Todd White and Healing

Jesus didn't just pay a price to get you to heaven. He paid a price to get heaven into you. -Todd White

Todd White has been one of my Christian heroes ever since I happened on a video on YouTube of him healing people on the street about three years ago. I wrote about my find in Healing on the Streets. The guy is just infectious with his love of God and of people.

Last week he was the speaker at a student rally just a mere 20 minutes from my home!!! We volunteered to be drivers, so we had to go 25 minutes south to our church and go another 25 minutes north and east to get to the church where this was taking place. They really did not need us to be drivers, so we went straight home afterward. I think there were as many adults there from my church as there were youth.

The event started with a DJ playing Christian rap. Definitely not my thing, but the youth was into it with the hip-hop dancers. I sat playing a game on my phone thinking how much I wish it was not so loud and how much the times have changed. When my husband and I were youth group leaders 20 years ago, there was no Christian rap at such events. I might have enjoyed the messages in the music just a bit more if I could understand what was being said, but I could only catch a word here and there or a short phase, no more than three words.

After that, there was a contemporary praise and worship band with break dancing injected now and then. Again, so not my thing, but I sang along with the words on the screen because most of the songs were ones I know.

Then came my hero, Todd White, taking the stage shouting "J-e-s-u-s, J-e-s-u-s!" He is just...well, I could just listen to him for hours and hours but we only got about one! He told us about an encounter with two unbelievers on his flight, how he prayed to heal them, and how they responded. The guy just does not take no for an answer. It is just so obvious that he believes not in just God's ability to heal, but in His love overcoming any resistance a person may present. His tenacity and optimism is just amazing.

From the moment we arrived, I felt the pull to go up front, but it was when Todd asked for anyone who had not yet been baptized in the Spirit to come up that I looked back to my husband in dismay as I found myself making my way up through the seats. Honestly, I had no idea why I was going, but I felt strongly that I was to go. I have not been slain in the Spirit, but I have surrendered to the Spirit. People passed by praying briefly, but I was still wondering why I was there. Then I felt I could leave; I turned, took one step, between a line of people, and there in front of me was my daughter. Then I knew why I was there.

Within a minute or two, a young woman came to her and began praying for her. I tried to listen, but it was just so loud there. So, I introduced myself as her mother and asked what she had prayed about. She told me she was praying about her anxiety and depression. I asked if my daughter had asked for that and she said it was what she was told by the Lord.

My daughter has had a skin condition, dry, cracking skin flaking and peeling off, that began on one hand and has spread to both forearms and her lower legs. I have prayed about it many times and I keep getting that it is a manifestation of her anxiety and depression, which is why it does not go away. She is not acting depressed as she was, but I know that deep depressions leave residuals and this is one of the reasons I have been more focused on guiding her these last few months and putting academics as a lesser consideration presently.

I believe it much of this mindset started when she was bullied by a girl and her brother in the neighborhood years ago. The Princess just never understood why anyone would treat another person that way, especially one who said she was a Christian. She also felt unsafe in the neighborhood because of them and her best friend in the neighborhood lived across the cul-de-sac from them. At times she still wanted to play with the girl, I think because she hoped every time would be different and a few times things went well, so she told me, but then the very next time.... And then there have been a few times, when we dug into the issue, that my Princess has screamed out about how I did not believe her about specifics or I did not protect her; she includes her father in that as well, but it is mostly directed at me. I know she feels that way because she trusted me, but she often allowed herself to be vulnerable against my wishes and advice.

I know that her perception and memories of what I did and did not do is skewed by her feelings. I took steps to protect her as much as I could given that she also wanted her freedom and to play with her best friend. When I asked about stepping into the situation, talking to her parents (which the parents of her best friend and I had already done a few times), or anything else, she begged me not to do so saying it only had things worse. That girl's mother and I agreed to have her daughter come to my house to play so the other girl would not see them playing from the cul-de-sac, but then the girl and her brother began to play with our neighbors' children who were younger. Eventually, even my neighbor had enough of her children being bossed and bullied, but it took a couple of years. (This was the same neighbor that banned my daughter from talking about anything religious.) In the meantime, my daughter and her best friend ping-ponged between our homes to avoid the bullying girl, who had turned particularly mean toward my daughter, but was not that kind to either of the girls.

My daughter was prayed over and I am hopeful that she is healed in body and soul. While waiting for the skin condition to completely disappear, I keep working with her to bring to the Light what she has tried to keep hidden within and show her acceptance and love.

While we were up near the stage, my husband was being prayed out for healing of a pain in his foot caused by a cyst by all the remaining of our church that was sitting near him and he was healed of the pain instantly. He still had the cyst and gets a little twinge a time or two during the day, but he no longer has constant pain.

My Lord, please help my daughter get past her hurts and heal. Let heaven be in her...and me and my husband, too.

