Firefly Frolic

My summer is conspicuously unscheduled this year. Somewhere down the line I seem to have lost the need or desire to be insanely busy along with the rest of society. I have had time time to just kick back, read a couple of books, enjoy living in my house with my garden and cats, do a little cleaning, cook some...It feels great.

Along with this sweet time of unscheduled, lazy, long days, ideas for "what to do" become a little simpler. Dad suggested this evening a surprise for the kids--stay up past bedtime to hunt fireflies. You'd think we had given them the moon for a snack! They bounded around the yard with their butterfly nets and caught many, many firefies. The sound of their delight and the sight of them running and jumping and saying, "right behind you!" and "ooh, there's one!" and then rushing to put them in the bug keeper was better entertainment than the most expensive water park.

What have we become? It was a gorgeous, breezy day today, and this evening as the winds died down and the sun began to set, we sat out on the front step to enjoy the long shadows and gathering dusk. All around us, we should have seen kids riding bikes, calling to each other, doing what kids do on warm summer evenings, but all down the street we saw not another soul. All we heard was the hum of air conditioners and houses were buttoned up tight against the threat of a degree above 72. Matty asked where everyone was and Aimee answered "in their basements watching their TVs." I'm starting to think that our neighbors must find us odd because we actually play in our yard, plant a garden, and draw on our driveway with chalk...oh yes, and catch fireflies.

Swimming Against the Tide

The last week or so has been a whirlwind of ideas coming to fruition in our household. We attended the HEAV convention in Richmond and heard the keynote speaker, Voddie Baucham give three very inspiring talks on biblical headship in the home, cultural war, and biblical manhood. The audience gave him a standing ovation. It felt good to be in that place. There was a rather large gathering of people all committed to the same (or very similar) ideals as those we hold dear. But when I looked around I couldn't help thinking how when we all part company, we are few and far between in this culture, and our views on things like biblical gender roles, marriage and family, education, and truth are not popular in everyday society. In fact, they run counter to everything this culture is founded on, and would even be construed as intolerant, extremist, even threatening, though we know otherwise.

What he said gave me courage to stand, and not just to stand against the cultural tide, but to swim against it, purposefully teaching my children and raising them in a way that will not win friends in Ceasar's eyes.

Psalm 144:11-12
Deliver me and rescue me from the hands of foreigners whose mouths are full of lies, whose right hands are deceitful. Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nutured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.