Back in the Groove.

Getting back into homeschooling again this week has been a little rough. No one has been overly grumpy, but I've been very easily distracted. Last week we kind of took things slow, and without CC starting back up yet, I still had a bit more free time than usual. The last two days I've had to prep for tutoring, and then we'll be at CC all day tomorrow. Then later in the week, both the boys will have more work than we've had the last week and a half.

I'm not sure why this makes me so grumpy. I love what homeschooling does for my family. I guess I'm not totally content with what it requires of me. I've always been the type of person who has a side-projects and other endeavors I want to pursue, and it's true that homeschooling requires me to put those (or at least the timeline for pursuing those) on the back burner. 

I finished reading my first book of the year the other day... A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken. It was really excellent. The first 1/3 of the book was a bit slow, a little romantic and gushy for my liking. I'm not really the romantic type, so trying to relate to some of that loftiness was just whatever for me. Still, my curiosity kept me going.

I won't spoil the book, but at the very end the author begins to talk about what he's learned through the very intense trial he endured. He starts to consider time. At the beginning, him and his love saw that if their love was to last, they would have to fight against separateness all their days. But much later he saw that that he, and all of humanity, is really always fighting against time. Even in their togetherness, they were seeking a way to hold onto and keep something as long as they could. The rest of this really gets good when he begins to speculate about eternity. 

I've always thought of heaven and eternity often, ever since I was little. Just realizing that I cannot comprehend it is something I like to attempt to grasp - a fun brain-teaser of sorts. But Sheldon starts thinking about the timelessness of eternity and how it frees us from so many things. We will have all the time we need to enjoy the beautiful world God has for His children. Not a moment ever wasted, never any time that got by us, never something we won't be available to enjoy. Now that is wild.

I think I never really thought about how much I fight against time. I always want more. In my more honest moments I can see that not having the time I want for the endeavors I want is what makes me a cranky woman. But after reading that bit from Sheldon, I started to realize that as God's daughter, I will have all the time I ever need for everything good I will ever do. 

In my head I know that my life won't end. Yes, I will die physically, but I'll get a new, restored body with the same soul. I so easily forget that my eternal life is a continuation of this one, not a completely different one. And there is nothing I must do here on earth that God won't give me time to do. No certain success that I need to feel pressured to gain, no pressing agendas that He will just sit by and watch me fail to do. And that is a promise I can bank on today. Even when all my progress is slow, sloppy, and just plain less good than I wish it to be, I can trust that I have all the time I need to make it as He pleases. 

That's the key: as He pleases. 

When I am pleased with what pleases Him, then I am at rest. My own agenda will never give me rest. Sure, success feels awesome, and being thought of as awesome is even better. But really, it's living a life pleasing to God that will be the best sort of awesome feeling I can ever find. And the funny thing is, the more content I am to make that my agenda, the more I love the rest of my life. 

Too Many Pens.

Is it possible to have too many pens? Maybe too many crappy pens, but I don't think having an abundance of lovely, well-working, colorful pens is ever something I will feel bad about.

Like I said before, I spent all my birthday money on art supplies and books, and that included quite a few sets of new pens. I also got some pens and notebooks as Christmas gifts, so I'm getting to be pretty well stocked (but by all means, send more if you insist). I'm learning the ins and outs of what makes a pen nice, what makes it good for certain tasks, and what price-point feels like "good enough" for me.

Today another set of brush pens arrived. I have a couple sets of the Tombow Dual Brush Pens that I like quite a lot, but I saw someone on Instagram using the Ecoline Brush Pens and thought I'd order myself a set. At first I did feel a little bit bad for using my Amazon points on more markers, but after using them a little I realized it was just what I needed to learn a few lessons.

1- Every marker or pen has a different hardness, density, and inkiness that makes it write and look different.

2- You cannot know what markers or pens are best for what until you spend time experimenting.

3- I don't think I'll ever get sick of playing with markers and pens.


