Continue reading »]]> This week’s Martha Monday post has got me to thinking about those two sisters again. And about me and my little household here in Just the Other Side of Nowhere, WV. I almost hate it when these kinds of things happen, because it seems I’m always too harsh on myself in these situations. I mean, come on, let’s get real here. Who can really stack up to either of those two gals, with the exception being possibly that really irritating lady in Proverbs 31? Mary was so spiritually focused, so “good” sitting there at the feet of Jesus, choosing her “one thing” that she needed most. And by all accounts, Martha was a consummate homekeeper. Jesus and His followers didn’t just stay with anyone, after all. It must have taken a great organizer, a great delegator, and a great flair for the task at hand to create a home worthy of the repeated visitation of Christ. Yet it somehow seems like it’s our misguided duty to try and emulate them both. And fail. And try again. And probably fail, again. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn something in the process, right? So, here’s some things I’ve learned:

1. There’s are seasons in life when it’s necessary to be more Martha than Mary. When the children are small, when the garden is in full production mode, when the holidays loom, you need to be more Martha-like than Mary-esque. Now, I’m not saying ignore your spiritual needs and duties, just prioritize them so that you can focus on the running of your home more. Say no to the church choir, or to the ladies’ group, or to the fundraiser for the new roof. Make your home and family your priority.
2. There are opportunities in every day to be a little bit like Mary. You can set aside time for your spiritual nourishment. Light a candle, pray, read scripture, meditate, enjoy the quiet solitude of a walk or early morning in the garden. In short, do whatever you feel best feeds your inner being and draws you closer to your God. Say no to the television program, the romance novel, the telephone call, the computer. Make time for your “one thing” your priority in your daily schedule.
3. You can be a bit of both ladies at the same time. Sing hymns or worship songs as you work. Pray as you wash the dishes or scrub the floors. Bless your house, your family and guests as you prepare a meal or make the beds. And if you can’t remember to do all that, do everything as if Jesus may walk through the door at any moment. Do it all with a servant’s heart and a joyful spirit. Be grateful you have a house to clean, a family to pick up after and a husband to cook for. Many women don’t. Cultivating a Mary spirit while going about your Martha tasks isn’t always easy, but it will make your work so much lighter and more enjoyable, even the nasty toilet scrubbing parts, because you aren’t doing it for you anymore, or simply because it has to be done. You’ll be doing it for a higher glory, for a higher purpose.
4. You aren’t a failure if you can’t live up to some impossibly high standard set by someone in Scripture, or on television, or in a magazine or on a blog either, for that matter. I’m not Martha Homemaker, nor am I Mary-at-the-feet-of-Christ. And don’t even get me started on Sister Proverbs 31 Better-Than-You. I’m me. I’m the mom who forgets to read her Bible until she’s so tired she can’t see straight, who gets distracted by the needs of home and work and homeschool that I sometimes forget to care for myself. I’m also the lady who hates to vacuum, whose laundry piles up higher than K-2, and whose fridge sometimes contains things old enough (at least by Chicago’s standards) to vote. (Just an FYI: green peppers aren’t supposed to be purple and fuzzy. At least I think that was a green pepper.) So I have to cut myself some slack and try not to be too hard on myself. After all, those ladies are a tough act to follow.

Moral of the story – you can’t be perfect at everything, all the time. You can strive to do better, to be better, but you can’t beat yourself up if you don’t make it. You are who you are. I’m who I am. And Mary and Martha, well, they were who they were, too. Aren’t we all?

Continue reading »]]> (Martha Monday posts deal with home keeping, frugal living, and generally being the good “Martha”s our home needs. Remember, Christ did not chide Martha for her working in the kitchen while Mary sat at His feet. He merely chided her for thinking Mary was wrong for sitting at His feet and not working in the kitchen. It was her attitude, not her actions, that landed her in hot water……)

We haven’t done a Martha Monday in so long, I almost forgot they existed. But I feel that in the spirit of being a Cheap Chick, we need to explore frugality in all areas of our lives, not just our homeschooling. With that in mind, I think it’s high time we resurrect old Martha and her practical ways of doing things! And since I’ve not really had time to think this one completely through, I thought I’d start off with a challenge, or rather, by giving you a choice of challenges. Simply pick one of the challenges below and see how far you can get with it. Let us know which one you pick. Share your results. Send me a note, photos, whatever, and in a month, if I get enough responses, I’ll do a follow up post reporting on your successes, trials or failures. Ready? Set…….Go for it!

