Building a Sensational Summer

                   

Summer Camp. Hot days at the lake. Dripping ice cream cones. Bike rides. S'mores. When you live in the Midwest, you may have a slight issue with idolizing summer. And who really can blame us? It's cold and nasty for so long that the 12 weeks of summer are that much more important. I tend to approach them anxiously, not wanting to be over-scheduled but also not wanting to miss out on what makes summer so special.

With this in mind, I came up with a list of summertime goals. Things I'd like to see happen on at least a weekly or biweekly basis. Something that gives the summer intention without being overly structured, giving ample time to the lazy boredom that is so necessary to spark some imaginative growth. Our bigger kids have camp and VBS, service project weeks and some other trips scheduled, so that fills things out nicely for them and also gives me a chance to focus on the little ones.

We have one car and my husband's job has a long-ish commute, making dropping him off and picking him up quite a commitment. This is the first summer I've had to work within those parameters and, to be honest, I haven't been very happy about it. When friends text to see if I can meet them at the park this afternoon, the answer is always going to be no. And that can be incredibly frustrating. While my natural inclination is to be as open and available to whatever whim comes our way, I can't operate that way this year. But with my hopes for the summer listed out, I can begin brainstorming ways to make them happen.

 This is what I came up with. What would you add?

Weekly:

Visit Water. This can be a pool or one of the millions of lakes we have or maybe even just a park with a good play stream or splash pad.

Visit a Park. I like parks especially with trails, usually nothing more than 2 miles. Hoping to do this after dinner during the week.

Go to the Library. I'm trying to get my kids to read for an hour a day. New material is a must.

Be creative. Tie dye. Finger paints. Messy things that can be done outside.

Play with friends. Inviting people over to play with us or meeting them out somewhere.

Biweekly:

Have a Backyard Bonfire. I love this as much as the kids.

Go on a date. Self explanatory.

Group Kid Activity. I'd like to take small groups of my kids out. Maybe just the big girls, or the oldest two/middles on some adventures. Thinking of canoeing/paddle boating or other things that are tough with little ones around.

Visit a Museum. For us this is usually the big outdoor museum nearby, but could also work with indoor options when it is extra hot or rainy.

Invite friends over for dinner. I'm not great at this, but I want to be better and summer is as good a time as any to work on hospitality.

With a little big of intention, building a sensational summer. Living this little life to the absolute fullest and being so grateful for every moment.





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Love is Work

I feel it bubble up within me at the oddest times. Usually while I'm washing dishes, or making dinner, folding laundry or sweeping up. When my kids are all running around the backyard when they should be inside helping and I can see them laughing from the window. Always, always when I'm doing something for someone else.

"I am so in love with these people."

It's unbidden, this thought, and when it comes over me I hold onto the delicious way it makes me feel for a beat or two. Yes, I am. So in love. So grateful for every single one of them. Yes, when I'm scrubbing crusted pans at the sink. Yes, when I'm folding the fourth load of laundry today. Yes, when I'm sweeping up the cheerios beneath the high chair.

I think about it when another feeling comes over me. A less positive one. A more "can't I get 5 minutes to myself?" feeling. Those ones, they tend to show up when I'm trying to do something for me. The irritation of interruption is a joy-stealer for sure. The contrast of my activity and the feeling makes me realize:

It's a grace to serve. A blessing to be other-focused. These long days of hard work are a privilege and I'm gathering them up. It's the real life truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive. Even when your feet ache and you're wrung out with exhaustion, love is something that wraps around the moments where your focus is on something bigger than just you.

It's a truth I forget during selfish seasons, times when self pity moves in and contentment is shoved to the side. 

My three year old is approximately five handfuls at all times of the day. My baby is starting to walk. I'm schooling four kids and trying to keep Peter out of mud puddles (and doing the subsequent zillion loads of laundry), trying to keep food in the fridge for my ravenous almost-teenager, trying to have a little energy and good humor left at the end of the day for my man. I can easily get side tracked by the enormity of life and forget that this is what it is all about.

Being in love with my people, being love to my people, isn't a puffy pink heart. It's not when I'm all dolled up, or well rested. It isn't when everyone is behaving perfectly, or on our smooth and easy days.

It's about making the choice to be love, without contingency. That's where the flood of grace comes from. Not from picture perfect moments, but the times that require a little bit of compassion. A little bit of understanding and a whole lot of effort. There's a dirty grit to doing real life with real people. Love gets in there anyway.

I can't force it, but I know where to find it. Getting out of my own way, away from my expectations, my perfectionism check lists - and diving head first into the messy, exhausting, exhilarating work of love.

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Charts and Checks

I'm cross legged on the ottoman by the window for a few rare quiet moments. It's April and, although I always like to pretend that means it's warming up, it's cold. I'm wrapped in an oversized cardigan, knitting by the light filtering in. It's one of those sacred moments when my home is completely still - few and far between these days - and I'm soaking up the brain stillness that comes along. He interrupts my reverie -

"Geez, Mom. You look like a Grandma over there."

