Yes, I Bribe my Children...

You know that stage when the youngest one can't walk yet (or can't walk well) and you have to carry him everywhere and then the older one wants to be carried too? So that you don your best apologetic look and shrug your shoulders and carry them in and out of the gym and wait, just wait for someone to say, "Well, it's a good thing mommy works out, huh?" Sigh... well, THAT stage has lasted in our home a little too long and I'm ready to get shoes on Hucksley so he can walk already!

However, ingenious mother that I am (haha...) I managed to snag a few cookies today from our breakfast table and saved them to give to Bombie when she got out of MOPS for the walk to the car. Ahhh. What a wonderful little walk we had back to the car. No fussing. No crying. No issues. No dramas.

There is a time for discipline, but there's also a time to just let them be kids. Now if only I could tell the difference every time.

A Simpler Life

I want a simpler life. The thought has been bothering me lately, burrowing itself deeper into my mind, eating away at the last of my desires for bigger, brighter, shinier things. Somehow, I have bought into the idea that if a little satisfies, more will fill me up. And I'm learning that perhaps a little is all I need. A little nourishes; more overflows and overwhelms.

I want to learn to be satisfied with little.

I want to hold close to my heart the only things that matter, the things money cannot buy - satisfaction at a house cleaned well, a day lived within the family budget with three healthy meals, children who say "Thank you" on their own when you put food in front of them,  a husband who would readily give up his Sunday morning to go with me to church because he knows it's important to me. I want to live in the simplicity of gratitude, untouched by worldly desires.

I'm not there yet.

But the desire has taken seed and something else inside me has been uprooted. The crown of this world does not fit as well any more. I am filled with a holy discontent and that is a good thing, I think.

A Decade and a Year

January 10th, 2011 marks for me a decade of coming to America and a year of coming to Christ. It's normal and customary, I suppose, to ask what I have learned. We assume we learn as we experience events, people, life. We're supposed to be wiser as we're older. My father used to say that his hair didn't get gray just because the sun shone on it. Nestled comfortably in my thirties today, I find a few gray hairs myself and wonder what I have learned, if anything.

Much happened in the past decade - I fell in love with a man I couldn't believe really existed, got married, got a masters degree, bought some houses, got rid of all but one, acquired debt, went from wanting to be a writer to being a real estate broker to landlord to homemaker, gained and lost thirty-five pounds twice over, had two babies - one with an epidural one without, learned innumerable skills from painting (a house) to knitting (a small square) to sewing curtains to filing taxes and other government forms to baking pretty much anything to gardening tomatoes and pruning geraniums.

Marriage in itself has taught me a lot. When I read about God's "covenant love" and how Christ calls us His beloved, it makes sense to me. I understand it experientially, I truly get it as a reality because that is the love James has for me. It is an abiding, everlasting love, but more than anything it is an honoring love. There is much about love as honor, love as work I have yet to learn from this man who still does not call himself a Christian, yet lives Christ's word.

Parenthood was not what I expected either. But then again, who really knows what being a parent is like until you are one? Who knows the joy of holding something that  began as an orgasm and is now crying for warmth and comfort and food and diapers and will someday have legs that walk and a mind of its own? It's just like trying to describe what being married is like - it changes you, it makes you more giving, it reminds you of how rotten you really are and how far you are from what you really should be and yet, miracle of all miracles, you're there, you're enough... and you're needed, even loved.

A famous theologian once said, "Of what value is learning that does not turn to love?"And I think that's what this decade has been - a study of how to love. I'll admit I didn't have much of it when I first stepped on American soil. I was selfish, spoilt, always wanting my way, insisting on getting mine. Love, I think, was inside me but it was twisted. Manipulation, greed, guilt, depression, shyness, insecurity clung to me and their roots ran deep. Fear, the inability to forgive, anger, doubt - these were my friends for a long time. But I was in search of Truth and had been for a long time. (Aren't we all?) And some of my husband's first words to me cut through all that muck right to the core: "I need to be with someone who loves me." Truth has a way of doing that. Nine years later, another simple sentence by another Man: "I am The Way." Both answers to prayer. Both life-saving.

