A long time ago I read a story about a man attending the concert of a famous violinist. He was booked in the same hotel as the man with the fiddle, and as it happened, in the room next door. He was excited because he thought he would be the recipient of a free concert. After all, the walls were thin. What he heard in the hours before the evening’s performance, though, wasn’t too exciting. It was just a bunch of scales. And more scales, and then some more.

The-man-next-door was wondering about the upcoming recital—had the crowd paid a bunch of money to hear repetitious meanderings in the key of F sharp? He hadn’t practiced his classical pieces. But of course, the good musician knew the key to a good performance: a focus on the fundamentals. The crowd was pleased as the musician delivered a fine classical performance.

I see this same thing applied in baseball. The key to improving performance is not a lot of scrimmage time, but instead, a lot of drill time. Playing the game is a lot of fun, but you will never play the game well until you have the basics down.

My son plays short stop in Little League, and though he is a good ball player, occasionally he takes a quick pause or a step before fielding from short to first. This is a pretty basic sin of fielding grounders on the infield and one that needs correction. The only way to get rid of this habit is to drill: charge, scoop, fire; charge, scoop, fire; charge, scoop, fire. This is fundamental to the game.

At this level of baseball, a short stop will often make the out at first base even with a hesitation (and everyone will cheer…), but it is a bad idea not to correct the form now. Drills create good habits, so that the body automatically does what it is supposed to do. When making the play is a matter of a second, you don’t have time to think about your form. It has to be second nature. The ball needs to be in the first baseman’s glove as soon as possible. A half of a second can be the difference between being safe and being out. The way to get that immediate response is through drills, which of course, aren’t as fun as playing a scrimmage. Guess what McGregor will practice in the cul-de-sac before tonight’s game.

The reason I was thinking about this is because I had a conversation about the gospel this week. We are sinners, but Jesus died for us. We can have eternal life if we believe in Him. But, as is often the case, a lot of my thinking and blathering has to do with anything and everything but the basics. Yet the fundamentals of the gospel have everything to do with how we play the game, or such as it is, do life.

My faith triumphs and suffers along with my emphasis on the fundamentals. Have I been forgiven? If so, can I forgive others as God has forgiven me? Knowing something, I’m finding out, is not the same thing as believing something. It is fun to play semantics and dissection, but at the end of the day, what I need to know is that fundamentally and objectively that God is all the things He said. Some people look pretty good in a uniform but can lack the very basics of what the game stands for—loving God and our neighbor. It’s funny, because I’m all about learning a trick move when I am not even good at the basic ones.

Fundamentals have everything to do with how well we field the stuff life throws. We must get the gospel right if we intend to get how to live out the gospel right. Jesus took our sins so we don’t have to. This isn’t rote or boring. This is good news and basic to our understanding of what this crazy world means.

The house is all done except for the kitchen. I will find out if it’s a true or just a rumor when I check it out this weekend.

The picture below is what it will kind of be like….with a few differences here and there:

So you let her go to the farm all by herself and what does she do? She spends two days looking at rental properties near our new home.

Go figure.

I meant to write a post about the other side of owning rental properties. You know, the part where you actually make money, but I thought I should stick to things I know about.

Rental properties can be a good investment. In theory. The things you have to know, though, are the things I haven’t told you about yet. (A woman has to keep secrets in order to maintain the mystery.) One of those things you have to know is that small time investors—that would be us—need to keep their properties local. That way, you know if people are violating the rules, like the one about keeping pets. The cat that fell through the ceiling in the middle of the night on the naked 500+ pound man sleeping in the bedroom? That wouldn’t have happened if I was on the job. You have to keep an eye on the place. (Well, I’d be sure to leave my glasses at home in the case of the cat man.) Note to renters: always take the top floor apartment. The top floor apartment is always the best. If it leaks, at least you know it’s rain and not something else.

That’s why when I was driving through our new town on my visit to the farm, I slammed on the brakes when I saw this certain house. It was perfect, well, almost perfect if you don’t look at the boarded windows, sagging A/C units, and yard that looks more like a South American jungle than a city lot.

