Moth to Flame

Stuart is in and out these days. New job. Lots of travel. I am intentional about enjoying the time while it passes instead of counting the minutes. We look for shooting stars, go to the movies, camp in the backyard. Six of us in a four man tent. I read aloud by flashlight and a moth flutters to the light. Faith flutters to the moth, tripping over heads and legs, a hypnotic look in her eye. She falls down laughing. We laugh too.

And the next morning, we sit in a row, new Bibles in our laps, highlighters in hand outlining the Roman road. Good for the kids to know the verses that define their faith. But the reason for this? Next week we are to take these shiny Bibles and hit the streets during the church hour... ring doorbells and flash highlighted words at unsuspecting residents. A sneaky plan. Who would suspect a Baptist at their door on a Sunday during the church hour? We shift in our chairs and squirm through the altar call and bolt for the door at the last amen.

The weather declares a picnic so the kids and I zip through the store and collect up the goods. We sit at a high table with low seats in the park and feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag. "So are we going next week, Mom?"

"What do you think about it?" I ask the asker.

"I don't think we should. I think we will be barging in uninvited. It's rude."

I might be a heretic because I agreed. "No, we'll have church at home next week." Door-to-door evangalism and arm twisting altar calls step on the toes of graciousness and good manners. Once I did this. Once I sat in the dark on the lawn and told a friend that she would go to hell if she didn't have Jesus. She didn't start the conversation. She didn't ask for this information. I offered it free of charge, all righteous-like. I still blush when I replay the scene. How did I dare?

I know how. I used to think that I could strong arm people to believe the way I believe. A clever argument and a few words from the Word and voila`...another name added to God's big book. Silly girl.

Silly girl. You cannot drag people to me. They have to want to come. Do you not know that it is I who raise the dead? I take a dead heart and breathe life into it. Pray for life! Pray that I supply the want.

So we do. Mornings around the Bible we pray for those we know and love. We pray for life, eternal life to be whispered into hearts. We live our lives in the Light and I write bits of our story and this everyday living is our invitation. For me, this is enough. Notes slipped, now and then, to my inbox confirm that this quiet way works and I am always amazed. This matters, this living consistantly with gentleness and humility, because you never know who, like the moth, might be attracted to the light.

Life After Death

A hot breeze blows in the shade under the maple tree where I sand away the stain and varnish from Stuart's boyhood bed. Bits blow and stick and soon I'm covered with reddish dust. It's a good day for dust. I work and listen for the sound of Stuart's tires in the driveway. Dread hearing tires. Dread where they will take me in an hour.

Charlie chatters while I sand. His words come dimly. "How old is this bed, Mama?"

I push away black cloud. "It's old, Charlie. It was your papa's bed when he was a boy."

"How old is your car?"

"Old as far as cars go. About as old as Lauren." I sand until tires crunch gravel and then I put the bed back in the garage and rinse off dust and switch shorts for dress. The tires carry us away.

And too soon I stand in front of the husk of a girl. Young, not old. Younger than our car. A smidge younger than Lauren. A beautiful, beautiful girl... in spirit and in body. I hold her Mama hard and the tears come, hers and mine. "I'm so sorry. We're praying courage... grace..." Watery, weak words. A poor substitute for a daughter lying cold in a box.

Hair brushed back, full lips, fingers wrapped still around a blue blanket. Still. I look for her chest to rise, her heart to beat. It seems that time should stop, people become statues. Instead we live. In our few minutes with broken-hearted parents we make introductions, shake hands, cry, laugh, breath. Live.

Later we lie restless in the dark. "Are you asleep?" Stuart asks. "It doesn't seem fair, does it for parents to lose a child."

I'm quiet for a bit, thinking how to compress emotion into words. "That's not a safe question because it leads us away from the sovereignty of God. She's whole and safe and well. How can that not be good? I'm so, so sad for the empty place in her family. I'm sad for her parents, her brothers, but I cannot be sad for Abby." We toss a long time before we sleep and tears soak the pillow for a mother with empty arms and empty hours.

