In pursuit of Christmas

If you don't know what a chaturanga is, allow me to divulge.  It is a low plank, or in other words, the bottom of a push-up.  It is having your back, knees, heels, and shoulders in a line that is being held inches aloft by your toes and your arms, which wiggle and scream and do this Shakira-like jiggle as your elbows are bent to ninety degrees.  You stare at the ground and watch your sweat drip, drip onto the ground.  That is a chaturanga.  

It is a yoga pose.  It is part of the practice that I can feel in nearly every muscle of my body.  My cheeks get to rest, and that's nice, but then the instructor will say something funny and I'll start to smile... and then even my cheeks are straining.  Today, when we were in our chaturanga pose, and holding it for quite a while, Libby asked us to remember that this was why we showed up.  It was nearly the end of class and our bodies were exhausted.  Holding that chaturanga was a bit like reeling in the last few inches of line holding a ten pound fish.  She reminded us that we came for the end, for the arrival, for the realization that this was hard and that was the point.  She also asked us to call to mind our "intention", that is, why we came to class.  It can be anything- for health, for peace, for the mental space to be kind to our family members, for the patience to get through the work day.  As we gritted our teeth and tried to keep our breathing at an even pace, we thought of our intentions. 

The work of December exhausts me.  From the time Thanksgiving wraps up to the time we gather under the tree on Christmas morning I feel like I am sprinting.  There are gift lists and party lists, PTA meetings and church meetings and text threads that feel like meetings to plan meetings.  I have one hundred fifty two reminders in my phone to make a craft or deliver a baked good or pick up the sticky hooks to hang wreaths on the windows.  Then, invariably, the craft store is out of stock, the baked good is left on top of the refrigerator where we hid it from the dog, and the wreath hooks are irrelevant because the ladder isn't tall enough.  What is my intention in all of this?  What am I sweating for?

As I drove around today I thought about this.  I thought about this because while I stretched my muscles and challenged them and listened to Libby coach us there was a small space in my brain that opened up and gave me pause to ask myself, "What is Advent?"

Walking toward Christmas, for me, means walking toward the manger.  It means imagining the strain of pregnancy on Mary.  I think of her long journey on donkey back, which cannot have been pleasant if I compare accurately my nine month pregnant self to hers, and the girth of a donkey's back.  I think of the wise men and how long they wandered and hoped and wondered what it was they would find beneath that star.  I think of the shepherds and their awe at finding a baby born in a tiny, musty room, heralded by angels and yet so lowly and ordinary in his wrinkled skin and tiny features. 

Mary, the shepherds, the wise men, and I.  None of us know exactly what we will find at the end of the road.  All of us know our intention.  It is a conglomeration of discovery, hope, relief, and love.  It is faith.  

When I look back on my Christmases- as a mom, as an adult still trying to chase the wonder without kids, as a college kid who needed a respite, as a child... I realize that Christmas morning has always come.  What is left up to me is how I walk the road to it. 

As I attempt to grasp hold of Advent, to share it with my kids and remember it myself, I will think of that moment as I sweated through a chaturanga.  What is my intention? I came here for this moment. 

I had a lot of ideas about how this Christmas season would look.  I even stated them, emphatically, to my husband.  

"There will be wreaths!," and I probably gestured grandly with my hands toward the windows. 

"We will shop beneath the lights at Friendly Center!," I said with dreamy eyes as I thought of the two of us, on a date night, happily strolling in pea coats through the shopping center as we picked out perfect gifts for family members. 

The fact of the matter is, we can't get the damn wreaths to hang. Also, we did shop at Friendly Center.  With kids.  No pea coats. (Josh doesn't even own one.)  We purchased absolutely nothing because we found absolutely nothing.  Refer back to the fact that we brought the kids.  

Here's the thing, however.  Letting go of the wreaths and the dreamy Christmas shopping experience feels like work.  It feels like the good work of preparing for something that is bigger than presents and pea coats.  There is something magical about spending an entire month, especially in this age, to get ready for one beautiful day.  We breathe in and laugh about wreath hooks not hanging.  We breath out and smile as the kids turn the shopping mall into a personal race track/playground/jungle gym.  We strain our muscles, trim our tree, hang our heads a little when the pose doesn't go quite right.  We sweat and we show up.  We get here.  We do the work.  We remember that for some the work is even more painful, in its loneliness or its loss or its lack.  Day by day and labor by labor we arrive.  

I believe Christmas is the arrival.  It is what we come for.  It is the cool lavender-scented towel we drape over our sweat-caked face as we lay down our tired limbs and smile at the work we did, the space we created.  Perhaps Christmas is the reward for the hard work, but it also is the work.  It is right and okay that preparing for this one day every year be difficult.  For nothing beautiful, nothing worthwhile, was ever born of ease.  If I am honest, Christmas morning itself is not easy.  It was never meant to be.  

If I may be so bold, I would venture to say that Christmas was meant to be a sign of hope, and peace.  If that is the case, and we are now preparing for one day that embodies those two virtues, we better be sweating and aching and burning in the pursuit.  

I voted in 2016

Two days ago, in church, Josh tapped my elbow.  He whispered in my ear,

"He's singing."

I looked past him, trying not to be seen by my eldest son.  Sure enough, there he was, holding a piece of paper with the lyrics to the songs we sang as a congregation.  He was standing, leaning against the chairs in front of him, his auburn hair brushing across his forehead, his freckles dotting his nose that angled toward the words, and his lips were subtly moving.

Jonathan does not sing.  Jonathan does not stand up in church.  Well actually, Jonathan did not sing and he used to never stand in church.  It is something that has irked me slightly, this inability of mine as his mother to help inspire in him a desire to worship, to participate, to feel the passion in the words we sing.  Nonetheless, I have tried to let him just be him.  I have stood next to him as he sat, sprawled, or slumped in the rows of chairs.  Suddenly there he is, joining in to the voices, singing of his own accord.

I smiled, eased back into my spot, and sang with my heart full, so grateful for my son's ability to set aside his discomfort and give this a go.

Today we went to the polls as a family.  Frost topped the grass and we watched our breath as we piled into the car and huddled into our coats and sweatshirts.  I felt anxious as we approached the little church where we have been voting for various races over the past five years, not knowing exactly where I lean this year and wondering if I would feel proud of any result.

Then I thought of Jonathan singing in church.  I thought of the courage it took for him to stand up in a sea of legs and hips that become a forest around him, to stand up and then sing at that.  I thought of all of the thousands of minutes when he sat in that church and wished he was anywhere else, and now here he was standing up and taking part.

Perhaps it is in the walking into the polls, in the taking that last breath before casting the ballot, in the moment of deciding what is it that I believe in, what is it that I cherish, and then proclaiming it for myself in the quiet that comes from being surrounded by people doing the same.  There is something so powerful about standing in those cloistered ballot spaces, knowing there are people in front of and behind you making these choices and helping by increments to build the leadership of our country.

We sponsor a child in Uganda and he and I write to each other occasionally.  I told him in our last correspondence that we are going to vote for a new president and that I was not very excited about either candidate.  He responded that he was grateful to vote for his new president as well, and grateful for the lack of bloodshed this time.

That got me.  This boy who is half my age expressing gratitude for the great gift of voting and for the blessing of no bloodshed.  I realized then that I have so much to celebrate.  I am raising a son who can worship without prosecution and who can follow his parents into a polling place and walk out to the smiling faces of women handing him an "I voted" sticker.  We went to Krispy Kreme and watched the doughnuts be drizzled with sugary glaze and rock down the conveyor.  I ate my free "I voted" doughnut with my bright eyed boys and I felt satisfied that we had this moment as a family, to go to the polls and talk about why America is great.

That is what Jonathan asked me this morning.  He didn't ask who I voted for.  He said,

"Mom why does America win everything? Why do we win everything in the Olympics?"

I am sure there are one hundred answers to this question, and that some of them are cynical, but this was mine:

"America was built to take care of its people.  Some countries are built to take care of their king or their dictator, but we were built to take care of our people.  When you take care of your people, they are healthy.  When people are healthy they are better athletes."

