Jodilightful!

…And a new skill!

June Raspberries 7/09

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

Our sweet Romilly has an active imagination, a sensitive spirit and a very unique perspective on the world.  She laughs easily and cries easily, and she is definitely our most dramatic girl.

From when she was a tiny baby, she has always startled easily and been frightened by loud noises.  As she has become more aware of the world around her, her list of phobias has grown to include:

• Vrooming cars.
• Prickling branches.
• Play areas with holes in them.
• Anything with holes, come to think of it.
• Moths. (They eat clothes, after all, what’s to stop them eating her too?)
• Ants.
• Spiders.
• Fruit flies.
• Okay, insects.
• Getting pruny fingers.
• Tunnels and other small spaces.
• Slides and other high places.

And tonight, a new addition to the list:

• Getting old.

Yes, that’s right.  My three-year-old is now very much afraid of old age.

It all started when Big Junie (of course this is a terrible name for her, she wants to be called Junie B to distinguish her from the baby, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on with the girls… anyway, *Aunt* Junie, my great aunt whom Junie is named after) came over on Friday.  One of the girls noticed something alarming about Big Junie’s ear (wrinkles or similar, I didn’t quite catch it) and asked why it was that way, to which Junie replied, “It’s because I’m getting old.”

Nothing more was said about it, but it apparently got Miss Ro’s wheels turning.

Tonight we dropped Trevor’s car off for its inspection.   It, too, is getting on in years.  So on the drive over, he thought it would be a good idea to prepare the girls for the possibility that we might not get it fixed this time and would therefore not be able to drive it anymore.  In hindsight, this was a very bad idea.

Both big girls were very distraught about this prospect, but Romilly got particularly upset, as is her wont.

On the way home, we had a converstaion that went something like this:

Ro (nearly in tears): But I’m afraid of getting old.

Daddy: But Ro, you’re only three, you won’t be getting old for a very long time.

Ro: But Junie is old.

Daddy:  Well, yes.

Ro: But I don’t want to get old.

Daddy: But you won’t, for a very, very long time.  Mommy and Daddy aren’t even old yet, and we’re a lot older than you.

Ro: But I don’t want to get old ever.  Why does everybody have to get old?

Mommy: That’s a good question.  God made us to live forever, but Adam and Eve sinned it messed everything up, so now people get old.

Ro: But I don’t want to get old.

Mommy: Well, Ro, what are you afraid is going to happen when you get old?

Ro: I will be pruny all over all the time!

***

It’s a legitimate concern, you’ve got to give her that.

Last night was the final night of our church’s week of Vacation Bible School (VBS, or PBS, according to Romilly, even after over a week of correction), and I fear that if I don’t take a few moments to reflect now, some precious memories from this week might just slip away.

This year I have been “teaching” the kindergarteners and first graders.   The main teaching is done as a large mixed-age group, so my “teacher” role is mainly a shepherding one, apart from a few nights of teaching the memory verse.  We began the first night with 15 in our class, and were up to over 20 by the end, with very few absences.  These things alone are incredible answers to prayer:  I taught the same age group last year and I believe we had about 8 to 10 children.  This year’s turn-out has been amazing – praise the Lord!

On my first night, I just wasn’t prepared.  I had planned out how I was going to teach the verse, but I hadn’t practiced enough or accounted for the fact that 25 minutes to teach a verse that’s only ten words long is a very long time.  It was fine, though crowd control was a little rough, and I’m sure none of the other teachers there thought it was a huge of a failure as it seemed to me, but I lost sleep that night for feeling that I had done these kids a disservice.

VBS kids are a very mixed bag.  Some of these kids are from our church.  Some of them are from other churches but are so clearly well-churched that they are not only raising their hands to answer *every* question, but they are also sometimes raising their hands to expound on the teacher’s lesson!  Then there are the kids who were invited by a friend, or maybe whose parents just saw the  sign outside the church and thought it might be something fun to do.  Some of these kids are hearing the good news of Christ for the very first time.  Maybe some of them… for the only time.  What a responsibility!

There is one girl, S, in my class, who began coming out on the second night.  On the third night she brought me a little present in the form of a perfectly colored (both sides) page from a mermaid coloring book, labelled “for Beybale Skool”.  That same night, S’s mother shared with one of the other leaders that she had grown up in the Catholic church but has become very disillusioned with it.  She plans to start coming to our church now with her family.  Praise the Lord!

