As thy Days...

O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You from the land of the Jordan and the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.   (Psalm 42:5)   (Photo: Tetons)

Richard Baxter wrote a wonderful sermon on "The Cure of Melancholy and Overmuch Sorrow."
In a section called "Duties of Friends and Relatives of the Depressed," he includes this: "Often set before them the great truths of the gospel which are fittest to comfort them; and read them informing, comforting books; and live in a loving, cheerful manner with them."




5. Don't give in to your own fears.
Trust God to do His good work in and through your husband. Be patient.


6. Don't try to analyze him.
This one is especially for me. I have an analytical brain, and am forever trying to figure things out and solve problems. But my husband needs me to be his wife, not his shrink or MD. When I tell him what I think is going on or give my "helpful" prescriptions, they are usually less than helpful.

7. Don't let him isolate himself, even if he wants to. 
Invite good friends over for dinner. Not someone who will be draining and need lots of good counsel, but someone you can laugh and relax with. Plan some fun times out together whether it is a hike at a nearby nature preserve or a walk around your neighborhood. Go out for dinner together. Find fun, low-key things to do out of the house.



8. Find a friend you can talk and pray with.
Yes, you need to be careful what you say. You don't need to share specifics, but having a friend to pray with regularly is a great help in all times, including those times when your lover is in the depths.

Gal 6:2 Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.


9. Encourage him to seek help if it seems extra-long or extra-serious.
Also, don't pooh-pooh medical sources of depression. I'd always read about these possible causes, but thought they were improbable. Last year for me was the most difficult emotionally I can remember. We had legitimate reasons to be discouraged, and both Tim and I were. But my response to life's situations was out of proportion. A normally fairly unemotionaly woman, I was crying daily. And worse, many days I felt no reason to go on. And then, during a routine doctor visit, I learned my thyroid was barely functioning. As I wrote a few months ago, once I got on thyoid replacement medication, my depression almost immediately lifted. Praise God for this simple help. So now, I no longer despise the idea of medical roots of depression. It can definitely be worth checking out.


10. Make love. Often! It helps.
Definitely more fun than Prozac, and maybe more effective.




God can use depression in our lives, as He can use all suffering, to draw us to Himself. Trust Him for His work in your husband and in yourself.


II Cor. 4:  7-10 
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;
 8 ¶ we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

You've heard the old saw about nature abhorring a vacuum? It sure has held true in our house. When we moved to this house, double the size of our previous one, at first we had a couple entire empty rooms, but the inevitable happened and those vacuums soon became filled with more and more stuff, not to mention more children!



During the school year, it's all we can do to keep up with the routine homekeeping, with an occasional stab at dejunking. So each summer I try to get serious about thinning our belongings and ordering those that are allowed to remain. This week I'm working on our basement storage area.


My frugal nature makes me tend to want to hold on to things, thinking, "But it might come in handy some day!" And truth be told, "it" often does, which only feeds my desire to hoard stuff. This is not healthy in any sense, and I do love the order that is only possible when there is not an overabundance of junk.

For any natural de-clutterers reading this, you must be rolling your eyes at me. And I deserve it. But for any other packrats like me, here are the principles I've found helpful:

1. Touch (and open) everything. To really get rid of things, you have to take everything off the shelves, out of boxes, and touch it. It's not enough to simply rearrange boxes. For example, if I look at a bookshelf I want to thin, I can either scan the titles and pull out a few to cull, or I can remove all the books and sort them, deciding which merit staying on the shelves. This alone has made a huge difference.

2. I find myself asking, "Now just why am I keeping this anyway?" Often I don't have a good answer, so out it goes.

3. For the things I do decide to keep, I ask, "How can I make this accessible?" I want to not just store these things, but put them to use.

4. "Like with like." OK, I know this is obvious! But over time, I get slipshod and squeeze things into a convenient place instead of rearranging so the similar items can be stored together. I was thrilled to get all my food preservation equipment into the same zone so I can see what I have and find it readily.

