Basic Theology... for KIDS!

A friend has released an on-line version of a book he co-wrote with his son. Basic Theology for Kids is now available from Pastor Steve Lucas and son David! Steve is headed out to Costa Rica to support and equip other pastors through The Brook. AND. Steve is offering a freebie of his Kids' Theology text to bloggers willing to offer him a link. So. Here's a two-fer, Steve because we also appreciate your work to help equip parents who don't happen to be pastors. Sample download available at Steve's web site

Surprises

Oooooh. Friday night was full of surprises. My parents brought unexpected gifts of Polish pottery. A stunning batch of pretties including a coffee pot, egg plate, sauce boat and plate, and a flower-shaped bowl were all unwrapped just in time to put out for our first potluck dinner!
Mom and Dad with Katie also had a hand in a surprise for Don. His birthday is coming up, but since we had friends over, I figured a cake and "Happy Birthday" would be in order even if the date was a little off. The three of them went out to pick up a few things that I wanted for our guests... and a birthday cake. Dad slipped into the kitchen with the cake reading "My Dad Rocks!" while Don sat in the living room talking. Everyone headed into the living room, and the children started off the singing of the birthday song as the cake was brought into the living room. Don was looking around wondering who everyone was singing to as the cake was presented to him. It's pretty rare that we are able to surprise him!

Passages

A woman beloved by many who are precious to me passed away late Thursday after spending 2008 battling aggressive cancer that spread throughout her body costing her a leg and eventually this life. But what a life. I am tickled by the desire and level of activity going into developing a suitable way to celebrate a life well-lived. I saw the lady one time after she began her fight for life, but I never actually met her. Don knew her only to say, "Hello!" Yet our lives are strongly influenced by her effect on all the mutual friends who knew and were loved by her. What more can we hope for than to have loved so well that all who share our lives carry a bit of our torch forward to continue lighting the way to Christ?
An interesting counterpoint to the loss and celebration came an hour later when news of my sister-in-law producing a bouncing bundle of boy was relayed. Don and I were pleased that all went well for the mother and the little one. They should go home Sunday where my dynamo of a mother-in-law is waiting to help the family adjust to life with baby.
The news of these two common, yet once-in-a-lifetime, passages came an hour apart. There is an appreciation of the symmetry. We will pray for the peace of those who mourn, for the quick recovery of the new mother, and with all joy for the eternal life and the new life to be celebrated.

Time and Tied

Despite the officiant looking suspiciously like David Koresh, Don and I made it through our wedding vows to be introduced as husband and wife. We ate fajitas and cake, dumped our wedding clothes, tossed the garter and the bouquet, and headed off for our wedding night. Which was almost as ill-fated as my attempts to stay dry-eyed during the ceremony.

A couple who drove in for the wedding from another town were staying the night at our house. As were we. Shared quarters do not an intimate honeymoon make. As we unpacked my assorted toiletries on arriving at our first official residence (with our first official house guests), I discovered that something was missing. So I called my parents, and asked that they bring me the small plastic case left in the bathroom so we could avoid celebrating a honeymoon pregnancy a few weeks later. Mother said she would finds the missing pills before I was missing pills.

Except she could not find them. So she sent my Dad and his good friend (the father of the flower girl) over to the drug store connected to the home health agency where I worked. My father and his pal requested a refill of my prescription and explained the circumstances to my co-worker. (Oh, Privacy Practice laws how I love thee...) Dad and his friend delivered the by now much-discussed birth control pills to our house. We have wedding guests, and fathers of the wedding party all along on our wedding night. At which point the doorbell rings.

One of the nurses I worked with had been in the pharmacy and overheard my Dad broadcasting my birth control needs. Which she found very funny. So she proceeded to purchase every other method available in the store, tossed in pamphlets on everything from pregnancy to certain indelicate diseases, and came right on over to join in the fun. In case you are counting, there are now five more people involved in our wedding night than there ought to be.

Which brings me back to that study I joined a few years later hoping to find a cure for an all too common marriage and my husband's lack of attention and interest. Beginning to learn what Scripture had to say about marriage, I discovered that the pattern we set on our wedding night was still the one we were reproducing--- and that it looked nothing like what the Bible said our relationship could be. There were too many other people involved in our marriage. We needed to cleave--- both away from other people and to one another. While our children were directly affected by our marriage (and we remain responsible for loving and teaching our offspring), they were not participants in this particular three-legged race. And the race was bound to be smoother once we cut ourselves loose from our friends and parents. They were likely to have opinions, but not one of them was tied to the quintessential unit of one comprised by Don and I.

