Simplicity Parenting

So after a new friend of mine in Georgia highly recommended it, I picked up this book.

With every page I read, it's like my spirit exhales and whispers

This.  This is what you've been searching for.  This is what you're missing in your life.  Greater Simplicity.

The best year we had as a family was the year our three youngest were homeschooling.  It wasn't because of the homeschooling...it was because homeschooling gave us time to be together for the little things, sometimes the best things, that get set aside in favor of the must-be-dones.  There simply isn't time to do it all with the current amount of things in our lives...both activities and things.

The book is a treatise to reclaiming childhood.  Its a beautiful weave of inspiration and practical how to.  Love, love, love.

This is not a book about homeschooling, to be clear.  In fact, the author assumes that he's writing to parents of kids in today's pubic schools.  In fact, it's precisely because kids are expected to do so much more in school than in recent years that they need more time to do more with less at home.  Fewer toys.  Fewer things that buzz and glow.  Fewer things that need to be charged.  Fewer outtings.  Fewer enrichment activities.  Fewer choices.  More childhood. More time to imagine.  More time to create. More time to dream.

To follow this book means to be counter-cultural.  That scares me a bit.  Because I fear the disapproval of man too much.  But my heart just knows that this is what my crew needs.

And I'm thinking....you might just love to exhale, too!

Here's a link to the author sharing his heart for reclaiming childhood.
Here's a link to the author speaking briefly about the needs of boys.  GREAT stuff.

Easter 2015

Easter is one of the best days of the year.  No contest.  We have the most incredible reason to pause and celebrate a world-altering, life-changing event...and we do it with trumpets!  and flowers!  and chocolate bunnies!

There are egg hunts and choirs singing and white cloths on altars.  There are smiles and feasts and baskets with treats.  So many opportunities to notice and thank God for NEW LIFE.

This morning, I helped my girls dress in their new Easter dresses and my heart rejoiced as I remembered that just a few hours away

Someone was dressing the most beautiful little baby girl in her first Easter dress.  How I wish I could show you the picture!  Loved already, treasured and wanted, this little one took up residence in the home of Randall's brother's family just days ago.  She came to them through the foster care system with a story that makes you want to shed tears and scream why all at the same time.

But this weekend she is being clothed.

It's awfully like Christ and us, isn't it?  Christ's death and resurrection literally cover over our nothingness and clothe us with His holiness.  His splendor.

The Chinese character for the word righteousness literally means "lamb over me." Amen.

And this precious little one who is now being loved?  She's hearing the name of Jesus.  The Lamb OVER her.  The Lamb FOR her.

Easter and all its beauty?  It shouts HOPE. It shouts PROMISE.  And isn't that just what this baby girl needs?  Hope and a Promise that she can TRUST?  Isn't that all we need, too? 

We don't know what the days ahead hold for the littlest lamb, but we know that God knows.  He already SEES.  He's got it covered.