Category: Family

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Creating Memories, I

A couple of days ago, I introduced a conversation to you. A conversation about memories ~ those from our own childhoods, and those that we desperately wish to inculcate into the lives of the children around us, in our homes, in our charge. As we jump into a few days’ meditation on this subject, please allow me to first share with you some of the hallmark memories from my own childhood, and the overarching theme which I remember permeating our family home & life. You are invited, and most welcome, to share your own experiences in the comments here or link over to your own blog if you have one. The intent is not to compare or even to contrast childhood memories, but to encourage one another as we see different beauties and varied glories in different homes among different families, to see with eyes of grace how the Lord has written different stories for each of us, to be lifted in spirit as we remember where we came from and look ahead in faith & hope to where He continues taking us.

 

CREATING MEMORIES, I
what I remember from my own childhood

~bedtime—singing, Daddy on guitar, Mama’s fingers running through my hair~
I remember bedtime like no other time of the day. Some of my very earliest memories (coming from someone who has a notoriously bad memory…) are of bedtime. Perhaps because it was the one predictable time of the day when all four of us were together, doing the same thing at the same time. I don’t remember how we got from the dinner table to our beds; I don’t recall if we had dinner, evening, or playtime routines; I don’t even honestly remember if my super-busy pediatrician father who was incessantly in high demand was with us every night for dinner or not (although I know for certain he was there often, and I imagine he did absolutely everything he could to be there every night).
But I remember being tucked in. I remember my dog either curling up on her pillow at the foot of my bed or scurrying underneath my bed to sleep. I remember my parents taking turns saying goodnight to my brother and me, singing to each of us separately, sometimes my dad settling himself with his guitar in between our bedroom doors to sing to us both at the same time. I remember my favorite “song” to request was “make-up, Daddy! make-up!” and he would make something up on the fly. I loved that! I remember my mother kneeling at the side of my bed, combing my hair with her fingers, sometimes just while she said goodnight and sang me a lullaby (which words she crafted when I was a wee thing), sometimes continuing until I had fully fallen asleep. I remember falling asleep with the most peaceful feeling that this was home, this was peace, this was comfort, this was love.

I remember how well they loved us without actually using words.
Because sometimes words are too difficult to hear.
Sometimes you’re just not ready to dissect what you’ve been through.
Sometimes you need both more and less than the words.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p98~

~freedom in playing & schedules & schooling—the comfort of balancing freedom with boundaries~
I remember feeling so free in my childhood. We were not married to schedules although we definitely kept to routines (don’t you kind of have to, in order to all function together smoothly, and to interact with the community around you?). I remember routines like “Thursday School” and going with my mom to her ladies’ Bible studies. I remember going to “the club” with my mom, coloring in Disney books (Ariel might have been my favorite… and one of my friends may have taught me to draw mermaids freehand, although I always ended up with the shells near the belly button somehow…), while my mom did aerobics. I loved watching her, tapping my toes to the rhythmic music. Sometimes we got to go swimming, play tennis, or play on the playground at the club. I remember the routine of Friday mornings, where my dad would take my brother and me on rounds with him at the hospitals. I remember hanging out in nursing stations while he donned yellow gowns and examined sweet tiny babies in nurseries. I remember the smell of the hospitals. I remember he would take us out for breakfast too: Jack In The Box was our agreed upon favorite at the time. Colin ordered things without eggs, I ordered things without sausage. We loved the delightful spoiling of getting to have a treat like Sprite or orange juice on a weekday morning. I remember getting to bring my schoolwork to my dad’s office, to sit at the little fold-up desk he had built right there into his own workplace. Sometimes I got to interact with patients, or hang out with his staff (including my grandma, who was the financial guru), but mostly I think I did try to focus on math and reading and writing. I remember doing schoolwork at home, and watching Little House on the Prairie on channel 36 when I was done with my lessons… although I tended to do more lessons in one day than I was technically supposed to. I remember my parents encouraging fieldtrips and experiences and reading for hours on end. I remember hanging out at the Saratoga library. I remember learning and growing and my curiosity expanding. I remember having time to create things, to play music or read books for hours on end, to run free and wild in our acre-wide backyard, to gather wild blackberries or catch tadpoles in the creek or hike through backyards to say hello to a horse a few homes down (I called her Sweet Pea, but I never actually found out her real name). I remember my friends all being tied to schedules and having very little downtime. I remember wishing my friends wouldn’t be grounded so often, because it always seemed to hurt my heart more than it hurt theirs when our precious playdates got canceled (perhaps that’s because my friends all had sisters, and I was the only one who didn’t). I remember feeling so beautifully free, but I remember the comfort of knowing my boundaries and of resting in the knowledge that breaking boundaries would result in the bittersweet blessing of discipline. I remember feeling loved and safe in the freedom of those boundaries.

~being my mama’s shadow and being allowed in my daddy’s world~
I remember following my mother everywhere. From the moment I was born, I think I somehow knew she was going to be my lifelong best friend and forever mentor. Church events, errands, hospitality, visiting those in need, catering monthly office lunches at my dad’s office, Sunday night family dinners at my grandma’s house, hosting tea parties, doing housework, cooking meals, folding laundry, adding chemicals to the swimming pool, sewing clothes and curtains and gifts, reorganizing cupboards and redecorating rooms. I loved shadowing my mother, learning from  her, watching her, coming alongside her to groom my clumsy hands slowly into shadows of her skilled ones. I hardly ever remember being without her. When I did find myself without her (at piano lessons, ballet, or even if I waited in the car while she ran in to the bank or Safeway), I do recall a feeling of painful separation. I didn’t like being without the one whom I shadowed. I embraced it and loved it and was blessed by it. Thankfully, I think she did & was too!
I remember being allowed in my daddy’s world. From the weekly trips to breakfast and on hospital rounds, to the times (was it weekly also?) when I would spend mornings doing schoolwork in his office, to playing tennis, to learning different swimming strokes, to watching him woodwork in his shop, to singing alongside him while he strummed his guitar, to recording music together on cassette tapes, to driving around buckled into the back left seat of our minivan and shopping at Home Depot for wood or Fry’s Electronics for techy stuff I really didn’t understand ~ I loved being allowed in his world. I followed him like a little duckling, not always shaping my hands to imitate his, but always watching and gleaning and loving and respecting what his hands were doing… and his hands were always doing.

