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Finding That Solid Ground Between Ditches.| | 
It's hit the 90's a few times already and so the children are always looking for way to get wet. Scott designed his own little water park for the other kids using two trash cans, a plastic pipe, drill, duck tape, and a hose. It worked marvelously. He loves to invent things. He told me last week he is either going to be an inventor or the President.
(No, Bubbie is not wearing a man-skirt. He is wearing sports shorts way too big for him.  )
I love this blurry picture.
We had a wonderful time celebrating my dad's birthday this past week. By the request of my dad, we all went to the world's only amusement park built for special needs people. It was so cool. My sister Amanda, who has Down's, just loved it. And, well, so did all the rest of us! What an awesome idea to build a whole theme park where special needs people have it catered to their special needs!
All the park equipment was built for wheel chair access... which means it was also stroller accessible :) So kid/protective friendly for children. Here is my dad and Brighton trying out the roller slides:
Quite proud of her horse.
My favorite picture of the day - taken by Robert.
We spent one day this week at the River. I was so glad we did considering how busy our week was with everything else. It was good for me, and for the kids, to just take some time out.
How to eat an apple? Brighton shows Baby how...
Shelton picked this for me. You have to know thistles to appreciate this pick - it's hard work picking one of these, and even harder picking it w/out pricking or cutting yourself. I had to remove a few thorns from the gift giver after he handed it to me saying, "Mom, this is the biggest one I've ever seen and I picked it for you. Take a picture of it."
And so I did and I shot it over exposed and it made the thistle flower just stand out all the more and it reminded me of a part of a song I've taught the children, "...don't be afraid to stand out..." And I like to add to that, "That is, stand out for the right reasons not just any old reason!"
It's Saturday morning and I woke to distant sounds of chattering children somewhat drowned out by the humming of the fan on our bedroom floor. It was dark and cozy. I often wake to words of songs going through my head. This morning the words that were immediately on my heart were:
Jesus, can You show me just how far the east is from the west
'cause I can't bear to see the man I've been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find rest
'cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other
I start the day, the war begins, endless reminding of my sin
Time and time again Your truth is drowned out by the storm I'm in
Today I feel like I'm just one mistake away from You leaving me this way
But I know You've washed me white, turned my darkness into light
I need Your peace to get me through, to get me through this night
I CAN'T LIVE BY WHAT I FELL, BUT BY THE TRUTH YOUR WORD REVEALS
I'm not holding on to You, but You're holding on to me
You're holding on to me
(I LOVE that part! and I find myself singing those words over and over to myself right now.)
Jesus, You know just how far the east is from the west
I DON'T have to see the man I've been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find REST!
'cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other
This morning I praise God that He has removed my sins as far as east is from the west!
I don't want or have to live by my feelings, but can live by His truth as I apply it to everything that comes my way this day. I've come to an end of a long last two weeks - they've been good weeks, but filled with a lot of hard, good work for me and for Robert and we're very tired.
It's a good tired.  Today doesn't slow down, but we're going to try to make it just a little bit.
We were planning on both running a 5K this morning but we are just too tired to do it considering we have three boys who have soccer games today and I have a photo shoot tonight - we knew it would zap our energy for the rest of the day and being parents to seven, well, that just can't happen right now. I think we might be gradually, as we are getting older, learning to cut things out instead of trying to do it all. Well, at least today we're trying to.
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What an interesting response it's been to the no comments thing here on my blog! I've learned a lot about people through it, and there has also been a lot of confirmation to what I was sensing God leading me to do - both through the negative and positive responses. The reaction has been revealing.  I have found the assumptions and judgments quite interesting.
Life is entertaining.
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I've thought more about living in a "ditch" since I last posted. One friend put it oh-so-not mildly as living in a "slimy pit." I agree with her. It's so like the enemy of our souls (satan) to want to get us off track. The Pharisees in the Bible thought they were living the most godly and righteous life.
Outwardly they had it down "right."
And yet, their hearts, their motives, were pretty slimy. I think what is so amazing to me is how quickly I can fall into thinking or living no better than the Pharisees.
As christians, we should want to leave behind the "old self" and the darkness of the world. But often in so doing, the tendency is to swing WAY over in a ditch of self-righteous issue and action oriented religion.
Diving into some christian movement of some sort, or taking hold of some other man's teachings and making it "gospel" to live by, is common place in the homeschooling community. Motives might seem good because after all, we want to do what is "right" and we desire to love our children and our families. Or at least we convince ourself that we do.