Me: Ring. “Honey, I got this idea.” After waiting for him to pop some Advil, I explain how the house sits on the main drag next to the college in town—perfect. There are a few cosmetic issues, but nothing that can’t be fixed with a 2 x 4 and some paint. And some windows and doors. And a new floor. And appliances. But that’s minor. “It’s a bank foreclosure. What do you think?”

Greg hangs up the phone and concurs with my son that I’m nuts. The voice of reason, a nine-year-old, wants to know why I want three more units when the seven we already have…well, let’s not go there again. Here’s the thing: why give up now that I’ve paid so handsomely for this education? I mean, we know a ton of secrets—one of them is to stay local—so why leave the business now? We’re just about to make a return on our time. I can feel it. I know this. Besides, worst case, we can always use another tax write-off.

They probably won’t take my offer, and if they do, I’m going to find out what they’re hiding (or drinking).

It’s in my blood. I can’t help it. My name is Amy Scott, and I’m a real estate junkie. Please pray for my marriage. Thank you.

I flew into Nashville last Friday and drove on up to the farm. The house is almost finished, and it was time to check on the progress. I’ll put the inside pictures up next. The pictures below were taken on our street. It sure is purty. (That’s about all the accent I can muster.) I know that heaven must be wonderful, and I think that our little spot here is a foretaste.

This church building is vacant. It’s just down the road from us. You can’t see the river along the driveway, but it doesn’t get any better than this. I hope the little community church is revitalized one day. It’s gorgeous.

This is the top of our hill.

This is another farm on the way to our place.

1. When making decisions, ask yourself what you’ll wish you would’ve done in hindsight. Another thing is to figure out what you’d say to a friend asking for advice. I wish I would’ve thought of this earlier. I’m much better with other people’s lives.

2. TSA would be better off confiscating the razor and haircutting shears from the foreign guy in front of me than taking away toothpaste from a suburban mom. Also, I would like to thank them for the compliment, “You don’t look like your driver’s license.”

3. Over the years, I’ve been told a few times that I am naïve and sheltered. I own rental units and my mother used our childhood home as a halfway house for her jail ministry. Hello. While we’re talking about it, I think it’s easier if you put your baggage in the closet instead of carrying it around with you your whole life.

4. Whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer, I always skip the part, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I don’t want God to forgive me the same way I forgive others. But not praying that doesn’t release me from the obligation to do so.

When my husband met me, he said that I was a diamond in the rough. He saw the potential that everyone else seemed to miss, which includes the boyfriend that dumped me and all the folks that warned him that he was marrying beneath himself. He’s still waiting on the diamond part I think, but it’s there. I mean well most of the time, and I love Jesus.

I like houses with potential too. I could see this one was going to be a beauty. It is. It’s our best rehab job yet, and it also happens to be the only one we didn’t do ourselves while living in it. But anyway. We’re close to the finish line.

Here’s the main living area of the house when we bought it:

This is how it’s been sitting for a couple months:

And here it is now, minus the red paint that I changed my mind about:

When my oldest turned the big double digits this week, I realized that the days were long but the years are short. I know what that means now. When he was a baby—which was just yesterday, if I recall– I couldn’t leave the room without him wailing. Now he wants to walk to the park alone. I told him I’d consider it when he was 10. He’s 10 now, and I’ve done considered it. I thought the day was far away, but it is not. It is here. It is now. I wanted him to hurry up all this time, but now I want it to slow down. Fast.

Please don’t hate me for noticing what every other parent has observed before me. I knew it was coming but I still didn’t think it’d happen to me. This stuff happens to other people. The feet that fit in my palm are now the size of my own. He will be a man in less than 10 years. He will be taller than me any day now. The next thing I know, I’ll be the mother of a teenager, and what will I do. For his birthday, we gave him the multi-tool that SurvivorMan uses, and I trust him with it. I’m having one of those moments where I sat quietly and realized: This is going by. My mind is not ready for it. It’s like the thing you’re hoping if you just ignore, it won’t happen or it’ll go away. But when he ooh’d and ahh’d for a long time over his little siblings handmade cards instead of tearing into his present, I was certain things are different now. The signs were there, but now I have to read them.

He has a quick wit and a good reputation, but he is not yet the man he is going to be. I can see a shadow of it, though. It is good, but my husband and I are not yet done telling him all the things we want to say. He is a gift, but I see now that so is our time with him.

