gifts...

74. The big miracles. Like the miracle of a brand new life created, gifted to a family, tiny, fragile, dependent, and so very precious.

75. A little girl nestled in the crook of my leg, sleepy breathing punctuated by little shudders and sighs of lungs newly put to use.

76. Two weeks paid time off for the proud Daddy. Two weeks together as a complete family. Two weeks of strengthened bonds between Daddy and sons, renewed friendship between My Hero and me.

77. "Ksheww! I shot the tiger that was going to eat my little baby sister!" Christopher Robin practicing his new role as protective big brother.

78. The deep, subdued colors of morning before the sunrise.

79. The strength and alertness to get out of bed before the others, after months of not doing so, and begin the day with a heart to heart with the High King.

80. Small moments of quiet and stillness to stop and drink in the beauty of a darling baby girl... my last new baby, unless God changes our minds somehow.

81. Peanut Butter's pathetic "Gammie Gampa" after about the eighth spanking of the day his first full day home with us after spending 3 days at my parents' house while we were in the hospital. Apparently Grammie and Grampa didn't treat him to many spankings. And he prefers life with them.

82. Peanut Butter pronouncing his little baby sister's name in a high pitched squeal with a sugar-sweet smile. And the kisses he showers her with.

83. That he has a form of touching her, those kisses, that isn't too rough for comfort.

84. My dad's recipe for porridge, hot in the bowl each morning.

85. Parents-in-law, flying out to visit in the middle of a busy farm season, to see their new granddaughter.

86. Kids' bedtime...toys put away, teeth brushed, poems read, prayers said, then quiet. Well, after an hour and a half of reading books and talking to each other in their room, then, finally...quiet.

87. Christopher Robin, "reading" the story of Jesus' birth, his favorite, pretty much word for word, from memory.

88. Christopher Robin, quoting a poem that we read often at bedtime, spontaneously from memory for the benefit of his little brother. That he's memorizing poetry without even trying.

89. Twins, boy and girl, strong and healthy, born to dear friends in Florida about a month before our little girl...the fun of finally having kids the same age.

90. Now I am free from sin, my old master, and I have become slave to my new master, righteousness. Romans 6:18 Now I must choose to be a slave of righteousness so that I will become holy. 6:19

a small choice

The morning has been rainy and gloomy, and myself feeling impatient and cranky. The morning was spent doing things, like making loaves of Amish Friendship Bread and dipping frozen bananas in chocolate and reading books to my boys, but not with purpose or intentionality. I'd resigned myself to a day without real direction or purpose, the wet air coming in from the downpours outside keeping my ambition dampened and lifeless. The boys fed and down for naps, I intended to curl up on the couch and take a nap also, after reading a little of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography as I ate a frozen chocolate banana.

But then the sun came out. Blazing and strong. Shaming my lazy, self-indulgent intentions. I can't do things on rainy days like finish painting the deck or weeding the garden, but when the sun bursts forth and dries up my excuses, I have a choice. What will the rest of my day look like? My inclination is to follow my ready-made plan. Curl up on the couch and snooze in the warm breeze. Let the afternoon's whims dictate the last 6 hours of our day when the boys wake up from napping. Find ways to make myself happy and comfortable, or at least as uninconvenienced by the day's demands as possible.

But what if it matters? What if I choose the better way? What if I spend some time talking with my Father in heaven, submitting my unthankful spirit to Him, and enjoying the privilege of one-on-one time with the High King of All? What if this afternoon turns out to be a day in my life that really matters, not just another ordinary day that will be spent and forgotten. What if something happens today, and my reaction to it is based on the kind of day I've let myself have so far, and it really matters that I'm Spirit-filled, not full of self?

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit." -Aristotle

It's hard, on the days when I've let my old selfish self have some say in how I spend my morning, to turn and make a better choice for the rest of the day. But every day really does matter, and the bad ones can be redeemed. So now I go to humble myself before the throne, to lay my nasty, griping spirit on the altar, and choose the joy and rightness and truth of God to influence the rest of my day.

The Middle of Everywhere

Five years ago this month, My Hero and I moved back to New England from his home state of Illinois. Two years ago this October, we moved into our newly built house on land purchased from my grandfather, about a mile down the road from my parents' house. It took a year or two, after 6 years away (4 for college, then 2 years after we were married) for this area to feel like home again, but since then, I have felt our roots, especially mine, delving deeply into this rocky New England soil, making connections, winding around favorite places, learning to find the best nourishment, what sources of joy New England has to offer. Summertime, especially, from the first days of melted snow and birds telling us that spring is here, offers endless reasons to joy in calling this place home.

Our large yard, surrounded by woods on two sides and a cow pasture on the third, with stone walls centuries old, holds so much freedom and potential. It's quiet here, and most of our time is spent in the back yard, far from the road. My garden patch doubled in size from last year to this, and its uneven edges testify to a work in progress. My goal in the next few years is to determine the right sized garden for our family, and to plant grass in straight lines around its' neat, rectangular edges. I love our yard, but I cringe with embarrassment at the slow progress we're making in getting it finished. Large patches on the sides and in back remain untamed and are now filled with weeds, shrubs, brambles, and growing young trees that will be harder to remove with each passing summer.
My maternal grandparents purchased a plot of land from my paternal grandparents across the road from us, and moved in last fall. Before their house sold and their new one was built, they would come and neaten up their stone wall, and sweep the rock that rises like an island in their front lawn, and trim away any undesired shrubbery. My Hero and I joked that they took better care of their lawn before they lived there than we did of ours after moving in. We joked, but it was absolutely true. This summer they have paved their driveway, replanted grass in bare spots, landscaped, put up window boxes under their windows and filled them with flowers, and they mow their lawn 2-3 times /week. In a week or two they'll have a deck built in back of their house, too. My Hero shakes his head and says, "They're shooting themselves in the foot. What will they have left to do next summer?" We're envious, but realize that they're retired and don't have toddlers to tend...other than all the times they invite our boys to come over and play. So they have more free time than we do.
We couldn't ask for better neighbors. My grandpa brings us their newspaper every morning around 6:30, after they've finished with it, even in the bitterly cold winter. And they bring our kitty the fancy food their spoiled cat turns her nose up to, which is the only time Tuttles gets soft moist food to eat. The best part is how much they delight in our little boys. Grandpa especially loves that Peanut Butter gravitates to him, climbing in his lap, snuggling with him, talking to him first.

This afternoon Great Grammie and Great Grampa came to take the boys and their vehicles across the road to ride around on their paved driveway.

My sister has a lovely habit of sending me something really good to read for my birthday, and this year it was The Middle of Everywhere by Mary Pipher, a book about "helping refugees enter the American community." I never had any idea just how difficult it can be for someone to adjust to our culture. Imagine someone, a middle-aged adult, say, who had never before used a clock or lived by the concept of hours and minutes, learning to keep an appointment or tackling the enormous complication of daylight savings time. The book really opened my eyes to the problems refugees face, and made me want to help somehow. New England isn't exactly a melting pot of nationalities, but actually our nearest city has a large population of refugees from Somalia. Many refugee families just need a friend to help them learn the necessary details of our culture...Pipher listed over three pages of things that she had helped refugees learn, things like:

How to mix juice
How to cross streets with traffic lights
How to use an alarm clock, a watch, a calendar, and an appointment book
How to check oil and put gas in a car
How to drive
How to peel an orange and eat watermelon
What to put in a refrigerator
What are vitamins
How to enroll in school
That cut flowers need to be put in water
What a United States map looks like and where Nebraska is
How to walk on snow and ice
What a birthday is
How to wear socks
That police can be helpful
How to use cleaning products
What germs are
What a tissue is

The list goes on and on... And the stories she tells of refugees she has come to know are almost impossible for me to fathom. Almost all refugees have lost family members--seen them shot in front of them, or seen them starve to death or freeze to death. Refugees have survived terrible situations, yet the United States confronts them with new and different difficulties. Life isn't easy for them just because they arrive here. Most can't speak English well enough to hold higher than minimum wage jobs, and many fall prey to the worst influences of our culture...television, commercials, credit cards, junk food...they have no education or experience to guard them against the lies shown on television every day.

The book opened my eyes to a need I had no awareness of until now. What can I do with this? How will this change me? I want to help, but I'm not sure where to start.

It also opened my eyes to the tremendous blessing of community, of being surrounded by friends and family who know us and care about us, of having roots and knowing the nuances of my particular town and land.

he's learning to talk

His eyes are bursting with a story locked inside. He looks at me with wide intensity, and his body fights against the barriers of unlearned speech. "Mama! Brrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmm! Bampa!!"
"Grandpa took you for a ride on the tractor??" I ask.
"Dah!!" He nods excitedly, relief and joy that his story is told.

I wonder how much more Peanut Butter wants to say...details he would add if he knew how to articulate them. Maybe, since he's all boy, he wouldn't elaborate if he could; the bare facts are all he cares to discuss. But his enthusiasm and body language are eloquent about the passions that stir him. Tractors. Motorcycles. Horses, cows, pigs, and chickens. And puppies.

