14 hours ago
This week I got my Christmas shopping done.
Sometimes life gets a little hectic, and before I know it I have five projects hanging over my head. And the calendar keeps rolling on, and each day passes without anything getting crossed off my list, and the pressure in my chest builds. When I start to feel like I'm a few interruptions away from bursting into tears, it's time to set some things aside and make sure those projects get done.
That's what I did last week. I have a sweet husband who had the week off, so he filled the homeschool teacher role for a couple days. But aside from that, I cancelled school for the week, and I spent every spare minute crossing things off my list. I finished my Christmas shopping (except for a couple little straggler gifts). I sorted, edited, and uploaded all my 2024 photos (so far) for printing in January. I cleaned out my kids' rooms (no small task) in preparation for Christmas presents. And then I spent the weekend sending out emails, writing an overdue book review, writing a couple blog posts.
So here we are. I've been wanting to share our recent happenings on here before we are full-on into Christmas season. Despite what the weather did a couple weeks ago, it's still fall, and I don't want to let it slip by without chatting here.
Our Fall
Our post-election snowstorm.
Ever since 2020, I get very skittish in election years, and I've particularly avoided going out on Election Day. You just never know what is going to happen, and I'd rather be tucked away in my little mountain home to deal with the results on our own, for good or for ill. So I stayed up far too late on Election Day, went to bed with the slow dawning of relief spreading through my muscles, and when I woke the next morning with nary an election hiccup in sight, it felt like Christmas morning in more ways than one. Snow blanketed the ground, and we cheered the results and declared a snow day. I baked, we played Christmas music. It was lovely.
It turned into two lovely days, and then three, as the snow continued to fall, and our previously planned events were cancelled clear into Saturday. Finally on Saturday morning, with my husband and oldest out hunting, the younger kids and I could take it no more. We went roller skating, and had a grand time.
This fall we pinched our pennies a bit. Instead of a corn maze (which are quite expensive here) we went on a tour of a tea factory, and visited a fall bulb sale at our local gardens. Instead of a pumpkin patch, we visited our ranch friends, and they gifted us with pumpkins from their garden that are still gracing our house. Instead of picking produce, we went on an adventure in the mountains, and sat in the middle of a huge, secluded aspen grove while we read books and ate candy corn. Fall fun doesn't have to cost alot, does it? Spending time with people you love in the brisk air is what makes fall special.
Homeschooling is going really well, much more smoothly than the previous two years. As I've written before, I think when you hit a homeschool rough patch, the thing you really need to do is power through. Things do tend to improve if you give them time. Even though I have more to manage than ever before, I feel more up to the task as well. I would like to write about our curriculum choices for this year at some point, since we made a bunch of small changes and we are also managing work for our new homeschool co-op. We are taking a more "purist" approach to Charlotte Mason style history this year - my kids are reading so many good books, and it's really wonderful to see them connecting with what they're reading. I'm reading about half their books with them right now, and I myself am learning so much! A curriculum summary will be coming eventually, but for now all the books are my favorite change.
A Hobby Update
Every year around this time, I find myself wanting to learn how to crochet. I've tried learning to crochet before, but it's tricky! I will persist though. A Christmas ornament crochet pattern caught my eye on Etsy the other day. Even though I've gone shopping for the correctly colored yarn, I have not had time to attempt my project yet. Now that all my pre-Thanksgiving tasks are out of the way, perhaps this week I can give it a go. I hope to report success the next time I write an update.
Reading has been very touch-and-go since the summer. I have finally finished quite a few books, but can't seem to get my reading momentum going on any one book. I will have a reading update blog post coming in the next couple weeks, but I have a feeling my yearly totals are not going to be as impressive as previous years. One recent book quite likely will make my favorites list though - I just finished True Grit by Charles Portis a couple weeks ago, and I found it delightful. If you like spunky main characters, amusing first-person narration, and the Old West, it's a winner.
I haven't been baking nearly as much as I typically would in the fall, but I did make caramel pecan cinnamon rolls last week, and they were very tasty.
Derek and I have found several new shows that we are finding amusing. Our favorites are usually competition shows (think Survivor), and we found one called Anonymous. It's one of those social media game shows, which can often be annoying, but this one grew on us. We also have tried a show called The Snake, which is a one-day game show where contestants have to complete tasks while figuring out which player is secretly trying to sabotage them. And then we stumbled across Frogger - which is, well, a real-life Frogger. Similar to America Ninja Warrier, but sillier. We're saving that one to watch with the kids. One of these days I'll get Derek to finish watching Downton Abbey with me, but for now, competition shows are scratching the entertainment itch.
Gratitude
I told Derek a few weeks ago that this year has felt like a year of disappointments. I rattled off a list of things that have just not worked out the way we wished. We had to buy new appliances instead of taking a planned trip to see friends, we didn't have successful hunting seasons, and finances have been leaked away by scary trips to the emergency room.
What I really needed was a bit of sleep, because things always look worse when you're tired.