I always say that hindsight is 20/20. When it comes to raising children though, I think I’ll adjust those numbers. When I’m a grandma, I’ll have Superman vision, like 20/10. I’ll know all the things I did wrong because I’ll have the evidence right in front of me. I will own it– right after I make a few excuses, like this one: I am so not responsible for the messy child. He did not get that from me, and by golly, I tried.

The thing about raising children is that for us women, it is a big deal. It’s important not only because there are eternal consequences at stake—we know that their souls need Jesus and the messy room is small in the scheme of things—but because this is what we do every day. We wake up and they are there. We lie down and they are there. We sneak into their rooms in the middle of the night to make sure that their chests are rising and falling. We flinch and grimace when the door makes a squeak on the way out, because we love them, but you know, we love them to sleep too. When some other kid yells “mom” from the dugout, we turn our heads just to make sure.

There will never be a better job for me. This is who I am and what I do. So when I mess up, things can get wonky. I’ve made some mistakes, like burning dinner and forgetting the pompom balls for the church craft bazaar. But then there are the big ones, the kind where you can’t just reorder a new part. I gave my son’s dog away six months ago, and now I know what it feels like to do the wrong thing. The story is long and complicated, but the feelings aren’t. I am sorry for hurting my boy. When he hurts, I hurt. The pain is still there. I see all the parts that others did wrong, as is always the case, isn’t it? But I see, better than 20/20, that I did wrong too.

I love my children. I want to do the right thing. I want to do a good job for their sakes, not just for me and my ego. I want their forgiveness for when I mess up. I thought I could make it through motherhood with only a few minor scrapes. I thought I could do a good job, because if it was all about love, I’m all good. But life is complicated sometimes, and having good intentions doesn’t matter for some things. For times like these, I am glad that we teach our children a gospel of grace and forgiveness, not of works and self-righteousness. I hope the grace part sticks, because if it doesn’t, I have a feeling I’m not the only who is sunk.

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. –Colossians 3:12-14

I’ve been around the Mommy Wars long enough to know that it can get ugly. The Mommy Wars, of course, are the way women one-up each other in a way to validate their work that otherwise gets no recognition (not counting the pink carnation on Mother’s Day). Some women work for God, some women work for their own egos, and some women work for no other reason than it has to get done. Sometimes it’s a combination.

I’m sure there are other reasons that I haven’t thought of, but I’m bad at psychotherapy. The truth is, even if we have noble goals, the nitty gritty is messy: it can get competitive among the women. I’m still young, but I’ve never heard a man say, “Dude, you really need to get your kid off the bottle. It will deform his mouth structure.” To clarify, I have never asked anyone to open their mouth so I could see if they had a good mother or a bad mother.

Men are simple, but women are complex. (This is not the part where I say that I wish I were a man.) Once you understand that women are complex, though, you can work with it. The world is a yucky place, and those of us with the same goals—like doing right by our children and doing it for God– should stick together. What if we really threw each other for a loop and said, “You’re doing a good job”? I know we need to flesh some things out, but what if we started out on the same page more often?

I got this idea because I was talking to a woman about marriage stuff recently. She’s awesome: beautiful, smart, and a good mom to her kids. She’s the kind that you don’t think to say nice stuff to because she’s strong and anyone as cool as her has to know it. But she didn’t know it. Not knowing that your work is meaningful—whatever it is—can be a weight around your neck.

Every person reading this knows someone in real life who is doing a good job. Why not say it? I don’t think we suffer from too much encouragement that it can turn into a pride-fest. At the end of the day, we want to lay our head on the pillow and know that the day was not wasted. That’s why it’s important to do all things for Jesus– bottles or cups.

Let’s do this. Next time you see an 18-month-old running around with a bottle, resist the urge to gasp in horror and discuss orthodontics. Try this instead, “You are so patient with your kids. That’s awesome.” It’s a step in the right direction. I have this theory—moms who are not beating themselves up all the time for their deficiencies have more time to research bottles and cups and dentists. (Or concentrate on the stuff of life that really matters.) Look, I don’t want you newbie moms—you know I love ya– kicking yourself when you realize how hyper you were. Just calm down now and save yourself the apologies. We moms need to stick together. We can hear each other better when we’re building up one another.

