When the family tree is tipping

I glanced up while feeding the baby today at the one of only two walls in my home that bear any semblance of “home decorating” and had to smirk.  Somehow in the chaos that has ensued here this past week, the tree painting on the family wall was all askew:

It seemed fitting.  Saturday evening after what we thought was “a quick stomach bug” had ended, our friends came over to buy some hay.  As Chris stood in the hall with his buddy Mark, he said perfectly calmly, “Hey, you’d better move over, you’re gonna get wet.”  In a quick second, the craziness of what was happening clicked and he jumped into action, grabbing towels, calling for reinforcements, etc.  We eventually had to turn the whole house water off to stop the flooding down the hallway.  Simultaneously, I was outside, in the pasture overseeing goats and milking and such, musing about castration methods with my friend Sam.  Rylee ran up to me and said “I don’t feel good” and promptly lost her dinner just shy of my boots.  As I walked her inside, I heard the calls for help and towels and got wind of the “water emergency”.  Um, yes, turns out the septic pump quitting and the subsequent “backing up” that happens, it indeed quite a crisis.

By the next morning, we realized our floors were buckling and we needed to call insurance, which we’ve never done so that was a whole new thing to figure out.  They sent people out immediately to put up industrial fans to dry the floor and walls and rip out anything damaged.  While I’m rinsing out throw up bowls (without running water), there are all these workers in our house.  And the extra fun fact here?  Though it was a weekend day, my hubby was filling in for our pastor who was on vacation….so he absolutely had to go to church.  He apologetically departed and went to Safeway with a bottle of shampoo and washed his hair in the bathroom there so that he didn’t have to preach with serious bedhead.  Initially, a good part of our downstairs was sequestered off with thick plastic and full of the big fans, but by this afternoon it looked like this:

Imagine fans so loud you can’t hear if someone is throwing up in the next room or calling Mom for help…seriously, they were loud.  We went for a drive a few days ago to get a break and though all seemed okay, before we made it home someone was throwing up in the van.  This went on for a couple days and by today, despite the continual stomach issues people were having (as in:  “Mom, gross, help…Finn was playing on the deck but he just threw up all his chocolate cookies and the dog is eating it” and “Babe, I know you just got to work but I feel like I’m dying, you gotta come home right now”) we had to get out of here.  We went “hiking” for a couple hours on a trail nearby and breathed deep the fresh, quiet air.  It was therapeutic and wonderful even if it ended with me carrying an 8 month old on my back and a 35 pound three year old on the front.

The vintage, cutesy sign I bought for our anniversary was suddenly more than an art piece, it was us. 
It was the way we shift into action in the midst of crisis and the way we both try to be gracious even though we feel like we’re about to snap.  How he stayed up hours one night to do dishes and clean counters just so there was one space that didn’t look like this (after the clean up crew came and emptied out a closet into our schoolroom):

This is real life.  It’s where the family tree either puts down deeper roots and survives the storm or topples over and gives up.  We might have been blown around a bit this week.  For sure.  There were moments that left me feeling one step from crazy.  But then as I’m weeding the garden and digging out the cat poo that is infiltrating my spinach, Finn says to Audrey, “Guess what? I like ants.  I found an ant and I put it in my pants and its in there.  Right now.  I have an ant in my pull-up!”.  Really, honestly?  I laughed a lot.  I told and retold the stories and made them seem like entertainment because the alternative, the sitting around in a puddle of tears, just doesn’t work so well.

My parents are in blistering heat halfway around the world sharing hope and love and LIFE with people who can’t imagine my fuss over losing a bathroom for a week or three.  They’d be thrilled just to have a toilet.  As I sweat it out in my laundry room next to the fans doing their (loud) work, I think of my mom who can’t stand hot weather, laying that down to go where God called, even if its 118 degrees.  As I swish out yet another throw up bowl, I’m keenly aware that there is an incredible hospital an hour away from here chock full of children who would give anything to just have a bad bug for a week.  They just want to live.  Perspective is everything.  It’s true.

So, for the record, we’re still standing folks.  A bit bruised and weary but the fact remains:

We’re in this together.

Rainy day homeschool

They tell me to sit down.  While I’ve been on an important phone call they’ve been rummaging through dress ups and their own imagination and come up with an elaborate game.  They take me on a journey with the map in the living room, across the ocean in a steam ship, by train over land…all the while Caleb points to each spot on the wall map telling me where they are traveling.

After the “travels” they disperse around the house.  I watch and listen and smile.

Caleb:  “I’m pounding nails in (holding an imaginary hammer and pencils for ‘nails’), is this a good place?  Watch out for my nails Audrey.”

Audrey:  “Yes, it’s good.”

Mom:  “What are you doing?”

Caleb:  “Building Audrey’s orphanage, I’m almost done.”

Mom:  “What’s the name of the orphanage?”