The bluntness of kids is really something, isn't it? I smiled at him, and said "well there are worse things, right?" and he rolls his eyes and heads out the back door.

I'm not sure when my Grandma learned to knit, but I do know it was long before I came to be. By the time I was cognizant of such things, I knew that wherever Grandma was, there was knitting. She brought it with her everywhere. And not just knitting, but her bag of curious knitting gear that mystified me as a kid. She'd sit in her recliner, little hands working impossibly fast and it looked like she wasn't even paying attention. On the arm of the chair would be the pattern, paper, and as she worked along she would make little check marks with a ballpoint pen as she completed a section.

I started knitting regularly as an adult, in the brave new world of technology, and I rarely have a paper pattern. Everything is digital, and my phone works just fine, thank you. In nano seconds I can look up yarn types, hundreds of thousands patterns, reviews, completed projects. It might seem better than when Grandma would go to an actual yarn store and touch all the yarns, squinting over paper patterns she found in magazines to find one she liked. I have access to more. Better.

I'm knitting off a chart and it's after I screw up and pull it out in frustration 15 charted rows in that it occurs to me - maybe trying to read a chart off a 4 inch smart phone is anything but smart. Maybe there is such a thing as a time to set aside the ultra connectedness, the bright light of a screen. I'm squinting at it, trying to figure out what row I'm on because there is no way to mark my progress. So I print it off. I make check marks. Row after row, line after line, the pattern flows out from my needles perfectly.

It's something that I need to remember. The wisdom of the small and the slow isn't that, when you embrace them, life gets smaller. When you focus small and slow, life gets bigger than you could have ever imagined. Sometimes the steadiest way forward seems to be the least sophisticated. It looks common and maybe even a little bit backwards. It eschews the bright lights of bigger, more, faster - for the calm and steady simplicity of the next right thing.

From the outside, it may look a bit like settling. Plodding along in normalcy. One drop of water doesn't seem like much, but under a microscope - teeming with life. Easy to ignore in the push and rush of more, but still there. Unlocking bigger and better might be as simple as setting boundaries and taking the time to fully engage in each small step. Each check along the pattern.

When you have everything at your finger tips, you can end up dissatisfied. Your focus suffers in the face of so many options, and you can miss out on what is right in front of you.

I turn it over in my mind. The lure of the information superhighway, the instant and non stop social media - is that more and better is achievable with minimal effort. I can sit here and scroll my life away looking for the next best thing. But at the end of the day, I need to face down the raw truth that living fully and intentionally within my real world is where growth and beauty is truly, palpably, possible.

In knitting and in life, Grandma may have had it right. I'm not ready to give up my online yarn shopping or reading pattern reviews, but if I ever find myself knitting off a chart again? I'm going to pay extra close attention. And be reminded that life is lived best when you take every moment as it is - brimming with possibility, teeming with life - and abide with intention.


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Off The Beaten Path

A car. A life vest. A trailer. The smell of sunscreen and bug spray. The feeling of the sun-scorched sand beneath your feet and the sweeping lake breeze whipping your hair. The sound of the waves at night.

Are these my children's memories or mine?

Happily - both.

This past week we went off grid and leapt through waves and put kites in the sky. We climbed dunes and watched the sun light up the sky all pinky purple at the end of the day. We slept soundly and close together. We licked ice cream and chased seagulls and climbed nature trails.

A family trip is many things to a Mama, but it is very rarely a vacation. Indeed, I did at least a load of laundry a day, nursed a sick baby for the first few days, washed dishes and made meals and if I thought I'd get much of a rest I would have been sorely disappointed. But the truth is, I didn't go on this trip for me. I did it for them - all for them.

And the beauty of giving without expectation is the abundance of what you get when you aren't looking to receive.

So I tuck into my little stash of memories the new ones I found this year.

Them riding that driftwood down the shore.

Her footprints in the sand

His face when he held that big fat toad

Basketball with Dad

Monarch caterpillars and the boy who loved them

My mom rocking my baby to sleep

My dad holding her dimpled toddler hand

The peace of shutting out the noisy world, tuning out and turning in to see the beauty of every created thing and the sure closeness of the One who holds them all for me to see.


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Showing Up

"Family is the natural school of love."

John Paul II

My first memory of it is in the kitchen of my grandfather's house, before he married again and sold it to my uncle, so I must have been young - under ten, at least. I was small and my Aunt Helen showed me how to devein a shrimp right there at the sink, the sun streaming in and the dull roar of our oversized family conversations pouring through the doorway. My indoctrination to a club I've belonged to ever since. My arrival, in a way, to womanhood. On that day I held a knife and I wasn't just one of the kids anymore. My place in the family changed and I felt it - the shift, the responsibility. The unmistakable feeling that something important had just transpired.

It's been twenty odd years and Grandpa has been gone more than a decade. The house was sold to my uncle, and then to the couple that became the parents to my son's best friend - because that's how life goes. I walk past that kitchen window with my seventh baby in a sling and my toddlers in the wagon and although the paint is different and the kitchen has been redone - it is written in me like a part of my dna.