This satisfied my inquisitive eight year old, and he stared out the window for a moment in contemplation.  I added that we have a lot of money, and that helps us with fancy pools and nice sneakers and good coaches, but I do believe what I told him about why we thrive.

There was a moment today when I doubted this.  I wanted to blame someone for the candidate list.  I wanted to go home and not vote.  Then I thought about what I believe America to be, what I want America to be, and I realized I don't have to have faith in what America is, but I have to take pride in what I believe America has always striven to be.  Let there never come a day when I refuse to vote because I can't find a perfect option, for there have been too many who did shed blood so that I could stand up in the forest of others doing the same, and quietly cast my voice into the chorus of those around me.

Ease in the work

Today during yoga class the instructor reminded us to "find the ease in the work".  She ticked off the working groups, "Plant your feet, turn on your legs, straighten your back, pull your shoulders in and down," a checklist of contracting muscles and bones and joints.  With a clear voice she told us to feel our muscles working, then settle into it and find the lightness there.

The funny thing is, I had just read a quote by CS Lewis today that communicated the connection between work and ease.

"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier.  Christ says 'Give me All.  I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You'... Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.  You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy.  He says, 'Take up your Cross'--in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp.  Next minute he says, 'My yoke is easy and my burden light.' He means both." 

CS Lewis and my yoga teacher seem to be in cahoots, and when something like this happens I tend to think it is God whispering.  Embrace the work and lean into the grit.  Yesterday at the pool I was chatting with another mom and commenting on how I often tell Josh, "I just want to wake up and make it through the day the way I planned it.  I want everything to work the way it's supposed to."

Aside from smiling a crooked smile as he is working on something else in the house I've asked him to fix, Josh's typical response is, "Yep, I know it babe.  That would be nice."

That would be nice.... or would it?

Last week the yoga instructor had us change up some of the routine.  She never teaches the exact same class, but I can usually see what's coming and know that if my body is twisted this way right now, it will move into X pose next.  Well, on that particular day she had woken up energized, giddy even.  She said she was "excited to live life" or some such inspiring (read: terrifying) claim. I found my feet over my head when they were supposed to be planted in plank pose.  I found my hips in the air and my shoulders over my ears when they should not have been.  In short, sweat was dripping all up in my face space.  I felt beads of it streaming from my neck onto my hairline and into my eyes.  It stung and I couldn't reach my towel or I would have fallen clean onto my nose, so it stayed there, stinging.  I was blinking so hard I thought I'd have a headache.  As Libby continued to move us through her excited-for-life madness series, I was trying to figure out how to stay with her cues but still predict what was coming next and how to reach my daggum towel.

My brain stopped trying to catch up to my body, and finally accepted that we were on a different playing field.  Then, as if by magic, it was as if my brain sat back, popped a Corona and said, "Heart, lungs, do your thing.  I'm taking the back seat." It was clarifying.  I let the expectation drop and just decided to like the sweat in my ears and eyes.  

In any job there is the mundane, the expected, and then there is the wildly unexpected bordering on chaotic.  As I raise my children I am coming to expect both, and finding myself resenting them equally.  Make the bed.  Wipe down the counters.  Unload the dishwasher.  Why is it never done.  Take the suddenly feverish baby to the doctor.  Sweep up the broken china plate.  Hear the news, "Honey I think it's time to buy new land and move across town." Clench, breathe, clench. Cry. 

Nevertheless, there are moments when I realize I actually love the mundane and I cherish the surprises.  I was wiping down my gorgeous granite countertops the other day thinking how satisfying it was to watch that grime disappear.  I folded laundry and realized that sitting in the sunroom with an excuse to do so for an hour was soothing my harried mind.  The car had to go BACK to the mechanic and somehow I was more grateful than exasperated.

Is this what they mean?  Is this what it means to lean into the work, to find the ease there and to settle into the elbow grease of life as if it is the big comfy chair?  I am wondering if I stopped running towards rest and rather pushed back the branches in my mind and reached for the tool belt-- would I find that I prefer it?

Try as I might, I can't think of a single story in the Bible wherein the protagonist goes on vacation and achieves nirvana.  In fact, I can't think of a single story like that in my own life or the lives of my friends.  I can think of a lot of stories in which a person has striven for excellence and found, more than the achievement of their goal, a growth of self.  Furthermore, I can think of a dozen instances wherein a curve ball produced depth or a shock to the system turned into the greatest gift.  I am not naive enough to believe that every bit of unexpected news or droll work will bring happiness- the world is too broken for that.  I did not expect, however, for sweat in my eyes to become something I look forward to.  Realizing that I can feel the ache and reach into it for more makes me think that I can probably discover more of this delight in struggle.  Perhaps I can even find myself singing while I scrub a toilet... for the third time that day.

Lewis, CS. "June 23." A Year with CS Lewis. 1st ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 191. Print

Easter Observation

Tonight I listened to William say his prayer.  He was reluctant to pray at all.  He said, 

"Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross to forgive us for our sins."

Every "r" came out as a "w".  Then he sighed. 

"That's all, I don't know what to say next!" he explained in tired exasperation. 

I smiled at the floor while Josh explained to him that prayer is our chance to talk to God, that especially today, on Easter, we need to participate.  William started over, said again, 

"Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross to forgive us for our sins,"

added one more sentence for posterity, and then fell asleep quickly. 

As I listened to him pray, get disgruntled about praying, and then try again, I smiled to myself because of how perfectly he was echoing my own feelings at the time.  

Today has been a dreary Easter Sunday.  Josh and I were up for most of the night with a sick Sam, spent the morning apart as I went to church without the fellas, and then the afternoon apart as he took the big boys to lunch with the grandparents while I snoozed on the couch with our littlest.  I have picked up the computer three times to blog about the impact Easter has on my redeemed heart, and each time I have closed it in somber irritation at the fact that I just can't get at the joy of this holiday.  The rain has softly dotted the yard all day, the clouds have hovered low over our city, and I have felt as heavy as soaked denim. 

Last night we read the children the story of the crucifixion.  In years past they have relished this story, have wanted to read and re-read it, have asked questions about how the Roman soldiers were armed, how they hurt Jesus, and what they would like to do to the soldiers in vindication.  Truthfully, I used to cringe at their questions and silently wish to silence their fascination with the story of the cross.  Over time I have come to appreciate their dissection of Good Friday and have learned a lot about my own faith while listening to them drink in the truth of what Jesus had suffered. 

Last night, however, they wanted to move on.  When we finished the story of the crucifixion William asked repeatedly to read the story of the stone being rolled back and the ladies who went there.  He wanted the story to be finished.  He wanted to hear the happy ending.  He wanted Jesus to rise from the grave.  This morning, before I went to church, before the day had fully begun, Jonathan offered to read the story of the resurrection to his brothers.  He couldn't wait!  They sat on the couch and read together the story of Easter. 

I am learning from my children how to grapple with the reality of being human and how to claw at truth, to chase goodness, and to seek the simple yet profound fact of Jesus being IT.  

William's prayer tonight is my prayer today.  When all is said and done and the Easter Sunday trappings weren't exactly as planned, I thank my Jesus for dying on the cross to save me.  When I am tired and disgruntled I thank him for being my Savior, and I put away any more fanciful words. 

Furthermore, the story my boys craved is the story I long to hear.  Again and again.  I want to hear about Jesus rising.  I want to be told that He came out of that tomb.  I crave to remember how the women discovered him absent.  Absent from death, absent from the tomb, absent from the oppression of sin. 

I have been pondering the emotions of Mary lately; how she must have suffered when Jesus went missing for three days at the age of twelve.  I wonder what pole vaults her heart did when she found him and asked him, 

"Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." 

It has occurred to me that his next words must have reverberated through her life and her mind.

"Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

I wonder, when Mary heard that her son's body was no longer in the tomb, if she recalled these words of his.  I wonder if it occurred to her that her son was on his way to his Father's house.  

Sometimes I expect a day, such as this Sunday on my calendar, or a moment that is packed with holy ceremony, to encapsulate my relationship with Jesus.  I want, each Easter, to be overwhelmed by the joy of the rising.  I want Him to be caught in Easter Sunday like a wintry scene trapped in a snow globe.   In thinking that a day can contain the wide mystery of my LORD's resurrection I find that I am cheapening the miracle.  

