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Bored–Nothing To Do

Mar14

Spring break hasn’t even started yet, and one of the urchins is already worried about being bored. While I’m tempted to bop her over the head, I promised instead to make her a list of 100 things to do. Here’s the list. Feel free to use it to amuse and stimulate your bored urchin.

1. Read a book and write about it on your blog.
2. Bake a cake or some cookies and give them away.
3. Help Bee with her scrapbook.
4. Organize all the pictures you’ve taken with your digital camera into a scrapbook on the computer. (iPhoto?)
5. Sweep the porch or the driveway.
6. Plant the flowers in the flower bed around the tree in the front yard.
7. Go to the bookstore with your sister.
8. Help Bear clean and rearrange her room.
9. Read to Z-baby.
10. Send postcards to all your friends telling them how much they mean to you.
11. Write a real letter to your grandmother or to your aunt or to your cousin.
12. Take a photograph for each letter of the alphabet and make Z-baby an alphabet book.
13. Take someone with you and go for a walk.
14. Make a list of 100 random things about you: books you like, clothes you wear, things you’ve done, things you want to do, etc.
15. Draw a picture of something beautiful and give it to someone, or frame it and put it on your wall.
16. Plan a meal and make it for the family.
17. Write someone’s name at the top of a piece of paper. List all the ways you can think of to bless that person.
18. Rearrange and clean out your bookshelf.
19. Make a pillow for someone you love.
20. Write a poem every hour for a whole day–12 poems. Share them with someone you love or post them on your blog.
21. Make a list of every person you know and beside each name write at least one good thing about each person.
22. Find your favorite poem. Read it out loud twice a day until you have it memorized.
23. Read Psalms all the way through.
24. Find a place where you can be alone and pray for 15 minutes. Can’t make it for 15 minutes? Try 10. Try 5 minutes.
25. Go for a whole day without speaking. Can you do it? What do you learn by not talking?
26. Write a letter to yourself to be opened at your high school graduation. Tell yourself what you would like to be doing when you are eighteen.
27. Tell knock-knock jokes with Z-baby.
28. Make jello.
29. Put on some music and dance with your sisters.
30. Choose a drawer and clean it out.
31. Learn how to say “I love you” in ten languages and make a card for someone using the languages.
32. Help Karate Kid plan his birthday.
33. Try not to think about polar bears.
34. Comment on 20 people’s blogs.
35. Play cards (Alligator) with Bee.
36. Daydream.
37. Paint your nails.
38. Do 25 crunches.
39. Play SET on the computer.
40. Make brownies.
41, Update your calendar.
42. Jump on the trampoline.
43. Call a friend on the phone.
44. Find something that’s lost.
45. Play dominoes.
46. Drink nine glasses of water in one day.
47. Put lotion on your feet and then wash someone else’s feet and put lotion on them.
48. Turn your mattress over.
49. Clean out a flowerbed and buy some seeds to plant in it.
50. Tell somebody a joke.
51. Sort out our photographs. Have an envelope for each person in our family and and envelope for groups.
52. Match all the socks in the sock basket.
53. Ask Daddy to give you all his shirts that are missing buttons. Sew buttons on them.
54. Write 100 words in a journal or blog every day–no more, no less.
55. Give every person in the house a hug.
56. Listen to someone else’s music.
57. Learn to play a musical instrument.
58. Eat so much junk food that you’re sick of it.
59. 27 fling boogie.
60. 27 give away boogie.
61. Brush your hair 100 strokes. Brush someone else’s hair 100 strokes.
62. Take a long hot bath.
63. Do a math lesson.
64. Read the encyclopedia.
65. Color in a coloring book with your little sister.
66. Ask a neighbor if you can do something to help her in her house.
67. Write a story.
68. Read the jokes in the old Reader’s Digests and tell one to someone else.
69. Watch one of the movies on Semicolon’s 105 Best Movies list that you’ve never seen.
70. Scratch someone else’s back.
71. Rake up all the pine needles in the backyard.
72. Make funny faces.
73. Clean all the writing off the windows in the gameroom.
74. Find a way to display our collection of buttons.
75. Find a new word in the dictionary and use it in conversation at least 5 times today.
76. Go outside with a piece of chalk and write something encouraging on the sidewalk–in ten different places.
77. Send a thank you note to someone who’s done something for you.
78. Wash and dry all the comforters in the house.
79. Walk around the couch and tell yourself stories.
80. Videotape the younger children doing a show or a play.
81. Clean out the van.
82. Organize the pantry.
83. Doodle on the whiteboard.
84. Read a short book of the Bible out loud all the way through.
85. Pray for ten people who need your prayers.
86. Write something in all the other children’s blank books.
87. Paint a picture.
88. Play with make-up.
89. Make milkshakes or smoothies for the family.
90. Teach Bee to play hopscotch.
91. Learn calligraphy.
92. Make a collage.
93. Find your “life verse,” the Bible verse that God is giving you to help you see His purpose in your life.
94. Think of something you want someone to do for you. Do that thing for someone else.
95. Do something kind for someone for free–in Jesus’ name.
96. Read the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). Use your camera to take one picture to illustrate each Beatitude. Or take pictures to illustrate one of the psalms.
97. Read a magazine.
98. Get Karate Kid to teach you some martial arts moves.
99. Sing a hymn out loud.
100. Sing all the songs from your favorite movie musical.

