Pregnancy Update

I had a sonogram yesterday.  This is what we in our family impatiently wait for from the beginning of the pregnancy.  Especially this time.  With three boys and only one girl, man, the pressure was on!  And yes, I told the kids that it is Daddy's contribution that determines the s-x of the baby.  There.  Less pressure on ME!  LoL

We make the sonogram a family affair, so all of us piled into my doctor's office yesterday, along with my niece.  We created quite a stir and had just about everyone in the waiting room asking, "Are they all yours?"  After we would claim our niece as our niece, they would look at the remaining kids, count, and then say, "So this is your FIFTH?"  If they only knew that we would take more if God decides to bless us this way!!!!!

First Son, a.k.a. Mr. Manager, kept track of the time with his watch.  We arrived five minutes early for the appointment, and as each of those five minutes ticked away, he let us know how much time we had before we were called.  When we were on the last minute before the appointment time, we got the update every 15 seconds.  Imagine all the kids expecting for the door to be opened and my name called at exactly 10:15 and it not happening.  My Husband and I warned them, but did they listen????  Noooooo.  We had another 15 minute wait ahead of us and Mr. Manager kept us informed of how late the doctor was until we were finally called. 

We took a poll on the way to the doctor's office and there were four votes for a boy, and only two for a girl.  My daughter and I voted "boy" just because we felt the odds were stacked against a girl.  First and Second Sons voted "boy" because, well, they wanted a boy.  My niece voted "girl" because she wanted us to have a girl, and my Husband voted "girl" because he LOVES the name we had picked out for a girl.  I'm sure Third Son would have voted "boy" if he could - he is ALL boy, and I'm sure would have loved to wrestle around with a younger bro.

I have to say, our sonogram tech is the same woman who did First Son's sonogram over 12 years ago.  The experience shows because during the sonogram, she would say, "There's the two kidneys."  or "Look here at the bladder."  We would all squint and lean in to try to get a better view, but it sure looked like blobby static  to us!  But the shot of the baby we were all looking for was perfectly, perfectly clear.  This baby is a girl!!!!  My daughter and niece were sharing a chair and were squeezing each other to death during the entire sonogram until that time.  Then they did what they had practiced in the car - they let out HUGE, silent screams.  We were all excited.  This baby is such a blessing to our family.  God is so good.

It's kinda interesting......I come from a family of six kids.  Only two girls.  My older sister is nine years older than me, just like my daughter is nine years older than her little sister.  And this new baby girl is the 5th, and I am the 5th!  Wonderful omen, in my opinion.  My sister was always so good to her little sister and I'm expecting that history will repeat itself with my two girls.

Uncool

A lot of people talk about how homeschooling is so kewl because they, the parent, are getting a second chance at an education they never had.  I second that wholeheartedly!  What was it about nouns and adverbs that couldn't be absorbed into my poor head back in......ummmmm........I barely even remember what grades I studied grammar, but you know what I mean.  ;-)

While we are learning academics along with our kids, my Husband and I are learning a few other things as well.  One of the least flattering would be our attitude towards certain kids.  And the amazing thing, is that this attitude is really only towards kids, not adults.  I'm embarrassed to admit it........

Okay.  My son has this friend.  Sweet, sweet, SWEET boy!  Really, there can never be any complaints about this boy's behavior at all.  He's just a good kid.  But you know, if we were in public school, this kid would be an outcast.  He's sweet, he's just not COOL.  My husband and I have discovered that we still have the leftovers of our Public School Personality Files in which we place the friends of our kids, or really, any kid that happens across our paths as we navigate through life.  Ugh.  We are thankful that it doesn't seem as if our kids have picked up on this nasty habit so far.....but then I think to myself, "Does that mean that MY son is uncool, and that's why he has this friend?????"  How pathetic and UNCOOL is that?  Lots to work on and pray through - it's LITERALLY not all about academics, eh?

Thank you!

