an update on nothing 28.September.2008

Well, this is a post on something, after all.  It’s a much-belated update on my 30 29 Days of Nothing.

What a month this has been!  Full of blessings and bounty — far from nothing!  There was so much bounty, in fact, that I expected to look back at my five resolutions in my original post and have to tell you that I failed at nearly everything.  But today I read my resolutions again (they had always been in the back of my head, but I couldn’t have told you exactly what they said), and I realized we had met almost all our goals!

1. No lunches out except Sunday.  One dinner out per week, with no drinks or appetizers: On this one, I messed up twice, I think, with the lunch thing.  But the lunches were not unplanned splurges in a moment of weakness.  They were both lunches out with friends, for social and relationship-building purposes.  Justified, or not?  (I could have cooked those meals, after all.)  As for dinner, I think I succeeded 100 per cent on that one!

2. Meals planned around grocery store sales. Eh, I tried.  But I don’t really enjoy going through fliers.  So, how’s this?  I planned a meal, and then found the grocery store that had that item on sale — beef stew meat, for instance.  Since I have decided that buying all organic produce is not conducive to saving for an adoption, I am buying most of my conventional produce at the dirt-cheap Korean market.  Meat, though, kind of freaks me out at the Korean market.  So, I’d either bypass the meat altogether, justify a really good meat sale at Kroger or Albertson’s in the name of frugality, or when feeling particularly sustainable, I would go to Whole Foods to get a small serving of the good, organic, free-range stuff.

3. Stay under budget on groceries by at least $50. Everybody say “Wooee!”  Wooee! I am officially done getting groceries for the month.  And guess what?  I am under budget by $105.  Yeah.  I will attribute this in part to the bounty of food my parents brought from Kansas, but I could also argue that our grocery budget was more stressed because we had two weekends with houseguests.  It all balances out.

4. Limited electricity use, including air-drying clothes and turning off lights. I’d say the month was about average in this department.  I wasn’t exactly a stickler about turning off the lights — not more than usual anyway.  But just to make up for it, I am sitting in the darkness with my laptop right now.  And then there was one weekend I totally broke down and used the dryer for two loads of laundry, which I almost never do.  I enjoyed the luxury and felt little guilt.

5. Cloth diapers. The next weekend I broke down and used disposable diapers on Isaiah during the day.  I did feel guilty about that.  Other than that, I stuck to my guns.

As I’ve said, I didn’t feel very deprived during September.  I received bounty.  The hardest moments were in the late afternoon when I was tired and felt like doing anything but cooking.  Those will always be the hardest moments.  Perseverance is rewarded when I realize that in our budget, we were able to pay for a three-night stay at a condo in Breckenridge, where we’ll be two weeks from tonight.  If I had planned better, maybe that money could have gone to someone in need, rather than to give ourselves some late luxury that we missed out on this month.  But whether we had done this experiment in September or not, we still would have taken our mini-vacation in Breckenridge.  And now it’s paid for.

I believe these exercises can and will become habit for me.  In the kitchen, I have become less scared of cooking from scratch.  I have learned a little more about balancing frugal shopping with ecologically responsible shopping; I don’t have to feel guilty about buying organic milk or zucchini.

But I can do without a weekly coffee shop indulgence.  It’s a nice and perhaps much-needed reward on occasion, but I don’t have to do it to satisfy my consumerist cravings.  As Suzy recently reminded me through the words of Gandhi: “We must live simply so that others may be able to simply live.”

All discipline is hard in the outset.  But the fruit it bears will sustain not only our family but maybe also many others.  That’s my dream.

living with lists 4.September.2008

I have tried FlyLady.  I have tried winging it.  I have sent myself on many, many guilt trips.

The thing is, my dear mom has a housekeeping plan for her house that left no room for failure.  If she planned to clean Friday, she cleaned Friday.  Her follow-through rate is amazing.  Mine?  Not so good.

FlyLady wasn’t so bad.  I have to say, it was motivating… in a cute sort of way.  Attitude and self-image were of high importance; I have a hard time arguing with that.  But the emails.  Ugh.  The emails drained me before I even got started.  I think you’re supposed to forget about the daily missions if you don’t do them for the day.  But I saved them.  I had piles and piles of uncompleted household missions that stared me in the face every day, reminding me that I would never catch up.

