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About A Day

About A Day

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Because it’s therapeutic just to journal about the day.

Because in the thinking back, we can let go and find the beauty in our mundane.

Because, in an effort to find significance where I am right now. It’s that place where kids are small and messes are big and none of us know what we’re doing.

This morning, I woke up to a seven-year-old who had to go the bathroom and was eager to read The Boxcar Children. He said good morning to my sleeping eyes and then he went to my closet to read alone. It’s a big closet, with the light and space for this boy to spread out.  One corner even holds a pile of his books. I wonder just how many books he has in there, but I have never taken the time to count them. Instead, I often remind my boy that it’s not his closet. I ask him to stack his books neatly. I ask him if he really needs that many books in my closet. He always tells me that he does. I don’t believe him, but then I look at my nightstand which holds at least twenty books. I read them all.

This morning, I stayed in bed with Susan (almost three weeks old now). We snuggled. I went back to sleep until the next child awoke. Then I left Susan to dream, and I showered.

The morning was more hectic than I would have liked. The mornings almost always are. This morning, Susan woke up and and wouldn’t be put down. We were all starving by the time she did. As soon as my hands were free I made oatmeal. I cooked it with maple syrup while my middle two children stood close, blowing holes into the steam that rose above it. I scooped the oatmeal into four bowls and listened to everyone’s requests for toppings. Milk. Honey. Brown sugar. My oldest cried. He didn’t want honey but because I was feeling rushed I had accidentally put it into everyone’s bowls. Screaming rose like the oatmeal’s steam had earlier, but the screaming could not be blown away. The child said he didn’t like honey but I know that’s not true and I told him so. We argued, though I knew that was dumb and futile. I am an adult and these are children, but I often forget about our age gap.

Susan woke up. Eventually, everyone was fed and we were trying to get everyone ready for a play date at the Splash Pad. I was annoyed.

“Seek first the kingdom of God” kept playing in my heart, but my annoyance won anyway. I gave my kids opportunities to listen but they kept failing my expectations. I made sandwiches while Susan lay in a basket of clean laundry and screamed. Her siblings stood nearby trying to calm her with sweet songs and well-meaning kisses. We were an hour late to our play date but we had fun while we were there.

Water shot up from the ground and my kids knew exactly what to do with it. They explored. They played. They laughed and climbed and made memories with their friends. I chatted with my friends–the other moms–making my own memories.

Where are my eyes throughout these days? Am I looking at crumbs or at the tiny hands who made them?

After dinner, after bedtime, I washed dishes and wiped the counters and now I am sitting at the table writing out the day, looking for the meaning, knowing that meaning only sometimes comes how we think it will.

Haiku the Day Away was never about advice or how-to anything. Haiku are small image-driven poems with big punches. Though they seem to be about the images, haiku hold unseen treasures. They show what is in front of us but they are about something deeper. They are like metaphorical x-rays, begging us to look beyond. Again and again, they ask us to seek and keep seeking and they almost always, in the end, reveal more within those things which we have allowed to become mundane. In a haiku, the mundane can actually hold so much beauty.

On Buying a House and Walking in Promise

On Buying a House and Walking in Promise

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I could tell you that we bought a house, but unless you have been standing next to us, you wouldn’t understand the victory wrapped up in these walls. It’s just a house, a residence, a thing made from wood and nails. You might have one too. Maybe when you think about a house, you just think about to-do lists and Saturdays filled. Maybe you think about the decorating and the furnishing. I have. Exciting colors or monochromatic schemes to soothe or brighten. It’s exciting, scary, big. That’s what you might say because if you weren’t there for the battle you can’t understand the weight of winning.

I could tell you how we were led to pray daily for a year, “Thank you God for Egypt.” As if we were slaves. As if we were forced by whips into the life we had. We weren’t forced. Not really. Yet somehow there we were, thanking God for our Egypt. For where we were. “Thank you God for Egypt.” For our slavery. For the precursor to our freedom. For the time before walking into a promise. Then one day, “Thank you God for Canaan.” For the promise.

One day our four-year-old drew a picture. He started with half a circle. He said, “This is the sun. It’s warming the food.” But he hadn’t drawn food yet. The image of the sun wasn’t even complete. And yet there was the sun, shining in the mind of my little boy, warming a table full of food that hadn’t shown up yet.

Another half a year went by. We fell for two houses. We were sure of them, but we waited and found that neither one was right.

Still saying, “Thank you God for Canaan.” For a land that He would show. A place to which He would lead us. Two other houses, a nudge to keep looking, a small flood in an attic. God said keep looking, so we did.

