Beautiful

So, in the random way these things happen, I stumbled across this article just now.  (Don't read it yet.  Come back up here at the end.  Also, I looked through all 30 images so I could feel justified in writing a post about it...but if you don't want to waste a bunch of time, 4 or 5 pictures will do you just about as well.)

It's titled "30 Fairly Shocking Pictures of Celebrities Without Makeup"...but I find myself more shocked by how normal most of them look without the magic wand of a professional makeup artist.  I mean, those pictures on the left?  They are of you and me on any given Saturday morning (or, let's face it, any given most-mornings if you're at home with little kiddos).   

Of course some of these pictures are actually awful, because candid photographs have the same ability as pressing pause at any given moment in a movie: you get the most gruesome, funny distortions of the actors to stare back out of the tv until you come back from your potty break.  But really, start by looking at the left-hand picture in each of these slides, and I think you'll find many of these girls actually garish when they're all done up for the Oscars.

When did our culture redefine beauty this way?  Why are you and I always so terribly conscious of our faces when we go beyond our front porches without makeup?  What IS beauty, anyway?  We are created in God's image, and His paintbrush never touches a makeup palette; He pronounced us Good.  

Now, this isn't a post about whether or not makeup is ok.  I use makeup.  I really, really appreciate makeup, actually, and it's a Big Deal to me if I forget my makeup bag when I'm traveling, or find I left it in the car that went to school with Andy, or something else that necessitates a bare face.  But, though I don't often feel it when I look at my bare self in the mirror--I am beautiful.  My husband seems to prefer my bare face, and I have to choose to take him at his word.  My God certainly doesn't care in the least what I look like, and I have to choose to take Him at His word.  

What my God and my husband care about more than anything else in my life is that I allow things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control shine their beautiful selves brightly in my life.  Those beautiful things, radiating out of the inner me?  They change me, and they change the world that I interact with and touch.  And they have the side effects of physical beauty: a soft countenance, a ready smile, lines creased by laughter instead of stress and anger, a quiet spirit, a body that is stewarded well and therefore trim (if not altogether tone ;0) ).   

What our culture needs is more women who think about their inner Beautiful more than their outer, more women who get their affirmation from Jesus, and let Him do His good, beautiful work in and through us. 

Go.  You're more beautiful than you know. 

A Day of Misadventures and a Year of Memory-Making

I'm ending today better than I began.  Actually, the day began very nicely, with quiet Quiet Time and all my hot coffee before the boys woke up.  But the whole "daytime" part of the day was pretty darn rough.  Is it bad that all I really (really, REALLY) wanted to do was to clean my house?  I mean, yes, it's nice to have a clean house.  And yes, I'm much happier to go to bed in a few minutes with a cleaner house.  But I was emotionally at war all day with my un-clean, attention-demanding boys.  This is my problem, not theirs.  

But anyway, the big reason I wanted to clean (other than there being laundry, toys, food, milkweed seeds and flower petals literally EVERYWHERE, ALL over the house) was in order to let my home know that I appreciate it.  I do not actually anthropomorphize my house; it's more of a called-to-be-a-good-steward thing, wherein being entrusted with a big gift means I'm expected to take good care.  (...We'll save the post on being a good steward of my children for another day, hopefully for when I'm letting God give me the grace for it.  This was a bad day of accepting grace.  Thank heaven His mercies are new every morning, right?!)

And the big reason I want to let my house know I appreciate it is because... 

...one year ago TONIGHT (October 29, 2012), Andy drove to Watertown after school to sign the closing paperwork on our new home. The boys and I met him here afterward with macaroni and cheese for supper in the kitchen out of red plastic cups. Let's make it a macaroni tradition! So blessed to live here! Been praising Jesus for 365 days, and we look forward to many, many more.

Small Accomplishments

Lincoln's opinion of Beaver Camp baked oatmeal.

Lewis's opinion of Beaver Camp baked oatmeal. 

The goal is to make a family of scarecrows for our front porch.  Here's the start of the daddy scarecrow.

But how in the world does one make scarecrows stand upright and tall??  I'm having trouble here.  Maybe we'll make an after-dinner family project of it. 


