Jodilightful!

I mentioned a few weeks ago how my ladies’ Bible study of Isaiah has really impressed on me how well God’s Word holds up to close scrutiny and how it authenticates itself.  This morning, we finally reached the chapter of Isaiah that we’d all been waiting for.  Chapter 53 (and the couple of verses before it) is one of the “Servant Songs” written to foretell Christ’s life and death.  Go ahead.  You go read it.  I’ll wait here.

Just wow, huh?

A tiny bit of background for anyone reading this who is not very familiar with the Bible.  Isaiah was an Old testament prophet who spoke and wrote down his prophecies hundreds of years before Christ was born.  I mentioned in my last post how he called king Cyrus by name before he was even born, but this chapter about Christ is where the real meat is, for me at least.

What must have been going through Isaiah’s mind, I wonder, as he was speaking and writing down these words from the mouth of God?  The people of Israel believed that their Messiah would come in great majesty and take up the throne of David.  What would Isaiah have made of these words (53:2): “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” ?

They believed their Messiah would be for *them* only.  What must he have thought about these words, then? ”so shall he sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which has not been told them they see, and that which they have not heard they understand. ” (52:15, emphasis mine).  (This great mystery is referred to quite a bit in the New Testament, particularly in Ephesians 3.)

And what about His purpose?  The Israelites thought he would bring political success to Israel.  Yet these words describe His excruciating mission on earth: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.” (53:11)

Not a king who would come in power and strength, but a servant who would willingly give his own life to bear the sins of mankind away.  What a beautiful, bittersweet picture Isaiah painted of our Lord.  I just wonder how much he understood.

Another verse appealed to the more analytical part of my brain, as another ‘proof’, if you will, of how perfectly Christ fulfilled the many prophecies about himself written in the Old Testament. Isaiah 53:9 says this: “And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”  The New Testament tells us in Matthew 27:37 that Jesus was crucified between two robbers, fulfilling the first part of the prophecy.  Then a few verses later, starting in 27:57, we are told that Jesus was buried in the tomb of a rich man.  Some Bible scholars believe there are over a hundred such specific prophecies of Christ in Isaiah alone, and each one has found its fulfillment in what we know of Christ from New Testament eye-witness accounts.

This verse that Pippa memorized for her AWANA Cubbies club this week, sums it up very nicely:
 

(PS  I don’t think all the red marker is supposed to look so gruesome.  She just loves red.  And purple.)

What would you call a bag that looked like these?

Well, if you’re as extremely adorable and clever as my mom

(shown here trying on hats with Pippa at the mall yesterday, where we saw these bags),

you might call it…
A CROC-A-BOOK!

Ha ha ha! Ah… she makes me laugh! A day out with my mom always does my heart good.

(Maybe that’s because we have the same sense of humor? I have been known to say to the girls, as we’re getting their crocs on to go out, “Come on, let’s croc and roll!”)

Oh, how genetics fascinates me!  I love analyzing our children’s appearance and dissecting their features to try to figure out what came from whom, but I’ll leave all that for another post.  Only recently have we started to catch glimpses of talents and personality trait likenesses coming through in the girls.  Today Pippa said something that reassured me that she’s her father’s daughter in one very good respect.

We were walking home from a friend’s house today, and Pippa was chatting away about her dear (*cough* imaginary) friends Allie and Aboba.  We hear a lot about these girls, and they really feel like part of the family.  Sometimes the names refer to specific stuffed animals, sometimes they are names that are designated to members of our real family, but most of the time, like today, they just exist in some far off parallel universe known only to her.  (As an aside, this quirky rich, imaginative aspect of her personality may well come from my genes.  I’m pretty sure I had more than my share of imaginary friends when I was little.)

Today, it went like this.

Her: I went to Aboba’s house today, Mommy.

Me: Oh, did you?  Good! (Pretty standard stuff so far.  Then this.)

Her:  Aboba’s house is just like Zachary’s.  It has the living room upstairs not downstairs like our living room.

Hold on!  Zachary is a real person, a friend of Romilly’s that I introduced you to here (the one playing with the firetruck).  We’ve been to his house exactly once and it was about a month ago.  We have not talked about his house since that day, and I had to think a little to remember how it was laid out.  Sure enough, it’s a split level, with the main living room upstairs.

