If anyone out there is feeling inclined to add to their fabric stash, I’m giving away 2 1/2 yards of my fabric over at the Amoretti blog! (Come on – you know you want to sew something . . . . )

Let’s just say (hypothetically of course) that you have just completely lost the bubble with your children. (That would never happen, right?) You got tweaked all the way out because they were being loud and rambunctious and they woke up the baby. And, (this is the vitally important part), you TOLD them not to be loud or they’d wake up the baby. You said it plainly and in English, and now they’ve gone and done it. This is clearly a flagrant disregard of your authority, of God’s law, of the ten commandments, of all the laws of nature, of house rules, of all human decency, and now you’re not going to have your calm moment to sit down and sip your tea and look at Pinterest. Or fold your laundry. Or get caught up on your email. Clearly (you tell yourself) you need to show the children the full weight of their offense. What better way to do this, than to pack all the punch you can into your frown, ramp up the tone of voice, raise the level of sarcasm to previously unscaled heights, and grab them (too tightly) by the shoulder and frog march them to the bathroom? All of this, you reason, is to show them how badly they have offended God – you are clearly obligated to show them how grievously they have transgressed.

If you don’t have a baby, then change the above scenario to the one where your daughter used up more minutes on her phone than she was allotted, or sent more texts than she was supposed to, or didn’t get her chores done. You draw yourself up, put your hands on your hips, and commence an outraged speech, littered with tasteful phrases like, “Why can’t you ever LISTEN TO ME???!!!”

You know how this goes, right? You tell yourself that you are training up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, showing them right from wrong. That you have a zeal for righteousness. That they need to understand the weight of judgement in order to comprehend the righteousness of God’s standards.

However, follow me closely here, you actually aren’t doing anything of the sort. You’re being a big stinker. Of all the pills in the house, you’re being the worst. In this little scenario, the prize for bad behavior goes to mom, with the loud children and phone offender coming in a distant second.

Now, am I saying that disobedience should be ignored? That we should forgo teaching our children to be righteous? Obviously not. I’m just saying that when you flip out at them and really haul up your slacks with outraged tirades, you’re actually only showing them that disobedience to God is something that is perfectly ok with you. Long story short, you’re teaching them hypocrisy. You get to ignore God’s rules whenever they don’t line up with your mood . . . so why shouldn’t your children be allowed that same privilege?

Here’s the trick. The wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. If you are an angry parent, you will not produce righteousness in your children . . . even if all your anger is directed at sin. The wrath of man DOES NOT produce the righteousness of God. Tattoo it upon your paddle. Write it on the doorposts of your bathroom.

Or how about this one? Proverbs says, “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man.” You’re not supposed to even be friends with an angry man . . . so what exactly are your kids supposed to do if you’re an angry mom? How do they obey that proverb? We like to pretend that our anger is righteous, and that we’re in this for justice and truth. But as a matter of fact we’re just being selfish little punks when we lose our temper at our children.

We have been saved from the wrath of God through Christ. This means that the full weight of God’s wrath has been turned from us. Are we going to be like the unfaithful servant who, after being forgiven much went out and choked his fellow servant for a piddly little sum? You’ve been saved from God’s wrath . . . why would you feel like you need to pour the burning brimstone of your wrath out on your kids?

If you’re an angry mom, confess it. Stop pretending it’s justice. Stop pretending that you’re on a crusade for righteousness. Call it what it is, and confess your sin. Confess it to God, then confess it to your kids, and then confess it to anyone else that witnessed it. The confession should be as public as the sin was. And if you find that you’re shrieking at your kids all the time with very little apparent provocation, dig a little deeper and see if you actually have some anger issues with someone besides them. Are you mad at your husband over something? Are you angry at your parents? Are you angry at God for your situation in life? Do you feel wronged by someone from your past or present? If you’re hanging on to that and nursing it along in your heart, then your kids will be the unlucky recipients as you sub-consciously re-direct your pent up wrath. And even if you pretend that it’s justice, your kids will see right through it.

I’m just throwing this out there . . . but here is a fun, cheap, easy, and generally awesome little boy gift. Since it’s a download, you can print out as many as you want, as many times as you want. Stick some in your son’s stocking, tie some on top of the new book for your nephew, give a set to the little boy you babysit . . . you get the idea. All you have to do is download, print on sticker paper like this, slice them apart, and you’re done. Easy peasy! Here’s all the info right here. (Pairs well with The Dragon’s Tooth which I’m sure you’re getting for lots of people on your list, right?!)

Are you drinking this in?

I, for one, have no words.

I’ll bet that, in this recent season of thankfulness, you forgot to mention your gratitude that this outfit  is not in style. I can’t even wrap my mind around it to be honest. Cast your eye over it again. Did you forget to notice the dressy gloves paired tastefully with a sweatsuit? I’ll bet you did. No one expects gloves. And honestly, I’m still stalled out back at the SWEATSUIT!  With tastefully appliqued floral motifs upon the sweatshirt, no less.