I grieve but to look death in the face is instructive. To see death teaches that there is a time to die. To see death teaches one to number the finite minutes and to learn to live those appointed days with wisdom. Like Abby.

Artwork and words from the back of Abby's funeral program. A recent creation from Abby's own hand.

Gone Fishin'

It's crazy around here!  So I need to take a blogging break.  I'll be back when the dust settles.

History Repeats Itself

Once there was a little boy. A mischievous little boy with a wind-up car. He took that car, wound it up and drove it into his sister's hair.

The little boy grew up and had a girl and he told her the story about the car and the hair. "That car turned your Aunt Ellen's hair into a rat's nest. A regular rat's nest your granny would say. I made a hell of a mess! They had to cut that car out of her hair."

The girl grew up and had a little boy. A mischievous little boy with a wind-up car. He took that car, wound it up and drove it into his sister's hair...

More, Please?...Here You Go

So you want to know about the fairy house?  I noted your curiosity and dashed into the rain, camera in hand, to shoot another photo minus the cat.  See the sweet little walkway of tiny stones that the girls laid out?  The tiny lantern has a solar powered battery so it gives a wee glow when the sun goes down. 

Faith had her birthday all planned out, "Binoculars and an alarm clock, please."  We purchased and wrapped and were good to go when one morning I was flipping through the Plow and Hearth Catalog and spied these fairy accessories.  A bit of internal tug of war...  We already have her presents.  She doesn't really need this.  It's not like she can play with it... but  fifteen minutes later the goods were on their way to our front door.  Faith LOVES fairies.  She still plays the fairy game.  Now she has a door to deposit her minature delicacies at.  (No matter that we see the cat walking away licking her whiskers.)

We are on the hunt for tiny shade loving plants to line the walkway. I'm thinking ground cover that can be stepped on.  Any suggestions?  Wal-Mart has not offered up the perfect plant for this project; though today I found an ornamental grass on the way back to the car that had me running me into the store.  Isn't she a beauty? 

Karley Rose Pennisetum

Accesorizing continues in the back yard.  I've got my eye on the Wizard door for a few of my fantasy lovers. 

The Backyard

The gorgeous weather draws us out of our cave. We wile away the hours in our backyard...

...sunning...

(Allegra stretches out in front of Faith's birthday present.)

... playing...

(This photo shows only a fraction of the graffiti explosion on our back patio.)

...working...

(Lauren and John dump six hundred pounds of salt into the pool.)

...working and playing?!

(Kaya is all the rage with the younger set.)

Bad Theology

We had to backpedal and find an easier children's Bible for Charlie because the Children's Story Bible is beyond his depth and breadth of knowledge. Still, he listens in when I read to Claire and Faith, "I know about those, Mama," he tells me as I read the story of the pillar of cloud and fire. "A fire pillar is like a firefly."

Right...like this firepillar?

And for his own Bible time with his easy Bible story book, I point to Adam and Eve and ask, "Who are these people?" to which I receive this confident reply:

"That's Adam and Jamie."

Fruit

Her children rise up and call her blessed. Yeah, right. Maybe someone else's children do that. Not mine, and I wish they would stop rising so darn early. That would be a blessing. The thoughts that churned in this mother's heart when it beat stronger and surer a half decade ago when I was up to my eyeballs in diapers and sippy cups.

Today is Mother's Day. To celebrate, Claire drew me a card on a piece of notebook paper in church where she was informed by today's sermon that it is a significant day. Happy mothers Day, Mama! A bouquet of flowers drawn underneath. For lunch, we hit the McDonald's drive through (where the cashier wished me a Happy Mother's Day) and then went to Lowe's for home improvement materials (where an employee operating a fork truck said the same). It has been a great day.

