Category: Home Life

Jaunting About

Jaunt: v.

  1. an excursion undertaken especially for pleasure

  2. archaic :  a tiring trip

We are jaunting about like everything these days and it is so much fun. It is a fast way to wear out, but it is great way “to blow through life without a budget,” as Rachel Jancovik says.

I am taking walks every day except when it rains, just noticing how things bud and burst open and it changes in every 24 hour stretch. I applaud the skunk cabbages along the roadside ditches from the first purple spears to the brilliant unfolding green leaves. I cheer the forsythias across the road, now very nearly at their peak of screaming hilarious yellow. And I got out the vases because my children are bringing me any and all blooms they find. There are no more daffodils or hyacinths outside because they all came into my kitchen.  I have plum blossoms and pansies on the window sill and baby broccoli too.

Yesterday I couldn’t resist and pulled out two baby evergreens that were growing beside the road on a deserted stretch. I wanted to plant them by the pond, and rationalized that the road crew comes along and whacks everything off for visibility purposes anyway. Gabe thinks I poached them off someone’s property, so now I feel conflicted about my baby trees, even though the state owns the road frontage: 20 feet from the middle of the road puts state property boundaries right at the edge of our front porch. So my trees come from state property, which they routinely deface with chain saws and whackers of various sorts. (I am making excuses here, I know! A preacher I know stops and picks up nice rocks beside the road to build chimneys. Is this different? :/ ) I did plant my tiny trees. If they die, I will know I shouldn’t have pulled them. My defense in court would be, “Spring made me do it.”

Last week I spent a sunny afternoon digging dandelions out of the asparagus bed. It was very satisfying. They are the most persistent things! Every year I do this, and every year they gird up their roots and try again. Now I am willing the asparagus to appear!

Spring means lemony desserts to me. I just got done lovingly assembling a Greek Yogurt Cream Cheese Lemon Cake for guests. It is a rite of April. I am pretty sure I posted about this before, but for your benefit, this is what it looks like:

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And here is my recommendation that you go show Lovely Little Kitchen some love and make this cake today.

Grating lemon peel always makes me feel happy. This morning I was busily mixing and pouring and was surprised to find myself feeling annoyed. It certainly wasn’t the gorgeous citrusy aroma or the cream cheese. I isolated the cause to a Pandora music station that I had playing with popular worship songs. I had chosen it because I wanted to hear one song in particular and here I was, listening to the next ones in the queue and getting really irritated. This is not to minimize anyone’s taste in music, but as a lover of language, after the 47th time of “I could sing of your love forever…” I want to say, “USE YOUR WORDS, HONEY!”

I was raised with the grand hymns of the church and am well aware of the “outmoded, outdated, outgrown” arguments concerning church music of the past. However, after something truly beautiful like:

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, Thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, Thou rulest in might;
Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above
Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small;
In all life Thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but naught changeth Thee.

I simply can’t get into the modern worship songs with their overwhelming emphasis on how I feel and the music that croons to God like I used to croon to my babies. I love the substance of the old hymns, the descriptions, the grasping to know a glorious God who is so amazing that our best language cannot describe Him. I need music to remind me that God is so much bigger than I am.

*that creaking sound of a person gingerly stepping off a soapbox*

Anyway, the cake is now baked to perfection and the house awaits the weekly clearing away of stuff that didn’t get put into its proper home this week. I scored a great victory last week. I actually threw away the sweater vest from the ’90’s. And I replaced the beloved pair of shoes I bought when I was expecting Gregory (He is 11. You can do the math.) and couldn’t fit my swollen feet into any of my regular ones. I loved those shoes, even though they flopped when I wasn’t pregnant, but it was time to let them go.

I have a goal this spring that I am almost afraid to verbalize. I want to assign everything a place in this house, and if it doesn’t have one, it needs to go. This could be both cathartic and painful! My small treasure hoarders will need to be out of the house when I do their room, but they have a whole playhouse where they have free rein and can decorate their little hearts out. Now that it is warm, I am shooing them out there every afternoon after school. They have beds with old blankets and books and a plastic table with squatty little plastic chairs. It’s the perfect way to learn cause and effect in housekeeping. 🙂

Gabe has PTO for 8 days! We are working on building the critter barn and sandwiching in a field trip to DC with my big brother and his family. More jaunting. Hurray!

