Wednesday, September 16, 2009

My Crazy Life!

There's "busy" and then there's my life lately: "busy on steroids". Things have been blowing and going all the way through Labor Day in my household and the dust is just barely starting to settle now that school has begun.


Not that it is terribly interesting to anyone else, but by way of explanation we have experienced a graduation, a house full of company, swim team (this being our first year I was astounded to find it took the better part of the day to accomplish a swim meet!), a family trip to Colorado and Wyoming which ended with dropping my oldest off for missions training, returning home to leave a week later to Mississippi for a family reunion, and somewhere in the midst of all this, ordering school material for my 6th and 9th graders. I think there's more but that's all my blurry, overloaded brain can recall at the moment!


Oh yeah, the other biggie has been being a reviewer for The Old Schoolhouse Magazine! That has been my time-consumer (what little free time there is!). Don't get me wrong, I am honored to be able to review all these fun products and thrilled that I get all these surprise packages in the mail with lots of wondrous homeschooling items! However, there has been way more books and charts etc. to fit into our lives than I had ever imagined. It has been fun but challenging to juggle. So, basically anytime I have some time to write on this blog of mine, it is in order to review an item rather than write for my own purposes.


So, I guess today I am just writing out of frustration! I am thankful to know that the Lord doesn't desire for me to just keep my head above water and dive exhausted into bed each night. I realize that some of this is our own doing, my own doing, in the life of our family. It is now my prayerful desire to streamline life into a workable schedule and take back control of things that have taken control of me. Well,then give them to the Lord, of course. He's the one that needs to be in control, not me! All I would do is add another thing that we could maybe squeeze into an available 15 minute time slot. Crazy.

But, I do hope that I will be back more often. I will continue to post product reviews, but I plan to have more personal fun and thoughtful articles as well. Thanks to those of you who have been checking in!

In the meantime...church tonight...volleyball game tomorrow...exercise? No way, I'm too busy...correct math...make dinner...finish laundry...don't remember the last time I mopped so probably need to find time for that...Did you say something? Was that a chicken? Do I have ADHD???

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Heather,
I can certainly relate to the busy factor around here as well! Every minute counts. I am enjoying your blog-write on!

Missy

At the Intersection of Creation and Evolution: A Dream

The alliterating story below is based on a dream I had several years ago. Please contact me for permission to reproduce.

Darkness devours me.

I am enveloped in emptiness.

Are my eyes open or are they closed? I strain against this shroud of night and still see nothing.

What is this place?

An image illuminates in front of me. A large, leafy tree streaks past and vanishes.

It deserts me to the darkness again.

In a moment, more images appear. A rapid succession of snapshots and thoughts clamor before my eyes and mingle in my mind.

I see seedlings. Several supple shoots have emerged before me and then swiftly stream away.

“The first trees on earth were not seedlings”, my mind observes. “They were not created as small insignificant saplings.”

That thought is rapidly replaced with a vision of a man.


He’s maybe 30; he is muscular and needs to shave.


He fades away.

In his place I see an infant.

A tiny bundle of pink skin upon a soft blanket flickers briefly in my brain.

“Man was created with age,” is the next statement I hear. “Adam did not begin his life as a baby, he began as a grown man.”

The voice seems like my own.


The thoughts do not.

Reeling before me now is a blur of rivers, forests, mountains and even layers of the earth. It is like a movie rushing rapidly before my retina.

The soundtrack of this epic is proclaiming a peculiarly plain concept:

“The earth was created with age. Creation and evolution are not in total opposition. There is a reason that science finds the earth to be quite old: it was made that way.”

Thoughts continue to tumble through my mind; pictures parade before me. I listen in amazement to what seems to be puzzlingly profound and yet rather apparent all at once.

“Adam was created as an adult. Trees and plants were made fully grown.”

I suddenly feel quite certain that, if I were to chop down some of the trees that had been spoken into existence, I would find a range of rings running through their trunks.

“The earth was brought to life with age built into it… just like Adam. He did not begin life as an infant. The earth came into being with what it would need to sustain the life that was created. It was old when it was young. The world was
made with maturity; it was also produced with purpose.”

These thoughts are thrilling. Why had I not seen this before? It seems so simple. Obtusely obvious. Had others not observed this correlation? If they had, why wasn’t it being candidly conveyed?

In the span of thirty seconds I have been ravaged by a radical revelation. I feel the weight of its worth resting on me; it is tantamount to tangible.

I am neither a theologian nor am I a scientist. I don’t claim that the ethics of evolution are completely compatible with the Bible’s account of creation. But certainly Science can come concurrent to creation and affirm our faith with facts.

Of course, the Omnipotent Originator of the Universe is exceedingly elusive to what our mind could ever envision. Above what science could ever extensively elucidate.

Accordingly, creation is confounding too. Each diverse discovery deems it more marvelous to grasp. Many scientists have reluctantly relented to the theory of Intelligent Design.

That’s why, alongside those facts, we also need faith.


Lying inexplicably at the intersection of those two essential elements is an exceptional endowment: the intermittent insight of our dreams.

Followers