Hope Road

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

One of the funniest slash most annoying things about working with toddlers is their penchant for latching on to one phrase and repeating it twenty times, just in case by some chance I hadn’t understood what they said the first nineteen times. For example (events in this story do not necessarily correspond with reality word-for-word):

“My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut.”

I smile and nod. “Yes, sweetie, that’s your donut.”

“My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut.”

Feeling slightly desperate, I point to the donut and repeat, “Yes! That is your donut!” while smiling brightly with as much enthusiasm as I can muster while trying to keep track of eight other rambunctious two-year-olds.

Still the little voice continues, eyes alternating between me and the donut, tone growing in urgency and insistency, finger tapping my shoulder.

“My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut. My donut.”

 At this point, I am tempted to grab the donut, pop it in my mouth, and declare triumphantly, “My donut.”

But finally, he’s distracted! With one last sigh of contentment and “My donut,” he heads off to another activity.

Whew.

(originally published August 10th, 2007)

Filed under: My Life on August 6th, 2008 | 8 Comments »

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

“But there’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
-Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Isn’t it a wonderful feeling when renewed and utter gratefulness for grace sweeps over you like a flood? Yesterday I was thinking about something I had done that ended up hurting someone. I felt so miserable. The person had forgiven me, but I couldn’t forgive myself. I couldn’t impress the reality of God’s forgiveness into my thick head. I was talking through it with a friend, and processing through the realization that I don’t have to live in the sins and mistakes of the past. I said, “It’s not like I’m walking around with a black mark on my head or something.”

I wasn’t directly relating that statement to the cross, but as I said it, that flood of reality came rushing in and overwhelmed me. I would be walking around with a black mark on my head if it weren’t for Jesus. And I don’t have it anymore. Everything is forgiven. All of it. I don’t have to go back to yesterday and bear the weight of my failures then. I am new in Christ. I can’t even fathom this grace. I am so thankful.

(originally published September 28th, 2007)

Filed under: Christianity, Personal Reflection on August 4th, 2008 | 2 Comments »

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

I have no idea what this post is going to be about. Last night I decided to write an entry titled “How Now, Brown Cow.” Just because that phrase was stuck in my head and I wanted to work it into my life somehow, some way. And blogging seemed the most, logical? illogical? easy? extension of that.

Ahh, I know… what was your favorite Dr. Seuss book as a child?

Mine was Fox in Socks. Perfect for a word-lover like me.

“When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…
…they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.”

(originally published August 14th, 2007)

Filed under: Books/Writing on August 3rd, 2008 | 4 Comments »

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

Ernest Hemingway’s shortest story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Six words! I think some of the best writing is communicated in a small amount of space. Pithiness is paramount! (I love the word pithy, by the way. And the words winsome, pulchritudinous, pensive, and quixotic… even though I’ve never been quite sure how to pronounce that last one. But I digress.)

If you’re feeling brave, write me a six-word story in the comments section!

(originally published June 18, 2007)

Filed under: Books/Writing on August 1st, 2008 | 5 Comments »

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

I’m a girly girl in many ways, but not when it comes to shopping. I don’t mind window shopping, and I love book shopping (even though my wallet sure doesn’t). I don’t even mind shopping alone, especially when I’m not desperately searching for one much-needed item. But I am never going to be a girl who tries to think of a fun activity and comes up with shopping.

And I usually get most restless when I’m shopping with other girls/women. I think it’s all those long hours I spent in stores with my indecisive female family members when I was growing up. Girls shop so slowly. They wander along, halting every minute or two to look at something, finger it, debate about color and pattern and whether it’s figure-flattering or whether it would look good with the room decor or whether it’s too expensive or unnecessary or completely perfect in every aspect. They don’t seem to have any sense of the passing time, or of how long we’ve spent under the glaring lights of the department store. They can’t leave until they’re perfectly satisfied with their purchases, and they absolutely cannot decide on one single purchase in anything less than half an hour.

And the worst thing about shopping? I always get so dreadfully thirsty. I don’t know what it is. I should learn to bring water with me.

So, with all that being said, I’m off to go shopping with my lovely friends! Oh, the bitter irony.

(originally published September 15th, 2007)

Filed under: Miscellaneous on July 31st, 2008 | 4 Comments »

While I’m on blog hiatus, I’m taking a leaf from Shannon and re-posting some entries from my archives. Lord willing, I’ll be back to writing new content in a few weeks - see you then!

Earlier today, I read this entry from the Girl Talk archives. I thought, “Oh, I know someone who that would apply to. I should share it with them.” This evening, there is no one who needs to read it more than I do. I hope it might encourage you too.

Whenever I am tempted to wallow in regret over a mistake, an unwise decision, a sinful comment, I have often found encouragement in these thoughts from Charles Spurgeon:

“What is the use of regret unless we can rise by it to a better future? Sighs, which do not raise us higher, are an ill use of vital breath. Chasten yourselves, but be not discouraged. Gather up the arrows which aforetime fell wide of the mark, not to break them in passionate despair, but to send them to the target with direct aim, and a more concentrated force. Weave victories out of defeats. Learn success from failure, wisdom from blundering.” (Spurgeon on Spiritual Leadership by Steve Miller, p. 93)

Let’s get off our mental couch of despair over past sins and mistakes. Let us not be like the one the apostle Peter describes as ’so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins’ (1 Peter 1:9) By the power of Christ, let’s be all the more diligent to make our calling and election sure (v. 10). Let’s weave victories out of defeat.

