Houzz had the BEST article today (by Alison Hodgson, my FAV writer there). It’s about “How to Build Your Housekeeping Muscle,” but honestly – it is just a great perspective on how to develop your abilities at anything you might find perplexing.
She shares an example of a man who has loaned lots of money to friends and relatives over the years and how he isn’t bothered by it because he just sees himself as some one who is really good at saving money, as in “skilled at it.” His viewpoint took something we usually judge others about and turns not being very good at handling money from being some irreparable character flaw (the writer’s profound revelation about this totally hit me) in them as people ~ to something we can, with a little effort, actually become skilled in ~ whether that includes housekeeping, or managing a budget well, or making new friends, or good communication, getting fit or whatever it is that perhaps has been pointed out to us as being a weakness or imperfection calling our very value into question.
While we are often quick to judge other people harshly for what we see as a major character impairment, a proof of a lack of development in who they should be as a person (#don’taskmehowIknow), maybe they are just good people who have not yet developed skills in certain areas – just. like. us.
I won’t tell on myself, but…
My mom was the most “distracted” housekeeper on the planet, which drove my perfectionist dad up the proverbial wall and caused him to rule the roost by making endless, demanding lists of to-do for every member of the family. Even after I was married, and moved hundreds of miles away, when we came for a visit, I was given a list! OH-Yes, he did!:) It’s an honor for me now, to get to be helpful to my parents, but in my early 20s I was probably pretty incredulous. Haha.
Now, my dad is known to be highly competent and get-things-done-well NOW! and I like that. He is a high-capacity leader, a pastor trusted for high-impact ministry and church growth. But my mom is also known ~ as the woman who makes him bearable. She is without guile in any way, so loving and non-judgemental. She can make a lifelong-wholly-devoted friend from the most snarky and committed enemy.
There were church ladies and relatives who judged my mom’s housekeeping as inferior, but her character: above reproach. There is not a person in the world who doesn’t want to be around her because of how she cheers them on and showers them with love. Over time, she learned to follow my dad’s “guidance” and keeps a lovely home. But she wasn’t born that way and she is in NO WAY deficient in her character!
It is interesting, I think, how we like to compare some one else’s weakness in skill against our own strength as though it automatically makes them flawed. Or we do it to ourselves, thinking, “I wish I weren’t so awful at ______,” feeling doomed forever by some label (“I’m the messy one,” or “I’m the one who can’t do _____,” or “I’m the clumsy one,” etc).
So, the article:: This was just so thought-provoking to me, I wanted to thank Alison Hodgson and share it here. Hope it gets you thinking, too, and giving yourself and others GRACE and great hope for the future. Just simple tips to follow to get the skill you need to strengthen the area you feel condemned about, housekeeping or whatever else.
YAHOO News [10.29.13]: Nothing is stronger than the bond between mother and child. This certainly rings true at the Leroux household in Ontario, Canada. Their daughter loves one of her mom’s songs so much, it send sher into floods of tears, every time she hears it. Mom Amanda Leroux told Storyful: “No one can explain why, not even I. I can sing any other song and do not get the same reaction from her. It’s to adorable to keep all to ourselves.” Update: The song is “My Heart Can’t Tell You No,” which has been performed by both Rod Stewart and Sara Evans. Credit: Alain Leroux.
Don’t try to tell me this baby doesn’t already understand the power of melody, the emotion in a song. This is amazing! Her response is so subdued, she chokes back her emotion while tears shoot out. It is mesmerizing to see and I just want to scoop her up and sing a happy song for her. Hope her mommy did!
“I Loathe, Despise & Abominate Halloween” BUT wait: I LOVE the trick-or-treaters!!!
This is my nearly-2000-word {highly-opinionated} essay (w/no pictures) on WHY I hate Halloween~
I don’t hate little kids, all cute and dressed up coming to my door with an open bag. That actually requires a lot of trust in this day and age and I look at it as a chance to bless the little children, a chance to be a nice neighbor. Trick-or-treating does not bother me, really, because the kids (young kids only, please – you kids that are old enough to work – go buy your own dang candy) are just excited to get to wear a costume and eat more candy than they should. I hate, literally loath, despise and abominate Halloween, but maybe for reasons different than you’d imagine…
The Horror of Retail {mwa, mwa, mwa….}
For 5 years I ran a retail party store. Halloween was the BIG ONE. It drove our sales for the year and I had to be number one (I just HAD TO!…and was!!, ok – strike that last prideful statement), so can you imagine my deep loathing for both milking-Halloween-for-all-it-was-worth for the money we could rake in and just hating the symbols that have come to represent it all? I set everything and worked my head off (can you say 90+ hours a week during the evil-season??) to sell to people who would purchase useless styro-headstones, “bloody” goblets and giant fuzzy spiders. Fog machines were the biggest rip-off and anything witchy-skeletony-or-ghoulish you could add double-D batteries to so it would light up or make some horrific noise were big sellers.
