Think Pink

You Say You Want a Revolution

I suppose it would be fair to say that one of the things I have been wrestling with, and still am, is ministry.  I was recently assured that all Christians occasionally had crises of faith, and I admit to being a bit taken aback.  I'm not having a crisis of faith.  In fact when it seems that all else has fallen away from under my feet, God has been the thing on which I have continued to stand.  He and I are tight.  That is not to say that we have been in agreement all the time lately, but to my way of thinking, He made me this snarly ball of prickles and questions, so He is very able to deal with me when I get this way. No, if anything, this little episode is only serving to strengthen my faith in God.  What I am really having is a crisis of church.

Now before I embark on this little journey of thought, about church and believers, about purpose and concept, about passion and apathy and all the levels in-between, I want to be sure that I am clearly understood.  I am not anti-church.  Not. at.  all.  I believe in God's church, that it is divinely inspired and instituted. I believe we are called to come together as a body of believers (not defined by modern day denominations) to do great, amazing, miraculous soul-saving work for God.  I do not for one moment think that holing up at home and "home-churching" is anything but a direct rebellion against everything God had in mind when He talked about his church.  As easy as that might make life (and I have also considered how easy ministry would be in a cave in Montana somewhere as well--with just me) that is not what God has called His people to do. 

Furthermore I love my church, a lot.  I love the people there.  I love their heart.  I think the elders and pastors (hunky hubby included) are amazing men who want to be in line with God's will and who truly desire to change this world for Jesus Christ.  Their passion inspires me to be more passionate.  Their individual dedication puts ten men to shame. However, I do not love blindly.  There are things I question and things that concern me; things I wonder about.  I think that is that sign of a healthy church member.  Blind love is dangerous.  Discerning love is real, and it makes us be better people and better churches because it changes us.

I wanted to say these things because I may be discussing some hard concepts about church and believers as I work things out in my head.  I don't want you to leave here and take my generalized statements to be bashing my own church, or any other particular church or person.  I am not here to stand in judgment; I am trying to work my way through my own part in all this convoluted mess.  I think we need a revolution.  We need revival.  It has to start right here, with me.

I see the LIGHT!

Despite the fact that I feel grinchy for contemplating NOT putting up a tree this year (it's true), I still intend to inundate my house with glorious Christmas lights sometime in the next 48 hours.  I have already taken the Florida tradition that some Christmas lights are necessary the whole year, as my backporch is lit with strings of blue and white all year round. The girls are excited because as soon as houses begin to be decorated, we drive somewhere almost nightly to enjoy the outrageous displays.  Seriously, I think it's the fact that we can still wear shorts most days that leads Floridians to go way beyond the bounds of taste when they begin to put up the lights, and don't even get me started on inflatibles.  Still, it's great fun to sit in the car with the Christmas music blaring and see who can spot the next house first.

Thanksgiving went off literally without a hitch, unless eating earlier than planned counts as a hitch.  Everything cooked beautifully.  I brined a turkey for the first time and the tiny little sliver of carnivorous material that I sampled seemed quite yummy. Of course, I took no pictures.  By 5pm the house was empty of all the guests (and one of our own lovelies), the kitchen was clean, the leftovers were stored, and the two remaining girls settled down to a movie whilst the hunky hubby and I ensconced ourselves on the backporch (christmas lights on) with books, blankets and hot tea.  This picture also covers most of yesterday as well since there was no cooking, no shopping and very little movement from whatever comfortable perch we found for ourselves.  All in all it was an excellent start to what may be our busiest holiday season yet.

This weekend ends my worship team hiatus. I ended up taking a total of five weeks off the weekend rotation, but I think that may be blog for another day, as are so many things in my head.

I'm sure you've probably seen it

But something that makes me guffaw?  Well, I have to share (my very favorite is #12):

(seen here first)

The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List

By Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling Magazine, Issue #1, Fall 2007

1 Please stop asking us if it's legal. If it is — and it is — it's insulting to imply that we're criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you're talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we've got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don't assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You're probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you've ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don't look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they're in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we're doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we're religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn't go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11 Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn't have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don't need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can't teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there's a reason I'm so reluctant to send my child to school.

12 If my kid's only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he'd learn in school, please understand that you're calling me an idiot. Don't act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13 Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We're the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it's crowded and icky.

14 Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we're into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don't have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15 Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don't get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I'm one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16 Don't ask my kid if she wouldn't rather go to school unless you don't mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn't rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.

