good pictures along with me, I think.
Update: I am adding links to all 30 days, to have them all in one place.
And here is my amateur's How-To for a Camera's Manual Mode that summarizes what I learned.
Day 1: Self-Portrait
Day 2: What You Wore Today
Day 3:Clouds
Day 4: Something Green
Day 5: From a High Angle
Day 6: From a Low Angle
Day 7: Fruit
Day 8: A Bad Habit
Day 9: Someone You Love
Day 10: Childhood Memory
Day 11: Something Blue
Day 12: Sunset
Day 13: Yourself With 13 Things
Day 14: Eyes
Day 15: Silhouette
Day 16: Long Exposure
Day 17: Technology
Day 18: Your Shoes
Day 19: Something Orange
Day 20: Bokeh
Day 21: Faceless Self-Portrait
Day 22: Hands
Day 23: Sunflare
Day 24: Animal
Day 25: Something Pink
Day 26: Close-Up
Day 27: From a Distance
Day 28: Flowers
Day 29: Black & White
Day 30: Self-Portrait
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Making of a Financial System
One day a bit ago, I suddenly found myself compelled to make my budget spreadsheet more user-friendly.
It was pretty odd. I would not have said it particularly felt like God was telling me to. I would normally have written the thought off as a waste of time; no one else is going to look at my budget spreadsheet, so why make it easy for someone else to use? But I just had a need to do it. So I went through and deleted a bunch of extraneous calculations, organized the info into color-coded tables, and put labels on various things to show what they were about.
Fast forward a couple months.
Remember when I said I had been glancing through the websites of the guy who came up with the No-S Diet and Urban Ranger? (His name is Reinhard). Well I came across a post on the forums in which someone bemoaned the difficult reporting and tracking that was required to stick to most budget plans. It was an old post, but there weren't a lot people jumping in to offer simpler ways of doing things.
Aha! I thought. Perhaps I should share our system.
So I made a generic version of my budget spreadsheet, tweaked it a bit more, and made two other versions for people who have different pay schedules. I was almost, but not quite, done with the spreadsheets and ready to put a post on the forum about this system. But a lot has been going on, and I hadn't found time to work on them lately.
Then I woke up Sunday morning from a dream.
I don't even remember what the dream was anymore. All I remember was that there was some guy who did a bunch of things or had a bunch of things, and I was impressed by how practical all those things were. As I was waking up, I was thinking what was that about?, and then it struck me that it was just like Reinhard and his "everyday systems". And I just knew that God was telling me to finish setting up the financial system that day.
Then, in case I might have doubted whether God was speaking to me through my dream, my Scripture reading for the morning involved the beginning of Matthew, where Joseph has multiple dreams with God telling him what to do. So that was what I spent most of Sunday doing.
If you're interested, read all about Only Spend What You Got.
(Those of you who read Conversion Diary may be interested to know that I originally got the basic idea for this financial system from Jen's #6 Take here.)
It was pretty odd. I would not have said it particularly felt like God was telling me to. I would normally have written the thought off as a waste of time; no one else is going to look at my budget spreadsheet, so why make it easy for someone else to use? But I just had a need to do it. So I went through and deleted a bunch of extraneous calculations, organized the info into color-coded tables, and put labels on various things to show what they were about.
Fast forward a couple months.
Remember when I said I had been glancing through the websites of the guy who came up with the No-S Diet and Urban Ranger? (His name is Reinhard). Well I came across a post on the forums in which someone bemoaned the difficult reporting and tracking that was required to stick to most budget plans. It was an old post, but there weren't a lot people jumping in to offer simpler ways of doing things.
Aha! I thought. Perhaps I should share our system.
So I made a generic version of my budget spreadsheet, tweaked it a bit more, and made two other versions for people who have different pay schedules. I was almost, but not quite, done with the spreadsheets and ready to put a post on the forum about this system. But a lot has been going on, and I hadn't found time to work on them lately.
Then I woke up Sunday morning from a dream.
I don't even remember what the dream was anymore. All I remember was that there was some guy who did a bunch of things or had a bunch of things, and I was impressed by how practical all those things were. As I was waking up, I was thinking what was that about?, and then it struck me that it was just like Reinhard and his "everyday systems". And I just knew that God was telling me to finish setting up the financial system that day.
Then, in case I might have doubted whether God was speaking to me through my dream, my Scripture reading for the morning involved the beginning of Matthew, where Joseph has multiple dreams with God telling him what to do. So that was what I spent most of Sunday doing.
If you're interested, read all about Only Spend What You Got.
(Those of you who read Conversion Diary may be interested to know that I originally got the basic idea for this financial system from Jen's #6 Take here.)
Friday, December 16, 2011
Urban Ranger
The Idea of Urban Rangering
So, some bit ago, I was looking through the website of the guy who came up with the No-S diet1. (I would like to point out, for the record, that he has a number of great systems.)
Every time I came across the Urban Ranger site, I went "oooh".
The basic idea of the Urban Ranger is that you walk everywhere that's within walking distance, instead of driving. I've come across the site before, and loved the idea of it then, too, but frankly I like a lot of ideas without being actually inspired to do them, for reasons of practicality or sloth. This time, though, I found myself going back to the page over and over again, and each time there was that subtle underlying push from God, as if he's telling me "pay attention to this". So I started thinking about it a little. The author recommends walking, "Anywhere you need to go that you can walk to in (say) under an hour", and I discovered that Google Maps' walking estimator thinks that my usual errands - the grocery store, the bank, Kmart, and the library - are all within an hour's walk from my apartment. Heck, even the Learning Palace where I occasionally go to pick up homeschool materials clocked in under an hour.
