Grief, Gently

We're walking hand in hand and she's grasping a letter I wrote, signed, addressed and stamped. I'm carrying the baby on my hip and she's waving a chubby, dimpled hand at the cars that pass us. Maggie stands on tiptoe to slide the letter into the mail slot, tall enough finally at four. She pauses out in front of the post office, gazing across the street.

"I miss our old house. We had a lot of fun there."

I pause too and follow her gaze. There it is.

In the year plus since we've moved, I've carefully side stepped this place. That's the thing about grief and moving on. You get to work it out your own way, right? Except, when you have kids? It doesn't work that way. When you have children, you have your own process, your own path...but you also walk theirs with them. 7 kids means 7 paths, plus mine. 7 unique interpretations. 7 hearts mending in 7 different ways.

You'd think I would've realized it, but it wasn't until my oldest son was driving me home from the grocery store a few months back that I saw it clearly.  Driving permit still crisp in his pocket, he seriously and cautiously clung to the steering wheel, eyes laser focused on the road ahead. I thought for a moment that he forgot where he was going, had taken a wrong turn. In the gathering dusk, the light in the windows shone brightly as he drove by, agonizingly slow -

and raised his hand in a half wave, half salute to his childhood home.

My heart crumbled in my chest.

Being a Mama means requires self care. Being a Mama also requires self sacrifice. It is within the tension of these two things that we live, heart forward, opened up to show up for our kids, no matter what.

I squeeze Maggie's hand. "Yes, we did have fun there. Let's walk by."

The peonies I always loved in the front garden are opening up. I look up at the window of the room where 3 of my children breathed their very first breaths and, for a moment, feel it all. The good times. The bad. The heart of that home, that time, that life. It hurts.

That's the thing about grief. You can't really control it at all. Maybe, in learning this with my kids, I'll find a gentler way for myself.


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Snow Days

Everyone in Michigan is talking about snow days, cold days, ice days and all the other type of days that keep getting school cancelled. I think we are up to 8 or 9 now, days where the phone rings at 5 am and you hope the kids remember how to sleep in.

I've been reveling in them more than I thought I would. Slow mornings with all of my kids at home haven't been a reality in months. The absence of afternoons with epic amounts of driving that see me home past dark, just in time to put little ones to bed, is like a gift of the one thing I can't make up: time.

I've been so all in with this new life, so dedicated and determined to make it work, that I've quickly left behind things that are still so very much a part of who I am, part of what and how I love. A friend told me the other day - your life has changed so much. And I felt it then, a tug at my heart for all the things that cannot be.

The blessing of a snow day is rediscovering with joy the things buried under the drift of my current reality, not gone, not destroyed, just biding their time. I knit while the baby snoozes in my arms. I teach my tween to bake biscuits. I invite the neighbor kids over who run through the house with my kids and fill it to the brim with laughter. It's familiar and bright, like recognizing a familiar face in a crowd where I least expected it. A reminder that it is always the good things survive in refining.

I watch my oldest in a rare moment, lazily flopped across the foot of my bed, making the baby laugh. And I think of the gift of him, of her, of this day together. Outside the salt trucks scrape along our street and I know that tomorrow we'll be back on track, but right now? Right now the warm center of us is all I see.

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Spark Light

Last week a friend of mine lost and buried a beloved daughter to her struggle with depression. There hasn't been a day since that they haven't been on my mind.

As a mother with a kid heading to high school in the fall, I am just now becoming acquainted with the idea that my little ones, they're growing up and away from me. Their struggles are no longer the sort that are played out in front of me, like when they were little and any heartache could be solved with a cuddle or nap. It can be tempting to think that "I'm fine" really means just that. But I know better.

I vividly remember my life as a teen. Despite being a happy kid in a wonderful family, I had my own bouts with anxiety and confusion. Emotions that seemed insurmountable at the time. I still have those moments today. It's natural and normal, but, like a toddler's tantrum, it requires a constructive response. A message that is consistent and true.

How many times have I walked through life assuming people in my life know how I feel about them without verbalizing it at all? How often have I, on the other side, just needed a simple reminder? Someone to notice. Someone to care.

As someone who is wired for affirmation, I've often felt embarrassed by my need for encouragement. As if requiring a reminder made me some monster egomaniac. I no longer believe that. People are made to be love and to receive love. And while there are a variety of ways that that plays out depending on temperament and personality, none is more virtuous than another. It all comes down to connection.

