Ode to Wisconsin...

At the beginning of this year, prior to the Gulf Coast oil spill, we had made plans to spend two weeks this fall in Pensacola Beach. This is a trip we have made periodically with my parents and sister(s) since my little sister went to college in Pensacola several years ago. We enjoy that area very much. Needless to say, once the oil spill happened, we decided to change our plans - based on the uncertainty of how things would be on the Gulf Coast in the fall. I didn't like this change in plans. Mainly because it meant that we would be vacationing in the slightly less coastal, significantly more humid and buggy WISCONSIN. I have bad association with Wisconsin. When I was young, my aunt and uncle lived there and used to bring us up for visits. She had Illinois license plates on her car, and people shouted at and swore at us on a regular basis just for being from Illinois. There was no ambiguity how the majority of loud Wisconsinites felt about anyone from Illinois. Since then, I have had fun having a vendetta against Wisconsin. I like to make fun of Wisconsin for whatever reason I can find - from charging so much for state park admission, to all the roadside cheese markets, to whatever else seems handy at the time.

I had some great fun going over the Wisconsin State Fair website - that actually advertised "Illinois Day"... so that "all our friends from Illinois can get a discount on fair admission to enjoy our fair". All you have to do is present your Illinois driver's license to receive discounted admission. Um... exqueeze me? Like we don't have our own ridiculously obese bull and boar? Like we don't have our own blue ribbon jams, jellies, pies, and pastries? Like we don't have our own pork chops on a stick? Like we don't have our own deep fried snickers bars, twinkies, oreos, and pickles? Like we don't have our own life-sized Neil Armstrong carved completely out of butter? Like we don't have our own cow chip throwing contest? No, we need to drive hours away to go to yours. Like yours is better? What really annoyed me about the prospect of Illinois Day was that it was an obvious ploy to keep the Illinois riff-raff on one, specific day of the fair. They could have just as easily said, "In effort to keep the Illinoisans from tainting the rest of the fair, we're going to offer them a discount for a specific day. That way, they'll hopefully come that day, and we can actually enjoy the rest of the fair - Illinois free." I know for a fact that Iowa doesn't have an Illinois Day at their fair. We're welcome any day of the fair. Wisconsin State Fair, you can keep your Illinois Day.

When I say that I have fun having a vendetta against Wisconsin, the above paragraph is a perfect example of how that looks. It's not real anger or hatred. It's more like a good-natured ribbing. What I mean is, we live within about an hour of the Wisconsin border. We share much of the same agriculture, weather, terrain, and life experiences, but we still find reason to dislike one another. We're like feuding neighbors, and I find that terribly fun... in a Grumpy Old Men kind of way.

Two years ago this fall, Mark and I went to a beautiful bed and breakfast in Wisconsin for a few days. I was pregnant with Violet at the time. We decided we'd like to learn how to fly fish. So we went to Cabela's and bought thigh-high waders, flies, and poles. This was an interesting sight, I imagine, watching a pregnant woman sitting on a van tailgate putting on waders. Me and my bulbous belly - wading into the creeks trying to learn how to fly cast. We never caught a thing. We did, however, find a lot of new and creative places to go to the bathroom... pregnant - remember? We had studied up on this quite a bit, but we didn't catch a thing. I'm not sure it was the right time of year, considering we didn't even see a single fish.

My husband and I had only known one another for about 2 1/2 years, at this point, and had spent relatively little time alone together. We were still trying to figure out how to be vulnerable with one another. As a result, there are a few humorous stories I like to tell about that trip. You see, my husband likes TV, but we don't have regular TV channels. We just have DVD's, Netflix, etc. He looks forward, on our trips away, to watching a little television from the outside world. I neglected to mention that the only TV set in the entire bed and breakfast was in the common room that we shared with the rest of the guests. I believe his response when we arrived at the B&B and he arrived at this horrible conclusion was something to the effect of, "You mean I have to share one TV with a bunch of old people? Grrreat! Now what are we going to do here?" Perhaps the fact that he couldn't just relax in his skivvies and watch Letterman before bed was quite distressing... so distressing, in fact, that the slightest thought of the romantic few days I had hoped for did not even cross his mind. Our room did, however, have a hot tub... which I was very grateful to use - yes, even whilst pregnant. I was just starting to get bigger, and I had a case of the pregnant clutsies. I kept tripping and falling. When we were scouting a stream, I had been running toward him and fallen in a hole - landing flat on my face (and belly). After I got up, we had a good laugh over it, but it made me even more thankful for a hot tub at the end of the day.