Take it from me, you’re awesome.

The house progress
I took a trip to the farm earlier this month. Usually Greg goes to check on the progress, but since he’d been travelling so much lately, it was decided that I should go instead. It was a four day trip, something I haven’t done since four children ago. One of the advantages with Greg’s work is that we earn frequent flyer miles and car rental incentives, so it is inexpensive for us to travel. I would normally say that that is the only advantage of traveling for work, but with the economy the way it is, I am just glad for the employment.

Even though our contractor was formerly Amish (now Mennonite), he’d never done an Amish-to-English conversion and so there was a lot of things everyone learned along the way. We don’t plan on needing this kind of information again, but I suppose it might prove helpful for someone one day. For example, one way to save a lot of drywall work is to run the electric along the bottom of the wall—threading it up to the receptacle spots–so that the patching doesn’t have to be done perfectly, as the baseboards will cover it. I am partial toward high baseboards, and so having a practical reason for them was helpful. They are plain, not fancy.

We hired a cabinet maker to do our kitchen, as it turned out to be more economical than using a retail store. He is behind on the counters and cabinets, but we still expect/hope the entire project to be finished in July. We bought the farm – I see the euphemism there – last August, so it looks like the rehab will end up as a one year project.

The neighbors
I met more neighbors on this trip. After asking around, I was led to a farm down the way to inquire about keeping our place bush hogged while we were away. They already knew who I was, so I didn’t even have to introduce myself. News travels fast, I’m learning, and so now it’s just easier to say, “Hey, we’re the folks who bought Jake’s place.” That is the shorthand for my farm address, birthplace, family status, and all the work that is going on at the farm. (They already know; no need to say it.) People tell me this country telephone is good and bad, but so far for us, it’s been good.

Our neighbors are fellow Floridian transplants that moved for similar reasons. So here we are in the same little town that we both picked because it was affordable and pretty. They used to own a gas station a mile from our house in Orlando, so life is funny that way. Our neighbors on the farm south of us are also from Florida, I hear. I met a realtor that weekend from Deland, Florida. I am noticing the pattern.

I spoke with my new neighbors for several hours. They are eager to help us avoid all the mistakes they made, but not nearly as eager as I am to learn. Greg tells me that I need to learn different manners – like not being in such a hurry all the time – but I’m not sure how much of that is my personality and how much if that is surviving with a large amount of preschoolers. Really, I don’t enjoy eating fast, talking fast, getting things done chop-chop, but with the past ten years of having babies in succession….well, you know.

There is an Amish schoolhouse that used to be part of our farm, but it got divided up during an auction last year. It is across our narrow road down by the river. I heard that a newlywed Amish couple is living there and farming, but I didn’t get to meet them. They plan to build a house soon. I followed their buggy home one night, but since it was late, I didn’t stop in. (Actually, I wasn’t following them, I just decided not to pass them.) We’ll meet soon enough.

John Piper’s comments that I wrestle with
I drove the back roads of our area, and it is beautiful. While enjoying the scenery, I was thinking about one conversation Greg and I had back in 2000. It was late and we were talking about where we’d like to be in 10 years. It never occurred to us that we could leave Orlando, as (1) that’s where we were both raised and (2) because because. Yet, our kids couldn’t play outside because of the traffic and crime, and we just felt restless. There were no sidewalks even if, let’s say, there weren’t gangs.

Right around this time, I heard John Piper – back before he became a celebrity pastor – publically criticize some men (not by name) who were being interviewed for the pastoral staff at his church. During the interview process, they asked if the area (downtown Minneapolis) was safe for their kids. Boy, he went off. He explained about how the Christian life wasn’t about “safe” but that the only safe spot in the world is in the center of God’s will. (I’m paraphrasing; if I use the phrase “God-saturated” or something, you might think I’m quoting, so I’ll stick to this generic version.) I agree with this position, but I’m not sure how to unpack it.

