Praying for Oklahoma

Lord, we can't understand why nature unleashed such violent forces unto the people in Oklahoma, causing such destruction, injuries, and the loss of precious life. But we trust that you are there, in the midst of it, and ask you:

• to help the people who are trying to rescue the trapped and injured, and to make their efforts successful.
• to send down your healing powers for those who are emotionally traumatized and/or physically injured.
• to make perfect the souls of those who lost their lives and welcome them in your Heavenly home.
• to send down peace and comfort on those who lost a loved one.
• to strengthen in hope those who need to rebuild their lives. 
• to create an outpouring of generosity and solidarity in all the people who can help the victims.
• to protect all the people in the path of the remaining storms and to keep them safe from all harm.

We ask this in the name of your son who came to suffer for us, and through the intercession of Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Have mercy on us and on the whole world!

7 Quick Takes - May 17, 2013

Another week, another Quick Takes! For more go over to Jennifer's Conversion Diary! 

-1-

My email provider just thanked me for being such a long-time customer. That made me think back to the first time I ever opened an email program, wrote, and received one. I was 19, and in a college orientation class. Maybe it was so memorable because I ended up dating the guy who taught the class (unfortunately not Dear Husband). Do you remember times without email? How did we live back then?

-2-

Just in case you were wondering what happened to our insurance battle from a while back: I don't know. We've submitted the appeal many months ago, but haven't heard anything back yet. We've asked the lawyers to check back on it, but are still waiting for answers. In the meantime, we've forked over a huge check to the property manager, and the house is finally getting repaired. So, if you don't mind me asking, would you please pray (again) that we get positive answers soon and the repairs go smoothly and stay within budget? Thanks.

-3-

I was going to write about what a peaceful day is has been, but then I discovered some beads in Big Girl's hands and realized that one of the kids has torn my sister-in-laws necklace and the beads are now spread everywhere in the huge basement. Unfortunately, what followed can only be called a yell-a-thon. I wonder how much longer my sister-in-law tells us that we are welcome for as long as we want to stay. Probably less long than it will take for me to quit this yelling habit.

-4-

Contributing to the peaceful part of the day, however, is my having rediscovered the soothing effects of crocheting. Since we don't have many places to go right now, and the kids are content swinging on the play-set for long periods of time, I've been able to just sit on the porch and crochet away. Barring any new acts of vandalism, this calming of my nerves should improve my mothering abilities.

-5-

Finally!!! Both Big Boy and Big Girl have learned how to pump and don't need me to push them on the swing anymore. What a relief. I still don't know why there are no swings on a typical Hawaiian playground. My guess is that the parents just got tired of pushing. Now, is 2 years too young for acquiring this skill? I'm determined to teach Little Girl as soon as possible!

-6-

Since I have finished "He Leadeth Me" by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. I have moved on to his other book, "With God in Russia". I guess you can't read one without the other.

-7-

One more week to the Bible Verse Photography Challenge! Have fun picking out pictures! Here is May's verse again:

"And I commend enjoyment, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and enjoy himself, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of life which God gives him under the sun."Ecclesiastes 8:15

Lessons from "He Leadeth Me" (Part 1)

I almost certain that I'm the last one to read "He Leadeth Me" by Walter J. Ciszek, S.J. So I'm just assuming that you know the back story (Jesuit priest captured by the Russian army during WW II and convicted of being a Vatican spy, surviving 5 years in prison and 15 years in Siberian labor camps), and skip right ahead to the parts I earmarked. Of course, should you not have read it yet, please go ahead and do!

As someone who constantly struggles with actually meaning and not just reciting the line "Thy will be done" in the Our Father, this particular passage very much spoke to me (he is talking about his shame after not being able to refuse under the threat of death to sign a false statement):

"Slowly, reluctantly, under the gentle proddings of grace, I faced the truth that was at the root of my problem and my shame.The answer was a single word: I. I was ashamed because I knew in my heart that I had tried to do too much on my own, and I had failed. I felt guilty because I realized, finally, that I had asked for God's help but had really believed in my own ability to avoid evil and to meet every challenge. I had spent much time in prayer over the years, I had come to appreciate and thank God for his providence and care of me and of all men, but I had never really abandoned myself to it. ... I had not really left myself open to the Spirit. I had, in fact, long ago decided what I expected to hear from the Spirit and when I did not hear precisely that I had felt betrayed.Whatever else the Spirit might have been telling me at that hour, I could not hear. I was so intent on hearing only one message, the message I wanted to hear, that I was not really listening at all.
This tendency to set acceptable conditions upon God, to seek unconsciously to make his will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait. And the more important the situation is, the more totally we are committed to it or the more completely our future depends upon it, then the easier it becomes for us to blind ourselves into thinking that what we want is surely what God must also want. We can see but one solution only, and naturally we assume that God will help us reach it. ...
For each of us the trials will come in different ways and at different times - for some, self may be easier to overcome than for others - but we were created to do God's will and not vice versa. We can daily pray for the grace to do this, without always meaning it; we can promise quite easily in prayer that we will do it. What we fail to see is how much of self still resides in that promise, how much we are trusting in our own powers when we say we will do it."

