TriMo Begins September 1st 2005 / Ends November 31st 2005
0/50,000 Words Written
Things to do today (yeah right… I know it won’t all get done.)
Home: Sort through my inbox (always!) Open Journal page and sort out my day over coffee. Pay bills, catch up the transactions into QuickBooks. Move desk and bookshelf downstairs. Three loads of laundry. Clean off the piles on my desk and stacked beside it. If I am really efficient, I will even sort my “to file pile.” Yay! Today I don’t have to drive the tutoring loop!
Ritt’s End LLC: Catch up daycare time log. Record payments received. Make deposit. Write, stuff and mail a fall-season parent letter. Deliver stack of fliers to schools and the gym across the street.
Church: Base Camp (evening meetings): Contact volunteers for the Jr. High group and create a new schedule for 2005-2006 school year of events and meetings. Base Camp (Sunday school): Outline suggestions /ideas for curriculum units to cover for the year. FirstWork (The church prayer and praise e-mail) Get the snail mail version to the mail box, since Tuesday the e-mail version went out.
Notebored: Catch up on the crits for the Polish Challenge over at NoteBored, Sort out who is moderating the Wednesday Challenge.
Writers Hideout E-Zine: Okay, I admit that nothing has happened yet beyond my mock up and crazy idea for how to market it. But, I am afraid that if I don’t put it out there in front of me, I will loose it in the shuffle. Plus, when I am working on it, I have a place to record progress.
Current Book(s) I am reading for fun: Drums of Autumn – Diana Gabaldon, Mummy – Ann Rice
Books (s) I am learning from: Shattered Dreams – Larry Crab, A Young Woman after God’s Own Heart – Elizabeth George
Movies(s) I have rented or bought: Oceans Eleven, National Treasure
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
I am in a strange kind of mood today. The closest I can relate it to, is when I was pregnant and about do deliver “any day.” It’s a nesting thing.
Bill and I have been rearranging the house to make more room for the daycare. We’ve been and turning the basement more into our living room, swapping out den furniture and the bigger TV, and the stereo cabinet for more floor space upstairs. The hope is that soon I will hire on help for the daycare and have room for up to 12 children.
Two days ago, the girls split up roommates and rooms, there is now 3 in one room and the eldest now has her very own room for the first time in her nearly 12 years. Soon I will be exchanging what clothes they have in their dressers for the winter season and the next size up. It’s amazing how long their legs grew while they were playing in shorts all summer! I see “the routine” looming, changes to the house reflect it.
To whatever degree, this journal is my effort at structuring my inner self to reflect those changes too. I don’t want to just make this public to-do list. But I do think it’s fun to have a place to record where my day goes so that it doesn’t slip through my fingers. I am easily distracted; I am hoping this will help.
Ah well, I am off to switch the load of laundry that is buzzing at me, fold that “now-done” load, put away the dishes that are drying on the sink, finish paying bills and putting stamps on the snail-mail FirstWork.
Then I am off to make sure we have a Wednesday Challenge set up, and read and crit the Polish Challenge stories.
Sometimes it's nice to see life from someone else's point of view. I am a mother, writer and amateur photographer. This is what the view looks like from where I am standing.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
I realize that absolutely none of the photos in my vacation tour showed up. :-( I did get them to work in the mirrored thread over on my website http://rittinger.admiralxp.com/index.php If you are still curious, register there and you will see the whole shabang. In the meantime, this is a picture of the sunset off of the beach at the Naval Recreation Center in Solomon Islands in Maryland. I love this sunset... ahhhh
Friday, August 19, 2005
A Day in My Life
Have you ever felt like the world was moving too fast for you to keep up? I have so many things circling out there in a nebulous loop around my head that I just can’t get them to sit still long enough to prioritize.
School is starting soon. The hardest thing for me here is that I must fight my own dislike of structure and schedules and begin waking up much earlier to get the rest of my family moving. During the summer, the daycare kids come later and I wake up when ever Bill is stumbling into the shower. Now, I must start the day running and much earlier than this night owl likes to get up. Crazy as it sounds – this intangible element is harder for me to adjust to than the frisking at the door for backpacks and the routine of doing homework.