Today has not been pretty.  We did not all end up in our Easter outfits.  Yet, and here is the crux of it, we told the story.  We read it to each other.  We remembered the truth.  We accept the gift of Jesus ascending to his Father. 

Our Father. 

The Joy that is knowing Jesus can no more be caught in a day than the wind can be caught in the trees.  The joy is Jesus.  While I am trying to make Easter pretty, Jesus is clearing out the need for it to be.  While I am wishing for sunny skies, He is owning the rain.  As I regret the mess, He is entering it.  He is in his Father's house.  If ever I am at a loss to find the peace and joy that Easter represents, I have only to look at the throne at the right hand of God. 

Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"  

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!"  and she told them that he had said these things to her. 

John 20:17-18

Yoga, clarity, and being a mom

Today in yoga the instructor asked us to think about why we were there and she told us to take something from yoga, store it up and utilize it "out there".  As sweat beaded on my body and I had to focus on breathing hard in and out so that I wouldn't go cross-eyed, I thought about what I wanted to take with me. 


As my booted feet tromped across the street, my eyes squinting against the blazing sun and my shoulders hunched due to the below freezing temperature, I carried this... what is it?  I carried it with me.  Getting into the car and turning on the radio I carried it.  I rolled down the window to let the frigid air cool off my stuffy, sweaty heat.  Driving down the road I tried to tap into it, tried to find it.  Unsatisfied obligations and undone tasks crowded into my head like so many mosh pitters fighting for the spot right in front of the stage.  With effort I pushed them back, and tried to find the clear spot in my head.  I think this is the thing.  After an hour of sweat and burning muscles and deciding to believe I have one more chaturanga in me, the gift I have given myself is a pocket of clarity in my teeming brain.


I think, for me, that yoga means being alone and quiet.  Even if friends are on both sides and the music is playing and the lights are on and the instructor is loudly challenging us to "dig deep", I find solitude in the practice.  It is a rich opportunity to feel the tendons that connect to my muscles, to discover the length in my spine and the rotation of my neck.  When she tells me to imagine that someone is drawing my head up by a string, I can feel it.  There is a reckoning, an acceptance that my body can do more than it wants to, can go further than it feels comfortable, and past the point of what I think I can do.


That is not all.  I find that there IS a reason I am there, in that studio, in that particular practice of poses.  It is not a nebulous reason, it is as solid as the pavement under my feet.


It is my children.  This is not trite.  This is not a cop-out statement.  Three little lives are blossoming around my feet.  Three young boys are filling up the space around me, crashing through my bubble, leaving foot prints all over my aloneness, and beating drums into my quiet.  In a fast paced crash course in maturation they are growing up next to me.  I am trying to hold them back just a little, speak into their moments with lessons.  These lessons are piling up next to me like papers on my desk.  Millions of teachable moments are filling up our empty spaces, bursting out of drawers and cascading over the side of filing bins in our lives.  I can't hold them back, even if my only goal is to teach them how to run while they run.  They will fly forward while I seem to stand still.  What I want for them is to feel the wind in their hair and enjoy it, and even as I try to slow their roll so that I can make it safer, I know that my best chance is to run alongside them and let go when the string gets taut.


When I say that I exercise for my children it is not that they need me to carry them.  It is precisely the opposite.  They can't stand for me to hold them up, they are fighting to hold up themselves.  Watching them do it is taking every ounce of patience, control, and strength that I possess.  Observing their flight is making tears come to my eyes.  I can't tell if the tears are from the windburn of all of it happening so fast or from the deep ache of it. 


In the yoga studio I find those deep places where the ache dwells.  As she asks me to twist, and my arms and legs are shaky and weak, I can tap into the heart of being a mother.  My heart can pound, my body can move, and all the while I am practicing patience and stillness and the slow, steady rhythm of breathing.

A break in routine

The wind chimes on the neighbor's porch across the street sing a high pitched melody.  It's a repetitive  nursery rhyme, as if it's being sung by a woman in her garden absent-mindedly, the memory of childhood long past.

On my porch the tin cans clank together, my son's homemade wind chime from two years ago, in a lower baritone cadence.

The sun is reluctant to go down in late February, as if it's arguing with the night that it is nearly Spring and that the glow of it's fading light is more romantic for being in a time between seasons.  The hedges catch its glow and bounce it back, and in between the sky and the earth the glare catches in my eyes.  I squint inside my sunglasses and feel the tightness in my forehead creases: evidence of the faintest bit of sun kissed skin.

It is a kind of magic when a season arrives before it is due.  We are supposed to get wintry weather later this week, but for now we sit on the porch and run in the grass in tee shirts and tank tops, easing sweaty socks off our feet to stretch out our winter-hidden toes.

The boys are making criss cross marks in the yard with their bikes and scooters.  Eager to steal speed from the sunshine, they zip around like dragonflies, trading out toys as if their day depends on how many vehicles can be released from the garage.

Birds mimic their movements, flying and diving in the sky, singing along with the wind chimes, and bounding from tree to tree as if sharing their song will ignite the buds within.

Today has been a sick day, there have been antibiotics and tissues and the nebulizer even had to make an appearance, but sitting here with dirt on my knees from weeding, a tall ice water by my side that doesn't make my guts go numb with the drinking, this is alright.

Earlier today the dog got at the neighbor's chicken.  There are still feathers floating in corners of my house where they landed off her fur as I chased her to her crate in frustration and sadness, and horror that I would have to tell my neighbor of the death in my yard.  Men came to put new windows on our house and asked me, gently, if I was aware I lost a chicken.  I sadly explained the chicken was not mine.

All through the day I have been guiltlessly putting off folding the laundry, emptying load after load out of the dryer and into the bin by the washing machine, letting it become a mountain of cascading shirts, socks, and pants that seems to laugh at me as I pick a fallen sock from the floor and place it back at the top of the mountain, which is now so steep that it pitches to a point against the wall.

I think this is why I love it when Spring says hello in late February.  There's something decidedly rebellious about it, as if God himself is saying "leave the laundry!"  I don't know, this may be over-spiritualizing things, or looking for excuses where none are needed.  Nonetheless, I am finding the song of the wind chimes, the frenetic play of the children, and the deliciously warm sunlight studded by a crisp winter breeze to be scrumptiously off beat.

It's almost enough to take my mind off the poor neighbor children's lost feathered friend.  It is at the very least enough to keep my head clear enough that I have decided I will take them cookies and flowers and leave it at that.

I suppose the chicken just couldn't resist the temptation to play outside the pen in the early Spring weather.

Neither could my dog.

The star of Christmas

I pull a book out of the basket.  Sam is heavy and warm in my arms, and I stretch my arm down the side of the rocking chair and grab the hard worn cover of The Polar Express.  I turn the pages slowly, smiling at my littlest boy as I point out the large black train that fills the page.  We take our time, replace the book, and pull out another.

The whisk turns speedily through the batter, combining the colors of chocolate brown and butter white.  I click it off, hear the hum of the mixer taper off to silence, and draw the spatula along the sides of the bowl.  There is a satisfaction in watching the rubber slide along the metal sides, slicking off the fluffy mixture.

My coffee starts to cool as I sip it slowly, reading the story of Christmas from a Bible that is soft and malleable in my hands, the leather feeling old and new at the same time.  I remember what it felt like to hear it at age ten, sixteen, twenty-five.  It changes every time I read it; I can identify with the wise men some years and with Mary in others.  I treasure the words, holding them in my mind's eye and drinking them slowly, like my coffee.

At the white hot center of the star is where I find Christmas this year.  From the center is where all of a star's rays begin and where they travel to.  This is the cosmic pause, the epicenter of humanity.

Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

Isaiah 53:7 predicts the suffering of Jesus: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

Creation groaned for Jesus.  There was inspiring victory and crushing rebellion.  There were so many stories of life and death and the painful renewing of it all, morning after morning as the sun chased the night away for generations, and as the darkness followed the day.

Jesus then groaned for creation, picking up his dusty feet through moment after moment, until we nailed him to a cross.  He died for us and for us He rose.

Consider the pace of our history; the blinding light speed race that has carried us like a baton through the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations, and individuals.

