Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 50

Patterns! And Free Shipping! And Exclamation Marks!

I would like to just take a moment to peel myself up off the floor, mop my brow, and say, "Sheesh! What a summer that was!" If today was June 9th, I'd be just about right on schedule with everything I'm supposed to be getting done. On the other hand, it's not June 9th, my kitchen floor needs to be mopped because I have cinnamon sugar stuck to the bottom of my feet, my kids' rooms need to be organized, and if you thought that this was a lot of laundry let's just say that as I look at that picture I think to myself how nice it would be to have all the dirty laundry in one place rather than tucked into nooks and crannies all over the house and scattered hither and thither upon floors.

On the other hand, I'm pretty much ready to pop the champagne . . . because after a long and ridiculous saga, all my garment patterns are written, illustrated, printed, assembled, and shipped! (Thank you to all you lovely pre-order people for your patience! If you didn't receive your patterns today they should be there in the next day or two.) So at least one item on my to-do list has been officially checked off. It also makes me realize that I don't think I ever showed you the video that we took to Market in May. (Or did I? It's all a blur . . . )

Can't see the video in your RSS reader or email? Click Here!

Anyway, there you go. And while I'm at it, why not give you a whole slug and a half of pictures? Also, did I mention that for the next week you can get FREE SHIPPING on your entire order?!?!

This is the Duchess Skirt pattern. It takes 3 1/3 yards of fabric, and it was just featured in the latest issue of American Quilt Retailer. So that's fun. The pattern covers women's sizes 4-14.

And then there's the Party Frock. I like this one. (It also got featured in American Quilt Retailer!) This one requires between 2 and 3 yards, depending on the size you're making. The pattern includes girls' sizes 4-14. Did you catch that? Girls size 14. That's a hard size to find things for.

Note: The button and rick-rack are just a fun variation I added to this version . . . that part isn't included in the pattern.

Then there's the Teatime Frock. I like this one because it has a comfy elastic waist, but it doesn't look like it because of that button sash. It also goes from sizes 4-14, and requires 1 2/3 – 2 1/3 yards depending on the size, as well as 1/2 yard of contrast.

And now I will stop posting pictures because I have to go pick up my kids from school and mop my floors. And grocery shop. And read read large chunks of the Iliad and Beowulf for class tomorrow. And muster all my dirty laundry into one spot. And think of something to make for dinner. Not in that order though.

Don't forget to take advantage of the free shipping . . . it's on your entire order, not just the patterns. And for every order, I'll also throw in a free download card for Michalangela's version of England Swings.

Okay, and this is fun too.

Just a few pics of the making of the trailer for The Dragon's Tooth here. Many talented people in a crazy story while they make a film about a crazy story. And here's a great review of The Dragon's Tooth in case some of you haven't bought your copy yet!

More on Motherhood from Lizzie

Rachel has her third post on motherhood over at Desiring God, so hustle on over and read it. I am finding her articles to be a great blessing to me, not just because I am her mother, but because what she says about motherhood still applies to me, even though I'm a grandma! This is one called "Motherhood is Application."

On Women, Divisiveness, and Hobby Horses

We all know that women are pretty much the worst at getting tangled up in heated, personally charged arguments about things (things being pretty much everything pertaining to children). Someone comes along to say that breastfeeding is the way the truth and the life, and people start throwing stink bombs. Someone barges through saying that epidurals are the only answer to the problem of pain, and before you know it, churchwomen will be driving cars with "Ban Sally from Mothering" bumper stickers. Some poor woman makes a comment at a baby shower about how she is scheduling her baby's feedings to try to get more sleep, and women will begin making pointed comments about baby wearing and co-sleeping, and when the next la leche league meeting is. People start using words that are too big for the situations and start alienating Christian sisters over whatever they have decided is a monumental issue.

But here is the real big issue: Christians are not allowed to have hot button issues which they use to stir up trouble. Sure, you may care about things. Yes, you should have reasons for why you are doing what you are doing.

But have you gotten so involved in an "issue" that you cannot fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters who think it is silly? Are you so caught up in teaching your kids phonics while they are in the womb that you need smelling salts when someone laughs about it? Does it stress you out to see a "christian" mother feeding her children easy cheese? Do you long to pelt her house with copies of Nourishing Traditions with important parts highlighted? Are you the wrath of God as pertains to birthing methods, educational systems, and nutrition?

Now here is the thing. Principles are the things that God lays out for us. Love your children. Serve the Lord. Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Children are a blessing. Be fruitful. Methods are the tools we use to try to accomplish these things.

Methods vary, even when the people involved are all following God. Do not get caught up in method camps and chisel away at the number of saints you can fellowship with every time you read a new article about that thing that has become the most important thing. Do not build for yourself an arsenal of inflammatory topics. Do not be quick to fire off heated comments.

