Faith of a First Grader

On the way to dropping me off at an event I had to photograph, Leelah tells John and I that one of her classmates said to her:
"I know you are a Christian."
Leelah agreed.
This little boy comes from a family that is Jewish. Which if you truly know a Christian, we adore Jewish people. We pray for them. We support them. It hurts our hearts that they are so very persecuted. And it hurts our hearts that they do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah.

So the conversation continues between Leelah and her friend.
He says, "We do not believe in Jesus because we are Jewish."
Leelah, "I know that." We had lightly touched on this at our home, still telling her all the while- show him LOVE. Which we pray she is doing.

He goes on to say, "Jesus is a liar. He tells lies. He is not the Son of God."
Whoa.
Re-read the subject: First Grade.
 Look, I thought that Leelah's diagramming sentences and learning prepositional phrases was beyond first grade, let alone theology debates!

"That's not true." Leelah says, "Jesus is the King of the Jews and the Son of God." 

I asked her how it ended and John said something to the effect of, "How every convo a kid has they see a bird and run off or something."

Leelah kind of dropped it, but John and I explained that Jesus is a Jew and that He is the Son of God. They do not believe what we believe, Jewish people believe in a different book called the Torah.

If you are Jewish and are reading this, I love you. Seriously. Everything about you pulls at my heart. Please know I'm not sending my child to school to convert everyone she sees. My child is starting to recess preach, and I just pray that she speaks the truth in love. We don't hate anybody. She is bold and honestly, it scares me sometimes. I'm all like I LOVE PIZZA and she's all telling kids about Christ and, "It's okay if you don't believe, I still love you anyway!"

We further explained that Jewish people wanted God's Son to be a KING. Or as Cee-Lo would say, "A KANG!!!" With all the riches and glory and whatever else. I'm sure I'm insulting folks now.

But Jesus came in on a donkey. He is humility. His riches are far more than that of wealth we could conjure here on earth. He fulfilled all the prophecies.

 We explained to her that people are not going to believe in the Bible, but we stand on it ALWAYS AS TRUTH. Always.

And that story right there is just one of the reasons I go to Moms in Prayer International, formerly Moms in Touch each week!!!

Festivals are the Bestivals!

I love me some festivals, y'all.

I can eat Kettle Corn and never get full of it. Ever.

I can get all Viking on some meat on a stick.

I can spend $20 faster at a festival then you can yell CUTOFFSLEEVESHIRT!

Get a sun-migraine over my over-surgeried left eye all for the fun of it! 

Oh and I love seeing my child have fun and stuff too.
Evidenciary (that is a word, right?) Support of my parenting skills:

John was at his PE Exam Test course review- can you tell I don't know what to call it- thingy this past weekend- the LAST ONE. So Lbugs and I decided to be wild and crazy and hit Old Town Katy's Rice Harvest Festival up.

We tried to go the weekend before, but Silly Rabbit- that was only the parade, which we were too late for. Have you noticed I keep adding commas and dashes because I placed out of English and have forgotten grammar stuff.

Leelah had a fantastic time! I had to shield her vision from some emergency sitch over by the corn stand where a man was on a gurney possibly bleeding to death, but other than that it was a blast. Poor guy. Hope he turned out okay...

Leelah about had the EMT's come and rescue her when she saw that "Magical Pony" whose hair was painted blue! She said it was the best thing that has ever happened to her ever.

Dang it, if I was little and I got to ride a blue-haired-pony, I'd have a full-on-joy-fit too!!!

Spetaphorically Meaking

I'm trying my hand at metaphors today. 

For the past couple of days I have lost my focus. Wait, I rarely have real, honest to goodness focus on account of the ol' eyeball sitch; what I'm really talking about is my mental scope being off.

Lately, I've received some opposition on my life course. Some of it has been blatant, so easy to trip over. Like a huge buffalo that just upped and got in my path. Kind of like that chick that totally walked in my lane during my 8th grade year when I was just starting to get the hang of hurdles and I saw her, freaked out, and fell onto the next hurdle. Durhhhya!!!!

The huge buffalo situation was handled with prayer and once my hands stopped shaking, a prayed-over email. The non-hurdle sitch was handled with hurt pride and me never ever hurdling again.

And I've had some other unexpected race stoppers.
The other type of opposition really, really took me off the track.
 It was like stopping to smell a beautiful bunch of flowers and taking a look at them up close- i.e. lose focus on the course ahead. And then outta those gorgeous bulbs comes OUCH a bee to sting the crud outta my hand. And this bee I didn't even throw a fry at! (I'm looking at your fourth grade memory...)

