Gathering

Don't give up on gathering, 

face-to-face,

to comfort each other,

to pray with & for each other,

to sharpen each other, &

to motivate each other to love & do good.

This is even more important 

as you see The Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:24-25

(Vicki's paraphrase based on the original Greek)

(feel free to look up this verse in the translation of your choice)

And is The Day not approaching, people?

For me, this is the standard for what church is. It's not a specific day or time or style of service. It's not programs or check lists or pot lucks.  (Although...who doesn't love a good pot luck?)  It's not a building or how it's decorated or how many people happen to be in the room.  It's certainly not about a denomination.

The homeschool community we are a part of (Classical Conversations) has a principle that if you can't teach something using a stick in the dirt, you're making it too complicated.  That's not to say that using other teaching tools isn't effective, it's just not necessary.

In that same spirit, the criteria for what constitutes a church meeting is quite simple.  (We tend to make things too complicated, don't we?)  So whether the church is meeting on Sunday morning in a sanctuary or on Tuesday night around your dinner table, this is the standard.

When things start feeling complicated, I think about developing countries.  One thing my husband and I have talked about through the years when it comes to the essentials of faith and the basics of how church is done is...if it doesn't work in a developing country, it doesn't work.  The Bible wasn't written only for North American Christians.  Shocking, right?   Many people we serve in developing countries don't really care what time it is or even what day it is.  They don't do check lists or pot lucks.  What buildings? What decorations? You might have a few people under a tree or thousands in a field.  But they could teach us all a thing or two about comforting each other, prayer, sharpening, loving & doing good every chance you get.

If I don't walk away from a church gathering feeling comforted, prayed over, sharpened & motivated to love better & do good things, I feel like my time has been wasted.  If I walk away without comforting, praying with or for somebody else or inspiring somebody else to love better & do good things, I feel like I've wasted their time & my spiritual gifts.

We all get dissatisfied & burned out with attending church.  Not admitting to this is like a married couple saying, "We never fight."  Denying that both statements are true is dishonest & unhealthy. You know why we get dissatisfied & fight?  Because churches and marriages are made up of imperfect, individual human beings. The only remedy for that is operating in the Spirit, which is an almost lost art of intentional, supernatural discipline & surrender.  This will always be true on earth.

When I get in this spot with church, this verse always comes to me.  This is what it all boils down to. If I'm struggling with wanting to gather with the church, it's probably because I'm not focusing on these basics (or they aren't) and we're too wrapped up in periphery.  

Today, I challenge you to find a group of people (at least 1 or 2 others) to gather with as often as you can, eyeball-to-eyeball, who comforts you, sharpens you spiritually, prays for you & motivates you to love & do good. And when you find them, comfort them, sharpen them, pray for them & motivate them to love & to do good.  That's it.  Because life is coming at us fast...and so is The Day.

Have a restful Sunday, everybody.  And don't give up...

Back To School

And yet begins another school year.  This will be our 19th consecutive year of homeschooling. Some years, I have loved it; other years, I have wanted to resign from my teaching position.  There have been years that we also had a child in private and public school, but we've homeschooled at least one child every year since 1995.

No matter how you choose to educate your children, here's to another year full of promise.  Here's to another year of your child's growth into a beautiful young adult.  Here's to getting another year closer to the next chapter of your life that will not include the daily overseeing of children.  (This is both sad and exciting, if you're like me.)

Lean into it.  You're gonna miss this.

Car rides into town

Trips to the library

Praying over all the parents, kids & teachers as we return to school routines.  May you have a blessed year!

Little House On The Mountain - Part 1

When I first saw our current house, I knew I was home.  (Even though it would take me months to admit that.)  It was tiny but quaint in the middle of a gorgeous, peaceful setting in the Ozarks.

National Park trail minutes from our house.

Just past our driveway, descending into the valley.

Wild elk herds roam freely less than 10 minutes from our house.

Hay in our field.

I loved the simple white, the tin roof, the native fieldstone.  Nothing fancy.  