And then there were the costumes. We sold all those crappy costumes plus face paint and fake blood, stitches, etc.
And people would FILL those carts and spend hundreds of dollars. I both loved racking up the sales AND I disrespected seeing people waste that much money on something like Halloween, a “holiday” that really celebrates nothing that means eternal anything to me.
The worst part though? The company “encouraged” (read: forced) us to “dress up” – the whole month of October! It is fun for like, three days. The other 28, not so much. I have been a nun, a gypsy, a bunch of grapes. There were platinum blond wigs, Cleopatra headdresses and hot pink beehives. I was never “evil,” just dressed, all the while managing a hopping Halloween staff, chasing shoplifters, receiving Christmas and trying to make that transition as fast as humanly possible and just gritting my green-hick-farmer teeth to get through.
Suffice it to say I had more Halloween than I ever wanted and enough to last 37 people a lifetime. Yuck.
The Great Halloween Debate
And to top it off, I have spent almost a lifetime in the middle of the great Halloween debate: Is it OK for Christians to Participate?? OR Is it an evil-pagan holiday dedicated to devil-worship that we should avoid at all costs? I gotta tell you, I DO wish to avoid it all costs, but not for spiritual reasons, necessarily because the devil doesn’t own my days – not any of them. Dare I say I think it falls under the Romans 14 directive for disputable matters?…I do. Let the stoning begin…
Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so!
This year my home church decided not to have the Halloween alternative they usually have. And nobody knows quite what to do.
When I was growing up (in my very Christian, very strict Pentecostal preacher’s home), our parents let us trick-or-treat. In retrospect, that seems crazy. I couldn’t cut my hair, wear make-up or listen to the radio, at least “legally”, but I got to trick-or-treat. Strange. The church hadn’t been super-sensitized to the meanings and origins of the day back then. They still really thought it was just kids dressing up and getting lots of candy. And even after it became a “test of righteousness” in Christian circles, the churches my dad pastored still usually offered an alternative like a “Harvest Fest” with fall activities and the kiddos dressing up. I remember church bulletins reminding everyone that no “ghosts, ghouls or goblins” were allowed to attend, but costumes were welcomed.
Dave’s family was an absolutely-not Halloween family. I was from the use-the-opportunity-to-witness stream. My earliest memories are of my mom explaining to me that I had to do a “trick” to get a “treat,” and wow, was I ever willing! My trick was always to sing a song of some sort and since we didn’t do secular music, my song always had something to do with Jesus. The first year I could sing it all, I did – at every. single. house. “…for the Bible tells me so.” Deep breath, the person tries to give me candy, I whip my bag away from them , my mom reminds me, and whale on, “Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!…” They were prisoners to the end. But I would not take that candy until I had witnessed of the Lord’s love the full way through.
Pagan Roots
It seems H’ween has its roots in pagan Celtic festivals, the Druids dancing around bonfires and offering sacrifices to the spirit world for the harvest. So actually – having a church “Harvest Festival” is not an improvement on Halloween, necessarily. During the ancient pagan fetsival, Candy Corn would begin to fall from the sky, just kidding…just checking to see if you are still reading. ;p Haha.
In the 8th century, the Pope moved All Saint’s Day to November 1, so October 31st became “All Hallows Eve” and most people think he did it to claim the 31st back for Christians, which frankly, I applaud. What I bind on earth is bound both here and in heaven. We do have some authority in Jesus’ Name, people!
I digress.
So, then there is a biblical scripture-storm that erupts annually against having any part. One of the scriptures often cited is Ephesians 5.7-12 NLT:
7 Don’t participate in the things these people do. 8 For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! 9 For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.
10 Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. 11 Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. 12 It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.
Or, there is Deuteronomy 18.10-12 NLT
For example, never sacrifice your son or daughter as a burnt offering. And do not let your people practice fortune-telling, or use sorcery, or interpret omens, or engage in witchcraft, 11 or cast spells, or function as mediums or psychics, or call forth the spirits of the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord. It is because the other nations have done these detestable things that the Lord your God will drive them out ahead of you.
