Personal Challenge

Mark Zuckerburg is now eating only meat that he kills. Apparently he is attempting, like so many of us, to become more aware of where his food is coming from. It's his personal challenge, a goal he makes every year to accomplish something he otherwise would not make time to do. Besides ruling the world, last year he challenged himself to learn Mandarin.

Although I have very little interest in the man himself, I think the idea of a yearly personal challenge is compelling. It's less flimsy than a New Year's resolution but more flexible than a vow. I have a new friend whose boys go Beacon Hill that inspires me so much in her personal challenges. (Among them making her own movie, competing in a figure competition, and winning statewide TaeKwonDo tournaments.)

Just this week I made my own personal challenge. It's been a while since my half-marathon challenge and I'm really excited! I want to read the top 50 books I've never made time to read but have always wanted to. My children are all out of the baby stage and I'm finding myself strangely with some time on my hands during the morning hours! So instead of catching up on whatever brain candy reality show is on hulu from the night before, I'm going to use the time to become what my husband needs me to be: thoughtful, well-read, and discerning.

Here's my list:

1. Swiss Family Robinson

2. Pride and Prejudice

3. Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World

4. Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Medieval World

5. Augustine's Confessions

6. Robinson Crusoe

7. Capon's The Supper of the Lamb

8. Gulliver's Travels

9. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

10. The Canterbury Tales

11. Ann of Green Gables

12. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

13. Mary Poppins

14. Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

15. Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship

16. Here I Stand (bio of Matin Luther)

17. Uncle Tom's Cabin

18. Lewis' Surprised by Joy

19. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

20. Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno

21. Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory

22. Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradise

23. Leithart's Ascent to Love

24. Paradise Lost

25. The Pilgrim's Progress (2nd time)

26. The Jungle Book

27. Around the World in 80 Days

28. ten Boom's The Hiding Place

29. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

30. Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces

31. The Lord of the Flies

32. David Copperfield

33. Mere Christianity

34. The Brothers Karamazov

35. The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle

36. The Call of the Wild

37. Steinbeck's East of Eden

38. Shaeffer's The God Who is There

39. O'Conner's Wise Blood

40. Don Quixote

41. Calvin's Institutes (portions)

42. Jordan's Through New Eyes

43. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

44. MacBeth

45. Hamlet

46. Leithart's Greatest Heaven of Invention

47. Chesterton's Orthodoxy

48. The Odyssey (2nd time)

49. Jane Eyre

50. Moby Dick

There is so much great stuff out there it was hard to narrow it down. If I'm successful, I already have a list ready for next year.

I Love It

Precious time with Aiden and Jonathan this morning. Abby decided to sleep until 8 which is unheard of, so it was a little more laid back.

There is only one boy in the history of the world, including literature, who has more puppy-sick disease than Jonathan, and that is Billy from Where the Red Fern Grows. I've been wanting to read it out loud to them for a long time, but was trying to wait until they were ready for it. Today I decided we had waited long enough. So we read Ch. 1-3. I closed the book and both boys immediately jumped up, exclaiming, "I want a dog, mom! What can I do to save up to buy a dog?" Bless his heart Jonathan has decided to save up for a fishing pole so he can catch fish, cook them, and sell them to people. I don't have the heart yet to tell him about business licenses, commercial zoning, and food safety laws. I wish it was as simple as he thinks it is! I know someday this sweet boy will get his heart's desire: a dog. It does give me a great idea for his birthday coming up: a fishing pole!

The boys were feeling ambitious so we started doing some chores. Aiden wanted a little music on to get us in the mood. He chose his current fav, "Joyful Noise" by Flame, featuring Lecrae and John Reilly. It's this amazing Christian rap song introduced to us a few years ago by our super cool cousins Claire and Jorden. (Because you all know we don't know much about Christian music less than a hundred years old. :) It's God-glorifying worship, like Dominic Balli. Everyone should know about it. It's a joy to hear my son sing it's lyrics:

Angels surrounding His throne and

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain

The whole earth is full of His glory

All nations bow to his name

His majesty fills the heavens

Our hearts give thunderous praise

Declare the Lord is forever

Make a joyful noise in this place.

Chores? Not so much this morning. Just a lot of hanging out and being together, dreaming, planning, and singing. The kind of stuff I wouldn't trade a million dollars for.

The Gastronomical Me

Some books are just delicious. The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher is one of them. Though not a Christian writer, I have never read anyone that can describe the very Christian connection between the table and fellowship like she can. My favorite book in this 5 book anthology is The Gastronomical Me, a memoir of her early years.