I can hear some of you saying, “So?”  But here’s the thing:  I don’t notice layouts of houses;  I get lost in them.  I am the second least spatially aware (don’t worry, Mom, I won’t embarrass you by saying who’s first.  Oops.)  and probably the least observant person I know.  I make a wrong turn when I try to head back to the waiting room from the doctor’s office.  I have to get directions to places that I’ve been to dozens of times before.  When I arrive home from somewhere a half an hour later than expected with that look in my eyes that tells Trevor that I have *once again* made a wrong turn somewhere within five miles of our house, he just smiles at me and says, “Sweet wifey.”  I just missed out on the sense of direction gene.

But there is hope for my children!  We have caught glimpses before of Pippa knowing where she is.  She often knows whose house we’re going to just before we get there.  She always asks if we’re going to see Chris (her physical therapist) when we go to a doctor’s appointment at the medical center on the same site as the PT building.  Whenever I ask her where she went after a walk around the neighborhood with Daddy and Gulliver, she thinks for a minute and then says, “To my house.”  I love that one, though it doesn’t particularly show her sense of direction.

Anyway, hooray for her having missed the could-get-lost-in-a-WaWa gene!  May she follow in her Daddy’s footsteps, able to glance once at a map of a completely new part of the world and navigate herself there flawlessly without even consulting the directions.  Astounding!

I owe my family an apology today.  In fact, I owe my family an apology most Sunday mornings.  This is me by the time we leave for church (ten minutes late) each week.

This is usually what our Sunday morning looks like prior to that moment.

6:00ish  Beatrix wakes up and I nurse her in bed.  When she’s done she coos happily while we continue to doze.  Love that kid.

7:00-8:00  Pippa and Romilly wake up, and instead of going downstairs and getting started with our day, we pile them into bed too and try to pretend we’re still sleeping in spite of Pippa’s chatting with Allie and Aboba (imaginary friends/stuffed animals), and Romilly whining,”No-no-no-I-don’t-want-it-I need-my-deeting(sleeping)-bag-I-need-my-Mommy” (She’s not a morning person, but we love her, too.)

8:00 Head downstairs and, for some reason, eat breakfast as though we are staying at a fancy resort and the only thing on our agenda for the day is lounging by the pool.

8:30 Suddenly realize that we should be leaving for church in a half hour and everyone is still in PJ’s with very bad hair, then scramble around bickering over who’s changed and dressed more babies until we walk out the door ten minutes late.  At least. (Whose idea was it to start church at 9:30, anyway?)

This seemed like a topic worth blogging about because I think it’s a malady that strikes a lot of Christian families on Sunday morning. Maybe it’s just that a time-pressured situation brings out the worst of our own sinful nature, but maybe it’s more than that. The Bible, in 1 Peter 5 has this to say about our enemy, “8 Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Does he, the devil, want us going to church with quiet, joyful hearts ready to worship God and hear what His Word has to say to us? No way. He wants us distracted by our own selfishness, angry with each other and maybe, if he’s lucky, so frustrated with the whole ordeal that we throw up our hands and decide just to stay home.   I confess I’ve let him have his way far too often (though thankfully, as long as my wonderful hasband is around, skipping church is not an option in our home.)

The simple answer to all this comes in the next verse.  ”9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.”  Resist the devil.  Know that he is real, and he is there, and he wants the worst for us.  But know that God, who wants the best for us, is stronger, and stand firm.  We are told elsewhere that if we resist him, he will flee.  He knows he has no real power over us.  Amen!

But I was not thinking about all this this morning…

Usually, once we’re out the door, a calm settles over us all.  My head clears and I regain my perspective.  Then I have the ten-minute walk to church to try to focus my mind and heart on the Lord and prepare to worship Him.  Today, about two minutes into our walk, I said to Trevor, “I’m sorry.”

I should have quit while I was ahead.   Instead, I went on to say, “… but I feel like every Sunday morning we sleep too late and we run around and everybody gets to get all dressed up and look nice but I get whatever time is leftover and my hair looks awful and blah, blah, blah…”  Whoa, where did that come from?  I really thought I was going to apologize, and then suddenly, I wasn’t apologizing at all.  I was excusing my behavior and trying to lay blame on everyone but myself.

I think I was particularly aware that I was doing this today because I *just* read an article on this very topic yesterday.  It was written by the husband/father of the lovely ladies at Girltalk, a pastor, and though I was a little lost through some of the sports talk at the beginning, this part at the end hit me right between the eyes.