It's not enough to say I didn't know you needed that. We all need it. We all know it. We know that it isn't always enough to know intellectually that we are unconditionally loved. We need to hear it. To be reminded over and over and over again.

It seems overly simplistic. Stupidly so.

Be love. Spark light. Stop looking around for your mission field and remember that the people in your life right now, today? They are your purpose. Your challenge. Your responsibility. Be committed to that.

If you need help, find someone, anyone, tell them, ask for it. This struggle against darkness and pain is best fought with people on your side. We belong to each other.

Hey, you. You're a miracle, God breathed, made for love, unique and gifted, infused with purpose for glory and good. Your life matters. Your heart matters. Your struggles matter. Your quiet and desperate moments, your sparks of joy - they touch the world around you, even when you are so sure that no one sees.

You are too precious to be lost.




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The Summer Family - 5 Daily Goals

Summer break is fast approaching. I'm already waking up to popsicle requests and the littles have taken to wearing bathing suits all day long. We can hardly contain our excitement at having the big kids home during the day again. There is new sand in the sandbox, a sprinkler set up. We're locked and loaded and ready to go for it.

Still, shifting seasons and learning new skills and lifestyle has me more than a little upside down. Just barely did we get into a groove with the school year and now it's nearly over. Facing down having 7 kids back in the house all day every day is always daunting, but adjusting back after time spent apart is sure to bring with it additional challenges. Despite our normal camps and weeks where this child or that is off on an adventure, we will have plenty of time here, altogether. With ages ranging from high school to toddler, thing are bound to be a bit chaotic. I need a plan.

I took some time to contemplate our family needs this season, pausing to evaluate personal goals, to craft an intentional vision. What do I need for my health - mental and physical - so I can be the best mom I can be? What do my children need, given their variety of stages?

I came up with five daily goals to give our days some shape and intention while also leaving lots of room for the breezy, lazy summer vacation we all need. Goals that are easily customizable and accessible for everyone to participate in, regardless of age. Some can be stacked, hitting the mark with more than one category - baking with mom, working with a friend, meditating during a workout - while others are more stand alone. The main idea is to keep moving forward, to make the most of our time together and to focus on the things that matter to us most.


Work. Help out at home. Volunteer. Find satisfaction through effort.

Rest. Unplug. Be bored. Close your eyes. Meditate. Nap. Pray.

Create. Build. Draw. Knit. Cook. Paint. Write.

Commune. Focus on relationships. Invite friends over. Prioritize one on one time. Family or solo devotions.

Move. Dance. Run, Stretch, Lift. Bike. Skate. Hike.

Grow. Learn something new. Read. Explore. Have conversations about faith, life, future.

There is bound to be plenty of time left over for fun at the pool, a metric ton of popsicles, staying up late to catch fireflies and more screen time than I would prefer. In short, a magical childhood summer. Which sounds just about right.


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Never Easier, Every Day Better

Monday morning and I'm knee deep. Every day just flows right on into the next. If at one time I felt like I had a bit of time to take a breath each evening, a stop gap between one full day and the next - yeah, those days are behind me.

That's the thing no one tells you about the kids growing older. In a great many ways, the benefits are huge. Yes, I have a child old enough to babysit - something my friends with only littles look to enviously. I know, because I've been there. I know because I remember being awestruck at a friends home when her teen made our kids pb&j with a baby on her hip while we visited and sipped lattes. I thought wow - you've arrived. She assured me, though I doubt I believed her - Ha! No. I haven't. It's still difficult - just a different sort of difficult.

I feel that these days where my kids aren't all tucked in and fast asleep at 8 pm, and I'm not getting that "break" I spent years getting used to. Where the school days are longer and much more intense, where we roll into 5 pm barely done with schoolwork and I still have a 9 person family worth of housework ahead. Where the concerns aren't so much a toddler losing their mind in the middle of the grocery store half as much as how this culture is affecting my kids and what on earth I can do about it. There's a lot less knitting, sewing, baking and writing for me these days. I haven't arrived. Not by a long shot. But I'm beginning to embrace that maybe that was never really the point.

