Manic Monday

I happen to love Mondays. I love waking up to a new week, fresh slate, new dreams to pursue. Procrastination, discouragement and fatigue rear their ugly heads all too early in the week, but Monday mornings I feel like I can conquer the world. (Don't ask me how I feel on Wednesday).

I'm posting over at this sometimes neglected dustbunny corner of my blog today and in the upcoming week or so. I'm taking a good hard look at Simple Mom's series from last year on "How to Be Disorganized and Unproductive." So far I've posted and discussed the Introduction, Key 6 and today Key 5. If this is looking like a discussion you'd benefit from come on over and join us. The more the merrier. If not, I'm sure I'll be back soon with some preposterous, poetic, or personal ponderings.

Sometimes…

Sometimes I say really sweet things about my husband and kids, because sometimes I really love them beyond reason and because sometimes we have really good moments.

Sometimes I choke back rants and raves because I choose to focus on what I have to be thankful for.

Sometimes people make comments about my life that make me choke. Things like “your kids are so lucky to have you for a mom!” in regards to my children and; “you guys are such a perfect match.” in regards to my marriage. *Ahem*.

Sometimes there are days when I look at my husband with such shock and horror that you would swear I could freeze the blood in his veins.

Sometimes there are moments where one or the other of us says ALL the wrong things, in ALL the wrong ways and the other responds in like manner.

Sometimes we are too proud or stubborn to even recognize how blind and insensitive we are.

Sometimes things get really, really ugly.

The other day in my inbox the following line from Chinobilly Mamma got me thinking;

“It felt good to “air my dirty laundry” for the world to see for some reason. Believe it or not many friends emailed me and confessed they were glad they weren’t the only ones having crazy days. One friend even thought she couldn’t really relate to me because she thought I “had it all together”.

Sometimes I worry that despite my “Blog Reading Essentials” disclaimer at the bottom of the page, people still might get the wrong impression by reading my “sometimes life is really wonderful” thoughts and not getting glimpses into the “sometimes things get really ugly around here” moments. I don’t mean inside my head, or heart, I know I get down and dirty there on a regular basis, I mean… in real life family dynamics.

So. For the record. Just so you know. Sometimes things get really ugly around here. How ugly, you ask? Sometimes THIS ugly.

The other day, I had swept and damp mopped my dining room floor oh, let me see, no less than THREE times. (The dining room is a central room in our house, it gets us coming or going from either the front door or back). We are 6 people in and out of this house all day and we tend to drag in a lot of mess.

Besides that I had washed, hung, folded and put away four loads of laundry, fed my kids twice, cleaned up after them (no dishwasher remember), cleaned out the cat pen in the barn, done a basic tidy of the entire house (that doesn't mean you could TELL by the time 5:00 rolled around) AND washed, changed and exchanged clothes on my littlest guy amongst numerous other things. I had every intention of having supper on the table when Prairie Guy got home as we were planning on skipping out to the city right afterward but due to a drop in visit I was a few minutes late in the supper department. Not terribly mind you, but it wasn’t on the table till 15 minutes after he got home.

Now, I KNOW that we have a 45 minute commute, and I KNOW that the stores close at such and such a time, but 15 minutes in the grand scheme of things didn’t seem to make or break anything in MY head… but to my husband it was problematic. Not only was that problematic but apparently he was more concerned about the grass being cut than the cat pen being cleaned out (even though he had told me the day before he was concerned that the cat pen should be cleaned out)…. and didn’t I care that the dining room floor was so dirty? Oh dear. Cry me a river, DO I CARE THAT THE DINING ROOM FLOOR IS DIRTY???? Yes, as a matter of fact I CARE. I care ALOT. If you must know it is the bane of my miserable matronly existence (can you feel the drama coming on?) Just wait, it gets better.

I keep my cool up to this point. Inform my husband that “yes, actually, I do care, and for the record, we swept and damp mopped it three times today…” His look of disbelief did not help matters, but I just clenched my jaw and blinked madly while clashing lids and wooden spoons around to try to vent my own frustration.

We sit down 15 minutes behind schedule and I look at my baby in his high chair with some leftover food I had given him to keep him occupied. Can’t even remember anymore what it was but he had evidently smushed it all up with his hands and then rubbed it all into his hair and dribbled it all down his front. This is the child that I had bathed and changed just half hour before my husband got home. Now we had added to our delay that I still had to get him cleaned up and changed again, not to mention the other kids were looking a little wilted and worse for the wear as well… have mercy.

That’s just what I needed in that moment. Lots of mercy. And a good heaping dose of grace and someone to comfort and NURTURE me. But what I got was a whole series of “couldn’t you have…?” “Why isn’t….?” “Why didn’t….” and “I wish….”

Honey… believe me when I say that I wish I could keep a clean floor too. I wish my kids weren’t dirty half hour after getting changed. I wish my kids would learn to pick their stuff up without being asked, told, commanded or threatened. I wish, I wish, I wish! But. Sometimes? Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches. Sometimes you just gotta understand that life is messy and what matters is keeping peace and order in your spirit despite the circumstantial chaos.

