My people

Back when I was younger, had fewer grey hairs, an easier time losing that last five pounds, and all my kids could fit comfortably in my house I wanted to remember that when I got older I needed to be looking for other young moms to help out.  I think I was really wallowing in self pity and just wanted my mom to live closer and be more available to help with my herd.  I wish I would have done more reckoning with myself back then, but frankly I didn't have time.  I was an idiot and was busy trying to make my life impossibly difficult  so that I could prove what an awesome follower of God I was.  God is very kind.  He does not give us what we deserve, but he does allow us the freedom to learn lessons the hard way.  He has been very kind to my kids, because I definitely do not deserve the way they have turned out.

As I get older I realize that I need to be much gentler on everyone around me, which is not an easy task for me.  My motto is: "suck it up buttercup, life is hard."  Life is hard, and I need to walk along side people better.  I need to allow my kids and my parents to make decisions that may make some things harder for them or for me or for both.  I need to accept that I don't have any control over what they do.  I need to think more about how my decisions affect those around me.  I like to be independent, but there is no room for that in my life.  I have too many people living in close proximity to me to believe that anything I say, buy, do, believe has no affect on someone else.

I have struggled for most of my adult life with individualistic thinking.  I deeply desire to be part of a people.  That probably explains my insane choice of raising 9 of them.  I think my secret hope is that at least one of them might end up in the same town as me.  Things aren't looking good at the moment, but there is some hope.  I live in the constant tension of wanting to be my own person, and wanting to be committed to others.  I was honestly heartbroken when my brother and his family moved away from us.  I haven't really dealt with that completely.  We had gotten into some very fun grooves, and I miss the balance they brought to my life.  I just really miss them, all of them.  Loud, rowdy, smart-asses that they are, 200 miles away is too far.  When I was a kid, I always wanted to live in the same town as my grand-parents.  Ironically they live in the town my brother lives in now.  I'm trying not to question God on this, but I struggle.  It's not easy to develop close friendships (at least it is not easy for me) with people that aren't committed to you for better or for worse.

My FIL has recently started dating someone he is very excited about.  The rest of the family is trying to deal with our happiness for him, and heartbreak over the loss of my MIL.  Of course we are happy that he has someone to keep him from being lonely, at the same time we feel like we are dishonoring my MIL's memory.  I also know, although my husband doesn't yet, that it will alter all of our relationships with his dad.  Falling in love with someone new changes all of your other close relationships in ways that no one can predict.  It makes me a little bit anxious, even though I know it is likely what is best for him.  Another occasion to let my selfishness die.  My daughter has discussed her struggle with it as well.  The humorous part of that is that she has her own love interest that has altered all of our relationships, but she hasn't made the connection yet.  Letting the people you love love others and bring them into your family is quite the ride.  I guess I should be more thankful that they don't really know what a bunch of loonies they are getting involved with.  I try to focus on the many, many happily married people I know and trust that God will work it all out.

I'm trying to be very honest with myself.  I have a lot of close relationships in my life.  At this particular season most of them don't feel very good.  The majority of my children are at an age where they need to start moving away from mom and dad.  This is what should happen, but it doesn't feel great in the process.  I also have so many, so close in age, that it just feels like no one likes me very much.  Everyone has an opinion.  No one wants to share their plans, or their interests, because they don't want too much advice or a less than enthusiastic response.  I am grateful that my parents are filling in some of those conversations for me.  I know it is easier to talk to someone who is not your mom most of the time.  It just leaves me feeling very left out and unwanted.  I'm trusting that this will change eventually.  I'm also realizing that I need a support network of people that do like me, or at least can make me feel like they do.  I don't think my husband understands, and it is a lot to burden him with.  I know this too shall pass, and I'm trying to be thankful that they are still around even if they would rather not be.  This is not at all what I imagined my late 40's to be like.  I was hoping it would be more joyous and less insecure.  I really should have thought about that more when I was younger and just hoping things would get easier.  News flash girls, they don't get easier.  Teens don't puke as much as toddlers (usually) but they can be very unkind with their words and they don't go to bed at 8 pm.  My best piece of advice is to keep your girl friends close.  Don't let some petty thing come between you when your kids are little, you are going to need those ladies down the road.  No one is going to care who started walking first, or whose couch is cuter.  If she is a safe person who can make you laugh when you feel like crying, keep her at all costs!  Life is hard, but it is also beautiful.  Seasons are constantly changing, and new lessons are being learned.  Thank you Jesus for walking with me through this life, when it feels like everyone is distant, you are always near.

Willing to Take On

Why did Jesus have to take on flesh and blood to bring our salvation?  That was the question we were answering in Hebrews 2 this morning.  The thing that is still blowing my mind is that Jesus willingly stepped into our world, our mess, our fault, and bore it all.  He rescued us from what we deserved by doing what we refuse to do...suffer willingly.  He created a perfect world.  He gave it to man because He loved us.  He gave us freedom to choose to walk with Him, or to listen to the seductive voice of pride.  When we chose to walk away from Him He chose to step in and rescue us.  He chose suffering and death so that we could have glory.

All of sudden it made my motherly love seem really small.  First, I don't want to suffer.  I want to be comfortable.  I let fear creep into my life and hide.  Second, I don't want my kids to suffer.  I want them to be comfortable and happy.  That's an idol that I need to let go of.  Not only that, I need to be willing to step into my children's messes.  Even the messes that they got themselves into.  The ones I warned them about and told them were going to be messy.  I need to draw near to God and go in with Him and rescue them when He tells me to.  That doesn't mean I keep them from suffering consequences of bad decisions, but I am willing to sit with them, identify with them, and walk through the mess with them.  I am proud to call them my kids, even when they look bad.

Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers.  He came and took on flesh and blood so that He could be a faithful and merciful high priest for us.  He was perfect.  I am not.  I am called to walk with other imperfect people, especially the ones that I can relate to.  I am not called to look down on them and wonder at their stupidity.  I am called to see myself in them, to remember how dark things were, and to guide them to the light.  I know from my own life that they will stumble.  They will whine.  They will want to turn back to the easy way.  They won't want to suffer.  I have to be willing to suffer with them.  I have to be willing to suffer at all.  Suffering takes time and energy that I would rather spend on something more pleasant.  There will be joy, but it comes through suffering.  Suffering getting up early every morning to suffer the pain of exercise for the joy of being in shape.  Suffering strained relationships for the joy of reconciling.  Suffering waiting for God to move for the joy of knowing Him better.  There will be much suffering in this life, for the joy of getting to know Jesus better.

The end of this life is to know God better and to love Him.  Everything we do should be moving us in that direction.  When we choose to find an easier way, a more comfortable way, a more glamorous way we are choosing a lie.  Kids don't be afraid of the hard things.  The hard things teach us that suffering produces joy.  It starts with learning that suffering to not eat all your Halloween candy in one night, brings the joy of weeks of candy.  Suffering to go to bed early brings the joy of getting up cheerful.  Suffering to not date until you are old enough to make some wise decisions brings the joy of healthy relationships (or at least a lot fewer unhealthy ones).  Suffering to listen to Mom's advice brings the joy of not getting into embarrassing situations.  Suffering to walk with Christ brings the joy of freedom from sin.  I know it is easy to convince myself that I deserve a break.  I should lighten up and have some fun, maybe, but I need to stop and really ask myself if what I am trying to do is avoid suffering that needs to happen.  I have gotten pretty good at avoiding some suffering that has robbed me of my joy.

