Memorial

Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's cello suites. A fire crackling. Dusk slowly enfolding us. The washer and dryer rumble gently below the floorboards. Peace. Quiet. Contentment.

Today is a day for remembering...for so many people in so many different ways. The Israelites had stones, feasts, cords and tassels for remembering. When Amy Carmichael established Donavhur, she set great value by the importance of days and events (I am currently reading A Chance to Die).

Perhaps in this fast paced life called America I forget the importance of the slowing down called remembering. With remembering can come sorrow...and...with remembering can come thankfulness.

Thank you Father that you never change.
Thank you that you are our Rock and Fortress.
Thank you that you are our Feast.
Thank you that you are our Peace.
Thank you for memories...good and bad.
Thank you that even when we do not have words, Your Spirit does.
Amen

the illusion of distance

I am blessed beyond measure.

I have 3 beautiful children and 5 loving and wonderful gift-children. I am showered with acts of love: cards, flowers, pictures, chocolate, tea-cup, book, delicious meals...words of affection and affirmation.

I have an amazing mother who has done nothing but love me unconditionally all my life. She is a light that has given me light. She is comfort and has taught me to be a comforter.

I am blessed beyond measure.

Today I take out a precious little carved box that I seldom open. I lovingly run my fingers over the pictures and words carved into the box. I hesitate to open it and set it back down. I come back again and gaze at it longingly. I refuse to cry. I slowly open it........

Topaz....
10,000 miles .....
17 months......

I miss you my darling one...my precious first-born daughter. Will it be like this as each one of these beautiful gifts grows up and goes out on their own? Will I put them each in their own special box in order to protect my tender heart? Will I only think of them in fleeting moments, knowing that I still love them desperately....but also knowing that love and distance can overwhelm me?

It is a wonderous thing to take a child and with trembling fingers remove them from myself and place them in HIS hands. It is a humbling thing to recognize that she is her own woman now, that each of these gifts will step out our front door one by one.

I miss you my darling, complicated, independent, beautiful, smart girl.

Topaz.....
10,000 miles.....
17 months......

O Lord you are my God
I will exalt You
I will give thanks to Your name
For you have worked wonders
Plans formed long ago
With perfect faithfulness
Isaiah 25:1

Cacophony

I sometimes wonder what our neighbors think of our large brood. We bring movement and noise into the neighborhood in a big and loud way.

The weather continues to be gorgeous and we love being out on the deck. Last night Emerald practiced her trumpet on the deck, Jasper played his saxophone in the living room soon followed by Sardius on his violin. Often all this is accompanied by Hyacinth on her flute or the piano.

To us, this is a joyful noise and not a cacophony....although it may sound like it at times :). Our neighbors have never complained, which leads me to believe that perhaps they enjoy these signs of life as we do.

It is the end of the school year....a busy time. This morning was Electrum's spring concert. He looked so cute and serious as he sang "Dial 555 Meow". Tonight is Sardius's orchestra concert and tomorrow Hyacinth's ballet performance. Quartz rehearses everyday for next weekend's 4 performances of Tartuffe and Jasper and Emerald prepare for the band concert on Thursday.

Busy, busy and yet so wonderful and fulfilling.

Thank you again and again my Father for this life you have given us. You have restored by Your mighty hand that which was destroyed. You have turned my mourning into dancing and I will praise you with all that I have. May every breath, every joyful noise reflect your glory and beauty. And oh my Father when life seems more cacophony than symphony please by Your Holy spirit remind us that is Your son's amazing sacrifice that has brought us peace and salvation . I love You oh my Father.....may it ever be so. Amen and Amen.

a new and unbearable disturbance

Anonimo and I both worked a long day: 10 hours. We came home to three precious jewels completely oblivious to the dishwasher that needed to be emptied, the floors that needed swept, the trash that needed to be taken out.

All of this was not a new disturbance. We have faced this before and it is sometimes hard for us to believe the utter unawareness of surrounding that our dear children suffer from. But they do, they are just children after all. They have not taken on the mantle of responsibility to mortgage and maintenance.

Something has to change though....for their sake. Because someday they will have these responsibilities of their own and it is our job to prepare them. What will it be this time? Another chart? Another schedule? I am not sure. Prayer and thought is needed here :).

I handed out fierce instructions to all 3 and then Anonimo and I escaped off to dinner together where we fumed and vented and immediately felt better. We felt even better after ice cream. Or did we just feel full? Too full.

We returned to a home that was happy to see us and a relaxing evening. We made the decision last year to get rid of our TV. I have enjoyed evenings ever since then....a sweet peace and quiet. A time to talk, study.....read.

One of my finds from the weekend rummage sale was the book One Man's Meat by EB White, the author of Charlotte's Web. This book was written in 1938 and is a journal of those next few years of his life. I was struck by the following passage:

The news of television, however, is what I particularly go for when I get a chance at the paper; for I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television- of that I am quite sure.

EB White was exactly right....television in our homes has become an unbearable disturbance...our families and our country is and has been falling by it.

