Is it okay to acknowledge that sometimes a spirit of thankfulness is difficult? 
Is it okay to recognize that many, if not most of us are in a season of deep lamenting right now, rather than a season of gratitude? Or perhaps “in addition to” is better said.

Our lives are in limbo.
Our country is in limbo.
While beauty surrounds us, disappointment seems to continuously lurk in the shadows, striking at will.
Where the sick people used to be resigned to those on the news, now they’re our friends and family members.
We’re tired of watching the pain expressed on our children’s faces as we tell them (again), “No. We can’t. It’s been canceled.”
We seem to be continuously bracing ourselves for the next wave of bad news.

Yesterday I went for a walk. In my ears, the melodies streaming from the music box; stories reminding me of the Lord’s goodness. 
The crisp, cold air burned my lungs. It felt familiar and good, like an old friend whose embrace I hadn’t felt in months.
The early morning sun sprawled my long shadow across the grass. It made me feel taller. I pushed my shoulders back.
The crunch of the leaves underneath my feet, the sounds of birds flirting with each other, the hope of a new day lying open before me…all these things filled my heart with the knowledge of the goodness of God.

Yet, as I walked, surrounded by loveliness and goodness and truth, I realized just how sad I was.
I realized that, while my heart held fast to gratitude for a bounty of blessings, my soul was resting in a season of grief. Not depression, but lamenting.

And I felt, strangely, as though that was okay.

“Wait, Lord,” I asked. “Aren’t I supposed to shrug off this sadness? Aren’t I supposed to buck up and put on a happy face? ’Tis the season of thanksgiving, after all. I’m supposed to have an “attitude of gratitude.” I can’t be content being sad. Can I?”

Then He answered me. From the melody of the music box, as if on cue, came His gentle reminder that it’s okay if I’m not always okay.

Do you remember how Mary was grieving?
How you wept and she fell at your feet?
Well, if it’s true that you know what I’m feeling,
Could it be that you’re weeping with me?

Unexpected tears welled up in my eyes.
Oh, if only I had worn sunglasses.
The words continued.

Well, it’s so hard to know what you’re doing,
So why won’t you tell it all plain?
But you said you’d come back on the third day,
And Peter missed it again and again.

So maybe the answer surrounds us,
But we don’t have eyes to see
That you’re always good, always good.
This heartache is moving me closer than joy ever could.
And you’re always good.

Perhaps you’re like me. Perhaps in this season of Thanksgiving, while acknowledging all there is to be thankful for, deep down your heart is grieving. 

We’ve all experienced loss this year. 
Loss of expectations.
Loss of control.
Loss of fellowship.
Loss of the ability to move freely about our lives.
Loss of the ability to wrap our arms around the necks of those we love so dearly.
Loss of normalcy.

I think I’m supposed to tell you today that it’s good to grieve. 
We can still be thankful, but there’s nothing wrong with allowing ourselves to acknowledge our sadness.
It’s alright to shake our fists at the sky.
It’s necessary to confess our weariness.
It’s okay to walk down the street with tears in our eyes and say, “Lord, what are you doing? How much longer? I don’t understand this.”
Because more often than not, sorrow and heartache are the things that move us closer to the heart of God.
No one knows this more than those who have felt deep despair. 

To be aware that the Lord weeps with us in our pain is one of the most joyful truths we can know.

If you’re sad today, know you’re not alone.
The Lord is by your side.
He doesn’t need you to put on a happy face.
He simply asks that you rest in Him.

My God, my God, be near me.
There’s nowhere else go.
And Lord, if you can hear me,
Please help your child to know
That you’re always good, always good.

As we try to believe what is not meant to be understood,
Will you help us to trust your intentions for us are still good?
‘Cause you laid down your life and you suffered like I never could.
And you’re always good, always good, you’re always good.
(Andrew Peterson)

In west Knoxville there sits a beautiful house high up on a steep hill.  From the back yard you can see the mountains sprawled out in the distance.  From the front yard you can see, through the window of your imagination, the most epic Slip-and-Slide just waiting to happen.  The house belongs to our dear friend Tracy and her boys.  Well, it did.  Today they’re moving out, and it feels a little bit like we’re moving with them.  Actually, it feels like a whole lot of us are moving.  Allow me to explain.

