"What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator."
I like this scripture, from the New King James Bible, for its name of Christ as "the Seed," which I'd never noticed before yesterday. How appropriate to call Jesus a seed, within which is infinite possibility and perfect planning, if only it would be planted and nurtured as it was meant to be. It represents past, present and future, as does Christ, Who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Within a seed there is hope for what will be, its present state, which sustains in forms such as the sunflower when consumed, and its link to the beginning of all things, the first of its kind.
I also like it for its explanation of why the law was important; a holding place for our sin, until Christ would come and set us free. Notice that angels are involved and the mediator is kind of up for grabs as to who that is, but it is definitely a legal term and brings to mind thoughts of a heavenly court system.
As a Christian who constantly struggles with receiving the free gift of grace on a daily basis, this clarity of why the law was there in the first place, and the logic that follows it, being that it's no longer the basis for one's relationship to God because of Christ fulfilling it, frees me in a renewal of my mind that is embarrassingly long overdue. I love feeling right; I enjoy seeing results that give me reason to brag; I like putting others in their place. I would have made a great Pharisee, and I love the fact that Paul was the great example of a forgiven smarty pants, of which club I am a member in good standing. Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!
So why am I terrified today? After a well-thought out and prayerful move to take our boys out of the two-day per week school they are a part of, I am doubting every good reason that we made this decision. A background of our school history: private preschool, public Kindergarten for oldest son, lasting 3 weeks 'cause it was so gol-blamed awful; homeschool combined with preschool for younger son, till 2nd half of older son's 3rd grade year, when we decided to let him try full time private school; he decided it was too much so we tried two-day per week support school for homeschoolers, while still homeschooling my younger son; younger son entered the 2day school at 3rd grade, so both were in for 3rd and 5th; decided to take them out for 4th and 6th and focus on a trip to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia instead, a history and citizenship focus for the year; re-entered them in 5th and 7th grade, for the academic challenge of a lifetime, and now are exiting the system for the brave old world of real homeschooling again. Husband and I are in agreement and I am in shock and fear for my sons' education that largely now depends on me. Or God. Or them. Or my husband's support of me. Or something.
The great thing yesterday, after deciding with hubbie and then finding a moment to tell the boys, was how I was given the perfect fable to illustrate our decision--imagine you are on a big trip, you've packed the car with everything you would possibly need, and you discover the main road you were all set to take has major obstacles, traffic, roadwork and damage that you had not noticed before and would do damage to your car if you keep on that road. The choice: Do you continue on that road anyway, because turning back would mean starting over and even having to unload and load the car again after so much careful preparation? Or do you turn around, go home, and start over, planning another way to get to your destination? Thankfully both boys answered the way I wanted them to, and opted for the go home and start over plan. Then my younger son asked why I was asking them this. That was the hard part. My 13-year-old immediately saw the benefits of going back to school at home, but my 11-year-old, social as social can be, was saddened at the prospect of not seeing his school buddies, which is totally understandable, though we are talking two buddies, one of which is new this year. We have many other connections that do not have to be arranged from across town, though I did set the precedent that this was perfectly acceptable and do-able. While certainly the former, not always the latter. The distance of the school has always been an issue; twenty-five minutes or so on freeway, and a total grind when one is sick. Or when there is lunch/recess duty. Or a party.
So fears notwithstanding, here we go. I don't know how I am going to keep the bar set high enough for them to feel challenged, I get easily distracted and discouraged, my support system is scattered and inconsistent, and I feel torn between structure and freedom. Is it any wonder that verse is so on target for me? If I focus on Christ as the Seed, and the answer to my structure problem, then all should fall into place in its time. After all, a seed will grow in its time; you just can't forget to water it.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Where oh where did the summer go?
Tomorrow is the first day of school. I am in denial of this fact. I would like very much for it to be the beginning of August again, with a full month of lazy, fun-filled, no worries days ahead. But alas, it is today, full of grocery shopping for school lunches, getting binders and backpacks fully stocked, and making sure kids are in bed early enough to face the first day of a new school year.
The summer started off well enough, with a computer camp for my 11 and 13-year-old boys, each reveling in some great video game design instruction from Camp Galileo. Not exactly hiking and learning survival skills, but they loved it and I learned to navigate downtown San Jose a bit better.
