end of March life update

The weather has been milder, and we are seeing the sun earlier and earlier. :D I have been outside making dirt behave several times a week. Some of my onions are debuting their green stems. I have popped one of two blisters from my spade work breaking up the soil.

I am beginning to enforce mandatory outside time, although it is not as difficult as it used to be, because both little people want to play outside, and do not fight putting on coats and shoes. It used to be fifteen minutes getting ready and fifteen minutes outside and that was not quite worth it for me. But now we are getting better, and sometimes coats are optional.

My neighbor and I are sharing the three chickens that she owns, who live at the back of the garden. So every other week, I feed, water, and scrape poop off the floor of their house in the morning, and around lunch time there are about three eggs waiting for me. We have decided to make T-tshirts that say, "My pet made my breakfast."

I am in the middle of the T-tapp 60 day challenge. I decided to force  motivate myself to do three long workouts a week, and then anything extra would be exceeding my goal. I am also doing the various extra challenges as they pop up on Facebook--this week's was Awesome Legs (a leg movement that tones inner, outer thighs, and hips), and two weeks ago it was a movement for the abdomen. Since I am not expecting either inch loss or weight loss to be super dramatic (because I lose slowly or in spurts, but it all equals out over time), I am getting a little lazy about weighing and measuring myself.  Mainly because I wear fitting clothes enough to know if there are any changes (and I have noticed some, but again, not dramatic), so I know I am not in need of changing anything. Also, I decided that I needed to take a break from "counting" calories. It was just tedious and I've been maintaining for a little while. I started using sort of a macro portion control method used by Beachbody.... but I have corrupted it a little to include more fat because I believe in fat!! If you want to know how I figured that out, let me know, lol!

At the mom's group I attend weekly, we are going through Daniel with Beth Moore. I am enjoying it because it has a very interesting perspective. Beth always does. And it requires me to get into the word every day, and I appreciate that. I also have been working hard to get together with some of the moms from moms group because I need friends! :D This is good for me and for them. We all live within twenty minutes of each other so it's not hard, we just have to make room in our schedules for it!

I started reading a Biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Now this is INTERESTING!! מענין. (that's hebrew for interesting. pronouced MenYen). rabbit trail!! This book is a perfect faith builder--we get glimpses for Bonhoeffer's theology and sermons, but not enough to bore me, and it has historical aspects that keep me captivated--he lived in Germany during the first world war and the died during the second world war. And (so far), he was a gifted teacher and presenter of the Gospel, really waking people up to Christ. It ignites the fire in me to remember to keep on delivering grace to people, but also showing them the Gospel is vital for them.

Interestingly enough, it also points out how higher education in present day is a weakling limp noodle in comparison to what it was eighty years ago! Like my degree, for example... people wouldn't even think to go to school for something like that in the 20s and 30s. It is important, but the pastor really was the social worker in this period of time in Europe.

Ben's parent's washer broke and so they gave us their dryer, and so now we have a dryer! This is a major improvement on our home! this past winter was a stretch for me, but between our neighbor letting us use her dryer occasionally (we trade things), and having several milder days (if you have sun, even if it's freezing, things will dry, but they will freeze first, and the part of clothing around the clothespin will probably not dry, but it's better than having too much moisture in the apartment). And everything else we dried inside our apartment (which wasn't the majority).

And we also survived the winter with Dyson hot +cool fans instead of using baseboard heating all the time. We used the heater int he kitchen only on particularly cold mornings and the kids baseboard heater at night because it functions efficiently in the side of room that they have.

Ben and I continue to study Hebrew. We have approximately four lessons each week, about 3.5 hours. We do homework and practice speaking together some of the time. We are definitely getting better, and making improvements. I still want to speak more and need names for most things in the house still, but we are getting better. Still learning tenses and different verb structures and rules. But I like it!

We enjoy seeing family occasionally--we saw Ben's family for Easter, and my parents are coming to see us soon. We saw Marie in February when she came back to get her visa stuff figured out.

I joined the worship team at church and play piano and do harmonies (and one song I did lead, on Palm Sunday) once a month. This is a great thing for me--not only for my soul and to stretch my fingers, but to finally have a method to intentionally get to know people in the congregation besides in the nursery.

Finding new ways to absorb God's word

My relationship with God had become a little bit like doing the same exercise routine for too long.. it was not as effective as it once was. I had hit a plateau, and I wanted to get out of it, but my life path had changed so much that I could hardly even do the minimum (in my mind) to maintain. I had one baby, and then I was pregnant again and watching my own and another toddler, and then I had another newborn and we moved three times in four months. Then I found myself in a new apartment in Lancaster County, and a mom's group found me and took me in. We did a study of James, with Beth Moore teaching, and I challenged myself to get back into a devotion routine.

I did the homework, I read James, I wrote James, and I memorized James. I wrote it over and over, and repeated it over and over and it became like the back of my hand. (Now it is more like the back of my head (which I do not know as well), but that is what happens). But it is still in there and I know how it goes. I know it better than I've known any other book of the Bible. It is Holy Spirit empowering to memorize God's word.

I've read the Bible all my life. When I was in seventh grade, I read through the whole Bible in a year. I remember waking up at 6am and sitting in front of the heater vent in our living room after I turned the heat up to 65 (yes, you read that right.), and reading each morning.

As I went through high school I continued to read and do devotions and journal and pray some. Camp was a place where I really craved God's word and developed better understanding of God's love for me. In college, I continued to read and devour and consume God's word, but after I became pregnant with Naisa and she was born, it was much harder to get back into the word of God. I wasn't motivated. I wasn't focused. Even if I did read, it was just going through the motions, I wasn't absorbing anything. I knew I needed it, so I would keep trying, but there were long breaks in between, sometimes.

When we did the James study, I realized that writing the Scripture took it slower through my mind, and I listened and savored and absorbed more. I heard the sentences in my mind and understood their meaning. Having a teacher also increased the interest and having a group doing it with me increased the accountability.

So here I am in September, a couple months out from the James study, and I have decided that the best way for me to "get" God's word is to write it. Not necessarily memorize the whole book but maybe one chapter at a time. So right now I have started working through the books that Peter wrote. I am writing one chapter a day (and working on my handwriting. haha!) and I am listening through a series of exegetical sermons on First and Second Peter by Skip Heitzig. He does a significant job of researching and portraying the information in a way that makes it understandable, as well as entertaining, and it holds my attention. I find this kind of teaching helpful especially with certain verses in the Bible that no woman "likes" to read. "the weaker partner", "be submissive to your husbands".  I have greater understanding of how my own relationship with my husband becomes easier and more loving when I submit my own authority to God and entrust my will to Him.

I want to encourage you, if you are reading this, to take on a discipline to write a book of the Bible. Pick a short one, maybe one that you don't like!, and write it, slowly, just a chapter a day, and find a good quality teacher who does an exegetical teaching of the book (like Skip Heitzig) and follow along with them for a little while. Even if you don't agree.

Blessings