And let us not grow weary...

in doing good,

for in due season,

we shall reap...

if we do not lose heart.  
Galatians 6: 9

One of my all time favorite verses! Have a blessed day today! xxx

Our homeschool group is having a World's Fair this weekend that Sherry, with a wealth of creative ideas, dreamed up for us last Spring...and we postponed for this Fall instead. The community is all invited and the children are all excited!

Since we have Scandinavian roots on both sides of our family, we've decided on Sweden for our country. In the meantime, however, our family volunteered to make a banner for the event.

My point in all of this, though, isn't about the banner or even the event itself (not yet anyway!)...but to simply share my continual revelation that serendipitous learning takes place in areas that I forever least expect.

For instance, it never occurred to me initially that this World Fair event would include math, elements of geometry, and measurement...among a host of other (what I thought to be) unrelated subjects. We're talking the mixture of various properties and the results of those mixtures with various properties of physical elements.

The fact that paint applied to a blue background distorts and darkens the paint color immeasurably than when applied to a pristine white background...or that 15 times more paint is needed to cover one small area of porous fabric...and due to this porosity causes fabric to wrinkle up into thin little ripples...than when applied to a not-so-porous flat sheet of paper....or that paint causes paper to stick to fabric and is impossible to remove once it's dry. I do believe this involved something way beyond the merely physical level but entered into the realm of some fantastic chemical fusion. I'd say much more effective than any glue we've ever tried!

My children have used chalk and rulers and learned new tricks on how to lay things out and that what we think might work one way works much better another way. They've learned what it means to enlarge something 1000 times...and that it still might not be big enough!

But I think the most important thing we're continuing to learn...and this is especially true for Mom here....is that patience and perseverance are the most integral part of any process...and the most valuable lessons learned. The creative process IS indeed a process....and we need to savor and enjoy that process for it's own sake. This means extracting all that we can learn and discover and require of ourselves...which ultimately becomes way more beneficial and fruitful than the finished product itself.

And the things we learn from one thing or incident (mostly prayerful patience and perseverance) can then be applied...hopefully with more wisdom...and creativity....to later things or endeavors. It also means that we can work as a family and come up with ideas, or fancy ways to fix mistakes, or the ability to join together and start from scratch again...as it dawns on us together that learning lasts a lifetime and is never really a formula and is also never finished. Unpredictable, non-formulaic, outright messy, serendipitous happenstance...laced with patience and perseverance and a joyful, thankful heart...will always be there to bump us blessedly along the path.

Life's Race

Life is a long cross-country race
Where Christ Our Lord once set the pace,
And taught us how "Life's Race" is run -
Not only run, but truly won.
He taught us of His Father's Love
Which floweth freely from above.
By His example he did show
The way to live and the way to go.

By Clayton G. Mosely
The Tree of Life - Salesian Collection


And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart.   Galatians 6: 9

From time to time, the storms of life
must fall upon my way,
I may be bruised and battered
as I stumble through the day,
For the stormy sea may take my boat
and turn it upside down.
By faith I somehow stay afloat
for God won't let me drown.

For once the storm has run its course,
a rainbow shall appear -
A promise from the Lord-of-all
that He is always near!





From The Storms of Life by Clay Harrison
The Tree of Life from The Salesian Collection

Let the lowliest task be mine,
Grateful, so the work be Thine;
Let me find the humblest place
In the shadow of Thy grace;

Blest to me were any spot
Where temptation whispers not.

If there be some weaker one,
Give me strength to help him on;
If a blinder soul there be,
Let me guide him nearer Thee.

By John Greenleaf Whittier

As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience.
Col. 3:12

I guess this would be my version of airin' some (clean as opposed to dirty) laundry....or clothespin art....or 5 sheets to the wind or....laundress gone loopy or....perhaps you could tell me....!

What really struck me, though, as I was loading these photos is that I would never have ever taken shots like these 6 or 7 years ago--it would never have even occurred to me!

For one thing, I never hung my laundry out on a clothesline to dry.  I didn't even think people did that anymore. They certainly don't for the most part in the Dallas suburbs. When I spent some time with my childhood friend, Lizette, in Australia, she hung her laundry out  to dry on a clothesline--not just occasionally but every time she washed--as did most everyone down there. The towels come out kinda crispy, but OH! the bed linens! How can you begin to describe the wispy, fresh, wonderful smell of sheets dried in warm breezes and sunshine? It's just one of those things you have to experience!  Mere words just can never do it justice.