 

 

 

Life on a Loop

Notice that I did not say life in the loop, because I am so busy running  faithfully in my own space that I hardly have time to stay informed as to the world at large. The hamster wheel was spinning dizzily this morning as I pedaled along full tilt, doing laundry loads and checking tests and quizzes and filing them in 4 separate portfolios. I had brewed the very last of my coffee beans from Honduras, taking special care to press them exactly the way they should be pressed and it was the fragrant coffee of dreams. Of course, one cannot sort laundry while cradling a mug, so I set it on my desk until that task was done. When I pulled out a teacher’s book, I nipped the edge of that mug and there went my coffee, my beautiful coffee, all over the tests and quizzes.

A few frantic minutes of mopping and draping of papers over the edge of the trash can later, and I could at least check them well enough to give my sons credit for their grades even if those particular tests won’t be filed. Then I remembered that I had saved the last cup of coffee for Gabe who was still sleeping after his long night shift and didn’t need it anyway.  I went for a refill. Right there I made a strategic mistake: I used the same mug. It is pretty and green and has a leaf imprint, but it has this weirdly tapered round bottom that should be illegal. This time I set it on my sewing table while I did some mending on garments that were cycling through the laundry in a disreputable state. I picked up a pair of pants, and there went that stupid coffee mug again.

I know. I don’t let my children use that word, but sometimes under extreme provocation… There were no more refills. If I weren’t so frugal I would take that mug out and smash it on some rocks just for fun. I wonder if that would feel better than saying “stupid”.

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I keep doing this loopy stuff. On Sunday I couldn’t seem to quit driving to church. I was already struggling a bit with daylight saving time, getting the family dressed up nicely by myself since it was Gabe’s day to work. (You need to go brush your hair, Buddy. And clean your ears. Yes, I know nobody cares about your ears, but go wash them anyway. Do you know your Sunday school verses? Let’s practice while I do your hair. What? You don’t want a bun? Okay, your turn, Olivia. What? You want two braids? Sorry, that takes too long. I will make you two braids tomorrow. Alex, can you help Addy put on her good shoes? etc. etc. etc.) We had fellowship meal food all ready: a special layer cake Alex had decorated with yellow marshmallow Peeps and a crock pot of Taco Chicken. I was combing the last little girl’s hair and called out to Alex to take the cake out to the Suburban and load up everybody else. I twisted an elastic on the wispy little ponytail, sent the small girl outside and whisked the crock pot and my purse off the counter. We were actually going to get to church before the singing started. I felt a little proud of this feat, especially since my little girls even had socks on, not just bare feet in boots.

As we pulled in at church, Alex gasped, “The cake! Did you bring the cake?” Well no. I didn’t. It’s only 3 miles, so we u-turned  and went back to get it. If I hadn’t forgotten my phone, I could have texted Gabe to bring it when he got up. He had been mandated to stay at work longer the night before due to short staffing, so he hadn’t gotten home until 4:30 AM.  We got the cake and the phone. After church I texted him about bringing a plate of food home and he said sure, but he had to leave again soon for his next shift. I hurried the children away from their friends, and took that plate of food home, hoping we could visit a little before he was off for another 12 hour shift. Alas, he was sitting in the car, ready to leave when we got home. There was no time for anything but a quick kiss and a food hand-over.

Then Alex said, “Um, I forgot the cake plate again.” And everybody clamored, “Can we go back and play for a while?” So we did. We went to church again for the cake plate. I found a circle of friends and sat there and visited for another hour. And I ate a piece of my friend’s marvelous lemon raspberry cake (yes, the same friend who made the salted caramel shortbread bars last month) with cream cheese icing. I needed that bit of fortifying and endorphin-boosting.

