Jonah

Recently our church Pastor did a series of sermons on Jonah. It's one of my favorite stories, and my kids favorite too. It's facinating to imagine being stuck in the belly of a giant fish. What little kid doesn't know and love this story?

Our church of nearly 4000 members has one of those big screen set up and lots of visual aids. Since I am a very visual person, this naturally appeals to me. The church commissioned a local artist to illustrate the series on Jonah. The graphic illustrations were so tremendously popular they posted them on their website for everyone to view.

This is week one. Are the colors fabulous?

Week 2, I feel sea sick just looking at it don't you?

Week 3, This is my favorite. Incredible!

Week 4, Jonah is finially doing what God directed him to do.

Week 5, Jonah is angry with God for the salvation of the people of Ninevah. I love that he is purple!

Our Pastor Tim, has a wonderful way of thinking outside the box, so to speak. This is my favorite of his sermons on the subject, guess what he does with the box?

http://www.blackhawkchurch.org/media_handlers/show_sermon.php?id=570&size=medium

Designer Mom

Lessons Learned in the Quest for Spiritual Growth

Our journey constantly continues. Our educational quest is now a quest for spiritual growth. It has brought many joys, trails and suprises along the way. But, the truth has set us free. Daily reading and studying of the scriptures has ensured that there will be no misunderstandings, no chance of misinterpretations. I told my kids one day about my childhood misinterpretation of the phrase: " And the meek shall inherit the earth", they laughed and said, " Mom, I can't believe that you thought that!" . God is good, isn't He? It is our duty as parents that our children should grow up knowing the Lord. There should be no doubt about His commandments to us.

"Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the Lord swore to give to your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth." Deut. 11:19-21.

J.R. Tolkien once wrote "Life is a journey, one that we all must take." In having shared my journey with you it is my hope that you will in turn share your journey with others. I truely believe that we learn about God from each other. Sometimes, it is easier to see God working in someone else's life than it is in our own. I wasn't sure I had much to write about until I began to write, hen I found that the Lord has done SO MUCH in my life. I am learning about Him all the time, from all of my church family, friends, immediate family, from scripture, even from my children.

By proclaiming my faith in God in this way I have taken the next step in the journey. I have found that I cannot expect others to do things that I cannot. How can I teach my children to stand up for their faith if I don't do it first? How can I be a light in a non-believer's life, if I live my spiritual life in the closet? It all starts right here, with me. It is an AWESOME journey, and the rewards of being in the Sweet Spot of God's Grace are great!

I praise God for whatever journey He has set before each of you, and pray that He will be a light unto your path.

Giving the Kids Back to God

So we began our spiritual journey. It is a daily challenge to give the children back to God. You would think that after all we had been through with their health that this would be a natural process. But it's not. I struggle constantly in this area, and the Lord is always there to lead me.

One of the first problems I encountered was not just what to teach the kids, but which curriculum to choose. One of my favorite home school sources is the Rainbow Resource Center catalogue. It is huge, a whopping 1330 pages. It's pretty much a bible for home schoolers, and believe it or not there are many curriculums out there that they don't carry! I remember spending hours reading it, trying to choose what would be right for the children. Our kids had very different needs, and what might work for Alex, might not work for Ted. Eventually I gave up in despair and said " Lord, help me choose, I don't know what you want me to do." I closed my eyes, opened the book, plopped my finger on the page, and ordered that book. After it came in the mail, I read the back cover, and it said something like this:

"Award winning curriculum, suitable for childen with Dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, APD, auditory discrimination problems, and various other learning handicaps."

 It was exactly what Ted needed. There was no mistake, the Lord and hand picked it and sent it UPS to our doorstep. That's how it's been ever since. Every decision we need to make, when we give it up to God, comes out in their best interest. After all, isn't he the only one who knows what they will grow up to be?

There are several different methods of home schooling, for those who aren't familiar with it. They include: literature based studies, unit studies, classical education and the traditional textbook approach. We have used them all at different times, however, one thing that remains the same is our use of scripture.

After all, what kind of book is the Bible? It's a text book. We use it for studying all things. Our history lessons, for example, work something like this:

We start by reading Genesis, and read until we get to Egypt, then we stop and study Egypt.

Then we begin again, and read until we get to Greece, and we stop and study Greece.

Then, we read until we get to Rome, and stop and study Rome.