I abandoned FlyLady shortly before Isaiah was born.  And, well, the house has been a disaster since then.  I clean, oh, once a month?  I don’t know; I don’t count anymore.  But it stinks (literally, as of yesterday)because, you know, I like a clean house.  But beyond that — way beyond that — I’ve been wanting to seek God’s purpose in my daily life.

I believe one can know the big picture of needing Christ, and maybe even be motivated to love and evangelize those who don’t know about his saving grace, without inviting Him into the everyday.  But what about eating, sleeping, and getting groceries?  What about cleaning the toothpaste-caked bathroom?  What about changing your baby’s wet diapers (I’m not even talking poop; that takes some grace!  Pee is the mundane for me.)?  What about washing the car, ironing, sending the laundry through its cycles?  Where does God come into our lives during those moments?

Ann at A Holy Experience has been blogging about ceremony in recent days.  Read her words from her post “Live a Celebrated Life: the beauty of ceremony”:

If we consider an occasion meaningful, we develop a ceremony to duly recognize it. Simply, ceremony is a repeated action that marks important happenings: always candles on birthday cakes, centerpieces for Thanksgiving, vows on wedding days.

And yet, isn’t every day important? Do not all of our acts warrant ceremony?

Ann goes on to describe God’s way of creating ceremony in our lives: the sun rising and setting in splendor, the stars decorating the night sky.  So, too, we can mark the beginning of a new school year with bright, sharpened pencils; begin a meal with a prayer of joy and thanksgiving for a generous God; grace our ironing time with a blaze of music.

But how can there be ceremony if there is no mundane task to deck out in grace?  We can set out to only enjoy life, throw our work and schedules to the wind, and thank God for what prosperity may come.  Or we can embrace the mundane as opportunity for everyday beauty, for seeing the fruit of labor ripen and bless our lives because we tended it with diligence.

I’m good at imagining diligence.  I can make lists like no one’s business.  Don’t believe me?  Please see the following example.  She is one of (at least) three lists that will guide me in my housekeeping tasks:

Monday

Sweep/scrub floors (Kitchen and Living room)

“Spring” cleaning: Choose task(s) from monthly list (another list for another day!)

Clean out fridge and microwave

Tuesday

Clean bathrooms: counters, toilets, baths, showers

Dust everything

Clean kitchen counters

Plan weekly meals

Make shopping/errand lists

Check grocery store sales

Clean out purse

Declutter top of dresser

Isaiah’s bath night

Wednesday

Run errands: grocery store, post office, library, gifts, etc.

Pay bills; balance accounts

Write thank-you notes and letters (including MOPS)

Go through mailbox

Declutter and organize desk; File papers

Email Mom and sisters

Clean out car

Toss old magazines

Thursday

Vacuum everything

Scrub bathroom floors

Declutter washer and dryer

Hobbies: cards, photo albums, knitting, creating art, etc.

Friday

Sweep tile floors; Spot scrub as needed

Wash car, if needed

Laundry: wash, dry, fold, put away

Ironing

Change bathroom towels

Shine mirrors and glass

Date night

Saturday

Work on household project, if needed

Garage/Yard Day

Clean kitchen counters

Take bath; Shave legs; Wash hair

Isaiah’s bath night

Sunday

Go to church

Rest, worship, play

Write rough weekly to-do list

Empty all trash and put out trash barrels

Whew.  Now that we’ve got that over with, let us all agree that I know the work that needs to be done around a house.  But I also know the guilt of seeing my lack of checkmarks at the end of a day.

I have approached this new homekeeping project asking God to help me keep the beauty — His beauty — in it.  Today, I decided that I may hand-write the entire list in my journal, paste pictures I love beside the daily tasks, and use the list more of a guide than anything.  I will grace the list with encouragement from the Encourager Himself:  “Commit your works to the LORD, and your plans will be established…. The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16.3,9)

More than anything, I don’t want my cleaning of my house and planning meals to rise above my desire to make our house warm and inviting — not only for guests — but for my family.  I want joy and peace, goodness and love to reign here.

