The Garden of the Freedom of God's Children

Ok, so it isn't my first craft ever, but it's my first once since getting inspired by a friend's blog (and a nice long conversation!) This one got a nice organic start, as in it grew out of my brain. (Though I got the garden idea from that same friend!)

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I had spent a lot of time thinking about how we as parents are really just fence builders. Why is that? Well, when they enter this world, children seem to struggle with the idea of freedom and license. You know, they think that they should be able to do anything they want, including scream in church, not ever go to bed, call dad a "stupid-head," eat an entire 16oz box of raisins (that they snuck out of the cupboard), and in general get whatever they want at all times with no consequences.

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Whe-he-hell... NO. That's not exactly how it works. That is called license, and sometimes there are very painful and uncomfortable consequences to living life that way (especially with the raisins). I want my children to live in freedom, most importantly freedom from self-inflicted pain due to selfishness, sin, pride, anger, hate, and gluttony. Despite KNOWING this in my head, I have struggled to figure out how to explain that to a logic-less toddler or a willful six year old who says to me, "Mom, if there is a fence to the garden, then we really aren't free."

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So, I explained to them last night, it IS like a garden. You guys are in the garden of the Freedom of God's Children. It's very large and very beautiful. It contains things like LOVE and happiness, and peace and joy. But there are dangerous traps that look alluring, traps like disobeying, hurtful words, lying, stealing, and the like. But these traps will close behind you and take right in as a prisoner. If this does happen, and it does happen, you can never escape by your own power, but if you are truly sorry and ask Jesus to forgive you, He will forgive and release you from the trap.

But it is not fun to fall into these traps, and God never wants us to sin, so Mommy and Daddy put up fences around the garden for you so that you know where it is safe to go and where it is not (and sometimes if you get close to a dangerous spot you might get a swat on the rear to remind you to stay away!)

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We know where to put these fences because of God's natural law, and because of his revealed law. We talked about the Ten Commandments as the fenceposts of the garden, and when we made our gardens we made these fenceposts beautiful because the law of the Lord is sweet and more precious than gold, because it keeps me walking in the LIGHT and away from the slavery of sin.

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Today, the oldest two and I made gardens. I have a catalogue from a seed company that was perfect for different pictures of flowers. So here's mine:

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I have 10 Fenceposts for the Ten Commandments, as well as a dark, murky, mysterious place around the outside that disguises the chains and slavery of sin. The Greatest Commandment in the center: "Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. (and the second) And Love your neighbor as yourself."

In this lies the Freedom of God's Children.

Bethany made a beautiful garden, with a waterfall down the middle, and it's opposite, which she imagined would be like a desert. She found a flower she didn't like and glued it on the other side of her garden.

those are "angry clouds"

Emma's garden also had a waterfall (that would be why there is a space in the middle of

Fre edom).
Emma also had the angry clouds on the other side.. Oh and a Dragon for good measure.


So that was my craft day. Nothing too crazy difficult. We used glue and scissors, though, so it is like a level 4 difficulty for me. I was just happy to share this truth with my girls and maybe give them a glimmer into how God is not "mean" when he says no, and while mommy and daddy may get frustrated when you test the limits, we really love you more than anything and just want you to be truly happy: happy with the Freedom of God's Children.

Dear Mr. President

So I found this video and really, really, really liked it.

My Bethany, 6 years old, watched this with me. After we finished watching it, we had the following conversation:

"Mom, governments are supposed to protect people, right?"
"Yes." I said.
"Then why doesn't President Obama protect people?"
I had some idea where this was going, but said, "What do you mean?"
"He doesn't protect the babies... Why doesn't he do what he is supposed to?"
"Well, it is because he doesn't believe that really tiny babies should be protected, but that they are like the "property" of the mommies or the doctors, and they can decide what to do with the babies."
Thoughtfully, she asked, "Why don't you tell him, Mommy? Tell him that they are people, but they just need a place to grow?"
"Well, I think that plenty of people have tried, sweetie. And it would be very hard for him to change his mind now because lots of people would be very angry because they think the same way he does and voted for him for that reason."
She didn't give up, "But if more people tell him, wouldn't he change his mind?"
I suggested that she could write him a letter if she wanted, but this scared her...
"What if they come and take me away?"
"I don't think that would happen, and anyway, I wouldn't let them."
"But what if they take you away?"
"Well, I think if they take me away, they'll have a lot of trouble on their hands because we have a lot of people who would stand up for us... Honey, if you think you need to write a letter, you should pray for the courage to do it.. I'm not going to make you write it."
"Okay, Mommy."

