Three Year Old Tantrums– Making Peace

Three year old tantrums are like tsunamis. You don’t know how big the cataclysm will be until it’s on top of you, and you can’t stop it once it has started. You just have to be prepared beforehand and get to higher ground. 

As my daughters have moved from the developmental stage identifying themselves with me to seeking individuality and choices, the transition has been rocky and full of temper tantrums. As much as I would like to point fingers and blame their tender youth, I myself am not always the example of maturity I wish to be. I try to let myself off the hook because I am not a yeller, but I’ll say it before someone else rats me out: Bull-headedness and snarling are patterns God convicts me about regularly. Oh God, you multi-tasker, you! Using me disciplining my kids to discipline me! 

So here we are with long, massive meltdowns in very public places, but that doesn’t even matter because I happen to know you can still hear that little voice shrieking inside the house from down the block. Thank God we don’t live in an apartment at this point!

As I said, there’s no stopping it: The element of surprise is impotent. Punitive action and reasoning are equally fruitless. It takes a good 20-30 min. before distraction is an option. Mostly tantrums just have to be forestalled before they start. 

Sure, I know that means eating real meals at regular intervals. Of course it means getting regular sleep. Gee, thanks, parenting sites. I'd never have thought of that on my own!

The key for me was realizing what my daughter was trying to accomplish with her tantrums. On the surface they seem whimsical –in a bad way– but for her it is all about feeling like her rights were trampled on and having no recourse. Her solution might not be the same as your child's solution because her reasons may be different than your kid's. But if you think it may help, read on! 

What has really helped is having a family peacemaking strategy. The work of making peace is not best done by the clear-headed outside observer. It has to start in the heart of the person who is angry and sees the wrong. We have found my daughter's temper escalates when she sees no recourse for due process and justice.

My idea and my children’s ideas of justice don’t often coincide at first, but having a calm, consistent road to travel together makes a difference.

Here are the tools I want to give them: A desire for justice, capacity for mercy, a chance to cool down, a template for respectful discourse, empathy, and experience with un-begrudging compromise. The terrible thing is that this list doesn’t describe my heart of hearts! My own desire and practice are far from perfect, so this is for me too. 

My efforts at cool down time and respectful discourse had so far been blown away in the blast of living fury that is my second-born, so I needed a new strategy. We tried a Peace Table ala Montessori, and it is working surprisingly well! The idea is to have a neutral place for conflict resolution and the promotion of peace. The genius of it is that it gives my kids an avenue for positive action, not just violent protest. 

Supplies: On the table we have a rose in a shallow bowl- not a long stemmed flower in a vase, because vases are easier to knock over, and long flowers can be turned into cart whips by furious children– and a battery operated candle. 

Step 1: If someone in the home is feeling upset or experiencing conflict they can present the involved person with the rose, and it is part of the social contract that they go to the table together to resolve their difficulty. 

Step 2: Whomever is holding the rose has the right to speak, and anyone else has the privilege of listening. 

Step 3: The rose is passed between them until they resolve the matter. 

Having physical tools to hold as protocol for the intellectual/emotional process of conflict resolution is grounding and reassuring for them. It keeps them on track. There is a Montessori book to introduce this activity, but role playing was enough, and in fact, quite revelatory for us!

The purpose of the battery candle is that it is an extra task and treat for the angry child to turn on, allowing for a few more split seconds of cool off/distracted time. Every instant counts! Also they are mesmerizing and cheap at the dollar store! Another advantage to having a dedicated space for this is that it is proactive. Choosing from a small selection of activities from the table is a self-directed action. I see cool down time-outs as preventing anyone or anything getting hurt, but the angry child sees it as punishment or banishment, which compounds the drama. I want them to grow up knowing that they don’t get positive or negative consequences for how they feel, but for what they do with the feelings they have. Mature people find activities that de-escalate themselves when they are angry, but sometimes we stop kids from de-escalating by mandating things that make them angry. Once again, anger is fine, being destructive and rude is not. They have to be dealt with separately. 

When I said that role playing was revelatory, what I mean is that I discovered a reason my explosive child has a short fuse: Her fuse is not that short, it’s just that her sister is a pyro. As I found myself trying to negotiate a pretend argument for the rights to a toy I don’t even care about, I discovered that my oldest drives a really hard bargain, and she denies others acknowledgement that they have a real case. While she looks level headed and peaceable to authority figures, she looks like a tyrant when you are standing eye to eye. It raises the point that making peace is everyone’s job. No one is exempt. The burden of it can’t only fall on the people who burn for justice. Acknowledgement and sensitivity are really important. Without empathy the person who is wronged just comes off as a complaining troublemaker, and that is unjust too! As a mother it is tempting to focus my efforts on the child who is most publicly embarrassing, and who inconveniences me most, but my job is to help both the explosive child, AND the kid who casually plays with emotional matches. One is no less important than the other. 

 The spiritual component is something we are working on as well, but not in the tsunami moments. Jesus said that when you try to feed pearls to swine, they turn around and eat you. Raise your hand if that’s happened to you when your kids are angry! I find my relationship with God, my prayer life, and the help of Scripture invaluable, like pearls, but when my kids have a hunger for justice they don’t appreciate moralizing.   

Becoming peacemakers is a life-long, not week-long evolving process. Additionally, peacemaking is not just about resolving conflict, but about developing an eternal perspective, deepening one’s walk with God, developing love, practicing patience, and self-control. As my children master the peacemaking skills we started with, I expect to swap in other activities at the peace table. 

Here are my ideas: 

• Calm-down glitter jar,
• Music player with Scripture songs,
• Books about peacemaking... any suggestions? 
• Stones with applicable Bible verses on them,
• Tactile celtic knot tracing activity to introduce labyrinth prayer aides,
• Recorder for work on taking deep breaths, and 
• Puzzles for taking time to cool down.