Base Camp (The Jr. high morning Sunday school and evening meetings) Here is where I am really worried. We lost two of our volunteer helpers. This leaves Bill and I as the only ones working with the middle school youth. Bill, is a tax man and is unavailable from Jan. thru April. Can I keep the youthgroup, Daycare and home routine going alone? I remember how stressed I was last year. I really need another person who is detail oriented to help with the event details. I can do the teaching. I am passionate about communicating Christ to these kids. I am smitten with them and with the age group, nothing is more satisfying to me than sharing the life changing work of Christ. But to be very honest, I stink at details. I need help in hammering out fun events. Please pray that God would rise up someone to meet this need.
Ritt’s End (My Daycare business)
The NoteBored (Peer Review Writing Workshop) We are growing! My laid back approach to most things work in a one on one environment. It’s not so good when dealing with nearly 100 members. So we are discussing ways in which to organize and structure the growth. I have a few new moderators and I hope that the level of administration needed will not overburden them or me.
In the meantime, I am also:
Collaborating with a friend to write a longer story, each using the others strengths to build a better story and learn from each other. We’ve spent a great deal of time establishing the world building, basic plot and characters. We will soon begin the writing and it will coincide with the NoteBored’s version of the National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. The NoteBored group will be starting their novels in September and finish alongside NaNoWriMo contestants in November. We are calling it NoteBored’s “TriMo”, and it’s the first one we are attempting.
There is still the endless loop for taking my daughters to tutoring twice a week. Remind me sometime to share with you all what I have learned about dyslexia.
I am also drawing up designs and gathering ideas for a revamp on my website.
I am toying around with starting my own web e-zine, called the Writers Hideout, and tying it in with a marketing idea that has a print version component that is unique in approach. I might talk about that in another entry sometime, but I am still doing the research on copy write protection and the legal ramifications of this venture. Okay, I am also waiting for my self-confidence to catch up with my bold imagination. I’ve had a friend try to kick me into gear after I spilled this grand idea, and so far I sit safely in the shadows.
My head is spinning
One thing I know: no matter how thin I spread myself, I would rather do this, be growing, than sit in front of the TV, and feel myself slowly rot.
There is a day in my life. Spitting it out here has helped me to hold it still long enough to look at it all at once. Thanks for letting me bend your ear.
School is starting soon. The hardest thing for me here is that I must fight my own dislike of structure and schedules and begin waking up much earlier to get the rest of my family moving. During the summer, the daycare kids come later and I wake up when ever Bill is stumbling into the shower. Now, I must start the day running and much earlier than this night owl likes to get up. Crazy as it sounds – this intangible element is harder for me to adjust to than the frisking at the door for backpacks and the routine of doing homework.
Base Camp (The Jr. high morning Sunday school and evening meetings) Here is where I am really worried. We lost two of our volunteer helpers. This leaves Bill and I as the only ones working with the middle school youth. Bill, is a tax man and is unavailable from Jan. thru April. Can I keep the youthgroup, Daycare and home routine going alone? I remember how stressed I was last year. I really need another person who is detail oriented to help with the event details. I can do the teaching. I am passionate about communicating Christ to these kids. I am smitten with them and with the age group, nothing is more satisfying to me than sharing the life changing work of Christ. But to be very honest, I stink at details. I need help in hammering out fun events. Please pray that God would rise up someone to meet this need.
Ritt’s End (My Daycare business)
The NoteBored (Peer Review Writing Workshop) We are growing! My laid back approach to most things work in a one on one environment. It’s not so good when dealing with nearly 100 members. So we are discussing ways in which to organize and structure the growth. I have a few new moderators and I hope that the level of administration needed will not overburden them or me.
In the meantime, I am also:
Collaborating with a friend to write a longer story, each using the others strengths to build a better story and learn from each other. We’ve spent a great deal of time establishing the world building, basic plot and characters. We will soon begin the writing and it will coincide with the NoteBored’s version of the National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. The NoteBored group will be starting their novels in September and finish alongside NaNoWriMo contestants in November. We are calling it NoteBored’s “TriMo”, and it’s the first one we are attempting.