Here’s just one oddity about being people:
I don’t remember anything about showing up on this planet (and neither do you).
I am here. You are here.
Others have to explain it to me.
I take it on faith.
Everything that I believe about my own origin and the early years of being me,
I have heard secondhand.
I was clearly a free agent (based on the stories).
I was assessing things and making decisions and taking action (with an emphasis on self-interest).
I was living life to the fullest.
And all of it is gone, at least from my memory.
But humans are not intended for data storage (though we have that capacity).
We are intended for living, for moving through a story.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p96~

~my brother as my constant and best friend~
I remember how people would comment about our brother-sister relationship, how we never argued (let alone fought), how we were sometimes mistaken for twins (red head blue eyed freckled waifs!), how we had vastly different hobbies & interests but always found middle ground to love spending time together. I remember always looking up to him, and wanting to be like him in any ways that I could. I remember how he shadowed our father like I shadowed our mother. I remember knowing early on that he was basically a genius, and I tried hard to keep pace with him until we were teenagers when I realized calculus and computer languages just were not going to be my thing at all. I remember playing with him in the creek, watching him practice archery on the woodshed, how he helped my dad build me “a prairie house” playhouse, how I learned to type by watching him type, how he helped teach me to drive, how we did music together, how we did Scottish Highland dancing together, how we shared friends, how we shared love of being country kids (he with his cows, me with my horse) and he built me a chicken coop for my fifteenth birthday present because I was given nine little chicks that year. I remember being told that it would change when we grew up, that boys grow into men who necessarily have to love wives so intensely that sisters will have to grow into the background. I remember not believing what I was told. But even though our friendship is not the same depth because we do not have the unique time alone together for days on end anymore, our friendship is still present and unique. He is always there for me. He always answers the phone when I call him, whether with good news or bad. We pray for one another. We embrace one another’s kids with abandon. I see us in our children… and I see the beauty of my lifelong friendship with my beloved big brother reflected in the loving friendship our children now share. He is the only other person who shared my childhood, who has common memories with me, who gets the inside jokes or secret looks across the dining table at my parents’ house. Age and distance will never change that. And the things I remember from childhood, growing up with him as my only sibling and only real bosom friend, haven’t begun to fade yet, and I seriously pray they never will.

Because [he] is my only sibling, and I am his,
there’s something completely singular about our relationship.
There’s no one on earth who has shared our history,
no one on earth who can see the world from the corner that we alone inhabit.
… Now we are grown. And he is still one of my best friends…
There is a whole world, a whole history between us that no one else knows,
that no one else understands, and there are times when my brother and I catch eyes
in a room, across the dinner table, or across the yacht club,
understanding each other perfectly, wordlessly.
What a gift it is to share this town, this history, this family,
this corner of the world with someone like him.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p238~

~truth, beauty, and goodness as overarching themes that penetrated our everyday~
I remember the gospel glories of truth, beauty, and goodness penetrating every aspect of our family life. Home, church, homeschooling, hospitality, Daddy’s work, Mama’s work, our relationships. There was never any doubt Who ruled our home and family. There was never any doubt that the only things truly worth pursuing (individually and corporately) were those which held truth, beauty, and goodness ~ or at least the seeds or seedlings of them. Woodworking, home decorating, feeding bellies, lavish tables, huge Christmas trees, clothing, speaking, writing, singing, fellowshipping, exercising, serving at the City Team homeless shelter, leading Bible studies and craft nights, science projects with the J girls, hiking through the hills, finishing math pages, playing dressup… there was no aspect of my childhood where truth, beauty, and goodness did not permeate and saturate. Even (perhaps especially) when I sinned, and was disciplined, those three glorious themes were huge and everpresent. The forgiveness of my father was something I craved and loved and clung to… and it taught me about the forgiveness of my Heavenly Father as well.
While my parents may not have verbally used the tri fecta of truth, beauty, and goodness in so many words all the time, as I reflect upon my childhood, that is what I remember. It is what I knew, and what I know, and what I pray to continue knowing.

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Happy Birthday, (Grand)Mama!

As I begin to delve into a little blog series on childhood memories, I wanted to take this little opportunity to say happy birthday to my mother.

The woman who has embraced me, pursued me, let me go, and prayed for me ~ every day of my life.

I know she’s praying…
The faithful prayers of a woman
who isn’t just being polite when she says, “I’ll pray for you.”
I’ve come to recognize that for her,
that phrase isn’t the worn-out cliché I’m used to,
but the battle cry of a warrior.
I don’t take it for granted anymore.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p126~

One of the greatest gifts my mother has given me is her love of prayer.
She pursues it daily, in big and little ways.
You might not know she is seasoned in combat just by looking at her, but I know that she is a warrior ~ the Throne of Grace has been battered by her cries repeatedly, daily, continually… not the least cries of which, have been on my own behalf.

I have always wanted to be like my mom when I grew up. At the same time, like most adults, I am more like her in some ways than I thought I would be… and maybe even like her in some ways I wish I weren’t. But I was made partly in her image. I am half her. And I’ve learned to love and embrace that, with its vibrancy & its shadows.
I want to cook like she does. Paint like she can. Play with my grandkids like she does. I want a vibrant and militant prayer life like hers. I want to be passionate and unafraid like she is. I want to honor my husband and adore my offspring in the private & public ways like she does.