The end of this story hasn't happened yet, but we have gone from 2 huge tantrums a day to 1 or 2 short ones a week. My daughter has been swallowing back the fearful rage and seeking healthy things like cuddling and talking about it since we have a plan. The rose is something she can present to parents too, and be certain her appeal is heard. The table also gives us a benchmark for the minimum of what is required to work something out. Often I would see my older daughter sulking about something her sister did. She always claimed to have tried to work it out, but I wasn't sure. Now I can tell them "If you haven't invited your sister to the peace table, you haven't tried to work it out. If you aren't willing to do that, you can sulk in your room, but not in our space." Very effective! 

Artist? Craftsman? Designer?

By now I have read enough blogs, listened to enough podcasts, and watched Lost in Living so I know I am not the only one asking “Am I an artist?” and “Am I still an artist when I am not making?” For me there is another foundational question I have to ask before that: Am I an artist, designer, or  craftsman? It's a loaded question because these are different paths. By far the option with that takes the most courage to look in the eye is artist. Growing up I was “the creative one,” shirking my responsibilities to draw and manning many a craft booth to make cash. I won a few little prizes, but nothing exceptional. My parents paid for years of watercolor lessons and I am still a terrible painter. Since my mom spins yarn and sells it, that was the family business, and definitely a craft. 

My real talent and passion after the baby-seal-drawing phase was in clothing, so I had the gaul to apply to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I didn’t know how bad the odds were, I just knew that I had read every book on costume and fashion in my small town library, and they were written by FIT professors and/or referenced the FIT costume library, so I scraped together money I didn’t have to apply to a school in a scary city I had never visited. I got in. I thrived. I worked myself into the ground. I still don’t think I was exceptional, I just had a good sense for design honed by years of reading and making, and I worked exceptionally hard. There was a lot of talent that burned brighter than mine, but I struck a decent balance and I won bigger awards, had bigger opportunities and teachers who believed in me.  

Then I got married and moved to Texas. I was completely lost. I Drowned in a sea of the infinite possibility of time and absolute impossibility of place, being remote from all things creative. Remote, really, from all things. 

I am grateful for the time of experimentation I had in that painful solitude. I am thankful for the forge of motherhood and just generally growing up. I began to find my voice. But then there is motherhood and stuff. I haven’t put in the hours I need to. 

My studio is calling me now. I am serious enough about creating that the first room you see in my house is the one dedicated to making. Making a mess, mostly. Should I seek my voice again? Is that even right or responsible? How serious am I? Where is my place? I have asked the questions thousands of times for more than half of my life. Sometimes in my head I say I am an artist because what I have to say is not just practical, not just a thing, but a living idea. Sometimes I call myself a craftsman out loud because I am not making real art. But the-buck-stops-here reason I am not making real art is that I am afraid. I am a decent and dedicated craftsman but a designer with no market and no heart for mass production, and a poor artist. A dabbler, really. 

Being the worst at something scares me more than anything else and I have no credentials. 

In fact, I have trained and refined taste, so I know exactly how bad I am. I don’t even know if I have a dream. But there are things I must do. Things I must make. Things I must say. Things that have nothing to do with alphabets. Can I be an artist if what I am doing is knitting and sewing? I don’t know. I tried self-identifying as an artist at a party the other night and I wanted the heat in my cheeks to sublimate my whole self and all claims on artistry into the heavy air. I didn’t, not because it is impossible, but because I caught my breath and the crush of imagining denying this part of me held me in place and time. 

That is why I am still here to ask the question. 

Getting Unstuck

This popular meme summed up the creative process in 6 steps:

1. This is awesome.
2. This is tricky.
3. This is crap.
4. I am crap.
5. This might be okay.
6. This is awesome. 

You know it's true. In the past 2 weeks I find myself hanging out in the vicinity of steps 3 & 4 wondering if all the collagesI have made  –which are so many more than these–  were all flukes!

That's just how projects go sometimes, and the best thing to do is go for a walk, soak in the tub, have a dog pile/tickle/cuddle extravaganza with my kids, sing Shake It Off karaoke style (go big or go home), and tell ridiculous jokes.

Here is the one I cooked up:
Q: Why did Cinderella's soccer coach bench her?
A: Because she is always late to the ball, and half the time she loses a shoe!

Here is one my daughter shared in the style of a knock-knock joke:

Her: Salmon!
Me in a stage whisper: What do you want me to say?
Her: Whoa!
Me: Whoa!
Her: Wait. I'm a salmon, not a horse!

So there you have it.
Now time to get back to work, because the main thing is just to keep showing up!


 

Little Cooks in the Kitchen

This week is all about the kitchen. On the creative side, I have been wood burning kitchen wares like crazy. Some of it is special order, and some is on my newly revived Etsy site.

 
    If you see anything you like that's not on my site, you can shoot me an Etsy message to inquire about special orders. (I love special orders!) What is really keeping us in the kitchen is that the girls just discovered that cookbooks can fill their weekly library requirement of non-fiction books.
We have done a lot of eating from this Disney cookbook. I was fully prepared for it to be horrid as so many cookbooks are, especially licensed ones, but it is actually fairly healthy and delicious because you can't mess up Creole cooking and soul food that much!

    The cookbook pictured below is Fairy Tale Breakfasts, from the Fairy Tale Cookbook series by Jane Yolen. The stories are great, because it's Jane Yolen, and it inspired the girls to try their hands at cooking "Eggs in the cradle" by themselves. I just turn on the stove for them.

    This, in turn, sparked a conversation in our church community group. Do you let your kids cook? At what age? My mother and grandmother had me sitting on the counter from the time I was tiny, measuring and stirring. I didn't think twice about having the girls help as soon as they could hold things. They have never cut or burned themselves, they have always been careful. I can fully see why some kids are safest outside the kitchen, but for us it's a precious daily ritual. I let them start cutting soft things like mushrooms when they were younger, in addition to stirring and licking. They have graduated to pancake flipping, measuring, and spreading peanut butter and butter– a surprisingly tricky business.
    They never stir things like soup that have hot steam, and they stay away from the oven. Knives are with supervision only.

    What are your kitchen rules? Do you handle kids in the kitchen the same way you grew up, or have you tweaked things?