Another thing you may have missed on first glance, taken aback as you so rightfully were by the sweatsuit, is that this poor girl is sporting a tam, perched precariously on the side of her perm. I think that’s why she has to hold her head that way -  bobby pins are only so sturdy after all, and the whole thing may slide down onto her shoulder in a minute.

Take a quick gander at the foot gear.  Yes – your eyes have not mislead you – dress shoes with socks.

Now that she’s decked out in this sumptuous ensemble, what does she do? She loiters coyly by a lacy tea table,  holding a lily. Possibly to indicate the variety of lifelike instances in which this outfit would be appropriate.

Where did I get this photo you ask? No – it’s not my senior picture . . . thank heavens. My senior picture is dated, yes, and truth be told I was wearing some serious shoulder pads of power in a black tuxedo jacket with black satin pants. But why bring up the log in my own past when I can so much more easily poke fun at this unfortunate speck? At least I wasn’t wearing dress shoes with socks.

But I don’t blame this poor girl . . . this is actually the cover of a sewing pattern. Yes, she was paid to put this on, so we can give her the benefit of the doubt. But someone out there, at some point in the 1980s, thought this fashion decision was a good idea. Enough of a good idea to manufacture sewing patterns, and no doubt sell them!

Fess up now . . . did any of you ever wear this in 1987? Have you ever paired gloves with a sweatshirt, tam, socks, and a perm? Did you wear it to a tea party? Or were you one of those people that wore incredibly high waisted acid washed pleated jeans with zippers in the ankles? How about hammer pants? Any of you have that dark deed lurking in your past? What about jumpsuits? I’m totally guilty on the jumpsuit I’m afraid. I had a yellow and white striped one that Mom sewed me and I loved excessively. I also borrowed her chambray one and wore it with the collar up and a silver stretchy  belt. Yep. I did that. And I pegged the legs too. In further bad news, I’m fairly sure that I still have a soft spot in my heart for jumpsuits . . .

“Daughters” is kind of a big topic actually, and a whole lot of things spring to mind. I’m not even going to try to say everything all at once – I thought maybe I should pick away at it and just mention a couple of things right now.

The first thing I thought of is “foolishness.” This is something that we’ve worked on from the time our girls were very small – it’s not only relevant to older girls. However, I’ve been very grateful that we have been working on it for years . . . because we’re now hitting the age where this category actually matters. Basically, you reap what you sow. You harvest what you plant and tend. If you don’t want a harvest of foolishness when your daughter is grown, don’t tolerate foolishness when it’s small. Picture a garden. That enormous stink-weed there amongst the lettuce didn’t just appear there overnight. It started out as a seedling, and you let it grow for months and months. Not only did you neglect to pull it up, you probably watered it diligently every day. If you don’t want the big stink-weed, learn to recognize the little baby stink-weeds and get rid of them as they appear. Hint: they don’t look nearly so dire when they’re smaller. They might possibly even be cute. But they’re much, much easier to pull up when they’re small and cute.

So how does this apply to foolishness? Well, what does folly look like in a grown woman? Now rewind . . . how did that folly get there? It didn’t magically appear overnight. Rewind and ask yourself what it looked like when she was 10. What did it look like when she was 8? The fact that it suddenly blossomed and everyone noticed when she was 22 does not mean that it wasn’t there all along. It just means that no one took the time to pay attention to what was actually growing. Turns out it wasn’t a lettuce.

Here are some examples of the things that we’ve focused on and labeled as “foolishness.” We’re trying to train our girls to see these traits in their friends as well as themselves. We want them to be able to identify folly in others so that they can refrain from participating, or try and steer the activity in a different direction. I’m purposely picking things here that are not obvious sins (hopefully those things are straightforward enough!) – and I’m not trying to say that these are officially sins at all. I’m just saying that as we try to train our girls away from folly, these are some of the things we’ve identified.

1. Babytalk / weird voices. Yeah – this may seem uptight. I’m not talking here about girls playing a game with a baby doll. I’m talking about the situation where you have a group of 10 year old girls talking babytalk to one another. We’re not into that. If it pops up, we remind our girls to not use foolish voices and to talk like big girls. We’re trying to train our girls into maturity, and this seems to be an obvious area where people tolerate and encourage immaturity. I’m not trying to say girls shouldn’t laugh and have fun together – I’m all about that. But I think this is one area where folly looks so completely innocent that people feel ridiculous making a deal out of it. But once again, what does this turn into? If you nurture this one, where does it go? If you’ve ever seen a group of college girls squealing and hugging and jumping up and down and using babytalk, I hope you’d agree that it’s utterly unbecoming and foolish. And embarrassing. And cheap. And not cute at all. And I never want my girls to be those girls. So when the baby version of that shows up, we work on it. Sometimes it seems tied to one particular friend – after playing with her our girls seem more inclined that way. That’s a great learning opportunity, and it means that we can remind them before playing with her again that they need to make sure to guard against using foolish voices.