She describes in beautifully vivid detail her grandmother's "violently active cannings" of summer fruit. How her grandmother, stirring the boiling fruit, "stood like a sacrificial priestess in the steam, 'skimming' into a thick white saucer, and I, sometimes permitted and more often not, put my finger into the cooling froth and licked it."

She describes visiting her great-aunt's house in the high desert of Los Angeles, with the "war-time crews of old men and loud-voiced boys picking the peaches" that would later that day be made into pies using butter cooled in a nearby stream.

And so on...into adulthood and her table gatherings in Dijon, France, and her many meals on ocean-crossing voyages. In her forward, she explains, "I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness...there is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk."

These are some thoughts I will take with me to our Saturday night feast and to the Lord's Table.

March 2011

Here's a bit of what we've been up to in the last month.

Our dear neighbors the Georgescus moved to England for 7 months, taking Geneva's BFF and Jonathan's "little brother" with them. We're so happy for them though. How cool would it be to live in Cambridge for a summer?! Especially when a royal wedding is coming up. So fun!

We've taken a few field trips: LA Cathedral (their tapestry "Communion of the Saints" is absolutely amazing). Joni and Friends Headquarters (Joni herself showed the group around and told her story. We love this organization!). And finally, the family went to the Reagan Library for Colonial Days this past Saturday.

The tooth fairy has come 3 times in the last month. All Jonathan wants for Easter is his two front teeth. Geneva lost her tooth in the bath--and found it! Jonathan (ahem....his parents) lost both his front teeth before they made it under the pillow. Somehow the tooth fairy still knew just where to place the goods. All's well that ends well.

We are really enjoying the spring in our new home. The windows are open, the backyard hosts daily picnics with many stuffed animal guests, and when the gladiators come home from school, the picnic area becomes an arena. Sprinklers rarely spray without children running through them. The seeds are sprouting in our garden and we hope to invite you all over for Caprese as soon as our tomatoes and basil are ready to harvest.

A Great Encouragement for Difficult Times

These past two months have been a wonderful season for us. We have a new house, Beacon Hill is going really well, and we are seeing a lot of maturity in our children. But the Lord has tempered this with some really difficult providence. Two of my mentors have an aggressive form of cancer. One is my grandmother and one is a dear friend. They both have granddaughters named after them. They both are amazing and I cannot even imagine the world without them.

I have been slowly reading through The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by puritan pastor Jeremiah Burroughs. I read about two pages per day--it is that rich. Today I read the following:

It is the way of God to work by contraries, to turn the greatest evil into the greatest good. To grant great good after great evil is one thing, and to turn great evil into the greatest good is another, and yet that is God's way: the greatest good that God intends for his people, he many times works out of the greatest evil, the greatest light is brought out of the greatest darkness. I remember, Luther has a striking expression for this: he says, 'It is the way of God: he humbles that he might exalt, he kills that he might make alive, he confounds that he might glorify.' This is the way of God, he says, but every one does not understand it. This is the art of arts, and the science of sciences, the knowledge of knowledges, to understand this, that God when he will bring life, brings it out of death, he brings joy out of sorrow, and he brings prosperity out of adversity, yea and many times brings grace out of sin, that is, makes use of the sin to work furtherance of grace. It is the way of God to bring all good out of evil, not only to overcome the evil, but to make the evil work toward the good.

A Gem From John Piper

"I confess that I have gotten very excited about being a father as I have been thinking this week about what a family is and what it's for in God's great design for the world. I get excited when I think of the family as:

A breeding ground for children who hope in the triumph of God,

or when I think of it as

A training school for teaching what is true and false about what the world is really coming to

or when I think of it as

A boot camp for fitting out young soldiers of Christ for the greatest combat of the world,

or when I think of it as

A fortress for protection

or

A hospital for healing,

A supply depot for replenishing the troops,

or

A retreat center for R and R,

and I get especially excited when I think of the family as

A launching pad for missiles of missionary zeal aimed at the unreached peoples of the world."

--John Piper

The Christian's Joyful Duty of Storytelling

The conservatives want to keep the truth of the propositions, unencumbered by any troublesome questions about whether it actually happened or not But when we separate them like this, they both die. Liberals love story, but they cannot tell it any more because they have gutted it. Conservatives love abstracted truths, but they can't defend them anymore because truth without a body has no immune system.

We must meditate on the example given to us in the book God gave to us. There we learn to honor the power of the narrative, throughout the course of much of both the Old and New Testaments. And the preeminent preacher and teacher was, of course, our Lord Jesus. And how did he teach? The answer is that He taught overwhelmingly by means of parables--short stories. Why is this so rarely imitated?

