Multitude Monday with a Side of Self-pity

We don't own a full-length mirror or a bathroom scale. Most of the time then, I'm unaware of how my weight is doing or how my aging body appears. The scary glimpses come four times a year as I try something on at thrift stores.

It so happens that 10.5-year-old Peter outgrew all but one of his size 12 jeans. His doctor told me if Peter keeps growing at the current rate, he'll be 6 feet, 2 inches tall as an adult (regardless of his parents' heights of 5'8'' and 5'3''). The five pairs of jeans I found for him back in June are now waiting for brother to fit into.

Yesterday I went off to the thrift store in search of size 14 slim jeans, or at least size 14 jeans with adjustable waists.

A high-quality, fairly new ladies sweater caught my eye so I meandered over to the dressing room, only to nosedive into self-pity.

Youth, where have you gone? We just rendezvoused together last week, didn't we? Why have you forsaken me, oh comforting friend? What becomes of me now?

My hair, thin and lifeless, badly needed a new perm or a cut to revive the March perm. The self-pity of youth-long-gone, something I'm usually too busy to dwell on, caught up with me and I stopped by Best Cuts on the way home, hoping for a lift in spirits and hair. The last two times I've been there I vowed to never go again, but I felt desperate.

They messed up a one-length chin bob but after 60 minutes of my working on it at home too, I like it. You have to pin up most of the hair and cut the underhairs very short before going forth with a chin bob, otherwise the underhairs peek out and look ridiculous. You'd think cosmetology school teaches this concept? Probably, but maybe I've just run into people with no work ethic?

I pinned up my hair and tried to get my fingers and arms and elbow in the right position to cut my own underhairs, before evening up the rest--in the same weekend I cut Paul and Beth's hair. I'm learning new things, friends. Beth's natural curl is gone and she needed a shoulder-length cut to have any bounce to her hair. The length weighed down her body and bounce, as happens to my hair.

As I struggled in the mirror, God worked on my self-pity. He hates that emotion and never lets me bathe in it for long. Being low-income is hard a lot of the time, particularly when it means you can't make the most of the looks God gave.

So what did God do? He brought third-world women to my mind, who usually don't have a bathtub or shower and must bathe in dirty water, with or without soap. They don't own curling irons, hairspray, home color treatments (I'm still too scared to use one), make-up, moisturizer or acne medicine.

God spoke some more. When you age and lose any looks you had, or when you're unable to make anything of your looks, what do you have instead? What do you have instead of self-involvement and vanity?

You fill up more on God. The more that's stripped from you, the more you feel connected to God as the lover of your soul. Only God doesn't change. Only God gives a fountain of life that never runs dry. 

Youth? Fleeting.
Looks? Fleeting. 
Motherhood? Fleeting.
Your possessions? Fleeting.

Wisdom comes with age? I think yes, but only because wisdom comes when one's focus shifts from inward to outward.

The solidarity God makes me feel with the poorest of the poor? It keeps me ever thankful and ever concerned about caring for the least of God's people. They not only need His love, but ours too. His love sustains their souls and our love brings them right-now hope, comfort, and physical health. Our love is an extension of God's love. It's the necessary, earthly version.

Giving Thanks Today:

