Turning My Tent Upside-Down: A Lesson in Camping with Kids

Some families do Disney. Some do Hilton Head or Daytona Beach. Others jet across an ocean because they have the funds (bless them, oh Lord, for I am jealous). Then there are families that camp.

Camping is not for everyone. Sometimes it's a harrowing experience with more dirt and bugs than you can shake a stick at. Other times you walk into a deluge meant only for Noah. Laying on the ground isn't for everyone. But for some, it is the piece de resistance. My childhood was full of that resistance. 

There were multiple summers where we packed our Honda Civic wagon to the ceiling and drove across the country, camping the whole way. A cooler wedged in the middle of the back seat was the only thing separating my sister from myself. But the cooler was narrower than my arm, so it was useless in stopping any fights that involved hitting, poking, or pinching.

Most mornings we would pack up camp and drive for 8-10 hours, only to stop by dinner time and set up camp again. Everything in the car had a place, that had a smaller place in which the place would be set in order to make room for the next place. There was order to the order and it was beautiful. I credit it all to my dad, but I'm sure mom helped. (I love you mom. You make great sandwiches.) We rolled our clothing into tiny cylinders so that we could squeeze as many outfits as possible into the small duffle bags that held our lives for more than a month. Dinners were cooked over a Coleman stove, and lunches were always packed in the morning for quick an easy disbursement at noon. A well-oiled machine people. Clockwork.

It may not sound super appealing to you, but the memory of these trips has reached sainthood in my mind. And so, with that tucked away in my adolescent brain, I grew up and had children of my own. And what better thing to do with five children than go camping? Stay home, you say? Not a chance.

Planning- a.k.a. the part where you are blissfully unaware of reality

Seeing as how I was a child when I was little, I didn't really have an insiders view of the preparations for camping. I saw the results, but not the process that led up to it. With that skewed vision in mind, I began to plan our Grand Memorial Day Camping Adventure. I made lists. I love them, and they make me inexplicably happy. Kind of like straight lines in mown grass. Lists of food. Lists of things to do. Lists of super important, don't you dare forget this because this is the most essential item when camping, kinds of things. 

                           

Packing- a.k.a. the part where you realize just how much your lists have on them

There are seven people in our family. That is a lot of sleeping bags. Two tents. A lot of pillows. It is a lot of shirts, shorts, towels, underwear, teddy-bears, toothbrushes and diapers. When we bought our wonderful mini-van, we did not think ahead like smart people do, and got a not-so-grand caravan. That means that the packing space in the trunk is deep enough for a grocery bag. Maybe a couple of raisins. 

---

Once we were squeezed into our spaces like toothpaste, we made the trek across the state to the campground. Our site was directly across from the playground. Thank you, Lord, and Amen. The kids played in the sandy Michigan dirt while Adam set up camp. Dinner was late and crazy. Ramen with veggies. And all of a sudden it was dark, so off to sleep we went. 

Just kidding. Adam in one tent with four children, and me in the other with the one that cries and wakes up an average of 5 times a night. No sleep.

Breakfast- a.k.a. the meal that should inspire a camper to climb mountains, or at least trade legos

Bacon. Eggs. Poptarts.

Two parts iconic, one part reality.

Oh, and coffee. (See, "no sleep" above)

We spent the next two days boating, fishing, swimming. All on whims. No plans, just wake up and be. 

It. Messed. With. My. Head.

What about my lists?

What about the meal planning that I did?

How is this going to be EPIC if it doesn't go like I planned?

The moment of truth came our third night there. I had packed our super awesome ice cream making balls, and all the pre-measured ingredients in little zip-loc baggies to make some deliciousness. While the kids were boating/playing/fishing, I got them set up. Salt and ice in one end, and cream and sugar in the other. The time comes to roll the balls and there is not a child to be found. I spy one across the playground. Even before he's in earshot he starts yelling a question about going to play a game. He can clearly see the big red ice cream balls under my arms. He does not want to do the quintessential camp thing that I planned. He wants to play. 

No.