It’s only a house, you might say, though we all know that buying a house has its own weight. The abstract idea of a mortgage, money that we don’t yet have but over 30 years we will have found. That’s longevity and it takes another measure of faith.

A table set, but not yet drawn. A meal not yet harvested. The sun had only half risen and yet was providing warmth. This is the plan. God doesn’t respond to need, but to faith. Those are not my own words, but true ones. We have seen it. We have been without, cried tears of desperation at the slavery of metaphorical Egyptian kings.

God said, “Let my people go,” then Moses spoke it. Again and again he spoke it, bringing plague after plague on a stubborn nation unwilling to let go of their free labor.

When you don’t believe in a cause, you can’t possibly give your whole self to it. You can’t possibly do your best work. When you are forced, mistreated, abused, you can’t possibly be serving cheerfully.

Slavery? I have been reluctant to use that word because we are free people living abundantly in a nation of wealth. For us, Egypt seems to have been the physical place we lived for several months, a place of transition for our family.

God never forces us, but gently leads us into areas we would never tread alone. The Red Sea was vast, a powerful giant carrying life, yet humans cannot naturally survive in the sea.

God showed himself faithful, gave freedom to a nation filled with people who would betray him, continuing the battle of the human condition, onward to grace and mercy.

The war isn’t over. Only one battle won. “Only.” I am not trying to diminish it, but bring perspective. God’s glory shines through ages. Victory brings its own battles. The Israelites had to fight for their promise. We all have to continue in daily thankfulness. Daily praise. Daily remembrance of the wonders we have seen.

I could tell you we bought a house, but that’s like saying the Israelites just moved. They didn’t just move. They walked out of slavery. They stood on the floor of the ocean. They were covered by cloud, led by fire, and fed by manna. They were given the land of milk and honey, not without trials, but neither without God’s hand.

And I hear the words of my four-year-old again and again. “This is the sun. It’s warming the food.” Hand still drawing, a promise yet to see.

THE WHOLENESS OF SICK DAYS

THE WHOLENESS OF SICK DAYS

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This morning, I woke up with a headache. Even before my head left my pillow, my eyes were having a harder than usual time.

It was the opening they couldn’t do.

Now, as I sit wide-crosslegged on my carpet, typing away at the coffee table in my living room, I think my early morning experience is kind of funny. My eyes were having a harder than usual time.

Lately, it’s everything else that has been having a hard time. I have felt like I can’t do anything. I can’t process things correctly. I can’t think or organize (well, the non-organized part is pretty usual for me). I can’t respond. I can’t focus.

Why? Maybe because of this hectic world I’ve created. Too much on the plate. Not enough calm. Not enough space. Not enough rest.

Because my life is like yours. There are too many crumbs on the floor. Too many dirty clothes. Too many questions. Too many mouths and not enough spoons. Too many dishes and not enough hands. Well, sometimes there are too many hands too.

Like tonight.

But before we get into that story, I’m going to back up.

I woke feeling terrible. I was forced to step back. To put on The Magic School Bus Gets Lost in Space and lie down on the couch so I could close my sore eyes. To make whatever food was easiest. To back away from the kitchen as soon as possible so I could stop using my legs.

Right before lunch, my 4 year-old (who never stops jumping and has tantrums like The Hulk) said he wanted to go to bed. He said that both his stomach and the back of his neck hurt. These were my exact symptoms.

“Okay,” I said. “Would you like some pizza first?” Today’s lunch was homemade frozen pizza, and Super Healthy Kids jello. And cucumbers. All foods that this boy loves.

“No. I just want to lie down,” he sagged down the hall to his bed, hugging Red Monkey all the way.

After naptime, I was feeling better but this boy had a fever. So we snuggled and played cards.

What took my attention was the fact that he did everything right while he was sick. He didn’t get impulsive and flip over our game of war. When he went to the bathroom, he didn’t pee on the floor, and as soon as he came out of the bathroom he told me that he washed his hands and flushed the toilet. He didn’t once raise his voice. Not all afternoon or evening.

So, he does know what he needs to do. He just chooses not to do it.

Kind of like me. I know that I need to rest. I need to stop focusing on what my life should look like. I need to use more paper plates and I need to buy more packaged foods. I need to let go of the desire for homemade, at least in a few areas.

After dinner, we were all feeling somewhat better. Our bellies were full of eggs and bacon and sautéed kale and fruits. (Well, only mine was full of sauteed kale. Kale goes with everything. No? 🙂 )

I decided to step in the kitchen and empty the sink so we would have some clean dishes. My feverish boy brought a chair and helped as best he could. Ah! How does a 4 year-old help wash dishes? Some of you probably know the answer, but in that moment I was shaking with uncertainty.

