A Confession, and a Proposal

No, there is no picture.  (Well, because the picture you would get for this post is my ginger beer fermenting on my counter.  At the moment it just looks like a jar of suspicious, murky tan liquid.  But the recipie promises I will have ginger beer in a mere two weeks.)

I have this feeling I am a bad preschool mom.  Here is my confession: I hate cut and paste crafts.  You know the ones I mean?  The ones that involve cutting things to bits to glue them to other things?  A cotton balls?  And glitter?  The craft pages, for instance, that Miss Boo does in Sunday School, rapidly loses interest in, and then the pages shed glittery cotton all over my house for the next week until I can master my guilt over throwing the thing away.

So here's the thing.  I am probably being uptight and Prussian about this, but it seems to me that if you are going to let the kids fiddle with something, and if you're going to have to supervise them anyway (scissors and glue, anyone?), why not teach them something USEFUL?

Like a craft that won't be a dust catcher/maker.  I mean like a ball they can play with or paganish noisemakers or something.

No, I haven't taught Miss Boo to sew yet, but I am starting to consider it, thinking about the fact that little girls of three were sewing and knitting in colonial times.  And also because whenever I get out my  mending, she pesters the living daylights out of me to hold the thread.

Which brings me to my Proposal.  See, I don't like Ladies' Craft Night any better than the glittery Sunday School papers.  To me a dried flower arrangement has all the same problems, only eucalyptus-scented; scrapbooking to me is just expensive glittery Sunday School papers.  So here is my Proposal, which I am putting on my blog only to keep myself from getting crazy enough to actually propose this to my ladies' Bible study group (which would promptly put me at the head of any such effort):

1. Why not get together and learn to do useful things?

It would work like this: I know how to mend a variety of things, including socks, how to knit, crochet, weave, spin, make bread, make pickles, and pin on a cloth diaper.  But I could use some help learning how to work my pressure canner, figuring out my sewing machine, and getting my pie crust to stay in one piece from board to pie plate.  So why not swap?

It could go on and on.  Maybe there is an older lady in the church who braids rugs--or makes knives, heck, we aren't sexist--or knows how to kill pigweed, or keeps ducks... maybe there is a younger lady who knows all about herbs for pregnancy, or how to make whole grain pancakes that aren't the consistency of hockey pucks.

Do you see how this works?

2. Then just keep it going--at canning time, get all the ladies together in the church kitchen and have a little inservice on canning.  (Sign waivers if you have to.)  And cleaning, for that matter.  Do you know how many people my age don't know how to scrub a floor?  I'm not kidding.


This all came about because, in case Warren Buffet is reading this blog and hasn't heard, hard times are here and rapidly getting harder.  It seems supremely silly to me to be wasting time, effort, and money on something as transient as scrapbooking.  (Please don't hate me if you love scrapbooking--to each her own--but how can you really love something so fiddly?)  It's a matter of priorities.  Perhaps back before we had our first stock market crash of the decade, we could justify scrapbooking to ourselves.  But now we have to examine what we do, everything we do, and see if it's useful or...well, stupid.

Say you want to buy a book (a pastime I am all for).  Should you buy a novel you will read once, a novel you will read many times, or a practical manual that will tell you how to garden/mend/cook?  It might be either the second or third, but it won't be the first.  And probably before you buy any books, you should try to check them out of the library and see if they are worth owning.

You want to keep your hands busy with a craft?  Well, would you rather spend twelve hours putting together a photo album that no one but you and your grandma will appreciate (especially considering you can do so much with photo arranging on the computer), or twelve hours knitting a pair of socks you can wear for the next five years?  For that matter, if you committed twelve hours (not all at once, an hour an evening, say), you could memorize a lot of Scripture, or learn to make really good bread, or take the time to use shoe-goo and leather conditioner and fix up your shoes instead of spending $40 on a new pair.

Priorities, baby.  I'm getting Miss Boo her own little sewing basket fitted out tomorrow, I think.  Now if I can just find a blunt needle and some loose-woven fabric.

Maybe I'll talk to them Bible study ladies after all...

Breanna

I Should Probably Mention...

I sold a story a little while back to a neat e-magazine calle The Enchanted Conversation.  It's now up, and available for commenting on.  I linked to it on my other blog, but remembered there are people who only listen to me because I have cute kids. :)

So here's the link.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

Yes, I'll post more pictures soon.  I'm charging the camera.

Praying for patience

It's been an interesting few days.

Holy, of course.  It is Easter Week.  But have you noticed the wry sense of humor with which the Lord decides to mix things like Easter Week and babies waking up at 5:30 AM for three days in a row?

