Within the Lines

Catching Up

I dedicate this entry to all those friends who call and say, "so, what are you up to?" and I can't possibly think of a thing to say, so I say, "nothing."

I would love to have kept up better than this.  I can't tell you how many times during a week I think about some way to write on my blog about whatever I'm up to.  And that's been the problem.  It's May on the "farm", and I'm "up to" a LOT.  So I'm going to try to do a short (hopefully), intensive update now.

In the past 2-3 weeks, I've worked (with some help) on the following...

     OUTDOORS: cleared a hill--piled all the cut down jackpine trees to burn-- in preparation for fruit trees and berries we plan to put in, removed straw mulch from all the flower beds and cleaned those up, divided the lilies, planted roses, got more seedlings started and cared for those that are up and growing, froze some (seedlings) off  by trying to move them out to our little "greenhouse" shelves too soon then spent a good part of a morning trying to find and set up a better spot in the house, planted strawberries after hand-tilling (pitchfork) the bed, planted asparagus, some herbs, reseeding pearl onions, lettuce, spinach, and peas, potted the peach trees, black raspberries, and elderberries that we brought home from a local farm tho the hill (see above) isn't ready because still awaiting excavating to smooth and prep it, thankfully husband cleaned out the chicken barn but I think I get the goat barn this week -FUN- , cleaned/raked up the hay storage area, cleaned up the dog poop in the yard (which is promptly being replaced by more -- I think our herding dog only knows how to go on the run; our lab cross always wants privacy), I can't remember what else...

     INDOORS:  schooling, reorganized school for the summer schedule, completed weekly to-do plans and menus, worked on the way-behind bookkeeping, started spring detail cleaning of windows, 4-6 loads of laundry per week, 21 meals per week, kept up on the kids' vitamins and health needs, sorted the accumulating and multiplying toys, finished up a baby quilt for my new niece, planned and hosted Bee3's 3rd birthday party, visited f-i-l in nursing home (as mentioned here) while he was still there recovering from heart attack and now learning to manage congestive heart failure, continued to check in with him at home after he came back last Wed. evening, made up a form to help him record and remember his daily weigh-in and diet allowances, caught up on email correspondence, contemplated and journalled about things learned in Proverbs recently -- and other areas as they came up, met and prayed with a friend going thru present trials, went on a couple dates with husband, and

lost 10 pounds!!

By the way, did you see the recent Fox news mention that a stay-at-home mom is worth (conservatively) $117,000.00??  My husband likes to say now that I'm worth more than him!  But I tell him I'd be worth nothing without him making my work possible.

3rd and final installment of Elizabeth Elliot's, Meeting God Alone:

Another source of assistance for me has been the great hymns of the Church, such as "Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven," "New Every Morning Is the Love," "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken," and ''O Worship the King." The third stanza of that last one delights me. It must delight God when I sing it to him:

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

That's praise. By putting into words things on earth for which we thank him, we are training ourselves to be ever more aware of such things as we live our lives. It is easy otherwise to be oblivious of the thousand evidences of his care. Have you thought of thanking God for light and air, because in them his care breathes and shines?

Hymns often combine praise and petition, which are appropriate for that time alone with God. The beautiful morning hymn "Awake, My Soul, and With the Sun" has these stanzas:

All praise to Thee, who safe hast kept,
And hast refreshed me while I slept.
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake,
I may of endless light partake.
Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say;
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

Adoration should be followed by confession. Sometimes it happens that I can think of nothing that needs confessing. This is usually a sign that I'm not paying attention. I need to read the Bible. If I read it with prayer that the Holy Spirit will open my eyes to this need, I soon remember things done that ought not to have been done and things undone that ought to have been done.

Sometimes I follow confession of sin with confession of faith--that is, with a declaration of what I believe. Any one of the creeds helps here, or these simple words: "Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief."

Then comes intercession, the hardest work in the world--the giving of one's self, time, strength, energy, and attention to the needs of others in a way that no one but God sees, no one but God will do anything about, and no one but God will ever reward you for.

