Christianity Archives - Page 21 of 41

Fathers and Daughters: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {23}

My dad died when I was not much older than she is now. I think of it in moments like this when he puts his arms around her shoulders and squeezes her to his side.

I think of it when he calls her Fluffer-Puff and asks her about her day, or when she’s tucked into her bed with a book and he sits down by her feet and talks to her in his unhurried way. He is never as hurried as I am.

I think of it when he builds the Swing of Awesome because he knows she’ll love it. It’s constructed out of a curvy old bike handle and a length of chain strung way up high in a sprawling tree. He pushes her out over the field where the bank slides away and her giggles fly away into the sky.

I can’t watch.

I think of my dad when her dad buys her bread sticks because she likes them, or when he let her have chickens even though he did not want chickens. But she did.

I think of it when he asks me how he can pray for her better, and I am reminded of how my own father prayed for me. It is not even a memory. It is part of my making.

And it minsters to me so deeply, the fatherhood of my husband toward our children. I see in him the love my own father had for me, and I am grateful. I see in him the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I am amazed.

I watch them together and I am thankful that she has him. I am thankful that her father’s love will lead her to understand the love of the Father. I know my husband is securing her affections toward the things that are good and holy, pure and righteous, beautiful and lovely. My daddy did the same thing for me, and if the story repeats itself as I think it will, she will not be able, after, to choose anything less.

So on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful for the ministry of fatherhood. I am thankful that God has given us a picture of Himself that I can’t see in my mirror. I am thankful that I can see it in him.

Beautiful Bones: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherood {22}

The makings of something beautiful

Mrs. Smith has sent another chicken carcass over to my house. It is meaty because Mrs. Smith isn’t interested in the economics of meat the way I am. She doesn’t mind doing a half-hearted job on a four-pound fryer, especially since she knows my children love the way she roasts chicken. Something about the way she uses a half-stick of butter to baste it makes it taste better, they tell me.

Mrs. Smith saves her chicken bones for me because of Jonathan. Once, when he was helping Mrs. Smith with some chores around her house, she asked him to throw away some chicken bones for her.

Jonathan was a little perplexed. Those bones were a good two meals away from the trash can, and Jonathan thought he must have heard her wrong. “Don’t you want to make soup out of it first?” he asked, agonizing over the benevolent bones.

Mrs. Smith was surprised. “Oh, I can’t be bothered with that anymore,” she said. Although, Jonathan knew Mrs. Smith could make a fine stock, back in the day when she used to sell lasagnas to her bosses for fifty dollars a pop. “I used three different kinds of cheeses,” she explained, as if to justify their extravagant purchase.

Jonathan listened and considered what to do. It was a very meaty chicken carcass. There’s never that much meat left on a chicken that’s been served at our table. Mrs. Smith hadn’t even touched one whole wing, and bits of white meat mocked him from the bones.

“Can I…can I bring this to my mom?” he asked.

It had not even occurred to Mrs. Smith to save us her chicken bones.

Now, whenever Mrs. Smith roasts a chicken, which seems to be more often now that my husband is out of work, Mrs. Smith packs the leftovers in a casserole dish nestled inside of two grocery bags, paper on the inside, plastic on the outside, and calls Jonathan to come and get it.

Sometimes, she’s only taken a little bite out of one half and says she can’t eat any more, and we all marvel because it is completely ridiculous for a single woman to roast a whole chicken for herself.

But Mrs. Smith is not roasting it for herself. She’s roasting it for us.

And Mrs. Smith tells Mrs. Greenlee that I make chicken stock out of the bones, and Mrs. Greenlee tells Mrs. Smith that I bake my own bread, and they both smile and nod and steel up their resolve to feed my children more cookies because they both know.

They know what it’s like to feed a family out of the scraps and the leftovers and the would-be discarded things. They’ve both done it. Nearly every mother from their generation did, not because it was fashionable but because it was necessary.

And while it might not be the most glorious thing, to pick through bones and skin, scavenging for some redeeming bit, they both know there’s a tremendous joy in that, in gathering up the parts that might have gone to waste and making something of it.

I feel that joy myself because I love redemption in any form. I love it in a stock pot full of bones and discarded vegetable trimmings that could’ve been thrown to the compost pile but instead have been saved in the freezer for such a time as this. I love it in the hands of Christ, breaking bread and serving not-enough fish to a crowd that ended up with plenty. I love it in the call to sinners so broken, they can’t possibly be worth a thing. Yet theirs is the Kingdom of God.

It is the leftover things, the scraps, the nothings that make up the beautiful story of the cross. It is the leftovers, the scraps, the nothings that allow me to nourish my children richly and deeply. It is the leftovers, the scraps, the nothings that make up such a beautiful part of my day.

So on this beautiful day, as the rich stock simmers on my stove and the smell of garlic and onions makes me happy to be inside, I am thankful that nothing is lost. Nothing is discarded. Everything can be redeemed.

