"Draw me close to you
Never let me go
I lay it all down again
To hear you say that I'm your friend
You are my desire
No one else will do
Cause nothing else can take your place
To feel the warmth of your embrace
Help me find the way
Bring me back to you
You're all I want
You're all I've ever needed
You're all I want
Help me know you are near"
it is almost not an exaggeration to say that this song is just a a few years younger than i am....i have heard it a million times...and yet i am singing it tonight.
my hands are freezing cold and i am reflecting on the day and how messy the house is and how tired i am of hearing the bickering of my children and i find myself singing "draw me close to you, never let me go..."
i have spent a good bit of my life thinking. trying. doing. and the crazy thing is that as much as i am trying and thinking and doing i am continuously amazed at how God fixes all of my thinking, trying, and doing.
this hardly makes sense to me but i am writing it here anyway because i am just amazed by God. i am amazed at how i never understand Him and then i do...and then i don't again...
i have often thought of my pursuit of God as exactly that...a chase...a hunt...trying to catch and uncover a hidden and distant God. in my relationship with God i see myself as the hunter. the closer i am to finding Him the more in line my walk of faith is. and while i know that seeking God is a biblical principle i now realize my understanding of God's response to my pursuit has been tragically flawed...
Proverbs 8:17 - I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me.
Matthew 7:7-8 - Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you
Psalms 34:10 - The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good [thing].
Psalms 9:10 - And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee.
Hebrews 11:6 - But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
1 Chronicles 16:11 - Seek the LORD and his strength, seek his face continually.
oh, it is biblical to seek God...i am instructed to seek God diligently, earnestly, and continually...but God is not in it for a chase. i immediately think of the hunger games and in so many ways my perception of faith has been a last man standing mentality.
our reward is found only if we survive the hunt.
we will find God, if, by some strength of our own, we manage to maintain some sort of faith throughout all of the trials of life.
this is so wrong!
he tells us over and over again that we will find him if we seek him! he will not hide his face from me. he has not forsaken me.
what comfort?!
and when i look back through my life i see evidence of it all. i see evidence of his hand orchestrating these huge moments in my life and i realize that all the while i feel like i am seeking him it is truly His hand that has been guiding me all the while.
He hasn't been hiding behind trees or lurking in shadows. He has lovingly and gently been pulling me forward...
i read the perfect image for this in the book i have been currently reading called Families Where Grace is Place: Building a Home free of Manipulation, Legalism, and Shame...long title...but i probably wouldn't have read it if it were just for the first part of the title...but the idea of building a home where my children are taught and modeled faith free of manipulation, legalism, and shame really captured the core of my heart.
relatively early on in the book vanvonderen clarifies the definition of "spirit filled" with the image that has remained present in my thoughts for a few weeks now...
"it is not the wind in the sail that propels the boat--the boat is not pressured forward from behind. in fact, the wind creates a negative pressure--a vacuum--in front of the sail. this vacuum is the force that attracts the boat forward. so being filled with the spirit does not mean being power-driven through the christian life, as if the Holy Spirit were a locomotive-wind behind us. rather, it means being drawn into godly living by the Holy Spirit, who is in front of us, focusing us on God. i guess God knows about physics too" (81).
this truly transformed how i have viewed God.
instead of seeking God for the wind that pushes me into the right path, seeking God becomes something so much more graceful and gentle. it becomes more about the "be still and know..." faith instead of the chaotic rabbit chase of faith that i have been participating in most of my life. i am not good at being out of control. i want to lead the ship but there is something so beautiful about surrendering to His pull...
and that is why my heart is singing "draw me close to you...never let me go...i lay it all down again...to hear you say that i'm your friend...YOU'RE ALL I WANT...YOU'RE ALL I'VE EVER NEEDED..."
Showing posts with label the good days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the good days. Show all posts
Friday, January 25, 2013
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
school at home...
well, it seems as if school is on its way...we have made it through the first few weeks and are on lesson 20 in our curriculum...
