Values and Priorities

Yesterday morning Jim sent me a link to an article he had read, and it bothered me all day.  It's about priorities, and here is the part that got to me:

"If an executive has their Blackberry at his kid’s ballgame because work it still a priority, then how much does he value the fleeting time he has to watch his kids grow up?

If the urgent always takes priority over the important, then how much do we value the important over the urgent?

If indeed we value things that we are not prioritizing or prioritizing things we do not value as much, then perhaps it is time to realign our priorities..."

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I have been thinking a lot about the time I spend crafting and decorating and blogging, and I have been asking myself a lot of questions:  Why do those things matter to me?  Is it okay to spend time on them?  Does God approve of this use of my time?  Can I justify making a room look pretty when there are people all over the world who don't have clean clothes to wear or food to eat?

And what about my kids?  Are they getting the best of me?

At the beginning of the year we signed up to sponsor two children through Compassion and World Vision.  And as I have thought about their lives and their needs, I have felt more and more guilty about my own life.  I feel guilty for having so much, for pursuing beauty when it is so inconsequential, for putting my time and energy into things that don't really matter (like, big-picture matter).   And yet I know that guilt and shame are not of our Father.  I know that the enemy is taking my good thoughts and using them to make me feel bad about who I am.  He starts distorting things so that I feel bad about having food to eat and beautiful clothes to wear and the fact that my kids have toys...  And pretty soon I even feel guilty for living in an affluent country.


I won't let Satan win.  After weeks of grappling with these thoughts and mulling them over all day yesterday, here is where I have landed on these issues:

- God made me this way.  I have an eye for aesthetics and a passion for the fun, creative, and crafty.  I can choose to embrace or deny these things, but they're still a part of who I am.  I can use my skills to bless friends and family with homemade gifts and baby showers and comfortable, safe spaces, or I can use those skills to seek fame and fortune, in which case I will be deeply disappointed.

- God made this world beautiful just because He could.  Several people have reminded me of this in the last few days, and I appreciate the reminder.  I have always been obsessed with trees (ob.sessed.) and I love to include them in my decorating because they make me think of my favorite Designer.  He appreciates beauty and is the source of all creativity.  Beauty isn't bad... God MADE everything beautiful!

- My kids are not being cheated.  I work hard to make sure that's true.  Sometimes I get wrapped up in a project too much and regret that I didn't spend more quality time with them, but that is true for every mom.  I am aware of my selfish tendencies and set boundaries so that the kids do not suffer too often.  And the very fact that a simple article on priorities could make me cry shows that I care deeply and my kids are going to be okay.

Honoring the Lord is what I value most in this life.  I'm going to look harder at the way I spend my time and make sure that it is also my top priority.

A Personal Dictionary

Now that Brennan is a reader, he also wants to be a writer.  The other day he wanted to write a letter to his daddy.  He worked sooo hard on it, but it really frustrated him that he couldn't spell everything right.  He did not like guessing at how words were spelled.

Enter the Writer's Dictionary.

For teachers, this is not a new concept.  But if you aren't a teacher (and don't have a ton of them in your family, like we do), you may not have ever seen this before. 

We took a regular composition notebook, created tabs with cardstock, and made it cute. 

Now, when Brennan wants to know how to spell a word (that can't be sounded out easily and phonetically), we add it to his dictionary.  We started the dictionary with words he uses frequently like "want" and "love" and "friend," but we will constantly be adding to it. 

In teacher terms, these are "high frequency words," but we're also adding personal words or words that Brennan will want to reference more often.  Now the key will be convincing him that we don't have to add every word he can think of.

Yesterday Brennan wrote a letter to one of our sponsored children, Dalton.  He made an elaborate sticker picture and wrote on the back, "Dear Dalton, I am happy to be your new friend and I made this picture for you.  Love, Brennan."

Everything was spelled perfectly, which doesn't really matter when you're four years old and just learning, but Brennan thinks it does.

He was so proud.  And I'm excited to see him learn to be a great speller and confident writer!

Taking a Family Photo

It never ceases to amaze me how hard it can be to take a family photo.  It's hard enough to take a good picture of one child!  Getting everyone to look at the camera with a pleasant look on their face is quite a feat. 

A few days ago we tried to get a family photo to send to two kids we signed up to sponsor through Compassion and World Vision.  We just signed up to sponsor on January 1st, and these were our first letters to introduce ourselves, so we really wanted a family photo instead of separate shots of each member of the family.  We also wanted the picture to be as current as possible because it can sometimes take weeks or even months for a sponsored child to receive a letter, and Cora will look completely different in a few months. 

(Take these photos, for example.  They were taken just three months ago, and Cora already looks completely different!)

Since we don't have a live-in professional photographer, we resorted to setting the camera on the coffee table and using the automatic setting.  It was interesting.  Picture this: "Okay, grab Cora.  Brennan sit there.  No, there.  Hurry, Jim!  Okay, smile!  Nope, we didn't get it... Let's try again.  Where did Cora go?" 

We never did get a "perfect" photo, but all in all, we got a few good shots and at least our sponsored kids will know what we look like.

We pray that Dalton and Mayerli will know we already love them and pray for them, and we are excited to start this journey of sponsorship!!