Why Do Good Things Always Happen...

"You know what?  I like you, Marcie.  You know why?  Because you make me feel good about myself, and I hope I make you feel good about yourself too!" exclaimed my boisterous physical therapist.  Boisterous is the best word I can use to describe the almost indescribably upbeat - to the point of infectious giddiness - person that she is.  I loves me some quirky people.  The quirkier, the better.  If ever I'm watching a movie with my husband or kids and an odd person is insinuated into the plot, they all look at me and said, "Mom, you like him/her, don't you?"

Harmless quirkiness lightens the heavy atmosphere of an often weary world.  Besides, anyone who can cajole me into revisiting these little beauties after a 15+ year break... better be optimistic enough for the both of us.

YES, they are lunges... which is a loose translation for "exquisite agony"...
or maybe they're just named after what you want to do to someone who makes you do them.

Oh, they feel harmless enough when you do twenty or so of them after said 15+ year break.  And that is the silent evil lurking in a lunge... Sure, go ahead.  Show your kids, your ex-P.E. teacher, your new personal trainer how many you can still do.  However,  when you can't walk two steps the next day without your knees buckling in pain... when you suddenly remember how ridiculously out of shape you are... when you decide you'd rather get down on your hands and knees than squat to get clothes out of the dryer for a solid week, when you wish for the sweet relief that being run over by a Mack truck would most certainly bring... you will know the punishment of the lunge.  These are a new part of my physical therapy regimen that a severe ankle and leg fracture and resulting surgery secured for me.  After 6 weeks of calling a wheelchair "my ride" long before I ever thought I would, I get the pleasure of more physical therapy.  After all, they had almost discharged me from my last bout of therapy resulting from a back injury when I decided I was all better and then broke my leg to prove it.  I recall with amusement the day I called one of the therapists from my hospital bed to tell him I'd have to cancel my last week of therapy on account of my broken leg, but assured him I'd be back - not to worry.  He was completely incredulous.  I had gotten over my own incredulity while lying on the ground saying, "This is SO stupid!" and begging my son not to call my husband (who was absent when I hurt myself).  I've often felt I might as well move in to the local physical therapy unit.  They'll miss me when I'm gone... if I'm ever gone.

"Why do bad things always happen?" I've heard so many people wonder - especially lately.  Drought, famine, disease, murder, and the list goes on and on... After all, we all - whether we'll admit it or not - whether we're religious or superstitious or not - know we were put here at the behest of someone who knows more than we do.  We'd have to be utterly ignorant or just plain stubborn to look at the complexity of our bodies (not to mention the micro and macro universe) and think it all happened by accident.  As a wise man once said, "If I saw a working wristwatch wash up on shore of a beach, would I assume it had just evolved into being?  That all its parts had been shaped and come together by random chance?"  I read a post on facebook a few days ago in which the poster exclaimed that people who murder others don't lack morality or religion - they lack empathy - and nothing more.  Insinuating that morality and religion aren't necessary to kindness.  I know some irreligious people who are very kind people.  Is it wrong to say that if I didn't believe in God, I don't think I'd be kind at all?  Why should I be?   I find it amusing that "survival of the fittest" would make any room for empathy... or any positive emotion, for that matter.  After all, how does feeling empathy for another person - putting myself in his or her shoes - ensure that the biologically "fittest" of the species survives?  Empathy would most certainly be a deterrent to biological evolution.  The more compassion one has, the less likely he or she is to survive.  How could empathy or compassion be considered virtuous - as if there is such a thing as virtue - in a dog-eat-dog world?

You know I believe in God.  So now I'll talk about that.  Theologians have debated for millenia about whether or not God provided for the fact that Satan would tempt man to sin, man would sin and become subject to death, and whether or not that was part of God's original plan.  The Bible makes it plain that God does not sin or tempt anyone to sin.  (James 1:13) It is clear, however, that if He is sovereign (in control of His creation), then he must know and have dominion over the course of it... including the wrong that happens.  He "allows" the bad.  WHY?  Is the eternal question.  Well, when man chose to sin... thereby causing sin and death to permeate what had once been a perfect world, why did God allow it?  I have a humble theory that rolls around in my head.  

We are primarily spiritual beings.  All that we think, all that we are... lives inside a physical shell that acts out of what is inside of us and experiences the results of what is in the spirits of those around us.  Why are we physical at all?  I assert that our physical existence serves only for us to understand spiritual truths.  I submit to you broccoli and lunges.  Broccoli - green and good for the health but not so tasty as let's say...  Doughnuts - fried and good for the cardiologist's paycheck but taste like angels dancing on my tastebuds.  Lunges - physically active and good for the health but make "misery" sound like good times.  Lying on the couch - not physically active, not good for the health but is, on the bright side, not lunges.  I hold these truths to be self-evident:  The physical universe reveals to us that what is fun and easy is diametrically opposed to what is good for us deep down - despite what the advertisers of the Ab Lounger would have us believe.  Conversely, it also tells us that what isn't as fun to eat (I can hear all you, "I like broccoli more than doughnuts," goody-two-shoes right now.  Your mom's not listening.) and what requires more physical exertion is always of more benefit to our overall well-being.

A beautiful princess is born into a glorious kingdom.  Her family welcomes her with open arms, and she is doted upon since birth.  Given everything she could need for positive development and prosperity, she lacks no good thing.  Then one day, a prince rides in on a white stallion, and he says to her, "I will rescue you from your present circumstances!"  She laughs and says, "Rescue me?!  What in the world do I need rescued from?  I have it all."  She does not need his love.  A lover cannot prove his love to a person who has never known that hate was possible.  Even more, he cannot prove his love to his beloved without making a grand sacrifice of his own.  He can say he loves her all he likes, but unless he has to give up a tangible part of himself in sacrifice to her, his words are meaningless and fall to the ground.

A beautiful couple is "born" into a perfect garden in a flawless universe.  They are wanted and welcomed by a loving Father.  They are given dominion.  Their every need is met, and virtually nothing is withheld from them.  They are loved perfectly, and yet they've never been without love.  They eat when they want to eat, but they have never known what it is not to be satisfied.  They enjoy perfect health, but they have never known what it is to be ill.  God says, "I love you."  And they think, "Yes, we know."  After all, He always says that, and love - like perfection - is in endless supply in this garden.  They say, without sacrifice, "We love you too."  