People who haven't expereinced the hellish sleep deprivation of early parenthood don't know what I'm talking about.  They chuckle merrily and picture something out of an "I Love Lucy" episode, maybe.  But I'm not exaggerating when I say I haven't had an entire night's sleep since my daughter was born in late 2007.  Yep, that's almost three years.  You can get your trucker's certification faster than that.  You can even become an LPN faster than that, for Pete's sake.  So sleep, all sleep, becomes this gorgeous, precious thing that you are continually trying to obtain.  To the point that I have, several times, looked at my husband at 8:10PM and said "Well, I'm going to sleep."

And he says, "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."  Sigh.  We used to be normal adults, who knew that there were shows on TV other than The Wonder Pets and who had your normal social hangups about mentioning poo in conversation.  (No, we don't have those hangups anymore.  And I don't watch Dancing With the Stars.)

The practical consequence of this sleep deprivation is that on bad days I have less patience than, say, Mike Tyson.  This is bad; patience is a fruit of the Spirit, so not having it in my life is a significant lack.  Also, I have children whom I am trying to teach impulse control.  When you find yourself snapping "JUST WAIT FOR A SECOND!  A SECOND!  A MEASLY SECOND!  BE PATIENT!" at your two-year-old, you become aware of the dictionary definition of "hypocrisy".

So the other night I prayed, "Lord, give me more patience", and then I cringed.  Because you know what they say about praying for patience.

Which is surely a backward way of looking at things.  God is the definition of love; He doesn't look for reasons to trick us while answering our prayers a la Hera or Zeus.  If I need more patience, I am instructed in the book of James to ask for it.  If I need to get a handle on the tone of my voice when I discipline my youngsters, I should ask for it.

So why don't I?  To my shame I just don't think of it.  This, I think, exposes a fundamental lack in my basic way of thinking: I'll work on it myself and call on God if I have any problems.  Which is a little like deciding I'll buckle my seatbelt real quick if I seem to be getting into a car accident, right?

Which brings me here, on Friday of Holy Week, praying for patience.  We've decided getting the girl up at 6AM is probably the best plan, since it minimizes our "I'm-not-tired-and-you-can't-make-me-sleep" issues at night.  In theory. 

I am dying thinking about it in a way that only another nursing mother can really understand.  So can I ask all of you to pray for my patience as well?

Thanks.

Breanna

Easter Week, and the Great Fifty Days

(Isn't this a great picture of the Lord and the children?  I can't find an artist attribution anywhere.  If this is your picture, I apologize!  Please either send me your name so I can credit you or ask me to take it down, and I will.)

I like the picture that I've headed the post with because 1) He looks Jewish and 2) He looks 30, instead of 50, like in some older European depictions and 3) the kids look like they're laughing, instead of constipatedly holy and 4) He's laughing.  (C.S. Lewis quotes an author I can't remember who says that we're never told, in the Gospels, that He laughed.  But as Lewis points out, it's difficult to read the Gospels and not conclude, and tremble in the conclusion, that He smiled.)

In the church year, we've entered into what's called The Great Fifty Days, the time between Easter and Pentecost.  This is the time when the risen Christ was with His disciples, appearing to them periodically, before His ascension (we have a Sunday to commemorate that), and then from the time He ascended until He sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Liturgically speaking, the whole thing is one big Feast.

This probably has less meaning for most Protestants, who don't usually fast seriously during Lent.  Perhaps one of these years I won't be nursing or pregnant during Lent and I can undertake a mealtime fast; this year I should, probably, have fasted from something else--like the computer, maybe, or coffee.  But I didn't; every year a baby step.

Especially is Easter Week a feast--that's why Easter baskets exist, actually, they're filled with candy and other things that you are typically supposed to avoid during Lent.  (In the olden days they'd have component ingredients in them, things like eggs, butter, and sugar.)

We tend to forget about Easter after Easter Sunday, but I encourage you to spend the whole week thinking about Christ's Resurrection, and celebrating it.  And if that means eating the ears of a few chocolate bunnies, well...

See, the Lord likes feasts.  He instituted several under the Old Covanent, in perfect rhythm with fasts.  Fasting serves to point out where we are too attached to something that isn't God--whether that be soda, television, or food itself--and to force us to seek the Lord instead of our distractions.  Feasting is the expression of our astonishment at the abundance of every kind found in God.  To feast every day blunts its point, and to fast every day blunts its point, but when we alternate feasting and fasting on God's rhythm, we learn something important about him and about ourselves.

