Archive for December, 2010
One Moment In Between the Have-To’s and the Gotta’s
Christmas Eve arrived and this mental list presented itself when I awoke:
- Finish painting ornaments(they had to be dry and sealed and wrapped by 2pm).
- Make Christmas Dinner ahead of time(ahem, that’s make crepes, the insides, the sauce, etc).
- Finish(begin) handmade presents for the children.
- Wrap all of the presents.
- Help the boy make presents for his sisters.
- Spend time writing letters to Jesus as a family.
- Get to Grandma’s on time.
- Open a Christmas Eve present.
- I should add in -feed all of the children and take care of their needs, and clean the house!
It was a day filled with have-to’s and gotta’s, when my heart longed for peace and chance to quietly think about the gift I was receiving from the Lord the next day.
By 9:30pm, we still had kids up, still checking off the mental list. Letters to Jesus had already been pushed to the next day and opening our Christmas Eve gift, a family tradition, had slid right over to the “gotta” list so that we could get the kids to bed and get on with the projects.
This tradition came right out of my own childhood and the kids have looked forward to opening new slippers and pajamas each year. This time they didn’t need either of those and we had warned them earlier in the week that the gifts were going to be a bit different. ”You’re going to get a gift that you can give away.” Puzzlement, a little grumpiness.
Finally we gathered around the tree that night and their little brother handed out thin tissue wrapped packages I’d hidden in the tree. They opened them and this is what they saw.
“What is it?”
“Ten dollars for what?”
“Ten dollars for you to choose something from this catalog to help people struggling in Asia, ” Mr. Darcy replied.
We opened the Gospel for Asia catalog and looked at the choices.
“We can send Bibles.”
“Is anyone getting a mosquito net?”
“What’s malaria Daddy?”
“We could get a camel!” That comment was from Mr. Darcy, who is a little camel happy.
“I told him he can’t keep for himself,” I warned the kids.
Everyone took about 15 minutes to decide and they smiled the entire time.
And for the forty dollars we didn’t spend getting a second set of pajamas, we purchased:
3 Bibles
16 New Testaments
1 Blanket
1 Mosquito Net
1 child sent to VBS
800 Gospel Tracks
The children were floored that we could do all of that with the money usually spent of Christmas Eve gifts. Over and over again, “I can’t believe it, ” and then they would read the list out loud again.
“That’s 822 people who are going to get something because we did this.”
“That’s right and we can pray for each of the people who are going to receive something.”
It was a “have to” task on my list that turned into my favorite moment of our Christmas.
The Kind of Gift that Gives Twice
Jellybean said, “I love to see people smile when they open presents I’ve made, it’s better than getting presents.”
Mookie said, “I’m more excited about giving presents than what I’m getting.”
I can’t take any credit for these sweet sentiments. Too busy this month to make presents for each of them, I stayed up half the night on Christmas Eve making each of them gifts because I knew how hard they had worked on mine. THEIR hearts inspired mine.
Mookie made me a beautiful set of handmade christmas cards and Jellybean wrote me a book of poems. You can bet I was glad that I’d stayed up until almost 4 that morning putting together their gifts, it was worth it to see the smile on their faces.
As a Christmas Day gift, I now present to you two selections from my new poetry book.
I can’t take any credit for how awesome her poems are either, even though I’m the teacher. Her rhythm and imagination are all her own, they always has been.
Moms, OR Mine
by Jellybean, age 8
Moms are prity neat
but mine’s really hard to beat.
She baked six batches of cookies
in less than a month.
Moms(or atleast mine)
think we’re as noisy as a rock n roll band!
Their REALLY cool!
(If she ever goes away,
She will come back real soon.)
Animal Speech,
from an animal’s point of view
by Jelllybean, Age 8
People are big
I think they wear wigs.
They are very scary
(O and my name’s Larry)
They shoot the big things
and when they hit you your dead
and the bullits are made
of stuff called lead.
So run or else your done,
really RUN!
Boom!
May you have a joyful celebration, and be filled with hope this day.
Mr. Sandman Bring Me a Dream
When the topic of sleep comes up between friends I most often hear,
“Oh I go to bed at 9, atleast by 9:30!”
Sympathy swims to the surface and I think, “What do you do for the other four hours until you actually fall asleep?”
Eventually someone notices that I’m still silent and asks about my own bedtime.
“Oh, somewhere around 12:30 or 1. We’re night people.”
“That’s so late, when do you get up?”
“Oh, around 2.”
“In the afternoon?” another mom exclaims, already wondering about the lack of parenting skills that would allow me to ignore my four children until after lunch.
“2 am. Sorry I thought you meant what time do I first get up at night. Around 2, then 3:30ish, 5…”
At this point I have to remind at least one friend to close her mouth. I hurry to reassure,
“But from 6 to 8am, now that’s some good sleep!”
“But how do you function?”
(Which always seems to imply that I have a choice as to whether I want to function the following day with the homeschooling, house, and kids.)
At this I’m a bit smug, sure that I’m made of tougher stuff than these clearly needy people who bed down when my night’s just beginning. I can hold my own with the sleep deprived.
Well, okay, I function. There are also the long naps, the rather surreal feeling by 4 in the afternoon, the seasons of the normal slim sleeping plus pregnancy, or nursing babies, the multiple baths in one night to trick my body into relaxing, and the extra eating that occurs when one spends more than 3/4′s of a 24 hour period awake instead sleeping.