Then in early July, my husband took the boys on an annual camping trip to Shaver Lake where they got to do some innertubing off the back of a boat. Way cool fun. And it left me, home alone, during the hottest weekend of the summer, to discover through the act of rug-doctoring the bedroom carpets, that we were destined to replace carpets with Pergo or some reasonable fascimile to squelch the incumbent doggie pee smell I just couldn't live with anymore.
Having already committed to giving up my precious school room (in a three bedroom house made for Barbies) in order to fulfill my sons' dreams of each having their own room, the addition of new flooring seemed to make sense in the scheme of things. Not being fixer-upper types, we enlisted the help of our local Home Depot to do the job of putting in new fake wood floors. After much gnashing of teeth due to bad communication from this outfit, we decided to fire them, knowing that the closest match to our current floor would slip through our fingers. But it felt too good to fire them for their incompetence. And to be able to sign on with the boycott to voice our disgust with Home Depot's support of the Gay Agenda.
Onward to Lowe's, which seemed to provide some good service and hope to get it done in good time. Unfortunately, what we thought would be a compliment to the current flooring turned out to be way too orange-y. Thankfully we learned this through a sample and not by having the floor installed.
On to MMM Carpets, who by then was our last hope to get the floors done by the time my brother and family were scheduled to arrive in late August. They had done our original Pergo, and I knew they would be a bit pricier, but by then I didn't care. So that was on the roster, and just had to work. Did I mention that my husband had taken his vacation to help orchestrate the flooring project and re-org of the rooms? We had been living in limbo with the bedrooms all this time. Not my comfort zone at all, chaos.
Somewhere between firing Lowe's and choosing MMM, we found another home project to tackle. A bad smell coming from behind our oven, which we assumed was a dead rat. This led to consulting many pest control outfits, who almost unanimously advised us to wait it out and the body would eventually decompose, leaving us with an intact as opposed to destroyed kitchen. Not wanting a destroyed kitchen, we were happy to wait it out and burn many scented candles. However, the ten days we were were told would take care of it turned into twenty and more, and before we ordered the new oven to replace the now eternally stinky one, there was a little mishap...
I came home from shopping for my husband's birthday dinner, opened the front door, heard a crash, then "Dad, Dad!!" and after considering turning around and fleeing for my peace of mind, entered the house to find Hubby fallen through the ceiling in the hallway, covered in asbestos popcorn and fiberglass fluff. Now we had another project to add to the roster--fixing my husband and the hole in the ceiling. The ceiling was fixed quicker than the husband, but thankfully the husband should eventually heal as well as the ceiling.
Fast forward to the oven issue, where the installer guy has just removed the old oven, I am armed and ready with bleachwater solution to stave off the offending smell and carcass, and it is discovered that there is no carcass to attack with said bleachwater. After some light head scratching, the installer guy explained that sometimes rats get into the oven itself and eat the insulation between the oven and outer shell. Sounded plausible enough to me. He rolled out the old, brought in the new, and soon there was a brand new oven where the stink had been. When I was putting the kitchen back together, spraying cookie sheets and baking pans that were sitting in stink for a month, I discovered a cookie sheet covered in oily smelly goo--smelling just like the "dead rat" that we had been plagued with for the last month. Oops. I guess I should have listened to my husband, who weeks before had suggested that maybe the smell had been from something inside the oven. Yeah, right, I'd said. Chalk that one up to a big "L" on my forehead, and a very gracious husband who resisted any temptation to hold that over me. Bless him!!!! A big dose of humility for this smarty pants.
So we have the new oven, a repaired ceiling, a still-sore husband, new floors, bedrooms for each boy, new bed for the 11-year-old, and a fine visit with my brother and family for the last week of summer.
Cost of our summer "vacation" --- a little over five grand. Our trip to D.C. and Philadelphia was a bargain compared to this summer. But hey--it kept us out of trouble, gave us incredible anecdotes, sympathy from friends and family, and a big heaping dose of perspective and realization of how greatly we are blessed to have the funds to do these projects and be really stupid once in a while. On with the year!
And I've successfully procrastinated getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow.
The summer started off well enough, with a computer camp for my 11 and 13-year-old boys, each reveling in some great video game design instruction from Camp Galileo. Not exactly hiking and learning survival skills, but they loved it and I learned to navigate downtown San Jose a bit better.