Thank you all for your prayers and kind words for our family during the rough time we've been having with sickness around here.  What a year this has been for us!  Third Son's hives and fever are gone.  He has had the hives before but we thought they were bug bites!  Now we will begin watching for the next time the hives come back to see if we can find what triggers them.  At this point, my first guess is that he gets hives every time he gets sick.  Seems the last time he had them, he was sick.  That was about four or five months ago.....we'll see.  :-)

Sending Out an S.O.S.

Third Son has been sick with a fever since last Wednesday and no one knows what the trouble is.  He has no other symptoms but hives.  Yup, hives.  So we have no clue and have been praying for his recovery from this mystery illness. 

It's been a tough last week, and man, I am feeling ragged.  I didn't want to let the older three languish in front of the t.v. while I tried to keep Third Son happy, so I've been working at keeping them on our regular schedule as much as I can.  To top it all off, I have developed a head cold.  My husband was able to stay home today and lend a hand, God bless him.  Tomorrow he will not be able to - he has tons of deadlines and pressure at work right now.  So if you're reading this, and feel the urge, please pray for our little familia, and for me, that I will not totally collapse in a heap on the floor in the morning when my husband leaves for work.  ;-)

Where's Your Wealth?

Anti-Scheduler (a.k.a. Slacker Woman)

I have a basic schedule that we follow every day.  The kids know what to expect which is good.  They seem to have this huge need to know what comes next, and I'm glad to oblige.  Here is what our day usually looks like:

8:00 a.m. - Rise and Shine (get dressed, eat breakfast, read a chapter of Proverbs, work on chores)
10:00 a.m. - Bible Study (we sing hymns, read scripture and pray)
11:00 a.m. - History or Science
12:00 p.m. - Get ready for lunch, finish chores, eat, freetime
2:00 p.m. - Seatwork
5:00 p.m. - freetime, get ready for dinner
6:00 p.m. - evening pick-ups (each one has an assigned area of the house to make sure is cleaned up)
6:30 p.m. - Dad comes home and we eat dinner
After dinner - clean the kitchen, take baths and showers
After showers - we read a book together as a family, sing a song, and pray.
BED!

There are no other details to our schedule.  We keep it lose and go with life.  The only time during the day when things get hairy for me is in the afternoon during our Seatwork time.  I've got three that need to work with me, as well as a 15 month old running lose.  On those especially frantic days, I vow to make a more detailed schedule so things aren't so haphazard during this time.  And every now and then I actually follow through.  The only thing I don't follow through on is following the schedule.  I've just never been able to bring myself to do it.  I look at the schedule and cringe.

On my latest rampage, I bought Managers of Their Homes.  That was three or four months ago, and I haven't done anything with it.  I just have a mental block in this area!  In her latest Mom's Corner, Terri Maxwell wrote about we moms who resist detailed schedules and something she wrote really hit home for me:

I will also challenge the mom who wrote me about Spirit-led scheduling to evaluate why she would feel stifled by her schedule. Is it because her schedule is put together wrong? If so, then she wants to determine where the problem lies. Did she pray about her schedule as developed it? Did she discuss it with her husband? Is the difficulty with having wrong activities on the schedule? Perhaps she hasn't allowed enough time for those activities.

Good points!  Where is my focus?  On the correct things?  I have to honestly say that I have never prayed over any schedule that I've made, and only once did I discuss a schedule I was making with my husband, and then I just sort of ram-rodded what I thought was best into the schedule.  Basically, I made a schedule in the presence of my husband. 

So I can see that I need to go back and put more prayer and input from my husband into this whole schedule business and see what we can all come up with.  ;-)  Maybe then I can be at peace with more details in our Seatwork time.  Who knows, maybe we'll just throw seatwork out the window.  HA!  What would the kids think about THAT?

Are You Relevant? Part 2

I love reading Pulpit Magazine.  It's really a blog, rather than a magazine, but I guess they can call it whatever they want. ;-)  It actually used to be an online magazine before they changed it to the blog format.  Pulpit Magazine is edited by John MacArthur, one of my favorite pastors.  I have learned so much from listening to his daily radio podcasts.

