Dominion Family

Timothy joined the Navy to be challenged. For the first 2 years he felt totally unchallenged. Even bootcamp was a disappointment for him and he has hated living on his ship. Thankfully the Lord provided a family from his church he could live with when not required to be on ship.

Because he is scheduled to go to SEALS in February, he has been given permission to work out with the SEALS in Norfolk everyday instead of reporting to his ship. Finally Timothy is enjoying the Navy.

Now the phone rings every morning around noon. Timothy wants to tell us all the horrible things he had to do that day. There is a new lilt in his voice as he tells us horror stories of being yelled at, stepped on, made to run for hours at a time, throwing up. He is thriving.

” First we ran on the beach in our boots. We ran for about an hour and then they tied a tire to our backs and we had to run for another hour. Then we had to run in the water. Then we had to do 7 million pushups in the sand with the tire on our backs. Then we had a race. ”

He tells us stories like this everyday, and I thought some of you have younger boys who might like to hear about that. But the thing I found the most satisfying was when he started telling me how he keeps going . He said, ” When I think I can’t go on any longer I think of all my little brothers who think I can and I think of Bannockburn and William Wallace and Eric Liddle and all those great men I read about growing up.”

I take great satisfaction in knowing that while the Navy is training the warrior, home trained the poet.

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Ok, big boys, here is a page for you.

Navy Seal workout

And little boys, here is a workout for you:

This is a copy of the workout that Timothy sent to Andrew (7):

Navy Seal Workout for Andrew:

Monday, Wednesday and Friday:

10 Push-ups
10 sit-ups
10 4 count flutter kicks (always keep the chin on chest to avoid back injury)
Run around the house 1 time.

That is one set,.
do a set then get a drink of water and rest for 2 minutes.
Do it again 5 times.

On the flutter kicks, lay on your back, sit on your hands, put your chin tight against your chest. To do this wrong will relax your back muscles in the lower back and hurt your back. So put your chin against your chest.

Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday:

Rest and recover.

Andrew,
I took valuable time out of my day to write this because you told me you were motivated enough to stick to a schedule if I gave you one.
Don’t let me down. Do it every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and telll me how you feel when I call.
When you are able to do more I will give you more. Work your body slowly, eat right and get plenty of sleep, and you will be very strong someday.

Love, Timothy

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I am in the midst of writing my post on Nathan Bedford Forrest, but I want to get a few facts straight before I publish it.

In the meantime I thought I would share a few odds and ends of things going right around here.

1. I have a new form of discipline for my older boys. It is working out wonderfully. I am not oppposed to using the “s” word on the boys but this is a much better punishment. It works especially well for the subtle forms of rebellion like talking back, reacting slowly etc. They actually began this on their own and I am not too sure they were happy I grabbed the idea. It is just this, “drop and do 20,” or 10 or whatever. If they argue the number increases. It establishes authority and works out aggression. I was telling the father of a little baby boy about this the other day and now he can hardly wait for his son to grow up. BTW, the number refers to push-ups but you could change the exercise accordingly.

2. My dh, Tim, as many of you know, works long hours. This was wrecking havoc on our evening devotions. Finally Tim asked the 3 older boys to rotate giving the devotions for a while. That way he doesn’t just wing it or skip it. James, Nathaniel and Christopher have done such a wonderful job of preparing and presenting, we wonder why we didn’t think of this sooner. The Holy Spirit has used their words to convict and encourage Tim and I in several key areas.

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I don’t suppose you need me to tell you about the new blog: Together for the Gospel: Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Albert Mohler
with special guests John MacArthur, John Piper, and R.C. Sproul. Wow!

I am already printing off things like several Southern Seminary articles on raising sons that they linked.

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Life goes in cycles. I know for some people in this family the cycle is spring training, 1st half, all star game, 2nd half, play-offs, World Series, depression. When “Barney” was in the police academy we spent a lot of time praying for him. When he graduated we all felt like we had participated.

At this time we are heavily involved in “getting” Timothy through BUD/s. I don’t mean to blog about it all time but I haven’t been thinking of much else lately.

In a most amazing providence one of Timothy’s cousins is a pastor San Diego. This weekend his wife sent us a picture of Timothy. We were all a bit shocked at how thin he looks, but his spirits are much higher than they were a week ago. Timothy is a bit embarrassed that I am blogging about him since he knows the chances of getting through BUD/s are slim. As a matter of fact, he knows that he can’t get through BUD/s unless God has a purpose for him to get through.

And in the meantime, here is a link that gives a detailed explanation of each BUD/s phase.

Here is the page which describes the week Timothy is on. Isn’t that drown-proofing awful?

