Reaching your Child's Heart with a Letter Journal

My son, Ezra, asked me about a small leather bound notebook he found on our bookshelf. Opening it up, I said, "this is the book I started writing for you when you were little. It's all about you." His eyes widened with curiosity. I began reading it to him and together we laughed at the silly stories and sweet memories in it's pages. He left my room that morning feeling a few inches taller and just a little more loved than when he walked in.

I started keeping a little notebook with letters to each of my babies when they were born. I wanted to remember the small things about their quirks and personalities that I feared I might forget someday. I wanted to speak life and encouragement into them before they were even old enough to read it. I wanted it to be a powerful tool to help them know themselves and understand my heart for them. I started with the goal of writing a few times a month, but sometimes months went by with no entries. The busy life of a mom with young children, didn't always lend itself to writing, but I tried to at least write in it each year on their birthday. I'm so thankful that I have these journals today to share with my children and continue writing in.

I don't know where I got the idea for a letter journal or if it came to me on my own, but the simplicity is that all you need is a sturdy small notebook and a few minutes once and a while to write. It doesn't have to be flowery or polished, or even super thought out. Just speaking your heart and telling stories is meaningful enough. Keeping the journals close by in a night stand or on your desk will help remind you to write in them. It's never too late to start a letter journal; I was reminded recently how even my teenage girls need their mom's encouraging and loving words.

Here's an excerpt from my journal to Ezra:

Dear Ezra,

My how time flies! You are 4 years old, but in so many ways you still want to be my little baby. You love to be held, carried, and cuddled. In fact, you may be the reason my back is sore-from carrying you around! Yet you are full of energy! I see you running around playing wildly enjoying your trucks, cars, and your new tricycle. I see your determination and leadership abilities blossoming. You love to sleep with your monkey and blanket and preferably in bed with mommy and daddy! You crave individual attention and sometimes that is hard to get in a family of 7 right? I hope that we give you all that you need. You are so funny with your baby brother Caleb. When he was a year old you said, "Could we take him back and get a different baby?" You like to do "school" and you write the letter "E" on everything. You love dad's jeep, but you sometimes ask if dad can get a blue truck instead. You are so much fun Ezra, and I can't wait to see how God is going to shape you and mold you and use you for his glory and kingdom here. We pray that you will love the Lord wholeheartedly and serve him your whole life. 

love, Mom

Carrying my little boy when he really was too big to be carried.

His younger brother's (who didn't get carried as much as a result) head by his foot.

Four Tips for Visiting a Nursing Home with your Child

When I was in college, my sorority had a nursing home visitation. Many of the girls enjoyed this time tremendously, and I remember one of them loved older people and was studying geriatrics, intending to be a nursing home activities director. I certainly didn't understand the appeal, and the sights and smells of the nursing home convinced me it was something I'd rather not be a part of. Fast forward 25 years, and here I am working part-time in our local nursing home as a nursing assistant, and popping in to visit the residents with my children on days off. I want my children to start now to feel comfortable and enjoy these older people. And I want them to be aware of the great opportunity we have as a society to care for the elderly who are lonely, sick, or suffering. I'd love to see more children visiting our residents, and so here are 4 tips for visiting a nursing home with your child.

1. Start early. While an ideal age for children to visit nursing homes and interact with conversations with residents might be between 4th-8th grade, babies and toddlers can also bring a special joy to the elderly. Very young children may be a bit timid or scared the first visit, and that is okay. Hold your child gently, be relaxed and cheerful with residents and your child will gradually become more comfortable. It's never too late, but the earlier you begin taking your child to visit the nursing home, the more comfortable they will feel about it as they grow up.

2. Be brief, but go often: I have often walked through the nursing home with my children greeting and visiting with 3-4 residents in as little as 10-15 minutes. If there is a nursing home on your route home from school, work, church, or sports practice, pop in and say hi to the residents! They love it! Imagine being stuck in the same boring building day after day after day. A brief interaction with a new smiling face can break the monotony. Good times to visit are an hour or so before meal times when residents are up and waiting to be wheeled into the dining room.