The long process began of trying to learn how to put Don in a place of higher priority than every other person. More challenging lessons came as we walked, ran, limped, and sometimes crawled along together. Sometimes we struggled against the ties that bound us together, but eventually we began to understand how to support one another while developing a fairly smooth gait by working together. Everyone else in this marathon is a spectator, coach, cheerleader, even companion, but none can be tied to us without hobbling our marriage by throwing off our rhythm or introducing a lack of harmony.

Radical Idea

I cried all the way through our wedding vows. And my nose ran. And I didn't have a tissue. And my maid of honor was all of 16, and she didn't realize I needed a tissue. So the most memorable moment I have from our ceremony was Don making the first of many sacrifices. During the prayer at the end of the vows, he let me wipe my nose on his suit jacket sleeve. (Ew.) To spare me from having great embarrassment before our guests. Except that the wedding video was rolling away to capture the moment forever. Hee.
No wonder that I have little real memory of the whole "in sickness and health", "for richer or poorer", and certainly I missed the "for better or worse" bit. I did catch the "to have and to hold from this day forward", and I was especially enthusiastic about the Mr. kissing his bride whose drippy nose was temporarily relieved. At twenty and twenty-one we were young... and really stupid. Which was good because our stupidity prevented us from giving up on one another and our youth left plenty of time to sort out our marriage.
I read a line in a book yesterday talking about how some kinds of love are "responsive", and I am drawn back through the haze of memory to the first three years of our marriage. Responsive love was exactly what we had signed on for, but neither of us was giving anything good to stimulate the other one on to love in response. Which means we were both miserable, and we each blamed the other. (Yeah, that helped.) I signed up for a group study thinking I would learn how to fix my clearly busted spouse at that point.
Except the other women in the room all seemed different from me. Different from any experience I had with examples of marriage. And the study was not at all what I expected. While I was ready to create my list of What's Wrong With My Husband, and it's sister How He Needs To Change, the ladies and the study all advocated something far more radical. And unappealing. They actually suggested that perhaps Don was not the Problem.

Completer

I answer my phone this afternoon to hear some really crazy news. Lisa and her sister Shelley have taken themselves off to our local bargain store. And guess what the two of them have discovered crammed in amongst the what-not littering the shelves in Bargain Basement? Polish pottery! The real deal--- and they would certainly both know exactly what they were seeing! So I hop in the car and race off to Bargain Basement. Oh. My. Goodness. Yay! We gorge our little peepers on all the pretty bits of pottery exclaiming over the fun of finding such treasure in this unexpected place.

I received a beautiful creamer and sugar bowl as a surprise gift a while back after posting my wish to build a coffee and tea service. (And yet people ask why I blog?!) I have since added a matching spoon, but today we found a little tray in the matching pattern to hold the whole lovely set. Shelley, quick with the rationalizing, suggested that the tray was a good buy because it both completed my sugar and creamer set and it was a lovely decorative item for my kitchen.

Calendar Crunch

Birthday, birthday, birthday. Erin's birthday is almost here. Unlike her siblings who would be on some demented Birthday High at at this point, Miss Erin is looking forward to the day we celebrate her, but she is too busy for much self-absorption. She has dancing lessons today, and on Thursday she has two friends coming for dinner, a rehearsal for Children's Choir and a second practice immediately after choir for her role as a shepherd in the grown-up Christmas programming.
Here's where it gets sticky. There are two more rehearsals on Saturday. When we have scheduled a birthday party. While waiting on confirmation, there is hope that Erin is not in either of the sections rehearsing this weekend since both appear to involve primarily the speaking roles for the Children's Choir production. I suspect that Erin would be perfectly fine with racing from rehearsal to birthday party, but her grandparents would probaby like to see her at some point on Saturday rather than racing along with her from one activity to the next. Had Erin's mama made the minimal effort to read the rehearsal schedule prior to last night, then the stress level of possibly squeezing too much stuff into too little time could have been avoided, or at least minimized. Bad Mama.
At least I know that she is a shepherd now. There was confusion created by requests for information from the costume mistress last night for Erin's clothing sizes because I still had not seen the script for Imagine (the show where Erin will serve as one of four shepherds reading Luke 2). The motivation to look back at a previously received message regarding Children's Choir came as I realized that, in addition to not knowing her specific role, I had no earthly idea what my child was doing, where she was committed to be, or when. Uh-oh. Not knowing the role was because the scripts had not been sent to the children yet, but the schedule whoopsie is all on me because that was sent two weeks ago and has even been referred to by two other moms!
The days of the December festival will make for one crazy weekend. Erin will perform not only in the two productions, but her ballet class will likely dance during the intermission. And her Daddy is playing bass in both the adult productions of "Pop Goes Christmas" and "Imagine". Oh, Boy. This is why I needed to not be involved in the organization roles for the intermission performers. I can hardly keep track of two performers--- much less a whole list of them!

