Prayer: your legacy

Fern Nichols writes that "even with so many things to be busy about - most of them good things- the absolute best thing you can do is to pray."

"You cannot give a greater gift to those you love." 

 I don't live like I believe this. I agree with Fern's statements, but too often my life and feelings don't match up with these truths. I am more eager to complete my unborn baby's quilt than I am to pray for her future. At times I grow frustrated and despondent when I can't do what I want physically, or cannot pursue various learning opportunities, even though I can still do the best thing.

While a clean house, good meals and creative gifts bless my family, even the best of these things are temporary. In contrast, "Long after we're gone and our lives are but a memory, God will still be responding to the faithful, fervent prayers we've offered on behalf of our dear ones." Our prayers are powerful not just in the present, but into the future and eternity.

The eighth chapter of Voices of the True Woman Movement, "leaving a lasting legacy through prayer", has provided me with fresh inspiration and determination in my prayer life. In less than three months I will once again be spending hours feeding a tiny baby. I will be making leaps and bounds in living the truth about prayer if instead of being frustrated and bored, I can invest time in prayer and feel that I have done something worthwhile.

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3 years of marriage

What a huge amount we have to praise God for as we pass the three year mark in our marriage! This year was the first time we've celebrated our anniversary in Australia, as we were in South Africa for the prior two.

We left Elnathan with his grandparents and spent a night alone at "Poppies" cottage on Bruny Island, about an hour from our home. What a luxury it was to spend nearly all afternoon, hours and hours uninterrupted, reading books in front of a crackling fire!

The next day we went on cruise together around the island. The word "cruise" makes me think of a calm trip with drinks and snacks. Well, this one was quite different as we mounted large waves in the ocean and crashed back down again. This was not a cruise for those afraid of early labour. Thankfully I was 100% fine . . . Dave was the one who suffered from a queasy tummy! We had some amazing views of God's creation.

We picked Elnathan up that afternoon and he came with us for two more nights. As part of our "family celebration" we gave gifts that could benefit our family including games (checkers, chess, Uno), Playschool DVDs (we don't have TV), and a toy drum.

The idea of having a family celebration around the time of our wedding anniversary comes from the friends who introduced us four years ago. We love this idea and hope to continue it in coming years. 

 Our cottage was a short walk from the beach and we loved our walks there, despite the cold.

Much of the pleasure was in seeing the antics of our fifteen month old, who loves to walk and climb and communicate about the things he is seeing.

It is wonderful how interesting nature is to a tiny child. God created the perfect classroom.

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28 weeks of pregnancy

Entering the third trimester of pregnancy is a great excuse to get out my most "obviously pregnant" dress! I have to be in the right mood for this dress!

Time has flown . . . and now I'm nearly 29 weeks with only about 11 weeks to prepare. 

We continue to praise God for a relatively easy pregnancy, although my back pain has worsened and I need to rest more.

In this picture we can see one of new baby apple trees on its espalier. You can also see the part of our veggie garden that has next to nothing in it at the moment except horse manure, waiting for spring plantings. I am hoping to get lots of planting done before November 11!

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God's jewels

"If you want to shine with His glory, it will be on His terms". Those are the words of Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who was paralyzed at a young age and has spent decades learning how to glorify God through suffering. In the seventh chapter of Voices of the True Woman Movement, "God's jewels", Joni explains the way God uses suffering to defeat our sin. She presents the question: "Why not cooperate with what God is doing in your life - preparing you through difficulty and hardship for His beauty to come shining through?"

One of Joni's challenges is to focus on others who are needy, using what God has given you to make a difference in the lives of others. I often think about this, as we have been given so many resources and advantages! I am limited in physical strength, however, and struggle with a great deal of pain daily. This means that giving physical assistance to others is hard. Since I find it a challenge to keep up with my own housework, I am not able to clean the homes of others when they have a need. I often give meals, but have to face cutting back on that also as I near birth and aim to stock up our own freezer to provide for us in the early months of our new child's life. So what can I do? I have a little mental list for this time in my life:

* Write cards - isn't it wonderful to receive a thoughtful, thankful card or letter in your mail box? I want to increase in blessing people in this way.
* Pray for God's provision for those I can't help physically
* Email in encouraging ways
* Blog with the goal of encouraging others
* Give financially
* Welcome everyone who comes to our home
* Visit the local community center and contribute there
* Visit those who are sick or elderly
* Attend church and encourage others there
* Say "yes" to service opportunities that use verbal or written gifts, rather than physical strength. These include opportunities to share at women's events and taking children's talks at church.
* Organise prayer meetings and attend those that others hold

At times I may have to even cut back on some of this. Visiting becomes more difficult when I am in more pain and may not be possible when the baby is tiny.  Whatever our challenges, though, we can all do something to bless others and further God's kingdom. I was encouraged when I read Joni's exhortation that "it's through obeying in small, yet great ways, that God miraculously changes you."

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Righteousness exalts a nation

Righteousness exalts a nation,

but sin is a reproach to any people.

Proverbs 14:34

Today Australia went to the polls to vote for our Federal Government. I went with steam coming out my ears, because I hate compulsory voting. Every party advocate handing out "how to vote" cards got a little of my steam, with an "Absolutely not" being the reply to a request to "Vote 1 Green". I was more polite to some others, "Thanks but no thanks" being the response to their how to vote papers. If I must vote, I certainly don't need help.

What has been notable to me in this election campaign has been the total lack of information about where candidates stand on moral issues. I can only assume that this is because people just don't care. In this election campaign, prosperity and good economic management exalt a nation.  Sin, apparently, consists of distributing the wrong amounts of money to the wrong people or fudging its administration. The only moral issue that gained much coverage during this campaign is the question of how we treat strangers, termed "asylum seekers" or "illegal immigrants". On this matter, sin seems to be letting any of these dangerous folks set foot on our shores or enter our waters.

Once I got into the polling booth, I realised that I would have been there even if it had not been compulsory. No, none of the candidates for the House of Representatives deserved my attention (or a pencil mark on the ballot). I might have to turn up, but no one can force me to put numbers in boxes. When it came to the Senate, though, I cared desperately about voting 1 for a man I know to be godly and whose seat may be threatened. This is a man whom I know "exalts" our nation. As I consider the vote count tonight, I am grateful that no matter who is elected I will continue to be free to teach our son as we see fit, have babies, and go to church. Right now, we still have much to praise God for in this nation. The future is uncertain though, when   we seem to have forgotten that sin and righteousness matter in public life.

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Cooking with pumpkin

Mum had an abundance of pumpkins to harvest this autumn, as you do when you plant your seeds on what was once an excellent compost heap!

We have been meaning to have a "pumpkin party" so we turned my sister's birthday into a pumpkin feast! First course was pumpkin soup with pumpkin and herb bread. Mum did a fabulous job on both counts.

Second course was Dave's pumpkin and spinach risotto with garlic bread.

For dessert we had New England pumpkin pie (with maple syrup, yum, yum) and pumpkin and date cake. Mum made the cake, and I made the pie.

The amazing thing was that I didn't feel like we ate pumpkin all evening! Each course had pumpkin as a main ingredient, but each dish was so different that it was not in any way monotonous.

What about you? What do you like to cook with pumpkin?

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Fearless Motherhood

Hannah asked for a son, and in the next breath promised to give him up to God's service if her prayer was granted. Hannah's story in 1 Samuel is the springboard for Janet Parshall's discussion of motherhood in the fifth chapter of Voices of the True Woman Movement. Janet says of Hannah "She let go of her own plans. She knew God was in charge, not her. " I became a mother after my own desperate pleas to God for the gift of a child. I am certain my desperation had not reached anything close to the pain Hannah felt. However, it was real to us and as a result we named our child Elnathan to mean "God has given". My husband's prayers were always added to with a second plea: please give us a child who will follow You.

Since becoming a mother, I have thought a lot about the fact that it is easy for family to become an all-absorbing end in itself. I once heard Francis Schaeffer say that our age pursued the two "terrible values" of "personal peace and affluence". If it is wrong to pursue these as the highest goals for ourselves, surely it is equally wrong to pursue them on behalf of our children? There is nothing wrong with living in peace, or enjoying prosperity. However, these must not be our primary goals for ourselves or our children. The purpose of the family is to further God's kingdom. We must exist for more than ourselves, and our family must exist for more than itself. If our primary goal is pursue God together, our love for family and our commitment to God's kingdom need never be in conflict. I must be open, however, to that working itself out in ways that may challenge my ideas about the "good life". If our family or my child is called to live in a place that is not as safe, or give up financial security, I must never stand in the way. My child is called, just as I am, to prioritise God's kingdom over personal peace and affluence.