As my kids grow up and take on responsibility for their own decisions, I need to remember that suffering will come.  Some suffering will be self inflicted, but some will be just be part of life.  Either way my job is to love them.  They are not perfect.  They will ignore my good advice and choose to figure things out on their own.  God knows that too.  He has watched His children choose foolishly from the beginning, that is why Jesus had to take on flesh and blood.  He didn't wimp out.  He suffered perfectly unto death, to give us eternal life.  When my kids wimp out I have to remember what Jesus did for me, and be willing to suffer with them, to show them the better way.  I have so much left to learn.

Kids

I have known intellectually for some time that how my children "turn out" has a lot less to do with my parenting skills and a lot more to do with the way God made them than I would like to believe. (Unless it is the disciplined kid that everyone likes, I nailed that one!)  I can see that the tendencies they had as toddlers are pretty much still their tendencies as adults, they have just learned some skills to make them functional in society.  I had a mom ask me one time how much time I spent doing homework with one of my kids, who is just naturally very bright.  It took me a minute to understand her question, because I wasn't particularly bright at the moment, and then I responded that she did all that at school.    Some of my kids have always brought a lot of work home from school and some don't bring any, and neither of those situations had anything to do with good students vs. bad students.  I have kids who get good grades through hours of hard work, and kids who get good grades while getting all their work done at school, and kids that do hours of hard work and get mediocre grades, and the ones I help are not the ones that get great grades.  I have been blessed with a larger sampling size than many parents, so I can say from experience that every kid is different, and parenting each of them is a challenge.  Sometimes I think parents take way too much credit for their amazing kids.

I have one child that blows my socks off over and over.  He is the sweetest, most tender  hearted, athletic, gentle, diligent, and kind person I have ever met.  He was born in Africa to a very poor mother who was HIV+.  He doesn't know who his dad is, his mother never talked about him.  He was raised by Catholic nuns in an orphanage in Addis Abbaba until he was almost four.  Not the most auspicious start in life, but this kid is the one I wish I could take credit for.  He is the only one in my house that would share his chocolate if he was the one that was given two when everyone else got one.  You wouldn't have to prompt him, or point it out, he would do it automatically.

Today I was editing his paper for third grade and it made me cry.  He was writing about the four people he would really like to meet.  He wants to meet Jesus, George Washington, Marshawn Lynch, and his Ethiopia dad.  He wants to meet these men, and worship with them.  What?  Who is this kid?  I promise you folks any goodness in him has nothing to do with me.  He blesses me more and more everyday.  He loves his heritage and is looking forward to Africa night coming up at UofI.  He aches for his father that he has never met.  He wants to know why he left him and he wants to know if he looks like him.  I think he looks like his mom, but that doesn't help him.  I had no idea he is a Marshawn Lynch fan, but he recognized that he is fast and strong, and followed his dreams.  I pray that God fulfills Nes's dream of being a missionary to Africa with his big brother Karsten.  I know God has big plans for these two.  I'm lucky to be their mom.

Some of my kids are more challenging.  They have their own special gifts, but sometimes you have to really look for them.  It can be really hard in a big family not to compare yourself or your kids to their siblings.  I keep trying to remind the ones that God has given very obvious talents not to take too much credit for those, as they are gifts.  They need to share them with their siblings and friends, not flaunt them.  Sometimes our gifts aren't obvious to everyone else, and it is easy to think they are less important.  It is important for me to recognize those and encourage my kids to be thankful for what they have been given.  Some kids have incredible gifts that they don't use.  Madie gets so mad at Bronwyn because she is naturally faster than she is, but it takes Bronwyn the whole season to beat Madie because she doesn't work at it until she has to.  Madie's hard work is paying off now that she is at college and I am very glad to see her keeping focused and seeing results.

All of my kids are going to grow up and fly whether I am paying attention or not.  Some of them are destined for great things in spite of my lameness.  Others will need encouragement often, always, and I am glad to give it.  Mostly I am thankful to have had the opportunity to watch them grow.  They are a lot of fun and they challenge me to grow as well.  They are the fruit of much of my labor even if the kind of fruit is all determined by their father in Heaven.  They keep me humble and delighted all at the same time.  It's safe to say I am not nailing this parenting thing, but God is kind and He loves His kids and has good things for them.  I can't wait to be the grandparent that gets to spoil their kids and send them back home.  That will be the real reward.

What is Good?

"Is your eye evil because God is good?"  Peter Leithart gave an amazing sermon on Matthew 20 that has always stuck in my mind.  It was one of those sermons you wrestle with for years.  The story of the laborers in the field messes with our idea of fairness in a way that makes us wonder if God really is good.  Isn't that the point?

When I do these little test exercises on my kids at home it really stirs up their hearts.  I will give everyone a cookie, but some people get two.  Everyone will start casting sidelong glances, and soon will start asking, "what's up?"  We are all into fairness when it means someone else has to give something up.  Wouldn't it be more just if the people who have two break theirs in half and share?  I don't know let's ask them what they think.  But the most important question is, "Do any of you deserve a cookie?"  Maybe we should be grateful that we got one and rejoice for those who got two.  What?  That just doesn't sit well with us at all.  Try it with a group of kids sometime, it makes for a great discussion.  Try it with adults and you will probably get socked in the nose, or a pouty silence and some murmuring later.

Which is where I have been in my wrestling with this passage.  The bottom line is (I'm a bottom line kind of girl), do I believe God is good?  If I can settle my heart on the solid rock that God IS good, and whatever comes my way is from Him then I can do all the crazy stuff like count it all joy when various trials come my way.  I can say that God is good in a way that goes against a lot of our ideas about goodness.  We think a good God would let us sleep in everyday and that chocolate would be at the bottom level of the food guide pyramid instead of whole grains.  We try to define God's terms by our standards which is where we get very muddled ideas of ourselves and God.  It is also I am discovering where we get very muddled ideas about ourselves and our parents.  Parents who give two cookies to some siblings and one to others are obviously evil even though they feed and clothe and provide and sacrifice for you everyday.  I need to make sure that my idea of goodness comes from the right source and that I bank everything else in my life on that idea and not the myriad of other strange ideas that float around me.  I don't get to define things like goodness, justice, fairness, righteousness, God does because these ideas are way too big for my little brain to contain much less apply to others.

He gave me a whole book of instructions (I'm also not the kind of girl who reads owners manuals, so this is a challenge for me), that explains who He is and why He does things in the crazy manner He does.  Sometimes the book doesn't give any clear instruction, just a lot of rather wild stories that leaving you thinking, hmmm...  I can say that over years of reading and rereading and living out my own crazy story that it starts to take definite shape.  Now by definite shape I mean I know when to say, "I just need to pray about that," instead of "well, the Bible says..."  I realize that when I was 20 I had an answer for everything, but now that I'm 44 things seem a whole lot less simple.  The extenuating circumstances are more varied, and God's Word has become deeper and wider.

