Coming Up On Sixty

I remember when my dad had his first big heart attack. He was 37. Crazy to think about because I am 32. He was working like crazy to support his big family and coming home after his ten hour shift to remodel the kitchen. He really is the kind of man that I look at and think, wow, he is good at everything. He would often come home from work and get on the ground and wrestle with all of us. He fixed everything and fixed it the right way. He was the best driver (something important to us Johnstons). He was my basketball couch and biggest cheerleader at softball games. I think he was convinced that I could of gone pro. He also took us to church every Sunday and made sure that we all had our first communions and reconciliations. We put money in the offering at church even though we did not have much. He was a hero and to a little girl he was invincible. So 37 is a bit young to die. Too young to die. Too young to leave behind 5 girls and 1 boy with their mamma to take care of him. Not many die and live to come back and talk about it. But my dad is not a normal guy. He is the seventh son of a seventh son and their is magic in this. So he did the magical thing and died and came back to life! And thanks to God that he did! My dad is now approaching he 60th year and we are planning a huge party for him. I do think that we are all a bit surprised that he is still here. But more then being surprised, we are grateful!! He is a man of many talents. He is a man tested by hard Providences and remained loyal and faithful. Not many men get to care for a wife as sick as my mom was and I must say that he did it with grace and integrity. I remember when my mom was super sick at the end of her life and she was really getting into knitting. At this point in her sickness she was home-bound. My dad went out and bought her a truckload of yarn and needles. When she got super into card making, he made sure that she had ample ink and paper to satisfy her Hallmark adventures. He loved and adored her. He was loyal and kind. He never, never said a selfish word to her or acted in a way to make her feel like a burden. It was the kind of love that inspires! It is the kind of love not easily forgotten. It is the kind of love that invented its own language! The kind of love that had him crawling into her hospital bed again and again. It was the kind of love that stayed strong for us kids when our mother passed on leaving him behind and broken. It was the kind of love that gave us an example to follow. And this man has been an example to us all on how to be a son, constantly taking care of his mom by bringing groceries, visiting often and always speaking of grandma with awe. By being an example as husband and caring for my mom with a loyal admiration that was breathtaking. By being an example as a father in providing for a large family and working off our tuition so that we could go to private schools. By being an example of grandpa and continuing to help us all out with our individual families. By being a good man. Hears to my dad and many, many more years with us!

Little Pests

I have been in bed the past couple of days. I have been bogged down with sickness and can say that I have not meditated on anything other then feeling horrible. I wish I was holier then that but I am not. Being sick really is a pest. And it is a pest that I do despise. I keep trying to make this very clear, trying to offend this pest so that it stays far away from me. But it seems to take a liking to me. It is kinda of like cats. I really do not like the feline. I try and make this clear as well. But they love me. They love to rub against my leg and purr like they have really found a great friend. But alas my cats and sickness seem to really like me. I wish their was a solution. But I have come to understand that my lot is full of headaches (migraines really) and cats. The cats I think are more tolerable. Enough with the cat (I should say cats because our cat is about to bless us with more fuzzy felines!). My mom was sick. She was the kind of sick that never went away. she was the kind of sick that eventually took her. I never thought I would resemble her in this way. I always thought I was stronger. I always thought of myself as healthy and able. And I really am not sick like she was. But I am more like her in this way then I thought I would be. The problem is, every time I host a dinner, a party really anything, I get bogged down with a migraine. It really does seem that my little body cannot handle hospitality. This really bugs me because I love, love having people over. I do struggle with this. If I host, then my family suffers the next day. And Jason has become part house-wife because of this. I am young and want to be strong and not feel at war in this body daily. Weakness of any sort is hard. Weakness in body is a constant reminder to me of the pardox we all are. New life in Jesus, called to leave the old man and his old ways and walk with the Spirit in new life. But this new life is residing in a fallen body. There are things about this old man that will not "die" until I really die. And it is not untill I am raised from the dead, that the new man will get to walk in his new body. Our culture is obsessed with preserving our decaying bodies. They grasp after this like it is the way to new life. But Jesus really is the way the truth and the life and it is by following him daily and dying daily that we find new resurrection life. And this is how we live and it is a reminder to us that when we have that final death, that it will most assuredly be followed up by resurrection. So here is to living in a body fallen and decaying and remembering the promise that we have victory over death in the end.

