a la mode

Home Updates: How My Mistreated Windows Grew Up

2013-05-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

So. This is the last post of the unofficial "Home Updates Series."

If you'd like to catch up, here are the other posts:

Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

Bookcase Bling

Today I'd like to show you how my adolescent, mistreated-but-just-fine-windows got a makeover.

My poor windows sat naked for years. Window treatments can be spendy, especially when you have five of them in one room. And I'm sort of a perfectionist. So I simply did nothing while my sad windows sat victimized by my frugality and perfectionism.

When I first started reading The Nester about six years ago, she inspired me with her many ways one could "mistreat" a window.

So, armed with my glue gun and Wal-Mart fabric, I decided that something was better than naked. I spent $20 on fabric and a little bit more on ring clips and upholstery tacks.

I figured it would be temporary fix but those make-do mistreatments remained tacked to the walls for four and a half years.

After we painted and spruced up our great room, I knew it was time for my windows to grow up. A few months ago I found 8 sheery panels at a local antique shop. I risked $25 for them, not knowing if they'd work and not knowing when I'd ever get around to putting them up.

I'd also been holding on to a lovely vintage curtain rod with crystal finials I'd scored years ago at a thrift store, but I only had one. I was determined to use it so I told myself that all the curtain rods "don't have to match, they just have to go." {Channeling the sage advice of Clinton and Stacy.}

I found some in a similar finish at {gulp} Big Lots. As it turned out, they look just fine in the same room with their different but fancier sister who lives just further down the wall.

Want to see what a difference sheery panels with real curtain rods make in this room?

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

{Look how tiny my big girl is in this picture. She is in middle school now! Tissues please.}

AFTER:

I know. It may be my favorite change to this space. I love how they still let in the light but they add a softness and finished-ness to the space. In my husband's words, the room looks more "sophisticated." {I didn't even know he had decorating adjectives in his vocabulary. He has so been holding out on me.}

Thanks for letting me show and tell all of these fun changes to our main living space.

I'm a house junkie and a homebody and I think about our home's spaces a lot. But...I've realized that I do not really love to write about my home. I like it, but I don't love it. It feels like work, especially posting all of the photos. {I don't know how all of you home bloggers do it.}

While it's fun for me to do a house post here and there, I am so very ready to get back to the writing I love most.

So stay tuned. I already have one scripted for tomorrow. It's kind of a special day.

Home Updates: Bookcase Bling

2013-05-22T10:05:00.003-04:00

Last week I made a quick stop at Lowe's. Several employees asked if they could help me find what I was looking for and I replied with fake, cheerful, confidence: "No thanks. I'm fine."

I marched the aisles like I knew exactly what I needed even though I had no clue and was too embarrassed to ask where the tiny, pretty, brassy, corner thingys were.

How could I tell the savvy home-improvement gurus that I was looking for jewelry? For my bookcase.

Months ago I found a humble wooden bookcase at an antique store for $25. It was the perfect size for our foyer.

When you are living large in a small space, everything has to do double duty. I can't waste space on a lovely occasional table that holds lamps and picture frames and candles. Form and function rule the roost around here. It's just the way it is.

That means my entryway is the library / art gallery / foyer. My "occasional table" is a hardworking holder of books. Lots of books.

{Crazy Jetta photo-bombing my blog photos. Seriously could not get this dog to move.}

There's a bit of a shelf shortage in our home.

I have books stashed in the hutch:

And on our nightstands.

Amid the Playmobil police station and cowboy boots.

Next to the boys' bunkbeds.

And there's still a box or four in my attic from my old office. Believe it or not, I've actually gotten rid of a lot of books in recent years. Still, it's just sort of bookish around here. I hope it always will be.

I dream of this:

{via}

And this:

{via}

And this:

{via}

And this:

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And this:

{via}

Let's face it. I really just want to live here.

{My heart skips a beat. The Abbey Bookshop, Paris.}

But in the meantime, I'm content with my $25 slimline shelves. And while she's practical...she's a bit plain.

Back to my story. I remembered seeing some brassy hardware recently as I strolled the aisles of Lowe's and it hit me: "Those hardware thingys would sure look pretty on my Plain Jane foyer bookcase."

Here's what I bought.

$1.96 a package.

Here's the before BEFORE. {She was originally brown and I painted her some shade of aqua.}

Here's the most recent BEFORE. {She fell prey to the great white-out, same as all my shelves and frames.}

And here she is AFTER a bit of brassy embellishment.

It's a small change but I think it makes her a little more legit, especially since she sits in the foyer all welcomey and important.

A word to the wise: Remove your lovely succulents sitting precariously on the top of the bookcase before you hammer away at your shelves.

Next post: The Hazards of Home Improvement.

........................................

{Other Recent Home Update Posts}

Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

Homes Updates: Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

2013-05-16T11:31:00.000-04:00

I am not really a home blogger. But I am a bona fide home hacker and I do love to be inspired by the beauty of my surroundings. And I just happen to have a blog which means that sometimes I see fit to interrupt my irregularly scheduled posts about kids and failure and making friends with mess to show you my most recent home hacks.

Enter this post on "gallery walls."

Oh how I love them! I always have. My first gallery wall was way back in 2002. I'd traveled abroad by then and I desperately wanted to display photos and art from my travels. When we moved into our current home 7 1/2 years ago, I replicated much of what was in our old house and for the most part, it has remained unchanged since then.

I may be a compulsive rearranger but when I get my walls a certain way and love it, I do not change a thing.

But new paint inspired some much-needed change. {See the earlier post this week on new paint and our dresser-turned-entertainment-center.} I painted all the shelves and some of my frames white. I mixed in new photos and art. And it just. kept. growing. My gallery wall is now so expansive that I'm thinking about charging admission.

Here's the great room gallery wall BEFORE:

{Oh and here it is after I had to move the settee to make room for our homeschool desks a few years ago.}

And here's the great room gallery wall AFTER:

I know, that's a lot of stuff on the wall. Maybe too much. But it makes me smile and it's terribly sentimental and I really, really love it.

{Now that I'm no longer homeschooling, that long desk had become a landing strip for clutter and laundry so I removed half of her. I'll show you where the other half went in another post.}

So this post is all about what I've learned after assembling a few gallery walls over the years. I know, a "bullet point post" is not my usual fare. Nonetheless, I'll share with you some tips that may be useful if you want to create a gallery wall of your own. I'm anything but an expert. Take or leave whatever you like.

1. Make it personal. There's nothing wrong with buying cute, mass-produced art from Hobby Lobby. Truly there's not. I've gotten a few things like that over the years but recently realized that I've given all of it away or sold it in yard sales. In the end, I guess I prefer what's "real" or sentimental or crafted by an actual artist, even if that artist is my amateur kid painter.

I have four pieces of kid art on this wall. And I'm just crazy about all of them.

Two pieces of art are watercolors by street artists in Prague, given to me by my sister who visited there during the year she lived in Munich. They are beautiful, miniature works of art and I have always adored watercolors. I've had these for years and love them just as much as I always have.

I have three "artifacts" that are super special. One of them is a teapot that belonged to my husband's grandmother, gifted to me by his grandfather. Both of them are in Heaven now and gifts like the teapot are sweet reminders of them.

Another is a gorgeous Anthropologie teapot gifted to me by Lily for my birthday a few years ago. The last is a hanging piece of pottery crafted by a local South Carolina artisan and given to me by my dear sister last year.

I also copied, pasted, and printed out this "Prayer for the Home" that I saw on Edie's blog, Life in Grace, a really long time ago. It's so beautiful.

I thought it was perfect and wanted to have it in our place too. I wrapped some scrapbook paper around a matte and put it in a clear frame.

2. Choose your favorite photos. I have ten photos on this wall. That's quite a lot but they're a sweet, eclectic representation of our family. Having fewer but larger photos would also work beautifully. I'd love to have several larger canvas pieces around the house at some point but with an open floor plan, there's a shortage of walls and therefore a shortage of gallery space.

Photos are such an easy, inexpensive way to change things up. Take 20 minutes to upload and print several of your favorite photos that are sitting in obscurity on your hard-drive. Then grab some cheap, chunky frames from a discount store {or from your attic} and you're good to go.

I don't know why I put simple things off like that. I'm amazed at how easy and quick it is to add photo updates to our space; I always wish I'd done it sooner.

3. Mix art and photos and "artifacts." It just works. Too many like things can feel matchy-matchy. Mixing is up is fun and interesting. That's all there is too it.

4. Add architectural elements. Shelves and cubes and giant chunky frames add substance and dimension.

5. Group tiny things inside larger frames or on shelves. Scale is important. Our house is small but this room is huge. It comprises two-thirds of our house. Small picture frames and tchotchkes sitting on end tables or tacked to the wall with nothing around them end up adding to the clutter and getting swallowed up by the space. But let's face it, most of us have lovely things we want to display that are smaller than an 11 x 14 frame.

For this wall, I found that grouping my smaller frames inside one giant frame feels cohesive instead of cluttered.

6. Crop. This is something I've just discovered. My daughter has gobs of art and because she's a perfectionist, she hates most of it. Thankfully, I have salvaged some precious pieces from the trash. This monarch butterfly, one of her "earlier works," was painted on a much larger piece of paper. I cut out just the butterfly and framed it. Made all the difference.

This waterlily painting was a half-hearted attempt at Monet. It was her first draft and she tried to trash it. The paint ran and the colors mixed too much and she thought it was a wreck. But I thought the colors were beautiful and I told her it was simply an impressionist version of impressionism. Once again, I cut out a small piece of it and showcased it in a thrift-store frame. She still doesn't love it...but I do.

7. Copy. Inspiration is everywhere. Grab your old magazines, get on Pinterest, do a search for "gallery walls." See something in a friend's home a snap a picture. You don't have to replicate it identically but you can use similar sizes, shapes, combinations, layouts and colors.

{via}

Here's a great post on artwork wall groupings that is full of all sorts of beautiful and vastly different gallery walls.

There is no need to reinvent the wheel, people. Remember, you don't have to be inventive to still be creative.

Find something you like and make it your own. You'll feel like a creative genius when you're done.

Years ago I had a friend who sent her husband to take a picture of our gallery wall and replicated it with her own pieces at home. It totally worked and she loved it. "Imitation is the finest form of flattery."

8. Don't over-think it. Just experiment.

The "bones" of this wall {the shelves, some of the larger pieces} stayed the same. I held stuff up and moved things around and put countless tiny nail holes in my wall.

My friend came over to look at and said, "I love it. It's balanced even though it's not symmetrical. And it's interesting. There's so much you want to look at!" That was exactly the vibe I was going for. This same friend is doing a gallery wall of her own. She cut out paper shapes of frames and such and tacked them to the wall. She's moved them around and played with the design until she finds what she likes. That works too and is probably the "right" way of doing a project like this.

Unfortunately I am ten shades of impatient and tend to just use what I have, eyeball things, and grab the hammer.