Audrey (ever so matter-of-factly):  “A Chunk of Love Orphanage.”

Mom (deep breath and huge grin – could I love them any more?):  “That’s awesome.  I love it.”

Somehow, don’t ask me how, Caleb tells me that he’s Ronald Reagan before he was President of the United States and he is building Audrey (who tells me she’s dressed up to be Clara Barton because she didn’t like the name Gladys Alward) an orphanage in Hong Kong. I bite my tongue and try not to laugh, looking at the outfit Caleb has chosen, brown Carthartt coveralls and leather gloves and brown leather boots.

Kyler is a rock climber.  He’s scaling Mt St Helens (our living room recliner chair) before it blew up.

Rylee makes me guess who she is…her bright fuschia sari is a dead giveaway though and I get it right on my first guess, Amy Carmichael.

And this little one is content to watch it all unfold…

No, she’s not embarrassed that she is still in her pajamas at 3:00 in the afternoon 🙂

Finding rest in the midst of chaos

I sit across the table from her in the early morning as we drink coffee in the corner of this tiny breakfast spot that is a 45 minute drive for both of us.  It’s the perfect middle meeting place.  She drives south as I’m driving north.  It isn’t anything pretty to look at, this little diner that seems to be full of locals who all know each other and talk farming and friendship and bureaucracy.  But to me, on this rainy Saturday, it is sacred ground.

We’ve somehow managed to carve out time with none of our combined thirteen children and have two full hours of face time.  Not the electronic app type, but the real kind where I can reach across my coffee cup and touch her arm.  There is little time for chit chat or anything light or mindless, not today.  We know our time is short and we both know too there is heartache of many varieties on each side of the table.  There are twenty five years of friendship in between as well.

Our banter is quiet and though we find things to laugh about, as we exchange words and share about life, something happens that is always a bit beyond the reach of my understanding.  Somehow, in the sharing, in the hearing, in the remembering together, the burdens that are pressing so heavy on my heart are lifted just a bit.  We don’t answer any big questions or solve any mysteries.  The process reminds me of these words that are life to me these days…

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

These two hours are rest for my soul.  In the midst of the talking, the listening and the tears there is some sort of mysterious exchange.  It feels like she is a stand-in for Jesus.  There isn’t any better way to describe it.  In daring to speak out loud my deep sadness and struggle, and listening to hers….in shouldering it alongside each other in the corner booth, it doesn’t weigh the same.  It is lighter.

At certain times, I think God knows we need a physical person to represent him in our life.  We need someone living, breathing, sitting right there whose own eyes well up when they see us cry.  Someone who holds no judgement over our failure or mistakes.  Someone who doesn’t offer an answer but extends compassion and makes sure we know they aren’t going anywhere.  We can read in a book or on a blog or know God’s word by memory, all sorts of truth.  But there are moments in life when things press in a little (or a lot) too hard and we need a person who looks like Jesus to hold us up, to bear with us under the weight of life, until we can stand again.

Thankful today that we don’t have to walk it alone.  That one way or another, God stands near.  Ever present in our pain.

Looking back to summer

Yesterday it seemed like the sun might set at 3:30 in the afternoon, the sky was black and ominous and promised showers but it was bone dry outside.  I nuzzled a soft baby head and felt a pang of nostalgia wash over me.  It feels like summer just ended last week, then our daughter was born and here I am knee deep in dark, wet days.  Some quick math tell me Liberty is almost 10 weeks old so I must be off somewhere…oh how my mind wants to cheat and steal when it comes to time.

Just before the actual sunset, spectacular beams of light burst through the trees and lit up our patch of land.  The sky was still so dark.  But somehow light was finding its way through.  It was so dramatic and so stunning, I made the kids come outside and see it before the light disappeared.  Writing about it makes me think of sweet friends who we were privileged to share life with last year at church and in our home group.  They abruptly moved to Arizona in August in pursuit of treatments that might help Bryan’s aggressive melanoma.  The road they are walking, at just freshly past 30 years old and with two young kids, makes my face pale.  Talk about darkness in the light of day.  Talk about needing light to burst through and find its way.  Talk about wanting to steal time.  Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder why things like that happen.  It is anything but fair.

My reaction to thinking about them yet again is twofold…first prayers for the miracles they need.  And second is calculating all that lies around me – a sacred, precious, puking mess.  Three days in with a wicked stomach virus that has completely taken over.  As I sat with Finn yesterday on my lap, killing time until bedtime by watching tractor movies on youtube, I breathed his smell in deep.  I rested my weary head on his sweaty neck and remembered the highlight of his summer as he chatters on about each John Deere he sees on the screen.  It was this:

He could sit on my lap and stare at that picture for ten minutes.  And believe me, there isn’t much that keeps him busy for ten minutes!  Its been two and a half months and he still asks every time we drive that directions, “Can we go to the fair mama?”.  I thought doing the fair, nine months pregnant, with five other children might just do me in.  And it may have come close.  But oh the happy in his voice when he talks about it, remembers with me, the insane crazy fun we had practically living at the fairgrounds for six straight days.