But his chair was already there and his voice was so sweet.

“Can I help you, mom?”

I have been thinking lately that maybe it’s not the daily chores, but how I do them. I often rush through chores with speed, trying to get them done before one son slaps another. Before voices are raised. Before toys are thrown. I rush through tasks because I don’t have enough time to slow down.

But there is no lack of time. There is a myriad of time. And rest requires that revelation.

As a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom, it would benefit my whole family if I slowed the chores down. These are teaching moments. Learning to make a dish clean is learning to love. Caring for a home means caring for the family, for the people. Though tasks are numerically abundant, they can hold another kind of abundance, too.

This is the kind of abundance that makes our hearts flow at night’s end, and uncovers joy within the chore of a.m. eye-opening.

A NUTRITION COURSE : ON SWIRLY MINDS AND SWIRLY LIFE

A NUTRITION COURSE : ON SWIRLY MINDS AND SWIRLY LIFE

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Most recently, in our home school, we are doing a tiny course on nutrition. This has been in my mind for a long time, but then I found Usborne’s “Why do we Eat?” at a consignment shop for $0.75 and decided it was time. My kids and I read that book a few times, then I printed this nutrition book from The First Grade Sweet Life. We worked on filling it out, then today we went grocery shopping. I let my kids think of things we should buy, according to the variety of foods that we should eat to make our bodies function. We started our list yesterday, and went this morning.

There was nothing particularly terrible about this morning. It was just that… maybe we should have stayed home.

Do you ever have days like that? When you start to do something–whatever it is–you think it’s going to be easy and fun but it ends up giving you a small heart attack instead?

My kids were tired. We didn’t eat a big enough breakfast. And the always-always-always part of my life where I don’t know how to give directions was glaring at me.

Do my kids really understand what we’re doing? Did I explain it well enough to each of them? Of course, my two-year old wouldn’t really understand, but I may have neglected to tell my 4 year-old anything, relied on him hearing when I read that book with my 6 year-old. They might just think this is a regular shopping trip. 

Our list was made of only good things, a guide for real-life nutrition lessons:

Cucumbers
Carrots
Bananas
Oranges
Strawberries
Cantaloupe
Potatoes
Yogurts
Granola bars
Rice cakes

Whole foods. Not Whole Foods, but foods that are whole and untainted with chemistry. Strict biology, here!

But somewhere in the putting on of shoes and the checking for shopping supplies and the actual driving to the store, I just started freaking out. Things were so unclear.

Life things. Grocery shopping things. Self things. Kid things.

My mind just went around in swirls.

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Sometimes swirls are beautiful, but more often they look chaotic. This is the creative way. More, though, this is the way of life.

We are a series of connected, tumbling, intersecting, up and down lines that have no end and whose beginnings are often hard to locate.

Where does life go next?

There is no pattern to swirls. They dip and peak and then they dip lower and peak higher. To peak means to reach the highest point, but here I’m talking about the point that is highest at that moment, and moments change moment to moment.

That makes sense…

Guys, I admit that I’m just thinking here. This is a blog. Not a published book that has been checked and backed by others. I’m talking about my day, my emotions, my thoughts. I’m using my life with the admonition that my life is different from yours because we are all different people.

Yet we live in the same world.

Somewhere in the writing of all this, I’ve come back to the whole foods list. We made a list of foods that are untainted with chemistry. Strict biology.

We can learn how plants grow and how animals multiply, but life is so swirly. Chemistry happens. Even if no one pours vinegar into a bowl of baking soda, a bottle might spill. Then what?

A couple of weeks ago, I was challenged to diagram my faith race.

As in, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us…” (from Hebrews 12).

I was challenged to diagram my obstacles, my hindrances, my sins.

I had a hard time with this. First, I drew two lines:

_______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

But I didn’t think these two lines accurately represented my path. They were just a starting point because I didn’t know what to draw.

What is my path? I thought.

I thought about my life. It’s pretty common, when you sit down and put words to my actions:

Kids
Dinner
Dishes
Laundry
Writing a novel
Writing other things
Marriage

Perhaps my path is straight like the above lines, but my mind goes in swirls. Perhaps it’s not my feet that wander but my eyes. Instead of looking straight at Jesus, I look up at the clouds and I pause to listen to the leaves of trees. Then I find myself out of breath because I’ve gotten distracted. One minute I am breathing oxygen and the next minute I’ve stuck my head into a pond because I want to see how far the bottom is (total metaphor, guys… that’s just creativity). Today as I drove my children to the grocery store, I just found myself saying, “Jesus help. There has to be a way.”

