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My kiddos (mostly the four-year-old) have said some pretty funny things over the last few months. I jotted them down so I could share some of with you.

. . . 

 Anna (four years old): "Can I have some honey mustard for my apples?"

. . .

Anna: "My stomach hurts. It has a headache."

. . .

Anna: "Mom, how do you say 'I love you"?
Me: "I . . . love . . . you . . . ?"
Anna: "Thanks."

 . . .

 Me: "What's your favorite color?"
Anna: "Jelly beans!"

 . . .

 Me: "Why did you punch your brother's chest?"
Anna: "I thought he was a drum."

 . . .

 Anna: [handing me pebbles] "Take these and save them for the baby when he gets teeth."

 . . .
Anna: "I'm going to let my baby stay up early tonight."

. . . 

Me: "What do you want to do for you birthday?" [which was in April]
Anna: "Celebrate Christmas!"

. . . 

Anna: [at dance class where she previously fell, got bloody lip, and chipped her front tooth] "Remember when some kids were swinging on those chairs and there was blood?
Me: "If by 'kids' you mean you, then yes."

. . . 

Anna: [wearing a medal on a ribbon] "I got this medal cause we're done fighting the civil war." [I think that's the only war she's heard about.]

. . . 

Anna: [not wanting to get dressed] "I'm just going to be make-ed (naked) all day."

. . . 

Anna: "I'm going to obey now. Sometimes four year olds make bad choices."
Why yes, yes they do.

 . . . 

Anna: [On the way home in the car] "I have to go peepee."
Me: "How much longer can you wait?"
Anna: "About two more seconds."

. . .

 Anna: [mad at her sister]: "I don't like you. You're a duck. A watermelon duck!"
At least that's the worst she could think of.
Anna: "Eiffel tower and townhouse rhymes!!" [so excited]

. . . 

Me: [to Anna after getting a toy for Silas] "Anna, you have inner sweetness, don't you?"
Anna: [with a saintly expression] "Yes, I have lots of baby toys in my heart . . . I will rub his head with my foot."

 . . . 

 Daddy: [to Anna] "Anna come snuggle with us."
Anna: [hand out] "I don't have a choice!"

 . . . 

 Anna: "I drew on the wall with a pencil."
Anna: [five minutes later after cleaning the wall off with wipes] "I accidenally drew on the floor . . . but I'm sorry!"

 . . . 

 [on the way to Mamo's house]
Anna: 'They have water right?"
Me: "You mean inside water?"
Anna: "Yes, in case I get thirsty."
Me: "Yes . . . Do you know anyone who doesn't have water?"
Anna: "No."

 . . .

 [After a post-dining-out talk about trying to have our best manners at restaurants so the servers don't have to clean up our messes.]
Anna: "Well there was ice on the floor and I ate it, so that means I cleaned it up."

 . . . 

 Anna: [Singing this song, which helped them learn the books of the Old Testament] "Genesis,  Exodus, Legenesis, numbers .  . ."

 . . . 

 Anna: "Mom are you edible for cheese?"
Some questions I just don't know how to answer. I think she was referring to my lactose intolerance.
. . . 

 Anna: "When I drink water it reminds me I want to be a queen, a queen and a mommy."

 . . . 

 Anna: [to Daddy] "I love you in the morning Daddy."

 . . . 

 Anna has been talking Sarah into doing crazy things for her. The other day she had her use a gel pen for eyeliner. Today she had paint on her arm and face.

 Me: "Sarah why is there paint on Anna's arm and face?"
Sarah: "Oh, that was an accident." [Incredulous look from me]. "Well, the face was an accident, but she asked me to give her a tattoo on her arm." 

 . . . 

 Anna bumped her chin on the corner of our island and had a little scrape.
Me: "Sarah, what did Anna do?"
Sarah: "I don't know--I wasn't watching."
Anna: "I wasn't watching either!!"

 . . . 

 Sarah has just started reading small chapter books and is very excited.
Sarah: "Reading is my life!"

 . . . 

