"God, help us not to be enticed by evil but to look to you for help in all things."
Thomas, 4/29/13, in response to Proverbs 1.
Showing posts with label God is so good. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God is so good. Show all posts
Monday, April 29, 2013
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Thomas and the Floor Mats
Sweet Tea. It's bad for kids. But good for community and spiritual growth.
If you give a kid a sweet tea in the backseat of your brand new-to-you minivan on a hot day, there is about a 75% chance of that tea getting dropped into the floorboard of said brand new-to-you minivan. Hopefully you will retain your composure enough to a) not cause a wreck and b) not beat your kid after you get pulled over so you can attempt to mop up the soggy mess until you can get home to clean it out. Oh and of course you will have 3 napkins and a used kleenex to do this with.
Anyway.
When we got home, Thomas had to take the floor mat out and scrub it so the mess wouldn't get worse. And since it's a gorgeous day outside, that means bare feet and dish soap in the driveway.
So we drag out the mat (Ewww it's all sticky and gross!!!) and turn on the hose (Mom, why is the water spraying everywhere around the trigger thing? A gasket? What the heck is a gasket?!) and proceed to wet the mat.
"Now Thomas, " I tell him, in my best Mom the Teacher voice, "you need to wet the mat down first with the mist setting, then put some dish soap on it and scrub the whole mat with the brush, and then rinse the soap and dirt away. Then we'll leave it in the sun to dry and it will be good as new."
So I go in the house for five minutes because I know he's going to get completely soaked and I'll be fighting the urge to tell him he's doing it wrong. (I mean seriously Leah, how can you wash a floor mat wrong, cut the kid some slack)
When I come back out he is just finishing up rinsing it.
"Oh hey Mom," he greets me, with his best Thomas the Responsible Preteen voice, "I'm almost finished washing the mat. But I bet you are wondering why I changed the setting on the hose." I wasn't, I was actually wondering how he managed to get more water on himself than on the mat and driveway combined. "Well you see, we started out with mist, and that was all well and fine and all, but once we started scrubbing up the mess with the soap and the brush, the mist wasn't going to wash all the soap off the mat, and what it DOES wash off isn't going to take the dirt with it. So I switched to the full setting. This setting lets me get straight to the soap and dirt and get them out of the carpet but it doesn't blast the carpet into smithereens like the jet setting would do. It's just like Pastor Brian was saying at church this morning. When you are dealing with people in community, sometimes things get messy, just like when I dropped the tea in the car. So you have to help them clean it up. But you can't just dance around the problem they have and you can't just blast them with 'you need to do this to fix your problem, so just do it'. You have to use the right setting to help them clean up their mess."
When did he grow up so much?!
I am so very thankful that God has placed us where he has, in a community of believers who love my family and pour the truth of the Gospel into them. Who invest their time and talents into us. And who aren't afraid to use the full setting to help us get the sweet tea out of our floor mat lives.
If you give a kid a sweet tea in the backseat of your brand new-to-you minivan on a hot day, there is about a 75% chance of that tea getting dropped into the floorboard of said brand new-to-you minivan. Hopefully you will retain your composure enough to a) not cause a wreck and b) not beat your kid after you get pulled over so you can attempt to mop up the soggy mess until you can get home to clean it out. Oh and of course you will have 3 napkins and a used kleenex to do this with.
Anyway.
When we got home, Thomas had to take the floor mat out and scrub it so the mess wouldn't get worse. And since it's a gorgeous day outside, that means bare feet and dish soap in the driveway.
So we drag out the mat (Ewww it's all sticky and gross!!!) and turn on the hose (Mom, why is the water spraying everywhere around the trigger thing? A gasket? What the heck is a gasket?!) and proceed to wet the mat.
"Now Thomas, " I tell him, in my best Mom the Teacher voice, "you need to wet the mat down first with the mist setting, then put some dish soap on it and scrub the whole mat with the brush, and then rinse the soap and dirt away. Then we'll leave it in the sun to dry and it will be good as new."
So I go in the house for five minutes because I know he's going to get completely soaked and I'll be fighting the urge to tell him he's doing it wrong. (I mean seriously Leah, how can you wash a floor mat wrong, cut the kid some slack)
When I come back out he is just finishing up rinsing it.
"Oh hey Mom," he greets me, with his best Thomas the Responsible Preteen voice, "I'm almost finished washing the mat. But I bet you are wondering why I changed the setting on the hose." I wasn't, I was actually wondering how he managed to get more water on himself than on the mat and driveway combined. "Well you see, we started out with mist, and that was all well and fine and all, but once we started scrubbing up the mess with the soap and the brush, the mist wasn't going to wash all the soap off the mat, and what it DOES wash off isn't going to take the dirt with it. So I switched to the full setting. This setting lets me get straight to the soap and dirt and get them out of the carpet but it doesn't blast the carpet into smithereens like the jet setting would do. It's just like Pastor Brian was saying at church this morning. When you are dealing with people in community, sometimes things get messy, just like when I dropped the tea in the car. So you have to help them clean it up. But you can't just dance around the problem they have and you can't just blast them with 'you need to do this to fix your problem, so just do it'. You have to use the right setting to help them clean up their mess."
