7 Simple Ways to Make Life More Beautiful

In our corner of the world, February tends to be a dull month. The holiday festivities are long past, the snow is dirty, the sparkle of a new year is already starting to dim, the days are a bit longer but we still spend much of the day in darkness. People everywhere are saying, “I can’t wait for spring!” Oftentimes, it seems they really mean, “I can’t wait for life to be beautiful again!” We hope these ideas (and the following posts) may help you make life a little more beautiful right where you are...without any dependence on the weather.

1. De-clutter. This may seem very elementary, but please stick with us! We’ve discovered that our family keeps all kinds of things because we can see the potential. “Oh, if I only did this, this and that to this item, it would be perfect for such and such,” we say. Sometimes this works and sometimes it is simply a good way to collect all sorts of stuff that takes up time, space and mental energy and all-around makes life ugly...on top of often getting in the way of what God wants us to be doing. For our family, we have to institute the “B.U.J. Principle”. If it’s not “Beautiful, Useful or Joyful” (or can’t be made so in, say, the next six months), it gets a ticket out the door. Now there’s space to carry out some of these more creative projects...
2. Paint It. Once upon a time, we were oohing over some red file cabinets we found in a catalogue. We thought they would be just the thing for our family’s office space...until we realized that we could have almost an entirely new office for the cost of the cabinets! Thankfully, spray paint came to the rescue. Our file cabinets are now rimmed in cranberry red which contrasts cutely with the beige drawer fronts, and it’s been a happily-ever-after in the file cabinet department ever since! Some other ideas come from a friend who is the queen of this art. For example, she had frames that fit her favorite photos perfectly but no longer functioned with the room’s color scheme, so she painted them, and they became fabulous! Another time, she had found a set of kitchen chairs for a few dollars at a yard sale. A couple of hours, a couple of cans of white spray paint and a little sandpaper later, they were the perfect set to complete her splendid shabby-chic kitchen. Happy painting!
3. Cover it. Pillows, duvets, couches...The possibilities are endless! Take something
   that doesn’t quite match or has lost some of its luster and give it a new look with new fabric and a little sewing. One industrious daughter we know even made a cute cover for a coffee urn.
4. Put a new face on it. One of our favorite ideas is using antique boxes or tins to give things a new, prettier look. Depending on the style of your house, antique wooden boxes may be a great tool for transforming eye-displeasing electronics (and keeping dust off of them). The dog’s treats kept by the front door actually become a decorating accessory when they’re hidden in a vintage candy tin. Mint or tea tins are the perfect place to store bobby pins or tiny office tools that otherwise languish on the desk or in a drawer, looking messy and getting lost. You can probably come up with many more ideas yourself!
5. Simmer something sweet and spicy on the stove. If there is such a thing as beauty for the nose, apple cider and mulling spices is surely near the top of the list.
6. Make a playlist with music to go with your day and add a little ear-pleasing ambiance to life.
7. Smile. No two ways about it, a smile makes you look more beautiful. And it makes life more beautiful for other people, which is a timely thought as it will lead into our next post...

May your life be blessed and a little more beautiful today!

A Lesson from Uglyville

Our family recently traveled to Guatemala to visit old friends and familiar places. It’s hard to believe it has been almost nine years since we lived there! Of course, this trip brought back all sorts of memories.

One of those memories is of the town where we lived during the year Susan and I turned ten. That was the year that we moved back to Guatemala after spending most of our childhood in Wisconsin. While we were waiting for construction of our house to get far enough along for us to move into it, we lived in an apartment in a nearby town.

Now Guatemala is an extraordinarily beautiful country, generally speaking, but this specific town...Well, the dirt roads made everything incredibly dusty. There really were no beautiful tropical plants; everybody concreted as much of their land as possible. Broken glass soda bottles stood watch on the concrete block wall around our apartment, deterring any “clever” visitors. Drunks would bang on the metal gate at odd hours. Besides the drunks, there were the mangey street dogs. If you walked down the dusty/muddy street, there was trash and all sorts of icky, smelly things along the side. And the radio station above our apartment provided a background to the roosters, motorcycles, cars and trucks that went by. Oh, and inside the apartment you had to watch out or the rough finish on the walls would scrape you - not to mention the Amazon-worthy spiders who might show up above your head.