 Sarah: [to me wearing a flowered skirt] "Mom, your shirt is pretty. Your skirt is really . . . interesting. It's like a bunch of zebras running past. I learned that on Wild Kratts."

. . . 

 Sarah: [while cleaning the homeschool room where she has rest time] "I feel like a piece of trash. I feel like a piece of trash in the garbage. That's how I feel about having to clean this room.
Well, thanks for the honesty darling.

 . . .  

 Anna: [picking up an acorn at the park]: "I'm going to take this home and science it!"

. . .

Me [to screaming Silas]: "It's just a nap kiddo--not medieval torture."

 . . . 

Daddy: [to Anna] "Butter is not designed to be eaten as a separate meal." 

. . . 

And here's one more from last week when we were watching the US Open with Daddy. I put this forth as evidence that we actually are influencing our kids in ways we don't even realize. More is caught than taught.

 Anna: "I want to eat dinner down here so we can watch golf."




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Conversations with my four year old: Volume 3

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There have been times this last week when the challenges of parenting compounded with physical weaknesses made it all seem just too hard, and discouragement creeps in. It seems silly to write it; I'm not gravely ill or suffering anything serious. It's just the moment-by-moment challenge of life currently.  

 My friend Laura recently shared the quote pictured above on her blog, The Blog Around the Corner. Laura is a friend that used to be part of our church here. She has fantastic style, a gift for hospitality, and a blog about decorating, food, and life. She is a wife and mama to two babies in heaven. She shares honestly on her blog about the suffering of losing her two babies.  

This is the full quote from Andy Stanley: "You have no idea what or who hangs in the balance of your decision to remain faithful when everything around you says "Be faithless." You have no idea what God might be up to through your faithfulness when everything around you says, 'There's no point...”

In Joni Earekson Tada's book, A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain and God's Sovereignty, is a chapter entitled "How can I go on like this?" One thing on her list is this:
 "I can go on . . . because right now counts forever . . . Here on earth, we're being observed by both the sons and daughters of God (who need an example of how to face suffering) and by those who have not yet bowed their knee to the Lordship of Jesus (who need to see how believers respond to the mutifaceted circumstances of life). And beyond these earthly eyes, there are other eyes in the spirit realm--both angelic and demonic--who observe and take note whether or not we trust our God in the crucible of trials and affliction. (Remember Job?) And those who have gone before us--are they watching too? . . . Every day of our short lives--even every hour--has eternal consequences for good or ill. Eternity--and the way we'll live in it--is somehow being shaped by our moment-by-moment responses to the life we have before us to live right now."
She also shares this encouragement:
"I can go on . . . because God moves through time with me. . . . He knows time in a personal, experiential way. As the writer of Hebrews said, 'We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality' . . . When you find yourself in chronic agony, life gets reduced to hours rather than days--and sometimes minutes and seconds. When I am in physical distress in the night, unable to sleep, unable to move, and unwilling to awaken Ken (again) to turn me, I need to know that God's concern and care for me is literally breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, moment by moment."
This is all a great encouragement to me, so I made a printable 5x7 to share with you, dear friends. It's free for your personal use, and you can download it HERE.

And after you've printed your printable, you can belt out Meredith Andrew's "Not for Moment" with me.

"All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you." Psalm 38:9




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Right now counts + free printable!

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I've been able to work on some fun projects over the last few months, so I thought I'd share a few, and also an exciting one in the works!

 I did this custom print for an adoptive family. The quote is by Fleur Conkling Heyliger.


Our church's women's retreat this year was about being "fearfully and wonderfully made." I created this image for our materials and promotions.


Friends of my sisters in Emerald Isle, NC are starting a cheesecake business. They loved the faithfully fed print that hangs in one of their bedrooms, and decided to use the phrase for the name of their cheesecake company! They asked if I'd work my bird drawing into a logo. I have only done a few logos and am still learning, but it was really fun to see their brand come together. We created both a round and a long version of their logo, and two secondary "ff" marks. They wanted something hand-drawn that reflects their homemade values. 