3. Bring small gifts to pass out: It's not necessary every time, but it can take the awkwardness out of walking up to complete strangers if a child has a little homemade heart or card or flower to give. Remember that you are entering someone's home when you enter their room (always knock and ask permission to enter). Your little gift will be a reminder of your visit after you leave. I don't really recommend bringing cookies or food, as some residents may be on special soft diets, unless you clear it with the nurse ahead of time.

4. Thank the staff: Thank the nurses and aids as you see them for the job that they are doing with the residents. For some residents who are lonely and receive no visitors, the staff become like family. They play a significant role in the lives of their residents and some encouragement from you can uplift them as well. Be brief as staff are usually quite busy.

Visiting a nursing home can be a fun experience for you and your children. It may have been the fact that the residents marveled at how incredibly handsome he was, but after our first visit, my middle son said, "That was awesome! We should totally do that more often!"

Have you visited a nursing home with your children? How was the experience and what ideas might you add to this list?

A New Mom's Resolution

Nobody warned me what becoming a mother for the first time would be like. Nobody prepared me for the complete shattering and remaking of my heart that would take place. Nobody revealed ahead of time how completely over the moon exhausted with emotion I would be. Like those scenes in movies that come out of nowhere when somebody is walking across the street and suddently gets run over by a bus, motherhood hit me hard. I didn't know the capacity of my heart until that moment when my little girl was placed in my arms. If someone had tried to describe it to me, they never would have succeeded. This marvelous teeny tiny gift of a person captured me with her every yawn and hiccup. 

A few weeks into motherhood, still overwhelmed yet so happy in love, a surprising and almost devastating thought occurred to me. My hopes and dreams were wrapped up in raising this precious gift to love Jesus. But what if some day she didn't? What if she grew up, chose a different path, rejected the God I desperately loved and who gave her to me? What if she rejected me as well? I'd heard it said, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." But I knew from my seminary days that the statement was a principle, not a promise. And that while I might do everything in my power to show her the way to Christ, she may still choose to reject my faith or never make it her own. 

That's when I made a clear decision. I would love this child UNCONDITIONALLY throughout her entire life. Through the highs and lows, through temper tantrums, sleepless nights, middle school attitudes, and teenage drama, through disappointments and hardships. Loving unconditionally wouldn't mean that I would not discipline her. I knew there would be plenty of opportunities for training along the way. Unconditional love meant that I would always love her for her, and not for how she treated or felt about me or the God I fervently hoped to introduce her to one day. Today, my little baby girl is almost 17. She's loving Jesus and she's pretty okay with me too most of the time. Have I always been the perfect mom, no. Has she always been the perfect daughter? While I'd love to say yes, growing up requires some shaping along the way. But this solid base of commitment to unconditional love has been key to our relationship, and so necessary to passing on the heart of Jesus to all of my children. My baby girl is in the process of becoming an independent adult. We're not perfect, but we're off to a good start. I'll always love you Anna!  

First College Visit

Just yesterday, I was dancing in the kitchen and bouncing my baby girl in my arms to Shania Twain's "Feel like a Woman" and today we embarked on our first college visit.

Tonight I told her: "Stay home Pumpkin! Just don't go to college!"

She just looked at me and laughed. For some reason, I don't think she agrees with me.

The End.

The unfortunate face of a girl determined
to leave her mother and fly to college!

Where's the Bacon?

We've successfully completed two whole days of school so far this year and nobody has cried yet. There might have been a little screaming, but no crying. This morning, we nuked some bacon and I stirred up some eggs, then added a little parsley from the front porch: an amazingly quick breakfast, which made me as happy as wearing this shirt does.

Just in case you can't read it, here's a close-up:

One of the more disappointing moments of my life was when I stumbled across an article on Facebook about how eating bacon causes cancer. After fretting over this for a few days, I decided that eating healthy is a thing because we are afraid of dying. And since I am just not that afraid of dying, I can eat all bacon I want! (Okay good health, living to see my grandkids, etc, etc, etc, I'll cut down on the bacon....)

