School Choice

Every year, we consider whether we want to homeschool for another year--it's very much a year to year decision around here (OK, honestly, sometimes it's day to day!). With the way our school systems are set up down here, we have to be thinking about it before the school year is even half over--to put the kids into public school for the next year, we have to enroll them in January/March, or else we are probably not going to get into the public school we would like (even if it's the closest one to us). Usually, we have gotten to this point in the year and have not been interested in changing our situation.

This year, though, that has changed. We are in our sixth full year of homeschooling (which sounds like a long time to me!), and I'm getting tired and discouraged, and a bit overwhelmed. I am strong in believing that homeschooling was the right choice for us up to now, but at this point, I'm thinking we're ready to move on, both for my benefit and more especially for the children.

We haven't decided yet, and just thinking through it for the past few weeks is alternately stressful, liberating, overwhelming, depressing, and a little bit hopeful. If we choose public school, we have just a few more days to get their names in for the lottery. We are actually considering private school as an option, too, for a variety of reasons (the main question being which child to sell so that we can afford it...just kidding! But if they are in school, I might even be able to work some! which, in turn, might help pay for that option).

Obviously, there is a lot more going on in my head than just the above, but it's too much for a blog post (and will get too overwhelming to put on paper!). I just wanted to share in a general way that this is going on, and if you are the praying type, I'd appreciate your prayers as we make this decision. In the next week and a half.

Merry Christmas 2010

I wondered if I should put this blog address on our Christmas card or not this year, since I've fallen into a pattern of unfortunately rare updates, but I decided I wanted to keep it if I could, so I guess my New Year's resolution will be to actually get here and get some content up for you!

It's been a good year for our family, for which I am thankful. Andy decided at the beginning of the year that in addition to completing his MDiv through Fuller last year, that he would go ahead and pursue ordination as a "teaching elder" in the EPC as well. In May, he took a series of written exams (you don't even need to ask, of course he aced them); in June, he and I flew out together to Denver for our "regional" presbytery meeting for the oral exams. And this fall, our church had the ordination service and now I'm married to Reverend Andy Cornett. Which makes us both laugh a lot...not because it's funny, but because it is. His job isn't changing, his calling to ministry isn't changing...but now he has a title. It's funny on the one hand, but I will say that I am very proud of him.

The children have thrived as well...we continue to homeschool, and they seem to learn and grow in spite of their teacher. I counted on my fingers and realized that somehow this is my sixth year of homeschooling, which seems like I ought to have a better grasp on it by now than I think I do. But I'm thankful for the opportunity to challenge them where they can take it, help them where they need it, and to watch their minds grow. And, I confess, having the flexibility in our schedule is great, because Andy's work (and mine) don't always quite match up with a public school schedule. We started early because it was too hot outside to play, and spent December with a bit lighter schedule than otherwise because I was designing Christmas cards for clients! They also continue in soccer and ballet, and really enjoy all of it.

My photography business has rolled right along, and I continue to learn new things about running a business, taking pictures, and internet/web stuff, oddly enough. I've met new people this year, and taken new pictures of old clients, and kept myself reasonably busy. I also inadvertently stumbled into helping our friends Mark and Mylissa redesign the Habitat for Hope website, which was both fun and a challenging way to learn a lot in a short period of time.

If I try to say too much more here, I'll never hit publish on this, so I'm just going to leave you with a sequence of images showing what happened on my first attempt to capture the kids for our family Christmas card:




I'm sure that I don't need to explain that we ended up doing a "take two" on our family Christmas card session. I'm really thankful that my clients' children handle this better than my own!

Merry Christmas to any of you who visited our little blog, and a very happy New Year as well!

"Lucky Me:" Michael Chabon and me on Father's Day

A Father’s Day quote from Michael Chabon. This one comes from his amazing volume of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: the Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. In lamenting the low bar for fatherhood in our culture, he homes in on the humility of the work:

“The daily work you put into rearing your children is a kind of intimacy, tedious and invisible as mothering itself. There is another kind of intimacy in the conversations you may have with your children as they grow older, in which you confess to failings, reveal anxieties, share your bouts of creative struggle, regret, frustration. There is intimacy in your quarrels, your negotiations and running jokes. But above all, there is intimacy in your contact with their bodies, with their shit and piss, sweat and vomit, with their stubbled kneecaps and dimpled knuckles, with the rips in their underpants as you fold them, with their hair against your lips as you kiss the tops of their heads, with the bones of their shoulders and with the horror of their breath in the morning as they pursue the ancient art of forgetting to brush. Luck me that I should be permitted the luxury of choosing to find the intimacy inherent in this work that is thrust upon so many women. Lucky me.

