Sunday, December 13, 2009

Joyful Noise

A year ago, Abigail could not speak the language. Life for her at that time was a blur, in fact she remembers very little of the month after we returned from China. A year later (yesterday evening), she was singing a solo in front of a large church. She loved it. She wants to do it again.

God is good.

Pictures and a video clip below...


Abigail is the one with the pink shirt and big smile (circled):

In the following video clip, Abigail is the first to sing...

Friday, December 4, 2009

The Strong-Willed Child

It is said that some children are strong-willed. We have one of those. If there were a way to measure the strength of a child's will, Abigail would be way at the top of the scale. Some children have strong wills, her will is made of high strength steel. While this can result in some tensions within the family, particularly with other strong-willed family members, it can also result in some rather humorous situations.

She has been learning the concept of obedience, and of one's role in the family--particularly, children being obedient to their parents. Some of this she has been learning the hard way, through the consequences that occur from disobedience. Those are some hard lessons, but she is making progress. To put it in simpler language for her, Dad and Mom are the "boss", and the boss is to be obeyed.

Knowing now what she is like, it really came as no surprise to us when she announced at dinnertime yesterday, "I wanna be the BOSS." She just blurted it out to the whole family. She has never been accused of being subtle, so this was right in line with her character. She wants to be in charge, and will let everyone know about it. I think she knew that she wasn't going to get far with this little request, since we all burst out laughing, but I think that she was only half joking.

This resulted in an animated discussion of what being the "boss" was like. This was backed up a little later when the topic on our Advent calendar was Jesus the Servant King. The "boss" serves his family. The "boss" is the one who gets up earlier than everyone else to clear the snow off the driveway. The "boss" takes responsibility to provide for those that he is responsible for, putting his own desires aside.

I told her that she could be the boss. I would go to Chinese class once a week, and practice the piano for a half hour a day, and sleep in until 9:30, and wash the dishes, and work on math problems. She could then pay the bills and go to work and make sure there's food on the table every day and keep the cars on the road and heat in the house.

She was not dissuaded.

She still wants to be the "boss".