Another little girl, J, is a ball of feisty energy and a bit of a handful whom I instantly remembered from my class last year.  I do not know what her story is, whether our VBS week each year is the only Bible teaching she ever gets or  not.  On Thursday, after three nights of feeling like she was not listening to a word I was saying, I heard her quote Psalm 37:3a *perfectly* including the reference.  Praise the Lord!

On our final night, as we were singing Sovereign One (you *must* follow the link and click on Sovereign One to listen – it’s worth your time even just for an excerpt) by Sovereign Grace Kids, I was looking around at our kids and reflecting on all these little moments.  Reflecting on who these kids are and who they’ll become, and wondering what impact the gospel may have made on their lives this week.  Thinking about all this while singing this song (lyrics below), I was barely holding it together.  I don’t know what the future will hold for these precious little ones, but this I know for certain:

…so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:11

Praise the Lord.

Sovereign One

When I’m all alone and afraid
I will trust in You
For You watch over my ways
When things in my life don’t make sense
I will trust in You
For You are good, You are good

Sovereign One
You work all things to Your plan
Sovereign One
You hold all things in Your hands

When I don’t get to have my own way
I will trust in You
For You know what is best
When tears begin to roll down my face
I will trust in You
For You are good, You are good

Perfect in power, You control all things
Perfect in wisdom, You know everything
Perfect in goodness
Jesus, You’re so good to me
So good to me

I’ll leave you with my two VBS attendees singing two of their favorite VBS (Sovereign Grace) songs.  The titles are Jesus Came to Earth and Mighty Mighty Savior, in case you want to click back through (click here) and listen to the proper versions or check out the lyrics.  I was absolutely thrilled to receive a copy of the entire CD as a gift to the girls at the end of the week.  Just in time, since I’m pretty sure we’ve almost worn a hole in the copy of the four VBS songs that we were given to practice along with.

Young Girls Rock the VBS Songs

Bonus points to anyone who recognizes her fluffy friends from our new family favorite movie!

(PS I should note, the white one is technically Pippa’s.  Technically.)

For more Wordless Wednesday, click here.

My wonderful husband, on top of having a very dry sense of humor, is very quiet.  The combination of these two things may make it seem to most onlookers that he is very straightlaced and reserved (The first time he made a joke at small group, which incidentally was after we’d been meeting with this same group of people week after week for about two years, it took as all a good five minutes to pull ourselves back together because it caught us all so off guard!)  But get to know him well enough, and he actually has quite the silly streak hiding deep down inside.

Most Sunday afternoons, Trevor takes eBay pictures for me.  I root through the piles of boxes I get from my mom’s thrift store and other sources, and pick out the things I want to list that week and lay them all out on the table for him.  Sometimes there are a couple things to explain:  I may list pieces individually, or sometimes I group them into little lots.  So I put the stuff on the table, give him a couple instructions, and take the dog for a walk while he takes the photos.

This past Sunday, I left him a pretty straightforward bunch of china and crystal to photograph on an otherwise still cluttery table full of the usual stuff.  ”Any special instructions?”  He asked me.  ”Not really,” I said.  ”The teacups and the saucers go together, but you’d have figured that out.”

“Okay,” he said, but there was a twinkle in his eye…

Later, when I uploaded the pictures, amidst the usual shots of cups and saucers and crystal champagne glasses, I found these:

(There were actually four of these shots in total, but two of them were such good photos of the crystal paperweight that I cropped out the scissors and sippy and used them for my listings!)

So, do I have a starting bid?

Juniper, July 12, 2009

ded·i·cat·ed

adjective
1 : devoted to a cause, ideal, or purpose : zealous <a dedicated scholar>
2 : given over to a particular purpose <a dedicated Web server>
— ded·i·cat·ed·ly adverb

This morning was Juniper’s (as well as our dear little friend Ellie’s) dedication.   I always think a baby dedication must sound like an odd sort of thing to the outside observer.  Baptism is a much more culturally known ceremony (one our particular church reserves for later in life, when a person personally becomes a believer).  A christening is likely to involve water, and perhaps evokes the concept of officially bestowing a name.  The Jewish Bris for baby boys serves a set purpose… but what is this dedication thing?

Unlike other Christian ceremonies like baptism and communion, there is not really a Biblical precedent for dedicating a child.  Hannah presented her son Samuel to the Lord in 1 Samuel 1 in fulfillment of a promise she had made to the Lord should He hear her pleas to end her years of barrenness.  As soon as Samuel was weaned, she took him to the temple to live and serve the Lord, to be raised by others in the house of God for His own purposes.