Whoops.`

Sorry. I worked in an Operating Room for a couple of years. Cuts and bruises don't faze me, but I do apologize for giving others a turn. Not intentional, so much as unthinking. If you have not already read "Multitasking", then the apology will make little sense. The offending photo of Miss Erin's eye injury has been pulled down to avoid causing any unintentional "Ewwww."

Multitasking

Our weekend involved a series of commitments that kept us on the run right up until our youngest caught a frisbee with her left eye during a party--- just as we were preparing to take our leave to head for her school carnival. Instead, we headed for the E.R. where little missy's eye was determined to be undamaged although painful. The M.D. made it glow-in-the-dark which was exciting. She wore shades to church yesterday and to school today because she finds the look of her now full-blown shiner unappealing.

This week will be no more quiet than the last one. We have company coming for the weekend (my parents), the opening of a friend's daughter's play Wednesday evening, a pair of kids visiting Thursday night for dinner before they and Erin go off to choir rehearsal, what may be a full house for a our Second Friday Potluck, and a herd of second grade girls for a birthday party on Saturday, and the baptisms of five children belonging to two families dear to us.

So. While I ought to be doing things to prepare for the craziness of later this week, I am in no mood to do anything because it is a cloudy, somewhat rainy day which makes me want to curl up and sleep despite the household chores that need doing. Which is precisely what I will do while the modern conveniences of the washing machine, dryer, and dishwasher proceed to wash clothes and dishes for me. That is my kind of multi-tasking.

Not Polish

Whoa. Shelley and I had some yummy Polish food at lunch yesterday because the sklep is also a restaurant. Everyone else... mmm. Not so much. Because the results of our hours shopping for ingredients and preparing a really... um, involved meal were not so good. I will spare the details of our thoroughly misguided attempt at preparing pierogis (dumplings) and sernik (Polish cheesecake). Thankfully, we did have kielbasa to salvage the dinner.

Unfortunately, we also had the cheesecake. I was sadly going to forgo eating any of the delicious sounding cheesecake topped with a layer of thinly sliced peaches, meringue, and finished off with a crumb topping. (The operative word in that sentence was "sounding".) Everyone at the table sampled a bite of the treat that oddly resembled scrambled eggs with peaches. Shelley looked thoughtful. Don proceeded to scoop up a bite of the stuff to offer me saying, "You won't be breaking your fast [from sweets] with this..." before putting the single most vile bite of food into my mouth ever created. Holee cow. I can now say that I have eaten something so vile that I spontaneously cried. Wow. Whoo. Oomph. Apparently there are two kinds of "twarog" cheese, and we did not use the right one. Imagine dry cottage cheese with (Oops.) twice the butter called for in a dish that ended up reminiscent of cake batter with cottage cheese, a hint of peaches, and finished off with a highly bitter aftertaste. Oh my, my, my.

I still stand by the company. Despite five hours invested in a meal that I would feel guilty serving the dogs, I can honestly say the day was fun. I am not a Polish cook. My appreciation of good Polish food grows every time I attempt to prepare it. But I would not trade the fun of watching Shelley try to get instructions from three women all speaking rapid-fire Polish as they each weigh in on how much bacon we need for the pierogi filling... only to discern that one of them is underestimating because there are two pounds left in the meat counter--- and she wants one pound. Or watching the girls roll out the dough and cut circles for the dumplings before everyone gathered in the kitchen to begin filling and sealing our little pockets of potato, cheese, and bacon, followed by all three kids anxiously peering into the pot to see if we had any "floaters" that were ready to eat. Or the combination of chagrin and laughter at the discovery that the carefully filled pockets had all stuck together on the plate while waiting for cooking. Any day filled with laughter is okay in my book even if I eat something that literally brings me to tears.