Somehow, I don't appreciate air conditioning in the winter.  If I haven't experienced oppressive heat, I don't value cool refreshment. I don't appreciate my furnace in the summer.  If I haven't experienced freezing cold, I have little use for the warmth a furnace offers me.  Had men not been taken in by Satan's lies (as we often still are), Adams and Eves would never have experienced anger, bitterness, hatred, lies, betrayal, slander, gossip, envy, pride, jealousy, adultery, sickness, greed, rage, murder, etc.   Nor would we have appreciated truth, forgiveness, friendship, happiness, courage, loyalty, charity, humility, health, love, and life.

Did we have a choice?  Yes, and we made the wrong one.  Was God wringing his hands wondering what Plan B was going to be?  No.  Jesus was always part of His plan - to send Himself - in the form of a man - to prove that when He said, "I love you," to us - he meant it at the expense of His own life.  What is written on the hearts of humanity is that it takes the sacrifice of one's very life (not necessarily in death but unto it) to prove the depth of love that one has for another.

I don't know about you, but I know how rotten humanity is - myself foremost.  I am not good.  Neither are you.  "Why do bad things always happen?" we may ask, but a better question might be, "Why do good things always happen?"  In a world filled with people who all want our own way, why and how do good things ever happen?  

In Colossians 1, the Bible says of Jesus, "

15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."

It says plainly that God is responsible for the holding together of earth.  A world where the presence of God was taken away would be dark, wholly evil, and wholly depraved.  Devoid of any good thing, not just where the possibility of bad things happening would be a likely prospect but a certainty... where a single good thing would never happen.  That would be what I deserve.  When I look around, however, I see goodness.  I see the best that humanity is capable of - far more often than I see the worst.  God has not yet abandoned us.  His presence is with us in the actions of His people and the Spirit He has left us as a counselor.

We live in a world of, "I deserve..."  We all think that it is somehow virtuous to believe that we are good people who deserve good things - the best the world has to offer even.  Truth tells us a different story.  We are not good people capable of doing something bad from time to time.  We are basically bad people incapable of making a decision to do good without some deep-down selfish motive (ie. to make me feel good about me).  God isn't an add-on to the basic "good me" package.  For me He is essential - the only One Who makes it possible for me to genuinely love and be kind... to give and be unselfish.  When I walk around as if He doesn't matter, my life shows forth in selfishness, negativity, unkindness, pride, and more.

I think I mean this to be an encouragement... on those bad days - when it seems we are overhwhelmed and disgusted by the fact that evil and pain seem to be overtaking the whole world, we can be glad that it is a temporary necessity that will end in the ultimate proof of the love for which we so long.  We can acknowledge that it is not without ultimate purpose, and we need not act like victims.  We can remember that - without the bad, we would not even recognize, much less appreciate or treasure, the good.  We can rest in the fact we are eternal spiritual beings spending a very short sojourn in a sometimes dark and often weary place.  We can rejoice that we are able - in Christ - to be a part of the goodness with which God blesses others.  We can choose to walk in the truth.

Driving Sticks and Super Heroes

I was 17, and he was probably 15.  He was a friend of my younger sister's and a sophomore and I a senior in high school.  I was driving us back from a sports game or tournament of some kind.  I can't remember which.  He looked at me and said, "You drive a stick better than any girl I've ever seen."  I smiled.  My dad raised three daughters.  He's a special kind of man - the kind that worked 25+ years at a white-collar desk job but built houses and fixed cars on the weekends and evenings.  I suspect he was a little disappointed that God had not seen fit to give him any sons to whom he could pass on some handy-man skills.  Well, honestly, I don't just suspect that he had really wished for a son.  He had picked out "Joshua David" for his first son's name before my older sister was born.  Suffice it to say that we ended up with an annoying parakeet named "Joshua David"after the birth of my younger sister.

My dad taught us all kinds of things.  I can't count the weekends and evenings of my childhood and early adulthood that were spent in a toolbelt or nail apron - hammer in hand - building house frames in a cold garage... or insulating buildings... or wiring outlets or switches... you get the idea.  When it came to our cars, things were no different.  We drove old, ugly "bumper cars", but we were to maintain them.  He taught us to check and maintain auto fluids and change oil and brake pads.  He taught us to change a tire, and how to drive a manual transmission vehicle.  Many of the cars we owned as I grew up were stick shifts.  When I was too young to drive, my dad would let me change the gears from the passenger seat as we drove to a hardware store or lumber yard.  It made me feel so grown up.  When we grew up, that was a prerequisite of getting our drivers licenses.  We had to know how to proficiently drive a stick shift.   These memories came flooding back to me when I saw this iPhone cover on zazzle.com last week.

Why did I pin it to pinterest?  Well, mostly because it was that kind of week last week.  (Warning - hormone talk coming up - boys feel free to stop reading - or keep reading and get some edumacation.)  I have generally had a slightly high testosterone level for as long as I can remember.  This caused infertility early in my married life and has caused a few other annoying side-effects but not enough to wish it away, because one of the nicer side effects has been a virtual lack of emotional outbursts associated with some more annoying hormones.  I am pretty even-keeled.  That doesn't mean I don't have personality deficiencies.  It just means that those deficiencies aren't exacerbated by hormone-related psychotic episodes.  I have even made known to my husband, on occasion, how lucky he is that I am so easy-going.  I have friends that turn into completely different people at certain times of the month.  Crying, yelling, etc.  Whew!  I was so glad that wasn't me.  Maybe they were exaggerating to justify irrational behavior?  

Maybe not.  Enter estrogen.  Apparently there has been some recent evening out of my own hormones as last Monday my evil twin made an appearance.  She has rarely reared her hideous head... only once or twice all through my child-bearing years, and maybe once in a delivery room.  We were starting back up with school early, and as I was reading to my older girls, the younger two boy (5) and girl (3) were starting to (as usual) get on one another's last nerve.  I had asked them to straighten up their room, and they were fighting over every, little thing.  That was getting on my nerves... a little.  They interrupted the schooling a minimum of a dozen times with arguments over who was or wasn't pulling his or her own weight in the cleaning department.  I had tried positive reinforcement right off the bat.  (You know, the ususual "If you guys work together and get a long and do a good job, mom will give you a reward.")  It took about 30 seconds for us all to realize that they were not going to be "bought" by cheap child psychology that day.  Sometimes they force my hand to go for the negative reinforcement.  Fortunately for all of us, that's rare and gets rarer the older we all get.  

