martha_martha

2006-06-16T12:19:00.000-04:00

A Must-Listen on Biblical Womanhood

Highly, highly recommended to all women: Mark Driscoll's 4-part sermon series on Women and Femininity. If you only have time to listen to one (they're about an hour and 15 minutes each), Women as Homebuilders is especially excellent. They're available for free downloading (as are all of his other sermons). Go to the above link, click Downloads, then Sermons, then Practical Topics, and then Women (kinda complicated, but well-worth the effort!).

2006-06-16T12:08:00.000-04:00

Shameless Product Non-Endorsement

A few days ago, a friend of mine was doing some spring cleaning. One of her projects was to clean out all of her purses. She came across one that she doesn't recall using since last November. Among the contents of the bag were two chicken nuggets from a certain well-known fast food chain, which shall remain nameless (although two red pigtails might give it away). Two 7-month old chicken nuggets! And the scary part is not that she had chicken nuggets in her purse (she's a mom). The scary part is that they looked as if she'd bought them yesterday! Yep, no mold, no decay... just two perfectly good-looking nuggets! Anybody hungry? :)

If you've seen SuperSize Me, this may remind you of the french fry experiment (the two-month old perfectly fresh-looking fries)... Now we know they weren't faking!

2006-06-09T14:27:00.000-04:00

Shameless Product Endorsement

I have to say that Brown Cow™ Cream Top Plain Yogurt is the best commercial yogurt I have ever tasted. Creamy, full-bodied, not too tart, and no antibiotics or hormones to boot... add just a little good Canadian maple syrup, a bit of freshly ground flax seed and you've got a snack that's both nutritious and delicious! And hey, just saying "Brown Cow" gives us Canadians a chance to display our fine Canadian-raised pronunciation skills:)

2006-06-09T13:47:00.000-04:00

Our Faithful God

"Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass." Joshua 21: 43-45

2006-06-07T12:10:00.000-04:00

What Do You Expect?

I don't know about you, but I don't expect much from God. I am the master of negativity when it comes to my expectations about what God can and will do. It's not that I don't expect anything; rather, I actually expect to be disappointed, frustrated, bored, ineffective and weary. I might not say so, but my actions and reactions betray my real expectations. This is often true in my devotional time. I'll sit down with my Bible one morning after many days of not getting my devotions in before the kids wake up, and my attitude is one of "Well, it might be quiet now, but I'll just bet God only lets me have 5 minutes before Susanna comes bolting in here, so I might as well not try to read anything deep or difficult." Or lately, I've been working my way through the Old Testament, and there are many mornings when the chapter(s) for the day is(are) filled with genealogical information, or accounts of which tribe got which cities in the Promised Land. And as I notice that this is what I'll be reading for the day, the thought is that I'm about to be bored out of my mind. "Oh, yippee. Get to read a list of cities I can't pronounce. I'm gonna get a whole lot out of this one. Maybe I should just skip these chapters."

What does this say about my view of God? Well, he's little, and just about powerless, and not too interested in my daily life or thoughts. I don't like to say it, but if I really examine the beliefs that inform the way I live much of the time, that would be them.

Last week, as I was reading through Joshua, I came to the account of the crossing of the Jordan. You know, the one where the priests step in to the Jordan with the ark, and the river suddenly stops flowing and forms a wall of water all the way back at the city of Adam, and so the people cross over on dry land, and go on their merry way, and blah, blah, blah. Heard that one a hundred times. Wait, what? The river did what? Can you imagine being a citizen of Adam, and you're just going about your business, washing dishes in your kitchen and you look out the window like you might any other day, and... what in the world? There is a wall of water out there where there used to be a river. You'd probably freak out. I mean, that just doesn't happen every day. In fact, I only know of two times it did. This is a completely unnatural, extraordinary event. And who brought it about? That puny, powerless god of my own imagination? NO! The Almighty, All Powerful, All Glorious, All Sovereign All Righteous, Incredibly Creative God of the Bible! I come to a God who can stop a river in its tracks, and on top of that, made Himself into a man and died to save me, and all I expect from Him is 30 minutes of boredom and an ineffective, disappointing rest of the day? I must be crazy!

So lately, when I sit down to read the Bible, before I read anything or get any stupid ideas about certain passages being boring and worthless, I start with asking God to make me expectant, not of disappointment, but of all the wonderful things in His Word, things that the Holy Spirit can teach me even through genealogies. And reading with eyes looking out for God to work, I'm amazed at things that I learn from a passage that is primarily a description of land distribution!

2006-06-02T14:31:00.000-04:00

No, Really!

If I have any loyal readership left out there, I would like to let you know that I am no longer in a state of denial: Rachel's assessment of my blogging frequency has been correct all along, and in order to be completely truthful, she should actually now list me under "Bloggers Who Don't Blog". I would really like to post at least from time to time, but I can't make any promises, seeing as the last entry was written as I thought life was slowing down a little bit, and then the last two months have been another whirlwind... I think life is heading back to a normal pace now!

My guess is that the best thing to do is to start fresh and not try to complete any previous blogging topics, although I'm still studying the Old Testament and thinking about the Law. But I'm more likely to blog if I can just start where my mind currently is, rather than trying to fill everyone in on everything I've thought or done in the last two months. And now I've got a diaper to change and dinner to start, so that's all for today!

2006-03-27T14:03:00.000-05:00

I'm Back

It has been brought to my attention that my sister has now listed me under her "Blogs... That Don't Update Often". Okay, so it's true. But I think I have a good excuse this month (two kids aside:-)). We've spent the last week reorganizing the house and getting over jet-lag after a 10-day trip to Germany... yeah, a European vacation... makes us sound filthy rich. Privileged though we may be, thanks goes to my parents, who provided us with two of four plane tickets, room and board, transportation, tour guiding, and a marvelous time which we otherwise would not have been able to afford! I've been twice before, but this was Nathan's first time in Europe (not counting 7 hours in Amsterdam on our way to Kazakhstan for missions work). Now that my parents live there though, I'm quite sure it won't be the last time! They moved to a small city near Frankfurt (the only German city with skyscrapers!) in September, after my dad accepted a position teaching at the Freie Theologische Akademie (the only evangelical seminary in Germany). He's also overseeing church plants in Frankfurt and Berlin (sorry all those links are in German, but, well, they're aimed at Germans... what can I say?:-)). It was exciting to visit the church in Frankfurt (with 30-40 people), as well as a more established church of 80-100 in Lich, and see what God is doing in the country where the Reformation began and yet is now only about 2% evangelical Christian.