In some way, I think it’s OK to take risks for myself, but not necessarily for my children. And by that, I mean, calculated risks for the Gospel, not just stupid stuff. This idea impacted me in a big way, as you can see from my writing about it so many years later, and in some way, I feel the need to justify my decision to withdraw from the decay instead of raising my children among the moral cesspool. Sometimes. This doesn’t mean that I’m wavering or unsure, just that I’m always thinking about how our lives can be wasted. How many of our life decisions are based on preferences and not on earnestly desiring that God’s name look great? Not that there isn’t moral degeneration wherever you go and you’ll get away from sin by moving to the country. The counter-point to Piper’s position is what Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Con, often talks about with the Benedict Option. In a lot of ways, I think it’s a “both-and” instead of an “either-or” and it all depends on what you’re trying to do.

Everyone has different callings, but no matter what, decisions ought to be based on faith and not fear. (Romans 14:23) Each side (one side being in the world, the other side being not of it–even though we’re supposed to be both, we tend toward one side or the other)tends to claim the moral high ground, whether or not they found themselves there by default. In other words, I would think sanitized bragging rights belong moreso to someone who radically changed the course of their life, choosing the harder path, as we all usually just defend the position we find ourselves in, in order to justify our laziness or whatever. I’m just saying, as I’m guilty of it.

My current thinking is that it’s possible to raise children in the middle of popular culture, but definitely harder and not without significant risks. That’s my call as a parent for my own kids. With our situation, I began looking for ways to make this easier without having to stop having children. Again, this is where I felt sure of my calling, but all the other stuff seemed negotiable. I’m not saying we are 100% making the right decision, just that it was deliberate.

It’s OK to dream
It was during the late night conversation in 2000 that we looked at each other and basically said, “You know, I don’t hear God telling us to stay, so why don’t we follow our dream?” With babies coming every year, it made sense to us to take steps in another direction, out of the city. We needed a place that I didn’t have to lose my mind playing a helicopter parent. We could’ve made the concession to just stop having babies – don’t-you-know-what’s-causing-that —but in my heart, I felt that God did have that in His plans for us. We might have been foolish in the eyes of everyone, but I felt at peace with God.

We moved to the coast to be closer to Greg’s job. This was huge, as I said, because we’ve both lived in Orlando all along. He was commuting 2 hours, 15 minutes each day, and that’s time you can never get back. Once we settled into what is our home now, we began looking for alternative ways to make a living, pay off the house, and simplify. Again, one solution is to quit the stork’s visits, but living simple isn’t about sacrificing quality of life for the easiest way to live it. So, I came up with a new idea almost everyday (think: rentals), but none of them ever amounted to much (think: rentals). The way I saw it, we had two options. Either Greg could work more hours to make more money to pay for the things we needed and wanted, or we could reduce our needs and wants and need less money. We fiddled with spreadsheets constantly, and in 2005, I was ready to sell our house at the peak of the Florida housing bubble. The trouble was, Greg didn’t have a work-from-home job, so where would we go anyway? None of my entrepreneur ideas worked.

We were rescued from probable financial ruin with all my let’s-start-a-company talk when Greg landed a work-from-anywhere job after the market decline. Notice I used “work-from-anywhere” instead of “work-from-home.” My son asked last week, “Mom, how come Daddy got a work-from-home job but he doesn’t work from home?” Actually, all his emailing and phone calling at home is part of his job, but it does involve some travel.

A miscellaneous paragraph about my baby
I think I’ve gotten off-track, but I don’t know how to get back on. Apparently from my going on and on, you can tell that the baby is still sleeping. She is six-months-old and began crawling this week. This is an official Scott baby deviation, as all the Scott babies sit up at six months and crawl at seven months. I don’t know how this Scott baby got so far off track. I will have to research this.

It’s all good
Anyway, the drive. Yes, I was driving and wondering and thinking and praying and just being happy. We’ve talked about this for so long — the chickens, the berries, the creeks, the fresh milk, the flowers — and it is given to us to enjoy. But I know that it’s not nirvana. No matter where we’ve been – in the rented 2 bedroom California apartment, downtown Orlando, this pretty farm – we’ve always had Jesus. This is the reason the Christian has joy in poverty and in plenty.

A few things have changed for us, and so we’re considering an August moving date. How cool is that.

Whenever we have family get-togethers with Greg’s side of the family, we’ll usually hear some good natured ribbing from Greg’s younger sister. She is seven years younger than Greg. They’d play together when they were kids, but Greg would dominate in every game. He never let her win. Greg will be 40 this year, but he still can’t live down the “abuse.”

