Tag: Quotes

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he leaves me speechless

Last Wednesday evening, my oldest son and I got to tag along with my parents to a Lenten event at our church, while my husband stayed home with two sick toddlers. It made me feel like a kid again, sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car; and having my little boy next to me, feeling more like he was my brother than my son, made me relaxed and happy. We talked, mostly in giggly whispers, the whole way to church. And hours later (long after bedtime), he held my hand in the backseat while he fell asleep. Before he fell asleep though, he asked my dad, “so Grandpapa, your birthday is tomorrow: what would you like to do special with me for your birthday?” What an adorable grandchildlike question. So it was decided that the next morning, Gabriel would take Grandpapa out for breakfast, before one went to work & the other went to a fire station on a fieldtrip. Well, the breakfast happened on Grandpapa’s birthday, and I swung by to pick up my little boy on our way to the fieldtrip, and as he climbed into the backseat (where he feels more like my son and less like my brother), he said, “Mommy I bought you a present!” At first, I thought maybe he meant the last sip of 7Up in the shiny green can he clutched against his chest. But then he held out a precious little wooden sign with a cheesy saying and a wire hanger, complete with a red gingham ribbon tied on. He spent his very own five dollar bill on it for me, for no other reason than he saw it, he thought of me, and he wanted to make me smile. I held it together, but I kind of wanted to cry. This little man-in-the-making is both tender and strong. And he leaves me speechless, at the foot of the throne of grace in thankfulness.

 

The memories my children carry with them into adulthood are largely up to me.
In the everyday routines of life,
I have the power to provide my children
with countless loving memories of human connection.
I also have the ability to leave my children
with a scarce supply of meaningful moments together.
~Rachel Macy Stafford, Hands Free Mama, p57~

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Freedom to love and enjoy our children
flows out of the knowledge that
God saves them in spite of our best efforts,
not because of them.
Salvation is of the Lord.
~Elyse Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace, p53~

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God started to show me how to see my son.
Not with a magnifying glass, but with a mirror.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p141~

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fortification for the every day

When my husband got home, the kids were watching a video and I was sitting at my desk, with eyes trying to focus on some reading while my head rested in the palm of a hand and a weighted heating pad balanced on the aching muscles of my neck and shoulders. Lunch bag and stack of mail were set on the kitchen island as usual, and my hardworking handsome man came over to give me a hug & long-awaited kiss. Those big hugs and warm kisses at the start of the evening are marvelous, aren’t they?

But then came the inevitable question.
“How was your afternoon?” he asked. “What did you do?”

On this particular day, I bit my lip for a moment before just closing my eyes and chuckling. He seemed to wonder what was so suddenly comical in such a simple question.

I lifted my right index finger to indicate wait just a second, and I grabbed for a little book that I had just finished reading that afternoon. I paged through a couple chapters trying to figure out where the pertinent paragraph was.

Aha! I found it. And I read it to my husband:

If there’s one thing that can defeat a mother, it’s the monotony. Get up, feed the baby, wash the laundry, change the diapers, do the dishes, make the car pool run, wrestle the math homework, figure out a new way to make chicken, change the sheets—times 365 days in a row. It’s hard to see the significance when you’re so weighed down by the mundane. And it can feel like everyone else around you is busy doing big, important things while you have worn the same spit-up-stained sweatpants three days in a row. You dread the “So what did you do today?” question as you rack your brain to come up with more than, “Cleaned up after the kids.”
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p113~

 

At that, my husband laughed. Then he kissed my forehead, made a comment about how he was glad that I “had an afternoon” and went about his business for the rest of the evening.

The normal chaos of family life ensued with playtime, dinnertime, cleanup, bedtime routines, and calming the chaos into rest while an almost full moon poured lunar glory through the windows and the screams of nearby coyotes filtered in around the panes. I played piano while the children rested in bed, and while my husband reclined for some Scripture reading. Then it was showers and time to recline myself in bed beside my husband. The best way to end the day. Any day. Every day.

As I ooched myself comfortably onto pillows and under duvet, my husband seemed to pause thoughtfully, and then turned to grab my attention with some subdued cue. “Thank you,” he said, “for doing all the mundane and monotonous things.” I felt my eyes begin to burn, and this time it wasn’t an eyelash poking around in places it ought not. “Thank you for making a delicious dinner. Thank you for taking care of the kids. Thank you for doing all the laundry. I love you.”