Happy Birthday, Mama… you are grand. xo

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I will live myself to death for them

As Nate Wilson said, I am thankful
“for the people I am meant to live myself to death for.
For bigness. For smallness.
For bread. For wine.
For all they represent”
(Death by Living, p188).
May I live accurately,
according to this thankfulness in my heart.

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May I live myself to death for the people God has given me.

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My Sweet Teen

Introducing my newest little covenantal creation, by the grace of the Holy Spirit & creative Word…

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This is our thirteenth child, the little guy I lovingly call Sweet Teen.
The beloved baby I hold now in the depths of my own body…
whose heart beats beneath my own…
whose precious limbs flail without me even feeling them yet…
this is the person I ache to look upon with my own eyes this autumn…
and until then, we pray and we hope and we rejoice…
I take medications and shots and adhere to dietary restrictions…
I rest and I puke and I ache…
and I give unabashed thanks every single day to the Author of life…
and it brings me such joy to share this glimpse with you
into the secret places where the Lord is secretly & miraculously weaving microscopic threads
into a little itty bitty person in His image
and in ours.

And I weep for joy
because the Lord has heard our cries
for life.

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Sex as an act of creation, of art, of life,
filled our thoughts and bed and intertwined the parts of us
we didn’t realize we’d still been living separate.
This righteous act of love that reminds human creatures
that there is a miracle wrapped in the gift of pleasure.
A miracle that points to a good Gift Giver outside ourselves,
outside our control, outside our timelines,
outside our attempts at  manipulation or desperate demands.
Galaxies must align and collide in the secret dark,
and all we can do is humble ourselves
to be available to something much bigger than our comprehension.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p184~

~*~*~

God knits babies together in the secret dark.
And we can plan all we like,
but we have no actual control over the outcomes.
We bear witness to the miracle, and we women—
we also bear it in our bodies.
But we certainly don’t dictate it.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p166~

 ~*~*~

God already knows
He already delights.
He has already been singing over them in the dark,
secret hours of spinning life out of strands of DNA—
an artist at work, creating and shaping another Adam-child in His image.
And the sonogram is desperate to catch up.
The black-and-white shifting dimensions on the screen only hint at His handiwork.
At the brilliance and the raw beauty beating
with the brand-new chambers of a heart there on the dim screen.
It is the shape the Father sculpted in the beginning
and the shape the Christ-Son took.
It is the ancient, familiar form
that is still somehow new every time we see it fitted over a new soul.
Upward and forward and deeper into the heart of God
with each new life He entrusts us with.
Parts of us crack wide open,
and we are vulnerable to a vast army of fears,
for to parent is to ache over the unknown.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p166~

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Easter Lessons

This year, we went out of our way to do a few more hands-on lessons and Easter preparations with the children. The older they get, of course the more they grasp ~ and it is delightful to hear their own 6, 3, and 2 year old sized insights into why we do the things we do.

On Good Friday, rather than doing our normal homeschooling routine, while the little ones had individual room time (learning to play on their own for a solid hour is a good skill to learn), Gabriel helped me clean the house. We washed windows, cleaned bathrooms, swept floors, mopped floors, did laundry, washed dishes, wiped down cupboards. And while we worked together, we talked about why we were working so hard, and why is this what we chose to do on Good Friday. When I asked Gabriel what he thought, he paused in thought, then profoundly said, “Well, today is the day we remember the whole reason why Jesus came. He came to clean our hearts. So I guess that’s why we should clean our home.” I wanted to just stop the conversation right there, and leave it at that ~ because my kid gets SO much of the Gospel story, and I love hearing his perspective on it. It’s beautiful. But we went on to talk about how Jesus served others, even though He was King of all. We talked about “our people” ~ and who are our neighbors. Gabriel even asked if he could wash my feet when we were done cleaning, because he wanted to bless me and serve me like Jesus.

But I hate to admit, I forgot about the feet-washing, because by the time we were done cleaning the house, the little ones were ready to be done with solitary playtime, and we needed to move on to the phase of dirtying things back up again. Funny how we do that in my line of work: we clean things up so we can make them dirty again!

So after a little lunch, Evangeline was ready for a nap, and the boys & I got out supplies for some crafts that would hold more lessons.

We had already dyed Easter eggs with Grandmama, Auntie, and cousins, complete with super sweet and thoughtful conversations about the metaphors, symbolism, and just plain fun of the tradition. My children and I have talked numerous times this week about the symbolism we can see in the eggs… how they symbolize the rock which closed the tomb, but new life can spring forth from it… how we can take plain eggs and give them new clothing, as we do when we take on new life in Christ… how the yolk in a cracked egg can symbolize the glorious light of Jesus’ resurrection from the dark tomb when He burst forth in glorious array…
Click here to read about Easter Egg traditions throughout the life of the Church, following the Lenten season. Even plain old Wikipedia had some great thought-provoking things about Easter Eggs, or Paschal Eggs. And for some fun nuances on Easter Egg traditions, click here and have some fun with the kids in your life.

Romans 6:4
We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death,
in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
we too might walk in newness of life.

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Thanks to Ann Voskamp’s diligent sharing each and every year, I finally felt like my boys were old enough this year to really grasp & enjoy a couple more unique & detailed hands-on projects.

First we had a snack of nuts and figs, while we made a crown of thorns (using a small grapevine wreath and a few dozen coffee-stained toothpicks) and talked a lot about the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Three year old Asher was nearly in tears (I love how his forehead crinkles and his chin quivers when he feels genuine sorrow), talking about Jesus being tortured, bleeding, and dying. He finally smiled again when I reminded Him that this was why Jesus came, and this is how He worked to save US from OUR sins. And in his sweet little voice, Asher proclaimed, “I sure love Jesus, Mommy.”