Greg is a bit of an overachiever (even when he’s not abusing the little guy), as are the majority of homeschoolers. It makes sense that Subway wants homeschoolers to take their bat and go home. If you don’t let them play, they can’t decimate the competition.

Subway is holding an essay contest for school children. Here’s who can enter: “legal US residents, over the age of 18 with children in either elementary, private or parochial schools that serve grades PreK-6. No home schools will be accepted.”

Now, it’s possible that Subway excluded homeschoolers since the grand prize is athletic equipment for the child’s school. Fair enough. It’s not like homeschoolers patronize parks or church playgrounds or community centers. But the bigger suspicion is that homeschoolers are kind of like my husband—they never let anyone else win at anything. From national test scores to the annual Spelling Bee, homeschoolers dominate. This isn’t a rah-rah for the homeschoolers, as I’ll get to my criticism next. It’s always dangerous to analyze motives, though. I’m married, so I know this.

The homeschool blogs are having a heyday with this public relations mistake. But I agree with Jube Dankworth who writes, “As a private corporation, Subway is free to include or exclude anyone from their essay contest, and can set up the rules of their contest as they see fit. So why — beside the blatant misspellings that even the eight-year-olds caught [which are now fixed…–Amy] — are homeschoolers so offended by this?” Go ahead and take your business elsewhere. That’s good. But stop with the discrimination charges.

Why don’t we independent types support autonomous businesses to do what they want with their money? It is not public money; it belongs to Subway to do whatever they want with it. If homeschooling exists because of the freedom allowed by the Constitution for parents to raise their children how they see fit (children belong to parents, not the state), then Subway ought to be afforded the same freedoms to give their money to non-homeschoolers (after-tax money belongs to Subway, not the state). It’s consistently applying the same principles, even when we don’t like it.

So, here’s my advice. Save your money. Don’t start a lawsuit. Practice hard for the Scripps National Spelling Bee and eat Quiznos.

In college, I drew the short end of the straw and got a campus job in the dish room. The only thing worse than working the dish room was having the breakfast shift in the dish room at 6 a.m. I told you I have bad luck. (While we’re talking about it, I’d like to apologize for the day that I forgot to put soap in the machine for my entire shift.) There are worse jobs than scraping gooey scrambled eggs intertwined with paper napkins off plates, but when you are 17-years-old, you are too stupid to be grateful.

I went to school beachside in south Florida, and back then, there was no air conditioning in the kitchen. I hope they’ve figured another way to make folks carry the cross, so to speak. There’s a lot of steam and smoke (not from smoking, these were fundamental Baptist folks) in a dish room. If you remember the scene where Dorothy meets the Wizard of Oz, dish rooms are kind of like those smoking contraptions. It’s hot, it’s steamy, but not in a romantic sort of way. There were two dishwashing people vs. 400 students at a meal. That’s a lot of hard work and bad odds on any day.

I’ve never been afraid of hard work; I just haven’t always been especially good at it. (Foreshadow.) The students would line up at a small hole cut into the wall and dump their plates at the dish person. The wall was to hide the human behind it, so they could shove their stuff fast, carelessly, and without putting the silverware in the appropriate bin and still have a clean conscience. I don’t know what’s wrong with people these days.

Ten minutes before the hour, there’s a huge influx of students dumping their dishes in order to make it to class on time. I was flustered at the incredible amount of multi-tasking and speed in which I had to work. I am methodical, detailed, and particular. I like my stuff alphabetized, clean, and in order. I do not enjoy dealing with mass volumes that have to be moved on a large scale at high speed. But I’m also competitive, so I aimed to conquer the thing and develop a method to scrape, stack, and run the bin in one successive motion. By the end of the semester, I could handle a shift on my own.

Now I am the mom of a small herd of people who leave gooey things on their plates and sometimes dump stuff at/on me in warp speed like I’m the maid with Go-Go-Gadget functionality. I still don’t know what’s wrong with people these days. I know that God has a sense of humor, and in some small way, never wastes anything. I work fast, and I work hard. Some things come back to you when you need it.

I accepted the computer lab tech position when it was offered to me the next semester. I’m just saying.