We also thoroughly enjoyed traveling around the southwestern part of Germany, seeing several castles, hiking up to the 900 year-old cloister on the hill near my parents house, eating lots of good bread, meat, cheese and sweet stuff (no refined sugar limitations that week!), and just hanging out with my parents and youngest sister. We also celebrated my birthday and Susanna's (can't believe she's two already!). I'm sure I'll have more to say, and pictures to post whenever I remember to take the film to Walmart!

I do want to say that the kids behaved very well on the flights, seeing as that's one of the first things everyone asks. We were praising God all the way there for graciously giving us the "bassinet seat". What's a bassinet seat? I asked the same thing when the flight attendant asked if we had been placed there. Apparently, they reserve the first row of economy class for parents traveling with infants, and they actually have a portable bassinet that hooks on to the class-divider. We had fully expected to have both kids on our laps the whole time (part of the reason we went now was because Susanna was turning 2 and we wanted to get the lap-kid discount before her birthday). But we ended up with 5 seats to ourselves, plus a place for Jacob to sleep comfortably! And leg room, because there were no seats in front of us! And we got the same thing returning, even though we were so late for our flight that I heard the one check-in attendant say to the other, just after we checked in, that no more people were going to be allowed on our flight! The only downside was that from where we were sitting, we could see what was going on in business class - offerings of ice cream, hot towels, fresh fruit and sweets, dinner on a real plate with real cutlery and linen napkins... :-) But I can't complain - we had 5 seats for 3 of us!

2006-03-03T21:23:00.000-05:00

Jacob rolled over for the first time today! He'll be off to college before we know it;-)

2006-03-03T12:24:00.000-05:00

Law and Gospel: As One Under Authority

Before I say anything more on the subject, I need to make an apology and important note. As many in the blogosphere have recently been discussing, the relatively new world of blogging brings up "new" issues, or at least new applications of old issues. One I have been thinking about as I consider what to include or not include in my blog is the issue of headship and submission as it relates to public discourse and blogging. As a woman submitted to the headship of my husband, what should I feel free to publish and how should I go about it? My blog is a journal of sorts, and that leads to the temptation to write anything I would normally put in a journal. It is important, however, to remember the public nature of such an on-line diary, and therefore, to post only those things that are helpful for public consumption. Part of doing that as a married woman is writing in such a way that my husband comes off looking like the respected head of our home that he is, and for me, that means not posting anything of significance without first talking the subject through with Nathan. Not that I necessarily ask permission to post things, but rather that I try to make sure he doesn't hear my thoughts on my public blog before he hears them from me, and that he gets input and can give direction before anyone else. The reason I bring all this up is that I actually should have made note of this in my first Law and Gospel post. I realized after the fact that although I was making a conscious effort to only post what Nathan and I had already talked through, this may not have been apparent to those reading the post. I'm afraid I may have come off sounding like I'm going this study alone, which is not the case. Although I was the one who brought up the question, Nathan is also doing some study to help guide me in my own study. Anything you read on my blog, we have already discussed and agreed on. So I am not without guidance in this... I write these posts to help flesh out and clarify what Nathan and I have talked through in order to spur my own thinking, and perhaps yours as well. And so I want to apologize, first to my wonderful husband Nathan, and then to any reader who may have gotten the wrong impression. I will do my best to write this "series" (and any other such things) in the first person plural.

Upcoming topics include: Old Testament Wisdom, Thoughts on the Food Laws and Law, Gospel and Child-Rearing...

By the way, on a totally random note, hot sauce on popcorn is really good.

2006-02-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

Law and Gospel: Underlying Assumptions

There are certain truths relating to the Law that I am absolutely certain of, so I want to lay these out briefly, for my own good and also to dispell any notions that I might be wandering into any kind of works-righteousness territory. The Scripture references given are only a minute sample of abounding evidences for the following truths. You can tell I was mainly paging through Romans as I wrote this:

1. Keeping the Law is not the source of our righteousness. (Romans 3:20)

2. We are justified before God by grace alone by faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. (Romans 3:22-25; Ephesians 2:8,9)

3. The Law serves to bring conviction of sin and show us our need for Christ's atoning sacrifice because it is impossible for any human (other than Jesus) to live up to its standards and carry it out perfectly. (Romans3:19,20; 5:20,21)

4. As a believer, I am no longer condemned by the law. (Romans 8:1,2)

5. God's grace does not excuse us from obedience, but rather motivates us toward greater obedience. (Romans 6)

I'm positive there are more things that I'm sure of, but they're not coming to me right now. Those are at least the basics. So my main questions concerning the law and it's relationship to the believer are things along the lines of how much of the Mosaic Law is relevant to gospel-motivated obedience in the Christian life. Obviously anything repeated and expanded by Christ in the gospel accounts or by any of the Spirit-inspired New Testament writers stands. But what about all the other commands of the law? Are they merely for anthropological enthusiasts, or should we regard them as ageless wisdom given by our omnipotent Creator? More thoughts later...

2006-02-24T21:41:00.000-05:00

I'd like to take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to announce that Susanna hit a record score of four successful trips to the potty today! (Frankly, two would have been a record:-)) I'm not counting any unhatched chickens, but I'd like to think that means we're making some headway in the potty-training department.

