I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Yesterday her hands caught me off guard. Half tickled and half tearful, I gazed down at those 9-year-old fingers, artfully bedazzled with nail polish, a mood ring, and silly bandz.

Gone are the newborn fingers that clung fiercely to mine and the dimpled toddler hands that toted around my purses and ruined every. single. tube. of lipstick within reach.

It’s funny. Lately she seems to pay attention my hands more than I pay attention to hers. She plays with my fingers during church and asks me the same questions every time. Mommy, is that a real diamond? Are all of those tiny diamonds real too? Do you think I’ll get one someday?

‘Cause even though 30 rubber bracelets on one wrist are totally awesome and she does not go anywhere without her penguin mood ring, the girl would trade those baubles in for the real thing any day of the week. There are some things a mama doesn’t have to teach.

I’m just glad I took notice of her {still small} hands and had the good sense to grab my camera.

Sigh.

It kind of makes me see all of those sticky handprints {and smooshed-up lipsticks} in a new light.

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Meet the Family {Beach Edition}

We’ve come here every year together since 1997. There were only seven of us since I was the only one married then. Now we’ve swelled to a whopping nineteen, nine of whom are kids. Seven of those nine are ages four and under.

When we all get down to the beach, it looks like somebody dumped a day care out onto the sand. {Just imagine 14 more people.}

Gone are the days of beach novels and sun-drenched naps. As much as I miss that life of leisure, I wouldn’t have things any other way now.

Our week together is the best kind of crazy.

As the oldest of four kids, I was the typical firstborn, responsible and bossy. Had I known then about the future invention of the internet and how any one of them could publish tons of junk about me, I would have been much nicer.

Want to meet everyone? Of course you do. {See, I’m still bossy.}

Here’s my first younger brother and his family. As a child he was bookish and introspective and passionate about justice in the world. He still is. Last year he and his family moved to Colorado and we miss them terribly. He goes to bars and has meaningful conversation with people. Often they end up talking about God. He and his wife are passionate about loving people who are lost and struggling.

Here’s my next brother and his gang. He was a Tazmanian devil. Not much has changed. For his 30th birthday he invited his best friends in for the weekend and did stuff like cage fighting and eating contests. But don’t let his bullying ways fool you. He is tender-hearted as can be. He and his wife spend their weekends building community among hurting people.

Eighteen months after the cage-fighter was born, this happy little girl came into the world. Thoughtful and cheerful, she has always loved others something fierce. Thirty years later, she is just the same. In addition to raising their own children, she and her husband are amazing house-parents to at-risk teenage boys. They are saints.

And last but certainly not least, the dynamic duo who started it all. Meet the parentals. They have sacrificed a lot to give us all this week together every year. They feel blessed beyond measure by all the mayhem they began nearly 37 years ago when their first one was born.

And because I’ve already subjected you to the bloggy equivalent of my family history, what’s a few more pictures? Here are some of my faves along with totally unnecessary commentary.

Cupcake’s curls are on steroids with all that beach humidity. I love it.

I found this guy while combing the beach for treasure. I think I’ll take him home.

There are no words.

She planned her outfit around the colors of the sky.

Because if you can’t wear a tutu at the beach, where can you wear one?

Speaking of outfits, Nana gets matching suits for the boys every year. This will likely be a short-lived tradition as boys will only be suckered into this matchy-matchy scheme for a few more years at best.

I could have followed this ruffled cutie around for the day with my camera. She knows she looks good.

Tutu’s mama was two weeks away from her due date last year. Obviously this year was much more pleasant. And we got to celebrate baby girl’s first birthday!

If eating birthday cake was an Olympic event, this girl would take home gold.

Don’t let them fool you.

One of these darlings is the daughter of the cage-fighter. The other is the daughter of a former college basketball player. We witnessed some epic battles over the course of the week, one of which came to an ugly end as Girl #2 flipped Girl #1 backward over a baby-doll high chair.

Clearly, they take after their fathers.

The dads are serious about their moats and sand castles, not to be outdone by the college students down the beach building replica Egyptian sand pyramids.

A highlight is the Man of the Year competition. Contestants battle it out in bocce ball, shuffleboard, mini golf, corn hole, and the famed Oreo Blast competition.

The winner takes home the ghastliest trophy you have ever seen and has to display it prominently in his living room for the year.

The ladies are the judges for the Oreo Blast contest, so we’re the real winners.

