I had a tough week with some very unexpected crises and was emotionally drained.  Back on Sunday, five of our friends had offered to come over last night to help babysit our children in order for Evers and I to go on a date.  Yes, it takes five adults to watch our four energetic kids. While the fabulous five held down the fort in our house, Evers and I had a very nice and uninterrupted dinner at a local restaurant.

Knowing how I was feeling in the aftermath of this week, he came up with a “personalized” version of the Proverbs 31 passage about “an excellent wife” and dedicated it to me. I was so touched that I declared that his poem was blog-worthy material. Some of the material is from Proverbs 31, and a bunch of it is “contextualized” to reflect how my husband sees me. So, for the whole world to see, here it is:

The Proverbs 31 Woman

An excellent wife, who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.

The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.

She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life;

She sews clothes for her children,
and even for their stuffed bears.

She is like the trucks of the merchant;
even though she mostly buys her food from
Costco and Chinese markets.

She rises while it is yet night
and dedicates herself to reading and
praying through God’s word;
even as she anticipates preparing food for her household.

She goes out for early walks
and hides in her bathroom to exercise;
even though her husband thinks she’s beautiful,
regardless of a few extra pounds!

She considers a blog post and publishes it;
and thus blesses many others who are walking or will walk similar paths.

She cooks all sorts of cuisine with flair,
especially when there are guests (one of the joys of hospitality)!

Her children are well-dressed;
not in sweatpants and mismatched “Engrish” shirts.

Her husband is well-dressed too,
thanks to her occasional gifts of shirts and ties, even the ‘metro’ ones.

She perseveres through often thankless days,
changing diapers, wet underwear, and dirty clothes;
disciplining, instructing, comforting and loving her adorable children.

She occasionally bathes her children too –
but they’re cute even if they get a bit smelly.

She opens her mouth with wisdom far beyond her age,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Her children rise up (too early) and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her (though not often enough):

“Many women have done excellently,
but you, Lois, surpass them all.”

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but Lois, who fears the Lord, is to be praised.

Learning how to write is not an easy task for younger children, especially for little boys who are not as coordinated or whose fine motor skills are not as developed.

In order to help my almost four-year-old son to learn to write his letters, I have him trace his letters in a pan of cornmeal instead of using standard pencil and paper. This writing technique helps him to write the letters in their proper form without requiring him to obtain fine motor skills first.  I teach him the correct strokes and sequence to the first letter of the alphabet and he is required to follow my directions.  After he can write the letter well, I let him have the cornmeal pan and he can draw or write as he pleases. This writing lesson is so much fun for my son — he looks forward to free expression after the formal lesson — and I’m very happy to combine both fun and school.

You can also make a pan of cornmeal to help your little ones to write. If you don’t have cornmeal in the house, you can also use flour or play sand.  Instead of a foil pan, you can use a cookie sheet.  The writing instrument can be the child’s index finger, a chopstick, or a closed cap pen.

Recently my husband and I have been talking about college life and how unique this period is in a person’s life experience. For most people, this is an exciting and fun period because for the first time, you feel so independent and so grown up. You no longer live with your parents, you have your own apartment, you don’t have to tell anyone your whereabouts, you can hang out with friends for as late as you want to, and you come and go as you please. All of your friends are your age and you share similar struggles and life experience.

However, at some point, all the college fun must come to an end (though some prolong the experience by taking their time graduating). And when that end comes, most people get a cultural shock when they graduate and start working. All of a sudden you are part of the working world, working long hours, paying your own bills, and trying to figure out what to eat. You no longer hang out with your college buddies till the wee hours because you have to get up early in the morning to go to work. You miss your friends because they’re no longer in the same vicinity. Such sudden change depresses you and makes you long for the good old times. You wonder if this is what life is all about. To remedy your sudden change of lifestyle, you consider going back to graduate school so you can relive your college years. Or, if you’re a Christian (and that’s who I’m talking to), you look for a church that has a big group of people your age.

I’ve seen people trying to relive their college years by returning to their college fellowship functions year after year, but as they got older, they finally realized they simply had to move on. How they move on is to find other people in their life stage. If you’re still single and working, then you find like-minded people who are just like you, single in the working world. If you’re married, then you find people who are married. If you just had your first child, then you surround yourself with people who just had a child too.