They managed to get through the room-cleaning for the most part, and I don't want perfection - just presentability... okay, mostly I just want to walk through the room without getting my feet wound in a blanket or stepping on a lego or used overnight diaper.  Then I made the mistake of pushing my luck and asking them to clean the basement.  The children know that they all share a similar fear - a fear of all children with basements - fear of being left in the basement alone.  Like all children with basements, they use this fear against one another for the purpose of emotional manipulation.  Violet threatens to leave Levi downstairs alone if he doesn't do her cleaning for her, and you can imagine how well that goes over.  He tends to run high emotionally, and usually he and I are good for one another.  Monday was an exception to the rule. He was screaming at Violet so much that I couldn't be heard.  Against "good twin's" better judgment, evil twin started to scream over his screaming, and once she started she owned me.  As you can imagine... whatever I was trying to accomplish didn't get accomplished.  By the time he settled down enough to hear me screaming at him not to scream at people, he could only say, "But that's not fair, mom, because you're screaming at me."  Granted, I was once told that my version of "screaming" was more along the lines of a muted yell, but I was raising my voice to a decibel level that was the verbal equivalent of overkill.  I wish I could say that after that I started being totally rational that day.  I also wish I could say that Violet hadn't taken Levi's brand new Toss Across tic-tac-toe beanbag game and taken it upon herself to try to assemble it all herself by removing all of the orange X stickers and sticking them on every triangle block.  I wish I could say I hadn't gotten  CADD (cleaning attention deficit disorder) and gone downstairs to put some things away and decided that the basement toy boxes needed going through and organized - thereby biting off way more than I wanted to chew that day.

As I sometimes am apt to do, I got into the huge facebook confessional and confessed my sin of being hormonally horrific to my child.  I got quite a few "likes" and comments about the "confessional status" that mentioned something about us screaming, and that I was glad Walgreen's doesn't sell at-home ovariectomy kits.  I think it was because it was just plain honest - no sugar-coating.  One of the comments was from another mom-friend of mine who said she was glad I had confessed my faults that day, because she always sees me as super laid back.  I told her I didn't know that I put off the laid back vibe, and another friend commented that I absolutely put off that vibe.  I wasn't sure what to think about that.  As I thought on it, I started thinking of my alter-ego - "Laid Back Mom".  She'd make a great super hero, I think.  I can just see her now.  A big "LB" emblazoned across her super-hero chest.

I got married and had children quite a bit before any of my peers.  I didn't have a single person to watch go through parenting or ask advice from who was going through it at the same time I was.  I quit my job at the Illinois State Police to be a mom, and believe you me... I was not Laid Back Mom.  I was a wreck.  Sadie - my firstborn... she didn't sleep at night.  She was tongue-tied and couldn't nurse right (even though I had promised myself and her that she would get breast-milk).  I forced myself to pump-and-feed for 5 months before I finally just gave in to what I felt was a total mothering failure.  I was up-tight and worried about her health all of the time.  She had chronic ear infections, and she started to have epileptic seizures at about 4 months of age.  I was also worried about other things - dirty floors, for instance.  I swept the kitchen floor at least once a day - usually 2-3 times.  I was even one of those mothers who lays down a tarp under the high-chair to keep things clean.  (As if the tarp doesn't also need cleaning.)  I was on WIC, and got help from the local health department for groceries, and I took classes on baby-care there too, as I was certainly no expert.  I was a stickler for growth charts, time-lines, and keeping her "on target" milestone-wise with other babies her age.  I read books on every topic in child-rearing.  I sought perfection in parenting.  I wanted to be Super Mom - able to clean up sippy cup spills with a single paper towel... able to make my own diaper wipes and laundry detergent... able to weed a garden while wearing a baby and teaching baby's older sibling the fine points of composting.  I failed... miserably and often.

Three years after Sadie was born I was headed for divorce court.  My husband had left me with a three-year-old and 9-month-old to raise, and I was miserable.  Our marriage had been a difficult one at times, but I was not prepared for the awfulness of divorce.  It is truly inexplicably painful and awful.  Super Mom had never been attainable for any length of time, but divorce handicapped me on an emotional level in such a devastating way that I was lucky to even remember - at the end of the day - whether or not I had fed my daughters three meals that day.  Not only was I not super.  I was barely being a mom.  Well, it was during this season that Laid Back Mom became my norm.  Laid Back Mom - able to ignore a smudged window with a single glance... able to buy a container of wipes and jug of detergent without guilt... able to let the weeds and carrot plants in my garden battle it out for supremacy and hope for the best... able to listen to two moms converse about their compost piles and not feel pressured to have one myself.  How do super heroes become super?  Usually through some freak accident that leaves them maimed and genetically mutated to be super-human.  I became Laid Back Mom when I was maimed by divorce... finally not only realizing and coping with the fact that I could not ultimately control my circumstances or any one else's actions but embracing that glorious reality.  God showed me such grace, and I was able to bask in it.  I was not in control.  I didn't want to be.  I still don't want to be... in my spirit.  My flesh (the part of me that reacts - the part that battles my spirit) wants control, but I got much better at stuffing that part away in a corner and letting God do what He wanted to do with my life and circumstances.

I was once in McDonald's where I witnessed a young mother of one child of approximately 16 months of age.  She brought the newly toddling child into the Playland area, and started to use copious amounts of anti-bacterial wipes on the high chair, the table, and anything else her baby might touch while sitting at the table.  She struggled (as all parents do in the Playland) to get the child to eat a few bites of food, and she was obviously very frustrated by it.  She finally let the squealing toddler out of the high chair, and let the child walk around the Playland a bit.  She began cleaning up the table, and then she saw them... french fries... strewn about all over the padded Playland floor.  I saw the look of panic in her eyes as she dove - almost in slow motion - toward one that her baby was about to pick up off the floor to eat.  She stomped on it and just stood there - covering the fry with her foot.  Apparently she didn't want to pick them up herself - for fear of germs.  SO... baby went for another fry nearby.  Mom stood on that one with her other foot.  Persistent baby went on to the next and the next.  All the while, the mom was playing discarded french fry Twister to keep herself and her baby from the germy fries.  I couldn't help but smile and chuckle at how funny she was.  She was an obvious "rookie".  Had she even one more child she would never have had time to micro-manage the Playland.  She would have done what the rest of us do - hope for a few minutes of mom peace-and-quiet... which isn't really peaceful or quiet... just affords fewer interruptions than usual.  She would have finished her baby's half-eaten cheeseburger and fries, because she hadn't really wanted the salad she had choked down herself.  She would have thought about wanting to smack the kid who knocked her baby down and took away the ball she was playing with.  She would have looked around to try to figure out who was that brat's adult supervision anyway.  She might have even looked down at her phone and texted a friend she hadn't gotten to talk to in months - and rested - even for just 60 seconds - trusting that her baby would be relatively safe and less than 20 feet away on padded flooring at all times.