The First Urban Rangering Excursions
Driving back from Seattle after Thanksgiving, a rock hit the van windshield and started a crack, which grew to be some 6 inches long by the time we got home. I called and got quotes, yada yada. When I called the place to schedule a new window to be put in, they informed me I needed to drop the van off for some 5 hours or more, for it to set. Since I'd been planning to take the kids with me, that was an issue. They definitely weren't going to behave in a waiting room for that long.
The thought persistently cropped into my mind that this would force me to do some Urban Rangering.
So I did it.
I borrowed a double stroller from a friend2, made sure the kids had winter jackets, packed snacks and drinks, and we headed off on our grand adventure.
And it was fun.
Here's a list of some of the interesting places we saw or visited:
All in all, we walked a little over 3 miles, round trip.
The next day, we went Urban Rangering again.
This time I needed laundry money, and I finally admitted to myself that there wasn't going to be any better time to get it. We hit the bank, the library, and a corner market on the way home, for milk. It was pure awesome to walk out of the library with three kids reading while they walked.
2.4 miles this time, and the kids did an awesome job of it. Complaining was not an issue; for the most part, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. I was quite impressed.
Now I just need to invest in galoshes, rain coats, and a double stroller of my own, so we can make a habit of it.
1. Around the time I wrote about not indulging on Sundays.
2. Technically, I have a double stroller of my own. It's been cluttering up our front porch area for some time. But, well... I didn't want to put the kids in something that I couldn't be sure didn't have mold or mildew growing in the cloth. That thing is ready for the trash, I'm thinking.
3. At least, I think "sports" was the word they used. I can't remember for sure, and I'm not really confident on the racing part either, because I know nothing about motorcycles except the name Harley Davidson. But there was some word, and it probably began with 's', and it was clear it was not just ordinary motorcycles.
So, some bit ago, I was looking through the website of the guy who came up with the No-S diet1. (I would like to point out, for the record, that he has a number of great systems.)
Every time I came across the Urban Ranger site, I went "oooh".
The basic idea of the Urban Ranger is that you walk everywhere that's within walking distance, instead of driving. I've come across the site before, and loved the idea of it then, too, but frankly I like a lot of ideas without being actually inspired to do them, for reasons of practicality or sloth. This time, though, I found myself going back to the page over and over again, and each time there was that subtle underlying push from God, as if he's telling me "pay attention to this". So I started thinking about it a little. The author recommends walking, "Anywhere you need to go that you can walk to in (say) under an hour", and I discovered that Google Maps' walking estimator thinks that my usual errands - the grocery store, the bank, Kmart, and the library - are all within an hour's walk from my apartment. Heck, even the Learning Palace where I occasionally go to pick up homeschool materials clocked in under an hour.
The First Urban Rangering Excursions
Driving back from Seattle after Thanksgiving, a rock hit the van windshield and started a crack, which grew to be some 6 inches long by the time we got home. I called and got quotes, yada yada. When I called the place to schedule a new window to be put in, they informed me I needed to drop the van off for some 5 hours or more, for it to set. Since I'd been planning to take the kids with me, that was an issue. They definitely weren't going to behave in a waiting room for that long.
The thought persistently cropped into my mind that this would force me to do some Urban Rangering.
So I did it.
I borrowed a double stroller from a friend2, made sure the kids had winter jackets, packed snacks and drinks, and we headed off on our grand adventure.
And it was fun.
Here's a list of some of the interesting places we saw or visited:
- a "bakery" that doesn't bake anything (they just sell regular store-type bread, Hostess products, and the like);
- a pleasant little coffee shop that I never knew was there;
- a craft store that we decided not to take the double stroller into, after seeing a sign proclaiming that all bags must be left at the front;
- a library with a much expanded kid's section compared to the library we normally go to, and with a baby room open on Friday mornings;
- a bagel place that we are definitely going back to;
- a city park that was two or three stories deeper into the ground than the surrounding streets;
- a skate park with a LOT of teenage boys hanging out;
- a little shop that re-upholsters furniture (good to know!); and
- a place that sells racing motorcycles. Not just regular motorcycles. Sports motorcycles.3
All in all, we walked a little over 3 miles, round trip.
The next day, we went Urban Rangering again.
This time I needed laundry money, and I finally admitted to myself that there wasn't going to be any better time to get it. We hit the bank, the library, and a corner market on the way home, for milk. It was pure awesome to walk out of the library with three kids reading while they walked.
2.4 miles this time, and the kids did an awesome job of it. Complaining was not an issue; for the most part, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. I was quite impressed.
Now I just need to invest in galoshes, rain coats, and a double stroller of my own, so we can make a habit of it.
1. Around the time I wrote about not indulging on Sundays.
2. Technically, I have a double stroller of my own. It's been cluttering up our front porch area for some time. But, well... I didn't want to put the kids in something that I couldn't be sure didn't have mold or mildew growing in the cloth. That thing is ready for the trash, I'm thinking.
3. At least, I think "sports" was the word they used. I can't remember for sure, and I'm not really confident on the racing part either, because I know nothing about motorcycles except the name Harley Davidson. But there was some word, and it probably began with 's', and it was clear it was not just ordinary motorcycles.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Not Everything Needs To Be Done Every Day
In my apparently never-ending attempts to get my little apartment clean and uncluttered, I happened to go through large stacks of papers dating back even into my teenage years, I think.
(I mean, really. Hundreds of pages of various notes... why was I hanging on to them? There might have been two in there that I thought worth copying into Evernote. But that's not the point of this post.)
As I was going through all these papers, I found that three-quarters1 of them were either lists of things that I thought I should do every day, or else a schedule in which I tried to set aside time for all of those things. Exercise, prayer, and reading to the kids - for example - would show up on list after list, schedule after schedule.