Some Expectations are Necessary

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises. ~William Shakespeare (All's Well That Ends Well)

Friends who know me well, know that I have a philosophy that expectations are what allow us to be hurt by other people so I usually have no or, at least, very low expectations of other people. That being said, before I had devised the new homeschool plan described in my last post, my daughter and I were still hashing it out over trying to fit into the old one. At one point, she screamed that my expectations of her were too high. It was during this time that I was beginning to accept what we had been doing was not working well for either of us. Her perception was not entirely accurate, but it also had some truth.

We sat down and talked about those expectations during one of our morning devotions, because the reality was that she was not meeting mine, but she also was mistaken in what my expectations were. She also knows my philosophy, so this was her teenage gotcha-now way of finding fault in practicing my own ideology on expectations, spurring our discussion about reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations.

People we trust the most are the ones on which we have the most expectations and most are reasonable. This is practically inescapable in human nature. As parents, we expect our children to obey us. When children disobey, there is a consequence, a punishment, to remind them and help train them to comply with the rules that are set for their protection and to train them to behave. You cannot explain to a toddler why he should not run out into the street, because he will not fully understand that he will be in harm's way, that he could be injured or killed by a car, but he will remember the spanking of a repeat offense. (For those against spanking, I feel it is better than letting them learn this one by experience.)

Unreasonable expectations are the ones that we have not communicated to the other person, like I might expect my husband to call me if he is going to be home late, but his idea of late maybe 9:00 pm and mine might be 6:30 pm. It is unreasonable to think he just knows what I have in mind without talking with him and coming to an agreement on the time.

Another unreasonable expectation is to want someone to be different than they are. This is something that cannot be agreed upon and cannot be changed by the person who has the expectation. Imposing an expectation, even one that you have communicated to the other person, is not going to change him and is only going to hurt you because it is continually unmet. I had such a relationship with my mother; she just never was and never was going to be the mother I needed her to be, but once I identified that expectation and let go of it, I was finally free to love and enjoy her for the person she was. We were never close, but I was no longer hurt by her casual remarks; in fact, I often laughed about the things she said that used to feel like stabbing into old wounds and upset me for days afterwards.

I explain to my daughter that with education, there will always be some expectations, that is why there are test scores. Her father must at least meet most of the expectations of his employer to keep his job and exceed them to be considered for promotion. This is just how the world works. Likewise, I, as both her mother and her teacher, have some expectations of her when it comes to homeschooling. I cannot hug her and and comfort her because she felt the teacher was mean to her at school as her mother, because I am also the teacher. I cannot be detached about the quality of the work she hands in and I grade as her teacher, because I am also her mother, who can be disappointed.

So, I am not lowering the bar on my expectations of my daughter because I do believe I should have some, but not unreasonable ones. I do not see her as an "A" student in math, but I still want her to strive to do her best and she has earned some A's. I do see her as an off-the-charts student in Language Arts because she is and I do expect very few grades lower than A's there. Mostly, I expect her to learn, really learn, the material she is assigned. I also expect her to be a teenager, who one minute wants her independence and the next the security of her parents. Now that we have a chart and daily communication about assignments so that there are no unspoken expectations, things are much better...and probably as good as they can be between a teen and a homeschooling mama. 

My Lord, help my daughter to understand that expectations are a part of life, but how she deals with them is very important. Let her not be crushed by the weight of expectations place on her by others, let her set her own reasonable expectations on herself, keeping ones on others very low.

Our New Homeschool Plan

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
~Corrie Ten Boom

I have not been writing on my blog for a number of reasons, most are excuses, but a few are quite valid. One is that I needed to focus on getting our homeschool structured. I wrote about this in Homeschooling Mama Still Learning the Hard Way nearly two months ago. After much seeking my Lord on the issue, I began to give in on my ideas of working towards the perfect college-prep transcript and come back to the things I loved about homeschooling; teaching to the child and encouraging her gifts and talents.

I think that going to the Home Learning Center encouraged a sense of conforming to the conventional academic expectations and with this being my daughter's first high school year...well, we both got caught up in everything counting with far more importance than the previous years. For instance, when the Princess began taking a science class it was to supplement our homeschool, although it was quite demanding. The next year she took the full STEM program, which it seem to take the position of priority in our homeschool. Knowing that this year everything would go on transcripts for colleges to look over, we both put far much importance on that.

I had to come back to placing my trust about our homeschool to my Lord... completely.

My daughter is a writer and an artist. She tries to sneak in writing one of her fictional stories whenever I am not watching over her and she knows how access her stories with every technical device with Wi-Fi access because she saves them online in Google Docs. We have some new rules about her tech now. She cannot have any tech in her room at night, because she will write when she should be sleeping and she was also having issues with her sleeping patterns that have been corrected for the most part after working on this for a few months. We believed that her abnormal sleeping patterns were contributing to her anxiety and depression, and she is doing far better now. We allowed her to have an extra 30 minutes for her bedtime curfew, but she has to be off all screens an hour before. Now she falls asleep more easily and stays asleep through the night most nights. She also cannot have any tech in her room until all her assignments are completed or I have given her permission for an assignment she wants to do in her room or listen to music. Permission depends on attitude, what she plans to do with the tech to help her with an assignment, and how responsible she has been at getting her assignments done.