I ordered some pantry-organizing Tupperware for my mom’s birthday weeks before her February birthday, but didn’t actually receive it until this week. I had bought a lovely card that I was saving to give with her gift. Meanwhile my desk got conscripted into a poster making project for a safety fair at the hospital and the card disappeared without a trace. I settled for a generic one and gave my mom her present. Two hours later I found the card that I had been scouring the entire premises for. I don’t know what to tell you. The really scary thing is that all these items should be/always live “right there”.

But remember that journaling Bible I lost before Christmas? I found that  while I was looking for the card. And my phone charger turned up just recently too, after Gabe had borrowed it and mislaid it. That too, was something we had searched for with diligence. Again, I don’t know how to explain this stuff. If you were to come to my house, I think you would consider me a reasonably orderly person. We do have Alzheimer’s in the family and that is too frightening a prospect to even consider. So I am letting my brain off the loop and I am going to walk in the woods and laugh hysterically whenever I feel like it. Take that, hamster wheel.

 

(Just for your information, if you want to enter for the giveaway I posted last time, you have until noon tomorrow. Go ahead, don’t be shy.)

 

When You Are Eight

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I am the big girl around this house, even though my brothers think I am really kind of little and weak. I have a mighty spirit though. So what if my arms are skinny and I need help pouring milk from a full gallon?  I am smack in the middle of the family. My brothers are much bigger than me and they think they know so much more than I do, but I show them pretty often that I am not ignorant at all! (Especially when I tell my mom that they were eating chocolate chips from the pantry.) When I was only 1 year old, I had a baby sister; when I was 3 I had another baby sister. So I learned pretty fast to do things like brushing my own hair and making beds and running errands.

My mom depends on me a lot. She says I inherited my grandma’s genius for cleaning up super fast. I don’t know why, but I just love to turn a really messy place into a neat and clean place. I can scurry around and surprise! I think it is more fun to live without a lot of rubble in the house. Sometimes when I have to clean up, I don’t feel like it, though. It’s kind of funny how that works, don’t you think? I doubt my grandma is like that.

The thing is, I share a room with two little sisters who are just so good at leaving clothes on the floor or dumping out all the doll clothes and then they run off and play. It just makes me despair sometimes! They expect me, the cleaner girl, to have fun picking up their messes, but there is a limit to how much a person can bear. I tell my mom how I feel about that: the little girls should clean their own messes!

I really love our dog Lady. She is sometimes a nuisance, but I defend her every time she is in trouble. I have a soft heart for anybody who is trouble, which is why I sometimes regret that I told my mom that the boys ate the chocolate chips. They call me a snitch and then I feel sorry for myself too, and I don’t feel so bad after all that they had to pay for the chocolate chips out of their allowance.

I think my favorite thing in the whole world is going out for breakfast with my dad after I have a lab draw. I get blood-work done every 3 months, then we have a date. I feel so special then that I don’t really mind the needles. The other children get jealous and want to do blood-work too, but this is something that is just mine and I don’t have to share it.

It’s kind of neat, being the middle child. Some days I have to be big and do every bit of my homework and stuff like that, and other days I can skip penmanship practice and have a tea party with my little sisters. I work really hard to get 100% on all my tests in school, because I get a dollar bonus for that.

It’s so hard to save money because every time we go past the stuffed animals in a store, I just feel like I have to get one. Sometimes my mom lets me pick out one at Goodwill, then we wash it in hot water and fluff it in the dryer. I can afford that better than the Valentine’s teddies at Walmart. Lady ripped up a whole bunch of our teddies, so now we don’t have too many anymore. My mom thought it was a mercy, but I didn’t know who to feel sorry for, the teddies that got trashed or Lady who knew she was bad.

I want to be good every day of my life. Sometimes I just do not know how to be peaceful with my siblings when they are so annoying, so I just go tell my mom. She doesn’t always like that, but when I feel bad, we pray and then I can go to sleep at night.  I love Jesus with all my heart, even though I am only a little girl who is 8.

Now We Are Six

“When I was one,
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six
now and forever. “

A. A. Milne

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This is the best time of my life! I am much wiser than I was just a few years ago. My mom says I was the most mischievous of all the three year olds she has ever seen, but I was learning and exploring and I usually didn’t make the same mistake twice. Like I never went to visit the neighbors without permission again after that one time when my mom couldn’t find me. I know better than that now. And I won’t bring sugar packets home from the church kitchen in my shoes again either. I can’t believe all the things my mom sees.

