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100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Wonder {2}

Snow falling in the neighbor’s backyard

Yesterday, it snowed. The kids were having breakfast when it happened. The drizzly rained turned into fat white feathers that floated softly down from the sky and clung, for a moment, on the evergreens.

All five children dropped their spoons and rushed to the windows, wonderstruck. The twins, who have not seen very much snow in their four years of living, ran to the sliding glass door and looked out on the deck. Jonathan took pictures. Kya asked about sledding. Everyone insisted that we were going to have to take a snow day.

Jonathan can’t help but capture the moment

It was beautiful, to be sure, but somewhere in the course of days, I have wearied of snow. It covers the roads like it did the day my father died, and I worry. It blows up in my face and burns my fingers and makes the chicken water freeze over. It falls in my shoes and freezes my feet all the way to church.

But my children did not know all these things. They were simply captivated by the magic of it. Their faces shone with wonder. Even though snow and I are not on the best of terms, I couldn’t help but be swept up by the wonder myself, like a child.

Wonderstruck

I wondered, as I stared out the window, how many miracles I overlook each day because I have become too old to see. I wonder how much I have missed because I have ceased to wonder. I wonder how much I have missed of God because I have taken the miracles for granted, like the Israelites who grumbled against the manna that fell from the sky and kept them satisfied enough to complain.

I remembered a time some years ago, when I had an opportunity to crawl up on Jesus’s lap like a child and stare at his face in wonder. But I was too big and stood off in the crowd with a frown on my face and a to-do list on my mind.

It happened on a Sunday, and it was all John Paul’s fault.

John Paul is a grown up boy who comes to church every Sunday in the same suit. He is older than me on the outside, but not on the inside.

John Paul lives with his married brother because he can’t quite live on his own, and he walks to church in cowboy boots and a baseball hat because he can’t quite drive. He has a bike which sometimes gets stolen and sometimes gets lost, but he doesn’t mind walking and he doesn’t mind hitching a ride.

Every week, he counts the number of Volkswagen Beetles he sees so he can report the number to me the following Sunday, although I’m 99% sure he inflates the stats because I’ve never in my life seen 15,000 Beetles and I’ve been to junkyards.

If you talk to John Paul for any length of time, you will hear about his favorite football team and the latest movie he has seen. And, you will hear about his mother who killed herself when John Paul was not old enough to understand. He will never be old enough to understand.

But one thing John Paul understands is Jesus.

One Sunday, I was having trouble focusing on the sermon. Was it just me or was this going longer than usual? Was it just me or had I heard this all before? When the pastor launched into a “Come to Jesus” message, I stopped talking notes and started thinking about what to make for lunch.

The cat remains unimpressed with snow or anything else

The pastor’s voice filtered in as I considered whether or not I had tomato soup to go with the grilled cheese. All the parts about sin and a holy God and a perfect payment washed over me without making me a drop wet. “God is a gentleman,” the pastor was saying, “and a just judge! If you don’t want Jesus to pay your debt, you are welcome to pay it on your own. But the debt must be paid. The question is, who is going to pay it? You? Or Jesus?”

From somewhere in the sanctuary, John Paul’s voice rang out, “Pastor, I choose Jesus!”

Astonished, I looked over at him. He held his hat in his hands and he leaned in to hear every familiar word. His face wore the wonder of the gospel, his eyes were wet with tears that came from knowing what had been done for him.

My face burned with shame. John Paul is just a great big child whose heart is still young enough to hear the same story over and over without growing old in the hearing. But I was not. I had lost my wonder. I had grown weary of the miracle.

But God, in His mercy, has given me five pairs of new eyes. He has given me ageless hearts, like John Paul’s, to remind me of the ordinary, astonishing miracles of earth and eternity. He has given me a thousand new opportunities to hear the same story with new ears and to be humbled, felled, and wonderstruck at what has been done for me.

I am reminded when I read the Easter story to my boys and Paul begins to cry. I am reminded when Kya prays almost every night, “Thank you, Jesus, for dying for my sins.” I am reminded when Micah’s voice comes down from his perch on the toilet where he’s singing “Holy, holy, holy!” in his loudest voice. I am reminded when Jonathan wants to give all his money in the offering or when Faith asks when we’re going to adopt a child who needs a home.