My daughter takes a clipboard, pencil, and paper with her everywhere when we go out so she can draw whenever she can. She is also great with anything to do with dramas and, even though right now it is not something she loves, she is a pianist. We are in the perfect church for her. The people heading up the dramas actually teach acting. More recently couple of the youth have decided to start their own praise and worship band asking her to be on the keyboard and I am again seeing her spend extra time on the piano playing things for her own enjoyment once in a while.

This is what I felt led to do with her home education:

In the morning, we begin with devotions. We were skipping them when she got up late, which was more often than not. (I know, I know, and it was meant to be the most important thing of the day, but unfortunately, we made the schedule a higher priority.) To emphasize its importance and give the Spirit time needed to speak to us, we just do not have a schedule about how long to take with devotions. Sometimes they are quite long, because we still have some challenges to work out.

After devotions, we talk about the assignments for the day. On Monday, we look over scheduled appointments and such to plan the entire week assignments. I made a check-off chart so that we both could see everything that she is expected to do. Last week we went to the science museum for the Lunch & Learn on Rocket Science, so I had to cross off a few assignments for the week. Part of her problem was she could not see what I expected from her each day, each week. I remember she used to say that the more work she did the more I would give her, while I was thinking that she was under achieving what I wanted from her most of the time and I was trying not to overwhelm her with giving it to her all at once. We are communicating better now.

My chart has two columns, the first is the daily assignments and the second is the assignments that need to be done during the week at any time she wants, with the only condition that I have to check each assignment done before she starts the second one in the same subject. We also continue to have talks about time management and that she might have to rethink her expectation that no matter what she did or did not get done, she feels she should not work on any assignments after 4:00 pm. The first week we started this was rough, partially because she was ill for two days. The second week was a bit better. The third week, I was seeing her take more initiative—I actually found her working on her grammar in the evening after dinner!—but she came down with a cold so it fizzled out understandably.

The daily assignments are mostly morning ones, but we are flexible so if I have something I must do in the morning, we can flip them to the afternoon. All this is discussed after devotions each day, so we both have a clear understanding of the expectations of each other for the day.

Daily Assignments

The first assignment is piano practice for at least 45 minutes, which is usually always the first thing done.

Algebra is timed to one hour a day and the Princess also has to sit at the dining room table to do it, so that I am right there to help her should she need it. This is because she gets distracted when doing math. I cannot tell you how many times she was doing math in her bedroom that took hours because she actually was writing a story.

Latin or Greek may be before or after math, but we both take together because I am learning it also. Ideally, we should do two lessons of each one during the 4-day week. (We have only four days because Wednesday is our errand day.)

Vocabulary, based on Vocabulary from Classical Roots, is also mostly done at the dining room table because I have most of her studies on Quizlet, so she needs tech to do it. However, for each lesson, I require a writing test: I give the word and she must use it in a sentence that is graded on spelling, use, and identifying the root from Latin or Greek, which is indicated by underlining. She can earn extra points with five more words from the challenge words and variations lists. This overlaps Greek and Latin as well.

Weekly Assignments

Grammar is two assignments per week. When we finish with Analytical Grammar with all the parsing, sentence diagramming, grammar rules, she will be completely done with Grammar and we will move on to more writing and reading assignments.

Literature is something that got pushed to the wayside for too long now, but we have added it to our weekly assignments.

World History is one assignment per week. These are done in units of my own design. Each unit requires reading at least three chapters from various resources and then journaling at least one paragraph and drawing a picture of her choice associated with the time for each chapter. Her writing is checked before she prints out the paper and draws the pictures. So, this also is also a grammar and writing lesson.

Civics is one assignment per week, which is one chapter of Uncle Sam and You. Although it is intended for middle school students, I think it is more in depth than most get in high school. The tests are a little light, but the chapter review questions are quite good. It reminds me of my tough 8th grade social studies text and teacher, who expected every one of those review questions answered in full sentences.

Science was the one subject I was dreading, mostly because I have not taught it in two years. However, I obviously had my Lord's leading when I bought the Bob Jones Physical Science textbooks she was required to have for the school because I bought the entire set! Teacher's manual, lab manuals, everything! When I finally got the courage to look into the books, I fell in love. Right now the Princess is just doing reviews of the chapters she covered when in the school, because she did not do all the assignments and could not recall many things. She can get most things from the book without me, but we will be looking into doing lab work when we do our weekly plans.

French is still being worked on, but she decided that she likes the Duolingo app on her Kindle better for now and she is supposed to do two 30-minute sessions.


I feel this is how my Lord wishes it to be for now. The Princess is so much happier and far more engaged with both her father and me than she was. She seems willing to take more responsibly in her own education, even though the stories in her head are practically screaming to get typed out. I keep telling my Princess that college may not be where she is to go; she could be a published author making money while most of her peers are sinking into their student loan debt. She rolls her eyes, but then as soon as she can she sneaks away to smile at her computer screen as the words stream out of her.

