God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
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battleground.
I’m not raising babies any longer. I was watching Otto rest in our bed last night, Kevin and I lying on either side of him – gazing at his freshly cut mo-hawk. (His request. His repeated request, actually.) He’s so capable. Been wearing big boy boxers for almost a year. Sticking his hands in his pockets. Conversing and sharing his thoughts and ideas. My days at home have changed. Oh – and how they’ve changed. I’m no longer shuffling nap times and scheduling my mornings to be home at a certain time. No directing of toddler-time activities and monitoring the play dough intake. There’s not a calendar on my fridge…
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the crying game.
My mother-in-law was a crier. A bona-fide crier. The Real Deal. Commercials. (Back when you had no choice but to view them in between your television show which you could not DVR.) Weddings. Novels. Birthdays. Graduations. The wind blowing. And – although I’m ashamed to admit this even now – her crying would sometimes embarrass me. I didn’t know how to handle it. I was a non-crier. Of the worst kind —- a prideful non-crier. Her tears made me uncomfortable. I didn’t have the right words to say. I wasn’t sure if I should hug her or leave her alone. I just didn’t understand. I guess I hadn’t lived long enough…
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What it is.
Two weekends ago I attended a wedding shower for a friend. Last weekend I attended another wedding shower for a different friend. Sunday we were sitting in a field with an incredibly lovely mountain top view watching two sweet friends holding hands and exchanging promises. Love. It’s just all over the place this month. Love. I like weddings. I like romance. I like the idealism associated with newlyweds and young love. It’s the beginning and it’s sticky sweet and it’s hopeful and it’s full of glowing words and bold proclamations. It’s nice. But when I saw this instagram picture on my phone last week, I was reminded of the kind…
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morning reminders.
I was lying in bed this morning. Avoiding crawling out of its three-blanketed warmth. (I think three blankets is too many. Too heavy. Kevin thinks otherwise. London commented on the thickness of our bed covers and I told her how Daddy likes lots of covers. She grinned and replied, “But I bet his bed mate doesn’t.” She was right.) Instead of getting up and conquering the morning, I just kept lying there – letting the morning conquer me. I pretended to be pseudo-accomplishing things – like checking my e-mail on my phone. Then I scrolled through the photos stored on my phone. All 1,375 of them. I stumbled across…
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left without . . .
On any given day I have ten or more ideas for a blog post. I keep a steady stream of maybe posts already written in my drafts section. But usually I just plain run out of time to work my way through all those ideas and false starts and half-completed sentences. Life just wears me down and fills me up and spreads me thin. Some days it’s the baking. Some days it’s the chaos and the mess that keeps me from writing and processing and attempting to craft pretty words out of ordinary living. But today – oh today – it’s just been the details. The sit-down discussions. The wearying task of…
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Wildwood Academy: Group Study
Homeschool is proceeding differently this year. A true statement I can make every year. Even though I waited in line a loooong time to get into a fabulous homeschool co-op last year, we’re not all doing the same co-op this year. (And it still is fabulous, mind you – just not what our house needs this year.) Riley is attending classes there but my younger crowd is heading in a different direction. I mentioned being excited (I might have said “wildly optimistic”) about an upcoming joint homeschooling venture with several other families. We’re two weeks in and it seems to be going swimmingly. The idea was born of thus: Four…
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then. now. next.
Vividly, I remember it all. (Sort of.) But so clearly, so recently, it was true, that I often brace myself for the reality of it right now before I look around me and am reminded that time has escaped our clinging grasp and changed our present as it is wont to do. There was a time when our house was overrun by littles. A bevy of tinies we had. A stir. A commotion. An entrance – we made one everywhere we went. Five children under the age of six. That was our reality. Two toddlers six months apart. A newborn when those two were not even three. Diapers for a…
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it’s inescapable really.
Sigh. Yes. I am beginning a post with a sigh. A written sigh. A written sigh that implies a verbal sigh. The deep-chest-breath-in-hold-the-air-as-long-as-you-possibly-can-until-you-breathe-the-sigh-out-between-pursed-lips kind of sigh. And you know what? I’m not entirely sure why. It’s just the kind of day I had. Or chose to have. Or narrowly escaped from having. Here’s the thing. Yesterday, I lost. I lost the battle most of the day. I let everything around me dictate my attitude. I let the heat in our home make me irritable. (And I mean irritable.) I let the list of trying-to-understand-and-adequately-prepare-for-the-onslaught-of-paperwork-that-is-homeschooling-a-daughter-through-her-senior-year weigh me down and push me into the dirt. I let the children tugging on…
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reminding myself.
Quote by Annie Keary ….. I think I find the most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one’s work. Then one can feel that perhaps one’s true work – one’s work for God – consists in doing some trifling, haphazard thing that has been thrown into one’s day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day – the part one can best offer to God. After such a…
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words fitly spoken . . .
I know I’ve written about my kids being that still, small voice of God to me sometimes. So many times I’ve been convicted by their words and their actions and have been forced to reconsider my words and my actions. And while later, after the fact, I’m prone to lean toward being pleased with my children for their clarity of thought and their purity of purpose, during the moment of the revealing of truth I am blindsided by something else less flattering although equally familiar. Pride. Humility. A quick flash of frustration that a nine-year-old has a higher degree of sensitivity than myself. You know, feelings like that. And so,…
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Coming Home, Being Thankful
I drove to Virginia early last week with just the kids. It’s been a tradition for many years for the moms and the kids to gather the week before our annual July Fourth party and spend time prepping for the party, corralling small children and laughing at nonsensical things. The husbands generally join us later in the week as soon as their jobs make it possible. So it was this week. And for the ride home Riley is staying with Emma a few extra days and driving the car Kevin drove up home. Which is why we were driving home Sunday with six kids instead of one and two grown…
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When The Relatives Came to Town
The title of this post is a title of a Cynthia Rylant children’s book. She’s a great children’s author. Do you know her? She writes a series about Mr. Putter and Tabby. And she wrote a beautiful book called When I Was Young and in the Mountains, which is just my favorite. (Because I love mountains. And I love prose that reads like poetry.) Oh, and Kevin met Ms. Rylant when she attended a program at his school when he was in the fourth grade so our family’s copy of the book is signed. And all of her lovely literary merits have very little to do with this post. Except…
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me. lately.
I thought I had worked so long at loosening fear’s grip at my throat that I shouldn’t have to fight so hard any longer. But isn’t that usually the way? When you think you’ve made it, you get a little sloppy. You get a little lazy. And you provide an opportunity to allow the exact thing you’ve been fighting to creep back into your mind. You unwittingly create this tiny sink hole. And because you’re so unprepared, so lacking in armor, you fall right in and risk being swallowed up by a monster you thought you’d already defeated. That’s where I’ve been this week. A little off-kilter. Sensitive to…