A way to life. A way to mother. A way to streamline the never ending groceries. A way to end the swirls. A way to breathe. A way to think clearly in the midst of tiny obstacles.

These obstacles that I face, they really are tiny.

The simple answer was right there. “I am the way” (from John 14).

While we might expect to live the natural way of other living organisms, chemistry just works its way in.

The composition of our matter changes because we are not the way. We are only the vessel.

SHOWING GRACE TO THE UNLEAVENED

SHOWING GRACE TO THE UNLEAVENED

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I was really comfortable sitting in my van. I was outside of Lowe’s, texting a friend, sitting on a heated seat. Then someone appeared at my window.

“Excuse me,” she said. I looked. She was a stranger, and I know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers. But there’s a compassion in me for the destitute that I can’t shake. Besides, I’ve been reading Jen Hatmaker’s Interrupted, a book that chronicles the Hatmaker’s journey toward compassion for the homeless. There’s a whole book of explanation, but it begins with a prayer and the verse where Jesus says, “Do you love me…. Then feed my sheep.” It’s possible my compassion was swayed because of this book. But also, my only options were to open my window and give this stranger a chance, or ignore her and give her disgrace.

I rolled the window down.

Her face was small. Her cheeks sunken. A face with visible bones. We all have a skeleton, but everyone I know has enough substance to cover. I’ll say it again; her face was small.

Now I’m trying to remember her words. I can’t. Just the gist of them in conjunction with the image I saw. “My daughter and I are trying to get a meal and some blankets. We’re homeless. Could you help us out?” She looked me in the eyes and spoke in meek desperation.

I had just returned something at Lowe’s. I didn’t have the receipt and was expecting store credit, but it was under $10 so they gave me cash. I hardly ever have cash, but at that moment I had $9 neatly folded on top of my purse. $9 that I hadn’t expected. Easy to grab. I handed it to her and looked in my backseat. She said she needed blankets too, and since I never know what I’ll find in the back of my van, I looked. There was one blanket. One blanket that one of my kids had dragged in. And a winter hat that didn’t fit me, but had made my daughter laugh one day. I considered giving the blanket, but it was an Avenger’s blanket. One whose presence would be missed. I said I was sorry but I couldn’t give away my kid’s blanket.

“Okay. Thank you. Keep us in your prayers,” she said.

And we parted ways.

I didn’t say much to her. I was uncomfortable. I was unsure what to do. After she walked away, I finished composing my text and I thought, Why didn’t I give her that hat? And what was her name? Couldn’t I have given her some dignity by shaking her hand?

I drove around the parking lot looking for this woman, mostly wanting to give her my winter hat. It was pink and blue and would have covered her ears.

I couldn’t find her.

Then I started wondering… she said she had a daughter, but where was she? Maybe they lived in their car and her daughter had stayed put when the mother came to ask for money. Or maybe there was no daughter. Maybe it was all a lie. Maybe this woman was not who she said she was. Maybe she was just a beggar. Was I contributing to the discomfort of other middle class Americans by giving $9 to a beggar?

Then, “We are all mere beggars, showing other beggars where to find bread.” -Martin Luther

I was going to make bread today, but it has not risen enough to bake. What’s wrong with it? I know the recipe. I’ve made this same bread for years, but now it’s suddenly winter and sourdough bread responds differently to cold, dry temperatures. For sourdough, 70-85 degrees and humid is perfect. In other words, sourdough bread wants to live in San Diego, but mine can’t. It has to adjust, or I have to adjust it. I just didn’t think about adjusting today, since it’s not very cold yet. So two loaves have been in my kitchen, rising slowly, all day. They are minuscule. Stout. Dense. Like there is nothing in them to procure the loaves I want. Like the wild yeast of my sourdough starter didn’t take. Like the loaves are unleavened.

It’s not Passover. I’m not Jewish. I don’t have personal experience with either, but I’ve read Deuteronomy, and I could stand to read it again.

“Observe the month of Abib by celebrating the Passover to God, your God. It was in the month of Abib that God, your God, delivered you by night from Egypt. Offer the Passover-Sacrifice to God, your God, at the place God chooses to be worshiped by establishing his name there. Don’t eat yeast bread with it; for seven days eat it with unraised bread, hard-times bread, because you left Egypt in a hurry—that bread will keep the memory fresh of how you left Egypt for as long as you live. .” ~Deuteronomy 16, the msg

Unleavened bread. The bread of affliction (from the same verses, in the ESV). The bread of pain or suffering. At the place God chooses to be worshiped by establishing his name there. Unraised bread. Hard-times bread. That bread will keep the memory fresh.

