My Quiet Time Thoughts on Proverbs 15:16-17

 "Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure with trouble.  Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred."  Proverbs 15:16-17


We have been in the beautiful North West for almost half a year now and I can't tell you enough the beauty that surrounds us.  I feel like I'm on a three year vacation to Hume Lake.  The incredible difference between here and that little dusty Central Valley is that most fun things here cost one arm and maybe two legs.  I can't put A back in ballet because than we couldn't buy food.  I can't put any of them in music lessons because than we couldn't buy food.  How are they going to be famous if I don't give them the training when they are five!  This is serious stuff.   Fatted calf around here is literally twice the price now that we don't live down the road from Harris Ranch!  After a couple of months of searching for cheap recreational classes (and cheap beef), I sat down with the Lord and brought Him my disappointment.  He brought me to this verse and said something like this....

A loving child is not created in violin classes.  A loving child is not created in correct classical ballet training. 

A loving child is created in your home...often while building tent forts.  Through the daily, and FREE, goings and comings of a day, a child is learning to love...learning to prefer others...learning to respect authority. 

We have VERY HAPPY dinners of herbs.  We have love not hatred.  I would love a steak right about now but more than that I love listening to the comings and goings of my children playing "cowboys."  Did you know playing "cowboys" is free?  I do want to warn you about something...if you tell them they can put syrup on there cornbread, you will look out the window at one point and see them drinking it.

Okay everybody...have a good day. Finish off you coffee, and go be a good mommy.

Irritation Is A Tablespoon Away From A Glass Of Angry

I kept telling my husband "Honeycakes, please pray for me.  The kids keep irritating me and I just don't know why.  They ask so very many questions.  Food, water, shelter, candy...and on and on.  Can't they tell that when I'm sitting on the couch drinking my coffee I'm doing some really important thinking?"

.....weeks go by and I'm still getting dressed in grumpy pants. It NEVER dawned on me in all my important thinking that I, THE MOTHER...THE BEEN-SAVED-LONGER-THAN-YOU'VE-BEEN-ALIVE....was...heaven forbid...

Sinning.

You see.....irritation is just a smidge shy of being angry.  As I gracefully (yeah right) accepted this fact I formed a Three step attack plan to kick irritation in the butt and then maybe sit on it until it dies. Repeat after me...

Step uno: Agree with God that you are sinning. That's called confessing.

I____________, am a irritable brat. I am sorry, Lord. I will try ever so hard to quit the brat stuff.

Step dos: Assertain the cause of irritation.

Sleep deprived? Hungry? Somebody drop Legos in your coffee? Usually for me, it's a lack of instruction that I need to teach the kids so we won't hit any more potholes as our day goes by. "You don't have your shoes ON YET?" (then my eyebrows go lower than my nose and I start growing horns) So I wrote out clear instructions called "Getting Ready to Leave the house In Three Months Or Less"....it's working so far.

Step tres: I can't really think of anything else so let's just stick with repeating the first two over and over.

Well I feel better how about you? Pretty basic stuff....confess, problem solve, repeat. Quiet time is over. Be a good mommy.

How To Drive Your Husband To The Rooftop in Ten Steps or More

1.NEVER make him feel special when he gets home from work. After all, your work is WAY harder than his so he should run through the door to rub your feet and make dinner and supervise the children and dab your glistening brow. Frequently comment that your job is much harder and much perilous.

 2. CONSTANTLY undermine him in small and big ways to your children. Make them aware of his mistakes.

 3. When he messes up go ahead and treat him like an idiot. Remind him of his mistakes often. Especially when YOU make a mistake. That's a doozy.

 4. ALWAYS become emotional when he wants to talk over something he'd like you to change. When pretending to grab a tissue, rub onion juice under your eyes. When you come back to the conversation they will be read and puffy and then you can crumple up on the couch and say stuff like "I just don't know if I can do all that you ask of me" and "I could have been on Broadway."

5. DON'T flirt with the guy! In fact, don't even shower. That'll show him!

6. DEVOUTLY treat his hobbies like they are not contributing to the better good of mankind and world peace and stuff. Show him in big and small ways that your hobbies are going to win the Noble Peace prize.

