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First Week of School

I love starting and ending at odd times. Quarantine came, and I decided to ditch 2nd grade with Andre. (The girls are on their own tracks to finish 8th grade.) He was already in Third Grade math and reading, so I figured, let’s drop it. I wasn’t inspired by it, neither was he.

So I used Quarantine to … change. I love change, I love seeds of ideas bursting forth into blooms, leading into fruit. In January, I had planned to move midwifery studies to first place. But then, several factors converged to change my direction once again.

I realized that Skyla and Vika would be G-O-N-E GONE in four years, and my window of opportunity with them is in its final stages. So I:

And most importantly at this moment, I invested in myself as a teacher– I’ve been realizing that if I’m going to enjoy home schooling, I need to invest myself in learning the skills of it, So I:

I did this because I think I have a similar personality to her and I really, really love her program– how it integrates history, literature, culture, arts, geography, philosophy, writing.

I spent time learning the program, learning to do the parts I’ve been skipping and which I naturally am repelled by. I also set myself up for success (hopefully) by starting early (this week) with only Andre and Una. I made an early bedtime and before bed we clean the living room and I set up our needed books the next day. We set up a big table. And we have a definite start time. I also made Weekly Assignments for them, and they (Andre especially) love seeing what they have to do for a day and crossing it off as it’s done.

clean, organized, devoted workspace
school books in one place
Our unit topics for 36 weeks of school
Weekly assignments for each Level: grammar (upper or lower), dialectic, rhetoric.

I’m starting Andre and Una as Lower Grammar students; Andre is writing level 3 while Una is level 1.

Literature and history
Fine Arts
Extra/Other: Geography, science, and extra history reading

Left: Una learning to read. She still doesn’t remember all the sounds of the letters in the alphabet but we go on slowly with combining sounds a bit. Her brain will click with it when it’s time.

Right: Andre took off this year with English reading. This is a third grade reader I found, and he reads a page aloud each day.

Math is easy for Andre; It’s what’s most interesting for Una though it clicks less at this time. She has fun with the shapes, counting, and writing numbers.

Andre has another handwriting program, but I’m also trying to incorporate more writing for him. He needs repetition and practice. He’s getting ready for spelling. We use Spelling Power. He writes the group rule, then does a short activity like writing in chalk markers on the board below. Today he recorded himself saying the words and spelling them.

And this is a recent photo of moi, teacher extraordinaire.

I have more to say, but it will wait for another post 🙂

Pt. 2, about controversial things

So, I just wrote about controversial things, and a friend commented:

Please write more especially on the relation to the overlap of courage, fear, wisdom, and dying to self with that “non-person” phenomenon.

I will explain my own progression in these areas and include insights from my husband that helped me along the way. (It helps me organize by thoughts by numbering ideas, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a distinct progression.)