But in the last couple weeks, my heart has started to calm. God is gracious to us, and somewhere along the way that knowledge settled back on me, like the snow settled on the ground last week and made it sparkle. We are very blessed. All the things I was disappointed about are just life; but life is also full of gifts, isn't it? This is the time of year when we are reminded to open our eyes wider to see them fresh.
Remember when we all used to post thankful lists this time of year? I'm thankful for:
-A house that is filled with warmth, and voices, and a little bit of chaos
-The way snow looks when it's hanging all over pine trees
-The smell of fresh-baked bread
-Books that make you feel like home
-A healthy husband and children
-The smell of fallen aspen leaves
-Watching the sun rise before anyone else is up
-Holiday plans with family taking shape
-Friends that let you know when you're missed and welcome you into their homes
-A group to study the Bible and sing hymns with
-Good preaching
-The right to educate my children at home
-Pumpkin candles
-Twinkle lights
-Siblings to laugh with and supporting parents
-Fuzzy blankets
-Thrift store finds
-A small-town library that lets you check out board games
-Decaf coffee
-Small dogs that don't pass up a chance to cuddle on my lap
-Sweaters
-Sleep
So many little gifts when you stop to think about it. I know this, I've been counting gifts for years, but sometimes life gets busy, and you forget how wonderful everything can be - God's common grace in showers every day. And of course, underneath it all is always that deeper gratefulness that comes with knowing my Savior calls me His own. If everything else falls apart, if every hope is disappointed, if everything is lost - that is something that can't be taken away.
Happy Thanksgiving season! Knowing me, I won't get around to writing another personal post before the day. So I hope you all are overwhelmed by gratitude to the Giver of all good gifts this year.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." James 1:17
I’ve been thinking lately about what kind of habits and skills I want my children to have in place before they are technical adults. When I pause a moment and realize that my oldest will be eighteen in a mere five years, that is sobering. What kind of things do I need to teach him before he launches? Five years doesn’t feel like enough.
It is tempting to focus on college prep skills - how to write a great essay, time management, how to take a test, how to read difficult books. Or maybe we should focus on life skills - how to not overdraw your bank account, how to file taxes, how to change a tire, how to be a valuable worker and hold down a job. And of course, there are character traits I want them to have - how to persevere, be reliable, be honest, be a courageous person, be an encourager, forgive others, be kind.
All these things are important, and of course we make plans to instill all those things in our children. But what are the most important things they need to learn? As I fret and worry about all the skills that my children should have, with an eye on the ticking clock, a verse niggles at the back of my mind.
“‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken from her.’” Luke 10:41
The good part Mary chose was to sit at the feet of Jesus, to hear His words, to soak them in and treat them as the treasure they were.
This is the one thing that is needed. My kids will learn everything else at some point, but if they miss this one thing, they’ve missed it all.
The habit of being in the Word daily, verses hidden in their hearts, the skill of how to study the Bible - this is the one thing that is needed, because these are Jesus’s very words. This is how we grow in our love of Him, and if we’ve missed Him, we’ve missed everything. So at the top of my list of things I want to give my children is the skills to know Him through His word.
Daily Bible Study And Memorization
When I was 9 years old, I read a fiction book in which one of the characters casually mentioned that you can read the whole Bible in a year if you read three chapters every day and five on Sunday. It was like a lightbulb turned on. Shortly after that, I used some of my own money to buy a devotional book, and started a daily Bible routine of my own, reading three chapters a day.
I read through the Bible several times by the time I reached the teenage years, and just reading the Bible and letting it get into all the corners of my mind was hugely helpful. My mom also took us to a community Bible study, and we learned alot of basic Bible study skills there. We attended a small country church that deeply cared about encouraging the kids to memorize Bible verses, and they offered two dollars toward summer camp fees for every verse we memorized. I memorized hundreds of verses before I graduated high school.
By the time I was an adult, I had my devotional routine firmly entrenched, I knew many Bible verses, and generally could find whatever passage I was looking for. Love of the Bible is bolstered by a familiarity with the Bible, and that is a beautiful thing. Since they were little, I’ve been trying to give my own kids both those things by equipping them to develop their own daily devotional habit.
These are a few ideas for helping kids with daily Bible time and verse memorization.
-Encourage your kids to join you for your quiet time each morning. I think the most impactful way to help your kids develop the habit of being in God’s Word every day is to make it a habit for yourself. I know that I have memories of my mother sitting at the kitchen table every morning, with her coffee in hand and Bible open. Knowing she was making her own Bible time a priority was a great encouragement to me.
-Read the Bible together. Sometimes kids go through a period of struggling with reading or understanding the Bible. Don’t let learning struggles get in the way of giving your children God’s Word! I’ve been reading the Bible with my kids as part of our homeschool morning time for the last couple years, and it has been so enriching for our family. It has opened up so many spiritual conversations that we may not have had otherwise. My goal is to read every book of the Bible to them before they graduate.