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Get Over It

Once upon a time there lived a great prince. He was made from the dirt of earth by the greatest King who made all things. He was given a great garden set on top of the world. The garden was full of beauty. The garden was teeming with life. The King gave this as a gift to the man. He gave it to him with the intention of setting the man out to expand the garden over the rest of the world. The prince was allowed to eat of all the trees in his garden. But there was one tree and this one was not yet to be food for the prince; he was to wait until he was ready. Now this great King had fought a war in the heavens against the great Dragon. This Dragon was once the greatest and noblest of his kind. But this Dragon coveted the Kings kingdom and gathered an army together to bind the great King and steal his Kindgom. But the Dragon failed and the King cursed him and threw him out of the deep heavens. This Dragon beheld the making of the man. And he saw that man was made in the image of the great God. The Dragon was still at war and he wanted to use this man to fight a new battle against God. The Dragon was known as the cunningest of all beasts. He came to the garden and found man's wife in the midst of it. He walked with the women and asked her questions. He brought the women to the forbidden tree and convinced that if she ate of it she would be like God, her great and awesome creator. The women did want to be like God and when she looked on the fruit and saw that it was pleasant fruit, she ate of it. She gave the fruit to her husband and he ate of it. God came to man and women and spoke words of judgement. Man had started a war with God. And he would continue to fight with God and all the earth would be at war with him as well. The land would be hard and would not easily yield to his hand. Women would be fruitful but she would bear children with much pain and suffering. She would also be at war with her husband and try to rule him. All was changed that day. But God is good and loves man. He promised that he would send a prince that would be a new gardener. He would be one that would end the war between man and God and bring peace to the earth. He would do what the first man failed to do; he would make the whole earth a garden city. And he would fill the streets with the knowledge of the Lord. He would be the true Son of God and he would bear the weight of all mans sin and war against the great God.

This advent story is beautiful again and again. It is in Advent that the promise made to Eve appears through her curse of childbirth to Mary. It is hope fulfilled. It is the beginning of the end. The unmaking of the world and the remaking of the new world.

It is a wonder that we so easily forget who we are. We are called to be son's of the living God. We are also called to something. We are on a journey. We are going somewhere. We are running a race. We are fighting a fight. Our sights are set on things above. Right. Check. We know who we where in Adam. We know who we are in the new Adam. So why do we get so bogged down when we stumble in the race. Why do get so discouraged when we loose a match in the fight? Why do we wallow when we find our gaze shifted down instead of up? I often think that psycho-analyzing the situation, just makes a bad situation worse. So instead of asking why am I this way, why can't I just stop, why, why, why? Why don't we just get over it. Why don't we go to the cross again and lay our sins at the feet of Jesus. Why don't we let him take care of it. Why don't we move on and do something good with our time and thoughts. Why don't we remember that God is working the old Adam out and the new Adam in. Why don't we shift our gaze heavenward.

All right this is the plan. We will get up quickly when we stumble. We will not make a big deal out of a little deal. We will let Jesus carry our load when it is heavy. We will fight the good fight and not tire of doing good.

So go on and do something good for your family. And when you fall short, go to God quickly and continue on. Be a strong soldier and finish the task. Be strong in God's might and watch Him transform your heart into a beautiful garden.

