Mothering: Like a Box of Chocolates

We're night people here; mornings roll along slowly.

The morning after Valentine's Day found all four children in bed with me for a cuddle, until Beth remembered her box of chocolates. She sauntered into the kitchen, brought her box to the bed and asked for a chocolate.

Beth loves chocolate. I recall at least six times this year her waking in the night, obviously dreaming, whimpering, "I want some chocolate chips!"

It's not unusual for her to begin the day asking for chocolate, even though my standard response is, "Mommy doesn't serve chocolate for breakfast."

Still, she keeps asking, because a couple times per year, like the day after Valentine's Day, I actually say yes.

"But only one piece before breakfast."

So there we are on the bed, all four children now with their heart boxes of chocolate. 

And what are they doing? Negotiating. Serious, amusing negotiations ensue...and me? 

I'm lying there trying not to laugh.

Turns out their boxes have a number of yucky kinds, like the ones with the cherry or orange goo in the middle. Then there are the dark chocolates, which they also dislike. 

But Peter, he happens to love the goo in the middle, so even 24 hours after I gifted them with the boxes, Peter has a full box. And I suspect the child has consumed more than his share of chocolate. 

When we pray after dinner, using the ACTS acronym, Peter's nightly confession part has something to do with stealing snacks from the kitchen. "Dear God, I'm sorry for stealing that chocolate." 

And every night my husband and I have to put our chins deeper into our chests, for fear the children will see our smirks.

The nature of the negotiations means that the children's chocolates are flattened, with the insides sticking out so they can see what they're trading. Mary only likes the caramel ones, so her box is mostly empty. She's given most of it away and probably eaten the few caramels she's gotten in trade.

And Beth? She's a Hershey's girl, or a semi-sweet baking-chip girl, and this box of surprise chocolates was not what she expected. After the first bite into something with fruit-flavored goo, she was not amused. Her box is empty and she's eaten very little. Most of her chocolate, no doubt, resides in Peter's box.

As they negotiated and dropped tiny bits of chocolate on the sheets--I guess this is a sheet-laundering day--I thought about their various love languages. Peter went to the kitchen and asked me to stay put, please, because he would be right back and wanted to talk with me.

Peter's love language, see, is quality time...and he's very verbal.

Peter came back to the bed and I said to the children, "Peter loves me most when I sit and talk with him. Paul loves me most when I bring home some bacon." That one brought a giggle, but it's true. His primary love language is gifts and bacon isn't a normal purchase for us.

"Now, Mary, when do you love me best?" Mary didn't quite know what to answer, but finally she said, "When you tickle me."

Beth was next. "Beth, when do you love Mommy best?" 

Beth still nurses twice a day so we're still very close. She sleeps nestled against me half the night, preferring our cheeks to meet in the night, her arms snug around my neck. 

In response to my question, she jumped into my arms, knocking me backward, answering, "I love you all the muches and all day long!"

Mommy was in maternal heaven then, I don't have to tell you. 

After releasing me, she added, "Except when you're mean, like when you put me in time out."

Mothering is like a box of chocolates, isn't it? Some things, like getting them to clean up their messes and brush their teeth, are the equivalent of icky-sweet cherry-goo chocolates. Yuck!

But so many things, like Beth's sweet hug and having a talk with your 11 year old, are carameled-inside, or bona fide, decadent chocolate through and through. 

Savor those decadent mothering moments, dear friends. For the time will come all too soon when the box is empty and our children have moved on. 

And we'll ache for them to be young again. We'll ache for their messes and the teeth-brushing battles, and the tracked-in mud on the carpet.

Really, we will.

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A Jolt to the Minivan and Heart

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She pulled out in front of me, this girl whose soul I can't stop thinking about.

And she totaled my old and nasty, but beloved 1998 Toyota Sienna Minivan. No injuries, thank the Lord, as I proceeded through a green light with my Walmart cargo at 10 PM, my brakes failing to avert the assault as she attempted a left-turn-on-yield onto the freeway.

Very friendly and chatty, her conversation revealed so much. "I just got out of jail today," she said, as though that happens to all of us.

"Oh.....I'm so sorry," said my feeling, shivering, shocked self, as we exchanged information and awaited police.

Strange response? I suppose so, since really aren't we supposed to be happy when someone gets out of jail? That's better than going in, after all. My heart felt sorrow over her jail-riding lifestyle, but I didn't think till later how odd my response probably sounded to her.

