Life Interruptions

The washing machine is choking on bedclothes and pajamas. A sour-sick smell languishes in the air, half-heartedly mingling with the fresh herbal scents of the lavender and peppermint I am using to disinfect everything.

My son sits on the couch and watches me through hollow eyes. Just yesterday, he was bright and laughing. Today, he has aged a hundred years. His body holds him captive; he’s a pawn in the fight that rages inside.

He is limp.

Fire burns across his cheeks.

I can’t see him in his eyes; he looks at me, but he is not there.

We have been up all night, we two, one of us huddled around the toilet, the other standing guard with a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle. He has been dunked in a tub or run through a shower three times already. My hands are chapped from the washing.

The sun has not yet warmed the sleep out of the earth, but already the plans for the day have evaporated. The intentions of six are trumped by the sickness of one.

Jonathan’s birthday—his tenth birthday—is just days away, and for the first time in my mothering career, I actually planned a party. Not just a party for relatives, but a real party with handmade invitations and too-much sugar and ten high-energy testosterone-dripping boy-guests who are all planning to explode things in the backyard by way of celebration.

But everything halts because this child is ill. I cannot go to the store to get the last few supplies for the cake. I can’t get the PVC pipe to make marshmallow shooters. I can’t even get out of the laundry room long enough to sweep the kitchen floor or pick up the school room. I can’t…I can’t…I can’t…

The sudden change in plans, the newly-formed void in my day, opens up a space in me that my heart rushes in to fill. Gurgling, bubbling, spilling out into me from its excess of good—or bad—my heart shows up in that interruption.

It happens so rapidly, I cannot stop it. It is just there, like a sudden string of traffic on an already busy morning, and I can do nothing but look and see what has just bubbled up inside of me simply because plans changed. In an instant, I see the state of things in that hidden room.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the heart. When the day brings something unexpected, or plans change, or life gets interrupted by God’s intentions, your heart will fill the void.

It may rush in with hot words and short-tempers, if that is what it has in greatest supply. Or, if it has enough in stock, it may spill over into your soul with grace and patience. Either way, the greatest indication of where your heart is at is not in how it behaves when life is under control. It is in what happens when life is interrupted. What flows out of your heart then is the surplus, the thing it has the most to spare.

Is it good?

Or is it shameful?

I finally get a moment to stand in the shower while my boy sleeps on the couch with a bowl by his side. I think back to my grade school days. Twice a week, we lined up and trotted down the hall to the art room. We donned oversized shirts to cover up the school clothes we’d already dirtied on the playground and set to work with brushes and pencils and glue that smelled like it should be eaten.

Sometimes, we were given great lumps of clay to work into bowls and saucers and little figurines that our mothers would feel obligated to keep on their dressers until we married.

Those lumps of clay were always gooey and cold in my hands, at first. If I was impatient and tried to bend it into a bowl, it snapped and crumbled. But if I held the clay in my hands and worked it until the warmth of my body infused that bit of earth, then I could twist and turn and bend it in any direction, and it would not break.

My heart is clay.

Sometimes, it is cold and brittle. Any sudden, unexpected molding causes me to break instead of bend. It does not matter if I intend to break or not. It simply happens that way because I was not ready. My heart was not prepared the way it should have been.

But when I dwell in the hands of the Potter, and His life radiates through every molecule of my little lump of dirt, I cannot help but be pliable. He has warmed and readied me for His own purposes.

My life was interrupted today. Was yours?

Did you like what you saw when your heart bubbled up to fill the void in your sense of control?

If not, then take your mind captive to this: Those interruptions are the very things He is using to transform you from a ball of dirt into a holy vessel , sanctified and set apart for Kingdom work. Those things that seem like interruptions and unexpected annoyances do not take Him by surprise. In fact, they are His intention for you.

He uses these things to show you what is in your heart. Then He says, “Now, come into my hands and let us see what we can do with that.”