Truth isn't always pleasant, and so I didn't necessarily want to hear the next message. It's just so much easier sitting around wondering what God's will for my life is, than actually accepting it:

"[Previously] Perfection consisted simply in learning to discover God's will in every situation and then in bending every effort to do what must be done.
Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God's will was not hidden somewhere "out there" in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me.  What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back. I demanded absolute faith: faith in God's existence, in his providence, in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will not be there to bear you up."

The further I got into the book, the more I realized how lazy and selfish I actually am, and how sophisticated my mind's fallacies are that usually hide this fact from myself:

"For each of us, salvation means no more and no less than taking up daily the same cross of Christ, accepting each day what it brings as the will of God, offering back to God each morning all the joys, works, and sufferings of that day. But those are abstract words. What it means, in practice, is spelled out as always by the poor old body. It means getting up each morning and going to bed exhausted. It means the routine, not the spectacular. It can mean drudgery, pain, putting aside pleasures, happiness, or the love the human heart craves until another time, so that what is necessary at the moment can be done. It means working for others, touching the lives of others, through the medium of the body."

Alright, I wanted to argue, but exhausting myself by wiping dirty bottoms, tackling mountains of laundry, and comforting my child several times a night is surely not the most meaningful way of working for God's kingdom. Or is it?

"There is a tremendous truth contained in the realization that when God became man he became a workingman. Not a king, not a chieftain, not a warrior or a statesman or a great leader of nations, as some had thought the Messiah would be. The Gospels show us Christ the teacher, the healer, the wonder-worker, but these activities of his public life were the work of three short years. For all the rest of the time on his life on earth, God was a village carpenter and the son of a carpenter. ... There was nothing spectacular about it, there was much of the routine about it, perhaps much that was boring. There is little we can say about the jobs we do or have done that could not be said of the work God himself did when he became a man.
Yet he did not think it demeaning, beneath his dignity, dehumanizing. If anything, he restored to man's work its original dignity, its essential function as a share in God's creative act. ... He worked day in and day out for some twenty years to set us an example, to show us that these routine chores, too, are not beneath man's dignity or even God's dignity, that simple household tasks and the repetitious work of the wage earner are not necessary evils but noble and redemptive works worthy of God himself. Work cannot be a curse if God himself undertook it; to eat one's bread in the sweat of one's brow is to do nothing more or less than Christ himself did. And he did it for a reason. He did it for years on end, he did it for more than three quarters of his life on earth, to convince us that God has not asked of us anything more tedious, more tiring, more routine and hundrum, more unspectacular than God himself has done. He did it to make it plain that the plainest and dullest of jobs is - or at any rate can be, if viewed properly in respect to God and to eternity - a sharing in the divine work of creation and redemption, a daily opportunity to cooperate with God in the central acts of his covenant of salvation."

To summarize the lessons from this book for me so far:

• It's my pride that makes me believe my life should go a certain way.
  
• Waiting to hear what I want to hear means not hearing what I should hear.
  
• God has already given me a specific job. There are no open positions I need to submit my resume for.
  
• I need to get off my bottom and just do it.
  
• Simple tasks are still worthy tasks.

Have you read this book? What did you take away from it? Do you tend to think about "God's will be done" in similar ways, or is it just me? 

Mother's Day Presents

The first one to arrive: 

From all the kids via Daddy via Internet, on Friday

This year's most cherished one:

From Big Boy who (without prompting!!) decided to make a gift for me. 

Most peculiar one:

From Big Boy to Grandmom. We went to the Dollar Tree and I let the kids each choose one present for Grandmom. I did emphasize that they should pick something she would like as opposed to their favorites. However, the airplanes came in a 4-pack, and he convincingly argued that there was a pink and purple one in there, and those were Grandmom's favorite colors, so she would love them. And bless her heart, she actually seemed to enjoy them.  

Maybe the most desired one:

What my friend Jenn got: an uninterrupted shower!!!

7 Quick Takes - May 10, 2013

 -1-

Limbo. That place that is neither here nor there. That's where the military has put us right now. We are in between duty stations, and we don't know what is going to happen next month, or where we are supposed to be. It's the sequestration's fault (again). Initially Dear Husband was supposed to attend training A (6 weeks) and training B (4 weeks) back to back before we move to the next duty station. Then the sequestration happened, and he was told that he could only take training A, and only if we moved earlier than planned. So we did. Then they told him that they found some more money and that he was scheduled for training B again, but he'd have to take 60 days of leave in between. Sure, we said, (luckily he has accumulated enough during the last few years), we'll take a big RVing tour across the States or something. Now they tell him that he may or may not attend class B, but they can't tell him either way until 45 days or so into his leave..
I was (half-)joking with a friend that since the deployments are winding down now, the military had to find a new way of torturing families. And they came up with limbo.

-2-

I may have the best brother- and sister-in-law there is. They let the kids and me stay with them the whole time Dear Husband attends training A, and were even gracious enough to extend the invitation when we found out that he may even attend training B. I'm so amazed by their generosity. Yay for family!!