I told the bored urchin that she should do something for someone else when she’s feeling bored, but this idea didn’t go over too well. So I tried to make my list to be fun and reflect that idea. Maybe some concrete examples will help. I do believe my children spend way too much time worrying about how to entertain themselves, and that goal invites boredom. Joy really is found in service, but it’s a hard lesson to learn. (It’s also a hard lesson for me to model sometimes since I tend to be as self-centered and entertainment-seeking as the next person.)
Some of these ideas, by the way, were loosely based on ideas found at a site called 52 Projects.

To Grow or Not To Grow (Up, That Is)

Mar7

I found a link to this interesting (2002) NRO article, Let’s Have More Teen Pregnancy, by Frederica Mathewes-Green at Boar’s Head Tavern, where they’re discussing singleness and marriage and saying that the evangelical church is way too hipped on marriage.
From Mathewes-Green’s article:

Until a century or so ago, it was presumed that children were in training to be adults. From early years children helped keep the house or tend the family business or farm, assuming more responsibility each day. By late teens, children were ready to graduate to full adulthood, a status they received as an honor. How early this transition might begin is indicated by the number of traditional religious and social coming-of-age ceremonies that are administered at ages as young as 12 or 13.

But we no longer think of children as adults-in-progress. Childhood is no longer a training ground but a playground, and because we love our children and feel nostalgia for our own childhoods, we want them to be able to linger there as long as possible. We cultivate the idea of idyllic, carefree childhood, and as the years for education have stretched so have the bounds of that playground, so that we expect even “kids” in their mid-to-late twenties to avoid settling down.

I was discussing this problem with a friend just last Friday. We know a whole group of young men, homeschooled, from Christian homes, professing Christian themselves, who have dropped out of college, are working at minimum wage-type jobs, and playing around with dating, planning to get married “someday.” They don’t seem to be preparing themselves financially for marriage; they don’t have any discernable long term goals. They aren’t preparing for or taking leadership positions in the church either. If this behaviour isn’t a refusal to grow up, I don’t know what to call it.
Then, there are the dozen or more young Christian women that I can name off the top of my head who have graduated from high school, finished college, learned to manage a household in addition to preparing educationally for a career, and who still aren’t married at age 20+ or 30+. I don’t think that for most of these young ladies their standards are too high; there just aren’t as many committed Christian men as there are women. So, any suggestions? What is the key to encouraging the Christian young men that are in our families and churches to grow up and commit themselves–to marriage, to career, to education, whatever the Lord is calling them to do?

By the way, all the discussion at BHT started with this address by Dr. Albert Mohler, Part 1 and Part 2
Then, iMonk wrote this essay asking, Have We Said Too Much (about marriage, that is)?
From there, you can go on to read all sorts of responses, both pro and con.
Put me in the same camp with Dr. Mohler. I see too much anecdotal evidence that young men, especially, are delaying adulthood in many areas, not just delaying marriage. I am praying that the Holy Spirit will bring revival, not so that everybody will get married, but rather so that that the church will have the strong male leadership that it needs to follow Christ in this century.

Sound of My Grandmother

Feb11

Here’s a short piece that my mother wrote about her mother whose birthday would be today:

Mary Eugenia Thomas Stewart, b. 1907
One sound in particular that I remember is that of my mother playing the piano and singing. She usually did this when she felt no one else was around, because even though she had the voice of an angel (or what I feel an angel would sound like), I’ve never known her to try to elicit applause or special recognition for the bountiful talents that she possessed. To go along with these extraordinary gifts that God endowed her with, was the fact that her love for music landed her a job as public school music teacher, which she held for many years.

Not only did her love for music endear her to her students but to adults as well. Many times when her friends would have a musical engagement, they would come to the house and ask my mother if she would assist them at the event where they performed. On more than one occasion a man by the name of Russell Cothran would spend an afternoon playing his violin while my mother accompanied him on the piano. Now, Russell lived and breathed for the sole purpose of playing that violin! At least, it seemed that way to the rest of us. Needless to say, he was a violinist personified! I often thought when I was much older, that he chose my mom to complement the music he reveled in because she never faltered in rising to the occasion, no matter how difficult the music was that he presented to her.

