What I Already Have

     It was 9 am and breakfast wasn't on the table, even though we had been up since 8, only one of the children was dressed, the dishes weren't done, the crock pot, that was supposed to already be making dinner, wasn't even out of the cabinet, not to mention the thousands of other things that I "needed" to get done. I was "calm", in that you can feel the pressure building, kind of way. Didn't these kids understand that I had lists, and mental pictures, and bullet points and info-graphs for the day, all in my head, and this was not on a single one of them. The little one was screaming to be held, following me through the house wailing and hitting her brother while I was trying to put him in time out, time and again, for fussing, throwing fits, kicking and/or throwing things.
     My oldest child was whining about every option I was giving him and pushing every button he knew with his words, and with every tilt of his little head, and with every shrug of his insolent shoulders.
     Push, push, push.
     My youngest's cries were getting more shrill and the pauses fewer and further between. And when she paused it was to push or hit or grab.
     Push, push, push.
     I was holding it together. Why were things not getting better? I was making all the right motions. I was saying all the right things in my "calm" voice. Why was everything getting worse and worse? Deep breaths. I told myself. Deep breaths. 
     It finally came down to the breaking point. I put the big one back in time out, again, for kicking at a chair, again, and was taking the little on to bed for a nap. That had to be the problem. They were just too tired.
     As I tried to put her down in her crib her screams multiplied and reached whole new decibels. I could hear the rattle of the door down the hall as her brother sought escape from his prison. She was never going to sleep in all this. I scooped her up...

      ...and as her beautifully delicate little hands, and wonderfully chubby little arms wound tightly around my neck her cries just stopped. I could feel her clinging to me as if I was the only thing in her world, her face was pressed so close to mine that I could feel her little eyelashes flutter and hear her breathing go from a slight sob to deep, calm, long breaths. A contentment settled over her that is unique to a small child in the arms of the one she loves most.
     As I stood there, holding my beautiful little girl, taking in that most precious of moments, something in me just broke and I began to cry. I cried for the joy of being in those precious arms. I cried for the fear that was always hovering in the back of my mind that I'm not doing it right. I cried for the tiredness that clung to every inch of my body from staying up to late to try to "get one last thing done". I cried for joy that the Lord had given me these precious souls to care for every day. And I cried in sorrow for my terrible blindness to that amazing gift.
     With each tear the tension, anger, frustration, all those pent up feelings, just fell away and all the love and compassion and joy from the little soul in my arms filled every corner of my newly opened soul.
     I was still tired, and afraid. There were still a million things, and four minutes of time out, to get done, but my heart had found an amazing peace.
     I softly, in a voice filled with my new peace, asked my sweet child if she was ready to go to sleep. She calmly laid down in her bed, without a moments protest, let me cover her with her blanket, and was asleep before I even got down the hallway.
     As I opened the door to my precious boys room he looked at me with his big, beautiful, and all to observant eyes, and asked about his breakfast. In that humbling moment I knew that all was forgiven, I was his mama, his source for all that he needed and that I was enough even on days like this. He had no list for me to measure up to, no picture in his head of how the day should go, no info-graph about my behavior. He just stood there, accepting me, accepting all I had to offer and it was enough.
     If I told my children thank you they wouldn't understand why, they were just being themselves, but because of them maybe today I will spend a little more time just being something a little more like myself. I get these ideals built up in my head that can become so consuming, but when I see them through the eyes of my kids... they pale in comparison to what I already have.

Vacation of a Lifetime

This last week I got to go on vacation. Real vacation. In fact every member of my family, except perhaps baby girl, got the vacation they dream of. How was this accomplished, you might ask? Don't worry, I will tell you.

Well, first of all Daniel is a homebody who loves his personal time. Me and the kids being gone is a wonderful vacation as long as I leave enough Ritz crackers and cheese in the house. He had guy time with one of his friends, he worked on his comic strip, he played some banjo, he read some Peanuts, watched Darkwing Duck and Doctor Who. Who could ask for more? Not Daniel! After a week he said he was very ready to see all of us, but I think he really had just gotten tired of his own cooking though he got a friend of ours to take him out to lunch on Sunday. I think she felt sorry for him. He played it up and said it was due to his amazing bow tie. Can't argue with that.

"You can't deny the tie!"- Daniel

I took my sweet kiddos and headed toward the big city where Daniel's parents live. The kids were going to be staying there for 5 days (!) while I headed out. This is the vacation that Nathan has always dreamed of. They went to the zoo, saw great grandparents, got to hang out with awesome older second cousins that he thinks hung the moon, all that with a dab of grandparent spoiling through out. He loved it!

