Guess What...

For most of the years I homeschooled my life was dictated by the demands of ODD's vocal academy. Which meant our schooling often suffered.  A lot.  Especially performance weeks. And what really suffered was her math.

We hated math.  It was the bane of our lives.  It could reduce both of us to tears. We weren't particularly good at it & we did as little of it as we could get away with. Even our supervisor, a certified math teacher & a truly lovely person, met her Waterloo at ODD's hands & math.

At the time I said, over & over...& over... because I needed to hear it as much as anybody, ODD is a smart, smart bunny.  If she needs this stuff, she'll work it out.

Guess what? ODD is a smart, smart bunny. Having reached the end of the financial year & discovered she was broke, she decided she would do her own tax return rather than going to the accountant as she has done previously.

She put in for exemptions on everything!  Clothing. Make~up. Office equipment. Travel. And she got it all back! It's the best tax return she's ever got.  And people thought she couldn't do math!

The thing with homeschooling, & we are seeing its fruits still, years down the track, is how it teaches kids to think: I can do it ~ I just need to learn how; I can do it ~ I just need to figure out how it works for me; I can do it ~ if I need to learn how. so proud of my girl.

The But...

I have a confession to make. I don't do daily devotions. You know, those little booklet thingies with a short bible passage, a shorter message, & a brief prayer like Our Daily Bread or... I dunno.  I don't do them.  Not ever.  They drive me to distraction.

Now if they're your thing, that's great.  Terrific. Be blessed & all that but they aren't mine & it's a problem.  Christians are always offering me these things. Do you read...? Oh but you must.  I have a spare...

And sometimes, to keep the peace & get these lovely, well meaning people off my back I take the thing hoping that they never check because I bin the thing as soon as they're out of sight.

Mostly there's this slightly shocked expression when I refuse that gets bewildered as I gently try to explain I don't read them. The wheels in their brains go round & round & I can almost hear the But..but you're a pastor...But you teach...but...yep, but I don't read daily devotionals.

I used to homeschool, you know.  It is a very useful thing for a preacher.  It teaches you about how you learn best.  It teaches you that the way you learn may not be how someone else learns so I know things about me & the way I learn best.

I know I'm a big picture thinker. I know I'm visual ... non~sequential...language orientated...complex & so when I study I don't look for a quick 2 minute time filler.  I start opening windows on my computer: Mounce's interlineal; Biblehub; biblegateway; Hebrew roots...I may, depending on my topic, listen to or read others opinions & interpretations.  I consult with the Holy Spirit. I am liable to think about my topic on & off all week.  I get excited & when I get excited enough I have a sermon.

Now, no~one in the congregation wants to wade through the bru~ha~ha with me.  That's what they have me for.  Equally, I can't afford to expend my time & energy on milk~sop because that's what I would dish up & that's not a healthy diet. Not everyone is going to get everything all the time ~ but that's ok.

The thing is, my brain works in a certain way.  It has been trained in a certain way.  Now I am at that time of life when it is much harder to change the habits of a lifetime.  When I feed I feed deep.  I gorge myself.  I coalesce way more information than I can possibly use but it's there & I know it's there. Then, like a sated bear, I hibernate.

And at some point [just ask my kids] someone will ask the pertinent question & all that information will erupt.  Which doesn't happen with those daily devotional things.  So now you know.  Love them & keep them but please, don't pass them along to me!

Saying Good~bye.

We have been dealing with a death  in the family.  Some deaths are easier than others.  Some families do better.

The MOTH's generally doesn't do well.  They have no belief & so death tends to be traumatic.

For us it is different.  It has been hardest on CG who is in Chile & who has rung & messaged & needed regular updates so as not to feel left out & excluded just because she is so far away. That has been my job.

The MOTH has been in charge of his mum.  Meanwhile his siblings have been spinning wildly out of control organising all the funeral details without consulting anybody else ~ not the MOTH's mum; not the MOTH; not his friends & they chose a *family only* funeral service.

None of this would matter except that GD had a lot of friends on the island & so we must organise a way for the island to say goodbye because this is still a small, tight~knit community & GD wasn't even cold before news of his death had spread like wildfire.  No such thing as confidentiality when it comes to the island.

