Free Burma Rangers

About nine months ago, my husband and I got this movie and watched it.  Francis Chan posted several posts on Instagram about it, how life changing this movie was...so we decided to give it a shot.  Now, I want to read the book too because this story - this family (David Eubank, and his wife Karen and their children) all they have given, all they have done...it is INCREDIBLE.  

About a month, I guess almost two now, Burma (Myanmar) had a military coup, and the stories that are being posted, they are heartbreaking.  Heart Cry Ministries, Radical, and Crazy Love (Francis Chan), have all posted prayer requests and updates from people inside this country, I cannot imagine the terror the citizens are surrounded by.  I also wonder, how are David, Karen, their children and the Burma Rangers.  What has this been like for them?  When you watch a documentary style movie, at least when I watch one, it is as if I get to know the people personally.  As if I am right there, walking just behind them as they venture from village to village, saving as many as they can, protecting them, loving them, feeding and sheltering them.  

I want to cover the people of Myanmar in prayer, to pray for them as if my friends and family are there, will you please join me?

Hebrews 13:3

February Reading Stack

 February was not a great reading month for me, that is to say, I started some great books, but did not complete any (except for one, and it was a read aloud).  *sigh*  There are SO many great ones in my TBR stack, I fear I have become  "The Boy and the Filberts", greedily grasping, but never finding contentment in what I can get done.  

I want to finish each of these titles before moving on to more. (with the exception of one very important title I am squeezing in: Finally Focused by James Greenblatt, MD)

Journey to the Cross: Devotions for Lent by Will Walker (this actually won't draw to a close until April, as it is meant to be an ongoing book over the forty days of Lent)

The Brave Learner by Julie Bogart - roughly half-way through this one

The Warden and the Wolf King - I am having to balance this book with others for my girls, so that the heaviness does not trigger/overwhelm issues.

The Spirituality of the Cross by Gene Edward Veith Jr. - two more chapters to go.

Adventures with Waffles by Maria Parr - reading aloud 

Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace - reading aloud.  This is one we pick up as we can, slowly making our way through the sweet, sweet stories.

8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel / 1 Dog = Chaos by Vivian Vande Velde (this is a FAVORITE of ours.  We have read this book SO many times, when we are having a bad day, I will check to see if it's available at the library - I need to just buy a copy of it, since it so beloved.  This is SUCH a fun, silly book, great for bad days when nothing else is working - this almost always elicits giggles by chapter two.  We finished this in one afternoon.)

The Bookwanderes by Anna James - had to return it to the library before I could finish it and it just came available again, only on chapter three,

Helping Your Child With Language-Based Learning Disabilities by Daniel Franklin, PhD - reading slowly to take notes and work through exercises that Homeschooling with Dyslexia posted when she took her community through the book (two-ish years ago?).  I did not have the time then, nor did I own the book.  So...this is going to take a while, but that's ok - this is too important of a topic to zip through just to check off a box.

And that's it for now.  I am off to squeeze in a bit of reading as I can - I will write about the impact each of the books had after I complete them.  

Lent 2021

In figuring out how to answer the questions that swirl around this time of year - questions like:

What do you normally turn to instead of Jesus for comfort, commendation, meaning...?

or 

What habits or tendencies of self-absorption do you possess? (I was really embarrassed by what that line of questions revealed.)  

Immediately as I am journaling through these questions, I thought about all of the time I have tried to "fast" from some of my "coping" mechanisms:

No sugar...made it two days.

No chocolate...made it a week.

No instagram...ummm did I even make it two hours???

The list goes on and on and on.  

Epic failures, broken promises, and grand statements of 'I am going to go 30 days, 40 days...(whatever the time set aside was supposed to be), without _____________(chocolate, sugar, social media etc;).  Yet, I did not do it.  Not a single time.

So this morning I prayed a simple prayer - God, show me what grieves You most in me.  And you know what came to mind?  It wasn't my junk food addiction, and it wasn't my chocolate consumption...those are real things, but for me, those are symptoms of something deeper.  

God brought to mind two things:

self-pity (you know the parties you throw and try as you might you pretty much end up being a perpetual party of one...because really, who wants to come to your pity party and listen to you whine?) 

and

worry thoughts (what if thinking...worst case scenario imaginations...)

Digging deeper still, I realized several roots are attached to the fruits of self-pity and worry/anxious thinking.  A sense of entitlement, discontentment/envy, unrealistic expectations, unbelief, and ungratefulness.  

YUCK.  ☹

I am a pro at spotting these qualities in others, but a little (OK a LOT) inept at seeing them in myself.  I wallow in self-pity quite often, I spend so much time worrying about what might happen that I miss what is happening, I do not lay down my life, deny myself, and pick up my cross to run my race because I am so busy and distracted thinking about all that is going wrong, comparing my life to someone else's and asking "well why can't I have____________ or our lives be like _______________?"

So, this year for Lent, I decided I would fast from self-pity and worry thoughts.  I am asking God for a complete make-over in my mind and my heart this lent.  That I would not be the same person forty (ish) days from now.  

And then, after I have dealt with the root cause, maybe I will be better prepared to tackle the sugar and chocolate.