But mom, can't I just go play and then come back when it's ready?

No.

Seriously?

No. If you go play now, you will come back and watch us eat ice cream. And I will eat it slowly and make lots of good food noises so that you are certain to regret your decision to go have fun and leave me with all the work. Shake. A. Ball.

(Somewhere in my planning, I forgot to check how long the process takes. Fatal mistake.) 

Mom, is the ice cream ready yet?

No.

How long does it take?

It takes...as long...as it takes!

How long is that?

*flames...on the side of my face*

In the end, I sent them all off to play while I finished making what ended up being sweet cream shakes. When they came back to enjoy the fruit of my labor, the baby was eating dirt, the mosquitoes were attacking, and the mountain of camping dishes to be done before bed was literally falling off the picnic table. At some point, Adam disappeared into the van for three minutes...just to sit...away from the insanity. 

Darkness could not fall soon enough.

As I lay in my sleeping bag, cursing myself and regretting the crazy rabid mama that I had become that evening, I began to think a bit more about the perfection that I had failed to achieve. My memories of camping as a child are so gilded and perfect. I don't know what work went into creating those memories. I don't know if my parents were stressed out trying to do that with us. I don't even know if the memories that I have are fully accurate. I may have created things just to match the emotional euphoria that is etched in my heart from those trips. 

But looking back, it wasn't the meals or the detailed planning that made me love those trips. It was the moments. Snapshots in time. Family intimacy in God's great big beautiful creation. Bugs and all. 

My kids had spent the weekend wallowing in each of those delicious snapshots. Writing those memories into their little souls as beautiful, fun and good. They were seizing the day while I was worrying about planning for the next great memory. 

*face palm*

It really was an absolutely, fantastic weekend. And in spite of my obsessive tendencies, the kids deemed it the best. weekend. ever. Adam and I came out alive, and know for certain that we'll do it again.

 In fact, we've already started planning... 

Anger Mis-management

My mind has been very preoccupied lately. So many different parts of my life are flying in as many directions, and I often find it difficult to be "in the moment". This is a dangerous place to be when five small children are constantly running circles around my ankles and asking questions about life and their pursuit of a mid-morning snack.

Needless to say, it hasn't gone very well.

Take today, for instance. All day I was sitting on pins waiting for a call from our loan officer. The appraisal for our hopeful house was supposed to come back today, and it was ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT. The kids would come up, be completely in my face, and I wouldn't even see them there. I would hear my name being called, as if from far far away in a distant Narnia land, only to realize that their nose was touching mine and they were screaming. Bloody, evil screaming.

So I screamed back.

Bloody, evil, Mommy screaming. Ugh.

Case in Point:

While trying to explain a math problem to one of the older boys today, the younger one piped up with the answer. I asked him to wait so that I could finish my sentence. And he kept talking. No pause, nothing...just kept going. As if the words coming out of his mouth had to be expelled before he could breathe. It was infuriating. After shushing him three times to no avail, I lost it. I started to make this terrible noise. Like the one they teach you to do when you're being attacked. Not a high pitch scream, but a guttural, loud, annoying air horn type of sound. One that might just make you pee your pants if you're 6 years old and sitting at the dining room table trying to do your math.

And this was not a singular sensation today. Granted, I didn't pull out my victim scream again...but seriously, every time that I felt crossed or disrespected or ignored or inconvenienced, the volume of my voice would jump. IMMEDIATELY. No questions asked, just yell.

By 4pm I was certain that all was lost. I just knew that the appraisal would come in low and that we would have to walk away from the house we wanted...that my children would grow up knowing only one form of communication defined by its excessive volume, and that they would need therapy in order to survive...I knew that I couldn't do any of this well enough, not school, not child rearing, not wifery, not housekeeping, nothing. And it was only 4pm, so I just couldn't justify that glass of wine.

*sigh*

There are some days that are just like that. ^

Sometimes things are beautiful, and my children listen and I can just feel God working through me to raise my children. Then there are others where it's lost before 8am and the desire to hide in my bathroom behind locked doors is so intense that I can not resist the fleeting respite, and I sit on the pot with my face in my hands and choose to breathe through the din of the banging on the door.

