Message in a Bottle

I wondered how a camera's sensor reproduces the world around us, both in shape and color. Then I looked at a plastic water bottle and noticed how it reflected the sunlight and the hazy blue sky and the shadowy interior of my car. 

water bottle, a photo by Muffet on Flickr.

That was an epiphany. 

I realized that not only can a camera reproduce the world, but quiet lakes, eyeglasses, and water bottles do too. Every time I look in the bathroom mirror I'm seeing a reflection of the world around me—my bathroom, perfectly reproduced on a sheet of silver-backed glass. 

So I ask myself, why doesn't everything reflect? And then another epiphany: everything does reflect. Everything my eye sees is only visible because it reflects light.* That green tree isn't inherently green; it's actually everything but green so that it reflects back green light and that's why I see. A strawberry is red because it's reflecting back red light, etc. So every blade of grass, every coffee maker, every fire hydrant, every necklace, is just a reflection—

the world is a reflection. 

Droughts and Fasting

My first few days of the challenge have been interesting. I've tried some interesting new foods (the kind of things that my sponsored child in Ghana would eat), cut down on portion sizes for certain meals, and tried to focus on plainer/more natural/cheaper foods. In addition to the diet changes I've changed up my working habits somewhat. Instead of starting an evening of cleaning offices by turning on podcasts, I play soothing Gregorian chants and try to concentrate on prayer. I struggle with my thoughts constantly straying, but I feel better just for shutting off the constant barrage of information and letting myself think. 

Ideas happen to come to you when you think, and one idea that came to me recently concerned the drought that has been plaguing Northwest Arkansas (the whole Midwest, actually) for several months. Record high temperatures for weeks on end, no rainfall, the sun beating down like a hammer and cloudless skies laughing cruelly in our faces--it's been a time of testing. This summer has taught us several important things:

My Prayer For Old People

I visited a friend at a nursing home today, and cried all the way home. It wasn't that my friend was suffering so badly—she is in pain and discomfort but has a beautiful spirit about it all—it was because of the other people I saw in there, the people with nothing but their own souls.

Their minds are gone.

Their bodies are deteriorating.

They have lost the things that we think make us human: beauty, talent, promise, wit, creativity, future. 

And what remains? Their heart and soul, quietly beating while the rest of us bustle around and try to care for them, wondering what on earth we'll do with them until they finally give up and die. And the truly frightening thing? Many of us—perhaps most of us—will be there too, one day. I might be one of those women in a sanitized hallway, crouched in my wheelchair, gray hair thin and wispy, draped in smelly old clothes, eyes glazed, drooping lips and toothless gums smacking together in horrible incoherence.

Fear of Naïveté

Naïveté: the state or quality of being naive; ingenuousness; simplicity

This word comes from the French language, and originally denoted a state of naturalness or innocence. At one time people used it positively, with no stigma attached. How about now? When you describe someone as naive you are usually condemning them for their inexperience, lack of knowledge, or downright ineptitude. It's certainly not a compliment. This change in meanings signals a change in mindset that has sunk so deeply into our brains that it is hardly recognized as an opinion.

I'm not certain whether or not this mindset is isolated in modern-day America or if it is common to most men in all places in all times, but it has certainly permeated many areas in our culture. This is the mindset of sophistication, characterized by a downright fear of  naïveté. We try to sophisticate everything: investing, relationships, education, art, generosity, fashion, careers, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Sure, there are a few lazy slobs who couldn't care less, but the prevailing theme in our culture seems to be that if it isn't complicated, isn't dramatic, isn't mature, then it's not worth having or doing. 

No simple, fun-loving, childish abandonment for us, no sir! No belief in a God we cannot see, no sir! No real joy in living in this wondrous world, no sir! We need to be sophisticated, we need to sexualize preteens, we need to invest in opportunities we can't even understand, we need to have the best and most expensive of everything. 

Innocence is way out of vogue.

