Baseball with a Lesson

I love how much Aaron is enjoying playing baseball!

His coach is a CLASS ACT! He challenges the children to become better players, teaches them the skills they need to improve, and is their biggest cheerleader. I'm so thankful that Aaron has been able to work with this coach.

Once he teaches the children a skill, he expects them to perform that skill properly, and when they miss a ball 3 times in a row, he makes them run a lap! He teaches them to have excellent sportsmanship, to be disciplined ball players, to have good attitudes, to cheer their other teammates on, and to LOVE the game of baseball. We have been incredibly blessed to be on this team this Spring.

Last week during one of their games, the children on this team had to witness a terrible act of selfishness, pride, and loss of self control from an opposing team's coach and the umpire. My child was exposed to words that he'd never heard before(yes, the word that is culturally accepted to be the worst one) and the worst kind of poor sportsmanship that you can imagine. Unfortunately that display of poor sportsmanship by two grown adults ended in calling "GAME OVER", and the children were left wondering what in the world had happened ... and if it was something that they had done wrong!

I'm so sad that pride over an umpire's call became the most important thing on that ball field. I'm sad that my child had to witness the ugliness between those two people. Unfortunately, he had a front row seat since he was playing catcher when it all went down. However, I'm thankful that Aaron's coach is a man of integrity.

He pretty quickly pulled the children off of the field and put them in a huddle. He waited for the argument to be over and then put his team back on the field and ran a practice with them, so that they were able to keep playing baseball. After all, that's what they came to do. When he was done with practice, he put the boys back in a huddle and told them that he was going to explain what happened the best that he could. He told them that some adults made some bad decisions today. He told them that they(the children) did nothing wrong and that they played a great game and did well! He said that when bad things like this happen we can learn from it. We can learn that what the children saw today was poor sportsmanship and that we ought to never be poor sports. We should never act like that. He encouraged their confused little hearts and got them excited about their upcoming game.

I wish that Aaron had gotten to finish playing that game. (especially considering all the guests that came to see him play that day - special friends Brent, Amy, and Hannah - my Mom, Dad, and two nieces came all the way from VA) I wish that he didn't have to see two grown adults lose their self control and shout obscenities at one another. I wish that he didn't have to experience the disappointment of not being able to finish the game.
However, we live in a world full of imperfect people. So, we prayed together that night for the two men who lost it at the baseball game. We prayed for their hearts. Just as I am praying that my own heart be guarded from pride that can so easily overtake me, I pray that these men will come to care more about the little people on the field than themselves.
Isn't that just how it is with pride? We are all affected by it. We are all overcome by it at one time or another.
How can we guard ourselves from it?

Ironically, that very morning I was at a worship leader's summit at my church where my pastor was speaking on the topic of pride. It resounded with me on so many levels because pride is something that can so easily and stealthily sweep me off my feet.
These are some of the bullet points from Pastor Larry:
1. Meditate on Scripture that will cause us to walk in humility
2. Have a shepherd's heart - care more about the people we are leading than ourselves.
3.  Pray for the glory to be all God's and to be free from the fear of man.
4.  Pray that the Word would be exalted
5. Pray for the person of Christ to be exalted
6. Thank God for his unspeakable kindness

Those words of wisdom are a great start to humility in Christ. I will continually pray for this to be my own heart and attitude, and I will teach it to my children because they do and will continue to struggle with pride.

Ministry Opportunity

Last week we were invited to come and do a hymn sing at a local Nursing and Rehabilitation home.

A friend from church invited us and I immediately said that I would love to do it!

Most of the Holland children were excited for the new adventure. Martin didn't want to have anything to do with it. 

In his ever so blunt and abrasive way, he told me that he didn't want to go and that he didn't even want to have a right heart about it.

I thanked him for his honesty and told him that he had to do it anyway. I quietly began to pray that God would move in his heart and change Martin's thinking about it. 

Once we got there, most of the residents who were going to be there were already waiting on us. There were a few of them we needed to go and get, so my friend, Kelly took us through the home searching out some more folks to join us. We gathered a few more and pushed them down the room where were would be singing. Martin carefully pushed one of the residents himself. I was cautiously optimistic that his heart was opening up to these wonderful people at this home.

We sang dozens of beautiful old hymns and encouraged the men and women to sing along with us. It was a pure joy and encouragement to my heart. The children sang along as much as they could. They didn't know all of the hymns that we sang.

Rosalie and Aaron (and Jonathan...sort of) sang a song at the end by themselves. They sang Christ is Risen He is Risen Indeed. I played (and sang) as well. If you look closely in the video you can see Jonathan sitting in a chair behind Aaron hiding - but singing along!

As we drove away, Martin said that it wasn't at all what he thought it would be and that he really enjoyed it and hopes that we can go back again soon!

Praise God for working a little miracle in Martin's heart!

December in our home

December of '12 was a joyful time for us. It has taken many years for me to figure out how to "do" December in our family. It has been a genuine struggle for me. The questions that are constantly floating around in my head is: How do I be in this world - love the people around me - but not be of the world? How do I teach my children what really matters? How do I teach it without causing an heir of self righteousness about how we do things? It's taken me several years to figure out what works for us, but I think I finally have found peace with how to do December in our family. Instead of focusing on what we don't do. I want to focus on what we do. I am going to give a detailed description of what we do in the month of December. 

