Smidge 1: Closet Devotional

Mimi,
My brain is like that small hole in the house where the laundry steam escapes. About once a week good ideas come spewing out, only to quickly vanish into the air. As such, there is something new coming to the blog. 

Case in point. Every week you truck home a new memory verse from Sunday School. Often times, when they grace two or three  lines, I raise one eyebrow and wonder how I'm supposed to teach it to a kindergartener.  But without fail, if I take the time to mull it over, I can come up with some way that illustrates the point.

So here we go, a new aspect to the blog. Since these ideas, devotionals of sorts, are fleeting, I'm posting them here.

Devotion 1

 (I may switch the titles because you know I won't remember which one I'm on, or if I was doing a numerical gig, alphabetical, or shapes for that matter.)

Memory Verse (From Life Center Church)

"Where is the one who has been born kind of the Jews: We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship Him." Matthew 2:2

1. Gather a flashlight, your nativity figurine set, and blocks if you have them  and head to a closet, or bathroom, etc.
2. Find a shoe-box handy and build the nativity scene on the a short distance from the wall. This alone sparks interest. Whisper what your doing. (just seems like you should whisper) as the kids help you set up the scene, if you can, use the blocks to build a stall. Explain 3 times why Peter Rabbit can't be in the scene, and then give in and say there were probably rabbits nearby, sure he can come.
3. Have the kids turn off the light and return in darkness.

The set up 

4. Read the verse

We used blocks for a stable, and Yes, that's a nursing pad box I used for the stable roof. Pulled out all the stops to keep the rain of God's head.

5.  Turn on the flashlight and slowly make it "rise" up onto the wall like a star rising in the East.

6. Kids approved.

The shadow - hard to photo in the dark. We repeated the performance later with all lights off in the house, on the dining room wall - was impressive.

Thanksgiving

I stood in the entry taking my shoes off after a run. No sooner had I thrown them in the closet than your daddy said, “The door to the garage blew open after you left, we have to make sure it shuts all the way.”

I replied “Ya, sure,” and smugly rolled my eyes. My crosshairs had been set on him all morning. These little suggestions weren’t helping and what he did next really got my goat. He started cleaning.

When my man performs extra chores it can only mean…  I haven’t done them. Stick to your territory bud. Take the garbage out. Change a lightbulb. Do the dishes. But don’t wipe down the refrigerator shelves. I know there’s goop there, I’ll get to it, you don’t have to point out that it hasn’t been done. This is when the argument began.

Next he had the audacity to suggested, one too many times, that I go out for a bit. Again, he’s allowed to suggest it once, but if said over and over, I will get it. You don’t want me around.

Here, at the peak of the argument, I grabbed your baby sister and left, slamming two doors on my way out. That is how your mama makes a point, whipping the door behind her, leaving the other contender speechless. Or at least out of ear shot.

I gunned it down the driveway contemplating where to buy a peppermint mocha-  the obvious solution.

Now here, sweetheart, is one of the drawbacks to loving Jesus. Just as soon as you are feeling justified in your nasty actions, and you’re ready to stew over it, you reluctantly get a taste of how He might be viewing the situation.  I roll my eyes again, as I am reminded of what love is. As Pastor Joe says, love is doing what’s best for the other person, despite the cost to you, even when they don’t deserve it. It’s the undeserving love Christ has for us. We don’t deserve it and yet He offers it freely. And that’s just chirpy- until I have to apply it to my own life.

So with an abundance of reluctance and pride I order and extra cappuccino at the drive through and zoom home to your father. He accepts my token of forgiveness and our day is salvaged.

That evening I mumble an apology for being so mad at him.

“You were mad at me?” he asks.

No. Way.

“Yes I was mad. Madder’n a wet hen.”

“Oh,” he replies, clearly perplexed.

“Remember, I slammed the door,” I add with a raised eyebrow.

“I thought you were making sure it was shut.”

Way.

“The coffee,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief, “That’s when it ended, that’s when I said I was sorry.”

Or did I actually say the words? I don’t remember now. It all seems suddenly silly. There was a fight, wasn’t there? I was noble in my offer of forgiveness, wasn’t I? What did you do again – clean the house? Ask me to go shopping? Oh, man.

I once had to break up with a boy after returning from spring vacation. Apparently, while I was out of state, we had started dating. When I got back, a friend informed me of this and I had to do that horrendously awkward phone-call break up thing with someone I didn’t know I was dating. This spat with your dad made me feel the same way. Communication is everything.

“I’m sorry,” he says with a smile. “I’m not perfect.” The tension in my shoulders releases as I finally breathe out. I know he’s not perfect, but he’s darn near close.

