Sweet summertime

Summer’s here. Gone are the days of weekly school planning, lecturing, grading, and making of lunches. (Well, I guess I’ll still be making lunches – just not before 8 o’clock in the morning.) Sure, I’ll be plenty busy doing just about the same things I do during the year around the house, but I’ll be busy doing them during the summer. That’s the difference. Do you see what I mean?

I have a specific pile of books I want to read. I’m actually going to read the same books my husband is reading about the covenants of God and man. I have been VERY interested in this subject for a few years and this summer I finally get to delve into it and read about it and think about it. It is nice to have a season of personal study on a highly interesting subject without a lot of other mental distractions. I don't normally study theology books (that's more in Rob's line). I usually just want to read books to help assist me in private devotions. But we're doing something a little different this summer. The neat part is that because we'll be reading the same books and thinking about the same things, we can discuss them together. We've done that with one book, but never with a group of books. It will definitely be a syntopical study, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

The main priority now is making the final preparations for Candace’s graduation. Rob and I have already gone over each other’s speeches to make sure we aren’t saying the same things. We’re not. My excitement and anticipation is growing as we approach our oldest daughter’s high school graduation. This is a special time indeed. The time of graduation is the perfect time to look back on a person’s whole childhood. What’s it’s been. What she’s meant to me as a mother, and to her father, and to her brothers and sister. What a wonderful time. I could almost write more oratory right here and now, but I’ll spare you. Just come to the celebration with us if you can!

Tomorrow’s our 21^st anniversary! Guess where we plan to eat. None other than Kokomo, Indiana’s Texas Roadhouse! Yeah, we’ve never eaten in that restaurant so we thought we’d give it a try. Nice name.

We had our last regular Wednesday night bible study in our home tonight since we don’t meet for them regularly during the summer. It was very thought provoking tonight. I like it because we go verse by verse and have a format that encourages us to dig a little deeper into a passage. Tonight, we studied Act 13.

I’m sitting here typing in our den which we’ve turned into Josh’s room for the summer. He’s sitting right behind me on his computer. We had to put them this close to share this DSL plug. I don’t know how the boys have it hooked up, but they’ve fixed it somehow.

Well, I need to ready myself for bed. G'bye

Quick note ...

One more day of our co-op school for me. Yep, tomorrow's the finals for the two classes I teach and my final in Hebrew. Both in the college-prep English class and in the Latin class, I've made some dandy four page tests. In Hebrew we will have to translate 5 out of 9 verses from Genesis and parse the highlighted words. I better go study some more or I won't do so hot. Makes me feel like I'm in high school all over again - just the studying for a big test part not the loads of endless energy part. Oh well, better go study.

Oh yeah, we'll be driving to Texas in a week to celebrate Canny's graduation. Yippee!! Hope to see you there!

Later

Feel like I did a lot of walking today
... and I'm ti-ert.

We'll talk later.

Deja vu

Much has happened since my last “what’s going on with me” entry. I can definitely see how an old person like me can forget the events of the recent past unless it is written down immediately. Now, ask me about say the hubbub that surrounded the release of the original Star Wars movies and I can relate every detail, but ask me what happened seven days ago and I draw a blank.

But let’s see what I can dig up. Oh yeah … we picked up Josh at the airport close to midnight last Monday. Now there was a senior moment. Josh’s dad and I were walking through the airport after just having checked on the TV screen to see when his flight would arrive. We still had ten minutes until his plane was supposed to land. We were hungry so we were walking along greedily eyeing all the closed airport restaurants not paying a bit of attention to the stream of passengers who were filing by us on the way to baggage claim when suddenly, I heard a voice say, “Robert and Suzanne?” I turned and saw our own son grinning behind us. We had walked right by him without seeing him standing there waving at us. It seems we had momentarily forgotten why we were at the airport. Silly us. I smiled a ridiculous smile and hugged him.

Since then, all six of us have eaten meals together (even this is a big event when one member of a family has been gone), we’ve gone to our co-op school banquet together, we’ve watched PTO together, and we’ve gone to our first Sunday service together. Ah! It doesn’t get any better than this. All six of us together again! (Remember about that, those of you who miss your friends back at school, your mom, dad, and siblings like to see your shining face, too!)

This week has had a familiar feel to it as though they were all children and we were living together again. But it’s just for the summer. In reality, there aren’t any guarantees that all of us will live in the same house for other summers to come. And so one of my main goals for this summer is to work on my relationships with my "adult children" (now that sounds like a paradox). I want to relate with them differently than a mother to a child and I want them to relate differently with me than a child to a parent. I mean, I’m still a handy advice-giver, but our relationships must change and adapt to this new adult/adult situation. I’m shooting for mutual respect and freedom of expression. Please pray for both the parents and the young adults as we are in this transition. :-)

Thank goodness we have this summer. I’m going to enjoy every minute of it!

Talk it up, fuzzball

Ever been caught in the blog twilight zone? Let me define it. That's where in real life, in real time, one person who used to open up and talk to you stops responding or initiating conversation and reverts to blank looks or very short replies. It stops feeling like conversation at all. Feels more like occasional verbal comments to the other person's blog. Okay for blogging, not okay for healthy relationships. In real life, in real time - talk it up! We all need it, and even when we feel awkward if we'll just try a little, it'l go a long way. Conversation: it's a beautiful thing.