 

Support Languages

"I feel so alone in this. It's bewildering."
It didn't matter what the issue was: It could be anything, but that's what my husband and I were telling one another recently. Intellectually we knew we were in this together, but it felt like we were not. Ambivalent is the word we kept coming back to, because while we felt loved, each of us felt the other spouse was not particularly invested in things that really mattered to us. What was maddening was that we really do care! It just wasn't getting through.

Does that feel familiar?

It did to us. It reminded us of Dr. Chapman's books The 5 Love Languages and The Five Languages of Apology. The idea behind the books is that individuals weigh some expressions of emotion more than others based on personal needs and experiences. Dr. Chapman cites 5 categories for expressions of love: Quality Time, Acts of Service, Physical Touch and Closeness, and Words of Encouragement. I've never met anyone who didn't need quality time, but additionally, to show affection I am a snuggler. As a words guy Daniel turns into an all-out cheerleader. Of course the way we show love is also how we crave it, so we have worked hard to become more fluent at making one another feel all-out adored, and to honor the less familiar expressions. That's why we were so surprised by this disconnect.  

So we came up with a new phrase: Support Languages.

Daniel kept saying "But I have shown up to everything! I’ve pitched in! What more do you want?” and I was wondering “I have kept up to date on every detail of this! I ask you about it every night! How could you think I wasn’t interested and supportive?” As it turns out, Daniel was needing some Acts of Service, and I value an inquisitive listening ear.

Is this really different than love languages, or have our needs and habits shifted over time to neglect some forms of support? I don't know. In some ways it doesn't matter as long as we add this new question to our marriage toolbox: "What kind of support would be most meaningful to you right now?"

Story, Sweet Perilous Story

When I started writing curriculum for my church’s Junior Church program last year it became clear that the kids kind of didn’t know what the Bible is, so we started there: What is the Bible? Who wrote it? Why is it arranged the way it is? What are in the different sections, and how do you find things fast? We memorized the books of the Bible together. We did worksheets. It was very satisfying, and we ended the summer with a happy glow and a hard-earned pizza party.  This semester we turned to the subject I really wanted to tackle: God's constant character, from creation to the end of the world. I want the kids to really know God’s character. 
We are doing a detective theme. 
It’s cute. 
It is not, however, nearly as fulfilling for any of us. Whereas cranking out a polished lesson every week was a joy in the first unit, this one is a real wrestling match. It gives me goosebumps, it’s a little fly-by-night, and the pace feels absolutely punishing. Some weeks the kids are not so enthusiastic either, to be honest: All of which got me thinking “Why?” 

   I think that the unit on the history and purpose of the Bible was so fun for all of us because it dealt with concrete facts: This is how many books there are. This is how you find the New Testament. Facts are fun because they are easy to impart, easy to memorize, easy to feel accomplished about, easy to test on, easy to check off your list. You can do really creative things with facts, and then in the end they are there, nice and solid like coming home. 

   The thing is, if God knew it would be best for us to connect with him in a quantifiable way, surely he would have given us such a way. Instead he gives us his presence via the Holy Spirit, Jesus, of course, and stories! Doctrine too, but the doctrine is like the bones beneath the flesh of the stories. I find that fascinating and terrifying. Stories, I mean, not bones! I love bones. And stories. But you knew that.

   Story is enmeshed in every culture. Whether you tell stories to drumbeats around a campfire or via Youtube, story is how we pass down meaning and cultural value. It’s how we explore, internalize, and make sense of the world. Your family stories confirm who you are and where you came from: The love, the ethics, the humor! Story has a potency of it's own, and serious staying power in the mind. Every time you approach a really good story you have a new thought. It touches your experience in a new way. Think, for instance, of how many times over we tell Red Ridinghood. We need to tell it again and again because Red Ridinghood is each of us, straying off the path, rationalizing, entranced by something just up ahead. Like us she is both innocent and willfully ignorant, or even a bit fascinated by gleaming incisors. Like life, it could be dark, comic, tragic, or reassuring depending on your angle. Red Ridinghood is also someone we love, whom we want to protect from wolves. Heck, Red Ridinghood might be the wolf! What then? We need this story because we are not sure to recognize a wolf when we see one, because the wolf might be misunderstood, because no matter how well you know your grandmother, you can’t know her all the way, because it isn’t certain whether we can wait for a woodcutter, or whether we need to be prepared to slay the wolves ourselves. Story helps us work these questions out. 

   Our culture is just as heavily dependent on story as any other, with a key difference from traditional society: Overall it seems like we are less commonly adept at telling stories ourselves. On average we are more consumers of story than purveyors. That may be a somewhat temporary problem as younger generations are finding new ways to convey stories with common technology. But here we are, a little bit in between, and if God saw fit to speak to us through story, and I am supposed to be passing that on to the little minds in my charge, the problem is this: Instead of teaching story the same academic way I'd teach fact, how do I celebrate the story and become a really great storyteller? How do I equip other teachers to become really great storytellers? I don’t know, I’ll have to keep pressing into that. That’s the fascinating part.

    I am a little distracted from the "How Question" by this scary observation: Story is really dangerous to consensus. Literature is perilous! If you sit 3 people down to talk about a story they may agree on a few facts, but they will disagree on the interpretation. You can get consensus amongst peers in many areas, but with literature you can’t always get everyone to agree on something as foundational as who the villain is. I don’t know if this is objectively true, but my observation is that the better the story is, the more nuanced and wide ranging the interpretations seem to be.  That’s so true with the Bible too, isn’t it? It helps us work our questions out, but we approach it with experiences and presuppositions, and we don’t always come up with the same answers. God has given us that leeway, even with the Holy Spirit. There are facts there, but He didn’t make his primary message to us a mathematical proof. He made it story. And that's where the skeleton of doctrine comes in, because it gives us facts, a place to start. Still, there's the Living Word humming with the bass line of truth that rattles us. 

    I think as we try to responsibly hand down the Christian faith in our western secular culture, it really is easier to retreat into dry fact mixed with personal opinion, memorization, ritual, truisms, common experience, politics, vitriol, warm fuzzies, crafts, moralism… anything but story. Story cannot be controlled and regulated the way these other things can. When it comes down to it, all we can do is deliver both the great story of the Bible, and our own stories accurately, vividly, daily. The Holy Spirit must do the rest. That’s the miracle isn’t it? That in each generation God does the heavy-lifting in spite of our toddler-like counterproductive help. 

