A Worthy Life

common occasions of my day

"To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common--this is my symphony." ~William Henry Channing

I have become lately an observer of the small moments, the quiet moments, the moments in between the scurry and flurry of devotions, play, housework, and meal prep. Yesterday a few such moments stood out to me...

While gently rinsing bella mushrooms for dinner, I noticed in the sink's reflection the Cross. Jesus' words echoed in the quiet of my heart, "Take up thy Cross daily and follow me." Here I was, at the threshold of mundane activity and yet in a second it became an altar of spiritual sacrifice. This, among all the others, is part of my daily cross, chosen for me. And in it's simplicity I was doing the most otherworldly task that I could do. "The wise woman prepares food for her household."

In preparation for our long weekend camping trip, I braided my daughter's hair into a bajillion braids. It serves as my promise to her that all weekend long I would not try to brush or fix her hair, the point of her day that she loathes the deepest. Before dinner, I caught her in the backyard, letting the cool night breeze through her new 'do.

4:2 The visual proof that when it comes to resisiting the d.evil's i.nsidiously e.vil t.oxin of coca-cola my spirit is willing but my flesh is very, very weak. I have tried so hard to purge myself of it's poisonious allure. To no avail. After this weekend, I'm off it for good. Well, that or 30 days, whichever comes first. You, you, and you are officially recruited to keep me accountable. The rest of you, should you see me sipping my black potion in the dark corners, have pity and turn a blind eye, would you?

My morning routine is simple. Wash, brush, apply a little concealer, and underarm smell neutralizer. As you can see, no Teen Spirit for me. Nope, for me it's the Holy Spirit all the way. (Also known to the rest of the world as The Dove Who Descended, or Dove, or...whatever! I'm looking for the holy in the very ordinary, remember?!)

shoot! they're faux-pros!!

 

I took the kids for their back-to-school photoshoot the other day. I must say, they cooperated fairly well in their individual sessions. Push them past their agreed upon task though and the meltdown soon begins. But even in a photoshoot there are plenty of teachable moments. Especially for the mama as a few things began to become clear to me:

1. Since I take a lot of pictures of them, they are starting to lose the understanding of casual and candid. Every time I whip out my camera, they start their faux smiles, which of course totally defeats the purpose of trying to capture real moments.

2. Even when I am asking them to pose, they do so with such rigid form that none of my jokes or efforts to get a genuine smile from them seems to work. Or, maybe it's just that I'm not as funny as I think I am.

3. They have come to believe that they are real models. You know, the kind that get paid? Yes, it cost me four Airheads and a dinner at McDonald's to repay these stunning professionals. I'm just trying to figure out how many shoots they still owe me since I've fed them almost every meal since birth...

4. No matter how imperfect, each photo is a treasure. No, really. Each and every one. Even the 237 ones that you'll never see of this same pose because each one captured something different, something unique about each one of my children. Whether it was a bad attitude, an unprompted tickle to her brother's neck, or a smack to their forehead to avenge the mosquito's bite, each and every one is pure gold.

Even ones like this:

joy

I snuggled up close to her in my bed. I could feel her rhythmic breaths on my face smelling of sweet syrup, olfactive residue from a lunch of french toast. This girl makes me crazy with love. Her brilliant smile lights up a room and illuminates any momentary gray areas in my heart.

We named her Emmanuelle Joy. Emmanuelle because she was our promise and then our testimony to God being with us through a very difficult period in our lives. Joy because there was nothing else present in our hearts when we first laid eyes on her and our ears heard her cry of life.

As her mother, I remind her often: "Manu, what is your name?"

"Emmanuelle Joy."

"Then, where oh where is your joy?! Are you Manu Grumpy-pants or Emmanuelle Joy?"

Slowly, as the words sink past her stubborn insistence, a smile steals the grump from her face.

"Manu Joy!", she shouts with glee.

I think of the way her melodic baby voice sounds as I watch her silent lips, pursed in sleep. And I am grateful, so grateful that I am her mother.

What joy I've found in her!

watch and learn

He watches her every move. Watches where she places her feet, observes how she twists her legs, and commits to memory all the boarding vocab like ollies and half-pipes. He keeps his board close by during the day and tucks it close beside him at night. He wants to do what she can do. He wishes that what seemed so effortless to her came so naturally to him.