So we have booked the hall where we have church & I began thinking about what I could, in honesty, say without being nasty.  GD & I were like oil & water.  We had nothing in common.  We never once, in all the years I knew him, had a sensible conversation.  My boys did better.  They took him fishing ~ though that could get hairy.  They were better fishermen.  They caught more.  They caught them bigger ~ & invariably they were right about the best places to drop a line.

In the middle of the night ~ & seriously, I have no idea why the Holy Spirit chooses these times!~ I was woken & what the Holy Spirit was reminding me of was a Katherine Mansfield short story: At The Bay. It is a long rambling short story about nothing much & which is read for literary style rather than plot ~ completely forgettable in many ways except for a delightful cameo wherein the child, Kezia, attempts to get her grandmother to promise to never die. And that was what the Holy Spirit reminded me about. [You can read the story here; part VII is the relevant episode ]

And so this is the story that leapfrogs into a discussion about life & death & the starting point the Holy Spirit chose to lead into a discussion about what my boys discussed with their grandfather during those long hours on the water & what he, himself, finally came to believe. GM is happy with it. The MOTH is happy.  I am happy to have  successfully managed a delicate balancing act between the secular & the religious.

Just the same, we are all going to be very glad when this week is done & dusted.

Some things remain the same.

I had several days on the mainland before the Little Man & his mummy headed to S.A for a month so the other GPs can spend some time & see how much the Little Man has grown ~ & grown he has.  He is walking & has a few words & is now exerting his will to get his own way. Yep.  Mummy & Daddy now need to do a little more than Oooh & Aaaah.

The Friday night was interesting.  It had rained ~ a slow, damp mizzling sort of rain ~ all day.  It was cold & I was missing our fire & my cats, which would have been so much warmer & comforting & the Little Man hadn't slept much so everyone was hoping he would go down nicely that night because they were travelling the next day.  Of course he didn't.  His mummy went early leaving the lad with me & his daddy.

T1 tried @ the Little Man's regular bedtime to put him down.  No go.  He screamed so much His dad brought him back out to the t.v, where he raged.  Tried again an hour later.  Same deal. The 3rd time mum was up, dad was up & I got up again even though I had gone to bed too.  I was pretty sure mum & dad were going to try the same unsuccessful strategies they have used in the past, even though we all know they don't work.

Now @ this point my DIL was saying: He only wants me ~ & while that sounds flattering it was patently untrue.  What the Little Man wanted was his own way with everyone dancing attendance. So I said to my son:  Would you like me to try?

Five kids & all my boys were lousy sleepers so I have learnt a trick or two.  Actually ODD was perhaps worst of all but we had a different household, a different arrangement & a whole different relationship because of it. So I had T1 drag out the stroller.  The little Man's eyes lit up like beacons when he realised he was going walkies & he began bobbing up & down with excitement.  I plonked him in, well wrapped, all bug eyed & bushy tailed, sitting bolt upright with delight.  I figured about then this was not going to be a quick & easy exercise but we headed off into the misty night, the street lights all haloed, & the smell of rain rich & pungent.

The thing is, he could have screamed his lungs out if he wanted, but neither of his parents would have heard him & become distressed ~ only he didn't.  He was out in the night & it was interesting & exciting & wonderful.  Every so often he swiveled around to give me a great beaming smile of delight. I grinned back because there is something about the regular motion of a moving vehicle that sooner or later mesmerizes sleepless children into a drugged state where they simply must lay their sleepy heads down.  It is inevitable.  Like the sun going down or the tide coming in.

After about 20 minutes I was nicely warmed up & the mist was making things damp so I took of my jacket & hung it over the front of the stroller, plunging the Little Man into darkness & within 10 minutes he was down for the count.

 I turned for home [20 minutes away] & by the time we got in the door he'd been asleep for a good 20 minutes so I advised my son to let him sleep where he was because if he woke then it was going to be an all nighter.

Being me I would have done the stroller routine much, much earlier but the Little Man is not my child & he needs to live by mummy & daddy's rules.  I don't want to be an interfering sort of Mother in Law ~ though I'm pretty sure everyone was relieved to get the Little Man back sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted.

With his wife & child out of the house T1 reverted to type. Latish on the Sunday night I heard a great thump land on my verandah & immediately thought: Why is there a wallaby on my deck?  I have no idea why I would even think that.  The next thing T1 hove into sight having thrown an esky full of fish up ahead of him.  He was grateful for a roaring hot fire, someone to cook him a meal & a bed for the night.  He will be back.