These past of couple weeks, I had a chance to read a pre-publication version of C.J. Mahaney’s upcoming new book titled Humility: True Greatness, in exchange for providing a review on my blog. Talk about a win-win situation! In the interest of full disclosure, I’m also going to receive a free copy of the book as a gift for blogging on the book.

One of the pluses of the blog/web world is the ability to cross-link between pages, so before I offer you my impressions of the book, I’ll point you the excellent preview of the book over at Tim Challies’ site.

Now for my own thoughts. For a long time, I’ve procrastinated on reading Mahaney’s The Cross Centered Life. After reading this book on humility, I’m very motivated to go pick that one up as well. Mahaney is a terrific author: his humorous and readable style is well-complemented by sober and serious Biblical substance.

The book is broken up into three parts. The first section defines the premises and necessity of humility. The second examines how Jesus’ life — and especially his death —both model humility and enable us in its pursuit. The final section is essentially Mahaney’s advice for practicing humility, both in daily activities and specific areas in life.

A friend once commented that Jerry Bridges’ books are as valuable for their bibliographies as they are for their content. I think the same could easily be said for this book. I was amazed by the sheer number of quotes and references to other books and resources. This alone, to me, speaks of Mahaney’s genuineness in pursuing humility. He doesn’t pretend to have mastered humility. In fact, if anything, this book invites the reader to join him in this very important pursuit. How important is it? As Mahaney points out, if God gives grace to the humble, and opposes the proud, would you rather have God opposed to you? The author does a great job of drawing the reader into Mahaney’s own yearning for humility (with his characteristic self-effacing humor). At the same time, his examples and words really forced me to look at my own life and not merely absorb his book as “a good story” to be forgotten.

The two other strengths of this book are its gospel-centeredness (unsurprising given Mahaney’s other well-known book) and its very readable suggestions for growing in humility.

Over and over, Mahaney emphasizes the need to place the gospel at the forefront of our pursuit of humility, lest it (ironically) become simply a basis for self-pride. This short book is saturated through and through with reminders of the absolute centrality of the cross, which is both unsurprising and altogether crucial; since the cross is the ultimate reminder that a sinful man being proud is, well, stupid (my word, not his).

I especially appreciated his practical suggestions and exhortations to growing in humility. The book is short, so I won’t go into detail (lest I keep you from reading it yourself). That being said, in this section, especially helpful were his numerous suggestions for further reading; as well as his chapter dedicated to parents. Being a young parent myself, it was a very poignant reminder of the place and practice of humility in family life. I loved the fact, in addition, that he suggested so many good books for further reading in order to stimulate humility. Most of them, truth be told, are on my bookshelves waiting to be opened. <grin>

In summary, let me encourage everyone to get a copy of this book (and perhaps even Sovereign Grace Ministries can offer a downloadable copy of it!). I really believe the Lord can use it to help his saints be more like the Savior they represent to the world around them.

There is a danger for those of us who’ve opted to provide an education for our children within the home (a.k.a “homeschoolers”): pride. That and making the mistake that homeschooling is somehow “God’s Way” of bringing up our children.

There are a couple good articles/links about this subject from Justin Taylor’s blog. His post is titled “Homers and the Eight Myths of Homeschooling.”

Even though Emmaline has a Chinese name, that name has no particular heritage other than that of the orphanage/city in which she was born. Why bother giving her a new Chinese name, in light of the fact that it won’t be reflected on any legal documents (her Chinese papers will list “Shao Mi Gao” and U.S. documents “Emmaline Anne Ding”)? I suppose I want to emphasize that she’s a member of the Ding family as much as any of our natural-born children, and that’s why I want her to have a Chinese name according to the Ding family tradition.

So… we’ve been wrestling over and rejecting several dozen possible Chinese words for a given name for Emmaline. According to Ding family custom, our two boys thus far are named 明哲 (ming zhe) and 明 (ming jun). The character 明 (ming) is particular to this generation of Dings, inasmuch as my brother and I share a common middle character in our Chinese names. So for Emmaline we simply had to choose a third character to append to 丁明 (dingming).

For Emmaline, we’ve finally agreed on 雯 (wen). And for those of you without Chinese character support in your web browsers, here’s her full name in gif format:

You can click on each character to see a dictionary entry for it.

The character 雯 (wen) literally simply refers to “cloud patterns, coloring of cloud.” It is composed of the character for rain (雨) on top of the character for culture (文). It’s also a homonym for the word which means culture, 文. As such, the given name implies elegance and a sense of culture.