There is still the endless loop for taking my daughters to tutoring twice a week. Remind me sometime to share with you all what I have learned about dyslexia.
I am also drawing up designs and gathering ideas for a revamp on my website.
I am toying around with starting my own web e-zine, called the Writers Hideout, and tying it in with a marketing idea that has a print version component that is unique in approach. I might talk about that in another entry sometime, but I am still doing the research on copy write protection and the legal ramifications of this venture. Okay, I am also waiting for my self-confidence to catch up with my bold imagination. I’ve had a friend try to kick me into gear after I spilled this grand idea, and so far I sit safely in the shadows.
My head is spinning
One thing I know: no matter how thin I spread myself, I would rather do this, be growing, than sit in front of the TV, and feel myself slowly rot.
There is a day in my life. Spitting it out here has helped me to hold it still long enough to look at it all at once. Thanks for letting me bend your ear.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Asleep.
I am asleep in the light.
I am a Christian. I asked Christ into my life when I was 15 years old. The first miracle I ever witnessed was watching my father, who had been chained to drugs, alcohol and his own selfish pursuits transform overnight into a man free of them. My first glimpse of who God really was, was as a life changer.
I grew in my knowledge and faith, finding myself soaking up the word and his love, his soul quenching love for me when I was so broken and afraid. My spirit had become as a parched earth, cracked and hard. I had come from an abusive background, physical and sexual abuse. I had killed the hope of there being the fairytale kind love. It hurt too much to let it sit there mocking me. So I used others to get my own needs met. I assessed a room quickly to see who wanted what out of me, and if I was willing to give it or not. I manipulated in order to make sure that I was never again left without control or power.
Then, that day long ago when I was 15, I felt the first stirrings of God in the form of his Spirit. I throbbed with the fear that He was real, and feared just as equally that He was in fact real. For if there were such a thing as God, if His Spirit and His Son truly existed outside of the fairy tale that I had placed him in, then I would either have to act on it, or turn away from it entirely; for this love, this passion was larger than the tide that my life drifted in. I was hurting, half dead with soul malnourishment, flashbacks, fear of never finding anyone who would love me -- or worse, letting someone inside that wall I’d erected to keep myself safe. Love, would make me vulnerable. I was starving inside my own prison.
The thing is, My understanding of God came in parts. My hunger pulled me from the cage, starved and mangled, twisted with need and greedy for those things that satisfy I approached God for the first time. He bathed me in light, and I was ashamed of all those things that I had armored myself with. My scheming nature was exposed, and in the light of that warmth, I saw it for what it was. I saw how I had used people and reacted out of my own pain, hurting those around me. I sobbed, feeling hopeless, for those very coping skills that had kept me sane while in abuse, were no longer needed in my present state.
How to make myself clean?
How to undo what years of pain had wrought?
Why would he call me? What could I possibly have to offer Him? I was despicable and empty.
Just when I didn’t think I could stand being in that light any longer, I saw the way. I saw how it wasn’t my righteousness or usefulness but Jesus’s that made the difference. He saw things in me that I didn’t. He saw what my life would look like when that dry cracked ground was saturated with Christ. He saw the soil of my soul, with righteousness seeded into it. He could see the future, a possible future. And with trembling steps, I began my walk of faith.
Over twenty years later, I am a mother of five. I have seen the illustration of what it might be like to be called the bride of Christ when I submit to the authority and care of my husband. I have glimpsed as through a bubbled and warped glass, the nature of his love for me when I became a mother myself. He established the dynamics and relationships that we weave our lives in and out of every day, the heavenly blueprint, mirrored here. I only needed to experience it from that viewpoint to understand it on that level.
Now, I am going to church and training my children to love him too. We go to worship him and my spirit responds to him through song. I serve the body through leading the jr. high youth of our congregation. My passion for people, my dedication to Him has not stopped, though I have often been sidetracked by the busyness of life.
But still, I find that I cling to old and familiar ways. My heart has been forever changed, my life transformed and my passion is still hot, however, we live in America in a culture that is radically different from the way God calls us to live move and be. The abundant life that he calls us to is not one that satisfies our desire for more things, to get ahead in the world or to succeed. His call is not about our own happiness, making a comfortable and safe nest of our lives built by what we can own or make payments upon.
