A Bunch Of Yard Pics

Did you know that when we moved in the yard was a windblown dustbowl, fit only for wandering scorpions and the occasional very cabin-fevered child?

Well it was.

I didn't take any Truly Before pictures, because even though Grammy reminded me I'm just that lazy.  But this is a Sort of Before picture.  Imagine in without the shrubs in the flour bed or the pine trees to the left.  (The other trees are in the distance, in the neighbor's yard.)

Another Sort of Before.  Imagine it without the concrete strip and the trees and bushes.

A Sort of Before of the back yard.  I really like my trees, though.  And the bushes are currants, so that means next year I can make some more currant cordial like I did two years ago, which was popular and guzzled.  The peach cordial that I tried the year after that?  Not so much.

I mean you can see what I mean  by dust bowl.

All of the work was extremely fascinating.  (The boys do not do pants on warm days when we stay home.

It's just... easier.)

Today a giant semi truck with sod rolled up the street in front of our yard, where what Buddy calls "the diggermans" had been waiting, leaning on their shovels and sitting inside upturned wheelbarrows (really), for half an hour.

They busily got to work.  After a bit.

It was fascinating.

Fascinating, I tell you!  Like a dirt and grass quilt!

Even the Littlest Sasquatch had to get in on the fun.  He was very vocal about being included, and kept yelling "I SEEEEEEEEE!" at the window.

After!

Well, okay, it's Sort of After.  Because, as we've come to expect from them, the Diggermans miscalculated and did not order *quite* enough turf.  You see the spot back there by the Husband.  You'll also notice the huge honking gap in the fence, which the Diggermans still have to fix.  Will we pay the Diggermans until this is finished?  We will not.

But I mean, look at the trees!  Aren't they pretty?  The tall ones are ash trees, the ones in the back are lilacs, and the ones you can't see because they're tiny are cranberry cotoneasters.  (Unrelated to actual cranberries.)

The sod is in extra-large pieces so as to allow people and dogs to walk gently on it without fear of crushing its tiny life-force into the muck.

A real yard!  Makes me feel less like a Joad!

Aaaand the front, which we can say is a real After, because they finished all of it.

Much better, huh?

I think so, anyway.

Well, okay, maybe it's only a Sort of After.  I need to ask the head Diggerman about this plant, which is supposed to be guaranteed for a year, and which looks a little peaked to me.  Does it look peaked to you?  I mean, maybe dogwoods always get this way after transplant, but I doubt it.

In other news, Buddy has mastered reading "ME" and "MA", The Littlest Sasquatch's favorite word is still "BALL" (a close second is "MAP"), and Miss Boo is now reading everything that I don't want her to.

Cheers,

Breanna

Stuff to Spend On Now

Wait, what?

Breanna, you just spent two posts telling us not to buy paper plates and to mend socks.  What are you talking about, spending money now?

Well, some things are worth having in place.  Nothing I'm telling you to buy will cost very much, and they might make a big difference in how comfortable you are during a depression.  (See, get it? Comfortable?  See how comfortable she's looking?  Yeah, well, I just had to use the photos I had on hand, okay?)

On to the list!

1. Good walking shoes.

And winter boots, if you live where that's needed.  I have a pair of Sketchers (style #2250) that I've had for almost two years now and they're still going strong.  They're extremely comfortable, sturdy, go well with most things, and I could run from a bear in them.  I could also, more to the point, do a lot more walking if gasoline became so expensive that I didn't want to drive to the post office, store, or bank.  (Well, actually if that happened *here*, I would probably at least be riding my bike to those things, because they are five miles away.)

The point is that it's hard to make good decisions when your feet and back hurt.  Invest in some good shoes now, and then take care of them.

(This will be a frequent refrain in this post.  It's only an investment to buy quality items if you then take the time to maintain them: treat your boots with neatsfoot oil, don't put your elastic items in the dryer, oil things that need to be oiled, sew up small rips, superglue what needs to be superglued, take things in out of the sun/rain/snow, etc.)