And oh ~ I felt my heart go all melty mooshy & my toes start to twitch nervously as I bashfully muttered, “you’re welcome,” and “I love you too.”

There is no part of our everyday, wash-and-repeat routine of kids and laundry and life and fights and worries and playdates and aching budgets and preschool orientations and work and marriage and love and new life and bedtime marathons that Jesus doesn’t look deep into and say, “That is Mine.” In Him all things hold together.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p116~

 

Then I gave him a kiss… soft kisses are such a gift… and I turned onto my side so that I could scootch my thighs and my knees and my back and my toes into all the most comfortable places, that rest right in the warm nooks of my husband. This man who notices the wash-and-repeat routine that I perform every day even when I don’t realize it, and who helps me to remember that all these things are glorious because all these things are for The King and His Kingdom.

 

And I slept all night in his arms, content and cozy, so I could face the next day with strengthened arms and fortified soul.

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one little reflection

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We see ourselves in our children
better than in any mirror.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p187~

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I believe God loves us too much
to leave us flailing in our self-centered universes,
so He delivers these tiny reflections of ourselves
into our homes with earthquake effectiveness.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p187~

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don’t miss the morning cuddles

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What if you missed hearing the best part of your child’s day because you were on the phone? What if you missed a chance to inhale the sweet scent of your energetic child because you insisted on folding that basket of laundry before bedtime? What if you missed a chance to console your worried spouse because of your mile-long to-do list? What if you missed hearing an unknown childhood memory from your aging parent because you were too busy to call? What if you missed a divine cloud formation in the sky because you were racing to the bank, the post office, and the dry cleaner before you had to pick up the kids? What if one day you realized that all the opportunities you missed couldn’t be retrieved? But it was already too late. What if one day you realized the best moments in life come in the mundane, everyday moments? But you were only fully present on special occasions. What if, instead of rushing through the minutiae of your daily life, you occasionally paused and offered your presence? What if you turned away from the distractions that monopolize your time and attention and grasped the sacred moments passing you by? Turn off the music in the car. Sit next to your child as she plays. Lie in bed with her after you say goodnight. Hug her and don’t let go right away. Tell her something you have been meaning to say. Bend down and look her in the eye when she talks to you. Do these things and see what might unfold. And once the moment is over, reflect back on that moment and realize this painful truth: If I had not paused, that precious moment is what I would have missed.
~Rachel Macy Stafford, Hands Free Mama, p21

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oh, spaetzle!

It was spaetzle that brought me to my senses. Spaetzle, if you do not know, are the very flower of all foods made with flour. They are tiny bits of soft noodle dough, boiled to a light and lovely perfection, and served with butter or gravy. It took only one taste of my wife’s first batch to make me realize that I could not go on as a dieter. Spaetzle exude substantiality: A man who takes a small helping is a man without eyes to see what is in front of him. Accordingly, I passed my plate back for seconds and then thirds, and made a vow then and there to walk more, to split logs every day and, above all to change my religion from the devilish cult of dieting to the godly discipline of fasting.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p114~

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To eat nothing at all is more human than to take a little of what cries out for the appetite of a giant. One servingspoonful of spaetzle is like the opening measures of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: any man who walks out early on either proves he doesn’t understand the genre—and he misses the repose of the end. To eat without eating greatly is only to eat by halves.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p114~

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Life is so much more than occasions, and its grand ordinariness must never go unsavored.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb: a Culinary Reflection, p27~

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(…and yes, my mother made me some of my very favorite things in gluten free versions!
like schnitzel and spaetzle and peanut butter cream pie!!

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Date Night: Daily & Divine

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Food and cooking are among the richest subjects in the world. Every day of our lives, they preoccupy, delight, and refresh us. Food is not just some fuel we need to get us going toward higher things. Cooking is not a drudgery we put up with in order to get the fuel delivered. Rather, each is a heart’s astonishment. Both stop us dead in our tracks with wonder. Even more, they sit us down evening after evening, and in the company that forms around our dinner tables, they actually create our humanity.
~Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb~

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Food matters because it’s one of the things that forces us to live in this world—this tactile, physical, messy, and beautiful world—no matter how hard we try to escape into our minds and our ideals. Food is a reminder of our humanity, our fragility, our createdness. Try to think yourself through starvation. Try to command yourself not to be hungry, using your own sheer will. It will work for a while, maybe, but at some point you’ll find yourself—no matter how high-minded or iron-willed—face-to-face with your own hungry, and with that hunger, your own humanity.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p250~

