Socks

Socks aren't my favorite piece of clothing. In fact, they are probably my least favorite, because the older they are, the less elastic that is in them, so the further into the day you get, the easier they slip off of your feet or move sideways when you change positions or take your shoes on and off. If you don't wear them to bed you have cold feet that take forever to warm up in bed and if i do wear them to bed, I have to take them off and put them on the floor so I don't sweat to death. I will be happy when winter is over and I no longer have to consider whether or not to wear socks to bed.

Why socks? Because in our difficult decision to move away from friends and family while pregnant and me dealing with post partum depression, we have been welcomed into our new church and made new friends who have come to help at the drop of a hat. I think I had my first migraine about a month ago and it was so painful that when I called a friend to see if she could come help with the kids, I couldn't hardly talk because the pain was so bad and I was in tears. Today, after Nathan didn't sleep a wink past midnight unless he was being held standing up, which meant Jeff and I got very little sleep, we had several friends offer to bring me coffee (which I don't drink, but it's a nice gesture), and 4 or so people who were available to watch the kids if I needed a nap. I did end up napping while everyone was down for a nap/quiet time.  Thankfully all the kids are in bed asleep right now, and hopefully Jeff will be home soon and we can all get a good night's sleep to recover. Nathan has had a fever since about 8:00 or so and we have been alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol and his temperature has stayed over 100. In the process of raising 4 kids through nightmares, illness, teething, and the newborn stage, that's the most I have stayed up since my 1 almost all-nighter in college (not counting the 4 nights I was in labor and had babies). This is just something I'm not accustomed to.

My whole point being that our small group has really blessed the socks off of us, and we are so grateful to be doing life with these fellow believers who are willing to stick their necks out for us. I just hope we are able to be there for others within our local body of believers in their time of need as they have for us in ours.

Church

As some of you may know, we moved at the end of the school year to help accommodate our growing family.  Because of our move, we had to change churches.   I find it rather interesting that both churches began a series in January speaking about the local church and it's purpose in the big Church.  Clearly there has been a big exodus of people in the local church.  Before Christmas our former church posed the question to those who would listen why they or people they knew were leaving the local church.  I read a few of the responses and I shared it with my friends to see if anyone would respond.  It makes me sad to think of people leaving the church and still claiming faith in Christ.  I do not doubt their faith in Christ, but I do take into question their commitment to the commission Christ gave to the church and wonder how they justify their not going to church.

I realize Paul is not Christ, but many of the things the church believes and practices are based on Paul's teachings. Like Titus 2 telling older men and women to counsel and direct the younger men and women. Or in 1 Timothy where he gives instructions on prayer, church leadership, instructions on ministering to others and more.  There are many more instances in which Paul directs believers to come together to get encouragement from other believers, gain in knowledge and wisdom and to live in peace and harmony with others.

Clearly this is difficult to do perfectly because the church is an organization of sinful people.  The most common reason I hear for people not going to church is because of the hypocrites.  I'm not sure how to get away from hypocrites.  If you're looking for the perfect church, run the way you want it to be ran, you're going to have to start it yourself or wait until we're on the new earth and we're all praising God night and day.  I have decided, whatever the excuse may be, I feel it's usually a lack of faith in how intricately God is woven into our lives and how desperately we need each other in the battle with Satan while on this earth.  Another excuse that is common is they feel they have been slighted by the church, and that may be true, but chances are, both sides were sinning in the process and forgiveness must happen or bitterness will set in.

I have had trouble with being angry.  Angry at people for their lack of understanding, or for being self-involved, and at my kids and husband.  If I actually examine myself, I am being pretty self-involved.  I try to control things that are out of my control and I should be leaning on God for my understanding, wisdom, forgiveness and grace.  I think some people make excuses.  As a preacher's kid I heard the phrase, church would be great if it weren't for all the people, all the time.  It was a joke for pastor's and other people who knew the church was full of sinners, including the people who run the church.

I hope I've said before that I'm a really poor writer.  My thoughts don't flow together as well as I'd like and I get distracted easily.  I think the church should/does play a major role in a believer's walk with Christ.  Is any church perfect, no.  If the church is available to us, should we take advantage? Yes. Going to church should not become a habit, but it should make you want to stop and learn.  If you're not getting something out of it, maybe you will next week.  It's not about you all the time.  That's one of the things our pastor likes to say.  I also appreciate that he doesn't sugar coat it.  If the bible says it's wrong, he tells you that's what he believes and he has scripture to back him up.  Our church isn't perfect.  There are some things that drive me crazy, but I try not to focus on them, because we love our small group, we feel connected to the missionaries, there are many different areas where we can serve, and the kids have several kids their age, so they are making friends.

