A Road Less Travelled

See? I told you it was a good song.

Comments(0)

To old friends and new missions.
God be with you, Evans.
Farewell.

Comments(0)

Merry Christmas to all our readers! May your celebrations be full of light and laughter.

Comments(0)

I don’t really like most Christian music. Unless the artist is royally ticked off at the Church, doesn’t put his music under the label of Christian or was inspired by Rich Mullins (or is Rich Mullins) then my default setting is ambivalent with leanings towards dislike. Yes, I know this is unfair. I mention this so that you all understand where I come from. And so that when I say that One Day by Anthony Hopp is truly excellent Christian music you understand that this is unusual for me to say.

Anthony Hopp works at Samaritan Ministries with Seth. I’d only ever heard him sing at the Christmas party where he and one other are very, very funny. Just recently, though, he released an album that was done mostly single-handed. Anthony doesn’t say anything new in his music, but he expresses the old truths so beautifully. The title track One Day is fantastic, but my favorite song on the album is simply called Hymn. I listen to it twice each time I listen to the album and tear up each time. The songs are all very melodic sometimes with some electronic influences, sometimes with gospel influences. The lyrics are not complex, but contain such truth and love that they are powerful and moving.

I had a weird thought progression about this album. I was listening to it and I thought “This is truly excellent.” And then I thought “Hey, it’s a local, Christian, indie artist making something truly excellent. That’s cool!” And then I thought “Hey, I think having local, Christian, indie artists making truly excellent music is important. Like, I tend to think that the Christians around those artists should support them.” And then I thought “I’m a Christian near Anthony and I like his work. I could give him money!” So I did. I sent some money to work with Seth and he came back with a CD for me. An even trade I think.

In a few days you should be able to buy the album here. Until then unless you know someone who works at Samaritan I fear you are out of luck. However, Anthony does have a MySpace page where you can listen to some tracks off the album. Sadly, you can’t hear Hymn nor can you read the lyrics so you will simply have to trust me that it is that good.

So, does this album change my default position on Christian music. Probably not, but it does go on the list of exceptions to the rule. I hope you go listen and I hope you like what you hear as much as I did.

Comments(2)

I have undergone another name change. I used to be “Maaaaaaam!!!” to Justice. Crystal got the nice, sweel “Mommy”, Seth was “MommyDad” and I got stuck with “Maaaaaaaam!!” But no longer is this my name. Now I am “Set”. Justice knows that sometimes one of the grownups is called Seth. He knows that it couldn’t possibly be Crystal because her name is Mommy. And it couldn’t possibly be Seth because his name is Daddy. So, therefore, since I didn’t have my own name I must be the one who they call “Set”. The troubling part is that I’ve almost started answering to it.

Comments(3)

Samuel and I made breakfast today. I love cooking with that little man. I finally realized some time back that for Samuel cooking is a way to express love. He’s very much like his mother that way. He’ll ask to help with a meal and I never quite understood why. I mean, the others will ask sometimes, but it sounds different from Samuel somehow. Arianna mostly wants to hang out with people and Isaac likes to use the electric mixer. But I never quite understood why Samuel wanted to help. And then one day I was talking with Crystal and she explained it to me. So today Samuel and I made fried eggs on toast and oatmeal for everybody. He cracked all the eggs except for the one in the way back of the skillet and got nary an eggshell in the pan. I taught him how to flip an egg which he explained was very similar to flipping pancakes. It’s so much fun to help someone learn a way to express love for his family.

Comments(0)

  I now have a light in my room again. To be technically accurate, I already had a light in my room. But for the last couple of years it’s been a desk lamp on the other side of the room from my door. This means that: (a) the lamp plug has been in permanent residence in the outlet so that I can either charge my palm pilot or listen to cassettes, but not both at the same time, (b) if my light isn’t already on when it’s dark and I walk into my room I have to navigate through all my precariously piled stuff to turn the light on, and (c) I can only have light on one part of the room at a time, and some parts just don’t light well at all.

But no more! As of today I have a fully functional ceiling light. It turns on and off by the switch right outside my door! (Yeah, the switch is outside my door. It’s a funky wiring thing…)  It lights the whole room! At once! Yay!!! So now I have  a door and a light!

Comments(1)

It’s like Merry Christmas, except earlier. This is the time of year where I desperately try to finish Christmas presents and wonder how I could possibly be so far behind when I’ve been working on them all year, become convinced that I’ll never really finish in time this year, and finally slide in just under the wire with everything wrapped up and wrapped by Christmas Eve. The time of year when I stare in puzzled confusion at people complain about the snow and look around thinking we could stand to have a few more inches of fluffy white stuff on the ground. (For the record, I really like ice too, but that does get inconvenient when it comes to driving around.) The time of year when we pull out all the classic Christmas music (Piggy pudding?!?), try to keep the baby from eating the decorations, and brush the tinsel off our clothes.