What would happen if we weren't afraid to be natural and innocent? What if we weren't afraid to put up blinders and neglect the seedy headlines for once and indulge in a little childish wonder? “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." Our Lord calls us to humble ourselves, a novel and largely unwelcome concept. We are to be as innocent as doves. While not forgetting to also be as shrewd as serpents, we must realize that we are not called to be sophisticated, we are called to be childlike. The sophisticate is proud because he lives in a world he claims not to understand, the naif is humble because he lives in a world he knows he understands completely. Which one are you?

(17) impromptu adventures....the child is still in all of us, a photo by fishgirl7 on Flickr.

The Different Homeschool Girl

This extremely insightful and encouraging article was written by Chris Davis (www.chrisdavis.wordpress.com). If you're a homeschool girl like me, or you're a homeschooling parent, you probably want to read this, if only to know that you're not alone!

She lives in a small town in Tennessee, or in a subdivision in North Carolina, or on a ranch in Montana.

She may be 15 or she may be a college graduate. Either way, odds are not many boys have ever paid much attention to her. She may wonder if she will ever get married. She is lonely.

What’s her problem? The answer is (not so) simple: She is different.

She doesn’t particularly like being different. She may tell you she doesn’t care; but she does.

Behind her back, her peers say she is a snob. Her mom says the other girls are jealous. That doesn’t help much. So she tries to be friendly and kind but that doesn’t help much, either. She may be shunned by other girls and ignored by boys.

She is different and who wants to be different? Nobody likes others who are different and nobody likes being different, either.

I have met many homeschooled girls like her as I have traveled and spoken at conferences around the world. Each girl thinks she is the only one with these feelings. But, there are many, many just like her. If they ever found one another, there would be a huge group hug. And, yes, probably lots of tears.

Winning IS Everything

"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

                                                   -Henry Russell "Red" Sanders

I recently heard this quote lambasted. "Then what's the point of life?", people say, "To beat everybody else and make yourself important? How lame and inhuman." In my opinion, though, this quote doesn't have to be translated like that.

Sure, it was spoken in a competitive football context, where you winning means that someone else has to lose. But what's the point of football if it isn't to win? As the great Vince Lombardi of the Green Bay Packers once said, "If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?" Good point, Vince. 

So what is the point of your life? What do you want to win? If your goal is to smash the "competition" into the ground and put yourself on top then certainly that isn't honorable and you've probably got your priorities out of whack. But what if your aim is to be the greatest daughter that you can be? To help as many people as you can? To follow Christ in everything? In that case falling short isn't going to do you any favors. Coming in at second place isn't an option. 

Too often we get hung up on the idea that our win equals another person's loss. That's simply not true! George Bernard Shaw supposedly said, "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple.  But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." That's how life works in the real world. 

So don't be afraid to win! You being a success doesn't drag other people down. If you're not winning, who is?

Finish line, a photo by ukanda on Flickr.

Bonhoeffer: Denial of Self

Bonhoeffer, a photo by depone on Flickr.

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

To Be An American

I was born in America. Most people would say that that makes me an American. But a Brit pointed something out to me once: British people are British because they were born in Britain, Americans are only Americans if they act like it.

How is this, you ask? In Britain it would be strange to say that someone was acting "un-British" (unless of course they were standing awestruck in front of Buckingham Palace in Hawaiian shorts with a big camera). However, we hear of "un-American" conduct all the time. To be an American is to be patriotic, to value freedom, democracy, freedom, independence, humanity, freedom, justice, mercy, capitalism, and freedom. We are a strange breed: no distinct color or language, a very short history, no background in feudalism or even monarchy. You have to earn the right to be an American, otherwise you're just a squatter.

Personally, I strongly identify with Britain and Britons. I have a feeling that something went drastically wrong before I was born--I was supposed to be placed in a cool, rainy, dreary castle in Dartmoor with a quirky couple with bad teeth, flowery aprons, teapots, and a little garden. Instead I was rerouted to the humid, rocky land of Arkansas. But there are things in me that I can see are uniquely American, things that I've gleaned from my heritage and that wouldn't be there if I wasn't here:

A Life With Wings

I'm asking for a show of hands: how many of you would love to live as mediocre a life as possible? 