In the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge, they speak of the beauty of a woman.  They claim that a woman's truest beauty is in that of being at rest.  Women are pictured in some of the world's most beautiful artwork as reclining on a couch.  This doesn't hold true for men.  We see a man reclining and wonder why he's not out doing something more productive.  I don't think laziness is attractive in either sex, but I think that artists are more about capturing the spirit of a person and not just the physical attributes.  A woman who's never content and who is alway striving and trying to be something more than what God made her (and thinking you should be too) is essentially unattractive.  She could be the most beautiful woman in the world from a physical standpoint, but if she's counting her calories and yours, talking about her deadlines, fussing with her hair and makeup while badmouthing a co-worker, she has lost the beauty of a woman internally at rest.  Reclining Woman is restful inside.  She is happy with who God made her and happy that He's not done making her yet.  She truly enjoys others, and they enjoy her.  She has time to talk.  More importantly, she has time to listen.  She eats a piece of chocolate cake and offers you one too.  She sometimes wears a flowing skirt and a pair of dangly earrings, and her hair is often a bit out of place.  She is as comfortable in makeup as out of it.  She is remarkable.  I'm not her, but I'd rather be her than Striving Woman.

Super heroes aren't born.  They're made by pain and suffering.  They are the result of freakish accidents.  They are freaks.  By God's grace - giving me a gift called suffering - I became a freak of human nature.  I try to maintain it, and maintaining Laid Back Mom is so much more easily maintained than is Super Mom.  Laid Back Mom just smiles and remembers that sooner than she wants to admit she'll be Empty Nest Mom.

When I yelled at my children last Monday, I had a choice to make.  I could apologize and hope that my children would forgive me my faults, or I could continue on in stubbornness and anger.  By God's grace alone I opted for the first, and children are always so forgiving.  With a pat on the back and an, "I 'give you, mom.  You 'give me too?" from the littlest one, I feel like a million bucks again.

Baby Doll

As every mother knows, a mom rarely gets the chance to take a shower in a bathroom... all alone... by herself.  Recovering from two months of shower chairs and baths due to a broken leg and ankle, I was relishing my first chance at a "normal person" kind of shower when Violet came in to talk.  To know her is to love her - an ideal combination of stinker and cutie, she always has something interesting to say.  She likes to say rhymes like, one, two pick up sticks, three, four, pick up sticks, five, six, pick up sticks.  She calls Mark "your husmint" when she talks to me about him.  When he comes in the door after work, she says to me, "Mom, your husmint is here.  Don't you want to go kiss your husmint?" and giggles uncontrollably.   Like most girls, she has a big crush on her daddy, and her affection is not misplaced.  She and Mark have become quite inseparable over the past six weeks of my convalescence.  Mark said to me a few weeks back, "Maybe she wouldn't be so ornery if I just lavish her with attention," and so he did.  I dare say she is more in love with him today than ever, and I think it's a result of his efforts toward her.  I haven't seen a dad - ever - be as devoted to his children, but I am admittedly totally biased.

showing off for daddy

When Violet joined me this morning, she said, "Hey, mom.  Your husmint is downstairs."  I said, "Yeah?  What's he doing down there?"  She replied, "He's working."  (He was installing a component on our heating and cooling system.)  Mark later told me that Violet had been his "lovely assistant" earlier, "Until she got tired of me stepping on her toes, and that's how close she was to me the whole time," he said with a grin.  Fortunately, I think she got impatient before he did and decided to come talk to me instead.  She said, "Yep, dad is downstairs working."  I said, "He's so great, and he's my honey."  She said, "Yeah, and you're his honey, and he calls you 'honey' sometimes too."  I said, "Yep.  You know what else he calls me sometimes?"  She asked, "What?"  I said, "Baby Doll."  She laughed, and said, "That's funny!  Baby doll."

You know what?  It is funny.  What man calls a woman "baby doll" in the 21st century?  I mean, Mark has called me "baby doll" from the beginning of our love relationship.  I thought it was so odd and old-fashioned at first.  Then I thought it was unique and wonderful.  It made me fell all wrapped-up and warm inside when he called me that - as though I belonged to him... as though I belonged to someone who wanted to take care of me.  Call me old-fashioned, but that's exactly what I always wanted from a man... what I still want.    Mark and my courtship was so quick.  We met in January, were engaged on February 7th, and married April 14th of the same year.  We had prayed it through in every way, and God kept giving the green light from making the date clear (we had originally planned to wait a year), to having our parents completely on board without a single question or doubt and without our saying a word, to blending our families so well, to... THIS

What is this, you may well wonder.  I have to admit that, as I went shopping for a wedding dress, I wasn't a bit nervous, but I felt I had every reason to be trepidatious.  After all, I didn't know this man who called me "baby doll" very well at all... considering we were about to be married.  I had very little time to find the right dress.  As I wandered through the small, local dress shop, I stopped at a section for wedding accessories, and there it was... plain as day... a bridal purse with the words "Baby doll" emblazoned across the front in rhinestones.  I took a double and a triple take - standing and staring in disbelief.  What are the odds of this? I don't even know.  What I do know is that it was another sign that God wanted me and Mark to be married.  He had lavished me with another convincing proof.  When I say "lavished", I mean it.  It was totally over-the-top.  It might as well have been a bright neon sign that proclaimed, "Marry This Man!" God didn't have to give me such an obvious yet perfectly soft and soothing reminder that - not only was He in loving control of our situation, but that He had planned it out long before we had.  When I think about the series of events that would have led to a manufacturer choosing the phrase "baby doll" to put on a bridal purse, and that a tiny bridal shop in Milledgeville, Illinois, would have chosen such an interesting item to stock their meager accessory shelf... Things like that don't just happen by coincidence.  If you ask me, nothing does.  