So sorry for the glass-half-empty approach, but as little girls those were the things that we noticed. All of those details combined prompted us to make up a new name for this town. In Spanish, it was “Feotenango”. Loosely translated, that means Uglyville. Uncharitable and pessimistic perhaps, but, in our culture-shocked opinions, decidedly honest...and funny enough to make us smile, which was worth a lot. 

Yet, with all of it’s ugliness, we began learning a lesson in Uglyville that has had a huge impact on our lives. The revelation was that beauty is important. Ugliness makes people want to give up and go back to bed. More importantly, God loves beauty and beauty is important to Him. (Psalm 50:2, Psalm 27:4, Psalm 96:6, Exodus 28:2) It was only after Adam and Eve’s sin that life got ugly (Genesis 3). Furthermore, we reflect Him as we, by His grace, make life beautiful again (Exodus 28:2,  part of the “dominion mandate” in Genesis 1:28 and Psalm 8).

Thankfully, our mom knew how important beauty is and helped us start making as much of our little life more beautiful as we could. It was somewhat like being Laura Ingalls: simple but pretty things became special. Daddy and some friends made our beds, and we painted the plywood our favorite colors and put the prettiest knobs that we could find on the drawers underneath. We painted little bookcases to match. With cardboard boxes, we made a house for our American Girl dolls, and had a delightful time decorating it. The dolls lovely clothes gave us no end of delight.

Once we moved into our own home, life got better because we could do whatever we wanted with the house and we actually had a yard for growing fabulous flowers. Bougainvillea vines look so much better on top of walls than broken bottles while serving the same purpose! Our goal was to make our home a place where other people could enjoy beauty, too. We hope they did.

So, in the end, we’re grateful for Uglyville because it taught us how special beauty really is and that, wherever God plants us, perhaps we can help make life a little bit more beautiful. As a wise albeit fictitious character says in the Lamplighter Theatre version of The Basket of Flowers, “It is our duty as Christians to make whatever place He leads us to more beautiful.” (Track 7 starting at 0:44)

With all this in mind, we’re excited to start a series on “Making Life More Beautiful”. Lord willing, we’ll be posting more thoughts, ideas and projects in the days ahead, but we would love to hear your thoughts as well!

Being Content with My Place in History

Dear Sisters in Christ,

    With all the talking we’ve done about the importance of history and the grand adventures of bygone days, I thought it might be good to offer a bit of balancing perspective. I don’t know about you, but I do know about me (some of the time at least!), and I know that as a girl I frequently longed to live in some former era. Let’s face it: the average historical films and historical fiction that girls these days watch and read tend to make life “back then” look pretty amazing! Of course, it’s right, good and to our benefit that we learn about and honor those who have come before us (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 32:7, Jeremiah 6:16, Ephesians 6:2-3, Hebrews 12:1—remembering the “cloud of witnesses”).  However, recognizing that God has providentially placed us at just the right point rather than pining to be somewhere else is also important. Scripture reminds us that “godliness with contentment is great gain…” (I Timothy 6:6). Now I can see that, at least in my case, I was caught up in an incorrect view of both the past and the present. Thankfully, my point of view all started to change when I was in my teens and found myself immersed in the saga of America’s War for Independence.  

    That year my sister and I had divided up the eras of American history and were responsible for teaching each other the vitals on each section. Being me, I dove into it and practically ate (Time period recipes occasionally found their way to the table.), read, dreamed, wore (Costumes, please!) and just about lived my eras. After doing everything from listening to 1776 while washing dishes to going around in my mob cap, I came to several conclusions that, for me, proved astounding.

    Those conclusions formed themselves into a little essay, portions of which I am reposting here. Crafted in a mere three days, this paper is no literary feat, but it surprisingly made its way to the 2007 Liberty Day Essay Contest. Through ensuing events, God used it to catapult my family into a whole new series of adventures…but that’s a story for a different time.  

The American Revolution Revelation

As a child, I wished I could live in American history.  This past year, as I traveled through books into the American Revolution, my old longing returned.  At my historical journey’s end, I realized that today differs little from then and that my wish came true.

Although living conditions, customs and technology have changed dramatically in America since her birth, much remains the same.  Once again Americans are protecting freedom for future generations….