Looking up

Well, after the chaos and awfulness that was Monday, the rest of the week was much improved. Jeff stayed home on Tuesday, ran a few errands, I helped our church's after school program, and we had a quiet evening. We made pilgrim crafts and decorated for Christmas for our party happening on Sunday. We had friends over on Friday and had 6 kids running around our house. It was great! We are planning a brief getaway for our family just before thanksgiving and we are looking forward to it. Getting out of the house with just our family and going out of town just to relax.  Of course it's supposed to rain and be super cold, so we won't be venturing out in the weather much, but hopefully we are able to entertain the kids and keep them occupied for 2 days.

I'm praying that all of these positive things indicate an improvement on the up and up and that after a week of Jeff not having to go to work and the holidays coming up, we are getting to a new healthy normal.

I have heard a few things or had people ask me questions and I just go, "Really?"  Questions like are you going to homeschool through 12th grade? I'm not sure what my response to them should be. Or for others who say, this is what happened to this person in a situation like yours. I'm not that person. I guess that's just a couple of the things that I heard that just bugged me a little this week.

Life's Callenges

Everyone deals with different challenges in life. For the past seven years, we have dealt with my emotional roller coaster. I have been either pregnant or breastfeeding for almost all of our married life. This has created a difficulty in my hormonal stability and makes life a bit rough at times. With some of the kids I have had some postpartum depression. Lately I have been feeling very angry and frustrated, but I don't know why. Today after a pretty calm start to our morning, (we were going to be kind of crafty and do a couple of projects) a few small kinks in my plan made me really upset and threw my whole day off kilter. I'm hoping I can stop allowing the little things to become big things or just making them big things when they don't really matter much.

In previous posts I had written about being lonely and not being able to talk to many people about struggling. In the homeschooling world I feel as if I'm not cut out for the job of teaching my kids because I am a perfectionist and I'm trying to be more creative and letting things go. Now this doesn't mean we stop disciplining. Through all of this I had forgotten about a good friend of mine that had dealt with postpartum depression and I haven't been doing a good job of keeping in touch with her. I think I have found someone who might take my calls that understands what I'm going through. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.  Maybe I will also start to make friends locally that we can get to know better that will encourage us in our walk that we can do life with. I'm off to get some sleep, because I think lack of sleep might be part of the problem. Night, night.

Learning never stops

In the natural flow of life learning never stops. You can be walking along the road or driving down the road, or just be working at home and a learning opportunity will come along.  Either for you from hearing news or random facts on the radio to having a lively discussion with a friend or special someone, or for your kids who still have lots of knowledge to gain as they go through life. 

Today while digging up a bush in the flower bed and then again when attempting to dig out a tree from the back yard, we found worms and other bugs and learned why they are good or bad for the soil/ground. At dinner we discussed that soy sauce was salty. Earlier in the day the girls were fighting over their blankets and they were explaining to Julia (2) that hers said J-U-L-I-A and she said no, "A-B-C-D". It was quite cute. She is almost able to count to 10, but she doesn't like to. She starts with 1,2,3,4 and skips 6 or 7 and says 9,10,11,12,13. The big girls try to get her to count to 20 with them, but she only recites 14 when prompted.  Last weekend while we were painting a room in our house, the girls were reading books (actually reading books) and doing math on the computer, all on their own accord. 

This is why I love homeschooling. Even if we don't get all of our lessons in during our "school day", we can still teach and learn at other times during the day, like when Jeff is home, or on the weekend. Life is continuous, so I'm not sure why we have to tell kids that they need to be able to learn between 8&3 or something close to that. I'm sure it's a schedule that works well for the teachers, but not every student is the same. When you homeschool and you have to take a test, you can take it any time during the day that you want. Now, as they get older and start taking the SAT or ACTs you don't just get to pick a random start time, but in general, tests can be given whenever you feel I like it. 

We also don't have to worry about getting some of the illnesses kids get from being around so many people at once. Don't worry, there's still plenty of social time. Of course as I say that I am reminded of a few cancelled play date because of sick kids by one of us, so we're still waiting for the right moment to come along so that we can get together. Of course I could use a quiet weekend away, completely BY MYSELF! 