• The Lord, my fountain of Life.
• The Spirit, who teaches, comforts, and gently rebukes.
• My husband, who made dinner while I fixed my haircut nightmare.
• My husband, who denies I've probably gained four pounds in the last two years (not good on a small frame but lowered metabolism is expected at my age. I have to make some changes.)
• That fantastic sweater on sale for one dollar.
• Three pairs of nearly-new jeans for Peter.
• Brand-new holiday dresses for my girls--tags still on one of them--for singing in the Christmas choir on stage. God keeps track of my needs before they're even on my radar. I hadn't even thought yet of what they'd wear on stage, but last year they were the shabbiest of the girls up there and that made me sad. God understands my Momma heart?
• Sight word learning videos from the library for my girls.
• Finding a newer version of Charlotte's Web at the library with real people and enjoying it as a family movie. The spider and all the animals were so realistic, even as they talked! 
• On Saturday Paul performed in a piano recital the library offered. He did as well as most and better than some, even without formal lessons. My tears started with his first note and I couldn't halt the flood. God arranges things in ways we could never duplicate. The glory went to Him, not to Paul or to Paul's parents. The way the piano fell into our hands, the dedication Paul displayed, the procuring of piano books....all of it was God and He did it so that no mistake could be made as to whose power was at work. 
• As much as being low-income is hard, I see more and more that it gives God a unique opportunity to shine. He wants everyone cared for but he doesn't want everyone rich or well-off, regardless of what the prosperity preachers spout. A diverse society leaves room for the Glory of God. 
• The Bobbin Girl by Emily Arnold McCully, a perfect library find. It's about a ten-year-old mill girl from the 1830's, an era in which children worked long, exhausting hours six days a week. It fits in perfectly with Turn Homeward Hannalee, one of the historical fiction novels my boys just finished.
  Hannalee is a fictional, Civil War-era 12-year-old mill girl who worked 12.5 hours a day, six days a week for $8 a month, along with her 10-year-old brother, Jem. If they didn't work they didn't eat, which was the case with many children of the era (with the exception of the rich, Plantation-owning southern families). During the Civil War, Union soldiers burned down the mills making Confederate cloth and sent the child workers--without their parents--off to distant states to be used as low-paid labor for whomever was interested. Turn Homeward Hannalee is the incredible story of a young girl's strength, determination, and love of family. I highly recommend it for any child in need of a thankful heart this holiday season. Children need to know that life has not always been so easy for America's children.
• Loving gesture from a sweet, tender-hearted friend.

 Giving thanks with Ann today.

photo credit

Boys Will Be Boys?

If you have two girls studying the Civil War and you assign them Freedom Train, a Harriet Tubman biography, along with The Perilous Road, and Turn Homeward Hannalee, what do you suppose you'd get for a response?

My guess is your two girls will lament about the collective human suffering wrought by war--justified war or gratuitous war.

If you have two boys studying the Civil War and you assign them a Harriet Tubman biography to read, along with The Perilous Road, and Turn Homeward Hannalee, what do you suppose you'd get as a response?

Well, forget the lamenting. That lasts all of five minutes. Instead, you get daily Civil War reenactments in your home, executed with exactness and gusto. And as you carry your laundry basket pass the warring factions--Confederate and Union soldiers--you'll scratch your head with your free hand, wondering just what God was thinking when he crafted the male brain and psyche.

Cus' it sure ain't anything you'll understand.

Dare I say it?

Boys will be boys.

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The Path of Least Resistance

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Three of us led the AWANA Cubbies down the church halls, into the multipurpose room for kids' choir (a high-energy, use-your-whole-body worship time). Two new students, twin brothers, bobbed along down the halls with us, much like the bobbin' preschooler peers in front of them. Watching young children trot in a line always makes me smile. They've got flare and style and bounce.

When we arrived at the multipurpose room,  "normal" no longer applied to our new friends. They wriggled away from our helping hands, yowled like banshees, cried and refused to sit or stand to be directed in music.

We gave chase, glancing alarm at one another, wondering how any class could take place that night.

Fifteen minutes in, the main teacher knew what she had to do. "I'll have to call her to pick them up. We can't do this for two hours."

As visitor's to their cousin's house, they were only there for the night, if not for which the teacher would have worked with them longer and harder, trying to get them to conform to the simplest of routines.

Twenty minutes later, back in the gym for the opening AWANA ceremony, I saw their aunt zipping up their coats as they cried and wriggled. Though I hadn't made the decision to "reject" them, I did agree with it. AWANA is not a babysitting service anymore than the public schools are, but having a special-needs child myself, I knew how badly the guardian probably needed a break.

I learned that their biological mother gave birth to them when she was just thirteen-years-old. Hearing it, my heart cried silently to the Lord, wondering at the depth of dysfunction the human spirit must endure.

It depressed me, this opening to the AWANA night. I tried to shake the sadness, noticing no one else felt sad, but hormones weren't working in my favor.

"Can you imagine that kind of stress on a daily basis?", I found myself saying later, trying to process the experience. I deal with a lot of stress from my own special-needs son, so I have some idea how life gets colored by impulse-control problems. Exhausting is the best descriptor and if you have a strong-willed child, you know something of this flavor of life.

These twin boys could have been born from incest, abuse, rape...I don't know, but they have serious challenges, far beyond that which lax parenting would cause. Their mother, now sixteen and no longer in the picture, obviously couldn't handle them. She unwittingly handed their precious lives and special-needs over to someone else, for whom life is permanently altered.