7. MAKE it known that you are much holier and act accordingly. Wave your Bible in his face!

 8. Do all that stuff every day.

 9. Don't stop when he asks you to.

10. Don't stop when God asks you too.

11. Disobey God.

12. Disobey God.

13. Keep disobeying God.

 Sincerely, Rachel's ugly nasty sin nature that would be doing these things if it weren't for the fact that God, through His perfect grace and mercy, saved me from a horrible existence and brought me into His marvelous light and showed me that marriage is a picture of His love for me.

Why Do We Need Friends?

Why do we need friends?

I just moved away from all my friends and my favorite friend named Richard is on the other side of the country right now.

  Wittle Wachel is all alone in the world. 

 I am on my way to a new city and the first thing I am going to do, after putting on all my sweaters at the same time, is find a friend.  My step son asked me the other day why we need friends. Well...

1.  Some things that happen are extremely irritating and serious...and then you tell the story to your friend and you laugh. For a VERY long time. 

Like that one time that one child who was at a potty training age and was in the backyard playing right after you put the Christmas tree stand on the patio. Then this child really had to go and that Christmas tree stand pretty much looked like a potty so the child went in the Christmas tree stand.  I thought it was gross. But then I told my friend and I didn't stop laughing until I HAD to use the Christmas tree stand. 

2. Some times you are having a really bad, fleshly, sinful day....and then you text your friend to ask for prayer and the stupid sin starts to go away and the joy starts welling up. 

Like that one time when my kids just would not obey and I was yelling and they still would not obey and then I got the crazy mom eyes and put on really loud worship music and sent them all to their beds and texted this to my friend " Sin is stupid. Pray for me." And then I did hence get much better and the sin did hence get much less.

3. Some times you need someone to go see a movie with. Sometimes you need some one to go get an expensive coffee with. Some times you need someone to be dorky with. Some times you need someone to watch your kids while you go have the flu. Some times you need friend conversation when your husband is in the middle of the ocean. 

Like the 5 million, 300 thousand, 50 trillion times my friends have done all those things for me. 

I LOVE every friend in the whole world. 

A Proverbs 31 woman IS NOT----Dramatic

Welcome to my after bible study sessions where I sit down and share my after Bible study inspirations which I probably will only get around to doing once out of the six week bible study that I am enjoying at my church this Fall. We are looking at what a Proverbs 31 woman IS and I'm going to get all wild and crazy and look at what she IS NOT. A Proverbs 31 woman IS NOT...

DRAMATIC

She's Undramatic...disdramatic...antidramatic.....

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what this means for me right now as a mother and wife. Especially after my husband went to sea duty and I've had plenty of ammunition to be woeful about my lot in life. Especially after I went past the two kid mark and have plenty excuses to whine about my life.  Especially after I started delving into history books with the start of my children's education and seeing what other generations have gone through and that nothing is new under the sun. Even more especially as I constantly encourage my four children to choose to do everything without complaining. I would say this is God's returning melody for me over the past six years. After all these reminders over all those years, God sealed the deal with a huge revelation a couple of weeks ago through my Pastor's sermon. I don't think he'll mind if one of his sheep plagiarize him.  My pastor basically refuted one of the most common Christian statements: "God will never give you more than you can handle." Incorrect. Foul ball. Incomplete pirouette turn. When I say that I sound like an idiot. And a parrot. A Christian parrot but a parrot nonetheless.

God does give you more than you can handle! That's kind of the point. He gives you more than you can handle because He wants to handle it! Handling is the Lord's job! We do the obeying. He does the handling. He's the Abba and I am the child on His knee. He calls me and I come running to His arms and He handles it. I really need to stop being dramatic. I tell myself these three things all the time.

Quit Being Dramatic
Seriously, what good does it do but make everybody cranky around me. I'm not talking about sarcasm. I say the world will never have enough sarcasm. I'm talking about walking into a room or cyberspace  and taking over the surrounding area with my woeful overwhelming life.  LISTEN. You are a child of the King. Make Jesus shine in the spotlight and your Mama Drama play itself out backstage. I marvel at these calm, brave, amazing women that end their conversations like King David. "This is rough. People want to kill me. But God is so Good!" (paraphrased by Rachel Cook) I can give you ten names right now of women that have gone through very dark difficult times but have had the David attitude. I can give you one hundred situations in my life that I acted like it was the end of the world but it really really really was not. I was just being dramatic. I want to be around these David-like women.  They are so cool!  I kinda want to run from the drama queens..... which means me sometimes.