Never tried a brush pen? Well, here are a few things to know.

A softer brush end makes it harder to use in some ways; you have to be more precise and steady. But it's also easier to use because, if you've been practicing, it gives you a huge range of thickness to thinness in your lines, making it really fun to write with.

The inkiness of the pen really matters. It will give a different look with different amounts of pressure, and it can affect the sharpness of your edges (that kind of depends on the paper you are using too).

There will be a lot of trial and error going on, probably forever. I bought my first set of brush pens about 3 years ago, and while I was using them frequently for the first 6-ish months, they've just been used on and off for most of the last 2 years. Over the last several months, I've been getting more into that craft again and I'm having a ton of fun, but I'm still honing my skills and there are still a million things to learn.

You can learn a lot from watching other people letter, reading or listening to what they have to say about their likes and dislikes of certain products, but at some point you really just have to jump in and start. You can store up a lot of knowledge, but it will only really help you when you start making mistakes and are able to apply that knowledge to what happens.

Lastly, paying good attention to detail is a skill you MUST gain. It's just pivotal in art. Otherwise, it will take you ages to learn things, and you'll just have to hope that someone points things out to you, or writes about them. Being able to notice subtle movement differences, ink and paper combinations, and techniques in stokes and methods are all going to be most helpful if you can figure out how to connect the dots without being told directly.

Honestly, I think paying attention to detail probably comes more naturally to some than others, but it's something worth striving to grow in. It will make you a valuable asset in whatever role you function during your days and in whatever job you might get down the road.

I hope this has been a fun little insightful post. Let me know if you have questions about lettering or pens - I love to talk about what I'm learning!

His Forever.

This morning we sang a song in church that hasn't come up for quite a while. I love it for many reasons... one being we tend to sing it in a range that is SO perfect for my voice. Yes, I know, that's one of the least important things to love about a song praising Jesus, but still, it makes it fun to sing. The melody is also very lovely, again not the most important factor, but still it's just another reason to enjoy singing it. Mostly, it's the lyrics and where they lead my thoughts that gets me every time.

Jesus, friend of sinners

Loved me 'ere I knew Him

Drew me with His cords of love

Tightly bound me to Him

'Round my heart still closely twined

The bond that none can sever

For I am His and He is mine

Forever and forever

Jesus, friend of sinners

A crown of thorns you wore for me

Bruised for my transgressions

Pierced for my iniquities

The wrath of God that I deserved

Was poured out on the innocent

He took my place, my soul to save

Now I am His forever

Jesus, friend of sinners

I love to tell the story

Redeeming love has been my theme

And will be when in glory

Not death nor life nor anything

Can ever separate me

Oh, love that will not let me go

Yes, I am His forever

by Pat Sczebel and Sovereign Grace Music

You really must listen to the actual song. It's so good. The melody just goes so well with the words and really helps your mind to settle into the calm joy that resonates in this song.

The line that really got me this morning was "Redeeming love has been my theme." Do you sense a theme in your life? God's provision maybe? His healing? Or maybe it's of miraculous rescue? 

I can't remember when, but during some training I was listening to, they recommended writing down every single prominent memory you could quickly recall in succession over the course of your life. Yes, that might take a while! But the woman encouraged us to do it without much thought, just quickly spending 20-ish minutes writing a bunch of things down. The woman leading this training was trying to help us get our "life theme" out in a rather simple way. 

If you sit and think about your life too much, it's easy to get bogged down by little things or get overly detailed about traumatic situations and miss the big picture. It's often easy to look at the lives of other people and see the big picture of what God has done in them, but often difficult to see that same zoomed-out image of our own. So with this tool I sat and wrote. I don't really remember where it led me, but it's not the point of what I wanted to share anyway. 

