Month: October 2011

Wow, did they do their research!

My husband said the show hit too close to home to watch. So I never caught any of it last year. But last week, it came on just as another show we had been watching ended. So I thought I’d give it a try.

Wow, after 3 minutes, it had to go off – it was that good! The show, “Parenthood,” has captured perfectly what it is like to parent a boy with Asperger’s syndrome. Anyone interested in experiencing my life, tune in.

However, as my husband and I generally watch TV to relax and escape from reality for awhile, that show is not for us.

But I am so glad that show is out there. Kudos to the creator’s of, “Parenthood.” You have done well!

My kids wanted me to blog this…

A week or so ago our minivan died. After taking it to several shops and pouring several thousand dollars into it, it still didn’t run properly. So we donated it to a school that fixes cars, and bought a new vehicle.

Our family tries to eat gluten-free, and as any of you who eat GF know, everything GF is a lot crumblier than its glutinous counterpart. Well, the first day that I was picking the kids up from school in the new car, I baked some GF cookies. I brought them as an after-school snack. But I forgot to bring some napkins.

As all of you will elementary students can remember, you put a lot of time and effort in nagging, cajoling, bribing, shaming, threatening, whatever it takes to get your kids to learn to use napkins or facial tissue instead of some other nearby fibers, such as clothes.

So needless to say, my kids think it is absolutely hilarious (they are still laughing about it two weeks later) that when I picked them up from school that day, these are the directions they received:

“I forgot to pack napkins, so if you get crumbs all over your fingers, please wipe them on your pants, do not wipe them on the car.”

God so gently prepares us

I have heard numerous sermons on verse one of Genesis 12, how one day, out of the blue (literally!),  God called Abram to leave his land and people and go to a new place where God promised to make him a great nation. And Abram, who had been happily puttering about, living his life, with no thought in the world about anything else,  faithfully just got up and left with his household.

Wow! That is faith – to just change direction with no warning. I was always a bit disheartened by this story, because I know myself too well. I require a lot of warning before I am ready to make significant changes. I am getting better at trusting God, but I still don’t think I would have been able to turn and rip up my life so quickly.

However, while doing my assigned Bible reading this morning (ok, so the reading was assigned for Wednesday, Aug 24. But better late than never!) of Genesis, Chapter 11, I read the following:

“Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and died in Haran.”

Wow! That really gave me hope. God had already been preparing Abram’s heart. God gave Abram a taste of what it is like to move from your home, by prompting his father, Terah, to move the family from Ur to Haran.

God gave Abram a sense of what it is like to be obedient to authority, even when it means plans you made are interrupted. The Bible says that Terah had planned to go to Canaan, but stopped in Haran. Abram had expected to go to Canaan, but was stopped by someone in authority over him.

Most importantly, God put a glimmer of the dream of living in Canaan into Abram’s heart, so that when God called Abram, Abram would be ready to respond. Abram had expected to be living somewhere other than Haran. So when God called him, it probably felt more like, “Cool, I was hoping to get moving again some day.” And less like, “What, you want me to just uproot everything and go to where?”

I am sure there was a bit of the, “you want me to do what?” feeling. But I am so happy to see that God made sure there was some of the, “Cool, I was wondering when this dream would come to fruition!” feeling, too.