Not a single one of those schedules ever worked for me2.
Not ever.
I might keep them up for as long as two weeks - most were lucky to last two days. They were, in general, hopelessly unrealistic, expecting me to accomplish things in a phenomenally short time so that I could fit everything into a day. Even when I was deliberately trying to "go easy" on myself, I never succeeded.
So for the next few days, I pondered why I kept making schedules that didn't work. This was ... relevant ... since I was also trying to figure out what sort of schedule I should have - if any - for homeschool. I think the turning point in my understanding came when I was looking at the Mother of Divine Grace curriculum. Out of curiosity, I took their 2nd grade syllabus and sketched out what their daily schedule (for the first week at least) looked like.
Eventually it percolated through my head that they only did history once a week.
Now, art and music are popular candidates for "less often" subjects3, and many curriculums will do history only two or three times a week. But MODG is a curriculum that aspires to excellence, and history is a significant portion of it. And yet, they do history only once a week.
Not everything needs to be done every day.
I'm finally realizing how much that thought - that everything important needs to be done every day (maybe with a few rare exceptions) - had permeated my thinking. When Ken got a beautiful copy of the Catechism for his RCIA class, I picked it up and started reading it. I got so excited, I immediately wanted to vow to read it every day. I've been reading through the gospel of Luke, and - inspired by Frank Sheed's book To Know Christ Jesus - I decided that next I would do a comparative reading of all four gospels at the same time, and I was so eager to do that, I almost didn't finish reading the end of Luke first.
Not everything needs to be done every day.
I'm trying to exercise in the mornings - 14 minutes of anything, which means for me, mostly dancing. But some mornings I don't have even 14 minutes, because I have to spend that time brushing the girls' hair out, or because the living room floor is too messy to dance on, or because I'm still a shuffling zombie. Exercising is not one of those things, at this time in my life, that needs to happen every day.
I think I'm reading to the kids once or twice a month lately. We are very ... very ... slowly ... working our way through The Rats of NIMH. But we actually finished The Secret Garden. And it finally occurred to me that one of my treasured childhood memories was Dad reading us the book The Phantom Tollbooth; it's the only book I remember him ever reading us once we were old enough to read ourselves, so why was I freaking out over not reading to the kids every day?
Some things DO need to be done every day. Dishes, pretty much, although there have been times in my life where I didn't. I think some sort of prayer, too, needs to be done every day or nearly so.
But... not everything needs to be done every day.
Not everything important needs to be done every day.
1. Have you heard that 90% of figures on the internet (and in conversation) are completely made up? Including that one? Yes, well, I did make up the 3/4 figure, since I obviously wasn't keeping some sort of tally going as I sorted my papers, to get the exact percentage of how many of them were schedules. But it was a lot.
2. Which is why there were so many of them, haha.
3. I have noticed that language people insist that poetry needs to be done every day, and musicians insist that music should be done every day. I assume artists would insist that art should be done every day, and historians history, and mathematicians math. I've decided that I am competent to set my own priorities.
(I mean, really. Hundreds of pages of various notes... why was I hanging on to them? There might have been two in there that I thought worth copying into Evernote. But that's not the point of this post.)
As I was going through all these papers, I found that three-quarters1 of them were either lists of things that I thought I should do every day, or else a schedule in which I tried to set aside time for all of those things. Exercise, prayer, and reading to the kids - for example - would show up on list after list, schedule after schedule.
Not a single one of those schedules ever worked for me2.
Not ever.
I might keep them up for as long as two weeks - most were lucky to last two days. They were, in general, hopelessly unrealistic, expecting me to accomplish things in a phenomenally short time so that I could fit everything into a day. Even when I was deliberately trying to "go easy" on myself, I never succeeded.
So for the next few days, I pondered why I kept making schedules that didn't work. This was ... relevant ... since I was also trying to figure out what sort of schedule I should have - if any - for homeschool. I think the turning point in my understanding came when I was looking at the Mother of Divine Grace curriculum. Out of curiosity, I took their 2nd grade syllabus and sketched out what their daily schedule (for the first week at least) looked like.
 |
| I can't believe Mother of Divine Grace only has one day of "reading". |
Eventually it percolated through my head that they only did history once a week.
Now, art and music are popular candidates for "less often" subjects3, and many curriculums will do history only two or three times a week. But MODG is a curriculum that aspires to excellence, and history is a significant portion of it. And yet, they do history only once a week.
Not everything needs to be done every day.
 |
| She does still need to nap every day, although she seems to want to think otherwise. |
I'm finally realizing how much that thought - that everything important needs to be done every day (maybe with a few rare exceptions) - had permeated my thinking. When Ken got a beautiful copy of the Catechism for his RCIA class, I picked it up and started reading it. I got so excited, I immediately wanted to vow to read it every day. I've been reading through the gospel of Luke, and - inspired by Frank Sheed's book To Know Christ Jesus - I decided that next I would do a comparative reading of all four gospels at the same time, and I was so eager to do that, I almost didn't finish reading the end of Luke first.
Not everything needs to be done every day.
I'm trying to exercise in the mornings - 14 minutes of anything, which means for me, mostly dancing. But some mornings I don't have even 14 minutes, because I have to spend that time brushing the girls' hair out, or because the living room floor is too messy to dance on, or because I'm still a shuffling zombie. Exercising is not one of those things, at this time in my life, that needs to happen every day.
I think I'm reading to the kids once or twice a month lately. We are very ... very ... slowly ... working our way through The Rats of NIMH. But we actually finished The Secret Garden. And it finally occurred to me that one of my treasured childhood memories was Dad reading us the book The Phantom Tollbooth; it's the only book I remember him ever reading us once we were old enough to read ourselves, so why was I freaking out over not reading to the kids every day?
