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I first heard Emily Franklin read her book excerpt on NPR. With equal amounts wit and truth, she relayed her son’s dislike of peas, comparing his reaction to someone experiencing a traumatic event such as death:

“In fact, Daniel’s reaction to knowing he’s going to have a big pile of peas just like the rest of the family is very similar to the five stages of grief.

The first stage is denial.  Disbelief takes over and he shakes his head at the warm dish I’m preparing.  ’I just can’t believe it.  I can’t believe you’re making me eat peas!’ He mutters to himself, confounded and confused.  ’I don’t get it.  I can’t believe this.’

On national radio she confessed her child’s Olympic worthy skills in fit pitching. Particularly over food. She mentions a similar reaction to the peas when she slices his sandwich. (He likes it unsliced, just in case you meet her and make he son a sandwich one day.)

I sat in the car outside of the grocery store and laughed out loud and thought how fitting the metaphor of the stages of grief to my children and food.  My son’s issue begins and ends with beans. All varieties. And chicken. And milk. His sister denies that salad dressing exists, also lunch meat. His older, older sister-well, she actually likes most things(which is what keeps me holding on with similar hopes for her siblings as they age).

Within a few hours I requested her book from the library-not quite sure what the book would be like beyond the brief sound clip, just knowing she and I had something in common.

It turns out that Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 mom, 4 kids, and 102 Recipes is set up in the recently popular style of foodie books: each chapter consists of an essay followed by correlating recipes.

It also turns our that her one excerpt on pea grief is only one of the many, many stories that made me laugh over the true situations that arise from cooking for (or with) kids. She’s not cooking in ideal situations that arise only in photo shoots for a Mom and Me cookbook. She’s got baby Will at the breast, kids with unwashed hands, and ingredients that have to inspire me to move outside the macaroni box(monkfish, anyone?). I don’t want to give too many stories away but I will mention that there’s a vomit situation on a flight to Indiana. We’ve had that flight(to florida).

So why does she cook salmon, thai food, fresh bread, and tarts despite the fact that it might mean opening up to a bit of chaos and a whole lot of “That’s gross, I’m not going to eat that.”? First of all, it’s clear she loves food in the same way that I love books and can’t pass a used books store without filling two bags(she was previously a chef). But she also wants to pass on her wide palate to her children. Not her exact palate, but one willing to try. And I have to admit by the end of the book, I was just as happy as she was when Daniel started eating food that was combined into one dish and instead of separated into non-touching piles. She goes to all of the trouble because she’s pretty sure she’ll eventually hear “Wow, I like this” as a regular phrase(as opposed to the swear words that the 8 year-old brought into the house from his camp counselor), and she’s right.

Although we are generally one of those whole-wheat, organic-when-we-can-afford-it, eat your veggies family, you can still read this book if your family is not. In her introduction she lets you know that she doesn’t have a food agenda other than “get your kids to try a lot of things”. She’s generous in giving options with flour in her recipes(whole wheat or white) and she includes recipes that use rice crispies. And she’s humorous with her recipe titles including the Gross-looking But Very Delicious-Tasting Red soup.

Her passion for food is obvious, but so is her love for her kids, fits and curse words included. The world could stand to read more moms who love their kids in this way. While her kids grieve the coconut she made them try, she grieves the end of babyhood for her last child. (Which is another way I felt a connection to her-see photo below.) She takes food writing into the world of family, and I cheered for both throughout.

So I connected to Franklin through her four kid circus complete with spit-up and her recipes that offer something wholesome and tasty with a touch of exotic. I only felt distant from her when she was feeding her kids in Italy and Martha’s Vineyard, and serving them cheeses that cost a quarter of our weekly grocery bill. Those chapters reminded me that we’re not going to be living next door to each any time soon.

As I sat in my car outside the grocery store again today, after a week of reading her essays, my taste glands wandered toward imported cheeses and wild salmon and then I looked at my real list and decided Buttery Apricot Bars and Wheat Oat Bread would be a fine start.