When did he grow up so much?!
I am so very thankful that God has placed us where he has, in a community of believers who love my family and pour the truth of the Gospel into them. Who invest their time and talents into us. And who aren't afraid to use the full setting to help us get the sweet tea out of our floor mat lives.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Red Light, Green Light
For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, you can find out more about Schizoaffective Disorder here and ECT here Or Google them.
If you had to take a guess as to what question I get asked most frequently is, what would you think? And no, "how are you" and other generic pleasantries don't count.
If you guessed "How is Joe doing?", you win the prize! (The prize is the satisfaction of being right. Hey, I'm cheap, I'm not giving you a REAL prize!)
I'm not going to go into the whole back story right now (though I probably will blog about it at some point). Since my stats tell me I have quite a few stalkers out there now (Hi everyone!!), writing a blog post is probably the fastest way to update everyone all at once.
Most (some?) of you know that Joe, my husband, is disabled. He suffers from schizoaffective disorder. Click the link at the beginning of the post if you want more info about it.
For some time now, medication therapy has not been working. We've done it all. Well I'm sure we missed a particular drug or two, but we've pretty well hit every combination of every category of drug approved for the treatment of mental illness (and a few that were not!) to no avail. About 3 years ago, the doctors started bringing up a treatment called Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT.
If you had to take a guess as to what question I get asked most frequently is, what would you think? And no, "how are you" and other generic pleasantries don't count.
If you guessed "How is Joe doing?", you win the prize! (The prize is the satisfaction of being right. Hey, I'm cheap, I'm not giving you a REAL prize!)
I'm not going to go into the whole back story right now (though I probably will blog about it at some point). Since my stats tell me I have quite a few stalkers out there now (Hi everyone!!), writing a blog post is probably the fastest way to update everyone all at once.
Most (some?) of you know that Joe, my husband, is disabled. He suffers from schizoaffective disorder. Click the link at the beginning of the post if you want more info about it.
For some time now, medication therapy has not been working. We've done it all. Well I'm sure we missed a particular drug or two, but we've pretty well hit every combination of every category of drug approved for the treatment of mental illness (and a few that were not!) to no avail. About 3 years ago, the doctors started bringing up a treatment called Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Letter to the Readers
Dear Reader,
First of all, humor me. I am pretending you exist and that I am not just writing this blog for the amusement of the magic internet faeries.
Before we go any farther, I thought there were a couple of things you might need to know.
I started this blog because there was never enough room on FaceBook to fully write an open letter. That and people tending to think said letters were directed towards them specifically, which is generally not true. I am a pretty sarcastic person by nature and sometimes I just need an outlet to get the snark out, ya know?!
Apparently, some people think I am funny. Or have a talent for writing. Or something. While those people may or may not have issues, I am choosing to think that I AM, in fact, funny and DO have a talent for writing. Take that, 11th grade English teacher who refused to give me an A no matter how good my papers were! "If it's not good enough to be published, I can't give you an A for it. A is for excellence."
It's possible I might have some stalker tendencies. I check my stats and get really excited when I have a page view that isn't mine. Yeah, I know. Anyway, if you ARE reading this, drop me a comment. You can remain anonymous if you REALLY want to. That will slowly drive me crazy, just so you know. Or crazier. Whatever.
I've made many attempts at blogging over the years but most of those have failed because the blog lacked direction. So I'm trying to keep the format of an open letter so the blog will have focus. This will probably change over time, but it's a start! And I've managed to keep it going this long!
Some things about me that you might not pick up on just due to the nature of this blog:
First of all, humor me. I am pretending you exist and that I am not just writing this blog for the amusement of the magic internet faeries.
Before we go any farther, I thought there were a couple of things you might need to know.
I started this blog because there was never enough room on FaceBook to fully write an open letter. That and people tending to think said letters were directed towards them specifically, which is generally not true. I am a pretty sarcastic person by nature and sometimes I just need an outlet to get the snark out, ya know?!
Apparently, some people think I am funny. Or have a talent for writing. Or something. While those people may or may not have issues, I am choosing to think that I AM, in fact, funny and DO have a talent for writing. Take that, 11th grade English teacher who refused to give me an A no matter how good my papers were! "If it's not good enough to be published, I can't give you an A for it. A is for excellence."
It's possible I might have some stalker tendencies. I check my stats and get really excited when I have a page view that isn't mine. Yeah, I know. Anyway, if you ARE reading this, drop me a comment. You can remain anonymous if you REALLY want to. That will slowly drive me crazy, just so you know. Or crazier. Whatever.
I've made many attempts at blogging over the years but most of those have failed because the blog lacked direction. So I'm trying to keep the format of an open letter so the blog will have focus. This will probably change over time, but it's a start! And I've managed to keep it going this long!
