Psalm 1 Recitation

I have made it a goal to memorize twelve Psalms this year.  

I plan to share my progress here via video for the sake of accountability, motivation, and fun.

I think these videos will also provide me with a sense of perfection in a very traditional sense of the word, meaning that my task will be totally complete and in the past tense.      

I drew a little sketch in my journal that illustrates the Psalm and commemorates the occasion for me (and my supportive husband was a good enough to take the video.)   

This is the first of the twelve I have memorized well enough to say throughout the day at any time without reviewing or having any prompts of any kind; Psalm 1.  

Curiosity Abounds

In an effort to steward the gift that God has given me in this new home, I've allowed myself time to take walks. As a result, I've got a growing fascination with the mosses, fungi, and lichens that grow in the woods around me.  Painted with infinite shades of one or two colors, they are each glorious in their own right.  So I am arming myself with the appropriate field guides.  I can't wait to be able to call these beauties by their names and discover details about how they work.  

A Gentle Word on Goal-Setting

I made it a goal to read The One Year Chronological Bible in 2017.  I tried this last year, but I failed to stay with it. 

The Bible in this format as compared to the other One Year Bible is more difficult without a doubt; No inspirational Psalms;  No convicting Proverbs.

But that's not really why I didn't accomplish this last year.

I just I hated being so far behind, so then I just gave up trying to catch up.

But I wanted to try again this year. I felt like there was something there, something important in that failure that I needed to confront, something that God wanted to show me.  

So I started again on January 1, 2017 and did well for like three days.

Then I got behind almost immediately, not able to read the Bible every single consecutive morning, because... life.    

But this morning, I had a little more time than usual, so I caught up.  

Now I am set to read January 15 tomorrow and all is right with the world.  

But seriously.

When I closed the Bible this morning after catching up, I had a moment of realization about goal-setting.

Why didn't I just keep reading last year and finish The One Year Chronological Bible later?

If I had just kept reading, I might have finished today, for all I know.

Even if I finished in February or March of 2017, would it have really mattered in the end?

No.  I didn't finish, because I didn't like feeling imperfect, so I quit trying.

Pride.

The revelation came so quickly and gently, I almost missed it.

It's not about perfection.

It's about progress. 

It's not about saying, "I read The Chronological Bible every single morning in 2017."

It's about having a better understanding of how God worked in history.

It's about taking a big, worthy goal and making it attainable by following a plan and doing the best you can everyday.

So set some goals, people!

You will probably fail and find that you are imperfect almost as soon as you start trying.  

But if you keep on trying, you will look back and see that you "caught up" to your goal after all.

    

Bag Work

I got a chance to fill up my punching bag and hit and kick on it last week. It had been in storage for many months during the move. It felt great to have it again.  

Do-Dad

This little cast iron do-dad was left in our house when we bought it.  I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be for...

Was it a candle holder?  No, it was too big for a tea light, too small for other typical candle sizes.

Was it a spoon rest of some kind?  No, it was too small to hold cooking utensils and it's rim was too high to be used for tea spoons.

I couldn't figure it out, but it was interesting to me. So I kept it, cleaning it, then putting it in the kitchen cabinet.

Then the other day, I was making gumbo and I needed to taste the broth...

That's when I thought of this do-dad!  It occurred to me that it is the perfect design for tasting broths, etc.

So I tried it as a tasting spoon.  I scooped up some broth and gave it a look and then a taste! It was the perfect shape for dipping, swirling, and then drinking!

Of course, I am not really sure this is actually what it is for, because I haven't seen a tasting spoon in this shape. Most look more like a spoon or ladle, but this do-dad works great as a taster, so I think that's what I will be using it for!

Easy Gumbo

I call this recipe easy, because the only thing I really ever need to buy for it is kielbasa and okra, because I usually have all the other ingredients in my cabinets, fridge, or freezer at all times.

It's also easy, because I have left out ingredients altogether, like zucchini or worcestershire sauce. I have also swapped out fresh flavorings for powdered ones, onion powder in place of chopped onion, for example, and it always tastes great no matter.

Ingredients:

Extra Virgin olive oil
Water (or thawed chicken or beef bone broth- approx. 4 cups)
Corn flour
Beef kielbasa sausage
Two chicken breasts
Zucchini
One bag frozen, chopped okra
One large can chopped tomatoes
Minced Garlic

Spices:
Onion Powder (or fresh onions if you feel like chopping them)
Kosher Salt
Worcestershire Sauce
Dried parsley (or fresh parsley, of course, if you have it)

Optional:
Jalapeno Powder


Drizzle a lot of olive oil in the bottom of a deep pot and turn it on medium-high heat.  (If you are using fresh, chopped onions in place of onion powder, add them now.)

Chop your meats into bite sized pieces and throw them in the warm-hot oil. Let them begin to cook and begin to brown, stirring them fairly constantly, and adding more olive oil to keep the meat from burning.  With gumbo, brown and sizzling is good. Black and dry and bad.  Add oil to avoid any dryness or burning.

Once the meat is browned all over and the fats are rendering out of the sausage, push all the meat  over to one side of the pan.

