Dark and Light

"What do righteousness and wickedness have in common?  Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?"  2 Corinthians 6:14

Yesterday, my 14 year old daughter, Mary Susannah, was restless.  She wanted to go somewhere, do something, have something new.  Never mind she's been on a trip with her brothers and dad and gone quite a few places over the last couple of weeks - yesterday was boring.  She came in the late afternoon and asked me to download a certain book we had seen in the newspaper as they reviewed several people involved in the 911 disaster.  It looked very interesting to both of us.  And they did have it as an ereader.  But I was worried because I could not flip through it first.  Mary Susannah is a pure work of art, as are all children, and as long as it is in my power, I will not defile her.  I don't want her to read a book that I had not checked first.
She was not real happy with me, but she's a good girl, and went to find something else to do.

So after I had taken my soon to be 18 year old son Beau out to a birthday dinner at TGIFriday's last night (after which we both had food poisoning - stay away from their mozzarella sticks), I suggested we head over to Half Price Book Store so I could surprise my pretty daughter with the book she wanted.  In between trips to the bathroom, I couldn't find that particular book, but I did find one by the same lady, written with her husband, and it did look okay for my girl to read, so I tucked it under my arm and headed over to the teenage/young adults section to see what else I could find for her.

Oh, my...

I knew the world was bad.  And the Bible tells us that it's only going to get worse and worse as the end draws near.  But I wasn't expecting what I found.  The shelves were full of almost nothing but vampire and occult books.  The covers were dark and scary looking.  Evil just surrounded shelf after shelf after shelf.  I was horrified, and thought I might cry as I stood there.  I grieved so HARD for the children trying to grow up in the world today.  No wonder they are struggling so.  And what parent in their right mind would buy this stuff for their children?  Don't they care?

Let me stop here and say that as a young adult, I loved horror stories.  Stephen King was my favorite, and I had invested in all his books in hard back.  I had every. single. one. of his books.  And even back then, most horror books (the old Dracula ones)  were not as graphic as they are now.  But still...

I was lost.  I was hell bound.  And I firmly believe my love of those books showed it.  There was a lot more in my life, too, I will admit.  These books were just one thing.  But it wasn't long before in my late twenties, and early 30's the fruit of my life hit, and everything went into a downward spiral.

Finally, FINALLY, I hit the bottom.  I remember the day, in the midst of sin, it was like I had an out of body experience, I could see how dirty I was, and I cried out "God, SAVE ME!"

From that very exact moment, things changed for me.  The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5: 17 that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone, the new has come!"  Suddenly, all those books and magazines (among many other things, this is just what we are talking about right now) no longer held an appeal for me.  In fact, it kind of made me sick.  I wanted my mind to be clean.  So out went the magazines into the trash.  And those Stephen King books, hundreds of dollars worth of them...what to do with them?  For a second, I considered selling them or giving them away.  After all, they were in good condition, and I had spent so much on them...but quickly I knew - if they were not fit for me to read as the new creation I was, how could I pass them on and pollute someone else's mind?  So every time I opened a new trash bag, I threw a book inside.
A friend was pretty horrified at the change in me.  My love of Stephen King has always been "part of me", everyone who knew me well knew how I loved his books.  This friend begged me to let him store my books in his garage until I "got over this."  I smiled at him and said, "If I ever get over this, please just shoot me, okay?" 
I had no intention of going back...

It took two years to get my "shockability" again.  I remember being at someones house and the TV was on.  Someone on the screen yelled out the "s" word, and my head jerked around.  And then, I got chills, because I thought, I'M CLEAN!  Those words are not something I hear or see anymore.  Those words can shock me now.

That's not to say that we clean our minds and let it go at that.  There's a story in Matthew 12 about the man who "swept his house clean" of evil spirits, but left it unoccupied.  When the evil spirit came back and found it was empty, he brought seven of his friends along to move back in, and the final condition of the man was worse than it was before.  I often think of that story when people I know start out on the journey to be Christians, but soon turn back.  Did they clean their house?  Did they fill it with good, pure things?  Did they let the spirit of God fill their very souls?  Because otherwise, how could the old life hold any attraction anymore?

Recently, a good friend showed us an article written by a Mennonite publication that was praising Harry Potter.  They said that although, yes, it was occult, Harry Potter was, after all, a good guy, and it was refreshing to find good guys as the hero in today's world.
It made me sad to see this.  The Bible is so clear about these things.  2 Corinthians 6, in the passage I quoted at the beginning of this blog, goes on to say:  "What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?  What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?...Therefore come out from then and be separate, says the Lord.  Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."

