These Taliban threaten me. But I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ who has given His own life for us. I know what is the meaning of cross and I am following the cross. And I'm ready to die for a cause. I'm living for my community and suffering people, and I will die to defend their rights.

- Shahbaz Bhatti, martyred Pakistan minister of minorities

These words were recorded several months before Bhatti was gunned down by four gunmen as he left his mother's house on March 2. Bhatti was the only Christian member of Pakistan's cabinet and an proponent of reforming the country's blasphemy laws for Christians and Hindis.

And I'm really ashamed- of myself- when I read these words. Unworthy of being called by the same name as a man like him. Would I be so bold as to expect to die for my Jesus like him?

No, I carp about the songs I don't appreciate in the Sunday service and complain about having to drive more than 10  minutes to church. I fall asleep on a regular basis when I'm reading the Scripture.

Do I - do we Americans - know what "the meaning of cross" is? I hardly think we have a clue. We're too busy debating whether Scripture is really written by God and whether that Scriptural definition of Hell is really just a cultural straight jacket that enlightened and post-modern people need to redefine. We think we are enough. We don't see need for a Saviour to save us because we're up to our eyeballs wallowing in stinking rotten self-absorbed pride. In the words of Stuart Smalley, whose words ring true more times than ever imagine, we're good enough and smart enough and doggone it, people like us. Or at least that's our main ambition: to be well-liked.

Which is true. You don't pick up friends with talk of eternal torture for rejecting God in life. It's hard to swallow. The "everybody-goes-to-Heaven-because-God-is-loving" goes down so much easier.  Like lots of the Old Testament talk about the Israelites having to kill all the men, women and children of people groups they conquered. It's much nicer to suck on peppermints and sit cross-legged and hum about a world with no war, no guns and no right-wing extremists.

But let's snap up to reality. Has there ever been a minute in history that someone hasn't been fighting? Nope.  Not in a world full of sinners. Especially those who feel they are good enough on their own.

I've noticed a disturbing and convicting trend among those "little Christs" as the word Christian is defined, around the world who suffer for claiming to know Jesus: they don't ask for prayer for relief from their trouble, they want strength to endure it. Ouch.

While we're too busy trying stripping out the cross and pews and replacing them with creepy candles and round tables where we can drink coffee so those "seekers" among us won't be offended by churchy things.

Laura Story's song here brings me to reality that I need to be a little more far-sighted than I am. If I claim to be a little Christ, then my hope is not to be sunk in a fallen world, but to point a fallen world to a place that my Jesus is preparing for me and those who aren't ashamed of Him.

helpful for your medicine cabinet

This could come in handy someday.

It makes me feel like I have the potential to be MacGuyver swapping the duct tape and household chemicals with iodine and Emergen-C and echinacea. Sort of.

hmmm...

For real? I have just one honest question: what was the "special family pet" doing out and about in a red Christmas dress in February anyway? 

(credit: Naomi who was looking through our local Murray County newspaper and located this ad)

finished (mostly)

Sam's room

Priya and Anneka's room (the heaps of clothes on the dresser adds a nice touch, don't you think. But the name boards on the wall, compliments of Becca mostly, drown that mess out.)

the other side of Priya and Anneka's room (the purple paint is compliments of our neighbors who had an unused gallon sitting around, the Madeline prints compliments of the St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Store, the orange plaid chair from Mark's grandpa and the blue table painted by Becca )

our room (yes, I know my photography skills indoors are fabulous)

The hallway: the light fixture is the only good bargain I located at the Brookings ReStore, the bookcase is the masterpiece of Dad whom I conned into creating such a thing from a magazine picture, the wainscotting is from a craigslist transaction.

"He made it for us"

It is now the eighth day of March and we awoke to snowflakes again.

The weather is the universal conversation starter and a common note to whine on.

I am the first to start complaining and the last to quit. But my whining sounds strangely hollow and silly after this reminder from a bowl of moss and pebbles :

"Winter is the season I hear people begrudge the most. As a little girl I loved it—snow angels, snow men, snow sculptures; everything snow. We would send “notes” to airplanes by writing gigantic messages with our tracks in the snow-laden back field. Adventures of crafting the pristine snow into works of child art were the epitome of winter joy, the coziness afterwards you could enjoy only if you braved the elements and returned victorious.

But as I’ve grown to realize the inconvenience of it all (you know, the icy roads, shoveling driveways, layering in static-y sweaters. . .) it’s become very easy to complain. I don’t particularly care to get my socks soaked from endless hours of snow-crafting, plus lots of other people seemed bothered by it all, so why don’t I just join in and complain, too?

But I try to resist. I weakly (and pridefully and humbly) resist complaining. Pridefully because it’s my birth season: akin to heritage, you would never hear an American disown that he was partly Irish. Humbly because just look at it: the Creator of the universe made every snowflake and blanketed every woodland scene and city scape, offering you a look at the world in a new way. It’s beautiful, it’s gloriously breath-taking, He made it for us, and I dare not complain.

Will another Winter slip before I take time to appreciate it’s splendor? On my deathbed I don’t want to remember life as standing at the back door complaining about the weather and then turning indoors to breathe stale, dead air. If you knew there was a letter from a  dear friend waiting for you in the mailbox but you had to journey through the snowdrifts to get it, would you venture out into the cold? Well, each and every snowflake is a letter, a teeny-tiny letter of your Savior’s love for you that proclaims His glory and creativity.

So on this quiet winter day, I think I’ll go on another walk with Bently. And I’ll carry him home as we revel in the sparkling, wispy drifts of snow made just for us."

Read the whole thing here.

snow moments (again)

While it is nearly impossible to get three children looking at the camera at once, they did enjoy the snow candy from the Little House cookbook. We certainly have an abundance of snow.

El would ride indefinitely in her red Torpedo and mostly with a smile.

Priya and Sam sort of worked together for a brief moment to pull Anneka, who was acting like the Queen of Sheba as much as one can in a blue plastic sled.

And here is the brains behind our operation here...

Normal people would have sold most of these critters off on the last day of October. But they have made a fabulous work-out plan for the winter months: when we're not hauling hay and corn for them, we're thinking of a way to maneuver hay and corn to feed them. That's physical AND mental exercise.