5. Label shelves, not just boxes. A label maker would be ideal, but I've been using masking tape on the shelves to show what belongs there. When I reorganize closets or cabinets, I make index cards showing what belongs on each shelf, and then I affix the card to the inside door. This helps especially when you have children putting things away.

6. Some things are much harder to let go than others. Particularly, thinning kids' portfolios is difficult  for me. Tim says this is because that work represents my blood. So I save parts and dump the rest. I think I've liberated enough binders and sheet protectors to last a lifetime.

7. If I can't finish an area in the time I've allotted for it (usually one week of dejunking), I leave behind a list of places to start the next time I cycle back.

8. The new rule is: No more compulsive saving! If something new comes in, something has to go out. Everything from fabric to camping gear has its own zone, and if something doesn't fit, it is time to toss!

OK - that's it. I know it's kind of a "no duh" list. But keeping these things foremost as I de-clutter is making a big difference on this go-round, and I figured maybe there is someone out there as prone to collecting stuff that "might be useful someday" as I am. Now - for the family room side of the basement!

Because several of the families were dealing with illnesses, we held a simplified book club in December at one family's home. We ate popcorn and watched a video version of this holiday tale and then discussed lessons from this book. Very enjoyable!

UFO: UnFinished Object in quilting parlance

This one was a long time in the making. Or more accurately, a long time sitting in a box waiting to be found and finished. Originally it was to be for my oldest son's high school graduation. With time to in short supply, I gave myself plenty of it, starting when Andrew was a sophomore, working in bits and pieces. While Kara and I waited to hear election results in 2000, we stayed up late working together. She pressed while I sewed. And then it went in the box. About five weeks later, a few days after the Supreme Court finally ruled that George W. Bush had in fact won the election, our eighth baby was born, dooming the quilt blocks to stayed untouched. Two years later as Andrew started his first year at Purdue, baby #9 put in his appearance. Somehow that quilt never made it out of its box.

Fast forward to this year. Hmmm. Andrew was approaching another graduation.When I pulled out the box from under my bed, I found that it was closer to finished than I'd remembered, and it went together without too much further hassle. But if I had to hand quilt the top, my preferred finish, it might sit another decade. So I found a lovely couple who do long-arm machine quilting at very reasonable prices.  (Sheila's Sew Time.) A month later, I had it back and ready for binding. Hurrah! One less UFO under my bed!

All-over quilt design with cotton batting

Done!

etc.usf.edu

It is honorable for a man to stop striving, since any fool can start a quarrel.   Proverbs 20:3 (NKJV)


A man's discretion makes him slow to anger, And it is his glory to overlook a transgression. (NAS95) Proverbs 19:11

Don't you just love how practical God's Word is?

It was the eve of D-Day when the Allied troops would fly and sail across the channel to invade at a location the Germans were least expecting: Normandy, France. For two years generals had been planning, and now 2,000,000 soldiers were massed in southern England, poised for just the right moment to enter France and begin to push back the Germans. The weather was foul, but because of the moon and tides, this would be the best shot for at least a month. Still, General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied troops did not know if the invasion would be a success or a horrific failure. And so he scrawled out this note as a press release to be used “in case of failure.”

Eisenhower's "failure" note, found weeks later by his aides

Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, air and navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.  













Thankfully Gen. Eisenhower did not need to issue this as the invasion was a brilliant, though costly, success.

I’ve just finished reading The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan, a book which kept me up late at nights, spellbound by the bravery of the men who fought in WW II. No, war books are not normally an interest for me at all, but I wanted to bone up on this era of history before teaching it in a few weeks. I highly recommend this 50 year old book which was based on hundreds of interviews with American, British, Canadian, French and German survivors of that momentous day which marked the beginning of the end of the war.


So many things impressed me in this book. It tells of the 18,000 men who parachuted into France, often landing miles off target or in flooded swamplands or even on church steeples, of the glider trains (planes), of the thousands who landed on the beaches loaded with mines and other booby traps, knowing that death was a very likely outcome, and of the men and women of the French underground. What has happened to men and women since then? Surely they were of stouter fabric than we are today. One of the reasons we study history and teach it to our children is to be inspired to bravery by the actions of our forefathers.

