Visiting England this Summer

Bryan and I are embarking on a new adventure in our life.  We are part of a short-term mission team that will travel to Solihull, England to encourage and interact with Christians and their neighbors.  We will be with a small congregation for 10 days and then do a few days of sightseeing before returning home.  This is one of a series of adventures of late that have marked our life together.

The biggest change for us in the last 6 months is joining a different church family.  One of the benefits of joining a new church is that we are very accustomed to meeting new people and learning about them.  So going to a different country to meet new people is not as intimidating as it may have seemed in the past.

We are stepping out (maybe I should say walking out) in faith as we plan our trip.  We can't really afford it on paper, but God is providing the means for us to go.  And we are trusting that He will be leading us as we meet and encourage fellow believers.  We will also be inviting neighbors of the church to a few events.  It will be interesting to see how we are received by the English.  And how much we can connect with the Christians we meet at the church in the short time we are there.

It is exciting to think about doing 'work' like this in the church in the future.  We both have wondered if we could be used as encouragers to new believers (discipling) or as supporters of a new church just starting out.  We look forward to what we can learn from this trip about ourselves and about how to care for strangers to whom we are connected through our faith in the Lord Jesus.

Here I go again...

Starting over: I think I start over every week in some area of my life.  Why?  Because I am not a disciplined personality.  I am a disciplined-habit-keeping-routine-list-making wannabee.  I want to have my day ordered, taking things one step at a time, having habits in place that I don't have to really think about.  I know the value of going from one task to another without having to 'talk' myself into the task; it should be automatic, I shouldn't waste brain power or will power to 'decide' to do it. Like making my bed or getting dressed in the morning or putting my glasses on.

I want to be disciplined, and yet no matter how often I work on this area of my life, I still, after almost 50 years, can't get it perfect.  Probably one of the few habits I have is working on forming habits!  I know that my personality is what is making it impossible for me to succeed in this desire.  Maybe it's the procrastination part of me; or is it the flexible, change-embracing (as opposed to change-resisting) part of me?  Over time I have become less of a procrastinator and more of a habit or routine keeper.  If I do fall into procrastination mode, I still gets lots of stuff done as I avoid the one or two tasks over which I am procrastinating.  I frequently make lists of what I have accomplished for the day just so I can see that I am actually getting things done, habitually, every day.

Some of the things I have learned about myself is that if I am given a detailed plan to follow about how to do pretty much anything, I will resist it, rebel against it, and eventually change it or tweak it to my own ideas about how to do something.  What does that say about me?  Is it my rebellious nature that does this, or is it a positive side to me that just gets out of hand sometimes, preventing me from following someone else's idea of how to do something?  I won't follow a recipe to the letter (mostly for cooking, I do pretty much follow a recipe for baking),  I can't follow a diet for longer than a week, I can't do the same thing at the same time every single day of my life, and if I start to see myself doing that, something inside of me kicks in and stops me from sticking with it.  I wonder how I managed to raise four children, feeding them, caring for their bodily needs every day--I guess that is one area where I did keep good habits without even thinking about it.


At this point, you may be thinking that I am some kind of a freak who never gets anything done.  Actually, I read books all the time about how to be efficient, creating habits, dieting and exercise books, plans to follow for every area of my life--housework, hospitality, home schooling, Bible study, and more. I love thinking creatively about how to get things done and reading or hearing about how others accomplish what they do in a day.  Mini habits are the way I get things done--breaking up my goals into very small chunks so I can see myself succeed (at least for a little while) and baby steps that become real habits to me which I follow for the rest of my life (mostly).  I have to be 'in the mood' to cook, to clean, to write, to read, to exercise.  Even when I tell myself that I am working towards consistency and true habits, I have to qualify myself because I will never be able to keep to the habits absolutely. I don't always know my own limitations, and so I get stressed about how busy I am and wonder how I will ever get anything done which paralyzes me and sometimes prevents me from starting something new or causes me to procrastinate.

