Author: joyfuldomesticity

Posted on

Remembering two of my sons

One year ago yesterday we found out that our sweet son Hosanna died, and it will be a year ago on Tuesday since he left the secret depths of my body.
Two years ago today our adorable little Peace died & was born into my hands, just a few mere hours after we saw his precious heartbeat on an ultrasound.

Yesterday I got together with my best friend to practice singing something we’re doing for a meditation in church on Sunday, and the words were so encouraging, given these anniversaries/reminders. The lyrics remind us that Christ humbled Himself by coming to earth, then living and dying in order to take away the sting of death from His people ~ that JOY is ours completely because He came to abolish the sadness that comes with sin and death.

Anyway, it gave my friend and me an opportunity to talk about my heaven-babies, specifically Peace and Hosanna, because of their anniversaries right now… and I love talking about my children. (in case you’ve never noticed, haha…) And I’m so thankful that God has given me such a sweet friend who loves to talk about them too. :happytears:

So today I remember my sweet Peace Nikonos and Hosanna Praise. Two of the beautiful boys I am eager to be reunited with when I join them on the other side of those glorious heavenly gates. How my heart loves them! This mommy still remembers holding them in my womb, seeing them on ultrasound screens, praying for their lives, mourning for their deaths, and the years of grief mingled with joy as I miss them now but anticipate meeting them again.

Mommy, Daddy, and Big Brother love you two sweet littles forever and deeply... and Little Brother will too once he knows who you are.

Posted on

Loving My Boys

Have I mentioned lately how much I cherish, love, and adore this man? He blesses me so much and in so many ways that I can not begin to describe it to you. But my husband has my heart, completely, and I am beyond thankful for the gift that he is to me, our children, and everyone else that we know.

And this big boy? I love him, too, more than I can tell you. His life, his vibrancy, his cleverness, his curiosity, his passion, his tenderness ~ they constantly surprise, encourage, humble, bless, and amaze this mommy.

And how about this tiny boy? I have never so much as even seen his profile, but he already has me wrapped completely around his little fingers (which I do see every week on the ultrasound machine). His life stuns my socks off every morning. Our little Baby Nine is quite the charmer (he has charmed his big brother completely!) and I think God has great plans for him to impact the Kingdom and the world! I can just tell.

Posted on

Casting Anxieties

1 Peter 5:6-7

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you.”

This is something I am praying daily for strength to do. Particularly right now, I have anxieties about the house-building and moving timing, and anxieties about Baby Nine’s life. These are big things in our life and there are big anxieties associated with these big things. But they are not too big for Christ. I am called to cast my anxieties on Him, no matter their size or weight. And why am I called to cast my anxieties on Him? Because He cares for me! HE cares for ME! How incredible is that! My anxieties are not too big for Him, but they also are not too small. He cares about the little details that press upon my heart. Christ is not one to roll His eyes and tell me to get over it: His method is to enfold me in His mercy and carry the weight for me.

I am anxious about how the house is going to come together in under four weeks… but each day, God is showing me things that He is accomplishing out there and reminding me that He is faithful. No matter what gets done, no matter what is left undone: He is faithful and will provide for our needs in all of it.

I am anxious about Baby Nine’s life… in fact, when I was lying awake during the night last night and wasn’t feeling him move, I laid there crying and just asking God to give me the comfort of kicks or wiggles. I still fight fear daily that he will die. When I rolled over and laid on my stomach (which I know he doesn’t like…), he started wiggling, and my tears of anxiety changed to tears of thankfulness as I finally fell back asleep. It is so hard to hold my children with open hands, no matter their age. But these children are HIS, ultimately they do not belong to me at all. I am praying for bigger faith and trust as He cares for these, His children, in whatever ways His providence has ordained as best.

I realize that the life of the Christian is one of daily giving up our anxieties to God and hourly placing ourselves at His feet. As I continue to grow in my knowledge of Him and His character, I want to grow in my faith and ability to cast all my anxieties at His feet and lay all my burdens on His shoulders. May the Father strengthen and enable me for this enormous task of daily Christian-living.

Posted on

Bagels

We love bagels, but they’re one of those rare treats in our home. It’s probably a good thing that we don’t have a Noah’s Bagels in our town. 🙂 But the bagel-bug bit me recently, so I decided to make them myself! Oh boy. Delicious. And while they may have been a little bit time-consuming, they were super simple and well worth it. I made a small batch, and did a few plain, a few poppyseed, and a few cinnamon-sugar. I highly recommend trying these. They are chewy and spot-on. Slather on the cream cheese and you’ve got yourself the most mouth-watering bagel treats you could imagine.

