- Subbing... and more subbing (the end of the year is generally like that, as teachers need time off to plan for the next year and whatnot),
- Working with my freshman to plan the rest of her high-school coursework,
- Helping her prepare for and then watching her perform in her first high-school drama production,
- Getting my 8th grader graduated from middle school and ready for high school,
- Chaperoning his end-of-the-year band festivals and field trips,
- Keeping my 4th grader from driving his older siblings completely bonkers (partially bonkers or almost-totally bonkers is OK though... it helps keep them from getting bored ^_^ ),
- Coordinating with various and sundry friends and family to get all 3 kids to their assorted scouting activities and camps,
- Dyeing my daughter's hair bright orange so she could portray Lucille Ball for all of the little Brownies and Juniors at Girl Scout Day Camp (it's still streaked pink in spots where the cherry Kool-Aid took more deeply to her hair than the Ion Color Brilliance Semi-Permanent Orange did),
- Spending 4 days camping at the coast (and being entertained by watching my daughter trying to find cell phone reception on the beach... "Wait! Stop walking! I've got bars now! Just so long as I don't move off of this rock right... here... Oh, hey, he's calling me back! Hi there, handsome... Drat! Gone again... Grrr... CURSE YOU T-MOBILE!!!!")
- Welcoming my baby nephew (the first child for my sister and her hubby :-D ),
- Hosting my niece from Virginia and watching as much Doctor Who as physically possible in 5 days time... which just proves the wisdom of images such as this:
... and probably half a dozen other things I've already forgotten about but that most likely seemed critically important at the time :-)
I've also kind of been suffering from a bit of writer's block... It's not that I have no ideas for what to write about; it's more like none of the ideas go very far before I lose interest or get frustrated with the tone my writing seems to be taking. So I've been taking a bit of a break from the blog and refocusing on what's really important :-) And now that the summer is winding down, I'm feeling the pull back into writing... which makes me happy :-)
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There seems to be this idea out there of "faith" being this nebulous set of standards that religious people use to justify their behavior. If I don't let my daughter or son go to see an R-rated movie, it's because such things "go against our faith." If I vote for candidates who support limits on or the abolition of abortion, I'm doing it "because of my faith." If I choose to homeschool my kids or put them in Christian schools, I'm doing it to "defend their faith." And if I listen to Christian radio or watch Christian TV, I hear constantly about the dire need to "fight for the faith."
But what IS this "faith"? And what does it mean to "have faith in" something?
The Bible says that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." (Hebrews 11:1, New King James Version). It is (as my 10-year-old's Bible phrases it) being sure of what you hope for and certain of what you can't see. For me, this puts that grand notion of "faith" into a concrete, tangible form that I can totally grasp.
We live about 100 feet from a 4-way intersection in our small college town; whenever I leave to drive pretty much anywhere, I pretty much always drive through this intersection. When I approach the intersection, I hope that my brakes are going to work; when I press my foot down on the brake pedal, I'm pretty certain that it's actually going to do something to help stop the car. I don't know for sure that the brakes are going to work; I can't see whether or not the brake lines have been cut in the night or if the bolts that connect the various parts of the brake system have snapped (can you tell yet that I'm really not a car person? ^_^ ) But still, I stomp down on that brake pedal as if my life depends on it... especially at about 2:45 in the afternoon, when all the crazy teen drivers are leaving the high school that's about 2 blocks further down the road o.O Basically, I have enough faith in my brakes to put them to use and trust that they're going to keep me from slamming into the side of that jacked up Toyota pickup filled with a half-dozen teenaged boys who seem to forget on a daily basis that that funky red octagon does not mean "Gun it!"
Some of the other things I put faith in are a little less mundane. I have faith that, if my home gets broken into, I can and should call the police and have them investigate; I also have faith that, if the burglar is found, he will be prosecuted in the court of law. Why do I have this faith in our police and legal system? Not because it always works the way I expect it to or because it's always worked perfectly in every circumstance, that's for sure o.O But I do have faith in it because it seems that, more often than not, it does work, and I have never found myself shortchanged by it. If I ever do find myself on the losing end of the legal system or end up being ripped off by the cops I assume are going to protect me, I might change my point of view on the system. But for now, based on my own personal experiences, I choose to have faith in the system.
And then there are the big-picture things of life that I also put my faith in. I have faith that, if I raise my kids to respect others, work hard, be obedient to parents, teachers, employers, and police officers, and think critically, then they will be successful in their lives as adults. I have absolutely no way whatsoever to prove now that they will end up that way; in fact, there are countless examples in the world of kids whose parents did everything "right" but who still ended up shipwrecking their own lives as teens or adults. I choose to have faith in the belief that we're raising our kids right because to not raise our kids this way seems to be begging for trouble. And as we raise our kids and watch them become respectful, smart, responsible young adults, I see confirmation that my faith in their upbringing is valid.
Brake lines... law & order... good parenting: These are some of the things I choose to have faith in...
And so, I suspect, do you.
We all have faith in all kinds of stuff... Faith is simply believing in something strongly enough to put it to use in our daily life. We have faith that the sun is going to come up tomorrow; when we lay down at night and close our eyes, we have faith that we're going to wake up in the morning. We have faith that, when we walk down the sidewalk, all the cars are going to stay in their lanes on the road and not hop the curb and mow us down like unruly blades of grass.
As a counterexample, just try to imagine what your day would be like without faith in any of these things... Imagine that, once the sun drops below the horizon, it might or might not rise ever again. Imagine, as you tuck yourself into your bed, that you might stop breathing and die at any point after you fall asleep. Imagine walking along the roadside and expecting every car to veer off course and crush you.
You'd be scared to death of living at all... And so would I, without faith. Faith is being sure of what we hope for (that the cars will stay in their rightful lanes, that our lungs will keep inhaling and exhaling even as we're dreaming of our Language Arts teacher waxing our feet, that the sun will come up tomorrow... bet your bottom dollar that tomorroooooow, there'll be suuuuunnnn...) and certain of what we cannot yet see (the unbroken brake lines in our car, the integrity of the police and the judges in their courtrooms, the future of our children). We all have faith in something, and that's an undeniable fact of life.
The question, then, that divides Christians and non-Christians is not "Do you have faith?" It's the question "What do you put your faith in?" And that, in the interest of keeping this post short, is a topic for another day :-)