The voices of my aunts float over my head as a young teen making buttercream frosting in my aunt's kitchen, frosting the cupcakes Uncle Jim always pretends to complain about because he hates coconut, even though it's one of Aunt Beth's go-to recipes for a shower. In the heat and bustle and importance of being a part of making something happen, I find a place. I feel grown, necessary. Needed. None of my Aunts on this side of the family are my blood relatives. They are all married in, not that you could tell. Family is forged in the commitment to do life together, however it presents itself. In joy and grief and every day in between. We show up for each other. It's what we do, in my family. My Mom tells me - this is how we love.  "You can't have a party if no one comes."

The years slip on by and we shower every blushing cousin bride, each expectant mother glowing with pride, each awkwardly grinning graduate with all our love, acceptance, celebration. This is what we do. We leave no marriage unacknowledged, even the elopements. No baby un-feted, even the unanticipated ones. Life events are marked and marveled over. I grow up with a tribe of fierce and faithful women showing me that the point of all life is the giving away of all love, no matter the cost, no matter the time, no matter the place. We know what we are about. I was grown, trained up, apprenticed and graduated in the fine and fast disappearing art of service as love. And I learned it all from women with brains like steel traps and hearts like never ending chasms of good will.

I'm thirty one and sway with my baby sleeping on my chest. My Aunt Jane is talking to me about breastfeeding and I'm hanging on every word because it's gold. I sought her out because I'm old enough to recognize wisdom when I hear it. My girls have been here nearly every day this week, helping with gardening and sweeping porches, preparing for just this - another family baby shower. Another baby on the way. When you believe that each life is God-breathed and planned from the beginning of time, there is no such thing as "another" baby. A new one, a different one, one of us. One of ours. He or she holds the same importance as the most important of us, even while still snuggled up deep inside Mama.

We all assemble and it feels like home. My daughters with eyes and ears wide open, standing up straight almost like they know that this is where it happens. Where womanhood is forged and is so much more than any biology book says. This is where we learn that the language of love is the serving of one another - and joy is the unintended result of that gift.

"Love...binds them all together in perfect unity."

Colossions 3:14

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The Chore Revamp That Is Saving My Sanity

There are a lot of things I like about our little house. I like that it's all charming and 100+ years old. I like how snug it feels in the evenings when everyone is home and the candles are lit and we're all just together, close. I like how someone can call and say they are on their way over and I can get the downstairs from a huge mess to presentable in about 15 minutes. It's a sweet little house and I love it. It would be perfect for someone with no kids, or two kids, or anything other than 6+ kids.

Therein lies the rub. Not because it's not enough space for us. Goodness, it's a palace compared to what families our size shared even a half century ago, and certainly meets our needs. No, the tough spot is that, while a small space is quick to whip into shape, it's even quicker to demolish. Especially with six kids, all home, all day.

This school year I've been working on a somewhat more intentional chore list for my kids. They have always been extremely helpful and often go above and beyond what I'd even think to ask for, but I still felt the need for a little more structure to this area of our life. We started with after dinner chores which quickly became just part of life with minimal crabbiness. All good so far.

The next step I just wasn't sure how to proceed on. I liked the flexibility of having my kids doing what I asked when I asked it, and worried about what making more assignments might bring (like the dreaded "that's not my job!"). But during the day I was still doing the bulk of the work and it just was not working.

Enter domains. When I met my friend Amy a few years back and she kindly invited us over to her home, I was kind of astonished by how tidy her house was. She had double the kids I did (and still does!) and only double the square footage, which put us in the same boat. I asked how she did it and she told me that she divvied up the areas of her home into domains, and each child had one. It was their responsibility to keep that area cleaned up, along with a few other responsibilities.

For the longest time I thought it wouldn't work for us. Our kids were too small, etc. But lately it has become obvious that something needs to change. With school and babies and pregnancy, I just couldn't do it all on my own, especially in this small, constantly in need of attention home.

I sat my kids down last week and explained the new system. I assigned them each a domain, plus one or two extra jobs each, and then their after dinner jobs. It's not too much. It doesn't even take that much time. It just needed to happen.

An amazing thing happened. Not only did my kids take their domain responsibilities seriously, but it gave them perspective into what their messes might cause others - and saw them cleaning up after themselves better than before. No one wants to clean up their domain after their siblings pulled out every puzzle,  dumped them all over the ground and walked away. Knowing that, they don't go into another kid's area and do something similar.

What didn't happen is this: I didn't suddenly sit like a queen with no jobs and have my kids wait on me like slaves and clean my home. While I have a lot of children, I really only have three big kids. The others are still young and their domains reflect that. I still work all day every day. I still have to remind them. I still have my own domains for which I am solely responsible. I wouldn't say I work less, but I would say that there are more lasting results.

It's not perfect, or even how I would do it. But it in a lot of ways it is better. Giving kids responsibility and holding them accountable is about more than keeping my house tidy. It's about lasting lessons that will serve them and those around them their whole lives.

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My Minimal Baby Must Haves {And A Few Sweet Splurges}

The more children I have, the less baby gear I want or use.