Today's post on Pulpit Magazine kinda goes together with my post from yesterday about "culturally relevant" churches.  In his post, John MacArthur writes about keeping truth, TRUTH.  There is no need to change what is in the Bible to "fit" our culture today.  Here's an excerpt:

Certainly, an individual’s understanding of the truth can be refined and sharpened by study of the Scripture. But the truth itself does not need to be reinvented or retooled in order to make it suitable for the times in which we live. The same truth Abraham, Moses, David, and the apostles believed is still truth for us. Changing times do not change the truth. Scripture is as unchanging as God Himself: “But the word of the LORD endures forever” (1 Peter 1:25). In other words, we need to adapt our understanding to the truth of God’s Word, not try to manipulate Scripture in a vain effort to harmonize it with the changing opinions of this world.

Here is a link to the rest of the post.  Much shorter than the link to the article I posted yesterday.  ;-)  Go HERE.

Are You Relevant?

We used to go to a church that brags about being "culturally relevant."  Eight years.  Whew!  I am glad we are gone.  Eight years of topics such as "The Top Ten Reasons to Love Your Spouse" was enough.  I heard someone say, "I can get a list like that from Dr. Ruth!  Why do I want to hear that from my pastor?"  Well, I think there are obvious answers to that question.  Dr. Ruth and my pastor should have very different answers to that, for the most part, right? 

The reason I am glad to be free from a "culturally relevant" church is because looking back, I realize that I was a duck in the water at that church.  The messages were great in their own right, but what was I REALLY gaining?  Comparing what I've gained at our new church to what I gained at our old church, I can see a huge difference. 

The church we go to now is relevant to me, a Christian seeking to be closer to God, rather than my spouse, kids, friends at work.......I found that I was SO underinformed when we arrived at our new church.  I understood strategies to "be happy and get along" but could I have explained anything about dispensationalism? Soteriology? The differences between Calvinism and Arminianism? How Modernism and Post-Modernism have affected the church?  Grace?????  I could not have.  Basic Christian doctrine and ideas, and I couldn't really explain it to someone off the street to save my life - or theirs. ;-)

I just read a great article on this topic this afternoon.  The title is Preaching without Reaching: The Irrelevance of Relevant Preaching by David Mills.  Here are some excerpts and if you can, definitely go read the whole thing.  David Mills specifically writes about pastors who bend the rules of the language in order to skirt "church" words so they can "reach the unchurched."  In the article, he writes of a pastor-friend who thinks it's acceptable to trade out "perfectionism" for "legalism" and "permissiveness" for "licentiousness."

(The excerpt makes this a longish blog post, but hang it there, it's worth reading. :-)

“Perfectionism” is a very different thing from “legalism.” One is a psychological problem, the other a spiritual choice and theological error. The perfectionist will expect too much of himself and of others; the legalist will act as if God were not a gracious God but one whose favor could be won by obeying all the rules.

These are both problems, but they are not the same problem, though a man may be both a perfectionist and a legalist. The perfectionist should talk to a pastor or a therapist to learn to distinguish the pious pursuit of the good from the neurotic; the legalist should learn, or relearn, the doctrine and reality of grace.

In the same way, “permissiveness” is a very different thing from “licentiousness.” The first means relaxing the rules too much, the other means actions characterized by license and lawlessness, and usually in a lewd, lustful, and dissolute way. They are not even close to the same thing.

The depravity of the licentious is not at all expressed by calling them permissive. The licentious leer at young women in short skirts (or long skirts, for that matter); the permissive only permit people to do what they want, when they know they shouldn’t, with a genial smile and a forgiving wave of the hand.

Again, these are both problems, but they are not the same problem. The permissive man should enforce the rules he is given to enforce. The licentious man should repent of his sins and adopt such disciplines as will help him bring his appetites under control.

My friend’s substitutes are not synonyms. “Perfectionism” does not accurately translate “legalism” into the language of the day, nor does “permissiveness” translate “licentiousness.” The substitutes are not nearly close enough in meaning to replace the biblical and traditional terms.