Some things DO need to be done every day. Dishes, pretty much, although there have been times in my life where I didn't. I think some sort of prayer, too, needs to be done every day or nearly so.
But... not everything needs to be done every day.
Not everything important needs to be done every day.
 |
| Painting is more like a once-a-year activity for us. |
1. Have you heard that 90% of figures on the internet (and in conversation) are completely made up? Including that one? Yes, well, I did make up the 3/4 figure, since I obviously wasn't keeping some sort of tally going as I sorted my papers, to get the exact percentage of how many of them were schedules. But it was a lot.
2. Which is why there were so many of them, haha.
3. I have noticed that language people insist that poetry needs to be done every day, and musicians insist that music should be done every day. I assume artists would insist that art should be done every day, and historians history, and mathematicians math. I've decided that I am competent to set my own priorities.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Donating Clothes to the Poor
I bet none of you remember anymore that, way back in July, I mentioned I had bags of kids' clothes that I had decluttered after feeling like God wanted me to give things away to the poor.
Well, they sat in my bedroom for months as I tried to finish getting them all cleaned and sorted. A dozen times during that period, I thought to myself that I should just dump them off at the local thrift store when the clothes were all ready. It's what I usually do when I want to give stuff away. But somehow that didn't feel right; God had told me to give things away to the poor, not hand them over to someone who would sell them (albeit at a cheap price).
Then, some months ago, a trio of women gave a presentation to my prayer group about different aspects of the Right to Life movement in Portland, such as the 40 Days for Life campaign. Because of that presentation, I ended up getting the name and address of a local crisis pregnancy center.
I was thrilled.
The pro-life movement lies very close to my heart; I am often pained at the thought of all the abortions that happen. There is little I can do about it, though, beyond simply raising my own children. To have this chance, this opportunity, to actually help women (and babies) who would otherwise be at risk for an abortion, even if just by donating used kids' clothes, gives me great joy.
Which didn't stop me from taking forever to actually get the clothes to them. It was only yesterday that I finally delivered the clothes, and the only reason I finally got around to it was that the light in my bedroom went out, and I didn't want my neat-freak landlord to see the bedroom that messy, and the only other place to put the clothes was in the van. And then the kids had a dentist appointment in the general vicinity of the center, so it was reasonably convenient to just drop them off.
Well, they sat in my bedroom for months as I tried to finish getting them all cleaned and sorted. A dozen times during that period, I thought to myself that I should just dump them off at the local thrift store when the clothes were all ready. It's what I usually do when I want to give stuff away. But somehow that didn't feel right; God had told me to give things away to the poor, not hand them over to someone who would sell them (albeit at a cheap price).
Then, some months ago, a trio of women gave a presentation to my prayer group about different aspects of the Right to Life movement in Portland, such as the 40 Days for Life campaign. Because of that presentation, I ended up getting the name and address of a local crisis pregnancy center.
I was thrilled.
The pro-life movement lies very close to my heart; I am often pained at the thought of all the abortions that happen. There is little I can do about it, though, beyond simply raising my own children. To have this chance, this opportunity, to actually help women (and babies) who would otherwise be at risk for an abortion, even if just by donating used kids' clothes, gives me great joy.
Which didn't stop me from taking forever to actually get the clothes to them. It was only yesterday that I finally delivered the clothes, and the only reason I finally got around to it was that the light in my bedroom went out, and I didn't want my neat-freak landlord to see the bedroom that messy, and the only other place to put the clothes was in the van. And then the kids had a dentist appointment in the general vicinity of the center, so it was reasonably convenient to just drop them off.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
On Not Indulging on Sundays
I realized lately that I've been on the No-S diet for something close to a year.
It's simple: No Sweets, No Snacks, No Seconds, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and Special days.
I haven't lost any weight at all.
This may have something to do with the fact that I still eat too much on the weekends. So I was thinking and praying about that on Sunday morning. And after asking God for help figuring out what to do about it, I opened the Bible randomly. (I think it was Luke 6).
I came first across a verse about level ground, and it instantly struck me that God was telling me to make my week level, to make my weekends the same as the weekdays.
I kept reading, and came across "Fortunate are the hungry." Call it confirmation.
Sunday is supposed to be a feast day, and one of the objections in the back of my mind was that "fasting" from sweets and such would violate the spirit of the Sabbath rest. Then I glanced over at the adjoining, previous page, where Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath. "I am the Lord of the Sabbath", he says, "Is it lawful to do good or do harm on the Sabbath? To save life or destroy it?"
Temperance is a virtue. Being temperate is doing good; eating healthier by not over-indulging is like saving my life. In this way God made it clear to me that this was what he wanted me to do.
I had a lot of doubts during that day - Was I really to never eat sweets again? Should I wait until I'm more clear on the details before denying myself the sweets I so desperately want? - but I stuck with it, for this Sunday at least.
At the end of the day, while praying, I felt as if God was pleased with me, and it seemed to me that he told me that because I had obeyed him, he would heal me. I think He meant heal me of my intemperance, but frankly, I'm not 100% sure.
(In the interest of full disclosure, since then, I've been thinking that God is guiding me towards some new rules, like maybe two sweets per week, or something.)
It's simple: No Sweets, No Snacks, No Seconds, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and Special days.
I haven't lost any weight at all.
This may have something to do with the fact that I still eat too much on the weekends. So I was thinking and praying about that on Sunday morning. And after asking God for help figuring out what to do about it, I opened the Bible randomly. (I think it was Luke 6).
I came first across a verse about level ground, and it instantly struck me that God was telling me to make my week level, to make my weekends the same as the weekdays.
