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.

On walking and waking together

I was just a month past my teens and freshly turned twenty, sixteen long years ago. He’d won my heart years before, when I wasn’t even old enough to drive a car. Against all odds, we were still an inseparable pair and despite the long distance of college, he asked me to share the rest of life with him. I asked him first if he’d asked my dad (he had!) and then I said yes. A few weeks later we went on a walk with a friend and her camera and she snapped this photo:

A year of planning and dreaming and anticipating what life together would look like. Quiet walks and plenty of time to talk. Coffee dates whenever we pleased and the occasional jump into the lake on a sun-setting summer night. Both with two years of university remaining, we studied hard, worked hard and served hard on staff part time at church. Money in short supply but not lacking in the burning-with-love-for-each-other- department. Oh the waiting, it felt like we would never make it to that altar!

It was easy. The saying yes. The beginning of the journey. That uncharacteristically warm summer May afternoon with 427 people sitting watching. Its the staying in yes that isn’t the easy part. No one tells you that. Years without babies with hearts full of ministry life then the years with babies, one after another. The quaint little college apartment with organized everything gave way to a cute and crowded condo by the lake which gave way to the darling rambler where we would welcome our fifth baby blessing on our bedroom floor on a cold February evening.

There were scars by then. The kind you see, that tell of a body swollen beyond capacity time and again. And the kind you don’t see, the ones that tell of losses and disappointments that rend the heart all sorts of broken. There were all the months I spent sure that no other married ones who loved Jesus this much could possibly find life this hard. Whatever of “happily ever after”?

Just when it seemed the heart was plum full and how could I possibly learn to love more, deeper, softer….there was always more. Room for more. Growing, changing, forgiving, learning, CHOOSING. It was always that that was hardest for me. That it wasn’t always going to feel lovely and beautiful. It was going to be a falling apart mess sometimes and I would always have to choose. Choose to be steadfast. Choose to forgive. Choose to stay present. Choose to love extravagantly. All in the midst of a culture that says marriage isn’t forever and I should do what makes me feel good, despite the cost.

I booked a babysitter days ago, chose the nicest restaurant in our country town for us to share dinner and anticipated what two hours off alone together would be like. Life is full and loud and some face time is such a rare gift. Just five hours before our to-be anniversary dinner I heard these infamous words “I think I’m going to throw up mom!” And I dropped everything, ran to the kitchen and ushered her to the bathroom. I cancelled the sitter and texted the sad news of our dashed dinner plans. An hour later as Finn joked about “choking up” as he calls it, and playing with the bowls I had put out, he turned sheet white and lost his lunch all over the kitchen floor. The hubby texted back and offered to pick up dinner and I mopped up nastiness one batch after another.

He brought take out and we sat on the back deck so we could eat sans vomit-smell. Liberty kept us company and we mused about our state of affairs while eating out of a box with plastic forks.

We exchanged gifts, which was hysterical because we both shopped at Costco for each other, obviously because the boxes were identical. We agreed on many accounts but especially this…the sharing of the journey, in all its imperfection and mess, the walking together instead of alone, the waking up in the same bed with the same person day after day after day…it is profoundly precious. It is not overrated. It is nothing less than amazing in all its “ordinary-ness”.

As I took bites of food on the deck in between rounds of running in to empty full puke-bowls, I could only smile. This is it. This is real life. This is our life. An unexpected end to our fifteenth wedding anniversary to be sure. But then most of our life together has been unexpected and beyond what I’d dreamed of. I could not ask for a better someone to share it all with. Our walks may be slower and louder these days, but they are rich and brimming with love and laughter and all sorts of sweetness we are crazy thankful for.

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Signs of (good) times…

While I put the baby down for a nap, Audrey grabbed her work and her little brother and headed for the sun…where I found her explaining the “code” from her Explode the Code workbook.

The view from my pillow every morning…gads of clean, folded, piled laundry

The after-playtime-outside bathtub residue

My breakfast-in-bed Mother’s day treat!