The ideas are related but they are not the same. One cannot do the work of the other. You might as well, in a professional baseball game, send in Barry Manilow to replace Barry Bonds, because they are both rich, famous, talented men named Barry.

__________________________________________________________________

Here Christians ought to learn something from the world, for in this matter the world shows great common sense. The world itself does not define “relevance” as the highest level of discourse the marginally interested will tolerate, at least in the matters it really cares about.

Every field, from thoracic surgery to architecture to real estate law to stamp collecting, has its own specialized vocabulary. Every field demands that new members learn the language if they are to work inside it. Their willingness to learn it is a test of their desire to belong. The man unwilling to learn what an architrave and a pediment are is a man who does not really want to be an architect—and those who need an architect (as the world needs Christians) will not want him to design their house.

And the world is right about this. Christian preachers cannot afford, in the hope of speaking in a way more likely to get and to keep laymen who are (supposedly) intimidated when they speak the Faith’s given and natural language, to act as if its necessary language can be translated very far, lest the laity continue to be ignorant of the truth, and many members remain unconverted or only partly converted. For one thing, ignorant people can’t answer the questions some of their curious neighbors will ask them.

This leaves unsolved the problem of the “irrelevance” of the necessary Christian language. There is much more to be said about this, both about the ways in which the insider language can be conveyed and about the fact that we have a compelling story to tell, so that much preaching will need only to declare the facts.

But I think the first answer to the problem is not to simplify and replace the language and therefore distort the message, but inside the Church to explain, and outside the Church to live, so that those who think Christianity irrelevant will so desperately want to be part of our community that they will happily learn to speak in a new tongue.

 

It Is Well with My Soul

Pregnancy Update

Had an OB appointment this morning.  It was for 9:45 and I was pulling into our driveway at 10:15.  It's so funny.  I am SO excited about our new baby that there are times when I feel that along with me, everyone else should be making a big, fat deal out of our impending arrival.  So a short, short OB visit seems so anticlimactic.  ;-)  But after sharing the news of the pregnancy, even my own family has settled down into a "we're just waiting for the baby to be born and living our lives like real people until the birth" routine.  Ho Hum. 

I have been stressing hard the last few weeks, though.  My husband sent First Son up to the laundry room to get a bottle of bleach.  Well, the poor kid dropped it, and it broke, spilling the bleach all over the laundry room (small, 5x6 room), into the hallway, and across the hallway into our bedroom.

As an aside, let me say that if you can get your laundry room UPSTAIRS and across the hallway from your bedroom, do it!  It has been so kewl to not have to run up and down the stairs with laundry.  I have to do one or two loads per day to keep up with the demand around here and I just can't imagine what life would be like having the laundry room shoved off in a corner of the house next to the kitchen.  What a drag!

So First Son spilled the bleach.  Ugh.  What a mess!  To keep prego me out of the fumes, my husband and First Son cleaned up the mess.  I didn't really give it much more thought after that.  The day was busy, and when I went to bed that night, I fell asleep in about two seconds.  My husband woke me up in the middle of the night saying, "Isn't that bleach smell bothering you?"  As I wrote, it had also gotten into the carpet in the hallway and in our bedroom.  But I was so out of it, I told him no, then rolled back over and went back to sleep  as soon as I shut my eyes.  The next morning, my husband and I both had headaches and sore throats from the bleach fumes.  I finally understood what his issue had been.  :-/  I frantically searched the web to see if I could find anything that would tell me if inhaling bleach fumes for hours on end was harmful to the baby but could find nothing.  My husband told me to quit stressing and trust God, so I said "okay." 

I've just been praying, and waiting till this visit when I could chat with my OB about it.  And talk about anticlimactic!  There I was, telling my bleach story, about to get all teary with thoughts that I could have hurt the baby and my OB just shrugged her shoulders, wrinkled up her nose, and said, "The baby is probably just fine!"  And so that is that!