2. Take care of your teeth.

If you can afford to see a dentist and get any issues worked out, do.  But if you can't, I'll bet you can afford this simple and inexpensive system.  Even if you can afford regular dentist visits, you should still try it.  Nobody wants to have a lot of cavities to be filled, right?

Teeth are important because inflammation in your mouth can cause trouble through your entire body.  And again, it's hard to make good decisions or do the hard work that some of us are going to have to do when you have a toothache and can't eat properly because of it.

(Double rainbow all the way across the sky...so intense!  Really.  In my front yard.)

3. Tune up your bicycle.

Most people probably have one.  I do, but the tires are flat and the handlebars were off because that's how the movers packed it.  Last weekend we put the handlebars on; I will pump up the tires and get myself a helmet soon.

If you don't have a bike, or if riding a bike would be too uncomfortable for you,  consider an adult-sized tricycle (which often has a shopping basket, handy) or a recumbent bike.  You might be able to find a good deal on these things on Craigslist or Ebay.

Personally, apart from the fact that I really like riding a bike, I know that in dire circumstances I would rather ride a bike (I have a trailer for the kids) to a friend's house or to the post office than I would walk.  You will have to evaluate your own circumstances.  If you'd rather walk to the post office, then take the time and money you'd spend on making your bike street-ready and put them toward something else.

4.  Cloth diapers and/or other products.

TMI alert-- males may want to skip to the next item.

Cloth diapers may seem like an investment up front, but think about the fact that disposables cost about $10 for a pack that lasts a week.  In five weeks, my favorite inexpensive cloth option will have paid for itself.  I bought two of the packs like the ones I linked to (only it didn't include a wet bag back then). I've used the diapers on three kids.  Only two have frayed enough to be unusable.

I also use hankies, only buying kleenex when we've got colds and go through a ridiculous amount of snot-wipery.  Hankies are a good deal if you can get them in the men's department.  Pretty little ladies' hankies are fun, and I take them to church, but they don't do a great job actually wiping up allergic/baby noses.  (If you want to get pretty hankies, look at Goodwill.  Sometimes you luck out and someone has cleaned out all Grandma's 1960s drawers.)

This is the TMI part - I also don't buy any disposable monthly products for myself, for a couple of reasons.  One is that it's terribly expensive.  The other is that I'm sensitive to the chemicals in disposable products and it makes my PMS, cramps, and other things a lot worse when I use a disposable.

So what do I use?  These and this.  I haven't bought disposables in years.  (No.  It isn't any grosser than washing a hankie that you've used to mop up a bloody nose.  Nope, they don't stink.  Nope, they are not uncomfortable.  Much more comfortable, actually.)

5. Tools to make your life easier.

I'm not talking about a rototiller.  I'm talking a shovel, okay?  If you look around and you lack a basic set of hand tools, basic cooking implements, or basic hand sewing implements, you probably want to look into getting some of these.  And getting a book from the library on how to use them.  Wouldn't it be silly to not have a presentable shirt because you don't know how to sew on a button, or you don't have a needle to do it with?

You'll notice I'm not telling you to buy bread machines, laundry mangles, guns, or anything foolish like that.

So let's say you have some extra money, no debts, and you've already got all of the above.  What then?

Here's a few items I consider to be luxury options, but nice if you have the money.

1. A water filter like this one.  This might not be as important if your water is pretty clean anyway, but it gives me peace of mind in mining country to filter the water that we get from local wells.  (They are not *our* wells, they are wells that we pay to have access to.)  The advantages of the filter I linked to is that it lasts for many, many, many years, and the filters themselves are cleanable-and-reusable.  I hope I don't need to point out you should not be buying bottled water, right?

2. Some reference books. Like a cookbook that doesn't count on coupons to get costs down, a good clothing repair book, a gardening book of one kind or another, and a home repair/fix-it manual.  If money is tight, all of these can be borrowed from the library, but having them at home sure is handy.

3. Labor to put in larger projects like a clothesline, a rain barrel, extra insulation, or even just projects you've been meaning to get to.