So don't ask me what I have learned. Because I am still learning to love.

No Whining and No Warnings!

I have posted this on my refrigerator to remind me of the new plan in place for the children. Two days ago, I was at my wit's end with the children. I watched horrified as they took turns being completely rotten. Whining, crying, flying into a rage, not sharing and other annoying stuff toddlers do had become the routine. I don't know if it was the Christmas holidays or that I had been going soft on discipline - probably the latter. Then again, I noticed with Bombie that when she started walking was when she developed other "amiable" qualities like disobeying me and lying. And so it continues with Hucksley. Sigh. Babydom is over.

This time, however, it's not the first time I've encountered disobedience. And I'm not handling him with kid gloves. Ha. See, what I have come to realize is that the wonderful thing about being the second child is that there is more than one influence since you're little. Perhaps the reason first children are more obedient is because it's just mom and dad that are in their environment and discipline is (relatively, at least) consistent. But now Bombie is the factor I cannot control in raising Hucksley. He whines, she gives in. He screams, she gives him a toy. I scold him, she soothes him. I pick him up and she wants up too. Or she yells. Or just skips away. He falls and hurts himself, she continues to play, completely ignoring his cry for help. I just cannot control her reaction! 

Lately the screaming and the whining had gotten out of control. Hucksley whined for every little thing. He whined if someone walked past him. He whined if something was taken away (because I was trying to teach Bombie to share); he whined at every. Little. Thing. And she was beginning to do it as well. 

Now, I pray often. But I know I'm in trouble when I have to repent for how much I'm beginning to resent caring for my children and then pray for strength before I open their bedroom door in the morning. And that's where the situation had landed until my very wise husband suggested what we call the "No Whining No Warning Plan." As soon as either of the children start to whine - unless they're hurt - they get a time-out. It's an immediate-drop-whatever-is-in-your-hands time-out. It's also an I-don't-care-who-did-what time-out. 

Here's the thing - it works! We're on day two and the children are behaving. I see them think about whether they want to whine or not. Sometimes, it's just a whimper and it stops. It's downright wondrous. And the truly fantastic thing about it is that after the time-out, I'm free to love them and cuddle them and totally go gaga over them as I naturally want to do. They know they're loved. And it is so much better than trying to scold them, scold them, scold them, warn them, warn them, warn them in the hope that they'll stop. Immediate punishment works. James Dobson writes about this in The Strong Willed Child (and by the way, he's not anti-spanking and neither am I) - he says to draw the boundary early and then maintain it. It's boundaries that make a child feel loved, protected and cared for. But we forget that. 

I forget it constantly. I forget that love involves discipline. An important part of loving my children is caring enough about them to bend and shape their will. I'm not raising children, I'm raising adults. The worst thing I can do for Bombie and Hucksley is to send them off into the world pampered, unable to control their impulses, not knowing where boundaries are, unsure of what their response should be, uncaring about how their behavior affects others around them. The world has enough spoilt children disguised as adults because someone forgot that they had to be a parent. I once went to a social gathering where kids were watching a video on You Tube with loud cursing (it was supposed to be funny) and their parents were standing right by them laughing. I was pregnant. I didn't find it hilarious in the least. Frankly, it scared the heck out of me.

No, I will probably never be a cool mom like that. But if my kids turn out messed up anyway, at least I'll know it's not because they were not disciplined enough or loved enough. 

3.1

If it is true that life is a marathon not a sprint, then I would like the race of faith to be a 5k. This morning was the first time I ran 3.1 miles. 

I have never been a runner. When I started running this summer, it was on the treadmill. I found out, much to my disappointment, that I could barely run for one minute without having to walk. So I started to follow this website's guidelines for a few weeks. Then my wonderful husband suggested I try running outside on the open road. So I did. First just a block, then half a mile, then a mile. And today - today! - three point one whole miles.

