As some of you know, my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia earlier this year. All of our lives have turned upside-down while we’ve adjusted to her new schedule of treatments and procedures. As is so often the case with difficult times, we’re all learning and growing from the experience. She moved across the country for treatment, so she’s now living in our town. That part has been great. My parents have been able to watch my youngest learn how to talk and walk, which is so cool.

My mom has been on a very aggressive chemo schedule as she is awaiting a bone marrow transplant. They were able to find a donor in the national donor registry (please consider placing yourself on the life-saving donor list!), and her transplant is scheduled to take place on June 16th. It has been a challenging road so far, but we are hopeful that the transplant will be successful.

I have quite a few things that I’ve wanted to write about, so I’m going to go try to get those posts up…

Many thanks to everyone who has been supportive as we’ve gone through this storm. I love you all!

Its been an amazing week around here.

My mom came to town last week so that she could help with the kids while I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed.  It wasn’t a fun experience (duh), but I think I managed it pretty well.  Tomorrow will be a week since the surgery.  My cheek is still bruised… My jaw is a little creaky… I keep getting food stuck back there… but its doing well overall.

So, how funny is it that during this time when I’m talking like I have golf balls in my mouth, one of the most important events of my life (that requires talking!) would take place!

My son has these little worksheets that he gets each week from church.  He loves doing them each week.  They usually include reading the story for the week from the Bible, a few little word games, and then some application questions.  I’ve been helping to teach in his class, and he and I have been talking a lot about salvation, sins, heaven, souls, you name it.  

This weeks lesson was all about restoring our friendships with God.  My two oldest and I were having a great conversation about all sorts of theological issues.  We’ve been discussing it for weeks, and I’ve been trying to let them lead, ask questions, and really sort through their thoughts.  When we got to the end of the little worksheet for the week, it had a place to pray.  Without going into too much detail, they both had prayers that they wanted to pray to Jesus, asking Him into their heart to forgive them of their sins and be their Savior.  It was so humbling to be there for such an important spiritual marker for each of them.  It was not exactly how I would’ve pictured it (with me bruised and hardly able to open my jaw, LOL), but it was absolutely perfect.

So I think we’re going to get them each their own Bible for Christmas.  Joe and I had a huge talk last night about the good and the trials that come from being saved early in life.  We were each saved at around the same ages as our children, and we can guess some of what the road ahead may look like.  We want it to be alive and real in their heart – not just their heads.  We feel like there are so many ways where we are still just starting to -get it-, and we don’t want them to miss out on those living, breathing areas of relationship with God.  

We know that being Christians from an early age really helped us through our tough times in life, and was a vital foundation.  We talked once again about how we want our children to be comfortable discussing doubts, other beliefs, and anything else that comes to their mind.  We try to be the kind of family that is super open about that kind of stuff.  We have a lot of conversations around here about everything from Gandhi’s wisdom to evolution, so I hope that we are able to keep an open dialogue with our children for their whole lives.  We also talked about how the best way to teach them is for us to live it passionately and wildly, lol.  So, hopefully we’ll at least have that part covered!

Anyways, thanks for reading if you made it this far.  It was a special day in our house, and I feel so humbled.

 

I am currently reading Irresistible Revolution and I am really loving every minute of it.  The amazing thing is that God is bringing together my convictions, what I’m learning in my Bible time, what I’m reading in Irresistible Revolution, AND what I’m reading in my Beth Moore Bible study.  Seriously.  Any time Beth Moore and Shane Claiborne intersect, I think it is good to shut up and listen, because that can’t possibly happen that often, LOL.

I have so many things that I’d like to write about from this book, but today’s quote is sponsored by our upcoming presidential election.  I’m so sick of it.  I can’t even tell you how sick of it I am.  I am a fan of neither party, and I am pretty much just dreading this whole thing.  I just pray that the fans and followers of whoever wins (which I assume will be Obama) are able to win graciously.  Ugh.  I’m so not excited.  This whole political season has driven me nuts, because everyone is spending lots of time making villains of the other side, and I think everyone is screwed up.

I think Shane Claiborne agrees  =D

The stuff Jesus warned us to beware of, the yeast of the Pharisees, is so infectious today in the camps of both liberals and conservatives.  Conservatives stand up and thank God that they are not like the homosexuals, the Muslims, the liberals.  Liberals stand up and thank God that they are not like the war makers, the yuppies, the conservatives.  It is a similar self-righteousness, just with different definitions of evildoing.  It can paralyze us in judgment and guilt and rob us of life.  Rather than separating ourselves from everyone we consider impure, maybe we are better off just beating our chests and praying that God would be merciful enough to save us from this present ugliness and to make our lives so beautiful that people cannot resist that mercy.

This quote really gives a very skewed glimpse of what is contained in this book, but I was just reading a bunch of election stuff, and it summed up my feelings quite well.

The main criticism that I have noticed popping up around the Slow Food movement is an idea that it is forcing women back into the kitchens and out of the world. The idea is that this is both degrading to women and it is robbing women of pleasure and leisure time that could be better spent.

This lecture was posted on one of my message boards – Mark Bittman: What’s wrong with what we eat. The discussion moved over to the question of “who will prepare this food”? Who will be the one to cook from scratch and to use real ingredients? The underlying assumption is that most of the burden will be placed on women. I’m guessing that this is true in most families. So does that mean that this kind of advice shouldn’t be given?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I can imagine myself saying the same thing 10 years ago. I didn’t see how “domestic chores” could be enjoyable and I certainly didn’t think they could be empowering. I thought that any woman who chose to do them AND enjoyed it was brainwashed or at least allowing herself to be manipulated by the patriarchal society that we live in.