The longer I live here under the sun, the more I realize that what I see is extremely limited, and unclear.  God has the vantage point of knowing the end from the beginning.  He knows ALL the extenuating circumstances.  He has his reasons for sending a trial or a blessing at a certain time and I don't really need to know those reasons most of the time.  What I do need to know is that He is God.  I am not.  He is good.  I am only good because of Him.  I don't need to know why things happen, I just need to know that my Father who loves me allowed them to happen and that it will be for my good even when it doesn't feel good or look good.  I have also found that I can see God doing good things in the lives of my friends when they are struggling with a difficult circumstance.  They feel burdened and worn down, but I can see the glory in their lives as they carry on trusting in God.  I can hope that others see that in me when I am trudging along feeling nothing but extra weight and uneven ground.  That is the blessing of living in community with other believers.  We are all in this together and we have different vantage points so we can cheer each other on.

One of my parenting struggles lately has been times when it is obvious that my kids are thinking I must not be good.  I'm not, as we already established, but I am their parent and as imperfect as I may be I still have to make rules for their safety and stick by them.  One odd example is my youngest who informed her grandmother, who gives them each $10 for every road trip home, that their dad takes their money and doesn't let them spend it.  I admit, I got a little bit hot about this, and all the kids know exactly what I think about this line of reasoning.  It is true, that dad does take all the money.  What dad usually does with it, is take them out to dinner or to a movie, or uses it when we go someplace like Silverwood.  I'm not sure what my youngest child thought we did with all this loot, but she was sure that she was being robbed.  The quandary for parents is how to show our kids that we love them and that we are looking out for their good and not just our own.  Our kids have their very mature ideas about what a good parent looks like, and we obviously are lacking.  This curfew business is obvious oppression.  Dad not getting all excited about the latest guy that is texting us 2000 times a month is clearly judgmental.  Mom asking us to change our clothes before church is because she is old fashioned.  Does any of this sound like the kinds of charges we level against God?  So then the obvious question is, "Do I love my kids?"  I am imperfect but I know to give my kids cookies and not rocks if I want to bless them.  I have gotten up in the middle of the night for millions of reasons ranging from crying, to puking, to giving them rides from various events, and I haven't kicked them out of the house yet.  What does love look like?  Does it mean my kids have everything they want and they never get a rebuke or spanking?  Would that be lovely?  Who gets to define love?  Well in this establishment God does.  And here it is: Love is patient; love is kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.  That just stills my heart.  Yes, kids that is what I am striving for, and you know better than anyone that I fall on my face.  That is the love God has for us, and that is what I am trying to pour out on all of you.

I'm not sure how to wrap this one up, so I will just lay it before God and pray some more.

That moment when you realize...

God delights in us even when we are knuckleheads, which is most of the time.  One of the really comfortable things about having all my kids at home last school year, was that I had the illusion that I had some control over what they were up to.  I didn't of course, but it felt like I did., which is actually one of the downsides of homeschooling.  There is a temptation to think your kids are doing better than they really are because they don't have the opportunity to go out and be knuckleheads on a daily basis.  I knew this intellectually, and it makes me very thankful for a community of people to watch my kids and let me know when they need a kick in the fanny.  Just to be fair, I also have people who will kick me in the fanny, because I need it on a regular basis as well.  The kids had the joy of doing this when they were home, and now it is up to my friends to jump in and take their job.

I remember a conversation back in yesteryear when my kids were hitting middle school age.  It was time to give them a little more freedom than we mothers were comfortable with, but it needed to be done.  I remember saying somthing about needing to have faith, my friend's question was, "in what?"  The answer to that is always in God.  Year after year my faith gets deeper when I realize that these are His kids, not mine.  He called me to be faithful in the little things while they were young.  Faithful in feeding them, keeping them reasonably clean, disciplining them with love and consistency, taking notes on their besetting sins so they can still be addressed when they get good at hiding them, encouraging them to walk with God, and generally showing them that they were delighted in.  I was being called to be faithful in the work of parenting, but the results have always been in God's hand.  He is the author of their story, and mine, and I don't get to control how things go.

Looking back I failed a lot.  I got too caught up in whether or not my life had meaning.  I was preoccupied with whether or not I was doing the right thing with school, or food, or discipline, or decorations, or matching outfits, or a thousand other ridiculous distractions, but at the end of the years God is very kind.  He has let my love that is very imperfect cover a multitude of sins.  He lets us forget a lot of our little years.  My kids have very odd memories of their pre-school years, and over all they remember that they were happy.  I find this shocking, and more than a little bit encouraging.

Now as I sit and ponder whether or not I should call my college students more than once a week, I am working on a deepening faith.  I don't know who they are hanging around with.  I haven't met the people they are talking about.  They don't tell me funny stories about what happened in class, or who the annoying kid is in the front row.  I get an occasional text asking me to send something, or a screen shot of a conversation they thought I might like.  I pray for them a lot.  I know that God has them in His hand, and that they have to go off on this adventure without me.  I know that I can't change the past and do a better job preparing them.  I have to trust that God is faithful to them and to me.  I have faith that He is big enough to get all of us through the valleys and the mountains that lie ahead.  Any illusion I had of controlling their life is all gone.  Now I wait, and watch, and pray and trust that their Father is walking them down the path He has for them.

I have to keep reminding myself of these things.  Just because I have two that are out on their own, does not mean that the job is done.  I need to find ways to communicate that I still love them and care about what they are doing, while still meeting the needs at home.  I still have third graders that need to be quizzed in Latin, that I still can't pronounce correctly.  I have kids that still need to learn to drive.  I am still searching for wisdom in balancing how much screen time is too much, and how to monitor the millions of texts coming in and out of my home.  I need to be faithful in all the little things while remembering that God is control of how it all shakes out.  My tendency is to let God have the whole thing and just lock myself in my room and pray, but He needs me to keep on feeding them and clothing them and trying to keep them on the narrow path.  Finding the joy in the work is really the trick.  Trusting God to walk with me when I know what I am doing doesn't look good to those on the other side, or when I am pretty sure my child has it all wrong.  Deep faith will get me through those long days.  He loved me and snatched me out of my own pit, I am confident that He can do this for my band of knuckleheads as well.

I am thankful for:
-leaves turning colors
-parents that laugh at my foolishness, now
-the smell of zucchini bread baking
-bicycle rides with sweaty kids
-teens learning to find their wings
-Instagram
-friends who have been down this road who can walk with me
-fresh vegetables coming out of the dirt

I'm full

When people ask me how I am, I tend to give them a blank stare; first of all because I'm a slow processor and that is an open ended question; second there is so much that I want to give them the digested format; third I don't want it to come across as complaining.  The bottom line answer is that I'm full.  I'm full of good things.  It's a heavy load, and things roll off the top looking like I am a basket case, but I'm no good at containing it all.

The school year has blasted off.  Nine kids, four schools, two states, reams of paperwork (why do we have computers again?), countless schedules (at least too many for me to count which is more than five), and one patient husband.  So far everyone has left the house clothed and fed which I count as a huge success.  Speaking of success, I am taking a whole new angle on that.  I'm trying to think of a snappy saying to explain the number of F's we have racked up already.  I'm also trying to be cheerful that we need to throw around so many letter grades this early in the year.  A year without grades was very restful.  It's okay, the kids are still happy at school and oddly the teachers are pretty smily too.  My hair is getting grayer by the minute, but that's okay too, it's the new blonde.

