A Joyful Keeper

Susanna is a gorgeous 1 year old daughter of one of my online friends. They recently discovered a tumor growing under her tongue and she went for a MRI scan last week. The results are that there are two tumors one of which is very invasive. Please take some time out to pray for this beautiful girl and her family. You can read more about them and keep up to date at the following websites:

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/hallfamily8

http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/inputSiteName.do?method=search&siteName=susannahall

Thank you all for taking the time out to read this and I hope that you will join with me in prayer that God will meet their every need - spiritually, physically and financially.

Term 3 is about to start where we live, and while I haven’t been sticking to term dates as such, now that we are back I have decided to fall back in line with the school terms… at least loosely. DH will start work on Monday, so it seems sensible that we start a new Term on Monday too

I have been trying to plan the term without going completely overboard like I tend to sometimes. I have made an outline for the first four weeks and then I’ll revisit it and see how it is going. I have looked at our daily schedule and changed it around a bit. This is what I have come up with : Our Daily Schedule

Then I have been playing with my checklists and routines, and the children’s as well. Again, after a few weeks I will reasses and see if they are working. Here are our basic routines:

My Daily Routine

Dan’s Checklist

Beth’s Checklist

Matt’s Checklist

I have to admit I was getting a little stressed while I was planning, because I always want to do it all and have it perfect No one else out there like that, is there?! As I look around the house, it has come a long way, but there are still sooo many things I want to do. I have to discipline myself next week, however, to tackle things bit by bit. I need to put a priority on school and my daily routines, or else we will never get on track! There will always be things I want to sort and deep clean and all of that, but I can do that bit by bit on top of my daily tasks, and eventually it will all be running like a well oiled machine (ever optimistic, I am!).

So, as I was getting stressed, I thought - “Let me write down everything I am getting stressed about still having to do, and divide it up over the next weeks.” So this is exactly what I am going to do. Write the list of things I want to organize better and then take one week for each thing. For example, I still want to go through all of our clothes. I have decided this is fairly important and want to do that this week. But I am only going to work on the clothes once school and daily chores are done. I need to sort through what each of us has, see if there is anything too small that can be given away, see what else might be needed or mended, etc. And if I don’t get it done in a week? Then I will spend another week on it. But I do think that it will be surprising how far I get if I am only concentrating on that one “major task” for the week.

I still want to write out a menu plan for this week and do my grocery shopping tonight, so I’d better go and do that now!

I hope you are all having a great weekend

It’s been a very busy week! I’ll have to do a “Peak” at it this weekend I think! Just one bit of news that I have to share with you is that dh has a job!!!! Yay!!! PTL!!!! We heard for sure yesterday evening and we are so thankful. It is a job where he will have to commute quite a bit, 1 1/2 hours each way, and we will have to see how that goes. But the job is interesting and well paid, so that should make up for it a bit! LOL!

God’s timing is perfect. We have needed these past months to get settled back into life in Australia. It is funny to think you have to get used to your own country, but it is so true. We still have moments when we feel like strangers here, but then listening to Jim Reeves yesterday - “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through…” That is so true. We need to keep our focus on why we are here and where our true home is. So, we have used these past months to get settled into our house, sorting out all the paperwork involved in returning here, catching up with people, and also just resting from a very difficult past year.

Now it is time to move on! DH is well and truly ready to go back to work, and the kids and I are needing to get into a proper school/home routine. Also, the credit card is almost at its limit, so it is definitely time to get some money in, LOL! God is faithful. With a good salary we will be able to concentrate on getting the credit card down and then save for a house. In His time this will all fall into place.

Thanks to all of you who have prayed during this time. We have felt peace throughout these months, knowing that God would work it out in His time. I think others have been more worried for us than we have ourselves! And that is purely because the Lord has given us His peace. All the praise and glory goes to Him. Alhamdulillah!!!

Not all of my older women are “real life” women I mean, they aren’t women I have met face to face. We have so many wonderful books and people on the internet to learn from, that even if you don’t have an older woman in your area at the moment, you can still learn from others.