2006-02-24T10:37:00.000-05:00

Law and Gospel: Introduction

In all our recent thinking about healthy eating, I came across information from a few different sources on the potential risks of eating pork and other scavenger animals, which got me to thinking about Old Testament law and its relevance for the New Testament believer. I began to realize that my understanding of how a Christian should view the Law is severely underdeveloped. I’ve grown up under the assumption that the Ten Commandments and some other OT laws (like capital punishment) still apply, but others, like laws about animal slaughter and tearing moldy bits out of garments, don’t. But why I would believe this I could never tell you… I’ve often had questions, when the issue of capital punishment comes up, as to why we think that’s good but don’t follow all the rest of the Law… But it seemed too complicated an issue to really think about, so I let it go.

Lately, however, I am beginning to see just how relevant the question of law and gospel really is to everyday living, and besides that, any theological issue that I am willing to ignore because of potential complications just shows how little I care about what God’s Word really says. I should be desiring to grow deeper in understanding in all areas of doctrine, especially those I don’t understand well or have firm convictions on! So I’ve resolved to begin some study in the area of law and gospel, which, for the time being, consists of reading through the “Law” (Exodus through Deuteronomy, plus some parts of Genesis) during my devotional time in the morning, and reading Five Views on Law and Gospel for some academic treatment of the various views on the subject. As I am doing this study, which is likely to last some months, I will be posting thoughts, observations, convictions and conclusions periodically on this blog… a series of sorts. Feel free to comment with your own meditations! Later today (assuming the day goes at least partially according to plan;-)): Underlying Assumptions. Stay tuned!

2006-02-22T10:57:00.000-05:00

Here's a recipe we enjoy for breakfast or light dinner.

Nutty Whole Grain Waffles

These are adapted from Cooking & Baking with Fresh Ground Flour...

1. The night before, mix:
1 c. whole wheat flour (I use white wheat flour, but regular red wheat will work)
2 1/2 c. rolled cereal grains*
2 c. milk
2 T. honey
Cover and let sit overnight.

2. In the morning, mix in:
1/2 c. butter, melted
1/2 c. orange juice (or apple juice)
1 egg, beaten

3. Sift over batter and whisk in:
2 t. baking powder**

4. Fold in:
1/2 - 1 c. chopped walnuts

5. Spread batter on waffle iron and bake until brown.

Serve with maple syrup and sour cream/plain yogurt, or other desired topping (I also like unsweetened applesauce).

The recipe makes 4-5 large waffles, and they are pretty filling. If doing them for dinner, I start the process in the morning, let it sit all day and then do steps 2-5 at dinner time.

*oats work fine... I prefer a rye/barley/wheat/oat mix, which you can buy at health food stores or roll yourself
**add this right before cooking, as baking powder becomes active when it gets wet

2006-02-22T10:55:00.000-05:00

Those desiring more specifics on the grain mill can visit the comments section of my previous post, seeing as I wrote a post-length comment there.

2006-02-13T21:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, now that I've had several people ask me where I'm going to find time to mill all our grain with two kids running around, and where in the world I'm going to find a place for a mill in the house, I've realized that some explanation is in order... especially seeing as two months ago, I, too, would have entertained images of a stout old man in lederhosen handcranking a very large wheel for hours. This is our mill: it weighs all of 5 pounds, runs on an electric motor (so I just put the grain in and let it go for 5-30 minutes-- depending on the amount of grain I've added), and sits on our kitchen counter next to the coffee maker. It does come with a hand-crank (for power outages, which might be useful if we had a gas stove, but we don't), but my guess is that I'll only ever use it once, just to try it out:-)

It arrived last Wednesday, and I love it! We got a flaker attachment too, so we can make our own oatmeal and flaked wheat cereals. And yes, we now have 130 pounds of grain sitting in our kitchen. So go ahead and call us hippy health nuts:-)

Seriously though, we are feeling great and have so much more energy these days... and our blood sugar is a lot more stable all day long. And we've lost a couple pounds. These are the pleasant side effects of working at taking better care of the bodies God has given us, so that we will have the strength and energy we need to carry out our God-given roles and responsibilities.

2006-01-31T16:54:00.000-05:00

The Feast

We live in a culture where it is expected that you can get whatever you want, whenever you want it. This is true in many areas, but I want to focus on the area of food today. If you live in the US or Canada and are willing to pay for it (most people are), you can get any food you want from any nation on earth at any time of year, and fast, too. You can have fresh strawberries in January (nevermind that they don’t taste quite so “fresh”), a whole dinner ready in 5 minutes from a little box, and if you want a little something sweet, you can grab a box of Krispy Kremes on your way to the checkout. We want everything “gourmet”. Birthday cakes aren’t quite as special as they were when we were 4, because we can pick up a cake from the Walmart bakery any night of the week and eat it after dinner for no reason at all, other than that we happen to like cake. Nathan commented to me after Christmas that even Christmas dinner didn’t seem like a big deal because we eat that kind of food (though not in those quantities!) all the time. I could go on. But my point is that for centuries before us, and still, to a greater or lesser extent, in the rest of the world, “special” food was and is reserved for special times. Even in Germany, which is very much a “Western” country, it is difficult to find fruits and vegetables out of season and Pfeffernuesse, Stollen and Gluehwein are only available in November and December (of course, you can make your own any time of year, but who would? - they’re Christmas foods!). If you live in a small town and want tofu, you might need to travel to a big city to get it. And certainly in more remote and/or poorer areas of the world, daily fare is very simple and based on things that are cheap and readily available - beans and rice, for example. But then, bring on a reason to celebrate and out come the delicacies! A special homecoming, wedding, harvest festival, Christmas… expect a real feast! Except most of us in this continent would only see it as a big meal… nothing special about it, because we eat “special” food all the time.