My husband is a Renaissance man. He has many tastes and an amazing array of abilities. One of those abilities is tying knots. He can tie an impressive array of knots... from a slipknot to a hitching post knot to a hangman's noose. (Incidentally, if you ever need to form a lynch mob and you need someone with his unique ability, feel free to call.) He not only knows how to tie these many times complex knots, he also knows the history of these knots. He has 2 or 3 books on knots. He often takes his rope and books with us places. He took it on that trip to the B&B in Wisconsin. One evening, as I was filling the hot tub with warm water, and he was sitting on the bed - reading and tying, something funny happened. I went to step into the hot tub, but I slipped on a rug and fell in - quite loudly. I got a huge bruise on my leg and another on my arm. At the time, I wanted to scream in agony, but, because I was embarrassed, I managed a mimed, "owowowowowow!" I peeked out of the tub expecting him to be staring at me or laughing at me, but he still had his back to me - tying knots. He is very intense and focused and hadn't even noticed me falling loudly into the tub. I found myself with mixed emotions ranging from annoyance that he wasn't paying me any attention, relief that he wasn't paying me any attention, embarrassment at my clumsy blunder, and curiousity about what would have happened had I been rendered unconscious by my fall. I wondered how long it would have taken for him to stop tying knots and notice I wasn't around. Would I have drowned in the tub? What would he have told the paramedics when they arrived to find his pregnant wife bruised, waterlogged, and deceased in the hot tub? We still laugh about it, from time to time, making up scenarios of how that might have gone. I have a friend who asks me to tell that story sometimes. She nearly rolls on the floor laughing by the end of it - incredulous that he was paying me no attention at all as I nearly drowned in a dimly lit hot tub.

This most recent trip was spent on a lake and was quite fun - aside from dealing with the same weather and same mosquitoes we deal with at home. At least we had a TV in our room. :) It also had a hammock, which I find to be a welcome addition to any vacation. Levi was having a difficult time understanding what we were doing or where we were going. He thought we were going on "cation" to "Miss Consin's" house. In fact, when the caretaker of the cottage arrived, he was pretty sure that he was Miss Consin and that he needed to go talk to Miss Consin about his nice house.

Anyway, I guess I have Wisconsin to thank for some of the good memories I already have in our marriage and family life. Maybe Wisconsin and I will have to kiss and make up someday. Or maybe I'll have to take Levi and Violet to the Wisconsin State Fair wearing their new, favorite t-shirts.

Hamsters Have At Least 3 Lives

We have had a hamster since April of this year. I have come to think of her as Nibbles, the Miracle Hamster. She has earned this title quite handily, and yesterday was no exception.

You see, Nibbles likes to run away. Houdini might have been a better name for our talented hamster. She has escaped three, separate times to date. When I was gone on vacation with Austin to California in May and my parents were taking care of her, she ran out of water, and, understandably, staged an escape. My parents have mouse poison in small, childproof containers throughout the house. The fear of impending pet poisoning gripped my mom. They ransacked the house for her, and, when they were unable to locate her, my mom left Nibbles‘ cage on the floor, with the door open. She left the baby monitor on the floor near the cage so that she might hear her if she returned in the evening. She text messaged me to pray for Nibbles’s safe return. It seems funny to pray for the return of a hamster, but my girls had already become quite attached to Nibbles. So pray we did. Within an hour, I received a second text message proclaiming Nibbles's miraculous return. My mom had heard some scratching sounds on the monitor. She went downstairs to find Nibbles back inside her open cage. With that much house and that many food options, her return was surely not coincidence or blind luck. Was it?

A few weeks later, Nibbles managed to get her cage door open again and disappeared from the girls’s bedroom. They woke up and panicked, as our house has the same mouse poison and Nibbles was nowhere to be found. Lucky, our Boston Terrier, is particularly fond of Nibbles. Lucky is to Nibbles as Henry VIII was to turkey legs. On that occasion, we let Lucky loose to find Nibbles. Find her, he did... in the back of a toy moving van with some of his dog food. Nibbles had apparently stopped by the bag of dog food in the laundry room before making her way, jowls crammed with dog food, to the back of a moving van... ready to hit the road. I imagine that, for Lucky, the sight was like one out of a dream - appetizer and a meal... ala moving van.

After the second time Nibbles vanished, we wired her cage door shut. We weren’t entirely sure someone hadn’t just left the cage door open the first time. The second time, we realized she could get the door open herself.