In Acts 19:18-19, a number of people who practiced magic arts were converted.  And what happened then?  Did they decide to use their magic for good?  Did they turn it into "Christian magic", did they believe that sorcerers could be good guys, and the world needs that, after all?  No, in fact, here is what happened:

" Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed their evil deeds.  A  number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.  When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas.  In this way, the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power."

A drachmas was a silver coin worth about a days wage.  They burned up a LOT of money that day to the glory of the Lord, and that testimony caused His word to grow in power.  How many other people are in glory today because of that bonfire?  Are we so good, we are better than that?  Are we so good, we can cling to our Harry Potter and Twilight and Stephen King books, and not only that, but give them to our children to read?  Lord, have mercy on us...

Revelations 21:8 says "The cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, THOSE WHO PRACTICE MAGIC ARTS, the idolaters and all liars - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur."

Jesus tell us over and over in the gospels that if we enjoy sin in our hearts, it's the same thing as if we have done it.  And that any of us who cause a little child to sin - well, it would be better if someone tied a rock around our necks and cast us into the water...
If we read these books and enjoy them, does that mean we are guilty of actually doing it?

Here is a good motto:  "Why would I watch or read for enjoyment, the sins that caused Jesus to die on the cross?

"Create in me a pure heart, o God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."  Psalm 51:10

book review: The Encylopedia of Country Living

I was a little girl growing up in the suburbs, always longing for the country life. I had quit a romantic view of it: large expanses of land with cows, chickens roaming in the yard, maybe rabbits and eventually my dreams included goats. And always, I pictured lots of children playing in the sun and growing strong.

When I was fifteen years old, I met an older young man who said that was the life he wanted too. As the years went by, he asked me to marry him, promising me not diamonds and furs like my own father had promised my mother, but a farm and animals and children.

Time passed. He made good on the promise. We now live on twelve acres in a small Texas town. I have the children running around my yard, in fact, we ended up with ten children that we homeschool. I’ve had the opportunity to milk up to three cows by hand at a time and I sold the milk: that was the best home business I’ve found so far. I have raised and sold chickens, and helped one of my sons with his business of raising and selling rabbits, ducks and geese. I’m older now, and don’t have the strength to do as much, but I still have the chickens, the rabbits and some goats, which are the bane of my husbands life, however he not only tolerates them, but builds fences for them (anything to keep them off the stairs to his office and out of his garage).

How does a city raise girl learn to milk cows and raise and butcher chickens? For me, the best thing I ever found was the book The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery.

This book is a wealth of information on just about every subject you can think of, from birthing your own babies in a tent to helping a cow give birth when there are complications. It covers all aspects of country living. Almost everything you will need to know is in this large book.

Carla Emery started out to write a recipe book, and it evolved from there. Throughout the book are interesting and humorous stories about her own life and the lives of the people she has come into contact with through this book. She writes about the lessons she has learned, including the time she decided to shun the fame of talk shows and come back home to her family.

This book has been invaluable to me as I learned to live the country life. I laid it on the tailgate of a truck as a handy reference as I butchered my first chicken. It taught me how to incubate an egg, and keep the chick alive afterwards.

I learned to milk cows by reading its pages. I learned how to strain and cool the milk. I learned to skim the cream off the top of the milk and use it to make butter and whipped cream. I used it’s recipes to make my first batches of cheese and yogurt.

I’ve used it to learn which goats to buy, how to raise them, and how to use their milk for cheese and soap.

In fact, I learned to make soap from this book. That was another small home business for a while.

This book will teach you how to garden both vegetables and herbs, and how to use what you raise. You will learn how to grow fruit trees, and how to can or freeze your fruit at harvest time.

Just about everything you will need to start out your country life, you will find in this book. It might be the only book you need. I highly recommend it.

Book review: Families Change by Julie Nelson

Our daughter Angel-Leah was four years old when we adopted her from foster care. She had lived with her birthmother until she was removed and place our foster care at two years, seven months old, and she continued to see her extended birth family in supervised visits at the CPS office until she was three and a half. After that came an eight month period of time where she was basically in limbo, her birth parents rights had been terminated and all visits ceased, but we were unable to adopt her for a while because her caseworker had gone on emergency leave.
This time was very hard on Angel-Leah, who was grieving for her lost birth family. Two weeks after her adoption was final, we received a call asking us to take her five month old baby brother, Tommy, who we have now adopted, too.
I had thought very much about whether to have an open adoption for Angel-Leah, and since Tommy’s coming to live with us brought the family back into our lives anyway, I got permission from Tommy’s caseworker, gave the maternal grandmother a call, and after we had emailed a few weeks and gotten to know each other again, we arranged to meet at the park. Our open adoption has gone on with the extended families on both sides for just over a year now, and it has worked out so well for both the children and the birth family. At this time, we don’t see the parents, who have not been able to stabilize their lives, but we do write and send pictures back and forth with the birth mother.