“If my so-called confession extends beyond a very specific (acknowledgement of sin) sentence or two, then I am most likely excusing my sin, and requesting understanding for my sin, rather than sincerely asking forgiveness because of my sin. So I have learned to be suspicious of any confession of sin that is lengthy. Genuine conviction of sin is evidenced by a sincere, specific, and brief confession of sin, without any reference to circumstances or the participation of anyone else. When I sin, I am responsible for my sin, and the cause of my sin is always within my heart and never lies outside my heart.”

So, to my husband, and my family, let me try this again.  I was grumpy this morning.  And I’m sorry.  Can you forgive me?

As Trevor was helping everyone out to the car to go to the airport, we found this message left on the sofa for us:

Thanks, Nath!

(By the way, this toy was *the* surprise hit of Romilly’s birthday presents.  Everyone, including Grandma and Auntie Audrey, has enjoyed playing with it at some point this week.  Thanks, Debbie-Mum!)

Well, I just about started crying right then and there. It always surprises me how hard it is to say goodbye to Trev’s family when they go. After all, I’m getting my house back (and my own bathroom – yippee!), we’ll be able to eat at our table again after a week of meals on the sofa, and we can get back to our usual diet of evening DVD-viewing, but boy, would I trade it all for another week with them. Or two!

I guess it is just a fact of life when two people from opposite ends of the world meet and marry that someone’s family is going to be far away, but that doesn’t make it any easier. It is always a surprise and a delight to me to see how quickly the girls remember and attach to their English family each time they see them.  I take great comfort in knowing that, even though we don’t see them nearly as often as we wish we could, that bond is always there.

Pippa went to the airport with Trevor to say goodbye, and I’m glad to be missing that scene. Meanwhile I’m sitting here in a nearly empty house wondering what on earth we do with ourselves when it’s just the five of us.

I can’t think of a better way we could have rounded out our week with Trevor’s family than with two beautiful days of wintery wonderland, can you?  Friday morning we woke up to  about a four-inch covering of snow: the most we’ve had all season, and by far the most (Uncle) Nathan has seen in his sixteen years.  And oh, did we make the most of it!


 

(Don’t you just love Grandad’s hat?)

Gran helped the girls build a snowman.  (Hey, it was very powdery snow. We did the best we could!)

And bought us the sled that we’d been putting off buying all year on account of the lack of snow. As Gran pointed out today, even if the girls don’t ever use it again, they got their money’s worth.

Pippa loved it so much, she didn’t want to get out!

We couldn’t have planned it, but it really was perfect to have a few days of forced downtime, some time just to chat and hang out, and an awful lot of hot chocolate to finish our week together.  Just lovely!

Anyone who knows me (online or otherwise) knows that I have an obsession affinity for names.  I have pondered, listed, discussed and collected names since I was a little girl.  When it came time to name actual babies, well, it was like Christmas for me for nine months straight!

So you can only imagine how excruciating it has been for me to have a blog exist for over half a year under the thoughtless banner of  ”Jodi’s Blog”. I almost couldn’t start writing my blog until I’d named it, but I soldiered on and waited for inspiration to strike. Well, today, it did (I think).

Here’s what happened (for all you Monk fans out there).  We were behind a car today with the license plate DEELISH.  I said, “I bet she’s called Dee and thinks she’s delicious.”  Trevor had a look as she turned, and said that she was decidedly *not* delish, but it still got me thinking.  Then I said (mostly kiddingly), “Hey, I could call my blog Jodilish!”  I thought better of that, since that lack of any culinary theme to my blog might imply a less savory meaning.  But it opened up a world of similarly cheesy possibilities: Jodivine, Jodabulous, Jo-da Man!

And then this one.  I know at first glance it looks fluffy and possibly a bit self-indulgent, but I’m hoping it will remind me of these two things that I hope to do both in life and in my blog.  Besides that, if it seems a little hokey, that’s me, too.  Layers, see?

(Auntie Audrey, Grandma, Trev’s Dad)

This pretty much sums up how we’re all feeling after the pace of this week.  Ironically, the three people in the photo are back at it again today, having taken the train to center city for some sightseeing.  It’s our young and spry family of five who are taking the day off today.  All five of us are stricken with a cold, to varying extents.   I’m not sure how the elder Youngs have managed to escape it, but there’s no slowing down die-hard holiday-makers.

