Scared

Powerful.
Eye-opening.
Convicting.

These are the words I would use to describe Scared:  A Novel on the Edge of the World by Tom Davis.  It shakes me out of my comfortable little life in Midwestern USA.  The novel is fiction, but it's based on Davis's experiences in Africa.

I've heard about the plight of widows and orphans in Africa, but somehow it makes more of an impact on me to experience the hopelessness vicariously through characters in a novel.

The story is about a photojournalist's personal growth as he learns to love and care about people again while on assignment in a small African country.  While there he meets a young girl, Adanna, whose father abandoned their family shortly before her mother died from AIDS and left her alone to try to feed and raise her younger brother and sister.  As he witnesses her desperate struggle for survival in a morally defunct culture, he is moved to compassion and a deeper, active faith in the Lord.

I really appreciated Davis's description of Africa, even as his perception of the country evolved from bitter despair to frustrated hopelessness to compassionate resolve.

"I can't believe I'm going back to Africa.  I hate everything about it:  the heat, the poverty, the corruption, the ignorance, the death that blows over the place like a dry western wind" (37).

"I'm keenly aware of the dangers in Africa whenever I step foot on the soil.  Beyond the crime, there's something more.  It's like evil spirits take possession of you when your feet touch the soil.  They are the living echoes of devils that for generations spread war, hate, rape, and violence throughout Africa" (50).

"Poverty is like a stray, starving dog you fed once and now follows you everywhere" (163).

"What is it about this place?  It twists you all up inside and messes with your head.  And your heart.  In this place, God has a way of bringing people down to the essence of who they are" (164).

"The utter depravity of these terrible acts, the sheer poverty and sickness, death and sadness--these things can weigh down your soul and render it weak and useless, or they can stir your soul to life in a way that changes you.  And other people as a result.  I believe this is God's way.  His heart is broken over what happened to Adanna, this I know.  But look at your feet, Stuart, you are racing to her aid.  You are God's feet.  You are showing kindness.  You are God's hands.  You have fed her and her family.  You are feeding His sheep" (178).

"I snap off dozens of shots, children of skin and bones, dried mud and hanging clothes, grateful for a bit of food.  They are living in this moment only.  To look back would be too painful; to look forward, pointless.  I have never felt so completely enveloped and powerless" (230).

I think the example of Walter's character is convicting and inspiring.  It's easy to expect, to hope, to pray for someone else who has excessive finances or visible talent to do what God has asked us all to do.  But God doesn't tell us to worry about what someone else needs to be doing--He's just concerned that WE do what He has empowered US to do.  (gulp)

"'God, send me people who have the ability and the finances to help us.' And you know what God said to me? He said, 'Walter, what's in your pocket? Start giving to these children out of what you have, and I will take care of the rest.'" (79)

Would you believe the very day after I read this book, I learned of seven sisters in Uganda whose mother died of cancer and their father left the 12-year-old to take care of her six little sisters all alone?  They now range in age from 13 years down to 14 months.  They need a family, a home, love--and I just can't stop thinking about them and praying for them.  What must that be like?  Reading this book makes it so vivid for me to imagine.

Leftovers: New Look, New Name

My husband doesn't like leftovers.  I think I've spoiled him because I like to cook and I like to try new ideas, so he thinks every meal should be a "party in the mouth".

But here's the thing:  1) Have you been to the grocery store lately?  Prices are crazy, we have seven people in our family who love to eat, and I like to stretch my hubby's earnings as far as I can. And, 2) I am in a busy, busy season of life which doesn't lend itself well to trying creative new recipes every day.

While reading Managers of Their Homes last week, I noted her solution to simplifying meals for her family.  They have the same menu for lunch every single week:  Monday--Ramen, Tuesday--tortillas and cheese, Wednesday--Soup, Thursday--frozen burritos, Friday--leftovers, and Saturday--Mac 'n cheese.  I'm not criticizing her in the least; it might be great to do this and have a family who accepted the idea.  Mine would be bored silly.  She does a similar thing for the evening meal with a theme for each weekday (like Monday Mexican, Tuesday Italian, etc) and the weekends are always Friday--pizza, Saturday--frozen pizza, and Sunday--burritos.  I showed the idea to Alan and got the exact response I expected.  (chuckle)

The last couple weeks, however, I have been purposefully planning leftovers which has reduced my grocery budget AND has simplified my meal preparation.  Here are a few meals I've "re-purposed" in case you would like to try something similar.

