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| I am through the 4th week of school, and have decided to drop two classes in order to survive. My math is too stale to allow for the quick completion of homework in Thermodynamics, so that was the first to go. I will use some of my 'extra' time to review my calculus and physics, and give it another shot in the fall. Now maybe I will have time to say more than a quick 'hello' to my children in the morning.
This was a tough decision to make, but I realized that 2 hours to a problem was not going to make it on a test. The laundry on the kitchen floor had been there for nearly a week, and the mail that needed to be forwarded to Carolann and Melissa was stacking up. I started snapping at the kids for just being alive in the house, and I couldn't sleep at night. Something had to give. School was on the bottom of the priority list, so it got trimmed.
Now I am getting a chance to live out my favorite advice: allow yourself to make mistakes, allow yourself to fail, and don't let it ruin your day or your life. Make good decisions based on reality, and if things don't work, look at the whole picture, rearrange it a bit, and try again. Sounds simple enough, but is sure isn't easy.
Happy Friday, everyone.
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| Greetings, one and all. I have an urge to share with you my excitement over a couple of books I have recently found. The first one came into my hands at a second hand shop in Pacific City when I was visiting my in-laws over the 4th of July. I always give the books a quick look-over, just in case. The Van Vonderen name caught my eye, so I bit. The book was titled Tired of Trying to Measure Up. A great read, lifting the burden of legalism from the souls of tired Christians, and freeing them to do God's work in God's way. A real breath of fresh air.
Jeff Van Vonderen grew up in a disfunctional family, attending a legalistic church, where he learned as a teen to shine. He went away to college and fell into the all too present trap of alcohol. After a couple of failed attempts at secular college, he chose one his parents would approve of so they would foot the bill. It was a seminary. While there, he got a job in a secular recovery program, and found out a lot of things about recovery. People were getting better in the recovery programs. People in the church he attended were being shamed into compliant behaviors. But the Jesus he was learning about was not about shame. Putting two and two together, he wrote a book called Hope for the Chemically Dependent and Those Who Love Them. I heard him speak on the Family Life Today program about 10 years ago, and ordered up the tapes. They contained words of life, scripture rightly divided. I would listen to them in the car every time I went somewhere, until the truth of the forgiveness of Christ and the removal of our shame and condemnation became a reality to me, not some pretty words I didn't really understand.
I am still trying to make sense of what happened last year at the church I had been a part of for nearly 20 years. Tired of Trying to Measure Up contains a short section on Spiritual Abuse., with a note at the end recommending The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by David Johnson and Jeff Van Vonderen. I was intrigued, so I ordered a copy from Amazon. Wow! In a spirit of gentleness and genuine concern for the state of the church today, these two men have laid out the problem in simple language. Both draw from their years of experience in counseling and ministry, describing the hurting masses that are not allowed to speak their hurts, instead, they are expected instead to perform "religiously". They illuminate the traps that spiritual leaders fall into, and carefully explain the difference between the occasional hurtful behavior that happens in all relationships which can be exposed to the light in conversation and healed, and the abusive behavior that hushes and publicly shames those who express hurt or disagreement.
In my counseling with abused women this is an issue that comes up frequently. Well meaning churches that have laid the burden of shame and guilt on the victims of domestic violence, adding spiritual abuse to their suffering, instead of giving them a place of safety for recovery. How my heart burns within me. How can I help others to see what I have been shown? How do I share the wonder of the freedom that Christ came to bring? By being an encourager, an inviter, a willing shoulder, a safe place to express what is real. By allowing disagreement without condemning the one that disagrees. By speaking the truth in love, and not forgetting either part of that great admonition. By living my life with integrity, listening to what others have to say to me and about me with the ears of Christ, always remembering who He says I am.
May each of you be deliciously aware of the presence of God in your life today!
