…in images by Christopher Boffoli. I absolutely love his work. There are other mini people/food photographers out there, but in my opinion, he is the best.

A Deep Tea Dive (Look! it’s Earl Grey!)

Some Chocolate is in Order

And just for fun: A Cookie Climb Without Sherpas and Supplemental Oxygen

Wanna guess what is the best purchase I have made in a long time? I will give you a few hints. There is a little color-starved worm in my brain every year when March rolls around. It is a sad little worm that is so done with grey and taupe and brown and grey. So I gaze in awe at the lovely Easter displays, and one of the reasons I love Easter candy so much is because of the fresh pastels it is wrapped in. Well, it is also usually chocolate. When I was younger, my sister and I would get spring fever and head to the closest source of fabric to buy our annual, terribly impractical pale green or light blue or lavender cotton yardage for summer dresses. I remember feeling like my life was complete when I could finally wear peach and pink. 🙂

Anyway, I did buy some fabric for myself this spring. White, with a coral sweater to go with it. A bit of brilliance, but not my most brilliant purchase.

Has anyone else noticed the purses for sale this year? Maybe it is because I did about as little shopping as it is possible and still be a woman in the last three years, but this spring I just looked and looked at the purses, aisles and aisles of them. I fought the impulse, but gradually my black leather one from Goodwill just seemed too small and… black. One day I took yet another walk through the purses and I fell hard for a pink leather purse, just the color of the tulips that are not blooming yet. It makes me happy, which makes me feel just a little shallow, but I do believe the Lord understands. He made color, after all.

Still, the smartest purchase is none of those. I walked past the display of Sloggers at the local hardware store, and I decided the time had come to invest in some for myself. My children call them puddle boots, and they each have their own pair. When it rains and sogs, they head outside anyway, but I was always lacking the proper footwear. No more! I passed over the paisleys and the zebra print and the polka dots. Here is the color I bought.

Already I have fought a grass fire (accidental) while wearing them, and I have cleared brush with my husband while wearing them. Then he showed me how to run the chain saw, so I grinned down at my boots and cut down a nasty old thorn tree after he went to work. I slopped through our pasture and climbed the dirt piles in pursuit of a stranded tot. No more gingerly picking my way through the mud in old tennis shoes. I have every intention to go puddling with the children just as soon as I get a chance. And that makes me very happy indeed!

I don’t know if you noticed how many of the things in my rethought list of “That’s life” were the kindness of others. Somehow I have been blessed with so many people who are kind to me and my little family. Sometimes it feels very unfair… like why don’t I suffer more rejection and sadness?  I find that others often show me the way to actively care  by the way they come alongside and help me carry my burdens. When you have received generous help to pay a big hospital bill, you never again think the same when the offering basket is passed for another. How hard is it to stoop and pick up a button? How strenuous is it to hold open a door with a genuine smile? What does it cost me to graciously wish the drive through attendant a lovely day, and mean it? A note in the mail takes 46 whole cents, and a local phone call takes no cents.

If I find myself waiting for the big chance to really make a difference, I need to stop and rethink that idea as well. Didn’t Jesus have something to say to that, like “Well done, you good and faithful servant: you have been faithful over a few things. I will make you ruler over many things.”

When I worked as a cashier many years ago, their were certain customers who made a big impression on me. They were the ones who actually saw me, who asked how my family was doing, and who really meant it when they thanked me for packing their groceries so well. Alexander McCall Smith said, “It takes so little to change the small space in which people live their lives.” That has become one of my favorite quotes.

I could think of dozens of times when someone spoke a word or sent a text or even just smiled encouragingly at me, and it lifted me right out of a struggle into a gracious Presence. If you feel even a tinge of prompting to bless another, no matter how small it may seem, JUST DO IT. Don’t think, “Oh well, they are probably doing fine. What will they think if I send them this note out of the clear blue?” And I have never heard of anyone who said, “Enough cookies, already!”

My brother told me this story. There was a grocery shower, so he went to the store, praying that God would show him just what the people needed in their cupboard. As he walked the aisles, he followed the promptings, whatever seemed impressed on his mind to put into the cart for the people needing the groceries. When they looked through the goodies, they exclaimed over and again that he had bought just the stuff they really liked.

Let me tell you another grocery story. My husband was terribly sick, unable to work, scheduled for surgery. I had a long grocery list hanging on the fridge. One day we came home and found a box on the porch. Friends, if I recall correctly, all but two of the items on my list were in that box. I know how it feels to be the one blown away by the kindness of God through the kindness of another.

So, I repeat, if you feel even a twinge of a suggestion to reach out to another, however little or even silly it may seem, do it! With practice you will become much more aware of the Spirit of God’s prompting. You will be astonished how often the kindness you showed comes back to you, multiplied.