Eisenhower’s words, too, impacted me. In the actual press release that went out, telling of the mission’s achievements, he did not take credit, though if it had failed he was prepared to take the personal blame. According to Doug Wilson, in Future Men, this is a mark of a true man: he is willing to accept responsibility when things go wrong without making excuses. As parents it is essential that we teach out children, boys and girls as well,  to own the responsibility for their actions. We must not let them give us excuses for what they should have done. And even worse, we must not make excuses for them.

Blame-shifting goes back to Eden when Adam blamed “the woman whom You gave to be with me” and Eve blamed the serpent. I see it in myself regularly. Something goes wrong, and too often my response is not to take personal responsibility but to look around and see if there is someone else handy. My children do it too. Here’s a nearly trivial example, but the kind that happens all the time. Last night we were going through the bedtime routine. I asked Paul, 5, who normally takes care of this himself, if he had brushed his teeth, and he responded that he had not.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because you didn’t help me!” (Now, note that he does this himself 95% of the time, and he had not asked for help. Instead he had been playing.) But by saying that, suddenly it was not his fault but mine that his teeth were unbrushed. Well, this of course, provided an excellent opportunity to explain to Paul, while I brushed his teeth, why making excuses is unacceptable, and that the correct answer to my query would have been, “I have no excuse, Mom.”

I’m looking forward to our study of World War II in a few weeks. My boys especially will profit by looking at the actions of courage by men who were willing to risk their lives, men who were willing to live and die with honor. They will remember their Great- Uncle Rubert, who was killed in France not long after D-Day. And as we study D-Day, I will read to them General Eisenhower’s words that he did not ever need to send.

“Boys must learnt to say, regularly – to God, to others, and to themselves – that they were wrong when they were wrong, and that they were responsible when they were responsible. When they do this, they will discover that authority naturally flows to those who take responsibility. That same authority naturally flees from those who seek to shift the responsibility or the blame. When boys learn to do this, they are learning what it means to be a young man. When young men do this, they are learning what it means to be a grown man.” - Future Men

Feb. 2006


Update: Having just read The Longest Day again, this time to my youngest sons, now ages 9 and 12, I still give this book a hearty recommendation. However, as an adult war book, it contains earthy language and sometimes graphic descriptions. Reading aloud allows a parent to edit on the fly as appropriate for the age of the listeners.

This time through I was again impressed with Einsenhower's readiness to assume responsibility if the invasion failed. How stark a contrast to today's political leaders who seem only too quick to find someone else to blame! Teaching our children to own up to their wrongs as we arbitrate disputes or deal with disobedience is a good place to start in training men of honor.   (May 21,2013)

So far we've been able to score two-for-one on our Purdue graduations!

2007

Back in 2007 Andrew and Kara completed their undergrad degrees together. (Kara saved some money by squashing her classes into three years.)

2013 Kristen and Andrew with John Purdue himself. (Kristen earned some snazzy tassels, too, but hadn't received them by the photo shoot.)

Deciding that it was such a good thing to have an older brother watch out for his younger sister, we made Andrew stay at Purdue for another six years so he could be there for his next sister's Purdue tenure.












No, not really. As an undergrad Andrew found a wonderful professor to work with in the electrical engineering department, and stayed on for his PhD as he dove into research in radar that both sends and receives. He works for the military. There. That pretty much exhausts my knowledge of his research. (But - tada! I will possibly be more enlightened after reading his thesis, which I will do this summer!)










We had a lovely weekend in West Lafayette! Besides attending the two commencements plus Kristen's nursing pinning ceremony, we also had a wonderful time celebrating with Andrew and Kara's church and lab friends at a cookout at Andrew's house.




And here's our family (minus Kara and crew) on a pillar of one of Purdue's beautiful fountains. From the top: Ben, Paul, Tim, Peter, Kristen, Andrew, Jonathan, Faith, Amanda, and me.