Note: I’m just beginning to try the recipes. The Hamburger, Macaroni, and Peas(which I happened to have on hand during the week) was surprisingly satisfying even though it was one of her most simple, comfort food recipes. The Mummy Nuggets are chicken nuggets that are all-natural and can be made in bulk and frozen, a good staple. Only the two-year old like the 10 Minute Unplanned Bran Muffins.

I stood in the middle of the woods with a handful of moms and  a dozen pre-teen girls. We mirrored each other in matching helmets and harnesses that circled our waists, swaddled our many-sized bottoms and finished their path around our thighs.

Always preferring to learn with my hands instead of ears, I was hoping for a short instruction time.

Fuzzy, the name of our bearded and barrel-stomached instructor, stepped forward. Instead of asking for volunteers to demonstrate as I had hoped, he began with a different kind of lesson.

“Everyone link arms and form a tight circle.”

We crossed elbows and pressed against each other’s shoulders, moving several inches into each other’s personal space, Fuzzy completed the chain.

Nervous giggles of discomfort.

“Now take a step back and drop hands.”

Ahh, a little better.

“This is what we’ll call our comfort zone. In our comfort zone we do the things that we’re most comfortable doing. Let’s go around. I’m Fuzzy, and I’m comfortable playing the piano.”

As the answers leapt around the circle, I formulated a list of my own.

My name is Aimee and I’m comfortable taking a hot bath with a wet book. I’m comfortable with four kids leaning into me, shifting their bodies into every free crevice. I’m comfortable in the library with stacks of books almost tipping out of my hands.

“Now everyone take another step back,” commanded Fuzzy.

We did and I wondered again when he was going to tell us how to climb those ropes.

“What happened when we stepped back? What happened to that chain we’d created? That’s right, we stretched it. I like to call this the stretch zone. This is the place where we do things that might seem difficult, you might be a little scared or uncertain you can do it. Why is it good to be in our stretch zone and not just stay in our comfort zone?”

One of the young girls raises her hand, “Because we might find things we really like to do and then our comfort zone will get bigger and bigger.”

“Exactly. Now everyone turn around and wave to the trees behind you.”

We waved.

“Back there is the panic zone. We don’t want to go there today. If you panic you’re going to be tempted to jump right back into your comfort zone and stay there.”

Even though I was anxious to get to the hands-on portion of this course, I wondered if I’d have the strength for the ropes. I worried that the system would be too complicated and I’d feel dumb and fail. In front of my daughter. And a pestering thought about a dislike of heights rumbled around my hard hat.

But circle time was finally over, Fuzzy was at the ropes.

Another instructor hooked my harness to the tall ropes streaming down from the top of the tree. I pushed the large knot in front of me up as high as it could go. Pushing up the knot for the foot loops, I placed my feet inside. Lifting the first knot, I stood up in the foot loops. Lifting the lower knot again, my feet were off the ground, my weight entirely resting in the harness.

Repeating the steps, I moved further into the air, a stop motion picture of a baby bird leaving the ground.

With each foot that I moved up the ropes, my smile grew. Sally cheered and took pictures. One of girls called from below, “Go Mookie’s Mom!”

And I continued to pull myself into my stretch zone.

Finally, floating freely at twenty feet, I looked around, my smile at full capacity.

I did it!

Did I say that out loud?

“Take a picture!”

I definitely said that out loud.

Meanwhile, my daughter was 10 feet below me performing a butterfly. She had removed her feet from the loops and thrown her arms and torso backward from the harness, until her body formed the sloping wings of a butterfly in flight.

WE did it.

My name is Aimee and I am comfortable hanging from ropes twenty feet off the ground.

Soon after that I started to think about what would happen if I fell. What equipment would have to break to cause my fall, and what on my body might break if the fall occurred? I heard the rope fibers rubbing against each other with the tension. I felt my weight against the harness.

I waved to my panic zone.

And I said I was ready to come down.

But the stretch zone had already served it’s purpose and it became a repeated metaphor for the rest of camp. As another mom and I walked across the pitch black field to get to the bathrooms, we both agreed we were in our stretch zone then. As I pulled a tick from one of our girls, I knew beyond a doubt that the whole weekend had been one big stretch zone.