This life, it's never been about "set it and forget it." I can know this intellectually, but in practice it still smarts a bit. It starts in the beginning, where we want a baby to sleep through the night - and maybe they do. For a while. Until they don't. On and on with parenting we go, ironing out this or that issue, thinking - yes! There! Done! Until it's undone. Or something else crops up. On and on and on. Add more kids, and it's that doubly, or triply, or x7 more. We want that because it seems easier. Less work. We want to be done with difficulty so we can just sit back and relax.

But, as He always does, God gives us all these maddening opportunities along with a gift. The gift of growth, of sanctification. Instead of allowing us to stagnate, to atrophy in our lives - He uses life to invite us further. Deeper. Beyond what we could have ever fathomed possible.

It's that hook that I can hang my hat on. How I can look out on a Monday morning, with yesterday's laundry in a pile at the foot of my bed, with last weeks bills on my desk, with tomorrow's unfinished homework looming, next week's lesson planning untouched, today's toddler tantrums ramping up and 7 kids worth of Halloween costumes in the back of my mind - and believe that He is present in this chaos.

It's never going to get easier. But every day is better.

He has a plan here.

Every day. For His glory and our good.

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Daily Life Practice

The Spring my brother left to hike the Appalachian Trail, I gave birth to a baby. While he pushed through exhaustion and walked 20 miles in a day, I rode the cresting waves of labor. Each an exercise in survival.

At the peak, he'd rest and survey breathtaking views afforded only to those who do the hard work of getting there. At the peak, I lifted a fresh scrunched up soul to my chest, a miracle infused moment of triumph, pain and searing joy.

It's been a year. In some ways it feels as thought the adventure is over. What is life like after the vista? After the apex of upward toil, sacrifice, strength?

She's one year old.

I knit her a birthday dress made up of hundreds of rows, spiraling around and around, each one seamlessly starting the next, like the 365 days that made up her life. It's imperceptible, how a baby changes, until you look back. When did she get so chubby? Where did those teeth come from? Her first words, her first steps - they just came along and were swept up in daily life, one day bleeding into the next until, suddenly, she's one. Those first few days we marked by hours. 24 hours old. 36. 48. Then in weeks. 2 weeks. 6 weeks. Months and now, like the rest of us - years.

Each day feels so much the same as the last, and yet - we're all growing. It's what happens in the moments that don't feel or look like the big exciting ones. You grow.

It's another normal day that I wake up and remember. Daily life is spiritual practice. It is within the spiraling sameness of daily living that our faith is tested, refined, practiced and played out. This isn't the wait before the ride. It is the ride. In the constant, consistency of one day after another, one foot in front of the other, through the mundane - we practice. We struggle and, over time, we strengthen.

We make spirituality small when we believe it only fits in one Thomas-Kincaid painted box. We miss out on a bigger, all-of-life encompassing intimacy which is what Jesus has for everyone.

It is tempting to believe that we need to change ourselves to become holier, more devout. That we can chameleon our way into the Christian life. But that isn't how God works. God wants you. Just as you are. With your sense of humor, your unique giftedness, your passions and your temperament. People are all different. Christians are all different. This is by His perfect design. Spiritual life practice is less of Extreme Makeover and more of a gentle reshaping that preserves and enhances what was there all along. He takes you, and all that you are, and grows you as you go along. One day at a time.

Sweaters are made up of hundreds of them. Row after row. Lives too. It's not til you get to the end and hold it up that you can fully see how far you've come. How a life can knit a garment of love.

I flip back the covers and my feet find the cold wood of the floor. It's morning and it's time to get started on the next row. Around and around we go.


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A Good Place

Every once in a while, you find yourself in a good place. A smooth place. I know it doesn't last for long, so while it is here, I am lapping it up with gusto.

We are in a time of smooth relationships, little shifts here and there as people grow and change. I notice it in how my oldest and middle boys start doing everything together, despite their 6 year gap. The oldest seems past that big kid need to distance themselves from "babies," and my middle guy is just plain thrilled to be included in everything. It's warming my heart to watch them playing soccer out in the back yard together during the day, or working on projects together in their room. It is a precious time, and it feels like a gift. My oldest will be 13 this summer, and I know that we are in for a lot of big changes. Good things. Growing into a man - things. But this holding space of childhood and brothers bonding is doing my Mama heart good.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing enough, preaching enough, lecturing enough about how we are meant to live. But then my sons bring me a coke they bought with their own little stores of quarters, or my daughters surprise me with picking up one of my chores and completing it beautifully for me, just because - and I see how life is teaching and growing them in a lovely, natural way. I see them reaching out beyond themselves in generosity and I'm so humbled by the people they are becoming.

We are in a time of smooth schooling. Our co op is over for the year, and I'm grateful to be able to just focus on what we do here. We've gradually switched everyone over to Saxon math (formerly we did horizons) and I am absolutely loving it. I was able to skip two of my kids a complete grade up. We are still opening our days with daily bible readings and prayers from my Laudate app, and our read aloud is "Calico Captive" by Elizabeth George. The littles draw, play with blocks or cars or the play kitchen or have older siblings fold paper airplanes for them while I read. It isn't quiet, but it is us, altogether. I'm soaking it in.

As the days get warmer and brighter, I'm trying to ease out of some of the patterns we found ourselves in. I had fallen into the habit of turning on a show for the preschoolers first thing in the morning to give me time and space to caffienate and get my head on straight. Today, I avoided it. And we didn't miss it one bit. We are taking on more projects and slowly adapting our little house to the large family who lives here. This weekend we moved out the boys dressers and replaced them with an ikea shelving unit, which more than doubled the available space in their room. I'm ordering this table to serve as a desk for my oldest. Amazingly, this little home still manages to work for us as our family grows. Not perfectly, of course. But I'm so very thankful.

It seems impossible, but in less than 2 weeks our little Magnolia blossom will be 1 year old. I know we always say "children are blessings!" but never have I felt that to be more true than with our 7th baby, who came to us during a dark desperate time in our family. God did that thing of His - that seemingly backwards way of His that doesn't make a lot of sense to the world - and He gave us the gift of love when we needed it most. Who gets pregnant in the midst of job uncertainty, relationship crisis and and financial instability? God's ways are foolishness to men. During the "worst possible time," God gave us the best possible answer. She is our crowning jewel. I'm knitting her a little birthday dress and getting in as many baby cuddles as I can.

"...God chose the weak things to shame the strong." 1 Cor 1:27

The whole of our lives makes little sense to the outside world. But I'm finding that really is meaningless to me. I'm here, every day. And even through the rough times, we are so abundantly blessed.

So, a good place. A smooth time. Grace, grace, grace and more grace. Thank you, Jesus.


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Gently Does It

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Romans 8:1

How has it been two weeks? Time flies when you are knee deep in birthday season with Holy Week and visitors thrown into the mix. Truthfully, I've barely kept up with spinning all of the plates I've got going and, as is commonly the case, writing is the first thing to go. Except it hasn't, at least not completely. I have a draft folder full of half baked ideas and thoughts, moments of intention that were interrupted. I'm still learning how to be interrupted well. This life is so full of opportunities to stretch and grow into virtue. Sometimes maddeningly so.

The three March birthdays, a baby shower, Easter are all behind us, with the final birthday in this set coming up this weekend, along with a visit from my husband's parents. I've been looking toward this weekend as an end cap to the madness since before Lent. I know that living life to "just get past this" isn't how I want to be, nor is it what I am called to. Still, something has to change and I feel it most on the day after Easter when my home is a shambles, work men show up unannounced and I'm completely overwhelmed by the chaos. All of that paired with lack of sleep and several consecutive weeks of extras and I'm just suddenly so done I couldn't be more done if I tried. And I realize it in the moment right after I completely lose it that maybe I need to get a little better at establishing boundaries and respecting my own needs.

It's a common realization for me at times like this, but one I always struggle with implementing. On the one hand, service and self donation are, in my mind, the highest and truest calling on my life. On the other hand, I have a tendency to give until I give out. It is only when I'm at rock bottom looking up that I realize maybe I'm going about this all wrong. When I see someone with a good grasp on communicating their needs and establishing their boundaries, I'm in awe. My people-pleasing tendencies run deep, and in the rare event that I do try to set parameters such as that, I'm back pedaling and apologizing before anyone knows what happened. If anyone has any suggestions for good reading on boundaries within a Christian life, I'm all ears.

The thing is, pushing through until the magical weekend with nothing on the schedule is a fools errand - because right beyond that we start the push toward summer time with all that that brings. I've got to figure out how to choose the better part - and to remember who and Who's I am. In those tender early days following the arrival of a baby, I have no guilt about requiring gentleness for myself. Perhaps there are other seasons and reason to give myself a break and remember that not all rest is laziness and not all efficiency is good. Sometimes, dare I say it, the theme of the day needs to be to simply abide.

Perhaps you're like me? And you think you need permission, a reason to be gentle with yourself. You don't. Dearly loved one, don't forget to treat yourself with kindness and heaping grace.



Today, for me, for you, for us - gently does it. 




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February Reprieve {All's Grace}

Over the past few days my feed was alive with the joy-filled posts of my Mama friends, sending their kids out on a February day in Michigan to nearly 70 degree temperatures. A reprieve, it seems.

Winter hasn't been too dreadful this year. In fact, we never even got to go sledding because the only snow of any consequence was way back in early November and was gone nearly as quickly as it came. While we've had a few cold days, it has been nothing like the last few years with day after day well below zero. Still, Winter is winter and the bleak landscape is uninspiring at best and downright depressing at worst. With the warmth came sunshine and the haunting scent of Springtime just around the corner. So my mom friends and I, we threw open the windows and kicked the kids out and turned a blind eye to the masses of dirt they tracked back in. And it was glorious.

But a reprieve is just that, and nothing more. We'll return to regularly scheduled February programming here this week and once again the ground will freeze hard and kids flock to the heat vents first thing in the morning. But something changes when there's a break like that. We all feel it. Reminded of what is surely coming next, we are better equipped to handle today. We start to dream about Spring.

This Lent hasn't really felt much like Lent at all. I'm not sure if it's because it is so early this year, or perhaps because I'm not in that achy last trimester of pregnancy and all the emotional turmoil that that brings with it. Maybe it's because our months that proceeded Lent were already difficult and dark. I'm not sure, but I've felt an undeniable lift lately. Looking and leaning toward that promise of what comes next with an anticipation. I've been praying to be freed from fear and I'm realizing that fear flees when you hold onto the truth that there isn't a single day where God doesn't show up. Not a moment where I can turn to Him and say, "Well, what next?" I'm growing into a less formal, more intimate relationship here and the most marked result is an overwhelming calm. Abiding in it and coming to a place of surrender.

Maybe that's what Lent is all about anyway. With the ashes we acknowledge our impotence, and with that in place we are freed to lay it all at His feet and let Him sort it out. A reprieve that reminds us that Easter is for us. Sunshine is coming and we've got nothing to fear.

He's all Good. It's all grace.

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Love Letters

Today repairs on our house required that we vacate the premises. Not for the first time I was relieved that my parents live right behind me and were gracious enough to give us the run of their place. We packed up schoolbooks for four kids, snacks and lunch things, knitting, baby carriers, art supplies, read alouds. All the things that a day with my crew requires - and made our way over.

 Although we are doing our normal things, the change of location is actually a welcome reprieve from another frigid winter day inside, battling boredom and cabin fever. The big kids are looking forward to a game of "life" after school is over. The littles helped me mix up a batch of sugar cookies for Valentines. The baby is blessedly napping after a long night and I'm just happy to be here. Playing house in my childhood home where my seven kids remind me so much of what it was like back then. It's almost like peeking into the past, except I'm no longer one of those kids. Entering my mother's world, I get a birds eye view of what her days were like - and gain a new appreciation for my own. 

For all the scuffles and noise and, goodness, humanity that we mamas put up with - we are the witnesses to such glory. We witness fledgling humans figuring out just how this life thing works in the best school there is: family. Our work is merely the crafting of home, which is the cultivating of love. And whether that takes place in my mamas sprawling 200 year old Greek Rivival home or in my little cape cod right behind, the work is the same. Echoing God's heart means putting people first, always. Welcoming each one like the love letter they are into our lives. 

Valentine's is around the corner and we're cutting out paper hearts and I'm wondering at how the Creator knew how to craft a mamas heart to expand and expand and expand endlessly, able to wrap around each and every one of these gifts. 

This day, these precious ones. All glory. All grace. 

Inspired Joy

It's Friday morning. Only half of the kids have eaten breakfast. The baby is on my back. I've already had to instruct on why we treat siblings with kindness and I'm not done with my first cup of coffee yet. One of the kids was sick during the night, so that lovely laundry is waiting for me, plus the normal school/jobs/life stuff that is incessant.