We are asleep in our safe little worlds where no one gets to see each others pain or mess. I once had an inner wall that protected me from the world, and it shielded me from others viewing my strangeness and my inner deformities. I have found that there is another wall, one I have not been able to find a way out of yet that prevents us from truly living that radical and extreme love that Christ lived out. This wall is covered in pleasure, and exudes a lassitude that invites us one and all to… sleep. Hours of our time pulsates to this wall of pleasure. Even those of us who are serious about our love for the Lord, we throb, to the metronome of it by asking that God make our friends, who’s lives are messy with cancer, divorce, mental illness become once again smooth and calm. That the distresses would be removed and the path made clear so that they would be comfortable.
I wonder at what Jesus would say to that.
So now I tremble yet again. This time, not at the inner wall that hid me, but at this outer wall of American culture and comfort where so many others and me have been napping. And I am afraid. I am afraid that I will feel this today, and tomorrow I will fall back to sleep.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus walked a ways out from his disciples and begged them to pray. Pray for me, he said, while he prayed for the cup to pass and for the courage to remain there. He knew the soldiers were coming, he ahd sent Judas off into the night himself, setting those wheels into motion. And now he prayed for it to pass or for another way to be made, like Abraham when the cry of the ram in the thicket released him from that terrible duty.
I am still saved, I am still one of his disciples crying out for others to see what His deep love can do, how it can transform a life… but like Peter, James and John, there in the garden, I sleep.
There is a parable of the ten virgins, warning them to keep their lamps ready, to be able to meet the Bridegroom. Our culture is different today than it was when that metaphor was used to the Israelites. A man pledged to a woman in a binding that was as strong as marriage, but the wedding itself, the ceremony and banquet didn’t happen until he had built his house and could provide for his bride and new family. Her job while he was gone, was to remain pure, assemble the necessities for the household, and keep oil in her lamp (to be ready) for the call to arise and join him, the actual wedding day could come at any time. She must be ready when he calls.
The story tells of how only half of the brides who were called were ready, and how even now the call goes out that the bridegroom comes.
*sigh*
Today I tremble. Today I feel hollowed out for the vision of the radical ways in which He calls us to live, to love and to act toward one another. We are so alone inside our inner prisons and outer walls of comfort. We see this bright vision when we are in church on Sundays, we warm our hands by it, open our spirits to it in praise… but we never actually leave the doorway of salvation, we never truly… wake up.
I am a Christian. I asked Christ into my life when I was 15 years old. The first miracle I ever witnessed was watching my father, who had been chained to drugs, alcohol and his own selfish pursuits transform overnight into a man free of them. My first glimpse of who God really was, was as a life changer.
I grew in my knowledge and faith, finding myself soaking up the word and his love, his soul quenching love for me when I was so broken and afraid. My spirit had become as a parched earth, cracked and hard. I had come from an abusive background, physical and sexual abuse. I had killed the hope of there being the fairytale kind love. It hurt too much to let it sit there mocking me. So I used others to get my own needs met. I assessed a room quickly to see who wanted what out of me, and if I was willing to give it or not. I manipulated in order to make sure that I was never again left without control or power.
Then, that day long ago when I was 15, I felt the first stirrings of God in the form of his Spirit. I throbbed with the fear that He was real, and feared just as equally that He was in fact real. For if there were such a thing as God, if His Spirit and His Son truly existed outside of the fairy tale that I had placed him in, then I would either have to act on it, or turn away from it entirely; for this love, this passion was larger than the tide that my life drifted in. I was hurting, half dead with soul malnourishment, flashbacks, fear of never finding anyone who would love me -- or worse, letting someone inside that wall I’d erected to keep myself safe. Love, would make me vulnerable. I was starving inside my own prison.
The thing is, My understanding of God came in parts. My hunger pulled me from the cage, starved and mangled, twisted with need and greedy for those things that satisfy I approached God for the first time. He bathed me in light, and I was ashamed of all those things that I had armored myself with. My scheming nature was exposed, and in the light of that warmth, I saw it for what it was. I saw how I had used people and reacted out of my own pain, hurting those around me. I sobbed, feeling hopeless, for those very coping skills that had kept me sane while in abuse, were no longer needed in my present state.