Play All The Things! DJ Meme

When someone asks if I share my playlists...
There's just too much good music to be a hoarder.

A Mountain of Steel

  Jesus and his disciples were out in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee when a furious storm came up with waves sweeping into the boat. Matthew 8 tells us that Jesus was sleeping through it all, and the disciples were understandably freaking out and woke him saying “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” Before he gets up and fixes it he says “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”

  In his excellent book Hearing God, Dallas Willard points out “Now the disciples obviously had great faith in Jesus. They called upon him, counting on him to save them. They had great faith in him, but they did not have his great faith in God. It was because they did not have his faith that he spoke of how little faith they had. 

  Some Christians too commonly demonstrate that the notions of ‘faith in Christ’ and ‘love for Christ’ leave Christ outside the personality of the believer.”

  The concept excited me and I knew it was deeply applicable right now, but it took many readings to let it sink in. To grow one’s faith has always seemed vague to me. How much faith are we supposed to have? How did the disciples get it in the long run? If “little faith” here refers to the quality and placement of the disciples’ faith rather than quantity, application was going to answer some of my questions.

  I know that I am to have the mind of Christ with which to make judgments (1 Cor. 2:16). I know that Christ is my life (Col. 3:4), that regeneration brings me back to square 1, but my redeemed life + his life in me is true life. I know that the peace of Christ is to rule in my heart (Col. 3:15), and the word of Christ– who is himself the Word (Jn. 1:1)– is to dwell in me richly (Col. 3:16). If Christ’s life is to literally, not figuratively be my life, then it makes sense that I need to ask for his faith as well. 

  Of course it was only a few hours before I once again desperately needed Christ’s faith. In addition to not feeling great at this time of year, God has directed me to get involved with something that is particularly spiritually embattled. At first Mondays were hectic, then Sundays, and it spread from there. For a month and a half every minute of rest has been a dark, dirty fight. 

  Here’s what happened: Once again as I prepared to obey God’s request I was feeling sick and tired. There was a chemical halo of anxiety to it, and as I prayed about it, I got the sense that it was more spiritual than anything. I was prompted to remember what I had read about Christ’s faith, but I didn’t really know how to apply it. First I asked to be taught to pray. Then I asked for greater faith, for Christ’s faith in God. Without any awareness of when or how it happened, without any sensation at all, I was suddenly calmer. My immediate impression was that I had more backbone. I was suddenly praying with calm clarity addressing the darkness and anxiety: 

  “My life and times are in God’s hands. If he has asked me to go tonight, I will go, and you will not be able to stop me. His rule limits your power to harass me. You are clearly allowed to make me uncomfortable, but you are not allowed to actually stop me. I am the Lord’s servant. I will not be afraid.” 

That was it. No dazzling linguistic fireworks, just a rock solid statement of facts. It reminded me of how Jesus prays in Scriptures, but not how I pray. I try to pray with authority in Jesus’ name. There was a point in time when that seemed like enough. Maybe it was developmentally appropriate then, but I’m going to tattle on myself here. Lately it sounds kind of whiney and desperate: An urgent, peevish whinge “They are picking on me...Stop it! Jesus doesn’t want you to do that!” No one likes to listen to that, nor does it carry any authority. It isn’t effective at stopping an attack. As we all hopefully learn in grade school, singsonging “Hey! Mom told you to stop that” really only eggs on antagonists. 

By showtime I felt like a 30 lb weight I had been schlepping all month had melted away. I also slept restfully that night for the first time in a month. I have since had occasion to pray this way a shocking number of times. I’m having to fight just as hard for sleep and peace, but I am entering the combat with a power far beyond my own. 

  When I pray this way it feels like the tattered membrane of my faith is firmly backed by a mountain of solid steel, the force that invented nature. Aha! Is that why faith as small as a mustard seed can move a mountain? My own faith might be very flimsy, but Christ's isn't. 

  I can’t express why, but it also feels like instead of tugging on my brother’s sleeve to get him to beat up my bullies, I am stepping out from behind him and we are taking care of it together as a family. The verse that keeps coming to mind is 

Romans 8:29 “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” 

  

  This is a conformity unlike any I have experienced before, and I’ve never had a sense of Jesus as a brother before, but it is really awesome! It is a quality you can sense in the heroes of the faith: Not just an assurance that comes from years of walking with God, but that otherworldy sense of being tapped into the source of life, of Shalom. I am definitely not there yet myself, but I know God means for me to be. 

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.” Colossians 2:9-10

On Making Art

Dear Friend,

Please make art.

How burdensome yet freeing it must have been as an artist’s apprentice in the Renaissance: To copy the works of masters while they were young, perfecting technique in the years before they were experienced enough with life to have much to say! How they must have chafed at being chained to the work of those who went before them, mastering the technique of their masters, mixing colors, ghost painting and getting no credit. So alright there were ups and downs. How ardently they probably wished for their own commissions! I speak from experience when I say that today we graduate from college with a degree, taste, talent, and all the freedom in the world, only to be disappointed since most of us aren’t exactly ready to be tastemakers yet, and no one is clamoring to pay us. As thinking Christians, bad art is all the more daunting. There is this added weight of desiring to make art that glorifies God and all of the questions we all have at first: “Am I supposed to be painting saints and florals here? What if cars are more my thing? Is Christian art figurative of necessity? Should I sign with an ichthus?”

So you talk and read and wrestle and you start realizing those questions are funny, and maybe even cute. Still, the weight of bringing glory to the Lord of Creation by the works of your hands is overwhelming. Anything else seems more appealing. That’s where most people stop. There is always something “practical” you could be doing instead of making.     

Don’t let your taste stifle your talent before you have experience. 