My Lord, it has been a difficult time for my daughter. I see her gifts, gifts You gave her, but I hear the world and its demands for her education loudly. Quiet the world. I only want to hear you, my Lord, what You want for her. Thank you for guiding us and making things better for us.

Our Kissing Tradition

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they're already asleep. ~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

From what I have seen on the Internet, this topic seems to be very controversial but I am going to write about it because I think people make too much of it, especially considering the variety of cultures within all the Western countries.

We have had this tradition, since my daughter began sitting up to eat, that we ask God to bless our food to nourish our bodies and then we all kiss each other...on the lips. It was cute when the Princess was young, but we just never stopped. When we are at a restaurant, we touch our finger to our mouth and then touch our fingers, when it is not convenient to kiss across the table.

Now, this kiss after a prayer was not a tradition in my family, nor my husband's. It is just something we began doing and it stuck. We also kiss on the lips when saying good-bye and good-night.

Sometime after the Princess turned twelve years old, she began to be a bit more self-conscious about our kissing tradition in front of people and where her friends might see, like when I would drop her off at the Home Study Center, so I accommodated with kissing her cheek when she would present it instead, which was off and on.

Now, as to the controversy, I was raised in a home with sexual abuse from which my Lord has healed me. I honestly and with all good intentions look forward to seeing my father in heaven, because I have completely forgiven him and hold absolutely no ill will towards him. I admit that I did not want even the possibility of exposing my daughter to him, because while I had fully forgiven him for what was done to my siblings and me, I also did not trust him with any children. Forgiveness does not equate to trust. Forgiveness is given, trust is earned. All this is to say that I would NEVER put my daughter at risk for her to be abused and since I have had that experience in my life, I know very well what can make a child more vulnerable to such abuse. Hold that thought for a minute.

I remember when I was in middle school, the time when children become so self-conscious, my aunt kissed me on the lips when saying good-bye. At the time, I was still enduring the abuse that she would not know about for a few more years (actually she was the one who figured it out and brought it to an end). She thought nothing of the kiss probably because half of our family is French descent and that is what they all did. I, on the other hand, felt it was the one intimate act that I had kept apart from the abuse. I could not stop anything else, but I made it clear that kissing was off-limits. This simple act that my aunt did out of love and respect and tradition felt foreign, surprising, and perhaps a bit of an invasion in a way to me. I was keenly aware that she was a woman kissing a girl, even though she probably had done it many times when I was younger, but since I only saw her a few times a year at the most, I had probably forgotten.

That one good-bye kiss from my aunt is something she probably does not even remember, but it was burned into my memory. Being that I was of the age of being self-conscious, I realized it was a familiar, casual, and perfectly normal act from her point of view and that is why it bothered me; it was not that for me at that point and I knew that it could have been and probably should have been because all the relations on my mother's side kissed on the lips. Also, it is not something done in just my family, my husband's family also kisses on the lips. Come to think of it, maybe it was also a generational tradition since they are the same age as my aunt and uncle?

I read many books about personalities and teaching approaches particularly in regards to children, but the one book that really stuck out to me was about the love languages. I still have not determined what my daughter's love language is and I think that is because we have kept her bank full in all of them. If she was deficient in the one she needs the most, we would know what that one is. For instance, the child has always loved to give gifts, but is not particularly disappointed when she does not get gifts...maybe she is divergent or factionless in the love languages? Regardless, I did not want her to be needy in the physical touch arena, because I knew that would make her more susceptible to an abuser or a premature physical relationship. I wanted her to know genuine love and respect through appropriate touching so that she would reject anything that was not appropriate.

When she was a baby, we used to give her a massage before bedtime. My husband changed her diapers and bathed her as often as I did. We wanted her to know that she could trust both of us and that is how she grew up. I wanted her to know that a kiss on the lips from a close family member is a show of love: her paternal grandmother did not even have to be encouraged in that! When she was a toddler, the Princess kissed a sick baby on the mouth and got a stomach flu, afterward she stopped kissing other children and today she thinks kissing anyone else but close family as...ewwww!

So, as to why I am writing about this now: The Princess and I went to a science museum to which we have a membership for a Lunch & Learn with a presentation on Issac Newton. Although I was fasting, the Princess grabbed a tuna salad sandwich and a salad from the cafe to eat during the presentation. She prayed, holding my hand which is also our tradition, and then to my surprised she kissed me on the lips. I was not surprised because she rarely does it, because we do this at least twice a day, but because she did it in public without giving it a thought in hesitation.

Immediately, I wondered what the other people there, mostly homeschoolers, would be thinking, but I did not look around because I really do not need their approval or their disapproval. I was just so very pleased that my daughter felt comfortable enough in that setting to do what we normally would do if we were home. There are glimpses of maturity in the child now and then that just leave me in awe.

Now I have a question:
Do you think you would feel odd to kiss Jesus on the lips?