But the other thing I realized was that I was always in such a rush or hurry. Where on earth do you find the time to go hang clothes out on a line and then wait for them to dry? And then what if it rains...or the birds poop on something...or the kids get their grimey hands all over it....or...(well, I didn't exactly have goats to worry about)...?? It all presented way too many logistical problems in my mind. I'll just throw it all in the dryer, slam the door, and be done with this mess! And it's another tick of the never-ending to-do list. Whew! Besides, who really wants to deal with laundry more than you already have to deal with it? Aren't there more constructive, industrious, productive priorities in my life than LAUNDRY? Please!



.

Despite all of this, however, there was still something very romantic to me about hanging the laundry--or the bed linens at the very least--out on a clothesline to dry. And I guess it was that romantic image in my mind that slowed me down a bit and caused me to pause....and to reconsider all my rush and haste about things...even if it did take me 6 or 7 years to really SLOW way down.

You've heard the old saying, "take time to stop and smell the roses..." but I needed to take time to just stop. Period. And ask myself why and for what I was doing so much of my present scurrying around! What was so dadgummed important about it, after all? Was I starving to death? Was I being persecuted? Was I running from the law? What was I so afraid of that just wasn't gonna get done or get accomplished? Who was I trying to impress? It seemed as though there was somebody or something out there somewhere that I was trying so vainly to impress with all my frantic carryin' on. So who or what was it? In the whole big scheme of things, I realized it mostly boiled down to myself. No one was doing' this to me...but me.

I also realized that I identified way more with that dirty, stinkin', soiled heap of dirty rags on the floor than I really cared to admit. In many ways I knew that I needed to be scooped up, cleaned up, and put through the wringer--but not just through any ol' wringer. I knew that God was somehow trying to work on me and I spent an inordinate amount of time causing as many distractions and disruptions to that process as I could manage to throw in there.

It has also occurred to me that it takes way more courage to slow down and to even stop than it does to run as fast as a body can run in any direction. Just take the example of being chased by a wild animal or a dog that's on the chase. If you don't panic and run, many times that can save a person from sure attack. But man! Does that ever require some courageous fortitude!

I've discovered, too, that once I slowed down, I started looking around more. And when I'm hanging laundry out on the line--even if it's at the very least the bed linens--I have to look up. And I've begun seeing more beautiful things in my life by simply looking up! And out...and far....and wide. It's really amazing! But it's all because I somehow managed to let God wring me out and shake me loose and give me the present courage it took to slow way down....to find the narrow path....and to discover it's unfolding beauty. And that's also why I would never have taken photos like these 6 or 7 years ago. There it is again...Give us this day our daily bread...it's always more than enough, isn't it!

When I mentioned that I'm a train-wreck on legs, I was not joking! We're talking highly factual, easily document-able information here. I didn’t always admit that I was a train-wreck on legs. In fact I thought I had it pretty well together and spent a whole lot of years propping up my high-achiever, very-impressed-with myself kind of life I was attempting to lead. And basically surrounded myself with others doing the same thing.

 It wasn’t until some major dents and dings of events began to penetrate the armor of my happy-go-lucky, do-as-I-please lifestyle that I began to ask some of those serious questions….ya know, some of the BIG questions….like “is this all there is to life?” kinda questions….and “what in the blankety-blank am I doing here?” kinda questions. The underbelly of my façade was revealing itself to me in ways that were increasingly more difficult for me to ignore—or laugh off.

 One day in my early thirties, college-graduate working as a hostess, single, and having just spent a long sleepless night under the neon lights of one of those sober-up tanks in the downtown Dallas jail struggling through the remnants of another hangover, I concluded that my life at that point was pretty much one….big….fat….zero.

 Now let me clarify a bit. I hadn’t been driving drunk and I wasn’t arrested. I had been out with some friends in my perky little suit and designer shoes drinking way too expensive black martinis at some nouveau shi-shi bar. The cops actually thought that I was some attorney so they didn’t hassle me too much. But that’s all just semantics and geography. A jail is a jail is a jail. Drunk is drunk is drunk. And I knew that. And I hated it. Something in my life, my ideals of what I thought life was supposed to be was going completely haywire. It was spiraling toward pathetic and yet I didn’t know what I could do about it. I had no idea what I needed—or even wanted. All the things I thought I wanted were looking more shallow, and plastic, and cheap, and ridiculous with each passing day.