• Chili to Chili Pie

Make a big pot of chili (preferably serve it with cinnamon rolls--yum!).  A couple days later, pour the leftover chili into a baking dish, top with your favorite cornbread recipe, bake and serve.  It was a big hit!

• Roast to Beef and Noodles

Cook a large roast with onions, carrots, potatoes and seasonings.  Before you serve it, chunk off enough meat for noodles (because I have a 15-year-old son who will frequently keep eating until the food is gone, even though there is more than enough to satisfy) and place the meat and broth into a container for the refrigerator.  A couple days later, mix up eggs, milk, salt and flour to make noodles for a delicious meal (one of my personal favorites!)

• Tacos to Taco Salad

This one is simply too obvious and simple to explain, but fry up a bunch of hamburger, season it, and put a third to half of it in the fridge (same reason as above--you would not believe how many tacos a teen boy will eat if you just put unlimited meat before him!).  Serve tacos with all the fixin's.  A couple nights later, reheat the meat, set out all the fixin's again and add Doritos and Western dressing.  Voila--entirely different meal!

• Chicken and Dumplings to Chicken and Biscuits

This is comfort food at its finest.  Use an extra large stock pot to bring chicken and broth to a boil (easiest when you have canned fifty quarts shortly after butchering your chickens so you just have to pop the lid off the jar) and top with fluffy dumplings.  If your family is like mine, they will eat all the dumplings and part of the chicken, but you will be left with quite a bit of thickened broth and meat.  A couple days later, add leftover veggies (carrots, peas, potatoes) to the broth and meat, thicken it on the stove, top with homemade drop biscuits, bake and serve.

• Rotisserie Chicken to Chicken and Rice Burritos

I was blessed with a rotisserie cooker from a friend of mine who never used hers.  We use it all the time.  This simple meal just requires a quick seasoning of the chicken before putting it in the cooker for an hour and a half.  If you don't have a rotisserie cooker, you could easily bake a whole chicken or use your crockpot.  Pick the leftover meat off the bones and a couple days later mix it with instant rice, cheese, and seasonings, wrap it in tortillas and bake.  

• Country Fried Steak to Creamy Mushroom Steak

Bread several pieces of round steak with cracker crumbs and fry them.  Set half of them aside in a baking dish and put it in the refrigerator.  Serve the first half with milk gravy, veggies, and either biscuits or mashed potatoes.  A couple days later, dump a can of cream of mushroom and a little water over the other steaks and stick the dish in the oven.

It's ALMOST like twelve meals for the price and effort of six!  Do you disguise and/or plan ahead your leftovers?  Give me some more ideas!

Boot Camp Update: Managers of Their Homes Review

It's time for an update on The Homeschool Mom's Boot Camp.  You may remember I am combining the boot camp with a 21-Days to Discipline challenge in order to revamp our daily schedule and our chore system.

 I would say I am doing "ok" with the challenge, even though it took me a little longer than three days to accomplish my first three steps:

1)  re-read my copy of Managers of Their Homes by Teri Maxwell
2) complete Mom's activity worksheet
3) assist Briana and Destry in completing their activity worksheets.

I re-read my copy of Managers of Their Homes (MOTH) and loved it all over again.  This is my third time through it and I get something new from it each time (likely because of the different seasons during which I've read it).  She already had me sold with her analogy of using a schedule to budget our time just like we "tell our money what to do" with a budget.  We only have so much time (as we only have so much money) and we have to be the ones to control it or it will just. . .disappear with nothing to show for it.

While we have retained the basics of a school schedule for the older children, this time through the most helpful section for me was chapter three, scheduling younger children's days.  She reminded me that "little ones are more peaceful, content, and obedient when their days are planned and routine, including regular changes of activity" (11).  She suggests planned activity changes so that children play in a specific room with specific items for 30 minutes and then you have them change their location and/or activity.  She even encourages rotations of toys for different days of the week and includes art/craft supplies as a suggested 30-minute activity.