9. Pick one to three frame finishes and stick with those. This isn't a "rule." There are no rules. {This is why I love people like The Nester and Edie.}

Actually I've seen gallery walls with all sorts of different frames and finishes and it works. But because I'm an amateur, I've found that sticking with one to three of the same color frames brings it together a bit. In my case, I used black, white, and a bit of faded, splotchy gold.

Here's my other, smaller gallery wall as you leave the living room and walk down the hallway. Everything is white. I love this too and if you want a less eclectic, more traditional look, go with all the same finish on your shelves and frames.

{Here's that same wall with the old wall color and black frames. Ugh. Why do wall colors photograph so strangely?}

10. Enlist help. I know what some of you are thinking: "I'm just no good at this sort of thing." In the words of Tim Gunn, you feel like you just can't "make it work."

I hear you. And let's face it, some people just see the world through a more creative, free-spirited lens. They can put things together in ways others would never imagine. Chances are you have one of those friends. Ask him or her to help you.

I'm no professional but I love beauty and home. My friends and family say I've always been a tad on the creative, resourceful side and I do so love to lend a hand and help a friend make her space beautiful too. I've also been known to enlist my own artistic friends when I feel stuck.

Tell your artsy friend that you'll watch her kids or buy her a frappuccino while she hacks up your wall. Win, win.

And just to keep it real. Here is how the gallery wall has evolved just while I've been sitting her typing out this post.

Apparently I have a tiny creative genius of my own, which brings me to tip number....

11. A fort is the perfect addition to any space.

...............................

So there you have it. What do you think, are you a fan of the gallery wall trend? Any tips of the trade you can share with the rest of us? Should we have a gallery wall linky party?

{Other Recent Home Update Posts}

Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

Bookcase Bling

Home Updates: Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

2013-05-13T11:26:00.000-04:00

We've made a few changes around here these last couple of months. I'm not going to show you all at once. {Because that would require getting too much of my house picked up at the same time.}

My husband's parents visited over Spring Break and because I was sick and my son got the flu, our local sightseeing plans were cancelled. Instead, they painted my foyer and great room, which includes the kitchen. I'm still giddy about it.

{The color: Comfort Gray by Sherwin Williams. I had Lowe's color-match it.}

Fresh color on the walls ushered in some other fresh updates. My favorite is a "new" piece of furniture for our TV.

We've lived in this house 7 1/2 years and the TV wall has gone from this (Pier One pine armoire):

To this (our bookshelf / nightstands on loan until we could find something else):

To this (IKEA Expedit unit that I thought was right but ended up being all wrong):

To this (a repurposed white dresser that gave me a less obtrusive look but that I couldn't quite get right):

And finally, to this. Tada!

Talk about the evolution of a space! Sometimes you have to find out what you don't like in order to figure out what you do. The Pier One armoire was fine but didn't fit our new TV. I sold it on Craigslist and used our nightstands in the meantime to hold the TV. The giant IKEA unit looked much smaller in the store than it did in our living room. {Let's face it, when a store is the size of a small country, everything looks smaller than it really is.} I sold it to my neighbor and had been patiently waiting for a replacement ever since.

A friend of mine gave me an old dresser that I repainted but despite ridiculous amounts of sanding, I couldn't get some of the bubbled wood sanded flat. I experimented with a number of failed drawer coverings. Burlap, painted burlap, modge-podged patterned papers....all of them epic DIY fails.

{Exhibit A: #modgepodgeisthedevil}

Finally I moved the solid but bubbled dresser to my boys' closet {as they were in desperate need of some storage} because at long last I found the perfect piece at a local consignment store.

Love at first sight. {She looked less orange in real life.} Here she is in the store:

Drexel, 1974. Great condition. Perfect storage. Fairly priced.

I actually wasn't going to paint her but my husband, who rarely has an opinion about home stuff, looked at it in the back of my van and said, "Oh. You're going to paint it aren't you?"

Obviously, I had to paint her. And you know what? I'm so glad I did. White may be "boring" and what I always end up painting my stuff but maybe that's because it's fresh and looks good with everything. Plus, the bronzey bling on the drawers and corners makes her glam instead of "meh."

DVDs, games, and controllers are neatly tucked away in the drawers and this middle cabinet is the perfect size for the PS3.

Also? My boys figured out that they can apparently still work the PS3 via remote with the middle door closed, causing an extreme amount of heat to build up inside. Good thing my husband realized what they were up to or this post would have been titled, "How a DIY Project Burned Down My House."

After I finished this project and felt oh so happy about things, I discovered this little gem in my home ideas notebook. It's a binder I've had for years and even with the advent of Pinterest, I still rip pages out of magazines and file them away. A year ago I filed this page but had forgotten about it:

Crazy! The wall color is almost the same as mine and the style of that dresser is eerily similar as well. I have a shiny turquoise lamp in my living room and my favorite accent color is that bright yellow. It was fun {and reassuring} to see that this piece I'd been waiting for was meant to be, a true fit for my style, form and function.

Now, if only I had the talent and motivation to hack that gorgeous painting...

..............................

{Other Recent Home Updates Posts}

Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

Bookcase Bling

The Upside of Failure

2013-05-02T11:51:00.002-04:00

Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.

~Winston Churchill

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Isn't it funny how we desperately avoid that which makes us real and touchable and recklessly open to grace? The older I get, the less I'm captivated by great and righteous people and the more I'm drawn to the ones who don't get it right but keep going anyway. Brokenness can be the loveliest thing.

It's a human thing to avoid failure. No one aspires to loser-dom. We don't begin each day hoping we'll careen into a ditch or get fired or flunk a final exam or spew careless words that hurt those we love the most. Nor should we.

But for most of us, the prospect or the painful reality of failure, of not meeting our own expectations, of not meeting others' expectations, of falling short in some miniscule or monumental way--it's not something we cope with all that well.

We all approach failure differently, depending on our personalities and experiences. Some refuse to even try, paralyzed by the sheer possibility of falling short. Others try harder and harder, convinced that if they simply amp up the effort, they'll yield perfection. Some float into escapism in ways that bring temporary relief but long-term grief.

And then there are those who, when whipped by failure, simply take hold of the whip for themselves and begin the punitive penance of self-flagellation. Mental anguish and condemning thoughts have their way and the shame spiral often turns into a vicious cycle of renewed effort followed by familiar defeat.

For years I've known about Grace. I sang its songs and could spout its doctrine. But I did not run headlong into Grace when I felt wrecked by my own failure. Instead, I'd pick up the whip. I'd try harder. I'd give up altogether. {I gave equal opportunity to my coping mechanisms.}

Grace was an abstraction.

And it still would be, if not for failure. I've failed in so many ways where I thought I wouldn't, found I'm simply not inherently capable in endeavors that have felt hugely important. I have sins and pitfalls that will not die, struggles that lie dormant for many seasons and then rear their ugly heads when I least expect it.

Life would be simpler if we only had our own failures to contend with. But because we live in relationship with others, we do battle with their failures too. Loved ones who owe us their fidelity and provision and protection sometimes fall short. Children and spouses, parents and siblings, friends and colleagues--they're prone to disappoint us, to anger us, to follow their own selfish paths and leave us in the wake.

There are rules in relationships and sometimes the rules get broken. What then?

Well, that's probably best saved for a different post so let me just get back what the good Mr. Churchill said about failure, that it's not fatal. {And believe it or not, that can apply to our relationships too.}

He's not the first to speak such counter-cultural "nonsense." I've heard and read Bible stories my entire life but lately I've been nearly dumbstruck by the sheer loser-ness of those who Jesus chose to use. I'm seeing their frailty with new eyes and it's kind of amazing.

What about Peter for example, the disciple who triple denied Jesus?

In the Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning asks:

What future would have awaited Peter if he had had to depend on my patience, understanding, and compassion? Instead of a shrug, sneer, slap, or curse, Jesus responded with the subtlest and most gracious compliment imaginable. He named Peter the leader of the faith community and entrusted him with the authority to preach the Good News in the power of the Spirit.

We forget that Jesus told Peter he was the one on whom He'd build his church. And Jesus told him this before his shameful string of denials. Do you get that? Jesus granted Peter "greatness" knowing that he would soon demonstrate tremendous betrayal. He knew who Peter was, knew his capacity for self-interest and its resulting failure. But He loved him anyway. He'd called him long before.

Peter got scared. He acted impulsively. He screwed up and immediately regretted it. We are not so different and those we love are not so different either.

So what would happen if we began to embrace failure with openness and gratitude? Yes, there are difficult and beautiful lessons learned in the trenches but more importantly, it's our brokenness, our inability, our failure, our imperfection, that leads us to grace and that draws others into that same saving, life-giving grace.

I daresay that Peter's ministry had more currency and conviction because he knew what he was talking about. He'd experienced the lavish, undeserved, unconditional love of Christ for himself and it changed him.

Failure can give way to freedom. It doesn't make sense but it's true.

Let us not forget that it was the prodigal son who experienced the lavish love and elaborate feast. Meanwhile the law-abiding older brother refused the goodness and merriment surrounding the sinner who stumbled home and into the arms of the faithful, forgiving father.

The failing prodigal found freedom. The self-righteous rule-follower remained enslaved.

So what would have happened if Peter had stayed down, if he'd been so gripped by his stupid failure that he refused to ever try again, if he'd succumbed to voices of condemnation and a defeated life? If he'd said to his friend and savior, I'm sorry but I'm a hopeless case; you'll just have to find someone else?

We'll never know and that's a good thing. The world was changed because he said Yes. He refused to be defined by his failure. Jesus had already blessed him, called him "the rock" on whom He would build his church. That's pretty high praise for a soon-to-be repeat offender.

This is where the courage comes in. I'm learning that courage isn't about relying on our strong track record, our bravery, or our adequacy. It's about showing up. It's recognizing that failure isn't fatal.

Courage has more to do with how we handle failure and not an inherent ability to avoid it altogether.

Courage thirstily gulps down grace and lavishly passes around the cup to others.

Courage falls down but gets back up.

Courage doesn't always feel up to the invitation, but accepts it anyway.

For those who are in Christ, courage isn't about resting on our faithfulness but about leaning hard into His.

If you're feeling a bit defeated today, there is such good news...

You're not the sum total of your success or your failure. Receive the grace that is yours. Take courage in knowing how much you are loved. Embrace the freedom you were made for.

When Coffee Spills All Over Your Sunday Morning

2013-04-23T11:04:00.002-04:00

If I could summarize the path I've been on for the past eighteen months in just one word, it would be this: acceptance. Sure, it's also been about rest and simplicity and letting go. But I think acceptance trumps everything else.

Truthfully I've been on this path for much longer than that, fighting forces and realities beyond my control with all the might I could muster.

I've written on this topic more than I realized. You may be sick of reading about it actually. But the junk we wrestle has a way of coming to the surface doesn't it? I'll probably quit writing about it when I quit wrestling with it so if you want to bow out now, I don't blame you.