Back home I read an email from my best friend about her tough mothering week, one that ended in tears. As I typed I noticed the cuts and burns the ropes had left on my hands. I thought of my friend struggling and of myself at the highest point on those ropes. I realized from the moment my first child became flesh in my arms parenting had also been one huge stretch zone.

Ten years later mamahood spreads itself across all three zones.

I’m comfortable with dirty diapers, occasional stomach viruses, feeding and clothing and laundry, going to the bathroom with a toddler always present, teaching a child to read and add numbers, hugging and comforting. But in the beginning, any of those could take me to my panic zone.

On the ropes course I made the choice to leave my comfort zone, but in parenting the choice was made at the very beginning. Since then I’ve just tried to hold onto the knots. I’m stretched when my children are fighting and hurting each other for the fifth time that day, and when a child needs me and I can’t meet her needs in the moment.  The fibers of my heart rub against one another when my child has made a mistake and I can’t see which path will grow her character, should it be mercy or a consequence? In those moments I can’t call Fuzzy over to grab the rope, it’s either stretch or panic.

Sometimes, mercifully, I get to whisper, “I did it” and I’d really like someone to take my picture.

I also regularly land in the panic zone, usually when I’ve looked from the ground and can only see the path of my own failings. I panic when my daughter is distressed and my mind only calls up foolish, trite answers. I panic when I realize they’ll have to hurt sometimes to grow. I panic when I realize I can’t protect them. Mostly I panic when I look around at the other moms who look like they never question if they’ll reach the top of the ropes.

Usually the dividing line between stretch and panic happens when I look up. Do I see a mistake that I could make that would break me and my child, or do I fling my arms and legs out into a butterfly because my whole family is tethered to One who is going to keep holding us with each of my mistakes and successes. Do I look up and see how much bigger He is than me?

My comfort zone has expanded as a mama. And for it to grow further, I’m going to have to dangle in my harness and so are my kids.

Because even if I did have the choice, I’d definitely choose the stretch zone instead of keeping my feet on the ground.

I haven’t checked to see when I last posted something, my guess is that it’s been about a month.  It wasn’t a carefully considered decision, I just stopped writing.  And I haven’t once thought about sitting down to write a new post. Until this one.

Up until now this blog has been a place to work out my heart-thoughts into words and I usually find myself coming to peace with the inner turbulence inside as the words also find a pattern, a winding journey.  It’s also been a place to share joyful family moments and harrowing parenting perplexities. Often it’s just been a conversation between me and my friend. Calling me out a night or two a week to sit at starbucks to face the challenge of the blank screen, it’s been writing practice as well.

So why am I suddenly without a drop of compulsion to grab a tea latte and hen and peck out the making of my abundant life?

I find that blogging, for all of the many things I said above, also splits me in the moment of living my life. My brain registers, “This would be a good topic for my blog” and therein blog lines take shape in my head, even as I’m still in the making of. Right now I need to stay in it.  Instead of moving so quickly to the process and production stage that blogging moves me toward.  And finally, I need to stay in my house, instead of outside of it, writing about it. There’s too much happening in that 7-9 hour that I don’t want to miss right now.

I can call it a season.  It might be two weeks.  It might be 6 months.  This might be my last blog post.

Whether you write about your life on a blog, or follow other people’s lives in your reader, take the time to feel your life-the joy, the pain, the reasons to praise, the blessings filling up your arms and bouncing on you when you try to rest, and all that’s in between.  It’s all happening now.  Words, even very well-written ones, are still second hand knowledge to the real thing. Both are gifts that I treasure.

A torrent of words and sketches
have shacked up in my chest.
Poem them, story them, call them wretches-
If I art them, will they let me rest?

A relentless slideshow and ranting wordsmith
are spinning on my hamster wheel,
they call themselves real and my real job myth.

Pastel them, design them, film them from my head,
Cut them, collage them, glue them last to best.
Can I hope, is it possible, skipping past the dread,
If I art them, do you think they’ll let me rest?

Illustrated by 10 year old Mookie

“The right word at the right time is like golden apples in silver jewelry.”

My eight year old read this verse aloud from her study of proverbs.