20 lessons.
i cannot believe that we have started and finished 20 days of school!
i contemplated all the potential catasrophies of this set up and i am happy to say that we have not experienced any of those...the scariest of which included total mutiny, children dressed up like pirates, and kyle and i tied up with rope with duct tape across our mouths.
this post has taken me a little long to write because i didn't want to speak prematurely about how wonderful this all has been but i finally came to the realization that waiting for some sort of inevitable failure is such a pessimistic and grosely ungrateful way to live.
tomorrow may be terrible. i am not naive enough to think that if i say that homeschooling has been wonderful and without trouble that it means everyday must follow suit. i also hope that writing this now will help me remember the good on the days that i most need it.
one of the things that i worried about most was the children's willingness to work with me. it seemed that everyday homework after school last year was a fight. no one wanted to do their work. i had to cut playtime short or delay playtime altogether just so we could get the task done. harper was the worst. she would sit at the table and just stare at the pages, or roll around on the floor picking up her pencil for the 1 millionth time (the purposefulness of this was not lost on me), or just cry about how it was too hard and too much... but my reality has been much different than the school experience of last year. which leads me to believe that my presuppositions about school were well founded. it was just too much.
so here is how our school days look now:
7:00 am--i wake up and do my quiet time and get ready.
7:30 am--the kids get up and start rolling in to my room.
8:00 am-- we eat breakfast
8:30 am--the kids get dressed, make their beds, and brush their teeth while i clean up from breakfast.
9:00 am--we start school with bible.
9:30 am--harper starts math and calvary starts reading. i give instruction to harper, do a couple of problems with her, and then give her the assignment. while i teach harper, calvary usually entertains finley and oliver jack with a book or the sensory rice. then i read with calvary.
10:00 am--i give harper instruction for her science or social studies while calvary gets the little kids started with a show. then i give calvary his instruction for science or social studies.
10:30 am--we go outside for a snack and playtime. they like to ride their bikes and we also play games like mother may i or some sort of made up game involving a ball.
11:00 am --harper does her phonics and spelling. and calvary finishes up with math.
11:30 am--calvary, oliver jack, and finley usually play with play-doh, stamps, puzzles or go upstairs and play together while harper works on her last couple of assignments. she usually has an assignment that is once a week like art, gods of greece, or poetry that she works on during this time.
12:00 -- harper finishes up with reading. we read together and then she does her final assignments while the other kids help me prepare lunch.
12:30pm--lunch
1:00 pm--nap for finley and oliver jack and playtime for harper and calvary. they have been doing all sorts of things during this time. they have made comic books, played iPods, played memory, and watched TV among other things.
2:30/3:00--wake up and snack time.
3:30--lots of friends have been stopping by to play which has been great or we go to the park or run errands.
4:30/5:00--start cooking dinner
6:00-7:30--playtime with all of us since kyle is home
7:30--get ready for bed and watch a show
8:00/8:30--bedtime
since i do a homeschool charter school funded by the state we have a few online classes. calvary has three 30 minute classes while harper has one 30 minute class and two 1 hour classes a week. they have one each on tuesday, wednesday and thursday. it is really awesome to see them in their little classes and using the computer to learn skills that correlate with what we are doing together. and since monday and friday are free i turned monday into our home ec day where were do some sort of sewing project, cooking, or art project and i turned friday into science and nature day where we do some sort of experiment or nature study.
i am not sure how long we will stay with the homeschool charter school because it is so much structure for this free spirit...but that is exactly why we need it now. it has been the perfect transition for us from a traditional brick and mortar school to a homeschool family.
i also love that our whole life no longer revolves around school. our life now focuses on learning, each other, and others to a whole new level. i am grateful for this opportunity and i pray that it is an opportunity that my kids continue to enjoy in the years to come.