Out of reaction to what we have experienced from our past, we take on something that will have only different ill consequences for the future.
God is about relationship. He is about our hearts and motives. I have been reading through the book of Matthew and I cannot get over how the gospels point to this over and over and over again! He is not about us living our lives of godliness before men to be praised by them. It is really quite simple.
"We cannot find strength within ourselves to do anything
more than either live in worldly darkness or live in religious darkness."
The strength to get out of these two ditches can only come from Jesus -
If we're going to be set free there must be repentance. Humility.
I think a bit about my parent's generation:
Some were "saved" and there was this Jesus movement and things seemed good and right but then someone came along and said it wasn't good and right and that it was not much different then just bringing the worldly ways into the church...
And so then there was the reaction for some of these new believers who wanted to do what was "right" and protect their children from all the awful consequences they were facing due to their worldly lifestyles from the past and a new movement came along that promised them if they followed all these rules and lived a certain lifestyle they could save their children from the world and it's consequences.
A lot of folks jumped on ship. And still are. Just the movement has changed up a bit and the leaders of the movement have swapped up a bit too.
And yet we're actually quite a number of decades into this movement, and I've been around it a whole lot as it's developed and the promises of not having consequences, or problems, or rebellion...have not held true because the emphasis has not been on the gospel.
The emphasis has been on WHAT TO DO, AND NOT DO in just about every area of one's life.
The emphasis on family has been priority over relationship with God.
Family has become the idol, kids have became the idol. Issues and family values have been the "gospel" preached.
Thus image becomes the idol. Thus following people who appear to have their family all "together" becomes the thing to do.
So I come to me, my generation. The first generation of homeschoolers, is really what we are - and we have watched, and lived through it to one degree or another.
Some have survived to "rebel."
Others survive as robots, brainwashed to say and do all the "right things."
Then there are some who married someone who was raised in this ditch movement.
They find themselves married to a spouse who may not have the baggage that say, their parents' generation carried (no STD's, "huge" sins to regret, history of previous marriages and such), but have a whole different set of baggage and I will call it RTD's (Religious Transmitted Diseases.) The consequences are just as heartbreaking. What's even more tragic? God's name is stamped all over it - but it wasn't God at all.
Out of one generation's desire to save their kids from the consequences they faced from their lifestyle of the past, they started a whole different ballgame... one that they thought would keep their children from facing the tackles, the outs, the strikes that come in life - but instead it has backfired because what was sought after is not THE ANSWER.
They say the answer they seek is God, but really it's God AND a whole lot of other things too.
God isn't into being attached to some movement. He wants, He is, to BE our all. It's not Him and a certain lifestyle. It's not Him and a list of rules. It's not Him and some leader of some ministry out there or some pastor. It's just Him - Him then moving in our lives to love Him and others.
There is the world and it's living for self.
Then there is the movement that reacted to that which led to a generation of Pharisees and hypocrites and controlling parents who did all they could to move as far in the opposite direction of the world, only to go from darkness to a darkness that appeared as light.
I hear regularly from these kids who are running from the ditch of legalism and the conservative homeschooling movement. Some are finally 18 and looking for a way of escape. Some are now adults, yes complete adult age, but being treated as children at home. And some are mothers my age.
Some tell me they hate God. They are so sick of of the hypocrisy and the control of the spiritual abuse. Or they tell me they are confused, so very confused. Their hearts and minds are so muddled. They say, "If that is christianity, then no thanks." Or they find themselves, having run wildly away from the conservative movement to the world, now dealing with the very consequences their parents worked so hard trying to keep them from.
They do not know where to turn. They know both are a ditch, but see no firm holding between the two ditches.
But here is exciting truth:
-It is not God you have experienced.
-It is not the true gospel you have heard or seen lived out.
-That is not christianity. It is merely another form of works based religion.
-The enemy of our soul, satan, wants to tarnish the name of God - he'll resort to doing this through empty religion if need be. The movement is not the enemy, your parents are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy and he will use whatever he will to destroy the name of Jesus and get people off base.
-Do not reject God and His Word because you've been hurt by someone who claimed the name of God, yet who was not grounded and anchored in Jesus Christ but was merely caught up in a movement that had God's name attached to it.
-Do not run into the original ditch your parents ran from in the beginning of all this cycle. Because you will not find life, or love, or happiness, or acceptance, or freedom there either. The world is just as empty and the consequences are indeed real.
