{How to Mend the Little Things}

It's funny how we become accustomed to nagging little things in our lives. Take, for instance, this lamp.

See that trim? Hanging right off. For a very. long. time. I really have no idea how long I lived with it. Just sort of hanging there.

Dejected. Sloppy. Incomplete. Ignored.

It became so normal that I didn't even think about fixing it. Didn't even acknowledge that I could have it whipped back into shape in a mere five minutes.

That is, until our recent move. When the surroundings were different, I saw that lamp in a new light. (Ha.) I said to myself, "A glue gun and two minutes will have that baby restored. I can have my lamp back!"

So I grabbed the glue gun (it did help that I had it out for another project anyway), applied a ribbon of glue to the trim, and pressed it back into place.

Voila! That's all it took. And my lamp looks happy and whole once again. After far too long.

I wonder if I've let other imperfections slip into my life without giving them a second thought. They've become routine. A part of the normal backdrop.

Attitudes. Words. Habits. Thoughts.

And it doesn't occur to me to do one single thing about it.

With the lamp it took a change of scenery. Perhaps it's the same with the heart? A carved out space of quiet to move away from the normal and to really observe what's going on. To get out the glue gun and mend a thing or two.

Better yet, to hand the brokenness over to my own Creator. To lay it all bare and pray the prayer that David uttered long ago.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

The wonderful thing about handing my hurts and imperfections over to the Lord is that He doesn't just repair it. He makes it new.

New ribbon ensconced in light. Fashioned by His own hands. Now that I can definitely live with.



Beautiful Things by Gungor
Psalm 51:10

{Thankful}

Giving thanks this week. For rest, for play, for family.

For cousins . . .

And curiosity . . .


For health . . .

And inspiration . . .

For sisters . . .

And sons . . .

For creativity . . .

And another year to celebrate . . .

A fourteen-year-old and the joy that he brings . . .

For the path ahead and the path behind.

For this I give thanks.

{Order}

Aidan recently got it into his head that it would be most efficient to group his LEGO collection by color. I calmly smiled and said, "What a great idea, honey."

Inwardly I performed a number of gravity defying leaps and pirouettes. My child. Creating order. Hallelujah.

I quickly devised a plan to acquire some cute little, Pottery Barn-perfect canvas bins in which to store these delightfully organized bricks. In the mean time, Aidan resorted to shoving each pile into separate gallon sized zip lock bags.

It was tedious. Too tedious to wait for the perfect bin.

So when I found some serviceable little plastic bins at the dollar store, I snatched them up.

My plan morphed just a tad, and I soon envisioned his shelf lined with these substitute bins. I would alternate the bins: blue, green, blue, green. Yes. That would be so pleasing to the eye. Each bin would have a darling printed label naming the LEGO color contained within. It would be a thing of beauty. My heart skipped a beat just thinking about it.

When I brought the bins home, however, it became quite clear that Aidan had a plan of his own. No sooner had I deposited the bins in his room than he began to dump the contents of each LEGO bag. Much to my horror, he also grabbed a green Sharpie and started labeling those bins. On his own.

Without the cute little labels I had envisioned.

I mourned for a period. It took every ounce of willpower in my possession to let this child create his own order and to smile over the work that he was so proud of. And to watch that green Sharpie desecrate the surface of the tidy bins. Which were not placed in alternate order by color, but grouped by color.

The nerve.

Of course, I could have said, "Aidan, this is how we will arrange your LEGOs." And that would have been the end of it. But I knew that this would also have been the end of his contribution to the order. And I truly wanted it to be his work, his order. His growth.

So I stepped back, bit my lip, and witnessed the continued attacks of the green Sharpie.

Later that afternoon, when I returned to see the completed project, I was more than thankful that I had let go. I was given a window into his world through which I could see what "order" means to him.

It was clever the way his labels ran on like a sentence, each color or description followed by a comma as though the bins were all attached to one another like box cars on a train. The final bin was labeled with a description of its contents followed by a squiggly little period:

Oh, this child. To think that I would to force my own order into his world.