Then in early July, my husband took the boys on an annual camping trip to Shaver Lake where they got to do some innertubing off the back of a boat. Way cool fun. And it left me, home alone, during the hottest weekend of the summer, to discover through the act of rug-doctoring the bedroom carpets, that we were destined to replace carpets with Pergo or some reasonable fascimile to squelch the incumbent doggie pee smell I just couldn't live with anymore.
Having already committed to giving up my precious school room (in a three bedroom house made for Barbies) in order to fulfill my sons' dreams of each having their own room, the addition of new flooring seemed to make sense in the scheme of things. Not being fixer-upper types, we enlisted the help of our local Home Depot to do the job of putting in new fake wood floors. After much gnashing of teeth due to bad communication from this outfit, we decided to fire them, knowing that the closest match to our current floor would slip through our fingers. But it felt too good to fire them for their incompetence. And to be able to sign on with the boycott to voice our disgust with Home Depot's support of the Gay Agenda.
Onward to Lowe's, which seemed to provide some good service and hope to get it done in good time. Unfortunately, what we thought would be a compliment to the current flooring turned out to be way too orange-y. Thankfully we learned this through a sample and not by having the floor installed.
On to MMM Carpets, who by then was our last hope to get the floors done by the time my brother and family were scheduled to arrive in late August. They had done our original Pergo, and I knew they would be a bit pricier, but by then I didn't care. So that was on the roster, and just had to work. Did I mention that my husband had taken his vacation to help orchestrate the flooring project and re-org of the rooms? We had been living in limbo with the bedrooms all this time. Not my comfort zone at all, chaos.
Somewhere between firing Lowe's and choosing MMM, we found another home project to tackle. A bad smell coming from behind our oven, which we assumed was a dead rat. This led to consulting many pest control outfits, who almost unanimously advised us to wait it out and the body would eventually decompose, leaving us with an intact as opposed to destroyed kitchen. Not wanting a destroyed kitchen, we were happy to wait it out and burn many scented candles. However, the ten days we were were told would take care of it turned into twenty and more, and before we ordered the new oven to replace the now eternally stinky one, there was a little mishap...
I came home from shopping for my husband's birthday dinner, opened the front door, heard a crash, then "Dad, Dad!!" and after considering turning around and fleeing for my peace of mind, entered the house to find Hubby fallen through the ceiling in the hallway, covered in asbestos popcorn and fiberglass fluff. Now we had another project to add to the roster--fixing my husband and the hole in the ceiling. The ceiling was fixed quicker than the husband, but thankfully the husband should eventually heal as well as the ceiling.
Fast forward to the oven issue, where the installer guy has just removed the old oven, I am armed and ready with bleachwater solution to stave off the offending smell and carcass, and it is discovered that there is no carcass to attack with said bleachwater. After some light head scratching, the installer guy explained that sometimes rats get into the oven itself and eat the insulation between the oven and outer shell. Sounded plausible enough to me. He rolled out the old, brought in the new, and soon there was a brand new oven where the stink had been. When I was putting the kitchen back together, spraying cookie sheets and baking pans that were sitting in stink for a month, I discovered a cookie sheet covered in oily smelly goo--smelling just like the "dead rat" that we had been plagued with for the last month. Oops. I guess I should have listened to my husband, who weeks before had suggested that maybe the smell had been from something inside the oven. Yeah, right, I'd said. Chalk that one up to a big "L" on my forehead, and a very gracious husband who resisted any temptation to hold that over me. Bless him!!!! A big dose of humility for this smarty pants.
So we have the new oven, a repaired ceiling, a still-sore husband, new floors, bedrooms for each boy, new bed for the 11-year-old, and a fine visit with my brother and family for the last week of summer.
Cost of our summer "vacation" --- a little over five grand. Our trip to D.C. and Philadelphia was a bargain compared to this summer. But hey--it kept us out of trouble, gave us incredible anecdotes, sympathy from friends and family, and a big heaping dose of perspective and realization of how greatly we are blessed to have the funds to do these projects and be really stupid once in a while. On with the year!
And I've successfully procrastinated getting ready for the first day of school tomorrow.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Why did I just create a blog when I have nothing to say?
Uh, I'm kind of overwhelmed that school is starting next week, so the fact that I'm trying to figure out the supplies my boys need while being on a short fast is making me a bit brain-dead. Perhaps I will continue this when my free time kicks in as the school year begins. Or maybe later today, who knows?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)