Conversation on Idolatry

Recently, at the birth of our fourth, we gave our three older kids a present each as a way to express our care and love for them. One of them received a gift of several toy horses. She promptly lost the baby horse (her favorite) in the house later the same day. For the next two days, she proceeded to mope and stomp and cry and refuse to be happy until the horse was found. It quickly became ridiculous. After several go-arounds, we sat down to have a talk and had a break-through.

I told her, in short, that she was being ridiculous. While helping her look for the horse, I had told her several times that we understood, that it was hard to get a toy and then to lose it. But now things had gone on so long, I wished we never would have given her the horse, if we knew it was going to cause such problems. She had been happy before she even had the horse, but ever since she had it and lost it, she had been miserable and making everyone else miserable. I told her that maybe there was a reason God hadn’t let her find the horse. (You have to be careful trying to interpret God’s will like this. Sometimes we will pray that God will help us find something that has been lost. But I didn’t think it was appropriate to pray that way when she was acting so angry and taking it out on everyone else. It is wrong to spend prayer on our desires when they are full of sin and prayer really needs to be spent on repentance.) Maybe God wouldn’t let her find the horse until she repented. She has informed us several times recently that she has been praying for God to change her heart and give her a new heart. Maybe this was something God was doing to help her know what that meant.

So I told her that the horse had become an idol. She was refusing to be happy until she had the horse back. She had been happy before she even knew the horse existed, but now she couldn’t be happy without it. Having the horse was more important to her than anything else, and she was willing to make everyone else miserable until she had it. (As I talked with her about it, she was still glaring at me.) We have talked about what it means to be a child of God - that when we’re trusting God, we have a peace with him in our hearts that is bigger than our circumstances, that the fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”. I asked her if she had any of those things right now. She said, “No.” What do you have? “Angry.” What does that tell you? “The horse is more important and real to me than God.”

I then asked, “Does the horse talk?” She looked at me funny and said, “No...” “Does the horse run by itself? Does it play? Does it hug you? Love you? Is it good for taking you on long journeys? Does it listen when you tell it all your problems?” Again, “No...” The Bible talks about idolatry and says, a man finds a tree in the forest and cuts it down. Half of it he burns in a fire to stay warm. The other half he crafts into an idol and bows down and worships it. (See Isaiah 44:9-20.) Psalm 115:4-8 says, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear; noses, but do not smell. They have hands, but do not feel; feet, but do not walk; and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them.”

I asked her, “What do you think of that?” She said, giggling, “That’s stupid.” I said, “Does your horse talk?” Laughing again (obvious change of attitude), “No” “Does your horse play with you?” “No”. “Can the horse really make you happy?" "No." "When you find the horse, is it really going to make that much difference in your life?” “No.” “Well then, what is it?” Smiling sheepishly, “An idol.” “What do you need to do?” “Trust God and repent.” “You know what Jesus did? You were his lost treasure. And he went to the ends of the earth and to his own death to find you and win you back. And he rejoices for eternity when you repent and are found by him.”

We ended the conversation with a very different attitude.

She found the horse the next morning.

Valentines Day

I love Valentine's Day! I have so many fun memories from growing up and celebrating - candy at our places at the breakfast table, finding Valentines from Mommy and Daddy hidden all over the house (and even in my school stuff, too!)! I still remember opening my math book in college to find a Valentine from my dad hiding in the pages!
For me, Valentine's Day is a fun family holiday that gives us an opportunity to celebrate each other. Consequently, it is one of the"bigger" holidays that we celebrate at our house.
We celebrated over a three-day weekend this year, since Valentine's was actually on Sunday (not the best day time-wise for our family). We began Saturday night with our annual Valentine's dinner, compete with china table settings, candles and our traditional Valentines' chicken dish that Matt first made for me in college. Then, the next morning (Valentine's morning), the kids came down to find candy at their places (they especially love this tradition!). This morning, we did our annual scavenger hunt, where we send the kids all over the house to gather clues and eventually find some special new "treasure" hidden for them. We also tried something new this year that I want to remember and keep doing.
Last week, I set a little basket full of construction paper hearts and markers on the table and explained that it is our "I love you" basket. Everyone could write a note to someone else, telling them that they love them and a reason why and then put it back into the basket. It was especially neat to see the girls stealing opportunities to sit down and write hearts to everyone else! This morning, after we ate breakfast, Matt read out each heart and then handed them out to the kids. You should have seen their faces when they received hearts and when he read a heart that they had written to someone else! It was a really neat time!
So, usually this is all in one day, just not this year. And, as far and Matt and I are concerned, Feb. 15 has always been the day we celebrate, ever since we started dating!

Our "fancy" dinner table. Liam wanted to sing "happy birthday" since there were candles, so I had to keep explaining to him that these are not birthday candles, just fancy ones. :)

The "I Love You" basket and (below) some of the notes that the girls wrote



And the faces as we read and handed out the notes this morning:

Collecting clues for the scavenger hunt

A successful find!

Snow Party!

Since were stir crazy and missing our friends, we decided to host a snow party this morning. After all, what else could you do when you have all of this snow everywhere (and what is the worst that could happen - me go into labor?!)?! We invited our "walking" neighborhood friends to come over and play and, when they arrived, they all played outside for quite a while. I know my kids loved having other kids to play in the snow with them! When they were cold and wet and ready to come in, we let them play together inside for quite a while, and they all played together very nicely!
Finally, we moms decided that we were hungry, so I headed outside to scoop up some clean snow for snow cream while they began the lunch fixings inside. We began our mealtime with snow cream (it was a snow party after all!) and then moved on to more traditional lunch foods. Let me just say that the snow cream with several drops of orange extract added was the yummiest thing I have tasted! It was just like an orange creamsicle and was the bowl to empty first (after all, there are no limits on how much snow cream you can eat at a snow party!).
After lunch, we made "magic" snow paintings, drawing with white crayons on white paper and then painting over them with watercolors to see our hidden pictures. It was a hit with everyone!
I hope that we get snow again next year so we can do this again! It certainly makes snow more enjoyable when you can share and celebrate it with your friends!

