Miss Beth

Miss Beth went to the orthopedic doctor today, who took another x-ray to rule out a break. Like the other two x-rays, this one was also normal.

He can't understand why she isn't better by now from a sprain (almost five weeks), so he ordered an MRI, which will take place on October 6th, unless she improves before then.

He scared me with more talk of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. The fact that her hospital blood test didn't indicate this doesn't mean we're free to rule it out. Not all children with this auto-immune disease test positive via blood sample, especially in the early stages. Truthfully, an arthritis diagnosis would explain night waking with crying, indicating pain. It would explain morning stiffness, and the horrible after-nap mood she wakes with in the past few months.

Some children with rheumatoid arthritis grow out of it at or before puberty, depending on how many joints are affected. It usually affect joints in a symmetrical way, so the fact that only one knee is affected seems to make it unlikely, though in some cases it manifests this way at first.

It's a scary diagnosis no matter how you look at it. She wouldn't lead a normal life unless she was blessed enough to have a short-lived case--like several weeks or months.

Please pray?

Paradigm Shift; Just Enough

Reading Shaun Groves' blog this afternoon, I came across the most beautiful story written by a contributor at the Living Proof Ministries Blog (The lpm Blog).  This is Beth Moore's blog and the two young women who contribute are Beth's daughters, one of whom, Melissa Fitzpatrick, went to Bible College with Shaun Groves, and accompanied him on the 2009 trip to India with Compassion Bloggers.

Please take the time to read Melissa's story. The power of the cross, the grace of the Almighty, is seldom this evident.

Clutter-Free Living

How much time do you spend, as a mother, taking care of possessions, versus taking care of your family?

In the last couple years I've spent countless hours downscaling. While my home features large living spaces, the bedrooms and closets are small. Too, it has neither basement nor garage. Since mice are known to inhabit the shed, I no longer consider it storage space for anything but lawn gear.

Few homes need downscaling more than ours did, in short.

Today, as I continued processing clutter I pulled from bedroom closets, bookshelves, toy bins, the linen closet and the kitchen junk drawers (not done with the draw-junk yet), I realized that the bulk of my time goes to managing things, versus investing in the hearts of my children.

What a tragedy! And how profoundly I will regret it if this doesn't quickly reverse.

Birthing baby after baby without much extended family around created a mode of living devoted to moment-to-moment tasks. Smart living was something I could only dream about.

Yes, organizing and decluttering create temporary havoc, but they must be done if we hope to raise Kingdom-minded children capable of changing the world for Christ.....for a world-changing mindset leaves no room for clutter, neither physical nor emotional.

How I wish a Titus-2 woman had been around twelves years ago, when I married and began setting up a household! How I needed someone to pull me aside and speak truth into my homemaking soul.

Pray about every single thing you bring into your home. Every item has the potential to steal your time. Thus, take in only what you need to create a haven of rest and renewal.....and not a thing more.

If your child can't build or create or problem solve with a toy, don't buy it. If you already have four or five good quality toys, you're set. Mine don't have game systems or handheld electronics or non-academic computer software...and they're none the worse for it. Don't add more toys, and especially not toys that lead to addictions, like electronic ones.


The more toys your child has, the less blessed he is.

Don't buy more books than you have room for...or more than you can practically display. Tightly packed books rarely get read. Use book tubs and rain gutters so that enticing book covers are visible, not hidden.

Books should beckon, not clutter and collect dust.

Keep linens to a minimum....one extra sheet set for each bed. Wait until your children are older to buy a nice tablecloth, or buy just one for holidays. Do you really need placemats or tablerunners? Do you really need more than one bud vase or flower-bouquet vase?

Are you thinking you need to be organized to keep a low-maintenance home?  Wrong. You just need less stuff!

What advice can you add?   Share, please.

And maybe try this book, written from a Christian perspective by the creator of Simple Mom. There's also the FlyLady, but I found that hard to follow with a lot of littles around.

Rapheal

It came in the mail today, eagerly awaited.

Raphael, age 11, from Burkina Faso (landlocked country in west Africa), lives with his father and his mother. He is responsible for running errands and cleaning. His father is sometimes employed and his mother is sometimes employed. There are 3 children in the family.


Soccer, playing with marbles and running are Raphael's favorite activities. In primary school his performance is above average and he also regularly attends church activities and Bible class.


Raphael lives on the plains of Pissy, home to approximately 180,900 residents. Typical houses are constructed of dirt floors, adobe walls and corrugated iron roofs. Most adults in Pissy are unemployed but some work as day laborers and earn the equivalent of $20 per month. This community needs income-generating activities and tuition assistance.


Burkina Faso, with a population of 13 million, is one of the poorest countries in the world. With no coastlines and ports, the country has few natural resources, fragile soil and an unequal distribution of income. About 90% of the population is engaged in agriculture, (mainly subsistence) which is vulnerable to variations in rainfall. 


Paul checks the mail everyday, with Mary by his side, holding his brotherly hand as they cross the street. He knew what this envelope contained and they ran all the way back to the house, eager to open it with me.

Our Compassion account showed Raphael's name and age and country over the weekend, but we hadn't received his packet until today.

Burkina Faso, with a population of 13 million, is one of the poorest countries in the world. This sentence, more than any of the others, brought me to tears. One of the poorest in the world. Our new son, my children's new sibling, comes from one of the poorest countries in the world.