Maybe she was a beggar. Maybe she was a drug addict. Maybe she was promiscuous.

Does it matter?

We are all beggars.

Hard times are hard times, even if we create them for ourselves.

My bread is unraised.

It’s hard-times bread all around.

And I’ve been trying to sort all this out while sitting in a Starbucks. It’s not my place of choice, but it’s the only coffee shop open past 9:00 in my area. They’re playing jazzy Christmas music. They’re creating sweet aromas. The floors are clean and the people are well-dressed and my cup has a picture of snowy trees on it. I’m warm. But not too warm. This should be perfect conditions. Could be my San Diego.

But somewhere a woman has my $9, or something of equal value.

The bread in my kitchen is not unleavened but it is uncomfortable tonight. The yeast to make it rise is yearning for different conditions.

And we all have suffered that.

Still Giving Thanks

Still Giving Thanks

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Thanksgiving is over. Are you still full?

We made a turkey, cranberry chutney, two loaves of bread, and four pies.

We asked our boys what pies they wanted, and one boy said “Mince Meat Pie.” After some questioning, we deciphered his actual wish. Mint Pie. We searched for recipes. We crushed up Oreo’s. We purchased cool whip and Andes. The result was delicious. Like thin mints. In a pie. We called it “Mint Meets Pie.”

We were with our wider family all day. We saw friends. We gave thanks. We broke bread.

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I had the thought, how perfect that Thanksgiving precedes Christmas. 

Then, right before we prayed over our feast, my sister-in-law said the same thing.

How perfect. 

It is no accident that before the season of gifts is the season of thanks. That before our focus is yanked toward sale signs, we fill ourselves up with one gift that is greater.

Hopefully our focus never actually makes it to the sale signs. They can provide terrible distraction unless we are filled with thankfulness. I know I need some work in that area. Some reminding. Constant reminding.

It is better to give than to receive.

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Prov. 17:22)

The words, “Give thanks,” lined the aisles on boards and posters. Now, the signs say “Cheer” and “15% off.” But cheer doesn’t connect with numbers. The most wonderful time of year turned into something akin to dust.

Can Thanksgiving continue?

As in, “Thanksgiving is our dialect.” (Eph. 5:4)

Are you still full?

Do leftovers remain in your fridge? Do you have so much turkey that you need to freeze some, make a pot pie or two, a big pot of soup, a casserole?

And how does our Thanksgiving feast translate spiritually?

Our tradition of abundance.

I’m wondering.

And while I wonder, I’m reminded of words that my 3 year-old son spoke a few months ago. Words that pierced me. I wrote them into an entire blog post, or I thought I did, but those words are missing now. Either I never actually wrote them down, or I have misplaced them. I have been searching because I wanted to share them. And at the same time, I am thankful for the loss. Often, it’s not the words but the spirit of them anyway. Often, the original thought lives on.

“Mom, how do you spell Grace?” he said.

Grace. The name of my youngest child. A girl who smiles and mimics and loves to be a part. A girl who squeezes when she hugs and sings when she wakes. A girl who was given the name Grace partly because it is the only female name my husband and I have ever agreed on, and partly because Grace is the most beautiful word, and now it’s a word that we speak over and over, every day. We will never forget.

When my son asked me how to spell Grace, I knew what he was asking. The answer, “G-R-A-C-E.” But the only thing in my head was “In order to spell Grace, you have to spill Grace.”

In order to understand Grace, we have to recognize the need for it. And I’m speaking both about my daughter and about the free and unmerited favor given. Two things that God has given purely because He is good.

We receive the gift of Grace when we realize it is given freely. But Grace is made whole when we give thanks for it. Because it’s better to give than to receive. And when it’s all intertwined in a great big Holy circle…

Well, are you full yet?

FROM LONELINESS TO FULLNESS: THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

FROM LONELINESS TO FULLNESS: THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

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Last week, I was on vacation with my family. We were visiting family and lifelong friends, staying near the beach, and celebrating an anniversary. It was a refreshing and beautiful time. But while we were out of town, we missed some events that happened at home. Events that all my very best friends are still talking about.

I know we can’t be everywhere all the time. Sometimes we miss out on things because of prior commitments. Yet, since I’ve been home I’ve been hit with the weight of everything I missed here.

Though our vacation was purposeful and plentiful, I feel separated, weary, incomplete.