At the center of our story is a moment when the groaning, of childbirth itself, quieted.  Into the night came the cry of an infant.  Look into his face.

Put aside the to-do list, lay down your work and your worry, and accept the offer to hold the baby in your arms.  Accept a smile from Mary and take him, the answer to all of history's crying.

This is the colossal breath creation takes.  All of the star's points lead to his birth, and all of its rays come from him.  Yet, for a moment, everything stops.  Breathe in, breathe out.  There was a moment when everything had to wait.

Tomorrow is, for me, a celebration of this deep inhale.  I cannot stop time from passing, but I can remember that moment when Mary had only to care for him, nurture him, and wait.  My intention is to wait, to experience a moment of not moving so fast, to consent to the fact that in the manger there was the gentle rise and fall of his little chest, and everything that would come had to sit on the shelf.

If only for a moment.

Joy in my Home Office

There is a sea of items on the desk.  They are piling on top of one another, vying for space and growing.  As I approach the desk to clean it there is a ball of anxiety that wells up, not for this small pile but for the redundancy of it, for the millions of small piles in my home, in my head. 

I see a handful of Lego dudes, a little plastic horse, little vehicles crafted by little hands.  Something in me stops, I don't WANT to pick them up.  I like looking at them. 

Normally when I have these sentimental pauses I push them to the side, shaking my head at my inability to just DO.  I routinely pick them up and discard them into small bins, big bins, a room of these bins so that I can create order out of the chaos of childhood. 

Today, however, I just stared at them.  I took a picture of them.  I cherished them.  What is this in me that wants to touch, treasure, LEGOS of all things?  After all, Legos are what I found in my two year old's mouth yesterday.  Legos are what I step on and curse.  They are the toy that refuses to be confined to its orderly bin.  

Somehow, perhaps for the music of JJ Heller waving through the house, or perhaps because the windows are open and Fall is here and I'm feeling something close to FREE; today I stopped and I just loved those little Legos. 

I love that Jonathan's fingers are still chubby and somewhat awkward as he puts them together, though he does it deftly and quickly, I can still see the rubber band wrist and the still-little fingernails as he works.  So rarely do I watch him do it, but I know how he looks when he does. 

There is a bubble of protective callousness in me that bursts when I see him helping William find pieces out of the bin and something so precious to me about Sam knowing what "guys" are, because at two he has already learned this boy term from his 

"budders". 

At some points in my life I would kick myself for not cherishing the small toys EVERY day.  I would respond to my tenderness with guilt, refusing to enjoy the joy of motherhood for all the hurts I have not comforted, all the toys I have literally thrown into bins as frustration and anger and exhaustion and confusion have tunneled themselves into hatred of those little plastic figurines. 

Not today.  Today I will love the joy, soak in it and work it into my head until bubbles of joy are forming.  Wash in it now, for tomorrow I will remember the sweet feeling of standing in the waterfall. 

Grasping at wild greatness

There is a children's book called The Story of Ferdinand.  In it a young bull grows up contentedly in the pasture, is suddenly and shockingly thrown into the bull ring, and if you haven't read it you really should because it has a cute ending and adorable black and white illustrations.

I have been thinking about my season of motherhood lately, trying to view it as through a telescope.  I need to get a far off perspective because I am tired and overwhelmed and also keenly aware that these days are expiring more and more quickly.  My children's wrists are losing their chubby creases and their faces are lenthening, their muscles starting to be more defined.  They are getting faster and faster and stronger every day.  It struck me recently that I am not molding small pots, but rather I am watching as these boys, these arrows, fly by me at the speed of light.  When I can I reach out and touch one, I leave my mark on it or adjust its course, but only very quickly and often subtly.  They don't sit or listen long enough for me to train them up as a professor teaches his students; I have to just stick out my hand and graze them if I want to leave any impression at all.

These boys are fast approaching manhood, and though it seems preposterous right now, it is always that way, is it not?  I remember working at a horse farm in middle school and one of the mares was pregnant.  It was a small farm, and there was only this one pregnant horse so we young girls watched her as though she were Cinderella transforming at the hand of the fairy godmother.  We were awestruck by the whole process and came as quickly as our moms could drive us when she finally gave birth.  We arrived in the early quiet of morning before the sun had even risen halfway into the sky.  There was this colt, this wobbly beautiful baby, and we were instantly in love.  He was named Jet, and as his name would suggest he was suddenly a strapping young stallion; it happened so fast we didn't see it coming.  The whole process of his growth was fascinating and startling; we marveled at his youthful energy and stubbornness and started in surprise when he nipped at our hands.  We giggled at his progress and learned to fear his unbroken strength.  The only way he became a capable, rideable gentleman was at the hands of the farm owner, a woman we all feared (as much as we feared Jet's youthful strength) and admired (a little less than we admired the horses, to be frank.)

Sometimes my fellas seem like this colt, with their unbridled strength, passion, and wilfulness.  I try to bridle it every day, but sometimes it is all I can do to keep up with them.  Thinking of the story of Ferdinand gives me a little lense into their youth and boy-ness.  Jonathan reminds me of a bull at pasture, rough and strong and content in his field.  William seems to often find himself in the china shop, and things get broken sometimes.  Sam was born in the ring and lives there.  He came into the world with a red flag in his face and has been attacking that thing ever since with a passion that will soon require restraint.  I am not eager for the attempt.

These handsome young bulls of mine are the most complimentary gift the Lord has ever given me.  To think that He believes in me to handle their wildness, joy, and stubbornness is amazing to me.  All too often I don't believe I'm up to the task.  I feel my humanity keenly and it feels like there is a great gulf between my energy, intelligence, and strength and their youth.

Perhaps this is the very reason God gave them to me, or one of them at least:  When I do manage to touch them as they shoot through the sky, there is a moment, and it is ever so brief, in which I feel like I am flying too.

"Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth." Psalm 127:4

"But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  They will soar on wings like eagles.  They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."  Isaiah 40:31

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."  Philippians 4:13

Milk or champagne?

Who came up with the phrase, "Don't cry over spilt milk"?

I'd like to share some choice words with them.

Do you know what spilt milk looks like?  Do you know what it smells like?  Anyone who doesn't ever cry over spilt milk has incredible self control... or a maid.  On most days, I have neither (well, I never have a maid but there are lovely moments when I have self control).

Once I paid thirty dollars to have my car cleaned by the energetic gentlemen at Auto Bell, then went home and cleaned it myself... all because it smelled like a mouse had died in it, and not recently.  It turns out my one year old had spilled his milk on my yoga mat.  First I cursed the makers of his "spill proof" sippy cup.  Then I cursed the one who coined the whole crying over spilt milk adage.

I only discovered that the atrocious smell of rodent death lay in my yoga mat as I was participating in my class at the Y.  I kept smelling my hair, my armpits, my clothing ... all the while hoping my neighbor was not watching me.

At some point a cynical person amended aforementioned phrase to say, "Don't cry over spilt champagne."  I don't know if they were trying to be ironic or funny, but I find the new phrase much more appropriate.  First of all, champagne does not smell of putrid rot upon drying.  Secondly, I cannot feed my children with champagne nor can I produce it from my person.  These two qualities of milk cause it to increase in value enormously.  Champagne is made with grapes and is not the best use of them, in my opinion.  If it is spilled my husband will be spared a most infernal headache.

Advertisements and books I read and shows I watch keep encouraging me to appreciate the simple things in life, and that the best things in life are free.  I would like to add that the opposite is true: the simple harms in life, the simple mistakes, can also be the most egregious.

We are tempted to gloss over our little slip-ups, and I am to blame as well.  If I want to shed a tear over my spilt milk, I wonder how my six year old feels when I turn his tv show off five minutes too soon because we have to leave now.  If milk can cause my blood to boil, perhaps it makes sense that my three year old will cry when presented with purple lettuce that he must eat in order to receive dessert.

Sometimes I overlook an apology for little things; I forget to explain to Jonathan's teacher why I was late for AR testing.  I let my late arrival to a playdate be ignored and hope that it will just be forgiven.