With the first we were so well loved by family and friends and given a wonderful baby shower. We dutifully went to our nearby big box baby store and registered for all the "essentials." The travel system (car seat and stroller combo). Swing, bouncer, pack n play, play mat, toys, hooded towels, on and on. Each item incredible specific. Each item with a potential usefulness lifespan of just a few months at best.

Of course every baby and circumstance is different, but my list of must haves has changed quite a bit over the years, evolving with my parenting style and our circumstances. My bare bones list is a car seat, a carrier, diapers, clothes, maybe a bouncer.

With our large family-in-a-small-home lifestyle, things have to truly earn their keep to be kept, and items that can be used for more than one task are more likely to fit the bill. So plain prefolds that can be used as burp cloths or diapers are a mainstay. A nice thick baby quilt can double as a floor mat. A regular towel works just fine. Beyond the newborn stage, holding onto things that are not getting used is just not an option with limited space, so the multiple use item is a better bet for us all the way around.

That all being said, I'm not exempt from oohing and ahhing over some truly sweet baby gear. Beyond knitting sweaters and leggings and booties, I rounded up a few things that I just love. What would you add to my list?

A nice baby carrier. We have a Beco and Ergo for when the baby gets bigger, but I'm dreaming of a Didymos Indio this time around. I love wrapping, but especially wrapping a newborn. In the carrier department, going with a more expensive option is usually your best bet. The nice thing is, resale values on carriers is very high and you can usually find nice ones used.

These leggings by Whole Parenting Goods. She has the best fabrics and they have enough stretch to make it over a cloth diaper.

Pilot caps. These ones from Lil Nells are so adorable!

I'm not a big bib girl, but these bibs from Wee Whimsicals are so cute, I make an exception.

Stretchy gauze swaddle blankets are a nice size, light enough weight for summer.

I've never used a baby hammock before but I love the idea.

Burt's Bees baby line makes your baby smell delicious, which is always a good thing.

There's truly not much you actually need for baby. Keeping them warm and fed and changed is pretty simple in most american homes. Everything else is truly gravy. And in a home like ours, with many siblings anxiously awaiting to hold and play with our newest addition, most of the gear would go unused anyway.



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{Stewarding} Toward A Better Life

I only meant to clean up the breakfast dishes. Wipe down the counters, maybe a quick sweep of the floor. It was Saturday after all, and I was still in my husband's pajama pants, entertaining the idea of cleaning out the boys' closet. I was almost finished when I got distracted by little splashes on the woodwork above the sink.

Ever since we came home to the dining room painted freshly white, my kitchen has been bugging me. We moved in this house 7 years ago, and 7 years of heavy daily use leaves its mark. The white walls look dingy, the paint chipped here and there around the windows. In comparison to the more recent paint in the other two downstairs rooms, my kitchen looks...awful.

I wiped at the splash, and then remembered what a friend and fellow home-renter had recently posted on facebook, her trick for cleaning walls when a fresh coat of paint isn't an option. Hot water and vinegar. Vinegar water can be awfully strong, so I added a few drops of peppermint essential oil and set to scrubbing. I didn't mean to get carried away, but about an hour later, I found myself apologetically explaining myself to J while standing on the counter top, pulling curtains down so I could better wash the walls above the windows.

"I, uh, kinda got carried away."

The walls look great. I won't divulge how many times I had to change out the dirty water (how, HOW do walls of all things get so disgustingly filthy?), but the mixture worked amazingly well. It almost looks like fresh paint. I keep admiring them when I walk through and keep thinking to myself - see? Stewardship. It really makes a difference.

I can be a bit of a dreamer. A "cart-before-the-horse" type. Instead of finding ways to improve what I have, I find myself wishing for something different altogether. But lately I'm really thinking this stewardship thing is a key. A key to happiness and contentment, a key to a more fulfilling life. Instead of wishing away what is now, seeking to improve, to cultivate what I have to the utmost. If I approached my life, my work, my family, my home this way - what sort of change might I see?

I turned these thoughts over and over in my head while washing every inch of my kitchen walls, woodwork and all. How I could just go on hating how my kitchen looked and felt, or I could do something about it. And, having done that thing, how wonderful it feels.

There will always be a million reasons why not. A million defeatist thoughts to give you the out, if that's what you're looking for. I don't want an out anymore, no more excuses. I want to find the way to that wonderful feeling of knowing I did everything I possibly could.

Tonight my kitchen sparkles and I'm all lit up inside with possibility. Purposeful stewardship. It's a game changer.



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Chaotic Christmas

Two boys are wrestling on the rug. Nearby Rosie is oblivious, playing with her play kitchen next to the side table where Fiona is playing a computer game on my lap top. Dinah is drawing over on the coffee table and I'm on the couch, feet up, knitting (always with the knitting). This room is loud. There are toys sprinkled here and there, books in haphazard stacks in any available space. The bookshelves are crammed with board games, art supplies and school books. We live in every inch of this space. In the corner, next to the TV, stands our Christmas tree. Right in the middle of our chaos.

