I was sitting here somnolent, waiting for my coffee to kick in, Olivia urging me to go back to bed, 🙂 when I decided I might as well catch you up on a few events. You may have noticed a few days of consecutive posts, which then abruptly ended.

Last week I got the best surprise of the year to date when the South Dakotan brother-in-law and wife showed up on our doorstep. They used to live a half mile from here, but it has been five years since they just casually dropped in and helped us eat our supper! It is so much better to look at each other while we talk, to admire in person the newest little baby who traveled along on their flying trip. Gabe confessed that he knew they were coming for a cousin’s wedding the next day, and that he had also arranged for us to go up to his parents’ place after the wedding.

Wow, I had some scurrying to do that night. Laundry came first, so we had clean clothes to pack, then a lick and a promise clean-up, as my mom used to say. I wrapped the wedding gift last thing before collapsing into bed. When I got up the next morning to assemble the boys’ school books for the day, I found that the little stinkers had gotten up early and done their school already!  My blessed mother came to our house to take on the childcare.

We traveled to the wedding with Thad and Rhonda, 1 1/2 hours to catch up without interruption. Well, at least we made a dent in the catching up. It really is fun to be friends with your siblings! 

Gabe and I headed back home before the wedding reception was quite done, leaving Thads to go on north with his folks. We had another four hours to drive after we picked up the suitcases and children. Once we were all loaded up, favorite people tucked into their favorite blankets, snacks and water bottle at my feet, I took a little time to breathe and be grateful.

In the last two years we have not traveled anywhere as a family except those four hours up to Grandpa’s house. This was the first time that I didn’t drive while Gabe studied. (In fact, many of the text books are sold, and I couldn’t be happier to see them sailing out the door while the paypal account fattens up!)

We had a delightful weekend, surrounded quite literally with family. Having taken along all manner of snow clothes, we got to ski and sled and skate. We strewed socks and hats and cameras and games all through Grandma’s space and she was just as sweet about it!

Oh, and we ate her food. Gabe’s mom is an artist in the kitchen. I have never seen anyone so effortlessly turn out a buffet of delectables like she does. I have a suspicion that she felt a little like a hoard of devouring locusts had descended upon her kitchen.

Gabe’s dad, the cabinet builder, has been working on a handsome, custom-built dresser for us. He built it out of walnut and sprayed the last coat of poly on it just an hour before we loaded up to come home. Always before we head out, he comes with bags of potatoes, onions, and carrots from his root cellar that we tuck in here and there with the luggage. Vegetables and fine furniture and love.

The ride home is usually very quiet, everyone having pretty much run their little legs off for the duration of the visit. Long on fun, short on sleep makes for interesting days post-visit. I didn’t want to skip a school day yesterday, so we got out the books and I ran laps doing laundry in the basement, switching things from the old dresser into the new one, arbitrating the differences that inevitably arise between tired children. Gabe had EMS con-ed and two interviews, so I was flying solo, attempting to bring the family craft back to earth without too much drama. 😉

To complicate things further, Olivia and Addy had a doctor’s visit scheduled in the afternoon. My cheerful young friend, Janelle, helped me out with the other children and the mountainous laundry while I was gone. I had promised Olivia, “No sticks or pricks. No labs. Just routine check-up.” Don’t you know, the doctor discovered a vaccination that needed boosting. If it would have been any of the other children, I would have refused it for the time being, but with Olivia’s compromised immune system and the swirling threat of whooping cough, I decided to go ahead with it.

Well. My sweet little girl pitched. a. fit. “You promised, Mama! No, no, no, no, NO, NOOOOO!” Addy joined the chorus of dismay with loud wails of her own. The nurse was briskly efficient and we scooted out of there as fast as we could. I really felt like a rather awful mother. I did not buy a milk shake for either of us, which is our customary treat for being good at doctor’s visits.

I took my helper home, picked up milk, fed my family supper, listened to my man, slept the sleep of the nearly dead, and now here we go again. Trotting on.

I just found this really clever blog post on what it is like to be married to a student. I laughed out loud; it is so very true. I nearly cried; I am so incredibly relieved that we are on this side of graduation. This past summer when we were at the Faith Builders College Student Workshop, I remarked to an elderly gentleman that we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. He smiled sagely and said, “You just hope it’s not the light from an approaching train.” Yeah, right. (I wonder if Gabe may have talked to him about going on to get his Bachelor’s…)

I think I had graduation tricked out in my mind as the magic portal through which we step, and everything that is less than ideal in our lives will immediately be fixed. Better job, more money, fewer crazy part-time hours at work, more time with the family, less stress, better health, instant happiness unmixed with ickiness. I mean, I am a realist, so I know that isn’t the way things work, but I wasn’t prepared for how utterly weary Gabe and I both felt. Very tired people aren’t always the most rational people. Nor did I expect a sort of identity crises. He knows how to be a student, I know how to support a student (sort of). Now we have to find a new normal, and it is not unlike the adjustment time after you have a baby. Just what do you do with a weekend when you don’t have to study? Can anybody remember how that looks? 🙂 And Children, for goodness sakes, take your quarrels to your father! Oh, yes, let’s all go to bed at the same time again, shall we?

So, just in case you think we are all hunky-dory over here, and its all glitter and stardust, I will just say, “Yes. And no.” But it is good.

Back when I was a teacher in a bricks and mortar school, this sort of thing amused me, but I had a pretty strict “no doodling on your papers” rule. Doodling, I felt, should be confined to sketch pads and scrap paper.

I then got married and gave birth to a son who doodled from 18 months of age to now. He scribbled on every surface imaginable, in every medium imaginable, despite the cases of plain white paper and the series of beautiful sketchbooks I provided. Sometimes it drives me crazy and sometimes I just sit and watch as a dancer materializes on the ear of a rhino, while her rescuer sits impaled upon its horn. The rescuer was rather hastily executed, because right then my inner teacher spoke up, “SERIOUSLY, Greg! Get the writing page done!”

Did you know you can actually do that? I looked it up, and one of the meanings is “deep pondering, musing”. So that is what I have been doing, reflecting forward and backward. I love a new year. It feels so fresh and exhilarating to teeter from the edge of a tired, raggedy December into a shiny, unsullied January.

I have always enjoyed Calvin and Hobbes, and had to laugh at this illustration today. One part of me is so excited to go exploring, and yet I feel so sad that for many people, 2012 will be the year their lives fell apart: the year of the school shootings, the year of the gaping, raw cries of  “Why?”

It was not an easy year for us, by any stretch, but we see that it was a time of abundant grace! I think sometimes we just keep pleading for mercy, breathing, doing the next thing, and asking for help, and it is only later that we realize the obvious fact that Someone was carrying us …Even in the very middle of the soul-stretching struggles that we didn’t think we deserved. It is that reflection on the past that gives me confidence for the future.

Recently I have seen enough negative media and crackpot conspiracy theories and the-left-is-the-devil, no-the-right-has-their-heads-in-the-sand junk to make me want to go straight up. People say, “Oh, just think what your children are going to have to deal with!” I do think about that, but it seems rather pointless to me. This is our time to shine, my friends!

In Matthew 5, we find this encouragement from Jesus: Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. I really like how the Amplified Bible just… amplifies it. 🙂

“Let your light so shine before men that they may see your moral excellence and yourpraiseworthy, noble, and good deeds and recognize and honor and praise and glorify yourFather Who is in heaven.” 

This is clearly not the time to cower! It is the time to be bold with our light, to intentionally make His name glorious in this sad old time in which we live! I want to go exploring in the new year! How about you?