And there are lots of other verses that are used to promote total abstinence from any type of Halloween participation. And they are important scriptures with definite guidelines for what we should and shouldn’t be participating in. But I honestly don’t see them saying “Little kids dressing up and trick-or-treating is anti-scriptural.” I just don’t. My grandbebes, who will dress as Nacho Libre or a Strawberry or as princesses or Batman this year? They will NOT be calling forth spirits of the dead or hosting seances. We will not sacrifice them as burnt offerings. They will NOT participate in drunken parties and godlessness of that sort and I will teach them to speak up for righteousness through their vote as citizens and to protect the helpless and feed the hungry. That is how they are being raised. They are being raised to be who God created them to be (light!) and to do what God has ordained for them to do and to fulfill their destiny for God in their generation. Period!
The devil doesn’t get my grandbebes. I truly and humbly do not see trick-or-treating as the step into a dark realm. If anything, I see it as “Hallowed,” like the old Pope wanted it to be because he went to enemy’s camp and took back what was stolen (know that song? Don’t make me sing it here!). My days are the LORD’S. All of them! And it is a great time to show our babies the difference between light and darkness by not worshipping death, not giving in to demonic influence and avoiding rebelliousness (which is as the sin of witchcraft and rarely gets corrected in Christendom).
Renunciation.
You know what, though? If you came from an occultic background where you used the 31st as part of demon worship and you have walked away from it being born into Christ and you have renounced that past – by all means, don’t participate. It holds something for you it doesn’t for me. Don’t be enslaved into any bondage you have been delivered from again! I would stand with you in that, and I mean that! Or if you just have a strong conviction that you don’t want your family to participate, because to you, it seems like being part of an agreement with the world, part of this godless generation and you’d rather make a stand here – then make that stand. I support you in that, but Romans 14, again {“disputable matters”}…
Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong. For instance, one person believes it’s all right to eat anything. But another believer with a sensitive conscience will eat only vegetables. Those who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don’t. And those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them. Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord’s help, they will stand and receive his approval.
Figure it out. Study it through. Pray. Ask the Lord. Listen. And be obedient there and let’s not let a disputable matter polarize us as Christians, or get us fighting one another in scriptural-sword fighting. Because? Then the stupid-head devil wins. Geesh, people – it is when he breaks our unity that we are trashed – not when some low-level demon flies around a room impressing the idiots who want that sort of thing. RESIST HIM, seriously. He HAS to flee!
I loathe, despise and abominate* Halloween because of how it separates us and causes holier-then-thou crap and we make each other the enemy instead of THE enemy. And I hate all the blackness and darkness because I am of the Light, but oh, by the way, I shine ever so much more brightly in the dark places. I say kick-him-in-the-butt and bless the little children when they come to your door: give the best candy, the biggest smile, the greatest encouragement and give ’em a God-bless-you, because that actually is within your power to do. Heaven will hear and attend to your blessing! May His will be done on earth as it is in heaven! On Halloween, even!
‘Nuff said.
*In the book version of Meet Me in St Louis, the sisters show their distaste for things by saying “I hate, loathe, despise and abominate {fill-in-the-blank}”. I think it is used a time or two in the Judy Garland movie, too. It is a fav family quote.
“Live as people of light!”
RT @ pastormark via ryan may: “If you’re one of those Christians who is going to give out tracts for Halloween, also give enough candy to make a kid a diabetic!” Haha!
So this Thursday, October 31, 2013? I stand by it. The devil can’t have that day or that night in my life, my neighborhood or in my family! We are a holy people redeemed by the LORD!
OH, and…if you’d like to be really super missional this year (have they been talking to my mother???), THIS SITE has tons of ways to redeem Halloween and makie it a teaching and being-a-nice-Christian kind of thing!
It’s really cold today. And last night I watched “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, because I just couldn’t wait a whole year. Plus I need to get into the Christmas mood for some marketing I am starting this week for a **major production**…So I thought I’d check out a few online businesses and see what they have going for Christmas.
They have a “take a trip to the Tree Lot” campaign going and the scroll-down promo is really fun! Makes me ready for Christmas! See it {{HERE!}} Then just scroll down, quickly or slowly and back up if you want. It’s really cool!
Just in case I forgot to mention, now that my own kids are grown and I see the whole child-bearing/rearing years through misty-rose-colored glasses and tell you how my children were always cute, so sweet, and just always behaved – yes, well, in case I forget to tell you, while you’re mopping up spilled milk and changing the 37th diaper of the day and refereeing sibling spats (which sometimes accounts for 87.682% of your waking hours) and experiencing the inevitable law of physics which proves that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich will always, will always fall onto the kitchen floor with both pb and j splatting directly onto said floor, *splat*, and oh-my-goodness, nooooo-as you’re grabbing the craft scissors from big sister who just lopped off a handful of baby sister’s hair while little brother is throwing his cars into the toilet ~ yes, in case I might have forgotten to mention…
Well, I just thought that maybe a 50-something who is {way} past where you are (pregnant or w/newborn, pregnant and w/newborn, toddlers, pre-schoolers, school-kids, etc~ in the house // yes, YOU, 20 or 30-something mommy) ~ maybe I could give you a few random encouragements for today? Pull up a chair and let me just tell you…wait – ok, keep running, I’ll talk while you manage everything in the known universe!
