Together Struggles

This morning I had a meeting to discuss the book The Masculine Mandate. I asked the group a question about how to bring my family up in the admonition of the Lord. I told them that Emily and I were struggling, specifically me as the spritiual leader of the family of how to do this.

Come to find out. All of them have struggled or are struggling with the same thing. I thought it was interesting that most of them said the key is “I have served my wife”. Oh how my eyes continue to be opened to understanding the different ways to serve the King. One of them is to serve my wife.

My take away from todays conversation is by serving my wife I can have a glimpse or a small taste of the infinite joy to come. Today I am going to try to do small things to serve my wife by not focusing on the mudpies but enjoying my time with Emily by conversing with her and serving her around the house.

Grace and peace,
Wylie

What is our story?

Everyone has a story to tell. Teamwylie (as my wife and I like to call ourselves) is lost in how to tell our story. We seem to focus on the “mud pies” of life where we cannot even imagine a holiday at the sea. The quote below by C. S. Lewis is where my wife picked the address to this blog:

“We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

So I at least want to admit my reason for borrowing this site from my wife is because I love the idea of understanding infinite joy. More than that, I want to experience infinite joy. So where do we begin? Do we try to see the mud pies in our lives? Or Do we focus on the holiday at the sea? I do not believe I have an answer but again this brings me back to trying to figure out how to be content with the uncertain in my life and to press onward to gaze deeper and stay longer in the presence of the KING, my King and Savior.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is considered to be a negative thing here in the 21st century. I am constantly hearing “create goals”, “have a vision”, and “focus on your future” from those around me. What if this philosophy is not written on our hearts? What if we are wired to be content with the uncertainty given to us in our daily life?

These are the things that Emily and I are struggling with right now. Where do we go next? What kind of job will I have? How do we support our children? The struggles of understanding how to find purpose in the everday things such as work, cleaning the dishes, reading books to our children, grocery shopping, and sleep. All of these things need and are good within themselves but where are our hearts.

Can you bear uncertainty? is a blog post by Jon Bloom on Desiring God that rocked my world.

Uncertainty is a good thing. Even the creator and savior of the world did not have a place to lay his head. My prayer is my focus will be to focus on my current situation. To meditate how I can use the next staff meeting, task that is due, or conversation with students or coworkers to spread the “good news”. Oh that I would seek and long after Jesus.

Grace and peace,
Wylie

Day 1

So I have taken over this blog from my wife. My goal is to reflect about struggles and successes of life. So today is day 1. We are struggling with what is next in our lives. Where do we go? What are we to do next?. So I am going to be short for today as my student group has just cut me off during the meeting.

To be content vs. press onward. What about the uncertainty? How do we deal with this. Oh dear friends if I had the answer, then we would probably be not as stressed.

Note to Emily, my beloved bride of 1560 days. My goal is that these thoughts will guide our conversations but thought it might be nice to save it online for our children to see what we were thinking when they were younger.

Grace and peace,
Wylie

sigh… this would be nice

This is my chance! We have been “printerless” for quite some time now. It’s just one of those things I can’t justify buying when I can go to a lab on campus and print. But think how much I could do from home if I had this one.

Wish me a win please!

the great pumpkin(s)

Jon had to work this morning cleaning up from the conference that was here this weekend and when I got home from church he had two pumpkins sitting on our kitchen counter (leftovers from decorations).

You would have thought he gave me the moon.

I have really been wanting to try cooking and pureeing and freezing my own pumpkin to use for pies and baking, etc. but an extra pumpkin or two just wasn’t in the food budget lately. So today was my chance!

This is what I did:

1. Cut the pumpkins in half.

2. Scooped out the goop and seeds and rinsed and saved the seeds (they are drying for 48 hours and then we’re going to make this with them).

3. Placed one half of the pumpkin cut side down on a cookie sheet and baked at 350 for 1 hour. And yes there were two pumpkins, which means 4 half pumpkins, which means I cooked pumpkin for four hours straight… STRIKE 1.

4. After cooking I scooped out the good stuff and beat it with my mixer. Then I strained the liquid through a cloth so it wasn’t too watery… that was REALLY a mess. STRIKE 2.