So he watches and learns.

This afternoon I spent time at the park with a group of friends celebrating one of their son's birthday. As often happens, the mothers' conversation soon turns to life, a mother's life, and where the twists and turns of parenting are taking us. I watch one mother as she gently interacts with her daughter, I observe how another speaks to her husband, and commit to memory the tricks and techniques of how each is perfecting her calling and profession. I realize that the benefits of being in community with other women, other mothers, other wives are numerous. I want my children to behave like hers do. I want my marriage to embody the same love and respect as hers does. I want to be inspired and challenged and encouraged.

So I watch and learn.

look pa, new hair!

Sorry, pops. We seem to be woefully unable to keep our hair long anymore around here. First me, against your wishes but with your blessing. Now, Eliana joins the ranks of the shorter haired girls.

But honestly, how could you not think this face surrounded by any sort of hair is less than radiant and divine?!

She can't wait to show you in person, Papa, as soon as you arrive home from the T.Dot. Hugs from us all!

objects in mirror are closer than they appear

The signs of aging are already there. Some just a whisper of what is to come. Some marching in with vicious progression.

I tell myself I am young at heart. My mind is understanding but my body must not have got the memo.

When with my older sister, we joked about what work we would have done if we could. While nursing two kids at a time, her chest is one woman would pay for. I told her she should have them photographed or immortalized in a bronzed sculpture. She'll need the reminder when they soon deflate after the suckling years are over and she is reduced to rolling up the sagging remnants and pin and tucking them into her Victoria Secret prosthetics commissioned to give the illusion of having had work done. I speak from experience so she laughs at the Grim Reaper foretelling such news.

Personally, I'd get implants a little lower. Not the front, but the back side. No, literally, the backside. I can't blame this one on pregnancies or engorgements, just terrible genetics that leave it slipping and sliding into the future without the desired perkiness. I've heard tell that Victoria has a secret for this too so that may be edging it's way up my grocery list soon. To buy: veggies, fruit, bread, hummus, diet coke, a lift for the booty. I'll sneak it in subtly so when hubster does the shopping it will seem a very ordinary addition to the cart. He'll thank me later, oh yes he will. He'll wonder if I splurged on those $200 pair of jeans. Nope, it'll still be my clearance rack specials, just a little more filled out.

We talked about altering our appearances, whether through cosmetic camouflage or surgical alterations, my sister and I did. While I am all for painting the outside and embellishing natural beauty, I am mindful of the message our beauty obsession is sending my children. When I look at them, I see nothing but flawless perfection. Not because they are flawlessly perfect, but because that is the way I view them. Created by an Artist so skilled, so precise in His sculpting and so exact with His brush that I, a complete illiterate in the world of art, seem ill authorized to question His masterpiece in each of them. The only credentials I hold in beauty are the ones that came hard drived into me through the images of the culture around me. Had I been born a few hundreds year sooner or in certain tribes in Africa, my natural slimness would be frowned upon and would give me little hope for survival in time of famine. My understanding reminds me that what I consider beautiful is temporary, evidenced by the sudden and constant march of change in fashion and cosmetics across the short time line of my life.

What I do with my body and my face is contributing to the hard drive of my children's understanding of beauty. While I may yet spring for that series of special dermabrasion, I may not. If certain scars and age marks are removed will I then be content, finally happy with my external beauty? By fixing just this and just that and only spending a thousand here and a thousand there, will I finally be finished? Or will my pursuits only gain rapid momentum as new procedures and miraculous claims continue to bombard me?

When will I learn to accept the masterpiece that He created instead of altering it to fit my finite and amateur idea of what I'd rather it were?

Will this be the year? I'm turning thirty, you know. With every increase in age, I'd rather see a decrease in complaints against the One who put me together. I'd like to hope that with increase of age, my wisdom too is increasing. That I'd be all the more wiser to know that it'd be just plain stupid of me to suggest to Monet, "Your artistic approach is a little fuzzy to me. I'd rather know the precise details of each person and every fragrant bloom. Your little dabs of spotted paint seem rather dull and drab to me."

Because everyone knows that if you were but to take a few steps back to gaze upon the masterpiece, you would see more than random, imperfect splotches. You would see the beauty as the artist intended to be viewed.