The thing about principles and methods is that if you agree on the principle, the method is not such a big deal. But most of us know this – we understand the difference between the two, and yet we still get all wangled into madness about it. Why is this?

Here is my theory: If principles are the content of what is being said, methods are the languages used. We agree that a good principle is "love your children."  So we each say it to them in our own language. Some of us might say it in schedule feeding, and some of us might say it with a sling. The problem comes in when someone overhears someone else "talking" to their children. Quickly translating into her own language, she overhears something like, "I do not love you, and you are a fink!" Outrage ensues.

We want to hear people speaking in our own languages. We have labored over all our translation manuals, worked to have just the right accent, and so it grates on us to hear someone come say the same thing in pig latin. We often refuse to admit that it is the same thing – it just can't be.

Now the point of this is certainly not to say that there are not objectively better ways to communicate to our children. Some people may be speaking in pig latin, some in a random smorgasbord of cliche sayings, and some only speak to their children in Italian sonnets. Some methods are better. Some methods are dumber. My point is not that we shouldn't have an opinion about methods, but that we should be comfortable with different languages. When people speak in different languages, it ought to give us joy. The world is a crazy place. The church is a crazy place.

So, next time someone says the clearly outrageous, just remember this: there is a wrong way to be right. There is also a right way to be wrong. And there is always a greater right than being right.

The Monkey Patch

We are celebrating the release (today!) of The Dragon's Tooth, the first book of five in Nate's new series called The Ashtown Burials. Your kids will love it, and I couldn't put it down. Judging from our grandkids' response, you could read it to the six-year-old's and turn the older kids loose. Notice the monkey patch. That's important! And you'll want to read what my husband has written about it over on his blog.

God Will Never Give You More….

Some weeks ago I was visiting with a friend who was worrying over something that could possibly happen in her future. As we were talking about it, I was trying to be encouraging and helpful, so I said something  like, "Don't worry! God will never give you…." and she finished the sentence, "….more than I can handle. I know."

On my way home I realized that I had said something very stupid and untrue. I know that God has promised to never leave us or forsake us; He has promised no temptation will ever be so bad that we can't escape. But He never promised not to give us more than we could handle. In fact, He gives us more than we can handle all the time. If He didn't, then we would not need to lean on Him for grace and strength. Paul learned how to be content because God gave him more than he could handle many times over. But Paul learned to trust God, and he learned contentment in plenty and in want. He summed it up by telling us, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." If he had never gotten more than he could handle, he would not have learned to get strength from Christ.

Twins? Quadruplets? You've got to be kidding. But God gives more grace. Forgive that guy? I can't. But God gives more strength. Speak in front of a large audience? No way! But God enables. Cancer? A house fire? If we simply look to our own resources, of course we will crumple. But if we acknowledge our weakness and look to Christ, He will carry us through.

Moses felt pretty inadequate for the job. "O my Lord please send by the hand of whomever else You may send" (Exodus 4:13).  Jeremiah argued with the Lord, "Ah, Lord God! Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth" (Jeremiah 1:6). I wonder if Mary didn't feel a little overwhelmed at times. Think of Esther, married to King Xerxes of Persia. She must have been terrified when she approached the king to ask a favor. I am sure we could find many more characters who were given more than they could handle, and yet when they responded in faith, they were blessed. Daniel and his friends in the den of lions, Noah and his ark, Sarah and her promised son, the list could go on and on.

So join me in never saying such a stupid thing as, "God will never give you more than you can handle." Our God is much better and greater and kinder than that!

A Wind Storm?

Lately life has seemed so very slow and so very wild at the same time. It is almost like we have found a way to putter around in a huge foggy cloud of intensity. Lovely summery days, with a background of tons to do. We've been doing swimming lessons and getting ear infections. We've been trying to clean the house, while magically bombing it out. The children are doing great, growing into new needs, new discipline problems, new hilarious plans and games. I love this life, even if I can't keep up with it.

Yesterday while I was working on the laundry downstairs, the kids hauled the play table up the stairs, flipped it over, and launched Lina down the stairs riding on it. I think they were all surprised by the speed of her descent, and I was a little surprised that I had not noticed them warming up for this. They were certain that they could control the next ride better. I was certain that there should not be a next ride.

I have had a great many days in a row where I can't tell what I did at the end of the day. I am pretty sure I did something. I didn't sit down that I can remember. These are the kind of days when my husband tells me that I was being fruitful, even if it doesn't look productive. A fruit tree doesn't move things from an in-basket to an out-basket all day. It is not in the business of ticking off boxes on a to-do list. Sometimes the business of being fruitful is standing in the rain, holding on to your branches in a wind storm, or simply providing shade. Every day is not an apple harvest day. Every day is part of a process, part of a journey towards fruit. Your whole life is part of a fruit bearing work, but today was just a wind storm.

