Love of learning

Education is always trying to figure out how to instill a love of learning. I think we just have to learn how to NOT stomp it out. Hannah is constantly learning and gets angry if anyone gets in her way. Example: she practiced putting on and taking off her jacket for at least an hour. She insisted I help her start the zipper every time. Then it was bedtime and she insisted on sleeping with the jacket. Now there is a passion for learning! Another example: Olivia was so excited to tell me about math problems, as if they were a brand new invention. "First they give you 2 numbers in a row like 1 plus 2, then a blank, and you have to figure out the answer and write it in. Isn't that exciting?!" This was not sarcasm...she was honestly thrilled! Another example: Melanie is getting paid to sit in a gorgeous, state of the art hospital and just read magazines and watch movies because there are no patients yet. She hates it because it has no meaning and she is not being challenged. Hmmm...is that why kids start hating school? Last example: Darrell has a liberal arts degree with a double major as well as a masters degree. He also has 16 years experience as a pastor. Now he wants to be a pastor in the Lutheran Church and they are "making" him take a year of classes in seminary and possibly do an internship. This makes me angry for him, but he couldn't be happier. He loves his classes and welcomes the reading of about 100 pages a night. Thanks, Darrell, for being the best example of a lifelong learner that I have seen. Thanks for not being content with an easy paycheck, Mel, but insisting on relevance and challenge. Thanks for showing us how exciting learning is, Olivia. Thanks, Hannah, for reminding us how important learning is, and for refusing to let anyone stop you from it.

Committed

If I call myself "committed" it can either mean I have nobly set my heart and mind on accomplishing something, or it can mean someone has forced me into a mental institution. Why do we use the same word for that? I have spent my adult life walking with Jesus. Sometimes I have messed up and slipped off the path but He has faithfully stayed by me and picked up the pieces and makes me strong again. I want to re-commit myself to God's way for me. I want to live the rest of my life as close to His will as I can get, by His power. I know that religious fervor often accompanies mental illness. I don't want to become one of those crazy Christians shouting at no one on the street corner, but I also don't want to be a silent, undercover Christian. I don't know what this will look like, but I am ready to find out all that God has planned for me and do whatever He says. Phil 4:14 "I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward - to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back." Please don't commit me, but I am committed to this.

Hannah

Hannah and I got the opportunity to hang out together last night while Dan and Amy went on a date. She is a funny, sweet, and wonderful little person! She is starting to talk, she likes to play chase, and she plays the piano. We played "grandma builds tower and Hannah tears it down." When I fed her supper I gave her a little plastic fork and she played airplane with it. She spent quite a long time trying to make a doll shoe fit on her toes. She did eventually give up and put her own shoes on (with my help). Although Hannah is still not bigger than Max, she shoves him away when he gets too kissy; Max seems to know she is the boss. Bedtime was sweet - 2 books, then rocking. She laid her head on my shoulder without any fuss at all and went right to sleep. I can't imagine anything more peaceful than rocking your granddaughter to sleep.

Power of parenting

How long do parents' actions affect their children? The positive stuff, I believe, is for eternity. The negative stuff, by the grace of God, has an end but it can last a long, long time. Today I was really surprised to find that after 40 years, my dad's death still had the power to make me cry. I was at a Crisis Response Training. The trainer talked about her experiences being called in to respond to national crises like the Columbine shootings. She told her experience of asking a little boy what it was like to be a 4 year old who lost his daddy. The trainer helped us understand the importance of asking that hard question. I realized no one ever asked me that after my dad died. In fact, no one said anything. When I went back to school, I wasn't sure if everyone was afraid to ask, or if they just didn't know that my dad had shot himself. None of us in the family even talked about it. Back to the crisis training: the next thing the trainer said that started to unleash my tears was that when a child loses one parent through death, they also lose the other parent to grief, sometimes for a very long time. It really touched my heart because I knew I never did completely get my mom back. She became a bartender after dad's death and spent the rest of her life taking care of sick men. I hadn't thought about the fact that I really lost both parents. She had to deal with it in her own way. Mom said just recently, "oh by the way, I have been meaning to tell you kids...Uncle Glenn said that your dad's death was an accident - that he was trying to fix an old gun of your grandpa's." What?! 40 years later she says "oh I've been meaning to tell you"...?! So I started asking siblings what they remember- the only thing our memories agree on was that the death was suicide - that he shot himself in his own mom's garage. No love for his own life, let alone his family. One sister said it was a relief that the pain was over when he was gone. One brother believes it was a personal assault on him - that the grenade blew up in his hand in Vietnam the same instant that dad died and there was some kind of weird cosmic connection at that moment. I had believed all these years that there was a suicide note that blamed us - a family who didn't love him. No one else remembers a suicide note. Even though we all have a different take on what happened, it affected us all in ways that we may never understand. I had no idea that something that happened 40 years ago could still make me cry. God promised that in the next life there will be no more tears, so I know the negative parenting will lose its power. But God's power working in a loving family is eternal. My life is nourished daily through the love of my husband Darrell. I see my own children loving their lives, loving their family and loving God. I believe my grandchildren will have the same heritage, and the love will last forever. I would like to believe that was the last of the tears over my parents' choices. But if not, God promised that there will be a day with no more tears, and that will be eternal. Now there is some powerful parenting! Thank you, Father!

Rev 21 "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things have passed away."

Thanks for allowing me to talk about this and for reading. I hope you will leave a comment to show that it really is OK to talk about it. You can't say anything "wrong". Also, I recommend watching a video of Jeremy Camp's "There will be a day". It is so beautiful! If you do, please comment on that as well.