We're rhythmic creatures--we get tired, go to sleep, and wake up refreshed, only to do it again.  We eat, get hungry, and eat again.  And we live in a rhythmic world--we have spring, summer, fall, and winter, every year.  The sun comes up, then it goes down.   We tend to be surprised by the rhythm in our emotions and abilities (I have a good writing friend who periodically writes to me, worried, because he is hitting a dry spell in his writing inspiration), but we shouldn't be.  After all, our souls and spirits are tied to bodies, and our bodies definitely have peaks and valleys.

This is one reason, out of practicality, to attend to your body the way you'd tend your car.  It's more difficult to be cheerful and loving when you're hungry, underslept, and vitamin-depleted.  On the other hand, it's entirely possible to be well-fed, overslept, and still vicious, selfish, and lazy.  In the U.S. we are probably not in danger of too much acesticism; much more likely we to need to discipline ourselves to go to bed (and get up) at a decent time and to eat our vegetables.  This is also, incidentally, an excellent reason to, if you find it helpful, use prayers you can read out loud (or at least pray out loud), so you can engage your ears and mouth in prayer.  Our souls are tied to bodies.  God made us that way.  So as much as we can engage our bodies in our devotion, we will find it helpful.

(By the way, in case anyone wonders, bodies are good.  God invented them.  We're not gnostics here.)

But disciplining our spirits to pray when we don't feel like it, and to worship God even when He doesn't give us a sweet emotional experience, has a surprising payoff.  Sometimes He gives us an experience of overpowering sweetness.  The equivalent, if you like, of a feast after a fast.

So this week, let your body do what your spirit sometimes does-- enjoy the Feast of the Lord.

Cheers,

Breanna

Happy Easter (Monday)!

Did you know Easter lasts for six weeks in the church calendar?

(The flowers from our Seder and Easter table--white and gold are the colors of the season.)

Our Seder table was very pretty.  Somehow, between frying latkes and bouncing babies, I didn't remember to take any pictures during the dinner.  But rest assured, it was great.

Unsure about having to sit in his high chair, Brother is equally unsure about being photographed while in confinement.

Not so this mysterious person, who kept showing up whenever Miss Boo disappeared.  Who are you,masked stranger?  Who?

Plastic eggs rock...

...but not as hard as using them to walk around with...

...or stealing them from your sister, with a clever "I don't even have to look at my theivery" motion.

Miss Boo takes matching up the eggs seriously.

Brother, not so much.  They are fun to smack and chew on.

Easter Sunday, and Brother apparently thinks that the church service would benefit from a DJ.  He's practicing while riding on Daddy's shoulders in this shot.

What? I should put down my sippy for my closeup?

You got it, babe!

Easter service was great.  The ham I cooked wound up being too big (why was I sure that only six of us would be able to eat that thing?) but now at least I have leftovers to do stuff with.

And yes, I am aware of the contradiction inherent in having a Seder supper one day and a ham dinner the next.  We're Messianic and not kosher anyway, ok?

I'll write something later about Easter Week (this week), but for now just enjoy the cute babies.

Cheers,

Breanna

Good Friday

...or "God's Friday" as some people think it used to be called (aren't they all His?), in the same way that Goodbye used to be "God be with ye".

This is the day that we remember the crucifixion and passion of the Lord.  (I have a confession: I've never seen The Passion of the Christ.  I just can't psyche myself up to it.  I get weepy just thinking about the previews.)  This is the day that we can identify, if we choose to use it as a devotional aid, with various people in the story.  Who fits you?

Perhaps it's John Mark, the young man who is so frightened when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus that he runs away, losing his garment in the process, and flees naked.  This is one of those times, I think, when God uses an event that really happened and also gives it symbolic significance--He's good at that.  Because surely, what makes us more naked than fear?  And what better way to lose the covering grace of the Lord than to abandon Him, rather than running to Him, in our fear?

Or perhaps you identify more with stubborn Peter, ruled by his emotions.  When Peter isn't allowed to fight violently for his Lord, he doesn't know what to do, and loses his courage.  Maybe you've denied the Lord like Peter did, for petty reasons, in front of people that didn't matter.  (Surely, the servant girl in the courtyard was not the person who could threaten a full grown, burly fisherman.)  Maybe you've repented.

Perhaps you identify with the women, unable to see what was going on, knowing He was arrested, knowing something bad was happening, seeing all your fears confirmed when He emerges, bloody, forced to pick up the instrument of His death.  Perhaps you've been watching someone you love carry death--death in a hospital, death at home, death coming in the next days or months or years.  I pray not.

