Life’s Lemonade Lesson #3

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Life’s Lemonade Lesson #1: Go out of your way to be thankful and never miss an opportunity to lift someone up.

Life’s Lemonade Lesson #2: Don’t let your kids get away with murder just because life is hard right now.

Life’s Lemonade Lesson #3: Don’t let insensitive people make you feel guilty because you are struggling with your current situation.

Let me start by saying that my family and I have been surrounded by an overwhelming amount of love, support, help and prayer throughout this meningitis nightmare. I honestly do NOT know how we would have survived without them and we are forever grateful.

However… a couple of people made some cutting comments while I was in the hospital that I have really struggled with. Instead of dwelling on their negativity, I’m trying to focus on what God might be trying to teach me through their insensitive words. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

It’s alright to struggle. God allows us to struggle because He draws us closer to Him when we do. In our darkest, most painful moments, we realize just how much we need Him. And if we are smart, we will hang on to Him and stay focused on that need when life gets better.

There will always be someone who is in a situation that is “worse” than the one you are experiencing. There will always be babies starving in Africa… someone who just lost a loved one… a person suffering from a more painful illness… and someone who suddenly lost everything. But other people’s “worse” situations shouldn’t make us feel guilty about our “lesser” misery. Instead, our misery should make us more compassionate about those that are also struggling.

It’s alright to feel. It’s alright to be depressed because an illness hurts really badly and you are quarantined in the hospital for 5 days. It’s alright to be down because you don’t like your job. It’s alright to struggle because you feel lonely. It IS alright to feel.

But it’s NOT alright to wallow. So instead of letting those not-so-nice comments get to you, use your pain as motivation to help someone else… even if it’s just to pray for them. The devil wants nothing more than to make us feel alone and he has no problem getting ugly to make that happen. Feel what you need to feel but do it without letting him win.

Every Child Should Own A Book: WE DID IT!!

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2 blog posts in 1 day!?!? What’s going on? Well, I was just too excited to wait to tell you about this one…

Do you remember when I freaked out because my son’s kindergarten teacher indicated that some of the kids in his school don’t own any books? And I just couldn’t handle it? So I suggested that instead of buying junk for school party treat bags, we should be purchasing the $1 books from Scholastic.

And then I had the crazy idea that EVERY student in my son’s school should own a book before the end of the year. So I had my kids sell an insane amount of pumpkin muffins, chocolate chip cookies and water at our garage sale. All of the money was set aside to buy $1 books. And then some of you generously donated some extra books to the cause.

Guess what? We were able to purchase close to 400 books – one for EVERY student in my son’s school!!!!! How cool is that???

And these are junk books, my friends. They are just books that are on sale. I purposely purchased books that were one grade higher than each class so that each child would have something challenging to read over the summer. And if the book is too much for a particular student, I figured it would serve as a good goal… to be able to read the book that they own.

Here are a sampling of the books.

My son’s teacher told me that the first graders were thrilled to own a chapter book. Some of them have not even been able to touch one yet, so they are excited to work on reading their very own chapter book.

Here is a thank you card we got from one of the classes. How fun!

Thank you… thank you for praying about this… thank you for donating… thank you for “buying muffins for Jesus!”

Now since we aren’t doing garage sales anymore, I have to come up with a creative way for my kids to earn money to buy books for next year’s classes…

Life’s Lemonade Lesson #2

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Life’s Lemonade Lesson #1: Go out of your way to be thankful and never miss an opportunity to lift someone up.

Life’s Lemonade Lesson #2: Don’t let your kids get away with murder just because life is hard right now.

Life is hard. And sometimes it’s really hard.

Sometimes I think, as parents, we feel so guilty when life gets difficult that we allow our kids to behave badly and act out. I think we are actually doing them a great disservice when we let that happen.

The last three months in Schneiderland have been hard. My mom had her hip replaced in February. I injured my back at the same time. On Easter, my daughter had pinkeye which turned out to be an adenovirus. The entire family got it. It was BRUTAL. No sooner did we get over that then my husband got a bad case of bursitis in his knee that led to bleeding in his entire leg. The poor guy still has swelling and I go down with meningitis on OUR BIRTHDAY which was 3 days before Mother’s Day. Needless to say, we are meeting our insurance deductible early this year.

We spent 3 or 4 weeks helping my parents after her surgery. Life was far from normal. This was particularly difficult for my sweet babies who like and seem to need order. And there was some whining. Understandably so. We quickly learned that this was an amazing opportunity from God to teach our children a few things:

• Life is unpredictable. You have to be able to go with the flow when it becomes necessary.
• When people are hurt, you help. Why? Because being hurt or sick is hard enough, doing it alone is impossible. That’s why God wants us to live in community.
• It’s lonely when you are in pain. Being present with someone is an amazing and FREE gift we can give them to help them heal faster.

So when I spent 5 days in the hospital, my kids knew the drill. Life is not going to be normal for awhile, but it’s going to be alright… even if alright is a new normal. They have had a few moments, but some friendly reminders have quickly gotten them back on track.

Look, I’m not crazy nor am I unrealistic. We are all going to have our moments when stuff goes wrong. I even think it’s healthy to have an ugly cry or two along the way. What I don’t think is ok is to wallow in it. And I really don’t want to raise my little people to be wallowers. God is too big to waste our time wallowing. And people are too amazing to waste our time with them behaving badly.

Kids are stronger than we often give them credit for. Don’t waste opportunities to help them to grow even stronger and to help build their character.