All Things New

There comes a point, after you've owned a vehicle for a while, when you start to get a hankering for a new one. When we bought our van 5 years ago, we had three children. Wonderful, adorable little boys. The fourth was on her way, and we knew that our Ford Focus couldn't handle that much child. We had crossed that threshold into the land of low mileage vehicles, and we were kind of excited about the whole thing. There were two whole extra seats in this midnight blue gem. Enough for grandparents to join us on a field trip. Perfect.

5 years ago. With all the growing and birthing that's happened since then, we have approximately 8 more feet of kid in or family, altogether. Just wanted to put that out there for imagery sake. 'Cause I personally think it's nuts, and the idea of 8 feet of anything in a minivan gives you a good idea of how cramped we are in there nowadays. Add five mouths and a few bad attitudes to that, and cramped turns into trapped.

*eye twitch*

Our minivan was gently used when we got it, but has since made itself the dumping ground for our family of seven. Things live in there for months. Lost gloves find nirvana under the back seat, half eaten granola bars slowly grow mold in the cup holders, and french fries petrify in the crevices of booster seats. It is the grave yard of all things discarded in haste. This last car trip, the van was in such disarray that I was afraid to open the door at the rest stop for fear that the trash would file out with the children. To add insult to injury, our little lady decided that her hamburger patty would best serve its purposes masticated and soaked in water...in her cup holder. *boke*

When we arrived home from that trip, the weather was teasing us with sunshine and warmth. That was my cue. I pulled the van out of its dark den and into the spring day, the vacuum out of its dusty hiding place, and a wad of plastic bags to contain the flotsam and jetsam that I planned to extract from their evil dominion. At first, the kids just ran in circles around the empty garage, a re-discovered play area that they had forgotten over the winter. But eventually they got curious and decided to help. One brought the Windex, another the paper towels, and the third a bucket of soapy water and the ice scraper. Bless him, he tries.

After an hour of tugging at belts and bench seats, while vacuuming and wiping and cursing under my breath at the invention of bubble gum and stickers, it was done. We stood back to admire our work, all of us tired, but completely satisfied. My oldest piped up, "Wow mom, we have a really nice van. Let's not get a new one just yet." I smiled and agreed.

And that's when it hit me.

Before this great cleansing triumph, our van was filthy. And every time I got in it, my only thoughts were of a new one- a bigger one, a better one, a cleaner one- just not THIS one. Every time I had to bend myself in half to buckle in their cute little bottoms, the thoughts that filled my mind were all wistful desires and discontentment. Not once in the last 6 months had I looked at that vehicle and thought to myself, "Wow, we have a really nice van. Let's not get a new one just yet."

But now it was clean, and my mind was starting to do a little internal loop on itself.

If I have this feeling about our van, what else in my life am I dissatisfied with for the very same reason? What else have I allowed to become covered in clutter and dirt, buried under misuse or neglect?

So, I started to list it all in my head, and I thought about writing it down for you here so you could see, but the list was long enough to be cumbersome in blog form. Mainly because it was pretty much EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE. Seriously, everything. In some way or another the dissatisfaction that I found myself feeling about anything could be boiled down to the fact that I wasn't being a good steward of all of these extraordinary blessings.

After this little epiphany, I took a walk through the rooms in our house. What about this room is making me crazy? That mirror? Let's clean it. That bookshelf? Go through it, get rid of the old tattered books, and straighten the ones left behind. The scary linen closet? Stack it up nicely. The "loved" dining room table? A little olive oil and lemon juice will make it shine a bit more.

Now here's the thing. All that ^ up there? I can't live like that every single day. I am not Mary Poppins. If you've been keeping up with my ramblings at all, you know that I'm a big proponent of being okay with your messy house. But friend, there is a time for everything. And we all know that after the continual desolation and bleakness that winter brings, there's something about the advent of spring that makes us desire open windows, a clean house, and a catharsis of all the dust bunnies and bad attitudes that have been building up for five months.

So I cleaned for a day. Even with 98% of the mess still there, I feel much better. You have to be realistic when you have five kids that you teach at home. Grace, even in frantic spring cleaning, is an absolute must.

As I was scrubbing walls and cabinets I kept thinking about all of this stuff, and I kept coming back to this question: why didn't I just want a clean van? Why did I want a NEW one? Yes, there's the obvious space issue, but this mindset permeates a lot of my life...not just my vehicle. Is something old and a bit worn out? Yes? Get a new one. Go! Go shopping! Take the keys, go walk the aisles and find a replacement. Bigger and better. Yessiree. And while you're at it, see if there's something else that catches your eye, and get that, too!