OK, now that those people have been escorted out of the blogosphere, I'll turn to the rest of you normal ones. What is the point of living your one life if it's boring, pointless, or just plain stupid? Some people live like they're trying their best to be a cautionary tale!

Don't be that guy.

The motto behind living "a life with wings" is to fly as far as possible away from the mediocre and toward a God who has the whole world in his hands. What does a life like that look like? Here are a few pointers: 

1. It is driven by a passion. Floating aimlessly through life will not give you the best results (unless you're Forrest Gump).
2. It is goal oriented. Not fluffy dreams, not hopeless resolutions, just concrete goals. 
3. It is full of meaningful relationships. What is the point of a life lived alone? No man is an island.
4. Take baby steps and enjoy the journey. Every day can have something wonderful, you just have to find it.
5. Expect miracles. Don't just believe in them, look for them around every corner!
6. Live like you were dying. Think about it. What would you do? Now make that a priority. 
7. Abandon yourself to God. Hold nothing back and trust him completely. What do you have to lose?

I'm just starting my life "for real". I've always been a kid before, but things are going to get very serious very soon. I will have the chance to forge my own life story, my own destiny and future. I can put it into God's hands, I can follow his will, or I can go my own way. I can live for the moment, I can live for the past, I can live for the future. There are choices to be made--choices we all have to make every day of our lives. 

"Always live your life with your biography in mind." —Gareth van Meer

Would you be interested in reading your own biography if you died right now? If not, change something! Stop existing and start living. Start living a life with wings!

The Beating Of Wings, a photo by ammgramm on Flickr.

Our Opus

101/365, originally uploaded by kharied.

Last night I watched what has quickly become one of my all-time favorite movies—Mr. Holland’s Opus. If you haven’t seen it then I highly recommend that you do!

It’s the story of a man named Glenn Holland who has big dreams of becoming a famous composer, inking his heart and soul onto sheets of music and conducting grand symphonies for the pleasure of thousands. He’s a young man with a wife and when they’re a little tight on finances he decides to try out a new “gig”: teaching. Educating some fertile young minds, summers off to write music, sounds good, right? When Mr. Holland finds himself surrounded by hordes of philistine high-schoolers who can’t keep time to save their lives, he realizes that this isn’t going to be a walk in the park.

Not to give too much away, something happens to Mr. Holland as the years go on: life. A son is born, they discover that he has a  serious “problem”, money must be earned and spent on a house, expensive schooling, etc., etc., etc. In the end, as you’ve probably guessed, Mr. Holland does not become a famous composer. Instead, he becomes something much greater.

Leap of Faith

Leap of Faith, originally uploaded by eatbitter.

Ideas are cheap and easy. Everyone has them, they're practically lying around for the taking. Just today I was thinking that someone should invent a fluorescent light tube with edges--like a rectangular prism--so that they wouldn't roll off of things so easily. Stupid, I know, but it could possibly inspire the right kind of person to go out there and make a lot of money with a similar concept.


But this doesn't just apply to work, inventions, and new year's resolutions--it's actually critical to our faith.  

Nasty Little Thing

DSC02335, originally uploaded by Benjamin Page.

I picture conviction as a niggling, ugly weed--one that we try very carefully to ignore. It's the kind of weed that is very hard to root up, so we cover it up as best we can to avoid dealing with the problem. Isn't it easy to shove our shortcomings in the closet and hide our sins behind a lovely big screen? 

You just had a nasty thought. What did you do? Did you blush a little and promptly try to forget about it?

What does the Bible say about conviction? I John 1:8, 10 is pretty plain, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.... If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us."

So ignoring the still, small voice of Jiminy Cricket is a very big no-no indeed, and there will be consequences. 

Oswald Chambers said something interesting about conviction:

Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings him into the presence of God, it is not his relationship with men that bothers him, but his relationship with God. 