Meet this year’s blast champion. A dreamy blend of rich vanilla ice cream, cinnamon, whipped cream, and golden vanilla Oreo’s.

And finally, a rare moment of stillness {brought to you by the makers of M & M’s, the best form of child bribery ever.}

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It’s easy to paint a picture of familial bliss with pretty photos of cute kids and good times. We’re a far from perfect lot. We’ve had disagreements and hurt feelings. We don’t see eye to eye on everything. We are as varied now as we were as kids.

But I’m convinced that love and loyalty and Jesus bind us together.

That and the alluring incentive of a complimentary beach trip every year.

Super Mom

Behold the Super Mom shirt.

A certain 9-year-old gifted me with this. I’ve been sleeping in it, hoping that some of those super powers might seep through my skin overnight.

It’s pretty much the best gift ever.

Wearing the opinion of someone who loves me unconditionally is powerful stuff. Powerful enough to overtake all of the villainous opinions and identities, smother them with kryptonite, and lock them in an underground lair…

Which is why I may wear this shirt every day of my life.

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Crazy Nest, Part Two

We have babies. When I found out, the miracle literally halted me in my tracks. I couldn’t stop smiling. My husband sent a photo text while I was out shopping. He was just as shocked by the birdy miracle as I was.

New life is powerful like that.

Birdies hatch every day all over the world but when it happened on my front door, suspended in a basket hanging on a $2 wreath hook, well…I still can’t stop thinking about it.

Our main entrance continues to sit unused as Blondie’s sign re-routes guests to our garage door. We worked hard to protect those eggs and I’m so glad we did. What is it about life that makes us fight so fiercely for it when it seems precarious or threatened…and yet we take it for granted 99% of the time?

Saturday a friend let us come over to see her 10-day-old baby bunnies. Her husband had nearly crushed their nest while doing a landscaping job. Now they have five furry newborns and feed them with a medicine dropper.

Precious.

Life is swirling around us all, waiting to be celebrated and cherished, even protected. I fear I’m so busy tasking and toiling and over-thinking that God has to slap a miracle on my front door before I’ll slow down and finally take notice.

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For Part 1 of the story, click here.

Crazy Nest

Lately I’ve noticed a bird flying furiously from our porch every time I open the door. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a nest with five blue eggs tucked discreetly among my fake flowers on the front door.

My kids are ecstatic. I think they’re convinced we’ll soon have a our very own family of birds that sit on our fingers and sing to us like we’re Mary Poppins and Bert.

Blondie even made a sign to redirect all of the neighbor kids to another door while I hot glued the bottom of the flower basket to the door to keep it from swinging to and fro. Heaven help us if one of those eggs falls to the porch with a splat.

I’ve thought a lot about this poor Mama Bird. She just wanted a safe and quiet place to be still and cozy up in her nest. She likely envisioned this season in her precious birdy life as a time of peace, tranquility, and domestic bliss. A season of careful nest-making and sweet bird-rearing…

Instead she is bombarded by loud hooligans all up in her business, slamming doors and not giving her a moment’s peace. She probably hopes her sweet baby birds just make it out of the nest alive and able to make it in the world.

I feel the same way.

I said to her, Mama Bird, you sure did choose a crazy and unlikely scene to do your life’s most important work.

And then I told my own Mama self the same thing.

{For “Crazy Nest Part Two,” click here.}

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For the Love of Friendship

One mommy. Three kids. Four flights. One mile of sprinting with three kids to make a connection. Two shuttles. Eight hours in a car. Two sick boys. Countless hours of missed sleep…

And six days that made it all worthwhile.

Years from now I won’t remember the hardships of travel but I will cherish the memories of time spent with a dear friend..our first extended time together since we graduated from college 15 years ago.

Back then we ate Rice Krispy treats by the panful, borrowed each others’ clothes, and talked about boyfriends-now-husbands.

These days we eat spinach salads, watch our daughters borrow each others’ clothes, and still talk about our husbands-then-boyfriends.

Our lives look very different and our homes lie in completely opposite parts of the country. {Her kids live in snow boots; mine live in flip-flops.} But kindred spirits have a way of keeping us connected over years and distance.

As time marches on, my soul clings hard to the few sister-friends God has blessed me with during different seasons of my life. Friends who live far away but always feel close.

She is one of the dearest.

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Linked up with Tuesdays Unwrapped {Chatting at the Sky.}

Acceptance, Laundry, & Robots

Recently life has become very compartmentalized. I don’t know how well I’m adjusting or keeping up.