Where did this voice in my head come from? How did people get from settling the wilderness and making their own clothing and homes, to throwing away a hairbrush because it has too much hair stuck to it? I personally blame the mail order catalog.

But that's not really the point. It's not how we lost something, it's what was lost.

Not so long ago, things were cherished, taken care of, and repaired again and again. This was mostly out of necessity.  Through the labor of a handmade life, people learned the inherent worth of things, and of the people behind those things...even when they didn't make them themselves. I hat wasn't just a hat. It was hours of work, done by a fellow in town who you knew by name. The few products that were actually bought in stores were saved for over long periods of time, and when finally acquired were treated with great consideration and care. Nothing wasted, nothing thrown away.

But that loop in my mind... it kept circling deeper...

What if...when the things we owned stopped being seen as precious and worth maintaining, and started instead to become disposable...what if we let that seep into other parts of our lives?

Friendships. Marriages. Families.

...Disposable...

Parenting your child is hard, so you check out. Your spouse is needy, so you stay at work. Your parents are getting old and cumbersome, so you stop visiting. Your friend doesn't agree with you, so you don't answer calls. To really address any of those issues is hard work, often full of heartache, and always time consuming. But to let those all go, to leave them where they are...that decision makes a statement: 

You are too broken for me. I'll just throw you away. 

---

Which of you can honestly say that you've never been thrown?

Truth be told, I don't believe that any one of us has been spared. So many homes are torn in two by divorce, lives are drowned by addictions, families are plagued by anger and rage, friends are left in the wake of our idle tongues, children are burdened with our criticism and resentment. But with all that said, and all that pain daily dealt and received, I still believe that not one of us is disposable, no matter how broken.

When I was young, a woman stood up in the front of our church and spoke about her journey away from, and then back to God. She compared her life to a bar of soap. Beginning fresh and whole, beautiful and white. Slowly being whittled down, piece by piece, washing by washing until it was merely a sliver of murky brown waste. No one wants that soap. It doesn't make much lather any more and it slips through your fingers too easily. It's the thing that gets thrown away when you scour the shower, and replaced with another- fresh, whole and white. And that's where she had been. Worn down by her life, her decisions, and the wounds given by those around her, until it seemed there was nothing left worth keeping. Disposable.

And then she talked about coming back -- Wandering into church broken and confused, feeling like the prodigal son who'd been eating alongside the pigs, and wondering if someone so far gone could ever be worth saving. She expected to be cast away; by the church and by God. But instead, she experienced the opposite. Grace and forgiveness. The people surrounded her and helped her move forward. And God...He didn't cast her aside. He didn't leave her where she was.

Instead, He took her sliver of soap 

-what was left after she had been worn down to nothing- 

and He made it new.

In many ways, we are all worn down soap. We each have places in our lives that we aren't proud of -whether the fault is our own or not. Yet even the most broken of spirits is not cast aside by God. It's such an amazing thing, the mercy that is offered. But what I find more amazing is that we are asked to do the same.

Not one person in your life is disposable. Say it. Out loud. Not one. That includes you. It includes your spouse. Your best friend. Your parents. Your opinionated mother-in-law. Your insanely disobedient child. The neighbor that doesn't read social cues and drives you nuts. The slow cashier at the grocery. The dude that pulled in front of you in traffic yesterday. Not one person in your life is disposable.

---

Think back to that dirty van. Very few things in life are that easy. More often than not, mending a broken relationship or showing grace and forgiveness take way more than an hour of hard labor. Sometimes these things take years. But after that hard work is done, and mercy abounds, you will have the joy of stepping back to see the repairs that you have encouraged - knowing that what you have is really very nice, and you don't need a new one just yet. 

Now that is some work worth admiring.

things that hurt

I love going to the doctor with all five kids.

It's a monthly highlight in my life...schlepping an infant carrier into the office, small hands leaving little prints all over the sparkling glass doors. I watch my children do laps back and forth in the waiting room, refusing to sit and read, choosing instead to tap incessantly on the fish tank and ride the small inflatable creatures like pogo sticks. I'd love to know which doctor bought those for the waiting room. They have a sick sense of humor and I will punish them by bringing all five of my snotty kids together to see them EVERY TIME.

Today was a four year check up for our little lady. Where those one thousand four hundred sixty days went, I'm not really sure. But there she is: tall, and sassy, and four. I managed to haul all the kids out of the house in time. Wearing shoes, no less. (Feeling super proud of that one.) Their shenanigans in the waiting room were actually a little milder than usual. But despite these positive advances in my children's sophistication, my stomach was in a small knot.