Some things about me that you might not pick up on just due to the nature of this blog:
- I'm first and foremost a follower of Jesus Christ. He is my reason for everything in life. Please don't let the angrier of the posts fool you - I am committed to being daily molded to the image of Christ. That is another reason I started this blog; I noticed a creeping tendency to blurt things out and sometimes those things were inappropriate and/or hurtful. This blog is an outlet for me to get those things out of my system.
- I'm so incredibly blessed to be married to my wonderful husband. Every day I love him more than I did the day before.
- We have 2 great kids. I mean really great. Other people think their kids are great, and I'm sure they are, but ours are freaking great. I'm just sayin'. And they do not get their sense of humor from me. Or their use of sarcasm. I'll take full credit for their philanthropic tendencies and loving natures though.
- I work as a school finance and record keeping secretary at a public school in North Carolina with about 450 students. These kids are largely "from da hood" and live in poverty. This tends to lead to me using my "ghetto voice".
- I have a real passion for children and mental disabilities, both together and separately. This tends to come through in my writing. I may be prone to jumping up on my soapbox and going off when one of these hot button issues is pushed.
- I don't do secrets well. Or double lives. What you see is what you get. I'm not going to pretty it up to make myself feel better, though I do try to spare feelings when possible.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Open Letter #11
Dear Sweet 10 1/2 Year Old Child of Mine,
Thank you for teaching me more about the love of God. Thank you for showing me how to trust God more through your example. Thank you for making me a better person.
You have a million questions and I only have about half the answers. You push me to find them, and in doing so I am able to further my own knowledge and understanding.
You make me laugh with the funny way you understand things. I think you get that from me. It's probably my fault for trying to wrap every explanation into an easy-to-relate-to scenario. This is probably why you told me heaven sounds like an episode of The Waltons. Thanks for breaking that down for me. I think we may need to revisit that particular scenario.
You have the sweetest prayers. Seriously. You can bring adults (even those OTHER than your dear old mom) to tears with the fervency and sincerity of your pleadings with God. You have such a strong faith - you don't doubt for one second that God is there and that he is listening specifically to you. I have yet to hear you pray anything for yourself. I am sure that you do, and I know that some of the things you pray for are indirectly for yourself, but you always put others first in your prayers. We're working on that being evidenced in your deeds, but I have no doubt we'll get there eventually.
The suffering of others truly bothers you. You are always outraged at injustice and want to fix it, and fix it now. Even from a very young age, you have always been compassionate towards those less fortunate than you. You are also truly color and ability blind. You don't care what other people will think or say about you. You see others the way God sees them - as special and unique individuals worthy of your time and energy. You actively seek out those who are different and strive to incorporate them into your life. That's a lesson we all could stand to learn.
Please forgive me for being short tempered with you at times. Your mom is a sinner just like the rest of the world, and sometimes that gets the best of me. I need to be more patient with you. I need to be more understanding. I need to recognize that the Son of God offered himself up on the cross as a sacrifice to save you from your sins, and that then he gave you to me to love and care for. To guide and nurture, and to point back to him on a constant basis. I know I have made many mistakes and will continue to make them, but I pray that you will forgive me for them and that God will continue to shape and mold me to be the best mom to you that I can be.
Thanks for letting me be a part of your life's story.
I love you more than you will ever know,
Your Mama
Thank you for teaching me more about the love of God. Thank you for showing me how to trust God more through your example. Thank you for making me a better person.
You have a million questions and I only have about half the answers. You push me to find them, and in doing so I am able to further my own knowledge and understanding.
You make me laugh with the funny way you understand things. I think you get that from me. It's probably my fault for trying to wrap every explanation into an easy-to-relate-to scenario. This is probably why you told me heaven sounds like an episode of The Waltons. Thanks for breaking that down for me. I think we may need to revisit that particular scenario.
You have the sweetest prayers. Seriously. You can bring adults (even those OTHER than your dear old mom) to tears with the fervency and sincerity of your pleadings with God. You have such a strong faith - you don't doubt for one second that God is there and that he is listening specifically to you. I have yet to hear you pray anything for yourself. I am sure that you do, and I know that some of the things you pray for are indirectly for yourself, but you always put others first in your prayers. We're working on that being evidenced in your deeds, but I have no doubt we'll get there eventually.
The suffering of others truly bothers you. You are always outraged at injustice and want to fix it, and fix it now. Even from a very young age, you have always been compassionate towards those less fortunate than you. You are also truly color and ability blind. You don't care what other people will think or say about you. You see others the way God sees them - as special and unique individuals worthy of your time and energy. You actively seek out those who are different and strive to incorporate them into your life. That's a lesson we all could stand to learn.
Please forgive me for being short tempered with you at times. Your mom is a sinner just like the rest of the world, and sometimes that gets the best of me. I need to be more patient with you. I need to be more understanding. I need to recognize that the Son of God offered himself up on the cross as a sacrifice to save you from your sins, and that then he gave you to me to love and care for. To guide and nurture, and to point back to him on a constant basis. I know I have made many mistakes and will continue to make them, but I pray that you will forgive me for them and that God will continue to shape and mold me to be the best mom to you that I can be.
Thanks for letting me be a part of your life's story.
I love you more than you will ever know,
Your Mama
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