-Give them external motivation if necessary. I personally am not opposed to giving kids some sort of reward for being faithful in Bible reading, for memorizing verses, or for reading the whole Bible themselves. There may be a danger of them only reading the Bible because of the reward, but I also know that God’s Word is living and powerful, and does not return void (Hebrews 4:12,Isaiah 55:11). Even if their motivations may start out as less than stellar, my hope is that the little extra push will establish a habit in them that will not be easily broken later.
-Join a Bible memory program, or come up with your own program and reward system. I loved that the church in which I grew up had a meaningful reward for Bible memory, and when we had children I knew we needed something similar. We’ve been part of an Awana program at church for years now, and it has been a great way to encourage my kids in Bible memorization. As I’m starting to have kids graduating from Awana now, I am trying to mull over ways to create my own program so they remain motivated to memorize.
-Memorize verses together. We’ve had alot of success whenever we have established a routine of learning Bible verses as a family. I usually say a phrase, and have the kids repeat it, until we are comfortable, and then we go to the next phrase. Sometimes I’ll write the verse on a board, and between repeating it the kids will take turns erasing a word, until we can say it with no help from the board. Faithfully learning more passages of Scripture together is something I’m still working on, because I can see how those passages we have done have stuck in my children’s minds.
Developing Bible Study Skills
Aside from solid Bible reading habits and memorization skills, as my kids began to reach the teen years, I want them to learn how to deeply study a book of the Bible on their own. Though I’ve done Bible studies at church and Bible study guides on my own for years, I have only learned how to deeply study a book of the Bible on my own over the last couple years. It’s been so enriching for me, and I would like to pass those skills to my kids before they grow up so they can enter adulthood with an established method of how to rightly handle God’s Word.
Instead of a list of tips, in this section I want to give a review of a book that I recently read. It is a wonderful tool for helping teens learn how to really study the Bible before they leave home.
Transformed By Truth by Katherine Forster
My previous tips are mostly aimed at helping kids develop a habit of Bible study, but I think Transformed By Truth by Katherine Forster is a wonderful way to address the heart of Bible study. Forster is a National Bible Bee winner, and in the process of studying for the Bible Bee, she has gained so many wonderful insights into the Bible and how to dig deeply into God’s Word. She has written this book for teens in the hopes of spurring them on toward a deeper love of the Bible.
Forster shares her personal experience of learning to study and love the Bible. She starts with presenting the “big picture” of the Bible, and why this book should be the most important one in the world to us. Throughout the book she systematically shows us why we should study the Bible. I love what she says here:
“Bible study isn’t about gaining a bunch of knowledge. It’s not about becoming a better Christian so God will love you more (the Lord forbid we ever think that way!). It’s not about being smarter so we can feel better about ourselves. In fact if all we ever do is collect information about God without letting it touch our hearts and move us to love and wonder, we’ve completely missed it. In Bible study, we get to behold our God.” pg. 81
After diving into the why of Bible study, Forster gets into the “how” of Bible study. There is so much meat in this section of the book. She addresses developing the habit of Bible reading and studying the Bible with the local church. Then she gives a thoroughly helpful explanation of how to do your own inductive study of a book of the Bible. She teaches us the proper methods of observation, interpretation, and application, and gives us a myriad of tools to enrich our Bible study - all while offering advice on how to avoid misinterpretation by comparing Scripture with Scripture and always keeping context in mind.
“On our own, we’re liable to misinterpret the Scriptures, twist them to fit our own desires, and misuse them to build up our own self-righteousness while tearing others down. We’re handling weighty, everlasting things with fingers of dust. Why would we think our hands could hold these truths on our own? Why would we think our minds could comprehend the words of God Himself unless He graciously gives us help?” pg. 106
Forster also covers so many Bible study tools that the vast majority of people are probably not familiar with. You may have used a concordance before, but do you know how Strong’s concordance can be used to find out the specific Greek or Hebrew word that is used? Do you know how to use a lexicon to understand further shades of meaning in the original language? These are some of the deeper Bible study skills that Forster walks teens through in this book.
Throughout Transformed By Truth, Forster’s love for and high view of Scripture is embedded into every page. You can’t help but catch it by the end of the book.
This is a book I will be having my middle schoolers read as part of their homeschool this year. My oldest is nearly done reading it, and after my daughter reads it, I want to go through the “how” sections again as Forster walks us through an inductive study of 3 John. I think putting these skills into practice will be so impactful for them, giving them confidence for future independent Bible study. And it will also be so meaningful for me. It’s a privilege to get to teach these things to my children before they are grown, and Forster’s book is a wonderful guide and encouragement for learning together.
Time is ever slipping through my fingers. I’m reminded of the psalmist asking the Lord to “teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). As my children grow older, my prayer is for the Lord to teach me to number the days of my children’s childhood, and use them well. The burden of preparing them to enter the world as Christian young people is overwhelming, but it is a weighty gift to have these years to pour into them. I want to make sure we don’t miss out on the one thing that matters most.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”
Isaiah 40:8
Note: I requested a copy of Transformed By Truth from the publisher in exchange for a free review. This is my honest opinion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