One thing I was not expecting, however, was one day at the park, when Angel-Leah’s five year old cousin began to quiz her about why she didn’t live with her birth mother anymore. Didn’t she love her anymore, the cousin wanted to know? As Angel-Leah heatedly assured her cousin she did still love her birth mother, I tried to help explain, but I realized this was a hard thing for a little child to grasp.

My tendency is to always look towards books to help me, and I very soon found a really nice child’s book to give the cousin. The name of the book is Families Change: a Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights by Julie Nelson. I’ve read this book to my own adopted children, and plan to give copies to the cousins for their mother to read to them.

This book gently explains the different ways a family can change, from the simple birth of a new child, to someone leaving for college or getting married, on to change from a birth family to a foster or adoptive family. It acknowledges that this change is scary and difficult. It assures that these new families are real families. It assures the child that these changes are not the child’s fault. It tells the child its okay to love their old family and their new family.

This is a wonderful, well written book for a child going through foster care or adoption, or for a child who has a family member that this is happening too. I would highly recommend it.

Home School book review: Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home

As a homeschooling mother of ten, four of whom are daughters, I was very eager to teach homemaking skills to my girls. I had struggled in my early married years with knowing how to do many things. It wasn’t that my mother hadn’t taught me some things, but she had also spoiled me by doing most of the work herself. I wanted to avoid doing that, and yet at the same time, there were many things that I still wasn’t overly good at, such as sewing, gardening, and baking.

At a homeschool book fair, I came across a large book called Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home by Ann Ward. This huge book is 601 pages long, and covers skills such as sewing, baking, gardening, knitting, home management, child care, elderly care, soap making, and many other things. I was so excited about it; I went ahead and bought it, even though the oldest daughter still living in my home was far from being old enough for it yet. I thought that I myself could learn from it!

The fly page of the book says: “The purpose of this curriculum is to glorify God by enabling girls, over a period of seven years work, to develop and practice Godly character and practical homemaking skills, so they will be able to serve God as keepers at home, whether single or married.”

The curriculum is designed to be used five days a week for about an hour and a half, over a 36 week school year. It should be started when the girl is around ten years old. An older girl might want to complete the courses in less time. A year by year schedule is included. For example, the sewing course would have a young girl learn basic sewing the first year, sewing for herself the second year, quilting the third year, sewing for home and family the fourth year, sewing for babies and children the fifth year, sewing for men the sixth, and rug braiding the seventh.
There are also lessons in making greeting cards, cleaning the house, flower arranging, and basketry, caring for the sick and family celebrations, along with many more things.

You will need to purchase several books to complete this curriculum, but they are good books to add to your homeschooling library anyway. The books don’t need to be purchased all at once, but over the seven years the courses cover. Many of these can be found at the library and used books sales, too. This curriculum isn’t consumable, so you can use it with all your daughters, and keep it as a reference for yourself once your homeschooling years are finished. You are also encouraged to have your daughter keep a notebook of the things she has learned, to use as a reference guide once she is responsible for her own home.

This is a well laid out curriculum and easy to use. It’s an invaluable book, as it contains so much good information about so many things. I would highly encourage adding it to your homeschooling curriculum! Check the link at the left for viewing and buying information!

book review: Mommy Diagnostics by Shonda Parker

Many years ago, the second of my ten children, a daughter, kept getting strep throat over and over again. We would barely finish one round of antibiotics, when the strep would come back. Finally, after when she came to me saying her throat was hurting once again, I began to seek other ways of helping her get over this problem. I met a lady who sold Nature’s Sunshine Herbs, and my life changed.
She told me that most likely my daughter’s problems were caused by allergies. She sold me several bottles of capsules, and I had my daughter begin taking them. Sure enough, the herbs caught the problem before it became worse, and my daughter did not have another reoccurrence of strep.
I continued using herbs for many years to treat my children. For a while, I sold Nature’s Sunshine Herbs myself. But life got busy, we moved several times, had several more children, and I let my education on herbal products go by the wayside.

