While it was great to be there it is also good to be back and to get back into a routine. I will and already do miss everyone, but the Lord is so good to keep us so busy that we don't have time to mull over it. As well as, the fact that if I did mull over it, it would be wrong. As it would be selfish. I know that I am here to bring glory to God and while I know that I could do a better job than I am, I can't help to think at how the Lord works it out that I do bring Him glory. Such as keeping me busy here. It has been so good to see the boys back at work. School is back in and will be going through the summer for us. Nathan is enjoying learning to read. Brandon is working on his next woodworking project. We have had three kids born and Brandon did a great job of assisting in that as I was at the store when they decided to come. One was breech. While Dad ran to see what to do, Brandon was doing what needed to be done. By the time Phillip came back the kid was born. Dustin has been trying to decide what to do with the billy kid that was born to him, as we don't keep them here. All of us have been busy with the garden.
Which brings me to say I have many ideas coming back on with the garden theme of our children. I plan to get back to posting some more about them as time permits. Right now I want to share something with you that I read this morning.
You know many people say that they homeschool the Charlot Mason method. I have been reading her books and am learning that those that say they do may not really. Most focus on the living books and living art, but I have come to learn that her method focuses more on character and discipline. Here is an excerpt out of her Volume 4 chapter 4. If we take heed to this then we all would be better off, as sin starts in the imagination. To keep ones imagination in check is very wise.
Imagination must not make Pictures of Self.––Imagination, minister as it should be to the joy and breadth of life, has, alas! its two besetting Dæmons––Self and Sin. There is no one who does not imagine. You are a Princess with golden hair and blue eyes and a long, long train to your silken robe, and the Prince comes, and after great feats of valour which make the world wonder, he kneels before you and asks you to be his bride:––
"Little Ellie in her smile
Chooses––'I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds:
He shall love me without guile,
And to him I will discover
The swan's nest among the reeds.'
Or you are Prince Valorous himself, and you subdue the Paynim and conquer many lands, and the King places you at his right hand in war and at the feast. These are pretty dreams, and there is not much harm in them, except that, while one dreams, one forgets to do, and life is made up altogether of doing and not at all of dreaming. It is very nice to dream,
when people have been finding fault with us, that we shall do wonderful and beautiful things––nurse the sick and build palaces for the poor and make gardens of delight for the mother or father who finds fault with us––and to think how everybody will admire us for all our beauty and goodness and cleverness especially those people who have laughed at us; to think, too, how kind we shall be to them and what presents we shall make them, and how sorry they will be that they have not always been polite and kind!
I do not think it is lawful to set Imagination to build us pleasure-houses in this way. In the first place, as I said before, while we are dreaming we are letting all our chances of doing slip by us. In the next place, when we have dreamed ourselves into being some high and mighty personage, ever so good and great, we are very easily affronted; and Imagination leaves off his building tasks to throw stones at our friends. Imagination tells us that 'Mother' does not understand us, does not know half what great persons we are; that 'Father' is not kind, that Lucy or Edward is more noticed than we are, that lessons are hateful, that going for a walk is a bother, that seeing people is a nuisance, that any book but a storybook is dull; and, by degrees, other people find us just what we, in our imagination, have pictured them.
Our best friends have to own that we are dull and disagreeable, peevish and resentful; they say there is no pleasing us, they complain that there is no getting us to join in games or to take any interest in plans. They say we do not try to be pleasant with, or helpful to, anybody. The little ones say we are cross, and do not woo us to play with them, and the big ones think us grumpy
and let us alone. It is very provoking, because we know that all the time we have beautiful thoughts about what we shall do for every one of them, and the least they can do is to be kind meantime!
How to Exorcise the Dæmon.––But the others are right, and we are wrong. Just ask yourself, who is the chief person in all the pretty pictures you make, in all the plans you form? If you have to confess that you, yourself, are, why, Imagination has just been making pleasure-houses for Self instead of collecting pictures of the great rich world. See about it, in the future, and set this glorious servant to work in his rightful calling. Then you will be a delight to your friends, because you will have much to tell, and will be interested about many things. You will not trouble them or yourself with that peevish, exacting, grudging Self, a tyrant in any home. In fact, you will find so much that is delightful to think about that you will hardly have a moment in which to think about yourself. Turn Self out the moment he intrudes upon any picture of the Imagination. A good plan is to take your Self by the shoulders, look him full in the face and laugh at him for a ridiculous fellow. This is what is called having 'the saving grace of humour,' and people who have it do not make themselves absurd by putting on airs and graces. It is nearly, though not quite, as good when your home people laugh at you and tease you. Learn from their laughing and bear their teasing with good humour.