In the open space at the bottom of the pan, add approx. one quarter cup of water. This water will steam a little, it will mix with all the oils and fats on the bottom of the pan, and it will begin to bubble up, because your pan is pretty hot at this point.  Quickly sprinkle in a few tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and about two tablespoons of corn flour and mix it around in the open space on the side of the pan.  Let that "gravy" cook for a few moments. Other people are probably much more careful about their roux. I am lazy, and I like easy, so I don't even take the meat out of the pot.  It still tastes great in the end.

Next add your tomatoes with juice and then add your spices or your spices and then your tomatoes. I don't really measure and I don't think you should measure either.  Just be generous with everything. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle and then mix it all together and give it a little taste. If you are using fresh parsley, you would use less, because fresh spices are more potent and can be overdone.  But if you are using dry spices, you can add a lot more and I usually do.  Remember gumbo is supposed to be savory and thick with flavor.  Make sure to add enough salt.  Like the oil at the beginning, you want to use enough. For it to be a true gumbo, don't skimp.

Next add your vegetables and remaining broth or water. Turn the heat up a bit, until it begins to boil, then turn it down and let everything simmer until your chicken and zucchini are fairly soft.

I like to make this in the late afternoon when I still feel like cooking and, once it is done, turn off the heat and let it sit on the back of the stove until a few minutes before dinner, when I heat it up to a temperature that is just right.  The time spent sitting on the stove is not critical, but it definitely gives the flavors a chance to mix.  If I plan to let it sit, I will stop cooking the gumbo just until the chicken is cooked through and then trust the hour spent hot on the stovetop to cook everything the rest of the way.

I serve this over brown rice that I also make ahead in the rice maker and let sit and warm until we are ready to eat.

Simple Avocado and Pepper Salad

Chop up one ripe avocado and one fresh bell pepper (red, yellow, or orange). Sprinkle with garlic salt and jalapeño powder, toss, and enjoy!  This is one of my favorite snacks right now.

How A Simple Writing Assignment Quickly Becomes So Much More

I had my oldest read the book My Brother Sam is Dead with me.  It's a historical novel set in Redding, our new community. All the sites are within walking distance of our new house, and apparently, while the characters are fictitious, the events in the book are based on original sources the author could find and as accurate as can be.

We practiced some of the writing skills we are learning in Challenge A to discuss the book together. It's Christmas break, so we have some time to do this extra reading and this will function as a sort of review for the things we are learning in The Lost Tools of Writing, the writing program we are using.

*Spoiler alert*

The title of the book might give you some idea of what may happen in the story, but if you want to read the book My Brother Sam is Dead, don't read below, because there will be spoilers.

I asked my daughter to choose between two issues: "Whether Sam should have stolen his father's gun" or "Whether Putnam should have had Sam executed." I usually let her create her own issue, but I was really interested in these issues, so I guided the conversation in that direction, because I can do that as teacher/parent and my daughter didn't have a strong opinion to the contrary.  She just wanted to get it done and get back to all the extra library books she gets to enjoy over Christmas break.  

She chose the former issue and I asked her to make an ANI chart that had at least twenty items in each category: affirmative, negative, and interesting.  She managed to get ten to twelve items in the first two columns on her own then she came into the kitchen and started complaining that it was too hard. At that point, I made some coffee and we started our discussion while I made dinner. By the time we were done talking about the book, she had filled in the chart.

During our discussions like this one, I realize how quickly teaching turns into parenting and how quickly parenting becomes discipleship.  I saw that this was true before I started homeschooling, and it's why I wanted to homeschool, but moments like this help flesh out that reality for me.

When we began our conversation, my daughter was sympathetic to Sam and she was certain that he was right to take the family's gun.  But by the time we went through this thought exercise together, she was much more critical of Sam. She saw how he was a bit selfish, really naive, zealous for good, but also reckless, adjectives that can describe many a young person with noble ideas.

As we talked, we touched on the other issues in the book, too, and she saw how the story shows that Sam was not entirely guiltless of the crime he was executed for.  And the questions came up: What is guilt? What is innocence?  Are any of us really ever innocent and totally undeserving of any suffering?  We begin to realize how relevant science and faith can be to what is actually happening in our lives.

She also recognized the hard truth of how Sam left his family unarmed, and unfortunately, that ultimately, contributed to his father's being vulnerable enough to be taken by a group of lawless men and dead on a prison ship. So critical topics like right, wrong, war, peace, law, justice, guilt, innocence, conscience, morality, loyalty, duty: all of these came up as we thought through this issue, and they always do come up, even when the simplest of issues are really thought through.

Truth is always much more complicated than we think at first, is it not? We came away with a lot more clarity on the issues in the book than we started with, but we also came away with a lot more questions about the most important things in life.  I had even changed my mind and I begin to see things differently than I had when I started the conversation!

All I can hope is that this sort of thinking and learning will help my daughter make better decisions as she grows up.  That's the best I can do for my daughter as a parent.  Of course, my practical goal was simply to make her review what she is learning in her writing program, because I am her teacher and I need to do that.  But, of course, she and I were obviously doing so much more than a writing assignment. But aren't we always doing more than that? Was I teaching her writing or was I showing her how to really think and helping her discover what is true?