A little later, she took me by the hand into the "den" and dictated this letter to me--I did not help her.

"Dear President Obama,

This is Bethany. I am six years old. I want to tell you to change your heart. These babies are people. They just need a place for them to grow into a wonderful person. I used to be a baby so tiny that you couldn't even see me. Then I was born out of my mommy's tummy. And now, I grew up into a six year old. Can you please stop paying people to kill these babies?

Thank you,
Bethany"

Thank YOU, Bethany.

So Close

Well, we did fill one apartment, and have an application out for another one, but alas, the trip to St. Louis was not to be. Still, we had a lovely weekend. Friday was good: got to catch up with a good friend during a playdate a BK (woohoo Big Fish!), signed a lease (in a van with 5 kids), picked out vinyl and carpet (for another apartment), ate at the fish fry with Matt, and a late tp stop at Walmart (all with 4 kids in tow).

Matt was siding a house on Saturday (you know, when it snowed), so I spent most of the day going stir crazy and listening to questions like:

"Mommy, what day is it?"
"Saturday."
"Then why isn't Daddy home? You know, the song: 'Saturday, Daddy's Home'?"

Yes, I made up a song with those words in it. We are all happy when Daddy's home! But these days we are earning our Sunday rest. :)

So the evening was spent watching 10 episodes of The Office via Netflix. I say highlight because it was not the best day, but you know how they say you can have too much of a good thing, well... sometimes it takes you some time to realize that you had too much of a bad thing... we realized that we kept watching it because it WASN'T satisfying..That we were much happier at the beginning of the show (I like the song) than at the end... you just think--"This has got to come to a plot resolution sometime, doesn't it???"--Well, long before any resolved plot, I got sick of that. I can handle stupid humor, but I think that stupid sex humor is really not funny. I also think that desecrating it through stupid sexual situations is even worse. My rule of thumb is, if you can't film the show without objectively sinning, I can't watch it without subjectively sinning. 21 minutes of "ha" isn't worth collateral damage to my soul. But hey, Duma was good.

*Whew*

So, Sunday was nice.. We went to church in Madrid so we could drop off an application to a prospective tenant and we had really well behaved kids.. We tried to get donuts for them at Git 'N Go, but turns out you can't "git" donuts there. So we came home and Mommy made apple fritters and scrambled eggs... I had purchased 30 lbs of organic apples and some were rotting in spots, so I cut out the yuck, cored them and sliced them in my new favorite appliance: my KitchenAid food processor (Thank you birthday club!) I mixed them with a little flour and cinnamon and sugar and froze them until needed.. Of course, I needed all 4 bags that I froze last Monday.. 3 of them for these amazing apple fritters which I've made 2x.

In the afternoon we went on a pilgrimage to Gilbert, IA to Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church to fulfill the requirements for obtaining a plenary indulgence in the year of St. Paul. We did not partake in the real part of the pilgrimage, the 12 mile walk from St. Thomas in Ames carrying a 200 lb wooden cross, but it was cool watching the college students come in right at 3pm, knowing what they had been through to get there. I had a beautiful chance to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation with a wonderful and holy priest. It was so cool because before the priests went into the confessionals, they knelt at the altar and confessed to each other! I've never seen a priest give absolution to another priest before. It was a true show of humility.

So, finishing off with leftover night and kissing and blessing our girls good night, it was a good weekend. I mean, it was a great weekend. I am truly blessed to have the family I do and even more blessed to be the child of God that I am.

1/2 way there!!

So we made a little deal with God.. Well, sort of..

I am told by those great spiritual writers of history that the secret to peace is not to want anything too much that its loss will cause great sorrow. So with that in mind, here is our deal.

Matt and I have been bowled over by the common sense and truth of a certain constitutionalist named Ron Paul. We wouldn't give him the time of day until some friends we really trusted suggested we take a close look. We read The Revolution and started reading Mises.org to find out what is REALLY going on with our economy.

Well, next week, Campaign for Liberty, a grassroots group devoted to Ron's ideals of freedom, peace, and economic liberty, is having a regional conference in St. Louis and boy do we want to go. Not only is the incomparable Ron Paul speaking, there will also be a man named Thomas E. Woods who is a regular contributor at Mises.org and who also wrote a book called How the Church Built Western Civilzation.