We recently added three more children to our family by adoption from the foster care system. Two of these children have asthma, and one of them and her full sibling baby brother are prone to ear infections. Being sick more than my other children seem to be, my mind once more turned to herbal remedies. I kept hearing about the book Mommy Diagnostics by Shonda Parker, and I finally took the plunge and bought the book. I am so glad I did!

Within days of purchasing the book, my youngest child came down with a raging fever, and kept sticking his fingers in his ears. Since he is only 21 months, he couldn’t tell me what was wrong, but it was pretty obvious he had an ear infection. I got the book out, and first chance I had, which was almost 48 hours later, since he became sick on a weekend, I made a trip to the local health food store. They have a wonderful line of children’s herbal remedies in gummies and tinctures. I had a list in hand that I had made from the recommendations in the book, and I bought what I needed.
Within 24 hours of giving him the products, he had turned the corner, his fever was gone and his ear seemed much better. Another 24 hours, and he seemed almost well.

This book is not a ‘no doctor at all’ type book. Mrs. Parker tells you what can be treated at home and how, and when to seek medical help. She includes forms to help you evaluate and form a plan for your family’s health. She gives instructions for growing and harvesting herbs, how to make simple herbal remedies at home, and what to purchase for your medicine cabinet.

There are many pages of different ailments and what you can use for each one. She covers babyhood, the teen years, middle years and old age, and gives advice on things to have on hand for the unique needs of each time of life.

There are resource lists to find different products, and also recommended books to purchase to further your education on herbal medicine.

Pictures of the Parker family are scattered throughout, and it’s fun to see her healthy children doing various things.

I recommend this book, and personally plan on buying more of her books, myself. The link to this book is on the left. Click it to check or buy this wonderful book!

Large Family Book Review: The Duggar's: Twenty and Counting

As a homeschooling, quiverfull mother of ten children, I looked very forward to reading this book by the Duggars. I don’t own a television, so I hadn’t been able to keep up with them through their show. But what I had heard about them seemed interesting, especially since they have some of the same religious convictions I have.

Once the book arrived, I read it very quickly. It’s an easy to read book and I enjoyed it. It covers a lot of ground, detailing why they have so many children, how they handle their finances, mealtimes, transportation, laundry and other things that seem beyond the realm of smaller families to imagine. Although I already know many of their ‘tricks’ I still got some new ideas.

This book includes many recipes both for meals and also for things like laundry soap, and how to make fabric softener stretch. I’ve tried most of them, and I have been pleased with everything so far. Also scattered throughout the book are ‘fun facts,’ answers to questions that people have emailed the family, stories about family life, and lots of pictures, which I enjoyed seeing.

The Duggars take turns telling their story, starting with their childhoods, their courtship, early marriage years, and what made them decide to give family planning to the Lord. They tell about coping in a very small house while running a car lot in the front of their yard, and how they built and financed the house they have now. They share how Jim Duggar’s stint in politics ended up with their being approached about the television show.

There is a chapter on organization that was interesting. It ranges from organizing through a big move, to assigning “buddies”, in which they match each older child with a younger child. The older child’s responsibility to the younger child assigned to them ranges from getting them dressed and helping with music lessons and school to getting them into their car seats on trips away from home. The older children and the younger children enjoy the special closeness this gives them, and it helps teach the older children child care.

The Duggars share their homeschooling methods. Michelle gives the reader her schedule. They tell how music lessons are done in their large home. Each child takes violin lessons beginning at a very young age, and some take piano, too.

At the end of the book is a list of resources that I found very interesting.

Whether you have a small family or a large family, I would recommend this book. Check the link on the left side of this page for a look, or to purchase, this book.

adoption book review: One Small Boat

Kathy Harrison and her husband, Bruce, have been foster parents nearly a hundred children in Massachusetts. In 1996 they were named Massachusetts Foster Parents of the Year, and in 2002, they received the Goldie Rogers Award. They are the parents of six children, three by birth, and three by adoption.

One Small Boat is Kathy Harrison’s second book. In this book, she tells the story of Daisy, who was five years old when she came to live in the Harrison household. Unlike most of the foster children they took in, Daisy was the child of an affluent family, but her mother was unable to understand how to care for a child. The effects of this abandonment, and the ineffectual parenting Daisy had received were heart wrenching. Anxiety and fear were Daisy’s constant companions. Her hair was thin enough that her scalp showed through in several places. She was emaciated and her eyes were sunk into her skull. Her nose was always running. She was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder, multiple phobias and ODD. She could hardly eat; she spun around in circles and flapped her hands. She had a severe speech impediment. It didn’t take long under Kathy’s loving care, however, before Daisy began to thrive.

