Antique swing outside our office window

I have fond memories from when I was a little girl of pushing my baby brother Chad and my cousin Jenny in a vintage wooden baby swing, hung in a shady tree in my paternal grandparents' yard. The antique stores in this darling gingerbread town where we live have all kinds of treasures, and I stumbled across one almost identical to Gramma and Dee's swing recently.

Our 4 bay carriage house contains all the leftovers from a less than organized effort to hurriedly finish renovations and unpacking, while I was on partial bedrest during my pregnancy with Annemarie. We shoved the last of the piles we couldn't get to in the carriage house, a little over a year ago while I was in labor.  It's a massive project we can't even think about tackling, for wisdom's sake, until the seasonal back to school and post holiday projects we're still fully engaged in are behind us. Since the carriage house is probably where the blue plastic Little Tikes baby swing that our first 8 babies enjoyed, I spent some of the birthday money Nana and Pa lovingly sent to our chubby baby on this pretty swing I found downtown. Now the newest munchkin discipline issue at our casa is quarreling over whose turn it is to push her in that awesome swing.

Are we blessed that our babies can play outside almost all winter in Texas or what?  Abbie and I actually got a bit of a sunburn the past 2 days that were unseasonably in the high 60's.  God is good to this 'reared in south Texas warm weather' mama of many, who needs sunlight to grow :)  .

Christmas Stress Solution No.1: Tallwish.com

I found this brilliant online resource, tallwish.com, where we can post the web addresses of any items that would genuinely improve our quality of life and/or our efficiency or productivity. This holds us accountable for taking the time to prayerfully think wisely about items that we genuinely do or don't have room for, in an already crowded household. When accessing this list, you can also see which category the list owner placed it in, one of four:
1. Must Have
2. Love to Have
3. Like to Have
4. Thinking About

We plan to keep it current and add to it all throughout the year, so birthday and other gifts are also less likely to need to be returned, exchanged, donated, or consigned . It'll also be a big help to me when I end up unexpectedly at garage sales and thrift stores, to have this handy list in my smartphone-  to differentiate the legitimate needs we've taken the time to really think through, from the temptation to spend impulsively on an item we really don't need or have room for.

We believe this tool will be of GREAT VALUE for the young couples we love to encourage, as many of them call us frustrated, sharing this same winter/spring project, following their American culturally normal Christmases each year. Shane's best friend from high school opened his garage door up not long ago, after Christmas, to visually display for his generous mother what 2 sets of materially blessed grandparents gave his family with 4 children that year. It was packed, and he explained that a trip or an experiential gift might prevent the stress he and his wife and children were faced with again, to try to figure out where to put it all. We're learning that because gifts is one of the primary love languages of those with time and spending power to buy lots of presents, these well-meaning people don't intend to cause strife; they're simply expressing a sincere love for their families. They honestly don't realize how much stress they can inadvertently cause, by buying what they want their children and grandchildren to have, rather than what would benefit them most. Here's to new beginnings!  And many thanks to Tallwish!

John Piper's Final Sermon at Bethlehem Baptist Church

Chace: Shane found this last night while comforting me after a very painful experience with someone I trusted who'd really hurt me, on the tail end of WAY too many post-Christmas organizational projects and Florence Nightengale tasks that had left me quite winded.  'Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing' Piper entitled this life changing sermon.  We watched, spellbound, with Abbie and Annemarie after the other children went to bed, feeling like the Holy Spirit had crafted this passionate plea to the Church just for us.   The concept of indomitable joy and endurance in Jesus, in the midst of pain, afflictions, hardships, suffering, sorrow, grief, sleepless nights (this part of his text, II Cor. 5:2-6:13, jumped out at me big time, since our tiniest child has been so very, very sick for a BUNCH of nights;  not easy for this mama and papa in their 40's), etc., is counter to some versions of contemporary theology, but it's here in black and white, and it defines what sound doctrine looks like:

www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/sorrowful-yet-always-rejoicing#/watch/full 

My tenacious husband has been so faithful to hang with me, encouraging my heart, while the STRESS of Christmas like we've tried to do less stressfully than the years before (with VERY little success), infected the way that each member of our nuclear family related to one another for 2 full months now.  After 20 years of studying these trends and attempting to simplify things a tiny bit more each year, hoping to prevent a little of the previous year's drama the following year, I'm convinced it begins around Thanksgiving, when our children (who live contentedly all of the other months of the year with their thrift/consignment store wardrobes and a non-excessive amount of 'stuff' being brought into our home) are asked by generous, loving extended family members what they 'want' for Christmas.

It's interesting that for years, we've developed a theological vernacular around here about our 'wanters.' Gregg Harris' presentation of the Gospel at the 'Do Hard Things' conference taught us that when we become Christians, we become sheep, following our Great Shepherd.  The problem is that we're trapped in what we were before Christ, our wolf nature... until we get to heaven, when the battle between our 'wanter'/flesh/sin nature and our spirit man will finally end. When a small child responds to a simple directive in an integrous, emotionally honest, yet defiant way, by telling us he or she doesn't WANT to eat what we're serving that meal, or that they don't WANT to go to the Y right now, when we're late for Jack's game, we often end up doing the whole schpeel along the lines of 'Your wanter is not in charge of this family, buddy; The Lord is, and He's asked me to be the conductor of our logistical affairs, and you are playing off key right now.' 