I guess I'm rambling a bit, but I wanted to encourage you to look at your life in this zoomed-out way, as much as you're able. There is something God is doing, some story He is telling with your life. It's His, and it will bring Him glory, and it's not our job to determine what that story will be. It's our job to live it well, to love God in all of it, and to point to His love and sacrifice as the anchor of our hope. Whether His glory is displayed through healings, through maintaining joy despite suffering pain, through keeping a commitment that feels unbearable, or through the blessing of beautiful relationships... it's all for His glory. 

I want to remember that His story is being written no matter what my ambitions are or what goals I desire to achieve. Remembering that I am His forever, and that the theme of my life revolves around what He is orchestrating helps me chill out and enables me to just enjoy what He puts before me, instead of resenting it or becoming jealous of others. If it's good enough for God's plans to glorify Himself through me, it's definitely good enough for me to enjoy.

Make sure you follow this link to listen to that song too... you won't be disappointed!

Dessert Love.

Once again, I'm doing this late in the evening.

We spent most of our day out in McMinnville celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday and we ended up staying late to watch an evening football game. I had thought about bringing my computer so I could possibly write while I was there but figured I'd just do it later. I also thought about typing out a post from my phone, but ain't no one got patience for that.

It's not really hard to think of things to write about, but it's hard to think of interesting things to write about. I know this challenge is not supposed to be about writing something really amazing, but I just always wish I could :)

Anyway, I am sitting here eating some peanut butter-filled pretzel bites and thought maybe I would write about some of my favorite foods.

I'm a dessert girl. I joke that I have a 2nd stomach just for desserts, and my mom and many others who know me well can testify. My husband discovered early on that I have almost no limit of the amount of dessert I can eat. I also have a special happy look that I get when I think of delectable foods... I just can't help it!

We had only been married two weeks when we were getting ready to be in the wedding of our best friends. We were through with the rehearsal and were having a wonderful time at dinner when dessert came around. It was this incredible chocolate mousse, served in a chocolate cup and I devoured mine in about one minute. Mark could only eat about half of his... so I finished it off for him, just to be a good wife. Then, another one of our best friends also could not eat all of his.... and you know what comes next. I ate his too.

Did I feel sick? No. Was I full? Not quite. Did I have any regrets? Well, I only weighted about 100 pounds back then, so no.

Mark was shocked. He had never seen that side of me, and I've proved it still exists over and over again. Although, now that I cannot just eat 3000 calories in a day without turning into a fat blob, I try to limit my dessert intake. I can't wait for desserts in heaven - they must be amazing, and calorie free!

My favorite desserts these days come from a local place called Papa Haydn's. Not only do they have amazing food on their dinner menu, but their dessert options are fantastic. They have a huge menu, a giant case full of gorgeous cakes and treats, and I've loved almost every single thing I've had. Which is actually quite a lot, since we used to live 1 mile away and spent many a date-night consuming calories while the kids slept at home with mom and dad keeping an ear out.

If you are in Portland, you MUST go eat there sometime. They have their regular dessert menu, which is seriously FULL of amazing items to choose from, but then they always have some seasonal items too. Here are a few of my favorites:

- Chocolate Truffle Cake
- Passion
- Raspberry Gateau
- Marjolaine
- Cassata

In the summer they sometimes have a lime-coconut cake that is adore, plus their cocktails (especially the hot ones) are fantastic.

I could go on and on about other desserts at other places, but I'll leave it at this for now. Go to Papa Haydn's, and don't share your dessert with a friend or loved one (unless you both go halfsies). Worst case scenario, you'll have extra dessert for tomorrow!

Finding Priorities.

As I speak, my husband and his friend/our friend are downstairs chatting away. He joined our family for Family Movie Night tonight and we have been talking and catching up on life and such. We watched a helpful TED talk about time management and how making priorities is what really manages our time. At the end I realized I had not written my 500 words yet today and decided to hop upstairs and get to it - after all, it's a priority this month!