I want to reintroduce The Feast in our family. By eating more simply on a daily basis, sticking mostly to seasonal fruits and vegetables, eating locally produced whole foods, and drastically reducing the amount of sugar in our diets (the expense of honey, molasses and Sucanat* over refined sugars helps us eat less of it), we will not only save enough money throughout the year to throw real feasts when we have reason to, but those feasts will be looked forward to and savored because they are full of foods we don’t eat all the time. I want birthday cake to be special, not just because it has candles on it, but because cake is a special food, requiring time and more expensive ingredients than our normal fare. I want it to be special because we don’t just enjoy sweets whenever we want. I want food to be a real part of the celebration, not just something to fill our bellies like any other day. I want special occasions to have a meal that reflects, to a very small extent, the incredible feast that will be set before us at the marriage supper of the Lamb, which will be far beyond any comparison with even the best earthly feast you ever had!

The picture is from the movie Babette's Feast, a great classic and good example of a real feast!

*SuCaNat = sugar cane natural: evaporated sugar cane juice granules that retain the nutrients of the sugar cane

2006-01-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

To Your Health!

As mentioned in a previous post, we decided this year to cut refined sugars and flours out of our diet ("refined" modifies "sugars" AND "flours" - my sister asked me after she read the first post why we weren't eating flour anymore). No, we haven't gone wing-nutty... just maybe a little health-nuttish by current cultural standards. We met a couple who eats super healthy but who is quite normal otherwise, and on top of being "normal", they aren't vegetarians. Nothing against vegetarians on my part - I'm not a big meat eater anyway - but Nathan, well, the man needs his red meat. So when this couple, in the process of talking about all the health benefits of eating unprocessed stuff, asked if we might be interested in going in with them on a cow (as in the already slaughtered, made-into-steaks kind), Nathan got intrigued. A week of serious sugar craving (it IS addictive, you know) despite the fact that we were still getting some from the last few "bad" things we were trying to get rid of, followed by another two weeks of more minor adjustments... but this week we are feeling pretty good and I've had more energy the past couple days than I've had in months, even though I'm getting less sleep... and I'm really enjoying trying new recipes with new grains... A small portion of our tax refund will purchase us a grain mill so we can buy our grains in bulk and mill them fresh in our kitchen (even whole grains loose a substantial amount of nutrients a few days after milling) - okay, maybe we are wing-nutty:-)... but I've done a little grain milling in our coffee grinder and the muffins I made tasted better than the same ones made with store-bought flour (and it's cheaper to buy the grain in bulk than the flour).

More on our reasoning, and some recipes, in the coming days (or posts, anyway)...

Now don't worry... we're not into legalism - so if you invite us over for dinner, we'll gladly eat whatever you fix!

2006-01-27T21:28:00.000-05:00

Toddler Antics

Today Susanna acted like the two-year-old that she almost is: this morning she carried my rings (which I had removed for bread kneading) into the living room and temporarily lost them for me (they were later recovered). Then she decided she wanted to wash her hands in the bathroom sink while I was preoccupied with Jacob... and proceeded to fill my make-up case with water while she was at it (I am still in the process of drying everything out). Then she opened the fridge, took out the carton of hard-boiled eggs and dropped them all on the floor (fortunately they weren't raw, but even hard-boiled eggs break when you drop them!). And then she opened a drawer, found the negatives from our wedding, tore the envelope and dumped them all out in the drawer (no damage other than the envelope, but a mess all the same). But it still made me smile before she went to sleep when she insistently informed me that a parrot says "Polly cracker! Polly cracker!"

*Edit*: I forgot to mention that she also found the Comet I had accidentally left on the back of the toilet and dumped half the contents into the toilet, then proceeded to "clean" the toilet...

2006-01-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

Tagged In Fours

Okay, okay... I don't usually do these chain things... reminds me too much of those silly 80's chain letters that were supposed to net you millions of dollars, postcards, recipes, friends, etc... but all they ever succeeded in was make everyone you sent them on to rather annoyed at you;-) However, seeing as these tag games don't claim any rewards other than "fun" and seeing as my blog posts have been rather few and far between, and since I've been tagged by a blogger I highly respect, I'll do this one. JUST this one, so don't any of you other taggers start sending me new ones!:-)

Four jobs I've had:
-Data Entry Clerk (among other places, at Humana, where I learned just how crazy the US health insurance industry is - no cynicism there;-))
-Waitress (I'd do that one again)
-Research Assistant for the U of T linguistics department (my major)
-File Clerk

Four places I've lived:
-Louisville, KY
-Toronto, ON (the place I consider "home")
-Ephrata, PA (most of my childhood years)
-Baltimore, MD (and born near Chicago, so that's ALL the places I've lived)

Four vacations I've taken:
-Virginia
-Germany
-Florida
-Quebec
(I've also been to Vietnam, the Phillipines, Rwanda, Kenya and Kazakhstan, but those weren't "vacations" - I was doing ESL teaching/missions work)

Four (or not) vehicles I've owned:
-Toyota Camry (though I don't actually drive it)
-a sturdy pair of legs

Four blogs I want to tag:
well, considering my intro, I shouldn't propogate these things;-)

2006-01-23T12:59:00.000-05:00

Had to post this one! (sorry it's not a new one for you family members:-))

2006-01-16T22:51:00.000-05:00

On Remembering

It's about time for me to head to bed (per New Year's resolution #1: move the bedtime WAY back from 12:30 - we've made it back to about 11:30 at this point - so that I can get up early enough to have devotions before our crazy toddler becomes a distraction and get Nathan some breakfast before he heads to work, seeing as #2 involves drastic improvements on our eating habits, mostly with regards to the cutting out of refined sugars and flours, which may be explained more fully in an upcoming post, although I make no promises - how's that for a whole blog entry just in the parentheses?:-))...

But before I do so, I just want to say that we have been incredibly blessed with two healthy, beautiful children, who, despite all the difficulties associated with child-rearing, are much more than we deserve or even hoped for... some friends of ours found out a few days ago that there is very little chance of them ever having biological children, and as we grieve with them in their suffering, I am reminded how often we take our own children for granted... I am reminded how little I ever even think about the fact that for the last part of highschool and first couple years of university, I was struggling with the possibility of never having children... how rarely do I look at Susanna and Jacob and recall the days of walking through the park on the way home from class and feeling sadness as I watched kids playing with their parents because I was losing hope of ever being able to have any children of my own... in my case, God caused my body to begin working properly (and it was God, because the doctors never could figure out what was wrong in the first place) shortly before Nathan and I started dating, so worry over infertility was never a part of our relationship... but it was certainly a part of my life for several years and yet, I seem to have moved on... forgotten...