The beauty of these days is that they are full of newness. Awe. And wonder. I am given a chance to be a child again, and that is something I need.

“Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” –Mark 10:15

Awed

100 Beautiful Days {of motherhood}

Micah

When the busyness of the day has ended and the last charging footstep has quieted into the night, I find myself compelled to look in on my children, still and softly breathing, while they sleep.

I have been with them all day. I have been pursued into the very corners of my home, I have served all the needs and all the wants until I have nothing left, so why should I seek them out for one more look, one more glance at the faces I know so well?

Because when the stillness comes, I am able to see my life like a picture. Every detail is captured in a single snapshot and I am able, finally, to pause and consider. I am able to see that my life is beautiful.

Even in the chaos, in rooms littered with Legos and laundry, I am overcome. I stare at the beauty captured by the quiet and I am compelled to worship.

Sometimes it takes the darkness to see.

The light brings the hurry, the motion, the stream of images that cloud my vision like a movie playing out on a big screen. It moves at such a pace, I do not know where to look. I am unable to comprehend it all. I am surrounded by beauty, even overwhelmed by it. But I am rarely overcome because the urgency of this world hurries me out of worship. It keeps my feet in the clay when it’s my knees that should be on the ground.

It is hard enough to slow down and consider the beauty of these days, to find and reflect on the things that keep our hearts soft and our eyes drawn up in worship. For there is mud and mire all around us, but in every day God gives us a glimpse of glory, a rainbow over a muck-brown world or a crumb of manna in the desert.

The trick is to notice.

Every day, God gives us a glimpse of glory

Because it’s easy to notice everything but the beauty. We notice the bills that need to be paid and the hair that needs brushing, the chores that need to be done and the dinners that need to be cooked. We notice which child is wet and which child is sleepy and how the baby is out of diapers.

And all that noticing gets us nowhere because it keeps our eyes fixed to the stuff of earth, to the mud and the dust and the dreariness that we never seem to overcome because we are made of it.

But all around in this earth grow bushes afire with God, their roots sinking down into the same dirt that muddies our kitchen floors and stains the Sunday clothes. Can you see them? Lift up your eyes. Bend your knees.

When we begin to notice—to see—the flaming beauty of these days, we are changed. It’s hard to be concerned about that pebble in your shoe when you’re standing on holy ground. But it is a joy to stand in the mud when there’s a rainbow overhead.

Here in our homes, children of Abraham, children of God, we are standing on holy ground. We are raising eternity. We are impacting forever. We are reflecting in actions and words the very image of God. In our daily work and daily bread we find shadows and pictures of glory, simple still-life portraits of the hand of God.

Can you see them?

This series is about taking the time to see, really see, the beauty in the everyday moments of life and motherhood. It is about finding that little piece of holy ground in the middle of the mess and fixing our knees to it.

You can expect, over the next 100 days, to hopscotch across the holy ground with me, to find joy and delight in the beauty of the every day, and to pause there to worship. My hope and prayer is that you will respond, first to God and then to me, with snapshots of your own.

Come mothers and fathers, come friends, and notice with me. Take off your shoes, forget about the blisters, and delight in these days.

They are beautiful.

Paul

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Harvest {Day 30}

The beginning is a great place to start! Click here for Day 1.

It doesn’t take a lot of effort to grow blackberries here. They sprout up and creep out wherever any bird has dropped a seed. The ditches are full of them, as are the hedgerows. People spray them with weed killer and hire goats to eat them, but the blackberries can’t be beat. They line every road and eat up tamed property until it’s turned wild again with thorny brambles and stone-hard green fruits.

But if the summer is warm and the fall dry, the berries on all these wild vines begin to swell and ripen until they drip down in inky clusters. Everywhere, the air is heavy with the scent of sweet fruit and blackberry wine, and people come out with Tupperware bowls and empty ice cream buckets to forage for the makings of a pie.

