Unconventional Generous Joy

There is a clothes rack, full of clothes drying. Clothes in the machine that haven't been hung out yet. Piles of folded washing sit on the table, yet to be put away. A mountain of dry washing sits in the basket. It's looking a little more like Everest with each hour that passes. Toys cover the floor, placed ever so carefully by my two year old, it's where they belong. The breakfast dishes still sit on the bench. Shelves to dust. Vacuuming to be done...

And we sit. Together. In our PJ's, on the floor, watching a movie. The kids snuggle up close to me. It's so precious. They are generous with their cuddles these days. I have to remind myself to treasure these moments, because it will pass before I know it. That's what everyone says.

They are generous with their joy too. With what seems like the smallest thing to me, their excitement overwhelms them, and they jump, and scream, and dance, and sing. It's uncontainable, uncontrollable, unconventional, they can't help but express it, they can't help but share it.

And all to often, I shush them. My look, my tone says it all. Trying to persuade them to contain it, expecting the impossible. But one day they'll learn. And they might just suppress that joy. And they might just lose that joy.

That's the last thing I want.

I have much to learn. Children are so generous with their joy. They exude it.

"the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." - Jesus

Sometimes I miss it, and sometimes I take hold of it, and cling to it for all it's worth. While the piles of clothes and mountain of unfolded washing sits, and the dishes remain unwashed.

For the afternoon we come up with a plan to share some joy, to be generous and make others happy.

As we prepare the kids become excited; and they jump, and scream, and dance, and sing. It's uncontainable, uncontrollable, unconventional ... and it's fun.

And soon, there is a park full of children with balloons. Joyous children. Running, and playing, and jumping, and screaming, and dancing and singing. And the teenagers ... they surprise me, they are determined not to miss out, and come over asking, if perhaps ... they could have a balloon each too.

Such generosity. Such joy. Such fun.

And as the day draws to an end, Zac shares his highlight ... "Giving the balloons to the other kids at the park, it made me happy"

Giving made him happy.

"the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

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Have you heard about 40 acts of generosity? It's a way of participating in lent generously ... check it out here. 

I wrote a book this week ...

Well, I can tick "Write a book" off my bucket list. Haha, not really! 

One of the things that was really emphasised when Brenton and I did training through Child, Youth and Family while preparing to adopt Evy was the importance of creating a life book.

A life book is a book written for an adopted child with the intention of sharing the child's story with them. It is a honest look at their life from the beginning. Generally it starts with their birth, talks about their birth parents, tells them they are adopted and how that came about. I've read that adopted children can imagine all sorts of ideas about their birth parents from a young age, (for example; their parents died in a car accident, their real mum is a princess in a far away kingdom, their real Dad is coming back one day to look after them) so keeping it open, honest and real with a life book helps the child to understand the reality of their situation.

Because Evy's is an open adoption, she will grow up knowing that she is adopted and she will know and be involved with her birth family. To help her understand her story we wrote a life book for her. We didn't call it a life book as such, instead we've simply said "This is a story all about Evy."



It just arrived a couple of days ago and we plan on giving it to her for her second birthday present. We didn't start with Evy's birth like is often suggested but wanted to start with who she is and what she likes. We move into the deeper stuff a little bit more into the book. It's not too deep but will definately get some conversations happening when she's a bit older.

The biggest thing that we want Evy to know is that she is planned, loved and wanted. We don't ever want her believing she was a mistake, unwanted, abondoned or rejected because nothing could be further from the truth. This is a major emphasis in her story. She was planned by God, to be a part of our family. She is loved by us, and she is loved by her 'tummy mummy'.

I can't wait to read it to her for the first time. I'm sure it will be one of those books we read time and time again, and something that she will treasure for life.

Writing the life book was also a really therapeutic exercise for me. As I wrote her story and thought about how we'd tell her about her adoption, I battled with thoughts reminding me she's not biologically mine. What I came to realise through the book is that she is my daughter in every other way now, and that's what really counts. The process was challenging, satisfying, time consuming but so far really rewarding.