I've had three fellas go through the four year check up, and there's something very special about that year. I use special in a very loose sense here. Words like grievous and bothersome are more accurate. The majority of her check up was fantastic. Her interactions with non-family are a coin toss most of the time, but today landed heads up. She was a charmer and show-off: giggling and giving me thumbs up every time she answered a developmental question correctly.

that look, right there.

I smiled back and my stomach turned, still keenly aware that she didn't know what was coming. All the smoothness of the morning was dependent on her ignorance, so I had decided to wait to tell her until it was almost time. After the vision and hearing tests, I sat her down on my lap and whispered in her ear,

Honey, you know how we've been reading about viruses and germs in science at home? *nod* Well, do you remember those special medicines that help our bodies fight those germs fast so that we don't get sick? *eyebrow goes up* Today is a day when you get some of those medicines. They're going to give you four pokes. *silence*

She looked down at her toes, and quietly agreed to do her best. I warned her that I would have to help hold her nice and still, but that it would be over super fast.

The nurse came back in a few seconds later, her tray overflowing with hypodermic horrors, little bandaids pre-opened and dangling off the sides, and purple gloves at the ready. She suggested that the best way to make this happen was for me to be in charge of stabilizing the top half of little lady's body while she popped as quickly as possible through the shots on her legs.

I laid my trepidatious, darling girl on the table, crossed her arms over her chest and held her hands in mine. Nose to nose, I looked down into her eyes. They were so calm, but only for a moment. The nurse wasted no time, and with each of the four pokes I watched my baby girl's eyes change from surprise to terror, and her face pinch as she dealt with the pain. I made it as far as the letter G in the abc's and it was over.

There are many opinions on vaccinations. As the wife of a handsome fella who got his PhD in immunology, we choose to vaccinate our kids because my husband has done all the reading. Literally, ALL of it, and we believe that the benefits far outweigh the risks. I totally realize that this can be a very volatile topic, and I bring it up only for the illustration. Just wanted to get that out there, because my non-confrontational self is super worried that you're going to block out all the important stuff because I used the "V" word. Moving forward...

As soon as the nurse gave me the go ahead, I scooped my baby girl up in my arms and squeezed her tightly. The tears streaming down her cheeks made their way onto mine, and we were there, just the two of us, slowly working through the pain. "You were so very brave."  I whispered.

"I know." she whispered back...

Like I said, four and sassy.

---

Parenting is hard. Watching your children go through something difficult is one of those hard things. The temptation to come to their aid, to defend them, to remove the assaulting thing from their path, is so often strong...but not always best. We do not learn to walk by means of our parents legs. We learn to walk on our own two feet, falling over and over, causing many bruises and many moments of angst in the hearts of our folks. 

Watching them go through something physically painful is even further up the list. I am a firm believer in the magic of bandaids, and I will put as many on as possible to stop the tears. Sometimes the gashes and bruises are a result of their own foolishness, but even though my mouth may chastise them initially for their lack of brain cells, my heart aches that this was the consequence for their actions. Plus there's all the blood. Blech.

Holding them down while they go through something painful that you've given a green light has been the hardest thing for me thus far. As parents, we have a perspective far above our children's that allows us to make those hard decisions...to know when certain pain is necessary, or even beneficial. When our oldest was four, we sent him into surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells from his arm. My husband would tell you that watching the nurse put that mask over that little face, letting him fall into the murky world of general anesthesia, and allowing his helpless body to be wheeled away behind closed doors...was one of the hardest things he's had to do. But had we left those cells there to do their worst...I dare not speak it.

Wounds must be cleaned, bones must be set.

These things are for their good, their benefit. We as parents know this, but it does not make it any easier to watch our children suffer. It does not make the pain any less real, or the look in their eyes any less harrowing.

---

To a four year old girl, getting four shots is a huge deal. She's still talking about it (now two days out) and reminding me that she's barely living through it. Many parents have had to make the decision to watch their child go through much worse than pokes. I am in awe of their courage, and thankful that I have not yet had to be in their shoes. 

With Easter coming this weekend, and Good Friday here already, the idea of a parent allowing their child to endure great pain for the sake of the healing it will bring...is very real. Whether you celebrate Easter with bunnies or crosses, or not at all...there is a universal truth in the love of a father for his children. He had one son. One that did all he asked. And he let him die for all his other children...those that had turned from him, and walked away. I can't even fathom the strength of that parent's heart.

You may not know the whole story. Or you might, but see it only as a moral tale. You may hold it central to your life as truth. No matter where your heart lies in the matter, it is hard to deny that the father in that story has a love for his children that no earthly father could muster.