I wonder:  does anyone keep routines, daily habits, disciplines absolutely?  I do know people who seem to be ultra-disciplined.  Usually, they are the people that I wish I could be like. Disciplined people seem to know what they can do and what they can't.   But sometimes they seem to have difficulty being flexible with their day or don't deal with change or life circumstances very well.  Nothing is allowed to distract the ultra-disciplined from their daily work. I am sure they get a lot done, and their flexibility exists as long as it can be conformed to schedules and routines.  But there seems to be less creativity at times, less spontaneity in these kinds of personalities. Maybe that is the trade-off for being a person completely disciplined.  And actually as much as I wish I could be as disciplined as they are,  they also drive me a little crazy when I am around them.   I drive them crazy, too, I am sure.   That's the interesting side of having relationships with people who are different than you.

My assessment of the disciplined person as compared to me may be completely wrong.  I may be glorifying their abilities or justifying my own weaknesses.  My desire is to reduce daily stress by having habits in place so that on my worst day I can still get up, and 'do something', or many 'somethings'  so each day is a success.  I struggle against my own flesh (physically) and against the leanings of my personality (mentally) to do, accomplish, excel at life, to be someone who values small daily work that adds up to bring meaning to me and to others.  All of the habits I want to develop should serve me intellectually, spiritually and physically.  Routines, discipline, habits should serve rather than enslave an individual; if I keep that in mind, hopefully, I can find a balance of creativity and flexibility while working towards keeping habits with less effort.  

A New Year Note

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy New Year! We look forward to 2016 even as we reflect on what God has done for us as this year closes.

This year has been one of blessings , challenges, changes, and perseverance.  As a family we have witnessed God's love and mercy, His faithfulness and patience with us, and His reminder to us that He is real and that He cares about every detail of the plans He has for us.

Bryan and I celebrated our 25th year of marriage all year long.  We enjoyed sunny Orlando and even sunnier (except when we were there!) Jamaica as quiet get-a-ways from our busy daily life.   It has been wonderful to reminisce and remind one another of the beginning of our love life together.  How far we've come and how much our lives have been shaped by our love for each other and by the love of God in our lives.

Justin graduated from Grove City College in May and secured a teaching position for the 2015-2016 school year at a Classical Christian school in Beaufort, SC.  We see him (and make room for him) every weekend as he travels 3.5 hours to and from the coast.  It may sound like he's had a hard time separating from us, but in reality he comes home every weekend to see Sarah, to whom he is now engaged! (Yay!)

Joanna started her college career in January at University of South Carolina Lancaster.  She is a teacher's assistant and is balancing classes, work, piano lessons, and teaching Sunday school.  She has been blessed in all her endeavors and truly enjoys life as a college student right now.  She wants to study history and possibly minor in music and will have to decide if she will continue her schooling at USC or transfer to a smaller private college in the next year or two.

Aaron works at Chick Fil A, has been accepted to Liberty University next year, and is in choir, has a garage band, and plays soccer and rugby.  He is in his senior year of high school , always a challenging year trying to figure out what comes next and what to study in college.   He has grown in his faith this year and is a blessing to us as we help him work through all the possible ways he feels called to serve the Lord.

Abigail is in Year 8 in our home school.  She plays soccer, enjoys choir and has good friendships near and far.  She is learning to play the ukulele along with her piano lessons.  She is such a good help to me regularly in the house and a joy to teach.  It will be strange to have only one student in our home school next fall but I look forward to it.

We've seen both sets of our parents this year deal with health stresses that they have faced.  It has been such an encouragement and testimony to us and to our kids to see older saints who are facing life-changing news by trusting in God and calling on His mercy and His healing.   My parents and Bryan's parents are living out their faith and trust in their Savior and do not hesitate to show how much God has cared for them in the big and small things.

It has been a year of reconnecting with family even though we may not see them face to face.  We have had our ups and downs as a family, but feel the love and encouragement even if we can't be with each other in the same room, house, city, state, or even country!  We know that prayers and Christian love surrounds us as we share our lives with one another, even at a distance.

Our hope and comfort has always and continues to be in our faithful Saviour to meet all our needs.   Through disappointments, trials of faith, suffering for Christ's sake, blessings, and trusting in what is unseen but sure, we will face the new year as we did the last: with confidence and joy. 