Wordle

Have you seen Wordle? It takes a bunch of text that you feed it and it makes a beautiful word cloud. Look at this one that I made from the Lift My Eyes blog. (Thanks, Lianna!)

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/912546/Longs_Peak

For my going away present from Future Pathways, the teachers all came up with words that described me and made a beautiful Wordle that they framed for me. On the matte surrounding the wordle, everyone wrote a few words to me and signed it in different colors. It is so beautiful and meaningful! I will hang it in my new office at Prairie Crest Elementary.

Roller coaster

It is weird how life can be so up and so down on the same day sometimes. People can laugh and be silly on the same day that they are very sad and mourning. How can that be? Not sure if that is resilience or just plain crazy. What do you think?

Coming back to life

Have you ever made up your mind to do something and then do the opposite? examples: ("I am going to lose 5 pounds" then you eat 5 pounds of food in one sitting) ("I am never going to get drunk" then the margaritas go down a little too fast) ("I am going to be loving in all my actions" then you curse the guy that cuts you off on the highway). I was despairing over these battles and Darrell read this out loud to me out of the Message and it was exactly what I needed to hear. It is so rich! I hope you will take time to read it. If you like what you read, try they video at the end. One of my favorite songs - it makes me cry. (I can hear what you are thinking, Daniel). :) Romans 7 I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. Romans 8 The Solution Is Life on God's Terms With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored. But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's! So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! http://www.videopile.com/video/4XmDKljqxTmG

Adopted!

I looked on Craig's List today and found a family in Newton looking to adopt a family pet. I told them about Scat and Emmy and they were so excited! They came tonight to meet them and already adopted them! It is a really nice family with 3 little kids. I told them how good Scat and Emmy are with my granddaughters and they were so happy! Scat and Emmy will be pampered and loved.

Up for adoption

My two sweet kitties need a home. I thought my neighbors were going to adopt them but they decided they only wanted one and got one from the animal shelter. Please check with your friends and see if anyone would like Scat and Emmie. They have to stay together. They are up to date on all shots and flea control, spayed and neutered, no bad habits, they let children hold them without protest, very loving...they cannot be farm cats unless someone feeds them as they will not hunt. They play with the hamster. Scat tackled a squirrel but did not harm it. Landlords are coming to assess the house on Tuesday. I need to have them out by then. Please help!

And More Family

Went to Polk City last night to see Hannah, Amy, and Dan. I don't know why it always surprises me to see how fast babies turn into little toddlers, but it does. She changes every time I see her again! Hannah is eating by herself all kinds of big people food...she also walks around in shiny silver flip flops, plays the piano and drums (pan and spoon - makes one of the best drum sounds ever!), and created her own lazy boy out of an outgrown car seat. One thing that doesn't change is her beautiful smile..what a dolly she is! And I got a beautiful framed picture of her for Mother's Day, too!

After checking out how all the vegetation is doing in the yard, we headed over to Sophie's graduation celebration. It was funny and touching at the same time. 3 year olds graduating to the 4's, 4's graduating to Pre-K. They sang (yelled) songs - pretty funny. Only one child cried on stage, everyone else was happy or ecstatic. Sophie stands out like a bright, shining star with her florescent hair, brilliant smile, and bubbly personality. I couldn't take my eyes off of her...except when that one boy was screaming so loud I couldn't think. (hee, hee!)

You might think I only have grandchildren, but no! I also have children, all grown up but always children to me. So here is a little update on what I know - Amy is working on a new business that will use some of her artistic talents, Dan is getting his new boat that he has dreamed of and saved for (Amy made sure it is big enough for all of us), Mel is finding many new opportunites in nursing to apply for and growing by leaps and bounds in her faith (persecution does that), Shawn and Lianna are making room in their house for a bunch of children, and Steve has been spending a lot of time at work and taking care of family and Rosie.

Darrell has applied for several jobs in Iowa City that he is praying for. The ministry process is proving to be very long, so he is looking at jobs that he could enjoy as he is waiting. His two favorites are at Kirkwood and MECCA. Maybe he will even find that the job he takes while waiting will actually BE his new ministry. Who knows? He is so willing to try new things - I like that adventurous spirit!

I am blessed to have a family that loves each other. Thank you, God!


Philippians 2
If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

Family

Having Olivia and Sophie stay with us this weekend has inspired me to start blogging again. Darrell and I get such joy out of seeing the world anew through their eyes. It started with watching Olivia's soccer game. Then we had a great time doing simple things: playing with the pets, picking flowers, having a picnic (Darrell does a great job on the grill!), walking to the playground (just getting there is an adventure), going to TCBY, (Olivia wanted to know what it spelled - I told her Ticbee). We had a great time together just being family. Of course, we are never just people family - this time we were a bird family according to Sophie. We ate our picnic in the top of a tree and flew everywhere we went. I tried to prevent discussion of worms during supper, but not very successfully. We have also been kittens and puppies in the past.
Famous quotes for the weekend:
Sophie: "I am eating my food that is NOT worms."
Olivia, "Have you noticed I am a much quieter person now?" she said as she sat up straight with her hands folded in her lap. I said maybe because she can run off her energy in soccer. She smiled sweetly and quietly said, "No, I have just changed." I was sad for a moment and wanted to say, NO don't ever change! but it was precious, too; of course she will change and grow up. But at 8:30 in the car coming home from eating ice cream, it was as loud and rambunctious as ever with goofy made-up words and laughter and songs. It was wonderful!