Recently, I’ve been asked how I’d advise the newly graduates on adjusting to their new stage of life. After much thinking, here are a few words I’d offer to new graduates:

1. You could try to relive your college years… or you could instead grow up (seriously)! What you experienced in college was unique. Even though you felt so grown up and free, you were not truly an independent adult earning your own money and paying your own bills. So as wonderful as the memories are, God has even better things for those who live their lives in the “today” rather than “yesterday.” You could miss out on great things if you spend your time yearning for what’s past.
2. Post-college transition is often a lonely, difficult and wilderness time. It’s very difficult to move from an environment where your best buddies are next door and always available, to a time when you are working day-to-day next to people nothing like you, and “fellowship” opportunities seem so hard to come by. Consider that this may actually be a great opportunity to learn about contentment and acceptance; and to learn more about life than the artificial bubble of “peer-oriented bubble” of your first ~20 years of life provided.
3. Read and study Titus 2. The Bible has much to say about older women and men mentoring the younger generation. Don’t merely look for interaction with people your age, but seek out older people from whom you can learn (formally or informally). People who have gone before you know the struggles you’re encountering and they can often provide wise counsel.
4. One of the hardest choices most graduates face is finding a church. Don’t choose a church merely based on the availability of people in your age group. Sadly this is the first question people ask (or look for, even if they don’t ask) when looking for a church. While relevant, especially for single people (we’re being honest, right?), you might consider that:

• churches built around only fostering interaction with your own peer group (“singles”->”young marrieds”->”married with young ‘uns”->etc.) are failing to encourage some of the most important relationships (see #3)
• if you would have a godly spouse in the future, the best way to get there is to be godly. And essential to that is learning from godlier — and usually older — saints.
• Is the Word preached? Is the pastoral leadership composed of godly men? Is there discipleship, mentoring and warm Christ-centered fellowship present (regardless of age)? These are questions more rooted in Scriptural priorities than “is there a big young adult group?”

Final word, especially to our dear friends who are in this very age range. I mean no ill will for those of you who like to spend time with others in the same age range. It’s normal. Even if you scarcely sit with my zany family at fellowship meals, many of you enthusiastically interact with us and our children. =-) My heart, and my husband’s heart, are simply to see churches return more faithfully to “integrated” fellowships where saints of different backgrounds, ages, and experiences learn from each other. We thoroughly enjoy seeing how God is working in the lives of many “young people” in our church, and hope that some of what God has done and continues to do in our lives may benefit them in ways that they might not glean from peer fellowship alone.

We’re back home after a week in Maui. And though it was not an educational experience per se, here are some thoughts upon our return:

• Hawaii is nice & warm even at night. Not so back here in the Bay Area, but we are thankful for our nice warm comforter.
• Sunblock works well, but the sun even better, at finding places you didn’t apply it.  Like the tops of my feet.
• It’s fun to play in the warm water at the beach, but kids love the sand even more.
• Food is much cheaper here.  Or rather, much more expensive in Hawaii.  For comparison, for a gallon of milk:
  • $3.79 at an Asian grocery store near our home in the SF Bay Area
  • $4.99 at Wal-Mart in Kahului
  • $5.79 at Costco in Kahului
  • $12.00 at Safeway in Lahaina (yikes!)
• Homeschooling moms are never truly on vacation: spelling quizzes in the car (“whale,” “mountain,” “library” among other new words), and the only “souvenirs” we brought home were a half-dozen 50% off hardcover children’s books from a Barnes & Noble store in Lahaina!
• There’s no place like home. The children (and we adults) happily returned to our beds, our house, our toys, our food, etc.

With that said, aloha & mahalo (thank you) for visiting our blog today; and we end with few more photos from our trip.

The family in Lahaina Town:

Matthew and Andrew on a branch of the famous Banyan Tree:

At the Maui Ocean Center aquarium:

The boys with me at the tide pool examining a sea urchin:

Calissa pointing out a big sea turtle at the aquarium turtle exhibit:

The children enjoying the lapping waves and wet sand at the Baby Beach in Lahaina:

Ah, the perils of traveling / vacationing with four children.Two bedrooms: one with a king bed, the other with a pair of twin beds. How shall we accomodate two adults and four children under six years old?