Tracy and her husband Kenny bought this house 11 or 12 years ago.  Jeremy and I got to be the first ones to see it with them; he was their realtor (a brief career he held in what seems like a former life).  I didn’t care much for it at the time; I thought it was too big.  I was wrong.  You see, Kenny (who passed away nearly three years ago) and Tracy together had a unique gift of hospitality, the likes of which I’ve never known elsewhere, so they needed something that would accommodate their vision.  And did it ever.  This house needed to be big enough to be a homecoming to three boys and their wives and children someday.  Big enough for teenagers and all of their friends, as well as for missionaries home on furlough.  Big enough for dinner guests and Fourth of July gatherings and Christmas parties and graduation celebrations.  Big enough to host their entire church family for Super Bowl parties and New Year’s Eve parties.  And little did we know at the time that it needed to be big enough for hundreds of people to gather and grieve together when Kenny died, and then a few months later, their youngest son Brown also.  This house indeed had a unique purpose, one it fulfilled so beautifully.

I have my own delightful family memories in this house.  My firstborn’s baby shower was held there, as were many of my friends’.  I remember being invited over for dinner when Jeremy was out of town and Kenny telling Aiden, who was a toddler at the time, that he could have all the dinner rolls he wanted and didn’t have to eat his green beans, even though I had just told him otherwise.  I remember narrowly dodging the explosion of a 4th of July firecracker lighting gone very wrong.  I remember Kenny and I challenging each other to Name That Tune and being mortified that someone actually could beat me.  I remember basketball games, children on the swing set, summer barbecues, Bible studies, board games, long conversations, gift exchanges, and a whole lot of hamburgers.  I remember laughing til I cried and I remember inconsolable weeping.  I remember last goodbyes.

The house that my friends, that we, are saying goodbye to today isn’t just a house to us.  For more than a decade it has been a living parable – a shining (house) on a hill where we have seen the love and hospitality of the Kingdom of God lived out by the people who dwelt within its walls.  It was full of fun and laughter, yes.  But it was also a place of refuge, a place of comfort, a place where there was room for everyone at the table.  As my friends say goodbye to their home today, dozens…no, I dare say hundreds of people will be saying goodbye as well, to a home that holds so many cherished memories and that reflected the light of the coming Kingdom to everyone who entered.

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m a full-blown Facebook addict.  (Hi, my name is Ariaun…)  I’m a people person who loves to write and who spends most of her time with two young children.  It’s the perfect storm for a social media addiction, and FB is my drug of choice.  I enjoy almost everything about it. (Except maybe cat videos.  I could live out the rest of my days without seeing another cat video and still die happy.)

But for quite a while now I’ve felt a nagging pull to take a break.  Like a good addict is prone to do, though, I’ve always managed to talk myself out of it.  “But this is how I connect with people!”  “I’ll miss something important!”  “I don’t really let it take up that much of my time.” This past December the desire to take a hiatus from FB became rather overwhelming.  So on Jan.1 I pulled the plug for a month on my biggest vice.

It’s now the middle of February.  Looking back, I have to say that removing myself from FB was probably one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time.  And I learned a few things, to boot.  Would you like to discover my confessions and insights?  Forge ahead, dear reader, and let’s discuss.

• As a FB addict, I checked my notifications first thing every morning, before I even got out of bed.  
  Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this.  It’s a nice, quiet way to stimulate my brain as I try to wake up.  It’s kind of like my pre-coffee pick-me-up.  I don’t remember how I did life before smartphones, do you?  Well, without my FB app, I had to find a different way to wake my brain up every morning.  I started out by reading news headlines, but after a couple of days I just couldn’t stomach it.  So I decided to try waking up the old fashioned way: I got myself out of bed.  I went to my living room, turned on a lamp, picked up a book, and started reading.  Visualize it with me for a moment.

