“This is the stuff blogs are made of.” I said to Misty as we began watching “Preparing Herbs for Holistic Purposes” VHS rented from the library. If ever a chic flick were made especially for people like us, it would be this film.

Perhaps it was the name of the presenter, the totally flower-child name “Kay Moon Dreamer”, that convinced me to pick it up from the non-print media section at the library this weekend. I saved it for the perfect night too…

First, our basement flooded. And who lives in the basement? Yep. I do. Luckily, this was the laundry room; some how the washing machine disconnected and spilled out several inches of water on the floor below, making its way to the carpet as well as many cardboard moving boxes still piled in the corners. Great!!! I didn’t quite know what to do. The One Who is Due Any Day Now and my machismo hubby began moving things around in a plan that only they seem to understand, and since Verity was screaming her brains out I was able to retreat for a bit until things calmed down. Hubby plunged the drain and got the water to filter down while they mopped up and sopped up and moved out and all that good stuff. One of the fantastic aspects of living in community with others is that there is never a shortage of people to call for help. Call Heath! Call Dan! Call Tom! Tom answered and had the wet vac we were after, so Seth brought it home and the men got to work finishing up the water spillage catastrophe. Now all we can do is summon the gods of NO MOLD with incense and burnt offerings.

What did I do this whole time? Seriously, I was like, “Um… I’ll just go bake cookies.” And I did. I literally threw stuff together and called them “A Wing and a Prayer Cookies” and you know, these little double chocolate pecan chocolate chip crunchy cookies were pretty good! A little red wine and coffee were prepared for every one having a mental breakdown and wa-la, the night was ready to be completed by the Herbal Hippie Video of the Century!

Lacey, Misty and I gather in my room with the cookies. The video begins with a lovely a capella hippie song about giving thanks to the garden and the earth and the gnomes and the little purple elephants with angel halos… My jaw literally gaped open in disbelief. I was secretly SO tickled that the video was starting THIS BAD.

The lovely host, Kay Moon Dreamer, turns out to be Ben Stein’s voice inside my step-mother’s body twenty years in the past. Susan, I love you, but why oh why didn’t you tell me about your starring role in herbal videos in the early 90’s?!?! And I love the name you gave yourself as a cover!

Otherwise, the video was pretty interesting, if you are interested in herbs, that is. I definitely want to know more now!

At the conclusion of the film, a series of related videos produced by the same group are previewed. The one for energetic yoga featured a bearded guy in briefs head banging on his knee, lightening speed Cat-Cow curls, and air humping. Supposedly, if you do these things, you will instantly have greater energy. Or just a headache. But suffice it to say, the three of us were laughing so hard that tears and pee were said to have come out. (Okay, it was only me who said that. Shoot. I’m such a bad exaggerator.)

Oh, but I sure needed that! Thanks, girls, for joining me on this memorable evening. It will be so disheartening to return Miss Dreamer’s film to the library, but I find solace in the fact that it will bring some one else great mocking material someday

Among the changes I wrote about yesterday, I’m also shifting a bit with my work-at-home-ness. While I continue to work on an as-needed basis for one client, it looks like my other long-term work relationship will be getting even more so as my role will be expanding a bit. Adding another title to my list of Random Things Vivian Does For a Living; namely, “Blog Editor”. Which I love – just the word “blog” gets me all smileys.

I worked on my new business website from Vivian Writes to Virtual Creatives last winter and while I haven’t had a chance to go back and improve the functionality yet, I’ve finally just let it be out there for the public because even unfinished it represents what I do much better than Vivian Writes did. I’ll be taking down the Vivian Writes site soon, I suppose. As of now, I’m not looking for another on-going client, unless Chris and I end up having him join me as an independent contractor and he would handle administrative tasks for a new client relationship. We’ll see. It’s a thought.

Well, baby is losing a lung right now she is crying so hard, so I better jet. Just wanted to throw this little tid bit out there.

Boy, I feel a bit out-of-body lately. This tends to happen when major life changes are upon me. I just check out to survive it, check back in when things are a bit more calm! Me and my gosh darn less-than-optimal coping skillz.