My Lord, thank you for our ability to show affection to each other with all that is good, without fear and distrust. Thank you for breaking the cycle of abuse and victimization in me so that none of it has touched my daughter and influenced her relationships.

Fasting is Not Easy

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world.
~John Piper, A Hunger for God

I started officially prepping for the fast one week ago today, although I actually started a few days before by simply eating less at meals. When I officially started I began eating more live and raw foods and with a couple of evening meals of turkey soup, mostly broth. On Monday I officially (and reluctantly) started the fast.

This fast is not water only, but more of a play it by how goes kind of thing. For instance, yesterday was my errand day. I was kind of weak in the morning and about halfway through my shower, I felt like I might pass out; this even though I drink about two ounces of raw milk watered down to a 1:1 ratio before bedtime. After spending about five minutes with my head down, I finally was able to finish up quickly and drink some diluted raw milk. Then I had to lie down for about 20 minutes for my body to assimilate the nutrients and level out.

Afterwards I was better, but I was concerned about being out all day so I made a thin smoothie to take with me as well as warm tea—I so love my new thermal mug that keeps it warm all the day! I sipped on both and still had over half of my smoothie left when we returned home and I had no issues with fatigue beyond the usual.

Last night I kept feeling like I had not slept. I think I woke up about every hour thinking I had been lying awake the entire time. I did not want to leave my bed but once up, I had so much more energy than I have has this week! Stepping on the scales pleasingly revealed that I still loss weight. So far, I have lost seven pounds. My goal is to lose eighteen, which is a bit under the weight I consider a good balance for me. I go a bit under because I tend to gain a two to four pounds after the fast ends, depending on how carefully I come off the fast.

Fasting is not easy, especially when going grocery shopping for the family. Everything smells absolutely delicious. I can actually smell apples as I pass them, and I probably always do, but their aroma never gets my attention as much as when I fast. Oh, and all those signs with food on them! Yes, I notice them always, but when fasting, they appeared to have been magnified. I do not watch regular TV but I know from past experience that the food commercials are far more enticing as well and there seems to be so many more of them. I am not even going to mention the food that is just sitting in my house readily available to my reach and the fighting the familiar habit of reaching for a snack—a habit I should not even have!

No matter the reason for fasting or what type of food fast or how experienced I have become with fasting for the last 25 years, it is always the same. It is just a matter of will, but when I write "just," it is not to suggest fasting is easy. It is hard. There is the struggle against the physical and the spiritual with the emotional ping-ponging between them. I did not have a specific spiritual agenda for this fast although for me there is always a spiritual benefit, even if unexpected and not even conceived. Mostly, I needed to restore myself and my health.

I already have less hip pain regardless how I sit, but it still has a ways to go. The base of the neck has only slight tightness after I wake up and it disappears in an hour or two. My face looks younger with all puffiness eliminated. Before this fast, I was having a bit of sinus pressure with headaches and draining, but that disappeared while I was still in the fast prep stage. Of course, my clothes are fitting better, with those extra layers in trying to keep warm.

All in all, the fast is going well. I am hoping that I will meet my target weight in the first week of February....hoping. I will say that I have kept my weight within certain limits, as I vowed to do when I was a teenager. Not too bad for a girl who used to be called "thunder thighs."

Thank you, my Lord, for the healing during a fast. Even though it is challenging, it has rewards.

The Safe

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his house, his possessions are safe. -Luke 11:21

When we refinanced the mortgage, we needed to take out a bit more than we owed to pay off the balance for the siding and windows as well as the forced-upon-us buying of a newer vehicle. My husband is also convinced we need another shed to store some of the things that are in the garage and cluttering up the yard, mostly scrap wood, building materials for rabbit cages, and the larger lawn/shop equipment. This should allow us to keep our workout area clear all the time and make a couple of cozy places for our outside mitten kittens that come in during bad weather. So, by taking out a larger loan than needed for the outstanding mortgages and these expenses, we had little extra money just before Christmas to buy the new dishwasher when our old new broke...again, and the new stove my husband could not pass up because it was such a deal—I will get back to that in the future with a post all on its own, and the large gun safe that we have wanted for many years.

We went back and forth with trying to decide on a safe, what we wanted as to size, fire protection rating, and price range. Tractor Supply in general had the best sales prices on safes and the Canon wide model was ideal as to size and price and fire rating, but there were two things we had against it: the interior was really cheap with the felt ready to come off and the inside hinges does not allow the door to be taken off. We read many a review and message boards about what people did and did not like about the gun safes they had and one of the main things was the hinges being on the inside.

Now I would have thought that inside hinges are more secure because outside ones can be cut off, but actually when the door has several bolts in all four directions, the hinges only serve to swing the door open when it is unlocked. Being able to remove the door makes it easier to move by dividing the weight between two pieces rather than all the weight in one piece and those who had to move their safes commented quite a bit on how this would be an important factor with their next safe, should they ever get one. The other benefit of outside hinges is how wide the door swing when opened. Interior hinges can only go 90° and exterior can go up to 180°, which may not be a big deal for some but it can feel rather crowded if two people are grabbing guns and ammo in a hurry.

