Heart Reflections Live

Labels: testing times

Life is made up of moments...

Am I hungrily savouring the simple beauty in each and every one of them? OR are they being lost and WASTED under the stress of the tryanny of the urgent?

There is beauty in EVERY moment! I want my HEART to learn to capture it! I want the heart of a CHILD like my own children who not only see the raindrop on the leaf, but see the extreme , transient beauty of it, and CELEBRATE it, as a gift from the Saviour, The Creator... before discovering the next one!

We don't need manufactured excitement in our lives, what some call drudgery is really service to the KING OF KINGS!!! I want to revel in this more and more...even when I'm scraping poop off a nappy. To live life with the same joy and hunger my children have... not wasting my moments with stress and distraction.... LIVING IN THE MOMENT... not wishing myself out of it!

EVERY moment we are making a memory for our children... are we singing hymns and rejoicing as we work or sighing and grumbling about the work they make, instead of the joy they are in just being? (GULP!!!!) I am over 40 now, and have discovered that the more children you have, the faster childhood and MOMENTS go, even when you homeschool, and create an atmosphere where childhood is cherished and not programmed by the dictates of popular culture.

I often wish I could freeze frame my childrens' faces in my mind's eye, but if they could do the same with me, would they remember a happy rejoicing Mama, or a grumpy one mostly- maybe I'm not game to ask ... yet...

There is to be no division between the secular and sacred in our Christian walk. I pray my children will notice that I seek to glorify the Lord moment by moment, and that they will grow desiring the same... Some days I think I learn more from them, than they do from me!

When my children and others look me in the eyes, I pray they will see a whole person, not fractured by care or worry or stress, sparkling with the joy of the Lord, as I live out the rest of my life savouring and celebrating the moments!

Labels: contentment, everyday life lessons

What a great couple of weeks we've had. We've just come to the end of 2 weeks school holidays- back to homeschool tomorrow- and we've been spending some of the holidays bargain hunting! FUN! FUN! FUN!

Apart from church and family visits, and occasionally a Christian Playgroup, I don't get out of the house much, so these family days were relished. On Wednesday, we drove from our hilltop home out to the coast for our semi-regular visits to our Koorong Christian bookstore. I was thrilled when Zara found a double Donut Man DVD set we didn't have. They are a refreshing option to many of the much more commercial stuff available for kids these days.

We also visited 2 of the huge Lifeline Secondhand Warehouses at the coast, where my darling hubby found me some vintage pyrex!!! I decided last year to start collecting this to use so that eventually we can eliminate the plastic we have in our kitchen. He found me a large casserole dish with a glass lid, in the English pattern pictured above, and a lovely smaller glass baking dish with a lid in clear glass with a slight green tinge to it. I've saved a website called "Pyrex Love" which helps identify most of the common patterns. I really love some of the pastel aquas and pinks from the 50's and 60's, as well as some of the yellow and olive green designs from the 60's and 70s. We just happen to have an olive green and yellow retro kitchen in our current rental which I love. I never collect things just for the sake of having them, I'm hoping to track down pyrex in different sizes for reheating leftovers and baby food, and food storage in general. The more I find out about the toxins in plastic, the keener I am to find alternatives. This is a fun, cheap way to do so.

We also got some great 2ndhand clothes for our boys who are now 10 months, and enormous! My hubby found some lovely pants and collared shirts for them, as well as a lovely handknit cardigan- I love traditional children's c;othes! It's even better when they're as cheap as chips! I'm blessed to have a hubby who loves to bargain hunt.

We scored some more vintage children's books, and I managed to find a few more classics off my list- Pollyanna, Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne, and My Side of the Mountain. I also found The God of All Comfort by Hannah Whitall Smith, and an A W Tozer classic- all for next to nothing.

The best part of the day however, was just going out together as a family, having wellbehaved children, and babies that travelled particularly well that day. A day we all enjoyed. I don't mind that fact that I don't get out of the house much as a homeschool mum, but it makes the times I do more appreciated and really exciting. We are truly blessed.

Labels: family fun, family life, frugality