A matter of opinion.....

So, this morning, me and the kids are snuggling on the couch this am before doing schoolwork, soaking in some of that indoctrinating public television that I love so much. I have to say, I actually do like PBS (or here, it's actually MPB) for the most part. They have some great shows like SuperWhy, Martha Speaks, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, and Word World, that my kids really enjoy. Then there's Dinosaur Train.

Of course, I have been blessed with two sweet boys (and a special girl).  Joshua, who is 4,  loves Superheros, robots, and of course dinosaurs.  We have talked early on, to both the older kids, about how God made the Earth. We've read the account in Genesis depicting the creation story. We've talked about the flood and Noah, how because no one would listen to what God said, he finally just had to wipe the slate clean and start over. We've talked about all the repercussions a global flood could cause-including dinosaurs and bones of other animals becoming fossilized all over the earth.

I have never had any doubt myself, that God was the divine Creator who designed our world and the Heavens around it.  Call it what you will-blind faith, foolishness, or sincere trust and belief. It doesn't matter much to me what you think of me. I know without a doubt that the Bible is the word of God, because he reveals himself to me every time I crack it open. But for those who've hardened their heart to him, I can see how Christians would appear foolish. To be honest, growing up in the public school system was very challenging to me though. My faith in God never died, but there were several occasions when I was, by my teachers and in college, my professors, flat out told that I was wrong to believe what I did. In fact, my biology teacher in high school, one of my absolute favorite teachers to be honest, once told me that the theory of evolution didn't counter what the Bible said.  I pondered how that made any sense at all, and resolved to just let her be. You can't argue with someone who doesn't understand the truth of God's word. That is the basis on my beliefs. Well, that and the fact that I have a personal relationship with my Creator, Savior, and Lord. Some people just don't get that. If you can't except the possibility that God just *might* be real, I guess our house of cards falls apart too. That's called faith.

Here's the twist. The absence of a belief in God, Atheism, is actually a religion too. To me, it takes just as much faith to believe that this amazing planet called Earth, could, even over "millions of years", come into existence all on its own. To me, it actually seems more logical to believe that something, some creator-whoever that may be-created this Earth and the heavens in the sky(being the other planets, etc).   If you want to look at something entirely logically, I know of no such empty void that can suddenly pop nothing into something all on it's own. So the whole presupposition that the Earth was created from nothing, all on it's own, doesn't make sense to me. Everything I know, had to have some cause for it's creation. Televisions, computers, phones were thought up by a person, and created or fashioned.  A baby is made from a mother and a father coming together to create new life.  Trees and plants grow from seeds we put into the ground. Elements combine to create new elements. Logically, I have never seen any one of those created things appear out of thin air, Have you?

Now, from everything I learned in my public education, I know that unless you can *prove it* (and by that I mean that the results are reproducible) you can't be sure it is a scientific fact. Someone has to see it happening to really know for sure, right?  If someone told you they had a surefire way to legally create a million dollars with the snap of their fingers, you probably wouldn't believe them would you? You might be tempted to demand they show you on the spot, but until you saw it with your own eyes, you would think they were a crackpot. And who could blame you? If it can't be reproduced, it is only a theory. That's why both Creation and Evolution are merely theories.

But the irony is, Evolution is assumed and taught as truth, even by people who claim a belief in God and the Bible. Here is the hang up. Evolution in no way aligns with the word of God. If you can look me in the eye and tell you that you believe in your heart that there isn't a God, that is your choice. You have faith that there isn't one. I just have faith that there is. Just as you have interpreted your life experiences to *prove* to you an absence of him (perhaps you had a death in the family and prayed to God to pull the person through and he did not.), I have had a personal encounter with him and that *proves* it for me. I have had prayers answered (and prayers not answered, to my advantage). I have been granted comfort, peace, and strength when I asked for it. I have seen things in nature that I know without a doubt were made by his design, how could they-even over millions of years-simply create themselves, so to speak.