I kept reading, and came across "Fortunate are the hungry." Call it confirmation.
Sunday is supposed to be a feast day, and one of the objections in the back of my mind was that "fasting" from sweets and such would violate the spirit of the Sabbath rest. Then I glanced over at the adjoining, previous page, where Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath. "I am the Lord of the Sabbath", he says, "Is it lawful to do good or do harm on the Sabbath? To save life or destroy it?"
Temperance is a virtue. Being temperate is doing good; eating healthier by not over-indulging is like saving my life. In this way God made it clear to me that this was what he wanted me to do.
I had a lot of doubts during that day - Was I really to never eat sweets again? Should I wait until I'm more clear on the details before denying myself the sweets I so desperately want? - but I stuck with it, for this Sunday at least.
At the end of the day, while praying, I felt as if God was pleased with me, and it seemed to me that he told me that because I had obeyed him, he would heal me. I think He meant heal me of my intemperance, but frankly, I'm not 100% sure.
(In the interest of full disclosure, since then, I've been thinking that God is guiding me towards some new rules, like maybe two sweets per week, or something.)
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Infinite Suppleness of Prudence
I mentioned once, in passing, that God had told me to read this book.
Now I'd like to share one particularly helpful insight that I got out of it.
Pieper speaks of the limited usefulness of casuistry - the laying out of morality in particular examples - and then, in speaking of its limitations, he quotes [my bold emphasis]:
Now, in all honesty, it took me most of the first section before I finally figured out that the classical notion of "prudence" means something like "knowing the right thing to do in a given situation". So Pieper1 is saying that life is infinitely complex, and therefore any set of rules you come up with about how to behave - no matter how complicated - will necessarily be an over-simplification of reality.
Prudence is infinitely supple.
So then I happened to be driving one day.
I pulled to a stop in a left-turn lane behind another car. Waiting for the signal to turn, I started wondering if I should pull up a little. This sent me into a spiral of thoughts that looked something like this...
There's all those times where the cars from the turn-lane stretch back so far they block the driving lane; clearly in those cases it would be helpful if all the cars pulled forward as much as they can, so no one gets blocked - but you can't pull too far forward or you risk hitting the car ahead of you, of course. And if someone comes too fast from behind and rear-ends you, then you want to have more space between you and the car ahead so that you don't hit them. And if you had a whole line of cars who had pulled forward in the turn-lane so as not to block the other lanes, and someone came along too fast, you could get the whole line of cars hitting each other. If you can see behind you that the cars are not blocking the other lane, then it's ok to stay back. But a lot of time you can't see around the cars well enough to know if they're blocking or not. So you have to guess. Or if God tells you to pull forward or stay back, you could go with that - if you can figure out whether he's really telling you something or not. Maybe you should just figure that it's better to play it on the safe side and stay back, and accept lane-blocking as the price of safety. Or maybe you should just figure that it's better to pull forward, because it's a lot more likely that you'll end up blocking the lane than that someone behind you will rear-end you into the car ahead.
Eventually, the phrase filtered into my head... infinite suppleness.
I realized that my train of thought wasn't just impractical. It was impossible - even in theory - to work out what you should do in every single case. Because the variety of situations isn't just beyond my grasp, it's infinite. That's why we need prudence and God's guidance in the first place: so we know what to do right now even when we don't have, and couldn't possibly have, every single case figured out.
So I tossed out the whole fruitless line of thought, and a peaceful sense of freedom came over me.
It turns out, I do this kind of thing quite a lot, and "infinite suppleness" is becoming my new rallying cry.
1. And, apparently, some French commentator, as well as Thomas Aquinas.
 |
| The Four Cardinal Virtues, by Josef Pieper |
Now I'd like to share one particularly helpful insight that I got out of it.
Pieper speaks of the limited usefulness of casuistry - the laying out of morality in particular examples - and then, in speaking of its limitations, he quotes [my bold emphasis]:
"Casuistry, on the contrary, carried to excess, substitutes techniques and prescriptions for the infinite suppleness which the virtue of prudence must retain in the face of the complexities of the ethical life," as we read in a French commentary to the Summa Theologica.
Now, in all honesty, it took me most of the first section before I finally figured out that the classical notion of "prudence" means something like "knowing the right thing to do in a given situation". So Pieper1 is saying that life is infinitely complex, and therefore any set of rules you come up with about how to behave - no matter how complicated - will necessarily be an over-simplification of reality.
Prudence is infinitely supple.
So then I happened to be driving one day.
I pulled to a stop in a left-turn lane behind another car. Waiting for the signal to turn, I started wondering if I should pull up a little. This sent me into a spiral of thoughts that looked something like this...
There's all those times where the cars from the turn-lane stretch back so far they block the driving lane; clearly in those cases it would be helpful if all the cars pulled forward as much as they can, so no one gets blocked - but you can't pull too far forward or you risk hitting the car ahead of you, of course. And if someone comes too fast from behind and rear-ends you, then you want to have more space between you and the car ahead so that you don't hit them. And if you had a whole line of cars who had pulled forward in the turn-lane so as not to block the other lanes, and someone came along too fast, you could get the whole line of cars hitting each other. If you can see behind you that the cars are not blocking the other lane, then it's ok to stay back. But a lot of time you can't see around the cars well enough to know if they're blocking or not. So you have to guess. Or if God tells you to pull forward or stay back, you could go with that - if you can figure out whether he's really telling you something or not. Maybe you should just figure that it's better to play it on the safe side and stay back, and accept lane-blocking as the price of safety. Or maybe you should just figure that it's better to pull forward, because it's a lot more likely that you'll end up blocking the lane than that someone behind you will rear-end you into the car ahead.
