She had a strong seizure. It broke the normal pattern for her of occurring sometime in the early morning hours, usually between 5 and 7 am; it arrived before she was fully asleep, at around 9:30 pm. and she couldn’t stop it this time. By the time we realized it was happening, she was already graying in the face, eyes wide open, glazed and unseeing, simultaneously choking on her own saliva and wallowing in it, gulping huge swallows of air, body rigid and racked with spasms. It took a long time to come out of it. Speech is one of the last things to be restored to her and as she finally was able to comprehend our presence, during moments of wailing, and obvious anguish, she was trying to tell me something and I could understand nothing but indistinct formless vowel sounds. It wasn’t until she was able to lose her supper that she found relief from the abdominal pain, the seizure was completely broken and she was finally able to speak coherently.

For the record, I hate seizures, really hate them. How can I not, by watching a child writhe in agony, contorted by a strength that is not controllable? I regret every impatient word I have ever spoken, every unjust verdict I have ever pronounced and every irritation that has harboured rejection. Fear courses through my veins, wondering if this time might be too serious for us to handle at home.? There is nothing to DO and I want to ‘do’ something to bring relief. I want to smooth away the tears, assuage the fear and erase the memory of such a-natural behavior. I want the hands of a healer.  I want to see light, hope and rest, peace, joy and confidence. I cry.

I feel a nudge in my heart, knowing that for those tears, he died. He doesn’t find this very acceptable either. If I in my selfish and imperfect passion can feel such depth of feeling, know such grief, and helplessly long to intervene; I turn in my heart and see the anguish of a Father. We are caught in our own form of a seizure…

“and God shall wipe away all tears”.

“Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.”

For now, I am brought one step closer to knowing the heart of God.

It had been years since I had made these wonderful baked donuts, and I ended up making them twice this week. Once to share with some friends and another time so I could photograph the process to share with my good friend Lisa.

Hi Lisa! I hope your family enjoys these Cinnamon Baked Donuts!

This post is going to include a lot of pictures, I hope it is not too boring and hopefully a bit helpful.

First I will start out with the recipe ingredients and then we will dive in and walk through the process.

Cinnamon (or not, if you don’t prefer) Baked Donuts

makes approx. 18

3/4 c milk, scalded and cooled

1/4 c sugar

1/4 butter, melted

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

1/2 c warm water

1 pkt yeast

3 – 3 1/2 c flour

2 Tablespoons melted butter

1/2 c sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

______________________________________

Ok, now we are ready to jump into the more nitty-gritty of ‘how-to’

Scald the milk. I do this small an amount in the microwave. About a minute and 50 seconds (2 minutes boiled it over for me! :) Cool to lukewarm – slightly warm to your hand on the side of the measuring cup.  As you can see, it forms a ‘skin’ on the top. This is a certain enzyme (?) that if you remove it, will make a nicer bread texture, but if you forget, it won’t be a big deal for these donuts

After taking the skin off, I put the butter in the milk and heated it again in the microwave for about 20 seconds to melt it, but you can do it separately too. Just make SURE the temperature is only just warm when you add the yeast mixture later or it will kill the yeast! :)  (been there done that)

Stir the yeast into the warm water, set aside.

Sugar. You can also add a few grains of sugar into the water in which you dissolve the yeast to help get it ‘going’ otherwise, just dump it all into the milk with the butter, salt and vanilla

Break an egg into a large bowl, beat, pour the milk mixture into it

Being certain the egg mixture is only warm, pour in the yeast mixture.

Stir until well combined. Start adding flour, one cup at a time, stirring well after each addition.

Flour. I use half White Whole Wheat flour, half White All-Purpose flour. You are welcome to use all white flour if you so choose, it will work fine! Just make sure whatever combination you use, to spoon the flour into the cup rather than scooping when you measure, you want doughnut dough to be sticky, not dry and tough because of too much flour!