Stepping away from the mirror and the speckled blotches and indentations, perhaps maybe I too could see the beauty in me, the masterpiece the Artist prepared with an eye for detail and a timeless and infinite understanding of what true beauty is.

lost at home

I have never outrun my husband.  Ever. Come to think of it, I have rarely outrun anyone. With the exception of my own children.

And in the exceptional event of having lost one of them.

We have out of town guests for the weekend. Old friends. The kind you can pick up after a year since seeing them last and still know how they're going to end their sentences and already know the punchline to their tried and true jokes.

So, we were laughing, full belly laughs and a few near drownings when one of us would make the near fatal attempt to take a drink immediately prior to an unexpected urge to giggle. The kids were running wild around the house, playing dress up, playing house, playing to their hearts content while the old folks stayed absorbed in our jokes about squeaky bedsprings and the passage of gassage.

"Mom, mama. MOM...I'm not feeling well."

"Ok, sweetie", I called with a casual glance her direction. "Go lay down on the couch and I'll be there in a minute."

But the minute turned into twenty while I cleaned up dinner and then went to photograph the deer practically standing in our front yard. I came back inside to find half of the family and our guests headed to the park and the other half waiting for me. I quickly wrapped up a few leftovers and headed out the door.

At the park where the boys were playing basketball, we joined the kids in the sand. We did a quick headcount to make sure we had everybody.

One, two, three, four little kids, ...

"Eden? Edie?! WHERE IS EDEN??"

This was The Moment. The moment every mother fears, the instant that time stands still as your heart races on ahead at a million beats per second. My daughter was missing.

In that frozen second in time, it was not fear that raced to my mind but rather an instinct to go out to seek and to find my lost daughter. I knew she was not with us. I knew she was not at the other park we had passed on the way. Her quiet conversation with me sprung immediately to mind. Amidst the merriment and the mayhem, she came to me. "Mama, I need you."

In my mind I saw her, waiting at home, on the couch, exactly where I had told her I would meet her. I ran without pausing to consider the pain in my chest or the difficulty of running with flip flops. I only knew that she needed me and I was far away.

Unlocking the front door, I could hear her soft cry. She was right where I thought she'd be having just awakened from a cat's nap and finding herself in a quiet house. I held her to me, rocking her to soothe away her sobs. She didn't know I had just sprinted home from blocks away. She didn't know that papa was following but lagging behind. She didn't know that while papa's heart was stronger, a mother's heart can inject speed and urgency into even the weakest legs. 

She only knew that I was there. Right where I said I'd be. In answer to her quiet cry. Holding her tight, ensuring her that I could comfort and protect her.

That was Saturday. Today I find myself running again. Running instead as the child seeking her Father. Today it was I who strayed far from home. I had wandered outside His direction and His safe keeping when I determined to follow instead my desire, my pleasure, my path of pride and stubbornness. The merriment lasted only a short while. Fueled only by selfishness, I always wind up empty, short on patience, short on love, short on respect for others. I needed Him and I was far away.

In quiet conversation I approached my Father and in that same moment felt enveloped in His embrace. I was aware of how child-like I still am in my faith and in my understanding. Wanting more than anything to be a Big Girl, able to go it alone every once in awhile, to succeed on my own in doing the right thing, I drifted away from the only One who could provide all the strength and wisdom I would need to accomplish even the simplest of these pursuits.

Eden was left, lost and alone. But I sought her out and took her again under my protection and love.

I left my Father, lost and alone. He drew me back with loving kindness and in my return, ran out to meet me.

It's good to be Home.

in with the old to bring in the new

I'll be honest. The last time we saw each other, we were both a bit on the naughty side. After a year of playing it safe my first year back to this private school, I was ready to shed my goody-two-shoes image for something a little more fun. I was hardly bucking the norm, I think our entire class, save for two angelic students, were terrors that year. We were top of the school, ruling as the upperclassmen in sixth grade, and you would know where to find us by following our teacher's sobs and tears just outside our classroom door.

Our crimes were the usual adolescent cruelties: gossiping, forming cliques, making up Wanted posters for people we were feuding with, and doing anything within our power to get our competition flat on their bums. For the record, I was participant in some and had others done to me so in the grand scheme of things, I'd say we were all equal opportunity haters.

