I was volunteering in Middle Man's classroom today. I love first grade. The kids are still so cute but they actually can have some good discussions and are able to do more on their own. It is a great age.
One of the things I love about volunteering in the classrooms is seeing what my boys are doing in school. Today I sat down next to Middle Man who was working on a special packet of work his teacher had created just for him. The worksheet he was doing involved hypothetical situations and Middle Man was supposed to figure out how he would handle the situation.
Question #1 - Your friend's pet died yesterday. What would you say to him?
My son's response - Nothing. He is not a talker. Nor is he empathetic. When I suggested he write, "I'm sorry" he looked very confused and did not want to write that because then his friend might think it was his fault. I guess "I'm sorry" is the same as saying, "I'm guilty."
Question #3 - A friend has offered to pay you to do his homework for him. What do you say to him?
My son's response - "How much will you pay me?"
I am not sure if I should be proud of his business venture or worried that he may be kicked out of school someday for breaking the honor code.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Trusting God isn't for the Weak
We are moving this summer. Moving back to the Bay Area. And I really, really, really want to move back to the same town and in the same school zone as we lived last time. It would be so much easier for all of us to have friends we already know and who already love us as we are. No making first impressions, which I am horrible at. No trying to figure out who I can put down on my emergency contact sheet. No wondering if it is okay for my kid to go to that boy's birthday party because I don't know their parents. It would just be so much easier and I also believe so right. So right to reconnect and build deeper friendships. So right to be authentic and real and invested.
We found the perfect house within a few days of making the decision to move. Right neighborhood. Right number of rooms. Right price which is incredibly helpful when housing is so incredibly expensive down there. So expensive that I don't usually mention how much we used to pay in rent because people make weird choking noises when they hear. We applied for the house, sight unseen, hoping we could all our ducks in a row right away. We waited, trusting that God would work it all out, and we waited. Finally after a week we heard that the owner decided on other renters. My heart dropped a bit at the news. Tears wanted to flow out of my eyes. I thought it was all going to work out perfectly.
But here is the thing, the thing I know from years of experience. Things will work out perfectly in God's time and God's time is usually about 3 seconds before you absolutely need it. Meaning that since we don't want to move until mid-July, the perfect place will not become available until early July.
I could stress about this. I could worry that we won't find a place. And there are moments when I do. But somewhere along the way, I have really come to understand that God is going to work things out in His time, in His way, and for His glory. And it is always GOOD. He has never let me down. I can trust Him, even when I wish He would hurry up a bit.
So when those thoughts pop up and start to take hold, I remind myself that God is good and His plan is perfect. I remind myself that worry will not change anything, well it will make me crankier and less fun to be around, but it won't find me a house any faster. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Worry that God will provide goes against my knowledge of God so I will take that worry captive and focus instead on how God has provided in the past and how He will in the future.
And then I pray. I pray for God's guidance. I pray for God's peace. And I pray that God would find my family the perfect place to live, even if it ends up not being in my perfect neighborhood.
We found the perfect house within a few days of making the decision to move. Right neighborhood. Right number of rooms. Right price which is incredibly helpful when housing is so incredibly expensive down there. So expensive that I don't usually mention how much we used to pay in rent because people make weird choking noises when they hear. We applied for the house, sight unseen, hoping we could all our ducks in a row right away. We waited, trusting that God would work it all out, and we waited. Finally after a week we heard that the owner decided on other renters. My heart dropped a bit at the news. Tears wanted to flow out of my eyes. I thought it was all going to work out perfectly.
But here is the thing, the thing I know from years of experience. Things will work out perfectly in God's time and God's time is usually about 3 seconds before you absolutely need it. Meaning that since we don't want to move until mid-July, the perfect place will not become available until early July.
I could stress about this. I could worry that we won't find a place. And there are moments when I do. But somewhere along the way, I have really come to understand that God is going to work things out in His time, in His way, and for His glory. And it is always GOOD. He has never let me down. I can trust Him, even when I wish He would hurry up a bit.
So when those thoughts pop up and start to take hold, I remind myself that God is good and His plan is perfect. I remind myself that worry will not change anything, well it will make me crankier and less fun to be around, but it won't find me a house any faster. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Worry that God will provide goes against my knowledge of God so I will take that worry captive and focus instead on how God has provided in the past and how He will in the future.
And then I pray. I pray for God's guidance. I pray for God's peace. And I pray that God would find my family the perfect place to live, even if it ends up not being in my perfect neighborhood.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Living on the Mountain Top?
I love retreats. I love the time away, away from the distractions of life, away from the chaos of my house, away from the schedule and to do list. I enjoy the rest and reconnection with God. I enjoy sharing those moments with women I love and women who love the Lord. It is a sweet, sweet time.
There are some years when I am at a turning point in my life and the retreat comes at just the right time for me to really grapple with some tough things. I come home changed. But often, as was the case this year, I was not changed. It is hard to write that down because there is an expectation that I would be changed by God at the retreat. One of the retreat leaders even ended the retreat by asking if we were changed and said if we were not we needed to spend some more time in prayer asking God to change us. And I get that. I get that we should be asking God to change us daily. We should be constantly on the sanctification road. But I also resented the idea that I had to feel changed by the end of the retreat.
Retreats are often a mountain top experience. They end with everyone having a spiritual high. And this can be good if it motivates people to spend more time with God once they get home. Giving people of taste of true fellowship with Him and His people is a huge blessing. Spending time on the mountain top can rest our souls and also remind us of how much God loves us and wants to spend every day with us. Mountain tops give us a clearer view of the world below and a better understanding of our place in it. There is a reason people climb mountains.