Perhaps you are like Simon of Cyrene, caught up in this drama against your will.  You were just going about your business this Easter and suddenly you are brought face-to-face with Christ, and you have to look into His eyes.

Perhaps you identify with the centurion, who was just doing his job, on a busy, exhausting holiday weekend, in a country he probably didn't much like.  Perhaps you've been forced to see God in the mundane, and perhaps you've realized that the job you were wanting to get over with has been the most important moment of your life.

Perhaps you identify with Pilate, and you just want the whole, embarassing mess over with.

Perhaps you identify with the theif on the cross, knowing Christ is what you need, and knowing just as surely that you can never presume to reach out to Him.  Remember, His arms are stretched out to you.

But unfortunately, I think most people on Good Friday identify with everyone else in Jerusalem--they are just going about their business, and while they may know something is happening outside the city where they execute the scum, they have their own worries to attend to.  Business is business, after all, and by the time the veil of the temple rips, the earth cracks, and the sky blackens, it's too late.  He's gone, and it was only a strange earthquake.

But remember, as we spend tonight and tomorrow in vigil, mourning the death of the Lord: it's only Friday.

Sunday is coming.

Breanna

Well, So I Skipped Spy Wednesday

Mostly because I had to take a couple of bags of handmedowns to the secondhand store, and that led to me looking at their furniture department, which led to me finding the perfect new bedside table for The Husband, who has been longsuffering-ly using a red cube thing we got when we were first married that is much too short for his side of the bed, and that tended to get rearranged every day by the kiddos, who found it the perfect height for mayhem.

Anyway, this is Maundy Thursday.  We're supposed to think about Christ washing the feet of His disciples, and hopefully later tonight we'll have our own little session with warm washcloths and lotion, but I found myself translating the service idea already today as I wiped certain chubby, wiggly little people up during morning diaper changes.  This motherhood gig--really can be means of sanctification.  Sigh.

Which is not, of course, to say that automatically sanctification has to be unpleasant, or that everything unpleasant is necessarily a means of sanctification.  But it at least lends an aura of greater meaning to the drudgery tasks--the picking up of dirty socks that you already picked up, that someone threw on the floor because they wanted the laundry basket for a boat, or washing the dishes, again, or vacuuming the floor, again, or changing the sheets you just put on the bed yesterday, only the baby puked on them...

Ah, yes, everyone has drudgery.  Doctors, pastors, mothers, factory workers, even, I imagine, fashion models (it can't be entertaining to have to stand in place for three hours, being told "now widen your eyes.  Alright, now look to the right.  No, my right.")  The drudgery is the place where we can choose. 

We know that we're supposed to be joyful in suffering--I think a lot of Christians would make a fine showing if Red Dawn happened and suddenly the commies were lining people up in the street and demanding they renounce the Lord or get shot.  (Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, by the way, when you've already got a high school football team militia running around the hills, yelling "Wolverines!")  No problem.  I'm only a bullet away from eternity, and I know what I'm supposed to do in this situation.  Likewise, it's not hard to do the right thing when we're having mountaintop experiences--when we're at a moving service, when your child looks at you and whispers "I love you, Mama, you're a good Mama", or when you get to be in on a person's conversion.

But it's very, very hard to do the right thing, and think the right thing, when you're scraping spattered bits of tomato sauce off the inside of the microwave.  Again.  And you're not being so demanding--all you want to do is get a FEW MINUTES away from the tomato sauce (or the annoying, talkative neighbor, or the pile of incoming papers to grade) to do something completely inoffensive that you like.  Knitting, maybe, or writing, or brushing your hair all at once.  It's very easy, in the midst of drudgery, to think resentfully, and (what's worse) to think that it doesn't matter what you think at that moment.  After all, it's just an ordinary, average, less-than-ideal moment.

The truth is that ordinary moments make up most of our lives.  Relatively few of us will, probably, be called to stand in the streets and choose the Lord at the cost of a bullet.  A relatively small portion of our spiritual lives will be taken up with experiences of emotional sweetness and supernal enabling.  Most of it will just be work, and a percentage of the work will be, I hate to say, drudgery.  So unless we can get in the habit of seeing our drudgery as service to the Lord, well, we'll spend most of our life thinking wrongly.

Which is something to remember when your son has the Epic Poopout of all poop-outs.  (It was even between his toes.  Wow.)

Service, baby.  Christ didn't have to do it, but He did it, and in the humblest guise imaginable.  Now if I can just remember this for the rest of the year.

Cheers,

Breanna