My day, as I see it now

- Algebra at home,
- Tidy up a bit,
- 100 details too boring to mention,
- Go to Carmel to music lessons,
- Make supper,
- Wrap birthday gifts, etc.,
- 100 additional details too boring to mention,
- Go to exercise class with the girls,
- GET JOSHY!!! :-D

Hip, hip, hooray for the tea drinkers of the world!

This morning in a little while I travel the three miles to Canny’s school to attend the freshman orientation for parents. Canny will become oriented to a place where she has spent much of her life the last eight months. But since she is technically passing from a high school student to a college student, it will be a little different to become a full-time student. Exciting times!

Had some interesting visitors last weekend – the Blunts from Scotland.

Our dear friends Rev. and Mrs. Blunt (otherwise known as David and Sybil to their friends) flew over three weeks earlier to visit Sybil’s sister and to visit with a budding fellowship of believers affiliated with their denomination, The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing), in Dayton, Ohio. We were able to drive the 3 hours and pick them up in Dayton last Friday and drive them back on Saturday. It was sooooo good to see them again. They are some friends with whom we have experienced a deep bond. Hope to get to see them again soon someday in Scotland, D.V.

Which brings me to my final topic today – tea. David who was born and raised in England and Sybil who was born and raised on the Scottish island north of the mainland of Britain called the Isle of Lewis are both, of course, stanch tea drinkers. Sybil confesses that her husband is much more chronically hooked on the stuff than she is, and from what I observed, I believe she’s right. I am a tea drinker myself, but more in the vein of the hippy-type American health food nut.

Regardless of the different types of tea drinkers out there, I don’t think we could ever touch the enthusiasm of the famous Samuel Johnson. Note the following excerpt from the notes in the back of a re-printed version of his dictionary:

Tea was indeed “lately … much drunk in Europe.” It first arrived in Europe in the sixteenth century, but was little known outside Portugal and Holland until the seventeenth. Thomas Garway offered it for sale in London in 1657, and in the next year, an advertisement appeared in the Mercurius Politicus for “China Tcha, Tay or Tee.” Soon tea houses sprang up across London. It was Johnson’s favorite drink. Boswell supposed “No person ever enjoyed with more relish the infusion of that fragrant leaf than Johnson. The quantities which he drank of it at all hours were so great, that his nerves must have been uncommonly strong.” A friend recollected that “when Sir Joshua Reynolds…reminded Dr. Johnson that he had drank eleven cups, he replied:-‘Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine, why should you number up my cups of tea?’ ” But calculating his prodigious consumption was a common sport. A woman remembered that she “had herself helped Dr. Johnson one evening to fifteen cups.” In 1757, he wrote a review of Jonas Hanway’s Journal of Eight Days’ Journey, a work that “endeavours to show, that the consumption of tea is injurious to the interest of our country.” Johnson would have none of it. “He is to expect little justice from the author of this extract, a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has, for twenty years, diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and, with tea, welcomes the morning.”

A Sunday meditation #2

Today is Sunday. From today’s sermon, several things arrested my attention. In this world, the children of God will suffer persecution so the question was asked, “Am I suffering for my faith?” If not, then that is probably a sign that I am walking with a low standard. Christ’s standard isn’t low, but I tend to compromise and lower it for myself. I want to make sure I don’t do that. I don’t want to kid myself. I can’t kid God. And what about all those people watching me? I have a responsibility to them. I don’t want to damage my relationship with Christ or damage the name of Christ in those around me. If I’m not living under the blood of Christ then I’m not really living at all. Being true to the walk of Christ is all that matters.

A Sunday meditation #1

Today is Sunday. More importantly, it is the Sabbath. Over time, my mind has changed about how to spend this day. Long ago, I used to treat is as a play day or a work day. A day for my own self to DO WHAT I WANT TO DO. Then as an adult and a growing Christian, the fourth commandment started giving me some problems. The word of God will do that to you. It’s not an easy book. Oh, the commandments are easy enough to understand – just difficult to obey. I started wondering, how is it that commandments 1-3 and 5-10 say what they mean and mean what they say, but commandment 4 is somehow different? I would rationalize that it was not a concrete command like the other ones. After all, isn’t a Christian supposed to live every day unto the Lord? Is Sunday supposed to be any different to any other day of the week? I thought long and hard about that. I kept going back to Exodus 20:1-17 to see if I could in good conscience interpret verses 8-11 any other way than literally. Of course, I don’t have cattle (at present) or male or female servants, but I knew that the essence of the command transcended those details, and I wanted to understand it so that I could obey it. Looking at the fourth commandment in context, I firmly believed that the Lord didn’t want me to make an idol – that would be very wrong. I also knew that the Lord didn’t want me to murder or steal or lie. So why did I waver so much on the issue of one day in seven to be set aside in a special way for the Lord? Those other commandments had not lost their direct application over time so how could I conclude that #4 had?

I finally couldn’t make that assumption any more. There was a quiet change that came over me. I didn’t make a big deal out of it; I just started making different choices on that day. Actually, I started making different choices on Saturday, too. I would try to get more organized on Saturday so I wouldn’t have to do so much everyday chores on Sunday. And on Sunday, I would try to put work off until Monday. I would also read my bible or a devotional book instead of doing some form of recreation.

Now I talk to others on Sunday about the things of God which is a great use of the time. I also like to visit about everyday things, because I don’t think God’s law intends Sunday to be a lonely day. The Lord’s day is a good day to concern myself with the cares and joys of others. I’m sure I still have a lot to learn about this, but then again, life is for learning, isn’t it?

I’m writing this blog as my way of meditating on God’s word this very special day. I hope you’re having a blessed Sabbath!