Make art anyway. Allow yourself to be an apprentice. Work on technique. Copy technique. Don’t make art in your brain, make it in your chest and arms. Make art with permission to throw it away. Draw directions out of a hat. Make art that is blatant plagiarism. Make art that isn’t planned so that you second-guess yourself out of it. Make art that lets God be in charge of his own glory, because that’s the reality anyway. Make art that you don’t burden with the task of telling you who you are. Make art that does not serve a purpose.  Make art without evaluating how it fits into your body of work or your life calling. Don’t worry about your body of work. Your calling is both art and people, just like every other artist’s calling is. They are inextricably intertwined. Love God, love people, make art. 

A day will come when you will need every technique you mastered in the course of making bad art– and bad some of it will be! Someday you will need technique to make good art and you will not have time to learn from scratch while the passion burns you. You must not wait to create until you have something profound to do and know just how to do it. If you wait, that time will never come. We must all create against the day when the alchemy of time and experience turns our dabblings and ramblings into gold that will glorify God. 

School builds taste and maybe technique. It gives you a lexicon, but the missing ingredient is time. Depending on how you calculate it you need 10,000 hours or 7 years to master anything. Unfortunately, for the majority of us no one is going to sit us in a little room with our supplies and catered meals until it gets done. We have to do it ourselves. You make good art the same way you make good friends: By showing up all the time, even when it does not suit you. Prioritizing.  

So do it. It’s hard, but let's make art, friend. 

Note: There are 4 links to other articles and talks hidden in this post! Consider them further reading. 

Why Vitamin D Reminds Me of Redemption

 This morning I woke from vivid and dark dreams into pain and... gratitude.
This is my brain. This is my brain without Vitamin D. Deprived of D I am not able to process calcium which allows me to think clearly or maintain bone and muscle integrity. Something I don't understand happens to my iron and my heart races. No amount of water quenches my thirst. I feel panicked. My skin is too sensitive. I feel like I am wearing a lead body suit. Every move wearies me.

I am so thankful.

It wasn't long ago that I thought this was normal, that everyone lived this way and I was just not as good at coping as everyone else.
I am thankful that now approximately 95% of the year I don't have to struggle with this because there are supplements I can take to stay balanced, except for around the winter solstice. I have learned many lessons from this experience and I am thankful for most of them. The others I am still working on!

Most of all I am thankful for such a graphic picture of sin and redemption.
I was born into this mess, and I didn't know the truth. People assured me I was perfectly normal, or suggested self-help techniques to elevate my mood, but the truth is that in and of myself there was nothing I could do. I didn't even know that there was a real problem because I was right in the middle of it all and I had experienced nothing else.
That's the way sin is too. I was born into it, suffering from it, but unconscious of the source of my need and the answer to it. Miraculous rescue had to come from outside of myself when all I had earned was death and destruction. Praise be to my Savior!

Since Vitamin D is a tiny little example of the grace of the incarnation to me, maybe being weak during the advent season is not such a bad thing after all.

Snow Day

Everyone loves a good snow day, except for me yesterday. What a cold front, huh? I was grumpy about lots of things yesterday, including, but by no means limited to: Finding hats, snow pants, mittens, tights, sweatshirts, and fuzzy socks. Sometimes you've just got to send everybody out to play while you take a hot bath.

Today I was ready to earn my Fun Momma badge back and we went out to play– but this time I knew where everything was!

We whipped up some snow cream, which my mom used to do when I was a kid.

Here's my recipe:

• 8 cups fresh, clean snow
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla

Stir vigorously.
Serves 6

This isn't the first snow of the year for us, but my family used to celebrate first snow with a day off,  a pot of hot soup, board games and a jigsaw puzzle. There was a family in our church who threw a big pot luck party the night of the first snow where all the food was white. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water for Chile Blanco!
How about you? Do you have any beloved snow traditions?

There and Back Again: My Journey to the Other Side of Functional Deism Part II

In the last post I shared that when I came to believe lies about God’s presence with me I unwittingly became a practicing deist. 

I began to wonder “What makes me so sure it is God I am hearing?” I began to think 

“God only speaks through the Bible– which I cannot fully understand,” and finally “I am alone, and I use an imagined voice of God to get what I want.” 

Part of what’s so tricky is that it is plausible that any one of us might misunderstand the Bible or dearly want to believe that wishful thinking is a special word from God. 

So how do you know if it’s actually God speaking to you and not your subconscious? 

We know God lives in us by the fruit of obedience and by his Spirit in us. 

I John 3:24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. 

We know that God does not lie. He will not contradict himself. Scripture and God’s individual words to us will agree. Numbers 23:19 God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

We know that God will help us understand when we ask. James 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 

We know that the consequences of acting upon God’s words to us will be in keeping with Scripture: Not to say that the consequences will always be easy, but that they will be good and not evil. 

James 1:13-15 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 

Those are the hallmarks, but to really recognize the Shepherd’s voice you have to spend a lot of time with him. 

Unfortunately I was not using reason, I was listening to lies. The delivery methods for some of these destructive messages were very painful, and the pain covered up the growth of loneliness in my heart until it was tough and strong. It has been years, but the seed was planted and watered and the fruit of deism in my life is worry. Worry was what really got my attention.

Worry Wart 

There was a time, even as an adult and a parent, when people talked about the burden of worry and  I could sympathize, but not relate. I did experience anxiety at times, but for the most part my anxiety felt primarily chemical. 

Worry is a little different for me. It’s a nagging feeling I keep returning to, generally about a question I have no answer for. 

Lately I have had a little growl in the pit of my stomach, a little dirty feeling when the questions rise unbidden. It comes down to meeting a “gray area” where there is no universal rule and attacking it to find a black and white answer. Oh, stubborn heart! Try as I might there are no mentions of perfect immunization schedules in Scripture, nor is there a dress code spelled out. Those are two things that have oddly hounded me. Of course I have prayed about it. Of course I have gone back to the Scriptures, but do you know what I mean when I say praying can feel like worrying? The Bible is no talisman to ward off the troublesome feelings that wear like a bur in your sock. I needed my Father to get to the heart of it.

Cure for Warts

God did just that. He didn’t answer my questions about shots or shoes, he asked me if I trust him. 

Lord, you know I do, that’s why I am asking! 

