The Jesus Song

I like family rituals. And we have many of them.

One of my favorites is the bedtime ritual. Each day, at bedtime, after the kids are theoretically ready for bed, we gather together in the living room. Then each child in turn says the verse for the week and picks a song that we as a family sing. Finally, we pray and the kids are off to bed.

The other night, Josephine was the first to say the verse and pick the song. She said the verse perfectly (as usual). It was Psalm 112:1 "Praise the Lord. How blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his command". She decided to sing make up her own song to sing, so the rest of us just listened.

"Jesus, Jesus, I know you, and you know me and I love you and you love me. You're my savior and you save us, Jesus, Jesus". It was very sweet and pretty.

Next was Matt. He, too, said the verse almost flawlessly, then requested to make up his own song. He started off singing sweetly.

"Jesus, Jesus"

Then his whole body flailed, and his song turned to a series of gun and bomb and smoke and fight noises as his feet kicked and his arms swung wildly.

Then it was over. The entire "song" about three seconds. I about died laughing.


81. Family rituals
82. Songs to Jesus
83. Ripe raspberries - so sweet off the bushes

84. Our first chicken egg!
85. Two jars of wild grape jelly, from a small bag of wild grapes that God allowed us to find, even though we were tardy by nearly a month from their normal season.
86. A more-rapidly-healing-than-usual bout with poison ivy, after hunting said wild grapes
87. Neighbors with apple and pear trees, who don't want their fruit
88. A juicer, given to me years ago, that makes such quick work out of apples and such
89. Fresh apple juice
90. New recipe: candy apple jelly

Thousand Gifts, part 6

61. A gentle father, teaching his son to mow the yard
62. A son, eager to learn and contribute to the household
63. Men teaching boys to love hard work

64. Sweet Sunday, once again sweet
65. (and the namesake meets again, little Tommy)
66. wide smiles
67. curly tops
68. guitar lessons
69. pleasant, filling fellowship
70. Calm tummies, even after eating too many sweet rolls and sweet corn

71. Young love
72. The eagerness and anticipation of two upcoming weddings
73. Family, serving together in preparation
74. A dress-cutting party
75. Wedding shower reminders on making marriage last long

76. Garden produce, so abundant I can't keep up
77. Boss at work, sweating with eyes dripping after biting into a cayenne pepper that I claimed was hot
78. Gallons of spaghetti sauce, ready for canning
79. Cases of bananas (no, not from our garden), made up into yummy bread and shared among friends


80. A new home for two chickens that turned out to be roosters (which are illegal to have in our city)

Thousand gifts, Part 5

41. round green blooms on the onions
42. twinkling stars on a clear night

43. Tommy's first birthday
44. that he lived through those first few preemie weeks, through the H1N1 flu, and on to today, his Birthday
45. how he learned to sign "please" when we fed him Birthday ice cream
46. The other kids, insisting that they, too, get to give him a birthday present
47. Tommy learning to drink through a straw on his special birthday cup from church

48. the Washington county fair
49. cows in the shoe barn
50. feather-footed chickens (how funny they look!)
51. crowned chickens (Mom! they look like a dog with those feathers on top)
52. Lisel noticing that this bird must be a duck, because it has webbed toes
53. long-haired bunnies
54. no one stepping in cow pies
55. free ice cream at the fair
56. first place jam and flower bouquets from my sister-in-law
57. watching our first horse-race
58. playing with toy tractors in piles of sawdust
59. climbing hay bales

60. chickens, sleeping soundly in their new dogloo that we found on the curb

31. So many shades of green in the summer tree tops
32. Hazy water, evaporating from sprinklers
33. One more chicken than last week (we mis-counted last week, I guess!)
34. Ladies and families that serve our church every week by cooking breakfast for all who come
35. Three different people that were kind enough to jump our van
36. Stores open late on a Sunday evening, that carry new batteries for cars and the necessary tools to change one
37. A new battery that fixed all the evening's problems with the van
38. Grass along the parking lot to play in and squish our toes into while Chester fixed the van
39. A husband that knows how to fix a van!
40. A safe arrival home, late on a Sunday evening