4. New tires, a tune up, or other maintenance for your car.

5. Clothing like long underwear, a really good coat, gloves, wool socks, or heavy jeans.  Like I said, luxuries.  Don't panic if you don't have these things.  But if you can get them, or if you see them at the thrift store, they sure do make keeping the furnace low in the winter more doable.

We'll have some easier tips in the next post.  Until then, keep your chin up!  Ought to be easy, now that I've got "Double Rainbow" stuck in your head.

Cheers,

Breanna

Twenty Buckets!

When Miss Boo was little(r), she heard her daddy say "holy buckets!"  We noticed shortly thereafter that whenever she was amazed or surprised, she would shout "TWENTY BUCKETS!"  It seems like an oddly appropriate exclamation, actually. You picture twenty big five-gallon pails of something, in an imposing row.  Like, "well, looks like it's a twenty-bucket crowd tonight" or "gonna be a twenty-bucket storm, I think!"

Like all my posts of this nature I'm going to give you the disclaimer before I get to the meat: don't panic.  Don't rush off to buy gold coins.  Don't quit your job to go live in a shack.  (Don't quit your job.  Don't quit your job.  Do not quit your job.)  Don't buy gas masks.  Don't decide that the most likely hard time that will occur will probably be like "One Second After" where you'll have to figure out the best way to kill Zombie Mutant Bikers.

Just don't, please.  All that stuff is so silly.

But--

--and this is important--

--twenty buckets, we've been having an interesting economic situation this summer.  Quite calmly, and without getting worked up, I want you to think about it.  I think what we are approaching is not TEOTEWAKI (The End Of ThE World As We Know It) or peak oil or mega-hyper-inflation or any of the other pet scenarios.  I think it will be a much more boring disaster: a depression.

I actually think we're already in a depression.  Consider some facts with  me:

• Food prices have increased by 33% in the last four years, in the U.S.  In other countries it's worse.
• The unemployment rate is 8%.  That's not even the interesting news: the unemployment rate does not count those who have simply quit looking for work or those who do not get unemployment benefits.  The true unemployment rate is probably closer to 16%-18% when you count in those folks.  At the height of the 1930s Great Depression it was something like 20%-25%.
• The price of fuel is high and will probably keep getting higher, even as we end summer.
• We have a huge drought.  This will cause losses in the corn and soybean crops.  This isn't so much a problem because people love to eat piles of corn and soybeans, but because corn and soy are in a lot of inexpensive food in the form of soy flour, corn syrup, soybean oil, and so on.  In other words, if corn and soy get scarcer, inexpensive food gets more expensive.
• The price of gold just keeps going up.  Good for those of us in the industry, a bad indicator for the economy.  This matters because people and countries tend to buy gold when they think currency is going to not be worth as much.  (Please don't do this.  During the last Depression it didn't do anyone any good to have gold coins or bars stored, because the government confiscated everything but gold jewelry.)
• Europe is imploding.  Asia is having difficulties.  South America has been bad for a long time.  As Elrond would say, our list of people with money grows thin.

All of these things say to me that the economy is going to get worse before it gets better, possibly for a long time.

So what do I think you should do about it?  Apart from the not panicking thing I mentioned earlier?

1. Learn things.

I start with this one because it's free, and it's actually kind of fun.  Sit down and make a list of stuff that would be useful to know if you had to start making do with less buying power.  Would you want to know how to mend clothes?  Grow a garden?  What the legal requirements are for a small business in your state?  How to bake bread?  Do an online search, go to the library, put the word out at church--and learn those things.  I do all of them right now except for the small business, and I can promise you that they aren't hard.

While you're at it, it can be instructive to study economic hard times in history.  I find it reassuring, for instance, to reflect that there were no Zombie Mutant Bikers during the first depression.  (Some people will tell you this is because we were a more moral, righteous country in the 1930s, but all I can say to that is that they obviously haven't read their history.  Or seen Road to Perdition.)  Cookbooks from the era will give you an idea of how people lived.  Sure, they contained strategies like stretching margarine by whipping in gelatin (eww.....), but they demonstrated that people still had birthday parties and weddings.  Life goes on.

