Books, Movies, and Comforts

Books mark my life and seasons, much the way that notches on a doorframe track the days, weeks, and years that speed by to grow your small one to a tall one.  

I can name series and book titles to mark the seasons of my life.  For example:

The Castle Glower Series and Mysterious Benedict Society mark the season that I drove all the way to and from KY by myself with my three girls for the first time.  The Island of the Blue Dolphins?  Nestled in the sun streamed living room of my mom's next-door neighbor's house as she (my mom) was recovering from surgery.  When I was living in NYC, enrolled at Joffrey Ballet's Summer Academy, at the age of 16, I discovered Christian Romance in the writings of Lori Wick and Jane Peart.  Struggling through the angst of teen years, I first read They Cage the Animals at Night and Where the Red Fern Grows.  As a young, much self-absorbed, sleep-deprived mom I first met Corrie Ten Boom in the pages of The Hiding Place.  

My childhood could be summed up by my favorite books, James and the Giant Peach, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Freckle Juice, Super Fudge, Little House in the Big Woods, Danny Champion of the World, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Bunnicula.   The Christmas that I was sick and my girls were still (mostly) young, I tore through the Harry Potter series for the first time.  

The late summer and early fall of my eye procedures to correct narrow-angle glaucoma?  Squinted through the blur and read Anne of Green Gables and literally sobbed until, my already sensitive eyes, stung.  Perhaps for the first time, as Anne bid Marilla and Green Gables goodbye, I realized that goodbyes to the ones you love the most are heartbreaking, beautiful, and unavoidable.  The years that my girls were still little, yet finally old enough to snuggle in for a long book, we embarked on the TumTum and Nutmeg series, the summer that it was so hot here that it registered triple digits for like thirty or forty-five days straight, that was the summer of Magic Treehouse books, A to Z mysteries, and  Nate the Great.  

The fall where I felt like we were truly getting a grasp on this whole homeschool thing we read Understood Betsy, and in the spring when it all fell apart?  We read Mountain Born.  The Christmas I got the flu?  I ached and coughed and read Island of the World.  

Dear Mr. Knightley was the last Christmas I was close friends with Kathleen, one of my dearest friends I met when we still were nursing our youngest ones.  She had recently moved and this book was the last book suggestion I shared with her.  

To be sure, I have read a lot of bad books (yes, even those deemed twaddle) between life changing good ones, but thankfully, I mostly only recall the really great ones.

These stories, beloved characters, and enviable settings - I draw them around me like a warm blanket. 

I am a TOTAL introvert.  

I would choose a conversation in a coffee shop with a close friend or a night nestled at home with a good book, or a Christmas movie and a mug of hot chocolate than just about anything else.  

Just like it starts to finally feel like the holidays here in my house when I pop in our first Christmas movie on October 24th (the day after the last birthday of the year for us) and watch every single one we own (sometimes more than once) until December 31st, and crunchy fall leaves and pumpkin spice candles mark fall, the holidays and seasons would feel a bit naked without them...the seasons of my life would feel lonely without the stories and characters that have helped shape them.

I just finished a book I started multiple times.  The Reading Promise, My Father and the Books We Shared by Alice Ozma.  I am sending this book off to my mom to read.  She was a public school teacher, reading specialist, and still is herself, a passionate reader.  Because of her and my second and third-grade teachers from St. Peter's Catholic School, I love to read. 

I love to read to myself, I love to read to my girls, I love to read to our dogs, I love to read to anyone or anything that I can convince to stop for a moment and listen.  

I hope my girls grow up and write about all the books we have shared and the seasons they marked one day.  It is a beautiful, beautiful gift we have been given - the written word.  May we love it enough to gift it to those around us, especially if like me, we parent those that struggle so very much to do something we often take for granted.  Read aloud.  Read long.  Read deep.  But especially, read aloud long, long after people think you should stop.  Of course, they could read it for themselves, that isn't the point.  

Hurting, Letting Go, Moving Forward...

Wow.

This year and all that it's contained so far.

It has just been, I am not sure what the word is, but the result is this: it laid me flat, broke my heart more times than I thought was possible, drew deep wells of tears, and elicited many, many desperate prayers.  I have never felt so laid bare by a season before.  

I cannot share all of the details because it isn't just my story to tell.  But there have been many, many sleepless nights.  Nights I woke up and tears had soaked my pillow.  Many, many, many long hard days - full of hurt and uncertainty and balls of anxiety boring away at my insides - days where I genuinely did not know if we'd make it through this time.  And to top that off, I had to say goodbye to my little furry best friend.  This dog was basically an attachment at my hip or in my lap for the past year, and now he's gone and I am so, so sad.