Let’s recap…

I moved into a community house with another family in March. BIG CHANGE! A very, very good one, I might add!

I had my second baby in April, at home in my shower no less. BIG CHANGE!!! An awesome one, of course.

I’m starting to unschool/homeschool again and actually getting together with other moms weekly and so on. And once you’ve got a homeschooling “group”, it’s like, official. All of that is also a good thing! The more I invest in Ethan’s life, the more in love with my kid I fall. And the more I see him with his peers, the more I realize he is just fine. Right on track, actually, lol.

For another thing, my husband and I have just celebrated our first year married. I say that because I really don’t feel we were ever married before he began recovery. We have discovered in this year an ever increasing intimacy with each other, something that can only come out of a relationship of honesty and respect. So WOOT for that too!

Okay, so what about the not-so-great changes???

I’ve slowly gotten back to work over the last 2 months, as Verity is now 2 months old (yeek!). But Chris’ work is slowing down and any day or week now they will finally clue in their employees on their official layoff date. The combination of my lost income from unpaid “leave” of my freelancing during Verity’s arrival with my husband’s impending layoff has left us with little option but to declare bankruptcy. A big, big decision, I know. I’ve written before about our use of credit cards to make ends meet (above our means!) through college, and how we joined a consolidation service 1.5 years ago. That was a saving grace up until now, because the loss of my income for the last few months made it impossible to pay our creditors on time, and now they have begun to withdrawal us from the program along with it’s wonderfully low interest rates. Catching up, which has seemed to work well for us in the past, is no longer possible. We simply have no way to pay back our debt at this point, and we have made the decision and begun taking steps to file.

Lucky for us, this should be a very straightforward case, one that I’m so far confident that I can actually do “pro se” (without a lawyer), but we’ll see. Being that we have zero assets (no home, no car, no investments, no nothin), we make well below the state average (to pass what’s called the “means test” for filing Ch.7 bankruptcy), and we have been in a counseling/consolidation service for 1.5 years until this recent double whammy of new baby and layoff, I’m convinced at this point that hiring a lawyer to protect, well, the zero assets we have is kinda pointless. So for the next few months (hopefully less!) I’ll be studying my arse off to learn all I need to file and get started on a new life of actually having the money to pay my bills each month without playing the catch up game. Here, here!

Which leads me to the OTHER big, BIG change… hubby has an appointment to get snipped in a few weeks. AH! This is a tough one for me. I can’t say that I never want to have another child, in fact I’d love more than 2 kids. However, all things considered, I believe its the wisest decision for us. Will I be freaking out and wondering how I feel about this for the next few weeks? Heck yes. But perhaps once its over and behind us, I’ll be free to consider the future without the possibility of more children and move on. I love kids, but I fear that having a “quiver full” wouldn’t be the best decision for us, given all the relational, parental, and financial issues we are muddling through. I trust God to not give me more than I can handle, but I also like to think He trusts me to utilize my common sense. So… yeah, I dunno.

Oh Lordy. Yep, 2009 will be THE YEAR of big changes for us. We’ll just have to roll with them, one day at a time.

What does it mean to live a full life? To live every moment to the fullest? Sometimes I look at my life and think… my… this is rather drab.

In doing some, ahem, research for Chris’ soon-to-be-launched dadblog, I discovered this guys bio and thought, now that’s an interesting person, lol.

You know the feeling, the itch, the urge, you get every now and then to DO SOMETHING GREAT? I get bored easily, I suppose. Having a baby was my last big accomplishment, and it wasn’t that terribly long ago (8 weeks almost! Woah!) My next big accomplishment will likely be declaring bankruptcy, which is not exactly something I’d put on my list of things I’m proud of

Now, I know the everyday tasks of working and mothering are pretty grand, as uneventful as they may sound in comparison to riding elephants in Sri Lanka! But I don’t really want to look back on my twenties and remember ONLY the unspectacular everyday things I did. So many moms say this but, but… “I used to have dreams!” lol

Okay, I’m getting to a point here, I swear.