The southern girls are learning many things.  They are learning that they may not be Olympic fast, but they are not bad for NAIA.  They are learning that they do have strengths and what a good annual salary is.  They are learning that color does make a difference in some places, and Brook is off the charts on the white scale which makes her stand out in the south.  They are learning how to drive in flash floods, and how to sit through football games during lightning storms.  We don't get much of that here in Idaho.  I think they might be learning a little writing and Biology too, but they don't talk about that much.

This week is the much anticipated fair.  We will be full of elephant ears, fried onions, pop, carnival rides, dust, pigs, and friends.  It will be exciting, exhausting, emotional, hot, and fun.  We load up the oinkers tonight and clean them up a bit before their public appearance.  We have finished up a few record books and gotten the rest up to date.  It was a lot of work, but it was good work and I am glad they have done it.  I will need a few days next week to catch up on some sleep and laundry, but I am glad that Soren's day in the sun is here.

Life is very full.  So full that when we have changes the weight of it feels the same.  I have three less people to feed this year, but it doesn't feel like a vacation.  Probably because the number of teenage boys that manage to show up at dinner time is roughly the same as the number of girls that left.  I do love it, even though I feel like I'm being squashed most of the time.  I think the things that weighs on me the most is that I don't like leaving things undone.  I like to wrap up projects in one sitting.  That rarely happens, ever.  I don't even manage to wrap up lunch in one sitting.  I have run out the door leaving a half eaten meal more often then not.  I feel very scattered and unreliable, which is hard.  I don't mean to be, I have just maxed out what my brain can hold.  The things I am clinging to are my Bible reading, Bible study, and family meals.  I'm even limiting meals to a few nights a week.  I don't want them to be a burden to my kids, I want to keep them joyful.  Maybe once the weather gets cruddy they will come to the table more.  It is good to be full.  I wouldn't trade it for empty.  From what I can tell, it will continue to fill up more and more.  It makes me thankful for the hope of eternal rest.

I'm thankful for:

dirt, lots and lots of dirt

art, kids that love art and make my home beautiful

Grandparents and all the joy they bring when they visit

Bicycles, exercise and transportation all in one

Grocery stores, the thought of hunting and gathering for this mob makes me very thankful for Costco

Good books, they give me hope

Facetime, it feels like my girls are still right here

Older kids that can help younger kids with homework, there are advantages to having the same assignments year after year.

Random Thoughts on God and Parenting

There was a time in my life when I thought I needed to have all my theology in order.  I needed to be able to "defend my faith" and answer every question with the right answer.  Then I got swamped in diapers, and discipline, and first foods and decided that I didn't care about theology.  I just needed to make more cookies.  Now as I look back, because looking forward is still too fuzzy, so I will get back to this in a few years with yet another vantage point, I see that God has walked with me the whole time.  He is always bigger than whatever box I try to fit Him in.  Today I just stand in awe and thank Him for not being any of the lame things I tried to make Him, and for not letting me be any of the lame things I've tried to make myself.

I love to study my Bible.  I love to read books about God, and theology, and church, and living the Christian life.  I know that there are glimpses of who God is in all of that, but they can't possibly contain Him.  I love to follow people from around the world on instagram and see the astounding diversity that God has created in this world and thank Him for all of it, but even that is so minuscule in showing us His wonder.  I will, for the rest of my life, be trying to get to know God more.  There will always be more to know.  Thanks be to God!

I was reading about a professor that gave his students a personality test and asked them to fill it out for God.  Then he gave them a similar test and asked them to fill it out for themselves.  Apparently people tend to think God is similar to themselves.  I know this is one of those classes that would have made me roll my eyes and grumble.  God is a Spirit people!  He doesn't have a personality.  He is all of it, perfectly communing in love.  We are too tiny to not be crushed by the magnitude of His personality.  He has to split it up and parcel it out to each one of us to reflect it back to Him.  And even then, we only get a glimpse.  I know this is completely arrogant, even talking about glimpsing God doesn't do Him justice.  I just stare at the clouds and am wowed.

He is my joy and my glory.  Sometimes I forget that and think my kids are my joy and my glory.  I see how dangerous that road is, and I am trying my best to stay off of it.  When my kids disappoint me, or their lives hit the hard spots, I do not want to question God's goodness.  I know He is good.  He has already dished up some crushing situations in their lives, and He walked us through it.  I know there are times where it looks like I am too trusting with my kids.  I know.  I know that they are His kids.  He let me lead them down the road for a while, but the road was always His.  He snatched me out of a dark and creepy place.  I wan't looking for Him, but He was always watching me.   I know that my kids will fail.  That is where they will meet God and know He is always watching them.  If they always look to me, I will fail them.  I already have, big time.  They need to know there is someone, much bigger than me who has their back.  I have to look to Him always in all things and know that in Him I cannot ultimately fail.  If I forget that, then it is all a failure anyway.  Most importantly I want God to be my children's joy and glory.  I can't give that to them.  I can only point the way and pray for God to give them eyes to see.

I have had lot of conversations with lots of moms over the years.  A common theme is keeping our kids from evil.  Not in those words of course.  Especially as our kids hit the dreaded teenage years.  I come from a long line of rather hands off parents.  I also have been given more children than I can keep eyes on at all times.  I could easily let this consume me.  I could have internet filters on every device (and I do have some), I could have apps that let me read all of their texts (this thought makes me want to curl up in the fetal position and suck my thumb), I could have a 9:30 curfew (which is my favorite bed time), I could have a list of rules a mile long nailed to the door and recited each morning during breakfast, but all of that would cause me to lose what little is left of my mind.  I may be crazy, and you wouldn't be the first to think so, but I pray.   I pray often.  I take all my concerns to God and ask Him which ones really require me to follow up.  I ask my kids a lot of questions (they love this!). I get to know their friends.  I have decided that I want to pursue healthy relationships with my people instead of volumes of rules.  I have had many times where "common sense" was not to be trusted.  My common sense is not the same as my teenage son's common sense.  Then I remember how far sense has come in my life in the last 30 years and I sit down and have another chat with the boys.  At the end of the day, I can say without reserve, that the teenage years in this household have been the best (so far).  I love my children and my friends who have teenagers and my parents (thank you for not killing me when I was a teenager).  We cannot keep our kids from evil, we live in a real world.  What we can do is give them tools to battle evil in their own hearts.  I think that is what God requires of us, and the rest is truly up to Him.

Just in Case I forget, and I Probably Will

I've been a bit stumped on what to write about lately.  There are so many thoughts and so little time.  I'm trying to make my rule of thumb: Would I want my kids to read this when I am gone?  That said there are a few parenting blunders I would like to admit to my kids, things that I did to them and I would advise that they not follow in my footsteps.

Listen to your kids.  I know it is painful at times.  Yes, they repeat themselves, often and for way too long, but once they get rolling they can say some pretty amazing things.  They have a perspective that we grown ups need to remember.  Let yourself really feel the wonder they have for the world.  If they say something really crazy, ask questions.  Sometimes they are trying to tell you something really important and they just don't have the words.  It is worth the effort to let them share what's in their heart with you.  Nes will ask us the deepest questions, and have the most profound insights.  I am thankful for his mind and his willingness to really try to communicate with a dense old lady like me.  Lord willing when I am an older lady, I will be able to listen to your kids.  I will have lots of time someday.