On Tuesday, we all stopped by my mom’s store for coffee before going to Pennsbury Manor while Trev worked his one day for this week.  It was a lot of outside time, and it was pretty cold, but Pippa was delighted to get to carry the keys around for our tour guide, and a good time was had by all.

Yesterday we went to the zoo. ‘The zoo?’ you may ask. ‘But it’s February…’ Ah, then you must not know about the great winter bargain at the zoo. If it’s in the 50′s out, you get in for $5. If it’s in the 40′s, you get in for $4. If it’s in the 30′s, $3…. You get the picture. Let’s just say we got in cheap yesterday! I realized while we were there, to my shame, that Romilly had not been to the zoo since she was about Beatrix’s age. She *loved* it. She was out of the stroller running around the place all day (after all, we were the only ten people crazy enough to be at the zoo yesterday), and she literally leapt for joy and laughed outloud with each new animal she encountered.  Except maybe for this one:

This ’little’ guy, aged 9 months, wanted to be her friend, bless him.  He was trying to high-five her and even put his nose against the glass to show her his silly side, but she wasn’t having it.  This is her walking to me very quickly.  I thought this little cub saw a kindred spirit in her.  A playmate.  A friend he hadn’t met yet.  Trevor thought the look on his face was more like, “Mmm… afternoon tea!”  and I think Romilly sided with him.

Anyway, when faced with the prospect of leaving at 9:30 this moring to catch the train for another cold day of sightseeing with our poor drippy girls, we had to call a younger Young family pow-wow, and we decided to have ourselves a day of rest.  At present, the girls are all napping, which they *desperately* needed, and we’ve had  chance to breathe.

Well, it wouldn’t be right to blog about resting without some mention of what the Bible has to say on the subject.  I could discuss how God rested on the seventh day after completing all of His creating, or how He established the sabbath as a day of rest for his people Israel.  I could even get into why we tend to have our day of rest on Sunday instead of Saturday, the original sabbath, but to be honest, my one day of rest hasn’t cleared my foggy brain quite enough for any of that.  Instead my weary head turns to these verses in Matthew 11:

“28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

What a wearisome thing life is, isn’t it?  When I start to become overwhelmed with life, I have to bring myself back to these words. “Rest for your souls…”  Sometimes we think if our bodies could just get the rest we need, our souls would be just fine.  But without Christ, our spiritual burden is much greater than any physical or emotional one we’ve ever carried.  Our labor apart from Christ is that of one enslaved to a master we can never appease.  Working to satisfy appetites that grow only hungrier, and at the same working to find approval from a Holy God whose approval we know we do not deserve.  What a burden!  There is nothing so restful as trading that burden for whatever the Lord, who made me and loves me, has in store for me.  Whether He would call me to the farthest corner of the world to share His love, or simply to wake up three times in the night to *cheerfully* tend to my poor sick babies, it is a lighter yoke than bearing my own sin.  What an amazing God, to offer us rest not only from the physical labors of life, but also from striving to earn our favor with Him.  We can rest, because Christ has carried that burden for us.  So simple, so sweet, and so easily forgotten, but today I am thankful *again* for the truth of the rest I have in Him.

A radical statement, I know!  But I really do.  She gets me in ways that no one else does.  We share a fascination with patterns in letters and numbers that has allowed us to bond over so many random things over the years.  She understands why none of our children’s names can start with the same letter (none of hers does either), how disappointed I was to have my first two children in even years when Trevor and I and his whole family are odd (double meaning acknowledged), and how exciting it is to me to have the same seventeen months between Pippa and Romilly, Romilly and Beatrix, *and* between me and Trevor.  (It’s our official family spacing, and I daresay she would even be a little excited if I got pregnant again next month and kept the pattern going.)  She wants me to have my next baby on the 8th of the month because we already have one on the 6th, 7th, and 9th.  Isn’t she wonderful?  So.  We have fun when we get together.

Of course, I have to tread very lightly here, because I know my own mother (whom I love to death in a way that one can really only love someone who is exactly like oneself) will eventually read this, when I send her the link to my blog for the tenth time, and at such time, even though she loves my MIL too, she might be a tiny bit jealous.  So, Mom, I love you, but you know that the whole crazy pattern-loving part of me is one of the few that you really don’t get, right?