Now, I understand your logic behind trying to justify this. Surely, over millions of years, just about anything is possible, right? I have been told this, by many Christians, and a few years ago I wondered about this myself. Perhaps God used evolution as his method of creation.  Seriously?  Now, I can't fault anyone for considering this. In the day we live in, we have been told over and over and over that Evolution is a fact. So surely, if Creation is also true, perhaps it was God's method. Until I did a deeper study a few years ago, I had so many unanswered questions. Thanks to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis ministry, I now have many very logical answers to them! Now, with Faith, not everything is going to be logical. My answer to that has always been God is God and he can do whatever he wants, however he wants to. So I guess, if that's what he wanted to do, he could create (aha, there it is!) a tiniest of tiny organisms, that would spawn another then another then another and another.....Really? That sounds logical? Why would he do that anyways? Now, I will be the first to admit, God does some seemingly crazy things sometimes to get his point across-not that we always get it. One word: Plagues. But if the Bible says God is constantly revealing himself to us, why would he create the whole Earth in such a way that it looked like he didn't play a part at all?

He is a loving God, but he is also a jealous God-wanting our whole heart, love and devotion. He doesn't want to settle for his children selfishly turning to him only in their time of need (though he forgives us for this time and time again). Why would a God who created the whole Earth and everything in it, to bring more Glory to his name, and to have us choose with free will to love and serve him--why would he make it look like it created itself without his help? The problem is with our free will. God is not the one who is inconsistent with his Word-we are. 

In an effort to clarify, I would like to point out the the major thinkers in the Evolution movement believe that no God exists at all. They have done their very best to leave God out of the answer, because they don't believe in him. So they try to rationalize everything else. When you take God out of the equation, you are forced to suppose preposterous things that cannot be proven, only because you choose to deny something you think is preposterous.  Since they deny God's existence, they have to come up with some other solution. So the first step is to give the extremely long and drawn out timeline. Anything can happen over long enough time, right? Secondly, they have to have some examples thrown in, that seem to make sense. There are lots of different kinds of dogs, this is true. If a dog with long fur and a dog with a genetic mutation for short fur both live in Iceland, only those dogs with long, thick fur are going to survive. That is logical. The others will die out. But those anomalies are things that are known. The genetic mutation isn't going to turn that dog into a lizard. Or a baby human. It will only ever be a dog. Natural selection, in theory, is very logical. But Evolution takes those observations that Darwin made, and supposes, that since God doesn't exist, perhaps that dog could turn into a baby or a lizard. Oh, that's how we got them! Now, I know that is not the order Evolutionists present, but that is equally hard to believe, for me, no matter what order you present it in.  You would never assume a dog could give birth to a human baby, no matter the environmental surroundings. So why do we assume a dog could be anything else, other than a dog?

It goes back to that "genetic mutation" thing. It logically makes sense, right? If there is a genetic mutation to change it a little bit, and the next changes a little more and a little more, maybe over millions of years it could just change and change until it became a person. One problem though. If the whole reason that beings with genetic mutations survive is because there is a need for the mutation. If the mutation is a beneficial one, it makes sense that the ones with bad traits would die off, and the ones with the good genes would still survive. The ultimate goal of this is to fine tune the genes to be optimum performance for the area in which they live. Get all the kinks worked out, so to speak. And over millions of years, those kinks change, depending on the environment, so that's why at one point in time, bugs would be the only species on Earth. Then a few million years later, bugs have adapted to become a species of wolves/dogs because it was cold and they needed thick fur. So how come we still have all the animals? We still have microorganism, bugs, lizards, birds, dogs, elephants, monkeys and people.  And all living in the same environments too. Granted, it's not every day you see a monkey running down the street, but that has more to do with the fact that in the wild, they are safer and less likely of being killed or hunted by us.