Then I have a day where the little things in my own life pile up, like today.  At one point I was in the bathroom on the telephone with my husband (the only place I can finish a conversation other than the car) and heard glass being thrown around the kitchen.  You think I'm kidding, but last night Jonathan wanted a last minute glass of milk, so I filled a bourbon glass with milk and let him drain it.  There the glass sat, still with that one last drop of milk, overnight, until the two younger children discovered it this morning and decided to play volleyball with it while I attended to a phone call in my "office".

My day progressed, it had its ups and downs, but what I really needed was something simple to bring me back to equilibrium.  I didn't need damn champagne, I needed a tall glass of milk.

I met two of my dearest friends at the Science Center for a playdate and as I soaked up the giggles and the fish, the scampering feet and the delighted squeals and the interesting facts about tornadoes that William and his buddy can't get enough of, I felt some peace.

When you start to feel like you're making too big a deal of the small atrocities in life, know you're not alone.  We all make too big a deal of them, because they are like mosquitoes: small, obnoxious, and occasionally carrions of deadly disease.  When the milk spills, the shit hits the fan, and it's evidence of Murphy's Law, which is quite discouraging indeed.

Fortunately, what I've learned is that I can turn Murphy's Law on it's cheeky, arrogant head.  If anything that can go wrong will, sometimes all I need is for something to go right.  Occasionally a tall glass of milk going down cold and accompanied by a chocolate chip cookie is like a holiday at the beach.

So, cheers.  Cheers and thanks to my friends for our playdates, to my husband for overlooking the takeout dinner, to my mom for cleaning my kitchen.  I will cheers with a tall glass of milk (or a cheap glass of wine) and poo poo that champagne.

Mutually Assured Destruction

Driving in the car this morning. 

William: "Mom, what is dat gwumbwing sound?"

Mom: Sigh. "Um, that is us driving over a bumpy part in the road."

William: "No, what is dat GWUMBWING?"

Mom: "I just told you."

William: "No, what is dat gwum-- sou--, what does SOUND mean?"

Mom: "William, I am going to need you to stop talking until we get to the grocery store."

William: "K."

This is unbelievably, cross my heart, EXACTLY the type of conversation William and I engage in at least ten times per day.  You might be thinking that I am shafting him on some good old conversational training, or that I am stifling his adventurous spirit, or that I don't appreciate the adorable curiosity of a three year old.  You might be right.  

Nonetheless, continuing on these threads is mutually assured destruction.  Eventually William will still not have his question answered, (largely because the question mutates with the speed of light), and I will be raising my voice saying something like, "Well then you can take a NAP for all I care."

Which is exactly what happened later on today. 

From 10:30-11:30 I was pretty sluggish, being as we completed a to-do list six items long from 7:15 to 10:15. From about 11 to 11:30 William asked me every five minutes to make him lunch.  Finally I hopped up off the couch and said cheerfully, (yes, cheerfully, I specifically remember being cheerful):

"Ok, bud, what do you want for lunch?"

"Cheese and cwackus."

"Here is your cheese, crackers, and a banana."

"Can I have juice mommy?"

"Hold on, I need to make my lunch and Sam's lunch too."

"Can I have juice mommy?"

 

"Just a second bud"

"Can I have juice mommy?"

"William! It is NOT all about YOU!"

I give him the juice.  He takes one bite of cheese.

"I am finished wif my lunch"

It does not behoove me to tell you how I responded.  Suffice it to say, he ended up taking a nap.  Early.  

See, I know that we need to learn how to communicate with one another.  I know that a lot of our conversations are priceless.  Sometimes, though, it's better to cut them off at the pass. 

I really like it when he prays.  It helps that God is getting his earful too, and it gives me insight into my little boy.  For the last three nights he has been praying for his Aunt Maria, because she's having a rough week at college.  He also thanks God for me.  Every single night. 

The wrap-up, I suppose, is this:  Conversation with a three year old is exhausting, but there are gems in there that are worth the ride. 

The rough and the beautiful of it

Life is hard.  It keeps getting harder.  There is more pain.  There is more beauty.

A few weeks ago I needed a babysitter and called a friend to see if her daughter could handle my three boys.  She said her daughter would love to, but she had school, then track practice and homework, and needed to rest up for a big meet the next day.

I remember those days.  I remember the stomach twisting fear right before a race, the palm sweating stress of lining up on the starting line, the sweat and unintentional tears pushing up the last big hill, digging deep for that shred of speed it would take to pass the runner in front of me.  If Jesus and my track coach have had one thing in common, it is this: they believe I always have a bit more in my reservoir than I think I do.

Needless to say, I congratulated my friend on protecting her daughter and agreed that of course we would look for another babysitter.

People keep telling me that it gets worse, that parenting gets harder, that I will "miss these days" because "they go by so fast."

"Enjoy it while it lasts."

"It doesn't get any easier."

I hear you, I do.  I believe you.  But stop.

When my boys are teenagers they will be bigger than me, and when they are in goofy moods they will lift me off the floor and make me laugh.

When my son realizes no one else understands he will share his heart with me, because I am the one who has believed in him.

When his homework is too hard he will sit down at the kitchen table, we will be elbow to elbow, and we will get headaches together because algebra is so. stinking. hard.  I will notice how thick his arms have gotten, I will marvel at the stubble forming like peach fuzz beneath his chin, and he will roll his eyes and ask me why I am tearing up.

I know there will be countless moments of pain that I will endure, and I know that my joints may start to ache more, but do you remember what it feels like to be woken up at 6 am and step on a Lego?! 

Of course growing up is hard, and painful, but isn't it gorgeous too?  I love the soft skin on my baby, but I can't imagine that I won't be proud when his hands are callused and his arms are sinewy.

So here is what I say to the high school girls: I hear you.  I see you.  Life gets harder, but what you're facing right now is just as hard as what you will  endure at thirty.  You will get stronger.  You are hearing that growing up is gross, but that's all lies.  People treat you like you're living in a carnival, but I know better.  High school is awfully difficult, and falling in love and out of love is too.  Growing up is marvelous.  It's terrifying like a roller coaster, delicious like Cheesecake Factory, mean as a hornet, and tender as a lamb.  You will get wrinkles, but the growing pains ease.  You will lose your pimples and get some gray hairs.  Better haircuts are coming, and more expensive razors really do work better.  Friendships will get deeper.  Wine tastes good.

To all of the moms who have been here, and have moved on: Enjoy the quiet!  I know it's lonely, but just appreciate it, because I am looking forward to the quiet and I want to believe I'll love it, at least sometimes.  Also, I will get there.  I know it's more complicated where you are, I'm just not ready to think about that yet.  And occasionally I would trade one day of worrying about my not-quite-ahead-of-the-eight-ball retirement plan instead of trying to wrangle three children to two different doctor appointments without changing a stinky diaper in my car.  We young moms standing on the playground and acting like we know it all really do look up to you.  We are impressed, slightly jealous, and a bit in awe.

For myself: calm down, little girl.  You recently hit thirty, and you feel all grown up.  You're not, so relax.  You have lots more growing to do, much more to learn and much more time to improve on those decorating skills.  You will miss these moments, and you will be grateful you've gotten through.    There is so much happening right now, stop waiting for it to be cleaned up and put away.  Shower tomorrow, play Grinch Bingo today.  Take a moment and be glad there are NO AP Physics exams looming.  Your car is not from 1987.  Your clutter is adorable, it is tiny coats and tiny socks and papers with a little person's handwriting that is dripping with glue put on by tiny hands.

Time seems hell bent on destruction.  It feels like a whip, a scourge, a driving cattle prod.  I'd like to throw something back in its face.  I would like to whip around in the middle of my flight, plant my heels in the ground, and scream: I'm not afraid of you, give it your best shot.  Give me the option to go back, I won't.  Give me the option to skip ahead, I won't.  Just keep on ticking, clock.  You ain't got nothin' on the beauty of living.