2. Don't spend money.

No more than you have to.  If things will keep getting more expensive as jobs become harder to get, then you'll be glad to have a cushion.  Now is the time to think hard about whether you can justify an expensive cell phone plan, satellite TV, an extra car, dinners out, fancy coffee/energy drinks, or new clothes every month.  I'm not saying that you *can't* justify any of this stuff, by the way.  I'm just asking you to really think about it, instead of spending automatically.  If you really watch your satellite TV and get $100 per month of entertainment out of it, then keep it!  (We do, alas.  Football and NickJr.)  But if you really only watch a couple of shows and the occasional movie, you may want to look into Hulu and Netflix and see if you can reduce costs.  If you adore Starbucks and truly enjoy it, then see if you can keep it.  But if you also have a fancy coffeepot and fancy beans sitting at home, maybe drink homebrew for a few weeks and see whether you like it.

The only thing I will draw a hard line on is what is called "aspirational purchases".  If you are buying Starbucks not because you love it, but because you want people to see you with a Starbucks cup in your hand to prove that you are the kind of person who drinks Starbucks, then I forbid it.  That's a stupid reason for buying anything.  (Cough *iPhone!* cough.)

3. Lower household costs.

This is not quite the same thing as number 2, which was mostly about discretionary spending.  I can decide whether I want to buy another pair of shoes, but I can't really decide whether to pay the electric bill.  What I can do, though, is try to take measures to lower my electric bill.  I can open the windows during the cool of the morning, close up, and use fans instead of using the air conditioner all day.  I can use a clothesline or drying rack instead of my dryer.  I can wash dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher.  (Yep, that really does make a difference.  One family I know of quit the dishwasher and the dryer and saved $1000 in one year.)

Once again, be sensible.  If you need to use the dryer because you live in Alabama and the clothes mold on the line, by all means, use your dryer and cut elsewhere.  But I live in Nevada--using a drying rack is low-hanging fruit for me.

-Wash clothes less frequently.  (A good rule is not to wash except for visible soil or a smell.  Sounds gross, but works fine.  I find that babies usually accomplish both criteria by wearing an item a single time, but adults can usually preserve their clothes more carefully.  Use aprons.)

-Stop buying paper plates and wash your dishes (frugally).

-Save water.

-Turn off lights.

-Don't leave your phone charger plugged in unless it's charging the phone.

-Turn your computer off at night.

There are tons of other tips you can find.  See point 1.

4. Consider hobbies that save you money, rather than cost you money.

An example?  Well, hunting is an expensive hobby--unless you inherit your guns, can pay a reasonable amount for your license, and make a point of eating the deer/elk that you get each year.  Knitting is an expensive hobby--unless you can find an inexpensive source for your yarn and then use it to create items that you would otherwise have to buy.  Reading can be an expensive hobby--unless you get your books from the library or cheap used bookstores.

But gardening as a hobby can save you money.  Woodworking/home repair are treated like hobbies in our society, but they can (if properly looked after) save you money.  Believe it or not home brewing can (if you don't buy all the widgets) save you money.  And so on.

5. Strengthen yourself in the Lord.

Remember, among all the things we do to help ourselves, that God is really in control.  He promises to provide for your needs. He will not let you starve.  You might not have exactly the food you want or like, but He'll see to it that you have food.  This would be a great time to dig deep into the Scriptures, if you don't do that on a regular basis already.  There is no remedy for discouragement except the truth.

That's all I got today.  If you have a moment, why not drop by the comments and share your own tips on lowering costs?

Cheers,

Breanna

Kid Pictures - Useful Penny Pinching

This is a post entirely to satisfy the people who forlornly remember when I could blog every day.  Them were the days.

 

I got a phone with a better camera on it.  While the pictures still aren't exactly top-quality--especially when you get them through the convoluted process I had to use (take picture, send it to Baba, Baba emails it back to me--because I don't know how to make my phone talk to my computer)--at least there are pictures.

The Littlest Sasquatch, for instance, experiencing chocolate.