1.) Eating from your pantry. Beginning right now (NOT after a nice stocking up trip) you are not allowed to buy anything more than fresh produce and dairy. You must make do with what’s in the house – pantry, fridge, freezer. I allow fresh produce and dairy because of the vitamins, proteins and goodies they provide aren’t often available in canned and frozen foods. How far can you make it? How creative can you get with cooking with only what you’ve got? What do you miss the most by NOT having it on hand? This is a very good exercise for those who have never really thought about “stocking up” or keeping a well-supplied kitchen. This is also a very good challenge for those of you who would like to break the cycle of poor eating habits, as it will force you to rethink your meal choices.

Eating From the Pantry Guidelines

All Recipes – I love the thingies they have where you can plug in your ingredients and find recipes to fit

2.) Cooking everything from scratch, as in NO processed foods for a month. Now, I won’t make you bake your own bread, but everything else – breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks – MUST come from your hands. Want mac and cheese? Better learn to make cheese sauce, then. Craving pizza? Then start making he crusts. You CAN make your own mixes – I do. Snack cakes,  homemade “Jiffy” mix, muffins, waffles and pancakes, even salad dressing and seasoning mixes can all be made by YOU. Give it a try. You’ll save money and eat healthier, too.

Busy Cooks’ Homemade Mixes – Great resource for “convenience” mixes – baking, salad dressings, seasonings, etc.

Canning Jar Mixes – This is another great resource – baking mixes, drink mixes, soup mixes – all kinds of mixes. My only complaint is that the recipes usually only make ONE batch of whatever……

3.) Go veg. You can start with one meal a day, add in the second meal in a week or two, and then by the end of the month, or the first week of the next month, you can cut out the third meal. Begin with dishes you already make that are, or easily could be, meatless. Pizza doesn’t need the pepperoni, spaghetti doesn’t need the meatballs. The chili is just fine with all beans, the Lo Mein is great without the shrimp. There are tons of resources, as you can see, to help you get started. And this time of year is a great time to do it, as fresh produce abounds. Dairy and eggs are allowable, by the way. Who knows? You may discover a whole new lifestyle!

Go Veg – a wonderful resource for all things vegetarian

The Post Punk Kitchen – another great resource for veg cooking. They are vegan, as in NO animal products, but you can substitute dairy and eggs for the non-animal products fairly easily. And who knows? Maybe vegan will be your way to go veg!

4.) Shop without a list (mostly.) Most home keepers and cooks make a menu, then a shopping list based on that menu, head to the store, buy what they need to fulfill the list and come home. Shopping without a list means going to the store, buying what’s on sale or special, coming home and THEN making the menu to fit the ingredients. Since I began shopping without a list, I’ve seen a great improvement in our grocery budget because I can take advantage of specials and sales, helping to reduce my costs. I have also found that we’re eating a greater variety of dishes than before, because we’re not in that rut of buying and cooking the same thing every month. (Now, I say I shop without a list, but I’ll be honest and say I DO make a list. It has very little food on it except for staples like butter, milk, juice, etc. and then the rest is supplies. It really stinks when you run out of cat food or toilet paper just because you forgot to buy it because there wasn’t a list to remind you…..)

So, make a Martha change in your kitchen, shopping and cooking. Let us in on your choice, and then let us know how it goes. Come, be a Cheap Chick, too!

Continue reading »]]> I have recently been reading A W Tozer’s great Christian classic, “In Pursuit of God.” In it, he writes, “The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we Christians are in great danger of losing God among the wonders of His Word. We have forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can.” and “To have found God and still pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart.” and better still, “Right now we are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.” Oh, how I love reading those words!

