It's been awhile...

It really feels like jumping on the bandwagon to be finally adding a new entry to my blog today. I saw Julie and Julia last night and it made me want to blog. It also made me want to eat French food. Le Madeline is right across from the movie theater, but sadly, it was closed. Chili's was not closed and it was amusing how long we took to decide what to get because "southwest" this and deep fried that just was not what you feel like eating after that movie. You want baguettes and brie, or meat baked into bread or anything cooked with wine. And you want some sort of sauce on the side that has butter in it. I wonder what Julia Child thought of salsa. I'm pretty sure, though, if she ever deep fried anything, she probably did it in butter.

I also looked to see if her cook book was at Barnes and Noble, and every one is sold out. By the way, I would watch just about anything with Meryl Streep in it.

A Fresh Look at Philippians 3

There is nothing that will change your perspective on a thing like really needing it. Water is pretty unamazing stuff, until you haven't had it for a day or two. A length of rope is pretty unspectacular, until you're hanging from a cliff. This is what happened for me with one of the most taught-on, preached on passages from the bible, Philippians 3. Now, if you're not completely familiar with this passage, I tend to, in what follows, refer to the passage in a way that assumes knowledge of the passage. (And also keep in mind that Paul was a great persecutor of Christians before he became one and had to repent of being what basically amounted to a multiple murderer.)

I have come to this place in my life before, but probably never in such an exaggerated manner, in a way determined to get my attention. I am looking backwards (but only a moment, or I am lost) at several years of what I thought was doing things right--not just right, but much better than those around me. I'm sitting in a heap of ruins right now--I have been for awhile, so I believe my grieving period has ended--taking a look at what got me here.

I've gone through several losses over the past year, some that came against my will, and some that I layed down willingly, realizing they were beyond redemption--at least any redemption I could perform. So what do I do now? Do I figure out what my mistakes were and try to rebuild a replica of what I lost? Well, like I've said, I've been in this place before, where I walked in pride with a mistaken view of reality and came to a screeching halt when things came tumbling apart just when I thought they were going so well. And trying to redeem it all is what my response has always been. I figure out where I went wrong and go through a period of "self-improvement", hopefully to provide a better outcome.

Now I don't want to say that we shouldn't learn from our mistakes or be willing to improve ourselves, but this approach has not brought me freedom. It's merely ended me up in the same mes I was in before.

Now let's look at the passage that God told me to read this morning and I'll tell you the new way I'm looking at it. It may only be new to me, but here we go.

"Indeed, I count everything as loss compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ." --Philippians 3:8,9

Now when I look back at the list of things that Paul counted as loss, they were things that looked familiar to me. I had always thought of him heroically laying aside all things, risking his life, etc. in order that he may gain Christ. Not to say that Paul is not a heroic figure, but I realize that it is never a proud moment when you have to look at something and count it loss.

The Great Pool Debacle

Here's an example that I just recently experienced. We had a quick set pool last summer that fit neatly on our patio and Abby and Emily played in it all summer while the older kids played in our larger above-ground pool. This summer, Emily was still in need of this alternative, although Abby had grown big enough to join her brother and sister. The pool from last year had been discarded, because it had been so well-used and could not beyond any more patching up. So we invested again in another one this year. But we had terrible luck with the thing. It kept collapsing. (It's one of those self-supporting quick-set pools) I thought this was because it was defective, because the one we had last year didn't do this. So we finally just threw the thing out. (write-off number one). I then began my search for the replacement. Being the end of June and with a mere 3 months of 100 degree temperatures in our future, of course, the stores are already clearing out their summer stuff. This is the annoying part of living in the south and having store chains driven by by New York weather.

So I finally found one quick set pool left at Academy and it seemed a great bargain. It was 12 feet wide and we got it for only $50! I eagerly went home to try to set it up. Well, it was too wide to fit on our patio, so I began to look for a relatively level spot of ground and the closest thing to it was directly in front of our shed. Hmmm... it will block the shed door, but I don't really need anything in there until Thanksgiving right? So I proceed to set it up and it proceeds to collapse while being filled up like the other pool. But I figure it's only because it's not completely level. So I go and by 7 bags of sand from Lowe's to attempt to level it. this of course was not near enough, so I began to transfer shovelful's of dirt from our old sandbox halfway across the yard and also building a ridge of slightly higher ground around the edge of the pool. This was about 3 hours of back-breaking hot work. As it filled up, it seemed to be doing relatively okay, sagging still on the end that was only a yard or so away from our big pool. so I took an old Little-Tikes playscape piece that we never use anymore and shoved that between the big pool and the little pool. Success... or so I thought until Abby tried to get in a swim. The water quickly started going over the side towards the big pool and the whole thing collapsed and washed the Little Tikes playscape half-way across the yard.