The weird thing though is this: the closer we get to December 31st, the more I want to hang on to this year.  I want to go back and get to say goodbye one more time and have one more snuggle with the little guy.  I want to go back and see if making a different choice here or there would have altered the outcome for my family and all that we have been through.  I desperately want to go back and shield my kids from some of the things that have come their way.  I want to go back and have a do-over.  And then the flip side of the coin is that crazy what-if thinking that puts you on a hamster wheel and works you hard but gets you nowhere.  You know the one - the what if 2021 might be worse, or what if we lose more than the dog, what if God has more hard, more hurt, more loneliness in store?  What if this crazy virus never ends?  What if things don't go back to normal?  Or my favorite - what if the store runs out of toilet paper again (which this morning, it looked like it was actually going to happen...again).  

My friend's husband preached a sermon last week.  I have thought and meditated on what he said all week.  'Life is purifying you, preparing you for heaven'.  It hurts, it is hard, but it is necessary.  And then we went to a doctor appointment this week and their doctor walked them through governing their thoughts.  I think I needed that lesson more than they did.  I realized that I will challenge just about every single thought I have except for the worst-case scenario/what-if thinking.  Those thoughts?  I accept as gospel truth and my feelings and attitude follow suit.  But, if I stop, take those thoughts out, examine them, and walk them through to their conclusions...then I realize the truth of what my friend's husband said.  God has a plan.  He is purifying us, preparing us for heaven.  And if the worst shall happen - what then?  Well then, He is right there beside me.  Because He promises me that I can do all things because of Jesus.  Jesus is everything.  Christ in me, the hope of glory.  Christ on the cross, the hope of salvation.  Christ in me, the strength I need to face what God has laid out.  I am in Christ - so anything that comes at me?  It goes through Him first.  Christ has secured me, built me on a rock, so that when the storms of life come - as awful and scary and crushing as they can be - I cannot be moved because He has secured me.

Reading Challenge Update

Uncovering the Logic of English by Denise Eide - this is a second read through for me, and this time I took almost an entire spiral-bound notebook full of notes.  If you are a teacher you NEED to read this book, if you are a homeschool mom and/or parent of a kid that struggles with reading - from dyslexia to memory, to slow processing -  you NEED to read this book, and finally, if you struggled with learning to read, spelling tests, and/or still find yourself thinking, 'now HOW in the world do you spell _________ again?' you NEED to read this book.

The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn.  I am still absolutely stunned by this book.  One of my favorite lines: (I own the kindle version, so I am not sure what the actual page number is, but it is in chapter 20) 

"A nation that turns away from prayer will ultimately find itself in desperate need of it."

Amen and amen!!

One of my favorite authors is Jenny B Jones.  Technically I think she is considered a young adult author, but (& I am in my forties!) I absolutely have LOVED her Katie Parker series, as well as her I'm So Sure series...honestly, I love pretty much everything she writes.  Well, earlier this year she stretched the Katie Parker from a four-book series (the last one had been published in 2014 I think) to a six-book series.  The confusing part for me was that she published book five in spring 2020, but chronologically that one was written to take place before book four.

*sigh*

With that said, I eagerly anticipated book six, Forever Your Girl to wrap up the series (Oct. 2020). But, I did not enjoy book six as much as I anticipated that I would.  It could be that I read it during a season of grief and letting go, so I definitely want to revisit this book in the future.  Actually, I think I will start at book one and read all the way through the series again.  

Speaking of Jenny B Jones, I was TOTALLY excited when I got an email letting her fans know that SURPRISE she published a new book The Holiday Husband, just in time for Christmas.  SQUEEEEEEE - I have already started reading 😍 and let me tell you I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas stories.  And Hallmark Christmas movies.  Especially with Lacey Chabert and/or Jen Lilley.  Can I please have the person who bakes those perfectly decorated cookies come to my house?  But I digress, where was I???  Oh yeah, the books I read...

The Rock, The Road, and The Rabbi by Kathie Lee Gifford.  WOW.  This book is amazing.  Awesome.  Thought-provoking.  Beautiful.  I will read this again and again and want to get the companion DVD study and go through it as a class with my girls in 2021.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. (I do one on one time with each of my girls in the morning and after plugging away at math and language arts (their hardest/most frustrating subjects) we reward ourselves with a read-aloud - and each girl has chosen a different book)  I adore Roald Dahl.  My absolute favorite of his books (in order) are: Danny, Champion of the World, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I realized this morning that I have not read any of his other books and that seems a shame, as they make the PERFECT read aloud 💖.  So, which Roald Dahl would you recommend next?

We are still chugging along in:

The top two are from our one-on-one read-aloud list

The Incredible Journey by Shelia Burnford 

Allies by Alan Gratz

Reading (still) to everyone:

The Warden and the Wolf King book 4 Wingfeather Saga

The Betsy-Tacy series

I am embarrassed to list the same books...again.  But honestly, our read-aloud season has taken a nosedive since last year.  Once, the most highly anticipated and celebrated part of our day, became hard and heavy in 2020.  Juggling all of the special needs/medical/mental struggles with a special needs dog...and it just fell apart.  I am trying to get us back on track because truly this is such a special, not to mention, very important part of my girls' day to day education.  We have some beautiful books to look forward to just waiting for us on our shelves, two from Julie Andrews my mom sent us LAST year that I am eagerly anticipating.  We will get there, just obviously at a turtle's pace.

