Standing on My Soapbox

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say "God isn't going to give you more than you can handle".  If you've ever said that to me and I've blown up at you, I'm sorry.

It's simply not true.

Someone tell me where in the Bible that little tidbit is, will you? 

I'm going to give you a hint: it's not there.

It's a misquote.  It's someone's bad interpretation of 1 Corinthians 10:13.  Let me lay that one out for you.

"No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it." (NASB)

Okay, where does that say that I'm going to be able to handle my 4 crazy kids?  Does it say God thinks I can handle a child with autism?  Or a set of twins?  Does it say anything about me being able to control my circumstances?  NO!

This verse is all about temptation.  Honestly, the biggest temptation for me is to wallow in self-pity over everything that I'm supposed to be handling.  I have an escape from that self-pity, though.  I can just hand over all my problems to God and let him handle them.  It's not easy, but since I'm fleeing the temptation to dwell on the negative, my escape is to let go of the negative and give it all over to the only One who can handle it.  It doesn't mean that I'm suddenly more of a superwoman and I handle MS, autism, twins, and everything else on my list that makes me a huge sob story.  It means that God can handle MS, autism, twins, and anything else because He is in charge.

Here's a good verse "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."Philippians 4:13 (NASB).  There's the empowering verse!  I can do all things!  Not with my own power and brains, but through HIM!  He is the one who is supplying the power here.  I can't handle anything alone.  It's only through Him that I can do anything. 

The reality is: God isn't going to give you anything in life that He can't handle.  He is the one handling my problems.  He is the one who makes me Supermommie.  I have super powers.  The cool thing is that God is offering those super powers to you too.

Science Fair

Becca has asked for the last few years if she can do a science project.  The problem is that she asks the day before it's due...until this year.  She finally decided to take the time to do a project right.  I told her she wasn't going to turn something in that is rushed and horrible, so she finally got the idea that she should ask me about it while the school was on winter break.

It began with an idea.  She wanted to google a good project, so she started there.  She liked the idea of letting food rot, but I couldn't deal with that.  She moved on to the idea of a recipe and changing it to see what happens.  I asked her what she wanted to make and the googling started again.  She found a YouTube video of a guy who made super balls and got stuck there. 

The confusion began.  She wanted to work with a partner, but she didn't clearly talk to her partner about doing it.  In the end, it was still less than a week before the project was due that they actually started.

Becca and her friend, Reina, came over to my house to do the experiment.  Over and over they made these balls and bounced them, then changed the recipe and bounced again.  They worked and worked for hours. The next day, they came back to start putting their notes together in a notebook.  They decided that they needed to type it.  This would have been no big deal to me if it weren't for the fact that they took 20 minutes typing the title page.  They asked if I would type it for them.

I began to type.  The girls wrote what they wanted for a while, but when I was typing a lot faster than they were writing, they started to dictate what they wanted on the page.  The temptation to correct them at times was overwhelming!  I figured I could ask questions to make them think about what they were saying, but I wasn't going to give them the answers.  In the end, there were so many grammatical errors, I made them read the thing aloud to each other so that they could hopefully figure out what was wrong...it mostly worked.

They went to school to turn in their notebook and it was sent back immediately.  They did too much work.  They were told to cut some things out of their experiment.  I went to the teacher in charge of the science fair and asked about it.  I asked her if it would be okay if they split the project and turned in both so they didn't have to throw away work that they did.  She loved the idea.

Another afternoon in my house!  They split the project up and then made their boards for the science fair.  My cricut got a workout that day.  Want to see a picture of their boards?

 I really wish I would have known when the science fair was, but there was no announcement at the school, no papers that went home with dates...nothing.  The few kids that came had parents that were teachers, except one who found it on the district website. In the end, Becca still got an award.

Sorry about the quality of that pic. It was an unexpected moment and all I had was my phone.  We were in the school office and I happened to be there to volunteer in Ali's class that day when Becca was called to receive her award for 1st place.  Reina got 2nd.  They didn't get sweepstakes and move on, but this was good for the first time.  Now I know what questions to ask for next year...like when is the science fair?

Now we are off to celebrate!

The House of Many Hats

My husband's grandfather passed away recently.  Tony blogged about him here.  My husband's inheritance?  A lot of hats.  Okay, he got a whole lot from his grandfather in life too, but the physical stuff that is affecting my life are these hats.

I haven't actually counted them.  There are quite a few.  Currently there are 4 huge bags (not little bags, big yard bags) filled with them sitting in my living room. 

My kids' only memory of their great-grandfather is going into his hat room (yes, there was a room in his house filled with them) and picking out a hat for a parade that went through the house.  They saw the hats and immediately remembered.  The hats are a huge legacy, and there's no way that they are just going away.

So, we have a lot of hats.  They can't stay in bags in my living room...what now?  I am sitting here trying to figure out what to do with the hats.  I want a house with order and less chaos (I know, I'm dreaming), but those hats can easily take over.  I just don't know what to do.

I am debating the idea of using my mom's room.  Many of you may know that my mom moved out a little over a year ago, but the thing is she still keeps a room here.  She's said she likes the idea of us using the room as a spare bedroom and putting a TV in there or whatever.  She just wants to be able to keep a set of clothes over here, so she doesn't need much closet space.  I am going to use her closet for linens as soon as soon as I get to organizing that room (in case you don't know, I'm organizing one space a week in my house and blogging about it here).  I have this color scheme in mind for that room and it didn't include the multicolored mass of outrageous hats (actually, not all of them are outrageous...but most are).  I just don't know if I want to go there...and I'm not sure my mom would be so thrilled either.

My favorite idea so far has been to make a collage of the kids wearing each hat and putting that up somewhere and storing the hats somehow somewhere for later use.  My husband loves these hats and really, they are very much his type of thing, so they aren't going to just disappear, but storing them is probably an option.

So the debate in my head begins.  What do I do?  If I do put them up on display in there, how do I display them?  If I only display a few, which ones should I choose?  What do I do with the rest?  Should I just take pictures of them and make them all just sit in a closet somewhere?

So...what do you think?  What should I do with all the hats?