Quit with the whining
Seriously......quit with the whining. How are you going to shine like stars? (Phil 2:14-15)

Get some perspective
Susanna Wesley had 19 children and only 8 survived her. Pioneer women left all they knew to take care of their families in a land filled with wild animals, no doctors, and natives that didn't think to highly of them. The first generation of Christians had to watch their children be fed to lions. How does your house full of dirty dishes, piles of laundry and cranky children look now? I feel ashamed. Completely ashamed.

A Proverbs 31 woman IS NOT DRAMTIC.  Drama is self seeking not Christ seeking. I feel ashamed of my dramatics and so thankful for His grace.  There are a lot of things that need to be handled in this life. Trying to handle it yourself and then being dramatic when it gets overwhelming is just dumb. Seek His face and fix your face. Seek His Word and stop your words.  Letting Him handle it is giving Him the glory.  Being dramatic is giving yourself ugly distorted glory.  I don't want no ugly glory.  It's ugly. And not really glorious.

Much grace to you and many returning amens.

The Sunday School Teacher Pep Talk

My heart is especially stirred up about Sunday School lately.  I love the special times of extra stirring from the Lord.  I think the extra stirage is partly from sharing in Richard's Bible college homework and partly from a VBS high but mostly because the Lord is good and loves to get us excited about ministry.  My husband is just finishing up a Bible class on Inductive teaching and he asked me many questions on how I would teach this or that to the kids at church.

I told him I was not going to give him the answers because that's cheating.....just kidding.

In usual Rachel fashion, when I get excited about something, I expect everyone else in the whole world, and all the astronauts in space, to be excited about the same thing.  This is how the good Lord made me and if you're not excited that the Lord has made me excited about being excited about teaching Sunday School then go read something more exciting....like athletes' comments to news reporters (yeah, I felt pretty good out there. yeah, my strategy was to go really fast. yeah, I guess the other guy was just a little faster.  yeah, cuz he won by a little bit because he was a little faster).  What? They ask athletes stupid questions! Those poor guys!

Well, I am excited about Sunday School! VERY excited about it lately! I now have two 2nd graders and have seen the full fruitage that comes from teaching these kids the Word of God! I could write a lot of sentences that end with these "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" about all the amazing exciting things the Lord has been stirring up in my heart over teaching these kids but we will just focus our thoughts around two points right now(hehe Calvary Hanford).  Actually, I really only have one point.

MY POINT------->> Go Beyond Entertainment and teaching Application

Wait wait wait wait....this is the cool thing about teaching kids.  You can shepherd and disciple these kids in an animated way that isn't just pure entertainment.  You can walk into that Sunday school room with your flannel graph of Scripture empowerment and knock their socks off with an animated retelling of the Bible story.  BUT DON'T stop there. Don't forget the APPLICATION part.  This is where the fruit comes from and if you think those kids are not going to understand the application part then you're full of bologna!  This is the hardest part to teach sometimes.  You have to figure out a way that a child would apply this Bible lesson and make the application memorable.  This is a tough one.  You want some tips?  Too bad.  I tell you anyway.

Take an Inductive Bible class.  Learn how to break down the scripture with the I O A; Interpretation, Observation, Application.  You will get tons and tons and tons of benefits from learning that stuff.  Just google it right now and get a quick overview.  It will help in your devotionals and whenever you teach.

Use props and costumes for the application lesson.  It helps it stick to their brains and hearts. Those kids will eat it up!!!

Share the gospel often.  I mean all the time. Talk about the Holy Spirit often.  The kids need to know that God would never ask them to do something they can't do.  They need to know that they will mess up but God is not an angry God who wants to punish them but a loving God who is quick to forgive and so pleased when we want to please Him.

Sing about everything.  Do you know the one thing that has never left my brain from my childhood?  Not math facts, not spelling rules, not my naughty deeds (I think I was an ideal child).  It's the songs!  They are permanently in my head. Start singing!  sing Bible verses, teaching points, frequent bathroom trips songs. Sing.  Right now.  Come on.

Stop thinking these kids can't take all this in.  They can.  I'm a lame teacher to think otherwise.  Application, application, application....the ability to apply the scripture to our walk with the Lord.  I am extra stirred up about children's ministry right now!  It's been extra exciting to see the fruit coming from the kids!  They are memorizing scripture, sharing the gospel with kids at the park, encouraging each other to obey the Lord.  It's just so cool.  They know the gospel so clearly.  It just amazes me. They don't stay babies forever drinking their little baby milk! Give them steak....they will eat it up and ask for seconds!