The zoo!

This was the first time that I had left baby girl and I wasn't as sure how she would do. I suspected that as long as big brother (bra-bra as she puts it) was there she would do all right and she did. She got to skip naps, pick out a toy in the zoo gift shop and sit in grand-mom's lap for every meal. As long as brother was with her she was good to go.

 I spent the night there, at my in-laws, and had plans with my childhood best friend, who I haven't caught up with for almost 15 years (I can't believe I can say that!), to head out for New Mexico the next afternoon. Well the adventures of the next day took their own post to explain so to make a long story short car trouble ate Wednesday and I had to try to head out again on Thursday morning. Thursday was uneventful, thank the Lord!

Hello Sangre de Christo! I love these mountains.

Falisha and I got up to the camp near our cabin just in time for closing campfire for the session that we always attended.

"not for passenger vehicles"

Since Falisha wasn't up for hiking, being pregnant is a very valid excuse, we went on some driving tours. We drove up to Johnson Mesa with no trouble since we weren't in my little red car. The view was amazing. There are no words to describe it so it is a good thing I took pictures.

Looking out from the mesa one way

Looking out from the mesa the other way

Roughing it, no table.

We even took a trip to Porvenir Canyon and "camped out" by the creek to eat lunch for old time sake. It was so peaceful to just sit by the creek, listening to it running over a little fall just up stream. Beautiful!

The weather there was beautiful. It may be hard to read but according to this the temperature at the time of this picture was 55 degrees! It was glorious! I had to buy a coat... in August! It was lovely to just sit on the porch, curled up with a good book, enjoying the sights and smells of afternoon. We spent a lot of time on the porch just taking all the beauty in, and maybe a tiny bit of napping.

We took a small walk along the creek. There is a path there that is very aptly named Rippling Falls Trail. It meanders next to the creek, crossing it now and then, typically with a quaint bridge or a series of stepping stones.

We even managed to experience some of the wild life. Squirrels, humming birds, deer to mention a few, and, thankfully no bears or cougars.

It was designed to look like
Thomas Jefferson's home.

We stepped into the nearest town and took a bit of a tour. This picture is of a Carnegie library. It is situated in a beautiful park and offered free wifi. I took a barefoot walk in the grass!









On the way back we got to watch this amazing storm blow in across the mountains. Just moments after we took this picture the storm blew over us.

It is so cool it almost looks fake.

I missed my family very much and there were times that my heart ached for my beautiful children's faces but I may not get a moment to recharge like this for a long time. I feel like the peace of these moments will last me a long time. And if Momma is happy everyone is a little happier, its just true.

Beautiful Fingerprints in a Crazy World

Oh, the best laid plans...

      Initially I was going on this trip with several of my best girl friends because we were all turning 30 during the same year.
      Initially this trip was narrowed to five people who had set aside the time and money to get "out of Dodge" and head for the mountains during the hottest part of the year and relax.
     "No kids, now boys" I said on the Facebook event.

Like this is all I took, ha!

     We had a menu, we had the mileage and gas all worked out, the sleeping arrangements were settled, everything was figured out, I was halfway packed, in my head at least. At the beginning of the summer I was supposed to be making two trips to the cabin this year and when the first fell through I just didn't worry because I was going with the ladies in August, my favorite time of the year up in the mountains. And then it happened...

     Incident 1- One of the ladies got an amazing job interview that was only possible in the days that we were going to be gone. One down.

     Incident 2- My best friend got a job in a new school district (yea for her!) so her new teacher training was in the middle of our vacation. We tried to reschedule but due to the fact they she was moving the next weekend she just couldn't make it work. Two down.

     Incident 3- One of the other ladies had a major car break down and just couldn't justify the trip with the major car repair looming on the financial horizon. That makes three strikes, your out.

     With all this, we decided, as a group, to cancel the event and try some other weekend as well as staying closer to home. But I wasn't giving up on spending my week in the mountains. I made sure my bestie from childhood, Falisha, was still up for it, we altered our plans slightly to fit our schedules the best, and we were ready to head out.

     Incident 4- Well this is where things got interesting. About 11:00 am we hop in the car and drive to a nearby town to pick up somethings we need. This put us back about an hour but we grabbed lunch too and got ready to head on our way. This is when I receive a phone call informing me that I had dropped my debit card last night and that it had been turned into my bank (thank the Lord!). I cancelled the card and decided to head on my way since I had the money for my trip in cash. I called Daniel and told him about the card and he agreed, I should just head on.