At one point in time, the only thing EVERY family had in their household was a Bible. If you read about the early American Pioneers, they owned very few personal belongings, but they ALL had a family Bible. There were very few public schools at this time in history, and yet our country experienced one of the greatest periods of literacy we have ever known. Scripture was used to teach many subjects. Over time, our family has used it not just for history, but reading, grammar, spelling, handwriting, memorization, recitation, and even math and science.

2 Timothy 3:16 says, "All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." God is shaping who our children will grow up to be through His word.

Now, if you were to tell this to a non-believer, they would think you are crazy. I have had many a mother tell me, "I could never home school my children." It is difficult to explain to them that I DON'T home school them, God does. He leads us in each and every decision, each and every day. At the beginning of each school year, I actually make a list of what they need to learn for the year, both academically and spiritually. I use this prayer list during my morning prayer time. I find that the days that I get up late, or get side tracked and don't spend time in worship and prayer, are the days we are the most frustrated, disoriented, and generally accomplish very little. It is a spiritual journey, and it's amazing where it has taken us.

That Sweet Spot of being in God's Grace, where you can feel Him near you, you can hear Him in the birds in the trees, you can taste Him in the tang of a tomato plucked fresh from the garden, you can see Him reflected in the smiling faces of your children, is EVER so elusive. But, once you seek Him, once you find Him and experience His ways, once you are lead down His path and not yours, there will be no going back. You will want to be there as much as you can.

Psalm 34:8 says: " Taste and see that He is good: blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him."

Birth of a Journey

After our fourth son was born, we began to see changes in our other children. Alex was in Kindergarden, and didn't seem to be improving in his school work. It wasn't that he got a lot of things wrong, just that he wasn't learnining anything new. He would come home from school and say that all was fine, and that would be the end of it. It was just Kindergarden, but we expected him to be learning something, and it sure seemed like he wasn't.

Ted, on the other hand, at age 4, was a very needy student. He had severe vision trouble, a speech delay, no fine motor skills, ADD, ADHD, was in occupational therapy, speech therapy, under the care of a child psychologist, and generally had just about every other label you can think of. He hated the Early Childhood program at school, and would run from the classroom the minuite the teacher's back was turned. He escaped out the door several times to the point where the school would call the police to come and find him. He was such a problem that they didn't know what to do with him, and transfered him to 3 different schools in the course of less than one school year. It even happened at church. The volunteer in the church nursery at the time asked us to please not bring him back!

We knew they both had needs that weren't being met. It was about this time, my cousins children began to graduate from homeschool. They came to visit our relatives, and they were all so impressed that my other relatives all began homeschooling their own kids. So, we began to research homeschooling as well.

My father (who has his Doctorate degree in Educational Administration), found out we were looking into homeschooling and encouraged us in our decision.

He said" You know, in the last twenty years of being in education and working as a high school Principal, I have experienced not just drugs, sex and violence, but guns, grand theft auto, attempted murder, even threats on my own life. Now, ultimately the decision is yours, but I think you should keep your kids at home."

To this day, he is one of our biggest supporters in our home schooling. There was no looking back for us at this point, we decided that home schooling was our path. After all, scripture says "Parents, teach your children." That really spoke to me. Prov. 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is older he will not turn from it."

So, our home schooling began as an academic quest. We felt both of our children would benefit from individual attention that we could give them at home. However, I was convinced that we needed someone else to do it WITH us. It seemed like to big a task to undertake all alone. I recall asking others to join us, and of course, they were not interested. Well, we were right about one thing, we needed God's help.

My step sister loaned me a copy of a lecture on home schooling by Carol Joy Seid. She is a well known speaker and travels nation wide promoting home schooling. During her lecture she gives her testimony, and relates it to how home schooling increased her faith in God.

I remember listening to that tape and thinking, " Is that what this is all about Lord?" No one told me that what began as an academic quest would end up being a spiritual journey. We were looking for human intervention, not unlike Corrie Tenboom in "The Hiding Place" had done. What we needed to do was turn to God and daily seek his direction. As much as I had experienced God in the Sweet Spot, that was the one thing that I had never done. It's no wonder to me today, that that's part of the reason I couldn't stay in the Sweet Spot for any extended period of time.

Proverbs 34 says,"Blessed is the man who hearth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors."