Oyve

So I'm just going to stop posting here.  ;-)  Everytime I post on something "meaningful?" it comes right back around to bite me.  In my last post, I wrote about how techonolgy is a potential character-killer for our kids, and how we're not watching t.v. for the month of July (big, BIG sacrifice since there's no hockey or football on, but it's a start, eh?) and lo and behold, this weekend, the Verizon dude came to our door for a "service check."  No really, I'm sure that Verizon is sincere............and the Dude was really, really very nice. 

I usually leave conversations like this up to my husband to conduct, and as he was talking with the Dude, he found out that we could get our t.v. hooked back up to the world of a thousand channels for only 5 bucks more than we have already been paying.  We haven't had anything other than our free antenna-inspired t.v. for about four years now, and I've been happy.  It's just been harder on the men of the family because they've had to miss an occaisional hockey or football game, so when the Dude let my husband in on the 5 dollar deal, well, you could have heard his "REALLY??????!!!!!!!!!!!!" all through the neighborhood.  Next was, "Becca!  Come listen to this!" 

So we are now scheduled to be hooked up to the juice on July 17th - First Son's birthday.  He's thrilled.  My husband is thrilled, and Second Son is thrilled.  My daughter doesn't seem to care too much, Third Son has no clue, and me......well, all I can say is "Oyve."

Neil Postman on Cyberspace

A pastor at our church sent a link to this YouTube video featuring Neil Postman in 1995. Neil is the guy who wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death.  It's a short, 10 minute interview in which he discusses the potential impact that Cyberspace could have on our culture.  As I wrote, this was 1995.  You will be amazed at how much he predicted has come true, and provoked to thought as he asks, "What problem does this technology solve?" and "Is it MY problem?"  and "If not, what is the purpose of this technology?  Am I using the technology, or is it using me?"

I think it's something to seriously consider as we fight worldliness from grabbing hold of our children.  As you know from my earlier post, I love my iPod!  We have two computers in our home, plus a laptop that we use whenever the mood strikes, cell phones, an MP3 player, digital cameras, blah, blah, blah.  I have consistently been amazed at the draw all this technology has on our children.  They're like moths to the flame.  After all, my husband's cell phone has those cheesy Pac-Man and Basketball games on it, and the kids all love to talk to people on the cell phone.  Computers have games which they would spend hours and hours playing if my husband and I would let them.  First Son listens to the iPod while mowing, and all the kids love taking turns with the digital camera.  There's just so much that sometimes to me, who grew up in the 70's/80's, it seems as if I could easily slip into sensory overload.

This month we have turned off the t.v. in our house and already limit computer games and other technology, and in just the six days that we have experienced with no t.v., my husband and I are amazed at how the kids are interacting so much more with each other.  And we limited t.v. to the weekends!  As Neil Postman indicated in his interview, technology can isolate people....bring about a life dedicated to individual pursuits, which of course leads to selfish, me-first attitudes.  We all struggle with this problem without technology.  For  me, Neil's interview is a great reminder to be careful as we implement technology into our homes and guard the hearts of our children.

Grace

The kids and I have been listening to John MacArthur's series on Forgiveness for the last week.  You know, it's something that we can all work on around here.  ;-)  I would give a link so you can listen in for yourself if you're interested, but I can't find one.  I am subscribed to his podcasts and download his daily radio messages onto my iPod for us to hear. 

I have to say, if you don't have an iPod, you should do ALL you can to get one.  Mine has changed the face of our homeschool in so many ways!  Skip counting tapes and other math/geography/grammar misc.?  On the iPod.  Books on tape?  On the iPod.  Everything is on the iPod and I no longer have to lug around a heavy, annoying CD holder from the house to the car and back again.  My husband bought a cord that plugs into our stereo system that plugs into the iPod and we all have listened to "The Fellowship of the Rings" together every evening.  We also have an adapter for it in the car and we have listened to many a history CD (LOVE Diana Waring!) as we travel about. The "little rectangle" (as I used to call it before I understood all it could do) holds a TON of stuff.  I love my iPod.