  1. Logical arguments mean almost nothing…. This lesson took years. I used to participate in a forum that discussed ideas, issues, etc. And the major life lesson I took away from that experience is that truth or rightness of itself doesn’t win people over. Logic has it’s limits. We are not at all solely logical beings. A winsome expression of the truth, a pleasant personality, general respect for others, self-effacement– these are the factors that tend more to win the day. Hopefully they are combined with truth.
  2. “Do not let kindness and truth leave you;
    Bind them around your neck,
    Write them on the tablet of your heart.
    So you will find favor and good repute
    In the sight of God and man.”
  3. Truth somehow becomes untruth if it’s used as a club or means to beat people down– I think because the non-verbal message is untrue to God’s nature.
  4. I went through a number of years when I was in an emotionally hostile environment due to some church issues. My husband, a pastor, became the main pastor of our church in a time of personal and public crisis for others in church leadership.
  5. During this time of hostile environment, I was personally having my most blessed insights about “opinion” matters.” However, sharing this was even openly attacked, so I became basically silent. For the sake of greater issues/hurts in our church and because certain key hearts were closed, I mostly remained silent. For years. My outlet was my former blog.
  6. However, I realized that God didn’t always approve of silence. Silence is comfortable to a point. But God didn’t make us to be creatures of silence, and there were potentially harmful opinions being loudly propagated.
  7. I wasn’t silent all the time. There were moments I could speak appropriately and I used them on rare occasions.
  8. So, I realized that my “opinion” (personal leadings/lessons/insights from God) were to bless others in my influence. That doesn’t mean others will do what I do, but as a person in leadership, I am a unique individual whom God leads in specific ways, and the cumulative effect of that will have a general influence.
  9. One lesson from Vitaliy’s evangelism: Look for open hearts. And be a person around whom hearts can open. Or a person with a skill/knack to opening hearts.
  10. I had to really clarify my opinion to become a more universal truth. I had to not become stuck on certain practices or outward showings of a truth. I had to state the truth. Example: the truth is that you should love your child. –That is a very deep and searching truth. I can’t “preach” the methods of loving because anyone can do a wide variety of actions and have love or indifference. But I can share wisdom insights, some specifics, etc.
  11. Also from Vitaliy: My opinions or ways of doing things have a particular result in my own life because of who I am, my personality, my character, my resources and situation. But just prescribing those opinions/actions to others results in a wide variety of outcomes — because those people are very different from me in a multitude of ways. They will not get the result I get by just copying me.
  12. However, I focused on my example and living out the truth: “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Others should be able to look at my life and be able to copy my faith, though the external actions may and will differ.
  13. Pray. It really is the Holy Spirit who changes an opinion, assuming all sides (truths, opinions, info, etc) are known. All I can “do” is not to make my opinion or belief (or the truth itself) malodorous to others by my obnoxiousness, snobbery, self-righteousness, pride, truth-beating, etc. Prayer also changes me and re-aligns me to Jesus as the salvation of mankind, not the “salvific” (surely! right? ) effect of my opinions.
  14. And when the Spirit grants open hearts (and after years, He amazingly did this!) there will be the fruit in others’ lives that God wants. And that’s more important than just winning some type of following.
  15. P.S. I try to re-examine my opinions periodically and ask God if He wants me to change in any of these areas.
  16. There’s something I may be forgetting, but that’s it for now 😉
  17. About the loud people who easily spout their opinions: don’t assume they have an overwhelming influence because they’re loud or because they easily talk about their opinions/beliefs, and because they silence others. God knows how to limit influences. Pray He will do so, and that He will be able to do so in positive ways.
  18. If you have a major opinion/belief conflict with the/a/another leader, tread carefully. Sometimes, for the sake of greater issues of unity, there are reasons God wants us to be OK with not making a big deal out of something. It’s very situational. Like, I would probably never join the church whose pastor actively promotes something I strongly disagree with. I could convince myself, for example, that oh surely people need to hear another opinion, so I should join that church and fulfill that role…. Really? I’m not there to humbly learn, but to teach? …. Now, if it’s something I or that leader gradually grew into our out of, and we’re already both members, I don’t know what I would do. It depends on the culture and situation and God’s leading. I’m not for church-leaving. But God also extremely values overall unity in the church (in the general emphasis of the body’s glorifying Christ).
  19. Also from Vitaliy: If you are truly interested in blessing that Other Person (or group of people), ask God what HE is doing in that other person’s (group’s) life. Then pray to join that work (even if it’s only in prayer). Your Issue #1 might be issue #8 or #22 on God’s priorities for that person.

enjoying a day

So, I’m trying to focus myself on enjoying these homeschooling days because God seems to put this before me year after year, and I want to start learning all the lessons I can from it.

I wonder sometimes about the childhood He is giving my children. It’s a subject I have to trust Him with. We all do, right? Our kids can’t choose their childhoods– nobody chooses it. I was thinking this AM about the Royal Family– so many rules and constraints to live by, and they didn’t choose it– they were born into it. A spouse– well, that feels more like choosing.

Also, a general theme in my life at this time is learning: That all the results/consequences that I live out now from choosing God’s will at certain earlier moments of my life–those results are also God’s will for my life. And I need to embrace those things, too, as God’s meaningful, purposeful, exact. good will for my life. Even though I feel like I didn’t directly CHOOSE these factors of my life, I actually DID choose them. I was actively choosing the life I have now when I was making particular, large decisions about “God’s will” for my life. Like choosing to live in Ukraine. Like choosing to marry. Like choosing to marry a Ukrainian. Like choosing to have our children. Like choosing to be employed as missionaries.

Those are choices I/we have made according to God’s will. Accepting that the fall-out of those choices is just as much God’s will … that is my life lesson right now.

So, I’m learning to value and even enjoy the fall-out. 🙂 It’s a process. I could just grit my teeth and endure it. But who wants to live like that? I’d rather spend the effort learning to enjoy it. So I’m watching how I live my days a little more. Trying to count the moments a little more.

In the spirit of that, here are some photos from today:

reading a book with Una

Andre and Vika played Legos for a bit

Working through The Armor of God (Shirer) Bible study our ladies’ SS class is going through

Andre wanted to make a pyramid yesterday, so we did

After our trip to Walmart, I saw this funny scene on our kitchen counter

I love how our kids just get tired and put themselves down for naps, and while they slept, Vika and I restfully read; she finished Little Women and I read A Pocketful of Pinecones.

Vitaliy and Skyla went fishing today

These are from yesterday

A nice day to remember.

our births, awesome or weird

Just take your pick– ha ha 🙂

I love our unattended births. (Andre and Una were unattended births.) But as I age, the things I want to say about them changes.

