Pictured from left to right: my grandmother, (help on who this is, Mom!), me, my grandfather, my mother, and my father
This photo was taken during my baby blessing (or dedication) and you might think that I am going to discuss how God began a lifetime of blessing me on this day. While that is most certainly true, that isn't the story behind this picture.
The real story began many years before I was born. My grandparents had three daughters and one son. My grandma encouraged me to space my babies five years apart like she did so that the older children would be in school when the baby arrived. I didn't exactly follow that advice! I would have been 53 when the last one was born and I didn't exactly send them to school (we homeschool if you're new to this blog).
My mom will have to help me edit this post because I am not sure if she was born when the accident occured or not. My grandparents' two older daughters (10 and 5) went sledding one winter day in Iowa. Their sled struck a parked car at the end of their ride and their five-year-old daughter sustained a fatal head injury as a result. My grandmother, who eventually lost her husband of almost fifty years, said that nothing was harder than losing a child. I can't imagine the pain of it.
My mother told me that prior to this tragic accident, her father was not a Christian. It's been said that trials will either drive us away from God or toward Him. In my grandfather's case, he wanted to be sure that he would see his beloved daughter again in heaven. He became a believer and eventually an elder in his church. If my grandfather had not come to faith, I wonder if I would have? Only God can work good from such terrible circumstances.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
Several years ago, I was inspired by these verses to create a scrapbook of God’s faithfulness to me that I’m calling my Joshua Journal:
5 and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.” (Joshua 4)
I recently took stock of the huge number of scrapbooking projects I want to complete and reluctantly admitted that I will never be able to complete them all. So I asked myself which projects I would really regret not completing in my lifetime and this particular one was number two (my youngest’s baby book is #1! I just have to do the journaling :-). I want to have an 8×8 digital photobook that I can give to each of my children that is like the pile of stones in Joshua, testifying to the amazing things the Lord has done for me. I dream that they will read it to my grandchildren and maybe my great-grandchildren, too. I also want to have a copy in my purse that I can use in sharing with people I meet the reason for the hope that I have.
I realized that if I blog each story, I can not only share these testaments of God’s faithfulness with all of you, but it will motivate me to finish the book! If a particular story is meaningful to you or if I fall off the wagon and quit posting them before I announce that volume 1 is complete, will you please comment? Thank you so much! I would love it if I inspire you to do the same. Please link up to your own stories!
The first thing we are tempted to do when dealing with our inner brat is to give her some rules. Your brat procrastinated on that big project and you had to stay up all night getting it done? She hasn't taken advantage of that expensive gym membership even one time since January? She has been web surfing for hours while the laundry evolves into a leviathon?
You surmise that what your brat needs is some good old-fashioned discipline. From now on, she is going to be up at 5:45 a.m. so she can be at the gym first thing. She could have gotten away with working out three days a week if she had kept at it in January, but now that it's summer, she will be up and sweating every single day if it kills her. You don't care how tired she is after a long day of exercising, working, teaching, mothering, cooking, and housekeeping, she IS going to spend an hour working on long-term projects before she even touches the computer keyboard. And two loads of laundry must be washed, dried, folded, and put away each evening or she will not be able to read or watch TV. She'll learn, right?
The rebel that lives inside of each one of us revolts in response to rules. I have witnessed this time and time again in people I love who are more outer than inner rebels. Rules are quickly assessed as "stupid" and not applicable to them. As an outward rule follower myself, I marvel at their refusal to acquiesce, and deep down, respect them for it. Nine times out of ten they are absolutely right that the rule is wrong. If you listen closely, you will hear your inner rebel roar when you give them rules like:
Absolutely no fat, carbs, or sweets
Everything must be recorded and tagged in a to-do list
Every decent photo must be scrapbooked and journaled chronologically
Everything you eat must be weighed, measured, and recorded
Every goal must be written, shared, and broken down into mini steps
You must eat 9-11 servings of produce and drink 11 cups of water daily
You must adhere to the schedule laid out in 15-minute increments
Most people who struggle to make meaningful lasting change are dealing with an inner rebel who hates rules. Two case studies. The first is FLYLady. I wrote a Woman's Day article about her home organizing routines more than a decade ago. Although she was an immediate success, there were as many anti-FLYLady responders as there were fan girls. FLYLady's rule that women wear their shoes all day really raised a rebel ruckus. Groups of FLYLady adherents formed whose identity was simply that they refused to wear their shoes in the house.