Eventually, the phrase filtered into my head... infinite suppleness.
I realized that my train of thought wasn't just impractical. It was impossible - even in theory - to work out what you should do in every single case. Because the variety of situations isn't just beyond my grasp, it's infinite. That's why we need prudence and God's guidance in the first place: so we know what to do right now even when we don't have, and couldn't possibly have, every single case figured out.
So I tossed out the whole fruitless line of thought, and a peaceful sense of freedom came over me.
It turns out, I do this kind of thing quite a lot, and "infinite suppleness" is becoming my new rallying cry.
1. And, apparently, some French commentator, as well as Thomas Aquinas.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Miracle of the Ipad - or Not?
Let me just start by using this picture to make it clear that my kids' ipad has a very dirty screen. This is not part of the story, I'm just explaining why, on all the rest of the photos, you have to ignore all the fingerprints that show up on the ipad.
My brother Caleb, who bought the kids the ipad last Christmas, has wondered several times how long the ipad would last under the abuse of five little kids.
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| Can you see that through the fingerprints? |
Well, mark it on your calendar Caleb - ten months.
This video clip might show the damage a little more clearly. There was a faint crack that I could feel, and it was clearly messing with the display. When it showed up like this, I could still access all of the apps, and they appeared to respond ok; I just couldn't always see what I was selecting. At least the internal computer did not appear to be damaged; just the display. Unfortunately, when the screen cracked on my Macbook Air earlier this year, and messed up in just this same way, the only way to fix it was to replace the whole screen - which I doubted was possible with the ipad, and if it was, probably cost more than buying a new one.
Some of the time, when I turned the ipad on, this was what I got instead. When this happened, I couldn't do anything with it except turn it back off.
And then, some of the time, I got this. A black screen with some slowly fading-in green lines. Again, completely un-usable this way.
Now, I was using the ipad to provide the musical accompaniment during the seven-week Life in the Spirit Seminar that my prayer group is putting on. If the ipad didn't work at all, that would really screw up what I thought God wanted us to be doing, musically speaking. My kids would also be very sad not to be able to play Angry Birds anymore.
So I started praying for God to fix the ipad. I had recently read a book on healing prayer that talks about "soaking prayer" - which basically means lots and lots of prayer, even for hours. And it seemed to me that God wanted me to do that with the ipad. I figured it might not be a bad idea to practice on an inanimate object before praying for people that way. So I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. Every now and then I would turn the ipad on again to see if it was fixed. It never was.
I tried not to get discouraged, and prayed some more on a later day. Again, no results.
It was really discouraging.
Since at least some of the time it was usable, even though difficult to see, I took it along with me to the next Life in the Spirit session. I got there early and plugged it in to charge while I helped set up. Plugging it in brought it out of sleep, and this is what I saw...
Pure crystal clearness.
 |
| This time with less reflection from the flash. |
Praise God, I thought.
I'd been wanting a miracle. Something I could point to as an indisputable violation of the natural laws of physics, like Peter walking on water. It didn't have to be something that other people would believe was a miracle - just something that I would know was one.
And this was it.
This was my miracle.
Or so I thought.
Until I let the kids play with the ipad, and they came back telling me it was broken again.
Sure enough, it was making some of those lines again. It didn't seem quite as bad as before, but it was clearly not working right. And I thought I could feel the crack again, which I had not been able to find when everything was clear-looking. I didn't have time to deal with it right then, so I turned it off and stuck it on the charger and told the kids not to touch it.
Later, on impulse, I turned it back on for a moment and it came on crystal clear again.
Still, I was upset. As I did the dishes later that day, and had time to think about what had happened, I started to fume at God. Why would you take this away from me, God? Why offer the miracle in the first place if you don't mean it? It would have been better not to have fixed it in the first place! Why does it seem like every time I get my hopes in you up, you do something to dash them back down again? I know I'm supposed to trust you, but seriously, how is this not messed up?
Eventually I felt I should stop fuming, and I tried to let it go. My husband found out it was still a sensitive issue for me when he suggested that we ask Caleb if there's a warranty on the ipad, and I snapped at him. (Sorry, love!) I figure not to let the kids play with it, until the Life in the Spirit is over next week. After that, if they break it, well, such is life.
So I'm left not knowing what to think. On the one hand, I have pictures to prove that something happened. Electronics don't just spontaneously fix themselves, you know? And, as of right now, the ipad is working just fine. Perfectly clear. But I think I can still feel a crack, and I can't make myself believe that the ipad is going to last much past the end of the seminar. Maybe the lines came back as a warning from God that the fix isn't going to last - that the miracle is just temporary, as it were. God only knows.
But at least He does.
So I'm left not knowing what to think. On the one hand, I have pictures to prove that something happened. Electronics don't just spontaneously fix themselves, you know? And, as of right now, the ipad is working just fine. Perfectly clear. But I think I can still feel a crack, and I can't make myself believe that the ipad is going to last much past the end of the seminar. Maybe the lines came back as a warning from God that the fix isn't going to last - that the miracle is just temporary, as it were. God only knows.
But at least He does.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
God Tells Me To Be Less Selfish With The Kids
Last Sunday's readings could be called the "good leadership" readings. And God used them to make it clear to me all the ways in which I am NOT being a good mother to my children.
Part 1: Morning Prayer
Gabe and Julie and I all had a cold Sunday morning, so we weren't making it to Mass. Instead of our usual morning prayer at breakfast, plus reading the Mass readings to the kids, Ken had led them in grace. So I was figuring to take it easy and skip our usual Sunday morning prayer routine. I did, though, sit in the bedroom to read the readings for myself. You know, in peace and quiet. Without the kids around.