Or waking up with his sister...they have about the same wake-up speed.  (0.03 seconds, vs. Buddy's, which is more like 2 hours.)

Miss Boo's hair, which she wanted done up in braids like Kirsten from the American Girls books.

Littlest Sasquatch eating choconana pudding (a bizzare but delicious pudding: put one banana, one avocado, 1/4 cup of honey, 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, and a teaspoon of vanilla in your blender.  Blend until it's pudding.  Eat it.).

And...something else messy.  Maybe tomato sauce?

Wearing his little brother's shirt...

A sunset from my back porch.  Pretty, huh?

Relaxing with a book she likes to read to herself.

Because she's of an age now to do that.  (*sniff!*)

Wearing the shirt that his brother had stolen earlier...he's remarkably calm in all these pictures, which is fairly accurate about his personality.  At least except for the times when he isn't calm.

Coloring with a set of pencils that Oma, the Husband's grandmother, brought us.  They've been possibly more popular than the slide that Opa and Grandma brought us.

Miss Boo standing on a big rock in Lamoille Canyon.  I promise she is neither as close to the edge nor as far away as the shot makes it seem like.  But the kiddos are now definitely addicted to hiking.  As in, "can we go hiking today? WHYYYYYYYY NOT?"

("Because it is Tuesday, Mama has a head cold, and we have chores to do."

"But I WANT to go hiking!")

I might be addicted to hiking, too, if someone carried me in a backpack the whole time.

I'll get more pictures soon--perhaps these will help tide you over, however.

In other news, we've accepted an offer on our old house in Texas--woo hoo!  (Although not for the price we wanted.  Boo.)  The housing market there has abruptly come to a screeching halt due to the army base having some layoffs, and people are even short selling their houses.  (We didn't have to do that, thank the Lord.)

This, I believe, is an increasingly common phenomenon.  It got me to thinking about one of the things that was my goal back when I started writing this blog--to be useful.

As an experiment, upon discovering the less-than-ideal price we were getting for our house, I decided to see if I could just not go to the store this week for anything.  To my surprise, upon surveying the stuff I had in the house, I discovered it was entirely possible.  Here are some things that I'm doing:

1. I counted the Littlest Sasquatch's disposable diapers and there were 11.  So he is wearing cloth diapers during the day, and I'm saving the disposables for nighttime.  I haven't yet figured out a really good way to keep him in cloth at night without him getting soaked and upset.  And when Sasquatch is upset, he has a way of letting the tri-county area know about it.  Plus cloth diapers really are easier on his skin--I've just been too lazy with all my company lately to use them.

2. We consume a lot of milk, and I don't believe it's good for kids (or anyone) to drink nonfat milk.  This is a dilemma, because I had powered milk in my pantry, but the kids won't drink it.  And who can blame them.  The solution: I mixed cream with powdered milk to make it whole milk.  I had two bouts of company in two weeks, and for each set of company I made something called Erdbeer Sahne Torte (Strawberry Cream Cake).  The recipe calls for 600ml (because it is German) of whipping cream, which is about a quart and a half.  So I, very strangely, happen to have a quart and a half of whipping cream in my fridge.  (Because I panicked in the store and overbought.)  I have to price this, but since it only takes about a cup of cream in a gallon of powdered milk to make it whole milk, I think it would be cheaper to buy cream and mix it with powdered milk than it would be to buy whole milk.  Alternately, I discovered there's such a thing as powdered whole milk in the Hispanic section of the grocery store, which is what I'll keep in the pantry from now on.

3. I went through my pantry and fridge and required myself to make menus based on what was already there.  It was surprisingly easy, but then I have a big pantry.  Also, we like beans.  Also, my kids are little.  If they were teenagers this might be harder.

4. I baked bread.  But then I do anyway.

5. I decided I was okay hand-washing dishes when my dishwasher detergent runs out (immanent).  Alternately I found on a blog that you can use two drops of blue Dawn hand dishsoap plus a handful of baking soda in your dishwasher.  But I'm a little nervous this would cause a mount Vesuvius of suds.  I'll let you know if I try it, though.  (I've also seen--and tried--using just salt and baking soda in your dishwasher and putting white vinegar in the rinse aid thingie. It worked fine, but we have terribly hard water here and I think it would leave a film if I tried it now.)