While these feelings stomp on my heart and make me simultaneously wish that I was still away and that I had never left home, what I’m remembering is that these are only feelings. I admit that feelings have purpose, but I don’t believe we are to live in our feelings. Feelings allow us to have empathy for others, but too often we call our feelings fact and use them as an excuse for selfishness.

Feelings are not facts, and my particular feelings are brought on by lies.

These feelings are trash.

But how do we rid ourselves of trash-lies when they have gripped us and plagued us and seemingly made their homes on top of our chest, so that every time we breathe we only get enough air to sustain our life?

It is not good enough to just sustain life.

I recently heard a woman speak whose life has been transformed by a stroke. She is learning to live a new kind of life and is joyfully doing so, but one thing she said is, “Well, I’m alive.” Those words struck me deep because I say them too, but I say them differently. As in, “Well, life sucks right now, but at least I’m alive.”

Truth is that, though life can be wonderful, it also often brings troubles. As in, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome this world!” (from John 16, msg). Since God gives good things and only moves in His purpose, we have to know that life is good. God overcame the world of darkness so that we can walk in His light.

Yet I still feel terrible when my children are disobedient. I still feel lonely when I watch others have grand excursions and I’m stuck in my apartment with three children who just won’t quit. I still feel the pangs of heartache when I am not included, for whatever reason. I still reel when I take a step back and realize that I have acted in rash.

My life has been transformed by children, similar to how that other woman’s life has been transformed by a stroke. Children are blessings, but they are mysteries, too. They are problems. They are troubles, at least for me. I know there are some moms out there who always know what to do, but I can barely figure out breakfast, let alone how to home school and discipline in love.

Then, there’s Jesus, just hanging around my apartment, sitting at the table and watching my family wander around in this world of troubles. And he’s saying “Take heart! I’ve overcome this.”

Very gently, He’s reminding us that He is the gate to fullness:

“Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” ~John 10:7-10

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I have heard the voices that say I’m not good enough. Have you? Have you heard the voices that say you’ve missed it, that your dreams are silly and unreachable?

Jesus says these are the voices of thieves and robbers. This is trash trying to clog up our lives of fullness. Throw it away. Right now. Because what else should we do with trash but throw it in the dumpster so it can rot away?

God doesn’t speak in lies. He doesn’t speak in heartache. God speaks in love. He speaks in mercy. He wipes every tear.

No matter where we are or who we’re with (or not with), can we recognize the lies that seek to destroy, before they actually do? Can we see the gate to fullness, and enter it, instead of standing outside and just watching everyone else have fun?

 

 

The Amazing Thing Is…

The Amazing Thing Is…

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I have this deep desire to do amazing things with my kids. Things like build a Habitat for Humanity house and go pick up trash on the highway. But you can’t take preschoolers to the side of a highway. I mean, I can barely take them grocery shopping. But I try anyway, then I get frustrated and wonder why life isn’t going well.

I have these thoughts, these grand plans which hardly ever work out because right on the surface of my thought process lies a problem. It’s my definition of the word amazing.

My first reason for using that word is that I want to do memorable things, and memorable things begin with amazing plans, right?

Wrong.

Often the memorable things are the unplanned ones.

This summer, we planned a trip to Maine and a few weeks ago, we were there. We had to plan it, but the planning isn’t what made it memorable. It was memorable because of the times we sat on a dock and both my son’s caught their first fish. No one could have planned that. The fact that fish held on to my sons’ lures was a surprise, and a joyous one at that. On the way to Maine, we stopped in Boston for a Red Sox game and the boys got to run the bases after. We had to plan it (we had to purchase tickets in advance and make travel arrangements), but that’s not why is was memorable and amazing. It was memorable because of the way the ice cream tasted as we all scooped it from one sticky bowl. It was memorable because, while walking on the field, our kinesthetic three year-old grabbed a handful of Fenway dirt and wouldn’t let go.

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Sure, planning is often important. But I’m going to argue that it’s not vital. The amazing things in life, the things that we remember, are often experienced because of unplanned wonderment (or, our giving into child-likeness). Maybe I’m arguing this because I’m not a planner. Actually, I’m a self-diagnosed un-organizer, someone who believes that everything at home has a perfect place, but where is it?! I am constantly searching for the answer. I have moments when I want to throw everything out because I feel like I can’t handle all the stuff. Then I realize that we really don’t have that much stuff and we use almost everything we do have. Sometimes I think we need to throw our organizing and planning out, instead of all our stuff.