And now, O priests, this commandment is for you:
If you do not listen,
if you do not lay it to heart,
to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts,
I will send a curse upon you
[Malachi 1-2]
Umm, right God. Yes, I had chosen the path of less-glorifying-of-God's-name this morning, and he was not pleased with that. So I called in the kids, and we had a surprisingly fruitful session, in which I got the kids to think more about the prayers than usual and about the readings.
Then I went back to reading the readings for myself.
Part 2: Homeschooling
I don't know if it was last month's series of posts about homeschooling or what, but the idea had come to me to make a complete curriculum. As in, write a set of textbooks for each subject that would eventually be something I could publish and sell. Because, obviously, I can write the most excellent curriculum ever1. I became slightly obsessed with this idea for a couple weeks, steadily ignoring the fact that (a) I was filled with grandiose visions, a sure sign that I'm not really being inspired; and (b) in all my research into what matters in education, it is consistently said that the teacher matters a lot more than the curriculum, and spending time writing curriculum would mean I would be spending less time with my own actual kids.
You have turned aside from the way, and have caused many to falter by your instruction;
[Malachi]
O LORD, my heart is not proud,
nor are my eyes haughty;
I busy not myself with great things,
nor with things too sublime for me.
R. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.
Nay rather, I have stilled and quieted
my soul like a weaned child.
Like a weaned child on its mother's lap,
so is my soul within me.
[Psalm 131]
All their works are performed to be seen. ...They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation 'Rabbi.'
[Matthew 23]
We were gentle among you, as a nursing mother cares for her children. With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well,
[1 Thess 2]
"With great affection"... that's exactly how I haven't been homeschooling; instead I've been pushing the kids away so I can do my own thing. Okie doke, Lord. I will quit all the grandiose plans to achieve the greatest curricula ever - which is mostly motivated by the desire for others to be impressed by me anyway - and instead focus on sharing more of my whole self with the kids.
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| I got these treasures at the used book store today, and plan to go back for more when I can find someplace to put them. |
Part 3: Chores
You recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery. Working night and day in order not to burden any of you,
[1 Thess]
They tie up heavy burdens hard to carryand lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.
[Matthew 23]
Yep, that's me again. I've been giving the kids more and more chores lately, which is fine. But once or twice the niggling thought crossed my mind that I was giving them more chores than I was really doing myself. So I'm going to re-focus on getting lots of cleaning done myself and help show them how their chores should be done. There's plenty for all of us!
1. In my defense, homeschooling curricula are rife with propaganda, which is a steady failure to pursue excellence.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Why Homeschooling Is So Exciting For Me Right Now: Summary
"[C]hildren learn by example. Most importantly home-school teachers must serve, through their own behavior regarding their own work, as good examples for their students."-[Source]
Here are links to each part of my "Why Homeschooling is So Exciting For Me Right Now" series:
Part 1: Fiction
Part 2: Nature Journal
Part 3: Spanish
Part 4: Art
Part 5: Living Books
I picked that quote at the top because with each of these things, I'm doing something myself and the kids are following my example. And it turns out to be an awesome way to teach; being creative makes my life that much richer.
For your enjoyment, I present the following story that Kyrie wrote (her original spelling). She recently got as entranced with the Encyclopedia Brown stories as I was when I was a kid. So when she was resisting writing a story, I suggested she write an Encyclopedia Brown story. And she did. Ken and I were both very impressed.
**********************************
A girl came into Encyclopedia's garage and put a coin into the coin holder. Encyclopedia looked up from the book he was reading and said "How can I help you today?" The girl said "My name is Katie and I need you to help find a watch." "OK" said Encyclopedia "let's go find your watch" Katie led him to the place where she lost had it. (Witch was a park.) Encyclopedia asked "Was eneybody here when the watch was stolen?" "Yes, but the boy left all ready. Only me and him where in the park" said Katie "Oh, and the watch was mine. I left it on this bench because I wanted to go on the monkey-bars. Mother gave it to me yesterday. So mother was afraid of it coming loos and fall of and get lost, so she made me take it off before I go on the monkey bars Get it?" "Yes" said Encyclopedia "And what was his name?" "He said his name was Charlie. Oh and I know where he lives. Any more qustion?" "Yes, what does the watch look like?" asked Encyclopedia. Katie said "The strapes are purple and the short hand in the clock part is red, long hand is blue, and that third hand is golden. Is that all you want to know?" "Yes." said Katie who was wanting her watch back more than ever. When they arrived, they found Charlie in the garden (his garden, wich was next to the house). He seemed to be digging a hole and now put somthing purple into it and started to cover it up. "What do you want here?" asked Charlie. Encyclopedia said "We are looking for a watch. Do you mind digging it up and reterning it?"
"How did Encyclopedia know Charlie took the watch?"
(turn to the next page
For the answer.)
[And then Kyrie wrote on the next page...]
Encyclopedia had seen Charlie put the watch into the hole he had just finish digging. Charlie dug up the watch he had just buried and reterend it to Katie.
Here are links to each part of my "Why Homeschooling is So Exciting For Me Right Now" series:
Part 1: Fiction
Part 2: Nature Journal
Part 3: Spanish
Part 4: Art
Part 5: Living Books
I picked that quote at the top because with each of these things, I'm doing something myself and the kids are following my example. And it turns out to be an awesome way to teach; being creative makes my life that much richer.
For your enjoyment, I present the following story that Kyrie wrote (her original spelling). She recently got as entranced with the Encyclopedia Brown stories as I was when I was a kid. So when she was resisting writing a story, I suggested she write an Encyclopedia Brown story. And she did. Ken and I were both very impressed.