I will try to resume my humorous or controversial posts soon. Maybe I will blog about new evidence that supports the claim that it is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition and indeed, always has been or another topic near and dear to my heart, the boorishness of gestapo homeschool moms.

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UPDATE:

The rumpus has ended. Timothy called a few minutes ago (2:30 am our time) to tell us he was too weak to make it through the week. He could barely raise his arms and began shaking immediately. He knew he was a liability to his boat crew and decided not to go through Hell Week. Thank-you all for praying for him; he still needs to recover from the cellulitis. We are hoping he gets leave and can come home soon.

Please continue to pray for David W. this week.

Update: The guys are at the camp waiting until about 5:45 their time for all H to break loose. The will be attacked with Ak-47’s, smoke etc and generally caused to be confused.

I will be posting the names of his probable boat crew later. We will be praying for them all.

Timothy is on his way to Hell Week !! It has been a bizarre week and I am glad to be reminded that this is all in God’s hands. I will probably not be posting anything about him this week unless he quits or is injured. He has asked me to ask y’all to also pray for the other homeschooled boy in his group David Wolfskill.

They will not be getting more than 4 hours of sleep all week, from Sunday night until Saturday morning. I don’t expect to hear from him until he gets some sleep. They will be watched by Medical for 48 hours.

It is not the physical trials of Hell Week that are difficult so much as its duration: a continual 132 hours of physical labor

I think I will go take a nap. :surrender_tb:

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Ok, I am going to take a short break from notes to beg you to go over and read Dr Richard Hawley’s article, A Man’s Life: When Men Are Free to be Good. Richard Hawley was the Circe Institute’s Paideia prize winner this year.

As a mother of 8 boys, the first sentence reached out and grabbed me.

The most passionate working men, the most devoted fathers and husbands, the men most willing to serve without material reward, have been those who, as schoolboys, were most inclined to press safe boundaries.

Both of my older boys pressed safe boundaries and we let them. I can’t tell you the frustration other parents expressed to us as we let our boys grow up. When our 18 yos moved to NJ and then Ft Lauderdale in order to do what God had clearly called him to do, we faced opposition. When our son drove off into a hurricane we wondered if we were crazy. According to all the current principles of raising sons, we were insane. To tell the truth it was extremely difficult to let go of our sons but it had to be done. Hindsight is helpful. Both of my older boys are thriving Christian men, while many of their peers are still living at home, asking dad if they can go to the movies. It is not rebellious for a son to desire to make his way in the world. You won’t read a biography of a great man where that didn’t occur. We should not let fear drive our relationships.

We have, by no means, arrived in our raising of sons. It is a tricky business in this culture. A mother’s best tool is prayer. Her worst fear should not be that her boys will get hurt or dirty but that she will be what Andrew Kern calls a helicopter mom, hovering over her children, most especially her sons.

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I just got a new printer which scans. My old scanner would not scan in color anymore. Now I can scan all those old photos and blog nostalgically. This is a picture of the last time I got the boys in matching outfits. I mean the very last time. When the lady behind us in church squealed, “Look at all the yellow duckies,” I knew an era had ended. You can see Timothy was not happy and that was before we went to church. I think he wanted to be a SEAL to make up for the humiliation. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted.

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It used to be that my life was pretty mundane. I mean apart from having 8 boys it was relatively tame. If you think having a couple of baby boys is exciting just wait until they grow up. I have these kinds of conversations everyday now:

Me: Hey

Barney: Hey

Me: You sound down.

Barney: Oh, not really I am just sitting here with this guy waiting for CSI.

Me: What do you mean by this guy?

Barney: Oh, he is just slumped over in the chair.

Me: You mean he is dead?

Barney: Yeah, that is why I am waiting for CSI.

Me: Oh, I will pray they get there soon.

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Our whole family was terribly saddened yesterday by news of the death of Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. It seems rather bizarre that he was killed by an animal that rarely kills. The Common Room states that
“there have only been 17 known fatal sting ray deaths worldwide.”

One of the best places on the web is Kim’s Coffee and a Muffin site. If you need help with your homemaking skills, as I do, then you will want to check out her site. All that to say I am not picking on Kim, just thinking out loud.

Here is what she posted yesterday: “May the children all over the world who idolized him learn from this hard lesson.” I don’t disagree with Kim but I had never really thought of it that way and I know my boys haven’t. Steve seemed to be a family man who took risks. In these times when even heterosexual males are fretting over what color to wear, Steve seemed to be a breath of fresh air. I didn’t get a chance to watch him very often so I don’t know how foolish he actually was. It doesn’t seem like he was being especially foolish yesterday.

At any rate, I know that Kim and I will both be praying for his family, that, perhaps, God might grant them grace.

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