Acceptance has influenced major life and family decisions. Putting my kids in public school after nearly five years of homeschooling--that boiled doing to accepting who I was and who I wasn't, what my circumstances were and what they were not. I'd gotten to the point where I was no longer capable of maintaining a healthy marriage, family, and home. I was unraveling in all sorts of unpleasant ways and we had to make a change. It's been the best thing for everyone.

Acceptance has influenced the daily grind and extra endeavors. There are things I no longer attempt, ways in which I receive help from my husband and others because I have certain limitations. And there are things to which I say yes, not because I'm all that brave or confident but because I'm learning that I'm wired with certain attributes and God intends to use them.

Acceptance has influenced my relationships with those I love most. Accepting my husband and my children {and other dear ones} for who they are and not for who I want them to be? It's everything.

Last week my book study group discussed this issue of gentleness toward ourselves and its myriad implications. The particular quote from our book is this:

Gentleness toward ourselves constitutes the core of our gentleness with others. When the compassion of Christ is interiorized and appropriated to self...the breakthrough into a compassionate stance toward others occurs.

Historically I have not been gentle to those I love the most. Oh I may not always rant and rave and stomp about the house spouting insults and condemnation. {Though that has certainly happened a time or ten.} But I can seethe and nurse resentment like nobody's business. As hard as I can be on others, however, I happen to be cruelest with myself.

Just when I think I'm beginning to understand all this grace business, I have a day of epic relapse and I wonder if I'll ever be ever to accept myself, screw-ups and all. I become so frustrated by my inability to overcome certain failures, serial failures that just won't go away, serial flaws that time and effort will just not erase...I have a meltdown and it is uglier than you can imagine.

My most recent meltdown occurred Sunday. Church day. Which is always convenient and awesome.

Before we could even get out the door, my mess-ups were too many to number. Mess-ups that affected the whole family and sabotaged our ability to make it to Sunday School. There were tears and self-loathing and ugly expletives, all of them mine.

And to top off all of this Sunday morning stress, I knocked over a full, steaming travel mug of coffee on the way out the door and did you know that knocking over coffee when you're in a hurry somehow triples the volume of coffee? Did you also know that the force with which the coffee is toppled is directly proportionate to the distance the coffee splatters will travel?

Imagine this tranquil Sunday morning scene...

The family is waiting in the van. The daughter is pouty that she's been rushed and that her hair is "dumb." The boys are fighting. One boy doesn't want to go to Sunday School altogether. And then there's me, the frantic mom who's just trying to get a family out the door and is it too much to ask for poor ol' mom to just have a mug of liquid alertness and sanity to sip on the way to church and why oh why when I am tired and hormonal and already consumed with my loser-ness do I have to knock hot coffee all the way to kingdom come and how did it drip down into the silverware drawer that was closed and into the cupboard of clean plastic-ware inside a door that was also closed and splatter to the outer reaches of my kitchen's radius?

It was as if Satan himself had conspired against me. I scrambled to the door, the tears freely flowing at this point, and mouthed to my husband: I spilled coffee everywhere. Please help me.

You may think I was being a bit hard on myself. Everyone accidentally spills stuff. But really, it wasn't that. The spilled coffee was simply the last straw. And truthfully, if I hadn't been in such a hurry I wouldn't have needed my coffee to go. I could trace the coffee to a million ways in which I'd failed before 9 am, failures that were ridiculously familiar and frequent and unshakable.

The whole way to church I was consumed with comparison and defeat. The voice in my head took one crazy morning and went global with it; I was drinking from a fire hose of condemnation, literally choking on a deluge of shame and defeat.

I wanted to go back home and I probably should have. My sweet husband looked at me as angry tears streamed down my face in the church parking lot. Unfortunately he is no stranger to such ugly, irrational scenes. He said this: You know, one of the beauties of the Gospel is that we're free from comparing ourselves to others.

I will not tell you what I said in response because this is a family blog and my words were not G rated. They were not even PG-13 rated. It was a day in which I could not glimpse or grasp an ounce of beauty, fists clenched tight against grace, acceptance, and gentleness. I'd succumbed to the shame spiral and I was unyielding in my stubborn misery.

The resolution of my Sunday morning mess is still working itself out but here's what I'm forced to reckon with today. As much as I write about acceptance, about receiving your own life, as much as I believe it and desire it and would encourage you to drink from the overflowing cup of grace if you sat across from me with your own tear-streaked face, my default is still and may forever be performance.

Only God can change the way in which I'm hard-wired. And He is. I'm better than I used to be but days like Sunday show me I'm only one small step away from going off the cliff on any given day. Grace alone is the only thing that keeps me from permanent residence in the Valley of Defeat.

Every day we have to do what our mamas told us way back when we were littles: When you fall down child, wipe yourself off and get back up. It's true. But somehow, little heretics that we were, we added something to our mamas' gospel: Get back up and try harder.

If we believe in Grace and the One who is Grace, we know that it's actually not about trying harder at all. It's about rest, the opposite of try-hard. It's about breathing this prayer in and out, day in and day out:

I'm sorry I'm so consumed with my big self. Shame and self-loathing are actually pride. Refusing your love is also pride. Grant me humility, peace, and freedom. And thank you, thank you, for forgiveness. Help me to quit trying harder and to simply rest. To rest in what You've done for me. To rest in your promise to finish the work You began. To rest in the truth that You love me as I am and not as I should be.

Or something like that.

I'm still sort of in a failure funk. I'm not even fully repentant. {I blame busy-ness and distraction. They're always convenient scapegoats.} Grace and performance feel like an internal tug-of-war, sometimes more than others. But there's grace enough to at least listen to the Truth, to write about it today, to think on it, to catch just a glimpse of that "beauty" my husband spoke of in the Sunday parking lot.

I accept that it's all still working itself out, that I am loved wherever I am on the spectrum of my own expectations. And in the seemingly backwards way that God works, being loved so unconditionally in the midst of such messiness gently stirs my hardened heart and pushes my gaze upward instead of inward.

Tug-of-war and all, I know I am loved as I am. I accept this beautiful Truth and I yield myself to be changed by the mysterious power of it. And today, that is enough. Every day, that is enough.

Life as a Ragamuffin

2013-04-15T13:07:00.000-04:00

I can't get stuff right.

Yesterday my dad's birthday came and went and I remembered at 5:40 this morning, a day late. That would be barely excusable except that it's the second year in a row I've remembered his birthday exactly one day too late.

There was a glitch with my e-mails and since March 27th the techie powers-that-be have not sent my bellsouth e-mails to my gmail account so there's all this stuff I've missed, time-sensitive information...to which I never replied. Obviously. Now I just look like an idiot. Or apathetic. Or a slacker. Or all of the above.

I didn't send in enough money for my daughter's field trip and my first words to her yesterday were snappy ones. Various members of my family do not have clean underwear at the beginning of the week. I tell them that they should let me know before they're completely out. They assume that a 4-foot high mountain of laundry is signal enough.

I've been spending too much time wanting stuff that I can't have and not appreciating all that I do have, doing battle with idols of the heart and not loving very well and feeling a tad bit entitled to certain realities.

God, I'm such a mess, I thought to myself this morning.

First thing Saturday I found out that I lost a friend and a mentor, one I've never met in real life. The world lost one of its best evangelists on Grace. Brennan Manning spent decades of his life speaking and writing about the lavish and limitless love of Jesus.

His books are among my favorites. I've read and re-read a couple of them and just ordered another one this morning. As a matter of fact, I'm feebly facilitating a small group study of The Ragamuffin Gospel this semester and it has me wondering if I'll ever not need this good news for the "bedraggled, beat-up and burnt out." It's doubtful.

And that's okay.

Manning's final book was published in 2011. His memoir, All is Grace, is apparently part chronicle and part confession. He discusses his ongoing struggle with alcoholism, loneliness, self-hatred and marriage. Yes, even in the latter years of his life. He remained a ragamuffin in desperate need of grace until his dying day.

Don't misunderstand. He didn't sin so that grace may increase; he was simply a man whose brokenness sometimes got the better of him. Just like me. Just like you.

My first reaction to that is a bristly one. I'm uncomfortable with the notion that someone so intimately connected with God, so knowledgable of his Word, so in pursuit of Christ could still stumble and struggle.

And if I'm painfully honest, I'm forced to admit that I long for the promise of near-perfection here on this earth. I want the assurance that I won't still dance with certain sins and that my loved ones won't relapse and that we'll all just eventually get our junk together.

Accepting our mess, our loved ones' messes, our "professional Christians'" messes, it's counter-intuitive. I'm not talking about a blasé, "whatever" kind of acceptance. Our mess cost a perfect man his life; there's nothing flippant about that. But because of what Jesus did, I'm free to really live and really love and really forgive and and really trust and really receive love. I don't have to crucify myself or others over every infraction because the world crucified Christ and He accepted it.

Refusing to bask in the glorious riches of His death and resurrection is like buying one's dream home and living in the cellar. What a waste.

And what a denial of who we are and what He did to save us. He knew we'd have trouble. He knew we'd be trouble. He knew forgiveness would need to abound and that's why He said seventy times seven, that's how much you can forgive. And we can. We can because He did and his resurrection power pulses within all of us who believe in Him.

Running as ragamuffins into the loving arms of Jesus is our only hope. We can fall down and start over as many times as it takes. His arms remain open, ready to receive us, mess and all.

His arms received our dear friend last Friday and I wept, I really did, as I imagined him finally, safely in the arms of Abba. His feeble body, aged mind, and weakened spirit made perfect. Finally perfect.

God promises that He loves us too much to leave us as we are but that's not a promise of perfection. It's a promise of presence. His presence, alive and at work in us. He accompanies my messed up self through all the foibles and follies and forgettings of today and tomorrow and every day after that.

I'm not the person I once was yet I'm so far from the person I long to be. He loves me anyway with an everlasting, unchanging, unconditional love.

His grace stretches like a canopy across my life, covering the good, the shameful, the redeemed, and the not yet.

I lie beneath it, thankful that its length and breadth never ends and knowing that it is enough.

.................................

A tribute to a life of Grace.

Spring Flings & the Flu, Far-off Places & Freshly-Painted Spaces

2013-04-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

Happy Spring dear friends! I've been jotting down post ideas and deep thoughts and I've got all sorts of ramblings simmering in the hopper.

But. Today I'm paying bills and catching up on laundry and trying to put my painted home back together.

Instead of deep thoughts, I bring you my life for the past two weeks:

My big ol' family gathered at my parents' place for March Madness {aka March Fatness, due to the overabundance of calories consumed.}

{Sweet Naomi}

We feasted and wore only elastic waistbands and watched a lot of basketball. My brother made the best banana pudding the world has ever known.

And then I got sick. {But not from the banana pudding.} A little cold turned into something bigger and I went to the doctor a week ago. Unfortunately the cough medicine that was supposed to help me sleep had the opposite effect. I was as wired as a 4th of July firecracker and missed two entire nights of sleep before we figured out the culprit. Fun. Is what that was.

All of this went down while my husband's parents were visiting us from Michigan for the week.

Here they are with our kiddos, all spiffed up for Easter.

{And here's the rest of us. My littlest loves himself in that suit. He wanted to sleep in it the night before. I believe he'd wear a shirt and tie every day if I let him, quirky kid that he is.}

My in-laws are awesome and we had big plans to head to the mountains and enjoy a nice hotel stay while the kids frolicked in a heated pool and the ladies visited the Biltmore Estate. But with my sick self and our middle kid who decided that Spring Break was a fine time to contract the flu, we were home-bound.

So guess what The Man and his super-amazing parents did? They painted the great room and kitchen, something we've been wanting to do for over a year.

This room comprises two-thirds of our home and would have taken The Man and me a year to paint. But the three of them taped and trimmed and painted their little hearts out while I did little more than convalesce.

It still feels like Christmas to me and I am tickled beyond measure by the results.

{I'm tweaking the decor here and there and will surely be blogging these fun little changes. Stay tuned.}

I was well enough by mid-week to enjoy a date night with my husband while his parents babysat. First stop? The new Anthropologie that opened not so far away.

I wanted to hide under one of their Parisian, vintagey, overpriced, swoon-worthy sofas until the store had closed and then pretend I lived there. And that I owned all of the clothes. And dishes. And purses. And perfume. Total eye-candy, that store. And they have the most fun books!

So, where am I in this story? My in-laws left last Thursday and I was well enough to pack my bags and leave Friday morning for a trip to the beach with my mom.

We planned this trip a couple of months ago and I'd been giddy with anticipation. She had a conference to attend and she invited me along as her travel companion and because she thought I could use the rest.

Instead of attending the conference, I indulged in some much-needed R & R. It was such a sweet time, just my mom and me.

We talked and laughed and shopped and lounged and ate yummy food. I read and walked on the beach and got to watch whatever I wanted on TV. I'm still amazed I came back.

Reality and the regular grind feel like a clunky adjustment this morning. I haven't cooked in a week and a half and I've eaten out more during that time than I normally do in a year. Despite being sick, God has been sweet to bestow such loveliness, kindness, and generosity upon me. I don't deserve his goodness.

{And let's be honest, freshly-painted walls make Monday-morning reality so much lovelier. Thank you Nana & Papa!}

Oh and it's a HUGE night for the family! Huge. I'm married to the biggest Michigan fan south of the Mason Dixon Line. Our oldest son is the second biggest fan.

Exhibit A: My front door.

Exhibit B: The main wall of my living room.

Exhibit C: "Go Blue" popcorn.

That's only the beginning. There is Michigan paraphernalia all over the place.

All together now: GO BLUE!!!!

..............................

I hope your Spring is going swell and that you're enjoying some fresh changes of your own. What's been happening in your neck of the woods?

Real Easter & Seeing Beyond a Flannelgraph Jesus

2013-03-29T13:40:00.000-04:00

When I was growing up, Easter was about a new dress and shiny white shoes and sometimes a hat. In my early years, my mom slaved over a big Sunday dinner that surely included her mile-high homemade biscuits. I don't remember what else we ate, just the biscuits. When I was older we splurged on a fancy Easter buffet at an upscale hotel. It was the culinary highlight of the year.

I'll be honest. Getting to waltz from table to table all dressed up in our Easter best and eat as much as we wanted--it meant more to me than church and the resurrection and all that. I would never have admitted it then but it's true. Easter was pageantry and special-occasion food and those fizzy dye tablets dissolving in vinegar and hunting for plastic eggs in our backyard.

Now I'm 39 with kids of my own. My daughter thinks it's not Easter unless she has a new dress {which we haven't gotten yet.} I no longer care whether I have a new frock or not. I'd rather spend my money on a pair of comfortable shoes I can wear every day. {I've become a "sensible grown-up" and this is mildly terrifying.}

We'll dye eggs and fill baskets and probably have something special for lunch, which isn't hard to do since we normally have sandwiches and chips for Sunday lunch. Yes, our splurge is the chips. How far I've fallen. I did not inherit my mother's knack for mile-high biscuits nor did I inherit her Sunday fortitude in the kitchen. I'm tired by Sunday and therefore choose not to cook.

Easter's significance is a melange of nostalgia, tradition, and celebration. It evokes certain feelings and memories and expectations. And I love that.

But Easter glitz and layers of crinoline cannot obscure the reality that we have trouble in this world. A lot of it. I know trouble. C.S. Lewis wrote a biography called Surprised by Joy. I could write my own called Surprised by Trouble.

Thankfully that wouldn't be the only book I'd write. Because here's what I know right now on this Good Friday. The world around me is full of trouble and even my own little kingdom teeters back and forth. It would be far more appropriate to wear sackcloth and ashes on Easter Sunday than a pastel dress and shiny heels.

But the trouble I face in this world is not permanent and I don't endure it alone. You've heard that before and so have I. In fact, I'd heard it so much that it had become an abstraction. All of it. Jesus, his death, the tomb, the resurrection. It may have well been a flannelgraph narrative for all the functionality it really had in my life. That's the sad truth.

When trouble comes, you've got some options. You can deny it, fight it, climb down into a pit, self-medicate your way through it, face it with a bullet-point strategy, or Pollyanna through your days even though you're dying on the inside. I've probably experimented with all of these approaches on one level or another.

Or...

You can tap into this resource that's too good to be true except that it is true. I know because I'm actually learning to live out of that resource and it's no flannelgraph Jesus. It's a feeble start but it's real. We can let the world turn us into victims of its trouble or we can fling ourselves into that arms of a Savior that promises to be our everything.

Our help in times of trouble.

Our refuge in times of danger and attack.

Our friend all of the time.

Our Counselor and our comforter.

Our strength when we are weak.

Our grace when we want to hold a grudge.

Our compassion when we'd rather condemn.

Our peace when life's a storm.

It took trouble for these things to become living, breathing reality in my life. As I've said before, it's good to make friends with mess.

And these things He promises to be for us? They have been living, breathing reality in my life not just in recent years but specifically this very week. You can be in the trenches of trouble and simultaneously in the trenches of grace. It seems like they should be mutually exclusive but they're not.

I've listened to a sermon by Tim Keller a couple of times in the past week or so. It's called Peace and he talks about how everything, all of our peace, comes down to the cross:

On the cross He {Jesus} got all the consequences of what we have done and this is one of them and can't you see it? Do you see Jesus Christ just walking through the crucifixion and saying, 'I'm just keeping my mind centered on God. I'm okay. I'm content in whatever circumstance I'm in.' Jesus didn't say that. No. Because He wasn't! Why? Because He lost all of his peace! He cries, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' In fact, we're told that He died with a cry. He died screaming...

Jesus lost all of his peace so that you could have eternal peace. And looking at that is what'll get you through. That's what will make him lovely.

Jesus entered into the trouble of this world and He allowed the trouble of this world to be heaped upon Him, the perfect and completely innocent Son of God, to the point of death.

Because of this we can make our way through our troubled days in this troubled world alongside and because of Someone who overcame the trouble.

And that's why Good Friday is so good even though it was also terribly bad.

For years I'd been trying to get all of this to really mean something, to care more about Christ and what He did more than I cared about foil-wrapped chocolates and a new outfit.

Now it finally does. Why? Because out of sheer desperation and dependance, I'm holding the hand of the One who leads me like a shepherd through the trouble of this world. It's experience to me instead of abstraction, actual heart change instead of behavior modification, reality and not just ancient story.

It's a promise fulfilled already in this very day and one that will continue to unfold throughout my days, like the petals of the daffodils in my yard each spring. They dare to burst forth, unfold, and hold their heads high. Even though they're surrounded by the weeds of my unkept flower beds and may well fall victim to my five-year-old's cowboy boots.

Beneath the traditions and fake Easter grass and Sunday pastel parade, there is Truth that changes you and me and our relationships with one another and this whole wide world.

It's real.

Happy Easter weekend my sweet friends. I pray that the glorious beauty and power of Christ's risen life in you will be more real and radiant than it's ever been before.

Eat. Read. Love.

2013-03-21T10:47:00.003-04:00

I'm all tapped out of meaningful stuff to write. 'Tis the weight of life and its responsibilities. It's still messy, just in case you're wondering.

And so I shift gears and share with you the simple objects of my affection these days. Everyday indulgences have a way of soothing my soul and unfurrowing my brow.

Eat:

My friend, Kelly, introduced me to the pita pizza a few weeks ago and it's revolutionized lunchtime for me and my littlest guy.

Get yourself a package of quality pitas. I use whole wheat but use whatever you like. Spread on tomato sauce. Top with your favorite pizza items and add cheese. I bake ours at 400 degrees directly on the rack for about 10 minutes. It's a nice change from PB & Js.

I blame Pinterest for my latest snack obsession: Marshmallow caramel popcorn.

I can't find the source but here's the easy recipe:

1/2 c. brown sugar; 1/2 c. butter; 9-10 marshmallows; 12 c. popcorn. Microwave brown sugar and butter for 2 minutes. Add marshmallows. Microwave until melted, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. Pour over popcorn.

I started making it for our family movie nights and then it became an after school snack and I may or may not be guilty of making it when there's not even a kid in sight. It's a tad habit-forming.

This soup.

I mentioned it in the "mess post" but it deserves another shout out. Flower Patch Farmgirl always has the best recipes at her place. This cheesy vegetable soup was a hit with 4 1/2 out of 5 members of my family. "1/2" because my oldest guy said he almost liked it. Around here, 4 1/2 out of 5 is considered success.

Read:

Per usual with me, I've got an eclectic mix of books littering my nightstand and my van and my coffee table. But let me just mention two of them for now.

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott. Her memoir on faith has me laughing, crying, nodding, and wishing all of us who call ourselves Christians could just step outside our stuffy boxes and breathe in the beauty, grace, authenticity, and freedom that is Anne's journey. This book is raw and real and tragic and so very beautiful. Also? Her conversion experience involves the F-word. I love her.

Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo. I'm still in the early stages of this book so I can't give a report yet. Have any of you read anything by him? I started watching interviews with various authors about a month ago and one of them recommended this book because the characters are so good. But now I can't remember who recommended it. It was either Anne Lamott or Kate DiCamillo {who I also double heart love.}

Oh and the older kids and I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this week. Finally. We have big plans to watch the movie and can't wait to jump into Book 5.

And here are a couple of books that I look forward to reading. {By two more ladies I love but have actually met in real life.}

The first one is Spiritual Formation: A Primer and it's written by Richella Parham, a writer and a blogger at Imparting Grace and someone I'm honored to call a friend. It just came out and you can easily get your hands on it here.

The second one isn't released yet but you can pre-order it on amazon. A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live by Emily Freeman. Just order it okay? Emily wrote Grace for the Good Girl and Graceful. I have them both. I'm tapping my foot with anticipation over her next one, which is quite a departure from her previous books. She blogs at Chatting at the Sky.

Love:

The Man have spent our not-so-long southern winter on the sofa watching great TV together. And now we're out of stuff to watch...which is sad, but probably for the best now that spring is springing. We loved / hated every moment of Downtown Abbey, along with the rest of the free world.