Domestic violence isn't something I've ever experienced, but in the last year I've encountered three people who've been in jail for it, this girl being the third. How odd that I reached 40-something, just now aware that for many people, jail for domestic violence is a common experience.

When the highway patrol arrived at the scene of our accident, she told me, giggling, "Wow, this is the first time I've encountered the police and wasn't scared."

I think I just smiled, not having the wherewithal to respond otherwise.

But it pained me to hear it...that her life was that dysfunctional and yet she was happy and chatty. So lacking shame.

She seemed lucid and I didn't smell alcohol, but later I remembered that drug users can seem normal. Was that why she was so chatty, revealing so much in her happy-go-lucky way?

A township police officer arrived later to help the highway patrol. More witty than I, when she told him, giggling, that she'd gotten out of jail that day, he said with a chuckle, "Well...then it was a good day before this."

She walked up to me later, saying, "Well, at least the police officers are nice. That one is really handsome."

Oh, my.

In my slow-witted, shy way, I could only smile at that as well, amused at her youth. He was probably 20 years my junior.

If my body hadn't been trembling from temperature and shock, I might have said that whether a man is handsome or not doesn't mean much to me now, married thirteen years...especially when they're young enough to be my sons.

The paperwork all done, the photographs taken, and the girl cited, Mr. Handsome drove me home, my van finally on its way to a tow yard. Bless his heart, he lugged my groceries and miscellaneous bags too. New on our township force, he was grateful to have a job.

He spoke about domestic violence, the girl having admitted that's why she was in jail. He said it's almost always because of substance abuse, like so many other domestic problems.

Sympathetic, he mentioned how sad the scenarios are. These people grow up around these same problems... and life is hard enough these days just holding down a job and paying bills. They have much haunting them on top of normal problems and often they don't even realize it. As the girl's manner revealed, getting in and out of jail seems like a typical experience to them.

I hadn't thought much drugs with Lexie's mother and boyfriend, but now I wonder.

Lexie's never come back after her mom's fight with her own father (Lexie's grandfather). It's been nearly a month and she changed schools as well; I assume they're living with the mother's boyfriend.

I pray for her often, reminiscing in my heart about her sweet little face and her surprising ways. I pray that her commitment to the Lord will grow stronger even while there's deep dysfunction around her.

The last time she was here for Bible study I taught her to pray using the ACTS acronym, telling her she could pray about anything and the Lord would give her peace. A peace all her own that no one could take from her.

Little did I know that would be one of the last times I'd see her.

Oh, my readers...we never know what tomorrow will bring. God wants us to share Him every day, as though we'll never have another chance. Each day, we must awaken with the knowledge that to God, this is just one more day to have a soul secured for eternity.

It's not another day to pick up some things from Walmart and sweep the kitchen floor, but a day that to someone, might mean Life itself.

The officer pulled into my driveway and helped unload my groceries.

I expressed my thanks and bid him goodbye, brought the groceries in, closed the door, and mourned for all humanity. 

It seemed the most fitting ending for my experience with a giggly girl who got out of jail...and then hours later totaled my van.

The next day I began praying in earnest for that twenty-something girl. She caused problems for us, sure, but nothing the Lord didn't plan.

We need a new computer and I want it desperately so I can open several windows at a time, study Bible commentary and go back and forth and reread and contemplate meanings and verses, formulating a mindset and spiritual direction that fits my own heart and life as relates to the scriptures. I want to click on my e-mails and have them open reliably. I want a computer that doesn't slow me down and remind me of why even American-style poverty stinks.

But instead we're looking for a used van to replace ours, hoping for a God-designed miracle for $5500 cash, thanks to a tax credit and the expected meager State Farm reimbursement for the van. We paid $4000 for our Toyota Sienna in 2005 and drove it over 100,000 miles, taking it up to 226,000 miles before its untimely death.

So I know God provides reliable wheels for his people. He can even put an updated computer in my lap if he thinks I need it.

This Melina girl....she needed to smack into a Christian's minivan on Tuesday night.

She needed someone to pray that sometime this year...even this week...her heart would be transformed and she'd be compelled to weep at the foot of the cross, thankful for her Jesus.

Her saving, redeeming Jesus.

And the rest of us...the ones who don't call jail home? We need to be smacked into too. We forget all too easily...."There but for the grace of God go I."

First Love

 

 Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Do you ever feel utterly alone? Sometimes when depression sets in, either during illness or tragedy or turmoil, we automatically look for comfort from those with skin on. 

