Transitioning to the Lake

The past week has been full of transition.

New adventures.
Saying goodbye to familiar.

Transition is hard for me.

There is:
comfort in the familiar,
sacredness in the routine,
holiness in the ritual of everyday.

Even when it's hard, I tend to cling to what I know, rather than trusting that the new, the different might be easier or even better.

I wallow in the mud puddle, because I know every inch of that space, even though there's a crystal clear lake just a few yards away.

This go around, instead of rushing through the uncomfortableness of change till it feels pleasant again, or even just recognizable, I'm trying to sit with my uncomfortableness:

be fully present
slow down
breathe
see God
give thanks
embrace it.

Help me head for the lake! Let me be refreshed by the cool, clear water.

I pray. As I pour over God with my mug of coffee and breakfast.

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788. Painted fingers.

789. Date night.

790. Little girls Swiffering the floors.

791. Dancing girls.

792. 18 months.

793. Coffee, breakfast and a book three days in a row.

794. Slowing down.

795. Finding thankfulness admist transtion.

796. Dinner at Farmhaus.

797. Girls going to the nursery at church with no tears.

798. Wonderful, supportive, understanding, patient (mostly with me) nursery staff.

799. Sitting in church with Brad.

800. Girls playing with make-up brushes.

801. The girls getting over their fear of Howard.

802. Peaceful end. 

803. Facial.

Unplugged

We got rid of our cable this weekend.

I can't tell you how ecstatic that makes me. No television. Zero.

Don't come to our house if you want to watch the big game. We'll be a big disappointment, because all we'll do is offer you a glass of wine and try to talk to you.

I'm a lover of silence.
I'm a lover a good conversation. 
I'm a lover of just being with people.

I think, sometimes, television, Internet, iPads, iPods, cell phones, and whatever else I might have forgotten--take away our ability to sit in silence; we never fully engage, we're never fully present to those around us.

I'm guilty of this too. So guilty.

My daughters see this. They see me on the computer type, type, typing away. The other day I saw Hadley pretending to type on our closed laptop. Little sponge, she is.

I love silence, conversation, engaging; yet my girls don't always see me seeking it.

Can I find God on my laptop? Sure. I've found him lots of times. Many of you help me see him through your writing. Can I find friends on my laptop--sure can. Maybe, though, I can really celebrate this unplugged experience by doing the whole email/facebook/blog thing only during naptimes. Read the girls more stories or run around the garden a few more times instead. Be present to them the entire time they're awake.

We've embraced a no television policy, where the girls are concerned. It's part of the reason the television is officially unplugged. That, and we seldom watch anything in the evenings.

Most evenings you'll find us enjoying wine on our back deck, talking about life, or God, or how we'd fix the world. If those pesky mosquitoes get too fierce, we come inside and watch a movie, or Arrested Development on DVD, or Modern Family on Hulu.

But--in sitting in silence, I think we can find God, see God, even hear him speaking. Being fully present to other people--I think we find God that way too; there is God in all of us, afterall.

Too often God gets drown out, or at least watered down when technology gets in my way; I miss the simple beauty, the gifts, the fellowship, the intimacy he's just layed out there in all it's splendor for me to notice.

In this modern age very little that remains is real. Night has been banished; so have the cold, the wind, and the stars. They have all been neutralized; the rhythm of life itself has been obscured. Everything goes by so fast and makes so much noise, and people hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its color, its smell and the way that it shimmers when the wind caresses it.... ~Gaston Rebuffat

A small addendum to my words here. Thank you for your grace.
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Counting my gifts with Ann today:

756. Girls walking in their mama's shoes.

757. Hibiscus in full bloom.

758. Girls pretending to talk on the phone to their papa when he's away.

759. Zinnias.

760. Smelling zinnias.

761. Tassels on our sweet corn.

762. Sunflowers.



763. Playdate with Whitney.

764. Authentic conversation.

765. Celebrating Max's two years.

766. Party fun.

Ring Around The Rosie

Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down!

Water drips from our bodies as we dance in a circle. Tiny droplets, cool us from the stifling heat of the day.

I marvel.

These little creatures amaze me.

They learn things so quickly.  

Sponges. Soaking in life. 

We've danced the song only twice, and they've got it!

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I am constantly pricked with the awareness of my mission; mothering our girls.

To radiate love and instill love.

To teach them to be kind.

To help them know Jesus.

To foster compassion. 

To model gentleness. 

To encourage resilience.

I recently read this:

A mother’s soul is the book of life a child will read. A mother cannot pass on to her children what she herself does not possess. That is why a mother must always be a student.... ~Sally Clarkson

Those wet girls, dancing with their mama, need me to garden my heart. To seek wisdom--always.

They draw from me how to live this life, how to be.

They are:

listening
watching
mimicking
learning.

It is; therefore, prudent of me to seek new:

thoughts
ideas
perspectives
life
each and every day.

Above all and before all, do this: Get Wisdom! ~Proverbs 4:7a 

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Counting my gifts today:

740. Ring Around the Rosie.

741. An hour in the pool on a hot day.

742. Surprise daylily.



743. Surprise vacation!

744. Surprise winner of a blog make-over by this talented lady!

745. Decisions.

746. Transition.

747. Yoga with God at sunrise.

748. Stillness.

749. Walk with Sara.

750. Dinner with friends.

751. Successful eating out with the girls twice in one weekend.

752. Girls sitting through an entire church service.

753. Lunch with friends.

754. Seeing God's grace.

755. Wise counsel.

Orange and Green

So. The other day I learned what Brad's favorite color is.

