Emma

Emma tends to approach things differently than Will and Lauren do. She's much more likely to fly off the handle, and she does have a tendency to be somewhat pessimistic. She also has a different approach to her school work. Every Monday, she comes home from school with her homework for the week. This includes a list of spelling words that she needs to practice by putting each one into a sentence. For some reason, Emma feels that she needs to be as creative as possible with this work. One of my personal favourites was when she had to use the word tree in a sentence. I believe she wrote:

You are beautiful, oh thou my tree.

I don't have it in front of me to provide you with her exact spelling of beautiful, but you can use your imagination. Recently she had the word right in her list of spelling words. This was her sentence:

Could you please put this on the table on the right? No your other right.

Funny, no? She's a funny, quirky little kid who sometimes sounds like an 80-year-old lady. She told me a little while ago that she enjoyed singing in her choir at church because it "just blessed her heart". She's also quite the drama queen and in fact had a very heartfelt sobfest tonight because she just felt terrible about how mean she is to Lauren and Will sometimes. There may have been more to it, since I do recall hearing something about her "heart breaking into a million little pieces", but I have to admit that I was a little distracted by her pink pajamas, which appropriately had the word DIVA printed across her chest in cute purple letters.

Where does this come from, I wonder. Darren is a very even keel kind of person, and Will and Lauren seem to be very much that way too. I am somewhat less that way, but I definitely don't have Emma's flare for the dramatic. Her recent reaction when she wasn't allowed to take part in Communion was priceless.

I don't mean to imply that Emma is some kind of wild woman. Darren has always said that she's a character. And she's really very sweet and funny. I'm just wondering where it goes from here. What are we in for down the road, when PMS gets factored in? Yikes. At some point we should probably add hormonal to her list of spelling words.

Sparrows

We went to the funeral for Darren's Uncle Hugh this week. I don't know what your expectations are when you attend a funeral, but the last thing that I expected was that God would speak to me there. I figured that we would go and hear some wonderful things said about Uncle Hugh, because he was such a great man, and then we would visit a bit with family and express our sadness to Auntie Helen and that would basically be it. But I was wrong.

I went to the funeral with a heavy heart. It had been a tough couple of days because Darren had gotten some pretty crappy news about his job, and I was really, really discouraged. And frustrated. I had boo-hooed on a friend's shoulder the night before and told her that quite frankly, I wasn't really sure that God even cared enough about us or our problem to do anything about it. My friend reminded me about the scripture that talks about how God cares for the sparrows, and I grudgingly admitted that she was right. But still.

So off we went to the funeral. We sang Just a Closer Walk With Thee, and a couple of the verses jumped out at me:

I am weak, but Thou art strong;
Jesus, keep me from all wrong;
I’ll be satisfied as long
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.

Through this world of toil and snares,
If I falter, Lord, who cares?
Who with me my burden shares?
None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.

Then Uncle Hugh's daughter-in-law spoke about two of his favourite scriptures; Proverbs 3 and Romans 8. Specifically, these:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

And just in case I wasn't paying attention, the last song we sang was His Eye is on the Sparrow. These are some of the lyrics:

"Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me

I'm not sure I can even express how I felt when I left the funeral. I guess I felt lighter. It wasn't a WOO HOO, JUMP UP AND DOWN, I'LL NEVER WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING AGAIN kind of feeling, but more a quiet acceptance of what my heart had known all along. I don't think that it was a coincidence that we sang these songs and listened to these verses. I asked God to speak to me, and He did.

Uncle Hugh was a wonderful man who left a tremendous spiritual legacy for his family. Many people spoke about the way he had touched and impacted their lives through his integrity and great love for the Lord. And throughout the service honouring this great man, God whispered words of comfort and hope and reassurance to me.

Ahh...youth

We were talking at dinner tonight about church when Darren and I were growing up. At CHBC, as soon as you were old enough to be trusted away from your parents in a service, you made a beeline for one of the back rows in the far right section of the sanctuary. This was the Youth Section. Here we sat, Sunday after Sunday, and I'm sure on the face of it, things looked pretty good most of the time. However, those weren't sermon notes we were taking. Generally, polls were taken about where we should go for lunch, at least in the pew where I sat. Someone would write "Lunch?" on a welcome card, and it would pass up and down the pew so that everyone could make a suggestion. "Pappy's?...St. Hubert's?...Swiss?"