The fact that I deemed my mother as one who would not admit defeat easily was ingrained in me at an early age, and it enabled me to try harder against my surmounting difficulties because of her steadfastness.

Anyway, that is what I thought of immediately when you asked me to describe a “sound” from my childhood. I can’t think of any better one than that !

The musical talent skipped a couple of generations. Although my mother and I can both carry a tune, Eldest Daughter and some of the other urchins inherited the real musical ability, either from my grandmother or from Engineer Husband’s mother who was also an accomplished pianist. My favorite memory of my Mema is this one I posted a few weeks ago:

I used to spend the night with my Mema every Friday night. We watched The Jack Benny Show and ate pink beans (pork and beans) and hamburger patties. Every Friday.

Implications of Population Decline

Feb8

When I was in high school, the bogeyman in social trends was “the population explosion.” Everybody knew that it was irresponsible to have more than two children in these modern, enlightened times. Anyone who did have a large family was just selfish, adding to the surplus population, using up the dwindling resources of the planet. Now, according to the article, Demographics and the Culture War by Stanley Kurtz in Policy Review Online, we’re heading toward a worldwide population implosion, a decline in population that is “set to ramify geometrically.”

As population falls, the pool of potential mothers in each succeeding generation shrinks. So even if, well into the process, there comes a generation of women with a higher fertility rate than their mothers’, the momentum of population decline could still be locked in. Population decline may also be cemented into place by economics. To support the ever-growing numbers of elderly, governments may raise taxes on younger workers. That would make children even less affordable than they are today, decreasing the size of future generations still further.

Kurtz uses information from the following recently published books to spin several possible scenarios that might result from a decreasing population.
The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It by Phillip Longman
Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future by Ben Wattenberg
The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know About America’s Economic Future by Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns
Running On Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It by Peter G. Peterson
Kurtz says the choices are:
1) a new conservatism: Population decline might be halted and even reversed by a change in cultural values, what GWB calls creating a culture of life. We could have a revival of traditional religions which oppose abortion, birth control, feminism, and the sexual revolution and which support traditional families with children.
2) a new eugenics: In this scenario, populations could be stabilized as traditional families were replaced by bioengineered breeding systems, as in Brave New World. He doesn’t think we’re so very far away from this “eugenic nightmare.”
3) “endless and compounding population decline:” This choice has some fairly scary implications as the population ages rapidly and fewer and fewer young people are forced to support more and more elderly people (who are living longer to boot).

None of the above is palatable to social liberals who value freedom, but it may be that we’ll all have to pay the price for the choices that we as a society have made and continue to make. (We should all pray for our children, even those of us who don’t have any.)

. . . population decline cannot be reversed in the absence of major cultural change, and the prospects of a significant religious revival must not be dismissed. In a future shadowed by vastly disproportionate numbers of poor elderly citizens, and younger workers struggling with impossible tax burdens, the fundamental tenets of postmodern life might be called into question. Some will surely argue from a religious perspective that mankind, having discarded God’s injunctions to be fruitful and multiply, is suffering the consequences.

I found this article via Arts and Letters Daily, a very useful website, by the way.

Proved/Proven

Jan24

The dictionary says that the verb prove has two past participles: proved and proven. Eldest Daughter says this fact is rather disturbing.
Computer Guru Son wants to watch Monk tonight. The second season of this TV series about a detective who struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder is out on DVD, and several of us are enjoying these programs. We see some (mild) displays of OCD in our own family, not mentioning any names. Maybe all of us tend to be obsessive or compulsive in some areas.
Karate Kid wants a dog. I don’t.
Engineer Husband helped some of the children dissect a flower tonight. I can think of much worse dissection projects that they could have done. I’m thankful it was only a flower.

The Blessing of Children

Jan19

The Blessing of Children is the story of Valerie, the mother of ten children, who sounds like someone who has gained a lot more wisdom than I have–and she’s gained it the hard way, through suffering. Hear what she says about having a large family:

I sometimes hear Christians say that they cannot have children soon or in close succession or in large numbers because it would be hard. And then I wonder where we, the Church, ever came to the conclusion that God has determined rest for us in all ages!

For the Christian life, God uses the metaphors of a soldier, a slave, and an athlete. Is it from these metaphors that we obtained the no-sweat, no-trouble, no-pressure model for Christian living and ethical decision-making? Wherever did we get the idea that discomfort is a sign that we should retreat to the safety of the trenches and not proceed in hope and faith?