Training

I woke up ten minutes late today.  Perhaps the day would have had a different trajectory had I woken up at 6:50, but I woke up at 7.  It's not really worth wondering though, is it?  Normally Josh, bless him, wakes up at 6:30.  He gets the big boys their juice, tells them to put clothes on, hops in the shower, and then fifteen minutes later wakes me up.  With a gentle reminder that I might want to be downstairs in ten to get lunches going, etcetera, he leaves the room and closes the door.  For the next ten minutes I am wrapped in the blissful cocoon of cool sheets, with sunlight waking up the room around me as I listen to the sounds of three children and their daddy starting a new day.  I settle my eyes back to sleep, and often catch a few more winks before I stretch myself out of bed and plod downstairs.   I groggily put pepperoni on bread, fill baggies with Goldfish, and hug a chubby baby face.  I answer the questions about what we're going to do today, later today, after nap, before nap, and for some reason all these questions require different answers.  I walk around the kitchen in bare feet, slowly, and sip black steaming coffee from my Anthropologie mug.  I hug Jonathan goodbye, watch William jump from the stairs into his older brother's arms for his farewell, and then I close the door and continue to sip my black coffee with only half opened eyelids.

Today, however, I woke up ten minutes late.  I jumped out of my bed and plodded downstairs.  I made two lunches because we have a friend staying with us, answered (for some reason) many more questions from my three year old, and then jumped in the car myself, with my half drunk coffee, William, Sam, and our buddy so that I could take him to his kindergarten while Josh trekked across town with Jonathan.  Only it didn't go slowly, smoothly, or sweetly.  As I was rushing out the door with no shoes on, I noticed Jonathan was lingering at the door.  Crying.  Well, almost crying- his eyes were looking watery and his chin was looking like a cooked spaghetti noodle.

"I don't want to go to kindergarten, mom, because I don't want to leave you."

Pause.

The craziness of the day, my sporadic wakeup and my half drunk coffee vanished.  Like the dance scene in Pride and Prejudice, it was just him and me.  We stood there in a desert by the back door and there was no other noise, just the sound of his softly pleading will and the sound of my heart being twisted, small capillaries of cracks forming there like veins on leaves.

Forty five minutes later I called Josh.  The situation had not improved.  With Charles having happily bounced off to school, Sam giggling in the backseat, and William still asking me what our plan for the day held, I wracked my brain for what to do.  LORD, I need you now.  Jonathan needs you, I need you, we need you.  

Obviously, I called my mom.  She suggested I go have lunch with him, validate his fears, take him a Lego guy to stick in his pocket and remind him that he is brave.  So I did, because I wanted to and I didn't know what else to do.

Sam's giggling turned to protest as his time in the car lengthened.  William's questions turned into tears, and still my mind stayed on Jonathan like a hound on a fox.  The noise around me wasn't soothing, it wasn't distracting.  It was grating and it was life, but it was like a hill beneath a runner's feet: it just had to be, because this was the moment I had been training for.  Sam cries because he needs to for survival, evolutionarily he is a leader of the pack.  Will cries because, well, I think because he is three, and three-year-olds have some innate need to get their life's quota of whining out of their system.  However, Jonathan cries only in extreme pain or angst.  Ever since I sent him off to school that morning I had been feeling like a fireman on the firepole or a runner at the start of a race.

Arriving at his school my stomach was twisted, not in fear necessarily, but because this was the race we had been training for.  For one of the first times I could not fix it for him, I could only stand on the sidelines as his coach.  We ate lunch together, he smiled, I met his friends, and then it was time for him to be the line leader.  Outside the bathroom Jonathan, his buddy Speirs, and I prayed for the day.  We tucked his lion lego in his pocket and I left.

I didn't look back.

In the car I prayed, took a deep breath, and drove back to my baby to pick up the day where it had been left off.

And Jonathan ran his race.

It's hard being a mom.  It's hard letting go, watching the gates fling open, watching them kick up dust and sometimes get nicked in the heels.  I hope the metaphor doesn't offend, but it's like raising a racehorse from a colt.  They nuzzle your hand with their soft nose, and you feed them apples with a smile in the corner of your mouth.  You bathe and train them, working long hours and sweating plenty.  You watch their muscles grow and refine, watch their coats go from fuzzy soft fur to gleaming garbs of velvet.  Then it's time to hire a jockey, and sit in the stands.

Golden retrievers and cheesecake

No mom, Madi did not eat my cheesecake.  Although that would be a reasonable hypothesis.  Actually, it is 1:15 and I am eating an apple cheesecake bar and drinking coffee.  It is not my lunch, I refuse to acknowlege it is lunch time.  This is breakfast, and these days breakfast and I have to get creative if we are going to keep our relationship alive.

Jonathan started kindergarten, but that is not what this blog post is about.  Sam is crawling and almost talking and sleeping through the night [finally, yay], but again, not the topic of the day.  William is three, I am doing yoga, friends are having babies, summer is turning into Fall, but again-- not the subject at hand.  The thing is, life is so darn full these days I don't know what to write about.  I don't know what to focus on.  My least favorite question is "What is new?" because honestly, what isn't new?!  Every stinkin day I have new adventures, obstacles, challenges, thrills --whatever you choose to label them-- and I can't stop my head spinning long enough to pick the newest of the new from the responsibilites, commitments, yadayadas --again, choose your vocabulary-- that seems notable.

I think that right now what I want to be new is quiet.  It is pretty loud around here.  As I write this Sam is protesting loudly from his crib that it does not in fact feel like naptime.  Soon we will get in the car and drive to kindergarten and there will be the noise of two little people needing me, always needing me, from the backseat.  There will be music playing that is on repeat because I'm too tired to argue against Jimmy Buffett's Cheeseburger in Paradise being played for the fiftieth time this week, and there will be an endless request for snacks.

Due to this endless stream of noise I am finding that I forget my mission on a regular basis.  Today I went for Target for four items, came out with about eight, and realized I had forgotten one.  I went back later for the one, came out with about fifteen, including an empty box of cheese puffs shared by cheesey faced boys.  Yesterday I went to drop a friend some dinner because she just had her second baby and I know what life is about to look like and I find it worth my while to make her some dinner so that for just one night she only has to worry about the forcing of the food into her children.  I meant to be in the neighborhood for 30 minutes.  It ended up being an hour, with a quick stop to a friend's house to "pop by".  The popping by turned into a soaking wet water play date with a hose, a motorized kids' jeep, and more that doesn't much need explaining.  I finally strapped three very wet boys into the car, sighed, and turned on the Cheeseburger song again.

The crazy thing is, when I sit down next to my golden girl and pour my cup of coffee at one in the afternoon, I realize I'm having a lot of fun.  If you read this blog a different way, [or rather, if I read it a different way] it seems that in two days I have successfully dropped my eldest off at kindergarten, managed to complete a whole shopping list in less than a day, had a super fun play date that managed to bathe my children in the process, succeeded in making a friend dinner while juggling three kids of my own, and I have to add that I feel pretty proud that I can sing along to a whole Jimmy Buffett song other than "Margaritaville."  (Doesn't this make me a certifiable Parrothead??)

While in the act of snagging snacks off the shelf to pacify my carrot tops in Target Round 2 today I bumped into a friend.  We chatted for a while over little whispy wiggly heads, and when we later met at the checkout she offered me a coupon for a free Starbucks.  "Would you want a cup of coffee?" she asked, proffering the ticket.

"Would I ever," I answered.

I placed my serendipitous cup of joe in the cup holder of my car and savoured the thought of sipping it from my couch perch in the sunroom.  Almost home, I remembered that while sweating and wrestling a hose from a one year old the friend I saw yesterday had offered me some of her famous apple cheesecake bars, freshly baked that afternoon.  Thirty minutes and two sleeping boys later, I heated up my coffee, grabbed my bar, and sat down in the sunroom.  With the door ajar I can feel a blessed summer breeze floating in and the music of trees, pregnant with green, swaying back and forth while the birds are singing their glory songs somewhere among them.  I can only be grateful, that my life is also so pregnant and green, with boundless adventure and the occasional quiet moment to sit beside Madi, sip coffee, and eat freshly baked cheesecake.  Who can complain about not having time for breakfast when a late breakfast is so durn scrumptious?  And who am I to complain about a very busy life when I realize that I am never ever bored?

Losing myself

Today a friend divulged to me that she thinks she is losing herself.  "I have no hobbies, no interests of my own.  I know you think I'm smart, but the job I used to do I don't think I could do anymore!"  After years of raising children, she is feeling her edges wearing off.  The silhouette of herself is dulling, those sharp poignant lines that separate her from the rest of women are rubbing out.