I know this, I have done it before, but I have gotten away from it.  I know this is one of the tweaks I need to make to our days so they will go more smoothly.  I've been allowing Kiana and Tyrell too much "free play" and they get into things (read:  sprayed water all over the floor in the kitchen basement using the fun sprayer attached to the faucet), they start bickering or whining and tattling (ergh, one of my major pet peeves), or they just follow me around and hang on me asking if they can watch a movie (only marginally less frustrating than the above two choices).

So this is one of the ways I got slightly distracted from (or we can say I purposefully modified) my original plan.  I went to the store and got a set of four drawers and made a list of 30 different activities that the younger children can do during 30-minute time segments while I am working with older children.  My list includes everything from specific toys like cars, trains, or a doctor kit with stuffed animals to learning activities like playdough, puzzles, books on tape, or computer programs.  I hope to change the contents of the drawers each day and then they can just remove the drawer from its tower and take the fun new activity to a designated place to play until the timer goes off.  At this point of my "boot camp", I allowed this slight modification to take precedence over the individual worksheets step of compiling a daily schedule so I can implement the more structured play starting Monday.

Another distraction was my printing of a 2013 calendar to record some dates we already have commitments for (how ridiculous is that?!) because I am paranoid I am going to forget them.  I am justifying this distraction as I think it falls under 'scheduling', wouldn't you agree?

Another section of the book that stood out to me this time was the concept of "Scheduling for Priorities" discussed in chapter eight.  "We can always be driven by the urgent, or we can take control of our days" (57) and Maxwell firmly believes in scheduling the activities that we truly want to do and know is best (such as reading to our children, memorizing Scripture, or individual time with each child) so they don't continually get brushed aside by "the urgent".  She encouraged me to set aside a "portion of the day properly devoted to some of my highest priorities rather than being driven by the urgent" as "you are laying the foundations in your family in these areas of relationships.  By your example of scheduling your day, being careful to keep relationship priorities in focus, you are modeling this discipline for your children" (57).  I'm looking forward to seeing how my new schedule can better help me nurture relationships within my family.

This brings us to the second item on my assignment list:  Activity Worksheet for Mom, which is "a written list of all God has called you to do each day and the amount of time required to do it" (77). 

Silly me, I allotted only one day for this task but Maxwell says to spend several days considering this worksheet, praying over it, and adding and omitting items, so I'm still working on it.  She says it's normal for the first draft to add up to more than 24 hours worth of activities, which is a relief.  I'm in the "pray and seek your husband's input" stage of the worksheet and Briana and Destry are working on (but not finished) with theirs.

So, there's my update!  Onward and upward I go.  This week I hope to complete an activity worksheet for myself and each of the children--six sheets.

Preparing to Be a Help Meet

I have mixed feelings about Debi Pearl's book for single women, Preparing to Be a Help Meet. 

I really enjoyed her usual analysis of three types of men, The Command Man, The Visionary Man, and The Steady Man, as well as her additional commentary on three types of women.  I appreciated the way she advises young women to "have a life" of their own and not just sit around waiting for "Prince Charming" to come and whisk them away to happily ever after.  And I liked the way she recommended using the single years to focus on growing in the Lord and serving Him.  This was one of my favorite quotes:

"Run fast and hard after Jesus and look to the left or the right 

and marry the person who is at your side" (144).

Even though I liked some aspects of the book, I will not be handing it to Briana to read any time soon.  For one thing, it seems to me it is for young ladies a little past her season in life.  She is not ready to be married at this point, so while she is preparing in some senses to one day be a "suitable helper", she is preparing in different ways than this book focuses on.  I think if a young lady reads lots of books like this too soon, it can create a sense of discontentment for the season of the single years that might lead to jumping into a relationship prematurely.

The main thing I didn't like about this book was some of the stories she told, especially those supporting her apparent philosophy that the Lord has a certain person who is "the right one" for each of us to marry.  While I agree that the Lord knows who each of us will marry, I just can't find scriptural evidence that He has a specific person prepared for each individual and I certainly can't find evidence that He speaks to us and let's us know who is the "right one" He wants us to marry. 