I feel like my kids should have structure (and they sort of do). But I also know that life is made in the small moments. Like when we come home from grocery shopping and I hand each of my kids each a box of cereal to carry inside, then they do. Like when we spot a pile of ants eating a piece of apple that dropped from the breakfast table and we watch, amazed at the jobs of little insects. Like when a baby sleeps in and I get to make pancakes with the boys, actually letting them help with the measuring and stirring.

I want to do things we all enjoy. I want to teach my kids to help people, and I want to teach them the value of hard work.

But for them, sweeping under the table is hard work. Picking up that ant-infested piece of apple is building their life skills. Maybe once they master things like keeping our home clean and well, we can go out and work on building someone else’s.

Preschoolers really are quite amazing, though. It’s just they’re hard to wrangle. They’re hard to  talk to. They’re hard to understand. Yet when I decide to sit down and listen, when I stop trying to plan and organize (these efforts are almost always futile anyway), my kids make a lot of sense. Often, they say the things that are on my mind anyway. They inspire me and help me. And together we build life.

That is where amazing is made.

Are you an organizer? Do you thrive on schedules? What kinds of amazing things happen when you do?

Or does planning give you a tiny heart attack and make you want to just go to the playground and hide under the slide with your kids? Do you wish you were better at organizing? Or have you found balance in your life?

Haha! Balance… Personally, I’ll leave that up to my symmetrical, orderly 5 year-old who proved his mind is made for symmetry when he made this scale all by himself the other day.

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Yeah, this scale. All on his own. Kid is made for mathematics! Amazing.
Quest to Distinguish a Vacation

Quest to Distinguish a Vacation

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This is the last day of vacation. A day of immensity, sentiment, expectation. I can’t recall the past week, but I know it has been here. Each day has run into all the others like the colors in Van Gogh’s skies. So today I am looking closer.

Vacation: An extended period of recreation
Vacation: The action of leaving something one previously occupied
This is where moments have come and gone. Now, I am sentimental for them. A vacation’s moments blow like the breeze. They are the very movement of this time. They are the only surroundings I see.

This is a week filled with recreation. We traveled. We left occupation.

This is a week where occupation followed us anyway. Motherhood, and fatherhood too, can never be abandoned. Though a vacation’s moments blow like the breeze, so do a mother’s moments. They are unpredictable and many.

This is a lake filled with fish and loons, edged in rocks and docks and boats, but mostly tall, dark trees.

This is a cool breeze on a porch. It is a family sitting in lawn chairs, filling bellies with root beer floats and gingerbread cookies, lobsters, sandwiches and snacks, while wind chimes sing the tune of relaxation. This is a yard of dirt for kids to touch and dig. This is sensory play at its finest.

This is where breeze is as welcomed as it is intrusive. It surrounds our skin, blows our hair, invades our lungs, moves the lake in ripples, and distorts reflections.

This is where our life has paused. It is a place rich with my husband’s memories, a place where I am forming my own. The place where my husband spent every summer growing up, the place we honeymooned and once before vacationed with our little family.

This is a place once foreign to me. Growing up in Florida, I knew beaches and year-round warmth. Now, I am in Maine, at the other end of US1. Here, warmth is found but not always felt in the air.

This is a kind of warmth that doesn’t make you sweat, but offers room to breathe. It almost forces breath while at the same time stealing it. Nature. Beauty. Only being here can truly describe.

This is the writer’s dilemma. To figure out a way to show a reader what is meant. How do I make you hear what I hear, feel what I feel, see what I see? How can I put this dirt on your toes when you will probably never sit on the slats of this porch, listen to these leaves blow, watch the changing reflections of this lake?

This is a place we leave tomorrow. Then we will go home to a place where sidewalks tell our path.

This is life, where warmth is offered, yet created.

This is vacation: when eyes open for every moment, where we realize that setting is important, that we always are somewhere, but more than that, we always are. No matter where we take our family, there our family is.

This is a pledge to open eyes, something that is necessitated by the change of location.

This is a location.

This is family.

This is where memories are made from moments.

This is always possible.

On Stars and Dots and the Trouble with Both

On Stars and Dots and the Trouble with Both

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I have three drafts of posts dealing with stars… 1.) A Review of The Little Prince movie, 2.) When Your Child Reaches for Stars (inspired by a conversation I had with my 5 year-old in which he told me he wants to be an astronaut. This one may not ever make it up here because it’s getting pretty long. It might be something to submit elsewhere.),  3.) This one. 

There’s apparently something in the stars besides lots of beauty. Stay tuned! 🙂

Now, onward to this one…

My kids and I recently checked out “You Are Special” by Max Lucado. This book has been around for almost ten years, and I’ve even read it a few times, but this last reading brought something new.