It's on days like today that I am so thankful for tomorrow.

When my 6 year old wakes up tomorrow, he will look at me with fresh eyes. He will see his mama. His strong, beautiful, morning coffee breath mama, and he will curl up in my arms as if there was never an evil bloody screaming match over a math answer. He will reach up and twist my pony tail and tell me he loves me because, like the God that made him, his mercy for me is new every morning.

hallelujah.

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.

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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.

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}

Talking to Strangers

Grocery shopping with five kids isn't for the faint of heart. I do it as infrequently as possible, and always with a list, a straight face, a clenched jaw, and the intense desire to disappear in the wine aisle while the five children run free among the coolers of ice cream and frozen pizza. You would think that -in comparison- shopping with only one would be a breeze. *chortle*

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When our youngest was born, it was fairly evident within the first week that we had ourselves a crier. Our first four babies had been pretty easy, as long as they were being held.  But this little guy...he would scream and scream, arching his back and writhing out of our arms, no matter what we did, or how much we jiggled. Sleep eluded us at night, and rest during the daylight hours was a phantom. The other kids worried terribly over this, and did their best to help ease my aching back muscles by taking turns walking the floor with their baby brother.

Around 9pm every evening, he would finally calm down for about an hour, only to awaken again with a vengeance and scream for an hour or so longer.  It was during this sweet spot one evening that I decided to go grocery shopping.  I dared not leave little man at home with his daddy, because -even if nothing helped when he was screaming- having mama around always helped the most.  So, I strapped the still screaming baby in the car seat, grabbed my shopping list, and pulled out of the garage.

He screamed the whole way to the store, slowly loosing vigor and sounding more and more like a strangled duck as the minutes dragged on. The moment I pulled into the Meijers parking lot, he fell asleep. Just in time. I strapped on my Ergo carrier, and gingerly lifted his sob wracked body from beneath the straps of his seat.  I tucked him into the carrier and hugged him against my chest in the hopes that the smell of mommy would keep him content.  I breathed a quick prayer and shut the van door. 

As I was grabbing the diaper bag from the front seat, another van pulled in beside mine, and a young mom hauled a baby seat from the back and plopped her happy baby into a cart. I didn't stick around to chat or even smile.  I was on a mission...but beyond that, I didn't want to talk to anyone, and certainly not to a mother whose small child was easy. Not tonight. 

The first thirty minutes of my quest through Meijers were peaceful. I was stopped more than once by sweet old ladies who wanted to peek into the carrier, or know how old he was, or tell me how cute he was.  I started to relax a bit, and slowed my step...I even looked at things that weren't on the list. Hooray, I thought to myself, I can do this.  

It may have been the cold air that woke him, but the peace abruptly ended by the frozen chicken. There was no slow crescendo. It was a sforzando of mass proportions. I pulled him out of the carrier and jiggled and hushed and rocked. Nothing. Switched to the sling. Not having it. 

My grocery cart, full to the brim with slowly melting food, could not be ignored any more than my siren of a child. All that could be done was to finish the trip in record time and blood-curdling glory. I tucked him in my arm and under my chin so that I could push the cart with one hand and my hips and then proceeded through the last three aisles, grabbing anything that looked like it might alleviate world hunger. 

A moment before, the store had seemed empty. But now, every soul had emerged from the shadows and was staring. I could feel their eyes burning holes. Some eyes spoke pity, others anger, some disdain. But every one of them was on me, the woman with the screaming infant in the grocery at 10:30pm. What a terrible fool.

I made it to the check out, and pried every item one by one out of my cart while he screamed in my arms. Eventually I stopped apologizing to the people around me and just kept my eyes on the floor. The longer I waited, the more he screamed, and the more they stared.  And low and behold, there she was, three rows down: the mama with the silent happy baby, checking out at the same time as me. 

shame. anger. frustration. hopelessness. 