I say, the reason for genetic anomalies in animals has to do with the flood, or even further back, sin itself. Bear with me for a second, as I explain my thoughts. Again, you have to be willing to consider the idea that God and the Bible might be legit. If you can't even consider that, I'm not sure what you are still doing reading this blog. But if you are willing to open your mind and consider all the options, chew on this for a bit.  I am a big believer that God has a plan, and good or bad, everything that happens is a part of it.  He had a plan to have a perfect Garden of Eden, to walk in fellowship constantly with Adam and Eve. They had dominion over all the animals, and the Bible says Adam even named them all. They had a good thing going there. They had all the vegetables (yehp, they were vegetarian!) they could eat. The Bible says they could eat from every plant in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Basically, that was the one rule they had to follow. But like he does, Satan entered the garden, and made disobedience look good and tempting. And like we do to this day, we blew it for ourselves. Eve chose to try something that looked good, even though she had been told by her Creator, not to eat it. Then she gave it to her hubby. Of course, when we find that doing what we want is satisfying, we are going to tell everyone we know, right? That's why there is peer pressure. In one bite, Eve committed the first sin. It doesn't matter why God said not to do it, simply that she did it anyways. (Don't we, as parents, make rules our kids don't understand sometimes?)

 Once she ate of the tree, she did in fact have knowledge of good and evil. What she was not aware of before, she was very aware of all the sudden. She immediately knew she was naked, and that she had sinned. There was no knowledge of sin before that. The same goes for Adam. This is the moment evil entered the world. In my head, it is one of those slow-mo scenes in the movies, where the person stands there, and everything around them just freezes, in mid air. Almost like time stopped. In that moment, life as we know it changed forever.


When sin entered the world, so did imperfections like genetic mutations and anomalies. Before evil entered the world, everything was perfect in every way. After that day, it opened the door for all sorts of flaws and blemishes on God's perfect creation. That was our doing, not his. Are you trekking with me? (as our pastor at church says).  Now, from looking at the situation logically, based on the way the Bible describes the consequences of these events, these little "mutations" here and there started showing up at that point. Childbirth would now be painful. The serpent would now crawl on its belly. Those statements imply that this was not so before (again, just opinion here). Since God is all knowing, of course he knew that would happen. He knew that various genetic mutations would now be present, and could therefore create different characteristics within the same species/family of animals.

I think he may have allowed this to occur, when sin and imperfection entered the world, to make way for Noah and the Ark. Allowing just two of each kind, as the Bible states, would mean there really was plenty of room for all the animals on the ark. Then, when they again departed from the ark, they were able to again start reproducing and flourish the earth with a population of both people and animals. Considering that we as Christians should take the Bible as God's literal word rather than an elaborate work of fiction, we know that there was a literal Global Flood. God literally covered the entire earth with water. This is an explanation for so many things, like fossils found all around the earth and the breaking apart and shifting of the land.

My point is, when you try to fit the Bible into your little mold of what evolution demands, it doesn't fit. It's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. But when you choose to accept Gods word as absolute truth, you will find that everything historically factual actually lines up! Now, it cannot possibly explain every presupposed scientific theory, again like the house of cards, but it can give you a clearer look into his plan for us, and the bigger picture.  You just have to open your eyes to see it :D

A new adventure!

So, recently we started giving the kids an allowance, if they do their weekly chores, schoolwork, and maintain a good attitude. We wanted them to learn the importance of earning money, and to understand we can't just buy whatever they want, whenever they want.

That has helped alot with the attitudes toward doing chores, and helping in general. However, these last few days /weeks they have stressed to me that the chores are boring. So today, after being rather fed up with the complaints, I decided to do something different. We turned it into a spy adventure, and they each chose a secret agent name-Hannah was Agent Flower Power, and Bubs was Agent Hulk. So first I tasked them to go around the house collecting trash in a bag, to inspect if they found any old notes with clues on them. Then, Hannah burst out saying that "The Evil Dr. Doom is at it again, Mom!" I, of course, responded, " I'm not mom. You have to use my code name."  Hannah then dubbed me "the Queen of Secrets". (lol??) I sent them on a mission to find any bombs (toys) and take them to headquarters (the playroom) to be disarmed.