     Incident 5- We hit the highway and things were going great, we were talking, catching up, everything is fantastic! Then the car starts to slow down. I pull over, not too worried because something similar had happened about two months earlier but we could find nothing wrong after a few moments. We had no similar  trouble since that one incident. We gave the car a few minutes, called our husbands, and then tried to set out again. The car was no better. This is when I started to get a bit nervous. You see, Falisha is pregnant and it was really getting warm outside. And by really warm I mean that we had passed 100 degrees long ago.

See? Its fine. Right?

     Incident 6- I pull over again and we look at the engine, just to see if it was on fire, or something equally obvious. And then I call Adam, who is way more mechanically inclined than I have ever even dreamed of being, to see if he could offer advice or maybe help somehow. While we talked to him I tried to head to the nearest auto parts store so that...
     1) I would be closer to civilization,
     2) I might could get a part or something if I needed it, and
     3) Maybe someone there might know what was going on.
After Falisha mapped it we found that the nearest store was only 20 miles away, this is the point where I looked at the speedometer and realized we would be there in... about an hour. Adam suggests that I check the transmission fluid level to rule that out. That was its own adventure. Not the problem, so he says that he will head our way when he gets off work in about an hour.

     Incident 7- So after putting along for a few more miles I notice that the engine is getting hotter. I pull over as soon as I can and we end up at a picnic area, still in the middle of no where Texas, but that's better than making the problem worse by over heating the car. We send Adam as close an approximation of our location as we can, which was also a mini adventure, and I described what the car was doing to a coworker of his that was a mechanic. This gave him a pretty good idea of what he thought the problem was so then we just had to wait.

     Incident 8- A few moments later we realized all we had to drink between us was half a large cup of water, which I gave to the prego lady, of course. We ask Adam to bring us some water when he comes and figure we will be fine until then. And we sit... and it gets hotter. Then we get a phone call saying that my mechanic would be later than he thought, and since he was our source of more water I began to look for other solutions. It was 105 degrees out there and I was getting worried about Falisha being in that heat with no water. I look down the road and see a tall sign that indicates either there is a gas station at the nearest exit or there was a gas station there. I can't tell from where we are standing how good my odds are. It's about 3/4 a mile down the road which is no small feat in this heat.

What kind of a face do you
make in a hitch hiking
selfie? I was just hoping
it wasn't the last picture
of me on earth.

     Incident 9- So I head out for the gas station, walking on the narrow strip that counts a the "shoulder" in these parts. Some kind of weird grasshoppers keep flying at me. To avoid them I would have to be on the highway its self. About a 1/4 of a mile down the road an 18-wheeler loses some of its tire and sprays the shoulder just in from of me with high velocity rubber bits but I took a deep breath, began to pray, and kept going. I began to notice several armadillo bits over a long stretch of the road and at first I thought "Wow, there are a bunch of those around here" then it occurred to me that getting hit at 75 mph might spread an armadillo over 1/2 a mile. Ugggg!

     Incident 10- About this point I reach the exit ramp, that leads to the bridge, that I have to cross to get to the gas station, that I am praying is there. And here is where the old Cadillac exits, stops, and backs towards me. I am trying to figure out how I am going to tell who ever is in this car that I would prefer to walk than be murdered by a stranger when I come level with the window. The voice of a older man says, "You nee' a ride? It' too hot to be walkin' out here." The gruff Texas accent and the fact that I think that I could either take this old man or break off his car door leads me to accept his offer. He takes me to the gas station (which does exist!) and then back to Falisha, who was starting to really feel the effects of the heat and minor dehydration.

     Falisha told me she was praying that the next car that came along would have someone in it who would give her some water and was working up the courage to just walk up to the next car and ask when an old Cadillac pulls up and I hop out with 4 liters of ice cold water and a bag of ice! The Lord will provide!

     Adam arrives about 20 min later, bringing more water and a DP (for me), and saves the day by taking my entire exhaust system apart, putting it back together, and managing to bust up my catalytic converter, which was clogged, just enough to get it to drive to a mechanic in the area that I know and trust. It only takes him two hours to do all that. I think he is amazing! He follows us part of the way home and my friends hubby meets us a little further down the road and follows us the rest of the way. We drop off the car and pick up Pa's (my dad) truck to try again tomorrow.

     As I am trying to process the day I begin to wonder if this trip is an exercise in futility or a test of my perseverance, patience, and faith in God. As I tell my Dad about the day he points out how much worse it could have been. I know he is right but I feel to salt/sweat encrusted to really take it in. I headed for my in-laws house to get a good nights sleep. I was looking forward to one last kiss from my kiddos before we attempt round two in the morning  but I was feeling pretty grumpy. Just when I was the most discouraged I got the sweetest text from Falisha. It reads:
          "Let's not get discouraged about today. I think we will be okay. Tomorrow is a new blessing. :) I can't wait to travel with you!" 
   