It's been twelve hours since the mail came. And I already love him. I already think of him and wonder what he is doing and wonder what he is having for lunch. I wonder if he carries water to and from the house many times a day. I wonder if he will be able to go to university through Compassion's tuition assistance program. Students showing promise in their studies are offered this opportunity. I wonder if he's a good runner and if he can get a scholarship for sports.

My boys already respect him, since he is older than they are. And because he does well in school.

We will be each other's graces, this boy and my family. Brought together by God.

I am so thankful. His birthday is September 29 and we made nearly the minimum child gift of $15.00 at our garage sale.

Happy Birthday, Raphael.

I pray we can come and see you one day. Being your friend, I know, will bring many happy days into our lives.

Hearing about the Compassion Sponsorship or Correspondent Program isn't something most people respond to right away. First, you hear it and think what a good idea it is. We should do that, you say. But then life gets so busy and you forget to make the call. Next time you hear about it, same thing. It probably takes three times before most people actually do the physical act of picking up a phone and getting involved.

Writing to these wonderful children is a blessing.....the likes of which I can't adequately describe. It isn't just some do-gooder activity that gives you a temporary high. Instead, it's a relationship that transforms your heart in ways you have no control over. God takes over and makes it powerful, life-changing, thrilling, joy-filled.

Don't spend another minute thinking about it. Call today, to set up a sponsorship or correspondence.

800-336-7676

The State Of Things

Well, we had our garage sale and decluttered in the process, but it wasn't very successful. This is a quiet, hard-to-find street. Nevertheless, the children very much enjoyed being hosts and hostesses to our neighbors. They were elated every time someone stopped.

With the help of Mary's expert insect-hunting skills, Peter successfully mated his female Chinese praying mantis. Now we're awaiting an egg sac, which takes two weeks. More to come on that fascinating experience.

I need a few more days to finish up the decluttering process. Miss Beth needs to be carried around and entertained due to her bum knee, so it's slow going. I've stopped relieving her pain with ibuprofen, so she is now staying off her feet most of the time...and asking to nurse about ten times a day, and several times a night, probably for extra comfort.

One positive aspect of her convalescence is that her attention span has increased manyfold, and she now enjoys sitting with a stack of puzzles, a stack of books, or watching the entire Richard Scarry's Best ABC Video Ever. Why is this product suddenly so expensive, by the way? Something produced in 1989 is now a collector's item? Thankfully, I have two copies!

Beth so loves to sing! She's memorized more lyrics than any of my other children at his same age. Even early morning, she wakes up with a song in her heart and on her lips. So precious to me! Her favorites are those with hand and foot motions.

We had to miss Beth's orthopedic doctor's appointment last Friday because my husband's car wouldn't start (failing starter, which we're fixing Monday). The appointment is rescheduled for this Friday and I will emphasize the need for a cast to help keep her knee stabilized. It's so hard not to worry about her knee. It almost seems worse and I think the weeks of relieving her pain were the culprit. I was only following doctor and hospital orders, which went against my instinct as her mother. I could see she was using it too much due to lowered pain, but I kept thinking I'd better follow their directions. If an MRI means she has to go into a machine, fully covered and tunneled, I dread it. They might have to sedate her just to do this. Anyone know anything about MRI's? Do they always require going into one of those tube things? The doctor may suggest one since her knee is taking so long to heal.

Back to the car now. We both feel acquiring the car was a mistake. Something new goes wrong almost weekly. It's hard to fathom why God allowed us to make this costly mistake.....but then sometimes, I wonder if he allowed it precisely so that we'd have to visit our unsaved mechanic four or five times a month. Maybe Gary knows very few Christians, and the Lord wants as many as possible to cross his path regularly? I hope he comes to know Christ soon!

I'm slowly learning that God doesn't guarantee my comfort. His purposes are far higher than that....and his graces stabilize even the worst of times.

Two dear friends helped us with the smog repair money, so it looks like we'll continue to have use of the van after replacing a catalytic converter and getting it re-registered. Our temporary tag expires on September 27, so we're blessed to have this help. What a load off our minds! Every time we managed to put aside money to repair the van, another thing went wrong with the car.

I never realized how great the need for car ministries. What about all the people who lost their jobs because they couldn't maintain a reliable vehicle?  It makes me so sad!  So many details work against low-income people. Pulling themselves up from their bootstraps is far harder than the wealthier segments of the population realize. They live in a state of near-constant discouragement.

Though my nerves are frazzled, I can still say I'm blessed to be in these circumstances. A whole different world is opening up to me. So many needs are present in even this, our own country....far more than I ever realized. And no easy fixes. Nothing equips us to help others, to empathize with others, more than sharing their circumstances. Low-income people need more than monetary help. They also need to be understood and valued, despite their lack of upward mobility.

My husband comes from a different perspective in all this. He begs and pleads to be able to support his family better than this...without needing help. He loves theology and would be happy to talk about it for hours. And yet, God hasn't given him the ability to organize and prioritize and do all the other things vocational ministry requires. He tried once in children's ministry and couldn't keep up with all the requirements.

The pressure is greater on him than on me, not to endure this experience and glean from it, but to get out of it. A husband's burden to provide is huge. Our job as wives is to respect and love our husbands for richer for poorer, as our marriage vows state. They deserve our respect not for succeeding--success is a gift from God--but for working hard. So no matter how badly we need a haircut, or new shoes, we must be content and show respect for our husbands--not complaining or grumbling.

How can you bless your husband today? Blessing our man empowers him to be all that God intended him to be.

I hope to get back to this space soon, but judging from the state of my living room, it may be several days.

Have a wonderful week enjoying fall beauty!