Next, we got word that the President was coming, so we needed the Secret meeting room (the bedroom) to be spotless for him. After all, we didn't want him to think we were sloppy lazy spies. We got the room cleaned, and then, suddenly, a balled up note was thrown into the bedroom, er, meeting room, and said that Dr. Doom had captured the president and his little dog Coco! We tried to brainstorm another plan, and continued cleaning. While I was in the other room, Dr. Doom squirted poison melty goo all over my face (cleansing face mask) and that he wouldn't change me back till all their chores were done. For some reason this was a real motivator. I made sure they knew it wasn't for real, but it seemed to make the spy adventure more real. Of course, they were almost done anyways, and in about 5 minutes, it all came off, and Doctor Doom ran off to escape another day!. They said they had a blast with it though, and all the chores got done today without any bickering!!!

A day in the life....

I have a tendency to get distracted a lot. It feels like we are going non stop and on occasion I do get to take a nap, which I feel like my body needs because I am burning the candle at both ends. If I take a second to blog, I am constantly remembering something I am supposed to do, and having to hop off the computer and attend to it. Just to give you an idea, here is what we have done today:

7 am-Woke up. Fed the two older kids breakfast and loaded the dishwasher. Emptied the dryer and transferred the washer load to the dryer, got a new load of clothes in the washer. Walked around the house and collected dirty clothes and brought them back to the laundry room-threw them in the l.r. floor.  Went to the computer to print out some items from Enchanted Learning for Hannah. We are working on a lapbook on Ireland this month, and I recently became a member of it. It is a wonderful site with a wealth of info and activities for kids, much of which are perfect for lapbooks. Then we worked on some of the sheets and colored them in (we being Hannah). I checked Facebook for about 2-3 minutes.

9 am-My sleepy little 17 month old woke up. I made him breakfast and sippy cup of chocolate milk to toddle around the house with-he is a grazer. I returned to Hannah and we worked on some math. We are doing subtraction right now. Then Joshua wanted to trace letters on the dry erase board so we worked on his letters and numbers, in green dry erase marker for March!

10 am-I returned to the dishwasher to unload it only to see that I had never actually hit the start button. D'oh! I finally started it again, Then went back to switch loads in the laundry room again. Now I had three loads in the basket to fold/hang. The phone rings, it's hubs telling me we were charged by something we shouldn't have been charged for-some movies from Disney Movie club (love them!!). So I drop what I'm doing and go call them, lady says No problem-she is pulling off the pending charges and when I get it, just mark it return to sender on the outside. They have always been really good about helping me out, you just have to stay on top of declining the movie of the month if you don't want it. I go back to switching the laundry loads, and the phone rings again. It's another bill to pay, and so I get that information and straighten it out.

11 am. Time to get ready for lunch. I realize I forgot the bread and the jelly in the van from getting groceries last night, so Velveeta Cheesy skillets it is! I start some meat browning on the stove, and go back to help Hannah with her work. Jonah walks over to me and wants me to read him some books, so we all take a break and have some storytime :D. The timer for the meat is done, so we head to the kitchen and get the pasta going, and then I unload/reload the dishwasher and clean the kitchen. I make everyone lunch, and just as I'm sitting down to eat, Joshua spill his milk everywhere. Jonah is splashing and playing in it, so everything is a mess. We wipe up the spill and finish our lunch. Jonah even sits at the table with us, like a big boy. I am losing my little baby :(    I take him to my room and run a bath for him, and get him all cleaned up.