All this to say two things. First, your daddy is an amazing man. There are many things I am thankful for this season, but your dad…I don’t deserve him. I am utterly to the bone convinced of this and there is only one way I wound up with him. Prayer. I’d like to say I spent many-a-night as a young single woman in prayer asking that God bring along just the right man. Although I didn’t, someone else did. A couple of someones actually.

Grammy June and Grandpa Ron had been praying for me since I was in diapers. They prayed for my parents too, that they would remain married, so that I would have a good example of marriage by the time I met their son. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know anything about my childhood, or the burdens my parents would bear. Burdens that could have easily split them apart. They didn’t know the details, but they prayed.

I’m so thankful for prayer and the power it’s had in my own life. Now, you can bet I pray almost daily for your future husband (and for your brother and sister’s spouses). I pray his mom and dad are patient with him, yet consistent. I pray because their own marriage will have hard days. Mine has hard days and my man is only trying to help. I ask God to give them the strength and wisdom to stay together, just so that their son would see what marriage was created to be. 

And then I ask, if it’s not too much trouble, that this boy could be Trevor Schoolfield. Doesn’t hurt to ask.

Self-talk

I’m no perfect mama. I forgot to put the baby down for her nap, I didn’t serve lunch until 2:00, and there were pee-paw prints across my tile floor because I didn’t put a diaper on someone. And that’s just since noon. 

Nope. Not perfect. So when I do get something right, I have to share it, if for no other reason than to get credit and somehow balance out the oopsies.

When things get crazy in our house I use age-appropriate time outs. Two minutes for the two year-old. Five minutes for the five year-old. And after 34 minutes, I’m usually back to my right mind.

Despite being familiar with the consequence, today you gave me the “who-are-you” stare when I threatened one. We were sitting at the craft table painting when you surprised me with some pretty bad self-talk. You said it softly to yourself, as if commenting on the weather. I abruptly responded in my gritted-teeth mommy voice, “Say that again and you’ll go to time-out.”

You:    Why mom?

Me:     (think Mama think)  Can you talk like that to your brother?

You:    No

Me:    (think, think think) Are you a child of God?

You:    Yes

Me:    Can you talk like that to any of God’s children?

You:    No.

End of conversation. End of bad self-talk. Good mommy. I could have high-fived myself or maybe even done a touchdown dance.

Mimi… you were blessed, chosen, adopted, accepted, redeemed and forgiven (Ephesians ch 1). Your brother may walk across the floor without a diaper, but none of you will walk down that road of negative self-image, not if I can prevent it.

Three Quarter Blues

Mimi,

As you bound around the house in your flashy new Nikes, I'm reminded...

I used to race the mile. I was not an immensely gifted runner, nor did I ever win, but it was my favorite track event and I was blazing fast compared to any pace I could currently hold for the distance.

I love the simplicity and symmetry of the mile event. Four laps around an oval. I knew, by heart, what my split times should be every 200 meters along the 1600 meter course.

Now ideally, in a race like this, you’d start out conservative and quicken your pace until you are putting it all out there on the fourth and final lap. But in every mile race of my mediocre career, the same thing always happened.

The gun would go off and I’d try to not sprint, conserving my energy for the rest of the race. Sure enough, the second lap was predictably faster than the first. But regardless of the exact lap times, something inevitably happened on the third lap. I petered out. Like the old Sesame Street segment “One of these things is not like the others”, the third lap was always pitiful. And here’s why- I was too far along to give up completely but still no where near the finish. I’ve come to call it my Three Quarter Blues predicament. It’s been a long time since I’ve donned those scant racing shoes with little spikes, but this issue has scampered right off the track and into other areas of my life.

In college it would look like this: I’d be three quarters of the way through the semester when my study habits would mysteriously vanish. Even now, I could fill a bookshelf of good-reads I’d gotten about three quarters through only to drop or skim the last pages. And honestly, well, most of my cop-out mama comebacks surface right around 4:00pm, about three quarters through my day. You know, words like “because I said so!”

I have grown in patience, but sometimes I loose sight of the finish line and all heck breaks loose, and the evil twin of your mama appears.

“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we shall reap a harvest.” -Gal 6:9

My harvest in parenting is raising a child who’s heart Christ can reach and work though.

Lord, help me get through each day glorifying you.  I’m in this for the long haul. As I strive after You, help me find tangible ways to point to you throughout all the days these babies live under my roof. As always, I ask for  patience, passion and perseverance as a mom.  You have done amazing things for me, as a mom, thank you!