Wrapping it up

I must confess a failure of mine that I believe I have passed on to my children:  I am unable to wrap gifts.  I confess this today after wrapping Christmas presents.   You may be thinking: just watch the many tutorials on wrapping on you tube and you'll figure it out.--been there, done that.    It's like those videos of how to fold fitted sheets into neat squares; it looks so easy when someone else does it.  I think this year's wrapping projects are actually my best yet, but I still haven't unlocked the secret.  All my wrapped boxes have the paper pattern right side up, most of them have square edges, none of the paper is torn at the edges, and best of all: I didn't give up!  Or, maybe you wonder how I can blog about such a mundane topic.  I'm pretty sure I can fill at least 5 paragraphs explaining and expounding on this particular weakness that I've lived with all my life.

I love wrapping paper because it has so many colors and designs.  I search for sturdy paper that won't tear easily and that has some kind of grid or geometric pattern that will give me guide lines so that when I cut the paper it will be somewhat straight (that's another problem I have that may be related to this one; I can't draw a straight line very well so I don't cut straight, either).  This year I found a huge roll of heavy wrapping paper at Costco that is reversible!  How cool is that?  And I decided that I would wrap the girls' gifts in one pattern and the boys' gifts in the reverse pattern.  Since this post is confessional I will admit that I already messed up that plan by wrapping a gift for Aaron with the wrong pattern.  But I fixed it:  I wrapped the outside of the wrapped box with a strip from the reverse-boy pattern.  Problem solved.

I love wrapping paper but I also get excited about wrapping gifts.  Basically, I approach every gift wrapping opportunity with hope and optimism:  this gift will be my best wrapping yet.  This year I got smart and kept lots of amazon boxes so that all my gifts could go in a box first.  You're probably saying to yourself: of course, who would wrap a strangely-shaped gift without putting it into a square or rectangular box first anyway?  But that kind of question is what separates true gift wrappers from people like me.  Just like the assumption that watching people on you tube wrap gifts means that I will become proficient at wrapping like they are.

So, I have beautiful wrapping paper, square or rectangular boxes, tape, and scissors.  I have my large cutting board as my surface so I don't cut crooked or pull the boxes onto my lap at some point. The stage is set for an easy gift wrapping session.  I can see in my mind what I need to do; cut some paper off the roll and begin.  This I believe is where everything starts to go wrong.  And I think this is why the you tube videos are useless.  They don't explain how much paper I should use.  If someone would just give me a rule or procedure for cutting the right size of paper for the box I am wrapping, I think I could actually become an expert gift wrapper (see the eternal, hopeful optimism?).

Wrapping becomes a full-body experience with tape sticking to fingers, the gift in my lap so I can hold a corner flap down while I twist around to locate the scissors that have ended up just out of reach to cut extra paper that I didn't know I would have and don't know what to do with on the end flaps.  Effort and care goes into every gift I wrap even if it may not seem so by looking at the finished product.

I wrote at the beginning of this post that I fear I have passed on my poor wrapping skills to my children.  As I sit here writing I look across the room at a very large box that has upside down snowmen on it.  I also see a cowboy boot wrapped mostly in a penguin pattern--I say 'mostly' because the toe of the boot has the reverse pattern of snowmen.  Beside the boot is a wrapped 2-liter soda bottle.  Do you see why my use of boxes this year is inspiring?

This brings me to another confession: we have in the past wrapped gifts in pillowcases, towels, blankets, socks, brown paper bags or store bags.   NOT Christmas gifts, usually, but birthday gifts don't always get the same time and care in presentation.  Sometimes it seems too time-consuming and expensive to go out and buy birthday wrapping paper and wrap a gift for just one child who will tear it apart in a few seconds anyway.  And since I pointed out the wrapped cowboy boot that is being used to hold a gift, I must also confess the odd-shaped gift that has a stapler sitting on top of it underneath the wrapping.  The offspring of mine who did this said it was because she doesn't want the recipient to guess what the gift is.  I guess it didn't occur to her to use a box to disguise the gift's shape and weight.