Just some more itsy bitsy thoughts from SamMe :)

Being Church Messy Styles - The GodFather

Brenton and I are privileged to be Salvation Army Officers. Basically this means we are ministers/pastors/leaders of the Upper Hutt Salvation Army and we oversight the Salvation Army community ministries (a branch of the army's social services) in Upper Hutt. There's never a dull moment! In March this year our Churches building caught fire due to an electrical fault in an extractor fan in our food bank. We received a call at 11.30pm alerting us, and by the time we got there, there were 7 appliances at the scene, and a butt load of smoke!

Needless to say, church on Sunday wouldn't be happening in that building. Thankfully, we are just around the corner from The Salvation Army's Booth College of Mission (where people train to become Salvation Army officers), and they very kindly let their home become ours for a good 6 months! LEGENDS!

Because we've been without a permanent 'home' since the fire, we've had the opportunity to experiment a little bit with church (So exciting, I can't resist letting out a little squeal of delight!) On the first Sunday of each month we've held church at a community centre in Timberlea. Church has looked different at Timberlea, and takes a 'Messy Church' approach. The first Sunday we did this we had REAL - LIVE - DONKEYS (poohs, eey oores and all!) , it was Palm Sunday and helped to give us a picture of what it would have been like for Jesus riding into Jerusalem that day.

Zachy feeds a donkey at Messy Church on Palm Sunday

Generally Messy church goes like this:
   The morning starts with family friendly activities (by family I mean from the youngest person you can think of, through to the oldest) for about 30 minutes (the activities introduce the theme for the day and are connected to the sermon).
   We then come together and sing some songs to Praise God, and then have a short teach time (we aim for a message no longer than 7 minutes, we like to share the word in bite size chunks to make it easy for people to chew on and digest)
   We eat together (actual physical food as opposed to Gods Word ... Word yo!) - we usually have a sausage sizzle.

My favourite Messy Church so far, has to have been Fathers Day. We decided to celebrate men and their masculinity. We started with some stereotypical manly activities ... arm wrestles, tug-o-war, shooting targets (with nerf guns ... safety first). We had the opportunity to make moustaches, we practised shaving ... by shaving shaving cream off balloons, and for the crafty ... we could make Father Day Cards.

The real crowd pleaser though ... was the Harley Davidson Rides. I'd approached the Wellington Hog Club and asked if maybe 4 or 5 people could bring their Harleys down to give people rides. Well, they arrived in full force with about 12 bikes! The noise alone attracted a number of people from the community. People faces were ecstatic on return from a ride around the block, adrenaline was pumping and the buzz was beyond words! Some of the kids had 4 or 5 rides on different bikes and it was an experience they won't forget anytime soon!

After about 40 minutes we packed up the activity stations and set up for the teach time.  We always start with a celebration time where people can come and share whats happened for them in the last month. A definite highlight was one woman from the community coming up and celebrating her children, just because she could! She later said to me she'd like us to dedicate her children. We sung some songs and then had the message. We heard about the love of our Father God, his strength, dedication and commitment to us, which is always good to hear when so many people grow up without Fathers around these days.

After the teach time we headed outside for BBQ bacon, hash browns and sausages (Nom, Nom, Nom). This is always a key part of the morning because it's where we connect with people, develop relationships and where we have the chance to really do life together.

Some of the main things we've learnt about Messy church are:

• Have an outside activity - It draws people down
• Be committed to the community - We've been in Timberlea for 3 years now (it started with weekend events once a year, then became free monthly Sausage Sizzles and is now monthly Messy Church.)
• Keep the teach times short - Many of the people we have come just need small amounts of teaching to chew on, much of it is new to them
• Be intentional about connecting with people - we are still working on this one
• Saturate the whole thing in prayer - without the Holy Spirit moving it's just an event.

In October we are hoping to do something a little different again ... thinking outside the box ... we don't want to be restricted by falling into a routine ... same old, same old ... YAWN! God doesn't fit in a box, I don't think His Church should either. We want to be innovative and creative when it comes to fulfilling Christ commission to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) . After all, He is The Master when is comes to Creating! Anyway, I could go on but I wont. I'll let you know how it goes some other time.

Itsy Bitsy SamMe