Yup, it's orange and green, equally (in case you were wondering).

I have no idea how I failed to know this until now. It's one of those things I'd think I would have thought to know about the person I'm married to. It's not life-changing, or perspective-changing, really. Just one of those random facts that I feel like I should know about the person who fathered my children.

Yesterday I learned something new about God. Don't you love it when that happens? It's invigorating and exciting! It's like:

Wow! Really?! He does that?!

Yesterday I heard a sermon from the book of Luke (excellent sermon--I highly suggest you check it out!). I enjoy reading Luke, I think it's my favorite gospel to read. Luke was a doctor. He wrote with great compassion, sensitivity, and used a lot of women to make some great points. In the parable I want to talk about, The Parable of the Lost Coin, the woman is God.

I love that. I love thinking about God as a woman. A mother, who opens her arms and draws me in close to her bosom, strokes my hair, kisses my head, loves me so much it aches, and smells like home cookin'. I can relate to that.

Truly, God is neither man, nor woman--he created both, and is both, but we call him, Him all the time, so I think it's easy to forget about the motherly, nurturing, gentle characteristics that He possesses. The strong, fatherly, Savior, Deliverer, Creator, stuff sort of over-shadows the gentleness (for me, at least).

The The Parable of the Lost Coin is short, (Luke 15:8-10):

Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.' In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.

So, remember, the woman is God. She rejoices. She rejoices.

When I ask for forgiveness, God rejoices!

God dances and rejoices in the presence of his angels, because I've sought forgiveness.

I'd never realized before yesterday that it isn't the angels that are rejoicing (they're already praising him all the time), it's God. God's doing the rejoicing!

Doesn't that just fill your heart with joy?! God, the creator of the whole world, throws his hands in the air, waves them around like he just don't care, when you seek forgiveness.

In short, you seek forgiveness, he boogies down! He celebrates!

I wonder if it would be effective for me to start dancing jigs and cheering every time Hadley gives Brynne back the toy she yanks away, or if Brynne would decide to share one of the two soccer balls we have with Hadley.

God knows and loves each of us deeper and wider and fuller be than I have the capacity to love my daughters, and he dances when we seek him. He cares that much.

Wow! Really?! He does that?! 

Yes. Yes he does.

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Counting my gifts today:

728. Watermelon faces.

729. Black raspberry face.

730. Hadley helping her mama stuff diapers.

731. Two naps.

732. Watching my parents interact with the girls.

733. Hadley puzzling with her grandma.

734. Brynne getting lessons on how to propel herself on the car from her grandma.

735. Hadley being taught by her grandma how to swing her leg over to get on and off the car. 

736. Pigtails.

737. Brynne walking backwards with her grandpa.

738. Girls playing in a field.

739. Brynne picking yellow flowers and handing them to her mama. 

Permission to Fail

Sometimes Brad and I sit around and talk about the Bible. What we've read, what we're learning, what God is showing us. Those times are precious. Some of my favorite conversations with him.

Recently, we were talking about the book of Ecclesiastes. We'd both recently read it.

Eugene Peterson describes Ecclesiastes as a bath. It scrubs us clean of the illusion that:

...we can live our lives by ourselves on our own terms.

Once we read Ecclesiastes, we are ready for Jesus.

It certainly was no coincidence that Ecclesiastes had come up more than one time recently.

For the past two weeks we'd been in the throes of transitioning the girls to one nap. I came up with a master plan, and we'd been executing that plan, bwahahaaaaa. Well, mostly, I'd been executing the master plan. Brad has been traveling a lot this month, so I've dealt with two tired, fussy, toddlers on my own.

Tired, fussy toddlers--the product of my master plan.

You see, sometimes I forget to have a chat with Jesus about all of this parenting business. I mean Jesus never had any children with nap schedules. Yikes, right? My arrogant heart needed the "bath" that is Ecclesiastes. My spirit needed to be scrubbed of the idea that I was in control, and that my "master plan" was somehow superior to anything that Jesus could help me out with.

So, on day three of Brad's most recent business trip, I just didn't know what do to. I felt like a fish flopping around on the sandy beach.

What the cuss? I had a master plan? (Have you seen the movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox? If you haven't, you should). Why wasn't my master plan working?

In that miserable, flopping place, that is where I met Jesus. Funny how sometimes I have to get to that point of utter and complete failure and "I-just-don't-know-what-to-do-ness" to realize that Jesus is right there, waiting for me.

So, after talking with Jesus, and having him remind me that, while he didn't actually parent any children while he was here on earth, he did create nap schedules, so I could consider him a reliable source for nap consultation. And, after talking with Brad, we decided that we'd surrender, wave the white flag, and fail.  

Jesus, Brad, me---we all decided we'd go ahead and go back to two naps a day. I've never felt more peace about failure before in my life. It feels good. The girls are back to their happy-toddler selves, and the angst of "I-just-don't-know-what-to-do-ness" is gone.

Sometimes, we just need permission to fail.

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Counting my gifts today:

717. Northside Dairy Haven.

718. Nap encouragement from friends.

719. Email from Melissa suggesting that it was okay to go back to two naps a day.

720. Lots of fun outings with the girls!

721. The girls making connections from the things they learn in books to the real world.

722. Gardenin' shoes.

723. The girls' awesome papa!

725. Sunshine.

726. Hydrangeas.

727. Gladiolas