I spoke with a Mom's group yesterday on the topic of rest, and while I was preparing I kept had the nagging feeling that I really had no authority to speak to them. Who, after all, am I? My house is always a mess. My heart, too. I don't have any "hacks" on how to make this motherhood thing any easier. If anything, the one thing I'm sure of is that it's not getting any easier. I can't offer them a pin-worthy picture of happy homeschooling or 10 tips on how to get siblings to get along.

It's almost like the longer I'm at this gig, the less I'm sure of anything. Didn't I used to think I had some of this figured out? Every day here feels like I'm starting back at square one. Back to the basics, time and again.

My husband has been working at a warehouse while he looks for a new job. It is long hours, backbreaking work, he comes home with sore muscles and calloused hands and a bone-deep exhaustion that only 12 hours of physical labor can bring. He confides in me one night - "I love it." And I think I get it.

While he's working hard for his family, I'm just doing the next right thing here at home. Grown ups struggling doesn't mean that childhood stops, and my kids still need me. They still need my kiss on the tops of their heads when I set their breakfast in front of them. They need my singing at the sink. They need my tickles and laughs and they need my warm arms in the middle of dark nights. I keep doing the next thing even during this difficult time in our family, and it reminds me of something.

Moms need to be very careful where they get their inspiration from - and what they fill their minds with. The internet is filled with images, some benign, some not so benign - and some that you don't realize are stealing your joy until it's too late. What really is the harm in a few unrealistic pictures? Of beautifully (albeit expensively) decorated homes, beautiful happy children in thousand dollar get ups and women modeling motherhood who are barely old enough to be a mom, much less have ever experienced it?

We see what unrealistic images can do to expectations. We live in a culture that is proof of that and I don't know about you, but I'm not really liking the result.

When we fill our minds with more of this than reality (which lightning fast internet speeds make all too likely), a shift happens. We can't help but compare our experiences - and find our lives lacking. Discontent moves in and gratitude moves out and instead of waking in the morning with anticipation at the day ahead, we just want to quit. Comparison becomes our companion.

I finding myself increasingly looking to step back from glossy pictures of perfection and the discouraged way they make me feel. I'm looking elsewhere. I'm looking for reality.

One of my favorite images of motherhood ever is this photo, taken during the great depression. When I see it, I feel it. To me, it encompasses how mothering feels quite a bit of the time - although I've never been in such dire straits as the Mom pictured. But when I see it, I feel strong. Instead of showcasing an impossible standard, I see something here worth emulating. Something worth working toward. It inspires me to take this day, this house, this family, this life - imperfections and all - and be the best I can be.

I want to be a mom. Not a model. I want to be home to my family, a person of peace, a place to rest. I don't want to flee from discomfort, pain or struggle - I want to dive in head first and find the redemption there at the bottom. Because I know it's there.

I get why my husband kind of likes the way it feels to work so hard it hurts. To take something that maybe isn't the prettiest thing ever and really give it your all.

I have less answers than I did 10 years ago, but I have more strength. More adaptability.  More grit. More gentleness. More gratitude. More peace.

And at the center of it all, 

Joy.

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Learning to Lean

Leaning in. I'm not altogether sure what it means, maybe a combination of "suck it up" and "do the next thing," but it feels about right for this first week back at it in January of a brand new year. My husband has found a temporary job while he looks for something better, so he's gone before we wake up and back after dark. We start school, pathetically, I'm afraid. January has none of the excitement and fanfare of September when it comes to school books. After a few weeks off, we struggle back into old routines. "Who's on kitchen today? I thought I was laundry on Tuesdays..." It's familiar yet we resist it, like the first time tying on boots after a summer of flip flops. Stiff and unnatural feeling, yet so badly needed.

Routine. Responsibility. Rhythm. These are things that I know help every one of us, the large and the small, feel secure. When you know who you are and what you are about, there is a certain comfort in that - even if sometimes you long for a change. We've had a lot of change over the past few years and I'm finding a lot of gratitude in being able to offer my kids consistency when and where we have it. Bible time. Learning hours. Meal times. Chores. Each holds purpose for us in small ways.

I've had my times of saying to myself "This is just a season." And, to be sure, sometimes it is. But the longer I'm at this parenting gig, the longer I'm uncomfortable claiming that. It may just be a season...but a season may last a lifetime. And if we wait our real lives until a season of difficulty ends, we might just find ourselves waiting forever. I've come to understand that perhaps the arrival at family/learning/life perfection is not something I will ever see. We keep learning lessons. We keep living through. We keep pressing on, leaning in, even when arrival at ease isn't a guarantee or even a possibility.