That is why I want to add ceremony to our lives.  So to my daily task list, I add:

• One hour of reading with Isaiah (yes, it’s a lot, but it’s so precious and important)
• One hour enjoying nature
• Time with God, early in the morning
• Thirty minutes of reading for pleasure; thirty minutes of writing
• Singing and reading Psalms with Isaiah every morning

These look like more tasks to accomplish, but they give us something to look forward to.  They motivate me for things that would otherwise be drudgery and rigidity.  They compel to me to let myself experience grace and rediscover purpose when all I can focus on is what I have done or haven’t done.  The lists are just for me; God isn’t giving grades.

30… er, 29 days of nothing 2.September.2008

My dear blogging friends, I am joining yet another challenge from the blogosphere.  Owlhaven is hosting 30 Days of Nothing, in which she challenges readers to cut back on all superfluous spending for the month of September.  Giving up a weekly latte or dinner out, saying “no” to snacks from the grocery store, cutting back on electricity usage – any and all of these things are fair game in order to participate in the challenge.  You can apply the challenge to as many areas of your finances as you like.

I wasn’t going to participate.  After all, I want a cute new skirt, and I would really like to pay somebody to help me with my dreadlocks this month.  But God spoke to me about money this morning when I was reading in 2 Corinthians, and I knew it was okay to give the challenge a try, even if I am a day late.  Looking cute will have to wait.

My 30 29 Days of Nothing will mean that I will plan low-budget meals, and try to only go to the grocery store once every week.  We will have meatless meals at least once a week as well.

I will refuse to eat a lunch out except for Sunday.  My single dinner out per week will not include the price of a drink, appetizer, or dessert.

I will plan my menus around grocery store sales.

I will NOT go over budget in my grocery store expenses.  In fact, I will try to underspend my grocery budget by at least $50.

I will be more diligent about limiting electricity use.  I will airdry all the clothes.  I will turn off lights when I leave the room.

I will be a stickler about making Isaiah wear cloth diapers during the day, unless he’s in someone else’s care.

That’s an intimidating good start, don’t you think?  I may make more resolutions as the month goes along, and I will try to post updates on how things are going.

In the meantime, and in other news, I am in the process of recreating my housekeeping schedule and developing new sleeping patterns.  (Don’t I have ridiculously high hopes for myself?  I never learn.)  I hope to post a copy of my insane task lists in the coming weeks.  My new sleeping schedule says I must go to bed now because I am tired.  So, goodnight!

a proverbs 31 wannabe 7.August.2008

I read Proverbs 31.10-31 as much as any chapter in the Bible.  Maybe it’s because that’s my lot in life right now — a homemaker, a home organizer, the female force of our family (nice alliteration, eh?).  And it motivates me to see the beauty that this woman makes of her family’s home.  The people around her are more whole because of her.

Tonight I read The Message version for the first time:

A good woman is hard to find,
and worth far more than diamonds.

Her husband trusts her without reserve,
and never has reason to regret it.
Never spiteful, she treats him generously all her life long.

She shops around for the best yarns and cottons,
and enjoys knitting and sewing.

She’s like a trading ship that sails to faraway places
and brings back exotic surprises.

She’s up before dawn,
preparing breakfast for her family
and organizing her day.

She looks over a field and buys it,
then, with money she’s put aside,
plants a garden.

First thing in the morning, she dresses for work,
rolls up her sleeves, eager to get started.

She senses the worth of her work,
is in no hurry to call it quits for the day.

She’s skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,
diligent in homemaking.

She’s quick to assist anyone in need,
reaches out to help the poor.

She doesn’t worry about her family when it snows;
their winter clothes are all mended and ready to wear.
She makes her own clothing,
and dresses in colorful linens and silks.

Her husband is greatly respected
when he deliberates with the city fathers.

She designs gowns and sells them,
brings the sweaters she knits to the dress shops.
Her clothes are well-made and elegant,
and she always faces tomorrow with a smile.

When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say,
and she always says it kindly.

She keeps an eye on everyone in her household,
and keeps them all busy and productive.

Her children respect and bless her;
her husband joins in with words of praise:
“Many women have done wonderful things,
but you’ve outclassed them all!”

Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades.
The woman to be admired and praised
is the woman who lives in the Fear-of-God.
Give her everything she deserves!
Festoon her life with praises!

Be silent, you feminists.  This is as high of a calling as they come.  Would I could be to my family what this woman is to hers.