I love reading books, and my favorite time to read is first thing in the morning.  But too often I find that the mindless perusing of social media easily draws me away from quality literature. (Plus, it’s challenging to hold a book in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.  You Third World people wouldn’t understand.)  I wanted to change that habit in January, so every morning, instead of surfing on my phone, I picked up a book (this one happened to be Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson), and I sat down with my coffee to read.  This book, along with a couple of others, has drastically changed my parenting philosophy, (which is a conversation for another time), and I’m not sure when I would have taken the time to read it without my FB break.  I discovered a sense of freedom in not feeling pulled to my newsfeed every morning.  Now when I wake up I (usually) start my day with a book or with scripture reading.  I could be wrong, but I suspect it’ll make me smarter than starting my day taking a quiz to find out what my left index finger says about my personality.

• Turns out I actually DO have time to do those things I don’t have time to do.
  This one is harsh.  I have a laundry list of 5-10-minute tasks that, up until January, I just could not find the time to do.  Some of them have literally been on my list for years.  They weren’t difficult tasks; they were just…what’s the word…boring.  And so when given the choice between taping the cover back onto my son’s LEGO Star Wars Character Encyclopedia or spending five minutes seeing if anyone left a comment on my status update, the latter usually won.  Okay, fine, the latter always won.  Take away the quick ride on the ego trip, though, and all of a sudden, the small tasks become a manageable “thing” that can easily be dealt with.  And doyouknowwhat?  Knocking things off my to-do list gave me even greater satisfaction than thumbs-ups on my status updates!  Who knew!

• Playing with my kids and having face-to-face conversations is more fun than debating issues on FB.
  Well, I didn’t really learn this, I already knew it.  But I liked having BIG conversations with people on FB, and this was what I thought I would miss most of all.  The unexpected truth is, I didn’t miss it.  Not even a little bit.  Intentionally disengaging from virtual conversations freed me up to spend more time in real, live conversations, with visible body language and everything.  I enjoyed not feeling compelled to share my opinions.  With this newfound discovery I’m (slowly) learning to be much more cautious about what I choose to talk about on social media.  I’m also finding myself less interested in engaging in other people’s controversial conversations online.  Not because I don’t enjoy the discussions; I do!  But because the amount of time required to clearly express one’s thoughts in writing without the benefit body language is one of the most difficult, time-consuming things about social media.  And I realized that it’s often more stressful than fun.  Ain’t nobody got time.

While my husband and I thoroughly enjoy having open-minded discussions with people about social issues around the dinner table, I plan to now be more careful about engaging in those same conversations virtually.  I was reminded that my time in this season of life is better spent loving on my friends and family.  I still enjoy being an active listener on FB, but I have set a goal now to be less of a talker.  To wag more and bark less, if you will.

•  I don’t like my kids seeing me on my phone.
  Most of my FB interactions happen on my phone more than any other electronic device I own, and I suspect the same goes for most people.  And I don’t know about you, but when I’m out in public, I can’t help but notice (judge) how often people are on their phones.  In restaurants, at the grocery store, at the park, in traffic…everyone has their heads in their phones.  What I realized about myself was that, though I try to be diligent about putting my phone away when I’m around people, my children still see me on my phone at home quite often.  Whether it’s FB, Pinterest, a news article, or a text message, my face is in my phone more often than I’d like to admit.  Consequently, I’m indirectly teaching my kids that this is an okay thing.

Perhaps I shouldn’t characterize being on one’s phone for a considerable amount of time as being inherently good or bad.  But for me, I can say with absolute certainty that it’s not how I want to be remembered.  I don’t want my children or my husband to remember me as being distracted by my phone all the time.  I  don’t want them to remember that I looked down at my phone more than I looked them in the eyes.  I don’t want them to remember me as having always focused on someone else’s conversation.  I don’t want to grow old and discover that I missed most of what was happening in my life because I couldn’t stop watching what was happening in other people’s lives.  My point is, I only have a few short years to make lasting memories with my children.  I want to be careful and deliberate in the way I craft those memories.  Being on my phone all the livelong day doesn’t fit well into that plan.  My break from FB sealed that truth for me even more.

