#tbt: November over the years

On this day exactly twenty years ago:

 

And one week later, since we were apparently full of energy and optimism when we were twenty-five:

Three years later with a second baby in tow, what else would we do on a November morning but climb a huge mountain? Apparently I still had ambition at age twenty-eight.

I see that another three years and a third baby (not pictured) reduced me to the local playground.

Then there was the following November when we went to Sea World with Nana and Grandpa, when Lizzy had just turned one and I didn’t yet know I was pregnant with Caleb:

I’ve always thought Sea World should pay me for this picture

I’m thankful to reflect that in November of 2025, my brood has grown to include a daughter-in-law, and if I climbed a mountain, they’d probably be more likely to carry me than vice versa. 

Hold your applause, please

We went to a college women’s volleyball game as an end-of-season outing with Lizzy’s team. It was very exciting. Those women are better than the high school and middle school girls we usually watch. 

The venue is also better. You can eat concessions, and the stadium seats have backs; and when a player makes a block or a kill to win the point, her name, picture and stats flash across the screens all over the arena.

I think my name and likeness should flash across screens when I do something awesome. Miiiindyyyy Millerrrrrrr!!! With the successful carpool completion! Mindy Millerrrr, playing the mom position, with the nutritiouuuuusss DINNER! And that’s team co-captain Mindy Miller with her ten thousandth career load of laundry!!!

Also the picture of me that flashes up would be incredibly flattering.

Of course, the play I most want recognition for is driving someone somewhere. Because I had a realization the other day. While driving last Sunday afternoon to our church’s fall festival (hay ride pictured above), a forty-five-minute-each-way journey undertaken after we had already driven nearly an hour round-trip that morning to church and back—but a journey that was nevertheless stunningly beautiful with the foliage and mountain views getting more and more brilliant as we neared the farm—I realized: it’s not the driving per se that bothers me so much. It’s a feeling I can’t quite articulate, but something that puts me in mind of junior high school, when the unambiguously cool kids would stand in a well-defined circle in a very specific spot in the hall before homeroom. 

I was not in the circle.

But I have clear memories of seeing the outside of the circle from my lesser spot in the general area of the hall.

Something about driving really far (relatively speaking) when EVERYONE ELSE (translation: some number of other people) had to drive really short somehow reminds me of looking at the outside of that circle in seventh grade.

And I’d feel a lot better if every time I showed up anywhere, everyone else stopped what they were doing to cheer and said Wow, Mindy, you are awesome! The stats screen says you just drove 22 miles for a grand total of 76 miles today! We can’t even imagine being as awesome as you! We just put on our shoes five minutes ago after taking a nap all afternoon. How do you do it?!! You put more effort into life than we would ever be able to!

Although that still wouldn’t soothe the concern that possibly all my friends and acquaintances are hanging out without me, since they’re all next-door neighbors.

Halloween

But also after the college volleyball game, the players sit at a table for people to line up and get their autographs. So maybe if people also clamored to tell me how awesome I was, after being informed by a flashing screen how awesome I was, and if they’d rather stay to hang out with me than go be with their friends and family and all their cool kid neighbors, then I’d feel pretty good about driving twenty miles to town.

This might be a me problem.

You must be prepared to work always without applause.

~ Ernest Hemingway

Love story

In this new era of life I’m in, I joined an afternoon women’s Bible study, something I haven’t been able to do for years, since homeschooling grew to encompass afternoon as well as morning hours. 

senior photo shoot I did for Ada and Jane

Despite the fact that I’m spending hours and hours reading political philosophy, that time is flexible, and actual instruction hours are morning only; therefore, if I gulp my lunch quickly enough or take it on the road, I can make it to Bible study on time.

Anyhoo, this past week we talked about the love affair described in the Old Testament between God and His people Israel—a relationship Israel was really bad at. 

For My people have committed two evils;

they have forsaken Me,

    the fountain of living waters,

and hewed out cisterns for themselves,

    broken cisterns that can hold no water.

~Jeremiah 2:13

We talked about how God alone can fill us up, despite our determination to look elsewhere.

What wrong did your fathers find in Me

    that they went far from Me,

and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?

~Jeremiah 2:5

We talked about our favorite rom-coms, and how a more biblical conclusion to a human love story would be not, “You complete me…I wanted it to be you so badly…my regard for you is unchanged,” but, “I want to disappoint you for the rest of our lives…I want you to be the one to perpetually drain me so I go running to Jesus to fill me back up.”

Let me know, Hollywood.

Cry out

At the end of our children’s ministry team meeting last night, our director asked what our prayer requests were. 

Probably because it was 9:02 and I was already tapping my watch, several of us didn’t offer anything.

So she prayed for us anyway, saying, “God, You know their needs; You know what they’re crying out to You for.”

On the way home I thought, what am I crying out to God for?

Answer: my kids. 

Whoever it was who said that having a child is like having your heart walking around outside your body was right. And it doesn’t have an age limit. You gasp and clutch your heart when your toddler teeters on the top level of the playground, and your aging heart still aches when they’re thirteen or fifteen or eighteen and you hope they’re going to turn out all right, with healthy minds and bodies and unbroken hearts and God-honoring character.

Maybe the only end is when they marry Maddie and you know her worrying will take up right where yours left off.

Other than worrying about my three kids who aren’t married to Maddie, my other pain point right now is driving to all the things.

But I realized, while driving home, that I’m not actually crying out to God about that, even though I struggle every day to trust Him and respond to the family’s daily needs in a godly way.

Why? 

Because I feel unjustified in my dislike of driving (Some people have to drive even farther! Soccer/volleyball/Bible study/friends are good for the kids! I have a healthy body and a reliable car that is able to drive! There are starving children in Africa!). 

Because my kids say, “Why are you tired? You didn’t play volleyball.” And I think Yeah why am I even tired? What’s wrong with me? 

So I feel like I shouldn’t resent driving, in fact I should be happy about driving, that driving should be life-giving to me and add every moment to my serenity and soul’s fulfillment. I should desire nothing more than driving my God-given children in our God-given car to our God-given activities.

And I habitually squelch and deny any contrary sentiments that rear up in my heart, rather than cry out to God about them.

Because everyone cries out to God for their kids, right? Probably even atheists on occasion.

But who cries out for grace to execute a privilege that they’re secretly ashamed is exhausting to them? 

Future

the model railroad Caleb is building in the loft of our shed

I was recently asked to look ahead a few years and consider taking on greater leadership in our church’s children’s ministry when the time comes. 

Who knows what my life will look like in five years? The math tells me that Caleb will be graduating, but still. I’m not enough of a visionary to form much idea of what that means.

Volleyball season is pretty much as overwhelming as we expected. High school government is even more time-consuming (for me) than expected. 

But it’s almost over. Both girls are done with the regular season and just have a few more practices and a tournament each; Lizzy triumphantly turned in her report on the gruelingly long Federalist Papers (she got an A).

So my felt need, if I suddenly had everyone graduated, would be to retire quietly, to focus on visiting my various family, and to finally clean the spiderwebs off my front windows.

Or…I could lean into a role at church that’s something I could see myself doing in another life. 

Jason took me to a comedy show, which turned into an overnight hotel stay and late-night drinks and a whole thing. It was a wonderfully fun birthday present and could not have come at a better time for us to get away together in the midst of a season of running around every which way.

But I can’t do everything, so which life do I choose?