**********************************
A girl came into Encyclopedia's garage and put a coin into the coin holder. Encyclopedia looked up from the book he was reading and said "How can I help you today?" The girl said "My name is Katie and I need you to help find a watch." "OK" said Encyclopedia "let's go find your watch" Katie led him to the place where she lost had it. (Witch was a park.) Encyclopedia asked "Was eneybody here when the watch was stolen?" "Yes, but the boy left all ready. Only me and him where in the park" said Katie "Oh, and the watch was mine. I left it on this bench because I wanted to go on the monkey-bars. Mother gave it to me yesterday. So mother was afraid of it coming loos and fall of and get lost, so she made me take it off before I go on the monkey bars Get it?" "Yes" said Encyclopedia "And what was his name?" "He said his name was Charlie. Oh and I know where he lives. Any more qustion?" "Yes, what does the watch look like?" asked Encyclopedia. Katie said "The strapes are purple and the short hand in the clock part is red, long hand is blue, and that third hand is golden. Is that all you want to know?" "Yes." said Katie who was wanting her watch back more than ever. When they arrived, they found Charlie in the garden (his garden, wich was next to the house). He seemed to be digging a hole and now put somthing purple into it and started to cover it up. "What do you want here?" asked Charlie. Encyclopedia said "We are looking for a watch. Do you mind digging it up and reterning it?"
"How did Encyclopedia know Charlie took the watch?"
(turn to the next page
For the answer.)
[And then Kyrie wrote on the next page...]
Encyclopedia had seen Charlie put the watch into the hole he had just finish digging. Charlie dug up the watch he had just buried and reterend it to Katie.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Why Homeschooling Is So Exciting For Me Right Now, Part 5: Living Books
"[C]hildren learn by example. Most importantly home-school teachers must serve, through their own behavior regarding their own work, as good examples for their students."-[Source]
 |
| Savi's book this week. |
I got so fascinated by the first set of books that I read them too. They were so awesome that I've kept reading these children's books each week.
 |
| Kyrie's book this week1. |
I've learned more about the Lewis and Clark expedition than I ever knew. I've discovered that Disney's version of Pinocchio is not too far off from the original in overall moral tone, while Disney's The Jungle Book manages to achieve about as opposite of an approach as possible from Kipling's noble book. I've felt sorry for the wife of Daniel Boone and wondered what happened to Elizabeth Crockett after the Alamo. I've admired Johnny Appleseed and admired Nathaniel Bowditch even more. I've wondered if Henry Longfellow has something against faith, but still had to struggle not to cry in front of Kyrie when discussing The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, it was that good.
 |
| Elijah's book this week. |
It gives me a real appreciation for the term "living book". These books come alive in your hands, grabbing your heart up and taking it to places new and exciting, places you didn't even know were there to be discovered.
 |
| This is a book that God made it clear I should read. |
And it gives me a better appreciation for my own adult reading, as well. Good quality books offer a richness and depth to my life that is otherwise lacking.
1. The LBC book on Crockett wasn't available from the library, so I substituted this. Some of the substitutions that I've made did not turn out to be particularly impressive books, but I liked this one.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Why Homeschooling Is So Exciting For Me Right Now, Part 4: Art
"[C]hildren learn by example. Most importantly home-school teachers must serve, through their own behavior regarding their own work, as good examples for their students."-[Source]
I had art classes in high school that thoroughly engrained in me that pretty much everyone, myself included, can learn to draw decently. Maybe not as exceptionally as those with a gift for it, but still well. Since I have not practiced, however, I have lost all those skills I once had.
Kyrie, who appears to have some talent at drawing, received several art books that I have been using for her art curriculum. One of them comes with a DVD and introduces the kind of serious art techniques that I learned in high school. I decided it would be a good thing for me to re-learn along with her. So I bought myself a sketch book, and started practicing along with the DVD.
 |
| Did I mention how much I like journals? That applies to sketch books too. |
Then one day as I was doing my regular Scripture reading, I happened to be at the passage where Jesus enters Jerusalem riding on a donkey. As I read this familiar passage, one verse stuck out that I do not remember noticing before.
Picture the scene for a moment. Jesus has just told two of his disciples to go into the town ahead of them and bring him the donkey colt they would find there. They do, indeed, find a donkey colt. When they start untying it, the owners naturally object. The disciples give the explanation that Jesus instructed them to give - "The Master needs it." - and the owners, for whatever unfathomable reason, accept that.
"Then they led the animal to Jesus, and laying their cloaks on it, helped him mount."[Luke 19:35]
All sorts of things are going through my mind at this point - Why did they lay their cloaks on the donkey? Was it dirty? Do cloaks make it easier to ride without a saddle? Were the owners already fans of Jesus? Did they know who the disciples meant by "Master"? - and so on. But one part in particular arrested me.
The disciples helped him mount.
What does it look like for the disciples to help Jesus mount? Why did they help him? Could he not do it by himself? How do you climb on a donkey when stirrups won't be invented for a few hundred more years, anyhow? Looking at the Greek translations, it sounds even stronger than just helping him mount - the disciples 'put Jesus on the donkey'. It makes Jesus sound almost like a helpless child, being lifted onto the donkey.
The visual on this so captured my mind, that I thought it would make a great painting. It's not a moment that I remember any artist capturing before.
If only some artist would draw it.
If only.
And then, of course, the thought percolated through my head, that perhaps I could draw it. Like, for real, not just as an egoistic fantasizing.
So I got out the sketch book and started blocking out what the figures might look like.
 |
| I don't have a good idea of what donkeys look like, so I found a picture online to copy. |
I need a lot more practice with figures, clearly. But it was so much fun to do, and I am excited at what I might draw in the future.
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