The only problem is, I look at this portrait and think: Is she real?  Is this even possible? Shouldn’t I, as a daughter of the Almighty, a temple of the Spirit, be able to pull off a decent fraction of these qualities?  But instead, I get about one thing done a day.  I “make about a dollar” (to quote Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz).

The time is swallowed up by some faceless behemoth, and I am left at 12.09a.m. in the darkness, typing, hoping that by some drizzle of grace, I can do better tomorrow.

three books 28.July.2008

Drowsiness pushes its heavy shroud over my head, but today I will fight it.  If there’s one thing I learned in reading Don’t Waste Your Life (John Piper), it is that work is not a curse, as I’ve often treated it.  In my work I will have pain and trouble because of the Eden curse, but even without work, pain and trouble will plague me.  They are unavoidable.  And so I try to not fight work anymore.  I’m doing my tasks with my eyes on Father-Creator-God, trying to see laundry and cleaning as neutral tasks that can be transformed into God-glorifying actions.

When I read Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, I started to wonder if, at the root of things, the desire for more and more technology came because of man’s view of work being a curse.  In the book, Eric Brende discovers that in the Anabaptist community in which he’s living and working, socialization comes during the lulls between loading the wagon with hay, and meeting new neighbors comes with a barn raising.  Rejuvenation comes with the morning light, from a body fed with healthy foods and exercised through daily work.

Brende discovers that when driving a car, anxiety levels skyrocket even if the driver feels completely relaxed.  Driving horses and bicycling and walking, however, do not result in such unnatural stress.  This idea fascinates me.  How many things that I have invited into my life in the name of convenience are actually tearing me apart from the inside out?

I enjoyed Brende’s book.  Brende’s prose can get a little dull at times, but the ideas in the book were invigorating for me.  Yes, they do make me want to move to the country to farm with motorless machinery and eat the fruit of my own labors.  Yes, they make me want to get a horse in exchange for a car.  Hey, maybe the horse manure could be my main source of fuel for cooking!  I don’t think there’s anything innately wrong with technology; after all, the horse-drawn plow was once a new invention.  I do think that humans need to create with more ingenuity and thought.  Does our technology make us more holistic individuals?  Or does it take away from our person in the name of ease or comfort?

The third book I’ve recently read is The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule.  It was a natural sequel to Better Off, and it was a much more practical resource to boot.  I didn’t want the book to end.  It is chock-full of ideas to help you and your children be creative together.  Soule recommends using nature and natural materials in play.  Plastic toys need not apply.  Sewing, dressing up, creating art with the best quality materials possible, enjoying nature, journaling, gardening:  these are activities that I want to make thrive in my household.  Had I read this book before writing my post on gift-giving on the Crunchy Domestic Goddess blog, I think my list of ideas would have been twice as long.

Back to Don’t Waste Your Life:  This wasn’t an “ah-ha!” book for me, but Piper did help me direct my focus back to God.  He is constantly preaching that God is to be glorified, and that we are to be joyful in Him.  His sections on taking risks, letting go of materialism and riches, work, and spreading the message of the gospel were the ones that impacted me most.

These three books have been inspiring for me.  They make me want to face my day with energy and enthusiasm for work and creating.  I’m excited to teach my children the wonders of living.  My greatest fear is that through mere habit, my ideas will not be transformed into actions.

celebrating Christ with joy 3.April.2008

As I’ve finished my year of spiritual disciplines, the practice of joy has been the most lasting and fulfilling of all the disciplines.  I chose to read Psalm 119 repeatedly, often aloud, in the weeks before Easter, to remind myself to delight in the word of God.  I want God’s passions to be my passions, so that the actions and thoughts that overflow from my heart are ones that exude the joy and glory of God.

“Celebration is essential to joy,” Jim Wallis writes in The Soul of Politics.  I don’t think a statement like that needs context.  Holidays like Easter should be commemorated with the utmost jubilation.  Many churches today seem to have set aside meaningful traditions, perhaps in an effort to squash out rituals that had become legalistic and cold.  But in so doing, we have lost the art of teaching and enjoying and celebrating.  I want Isaiah — and all my children — to understand why we believe what we believe, why we do the things we do.  To celebrate in tangible ways is to make my life full of Christ, so that he is my family’s meditation “when [we] sit in [our] house and when [we] walk along the road and when [we] lie down and when [we] rise up” (Deuteronomy 11.19, New American Standard Version).  Too many holidays have gone by in my life with only consumer-driven traditions.  I have learned to be thankful for physical gifts but have not learned to be thankful for sanctification, for deliverance, for redemption, for consummation, and for reconciliation.