How to make myself clean?
How to undo what years of pain had wrought?
Why would he call me? What could I possibly have to offer Him? I was despicable and empty.
Just when I didn’t think I could stand being in that light any longer, I saw the way. I saw how it wasn’t my righteousness or usefulness but Jesus’s that made the difference. He saw things in me that I didn’t. He saw what my life would look like when that dry cracked ground was saturated with Christ. He saw the soil of my soul, with righteousness seeded into it. He could see the future, a possible future. And with trembling steps, I began my walk of faith.
Over twenty years later, I am a mother of five. I have seen the illustration of what it might be like to be called the bride of Christ when I submit to the authority and care of my husband. I have glimpsed as through a bubbled and warped glass, the nature of his love for me when I became a mother myself. He established the dynamics and relationships that we weave our lives in and out of every day, the heavenly blueprint, mirrored here. I only needed to experience it from that viewpoint to understand it on that level.
Now, I am going to church and training my children to love him too. We go to worship him and my spirit responds to him through song. I serve the body through leading the jr. high youth of our congregation. My passion for people, my dedication to Him has not stopped, though I have often been sidetracked by the busyness of life.
But still, I find that I cling to old and familiar ways. My heart has been forever changed, my life transformed and my passion is still hot, however, we live in America in a culture that is radically different from the way God calls us to live move and be. The abundant life that he calls us to is not one that satisfies our desire for more things, to get ahead in the world or to succeed. His call is not about our own happiness, making a comfortable and safe nest of our lives built by what we can own or make payments upon.
We are asleep in our safe little worlds where no one gets to see each others pain or mess. I once had an inner wall that protected me from the world, and it shielded me from others viewing my strangeness and my inner deformities. I have found that there is another wall, one I have not been able to find a way out of yet that prevents us from truly living that radical and extreme love that Christ lived out. This wall is covered in pleasure, and exudes a lassitude that invites us one and all to… sleep. Hours of our time pulsates to this wall of pleasure. Even those of us who are serious about our love for the Lord, we throb, to the metronome of it by asking that God make our friends, who’s lives are messy with cancer, divorce, mental illness become once again smooth and calm. That the distresses would be removed and the path made clear so that they would be comfortable.
I wonder at what Jesus would say to that.
So now I tremble yet again. This time, not at the inner wall that hid me, but at this outer wall of American culture and comfort where so many others and me have been napping. And I am afraid. I am afraid that I will feel this today, and tomorrow I will fall back to sleep.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus walked a ways out from his disciples and begged them to pray. Pray for me, he said, while he prayed for the cup to pass and for the courage to remain there. He knew the soldiers were coming, he ahd sent Judas off into the night himself, setting those wheels into motion. And now he prayed for it to pass or for another way to be made, like Abraham when the cry of the ram in the thicket released him from that terrible duty.
I am still saved, I am still one of his disciples crying out for others to see what His deep love can do, how it can transform a life… but like Peter, James and John, there in the garden, I sleep.
There is a parable of the ten virgins, warning them to keep their lamps ready, to be able to meet the Bridegroom. Our culture is different today than it was when that metaphor was used to the Israelites. A man pledged to a woman in a binding that was as strong as marriage, but the wedding itself, the ceremony and banquet didn’t happen until he had built his house and could provide for his bride and new family. Her job while he was gone, was to remain pure, assemble the necessities for the household, and keep oil in her lamp (to be ready) for the call to arise and join him, the actual wedding day could come at any time. She must be ready when he calls.
The story tells of how only half of the brides who were called were ready, and how even now the call goes out that the bridegroom comes.
*sigh*
Today I tremble. Today I feel hollowed out for the vision of the radical ways in which He calls us to live, to love and to act toward one another. We are so alone inside our inner prisons and outer walls of comfort. We see this bright vision when we are in church on Sundays, we warm our hands by it, open our spirits to it in praise… but we never actually leave the doorway of salvation, we never truly… wake up.
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