I love how it turned out, and hope it creates a solid piece of the foundation of their business. And I hear their cheesecakes are amazing, so make sure to check them out if you're in the area!


And this is what's in the works. 


With this set of printables, I am trying to choose Scriptures that span the Gospel story from Genesis to Revelation, and from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Restoration. There will be a card and a coloring page for each Scripture. 

 I have a dream of putting fun, visual tools into the hands of all kinds of teachers out there--mamas, Bible study leaders, mentors, missionaries, Sunday school teachers--tools that will help you communicate who God is and all that He has done for us.  But please pray God will guide me and use my art however He wants. 

I don't want to take any steps without His strength, friends. My husband and I recently taught the story of Samson (we use the Gospel Story Curriculum) in Sunday school. For the first time I saw this story as one of a man blinded to his own pride. God had greatly gifted him with strength, but Sampson had forgotten its true source. In the end, he became so accustomed to functioning in (what he thought was) his own strength, that the Bible says God left Sampson and he didn't even notice (Judges 16:20). That was a pretty sobering thought for me. Would you notice if God withdrew Himself from you? 

 Thanks for reading this random post!




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Projects, a dream, and a lesson from Samson

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In 2000, I had graduated and completed four years at a wonderfully small Christian college (Gardner-Webb University), full of cherished friends, late-night talks, movie nights with lots of M&M's . . . and, oh, a wonderful education too. 

 But they didn't let me stay once I finished my degree, so I was cruelly catapulted into the real world of student loans, work, and living in the dark corner of my parent's unfinished basement. For me, this was a recipe for depression.

 My degree, honor society plaques, and good grades weren't the ticket to a career I expected them to be. I don't fault my degree or my education; I really didn't know what I wanted to do and didn't have much experience (other than working at Domino's: "Would you like chicken wings or breadsticks with that?" Once I asked, "Would you like chickensticks or breadwings with that?"). 

 That year after college put me flat on my face, desperate and hungry for hope and purpose. I began to live on God's words, eating them up like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches after a long hike. 

 After a year of floundering (and starting an anti-depressant--I'm a fan of modern medicine in case you haven't heard me gush about epidurals), I pulled out an application I had stuffed in a drawer a year earlier and submitted to what I felt was God's call to work with the International Mission Board as a two-year journeyman. I would have preferred to go a married woman, but that required a man, and there was no man in sight, so I, at first grudgingly and then excitedly, embraced "the call."

 And that's how I ended up in the monster city of Bangkok, Thailand in January 2002 for what would turn into two and a half years of teaching English to adults in the Baptist Student Center and working with a local church.

 I remember talking to my youngest sister, who was still in high school then, on the phone when I first moved to Bangkok. As I looked out at the highrise apartments and tangles of power lines crowding this section of the megacity of 8 million people, she asked, "Do you like have electricity there?" I think she pictured me in a different kind of jungle. Later she got to come and spend a Christmas with me there and experience it for herself.

How can I describe the sounds, the smells, the feel of it? Motorcycles, banana-grilling street vendors, sweat, car exhaust, jasmine flower garlands, horns honking, TRAFFIC, mangy street dogs, keyboard-playing beggars, pushcart vendors hawking fried bugs, gold-leaf covered statues, and did I mention the traffic? It was my adventure, and I loved the place from day one. I still do. 

 And the people. How a whole nation of people can be almost uniformly friendly is amazing. They are Thailand's true treasure.

 But it was hard.

I had been a 24 year old blooming with confidence in my own personality, sense of self, and sense of humor. Suddenly I was unable to communicate even the simplest "turn left here so I can get out of this taxi and get home." I carried my home address in my backpack for weeks to ensure that if I ever got lost, a taxi driver could at least take me home--like a lost puppy.

 The Thai language is wonderfully simple in its grammatical structure, but mind-wreckingly difficult in its tones. For example, the word "glai" can mean "near" or "far" depending on the tone. I believe one is a low tone and the other neutral (Thai has five tones). I still can't remember which one is which (kind of how I can't remember the difference between a nickel and a dime). This creates a problem when you're wanting to know if the restaurant you're looking for is near or far. Will I be walking one block in the 90 degree, 100% humidity weather, or eight blocks? Tones matter, you see.

