Quick Takes

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I suck at blogging lately. I’m just too busy. So I’m going to put a glimpse of my life in to point form…

– The girls are off on their summer vacation two weeks early. There is a teacher strike in the province where we live and it is a big mess. The end of this year is a write off. I’m just praying that it is resolved before September.

– We were so happy with the girls Kindergarten years! They were both so successful! Their teachers were so wonderful!

– Despite Sports day being cancelled because of the strike the kindergarten teachers put on a fun day for the kids! They loved it 🙂

– We have some awesome summer plans that I’m excited about! Camping for a week, going to Alberta to visit friends and Drumheller (the Dinosaur museum)! It will be a lot of work but worth it all!

– Evie is finally starting to talk more! She is almost 18 months old and has close to 10 solid words but is trying to talk so much more too! A big part of helping her speech along is the music class we had her in. It was the same one that helped Sofie. Evie was very shy in class but at the end of the 10 weeks she did start venturing out more. We did see the benefits at home though!

– Sofie is having some behaviours but I’m hoping it is just the excitement and uncertainty about the end of school.

– We had a very sick, germ, anti-biotic filled winter and spring. There was a lot of puke. Livi had a terrible flu. Evie has had tonsillitis a few times too. I’m hoping we are over it and never have a year like that again! If Evie gets tonsillitis again we will be getting a referral to an ENT.

– We’ve done some yard work this spring and took three huge trees down on our property. It was a lot of work to get things back to a usable condition! Loving our back yard again though!

– Jon was asked, or almost begged, to come work in another region as a supervisor. He is only there temporarily but it is a nice little ego boost and great experience. The negative affect though is he is gone before the girls get up in the morning and not home until just before Evelyn goes to bed. The girls and I are starting to really miss him!

– Livi had her final preschool swim lessons and passed with flying colours! Sofie also had some private swim lessons and loved them! She is way more independent in the water now too! SO proud of my girls!

– Evie LOVES the outside and this nicer weather. She is outside as much as possible and is really enjoying the water table we got her for the deck.

– Jon and I got to have a night away at a nice hotel. It was heaven. We got to do some much needed reconnecting and it was magical 🙂

Sofie is 6!?!

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This is so late. Birthday blogs are so important to me, to give to my girls, and this is almost a month late. Sorry future Sofie. This time of my life is so busy. I am assured it will get easier eventually!
Here is your 6th Birthday Post!!!

I can’t even wrap my mind around how she is already 6.

6 seems like a big one to me. I’m actually having a hard time with it. 6 is a big kid!

First morning picture, complete with whining.

I’m so proud of my 6 year old and amazed by what she accomplishes every day… well at least most days 😉

She is a spit fire of a kid and keeps us on our toes. She loves to laugh and keep us smiling with her often. She has such joy that just emanates out of her. She adores music and dances every single day, probably every single hour. Her favourite thing in the world right now is Frozen. She knows all the words to the movie, the soundtrack and sings it all loudly and proudly. She asks for “Elsa show” and signs for music or show every day after school. Some days it’s cuter than others 😉

Sofie’s skills and abilities are at an all time high! She is saying so many words now and tells us many stories… though I can still only pick out a few words from her long monologues. She understands most of what I say to her (receptive communication) but is still working on getting her point across with her verbal communication. She can do three word sentences now but uses two words mostly. She can put her jacket and rain boots on by herself. She is getting better at putting her shirts and pants on solo too. She knows about half of her letter and can count to 6 reliably. She also can spell her name verbally! She is also learning her colours. Purple is her favourite!

Sofie is my cuddle bug. She always wants us to sit with her or “sleep” with her. She plays with our hair and pets our face. I love how she tries to copy the way I squish my nose when I smile. She is so purposeful about it and makes sure I notice. I also love her eye lash and eskimo kisses she gives me when I cuddle with her before bed.

She loves baby dolls and the ‘idea’ of her little sister. They can be best friends and worst enemies. Sofie has actually been amazing putting up with Evelyn’s antagonizing. Sofie does her fair share of instigating too. Developmentally they are closer to each other now than Livi and Sofie are. I love seeing them together though. All three of them are truly each others best friends. Tonight Sofie was learning how to play hide and seek with Livi. She LOVED it and Evie chased behind them giggling. 

Sofie got three birthday celebrations this year.  On the day we gave her the bean bag chair from Jon and I. She loved it. On the following Friday Jon’s sister and brother in law came for a visit from the Island with Gramma, so we had cake then. She was so perfect with the cake…

“down”
“YAY!”
Then on the next Monday we had a big whole class birthday party. I was a little nervous about this. When we decided to invite the whole class I was scared either no one would come or everyone would come. Well everyone came… 19 out of 25 anyway! It worked out well. Lots of chaos but lots of joy. Sofie LOVED the attention. Elsa made an appearance. Sofie was a little afraid of her at first 🙂

We hired a friend to come and do a music class and the kids had a blast. They kept talking about how fun the music and dancing was 🙂 The party finished a little faster than I had planned. The kids whipped through all the planned activities faster than I had thought so they kind of wrecked my house for the last half hour. I’ll have to remember that for any future parties that we have! 

My sister made the cake of course. Gorgeous. 

Sofie was in heaven with all the attention. She handled the chaos amazingly and didn’t try to rock until 15 minutes before the party ended! All her classmates were so beautiful with her. They truly treated her as a peer and loved helping her open each of their presents. It was kind of amazing to watch. 
Happy Birthday my angel! You are such a light in our family and I can’t imagine any of us with out you. We love you!