20 lessons.
i cannot believe that we have started and finished 20 days of school!
i contemplated all the potential catasrophies of this set up and i am happy to say that we have not experienced any of those...the scariest of which included total mutiny, children dressed up like pirates, and kyle and i tied up with rope with duct tape across our mouths.
this post has taken me a little long to write because i didn't want to speak prematurely about how wonderful this all has been but i finally came to the realization that waiting for some sort of inevitable failure is such a pessimistic and grosely ungrateful way to live.
tomorrow may be terrible. i am not naive enough to think that if i say that homeschooling has been wonderful and without trouble that it means everyday must follow suit. i also hope that writing this now will help me remember the good on the days that i most need it.
one of the things that i worried about most was the children's willingness to work with me. it seemed that everyday homework after school last year was a fight. no one wanted to do their work. i had to cut playtime short or delay playtime altogether just so we could get the task done. harper was the worst. she would sit at the table and just stare at the pages, or roll around on the floor picking up her pencil for the 1 millionth time (the purposefulness of this was not lost on me), or just cry about how it was too hard and too much... but my reality has been much different than the school experience of last year. which leads me to believe that my presuppositions about school were well founded. it was just too much.
so here is how our school days look now:
7:00 am--i wake up and do my quiet time and get ready.
7:30 am--the kids get up and start rolling in to my room.
8:00 am-- we eat breakfast
8:30 am--the kids get dressed, make their beds, and brush their teeth while i clean up from breakfast.
9:00 am--we start school with bible.
9:30 am--harper starts math and calvary starts reading. i give instruction to harper, do a couple of problems with her, and then give her the assignment. while i teach harper, calvary usually entertains finley and oliver jack with a book or the sensory rice. then i read with calvary.
10:00 am--i give harper instruction for her science or social studies while calvary gets the little kids started with a show. then i give calvary his instruction for science or social studies.
10:30 am--we go outside for a snack and playtime. they like to ride their bikes and we also play games like mother may i or some sort of made up game involving a ball.
11:00 am --harper does her phonics and spelling. and calvary finishes up with math.
11:30 am--calvary, oliver jack, and finley usually play with play-doh, stamps, puzzles or go upstairs and play together while harper works on her last couple of assignments. she usually has an assignment that is once a week like art, gods of greece, or poetry that she works on during this time.
12:00 -- harper finishes up with reading. we read together and then she does her final assignments while the other kids help me prepare lunch.
12:30pm--lunch
1:00 pm--nap for finley and oliver jack and playtime for harper and calvary. they have been doing all sorts of things during this time. they have made comic books, played iPods, played memory, and watched TV among other things.
2:30/3:00--wake up and snack time.
3:30--lots of friends have been stopping by to play which has been great or we go to the park or run errands.
4:30/5:00--start cooking dinner
6:00-7:30--playtime with all of us since kyle is home
7:30--get ready for bed and watch a show
8:00/8:30--bedtime
since i do a homeschool charter school funded by the state we have a few online classes. calvary has three 30 minute classes while harper has one 30 minute class and two 1 hour classes a week. they have one each on tuesday, wednesday and thursday. it is really awesome to see them in their little classes and using the computer to learn skills that correlate with what we are doing together. and since monday and friday are free i turned monday into our home ec day where were do some sort of sewing project, cooking, or art project and i turned friday into science and nature day where we do some sort of experiment or nature study.
i am not sure how long we will stay with the homeschool charter school because it is so much structure for this free spirit...but that is exactly why we need it now. it has been the perfect transition for us from a traditional brick and mortar school to a homeschool family.
i also love that our whole life no longer revolves around school. our life now focuses on learning, each other, and others to a whole new level. i am grateful for this opportunity and i pray that it is an opportunity that my kids continue to enjoy in the years to come.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
a day at the pool...
i look forward to summer. summer is the salve to my free spirited soul. just when deadlines, schedules, and the need for perfectly seasoned and laundered clothing starts to become oppressive summer comes in and breathes solace.
oh the joys of going to sleep as the need arises, not waking up before the sun peeks through the curtains, eating meals at a leisurely pace...no homework...oh, curse homework and the person who believes that after 7 hours of elementary education that there is still a need for home work...i need nothing more than the freedom from scheduling for summer to feel and be wonderful.
picking a favorite pasttime for filling our summer days would be challenging because as long as each day was free from any of the elements from my non-summer list i view it as perfectly spent.
we fill our days with popcicle eating, watermelon seed spitting, sidewalk drawing, park hopping, daytime napping, picnic snacking, finger painting, family vactioning and many other gerund-y phrases but i have to say the favorite of my crew is swimming...
it doesn't matter where.
it doesn't matter how.
it doesn't matter when.