The right word.  At the right time.

I remember hearing a similiar sentiment at a marriage conference many years bag and it occurred to me then that to begin a serious talk about a potentially flammable subject with my husband at 11:30 at night, when he was dead tired, lacked wisdom.  To be sure, he would enter dreamland peacefully while I stewed into the wee hours of the morning.  It was not a time of the day that his heart was open or my heart was listening.

Having scaled back considerably on the witching hour debates, I still foolishly, anxiously, impatiently dribble words out of my mouth at the absolute wrong time.

Often it’s not only the timing, it’s the actual words themselves that sail loosely without an anchor.

I’d like to be so much more careful, stingy, with my words.  I pour them out like expired milk, stinking up the place with advice that’s not asked for, complaints or criticism instead of praise, venting that borders on gossip, nagging that makes even me tired of myself.

I’d like to say less and make each word a small sapphire of truth or one sentence a string of pearls bound with encouragement and praise.

And I’d like to know how to hold those pearls patiently until the table is set and the candles lit, rather the burst in when everyone’s bustling around and stressed out over cleaning the house.

Tonight our 10 year old read her chosen proverb of the day,

“…When she speaks she has something worthwhile to say, and she always says it kindly.”

Now that’s a word worth speaking.

Take a visit to my other blog, A is for Anteater, to read My Best Kept Secret about why I teach our children at home.

Things to Do if You’re a Sassy, Swaying Skirt

Don’t hibernate in the corner of the closet any longer,

It’s time to jump hangers, you deserve it,

you’re a sassy, swaying skirt!

Display your fanciful colors as proudly

as the dandiest peacock.

Tempt her away from those winter jeans.

(they’ve got the blues anyway).

Recline on a picnic blanket, edges grazing the dirt

and who can stop you, you’re a skirt!

Billow comfortably on the couch,

Legs and books loosely crossed.

Encourage a twirl for natural air conditioning,

your person’s calves flash pink, but you can do it

you’re a skirt!

Help her skip a little more than step,

a secret smile, just you and her.

Now, stick around a while.

I stood at the sink rinsing dishes from lunch.  Behind me the kids were working on school, a simple project that I had not thought of specifically as an art project.  But an hour later they were still drawing, detailing and eventually I had to stop them so we could move on to the next assignment.

Jokingly I said, “You guys have to stop liking art so much.”

Mookie, our ten year old, shot back, “Mommy, that would be like telling us we have to stop eating!”

She’s mostly serious.  And my delight at this shared passion in our family re-forms itself into thankfulness.

I’ve been noticing the gift of enjoying each other’s company this week. On sunday we were piled in the church service, not like individual dominoes, but more like 5 that had already been tipped with a finger(the baby was in her class, hence, the five). Mr. Darcy and I squished together with a Jellybean leaning on one side of me, a drummer boy piled onto Mr. Darcy lap, and Mookie reaching around her dad to hold my hand.

I’m not trying to create this ingratiatingly sweet picture of perfect family love. The moment came at the end of the week that included yelling(me), crying(some of them), sickness, a baby’s new skill at screaming, and the general challenges that come with six sinful people under one roof. Even as I write this I can hear Mr. Darcy working out a problem amongst the older three, with serious protest from the 8 year old. Which confirms my suspicion that the love that binds our family together has little to do with a problem free life or perfect parenting(as if either even existed).

Regardless of the daily challenges, it seems we really like each other. The kids get me all day and still they complain when I leave the house for an errand or coffee in the evening. On the days that doesn’t drive me crazy, I’m floored that they actually want to spend more time with me.

I think the biggest attributes to this gift have nothing to do with anything we’ve done to earn it. I see God’s hand of design in this thing called family and in the individuals who compose it. And I see His Holy Spirit constantly at work to bring forgiveness and acceptance.

From our end I hope they also feel their own value in our larger group of six. Seriously loved and secure even on the days that go wrong, wrong, wrong.

And this week, like the comment from my daughter at the top, I’ve noticed shared experiences and passions drawing us together.

Usually within a day or two you’ll find us:

Working on an art project(while Mr. Darcy is at work doing his own graphic design art).