Obviously, the king bed goes to me and my wife.

And the boys (almost 6 and 4yo respectively) are somewhat obvious recipients of the twins.

But what of the girls (3yo, 22mo)?

Emmie’s “room”:

Calissa’s “room”:

In case you haven’t figured it out, the ladies are sleeping on makeshift beds (stacked blankets & sheets) in the bedroom closets.  And Emmie likes her room (see her smiling?)!

It’s been a few days since I got home (and then on vacation) from the 2008 Shepherds’ Conference hosted by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA. The conference itself was a very packed experience. Each day began between 8 and 9 am, and ended at 8:30p. This resulted in 12+ hours each day of expository Bible teaching, seminars for church leaders, congregational worship, fellowship with other men, and some food squeezed in-between.

I’ve been trying to reflect upon my personal experience on the conference, to give the “editorial” version of things, and not merely the live-blogging experience of simply reporting on the various sermons & seminars & corporate gatherings. Here are some of my thoughts:

• I thoroughly enjoyed the conference’s emphasis on the importance of the Word in all of what the church does. I especially appreciated Al Mohler’s insight on what preaching ought to be:

We add to this problem by discussing expository preaching as the superior mode of preaching. When we add to that pattern, we do injury to it. Because according to the Bible, exposition is preaching. If it isn’t exposition, it isn’t preaching! You may speak, you may talk, but if you do not read the text and preach it, reproving, rebuking, exhorting from the text, you’re not preaching! We have to stop saying, I prefer expository preaching. We should say, “I’m a preacher, this is what I do. I read the text and explain it. Then I go home and study. And then I come back and do the same.” It’s simple, which makes it tragically absent.

He continued on later in his message

If the Bible is the perfect Word of God, it comes to the question of who’s going to speak: the preacher, or God? But when it’s the Word of God speaking through the preacher, then it is God who speaks, and that’s the difference between life & death. Do we arrogantly think that God’s people can live on our words? Obviously not. Life is only found in the Word of God. We live only because He is there and He is not silent. We have been called to this, and this is what we do. We obey the call, we study it, we get in front of God’s people, then we explain it.

Mohler’s insight is a refreshing reminder of the simplicity and significance of our job as believers (especially pastor-teachers) and as His gathered Church: to understand His Word and live it out.

• From the latter of the above quotes, Mohler made an important point: “Do we arrogantly think that God’s people can live on our words? Obviously not. Life is only found in the Word of God.” One of realities that was confirmed through my time at the conference is that even the best of preachers are but men. Even as many (including me) often raced to the front for the best seats to sit under the preaching at this conference, it was clear in conversing with other men after the conference that we did not agree 100% with all of the points made, or how they were made; by the various speakers. It helps to remember, we preach not ourselves (or John MacArthur, or Steve Lawson, or anyone) but Christ and Him crucified.
• Conferences, as intense and exciting as they may be, falls miles short of the joy of being in the local church. As well preached as many of the messages were, as inspiring the musical offerings and congregational singing, as yummy as the food was; the one thing I enjoyed most was the conversation to and from the conference (5+ hours each way), and chatting it up with my roommate at the hotel. It reminds me that what it really comes down is meaningful relationships built on the Word; applied truth, not just taught or proclaimed, is what matters in every Christian’s life. Or as James put it, being “doers of the Word” and not merely “hearers.”
• Last lesson: live-blogging expository preaching is both fun and tiring. The challenges of taking down detailed notes of exegetical considerations, while capturing broader points, is not trivial. But I enjoyed it, and Lord willing, I’d love to do it again sometime.

How about the rest of you? What did you get out of the conference?

We’re all enjoying ourselves on our much-needed vacation here on the “Valley Isle” of Maui.  Here are some photos of the fun thus far:

On the airplane ride over, Matthew getting some reading in:

The family distracted by a movie on my laptop:

Fine dining in Maui (at McDonald’s for breakfast, Aloha Mixed Plate for dinner):

At the Iao Valley State Park:

(This next photo was taken by Matthew!)

Kids enjoying one of the perks of vacation condos — free cable TV: