Dream On

We humans seem prone to disdain the familiar and long for the sparkle and delight of the stars. Yet I have never met a single person over 30 who says that their life has turned out just exactly the way they dreamed it would when they were teens. We pretty much all end up having to work, do some stuff we don’t really enjoy, be faithful in the minutiae of life. You know, grow up.

I am not suggesting that we give up on dreaming. People without dreams are sort of walking dead. (“Without vision, the people perish.”) Those who dare to dream and work toward what they long to do are those who achieve great things.

Did you ever notice how many people have long periods of waiting in seeming obscurity before they are able to realize their dream? There was a prince, with his high education as a royal in Egypt, who took high-handed action to save his people and ended up fleeing to the wilderness to stay alive. For forty years he was “lost”. I have a hunch he thought many times that seeing his people freed from slavery was only a pipe dream.

One of my more recent favorite stories is of Grandma Moses, who showed artistic promise when she was just a child. Then life got so busy and full of serving her family that she didn’t pick up brushes and paints until she was 78 years old. But then- Wow! She painted nearly 1600 pieces before she died at age 101.

I don’t understand God’s timeline, and I certainly cannot assure you that your dreams will come true. So when the doors don’t open, the plans fall through, the sickness is not healed, the spouse never materializes, the travel visa gets snarled in red tape… what then? Solomon said this: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” Sometimes there is not a shred of evidence that the thing longed for will ever become reality. We can choose to accept the present as a gift (pun intended), as the Best, right now, from a loving Providence. He gives joy instead of heart sickness.

Dream on, my friends, and believe that your times are in His hands!

Open Letter to an iPad Thief

Hello,

I wonder if you knew that when my husband (your loved one’s nurse) stopped by and laid an iPad on the bed, he was at the end of a long night shift, just ready to head out the door. He saw that your loved one was uncomfortable, so he had the compassion to come in and try to fix things up for him. That is when he forgot to pick up his device (which he “never” takes along to work) and you saw your opportunity. After he left, the other nurses asked if the iPad on the bed belonged to you, and you said it did. It got packed in with your belongings, and you just had yourself a freebie. I know it was a big temptation, but they gave you the chance to be honest. I am sorry you weren’t.

The funny thing is, that particular first generation iPad isn’t really very valuable anymore. Three years is a long time in the evolving world of technology. If you are interested in knowing what you stole, here is what it is to us, not in dollars, but in value.

You should try the Bugs and Buttons app. My 2 year old really loved counting buttons and sorting colors during her quiet time on the couch. There is a whole folder of pictures that our four-year-old drew and colored on her favorite app. She would tell you to try Monkey Math, where you trace numbers and count objects, as well. Have you seen that one yet? Our older children don’t really mind not having to do flash cards, but they had a lot of really good audiobooks and music on there for road trips. The boys especially wish they could still use the iPad to hunt deer when they have earned enough privileges on their job chart.

As for me, what you stole was my homeschool tutor and my all around helper. I had a lot of books on that shelf, books I highly prized. There is one I especially recommend to you, titled Don’t Waste Your Life. That iPad was also my recipe book, my contacts list, my connection to the world outside my house. Did you know that you stole my Bible? I miss that more than anything, because it was the one I used to study, underline, and note.

For a few days we kept hoping it would show up, someone would bring it to lost and found, etc. When my husband called you and courteously asked you if you had any idea where his iPad is, you had no idea. In fact, you hadn’t seen it. I bet you were a little surprised that we knew exactly who you were. Maybe you just knew we were the sort of people who would not press charges. I scrambled to change passwords on all the stuff I always left open in my bookmarks bar. We haven’t quite figured out a way to log out of everything remotely. I suppose if you are smart enough to disable the tracking setting, you know better than to incriminate yourself with funny business on our Amazon account. At any rate, we would love to have it back, but we will be okay. No doubt every one will adapt to how life was three years ago before it got so handy-dandy.

I hope you enjoy. Oh, and do check out the Bible app. It is amazing.

Sincerely, the Peights

Ten Ways to Value the Small People

Get onto their level when you talk. That means, bend down or lift them up. Just because they are short doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be courteous.
Really look at their artworks and treasures. Even if it is the fifth rainbow scene they have drawn that day. (And wait to dispose of the extras until they are sound asleep.)
Pay attention to what they say. One of my sons is long winded on subjects like rocks and fossils. I confess, I tend to glaze over as soon as he starts. But I don’t know of a better way to get to know your child than to let them talk while you listen.
Let them hang out with you, even when they are a dreadful nuisance. When Alex was a tot, he was literally always at my side, trying to help. He didn’t play with toys, and I was constantly tripping over him and cleaning up his messes. Tonight he made hamburger buns from scratch and grilled the burgers and cooked the green beans for our supper. It was more like he was tripping over me in my attempts to give him a hand. He felt quite accomplished and I was so proud of him.
Know their interests, provide them with resources, and find books at the library to drag home. 🙂 For us, that usually means a stack of Zoobooks for the science trivia lover, a few wilderness survival books/make your own handicrafts for the hands-on boy, some American Girl stories for the six year old, and a pile of storybooks. I have a friend who spends hours sewing costumes for her children so that they can participate in living history projects.
Take time to teach them what they want to learn. Today my Livvy sewed her first wobbly hand stitched seam around a pillow for her doll. I didn’t think I had time to teach her, but her wistful face reproached me, and it turned out to be a lot fewer knots than I expected.
Hear what they are saying behind the tears. For my small tots it often just means, “Please, feed me and put me to bed!” With my older children, it is becoming a bit more complicated, “But they will laugh at me if you cut my hair like that.” Sigh. Good bye, cute little-boy mop-top.
Play with them. Our house is too tight for “panther in the bull pen”, but we play peek around the corner and hide and seek outside. Inside is Pictionary or Sorry or Candy land, and oh, dear Lord, not Memory again!
Give them the security of boundaries. Nothing looks quite as neglectful to me as a child who is left completely to his own devices. He doesn’t even matter enough for the adults in his life to bother to guide him.
Laugh with them. Sometimes when everyone is pulling me this way and that, needy, needy, and I start fraying at the edges, we all crowd around the computer and do silly web cam shots. We howl uproariously and everybody likes everybody else again.

I just reread my list and am feeling convicted. I know this stuff, but it is so easy to push aside the children while the big, important adult world gets its demands met. I am looking a bit dolefully at a long winter in a little house with enough energy pent up to fuel a spaceship. I am going to be tested, oh yes. I need these reminders so much.

I want to give a bow to all those people who make my children feel special. Maybe you are the Sunday school teacher that genuinely takes an interest in your little charges. Thank you for the time you brought hot chocolate and donuts for your class. Maybe you are the man who never forgets to bring smarties to share with your little friends after church. (Hi, Steve.) Or perhaps you are the adult who knows all their names and asks them how they are doing. Maybe you taught them some new games, or helped them bat the ball at the school picnic instead of going off with the big people to play your own game. You noticed them struggling to reach the water fountain and gave them a boost. My children know who you are, and so does God. He even said something about it, about not losing a reward just for giving a drink of cold water. Thank you!

A Different Sort of Weird

It had been a fun, field tripping sort of day in the Upper Peninsula. Because lunch was beef jerky and cheese sticks with apples, everyone was on the grouchy side of hungry by five o’clock. There were no fast food restaurants, and most of the diners were closed for the season. We were forty minutes from our cabin where there was abundant food, uncooked, of course. So we kept searching.

Finally the GPS directed us to Jack’s Eats. Now Gabe and I make fun of any food establishment with the word “eat” in the name, but this would have to do. The parking lot was completely full. As we were piling out of our vehicle, an elderly lady watched us with frank astonishment. “Are these?.. All?.. Yours?” she asked, dumbfounded. I looked around and assumed she must be talking to me, since there was nobody else in the vicinity. (What do you mean? There are only five!) I didn’t say it, but my children snickered. “Five isn’t even many!” they said to each other, wondering at the silly lady’s perception.

We entered the diner, a seat-yourself place, and started threading our way to the back dining room in quest of a table. The talking din became noticeably quieter as the entire crowded roomful craned to watch us. There was, in fact, not a single table available. I resisted the urge to quack loudly as we threaded our way back out past all those full tables. Five miles further down the road we found an even greasier diner with a bit of space. So the hunger crisis was averted, and all was well.

I like this story because of my children’s amusement and the total lack of embarrassment they showed in being such an enigma. Sometimes I shrivel a bit under the disapproving vibe: the sheer audacity of having more children than is considered normal… must be some kind of freaks without many smarts. “Wow! It must take a lot of food at your house! How do you ever reach around to them all? You raising a bunch of kids to do all the work?” I think the comments are slight admiration with occasional undertones of sarcasm about the huge carbon footprint we are leaving. I also think they are a little unmannerly, don’t you?

Recently I met a lovely Indian lady at a park and we chatted about our children, our cultures, our values, etc. She told me how incredibly difficult it was for her to come to America to study with her husband. They found themselves without people, so far away from all the connections that were completely vital to living in their culture in India. When they had a baby, her mother-in-law came for 4 months to help with the baby. The grandfather of the child got to choose her name as a mark of honor. “It is sad that America does not value family and children,” she concluded.

I couldn’t agree more. In our society, it is more important to get a thirty year mortgage on a McMansion than to fill it with people. Garages are packed with ATV’s, boats, snowmobiles, you name it, but we can’t afford to have children. There are endless jokes about how inconvenient/expensive/disruptive the kids are. I am just getting up on my soap box to tell you that I am sick and tired of it!

It isn’t so much the number of children we have as the attitude we display. This sad old world needs to see us happily visiting with our little guys while we walk into the grocery store. It needs to see us smile into their faces, listen to their stories, laugh with them at the ducks gobbling the bread at the park. It needs to see us bending down to their level to explain why they may not run across the parking lot. It even needs to see a kindly firm “No” when our children beg for candy. Our society needs to see that we Christians will not subscribe to the hip and modern notion that pouring out our lives for the sake of the next generation is much too sacrificial and time consuming.

I think something in me has been growing up and getting bolder about the fact that we are living counter-culture. When the lady in the pottery shop told me, “I only had two and boy, was it tough!” I simply said, “I decided when I became a mother that I was going to make it my career.” Maybe she thought it was rude, but like I said, I am fed up with feeling slightly apologetic about my values.

Recently there was media buzz about a woman who chose to stay home with her family, describing her as a person “who never worked a day in her life”. Wow.

So… here we are, living on one income, stacked into our little house, wearing our second hand clothes, sporting our home-style haircuts, working hard to grow a lot of our food, (go ahead and measure our carbon footprint), trying to stay out of debt, having a string of children, spending our very lives to teach them well. So what if it is hard. You got a problem with that?

I am calling all Christian parents to rally together and show the twisted world we live in that we really do believe our children are our greatest investment.

Interior Monologue at Two AM

In the past week I lost at least three blog posts to the shadows of the night, because I ~~was too lazy to get up~~ needed to sleep. I don’t know why it is that sometimes the writing flows and other times it gets stopped up. Neither do I understand why I think up long, interesting bits about life at 2 AM and then cannot remember more than shreds of it at 7 AM. I should probably do what some bloggers do, give myself a deadline. You can expect a fresh post every Tuesday and Friday morning at seven, sharp. (That was a joke, because where would be the fun in that?)

Last night we went to bed early, and here I am, all chipper and feeling like I already slept enough.

The new family vehicle started hiccuping on us last weekend. Some stabilitrak system or other was kicking on and off without provocation. OH, NO. Service stabilitrak soon. It is a little hard to ignore when the lights flash and blink on the dash. We needed an inspection anyway, but the title transfer wasn’t done yet. So we decided to get a tune up, see what we are up against. Halfway to the garage, a distance of seven miles, I noticed that the warning light was off, the vehicle no longer hiccuping at all. Thank the Lord for large mercies!

Driving a Suburban is a little like navigating a smallish whale, although I have to say, this one is smoother than the old van was, by a long shot. And do you have any idea how much cargo room these guys have? It is amazing.

Gabe convinced me to go to our local outfitter’s store last Saturday when they were having a summer blowout sale. He brought me a helmet when he got off work Friday night and told me to go get a bike to wear with it. Something like that. Again, he was working, so I loaded up the little guys and off we went, bike shopping. I haven’t owned a bike for at least 10 years, although I occasionally took his for a spin. Did you ever ride a men’s bike with a really high bar? In a skirt? Awkward. Whoa, I really hope I don’t have to stop until I get back home to the mounting block.

He had preselected what he thought was the one I would like, so I browsed for “a bike with vine decals and a nice seat, but not a granny seat”. There were two with vine decals. Me being me, I got the cheaper one. Gabe being Gabe, he had the other one in mind, the one with the shock on the front tire. However, I can’t see myself doing extreme trails anytime soon, so this is fine. It is really fun to go buzzing around the back roads with my boys. We have no arrangement for the little girls to ride along, so Gabe and I haven’t biked together yet. All in good time.

I cleaned out my garden this week, all but the fall stuff. I feel cleansed. No more blighted tomatoes and unhappy watermelons. No more weeds on steroids. Just their babies. I can now look out my kitchen window without feeling the failure of neglected plants. And those grapes that we were fondly anticipating? It puzzled me to find that all the ripe ones kept getting neatly picked off their bunches, the green ones left behind by some fastidious critter until they were ripe, when they would also be neatly picked off. I myself ate maybe 5 grapes, total. Rita solemnly insisted that she did not touch the grapes. The thing was, there were no deer tracks. Then the children told me they kept seeing the cats in the grape vine. I suppose for the cats, those 65 dollars we spent to get them spayed is pretty good insurance. (We are now responsible pet owners.)

We took a ride up to the ski slopes last evening, looking out over the vista of mountains to the west, the glorious sunset highlighting the shapes of scores of windmills in the distance. Gabe thinks they look clean and green. I think they are just a little annoying when I am trying to see the scenery. On our way home we stopped at a local ice cream place where you can get 5 kid cones and 1 medium for $4.25. It was dark and cold and shivery for ice cream eating, but when has a child ever objected to that?

I recently read a thought that impressed me. “When it comes to child training, you decide how you want it, then you make it that way.” (Elisabeth Elliot, who else?) Maybe that is a little overly simplistic, but it is pretty true. When your children are allowed to whine, grab, belch at the table, disobey Mom when they feel like it, and other such socially unacceptable behaviors, it is because you have decided it is too much work to train them otherwise.

We are starting a new initiative this week: The Annual No Complaining About the Food Act. Every so often I notice that my children have fallen into a bad habit of grumbling about what is for dinner. Not everybody dislikes the same food, but with 5 children, there is a good chance that at least one person will not be impressed with the fare. All you need is one person turning up his/her nose for the chorus to begin. “Not beans again! Couldn’t we have spaghetti and meatballs?” Addy: “Have getti and meatballs!” Next meal: “I wish you would make rice instead of quinoa.” Addy: “I wants rice!” Random other child: “No, no, I don’t like rice!”

Mine all like broccoli, by the way, which makes it a bit puzzling when someone chokes about chicken noodle or fried potatoes. Some of them love oatmeal and others prefer eggs, while still others just wish they could have a bagel. And of all things, the kid who hates mayo loves mustard! It sounds like I really have a lot of children, doesn’t it? 😉 I don’t mind preferences. It makes birthday meals fun when you know what they love to eat. But you can’t always have what you prefer. Deal with it. I got tired of displeased sighs at meal time. It’s time to decide how we want it and make it that way.

Last year I purposely made foods they didn’t enjoy until they quit complaining. This year I amped up the stakes. We are having dessert every night this week. Gasp! If you forget and grouse just one time about the food you are served, you get halfsies on dessert. If you grouse more than once, you don’t get any. Fortunately, a jar of peaches counts as dessert for our children. Or a piece of Dove chocolate. Ask Rita how big a half piece of dove chocolate is.

Last night, sort of by accident, I made a total fail of a meal. It was edible, but it wasn’t good. We excused Addy for saying, “It’s yucky.” The rest deserved their ice cream cones.

I just read Code Name Verity, which is actually considered a young adult book, although I wouldn’t recommend it. It made me cry. While I could never be a spy, I love reading spy stories. (I don’t know if it is some housewife thing… me, in my safe little world, reading about the intrigue and unbelievable duplicity of the CIA or Mossad.) I wondered if I could be that brave if I were being interrogated concerning my faith in Jesus and my fellow believers like so many Christians are today.

All right, I will spare you more stream of consciousness and go back to bed.

Favorite Things

Sometimes my children really surprise me. Most days they make me laugh a good belly laugh at least once. And occasionally the surprise and laugh are together, like the day I was reading Gregory’s writing assignment titled, “All About Me”. He began with the usual 3rd grade stats about size, age, and looks, then: “My favorite food is cellry.” This from the child who has only recently been able to eat salad without gagging. Who loves all things pale and pasta but struggles mightily with beans and broccoli… who mostly likes peanut butter in his celery. I don’t know if he was trying to impress the teacher or if it was just another of his little jokes, but I did enjoy the moment.

If I were to ask Rita which are her favorite clothes, she would probably give me a blank look, indicating that she has no time for such frivolous questions. She does, however, come up with some eye-bending combinations. You can see one of them in the previous post… the teal shirt and the light green skirt. She had another set that seemed to make her feel especially elegant. The skirt was rust colored with golden brown embroidery and trim. I thought it was kind of cute, but she consistently wore it with a purple plaid shirt. The effect was unbelievable. Her feelings were rather wounded when I just couldn’t stand it and made her go change. One day Gabe kindly informed me that he never really liked that skirt, so I dropped it into the trash can in a private moment. I don’t make a big deal out of mismatched stuff for play clothes, but I have decided that there is no point in hanging onto ugly stuff just because… 🙂

We finally found a suitable upgrade for the family Caravan. We prayed that it would keep running at least until Gabe was done with school, and it was still going strong, just rather rusty and repeatedly needing power steering fluid. Oh, yes, the AC hasn’t worked for years, one of the windows wouldn’t close, the cruise wasn’t dependable, and the exhaust system needed to be replaced. And it was due to be inspected in September. Last Saturday Gabe traded it in for a Suburban. I had made an appointment a month earlier to take the kittens to a pet shop in hopes that customers would want to adopt them, so I couldn’t go along on the vehicle swap down VA way. Instead, Greg and Livvy went along. As Gabe was filling out paperwork, he noticed that our tender hearted little girl was suddenly catching the drift that they were going to leave the van. They had to take a little walk and get ahold of the sobs. That tickled me and touched me both. There is no accounting for taste when it comes to favorites.

Addy has caught onto the thing of laying claim to certain toys or books and guarding them diligently from the clutches of any other child. I never can understand how a doll can lay unclothed and uncared for for days, and then suddenly it becomes the very most precious, sought after toy to fight about and defend and sob about at night when another child has it in their bed. She has a “peshial” book, blanket, doll, even “peshial” shoes and jacket. Don’t get me started on the rose fork and the pointy spoon and the pink bowl!

My own favorite thing right now is fresh tomatoes, sun warmed and mellow. I like to imitate Gordon Ramsey and tell the children to go out to the garden to find me “one. stunning. organic. beeeautiful. tomato.” for my salad. 🙂

This next bit is more like unfavorite stuff, but I need to tell you the latest kitten story. We had that appointment at the pet shop. We got there early, but sorry, someone else already had a litter there and they only take one litter at a time and they don’t have my name anywhere despite the fact that one month earlier the girl on the phone clearly reserved this spot for me. So I didn’t ride along to VA with my husband on his day off… all for nothing? I guess the pet shop lady felt a little sorry for me, since she told me that I can bring the kittens again on Labor Day. Sigh. Okay. The good news is, one got adopted. If you wanted the pretty orange one, sorry, but you missed your chance.

I have now suffered the ultimate humiliation in finding homes for these kittens. On Labor Day afternoon we loaded up the crate at the pet shop with 6 kittens still very much homeless. Something desperate in me snapped. Why not try cold calling? Okay, kids, we are gonna stop at all the farms and see if we can find someone who has a spot for them. By the fifth farm I was so traumatized by rejection that I was going to drive right past, but Alex begged me to let him try. He started out by saying, “My mom is too embarrassed to ask you this, but we have some kitties…”

(I will never be unkind to the steak salesman again.)

I Can’t Keep Up!

But that is okay, as long as I sort of keep up, you know… like make sure my people are fed and clean and have fat souls. It’s the date that gives me trouble. Tonight we were writing letters to prison inmates, a ministry our church tries to help with about once a month. I dated my first letter August 19, which I discovered was just a few days wrong.

August 19 was actually the day we started back to school in this household. Just like that, the days are chock-full, the summer “over” in the sense of carefree, go-swimming-any-old-time, sleep-late-if-you-wish, etc. I am actually grateful for the more disciplined schedule. With Gabe’s work schedule being all over the place, days and nights all mixed up from week to week, it felt like we were all just flying by the seat of our collective pants this summer. I can handle that for a while, but I like it better to have some firmly established routines. Nothing like school to sober us all up at bedtime and getting up time.

We always do a party when we start back up in the fall, but this past Monday found me totally unprepared, so I told the children we will shoot for more of a Grand Opening party, like stores do when they have the kinks worked out of a new system. The DVDs are working all right for the boys. I like to hear them doing math drills while I am teaching Olivia. I have never met a homeschool mom who loved doing math drills. It is a bit of a problem when you don’t have the competition of a class to force you into being speedy. Gregory was in tears the first morning because he couldn’t keep up with his class. I still spend the entire morning with the students, monitoring, checking, fielding questions, teaching Livvy, keeping the little girls busy, etc. I won’t be twiddling my thumbs anytime soon! And when I do, I will know what else I could be doing.

Last week was crammed, the chief event a delightful campout at a nearby park with my brother and his family. It was so relaxing, after all the frantic packing lists and hauling of ice chests and setting up campsites, to sit and watch a fire and let the kids get thoroughly acquainted with the local variety of dirt.

Nate and Becca. I made them lean in like teenagers do, but you can see, they aren’t quite young enough to pull it off.

“I can do it myself!” Addy’s favorite phrase these days. Here Gabe is rescuing her from her independent efforts to swim.

Funny title to read when camping, huh? They couldn’t all see, so I was interrupted about seventeen times as they shifted heads and bodies and craned necks, complaining.

Cousins, making a book of baby animals. These two stuck together like cheese and crackers.

Gabe and I attempted a selfie. Something we are, apparently, also a little too old to do well. At least, I don’t think it is particularly flattering. But I like the hilarity of the picture, as it captures the general air of relaxation and togetherness of those camping days.

I did laundry for two days, solid, when we got home again. On Friday I turned 1/2 bushel of tomatoes into sauce and the next day I froze 23 quarts of corn, then the next day I took the children to church without Gabe because he had to work. That afternoon I spent hours catching up with a little girl I used to babysit. Only now she is all grown up and going into nursing school. (Somebody pinch me.) Which brought me to Monday morning, school starting and no party. The children were very understanding. We hope to do our Grand Opening on Friday. Because this… this choice to do school at home is a bit engrossing. Everything changes for 9 months. I think we deserve a party.

On Being Safe

Some of you heard about this story and have asked me to retell it. I have a difficult time verbalizing it all, mostly because of the recurring nightmares and repeated trips back to trusting a kind, oh, such a Kind Providence for what may happen or what might have been.

I think I have known for a long time that life is a gift, meant to be lived freely, offered back with open palms to the One who gives it. I have said that the surest way to live impoverished is to live with clenched hands, keeping everything for oneself, holding tightly to control.

I have known these things in my head, but I never experienced anything like the raw terror and scrabbling to hold onto life like I did this past week. (edit: I wrote this a month ago.)

Any parent or child care giver knows that sense of responsibility that comes with wanting to keep our beloved little people safe from harm. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. We would gladly shield them from struggle and heartbreak if we could. And especially, we want to keep them safe.

July 4th… It was the best weather and the best water for a canoe trip with friends, the river just thunderstorm-swollen enough to keep the canoes from scraping constantly on rocks. We arranged for babysitters for the smallest children and took the older ones along to the drop off point. Five children from two families and one mama, waiting with the canoes while the canoe trailer was hauled to the take out point, 12 miles downstream. It took a while. The children got bored, started splashing in the shallows of a small stream that joined the larger river just there. The water was about knee deep, and there was a rope swing on the far bank, where they were having fun swinging over the little creek.

Just as I was heading down the bank to keep a closer eye on their play, I saw the smallest girl, the daughter of our friends, swept off her feet in the current. I yelled for the others to help her up. Her big sister who can swim a bit, grabbed for her, but to my horror, I saw them both sweep out to the dark, still water of the river. The little girl was climbing up onto her big sister in sheer desperation, pushing her under. I tore into that water, swimming as hard as I could. It was deep, much deeper than I expected, and before I got out to them, they had both gone under the surface twice. The little one popped up right in front of me and grabbed me in a strangle hold around my neck.

I am not a strong swimmer, more of a doggy paddler. I have never swum with a dead weight hanging onto me. And I couldn’t find her sister. I yelled and yelled for help, frantically sweeping around me with my arms and legs, trying to decide what to do. Should I take little sister to shore, then try to dive for the other girl? Oh Lord, I can’t dive. Oh, Jesus, these girls are supposed to go camping with all their cousins this weekend. Jesus, help! In those moments, I thought that their parents would come back to find that I had allowed their daughter to drown.

Just then, she slowly floated up beside me, holding perfectly still, eyes wide open, just under the surface. She was too tired or too panicked to make any effort to swim. I grabbed her hand, but I didn’t have the strength to lift her head above the water, so I started the struggle back to shore, towing her under water. My son ran for the life jackets, tossed, missed, ran for another, tossed again, and somehow we caught it and she pulled herself up, gasping the sweet air. When we all staggered out onto the bank, I could hardly believe that the birds were still singing, the river was still sparkling, the children were all still breathing, alive.

We huddled in the brilliant sunlight, wrapped in towels, praising God for life, for breath.

I cannot shake the feeling of that near tragedy. I know my capabilities as a swimmer are not the reason we all got out safely. I don’t understand how that child could hold her breath that long, yet I don’t know how long it was… just long enough to hold all the terrors I ever felt. It was, pure and simple, not the day of death, but of life.

“I won’t die until it is my time to die,” as a teenager I said it glibly to my mom when she was concerned about my safety in traveling to third world countries. I know this in my head, but I have always struggled with the question, “What about tragedies? accidents? freak circumstances?”

Over and over this week I have heard the calm words of David from Psalm 31, when he was running for his life.

Fear is on every side;
While they take counsel together against me,
They scheme to take away my life.

But as for me, I trust in You, O Lord;

I say, “You are my God.”
My times are in Your hand;

I have realized how tight my grip is, how invested I am, maybe not so much in my own safety, but in the safety of my children. I have felt how tightly my fists can clench onto life. I mean, one minute they can be laughing, splashing in shallows and the next they can be drowning. It haunts me. I have beaten myself up again and again for not being more aware of how deep the water was. I have realized, too, that life is full of terrors, of danger, of fearful things. I can live in fear and try endlessly to cover all the bases to make sure my children are okay. Or I can relinquish control and trust God to cover the bases that I am sure to miss.

I wish I could say it was an easy thing to learn, but it was not, and it continues, every day. Join me in giving our babies, all our dear ones, to the safekeeping of the only real safe place, the arms of the Father. And thank God with me, yes?

A Quick Note

Let me just take a minute before my husband gets home from work (yes, he had to work 12 hours in the E.R. today, which stinks, but he is almost done with his shift) to say how excited I am about these book suggestions you are giving me. Many of them I have never read and some I have never even heard of. This is like a treasure hunt for me! Thank you and keep them coming!

Anniversary Giveaway!

WordPress just sent me a congratulatory email saying that I have now been using their blog template for a year. Sure enough, I have. My old archives go back 4 more years but the address I had then was too user surly even for me to remember. Wocket-in-my-pocket has proven to be a much better address.

The thing that makes blogging so much fun is the feed back from readers. It makes all the difference between, “I wonder if what I wrote was just MUD?” to “Wow, how refreshing to find that there are other people out there like me! or not like me! Either way, they read my stuff!”

I really value your comments. 😉

To show you how much I appreciate you, my kind readers, I am hosting a giveaway! Having been an avid reader of Elisabeth Elliot’s books for many years, I decided to give away one of my favorite of all her books, a collection of articles titled “Keep a Quiet Heart”. I pick it up when I feel frustrated, irritated, weary, overwhelmed, etc. You get the idea. 🙂 Her writings have given me courage to carry on when I think I am too tired to “do the next thing”. The most beautiful people I know have this quality… a quiet heart. Isn’t that what we all long for in this very unquiet world?

Here is how you qualify for the giveaway: Simply leave a comment with a book recommendation for me. See, there is something in this for me too. 🙂 It can be anything from children’s literature to historical fiction to classics. I will leave the giveaway open until August 1. Hope to hear from you!