*sigh*  

  

My personal stack:

Speaking of a turtle's pace, I am still wading through a small stack of mental health textbook type books, I have to balance this with 'light & fluffy' reading so that I can get what I need to help those I love most, without becoming bogged down, depressed, and overwhelmed by all of the information.  

One of my beloved light and fluffies?  Jenny B. Jones' Christmas story (mentioned above)!!!!!!

The Harbinger II

Left Behind - my girls just watched the three-movie series (Kirk Cameron) and I realized I never finished reading the book series and that, in fact, it has been SEVENTEEN years since I last read one of the books. (WHERE does the time go???)  This past week, I picked book one up off my shelf and decided a read through was definitely worth my time.  But I need to finish Harbinger II first (just realized as Grammarly continually flagged my spelling of this that it's spelled HARBINGER not HARBRINGER) 😁

While wading through the grief of the past month, the mess of the elections and some hard days sprinkled in, I have been drinking homemade hot chocolates (a dash of heavy whipping cream makes ALL the difference), starting to bake (pumpkin bread - YUMMY, some cookies, cupcakes, and fudge *bliss*) and putting up some of our Christmas decorations. (yes, already!!!)  

My early mornings begin with the lighting of cinnamon spice candles and reveling in the deliciousness of them, hands cupped around a cup of cinnamon flavored coffee (my mom sent several different flavored bags for my birthday - LOVE LOVE LOVE waking up to enjoy a fresh, new cup each day), huddled over the Word of God, reading and writing as my eyes soak it in, then on to doing my knee exercises and scribbling a story of a ballerina named Avery into a spiral-bound notebook for NaNoWriMo.  The days are spent doing school, and many an afternoon is spent working outside chopping up branches and scooping leaves.  

Today there is a bite in the air that just makes my heart soar and my joy bubble up, full and overflowing.  Pumpkin pie, broccoli casserole, turkey, and stuffing are right around the corner.  So much to be thankful for, even as I look back over a hard, heartbreaking year.

When you have been a bit of an idiot (on purpose or quite by accident)

*sigh*

It seems like I am always doing something that I need to apologize for.  I could give a lot of good, legitimate reasons for most of the screw-ups, but the fact of the matter is that I spectacularly fail at slowing down enough to make sure all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed.  And in the rushing from to and fro, inevitably I do something that either hurts someone else, embarrasses myself, or messes up something that I then have to go back and re-do.

*sigh* 

I hate when I make a mistake that causes someone else pain and hurt the most.  You can say you're sorry, but you cannot undo your actions or unsay your words, and that is the WORST feeling.

So what to do?  

Well, once I have done the obvious - apologize and attempt to make amends, may I learn to sit with the sting that is left over, and may I take the time to let that sting teach me to proceed cautiously in speech and action.  May I learn to let that sting sit long enough to form a more compassionate and forgiving heart in me, so that when someone speaks or acts towards me without thought (or even when they speak and act in malice), I may be ready to forgive fully and without reservation and not quick to judge or condemn them.

Psalm 19:14

14 

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart

    be pleasing in your sight,

    Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

When We All Get To Heaven by Matt Redman

 Have you heard this version of the classic hymn?  (click on the title below this and it will take you to the video)

Oh my, it is gorgeous.  

We have listened to this on repeat this weekend.  The lyrics take on such a deeper meaning after 2020 - Every anxious thought left behind - NO.MORE.FEAR.  

Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

One Day (When We All Get To Heaven)

Matt Redman

One day You'll make everything new, Jesus
One day You will bind every wound
The former things shall all pass away
No more tears

One day You'll make sense of it all, Jesus
One day every question resolved
Every anxious thought left behind
No more fear

When we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory

One day we will see face to face, Jesus
Is there a greater vision of grace
And in a moment, we shall be changed
On that day

And one day we'll be free, free indeed, Jesus
One day all this struggle will cease
And we will see Your glory revealed
On that day

And when we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory
Yes, when we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
And when we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory

Oh one day, one day

Yes, one day we will see face to face, Jesus
Is there a greater vision of grace?
And in a moment, we shall be changed
Yes, in a moment, we shall be changed
In a moment, we shall be changed
On that day

When we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory
We'll sing and shout the victory

We will weep no more
No more tears, no more shame
No more struggle, no more
Walking through the valley of the shadow
No cancer, no depression
Just the brightness of Your glory
Just the wonder of Your grace
Everything as it was meant to be
All of this will change
When we see You face to face
Jesus, face to face

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Matt Redman / Beth Redman / Leonard Jarman