That weed of mine (and yours) is not getting any smaller. Though our conscience may be numbed, it never quite goes away, and people have tortured themselves for decades trying desperately to believe that they don't have anything wrong with them. Don't be like that. We have the power to face our downfalls with power and confidence through Christ Jesus! There's something between those two verses I quoted above. Verse 9 says, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

Beautiful promise! 

Why Fairy Tales?

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."

-C.S. Lewis, Till We All Have Faces

What is it about fairy tales that entrances us and makes us pine for "happy ever after"? We see Cinderella step gracefully into her carriage, feel our hearts race as Gaston and the Beast battle it out on the castle roofs, and sympathize with Aurora's sense of romance and isolation. We're immediately wrapped up in the music, mystery, and magic of a splendid storybook adventure.


Despite the outright satire in the movie Enchanted, I still get a silly little thrill when I hear them sing about "true love's kiss". It's a film that almost makes fun of Disney fairy tales, and yet it's a beautiful fairy tale in itself. As Mom and I watched the credits roll last Sunday night I could hear her sighing next to me, "Isn't it a pity that life isn't like a fairy tale?"


That nearly broke my heart, because it is so true. It is a pity. I want to be like Giselle--I want to sing a little ditty and have woodland creatures appear to do my bidding; I want to meet a devastatingly handsome man (or two) who is madly in love with me; I want everything to blossom at my touch and be eternally beautiful and contented.

I think that everyone (or every girl and woman, rather) wants to be a princess: a daring, independent damsel with a brain of her own who just so happens to fall into distress and is saved by a hunky prince. It's the longing for adventure, romance, and--more than that. 

Is Disney to blame for our longings, or are their "princess stories" just a symptom of something deeper?

THE H EFFECT

Who am I? I am 

• Introverted
• Detail-oriented
• Usually the quietest one at a party, talking only to people I know
• Easily drawn into a book, movie, or song
• A leader/dictator (depend on who you ask)
• Melodramatic/passionate
• Easily distracted when studying
• Hugely imaginative
• Earnest and conscientious to the nth degree
• The kind of person who loves doing things for people to make them happy

I started this blog as "The Different Homeschool Girl", not even sure what made me different. All I knew was that homeschooling was a part of me, it helped make me who I am. Homeschooling is still a huge part of me now; I wash it with my hair every other day, pluck it out with my eyebrows, and see the world through its eyes. For better or worse, homeschooling was not just a way to get an "education", it was (and still is, even through college) a way of life. 

If there are any parents reading this who homeschool, or are considering homeschooling, I want to be sure you know that this is a big decision. Homeschooling--with all of its advantages and hang-ups--will impact your child forever. Forever. It will be a huge part, maybe the biggest part, of their childhood (and people only have one of those). It's their history. It'll be in their hair and fingernails.  I'm not trying to scare anyone away--I would never trade my experiences for a public school, or probably even a private school, education. If you think that it's really not as big a deal as everyone thinks--that public, private, or homeschool, your child will somehow turn out the same in the end--think again.

It's the homeschooling effect. It gets everywhere. Take it seriously.

A Man's Best Friend

My dad is in love. Every time he sees the object of his affection he lights up, gets a big grin on his face, laughs. He baby-talks to it, loves on it, gives it treats, plays with it, cuddles it, makes excuses for it, and generally enjoys it. What is the object of his affection? A dog.


When they say that a dog is man's best friend, they aren't kidding. Dad adores Hank, the smelly little mutt with floppy ears and (I swear) the ability to smile. Sometimes Aaron and I are actually a little jealous. We are his children, after all, and this is an animal. Some days he talks more to Hank than he does to us!


So what is the secret? Why this mutual love affair? Perhaps the answer lies in the not-so-old saying: to find out who loves you more, your wife or your dog, lock both of them in the trunk of your car and open it five hours later. Which one is happy to see you? In short--dogs don't ask for much. Even the most high-maintenance ones are probably worlds easier to deal with than a young child or rebellious teen. What is the importance of this?