Chris and I have been talking about backpacking Europe (probably staying in hostels and mostly doing just one location — we are thinking Barcelona) for our 10 year anniversary. Which is in 3.5 years. We’ve had this idea for some time, and I personally wanted to take off to Europe with a backpack since even BEFORE Rory and Lorelai did it

This will require much planning, much saving, grandparents willing to watch the tots (this shouldn’t be too hard! lol), … and a vasectomy. But I want to announce it on my blog because I want a bit of accountability to work towards this goal.

Sometimes the survival of the “day to day” keeps us from seeing too far into the future. I hesitate to make a playdate for next week! But I don’t want to neglect the importance of making room for a few great experiences too. Life HAS to be about more than just paying bills on time, heh?

I’ll try to keep the blog posted as we intentionally work towards this goal. I’m going to start a little push pin board in my room dedicated to this plan. A nice little visualization tool, ha!

So, back to my original question- what does it mean to live a full life? What does it mean to you? Do you have some rare and amazing adventure to look back on or that you are planning for? I wonder what you guys dare to dream about…

Every day that passes, I find more joy in knowing they have each other.

“What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent – in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgement, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them.”
~John Holt~ Teach Your Own

As far as I can remember, no one ever sat me down to teach me how to read by kindergarten, but I recall being zealously interested in making words and letters, often competing with my older brother. (I’ll never forget how I overheard he got a word wrong on his spelling test – the word “perpendicular”. I then memorized it to show off – I was in first grade.) I have a memory of making up games with my brother during road trips, counting to 100, and I couldn’t have been more than 5 at the time. What I do not recall is ever having an adult teach me to count, unless I asked them to count with me. When I got to school, I distinctly remember feeling like I had to slow down for the rest of the class, especially when reading or doing crafts. I have a few report cards that were saved from elementary school (I went to 9 different elementary schools so I was always kinda the “new girl”) and one I particularly find funny is the comment “Vivian shows exceptional artistic and language skills, though I do wish she would play more with the other kids”.

Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.–Ludwig von Mises

Fast foward to high school, where one year I missed 55 days of school in one semester because I loved sleeping in, waking up on my own time and finishing the work I knew they would be doing in class in a fraction of the time. The only classes I really showed up for were the one’s I was really interested in, or the one’s with a harsh penalty for absence. I had a 4.7 GPA when I graduated, already had 18 credits obtained in college courses. I took my SAT’s one time, in 11th grade, scored 1340 which was “good enough” for college and scholarships I needed, so I was fine with it. But I had missed a TON of school. I loved AP Music Theory and AP Environmental Science, and remember those and a few english courses more than any other classes I’ve ever taken. That leaves 90% of the classes I had to take out. Let me rephrase that: About 90% of my education taught me nothing.

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. –George Bernard Shaw

I remember having a lot of conflicts with a teacher my freshman year of high school – she was a great educator, it was an english course. But she didn’t like that I, and I quote, “played the system”. In my opinion, I had no other choice. Were I to sit on my sore butt for 7 hours a day when I wasn’t interested, I would have lost my love of learning entirely. But not excelling in school was not an option, so I had to “play the system“. I knew that I wanted to one day go to college to study what I really wanted to learn about, and I knew I would have zero money to do so. My goal throughout high school was to make sure my college was funded, period.

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.–William Glasser

In college, I really wanted the freedom to be absent as much as possible then too. I was deeply interested in a few classes that I’ll never forget: Principles of Teaching, Children’s Ministry, Life of Christ, Personality Theory, Creative Writing, Advanced Expository Writing, and Integrating Faith in the Communication Field, along with art, photography, and film classes. The rest I can barely tell you what they were. I finished all my math and science requirements for my 4 year degree by the very FIRST semester of college so I would never have to take them again, lol. I took my college exit exam my first semester too, scored very well, and have never had to take another standardized test again, thankyoujeebus.

I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.–Carl Rogers

Speaking of those standardized tests. The first one I remember taking was in 7th grade, when they first started making you take the psat’s or fcats or something. I was told that my scores on that particular test would, on their own, determine my placement in classes in high school two years later. Friends who were way more intelligent than me, but not good test takers, were “tracked” into “regular” courses while I got some honors courses. The course of our high school careers were determined by our answers to one test, one or two hours of our lives TWO YEARS PRIOR (which I later learned in my “Into to Education” class is called “tracking”).