I agonized over it, the tree this year next to the television. Silly, I know, but I kept thinking - I don't want a tv in the pictures I'll take of my kids in front of the tree! It didn't fit my vision of Christmas. Christmas as special, Christmas as set-apart. Christmas as somehow removed, glamorously different than our daily world.

In the house I grew up in, there were many spacious rooms. We always had our tree in the Living room, a room that was reserved for special events. Beyond practicing the piano, or my dad reading in there late at night, the living room was largely unused. The family room in the back was where we played and where the tv lived. The library was where we did school. The living room was special and so it made sense to me that that was our Christmas room. The place we decked out in Christmas finery each year.

It's funny, isn't it, how we hold tightly onto things in our lives, so sure of their absolute importance that it can cloud our thinking. The placement of my childhood tree made sense. We hosted a big family Christmas eve party each year and the whole house was thrown open wide for guests. But in my little house, there are no unused rooms. No special, company-only spaces. Each room used at max capacity.

For a while, it bothered me. Once the tree would go up, I'd try extra hard to keep our living room spotless, lecturing kids on picking up their toys and keeping things nice for Christmas. I've softened on that. Sure, I'll pick up on Christmas eve, maybe even run the vacuum before setting gifts under the tree so that Christmas morning dawns fresh and clean. But, really? We live here. This is our play room, our reading room, our wrestling room. It's the place where my kids lose puzzle pieces under the couch and Rosie sets play food on every surface. It's the space where they play video games and where I leave disorganized heaps of knitting here and there. It's our life. And right smack in the middle of life might just be exactly where Christmas is meant to come.

A glamorous, special, no-holds-barred Christmas is not wrong. But neither is Christmas right smack in the middle of every day life. For a King who came on an ordinary night to ordinary people in their ordinary lives, it kind of feels right. I'm reminded every night those kids head to bed and the lights on our tree shine out in the midst of evidence of another chaotic, regular day - that His light is constant in the chaos of life. A miracle shining brightly in the middle of the ordinary.

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{Rooted}

It's 6 days til Christmas, or so the makeshift calendar tells me, the one Fiona wrote out and Jonah consults each morning. It's afternoon now. Lemon bars are baking for a party later on and the dishwasher hums away in the kitchen. My two baby/toddlers are upstairs blessedly napping. Outside the big kids and a neighbor child, home for break, are fighting an epic battle of some sort. Inside its still, it's quiet, it's restful. I've got a basket-full of unfinished knitting projects at my feet. It feels, for a moment, like Advent.

Sure, there are things I have left to do in these fast fleeting days before Christmas, but with just one car and a husband at work, for the moment I'm only able to be just here, rooted in the restful now. Despite being a hard year, somehow this Advent seems the most peaceful I've ever known. I think it may come from a certain amount of acceptance and gratitude for just this. I know perhaps better now than ever before that even if my list doesn't get completely checked off, even if I somehow don't manage to pack it all in - Christmas will come just the same. That endless striving and inevitable burnout is all for nothing because nothing can make Christmas more than it already is on it's own.

Today I read this article about Christian refugees in tent camps preparing to celebrate Christmas. The pictures speak much more than the words do, and reaffirmed my thinking. Even in the absence of all we think we need to have a perfect holiday - the warmth and happiness of home, the closeness of family, the assurances of tomorrow - Christmas still comes. Christ still comes. The one thing that still roots us, firm - that never lets go. There will always be a reason to celebrate, always a reason for Joy - because He is always and forever. Even if everything that we think we need for it to truly be Christmas was stripped away - He remains.

I'm thankful today for the warmth of home, the voices of my happy and healthy children, our little tree and the celebrations we share with family and friends. We have an abundance beyond our needs and that is truly a blessing. But more than anything, I'm so, so thankful that my heart is rooted securely and eternally with Him, the source of pure joy.

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Why Mending Matters

It hung in my closet for years, that dress Mom and I found on the clearance rack at JCrew for a song when I was 17. I wore it all the time that summer - to church and out with friends, picnics and parties. It was breezy, pretty and everything you want in a sun dress.

Years passed and pregnancies came and went and I wore it a few more times in between. One day I noticed a small pull between the main fabric and the lining along the zipper. I wore it again and it got worse. So I stuck it in my closet and left it alone. Sometimes I'd grab it before remembering - that's right, it needs to be fixed. Never mind then. Summer after summer it waited, untouched.

Last weekend, I pulled it out and sat cross legged on the bed with a needle and thread. 5 minutes later it was fixed. Wearable. Useful again.

In my pursuit of clutter-free, simple living, I often forget about mending. That or it just doesn't seem to be worth my time. In our American life, we have so much. Often I get rid of clothes for the kids that might need a little fixing because the time/benefit equation doesn't balance out. I tend to err more on the side of getting rid of things that are no longer useful as opposed to fixing them.

But this disposable mentality can sneak it's way into other areas of my life as well. A relationship becomes difficult, more work than I want to put in? It's tempting to step away as opposed to working out the problems. When issues crop up in my parenting, my knee jerk reaction is to throw out whatever discipline I had previously espoused instead of examining what works and what really doesn't.