Our property was actually owned by our friends Scotty & D'Wana Villines at the time (it had been in his family for generations...and I will say here...they had nothing to do with any of the construction of the house.  ha!)  I remember removing my sun glasses to get a better look and D'Wana  saying, "You haven't seen the inside.  It's not fabulous."

 

D'Wana & Me

Our "local" coffee shop...45 minutes up the mountain.  It's since closed and I deeply mourn these vintage red chairs.

I didn't see the inside of the house that day, as we were on our way to another of the Villines family homes nearby on the mountain to paint interior walls in preparation for Scotty & D'Wana to move in.  In fact, I didn't see the inside of the little house until after we bought it.  We didn't buy the place for the house, we bought it for the land.  I knew we'd deal with whatever we found inside.

As I would learn later, D'Wana's "not fabulous" comment was no exaggeration.  It may not be immediately obvious in the pics, but trust me, we would have had to fix it up just to use it as a hunting cabin.  To make it livable as our family home on a shoestring budget with zero construction skills in a remote place in the winter was daunting.

This is the faux tile linoleum that was in every room.  This happens to be the kitchen.

Standing in the front door, looking straight into the laundry hallway.  To the left, the kitchen.  To the right, the living room.

At least it was clean & there were new towels.

The original house was about 800 square feet or less, the size of a small apartment.  There was one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room/kitchen combination and a "laundry hallway" in the middle of the house.  There were three closets in the entire house.  None of them was a walk-in.  One was an unfinished water heater closet with no door.  One was a broom closet.  One was a bedroom closet with no door.  So we left most things in storage and basically lived out of a suitcase.  The only interior doors were on the broom closet (which we lost before we moved in, more on that later) and the bathroom.

The view from just inside the front door...laundry hallway to the left, bedroom with no door on the right.

Yes, that is a flyswatter hanging above the floor heater.  Handy and homey.

You could stand in the front doorway and see into every room, except the bathroom.  The walls had no texture on them. High gloss paint (in two colors) had been sponge-painted directly onto drywall.  It was a sight to behold.  The floors were old linoleum throughout the house that was peeling up at the corners.  There was no central heat or air, just a gas floor heater and a window unit in the living room.  All of the outlets were installed upside down.  The ceiling was cafeteria-style ceiling tiles.

The house had never been lived in full-time.  We were told it was only built so that city water could be run to the property.  The house served as a landing place for over twenty years for family members and friends who were between homes or just starting out.  Many people in our area have "camped out" temporarily in this house at one time or another while waiting for their house to be built or remodeled or to get on their feet.  Still, just about every aspect of the construction was questionable and not-to-code because it was never meant to be anyone's full-time home.  For months, I watched professionals shake their heads the first time they would come to repair pipes or lines or construction.

We are a family of five.  At the time, our oldest son had graduated from high school and was still living in Texas; our two at home were fifteen and nine.  *The first year, our daughter slept on the couch and our teenage son slept on an air-up mattress on the kitchen floor.  He would roll it up in the mornings and roll it out at night.  Yes, it got very old.  When my husband was away on business trips, the treat for my daughter was to sleep on the real bed with me and our son got the couch.  To give ourselves a break from clostrophobia, we'd sit out on one of the porches and take in the mountain views.  [Put another dime in the therapy jar.]

*more later on why it took over a year to get traction on the remodel 

Kit & Cali

These rural Texas ranch dogs were so happy to be in the cooler temps with soft, cool grass after surviving two years of extreme drought in Texas.

Front Porch Therapy...love the view of Scotty & D'Wana's pond just beyond the pine trees...

Capo & Kit...think happy thoughts

Did I mention, we homeschool?  So we didn't even get a break during the weekdays.  We were always. together. in. a. small. space.  An hour from town.

Living in such close quarters with no privacy for so long teaches you a lot about yourself and your family.  I wouldn't want to go back to living on top of each other in 800 square feet while remodeling  said square footage, but I will say, the experience helped me hone some decorating skills & philosophies, to which I'll dedicate some future posts.

To be continued...