I don't know if anyone outside of my immediate family has problems with gift wrapping, but I do feel better admitting my inadequacies.  My gift wrapping failures offer a valuable and practical lesson similar to the adage: don't judge a book by its cover.  Not every thing or everyone has external beauty.  We must look beyond the external wrappings; it's what's on the inside that counts.  That is the real gift.

We begin again

We start another school year on Monday--2015-2016--a final year of high school for my son--a final year of middle school for my daughter.  I haven't done a whole lot of prep work yet besides thinking about the year and pulling lists of books from our curriculum guide.  I haven't even planned in my head how the days of week will go or what our daily or weekly schedule will look like.  I know what I want to implement that has been lacking in previous years, but  I also know how busy the days and weeks quickly become.  I want to really study this year, even if that means not using every resource that is planned, as long as the ones we do use serve us well.

I would love the year to be simple and straightforward.  I would love to not feel rushed, to have time to think and talk and write about what we are learning, to absorb beauty and knowledge in each of our disciplines of study.  I sound like I'm the student, not the teacher!  I would love for my students to experience the year in this way.  Quality not quantity.

There are always loopholes in our educational journey.  In the past I've fretted over missing some of the richness offered in literature or language study or poetry, art, nature studies.  I remind myself at the beginning of each year that we are learning how to learn just as much as learning the content itself.   We are learning to love to learn I should say; the desire to know, to delve, to seek information, to seek beauty, to understand the world and all that is in it to the best of our ability at any one time in our life.  And to exercise that desire to learn all throughout our life, not just when we are in 'school'.

There is still some trepidation as I wonder how the year will unfold in reality rather than in theory (or in my head).  But I am still excited about beginning again.

The Usual Suspects

I attended the first concert of Aaron's band, The Usual Suspects, last night and was blown away.  Of course I am biased, but I thought the amount of raw talent in the room was amazing.  Almost all the band members learned their instruments within the last 6 months, with the exception of Patrick on keyboard and Aaron on guitar.   Several of the band members taught other band members how to play and all of them worked up their skills to play all their pieces from memory.  They played 17 rock n roll cover songs from various artists.

They were modest in touting their abilities, but it was clear that each one of them had worked hard over the last 6 months to hone their talent.   No, they aren't ready to make a CD or anything, but they really enjoyed the fruit of all their hard work and long practice sessions.  With each piece of music, you could see them getting into their groove and simply enjoying the music and having fun.

The audience, made up of parents, friends, and a row of teenage girls, loved their energy and talent.  I was proud of my son's behind-the-scenes work ( he wrote out piano music for the keyboards, helped teach guitar riffs, kept the rhythm and beat, and worked long and hard on his own instrumentals and vocals) and his stage presence was great.  All the guys were relaxed and were naturals on stage.

I know the time commitment was crazy at times, but the passion each of the boys brought to their music was evident.  I know they won't ever forget the experience.  They really are a 'garage rock' band (they practiced in a garage most of the time) and they should be proud of their accomplishments.

We're done!

Our 2014-2015 School year is closed--we are finished.  Well, not completely. But I have declared that our year is done.  It feels good.  It is a weight off my shoulders--and my mind. I feel a sense of accomplishment and completion--no more guilt or worry or persistence to get those last few things done. No more cajoling, persuading, commanding, bribing.  No more patience, graciousness, firmness, mental acuity, calmness, kindness, biting my tongue. No more angry outbursts, tired eyes, headaches, interruptions of house work, interruptions of school work, waiting around for students, searching for books, pencils, paper, calculators, etc. Yay--let's celebrate!

Of course, we still have to read a few more chapters in Mark Twain's Joan of Arc.  And we are working through SAT/ACT prep books throughout the next 2 months.  And I still have to finish recording grades, finish out the semester assignments on Home School Tracker, begin the new school year on HST, start planning 2015-2016 school year. And there's always our foreign languages that we try to work on more in the summer because we have more time. 

But otherwise, we're done! And not a moment too soon--actually we're done when I thought we would be, even though we tried to finish earlier.  It didn't work.  But at least these last two weeks (after a two--make that three week break) were not as intense because we were already mostly done. 

Now on to the summer projects!