I love being six and that is why my little sister is always wanting to catch up. I am the middle sister. I don’t have to work as much as the older one and I don’t have to take naps like the little one. Now you see why I like being me.

When school started last fall I got very discouraged about so many years- 12 in all!- until I am done with school. I was crying one day and my mom said I should go out to play with my kitty. That made me feel much better! I love my kitty so much that I go out in the freezingest weather to make sure she has food. Her name is White Nose and she rubs on my legs. I always check on the bunny too, even though that is not my responsibility. If the bunny gets out of her cage, I can catch her because she knows I like her.

Last year I learned to ride my bike without training wheels, then I started riding my big sister’s bike that is so high off the ground that I fall when I stop. I love rushing through the back yard with my hair flying behind me. My mom tries to make sure I wear socks and boots in the wintertime, but my very happiest thing is running barefooted. One time I was picking blackberries and I stepped right on a broken jar that cut my foot. I had to get six stitches and I didn’t even cry a little bit. Afterward I got ice cream with sprinkles.

I know how to build a little fire to roast things on. My mom likes when I ask first, just so she knows about it. For snacks I like marshmallows but sometimes we don’t have any, so we try roasting other things. Apples take kind of long. Most times when I want a snack, I peel a cucumber or cut up a pepper and share it with my little sister. My mom can always smell it on my breath and she says she can’t keep salad things in the fridge, but at least it is a good habit. The worst way to start my day is trying to eat an egg. It just makes me cry.

Soon it will be spring and that will be wonderful! I even found a wooly bear caterpillar today and put it in the terrarium. I have plans for a garden this summer. I want lots of vegetables in mine, but especially flowers to pick. I can save the seeds and have more flowers next year!

My best friend is my cousin and he is a boy! He is six too, and we can play in the woods together for hours. We are Indians! Really, we have a grandmother, lots and lots of greats ago, that was an Indian. We like to fish too. But my brothers don’t like when we use their poles and get the lines all tangled.

Guess what! I can read much better than I could when I was crying about school that day. I have been practicing and it isn’t quite so hard anymore. I just love stories. My mom is reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle to us and I think it is so funny how she trains the children to do their jobs. I don’t really like to work very much. It’s so boring. But I don’t want the Not Picking up Toys Cure.

I don’t know what I will be when I get big. I am thinking about being an artist or a doctor. It’s hard to know when you are just six.

 

 

Right Now I am Four…

…but soon I will be 6 or even 25. I am the baby of my family and yesterday I asked my mom if I have to be the baby of the family always, like till I am 51? She laughed at me and said, “Yup, unless we have another baby or adopt one, you are stuck.” Well, today I met a man who is 48 and he said he is still the baby of his family and he even has 8 children, so it must be true.

This is the thing about being the baby: naps. I am the only one in the whole family who has to sleep every single day. My mom says I get too crabby if I don’t have a nap, but I am sure I would be fine if she would just give it a try. Sometimes my mom even says, “I can’t wait to put you to bed!” when I am fussing about how my brother is looking at me funny, or about not having enough peanut butter with my apple at lunch. I don’t know what that has to do with naps, but there I am, whoop-sloop-bloop, tucked in no matter what I say.

Here is the other thing: nobody takes me seriously. I was serious when I promised to eat all my cupcake as soon as I am thirteen. Right now I mostly like the icing, but I am trying, I really am.

Last year I traded my favorite blanket for a stuffed teddy at night. My mom said my blanket was too grubby for words and I need to grow up, so I did. Don’t you think naps are just not even fair when I am so grown up?

My brothers and sisters act like I am a baby too. They tell me I can’t hold the dog’s leash because I am not strong enough, then when Lady runs away and I fall and cry they say, “See, we told you that you are too little.” This really hurts my feelings. Also, they all do school in these big books with stories and problems. My mom got me some wipe-clean dot-to-dot books and said it’s my school. I like them, but you can’t really tell me that they are important or anything.