Enter yesterday... We were instructing a friend on how to care for our pets when we leave on vacation in awhile. We arrived at the girls’s bedroom to find Nibbles gone from her cage... again. We explained Nibbles’s care anyway, in hopes of her eventual return. We searched again, but to no avail. Their room bears a certain cluttered quality, even when clean, that I attribute to the fact that they have 10 grandparents and about 20 aunts and uncles - all of whom are generous at birthdays and Christmas. There was no way we were finding that hamster. I put her cage on the floor with a carrot and hoped she might again decide to return home. At that point, she could have been anywhere in the house.

I take three pills at night before bed. Two are an herbal sleep aid, and one is a prescription pain reliever. As a result, I could likely sleep through an atomic explosion. At 4:32 this morning, I was suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. I started immediately to picture all of the possible scenarios of finding Nibbles. None of them were pleasant. In one scenario, a stench led us to the dead body of Nibbles. In another scenario, someone found her by stepping on her. In yet another, gruesome scenario, Violet found a dead hamster in a toy somewhere and started giving herself dead hamster highlights. As panic started to overwhelm me, I got the sense that I should be praying, not worrying. After all, Philippians 4:6 says, “ 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Now, I’m not one to claim I hear the audible voice of God. However, rarely I feel something - it’s more like a sense not my own. I felt, “Get up”. I thought, “Now? Nah.” I felt, “Get up... Get up... Get up...” I thought, “Well, I guess I could use the bathroom.” I got up, and, as I started toward the bathroom, I felt, “No... the girls’ room first.” I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was going to find Nibbles in that room at that moment. I have never had this kind of experience before, and I know it seems silly just typing it. If it hadn’t been immediately obvious where Nibbles was, I might have dismissed my premonition as leftovers of a vivid dream or something simple and explicable like that. I heard scratching as soon as I walked in the door. Next, I saw their nylon hamper wiggling and moving in the corner. As I approached it, Nibbles did a vertical leap of about 12 inches. It scared me, as I didn’t know she had it in her. She wanted out of that hamper. I moved the hamper toward her cage and lifted her into the cage. She was VERY thirsty and tired, and was thinner and bald in a couple places, but she was alive.

I came back to bed excited (as excited as one can be at 4:30 in the morning) to have found her and at the way it happened. Mark asked me, “What happened?” I told him, “The hamster was in their hamster...” I said this a couple of times, and he said, “What?” My sleepy stupor was interfering with my ability to string together a cohesive sentence.

It’s strange, the girls have all of a sudden been into these Zhu-Zhu pets. They look like hamsters, and they have little cars they drive and slides and things that you can buy as accessories. They love these furry, little fakes. All the while, the real thing sits in her cage barely being noticed - until she runs away and give us a scare. Fortunately for Nibbles, she was not forgotten by God. (Luke 5:6-7) 6"Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. 7"Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows. I would imagine that “hamsters” could be substituted in these verses too.

When I went back to bed, a song kept running through my head - one that I haven’t sung for as long as I can remember... an old hymn - the chorus of which goes, “The Longer I serve Him, the sweeter He grows. The more that I love Him more love He bestows...” Why that song? I’m not sure. I had not taken time out for devotions that night before bed. I felt a little pang of guilt that, even though God was not on my mind, I had never left His mind. Neither had my daughters’s hamster. My tiniest problem was on his radar screen. But to me, He doesn’t grow sweeter the longer I serve Him. I just am finally able to see what was there all along. He isn’t changing. I am. I am becoming more cognizant of His nature - the Truth that sets me free (and, ironically, returns hamsters to their captivity).

It’s said that cats have nine lives. I’m not sure how many hamsters have, but Nibbles has proved to have three, so far... and a more resilient rodent I haven’t seen since Jerry Mouse.

Messy Perspective

I decided not to turn on the computer till afternoon yesterday. I had a few things on my agenda, and the computer, however useful for things like budgeting and paying bills, is not always conducive to a productive day. I started off by emptying the dishwasher and putting away dishes from yesterday. I was feeding kids breakfast in the midst of that. Then I started catching up on some laundry when I noticed a box of clothes on the laundry room floor that I had gotten out of the basement that needed sorting. I took the box to one of the kids' bedrooms for sorting and remembered that I wanted to clean bathrooms that morning too. I went to the bathroom in our bedroom and sprayed down the toilet (inside and out) with Clorox Cleanup to let it sit for awhile. I left the other bathroom for later in case the kids had to use it. I then went back to work in the kids' room to get that box of clothing sorted. I started to sort it when I realized that their drawers were too full to hold the new clothes. So I decided that I needed to clean out the drawers of things that were getting too small and put those things in another box to go downstairs. So I started to do that when I found some clothing in their closet in bags that also needed sorting. So I started to do that when I found some clothes that needed ironed and hung up in the closet. The children had been in and out of the various rooms I was in and out of to ask for a drink or to tell me a story, etc. the whole time, but it was then that I realized that I heard some bathroom cabinet doors opening and shutting. I figured it was one of the older kids getting a towel or some toilet paper or something, and I ignored it for about 2 minutes. Then I realized it was still going on, and I went to the main bathroom. There was nobody in it. I went to our bathroom and, to my horror, found Violet "helping" mom.

As background, my husband had one of those Clorox toilet wands when we got married. It's the type that you buy the disposable pads for the end of it, and then you just throw that pad away when you're done cleaning. I don't know for sure why he had one of those, as I'm almost certain that he has never cleaned a toilet. I guess maybe he bought it for his mom so she didn't have to bring her own when she came to clean his and Austin's bachelor pad. Either that, or he's a toilet cleaning whiz, and he's just been holding out on me all this time.

I don't know if Violet has watched me clean toilets but maybe once or twice. I usually try to save that job for when the little ones are either in the bath tub, high chair, or asleep, because I don't want them to get tempted to be "helpful". Apparently, she has absorbed what the routine is, because yesterday, as I walked into the bathroom, I found the box of extra Clorox pads open on the floor. I found the Clorox wand back under the cabinet where it usually is but soaking wet. The worst part was that, as she had evidently not been able figure out how to get the wand and pads together, she had taken the next best thing, a small, handheld scrub brush, from under the cabinet to clean the bathroom. She had given the toilet - inside and out - a through scrubbing, as well as everything around it - the magazine basket, walls, floor, rug, and - to my dismay - herself. As I arrived, she was brushing her hair with the scrub brush she had used for the toilet. She had toilet water (and Clorox Cleanup) running off her head in all directions and onto the new outfit I had just put on her. She had it running off her forehead and into her eyes and mouth. She met me with a huge, helpful smile, and some baby jibber jabber. I wish that my response had been able to match her glee. I believe it went something like, "Violet! Grooooooossss!!! GRRRRRR....."

All my germophobic mind could picture is germs running all over her and everything else and bleach burning her baby skin. I proceeded to strip her down and throw her in the shower and clean her thoroughly with baby soap. She was quite pleased at her helpfulness. I wrapped her in a towel and sent her out of the bathroom so that I could finish the clean up she had started.

Levi and Violet share a bedroom right now, and they have a small set of plastic drawers next to their dresser in which I store baby toiletries and items: nail clippers, lotions, creams, hair brushes, and hair pretties. On top of those drawers is a porcelain statue of Jesus with children around him that my grandma bought them at her favorite store - Everything's A Dollar. When I put them down for bed a few nights ago, he was apparently not very sleepy. When I went in their room the next morning, there was a white haze and a delightful smell. I immediately started coughing though as I sucked the white powder in through my nostrils and realized it was baby powder. The plastic drawers were open, and two bottles of baby powder were laying on their side on the floor of their room. His pillow and blanket were moved down next to Violet's pack-n-play, and when I lifted his pillow there was a mound of baby powder underneath. This was merely the tip of the iceberg. His bedding had been completely coated in the powder. Their carpeting was full of it. The plastic drawers and dresser had been coated with it, and the Jesus statue looked like it had been sitting out during a 3 inch baby powder storm. I got out the vacuum and spent quite awhile trying to get it all sucked up and into the bag. When I finished, a white haze permeated the whole first floor, and the vacuum bag was full of white powder.

My older daughters were easy toddlers. No toilets, no tantrums, no trouble... no writing on walls, no coloring in books, no tearing out pages... no eating non food items, no ripping out pet fur, no getting out of bed at bedtime. Before I had these last two children, I wasn't sure why people needed to put childproof locks on cabinets, drawers, and toilet lids. I didn't understand lids on garbage cans or those plastic doorknob covers. I didn't know why people said, "When they're quiet, that's when you have to worry about what they're doing." I have been schooled. I joke around about earning my "Boy Badge" when I got Austin and Levi. But I have also earned my "Busy Child Badge"... twice over. I'm fairly certain that God knew I needed to have a wider perspective of child-rearing. So that's what consoles me when I'm pulling plates and forks out of the trash, vacuuming baby powder, and mopping up toilet water. I'm getting perspective, and Violet's learning how to give herself blonde highlights. Sometimes I wish the easy ones had come second.

Well, I'm off to help clean up a hamster cage turned upside down on the floor. "Rodent Care Badge", here I come.

Dusty, Sucky, or Good?