So, we spent a few hundred dollars more on a safe that had a very good fire rating with outside hinges that was also heavier. The only downside to the one we got is that it is taller and narrower than we were wanting, especially for placing it in the basement room with a low ceiling. We have mere inches and that means it cannot be tilted much as they move it from the garage it has been in since before Christmas. My husband is looking forward to organizing all our firearms, which will clean up a great deal of clutter in the basement rooms.

The "they" mentioned are about three or four of my husband's friends that are coming tomorrow. It is nice to have friends like these. So nice that while they are here, I am going to be asking they to get sliders under the feet of my very heavy china cabinet. Then I can begin to get the rest of the wallpaper off from behind so that I can work on finishing the dining room and kitchen...finally! I mean, we have been living in this house for 18 years and I have yet to anything with these rooms.

Just one more necessary step in working on the renovations.

My Lord, please bless these men coming to help us. I ask that no one is injured and all goes well.

The Need to Fast

He who eats until he is sick must fast until he is well.
~English Proverb

The stress from the last few months that resulted from my daughter with the school, the play, and all that the issues that took place within a few short months took its toll on my health, emotionally and physically. The emotional atmosphere in my home is back to being normal with a daughter, who again laughs easily but can also be a bit moody, which is to say each day has its swings of ups and downs within ranges that I can tolerate well...for the most part. Physically? Well, that is another story.

My husband is still having some issues with his back that he is diligently treating; I mention this now because being empathic, sometimes I do not know what is my own pain and what is coming from someone else, particularly someone I think of and/or am near often. Basically, what is theirs becomes mine own eventually.

However, I have two issues that are definitely my own. One is that I gained quite a bit of weight even though we did not make cookies and eat as many sweets as we usually do around the holidays. In part that was probably because I knew—without daring to step on the scale—that I already was at my holiday weight well before the holiday feasting. Then I gained a bit more!

The other is that I have had a pain in my right hip when I sit certain ways that my chiropractor identified as an irritation of the bursa. I have had it probably for nearly six months and it will heal if I can keep from sitting in positions that irritate it, which are my favorite sitting positions, of course. I had an issue with a knee that I injured in a fall when skating that got much better after a year, except for now and then. What cured it once and for all was the 40-day fast I did just over five years ago.

I also have been having nagging upper back and base of the neck tightness and aching, especially on my right side. This usually is common when I have emotional issues that are even more nagging and difficult to remedy. The low back issue started before my husband's and seemed to be related to the hip problem, but now it is worse probably compounded with what I am getting from him.

I am looking old, more like my age actually. Not a big thing but even with my aging hair, my skin usually looks far younger. Fasting raises the human growth hormone levels, our own built in fountain of youth, so to speak. I would like to turn back the excellerated aging I did the past few months.

It is just time to do a fast.

Now here is where the mental fight breaks out, because as much as I love all the wonderful benefits from fasting, I also hate some aspects of fasting. I hate to fast in the winter, because I have a very difficult time staying warm enough to be comfortable: layers of clothing are required even inside my house. Since I went through that little thing they call the change of life, I tend to get feet and leg cramps at night particularly in the winter, but even more so when fasting, so I have to remember to take a calcium, magnesium, and potassium supplement.

I hate how it kills my social life, even though just a temporary thing, because most fun social events involve food and while I have the discipline to not be tempted to eat, it seems to make other people uncomfortable to eat around me when I am not.

Reduced energy levels are a big concern for me when I have need keep up on my responsibilities with the addition of renovations I need to do in the house. When I do a long fast as I am hoping to this time, I usually cannot take on much extra than just getting through the typical day. However, I will need to try to do more.

I am not certain what kind of fast I will be doing. It may not be water only. However, when I started preparing or eating down to a fast, I usually get to a point around two weeks where I do not want to eat at all. I am planning to have at least two ounces of raw milk before bedtime so that I can sleep through the night, because insomnia is another issue I have with fasting. The raw milk also kicks up my metabolism so that I continue to burn off the fat stores and release more toxins past the two week plateau period when the weight usually comes off more slowly. I am not going for a time period but more for a certain weight so I do not know how long I will be fasting, but I am looking forward to the morning when I wake up to realize I am no longer in pain. Actually, it feels like my own body is telling me it wants to fast of late.

My Lord, please bless this fast with Your healing and Your strength.

The Returning of Longer Days

You can only come to the morning through the shadows.
~J.R.R. Tolkien

I love autumn, except for one thing: shorter days. That is, less daylight in the 24 hours that we call a day. I probably did not mind the shorter days as a child so much but since becoming an adult, I have notice I dislike the short days more with each year. I want to go to bed a 8:00 at night, but should I do that I most likely will be awake at 3:00 in the morning. When I was in high school I remember how much I loved waking up in the dark of the morning, before everyone else, and quietly preparing for my day, planning and praying.