Between the increased rigors of home-schooling, home-keeping, everyday responsibilities and new part-time work, I’m easily overwhelmed by the seemingly endless tasks that require me for completion. Sometimes I feel as if the world would stop spinning on it’s axis if I didn’t tell it to keep on twirling…or at least feed it a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.

Change requires sacrifice. Most of us will admit that sacrifice is hard, even when it’s just the little things. Sacrifice shows me the idols I’d rather not acknowledge. They’re different for all of us but change shows me that I cling too hard to my own time, my own agenda-wish-list.

Oh I am selfish with my time. Giving up more of the precious little I had for myself is downright painful. I remind myself that the mothers who came before me probably devoted fewer thoughts to issues like “me time” than we moderns do. As I’ve said before, sometimes I envy those long-ago mothers. Like it or not, we are products of our place in history.

And while opportunity cost is a reality for all of us, there are seasons in our lives when we feel that more acutely. This blog post, for example, means that I will stay up even later folding laundry or that it will just not get folded at all until another day. Every bit of the unnecessary {like writing} that I choose for myself means that I have to be okay with the undone. It means I can’t complain about it, I can’t secretly fret and fume…I can simply accept the what is.

Acceptance, much like her sister, “Sacrifice,” is also hard. My Father keeps reminding me, gently but clearly, that this is the stuff of life, the stuff of being a responsible grown-up. Change, sacrifice, acceptance…it’s what we adults often have to do.

I like provision to come in the form of a money tree in my backyard or a plane ticket to Paris in my mailbox. And sometimes gifts do come in ways that are magical and undoubtedly supernatural {though I have yet to experience the tree.} And when they do, my lips are eager to offer praise.

But when opportunity comes in less-than-glittery ways, I too often choose to see what I’m giving up rather than what I’m being given, my pessimistic tendencies an all-to-familiar obstacle to joy.

It’s all in how I see it. Sometimes I’d rather be a robot, a series of buttons and switches that someone could just program. Choice can be overwhelming.

Thankfully we’re not on our own…and we’re not robots either. I can choose the lens through which I view the season but in any given moment, I lose it. And that’s when I cry out to the One who made me, not as a robot but as someone who can ask for new eyes {a little reprogramming}, anytime, anywhere, no matter the season.

So I’m choosing {with some divine encouragement} to accept the change and the inevitable sacrifice that comes with it. And there’s some cool stuff happening…excitement, surprising fulfillment, even some joy.

And yes, some unfolded laundry…

Because some things never change.

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Linked up with Tuesdays Unwrapped {Chatting at the Sky}

Just a Slice

This post is part of a contest to win a scholarship to She Speaks, a women’s conference by Proverbs 31 Ministries. She Speaks is for aspiring speakers, writers, and ministry leaders who desire to learn how to “make the most of their messages, the nuts and bolts of speaking, writing, leading, and influencing.” Lysa is offering anyone the opportunity to win one of three Cecil Murphy scholarships to attend She Speaks for FREE. Click here for all the details. Even if you’re not aiming for the scholarship but you’d like to go, hurry and register. The conference is filling up fast.

I hope to see you there!

{My post is longish. I apologize.}

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My favorite people have always been the ones who tell stories. Spin a good tale and I will love you forever. My granddaddy was the first great storyteller I knew, his voice the perfect blend of Georgian drawl and impeccable grammar. I don’t even remember the actual stories; I just know that almost everything he said seemed as if it were part of one and I could never stop listening.

I am not a great storyteller, not in the epic or even ordinary sense; I just have a deep and abiding love for words. A friend recently said to me, Words are your friends. You really have a way with them. I floated on that compliment for days, buoyed by the hope that I might one day find a place among real writers.

As a schoolgirl, I endured math and science but relished spelling and vocabulary. I delighted in Greek mythology and history and the eccentric teachers who taught me to love them. In retrospect, it’s no real surprise that I settled on history as my trade. History, at its best and purest, is simply great story-telling.

Years later, I made my way through graduate school and visualized the book I would write once I became a bona fide historian. I had one requirement: it needed to be someone’s story.

But the wonderful arrival of my firstborn heralded the beginning of the end of some of those book-writing dreams, which was just fine. I was overjoyed to be a mother. In the meantime, my academic dreams faded to gray. The story about slavery and freedom and against-the-grain Southern folk was shelved. In its place sat chronicles of motherhood and sleep-deprivation and survival…and of course the unspeakable joy that children bring.