My husband had a dust buster when we got married. It has been well-used. Its poor, rechargeable battery, however, has seen many a better day. It has a battery life of about 60 seconds. With the flick of the power switch, it starts with enthusiasm and gusto, but within about 5 seconds it begins its descent into eventual inoperability. It goes quickly downhill from that point. The suction level rapidly descends from near, "I can suck up pennies - reminiscent of the infomercial that put me in your hands" speed to "I'm not sure I can suck up that (wheeze-cough)... empty (wheeze-cough)... air," speed. It has ceased to be useful to me, because our family seems incapable of producing the 60 seconds or less mess anymore. It has inspired me to attempt a speed clean on a few occasions, but it usually just ends up in frustration. It has ceased to be good, but like so many of those things that we keep around way past their prime, we keep it. It has almost come to the point of deserving a nickname. Perhaps, since we killed Sucky, the algae eater we got for our small fish tank, we could use that name for the dust buster. Heaven knows you can't have two Suckies in the house at once, because that could lead to some confusion in which an algae eater might be pulled out of his tank and told to suck up cheerios off the living room carpeting. Pretty soon, we'll just be able to call it Dusty, since that's what it is most of the time, because it's useless.

I like to organize my groceries on the checkout belt at Walmart and cross my fingers that the cashier I choose will actually recognize that my groceries are somewhat organized into categories and put them in the bags that way. I attempt to choose, based on some vague specifications, the type of cashier that might do this. Inevitably, I end up grimacing politely while watching him/her stuff a tube of toothpaste in a bag with cottage cheese, batteries, and underwear. The search for the good cashier... always a challenge.

The theme, maybe not so obviously here, is goodness. There are so many ways to define it, but I think maybe one eclipses all others. In Exodus 33, Moses has an encounter with God described here:

¹⁸Then Moses said, "I pray You, show me Your glory!"

¹⁹And He said, "I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion."

²⁰But He said, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!"

²¹Then the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock;

²²and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by.

²³"Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen."

This exchange has long intrigued me, because it's the only case I can think of in which God is physically seen by man in any way other than as a pillar of fire or a cloud. What interests me about it is that God gave Moses what he wanted - and tenderly protected him from seeing all of Himself - which would have surely killed him. What strikes me this evening, as I think about goodness is that is how God described His physical appearance to Moses... "I will make all my goodness pass before you..." He describes it again by using the word glory. The only thing we can see if we look at Him - the only thing we could see if He was physically visible to us - is good.

We have trivialized goodness, defining it by our own standard of good and bad, happy and sad, right and wrong. We define it by our circumstances or by our experiences. We have given it our own spin and, like so many things, made into something "bite-sized"... something small and manageable... when it was never meant to be. We were never meant to even grasp good, lest it be the very thing that killed us. His goodness is seen in everything He made - all creation - even us. He saw His creation, before the fall of man, and "saw that it was good". All of these things carry, to this day, a glimpse of the whole of goodness, but not even the most majestic sight imaginable in creation can come close to comparing with even an ounce of the good that is, by definition, God.

In the same verses above, God proclaims, "and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion." He reminds Moses of the fact that His goodness is not separate from His sovereignty and that his compassion and graciousness (or the sometimes seeming lack thereof) is part of his whole goodness. This calls me to become better at working to define my daily encounters in different terms. Instead of defining God by my circumstances (if my circumstances are good, God must be good), I choose to think in the inverse - if my God is good, then my circumstances are part of His goodness toward me.

I wonder if this will make old dust busters, dead fish, and the fact that I can't use "the force" to mind control Walmart cashiers into doing my bidding easier to handle.

Home and Heart

Levi had a bad day today, and I think it was partially my fault. My in-laws came to pick up the older three for a few days in Iowa. Levi and Violet are both pretty young for leaving home for a few days, and they both seem much more attached to home than the older three are. Our oldest three children are used to moving around more, as they are part of a step-family and go to other parents/grandparents houses fairly often. I'm happy that they are adaptable, but I feel a little sad that they've had to be.

Levi and Violet are what some might call "home bodies". They love to be home. Whenever we are anywhere, no matter how fun or exciting, there comes a point when either one or both of them have had enough fun and excitement and just want to go home. I don't understand this, because we are home so much of the time, that I usually can't wait to get away from home and enjoy some time with other people. My husband is also more of a "home body", so they get it from nowhere strange. Levi loves to have people come to visit his home, but he would just rather enjoy visits at our home instead of going elsewhere. Sometimes, even when we're home, Levi asks to go home.