Now I wanted to cry. Not only did I have to face Nick, who had thought the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth from the start and advised me not to try this. (When, oh, When will I start listening to my husband?!) But I had 7 bags of sand completely unreturnable, a whole day devoted to obtaining the sand and moving sand and filling to pool lost, and when I remove the pool that I have to return, I'm going to have a really ugly spot in my yard where I put all the sand. By the way, if I'd only bothered to open the instruction manual, the first page says to find completely level, unbumpy ground to put the pool upon. Tell me, who has 12 feet around of this kind of space in their yard?! So the problem with the original pool had simply been, I guessed, that the patio had settled since it's been built on the end towards which we drained the little pool last year. We actually had a tree that almost died from root root because we didn't care for the water well enough and had to empty it too often. I checked with a leveler, and sure enough, the patio was not at all level.

Now what do I do, do I continue to try to redeem this situation? In my stubborner days, I might have actually tried to figure out a way to get that ground perfectly level and smooth. Bring in the construction team! Lay some concrete! Uh... no. Just stop. Move on.

Back to Paul's Life

So this is what Paul was looking at. He devoted his life to the pursuit of what he thought was holiness. He had achievements out the wazoo and alot to be proud of, so he thought. When he was faced with the truth of who his Lord truly was, he came to a fork in the road. He could deny the truth to hang onto the things that brought him the approval of his peers and made him feel good about himself because they were the things he had been taught all his life to value. But no... Paul could not. He valued one thing more highly than all, and that's doing the right thing. He did really want to do the right thing, and when he saw he was doing the wrong thing, he had no choice. He did not have a heart that could live in denial. All those things had to be left behind though to pursue Christ. It's bad enough when you spend $100 on dress that it's too late to return before you realize it looks terrible on you. But how do you feel when you have a lifetime of being mistaken.

You write it off. You cannot try to redeem the past and embrace the future Christ has for you. And you can't embrace Christ and keep your eyes on men. And the approval of men is what Paul had lived for formerly, and so had I. He had done all things correctly, except he had not love--neither the ability to give it nor was he lovable. I'm there... totally there. It's time to take a completely different direction. To write off that past, not hold onto old ways of doing things because it seems a shame to throw away what you've been perfecting for so long.

"Not that I have already obtained all this or am already perfect. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:12,13

I'm a happy tired. :)

Well, we wind up VBS at Central Baptist Church in Round Rock tonight. I was the leader for the music rotation for the 3rd and 4th graders. Jordan had wanted me to be his teacher this year since I had done preschool 2 years ago and was Abby's and Emily's teacher then, then last year I did 1st and 2nd, so I was Brynn's teacher. Jordan's particular group, the 4th-grade boys, was a group that was a particular challenge to everyone this year. There were about 20 of them! And they're boys! And did I mention they're all about 10 years old and... oh yeah, did I mention I get them right after they come from snack, which is usually full of sugar? :)

Actually, they were alot of fun, all four groups were and I got a chance not just to teach music, but there was a part of my 20 minutes where I got to teach bible concepts and that was a blast since on Sunday morning I'm usually teaching 4-year-olds. I love the little kids, but it was fun this week getting to touch on more abstract concepts.

The VBS theme was Hawaiian and my room was supposed to have a waterfall theme. I actually took a picture because I was so proud of the work I did on the waterfall. My kids pitched in too last week by drawing the lines on the palm tree fronds.

Also, I discovered sketching pens! A set was on clearance at Michael's marketed as pens for Manga anime, but as I found, they work just as well for landscape sketches. I'm also including a picture of my first painting that I did without step by step instruction. I simply imitated a painting in the gallery of the author of the instruction book I'm going through. My next step will be to pick my own subject. Nervous about that, but i need to take the leap I think.

To the ends of the Galaxy

A few of you may not know this song, but most of you do. We sang it in church this morning:

"God of Wonders, beyond our Galaxy... You are Holy."

This morning was one of those mornings where I tried to listen to the sermon, but God was preaching a somewhat different sermon to me during the one the Pastor was delivering. This song mentioned above was the last one we sang before the sermon started and God had already started speaking to me about the compass in my heart.