 

But those of us with skin on, in our humanness, are often so wrapped up in our own troubles, that when someone needs us, we're only half there. We don't feel we have time to stop everything and enter into someone's sorrow fully, though we may pray faithfully.

 

I am aware of this and have felt it from others, and I try to enter fully into others sorrow--to be Jesus with skin on for them. But alas, sometimes life is topsy-turvy here and I can't do it well. 

 

But I sincerely want to and I pray to get better at this. I think it is so precious.

God has been gracious to me, the lone Christian in my family clan, by providing e-mail relationships for me with three older women of faith. Their notes encourage me and make me feel loved, and we enjoy praying for each other.

Even the partner I have in the church nursery shares some of the pain of my daily life, in that she has a daughter with similar struggles as my Peter. Though we are the same age and have four children each, her youngest is 18 and mine is 4. So yes, there are differences, but there's that one shared sorrow and being able to share it even for a few minutes while we play with babies, helps both of us. And knowing the flavor of her troubles means that I pray faithfully for her and for her daughter, because I know the depth of the situation more so than others could.

And that is blessing.

And just this week I resumed contact--after I sent her a Christmas letter and picture--with a mom of three I worked with in California when I was a homeschooling facilitator. Her three children are in college now, and one of them has OCD badly enough that he has extreme difficulty taking the exams necessary for his nursing degree, though he's a highly competent student. The stress of the entire program has worsened his OCD and it's been difficult for his mother to watch.

This woman is 55 and her youngest is 18. She lives in Arizona and I live in Ohio. It can only be another e-mail relationship, but I often tell my husband...would I really have time to actually meet with anyone in the flesh? Not right now, for sure. God knows what I need and He puts together what will work.

God put our reunion together and I'm so grateful, for I've thought about her son four times this morning, and I've prayed each time for his peace and for the OCD to go away. And I've eagerly awaited another e-mail from his mother, who is a dear person with a gentle and quiet spirit.

 

It occurred to me today that she may have an empty nest in the next couple years, and during that transition she will need prayer, even though she may not know it yet.

 

I will be there, praying from afar, and that feels like such a privilege.

Our skin-on relationships are such a blessing.

 

But.

 

And it's a big BUT.

Despite these grace-filled relationships that help me immensely, God still knows I need him more. I need to go to Him every day, but especially when my spirit is high or low, when I'm faltering, when I need direction and comfort.

I thought I had this flu and sinus infection thing beat yesterday (Monday). I woke up feeling decent for the first time in over a week. I cleared away clutter and worked on the laundry diligently, planning on doing the vacuuming and mopping in between school today.

But I was foolish. After doing the saline nasal rinse several times over the weekend, I didn't do it at all yesterday, since I was feeling better. The discomfort returned last night and I only slept about four hours.

Then today, my body feels like the flu all over again. A setback, just when I was so ready to resume my life and activities. Depression threatened to sink me, and I knew God was the only one who could help me.

I love to read this Zephaniah verse:

 

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. 

 

I'm so comforted by these words especially: he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love

 

The reminder that my Father rejoices over me, that he's glad he created me, that he desires to quiet my spirit with his unfailing love? This always heals me within. It's always my hope, answered.

 

We must go to Him often. He is our hope, answered. Our need, met. Our Father, in all perfection. He is what our souls long for, and until our souls get Him--enough of Him--they will not rest.

 

It takes greater effort to read the Bible when we're down. Depression can make it hard to concentrate. It's harder to care for ourselves and work smart when our spirits are so low.

 

And God knows that. The Words of Scripture penetrate deeper when our need is deeper. Simple words that before just seemed beautiful, will seem like life itself in our hour of need. That's what it means to say that the Word of God lives. It responds to our spirit's need. It penetrates the places of our heart that need growth, and comforts where there is pain.

 

Sometimes, God will purposely leave us without enough skin-on support. We might get on the phone and no one is home. We might send an e-mail and there's no response. 

 

This is just His intent, so we'll go to the one Source who always has time. The Source who always has an answer. The Source who always understands our inner turmoil. The Source who always leaves us richer, brighter, more joyful and full of peace.

 

 Give thanks for your support system with skin on, but never forsake your first love.

 

Mark 12:30

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 

 

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The Power of Grace in Our Relationships

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

"Mommy, I wish Daddy didn't get so stressed when you're gone. He isn't nice at all when you're at the store."

How do I tell him, an eleven-year-old boy, my main philosophy of life? It's a hard sell.