In the TED talk, the woman says that we have time for what we make time for, for what we prioritize. She gives the example of a busy woman who had her hot water-heater break and ruin a ton of stuff in her basement, and how the woman found seven hours in her week to deal with all of it. How did she manage squeezing out that many hours? It was urgent! Super-duper important. 

So when we say we don't have time for something, and we feel like saying "I don't have time," this woman (sorry, I cannot remember her name) says what we really should say instead is "That's not a priority for me."

It's kind of hard to say, isn't it? Especially when whatever that "thing" is is something we actually want... just not more than the other things we are doing instead. I find this true in my own life, and I've only recently begun to recognize that many things aren't as important to me as I like to think they are. 

What's really sad, is that usually it's my comfort-level or my laziness that are the priority. Why don't I want to clean my bathrooms? Too much work. Why don't I want to get up and cook a nice breakfast? I'd rather sleep. Why don't I read my bible more than I read other books? Yikes, good question! 

But recognizing my own genuine priorities is the only way to start not doing the things I don't actually want to do, and begin doing the things I've only been wishing or hoping to participate in. Like art (hopefully you aren't sick of hearing about this yet). If I want to make progress in my artistic endeavors, I need to spend more time on it. Who cares if it isn't hours every day? 30 minutes every day is still more time than I was spending on it before. 

Last year when I decided to make reading those three categories of books a priority, I tried to figure out how many chapters per day I would need to read. It was kind of an estimate, since many of the books I was planning to read I did not have on hand yet to check the chapter totals, but I figured if I read 3-5 chapters per day I would easily reach my goal. After a few days, I read my five chapters but still felt like I was not reading enough. It dawned on me that since I just love reading and learning, the amount of time I spent reading would probably never feel like enough. So now when I "feel" like I haven't read enough, it's easy for me to recognize that it's just because I love it, not because I didn't actually prioritize it enough. The actual amount of time spent or the short-term goal accomplished needs to inform me of my progress more than how I am feeling about all of it and it has been much easier for my to see that I actually am following my priorities.

Like most problems, admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? Where are you struggling with priorities that you want to get straightened out? For me, decreasing my social media time has been a big deal. If I'm on there too much, it's both a time-suck and a soul-suck. Trading that time for doodling, lettering, painting, and whatever else has had the exact opposite effect. 

Are there areas in your life that you can swap like this? Think about it. Let me know how it goes. And Happy Weekend to you :)

The Writing Bug.

I'm not exactly sure I have "the writing bug." When I read books from other writers about what it feels like to be a writer, I can totally sympathize. It's very "in your own head" and can be extremely isolating... if you are actively writing that is. It feels like selfish work. It sometimes feels like pointless work.

I keep seeing ads for a subscription to something called Master Class. Have you heard of it? Basically, it's a company that has a ton of top professionals in different fields who teach a set of sessions on their field of expertise. I love the little blurb by Margaret Atwood! I also watched the ad for the class with Judy Blume and she said some interesting things that stuck with me. She says the only reason she thinks writers write is because they feel they have to, that they don't have a choice. She says it is a horrible profession; isolating, full of rejection, painfully slow, and often demoralizing.

It's that "have to write" that keeps me going. The last couple months I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out my need to write. And, when I'm honest, I think I was trying to silence the part of me that needs to write, or feels compelled to. I certainly don't think I need to write for my own consolation, or to feel better about life. I'd really rather not! In fact, I'm sick of writing something and trying to see if I can make it good enough for people to want to read and share it. I know I don't HAVE to do that, but it's the natural next step my brain wants to take when I write something.

I do sometimes write simply because I just HAVE to share what I am learning. That's the part of writing that resonates with me. I enjoy explaining stuff. I love comping up with the perfect analogy for something that is difficult to describe, or digging deep into my research to come up with a more precise way of knowing and understanding whatever it is I'm studying. But the job of writing and the "career" that it seems to produce in the field I write in... I just can't envision that.