5. Next I measured out 1 and 3/4 cups of pumpkin into freezer bags. (apparently that’s how much is in a can of pumpkin) I also did a few bags with 1 cup in them because that’s how much a pumpkin pancake recipe calls for!

All in all we got about 8 cans of pumpkin… that’s it. STRIKE 3.

We won’t be buying pumpkins to make our own puree anytime soon. BUT if free pumpkins find their way to us like they did today, it was a fun experimetn!

simple joys

Aldi sells flavored creamer for coffee! I think they have done so for a while, I’ve just never really noticed before. And it comes in a BIG bottle… in Hazelnut…for $1.95…

I was giddy as I prepared to drink my first cup in a calm and quiet house with a sleeping baby down the hall. And in my favorite mug… it doesn’t get much better!

Sigh… it was wonderful!

What simple joys do you appreciate?

oatmeal alternative

Since we’re not 100% sure yet whether or not Baby Girl likes it when I have dairy, I’ve been staying away from my typical cereal breakfast in the mornings.

I’ve been trying to eat oatmeal… trying is the operative word there…I have decided that I just can’t do it. I can’t eat the stuff. I have gone through spurts where I’ve liked it, and even posted about it… but the stark reality is…I STRONGLY dislike it.

But it’s healthy I rationalize to myself… and it’s cheap… and it’s filling… so many positives, but I can’t do it.

So a few days ago I started looking up other ways to incorporate oats into my breakfast in as healthy a way as possible. I ran across this recipe for Banana Oatmeal Breakfast Bars. Just made them tonight, had a little taste and these are yummy!

Plus…. it’s only 1/2 c. of brown sugar for the whole 9×13 pan, 3 bananas and no oil or milk. That rates as a pretty healthy breakfast in my book!

Beyond Me: Book Review

This is not just any book review… this review is a part of the virtual book tour for Kathi Macias’ new book, Beyond Me. Living a You-First Life in a Me-First World. I find the virtual tour concept a great idea and I’m sure if you Google Kathi or this book title in the next week or so you’ll find lots of blogs with interesting insight into her book.

 

I have to say right off that this book is not what I was expecting given the title. My assumption was that Beyond Me would practically address how we as Christians can battle the “me-first” mentality of our culture and in the process seek to serve others and point them to Christ. In some ways the book addressed this, but not like I anticipated.

 

Here are the aspects of Beyond Me that I appreciated:

1. Kathi bases everything she writes on scripture. Amen, my friend! I get really tired of Christian “how-to” books that give the author’s opinion and rarely talk about God’s opinion. Kathi however, doesn’t do this, she effectively and clearly weaves scripture throughout her text and undergirds any opinion that is “hers” with Truth.

 

2. The “You-First” aspect of the book isn’t just those around us (which is where my limited thinking headed when I heard the title), Kathi emphasizes our relationship with God and how He is the “You” that must ultimately be first in our lives.

 

3. The questions. Each chapter is followed by a few thought-provoking and challenging questions that are just enough to get you thinking. This would make this book excellent for a small group or book club discussion.

 

4. Chapter 8. While I enjoyed every chapter in one way or another, Chapter 8- Abide in Me, was by far my favorite. In our “Me-First” mentality it’s easy to isolate ourselves and I appreciate that Kathi points to the urgent need for unity and abiding in Christ for ourselves and in our relationships with other believers.

 

There was really only one aspect of the book that was a downer for me. I am a very linear thinker and value arguments and explanation that are well-connected. I felt that chapters were disjointed and in some sense could almost stand alone.  This made it hard for me to connect the ideas. The plus-side to this is that this would lend itself well to a group study week by week where if you missed a week you could easily pick back up.

 

Overall this was a challenging book.  I can see how it could really impact me differently if I were to read it at different seasons in my life.  With the birth of my first child at the end of July, my perspective as I was reading was really shaped by the new eyes I feel I have as I look at the world and my faith as a parent.

irony

The TELEcommunications service on our campus no longer uses phones, they only respond to emails.

There’s just something wrong with that.