Hold your kids more, clean less.  The window of time that they really want you to hold them is really pretty small.  For some kids it is very small, so snuggle them often.  They can't write their name in sharpie on the wall if you are holding them and just enjoying how warm and sweet they are.  They will be using sharpies far longer than they will be willing to sit on your lap so take advantage of years of being able to sit with them.  I let you all sit in the neglect-o-matic way too much.  If I could have those hours back I would snuggle you and let the laundry wait.  Believe me the laundry will always be there.

Don't make your young children sit at the table for hours over uneaten food.  We gave you the "starving kids in Africa" speech, then we gave the starving kids in Africa the starving kids in Africa speech and realized how totally ridiculous it was.  Now that I know how much you all eat as teenagers I would have fed you mac'n cheese and put the extra money in savings for ten years.  I lost so many hours, and so much joy over meals that I should have just kept simple and let go.  I would encourage you to try lots of flavors and enjoy the things you love.  Let your kids eat what you eat, and if they only want a tablespoon full, don't sweat it.  There will be more for you, and Teddy grahams are a lot more nutritious than you think.

Let your kids know how much you delight in them.  Don't focus on what they do or do not do, just enjoy them.  They are all different.  They are all wonderful gifts.  Let them know often that you treasure them and are pleased that they are gifts God has let you have.  It is so easy to think that you can just make them a little bit better by pointing out this fault or that, but over time I think they need to know they are glorious just because they are.  There are plenty of people to point out all of their flaws, especially if you have more than one ;)

Help them to understand their sense of humor.  We Schus specialize in sarcasm.  While this is funny it is not the best kind of funny.  A sense of humor is your ability to laugh at yourself, not your sister.  It will serve you well if you can not take yourself too seriously and learn to laugh at yourself.  Mads, that is why I tried to get you to laugh when that poor waiter dropped salsa down your back.  Sure, it wasn't fun for you, but he felt terrible, and if it would have Brook you would have thought it was hilarious.  We make fun of each other because we know that we are deeply loved.  Just remember that as we add folks to the extended family, we need to let them wade in from the shallow end.  I know, I'm the one that needs the most work here.

Be thankful.  In all things give thanks.  When your tire is flat and dad isn't answering the phone, give thanks.  When your sister "borrows" your sweater without asking, give thanks.  When your sister makes you dinner, give thanks.  When you get your own room, give thanks.  When you have to share your room with three other boys, give thanks.  When mom forgets you at school, give thanks.  When your sister posts that unattractive picture of you on Facebook, give thanks.  When you get money from grandma, give thanks.  For every single one of you and every hour of sleep I have lost over you, I am thankful.  You are the greatest gifts God has given me.  I am eternally grateful that he chose to give me a good, abundant life, and I am so excited to see where you all take it from here.

Education, Guilt, Adventures, Live and Learn

I've been reading a lot about education lately, so bear with me on this tangent.  I've been trying to sort out where we have been and where we are going.  I have found that often some off hand remark by someone during a conversation may bring a bit of wisdom I need in that moment.  Maybe something along this thread will be helpful to someone out there.

I have been thinking about my own education and what it has given me.  My youngest comes home from school every single day and sets up her own mini-classroom in the basement.  She teaches her invisible class right up until dinner time.  Each student has their work stacked neatly on their desk.  My older girls tell me that she lectures the class and even tells Tim not to touch the girls next him.  She is the one that might find home schooling a bit disturbing.  I remember dreaming of being a teacher when I was her age.  Then I realized that what I really loved about the idea of teaching was decorating the classroom.  So I explored interior design.  I went through a phase of sitting with my Better Homes and Gardens magazines and designing my dream homes.  Then I  played office for hours on end.  Scheduling appointments and filing every scrap of paper in the house.  Then I hit high school and quit dreaming of careers and starting living for the weekend.

I grew up thinking that WSU was where everyone went they graduated from high school, unless they wanted to work at the lumber mill, yuck!  Both my parents went to WSU and my dad worked for them.  My mom did try to convince me to be a Husky, but it was too late, and I knew I was a small town girl.  I was fortunate enough to complete my college education without going into any debt.  I had saved enough from my 4-H projects and working in the summers to pay for the first year and a half, and my parents helped me with portion that I couldn't pay for on my own.

There were a couple of things that happened in my early twenties that caused me to doubt the value of  my education.  I really wanted to pursue exercise science.  I loved working out, and spent a lot of time at the gym.  I loved studying the body and how it worked, and how exercise improved a person's total well being.  Everyone told me it was a dumb major and that I would never make any money doing it.  So I decided to get a degree in human nutrition.  It was a broader field and I did find that eating right was also important to a person's well being.  When Rick and I got engaged he was graduating in the spring and I had one more year.  He had been accepted to the University of Minnesota and I looked at what it would take for me to transfer and finish there.  They sneered at my classes and informed me that nutrition was a pre-med degree at U of M (I'm pretty sure everything is a pre-med degreee at U of M) and they wanted me to take two more years of classes.  With out-of-state tuition there was no way I could afford to transfer, so we sat down and talked about what to do.  The options were wait another year to get married, while Rick started at Minnesota and I finished at Washington State.  Neither of us was excited about this option, and I think we both suspected that we would not end up married to each other.  The other option was for Rick to defer his acceptance for one year and wait for me to finish my degree.  We ended up staying at WSU, getting married, and Rick was able to finish a Master's degree while I finished my Bachelors.  It was a good choice, but my experience with Minnesota had caused me to doubt the worth of my degree.  Within two years Rick finished his Master's and we had Madison.  One of the first books I read on parenting was called Children at Risk, by Larry Dobson.  It was a critique of the public education system, and it frankly rocked my world.  I realized by the end of the book that my education was pretty much worthless in my mind.  Looking back I think it really sucked a lot of wind out of my sails.  I had felt like a reasonably well educated person, but after reading that I realized how much I didn't know.  Maybe I needed to have that humbling experience, but it really changed my view of my entire education.  I was not going to let my children waste their time the way I had.

Fast forward to today.  My oldest is about to graduate from a very reputable Christian high school.  She has been accepted to several very good schools.  She is interested in being a personal trainer, and I am fully supporting her in that.  I am not going to tell her any of her dreams are dumb, except the one about marrying a professional basketball player.  It's not totally dumb, just very limiting.  Am I satisfied with her education this far?  Honestly I think I could have done better.  She is a bright young lady, and I think she will have a solid worldview to analyze life with.  I'm not afraid of someone convincing her that their philosophy makes her God look silly.  I wish I would have prepared her better for college, mostly by helping her learn to study better.  I think time management is a weakness, but I guess that is common for eighteen year olds.  I wish I would have pursued more dual credit classes for her.  There are so many ways to get college credit in high school it seems silly not to do that.  I haven't been as frugal as my dad was, so she doesn't have the same savings cushion that I had.  I have let her travel more than I did, and I think that was worth every penny.  I think she will take some time before she heads into college full time.  She could start classes in the fall, and is all set to do that, but I really think taking a little time to live somewhere else and work or volunteer will give her a change of perspective that will make her college career more meaningful.  If she comes back and still wants to be a personal trainer, then I will be right her to feed and her and make sure she gets to the gym.  If she decides that she has found another passion, then great, we will pursue that.