My response was pretty typical I think.  I told her that's ridiculous, that she is smart, that it's silly to think otherwise.  Recalling a quote I had read about love, I told her that she is loving her children by sacrificing herself, and that is what matters.  I assured her she is not losing herself.

I think I should have said otherwise.  In fact, I should have said, "Good!"  Go on girl, lose as much of yourself as you can.  After all, Jesus did.  He poured himself out "like a drink offering" and while I don't know what a drink offering is, I know what it looks like to drain a glass.  Nothing left, even the residue in the cup is evaporated momentarily in this North Carolina hot summer.

The beautiful thing about motherhood, and for that matter any kind of service wherein we are giving up ourselves to take care of someone else, is this very thing.  We empty ourselves, and as we mourn the loss of the science journals we no longer read or the blogs we don't have time to write or the high heels that used to look so sharp... we are missing the ugly stuff.  As for me, I am finding that as my language skills evaporate like water from my glass, so goes my pride.  Now, when people raise their eyebrows when they hear I am fluent, I inwardly sigh and let it go instead of wrapping myself in the isolated hug of accomplishment.  Early on after having children, I was embarrassed, felt guilty even, that I hadn't watched a Spanish soap opera of late or traveled to South America to do missions work and utilize my college major. Now I am letting it go, like Elsa's cape on the top of that snowy mountain.

Interesting hobbies are quite fun to talk about, and surely fun to do, but I wonder how many of the greats have had time for hobbies.  Surely Lincoln and Washington and FDR at some point said, "Good grief, there is none of me left.  All I do is government work these days."  Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa... did they ever think to themselves how sad it was that they no longer had time for movie night, knitting, cricket, or soccer?

I recently turned thirty, and have been meaning to write about what getting older means to me.  Perhaps that will be another blog, but I do know that I have learned something pertinent.  The person I am has changed a lot.  When I look back on who I was and what defined me at the age of 6, I am surprised both by the things that have stayed the same and by the number of ways in which I have changed.  For the next thirty years I imagine it will be the same.  The things that have made me better, the things that have given peace and made me feel more comfortable in my own skin have always been the things that have emptied me of what I thought I was and filled me with Jesus.

Once a friend was teaching me how to do a dance.  She is very natural and I am not at all.  She said to me, "Dance like you're bigger than you are."  I tried it, imagined what it would feel like to have some more shake to my hips and junk in my trunk.  I imagined throwing my weight around... and it worked!  My friend laughed and pointed at me and said, "That's it!"

There is a formula for beauty and even a formula for being interesting.  Yet the world offers no formula for being alive.  Jesus did, however, and it was simply, "Empty yourself of you... then there will be room for Life."

Easter means to me

Just now my husband came down the stairs from giving the big boys a bath and said,

"Hannah."

With a big grin on his face he recounted how he had absentmindedly been singing the words,

"Ain't nothin' but a hoochie mama, hood rat, hood rat, hoochie mama."

I can picture him up there, just beating out the words in his head, bobbing his head in woodpecker-like fashion, his lower lip jutting out the way it always is when he's rapping. 

Josh continued to explain how Jonathan was paying attention, as he usually is, and only moments later was singing the tune as well.  At that point William apparently had had enough, and exclaimed,

"Stop saying that! That is MY mama, do not call her HOOCHIE mama!"

Oh my heart melted.  First of all, my three year old has no idea the significance of what he was defending in my character, and secondly, he just wants me to be me and nothing else.  The sweet loving innocence of that vivacious little boy sits on my heart like a backup battery of joy.

Right, so you're wondering what this family anecdote has to do with Easter.  Nothing!... and everything.

Jesus died on the cross, and then three days later he rose from the grave.  It was a miracle, it was the final and lasting proof that he, the man, was and is God in the flesh, and it was the sacrifice and resurrection we require for eternal life in Him. 

Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for heaven, and in a lot of ways (and on a lot of bad days) I am.  I look forward to that promise of eternal relief from sorrow and sickness and pain like dessert at the end of a five-year-old's dinner.  It's the reason I'm in this, it's the ice cream sundae at the end of the long hot summer day, it's the vodka in my tonic.

On those days, however, I am forgetting the promise of Easter.  Jesus came that we might have life, life to the full, but here and now, not just in the hereafter.  This life is bursting with the promise of heaven, and sometimes it takes the simplest things to remind me.

When my husband told me the little story about our boys, how they mimicked him and laughed, defended me and loved me, my gut reaction was not joy-- it was greed.  I wanted to go back in time and video record it.  I wanted to lock that moment in a drawer and keep it for days to come, so that I can one day unlock that moment and relive it.  My knee jerk desire was to bottle that joy, innocence, and love.

I love the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, which was my Easter inspired blog last year, because of Jesus's human-ness alongside his miracle work.  He wept, and why?  Why would he weep over a dead friend he was about to raise?  I believe he wept because he lived in the moment, and that moment was bigger for him BECAUSE of eternity.  The death of his friend was more poignant, more gut wrenching, more full of ache exactly because he loved Lazarus with an eternal love.  When his friend died he felt the sorrow of Lazarus' loss echo for long after his natural life would be over.  

He came to say that it matters- it all matters.  Our beautiful little lives don't have to go down in ashes and dust and become the particles that are lost in a history of small moments.  He created an eternity for our precious lives, so that every moment that pulls our heart out of our mouths in a huge smile or bitter tears will have infinite moments to follow it.  He took the smallness that is our story and he stretched it out infinitely.  Easter, for me, is the promise that joyful seconds last and that my hardest moments will not be lost.  He is holding my joy in wait for me, and he holds my pain and myself in his tender hand.

Sorry to the squeamish

It all started a few days ago.  For that reason I really feel I am not to blame, seeing as that was a whole weekend ago and I couldn't have seen the chain reaction coming. 

When I talk on the phone havoc ensues.  The loudest screaming, the most cacophonous banging, the worst uses of nail polish, balcony jumping, you name it, it happens when I am on the phone.  Therefore, being a woman of reason, I limit my phone time to when I am in the car.  Last week I made the mistake of checking my voicemail inside.  When I heard the pediatrician's secretary say in her sing-song voice, "I'm calling about your appointment on Tuesday," I clicked delete and hung up the phone.  I made a mental note to remember to go on Tuesday.

My track coach always said never to assume, that it makes an ass of "you" and "me", so when I showed up to the pediatrician this morning, (harried, because of course I had forgotten until thirty minutes before), I should not have been surprised by their anxious question, "Didn't you get our message?"

No, in fact I did not get their message because I avoid phone time and only listened to .1% of the message.  How can I explain that?, and it wasn't their fault, so I rolled with it.  We waited for forty-five minutes to have Sam weighed and then be booted back out the door to await their call for when we could reschedule.  At this point I felt that it was still a kind of normal morning. 

Did I mention that I felt a UTI coming on?  Yep, and I had to get my husband to meet me in the parking lot of Target because I can't take my premature son into a germ filled grocery store, so he waited in the car while I walked into Target prepared to buy the whole dangum pharmacy if it would keep me from having to go to the doctor just to get an antibiotic I already know I need.

"No," says the male pharmacist while trying not to make eye contact with me, "there is nothing you can do to prevent it if it's already an infection. But you can buy the following.... to treat the symptoms."

So I did, I loaded my arms with $35 worth of symptom treating and slightly embarrassing products and headed to the checkout.  Two were open, one manned by an awkward gentleman and one, a sweet girl.  I steered myself for the girl and was cut off by a college dude with a backpack.  Seriously?? I wanted to yell at him, and as I was in line I thought of paying him off for his checkout spot with the girl. 

Cut your losses, Han, it's still a fairly normal day.

We get home and I am organizing and utilizing aforementioned purchases.  As I go to check on the sleeping baby in the car William darts by, "I'm going to poop on the potty, Mom."  Sigh, smile.  My big boy is learning to use the potty.  I am so stinkin' proud of him.

Two minutes later:

"Mooooom! There is poop on my leg!"

