Wordy Wednesday

We visited a new bookstore today with friends.  We read stories in the floor while the smallest ones climbed around and the biggest ones listened with the round eyes of storytelling.  There were corrections and cookies, smiles and practice at obeying.  It was a sweet respite from the rain for this book-loving mama.

While we were there, I picked up a hardcover copy of Charlotte's Web for our collection.  I hope it will be a favorite classic, pulled from our bookshelf often.  It had a foreword in it from Kate DiCamillo that was so lovely I needed to copy it down somewhere.  That somewhere, today, was here.  I wanted to copy the whole thing...but that felt too much like plagiarism.  So, an excerpt:

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"Every word of Charlotte's Web bears the full weight of White's love for the people, seasons, animals, and arachnids of this world.  And every world of the book shows us how we can bear the triumphs and despairs, the wonders and the heartbreaks, the small and large glories and tragedies of being here.

We can bear it all by loving it all.

These autumn days will shorten and grow cold.  The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall.  Christmas will come, then the snows of winter.  You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world...Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond.  The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again.  All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur- this lovely world, these precious days...

This is Charlotte's promise to Wilbur.

It is also E.B. White's promise to his reader: things will continue; life will go on.  It will be beautiful, astonishing, heartbreaking.  And as long as you keep your eyes and heart open to the wonder of it, as long as you love, it will be okay."

-excerpt from Kate DiCamillo's foreword for Charlotte's Web by E.B White

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This is a lovely world.  Precious days.  And they are mine to enjoy...so long as I keep my eyes and heart open to the wonder of it.

Hypothetically speaking

"God cannot be faithful in your hypothetical."

Someone had said it to her in the middle of her sadness and now she was repeating the truth back to me.  It didn't even make sense to me at first, but she knew it would eventually and texted the words to me right in the middle of our appetizers so I wouldn't forget them later.

I haven't.  In fact, I have repeated them again and again.  As it turns out, He cannot be faithful in my hypothetical, because my hypothetical situations are not reality.  They are not a thing of substance, and I cannot possible fathom up God's sovreign care in situations that do not actually exist.  I am certain the Israelites did not picture the Red Sea pealing to each side as they approached water before them and an army behind. It is unlikely the Israelites would have supposed that God would save His people from an enraged giant with a small boy visiting the army with a lunch drop-off or that John understood how his life of locust-eating and prophesying would welcome in a world-changing Messiah.  I'm nearly certain the disciples had pictured a baby for a Savior or the cross and empty tomb as the throne and greatest conquest of their promised King.

It's just...He doesn't do what we expect.  When I summon up all the what-if's, it's nearly impossible that I can also imagine His manner of faithfulness to me in that dreamed-up situation.  Then I am only left with the situation without His care imagined in...and all that leaves is a great deal of fear.

 God doesn't expect me to be able to say, "Even if "x" happens, I KNOW that He will be enough.  I will be fine with that.  I will take it with grace and I KNOW that it will be okay."

He's given me grace for today.  For my situation.  He has not armed me with specific faith for tomorrow's challenge or someone else's particular pain.  I can, in fact, imagine up a thousand situations still that fill me with anxiety and doubt.

But everyday....every day in every situation, He has been enough.  I have known more solidly than I've known anything else in my life that, in that moment, He was enough all on His own.

I didn't summon up the ability to withstand yesterday.  There was grace.  I didn't drum up the faith to believe hard enough in Him today to make it through...His pervasive joy was just, well, pervasive enough to be as real as the sadnesss.  And so, tomorrow...He will be faithful.  There will be enough grace there too.  I 'm not sure what challenge I'll meet, and I don't have to.  I don't have to have enough faith to walk through every situation...just mine and today's.  That's all He's given me, so that's all I can have.  Faith is not something I can muster up or manufacture, but a gift given one day at a time.

So out of her own cup of sorrow, my friend poured out a bit of her healing that night over our shared appetizer plates.  Months later, I'm still sipping the truths.  It seems over and over and over again, the Lord has best reflected Himself in His people around me...and I fall in love with Him and them a little more with each reflection.