 






And personal notes of the day:

1)  Freshly plucked eyebrows can make you feel like a new woman.  

2) I'm pretty impressed with the supper I'm about to put on the table.  What a nice feeling!

Simmer Down

Sometimes (often times) my older son and I clash.  We are both strong-willed, and we get each other going before we even realize what happened!  So there's this morning, when I mentally congratulated myself for diffusing a battle before it started raging by being first very firm, and then making my child laugh.  Lately I've been consciously employing strategies found in Dr. Dobson's The Strong-Willed Child and meeting with more success.  I'm thankful. 
Because then there's this late-morning, after some "preschool" and "baseball" and cocoa, when my son decides to disobey, blatantly, about something very trivial: pick up those little pegs you just threw all over the room.  And the battle rages.  Sigh.  I am getting better at keeping myself "cool and collected," and I do win, because part of my job is to shape his will and teach him about authority and obedience and those sorts of things.  But it is so draining. 
And it leaves me...let's say peevish. 
But then the sun comes out, and we take the bike trailer to the farmers' market, and converse with pleasant people and buy colorful veggies and press our own cider.  And then we drink our cider in the sunshine, and I think to myself, "I am happy."  What a wonderful world this can be, and what a wonderful gift to be reminded of it.

Distracting Myself

The boys and I are on our own for the evening, and because we know Daddy won't be home for dinner tonight, it's been kind of a rough day.  When I say our boys hang their hopes on daddy's homecoming, I'm not exaggerating all that much!  So there's that. 

Also, my babysitter cancelled for the afternoon, because, get this: she was bitten by a brown recluse spider.  Oh, creeps!  I mean, OH CREEPS!  I am completely freaked out about that, because over the past few weeks I've seen 5 or 6 spiders around our house that drove me to Google Images in the fear of just that.  The ones I've gotten a good look at are more likely Grass or Funnel spiders (still mildly poisonous)...but then to find out, yes, they really are in our area...  Anyway.  I can't even sit at this computer without feeling little creepies on my feet under the desk here.  I stopped watching scary movies a long time ago because of my wild, realistic imagination.  I wish I could stop seeing spiders. 

I need to be distracted.  So, I've lit a candle, put the season's first pumpkin recipe in the oven, and am watching The Office when I'm free to fold laundry.  Go away, crazy fears!

Big Night

I haven't written you a status update in over a week.  And before that, it was a week again.  My life has certainly been more eventful than that, but it's also nice to not care much whether anybody knows about it.  

But tonight!

Tonight I sat on my front porch with a boy in my lap marveling at the fierce storm blowing through.  It left us with a very thorough double rainbow, the main bow of which also had a "shadow" effect of two spectra splayed out beneath it.  My photo is pitiful; I'm sure it's user ignorance of settings. 

After supper, my sister-in-law and I went out jogging, and I could hardly take my eyes off the sky.  Every part of that glorious sky held different colors, textures, types of clouds, all lit up by the sunset.  Watching the retreat of a spectacular storm is a spectacular way to run.  SO GORGEOUS!  I thought of my friend Leanna, who would have recorded that beautiful run on her iPhone.  But non-data-plan-me just gets to remember it all :0)

After the boys were in bed, I took the plunge (a surprisingly weighty-feeling, nervous plunge) and purchased a preschool curriculum to begin working on with Lincoln here at home.  There may be more on this later.  For now, I don't care for the public preschool options Lincoln could be involved in over the next couple of years, and I'm going to try some low-key homeschooling, see how it goes.  I'm nervous about it, for basically selfish reasons; I happen to be comfortable with the ease of not really planning our daily lives and letting time slip by while I read other people's status updates.  But I know that it is not the best I can give my children, and so, by purchasing a curriculum, I'm committing myself to give them more of my best.  Among many reasons homeschooling is of interest to me, I'm realizing that the most important reason I would choose it over public school is to equip my children with the tool of a Biblical worldview.  Worldview is Important.  Capitol I.  My Father's World curriculum is designed for exactly the purpose of "raising up generations of families who see the world through God's eyes and live according to that knowledge."  I'm diving in. 

 And tomorrow!

My husband begins his 12th year of teaching, and it will suddenly be a new season for all of us.  

It's one of those Waiting days.