christian

I've been thinking about the word "Christian" and I've decided that it's among my most favorites. In the biblical book of Acts, it was the name that Jesus followers were first called. It means "little Christs." I'm weary of all the abuse that word has taken. All the fakes it has supported.

Think of it this way...just because there are arguably millions of mothers in history and even in the world today that are terrible doesn't mean that I try to come up with another word to call myself because I don't want to be associated with the mom who drowned her five kids or the one who left her baby in his car sear for over a week to starve while she played video games in the next room. I'm sorry but "guardian of children" or "maternal caretaker" just doesn't have the same ring as "mom."

So rather than reinvent a different name for myself who claims Jesus as my Saviour, I would suggest that I need to define the term "Christian" for those in my circles.

"Believer" is a nice name but it's confusing to those not familiar with churchy type activities and discussions. Believer in what? Angels? Santa Claus? My own terrific abilities?

"Follower of Christ" is nice too, but terribly cumbersome. And I realize that in some places, calling oneself a Christian may elicit a death warrant, but here where uttering the term may elicit a snicker rather than a bounty, I think it's time we help define the word.

Not with the way we want to see Jesus or wish He was, as a reaction against someone or some group who called themselves Christians but didn't rub us the right way sometime in the past . The good thing about Christianity as opposed to any other religion is that the guidelines weren't determined by any human. God did it a long time ago.

And when I get to Heaven, I will join millions of real Christians, many of whom are so much more worthy of the title than I. Jim Elliot, John and Betty Stam, my Chinese, Indian, Indonesians and so many other brothers and sisters who traded their lives for the privilege of being called a "little Christ."

standing

Anneka discovered a new skill this week while riding in the wagon. Why sit when you can stand?

And if the dog gets in her face, Anneka's not afraid to make a grab for whatever she can on Molly's face.

planting

Priya and Sam are "busy" helping Grandpa plant potatoes and onions on Friday. More accurately, Priya is searching out earthworms and wresting them from the dirt while Sam is stomping down the dirt on top of the potatoes. Hopefully with this year's outside help with potato planting, we will have more success than last year when I planted them. A half dozen potatoes are hardly worth digging. I'm still holding my breath that spring is here and that another major snowstorm isn't on the schedule.

home work

Wanna get people freely and ferociously offering their opinions? Try bringing up the subject of mom who work or don't work outside the home. More specifically whether keeping a home and raising children solely is the more biblical mandate.

Reading the boundless blog post on women as homemakers and men as breadwinner and then mostly the comments concerning it just makes me laugh. To me, among other things, this topic is a good lesson in NOT waxing eloquent or theoretical about something you've never experienced. (It's in the same lesson with keeping your comments to yourself about the lady screeching her overflowing cart around Wal-Mart desperately trying to finish her shopping while her child wails and whines. God has a wonderful way of teaching character development with your very own set of similar circumstances in the near future.)

Can or may I just say that being a full-time mom is perhaps THE most challenging job there is? Some days the least fulfilling and probably more days the best. Does one every master all the things involved in it?

Perhaps there are those who have the organizational skills to keep the entire house orderly all day while living in it, do business or otherwise on the telephone while the toddler and preschooler quietly sort and fold clean laundry, prepare healthy, tasty meals and then promptly wash, dry and put away all the dishes involved in that venture in addition to making time for one hour of step aerobics class at 5 a.m. each morning followed by an hour of Bible study and prayer accompaned by a steaming cup of fresh brewed tea or coffee and a homemade caramel roll. I must talk to this person.

Am I busy? I guess so if busy is defined as "always having something to do" and mainly because I am my children's nanny, there is always another load for the washing machine, Meals-On Wheels isn't available for my kind and Pizza Hut doesn't deliver out this far. But the schedule is flexible.

Ultimately I am responsible for the children God entrusted to me. Therefore, FOR ME, paying another twenty or thirty or eighty dollars a day to feed and teach those who I have brought into the world, while I spend 8-5 investing in somebody else is illogical in my mind. In the same breath, I have no doubt that a job outside the home would provide me with daily accomplishment, recordable achievement and end of the day closure, three things sometimes lacking from a day at home.

And just because I honestly believe I would be disobedient not to invest my time right now completely in my home, does not indicate that my procedures are close to being all in shape. Let's just say that Martha Stewart herself might just throw up her hands in despair by just walking into our porch right now.

still winter

It's a good thing our wardrobes have such a plethora of winter wear. It's April 11 and still snowing and blowing and cold. I used to think I'd never make it in a place like Alaska. I probably wouldn't but it helps me sympathize with the locals there. The stunning white covering that snow provides in December or Janary to cover up the dead-looking landscape just doesn't have the same effect in April.

Even Stewpot, the cat has a dazed and confused look (which isn't unusual for her on the perkiest of days) as she picks her way to park her free-loading self by the front door to wait for handouts. She was formerly known as Stewart, a tom cat, until she had six kittens in the dog house a couple years ago. So we switched her name to Martha Stewart and that name digressed to Stewpot.

the heart

I heard an interesting thought yesterday about parenting on a radio talk show. The speaker noted that an older lady noted to him that American parents are raising their kids with their heads and not their hearts.

He went on to explain that many parents today know all kinds of qualified, researched methods for raising their kids instead of just using a little common sense and doing what's best for their particular kids. It's true. The world is full of methods and kids who just need a bunch of their parents time to know they are important. There's the cry-it-0ut method and the family bed methods of getting kids to sleep (to name just a few). Some experts say that nursing a baby beyond a year is of no benefit except to pacify while others claim that nursing well into the first or second year has a long list of benefits. The time-out chair or spanking. Some claim a child's social well-being depends on maximum involvement in preschool, ECFE, dance class, gymnastics and play groups as soon as a child walks while others feel that a child should learn to be secure in his own home with his parent before he or she learns to be independent. And on it goes.

I frequently fall into line that if I read this book or hear this expert talk, I will be able to eliminate the behavior misdeeds of my children. I think God definitely has a sense of humor because while I haven't read everything on parenting, that which I have read rarely seems to apply to my specific dilemma. God creatively has given me three children who more often that not seem not to respond to any of the well-worn, researched methods of eliciting good behavior.

I hope that I am using more heart than head. It makes sense that the One who designed my kids has the best perspective on keeping them on the straight and narrow. That's not to say that a book or idea with God's principles on humankind once in a while isn't helpful for perspective.

bella

Bella comes out on DVD on May 6 and I plan to own it.

I guess it's stories of redemption that get me pulled in. The world is full of awful, terrible, horrendous things and you would just fall into depression to dwell on it. Things don't always turn out good either. There isn't always a happy ending where the girl and the guy kiss and everything is better. But the stories where good comes from the inconvenient, the hard to understand, the horrific, remind me of these words by James Russell Lowell:

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, - Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

The icing on the top of this cake is that the director and main actor have such powerful testimonies of the writing and making of this film. And I like how this movie is described as "a love story but not a romance".

This one rates right up there with Life is Beautiful. But that's just according to me.