In between episodes we watched The Last Enemy, also a BBC series, and it was pretty good. It's all about a hypothetical UK in which Big Brother is tracking everyone. It's full of conspiracy and unexpected turns and a love triangle. The guy who plays Sherlock is the main character. The only thing I didn't like was the eerie, 80s, space-agey kind of background music. Totally threw me off but I'm kind of weird like that.

Then we watched both seasons of Luther. You guessed it, another BBC series. We love Luther. But I recommend it with a serious caveat. It's dark. I can only watch dark if there's the faintest hope of redemption and light and there is with this show ... though in some episodes you have to squint kind of hard to see it. He's a British cop who investigates murders while dealing with his own personal demons; he's a fantastic character. And he's brilliant, but not in a nerdy, uptight Sherlock sort of way. In fact, he's quite the opposite. I hear they're making a third season and since it's on BBC's timeline, we'll probably get it see it in 2019.

I'd love some good TV series recommendations. What are ya'll watching out there?

Other stuff I'm loving right now:

My 5-year-old's prayers {Jesus, please help me learn to read. Help me not to wet my pull-up at night...but thank you that you love me even if I do.}

This necklace I made out of junk thrift-store jewelry.

The beads are wooden and it has 3 chunky turquoise stones. It's fun and lightweight and feels like spring.

This wine.

It's perfect. Lily introduced me to it and we always love the same food and drink. Always.

And last but not least, I'm loving that I'll get to hang out with my whole family this weekend...all 22 of us. I'm the oldest of four kids and it's still weird for me that my younger siblings are all grown and married and have the same number of kids as me.

{Here's a picture of all the cousins from Christmas. If you're thinking that's a lot of kids who look really close in age, you would be right. Our times together are not what you would call "quiet" or "subdued" or "relaxed." But it's for sure fun.}

Technically, we're all hanging out together because it's March Madness and we're kind of a basketball-loving family. But my brother, the one who's the baker, has renamed it March Fatness. His dessert list for the weekend: Cream Cheese Coffeecake, Golden "Eggs," Boston Cream Pie Cake, Candy Bar Cookies, Bale Bars, Banana Pudding, and the Helga Cake.

I feel that we may need to set up a colonic tent by the end of the weekend. I'm getting bloated just typing out that list of decadent goodness.

{Oh and here's a random bit of trivia: "Ferris Bueller" turned 51 today. I think my forehead just grew another wrinkle.}

.............................................

Happy eating, reading, loving, and basketballing to you and yours this weekend! Anything you're especially loving right now?

Making Friends With Mess

2013-03-12T11:25:00.000-04:00

I would die of shame if you came to my house right now.

But because y'all tell me that you love it when I show pictures of my dirty home and I'm feeling extra generous today, here's a gift: photos of my crazy house. You're welcome.

The garage looks like it threw up into my kitchen.

Stacks of folded laundry have been patiently waiting to be put away but the boys' closet is so full of wadded-up clothes that putting the laundry in the drawers means first clearing a path through a mountain of dirty clothes and super-hero costumes.

Dishes and dirty pots continue to breed in the kitchen even though I run the dishwasher every day.

The hallway is lined with stuff to put....somewhere.

The driveway and side yard have been littered for four days with junk from the garage that my littlest guy configured into a bakery.

{I mean, this is clearly and obviously a bakery.}

My lamp broke. Again.

And my threadbare sofa cushion finally ripped.

Much of this mess is kind of my fault.

I decided to clean out the garage a couple of days ago and what I thought would take a few hours is actually going to take a few days. Story of my life. At 5:00 yesterday, dinner came 'round like she always does, mocking me with her demanding daily-ness. I was covered in garage dust, had not a single clear spot on my counter, and felt the weariness of the day begin to wash over me. My husband was teaching late so I was shouldering the evening's responsibilities by myself. I considered the very messy, disorganized state of affairs and briefly contemplated running away.

Much as it pained me, I left the undone garage for the next day, rolled up my sleeves, and jumped into dinner prep. I stacked up all the dirty, soaking dishes and got busy, knowing that cooking would only add to the mess but also knowing that my kids needed dinner and that my hard-working husband would be starving when he got home.

In the midst of so much chaos and undone-ness, I was making more mess...but I was also choosing life. Real life.

Mess is my enemy. My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ. That "J" means that I'm a fan of order. It means my orientation to the outer world is one of structure and decidedness. Sure, I have a rogue spontaneous and creative streak that threatens to keep the order at bay on any given day but generally speaking, I "need" a certain level of environmental peace to be able think and work and breathe.

But yesterday? There was not an ounce of order to be found anywhere. I felt the familiar anxiety rise up from within and I knew I had a choice: I can give in to the freak-out and run around like a lunatic subduing my tiny world so that I can make dinner in a more peaceful environment OR I can just make the soup in the midst of too much mess, do what I can about the dirty dishes, still read to the kids before bed and know that I'll slowly but surely catch up on the rest throughout the week. And if life interrupts and I don't get to the rest of the mess like I want to, well, so be it. That's why God made wine.

As surely and quickly as I processed these thoughts and resolved to soldier on, I realized that the wildfire mess spreading throughout my home mirrored the deeper stuff of hope and perseverance and choosing life even when it's falling apart. I considered these things as I stirred the loveliest soup in my dirty kitchen.

Mess, both the literal kind and the less tangible kind, has always felt like the worst kind of adversary. Much as I hate to admit it, I'm a recovering perfectionist, a lover of order, a pursuer of the ideal, a romantic dreamer, a chaser of expectation. When I was younger, I really thought that all of my big sparkly dreams would come true. I did. And I figured that if I just did all of the right things and worked really hard and married the right person, we'd live in the Kingdom of Perfect happily ever after.

But Mess came calling again and again. Despite my best efforts to clean him up, smother him with a cute throw pillow, deny that he existed, and fist-fight him out of my life, Mess kept walking through the back door, dirtying up my house and toying with my life and blasting my little Kingdom of Perfect to smithereens before I could even finish building it. The nerve.

Over many years and through a myriad of unbelievable circumstances I could have never predicted, I gradually befriended Mess. I've learned that he's not the enemy. Without Mess, I'd still be chasing Perfect and kicking Grace to the curb.

I'd think I was better than I really am.

I'd believe that my sweet life had everything to do with my sweet effort and stellar performance.

I'd disdain addicts and squanderers and cheaters and anyone who just couldn't get it together.

I'd have no use for those who'd made epic fails.

I'd have no reason to receive grace and forgiveness for my own epic fails.

Mess has taught me that there's not a dime's worth of difference between any of us.

Mess has shown me that I can't get it together. {And also? Why is "getting it together" the goal? I don't even like people who have it all together.}

Mess has reminded me that Jesus did not come for those who are well; He came to heal and befriend and live among the sick and lowly {that's code for messy people.} And in case you're wondering, I'm in the latter group.

Mess has grown compassion where there used to be self-righteousness, has allowed me to enter into the dark and embarrassing places in others' lives because I've been there and it takes one to know one.

Mess continues to teach me that the worst circumstances may ironically give way to a better life. Not a perfect life, but a real one. A redeemed one.

It's a crossroads I seem to return to time and again. I can wait until things are all better and tidied up before I really start to live. Or I can survey my very imperfect life like I survey the ridiculous disarray of my house...

And as it turns out, one can make a beautiful and delicious pot of soup in a really messy kitchen.

.........................................

If your own life is looking particularly messy at the moment, here are some related posts from the last couple of years about living real in the midst of mess:

The Unfixable Life

A Home Well-Spent

{Day 30} Real Marriage Part 7: Choose Life, Even When It's Falling Apart

{Fourteen Months Later} Rest, Giving Up, and Receiving My Own Life

2013-03-08T12:59:00.000-05:00

Fourteen months ago I submitted to a sabbatical of sorts, an unknown number of months devoted to the "task" of resting, healing, and receiving Grace. I called it "The Year of Simplicity."

We put our kids in public school after nearly five years of homeschooling. I resolved to say No more than Yes. My husband has been good and kind about enforcing margin and boundaries. He shows me lots of grace for my lack of accomplishment.

In fact, I seem to be the only one who's really concerned with the "lack."

Many months later, it still feels indulgent to write about it. And more often than not, it still feels indulgent to live it. Some days I feel like I don't need the rest anymore so I plow ahead, taking full advantage of that day's energy and feeling like a normal person again and wanting to pat myself on the back for productivity on a "good day."

After all that I've learned, my default is still to equate personal worth with personal output. Where is the grace in that? I've said it before: Exhaustion is a bully.

Usually a day or two or three after one of those productive days, I crash. Overpowered by unexplainable exhaustion and its accompanying discouragement, I get the bare minimum done and wonder how someone can be so consistently inconsistent.

A few weeks ago I saw my doctor. My newest charts show that I'm getting better, but I still have a long way to go before I'm "there." She encouraged me to be patient, to take heart that there is measurable improvement. And I feel it, I do. It's just hard to wait.

I realize that I write in vague terms here on the blog. That's just the way it has to be. We all have our stories and though mine could certainly be far worse and tragic, it's safe to say that it's been a rough two years. In all honesty, it's been a rough seven years, with some acute crises along the way that threatened to undo me altogether.

Details aside, here's what I know: Cumulative emotional stress will eventually have its say. You can only keep truckin' for so long before you run out of gas and find yourself broken down on the side of the road. For me, that broken-down day came in December of 2011. Life since then has felt like one extended pit-stop. {Stop the world. I just used a Nascar metaphor.}

Some people receive grace and are less prone to guilt than others. I envy them. Sometimes I have to bury my head in the sand in order to avoid the good messages that my own brain twists into condemning lies. Look what she's doing with her life; she's not making any excuses.

And then guilt spirals into shame and shame sucks out the precious little anything I had left.

We all do life differently and even though we're called, as Christians, to shine light into the dark and downtrodden places of our world, there are seasons in which our own light is burning so dimly, we simply have to retreat, if only for a time.

I remind myself that God doesn't need us to accomplish his good in the world; He's all-sufficient. But He invites us into sacred, beautiful, messy kingdom work for our good and for his glory. For some crazy reason, He chooses to use us.

On my good days, I'm inspired when I see what this looks like in the lives of others even if it looks nothing like that in my own life. But on my loser days, I'm more guilt-ridden than inspired. I tell God that if He'd just help me out a little and fix what I want Him to fix, I could do so much good in the world.

Instead, He shows me that my struggles and ongoing redemption are exactly the good He's ordained for me and for my family, for now, in our own little corner of the universe.

After seventeen plus years of marriage, I'm learning {so slowly} what it looks like to love my husband and to receive his love for me. We are very much in the trenches of rebuilding and let me tell you, it's work. Emotionally-draining, spiritually-taxing work. Day after day of that will tire you out physically as well. For so long, I didn't make the emotional / physical connection. {Please, just take my word for it. If you're in a really emotionally-draining season, prepare to be physically tired and arrange your life accordingly.}

After twelve years of motherhood, I'm realizing {also very slowly} what it looks like to mother each child with grace and love and freedom. And that is also work.

