Flashback Friday

Three little indians. 

Thankful Thursday

Ok, so the title maybe a little cliché in the blogging world, but I like it anyway and I'm going to use it. Regardless, I think it is important to express our gratitude to God and to other people. There is so much to be thankful for, but it is often so much easier to be negative; grumbling when things don't go the way we planned. It takes effort and intentionality to focus on the simple joys and blessings in life. When you stop to look, there really is a lot to be thankful for! Here is the beginning of what I hope will be a long list of blessings and things that make me smile. Join me in the challenge, whether in blogging, journaling, prayer, or just your thoughts, to spend a little less time grumping and more time praising God for the numerous gifts He gives us each day.

1. A beautiful, warm spring day
2. Sewing with my sister
3. Amazing homemade arrabiata sauce
4. Game night with my older siblings and parents
5. A brother with a great sense of humor
6. The beauty of life: grass, deciduous trees, and flowers
7. A multitude of friends who encourage and support me in my decisions and endeavors
8. The unfathomable grace of our Lord and Savior

Writer's Block? Says Who?

My mind draws a blank. I can’t write. A word or two, my fingers stop. What do I say? What can I write? Nothing worth anything comes to mind. Medieval Christianity. What’s there to say? It was full of missionaries, conversions, saints, and the beginning of the reformed movement. How can I stretch all that into500 words? Impossible. Every thing I learned, every book I read, deliberately rushes from my mind just when I need them the most. 

I stare out the window watching the landscapers toss shovel after shovel full of dirt as they dig a hole for a new tree. They’re all Hispanic. How many of them are here legally? Four men carry an aspen to its resting place. It’s leaves quivering and quaking in the wind. Despite the gushing air, the rays of sun and clear blue sky beg to be enjoyed with a blanket, pillow, and book in the grass. A wet tongue and the soft sweet eyes of my companion bring my mind back to my confines within the walls, the computer screen staring at me with it’s blank expressionless face. The empty page begs for words. The soft background music attempts to help me focus, but with summer so close and the end of school only a paper away, how can I focus on anything? My siblings come home in a week; six days for one, eight for the other, but who keeps track of those minor details???

Ah yes, summer, I still have to decided what to allow to fill my days? I want to stay busy and productive, but I want to relax and enjoy the beautiful warm days of my favorite season. Gardening? Yes. Reading? Yes. Babysitting? Ehhh... maybe, but how much? Teaching swim lessons? Maybe. I still need to talk to Caity about that. Being a mother’s helper? Again, maybe. So many uncertainties. So little set in concrete. My graduation party, only nine days away. I have yet to figure all those details out either. *sigh* My thoughts drift back to the one thing keeping me from the freedom of being truly done. Enough of this. I was trying to clear writer’s block. Obviously that’s not my problem. My blank page suffers only from a lack of motivation and the right words. The desire to be elsewhere is my current enemy, not a lack of things to say. Once I start it will come. It always does. 

Imitating Augustine

I decided to post the draft of the paper I'm working on in hopes of getting some comments and feedback. The goal is to convey what Augustine's mother's life was like. I decided to write it from a different perspective than a normal essay and look at her life from Augustine's life and try to imitate his writing style. I'd to hear what you think!  =D

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Oh Lord my God, I cannot express in words the sorrow that fills my heart. I know You have ordained all things in Your Sovereign will, and yet I grieve at the loss of my dear and faithful mother. She devoted her life to You. So clearly do I remember her last request, the final words spoken by those dear sweet lips as she bid farewell to my brother and I, “It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you! All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you would remember me at the altar of the Lord” (Confessions book 9ch 11). So I come before You now, O God, and recount her goodness and Your mercy in my life. 

Even from an early age in her parents home she praised You and loved You with her whole heart. In her youth she sought to do Your will and felt remorse for her sins, something that I never understood until this last year. “It was You who taught her to obey her parents rather than they who taught her to obey You” (Confessions book 9 ch 9). As a child she was rebuked by a servant girl who caught her secretly sipping wine and called her a drunkard, my mother repented of her sin and promised never to drink again. My faithful mother never ceased to be a pious woman always seeking to do Your will. 

Though my father was a pagan Roman official and did not love You, my mother ever showed him Your love and patiently submitted to him. My father was known for his hot temper and frequent unfaithfulness to my mother. She forgave him daily and lived according to St. Peter’s wisdom to wives that they “be submissive to [their] own husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they, without a word, may be won by the conduct of their wives, when they observe [their] chaste conduct accompanied by fear” (1Peter 3:1). In truth it is because of my mother’s beautiful demonstration of faith and love that my father turned his heart to You in his last days. 

From my youth I paid no heed to my mother’s constant teaching as she shared the gospel with me. She longed that my heart should be tied to Thee, O Lord, and yet I enjoyed the worldly pleasures of sin and had no desire to submit to You. I longed, yes I burned with passion for all that was evil and wicked in my mother’s eyes, because it was wicked in Your eyes also. Though I chased after sin as a dog chases a hare, yet my precious mother in her faithfulness and love never gave me up for lost. This “chaste, devout, and prudent woman, a widow such as is close to Your heart, never ceased to pray at all hours and to offer You the tears she shed for me” (Confessions book 3 ch 11).  Oh, that there were more such devoted and loyal wives and mothers in this world! Oh, that all children might know the comfort and love such a mother can bestow! Oh, that I had recognized the beauty of her faith from my infancy! 

I grew weary of her presence as she followed me on my journey to Rome and then on to Milan, and even deceived her to keep her from pursuing me. Yet Lord of all Wisdom and Knowledge, You knew this would be the making of me and I would, upon reading Your word, be forced to see Your truth and fall on my knees in grief for my sin. When I ran to her to share my joy, “she was jubilant with triumph and glorified You...for she saw that You had granted her far more than she used to ask in her tearful prayers and plaintive lamentations” (Confessions book 8 ch 12). You had drawn me to Yourself as well as given me the desire to be fully in Your service. “You turned her sadness into rejoicing” (Psalm 29:12) 

It as with great grief and sorrow that only a short year after my confession, You called my mother to be with Thee. She found “no further pleasure in this life” for it would seem in her later days she lived only to see me turn to You. Great is Your faithfulness to me, O God! Your grace is unfathomable, that You would give me such a mother, such a jewel to watch out for me all her days. I will never cease to praise You for her life and lift her up before Your throne. Praise and glory be to Thee, O great and merciful God, for the life of my mother Monica. Amen.