You will make it.
You can do this! Those kids are going to bring you joy you never thought possible, but the joy will be amazingly-over-the-top sweet because they will also have challenged you beyond your limits and you’ll have wept from deepest places in worry or anxiety and there will be things that happen that you cannot control or fix and somewhere along the line most certainly you will have believed you are the worst mother in the world. Yes, there will be those days. Days when you think you are the worst mother and days when you actually are – a momster. Don’t ask me how I know. Really, please don’t ask.
I promise you this:
Your kids are perfectly normal. Or at least a reasonable variation of normal.
God chose you, yes YOU to mommy the one(s) in your nest. It wasn’t a mistake, not for you or for the child(ren). You are the best woman for the job!
Yes, any vital life lesson will have to be taught an average of 2387 times – in. a. row. That is just the average. There is nothing wrong with Junior. He just needs the steady, disciplined, day-in and day-out guidance which will finally sink in. And before you go thinking he must be defective to take so long in the learning, just think about some of the things God has had to teach you – over and over and over again. See?
One day they’ll dress themselves (ready or not). Sooner than you think the schedule can have more flexibility to it. There’ll come a time when all the consistency and effort and strength you have exerted today, this past week, the last few months will just morph into an easy rhythm of life and living (at least briefly).
One day the word “no” will start to evaporate from the minute by minute – from the kiddos and you. There’ll come a time of yes!, I promise!
Hey, remember the 80s? Me, neither. I look fairly sane, though, don’t I?
Listen, I always say, “I raised 5 kids and I lived to tell it.” I mean, I had 5 babies in less than 7 years and can barely remember the early 80s {{don’t try this at home}} and I can remember being tired, just bone-tiredand sometimes overwhelmed to the point of asking God what on earth He was thinking entrusting me with these little people. I’d never have made it through without help and compassion from friends. I am so thankful for the “cloud of witnesses” that waved me on and gave advice or didn’t dare, but were proof I could be the mommy God thought I could be. My mom did it and supported me. Miss Faye from church who just so happened to have 4 daughters and 1 son like me (except hers were teenagers by then) was such an example, teaching me how to just relax and trust God and LOVE them, which covers a multitude of sins. So thankful for women who showed the way.
Don’t go it alone. get in a group for encouragement. Find an older mom at church who can cheer you to the finish line she just got to not too long ago. Because btw, Titus 2 already set a good example for that, we “olders” are supposed to teach you “youngers.” :) It is a major honor for me to get to impart from the experiences I’ve lived through. It isn’t always easy to ask for advice and lots of times, we think we are beyond the advice of a previous generation, having found a better way, but I think you’ll find, if you open your heart, that your experiences and challenges are not so different from what some one my age or even older went through with their kids. Partake of the wisdom available!
By looking at [the older women], the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. Titus 2.4
ALL mommies have felt inadequate at times, ~rushed, overwhelmed, overworked, unheard, unseen, unloving, raggedy. All of us have felt like and probably been, at one point or another, the worst mom on the block. It usually happens just before a glory moment when all the kids are clean at once and cuddling with you and you have that moment of Wow-I was born for this. Those few seconds get us through, don’t they?
Remember:
The days are long, but the years are short. It’s a marathon not a sprint. Take a deep breath (especially if it seems like one of those really looooong days), and think about where you want to see each child in three or four years, what kind of human being you will have hoped you’ve raised. And for that dream, which will quickly come to pass, keep at it! Keep loving them and teaching them and raising them well and praying over them and saying the same things again and again if you must because it is the steady consistency of your message that will give them safety and disciplined hearts and minds and turn them into amazingly resourceful human beings who will change their world and bless nations!
And – in spite of us, sometimes, they just go right on ahead and turn out beautifully, as if deep inside, they knew what we were trying to do. And they loved us for it and they became all God intended anyway. I have proof of this {{aforementioned babies now 27-34 years old}}!
I am cheering you on! If you’ve got ’em, raise ’em & love ’em – like nobody else can!
And in the cuteness category, Tara sent me this the other day and if you still need more hope for the journey, take it from Kid President: the secret to changing the world? – MOMS!!!