2. Coarse Jesting. “Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.” This segues right out of the previous point. It’s amazing to me how “foolish talking” almost immediately turns to “coarse jesting” in children, and I remember being incredibly struck by this verse in Ephesians when our kids were small. Those two things almost always go together. The babytalk girls almost always inevitably descend to potty humor. And as they get older, the coarse jesting “matures” along with them. If you don’t want them making sex jokes with the boys in high school, don’t let them get away with potty jokes right now. It may seem innocent, but learn to recognize the weeds when they’re small. For us, coarse jesting is a disciplineable offense, not just if you made the joke . . . but also if you laughed at it. If your friend says something off color, you have to look them in the eyes and tell them that they need to not talk that way. Again, recognize that your small girl needs to take a stand when her friend makes a joke about buns . . . because you want her to be able to take a stand later when it’s a sex scene in a movie. Help them fight the battles when they’re small – and remember that he who is faithful with little will be faithful with much. Give your girls all kinds of encouragement when they make that stand – be proud of them and realize that it takes a lot of courage to stand up to a friend, no matter what age you are. It’s also a good reminder to watch what you yourself joke about. Most of the time that our kids have to stand up to friends for coarse jesting, it turns out that it’s actually  the parents who are pretty free and easy with what they joke about at home.

That last point can be taken very wrongly by the way. Girls inclined to be Goody Two Shoes are a whole other problem requiring a whole different plan of attack. If your daughter is inclined to the foolish talking and coarse jesting, then that is where you need to focus your attention. But if your daughter is inclined to be better than everyone else, you have a whole different situation that needs a lot of wisdom. Definitely a topic for a whole separate post.

On the other hand, I’m pretty much ready to pop the champagne . . . because after a long and ridiculous saga, all my garment patterns are written, illustrated, printed, assembled, and shipped! (Thank you to all you lovely pre-order people for your patience! If you didn’t receive your patterns today they should be there in the next day or two.) So at least one item on my to-do list has been officially checked off. It also makes me realize that I don’t think I ever showed you the video that we took to Market in May. (Or did I? It’s all a blur . . . )

Anyway, there you go. And while I’m at it, why not give you a whole slug and a half of pictures? Also, did I mention that for the next week you can get FREE SHIPPING on your entire order?!?!

This is the Duchess Skirt pattern. It takes 3 1/3 yards of fabric, and it was just featured in the latest issue of American Quilt Retailer. So that’s fun. The pattern covers women’s sizes 4-14.

And then there’s the Party Frock. I like this one. (It also got featured in American Quilt Retailer!) This one requires between 2 and 3 yards, depending on the size you’re making. The pattern includes girls’ sizes 4-14. Did you catch that? Girls size 14. That’s a hard size to find things for.

Note: The button and rick-rack are just a fun variation I added to this version . . . that part isn’t included in the pattern.

Then there’s the Teatime Frock. I like this one because it has a comfy elastic waist, but it doesn’t look like it because of that button sash. It also goes from sizes 4-14, and requires 1 2/3 – 2 1/3 yards depending on the size, as well as 1/2 yard of contrast.

And now I will stop posting pictures because I have to go pick up my kids from school and mop my floors. And grocery shop. And read read large chunks of the Iliad and Beowulf for class tomorrow. And muster all my dirty laundry into one spot. And think of something to make for dinner. Not in that order though.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the free shipping . . . it’s on your entire order, not just the patterns. And for every order, I’ll also throw in a free download card for Michalangela’s version of England Swings.

I mind it, yes I really do, when Christians run around loving songs and singing along with them when they have never bothered to discover what those lyrics are actually saying. Are you with me here? I’m sure this must have happened to you before . . . it’s definitely happened to me a time or two, and I hate it. There’s some great song, you hear a snatch of it on the radio, it’s really catchy, you like the tune, and the next time it comes on you sing along with the chorus. And then you file it away under the mental category “songs I like.” But have you ever then discovered, after singing along with it about eighteen times without thinking, that it’s actually quite a despicable song when you read the lyrics? That’s really the worst.

No. I take that back. The worst is when Christians never actually DO reach the moment of discovering that it’s a despicable song . . . either because they just don’t bother, or because the cool hipness of the song has them around the neck and there’s nothing in the world that will convince them that it’s not the awesomest thing out there.

