Well here we go! We've had so many of you ask "so how is the rice and beans experiment going".... :o) I have to say I'm surprised so many are interested, and to answer your questions, we started our month long mission to rid our home of entitlement yesterday and so far, it's going well :o)
We announced a couple months ago that we were going to be beginning this fast with our family and our intention was to begin sooner than this, but we have hit some speed bumps and so we are only now beginning.
First of all I want to tell you what we are doing and bring you up to speed on our adventure.
Several months ago we came to the painful conclusion that our home had an infestation of entitlement that hadn't just infected our children, but Daniel and I as well. We had bought into the lie that we need and deserve certain comforts all the time and that without them we had the right to go and get them, and if getting them wasn't possible then being miserable and irritable was our right.
So we began thinking and praying about what our family truly needed and we felt like we got a clear idea about how to help all of us have a better perspective on the life we were supposed to lead.
Daniel and I decided a missions trip for our family would be the perfect thing. We'd take the kids to a foreign country and they could see the poor and needy for themselves. They could see the kids that had been born into extreme poverty and were destined to live there their whole lives and probably die prematurely.
The country of Cambodia came up several different times in our recent experience. My niece just took a trip there to work with the poor for 2 weeks. We were also just made aware of an orphanage that is run by a foursquare missionary and we decided this would be a perfect experience.
Unfortunately for several reasons beyond our control our lives won't allow us to physically take a trip there right now so we decided that we would take the month and live like we would if we were in Cambodia on a missions trip.
Now for those of you who are truly a black and white personality you will see many, many holes in our experiment. Of course we are still going to live in our home, enjoy our beds, turn on the lights and use the toilets with toilet paper. We are going to drive our car and visit our library and bask in the warm Oregon weather without the hideous tropical insects. But we are going to deny ourselves many of the luxuries that we have access to in order to open our eyes to those who have less, much less than we do.
The way this will look:
- No screen time. We will listen to music, but no TV, no movies, no DS or Wii. No facebook. We will be checking our emails daily but only for contact purposes.
- Our original plan was a basic diet of beans and rice and whatever we could grow in our garden. Unfortunately we have had a pitifully cold spring and our garden is lacking.... extremely lacking, so we've had to adjust. One of our main goals originally was to save money to send us to Disneyland. After much research it doesn't seem that saving money will be a logical goal. Although our diet is limited, we will be buying all the fruit and veggies we can handle and since our garden isn't providing those for us, we will be purchasing them. Disneyland will have to wait until another year. We are not discouraged, only more purposeful.
- The boys will be reading more, practicing their God given gifts. Micah is an artist and will be spending time refining his art skills and learning more about the keyboard. Ethan will be practicing drums and exploring the world of photography.
- We are allowing leniency for special occasions. The kids will eat freely at other peoples homes when we go out. They will enjoy the 4th of July family reunion we have planned without restrictions and sampling at Costco is always a highlight. We want to be purposeful not strict.
Since we've been talking about this for so long the kids are ready. They were excited yesterday when we began and not only was the arguing and complaining minimal, but creativity increased, and so did compassion.
Our missions statement for this month is Isaiah 58: 6-7 The Lord is speaking to a group of people that have been very "religious". They were told that they needed to fast but they basically just gave up food and continued to act like lunatics, fighting, and making a mess of things. The Lord said "no, I don't want you to just stop eating, that doesn't do anything." (my paraphrase) he said... this is the kind of fast I want you to do ...."loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke."... I want you to "share your food with the hungry, and provide the poor wanderer with shelter- when you see the naked, clothe him, and not turn away from your own flesh and blood."
We will be studying Cambodia and looking at some of the lives of the young children in the orphanage there. This ministry is doing just what Isaiah 58 says, they are feeding, clothing and sheltering these little ones and I can't think of any more practical way to help my kids realize what they have been given than to expose them to the lives of these precious little ones. We will be supporting this ministry as a family and praying for them and hopefully some day we will get to take a trip together as a family to do with our hands and feet what we can only do with our dollars and cents right now.
I plan to blog weekly about how the experiment is going. The ups and downs. The struggles and joys. So far I am more than impressed with the peace and tranquility that has descended on our home. Just turning off all the noise has caused a greater sense of peace and I love seeing my kids growing in creativity.
Here we go. Our motto this month and for the rest of our lives is something we got from our pastor a couple months ago..... "Do what is RIGHT not what is EASY"