See, I’m one of those who distrusts the “programs” and the “methods” in place in many churches. We attend a liturgical, old-fashioned, traditional church. You’d be hard-pressed to find something in our liturgy that isn’t straight from the Bible somewhere. We even use *gasp* honest to goodness HYMNS instead of “praise and worship” music. And in it all, through it all, you can feel yourself drawing closer to God, and God drawing closer to you. In the liturgy’s “complexity” there is simplicity. Simple, honest worship and praise, Biblical truth and teaching, and a quieting of the soul that allows for that still, small voice to approach you.

Now, before anyone gets upset or offended by my words, I want to say this – In no way do I think you are wrong if you attend a church with a program, or a light show, or a sound system, or use contemporary praise and worship music. I have been in those type settings myself and have found them to be quite uplifting, quite moving. What I didn’t find in them, however, was time and room to listen to and talk to God. There was no teaching of a pursuit of God – You had either accepted Him or you hadn’t. And if you had, then He was yours and you could call on Him for anything, anytime. You could get to know Him through His word, and through your own “quiet time.” But not really in church. Church was for worship, not for forming a relationship. Church was for serving others, not really for being served. Church was for teaching, but not for talking. There was no conversation with God, just a lot of conversation about God. God was there, but not in a personal, intimate sense. He was always this great high Being worthy of praise and adoration, and always more than willing to answer your prayer requests. Somewhere along the way, God seemed to get lost in the sound and fury that was the program.

My God is a lot bigger than that. And I want to know Him in all His forms and in all His moods. I don’t just want a Heavenly Butler on stand by to satisfy all my needs. I don’t want just a stern and strict Judge bearing down on me with a glare and a lightning bolt when I’ve messed up. And I don’t want a God restricted to just being the Baby Jesus’ father and the guy who planted the flowers and made the zebras stripey. I want my God to be all that and all that He is, besides. I don’t want a small God. I know my God is bigger than the small boxes many churches have placed Him in. And, like Tozer, I want to run after Him, pursue Him like a hound dog on a fox’s trail, thirst after Him like a kid after Kool-Aid on a July afternoon. I want to embrace Him in all His awesome glory, and I want time and place and peace for Him to approach me, too. Scripture tells us in the book of James that if we “draw closer to God, He will draw closer” to us. I want that connection. I want that closeness, that intimacy. And I don’t want religion getting in the way.

This week’s challenge: Read Tozer’s classic. You can get it free from Amazon for your Kindle by clicking on the picture below. And then sit down and think about how you can pursue God. Make yourself a road map, a trail guide, of steps you can take to draw closer to Him. Share them with us, if you like. But whatever you do, take those first steps. I can almost guarantee you’ll never look back!

PS I’m not an Amazon affiliate, so there’s nothing in this for me. It’s all for you…..

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First off, let me just say that this has absolutely nothing to do with frugal living, inexpensive homeschooling or anything else that the Cheap Chick normally deals with. It’s just that lately, I’ve been finding myself with things I’d like to share, or start a discourse on, and no real format in which to do that. These things are too much for Facebook, and not quite enough (I don’t anticipate, anyway) to warrant a whole other blog. So what to do with them? Well, I have a platform here at the Cheap Chick. It’s my blog and I can do with it what I want to. So, since these don’t fit into any of our established routine post titles, we’ll just call them Stuff My Head Said and leave it at that. Because really, that’s what they are – things my head keeps me awake with at night, or distracted from my work during the day. So without further ado…..

Yesterday on the Facebook page I shared a photo of a pastel drawing I’d made. It was my first ever pastel and I was quite proud of it. With it, I posted the following:

When was the last time YOU were creative? I know many of us have creative kids we encourage, but few of us actually take the time to indulge our own imaginations. So this is my call out to you this evening. Put down the book, or the tv remote or the computer and come PLAY!

It was meant to be a bit of an encouraging challenge, in a fun way, for others to rethink their own “playtime.” However, it sadly reminded one Cheap Chick of her lack of creative expression. Here’s her comment:

It is very, very true. I have been thinking about this. I used to write music, poetry, journal, letters… all kinds of stuff. And now? nothing. I also used to listen to crazy provocative music. and I had time to THINK. I am becoming who I am again. I need to buy a journal and some good pens……I think in the Christian homeschool community there is a huge emphasis on anything that is “yours” is “wrong” and therefore selfish and dishonoring to God. I think that is a lie.