The cashier took pity on me and sent another employee along to help me get to the van. Once the groceries were in the trunk, I slumped into the front seat with the screaming banshee. Diaper change, gripe water and nursing were all futile. Nothing would stop him. Nothing. I sat there, staring into his squinted eyes, wondering what I had done wrong...how was a mother of five fully incapable of calming her baby? Why had I been foolish enough to bring him along, to take this risk?

Then she came out.

Baby still tranquil, grocery shopping done. She was there, in all her maternal glory. As I sat in my car, just trying to breathe, she calmly unloaded her food and set her happy baby in his spot in the van. She climbed into the front seat and started the car. But she didn't leave. She just sat there looking down.

I looked away, and tried not to notice that she was still there...until I saw out of the corner of my eye that she was no longer in her van, but was approaching mine. I glanced up to see her standing outside my window with a napkin in hand. 

I rolled down the glass, she handed me the napkin, and I heard her whisper, "Hang in there."

Choking back sobs, I nodded, and she walked back to her van, and drove away.

I looked down into my clenched fist, and through my fountain of tears, saw this:

There are many different types of crying. Some tears are joyful, others not. Some cries are shallow and short-lived. But some cries, and the ones that do the most good, come from deep down in your toes. I sat in that front seat and sobbed, with each breath reaching back to support yet another wave of release. Minutes crawled on, as little man and I shared our burdens through our tears with only the angels to hear us. I cried out of exhaustion, and sadness, and frustration.

But it was more than that.

I cried because, in a moment where I felt that all was lost, and there was no light to be seen, God made it very clear to me that He had not made any mistakes. Through the words of a perfect stranger, God had spoken to the depths of my mothering soul: words of peace and comfort that pulled back the dark veil of despair and filled me instead with something I had lost. Hope.

Transparency

I was walking around our house the other day, muttering to myself under my breath, cursing each and every object I tripped over.  Nothing was where it was supposed to be.  I had cleaned one spot of the house over five times that morning, and it had been stealthily re-mucked...again.  AGAIN!  Seriously, if I could make money off my children's ability to make messes, I would be blogging from a lounge chair somewhere in the Caribbean.

After about an hour of brooding over the mess, slamming cabinet doors, and snapping at my children, I took a deep breath and asked myself a question:

Why am I doing this?  Nothing is ruined because my house is messy, so why the intense stress to maintain a certain standard?

So I sat down for a few minutes and read a Parents magazine while the world continued to fall apart in my living room... and as I went through that magazine it hit me. The last page was this beautiful advertisement for a mattress set from a big Swedish store that rhymes with Eyepeeya.

Do you see it?  It's just a mattress.  But the bed is made, even though she's still sleeping in it, and the window is clean, and it's sunny outside.  And her closet is organized, and her husband is holding presents. She's got kids blowing confetti at her, for goodness sake...and why?  Because she has a new mattress from Eyepeeya!  Yaaaay!

Now, I know (consciously) that this is an advertisement.  This is a set, not a real home.  It took hours, and many people to make it happen. That is fake sunlight shining on fake trees.  In fact, that might just be a fake dog. I bet they make those. Those presents are empty, and after this photo shoot, every single one of those models went back to their own homes that are most likely not nearly as well kept as this picture.  I KNOW this.  In my brain.

But advertising is really good at doing what it does.  Something inside me is absolutely convinced that because I saw it in a magazine, it is NORMAL.  I believe, subconsciously, that I am the only one with a messy house and imperfect furniture. Everyone else has it together, except me. 

Bam.

We are constantly bombarded with things like this.  Things that tell us how we should dress, what car we should drive, how much we should weigh, what our house should look like, what kind of toothpaste we should use, and what kind of toilet paper will help us feel the least human when we poop (a pretty quilting pattern makes it SO much less so).

Why the puppy? Where does puppy softness come into play around one's butt? Eww.

Then there's the other end of the spectrum.  We have given up the hope that we can win this war against advertisement, so in order to feel like we've got it together, what do we do? 