Reading, Reading, Reading. Mama reading to kids for school. Kids reading on their own during rest time. Drummer boy reading to us so that he can read on his own. And the baby walking around demanding books to be read that very moment.

Inventing stories. Mama writing them, kids writing and telling them.

Delving into history(which has not always been a shared joy by yours truly, so I suppose we’ve also influenced each other). That’s right, the kids always call for another round of whatever chapter book we’re reading in history, but we’re now that family that watches Documentaries for fun.

Sharing God’s word in the evening. The girls sharing their proverbs study. The boy sharing his devotional. Dad sharing a good missionary read aloud.

I didn’t imagine what my family might be like when I had one of my own. But I don’t think I would have dared to imagine this gift.

This is love made up of holding hands, kisses from the boy, “Oh please stay!” from his sister, “Mommy!” our littlest one names me and rubs my face, and the pans of hot water added to my bath each night from Mr. Darcy.

With four children, we get four times the personality, the laughter, the unique talents, the joy.  We also get four times the germs.  A friend once said to me that when one child gets sick, she’s tempted to make all of the kids lick each other so that they all get sick at the same time.  I’ll admit I can see the advantages.  You can let me know at the end of this story if you think I should have tried that strategy seven days ago.

It’s good that I didn’t get to write this blog post on day one or day three or even day five of the last seven days.  I might have seemed smug, “We’ve had sickness before and it was bad, but look how we handle it now.” You would have been annoyed at me during your own snot covered days of survival with sick kids.  Now I can tell the whole story, with the last bit of smugness washed away by day five and a half.

It started with the flu.

No let me go back.

It started with winter. That’s another prideful blog post that I might have written a few weeks ago, after the first few unusual bouts of snow. I was a little cocky way back then thinking how much better I was doing then last winter, when the long, bleak days drained all my patience and joy away by early January.

It’s this last stretch, when a few warm days taunt you, and then winter leaves you in the meat locker for another six weeks, that really tests your durability. The walls are smaller, tempers shorter, and the germs are having germ babies.

The setting is bleak winter.  Enter the video camera.

The video camera?

The one the I dropped on my foot, which cut through my sock, which left a 3 x 2 bruise and my big toe wouldn’t touch the ground anymore because of the swelling.  (Old school video camera, don’t picture a pocket camera.)  It hurt, but we were laughing.

Enter the flu for child number 1. The first year in ten years that we hadn’t gotten flu shots. Eyes shiny and sunken, she was sicker than I’d seen her in about 6 years.

Enter the coughing, sick sister without flu symptoms but with a spurting, bloody nose. It was gross, still we laughed.

Mama hobbles around with a toe that won’t touch the ground. School anyone? We homeschool, if you didn’t know this, but at the moment the school teacher was doubling as the school nurse.

Enter the high fever for baby not yet two. Does she have the flu of her oldest sister or the coughy-but non flu symptomatic illness of other sister?

Fever sticks to her like a tongue to a frozen pole for about 3 days, around the clock.

Enter worry and sleep deprivation for Mama and Mr. darcy.

By day 5, the flu is resolving itself, the sun is shining and the big sisters are out playing after the germ-infected blah week. Baby still has the fever. Mama and Mr. Darcy need a serious nap.

“Jellybean’s nose is bleeding everywhere!” the boy rushes into the house. The same nose bleeder from earlier in the week has fallen and smashed her nose on the concrete and there’s a level two nose bleed. Blood on the face, the clothes, the concrete.

Still, after she’s mopped up, we laugh. She goes back into the sun.

Enter the boy, he’s left the perfect day to come inside, “I’m done playing. I’m going to go lay down.” The boy doesn’t ever come inside on a warm day without being coerced.

Mama gets a phone call on her way to the grocery story. “The boy’s temperature is 100.”

Is it the flu? Is it the coughy but non flu-symptomatic illness? Is it the myserious unknown fever of his baby sister?

Then he projectile vomits hard boil egg and accompanying fluids all over himself, his sisters, anything in an eight foot radius. Several times. Are you getting me? Chunks. Flying. Girls screaming.