On Sunday, our church had a Messianic Jewish guest speaker (Steven Ger, from Sojourner Ministries) who explained the spiritual significance of the Seder meal Jews enjoy at Passover.  I came away wanting to celebrate such a meal with my family and friends, retelling the story of rescue and forgiveness and healing every year.  The symbols of wine and bitter herbs, salt water and hyssop are powerful teaching tools.  If an event like the Exodus is worth celebrating with such dedication, how much the more is Christ’s work at Easter?

I was most impacted by Ger’s description of the matzoh — the unleavened bread.  There is a Jewish tradition to put pieces of matzoh into three compartments of a bag.  The piece in the middle compartment is taken out, wrapped in a linen napkin, and hidden away until after the meal.  The other two pieces of matzoh are eaten.  When the meal is completely over, the hidden piece is retrieved, broken, and eaten.  Although Jews disagree amongst each other as to the meaning and beginning of this tradition, the three-compartment bag perfectly symbolizes the Trinity.  The middle piece, Christ, was hidden away in the tomb in linen cloths.  But in his resurrection, he finishes the work with his broken body.  Ger likened the unleavened bread to the unleavened (or sinless) Messiah.  The matzoh, like Christ, is pierced and striped.

The Christian Communion cup took on a whole new significance, too, once I understood more about the Jewish Passover meal.  While four cups of wine are traditionally taken at a Seder meal, Jesus introduced a fifth at the Last Supper with his disciples.  This cup represents the new covenant, the blood poured out in forgiveness of our sin.  Without this cup of reconciliation, Gentiles like me have no part in God’s redemptive plan.  But the cross and the resurrection change all of that.

I’m an amateur at explaining such significant spiritual concepts.  I only know that with a tangible symbol, I start to get it.  I start see what’s worth celebrating.  I remember to celebrate with joy.

lent and the forgotten disciplines 11.February.2008

Just after Easter last year, I committed to seeking deeper intimacy with God.  In the beginning, I chose a different discipline on which to focus every month, hoping to have a renewed passion for Christ by Easter of 2008.  Since November, my disciplines have gone by the wayside.  (November’s challenge of loving Kyle in new, creative ways sounded really fun, but I honestly didn’t feel like the biggest romantic on the block when we had to pack up and move out of our house in a matter of two weeks.  Being houseless for another week didn’t help matters either.  So, I didn’t meet my challenge.  I didn’t get anywhere close.  But I’m not about to leave that one in the dust forever; it’s too much fun.)

It was my (sister’s) friend Jill’s candid post about Lent that compelled me back to my journey to intimacy with God.  Oh, yes… Lent.  Easter will be upon us soon.

Last Easter, I had so little joy.  On the most joyous of celebrations for followers of Christ, I felt so… blah.  And that felt utterly wrong.  That’s why I started my disciplines in the first place.  Though I haven’t had formal disciplines since November, I wanted to be a part of one final period of reflection in the weeks leading up to Easter.

I have never celebrated Lent, but its call to penitence, selflessness, fasting, and prayer draws me.  I think these traditional Lenten practices are something I’d like to, as Wikipedia says, “[take] up with renewed vigour” in the weeks leading up to Easter.  When I was younger, my Catholic friends always “gave up” something for Lent — a favorite snack, often.  So, in my first commemoration of Lent, I’d also like to “give up” something:  my joylessness.  A few years ago, John Piper (in Desiring God) first taught me the command of joy — although I had read the command countless times in the Bible already.  However, I’ve never tried to practice joy as a daily habit until now.

Claiming joy is my final discipline of this year’s journey to intimacy.  If it means that I spend more time sitting with God and meditating on his brilliance rather than updating my blog readers about how I’m not meditating on his brilliance, I hope you won’t mind.  My service is needed elsewhere.

november challenge: loving Kyle 2.November.2007

Well, look at me, posting my challenge on the first day of the month!  Uh.  We won’t talk about how I skipped last month.  I’ve been berating myself all of October for that one.