My days are simpler than they've been in the past but they're richer in a way too. Sure there's the laundry, the grocery-shopping, the taxi-ing. But so very organically and sweetly, God is allowing my quiet life to intersect with the lives of other broken and struggling women. In living rooms and coffee shops, via e-mails and blog posts, Grace is doing its upside-down, inside-out, backwards thing. Beauty out of ashes. Community out of brokenness. Encouragement out of suffering. Healing out of scars. Fruitfulness out of rest.

It's just...happening. I've done nothing to orchestrate it. I only say Yes and receive it.

I recently scribbled this in my notes of The Ragamuffin Gospel:

Is the Gospel of Grace the difference between receiving versus doing? Is the Christian life more passive than active? Responding to His lead instead of driving along as one would in an old carriage, beating life with the whip of law and control and expectation rather than knowing we are uniquely led by a loving God?

I'm no theologian but I'm discovering that great fruitfulness and freedom can be born out of giving up. And if anyone has professionalized giving up, surely it is me.

On days when I wish I could measure my productivity and have a bit of my old self back, it's steadying to survey the larger picture, to see that God is working and moving even when I feel like I barely am.

You can't rush rest. You can't Red Bull your way into a functional person. You can't rebuild in a month or even fourteen of them what slowly decayed and crumbled over many years. You can't live someone else's life or adopt their M.O.

You can only receive yours.

The Girl Hero & The Mom Manifesto

2013-03-01T07:48:00.002-05:00

This girl is turning 12 tomorrow.

My kids' birthdays always unravel me on the inside just a little. I'm overcome with nostalgia and joy, regret and worry. But mostly I'm overwhelmed by the desire to grip the clock with all my might and just make it stop. It's been said a million times because it's true: babies grow up entirely too fast.

This girl is a wonder to me in every way: inquisitive and intense, creative and dramatic, thoughtful and lovely and longing to do a thousand different things with her life. She wants to be everything from an astronaut to a marine biologist to a judge to a baker / artist.

More than anything, however, she wants to have a career in which she gets to ask lots of questions. Her statement that she wants to be "a rich missionary like Oprah" now lives in infamy. She figures that following in Oprah's footsteps will allow her the opportunity to ask questions for a living, enjoy a luxurious lifestyle, and still accomplish a lot of good in the world.

She's a tiny wisp of a thing but don't let her diminutive, blonde-haired, blue-eyed self fool you. She has an inner strength that I envy, an unflinching honesty that makes me want to cheer...and sometimes cringe. Just this week she commandeered her friend's fancy stolen pencil from a girl who's been in at least two fights this year. Refusing to leave second period without justice being served, she detected a weak spot in the girl's defense, called her on it, and refused to stop the interrogation until she retrieved the pencil.

I would have never done that in the 6th grade. Never. In my 7th grade gym class, a school bully who was twice my size and had a criminal entourage to boot, stole my paisley Swatch. The Swatch that my beloved uncle brought me from Switzerland. The Swatch that was my prize possession. A friend of mine spotted the girl bully wearing my Swatch in math class and with literal fear and trembling, I approached the thief and her posse later in the cafeteria. With quaking voice, I humbly asked for my Swatch. She did not give it to me. But she was kind enough to allow me to buy it back.

So fraidy-cat me scraped together $10 and didn't tell a soul. I bought back my own Swatch from a 7th-grade female terrorist.

The point to this story is that my daughter is far braver and bolder than I was. And if she can survive her school days without getting beat up, her bravery and justice will serve her well.

Though I love my babies fiercely, I tend to see their struggles and weaknesses, sins and character flaws with far greater clarity than I see their strengths. I tend to discipline and reprimand and redirect more than I applaud and encourage and accept. One of motherhood's greatest challenges, for me at least, is loving my kids totally and completely for who they are instead of who I want them to be.

And isn't that one of our greatest longings for ourselves? To be loved totally and completely for who we are, instead of who we're not. To know that those closest to us would tell us what our high school yearbooks did: You're so awesome. Don't ever change. LYLAS!

Mother-daughter relationships seem especially tricky to navigate. Between the projection and the vicariousness and the estrogen, relationship can get a little crazy. A mama's hopes can feel like a daughter's duty. And a daughter's independence and originality can feel like treachery to the mama. Don't believe me? Just watch an episode of Say Yes to the Dress.

I spent the first...probably 8-ish years trying to make my own girl into who I wanted her to be. I knew that a lesser-willed child would have made my life a lot easier and been the vehicle through which my own pink-tulled visions for her could come to fruition. Admitting that is more painful than I can tell you.

I wish I'd let her wear the kooky outfits and clashing colors and plastic tiaras to the grocery store and preschool and church. I fought ten thousand pointless battles that undermined her freedom and squashed my joy. During those early years, I was so intent on getting it right and taming that strong will that we both missed out on a ton of fun.

But several years ago we made a deal. I vowed not to pressure her into anything that didn't feel true to who she was. She vowed to be honest with me and not make decisions solely to please me.

We have six years together until she leaves for college and the rest of my mother / daughter manifesto is this:

1. Love her for who she is.

2. Choose to see her strengths above her weaknesses.

3. Listen when she's ready to talk, even if I'm bone-tired and just want to go to bed.

4. Chase her dreams with her. Even if I think they're ridiculous. And even if the last thing I want her to do is to try out for the cheerleading team instead of going out for cross-county which is what she wants to do in a couple of months and somebody please hold my hand and tell me to keep smiling and just support her.

5. Quit worrying so much about how she'll "turn out" and simply embrace right now. Enjoy our todays, hormonal imbalances and all.

6. Keep telling her she's beautiful even if it's not getting through and even if she says that I'm her mom and I have say that.

7. Sympathize when her haircuts don't turn out the way she wants and her "knees are ugly" and her ponytails have "too many bumps" and her "ankles look weird." {Because do I honestly think that telling her to quit self-obsessing is really going to make her stop? Does telling that to any female actually make her stop? This kind of crazy think is irrational and therefore impossible to reason away.}

8. Trust that God believes in her even when she's not sure that she believes in Him.

9. Do more "frivolous" things together, even though they cost money and even though it seems less than sensible. It's an investment in our relationship and therefore not a waste.

10. Pray. For her and with her.

...................................................

{This will likely be one of my last posts about her. She's getting older and my storytelling, as it pertains to her, will have to respect her privacy and lean more toward the vague than the specific. And that's as it should be.}

Happy birthday Blondie. You'll forever be my girl-hero.

"A Bundle of Paradoxes"

2013-02-22T12:04:00.000-05:00

I am...

A writer who is too tired and lazy to write.

A lover of Christ but a slack Christian {if you define my by my disciplines.}

A mother who wants desperately to be a mother yet is utterly overwhelmed, dismayed, and bewildered by the everyday moments and eternal responsibilities of motherhood. I'm also delighted, daily, with the gifts, laughter, and sacred sweetness this same motherhood bestows upon me.

A wife who wants desperately to be a wife and desperately loves her husband. But when my daughter tells me she's never going to marry, I think to myself, Good move.

A woman so blessed with faithful family and friends but not so great at faithfully maintaining the relationships I cherish most.

A humanitarian who weeps for the downtrodden but does precious little about the injustices within her own community. I dream of a larger home instead of reaching out to help those who don't even have one.

A foodie who loves her sushi and Cosmopolitans...and McDonald's fries.

Most days, I feel downright duplicitous. I wonder which one is the "Real Me." The truth is, they both are.

When I get honest, writes Brennan Manning, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and I get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side I learn who I am and what God's grace means. As Thomas Merton put it, 'A Saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.'

When we're honest, we see the duplicity of our hearts. Real introspection can lead to despair but it can also lead to freedom. Unbelievable freedom. We are created in the image of God yet we are so very human, capable of both the divine and the disgraceful.

I'm learning that repentance of my foibles and foolishness isn't a bootstrapped about-face; it's humble confession and confident rest. Rest in the One who forgives and loves and changes us from the inside-out.

Maybe you're repulsed by your inability to get it right. Or perhaps you're puffed up because of your ability to get it right, more often than not. Maybe you're both of these, depending on the day. Soiled or squeaky clean, pitiful or prideful, know that you are fully known and fully loved, paradoxes and all.

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*Excerpt from The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.

Links and Other Stuff I Love {Because I Ran Out of Time to Write About Love}

2013-02-14T11:56:00.002-05:00

{Valentines Day 2 years ago...when the littles were littler. Sweet times.}

I've been thinking a lot of love lately. The truest kind of love. The only love that can really make me love others in ways that matter. The only love that can break me open to receive love and how that changes everything. Everything.

But. You'll just have to wait for that post because I've run out of time to write it. I've been busy loving and living and that has looked like time at the kitchen table helping my littlest guy make Valentines for everyone on God's green earth {he's a fan of holidays} and helping my girl write descriptive essays and doing math stuff {Math!?!} in my bigger guy's class and helping my sweet friend who's battling cancer {Please pray for Susan?} and talking with my Wednesday friends about grace.

I realize that list of loving may sound a little braggy, a little "look at what servant I am." No. Believe me, I'm not very sacrificial by nature, not the type of person who needs {or even wants} to be needed. I shy away from volunteerism. I fear commitment. I actually kind of suck at being a friend. But those I love have needed me and it has felt good and right to help. Because I can. And I actually, sincerely want to. And all because of love.

Look at this! I'm writing about love after all. My point in that much-too-long disclaimer is this: living and loving have precluded writing and that's just fine and just as it should be for me right now. I'm craving some rest but I'm going to have to crank out something lovey and yummy for dinner first.

So in lieu of a deeper post on love, I bring you some links and other stuff...that I love.

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First, the links:

In which you are loved and you are free by Sarah Bessey. I don't know Sarah but I love her. She inspires me to be more brave and more free. She's written several others posts that I love but this one may be my favorite.

This video by Brene Brown {who I triple love} has gotten over 7 million views.

Girlfriend has obviously struck a chord. It's about 20 minutes long and well worth every minute. I bought one of her books two years ago, never having heard of her. I was buying another book on amazon and this book was in the sidebar and I had to have it. Turns out she's kind of a big deal. And for good reason.

So this next link isn't very Valentines-y, but I read it several months ago and I can't stop thinking about it. It's an article called Going to Hell With Ted Haggard. And though it's not all flowers and chocolate hearts and sentimental, it is about love. How we love "sinners." Or rather, how we don't. This is such a good article. I really can't recommend it enough.

And now for the stuff:

Burt's Bees tinted lip balm in Hibiscus.

I had some CVS extra care bucks so I treated myself to this sheery, pinky lip balm. It's perfect for dry wintry lips that are longing for spring.

Text Plus.