I remember my senior year of high school, me and just a small handful of other seniors were asked to meet in the library where the Dean informed us that we had excelled in some area of study so much that we were being able to take a test to place us as finalist for some major award or scholarship. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, but I want to say it was a national merit scholar something or other. All I remember was how I was told that I supposedly excelled in social studies. Social studies? I hadn’t been interested in a single government or history class in my whole life. I usually took “regular” classes with the football coach teacher for those courses so I could free up another hour for a music or english class. When I asked about it, I was told I must have scored well on some test year’s ago, which now dictated that I was nominated for the social studies award. I told them, thanks, but no thanks. I’m not interested in social studies and didn’t want to study for the test I “got the privilege of taking”, so I left the meeting.

Where I am going with all of this is that, while I might have appeared to do well in public school, most of the actual learning I remember took place outside of the classroom. Most, if not ALL, of the skills I now use for work were learned outside the classroom as well. When I was 13, I was reading books in my spare time that were either about spirituality, writing, or art. 12 years later, that hasn’t changed – just add parenting books to the list, lol. Last January, I grabbed a few things from my dad’s while we were in Florida and found a huge binder of poems and short stories I wrote in my spare time from middle school and early high school. I had written down the books I was using at the time to practice my writing, which included Poemcrazy and The Artist’s Way. I didn’t really enjoy novels, and I still don’t. In college, I took a course in Layout and Design in which we learned Adobe Photoshop and PageMaker (the old InDesign, basically). I hated it, though I got an A. I was bored out of my mind and never felt like I was “getting it”. It wasn’t until after I graduated that I got interested in blogging and I wanted the knowledge and freedom to change my blog design, without having to rely on some one else or pay for it, so I spent my spare time trying to change code that I had no idea how to read and used as many resources and knowledgeable friends I could. It was hard at first, I would spend 10 hours on the same darn problem because I had no basic understanding of the html or css language. I would just change something, look at the site, see what I had just done, figure out the correlation, and then see if it worked every time. (In this case, having some one teach me would have saved me a LOT of time, though this eventually did happen, as I had a few knowledge friends or got a hold of some books and slowly found some spare time, little by little, to learn more.) This is how I learn, how I suspect we all do – we have a goal and we need to know something to achieve it. We don’t back down or quit or get disinterested when we really want to learn something- the passion for figuring it out, the curiosity, it will win over in the end. For a time, you can even get obsessive about it until you feel you’ve achieved a certain level and then you can finally get some rest. (In fact, I am currently in this process with knitting!)

PRESS ON. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.–Calvin Coolidge

And so I come closer to my “point”: in the last, say, 7 months or so, I have found myself feeling disappointed in my approach to teaching/parenting my preschool aged son thus far. I never stopped to think about how I learn until recently, and since I could always do worksheets, tests and assignments so well, I spent most of the last 3 years vacillating between structured “teaching” towards Lil’ E, or no instruction at all because I have so little patience teaching something I myself am not interested in, lol.

Now that I’ve embraced the decision to home school, I’m giving a lot more thought to the process of learning, my own experience in and out of school, the differences as well as universal similarities in children. I find myself having to “unteach” myself about how to best foster a learning environment for him, one that takes cues from his interests rather than a “skills set for every 3 year old”. I suspect many, many parents go through this, especially if they want to home school. It seems so backwards, after all – to back off, observe, and trust that your child’s natural curiosity and inclination towards learning will have greater success on developing their intelligence than any subject we could force upon them. But it works time and again, doesn’t it? Just this lasts Winter while visiting in Florida I was chatting with my friend Kubby, who was homeschooled. He explained how he taught himself to read at a young age, and how by the time he was technically in “middle school” he would pick his own books for his curriculum and what he was interested in, read them and teach himself everything he was interested in, and with the efficient use of his time, ended up “learning” much more than most kids his age by 18. (Not surprisingly, when he went to college, he ended up getting very bored!)