First, I want to say that I’m starting to not like the term “unattended birth,” though I totally understand that term. I used to be ok with it.

But now … maybe it irks me, in that it puts the emphasis on who was NOT there, and can we puhleeze stop focusing on the caregiver? (I say this as a caregiver.)

My former midwifery director coined the term “family birth.” I like that. I’m toying with “just-us birth.”

Also, I used to explain, explain, explain  all my logical, physical reasons why we choose “just-us birth.” But I’m getting old and so I tire of all that now, and I just want to roll around in enjoying the fun and wonderful, amazing, over-the-top experiences we had together during our Just-Us Births. It makes me cry to remember it.

In our village house out in no-where, lying in the water in the bathtub, Vitaliy sitting next to me, listening to 4Him’s “Where there is Faith” over and over again while my uterus and baby did all the work.

Andre coming out, and me immediately, uninhibitedly talking to him and gently rubbing him with all his vernix! Oh, I could go on and on! I should!

Vitaliy coming to me over and over for days after Andre’s birth saying, “Wow, honey, you did it. You’re amazing.”

Him bringing me flowers and lavash, and buying 7 million chux pads for all the after-birth fluids.

Our kids running in after each birth to meet the new one.

My placenta that came out 7 hours after one birth– calling a “friend” in the States to ask how to push that out. And it was all fine.

Oh my.

Well, anytime you want to hear all about, just ask me to unload the stories on you.

I know you’re just dying to hear about it ….

 

when old questions resurface

I’m very thankful God doesn’t tire of my questions. I go through cyclical phases of questioning the value of my life, and God takes me cyclically deeper and deeper into His ways.

(I’ve had to become OK with my cyclical questioning, too. I think it’s an essential part of my personality.)

So a few days back, I started feeling all my familiar poopiness about my life–why am I here? why am I alive? what is the value of what I do and am?

This time, God led me to delve into Sally Clarkson’s teachings. She’s a great vision-caster for moms, and I need vision. And I listened to several of her podcasts and lectures, and one was about leadership.

And as I read through the verses she attached, I was very struck by Proverbs 4:18, “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.”

And I realized that my life, as a righteous person, is not dimming out because I’ve buried several dreams and stopped doing some ministries I love. I feel as though my life’s gotten dimmer the last few years, like my reasons for being excited about life have slowly been put out. And I’ve become an un-excited person. A person who doens’t really look forward to waking up another day, a person who’s enduring years not understanding their value.

In this new apartment we bought, we’re up very high– the 23rd and 24th floors! And one window looks out on the sunrise and other windows look out on the sunset.

And this verse that “the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn” has special meaning for me now that I’ve watched a few sunrises. They are gorgeous.

And God says my life is like that. It’s ilke that NOW. This is another answer to my cyclical questions about the value and meaning of my life.

And I will accept this by faith. And I ask God that I would experience this reality in the complete unity of my person—the reality of my life becoming brighter and brighter.

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

 

moy 42 rozhdeniya: net nachala, net kontsa

Итак, сегодня мой 42-й день рождения.

Я чувствую, что я в таком жизненом ситуации как описана Дональдом Миллером в его книге «Миллион миль за тысячу лет». Он описывает поездку на бардарке в темноте, и он рассказывает о том, как в каждом жизненом поездке, вы добираетесь до трудной середины – волнение и радость начала, когда с ожиданием отталкивали с берега– эти чувства рассеялись. И великое предназначение, к которому вы пливете еще не видно.

И вы находитесь в этом трудном среднем месте, где вам просто нужно грести веслами по вере.

И в последнее время я чувствую это место. Подобно тому, как Бог призывает меня к тому времени, когда дисциплины сложнее, потому, что нет особые волнения или радости от начала или конца. Это просто верный гребля.

Брак, воспитание детей, домашная школа, служение, отношение с Богом …

Это хорошее место. Место, где нужно идти глубже в другом, более сложном, более зрелом способом. Держать огонь живым и ярким, когда нет ни начала, ни конца.

Дорогой Бог, пожалуйста, встреть меня и благослови меня в этом месте. Хочу быть полностью верным до захватывающего конца!

My 42nd birthday: No beginning, no end

So today is my 42nd birthday.

I feel like the situation described by Donald Miller in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He describes a boat trip in the dark, and he talks about how you get to the hard middle– the excitement of pushing off from shore has dissipated and the great destination to which you’re going is also not yet visible.

And you’re in this hard middle place where you just have to paddle by faith.

And lately I feel this place. Like God’s calling me to a time where disciplines are harder because there’s no excitement of the beginning or the end. It’s just faithful paddling.

Marriage, child rearing, home schooling, ministry.