Life seemed so complicated then, but it is far more complicated now.

My daughter wildly swings from being the early morning girl to being the late morning girl. The duration of each can be weeks to just a few days. She sets her alarm early and wakes up her father (when he is home) and me before she turns it off and goes back to sleep until I get her up. On her early mornings, she would get up to exercise, but when she is not so inclined as she has not been for a few weeks now, we still are waken for no real reason. However, after struggling with her inability to fall asleep or stay asleep for over a year, I am thankful that she has a healthier sleep pattern now. We tried several supplements, homeopathic remedies, and a no-screens policy one hour before bedtime to help her get back to the habit of falling asleep and staying asleep more easily. She is well versed on how the body produces melatonin when it is dark to use that to her advantage.

One thing I do like that seems to be in concert with longer nights, besides higher production of melatonin, are the winter sunsets. This was taken with my new camera from my back deck. 

Still, as the winter solstice approaches, I begin to dread it more each year. Even though I know that mere seconds are taken away each day the closer it gets, I feel as if I will never get over its daunting hill because going back down it is just as painstakingly slow. Because of this, January is my least favorite month although I have tried not to label it for years because it was not always so.

When I lived in Ohio, January was the month it snowed the most and I love snow. Countless upon countless of tiny crystals can be so dazzling in the moonlight! When the trees are bare naked and covered in snow, I think of how God grace beautifies us as we stand exposed before Him.

When I lived in Florida, January was the month it was cooler without much blooming but mostly still green. Only a few trees lost their leaves and some only for about two weeks. To the northerners, it was warm enough to get a tan on the beach, but those of us used to warmer climates year around, it was just a short span of time to wear a few sweaters we kept on hand. I cannot say that I liked January there that much but, because it was warmer, I guess I did not mind it so much other than missing the Ohio winters with which I had grown up.

January in Georgia, however, is a different story. It is a wild weather month. It can be cool like Florida one day due to southern breezes and overpowered by a northeastern and covered with snow and/or ice the next. It is unpredictable, and weather always is, but there is something a bit different about this area when it comes to winter. That of itself is not why I dislike January here. It is the combination, lack of snow but still too cold to do much in very short daylight hours.

Yet, there is this certainty with January: the days are lengthening. The days are no longer getting  shorter (pun intended); they are getting longer. From the the first of January, it goes from just less than 10 hours from sunrise to sunset to 10½ and it continues to increase at a faster pace up to the spring equinox. At that point the days still lengthens but the pace slows.

Funny thing is that I disliked spring when I was younger. I liked seeing the blooms but the mud would get to me. The combination of melting snow and hard rains would just get me down. Having lived near farming communities with livestock and fields to be planted most of my childhood and with my aunt and her small horse ranch as a teenager, I can honestly say that I never liked muddy springs and almost all of them were. However, in Georgia, we see bright yellow daffodils often in the first weeks of February and somehow that heralds in spring for me. I just cannot wait to work in the gardens this year, now that our house has been resided and there will be no more workers trampling my plants. I lost so many last year, but this year I will work on them without that concern looming over me.

I cannot wait for those longer days!

My Lord, thank you for the seasons, the ones I love and the ones that I do not. Thank you for Your Light that shines on us all the time. Help me to see it more when I in the long periods of darkness.

Homeschooling Mom Still Learning the Hard Way

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. ~C. S. Lewis

I am trying to work out what has been frustrating me the most about homeschooling. I thought mostly it is the time that it takes my daughter to do it, but...is it that or something else?

On Tuesday, she worked through just one of her make-up algebra assignments and it took two hours, with a significant number of the graphs done wrong, so another 20 minutes to correct them.

The Princess finished an incomplete grammar lesson on sentence diagramming with adjective clauses that I estimated would take her 20 to 30 minutes but it took twice that with good reason though, as she was looking things up to remember how to do them. I have yet to check over the work, but I am hopeful as in sentence sparsing and diagramming she tends to do very well. I remember how much she used to hate doing it and now she actually likes it, I think because it has become easy for her. It has done what was so important for it to do, which was to fine tune her grammar skills in her writings.

The Princess also worked on vocabulary which also took twice as long as I thought it should.

So, if everything takes twice as long as I think it should how will I ever fit in science? There is history, Latin, Greek, civics, and probably some others I am not recalling at the moment. Oh, and with two practice times at the piano each day totaling 75 minutes.

I seriously need a new schedule plan! Actually, I do not really have one yet because I had to see and be realistic about how long it takes my daughter to complete her lessons. It just seems impossible to me at this point. Do I stick to times allotted as is done in classrooms or do we complete an entire lesson each day and rotate subjects accordingly? We have done it both ways at different times and I can only say that I still have not found what works best. I used to have my daughter break up math into two sessions, one after piano practice in the morning and the other after piano in the afternoon. it seemed to help her get her math assignment for the day done faster, but now she is determined to do in all in one sitting.