I am awed that I serve a God who not only meets my needs, but Who lavishes tender care upon me in most unexpected ways.  I don't think it's wrong to ask Him for signs that you are in His will.  In fact, I think that the desire for a sign to know you're in His will is a great testament to the fact that a person truly wants to be doing what God wants him/her to do.  

Since the first "baby" doll uttered by the man who would later become my "husmint", he has loved all of his "baby dolls" in most precious ways.

with Sadie and Claire

with Claire

with Violet, Levi, and Levi's baby

When we took our trip to Hawaii this past summer, it was directly scheduled over a date that would have been my 15th anniversary if I had still been married to my first husband.  My first husband left at the 6 1/2 year marriage milestone.  At 6 1/2 years with Mark, we were enjoying the bounty of God's grace - learning to love one another better daily.  A day that sometimes comes with sad reminders was filled up with the hope that comes with knowing that our committment isn't something that started out with starry eyes and love-struck infatuation with a side of fireworks.  It started with hope - not in one another - but in God.  Our hope was that the One Who brought us to it would bring us through it.  The best kinds of love are the ones that start out as an ember and are fanned to flame.  

Mark's love for us is a reminder to me of the fact that, if a person can love so selflessly - wanting the best for his family, how much more does our Heavenly Father want to pour out His perfect love on our sorest circumstances.  He stands waiting and wanting to give us everything that He alone knows we need - for our betterment and for His glory.  Will we welcome Him?

Give a Man a Fish

Today I'm reminded of the old saying, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."  This phrase comes to mind as I help a few of my girlfriends endure the heartaches of bitter divorce.  In both of these cases, church-going "Christian" guys with sweet wives and children and imperfect marriages (an affliction of every married person) decided that another woman would be a better life-choice for himself and his mistress and that his own happiness should take precedence over everyone else's in his family.  In each case, the husband chose a mistress and her child over work and dedication to his own marriage and family.

I struggle over this, and not only because the same thing happened to me but more because of what these men claim.  They stand staunchly by their "Christianity" and believe that God has led them to divorce their wives and live with their mistresses and that God is blessing their current lives - the proof?  "I know God's blessing me, because I'm so happy."  By the same token, they assume that because the wives they left behind are miserable and terrified that those women must be the ones in the wrong... that they are being somehow cursed by God for their wrongs.   Were the wives wrong in their marriages?  Yes, as we all are in relationships.  They have fully admitted their faults - even asking forgiveness and hoping for reconciliation and working toward it whole-heartedly.   Someone once told me that marriage isn't 50/50.  Each person has to give 100% to make it work.  Thus, when marriage fails - it is the equal fault of both parties, and I agree with that wholeheartedly.

As I watched one of my friends today agonizing over the fact that her husband is introducing their children to his mistress and her child, I remembered that feeling well... as though I was being replaced in the lives of my daughters.  I know now that no parent - however shoddy - can be replaced in the heart of his/her own children (a happy fact that I wish I had known back then.  It would have saved me a lot of grief).

My heart aches as I watch these situations unfold, because these moms are begging God daily - not only to take away their pain and protect their childrens' fragile hearts during this difficult time - but to help them treat their former (or soon-to-be) former husbands and mistresses with compassion and kindness.  All the while, they are being watched like a hawk by the husbands and mistresses for a slip-up in their behaviors.  In both cases, the wives have had weak moments of strong words with their husbands, and the husbands have the audacity to say things to the effect of, "Well, if you were really a Christian, you would be kind to my mistress and to me and be happy that we're happy."  If they fail to act sweetly in even one interaction out of 100, their religion is thrown in their faces, and they are told, "Well, if you were a real Christian, you would be nice - no matter what I do."  The husbands take it further to claim that they are the "real Christians".  These men who left wives and children for other women to make themselves happy... they have finally found the secret to true Christian morality and behavior - infidelity and abandonment of responsibilities.  Am I the only one who wants to scream at this?  Somehow the word "Christian" is supposed to translate to angelic, super-human self-control.  The whole world wants a Christian who is compassionate, sympathetic, and sweet-tempered while at the same time not able to have those same feelings hurt when they are thrashed verbally and emotionally.  They are supposed to have the presence of mind to forgive the swearing, screaming, abusive words of others and immediately respond with kindness and sweetness and unwavering self-control.  Does that happen sometimes?  Yes.  It may even happen 9 times out of 10, but it's that tenth time, when a person might snap and say, "Why are you doing this to me?  Why are you doing this to our kids?  That woman is ____ (fill in the blank), and I hate what the both of you are doing to us!"  Ah, then she has been the most filthy, anti-Christian ___ (fill in the blank) that the world has ever seen.  Would it be easier to just say, "I'm not a Christian," and that way have the right to say everything you are thinking/feeling inside?  I think so.

I mean, truly, what does a cheating husband expect his Christian wife to do?  Is she supposed to say, "I'm so happy that you're happy, and I promise that the kids and I will stay out of your way and let you have your happiness.  How can I facilitate it?  Can I help throw a bridal shower for your mistress?  I'll help you plan your wedding.  It'll be great fun!"

I watch these first-time single moms as they pray before interactions with difficult people and situations - that they'll be a good example to their kids and that they'll respond kindly to the people who are causing the most acute emotional pain they've ever experienced.  What are they learning?  Most people would say, "They're learning to be a doormat."  What they are really learning is to be more like God wants them to be.  They are learning to give over control.  They are learning to try to do the right thing - walking by what God wants them to do rather than what their human nature screams at them to do.  Sometimes we win that battle.  Sometimes we do not.  Does that make us hideous excuses for  Christians?  No.  It makes us humans full of sin - which is why we called on God in the beginning - for help... not to claim we're perfect, but because we know how desperately imperfect we are, and we at least want to try to rise above what our nature says to do.  Knowing it can't be done on our own, a Christian just claims - not his own righteousness (because he knows he has none to claim), but a Christian claims Jesus' righteousness as his own and tries not to tarnish that sacrifice by being an idiot time and time again.

