Category Archives: Family

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The Perfect Day…

Oh I had such plans for Monday. Zach, the Eldest, was off to his new tutorial for this year. He was to be immersed in Treasure Island and General Science.

The others, well, we were headed to this wonderful branch of the local library where there is a walking a trail a beautiful children’s area with loads of light and windows and colors…and story time for the Princess.

There would be time for our joint activities; time to discuss Bible and history, time to read the books we would find.

There would be a visit to the coffee shop and time to grab a bite before we picked Zach up and skipped our way home rejoicing in our stories of the day.

“MOM! Maddie just puked all over the iPad!!”

That was the announcement almost half way to the tutorial.

Yep.  The rest of the drive, if you had caught a glimpse of us, was spent with three boys hanging their heads out the windows to avoid gagging themselves.

Rather than traipsing through the trails around the library followed by hearing a story accompanied by violin music (seriously!), well, we visited the doctor with Maddie in a diaper, Crocs and vomit in her hair.

Yep. I was that mom.

Tuesday morning we redeemed the day. This is our second tutorial day. Seriously, I do homeschool…I just have some help. We had a great start to the day. Maddie was feeling wonderful, everyone was cheerful and we were actually on time for this first day of tutorial. Zach would be done early and we would spend the afternoon catching up on what I had studied with the other boys the day before. We would read and study at a hip coffee shop while Maddie stayed with a friend.

We jumped in the car….to find the battery dead.

Yep. It is better than the previous day. I was able to get the car jump started from our portable charger and got us to the tutorial on time. Still, it was not the day I had planned.

This is something that happens whether we are home school moms or public school or private school…or no kids or kids out of school. Life happens. The only difference with home school is the kids have to learn to adjust to the schedule and figure out how to get the work done around the obstacles; I think that is going to turn out to be a decent life lesson.

Zach and I still ended up at a pretty cool coffee shop able to study.

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While we were there a man came in I knew, someone who is involved in Christian circles. He had someone else with him I didn’t know, and this other person told me he felt strongly he was to encourage me.

He said he had this image of me juggling many things and the encouragement he wanted to share was simply that I was doing it well. Not to stress.

It’s been awhile since I’ve been in circles that talked that way. It’s not that my friends don’t encourage each other…we do. It’s not that my friends don’t share when something is on their heart…we do.

But I do not very often speak to strangers when something impresses on my heart about them. Maybe I’ll do so a little more often after this strangers kind words.

We came home to a meal that had cooked all day…chugging along through all the distractions and disturbances of the day. Life is like that. Bumps, distractions and disturbances, but there will be that underlying current of comfort and consistencies we cling to.

Our faith. Our focus. Our disciplines. We can roll with the frustrations and we can even laugh and adjust when the foundation is stable and we can still come around the table knowing who we are and knowing as well that there is One who knows our name and knows just when we need that word of encouragement.

We are remembered. We are known.

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And that….is privilege.

I have to confess that I grew up with a fair amount of privilege.

We had some pretty great toys as kids, and we grew up able to to hang out on this great space in Colorado in the summers especially…riding horses and motorcycles and exploring.

Most all of that was due to having a Dad and a grand father who were diligent in their work and who were wise and who blessed us. We didn’t always know how blessed we were, and we didn’t always appreciate it…and we didn’t always know the sacrifices that were made so we could enjoy these adventures and this life.

Now, when I’m a little older and hopefully a little wiser, and more importantly now that I am a parent as well, I am aware of how special my life has been. I am also aware of the privilege we are in the midst of now. This privilege is different, and yet it is also the fruit of my Dad’s diligence and his sacrifices.

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This is the privilege of watching my mother age in the care of those who love her, and I am aware that it is a privilege. There are so many who are simply not able to keep their loved ones at home because of the need for constant supervision…but we have been able to do so because my Dad has made that sacrifice and my brothers have as well, along with my nephews. These men take great care of this lady.

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That is pretty remarkable.  

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So on this trip I was able to chip in some of the time and watch Mom, to take my part in caring for her. To be part of the privilege of seeing her in the moments of confusion and know that even though that look of lostness comes over her…to know that she in a place filled with laughter and with children. A place filled with memories and filled with thought and care…a place which she designed to be welcoming and hospitable to those who would come. A place made to be home. Sometimes that makes things all the more difficult because if she was in her “right” mind she would be rejoicing in these moments and she would delight in this laughter and the place would be alive with her touches of hospitality. There are times the awareness of her dementia makes that sting…and it should. Brokenness hurts and reminds us that this is not as it should be.   Still…in this imperfection, she is in a place where she is known.

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She may not know it, but she is in a place which embraces her, and in the moments when she is silent and does not have words, or when she is flooded with words that simply repeat and express confusion…she is still surrounded by laughter and life.  She is not left on her own or isolated, and when she has those moments where she is alert…there are those there to laugh with her and embrace her.

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And that is privilege.

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And the richness of that privilege is not lost.

I spent much time this trip with just Maddie and Mom. It always amazes me how children just accept things and Maddie never was troubled that there was something amiss with Grandma. She would light up and embrace her, kiss her, or scold her…whatever the situation called for…with great enthusiasm. And she drew Mom out.

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That was privilege that could not happen in a “home”.

I think often of Madeleine L’Engle’s book, The Summer of The Great Grandmother where she talks of the last summer with her mother, and I think she would smile at our gatherings in Colorado. Our generations mix and aging happens in the midst of development.