The interruptions in your day are God’s invitation to dwell in Him. Let Him hold your heart-clay and make it soft. Let Him fill you with His radiating goodness so that when life screeches to a halt, His is the One who fills the void.

Hidden Victims of the Sex Trade

Recently, a celebrity visited a brothel in South America. According to reports, it was the kind of place where women are kept. Their bodies are sold for another’s gain, and he went there, this man, and paid to have sex with a prisoner.

It astonished me, even though I am not a fan of this young man and do not have any illusions about his lifestyle. Still, I could not fathom how a man who had been raised by a woman in this world could grow up to do something like that. I could not understand how a celebrity, who had women throwing their underwear at him and volunteering to birth his babies, could seek out sex from a woman who cannot say no.

A woman who has no choice.

How can a man—any man—sink so low? How can so many men do such a thing? How can there be such a demand for that kind of illicit sex that children must be stolen to meet the demand and women must be beaten, threatened, and raped into obedience to fill the need?

My head spins. What has happened to our men to make them think that this is okay?

I am the mama of boys, you see, boys who will stretch out and grow up into men. I see the world their eyes drink in and it makes me weep inside because I know what it is to shield their eyes and guard their bodies and pray with all hope that they’ll make it to adulthood without any collateral damage. I want to grab them and hold them close and look for the signs of brokenness that makes a man abuse those he was made to protect.

I am the wife of a man who grew up in this sex-saturated culture, a man who, when he was just a boy, went to a sleepover and was introduced to the Playboy channel. He is inundated with sexual advances every time he watches a movie or walks past a checkout aisle in the grocery store. Everywhere, women who are not his wife are tempting him to lust, daring him to think of them as nothing but bodies, and willing him to purchase their sexuality with his time, attention, and finances.

I am a friend to a man whose father struggled with pornography, who left magazines under the same nightstand that held his Bible. This grown-up man showed his boy what really mattered to him without ever saying a word.

I am the neighbor to the man whose parents kept their bedroom door locked, and for good reason. But that boy found the key and opened a door he could never shut again. Even as a grown man, he would struggle to block out the violent and degenerate view of sex he found behind those four walls.

I am the advocate of the man who was once a boy who did not know how to stop another man from using him, a mere child, for his own sexual pleasure. Forever, that child would view sex through his pedophile’s eyes.

I am a citizen in a country where the rights of adults are valued over the welfare of children. Freedom of speech is sacred; we’ll gladly sacrifice the innocence of children in its place. We teach boys to look up to men who make babies with multiple women, cheat on their spouses, hire prostitutes, and produce media that sells sex for profit. We call them athletes, actors, and entertainers, and that makes it okay.

I am a woman surrounded by boys who will grow to be men, and by men who were once boys. In their manhood, they have choices, but in their boyhood, they were victims too.

From a very early age, perhaps before they could understand what was happening, their minds were inscribed with words and images, attitudes and actions that contorted the truth. Natural feelings were awakened far too early by those who did not care to train and nurture them correctly. Boys, young boys, were left to find ways to gratify desires they were not mature enough to handle in ways they were not wise enough to avoid.

They were told that their sexuality was not valuable. They were told they weren’t worth waiting for, that their sexual desires could be filled in any base way by any base woman and it wouldn’t matter at all. They were taught that they could pay for sex, whether on the internet or in some brothel, and it would only prove their masculinity.

They did not understand that they were giving away their manhood for nothing. They were not told that their purity was a gift, that their sexuality was beautiful. In fact, they were taught the opposite. They were told that the proof of their manhood was in how well they spread it around.

How then, could these once-boys grow up to believe that the most intimate part of themselves was worth guarding? How could they believe that their body was so precious, only one woman was worth it? And how could they believe, wait, and hope for the truth that one day, a woman would love, cherish, and guard that gift herself because she knew the importance of it?