My view has changed drastically. You might guess that by looking at my last post about my apron, lol. Cooking can be just as empowering and enjoyable as any other leisure activity. I love the feeling of sitting down to watch my family eat a healthy, homemade meal. Looking back, I enjoyed it even when I was working full time and we didn’t have kids. I didn’t cook with whole food ingredients very often, but I did cook, and I enjoyed it. I think the closest thing that I can compare it to is the feeling that I get when I look down at a content, chunky baby who has just finished nursing. I can see that she is healthy, satisfied, and I know that I did it all on my own. Its such a great feeling.

I’ve been reading This Organic Life for the past week, and it just so happens to have a whole chapter devoted to this topic. What are the odds?! It also had a chapter devoted to having to kill garden pests. That chapter also spoke to me since I have sneaky little mice living in my compost bin. I’ll save that for a different post though, lol.

Back to the book though. Joan Dye Gussow starts chapter 14 (entitled “Is It Worth It?”) by saying the following

The foregoing celebration of local food rests, admittedly, on the threatening assumption that someone will cook. Judging from their behavior, it looks as if most people in many circumstances don’t and won’t. They seem to have decided that cooking doesn’t pay–although buying lavish cookbooks does. According to time-use studies, what has replaced cooking for females is television and grooming; men didn’t have that much cooking to replace.

Indeed. It does rest on that assumption. There is no denying that the only way that you can eat more whole foods, whether local or not, is if someone is willing to cook it. I really like watching BBC America’s show You Are What You Eat. I’ve always found it fascinating that some of the biggest complaints come over the fact that they have to actually MAKE their food. It appears as though they complain about the prep work even more than they complain about giving up fast food and junk. It seems that everyone comes around by the end, but almost everyone claims to be too busy to cook when they first start the process. I think that’s especially funny because they usually show the people sitting in a recliner, watching tv, and eating from a bag for the whole evening. They don’t look that busy.

So yeah, it seems that many people don’t want to cook. So that is automatically factored into most people’s ideas of the value of cooking at home. So does this mean that it is automatically a burden to ask men and women to cook?

Joan Dye Gussow came across the following quote as she was researching. It is from an Israeli economist named Reuben Gronau

An intuitive distinction between work at home (i.e., home production time) and leisure (i.e., home consumption time), is that work at home (like work in the market) is something one would rather have somebody else do for one (if the cost were low enough) while it would be almost impossible to enjoy leisure through a surrogate.

Aha! That describes exactly how I feel about the work that I do at home. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I really do see cooking as leisure time. I would never want to pay someone to do it for me. It would rob me of all of those great feelings. Apparently Joan Dye Gussow agrees with me.

Wow, I thought. Anything done unwillingly at home is work; anything done voluntarily is pleasure. So if I enjoy cooking, then my work counts as a benefit, not a cost…

The point is that cooking food is not just about whether or not I could pay a “surrogate” (as Gronau says) to do my cooking. The point is that I would miss out on way more than the experience if I were to have someone else do it. I would miss out on the laughs with my kids as they stir pancake batter. I’d miss the chance to meditate and contemplate while I kneaded my bread. I’d miss the chance to create and innovate while nourishing my family. I’d miss SO much more than I would gain by having an extra hour or two to watch tv or groom (which is apparently what the average woman now does, right?)

I consider myself a feminist. At the same time, I am saddened by the feminist idea that anything that was traditionally done by women is automatically degrading. Should men help? Absolutely, if that’s what works for your family. My husband and I have a pretty progressive relationship. We divide our labor based on who is better and who knows more about a given topic. Revolutionary! I would find it silly to make Joe cook just for the sake of equality. There are times that he does cook. It is usually when it is something that he is better at though. Its not just so that he has to work as much as I do at every single task. What about single people? They still have to cook. Is it be degrading then?

I realize that cooking is not something that everyone loves. I do believe that we can all work on finding joy in everything that we do. Joe and I have talked about this several times. He and I both have parts of our day that we enjoy less than others. There are certain tasks that we each must do at our jobs that are not our favorites. That doesn’t mean that we don’t get to do them though. The Bible tells us

Ecclesiastes 2:24 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

I actually love the section above this quote, but I have found that people start scanning when Bible quotes are long

I also love Paul’s encouragement to those who were slaves at the time

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward

Who would have more reason to hate their work than those who were being forced into labor?! Those are the absolute worst working conditions that we can imagine, and yet Paul still said to work as though you are working for the Lord.

I have found that the more that I work with a good attitude, then the more I am open to learn and experience through the task. As I said above, there is so much more that happens during that time. Its not just about accomplishing an objective.

Finally, as if reading my incredibly long post wasn’t enough, I want to link to this great sticky on Gentle Christian Mothers. It was written by a dear friend who has inspired me for years. We used to live near each other, and she serves with me at GCM. I feel so lucky to have her in my life, and I hope that her words can bless you to. Here is her writing on Finding joy in your homekeeping ministry. I hope that it can encourage you as much as it encouraged me

I hope you’re having a great Sunday, and now I’m off to make dinner!