Prayer, Boys and Women

For the last few Sundays, I've found myself teaching 10- and 11-year-old boys during Sunday School. It's an interim situation, and I've just been asking them a lot of questions about prayer.  I'm trying to get them to move beyond merely approaching God with their wish list--consisting largely of Lego sets, it seems, with a few sick people thrown in--and thinking more about "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  I'm trying to help them see that prayer is not really about making suggestions to God or drawing His attention to things; it's joining with Him in what He already is doing or wants to do, like help them grow in the fruits of the Spirit or introduce others to Christ.

I've borrowed some excellent illustrations from Jennifer Kennedy Dean that have helped.  We can imagine prayer as laying the train tracks for the locomotive engine to run on, or as the magnifying glass that intensifies the already-present power of the sun.  I took them through her discussion of the stories in the Bible where God seemingly changes his mind, and the story where God looked, and there was no man to stand in the gap on behalf of Judah, so He had to destroy it.  Yet God knew there would be no one, and factored it in to His master plan.

The boys loved saying "the master plan" with their best evil-genius smirk.  (Go ahead; try it. It's fun.) But I think they were getting it.

 So this morning we were talking about prayer as agreeing with God, and I explained, "That's why we say "Amen" at the end of a prayer. It means 'So Be It.' "

"I know how to say 'So NOT Be It,' " Bantam11 announced.

Surprised, I asked, "Oh?"

"A-women!" he pronounced.

Heh, heh, heh.

The boys all thought it was funny.  But they had no idea.

B5 the Soccer Engine

It's been a new thing for this theater mom to enter the soccer world.

It's c-c-c-colllllder, for one thing; it seems no matter how appropriately I think I am dressed when I leave home, by the time I've sat for 10 minutes at the soccer field, the wind has whipped its way through my clothing, finding all the cracks in my fragile armor.  Give me cushy indoor auditorium seating any day.

There's less to do, too.  I guess I could take a turn selling refreshments sometime, but other than that, you can watch the game, or you can watch the game and yell helpful things while you watch.  But you'll be one of the only parents taking the latter option, so you'll feel a little silly, especially if you don't know what you're saying.

Because there's all this vocabulary to learn, like "header," "punt," "off-sides" and "yellow card"--all the official lingo.  There are the coaching strategy terms that I have no idea when to use, like "up the middle,""pass" and "turn it." And we have colorful, descriptive terms used to compliment a player:  "I'm telling you, that guy has got a foot" means "He can really kick."  "That kid has wheels" means "That player can really run."  I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

So one Saturday morning at one of Bantam5's games, I enjoyed talking to one of the other parents with a son on the same team, who happens to be B11's coach. He told me B11 has wheels, and a foot, and he just needs to play more soccer to pull it all together.  Then I told him B5 was my son too, and he said, "Oh, you're B5's mom? Man, that kid...that kid has an ENGINE!"

That is about the best description of B5 that anyone has come up with. On or off the soccer field, that kid has so much energy.  It's focused energy.  He's not bouncing off the walls. He's not hyperactive. But he's as full of beans as they come.

And on the soccer field, he's a joy to watch.  He loves to run so much that he can hardly stand to stop play. He'll hop in place, in a little skip of joy, while waiting on a throw-in.  If the coach tells them to spread out, he'll run to the far side of the field.

It's a little field.  In fact, he came home from his first practice delighted to be playing, but concerned about one thing:  "There was something wrong with the field, Mom.  It was TINY!" He wants to run and run like the big boys do, but instead, they play on about a 1/8 size field.  They play four-on-four with no goalie, and nobody really keeps score but we all cheer when a goal is scored, about every four minutes. Compared to the big kid, low-score games, it's much more fun to watch these little guys traveling around in a pack near the ball, with the coaches on the field with them, shouting encouragements like, "Remember our goal is over THERE!"

By the end of his first game, B5 had found his groove.  His eyes hardly left the ball.  When all the bodies clustered 'round, he'd be the one to get a foot on that ball and send it in the right direction. A few more games, and he was analyzing his own goals: "I saw some kids on that side, and some more kids on the other side, and I saw a hole in between, so I kicked it right through that hole and into the goal." He has a foot, and wheels, and something rare among the five-year-olds:  he has focus.

And energy to spare. Anybody need an engine?

As Promised...Pictures!

I can't believe that I just figured this out.

Papa Rooster takes some pretty amazing pictures--and lots of them--more than I can keep up with--and he's gotten pretty good at posting the best on Facebook for our friends and family.  And I only just realized that I can grab a photo from his Facebook album, stick it on my desktop, and upload it to my blog--all by myself!  Without needing him to convert it from a RAW image in Lightroom to a .JPG which he must upload for me, because Lightroom doesn't like me. (A feeling which is mutual.)  He says the image quality won't be as good.  But I think only the techie photographer types will be able to tell, and the rest of us, we'll have pictures!  Yeah, baby.

Okay, let's commence with the pics!

I believe I mentioned homecoming?  Here is Bantam15 with his lovely date.

The dress was casual--can you tell?

Here's Blondechick with her special friend, the same one she went to the spring formal with. He graduated last year, but he's still around, living at home and taking classes at a local college. We like him a lot.  So does she!


And here she is with 17 other friends, in our back yard--all senior girls.  I posted this partly just to show off the background!  It's the view I am blessed with every day, and I am thankful for it.

I know I mentioned an ordination.