I do mean this. Around here, every day is Mother's day. Not the saccharine, stress-inducing, sainted, card-bestowing, mother-worshipping kind of day. Thank goodness! No, I mean the kind where the children rise up and bless me in a thousand considerate, unexpected ways.

Kindness springs forth from my offspring as naturally as breathing. I am typing this post on my knees, not because I'm praying, but because I'm too lazy to go get a chair. John sees this and brings me one. The girls notice where there is work to be done and they do it to ease my workload. Charlie wraps his arms around me a hundred times a day and kisses me...on one cheek and then the other and then on the forehead. I kiss him back in the same manner. "I love you SO much, Mama" he says while squeezing his arms tight around my neck. Sometimes I'm wrapped in ten-arm hugs and pummeled with ten-hand backrubs.

"You look pretty, Mama." This surprises me too...that my children notice what I wear and are free with extravangant words of praise. "I like that shirt, Mom. It is the same color as your eyes." They bring me armloads of wildflowers and arrange them in vases until the whole house flowers with the affection of these young ones.

They love me enough to call me on my shortcomings, too. Not in an aggravated or disrespectful way but gently, in a way that makes me want to be better than I am now.

And this, this gets to the heart of my astonishment. I have offered my children a little...a little love and care and nurture, mixed with some grumbling and entire days of hot temper and occasional despair. Yet, they flourish. They are good because of me and in spite of me. I'm learning the loaves and fishes principle applies to motherhood. These young saplings, the same ones I thought would never see beyond their own needs are beginning to look out, to bud and flower and bear fruit in abundance.

To John...and Lauren...and Faith...and Claire...and Charlie. I am blessed to be your Mama. Happy Mother's Day!

Big Yellow Rain Boots

Charlie snuck out to the forbidden boxes in the garage, the ones holding the off-season clothes, the shoes and his favorite, the boot box. "Charlie, put those back! You don't need them!"

He lifted his serious chocolate eyes to my stern face, "But I do need them, Mom." And I gave in until he peeled them off his feet and slam dunked them down in the back hall. Then I pounced and return them righteously to their allotted storage box. We played this sneaking/pouncing game for weeks. Charlie won. The garage is a long way from the shoe shelf in the back hall. Plus, Charlie was right; he did need those boots. Turns out they are an intregal part of his vivid imagination.

Charlie as Boromir.

Charlie as Paddington Bear.

Charlie as The Knight Whose Boots Always Squeak

Yellow boots are for bunnies too. This is Charlie's newest stuffed animal, Peter. No, not Peter Rabbit. Peter Jackson.

So how 'bout you? Do you have a kid with a vivid imagination and a great prop or two?

10:30 Tuesday Night

It's almost summer.  Or maybe it already is summer because the kids have been swimming every day this week.  Time for school to wind down?  Not for us.  We're picking up the pace and buckling down.  For some reason we always get more school done in the summer than we do any other time of the year.

The kids have been busy with a new language arts program and a new approach to handwriting.  (More on these soon.)  Lauren is obsessed with biology.  We work in the gardens and she holds out specimens to the girls, "Look!  It's a gastropod."  Or, "Come see this wood louse!"

 

 I introduced Claire and Faith to long division this afternoon.  This evening the children worked on art projects and played with a pile of hand-me-down stuffed animals while I read Great Expectations aloud to them. 

At ten I closed the book and after a quick candlelight question, sent the children off to bed.  At 10:15 Lauren came to get me so I could correct her science test.  She was too excited to wait until tomorrow to see how she did.  When I finished working with Lauren, I walked by Claire's bedroom where she was laying on her stomach, math notebook open in front of her.  I looked over her shoulder to see that she had created some long division problems for herself and was working on solving them.  For my children, it seems that learning is as essential as breathing.

(Lauren reading Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World Vol. 3 on a recent sunny morning. Claire and Faith share binoculars to complete a project listed in Jeannie Fulbright's Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day.)