Today I found a nickel on the floor and put it in the offering at church. I think the church is pretty rich now. I wish I could be bigger and do big people stuff, but mostly what I can do now is be sweet when I don’t have enough peanut butter on my apple or when my sister picks a bedtime story that I don’t like. It doesn’t feel very important. If I would be bigger, I would go help the refugees. I feel really sad for them and I pray that they can find warm places to stay.

One thing that I have learned to do is match my own outfits so you see I am getting to be pretty big. I have this green sweater with tulips on it that I just love to wear. My mom says it doesn’t go with some of my dresses, but she usually just lets me wear it anyway. My favorite jammies have feet on them and this long zipper from the toe to the top. I was supposed to give them to my cousin who is smaller than me because my toes were all squished, but I was so sad about it that my mom cut off the tip of the jammie feet and now I can wear them until I am 6.

I cannot wait until I am 6. I know I have to get to 5 first and it takes really long! I have been trying to become 5 ever since my last birthday but it is just taking really long. I told my mom it isn’t fair that everybody else has birthdays and mine never comes. She tried to explain birthdays to me, but she just doesn’t know how it is to be trying so hard to catch up all the time.

I guess being four is okay, even the naps stuff if I can pick a story book every day just for myself and nobody else. Don’t tell my mom, but I always look for a really long one. She skips stuff sometimes when she is tired, but I know when she does it! People think I am a baby, but I really have a lot of big ideas. Someday I will show you.

 

How to Clean Your House in One Hour

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The house was a wreck. I am hardened to mess, but this? It was what my mom would have called a Royal Mess. The sun was shining outside and I knew I needed to harness the man-power before it disappeared out the door. My strategy was a simple cleaning blitz, which is what we do when somebody calls and says they would like to stop by in a little while. It’s all hands on deck swooshing away toys and marching shoes to closets. It’s fast and looks great, though not totally thorough, if you know what I mean.

We had six rooms on the main floor to contend with and six people to be contenders. I divided us into three teams. Alex got the little sister who adores him unequivocally. I got the little girl who tends to sit and sigh despairingly at the sheer scope of what she is being asked to do. The two middles got each other and a kitchen with a lot of problems.

“Okay, guys, we have one hour before the sanitation officer comes! Let’s be done by then.” Dividing the huge chunk of picking up and putting away is the best motivation I know for staving off disheartenment. Even so my helper kept languishing and had to be encouraged with itty bitty jobs, one at a time. The middles very diplomatically divided the kitchen work and churned through it in record time. Alex’s team was done first, sitting on the couch with books long before the rest of us were ready for inspection.

Each person then got to inspect one room and the persons responsible for any problem spots had to accept the critique without fuss and fix the issue. I liked this way, because I always end up being the impossibly picky sanitation officer and now they got a chance to do it. They were quite detailed in their inspections. Even one of my rooms didn’t pass.

Lest you think it was all peaches and cream, I should mention the child weeping because her teammate made the bed with wrinkles and he walked off in disgust because she wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. The team that was done first had toys stashed in corners and coloring pages behind the couch. And some of the things went into drawers and cupboards where they definitely do not belong. Also, you shouldn’t go down to the basement. But that is one way to do it-clean your house in one hour.

 

Stepping off the Chili Soup

My Blogging instructor says I should fiddle with my theme today, try some others, see if I like them better. I have a seasonal theme called Sunny Day or some such, which I picked because it was bright blue and cheerful on the summer setting. Every once in a while I remember to change it when the seasons change, but I did notice that there are still falling leaves at the bottom right now. I never will be a savvy blogger with all the bells and whistles, making money off publishing my ideas. Well, never say never.

Recently I have been made aware that the ad bar at the bottom of my posts is displaying some distinctly bottom-feeder ads, to “help defray the cost of a free blog”. I never see them, so I cannot complain without a screen shot to prove my complaint to the higher ups who are defraying costs. If you see an offensive ad, please message me or send me a screen shot at the email address on my About page. Maybe I will just need to shell out the bucks to remove all ads.

Still, as the people who have to look at the theme, what do you say? You ought to have a voice here, don’t you think? How much does it matter to you how a blog looks? My personal preference is for little clutter and nothing blinky. I love beautiful photos and clean lines but I like artsy stuff too. If you open the site one day and woah! everything looks funny, it’s just me messing in the back somewhere, finding my “voice”. No, wait. The voice is the way you convey ideas in blogese. I will be looking for the right ambience.

Meanwhile, would you like to know what I should be doing? I should be feeding my chicks their breakfast. We need to be very quiet this morning since Gabe got home from his shift at 4AM. Cold cereal is quiet. Yay! The children are used to the drill. They drift into the living room sleepily, pick up books and whisper because anything more gets a fast and loud, “Shhh,” from Mama.

After the silent cheerios crunching, :/ (seriously, I struggle so much with annoyance at the noises of people eating cereal) it’s downstairs to do school. I need to write out Gregory’s assignments for the next week. Usually I do them 5 days at a time and a week goes faster than you can believe. We started this system of assignments written down in a notebook by the day, where they have to show me a completed row of checkmarks at the end of the day before they may move to the next one. This has helped a lot with missing homework. It’s all homework around here, but I mean science questions not answered, English paragraphs not written, quizzes not done. (It happens.)

On my kitchen counter I have ingredients for a big pot of chili for lunch. Gabe’s parents plan to stop in and he will be awake by then. I really should be chopping an onion about now, as well as making sure the coffee cake gets baked in my oven that is slowly letting me down by taking longer and longer to preheat. If I want to get it done by lunchtime, I had better go turn on the oven.

I have a lot of steps to get in today, too. Gabe got both of us those personal fitness trainer wristbands that sync to an app on your phone. We are counting steps and trying to be more active. It’s February, you know, and not particularly fun to go outside here in PA. I walk around my house a lot, though, just picking up stuff on the floor and keeping an eye on things in general. Haha. Yesterday I logged over 8,000 steps which is about 4 miles. I didn’t think that was too bad for a SAHM! Still, it’s not fair to compare, because Gabe did over 12,000 and passed me up while I was either sitting in church or sleeping. Olivia suggested that I go to the bathroom really often during the meeting last night at church. 🙂

Gotta jog along!

 

 

Notes to my Younger Self

My assignment today is to pick a person and write to them specifically. I picked myself, 10 years ago when I had a three year old and a toddler and my days seemed to be much ado over very small stuff. I am writing this as it pops into my head. It’s definitely not some holy writing or aged-to-perfection and prayed-over piece.

