Thanksgiving

"For gratitude, as we all know, is not a given but rather a way of being to be cultivated."

- Katrina Kenison

Beautiful is...

Beautiful is a 10-year-old catching snowflakes on her tongue on the way to school.

Beautiful is a 16-month-old really seeing snow for the first time, watching it fall through the air while trying to catch it in his tiny little boy hands.







* Note: The first glimpse of beauty was on November 12, as my husband and daughter left home to go to chorus practice and work. I neglected to hit the publish button that day.

Blind Faith

A few hours ago, while in the drugstore down the street with my big girls, we ran into my oldest daughter's friend. We left the store with our gallons of milk and a newly minted invitation for an impromptu sleepover. A little more than an hour after that, I dropped my baby girl at her friend's doorstep.

It's quiet in our little yellow house tonight, believe it or not. There's always something missing when one of our girls is off somewhere the rest of us aren't. Her sister and roommate sleeps alone tonight, and admitted that the pain in her stomach means she is missing her big sister. Seems she enjoys her more than she knows.

This is the first time our daughter has slept over at a house where we are not also friends with the parents. We don't know if we have similar parenting styles, morals, values or rules. We haven't spent time together watching fireworks, school plays, chorus concerts or fiddling contests, or commiserating over schoolwork and teaching styles with the parent of this girl. We haven't walked for coffee (or sipped clandestine thermoses of wine) during ballet class, or visited the park after library class. We're leaving it all up to faith, a giant leap in a time when very few people have given us faith to believe in others.

The clocks move back an hour tonight. While I'm grateful for an extra hour of sleep (we already changed the clocks in the kids' rooms so they won't wake too early), I'm not sure how deeply I will slumber. Missing my girl.

Sign of the Times?

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not...

I pulled out my phone during a PTO Meeting this morning to text my husband about something. My little man crawled over and reached out his chubby hand.

"iPod," he says.

My 15-month-old says "iPod."

The Grocery Store

I posted the lyrics to a song last week. Nothing is Wasted. I truly believe it. There was a reason I posted them (of course).

Last Wednesday, I went to the grocery store. Wednesday is not my usual store day, it's a busy after school day. My husband and I were both feeling a little crabby at the thought that our 14th wedding anniversary would be celebrated with early parent pick up, doctor appointments, gymnastics classes, harried dinners and too-late homework sessions versus the date night dinner we both needed it to be.

I received an email that morning from a friend who is expecting her fifth baby soon. "How is it really?" she asked me. I couldn't answer her.

I packed up the littles and headed off to the grocery store armed with a recipe to pick up what I needed for the surprise dinner I was making my husband, a throwback memory to our Grecian honeymoon.

At the deli counter the older women oohed and ahhed at the blue-eyed blondes nibbling cookies and cheese in the rocket ship cart we had chosen that day. Our talk centered around the whereabouts of the wandering moose who had caused quite a stir in our little town. He had passed very near our house on his way out of town.

A woman spoke to me and told me how she missed her children, and how I should treasure this time as the grow up too soon.

I know. I have guilt. I know I should treasure my littles being little, and not sweat the small stuff, and relax and be more patient and not yell and worry less about cleaning. But I'm normal. I sweat the stuff. Inwardly I rolled my eyes at her.

Then she surprised me.

She told me, while I should treasure the days, her children are in their 20's, but they were little, too; that she remembers the crying and yelling and dinnertime messes and overpooped pants and wanting to tell women in the store just like her to go away and leave her alone because the days are loud and messy and all a mom wants to do sometimes is run away screaming and slam doors and break things. And she told me it was okay. To do it. Because she was there.

She was there.

I wanted to hug her. She got it. And when she learned I had three more at school, she blessed me with the sign of the cross and told me to go get a bottle of wine or three.

My littles and I finished our tasks at the deli and moved on through the store, making our way down the list, covered in cookie crumbs and drinking sippy cups, hugging our baby brother and shrieking, pulling boxes off the shelf if I got too close.

At the end of one aisle and the beginning of the next present hit past again. I wanted to throw myself over my cart, protect my babies and scream, "Stop looking at them! After all you've done you don't have that right!" I was blind-sighted, and questioned, why that day, why of all days.

He looked old. Stooped over. Tired. Sad. Beaten. Worn.

I didn't yell or scream or slap, as I most certainly could have. I pushed my rocket ship cart ahead, got my salad dressing, and finished my shopping. Diapers was my last stop.

Up the aisle I headed towards the checkout was the woman I had met only 20 minutes before. I stopped and said to her, "I needed to hear what you said today. I believe I was meant to meet you today. Thank you." And I hugged her, this woman holding a bottle of shampoo, and me with a hand on my rocket ship cart, my crumb covered littles holding their sippy cups of juice.

As I emptied my cartful onto the checkout and bagged my items, I noticed him leave the store.

Everything for a reason. Nothing is wasted.

Nothing is Wasted

Time and again I have said, "Everything happens for a reason."
This song states the same, just in different words.

Powerful, beautiful, meaningful, and none of that is lost on me today.

The hurt that broke your heart
And left you trembling in the dark
Feeling lost and alone
Will tell you hope's a lie
But what if every tear you cry
Will seed the ground where joy will grow

And nothing is wasted
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer
Nothing is wasted

It's from the deepest wounds
That beauty finds a place to bloom 
And you will see before the end
That every broken piece is
Gathered in the heart of Jesus
And what's lost will be found again

Nothing is wasted
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer
Nothing is wasted

When hope is more than you can bear
And it's too hard to believe it could be true
And your strength fails you halfway there
You can lean on me and I'll believe for you
And in time you will believe it, too

Nothing is wasted
Nothing is wasted
Sometimes we are waiting
In sorrow we have tasted
Buy joy will replace it
Nothing is wasted
In the hands of our Redeemer
Nothing is wasted

-Nothing is Wasted, by Jason Gray

Boys are Different

Watching my little boy play, I can say without a doubt, boys are different than girls.

More than just the obvious separates them.

From just a few months old, he has known to laugh at his own noises, breaking into hysterics when it's time to take a wipe to tooschie and change a diaper. He knows the humor behind a good burp or toot. I think that means we are in trouble 7 years from now.

No one has taught him to play with cars and trucks. He just does. He wakes in the morning talking about them. He rolls and scoots around, running his truck on the table leg, up the wall, on bookshelves, on chairs, the stove. If it's not a car in his hand as he makes his way around the house, it's a ball. Which he is able to throw (er, fling) with incredible force, making it spin its way across the floor. The same goes for blocks.

He explores things in a way I don't recall my girls doing. I hope that's not because I've simply forgotten.

He calls me not "mama," but "mom." The sweetest sound to hear is a baby saying that word for the first time.

Every day I marvel at his differences.