But we spend most of our lives on the ground. And if we stay too focused on the mountain top, we can get lost when our real lives crash back in on us. We often meet God on the mountain and then accidently leave Him there as we drive home. Cell phones start ringing with news of sick kids. Emails start showing up in our inbox about the PTA carnival and the next women's event at church that needs to be planned. Laundry is piled up and work awaits.
Life is where we need God. It is when we turn to God in our daily lives that we are truly changed. It is when our pressures lead us to prayer, our worries lead us to trust in Him, and our relationships lead us to understand Christ's love for us, that we are truly changed.
I am all for the mountain top experience. This was the most restful and restorative retreat I have been on. I needed that time away. But I brought God with me and I took Him back home with me. The mountain top did not change me. God does every day, in little ways.
There are some years when I am at a turning point in my life and the retreat comes at just the right time for me to really grapple with some tough things. I come home changed. But often, as was the case this year, I was not changed. It is hard to write that down because there is an expectation that I would be changed by God at the retreat. One of the retreat leaders even ended the retreat by asking if we were changed and said if we were not we needed to spend some more time in prayer asking God to change us. And I get that. I get that we should be asking God to change us daily. We should be constantly on the sanctification road. But I also resented the idea that I had to feel changed by the end of the retreat.
Retreats are often a mountain top experience. They end with everyone having a spiritual high. And this can be good if it motivates people to spend more time with God once they get home. Giving people of taste of true fellowship with Him and His people is a huge blessing. Spending time on the mountain top can rest our souls and also remind us of how much God loves us and wants to spend every day with us. Mountain tops give us a clearer view of the world below and a better understanding of our place in it. There is a reason people climb mountains.
But we spend most of our lives on the ground. And if we stay too focused on the mountain top, we can get lost when our real lives crash back in on us. We often meet God on the mountain and then accidently leave Him there as we drive home. Cell phones start ringing with news of sick kids. Emails start showing up in our inbox about the PTA carnival and the next women's event at church that needs to be planned. Laundry is piled up and work awaits.
Life is where we need God. It is when we turn to God in our daily lives that we are truly changed. It is when our pressures lead us to prayer, our worries lead us to trust in Him, and our relationships lead us to understand Christ's love for us, that we are truly changed.
I am all for the mountain top experience. This was the most restful and restorative retreat I have been on. I needed that time away. But I brought God with me and I took Him back home with me. The mountain top did not change me. God does every day, in little ways.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
He Still Shows Up
I spent this weekend with some amazing women at our church's women's retreat. It was a sweet time with dear friends and new friends who all love the Lord. It is always a privilege to hear how God is working and speaking in other people's lives and retreats allow the time and quiet to really have those deep conversations with one another. It is also supposed to be a time to reconnect with God. And it was.
On Saturday morning, after our morning meeting together, we were scheduled to take a one hour quiet time. Now normally I would love to sit with God for an hour. But after being up until 2 am the night before laughing and talking with my roommates, I was tired. Tired to the core of my being. I may have been able to pull that off in college, but I am old now. I need my sleep or my body starts to shut down. So I decided to take my quiet time in my bed, with my eyes closed, rationalizing that I would get more out of the rest of the day if I got a little sleep.
I am a rules follower though so I made sure to put some JJ Heller on my iPod. Listening to Christian music while resting my eyes is quiet time right? I say to myself while rolling my eyes to myself.
As I wrote recently, we are relocating (again) to the Bay Area this summer. I can give lots of intellectual reasons why the move makes sense because it does. But then the song Everything is Changing by JJ Heller started playing in my ears and pierced straight to my heart.
Turns out God will show up even when I only give Him a small part of myself. He will whisper to me what I need to hear. He will use what I have given Him to take me one more step along the journey.
If you want to hear the whole song you can hear it here.
On Saturday morning, after our morning meeting together, we were scheduled to take a one hour quiet time. Now normally I would love to sit with God for an hour. But after being up until 2 am the night before laughing and talking with my roommates, I was tired. Tired to the core of my being. I may have been able to pull that off in college, but I am old now. I need my sleep or my body starts to shut down. So I decided to take my quiet time in my bed, with my eyes closed, rationalizing that I would get more out of the rest of the day if I got a little sleep.
I am a rules follower though so I made sure to put some JJ Heller on my iPod. Listening to Christian music while resting my eyes is quiet time right? I say to myself while rolling my eyes to myself.
As I wrote recently, we are relocating (again) to the Bay Area this summer. I can give lots of intellectual reasons why the move makes sense because it does. But then the song Everything is Changing by JJ Heller started playing in my ears and pierced straight to my heart.
Everything is changing all around meThose lyrics matched something my husband had said about all the things I am doing being a distraction from what I (and we) thought God wanted me to be doing. I don't always understand the why's of God's direction. Often I find out later. But I do think that this move will help me refocus on what God has planned for me. I have learned a lot from the times I said yes over the last few years. I found my strengths and my weaknesses. I found what made my heart sing and what distracted me and weighed me down like a heavy blanket. The yeses were good. The things I did these last few years were good but I am realizing that they are not necessarily where God has me, not what He made me to do. I needed to hear the words to this song.
Is this the ending of a dream
I thought I was doing what you wanted
It isn’t as easy as it seemed
Turns out God will show up even when I only give Him a small part of myself. He will whisper to me what I need to hear. He will use what I have given Him to take me one more step along the journey.
If you want to hear the whole song you can hear it here.
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