It's taken me awhile to realize that every time I am faced with a difficult person or situation it's God showing me something ugly in myself that needs worked out.  When I was going through my divorce, I begged God to get me out of that awful circumstance... bring Brett home - anything to get out of the pain.  Immediately, I got a mental picture of me trying to teach my daughter to write her name.  She kept dropping the pencil in exasperation and saying, "I just can't.  I can't do it."  God challenged me with a gentle question, "If she says she can't, will you just let her quit?  Would you ever stop trying to teach her to write her name?"  My only response can be, "No.  If I let her quit now, she'd never learn anything else.  Writing her name is elementary and fundamental to the rest of all she'll ever do in school."  His response was, "Exactly."  I knew at that moment that if God let me out of that difficult circumstance - in which he was hacking away at my pride, my control issues, my selfishness, and so many other things, that I would just have to go through more of the same circumstances, because learning those lessons was fundamental to moving on to something else.  If you are continually beating your head against the same brick wall of broken relationships, painful circumstances, financial woes, weight issues, etc. it's because you simply are refusing to learn to "write your name".  You can't move on to the next lesson until you get the last lesson down.

I find it ironic that one of my friends' husband said that he knew he was in the right and that his new relationship was being blessed by God because he was so happy.  If our happiness alone is a measure of whether or not God is blessing us for good behavior, it's a poor measure indeed.  Does God grant His creatures happiness if they're doing the right thing?  Does God grant us joys and pleasures based on our performance?  Is God the kind of God that would give a man a fish (happiness) today and neglect to teach a man to fish (act in a such way that facilitates internal joy) for a lifetime?  The benefactors in these hideous divorce situations, although they aren't fully realizing it yet, are the women who are learning to be kind when they feel anger, to forgive when they feel offended, to be quiet when they want to scream angry words, and to find satisfaction and trust in God rather than placing all their hopes in momentary happiness.  God is teaching them - as they are willingly partnering with Him - to implement behaviors that will end in true, ultimate happiness.  When we treat others with kindness, when we put self-control into practice, when we truly love others with our actions, then we receive the deepest happiness - and not the kind that disappears when a date night goes sour or a vacation gets rained out, but the kind of happiness that contents itself in having managed somehow to honor the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross with right acts when everything inside was screaming at self to seek revenge.

Now, that's not to say that God doesn't bless people for just no reason at all.  In fact, I think that is one of His greatest joys, and I've been a recipient of those kinds of blessings more often than not.  However, those things are momentary gifts - not able to sustain a lifetime of happiness.

Somewhere out there are Christians who claim that they are better than others, because of their religion.  It's these Christians that make others have an expectation that Christians should always act perfect.  They imply, "A Christian should always have the right response, and "A Christian should always be kind."  In that world, it doesn't matter how hard you smack a Christian down, they are obligated to get back up and offer themselves for you to do it again... and with a smile and a "thank you".  That Christians are to flawlessly execute Matthew 5:39, in which Jesus states that we are not to resist and "evil man" but rather give him more than he asks ("turning the other cheek" to persecutors).  I agree that we are supposed to learn to respond rightly and kindly in every circumstance, but where is the practice field?  Life is it.  It's the practice field.  A person can't practice right response to a distasteful person or situation until faced with it, and then is likely to fail miserably many times before finally getting it close to right - and then will likely fail again thereafter from time-to-time.  Unfortunately, there is no other place to learn right response than real situations - when emotions are screaming, tempers are flaring, and pain has us to the breaking point.

No one - Christian or not - should ever presume to brag that he or she is above ugliness.  Our fallen nature makes every one of us ugly in many ways - physically and emotionally.  These are not excuses for bad behavior, and our ugliness is certainly not a surprise to God.  Isaiah 64:6 says, "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags."  John 2:24 says, that Jesus refused to entrust Himself to the crowd around him, because He knew what was in the heart of a man.  They were singing His praises, yet He knew not to trust them, because He knew the heart of man is fickle and is prone to loving one minute and despising the next.  If anyone could obtain perfection like God, then we would cease to be human, and He would certainly cease to be God.  He knows we're incapable, and thankfully - even when we fail (especially when we fail), His grace is all-sufficient and covers our ugliness with the beauty of grace.

I don't know about you, but I'm glad that God not only gives me fish but that he teaches me to fish.

OWS and AHS

"We don't deserve this," I said as he sat on a rock looking back at me.  "Who says?" he responded.  "Huh?" I asked listlessly.  "Why don't we deserve this?" he persisted.  "I don't know... just because we haven't done anything right."  After all, Hawaii was the most perfect place I could imagine on earth, and as we sat there drying on some rocks underneath Alele Falls, a private location where we'd just swam under a waterfall without another soul in the world in miles, in an environment closer to earthly perfection than any I'd ever witnessed to that point, I felt small and totally unworthy to be there.

My husband works in the nuclear power industry.  Last winter, he was talking about signing up for yet another set of work hours that would take him to another region of the Midwest for a bit over two weeks.  These 72 hour work weeks for a month or more are not uncommon in his job, and we usually see these kinds of hours 2-4 times a year.  I will never complain about his job, because he has a job - and a good one, but these work hours can make for some trying times in our household.  Everything just seems to run more smoothly with two parents.  As he was talking about heading to another voluntary assignment that would separate us all for a few weeks, I said, "Well, I know we've said this before, but if you do sign up, I want some tickets to someplace tropical in hand before you head out."  We had talked many times about trying to take some time to go somewhere for awhile - just the two of us.  After all, our honeymoon a bit over 6 years ago was a nice one to the Smoky Mountains, but we were pretty new to each other at the time, and we were just trying to get through awkward - not to mention the mono I had contracted about a week before the wedding.  After that, we came home to 3 children - a ready-made family loaded down with responsibilities and routine.  We are a couple famous for talking about "what ifs" and "some days", but I liked the idea of more than just the promise of some future vacation if he were to sign up for more over time.  He agreed and told me to start planning a vacation for a mere 3 weeks from that time.  After sitting in front of the computer for 2 hours agonizing over where to go and how long to go, I determined I just couldn't put things together that quickly.  He agreed, and we decided to wait until the very end of August so that we could avoid busy summer vacation season.  So last January, I set to planning a vacation a whole 7 months away, which might as well have been an eternity at that point.