Isn't it just so easy to get what we want and then forget the struggles that came before the having? How often do I take any and every blessing for granted? Lord, may this time of weeping with those who weep spur us on also to remember and praise you for all you have given us!

2005-12-30T22:27:00.000-05:00

You Can Leave Now

Susanna is now well aware that climbing up on a chair and playing with stuff on the kitchen counter is not something she is allowed to do. She regularly climbs up to the counter and as soon as she sees me looking at her, says "Sidown pease. Dadu." (Sit down, please.... thank you.), which she has now heard me say numerous times. Well yesterday, she got a little more obnoxious... I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day when I heard a chair start to move across the floor in the kitchen. Now I've lived long enough to know that chairs don't move on their own (unless there's an earthquake or something), and I've observed my daughter long enough to know that moving chairs means trouble. So I walked into the kitchen and of course, Susanna was in the process of moving a chair over to the counter. She took one look at me, smiled as innocently as possible and said, "Bye-bye, Mommy!";-)

2005-12-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

Cookies Are GOOD, Too

Susanna discovered a couple weeks ago that if she pulls a chair up to any counter, dresser, desk, etc., she can climb up and reach the things on top. The other morning, I was in the living room working on something and she wandered into the kitchen. I was pretty focused on what I was doing, so it took me a few minutes to realize that she was being very quiet. Which, as any mother can attest, almost always means the kid is up to no good. So I quickly hurried to the kitchen. The first thing I noticed was that a plate of Christmas cookies that had previously been on the counter was no longer there. The next thing I observed was that one of the drawers below the counter where the cookies had been was pulled out (hmmm... somebody used that as a step up). And then I saw Susanna, sitting on the floor with the plate which was now empty (it had only had two cookies left on it, so at least it wasn't a full plate!), holding the last quarter of a cookie in her hand. She looked up at me, grinned like all was as it should be, and said in her best Cookie Monster voice "Nummy Cookies, Mommy! Nummy Cookies!":-)

2005-12-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

Sleep is GOOD

Well, I got that Christmas wish... and a week early at that! After getting progressively worse to the point that I thought I was going insane from sleep deprivation and frustration with this kid who was waking up every hour, I noticed one day that when Jacob was napping, if he started to wake up, he would suck on his fingers and put himself back to sleep...and it suddenly occurred to me that things had only started getting difficult at night when we had started using blanket sleepers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that type of garment, it's basically a fleece bag with arms that is supposed to keep a baby warm without the risk of a blanket getting caught over their face and suffocating them. Nice, only they're a one-size fits all kinda thing so the arms are really long and cver Jacob's hands. Great, I thought, that will keep his hands warm. And, as it turns out, keep his fingers from getting to his mouth. Hence the constant waking and inability to go back to sleep. The first night we stopped using the blanket sleeper, he slept four hours straight. And the next night he was up to five, and then six, and as of last Sunday, has been doing 8 hour stretches! Now that starts between midnight and 1 am, so we're still working on the early part of the night, but hey, if I can have seven hours of uninterrupted slumber afterwards, I don't mind being up real late!:-) And needless to say, no more blanket sleepers for us! He may be cold but at least he's got a sane mother!:-) (and we just tuck his mattress now, so he's not even cold, for those who were momentarily worried.)

2005-12-23T10:26:00.000-05:00

Introducing Quiverfiller!

For all those who have clicked on the "Hubby's Blog" link in the past couple months only to find a postless site, you may be interested to know that Quiverfiller has finally posted. Twice, actually. Just as I was about to remove the link;-) I'll try to post later about the sleep situation and other miscillanea...

2005-12-09T22:22:00.000-05:00

All I Want For Christmas Is A Good Night's Sleep!

Yes, yes, I know my previous entry was all about not focusing on the negative... and it's still true! But I would also still like to be able to sleep for longer than a couple hours at a time - for some reason, Jacob seems to be ignoring the idea that as babies grow ( and with them, their stomachs), they gradually sleep for longer stretches at a time. He has decided this week that actually, shorter stretches are more ideal... so the newborn who was sleeping 3-4 hours at a time is, as the first month draws to a close, now sleeping only 1.5-2 hours. At night only, of course. During the day, he is sometimes content to go more than 4 hours. Now I would be happy to feed him every 1.5 hours during the day if he would sleep 4.5 hours at night! But no... this kiddo is a night owl. And his mother, who is most decidedly NOT a night owl, is exhausted! Every night I find it harder and harder to get up, and every night I get more and more frustrated. Which brings me to something I've been wanting to post on for almost 2 weeks now.

If there is one thing that having two kids is teaching me, it is that I am not capable of getting through the day on my own. Or even the first 15 minutes of the day. Or, for that matter, even the waking moment. Sure, there were times even before I had any kids that I recognized my limitations and need for God's gracious help in a situation. But now I am constantly being forced to come to terms with the fact that I can't even handle something as simple as taking a shower or eating a bowl of cereal without His grace and strength. I am consistently needing to ask God for the strength just to get the next load in the laundry or dinner on the table. Or to get up out of bed and feed our crying baby when it is the last thing I want to do. I had been thinking about this after reading Psalm 33:13-22 :

"The LORD looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man;
from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth,
he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.
The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.
Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine.*
Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and shield.
For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you."

The same day I read that passage, I came across this helpful post by Kristin Chesemore about acknowledging God in even the most mundane moments of life. She says it so well(with the help of Charles Bridges) that I won't bother to try to summarize her thoughts - go read for yourself!

"Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed." (Psalm 34:5)

And now I need to go check the mail... yes, I realize that it's almost 10:30 at night and the mail has probably been there all day... so I'm a little behind on my daily tasks...:-)

*in my case, when I don't have a chance for undistracted devotions for days or weeks on end... see another helpful post from Kristin and her link to Donald Whitney's article for thoughts on devotions and the young mother - I found these to be very freeing! By the way, since I am lately linking to it quite frequently, may I take this opportunity to highly recommend Girl Talk, a blog by Carolyn Mahaney and her 3 adult daughters. There is a tonne of great stuff to be found there!

2005-12-06T10:49:00.000-05:00

futurepastorswife has asked for an explanation of my comment in the previous entry about two kids being more than twice as busy as one... the reason it seems like more than just double the workload is that not only do you have the separate needs of two individual children to meet, you also have carry out those and other responsibilities in such a way that, well, both kids end up alive and well at the end of the day. I can't just up and go to the bathroom like I used to be able to do, leaving Susanna to play by herself for a minute - now I have to make sure before I go anywhere that Jacob is in a place where she can't sit on him, bite him or otherwise torment him while I'm out of the room. And that goes for anything I do that involves moving out of eyesight. And sometimes it's impossible to meet the needs of both kids at once - human beings were only given one set of hands! Add to that the sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn (and the fact that my toddler only takes one nap a day, so I have to choose between sleeping then or taking care of the myriad of other responsibilities that are calling my name... and sleep almost always wins out against cleaning or cooking duties!), and caring for a toddler who is in to everything and regularly testing the limits becomes very hard to do in a patient and gracious manner... my temper flares up a lot more easily these days, and I've had to apologize more than once to Susanna for disciplining her in anger rather than in love...

All that said, I am not here to complain about the responsibilities I've been given to care for these two precious children... I was talking with another young mother of two in the nursing room at church yesterday about how easy it is to dwell on thoughts of "if I can just make it through this stage...": "If I can just make it till he sleeps through the night...", "If I can just get these kids out of diapers...", "If I can just survive their teenage years..." (we're not there yet, but that day will be here before we know it!). But not only do you end up despairing because every stage of life and childrearing has its specific difficulties (they sleep through the night only to want to be entertained all day long) - the day will never come (until heaven) when you will ever stop wishing away some hardship! - you also end up focusing so much on the negative aspects of the stage you're in and miss all the joys of that same stage... If all I ever think about right now is getting a full night's sleep, it will be hard for me to enjoy these precious weeks of having a child so helpless and needy that all he wants to do is be held and fed and stare at our faces - they learn to do a few things on their own and suddenly your lap is not quite the inviting place it used to be! Or for this other mother, it's that she doesn't ever get to sit in on the sermon because her son doesn't do well in the nursery (and we have so many small kids at our church that the nursery workers can't spend the whole service trying to quiet one screaming child while the others wreak havoc on each other!), but as she commented, Sunday morning in the nursing room is the one time of the week that she can give her second child an hour of her undivided attention, and those opportunities are few and far between with multiple small kids in the house! So her husband takes sermon notes for her and her son gets some special mommy time.

All that to say that yes, two kids is busy, busy, busy... but I wouldn't trade these two little gifts for all the "me time" in the world! May we always seek God's grace to be thankful for all the small blessings He gives us even in the midst of difficult circumstances, because not only does He deserve all our thanks, but a thankful and joyful attitude can make even the most trying days of life easier to bear!

I have more that I want to say about things I've been learning over the past few days, things that I might not be learning if life weren't so busy and sleep so rare, but I'll save it for the next post because this one is getting long.

2005-12-02T22:59:00.000-05:00

Well, today is the first relatively productive day I've had in about two and a half weeks, so I think it's time I sat down and did a little blogging, seeing as the kitchen floor is clean, the laundry is done (until the next time Jacob chooses to projectile vomit all over our bed), two batches of Christmas cookies are ready for the freezer (with a few left out for pre-Christmas munching, of course!), Susanna is freshly bathed and fast asleep in her bed and Jacob is lying in my lap, contentedly staring up at the black-and-white tile pattern on the ceiling... I can think of plenty more things that need to be done, but tomorrow is another day, and I'm not supposed to overwork myself until the doctor gives me the okay:-)

So long-story-short, I ended up having to be induced (and judging by the 5 hours it took for the pitocin to actually get things going, I'm not sure this kiddo was planning an exit anytime soon anyway), but that aside, things went as I had hoped - no epidural this time (I'm not against other people having them, if that's their thing, but I had really been wanting to go without the drugs this time), water broke on its own, so the doctor didn't have to use the hook, and once things got going, Jacob only took a little more than 3 hours to enter the world... my first thought upon seeing him was that he looks like his sister, which everyone else has commented on, too (with no prompting from me:-)), so I'm guessing it's true... many thanks to my mother and mother-in-law, who were there the whole time for support, and especially to my wonderful husband, who, despite his aching arms, spent hours massaging my back, thereby making the pain bearable (or more so, anyway:-))! This was definitely a different experience than labour with Susanna - I had to have an epidural with her, and so there wasn't really anything for Nathan or the parents to do other than sit and be spectators and bring me the occasional popsicle from the hospital freezer. And I have to say, it was nice to be able to stand up and move around shortly afterward, since I could actually feel my legs this time. Anyway, I'm not going to get off on any anti-drug rant - I'll admit that I have a high pain tolerance (and even at that, it was darn painful!) - but I would like to say that if you can do without the pain meds, it's an incredible experience!

I would also like to say that it looks like God has chosen to bless us with another calm, content, relatively easy baby... I was guessing that after an easy first baby, we were about to get a wild child, but I actually think Jacob is more laid back than his sister... we've taken to calling him Goat Boy (affectionately, of course), because he rarely ever cries at full throttle (for the first few days, we weren't even sure he knew how!:-))... he just kind of bleats like a little goat when he's not happy. Susanna loves him to bits, which is great, and also means that we are constantly having to pull her away from him and explain that while it is nice that she wants to kiss her little brother, he doesn't like having her face constantly shoved into him... ;-) she is not quite the perfect older sister, though... yesterday, Nathan turned around to find her chomping on his little leg - left a nice little ring of welts (fortunately, she didn't break the skin)... needless to say, that one got her a sound spanking!