Imagine if we all were given the opportunity to focus on our interests and were told that the sky was the limit with regards to how much time and energy we want to spend on them? How many of us would be specialists in a field and today be actually enjoying our jobs (even if that means homemaking, cooking, knitting, what have you) rather than watching the clock each day and deciding the bi-weekly paycheck makes it “worth it”. I know that I cannot imagine myself in a traditional “job”. For me, the freedom to set my own hours, take a walk or a poop or a nap whenever the heck I need to, spend ample time with my primary interests (family, faith and art), and navigate towards my “work related” interests within the field without the monotony of repetition is exactly what I need. I wonder if I’ll ever hold a “job job”, for I fear I will lose interest in about 1 month and be miserable. Not a day goes by that I am not incredibly grateful for the opportunity to earn money in this way. I hope that Ethan and Verity, should they want to, will have this opportunity when they grow up.

“True learning – learning that is permanent and useful, that leads to intelligent action and further learning — can arise only out of the experience, interest, and concerns of the learner” –John Holt

As I began to embrace the idea of a lose “unschooling” philosophy (if you will?) towards Ethan and Verity in the coming year or so, I found myself wondering most about Ethan’s social interactions. I so wanted to establish a regular group of peers for him, where he could have a handful of “friends” and perhaps 1 or 2 “real buddies”. (It could benefit him to learn that perhaps hugging, kissing and saying “I LOVE YOU!” to every single brief playmate on the playground isn’t appropriate to the level of intimacy in their relationship, lol.)

Enter the wonderful world of yahoo groups! Recently my friend Misty decided to also give homeschooling/unschooling a try and while I was home nursing a newborn, she tapped into some local resources for us and landed on a group of gals who began meeting just last week at Kenton park (which happens to be the park we go to about .25 miles away!) and then for lunch at Posie’s coffee shop after wards. The group consists of, so far, about 5 moms of preschool aged kids, most are 4 years old it seems, with a few younger or older siblings. I met with them last week for the first time (and it was such a coincidence because I had met the ring-leader, Laura, two weeks earlier while our sons played together at Posies. She had given me her email and I had yet to get ahold of her, and then life brought us back together again. Funny how those things work out, isn’t it?) The moms I met were smart and talented, and had a strong desire to facilitate a love of learning in their children. We have now agreed to meet weekly at Kenton Park for our children to have regular playmates, and then once per month do “field trips” together. I am over the moon about finding this little group of moms and their kiddos.

I’ve taken a break from focusing on homeschooling since shortly after we moved here in March, what with the move and Verity’s arrival on the horizon. My goal has been to kick things back up around Ethan’s 4 birthday, which is a month away, and it appears we are ahead of schedule! Recovery has been so great with Verity that I feel we have already begun many things, lately focusing again on letters and reading since that is Ethan’s interest, and also on planting/gardening that he asked to learn about. Otherwise, we have everyday learning all around us, and now we even have a group of buds to learn with once a week. Good stuff.

I mentioned last week that I’ve started reading “Mothering Without a Map”. It’s been very interesting, and hard for me to read without putting it down to sit and think on it before picking it up again. Clearly, I have mother issues, lol. (I guess most of us do!)

Having been raised by my father, a construction worker single dad of two, my “roadmap” for motherhood was a bit confusing. I had gleaned many mothering techniques from mother “figures” in my life, even purposefully studying them from a very young age- learning how they packed a lunch, kissed goodnight, or cleaned the bathroom. But I never saw a mother of an infant, never saw a woman give birth or nurse. Can you believe it? 100 years ago that was probably so commonplace. Nowadays, many woman, maybe most, in America have never seen these things.

Except that I almost always had a cat who had kittens. I remember well the hour I spent stroking my cat while she labored through increasingly intense surges until she at last pushed out 5 little amniotic sacs of kittens. She was in “labor land”- faraway and focused — just like I was in my labors. She had them and immediately began to build the bond of touch; licking … nursing … purring. As the kittens grew, she continued to allow them free reign of her poor 8 nipples, ravaged by their little kitty claws kneading feverishly at them for milk. She played with them, but not too much, as she also had to take the time to take care of herself. She had to stand up and leave them “mewing” at her while she got food, drink, or a potty break. If one got out of hand, she wasn’t timid about giving them a little growl to keep them in line, either.