At least, that’s what I’m told. I’m just a simple ABC: American-Born Chinese. For all I know, it’s all just sweet words to a dull ear. But I like how it sounds, nevertheless, even if she’ll primarily be known (for the time being) as 妹妹 (”meimei”, Chinese for little sister).

Trivia: these links, respectively, are the number of results that google reports for each of our kid’s Chinese names: Matthew (415), Andrew (55), and Emmaline (8).

Emmaline Anne (oh boy! that’s our first public announcement of her name) was born & discovered in Gaozhou. The below map is of the Guangdong province, southernmost in China. Gaozhou city is highlighted in red in the below map. The big purple dot is Guangzhou, where we’ll be meeting her and from where we’ll bring her home (soon, Lord willing!).

I love viewing friends’ photo albums on the internet. It’s easily accessible and it’s also fun looking at pictures of their vacations, outings, family times, etc. However, the one problem I encounter in viewing others’ photo albums is discontentment. “Wow, they did all those fun activities and I sure haven’t … especially since having kids. Look at how happy they are. Look at all those wonderful places they went. Their lives are so carefree, so fun, so much to live for. As for me, I just go through one mundane day to another, taking care of my kiddoes. When will I ever get to do all those exciting things?”

Have you ever felt this way? I certainly have, especially when my kids aren’t behaving as I’d like them to. In the midst of trials and the daily repetitious routines, I tend to think I have been given a raw deal. Other people’s lives seem to be a whole lot more exciting and glamorous than mine.

I quickly realize being discontent gets me nowhere. I’m not happier. Nor am I appreciative of my husband or kids. I only want to be somewhere else. Discontentment also reveals my dissatisfaction with God. I’m essentially saying that I am not grateful for what He has given me. What is the right attitude then? I need to learn to acknowledge God’s provisions and be grateful for what He has allotted. Even though it is not easy to have this attitude when I’m feeling all pouty, but I need to train my heart to go with my brain. I need to keep reminding myself to count my blessings, to be appreciative of my family, to be thankful to God. This is how I train my heart.

[Note from Evers: This article is also helpful for gaining some persective.]

Sorry. Those of you with children, you’ll understand.

After nearly a year and a half of persuasion, discipline, cajoling and numerous other attempts to get our oldest boy (now nearly 3 1/2 years old) to poop in a toilet… and many tearful refusals to even sit on a toilet… and many nasty b.m.’s in diapers each day… yesterday morning he came and told us that he’d pooped in the toilet after waking up. But he’d flushed it, we were sleeping at the time, and had no idea if he actually had. We were 99% sure he was telling the truth; but weren’t sure, since he’d steadfastly refused for so long. No proof, as they say.

Well, just now, he told us he needed to poop. Lois offered him a bounty of jelly beans if he actually did.

5 minutes later: “Mommy, I’m done!”

I ran up to the bathroom, and sure enough, he had pooped in the toilet. His mommy and daddy celebrated! Let the fireworks begin!

If only we’d also taught him to control the trajectory of his urine so that it went into the toilet rather than a good 5 ft straight out onto the floor (which I stepped on as I ran into the bathroom in excitement)! LOL!

Now you know why we started potty training our second one at 4 months old; he already poops in a toilet, most of the time. <grin>

And to close, a hilarious photo from friends of ours who’ve been using a stuffed bear to try to teach their boy to poop in a toilet. They used the bear to model and then left their boy alone in the bathroom for a few minutes, returning to find:

Lois and I have both struggled in recent months with Matthew, as we’ve begun formal “schooling.” One of our more frequent battles has been over “sitting still” while doing “school.” A recent post by Al Mohler suggests that rather than fight the battle, perhaps we should learn from it and adapt our schooling techniques. It is so easy to become discouraged with Matthew’s boyish restlessness, as evidenced by a recent IM conversation Lois and I had, with Lois describing a friend’s experience schooling their young daughter not a year older than Matthew:

She was able to sit down w/her for 1 full hr doing math, reading, and science; and [her daughter] even asked for more. whereas w/me, I can only do about 5 min. with Matthew. Even within the 5 min, he is all wiggly and jumpy.

Yet Mohler’s article, and even plain (politically incorrect) intuition and science suggest that this is a battle we’ll lose if we fight it instead of learning from it.

This is Mohler’s conclusion:

The differences between boys and girls are profound. Most classrooms are girl-friendly and largely feminized in culture. Boys think differently, communicate differently, and are incentivized differently. Young boys cannot sit quiet and still for long periods of time. Their concentration patterns are very different from those of girls — and they know it. Resisting an acknowledgement of these differences requires a tremendous capacity for denying the obvious.