Then why are you looking for rules instead of asking me about things? Why do you think I won’t answer? I am talking to you now! That discussion leader. If she doesn’t think that people can see me in you, does that make it true? It’s time to stop believing what other people have to say, and believe my voice.    

Here are some verses God brought to my mind that night as he spoke to me in the car. For the actual verse, click the reference.  

Romans 5:8 At my most unlovely and unworthy, he rescued me. 

II Peter 1:3 God’s power has given me everything I need for life and godliness. What else is there, really? 

II Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. 

Ephesians 4:30 I am sealed by His Spirit as a deposit of my redemption. 

I Peter 2:9 I am a member of a royal priesthood and a holy nation, a people set apart for his glory. 

John 10:27-28 I can hear his voice and know him and follow him. Nothing can separate us. 

It was time to reject the lies and embrace the truth. Worry hasn’t come knocking on my door since then.

Now What?

It may be out of the ordinary for Christians to live in the freedom of a conversational walk with God, but it was never meant to be exceptional. Walking and talking with God is part of what we lost in the garden of Eden, and one thing we gain through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Our communion isn’t perfect yet, but that is no reason to hold back. If God lives within us speaking to us and through us personally in the moment, we should expect –if God is who he claims to be– that it would be ELECTRIFYING! Electrifying and attractive! Weird in the best way, and very powerful! You would expect that a believer brimming with Christ would be different from anyone else– even from other believers– radically, and from the inside out. The apostles certainly weren’t a homogenous bunch. They had different strengths, weaknesses, passions, and callings. Close communication with God brings out each believer’s unique reflection of our infinite God.  

Walking with God in this way strikes at the heart extremes of practicing deism as mentioned in Part I. A conversational walk with God tosses out the human measures of goodness and badness. Think of how Jesus cleared the temple with a whip, but scattered the crowd that wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery. He was constantly doing the opposite of the Pharisees’ rule keeping while honoring his Father. So you might think that Jesus abolished the standards and opened up a lot of gray. He didn’t. When you are living in dependance on God there is no such thing as a truly gray area. When you get right up close to life with him as your lens you can usually see shades clearly as situations arise. He can tell you. This approach is more delicate than striking every issue of life into broad black and white categories from the get-go or using the gray areas as a land of everlasting procrastination. It requires trust and communication. Jesus demonstrated radical dependance on God. 

Can you imagine if the Church rose up and lived Christ’s extreme? It would turn the world upside down. Are you ready? He is. 

There and Back Again: My Journey to the Other Side of Functional Deism Part I

Do you believe that God will communicate with you? That he will speak to you specifically about things both large and small, and you, yes you can learn to listen?
I did, then I didn’t, and then I believed again.
There are 3 reasons to tell this story: Recounting helps me remember what I learned. This testimony might help to untangle someone else’s story. Finally, this is also a cautionary tale for leaders because little ideas have big consequences.

 Part I will tell about the lies I bought into that brought me to deism, and Part II will cover the rotten fruit that living as a deist bore in my life and how God broke through.

 The great blessing of my childhood is that my parents believe that God speaks. They taught me to listen. Growing up reading how God sent fire and rain when Elijah prayed on Mount Carmel and spoke to him in a whisper in the desert it never even occurred to me that God would not do the same with me. He did. Just like the scripture “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” John 10:27 I can hear God’s voice. Not an audible one.
Most of the time there is a montage of Scriptures, memories, phrases, snatches of things I have read. Sometimes it is just knowing, and all of these thoughts on the inside of me are cleaner, stronger, quieter, and more accurate than the tenor of my own thoughts. Yes, I can hear God’s voice– except for *ahem* the times when I can’t.

So here is my terminology.
Deism: Boiled down it is the belief in God and His principles, but that He just more or less got things started and walked away. It is the belief that his involvement in the world is distant or nonexistent.
Then there is Functional Deism: Though I would never identify myself as a deist, my life was telling a different story.

The titles below in bold are lies I started believing that led me down a path of doubt and worry.

 “What makes you so sure it is God you are hearing?”
 The silence of God is something I am not qualified to talk about. What I have in mind is my own deafness and worry grown from a seed of doubt. Until college I always served in the church with mentors, not peers. My mentors had their struggles to be sure, but they moved with the assurance of years walked in God’s presence. Uncertainty and doubt was not in my model, or at least I didn’t pick up on them until I was serving on my campus with peers and young campus ministry staff. Doubt and uncertainty are really popular these days. It’s kind of cool to have doubts because doubts, by this model of thinking, indicate humility and being “real.” This is not to diminish the herculean struggles of people with genuine doubts and uncertainty, but I have observed that the habitual posture of vague hesitation is sometimes a mask for laziness or fear of listening.
 As Christian leaders and students we would have inevitable questions about which way to go, and there was always this tentativeness about the answers.
 You know that fear you get when you turn your blue book in way before anyone else finishes the test? I started having that disquiet because while I was getting answers in the space of a thought in communion with my heavenly Father, others were really wrestling with angels or something and I began to wonder: Am I making things up, showing off, or deluded?
I would like to posit an alternate theory in hindsight. What if everyone forgot to tell 3 year old me that people in this day and age don’t communicate with God like Moses and the prophets and God had almost 2 decades of practice into me before anyone thought to question it?
That was really just the seed. The seed of functional deism.

 “God only speaks through the Bible– which most people cannot understand.”
 It was in a church that really elevated the Bible that the soil was prepared. The pastor was extremely gifted with exegesis. Exegesis means “critical explanation or interpretation of a text, esp. of scripture.” It was intimidating to read the Bible there, to teach, or to discuss. It was hard to know if you were doing it right, and context was so all-important that application of what we were reading was hard to focus on. This put a whole heap of authority on the pastor– who never asked for that burden, by the way– who specialized in reading and discerning the Scripture, instead of on God’s Holy Spirit working in believers. I don’t remember anyone out-and-out saying that God doesn’t speak to his people anymore, but it was heavily stressed in classes and studies that the way we hear from him today is through the Scriptures.
 This line from the excellent book on this subject Hearing God by Dallas Willard puts it succinctly: “...while the Bible is the written Word of God, the Word of God is not simply the Bible. The way we know that this is so is, above all, by paying attention to what the Bible says.”