Bedtime finally came and we did the same heartbreaking routine every night these days:

Mama (at his bedside): Finn, what song should I sing with you?

Finn:  No, I don’t want you to go mama, I want to sleep WITH you.

Mama:  How about I pick a song?  (I do, and I start to sing)

Finn (big brown eyes brimming with sadness): Oh mama, no, please don’t leave me.

Over and over again.  If I start to cry, like I did tonight, I leave sooner than later because there is a baby to feed and other kids that need tucking in.  I promise him that I’ll see him in the morning and that when the sun comes up, I will be there.  And I think again of our friends in Arizona and how much I want their sun to come up and their too-long-night to be over.  Every single day – even our puke-filled ones or the ones where all your kids are in hysterics at the grocery checkout or the ones where all your life’s efforts don’t seem to count for anything or any other kind of less than lovely day – is such a tender gift.  To be prized, tucked away and treasured.  Tomorrow is not promised to us, today is what we have.

The older woman

I’m only thirty five.  I feel like I’m still in my twenties though truth be told I love this age and I love this decade of my life more than any of the ones prior.  My twenties were awfully insecure for me.  No doubt I missed out on a good many things just because I was too worried about what someone thought to “just do it” or “just say it”.

These days, increasingly, someone asks a question or seeks advice about something and it catches me off guard.  My first blush response is usually (in my head at least) “I have no idea – I’m not qualified to answer that”.  And then I usually say something (out loud) that hopefully sounds like “I may not be qualified but I’m at least willing to try to help”.

Last year I got off the phone with someone and told my husband in disbelief:

I’m the older woman.  How can that be?!

I’m not sure how it happened, how I got to be thirty five and have six children over a ten year span and be married to the same (amazing) man for almost 15 years.  Well, of course I sort of know how most of that happened.  But the point is I still feel like the young, inexperienced, not-excellent-at-anything mother.  And regardless of anything redeeming I’m able to share with anyone, anywhere – I really need a still-older-than-me woman to beckon me down this path.

Last month I thought to myself “How does any mother make it without a Mrs. Nelson?”.  She’s a teacher at our homeschool co-op.  She had my two older sons in class last year, dealt graciously with the one who can be challenging and has my two middle ones this year.  Last year she spoke just a few kind words about my son that told me she gets it, she gets him and she sees good things in him despite his difficulties.  I can’t explain what that meant to me.  She affirmed who he was; his nature-loving, quiet, bright, book-devouring self.  I remember the tears the day I realized she saw great things when all I could see in that moment was a mess.  She spoke life.  She invited herself over this summer and I could hardly believe she’d want to come spend an afternoon over her break from school on my front porch but she did.  She engaged all of my children that day in the most delightful way.  It was such a gift to me.

When Caleb hurt his hand and had surgery she was quick to offer to come help at the Fair with kids and goats and anything.  It totally blessed me.  She came and she helped in the most practical ways.  She gently, firmly corrected my five year old who grabbed kettle corn out of her bag without asking.  She somehow did that with such grace that I didn’t feel judged for my daughter being a little bit rude, only thankful for the kind correction.  Mrs. Nelson continues to give me little pep talks and words of encouragement along the way and truly, some days, they hold me up in ways nothing else quite could.  And it makes me wonder, over and again, how people survive the arduous, un-glamorous, largely-without-thanks but most incredible privilege of motherhood if they don’t have a few good cheerleaders who are further down the road than they are.

In the same regard, we have Suzanne.  She texts me spur of the moment and says “can I bring you coffee?”.  She has a long lunch some days of the week.  Why anyone would stop by our crazy house on their lunch hour I have no idea.  And we don’t exactly live in the city or on anyone’s way anywhere.  So for someone to pop by with coffee is most unusual.  And most wonderful.  Her stay is always short and she makes sure to “check in” with each of my children.  Her genuine interest in their goings on is totally precious.  She is one of those people you meet and think “too good to be true, too sweet to be real?”.  But she’s the real thing.  She wrote me these words a while back that I come back to over and again (her email is tucked in my ‘special’ folder):

 Full of tender mercy & love, fiercely devoted to your family- that is how I see you.

Heaven knows as mothers we sure don’t see ourselves in a lovely light every day, most days probably.  I’d been discouraged and sad and unable to see past my failure of the moment when she wrote me that note.  It literally infused hope just when I needed it.  We often need someone else to tell us how they see us because what we see isn’t always an accurate picture.

The most lovely thing is as they cheer me on, I am inspired to do the same with the mama’s who are coming along after me.  It’s beautiful.  I’m fairly sure it’s the way life is supposed to work and part of how we were mysteriously, intricately, lovingly created by a gracious God to abide in community with others.