And for the record? Sometimes a man who spends the day alone behind a desk really shold think twice about saying to a woman who spends her day picking up after five kids “If it were me, I would….” or "Can I ask you what you did all day?" Sometimes that man should just REALLY be careful about what he says to that poor woman. No disrespect (I can hear the emails coming already) Just sayin’ is all.

Sometimes I lose it. And sometimes I tell my husband I’m losing it and if something doesn’t give I’m going to break And then sometimes he feels really bad and realizes that sometimes even a really strong woman reaches the end of her rope and needs a soft place to fall.

And lastly? Sometimes it’s good to have really ugly moments because it makes one all the more appreciative of the beautiful ones that follow.

for the record this is not a rant, I did not post this in frustration or out of disrespect to my husband, we talked about this episode at length and I have his full blessing to share this story here. No, I am not writing this little addendum in response to a particular email, just as a safeguard against any that may have otherwise been heading my way *grin*.

An Everyday, Ordinary Life.

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."

Romans 12:1-2 The Message Translation

Love this.  Just love this.  Love everything about this!  What a kick in the pants challenge to take the ordinary and let God make it extraordinary.

Crow For Breakfast

Hmmm… It would appear I need to make a few clarifications about my last post. I think that for those of you who know me, you understand my heart, you know my passions, and probably didn’t bat an eyelash at the way I said what I did, but for others who maybe don’t know me so well, I’m afraid my loose wording may have caused some misunderstanding. Upon re-reading it I can see how that could happen, so I feel the need to clarify. A concerned reader wrote;

“You state in the beginning that you are starting to read Leviticus and that it is a struggle for you to read that book with enthusiasm. And then you say that you hope "Max" (Lucado) will plant a seed of excitement! I am shocked and disturbed by this hope in another human to get you to enjoy the bible.”

Firstly, I was being vulnerable when I shared what I did about my heart sinking when I saw Leviticus. I’m not proud of it. I KNOW that each and every chapter in the Bible holds amazing truth and mystery and marvels for me. I KNOW this. And I know that the less superficial and easily gleaned they are, the greater the delight usually experienced upon unearthing them. But clearly those types of passages require more “mining” on our part. More energy, more attention, more…. work. And I’m human, I’m sinful, I’m lazy, and I am as guilty as the next person some times of wanting to be spoon fed, and not have to pick up my mining tools and sift through rocky soil in search of gems.

When I said “trust Max”, I was saying it very comfortably, with my hair down, just like I would say “trust so and so to make me laugh through my tears” or “trust my dog to come alongside and nuzzle me when I’m down.” I wasn’t using the word trust in any weighty sense of the word, merely that I have found, any time I have read something by Lucado relating to anything that I myself am pondering, I can pretty much trust that he, in his gift of making profound things simple and practical in such a beautiful way, is going to, in some way, enrich my own ponderings. I think this is what fellowship is about, and how God created the body to function. To encourage and equip others through our gifts. I think Max has a gift for preaching. And good preachers will make people passionate about the Word. And I think I can appreciate a good preacher for his spiritual gifts and for how those gifts help enrich me. Which leads to another possible concern;

“Your hope should be that God will plant the seed of pleasure when reading His word. Even if God uses an author to encourage us, our hope should be in the Lord and that He blessed the author with what God is trying to say to you through their book, but that it's God who is putting the words of excitement into the pen of the author. This is why working in devotional books is sometimes difficult. You put to much on the human author that is just writing their interpreting of the Bible. Rather than just reading God's word for what it is! So if you do read a devotional book or bible, remember that the author is just a human, God made and sin-living human just like you who is just as powerless without the help and blessings for the Lord. “

Absolutely. It is my hope that God will plant the seed of pleasure in all of His children when it comes to reading His word. I shared in a private email to this concerned friend how distasteful and disturbing I found it upon moving back to Canada and hearing everyone go on and on about stuff they were reading in books and yet they weren’t even reading the bible for themselves. I couldn’t agree more! I was so turned off by it that I went to an opposite extreme where for a number of years I refused to read anything BUT the bible, no study helps, no devotionals, no Christian lit. Just me and the Bible and the Holy Spirit.

I still am a meat and potato kind of girl, I like to just read my chapter and let it speak, and see what God makes stand out to me today, which could and most likely will be totally different from what He will make stand out to me the next time I read the same chapter. That thrills me. The Word speaks. But at the same time, I still believe in the power of fellowship. And I still have a thirst for more fellowship in my life. It is empowering, encouraging and exhilarating to know that just as God is speaking into my heart, He is speaking into yours. Or Max’s. It excites me when a preacher is passionate about devoting his life to planting seeds and when those seeds fall on ready soil, they are embraced, and by God’s grace receive sunshine and rain in turn and are nutured into thriving and maturing plants that can in turn drop their own seeds.