 It is true that the Bible is the written word of God, and stop me if I am crazy here, you also need communication with God to understand what is written. If you can’t trust yourself to hear the Holy Spirit to help you understand his word to you, it starts to be very difficult to understand at all. It casts doubt on God masked as doubt in yourself, which sneakily doubles for humility, but isn’t. You have to boil the Word down to axioms. You take the breath out of the God-breathed. There start to be a lot of gray areas– not in theory, but in practice. Every church I have been a part of acknowledges that it is God who reveals his word to our hearts, but hear me here, when you start stressing your own understanding of the Scriptures it is natural to stop leaning on God for it. Church can be such a factory for deists.
 When interpreting Scripture without the Holy Spirit I have seen two extremes: Some can’t admit to there being any ambiguity, in which case God has already either said everything in the Bible if you can just find it, or you weren’t meant to know anyway. These folks are Do-It-Yourselfers. It’s up to them to find the path God set out in his Word. If you have broad categories then you have a rule book and no great need to listen.
 At the other extreme there are people who really like ambiguity and gray areas and the license it gives them to justify any decision. The ambiguity people are Armchair Architects talking big, loving to pontificate on theory, quick to criticize. They have some edgy scale models, but they haven’t built a thing. If you live in the gray and God hasn’t made himself known, then there is also no need to listen.

 Both of these heart approaches are deistic because they presume that God got you started, but on a day-to-day basis you can do it yourself.
When did I stop expecting to hear from God? Here the hard soil of my heart met the doubtful seed of functional deism, but it needed some water.

 “You are alone, and you use an imagined voice of God to get what you want.” 
 Had church leaders undercut my walk with God when I was confident in recognizing God’s voice, I would like to think I would have fought back or removed myself to a safe distance, but by now I was vulnerable and bewildered which left me open to attack.
 I want to be clear that these were not first and foremost attacks from other Christians, but from the enemy of my soul who used words and situations and all of our brokenness as leverage against us.
 I want to avoid blow-by-blow accounts, but I don’t want to be mysterious either.

1. In prayer about a ministry position, I felt I had received an answer from God that I was free to step down. My mentor disagreed and did not accept my resignation. Message: You manipulate God to get the answer you want. 
2. When asked to design something for the women’s ministry the leaders tossed ardent days worth of my work in favor of clip art without telling me or giving me another shot. On the surface that is inconsiderate, but it was more. Like most artists and fine craftsmen, I know that my creativity comes from who I am, and that some, though not all, of my work is a spiritual expression, i.e. that it comes from communication with God. Message: Not only are your relationship with us, your time, and your skills not important to us, clip art is of higher value than your communication with God. 
3. I was told multiple times in public by a discussion leader that people do not see God in me and are not drawn to him in response “in the real world.” This one blows a few circuits, and it would take me pages to fully address all the reasons why! Do people not see God through his people in general or is this peculiar to me? Is that because God does not shine through his children, or because his children are opaque, or is it just me in particular? Since I was referencing actual statements people had made to me, were we not in the real world? What world were we in? Scariest of all, if it isn’t God people see in me what DO they see? I’ll stop there, but you get the picture. Message: God is not with you, you are alone and possibly delusional. 

 These propositions are not strong in and of themselves, but years of little incidents like these worked into the fissures in my faith and had me feeling terribly alone. It is almost comical now, because God didn’t actually quit speaking to me, nor did I stop seeking him, if only in name. I simply didn’t expect an answer, so I wasn’t listening. If I had stopped to examine my beliefs and seen how fallacious these were they couldn’t have lasted long, but I didn’t. The plant grew and took root. Much like planting a fruit tree it took a few years for the deism to produce fruit, but when it did it was rotten to the core!

How To Make a No Sew First Aid Kit

Well this is exciting! An easy no-sew project is kind of rare around here, and this is straight up crafty. That's right. I whipped out the hot glue gun.
Our first aid supplies are usually just jumbled into the medicine cabinet, but it really is a good idea to have kits for the car and the house in case you are on the go or it's the baby sitter trying to fix up boo boos instead of you.
At the same time, this is a generic covered box, and you could make boxes for all sorts of things: A treasure chest for kids, a place to corral little baby things like binkies and booties, a spot to keep keys and wallets, a Brio train box... you get it.

Supplies:

• Empty baby wipe box,
• Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks,
• Tape measure, 
• Felt to cover the box. As a ballpark figure I needed 24 1/2"x 6" and 6 3/4"x 9 1/2", but your measurements might be different.
• A scrap of accent fabric bigger than the lid of your box, 
• A scrap of leather, Ultrasuede, felt, or anything that doesn't unravel,
• Scissors,
• Pins– optional, 
• Steam iron– optional.

Directions:

1. Remove the stickers on the outside of the box. I mildly regret forgetting to do this the second time around. 

2. Plug in your hot glue gun. While you are waiting for it to heat, measure the box and cut your fabric:

• Measure the circumference + 1/2" is the width of your fabric, and the measurement from the lip of the box to a little past the halfway point is the length. Cut from felt. My measurement was 24 1/2"x 6".
• Measure the length and width of the lid, disregarding the curved corners. Cut from felt. My measurement was 6 3/4"x 9 1/2"
• Add an inch on each side to the measurement above. Cut from accent fabric. My measurement was 7 3/4"x 10 1/2"
• Cut 2 pieces of leather 1 1/4" x 4 1/2" for cross. 

3. Squirt glue all over one side of the wipe box, and press your felt into it butting the long edge of the felt against the lip of the box. Repeat for each side, neatly overlapping whatever is left at the end. 

4. The bottom of the box is wrapped like a package. Turn the box over and cover the bottom with glue. Smooth the short sides in flat first, followed by the lapped side, finishing up with the last side. Glue down any spots that got missed.