Getting ready to knead

It will be fairly sticky at first, but because of the high butter content, will soon knead nicely enough without using much extra flour than what is called for in the recipe

I only knead it for a couple minutes, until smooth. (Or until the photographer was finished taking pix. Al was the unlucky one to stroll by at this moment and I gave him the camera to get some close-ups of the kneading process. He didn’t follow instructions too well :) and then I forgot to crop the pictures so this process is a little hard to see. Sorry.

Place dough back into the mixing bowl.

This is a buttery dough so I do not think you would have to grease the bowl and the top of the dough, but I did give it a quick mist just in case.

Cover with a damp tea towel, set the timer for 1 hour.

After one hour the dough doesn’t look a whole lot different, just smoother and slightly puffy.

flatten on a lightly floured countertop, either with your hands or finish with a rolling pin to 1/2 inch thickness

Not like this, I made it too thin, consequently, we had 24 small donuts instead of 18 regular size

Cut. I am NOT a fan of re-rolling, so I just cut squares and use the removable center of a doughnut cutter to make the holes

Place on baking sheets, I like to use parchment paper on the cookie sheets, they do not stick or burn as quickly with the paper, but it is optional.

Set to rise for about an hour. Sometime before that hour is up, preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In the oven. I use Convection Bake so that I don’t have to rotate the trays, Otherwise I would recommend just one tray at a time.

Bake 3-5 minutes (for me it is always 4 minutes)

Melt the butter for brushing and prepare the cinnamon sugar while they bake

While still warm, brush with melted butter

Dip in cinnamon sugar

I nabbed Betsy to take these pictures because by now my fingers were not camera ready…

Best eaten fresh.

Enjoy!

But one thing I can tell you about myself that takes courage to admit is that I am irritated by waste. And why it takes courage is this: I will even go so far as to pull half eaten apples out of the garbage bucket, rinse them off and finish eating them according to my definition of finished.

And today, just about all of who I am converged on that garbage bucket. The teacher in me, the mother, the philanthropist, the gardener, the free thinker, the irritated conservation officer, all converged on that bucket and I had enough of it, enough of the waste, enough of eating someone’s garbage. So I formed a plan.

Allow me to insert this aside here, we eat quite a few apples around here, they are a great wintertime snack. The ones in the photos are Jonagolds, excellent although not great keepers and a little past their prime at this time of year. The cores that often end up in the garbage are often significantly more substantial than the one in the center.  And as for the garbage bucket, it would be wise maybe to explain that I have a separate container in my kitchen that all scraps go into that are headed for the compost pile, things like carrot peels and grapefruit rinds, etc.

Anyway,

My plan was simply this, to illustrate to my children why we don’t throw half eaten food away. I knew I would need to capture their attention by more than just another instruction from Mom that would probably go in one ear and out the other so I stooped a bit and caught them just a whisker by their greed. Money. Oh dear.

My kids are still young enough that they will pounce upon a penny, because even a penny has power and they know that 25 of them will enable them to procure a handful of candy from a gumball machine. And we try to teach our children to respect even the lowly penny because too many in this world are only pennies away from starvation, and many are perishing or have perished for lack of that power.

Back to the teaching moment. Math class.

The whole apple on the right weighs almost exactly 1/2 a pound, The core in the center weighs just under a 1/4 lb and the core on the left, weighs significantly less than one ounce.

I presented them with the numbers. We buy apples by the pound. If we paid $.80/lb for the apple on the right, it cost us 40 cents.

That means that the core in the center which weighs about half that, was about 20 cents worth of apple, and we just threw it away.

While the core on the left, was probably less than 5 cents worth.

Their eyes were big.

One head in particular was hanging very low knowing full well that they were a big culprit in this waste.

I relented.

Well, not completely. But we went on to talk about that in addition to the money waste involved, there is also the careless attitude to guard against, knowing full well that far too many would be eager to eat even that beleaguered core on the left.