Of course the first place to learn about older women is the Bible! We have many examples there. If you haven’t already done so, I’d encourage you to look at some of the women in the Bible and do your own study on their lives. There are Sarah, Esther, Ruth and the wonderful Proverbs 31 woman.

I remember in our first year of marriage I joined a Bible Study with the church ladies. Our pastor’s wife led the study. She was not much older than I was. The topic was the Proverbs 31 woman, and I was so excited to go to the study and learn about her. I will never forget when our pastor’s wife opened the study – she basically said she avoided this chapter of the Bible because it scared her! I remember being shocked and disappointed. Many of the other women in the group agreed with her and from there the study took an almost negative turn in which we looked at how hard it was to live up to her standard! As a young wife I was full of enthusiasm to try to learn from these older women and it was a sad thing to realize that I wasn’t going to learn what I was looking for from them.

I love the passage about the Proverbs 31 woman! I look at it as a standard that I can work towards, not that I will never achieve. I look at the things I am already doing, and the things that I would like to set goals for. I see it as some real instructions especially for us women, in a Book that has instructions for all of mankind.

Without going into the debates about whether the Proverbs 31 woman was a working mum or stay-at-home mum, there are many character traits we can pick up. Just the simple statements:

“The heart of her husband safely trusts her,” v 11

“She does him good and not evil all the days of her life” v12

“She does not eat the bread of idleness”v27

“A woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.”v30

have so much meaning in them. We can talk all we like about the day to day details of what we should be doing or not doing, but they all come back to a woman’s heart for the Lord and her family, and doing what she believes God has called her to do.

The women in the Bible and in real life that I want to emulate are those whose hearts were/are in the right place. I want my heart to be right before God and man too. I want Him first in our family life, and I want to seek to do what He has laid out for me to do.

For me, I believe my calling is to be a keeper of the home, and looking at the practical things the Proverbs 31 woman was doing has a lot of relevance to me, as well as her heart. Learning from her and other women is something that I am constantly seeking to do. I will never “arrive” at the point when I can say – yes, I’ve learned it all now! I hope to be a grey haired, little, chubby, old lady with an apron on, puttering around her kitchen still learning all she can about being a keeper! LOL! What a goal! Actually, I’m well on the way to that physical description….!!!

And another goal? This:

“Her children rise up and call her blessed,

Her husband also, and he praises her…” v 28

The box is gone!!! Yes, it really is!!! It has been emptied and flattened and is waiting to go in the rubbish And the contents you ask? (Must you?!) Well, I sorted it all out in piles for each family member and a BIG bag to go to the opshop Yay! The hallway looks soooo much better! The piles have all been put away in drawers or rooms except Matt’s because we need to move a chest of drawers in there… so, we are well on the way to having hardly any boxes in the house anymore!

Yesterday I went to visit one of my older women I hadn’t seen her for two and a half years and we were so excited to see each other again! While the children played and our husbands caught up on guy things, Stella and I chatted non-stop about all the things we’d done in the past few years. I told her that I had been using her recipes and what she had taught me when we were neighbours. She was so pleased. Her comment was that not many young women these days were interested in homemaking or cooking. I said that there were a few still… including me!

As soon as I became engaged, I prayed for God to send older women into my life. He answered this prayer, even long after I stopped praying for it. As a young married wife, He sent me Robyn, a lady with whose family dh had boarded with while he was finishing University. Now she is three women in one to me - mother, older sister and best friend! She came alongside me as a young wife and “fed” me information. She dropped in interesting articles, magazine, recipes, bits and pieces for sewing, etc, etc. She dropped by for cups of tea to see how I was doing and to encourage me in our (my husband’s and mine) goal of me being a stay-at-home-wife and later a stay-at-home-mother. When the world around me told me that I should have been seeking a career, she confirmed to me that some of us are called to carry out the high calling of keeping the home.