Well, it has been a long, long time since then and though I'd heard bits and pieces from her life through the years, we only recently reconnected via facebook. From her pictures, I knew she had blossomed into a gorgeous woman on the outside and saw that she was making quite a name for herself in her work as a hairstylist. Judging from her client photos and own hairstyle, I just knew she'd be the right person to help me finally shed years of emotional attachment to my long hair.

While in St. Louis visiting family, I met Donna at Metro Salon and Spa in Old Town St. Charles. In a moment I knew that the beauty that radiated in her pictures online was but a reflection of her beauty within. She greeted me with a hug and I was immediately impressed with her professionalism and knowledge. I had warned her that I was a more than a little nervous and very particular about the vision I had for my new 'do. Even when I experienced a momentary panic, she calmly and patiently guided me through to a brilliant result.

For two hours we got to catch up on life and talk about our shared passion of photography. Though hair and photos may be what she does, she approaches both with a sincere care for her clients and looks for opportunities to share more than her skills. She approaches every relationship with a desire to share the joy and hope found in her God. We may have been naughty a few decades ago but even then seeds were being planted in our hearts about a Jesus who wanted a relationship with us. Those seeds have now burst forth in her life and the fruit of her relationship with Him is evident in her marriage, her mothering, and her missionary's heart.

Thank you so much Donna for delivering so perfectly on the vision I had for my hair! It took me a few days to get used to it but by Sunday I was flipping it with sass and attitude! I will be sending my mother and sister in soon and I know that they will feel just as at ease as I under your scissor wielding magic. Is it too early to schedule an appointment while I'm in town next year on vacation?!

Before:

After (I know, I know...I look a bit like Gwyneth Paltrow here ;o):

After (with Donna):

portraits of a dysFUNctional family

To the untrained eye, we look normal enough:

An average family, a mom and dad, girls and a boy.

But below the immaculate perception lies problems, real problems...

All of us are genetically and certifiably insane but we rotate our clinical remissions so that only one person's instability shines at any given time. We laugh too hard at our own jokes and make too many jokes at our loved one's expense. Both the girls and the boys have been known to have diva-delusions and be so taken with their/our own star that they/we become black holes sucking all attention our way. Case in point, the man with the bald shiny head...always trying to outshine us all!

Though we love each other with immense intensity, we are not without our prejudices and judgments. See?! See how they laugh at me here?! That's just me being me, representin' my 'hood, so please, just accept that I'm coming from a different place than you all, a deep and mysterious place that even I have never quite plumbed the depths of. And throw up some signs of peace and love with me, won't you??

We are family, my mother, brother, sisters and me. And Pops, can't forget good ol' Pops! We've been through a lot, both together as a family and individually in our personal lives and with our new families. Growing up, life wasn't always easy but it was certainly blessed. It wasn't without its hard times but even through it all, our love would not let go and our laughter could never be silenced. Even today when we don't always see eye to eye, we can still share a meal, a smile, and a good time knowing that whatever oddities and differences we add to the familial dysfunction we are still loved, still accepted. Still accepted for who we've been, who we are, and who we are allowing God to form is each of us.

Each trip home opens my eyes to new changes within my family. These kids are growing up, with real jobs, fresh stamps in their passports, and new pre-owned vehicles. Their passions are expanding outside of those we all shared as a family, they're adding new love interests to their relationships, and each has other and varied influences outside our family. I no longer know the majority of their friends and am no longer spectator to the daily events of their lives. When once we were one family, we are now three with new ones certain in the future, and what used to be one father's and one mother's vision for their children has now been replaced with the P's vision and the D's vision, and her's and his and her's.

Who knows what the future holds for all of us? I've already moved far from home to another country and jobs and marriage will continue to claim us all one by one to fresh starts in our new lives. But at the foundation of who we each are individually is our family, our mom and dad, sisters and brother. They have each provided influence in my life, each provided support, encouragement, and friendship at times when I needed it most. I am in their blood and they in mine. Though we test each other more than most and though we forgive and forget less than with others in our lives, we have in each of our hearts a special love reserved only for our family.

Dysfunctional families are a dime a dozen. No family is perfect, no family is without their quirks. But a family that shares and knows their God knows that one of the greatest perks of family is having others to share their burdens and struggles. Though scattered and diverse in our pursuits and visions, united in love, we will continue to stand together.

Forever, representin' the 'hood of the S Family.

Psalm 133:1  How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!