Wordless Wednesday: Front Porch

(She ran out of grapes)

(Samuel gave her more....lol)

(tippy toes...my favorite)

Walking to Samuel (who is holding grapes) with all the enthusiasm.  If you haven't gathered, the key to this girl's heart is: grapes.

Ordinary

I know it is true.

I know that most mothers look down at the small people that are their daily charge, blessing, challenge and legacy and think, 

"Gracious.  Extraordinary."

It is EXTRAORDINARY to watch a tiny one look at symbols, make sounds and blend it together to read a word.  It is magical to watch a tiny mind downloading the world around him, making connections and asking the most interesting, boggling questions.  It is fascinating to see a small person grow and change and wind like a river with all its unexpected turns and periods and peaceful and rapid currents.  

Yet.  I know it is ordinary.  Universal.  It is a gift, but I know it is not my unique present.  I know I am not mothering the way no one has before nor are my children doing abnormally delightful things.  We are supremely normal.

And...you guys, that only makes it more magical to me.  That in this world we get to bear witness to each other's lives.  That we get to be the ones to see each other put pieces together, revel in the people and world around us, make sense of the places we live and the things we do.  We get to watch each other and help each other along.  We get to belong to each other.

It is all very ordinary, myself, my people and my days.  We are doing very normal things, learning what generations have learned before us, feeling the same things those who have gone before us have felt.

I am taken aback by the gift that there is so much of that miracle everywhere...and that the abundance doesn't make it less extraordinary...but somehow...

makes it even more.

Letters to Carter

Dear Carter,

What a different guy you are than I imagined when I was bouncing you all through the night and staring down in your face as I rocked you all day long.  

Of course, some things seem to stay the same.  You still have rules, love things to be in order, and you prefer being in charge.  That hasn't changed at all.  

But my you surprise me some days with you gentle ways of helping me along through the day.  The way you learn things in a totally different approach than I expected.  Sometimes I predict exactly what you are going to do and find myself shaking my head in disbelief.

Learning how to "do school" is a learning curve for us both...but we are both getting more of a kick out of it than I could have ever imagined.  You are so interested in this world and so enthusiastic about figuring it out.  You work so hard and persevere so much more than I would have imagined when you have to stretch those thinking muscles.

Carter, my favorite thing about you in this particular phase is watching you delight in caring for others. You are tiny baby boy.  You are just a little sweet baby rounding the corner of boyhood.  But you are stretching on tiptoe to find that boy.  You are pulling heavy doors open, carrying big bags, holding arms for your toddling sister to walk into, and helping your brother when he can't figure it out.  You are thinking hard when you don't understand, persevering when you are tired of trying so hard, and working on things that confuse you until you figure them out.  You are bravely letting yourself grow and change and become a boy who can not only do things to care for himself, but can also care for the ones around him.

This boy you are becoming...he's so fun.  You love flashlights, tape measures, Elephant and Piggie books, reading, reading, reading, and running as fast as you can.  You eat enormous amounts of food and love watermelon more than anything.  You are becoming interested in drawing for the first time ever and love rhyming words.  You still adore listening to Winnie the Pooh and eating pancakes and bacon and syrup on Saturday mornings.  You are the best tidier of toys I have ever met, and you love measuring things and attaching my skinny yellow belt to anything you can think of and dragging it around the house.

Carter-bug, I know I will love every phase because I love YOU, but I do really love you being five.  You are interesting, caring, and so very creative.  I am so glad you are my son.

I love you.

Love, Mama

Wordless Wednesday

A Giant Sandbox

I have the type of aunt that I can text a few weeks ahead and say...."I'm off for a week...can I bring the kids to your house?"  It's a week she and my uncle had to work and my cousin had to go to school, but she said yes without even a little hesitation.  Even when she thought my cousin might need SURGERY in the middle.  (He didn't, in the end.)