Eve's Fall

I learned something today I thought I would pass on. I was reading the temptation account in Genesis and read the (very helpful) notes at the bottom in my New Geneva Study Bible. When Eve allowed herself to be deceived by the serpent, she was allying herself to the devil. (Yikes! That's what we do whenever we give way to sin.) But when God spoke the curses, He established enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, thus reestablishing Eve's loyalty to Him. "God graciously converts the depraved woman's affections from Satan to Himself" (p. 14, note to Genesis 3:15). She is no longer allied to Satan, but to her Father in Heaven. God used the curse itself to bring Eve back on to the right side.

Some more good stuff from the note on Genesis 3:2-5: "The serpent tempts Eve by emphasizing God's prohibition, not provision; reducing God's command to a question; casting doubt upon God's sincerity and defaming His motives; and denying the truthfulness of His threat. The woman gradually yields to Satan's denials and half-truths by disparaging her privileges in adding to the prohibition ('nor shall you touch it,' v. 3) and minimizing the threat (v. 6)."

Okay, did you get that? I especially appreciated the first point. Don't we often emphasize all the things we can't do and forget all the blessings and freedoms we have in Christ? Eve had all the garden. Imagine! But she was tempted and deceived into thinking that God was a kill-joy. Of all things! In the midst of amazing, shocking, opulent abundance, she believed that God was short-changing her.

Don't we sometimes attribute bad motives to God, assuming that "rules" just keep us from having fun? And we even re-word His commandments and blow off His threats, assuming that He will bless us no matter what. That's how our mother Eve fell.

Good stuff for meditation.

Read 'em and Weep

Is anyone going to mind if I get a tidge preachy for a moment? Lovely. Here goes.

I mind it, yes I really do, when Christians run around loving songs and singing along with them when they have never bothered to discover what those lyrics are actually saying. Are you with me here? I'm sure this must have happened to you before . . . it's definitely happened to me a time or two, and I hate it. There's some great song, you hear a snatch of it on the radio, it's really catchy, you like the tune, and the next time it comes on you sing along with the chorus. And then you file it away under the mental category "songs I like." But have you ever then discovered, after singing along with it about eighteen times without thinking, that it's actually quite a despicable song when you read the lyrics? That's really the worst.

No. I take that back. The worst is when Christians never actually DO reach the moment of discovering that it's a despicable song . . . either because they just don't bother, or because the cool hipness of the song has them around the neck and there's nothing in the world that will convince them that it's not the awesomest thing in the world.

Actually, come to think of it, there's one thing that's even worse than that. The worst of all. That's when the Christian knows perfectly well what the song says, but in some attempt at a James Jordan-ish exegetical ninja move, they decide that the song has redemptive themes and a narratival structure of death and resurrection, which we all know is terribly Christian. That one can make me dance around in a perfect fury when I hear people do that. It's my ultimate peeve. Because honestly, it's not hard to discover redemptive themes and death and resurrection in basically everything. It's like hitting the ground with your hat. We live in the world God made, and so death and resurrection are obvious themes in everything – it doesn't mean the artist isn't thumbing his nose at heaven, and it doesn't somehow sanctify the rest of the trash. It's like getting all excited because you've noticed that the debauched film you're not supposed to be watching relies heavily on the use of gravity which, as we all know, was created by God. Clearly that makes no difference. I'll bet that if I sat down and gave my mind to it, I could come up with a good argument for how there are redemptive themes involved in visiting temple prostitutes . . . but that doesn't make it ok, obviously.

Why do I bring this up you ask? Because I've gotten all the way annoyed with people quoting little snatches of lyrics on their facebook pages that belong to songs that are as raunchy or as rebellious as the day is long. I don't know if these people have never bothered to find out the context of their little quote, or if they like it anyway, or if they're trying to act all deep about it and pretend that this is philosophically profound, but no matter what their reasons, it bothers me.

When I've suddenly realized that a song I like is actually a problem, it has always given me that sick feeling in my stomach. Not because the song is questionable – but because I had liked it. It's like eating something that you thought was fantastic, only to discover that it was actually goat eyeballs or something. It's that same kind of gross feeling. So all I can say is, read the lyrics. Seriously. Read them. It makes a difference when you look at the thing in hard print without the catchiness of the tune to make you feel like it's ok. Obviously you can't read the lyrics to every song you ever hear. But before you buy it on itunes, or add it to your playlist, or quote it on facebook, you should find out what it says. And like Dad always taught us . . . there are two questions that you should always ask. "What are they saying, and is it true?"

A Cure for Laziness

From Thomas Case, Select Works, A Treatise on Afflictions (quoted in Voices From the Past)

In affliction God teaches us to redeem the time. When life is tranquil, how many golden hours we throw down the stream that we shall never see again. Who is there that knows how to value time at its true worth? Most men waste it as if they had more time than they could ever spend. We make short seasons even shorter.