Matthew 27:29
…twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head…

Mark 15:17
…twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on Him.

John 19:2, 5
And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head and arrayed Him in a purple robe. So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

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Next we went out on to the back porch and put together our own little Gethsemane. Using a small moss planter (I used this, and don’t let the word “large” fool you!), we filled it with soil. Then we set our tomb carved in the rock in the corner of the garden (I found that aquarium accessories could offer some neat options, like this cichlid stone), before filling the rest of the garden with plants. We used some little succulents we got at a local store along with some pretty decorative moss, and then Gabriel used small smooth stones to make a little pathway through the garden to the tomb. Last of all, the boys went on a stone hunt outside to find something that would serve as a tomb cover.

John 19:41
Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

Luke 23:55-56
The women who had come with Him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how His body was laid.Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.

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On Good Friday, we used last week’s palm branches and our homemade crown of thorns to decorate our dinner table, when we ate lamb and roasted vegetables and matzo ball soup, along with the Seder plate with all  its elements and plenty of wine.

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Our kitchen island was cleared of all other decorations, and that is where we laid our own little Gethsemane. On Friday evening we closed up the tomb. On Saturday morning we found a little soldier to keep guard outside the tomb. And the children looked forward to seeing what would come of it on Sunday morning.

Matthew 27:59-60, 66
And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. … So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.

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Come Sunday morning, the children came downstairs to find the guard fallen down, the stone moved away, and a piece of linen folded inside the tomb.

Matthew 28:2-8
And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.He is not here, for He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where He lay.Then go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead, and behold, He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him. See, I have told you.”So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell His disciples.

Luke 24:1-12
…On the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?He is not here, but has risen. Remember how He told you, while He was still in Galilee,that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”And they remembered His words,and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles,but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marveling at what had happened.

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They found a table set for a beautiful little breakfast. Fruit salad, hard boiled eggs with sea salt, mimosas, Easter story cookies, and Easter tomb rolls (the kids had helped me make those all on Saturday, which was really wonderful). Candles and music and the excited rush of gathering and eating and praising God together, singing Christ The Lord Is Risen Today. Gifts for each one at their place ~ books and chocolates.

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Once the morning feasting was done, it came time to don our Easter clothing (clothing is hugely metaphorical and meaningful in Scripture and the history of the Church) ~ even the Easter sermon mentioned this, because we had three baptisms during the service and these Scriptures were emphasized.

Ephesians 4:17-24
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus,to put off your old self,which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Colossians 3:12-17
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Galatians 3:27
 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

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And so we got dressed in new matchy-matchy clothes (and my heart ached in all the heaviest and bestest of ways, because I have been given a family to clothe, and children who can wear sickeningly matchy outfits!), and talked about putting on Christ, putting off our old selves, putting on the new self in newness of life and the beauty of holiness, putting on love above all other things.

And then? Then the party really started. Gabriel pointed out, “there sure is a lot of joy around church and everywhere today!” and I couldn’t help but laugh. Because isn’t that just exactly, precisely the way it should be?! May the joy of the gospel, and of the Resurrected Christ, and of the hope He has given His people, shed forth from your homes, your families, your churches, and your wanderings until He comes again and everything is made new and all is set right.

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To the glory of the Father, amen. Allelulia!

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Blitz Trip Grace

By God’s grace, the Holy Spirit’s fruit of patience and gentleness swell and ripen in these times.
God gets the glory for giving me the strength I need
to be kind to my children when I feel hurried or annoyed at the end of a very long day.
And in times when I let the Spirit’s fruit rot because of my sinfulness,
the Lord gives me the grace I need to apologize to my kids
for my hastiness, insensitivity, and unkind words.
Bedtime is a maturing experience for all of us.
~Gloria Furman, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full, p111~

Other maturing experiences might be long drives in the car and blitz weekend trips that are so packed with fun busyness that naps & bedtimes kind of go by the wayside… So on mornings like today, I am extra thankful for grace, and am asking Him for extra measures of kindness, patience, gentleness, and joy today as we readjust to being home and as we reach for good things like naps & bedtime.

But man, aren’t weekend blitz trips with long car rides and occasions for grace just marvelous for the family!? Love it.

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running

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The road to Heaven does not run from the world but through it.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p180~

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I engaged with them in the moment.
They were never meant to be permanent.
~N.D. Wilson, Death by Living, p101~

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St. Patrick’s Day

Someone is trying to wake me. It’s so hard to shake myself out of a dream. Dreams can be so thick. It holds me, even though two minutes later once my eyes blink into the light and see a familiar face, I have completely forgotten what gripped me so strongly. Long cold drinks of water to say goodbye to sleepiness, and long warm kisses to say goodbye to my husband. He leaves with two baking pans full of fresh cinnamon rolls. One topped with Irish coffee icing, the other drizzled with bright green liquid sugar. I think I deserve a pot of gold for sending in goodies on a Tuesday. Right? Or at least a rainbow maybe?

Rainbow.
I open the blinds. It is raining, the grass suddenly looks so green and the hills so misty. It is a very Irish day.
No rainbow though. Not yet. Keep looking.

CHRIST BE WITH ME

Clothes on. Whoops ~ blue and pink do not make green. And nobody will believe me if I tell them my underthings are green. And I won’t prove it. So green earrings and green scarf. There. Head to the kitchen singing St. Patrick’s Breastplate. Twice.

Coffee made, vitamins swallowed, crockpot turned on (sighing thankful that I put this together last night), recipe for colcannon queued up for the afternoon.
Time to rustle the children. Why is it that the days when they need to be up early are the days their little bodies rest like rag dolls under their blankets? Moist heads with heavy eyelids. I kiss fuzzy cheeks. I snuggle warm bodies. Then I turn on the light and rip back the covers. Oooooh, morning feels so harsh sometimes.