Satan Lived Next Door

Right before Alex's illness, we had moved into our new home in Green Bay. On the day of our move-in, one of the neighbors came to introduce themselves, and told us that the man who rented the house next door was a sex offender. We were horrified, and over the course of the next 3 years, found out more horrible things that had happened in what we thought was a good neighborhood. We found out that our home had formerly been owned by drug dealers, and that the house next door had been the scene of a horrible crime. One of the tenants had committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree in the front yard on Halloween night. What was even more horrible was that the entire neighborhood thought the body was just a Halloween decoration, and no one realized it was real for some time. I was conviced Satan lurked in the house next door, and for 3 years I prayed that God would bring us another house.

It was then that Ben was born, boy number 3. I was 3 weeks past my due date when the doctor finially decided to induce labor. He was a posterior delivery (face up in the birth canal instead of face down), which is considered high risk for the mother. I remember having extreme back pain along with other difficulties of delivery. After being in labor for hours I remember thinking " You know Lord, I've been trying here, but I just can't do this alone." And wouldn't you know, but just then he flipped around and popped out. The doctor had a shocked expression on his face when he said "DID YOU SEE THAT?" Ben was a whopping 11 lbs. at birth, he always does things the hard way. He was just a few ounces short of the hospital record for a vaginal delivery. I felt like I should have won a trophy, but after all what did I do? God did all the real work.

Because our family was growing, it was time to find yet another larger house, and soon we moved again. The Lord brought us a different home despite all of our prior financial troubles. The money we needed for the down payment miraculously arrived in the mail he day we needed it from my Grandmother in Colorado. Remember how I had been praying for a different house for 3 years? Well, be careful what you pray for, you might get it. Our new home was definately a gift from God. Once again we were in that Sweet Spot, and life was good. I had it all figured out, parenting was getting easier, and once again it seemed like nothing could ever go wrong.

Are you noticing a pattern here? Every time I think I have life all figured out, God decides to prove me wrong. Every time, I say I am never going to do that, He changes my feelings on the subject. Every time I think I am in control, He decides to show me who is really in charge. Every time I KNOW who I am and where I am going, the Lord takes my path in unexpected directions.

 

 

A year or two after our move, I became pregnant again with our fourth son James. Two days before my scheduled delivery date, my doctor performed the one and only ultra-sound I had ever had during all four of my pregnancies. It was at this time they found James had a large tumor or cyst. They had no idea what kind of tumor it was, cancerous or not, or even exactly where it was located. They told us that many times these things appear on necks, or faces of the newborn. They were relatively sure it wasn't a vital organ that was outside his body, but they couldn't be certian. Now, I ask you, if you were a new mother, 9 months pregnant, what would you think? It seemed like we had just been through one medical ordeal, and here we were going through another one. It almost felt like we were being punished.

"Okay Lord, what did we do wrong this time?" The next day via C-section, we were blessed with James. He was born with a grapefruit size cyst under his arm, a football, as the doctors described it. Shortly after birth he went into surgery to have the cyst removed. It was something of an ordeal to perform this type of surgery in little Green Bay, WI. The same surgeon who performed Alex's surgeries 6 years earlier, operated on James. There were doctors that came from all over the state to watch. The surgery was video taped for future reference and classroom study. Apparenly this had never been done before on a newborn. God always brings something good out of the bad doesn't He? James' cyst was not cancerous. They were able to remove it in one grapefruit sized ball. It had not encompassed any of his important lymph nodes or other vital organs because of it's location under his arm. God is sure good, isn't he? It's nothing short of a miralce to us. James was able to return home within 2 weeks, and once again we were living in the Sweet Spot.

Married Life

Shortly after moving to Green Bay we joined Pilgrim Congregational Church. Around this time, we visited my cousin and her family in New Hampshire. She had recently begun homeschooling their four children. Bruce and I were very impressed with her children. They sat with us for hours and carried on very intelligent conversations with us, who were basically strangers to them. I remember thinking that they were very well behaved, but since I knew nothing about children, I figured that was just how they were. I also remember thinking, " Why on earth would anyone want to home school?".

About a year later, our first son Alex was born, and I quit my full time job to be a full-time Mom, at least temporarily. (Isn't it interesting how God changes people's hearts?) The most wonderful thing about being a new parent is the awe and wonder of experiencing first hand, God's creation. How can anyone hold a newborn child and not believe that God created him is somewhat beyond me. Once again I was in the Sweet Spot, and I knew that from then on I could not go back to working full time. Our second son Ted was born a year and half later, and it seemed like life was good and nothing would bring us down.