So many of you have changed my small space. Thankyou.

Recently I heard someone asking why we always say, “That’s life,” when inconvenient, unhappy things happen. The tire goes flat on the way to the airport. “That’s just life, ” we gripe. The little boy falls and needs stitches on the morning of a wedding we wanted to attend. “That’s life.” The clothes line loses its grip on the pole when it is loaded with wet towels, and we sigh as we pick them up to wash them again, “Oh, well, that’s life.”

And it is life. Life is just strewn with nasties and less-than-happies. But life is also strewn with so very much goodness, so much that I don’t deserve or even expect. I took the challenge to concentrate on the small, yet extravagant providences that come my way. Being somewhat like my little boy, I made a list.

That’s Life

• finding a piece of Dove chocolate under the bed when I am looking for a shoe gone AWOL
• receiving a note of such kindly encouragement in the mail that it brings quick tears to the eyes
• discovering that my little boy can, indeed, bake bread, just like he insisted he could
• finding matching outfits at the thrift store… clothes I really like, in the appropriate sizes
• giving birth to a child who actually loves vegetables in any form
• a tot who decided to potty train herself
• sticking my hand into a pocket and pulling out a fifty dollar bill that I was missing for months
• someone noticing and picking up a button on the church parking lot… the really special button that fell off the baby’s coat, and I thought I would have to replace all of them because I couldn’t match it
• a tray of cookies, put into our vehicle at church by Anonymous
• having a good hair day
• losing my purse in a parking lot, without realizing it until hours later… asking the cart pusher, and sure enough, the honest soul had picked it up for me
• the kind lady at the grocery store, the one with understanding eyes, who tells me that I have lovely children despite the fact that I am feeling a little overextended at the moment
• the spill that was only water
• the fender bender where no one was hurt
• facetime with the absent Beloved One

That’s life, I suppose, when the glass is half full and there is a quietness in my heart that recognizes sheer grace. That’s life when I stop living as though I am entitled to all that is easy and soft. That’s life when I start to see God’s hand in all around. I say, let’s change how we use that phrase!

Things to do in Winter

• Make snow globes
• Make snow man
• Make snow flakes (paper ones)
• Make snow cream

Maybe you also see a pattern emerging here? 😉 On the reverse side of the list, he had this title:

Things to do in Summer

• Make a spear
• Make a bow
• Buy a wagon
• Make a tree house

I just love finding his lists. I wish mine were that uncomplicated. 🙂 It is, indeed, a happy thought that we are now approaching spear making weather.

¹¹ Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb ¹² and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

¹³ They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” ¹⁴ At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

¹⁵ He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

¹⁷ 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.’”

¹⁸ 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.

That is John 20, the part of the resurrection story that is especially real to me this spring. I think of Mary, her eyes flooded with tears, heart torn with grief, soul bereft of hope. All she was wanting to do was take care of the body of Jesus, to make sure that He was properly buried so that she could somehow move on, back into the life she lived before Jesus. And then… Then came that personal touch: “Mary.” And she knew, without a doubt, that He was alive and all would be well!

I can’t really describe what this does to me, this personal touch. I have been there, tear-blinded, sure that hope was dead, that situations were beyond redemption, that I was somehow forgotten. I just wanted to bury the dead body and forget. But because Jesus was alive, alive in me, despite how I felt about the impossible present… in the moment of greatest need I heard Him speak to me and I knew that He was alive and all would be well.

So… it snowed again last night and is thawing again today, for the fourth day in a row. Fresh snow in March means fresh mud. It has been three days of fresh mud, and I am going to go out way, way on a limb here, and suggest that the air in the house may be getting a little stale. Unless we want to live in mud, however, we have no choice but to live in our house. Probably for me the itchy feeling is amplified, because Gabe had to be in Pittsburgh for the first three days this week, doing a critical care course.

I think one of the main perks of homeschooling is that you get to spend life with your children. I also think one of the main downsides could be that you spend all of life with your children. 🙂 After so much rubbing shoulders, of chairs pushing after you wherever you go in the kitchen, of people everywhere, with pressing questions about their math lesson when you are in the bathroom…well, ordinary things just start to chafe.

It is my firm conviction that our need to be liked is just as strong as our need to be loved. They aren’t exactly the same, you know. Love is the abstract idea to a child… my parents will take care of me and look out for me, even at great personal cost. (Well, they don’t seem to have much conception of parental sacrifices, but you get what I mean.) “Like” is when a child knows that my parents enjoy spending time with me. They take pleasure in who I am. They notice me.

So here is where I am going with this: Days and days together where the “like” is getting thin. The atmosphere definitely needs an airing out.

