Posts made in March, 2012

Back-Ups and To-do Lists

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 comments

This is the final week of Project Simplify.  I like that this project was simple and short, reminding me that being organized doesn’t happen all at once but rather it’s an ongoing process.  A compilation of small steps, really.

I’m happy to report that the 3 projects from previous weeks are still intact and organized.  The boys know where their clothes go, the kitchen cupboards don’t cause anxiety, and my paper files and office supplies downstairs are still in the correct places.

But this week was different.

This week, I planned on organizing my computer a little.

I did manage to unsubscribe from several emails and weed out a few files.  Tuesday evening, though, all my other plans came to a halt.  Tuesday evening, all my most important computer files went AWOL.  Pictures, Quicken, business documents, and who knows what else.

Since I’m just one step above computer-illiterate, I can’t really explain adequately what happened.  They just went “poof”.  I panicked.

The kids met dad at the door and gave him the news and the warning.

See, whenever something happens with any technology that I’ve come to depend on, I kind of blow my top.  I just want these things to work, always, and I despise spending any time trying to fix them.

Praise the Lord, I managed to recover the Quicken files and several documents after some digging and I-don’t-really-know-what-I’m-doing computer finagling.  Coaxing, pleading, praying.

The ‘funny’ thing is that I’ve had on my to-do list for 2 months:

Back-up computer

There are reasons why I put it off – a dvd drive that quit working and an external hard drive that was too full.  But truly, I just procrastinate sometimes.

I like things simple and if they’re not, sometimes I just don’t play along.  Bad move.

Do you think God is talking to me about something?  That He actually cares about my computer?  Or is it my character?

My Project Simplify this week was to take my computer in to someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who will find all my missing stuff (praying!) and someone who will probably scold me for not taking better care of it and keeping things backed-up.  I am using the minuscule Acer netbook now and am thankful for it, but it’s just not the same.

So in light of my ignorance, Project Simplify will continue even though March is over and Tsh at simplemom.net is finished with it.

Anyone have tips on:

1. saving and organizing digital pictures
2. a simple way to organize pictures for blog posts (flickr?)
3. backing-up efficiently – online or disk or external hard drive or…
4. using “The Cloud” or not

Kind suggestions in simple words welcomed.  Thanks, friends!

Five Minute Friday: Gift

Posted in Five Minute Friday, Home Life | 11 comments

I have five minutes to write about “Gift” with no editing or over-thinking, thanks to the prompt from Lisa-Jo.  My mind is racing like Scrat after the nut, but here goes…

My kids.  Four of them given to me all dependent and squalling.  How could I ever manage this responsibility?  Only by grace, you know.  And so much more of it for each day.

{this is where I insert the gorgeous pictures of my kids…instead, I’ll use this space to remind you all to back-up your computers because you never know when things will mysteriously go missing.  Seriously.}

I ask God why you couldn’t all just be cookie-cutter-kids.  All with the same needs and desires and personalities, instead of four people as different as could be.  Wouldn’t this parenting job be so much easier if we all played by the same rules?  If what ‘works’ with one child ‘worked’ with all?

I guess He doesn’t want a boring life for us.  Great adventure, this life with personalities.

You all are my adventure.  Knowing you, loving you, teaching and learning with you.  I fail miserably and you see it and love me anyway.

So many times I pray you forget what I said and just remember there is grace for us all…

He reminds me what you, we, all of us need.  The law makes no one perfect, but grace.  Grace brings us to Jesus.

These kids and this grace work together on me.  Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father, and we have to embrace them all squalling and dependent.

STOP

Family Dinner

Posted in Home Life | 3 comments

There are tears at dinner and someone wants to be excused.

What happened to family time and lively discussions?  To “how was your day” and “great soup, mom”?

The soup is cold and the stare, it goes right through.

All my warm-fuzzies disappear and I am frustrated.  Selfishness abounds in our jars of clay, and I really am no different.  I really could use a good dose of sound judgement.

So my husband and I, we are partners in this thing called parenting and we tag-team.  He talks, I pray.  I talk, he prays.

We choose carefully but probe the hearts, push over barriers, dig up roots.  Maybe we point out too much, things that the Holy Spirit can reveal better than  our words do.  We pray He uses our words and pray He shapes them before they enter our children’s hearts.

We are trying to do this right, to train without provocation.

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. ~ Eph. 6:4

But there are bitternesses that build when parental eyes aren’t watching, and habits.  Always those  habits.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days; while she who lets their habits take care of themselves has a weary life of endless friction with the children. — Charlotte Mason

The mother who takes pains.

So many habits seem to form painlessly, and it’s the effort of training in good habits that wearies.  There are so many rules we could make and thou-shalts that we could throw down, but the heart is not trained by vaporous words, is it?