This is part of a wonderful family that we've loved for a long time now; Father R--'s wife there is one of my dearest friends. When I met her, she was pregnant with the daughter on the far left...and I delivered Blondechick17 just three months later.  Those girls have grown up together, just as the other daughter (second from left) is one of Bantam15's closest friends.  Those two girls are their youngest children; their middle child, another daughter, is getting married next summer and Papa Rooster will be performing the ceremony.  That is their oldest son, with his wife and child, on the right, and their second-oldest is also a son. They have always been the kind of friends we can completely let our hair down with.  We have spent countless hours laughing, crying and praying together.

Here are all the clergy who attended.  Most of these men are also friends from waaay back.  We are a little grayer, a little more wrinkled than when we first enthusiastically began doing ministry together in our twenties and thirties!  But these men, representing five Anglican churches, are still enthused and energetically full of the joy of the Lord.

I think I mentioned soccer?

That's my boy, #23, on the JV team of the Christian school he attends.

And here's Bantam11 on the area soccer league team.

He hasn't been playing as long as most of the other kids who have grown up in the league, but he's learning fast, and he can run! Always a plus.

I am totally saving the best action shots of Bantam5 for another post.

But aren't these too unbelievably cute?  Just like the big boys.

But with cool sunglasses.

Fall News

Pictures, or story?  I don't have time for both this morning. I guess we'll go for narrative--it seems like updates are overdue in many areas!

Bantam19, 30 minutes away at Trinity International University (TIU), is doing very well.  He's so happy, really enjoying college life, independence and new friends.  I went to visit him for Family Weekend.  I suspect that his friends are not deep friends, but acquaintances that he feels comfortable sitting with at meals.  But he has a lot more of those than he ever had in high school--and you have to start somewhere with any friendship--so he's happy and so are we!  He's found a church, a sister Anglican parish nearby, and he's getting rides from a seminary student; it sounds like a lot of Trinity students worship there.  He's attending all his classes, says he's keeping up with all his assignments and thinks he's doing fine on them.  He's enjoying the food a little too much, but is taking some corrective steps.  That's probably my biggest prayer request for him--that he can really own the responsibility of managing his diet and exercise now that he's away from parental help in that area.

At home, our virtual schooling is getting easier, now that we've figured out how it all works and fits together.  Bantam11 will tell you that he is really enjoying iQAcademy's 6th grade.  It seems pretty challenging, but the lessons are just short enough that he finds it manageable. Some of the more creative assignments ask for a good amount of critical thinking, vs. regurgitation of facts, so I'm really pleased at how engaged he is.

Chicklet8 has blown me away with how quickly she's caught up to second grade level work! I honestly don't know how she would have tested at the beginning of the year, but we really did not spend the time last year that one needs to spend with a first-grader, so her reading and writing were not quite up to the level that seem to be expected by the online Little Lincoln curriculum (although I now know that she's not the only 2nd grader to find it challenging).  We were spending many, many hours a day for the first couple of weeks, because her reading was slow, and she was reluctant to read much or especially to write much. I was even helping her with some of it, just to keep things from being too overwhelming.  But she's made huge leaps in both areas, and now is reading much faster and more expressively.  She's hardly reluctant at all now about her lessons, and is even reading and writing independently, just for fun (and for computer time). I'm very proud of her.

Blondechick17 is lovin' her senior year at the Christian school, and B15 is enjoying being her freshman brother. He took one of her friends to Homecoming last weekend, and she went with the same boy she's been dating for the last year or so. She's continued to work at her restaurant job on the weekends since school started.  This weekend she took off, so she could go to a statewide choir conference.  Her director was allowed to bring only two girls and two boys, so it was an honor to be invited!

B15 played JV soccer and was the high scorer for the season! Okay, he tied for high scorer with 4 other guys.  They each had one goal. Their team won one game. It wasn't a fabulous season.  But he learned a lot, and there's always next year!  He also joined the cross-country team halfway through the soccer season.  He's only run in two meets, and isn't really enjoying it. He likes running, but cross-country, the sport, is a whole 'nother thing.  Still, he's learning a lot, and I'm so glad he's had the opportunity, even at his small school, to try different things.

B5 and B11 continue to play soccer on Saturdays; B11 is learning fast, to catch up with the boys who've been playing every Saturday, spring and fall, for years--but B5 was born to play soccer, I think.  I have a whole post in mind about that...but now, I want to go catch a little of his game!


Pictures next time, perhaps...!

Ordinations

It's a big day...tonight we are ordaining an old and dear friend, R, to the priesthood!

As it's been on my mind today, I realized that I never posted pictures of our last ordination, just weeks ago, of another old and dear friend, Mr. A., Papa Rooster's college roommate and one of the founders of Light of Christ. I don't know if we'll have pictures of tonight's service, since Bantam15, the photographer of these shots, is serving as crucifer this evening. So maybe it's appropriate to post these today, since R makes an appearance--one of his last as deacon--in them.

Here's the procession, with Bantam11 serving as crucifer, and Mr. A's own twin boys as the other acolytes.

Here is Deacon R reading the gospel.  It's a nice shot of the church, and gives you a sense of how large the congregation was.  Friends came a great distance for the service--a testimony to who Mr. A is!

Our Bishop, Sandy, making a deacon.  We are a blessed church to have them both!

The new deacon setting the table, with another deacon--and priest-to-be--on deck....

Can't wait to celebrate his ordination tonight!