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?

#tbt

This one is getting ready to graduate.

 

9 days old

I attended the initial “interest meeting” for a homeschool-parent-planned graduation ceremony.

2 weeks old

One of the many benefits of homeschooling is that you get to collectively pick the date for high school graduation, which is proving tricky, not least because my eldest is graduating from college at the same time.

7 weeks old

I was recently discussing with a friend with a son of similar age how much having a child who can drive is helpful overall.

2 months old

As in, yes, she can get herself where she needs/wants to go, AND she can take her siblings places…but it also rapidly multiplies how many places she wants/needs to go, leaving my middle-aged head spinning to try to remember where everyone is at any given moment and who needs a ride from whom.

13 months old

What with extra appointments and Caleb’s soccer team unexpectedly deciding to practice at the field a gazillion miles away from us, we told Ada she had to come home after her morning work/classes and pick up Lizzy for volleyball, lest I completely lose my mind.

That time one of the times she was hospitalized for wheezing, almost 2 years old

I realize—especially as she shortly celebrates her eighteenth birthday—that it’s tiresome to clear every detail of her life with her mom first, especially when her mom’s addled brain can’t remember anything without immediately writing it down.

Home from the hospital

Ah, youth, with its intrepid thirst for adventure that drives us to fly the nest. I, too, at seventeen, wanted nothing more than to strike out and do All The Things with All The People. 

And then I met my one person, and my greatest desire became to settle down.

4 years old

And then I procreated four other people. And now my greatest desire is to wear pj’s and leave the car parked in the garage. 

Home repairs

After we had the living room ceiling ripped out, Jason bought a water detector and a camera scope that he used to search every nook and cranny of our house between the upstairs bathroom at the east end of the house (where the Incident occurred) to the downstairs HVAC closet at the west end (where the result of the Incident was discovered in the form of an unwelcome waterfall).

After DIY replacing a bulging balloon of an HVAC flex that was threatening to burst over our couch any minute, at last it was determined that we were water-free.

So we got a new ceiling.

Gary, endlessly generous grandpa and home fixer extraordinaire, spent a few days painting.

And then—we moved the furniture back in, oh happy day.

We still have the dining room chandelier to replace as it seems to have gotten damaged in the chaos, but everything else is, thankfully, back as it should be.

Flying

 

Under our balcony, where we often eat lunch, birds like to make nests in the eaves. Jason doesn’t like it because he says it’ll rot the house or something, but I find the drama of mama bird flitting in to feed her chirping babies endearing.

Unfortunately, some birds seem to be better at nesting than others. We have found dead, underdeveloped baby birds smashed on the concrete under the nests before. I don’t know if it was a random mishap, or a stiff breeze, or baby walked to close to the edge and didn’t listen to mama saying don’t do that, but that bird leaving the nest was the last thing it ever did.

Here we are still getting used to Jeddy having an actual permanent address that’s not ours, and already the next birdie is getting ready to fly.

Unfortunate smooshed birds notwithstanding, it’s not the possibility of my birdie plummeting to disaster that scares me.

My fear is that she’ll soar. 

I know her wings are strong and healthy and there’s no reasonable danger in her perching on the very edge of the nest. Soon she’ll step off, and flap away…and she’ll be completely fine. She won’t need me to bring her worms or sit on her to keep her warm anymore. She’ll soar, and she’ll flourish, and she’ll succeed, away from us. And we won’t get to see it up close.

Is it true that mama birds push the babies out to force them to fly? I don’t know (Lizzy would know). Maybe some of them have to. 

But maybe there are some that the mama bird kinda wishes would stay a little bit longer. Maybe those mamas have to be brave birdies to watch that baby step onto the edge and jump out, waving goodbye and heading for the clouds.

Wordless Wednesday