Jesus Wept

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 John 11:35: “Jesus wept.”

The shortest verse in the Bible; Jesus wept. 

Throughout my tweens and teens I was a avid poet. I love poems and the different ways we can write the exact same words, but just a slightly different format, and the meaning is completely different.

So as we taught the story of Lazarus the the 3 year olds today in Sunday School, I couldn't help but wonder why would Jesus weep when he's about to raise Lazarus from the dead? And why was it emphasized in it's own verse that Jesus was crying? 

There's lots of different opinions out there, so if you want to do some research on it, I promise that it's very fascinating, but I have three different points I'd like to share with you.

1) Jesus was not just the Son of God, He was also fully human.

The fact that Jesus was God in human form means that when he fell down as a child, he hurt.  When he celebrated their holidays with family and friends, he felt happy. When he got sick, he ached. So why wouldn't he cry when he saw his friends grieving?

He felt our pain and sorrow, and felt our joyful and happy moments. He experienced them as we have! Even more so should we rely on God to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly feelings and situations we find ourselves in. He's been there. He knows.

2) Jesus knew that even though he was going to perform this miracle, people were still not going to believe that he is God. 

It pains me to think that when Jesus walked among us, performing miracles completely unfathomable today, people still didn't believe that he was God. In fact, the very fact that we today have to rely on more faith because we haven't seen with our own eyes, seems like it's even more blatantly obvious that if the people of Jesus time saw and did not believe, how blind and hard hearted they truly must have been.

3) Just as poems emphasize on certain phrases, God wrote it this way in the Bible to make a point.

And what exactly is that point? I believe the point was to make you stop and think about how powerful those two words are...

Jesus wept

The Universe is Gods throne and the Earth is His footstool. In the vastness of space and time  each one of us are nothing more that the tiniest blip in the grand scheme of the known universe, and even smaller than that in what is beyond the edge of space. 

And yet, God sent his only son to become one of us. To experience the pain and devastation we go through, to die for us in the most painful and tortured way, just to repair the bridge between us and God and restore what Satan had destroyed when evil entered the world. 

All because He loved us. The human race. The little, simple minded, undeserving of a second glance, and completely lost in darkness, sheeple. 

God repaired what once was broken and all we have to do today is just ask for salvation and it is done. But even though it's in His book, in black and white, simply put,

People will still not believe.

So

Jesus. Wept.

With Love,

Emily

No Cook Play Dough

Today the kids decided that since it was too hot and humid, not to mention the low lying threat of thunderstorms, to go outside today, that today was a good day to battle to the death with each other. Oh my goodness gracious, God help me.

I tried every thing that I could think of, school work, movies, ringing the bell to make them go back to separate corners. Absolutely nothing was working.

So I called Dad and asked for some ideas. He suggested to make something with them, even if it was just cutting up paper and gluing it on another paper.

Not feeling up to making a giant mess, I decided that making some play dough was the way to go.

Here's the recipe that I used.

No Cook Play Dough

4 cups plain flour

2 cups salt

4 tbl veggie oil

4 tbl cream of tartar

3 cups boiling water

food coloring or kool-aid for coloring

Stir all together and play!

I wanted to make mine with an added element of interest, so I made them..

MYSTERY COLORS!

Grab a handful of dough and a packet of kool-aid.

Use the whole packet!

Or use 5+ drops of food coloring

Carefully fold over the dough around the color.

Let Thing 1 and Thing 2 choose a mystery color.

Start mixing kiddos! Thing 2 is checking out how big brother does it first.

I'M GONNA WRECK IT!

Explore different ways of making the color mix... poke poke. Love how he sticks his tongue out in concentration; just like his daddy.

Show mommy how much fun this is!

Thing 2 just poked her finger in to peek at the color instead of mixing. Cheater. :o)

Despite the Cinderella Blue color, she was not happy she got blue. She wanted pink.  

 The kids got tired of mixing, so I did for them as they looked on. The bottom three are the kool-aid packets. They smell wonderful!

 Play dough was a big hit! They stopped their fighting, ok well mostly, and enjoyed playing with the play dough on and off throughout the day. Woo hoo!

Color recognition. Check.

Fine and gross motor skills. Check.

Social skills. Check.

Oh...

 Thing 2 made me the Earth. 

I think that's supposed to be Ireland. Lots of shamrocks.

Geography and Earth Science... Check.

We're done.

With Love,

Emily

When Breakfast Isn't Served.

Before I had kids I would have been mad at myself for making such a simple and stupid mistake that I happen to do once in a while when cooking; misreading the ingredient amount.

This morning I was going to make beautiful waffles for Thing 1 and Thing 2. I carefully read the ingredients and set every thing but the water out, because I knew at least one of them would want to help.

Now what makes me do a famous forehead slap is that I hear a voice in the back of my head saying, "ummm... Don't you think that's wrong?" and yet I completely ignore it each and every time.