In case you don’t know, this book documents the life of the Wemmicks, wooden people made by the woodcarver Eli. The Wemmicks walk around giving each other stars (for noble actions, celebrated talents, etc.) and dots (for moronic/clumsy actions). Basically they go around judging each other all day. Does that sound familiar?

Punchinello is always given dots, all day, every day, but one day he meets a girl with no dots or stars and she tells Punchinello to go see Eli. He does, and Eli tells Punchinello that it doesn’t matter what others think, only what Eli thinks, and Eli thinks that Punchinello is special. Then, the dots start to fall off. “They only stick if you let them,” says Eli.

I have always read this book as a beautiful reminder that no matter what dumb, clumsy, unthoughtful actions we commit, God loves us and thinks we’re special.

But on this last reading I thought, “Oh, but what about the Wemmicks with stars?”

It is always nice to be admired. It’s nice to feel valued, talented, and loved by people. I know I like when humans tell me I’ve done a great job or that they like something I’ve said. But I really shouldn’t be looking to people for acceptance, in the same way I shouldn’t let their negativity affect me. God is always the one I should look to. When I participate in the world’s games, I might get some stars. But if I let those stars stick, I am allowing pride to enter my heart.

It is well and good to encourage and to be encouraged by people, but it is not good to find our ultimate value in people’s words.

Oh! Lovely Wemmicks, that all of you, whether puffed up by stars or shamed with dots, go to Eli! He will give you truth.

Now, I am brought to another story. This is a true story, one where I am the main character. It is set in the land of 7th grade.

Where I lived, 7th grade meant the start of junior high, a brand new school with higher expectations and greater opportunity for both success and failure. The school I attended was a brand new charter school. I had gone to K-6th grade with all the same people and I was always told the same things by them: “You are tall.” “You wear glasses.” “You are smart [meaning, you do your homework].” I was familiar with every one of my K-6th grade classmates, but 7th grade brought a whole new set of faces. Because of all these new people, new groups formed, friendship circles expanded. You probably know. Even if 7th grade wasn’t the start of junior high for you, I’m sure you’ve been faced with new people before, and you probably know all about being 12 years old.

It’s as if being completely new, physically, isn’t enough, but then they had to move us all around to a new school too. New. New. New. Everywhere. Though I was in the same changing part of life as everyone else, I slotted right into the same position I had always taken. “You are tall.” “You wear glasses.” “You are smart.” In other words, I let the dots stick.

I realize that being tall, wearing glasses, and being smart doesn’t sound that bad. And it wasn’t really. The only bad part about it was that I was a lot more than those three things, and I like to think that I still am. But I was shy and quiet, so people (especially my fellow 12 year-olds) felt they could label me because that’s what you do in junior high.

I wasn’t necessarily an outcast. I had friends. I had fun. I survived. But I always kind of sat back and looked at the popular kids.

Popular was a real thing in 7th grade. These were the people everyone saw. Everyone knew their names. Everyone labeled them just like everyone labeled me and everyone else. But now I realize that the popular people weren’t really the coolest people. They were just the loudest, the ones who felt they had to perform so that they could get stars.

Oh! Lovely Wemmicks!

One day, I was standing in gym class, lined up for a relay. Hair up. Back of my line (I was tall, with a last name sort of toward the end of the alphabet, so I was always in the back). Baggy blue shorts. Grey school-authorized tee shirt. Florescent lights. I stood there in all my lanky glory, dreading the moment when everyone would look at me. I would likely fall in the middle of my jumping jacks and everyone would give me dots.

Or was I just perceiving dots?

Anyway, a boy in line next to me looked over. He was one of the popular kids. Always surrounded by girls and jocks. He had never spoken to me before. Then he said, “You are beautiful.” And I said nothing.

I didn’t know how to respond. It was like I felt worse because he said that. It was like I had let people’s words affect me for so long, and I tried to be the person who looked cool on the outside, just shaking off rude and ignorant words, but actually the dots never fell off. It was like they were seeping into my insides, so that when a popular boy said something nice, I thought he was giving me another dot.

He wasn’t giving me a dot, but that is what I saw.

All this to say, I think we all go through dot days, and we all go through star days, but either way we’re wrong if we let them stick.

Oh! That the Wemmicks with stars and the Wemmicks with dots would all return to Eli. That they would all leave their prideful, talented, or downcast selves and find their acceptance in truth.

Whether I display dots or stars or worms or butterflies or just plain dead, hard-heartedness, let my little wooden self go to Eli to reason it all out.

Because,

FLASH

Dots and stars are both sin, and both try to take me over every day. There is no reason to let them. Really, there is only reason to go.