A second case study. Mark Forster developed a system of task management that initially thrilled his rebel forum. Tasks could be accomplished simply by intuition, when they "felt ready to be done." The only problem was there were still a number of rules in the system. Immediately, the forum members objected to the rules and began proposing alternate rules. More than two years later, they are still at it.
If you are giving your rebel rules, your inner forum is revolting against you! So what are we to do? Don't we still need rules to get our rebel in line? Rules work better for rebels when:
There are few of them. That's why trying to crack down in multiple areas backfires.
There is a really good reason for the rules you have. A rebel will immediately ask, "Why should I?" You better be ready with an excellent answer!
The rules aren't merely to please people. People pleasing isn't what rebels do.
The rules aren't extreme. Rebels still believe in common sense.
The rules aren't based in fear. Rebels aren't afraid of much, especially consequences that "might, possibly" happen.
I will give you a personal example of the Rebel Rules Philosophy in action. I would like to cook healthier meals more often. So today I noted a weekly menu on AllRecipes.com that was for grilled meals, complete with shopping list. I read one review that raved about this menu and I added it to my shopping list. My kids and the cicadas outside were very noisy at the time, but I could hear my inner rebel pitching a fit. She was saying, "You're supposed to grill EVERY DAY for a week? Really? Your kids are going to eat grilled zucchini boats? Uh-huh. And you're going to make a grilled dessert every night? That is just stupid!"
So rather than do what I would normally do and buy everything I need for the grilled weekly menu, only to let the stuff spoil because I don't cook it, and then wonder why I am so lazy, I listened to my rebel. I might grill once or twice this week instead.
What kinds of rules have you given your rebels that have been resisted? Are there any rules you've laid down that have lasted?
A common source of guilt is piles or files of unorganized photos. I have loads of photos and guilt, too. I still have every intention of purging and sorting my printed and digital pics as well as scrapbooking them, but if and until that happens, I have a great solution: make a photobook.
I made a beautiful photobook of my mother-in-law's life in about a day and that includes the time spent scanning photos. My husband turned 50 in February and I decided to make him an even less time-intensive book. I used only digital photos. I reviewed all the photos I've taken over the past 5 years and let me tell you I have a bunch! But I was pleasantly surprised by how little time it took.
To make a quick, guilt-reducing photo book, first begin looking through your photos of your subject. If you have printed photos, pull them out and put them in a separate box or envelope. Before removing them, note where they're taken from. Use a sticky note to mark the page of albums where a photo has been removed. For digital photos, create an album file or tag to indicate which photos will go into the book.
The second step is to organize your photos. Because I didn't have exact dates for my mother-in-law's book, I realized that the photos would be easy to organize by decade. For my husband's book, I found that I could organize them into shots by himself, with me, with each of the individual children, with the kids in groups, with our family in groups, with his extended family, and with his friends. Once you've decided on your organizing structure, you'll want to either scan or add photos into subfolders. For example, my mother-in-law's book had one large file with subfolders for the 1960s, 1970s, etc.
The third step is to choose a digital photobook maker. You can drive to the photo developer and have them organize the book for you. You can also choose software like Creative Memories' StoryMaker Plus or Shutterfly which will give you fancy, decorated pages. I chose Creative Memories for my mother-in-law's book and had the book published through a different online developer. For my husband's book, which I didn't want to be fancy or have much journaling, I chose Walgreens. Their software was easy to use. Work on just one subfolder at a time! This is key. As you work, you may decide not to use certain photos to fit the templates your software provides. Try not to sweat that. 🙂 You can always print those photos or use them in another project.