And if anyone finds that they just cannot finish their apple, it is fine to put it in a container and set it aside to finish at a later time. Or simply bring it to Mom, that is far preferable to pulling it out of the garbage…

As an aside, allow me to balance that list. I loved when Daddy was the song leader and I loved Nancy Brubaker’s quavery voice when I was in preschool and she was the teacher. I loved putting stickers on charts and playing wild games of tag with the large group of older kids after church. I loved the smell and feel of Daddy’s suit coat as I leaned against him during the service and I loved the disappointment of too cold water out of the water fountain. I was very pleased when I mastered that fountain without getting my front soaked from it. I loved sitting with Grandma Miller and being allowed to find the 2 M&M’s she had secreted in her purse. I loved watching my fifth grade teacher wave her blood red daggers around as she taught.

There, there were good things!

Now, on with my subject.

As a child, church was boring to me. And I think that is perfectly fine. Church was not meant to be exciting to the small ones. Church was not originally designed to be entertaining. And to be honest, I think we have made a mistake in attempting to make it that. Let me explain.

The unspoken question I read in some peoples eyes is: “Why don’t you send your kids down to children’s church during the main service?”

On more than one occasion, the pastor of our church has assured us that he is completely fine with us having our children in the church service from babyhood on up, with all the attending squeals and ruckus that may afford. Not everyone is too pleased with that, but he is fine with it. This is a relief to me as I feel that this is a wise thing. Up till now, I had simply phrased the answer in my head as “oh, it is good for them to learn to sit and to be bored” but now I think I can put more of an explanation to it than I had before. Let me give it a try.

First we are going to have to establish some basic understanding of children and then we are going to have to get out the microscope and really zoom in and analyze this subject.

When God blesses you with a son or daughter, it is a gift from Him and you are given the intense and staggering privilege of nurturing that child to adulthood. In reality, that child is not actually yours but rather a beloved child of God’s that you are taking care of in their formative years. Because children start out with basically a clean slate, the sin nature and an inborn sense of worship, they cling to you as their guide and hero(s). They innately long for you to constrain them to do what is right since they already have the law written on their hearts.  You are your child’s first impression of what God is like and they want to please you.

When you are faithful to lead your family aright, and constrain them to do what is right and good, your child not only learns good habits, they also learn, by submitting to you, how to submit to the ultimate authority, God. Yes it is true, they might not choose to submit to him someday but at least y0u have given him or her the tools to be able to do so.

See it? You are ‘God’ to them when they are very young and so when they know how to happily submit to that as a child, as they mature to start being accountable they can then comprehend the sense of submitting to the Lordship of Christ. It makes sense to them when they are older and it becomes desirable. They soon realize that you are NOT God but now have the skills to be able to joyfully submit to the one true God.

Now, what does this have to do with church?

When you suffer plow your way through those first 2-3 difficult years of teaching you child to sit in church, and you are victorious in accomplishing this goal of them sitting, quietly, with hardly any toys/distractions and all the attendant boredom they feel; it is good because they have learned this from you in the roll of ‘God’ to them and they have completed a huge hurdle in being able to happily submit, be quiet, and know how to be unsatisfied [with entertainment], in short, they learn self-denial in the context of worshiping the one true God. You have just completed another step of ‘making straight paths’ for your children, removing another stumbling block and showing them the way to God.

Listen, I will be honest with you. A walk with the Lord is not a walk in the park. It is not easy, it is not at all appealing to the flesh. It hurts at times, it can be ‘boring’ from a fleshly standpoint.

A walk with the Lord is more about listening in the stillness of heart than it is about doing exciting things. It is more about laying down interests and activities and focusing on a kingdom that is not of this world, not easily discernible with eyes of flesh. It takes a lot of patience and fortitude and strength to walk in that path. As a parent, it is my responsibility to give my child as much of a boost as I can for them to be able to comprehend this kingdom.