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So try it. Try Keller’s three-times plan. Make it once according to the recipe. Then you know how the chef or recipe writer intended it to taste. Practice your scales. And then write your own version of the recipe. And then make it entirely from memory, at which point it’s yours.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p102~

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But our goal, remember, is to feed around our table the people we love. We’re not chefs or restaurateurs or culinary school graduates, and we shouldn’t try to be. Make it the way the people you love want to eat it. Make it the way you love it. Try it a million ways and cross a few off the list because they were terrible, but celebrate the fact that you found a few new ways too—ways that are fresh and possibly unconventional but perfect for your family. That’s the goal. Learn, little by little, meal by meal, to feed yourself and the people you love, because food is one of the ways we love each other, and the table is one of the most sacred places we gather.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p51~

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I am a bread-and-wine person. By that I mean that I’m a Christian, a person of the body and blood, a person of the bread and wine. Like every Christian, I recognize the two as food and drink, and also, at the very same time, I recognize them as something much greater—mystery and tradition and symbol. Bread is bread, and wine is wine, but bread-and-wine is another thing entirely. The two together are the sacred and the material at once, the heaven and earth, the divine and the daily.
~Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine, p11~

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the goodest of friends

We got to share meals and space and time and conversation with some of our “goodest” friends (in my son’s words). The kind of friends that you do not get to see more than a couple times a year, but who never feel like you’ve lost time with during the in-between. They are the kind of friends that you want to grow old with, and swap grandkid pictures with when we’re grey, and take annual summer vacations with, and create traditions with. This is a family that is like family to us. We are so indescribably thankful for them, and how God lets us cross distances to stay close.

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…There are things you can’t know,
and questions you can’t ask,
and memories you can’t recover via email and voicemail.
It was about the being there,
about being there to really see
what’s exactly the same and
what’s totally different about each one of us.
~Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet, p63~

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Share your life with the people you love,
even if it means saving up for a ticket
and going without a few things for a while to make it work.
There are enough long lonely days of the same old thing,
and if you let enough years pass,
and if you let the routine steamroll your life,
you’ll wake up one day, isolated and weary,
and wonder what happened to all those old friends.
~Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet, p65~

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Good friends are like breakfast.
~ Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet, p65~

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faithful body image

What does the world mean when they speak of having good body image?
The test is simply whether you can look in the mirror and love yourself.
Can you see your body and love it?

But for a Christian woman this question should be completely different.
Good body image for a Christian woman means being able to look in the mirror and love God.
If you can look in the mirror and thank God for the body that He gave you –
that He spoke from nothing when He called you to life –
when He made your heart beat in a secret place,
when out of nothing He crafted you and gave you life.

When you can thank Him for all the challenges that come with this body of yours
because they come from His hand –
this is a far deeper joy than loving yourself.

This is not the shallow joy of having good body image,
but the deep security of having faithful body image.

Pursue that – because it is pursuing your Creator.
Thank Him – for His gifts to us are overwhelming.
Image Him, even as we see ourselves.
~Rachel Jankovic~

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enjoying life & its offerings

[M]ake the most of dinner time in particular by creating an event of it.
Don’t allow it to be just throwing food down the hatch.
Enjoy the time, enjoy the food, and
enjoy our fellowship together as a family.
~Kim Brenneman, Large Family Logistics, pg215~

There are one thousand ninety-five meals a year that we as home managers are responsible for…
For those one thousand ninety-five mealtimes that your family sits down together to enjoy,
be encouraged that God will help you in your efforts.
Food, presentation, etiquette, and conversation direction are responsibilities
we need to take seriously as the matrons of our homes.
We must give thought and plan for these times during the day.
In planning meals, it is important to realize that these are times that the
family is gathered together around the table sharing, talking, and enjoying each other
and the food set before them.
~Kim Brenneman, Large Family Logistics, pg282~

 If you’ve never been able to summon fervent interest in nutritional breakdowns,
you will find a companion here.
And if you are one of those who has dined with such enthusiasm
that nothing could stand in the way of sheer enjoyment,
you may find that you’ve enjoyed not gluttony,
but the fullness of life and its offerings.

~Deborah Madison, in her preface to Supper of the Lamb~