That is, of course, not what we did with our daughter today.  Lord willing, Juniper and her sisters will continue to live in our home under our care until they reach maturity, but we have nevertheless, in a very real sense, dedicated them to the Lord.   We have recognized that each of our children is a gift from God, and that we are only stewards of them for a short while for His purposes.  Ultimately, we must give them back to Him for whatever His will may be for them.

But every God-fearing parent knows all this, and having a ceremony to acknowledge it has no magical powers to make that process any easier.

In fact, what took place today was probably a lot more to do with Junie’s parents than with the star of the show herself.   A dedication is a chance for us to reflect on the enormity of having a little life given into our nurture and care, to thank God for her, and to beseech our church family to pray for us as we carry out the task of training up a child in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  As we dedicate her, we are also dedicating ourselves whole-heartedly to the fulfillment of our “high and holy calling”  (as Pastor Wayne used to say) of parenting.

Sure, it’s a big day for her: a chance to wear the same beautiful dress her sisters have worn before her on their dedication days (thanks, Erin!).  But the bigger day, the one we long for and pray for daily, still lies ahead: the day that she recognizes for herself that she is a sinner in deperate need of a savior and accepts Christ’s sacrifice on the cross as payment for her own sin.  We cannot make that decision for her, but we entrust her into the hands of a faithful, loving, sovereign God.

Thanks to a timely tip from a dear bloggy friend (at four o’clock this afternoon!), our gang enjoyed a lovely meal at Chik-Fil-A tonight… for absolutely nothing!

It might be too late to get in on it this year, but mark your calendars for next July 10 (or perhaps the nearest Friday?): it’s Cow Appreciation Day!  In honor of this important event, Chik-Fil-A  gives a free entree to anyone wearing *anything* in cowprint and a whole free meal to anyone dressed head to toe as a cow.  Well, if you know our family at all, you know which option we went for.

By the way, don’t forget, Chipotle’s big Halloween dress-like-a-burrito night is coming around again soon!

Party Trick 7/6/09

In the life span of this blog so far, there has been some definite ebbing and flowing.  You may not notice so much, because I usually manage to throw up a few “quicky” posts each week: a Wordless Wednesday, a funny story, a recap of an event.  But I notice when I’m not saying anything useful around here, because without that, this blog always feels a little self-indulgent to me.

At times in the past when the blog has ebbed, I’ve known in my heart that it’s been because I’ve been ebbing as well.  I guess there are times in every Christian’s life when she is just on autopilot.  Not that my faith is any less real in those times, just that  the busy-ness of life has just temporarily taken over a place in my heart that it shouldn’t, and that a growing, thriving relationship with God takes a back seat for a little while.

But this is not one of those times.

Lately, this has been my prayer (from Paslm 139, NASB):

“23 Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts; 24 And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.”

I think I’ve always been a little afraid of this verse.  Maybe it has always felt just a little bit arrogant, like I’d be saying to God, “Hey, check me out, I’m doing alright, aren’t I?”  But I’ve recently come to realize it’s just the opposite.

It’s saying to God, “I know I’m a mess, but I can’t see it.  Can you show me?”

And that, folks, is a very scary thing to ask.   But as painful as it is to hear the answers to this question, I’ve been asking it, and God’s been answering, and it’s been too much to blog about.  In the immortal words of some song that I’ve never actually heard but that Pippa’s little friend Rosie’s mom told us about at Bible study once (and that has echoed in my head ever since, thanks, Cindy!): I’m a great big messy mess!

And the more I see what a mess I am, the less inclined I feel to share any “words of wisdom” with the blogosphere, just in case something that might seem like a pure, helpful, encouraging thought right now may be revealed to be just another part of my messiness a few weeks down the road.

Our pastor has recently been talking a lot about the tongue and the seriousness of teaching God’s word.  He has at least twice in recent weeks made reference to this verse (Proverbs 10:19, NIV):

“When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.”

And while my quiet husband can smile and nod smugly whenever this verse is quoted, I’m sure it will come as no surprise to you that this is not good news for people like me.

So, I’m thinking, and I’m praying, and I’m learning, but I am not shouting it all from the rooftops just yet.   As God lays things on my heart, I’m sure I will still be sharing them, but if I’m quieter for a while, I trust you’ll all undertsand why.

Search me, O God, and know my every thought.

Discern my every way, and speak into my soul.

Pour out to me my wrongs, convict me until

I follow down the path that leads me to your will.

(From Grace Greater Than Our Sin, as recorded by Building 429.)

(Image above is from www.relationship-economy.com.  Just to give credit.   I have no idea what the site is about, but probably I’m not recommending it. )