 Somewhere buried back in my sweet sixteen youthful naiveté, there was a wholesomeness…a pureness…a goodness that I perceived and that I wanted in my life. I had adored babies and children, and I loved the idea of being a wife and mother. But somehow I had grown to a point where I barely glanced at kids and mostly tried to avoid them. I also had done much thinking and studying about God back then but as I went into my senior year of high school and then to college, I basically blew all that stuff off. By the time I was immersed in college life, all the deeper things in life were….well, pretty boring…plain-Jane vanilla…unexciting. Besides, I needed to take care of myself and that meant a career—a glamorous one, of course.

 I also wanted to travel. So as soon as I graduated, I headed for California which is what every fresh-faced college-grad does who sorta wants a job/ sorta wants to party. I spent the summer living in West Alki beach with my college roommate and her boyfriend who had just landed a job with Boeing in Seattle. That was a fun summer but not so great in the finding-a-job department, so through some connections I became a manager for a posh athletic club in Vail, CO.

 From there I spent the next 8-9 years living my version of the high-life: Caribbean island vacations, Banff Canada, fancy ski resorts, Sonoma wine country, owned a yacht, antiques, followed friends to wine tastings, horse events, horses races, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, pretty much the whole Town & Country deal.

 But there was always this lonely, empty, hollow void that followed me around like my unpaid credit card bills. So after a bitter break-up, and a few months hiatus licking my wounds in Australia….well, have you ever heard  “when two trains collide—matrimony?” Or “matrimony and twins all in one breath?” Yes, my husband and I met (in a bar—a swanky bar, of course) and he was what some refer to as a back-slid Christian. A quite young and handsome back-slid Christian, I might add. And I was still a bar-hoppin’ basketcase. Let me just say that our relationship, our marriage, is living, walking, breathing proof that God does exist--and that He can and will make beautiful music out of manic mayhem if given the opportunity to do so.

 While I was still a basketcase pretending to know it all, my husband did have a really deep love for Jesus Christ that was buried somewhere under his own confusions and disillusionments at the time. And what this young, handsome guy saw in me (11 years older than him, by the way) is still a freak of nature in my mind. But since I’m the Romantic Mom now, I’ll just say it was a miracle! We just totally fell for each other. We went camping. We went for long walks. He continually told me how I needed to clean up my life. And I just kept on ignoring him. And we were inseparable at that point—and always will be. Believe me, I’m not being smug here. I’m not even being romantic (if that’s possible). We’ve done everything in our power to chase each other off and It just ain’t happenin’! I guess we’re both just too stubborn to quit. Plus, he keeps trying to convince me that he adores me—but I don’t believe it—not even for one minute!

 Then one day not long after the twins were born (1999), I just up and decided that I was going to stop playing mind-games with God and just believe what the Bible said…literally. It was a regular ol’ day, middle of the week, and I didn’t mention any of this to anyone. I decided, out of the blue, that if this is what He says, then I’ll just believe it. I decided that I would give God another chance in my life—which, in the first place, is so entirely presumptuous—He gave ME the chance…after chance…after chance…after blessed chance. It demonstrates, once again, how conceited and arrogant I was still—even after so many humbling blows I had endured by then. I would give God another chance. Ha!

 But He was gracious with me as He always is. After that point, it didn’t happen all at once, I did begin to change. I began to understand things that I never understood before. He began to teach me what love is—what it truly is. I was never able to get it before. And we managed to get through situations and problems that would have destroyed us otherwise. Four years later, after our fourth baby was born and right before we moved to Maine, at my request my husband baptized me in our hot tub in TX—right where I had birthed our baby the week before!

 We’re still on this journey. We’re still learning and growing. And our love grows for Jesus Christ everyday. That’s what strengthens me so much in this walk, this path, that I’m trying so hard to stay on. For a long time I just didn’t get it. I couldn’t see what this living, daily walk was to look like. But the more questions I ask and the more I grope and grab onto Him, I see it all more clearly. Not everything…and not everyday. But that’s OK. And I’m ever so grateful that I finally at least get that much! It’s the daily-ness of this walk with my Savior…give us this day our daily bread…and that’s all I need…and it’s enough…it’s more than enough!

Time is like a railroad train;
A one-way ticket – no turning back.
And the prayer of every passenger
Is to stay securely on the track.

But, there’s victory over fleeting time,
Anxious moments, fears and strife.
Just trusting God to lead our way
Brings decades of abundant life.

John and Edna Massimilla