Later that Spring, a family member who is in the Navy approached Austin (16) about a "Tiger Cruise". This is an event wherein Navy personnel can invite family members on board a ship to see the daily operations, etc. of the ship.  Essentially, all we would have to pay for him to go was air fare to Oahu.  We told Austin that he'd have to pay half of the airfare, and he'd be good to go.  He (being a renowned penny pincher) said he might rather just save his money and stay home.  I said something to the effect of, "Are you serious?  Do you know how many kids your age would die to have this kind of opportunity, and you're going to let a few hundred bucks stand in your way?  You may never get there again in your lifetime!"  He semi-reluctantly agreed that he'd like to go.  When was he supposed to go? At the beginning of August.  We made the plans, and he was to be gone 16 days.  My dad accompanied him for the trip, and they took in a week of sight-seeing in Hawaii too.  When Austin was gone though, I was afraid to tell anyone where he was... afraid that they might think we were bragging or that we had 'money to burn"... especially since he spent two weeks in February on a cross-country road trip from California to Illinois - bringing my sister back home from Cali for a visit.  In reality, he was just afforded a unique opportunity that we would have been foolish to deny him - especially since he foresees a possible military career in his future.

Austin - Grand Canyon 2012

Austin - Hoover Dam 2012

So, he spent months teasing us that he'd be getting to see Hawaii before we did.  A fact, which we didn't find nearly as annoying as he hoped we would.  His upcoming trip to Hawaii didn't make me feel less guilty.  I worried even more that people would see and scrutinize our trip-taking, and they did.  Pointed commentary about "rich Christians" - spending money frivolously when we should be (presumably, as they are) giving it to the poor was ironically posted on the Internet/facebook by people with computers... putting them in the richest 95% of humanity because they have a computer in the first place.  I guess if I were judging them, I would say they should have spent their computer money on the poor.  I find it terrifically ironic that people post angry words about the "filthy rich" on the Internet with their macbook pro or hp laptop from their bed whilst watching their flat screen TV.  Just about anyone in America can rack up credit card debt on "needs" like computers and TVs and Internet access and cable TV.  We didn't go into debt to take a vacation.  We planned it into our year... along with charitable contributions... as if it's anyone else's business.

As we sat there under that water fall, my husband reminded me that we don't spend money on the things a lot of people do.  We have aged television sets and no TV service; we buy almost all of our kids' clothing second-hand; we have older cars with no payments; etc.  Even more importantly, he reminded me - people who begrudge either of us a vacation do not really know, care about, or love us as a couple or family.  No, they don't even like us.  Why do I care what people like that think anyway?  He had made an excellent point - several, in fact.

It doesn't matter how many good points are made... I still want to feel guilty about having something so great.  I don't even know why.  What I do know is that, had Mark not helped in relieving my guilt, I was precariously teetering on the edge of losing the blessing that the vacation was.  So I began to keep a journal of our trip so that I could relive it for years to come... for those difficult seasons, which are sure to come - and always do... into every life.  I have never been so close to paradise on earth, and, for me at least, it was Hawaii with the man I love.  Everyone has their own version of where their paradise would be, but I think that our glimpses of those places - however many and to whatever extent we're permitted those glimpses in our lifetimes - are meant to give us a tiny taste of what God has within His creative capacities.

I intend to document our trip in another blog - mostly to have a photo/written remembrance of the trip, and also - for those of you who have asked for advice and are considering a trip to the same area - some must-dos and must sees and maybe one or two must NOT dos.  

For now, I'm going to take this in a different direction.  SINCE, I've started this blog about half a dozen times and rerouted and never finished it, and I have a contract to blog at least once/month, this is it, folks:

The ups and downs of our late summer/early fall - and by "fall", I'm not referring to "autumn", I really mean FALL:

It started off pretty well - kind of like this:

A friend of ours asked our family if he could take our photos in the wheat field behind our house... gave us 2 days to plan and be there, and voila... an awesome deal on family photos that we were very happy to have.

And then there was this:

I did something like this - OW...

Which ended up in something like this...
(MRI of herniated disc) - OW...

That lead to something like this... AH...
(Yes, there were much better massage photos on line, but I thought this one was funny.)

And then something like this... OW...

 
And ended, or so I thought, with this last picture... still a mom, still a wife... still a LOT of work to do that I'm not supposed to do, which lead to:

forced child labor :(

When all of the above started less than 6 weeks before our anticipated trip, I thought we'd never go.  I thought we would never make it to Hawaii and that my fears of getting what I deserved - were coming true... a bad back and a missed opportunity.  Enter our church family and family family who brought meals, cleaned, took care of kids, and helped with just about everything conceivable... not to mention the star of the show, my husband - who ran his life, my life, and our family life without a single complaint and with compassion and humor that are so essential to our lives as a couple and family.  What would I do without him?  This is one of the AH... parts.

Then came the time to take the trip...

northeast coast of Maui

northeast Maui coastline

Maui - mountainous/rainforest

southeastern coast of Maui

private garden at condo off Hana beach

One of my favorite moments of my love trying to extricate himself from sharp waterfall rocks without falling while I was holding the camera 

outdoor shower/tub at the Kipahulu condo 

falls on Road to Hana

Little Me... Giant Tree - on our hike up to Waimoku Falls

more of our hike up to Waimoku Falls

swimming in Alele Falls

my love on our first night in Oahu - near Waikiki beach

our toes in the first water we saw in Hawaii

Last night on Maui - Sunset extraordinairre

And I saw that it was VERY good... There was enough AHHHHH... in those 10 days to last me a lifetime.

And then we came home to an ordinary life - full of routine, continued physical therapy, bills, schooling the kids, etc.  After about a week of this - Mark and I meeting one another coming and going after having been spoiled with days of intimacy, he asked me to come sit in the garage in a lawn chair he had set up for me after a long week for us both.  He held my hand, and said, "I know it sounds terrible, but I want to go back..."  I looked at him, and smiled, and I said, "Me too... this is the first time all week I've even talked to you."  We sat and basked in the quiet beauty of rural Illinois from our garage lawn chairs, the kids squealing and riding bikes in circles around us.  Precious moments aren't about the places we're at but about the people who are with us.