Working out helped us decompress in between holiday events.
How cute is that Baby Love in her Santa jacket on Daddy's lap?

Trying to assimilate the surplus of gifts given at 3 different family meals, grappling with the exhaustion from the pace and way too many faraway outings that throw whoever's the baby WAY OFF for days, plus how conflicted we end up being (in the name of 'honoring' our family members' traditions) about the temptation to eat food we know we're on a permanent fast from, to avoid health consequences that are no small deal for how much responsibility we bear (i.e Shane's battle with asthma, diverticulitis, and high cholesterol/triglycerides, plus upset stomachs and lowered immune responses for all, resulting in consistent, annual post Christmas illnesses)...it's just not workin' out for us anymore.  

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  After 20 years of trying to figure out how to NOT get sick and stressed in the aftermath of the contemporary American version of the holidays, we've decided God isn't the author of this mess, and that our fed-up-ness is evidence of a holy dissatisfaction. There's more than enough challenges for us to learn to walk in indomitable joy through, simply attempting to develop a peaceful, less spiritually immature version of a loving routine, for the 11 people that live here (and who are genuinely trying to live out the Biblical 'one another' commands 24/7), but it dawned on me that this trend of home educators bailing on Christmas altogether, may be connected to this same feeling of a holy dissatisfaction we're discovering, with the way we do it in this country. 

Annemarie's yiddle books helped her chill and be less
 fussy when the pace of holiday busy-ness was outside our margins

My dear friend Pam is married to a guy from Mexico, and they have 6 incredible children.  She shared with me on Christmas Eve at City Church that the first year they moved back to the states, she tried doing Christmas like she remembered from her childhood, but that she abandoned her efforts shortly thereafter.   The traditions our parents did each year when Shane and I were little (he as an only child, myself as one of only two children) will be reworked quite a bit more dramatically next year, as we just can't focus on the renewed relationships with Jesus and each other (that the holidays are supposed to be about) when the after effects of an abnormally high number of outings, gifts, and non life giving foods throws the hope of a much needed normal routine out the window, big time, for weeks, sometimes months, before and after the big day. This makes exponential emotional reactivity a LOT more likely, not only according to the book of Proverbs, but also to those who've made it their life's work to study concepts like Celebrating Calm (Kirk Martin) and ScreamFree Marriage and Parenting (Hal Runkel).

We're learning, not only from so many years of unpleasant experiences, but from the wise people we're learning to grow up from, as a result of their teaching, that the buck has to stop somewhere. I read a history picture book from the library this year called 'Victorian Christmas,' and it turns out that originally, this gift giving thing was much simpler than it's progressively become. For me, by the time I've sorted our gifts and returned, exchanged, or donated the unreasonable amount of items we unsuccessfully tried to find 'homes' for, in our house, I end up having to spend any Christmas money or gift cards I received on more furniture or creative storage options to house the things we kept in. This involves rearranging furniture and cleaning out closets, 'projects' I told Jack we would be doing less of this year, as the gift he wanted most, since normal living isn't possible when our holiday organizational projects don't typically conclude until March or April  .    

After weeks of prayer and deliberation, we decided together last night that we will continue to embrace the replenishing, strengthening parts of the holidays, but that we quit all the parts of it that are like trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Because we've faithfully sought the Lord's wisdom for how to pull off a slightly more scaled back version of an American Christmas each year, and because it's progressively become more and more outside our bandwidth, each year that our family size and logistical equation becomes larger, we look forward to less self-inflicted sorrow and relational drama, and more loud rejoicing, as we courageously apply these convictions, with wise mentors keeping our game plan in check.  And to all of you sweet moms in a season of just munchkins, who process your frustrations with me about your extended family members putting pressure on you to engage in holiday traditions that leave you panting, as well, be encouraged that God is a genius who can lead you and your husband to reasonable solutions, too.

'No sweets' no longer necessary!

I've had an obnoxiously high interest in health and fitness since I was quite young, and I've collected (literally) the world's best workout videos/DVD's from thrift stores for 20 years now, but something that my favorite tape brought to my attention recently, when the hilarious Gin Miller said it, jumped out at me as INACCURATE, when Abbie and I worked out to her tape this week.

Gin was crackin' us up with her dramatic voices, telling us how the muscles we're developing, while doing her tape, are trying to tell the fat cells to die, and she mentioned the old adage of 'no sweets' as part of that process. My metabolism is much slower at 43, with only one ovary, than it was years ago. When my dear friends, the 3 Campbell sisters, had an 'intervention' of sorts with my over-the-top-working-out (and creating chronic inflammation), way-too-raw, low-calorie/dieting self in 2007, they began a slow, de-brainwashing process I'm still in. They're teaching me about how blood sugar works, and how even my best efforts to stay trim and healthy were no longer effective, since my metabolism had slowed, from normal aging processes and hormonal changes as a result of my oopherectomy.

After 5 straight years of eating like they encouraged me to and working out in moderation, as a guinea pig for their 'Trim Healthy Mama' book, it's finally available for purchase, and my family is eating delectable, rich, low glycemic sweets and decadent foods like you wouldn't believe.
Check out their Facebook page and consider ordering their book at www.aboverubies.org. It debunks all of the food myths that you never quite felt right about, if you were a 'jumping from the latest health food fad to the next' type like myself, at some point in your life.

And for a sampling of ENCOURAGING ideas, go to my second baby, Emma's blog, at deliciouslydelectabledelights@blogspot.com.