Grandma and Grandpa came to our home, and Levi and Violet could not have been happier. However, when it came time for them to leave and take the older kids back to Iowa, I knew we would have some trouble. I suggested that they might want to wait until after Levi and Violet went down for a nap before they left, and they agreed. Levi was onto them. They wanted hugs before he went down for a nap, and he started asking questions, "Are you going somewhere? Are you going back home?" Then comes the moral question of whether or not to lie to him to keep him calm. They just responded that they weren't leaving for a little while yet... not a lie. We were in the clear.

He had a nice, calm nap while Grandma and Grandpa left with the older kids and Mark left for work, as he is on afternoon shift this week. This left me free for a short nap - which is a rarely savored treat for me. I was awakened a fairly short time later by the pounding of Levi steps. He had woken a little earlier than I had hoped, and the cadence of his loud footsteps was unmistakable. He was looking for something - or someone. He burst into my bedroom and started panic breathing as he asked, "Where's Grandma?! I can't find Grandma!" I got to be the awful person to break the news to him, which I guess is fitting, since it was my idea to have them leave during his nap stupor in the first place. "Grandma's not here." To which he responded, "She went home?" "Yes," I replied, "Grandma went home." Then came the sobbing. He wouldn't let me hug him or hold him. I asked him to come sit with me, but he just took off on his hunt for someone else. He came back a few moments later, "Where's Dad?" I got to tell him that Dad was at work. Oh, filth... thy name is "mom". My open arms were again met with a cold shoulder.

Well, I offered to take him to his other grandma's house, which he finally agreed was a semi-suitable substitute until we arrived there, and he realized he still wasn't at the grandma's house he wanted to be at. Then he just stood at the door whimpering and traumatized. He was somewhat eventually sated at Grandma's house, but he was still asking to go home and if other Grandma and the big kids were at our house. As I put the two little ones to bed alone this evening, I realized how lonely it was around here without my older ones, and I felt sad for the lonely heart of my little boy too.

HOME. The word inspires feelings of warmth and happiness in most of our hearts. We may associate home with rest, relaxation, a sense of belonging, coziness, and fulfillment. How is it that home rarely meets our expectations or hopes? For most of us, adults at least, home is a place filled with to-do lists... lawn mowing, bill paying, honey-do lists, house keeping, etc. I love my home, but I have a difficult time just sitting down and enjoying it. Sometimes home is a place with family strife. Sometimes it brings us frustration, restlessness, discontentment, or loneliness. As I've often found, even in a house full of people, it's possible to feel lonely at home.

I am starting to think that home is an idea or concept that we were created to desire. The yearning for home isn't just in our hearts - those of us who have known a happy home. It is the desire of all humanity. We all have an ideal of home that even the most wonderful of houses and families fall short of delivering. We return home for family reunions or we tour the house or town of our childhood, and the feeling we're hoping to return to or obtain is just not there. Where is it? When Levi is home and says, "I want to go home," he's stating a longing that isn't insanity or immaturity or human glitch. It's actually the deepest form of sanity, maturity, and right - a desire, like so many of our desires (and to our agony), that the physical realm cannot possibly quench. Home isn't just where the heart is. Home is in our hearts. Home is an answer to the question, "Who am I?" It's there, and one of the greatest blessings I can imagine is actually getting to experience the Home that will actually meet up with my hopes and expectations... the Home I was created to want... a place where I will actually, truly, finally belong.

Scandals and Subjects

I've been working on entering some family tree data my grandpa gave me into Ancestry.com lately. I'm fascinated by it, and it's been taking up most of my free time. He has always said he comes from a long line of horse thieves and cattle rustlers. Truly, many of these entries have been like a soap opera - murder, insanity, betrayal, suicide, greed... you name it. I'm sure there were good things too, things like love, friendship, loyalty, and generosity, but those things don't make "history" any more often than they make the evening news. The fact that my grandparents turned out as normal as they did, rarely ceases to amaze me.

Mark has been working 3-11's lately, and when he gets home around midnight, I'm still plunking away at my keyboard. I was lamenting to him last night about the sadness in this tree. The infant/child mortality rate was one thing that was bothering me. It was not uncommon for a couple to have 8-10 children and lose more than half of them to death before age 5. I can't imagine bearing children knowing that there was less than a 50% chance that they would survive. Mark said, "Well, they were a lot more accustomed to death than we are." I know he's right about that. It started making me think about, not only how shamefully spoiled I am, but how ungrateful I often become for the things I do enjoy.