So it is time to hit the reset button. It has really helped me to concentrate on what I like about my children, especially the one who has been in a lot of trouble lately. Sometimes I have to go back a little while to think of something 😉 but it is important that it is something specific. Then I call the child to me, get onto their level, smile into their eyes.  “Do you know how glad I am that you are my son? I just really appreciate (insert appropriate praise).” It just restores fellowship immediately, and we like each other again.

For the occasions where a little child has been failing repeatedly and cannot seem to break out of the pattern of naughtiness, I say, “You know what? I have loved you from the minute you were born and I saw your little red face, all scrunched up.” And I launch into a story about when they were a baby. All of my children love this retelling of funny things they did or said. My parents did this for us a lot. It made me feel that they liked me, that they noticed me, and remembered the interesting things I did. I am sure that is why this works as a reset button for a little tyke. They get their mind off their obsession with pulling all the folded clothes out of their drawers and onto a better track. That is not to say that they don’t sometimes wander off into more mischief, but they tend to be more tractable when they feel liked.

Here are a few more things we do when we all feel crabby and housebound:

• have an impromptu tea with the China cups and a couple of candles lit
• bake cookies, chocolate chip cookies, to be specific
• assign everyone to a personal space on the couches, with no touching rules enforced, and listen to an audiobook
• clean up, each person picking up ten things, then rewarding ourselves with candy 😉
• comb hair and wash faces… my mom often said, “Go comb your hair. You will feel better.” It’s true.

I asked Gregory for three suggestions of what to do today, and here is his list:

• have a cleaning bee
• reeurange (sic) the house
• be lazy after work

I am sure some of you have excellent ideas for cheering the space where you live, cheering the people you live with. I would love to hear them!

Today I could sit and gaze at this photo for a long time.

Found here  at Room Envy… oh the irony! (I googled. I did not go on Pinterest to find this image. 🙂 )

I want to be there, sitting by the fire with my tea and a good book. I want to forget that it is March and it is snowing outside again. I want to forget that I have free lanced my housekeeping all week while we concentrated on school and laundry and cooking vast amounts of food that we ate so that here we are, at Friday, with an empty fridge and this:

This photo was taken yesterday. We clean up every day, I tell you, but this seems to recur on a 25-bits-of-rubble per hour basis. Today, I cannot sit and gaze with longing at what I do not have. Today, I will gird up my loins and clean out the junk behind the couch. I will be grateful that we have real people living in this house. I will praise God that I get to serve these people and I get to teach them how to keep chaos at bay with the daily rituals of order and cleanliness that we strive to attain. Today I will keep things in perspective, because only an “accident of birth” keeps me from living in this:

Found here at Rising From the Rubble. (I did not go on Pinterest to find this image either.)

I don’t remember where I read this quote, but it has profoundly changed how I look at the negatives in life.

My problems would be someone else’s dream.

If you don’t know what a maven is, don’t feel bad. I didn’t either until I read The Tipping Point. I discovered that I am, in fact, what Malcolm Gladwell calls a maven: a person who likes to pass on what they know about things. Ha ha. Apparently merchants appreciate such folks, with the free advertising they do, telling all their friends about this or that superior product.

Today my mavenly heart brings to you some good news. There do exist, in this fallen world, some very excellent eraser caps. In my Valentine’s Day post, I alluded to my utter frustration with insufficient, unbelievably inadequate erasers. We tried literally every kind of erasers that were readily available out there, from the cheap ones at Walmart during the back to school sale to the professional quality Helix brand from the art store. It isn’t that my children make so many mistakes on their school work, but that the baby has found the rubbery feel of erasers to be the perfect teething relief. We could sharpen ten new pencils and in one unguarded hour, she would have all the erasers chewed off and swallowed, just like that. The caps we put on went the same direction, until we learned to put the pencil jar up on a high shelf. Still, they broke and twisted off and  smeared the boys’ papers and just made me mad in general. All those brilliantly colored promises to erase cleanly? Empty, I tell you.

I dredged up from my childhood a memory of pink eraser caps in school, very sturdy and long lasting and clean. After a bit of time on google, I found them. To save you time, I bring to you the perfect eraser, heartily endorsed by our entire family. The Arrowhead, from Papermate, packaged in substantial amounts for accident prone humans who like to remove all traces of their mistakes. I asked my boys to describe them for you. “They are pick-resistant; your kids will not be able to dig into them with fingernails. They are stiff, and don’t come off the pencil. (The baby doesn’t like this kind so much.) And they actually erase.” There you have it! “Oh, and say that you don’t know how you have lived without them.” 🙂 I think my boys are mavens, too.

I was pleased to see that buying a box of 144 makes these erasers very cheap, about 4 cents each. The “professional quality” ones that irritated us the worst cost over 25 cents each. So there you go, just a bit of advice to make the life of all my teacherly friends much easier.