This really made me sad, and I agree that I too think this is a lie. God was a creator first! The very first thing we know about God from Scripture is that He was a creator. He spoke all of Creation into being from nothingness, for crying out loud! The first time I meet my God in my Bible, He has His sleeves rolled up, getting seriously artistic with seas and stars and seasons and plants and animals and even dirt. His was the most awesome and awe inspiring brainstorm of any artist, ever, hands down. And then my Bible tells me something else about my Creator God……wait for it…..

He made ME! And He made me in HIS own image! That means that deep down inside of me lives an artist, a creator, too. Now maybe my imagination and abilities can never compare with that of the Almighty, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be artistically creative, too. I can imagine something and use my limited talent to try and create what my mind’s eye sees. Does that make me selfish? Does that mean that I am not honoring God, or serving others in some way, because I am indulging my own creative urges? I don’t think so. I think God made us creative beings so that we could honor Him through our expressions. We don’t know the impact our words, our poetry, our paintings or drawings, our creativity might have on others. I make a pair of earrings and give them away. The friend that receives them is having a really rough day, but the earrings cause her to perk up, rejoice in the blessings she has, and remember that God is with her all the time. Were those earrings a selfish waste of my time? I think not! And who knows where our creativity will come to rest? We may inspire someone else to indulge their own selfish imagination, taking them to new heights, affording them a new awareness, serving up new blessings. So my head says create as God created, for you are His child, and He is an artist. And I do. And I encourage others to do the same. It’s not selfishness in my book. If anything it’s a sacrifice of first fruits. A sacrifice of praise and joy. Like David dancing before the Lord, I dance across paper with pen, or pastel chalk, or a little pair of scissors snipping away. Like my Lord commands, I give back to Him what He has given to me. And I think we both see and call it good.

I think it’s a crying shame that some Christians can’t see it this way. They are so busy trying to be righteous, they forget what it’s like to be free. Free to meet God in a sunset, or a field of flowers, or in the face of a loved one. They forget what it’s like to let your heart burst open and your mind spill out with the sheer joy of creativity. And they wonder why they feel stagnant and stuffy. Why others view them as repressed and oppressive. They’ve forgotten what it was like to make something from nothing, take joy in it, and call it good.

One note of clarification – I do not consider sewing or crocheting or knitting from a pattern, or making something from a kit, to be truly creative. In my mind, there is a fine line between creating something from nothing, and in creative expression using someone else’s ideas. Creative expression and creative creation are two very different things – linked, but separate. The builder can build from his plans, or from the plans of another. Both buildings can be highly creative, artistic endeavors, but only in one scenario is the builder a creator, the architect. In the other, he is a builder only, constructing something using another man’s imagination.

Continue reading »]]> April showers are almost over and it’s time to say welcome to one of my favorite months of the year – May. Not quite summer, not quite spring, May reminds me of the eternal teenager, caught betwixt and between and never quite sure how to dress or behave…..Mother’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, prom night, graduations – even her holidays and celebrations are a mix of seriousness and frivolity. Darling dear, sweet May!

*He that is in a towne in May loseth his spring.  ~ George Herbert

*May is a pious fraud of the almanac.  ~ James R. Lowell

*The world’s favorite season is the spring.  All things seem possible in May. ~ Edwin Way Teale

*What potent blood hath modest May. ~ Ralph W. Emerson

*May is here! The air is fresh and sunny; And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

*Spring’s last-born darling, clear-eyed, sweet, Pauses a moment, with white twinkling feet, And golden locks in breezy play, Half teasing and half tender, to repeat Her song of “May.” ~ Susan Coleridge

*Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger, Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her The flowery May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire Mirth, and youth, and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing, Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long. ~ John Milton

*Among the changing months, May stands confest The sweetest, and in fairest colors dressed. ~ John Thomson

Enjoy your week! 8>