My daughter thinks she should be completely done with her lessons by 4:00 and we take an hour for lunch, which can change. She is supposed to be practicing piano at 8:00 in the morning, but that does not always happen.

Much, much prayer needed. I mean, there is the world's standards for education of the masses, and there is God's desires for this one, His daughter, my child. I feel like sometimes I am trying to do what the world expects, having all the right subjects and such, and tossing God's plan aside if it does not fit, instead of the other way around. Not only does this cause anxiety for me, but obviously it is for my daughter as well, as I have seen since the beginning of this school year.

This picture of the classical model is on point for illustrating my problem, I think. If I have all the right stuff without God's truth shining on it, the tree of education will not thrive. Though I may have His truth in our education, I am clouding His radiance on that tree, filtering it to the point that it has become sickly, because I did not stay open to hearing His Spirit and following His desires in the education process itself.

This morning in the first few moments of waking when my mind is quiet, before I have begun planning my day or even making one simple decision based on my own thoughts like getting out of the bed, God slipped in this thought: two Analytical Grammar assignments a week. Still without a full functioning mind, I thought: Yeah, that would work so well. Do you know what I did then? I began to awake up and I began to think of how I wanted to finish that course this year and how two assignments a week would not meet that goal...and then I began thinking in reality, on the best of weeks she has done four, which is ideal and what I would prefer, but our average is probably between two and three...and then I started thinking of squeezing in at least half more of a lesson per week...and then I thought, if God is telling me two a week, then that is what is going to work the best and who am I to argue with my Lord.

After the disaster of the first few months, I am so unsure of homeschooling this year. Why have I not been not taking those cues from my Lord on her entire education? Why let Him shine only where I have allowed it? He is right here wanting to guide me in this, obviously! Had I sought His guidance about the Home Learning Center for this year in the spring, my daughter would not have been enrolled and all that happened from September to November would not have been. Yet, I still have not learned; I want to plan it all out and then as an afterthought I will pray for God to bless it, because I am doing it the way I think it best—of course, I know how wrong that is, but still that is what I want to do. It is so wrong to think I know better about educating my child than God does!

So, now I am going to have a little sit and talk with my Lord. We are going to talk about every subject, whether or not to use a prepared curriculum and how to use each, how long to spend on each for the day or the week or the month. That will be for the general plan, but I need to get back to working with Him at the beginning of each day. My expectations have to change to be reliant and willing to serve my Lord, Whom I love, as He educates His child, my daughter.

My Lord, forgive my arrogant disobedience. I has cost my family, my daughter mostly. It has made me fearful and unsure, which is good because it makes me want to rely on You more, as I always should be.

Happy New Homeschooling Year?

We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people. ~Diane Flynn Keith

The long break is over and now the work must begin again...and when I write work, in this case, I mean homeschooling. I have been dreading it so severely for the last few weeks that I could not even bring myself to pick up any of the books just to move them!

What I have learned is that I prefer organization, but teaching my 14yo is messy, particularly so this year, having we pulled her out of the Home Study Center. I really have not reconciled with her algebra. Do I stick with the textbook the school picked or do I revert back to the one I had picked? What do we need: to review, do the make up assignments, or just start clean in the middle? We discussed it and she wants to make up the work she was originally assigned and, perhaps, this is the best way because it will give her a sense of accomplishment in correcting something where she went wrong. She will learn the math eventually, but this life lesson may more important.

I also have to consider changing my record keeping for homeschooling. I have used Homeschool Tracker Plus for years. It has been the best for me and their customer support has always been wonderful. Although at times I would much rather just jot things down on paper, there is the convenience aspect of it compiling records that make it so much easier in the long run. However, Homeschool Tracker Plus is no longer being updated and although it works except for the ISBN feature, I am getting a bit nervous about not being able to access my records with each Windows update...so I will be going to their online version, HSTOnline. My husband is not keen about that either, because he is concerned the records could be lost, but for each subject, we have a logs in the binders of each subject of what was done on each day, from which I type in the info so I have that much on hand. Using the HSTOnline will be easier for me to access with other devices, but it also lacks a few features I like with the Plus version. I probably should buy the license this week and just get it done.

Science is the one thing that I have not even begun to consider other than getting a membership at a science museum about an hour away. I have the full set of books with lab and teacher's edition of the textbook the Home Study Center required, but I have not had to do anything much with science for the last two years, so.... Well, I just have not even looked at that book yet to make any decision, but I was thinking that it would be good to do more experiments, most simple ones. I have a number of homeschool books with simple science experiments with common items that we could do and then next year she could take a science class. There is another school for homeschoolers not far from the one we have been going to that will be half the cost, because there is no science retreats, and we can choose any classes as long as they do not conflict in time. This one has lots of electives from which to choose and only has classes on Tuesdays, so that is what we are looking into for next year...maybe.

Four years more to homeschool. Well, less than that as we are in one of those four now. It seems such a very short time to prepare my daughter and it seems such a long time to get through.

My Lord, remind me daily what if most important about educating my daughter.