Son, don't wish things were different. 

This wishing things were different...I believe it's Satan's ploy. It's the first step toward ungratefulness, toward self-involvement, toward insensitivity, toward discontent, even toward divorce. 

Pray for spiritual progress, Son, but don't wish things were different. 

God doesn't always want things to be different, but he does always want spiritual progress. 

Sometimes, like when the Apostle Paul was converted suddenly on the road to Damascus, spiritual growth is all God and nothing of us. But most of the time we must use our free will to accept and embrace the Spirit's voice, and obey it. The more worldly we live, the harder it is to obey that voice. The closer we stay to God, the easier obedience is, because Satan has less room to work on us. 

How old does a child have to be before he can swallow this sobering truth: that God isn't interested in making our lives easy? I've told Peter this many times before in different ways, but wishing your own father was different is something familiar to me. All my life I've wished that about my own father, but each year, I wish it less, trusting God that it had to be this way to get me where I am today.

My husband has ADHD, undiagnosed all his life. Many things begin to make sense for me as a wife, when I learned more about this disorder in my son, and then recognized it in my husband. I certainly spent some years of my marriage wishing things were different, but after I recognized the problem, the Holy Spirit spoke loudly, forcefully..."You are called to a life of grace. Accept grace, extend grace, teach grace."

After this turning point the Spirit taught me to embrace the wonderful things about my husband, and extend grace regarding the not-so-wonderful things. I still slip at times when I'm too tired to care, but spiritual progress has occurred. My husband can't make a serotonin problem go away, but by grace I can make the serotonin problem null and void. 

Jesus tells me he has overcome this world. 

John 16:33
I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

What does this verse actually mean? It can't be interpreted that all my problems will go away, but it does mean they are temporary...as a vapor. True perfection will come later, in eternity.

Revelation 21:4 

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

What Christ refers to when he says I have overcome "the world"? It's Satan. Satan's been overcome. The deed that the serpent did unto Eve and Adam, leading to all our tribulation? It's been overcome by the cross...by Christ's accepting the will of His Father and suffering and experiencing His Father's rejection for a time on that cross.

God loved us and sent his Son. He didn't have to remedy the Adam-and-Eve tragedy at all, but he choose to. First he spent centuries of time showing us our need (the Old Testament books), and promising a solution (the Messiah). Then at the appointed time a child was born in Bethlehem. A child who would be called Emmanuel..."God with us".

And again at the appointed time, they came for him and crucified him. 

Punishment is in order for all of us...eternal suffering. But instead we get out of the punishment (mercy) and receive a gift on top of that (grace)...a relationship with God here on earth, and later, heaven.

Without grace we're stuck in the Adam-and-Eve cycle of believing Satan and rejecting God.

When grace is lacking in our own hearts, what's the result? 

We always wish things were different. We get stuck. God didn't get stuck after he sent Adam and Eve out of the garden. Just as he made a covering for their bodies, he'd already conceived a covering for their sin. Grace. 

How do I help my son understand all these things, so he stops wishing his father were different? I don't want their relationship to have this dysfunctional foundation; I don't want Peter to get stuck. Instead, I want him to extend the grace that our Father conceived and Jesus achieved. 

I want him to have the peace Jesus promises us in this verse: "that in me you may have peace".Yet I know that's only possible for any of us, when we stop wishing things were different. 

Luke 22:37-39
He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus did not want the suffering; he did not want the cross. Yet he didn't get stuck in that feeling. Along with uttering his desire to get out of it, he said, "Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Everything Jesus said was significant. But these words? They are perhaps the most significant. When we learn to live by these words, we learn to live by grace.

Grace, extended by my son toward his father, is how their dysfunctional foundation will be overcome. Pharmaceuticals can't do it. Time can't do it. Only grace.

My task is to teach my son to pray..."My Father, if it is possible, may my father be healed. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

I know in my heart that when Peter gets there, his thoughts will be transformed by the Spirit. He will think frequently..."I'm so blessed. My father loves me, he loves Jesus, he gives sacrificially of his time. He does the hard work of love, in Jesus' name."

Because when you take away the annoyances of a serotonin problem, my husband is all these wonderful things. I have to put on my "grace glasses" and see my husband the way Jesus sees him... as a sinner in need of grace. 

And my husband? He graciously sees me this same way. I know he does because he loves me with an unfailing love. With a sacrificial love. With a love that is as good as it gets here on earth. 

I am blessed.