Lump Sum

Things in life aren't fair. Do you remember telling your kids that life isn't fair for the first time? I don't. I'm sure I've said it before, but it probably didn't have anything to do with an injustice happening outside of our home. Over the past year my husband has been under attack. It doesn't seem fair, and it isn't, but change happens and new people come in to replace them. This part of life that isn't fair involves politicking with his bosses who seem to not like him and his former boss that hired him is no longer working for the school, so now there is no one to stick up for him but me. I've decided that since one of his bosses was new, I was going to send him an email. It is still sitting in my mailbox so that it can be sent at the appropriate time to coincide with other events involved in this process. My husband loves his job and respects his bosses appropriately. He even loves teaching. He comes home at least once or twice a week and tells me about the interactions between him and his students or the experiments he's been practicing and doing with them. Because of events that happened during the last school year, my husband is teaching the lower performing students. In his 5 class period, he is technically teaching 8 classes, and last week they added 2 more, but he never sees those students. They are now his responsibility, but he doesn't teach them or give them any kind of assignments. Sorry for getting sidetracked, on with my story. He is enjoying teaching, and he has his typical students that give him fits, or want to purposely fail his class, or just plain don't like school and it doesn't matter how interesting you make the class. There are also students who won't like him. I remember having a few teachers I didn't like that other students did. I think he's doing a great job and I just pray that his bosses have/get an accurate view of who he is. I also want anyone who reads this blog to be in prayer for him.

Lovingkindness

I think I need some work. Of course, we all do. If our work on earth were done, God would be calling us home. I have been thinking about our friends and family this week who have adopted or had trouble getting pregnant. I absolutely love seeing pictures of their kids growing and changing and surpassing milestones. It just amazes me how much kids change in such a short period of time. Disclaimer: I really love these kids and praise God for answers to so many prayers over the years and mean no disrespect to any friends of family in the following statements. They are simply observations (and maybe a little soap box) and make me wonder about how my life used to be. When I see pictures of these sweet kids I just wonder what my life was like with only one kid. Did I take a thousand pictures and upload them all to Facebook? Did I change her outfit 4 times/day just so she would wear all of the clothes we had at least once? Were we too uptight because we didn't give her any sugar until her first birthday? Are we crazy to not indulge our children just because they want something? Even though I am a nurse and worked in a pediatrician's office before my kids were born, does not mean I know everything about kids and how to take care of them. Are they portable? Yes! So why not take them with you on whatever trip/outing you go on. Some of our friends and family took their child to the zoo at least once to the zoo before they were 6 months old. Others have taken pictures with a sign and a specific animal monthly to document how much they have grown. Still others deck out car seats with toys and strap covers that don't allow the parents to properly place the chest clip on the chest where it belongs. Soap box moment: Our new car seat actually tells you where to place the chest clip on the child. Please read and follow directions-it's not difficult. Children, especially babies, are not supposed to wear coats while strapped in their car seat. The belts aren't tight enough to hold them in the car seat and often sit off their shoulders just in case you are in an accident. Also, by adding things like said strap covers or headrest to a car seat that didn't come with the car seat, you are voiding the car seat's warranty. They will not honor it if anything happens to the car seat or your child if the car seat is not used as it came from the manufacturer or as instructed in the owners manual. Now on with it.. I need to be more thankful for my kids. I didn't struggle to get pregnant. I haven't had a miscarriage, or pregnancy complications. We have had several friends who have been unable to have children or who have struggled with infertility treatments and/or miscarriages. Many of them have adopted or were eventually able to have kids of their own in the past year or so and now are doting on their wonderful children God has provided. They have prayed for them for so long and once they found out about the child God would give them, they began praying for the kind of person they would be. Each one has been blessed beyond measure with multiple baby showers, and lots of love and support from friends and family who have been praying with them. I keep wondering how they have that kind of time on their hands and if I wasted mine because I don't remember taking a 100 pictures a week, and I certainly didn't get multiple showers with lots of gifts. I don't remember holding her all the time, or watching her sleep. Our friends and family are taking in their kids and enjoying every second they have with them. I don't think I have had that kind of appreciation for my kids because I didn't struggle on that end. We are very thankful to have healthy kids and hope that they remain healthy. I don't know how I would view life and what kind of thanks I would give if we had a child get diagnosed with cancer, or if one of them got pneumonia or meningitis. To date I haven't been fully acknowledging God for just how much we have been blessed with. I guess it's really easy to forget that God doesn't promise us tomorrow. I just hope that the more I get to see these precious children that God has blessed each one of us with that I will continue to give thanks for each moment I have with each of my kids. Maybe that will spur me on to make the most of the time I have with them because I may not have a lifetime to give them all I want to say or teach to them. May God give each of us a heart of thankfulness that we will recognize each gift He gives and that we would want to love and obey him in return for the love and kindness he shows to us each day.