Blessings,

Erin

Loving The Middle Years

I have discovered that there is a whole in all parenting plans and books. It seems that as soon as you are done training toddlers, if you did a splendid job of it, that your kids should run on their own pretty smoothly. Good training is like riding a bike, and once those training wheels come off, you just sit back and watch your kids ride away. The problem is, this is not how it really works! Discipleship is never ending. There is never a point that you reach that is "the Point". There is no DONE in parenting. You leave the toddler stage to enter into a whole new world, a whole new game. Thankfully the manual for this next stage is the same. The Bible always speaks to us as parents. It speaks to us in the consent and insistent age of 2 year olds, it speaks to us in the early wisdom age of the 7 year old and it continues to speak to us as we raise up our children to love the Lord. But it does seem that in parenting books this age is skipped. It does seem that this is the age where kids are given a lot of freedom without the right equipment for the job. When kids are young you need a lot of energy and a whole lot of patience and self disciple to do the same thing every day. When they get a little older they learn how to function in your home (they do not stick there fingers in the outlet anymore). And they really are able to play with friends without stealing or hitting! But, but, but....They still need you. They still need to be guided, they still need help and they still need bounderies. They are able to hang out with friends (siblings included) pretty effortlessly but issues still arise. It is a different set of issues but there is plenty to talk about and ample room for teaching and instructing. If these issue are not coming to you, you have a whole different issue. You need to know who your kids are with. You need to know what they are playing, how they are playing (or not playing!) and where they are playing. If your kids are playing with other kids out of earshot, you should ask questions in the car on your way home: Who did you play with? What game did you play? What did you talk about? And then you interact with what they tell you. If they are constantly having issues with the same kid(s) make sure to be observing the situation first hand so that you can help your young lady or young man, deal with it properly. Basically, you need to oversee there free time. This is not the stage that we let go of our kids!! We need to invest in our kids at this stage and teach them how to interact in the world they are in. When kids are toddlers we teach them the rules and boundaries of home life. They have rules all over the place. These rules are teaching them how to live in your home and how to live in your family. These rules are put into place for protection, function and to maintain peace, joy and some kind of order in the home. Really, the rules are in place for everyone's good. So by the time your kids are 5 they usually have the rules down. Yes, they may still break the rules but they know the standard. But these middle years are when their world begins to expand a little bit. They go from home, to playground, to school, to more school to work to starting their own families. Their world just keeps expanding!! It keeps getting bigger. And as it gets a little bigger, they need our help! They need our wisdom to apply to their new situations. They need guidance and guidelines for this next step. Because of this, I am going to try and focus on this for a little bit in my next posts. I am in the thick of it right now with a 8, 7, and almost 6 year old. And this is really me trying to figure out what I am doing right now with my kids. And as I go on this journey, I hope to please the Lord and help my children grow in grace and beauty!

Happy sweeping! And for those of you with older kids, much of that sweeping is in attitudes and spending time talking through things! We rarely spill milk anymore but there is still plenty of sweeping going on!

Dandelions

I have a strange memory from my early school days. Memories from St Patricks catholic school hold a special place in my mind. I loved my school and only have good memories of the 9 years that I spent there. It was small. We went to mass every friday. There was no play structure. There was asphalt and paint. This meant that kickball and foursquare where honored at recess time and that our school could have taken any other school on and destroyed them. Scraped knees where not a thing to cry over but something that made for a good story and to compare to the other kid's bloody knee to see who's was better. There was no room for bad attitudes or girly silliness. The school had a good aroma. And my class was the potpourri of the school! But back to this memory. I remember picking dandelions. My class went out during school hours to some of the houses in the neighborhood and picked their dandelions. We had big bags that we filled. And boy did we fill a whole lot of bags! We took these bags to a big factory. This is where the memory goes a little fuzzy and all I have left are some sparse but vivid pictures of this factory. I have no idea what this pest of a plant was turned into. But it did some good I am sure. And isn't that just how life is. Sin pops up in our heart but God..... God takes the sin and turns it upside down. God takes death and swallows it up with resurrection life.

Dandelions are on the brain. My yard is full of them. And they grow so fast, so relentlessly that I have given up trying to mow before they outgrow the grass. I would need to mow weekly to defeat them. But I really only like to mow every other week so my yard only looks decent for about 5 days before my grass is hiding below a bed of dandelions. Or rather a sea of dandelions for they really do appear to have no end!