I want my children to be molded by submission to authority, first mine (although sadly imperfect) when they are little and secondly when they mature into a position of knowledgeable choice it can segue into joyful submission to God. In this they will find the freedom that sets man free. And if God has made you free, you are free indeed. I want my children to be free!

Church is a completely unique phenomenon of the week. Church gives me one hour of opportunity in my week for me to (lovingly) constrain my child to be still, endure and listen. An hour, when the group gathered, is there to honor the Lord God. A time vastly different than any other time of your child’s week. A day to acknowledge that God is holy, a mystery. A day to remember that God rested and to honor the fact that we are commanded to take a day of rest also.  I have been grateful for that one hour and that unique day. I hope you are too.

Now I want to briefly look at the flip side.

A child that is not taught this discipline.

Many people rather than fight the exhaustive fight of accomplishing this goal of quiet kids in church, instead will rely on the fact that kids will learn this later in life. By the time they are maybe 8 years old they will sit fairly good and behave enough to be acceptable and by the time they are teenagers, they have this pretty much down pat.

Yes, that is right, most kids will learn this skill eventually.

Gradually, a child realizes that to be socially acceptable and tolerated, they need to conform to the prevailing behavior of the group they are in. And so, they sit quietly and behave in church, because peer pressure and self image dictate the importance of it.

But guess what, your child now knows very little about how to instinctively do this because of responding to a higher authority. Instead they are now simply molded by expectations and their own selfish interests.

And so we gather together to worship the Lord God and much of our underlying motivation, constraints and habits are selfish. Is it any wonder then that God himself tells us that even our righteousness is like filthy rags in his sight?

When I am controlled by the opinions and expectations of other men and by selfish interests, I am not being controlled by the Spirit, I am being controlled by self.

I know this paints an ugly picture. Most human choices are ugly. This look was not intended, by any stretch, to imply that there is no hope for someone if they were not properly raised in this environment. No, it is simply an indepth look at what is going on in a home that is in proper relation to the Lord. And also a small commentary on the christian culture in our churches today. And Praise God that in his infinite love and mercy, even the most destitute and broken soul can find freedom and purity of motives under the Lordship of Jesus! Praise God.

But now we will step back a bit, draw a deep breath from looking at this matter through a microscope and look at the bigger picture again.

I set out to explain to you ‘in macro’ (photography that is, not a series of slash commands for all you computer people) why I (we) do not choose for our children to attend children’s church during the regular church service. [There is another reason I hold important that I will not here expound on. If you really wanted to know it, you will have to ask me] I hope that I made sense even if it was just a little. I pray that if this can at all cause you to examine and refine your choices, for the better, how ever that may look, that is good.

I guess the ‘why bother?’ really comes down to an attempt, be it ever feeble, to do whatever I can to make ‘straight paths’ for my children’s feet. I encourage you to do the same in whatever capacity you can.

“I think I will add Mom to my salad.”

” Nah, I am old and tough”

“No you’re not, you are fat and juicy!”

“What!?!”

“Hehe, I was just quoting The Enormous Crocodile”

I never even heard of the book.

I am not sure at all if I can keep up with these kids anymore…

Today I was pleased to be rewarded with such a happening. I will attempt to explain, but first I need to back up a bit

For quite awhile now my one daughter has been begging me to “read through the Bible in a year” with her. Normally my knee-jerk reaction would be to say, “read it through yourself”, but since she is just nine years old and reading is not yet her strong point, my better judgement intervened and so we have commenced this journey with the new year.

It is quite a different task to read to one’s self as opposed to reading aloud, particularly to one who is young and hearing things for the first time. I suspect we shall need to take it slow at times as there will be many new things for her to digest and talk about. And there will be some things, honestly, I shrink from reading. We shall ‘cross that bridge when we get there’ I guess. But I also look forward to regaining a sense of reading it for the first time as I walk with her through this.