ANYWAY........so we've been listening to a series on Forgiveness......where was I??????  OH!  Yes, well, after we listened to each sermon, the kids and I would chat about all the implications that the information we had just heard, could have on our lives.  And I've been tossing around the word "grace" a lot in conjuction with what God provides for us by way of His own forgiveness towards us. 

Tonight I went to The Shepherd's Scrapbook.  Great blog, but I can only really focus on it when I'm not totally fried from playing mommy all day.  You know, it's deep and thoughtful - one of THOSE blogs.  ;-)  Somehow, tonight, I was able to focus, and Tony, the blog owner, had posted a quote by Sinclair Ferguson.  It goes like this:

No such ‘thing’ as grace
by Sinclair Ferguson

“There is nothing between the person of the Lord Jesus and the person of the believer as that union and communion develops and grows. I think this is a very important thing for us to grasp. Let me put it the way I sometimes put it: The union with Christ we have is not that we somehow or another share His grace. Because – follow me carefully – there actually is no ‘thing’ as grace. That actually is a Medieval Roman Catholic teaching. There is a ‘thing’ called grace that can be separated from the person of Jesus Christ. It is something Jesus Christ won on the Cross and He can bestow it on you. And there are at least seven ways it can be bestowed on you and they all, as it happens, turn out to be in the hands of the church. And you can have this kind of grace, and this kind of grace, and this kind of grace … There is no such ‘thing’ as grace! Grace is not some appendage to His being. Nor is it some substance that flows from us: ‘Let me give you grace.’ All there is is the Lord Jesus Himself. And so when Jesus speaks about us abiding in Him and He abiding in us – however mysterious it may be, mystical in that sense – it is a personal union. Do not let us fail because of the abuse of expressions. Do not let us fail to understand that, at the end of the day, actually Christianity is Christ because there isn’t anything else. There is no atonement that somehow can be detached from who the Lord Jesus is. There is no grace that can be attached to you transferred from Him. All there is is Christ and your soul.”

-Sinclair Ferguson on John 15 at the Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference in Grantham, PA this Spring.

It's always easy to let things or ideas take the place of Christ, isn't it?  I'm afraid I've been focusing more on "grace" than CHRIST with the kids, and will have to do a HUGE U-turn in our conversation tomorrow.  Just another instance of Mom not being perfect.  sigh.  ;-)

Come, Emmanuel!!!!!!

The kids and I sing hymns every day as part of our Bible study.  I have started our own little hymn collection.  I go through a hymn book we have, find the songs I know, type them up, print them out, and voila!  We are up to 90 hymns so far.  I never knew that I had picked up on so many hymns growing up.  I was a pastor's daughter and all, but I was not interested in church when I was growing up.  My dad pastored churches that were small enough to not have much of a youth group, but even without that, I was my own bad influence.  ;-)  I usually slept through church.  Isn't that awful?????  To this day, I can honestly say that I don't remember one thing my Dad preached on, God bless him.  But somehow, here I am, by the GRACE of God, teaching my kids hymns and reading the Bible every day with a glad heart.  Here is a link if you want to print out the 90 hymns we have so far. 

ANYWAY.....I'm pretty methodical in how we sing the hymns.  I know it's easy to get hung up on our favorites, so we will sometimes start at the front of the folder, singing three a day until we get to the end, then turn around and go back the other way.  Sometimes to make it extra, EXTRA exciting, we will sing just the odd numbered hymns, then the EVEN numbered hymns.  As you can tell, I work hard to make it a thrill.  ;-) 

But on Fridays I shake it up even more and we have "All Request Fridays" when the kids get to pick a special song they want to sing.  It's funny.  They all usually pick a Christmas song.  I guess there's just something extra special about that time of year.  The other day, Second Son picked "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel".  We have sung that song quite a bit, but it seemed to open up to me for the first time that day.  I think that this song should not just be sung at Christmas, but all through the year.  It is a wonderful prayer that I found myself begging God to answer ASAP as we were singing the song.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, great Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law
In cloud and majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Root of Jesse’s tree,
An ensign of Thy people be;
Before Thee rulers silent fall;
All peoples on Thy mercy call.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.