Sometimes the welcome card would have something not very nice written on it about someone in the vicinity. It was always unfortunate if the something written was funny (and it usually was), because then there would be a tremendous struggle to not laugh. I can remember crying in church, just trying to keep from laughing out loud. Once we were sitting behind a little old lady who had some kind of tremor or something, and her head shook ever so slightly continuously. Darren cupped his hands together and quickly slid them back and forth along the back of her pew, making like he would catch her head when it wobbled off. I can still remember the strangled snorts and coughs as the 5 of us sitting there struggled to keep it together for the rest of the service. And all of this went on under the watchful eye of Darren's dad, who led the worship and sat on the platform throughout the whole service.

We were bad. And we did a lot of laughing. I remember being kicked out of a Quiz Team practice with Janice and Lynda because we were laughing too much. Mrs. Hunt told us that if we couldn't control ourselves, we would have to leave. So we left, and fell on the floor laughing in the hall outside.

I suppose at some point we grew up a little and started to actually listen, and even participate in the services, rather than carry out hangman tournaments and make lunch plans. But I don't think Darren and I really grew up spiritually until we left CHBC and started going to First Alliance two months after were were married. We loved that church, and I think we really got to know God there (not to mention some fantastic people).

Darren and I still struggle to keep it together in church at times (I still laugh over the "notes" taken during a recent missions conference), and generally it's not a good idea for us to sit together in choir. I'm just glad my father-in-law isn't on the platform, giving us the eye.

It's all fun and games until someone loses Tim Horton's.

Tonight was the girls’ last swimming lesson for the winter session, and it was my turn to take them. Darren and I alternate taking them each week, but I think I get ripped off, simply because I have to go in the girl’s change room, and he doesn’t.

The swimming lessons themselves are great. The girls are so enthusiastic and work hard in their respective classes, and they’ve both improved by leaps and bounds since they started in September. Emma was in the deep end tonight without a life jacket on because it was the only way she was allowed to go down the slide, and she was determined to go down the slide! She went down three times, and each time she swam over to the side without using the floaty thing her teacher had for her. Lauren is awesome. She has such a long reach with her front crawl and she just glides through the water, leaving the boy in her class way behind every time.

So yeah, the lesson part is good. We leave the pool area with lots of warm and fuzzy feelings. And then we hit the girl’s change room, where all hell breaks lose every week, without fail. There is a little girl who comes to swimming lessons every week with her hair in ponytails, and every week when she finishes her lessons, her mom takes her ponytails out and apparently the world comes to an end. You have never heard such shrieking. And crying. And wailing. There are no words.

Tonight the big demonstration had nothing to do with the ponytails. “Micole”* was just being a brat. The mom told her that she was going to give her 3 chances, and if she got 3 strikes, there would be no Tim Horton’s treat. Surprise, surprise, Micole blew her 3 chances in about a minute, and therefore forfeited her treat. Can you even imagine what ensued? HUGE temper tantrum. Screaming. Fake crying. Hurled epithets at mom, who was sitting calmly on the bench, nonplussed.

This is the part I don’t understand. What is with these Stepford moms who think that no matter how their child is behaving, the right thing is simply to talk to them in a soothing, lullaby-ish tone? I get the feeling that those of us who are unwilling witnesses to all this drama are supposed to be impressed with how calm and unruffled she is. I’m not impressed. I want to say to her “You do realize that your daughter is making a fool out of you, right? She’s being rude and disrespectful and out of control. Who’s in charge here?”

It’s obvious who’s in charge. After much whining and boo-hooing and dramatic posturing, I hear mom tell Micole that maybe if she gets dressed nicely, they could go to Tim Horton’s tomorrow. Not good enough. More whining and posturing. So then mom offers to give her a special cookie at home. No dice. Micole HATES! those cookies. Mom tells her that she can have a timbit at home, since they have some there already. Micole considers this. Not bad, but what else have you got? So mom sweetens the deal with a promise of some Playdoh. To which Micole replies “I don’t WANT Playdoh!!! I WANT PLASTICINE!!”.

Fortunately, I can’t tell you how it ended. At that point, we were finally ready to go, as I had feverishly been throwing clothes at my girls and hustling them, wet hair and all, into their coats and out the door. I did hear one of the other moms say “Oh dear, I think somebody’s tired”, to which Micole replied “NO I’M NOT TIRED!!!”. I think it was at that point that her head spun around.

Now, my kids aren't perfect, and I am NOT a perfect parent, by any stretch of the imagination. We all have our less than stellar parenting moments. But I think that ultimately, you have to do what's best for your kids, even if it doesn't make you their favourite person at times. If we love our kids, we have to discipline them. The Bible says so.

Here's to three weeks without swimming lessons! I'll come back refreshed and energized after the break, able to face anything! (I will, right?) Unless they're going to quickly throw together a family change room in the next few weeks (so that Darren could go with the girls), I guess I better pray that God will change my heart and attitude (and maybe the swim schedule, too).

*not her real name