Mayhem and Magic

Crazy 8s Meme

Tagged by Blaine!

8 Things I'm Passionate About

My kids, my husband, my faith, my job, my extended family, adoptive parenting, blog reading, and book reading

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die

see my kids grow up, change my job just a bit to do new things with my current job (vague, sorry), see my marriage grow and improve, quit my job (eventually!), take a photography course (love it, but not that good at it), grow my relationships with my siblings, find a church family that I feel totally united with.  Last one here is totally a dream, but who knows...  I'd like to take classes in reconciliation studies (kind of a sociology/economics/race relations/history thing).

8 Things I Say Often

"Let's move it, Crazies!"  "Hey!  Respect your brother's words!"  "How can you ask politely?" "Hush!" "You're my boy!" "Where are your shoes?" "Do you need to use the bathroom?" and "I love you!"

8 TV Shows I've Watched Recently

Hmmm...  Stargate Atlantis (Beloved and I are watching the first season together, except sometimes I don't watch the scary ones), Design on a Dime, Extreme Makeover (there was a marathon over Christmas sometime and I watched two episodes.  Made me feel ugly and discontented, so probably won't watch again.) 

I'm gonna change the meme a bit, just because, and make the last ones books I've read recently...

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin, God of the Possible by Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation by Gregory A. Boyd, The American Dream and the Power of Wealth by Heather Beth Johnson, and I'm working on doing better at regular Bible reading again.

8 Songs I Would Listen To Over and Over

I'm going to change this one, too, and name 8 artists I'm listening to a lot lately...

KT Tunstall, Corrine Bailey Rae, Common, John Legend, John Mayer, Coldplay, Raffi and Sarah Hickman (last two are the boys' current favorites).   It's clear to me looking at this list that I do not have really sophisticated musical taste. 

8 Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends

Ooo...  Let's see...  My friends are gracious, hard working, humble (don't know everything and they're okay with that), un-self-conscious, generous, critical thinkers, accepting, and best of all kind enough to love me in spite of my flaws!

8 Things I've Learned This Past Year

I can't do it all, but I'll still do alright!  I think I've learned the same thing in about 8 different ways this last year! 

Christmas Bible Reading with Sparkle

Sparkle loves reading the Bible.

I must say, it has very little to do with our parenting influence.  (Pumpkin avoids Bible stories.  He'll even say, "Don't read me the God book, Mom," take away the Bible, and give me a book about dump trucks instead, which I find so, so great.)

I am not sure why Sparkle is so into the Bible, but I think it might be because it's pretty much the most violence he's ever been exposed to.  Daniel is thown into a den of lions, Peter cuts off a soldier's ear, Jesus is crucified.  It's fascinating stuff.

He asks really detailed questions, and I often don't know the answers.  Since we usually read from one of our two children's Bibles, he'll bring me an NIV and tell me, "Mom, read it from the grown-up Bible," and then sit quietly, listening intently, hoping to catch whatever information was missing from the children's story.  He can remember what I think are pretty complicated story lines.  For example, he can mostly remember that Joseph was thrown into a well, then sold into slavery, then lived in Potiphar's house, then went to jail, and then became a ruler in Egypt.  (The broader timelines, like the fact that Jesus lived long, long after Noah, he doesn't really get.  Maybe I should make an actual timeline to hang on a wall or something.  He would probably like that, but I think I might feel like a pushy-crazy-Bible-thumping parent.) 

He can process and interpret things pretty well sometimes.  Recently we were reading about Joseph, and we mostly talked about how even when things looked pretty horrible for him Joseph trusted God, and God was still watching over him, still in control, and still loved Joseph.  Just out of curiosity, I asked him later, "Why do you think Joseph's brothers were angry with him?"  (something we hadn't really talked about) and he thought for a few seconds and then said, "They were mad because they wanted a coat, too."

He's always been interested in the Christmas story (here's a post about Sparkle reading the Christmas story last year). 

Recently we read one of our little children's Christmas books that talked about the shepherds worshipping Jesus.  "What does "worshipping" mean?" my sweet, amazing four-year-old asked me.  (Man, this kid...  He absolutely keeps me on my toes every minute!)  I kind of stumbled for second, trying to think of definition that didn't include any words like "praise" or "glory."  So I ended up saying, "Worshipping God is when we tell Him that we know he is the best and the strongest and the biggest."  (I think that was a pretty good definition, on the fly.  To me, anyway, worship means acknowledging to God that we know he is God, and we're not.)

He looked puzzled for a second and said, "But, Mom...  Jesus wasn't the strongest and the biggest.  He was just a baby."

And I just teared right up a bit...  I told him, "You are absolutely right.  That is a really amazing thing, isn't it?"

My Sparkle...  He's so, so fabulous.  I'm sure this is true for people of all faith traditions (or even none), but I find parenting is such a surprisingly spiritual experience.  How many times have I heard, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" or "Hail the incarnate diety!" in Christmas songs or services?  Who knows.  A lot.  But looking at the story from the new perspective of my own child makes it more real to me.  The Biggest and Strongest God became the smallest and weakest, just so he could be with us, just so he could show us that he loves us.

Okay, so I have a bit more to say about dicussing the violence in the Bible with a four-year-old, but I better quit now and hit post before I get all church-y and all my many, oh-so-many readers are thinking, "Sheesh, I just wanted to see the pictures of your living room..."

(In this picture, Sparkle is helping to decorate the house for Christmas by putting Christmas stickers on our paper napkins.)