Today, I get to do a little redemptive work myself, transforming the broken bones into something good. It is a small thing, but it is a godly thing. And on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am happy for the small and godly things that speak of the truest parts of heaven. Broken. Cast off.

Redeemed.

When it Doesn’t Add Up: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {20}

It was the counting by 2’s that got to me.

“Zero—it is zero, right?” Kya asked as she began.

“Yes, the even numbers start with zero.”

“Okay, zero-two-four-six-eight-who do we appreciate?” she chants and dances the way we’ve been doing for months. “Ten…ten-nine-eight-seven-six…”

“No, no Kya, you’re counting backwards now.”

“Oh!” she says with a grin and begins again. “Two-four-six-eight-ten-twenty-thirty-forty…”

“Wait…now you’re counting by tens. Remember, counting by two’s is just skip-counting. Just say our little chant. Remember our little chant?” Of course you remember our chant. We’ve been doing it for months and months and months on end.

Kya jumps right in, happily chanting all the wrong numbers. 12—14—15—16, she says at last, and I do not tell her she is wrong.

“Let’s write them out on paper,” I say instead. Sometimes, seeing the numbers helps, but today, she can’t remember which way a 10 goes, and she can’t remember what to call a 12, and she’s sure that 20 should have a three in it, somewhere.

She can’t do it.

She’s six-and-a-half and she can’t do it. Not today.

I take my heavy heart upstairs, and I think I will not cry. I will not cry. Not today.

But I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what is wrong, and I don’t know how to help. I have helped so many children, but I can’t help her.

It is agony. I want nothing more than to protect her from feeling stupid or slow or different. I want to hug her and tell her it’s okay not to know 1+0 or how many cookies you have left if you eat one. Just eat them all, I think, and then it won’t matter.

Because Kya is exceptional, and I want her always to know it.

Under her bright blue eyes and dimpled smile is a pure heart and tender spirit. Always caring, always attentive, always gentle—that’s my Kya. She is delightful, and delighted, in every circumstance. We call her our Sunshine in Seattle, because it’s always sunny when Kya is around.

She is also highly creative and so perceptive, it’s almost unnerving. Even as a baby, she could tell when something was different, something was new, something was off. It was her habit, every morning, to survey my wardrobe choices and give me her unrestrained opinion in the sweetest possible way; we nicknamed her “Quality Control.” She is witty. She is funny. She is the only one of our children who gets her father’s humor and the only one who can, so quickly, give it right back.

But she is also soft. Fragile. Vulnerable. It will not take much to crush her. Not much more than a stack of flashcards she can’t answer. And I worry about that, way down deep and in words I don’t want to say. I think of my impatience and I wonder, “Will I be the one to take it from her? Will I be the one to make her feel less than she is? Will my beautiful baby grow up to feel inadequate because her mother couldn’t let her be enough?”

That brings the tears out that I said I would not cry. That brings me to my knees and I beg, beg, God to make me more patient. Now.

When I come down from upstairs, Kya has drawn a picture for me. It is a page filled up with circles, each one filled up with a different pattern of beautiful colors. Her math page has been decorated with patterns and grinning people with legs and arms coming directly out of their heads. She doesn’t believe in drawing bodies.

She tells the boys all about it, but she can’t think of a word. “I can see it,” she tells them, “I just can’t say it.” Her sentences are filled with pauses and slowly spoken phrases as she tries to collect thoughts from a brain that can’t access words very quickly. When she was a toddler, she had her own language. It bubbled out of her in giggles and turned-around phrases. But she knows enough now to try to reach for words that sit just beyond her grasp.

Oh, how I love her.

She laughs at her brothers and her own silly words and they laugh too. She lets them answer her math facts and then lines them up to tell them Bible stories that are probably heretical and asks them questions that don’t make much sense.

“Paul, what’s first Genesis chapter six?” she asks.

Paul squirms uncomfortably in his chair because he has neglected his lesson.

“It’s God. The answer is God,” she says. “Micah? Mr. Micah? Do you know who made you?”

“Dod,” says Micah, because his tongue doesn’t quite say the things he thinks. Kya understands about that.

“Yes. God,” she says as hushed and holy as possible. Micah and Paul nod and try to remember that in this class, the answer is always God.

The answer is always God.

Who made you? God. Who knows your worth? God. Who created you just as you are? God. Who can be glorified in your weaknesses? God.

I believe. Lord, help my unbelief.

Because it’s one thing to believe it for me. It’s another thing to believe it for my babies. It’s one thing to come to terms with my own faults, but God—oh God! –it’s quite another to come to terms with theirs.

That requires faith, and on this beautiful day of motherhood, I find my faith is lacking. I find my mother-heart tempted to fear. I find myself worrying when I am told to trust. Trust. It is a beautiful thing to be able to trust my children to the God who made them, to see the missing stitch and give them back to the One who knit them together. It is a beautiful thing to know that love always adds up, even when the math facts don’t.

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