Providentially, this weekend we were visiting the church that Rick grew up going to.  The message was on missions.  Every single on of my kids was engaged in that sermon.  He talked about all of the reasons people will tell you not to pursue Christian ministry work, and he was right on.  He talked about the rewards of following God into careers that don't pay well, that take you far from home, that mean getting down and dirty with people that don't have anything to give back, that mean sacrificing all of your potential to do something that looks meaningless.  My kids ate it up.  They got it.  I am so excited to see where God takes them.  They are ready to go, and following hard down that road.  The thought of Madie living somewhere else next year makes me want to follow her around every minute until she goes.  I am trying to fight the urge to make her feel guilty for leaving us.  I know it is what God has, and that there is no more danger in her being in Africa than here if that is where God wants her.  I look around at the families in town that have generations of people all right here and I wish I had that.  I have always wanted to live in the same town as my grandparents.  God in his abundant kindness has always provided a family to take the place of the one that is not here.  I know this, and I know he will do this for my children as well.  I have raised my children to have their own lives in Christ.  They are his, not mine.  I just hope that he lets me visit them wherever they are.

I want my children to value education, not just the one they will "finish" in the first eighteen years of their lives.  I want them to love learning and to pursue it until they wake up in Heaven.  I don't ever want them to doubt the value of knowing God and loving their neighbor.  I don't want them to get their diploma and think that is the end of the road.  I want them to see that diploma as the ticket to the rest of their lives.  The temptation right now is to focus on June 1st, which is the day Madie will get her high school diploma.  I want her to finish strong, but I also want her to run through the finish and start hard on the next lap.  It must be my slave driver instincts coming out.  My hope is that I am not taking too much of my sense of loss in my own education and using it to drive my kids too hard.  There is so much potential in them, but their path is God's.  As my very wise father told me just this weekend, "when you get to the fork in the road, take it."  Sometime I will have to blog on my redneck education in the sticks.  It really explains a lot about me.

I am thankful for...

Antibiotics

Dentists, and the fact that I didn't need a filling

Whoever assigned the topic of angels to Brook

Madie wrestling with her senior thesis, deepening her view of the sovereignty of God

Joe and the hours he has spent helping Madie hone her arguments

Books, shelve full of them

Clear blue skies, lovely no matter what the temperature

How to Fill 24 Hours

I have had several people tell me that home schooling is going to be really hard, especially with eight children.  I do realize this.  On the flip side, any kind of schooling is hard especially with eight children.  Getting out of bed is hard, especially with eight children.  I know, I didn't pick the easy road, if you don't remind me my dad will.  I have been told this ever since I announced I was pregnant with my third child.  Granted life hasn't been "easy" but it has been a lot of fun.  It has also been much better than being dead, so I will just have to do the work and see how it all turns out.  I know that there is more to do with eight children, but really anyone who has any children feels like they have their hands full, and they do.  There is some economy of scale with a large number of children.  Grocery shopping for example is not necessarily exponentially more time consuming, you just use a bigger cart.  Older children can entertain, and educate younger children.  I don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out play dates, since we are a continual party.  So, I refuse to play the, "I have nine children"card and should therefore have an excuse to get out of any other responsibilities.

I have been trying to figure out what I have been saying on my blog that leads people to surmise that I think homeschooling will be easier than having them all at school.  If there is anyone out there that thinks they all go off to school and then I head off to the spa to get my nails done, let me just tell you that that has happened all of two times in my entire life.  Most of the time I spend the next hour cleaning up the kitchen from the aftermath of breakfast and lunch prep, throw a couple of loads of laundry in the washer and head to the grocery store.  I did quit my job at the church (I'll miss getting to know everyone better, but not as much as I miss taking a walk everyday).  What did I do with my extra twenty hours last week?  I spent it at home with two sick children.  We did some home work (school at home).  We read some books, played some cards, and I cleaned up while they slept.  I did take a walk everyday which made me very happy.  There is a simple law of life here, if you remove one thing from your schedule something else will come in to fill it up, and not necessarily what you had hoped would come in to fill it up.  At the end of the day we all get twenty four hours.  We will fill it with something, most likely something we love, or something for someone we love.  I thought it would be helpful for me, and maybe for you, if I jot down some of the things I love, and some of the things I don't love.  I know everyone has a different list, so maybe this will make my priorities make a little more sense, even if they differ from yours.

I love to be outside.  I love to exercise, not running marathons, but getting outside and getting a little bit out of breath.  I love reading.  I don't really care if it is fiction, or children's literature, as long as it isn't a text book written to be read out loud in a dry monotonous voice, or a contract full of details.  I love to cook.  I really love to eat, which drives me to cook, because in small towns you don't get a lot of variety in the eateries.  I love to get to know people.  I really like to listen to people and try to figure out what makes them tick.  I love to have people over and feed them, it's the best of both worlds.  I love to spend time with my kids.  I love it when they ask me questions while we are out walking.  I love to watch them compete in athletic events.  I actually love helping them work through the anxiety of getting ready for competition and helping them calm their spirits and focus on doing their best before the Lord.  Praying with them and feeling their breathing start to slow down and calmness wash over them is the best part of the meet.  I really don't care how they finish, I care how they start.  I love to have time to sit an listen, to let a conversation go where it needs to.  This is a rare jewel, and with this many people around me all the time I try to savor it when it appears.  I also love order.  This can be a big frustration of mine and I have to fight against it often.  Really I love sorting out the toys into neat little bins, it makes me feel like all is right with the world, maybe that is where I let my control issues run wild.

Things I don't love are interruptions.  I don't love long meetings that seem to go nowhere. My short attention span is not helpful in these situations.  This seems to be a contradiction to my previous statement that I love to listen to people and figure out what makes them tick, hmmm.  I think I love to listen to people talk about who they are, but when it comes to things needing to get done, I go straight to the let's do and skip the maybe we shoulds.  I don't love waiting for decisions to be made.  I don't love waiting in doctor's offices.  I don't love shopping.  Wandering around stores for hours trying on clothes sounds exhausting and torturous.  I don't love loud places (like my family room on most evenings).  I don't love small talk.  I don't love sitting in traffic, although I don't mind driving.  I don't love being away from home all day.  I don't love sitting around with nothing to do, although I don't love having work hanging over my head either.  I don't love loose ends.

I'm sure this says all kinds of interesting things about my personality.  It will be interesting to see if anyone says, "that's not true!"  I'm not above blind spots, but really this is what I think I love and don't love.  Most of all I love God and the family he has given me.  Some of them share my loves, and some of them don't.  I have learned to love some of the things they love, because I love to see them in their element.  This weekend there were two time where one of my daughters and I were thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time.  I think it freaked her out just a bit, but she really is like me, only much better.  Maybe she will find this helpful.

Things I am thankful for...

Forks in the road, take it!

Getting in the car after church and having every single child say, "that was a great sermon!"