But all is not lost when we view life this way. By contrast, in doing so we might unwrap even more lasting satisfaction, deeper joy.

I may not arrive at perfection or ease, but I can arrive at joy through gratitude.

This may be a season, but it can be a season marked by grace, determination, prayer.

Leaning in, one day at a time.

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Extraordinarily Ordinary

"The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children."

G.K. Chesterton

On Saturday, I slipped on a dress and picked up my Mom in my 12 passenger van and together we made our way to a nearby Catholic church. A family friend had suffered heartbreaking loss, and as soon as I had heard of the funeral arrangements, I tapped out a quick text. "Will you come with me?" She merely responded "yes."

So here we were. Sitting in the pew of a massive, beautiful church, watching it fill with people I've known my entire life. People I grew up with who are now adults like me, along with their parents and, some, their own children. I remembered long sweaty summer nights playing neighborhood games with these kids-now-adults. Every once in a while Mom would lean over and say "In that pew there, is that...?" Family after family after family. Brought together to stand in community with one of their own. It was breathtaking.

After a lovely service and greeting people we hadn't seen in years, we walked through the frozen January air together and Mom commented about how it's amazing two normal people can be so blessed to have children. The gift of human life seems almost too magnificent for most of us mere mortals. What's so special about us, anyway?

More than that, though, how incredible is it that two ordinary, normal people can have babies together that then grow into people that become community for others? I think about those pews full of people drawing together in love. People holding space in grief and joy. People who are gifts to the world. People who are only possible because of someone's yes.

We talk so much about growing community, looking for community, longing for community. But do we realize that it's in our homes where whole communities take root?

It's Monday morning and my kids are still in bed. Once they trickle down things will get noisy and chaotic and messy and I'm sure there will be less than lovely moments. But the picture of Saturday's service remains in my mind and reminds me to keep an eye on the end goal. If a grubby group of south side neighbor kids could grow into something as strong, peaceful and loving as I saw then, I know there's still hope for us.

Mamas, the ordinary life you are weaving will yield some extraordinary things. Keep on keeping on.


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Upended Plans

I could feel it sneaking up on me, this coughy, achey, sore throaty virus that unleashed it's full fury on Friday. I tried to ignore it and push through for a while but it soon became clear that this was going to sideline me. It's just a physical reminder of the stress I've been carrying with me lately - an outward reminder that life is a bit of a hurricane at the moment and I'm hanging on for dear life.

There's something about the acceptance of the undesired that stretches me just a bit beyond what I think I can bear. The initial reaction is to flee, to struggle, to refuse to succumb - but then it becomes abundantly clear that the only way through is to find a way to live within the circumstances.

I'm not good at this. I have PLANS, you see. I have a mental view of my expectations and desires. I certainly have zero intention of sitting in bed and waiting for this virus to run it's course. I have shopping to do, work outs I want to complete, baking and cleaning and creating waiting for me. I want to take the kids ice skating and to that live nativity. I want to go to church on these precious Advent Sundays. I simply do not have time for this - that is, I'm refusing to make time for this. After all, who would want to?

This morning I woke up with five kids in my bed, curled around me. My youngest boy is four, and he nestles right beside me, squeezing me tightly when he realizes I'm awake. "You're warm, Mama." Yes, I'm warm. I'm feverish. My body is fighting this illness tooth and nail. It's not pretty or nurturing or sweet, but to a four year old, Mama is warm. Mama is cuddly. Mama is wonderful.

The redeeming grace about the fires we walk through is the way it can bless others. God uses our acquiescence for good. We can know that. We can hold to that.

My Advent candles might not be lit nightly this year (certainly, our track record at this point is exactly once. Sigh.). We might not get to bake cookies and I might be a bit of a zombie following endless nights of coughing and chills. This Christmas may not be the pretty package I humanly strive for - but that is no reason to throw in the towel.

The first Christmas was all about human plans being upended and shaking, uncertain people saying yes - yes to the scary, unpleasant thing. The result was the most important gift the world as ever known. The same God who sustained them is wholly able to see me through this - through all of it. And it will be blessed abundantly more than I could possibly imagine.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

2 Corinthians 12:9

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