What’s the draw to bed if it only means getting up again, frustrated, padding a towel in the bathtub against your head, hoping for a little moist sleep?
Here are a few of the sleeping beauties at my house (notice I’m not pictured):
But for five intoxicating nights all of that has changed. Mr. Sandman, that charming, wiley man of the night has been coming around in the evenings plumping my pillow and offering promises about this “sleeping through night” thing that I’ve heard so much about.
I’m currently drunk on sleep. I want it, I need it (I’ll admit it), and now that I can actually have it, I’m already thinking of a good excuse to get in bed way back at 10pm. For the last five mornings I’ve woken with a smile and an extra caress for my down comforter that has fought me like an enemy for years.
What’s the secret, that magic little ingredient that’s going to make me rich as I cure the world of insomnia?
Sleeping pills?
won’t take them
Melatonin?
Didn’t get a chance to try it before this happened
Cutting out caffeine?
don’t drink it
Cutting out the naps?
tried it, eventually you take the naps anyway if it doesn’t change the night-time patterns
Drinking a glass of wine, or Benedryl for that matter?
makes me awake and bug-eyed
Cutting out chocolate, don’t exercise late at night? Drink sleepy time tea? Take a warm bath?
tried it all!
For more years than I can remember (atleast for the last eleven years according to my sleep-disturbed husband), I’ve put off the dreaded moment of going to bed.
It’s only through prayer, and the work of hand much mightier than my own, that I find myself adrift in many luxurious hours of sleep.
Of course I’ve prayed about this before. Whether it’s the added voice of my husband’s prayers, or just the mysterious(yet intentional) timing of the Lord, I don’t have the answer. And I don’t care.
I know who to praise every morning.
And now this mama knows it’s time to say good night.
Special Feature: Behind The Abundant Life
I had enough circumstances of my own falling toward this revelation but I also watched The Making Of in those around me. When you’re pregnant, flat-bellied women recede into a hazy background while fellow Women Growing Life stand out like chocolate truffles amongst gingersnaps. In a similar way, when you’re hurting, intuition opens a new eye and ear, picking up on the echoed pain of others.
My hurting heart turned toward:
Christmas Eve Service at church, the lights dim, candles the only relief in the darkness when my eyes caught the nearby movement of a friend. Hey body swayed with the worship or else a music I couldn’t hear between her and the amazing new sweetness of a boy in her arms. In the weeks prior to his birth I knew she wasn’t putting her feet up and lapsing into daydreams of the nearby future. She’d been too steeped in every moment of her husband’s treatments, treatments that had extended into a year, now two. She was moving through death’s shadow while carrying life. That night she was close to me in the candlelight and I could see the awe that softened and heated every inch of her as babe and mama held each other. There was no question her heart was filled-simultaneously with joy and pain. Her heart was tangible because my heart mirrored it.
In other moments, when the joy isn’t so clearly, dramatically defined, the pain obscures my heart beyond recognition. Have you been on the other side of the nurse holding the chart with numbers 1-10 and happy-turned-sad faces? “What’s your pain level, honey?” I’ve been asked in a polite, tired voice after birthing a tiny human from my nether parts.
If we’re evaluating recent life pain, I guess my answer depends on who’s holding the chart. Does the friend or acquaintance at church really want to know or is it a pat-
#2 with a smile, “I’m fine, we’re moving along.”
or a #3 with a smaller smile and a sigh, “We’re hanging in there.”
Who really wants to see the shoulders collapse, the silent attempts to find the #3 smile before giving in completely to the truth,
“Number 10! Full Code Red Pain here!”
Those number ten moments (day, weeks, months?) can knock out my view of joy like candles snuffed out in the already dim room.
I know the Lord isn’t leaving me, His hand is deep in, and even, I tell myself, working goodness. But I still can’t help asking myself and finally Him, “What in the world am I going to do with this pain?”.
Here’s how I answered myself (I’m still listening for His answer):
I ‘ll remember that while there is pain, there is also beauty here. I’ll get out my canvas and paint, brushes deep and reaching and when that one canvas isn’t enough, I’ll get the economy size. And when the cracks between the canvas leave too much darkness seeping through, I’ll dip my hands in further and move to the ceiling, the floors, faces. And when the beauty keeps breaking, could I ever stop painting over the hurt?
Forget the paint that only smears, my brush will coat the frame with words. Endless stories and I will bathe in the books and the words louder than my thoughts and I will line my life with the pages until. The words will no longer sound like words and my excellerated heart beat will cancel the lulling, concealing rhythm. And when the power of the story to distract and make believe loses it’s strength,
What will I do with the pain then?
When it passes any threshhold I have known
and yet still I’m at it’s bedside
and I am the comoforter, not the comforted?I’ll remember that I’m just staying here a while.
There is a home ahead of me that has more beauty than my brush can ever clumsily create, filled with words breathed that will never lose their power, and I will know joy not attained through grief. But given. Freely.
For now my threshhold is adjusting , a little deeper for pain, a little wider for joy.
Today I noticed:
My little one, feet on her sisters feet, dancing by the tree.
An 8 year old, roaming through worlds, eyelashes 18 miles long, smile gi-normous and warm, like holding a new cup of hot chocolate in both hands.
The gift of sleep when I hadn’t asked for it or had it deeply in a long time.