In the midst of it all, writing took a backseat and I moved to the classroom. For the next five years I taught American History to college kids and served as a tour guide for a humble, nineteenth-century church founded by Southern abolitionists. I loved what I did…the teaching, the storytelling, the audience.

I didn’t know how much I missed writing until I left career and came home three years ago. That hard-wrought homecoming was just as much figurative as it was literal. In coming home, the layers piled on by performance and pretense began to peel away.

I began to write again and it felt…like home.

Through writing, I’ve begun to find myself {and yes, I do know how cliché that sounds.}

Writing is where I go when I can’t make sense of life, which is often. Writing comforts me in times of fear, anxiety, and confusion. It celebrates with me in times of blessing.

Writing reconciles me to my reality.

My stories these days are not so much stories as they are “vignettes,” a vocabulary word I still remember from the 12th grade, meaning slice of life.

A slice is about all I can eke out on most days. I write about motherhood and home, life and faith. I’m honest about my journey as a contemplative mommy with no place but a laptop and journal to bare her over-thinking self. I owe a lot to my word-friends; writing has saved me thousands of dollars in therapy, something I remind my husband of when everyone has run out of clean underwear…again.

But there’s more to it than just the free therapy. While motherhood is sacred and a mission in itself, there are other causes dear to my heart, issues I can’t stop thinking about, stories that need to be told. If “the pen is mightier than the sword,” I long to embrace writing as a form of activism, to lend a voice on behalf of those who cannot.

As for a book, maybe one day. The dream is still there. But for now, I’ve just got some stories….and some causes that I believe may need a mommy crusader, a word-wielding swashbuckler who just happens to drive a minivan.

My skills, however, could use some coaxing and coaching. I need help with things like finding my voice, maintaining continuity, telling the story powerfully, knowing my audience, the “nuts and bolts” stuff. I have so much to learn! That’s where She Speaks comes in. This is the third year I’ve longed to go. It seems like a perfect place to hone one’s writing within a context of encouragement and faith.

I sincerely hope this post will land me there, but even if it doesn’t, it always feels good to tell a little slice of my own story.

What becomes of it all…well, those pages have yet to be written.

The Adventures of Broccoli

I’m watching them more these days, intentionally stopping my always-important business to just inhale the “mundane” moments that appear when I least expect them. To forget the multiplying mess my table displays. To focus instead upon the play encircling its borders during a Monday lunch.

The personification of broccoli? Really? Have they been doing this stuff all along and I was too busy to notice?

As green florets played freeze tag around the plate before landing on the Ranch-dressing “base,” the pony-tail shape of one stalk reminded Blondie of a poem she memorized and then promptly recited to the broccoli audience…with brother’s help. {I didn’t even know he was listening all those days long ago she spent learning it.}

As for Cupcake, he laughed with delight in between mouthfuls of peanut butter and repeated every word they said.

I just watched. And laughed. And felt the fullness of gratitude well up inside. And then I got my camera.

It won’t always be this messy…or this imaginative.

Life bursts forth, like Spring, into every nook and cranny of this season in my life. I’d simply been too much of a grown-up to let go and watch it unfold, too caught up in hurrying and scurrying and tasking…seeing the act of lunch as a chore to complete rather than a sight to behold. Funny what happens when you’re not looking.

{And I hereby declare that it is forever okay, constructive even, to play with one’s food. Couple that with the not making beds or folding laundry from last week and I am well on my way to mayhem.}

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Linked up with Tuesdays Unwrapped {Chatting at the Sky.}

From Laundry to Literacy

I dream of having various reading nooks tucked away in our home. You’ve likely seen them in magazines or scattered about the blogosphere: cozy window seats with well-dressed children perched atop designer-fabric-covered cushions, overstuffed chairs in a clutter-free corner with natural light streaming over the pages of Robinson Crusoe.

The stuff of dreams to be sure…or so I thought.

Yesterday Brownie was undeterred by a pile of laundry atop the furniture, too taken with a good story to be bothered by all the undone surrounding him. I sighed with lament that I cannot even keep our sofas clear of junk, that there is no special place for my little readers to get cozy.

Apparently I’d overlooked this particular “nook.” Brownie paused from his story and said, Mommy, this sure is a comfy place to read a book. He is my hero, ever the optimistic and grateful soul.

As for Blondie, she found my unmade bed and messy bedroom just perfect.