The interesting thing about all this is that I shop once per week usually, and in that shopping trip I spend anywhere between $100-$150, depending on whether I need garbage bags, dog food, diapers, etc. that week.  So if I had gone my merry way and shopped this week, I would have essentially been spending something like $120 that I didn't need to spend.

That's not a lot, but it's something--and it's intriguing.  How often do we buy things just out of habit?  How often does food go bad in the pantry or fridge because we forgot it was there?

Why don't you take a look at what you have in the house this week and see if you can just skip going to the store?  It'll save on gasoline, time, and money.  You could even be like Brandy and shop only every couple of months, but I don't think I'll achieve that until I have a garden that looks like hers.  A girl can dream.

Look, you don't need me to be another voice clamoring about the Economic End of the Age.  You can see the headlines for yourself--drought and a lost corn crop, European nations defaulting right and left, government agencies quietly closing locations and laying off employees, the housing market tanking (again), people my age waking up and realizing they have no marketable skills.  Ultimately there isn't a lot we can do about that--buying gold, booze, and bullets is silly, in my considered opinion, and so is panicking.  The Lord is still in charge, just like He always has been.

And just like always, He blesses us with the ability to analyze a situation and do what we can, while trusting Him for the outcome.

The libraries are still open and the internet still hums.  Knowledge costs very little--you can learn to bake bread, set a patch, knit a sock, make soup, fix the toilet, or whatever else you need to know in order to help protect your family.  Go ahead and learn it now, before you desperately need it.  If you have income, you can think and plan about what to cut out of your life (satellite TV? a landline phone? new clothes each month? new books each month? scrapbooking? fly-fishing? magazine subscriptions? sweets? fancy coffee? organics?) in order to keep everyone fed and put a little bit away in case times get worse.  There are a million websites on stocking your pantry; there are several good books.

Don't get panicky because you're not on a farm, you don't have any savings, and you work in a shaky industry.  Certainly don't run around wasting your energy on politics just because this is an election year--it won't make that much difference who wins, PBO or Mittens.  Trust me on this.  Just quietly start doing what you can, and trust the Lord.

I'll be running a series, I hope, on thinking ahead to take care of your family.  But in the meantime, keep in mind the components of that sentence:  Quietly start doing what you can, and trust the Lord.  Quietly, because you're not trying to panic anybody and because the state of your pantry is no one else's affair.  Start, because you can know all of this and it still won't do you any good if it doesn't get any cans of soup on your shelf.  Doing, because this is work--what you can, because nobody can do everything they want to do.  Maybe you only have five dollars left in your grocery budget after you cut out all the nonessentials.  That's still enough for a couple of pounds of pasta, a can of chicken, and a can of tomatoes.  In other words, stuff you could make into a meal without too much work.  And trust the Lord, because otherwise you will get either panicky or prideful.

Oh, and don't forget to buy toilet paper.  It's amazing how you forget that having company means going through more toilet paper.

Cheers,

Breanna

Tact; or, You Used Up All The Glue On Purpose

Here is the scene I am referencing, in case you are among the 0.00002% of the population who hasn't seen snippets of this movie when movie channels run it continuously at Christmas time.

I know I promised you a baby post.  The issue with that is that I can't figure out how to get pictures from my phone to my computer, yet.  Smartphones are terribly annoying.

And also, this post has been brewing in my head for a while.  I'll try to be brief, but I think it's overreaching.

This is also also a PG13 post.  So if you're a kid or easily embarrassed you should probably go read an internet comic for a while.

(Kids all gone? Good.)

In the clip above, although it's funny, the husband sins with his speech.  He flings an accusation at his wife which isn't true.  Because the accusation is so nonsensical, we laugh--but in fact this is a comedically heightened version of slander.