My husband used to work with Prader-Willi-syndrome children. This is a congenital disease affecting many parts of the body. People with this condition are obese, have reduced muscle tone and mental ability, and have sex glands that produce little or no hormones. They eat uncontrollably and steal food--just one of the problems which land them in institutions for life.

Husband worked with the mentally-challenged for twelve years, some Prader-Willi and some brain-injured, after which he prayed he'd never have a special-needs child himself. I prayed the same prayer, across the country in my first-grade classroom. Not only did we end up together--him from PA and me from CA--but our first child is special needs, with impulse-control problems no less.

This is the gospel life and we wanted no part of it. We wanted the path of least resistance, thank you very much. This gospel life is more challenging than fun, more worrisome than carefree, more exhausting than rejuvenating. This laying down your dreams, your life, your nerves, for another? Who would choose it? Certainly not my husband and me.

And yet we're here. The guardian of those twins, she's here...to a far greater extent than us.

How do you embrace it? How do you learn to smile instead of cry? And what of the people who don't understand? Impulse-control problems are commonly considered parenting issues. Plenty of people don't want to hear otherwise...until they've tried to "fix" someone with these issues themselves.

Quickly, they realize no fixes exist. There are only best-cases scenarios to help minimize the assault on everyone's psyche.

Do we want to blame the parents because this makes life seem more fair? Be a good parent and life with kids will just be an everyday variety of chaos. The kind that only comes when you underfeed them, overwork them, fail to allow enough sleep, or indulge them too much. 

We want life to be fair, and random or inherited brain disorders? They're not fair. Who get's the lottery ticket for Down Syndrome or autism or AD/HD? Who gets to live the gospel life?

Home in my bed that night, I tried to sleep but my mind's eye could still see those boys running all over that multipurpose-room like scared rats wondering if they should bite us or give us the slip. Instinctively, from my school-teaching years, I knew to close all the doors least they run out onto the street. Sometimes keeping a child safe from himself is the only goal.

The path of least resistance; I wanted that for the boys' caregiver, instead of moment-to-moment stress.

But my son has taught me this: The gospel life is achingly beautiful and when you try to take the ache out, you also take the beautiful out. God's grace doesn't shine.

I finally fell asleep, realizing that the path of least resistance only lets us shine. Which is better, for us to shine or for the Lord Jesus to shine? 

Therein lies the smile I want to wear...the smile I want the twin's guardian to wear. Embracing the gospel life is embracing the glory of God. What could be more smile-worthy?

Perhaps no one would agree more than the Apostle Paul:

2 Corinthians 4:17 ..momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison"

Colossians 3:2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth."

Romans 8:18 the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us".

2 Corinthians 1:9 "indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God"

1 Peter 1:6-7 I know the thought of that is exciting, even if you must suffer through different kinds of troubles for a short time now. These troubles test your faith and prove that it is pure. And such faith is worth more than gold. Gold can be proved to be pure by fire, but gold will ruin. When your faith is proven to be pure, the result will be praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ comes.

On What We're Missing

Compassion International is in Peru this week. Twice yearly Compassion sends out a team of bloggers to bring back stories from one of the 26 countries Compassion serves. Compassion serves two million children worldwide and 55,000 of them reside in Peru.

I've been following these trips since 2010, when Kristin Welsh traveled to the slums of Kenya, revealing the worst physical poverty imaginable. That trip changed both her heart and mine, forever. A year after her trip she opened a home in Kenya for abused, orphaned, pregnant teens. And for my part, I resolved to never stop writing about abject poverty. I will do it until my fingers and my voice take their final rest, no matter how uncomfortable it makes people, and it does do that.

Your heart will squirm and you won't know what to think, much less say or do. And that not knowing might last a couple years, depending on your own level of wealth. Some people have enough wealth that sponsoring five or ten children doesn't change their lifestyle, so the decision is easy. The less wealth you have, the more you won't know what to do because the little you have won't seem like enough. Never make that mistake. Sponsoring even one child can change a whole community significantly. Some people have such tight budgets that $38 a month will seem impossible. But with God, nothing is impossible. 

You give, and then watch your own needs be met. Not necessarily your wants, but your needs. It's part of God's promise in Matthew 6:33: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (These things refers to food, clothing, shelter.)

Enormous progress has been made in fighting abject poverty in the last 50 years. A day will come when this problem won't be the world's most pressing. That day will come and it starts with you.

No trip since Kenya has equaled it in terms of the depth of poverty revealed, but the stories continue to change me. I've not yet experienced a Compassion trip to Haiti, but I imagine the physical poverty is similar there and perhaps even worse than Kenya, due to Haiti's 2010 earthquake.

We can't really understand what Jesus wants from us until we're exposed to abject poverty, either first-hand or through story and pictures. If the writer is good enough, it will seem like you're there too.

I urge you not to run. Don't refuse to click the first time, and don't refuse to click subsequent times. We need to know what Jesus wants.  Residing in the first world is not life as most humans know it. We have everything, and yet we're missing so much. 

Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

Read the stories coming out of Peru this week and learn what you're missing. And what you can do.

Clicking the Peru banner at the top of my blog will take you to the stories too.

Matthew 25:41-46⁴¹ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ ⁴⁴ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ ⁴⁵ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ ⁴⁶ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Homemaking: Taming the House

Amish house

When Mama ain't happy, no one's happy!

Does that ring true in your house? Do you walk from one room to another looking at your floor, noticing Lincoln Log pieces, tiny pony beads, waded-up paper, dirty socks, the pajamas your son never put in the hamper? The stray puzzle pieces that never made it into the box?

Do you hang up clean shirts in your son's bedroom, only to notice the clean jeans and shirts he rejected and threw on the floor?

Here's a peek into my heart. "For heaven's sake! I spend the bulk of a day doing laundry and he has the audacity to throw down what I've painstakingly fluffed and hung? What kind of blatant disrespect is that? What's the matter with that kid? What's wrong with all these kids and why in heaven's name must they create a disaster in their wake every. single. day.? How many times must they see me erupt before they get it?"

When I spout a verbal tirade about their disrespect of my time and our environment, what usually follows is some problem solving on my part. (They just get quiet for awhile, wondering when it will blow over).

What can I do better? What will it take to create a smooth-running home? How can we clean up faster and start school earlier? Should we start leaving the mess until after school?

If you homeschool you're likely to have a few more meltdowns than your friend next door, who cleans her house while her kids are away at school all day. She probably pays bills, organizes, and grocery shops while they're gone too (not that there's anything wrong with that).

If you find yourself melting down like me, let's spend some time together working through our issues over the next few weeks. I'll share what's worked for me and you can share too.

Helpful Things I've Implemented:

Catch Up Day:  I recommend you have one school day a week that doesn't require you to teach or monitor. My boys, ages 9 and 10, read their historical novels, their science trade books, their non-fiction social studies selections, and do their math, AWANA, and devotional times without my help. I'm needed for their spelling, writing, and for discussions of readings.

My 5-year-old K student is in a very dependent mode, needing me for penmanship, reading and writing, and math. Daddy does science with her on the weekends and he discusses the boys' science reading with them and conducts experiments on weekends too.

In order to have one day a week to catch up on the house, I give my K student one day off, except for a little penmanship practice and her AWANA verses. On this same day, my boys don't do spelling, writing, or have discussions of readings. My day is mostly free then, to catch up.

However you need to arrange it, give yourself one day to concentrate on the house. Enlist your older children to dust, vacuum and sweep, so you can tackle the unfolded laundry and other clutter. 10-year-old Peter does very well with these chores, but 9-year-old Paul is still learning. Most of the time Paul helps me by reading to the girls and leading them in art projects, so I can stay focused on decluttering.

Bag and Label Game Pieces/Parts:
Older kids play with games and cards more than toys. That means hundreds of game pieces and cards all over the house, potentially. After a number of meltdowns over this (my meltdowns not theirs), I took all the board games and bagged their parts into plastic ziplock bags, and labeled the bags with a Sharpie marker. We have 2 small toy bins that hold these ziplocked game bags, and on the outside of the bins I listed all the games represented in the bags. The actual manufacture game boxes only contain the game boards themselves--not the tiny marker pieces, monopoly cards, money, dice, etc. This way if the children put the boxes away sloppily or if the preschooler pulls out the game boxes, little damage can be done. No more looking for lost pieces, no more stress over the preschooler reeking havoc, no more heated lectures about lazy clean-up jobs.

Pitch Some Toys:  Kids don't mean to drive us insane with their trail of junk. The problem is often our fault; we provide too many toys and games and choices. They're more overwhelmed than lazy.