Lily told me about this free, awesome app. She's one of those girls who always has the low-down on everything. {And you totally need to click over to her link. She created the Padalily...best baby gift ever.}

Anyway, this is an app for any Apple device {and a few others} that provides free unlimited texting and it even turns an iPod Touch or iPad into a phone. Crazy! Our older two kids each have an iPod Touch {which are actually old iPhone 3G's that we converted.} Now they can text or call us from home or anyplace with WiFi for FREE. Our 6th grade daughter, the only 6th grader on the planet without a cell phone, now gets to text us and like...two other people. This means we're now slightly less horrible parents than we were before this app.

Nail polish.

Once again, Wet N' Wild has given me another polish to love. Heatwave. It's corally-reddish-hot pink. Perfect for Valentine's Day. Or when your feet are tan. Or when you are bored in pick-up line. And it's less than $2.

So there you go. A little post on love that will make you more loving, vulnerable, texty, and pretty.

Happy Valentine's Day friends! What are you loving?

Because Sometimes Showing Up Isn't Just Half the Battle, It's All of It.

2013-02-05T10:47:00.000-05:00

At the moment, weariness has overtaken my ability to write through the deep and true of my own life.

It's times like this when my blog can feel like a pet, yet another thing that looks to me to be fed and nurtured. But because I care deeply about this space and its value in my life, I resolve to come back, time and again, even when the well seems too deep to prime.

A funny thing happens most every time I click on "new post" and see the blank digital canvas staring back at me. I feel like I'm home. The white space welcomes me to come on in and get comfortable, even if I was reluctant to show up in the first place. Sometimes you just have to show up.

This is a place where I am myself, a place where I connect in true and life-giving ways with others, a place where I spill my stories and my crazy. In the most serendipitous ways, by each post's completion, I end up in a better place than I began and I somehow come alive in the process of it all.

So in the spirit of coming home and remembering I have a pulse, I show up here today.

Because sometimes showing up is all we can do. And it's enough.

A new week began yesterday and I didn't want it to. I didn't have it in me to wife or parent or tidy or launder or just go on at all. I cried and prayed and took a nap and got dressed {at 2:15 pm} and picked up kids. I asked about their days and monitored screen time and somehow found the where-with-all to hang up an art caddy and memo board in my girl's room. I felt like the champion of the world, just doing that. The Man taught late and the kids were asleep when he got home. It felt like a not-so-small miracle, just doing the day. I simply showed up. And somehow made it.

This morning the alarm went off too early and I stumbled into the closet like a drunkard. Waking was painful. I swallowed my pills, brewed the coffee, and met my running partner in the damp, dark cold. I could barely get out of bed, how was I supposed to run? Why do I do this? But one step propelled me to take another and even though it was a blur of a 30 minutes, I did it. I simply showed up and made it through the run, one mysterious step at a time. {And now I have a few extra endorphins in my arsenal for the day. Score.}

Tomorrow morning I will show up among a small group of real and honest women. We'll forge our way through the first chapter of The Ragamuffin Gospel. Somehow they picked me to facilitate our discussion and somehow I said yes without batting an eye and for the first time ever, I'm okay with the fact that I'm "guiding" {if even in a small way} others through heavy talk about God and grace...even though I am in a particularly messy, very un-together state right now. I'm barely qualified to tie my shoes. So I guess I can only show up. Yes, hopefully I can do that. And perhaps that's just as it should be.

In this world of Pinterest-perfect projects, five-year plans and productivity formulas, good books on countless angles of marriage and childrearing and everything else, we can become just a tad overachieving in our expectations. As a wife and a mom and a manager of home, I have some sort of unwritten list in my head of what "good moms" or "good wives" or "good homemakers" are supposed to do and it's rather ridiculous. It makes no room for the days {or weeks or months} when real life interrupts and forces a drastic realignment of priorities.

While I resent the seasons in which fatigue is my constant companion and tears are ever beneath the surface and much about the future is uncertain, weakness forces me into a much-needed, lowest-common-denominator sort of mentality. I give up and I receive grace. Or else I die trying to live beyond my ability.

Do those I care about know that I love them? Check.

Are they fed? Just, fed. Check.

Did they leave for school with clothes on their back and shoes on their feet? Check.

Is there food for dinner? Check.

Is a bed available should I need to lie down and rest? Check.

Does my van have enough gas to get to school and back? Check.

Do we have a home? Not a beautifully-decorated, spacious, scuff-free home. Just, a home. A physical shelter from actual storms and cold and critters. Check.

Are my kids getting an education? Not a perfect education. Just, an education. Check.

Am I loved? Check.

Lord willing, there may one day be hearty doses of where-with-all to paint the walls that color you're dreaming of and do those special, extra, intentional things with your kids. There may one day be more money, more time, more energy, more normalcy. Or there may not.

We make things too complicated. There are good things to accomplish and pursue, endeavors and desires that go above and beyond the lowest tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. But when life has us down due to health, drama, a new baby, crisis, depression...how 'bout we table the extras and be fine with just showing up?

Receive the Grace that says loudly and clearly and with so much love, Hey! If all you ever do each and every day for the rest of your life is just show up, it's enough. And then take that Grace you've received and pass it around to the rest of the stragglers who are saddled with guilt because they're in a season when all they can do is show up too. And they think it's not enough.

If you've checked your own incredibly basic, seemingly pathetic list and you're feeling like you're just not enough, stop right now and congratulate yourself. You're here. You showed up. And today, that's enough.

..................................

Also? That crazy kid in the picture who has my driveway and garage jacked up like that every single day, turning our abode into a redneck museum? He more than makes up for all that I can't do. And he makes me smile quite a lot in the process.

Favorite Things, January Edition: Dessert for Breakfast and "Loving Who You Am"

2013-01-29T11:59:00.002-05:00

Happy almost February, month of hearts, chocolate, and all things red and pink. In honor of the month of love, even though it's still a few days before the month of love, I thought I'd dish about the things I'm loving right now.

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1. Love Crunch by Nature's Path. I just picked up a ridiculously large bag of this dark chocolate and red berries granola from Costco. It's like eating dessert for breakfast. Dessert that's good for you. I double heart this "cereal."

2. iPhone Cases that are free and cute.

My friend and I were running yesterday morning when she spotted this iPhone case on the side of the road. We have found an array of useful, ridiculous, and scandalous cast-offs on the side of the road during the several years we've run together. Just recently she found a vintage architectural brick and insisted on carrying it the remaining two miles. It weighed 12 pounds. She is crazy {and also strong.} But this little polka-dotted treasure is all mine. And since it weighs a millionth of an ounce, it beat running with a brick.

3. Watercolor Girl.

I've been dreaming of a new blog design for about two years. I'm still waiting for the stars to align in order to make it happen but until then, I've been pinning and bookmarking various fonts, images, and inspiration ideas. I keep coming back to this lovely image. I call her "The Thinking Girl." She's a stock image and a bit pricey but I'm hoping I can one day work her {or something similar} into the design.

4. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

After plowing through The Thorn Birds and then The Poisonwood Bible, I was in desperate need of something less epic and tragic for my fiction read. Several people had recommended this book {which is actually the first book in a series} and it was just what I needed--quirky and delightful, with a writing voice that is unique without feeling contrived. The setting is modern-day Botswana and I love the main character, Mme. Rawotse, so much that I want to move to Africa and open a tea shop next door to her detective agency.

5. Masterpiece. British TV has positively ruined me for American television. Ruined, I tell you. Thankfully PBS and Netflix have come to my rescue. The Man and I are addicted to Downton Abbey {along with the rest of the free world} but we've also enjoyed the remake of Upstairs, Downstairs, Sherlock, The Last Enemy, and Call the Midwife. {Let it be known, The Man does not watch the midwife show.} I think we're going to embark on Luther next, but I've heard it's dark and disturbing. We'll watch the pilot and see how it goes.

Right now I'm still recovering from this past Sunday's episode of Downton Abbey. If you've watched it {and only if you've watched it}, you may appreciate this article by Jessica Fellowes.

6. Chartreusy colors. {Which help to lighten the mood after said Downton Abbey episode.} I'm really loving various versions of this color right now. I bought these jeans on clearance at Target after Christmas.

I wear them and I feel happy. Period.

7. And happy is the perfect segue to the last favorite thing on the list: the stuff this guy says.

I've said before that five is about the perfect age but it bears repeating. The kooky wardrobe combinations, the crazy sayings, the most inspiring confidence. I so want to be five again.

Anyway, here's my favorite quote of the week...

Looking in the mirror and admiring his outfit--Robin Hood pants, button-up dress shirt, cape, cowboy hat, huge belt, and cowboy boots:

Mommy, I just love who I am.

And so those are the words of wisdom I leave you with today, spoken by a sage 5-year-old:

Love who you am.

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Your turn. What do you love these days?

When You Want to Fix Your Life Like You'd Fix Your Roof

2013-01-23T11:28:00.001-05:00

Roofers swarm atop our humble abode and part of me is certain one of them will fall straight through the ceiling. The dog finally quit barking and I type back here in my bedroom, buried under the covers while my littlest guy watches Bob and Larry turned up too loud in the living room.

For a woman who loves her tranquility, I sit smack in the middle of irony. The house is a wreck, the result of an organization project yesterday in which the task outlasted my energy. Books, laundry, toys, and too-small shoes litter our one, small hallway. The top of my house is ripped off. Also? Roofing is a crazy loud endeavor.

Our not-so-old roof is the victim of protracted weather damage. Too much wind here, a bit of hail there. We didn't realize it until a strip of shingles just landed on our front stoop one day. And then a few more another day. One home-owners claim and an insurance adjuster later, it turned out we needed a new roof.

I'm not usually one to stretch my metaphors but I can't help it this time.

Homes don't usually fall apart all at once and neither do those who live inside them. A string of disappointments here. A few years of unchecked bitterness there. Comforts-turned-coping-mechanisms-turned-sin start slow and snowball. The daily demands of family life make the urgent trump the important.

And then one day part of the proverbial roof hits you on the head and you realize you're in bad need of fixing.

These roofers roared in bright and early with their giant trailer loaded up with nail guns and tarps, shingles and boards, ladders and wood. They get down to business, systematically ripping out the bad, putting in the new, setting it all just so, and then moving on to another job.

In two days flat, we'll go from falling-apart roof to brand new roof. And then we move on to another day, problem solved, shiny new roof sheltering us from the elements.

God, why won't You just swarm in and fix us up in two days? How many more layers do you need to rip out before you rebuild? What is the point of protracted pain and struggle and strife? I'm exhausted and can you see this white flag I'm waving already?

I want the quick{er} fix, the two-day roof job.

But it's not happening.

Lately I've feel a bit ripped apart and exposed. I try in vain to patch up the outside under the illusion that it will also take care of the mess inside. As if fixing a roof will repair the water-damaged furniture or the ceiling that's soggy and falling in wet chunks to the floor.

We can't work from the outside-in and we can't reconcile the mess of our lives with the glossy images and slick successes of others' lives. I know these things, yet I am slow to learn.

Monday I read this post of Ann's. And then I read it again. I read it two more times before I went to bed that night.

Here's an excerpt {but you should go read the rest}:

You don’t get to make up most of your story. You get to make peace with it.

You don’t get to demand your life, like a given. You get to accept your life, like a gift.