We packed up all the things...though probably just half of what I packed for Carter's first trip...that lasted four days.  :)

We stopped by Grandma's house on the way.  She fed us well and read thousands of books.  This is the children's FAVORITE thing about Great-Grandma for sure.

It was the perfect time to be at the beach.  The weather was warm without being stifling.  The beach had been abandoned for school by summer vacationers and the group that flocks to the coast for the winter had not yet arrived.  It was really convenient and nice.

My kids can feel like an uphill battle indoors.  I feel like I'm in constant "correction mode" for voices too loud, arms too rough, feet too fast, etc, etc, etc.  They have to learn these things.  But outside?  They barely need me.  Given open space, these three hardly need a toy.  Which was good, because one non-walker + umbrella + towels + waterbottles + sunscreen + lunch was pretty much my packload capacity.

Since my children don't know anything at all about central time, we were up early enough every day to be on the beach pretty early (I mean, in the sand at 8 am you guys)

Ella promptly crawled straight into the ocean and only got angry when I prevented her from drowning.  Carter loved splashing in the waves as they hit (Gulf "waves" = perfect speed for a cautious five year old) and letting them wash him up on shore.  He jumped over them, fell into them, and attempted to swim in twenty-four inch depths...because that is precisely how far I let him go without me.  Again, the Gulf means he would have had to walk approximately 18 miles out to get deeper than this :)  Samuel was happy in a few inches of water...splashing and running.   

We ate lunch in phases from about ten till 12:30 when everyone started tiring.

Normally, Ella would take a little nap each morning while I rocked her in the sand and the boys played.  It helped her stay awake on the short drive home where all three would pass out for a couple of hours.

Thankfully, we had the perfect weather.  It was sunny or partly sunny all but the last day we were there.  To be outside all morning every day was just the break we all needed.  All four of us seem to bloom in the sun and the wide open space.  It was such a fun week.

Someone asked if I had a relaxing week.  

Well.

No.  Not at all.  But fun?

Yes.  So fun.

It was a lot of work, all the swimsuits and sand and stuff.  But it was the good kind of work.  The fun kind.  The same brand of work of camping or road trips or parties with friends.  Sure, it is work.  But it is fun work.  Kind of the way I feel about this parenting gig in general.  Mostly.

Every evening the kiddos would wake around the time our family came home from work and school.  The boys made an enormous amount of noise that was accepted with much gracious patience.  Uncle Scott read and listened to stacks of books and Aunt Beth cooked full, delicious meals every single night.  That was a vacation in and of itself!

(Uncle Scott and I reading when I was three)

It did rain on our last day, so at my aunt and uncle's recommendation, we went on base to the National Aviation Museum.  It was all free and such a fun time.  There were so many things to see, and so many cockpits to climb in!

The boys had such a great time climbing around!

We drove into downtown Pensacola for lunch.  I researched a cute little cafe for lunch.  It wasn't really very cute, but it was super delicious and we were four of five lunch patrons, so it was super easy.  Good enough for me!

When it was finally time to head home, the kids traveled well and patiently.  I hit the jackpot with road trip children.  They are so great in the car.  I've found little tricks along the way that help things along...but really, they are just so great in the car.

The trip wasn't perfect.  My van broke down just before we left.  There was this one moment the kids were all crying in the sand at the same time and I wasn't sure how we were going to recoup and get to the car with dignity.  There was the point mid-morning EVERY SINGLE DAY when Samuel had to take an extended trip to the bathroom and we all have to go because: one grown up. There was the point on the return trip when I finally plugged in the long-awaited and promised DVD player for the last two hour leg of the trip...and it didn't work.  The trip was a lot of shuffling and hauling and packing and moving.

But good things take work. Good times take planning.  It takes effort to love other people and do fun things.  And honestly, there is nothing I would trade for our week.  They are kids who know how to wait in line for sunscreen and who love to help Mama...because they have to.  All three know what it is to be patient and chip in to be able to share in a good time, and I am grateful for that.  

I'm so grateful for family who open up their lives and homes to us.  Thankful for the memories I made with my three adventures and for the adventure it is to be their mama.