First, a report on the living healthily challenge from September:  I did pretty well.  I slipped up on the exercise thing a couple times because I forgot.  I started to adopt the trading-in-something-bad-for-something-better thing as a regular habit during that month, so I don’t know if I did it every day, but I think that’s okay.  I got sick for a few days, so I laid off on the vegetable and fruit thing because all I really wanted was chicken noodle soup.  I learned that feeling gross and headachey after a bad meal has more to do with my overdosing on sugar (pop, in particular) than overdosing on greasy pepperoni pizza.  I think that’s an important discovery that I should have figured out before now, beings I had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant.  I am feeling dense and boring tonight, and I think it has more to do with running around after a one-year-old all day than my having just eaten a buttery scone.  So, for now, I have no monumental nuggets of wisdom gleaned from my month of living more healthily.

As for November’s challenge, it’s all about romance.  Whoopee! 

I missed Sweetest Day.  I’ve never celebrated it before, but I heard on the radio that it was coming up, and I wanted to do something fun as a surprise for Kyle, but things were busy, and I got tired, and, and, and… I missed it.

In general, things are crazy once you have a kid.  Even if he goes to bed at eight, you still feel like a sopping dish rag by the time you’re finally alone as a couple.  At least I do.  Really, I feel more like a dry dish rag right now — the kind that’s all crusty and molded into its previously soppy shape.  Sexy.  Very sexy.

I have no more details for you tonight on my incomparable sexiness, but I’ll fill you in on the challenge.  (Yikes.  It’s November.  That means I start today.  And it’s already after 9…)

I resolve to do something romantic for my husband every day.   I can’t give details because he reads my blog.  But I want to surprise Kyle, look and feel beautiful for Kyle, and be nice to Kyle more often.

Okay, I admit, even at 9.14 p.m., this challenge sounds like it could be just a little bit… fun.

august challenge: hospitality 15.August.2007

Well, the month is half over and I haven’t posted my monthly spiritual discipline challenge. I’ve had one in my head; I just haven’t told you all about it.

Yesterday I delivered a basket of goodies over to our new next-door neighbors Ross and Lindsey. I took Isaiah on a sweaty walk to drop another one off for a man whose wife had just died yesterday morning. I tell this to my shame because in the three-plus years we have lived here, I have never given gifts to people in my neighborhood. I’ve wanted to, but I’ve learned that that doesn’t count for much in the sheep-and-goat separation.

This month, I want to learn what hospitality really is. I always think it’s about having people over and being a gracious host, but I’ve heard there’s more to it than that.

We’re having a group from church over on Saturday, and I hope that will be the first of at-least-monthly parties at our house. I want to fling open our doors and invite the whole world inside. If I can’t run a coffee shop now, our house will have to do in the meantime.

my lonely existence 20.July.2007

Withdrawal pains are coming on strong. I thought I could quit e-mail and the internet any time, but I miss them so much. Is it only Thursday? Four whole days to go.

Day one was okay. I was busy on the computer, so that was like eating fake sugar. Kills the cravings without the calories.

Day two I thought to myself that this fasting from the internet was a good lesson because I could determine what I really need the internet for — bank account information, for instance — and deem everything else as wasting time.

Day three I called some people, but they didn’t answer. So I sulked a little and felt very isolated. I came to believe that I need the internet to stay connected to people since I have so few friends with regular, in-person relationships. But I was kind of mad at the world we live in, too, that has become so connected in technological ways that real relationships are often superficial or nonexistent. If I were in a little village, and took all my laundry to the river to wash it, Isaiah would get the grandma-love he needs on a daily basis, and I would get some adult time.

Today it all just got harder, and I began to dread the weekend when I’ll have to say “no” to our Friday or Saturday night movie because I just had to add that to my list of things from which to fast. Why am I such an overachiever? But today was good because I got return phone calls from a couple people, so at least I didn’t feel so isolated.

I write this so you don’t feel isolated, dear readers. If new blogs posts kill some cravings for you, be thankful for Windows Live Writer, by which I can post to my blog without using the internet. It makes me feel pretty generous.