Have you checked out Stef’s blog yet? She is a young mom who is writing amazing stuff {HERE}! I wish I’d have been as smart when my kids were that little!
I grew up with Cardinal red pulsing through my veins. The St. Louis Cardinals mean summer and October baseball.
They are in the World Series again. The sky was bluer than blue today. The leaves on the trees were at the zenith of their dazzling autumn colors in the briliant light of the blazing sun.
And the Cards are up 2-1 in the series. Tonights’ win was weird (on an obstruction call), but we’ll take it.
The sun is bright, the sky is blue, the blue I am addicted to seeing (thank-you for these skies, Father-in-Heaven). There is the slightest breeze which comes and goes – barely perceptible on this cool morning. Oh, but the tree is ready, waits for the slightest encouragement – ready to abandon its’ hold…And the leaves, in all their glorious color, are falling in silent, slow motion~ drifting gracefully, gently to the ground. Today is the day of falling. Falling slowly.
This image looks really early 1900s. I google-searched for poets named “Mamie” and there are actually quite a few.
I like October because it reminds me of innocent childhood, shuffling through piles of leaves on the way to school, before the days when people felt the incessant need to banish the sight of them immediately at all costs. Have you noticed, in these newer neighborhoods, it’s almost impossible to get a decent pile for jumping in?
Because I’m still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I’m still in love with you
On this harvest moon. (Neil Young, lyrics – Harvest Moon)
I like October for the crimson and pumpkin, for the eggplant and rust, and all the colors of the deepening, mature, lusty, whole and passionate part of the year when the autumn moon hangs heavy in the sky like the warm embraces of a tattered, weighty quilt sewn years ago for the need of heat and not some contest of a county fair. Have you ever been covered in one of those?
I like October because the coffee is richer, the evening cricket is less frantic, more rhythmic. The sun slants and schedules fall into an easy ritual, the day in and day out are much more organized. Tans fade, memories are made, soup is stirred, cakes are baked, sweaters come out and life is rich.
Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
‘Neath the cover of October skies (Moondance, Van Morrison)
I like October because my neighbor’s Maple tree explodes into multichromatic, vibrance and dances merrily in a dazzling production for me through my big window each time I walk through the room. From dark, living green to lime to yellow to orange to scarlet to blood-red and back. Then, just as all the colors begin to subside, like the finale of a summer fireworks display, a wind scatters the leaves far and wide and they glide and twirl and settle on the lawns with a promise to do it all again – same time next year.
The tree of which I speak…from the window (this was 2 years ago)
I do like October. Love it, even.
And yes, in all of it, like the poet said, “the opulent Giver I see.”
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.’ 1 Corinthians 1.26-31 NIV
Jesus was humbled all the way to death. Still, we are utterly surprised and shocked when we are, too. #Don’taskmehowIknow
I pulled the proverbial plug. I gathered up, from their toasty little covering (Dave was heat-lamping them) the remaining 84 or so Beefsteak, Heirloom and Early Girl tomatoes (not to mention the couple hundred cherries) and threw the plants into the barrel to be hauled away today. I carried in bunches of tomatillas (probably threw away 3 times more), a pot full of green beans, 5 or 6 zucchinis, and a few dozen assorted peppers – not including the Serranos – another couple dozen of those, which I will directly give to my son-in-law, Ryan – do not pass go, do not collect $200. Those things are wicked hot! Out with them!
What? It isn’t still summer?
The size of a cereal bowl!
Poor, poor little garden. The beefsteaks were shocked it wasn’t the very middle of summer, I can tell from their behemoth size. They had no idea how protected they’d been.
My counter was already heavy-laden with ripening tomatoes at every stage. Now, if I wanted, I could do Fried Green Tomatoes and even found this very interesting recipe on Pinterest this morning, as if some fellow pinner knew I might need it:
How perfectly appropriate!
I like them red, and juicy and tangy and tart and real so I tend not to go in to the fried-green thing and opt for sneaking a couple of apples into their midst to get some quick ripening. But I am rather inspired to try {this recipe}based on that image alone!
The kale and onions and garlic chives and Chinese Cabbage are still puttering along, with chamomile and some potted annuals, but for the most part, I pulled the incredible-fruitful plants out of the earth and ended a very nice summer garden in anticipation of a cold-turn, possible rain turning to {SNOW} flurries…tonight. Ugh.
Thank-you, garden, for a lovely, long and sweet summer. Thank-you for still trying into the fall. And God bless you for the lovely bounty I shall still enjoy for the next few days, maybe weeks. So perfectly delicious.
“It’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember the way we were…”
I will always remember you, Garden 2013. I really will.
