A City Life For Me

I have always had a list posted in my kitchen of my daily, weekly, and monthly household "chores."  It helped to keep me on track so I didn't forget things, and the goal was also that it would keep me from overdoing it all in one day.  When I was a mom of just little people (I had four under three years old when the twins were born), it was a sanity saver.  I work better and relax better in a clean and organized environment.  But sometimes my desire for cleanliness makes me a little "OCD" as my mom says.  Trying to do all of the jobs in one afternoon usually leads to a crying breakdown right about the time dinner needs to be cooking... Some days with little people feel as if the cycle will never end.  The kids make a mess.  You clean the mess.  Or you don't clean the mess and it eventually drives you nuts.  But recently I have entered a "sweet spot" where my kids are able to help with the chores.  Now, many times it still feels easier if I just

Something that I have been learning about recently is the practice of Sabbath.  I always equated the practice of sabbath  with the Lord's Day.  My husband preached from Luke 14 a few weeks ago, and in that passage we examined the sabbath principle.  Because Sunday is one of our biggest "work" days as the church staff, it's hard to think of Sunday as a day of rest like it was when I was growing up.  But I have also been realizing that I cannot maintain the speed and pressure of everything on my list at this season of life, so looking for a rest day has been in the forefront of my mind. The word for sabbath  just means seventh, so a true  sabbath would be on Saturday.  Again, this is not practical for our family as a lot of ministry and ministry preparation for Sunday takes place on Saturday.  This has led me to evaulate what and when we could do to create a culture of rest in our home on a different day. We had been taking a half day off on Mondays.  Ben o

A couple of weeks ago I took Elaine on a special errand with me.  We waited for our appointment for about two hours, and the whole time she had no idea what she was there for.  Finally we were called back and the technician began an ultrasound to determine if I was having one baby, or twins agains.  As soon as the image appeared on the screen I asked Elaine if she knew what that was.  "A baby?"  She had seen enough ultrasound pictures to know!  She couldn't stop talking and screaming about it all the way home!   I allowed Elaine to break the news to her siblings.  This is how it went... They were totally unimpressed and unexcited.  It grew on them, though, and everyone is voting for a girl!  We have decided to wait until September 30th (or whenever baby makes its appearance) to discover the gender!  (Elaine and Nolan were surprises!) Henry has gone through mixed emotions.  One morning he shot my tummy with a nerf arrow to "get my baby."  The n

In Spanish class (which is far less consistent than it should be) my kids learned the hymn O Say But I'm Glad  in Spanish.  So I took the opportunity to make that our hymn of the month in February.  In January and March we learned some songs I had purchased visualized. Even Henry did a good job with the catchy tune and easy phrases of this hymn, so we ended up singing it in church.  Most of our congregation is bilingual, and they enjoyed the kids' effort to sing in Spanish! With the exception of a couple visuals, this song is designed for you (or your kids) to color in before laminating and using.  Here's a peek at a couple of the visuals: Download the song in PDF form from Dropbox here.

Recently I have come across a couple of really good articles, and I wanted to share them with you here.  :: How Should Christians Comment Online? I do not regularly read Desiring God , but this link was shared in my Bible Study group as we studied James 3 and the destructive power of the tongue.  I found this article to be very succint and well stated, especially regarding some "pet peeves" I often encounter when surfing social media.   The author of the article gives some guidelines for how often and how quickly we should respond to someone else online, as well as some guidelines for the content of our comments.  It bothers me greatly when professing Christians "like", comment on, and share items which have crass, vulgar language or cursing on it.  If you have to qualify your share with "please excuse the language" then you probably shouldn't be sharing it!  I also try to be careful to look at the name of the page or group from which the p