Early on I made a lot of mistakes and our playroom overflowed with toys. Most toys received little attention from the kids, except that the babies and toddlers threw them all over, creating havoc hourly. Many were educational toys and I was under the false impression that you could never have too many of those. Less is always more when it comes to toys. Concentrate on well-made classics and forget the trendy.

In the last couple years I've pitched toys every few months, and recently I've grown more radically minimalist. If they haven't played with something in two months, I pitch it, with the exception of board games. I don't ask my children's advice when I do this. They believe they'll eventually play with everything, so it's futile to involve them. I delay giving the bags to Goodwill for a week or so, to see if there's any adverse reaction. Most of the time they don't notice anything missing.

Here's a listing of what's survived my pitching (4 kids in this house, ages 3 to 10):

• Geo Trax train set (neighbor kids really enjoy this too)
• Legos
• Wooden building blocks
• Lincoln Logs
• various board games/card games/advanced cardboard puzzles
• hot wheel cars and 2 simple tracks
• 1 plastic bowling set that is good for Beth's therapy (deep-knee bending to set up pins) 
• 1 used heavy duty semi-truck that is good for Beth's arthritis therapy (she rides on it and propels with her quadriceps)
• 15 favorite stuffed animals
Dolly/Homemaking Stuff

• 4 dolls
• 8 changes of doll clothes
• 1 dolly cradle and 1 dolly bed (good thing to buy used, since they can be expensive)
• Play kitchen and dishes and a few plastic food items (buy a used play kitchen--new ones are so expensive!)
• Play cash register (this will be pitched next time)
• 1 small doll stroller and 1 used shopping cart
  
  Things I've regretted buying over the years:

• Fisher Price Little People toys: the people, animals, and small vehicles are useful, but the rest is a waste of money and it all takes up too much room
• Commercial toy sets like Dora and Diego and Elmo (usually low quality)
• pony beads and jewels (probably best for older girls)
• play dish sets with too many parts
• play food sets containing box foods (once the little cardboard boxes get bent they're worthless!)
• play money 
• remote control cars (battery nightmare)
• cheap yard toy sets (badminton, golf, etc--yard toys need to be high quality, durable)

Educational Items I've Kept: (These items are on a shelf in the dining room, where we do most of our school. The books are in the playroom mostly in shelves, except that recently Husband put up rain gutters for me to display easy-reader paperbacks and favorite storybooks.)

• About 800-900 children's books (mostly Scholastic paperbacks from book clubs, and board books--many are not in the best of shape by now; I began collecting books in 1992)
• 26 alphabet Little People animals
• Sorting toys for teaching patterns in preschool and K math
• Magnet alphabet letters/white board, Leap Frog Fridge Phonics
• Playdoh toys (stored in dining room because the Playdoh is hard on carpets)
• 4 wood puzzles for Beth, 4 large cardboard flour puzzles (ages preschool - 8)
• Wooden clock puzzle with numbered blocks
• 3 kinds of paint, brushes
• 5 coloring books and crayons

The bedrooms contain no toys at all (our family room is our playroom). When the playroom gets too messy and the children run out of room, their toys end up migrating to the dining room and living room, and that's when my nerves suffer most. My most recent pitch of toys should help that situation. 

Five Minute Clean-ups: When you notice clutter taking over, stop what you're doing and call for a 5-minute clean up. Turn on your favorite music and have everyone pick up and put away 8 things. I have two children who stuff things in corners, so after a clean up I always check the corners and under the couches. If you forget these 5-minutes clean ups, things will get far worse by 5:00 PM and you'll be cranky when your husband gets home. It doesn't matter how much we love mothering, if our husbands see us grumbling every evening, they won't know how blessed we feel. Sometimes I have to convince my husband that I love being at home all day. And that makes me sad. :(  Because I really do love this job!

Let Go of Perfection: When the house looks awful and it isn't your main cleaning day, give yourself permission to let it go. Concentrate on school. Do the laundry and dishes and let the rest go. If you start to feel cranky about clutter and dirt, cuddle with the kids on the couch and read to them. I find that my mood over the house always dissipates quickly when I do this. Having them next to me reminds me of how much I cherish them...messes and all.

Try inviting company on the day after you've cleaned, when hopefully everything still looks fairly good. Or invite company anytime if you aren't the nervous type. Most people just need a place to sit and don't care about kid grime and clutter. And the fastidious people who judge? They aren't your real friends.

What has worked for you, friends?