Benjamin Cheever in Strides calls the daily run "at first an ordeal and then an accomplishment..." and then "a staple like bread, or wine, a fine marriage, or air." 

Or prayer, I would add. 

Faith is often called a race in The Bible. James (my husband, not Jesus' brother) has noted many times that in his experience Christians seem to have an affinity for running. The book of Hebrews urges us to "run with endurance the race that God has set before us, looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith." Isaiah prophesied that "those who trust in The Lord shall run and not be weary." I know a handful of true Christ followers who like to run as well. Maybe there is a connection somewhere but I don't think I know enough to explain it.

All I can speak of is what I have experienced and continue to, how I understand - in a very small way - what the character of Eric Lidell says in Chariots of Fire, "When I run, I feel His pleasure."All I can say is that His mercies truly are new every morning and there is no better way to experience them than in a sunrise run. 

A Quiet Christmas

This has been the best Christmas by far. It has also by turns been the loudest (with the kids screaming), the happiest (baking cookies late into the night while having a heart to heart conversation with hubby), the most fun (playing Scrabble with friends on Christmas Eve), the most disappointing (Church service was such a letdown and it could have been so much more), the most extravagant (James bought me a Kindle!!!) and the most quiet. I am at peace in my heart this Christmas, not wanting or craving something other than what I have. 

I did not put up lights this year. I did not beg my husband for a specific gift. I did not even get a big tree. I got a plastic one and had fun with the kids decorating it. I wrote a Christmas letter. I baked cookies and gave them away. I did not shop till I dropped. I was not frazzled. I also did not feel like something was missing. I even heard my husband confess that this has been his best Christmas yet.

And that might just be the biggest blessing of it all.

I am all that... and more... I am His

In these last few days leading up to Christmas, I'm sitting here collecting the moments of this last year and piecing them together and I have only to look at the events that have unfolded to know that much of me is diametrically in opposition to the other. I have lived a schizophrenic life and in no other year has it been more apparent than in this one. Part homebody, part get-go businesswoman; in love with simplicity, yet enamored by the luxury money can buy. Easily incited, and yet immediately quieted by the right words. Truly solitary in soul and yet needing roots, connections, branches thrown into the ether to be known by, to hang on to for balance, for structure, even for contention.

I am being reminded that much of me is dross.

Going through old prayer journals reminded me of how much I've changed and how much still fights tooth and nail with God. Some of the first few words Bombie has learned are, "No! My!" Sometimes I think God gave me children to remind me how hard it must have been for Him to love me. Bombie teaches me more about the intrinsic nature of sin more than mounds of theological literature. She lies, she manipulates, she complains, she rebels. And she's only two. No one who has a two year old believes in the intrinsic goodness and innocence of childhood. Something about her - like about all children - is broken and it doesn't take a Christian long to know what.

Something about me is broken, too. I suppose I have always known that. But this was the year The Lord decided to begin to fix it. I cannot fathom a God that waits for my approval, but He did. I accepted Christ this year in January and was baptized in October. And He has held me together ever since. He is piecing me together day by day, hour by hour and sometimes minute by painful minute. There are so many times this year I have gone to Him simply grateful for Him, for His Spirit, for the reminder that whether I know it or not, He lives and He lives in me.

Perhaps the biggest change I've experienced this year is that I've begun to see people differently. I see them less as victims of their circumstances or as survivors. I see them less as needing to please me, support me, validate me. On the flip side, I also see less of a need to love myself, to forgive myself. Someone wrote that if we could do all these things, we would have no need of God. And maybe that's what the world is all about anyway. Every television show screams messages of loving yourself first. The idea that he who wants to be first among you should be everyone else's servant seems ludicrous. And may be so. But today I feel crowned.

Yes, much of me is still dross. But He is my Refining Fire. I am schizophrenic but He is wholly holy. I have no need to learn to love myself because He has called me His beloved.

For this Christmas, I will rest in that.