Do you know what to pray for people whom you haven't heard from in a long time? I don't. So I often use the prayers of the New Testament, so all-encompassing, so directed toward things of true and eternal importance, such as Paul's for the Christians in Ephesus: ''…I pray that you, rooted and founded in love yourselves, may be able to grasp…how wide and long and deep and high is the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:17, 18). Or I use his prayer for the Colossians, "We pray that you will be strengthened from God's boundless resources, so that you will find yourselves able to pass through any experience and endure it with joy" (Colossians 1:11). I have included many New Testament prayers in a small booklet entitled "And When You Pray (Good News Publishers).

My own devotional life is very far from being Exhibit A of what it should be. I have tried, throughout most of my life, to maintain a quiet time with God, with many lapses and failures. Occasionally, but only occasionally, it is impossible. Our Heavenly Father knows all about those occasions. He understands perfectly why mothers with small children bring them along when they talk to him.

Nearly always it is possible for most of us, with effort and planning and the will to do his will, to set aside time for God alone. I am sure I have lost out spiritually when I have missed that time. And I can say with the psalmist, "I have found more joy along the path of thy instruction than in any kind of wealth" (Psalms 119:14).

Continuing the teaching, Meeting God Alone, from Elizabeth Elliot...

This is a long dissertation from Elizabeth Elliot, that I find to be very practical and applicable.  I need this instruction so I'm posting it here where I'll hopefully see it regularly.  I will post it in 2 or 3 parts.

Meeting God Alone

A very tall man, wrapped in a steamer rug, kneeling alone by a chair. When I think of my father, who died in 1963, this is often the first image that comes to mind. It was the habit of his life to rise early in the morning--usually between 4:30 and 5:00--to study his Bible and to pray.

We did not often see him during that solitary hour (he purposed to make it solitary), but we were used to seeing him on his knees. He had family prayers every morning after breakfast. We began with a hymn; then he read from the Bible to us; and we all knelt to pray. As we grew older, we were encouraged to pray alone as well.

Few people know what to do with solitude when it is forced upon them; even fewer arrange for solitude regularly. This is not to suggest that we should neglect meeting with other believers for prayer (Hebrews 10:25), but the foundation of our devotional life is our own private relationship with God.

My father, an honest and humble disciple of the Lord Jesus, wanted to follow his example: "Very early in the morning…Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed" (Mark 1:35).

Christians may (and ought to) pray anytime and anywhere, but we cannot well do without a special time and place to be alone with God. Most of us find that early morning is not an easy time to pray. I wonder if there is an easy time.

The simple fact is that early morning is probably the only time when we can be fairly sure of not being interrupted. Where can we go? Into "your closet," was what the Lord said in Matthew 6:6, meaning any place apart from the eyes and the ears of others. Jesus went to the hills, to the wilderness, to a garden; the apostles to the seashore or to an upper room; Peter to a housetop.

We may need to find a literal closet or a bathroom or a parked car. We may walk outdoors and pray. But we must arrange to pray, to be alone with God sometime every day, to talk to him and to listen to what he wants to say to us.

Annual HS Conference

MORE SNOW!!  We left on vacation (4/13) with plenty of snow still on the ground, returned a week later to real spring beginning, but just got another snowstorm Saturday that dumped another 8" on us.  Now... I like winter --- in it's place!  But this is getting a bit much!  To lighten our moods about the whole thing, I decided, "well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", and got to making Christmas cookies with Bug10.  It did help turn a not so fun event into a nice time.

For vacation, we headed up to the North Shore.  Hadn't been there before.  We stayed in a great Best Western across the bridge from Duluth (in Superior, WI) Sunday night; then worked our way up the coast shore (I have to stop calling it coast -- I grew up going to the "coast" in northern California.) to Grand Marais where we stayed the next 3 nights.  We did lots of beach-combing and rock-finding.  Hiked in to see Gooseberry Falls and High Falls (up by the Canadian border).  I'll maybe be able to post picts soon; that would help make this all more interesting.  We had a very nice, relaxing time.