18 If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you're allowed to ask how we'll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can't, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn't possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19 Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child's teacher as well as her parent. I don't see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20 Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he's homeschooled. It's not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21 Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she's homeschooled.

22 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23 Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24 Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won't get because they don't go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25 Here's a thought: If you can't say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!

Time Enough

Yesterday when I was blogging in my head, I was planning to share the calendar of the next six weeks of my life. Every year I purpose that it will be different.  Every year I say, "This holiday will be slower, calmer, more deliberate, more focused, less hurried, less stressed." I say it every. single. year.  Then mid-November comes along, and the events begin piling up, and everyone wants to plan, practice, perform, party, and parade.  Despairingly I write event after event after event on my planner  and watch all my beautiful frosted dreams melt in the reality of time gone.

It happened again this year.

I can honestly say that between now and Christmas Day, we are going out of town no less than four times. We have two birthdays, one anniversary, four Christmas parties (two on the same night at the same time), four major church events, and I am simply praising God that I will not be in town to lead worship for the eight Christmas Eve services (that's just wrong!)!!! I also am supposed to be educating the little women in my spare time.  You'll notice that in these plans I have yet to mention pack, buy presents, cook Thanksgiving dinner, lead worship in at least fifteen services and facilitate Disciple class. It's enough to make my head shoot off complete with streamers and fireworks if I try to look at the whole chunk of time.

All of these things and more are what I was composing in my head.  Then my very wise, very hunky hubby read this:

For everything there is a season, and a time for very purpose under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up

In this midst of what seems chaos and confusion, there is time. Time to laugh, and time to cry. Time to make messes and time to clean them up. Time for school and time for the park.  Time for work and time for snuggling.  Time for joy. Time enough.

It's a promise.

Dana in Real Life

I want to thank all of you who are still reading (all four) for bearing with me through all the angst, torment, wallowing and woe.  Somewhere at the heart of that was some serious working through many, many things.  Questioning your purpose in life is never easy.  I still wish I had more answers, but unfortunately what I am learning now is resting in the fact that God isn't done with me or my purpose yet.  There is more to unfold, and likely a very different more than I ever imagined (you know because this life is so exactly what I had planned), but until my purpose in this place is finished, I can stop ranting and raving and shaking my fist and pounding the walls because that will not shorten it by one moment, and may considerably lengthen it.  *Sigh*

In my real life I am not all doom and gloom, though I haven't particularly been a barrel of laughs to hang out with. 

Sometimes I laugh; sometimes I belly laugh and lean down and hold my knees, and continue to snort out little giggles for moments afterwards.

Sometimes I feel tears right behind my eyes.

Sometimes I consider the fact that it's been almost six months since I talked to my Nattie and my heart breaks all over again.

Sometimes I sit on the back porch and dream.

Sometimes I sit in my chair by the river while my children scream like hoydens and climb the jungle gym.  I read my book or close my eyes and feel the sun on my face.

Sometimes I scrub the grout.

Sometimes I raise my hands in worship; sometimes when no one else is around.

Sometimes I teach fractions and multiplication and division and creative writing, and hand writing and science and geography and history and etiquette and logic and scripture and cooking and home economics and basic home repair and forgiveness and honesty.

Sometimes I want to take a nap.

Sometimes I burrow under my flannel sheets and watch Tv with the Hunky Hubby. Sometimes I fall asleep when I am supposed to be watching.

Sometimes I worry when I fill up my gas tank.

Sometimes I look at my calendar and wonder if any of it is even worth it. Sometimes I blow my calendar off. 

Sometimes I dream of moving to a ranch in Montana.

Sometimes I shake my fist at my scale.

Sometimes I listen to hunky hubby talk about his job and my soul bleeds.

Sometimes I want to shake people.  Sometimes I just hold them tight.

Sometimes I wonder if we aren't all sleeping, or maybe we're all just blind.

Sometimes I cook; sometimes it's cake.

Sometimes I cultivate friendships and work to live in community.

Sometimes I let the introvert win and ignore the phone, and whoever's knocking on the door.

Sometimes I mow the grass; sometimes I lay in it and hear it grow.

Sometimes people tell me I should write a book; sometimes five people tell me; sometimes I tell God I'm listening.

Most days look like any other day, in any other place, in any other town (except we have an ocean), but they are my days, in my life.  I don't want them to be ordinary. I want extraordinary.  I think we're nearly there.