How could they understand the evil of the sex trade when comedians joke about hiring hookers as if paying for sex is as innocuous as ordering a pizza? How can they believe that women are worthy of respect when talented, intelligent women use their beauty and their bodies as a commodity? How can they believe that men can wait, that their sexuality is a gift worth receiving, when the world honors the men who think and act like beasts?

They can’t.

If we do not combat the message of male sexuality that the media offers with the truth, we will never raise men who respect women and themselves enough to act any differently than the young celebrity who visited a Brazilian brothel just because he could. Instead, we will raise more men who buy women and degrade themselves because that is what they’ve been taught to do.

We can talk about the evils of sex trafficking. We can work to rescue the women involved. But we will never make real change unless we rescue our boys too.

There are two kinds of victims of the sex trade. Unfortunately, only the girls are making the news.

Stop Fighting!

It has been winter forever. Parts of the country are buried under so much snow, they’re not expected to thaw out until sometime in June. School has been cancelled, children have been cooped up with other children (all of them sharing the same cold back and forth for the past three months), and the mothers, who have long since exhausted the activities on their Snow Day Pinterest boards, have Had Enough.

One such mother posted a desperate plea to Facebook. “Help!” she cried. “My children have not seen the light of day since October and now all they do is fight! I don’t think we’ll make it to spring!”

All of her friends nodded in cyber-understanding. We get it. But we’re also in the same position ourselves and none of us had any ideas. “Let me know when you figure it out!” one of her friends wrote.

That’s code for “Girl, you haven’t seen fighting until you’ve been to my house.”

I decided it was time to call in the big guns to get some answers to how to stop siblings from fighting. I happen to know a few experts on children so I called them up and we had a conference. “Kids,” I said, “I have a friend whose kids are fighting. What should she do?”

My children exchanged glances. I knew they knew, but for a minute, I wasn’t sure if they were going to divulge any information that might be useful to me in the future. I was beginning to think they liked to bicker on occasion.

“There’s ice cream in it for you,” I said because I am a mother. I am not above bribery.

Just like that, the ideas came tumbling out. I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote them down, smug in my brilliance. Sometimes, the best way to figure out this parenting thing is to ask your kids.

So here it is, straight from my kids to you:

Ten Ways to Stop Your Kids from Fighting

(Before You Lose Your Mind)

1) Send them to Separate Corners

It works for boxers and it works for children. All the togetherness of winter and family life can leave people a bit cranky. “Sometimes, kids just need some time alone,” Faith suggests.

She’s my introvert, and I know how she recharges when she gets a break from her siblings. Mandatory rest periods on busy or dreary days help to save her sanity. And mine. It’s brilliant.

2) Play a Game or Build Something Together

This sounds counter-intuitive, especially since I have a distinct memory of slapping my brother over a game of Checkers on a snow day from ages past. And let’s not even talk about the fights we got into over Monopoly.

So. There’s the possibility that my kids are way off on this.

“Won’t playing a game cause more fighting?” I ask.

“Not if the mom plays too,” Jonathan says.

Ah.

“Mom has to play too?”

“Yep. And Dad, if he’s home.” Then he sighs a long sigh and says, “It’s just better when the whole family is together.”

It’s true. My kids do not fight when I play a game with them. It’s just, I’m busy while they’re playing and I don’t take the time to join in the fun. It’s amazing how cheerful they become when I stop and play with them.

3) Divide and Conquer

Split families are a good thing if it means some kids go with one parent or adult and the other kids go with another. Everyone gets to have fun and a little extra attention while getting a break from each other.

Even if you have a lot of kids like we do, Kya suggests it’s sometimes fun to do girl stuff with me and her sister while the boys go do “boy stuff” with Dad. We also divide them up into “older” and “younger” groups so that we can choose activities that are more appropriate for each.

Splitting up the kids changes the family dynamic, and that little break can infuse some new life into worn relationships. When the siblings are back together again, they are generally very happy to see each other. Believe it or not, they can actually miss each other!