In your own life the circumstances are different; it probably isn't a serotonin problem. But there's someone in your life--someone very close to you--who you wish were different. 

Grace is that difference, my friend. And it comes from the Spirit, through you, when you learn to utter:

"Yet not as I will, but as you will."

Letting Go

Isaiah 43:18-19“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

In some ways it's been a horrific week, and in other ways, a glorious week.

Tuesday morning I awoke, still ill with the flu, thinking the ache in my head must be a flu-related headache. Instead of taking my chronic migraine tablet--an acetaminophen/caffeine, Walgreen-brand cocktail--I took ibuprofen.

What a costly mistake, leading to a throbbing four-hour migraine, complete with two vomiting sessions. The whole time I was only vaguely aware of what my four children were doing. Half-reclining on the living-room couch with eyes closed and a washcloth over my face, I tried to listen to what was going on, to prevent any disasters.

They played and played, having a pretty wonderful time--the little ones only vaguely aware of Mommy's misery. Even in my private darkness, I was amazed at their ability to entertain themselves amiably, with all four siblings participating in the fun equally.

In one sense I felt it was four hours of my life wasted. I did nothing but stay on that couch, getting up only to vomit.

I'm a busy mom, and this predicament meant that no essential tasks got done, except pleading, desperate prayer.

The house turned into a disaster, as is usual when the children have free time.

But I believe in messes. History has proven that my children do their best thinking, inventing and problem solving when they're allowed to make messes.

But there's always a price to pay for me, and that price is what I refer to as "riding the herd". They never want to clean up their messes--they're overwhelming messes, let me tell you--and I have to ride them like a herd of horses, cracking a whip.

When I'm ill I don't have the energy to ride herd very well. It's taxing emotionally and mentally on a good day.

I'd say riding the herd is the hardest parenting task ever.

And riding herd during bedtime-prep hour? Let me say it nicely...not my favorite part of the day.

On migraine day an elaborate Geo Trax train village took up my entire living room--their newest creation. It was awesome, complete with oodles of small toys used to dress up the village (various blocks, unifix cubes, teddy-bear counters, small cars, people figurines, etc.).

Even after they cleaned up the track and trains, the place was still a nightmare of small toys. They were whiny and uncooperative, in the sense that it took me sending them back five times to do a thorough job, after which I felt like crying and a couple of them did too.

Then later in my week, an obvious sinus infection gave rise to more pain and far less sleep. I went through five rolls of toilet tissue wiping my nose. The Kleenex were long gone, and now we have no toilet paper in the house at all, and when they all get back from the library (praise the Lord that husband works only half-day on Saturday), I have to rouse my puffy eyes and drag myself to Aldi's, hoping no one notices my atrocious facial appearance.

I'm happy to say, the sinus infection seems to be in the left half of my face only now.

We've long ago run out of groceries and it's been driving me nuts for days, thinking of what to feed everyone. Husband gets milk or bread on the way home from work, but a major grocery run is about the worst task imaginable to him, other than fixing the girls' hair or picking out their clothes.

Letting go and letting God sometimes means being sick and miserable, and not resenting it.

It means stopping to notice how wonderful your children are--how bright their intellects, how ingenious their cooperation skills--because you have no choice but to sit and notice.

It means turning on the Christian radio to try and cheer yourself up, and then noticing that when the News Boys song Shine comes on, your 4-year-old girl becomes ecstatic, dances around and recites a good part of the lyrics accurately, wanting your sorry, sick body to dance along with her.

And you do, because you realize this is God's grace. This impromptu dance with your littlest girl, shouting about shining for Jesus.

 Letting go and letting God also means stopping to devour a great book, because with sinus pain that no pain-reliever touches, all you can do is go out to the living room in the middle of the night and read, hoping the story is good enough to take your mind off the pain.

And they were.

I'm now three books ahead of my boys in our Sonlight curriculum, and wondering what's next.

This particular book --Gone-Away Lake--is so good, I never wanted it to end. When it did I was incredibly sad, except that I noticed she wrote a sequel. Whohoo!

Letting go and letting God means dropping your expectations, as you cancel this and that commitment due to illness. It means letting go of your agenda, so you can hear God's.

It means having time to more fully drink in, and notice, his many graces. Our God is all about grace. Not performance, not perfection, not expectations. He's the author and bestower of Grace.

And when you have no other choice, you really get to share in that grace in a more beautiful, poignant way.

So, yes...in some ways, it was a terrible week.

But in others....it was awesome.

Thank you, God, for illnesses.