Versatile Blogger Award

Thursday started out terribly. I found something that I only knew how to interpret one way. I worked my mind into a muddle as an idea infected my soul and ate away at me. I was well nigh depressed, and that’s a word that’s barely made its way into my vocabulary. Very out of character for me.

However, there was one small ray of light that morning. In the midst of my self-inflicted tribulation (I later found out I had jumped to the wrong conclusion), I received an email from a new acquaintance. Kay, a fellow blogger, sent me the Versatile Blogger award. We had just recently found each other, so receiving an award from her took me by surprise (actually, receiving an award at all surprised me).

You should check out her lovely homeschool blog. I first came across it on October 5^th. She had asked a difficult question that many of us may avoid thinking about as much as possible. What is going to happen to your children if you die? Jesse and I have thought about this, a lot, but have not been able to reach any definite answers. Then, just Wednesday, she referred her readers to a wonderful site that allows you to print free handwriting pages. Since we are trying to scale down our spending this year, I have been investigating all of the free learning sites that I come across, and this one was a huge success with Ian. I have been trying to get him to write smaller letters for a while now, and the site that Kay recommended allows you to select the letter size for your custom handwriting sheets. Amazing! Thanks, Kay, for the award and for the tip!

Here is how the award works:

Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them: check

Tell your readers 7 things about yourself.

Give this award to 15 recently discovered bloggers.

Contact those bloggers and let them in on the news.

So here goes. Seven things:

I always wanted to marry a preacher. That didn’t happen, as many of you know, but God has his own ways of making us blissfully happy. I appreciate Jesse so very much, and I couldn’t ask for a more understanding, forgiving, redemptive husband. He is truly a picture of Christ in my life.

I am an aspiring writer. I don’t know if it comes through in my ramblings, but someday I’d like to write for a living. Books, not just magazine articles. Stories from my own head, not just how-to manuals. Yes, I’m one of those people.

I was a music major in college. And yes, I’m still paying on my student loans for a pretty much worthless degree. I do teach homeschool choir, so at least I am using what I learned in conducting. I could have taken a few more classes and gotten certified to teach in the public schools, but I didn’t want to stick around that long. Once Ian is completely independent, I may go back and pick those classes up, but I would rather get my MFA in creative writing.

If I had a million dollars, I’d buy a farm. Then I would hire people to teach me how to run it. I would love to be self-sufficient one of these days. Preferably out of choice, and not because a weakening economy demands it. One of my grandmothers was so poor, she never even knew the Great Depression hit because her family was already living on as little as possible. I wanna be like that.

I can’t do automatic things if I stop to think about them. I don’t even know which toothbrush is mine unless I grab it without thinking. Most of the time I get by alright because I do tons of things automatically, but when I’m really tired, upset, or generally confused, I’m pretty helpless. I tend to ask Jesse a lot of stupid questions.

I am a homeschool mom of one. Two if you count my niece, but I feel like I must stand out like a sore thumb in our current homeschool culture. I can’t honestly tell you that there’s not enough time in my day, because there is. If I don’t get everything done by the time my husband comes home, it is generally because I slept in or otherwise wasted my time.

I share a home with my two best friends. My husband, Jesse, and my son, Ian, are so cool and fun to be around, that sometimes I feel like I’m hanging out in a college dorm with my two best buds. We’re all of us inquisitive, easily entertained, and just plain silly!

My fifteen favorite recently discovered bloggers:

Okay, well, after searching through the blogs I follow, I have nowhere near that many blogs that I can list here. So I will just list
those that have made the largest impact on my life:

Ever On Word

Home’s Cool!

Elisa Michelle

suehealy

Lola’s Blog

Poetry and Music

I had to retype my poem from scratch the other day. It was either that, or scan it into my computer, and I didn’t figure you all would want to see the product of a very old typewriter combined with a beginning typist. White-out, smudges, and typed-over letters were everywhere! Anyhow, I was struck with how much it affected me to reread my old (and poorly metered) poem. As I typed in the last stanza, I got the chills. Should it have affected me like that since I am the one who wrote it? But it wasn’t the words; it was the message: we are the salt of the earth.

But I would like to know: What is it about poetry that stirs the soul? Why do we identify with it? Why is it that when something is worded beautifully, it resounds within us? Or as in my case, if it merely rhymes.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,

A fountain ever springing:

All things are mine since I am His –

How can I keep from singing?

Even deeper than poetry, music cuts us to the core and lays us open to our emotions. I came across these words while reading Our Last Great Hope. The words stirred me, and I sat there trying to remember the tune. When the melody came to me, I began singing out loud, which didn’t last long because I became choked up and couldn’t go on. Why does music affect me so? Or I guess it’s the combination of music and Truth. It breaks me…

Keith Green

“My eyes are dry; my faith is old. My heart is hard; my prayers are cold.

And I know how I ought to be: alive to You, and dead to me.”

This old song by Keith Green has been running through my mind a lot lately. I had been singing it on and off for days (the parts I could remember), and my 6-year-old finally asked if I knew any more of it. So on Friday, I dug out my seemingly ancient Keith Green CDs and began listening again. I love his music: he was, in my estimation, the Christian version of Billy Joel. He was very straightforward – very blatant in his statement of faith. The words that he chose to illustrate the Christian walk are almost stark: listening to his lyrics gives you the impression that you are being faced with the Truth, with no excuses between you and it to soften the blow.

I know that a lot of Christian artists have written tons of music expounding on the deep things of God, but here’s the kicker: as I was listening the other day, I realized that I had been thinking all these years that Keith Green was a new convert when he wrote these songs. I asked myself why I would have been under that impression all this time; some of the lyrics are pretty deep. How could a person just saved have written so many experience-laden songs about the Christian walk? As I began searching my mind for the answer, I suddenly realized the difference between Mr. Green and most Christian celebrities: he was so humble in his walk with the Lord. His music exudes a meek attitude: the fact that he was so undeserving. It feels like he was a new Christian because (in my mind, at least) he had not had time to develop that attitude of self-righteousness that so many “mature” Christians emit. I think that, above all, I love his honesty about his imperfect walk with the Lord, and his willingness to share his shortcomings with the world in an effort to challenge Christians into a genuine relationship with God.

Challenge: Can we live what we believe? But can we do it without an attitude of self-righteousness? Let’s make every moment count for the Kingdom today – but let’s not feel too proud of ourselves. We must remember in the process that our own righteousness is like filthy rags.