And after all that AH... there had to be another OW, which looked exactly like this:

the unveiling of my hideous leg

incision #1 (inside of right leg)

and, my personal favorite, incision #2 (outside of right leg)

Now, those I know and love know exactly how this happened, but suffice it to say that it involved an ankle broken in two places, a bone chip in my ankle, and a severely broken fibula - all of which resulted in my physical therapist who was completely mystified by my behavior.  Fix a person, and then what do they do?  Break themselves again.  When I tried to lift my leg after the accident, it flopped over to the right side, and I knew something was terribly wrong.  From there, let's just say that the ambulance crew knows me by name - they recognize me, not just in SPITE of the grimmacing, wailing, mascara-running, ugly-crying face that only they get to see, but BECAUSE of that face.  "I know you," said the ambulance driver with a little less finesse than was required at the moment.  I covered my face, and I said between gasps, "I know, and I'm SO sorry."  "Why in the world are you sorry?" he asked.  I couldn't respond - mostly, because I was sorry for everything I could think of... my husband, my kids, the abulance personnel who are supposed to be rescussitating drowning victims and little old people who are having heart attacks.  "How old are you?" someone from the accident scene shouted.  "Eighty-four," I wailed back.  "Um, my sister replied, 34."  "I feel like I'm eighty-four," I sobbed.  Then I lost consciousness. (AH...).  Then I regained it again.  (OW...)  Replay the last two sentences about a dozen times between the accident scene and my first hour in the ER, and you'd have those 2, terrible hours in a nutshell.  

5 days in the hospital; 2 roommates (one with Alzheimer's-induced screaming fits, the other with an abusive son who liked to stay in the room screaming at her off and on for hours just for fun); 5 IV attempts; one IV leak; 2 successful IVs; 2 pain pumps; 2 hours of surgery; untold mls of morphine, demerol, and dilauded; one metal plate and several metal screws; about 40 staples; and one wheelchair later, they finally released me from the hospital.  OW...

I could write for another 3 hours about the hospital stay, the first couple of weeks of recovery, learning to use a wheelchair and/or crutches, teaching myself to do everything in new ways, feeling very sorry for myself, and a lot of other whining, but I'd rather talk about something else.  

Well, I will talk about my Alzheimer's roommate for a second, because - and maybe this is just the pain pump talking - she.was.hilarious.  My first impression of her was when she would wake up shouting all night long the first night I was in the hospital.  My second impression was when they were trying to catheterize her at about 5:00 AM.  She kept fighting them and shouting, "Help!  They're trying to kill me!" and "Stop, that doesn't belong there!"  I felt sorry for her, but I admired her mettle.  I continued to witness her turn down any food they offered her, as I remained on a strictly no-food-or-water diet for 24 hours as they were trying to schedule my surgery.  I listened annoyedly as she turned down shakes, roast beef, yogurt, and chocolate cake.  Then came the shouts for "Help!"  I couldn't rest for two minutes without her calling for a nurse.  They knew she wasn't in need of one for the most part; so this could go on for 20-30 minutes before I would just call a nurse for her with the call button.  They would talk to her and calm her down a bit, and she would beg for them to stay in there with her, because she didn't like to be left alone.  Finally, she decided that she wanted her food tray (mostly, I suspect, because she wanted to keep the nurse in there to feed her).  She said, "I need my food tray."  "Really?" the two, young nurses at her bedside asked, "because you have turned down all food all day."  "Really!  and I want someone to feed it to me too!" she shouted back at them.  They left the room and told her that one of them would be right back with her tray.  As the door closed behind them, she muttered, "I don't want it anyway."  Ah, I imagine myself being just like that someday.  

What I really want to talk about are the things I'm finally learning not to take for granted.  Three days after I came home, my husband found me crying in my chair in the corner of our bedroom.  He asked why I was crying, of course.  I said that I hated being stuck in the chair.  It was only my 3rd day home of several weeks upcoming, and I felt trapped.  He brushed my hair back from my face, and he said, "You have a nice home to stay in.  You have kids who are old enough to help you and who love to help you.  You have church family who are bringing us meals every day.  You have a temporary condition.  You have a son who can drive you anywhere you need to go when I can't.  You have friends and family who are calling you and lining up to help you in any way they can.  You have a husband who is crazy about you and a God Who's watching over you.  What's wrong again?"  You know when you're in the mood to just feel sorry for yourself, and you don't want to hear someone tell you nice, happy things?  Well, I was in that mood - for days.   And then, one-by-one, stories kept coming to my mind or attention.  People would come by to drop off meals and tell of a friend or relative who was in dire straits.  People who had lost limbs...  People who were battling cancer or who had children battling it...  A woman whose husband divorced her and moved out of state while leaving her to cope with a young daughter who is dying of brain cancer and a son with serious behavioral disorders...   (I just noiced those last three sentences sounded like just one of the people that either of the presidential candidates might claim to have promised a better future to on their various tours of these miserable United States.)  What right have I to feel sorry for myself?  All I had been able to think of was how I was just finishing up physical therapy for my last injury; how I would have to rely on other people again; how much I would miss out on in these upcoming holiday months; how I was just starting to get back to regular workouts; how I hate sitting still; how I, I, I, me, me, me.

As I sat at the dining table one of those first nights home, Mark gave thanks for the food and for having me home from the hospital.  In a half-joking way, I made the statement that I wished the hospital had been able to put me under sedation for the few months till I'll be allowed to use my leg again.  Austin (16) frowned at me, and said, "Why?"  I said, "Well, you know - so you guys don't have to wait on me all the time."  He said, "You know, mom... we like having you around.  Do you know what it was like around here with you gone for 5 days?"  It cut me to the core - how selfish I was being.  I needed an attitude adjustment - seriously.  

Well, God's taking care of that.  I don't know what I need to learn in this, but I know there's a lot.  Some of it is that we all have our "OWs" and "AHs".  One moment we can be basking in an "AH..." only to be struck down by an "OW..." minutes later.  That is life.  Regardless of what it throws at me, I am the same person.  I can't choose my circumstances, but I can choose my responses.  I can choose to be beautiful inside when I'm scarred outside.  I can choose to contribute whole-heartedly to the happiness of those around me when I'm not ideally happy myself.  Would I like things to be different?  Yes.  Can I think of a single, legitimate reason to complain at this moment?  I'm happy to finally answer, "No."  

What are you struggling with this week?  Why are you unhappy?  What's making you discontented?  There are better times ahead!  AND... there are worse times ahead, most likely.  I don't say that second part to depress you but to encourage you to enjoy the situation you're in, not only because there are way better things ahead, but because there are also worse things ahead, and you don't want to waste the relatively good moments that are in your lap today.  I can't remember when I've had as much time to sit down and rest, sleep in, snuggle kids in my lap, have long conversations with my older children about nothing and everything, and just enjoy my family with no agenda in particular.  Someday, the kids will be gone.  Someday, loved ones will die.  Someday, health will fail catastrophically.  For now, I just have a broken leg, and I'm so thankful that God is turning my OW into an AH... right in front of my face, and even more that He's finally giving me the grace to recognize it.