Are you excited now? Good.

MODESTY (every christian has to have at least one blog post about it..it's a rule)

I know I'm blogging about what every christian blogger blogs about all the time in all the blogs but why not?  I don't write this out of exasperation or fed-up-ness or offense.  I am not surrounded by scantly clad women who need a turtle neck offered to them and need to be scurried into the church bathroom for a sound rebuking.  On the contrary, my peers are lovely women and girls who have the Central Valley casual ambiance of jeans and Old Navy sales rack tops that speak of coffee-loving, Phil Whickam-song-guitar playing, and afternoons at yard sales kind of look.  I feel super duper blessed to live in such a casual town because frankly...I'd rather rascal with a moose than go clothes shopping to keep up with the styles.  Since I go to jean church and have jean friends and have a jean husband the pressure of looking like a hottie is far from my mind. 

But since you asked I guess I'll share. 

I really am scared stiff to end up at church looking too hot.  Is that vain?  Is it so much the opposite of vain that it goes full circle and becomes vain?  Regardless, I have shared many conversations with close friends and now my growing daughter on what is and what is not appropriate to wear to church.  It seemed a lot simpler when I was single.  I was not claimed therefore I must be quaint and quiet and covered.  I figured that when I got married I could wear whatever I darn well pleased since I belonged to someone.  Of course my husband very kindly told me that that was utter nonsense and thenceforth have come to very much trust his man's view on things since he is...well...a man.  So here's the question...

How do you judge what is modest and immodest for a christian woman to wear?  Especially to church?

You know what?  Now that I'm an old lady and have spent so many years being around Christians and watching Christians and listening to Christians debate over our christian liberties and what we should do and not do and wear and not wear and listen to and not listen to I have come to this all purpose conclusion....

Hold on a second...it has two parts...let me see if I can make the words rhyme...no they can't rhyme this time.

Dress in Context.
 If I'm going to the beach, I'm going to wear my swim suit of course.  If I'm going to the gym, I'm going to wear my tight stretchy pants because I'm going to do tight stretchy stuff of course.  If I'm going on a missionary trip and they tell me in this culture the women only wear long skirts then I'm only going to wear long skirts.  If I'm going to Cambria on a honeymoon with my husband and he says, "Hey sugar muffin, you want to go out tonight?" I'm going to put on my black strappy dress and say, "Why Richard, I'm so glad you asked!"  If I'm going to church (remember I go to jean church) I'm going to more than likely put on jeans and maybe sometimes get fancy and wear a "church dress" which is what I tell my daughter to put on.  See what I'm saying?  You dress out of context and you might end up at church looking like a hot date and don't you think that might be kind of distracting?

Dress with wisdom
If you decide to dress out of context and end up with too much bear skin at the wrong place and the wrong time surrounded by people that you have caused to be completed distracted from the word of God then that is anything but wise.  The loving thing is always the better choice.  When I think, "It is my womanly human right to look hot" I have absolutely stopped loving others and I am now completely loving myself. 

Heaven forbid you try to copy my fabulous style!  I am a horrible example of stylish meets modesty.  My style is called LAZY meets LAZY.  I'm going to start a new line of clothes called "Don't Care AS Long As I Don't Have To Iron It".  It will be a drive through clothes store where you can choose the color, the size, and the style without ever getting out of the car and unbuckling and buckling your kids and saying "get out of the clothes rack" or "why don't they have these cute shorts in an after four kids size" and "boys I asked you not to play hide-and-seek in the clothes rack" and "Anna, is that Ben in the cloths rack?"  And whatever happened to going to the tailor for clothes!  When they could professionally accommodate every extra lump that God hath given you and the color that suits your eyes and your favorite cut of skirt?! I do plan on getting better one of these days.  In other words, if you want to pay for my closet makeover I won't say no. 

All sarcastic Rees/Cook humor aside, I am SO thankful for the modest women that surround me that are always dressing in context and with great womanly wisdom.  And would you just look at yourselves!  You are all just gorgeous!

Do the loving thing...it is so much better than insisting on looking hot!  Amen?