Finding pictures of quotes written on hands from the sermon, it was that good

The spirit of God stirring up my children to hunger to see new places and new people

Tears when we leave Grandpa's house

Boys wrestling outside

Grass stained jeans in April

Singing Happy Birthday to Grandpa for his "44th" birthday

The smell of roast when you open the door

Grandma's homemade desserts

Living rooms full of bodies just hanging out together

Phone calls from friends who say, "I just read your blog..."

Big brothers dancing the night away with their sisters

Singing in the Graveyard

As with so many things in my life, I'm still trying to figure out how to celebrate Easter.  I woke up in a panic during the night Thursday night.  I realized I had not even thought about Easter baskets.  I am not a celebratory person by nature, so these things are not intuitive to me at all.  I am barely keeping up with maintenance work, so piling on extra seems, well, dumb.  I'm trying to get over this, but it isn't easy.  When I returned from our Holy Saturday Service to the unholy pile of dishes we left from dinner I was questioning my priorities.  A friend commented to me this morning that everyday is a party at our house.  I answered that it is, and every night is like cleaning up after a party.  Somewhere in this I need to find the middle of the road.

Some of the weekend highlights so far have been new Easter outfits.  Rounding up nine new outfits in our shopping wasteland is not an easy task, but everyone looked great this morning.  We would have looked better at 10:00, but maybe next year.  I meant to get their Easter baskets out and set them by their beds so they would have them to wake up to. It was a bit anticlimactic for me to go haul them out after church while everyone waited for me. I need to write that one down so I don't forget on my way out the door at 6:00 am to go sing in the cemetery.  Now this may sound a bit odd, but it was truly awesome.  Of course this year we are having some AMAZING weather for Easter weekend.  I know that snow is not that unusual for this time of year, so next year I need to keep my expectations in check.  Getting up early and joining a crowd of merry folks to sing about new life and the conquering of death among those who have already won was glorious.  Watching the sun rise on the whole occasion really made my heart sing.  What a way to start the season.  That is on the must do list, and I must drag all my children with me.  My quirky friend Joe inaugurated the first annual Easter Apocalypse party last night.  He wanted all ages and genders, and races, and all those other people to get together and kick it Christian style.  He still doesn't quite get that some of us do actually need some sleep at night, so I stayed home with the little people and cleaned the dinner disaster.  The kids that stayed until the cops showed up had the best time.  I think Joe may have in fact accomplished his goal.  For my part next year I will do my best to organize breakfast for the faithful partiers and psalm singers before we all head off to church.  Oh yes, and I really need to remember to color eggs with my younger kids.  I have given in to the plastic eggs are good enough theory, but that is sort of like sporting the fake pre-decorated tree at Christmas.  (No offense to anyone, but I like the real deal.)

This afternoon we will gather at the Quall's home.  This has become our Easter tradition.  Looking back over the years I have many fond memories of this event.  Dr. Leithart grilling burgers, Tage grabbing the electric fence, Asher hiding eggs for the kids, loading the trampoline to capacity with teens, romances begun, sunburns a plenty, older kids hiding eggs for younger kids, the number of children growing and growing and growing.  I hope we are still doing this when all of us moms give in and sport our white hair, and our daughters are slaving away at feeding the crowd while we hold the grand babies and laugh at all the noise.  This is the family God has given me, and it is crazy wild.  I wouldn't want it any other way.  He is risen!

I'm thankful for...

Young people

Wiggly children at church to keep me from being too serious

Wonderful prayers from godly men

Singing

Coffee, just keep it coming

New clothes

Jelly Belly's and Reece's peanut butter eggs

The smell of coffee cake baking in the oven

Phone calls from Nes early in the morning wondering where I am

A Nail In The Hand

It's been another eventful week.  Rick was in Nevada for a good portion of it, so I did my best to keep everyone fed, bathed, loved and educated.  I ended every day bone tired, and knowing there would be more to do the next day.  It is good to go to bed bone tired, you sleep really well, unless someone wakes you up to see if they can snuggle you.

Last night, thankfully, no one tried to wake me up.  Apparently after I went to bed, the kids came home from their slurpy run to the sound of the frog symphony in our pond.  Karsten has been a bit annoyed with this nightly serenade, so he decided to throw some old boards into the pond to shut them up.  Apparently the third time was not the charm, and the board had a nail in it which pierced his hand as it sailed off into the night.  He came running into the house to his two older sisters who tried to figure out how to handle the situation.  Brook apparently was lobbying for a trip to the ER, Madie was not so sure.  They woke Rick up and all decided to wait until the morning to decide.  The PA who saw them this morning said it definitely needed stitches, and sewed him up.

I posted the cliff note version of this on Facebook, and a friend pointed out the irony of a nail in the hand on Good Friday.  It is sort of poignant.  God has done some very interesting things in Karsten's life over the years.  I have learned to trust him to his heavenly father and know that he has a plan.  I had told Karsten not to throw things in the pond, I hadn't envisioned boards when I gave that command.  The frogs are back this evening taunting him with their song.  They have won this round, but I am confident that he will back in the fight.  A couple weeks of laying low will probably do him good.

The older girls had their first two track meets.  One was a surprise event on Tuesday.  They have done respectably, but not what they had hoped.  The season is early, and given that we have no field equipment to practice our jumps, I think they have done well.  I'll miss track season.  It is fun to see the girls work hard and master some difficult skills.

We have been discovering more and more school options.  I have to say that I am really excited about the opportunities we have for next year.  We found a program that offers dual credit for our high schoolers with some very interesting classes.  It incorporates some of the ideas that we heard about at PLU in their international honors program, but they can do it in high school.  We will start the application process and see what happens.  We found an ESL program for Martha.  When Rick called them to see if it would be appropriate for her, we discovered that the lady who teaches the class knew about us.  She was one of the founders of the school we had considered teaching at in Indonesia.  I have been astounded again and again by God's faithfulness and blessing in all the twists and turns we have taken in our life.

A dear friend emailed and offered to let Madie come stay with them for a while and get a change of scenery.  It was completely unexpected, but would be such a blessing to Madie and to us, and hopefully to them.  I was feeling a little bit discouraged by how things were working out for Madie.  We are still very hopeful that she will be able to take a volunteer trip this summer.  We are trying to figure out how to do some fundraising to take care of the travel expenses.  There are some questions we need to answer before we are ready to send her to Europe by herself, but I really feel like this would be a great way for her to grow in maturity and faith.  She just needs to come up with the airfare, and they will take care of the rest.  God has been so good to us, and I have felt so good about the options he has presented that we have not expected in any way.

This Easter weekend has already been beautiful.  The weather is warm.  The flowers are springing up everywhere.  Yesterday while I walked with Eden the smell of dinners being cooked outside reminded me of Ethiopia.  It was such a sweet memory, and a longing to go back.  It reminded me of all the people we have met from Ethiopia, who have adopted from Ethiopia, who are serving in Ethiopia now, it made me so very grateful for our Ethiopian children and all that they have brought into our lives.  We are planning to celebrate Easter with some very dear friends who have hosted us for Easter for many years.  I was thinking about our Easter celebrations of the past.  We have been getting together since our children were all very young.  Many of them are now married and have small children of their own.  It has been a wild ride, and I am so looking forward to our annual get together.  Friends eating, hiding eggs, getting spring sunburns, and laughing as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and life everlasting.  It truly is better than Christmas.