Yes, smartphones and social media are probably here to stay.  And even with the things I learned from my Facebook “vacation,” I’m still a huge fan and I probably always will be.  I love engaging with my wide variety of friends far too much to kiss it goodbye forever.  But taking a break from FB’s constant beckoning gave me a renewed perspective on how to set boundaries for myself.  It helped me to be mindful of what I most value in my everyday life.  I honestly thought I would hate every minute of my month off, and I’ll be honest, Inauguration Day was HARD, I tell you.  But overall, it was not only an experience I truly delighted in, but it’s one I now plan make at least a yearly habit.

How about you?  Do you set boundaries for yourself for social media?  Do you take intentional breaks regularly?  If so, what perspectives have you learned?  I’d love for you to share your thoughts with me!

‘Tis the season for back-to-school.  Media articles, Facebook links, news segments, blog posts, how-tos, printable resources, and generally all things August/Septembery fill our news feeds and capture our attention with ways to make the start of the school year richer and easier.  As a homeschool mom, the desire to see how other people manage a school day that generally has very few standardized rules always leads me to the Information Superhighway.  It’s a joy to be able to take a few sneak peeks into other family’s lives without having to leave the house or put on makeup.  This isn’t a homeschooling blog per se, but since it’s a blog about my life (and since I have a lot of things on my to-do list that I don’t want to do right now), I thought I would take the time to offer a brief glimpse into our homeschool world.  Also, I don’t like to feel left out, and since everyone else is doin’ it…

We are part-time homeschoolers, attending a co-op three days per week and schooling at home the other two (or other four, as some may see it).  My daughter Natalie is in Kindergarten and my son Aiden in 2nd grade, so this is my third year homeschooling and my first year officially homeschooling two.  Tuesday we had a particularly great day at home, so I thought I would use that as my model.  That way you can think I’m really awesome at this homeschooling thing.  If I were to blog about Thursday, I wouldn’t be able to paint as lovely a picture, and the way I see it, I owe you high quality, so we’ll just pretend every day is just like Tuesday, K?

First, I’ll give you a tour of our space.  Our most gracious and glorious heavenly IKEA shelves (and a bookshelf from Jo-Ann’s) contain most of our “educational” toys.  Board games, art supplies, science kit materials, puzzles, instruments, playing cards, manipulatives, building toys, a balance, a globe, an abacus, a cash register, and the arc du triomphe: a CD player.  With headphones.  Headphones are key to homeschool mom sanity.  Sometimes I even let the kids use them.  😉

I’m a huge fan of natural lighting, and our homeschool room has TONS of windows.  Nine, to be exact.  We keep our desks next to the windows to take advantage of all the beautiful sunlight (if you look carefully, you can see the morning sun coming up over the trees.  Glorious).  To the right of the desks is an easel I use to write down the kids’ assignments and goals for the day, and to the left is our art gallery.  Nails. Wire. Clothespins.  Nothing fancy, but it works SO WELL.  On top of the tables is a roll of paper, crayons, a pencil sharpener, and a tin of erasers.  Hanging off the sides of the tables are little tin buckets containing pencils, markers, colored pencils, paint brushes, scissors, hole punches and glue sticks.