I mean they were flowers. I thought I had a chance to enjoy and a moment to relish. Nope. The enjoyment was supposed to come from tortoiseing the trail and maintaining a steady pace.

Does anyone relate to this?

I mean, I'm all about smelling the roses when a major life tragedy has happened and God gives me a time out.

But apparently this was  not the time to lose focus.

And look when it comes to personality types, I'm as Sanguine as you can get- confused? Read The Treasure Tree by Dr. John Trent.
It means, I look for the fun/positive/happyhappyjoyjoy time in everything. I kind of forgot where I was going with that. See! Those future sentences weren't fun enough for me to pay attention!

How do I run? I just keep my focus on God. Not on trying to please man, thing, person's schedule, kid's schedule. If I keep my focus on him by prayer and reading His Word, then I will inevitably please the ones He puts in my path. And probably anger my hecklers. But who cares?

What is at the finish line? For me Heaven, closeness with Jesus. A completed earth-job. And Kingdom business.

"Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.." - Hebrews 12:1

Moms Use the Thumper Rule...

I'm currently in the process of making Apple Butter right now. It's going to be slow cooking for another 12 hrs. My house smells almost perfect. If only for the lingering Pot Roast aroma, it would be perfect smelling. I have a very high standard for smells. Given that I have the vision of a bat who wears glasses, smells are a big deal to me. I also have amazing hound dog ears. Again, see reference to corrected-vision bat as to why.

Can I tell you the words I'm loving right now?
Recompense. Thanks a lot Avengers!
and
Compromised.
As in, "We would have had our home smelling perfect, but due to the Pot Roast from last night's eve the smell has been compromised."

But seriously, aren't you jealous that I'm making Apple Butter? I'm jealous of myself.

It's a wintry 57 degrees in Katy, Texas y'all! Or it twas about an hour ago.

Yesterday I had the honor and joy of teaching 60 little girls (a few were out) about them being God's wonderful workmanship. I know I can't shut up about it.

So far in Lovely Girls Club we've gone over the following verses:
Matthew 5:16: (Lovely Theme)
"Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
Matthew: 7:12: (Lovely Manners)
“In everything, therefore, ^[a]treat people the same way you want ^[b]them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets."
Proverbs 31:10: (Lovely Tea Party)
"An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels." (We focused on the second part of this verse).
And special thanks to my near and dear friend on her beautiful lesson and book reading for this special event! 
Psalm 139:14: (Lovely Beauty- Differences are Beautiful)
"I will give thanks to You, for ^[a]I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well." 

So for our lesson on Lovely Beauty, I had to tell the girls what was up. 
I showed them a bouquet of flowers- all mixed flowers mind you. I asked them why they thought the flowers were beautiful. Here are a couple of their answers:
"Because they are colorful."
"They are all different colors."
"Because God made them!"
"Because they smell good!"- Pretty sure that was my child...

I shared with them that they are God's flowers and to have a beautiful bouquet you need different flowers! One Little Lovely even said: "We are all individuals!" I almost died from joy at that point. And we talked about rainbows. I mean, does it get any more beautiful than little girls talking about rainbows?? No. So I asked them, "Does God make only blue rainbows??" NO! 

And then I told them that they are God's artwork. That He is an artist. That His works are marvelous masterpieces. Because they are. That they are not supposed to go into an art museum and complain to an artist, "Oh you didn't make that quite right!" 

I understand that this is simplistic. But can we just be a little simplistic sometimes? Our little girls are His masterpieces- and so are you Moms. That's right, I'm talking to you mothers. Whoa, that sounded explicit.

I'm over-reading again, doing 2 Bible Studies and reading 5 Converstations You Must Have with Your Daughter by Vicki Courtney. It brings up how we as moms have a huge voice in our daughter's self worth internal tapes/CDs/MP3's.  

Let me break it down right quick to you:
 DON'T DISS YOURSELF IN FRONT OF YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!! YOU ARE DISSING GOD'S WORKMANSHIP. And have we not just covered that God is an artist- scratch it- THE ARTIST. So don't be dissin' His pieces. Yes, you are His Work, His Piece, His Little Lovely. 
I'm going to say it straight to your and consequently my own face-
You are being a hypocrite if you are telling your daughter how lovely she is made and then go on to verbally assault your own looks in front of her. Or behind her back. Just stop it. 

You can't tell the artist he didn't craft his art right. 

And how's this for simplistic- remember Bambi? 
"If you can't say something nice (about yourself), don't say nothin' at all." -- Thumper.