Fran
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| Greetings, and long overdue at that. It was a busy autumn as I tried to juggle work and school and family. School went well, work is work... what can you say, and the family still talks to me, so all is well. The kids are back in school today, with the exception of Carolann. She leaves Friday for Pullman. The house is strangely quiet! Yesterday I covered my peach tree. That was my big accomplishment for the break. Last year I had a bushel of peaches, almost all perfect, from my 3 year old tree. I am hoping for more this year. While I was at it I cleaned up the flower bed home of the peach tree, pruning back the dead wood on the sage, and removing a few large clumps of grass. Now I just have to figure out how to dispose of all the branches, etc. Little pieces in the garbage can usually does the job, but it is rather tedious. I have a christmas tree that needs to be removed as well. Think I will chop the branches up and use them to mulch my azaleas. One of these days I may get some photos out of my new camera, and post them on here. I should get a picture of the peach tree tent first. For those of you who are wondering about a tent over the peach tree, here is the scoop. Leaf curl, the bane of peach trees in this wet country, is carried by the rain. Covering the tree before the buds start to swell prevents the leaf curl from entering the opening buds and infecting the tree. I have had limited success keeping the plastic over the tree throughout the rainy season, but have managed so far to protect it well enough that it is free of curl, and with no chemicals involved. My tree came up from a pit that was thrown into the garden. The peaches are free stone, and free skin as well, and really tasty. Well worth the trouble. School starts again Monday. This semester's lineup includes more Chemistry, Biology, Engineering Graphics and Native American History, for a total of 14 credits. Last semester I had 5 classes and only 12 credits. I wonder how the work load will compare. The schedule isn't as nice as last time; I will have to search for blocks of time to do my work in, but I think I will be able to cope. There shouldn't be as many papers to write, in any case. Last time I had two English classes!  I hadn't written anything more complicated than a grocery list in a long time, it was quite a shock. Enough for now, I need to get on with cleaning. That is what I am doing with my free time over the break. Sound like fun? You wonder why I don't post more? ...Well, today I cleaned the silver ware drawer.... Well, today I got the cobwebs out of the corners of my bedroom... well, today I sorted files.... How exciting it that? And all that hard work is no longer evident after about a week, so no point in puffing it off. Happy New Year to All! | | |
| Well, it is way past time for an update. School, after the first panic week or two, trying to kick the brain back into high gear, is going quite well. I am running 95% in Chemistry, pulling A's in Linear Algebra and at least one of my English classes. I don't have any feedback from my other classes yet, but have turned in all assigned work and haven't missed any classes yet. I sat down and reread some of my computer programming text the other day, and actually was able to make sense of it, which is a hopeful sign. If I can learn to read the text, I can learn the subject. I noted something interesting this week which I would like to share with you all. We were assigned a reading in one of my classes which had to do with our postmodern society. The gist of the essay was that we, as a society, are becoming addicted to stimulation. The author pointed out that Disney has created a 3 dimensional "reality" that is more "real" than the real thing. We would rather go down the river in Disneyland, where we are sure to see crocs, than down a real river where we might not see them. The image becomes better than the real thing. This flashed into my mind at the board meeting Thursday, where the discussion revolved around a piano for church. The board decided that a piano wasn't necessary, or even desirable, because it would have to be tuned, and a good electronic keyboard sounds more like a real piano anyway, and can do so much more... I cried inside. Is the church also being remade to be "better than the real thing"? The real thing is being pushed aside, to make room for stimulation. Okay, that is probably deep enough into the mire. It is Saturday morning and I have a weeks worth of laundry to do. We are planning an outing for senior portraits and school clothes shopping this afternoon. Justin and Melissa go to Sauvie Island to the corn maze at 4:00, so have to be back by then. Life is a bit of a whirlpool at my house, and I wouldn't have it any other way! I don't have time to obsess about injustices, because I am too busy trying to keep my head above water. Keep smiling, and know that God loves you! | | |
| Hi everyone! I want you all to share my excitement as the day draws near. Read back through a couple of entries, and you will see that the main theme has been school. I did quit my day job, in May, and have been working full time for SRI, booking jobs for sign language interpreters, and finding the interpreters to do the jobs. I work from a corner of my bedroom, so my commute isn't toooo bad. And the dress code is pretty loose too! I have registered for classes: Chemistry, Linear Algebra, Computer Programming, Writing and Rhetorical Convention, and a one credit class in using computers in writing. My financial aid package came in last month, and I figured after I had turned down the loans, I would barely scrape by with what I could make in 20 hours a week at my current job. Then yesterday, I got a letter from WSU. Drum roll. Suspense. It looks official. Did I mention you need to go back and review my last two entries? In January I wrote about going to a financial aid presentation, where I learned about the non-traditional student scholarship. I told the gal from financial aid to sign me up. Well, apparently she took me seriously, because it is mine! That coveted scholarship which covers tuition for the entire year! The one I asked you all to pray about. Oh, thank you, thank you for your faithful prayers. Now, would someone please scrape me off the ceiling? God has opened this door wide, and rolled out the red carpet too! On a saner note, I did manage to get some seeds in the ground. In addition to the beans, carrots, lettuce, chard, beets and squash that I planted, I have several volunteer pumpkins, about a dozen tomato plants and a few sunflowers coming up. I need to move the tomatoes, because they came up in the middle of the beans. I don't know for sure where to put them, but I will find room for somewhere. The kids and I are off to the beach this weekend to help Gary's mom celebrate her 80th birthday. And speaking of mothers, I talked to my 89 year old mother yesterday, to let her know that I had been awarded the scholarship, and she informed me that she is on her way up in a hot air balloon this weekend. I tell you, I have to go some to keep up with that mother of mine. Well, I need to go. Where ever you are, and what ever you are doing, share my joy for a moment, and know that our God loves us greatly. Fran | | |
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