This wall has all kinds of visuals on it, which change according to our monthly needs.  In the center is this most fabulous interactive world map!  I bought it for my son for Christmas one year, and we have just loved it!  Above the map is an Eric Carle canvas of the alphabet, which I also think absolutely rocks.  Other things currently include a sight words chart (which is ugly, but it works for now), a glass frame with fancy paper in it that I use to display our monthly Bible verse (I just write on the frame with a dry erase marker), a poster of the Presidents, a poster of our solar system, and a motivational system (read: my bribery system…because I believe in bribery.  Getting kids to put their clothes on and brush their teeth in the morning should be an Olympic event, so the promise of ice cream in exchange for 25 days of being ready to start school on time has been a game-changer in my house.  Judge not lest).  In the bottom right is a Slugs & Bugs poster of Psalm 139.  On the floor is a basket of wooden blocks and a toy piano.  The piano gets a LOT of use.  They’ve learned how to play a few songs on it, so now they’re challenging themselves to see how badly they can play them off key.  It’s great fun.

Here’s the room in its entirety.  Note that we also have a desk with a desktop computer, a United States rug and a couch for use as a trampoline a soft place to relax.

Just outside the homeschool room, we have this world map from IKEA hanging on a large wall.  We use this map all. of. the. time.  It’s probably the focal point of our house, and whenever we have visitors, everyone flocks around it and shares their tales of where they’ve been or where they’re headed.  I adore this map.  Best $150 we’ve ever spent.  Add a Nerf gun and some darts and you have one incredibly cool geography lesson.

Now for our day.  We wake up in the morning and the kids get ready while I (usually) fix a hearty breakfast.  We try our best to eat healthy meals as much as possible, so breakfast at our house usually consists of whole milk yogurt parfaits with nutty granola and blueberries, bacon, sausage, smoothies, homemade biscuits and pancakes, or toast with almond butter and jelly, along with fruit and fresh juice.  Personally, I eat a lot of eggs, buy my husband and kids get sick of them fairly easily, so it’s hit and miss with them.  While I fix breakfast the kids get dressed and make their beds.  Or they make X-wings out of Legos.

I bought these adorable oversized wooden clothespins at a craft store for $1.00 each, and I use them to display the kids’ weekly spelling words.  I keep them on the dining room table so they can look at them whenever they’re eating.  Since they eat 52 gazillion times per day, they get a lot of exposure to their words without me having to nag them about studying.  It’s brilliant, if I do say so myself.During breakfast and morning snack, we do a devotional and Bible story reading, respectively.  Sally Lloyd-Jones has the most beautiful devotional for little ones called Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing.  Lemme tell ya, it makes my heart sing for sure.  So much joy and grace and truth in these small, bite-size passages.  An excellent way to start our morning.  The Bible we use is Egermeier’s Bible Story Book.  What I love about this Bible is that it offers so much more than the basics of common children’s Bible stories.  There’s a lot of detail in each passage, but they’re cautious about making sure their words and pictures are sensitive to little eyes and ears (for example, David’s battle with Goliath leaves out the part where David cut off Goliath’s head).  We also have The Jesus Storybook Bible, which is my absolute favorite children’s Bible in the history of ever, but the kids also read that one at their co-op, so we’ve taken a break from it at home for now.

After breakfast and clean-up, we get our minds ready to learn by exercising.  Tuesday was an absolutely gorgeous August day, so we dashed outside to…

climb on the monkey bars…

jump rope…

and run relays.

We mix up the exercise time weekly.  Sometimes we ride bicycles, sometimes we find workout videos on YouTube if it’s raining, or sometimes we just find silly ways to move our bodies and dance.  An exercise trampoline is on my wish list to have for indoor movement during the day.  The need to move is especially key for my very energetic 7-year-old boy.  I’m a firm believer in the fact that movement stimulates the brain, so we try to always get our blood pumping before (and during) our lessons if we can.

Speaking of lessons, we head inside to get our book work done after exercising while our minds are fresh and rested.  We spend about 30 minutes doing math, handwriting and phonics, and then we get up and move around again.  We try to do as little sitting as possible, and we break it up into manageable segments.

Or we just lie on the floor.

Food is essential to learning in this household.  Did I mention that my kids eat 52 gazillion times per day?  Rather than fight the battle all day long, I put a simple snack and water bottles on the table for them to munch on while they work; in this case, popcorn and pistachios.  This helps prevent distraction and procrastination by keeping the “But I’m huuuuuungry!”‘s at bay.