  • It doesn’t really matter what else is going on, soul care is still the most important care. You might feel crosseyed in all your places from the weariness of not enough sleep and being a food source and having to constantly be everywhere, but if you keep your soul fat, you will be fine. This is not a season of heavy Bible study. Just let that go and find a promise for a lifeline for this day. Listen to an inspiring song until you know all the verses and they loop through your head the whole day long. Pray short prayers that come from your heart. “Help me, Jesus,” is a great start.
  • Lighten up. If you have never learned to laugh at yourself or at life, you had better start now. Maybe you find yourself fuming about the dribbles on the toilet ring. Think about it. You, the smart and capable woman who knows exactly where the Lysol wipes are, having a fit about something that will take 5 seconds to wipe away. It’s hilarious, isn’t it? As a bonus, your children are endless sources of amusement. They haven’t learned how to be sophisticated. Like the time your little girl asked if she could have some peaches. You were occupied at the moment and told her she can get some, and she sidled up a bit later and said, “Mama, my belly feels quite plump full of peaches.” That’s when you realized that she ate the whole quart. You had a choice of either having a conniption or just being chill about it. Who knew that a very small girl can hold 4 cups of peaches anyway?
  • Learn to kneel down to the level of short people. Take a walk and be okay with every stick and shiny rock is that is of such absorbing interest. “You are right, son, that stick does look just like a gun. What are you going to shoot?” Look at the jelly bread with the bite out of it and say, “Sure enough. It is a hippo!” Who really cares if they scrutinize their bread one methodical bite at a time? Don’t squish the joy just because you are such a grown up.
  • Slow down, like way, way down.  Telling a toddler to hurry with his boots is like saying, “Here is a great handle to pull Mama’s chain.” It is commonly known that children become all thumbs as soon as you start to scurry around. They can’t find anything and have to go potty and need a drink, etc. etc. Does getting to church on time really matter as much as a wounded spirit in a small person? If you have a time sensitive appointment, give yourself a half hour per child just to get out the door. It’s all right if it takes all morning to get to the store and buy groceries. Perks of the job: you take all the time it takes.
  • Accept the fact that you will fail sometimes. It is much better to apologize to your child promptly than to castigate yourself all day because you messed up and are such a loser mom. You may feel like saying, “You kids just really got on my nerves, and I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”  That’s a rationalization for your sin, not an apology. Instead you should say, “I was wrong to yell at you when you pulled the curtain down. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me?” Help your children to understand how to keep the air clear in your home by demonstrating repentance yourself. You will not lose face. You will gain respect.
  • You will be much happier once you stop looking for praise. Remember that day you tallied up the approximate number of snaps you had done up for your onesie-wearing, sleeper-clad babies in their lives? You were exasperatedly proud of that number but nobody else seemed impressed. This job is never-endingly repetitious and nobody else notices (the baby certainly doesn’t care) that you just wiped all the goo off the highchair for the third time today.  They really have no idea how hard it is to wipe things all the time. (Laugh at yourself right there and go eat some chocolate.)
  • Give it all freely, the face washing and the cup of water and the storytime with the same favorite book you read 20 times already. You wanted to be useful in God’s kingdom, didn’t you? Well here you are, grown up and useful as anything but it doesn’t feel like you expected it to feel. There is a verse just for you in 1 Cor. 15:58.  “Therefore, my dear… sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Maybe it still seems odd to you to say, “Lord, in your name I offer this snack of fish crackers and milk in a sippy cup. Be pleased to accept it with my love.” But that is the reality and you will freely receive for everything you freely give.

I write these things to my younger self, but here’s the thing.  Every day I am still learning, and I have been working at it for over 13 years. It has gotten easier, just like any other job where you practice daily and get better at your work, but I am still learning and expect to keep on until I die. Mothering is not a sprint. It’s the marathon of a lifetime. I have a very patient Life Coach who loves me enough to not let things be easy all the time so that I grow stronger. I wish like crazy that the learning curve wasn’t so steep for new mothers, but just know that you will be given exactly what you need in the moment when you need it. He promised it. You are not alone. We are all in this together. Keep going, for Jesus’ sake!

And just for fun even though it’s not mother’s day, because it actually is if you are a mom:

superwoman

Just Brilliant

What percentage of your days would you describe as stellar? I am talking about the days that went so well you don’t even feel like you need sleep at the end of them. I am referring to that span of time where everything felt choreographed to happy music and you just did a brilliant job.

As a stay-at-home teacher-mom, I can tell you that a lot of my days feel like I am stumbling over rocks instead of dancing on the beach. We have our brilliant moments at our house, where everybody likes the food, joins in to the conversation and laughs at the same things. “Ahh, this is wonderful!” I think. Then somebody gets their feelings hurt and I step out of the brilliance and deal with the earthbound problem of an unkind joke or an oversensitive person who can’t laugh at themselves. It would be more fun if the high spot wasn’t so slippery.

That’s life. It’s up and down and in and out and flat on my face crying for mercy and standing in awe with hands raised in worship. Remember Joshua? It happened to him too, and to pretty much every other person, ever.

Here I go making a lot of general statements. We crave excitement. We love the spotlight. We are important. We want to feel good about our lives. We need a lot of money to do the things that make us feel happy. We pine to go back to the beach the week after we got home. We want noble work.

We know we are made for brilliance. This makes it a little difficult to accept the very muddy world we live in, where the sparkle keeps rubbing off.

I asked Gabe how many ordinary sick people come through the ER doors for every spectacular chance to save a trauma victim. His conservative estimate was one hundred. Just routine broken arms, flus, addicts looking for a high, and then one person who is dying and truly needs the training and skills of the ER staff to pull him back into life. All the other people need them too, but they aren’t as exciting.

