Miracle One

 Miracle One: Sell This House

Well, the inks dry. My heart says it's final. It lasted  2 weeks on the MLS. We told our children not to sweat  the house for sale because in this economy it would take a miracle to sell. Then we all prayed  that God would grant us two miracles. Miracle One, sell this home and Miracle Two, provide a new one. We live in Florida so selling a  house without paying the buyer to take it requires a miracle of massive proportions. We embarked on a faith building exercise. God's taken us up on our endeavor.

We listed this domicile on a spur. Years ago, The Man and I decided to sell and downsize. Our home demands too much of us. It's like a screaming toddler requiring our undivided attention and every time we think we've got it settled down it presents us with a new time consuming, resource consuming issue. Four years ago we came to this  realization and we scrubbed it clean and windows sparkled and people came, but no one bought. It went on like this for a year. Exhausted we decided this must be our home for now and God would let us know when to move on.

The desire to move was firmly planted in our hearts but we had no plan to act on it. The kids were on Summer Adventures and us adults left alone to finish thoughts and do homework. We found that houses around us were selling. We contacted an agent and she informed us it's true. One week later it was listed. Two weeks later and we're doing appraisals, home inspections with a rock solid contract and I'm reeling wondering how did we get here and where do we go from here.

When I answered the customary phone call asking  if some folks could come look at the house  I said certainly and packed the kids up to run errands. As we pulled out of the  neighborhood Girlie #2 informed me that these were the folks who would buy our house. I started, my spirit said the same. They were only the second viewers.

Girlie #2's inspired utterings proved correct. Those selfsame folks presented an offer. It arrived the same day another couple had an  appointment to view. We waited  to respond. The second  family wanted to make a full price offer. This cemented the resolve of our first folks. They were bidding up the price of our house all on their own. We made a counter offer and our agent didn't even get a chance to present it before they came back with a higher offer.This type of sale, the norm seven years ago, is unheard of today. It's a bargain basement price these buyers are getting, but we won't be paying them to take our domicile. We reel at the miraculousness of it all.

As all this whizzes around us we struggle. We've put sweat, vision, heart and memories into the walls of this house, but when you are called to a new land, you go. Yes, you go and pray you don't make such a mess of the going that you end up wandering in the desert for 40 years. As we pray for Miracle number Two we're following up on that, asking God to protect us from ourselves, our grumblings, our pinings for  leeks and onions, or in our case hardwood floors and a fountain laden swimming pool. He already knows where we're going and  it would seem we're going to get that information 'Just in Time'. I'm centering my focus on him and learning to be patient.

How to Drive a Stake Part 2: Just Go!

Granted, she said it quite a bit ago, and her yearly digits were smaller, but it shocked me all the same. It seems a sense of entitlement flows steady and fast through the veins of my children. I'm not proud of it. I'm just stating the facts. The day she said it was the day my eyes opened wide to the reality of the path my American Babies were walking. It needed redirection.

I read World Magazine faithfully. I love that magazine. It often covers news that no one, I really mean no one else is covering. And the news that everyone is covering....Well, it just gives a different perspective. Isn't that what America is all about, the freedom to see it all from a different perspective. My dedication to a new issue's arrival peaked the curiosities of resident children. Thus, they began to pick it up and read.

In the kitchen, assembling lunch, she assisted me in various directed ways. We were chatting and in the midst of our discussions she commented, "Mom, people don't really live like those pictures in the magazine. That's all just staged for the picture right?" I had to stop and clarify what she was saying and indeed I had heard her correctly.

This incredibly blessed, American born, healthy girl had convinced herself that folks don't live that way. Those photographs of cardboard box homes, babies with bellies swollen from malnourishment and shoeless feet from lack of resources....  well, she convinced herself it all staged to pull at her heartstrings. In her mind, at the end of the photo shoot, they went home to dwellings much like the one she called  home. I immediately had a pow-wow  with her Daddy.

It didn't require a lot of prayer, or even thought, to decide we would find a place to serve and just go. The original plan included one child and one Dad but as we mined deeper into the hearts of her siblings we found similar veins of entitlement and our trip became a family affair.