Social Security Lockbox

Jan1

As far as I can determine the SSA has replacement Social Security cards in a “lockbox” since 9/11. I lost my 17 year old son’s SS card. He needs a replacement because he wants to get a driver’s license. Here in Texas, in order to get a driver’s license, he must show them a SS card. Unfortunately, in order to get a replacement SS card, he has to have a driver’s license or some other form of identification. From the SSA website, here is alist of some of the documents that they might acccept as identification:

* Driver’s license
* Marriage or divorce record
* Military records
* Adoption record
* Life insurance policy
* Passport
* Health Insurance card (not a Medicare card)
* School ID card

Computer Guru Son isn’t married (or divorced), isn’t in the military, isn’t adopted, has no life insurance nor passport, and has no school ID card since he’s homeschooled. He does have a health insurance card, but it doesn’t have his full name on it because his name is too long for the health insurance company’s computer paradigm. And Blue Cross won’t make him a special card with his full name on it (we asked). Social Security says his birth certificate isn’t useful for the purposes of identification. Neither is anything else we have. We’ve been to the SS office three times, and I spent an hour on the phone yesterday arguing with two different SSA people. They both finally told me that Computer Guru Son doesn’t exist for the purposes of the SSA and therefore he won’t be able to get a SS card. Bureaucracy wins again.

Sabbath Rest

Dec31

I found these words in a post entitled A Time to Rest and Reflect by John Zimmer at Letters from Babylon:

While we often do not take the Sabbath as a special day of rest and worship, I suggest that this fact might be symptomatic of our general busyness. As I have lately considered my own weekly routine, I notice that three things monopolize nearly all of my waking hours. Each of the three is an important, valuable endeavor, and two of them are even acts of giving to others. Surely I do well to do these things, right? There is no need to give up one of them, is there? In fact, would I not be sinning by decreasing my involvement at my local church? Would it not be wrong of me to lay down my role in the children’s ministry, when the task is vital for the nurturing of the next generation and might not get done as well or at all without my efforts (just an example—my contribution is not so decisive as that in reality)? At first glance, it seems the answer is yes—it would be selfish and perhaps sinful not to serve in whatever capacity I can. After all, if I weren’t serving in the children’s ministry or the soup kitchen or the adult literacy program or some other important service to other people, what would I be doing? Napping? Reading a book in the park? Strolling along the river listening to the Fenway crowd cheer? Surely I should sacrifice those simple (but ultimately selfish) pleasures for the sake of service to others.

But the danger in our busyness, even in the (rare) case that all our activities are valuable and others-centered, is that we do not have time to fellowship with our Creator. We are so busy preaching the Gospel that we do not have the time to develop intimacy with the Author and Finisher of our faith. We do not have the time to ponder deep issues of the mind and heart. We do not have the time to sit still and listen to what the Spirit of God may want to say to us. I fear that in the end, then, even our service to others will suffer by doing too much of it.

I tend to take time to read and think because I don’t believe I can live and remain sane without it. Engineer Husband, on the other hand, craves time to read and reflect, but seldom takes it. He is driven, I think, by his mother’s oft-repeated instruction, “Do something useful!” I am going to try to encourage him to take Sunday afternoons (or maybe Saturday mornings), at least, to read and think and pray and rest. He needs it, but it will be a matter of discipline for him.

SNOW

Dec24

In Houston on Christmas Eve! We came out of the church at about 7:30 this evening, and there was a thin layer of snow on top of all the cars. We’ve been in Houston for nineteen years now, and most of my children have never seen snow. Only Eldest Daughter has been to Colorado and to Chicago and experienced snow. The rest have only seen pictures and movies. What a blessing!
Now we’re enjoying our traditional Christmas Eve dinner–chili cheese dip, chips, Christmas Eve salad, and punch. What an amazing Christmas Eve! It’s still snowing outside. At this rate, we’ll be making a snowman for Christmas day.

In Memory and In Honor

Dec23

Eleven years ago today I was in the hospital. Our fifth child, Joanna Kirsten, was born and died two days before this date, and I spent Christmas 1993 in the hospital recovering from a very difficult and scary premature (eight months) birth.
Ten years ago today I was in the hospital again. Brown Bear Daughter was born, safely and easily; Engineer Husband called her our “Return to Flight Baby.” She’s been flying ever since. Of course, she didn’t replace little Joanna, but she did bring a new joy and beauty to our family. We call her Brown Bear Daughter because she was the happy recipient, we theorize, of the Native American genes that come from my mother’s side of the family, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. She’s our drama queen, our social butterfly, our curly hair pokey bear.
Happy Birthday, Brown Bear.
See You in Heaven, Joanna Kirsten.