Today, on the very first day, I saw something I never saw before in Genesis 1. And I don’t believe I have ever heard anyone comment on it before either. It vibrated a soft chord in my consciousness, a zephyr of recognition, if you will. So slight that perhaps I would not have remembered without a later reference to the subject in the morning’s sermon. I will elaborate.

The reference was the magi who followed the ‘star’ to Bethlehem to pay homage to the King of Heaven and Earth.

These men have been somewhat puzzling to me, I have always sort of equated star-gazing/worshiping, zodiac, astrology, etc…, with a misguided, primitive and futile imagination. Am I the only one who has almost chuckled internally at them for following this star? Come on, it was probably a comet that was just coming around on schedule. Or some other cosmic aberration that occurred naturally (read: explainably) at that time. But obviously these men knew and understood far more than I do.

And then that chord vibrated again in my consciousness and I remembered and saw the significance of Genesis 1, verse 14.  (underscore is my addition) (this is before the creation of the sun and moon )

Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;

Or as the NIV says it: … let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,

God, in His infinite wisdom, placed these ‘lights’ there for the very purpose of ‘signs’!

In this age of discovery and science and facts, we become jaded to the wonder and mystery that is inherently present in our world, our universe. We seek facts and explanations and analytical verification of all things, and yes, these things are good too, but I was reminded once again that man can be limited by this curiosity. There is a degree of understanding that far surpasses understanding the scientific explanation and is only understood by a level of discernment and purity of heart that is blessed by God.

And so I am humbled once again, first by the magi who were so very knowledgeable of and sensitive to the leading of the Lord God,

and then by the wonderment and truth so gently bestowed through the lovely serendipity of the Word read and almost missed except by a  passing reference in a Sunday sermon that awoke the memory.

“I wanted to make it really beautiful Mom, so I put these leaves on top”

I think I’ll keep her.

Being the type with an inquiring mind, I was prompted to do some more research about how and where the Hebrew nation fit into the Egyptian timeline. I was curious to know if there were any significant marks and effects left by the supporting role of the Jews in Egypt from a secular point of view. I was not coming up with too much until I compared a timeline of ‘key dates of ancient Egypt’ and a timeline of ‘Jewish history’.

From the World History point of view,  1550 BC  is noted that Egypt, in a phase called the ‘New Kingdom’, is at it’s largest and wealthiest.

On the Jewish timeline 2216 (1546 BC), Joseph was sold into slavery.

My eyes started to be glued to the screen. Do you see it?

I skimmed through the Bible, the story of Joseph, and realized that God plunked him right into the peak of the Egyptian Empire and by his wise leading, they prospered and were not destroyed!

I love that! All to often we get caught up into seeing world powers and prosperity from a secular point of view and forget the greater power behind the entire workings of our world. We become blase’ and calloused in our thinking. We fall for the lie that ‘by my own hand I have gotten this’ or are blinded by cause and effect.

May we all be even just a little bit more like Joseph, not staggered by fear, choked by despair, or foundered by bitterness. All stumbling blocks that surely he faced. May we all be even just a little bit more faithful and trusting in our God. Putting behind us the the critique of leadership and more in tune to the voice of the Lord. Let us rather practice the presence of the Holy Spirit, focusing on the bigger picture and trusting God to bring all things right in the end.

Remember:

“The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; he turns it wherever he wishes.” Proverbs 21:1

“Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no eagle”

Perhaps it begs some explanation as to why a small one would hear, absorb, and conceive this as making sense.

A while back, my husband procured a game for the kids to play on the Ipad called ‘Oregon Trail’.

In this game, you choose your characters and various criteria about food, money, and I don’t know what all, as you travel by covered wagon from the beginning of the trail (Missouri?) to Oregon. The actual journey in times past, was a rather dangerous and difficult experience; so naturally while the game includes many good things that can happen, it seems that even more bad things can happen, to the degree one might not complete the game at all.