I relate a lot to the idea of creativity being a spiritual discipline, something we were all made for in various ways, a reflection of the Image we were all made in - but what about mending? Repair? Salvation itself is about repair. Repairing relationship. Restoring us to where we were meant to be, all along.

We are made to create, but we are also made to mend. To fix broken things, to constantly move toward repair. There's hope in that, after all. Hope that, even when everything in life seems to be unraveling, or a collection of sharp and painful shards - the possibility for wholeness remains.

{Bear with me this week? My CF card reader met a sad end and I'm waiting on a replacement. Instagram photos are all I have to offer!}

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Preparing To Rest

{Hi Everyone! Still soaking up some much needed time off, and reminding myself of just this, an archived post on rest. We all need it. Enjoy and see you Monday!}

It's Saturday night, and I'm wiping counter tops in the soft glow of the kitchen.  Upstairs, the kids are busy pulling on pajamas and setting out church clothes in preparation for the morning.  I move from kitchen to downstairs bathroom, straightening and wiping down, and all the while keeping up a silent meditation.  Gratitude for another week past, intentions for the one just beginning.

One of my goals this year was to work on our family day of rest.  By being intentional in preparing for it, hoping to make it more of a weekly reality.  As the Mama of this family, taking a day "off" to rest can seem an almost laughable prospect.

The truth is, we need rest.  All of us.  Rest is neglected to the detriment of all, but culturally we seem to have let it slip away.  The crush of so many busy days deceive us into thinking that if we took a day off, we'd never catch up.  The catch-22 is that, without it, we surely never will.  A generation of people running on empty have proven this - we need rest.  Creating a family tradition of taking a day to pause, regroup and embrace rest benefits all, from overwhelmed parents right down through the little ones.

Sometimes I wonder that we get so used to seeing the Ten Commandments of a list of "Thou shalt not's" that we forget that when we let go of our vice grip on our lives, God takes that space to bless us.  Not only that, but this principle of a day of rest was important enough to Him to include it on His list of Commandments to us.  A Sabbath is a blessing, straight from Heaven to us.  It hangs there like a gift, just asking to be opened and accepted.  Still, we convince ourselves that our lives are simply too big, too full, perhaps even too important, to take time to slow down and regroup.  But if we are honest with ourselves, the world won't stop turning if we step out for one day each week.   

With little ones to care for and responsibilities every day of the week, yes, even on a day of rest, I have realized that I need to prioritize Sabbath preparation.  If I neglect this discipline, the very chaos of getting a family ready for church and the stress of figuring out what to serve for dinner can steal the peace I am seeking.  The key to a peaceful Sunday for a Mama comes right down to preparation.

Each family will prepare differently, based on their season in life.  Here are 4 ways we are preparing to rest.

Prepare Your Heart:  I work this in by listing my thanks for the week past and my hopes and prayers for the week to come.  Touching on the moments that made up my week illustrates God's blessings in my life and centers me in preparation for Sunday morning.

Prepare Your Mind: In order to keep stress at bay during my day "off," I jot down a list of all of the things I need to pick up again on Monday - the reminders, the lists, the plans.  This clears the clutter out of my mind and gives me permission to relax.

Prepare Your Home:  On Saturday evening, I make extra sure to have the house picked up before bed, the kitchen wiped down and ready for the next day.  This is not a time to get stressed out by aiming for a perfectly clean house, but rather just straightening up for a clean slate in the morning.

Prepare Your Meals:  Simple food is our staple on Sundays.  Soups and breads can be prepared in advance (I love my crockpot for this), cuts of meat can marinate over night.  I set out bowls and cereal for the morning so it is ready on hand when the kids come down.  Even if I do end up needing to do some cooking on Sunday, doing some of the prep work on Saturday evening really helps to keep the stress of getting meals on the table to a minimum.

Prepare Your Family: I have my kids set out church clothes the night before right down to shoes to minimize last minute dashing around (my 5 year old suffers from chronic shoe loss).  I double check their choices when I come up later on, just to make sure everyone is all set.  I also remind the kids about expected behavior at church and that we don't play video games on Sundays.

In a world of rush and schedules and madness, the Sabbath is still a gift, waiting just there for us to embrace. Through intentional preparation, even the busiest of Mamas can find a bit of peace in this, His gift of rest.

How do you prepare for your day of rest?

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Holy Work

My Mama used to tell me that God was a God of order, sending me up to clean up that cluttered bedroom I shared with my older sister. Christ lowered himself to our filthy level and gave the menial meaning. Sitting and talking to a woman at the well. Healing lepers with a bit of spit and dust. Building a fire on a beach. God got down and dirty with us and that's how I know, today when I'm wiping the grease spatters forgotten after Sunday's bacon at breakfast. Sometimes work is just boring, small, mundane.