Are People Good or Bad? An Easter Crisis.

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I’m having a bit of a parenting crisis. I had my kids come home from sunday school a few weeks ago and tell me they learned Jesus died on for their sins. Now this may not be as upsetting to some people as it has been to me this Easter week.

First, let me explain some of the theology that is leading to this…

At my core, I believe God is LOVE. With that and because of that, I believe the WE are good people but choose to do bad things… NOT that we are bad people who do good things. This goes against what a lot of churches teach. It goes against their total depravity doctrine where because of the Fall of Adam in the garden we are so enslaved by sin we can’t choose anything but evil. The Evangelical church, the church I grew up in and have the most experience with, teaches that Jesus came and paid the price for our depravity and countless sins making it possible for us to go to Heaven and be with Him.

In that teaching, who is Jesus paying that price too and why? Evangelicalism usually says that Jesus is standing in the middle between God’s punishment, or “justice” for our sin, and us. This model makes God out to be some horrific, blood-thirsty monster, in my opinion. All of humanity has angered Him so much by screwing up and not choosing Him in the garden, that He decided we all must die and forever be separated from our creator, our mother. He essentially has banished His children. I have a really hard time with this theology. I flat out believe it is damaging to all that I hold dear. God isn’t very loving in this model, which doesn’t add up to other teachings of the Church.

An argument I’ve heard to support this idea of “justice” from God, the justice that demands satisfaction for our sins, is that we don’t understand His justice or that I am misunderstanding things. I think that’s a bit of a cop out answer. In the Early Church justice was not about punishment as we, in our Western thinking, understand it now. Justice meant restoration. Judgement is a part of the depraved system we chose, not a characteristic of God. Remember, God is love.

I believe in an atonement theology called Christus Victor where Jesus is victorious over death. He enters in to the system of death, judgement and separation that we have chosen and conquers it for us, so that our relationship with God can be restored. It is an act of love. God is not subject to and did not create the system of death that demands judgement and satisfaction. We are the ones who chose it. God is still just, in a restorative understanding, but is not judgmental in a punishing sense. It is all about restoration. We chose the system of separation, judgement and sin, not God. The issue is not saving us from our sins, but saving us from death and separation from God. Sin is just a by product of that system. Jesus enters and beats death so that we can have our relationship restored with Him.

Jesus shows us that judgement perpetuates the depraved system. He puts an end to that judgement. St. Maximus says “the death of Christ on the cross is a judgement of judgment.” It is a pure act of love, in the absolute purest form, from Jesus and God. It is not a payment to an angry God.

I asked my husband for a modern, cultural example that might help this idea make more sense and he gave me Prison Break. I haven’t seen the show but my understanding of it is that one brother is sent to prison and put on death row while the other brother gets himself trapped in the same prison so that he can set them both free, from the inside out. In Evangelical theology, the second brother, or Jesus would have taken the consequences for us to satisfying the judge, or God, and sit in prison to be put to death. With Christus Victor theology the second brother enters in to the jail, or system that humanity has chosen, and sets us free, from within our own system.

Obviously, this is a simple explanation. This is a deep and complex idea. But I think it makes more sense. I think the penal substitution idea, that is currently preached from most Evangelical churches, is also deep and complex but people just tend to accept it with out worrying about the repercussions or how it fits in to the other parts of their own theology.

I’ve been going to an Evangelical church with my children for over a year now, after some years of not attending anywhere. I believe there is so much value in church, in a community of faith and in having a place to develop our spiritual selves. We live in a Christian culture and even without a faith I believe it is valuable to have a certain understanding and knowledge of the Bible stories and Christianity.

Here is where my struggle lies… Livi came home last week with a sunday school paper teaching about how Jesus paid the price for our sins. This Easter Sunday she was again told that we are sinners and Jesus died for our sins. This way of thinking leads us to believe we are bad people, incapable of good. Well, I don’t believe we are bad people. I can’t. I see so much good in people, in my children. If my kids are raised in a church where they are taught they are bad people from birth and at their core what is that going to do for their mental health?

I’ve asked a few people this week what they believed about themselves growing up in the church and each one answered that they believed they were terrible people. I grew up with a similar teaching and understanding, but it never really sat well with me. It wasn’t until my adult years that I was able to learn for myself, felt safe and confident enough to ask the hard questions and come to a better understanding.

Now, I’m left with wondering how do we deal with these issues for my children. I knew a crossroads like this would eventually come. I just didn’t think it would come this early. I thought I had another few years of happy Sunday school, Bible stories before theology started impacting their lives too much. I need to protect my girls from the damaging idea that God hates them for sinning and Jesus had to pay God off. We would never ask anyone to accept a relationship where one person wanted to punish them and a third party had to intervene and take that punishment for us, in order for us to be in relationship with the first person. That’s ludicrous!

Where does that leave us on the church front though? 

Do I continue taking them to church and hope to be able to counter all the damaging lessons that come out of it? Do I hope that more good comes from it that bad?

or

Do I stop taking them to church and hope Jon and I do a good enough job in helping them develop their own faith and biblical understandings with out that community?

I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if there is a church out there that has the community I’m looking for and teaches good, loving, accepting theology. I’m tired of searching. Why should we have to settle? Where do we go from here?