I once heard a speaker say something to the effect that if we are married, then that is the person the Lord wants us to be married to; if we aren't married, then He gives us guidelines (such as being equally yoked) regarding the type of person we should marry.  I might be making too big of a deal of this, but I think we need to be careful not to buy into the idea that there is a "specific someone" we are supposed to find--our ideal soul mate. 

I can think of several people (four right this second off the top of my head) who think they finally found "the right one" in successive marriages after a divorce or two so now they are within the Lord's will by finally being married to the person the Lord intended for them.  If I thought I just wasn't walking with the Lord as closely as I should have been at the time I married Alan (which would be true) and that we don't really have a great deal in common (which could be true if we didn't work at developing interests to share) or that he isn't as spiritual as some other man (which I'm sure there is someone out there more "spiritual" than he is) and if I subscribed to this theory that God had a "perfect man for me out there somewhere" (which I don't), then I might just decide to ditch him and go in search of "the right one" (or he might do the same to me).  Do I need to list all the verses where God says that He hates divorce and that what He has joined together, we have no business tearing apart and not to forsake the wife of your youth or most amazing of all, that marriage is a picture of Christ's love for the church?  I just think we have to be very, very careful when this philosophy is presented as truth and follow it through to its logical (and unbiblical) conclusion.

I had a couple other issues with the book which I won't take time to go into right now, but would just recommend that a reader use discernment if you choose to read it and especially if you hand it to impressionable young ladies.  Much of the book is good, however, so I hate to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" which results in my "mixed feelings" assessment.

Let's Do This

Those of you who know me well are going to get a little chuckle out of this.  I just finished reading 21 Days to a More Disciplined Life.  I have aspirations of being disciplined but. . .it just never seems to work out.

I come across great ideas for keeping my house clean, losing weight, organizing stuff, scheduling our day, managing my home, chore systems, etc. and I jump in with great excitement but a couple days later I'm "off the wagon."  Imagine my excitement at the thought of disciplining my entire life in a mere 21 days!

Sadly, the book says to pick one project and break it down into manageable pieces so you can finish that ONE project in 21 days.  She says we aren't supposed to make drastic changes all at once because they won't stick for the long haul.  Oh.

She says if we try to "overhaul our whole lives in a matter of hours or days" we will end up "exhausted and burnt out."  She said "for as long as I could remember, every few months, I'd realize that my life was in serious need of more order and discipline.  I'd have a flurry of resolve, which led to creating this huge list of new habits I was going to begin implementing immediately.  I'd do really well at my new resolutions for about two days.  And then I'd crash from exhaustion at all the balls I was juggling. . .I'd throw my hands up in defeat, feeling like a failure.  It just didn't work" (15).

I think she might be spying on me.

I've tried a couple of her ideas for completing small projects (the budget and organizing Kiana's hand-me-downs=SUCCESS!) and I'm cautiously excited to implement her 21-day project. 

Then I read about the Homeschool Mom's Boot Camp on Chellie's blog.  This is just what I need to actually complete my project.  I need the accountability to be disciplined--will y'all help me?

My goal is to update my daily schedule ala Managers of Their Homes which I've used in the past but have not updated since we moved.  Our school year is progressing well, but the truth is I'm flying by the seat of my pants and they're getting a little thin.  I also want to update our chore system, especially for Easton and Kiana. 

The point of the boot camp as I understand it is to focus on one specific area that is slipping in your homeschool.  I'm picking my schedule as that one area.  The point of the 21-day challenge is to pick a project which is overwhelming enough you just haven't started it and break it down into manageable bites with the goal of completing it in 21 days.  Yep, a schedule for this family fits that criteria.  I'm combining the two ideas thinking maybe I really WILL attain a disciplined life in just 21 days and second semester will be so smooth each day will just take care of itself!

Is that echoing laughter I hear?

My Daily Bites:

• Wednesday--review the MOTH book
• Thursday--complete mom's daily goals worksheet
• Friday--assist Briana and Destry with their daily goals worksheets

I'll try to check in early next week with an update on my Homeschool Mom's Boot Camp:  Discipline Version.