The other reason that dandelions have consumed me (as well as the yard), is that I came up with a great analogy today while taking to a sister about sin. I was looking out at my yellow speckled yard when my sister was taking about how discouraging it can be when you just cannot get the upper hand on sin. Just when you think you have it down, just when you think you are over something, it pops it's ugly head up in the form of a thought, "but really it was so horrible how........."fill in the blank. How he spoke to me, how he treated me, how he lied to me, how he cheated me. And the list of offenses is as varying as condiments in my fridge. But the real perspective is quite different. Look at it this way. When sin comes in (a dandelion in the yard) and you repent (you pick the dandelion), you have dealt with it faithfully. If you notice another dandelion, and then another dandelion, do not be discouraged. Just pick the dandelions out as they come your way. And pretty soon you will find that the yard is looking pretty good! And that your maintenance of this pesty weed is becoming quite manageable. But, always, always get rid of it as soon as you notice it! It is often tempting to go sit in the bed of dandelions and ponder over why they are there. It is easy to sit down with the dandelions and ask "how did you get here?" "where did you come from?" But all this does is turn you into another weed in the garden. Pick the dandelions, get rid of the dandelion. Don't turn them into a little pet to cry over. Just get rid of it. And if you notice that your whole heart is overrun with dandelions, do not fear. But rather rejoice that God is faithful and just to forgive. Start with one dandelion at a time. And if they will not leave you alone, remember to fight the good fight and never tire of doing good, good being killing the dandelion. You will have victory! And yes, each victory leads to another fight. But that does not mean you are failing. It rather is a sign that you are being faithful. If you are not fighting sin, then you have lost. Fighting is the ticket to living a fruitful blessed life. So get out there and take a sword to your dandelions. Cut there little heads off and never tire of doing it. And you will find that you get better and better at fighting. So the key is not to stop fighting, but to become a skilled warrior. The bible is very clear that this life is not one of ease. There are blessings all around us. And life is good. But it is not true that good and easy go together. It is a lie to think that fighting is a sign of failing. Or that fighting is a sign of something wrong with you. It you have this mindset, then get rid of it quickly! Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Gear up for battle!! But on the whole armor of God. Stand and fight. And it is in this fighting that you find victory. Victory in Christ will one day lead to rest. But that will be the day that you stand before Him face to face. That time is not yet here and you want to hear these words when that time does come, "well down my good and faithful servant." So get out there and pluck those dandelions. And when you pluck one, get ready to pluck some more!

Sweet Speech

We just finished our spring break. It was so much fun to have the kids home all week. We went to the beach, the park, set up a tent in the yard and the kids slept outside with Jason, we went to the flee market, Abby made cookies, the girls and I looked up you tube videos of fun hand games to play, we played cards........wow we really had an awesome time over the break!!! But there was something that I noticed over the break that was not so lovely. There was a weed that sprung up while we were in close quarters and it was ugly. The kids kept saying "stop it" or "stop"' to one another. Now in all honesty I must confess that I am a culprit as well. And it is I that condoned such ugly speech by using it myself. When we speak a certain way, we are telling the kids that they have permission to speak this way. We need to be careful how we speak to one another. So I thought of way to pull up this nasty weed with pleasant weed killer. I gave the kids each a ziplock bag filled with ten Junior Mints. I set a five day timeline and told the kids that each time they said stop or stop it, that they would have to give me one of their mints. Well, it is only Tuesday but so far there bags are full. This is just a fun way to get rid of something ugly. I am often tempted to be a drill sergeant to the kids. But God is good to us when we act ugly and He blesses us when we are a garden full of weeds; this is grace! I want to act like my Heavenly Father in all things and this includes the way that I deal with ugly speech.

This is just a little fun idea for weeding out ugliness in speech. I hope that this gets your creative juices flowing as you deal with your own weeds!

Blessings to you lovely sisters!