4) Get Physical

It’s amazing how therapeutic a wrestling match can be, or a family game of soccer or even a thumb wrestling competition. There’s something bonding about pinning your brother to the floor and making him beg for mercy.

At least, that’s what my kids tell me. They need positive physical contact, especially in the winter when they’re stuck inside together for days on end. Here are some ways my kids like to get physical:

Stuff the kids’ jammies full of pillows and let them belly bounce
Play Twister
Create a relay race or obstacle course in the house
If you have carpeted stairs, make the kids go up and down the stairs in as many ways as they can think of
Turn up the stereo and dance
Do a workout video together
Arm wrestle
Purchase a mini trampoline for the house and take turns jumping
Blow up a balloon and see how long the kids can keep it off the ground with no child touching it more than once in a row
Have a Nerf war!

You get the idea. Anything goes! Just make sure it is loud and sweaty and full-contact, and you’ll be good to go.

5) Turn Crafty

I know, I know. Some of you loathe crafting with your kids.

However, even a very simple craft project like learning to make paper airplanes and seeing how far they can fly can get kids working together and enjoying each other again. Put your crafting phobia aside, head out for some supplies, and get creative with your kids!

6) Find an Adventure

Want to stop your kids from fighting? Get out of the house. Sometimes, all it takes to hit the reset button is a change of scenery. Even in the winter, finding something new to DO is important.

Pile in the car and let the kids give you directions. See where you end up!

Be a tourist in your own town. Visit a place you’ve never been, even if it’s that tiny local restaurant with the flashing EAT sign and a disconcerting amount of bikes in the parking lot. Go explore!

If you’re snowed in, bake cookies and bring them to the neighbors. Or make tiny snowmen on top of parked cars, paint snow murals, or leave crumbs out in the yard and see what kind of animals come and find you! Just make sure you actually leave the house. Go. Go now! Okay, you can finish reading this post first.

7) Plan Something

My kids tell me that they really, really, really love to have something to look forward to. Everyone gets along better when excitement taints the air. That’s why everything after Christmas is kinda…blah. All the anticipation evaporated with the eggnog and now every day is exactly like the one before.

The solution? Plan something. Anything! Just get something on the calendar and talk it up. It can be something as simple as a movie night or something big like a sleepover at Grandma’s. When the kids get to bickering, interrupt them and say, “Hey, guys! What movie should we watch this weekend? Should I make popcorn or brownies?

Remind them that something good is coming up, and let the anticipation work its magic on their behavior.

8) Catch Them Being Good

It’s hard not fighting, especially because brothers and sisters can be so infuriating sometimes. Our kids don’t fight quite a lot, if you think about it. Praise them for the times they get it right.

My kids think a reward system is just the ticket. Focus on the good behaviors you see in your kids. Make a chart! When your kids have gone a certain amount of time without arguing, let them pick a reward.

Paul tells that when kids have been good all day, they should get ice cream, period. Don’t forget the sprinkles!

9) Speak Life

When my kids fight, they know one of their punishments will be to replace every negative thing they said about their sibling with three good things. If punishments are supposed to be painful, it’s not a very good one because it’s actually very fun. In fact, my little darlings mentioned it as a great tool to stop fighting.

If you catch your children being mean-mouthed to each other, stop them and make them spout off three things they love about their sibling. If they have trouble thinking of things, offer some suggestions. “Micah has the best-smelling toes on the planet” or “You have the cutest kissy-face.”

The result is (usually) a fit of giggles.

10) Make the Children Clean the House

This is not one of my kids’ suggestions. They tanked out at #9. However, I figure if your kids won’t stop fighting, you may as well put them to work. They might moan and complain and bicker the whole time, but at least the house will be clean.

Let’s just call it a consolation prize.

*Now you’ve read all the inspiration my kid-experts had to offer. How about you? Do you have any tried-and-true methods for keeping your kids from fighting? Share them in the comments below!

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