Since I didn’t have to clean it up-I don’t like egg in it’s natural form much less airborne, I was still able to smile, a little. Mr. Darcy had taken on a slightly traumatized appearance.

An entirely new sickness? After 8 more episodes(thankfully not projectile, and thankfully less egg each time) encompassing the entire night of would be sleep, we’re pretty sure we have a new beast in the mix.

By five that morning, nobody was laughing. I’d stayed up from 3 to 7 without a hint of sleep. The baby still had a fever.

Enter the zombie period. The grocery shopping hadn’t been done. The attempt to vacuum the house that hadn’t been vacuumed in a month was abandoned and the goal was resized to wiping off the door handles with disinfectant.

School planning? If I could do it in my sleep.

Ouch, the baby just stepped on my sore foot.

How did it get to be day seven? Monday. The sun had taunted and left for the week. Mr. Darcy was home from work trying to pull us together for the week. I was in the doctor’s office for two hours to get a two minute swab for strep. I hadn’t mentioned the headaches or sore throat to you, I didn’t want to overwhelm you.

Enter Tuesday. 90% chance of rain. The four different illnesses have left just enough germs to sprinkle a cough and a runny nose to each of them. School is happening by the seat of our pants.

There has been some sleep. There has been some laughter. Some serious yelling. And hopefully some more sleep tonight.

So there’s the whole story. Cocky pride at how well we can handle a round of sickness abandoned on day five.

Oh, I did forget to mention the call to poison control?

disclaimer: truly, the Lord was working and healing and strengthening.  this is less a story of complaint, than an invitation to squeeze each other’s shoulders and say, “yeah, i’ve been there.”  an invitation to laugh.

To enter the real life of other moms, head over here:

(The following story was told by my pastor from first person point of view, his daughter’s name has been changed)

I can still picture my grown daughters when they were just knee high.  Looking upon their sweet, sweet faces, I delighted in them 99 percent of the time.  This one night, something different was going on in our house.  Our then two foot, 35 pound little girl had a steak run through her.

My wife called, “Ellie, go put your pink nightgown on.”

Sweet angelic girl, “No.”

Again my wife said, “Go put your pink nightgown on.”

Sweet, angelic girl, “No!”

From the other room, I could her the no’s building to crescendo.

“I don’t want to where my pink nightgown!”

If she had asked, “Can I please where my purple one?” Or Cinderalla, or any other nightgown, we might have relented.

But with the “No!”, all other possibilities evaporated.  This was a battle, she was wearing that pink nightgown.

The “No’s” had now turned into one long wail and I knew it was time.  Daddy needed to step in.

I walked up to my very small and determined daughter and I began to hum a hymn.  As a hummed, I firmly took my little girl in my arms and proceeded to put the nightgown over her head. I pushed and hummed, she pulled and yanked and reached new notes.

As her red, sweating, tear-streaked face emerged through the pink satin nightgown it was like she was being born all over again.

I was still humming, louder now.  Finally, nightgown on, she pulled away from me, backed against the wall, began stomping her feet and yelled, “I don’t want to where my pink nightgown!”

After that, the Daddy fell down onto his knees and starting praying in front of his daughter, for his daughter, and she was so shocked by the pecular behavior of her father, that she stopped crying and eventually, she did sleep in that pink nightgown.

But it’s the image of her face emerging through the nightgown, fighting, resisting the whole time, that’s remained with me all morning.

I can easily picture it, since our little two year old has taken to screaming so loudly that her whole body shakes. And I can picture seeing her face just after being born, a similiar look on her face.  Until she pressed against my skin, safe, submissive, contented.

What the pastor was really getting to was our own hearts that hold a pocket of resistance to submitting to the Lord.  The S word. My resistance doesn’t look quite like my daughter’s fit, but it might to the Lord.  There is less screaming, and more silence.  As I occupy my heart with other things, as I fill it up with lesser things.  Right now there is one specific area that I’m standing with my feet planted, determined, shaking my head “no”.   Thinking, in time, God will finally see it my way.

I’ve also known those sweet moments when, tired and yielding, the resistance is finally over.  When I move into His love, safe, submissive, contented.