Well, as you know, life is not perfect. Shortly after Alex's second birthday he became ill. He had flu-like symptoms, and began eating less and less. He lost nearly 1/3 of his body weight in the month after his 2 year physical, he was 21 lbs. at the physical and 14 lbs. 3 weeks later. He just laid on the couch and wheezed for two days before we took him into the emergency room, where he was immediately admitted to the ICU. Upon his admission, he was severely dehydrated, and pheumomia in both lungs, and a large blockage in his intestine which required immediate surgical removal. After his surgery where they removed 6" of his lower intestine, he had a colostomy, and then both his lungs collapsed. The surgeon at the time, openly told us that Alex was the sickest child he had seen in a long time and would probably die. He handed us his teddy bear, and left us to absorb his information.

I remember thinking that this couldn't be happening to us and our little boy. Why would God give us this blessing for such a short time and then take him away so suddenly? The answer, I decided later, was to prove to us who was really in control. We tend to think that we are in control of our lives, when all the time it is God who is in control. It was our first lesson in giving our children back to God.

Alex was on every prayer chain from Green Bay to Tennessee. Friends and family all over were praying for him, and I literally believe that he was prayed back into health. He was in the ICU for two weeks, and over the next two months had multiple surgeries. At Christmas time that year, he was allowed to come home for Christmas Day. Our pediatrician made a house call and gave him his fluids inter-veinously. What a blessing she was! That day we had at home, the first one we had had in more than a month, was a gift from God. It was a ray of hope to me that some day we would be a family at home again.

That year the big Christmas toy was a Tickle Me Elmo. At that time, crazed Christmas shoppers were lining up in the stores to buy this "had to have" toy for children.The nurses at the hospital some how found, bought and gave Alex a Tickle Me Elmo. It totally brought me to tears. We had no money for anything that year, no toys, no Christmas tree, and no Christmas dinner. It's quite a helpless feeling, not being able to provide for your family the way you think they should be provided for. But God was truly taking care of us.

 Not only did Alex receive the year's most desirable Christmas gift, but there was a package hanging on our that day. One of the families with young children at our church had gift wrapped two toy cars and delivered them to us for Christmas. "Santa" came in the form of Christian love that year that we will never forget. People think that the little things don't amount to much, but they do. Those two plastic cars that may have seemed so insignificant to others, ment the world to us and our two small children that Christmas Day. We were so very grateful to our church family for their simple gift, and to the rest of the church who provided meals for us for several weeks upon our return home from the hospital.

Eventually, Alex was able to come home and was healed. He had spent more than 2 months in the hospital, and had had atleast 6 surgeries. We were thrilled to finially be home together again. Bruce was back at work, and we were on the road to recovery. However, it was not without a price. After our insurance had paid their portion of oru medial expenses, we were left with more than a $500,000 balance due. It might as well have been a million, because it was an impossible amount for us to pay. My husband's income at the time was only $26K per year. I can't say I lost a lot of sleep over it, all I cared about was that our son was alive and well, the money just didn't matter by comparison. Some how we knew that God would take care of it.

Well, we kept the faith, and I remember for the first time giving money to the church. We would probably loose everything anyway, so what difference would a few dollars make? Wouldn't you know, that shorly after that we got a call from someone at the hospital saying that we qualified for some special grant program, and our debt was reduced to a few thousand dollars. Who says God's not a banker? There was that Sweet feeling again, God was taking care of us.

New York City

While in New York, I had the opportunity to attend lectures by designers like Bob Mackie and Oscar de la Renta, I was able to experience some fo the biggest names in the industry: Saks Fifth Avenue, Liz Claiborne, and Ralph Lauren. I saw first hand some of the most famous models in the world including Naomi Campbell, Iman and others. But while there, I don't remember ever feeling in the Sweet Spot. Isn't that something? NYC and the fashion industry is considered to be one of the THE MOST exciting things on earth, and yet it didn't have what I was seeking. I knew that I could never live there and be truly happy. So after I graduated from FIT at Radio City Music Hall, I returned to Wisconsin.

In June of 1990, Father Bill married us in the Episcopal Church and our married life began. Shortly after the wedding we moved to Chicago, where I had a job as a lingerie designer, and Bruce worked for Lord and Taylor. We enjoyed the lifestyle of the city, but were unable to find a place of worship that we were comfortable with. That Sweet Spot was ever so elusive. So, when the opportunity came for a job in Green Bay, we moved back to Wisconsin.