This year I even got around to decorating my room before Christmas. It’s mostly some silver garland, but hey, I’m too busy to make black ornaments to go with it, so I’ll take what I’ve got. I’m considering getting a tiny tree to do up in true gothic Christmas style, but I doubt it will happen. Perhaps I’ll get one for next year at the after-Christmas sales.

I’ve discovered that actually enjoy the pre-Christmas rush. I’m not convinced that extends to the desperate push to get presents done, but I suspect that it might. I know that I like Christmas shopping, even when that means standing in the middle of the thrift store with two children who have bags full of change, presents to buy for each other, and two presents they’re going together on for two different people (with different prices, of course), trying to figure out how much money each of them have left and how in the world we’re going to check out without anyone seeing their Christmas present. I love the thrill of having cut forty-seven two-inch lengths  of dowel rod for some mysterious secret project no one can make any sense out of. Oooh, and yesterday I made the cutest little secret project spoiler removed you’ve ever seen! I can’t wait until Christmas! Did I mention that I love the feeling of not being able to wait until Christmas?

Comments(0)

Everyone’s heard of the generation gap, that gap between two people sitting in the very same room, but not all in the same place. I have heard of this occurrence; it seems to happen frequently even. But the only generation gap I’ve ever felt is the gap between me and everyone else in my generation.

There are exceptions, of course. There always are. But even the nice average Christian young person seems to run on a parallel track with no point of connection to my life. I’m not just talking about the mainstream ‘religion is a good thing in moderation’ people either. I’m talking about the solid, go-where-God-leads-me kind of Christian. The kind who’s pursuing all kinds of exciting opportunities at the nearest Bible college and making connections with unbelievers where they work. Or something along those lines.

I’ll admit that I’m blowing this out of proportion. The fact is that I usually get along just fine with these types of people. But there are more them than there are of me, and I tend to feel out of place. I can imagine, just to pick a random example, how it might at the Christmas party tonight.

I would hesitantly join a group of people my age. A few that I actually know a bit will smile and ask the usual introductory questions, but the soon the topic with turn to final exams. Final exams. I took a standardized test once–I think I was in third grade.

I will listen politely and muse upon my possible contributions to amusing conversation when the subject lags. I could regale them with the story of changing Margary’s diaper today. After discovering that the newly purchased clean diapers were all the way at other end of the house, and having already removed her soiled diaper, I’d had to make a mad dash while carrying the diaperless child. Somehow I suspect this would fail connect with them. (Since the readers of my blog are rather more likely to connect, I should probably tell you that it all went very smoothly. Yay!) I could tell them that I’ve had to clean up five dead rodents in recent memory. No, scratch that. Dead rodent stories don’t usually make good conversation starters in any polite circles. This will be the point when I start eying the nearby circle of moms who are twice my age, and decide to go share with them my excitement about getting a new dishwasher.

Phew… Oddly, I feel better after venting all of this. Perhaps because I just planned out my worst case scenario and it was really quite painless. Perhaps because I’ve now decided to avoid the ‘dead rodent story’ strategy and I always feel better when I have a plan beforehand. Or maybe it’s because the real people that I expect to be there aren’t actually as scary as the faceless entities implied in my scenario. Wait, hang on a second. Did I just say the real people my age aren’t actually all that scary? There’s obviously something wrong with me. Maybe I should go take my temperature…

Comments(3)

Today is St. Lucia’s Day. There are many varied and imaginative tales of who St. Lucia was and what she did, but the one thing we do know is that she was a Christian young woman who fed the poor and got martyred for it. It seems reasonable enough to me to celebrate this life. And since we have Swedish roots (you’d really know it to look at me) St. Lucia’s Day is a holiday we’ve celebrated for as long as I can remember.

The traditional familial celebration is that the eldest daughter in the home wakes up early and serves her family a breakfast of really yummy buns called St. Lucia buns and coffee. Seth and Crystal added a nifty tradition to that where we make a boatload of buns and serve everyone at Seth’s work. Last year we suffered from the dreaded Hair Catastrophe and we had to forgo giving out buns. But this year we did not cut the children’s hair right before we shaped the buns and therefore we did not coat them in a fine layer of tiny hairs. Instead we made some of the best buns I’ve ever had. It was a joy to walk around with Crystal and the children handing out these buns. We only lost one to the floor, but we had several volunteers among the St. Lucia entourage to eat it so nothing was wasted. The people at Seth’s work know St. Lucia’s Day as Special Bread Day and are always excited when it comes. Somebody said that the Christmas season had officially started now because it was Special Bread Day. I wholeheartedly agree.

Happy St. Lucia’s Day, everyone! Or, if you prefer, Happy Special Bread Day!

Comments(0)