The primary barrier to this type of living is fear. It is fitting, then, that the following chapter of Voices of the True Woman Movement is dedicated to exhorting women to overcome fear! Karen Loritts shares her struggles with fear and how she developed strategies to overcome. She wrote, "I put fear on notice that it could not make me its slave, forcing me to do whatever it demanded of me." For those of us prone to fear, motherhood is a minefield of them! I face mine daily as I am tempted to be anxious about birth, breastfeeding, back pain, and whether I'll conquer my one-year-old's tantrums. I agree with Karen that one way we can overcome fear is to talk to ourselves. What she means is that we need to choose God's truth over the lies that swarm in our minds. The key is surrender to God's truth and His choices for us. I cannot say it any better than Janet Parshall does: "motherhood is actually one of God's refining fires. The reality of motherhood is that it's a place to learn surrender, letting go, trusting and believing that God is God." I anticipate that the rest of my life will be full of opportunities to learn this lesson of fearless motherhood.

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For such a time as this

Have you ever wished you had been born in a different time period? I have. People have even suggested that I might fit better in the eighteenth century. As one friend half-jokingly said, I love children and want lots of them, I like to cook and make things, and I think abortion is bad. Surely I was born in the wrong century? Particularly as I began to question feminism, I wondered if I could ever live out these new-found but old values in this time and place. Surely life would at least be easier if I had been born a few centuries ago?

Nancy Leigh deMoss uses the fourth chapter of Voices of the True Woman Movement, "for such a time as this", to challenge thinking like this. She encourages readers with truth from the life of Queen Esther in the Old Testament. This quote sums it up: "Whatever your season of life, your marital status, your vocation, your natural gifting, you have been given privileges, opportunities, and a place in the kingdom - the kingdom of man - at this time, to be used to further the Kingdom of God."

I have been thinking about some of the ways we could even be more useful in displaying God's glory because we live now, in a time when many of our values are questioned or despised. If you are a Christian woman born in the second half of the twentieth century, maybe you were born to:

• Delight in relationship with God, even as society around us embraces unbelief and ungodliness
• Build up the church even as church attendance reaches all-time lows
• Display contentment in the midst of materialism and envy
• Honor and obey your husband as marriages around you are riddled with anger and gossip
• Create a beautiful, productive and orderly home even when most believe your job description - "homemaker" - is a joke
• Serve God with your single years instead of pursuing frivolity and selfish ambition
• Cherish the gift of children although many view them as burdens, and think having many of them is foolish

Wow! We have no idea of the effect we can have as we seek to be faithful in our time and place. As deMoss writes, "the natural, visible story is not the ultimate story." You were born for such a time as this, to build God's kingdom and display the beauty of the gospel. Your story and that of every Christian is "really about God and His agenda, God and His aims, God and His purposes."

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Settling chickens into their coop

Here are our new chickens, which we've named Harriet, Plenty and Daffodil! They are young and will later develop red crops. Settling them in has not been as easy as we anticipated. We thought it was just a matter of leaving them in their coop for the first week or so, but we discovered that they don't seem to know how to use a ladder! Dave ended up having to catch them and put them into their house. Since then only one has ventured out again! "Stupid" has been a word we've often used of them in the last few days! Whatever brains they have must be very addled due to their car journey and the shock of having a noisy baby in the yard. We are very pleased with them though, and have discovered that watching chickens is one of the simple pleasures of life. Sunday afternoon was unseasonably warm and we loved sitting in the yard watching the bock bocks as Natey calls them.

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Garden baby quilt

For the last five weeks or so I have been working on a quilt for our new baby, which represents the abundance God has given us in our garden. To me, it also represents God's abundant blessing to us in giving us a second child so soon after the first! I still have finishing touches to do on most blocks, and am trying to work how the blocks should be placed. I will post a better picture when the blocks have been sewn together.

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