On their first try at this game, my kids chose their characters as Pa, Ma, Mary and Laura (Ingalls). Not too far into the journey, Laura was abducted and eaten air-lifted by an eagle and never returned. What trauma! My kids love Mary and Laura. :)

My guess is that the creators of the game figured that if they chose something so incredibily impossible as an eagle carrying off whole people, it would be understood  as laughable. Not so here in the Nyveldt household. We fear eagles.

So now, can you see why it would make complete sense to a young mind that we really do need a reason not to fear the eagles? As I contemplate this picture, I actually don’t mind too much the misinterpretation. Small kids can hardly wrap their minds around the concept of ‘evil’. While they do comprehend their propensity to do wrong and ‘the lions under the bed’, it is not interpreted as ‘evil’ and I would certainly hope not, therefore the ‘eagles’ add a degree of reality to the scripture that is not entirely out of place.

Fear no eagle. I like that. We will keep that for now.

For me it did not get off to such a glorious start since I did not so much think about packing until 9 am Saturday morning and we cannot even begin to get a family of 6 out the door in one hour without more forethought. So I rushed around (just for the record – not in this order), yanking a comb through my daughters hair (gave up and ordered her into the shower to try and tame/detangle the bush) threw random clothes into bags, took my turns in (FB) Scrabble, hastily piled the breakfast dishes in the sink, forgot to buzz Jack’s hair, poured a bit of bleach into each commode so the place would at least smell somewhat clean when we returned (and then of course, they needed to be used again…) Yelling at everyone to for goodness sake, ‘eat your breakfast! we need to leave soon!’ and ‘Do your chores, now!’ Showered, ran out to the barn to rescue my screaming son thinking our attack cat must have hit again, but he was only mad at the chickens because he couldn’t keep them out of the catfood dish (yes, we do have a dangerous cat, beware when you come to visit, well actually, just stay out of the barn) And then after all that, most of us sat in the car and waited. Waited until the last were ready. And we drove off, forgetting to close the garage door. Which of course we did not realize until we returned home.

We had a great weekend! Come and enjoy the pics!

As usual, click on any picture to see it larger.

Ultimate Frisbee

Some players were happier than others. I think he got walloped somehow.

Some came prepared to play.

Others did not.

I think this is why football players wear a mouthpiece? Am I right?

It is a game about a lot of reaching, stretching….

He played with all his heart and soul.

The kids certainly enjoyed being included in the game.

Next up: Zip Line!

The beginning

The first person to try the zip line! Thanks for showing us how it is done!

Next

She looked so unruffled.  :)

Debi, the first person to make a graceful landing!

Some folks were not content with a ‘normal’ ride!

No, there is not going to be anything to grab onto to save you from an inglorious landing.

Meanwhile, some were doing the scavenger hunt

Attempting to catch a tadpole

final instructions

the most enthusiastic launch!

Others preferred to see what was coming from a different angle

To the tree, to the tree!

I will pretend and say this was an artistic crop and I tried this pose.

the climb to the platform

Betsy on the way up

did everyone look this apprehensive?

and give that cable a tug to make sure it was secure?

on her way!

Every child needs a cheering section, so we cheered him up that tree.

No turning back this time!

Waiting

Really? It’s safe?

So pleased with his big brother!

What boys do best,

throw stones

and watch Dad.

Perhaps the smallest person of the season to attempt and complete the climb up the tree (considered a bigger challenge than the actual ride)

A few brave souls tried the canopy course.

There were many more good times shared, but by now I was tired of the camera and left off carrying it with me. (actually, I sort of forgot about it too)

Soccer. Hiking. Kite making.

There were meals that I did not have to cook,

A campfire complete with singing and s’mores.

Table games.

An inspiring church service.

Talking, talking, talking.

A ballgame, gym time and more Frisbee.

We had a lovely in time, in spite of the fact that first thing Sunday morning, I dropped a certain article of clothing directly into an unflushed commode. Hey, sometimes you wear what you gotta wear but in this case, I did not choose to.

I chose to enjoy the day! Yay!

(Thanks for hanging in there through all those pix)