But then they remember. Donuts!!
They hurry to put on clothes. I remember to make them put on something green. Since we will be out in public, and I don’t know if kids are mean these days or not, but when I was little, you got pinched if you didn’t have green on. Whether someone knew you or not, suddenly they thought they had the right to squeeze your flesh between their fingernails if you were not wearing a proper color. Strange tradition. My mommy bear instinct kicks in, and I make sure the boys wear their brightest green sweaters of all. Top their coppertops with Irish hats straight from the island herself, and there we go. We are channeling all our Irish heritage we can at the moment.

Take a sip of coffee, shuffle the boys off to the bathroom, head down to dress the girl. She has a splendid green dress with orange flowers and butterflies. The orange accents please her father, as he annually reminds me that green is for Catholics and orange is for Protestants. I don’t know if I have ever taken the time to even so much as google the truth or tradition behind that… but I believe him, and I take a moment of delight in the fact that my daughter can wear both green & orange with much success. Little bow on her head, little shoes on her feet. Don’t forget blankie and baby doll! The day would be ever so rough without them.

Pop these little people in the car. Oh bother: where are my keys? These things really should come with radar tracking systems built in. Why are there so many purses and diaper bags to search through? Jacket pockets? Nooks & crannies? Hmm. Good thing there are travel cups of milk to pass out to the kids along with granola bars and apple slices, to keep them blissfully unaware in their carseats while I frantically search through the house for the fob. Honestly. A second car key might be nice (hint, hint, darling: Mother’s Day is coming!).

Finally, it emerges from the bottom of a third diaper bag. Of course. I can never remember which bag I took last. On my to do list: improve my memory. One of these days. Perhaps my large cup of morning vitamins needs some additional zinc or ginko biloba or some such magic.

CHRIST WITHIN ME

Here we go! Ten minutes late, but nobody the wiser.
Driving in a misty morning with coffee in hand is delightful. It is St. Patrick’s Day though, so perhaps I should have thought better and splashed in a dash of whiskey to make it Irish coffee. Oh wait, no, better that I didn’t ~ I am driving, after all.
Rain. Potholes. Puddles. Ponds! Windshield wipers. No umbrellas though. I might not have channeled enough Irish in me to remember that far.

I am able to take some back roads to make up time, and we get to the donut shop only three minutes late. The homeschool tour hasn’t quite started yet. About twenty children dolled up in all kinds of bright green shirts and shoes and headbands are lined up, waiting. We walk in just as a Krispy Kreme employee says good morning, leprechauns. My boys tug at my shirt, wanting to know what in the world is a leprechaun and why were they called such a strange word? They are an obvious combination of offended and concerned. A man stands here with a big blob of stretchy dough that looks like it has green sprinkles in it and asks if everyone would like to touch it. Evangeline takes one look at it & declares, rather loudly, messy. The boys suddenly revert to shy copies of themselves, and hide behind my blue jeans.

Watching through glass walls. Mixers, dough, ovens, bakers, bowls of green icing, conveyer belts covered in donuts like bugs processing on my sidewalk, a lustrous white waterfall that glazes them while the children press noses against the windows & make impressed oooooohing sounds. Children all around me, my own three little copper tops buzzing around from window to window, trying to figure out the best viewing point for the baking process.

CHRIST BEHIND ME

An employee scrubs and squeegies the walls of windows. Goodbye fingerprints. Goodbye breath ghosts. Goodbye residual sneezes. Goodbye splatters of icing and melted cooking oil. Children are enthralled with the scrubbing and the squeegie. Especially the squeegie.
Gabriel asks, if I buy him a squeegie, will I pay him to wash all our windows?
Dollar signs and overflowing piggy banks fill his brain.
Clean windows without the aching arms and streak-free countryside views fill mine.
How big of an investment is a squeegie, I wonder?

The window washing is done. Another employee emerges from the kitchen with two boxes of perfectly shaped, perfectly golden, perfectly warm, perfectly glossy donuts. We are given free glazed donuts, and the children squirm their bums onto a green faux-leather booth with delight. They grab at sugary rounds. Fingers and faces suddenly glazed with the familiar white sheen. Wiggles and giggles ensue. They return to the glass walls to peer once again at the baking process. Windows are no longer clean. Hello fingerprints. Hello breath ghosts. Hello sneezes.

CHRIST BEFORE ME

People eventually leave. We are the last to file out of the donut shop, complete with two dozen donuts in hand. Why not? St. Patrick brought the Gospel to people, why shouldn’t we bring donuts to people?
A phone call to one friend who lives nearby – they are in Seattle. Hm, no donuts for them I guess.
Another phone call to another nearby friend – unfortunately the day is just not going to work out for a visit there either. Bah humbug.
Sticky-fingered children buckled in their seats. Mommy, who remembers her love for the gooey deliciousness of Krispy Kremes but is not allowed to indulge in such a sugary glutinous delicacy, still smelling the twenty-four donuts on the seat beside me, making one more phone call.

This friend knows we are coming. They are ready for playtime and chats and donuts. Ten minutes of driving and chatting with little ones about donuts and baking and legends of leprechauns, and we pull into the driveway of dear friends. It feels familiar and wonderful to see faces of loved ones, exchange hugs, tell stories of recent life, play ball, build a fort out of cardboard & couch cushions. Children play loudly. Mommies try to converse over the din. We take turns taking a child out for discipline or potty trips. My friend scales their staircase three separate times to retrieve more superhero costume pieces for super boys. Conversation helps us share life ~ conversing in the same physical space not parted by computers or cell phone towers makes the sharing extra tangible.