When I read this, I thought first of my own experience over the last 10 years and the marvel of my wife and children. But close behind, I thought of the mystery of the Incarnation and what it says about the fatherhood of God. That he would choose to enter this world in all its follies and failures and so bind himself to our blood and bone to redeem every inch of it – surely, surely this whispers the truth of the word: Father.

rebuilding

Last week we experienced a wonderful gift--a family within our church gave us the use of their family beach home in Sandbridge, Virginia, for a vacation. It was unbelievably wonderful. Basically, our days ran something like this:

1. get up (unbelievably early for some reason, no sleeping in on this vacation)
2. drink coffee
3. eat breakfast
4. go to the beach for a few hours
5. come back to eat lunch at the house
6. nap
7. go back to the beach for a few hours
8. eat one of andy's fabulous dinners
9. watch another episode of "How I Met Your Mother"
10. crash

Exciting times, yes? We loved it, every single minute! There was not a lot to do except enjoy the perfect weather, and contemplate small matters, and build sand castles. This part really fascinated me, because every time we went to the beach (twice a day), we (I use the term loosely here) built another sand castle, knowing full well that the next high tide would obliterate it.
This fact alone really intrigued me, because honestly, I hate having to redo certain jobs every. single. day. Like unloading the dishwasher. Washing dirty clothes. Loading the dishwasher. Sweeping dog hair off of the floor. Shaving my legs (TMI? Sorry about that.). And here we were, blithely doing work that we knew, without a doubt, would be destroyed within hours.

I wondered how God feels about the work that he does in our life sometimes--whether he gets excited when we make spiritual "progress" in an area, like prayer, or reading our Bible, or serving others, even while he knows that in a day or a week or a month, we'll get distracted or bored and move on, only to be reignited in another day, week, or month, and do it all over again. Does God enjoy our baby steps of trying to build godly lives? Even though our selfish hearts will often wash away the work, so that it has to be done again? Does he view it like I view dishes? Or is he more like Andy with cooking yet another delightful meal (thank you, Lord, that he enjoys it so much)? Or is he like my children, building sandcastles, doing the same work again with joy?

on courage

I was reminded of this quote while listening to an NPR story this morning about fears of a terrorist attack via a nuclear device. The admonition still stands today.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented; and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways . . . It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists had added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance but a certainty . . . Let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (any microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

- C.S. Lewis, writing on the atomic bomb (citation forthcoming)

on St. Patrick's Day

Several years ago I was sitting in a class on early church history when we came to the story of St. Patrick and the gospel going to Ireland. As my teacher read from Patrick’s Confessions, his words gripped me and moved me to tears. I went and got her notes and copied down this excerpt. These words and the legacy of this amazing, humble man have continued to minister to me over the years. May they pierce your heart as well!

“I, Patrick, a sinner – a most unlearned man – tirelessly I give thanks to God, who has revealed himself to me, an unworthy man. He has bestowed upon my heart me the gift of limitless faith, so that in these latter days I may carry out his divine work, and even though I have not led a life of perfection, I am not ashamed in his sight. And I give unceasing thanks to Him for he has been lenient to me, for I have been a careless fool. But He has lifted me up beyond measure even though I was unworthy and the least of all his servants. Truly I owe a great debt to God for through me has redeemed a great people who are newly coming to faith. Although it was against the wish of some of my elders, I was guided by God … it was God who prevailed within me and withstood them all so that I might come to the Irish, and I am prepared to give my life freely in God’s name. I sought the Lord and he delivered me from all my fears. Look to him that you may be radiant with joy and you may never be ashamed.”

Patrick, Confessions
(the final lines are from Psalm 34:4-5)

300 words on Avatar

A disclaimer: I’m a sucker for panorama, spectacle, and sheer wonder, so it took me some time to wake up from an immersion in the Avatar ride. The technical magic and imaginative splendor are beyond my abilities to review. How appropriate that this film ends up first on the list for Into the Dark this year because on one level the film concerns the discipline of seeing. Before you judge the film with instant likes and dislikes, loves and hates, take some time to consider how it sees the world and what it says. If memory serves, early on in the film Jake gets a lesson from Norm on the nuances of the verb “to see” in the new language. To Jake, saying “I see you” is simply recognition of an object: like a “yeah, you’re there.” But to the world he is about to enter, “I see you” plays on different levels of “seeing:” discerning, knowing, grasping, comprehending, seeing from deep inside. That verbal shift hints at the clash between two cultures at the heart of the film: one mechanical, imperial, individualistic, and thoroughly modern – another spiritual, tribal, communal, primal and pre-modern. The former can’t see anything but an object to mine; the latter “sees” the living connection at the heart of all things (and the latter are Na’vi – “prophets” in Hebrew, “seers” even). The point is that we all need to wake up to what we’re doing and what we’re missing. It’s a fair criticism, even if I don’t share the pantheism at its heart.* Nor do I share its polarization.** Jake’s musing narration doesn’t diminish the fact that Avatar tells its story with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But again – I loved it.

grace and peace - Andy

* That’s a whole other post; holler if you are interested.
** That’s also another post. Suffice to say, reality is a lot messier and we’re all complicit in the way “we” live.