The spiritual life is not just “me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit.” The Bride is a corporate entity of whom I am just one part and Christ is the head. Of course He is directing all the members, of course the glory and praise is all due Him. Of course Max says what He does and is who He is by the grace of the Holy Spirit alone. I don’t put my trust in him, but as my brother in Christ I have come to trust that he is the kind who will usually have a timely word and a simple yet profound insight that will compliment and encourage the work that Christ is doing in me.

The beautiful thing about what happened in my quiet time that morning was that Max spoke a fitting word, that convicted me (through the Holy Spirit of course). When I looked at Leviticus with a spirit of “oh great, better get out my shovel and pick axe, hard work ahead”, he revealed a whole different perspective and facet to this book. To look at it through different eyes. To picture the soil that Christ has cleared, rather then get buried in the fields of stones.

Please always feel free to approach me and hold me accountable and sharpen me. I am happy to completely unfold my heart and get personal and gritty about what I believe and what I am trying to express and actually, I am EXCITED when someone cares enough to respond and dig in and start peeling back the layers. I will never take offense at something like this, and appreciate the opportunity to truly FELLOWSHIP.

The Stones Are Gone.

We are two chapters into Leviticus at my devotional spot. I have to admit my heart sank when I saw that Exodus had come to a close, Leviticus has never been a very gripping read for me. This is, however, my first time to read it with my devotional Bible and Lucado’s notes and trust Max to plant a seed of excitement in my heart over a book like Leviticus. In the intro notes he writes;

"Suppose your father grants you a piece of land. Free. You can farm it and make a living. There is only one condition. You first have to get the rocks out. And so you work. For hours and days you work. With time, you see the task is too great. There's just no way you can do it. You give up. Then your father says you've done enough. "I have another plot of land for you," he explains. This time the stones are gone."

"Who removed them?" you ask

"I did."

"You go to the acreage and find his promise to be true. The stones are gone, and you are left to farm. And so you sow in gratitude."

In the past year or so I have been coming to understand to an even deeper level how the Old Testament books that expound more and more on the law and the weight and the rules and the standards can and should be seen in a different light by those of us on this side of the veil.

They expound the great love of God that removed all barriers in Christ. Or as Max so beautifully puts it; "removed the stones."

This morning I read the second chapter, and I will admit, I didn’t see much there for me. Till I read my devotional notes. Lucado started by pointing out the fact that the sacrifices in these chapters taught the Israelites how to worship God through personal commitment. Through sacrifice. Hoh. I think there is something in there for me after all. He closes by quoting from Living Above the Level of Mediocrity by Charles Swindoll;

“In segments of the world where Bibles are plentiful and churches are protected, faith can run awfully shallow. Commitment can stay rather lukewarm. Eagles can learn to fly dangerously low. ‘What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.’”

This quote just twisted my insides into knots. I had just finished reading this;

"In a large house there are not only things made of gold and silver, but also things made of wood and clay. Some things are used for special purposes, and others are made for ordinary jobs. All who make themselves clean from evil will be used for special purposes. They will be made holy, useful to the Master, ready to do any good work." 2 Timothy 2:20-21

and writing this;

Love this. Oh how I want to be more than ordinary... more than wood and clay. Gold in the hands of the master goldsmith, useful, of value to Him, ready to do His work.

I don’t want my faith to run shallow. I don’t want my commitment to be lukewarm. I don’t want to fly low. I don’t want to esteem this good, cleared soil lightly. I want to dig deeper, I want to burn brighter, I want to soar and I want to sow good seeds in this beautiful soil He has prepared for me.

Tapestries

Once you sat serenely on terra cotta tile
in the corner of a Tuscan room
white chintz billowing softly at your back
sunlight splaying your floral brocade
oft I curled up within your familiar embrace
bible in my lap
leg thrown over the comfortable fit of your well worn arm
reading
praying
gazing out over sprawling hills
of sunflowers
vineyards
olive groves in turn.

Five children I held
rocked
nursed in you
five others I mourned
sat rocking in solitude
arms wrapped tightly around the ache
in my own hollow abdomen
while burning tears spilled
distorting my vision
as grief is prone to do.

You crossed the wide Atlantic to grace my prairie home
where you snuggled into the corner of a much more homely room...
battered hardwood beneath
and the steady pummeling of many little hands and feet
others less sentimental may have looked on you, chagrined
critical eyes drawn to those tattered tassels
this unsightly tear perhaps
that stubborn stain
But to these sentimental eyes of mine
each worn thread of your tapestry
is gently twined with a fleeting memory

I see my girls
sprawled on the area rug
braiding your silk tassels while I read
my boys years later
snipping mischievously away
scissors in hand
reveling in the "click" and the chords that fell
lifeless to the hardwood
later to be swept up and cast into the fire
like golden locks after a trim

Memories of my children as they napped in you
curled up in my lap on you
climbed
and jumped
and laughed on you.

Your faded tapestry is beautiful in my eyes
interwoven as it is with the tapestry of our lives.


My contribution to L.L. Barkat's poetry prompt at Seedlings in Stone. What timing to be led into the living room this week where I finally retired my beloved and tattered old wingback chair.