Menial tasks are just that...menial. We're all in this race to convince ourselves and others that what we does has weight, importance, that we're worth more money or higher prestige. But when we try to crown ourselves queens of domesticity and clamor loud at which job is really the toughest, we miss it - the glimpse of holiness in daily life. There's that human urge to puff up and tout our importance. Mothering becomes "The most important job in the world." We cringe at being called "just" a housewife because there's nothing "just" about what we do, thank you very much. But sometimes I wonder...just what it is we are giving up when we refuse to humble ourselves and embrace the smallness of the things we do.

There are days we shine His light by making everything clean and bright and emulating His order in our crazy chaos. But sometimes, sometimes I'm at my best Christ-following when I'm scrubbing dirty garden feet of a half dozen kids, changing diapers dawn til dusk and mopping up spilled milk for the third time today. These tasks are dirty. They require little thought, no talent. They are base, mundane, unsophisticated chores.

A friend asked me recently where I thought the bar was when asking for prayer. Is it an emergency situation? Possible death and devastation? Is there ever a time when you should just suck it up because others have it so much worse, you know. It seems we can think that even our prayers need to be important enough. But God says pray without ceasing. To cast it all on Him. There is nothing too small for Him to notice, no petition less worthy of His attention. We sell ourselves short when we fail to see that small things matter. It's not the job that matters. It's us.

I'm just a wife. Just a mother and, yes, I do menial work. Humble work. Unsophisticated work. I make food and clean it up. I clean dirty laundry and put it away. I fill sippie cups and wipe spills. I change diapers. Some days I can make things a little brighter and go the extra mile, but quite a bit of the time? I'm doing what few would aspire to. Small things. Dirty things. Gross things. Certainly nothing that's going to land me on a list of most successful people my age.

God came to people He made from dust on the very first day. We've not managed to crawl far from there still. Jesus washed filthy feet and took on all sin ever before and ever since. No matter is too small for his heart to hold. No chore too unimportant for Him to meet us in. No person inconsequential.

It's not ever the greatness of the task or how impressive the resume that defines worth. It's alright to admit when these things are small - because that has never been the point.

No matter the job, scale or impact, worth is ever and only defined through the lens of love.

His.

Rinsing out breakfast dishes isn't hard, mentally stimulating or even a proper display of my abilities. But He can and does bless even this.

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Pleasures

(Photo courtesy of my Instagram.  Are we friends over there?)

These December evenings are just so snug.  I'm usually buried under a few children on the couch after dinner, in that slightly uncomfortable place between "oh they are so sweet, don't move a muscle!" and "ow...my leg is falling asleep."  I know I'll come to eat these words in February, but I'm liking the deep darkness of these Winter evenings.  

Our evening Advent devotions are chaos, but not without their own brand of sweetness. My favorite part?  Holding hands and saying "Our Father" around the Advent wreath and taking in the faces of my six babes and their amazing father.  It's a natural and gentle end to our days, and it just feels so right. After the kids clamber on up the stairs, I try my best to get some gift knitting done.  I say "try" because at 8 months old,  our Rosemary still declines to sleep alone.  In my arms, or flopped across my midsection, her favorite resting place.  She can tell when I ever so cautiously slip her onto the couch beside me, or tuck her into bed.  I have mere moments before she calls to me again, so these days I'm giving in early and allowing her to stay just where she pleases - and knitting around her.  I'm a firm believer that babies cannot be spoiled.  Each one is their own unique self, with their own needs and preferences and well, what can be said of Miss Rosemary Beatrice?  She feels most secure and happy with her Mama.  And really, there's nothing at all wrong with that.

These days are flying by..and it's my pleasure to pass them in just this way: breathing in the soft sighs of my baby love and wrapping wool around a pair of sticks.  My favorite things, after all.

Linking up with Ginny today!

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Peace Making {Mindful Mothering Mondays}

On the first day of Advent, we ate pizza for dinner - the meal of a mom who is just plumb worn out from the holiday weekend and in need of a break.  We didn't get our tree this weekend and are still debating just where on earth we will fit it this year - our first as a family of 8 now in this packed little house.

Still, I love this season.  The brass ring in the middle of the table with four candles standing tall.  The readings and the quiet moments in the dark with just one candle lit - then two, then three, and finally a triumphant four when we celebrate the most dramatic act of love humankind has ever witnessed.

Advent has become a bit of a trend lately.  In our LCMS community it has always been celebrated, but in recent years I am noticing more and more families participating.  This is a good thing.  The not so great aspect is what is true of most of our religious holidays - they tend to become commercialized.  Pinterested.  And then suddenly, instead of being a sacred, meditative time of prayer and reflection, we start to get infected with guilt that we aren't doing it a certain way.  We scroll through our social networks and are bombarded with all sorts of decorations and activities to make it special - as if the celebration of Advent really came down to what style wreath to buy or coloring sheets for the kids.

I've had Advent guilt.  Last year I just couldn't seem to get going with it.  The thing is, making too much of Advent itself misses the mark completely.  When we lose sight of the point of it all by worrying ourselves with making memories with the kids or an activity for every night, with trying to keep a gaggle of wiggly kids still and contemplative at the end of a long day.  When we miss a few days of our special devotionals because we are too tired, or the kids are sick, or it's just the one thing that had to slide on a hard day - we get frustrated.  This is supposed to be a peaceful time, so why does it feel anything but?