We pray for Life to breath into this mealtime.

No one is excused from the table of hard fellowship, because fellowship and family are not about warm-fuzzies and can’t- everyone-just-be-nice.  

This is the hard work of family.

I say it several times this week, to friends hurting and children wanting solitude.  Living with people is hard work and God grows us all up in that love-labor, where we do the confronting and the repenting and the working it all out because He worked it all out.  And sometimes it only works out in us, not them.

I try to live those words I say.

It’s the hard work that means the job is worthwhile, right?  This is all worth the pain and the yuck that we stir-up?  Because I prefer an easy life with smiling people.  I prefer to be the one excused from the table sometimes.

After dinner, there is repentance.  A long talk with the one who prefers silence, repentance from one who heard Life breathed through vaporous-words-redeemed.  Tonight we can sleep with the grace-covering.

The adults and children alike have learned something, all of us working out this walking together.  All of us made in His image.  All of us needing grace.  We learn (again) that words have power and wounds left to fester will eventually burst open, and we learn that running away from the table of hard fellowship doesn’t solve problems.

Two things I intend to train as habits, in myself and my children:

1. Walk circumspectly – Eph. 5:15-16  (watch your time and how it’s spent)
2. be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving – Eph. 4:32 (watch your words and how you use them)

Dinner sometimes becomes about more than eating, with more dirt than food  on the table.  Let’s pass the antacids, roll up our sleeves,  and work it out.

Project Simplify Week 3

Posted in Home Life, Simplicity | 3 comments

Paper clutter weighs me down.

Throwing things away is one of my favorite hobbies, but alas, it gets me in trouble sometimes.  I am technically the secretary for my husband’s business, and more than once I’ve ‘lost’ something important.  The boss is pretty forgiving but I really need to work on my bad habit of tossing things I don’t want to deal with.

Last year my in-laws gave me a money gift for my birthday and I was ecstatic (really!) to buy this simple file for my kitchen.

It just makes me happy.  A place to put things, to clear them off the counter, to hide the paperwork I loathe and the bills that stack, the newsletters I really do want to read, just not now.  Pretty little file folders to go inside and cover the things I don’t want to deal with.

Can you see the problem here?  I’ll let you draw your own spiritual analogies, but go easy on me.

Remember peek-a-boo with babies?  If something is out-of-site for more than a few…seconds, it really is out-of-mind.  I’ve stashed several important things in this nifty box that really needed prompt attention, rather than hiding.

So today I semi-dealt with them, and I let go of a stack of things that were just never going to be read.

A little freedom!

This handy-dandy file sits on a not-so-lovely shelf in my kitchen.  It’s one of those things that you just look at differently one day, and smack your forehead and think, “That looks really hideous.  I’ve been living with that for how long?”.

We are moving in about 648  hours, so I was tempted to just dump everything in a packing box and show you a lovely-but-fake ‘after’ picture.  I resisted.  I reassigned and rearranged and came up with something not quite so disheveled.

I even labeled the boxes!  I guess this will do for a few more weeks.

Last but not least, the infamous drawer-of-homeless-items.

Before

After

All these little tasks just make me happy.  Pretty simple!

If the words ‘simple’ and ‘organized’ make you happy, click on the Project Simplify button on the right to check out some great stuff.

Five Minute Friday: Loud

Posted in Five Minute Friday | 11 comments

Loud.  No editing, no over-thinking, but five straight minutes of writing about loud…

GO

All I could think of is India.  India is loud.  Honking, beeping, shouting, mooing loud.  And my husband, when talking with someone who speaks little english – he talks loud.  Because surely that will help them understand.

Beyond that, nothing.  Can’t I write about quiet?  I like quiet.

I went to blueletterbible.org and searched “loud” in the NKJV.

Of the 72 or so times the word “loud” came up, the  huge majority (I didn’t count)  were found in the book of Revelations.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. – Rev 12:10 NKJV

Yes!  Something worth shouting, the kind of loud I can rejoice in.

I prefer quiet, but aren’t some things just necessary to be loud about?

The demons cast out, they were loud.  The threats from the Assyrians, they were shouted for all to hear.  The people crying out for deliverance and rescue were not quiet about it.

The accuser of the brethren, day and night pointing his finger at us before God, his voice is loud in our ears.  {Can we please be louder than that accusing voice, and encourage one another loud enough to silence him?}

And though He never raised His voice in the streets, my Jesus, He cried out in a loud voice when it was finished.  One day He and His angels will be heard with a loud voice (hallelujah!) and all my quietness will rejoice.

Trumpets and angels and the people of God, all loud for His coming.

STOP