OK, this is no longer a normal day.  I give up, grab the baby wipes and head to the bathroom, but William is running around the house whining about his issue. 

"Mooooom, there is poop on the floor!"

I take baby wipes and grab him, wipe him down, and begin to wipe up the floor. 

"Mom, there is poop on the wall tooooo!!"

Yep, he speaks truth. 

I go grab my mop, grateful that I have my super expensive Norwex mop which is handy and easy to use.  After mopping the floor, I break my mop.  Yes, my super expensive mop which I am grateful for.

You, dear reader, may want to check on me later today.  No, don't check on me.  Come check on my children.  I will be on a plane headed to Aruba and my kids will be needing adult supervision.

The dinner table

This week we are home bound.  Due to germs coming in and germs going out, we aren't going to preschool, inviting people over, going over to anyone's house, or subjecting any babysitter to potentially muck-and-mire-ish type situations.

In other words, I'm doing a lot of laundry.  More laundry than I ever wanted to.  Oh, I'd say to myself, "It would be nice to just have a day stuck at home and knock out all that laundry."  Well, I did.  I did it all.  It is washed, folded, [almost] all put away, and the bins are empty.  There are no towels growing mold in the washer because I went somewhere and forgot to change them over... because I didn't go anywhere. ANYWHERE.  Alright, I'll stop screaming about it.

As I sat queen-like in my pajamas, surrounded by my subjects of tees, panties, and socks, I remembered Christmas music.  "It makes everything better!" I thought.  I grabbed my computer and set out to buy a Christmas CD, one of my faves, one that I had lost.  The great thing about iTunes is that you don't even have to get in the car, or wait for the mailman, it's just there.  Well, so I thought.

Being repelled like an intruder at Fort Knox for not remembering my password and failing miserably to come up with an acceptable replacement... was not even the worst of it.  Upon loading the iTunes store I was assailed by a sleek, dripping, shiny picture of this sexy singer as if she were the cover of SI Swim Issue.  Then the whole store's page loaded and it was all HER.  Boobs, thighs, gleaming thighs, and all in different kinds of shimmery negligee.  Between the soft porn I was viewing and the password barricade I had had it.  I slammed on the X, shutting down the program.  "Screw Apple."  Right, I know, not the choicest phrase.  In fact, rather hypocritical given my grievances.  I digress.

Being the resourceful woman that I am I emailed my husband and asked him to pick up the CD for me at Target.  I hinted at Apple's treachery in my email.

That night over dinner Josh explained that he had tried to find the CD in two stores, but neither had it.  I thanked him, sincerely.  Then he sort of smirked as he asked why I was so enraged about Apple.  It was all I needed.  In a machine gun blast of words, most of which were "apple," "porn," "Fort Knox," and "mad mad mad," I answered him, nearly out of breath and trying to peel my eyebrows off my hairline by the time I was finished.  He laughed.

"Huh," he said, "I may have to check that out."

"Whhaaaaatt?" I sent my eyebrows from my hairline to his pupils.  "Aren't you mad?! It's wildly inappropriate!"

"Yes, of course it is. I know."

"Be MAD with me!" I exclaimed.

He laughed again, a slow chuckle, and again I entreated him.

"Hannah, I don't know.  I just don't have the energy to be mad right now."

I think the sheer force of his logic sat me back in my chair (at that point I think I was hovering genie-like over the kitchen table.  Luckily the kids were already up and playing somewhere else).  He was right, of course.  Besides the fact that this is the craziest month at work he has ever had (and that right there at least is no exaggeration), and the fact that we have two energy charged and play date starved children, and the fact that our feisty survivor Sam is still very very feisty; besides all of this we had the stomach bug in our house this weekend.  It felled Jonathan and me like thirty foot trees and left Josh standing amid the wreckage holding a baby.  

I wanted to stuff all that anger back inside of me, pick it out of the air like blueberries and eat the energy up.  He is right, I don't have the energy to get angry, so why do I?  I suppose that sometimes it is the fuel I need to rocket me out of the exhaustion and into the go-go-go.  Nevertheless, that energy gets burned.  It burns up like fuel and it's gone.  I should have laughed along with him, since that always seems to pay back some of the debt.

I want to remember

My sister is a writer.  I think one of the reasons she breathes the written word is that she hates for life to pass by.  I did not say pass her by, for if you know my sister you know that's not possible.  She holds on to things, and she cherishes them.

I, on the other hand, love the pace of life.  In a regrettable way I often bear the present by looking forward to what's coming next.  Recently it hit me that soon I will stop dead in my tracks and look backward.  Like a runner in a sprint kicking up dust I will stop in a cloud my tracks have created and not be able to see through the dust.

That said, here's to remembering.  Here's to holding on, and here's to what I'm grateful for.

I'm grateful that I found a golf ball in my purse today for the second time this month.  I'm grateful it was hidden there by my two-year-old fireball, and I'm grateful he's latching on to one of his daddy's passions.

There are tiny bathing suits draped over my bathtub, and they are haphazard and in dire need of grass-stain treatment.  Often I roll my eyes and wish for tidiness, but today, this week, for now, I am glad they are there.

Laundry is piling up in my husband's man room.  I pride myself in leaving his room clean and alone, it is a small gift I give him that he might not even realize (except that now it's out there in the blog-o-sphere).  I don't have time to do a lick with that laundry, now that our third son has come home, and today I am grateful for that.  I am so glad that there is laundry piling up and that dishes sat in the sink because I chose to build blocks with William instead of clean.

Tonight I'm grateful that my husband cleaned the kitchen, that I didn't have to, and that while he cleaned the kitchen I truly appreciated a cheap glass of wine with my sister at a small deli.  I'm grateful that I have a sister to share cheap wine with, a husband who gets it, and a kitchen that had to be cleaned at all.  (As an aside, please note the irony that I dumped clothes all over his man room and he cleaned the kitchen to spotless.)

Today I'm grateful that my yard looks like Cousin Eddy from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation just left--because all of those basketballs, soccer balls, baseballs, footballs, tricycles, scooters, clothing, goggles, shovels, and superheroes that took a swim in our inflatable pool are the leftovers from days and nights of brothers having fun.

I am grateful for the children's books running rampant in my van, grateful for the little socks I find balled up under my comforter at the foot of my bed, grateful for the pieces of grass at the bottom of the bathtub, grateful for the adventure my kids are living.

Furthermore, while I will never be grateful for losing sleep, I am grateful that my newest son is home, and that he needs me in the middle of the night.

Most of these moments will be forgotten.  I will forget how Jonathan sang a song to me while he tunneled through a cardboard box in our living room.  I will forget how tenderly William approaches his baby brother when he approaches everything else in life with such gusto and ferocity.  I will even forget how it feels to get butterfly kisses from my four-year-old son and how he was so excited when his baby brother gave him butterfly kisses.

But, God, don't let me forget that it was sweet.

Irises in my Window

My husband brought me a bouquet of green the other day.  Rich green leaves rose to bulbs about to burst, and he told me he was thinking I might like to watch them bloom.  From the color peeking through their tips I could tell there would be white-pink lilies and some other flower the color of my toenail polish, a deep midnight blue.  At the time I was just grateful for his tender thoughtfulness, I had been having a rough day in the hospital and knowing he understood that was comforting.

In these last few days the sun has had its way with the sky, clearing out the rain clouds and bursting through with a soft yet brilliant spring light.  My large hospital window has been a canvass colored in Carolina blue and puffy white clouds, "Pixar" clouds as I think of them.  In the corner of my window the bouquet of flowers has been opening up and today the irises are wide open.  They are looking towards the sun and basking happily like teenage sunbathers who have just hit the beach.  The only reason I know they are irises is because they opened with a surprise-- not only midnight blue; there is a daub of bright yellow on each petal.

When my Jonathan was born with dimples in his perfect baby cheeks I felt just as an older friend had described:  sometimes the finale is better than we could have imagined or asked for.

Samuel and I, Josh, Jonathan, and William are being written into a story and I have this feeling that the next chapter will be much richer than I can imagine.  Have you ever bitten into a chocolate cake with an assumptive air, and then you closed your eyes because it tasted so much more delicious than you were expecting?  That's how it's going to be, just like the irises with that brush of yellow.