It’s a good place. A place where one has to go deeper in a different, harder, more mature way. To keep the fires alive and bright when there’s no beginning or end in sight.

Dear God, please meet me and bless me in this place. May I be completely faithful to the exciting end!

lessons from birth: it’s not just a body giving birth

I want to snatch these 5 minutes to type this out, otherwise it will speed by, and I won’t record this.

I was at a birth 2 nights back, and I was having so many thoughts as she was laboring, and I was with her. We were in the darkened kitchen/livingroom with the half-sized Christmas tree with it’s lovely lights winking in the wee hours of the night.

Her husband and little baby were sleeping in the other room. She was hands and knees going through the intensity, quietly moaning, rocking. I was quiet, rubbing down her back.

It was a rich time in the mostly-dark night when I have to stand in one place and think about one thing. First I began by asking myself, Why am I even here? Her body can do this. She doesn’t need me here. It’s a beautifully-designed hormonal, physical process that her body and her baby will just do together.

And my mind wandered to those ancient midwives, Hebrews, Shiphrah and Puah, and how they saved boy babies lives by not murdering them at birth as Pharoah had commanded. They had been there. They had stood in the nights by quietly laboring women.

And it dawned on me, gradually, after I left that birth …. More than a body is giving birth. More than a hormonal process is happening. A woman’s soul is passing through an amazing experience. She’s having a trial, too, a hardship, even one that brings great joy. And it’s wonderful to have someone near you in the birthing, the working out that only your body can do and experience.

I can’t experience her pain, but I have expereinced the same event and it’s pain that was for me. And I can stand near and comfort her soul and body as she passes through what is happening to her.

… Those were some of my lessons from this beautiful night. Understanding that birth IS a hormonal process (involuntary) is essential. But it’s spiritual, too, in many ways. It’s more than a woman’s body giving birth. .

Vitaliy priyehal domoy i moi zhizneni uroki

Виталий приехал вчера– он неделю был далеко от нас, в Монголии.

Вечер был веселым– встретили, разобрались подарками, пили монголский чай (он же находиться на границу Китая).

Когда я вышла замуж за Виталия, я конечно не поняла все “последствия” нашего союза. И Виталий тоже не знал 🙂 Никто не знает! Кроме Бог.

И это хорошо.

Иногда, мне кажется, что я должна жертвовать слишком много из своих мечтов ради детей, и ради того, что я имею муж-евангелист. Он часто в разъездах, жизнь бывает очень спонтанно– трудно планировать.И еще и еще…..

Раньше, мои жертвы ради брака оказались для меня большие, тяжелие.

Но с годами, некоторые мыслил, факты, и истина мне утешают и направляют:

  1. Виталий очень много и для нас жертвует тоже. Это не только я. Он во многих тоже ограничивает себя.
  2. Вообще, я выбрала жизнь, которую я хотела. Мы миссионеры; я рада, что у нас 4 детей; я рада их обучать дома. И конечно, в этих решеньи есть то, что приносить мне неудобство. Это и везде.И с этими решениями, я должна отказывать от других вещей.
  3. У меня есть друзьи, которые работают, развывают себя не в рамке семьи. Им конечно легче, ни так ли? …. Кажется, что им тоже сложно– переживают о детях, имеют неудобство и жалоби с работой, чувствую что спешят слишком, что жизнь не такая, какая они представляли. Итог: Когда есть дети, получается по-любому, что надо много жертвовать.
  4. Служение и работа Виталия мне наполняет. Он часто мне говорит, что все его плода–это и мои плода тоже. Я очень рада для того, что он делает.
  5. Я учусь сосредоточивать на благословении и радости в этом моменте, на этот день, и не думать о том, что не имею и не делаю.
  6. Я очень рада, что я развиваю в сферах, которых я некогда раньше не думала. Это мне очень ценно

 

this mid-November day

My to-do list for this day is done. It’s not all I have to do, but it was the main things.

Vitaliy’s returning today after a week in Mongolia, so! We deep cleaned the girls’ room, and Skyla organized her tsuniamic-proportions craft supplies. Phew. That feels good.

Then, soup with meatballs (a Ukrainian dish). I fried the meatballs first, which might not be traditional, but we like it better that way. Meatballs frying, soup boiling.

Andre and I had a project we wanted to do together– cookies with frosting! On the way to the store we stopped for cocoa with marshmallows (A) and latte (me). Then we bought the butter, eggs, stuff like that.

Una plays at the sink, like she’s washing dishes.She also likes to sit on a stool and listen to our CD of children’s Bible songs.

Andre put on Skyla’s coat that zips up the entire way! He says it makes him like spiderman. 

Andre and Una at the sink togetherVika and Andre devouring the orange we bought

it’s  been a good day so far!