Anyway, maybe I'll be up to more frequent blogging soon... though 2 kids is definitely more than twice as busy as one and I've got a few Christmas projects to get done (only 23 more days!)... at least now you know I'm still alive...

2005-11-19T16:36:00.000-05:00

Jacob Nathaniel Fullerton has finally arrived!

Born November 16, he weighed in at 8 lbs 9 oz (same as Susanna) and is 19 inches long... may have some reddish tint to his hair, but we'll have to wait and see. We're all doing well, if a little tired:-) I'll have more to post later, but wanted to post that news so you all know why my posts will be few and far between for the next little while:-)

2005-11-09T05:31:00.000-05:00

On Trust and Patience

Well, here it is, 4:00 am, and I am up, sitting at the computer, adding a new blog entry. What, you might ask, am I doing wide awake in the wee hours of the morning? And where have I been for the past two weeks? No, there is not yet a screaming infant keeping me up at odd hours... although it is hoped that the cause of this morning's wakefulness will soon bring him into the world - in the past two weeks, I have had many a sleepless (or almost so) night brought about by the early pains of labour. Generally, I wake up in some degree of pain at 2 or 3 am, and the first thought to cross my mind is "Is this IT?" after which it is very difficult to fall back asleep because my mind starts racing, and counting, and eagerly hoping... eventually, fatigue forces me back to bed, and when I wake up in the morning, things have died down and I find myself disappointed again. This has been two weeks of increasing realization of the sins of distrust and pride working in my heart... every time the labour pains start, my hope and expectation rises, and every time they weaken and then cease, my immediate reaction is to become frustrated with God because He has once again not seen fit to answer my prayers for the speedy birth of this child.

For the first few days, I was subconsciously questioning whether God was even hearing my prayers... assuming that I knew when the best time would be for this child to arrive, I got frustrated and even downright angry when God didn't seem to agree with me. Some days seemed better than others - like the day after I had only managed to get 30 minutes of sleep all night, when I figured that God was being merciful in not allowing labour to commence when I was so exhausted to begin with. Or when I heard that one of the potential emergency caregivers for Susanna suspected that her daughter might have the chicken pox, and I felt spared from the possibility of exposing my newborn to the pox. Or when Nathan's boss informed him on Monday that they were going to give him an unexpected 2 days of paid vacation when the baby arrived - thank you Lord that I didn't have this baby before that when we might have had to take a financial hit for Nathan to be around those first few days... But really, this did not produce true trust in me - I could only "trust" if I saw some reasonable reason for God to have delayed an answer to my prayers.

As I moved into the second week of rising and falling hopes, I ceased to question God's hearing of my prayers and began to accuse Him of playing games with me... one particular day when I was feeling pretty discouraged, I began to pray that in His mercy, He might even bring about labour at that moment... around the same time, the contractions started up again, this time stronger than they had been previously. My first thought was, "Hey, maybe God is answering my prayer already", but no sooner was that thought had and I began to think, "You know, this is going to end up like all the other times... things will fizzle out and I'll still be waiting... how cruel of God to make a pretense of answering immediately..." And then when things did die down, I felt justified in my accusation. How untrusting and wary of the Father's love and goodness I have been! How arrogant to think that I know what is best far better than Sovereign God! How faithless to call His sovereignty into question!

And yet, how faithful He has been, in the midst of my faithlessness, to show me His goodness even in the minor details like the ones I mentioned above, to gently expose my sin, to call me to repentence, to grant me greater faith and the patience to wait for His good, pleasing and perfect will to be done! How faithfully He has continually shown me Scripture to convict and give hope:

"Refrain from anger and forsake wrath; fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land." (Ps. 37:8, 9)

"The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry... When the righteous cry for help the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." (Ps. 34: 15-18)

"Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let you steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you." (Ps. 33:20-22)

"Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation... Awesome is God from his sanctuary, the God of Israel - he is the one who gives power and strength to his people. Blessed be God!" (Ps. 68: 19, 35)

"Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance." (Ps. 66:8-12)

"How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light. Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart!" (Ps. 36:7-10)

I have also been reminded that the Cross must be much more precious to me than what birthdate God chooses for my child. It is so easy to get caught up in these light and momentary troubles and forget that not only these minor sufferings and pains, but even major, life-altering trials must not draw our attention away from the fact that regardless of how much life goes the way we planned, regardless of whether we get an "easy" life or a "difficult" one, God has given us the ultimate good gift in Christ Jesus. How can we doubt His love for us and faithfulness to us when He has been pleased to crush His own son for our iniquities, that we might be counted righteous in Christ even as doubters who rail against God for His supposed injustice to us?! Praise be to God for His indescribable mercy!

So here I am, at 5:15 now, still awake and yes, still hopeful that this will be IT, but even as my eagerness grows as the contractions grow closer together, my hope must not be in this being IT, but in the Father who delights to give good gifts to His children in His perfect timing, and if today is not the day, may I still go into it with rejoicing that He has kept my feet from slipping and saved me from His wrath by the precious blood of His son!