I have one child who is extremely distractible when we are trying to do school, and to make the school room a little "quieter" we installed this curtain:

What's that? You'd like to see what's behind the curtain?

Pay no attention to the boy behind the curtain...

That's a whole lot of distraction covered up right there, and because I was embarrassed to post it in color since it looks so messy, I put it in black and white. Very historical appearing now.

All these pics of the room and finally one of the kids on the first day of school because that's what you do on the first day of school. I was so glad to start back to school finally! Not because they will be gone all day, because, lucky for me, they homeschool, but because we have structure and schedule in our lives again and I need that. Actually, now that I think about it, one of them IS going to public school this year, but he is my least favorite so....

Come on guys, I was kidding about Micah being my least favorite......he's actually my favorite.

Fashionrut Funday Monday: It's Anthropologie baby...maybe!

It's been a while since I have published a fashionrut post, and for those of you who have desperately missed my fabulous thrift store finds, fashionrut is baaaaaacccccckkkkkk!

I could say that I've been too busy watching the Olympics, but that would be a lie. Unfortunately, while four years ago I was all, ''Hey kids we HAVE to watch this!" this year, it's almost totally passed us by. Except tonight we turned it on briefly and saw a 41-year-old, Oksana, from Uzbekistan on the vault.

Guys, the first day of school starts tomorrow for us! I'm so excited! And after the kids saw their little piles of cute school supplies, they are getting excited too. I expect that to last about 27 minutes into the schedule for tomorrow, but we'll see. It is the first day of school, but I'm not planning to wear this great new dress I bought at.....guess where..... the Goodwill for $3. No surprise there! I don't recognize the brand, but I decided that I'll go ahead and say it's from Anthropologie because when you see it......totally, right?!

Without further ado:

This summer has been the summer of working late shifts at the nursing home, and sleeping in like EVERY day, so getting up for church this morning and having time to fix my hair just didn't happen, hence the ponytail. The teal bead necklace is from Noonday, a great place to become a world changer by supporting third world entrepreneurs, so definitely check them out. I really shouldn't wear a dress this short because of my knobby knees. I promise, I'm not growing potatoes under those knees, they've been that way my whole life. And here is another pic of the dress, where I am pretending to love my dog.

Dog lovers, don't be hatin'. I got this dog for my three little boys who I happen to love enough to let them have a dog. And she house trained in like 2 weeks, so she's okay in my book. That's about as affectionate as I get when it comes to an animal.

Three things every Mom wants for Mother's Day

What does every mom want for Mother's Day? You mean besides.....

a long UNINTERRUPTED nap....
a few hours to HERSELF...
a hot delicious MEAL someone ELSE prepared for her.....

I'm willing to bet my minivan that 95% of moms just want the above three things for Mother's Day. And since those three things are basically FREE to give her (and if you wanna keep mama happy you best get those three little things taken care of first) let's look at a gift just about any mom would also love!

How about a new handbag from JOYN?! It's more than a handbag it's....

a chance to give back dignity to the disrespected,

a chance to provide an artisan living in India the tools to pull themselves out of poverty,

a chance to help those dealing with hunger, abuse, leprosy, and drug addiction, and connect them with education and skills and access to a world market,

a chance to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God!

Sounds like a fab gift idea to me!

If you are looking for a gift for mom, and know that she would love to be a part of all of the above, check out the bags from JOYN! Based in Rajpur, India, JOYN employs over 200 individuals, many of them disabled or rescued off the streets, who now have a future and a hope.

I attended a JOYN's warehouse sale in our city this past weekend, and was able to get these beauties as gifts for several of my people! These are just some of the smaller ones. There are lots more on their website here. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the block printed fabrics and designs!

Check out what JOYN does to change lives in India below!

And in case you need to know what NOT to do for your mom or wife on Mother's Day watch this:

Well there you have it, what every mom wants and doesn't want this Mother's Day!

If you know of other organizations like JOYN and Noonday who are providing employment, hope, and a future for individuals rising out of poverty, please comment below with links to their websites!