Aiden has a book he uses at home called Challenging Word Problems.  They really are quite challenging for his grade level, so we tackle them in small bites and for some reason, writing the problems on the dry erase board makes them seem less intimidating than reading them from the book.  It also helps to change the words around to appeal to his interests.  No one cares how many books Sam read on Saturday and Sunday, but figuring out how many Storm Troopers Luke Skywalker fought on Saturday and Sunday is a challenge worth taking on.

Writing practice is much more fun with paint and Q-tips!

After we’ve been doing book work for a while, we stop and play a game.  Natalie’s math book is especially easy for her right now, so rather than give her a more challenging workbook to do, we play math games instead.  On this particular day, we played a math game with playing cards.  Natalie and I played Addition War while Aiden and I had a slightly more complicated challenge.  We had to take four cards, figure out how to combine them to get the two highest double-digit numbers, then add them together.  Whoever got closest to 100 got all eight cards.  They both beat me almost every time.

By the time we finish this, it’s time for me to fix lunch, so I give the kids a challenging activity to work on with their hands while I’m in the kitchen.  This week they had Lego challenges.  On this day, they had to make a scene out of Legos that told a story.  Natalie had a difficult time with this, so she just made a box.  Aiden, however, reeeeeeally got into it and made a giant Star Wars battle, complete with AT-ATs, X-wings and tie-fighters.  He was enjoying himself so much, I had a hard time getting him to come eat lunch!

STEM Challenge: Who can build the tallest cup tower?

When we’re not doing Lego challenges we’re either doing art activities (I love artfulparent.com.  She has amazing self-directed art projects that are both stimulating and easy to throw together), STEM challenges, or creative writing work.  They (usually) love these tasks to keep their hands and brains busy while I’m unavailable to help them.  Aiden’s not a big fan of writing, so he doesn’t love the creative writing, but if I give him a Star Wars or Minecraft theme, he’s more willing to go with it.  This is a pretty fun journal for boys, too.

After lunch the kids go outside to play (or inside if the weather is uncooperative) while I clean up lunch and throw laundry in the dryer.  Then we read books and study science.  While I’m reading, the kids are either cuddled up next to me on the couch (as in the above picture), or they’re on the floor playing with manipulatives, such as Tinker Toys, Magna-Tiles, or a sensory box.  When we do science, I either incorporate a science experiment, book, video and/or art activity to go along with whatever we’re learning.  On Tuesday we were studying the Arctic, so we watched a video of the aurora borealis.  I was so excited to show them the video, thinking they would be mesmerized, but turns out they were already familiar with it, thanks to Octonauts.  Who says TV can’t be educational?  Totally rained on my parade, but whatever.  Octonauts didn’t teach them HOW it occurred, so I still had the upper hand in the teaching.  So there.

When science is over, we study a country, work on any classroom projects that are assigned, do individual reading, and/or call it a day and go play.  Our day lasts generally from 9:00-2:30ish, depending on how much extra-curricular work is required for their co-op.  The afternoon also offers us activities that we consider to be learning experiences, such as soccer practice, helping cook dinner, doing chores, and having read-aloud time with chapter books.  As most homeschoolers know, everything is a learning experience.

It’s taken us some time (two full years to be exact) to figure out our daily rhythm on our homeschool days, but this seems to be working well for us.  It’s not without struggles, but I don’t expect perfection.  There are things I’d rather be doing than school work, too, to be honest.  But such is life.  As a rule, however, our days are flowing smoothly and we’re enjoying ourselves.  Hands-on learning that’s playful and fun is important to me.  I’m a big believer in the idea that anything can be fun if you put in a little extra effort, and the more fun it is, the more the learning sticks.  We’re so thankful to be able to have the opportunity to do school this way.

What are some of your favorite techniques for making learning fun and your homeschool days flow smoothly?  I’d love for you to share them with me!  After all, we’re all learning!