12 pm Then I get Hannah's bath started and wash her hair, taking Jonah back in here with me. As soon as I do that, I start on folding the clothes from the heaping laundry basket. Then I help Hannah get dressed and get Joshua in the tub.  I go on a hunt for my glass of tea, only to realize it is just ice. Boo!!!!! I start writing this blog, and then realize it's been about 10 minutes, and I haven't heard from Joshua. He needs to get out of the tub, as it's probably freezing by now. He has a tendency to stay in until he's freezing and pruny, almost ghostlike. He apparently was already out of the tub, in my room rolling around on the bed. It is amazing to me, how different boys and girls are. My boys are happy to go off in a corner by themselves and get into trouble. Hannah wants and craves my constant attention. The headache I've had all morning starts to get worse, I look for my tea again, forgetting it is empty, and then I settle for water. I come back to the computer, and window out of the blog and work on my "coupon guide" I've been typing for a week now. I'm hoping to put it on Amazon soon and maybe make a few extra dollars explaining how I've managed to stretch my pennies into dollars by couponing.

1pm-Discover Jonah has dumped a huge box of colored pencils out everywhere and strewed them around the house. He's also (as accused by his older siblings) destroyed the playroom and pulled all the clothes out of the bedroom dressers and thrown those into the floor.Work on Joshua's awana verse for tonight. Remember to make Hannah do some extra chores to earn money to buy her another awana sparks book, since she's lost her book 3 weeks into awanas. Decide to take a nap with the kids when I get them to lay down.

2pm-Go check on the crockpot, and change the setting to low, as it's already been on high for 4 hours. Pot roast tacos for dinner tonight!!! Finish typing this blog, texting friends, and finally I am taking some tylenol to get rid of the headache and now to get the kids to lay down with me!

2:30 pm-turn on last night's episode of "19 Kids and Counting"(love them!!) while getting Jonah to sleep.  Halfway through he falls asleep, I pause the show and sneak off with him to snuggle up in bed.

4 pm. Jonah wakes up and starts crawling all over me, so I quickly get up with him, so as not to wake up the other kids. We come in here and I start to work on the laundry, and watch the rest of the tv show.

4:30pm-Joshua and Hannah wake up, and start helping me put away the clothes away.
5pm-Talk with hubs on the phone. He is still at work, and we may or may not may it to church tonight on time. I debate the issue. I want to go, but I still have to file my state taxes ( have to mail them tomorrow, D'oh!!) for the business I just closed for 2011 and 2012. I also have all the laundry that I haven't done, and no one is ready to go, nor had dinner yet. I decide to get ready like I am going regardless, so we have time if I decide to go or stay.

How Embarrassing!!

SO, I have to apologize (as I am finding I do this more frequently that I planned), for not posting for a whole month! I can't pinpoint one thing or another, as the cause to my lack of posts, other than I think I got discouraged by the 30 day challenge. I had every intention of starting this blog to be daily or at least weekly. Not  monthly, that's for sure.  I couldn't do many of the posts because all my photos are on facebook, and they have now removed the download feature that I have always used to get them back off there, and onto my computer. See, I use my phone as a camera, as it takes better than my actual camera did, and the sole reason I took pictures anyways, was to share on facebook. Now I am seeing that yes, digital albums are great, but I do see merit it having hard copies of pictures. But it seems that about the only time I get hard copies of pictures is when we get pictures of the kids at a studio, or Papaw or Mom gives me copies of their extras. I used to be really into scrapbooking (yeh, back when I had one baby ....not 3 or 4 or 5 here with me during the day, lol) and if I had more time or free hands I would do it now. I barely have time to do the things I *have* to do, and scrapbooking is not on the list of top priorities right now, so neither are hard copies of pictures I guess.  Come to think of it, apparently blogging isn't at the top of the list either. Or cleaning house, lol.

I am about to make another post in a few minutes though, so you can see exactly what my day has been like. Hopefully I will catch up on the 30 day challenge at some point, but I don't know when! (Sorry! Don't hate me!)