I used to see myself as becoming a big-name Christian author, and I won't lie, it's still kind of enticing to me. I've just always desired to stand out and be known for something impressive (just being honest here). But more and more I am seeing that I am scared to become that, and I feel like I have no idea how I could possibly navigate that and my family very well at the same time. It's not a dream I want to chase, but I still can't escape the compulsion to write, or the burden that I feel when I stop doing it. However, being very type-A, and having an overbearing Achiever personality, I cannot escape all the planning, figuring out, and trying to make-it-happen that comes with having a goal.

Truth is, I can't figure out a goal that works with my life right now, and it's driving me a little bonkers. I understand that with homeschooling and mothering well, my goals necessitate a much slower pace than I'd like to go. But I often would rather just not do it than go so slow. So I distract myself, pursue other things, and try to figure out how to turn off the "you must write" switch that is somewhere in my soul.

I don't think I can turn it off, but I'm not actually excited for where that will lead me. I suppose it's wise to not be disillusioned about the future I am pursuing, but I'm definitely trying to figure out how to move forward with excitement about it when it all feels very daunting and potentially very un-fun.

This might be a lot more soul-searching than you bargained for in this post. But, it's where I'm at. And it's what you get since I couldn't think of anything better to write about today - ha! Thanks for reading anyway :)

Juggling Everything.

My life feels crazy sometimes, and I usually try to blame it on homeschooling (ha).

It really is a privilege to be able to stay home each day and not need to get a job outside the home. I am blessed to have such great support in my homeschooling that I almost never have a family member or friend treating me like I am not competent enough to handle it. I am so thankful that homeschooling has not required us to drastically change our lifestyle, as I was still staying at home with the kids before we even began. Granted, without homeschooling we'd likely go on more vacations, and I might be more sane, but so far, it has been a greater blessing than it has been a burden.

This doesn't mean I don't have to do a lot of juggling or sacrificing though.

The hardest part of all the juggling is really hard to nail down. There are a lot of inconveniences, but also a lot of be glad about. I'm going to list a few challenges along with their counterpart blessings and hopefully it will be an interesting thing to read.

- I have to clean up so many dishes because we are eating breakfast, lunch and dinner here almost every day... but I almost never have to either prep lunches the night before or early in the morning (hallelujah!).

- I often have to interrupt my own schooling-schedule to get the laundry done... but I usually have helpers hanging about. Bonus: if I fold laundry in the evening, it's a good excuse to close my bedroom doors and listen to podcasts or audiobooks without a spec of guilt!

- It is SO hard to schedule Dr and Dentist appointments for myself when I have to find a sitter, interrupt schoolwork, and/or take them with me... but figuring out when to schedule their appointments is a breeze!

- When I leave the house to go run errands, I have to take almost all of them with me every single time... but, with limited "school events" I almost never feel like a chauffeur.

- It is really hard to find time to be alone and gather my thoughts... but, that means I do a lot of my living and learning WITH my kids, thus exposing them to a lot of "adult" problems throughout their lives.

I am pretty confident that homeschooling has given me more than it has taken away. Sure, they might miss out on certain things I had in school (free music lessons, more pick-up sports and games, riding a school bus), but they also get out of a lot of things I wish I could forget. Plus, living up here in Portland is such a great place for a homeschooler. There are SO many activities for the kids to be involved in, more than one family could ever take advantage of. Springtime in Oregon is amazing, and we have loads of time to hike, go to the zoo, and take day-trips that kids in regular schools can't do at their leisure.

Most of all, homeschooling has taught me how to learn and that has given me a confidence I carry into many other areas of life. Yes, I often feel an insane amount of pressure to do my best by them, and to get everything done in a way that doesn't take away from their education, but I'm learning how to juggle expectations, to not question my decisions so much, and pare down our activities to what my husband and I believe will be most valuable for them.

It's a hard road, full of bumps, trials, and learning, but it's one I'm so thankful to be traveling.