Kathy soon began to be taken with Daisy’s survival spirit and innocence in spite of all the things she had been through, and her love for her grew. When it was clear after a year and a half that Daisy would not be returning to her mother, Kathy began to make plans to adopt her. However, her plans were interrupted when social services managed to locate Daisy’s father, who had been absent from her life since babyhood. After breaking up with Daisy’s mother, her father had thought it best for Daisy if he dropped out of her life. He then married and had a couple of children with his wife. When he learned how things had worked out for Daisy, he wanted to take her into his family.

Brokenhearted, but wanting the best for Daisy, Kathy bravely learns to release her and help her bond with her father and stepmother.

This is a fairly short (201 pages) sweet and inspiring book to read. It’s one that helped heal my own heart after giving back a much loved foster child of my own recently. I highly recommend this book to anyone who fosters or is considering foster parenting. See link on the left side of this page to view and/or purchase this book.

fostering book review: Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison

As a foster/adopt mother, this is by far my favorite book on the subject. Kathy Harrison conveys the emotions, the joys and sorrows that come from fostering children, and adopting some of them so very well. She is certainly experienced, having fostered nearly one hundred children. In 1996, she and her husband were named Massachusetts Foster Parents of the year, and in 2002, they received the Goldie Foster Award. She and her husband have three biological children, and three adopted children.

The book begins by telling us a little about their life before, and how they adopted their first two daughters. It then goes into their lives after they became foster parents, and tells the stories of Karen, the daughter they adopted from foster care and several other children who lived in their home at that time. It’s an unabashed view of the fascinating, heartbreaking world of foster care – something most people don’t really understand. With the foster care system under so much fire because of abuse and mistakes, this book shows that there are dedicated foster parents who literally save children’s lives, and who love what they are doing.

This book details the fear of the children who come into a foster home on the worst day of their lives. It shows the heartbreak of children whose parents don’t know how to care for them. It shows the fear of a foster mother who grows to love a foster child with a fierce love, and then has to watch them go back to a less than desirable situation. It shows how a foster mother prepares a child to go to a new adoptive home.

Many situations of the life of a foster family are covered in this book, dealing with social workers in and out of your home, the effect it has on your own biological family, the ‘labor’ you go through when you decide to adopt one of your foster children. It tells how this family manages clothes, toys and rooms. It shows what it is like to deal with the biological family of the child. It’s not a sugar coated version, but shows how hard it can be to care for damaged children.

This is a spell binding book, one I have read more than once. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in actually doing foster care, or who loves someone who does. Click the link under recommended books to look at or purchase this book.

adoption book review: Welcome Home, Forever Child

Although I was a well seasoned mother of seven children by birth, adopting three children from the foster care system presented me with a new set of challenges that I had not confronted before. As I searched out books to educate myself, I soon came across several for children that I thought would help my adopted children deal with their own understanding of what had happened to them, especially my daughter Angel-Leah who had lived two and a half years with her biological family before coming to our home first as a foster child, and finally becoming our adopted daughter.

I came across a book called “Welcome Home, Forever Child” by Christine Mitchell. Christine Mitchell is the mother of two children, one by birth and one by adoption. She adopted her daughter at the age of four, the same age we finalized the adoption of Angel-Leah.

This book calls itself a ‘celebration of children adopted as toddlers, preschoolers, and beyond’. The illustrations show a blue tabby father cat, an orange tabby mother cat, and a gray kitten, so it would work well for trans-racial families. It is written in rhyme, and mentions God, which I was glad about.

The book tells the child that although he/she was past ‘diapers, bottles and cribs’ the family was grateful their prayers were heard. It tells the child that although the adoptive parents missed many of the child’s firsts, seeing their first grin, their first tooth, watching them learn to crawl, etc., that there is now a lifetime to see so many other firsts, the first day of school, learning to swim and other activities. It tells the child that the family will rock them, dry their tears, calm their fears, read to them and that everything is going to be alright. It goes on to list other things the family will be there for as the child grow up.

The end of this book always makes me cry as I read it to my adopted daughter, as it proclaims, “Precious child, you have blessed us so, and we love you more than you can know.” It then tells the child he/she is home at last, as a forever child in this forever family.

I really like this book. It is sweet, upbeat, happy, and covers a lot. My now five year old daughter brings it to me again and again to read to her. I would highly recommend this book for your child’s collection. Use the link at the left of this article to get a look and purchase at this book.