REALITY T.V.   (Double Bam.)

How does a show like Hoarders become popular?  What about Extreme Cheapskates?  We want to see people mess up more, be uglier, get dirtier, make more mistakes, and live in worse poverty and more scandal than we do.  

It's a beautiful tirade.  I know.  And I think that most people are already aware of this vicious cycle that we've created, and all take part in.  But it's a terrible cycle, and it completely lacks one thing:

TRANSPARENCY

Transparent:  adjective \tran(t)s-ˈper-ənt\

: able to be seen through

: easy to notice or understand

: honest and open : not secretive

Here's the meat of it, folks.  I think that what you need (and I what I need as well), is a lot of that ^.

So I'm going to start.  The other day, after reading that stupid magazine, and coming to these conclusions, I walked around our house with a camera.  

I didn't move anything.  I didn't add any filters.  I just documented.

the living room. this is actually pretty clean. our couch is really old, and the stuffing is coming out of the arms and all three cushions need to be covered with sheets in order to stay together. and yes, those are legos on the floor with my baby.  judge away.

this is my kitchen counter even before breakfast dishes.  you should see it at the end of the day.

this is the other half of the kitchen. nothing really gets put away...but my kids don't care.

um. yeah. this room is my favorite. those are axes on our mantel.  we don't do candles, we do lumberjack. a suitcase from a trip two weeks ago, clothes half folded, coats thrown everywhere. squishy pumpkins from last fall. need I go on?...

 the basement playroom/boys room from one angle.  there are shelves to put things on, but the kids seem to like it better when it's all dumped on the floor.  I have washed my hands of it, and close the door when I leave so I don't have to see it.

...And from another angle.  How did wood get there, you ask?  yeah, dunno. 

a pink room that I've tried to teach her to clean, but she likes it this way

One of the bathrooms: notice the lack of quilted paper.  

What you don't see here is our bedroom, (which is full of piles of clean laundry that will most likely never make it to a drawer)...and the master bathroom.  There are some things that one just should NOT share in photo form...but I will tell you that even when our toilet is flushed it looks like still it needs to be, and that the shower walls and floor are often orange. (shame)

Your home may be cleaner than mine...or it might be messier.  You may have a bit more time to put towards the maintenance of your space, or it might be higher on your priority list...or it might be lower.  But it doesn't really matter, does it? 

I'm not advocating the mis-use of the things we are blessed with.  We should absolutely take care of things as best as we are able.  But that's just it...as best WE can. Not our neighbors, not the guy on TV, not our grandmother or best friend.  

Me, and You...in our own situations, within the ability, time and grace that we've been given.

But there's more.

If we do this so often with our physical lives; judging the state of our homes and our possessions against all those around us, how much more often do we do it with that which is infinitely more important?

Those pictures are of my home, in it's most normal state.  It's kind-of bold, I know, because most people don't show that on a public forum. But would you be ready for more than that? What if I were willing to show you pictures of me in the same state?  Not my physical form, but ME?  

The me that yells at my children.

The me that loathes the successes of classmates and friends.

The me that desires recognition for pretty much anything.

The me that stuffs emotion down to her toes in hopes that it won't need to be addressed.

The me that wants to be in control, no matter what the cost.

The me that looks around the house and fumes discontent...

And the me that looks at the list above, and the things that I just can't type there...and weeps.

We all have a list like that.  Things that we struggle with, and are sinking deeply into day after day. Things that we are afraid to share, even with those closest to us.  Greed, Lust, Hatred, Apathy...

All. of. us.

Each day we fight these battles in secret.  Sometimes they surface in conversation, but we quickly back peddle for fear of judgement, and then tuck those struggles even further down. 

But what if we were transparent?  

Knowing that we all fall short, that we are all struggling...that is a beautiful thing.  The walls can come down, the masks can come off, and we can stand beside each other in our battles, instead of battling against one another.

We were never meant to fight alone. And once we are able to take that bold step towards transparency, we will find that we are surrounded -not by the enemy- but by Grace.