The children learn that we are frail, and they learn that we have to not be afraid of that and sometimes life is hard…but it is a lot easier when we handle it as a family in the midst of a place filled with laughter and life and memories.

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And that is privilege. 

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3,000 Miles, Snakes and Memories…

We began at 4:00 am.  We picked our mascot the night before, a giant blue Puffle…a stuffed, well, puff-ball of sorts. We had snacks sorted and we had the cooler with water. We had little surprises wrapped and we had stops planned.

I had spent the required hours on Pinterest planning the Road Trip.

We planned for pictures like this.

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Did you notice someone is missing. Yep.

That is because Maddie was running down the sidewalk at the rest stop and Steve was chasing her. The blue puffle, however is in the picture. After I stopped being stubborn and I let the boys pose how they wanted.

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Then we started having fun.

Honestly, I don’t need Pinterest. My kids are used to this. We do it every year. Nearly 3,000 miles of driving to get to our destination and get home, plus driving around while we are there. They know the drill, and they actually are really good at the adventure. On the way home Maddie, 2, and Sammy, 7, sat in the far back of the truck for the duration and Maddie only really fussed about 7 minutes of the whole trip. Not bad. We stopped a few times and found some cool stuff…like an old caboose we hadn’t seen before, and we even got Maddie to stop running long enough to get in the picture.

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Folks always think we are crazy to drive when we could fly, but with six of us it is still cheaper to drive, and honestly…you don’t get to just pull over and pee on bushes when you are flying. Or, when you are really desperate and pull into abandoned gas stations you might find things like this:

Seriously, though, you can’t see things like this from the airplane:

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I know there are great adventures in flying, and we loved our trip to California last Fall, but we love driving as well. Of course, the final destination is part of the adventure, and that is what makes the journey worthwhile. The objects we can find in the clouds and the snakes we can outrun and the cabooses we can climb on…they are fun, but we still have to climb back into a small confined space with sweaty siblings who annoy us after awhile.

We still have to listen to the Wiggles more than we want to keep the 2 year old happy, but we do it so we can end up in a place where we only get to be for a week out of the year.

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A place that has a special hold on my kids, a hold it had on me when I was a kid.

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We have had this place in Colorado since I was four years old. When my Dad built the house and garage that now stand there, we tore down an old barn that was built with wooden nails. I remember swinging from a rope in the hayloft and spraining my ankle.

Now my kids run around the place with their cousins and make their own memories. They never complain about making the road trip to go out there, and they always want to stay longer. When I ended up in the hospital with some complications after Madeleine was born there was a day Sammy had been shuffled around a few places and was feeling frustrated (he was 5). Someone asked him where he wanted to go, and without hesitation, this was the place he named.

CadeGrandmaThey hear about their history.

No wifi. No stereo.

Limited electronic games.

Limited noise.

Family.

Lots of stories.

Shooting guns.Boysshoot

Fishing.

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Laughter.

Building rafts.NateTessa

Exploring.

Continue reading →

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Living with the knowledge of Evil

I read an article the other day that began with the question, “Do you ever wonder if evil exists in the world?”.  The story that followed clearly answered the question. I have been troubled by the facts of the story since…it is in the most simplistic terms, one of the worst cases of child abuse I’ve read. I won’t repost it because, honestly, it is too disturbing and I don’t want to further their fame.

A few hours after reading that, our house was filled with roses and streamers and brightly decorated presents and cupcakes. Family came over and we joined together to celebrate a little girl.

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The striking contrast of the celebration of our little girl and the intentional destruction of another little girl left an ache deep within. 

There is evil in this world. The image that we have been given, by inspiration, of a roaraing lion seeking whom he could devour…we need to not let that fade into literary sweetness.

There is a destroying, active evil around us. It should terrify and enrage us.

As I have ‘listened’ to the conversations on FaceBook surrounding gay marriage and abortion and other issues, I hear that same evil stirring the conversation.  No…I am not saying what you think.

 

I am saying that I hear in our hatred and in our rejoicing in the failures of others that evil which seeks to destroy.

 

I wonder if our easy dismissal of others causes such a deep ache in the heart of God as the story of the intentional destruction of a wee innocent little baby did to my heart. Sometimes we need things to be more obvious before we get it…but God knows the way evil seeks to destroy in a variety of ways.  I can be sickened by the more obvious ways, and yet give in to the subtle hatred and the subtle evil around me.

 

There is evil in our world, and I do not like to talk about it. I talk more about wonder and about creation and about joy and about grace. Evil makes me aware that I am vulnerable and my children are vulnerable and that I am, frankly, incapable of stopping the evil completely. I can put bars on my doors and I can be vigilant and I can protect…but the evil that seeks to destroy us knows our weaknesses and destroys from within as well as from without.

 

Here’s the thing. I know that this evil will be dealt with. I know that God has dealt with sin, with the evil within me…I know that He has made a way to set me free from the hold of destruction on my life…and I know that ultimately He will deal with the evil that seeks to destroy. That is not fairy tale and it is not wishful thinking.

 

And so, we celebrate and we love and we do not cower.

 

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We delight.

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We step outside into the sunlight fully aware that there is a lion that seeks to destroy us…and yet, we love more tenderly and we are aware that the innocence and delight of our children holds a tinge of pain because that vulnerability is there.

 

Looking at Madeleine these last few days all I could think was of the little baby who was tormented and destroyed. It made me want to love Madeleine well  somehow to honor that other little one. Somehow to say that as much as evil may seek to destroy we will seek to build and to love and to embrace and to celebrate. We do so in the strength of the One who will ultimately deal with the evil.

 

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