I am thankful for...

Friends that have become family

Gifts paid forward

Surprises

New friends met, and relationships growing

Doctors to stitch up hands

Frogs to inspire boys to do dumb things

Husbands that come home

Eternal life

When will there be a cure, and who should I tell?

I'll be honest, most days we don't mention HIV around our house.  It is here, and we take medication everyday, but we have so many other things to talk about it just doesn't always fit in the flow of things. I have had a couple of opportunities to talk about it lately.  The big questions seem to be, 1. When will there be a cure? and 2. How and when do you disclose your status?  Those are both big questions, and neither has a straightforward answer.

There has been a lot of encouraging news about HIV lately.  A baby in Mississippi was cured by early treatment.  Our doctor explained that it is an encouraging development, but there has yet to be a functional cure for someone who has an established disease.  She was very hopeful based on the amount of progress that has been made in the last 20 years.  We have every reason to be hopeful that a cure will be found in the next 20 years.  Even the ability to control it with one pill, once a day is miraculous.  There is much to be thankful for, and still we hope for more.

How and when to disclose that you are positive can be much more discouraging.  My mom instincts are to educate as many people as possible.  Education does help, but often it isn't enough.  Fear of things that are unknown is a powerful.  People can have all the knowledge in the world, but if they think they are in danger, or someone they love is in danger they will act on that.  One of my children was trying to put themselves in the shoes of people who don't understand HIV.  How would she react if a friend told her that they were positive?  It is such a "normal" part of her life she has trouble understanding the other side.  That is cause for much joy on my part.  Tearing down stigma happens when you realize that the people around you, that you love, were once "them" instead of "us."  Getting to the point of being seen as a person, not an illness takes some personal contact.  The scary part is knowing how much contact is enough to get over the fear.  Once you tell one person you have lost control of who they tell, and then the personal contact is enough removed that fear creeps in.

This is especially tricky when you have teens that are positive.  Being a teen is challenging enough all by itself.  When you throw in a little adoption trauma, bi-cultural issues, and HIV you are just begging for drama.  I want my teens to have some control over their lives.  They all have so much to deal with, I want to carry some of that burden for them.  Unfortunately they don't always want mom to help.  I do realize that they have friends that are vital to them.  I have to trust God enough to let Him watch over some of their friendships that make them feel safe, even when I see the dangers.  I have been so blessed to have kids that will talk to me.  They ask hard questions, and I don't always have all the answers.  We have been blessed with good friends that are willing to listen and give wise counsel.  One thing I am seeing is that teens need families that are supportive.  They need mom and dad to listen and not freak out.  They need to be able to talk about things that might be uncomfortable.  They need to say what they think and be willing to be taught.  It isn't easy, and it can be very humbling.  I'm not all that my kids need, but they do need me.  It takes a lot of time to listen to connect with them enough so that they trust me.  I need to be where they are and study them.  Most of all,  I need to pray with and for them.

Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is very difficult.  The hardest part is being patient while they work through things.  It may not be all that difficult to see why they are upset, the difficulty is knowing the solution and not being able to communicate it when you want to.  I need to remember that I was once a teen.  I was once freaked out about being around people with HIV.  I was once blissfully ignorant about the level of racial tension that still exists in the world.  I am sure I am ignorant of all kinds of things that have not been revealed to me yet.  I am thankful for all the people that took the time to patiently explain things to me.  I am very vocal about my opinions, and I am very often wrong.  It is humbling to realize that I was just spouting off about some subject only to be schooled in it days later and realize I was all wrong.  This happens more often than I would like to admit, but I can think of at least two time in the last week.  God is good, and abundant in grace.  I pray that I would learn to be more like Him in this area.  As I pray this I know that it means I will be given opportunities to practice, which means bumpy roads for my children and I ahead.  It's all good, it's actually what makes life worth living.  Growing up is painful, but maturity is so worth it (so I hear).

I'm thankful for...

Spring break

A lack of scheduled things to do

Children outside catching lady bugs

The frog symphony that serenades me from our pond every night

The hills around my house turning green

Lost teeth

Blue eyes

Love that covers a multitude of sins

Ch, ch, ch, changes

There are so many changes on my horizon, I'm not sure where to start.  Our little Nes, who has been healthy and med free for the last seven years, started taking ARV's yesterday.  I don't know why this makes me sad, but it does.  We told him we would throw him a little party to celebrate this new chapter in his life.  Hopefully the party will mark a new beginning for him.  For me, I am celebrating that he has access to medication that will allow him to live a normalish, healthy life.  We have every reason to believe he will outlive the rest of us, and have a happy thriving home just like the rest of the family.  For that, I am profoundly grateful.

We have been talking as a family about homeschooling next year.  This month is re-registration at our school, and we will not be re-registering.  A friend pointed out to me that this would be a very difficult personal decision for me, not because I am going to increase my job responsibilities exponentially so much, as because I will be letting go of a personal identity.  She pointed out that we will be remaking ourselves in a very real way.  Actually we are not remaking ourselves, God is remaking us into something new.  I am very excited about this new chapter of our lives, but with the excitement is mixed more than a little trepidation.  We have every reason to believe that this is a decision that God has been moving us to for several years, and we have no expectation that it will look like a smooth transition to all of those watching.  Rachel Jankovic recently wrote a book about parenting called Fit to Burst.  In it she talked about parenting at times feeling like the guy on the free throw line being yelled at, and waved at, with everyone trying to distract him from what he needs to do.  I know I am going to feel like that for most of the next two years.  I am trying to work on my rhythm so that when the crowd is the loudest, I will be the most focused.  I know this news will get very mixed reviews from my friends, it already has.  I guess that is part of the remaking, I will find out who is willing to roll with us, and who will miss the old identity.  I've been through these kinds of changes before, and I know that they have taught me a lot about God, family, friendship, and life.

We are also starting to fill out FAFSA forms for Madie.  What is she doing next year?  We aren't sure.  What does she want to do?  We aren't sure of that either.  This morning she told me she would like to be a nanny in Europe.  I told her she had better pick a country quick and start learning the language.  She decided that gave England a decided advantage.  Ah to be young again and have all the possibilities wide open.  I know it will all come together, and that too is very exciting.

I have so much to study, think about, pray about, chat with friends about, and the laundry still piles up, and the meal times still come around at regular intervals.  It would be so nice to join a convent for a year and sort it all out, but that is not the life God has written me into.  I'm praying a lot.  I'm seeking Jesus in every corner, trying to determine where He is going with us.  He fed people, He healed people, He freed them from their sin.  I am going to start there, and then see what He adds to my plate.

If you know us, feel free to ask me about all of this.  The answer may be different today than it will be next week.  The kids are all in the loop.  They have mixed emotions as well.  Their identity is very tied to Logos.  They are fearful that they will lose friends in the process.  They may, but they may gain some as well.  Pray for us, we will need it.

Today I am thankful for:

Friends who understand my messy life, because theirs is messy too

Medicine that saves lives

Doctors who spend years studying and working with people to heal them

Medical research, a complicated, messy business, that works miracles

Health insurance without which it wouldn't matter

Oranges, the hope of warm weather in the dead of winter

The smell of fresh flowers