Words matter.  It matters to God when we go on our own personal (dare I say churchified) rants that essentially devolve into You Used Up All the Glue On Purpose.

Want some reasoning?  You got it:

First of all, by way of example, I think we can agree that the Bible asks Christians to control our natural tendencies in the area of lust.  Unregulated, most people would (and do) walk around lusting after anyone they find mildly attractive.  This is because we have a sin nature, and part of sin is to gratify ourselves with no regard for the well-being of others.  But as redeemed people, the Bible tells us that we're no longer allowed to consume someone as a sexual object.  On the contrary, we're to guard the honor of the other person even in our thoughts--this is one reason why sex is only to be between a husband and wife.  Each spouse has committed to honor the other, which precludes thinking of them as something to be consumed.

Secondly, I think we can agree that the Bible asks us to control our natural tendencies in the area of speech. Unregulated, most people would (and do) walk around saying whatever comes into their heads at that moment.  Once again, this gratifies us at the expense of others.  Sometimes it even requires that I hurt someone's feelings in order to relieve my own feelings of anger, insignificance, or embarrassment.

What I think we don't recognize often enough, in the Church, is that the Bible has at least as much to say about speech as it does about sex.  In fact sins of speech (like gossip, slander, insolence, and boasting) and sexual immorality are put on roughly equal footing.  I haven't pulled out a concordance to check this out, but I wonder if there might be even more passages warning about the dangers of what we might call "linguistic sin" than there are about the dangers of sexual sin.  Even Isaiah, when he was recognizing his sinfulness in the presence of a holy God, called himself "a man of unclean lips", not a "a man of unclean loins".

I'm not trying to be gross or crude here, but I am trying to get your attention.  While we all rightly recognize it is wrong to excuse a leader who has fallen into unrepentant sexual sin, I think far too many of us are willing to make excuses for leadership that is in unrepentant linguistic sin.

For instance, I've heard this one: "I can't help it.  I'm just a blunt person."

Or even "I can't help it.  They need to hear the truth."

I'd like to suggest this is a lie.  God never puts us in a situation where we are forced to sin.  Using your words to gratify yourself at the expense of someone else, whether you do that by lying about them, gossiping, or insulting them, is a sin.  We're supposed to speak the truth, but in love.  Part of loving someone is disciplining ourselves to be careful and merciful in our speech, even if we have to say something that might cause someone pain.  There is no excuse for speaking with excessive harshness, for being insulting, or for name-calling.

(Example, because I can see how this is going to confuse some folks: Say my kid is being sassy.  I have a responsibility as her mother not to allow her to be sassy.  But I can either say "Sweetheart, you may not speak to Mama like that.  That is sassy talk and Jesus wants you to honor Mama and Daddy--it is not honoring when you talk in that voice.  Now ask me again, in a happy voice", or I can say "You are being a disrespectful brat! How dare you speak to me that way?  Listen, you snot, you'd better straighten up right now!"  Notice that in the first instance I address what she's done--sassy talk--versus the second, where I make accusations about what she is--"disrespectful brat".  Any person we speak to will be a human made in the image of God, and that alone should be enough to preclude name-calling.)

Now, I can believe that some people are born with more natural talent for conversation and empathy than others.  That only makes sense.  But again going back to our comparison with sexual law, people are also born with differing levels of sexual desire, yet we all know that it's a lie when a man says he broke his promise to be faithful to his wife because he just "couldn't help it".  ("I'm just a lustful person.")

If we can agree that sins of speech are just as serious as other sins, then we need to stop making allowances for Christians, especially those in leadership positions, that continue, unrepentantly, after their sinful speech has been pointed out, to use sinful speech.  It's as though we feel like it will mean we are disloyal if we admit that some of our leaders are sinning with their tongues.

Some examples?

Rather famously, Mark Driscoll.  But a lot of people have called him on his stance, so let's get more personal.