Sometimes our plans for order are good. And sometimes letting those little ones around us make their own order is even better. It's all a part of growing up. Especially when Mama acknowledges that they really are big enough to wield a permanent green Sharpie.

{Home}

The golden morning light greeted me that first day. I had been lulled to sleep by the chorus of spring peepers, and I felt like a child again. The familiar sound, the familiar place.

Home.

I walked the neighborhood in the silence of breaking daylight, past familiar homes. My friends from elementary school had lived there. My youth pastor's family, just down this street, here.

The house at the other end where my sister and I quietly left a May basket, rang the doorbell, and bolted, giggling wildly.

And some homes, still sharing the same love and the same people that were shared with our family long ago. Ready to welcome, ready to "share an egg" or a "cup of flour."

Neighbors. Home.


The clock is now hung. Our "shepherdess."

We're settling in. And it's the most peaceful, right feeling in the world. I love nesting. But this nest, this childhood home of mine, has been feathered before. By my own mother.

To tend it now, as a mother myself, is surreal.

The rhythm of our days picks up and falls into a whirl of something resembling normality. School hums merrily in the study where, years ago, we set up our first, bulky family computer.

The china cabinet holds my china -- my grandmother's china -- just as it once held my mother's things. Pieces from family, passed down. Like this home.

Even sweet Maizy seems to know that all is well.

Serene and restful. I think of Gideon's peace. He asked the Lord, "Show me?" And the Lord revealed.

So, too, the Lord revealed that this is the home for us. For this time. And we are so very grateful.

Miss Kate scrambles up to the loft, not minding one bit that it's time for some quiet. Nestled among books with tea and CDs where I remember sorting through Sports Illustrated volumes with my dad.

Home.

The rain pounds its rhythm on the skylight above me. The geese congregate in the nearby wetlands, seeking shelter among the reeds.

We, too, have sought shelter. Many times. And the Lord has faithfully gathered us into His arms. And every time, we've found home.

{Why Today is a Special Occasion}

I finally put my vintage Holly Hobbie drinking glasses in the dishwasher. Now normally this is where I would say something like, "Don't tell my sister!" But I'm not going to say that. Because of all people, she would understand why I committed this brazen act.

She found the set of glasses at a garage sale a couple of years ago and immediately thought of me. I was delighted to receive them and awed by the report that they had been so well cared for by the previous owner. As in, they had been hand washed.

For thirty years.

I suddenly became scared of the glasses. I was scared to drink from them. I was even more scared to let the children drink from them. On the rare occasions in which I did use one of these precious vessels, I was careful to hand wash them in warm, soapy water and return them carefully to their nesting place in the cupboard, breathing a sigh of relief that they had survived the hazardous ordeal.

At some point, one of the glasses ended up in the dishwasher. Probably the kids were loading and I wasn't paying much attention. As you can imagine, it ran through the cycle quite merrily and came out decidedly clean. It was wonderful, I tell you. Wonderful.

The dishwashing "mistake" made something click in my brain. I wasn't using these delightful glasses nearly as much as I could have. I wasn't freely sharing them with my girls, but had been behaving rather like a martyr each time I ceremoniously brought them down for a little one's sick tray. I was even creating more work for myself when I could have chosen simplicity.

It was all quite silly.

I love these glasses, and I want to use them. I want my girls to use them. And we will be so much more likely to do so if we can easily wash them. Even (yes, it's true), even if that means running the risk of chipping the paint or even losing one all together.

Otherwise, I let the thing become more important than the person using it.

As we continue to pack up our home, I realize that I've done this in other ways, too. I've come across stationery that I didn't use. I was saving it for a special occasion. Jam from England. Too precious to consume. I even found a bar of soap from Slovenia that I hadn't used. It was a souvenir, after all.

Saving, waiting, keeping. All for some elusive special occasion. An occasion that may or may not actually arrive.

But what if I allowed that special occasion to be right now? What if this was that special moment that I had been waiting for? What if I celebrated the beauty of today, cast off fears and inhibitions and said, "Yes! Let's do it!"

Because the truth is that life is happening today. And I sure don't want to miss out on it.