BAGELS

Ingredients

  • 4 cups bread flour
  • 2 teaspoons yeast
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1.5 teaspoons salt
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • 1.25 – 1.5 cups warm water
  • poppy seeds, sesame seeds or any other toppings

Directions

  1. Combine all the ingredients (except toppings) in a bowl. You want to incorporate all the flour, but your dough will be stiff. Only add the water as needed until the flour is incorporated.
  2. Knead the dough for ten minutes until it is smooth, either in a mixer or by hand.
  3. Cut the dough into 8 balls and let it sit, covered, for about 15 minutes. While this is happening, get a large pot of water boiling (enough so that the bagels won’t touch the bottom while being boiled), with a couple tablespoons of baking soda in the water.
  4. Take each dough ball and roll it into a foot long snake using your hands. Keeping your hand in the middle of the dough snake and use your other hand to bring the two ends together such that the dough is fully wrapped around your hand. Rotate the dough around so that the part where the two ends come together is under your palm. Press down to make the ends come together. (If this doesn’t work, you can also flatten one end, place the other end in it, and then wrap the dough around it to encase one end of the dough in the other.)
  5. You should now have eight balls of dough with a circle in them. Let them rest for about 20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 425 while you wait, and grease a cookie sheet  so that the bagels don’t stick to it.
  6. Once your water is at a persistent boil, place a few bagels in the water (you don’t want them crowded). Boil on each side for about 1 minute.
  7. Take the bagels out of the water (use a spatula or something, as they are obviously very hot.) If you are using poppy seed, sesame seed or any other topping, sprinkle some onto the bagel on each side. Alternatively, you can lay some on a plate and press the bagel into it.
  8. Once all the bagels have been boiled, place them on the cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes on each side.  If your bagels are too puffy after the first side cooks, flip them over so that the cooked side is pointing up, and flatten them using the head of a spatula.
  9. Let the bagels cool, and enjoy with cream cheese or your other favorite spreads/toppings.

Posted on

Anticipating Heaven

Today I am anticipating so many things. Finishing some things on our house. Moving day. Baby Nine’s arrival. Heaven.

Wait a second, did you read that right? Yes, indeed: you did. I said heaven.

I suppose heaven is something that most Christians would say they anticipate, but today I am anticipating it in a particular way. It’s October 15th again. That’s the day for national remembrance of pregnancy/infant loss. Last year, Gabriel and I did some special, tangible things to remember his brothers and sisters, including letting balloons float away up into the sky in their memory. If you remember, though, unfortunately the bunch of balloons was blown into our neighbor’s super tall pine tree in their backyard! Oops! So umm… while some of the balloons have slowly escaped the branches and fallen to the ground, there are still at least two left up there. So yeah… we decided not to do the same thing this year. Maybe next year the boys and I will let balloons go from the vast expanse of our own pasture. Away from trees. 🙂

This year I am being low-key about things. I will light seven candles this evening to reflect a tiny spark of the glorious beauty our seven “heaven babies” are enjoying, and to remind us of the brightness & joy each of them have brought to our family. And besides that, I am simply anticipating. Anticipating with curiosity as well as great joy.

There are many things I anticipate about heaven. No more tears, no more sorrow, no more grief, no more pain (Revelation 21:4). Rejoicing and praising our Father forever alongside our Brother Jesus Christ (Psalm 11:4 and Psalm 103:19). Joining the ranks of all the saints who have gone before ~ including my seven children.

I don’t know a lot about heaven. Details, I mean. But I trust in the covenant promises of my heavenly Father (Hebrews 9:15), and believe that His faithfulness extends even to a thousand generations (Deuteronomy 7:9 and Psalm 105:8) ~ so one thing of which I am confident, is that I will meet my children again (1 Corinthians 13:12 and Philippians 3:20-21). My little host of redheads are not in my home and will not return to me; but someday I will join them in the mansion created by God the King (John 14:2-3) and I will go to them (2 Samuel 12:23).

So while I anticipate some ordinary things like my new house and some extraordinary things like holding a living baby of my own again soon… I am also anticipating some truly inconceivable things like the glories of heaven. Today I reflect on God’s goodness in sustaining us through long-repetitive grief, His mercy in allowing us to have a bigger covenantal family than we ever imagined, His grace in providing us with covenantal promises to claim, and His gift of hope for our reunion with our beautiful children once He calls to our eternal home with them.