(originally posted June 30th, 2007)

Filed under: Christianity, Struggles on July 29th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

My remaining readers - the few and the faithful - may have noticed a slight drop in my posting frequency over the last couple of weeks. I think I’ve been taking a blog hiatus while telling myself that I’m not really taking one, because there are few things that will kill a blog more than taking an extended, indefinite break. But the truth is that I just haven’t been much in the blogging mood lately, and I think I’m ready for a little break. I hope to return with the pencils of my brain freshly sharpened… or something like that (I guess my metaphorical powers are dwindling rapidly). Enjoy your summer and check back in soon.

“What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?” (Psalm 116:12)

Filed under: Blogging on July 27th, 2008 | 13 Comments »

I like The Rebelution and the Harris’ brothers “teenage rebellion against low expectations,” and something I particularly like about their mission is that they focus on the importance of small hard things. In a recent entry, they discuss this issue again with a quotation from young blogger Tim Sweetman:

Many young Christians long for Christian “stardom,” desiring to do “big things” for God, and are often in sin when pride is the catalyst for their desire to be on that stage, literal or figurative.

(Read the rest of Tim’s article here.)

I’ve written about this before also, in my post The Little Faithfuls. I love to think that, were it not for thousands upon thousands of ordinary Christians all around the world doing small hard things every day, so much would be different.

The scribes who painstakingly copied Scripture by dim candlelight…
the white-collar workers who give faithfully to the cause of missions…
the illustrators of Bible storybooks for children…
the janitors who clean church bathrooms…
the missionaries who labor for years with little fruit or recognition…
the secretary who prepares the bulletin every Sunday…
the friend whose exhortation is perfectly timed and needed…
and countless others.

It’s easy to sit safely behind my computer screen and write about the importance of faithfulness in small difficulties. But the truth is, I have to get up and do things I really don’t want to do tomorrow. Small things, hard things. Will I be faithful?

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)

Filed under: Christianity, Personal Reflection, Scripture on July 16th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

My title for this entry was inspired by the children’s book at left. (Children and books… that’s basically the summary of my life right there. ) If you’ve been reading Hope Road for longer than two minutes, you’ve probably noticed that I like to read - and that would be a slight understatement.

However, I think something happened to me when I moved the tassel from the left side to the right (or was it the right side to the left? I can never be sure). Maybe I did too much reading in those last few crazy months. Maybe I just plain read too much throughout my lifetime! Because this summer, I have read far fewer books than usual.

What’s even stranger is that I keep starting books and then not finishing them. Being the perfectionist that I am, I used to never do that. I felt committed to books when I started them, and I had to see them through, even if I didn’t like them. Part of the change was college, I think - teaching me to read assigned portions of a book instead of the whole thing.

I don’t want to abandon all of my intellectual faculties to a pile of littered, leftover childhood dreams. So I am trying to start reading consistently again - and not just picking up whatever I feel like rereading from my bookshelf, but something valuable that takes a little work to get through.

The point is, I started reading a couple of books recently, and I want to write about them so I will be committed to finishing them!

The first is a fiction book, The Old Helmet by Susan Warner. (I reviewed Queechy by the same author.) Although it’s a simplistic and stereotyped explanation, Susan Warner is kind of like a Christian Jane Austen. She wrote a couple of decades later, but her books have the same interest and insight into human character as Austen’s (with less romance), and the additions of Puritan-influenced theology and religious life. I have eight or ten of her books, and I love them. I haven’t read The Old Helmet for a few years, so I am looking forward to rereading it. It’s 434 pages long in very small type, and I’m not used to reading for long periods of time anymore, so it will take some discipline to get through!

The second is a nonfiction book, The Gospel and Personal Evangelism by Mark Dever. I’ve been reading this for a few weeks now. I got it back in April, I think, and have had it on my list to read since then. I’ve only read about a chapter and a half so far, but it’s really good, and it’s refreshing my perspective on this central element of the Christian faith. Mark Dever has such a mixture of brilliance and relatability (is that a word?); it’s a privilege to read what he writes.

So I really want to finish these books… I don’t know how fast, but I need to stay committed to reading them! I hope to have reviews posted by Christmas.

Filed under: Books/Writing on July 15th, 2008 | 5 Comments »

At work (daycare), today was library day. I went with the school-agers and another teacher. A librarian read the kids a couple of stories. Both of them were about fairy tales, and both were a little… non-traditional.

During the battle scene in the second book, the princess saved the prince by sweeping him up into her arms and taking him to safety. How very forward-thinking of this medieval young lady.

Then I heard one of the boys say, “Pshh… it should’ve been the other way around.”

Perhaps all is not lost for the youth of America…

Filed under: Culture on July 14th, 2008 | 11 Comments »