Over time I realized that I was also an older woman! I began to pass on knowledge to other women younger than me, and I believe this is how God wants it to be. All of us teaching and encouraging each other. This is not to say that we can’t learn from women younger than ourselves, of course we can. But generally as we grow older we (hopefully!) grow wiser!

I want to write some more posts about the older women in my life over the next few weeks, so keep dropping in! I’ll finish this post with a few new things I learned from Stella yesterday:

~*~ to make cakes or cornbread rise higher and be less heavy, use buttermilk

~*~ if you don’t have any buttermilk, you can make it yourself using 3 parts yoghurt to 1 part milk

~*~ to tenderize a very tough cut of meat, blend the flesh of a kiwi fruit with a cup of water. Strain the seeds and then cover the piece of meat with the mixture. If you have small pieces of meat, marinade them in this mixture. The meat will be soooo tender!

~*~ if you are growing cauliflower or broccoli and find that they are being eaten by caterpillars, prevent this by dusting with plain flour. The butterflies or moths will not be able to lay their eggs on the leaves.

~*~ a yummy twist on Chicken Parmigiana: cut a slit in the chicken breast and fill it with some sun-dried tomato and garlic. Cover in breadcrumbs and cook as usual, topped with ham, pasta sauce and mozzarella. Doesn’t that sound great! I must try it!

Stella and her husband make all their own sundried tomatoes and pasta sauce. It is so natural and healthy and the taste can’t be compared to the store bought ones. She gave me some of her homegrown and dried oregano. She put it in a plastic bag and it smelled just beautiful! She also gave me some homemade jam and peach conserve. I can’t wait till summer to make my own again, but in the meantime I can enjoy hers!

Do you have older women in your life? Thank the Lord for them If you don’t, ask God to provide one and He will!

Alhamdulillah is one of the most common words used in Arabic. According to Wikipedia, it means that:

“All Praise, Glorification, Thanks, Gratitude, that Praise ITSELF, Glorification ITSELF, the very concept, idea, and attribution of it - belongs to God and to God alone, and to no one else.”

This is quite a good definition of one of my favorite words that I have picked up from living in the Middle East, and although some may use it in a flippant manner, many others really do use it to give thanks to God for everyday things.

It is used in instances such as greetings:

“How are you?”

“I’m fine, Alhamdulillah.” i.e. I am fine and I give God the glory for this.

If something pleasant or surprising happens people might exclaim with joy: “Alhamdulillah!” and through saying this give thanks and praise to God for the circumstance.

How often do we say with full conviction that we are thankful for something and give the glory to God?

Let me share some instances in the past weeks that I have used this word:

Dh had a very positive job interview in which an IT company is so keen to have him that they are basically going to create a job for him - Alhamdulillah!

Two weeks ago some family members, knowing that we are tight financially at the moment, gave us $1000 - Alhamdulillah!

A friend gave me some fabric with which I can make some winter clothes for Elizabeth - Alhamdulillah!

I found some winter shoes in a box for Matthew that fit him perfectly. They were given to us 4 years ago in Germany and Daniel wore them first, but they are great quality, lovely and warm, just right for this cold winter - Alhamdulillah!

Just when we were running out of food in the pantry and freezer, I was able to purchase some bulk staples for a very low cost - Alhamdulillah!

As we drive around the countryside, we are watching it turn from brown to green as the drought seems to have broken - Alhamdulillah!

I talked to a dear friend on the phone today that I hadn’t spoken to for over two years - Alhamdulillah!

Oh this is such a handy word and of course when I use it here I get very strange looks! Sometimes I just long for a person from the Middle East that I can say this word to and know that they will understand the full essence of it! There are so many things I want to thank the Lord for, and I use this Arabic word. Of course, I know that God knows exactly what it means, and it is to Him I am saying it after all!

I thank the Lord for bringing us back to Australia and providing us with a beautiful house to live in, food to eat, clothes and shoes and a car to drive. I thank and praise Him for good friends and family that we are able to spend time with and enjoy once again. I thank Him for leading us and guiding us, and for keeping us in the shelter of His hands - Alhamdulillah!