Sometimes You Have To Choose Nice or Fair, but choosing Nice and not having Fair is STill better than Hell

Teenagers.....just a shameless plug

I have one son who is firmly in the world of teen age angst and one daughter who is on the front stoop. I love it. Love it, love it, love it. I am selfish for the reasons really and besides most of the time it is just fun. I complain and the bad moments are very, very, very bad, but they are also relatively few AND I believe that knowing what is ahead and not taking everything so personal will help with the coming kids. Having them talk to me about big things, important things, and sorting out their thoughts on family, friends and God our Creator has to be the most amazing thing. Knowing that in their brains they are making life long decisions and beginning to flesh those out both mortify me and excited me all at once. I was only 4years older than Zachary when I had Zachary. Being a young momma has had challenges that I can't put into words and one of those has been a lack of confidence. Today that is not where I am at. Today I am proud, so proud that I have great kids...Our kids have amazing friends, that my son refers to as 'his people', our daughter is working through the monumental task of balancing boundaries and not being a 'mean girl'. There world is one that I have unashamedly protected, but not naive. They are amazing. This doesn't hold any great wisdom no devotional moment, just me, a momma reflecting on being their momma. My Teen age years, not so great, not even safe for the most part. I had a few great friends who have found me into adult hood. I decided that our children would have the memories I wanted to make and do so many of the things that kids need to do. They are amazing and I am getting to do it along side of them.

Thanks Zachary and Sarah for being such amazing kids that make it a delight to be the momma of teenagers. Here are the years to come, you have been, so far, great job trainers.

The Science and Theory of Travel and Sight....Outside of Myself and the Rubbermaid Box

Molecular Science and the Atomic Theory, Energy and Mass are all topics that are swirling around my mind and for that matter our conversations in our home this week. I am piecing together Chemistry, Nature Study, Creation, and Travel, while realizing that they are all connected, at least for me. As I reflect on the calling to travel, yes calling, I know that it is connected to my new found understanding of what is outside me and how it relates to changing me. The words are shifty and don't paint a great picture of what I know is true and will quite likely ruffle feathers in any theology, not just my on. We are connected to all this stuff outside of us and how we deal with it and what we do with the things we learn and see has the opportunity, at the very least, to change us. I do not want the space I take up in the world to not be worthy of the great awe I have for my Creator, God, and what His Son did on the Cross, in order that I may fully experience, to the nth degree His creation and the energy that He put in us to fully experience all that He has for us. The more outside of ourselves we go to see, to really see the things around us, the more we can see what He is doing in us.
Consider this excerpt from a little charm I found through Ambleside Online ( a free curriculum I am using for my daughter), it only highlights what I lay awake thinking about at night.....


So use your eyes and your intellect, your senses and your brains, and learn what God is trying to teach you continually by them. I do not mean that you must stop there, and learn nothing more. Anything but that.There are things which neither your senses nor your brains can tell you;and they are not only more glorious, but actually more true and more real than any things which you can see or touch. But you must begin at the beginning in order to end at the end, and sow the seed if you wish to gather the fruit. God has ordained that you, and every child which comes into the world, should begin by learning something of the world about him by his senses and his brain; and the better you learn what they can teach you, the more fit you will be to learn what they cannot teach you. The more you try now to understand _things_, the more you will be able hereafter to understand men, and That which is above men. You began to find out that truly Divine mystery, that you had a mother on earth,simply by lying soft and warm upon her bosom; and so (as Our Lord told the Jews of old) it is by watching the common natural things around you,and considering the lilies of the field, how they grow, that you will begin at least to learn that far Diviner mystery, that you have a Father in Heaven.
Taken From Madam How and Lady Why-Preface-Charles Kingsley (check it out if you have a chance)

Such simple Ah Ha moments, that is what I keep having, taking me out of the limits I have put on myself to think that this is all I can ever do. Realizing, that these are limits I have constrained myself to, and opening my eyes and seeing the world around me is another micro-movement to the goal of seeing the world I must travel to.
Finding that I don't and won't have to step out of my calling as God Servant, Wife and Mother, to reach these goals, but now understanding that the things I want to do and see, the person I want to be and the things I need to do are an extension to the call of who God has created me to be in my various roles. I will be a more intent God Servant, a more energetic attentive Wife, and find more compassion and grace and hope in my Mothering, by moving out of what I know into more of what I am called to, inside of these roles.
This is what I am thinking about today.
These are the places and thoughts that are becoming part of my story, part of my family's story.
I don't fully understand, but I must put movement on the thoughts.
I must 'Consider the Lillis of the Field' to understand what God really has for me.
I just want to go see more fields than the ones within my immediate surroundings.