The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Bible study

With the study, A Woman’s Heart: God’s Dwelling Place, ending I am really thankful to be starting a new study already. It’s always sad for me when a good thing comes to an end. One thing that makes this transition a bit smoother is that the majority of our table group is continuing on with a new study together, No Other gods, by Kelly Minter.

Our group is joining thousands of women around the US and the world who are taking time every other Tuesday to meet together and study God’s word throughout the summer. Beth Moore and her team at Living Proof Ministries have organized this unique study. Each time we meet together we will share what God is teaching us through His word. We will share prayer requests, snacks and we will work together on memorizing our summer verses. Beth challenged us to memorize Jude 1:24-25.

No Other gods challenges us to “confront our modern-day idols”. In the introduction to the study Kelly says:

A few years ago I was feeling stuck. Stuck with God, people, career, living space, finances, convictions. I constantly cried out to God, “Please deliver me.”….. I was not ready for the simplicity of God’s remedy; He wanted to be God in my life.

Though somewhat unaware, I had been depending on false gods that were at the bottom of much of my pain. They were taking up room in my heart– room God desired to occupy. Through this process I became desperate to discover who the true God was in all of His glory so as not to return to the lesser and baser things. These idols could only offer temporary relief– promising what they could never deliver. How relieved I’ve been to find that through the dismantling, God has planted, built, restored, and redeemed. He has done nothing short of miraculous.

Idols are objects of worship and can be anything that we spend more time thinking about, interacting with or trusting more than our God. The subjects of idolatry and worship have been reoccurring themes recently and for me this means–God is speaking, pay attention! Pastor Mark Driscoll preached a fantastic message on the subject of worship. Mark teaches that whatever our issues may be, all our strongholds and addictions all boil down to having a worship problem. I highly recommend checking out that message, it’s one of the best I’ve heard on the subject.

This last season of Bible study has been life changing. The studies, the decisions, the clarity that came and life experienced throughout this spring will be one of the stones of remembrance in my life. Studying the Tabernacle, God’s presence, His glory and His plan for our salvation all the way back to Genesis has been indescribable. God has drawn near and I am forever changed. I am so grateful for His faithfulness and the journey He continues to call me to take with Him. Following God is exciting, challenging, refining, peaceful, restoring, and so much more. I just love Him.

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reading to the boys

I really love reading to the boys. Most recently, I have been reading The Phantom Tollbooth to Sean and Caleb. This is a great book to read aloud. It is full of rich language and elaborate descriptions. I have appreciated the meaning and message the book subtly and artistically includes. Here’s an excerpt from what we read tonight. Milo (the main character) and Alec another boy just entered the city called “Reality”.

“Many years ago, on this very spot there was a beautiful city of fine houses and inviting spaces, and no one who ever lived here was ever in a hurry. The streets were full of wonderful things to see and the people would often stop and look at them.”

“Didn’t they have any place to go?” asked Milo.

“To be sure, ” continued Alec; “but, as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of their city as they went.”

Milo remembered the many times he’d done the very same thing; and, as hard as he tried, there were even things on his own street that he couldn’t remember.

“No one paid any attention to how things looked, and as they moved faster and faster everything grew uglier and dirtier, and as everything grew uglier and dirtier they moved faster and faster, and at last a very strange thing began to happen. Because nobody cared, the city slowly began to disappear. Day by day the buildings grew fainter and fainter, and the streets faded away, until at last it was entirely invisible. There was nothing to see at all.”

From The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

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new Bible study

“Discover the parallels of the Tabernacle’s building and your life as a chosen vessel of God.”

Christ the King’s Women’s Ministry will be offering this study:

11 Wednesday Mornings
April 9 – June 18
10 am – 12pm, in Fun Zones
Materials Fee: $20.00, free childcare
or
11 Monday Nights
April 7 – June 23 (no class on Memorial Day)
6:45 – 8:45 pm, in room 116
Materials Fee: $20.00, free childcare

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Am I crazy?

I am considering home education for the boys, again. I re-read much of A Well Trained Mind this week and it really resonates with me. The Classical Education approach that this book recommends makes so much sense. It breaks down the different stages of learning (Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric) to teach what their brains are truly capable understanding at each given stage. For the boys to get the kind of education we want for them (well rounded academically with individual thought and artistic expression), we will have to teach them ourselves. We don’t feel like they are challenged enough and they certainly don’t get the kind of one on one attention that we could provide at home. In addition, Sean and Caleb have so many activities they would like to participate but we just can’t have them running around like crazy in the afternoons and evenings after being at school for 5 1/2 hours a day. The good news is, I already have most of the resources I would need for this next school year (2nd and 3rd grades) and I know exactly what else I would use that I don’t currently have. The more research I do, the more I am leaning toward this decision. Now I just have to stop and pray. If I am not crazy now, I could very well be after a few weeks of having the boys with me 24/7.

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Everything Old Is New Again

It’s incredible watching one’s kids grow up. I know this is a theme here lately, but it sure seems like it wasn’t long ago they were still chubby-cheeked toddlers, barely able to independently navigate terrain more treacherous than the living room floor.

Now, they’re full-fledged little people, with their own crazy ideas about how the world works. And now, they can read. This is a good, but scary thing. It’s a good thing because they can learn so many new things from books. It’s a scary thing because they can learn so many new things from books.

I was a voracious reader myself when I was young, and I learned about a whole host of things from books that I’m sure my parents would have preferred I didn’t including, among other things, vulgar vocabulary, semi-deviant sexual practices, methods of emotional and intellectual manipulation and detailed descriptions of drug use and associated lifestyles. Actually, that last one probably helped more than it hurt, as it basically caused me to be completely horrified by the consequences of illicit drug use, but I digress.

Of course, knowing the various things I learned from books, I can be vigilant as their reading tastes evolve. Fortunately, for now, the reading material they prefer is pretty tame. In fact, it’s been a nice little trip down memory lane as they’ve read (or had read to them) many of the books that I loved as a kid. We started last year with Where The Red Fern Grows, which we read to them. More recently, though, Sean has been reading the Value Tales. I’m sure they’re full of fictionalizations and white-washed accounts of historical events, but they’re a fun way to learn the basics about the lives of important historical figures. So far, I think he’s read about Columbus, Jackie Robinson, Will Rogers, Luis Pasteur, Orville & Wilbur Wright and Benjamin Franklin.

From my own childhood, I particularly remember the tales of Robinson and Pasteur. The only one I actually owned was the one about Pasteur; I think it was the one they gave out for free, hoping your parents would buy the rest. We didn’t buy the others, of course, so the others that I remember must’ve been from school. Fortunately, Betsy’s family had a sizable collection that managed to survive the years and is now available to our boys.

This past Saturday, because it was raining, and because Betsy had some projects of her own to work on, I took the boys to the library. While we were there, I stumbled across a series of books that I fell in love with around second or third grade — The Three Investigators. It’s a series of books in the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys tradition, but with younger pre/early-teen protagonists living in southern California. In hindsight, one of the things that probably lead me to prefer this over the Hardy Boys (which I also read extensively) was the fact that Jupiter Jones, the leader of the group, was a husky, precocious, well-spoken know-it-all that wasn’t intimidated by adults. Basically, me (or at least how I liked to think of myself).

We picked up a few of them and I’ve started reading the “first” of the three (it’s actually volume #2, but I couldn’t find volume #1). I’m amazed at how much of the story detail I still remember from 20 years ago.

I’m sure the boys will find their own pet books and stories as they continue to become better and better readers, but it sure is a ton of fun sharing with them the books that so amply fueled my imagination during the same time in my life.

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