My husband's book arrived about I week after I completed it. He was thrilled and I felt forgiven for my failure to print photos or to scrapbook them at all. He now has a short book with the most treasured photos in it from the last five years. It's not as great as having a paper scrapbook with tons of journaling, but he sure didn't seem to mind. You could make a great photobook this weekend and be guilt-free…for a while anyway.
Okay, so it is tough forcing myself to do this tonight at this late hour, but I was majorly distracted by the debate!
Today wasn’t so much about the kids, but about the dog. My poor little coney dog got spayed. She is really, really miserable with the cone on her head, but has to have it so she doesn’t chew her stitches out. They told me two days, but she is a determined dog. It may take longer!
I was overwhelmingly exhausted this morning so took a nap that took so long I felt horrible when I got up. Know that feeling? Next time I’ll set an alarm. My tummy was upset, too, so maybe I had a virus or it’s just because I HAVE SIX KIDS AND A DOG!
The big issues in having six kids really don’t wear me out. It’s the little things. Like this cute little picture I’ve had sitting on my entry table for quite some time. Someone decided it would be interesting and fun to make the picture back stop functioning. I can no longer have this little decorative art standing in my home. It has to lie down. Maybe that’s what happened to me this morning.
Then it’s things like finding little pieces of dried fruit poured out on my family room carpet. Why? Especially when it’s like gold nuggets with the prices at Whole Foods.
I left the family room to visit the office and found someone had been “creating” with the tape. Lest you think I am complaining over minor things, please know that this was a VERY good day in the destructiveness department. There is only a deck of cards spread out all over the family room floor (and a few more fruit pieces) to contend with at the moment.
I am behind on schoolwork, but we are just about to finish our Firm Foundations Bible curriculum that I am crazy about. I am also keeping up fairly well with our new supplementary history curriculum, The Mystery of History. I can’t say enough good things about this curriculum. If you want quick but thorough or if you want to beef it up with activities, this is the curriculum for you. It’s designed for 4th-8th grade, but I’m using it with my kindergartener and 3rd grader with no problem (though the 3rd grader gets more out of it). As I’ve never taken a world history course, I love learning everything in an easy to understand, Christian context.
I am excited that I have an idea for an anti-procrastination article. I plan to write that up and post on one or both of my blogs sometime. Hopefully.
I thought I could do this last week, but the effort it took to keep all the balls in the air left no time to take Ali’s challenge as described in Aby Garvey’s blog. I was honestly thinking of bagging the whole thing and then I listened to a superb talk on helping children remember while I was working out this morning. I was practically in tears at the gym. That’s a danger of listening to podcasts I guess. The woman (the podcast never gave her name!) described journaling for herself as a Mom and for her children. I realized that the most precious memories I have are just slipping away from me.
So today, I am not only going to do a week in my life blog (which I will later turn into a scrapbook), but I am going to begin journaling. Yep, I’m busy! But that’s what I’ll want to read about later, right? Today’s big event was a homeschool trip to Incredible Pizza. I have never been to Homeschool Day at Incredible Pizza; therefore, fielding the incessant “What are we going to do there?” questions was a challenge. Turns out we learned science (one demonstration pictured above), creative writing, creative thinking, and math. That was all before we were allowed to play games which really messed with my two-year-old’s mind.
By the time we got to play and the money was gone, the poor little guy lost it. As he tried to break in to take another ride, I realized I could relate. We both needed a nap, but only one of us took one. Some cute things I want to remember from today are: E asking me how we were going to fit the money into the game card; B’s answer to my question of how to complete our creative story about a student cheating on a test. I said, “What kind of test was he cheating on?” B said, “An art test.”
I’m a Christian psychologist turned homeschooling mother of six. My life can be a little crazy, so I look for sanity-saving ideas to use and share. I hope you’ll read my About page to learn more.