it just matters that they can. all of my children love the water. it is a gift which i am expecially grateful for in the summer. i can't imagine if one of my children were deathly afraid of the water because i am sure that my pool time fun would turn into pool time torture.
but everyone...oldest to youngest...enjoys the pool.
harper loves to jump in and dive at the deep end, but she also loves to lovingly tote around finley.
calvary loves to practice getting dive sticks, but he also loves floating with complete abandon in a float.
oliver jack loves to practice swimming from the wall to the ladder, but he also loves to sit happily filling containers on the stairs.
finley...well...she likes to be held. on the side, in the pool, or wrapped in a towel...it doesn't matter...as long as she's held.
everyone indulges my need for gratituous amounts of photos...like here and here
everyone gets along...
and everyone sleeps heavily...and i can think of nothing better than a sweet summertime swim induced slumber.
oh the joys of going to sleep as the need arises, not waking up before the sun peeks through the curtains, eating meals at a leisurely pace...no homework...oh, curse homework and the person who believes that after 7 hours of elementary education that there is still a need for home work...i need nothing more than the freedom from scheduling for summer to feel and be wonderful.
picking a favorite pasttime for filling our summer days would be challenging because as long as each day was free from any of the elements from my non-summer list i view it as perfectly spent.
we fill our days with popcicle eating, watermelon seed spitting, sidewalk drawing, park hopping, daytime napping, picnic snacking, finger painting, family vactioning and many other gerund-y phrases but i have to say the favorite of my crew is swimming...
it doesn't matter where.
it doesn't matter how.
it doesn't matter when.
it just matters that they can. all of my children love the water. it is a gift which i am expecially grateful for in the summer. i can't imagine if one of my children were deathly afraid of the water because i am sure that my pool time fun would turn into pool time torture.
but everyone...oldest to youngest...enjoys the pool.
harper loves to jump in and dive at the deep end, but she also loves to lovingly tote around finley.
calvary loves to practice getting dive sticks, but he also loves floating with complete abandon in a float.
oliver jack loves to practice swimming from the wall to the ladder, but he also loves to sit happily filling containers on the stairs.
finley...well...she likes to be held. on the side, in the pool, or wrapped in a towel...it doesn't matter...as long as she's held.
everyone indulges my need for gratituous amounts of photos...like here and here
everyone gets along...
and everyone sleeps heavily...and i can think of nothing better than a sweet summertime swim induced slumber.
Friday, August 10, 2012
birthday celebration...
i had edited these pictures to the best of my limited ability and they looked great! (great by my own personal standards but not by any professional standards :) ) but then i go to put them here, and all of my editing just vanished. so after literally days of trying...i give up...the important thing is that all of harper's fun and excitement is recorded for future posterity.
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| oliver jack was born for this :) |
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| she doesn't even have to try...cute just oozes out of her naturally... |
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| see? |
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| all grown up. |
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| silly adam with a finger 'stache. |
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| sweet jade...almost a teenager but can still have fun like a kid. |
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| finger 'staches and a unibrow. |
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| painting...well, everyone except for bria who claimed that she "preferred not to get messy". |
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| bria, used crayons instead.... |
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| harper's best friends: bria and ayden |
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| sweet merri...i loved watching her interact with everyone...such caution, such sweetness, such innocence. she is a beautiful girl and i love her :) |
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| favorite picture ever. |
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| one of my favorite girls ever. |
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| another of my favorite girls ever. |
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| pin the 'stache on the man: harper's favorite part of the night because "everyone was laughing so hard". |
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| i love harper's face in these next two pictures...she had the best time and her laugh just says it all. |
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| emmi's plates...i asked her if the cake plate was hers and she started giggling uncontrollably and said, "yes. and this one. and this one. and this one. and this one." |
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| beauty and the beast |
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| bella was a big hit |
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| happy 8th birthday harper faye. i love you more than i could have ever imagined and watching you grow has been one of the biggest privileges of my life. you are full of life and love. somehow you manage to be an unlikely combination of an old soul and free spirit. i know God has big plans for you...that's been clear from the beginning...but seeing you now makes the possibilities seem unbounded. i love you. yesterday, today, and tomorrow ever after. |
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