On Thursday (4/17), my family dropped me off in Duluth as they headed home, so that I could attend our state (Christian) homeschool conference.  Thursday afternoon there were some pre-conference, "Getting Started" sessions that I attended for the encouragement.  They were very enjoyable and encouraging to me.  Not really much help to my friend who actually is just starting homeschooling.  I think they needed to be much more practical, give more direct how-tos.  Met friends for dinner, the friends with whom I shared the hotel room (fabulous hotel room!); we had a really great weekend, eating, walking, swimming, and laughing together.

On Friday, I had to be there early morning for a training session for volunteering (hostessing one of the conference rooms).  Finishing that, I headed directly for the used book seller hall.  So did everyone else, apparently.  You could barely move in there.  Since I didn't really need to buy anything, I probably would have skipped that mob, but I was bringing some things to consign to one of the vendors.  God used it, tho, to lead me to a used volume 1 of Weaver.  I've looked at Weaver off and on, seriously considering it, but not sure I would commit enough to it to be worth nearly $200.  (I realize it's well worth the money, but #1 I know myself that I'm very bad at following someone else's plan, and #2 that's almost as much as I spend for all our homeschooling for the year.)  In this case, tho, I feel strongly that God led me directly to this, made it affordable, and wants me to follow it.  So, I guess we'll be "weaving" next year.  Bought several more needed items (once you're in, you might as well stay  ), hauled everything to the Coat & Book Check (thank goodness for them!), and headed off for my hostessing duties.  Tho it was sort of nerve-racking at first, I had a great time doing that.  It was nice to narrow down the crowds to a much smaller group, and I enjoyed meeting the vendors that were in "my" room.  After a quick hike thru the (new) vendor hall, I checked my books out to lug back to the hotel room.  That near to killed me off!!  I'm not in that bad of shape, but those were some big -- no, BIG! -- heavy books, several of them.  (Note to self:  next year, buy small, itty-bitty books.)

Saturday would, I thought, be slower-paced, more relaxing because I had a few sessions I was interested in, no real buying left to do.  True -- but just moving from session to session in the massive crowds was a lot of work.  I did have fun meeting and talking with Steve Demme (to tell him how much my daughter loves him and how he saved our math time), who promptly wrote a note to Bug10 -- so nice! -- and Jen Ig who was incredibly nice, but I was too starry-eyed to enjoy the conversation much.  She spoke about it here in her blog, and I am one of the comments.  I was thrilled to find a Worship Guitar instruction course for Bug10 at the YWAM Publishing booth and, in the process, picked up some of their wonderful missionary biographies.  And I found a great book for Son6, Dinosaurs Unleashed, at the Creation Institute booth.  A few other gifts and I was done!  Happy, but done in! 

So, here are the suggestions I will email to our association re: the annual conference. 

1.  There needs to be much more practical how-tos for the many, many newbies that attend.  (Miriam Heppner from Heppner's Legacy is one example of someone with lots of practical knowledge to pass along.)

2.  It would be nice if there were some sort of prayer/worship time to begin -- either once, to begin the conference, or twice, to begin each day.  In the mass chaos and high-pressure vending, it would be really nice to get our focus where it needs to be.  I realize this can and should be done individually, but I think it would be good to do corporately, as well, and would be a good reminder from MACHE that God is to be the author of our homeschooling, not the latest curriculum.

3.  And along with that, I could see a real need for some sort of get-to-know-you, mixer thing.  Where you come into a meeting hall and get together under the banner for your county, perhaps.  It's just plain h-a-r-d to connect with people in all those massive crowds.  Maybe if you're from the Cities and have a super-sized homeschool group, it's easier.  But when you're from the hinterlands and know maybe half-a-dozen homeschoolers, it would really be nice to be given a chance to connect with others.

That's it.  A really nice break from the routine.  And now we're back at it...

April Showers

How we do April showers Minnesota-style:

This is a view of our garden taken this past Sunday, April 6th! 

                   and my snow angels...

We're expecting another foot of snow tonight!!  So, do you think this will bring May flowers??

Another Disappearance