CHRIST BESIDE ME

Then the crying begins. My daughter is screaming almost inconsolably. This is a mind-boggling moment, where the little girl clings to me, clings to her blankie, clings to her baby doll ~ but cannot tell me why she is crying, if she is sad or hurting or scared. We take this as our exit, pack up our things, take turns at the potty, leave two (only two of twenty-four!) donuts behind us with our friends, I shuffle two happy boy and one unhappy girl out to the car. It is still sprinkling, the clouds still rest in wispy tufts around the tall pine trees, and I stumble in a little puddle. After I buckle the carseats once again, and my sad girl continues in her weeping punctuated by little gaspy sobs every couple of breaths, I shut the door for a moment. I put my hands on my hips superman-style and take a deep breath. It is a beautiful day, and my car is filled with life. Life strapped into protective seats simply because these lives are particularly precious and life itself is so volatile in its unpredictability. Before strapping myself into a seat where the noisy chaos of playful boys, crying girl, and cranked up Jamie Soles on the speakers would pound in my head, I breathe in the fresh air of March. I think of how cooling and life-giving the raindrops are. Even the mist. I quickly glance around for a rainbow. Still no rainbow in sight.

I climb in the car, take one of a few remaining sips of my morning coffee, and accelerate down the road. I tell myself to smile, tell the boys to be cheerful, even though our joy girl remains inconsolable. The very present picture of unrest, of joy trying to take over sadness, of comfort banging heads with discomfort, of pain having victory over peace… it busied my brain while I drove. I just kept driving. And driving.

 

CHRIST TO WIN ME

Unfortunately, I had a couple of errands to run. Oh Lord, be with me, as these tired little souls and their weary wee bodies in the backseat want nothing more than more donuts, and a cozy movie on the couch while the rain splatters down on the green fields by our country home. But here we remain, zooming along big roads and a busy highway, in the city.

Suddenly it hits me: call my hubby.
Darling, I’m coming! Please come sit with the children so I can run my important, time-sensitive errand!

And he does. Oh! Isn’t it just like a husband to put his things aside, and come to the wife’s rescue? To humbly sit in a car where his daughter is screaming, another son has begun to cry because nasty molars are slicing caverns into the gums in the back of his jaw, and the remaining son begs simply for another green donut.

CHRIST TO COMFORT AND RESTORE ME

I go inside a tall, boring beige building. But I don’t particularly find this building boring. I have spent blood and tears in this building many times, let me tell you. I run my errand. It takes twenty-five minutes. And during this time, I have quiet around me. I know that my husband is gently leading our children, even if that just means letting them cry the tears that need to be shed and filling mouths & bellies with another round of donuts.

And while I quietly go about my errand, and my thoughts wander to each one of my children and their various current wellbeings, my mind goes to my Savior. And how many times He has saved me before, saved my children, saved my family. In so many varied, both complicated and simple, scenarios. Knowing that this omnipresent Savior is both with me in this quiet moment and in the car with the rest of my family in their discordant moments is comforting, sweet. He is holding us up, and gives us the strength to stand, to endure, the continue on. Even with this day’s tasks and joys and struggles and hiccups. Sometimes He gives us psalms, sometimes He gives us outstretched arms of His people, sometimes He gives us green sugary donuts. Sometimes all three.

CHRIST BENEATH ME

Upon my return to the car, it seems that everyone is about in the same shape that I had left them. None the worse is sometimes all that we can ask for, right? And it’s still a gift. One entire donut box is empty now, so there’s that at least.

With a kiss and a knowing smile, my husband heads back to work, and I head back to the fray of the car, facing another 25 mile drive with crying children. I feel so hungry, dizzy, faint. I can’t reach my water bottle, my coffee cup is empty. The only snacks left in the car are literally oozing with gluten. Why did I let the kids eat all the grapes, oranges, and apples without leaving any for myself? My ears start to ring, my tummy growls, my palms get clammy. In the distance on the right I see, no, not a rainbow, but it might as well have been: golden arches! Yessss. Just what we need to drive out the hissing snakes of tears and fears and dizzy hunger pangs. I swerve into the turn lane, and immediately find myself in the McDonald’s drive thru. Some solutions are greasy and salty, and perfectly scrumptious with every bite. I pass the french fries around and find my water bottle. Ah! Christ’s banishing of evil things are sometimes such little gifts, but you know what they say: good things come in small packages. Red paper cups filled with hot shoe-string potatoes definitely qualify.

We keep driving. The crying won’t stop once the french fries run out. So I call our friendly neighborhood pediatrician and tell him, without explanation, that we are on our way. I divert our course and we head a different direction, off to see Dr. Grandpapa. Stethoscope, thermometer, otoscope. Rather than driving the children to further tears, they bring calmness and peace. Funny how familiarity is so comforting, even when it invades our personal bubble in strange ways.

Another ear infection for the daughter. Aha. Now it begins to make sense. A molar pushing its way through a gum for a son, its iceberg nature causing more trauma beneath the surface than we can even understand. So we head out for antibiotics and acetaminophen. And movies. We simply have to make a quick run to the library while we’re at it, and see what kind of videos I can grab to keep these little guys happy. Such a gift from the digital era!

CHRIST ABOVE ME

Finally. Home. Windshield wipers are tired. The clouds still hang. I tuck boys in beds with blankets and set up a laptop so they can begin cycling through library dvds. It begins with Mickey Mouse. It ends with superheroes. Of course.