So, June 25th we'll load our Party of 5! onto a plane for the Dominican Republic. Working alongside  missionaries who live there we will serve. The local church has a dirt floor and the walls are crumbling. The native pastor's home has electrical wires dangling dangerously from his walls and we know what to do about that. We have bought up shoes and plan to teach Sunday School. We're preparing our hearts  and our minds with resources like  Foreign to Familiar written by Sarah A. Lanier. It's helping us better understand other cultures so we can be good guests in their country.

We're  hard workers and we plan to push ourselves and serve well. I'm praying children's hearts are changed, eyes opened wide to see the world the way their God sees it.  I'm praying for a life changing trip. I'm praying our hearts are forever moved so the next time we see the depravity on the glossy pages of a magazine we will immediately be drawn to prayer. That those prayers include asking God how we can be the hands and feet to those in need.

Oh, how I'd  appreciate your company down here on my knees. You could pray for our team as we travel. Our group is full of families, like us, learning to serve together. The photo below shows all the teams serving this summer from our home church. We're the Yellow Team and we're 23 members in all! We will be traveling at the end of June and we thank you so much for encouraging us as you lift us up to our heavenly father.

Blessings to you all!

How to Drive a Stake Part 1

In days of B.C. (before children) The Man would jokingly say that each child birthed would receive a pick axe and a shovel as their welcome into this world. To this day when they begin the incessant questions about birthday gifts this is his go to response. It drives the kids crazy. I just laugh.

There are tools my children really need. Some of these tools I'm just now learning to wield.

When we hurled ourselves into the whole 'spearhead your child's education' thing I felt lost. I researched the bazillion books and conventions, blogs and websites that offer insight. Frustration ran deep as the more insight I researched the more questions I had.

Answers started coming with my first read by John Taylor Gatto. I felt misgivings about the education I'd received. I partook of a 'Top Notch' education including private schools, an Advanced Diploma from a top rated high school and several years in a prestigious private college. But, I still felt the education I'd received left much to be desired. To me it seemed I received pieces of paper (diplomas) almost just for showing up. Gatto put all my thoughts and concerns in black and white and stamped them as valid.

While Gatto called out today's educational system and exposed its rotting foundation, I found in Oliver De Mille's writings hope and a game plan I could implement in my children's education.

He describes three major types of schooling:

Conveyor Belt

Professional 

Leadership 

To be truthful the United States education system is filling two types well. The Man and I have been trained by the school system in Conveyor Belt and Professional. We have been told how to think, what to think and when.

Don't believe me then get a hold of this video on textbook writers:

 Fox News Reporting, "Do You Know What Textbooks Your Children Are Really Reading?"

 

You can watch a bit of the video here (segment 2):
(check out Youtube to view other segments)


Education woes in the U.S. are due in part to it's missing group, the one education model that has been sorely neglected, Leadership Education. (The neglect has been purposeful but that's a post for another day, or start the research on your own with Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education or start reading at his website).

Leadership education in America is nearly extinct. This model of learning's primary purpose is teaching how to think. It prepares one to lead. Lead in their homes, towns, businesses. Become Entrepreneurs, Problem Solvers, people who instinctively know the right thing to do and have the ability to follow it through to completion, doing it well.

At the heart of Leadership Education is Freedom:

...leadership preparation, which has three primary goals. First, its purpose is to train thinkers, leaders, entrepreneurs and statesmen--individuals with the character, competence and capacity to do the right thing and do it well in business, government, church, school, family, entertainment, research and other organizations.

The second goal is to perpetuate freedom, to prepare people who know what freedom is, what is required to maintain it, and who exert the will to do what is required. These two goals are accomplished by the third: teaching students how to think. Those who know how to think are able to lead effectively and are able to help society remain free and prosperous. Those who know only what to think or when, no matter how valuable their contributions to society, are not capable of maintaining freedom or leading us to real progress without additional leadership skills.

~A Thomas Jefferson Education By Oliver De Mille

It is Leadership Education that creates great businessmen, statesmen in government and it built this Republic we call home. This is how Thomas Jefferson and our founding fathers were educated. This is the education I want for my children.

Having an education background in the models of Conveyor Belt and Professional I find training Leaders a sort of dual enrollment. I learn right alongside my students. I cannot instruct my children in the ways to drive a stake through the vampire of the American Dream if they do not know how to think for themselves.

Understanding education, the different models, and how they groom people to specific purposes is the first step in educating my children to live a Radical life. It is a tool I give them and side by side we are learning to wield it.