On my journey, I discovered that I am living history, not as it was in the American Revolution, but as it is today in 2007.  While fearless Paul Revere no longer spies in Boston, valiant Molly Hays no longer carries her pitcher to wounded soldiers, wise George Washington no longer rides Mount Vernon’s grounds, and inspired Betsy Ross no longer pulls her needle, Americans today can imitate the Revolution’s heroes.  I can still live as they lived.  The Revolution’s true heroes lived to sacrifice themselves for God and country.  No thoughts of living in history texts’ pages drove them through the struggles.  Those men and women did what they believed was right—what they knew Scripture declared right—for their families and their country’s future.  

I want to emulate these heroes, and although I may never defend America on the battlefield, I now know that, whatever one’s tools are, part of the battle is doing the right thing for God and country.  I want children someday to admire heroes not only from the Revolution but also from this millennium’s first decade.  That is my new [prayer].  That is the American Revolution revelation.

(As a side note, I now wouldn’t refer to that era as the American Revolution because a “revolution” carries with it connotations that I don’t believe apply to America’s experience very well. America’s struggle for independence was vastly different from, say, the French Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution, and I like to keep that clear! However, one must admit, it’s much trickier to alliterate with “the War for Independence”…)

Like I said, for me this revelation was truly astounding. Discontentment seems to be such a troublesome issue with us girls!  Of course, I don’t have a corner on being content yet, but at least on this particular issue I am grateful that I can be satisfied that God has planted me in precisely the right place in His plan and that I can’t wait to see what He has in store!  

If any of you, dear sisters, have ever fancied that you would have faired better in some far away frame of time as I used to think, I hope this might encourage you to look differently at your present, and I would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on the subject.  

As a parting reflection, if you ever do find yourself having idealized notions of, say the 1800s, I challenge you to put on three to four layers of clothes (covered from head to toe, you know), build a blazing outdoor fire, hunt up a giant kettle filled with water (hauled by you, remember) and spend several hours stirring clothes in boiling water with lye soap in an attempt to get them clean…all on an about-90-degree day!  By personal experience, I found that to be a great reality check and the final cure for my illusions.                                    

Here’s to living God-glorifying, 21st-century-style adventures!

Blessings,

~Kristen

Once Upon A Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen

Once Upon A Town: The Miracle of the North Platte Canteen by Bob Greene is another great book when it comes to recording the stories of the generations before us. Our grandparents introduced us to it. They grew up in Nebraska during the WWII years, and Grandpa remembers his mother sending a little money to help pay for the food that was served to the soldiers passing through the North Platte Canteen on the troop trains headed to California. While we don’t endorse the entire book (read with discretion/some sections not suitable for children), particular stories are definitely worth your time.

During WWII, events that would be talked about for years to come were erupting on a global scale. Meanwhile, in a small Nebraska town, events were taking place with equal impact on thousands of individual lives. Travel with journalist Bob Greene to seek out the firsthand accounts of what happened at the North Platte Canteen where myriads of American soldiers stopped on their way to war. These are the true stories of sacrifice, community, hard work and love that capture life on the homefront and show how a mere fifteen minutes of kindness can leave a permanent impression and alter the courses of many lives.

I greatly appreciate that Bob Greene realized the importance of recording these stories. It is remarkable that he was willing to go so far to collect them. Whether he knew it or not, he was practicing Deuteronomy 32:7.

My favorite stories are the ones about the angel food cakes, the boy who sold his shirt to raise money for the Canteen, how popcorn balls connected particular people, and all the stories about the kids offering to help their parents do the work. Overall, the interviews are so sweet and inspiring. I thought it was really interesting that many of the people who told their stories to Mr. Greene cried as they told them. Oh, and another of my favorites is about the father who actually took his children to North Platte after the war because he wanted to show them this place that had had such an impact on him. They were even able to find his name in the Canteen’s guestbook! 

Another part of this book that intrigued me particularly is that serving especially scrumptious homemade food out of the Canteen to the soldiers coming through was a private idea. It wasn’t a government project. It didn’t take a bureaucratic committee. It did take a host of volunteering, kind homemakers, farmers and country children. It’s such a great example of charity that is “relational, local and voluntary”. 

All in all, it was a productive read and a challenge. Could we be as dedicated as Mr. Greene to collecting the stories of those who have gone before us with a focus on God’s glory? Would we be willing to give of our time and resources with such gusto if given an opportunity as the women, children and men at North Platte had? Could they have used those fifteen-minute intervals more fruitfully for Christ’s Kingdom? Are there similar opportunities waiting for us today? Hmmm. Food for thought.

Photo from Amazon.com