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul

Though Satan should buffet, though trials shall come
Let this bless’d assurance control
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
And has shed his own blood for my soul

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole
Was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll
The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend
Even so, it is well with my soul

- Horatio G Spafford

2005-10-26T12:38:00.000-04:00

On Anxiety

I went to the doctor yesterday for my regular check-up and everything looked good (he IS head-down, which was a concern for a few weeks there), except that the baby's heartbeat was a little lower than it has previously been, and on the low end of average, so the doctor ordered a nonstress test (NST), where they monitor the baby's heartrate and movement for 20 minutes to make sure that the heartrate goes up when he moves and stays steady when he's not moving. Anyway, I had to sit there for 20 minutes listening to his little heart beat away and click on this button everytime he moved. He passed the test just fine, so the doctor said everything should be okay, but I have to keep a regular check on his kick count (how much he moves in an hour) and go straight to the hospital if it seems irregularly low to me... Of course, the odds are, given his good reaction to the NST, and the fact that he is generally very active, that all is just fine and he just happens to have a slightly lower-than-average heartrate (but still in a normal range), which could indicate that he's on the larger side. But my immediate reaction is to start thinking of all the worst possible scenarios and fear for his life and health and generally become paranoid... Which got me to thinking about a sermon I listened to Monday night that C.J. Mahaney preached during that Washington D.C. sniper stuff a couple years ago... the topic was fear (his church is in the D.C. area) and he was preaching from Psalm 27: "The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?...", as well as Matthew 10:26-33 where Jesus says we are not to fear those who kill the body, but rather the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell, and then goes on to talk about the Father caring for the sparrows and knowing the number of hairs on our head. His point about fearing because of not trusting God's complete sovereignty and providence in our lives was convicting enough before the doctor's appointment! I don't have time to outline all the really good and helpful points he makes in this sermon, but it's a good one, so if you have time, it's well worth a listen...

Also well worth a read on the subject of anxiety, this time specifically in relation to motherhood is this little article by Kristin Chesemore, which I first read sometime last week... Seems to me that God had my reading and listening to these resources well-timed with this last doctor's appointment!:-) So today I've been praying that I would not be finding my comfort in the fact that the medical tests seem to show that all is well, or that the last 24 hours of kick counts have shown him to be as active as ever, but rather in the fact that through Christ, I need no longer live in terror of him who can destroy not only the body but also the soul, and that God is completely sovereign over the life and health of this little boy in my womb, and is working all things for His glory and our good! "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the LORD forever, for the LORD GOD is an everlasting rock." (Isaiah 26: 3,4)

2005-10-23T20:40:00.000-04:00

By the way, the pumpkin on the previous post was masterfully carved by my husband last Reformation Day.

2005-10-23T20:31:00.000-04:00

Interesting discussion on Christians' involvement in Halloween going on here. Of course, if you want to add a comment, you'll have to have a Xanga account, but even if you don't, it's interesting reading (and you could always add a comment here).

2005-10-21T22:15:00.000-04:00

A note to those just joining martha_martha here at blogspot: I can't help but make references to previous things I've posted, but I regret to inform you that I don't intend to take the time to repost 9 months worth of posts here, so I will do my best to add links to any former blog entry necessary for your proper understanding of the current post and you can go back to my old xanga entries if you want to know what I'm talking about... thanks for your patience!

2005-10-21T22:08:00.000-04:00

Raisins, Crazy Kids and Puddle Pictures

Well, the raisin bread, delicious as it was and as much of it as I ate, seems to have done nothing for my weight gain, seeing as I actually lost a bit this week, so now we are trying oatmeal raisin cookies (can you tell I'm on a bit of a raisin kick lately?). Of course, it's possible that I don't even have a week left to gain anymore... not that I'm getting my hopes up. If the last two doctor's appointments are any indication, I'll probably end up going past my due date. Oh well... I'm not quite so anxious to have an early delivery this time around... I've got a crazy 19 month old to keep me plenty occupied. And she really has been crazy lately... She's really starting to babble (the kind where they string a whole bunch of sounds together with an intonation that suggests that you really should be able to understand them, but really you only catch one recognizable word, if that!) and now she wanders (or runs, depending on her energy level) around the house saying things only she can understand and then stopping to do a little dance... or shutting her eyes really tight, stretching out her arms and making odd little movements with her fingers with a weird grin on her face... or running into walls... or carting full Juicy Juice containers around the house and leaving them in the middle of the living room (while saying apuldidi "apple juice", which, if she's excited, comes out apuldididididididi). Yeah, she's a little bundle of energy... I'm starting to wonder if she hasn't stolen all of ours, seeing as Nathan's been sick this week and slept most of today, and I'm pretty tired myself...

On another note, I took my daily walk this morning in the park behind our house, which has been a construction zone the past few months, and for the first time in a long while, was able to do so without having to circumvent at least one truck or large hole in the ground... they just poured the final layer of asphalt on Wednesday, so it's still jet-black and smooth and last night's rain was sitting in shallow little puddles all over it... the sun was coming out just as I starting walking and reflecting off all those little pools of water... It's been quite sometime (maybe even since we lived in Toronto) since I've been walking on a surface smooth enough to give a decent reflection (if you ever saw the old path around Shelby Park, "smooth" was about the last word you'd use to describe it). I was remembering how I used to love to watch the ground when walking after a rain shower because I loved seeing all the "puddle pictures". And at this time of year, when the leaves are starting to change, I particularly enjoy looking at all the reds and oranges and yellows reflecting off the pavement. Today's puddle pictures were particularly beautiful because the colours of the leaves against a bright blue sky contrasted starkly with the black of the newly poured asphalt, and they brought Psalm 19 to mind: "The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above (as well as the one in the puddles) proclaims his handiwork..." May we be reminded of our great Creator when we observe His incredible handiwork in all the minute details of the world we live in...

Unfortunately, after a few laps of enjoying the puddles, the guys who had previously been spreading grass seed decided it was time to spread straw over the seeds, and the park rapidly began to smell like a barnyard... At which point, after a few minutes of griping to myself, it occurred to me that such a smell was the same which adorned our Saviour's first bed... "though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men..." (Philippians 2:5-10). May we be reminded of the depth to which our great Creator stooped to save us when we experience the filth and stench of the world we live in... And in both cases, be it beauty or ugliness that points us to Him, let us lift our hearts to praise our Creator, Sustainer and Deliverer...

2005-10-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are - the blogspot version of martha_martha. I've decided to post here for all those non-xanga users who want to leave comments (since I know you're all dying to!*winks and smiles*). Posts dating back to February of this year can be found here, and all new entries will be posted to both sites, so pick whichever one you like better and enjoy reading all about the daily life and random thoughts of martha_martha!

P.S. I just thought, since I had the option, that I'd put the dates in German. That's for you, Dad!