All in one piece!

     I almost cried, well, I would have if there had been any water in my body to cry. It was just what I needed to hear. When I look back at that adventure...
          ...spending 5 hours, on the hottest day of the year, sitting outside with a pregnant woman, hiking up the highway, hitch hiking with a random old man...
     ...in all of the craziness I find Gods fingerprints. Not just the incident with the water, the fact that we were still so close to home, the fact that we made it to an exit with shade, the fact that a clogged catalytic converter was my only problem so I could get it back into town, all these things remind me:
    "Look to the Lord for help in everything that you do and you will be successful" Proverbs 16:3.

This is totally worth every
minute of that day.

     Well, we made it to the mountains, the next day, in one piece, without further incident, and it was as lovely, and peaceful, and as beautiful a vacation as I could have ever asked for.
      I tell you all this not to complain about that crazy day, though I have done some of that, but to encourage you to look at your crazy days for those beautiful fingerprints. Sometimes they are the amazing timing of a friends text, sometimes they are your insane hitch hiking friend hopping out of a Cadillac with bottles of water, whichever it is, be aware of the tiny miracles that make up life.

Parenting Fail 101- Parents of the Bible

     So we are called to be godly parents, right?
     And we are told to discipline our children lovingly and because we love them, in Proverbs and Ephesians for example?
    And we are told to share our faith with them, and that command starts in Genesis and goes throughout the bible. Not teaching the children about God was a fault even pointed out by the prophets. So putting faith in the lives of our children is a noble, righteous calling, right?

     But when we look for examples of godly parents it seems we are a little short, at least in comparison to the horrible parents. There is Ruth, who we can guess did the right thing because a few generations down the line you have Jesse who raised the man after Gods own heart. And you have Hannah, but all we really know is that she gave her son to God. And Saul managed to raise some alright kids, Michal and Jonathan, who were both crazy about David in spite of his claim to their fathers throne, not that it makes much sense that Saul would be a well spring of parental guidance. And there is Job, the loving father who would make sacrifices for his children just in case one of them accidentally sinned and forgot. He is my favorite because he left his daughters an inheritance, smart guy. And do not forget the line of godly women that raised Timothy. After that no glaring examples come to my mind.

    And even in those stories the parent parts were a side note, and the story was really about something else entirely. Nowhere in the bible do you see the story of the great parents who raised their kids to walk with God, end of story, everybody is so happy! But isn't that what we want in our churches, in our deacons and elders, especially?  That is what we are told to look for in an elder, Titus 1:6, a man whose children are not wild and disobedient. David wouldn't have been welcomed as an elder in the church. Absalom was both wild and wildly disobedient, and he was just rude.

     Most of the parents in the bible failed miserably, for example, in no special order: Gideon, Lot, Samson's folks, that lady who ate her son, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, and Eli, to mention a few, were all what we would call rather colossal failures by most standards. Also all the Patriarchs, except Joseph, we just don't know about his kids in detail so I guess it wasn't too exciting in a fratricide sort of a way like all the guys before him. I don't want to even count the number of times it is mentioned that a brother took out one or more of his siblings. If we know something about a family line, it is brutal and bloody.

     Is it that the good stories just don't get passed on? Happy is boring? Or does being called to greatness by God supersede your family? Or are we just seeing the acts of great men and women who's parents did something right? (Except Jonathan, he must have been raised by his grandfather or something because he was a way better guy than his father, but not good enough to be chosen by God to lead his people, though in all fairness that chance was taken from him because of his fathers pride. That whole story is totally an example of the sins of the father stuff if you ask me, which no one did.)

     It made me wonder, what do I pray for myself and my kids? That may sound crazy, but I want my children to have it all, chosen by God, led by his purpose alone, and a totally awesome godly parent instilling their faith in the next generation, but I just got to thinking and wondering, can you really have it all?

     I think I may be putting too much power in the hands of parents. The choice to be a person of God belongs to you alone. Maybe Eli could have done more to shape his sons but in the end they were the ones who chose to turn their backs on God.

We are each responsible for our own faith. I can not make the choice to accept Christ for my children. I can just hope and pray, daily, that they do. Which answers my question, I should just pray that they accept Christ and leave the rest up to him, not that it is anywhere but my own mind that I could do anything else. Alas, it is so human to have to spend a night and long blog post to come to the most obvious answer possible, trust in him, "He will never leave you nor forsake you."-Deut. 31:6b