Clearly the race today is between loud speaking and soft, between the things that are and the things that seem to be, between the chemist of RCA and the angel of God. Radio has already given sound a wide currency and sound "effects" are taking the place once enjoyed by sound itself. Television will enormously enlarge the eyes range and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tab(loids), the mag(azines) and the movies it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote. More hours in every 24 will be spent digesting ideas, sounds, images- distant and concocted. In sufficient accumulation, radio sounds and television sights may become more familiar to us than their originals. A door closing, heard over the air; a face contorted, seen in a panel of light- these will emerge as the real and the true; and when we bang the door of our own cell or look into another's face the impression will be of mere artifice. I like to dwell on this quaint time, when the solid world becomes make believe, McCarthy corporeal and Bergen stuffed, when all is reversed and we shall be like the insane, to whom the antics of the sane seem the crazy twistings of a grig [ a cricket or grasshopper.... ].

Last week was National Turn off your TV week. I wonder how many people tried this and realized how much they preferred the things that seem to be over the things that are? When we gave up TV it was very hard.....very hard. Now that it is out of our lives I am thankful beyond belief....we focus more on the primary and not the secondary. We are no longer slaves to a grig-like schedule set by corporations that have nothing to do with our family. We set the schedule as to when we might watch a DVD on the computer.

I know that a TV free home is not for everyone....for us it brings that time for quiet that is sometimes so hard to come by in this frantic world where all around us grasshoppers and locusts devour the time.

Jeremiah 50:14

"Draw up your battle lines against Babylon on every side,
All you who bend the bow;
Shoot at her,
do not be sparing with your arrows,
For she has sinned against the LORD.

to weave a tapestry

I always start my weekends with a mental list of all I want to accomplish, most of it housework related :)...all those things that do not get done during the week when I am working. I had such a list this weekend. None of it was accomplished...and that is more than ok, because our family was very busy weaving..

I do not like the phrase blended family. When I think of Anonimo's 5 and my 3, I think of a tapestry and therefore I like the phrase: Woven Family. When we started this journey our tapestry was very threadbare, full of holes and loose threads. It was difficult to see any pattern or beauty. Here we are two years later and the design is becoming clearer, the colors brighter and the weave tighter.

For the first time, Anonimo and Jasper were able to discuss events that happened several years ago....and yet have been hanging over them. Tears washed away the uncertainties and our tapestry lost a bit of its grime and dullness. Part of the design that was not visible before has now come to the foreground.

The beauty of our tapestry is sometimes difficult for me to see in the midst of our everyday lives.....in the midst of the children's squabblings.....in the midst of the tyranny of the age we live in. This weekend I beheld the beauty and I am incredibly thankful and blessed.

Sunday nights are always hard when 4 of our precious jewels return to their mother's home and this home quiets down to 3 precious jewels.

Anonimo and I pulled our tired selves out for a walk. We collected fallen branches, dried flowers and pinecones of every shape and variety. I arranged them on the mantle and breathed deeply a sigh of contentment.

Our home, our children, our lives....one living tapestry of incredible value and beauty....all woven with care by the ONE who loves us beyond all comprehension.

Nothing accomplished and yet everything accomplished.

Psalm 30:12

That my soul may sing praise to You and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

Count your thankfuls

1. I wake up at 5:15 and realize it is Saturday and I can sleep in. I am thankful.
2. I hear Electrum's feet pattering up the stairs and he begins to sift through his army men. I am thankful.
3. I snuggle closer to my wonderful husband. I am thankful.
4. I decide not to work overtime this weekend. I am thankful.
5. I look in on Jasper and Sardius sleeping soundly. Sugar is curled up next to Sardius. I let her out and feel the cleansing wind on my face and the cold paving stones on my bare feet. I am thankful.
6. I start a pot of coffee. I am thankful.
7. I look forward to taking Emerald to the cafe on the corner for lobster soup. I am thankful.
8. I look forward to spending the afternoon with Quartz getting his hair cut and a new jacket for prom tonight. I am thankful.
9. I take Garnet to work and the sun reflects off the lake and the bridge in brilliant bursts. I am thankful.
10. I walk in the door and the wonderful smells of Anonimo making breakfast greet me. I am thankful.

Thankful is the word and concept that I have been pondering on this week. I roll it around in my mind. I take it out and look at it....wonder at all its different facets. I silently whisper "thank You, thank You".

I looked up one of the Hebrew words for thankful this morning: YADAH. It is translated in several ways

• thank, thanksgiving, hymns of thanksgiving, give thanks, give you thanks, giving thanks
• praise, giving praise, gave praise
• glorify
  
• confess, confessed, confesses, confessing, making confession
• placed, shoot, throw down

Just looking over this list illuminates some of the many facets of thankful. I stopped for awhile over the confessing words. I know when I hang on to my little sins or hurts, I am unable to be thankful. I think of the path through the tabernacle....the first step through the gate, the altar of sacrifice, the bronze laver [confession, cleansing] and into the Holy Place (the lampstand, the altar of incense, the table of Shewbread) and there the glorious veil that has been ripped apart for me! And oh the mercy seat.

I am overwhelmed as I think of the gift I have been given to be in this amazing relationship with our Saviour. Tears of thankfulness begin. I am seated with Him in the heavenlies. I am a Beloved Child just as He is.

thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU thank YOU

Genesis 29:35

And she conceived again and bore a son and said, "This time I will praise the LORD ." Therefore she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing.

Colossians 3:15

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.

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