This morning Thing 2 and I were measuring the oil (before the water, so the measuring cup gets a jump start on getting cleaned), and I read it as 1 1/2 cups.

Yep! Whole time we're doing this that voice is screaming in the back of my head, "NOOOOOOooooooo!!!!!" as I pour the volatile mix in.

I recognize the mistake when I started mixing it and realized I have not added water and the mix is a weird color.

Insert forehead slap.  

Oh My... dead. I just killed the waffles.

So instead of just throwing it out, I explained to the kids that I made a huge mistake and we weren't having waffles after all. I interrupted their beginnings of whining that sounds like a jet engine warming up, and about as loud too, and said that we were going to do an experiment. What happens to a waffle when you put in too much oil?

Now they were hooked.

(muahahaha)

I poured in the batter and started cooking. They waved their hands over the steam to draw in the delicious sent of waffles cooking, these smelled like funnel cake cooking from all the oil, and eagerly watched. We peeked in once in a while to make sure it was actually cooking. Once it was a beautiful golden brown I got the fork to remove the waffle. One child thought it would come out, the other thought it would fall apart. And the result was...

It crumbled! 

'

Victory! The experiment worked, and a hypothesis was quickly quickly formed from each child. Why did it fall apart? What is bonding? Can we still eat it? And a slew more of questions.

What was once a terrible mistake, out to ruin breakfast for very hungry tummies, turned into an experiment and life long knowledge (or at least an awareness) of why we follow directions exactly when we bake or cook anything.

And the fried eggs and toast wasn't a bad substitute either. 

With Love,

Emily

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The Eating of a Frog

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

― Mark Twain

This is what I live by day by day. Ever make a list, whether mentally or written down? Ever look at that list and think, "Yeah, I'm not going to do that right now" on a couple of things and they never seem to get done?  Those are the frogs.

The frog that's been on my list is cleaning out my bedroom. It's the catchall room. It's my "safety" net. It's the one thing of my past that has been trailing me no matter how many times I've moved, across country or nearby. It seemed that when I moved into a new home I'd vow that this would be the time that I wouldn't clutter the bedroom, this time would be different, this time I would conquer the fear the boogieman left with me. Logically I know that the boogieman is no longer real in my life and hasn't been for about 20 years, but the one part of my heart that felt like I still had control of, the control of the fear of the boogieman returning, being prepared to entrap him in my mess I carefully created around me. That was what I lived in. That is what my husband has been very patiently living with. 

Well, ever since I started this blog a year ago, I knew that eventually I would have to eat that frog on my list and deal with the bedroom and the fear that went with it. I kept putting it off and putting it off, until finally with my in laws visiting (my mil is great at helping me declutter and get control of my life) and my husband home for a couple of days, I finally started to eat that frog.

It started off ok, my mil was giving me jobs and lots of encouragement as we went along, and as long as I focused on one bite at a time, I was slowly eating the frog. A couple of times I would look at the entirety of the frog I was eating and would start to get discouraged, but that was just my demons clinging onto me to bring me down. 

Now don't laugh... ok you can laugh, but I would put on Christmas music to help keep me in an upbeat mood. It soon turned into IZ, then Beach Boys, and before I knew it the frog was more that halfway eaten by the end of the day.

Back breaking work! My sciatica was acting up the next day, but I had no clutter on the floor, many bags of trash and giveaways out of the room, and a bit of invertigo from just how big the room seemed to be! 

Thing 1 comes in my room to see what I had been up to all day, and he kept saying "Wow! It's all clean! Look how clean it is! I'm so proud of you mom!" 

That made it worth eating the frog.

With his encouragement I finished eating that frog the next day. This time with new vigor and excitement! I knew the frog was almost eaten and I would finally be able to check it off my list for good.

It's now been two nights in a clutter free bed and bathroom, and though I'm still surprised with the space in the room and not having to dodge things, I'm also surprised that the fear I had been holding on to was not as strong that I thought it would be once the job was complete. Yes, it was still there, and even this morning it gripped my heart, but honestly it was for a moment before I realized that there is nothing to fear but fear itself and fear is just an emotional reaction of the unknown. This was something that has been unknown to me for 20 years. For most of my life. This feeling of having a clear space in my "hiding place" is completely new.

As I sit in my room, I look around and clear out the cobwebs in my heart and head. This is normal. This is what others have. This is healthy for me, for my husband, for my family. This is the final healing of my heart, my broken spirit. This is what God has been working on me for so long. 

My room is now a place of rest, not discomfort. A place of peace, not a place of ancient memories. It is my nest that I have carefully crafted with love and not with fear. 

I have come to the end of my journey with the boogieman. He has be conquered! He will not return in heart or home! I have vanquished the final battle and have won my war!

Praise be to God who has delivered me from evil. Who has taken what was meant for evil and turned it into good for His glory. Who has taken a broken and crushed spirit and not only healed but made stronger in Him. 

I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me;

Even the eating of a frog.

With Love,

Emily

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephaniemassaro/2384310118/">Stephanie Massaro</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>