Anyway, tonight’s fun was anagrams. When Trevor and his brothers and sister were young, she named a story character for each of them using all of the letters in their names. Trevor was Governor A.T. Murky, Michelle was Mr. Hullo the Nice Guy (I must find out the other two). Seriously, aren’t these fabulous? So when we named Pippa she came up with one for her (though none of us could quite remember what it was…), but the other girls had no anagrams, and so tonight she set out to right this wrong. For anyone who is this way inclined, I’ll share the results. Romilly is Logically Your Mine (we had a bit of help with that one, more on that to follow), and Bea is An Extra Aboun’ing Joy. She’s been at it for hours now, and she’s onto my mom (Oh I Try And I Can Smile) and Paige (I Go In Hope, Ask My Pa).

So, my challenge to you, my readership of four (or is it five now?) is to come up with your own, of your name (mine was abysmal) or someone you love. If you do not have my MIL’s incredible gift of being able to work this magic with tiny pieces of paper with letters on them, this might be a useful tool for you.

Please share your findings, if for no other reason than that it will let me know someone is actually reading this and make me feel loved!

Whew!  I don’t know if I’ve ever been more grateful to come out the other end of a weekend.

After two days straight of cleaning, washing, shopping and otherwise preparing for their arrival, I am happy to report that Trevor’s family got here safe and sound on Saturday night. All five of them! This visit, we have Mum, Dad, and Nathan as well as Grandma and Auntie Audrey, who haven’t been here since our wedding! That’s ten people staying in our wee four-bedroom Cape Cod (you do the math.) It’s a good thing we like each other. So far the sleeping arrangements seem to be suiting everyone: every time I ask Auntie if she’s *sure* she’s comfortable on the mattress on the floor of the playroom she says, “Oh, yes, Dear, it’s absolutely marvellous! I’m taking it home with me.” Oh, how I love her. Nathan might not be enjoying the sofa quite so much, but he’s certainly not complaining about it, and you can handle anything for a week, right?

So, yesterday was the big day:  Beatrix’s dedication and Romilly’s birthday party.
  

(Trev’s mum with Bea, and Trev with Ro)

I haven’t actually counted, but let’s see… there were 27 people in my house yesterday! (Remember my house? The tiny little Cape Cod? Yeah, same one.) And it was really fine. I’ll do it again, I think. (You know, not next week or anything. It’s like labor, you have to give yourself time to forget.) Ro held up like a trouper through the endless present-opening (thank you, everyone!) and when she finished, we chose one toy to get out of the packaging and play with before her nap. Do you know, as soon as she got the toy in her hot little hand, she slid off Trevor’s lap and went running to share it with her sister, saying “I need my Pippa!”? I just love that kid. She’s definitely my favorite.

As you can probably tell from the picture of her, the poor birthday girl has been hit with the plague that’s been making it’s way through the toddler Sunday school class, and by the time they went to bed, Pippa was suffering, too. It seems to be mostly a coughing, snotty sort of affair, but when Pippa coughs too much she often gets gaggy and ends up throwing up. So she did a bit of that last night and then took herself off to bed (you know things are bad when a three-year-old does that!) At about ten o’clock we heard her cough some more, then cry a little, and then silence. We let it go rather than wake her up by checking on her. When Trev went to bed a bit later, he peaked in their room as he always does, and found her *covered* in puke vomit hmmm… is there a nice bloggy euphemism for this that I don’t know yet? How on earth do they fall back asleep after that?!? We did our best to clean her up with a warm washcloth, changed her top, and put a clean towel between her and the mess on her bed, but really, short of a bath and complete change of bedding, there wasn’t a lot we could do for her. And she was just *so* fast asleep.

This morning at 7:15 AM, I faced the ineveitable aftermath of the night before, and gave Pippa (and Romilly, who is never to be left out) a bath.  Seriously, I thought I was going to have to shave her head.  I haven’t had to clean up something so foul-smelling and unaccommodating since the time Gulliver ate a stick of butter.  But, we persevered, and I’m happy to report that (by some miracle) she is a picture of health today and we’ve had a lovely day with the family.  Sadly, we did suffer one casualty: Pippa’s little musical ducky that she has had since she was a tiny baby was unsalvageably covered in sick.  She doesn’t know it yet, but he’s out with the birthday party trash.  I’m home now with the napping littles while Pippa and the gang celebrate President’s day with a trip to Valley Forge.

So my house now looks pretty much how it did before I started cleaning four days ago, and the girls’ room still smells a little funky, but there’s nothing like a whirlwind weekend to make you appreciate the status quo. Even when the status quo involves *double* the already large number of people living under our little roof!