He's 22 months, and just these days his vocabulary is exploding. Yesterday he learned "moose" at the wildlife park we visited. "Can you say, 'moose'?" I asked. He shook his head. "Mmm-mm." But a few minutes later he was saying it. "Mooosh. Mooosh." I talk to him like I do to Christopher Robin, and he understands it all. But his mouth doesn't know how to make the sounds. He's frustrated by the barrier to his communication, and he's slowly, painfully learning to scale the wall of vocabulary so he can tell what's on his mind. Just nouns now. Lots and lots of sound effects help him tell his stories. And pointing. But the joy he feels when I understand propels him to keep learning.

Sometimes, unexpectedly, a new word will come out clear and intelligible, unintentionally. Then I won't hear it again. It's like his subconscious knows more about how speech is done than his conscious mind. He doesn't know how to make himself form a word, even though he can.

I'm guessing speech therapy would speed the process a little, but I'm not concerned enough for that. He's learning so quickly now I'm content to battle it out together, him and me, and Daddy and Christopher Robin, too.

For months Christopher Robin has entertained himself by asking, "Can you say, 'vacuum', Peanut Butter?"
"Gacume."
"Yes! Good job!! You said, 'vacuum'! Can you say, 'calculator?'"
"Mmm-mm."
"Can you say, 'calculator', Peanut Butter?"
"Mmm-mm."

He knows his limits.

For a long time I've wondered what he will sound like when he talks to me. I'm starting to know.

Together

My boys have started doing lots of things together.

scraping up hailstones on our deck after a storm

reading books


playing with the dryer knobs


putting toys away


playing with trains


"sleeping" in Mommy and Daddy's bed after getting bathed and dressed for church


riding their tricycle

I've always hoped that my two boys would grow up being friends. I guess that explains the delight I feel when I see them having fun together, or even when one wakes up before the other after nap time and starts acting lonely, then lights up when the other stumbles groggily out a little while later. There's plenty of competition and screams of ill will and looks of satisfaction when the other one is disciplined, but I love that they're growing up together...that their earliest years are full of times spent together. My hope is that they'll always be close friends...that their growing up years will form a bond between them that they value and nourish even if their life paths lead them far away from each other in miles.

heart's cry

You say if I love You, I will obey You.
You say if I abide in You, I will bear fruit. Lots of it.
You say to love others as You love me.

But, Lord, I can't. I try, and in some of my best moments I succeed, but when the storms overwhelm me, even when my eyes are on you and I cry out for help, I sink beneath the waves. I feel my patience run low, I recognize that I'm at the end of responding with gentleness, and I look to You, implore You to fill me with more of what I don't have, but the next whine, the next sharp wail of protest from an angry boy snaps me. I want to do what's right, but it's not in me. I sink in despair at my own incapacity to obey You.

I long to see fruit. Tangible evidence that I'm Your child, that my life is not being wasted, that You can use me. Teach me what it means to abide in You, to stay connected to the vine.

Show me how to draw on Your strength and power, to respond with Your Spirit, rather than
tripping and falling in my weak, inadequate determination to do right.

Big Boy Beds

"I don't want a new bed," Christopher Robin insisted on our way home from the furniture store a month ago, van loaded with large boxes of new bunk bed pieces.

"Don't worry," I assured him. "It's not time to change beds yet." The unfinished wood would have to be assembled first, and then coated with three coats of polyurethane, and that would take us a little while.

After "helping" us put the beds together, and several mornings spent playing in the basement with Peanut Butter while My Hero and I sanded and wiped and polyed, Christopher Robin found the idea of sleeping in a bed up high, accessed only by ladder, exciting. He impatiently asked when it would be ready.

Still, last night as he and Daddy ceremoniously carried his toddler bed out of the bedroom, after his new bed was carried upstairs and assembled in its place, he again told My Hero, "I don't want a new bed." Even though he did. He wasn't ready to be rid of his old bed. It is a darling little bed, and he probably would have stayed in it at least a few more years if we had the space for two beds and a crib in the kids' room. Or at least would have passed it on to Peanut Butter when he moved to a twin bed, to free up the crib for their little sister. But we decided we weren't ready to move any of the kids to a bedroom in the basement yet, so they'll share a room for a year or two, the three of them, and putting the boys in bunk beds was the only way that could happen in their little room.

Once the old bed was removed and the boys had a few minutes to climb the ladder and play on the bed "up top," it was clear the excitement and novelty would make the transition and relatively painless one.

Relatively painless. The biggest adjustment is actually for Peanut Butter, who has been used rolling around to sleep against any of the four walls of the crib. Suddenly his rolling around tumbles him off the side of the bed. Cushions on the floor don't eliminate the rudeness of awakening to falling on the floor in the middle of a sleepy dream. Twice last night I heard the thump, and twice I tucked him, whimpering, safely into his bed, close to the wall, far from the edge. Our bodies learn, after a while, to stay away from the edge, but until then I expect a few more tumbles.