We therefore have a responsibility (as Christians seeking to be faithful to God and His holy Word) to learn how to tell stories. We must do this so that we can repeat the story, for those who have not yet heard it. And we must also do this so that we can tell lesser stories, stories that revolve around the great story, and which derive their glory from it.

--Douglas Wilson

Epic Long Post

For me, this fall has been about catching my breath. Honestly, this is the first time since I got pregnant with Abby that I have felt like I had my brain, my hormones, my SELF back. Life has been very overwhelming for me for a long time and my responses to the pressures have been, at times, less than godly. I am so very thankful to the Lord for the grace he gave during that time and patience he has for sinful and struggling believers on the road to glory.

The biggest change was the opening of Beacon Hill Classical Academy! The Lord is so kind to give us the desires of our heart: an institution which comes alongside the churches and parents of Ventura County to raise up thinking Christians to redeem the culture for Christ. And these kids are absolutely flourishing! It is so exciting to see what is possible in education. And the positive peer pressure these kids give each other--iron sharpening iron--just spurs them on toward love and good deeds. I am very thankful to the Lord carrying us through to the first day and beyond. We continue to look ahead and see what the Lord has for Beacon Hill next year.

Devin has been very busy building up the school and working on his new Master's Degree in Classical Studies. He is such a rock: diligent, hopeful, and persistent even through the busiest times.

I never seen the family so full of purpose and joy. Aiden has been learning the piano and filling our home with beautiful music to the glory of God. We have begun hymn singing nights at our house to give the church more opportunity to learn how to sing well and bring a joyful and beautiful noise to the Lord at church services. Jonathan is learning to read and is bold and excited about his young faith. Geneva is thrilled to go to Awana Cubbies and seems to understand the Gospel more and more. Abby just loves to be with her siblings and it is a joy to see them loving on each other. Life is really good right now.

Oh, and also I'm training for a half marathon. January 9th in Irvine. It's been so fun (I can't believe I really said that). More on that in a later post.

Here are a few pictures from this fall.

Geneva "visiting the ballerinas." She doesn't know it yet, but it really was her free trial lesson at Oakley Ballet School. She will be getting ballet lessons for Christmas!

Decorating gingerbread houses with Beacon Hill classmates and friends, the Spooners.

At the Awana Grand Prix in November.

Aiden and the beloved Mrs. McElroy at the Fall Festival.

Governor Bradford, I mean Jonathan on the last day of school before Thanksgiving.

Yes, this is really what you think it is. Abigail fell asleep standing up.

(By the way--I accidentally reset my camera to black and white and green for a few weeks--oops)

Sweet times. I've been waiting a long time for these moments.

Reformation Day/Halloween costumes. Pilgrim, Indian, and Raggedy Ann.

Here's Aiden rockin' his Martin Luther haircut.

"Here I stand."

Awwwww...

Devin's class eating "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" treats

First day at Beacon Hill!

Date to the Getty Museum in September

Abby's first night in her big girl bed!

By Way of Explanation...

Hi again! Since the last post a lot has happened which I would have normally loved to blog about, but crazy thing...Life got in the way! Now that we're settling down a little (maybe I shouldn't jinx it by saying that), there should be a few more updates.

Coming soon...Halloween, I mean, er, Reformation Day pictures!

Summer in Prineville: Misc.

This was the first day Jonathan was up on a two wheeled bike.

Our days in Prineville are always full of fun activities. Here's a few pictures of them to finish off this series of posts. Can't wait for next year!

Summer in Prineville: Smith Family Olympics

Trevis explaining the rules.


Abby's best event was the aim the water in the bucket game.

The most hilarious event was the baby relay. We all got a bunch of laughs at Geneva's and Abby's expense. They were good sports, though.

6 events. 2 teams. Only one winner. Smith Family Olympics.

Summer in Prineville: Cousin Time!

I absolutely adore my nieces and nephews. There is nothing more fun than to watch my kids and their cousins play together. We missed Xander, Caden, and Hailey this year, but here are a few pictures of fun times with Claire, Jorden, and Ava.

Coming home from my fabulous breakfast date with my niece Claire. Love you, Claire!

We've finally reached the years in our family that we've all been waiting for--those years we can send them out back on their own and tell them to just stay on the property! I'm still watching after my sweet Abby, but the rest of them had a ball creating their own fun. This year we let them sleep in the tent out back all by themselves! Of course, Uncle Trevis sweetened the deal by offering a dollar to any child who could make it out there until morning.

Ava, our fearless one, holding a mouse caught by Pop-Pop's mousetrap.

The boys playing "Mountain Trolls"

It was so fun watching Geneva and Ava hit it off this year. They are really two of a kind: spunky, fun-loving girly girls!