This evening, for example, I was going to run to get a pizza for us to eat for supper, as I sometimes do when Mark is not home at dinner time, and I want a quick eat and clean-up. Austin is old enough to stay with the younger kids for a few minutes at a time, but Levi and Claire wanted to come with me to town. That was fine with me, because I figured it would cut down on the chances of strife at home while I was gone if I took 2/5 of the brood with me. Levi and Claire were in the back seat, and I was listening to him trying to make conversation with his big sister, "So Claire, what you bent?" "What I bent?" asked a confused Claire. Levi replied, "Yeah, what you bent? You know, what you bent?" Claire exclaimed above the radio, "Mom, Levi is asking me what I bent. What does that mean?!" I turned down the radio and had her repeat her question. Then I said, "I think he's asking you where you've been." He said, "Yeah, Claire." She said, "Um, in the car with you."

A little while later, Levi decided to try again, "Claire, what Wiggle do you want to be?" Claire sheepishly responded (finally considering herself a little too mature for The Wiggles), "Oh, I don't care." He said, "Okay, you can be Mary." She said, "Murray?" "Yeah," he replied, "Mary." Claire just said, "Okay," undoubtedly hoping to end the conversation. He then asked me what Wiggle I wanted to be, and I turned down the radio again to tell him I wanted to be Greg. He said, "Good. I'll be Jeff," and promptly pretended to snore. I began to holler, "Wake up Jeff!" And, after awhile of my nonsense, Claire actually decided to join me.

Later that evening, I was putting the children to bed without Mark here, which is always twice the chore - twice the stories, twice the medicining and teeth brushing and expander key turning and talking and singing. Violet (18 mos.) is obsessed with tooth brushes, tooth paste, and anything else associated with dental hygiene. She takes the toothbrushes and paste out of the drawer in the bathroom and disperses them throughout the house, and the older kids have taken to hiding their toothbrushes to keep them from being stolen and redistributed. Last night they hid the toothpaste also. So this evening, she was looking for the toothpaste for her brush. She brought me her toothbrush, and a sample tube of Eucerin lotion. She wanted me to put the lotion on her toothbrush. She spent the rest of the evening trying to put anything that comes in a tube on her toothbrush.

All of these things can either strike me as cute or annoying, depending on my mood. Following around after a child, putting her messes back in order or having nonsense conversations in the car when I'd rather listen to the radio is a blessing I am taking for granted. If I had been in my ancestors' shoes, I would likely have lost some of my children (or my own life in having them). I doubt I would have felt at ease giving my whole heart as freely to my children either - fearing I would likely lose them at some point. (I know this, because I'm afraid of getting attached to the kittens that live in my garage for the same reason - and I didn't even birth them.) Not that I never worry about the safety of my children, but I am blessed to live today, when I can feel freedom not to worry to excess. Maybe the idea that we now have some level of control over life and death makes us feel more like gods ourselves. Maybe it makes us feel less vulnerable and more powerful, and, as humans, we can get drunk on that feeling. But I have to keep remembering that it is, after all, only a feeling of control.

I obviously haven't been able to protect my children from all heartache. Mark and I have a book about helping your children heal from the pain of divorce. Speaking of which, I am aware, through the typing of my family tree, that I am one of the scoundrels in it. I didn't kill anyone or end up in an asylum (yet, anyway), but I have had two marriages, two sets of children. We were at a park with some friends last week. My friend and I were talking when her son came up to us and said, "We're playing house." I said, "Oh, yeah? Who's the mom and who's the dad?" He said, "Katelynn's the mom, and Levi's the step dad, and Mason's the real dad." I immediately looked at my friend and said, "Oh, no. We have your kids playing step family! You may have some more explaining to do on the way home." We laughed about it, but it wasn't funny... not really. I had an immediate lump in my throat when it happened, and now it's more just kind of a twinge of heartache. It's not only that my children are "adulterating" their friends, but more that they are adulterated themselves. They have met, at such a young age, with a cruel truth of life. Yes, it's one that many share, but that doesn't mean it's not unfair or that it's right. There are a lot of people who have done something wrong or are doing something wrong and, instead of seeing their sin for what it is, demand that other people get on board with it... agree with it... or even endorse it. They want people to accept their lifestyle so that they feel better about it. I've never felt that way. We had family/friends who refused to come to our wedding because it was a second marriage, and we understood and respected their choice. We hate it when we see our own sin effecting our children or anyone else we love. We have grown through our divorces, and we have changed in unimaginable ways, but we don't ever expect anyone to be okay with our situation. We're not even okay with it. We are thankful for God's grace, and we hope to extend it to others, even if they can't find it for us sometimes.

I'm thankful that my family tree is just a vignette of the truth of who I have been made to be - who I am becoming. Some truth, after all, actually is subjective.