So today I am honoring and remembering my adorable children,

Covenant Hope (July 29, 2007)
Glory Hesed (March 30, 2009)
Promise Anastasis (June 20, 2009)
Peace Nikonos (November 5, 2009)
Mercy Kyrie (January 26, 2010)
Victory Athanasius (May 18, 2010)
Hosanna Praise (November 8, 2010)

and while I continue to grieve the emptiness I feel over their absence in our earthly home, I joyfully anticipate being present with them for eternity in our heavenly home.

Anticipate the glories of heaven with me today!!

Posted on

Works in Progress

With (give or take…) six weeks until moving and eight weeks until Baby Nine arrives, we are very occupied with our works in progress. Take a peek below at the two biggest projects of 2011 and the awe-inspiring work God has been doing in, with, and for our family this year. We are humbled and thankful beyond words.

 

Posted on

Thoughts on “grace” ~ a link

“Grace deals with sin purposefully.  It doesn’t make excuses.  It doesn’t ignore, soften, or cast a blind eye.

It approaches the sinner only after resting in grace himself and then he goes to the sinner, or child with a firm hand, but a compassionate heart.”

Click here for the rest of the short post by a former pastor and dear friend of ours, Ben Alexander. We sure miss Ben in our community (he was called away to another church, and we know God is sovereign), and are thankful for the internet as a medium which allows us to continue gleaning of his wisdom.

His thoughts here on grace being persuasive and winsome has been evidenced in our home in our discipline routines. I am so thankful for resources like this which God uses by His grace to pour out grace upon us so that we may then be equipped to shower grace upon grace on the heads of our children.

Posted on

Baking Bread with my Big Boy

I know this articleis going around a lot online (at least in the reformed community) right now, and I’ve heard that people are specifically tweeting, facebooking, and blogging this quote from it:

A friend of mine, a homeschool mom, just passed away of cancer. In the week before she died, I asked her if she had any regrets in her life. She told me she wished she had baked less bread – she said if she had it to do over again she would buy bread and spend more time with her children.

But pardon me, if I may: one thing that I will not say on my death bed is that I wish I would have baked less bread. One of the best memories I can give my child(ren) is the gift of cooking & baking alongside me. (Perhaps that was this woman’s downfall? Shoving her kids aside and separating spending time with her children from doing other work? I don’t know, I can’t say, just reading between the lines in this out-of-context quote. And yes, I did read the entire article: and no, I did not very much like it.) Sharing in work and play and joy together. Learning and talking and laughing. Dumping in fluffy flour, making messes, punching down squishy dough, cleaning the messes & washing the dishes together while listening to music, watching the dough rise and being amazed at how it grows, smelling the deliciousness of baking all the way from the backyard where we took a soccer break, slathering on the butter when the bread was still steaming, and biting into the warm & crunchy goodness. So I just want to offer my perspective here. If there is one thing I am attempting to do more in my motherhood, it is include my child(ren) more in “my” world. If I were to die tomorrow, I would be so incredibly thankful that I have taken the time to (among other things) cook and bake from scratch, and include my child(ren) in the process, because it is life-changing and joy-giving for all of us ~ not because it is part of what will sanctify myself or my children, because the method makes no difference, but because it is such a beautiful opportunity to work together, rejoice together, and share together in some of God’s goodness.

I’ve got photo evidence of my big boy’s bread-baking joy for you. Wish you could hear his glee, feel the freshly ground grain in between your fingers, smell the rich bread, and share a crusty loaf with us. It’s like God’s goodness for all of my senses right here, right now. We’re loving it; and Gabriel especially loves his own little miniature round loaves. 🙂

Posted on

Songs in the Night

“I have been through the valley of weeping, The valley of sorrow and pain;
But the ‘God of all comfort’ was with me, At hand to uphold and sustain.

“As the earth needs the clouds and sunshine, Our souls need both sorrow and joy;
So He places us oft in the furnace, The dross from the gold to destroy.

“When he leads thro’ some valley of trouble His omnipotent hand we trace;
For the trials and sorrows He sends us, Are part of His lessons in grace.

“Oft we shrink from the purging and pruning, Forgetting the Husbandman knows
That the deeper the cutting and paring, The richer the cluster that grows.

“Well He knows that affliction is needed; He has a wise purpose in view,
And in the dark valley He whispers, ‘Hereafter Thou’lt know what I do.’

“As we travel thro’ life’s shadow’d valley, Fresh springs of His love ever rise;
And we learn that our sorrows and losses, Are blessings just sent in disguise.

“So we’ll follow wherever He leadeth, Let the path be dreary or bright;
For we’ve proved that our God can give comfort; Our God can give songs in the night.”

~Streams in the Desert~