Here's my heart - here's my cry in all this and I'm passionate about it because I want the answer and I want to live out the answer in my own life.
Simply stated, I WANT GOD. I don't want the world and I don't want what I see carrying the homeschooling/homechurch movement.
This is not a popular position to be in. In fact, it's a very lonely position to be in.
I stand out because I don't go with the flow of the world, yet I won't jump on board and go with the flow of a movement. It's uncomfortable, and funny enough I get labeled from both ditches: the world calls me conservative and thinks I'm strange because I don't think and live like them...
And the conservative call me worldly because I don't think and live like them...
I WANT real, genuine, relationship with the real and genuine God of the Bible. It's not found out there in the world and I've seen so very clearly, especially in the area of the country I live in, it's not found in some conservative movement either.
I don't want to fall back in the ditch of the world because I am reacting to the hypocrisy ~ We abandon the truth of His Word when we run into ditches. At the same time, how oh how do I break the cycle of running into another ditch with my own children - the swinging back and forth as one generation gets burned from the other?
In my head I know what the truth is. I've got to be anchored. Set firm. Held to. Being held by... God. - to the very greatest and most secure foundation ever: Jesus Christ. That is the only way to not live out of reaction and fall into a ditch living lifestyle.
I want to say to myself and to all those who have found themselves in a ditch or wanting out or possibly even in the process of sliding into another one: HOLD FAST to Jesus. Cry out to Him to show you, to guide you and to lead you to the truth in His Word which is not in anyway ditch inducing. Be anchored in Christ, not to a movement or lifestyle.
Show your children who God is, not what dead religion is, not what man-made rules produce. That is the kind of mom I want to be -- and I know I can't. I really just can't. I am helpless, and a ditch dweller like every generation before me unless God in living and dwelling within me.
This whole thing keeps me broken within. It keeps me coming back and tearing down the walls I've built up around myself so quickly. It keeps me SO needy.
At the same time, it really gets me excited. It motivates me and drives me every morning I wake up to seek God more. It keeps me on my toes spiritually. It causes me to evaluate my motives, my heart. It makes me question things instead of just following blindly behind the blind.
This gives me hope... hope that I might raise up my children to not bow down to the world, to any man, to any movement. To shake the dust off their feet so to speak and be free to live as Christ intended them to live - walking worthy through the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells within them and will lead them in the way that is everlasting.
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I read the following on the webpage Disciples Notebook:
“Spiritual progress, therefore, is tied up in knowing Christ as our All. It takes place when we take Christ as our portion to be all things for us. Greater Bible knowledge will not do this for you. Increased religious activity or spiritual service will not do this for you. Neither will spending more time praying. Only a revelation of the vastness of Christ can meet the bill.
As I survey the landscape of modern Christianity, it seems to me that spiritual things and objects have replaced the person of Christ. The doctrines, gifts, graces, virtues, and duties that we so earnestly seek have substituted for Jesus Himself. We look to this gift and that gift, we study this truth and that truth, we seek to appropriate this virtue, we try to fulfill this duty, but all along we fail to find Him.
When the Father gives us something, it’s always His Son. When the Son gives us something, it’s always Himself. This insight greatly simplifies the Christian life. Instead of seeking many spiritual things, we seek only Him. Our single occupation is the Lord Jesus Christ. He becomes our only pursuit. We do not seek divine things; we seek a divine person. We do not seek gifts; we seek the giver who embodies all the gifts. We do not seek truth; we see the incarnation of all truth. God has given us all spiritual things in His Son.”
Frank Viola
From Eternity To Here, 302-303
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I know these are a lot of written words and people aren't into reading lots of written words these days. I guess if I could sum it up in a text message it would be: "Just Jesus." But these words are for me, and I pray one day for my children too...and those are my thoughts right now.
I need the grace and strength of God to help me live out what I say I believe - to be transparent before my children and real. Words mean little, living them out, another thing entirely.
"The enemy violently opposes your finding complete satisfaction in Christ alone. He cares not what he uses, whether the world’s pleasures, or the Lord’s blessings, or even ministry. He wants desperately to keep you occupied with anything but the Lord Jesus." Jerry White
Yesterday the children made a soapy swimming pool out of their daddy's wheelbarrow. These three were cleaner then I've seen them in a long time :)
"...He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:30-31
a. ann~ | | | Posted 5/1/2010 4:40 PM - 1235 Views
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