So we this is right up our alley! But there is that pesky income problem.. So the deal is: we have to fill 2 apartments at Madrid before we can go. This would be a significant sign since we've had 3 empty for a year and we have a week until the conference. But today we filled ONE!!!! YAY! Our hearts are heavy for other reasons, though, because Matt's grandma isn't doing very well, and unless she improves we can't make any reservations in STL at this time. So our deal isn't so much a deal as a request for a sign and a way.. If we don't get to go, we don't get to go.. this could be a great event in our lives, but if it is truly meant to be, God will make it happen so we can truly say, Que Sera Sera.

Enscuela de Capitalism

So, we had a pretty capitalistic day in our little homeschool today. The math lesson (in the math book--I take back some of what I have said about textbooks) was to organize empty food boxes and cans into what aisles they would be placed in a grocery store. Luckily, their aunt Kelly got them a BUNCH of play food stuffs.. So they spent much of the morning sorting....

And shelving....

And pricing...

My favorite was the freezer section (Bethany came up with the idea of using the french doors):

That's pizza and ice cream in there..

Bethany lasted longer than Ms. Emma, so Bethany determined that the store should be called "Bethany's." Emma decided she'd rather be a customer, anyway, so she went back to her "time test" that took her most of the morning..

Probably because her answers looked like this:

Madeleine was busy with the "tiny beads" a work that the kids do everyday.. You're suppose to iron it and they stick together, but this is a gift from 2 years ago from aunt Kelly (not favorite aunt Kelly (LOL), the other one). This pic is from a work Emma is doing right now, but this morning Madeleine showed us her design which she said was a garden.. :)

Little Leah is still sick and is taking a long nap.. Poor baby. She hasn't puked since last night, thank goodness. Hopefully she'll eat something when she wakes up.

So that is our day.. Daddy just left for work. He is going to put up siding at Bob's new construction house all week from 1-8 each day. Not quite full time, but hopefully we get some good leads soon!

Incredible Family

So my sweet girls have a real love for the movie, The Incredibles. If you haven't seen it, you have to get it.. It's just awesome.

This would be them acting out a scene from the movie in their "Incredibles costumes." There are only 3 kids in the Incredible family, so they made up a part for Madeleine, a "super" named Ada. Ada can fly, run really fast, go invisible, and her head won't fall off if you try to cut it off. I guess they had to throw in some pretty awesome powers if Madeleine was going to go for it. Leah is "Jack Jack" and just for kicks the girls threw in a baby doll named Gino (short for Eugenio). I am Elasti-girl, and with 5 super kids (including Violet, Dash, Ada, Jack-Jack, and Gino) I need those powers. Daddy is Mr. Incredible, and he digs that name, too. He is a pretty incredible guy, anyhow.

What's Up.

I realized that some of you might wonder what's going on with us since we are kind of in limboland. Well, we're doing very well! Matt is working hard this week at our apartment "complex." We've known for a while that it needed some work. I went two weeks ago to surprise him by painting the apartment where we needed to redo the flooring--took all four girls for two days! That was kind of fun, because as he left to go down to my uncle's house to work for him, I smiled in my pjs and then ran to get everyone ready to leave in 20 minutes!

Note the lovely carpet and the princess castle... Leah spent a lot of time in the stroller!

The gold is the new color, though the blue was difficult to eradicate completely!

Matt's work has been to lay the new flooring: brazillian cherry lock n' seal laminate from Sam's Club. He did most of it in 2 days!

Home news: We listed our house on the MLS today through a flat fee broker... So we can sell our house for just a buyer's commission, but we still get to be on realtor.com. It may take a couple of days to get on realtor.com, but we're excited to see!

Matt has a job lead right now, and we're waiting on an interview.. We've talked about the trade offs that we have to work through in life: especially security and freedom. He is free right now to go and work on our rental property and on Bernie's and Curly's and our friends' place in State Center. He can trade work for beef and be his own boss while he is learning and perfecting a trade, but we don't have the security of a fat paycheck, or even a regular one. But after 2 months of freedom (while still getting paid for the jobs he does), it will be difficult to put the yoke back on to provide more security for our family. I am supportive of his desires, mostly because I know he is an eminently reasonable and rational guy and he'll find the balance he's comfortable with... I probably have more of a risk tolerance than most people. ;)

I guess time will tell. Right now it seems that the "plan" isn't quite ready, or God would have revealed it. We are more than taken care of, and haven't even drawn unemployment yet. The message right now, though, seems to be "wait patiently." Although somedays we get antsy, we're both pretty at peace with the limbo for now.. Really it's more like purgatory because we are confident that things are going to work out as soon as the waiting is over. :)