Peace Child

A friend loaned me Peace Child:  An Unforgettable Story of Primitive Jungle Treachery in the 20th Century by Don Richardson and I'm so very glad I read it.  I feel a little bit like I'm the last one to read it as I've mentioned it to a couple people who immediately said "Oh yes, wasn't that great?"  Even if I'm a little late to the party, I'm still glad to have read it.

Peace Child tells about the Sawi tribe living in New Guinea who were cannibalistic headhunters before they learned about Christ.  Their culture admired treachery to the point that they honored tribal members who fooled an enemy into believing they were friends and then betrayed that friendship by killing and cannibalizing them.  They called this "fattening the enemy with friendship".  Isn't it just logical then, that they would esteem Judas's betrayal over Christ's sacrifice when they finally heard the gospel?

Richardson not only told his own story of his experiences living with the Sawi people for fifteen years (along with his wife and two young sons), but he also introduced us to a people group with a completely different culture and set of values from what we are accustomed to.  I think he did a wonderful job helping us understand some of the background of the culture and his love for the people was present throughout the pages.

My favorite part of the book, however, was his belief (and illustration of that belief) that God has preserved a way for His gospel to be understood deep within the mythologies of all people if we will just look for it.  Like Paul we must be "all things to all people" and get to know where others are coming from in order to "meet them where they are."  I was fascinated right along with Richardson when he realized that their culture makes one provision to prove allegiance and trustworthiness:  the peace child.  When two warring factions want to make peace a leader from each group brings forth one of his children and they exchange children.  As long as these children both live, there is peace between their groups.

Richardson was able to use the analogy of Jesus as the ultimate "Peace Child" who God sacrificed once for all to reconcile people to Him as the source of perfect peace.  Doesn't that just about give you goosebumps?

I was very intrigued by this book and am inclined to read another of Richardson's books, Eternity in Their Hearts.  I don't know that I am perceptive enough to make that parallel for a people group between their mythology and its foreshadowing of Jesus Christ, but I find the idea fascinating.  I would have to trust that the Holy Spirit would reveal the tradition that would help people understand the Truth of what the Lord has done for them when they were ready to listen.

Hot Mess

I'm stealing a phrase from my dear sister-in-law.  We all have our moments when we realize what a mess we are and I love it when she describes herself as not only a mess, but a "hot mess."  It's been one of those weeks and I am officially acknowledging my status as a hot mess.

I shared in my last post that my mind is always going like crazy and I usually have a post composed in my head before I sit down to type it.  This is how my mind is going today.  Are you ready?

We have survived this week.  That's it.  And frankly, I'm glad to be able to say that much.  I was sick for a couple days and it was a very strange sickness.  It started with a pain in my lower abdomen.  I thought it was just because I was ovulating, then it got worse, and I started thinking I might have a cyst.  Or maybe it's ovarian cancer.  Yes, ovarian cancer, because my brain goes in crazy directions like that.  Then the next day I had a fever and body aches and extreme tiredness.  No stomach flu, but a horrible stomach ache.  Probably appendicitis.  But I don't want to go to the doctor in case that's not it.  So I continued on, felt a little better, but still really tired and sporadic pain in my lower abdomen.  Pretty sure it's not constipation.  Maybe a bowel obstruction, I've heard of that before.  I wonder what it is.  Or my gall bladder, sometimes people have problems with their gall bladder and it's down there somewhere.

You'll be relieved to hear that I'm fine now--physically at least.

So yesterday afternoon we had some new friends over for the afternoon. They are delightful people and we all enjoy them thoroughly.  They have three teenagers to play games and be loud and giggle a lot with my teens, two little boys to run and play with Easton, and two little girls to play with Kiana and Tyrell while the mother and I just sit in recliners and talk about every random subject that pops into our heads.  During this time on a blessedly gorgeous afternoon, Tyrell and Kiana took off their boots while playing outside.  (That's just what we do around here.)

Kiana received these adorable boots for her birthday from my mother and she loves them.  She wears them every single day with dresses, skirts, jeans, tutus. . .you name it, she's convinced they match.  I don't even want to know what they cost.