Lost and Found

At our home, we don't have cable or satellite TV. We don't even have an antenna. That decision partially started out as an "accident", but it has ended up a choice. When we were first married, we had two houses - the farm Mark was renting from his parents in Iowa and the one I had built in Illinois. The girls and I moved to Iowa with Mark and Austin until Mark could find a job closer to our home in Illinois. Before my divorce, I watched a lot of television. We had four in the house, and many times they were all on at one time so that I could walk from room to room without missing things. I often found it a way of escape from the trials of a difficult marriage. It was similar to attempting to nourish myself with mostly junk food or like putting electrical tape over the low oil warning light in my car. It was a brief escape, but probably, in many ways, kept us lulled into apathy about the state of our marriage. Financially, things were more tight when Brett left. I started working again, which I hadn't done in a few years, and I decided it that we weren't home enough to justify paying a bill for TV.

Anyway, that was the first season of my life minus TV, and I have enjoyed every season since then. I have spent more time with my children. I have become more sensitive to the things I once missed. I have become more likely to try to confront the things that make me miserable, and I have become less miserable.

We still have DVD's, and we rent movies from Netflix sometimes though. It is easier to enjoy TV but still keep it in balance that way. Lately, we started getting the TV series LOST from Netflix. We are enjoying watching it. If you've not seen it, it's about some people who, as the result of a plane crash, have become stranded on what they thought was a deserted tropical island. We are still only in the first season, but the crash victims are beginning to find out that they are not alone on the island after all, and that there are some other "people" who seem to be (at least at this point) soulless. They have empty eyes and hollow speech. Their emotions are lacking.

This got me thinking, as I was headed to bed one night, of all the movies I've seen in my life, the scary ones are often about the soulless: the vampire, the undead zombie, the "pod people"/alien replacements of real humanity. These are the ones who are missing a portion of themselves - the invisible portion. This is, apparently, the worst thing that we can imagine - losing our own lives is bad, but losing the invisible part of ourselves is so much worse. The soul - our mind, will, and emotions - is the invisible portion of ourselves that makes us distinct as humans - different from the animals. Our soul is the invisible part of us that makes us capable of having a relationship with our Creator and with the rest of His creation. It was a gift from that same Creator... not only to us but to Himself. To create something that has the ability to commune with oneself and others (like Geppetto and Pinocchio) is within the heart of the artist and reflects our Father's heart. He has longed for a relationship with us. Like Pinocchio, we don't understand our Creator's desire and, as a result, we often hurt Him. We wander on our own way, looking for the more that we know is out there somewhere, but filling ourselves with all the junk food we can find along the way instead... not realizing that it is ultimately lulling us into a position of complacency that could lead to the very thing we fear the most - losing our souls. We are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to become real.

When you have seen a loved one lying in wake at a funeral or visitation... what's missing? Their physical body is still there, but the most important part is obviously gone. What has gone away? In Matthew 10:28 - 31, Jesus says, ²⁸"Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹"Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰"But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹"So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows."

It's the soul we fear losing... the part that is actually necessary for living. If we had just descended from animals, we would have no need for abstract thought, a complex will, or certainly any emotions beyond fear. The simplest sets have survived the ages without the ability to reason or feel. However, we have all of these - and more. Obviously, the physical body isn't what's necessary for living, because it is still present - even in the dead. The part that many try to deny even exists... that's the part that we most fear losing. If the physical body were able to go on living without mind, will, and emotions - the ability to commune with humanity and Creator... no sympathy, no heart... that is lost.

Back to my first season without TV: My spiritual walk changed completely at that point. I had nothing to do at night anymore. I had a few books... a Bible, which took up permanent residence on my "husband's" side of the bed. I soaked it in. I copied entire chapters word-for-word, by hand, taking extra notes. I figured that the purpose of God's Word was to 1) teach me about who He was, 2) teach me about my identity as a follower of Him, and 3) teach me how to live my life. I wanted to learn these things. So I began to read for hours each night - classifying each verse into one of 3 categories: God is..., I am..., and Admonitions. I have 5 subject notebooks full of those copied chapters and notes and a mind full of those sweet memories... nights spent face-down on my floor - looking for something I had already thought I had found. Knowledge is not being found. In fact, sometimes it ends up in feeling more lost. Truth is the only way to be found. The winner of the World Geography Bowl could be just as lost - anywhere in the world - as you or I... without a map of where he is. He has all kinds of knowledge, but without the truth of where he is and how to get somewhere else, he is just as lost as you or I.

Like Pinocchio, you and I were made for a purpose. The Artist wants a relationship. Turning toward Him is where we find our identity, and the LOST become FOUND.