Thus, I learned most about mothering small children from my cat.

Then I had a baby. Ethan turned my world around. We had such a hard time breastfeeding that I came to really value nursing more than I had expected. I longed to nurse and hold my baby, not pump while I watched longingly as some one else gave him a bottle. In those first few weeks, some well-meaning friends gave me the advice that they swore worked miracles for their sister: schedule, schedule, schedule… and above all, let him CRY IT OUT. As they were talking, a knot formed in my stomach and I’ll never forget my thought… “That sounds so… so… unnatural!”

I proceeded to mother my little one on instinct as much as I could. I held him all the time, usually in a baby carrier. I couldn’t go back to work outside the home (when he was 8 weeks old, I tried one day a week working next door to him in a church daycare and I couldn’t handle hearing him cry and not being able to comfort him!) So I started working for myself, first with in-home childcare and later began freelance copywriting which turned into my current job as a virtual assistant. I co-slept with him until he was 9 months. Once we were nursing normally, he never accepted a bottle again- nor a pacifier, or even a sippy cup! I nursed on demand –rather than schedule– until he was 18 months (and grieved giving up our night feedings, let me tell you!) I didn’t spend a night away from him until he was weaned and I cried when I had to (I went out of town for work). The bond I had with Ethan was so strong, he was my little buddy, and I didn’t want to miss the fun, even the challenges, of watching him grow and learn new things each day. This has a lot to do with my desire to homeschool/unschool Ethan and Verity as well (OH, and more on that to come very soon! So exciting!)

It occurs to me now that much of what I did was leaning into the “attachment theory” way of parenting, a theory I now subscribe to and intentionally ALLOW myself to do with Verity. With Ethan, the connection was so strong, and the period of time when he experienced separation anxiety when I left him in sunday school or something was hard on us. But I tried to trust my, again, instincts, that he would be able to stay without me when he was developmentally ready to do so. Then one day, he was. He understood the concept of “coming back” and he flourished into a very independent, confident, and highly (overly? lol) social preschooler. Looking back, I don’t regret the times I held him “too” closely for modern, American standards. We have been able to establish an intimacy that I never had with any mother figures in my life, a gift I longed to give him since I ever dared to think of myself as someday being a… GULP… mother.

Now, there are all kinds of ways to mother, I know that. I have dear, dear friends who love their kids endlessly, who have very well adjusted little buggers, and did NOT “attachment parent”. This post is NOT about the way I did it being “right” or the only way. It’s about a young woman who had no roadmap and found attachment parenting, or what I might just call mothering instinct in my case, a saving grace — both to myself and to my child(ren).

So, a deep thank you to the flea infested, broken hipped cat named Faith, who taught me the very basics of being a devoted mommy (So sorry I had to bring you to the humane society when I left for college!)

I am exhausted (and possibly feverish?) and low on words this evening, but I feel the need for even just a quick, public response to Chris’ vulnerable and endearing post last week. I haven’t written at length about the process we have been on as a couple, and I’ve tried to seldom speak for him about the changes he is making. I welcome his need to journal at mamaneedjava.com from time to time and hope that his writings are useful to whoever reads them. To me, the Chris who writes like that, who rubs my feet each night, who goo goo’s over his children and expresses his dreams and regrets– is a different man from the one I was married to over a long 5.5 year process before the covenant-breaking choices he had been making were confessed and he began the hard work of repentance.

This year hasn’t been an easy one for me, but it’s been a slow light at the end of a dark tunnel of mistrust and fear. I see progress, not perfection — and a man who at last appears to see what he has right in front of him. I am grateful for his desire and actions to allow God access to his heart and secrets, in order to change him from the inside out. I am grateful to God for bringing me to my knees as well, and showing me where I have contributed to the system of our relationship- which was dysfunctional and dead. I pray we never return to that state again. I’m grateful to God for holding me tightly and safely, even when I hated him for what seemed like His betrayal sometimes.