And one of them got lost.
While the kids were digging in the sand box that doubles as our yard.
Really deep holes.  With shovels and hoes if you really must know.
If my mom is reading this, we of course tore the yard apart until we found it.  If you're not my mom, we're still on a mission to find that stinkin' boot!  I wonder if they have metal in them and we could buy a metal detector. . .

The problem here, you see, is that I have issues with stuff.  As in, stuff is not important to me.  My parents tried really hard to teach me good stewardship and responsibility and to think ahead about potential outcome but all it managed to do was give me a huge guilt complex about always losing, breaking and otherwise ruining things.  My mom would get me a nice necklace and I promptly broke it or lost it.  When they bought me a nice dress my senior year I wore it twice.  The first time was for my senior pictures, the second time was for a vocal concert.  Then after the concert was over I changed my clothes, put the dress in a garment bag, teased my big hair some more, sprayed half a bottle of hairspray to hold said hair (hey it was 1991, what did you expect?), then threw the other half of the bottle in the garment bag.

I threw the hairspray in with the dress.
The hairspray bleached a huge spot in the dress.
Ruined it forever.
Ooops.

In case you're wondering, gifts are not my love language.  Please don't buy me stuff.  Unless you hate my guts and want to send me on a huge guilt trip when I lose it, break it, or otherwise ruin it.

Speaking of stuff, you may remember we thought we were moving to Colorado about eleven months ago, so we gave a bunch of stuff away.  Who wants to move a ton of stuff halfway across the country?  For example, it would be much easier to just buy new welding equipment there than to move it.  And we don't watch a lot of TV anyway, so let's just give that extra TV with the built-in VCR to some friends.  We're trying not to regret that now as Alan needs to weld something and I would like to put the little kids in one room with a cartoon tonight while I watch something more interesting with my husband since our teenagers are going down the road to a friend's house to play games.  But we only have one TV.  I guess that's because we like to be together and sacrifice and pick something everyone can watch and enjoy.  growl

But as I was saying, it's been one of those weeks.  Our schedule has somehow taken over my sanity.  The older kids started Driver's Ed this week (Mon eve, Thurs eve, and Fri aft) and we started the children's musical on Monday.  There are lots of boys in the musical, which is a really good thing.  Boys are very active and wiggly and noisy, which I'm also reminding myself is a very good thing.  Did I mention that I'm directing the musical?

It's going to be fun, and I'm sure it will turn out just fine.  It always has in the past.  It's just one of those areas where I'm a little out of my comfort zone.  I am more gifted at organizing people and telling them what to do than I really am at music.  While I love to sing, it's always a bit of a toss up when determining if more notes were in tune or more were flat.  I can tell you the names of notes and read a key signature, but you have to be really missing the pitch for me to notice.  So I always wonder if the musically gifted parents are wishing I would just sit down and let them direct.

But the good news is that Briana and Destry are going to be helping me a lot.  I'm a firm believer in "providing opportunities" (a.k.a. telling people what to do)  for them to give back and serve others as they have been served.  Briana is great with the kids and she just might have inherited a healthy dose of my gift for "organizing people and telling them what to do".  Destry is also great with the kids and the boys especially think he is super cool.  Did I mention there are LOTS of boys?  So this will help a lot. And I'm hijacking his musical ability for my own use to lead the children in scales and such.

Speaking of his musical ability, we were goofing off the other night while waiting for the microwave to reheat leftovers for supper after I got home from a Bible study and the big kids were done with Driver's Ed (don't judge me) and I for some reason started singing "The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round."   (Having teenagers is fun--they bring out your goofy and immature side.)  Destry looked at me curiously for a moment, tilted his head and said "Hey, you started on the note from the microwave.  You're singing it in A-flat major."

!!!!!
Who does that?
Do you ever wonder why the Lord gave this kid to me?
A musically-challenged hot mess!

In good news I have never lost or broken a kid (the jury's still out on ruining any).
And this is Friday.

Oh, and I picked up Iris Johansen's new book at the library when I dropped the big kids off for driving and the little ones are napping.
Goodbye.

EDIT:  3:41 pm  Destry found the boot!!!!!