parade

They were having a parade, I was informed. Of course being the big conscientious sister that she is, Priya hopped on her bike and instructed Sam to pull the heavy sled of junk from the garage,( "candy to throw out at the parade").

small hard things

Here's what I found the other day in Alex and Brett Harris' book Do Hard Things: their top five list of why small hard things are so difficult:

1. They don't usually go away after you do them.

2. They don't seem very important.

3. They don't seem to make any difference.

4. They don't seem very glamorous.

5. No one is watching.

Then the five ways "we fail to do small hard things":

1. Procrastination

2. Inconsistency

3. Compromise

4. Begrudging

5. Cheating

While it's written for adolescents and youth adults, the principles are universal for all ages. It's the small hard things that get me almost every time. Washing another sink (and the counter and the other counter and the stove) of dirty pans and dishes. Finding a place for all those little odds and ends laying around the edges of almost every room of the house. Trying to exert patience at another round of insistent pestering by a small child about a treat or doing a project or reading a book while the dishes pile up, the clutter piles up or the unfolded clothes pile up.

But on my mind is the quote by Mother Teresa: "We can do no great things. Only small things with great love." And another: "We are not called to be successful, but faithful." She said lots of great things and backed them up with what she spent her time doing: things certainly less glamorous than my duties entail.

dirt

I've read and heard that plain old dirt is helpful in curing such disorders as Crohn's disease. Maybe a few regular mouthfuls can be useful in preventing such diseases.

stories

I found a wealth of parenting advice from some unlikely sources: Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy and Ralph Moody's Little Britches. The principles aren't written out with headings and subpoints, but they are there.

I noticed that the parents never berate or criticize each other in front of the kids. They talk about their differences in opinion after the kids are in bed and they aren't loud about it. The kids know the parents have been discussing it, but they seem to trust their parents judgment.

Probably the biggest chunk of parenting advice though, was this: the parents aren't afraid to let their kids do hard things and then allow them to mess up in the process.

In one chapter of Farmer Boy, Almanzo's father lets him (at the age of 10) use his new bobsled to help drag timber from the woods back to the farm. When he gets stuck and when he loads too much on his sled, his dad doesn't bail him out. Almanzo figures it out himself. James Wilder isn't absent nor oblivious, he's just a few yards away. He just doesn't meddle with the process of his son learning important life lessons .

Ralph Moody recalls a similar time in his life when his dad lets him try cowboying the neighbors milk cows. When he works their horse too hard, Charlie Moody directs his son(who is also around 10) to a more efficient way of accomplishing the same thing. Another time, when Ralph takes it upon himself to abuse their horse with a job he didn't get permission for, instead of punishing him for such, Charlie Moody directs his son to channel his 10-year-old energy to do the same job, but correctly. Plus it kept Ralph busy for nearly every waking minute he had for the next two weeks.

Yet, the parents are never portrayed as harsh or unreasonable. Oh, they aren't perfect, but they aren't hurried, distracted and rushed, even though their responsibility list in a day would shame any of us moderns.

In their day, raising children WAS a full-time responsibility, not something we pay others to handle for 8 hours daily while we parents are out doing real jobs. No, I will be the first to appreciate modern conveniences such as disposable diapers, chicken already cleaned and packaged and the variety of cleaning conveniences such as automatic washing machines and electric stoves, but I'm not sure progress involves leaving behind principles that have worked for hundreds of years in regards to our protegy.

For some reason, I can read about all kinds of principles and they slip right on through, making it impossible for me to implement them in everyday life. But a story, well, somehow that sticks and I can conjure up the story with the principle when I need some parenting direction.

swinging

He's knows the concept of pumping to keep the momentum going, but he's still working on the timing of it.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Oh the frivolous ills of the world that would be resolved, if only a few more people reminded themselves of this thought.

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."