What if you sat down in your church and, instead of finding the church promotional pen, you found a reminder that God loves you? I switched out some pens today. Wild, I know. I am on the lookout for where I can sneak some pencils in. Let me know if you think of something brilliant. God's kindness leads us to repentance . Romans 2:4
A friend lent me a book. Theo of Golden. I had just begun reading it. It’s about an artist and people being seen. It led me to think about this friend I made on a pilgrimage in Israel. She is much older than me and darling. We are an unlikely pair, but our hearts are knit together. We were on buses, in gardens, on windy cliffs. I lit a candle in a monastery for her in Haifa, Israel after she fell ill. I photographed flowers for her. She is well now. She lends me books. Ingrid. As I thought about people that I pray for, I could see the depths hidden in their heart. I could see my friend Jenni breaking her alabaster jar in public spaces. She is writing a book. I pray for her fire to illuminate darkened rooms and hearts. I could see my brilliant, beautiful daughter not able to see how wonderful she is. I love her. She’s strumming her ukelele and talking to a cat. Hope looks so simple. Laomai. I could see myself sitting on deep things because they weren’t welcome in the market place....
People are always asking me how I taught Laomai to read so well so early. Truth is, I am not completely sure. Let me just tell you that I found this idea completely daunting. How was I ever going to teach another human being to read? Truthfully, I asked God to teach her because I had no idea what I was doing. I taught her the letters of the alphabet when she was one and a half. From there, we started working on phonics. She was reading small words by two and a half. We would look at hundreds of flash cards together and read book after book each day. We went through Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons. One of the things we did with learning the phonics properly was to do them with sidewalk chalk. Three days a week, we would spend an hour just playing and talking about the sounds letters and letter grouping made. We would write simple words and draw pictures. The secret here was to make it fun and never exasperate or bore her. She also did the phonics program on starfall...
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