My husband loves a good blackberry pie. He starts thinking of blackberry pie around June when the brambles are in bloom and the neighbors are in full blackberry attack mode. Mr. Greenlee is out in his yard with clippers and napalm, but Jeff is up on a ladder wearing leather gloves, carefully redirecting the willful vines through the evergreens so they’ll grow where the sun shines the brightest. He cranes his neck when we drive past berry-laden ditches and silently makes a plan for September.

When the berries start to soften in the sun, I know there will be buckets stowed between the seats of the minivan “just in case,” and extra trips out to Jeff’s favorite berry-picking spot. It’s right along a walking trail that follows a river past an eagle’s nest. People come there every day to run or ride horses and to watch the osprey swoop down into the water for fish. Sometimes there are otters or delightfully lazy snakes that slither slowly over the rocks and a boy who must remember that his mother doesn’t want him to pick blackberries with hands that stink of snake.

But rarely, very rarely, are there any other berry pickers. We live in a place where “organic” is practically a religion and people pride themselves on eating local and composting the leftovers. But berries? Well, berries are just a pain to pick.

I thought about this one afternoon when Jeff led us on a berry-picking mission down the gravel path along the river. The days had been particularly beautiful, warming the blackberries until they tasted like they’d been dipped in sugar. But we’d already been out picking several times, and I had other things on my mind. I did not feel like fighting the brambles and letting them claw through my jeans while I filled my bucket little by little with those frustratingly small berries. It seemed like a waste of time, and I still had a few splinters from the last time we did it.

“It’s such a short season, Kristie,” Jeff said when he noticed my lack of enthusiasm. “It could rain tomorrow and then it will all be over.”

It happened every year. When the clouds in the forecast resulted in actual precipitation, the berries turned snowy with mold in a matter of hours, and that was the end of the blackberry picking. We needed to take advantage of every sunny day that stretched into fall to fill up the buckets and gather in the harvest.

So I was silent and focused my attention on the task at hand. Birds flew overhead, swooping bugs into their beaks, fattening up for the long flight south. The kids chattered and hummed and filled themselves full of what was left of summer. It was lovely, really.

Faith stood next to me, slowly picking berries, turning each one over and checking for bugs before putting it in her bucket. “She is getting tall,” I thought. Her tenth birthday was coming up, and I was having trouble getting my mind around it. It’s such a short season, Kristie, I heard Jeff say, but he was far down the path with Jonathan, hacking down vines with a machete so the kids could pick the berries hiding underneath.

It’s such a short season. It seemed to me he had said the same thing much earlier in my life, at a time when I thought my talents were better used on something other than parenting. Foolishly, I thought God’s will for me was a little less…ordinary. I had failed to see the shortness of the season and the richness of the fruit all around me.

I looked at Faith. Her eyes are green, a little lighter than mine. She smiled. “You’re really good at picking berries, Mom,” she said.

I glanced down. Without even realizing it, I had filled the better part of my bucket.

“I think that’s the best way to do it,” she continued. “Just find a spot and start picking. If you keep walking, looking for a better spot, well, first of all, you might get lost, and second of all, you won’t get very many berries.”

“I think you’re exactly right,” I said, wondering how my life would have been different if I applied that advice to other areas of my life.

“So I think it’s just best to sit right down, and don’t even worry about the ones you can’t reach. If you can’t reach them, they’re not for you.” She shrugged at the simplicity of the thought.

It was a hard truth to swallow. The biggest and best berries were always just out of my reach, it seemed. Other paths were more interesting and less full of briars and that’s why more people walked there. That’s why I wanted to walk there.

It was foolish to sit down when the path kept on going, foolish to waste time picking berries and fighting brambles, foolish to embrace a task most people don’t want to do. It was foolish, but it was also brave and wonderful and perfectly delightful. Long after the vines have withered and the berries have gone, I will be enjoying the fruits of my labors. Rich pies, cobblers and jams, and a freezer full of fruit to carry us through the winter and beyond—all because we stayed faithful to the task. Long into winter and beyond, we will be enjoying the deep and satisfying harvest of a job well-done.

The season is short. The work is hard. But the result is worth it all.

Micah enjoying the fruit of the season

Thank you for joining us for this series. It has been a (busy) joy!

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