I unload the car while she cries, and then my arms are finally free. Open and ready for her. Desperate to cling to her and snuggle her, to put my chin on top of her head, to whisper in her aching ear that everything is going to be okay. She seems to believe me. Oh wait: her eyes have caught sight of Sofia The First. Well. If that’s all it takes right now to make her world a beautiful place of sunshine and rainbows, even while the clouds continue to drop their rains outside, that’s good enough for me. She lift her onto my bed with me. Push play. Snuggle deep into pillows. She climbs onto my lap, and rests a weary head against my breast. Chest still heaves with occasional leftover sobs. Little dimpled hand holds onto my finger. I kiss her moist head. Rest my cheek on her ruffled locks. She watches princesses on the television. I watch her, my princess, and cry because of the beauty of moments like this.

CHRIST IN QUIET

Eventually she is ready to lie down on her own in her bed. Medications are such a gift to the hurting, the sick, the suffering. Blankies and babies and nightlights, likewise. God gives us tangible things to take with us for the slaying of dragons, whether the dragons are owies or infections, bullies or nightmares. It is so easy to give way in our spirits to dread or doubt or fear or anxiety, or all combined together. While my daughter takes blankie and baby doll to the comfort of her bed with the nightlight shedding some peace in the room, I turn to books and blogs for my own armor. I have felt evil prowling about even today. If I wanted to deliver donuts in the place of gospel this morning, I guess now I fight inward serpents who threaten to bite and constrict rather than Irish snakes. But regardless of the littleness of my battles in my world, they are still battles. And I am still thankful for the strong together to whom I run, and for the armor He provides. I drink it in through my eyes, my fingers, my brain, my heart, my soul. I am fortified. Because He is my Fortress.

And I’m ready to face what’s next. And that’s when my husband walks in, and causes me to remember that’s what’s next is dinner. And while the crockpot has done its wonderful magic all day, corned beef is only one part of the sustenance I’ve got planned. Time to go weild knives and light fires, people: it’s time to cook dinner. Fight for victory!

CHRIST IN DANGER

We spend the evening sharing food with one another, and even my daddy joins us around our table. The house smells of beef and spices, onions and cabbage. I mash potatoes with leeks and cabbage, smothering it all with milk and butter and salt. Humble things, yes, but delicious, and it has a really fun name, colcannon. Undeniably Irish sounding, isn’t it? Asher, at one point, thought I said Uncle Colin rather than colcannon, but I assured him that they are two distinctively different delights. There is Guinness on the table, and a hard apple cider, and even the children delight in the tasting. Cool water is guzzled as though we have had salt and sugar in abundance today… oh, I guess, perhaps that is because we have. The child on my right asks for thirds on corned beef. The child on my left asks only for colcannon… four times, I fill her plate with large dollops of colcannon. The child across the table from me pretty much just wants another green donut… I rack my brain to do the math to figure out how many donuts that child has eaten today already… it might be half a dozen, give or take.

When the middle child goes potty and calls out for someone to clean his bum, we are all called in for a serious look at what has happened. We get a very visual education on the idea that “what goes in must come out,” and we realize that Krispy Kreme must use a very lively green food coloring for their donuts. What Asher produces, and is rather proud of, looks nearly radioactive. I don’t think I will ever eat a green donut again, even if I were to find a low-sugar gluten-free version. Asher has taken the surprise out of green donuts for me forever.

Dinner is a jovial hour of eating, drinking, chatting, laughing around the table. The grandfather tells jokes with us. He does math problems with the 3 year old, using green grapes for manipulatives. I didn’t know my young boy already knew 2+2 and 3+1, for instance. Grapes make math delicious and graspable. Then the 6 year old takes the grandfather aside to have some kind of deep conversations for ten minutes in private, as he so loves to do. Sometimes they discuss medical cases, sometimes theological questions, sometimes science experiments, sometimes knock knock jokes. On this particular night, I am not given a hint, I am left in the dark. Eventually, the 2 year old gets a turn with her grandfather, and once she is in jammies, he rocks her in the dimly light nursery. He sings at her request: Holy Holy, Glory Be, Blessed The Man, Lord’s Prayer. He sings things, thirty years in the making, that he used to sing to her mother in a like rocking fashion. Her pain seems gone, her heart seems encouraged, her thumb wet and wrinkly, her blankie clutched at her cheek, her eyes droopy. Grandpapa eventually lays her down in the comforting solace of her crib.

CHRIST IN HEARTS OF ALL THAT LOVE ME

With children in bed, my father gone home, my husband getting ready to call it a night, I go to my instruments. I play St. Patrick’s Breastplate on both piano and harp. I sing. I tinker. I try to find pieces of music with titles that are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, British. Definitely time to go on Amazon and order another songbook or two of things labeled Celtic, because I just don’t seem to have quite what I’m looking for.

Music played for half an hour of invigorating solitude, children lulled into their dreams, husband waiting.
I quickly shower and crawl beneath the duvet. We hold hands while we watch a little television and enjoy some random distraction from the day’s duties & delights. Then it’s lights-out finally, and I can almost feel the nightly rest grab me and pull me down into my pillow.

He says goodnight, we kiss & kiss again, we spoon, we draw the covers close around our chins and scootch our heads into the best positions on our pillows. The rain still falls lightly outside, but I know the stars are out there. The children are sleeping, their cries are silenced and their pains are numbed, their dreams have begun and their little bodies are snuggled like as many cocoons in their own beds under their own comforters. And what Comforter is here holding us all, in our own rooms and our own beds?

Our Father, the Christ, the true Comforter. He is here with us. We know His gospel, we have felt His peace, we have experienced His sustaining grace not only before but today. In the moments that He gave us on this day. In the donuts and the corned beef. In the friends and the store clerks. In the children, the parents, the siblings, the strangers. And even now with our eyes closed and our breaths slowing into rhythms we don’t even know how to replicate, He continues to give us His grace. And He is our rainbow, our promise of peace and life, the sign and seal that God is always good in all things. That no matter what happens when we rise tomorrow, He will again be here with us. And we can not escape Him. Like St. Patrick before us who went hither and thither, we too know that our Lord is always with us, and His gospel is always the foundation, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, and priceless to carry with us to all we meet.