Actually, come to think of it, there’s one thing that’s even worse than that. The worst of all. That’s when the Christian knows perfectly well what the song says, but in some attempt at a James Jordan-ish (see important note in comments below!!) exegetical ninja move, they decide that the song has redemptive themes and a narratival structure of death and resurrection, which we all know is terribly Christian. That one can make me dance around in a perfect fury when I hear people do that. It’s my ultimate peeve. Because honestly, it’s not hard to discover redemptive themes and death and resurrection in basically everything. It’s like hitting the ground with your hat. We live in the world God made, and so death and resurrection are obvious themes in everything – it doesn’t mean the artist isn’t thumbing his nose at heaven, and it doesn’t somehow sanctify the rest of the trash. It’s like getting all excited because you’ve noticed that the debauched film you’re not supposed to be watching relies heavily on the use of gravity which, as we all know, was created by God. Clearly that makes no difference. I’ll bet that if I sat down and gave my mind to it, I could come up with a good argument for how there are redemptive themes involved in visiting temple prostitutes . . . but that doesn’t make it ok, obviously.

Why do I bring this up you ask? Because I’ve gotten all the way annoyed with people quoting little snatches of lyrics on their facebook pages that belong to songs that are as raunchy or as rebellious as the day is long. I don’t know if these people have never bothered to find out the context of their little quote, or if they like it anyway, or if they’re trying to act all deep about it and pretend that this is philosophically profound, but no matter what their reasons, it bothers me.

When I’ve suddenly realized that a song I like is actually a problem, it has always given me that sick feeling in my stomach. Not because the song is questionable – but because I had liked it. It’s like eating something that you thought was fantastic, only to discover that it was actually goat eyeballs or something. It’s that same kind of gross feeling. So all I can say is, read the lyrics. Seriously. Read them. It makes a difference when you look at the thing in hard print without the catchiness of the tune to make you feel like it’s ok. Obviously you can’t read the lyrics to every song you ever hear. But before you buy it on itunes, or add it to your playlist, or quote it on facebook, you should find out what it says. And like Dad always taught us . . . there are two questions that you should always ask. “What are they saying, and is it true?”

Anyway, that is neither here nor there. I frankly felt that I should share, for everyone’s edification, my career in journaling.

It all started when someone, I don’t remember who, gave me a birthday present. I imagine I was probably eight or nine, but I don’t know for sure. The gift was a tiny, green Garfield the Cat diary – probably two inches tall, with a little strap that snapped it shut. I never wrote anything in it – except perhaps my name. It sat in my room for months, untouched. It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed to write in it – I just never did.

Then, one day, some people came over to visit. I don’t remember exactly why, but midway through the afternoon I got cranky at life and began to stew quietly to myself about how I was being unduly harassed by everyone and everything. You know how it is when you’re cranky – everyone in the world is to blame but yourself. Suddenly, in the midst of my mood, I had a flash of inspiration. This here was exactly what that diary had been waiting for all this time. I went and shut myself in my room, opened up my little Garfield the Cat book, and scribbled out a terse little entry that went something like this:

“We have had the Schwartenheimers here all afternoon and I’m completely fed up.”

I did actually say I was fed up. I remember it distinctly, because I was rather impressed with myself for whipping out that little phrase. I’d been reading a lot of Narnia. Clearly I was channeling Eustace.

Anyhow, I snapped that little thought up in the diary and set it back up on my shelf. It actually made me feel better in a horrible smug sort of a way.

Then, about fifteen minutes later, God popped my smugness balloon. Mrs. Schwartzenheimer strolled casually into to my room. She spotted the green Garfield the Cat book sitting up on my shelf, and said, I kid you not, “Oh look! How cute!” She unsnapped it, and opened it up. Of course, it opened straight to the page that had her name engraven upon it. And, of course, she read it. My mom walked in at just that moment, and she said, as she handed her the book, “Nancy – look at this.” Mrs. Schwarzenheimer was very cracked up – I’m fairly certain my mom wasn’t exactly overcome with mirth. However, she was very kind about it, and didn’t rebuke me in front of the lady. I was petrified into a short little statue of mortification, and Mom clearly knew that. But later that evening we had a little chat about why I had been feeling grumpy, and about why it was a terrible idea to chronicle that fact instead of just confessing it.

The thing is, writing it down is NOT the same thing as confessing it. But it can give a sort of counterfeit feeling of relief. It’s not the relief of having your sins washed away, erased, and removed as far as the east is from the west. It’s the relief of having vented and gotten something off your chest – and that’s not the same thing, although it could be mistaken for it.

Long story short, that’s when I learned the lesson to never write anything down you would mind everyone reading. The lesson that sin should be confessed and let go of, not inscribed in a Garfield the Cat diary. The lesson that your sin will always find you out . . . but probably sooner than later if you’ve taken the time to jot it down for safekeeping!