How about the sweet lady who leads your women's Bible study, who nevertheless turns prayer requests into a time to gossip about other women?  How about the pastor who has to use name-calling during a sermon?  (Item: I'm not talking here about calling sinners "sinners".  I'm talking about things that I've witnessed like calling women who work outside the home "Jezebels".  Because, you know, she really...um...held down a lot of jobs?)  How about the older person who sees nothing wrong with using terms to describe people that perhaps didn't used to be hurtful, but are now?  (If they don't know, you can mention it, in love.)

Don't excuse the sin.  Gently, and in love, confront it. Or at least refuse to participate in it.

Ah, there's the rub.  Because of course, when we recognize other people's sin, then we have the responsibility to examine ourselves.  Just as most of us would recognize that we have to guard ourselves against lust, we have to guard our speech.

I'm not just talking about sins that we have a tendency to regard as sort of cute.  ("Awww....come on, I gossip because I care...")  I know that I have trouble with strict truthfulness (I sometimes want to change an account of events to make it funnier, for instance--but unless I tell the person I'm talking to that that's what I'm doing, it's a lie), with not belittling others (especially in traffic), with not speaking ill of people (especially when I'm angry).  I have a tendency to want to fire away on Stupid Internet Debates (which means I usually have to discipline myself to say nothing).

And when someone I respect sins in their speech--name-calling thrown toward a group we disagree with, for instance, or belittling someone, or sharing gossip in the name of prayer requests, or boasting--I'm very tempted to excuse them.  ("It was just a joke."  "Well, that word didn't used to be offensive."  "I'm sure he didn't mean that." "He was only trying to ask for prayer...in great detail...")

These are big deals, in my very own life.  I'm sharing the insight I came to this morning in case they're big deals for you, too.

Cheers,

Breanna

Just A Note

Mostly to let you know that we're all fine.

I have been taking pictures.

I have been (sometimes) writing.

I have been (always) chasing around a boy who's finally had potty training click for him, and his younger brother who figures that if nobody else has to wear diapers, he shouldn't either.  You can imagine this makes a bit of work for Mama.

Hopefully I'll get a real post, with pictures and captions and all that good stuff, put together soon.  In the meantime, let me leave you with this thought:

I think one of the things that shocks women who decide to stay home and mother their kids (or women who work and mother, for that matter) is that the whole thing takes so much perseverance.  For some reason we expect raising children, a 20-year proposition, to take less patience and forethought than running a company, making a souffle, or learning to swim.

So hang in there, mamas.

Cheers,

Breanna

No Chance

The thing is I didn't know Dire Straits did this song, but, you know, this is cool to discover.  (I thought it was Mary Chapin Carpenter's.)



It's a little play on words - "The Bug" in this case refers to a stomach bug that swept through our house shortly after Grammy and Baba left.

The title of the blog refers to the fact that nothing happens via chance or luck in our lives; this is what the sovereignty of God means.

When you come right down to it, most people don't doubt God's existence.  They doubt His goodness.  So we explain things as being chance - these things just happen; sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.  It seems easier that way.

Until something really bad happens.  (Not like the stomach flu; that's not in the category of bad I'm discussing; it just got me thinking about all this.)

Then the all-knowing, all-powerful wisdom of God--and faith in His perfect goodness--are what make the dreadful something we can stand.  (They also, you know, happen to be facts.)  Because if I lose someone, or I lose my life's work, or I see something important to me ruined, and I believe that it happened because God lets the universe run on chance, then I really will despair--because the suffering then is for nothing.

But if I know that the Lord is in control of all my days, that He intends good for me and not evil, and that He really is God--with a perspective so eternal that I can't comprehend it--then I can at least know that I am not suffering for nothing.  Even from a stomach flu--but from bigger things as well.

Here's my hope.  By practicing on stuff like stomach flu, fussy kids, and low-sleep days--and the mountains and mountains of emergency laundry produced by things like this--I can learn faith and patience so that I can respond how He would have me respond if His plans involve harder stuff.

I would rather they didn't, of course.  But that's another reason to be faithful in these little things--what if this stomach flu is the only opportunity I ever have to show that I trust Him?

How will you trust Him today, with the little and big stuff?

Cheers,

Breanna