With this in mind, I quietly praise the Lord for my husband, my children, my home, my Christ.
And I fall asleep, ready and hoping to meet Him under rainbows in my dreams.

CHRIST IN MOUTH OF FRIEND AND STRANGER

 

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Resting in His Image on His Day

…Above all you shall keep My Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you… a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord… It is a sign forever between Me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.
Exodus 31:13-17

Around here, we love Sundays. We love the routines it carries, the rest it brings. It is an anchor for our week, the most predictable day of all.

A Sunday here is typically quite simple in structure yet profound in what it represents. Rest is indisputably delightful, in its various manifestations and representations! All five of us cling to the joy of resting on the Lord’s Day. We go to bed earlier than normal on Saturdays so we are well rested—in order to be prepared for the day of rest! (What could be more wonderful preparation than that?!) We have some of our best & favorite foods and wear some of our best & favorite clothes. We go to church to worship the King and be with His people. One of my favorite things about Sundays, personally, is how we covenantally ascend into heaven (just read Hebrews 12 for yourself) during corporate worship, because it makes me feel so intimately close with my nine babies in heaven. We commune through bread and wine with the Lord and with one another. We sing and pray, pass the peace of Christ to one another and find ways to shower grace upon each other, share conversation and fellowship and food and handshakes or hugs. While sometimes Sundays include hospitality, family parties and meals at the grandparents’ house, or spending hours with friends, we do sincerely love Sunday afternoons that offer us quiet hours at home—not to fret over schoolwork and house projects and cleaning nooks & crannies, but to play together and rest together. We love enjoying God’s creation on His day, from many vantage points and in varied ways. We have a special family tradition on Sunday evenings of eating goodies and doing something fun—for this current season of our little family’s life, it usually looks like eating popcorn & ice cream while snuggling & watching movies. After kids are tucked in their beds, it also means date night for my husband & me—with wine, chocolate, cheese, and sometimes a movie just for us.

Sundays—the Lord’s Day—our Sabbath—is a foretaste of heavenly rest, and a recurrent (utterly joyful and blessed!) reminder that our hardworking life should be predictably punctuated by worship and delight. And it isn’t just because in our human frailty we need a break from the six other days where we run around working hard, being as productive as we can manage, and having an undercurrent of diligent & dedicated labors. It is, after all, a good reminder that God did not rest on the seventh day of creation because He was exhausted. He rested to delight in His work.

God did not rest because He was tired.
He rested so that those made in His image
would share in His rest through worship.
He rested so that He could turn Adam and Eve’s attention
from the creation to the Creator.
In a sense, God was saying to Adam and Eve and all humanity,
“Come and rest in who I am and what I have accomplished.
Enjoy with me the goodness of all I have made.”
This was to establish a rhythm of
engagement with the world through work
and then thankful enjoyment of the world through worship.
~Nancy Guthrie, The Promised One, p45~

Some Sundays are more placid than others. Sometimes our resting is kind of… well… flat out energetic and lively and noisy or busy enough to even border on chaotic.

In fact, at this very moment—while I might be reclining on a comfy bed with a cozy comforter snuggled on top of me and a cup of tea within reach—I have an excessively wiggly and noisy two year old girl going up and down, up and down, up and down… screaming and giggling and babbling, trying to grab at the computer keys or spill my tea cup… while a video booms with bright images and loud soundtrack in a corner of the room and children carry on with continual commentary, occasionally interspersing requests for a water bottle, popcorn or ice cream refill, or simply expressing utter delight in sharing goodies with one another on this special day of the week.

And this is after lots of lively fellowship & projects at Sunday school, loud singing during worship (although I must confess that the entire corporate worship service is beautifully rich and peaceful even in our busy pew), a boisterous lunch at a crowded Red Robin restaurant (mac & cheese, ketchup, and juicy orange segments seemed to get absolutely everywhere!), and a long chatterbox-filled 26-mile drive home.

But these in fact are some of the best ways that we see Christ, His goodness, His rest, His future hope—in the people He put around us, and especially those in our own home under our own discipleship. We turn our hearts to Him and tune our souls to His praise, resting in who He is, what He has done, and delightfully embracing these living temples where He lives right here among us—but sometimes the resting is clamorous and rollicking rather than quiet and what you might describe as serene.

But whichever way our Sabbath rest takes us on a given day, we delight in the gift of the Lord’s Day (Mark 2:27), knowing that the Lord accepts our worship, covers us with grace, and fills us up on this day that He has set aside for us (and in return, we set it aside for Him) so that we can once again go forth to labor for another six days in His creation before being called again to this sanctified day—this day where we enjoy all that God has made, and where we delight in six days of productivity and rest in enjoyment of His sweet grace in so many of its innumerable manifestations.

Serenity, silence, and solitude are good things.
God uses quietness to tune our heart to listen to Him through His Word.
Silence can help us pray without added distractions.
In the peacefulness of our surroundings,
the Lord can still our busy heart.
“Truly alone” time with the Lord is a gift.
But so are the times when you’re ringmastering your family circus.
The Lord is just as near to you when you’re
using a bulb sucker on a tiny, congested nose
and as you’re summoning the wisdom of Solomon
to settle a spat over a disputed toy.
~Gloria Furman, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands are Full, p72~

And now it’s clear that I need to move on to ringmastering my family circus down for the night… the three rings are busy and the tents are bouncing. I have a little girl here who can’t seem to decide whether she is a dancing poodle, a trapeze artist, or toy juggler—and it’s always fun to wrangle acrobats into their beds. So excuse me please while I go tuck these little God-images into their beds, and watch them drift into the rest of sleep as the rest from His day prepares them (and me!) for another six days of working the ground the Lord has put into our hands.