I thought about what it would be like to actually be "beyond our galaxy". If anyone saw the movie "Contact", they begin the movie by panning a shot away from a house on Earth and getting farther and farther away until the Earth is a speck, then our solar system is a speck and then our galaxy is too small to be seen and the sound is completely silent and you're left with this sense of complete awe at not only how small our planet is, but also how far it is possible to be from it. And the bible intimates that God's ways are higher than our ways and his love higher than our love in the sam the heavens are higher than Earth. God is that much more holy and distant from what we are. He is holy. He is beyond all our efforts.

As I imagined being "beyond our galaxy", it just sounded like rest. It sounded wonderful! I really wanted to be with God far away from all else like couples do on their honeymoon, where there is no interference from other obligations, other people, reality in general. :)

Then I started thinking about how distant I am now from even thinking about some of those people in my life that used to mean so much to me--their opinion, I should say, meant so much. There always seems to have been someone in my life whose opinion meant the world to me. In early years, it may have been a guy I had a crush on, or a friend who never really gave me their whole self but always held something back. And that person would then become the only person in the room when they were there, and sometimes would dominate my thoughts when I wasn't around them. It was like I had a compass in my heart like that one in "Pirates of the Carribbean" that always pointed at what you really want. It would always be honed in on that particular person and what they wanted, what they thought about me, how to please them. This compass would usually cause me to ignore people more well-deserving, ignore priorities and dull my sense of responsibility.

And it seems that our heart is made to do this thing, to have someone your hearts compass is pointed towards, someone who matters above all else, an other to care about. And what amazes me is how you can look back at some of those people and wonder, "How could I have allowed that person to mean so much to me?" And yet in the chronicle of a man stranded on an island portrayed in "Castaway", Tom Hanks' character becomes attached to a volleyball that he paints a face on and calls Wilson and truly mourns when the ball is lost in the ocean.

I am amazed at my own capacity to become too attached when I look back at the people in my life with a now objective perspective. I look at grade school pictures of some of the kids I had crushes on and they just look like regular school kids to me now... nothing that stepped off the pages of GQ or anything. And when I was in the work force, the early years, I was around people that I probably would never come across otherwise in my life. I worked at Merry Maids my last semester of college, and most of the women I worked with were very lower income and a few lived in trailers and there was this one women, Gloria, who befriended me who I became very emotionally entangled in the ups and downs of her crazy life. I probably treasured her acceptance because I wasn't exactly the most popular in that group of women, probably since they knew that they had to do this to make a living and I was just making a few extra bucks before I graduated from college and got married. So that fact that she befriended me was received by me with incredible gratitude. Now this woman means nothing to me...simply not on my radar.

Then there was Kim, a 20-something waitress at a Shoney's restaurant. This was a very unglamorous job with unglamorous people. I worked with her after my freshman year in college. I cared about whether she thought I was a good waitress and treasured her friendship. Now I don't even think about her.

I could list many others, but those are the ones that stick out the most for now.

So what this all brought me to actually tied back into the sermon from this morning. Psalm 86:11 says "Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name." And the main idea of the sermon was to know truth, who is a person, Jesus. And our life should be ordered by that truth, or by that person, as is the case. And our problem tends to be that don't have one truth settled in our heart and we order our lives without Jesus as the central principle through which all our decisions are made. I think of an undivided heart as a heart whose compass completely fixed on Jesus.

So the rest that I felt in my heart as I imagined going to the ends of the universe to be with Jesus and everything else grows dim, that is the rest I want without actually having to be separated from people and responsibilities. People would stress me out alot less if I realized how much more important God's opinion is and their opinion would fade into nothingness. I want to have that confidence with people that I would have after a long separation, but I want to separate myself now, in my heart, without actually being separated from the people.

Those people from the past aren't even on my radar anymore.

Lord, can I live this way? Can live beyond the radar and in your embrace? I want to draw near to my Holy God and as I grasp, with the help of your Spirit, Lord, how much more you are, how much beyond, how much better... as I grasp this, all fear of man would simply fall off the radar. Lord, fix the compass of my heart on you. Give me an undivided heart. I pray that you would be the only one whose opinion matters and that I would do everything as unto you.

From 1 Corinthians 7:

29What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; 30those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
32I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

Lord, let my heart be married to you alone.

First attempt at rocks was much more successful than my first attempt at a tree-filled hillscape. I wasn't using the right sponge, technique with the sponge, and this was cheap paper and I was just doing about everything wrong, including not allowing my initial wash to dry before sponging in the negative space.

Here's what I came up with about 5 tries later:

My seascape

This is my favorite so far, because it looks very different from the painting from the instructional book. I just used the instructions as a guideline and ended up wtih something really different.

Doors are more fun to paint than I imagined!

Here's my latest. Nick went to practice bacground vocals, and this is what I did after the kids went down.