When’s the last time you played so hard you had grass and mud in your undies? 🙂

Someone’s been eating my onion tops…

My inner nerd enjoying an afternoon of book organizing and labeling….LOVE!

Dissecting a crayfish…wrapping up our year immersed in the study of all God’s amazing swimming creatures

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 🙂

The best day

Last month after an especially arduous dentist appointment with six children (um, ok, when is that NOT arduous?) we found ourselves at the McD’s drive through for fudge sundaes on our way home…I know ironic right? And the perky girl who gave us our 5 ice cream treats said as I left, “Have the best day ever!” with a smile. I was taken aback, it wasn’t at all what I’d expected to hear. But it stuck with me. And as I drove home from our long morning of dental fun, I was struck by the stark reality that my mundane, errand-filled morning could indeed be the best day ever.

Any day can be the best day. It is largely up to attitude and perspective and only slightly up to actual circumstance. When we woke up last Wednesday there was nothing on the calendar. It was just another day. It was bright and glorious outside and we all got to work on chores so we could start school work. A quick trip out to the barn made it clear that Rylee’s beloved Blanchette was very near to delivering her first set of kids. Book work got set aside and we set about an altogether different kind of learning. My favorite kind. The kind where we get all wrapped up in something amazing. And this amazing has to be the best kind. The kids planted themselves in the barn with walkie-talkies to keep me apprised of the situation while I did dishes and took care of the baby and came back and forth every chance I could. Once Liberty was asleep, I sat with them in absolute wonder:

I watched them hold their breath as the large-bellied mama heaved around her pen making soft noises as she labored. Even ever-busy Finn was quiet. Watching new life emerge has to be one of the most sacred, precious things there is. It is nothing less than amazing.

We marveled that she knew just what to do, made sweet mama sounds that we’d never heard from her before…I whispered through tears that they would always, always remember this day, this moment and knew that so would I. Our ordinary everyday turned into miracle-watching in a one quick instant.

They slowly made observations about the tiny hooves and the color of the fur and how slimy they were and how quick their mama cleaned them and how incredible it was they could stand in two minutes and look for food almost immediately….and suddenly a years’ worth of science seemed to pale in comparison to the beauty we were privy to in the barn on a sweltering April day.

Sometimes, a day gets to the best ever simply because we know that our today is one of a kind and it’s a gift all in itself. But every now and then a day is the best ever because we get to do or see something that astounds and amazes us and leaves us with a memory that we’ll tuck away forever. I found myself crazy thankful for the umpteenth time that our kids are home learning with me, that we got to share this day together.

My ten year old boy

Dear Caleb,

You are ten. You are complex and bright and curious and sensitive. Your sense of awe at all created things never wanes. You smell, listen and watch absolutely everything around you. Your awareness sometimes may feel less than a blessing and seem just too much. But as you grow, I have no doubt it will be one of your greatest assets and part of the unique and wonderful you.

You have stretched me, shaped me, grown me in ways that have exceeded what I thought I could bear. You have shown me things about me and about life and about love that I’d have never otherwise known. I know you love to be alone and would love to live in a tree but that for now, you live in a large family in a house. I hope you find in the many years to come, that your place in this family is critically important. You bring a heart, a mind, a voice to this community of sisters, brothers and your dad and I, that we are blessed to know.

Your love for reading runs to the core of you. You literally can’t stop reading. I want to be frustrated when you are right near me but have your face in a book and you can’t hear me. But I honestly think you don’t. You are immersed in the written word. You are captivated by grand stories and great adventure. What I hope you come to know better this year and in the next many years, is that your own story is grand and the God of the universe has a great adventure for you. He designed you, understands you and that truth has given me such a grounded sense of peace when I haven’t been able to understand.

You work hard when I can peel you away from books. You faithfully care for chickens and always help me with my farm chores with a happy heart. You thrive when you carry with you a sense of purpose. My love for you is a fierce one son. You must know that. Though I may not always ‘get it’, I always love you, more than you could possibly imagine.

Always,

Mama

Birthday boy with day old baby Daisy

TEN years old and so handsome!

A Place for Little Feet

a blog.