I am grateful to those who stood by me in my decision to stay married – the elders, friends, coworkers, strangers, counselors, family. Our marriage staying together, one day at a time, truly “took a village”. And continues to. From childcare to meals to financial assistance to prayer to counsel to a simple but profound thing — a listening ear; I will never forget the kindness shown to me (to us, even) when things truly hit the fan.

I’ll close with some quotes to Chris from one of my favorite writers…

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
–C. S. Lewis

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.
–C. S. Lewis

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
–C. S. Lewis

Happy fathers day!!!

Don’t have time to write much but lots of pics to share! Enjoy the slideshow!

So it has been a while since I have posted anything on this site. While sitting here at work on my lunch break and most likely after, I have some time on my hands. This life has given me plenty of..too many actually..times to choose the wrong choice. So I sit here now thinking about how to make the best decisions with this second chance at life, with my family, since having chosen a different path exactly one year ago.

Things have been looking up for me and oddly enough I have been pretty blessed. I have been considering going back to school and it just so happens that I will finally be getting my diploma and transcripts from the university I graduated from in 2007! Woohoo! All I need to do is figure out what to go back to school for. I have been thinking about Sociology..maybe a masters in that. Strangely enough I am excited at the possibility of learning in school instead of just getting it over with. I am very interested in seeing how I view education now that I am seeing things with a new set of eyes. Anyway, that is something that I have to decide with Vivian. Unfortunately, getting your post graduate degree is expensive. I am still paying for my undergraduate degree.

So back to my gratitude list:

1. God has been there for me even when I did not want Him. I have fought with Him for years. Self was my god. When I went back to Him, I felt unworthy to say His name. I could not gather the courage to be someone that could ask Him for help. But after my life came to a crossroads..I was left with no choice. He was all I had. And of course, He was what I needed. So I am here only because of Him.

2. Vivian is amazing. When I think of strength, courage, patience, joy, love, and especially grace, my wife is that. My wife has the ability to, taking it day by day of course, let me show her love. She shows me love back more than I deserve. I don’t know how she is able to show it as much especially with Verity and Ethan who are needing some as well. So that to say, Vivian is my love.

3. Ethan and Verity..what can I say. I am grateful that they are in my life, but sometimes I don’t know if they will feel the same of me. Ethan unfortunately had the father who was selfish for most of his life. I am trying to be the father he needs now. Let me tell you, it is the hardest thing I have ever done. Thank God for books that help with being a better parent. I swear when I read these books, and they give an example about the parent who withholds love, who loves conditionally, they might as well have used my name. Besides, I would have loved a percentage from the copies sold. I am gaga over Verity. I am hoping she can get a head start with a father who is trying to change into a better man unlike Ethan did. Those are just some things I think about all the time.

4.Family is important to me. When I say family, I mean of course parents, aunts, etc.., but I also mean housemates, friends, church, and other support groups. All of these are gifts from God that have brought me to where I am now. Every interaction has helped me get to where I am now. I used to think of family as “blood” relatives. I have grown enough to love everyone as if they are my brothers or sisters. This goes for anyone I have had any resentment towards and vice versa. I am learning to love!

5. Portland is something that I am grateful for as well. I can’t say how blessed I am to have moved here. Being in this city of imperfection is encouraging. Our community house is great! I think of when it was just our family in an apartment and realize that it was lonely. It is much better with another family. Portland is where we found our current church. This city has the best food too which always hits home for me. But you know..the city has tons of needs as well. Especially the people that are homeless. Whenever I get the chance, I like volunteering at the Portland Rescue Mission. For me it is very personal when I get a chance to be selfless like this. I see people that have been through things that make me realize that I am never too far from being there. Most people there are results of addictions taking over their lives. I can see myself and my future if I stayed on the wrong path when I look into their eyes. So that said, this imperfect city is home.

Well, it might be another month before I can reflect and have something to write about. The future is uncertain. There are alot more things I am grateful for but I will save them for later. Mostly I hold on to the first since without it, nothing else can follow. It is nice being able to share on this. I guess I am grateful for that as well!

6. Mamaneedjava.com for a place to share my thoughts.