I, for one, am certainly left in awe. 

Love in Disagreement

Many moons ago, when Adam and I were dating...before the excitement of our wedding and the joy and exhaustion of five children...we did super exciting things. Namely biking, fishing and hiking.

We were so daring.

The summer before my senior year of college, we decided to go to a large music festival in Pennsylvania. It is often described as Woodstock without the drugs and nudity, and with a whole lot of Jesus. It's a pretty accurate description, and a whole lot of fun. Music is blaring almost all the time from at least one of the many stages, and you're surrounded by people on blankets and in tents. It's friendly to ages zero to "however old you can be and still sleep on the ground."

We packed up Adam's new tent and some sleeping bags and left the fields of Ohio for the fields of Pennsylvania. His parents weren't thrilled about us going. Not because they didn't want us there...but because it was just US there. No parents, no other friends coming along. Just a boy and a girl. In a tent. Do the math.

I totally shrugged it off -something I had gotten really adept at doing during my college years. Seem like what you're doing might be a bad idea? Whatever. I got this covered. Do you think maybe you'll be sending the wrong message to the people around you? Free your mind, people. We're in love and we're planning on getting married sooner than later, so blah. Just let it go. Two decades of life under my belt and I was an expert. Ex-pert.

We arrived in the wonderful chaos and picked a place to pitch our tent. I don't fully remember if the spots around us were empty at the time, or if we were squeezing in between established residents, but by the time we got back from wandering and listening that first day, there wasn't an empty patch of grass anywhere on those 285 acres.

a city of thousands of tents...and blue porta-johns

Our neighbor for those few days was a family from the east coast. Two kids, probably both under 8 years old. We said some polite hellos that first evening. They were very friendly and sweet...asking lots of questions with genuine interest. I remember, as we were talking, watching their kids run circles around the tent. I got that terrible stomach wrenching feeling like maybe I wasn't an expert after all. But I shrugged it off.

Back we went to the hubbub of excitement. I have to be honest, there's nothing like really loud music about God to help you ignore what God is trying to tell you at the moment. *wink*

In spite of the guilt I was carrying, I know that the weekend was still full of worship and moments of wonderful communion with God. But honestly, most of it was clouded by the fact that -though I wasn't going to admit it with my lips- we were doing something we shouldn't.

Were we doing terrible naughty things in the tent? No. Were we flaunting our unmarried status? Of course not. We were there, doing our best to learn from the guest speakers and worship God with thousands of other people.

But four of these people, in particular, taught me the most about God that weekend.
The final morning, we awoke to the sounds of the neighbor family up and about. We unzipped the tent to find the dad crouched over the fire with a metal coffee pot in his hands. A smile broke across his face, and he waved us over.

"You guys need to see this."
(Rubbing our eyes and yawning. How are these people up so early, and yet so happy?)
"I'm gonna make coffee over the campfire with a dress sock."
(Adam is immediately drawn in.)
"Don't worry. It's a new sock." *wink*

And there it was. We all sat there around the fire and enjoyed great company and some surprisingly delicious joe. Us -two kids escaping for the weekend, striving to meet God somewhere, but falling miserably short. Them - a family of four, choosing to love on these two people they had just met as if there was no falling short, and no cause for judgement. Just love.

Now that I am a parent, this story is so much sweeter to me. My mother bear instincts over my children are pretty fierce. I internally loathe park goers that can't keep their language clean around the playground. I fume when the conversation of college age boys in the grocery turns to objectification of women, even as they pass a cart full of children. The desire to shelter and protect my own children is intense. Looking back, I know those parents had an important choice to make:

Do we smile and nod and avoid interaction so that we don't have to explain the situation to our children when they eventually ask? Or do we go ahead and really love on them, in spite of the behavior we see in them that we feel is wrong?

I am so very glad that they chose love. 

It's almost always the more difficult road to take. It's rarely comfortable. Your hands will get dirty. Your lives will be more complicated. You'll have to explain things to your kids that you didn't want to tell them until they were much older. Each interaction will challenge you to look more closely at the person in front of you...to understand who they really are, instead of making assumptions and throwing stones. It is certainly the road less traveled.

But this road. It is the only road worth taking. 

---

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love I'm nothing but the creaking of 

a rusty gate. If I speak God's word with power, revealing all of His mysteries and making everything as plain as day, and if I have faith to say to a mountain jump and it jumps but I don't love I'm nothing. If I give all I earn to the poor or even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, no matter what I believe, no matter what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

{1 Corinthians 13 -The Message}