Words

Paul, in Ephesians 4:29, says: “Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

We had an interesting conversation on this verse today at dinner, when one of our daughters, both of whom have watched My Fair Lady recently, suddenly quoted, “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.”

We had the opportunity to begin a conversation on words and why we use them – for God’s glory and to build other people up and benefit those who listen. Then, we ran through a list of several phrases or words that are not useful for any of these purposes (damn being one of them) and explained what they really mean and why they are, then, not wholesome. It is going to be more and more normal for them to hear these words, not only in movies, but from other kids and adults around them, so it was great to have a natural opening to begin the discussion with them. We emphasized that, anytime they come across a word someone says that they are unsure about, they can always come ask us. We did tell them that these are not words to talk to their friends about but that, again, they can always talk to us about them. (Just to let you other parents know in advance…)

Just a neat opportunity for training and discussion as they are growing older and surely one of many, many, many that we will yet have.

Closing Out Our Egypt Study

This morning, we headed out to the Penn Museum of Archeology (our GPS calls it the Penn Museum of Archeo) to see some real stuff from Egypt up close and personal. It was pretty neat to see columns and other artifacts that we had previously only seen in books. The girls each searched for the first letters (sounds) of their names in hieroglyphics, and we noted some of the hieroglyphics that we recognized. They also drew pictures of some of the things we saw there. Katy said that her fevorite part of the Egypt exhibit was the bones, even though they were kind of gross (her words). Darsie was most fascinated by the little child's mummy. Matt and I thought the sphinx was pretty cool. It is the third largest spinx in existence and the largest in the US. All but its head is in excellently preserved condition, because it was apparently buried up to its neck in sand when it was found, so only its face has worn away in the weather.

Posing with the head of Ramesses II

Posing with a whole statue of Ramesses II

Afterwards, we continued our field trip to our favorite milkshake restaurant, Nifty Fifties!

Fairness vs. grace

Yesterday evening, we had an interesting story play out in our home. Since we had not been making the girls clean up all week, the living room was pretty trashed. I finally made it to the library to pick up some books I had requested and found that the movie that I had requested was also in - The Secret Garden, which we had just read together a few months ago. When the girls saw it in my library bag, they were thrilled and wanted to watch it. However, there was really no where to sit in our living room comfortably to watch, so I said that we couldn't watch until the room was cleaned. I didn't tell them that they had to clean it up, because we were giving them until today.
Well, one of our girls wanted to watch the movie so much that she took the incentive to clean the whole room by herself, while the other one chose to play and actually had a pretty nasty attitude about it. So, before dinner, I told the one that she and I would get to watch the movie that evening. To the other, I explained that she would not get to watch the movie that night, that she had chosen to play instead of cleaning up, which was fine because we were not requiring them to clean up, but that it was not fair for her to watch it, too, since she had not helped at all. This one was crushed and went weeping to sit on her bed.
At dinner, while the second child was still upstairs crying, Matt talked to our one daughter and commended her on choosing to clean up all by herself, without much complaining or fussing that the other daughter was not helping. Then, he told her that, if she wanted, she could choose to say that her sister could watch the movie with us that night, even though it was not the fair thing to do since she had not helped clean up the room at all. This daughter immediately and joyfully asked if she could be the bearer of the good news and invite her sister to watch, too. She did this without pride or boasting, just excited to see her sister happy.
After our other elated daughter came flying down the stairs, Matt took the opportunity to talk with the girls a bit. He explained that this was an example of grace instead of "fairness." What was fair was for the first daughter to watch the movie and the second to go to bed. What was grace was the second daughter getting to watch the movie, too, despite her choice not to contribute. He went on to explain that this is what Christ did for us, though He did even more. What Christ did would be like if our first daughter not only cleaned up perfectly and then invited her sister to watch anyway, though she had not done a thing, but if she also then went upstairs to take the punishment (going to bed and not watching) that the sister was going to receive in her place, even though she had not done anything wrong. It is horribly unfair! Our hearts would cry out against it if we were asked to do such a thing, but, amazingly, Christ counted it all joy to do just that for us! He took all of our sins upon His perfect sinless self and bore our punishment in our place, and then He gave us His righteousness so that, in Him, we (who are anything but perfect and sinless) don't even look like sinners but are perfectly spotless in His sight! Amazing! A great gospel opportunity with our kids! I pray for more of these and for all of us to grow in our appreciation for and understanding of these amazing truths!

Outdoor Time!!

The girls attended their second homeschool club at Tyler Arboretum, so Liam and I had time for another nature walk while we waited for them. The birds were everywhere, and it was fun to see chickadees, sparrows, male cardinals, tufted titmice and even this funny guy:

This is a white-breasted nuthatch, whose particularly distinguishing feature is that he runs up and down trees (even upside down) and is therefore able to find nuts and seeds and bugs that other birds miss by walking only the "right" way.

No red-bellied woodpecker this time, though. I want to remember our nature journals and bird guide the next time we go!


And here's Liam, posing for a goofy picture in a chair he insisted on sitting in. :)