I need to make peace with family-style Advent.  Because mine isn't all hushed tones and murmured prayers.  There are sticky kid finger prints decorating Advent this year, and the last, and probably the next as well.  As we start off this Advent season with the theme of Peace leading the way, I wonder what it means to truly be at peace with who I am.  Where in life I am.  What life looks like from here.

A family gathered in peaceful harmony around an advent wreath is not doing a better job of Advent-ing than the Mom who put the kids to bed early and whispers quiet and desperate prayers into the dark.  We're all looking toward the light in this dark world - me, from my cluttered living room.  Someone else, from a prison cell.  Or a hotel room.  Or a coffee shop.  Or a meticulously decorated home that takes my breath away.  We are celebrating His coming, and looking expectantly to when He comes back again.

Ordinary people living ordinary lives. Imperfect Advent might just be the point after all - He came because we needed Him.  We still do.

So I'll aim for quiet and calm and it will end up a knotted mess as usual, loud and crazy the way our days usually are.  I'm making peace with Advent and with my kids and with my life - and offering it up to that sweet Christ child who says - No, it's not enough.  But that's ok, I'll take it and turn it into something beautiful anyway.  Because He's like that.

Fiona tells me she can't close her eyes as we say our prayers because she's looking at Jesus.  "Mom, you said Jesus is the light.  I'm looking toward the light."

Me too, baby.  Me too.

{It's Mindful Mothering Mondays, a day to take a deep breath and write out your mothering journey, whatever form it takes.  A day to link up for encouragement from others who are in this same phase of life.  A day of writing out the trials and triumphs and what you're learning right where you are, right now. 

You might post recent struggles or thoughts.  Maybe just a picture or a quote.  Or maybe you'll just come here and read the links that others post.  Whatever form your participation takes, this is a day for you.
We are all in this, together.  Together, we can encourage and build one another up, be honest with our shortcomings and strengthened by community to keep fighting the good fight.

I chose Mondays because what Mama doesn't need a little encouragement on a Monday? As such, I'll have the link up ready to go on Sunday night for you to begin submitting your links.

I hope you'll meet with me each Monday!  Here's what to do ~

Link up your post below.  Remember to put the link to the exact post you want to link, and not just your blog url. Include in your post a link back here so others who want to join in can find us!  And visit some other Mamas who have linked up.

Post the community graphic within your post, so people who are reading your Mindful Mothering post can come back here and find the rest of us!

Invite the writers of your favorite blogs to join in!

Share this meme with others on facebook and twitter.  This community is for all moms, and the more that participate, the more we will be able to enjoy!!}

Grab the graphic here:

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Kitchen Contentment

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” 
― William Morris

I've been meaning to do something about that kitchen for a while.  Yesterday I got to work.  I wondered if an island was the answer - but my oddly shaped kitchen just couldn't squeeze one in.  I really don't like having a lot of things out on the counter top, but the things I really use needed to be on hand - quick and easy to access.  Feeding 8 people a day out of a little kitchen with no storage to speak of can be discouraging.  I always feel a mess - disorganized because I truly do not have a place for everything.

Yesterday I moved the coat hooks from the wall next to the door to the wall perpendicular to that.  We had a wooden rack there with some collectible odds and ends, but honestly all it really collected was dust and I'm just not in a place in my life where I need to display random items.  The secret to keeping a small house feel clean and uncluttered is that less is really more.  Stuff on every surface makes the entire place feel claustrophobic and I can't hardly breathe when I look around.

 So I took that wood rack and hung it above the oven and moved the vast majority of my pantry to the rack.  Sure, it is stuff out in the open, but I don't know - I think it looks organized and it is certainly practical.  This freed up space in my one cupboard for that new set of mixing bowls my cousin gave me (that I love!) as well as my crock pot.  I was storing it in the basement, but the up and down was a nuisance.  Keeping it on the counter top wasn't ideal, either - I need all the space I can get!  It now fits under the cupboard with the bowls, pots and pans and the large storage containers for whole wheat and white flours that don't fit on the rack.  Already things feel so much neater - and my counter stays clear and ready for work.

My next plan is to tackle our produce situation.  These photos are taken midweek in our produce consumption, and we have another peck of apples in the refrigerator.  I want to find some bushel baskets, still trying to find the best price.  If anyone local knows where to find them so I can save on shipping, that would be great!  The plan is 3 bushel baskets under the side table to house the fruits and vegetables that stay out of the fridge.  Again, out in the open but organized and not unattractive.  

The last part of my kitchen organization will be a proper shoe rack.  We have a shoe mat under the hooks, but there really isn't space for 2 pair of adult shoes and 6 pair for children. I need to find one that stacks up a little bit, so I'll be looking for that this week.  Someday I would love to have a mudroom, but in this house I have a small corner in the kitchen to keep those things organized.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving and the cooking I'll be doing, I can breathe a bit easier in an organized kitchen - and be grateful that I really do have just what I need.  A kitchen to feed my family out of, and the ability to make it work.

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