5. Squirt glue over the face of the lid. Don't worry about the edges yet. Smooth the felt into the glue. Now glue and press down the edges leaving the corners for last. Glue the corners and press in whatever excess if left. Trim all the edges up with scissors to smooth them out.

6. Smooth your accent fabric over the top of the lid leaving excess on each side. Pin it to the felt in a few places to hold it steady. With the underside showing as in the photo above, give each edge a few blasts of steam with your steam iron to crease the fabric and show where you will be folding under.

7. Fold back half of the accent fabric, squirt glue over the felt staying away from the edges, and press the accent fabric down into the glue.

8. Next fold the edges on the creases and glue them down, followed by the corners. You may need to trim some of the excess off the corners and/or use something sharp to push the corners under before gluing.

9. Glue down the small strips into a cross shape on the center of the cover.

Done! Easy peasy. Making this box is much simpler than figuring out how to take an attractively styled picture of it. As it turns out, first aid is only glamourous on television!

Stock Up:
Pick out some items you find practical for your kit. Here are some ideas scoured from the internet. 

General

• Adhesive cloth tape
• Antibiotic ointment
• Antiseptic solution or towelettes
• Ace wrap
• Band-Aids in various sizes
• Breathing barrier
• Cotton balls and cotton swabs
• Disposable non-latex gloves, at least 2 pair
• Duct tape– You can stick it on the inside of your box and peel it off later as you need it.
• Gauze pads and roller gauze in various sizes
• First aid manual
• Instant cold compresses
• Petroleum jelly or other lubricant
• Plastic bags for the disposal of contaminated materials
• Safety pins in assorted sizes
• Scissors and tweezers
• Soap or hand sanitizer
• Sterile eye wash, such as a saline solution
• Thermometer
• Toilet paper or wipes
• Triangular bandage
• Suction bulb for flushing out wounds

Medications

• Activated charcoal (use only if instructed by your poison control center)
• Aloe vera gel 
• Anti-diarrhea medication 
• Antihistamine
• Aspirin and non-aspirin pain relievers
• Calamine lotion
• Hydrocortisone cream
• Personal medications that don't need refrigeration
• Syringe, medicine cup, or spoon

Emergency Items

• Candles and matches
• Emergency phone numbers: Family doctor, pediatrician, local emergency services, emergency roadside service providers, and the regional poison control center. 
• Medical consent forms for each family member
• Medical history forms for each family member
• Sunscreen
• Waterproof flashlight and extra batteries
• Emergency space blanket

Can Pumpkin Cupcakes Cancel Out Hard Weeks? Still Testing...

Here’s a little “secret”: When my blog is silent it usually means I feel like I am flunking life. In this case I know it is not true, but it feels true because life has been chock full of stuff I am not good at. There is definite progress, but it hasn’t been easy! 

Case in point, the only thing I have made successfully in the last few weeks are these heavenly pumpkin cupcakes with chocolate cinnamon buttercream frosting, and these pineapple flower toppers. I can't communicate how good they are except to say that my husband who only eats chocolate chip cookies is contemplating requesting these for his birthday instead. I haven't the heart to tell him that pumpkin cupcakes are not done in April. He just spoiled me with two pairs of really cute shoes though, so I'm going to give him what he wants, regardless of seasons! I only have this little iPhone pic of the cupcake because it was a birthday party and I was pulling it off at the last minute. Oh, I also tried making these darling chick rolls, and... uh... they turned out Halloween appropriate. Not my finest baking moment!

My workspace and laundry have been in the basement, main housekeeping duties on the ground floor, and the bedrooms and toys upstairs. This was a great improvement on some other living arrangements we have had recently, so I wasn’t complaining, but living equally on 3 floors had me feeling like I was living 4 lives: The housekeeper-keep-things-running life, the good mommy life, the creative life, and the adult with interests other than picking up shoes and Legos life. I was spasming with exhaustion and popping B12 like an addict when Daniel suggested rearranging the house: The dining room and living room are now happily sharing space, and my studio accoutrements are filling up the former dining room now. I’ll be darned if life didn’t resolve into a single, natural, peaceful rhythm once the dust settled! It just hasn’t been long enough to have a routine yet. I am really hopeful about this. 

Meanwhile, I attended my first big blues dancing event. The classes were great, but the DJs for the social dances brought out disappointed rage in me I thought was reserved for politicians! As it happens, choking back anger limits my dancing. Needless to say I am missing some dancing friends and DJs who could make this all better. Do I need to become a DJ?

Then I spent the past week doing the last bit of paperwork and baby-proofing for fostering. Neither of those things are hard, Just time consuming. Did I mention the girls have croup? 

This weekend I wanted to bust out of this rut and I tried to just get into the (new!) studio and make something- anything! Spinny winter dresses for the girls are urgent, and I took the challenge. I can just hear Heidi Klum ripping it to shreds on the runway in my mind. It was a cute sketch, but executed from fabrics I had lying around: an un-childlike color combo, a bad print for a child, flowing fabric when stiff was called for... it was turning into a medieval princess something or other. Ay yi yi. I wanted to scrap the whole thing and start again with new fabrics, but my little real life judge decreed that she likes it and I have got to make it work. On the bright side, I guess that saves time? I may have an idea for saving it from the landfill, but I haven't had a chance to try yet. 

And now we are off to enjoy some of this fall sunshine! May your days be full of joy and your nights full of peace dear friends!

A Fear of Falling

The icy fear that grips my gut when I think about the change in weather is way colder than the actual outdoor temps, and a bit embarrassing. 
What's not to love about changing colors, pumpkin flavored baked goods, soup, hayrides, and the rest of it? Well, nothing, really. What I can't stand is that winter follows autumn, and I am not the least bit excited about winter. This winter has just got to be better than the last one because we were in that itty bitty miserable apartment, but still the unreasonable phobia unease persists.

To associate the fall with more positive things we are making an effort to take outings and appreciate the changes instead of dreading them. First on our list, an early fall family camping trip! In the spirit of 2013 all the pics were taken with my iPhone 5 instead of hauling the DSLR up a big hill with a toddler on my back. Wonder of wonders it worked! 
Hope you had a great weekend as well!
What are your favorite fall activities?