School teachers work this way too. For every child who really wants to learn and gets excited about a new lesson, there are a few others who have to be coaxed along in the very same lesson. They don’t get to quit just because  it feels like they are sliding backwards instead of gaining ground some days.

Anybody who ever came home flying high from Bible school or a missions trip knows how hard it can be to be kind to the commoners at home. They are so exasperatingly stuck in their own ruts and so mundanely humdrum and their needs are so silly.

Even newly-weds who vow they will never become dull and prosaic toward each other find themselves, at some point, working hard at their marriage to keep it fresh. According to research, the constant euphoria of the honeymoon would literally frizzle the life out of a body if sustained for years at a time.

Apparently brilliance isn’t sustainable this side of heaven. It isn’t the goal we should be working toward. Instead we need to lean hard toward faithfulness. The assignments in our lives will be really boring in some ways and nobody may even notice that we deserve a star for our chart. We act like little children, pulling the covers up over our bed in a slip-shod fashion, then begging for a piece of candy as a reward for our hard work. Really, the only reason we made the bed at all was for the candy.

Faithfulness does the steady, hard work because God is pleased by the heart that bows to His plan. We wouldn’t see any need to get up and keep on going if the crowns were handed out now. The brilliance is coming; we even get to see little bits of it now. It really is coming, but not just yet.

Joshua’s promises had a condition. Look at chapter 1:7-9.

7 “Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid;do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

It was pretty important that he follow his instructions, wasn’t it? I don’t know what yours are for this day, but they are right in front of you. Mine? I go to cook cereal and brew coffee. I will leave the tiara behind. Join me?

The Farmer’s Wife Says, “Enough”

The farmer’s wife wanted to make noodles: long, straight, eggy noodles. But she found that her kitchen was too small for the long noodles and she was exasperated as she went in search of the farmer. “Dear,” he sighed, running his calloused hands through the sparse hair on the back of his head, “you know we don’t have the funds to enlarge the kitchen.”

“It’s the whole house,” she shrilled. “I can hardly move in the bedroom either, and you know how it is when your cousin comes over with his wife and ten children! People sitting on the floor!”

“I will go see Neighbor Wiseman today,” he promised wearily. Neighbor Wiseman was old enough to have seen most any trouble you could bring to him, so old that he usually suggested startlingly simple solutions. There was nothing complicated or expensive about his advice and the farmer trusted him. After unloading his problem he waited patiently while Neighbor Wiseman stared at the clouds.

“Errhrmm,” Wiseman cleared his throat and looked around vaguely for the farmer. “What you need to do is bring the chickens inside.” The farmer was a little surprised but he remembered how well he had been served by Neighbor Wiseman’s insights in the past.

The chickens pecked under the table, messed a few times, even laid surprise eggs, but his wife was still unhappy. The old man kept suggesting that they bring more animals inside until there was a goat eating the curtains, a dog napping on the bed, and a cow parked smack in the doorway looking out over the porch.

The farmer had to crawl out of a window to get out. “This is terrible advice! Our house is too small for all these animals and it is not helping!”

Neighbor Wiseman smiled and suggested one more change, “Ask your cousin and his family over for dinner.”

“We would love to,” the farmer said, “but they wouldn’t even be able to get inside the door!”

“You are ready to take out the animals,” Wiseman observed sagely. So they did. They pushed that lazy cow off the porch, banished the curtain-eating goat, woke the annoying dog, and shooed the constantly scratching chickens out to the yard. The farmer’s wife looked around her home and and smiled.

“I never knew how big our house is! And look at all these eggs!” Singing a cheerful little ditty, she got out her mixing bowl and some flour and started to make noodles.

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So that is my paraphrase of a story I read with Olivia. It spoke to me in an every-day-ish way. I am currently the farmer’s wife sorting out the superfluous things that are crowding my house. It is one of my February goals, along with writing every day, so you can be quite sure you will hear more about it.

I have now removed several cattle from the boys’ bedroom and the traces of an annoying dog who spent time in the school room. Yesterday the flock of chickens in my reading room went to their proper roosts and now it is a restful room again.

Today? I will probably just make noodles.