-3-

Confession: I'm not usually one who lets other people get credit for something I'm responsible for. However, I'm making one exception: to make Daddy look good with the kids. I've explained my "philosophy" behind this in my guest post at Cynthia's "Finding Great Joy". Right now, the kids miss Daddy incredibly. Being so unsettled doesn't help. So this week, they received presents from Daddy (that I ordered). Especially Big Boy was besides himself with joy and happiness, and told me three times that night how much he loved Daddy and how happy he was that Daddy sent him the Lego set he had always wanted. Oh well... to see him this happy was definitely worth it.

-4-

Have you read Dr. Eben Alexander's "Proof of Heaven"? I picked it up at Costco on a whim, and it's a great read, although apparently somewhat controversial in the Christian community. I plan on writing a review to post here soon. In the meantime, you can also get it on amazon.com for even cheaper.

-5-

Do you keep a list of people to pray for? Whenever I see someone asking for prayers on facebook etc., I try to say a prayer right there and then. Otherwise, I can't guarantee that I won't forget. My mother-in-law however, keeps a list of people to pray for and puts it in her copy of the Magnificat. I'm wondering if I should start one?

-6-

Only two more weeks until the link-up for May's Bible Verse Photography Challenge. Do you already have a picture in mind? I'm still thinking about it... Here is this month's verse:

"And I commend enjoyment, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and enjoy himself, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of life which God gives him under the sun."Ecclesiastes 8:15

-7-

Quote of the week, in honor of #2 above:

Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even if you wish they were. - Author Unknow

On this note, please head over to lovely Jennifer's Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!

nice tomorrow

"Mom?" Li whispered when I went in to check on him, "will you be nice to me tomorrow?"

I have to think about discipline quite a bit, thanks to this 5yo child.  He is temperamental and temper-y. As well as smart and loving and helpful and so, so considerate of his baby sister and mostly considerate of his little brother.  But that temperamental side (the side that he gets from both my husband and myself) is the side the challenges my raising-them-up-right skills to the upmost.

Tonight was a doozy.  It wasn't.  And then allofasudden it was a #passthewine #andthechocolate #andthetranquilizergun (thanks for that tweet, Sarah) kind of night.

See, I'm working on not being lazy.  I'm working on being consistent.  And I'm working on not yelling.  Which means, in theory, that my kids are working on listening and obeying the first time.

Which means that I have to expect them to obey the first time, and I have to back up my words.

It's a hard-knock life.

So, even though I am quite sure I'm much nicer these days (i.e. large and in charge and quieter, too -- like those dancing hippos in Fantasia!) my 5yo is not so sure.  He has been spending a lot of time in his room.  I get a lot of, "Are you sorry, Mom?"and "Will you please stop breaking my heart?" and, yes, "Will you be nice to me tomorrow?

~~~

Now, head on over to Cynthia's place and read this week's Mother to Mother Guest Post Series where mothers who have it together discuss this same topic.

Ivy, revisited (or: why is it so difficult to live with the personality God gave me?)

The other day I clicked over to Sophie Miriam's blog "Transfigure Nature", and I noticed the little box describing her personality type. It's based on a test that I took many years ago when I was still working, and because I was curious if there were any changes, and had a few minutes, I decided to retake the free test at mypersonality.info.

Your personality lies somewhere between the extremes of extroverted/introverted, sensing/intuitive, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. I don't remember exactly my letter combination from years ago (once my earthly possessions are not in crates crossing several oceans anymore, I'll probably find out), but I remember that with three of the values I landed almost smack in the middle of the spectrum. This time, the tendencies were a little more distinct, but I also changed from being extroverted to introverted (I wonder if that has anything to do with being surrounded by three little people all. the. time). Long story short, I ended up with the letter combination of ISTJ, which is dubbed the "examiner", and described like this:

"ISTJs are very loyal, faithful, and dependable. They place great importance on honesty and integrity. They are "good citizens" who can be depended on to do the right thing for their families and communities. While they generally take things very seriously, they also usually have an offbeat sense of humor and can be a lot of fun - especially at family or work-related gatherings."

Does that sound bad to you? I'm guessing no, but it did to me (hitting home because it's a pretty accurate description*). Dependable. How boring is that?

Yep, I had my "I am Ivy" moment all over again (read about the previous one here). Gretchen Rubin, the author of "The Happiness Project" describes how being yourself makes you happy, but can also cause sadness. Here is an excerpt. She summarizes her discovery with "You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do". So why do we, why do I even try? Why don't I praise God for making me loyal, faithful, honest, and to be depended on to do the right thing? Why am I focusing on the fact that I'm not spontaneous or adventurous and decide that this is what I should be? And more importantly, how can I get over this?

If you have ever felt anything like this, or have any advice for me and others like me, please share in the comments. In the meantime, please excuse me while I try to unearth my offbeat sense of humor.

*If you are asking how dependable goes together with "lack of perseverance": perseverance is usually not an issue for me when others need me to do my part. Only when it's a personal resolution.