 So I sat through conversations and jokes and bus rides understanding and contributing nothing. I wasn't funny. I felt tall, and white, and quiet. My sweet friends would try to translate jokes for me, but by the time they came out in English, I could never really get the point.

 Besides the difficulty communicating, the norms for a single girl my age in Thailand were different than I was used to. Suddenly this girl that craved alone time was in a culture where girls hold hands and do everything together. It revealed what a self-centered existence I had been living up until that point.

 And most things are just a little more difficult to accomplish in a big city. No, we weren't hauling our own water or driving somewhere for internet access, but it had its challenges. To get to school each teaching day, I took a motorcycle taxi to the top of my street (riding "side-saddle" in my skirt, of course) where I hopped on the sky train. From there I would take another motorcycle taxi or walk to my school building, depending on how sweaty I was willing to get. 

 My friend and fellow teacher Arlene tells the story of trying to buy a plunger. She found herself in the middle of a department store, surrounded by puzzled employees, giving her very best plunging impression. We all got very good at charades.

 I began to realize that the self that I had come to embrace in my mid-20s just didn't work in Thailand. If I wanted to make relationships and share the love of Jesus with these people, I had to change. I had to joke differently, talk differently, function differently. The first year and a half there felt like a constant rubbing the wrong way. But God began to change me slowly . . . 

 And in time, life in Bangkok got easier. Things I found grating in the beginning no longer bothered me. I began to understand how to relate, how to communicate, and how to fit in. 

 Looking back I see that the self I loved was much narrower than what God had planned--much more me and a lot less Him. Jesus said, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39).  

Jesus set the ultimate example of losing oneself:
"Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians 2:4-8

Jesus didn't cling to His identity as God or the advantages of that position. He was willing to lay all that aside to obey the Father's designs. He "emptied himself" in order to connect with us, and He empowers us to do the same for others.

 Life since Bangkok has continued to be a series of big and small losses of myself. There are small losses like seeking to know people without needing for them to know anything about me.

 There are bigger losses like when I decided I wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM for you internet-savvy people) when my oldest was one. I had enjoyed a short career as an ESL teacher for adult learners, and I felt good at it. I remember taking my daughter, Sarah, to story time at the library with all the other SAHMs and then coming home and whining to my husband, "I'm a stay-at-home-mom!!" 

 "I thought you wanted to stay home?" replied my husband, perplexed.

 "I do, but it just feels weird!" I lamented. Little did I know that staying at home would open the door to homeschooling (Now who am I??!), this blog, a little home business, a renewed love for art, and a new love for graphic design, not to mention all the joys of so much time with my children and other mommy friends. Dying to one thing gave life to other beautiful things.

 As I write this, I realize that I'm back in a Bangkok of sorts. This life as a stay-at-home mom of three now, trying to figure out homeschooling, not much time to myself, and little people who I adore, but who need so much. Some demands are very real, and others are the ones I unnecessarily lay on myself or let other lay on me (no, I haven't sorted all that out). I am disoriented at times, and stretched. I'm still in the "rubbing" stage. The me I have been must change in order to care for these little ones--my current "mission." 

I'm reminded that one day I will look back and see all the adjustments God has made in me, and once again, praise His perfect ways. 

Just a slice of life. Mommas, tell me you've never . . .


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Losing myself Part 2: Losing & Finding Myself in Bangkok, Thailand

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These are drawn from life currently, of course. What's your favorite?









Illustrations: Newborn Humor

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I love observing people and popular trends, and Instagram is one of my favorite places to do that. I'm not super trendy myself and if I do hop on a trend it's probably an awkward hop on the back of the train as it leaves the station. It took me forever to buy skinny jeans. I like trends, but just have never felt cool enough to join in immediately.

So in the mean time, I will observe from the sidelines . . . and document with doodles:





And in the print design world:



Illustrations: trend watch

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