Polish American

Yay! My favorite Polish American or Amercian Pole is home for a bit. Last night Shelley and I met at my favorite coffee shop in Suburbia just to hang out for a bit... and make plans for today's festivities. Today is something of a "Celebrate Poland" day at our house. Shelley learned to make pierogis in Poland. I made some truly bad Zurek (a kind of soup) for our family after returning from Poznan last Spring. Today, the opportunity to make both will be part of our day as Shelley comes to visit. I'll meet Shelley and her Mom to go have lunch and fulfill our specialty shopping list at a Polish grocery (sklep) in a nearby suburb. (The grocery store photo is from a previous grocery trip with Shelley... except it was a Polish grocery that was in Poland rather than Suburbia.) Then Shelley and I will be attempting to duplicate the feat of making pierogis which will be part of our dinner along with what will hopefully be good Zurek.

In addition to Don and I, the kids, and Shelley, Shelley's sister Lisa and Lisa's husband John will complete our dinner party! Hooray! While I am sincerely hopeful that the dinner will be wonderful, I know the companionship will be the best. After our yummy Polish dinner, we will all load up for the drive to the church. Erin is performing tonight (along with her adorable friends from dance class) at the church's monthly artist's gathering where original material is shared. It is awesome that we are all sharing so much with one another tonight from our home, to Shelley's Polish cooking expertise, to John and Lisa's ready laughter, and the children's corny jokes and talent. Whatever we each bring to the evening, it's bound to be memorable. Both my glimpse into Shelley's Polish world and her American world will come together tonight. What's not to love?!

Footnote:

Last night Shelley shared the raw footage of her support-raising video with me. As we watched, it struck me that several talented people were in the building who might share their expertise with her to create a piece that would truly communicate the spiritual need in Poland. We showed the video to our church's generally brilliant programming director Jan who had a couple of helpful comments, but was not really struck by the images that had me turning away from the screen to avoid sobbing. The message was not coming across in the video. First thing this morning, my phone rang. Those images that were not communicating the needed message did stick with Jan. So much so that she was calling with a makeshift verbal storyboard communicating the very real spiritual starvation in Europe. Whoo-Hoo!!! I am hoping that Shelley will be able to communicate why she goes out through the images and words with the addition of Jan's keen mind and eye to the creative process.

Requiem

Last weekend one of our pastors shared a quote from Calvin Miller, "Love smiles, Hate grins." The words caught my attention and imagination. An hour later, I mentioned to Steve that the quote was extremely appealing. So what was his response? He said, "Have you got a minute?", and when I responded in the affirmative he headed off back down the hall toward his office. Steve returned with a hardback volume in its dust jacket (Oooh, a dust jacket. Around here we still hide those so no one colors or writes on them!) which he extends to me.
This offering is wholly unexpected. I liked the words he spoke earlier, but I am already not moving along at the pace intended in my reading or an internet learning series I have committed to following. Despite the internal voice accusing me of being too busy to read something else right now, my hand is outstretched to reach for the slim book proffered by this man who is wiser than I, but for whom I have yet to see my admiration diminish--- a rare thing in a world needing grace and often characterized by disappointment. Perhaps some measure of the brilliance will be reflected if I read the words contained in the book proffered? Light reflected still illuminates.
And what words. The book waited with a small sense of accusation for a day or two before I creased the cover to begin the adventure it promised. In addition to Steve's comparison of Calvin Miller to C.S. Lewis, the book jacket contained praise for Miller saying, "...work in the tradition of Milton's Paradise Lost and J.R.R. Tolkien's "Ring Trilogy."" Really?
Really. And how. A Requiem For Love by Calvin Miller is genuinely a must-read. The description of Worship in the second chapter is stunning and the third chapter describes the oh-so-human need for touch and companionship despite an undiminished love for man's Creator with clarity and yet simplicity. Thus far, the book can be characterized as a sweet, sweet song. A song that remains with the hearer well after the notes fade. Oh, my.