Every night after our evening meal, we sit down and read the scriptures together. We read through many of the prophecies that tell of the promised savior and we read the passages that give a detailed account of His birth. We also do a craft that corresponds with the scripture reading. When we are done with the craft ... we hang it on our advent banner.

I was able to be a little more sophisticated this year with our crafts and all four of the children had a great time making the crafts. I love that all 4 of the children were engaged and enjoyed our time reading through the scriptures.

We ended our time of Advent with a reading of Philippians 2, and then each child made a wooden cross to go in the middle of the banner. After all, the cross is why He came. On the very last day of our advent celebration, as I read the Philippians passage out loud I was overwhelmed with the knowledge of what Jesus had come to earth to do for us. Obviously this is not new information for me, but reading it out loud to my children after just having walked through the scriptures of God's plan for humanity - a plan that was given the first time just after Adam and Eve first sinned...I was just overcome by His mercy, grace, and love that Jesus displayed on the cross for me. I could barely get through the reading of this passage. Tears were freely flowing down my face as I tried to get the words of Philippians 2 out of my mouth clearly for these precious children to hear. I looked up as I finished reading the last verse of the passage and saw the most incredible sight. I saw my two oldest sons wiping tears from their face as well. The magnitude of what this promised Savior had done for us swept over us and brought tears of joy.
There is no greater joy than Jesus. You cannot manufacture true joy like that. There is no tradition that exists that can bring joy like Jesus can bring. There was a time when I wrestled with the idea of not putting up a tree or decorating the house, now I fully embrace the simplicity of it. (It didn't happen overnight, though! It was definitely a process)

Those are the moments that I treasure with my children.
After we read through each of the Advent readings, we give each of our children 3 gifts. We chose to do this for the symbolism of the 3 gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh brought to Jesus, and for the symbolism of Jesus being God's greatest gift to us.
As my children get older, this time of preparation for celebrating God's most precious gift to us who came as a humble servant becomes more and more special and meaningful. 

The lamb and the lion ... not only have we been given a Savior who died for us ... we've been given hope for what is to come when He returns. I'm so thankful for this truth!



I used a couple of different sources for our advent readings this year. I bought Truth in the Tinsel - an e-book. We did use a few ideas from that source. Although, I found it a bit too young for my older kiddos. It also didn't take us through the Old Testament as much as I prefer. I like for my children to see Jesus from the beginning and Truth in the Tinsel didn't provide enough of that. I love the format and the wonderful craft ideas, though!! I also used Ann Voskamp's A Jesus Advent Celebration. I used the power of google to get craft ideas for some of the readings that would be small enough and able to be pinned onto our banner.

I hope that reading about the way we do December will be an encouragement to you and mostly my hope and prayer is that God will be honored and the glory will be all His. 

Thankful

Lighting is poor ... quality is not the best ... but oh how I love these two pictures.  I was in the kitchen washing dishes and the rest of my family was snuggling in together on the couch. I had to stop what I was doing to capture the moment. Daddy had been gone all day long and the children just wanted to be with him. Nothing else mattered. 

I am so thankful for these 5 amazing people. What a joy it is to be in this family. I hope they grow up knowing that I love being the wife and Mommy of this family more than anything in the world. My heart is full.
My days are busy, full, and loud. I have moments that I want to run for the cover of silence. I don't want to paint an unrealistic picture of my life. I just want to pause and have a heart of thankfulness. I want to be thankful in all of my moments.  I want to live my faith in front of my children.
What are you thankful for today?

It's been a tough few weeks ...

I have had no time for blogging or reading blogs ... because I have been holding and tending to sick kiddos... and washing lots and lots of sheets and towels! Busy, busy, busy! Rosalie has had an off and on cold for the last several weeks, which eventually led to conjuctivitis. It took a good 5 days to run it's course, and when she finally seemed to be done with it ... Jonathan came down with it. Along with the pinkeye, Jonathan also had horrible upper respiratory cold and cough. His cough was so bad a few nights ago that he wasn't able to sleep at all and kept throwing up from all the coughing and mucus. Not fun. His eyes are all better now and he seems mostly over the upper respiratory stuff.

Martin came down with pinkeye on Thursday, but his has not been nearly as bad as Rosalie and Jonathan ... and started to clear up much sooner.

I have been giving them immune boosting supplements and their immune systems have been taking care of it. It's not easy to be in the thick of it, though. I am thankful that the eyes seem to be on the mend ... and am hoping that we can just be done with all the colds and coughs!


Update: Martin's eyes got much worse after they seemed to get better. Rosalie started with a fever last night and seems to have all the upper respiratory stuff that Jonathan had last week. I think that I am now fighting the conjunctivitis ... lots of strange things happening with my eye. Thanks for your prayers ... while this has been a tough month, I am so thankful that it hasn't been any worse and that our immune systems are doing their jobs to fight it all off!  I have been feeling a touch of cabin fever, though!