Beginnings and middles, they are only yours to embrace, to unwrap like a gift.

But you get the endings. You always get the endings.

You get the endings and you get to make them a gift back to the Giver.

She told herself that, tucking falling strands behind her ear: Here wasn’t a glory to wrestle, but a grace to receive. Isn’t everything that is good always hard?

Sometimes truth like that dangles in front of you like a carrot. You're starving and you desperately want it but no matter how hard you try, it's simply out of reach.

Lord, I'm trying so hard to make peace with this life of mine...but it's not happening. I'm doing all I know to fix it...but it won't stay put together.

So is that part of the answer? Stop trying. Stop laboring in your own strength or expecting those in relationship with you to labor in their own strength to just fix it already and move on.

Perhaps waving the white flag doesn't mean failure and it doesn't have to mean apathy. It can simply mean you cease striving and rest in the One who holds the whole world together, even when it feels as though it's falling apart.

I love this translation of Psalm 46:10:

Cease striving and know that I am God...

Is that what it means to make peace with our story? Because truly, there is only so much we can control. And it's not as much as we think.

Just ask my two beautiful sisters-in-law, one on my side of the family and one on my husband's side, who each gave birth to Down Syndrome baby girls just three weeks apart, one in Charlotte and one in Indianapolis. I don't have to tell you that these baby nieces of mine are among God's most precious gifts to this world and to our families. But that does not mean life for their parents is without its many struggles and heartaches and questions.

They didn't plan it this way. There are no quick fixes for their challenges.

Ask one of my dearest friends for the last ten years, Susan, who found out over the holidays that she has cancer. Stage 4. She's married, with two kids in middle school. Chemo began Monday and we're all praying, praying so hard, for God to heal her.

She didn't plan it this way. Neither did her family. There is no quick fix for this cancer.

Ask me, ask my husband—why, in 17 years of marriage, we've had more than the average share of struggle and why it seems easier for some couples than others to make this thing work. We love each other and we are committed. But those virtues aren't enough to deflect suffering.

We didn't plan it this way. There is no quick fix for marriage.

I usually ask more questions than I provide answers. And while I know there can be purpose in the seeking and communion in the quest, right now I'm choosing to just stop.

Today, I wave the white flag and purpose to simply cease striving and know that He is God and that He is love.

And nothing can separate me from his immeasurable love—not a story I wouldn't have chosen or a future that makes no sense or a trial that seems to have no end—nothing.

{Not even a roofer falling through the ceiling onto my head.}

Today, I choose to give up.

I choose not to resent.

I choose not to fix.

I choose not to over-think.

Today, I simply rest in His unending love.

School Decisions: Finding Your Family's Path & Walking in Freedom

2013-01-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

My posts about school, particularly our transition from homeschool to public school, are by far the most read posts on my blog. Who knew?

I'm not a stats person but I recently found an interesting trend. Each post I write averages between 200 and 300 page views. My posts about school average over 1,000 page views. Several of them are well over 2,000 by now. I don't usually pay numbers much attention. I simply write what I want to write.

But do you know what this tells me? There is apparently a vacuum on the subject of transitioning from homeschool to public school. Again, who knew? But I now feel there's a bit more purpose in these posts and I hope to offer words of freedom and consolation born out of my own journey.

I get e-mails out of the blue, readers thanking me for speaking my small, shaky voice into the big void. I never wanted to be someone who stepped into that empty space. So all I can say is: Thank you for letting me share our journey. I spill my crazy insides onto these pages and then you thank me and tell me that my crazy has made you feel less crazy. Confounding, is what it is.

Even though homeschoolers are still greatly in the minority, there is a lot of online support and often much personal, community support for making the switch. It's a countercultural decision and as I've said before, you need your people. I know I did. I'm thankful that such support exists; I know it hasn't always been the case.

But it makes me wonder why there is such little support for doing the opposite. Perhaps some homeschoolers feel sad for or disappointed by or afraid of those {like my family} who jump ship. Or maybe it's just that they haven't walked this road so they don't have much to say.

Perhaps decisive public school folks don't know what all the fuss is about anyway. They never really questioned the decision; why should anyone else? Or maybe it's just that they haven't walked this road so they don't have much to say either.

When we abruptly made our decision, I never had a single homeschool friend try to talk me out of it. Every person who spoke to me was incredibly kind and wished us well. I'm so grateful for their kindness. I would have crumbled into a heap if someone had negatively confronted me at that point.

But well-wishing is not the same thing as camaraderie with those who have gone before you and lived to tell about it. Guess how many moms I personally knew who had done the same thing? One.

I enjoy chronicling our journey on my blog but that is not to say it's easy. These posts are tedious to write because they require such mental energy. I want to say things "just so" for fear of being misunderstood. Decisions about how to educate one's children are intensely personal and therefore the subject can become intensely divisive. Though it's ridiculous, few things make us recoil more than differing ideas on politics, religion, or parenting.

Because of the delicacy of the subject, it's hard to write in a way that is both tender and honest. I have learned so much on our journey and as a result, I have some deep convictions of my own. And yet this is a topic that should be situated totally and completely within the context of freedom; it doesn't usually feel that way though.

I can't tell you or anyone else what to do. And I wouldn't want to. I don't have answers; I can simply write about what I've discovered along the way. We're still not very far along on it, just a little over a year. Yet our story thus far has taught all of us volumes about ourselves, our family, and our God.

A brief caveat: Because I am a Christian, faith informs all of my decisions. Even if you are not a person of faith, you still hold values and convictions that inform your decisions, especially the big ones. This post, however, talks about God more than many of the posts I write. I'm just letting you know up front.

{Also? This post is considerably longer than my usual fare. You may want to grab a cup of coffee. Or use the bathroom.}

Could it be that God calls us all differently because He uses us all differently? I can think of many ways my own school experience--the good, the bad, and the abysmal--have equipped me for life, not because it was perfect but because it was the path ordained for me by a sovereign God.

Jesus' own disciples and apostles came from a myriad of backgrounds--socially, economically, educationally, vocationally. They all brought varying life experiences to the table and were given unique ministry opportunities as a result. Sometimes it was because of their background; other times it was in spite of of their background.

God is not limited by the ways we often limit ourselves or others. His ways are not our ways, nor are his thoughts our thoughts.

Christian proponents of public school may argue that it's our "mission field," our "world," the place where we are to be "salt and light."

Christian proponents of homeschool {and Christian private school} often argue that we equip our kids by providing a strong foundation in faith and learning before sending them out into the world to be "salt and light."

And they are both right.

But where is our trust? Is our trust, our hope, our salvation for our children and our communities and our world found in education or methodologies?

Are we following followers of one camp or another, or are we following a God who delights in directing us in ways that are unique and personal?

Are we congregating with likeminded people more because they affirm our ways and share our fears rather than challenge us to proceed differently, if a certain way is no longer fruitful?

Perhaps it all comes down to the issue of "calling." And you don't have to be religious to embrace the idea of being led down one road and not another.

But if you are a Believer, I'm wondering if it has to be this: calling. I'm not sure if there is any other lens through which we see our family's path.

That's fine and good, you may say. But how does one find this elusive "calling?" I'm on the fence. I'm confused. I'm afraid. What if I choose wrong?

I hear you. I am you. Fear has unfortunately been a constant companion since I first became a mother.

Allow me to share what I'm discovering:

Sometimes God leads us through His word. This was one of the ways he confirmed, for us, the decision to homeschool nearly six years ago.

Sometimes God leads us through prayer and meditation as we seek answers.

Sometimes God leads us as the Holy Spirit moves and leads in powerful and unmistakable ways. Other times it is a still, small voice.

Sometimes God leads through wise counsel.

Sometimes God leads through the guidance of our spouse.

And sometimes God leads through circumstances and common sense.

Let me elaborate on this last point. It's the one I think many of us discount because it's "less spiritual" and perhaps more subjective.

In the case of schooling, we can enter a season and find that what worked in prior seasons is no longer feasible.

There are countless reasons for this:

It's no longer healthy for a homeschool mom to have homeschooling on her plate. She's burned out, stressed out, emotionally and / or physically drained to a point that she is not healthy.

Or perhaps homeschool is no longer the best option because one's marriage needs full attention.

Maybe homeschooling is no longer a fruitful course for one or more kids who would do better in a classroom setting.

Perhaps one child needs full attention at home and therefore the other kids need to learn elsewhere.

I used homeschooling in the above examples because that's been my experience, going from homeschool into public school. Sometimes it's public or private school that's no longer feasible and homeschool becomes the better option.

God gifted us with minds to think and evaluate; that's the "common sense" part. {Sometimes our poor minds are so stressed and depleted that it takes other wise and loving people to speak necessary truth into our lives--a counselor, a pastor, a spouse, a trusted mentor.}

God has used all of these "leading ways" countless times during my life, often using several of them together to confirm a decision.

It's so difficult to go a different way than we'd planned and this goes for those of us who switch our kids from school at home to the school down the road and for those of us who'd planned to put our kids in school and for one reason or another, that's just not best.

Proverbs 3:5-6 is a verse that has come to mind many times recently:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to him,

and he will make your paths straight.

What would our lives, decisions, emotional states look like if we leaned hard into God's understanding, trusting Him with our whole hearts, instead of making idols out of our own knowledge, insight, and desires?

I think it would translate into lives governed by freedom instead of fear. I am just baby steps into the land of Freedom and let me tell you, it's a way better place to live.

I'm not really an "old mom" yet but increasingly, I have opportunity to speak into the lives of new moms, simply because my oldest baby is now in middle school. I tell these frightened, sweet moms to put down the books and get on their knees.

I wish I'd read less and prayed more.

And every time I say that, I preach it to myself. Sure, there are books that have encouraged and guided me tremendously as I've trod the treacherous path of parenting. But the toughest decisions we've made had nothing to do with what we read in a book and everything to do with how God was personally leading us as a family.

As a mom, I want the formula. A + B = amazing kids.

Here's the hard but freeing news: There isn't a formula. Our kids' training grounds vary, in part because their futures vary. Our options vary because our resources, abilities, and circumstances vary. Our decisions vary because what one kid needs is not what another kid needs, or what works for one parent is not working for another.

Education isn't always about the "best," most noble way. Do what's feasible and practical. Your lofty ideals are beautiful. I know it's because you love your kids; you want nothing but the best for them.

But sometimes the ideal is trumped by the "real." Know that it's okay, maybe even better? As I've said before:

Sometimes real life reroutes us in ways that feel like failure but are actually grace.

Trust that God has the right training ground for your kid and it may not be the one you'd planned. Your hope is not in a formula; it's in a Person. Though we lead and guide our children, we too are led and guided by our own Shepherd.

He loves you and He loves your children. He gently leads those who have young.

May all of us find rest in this promise.

................................

Isaiah 40:11

He tends his flock like a shepherd:

He gathers the lambs in his arms

and carries them close to his heart;

he gently leads those that have young.

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My comment section provides a way for me to reply to individual comments on the blog. You won't get an e-mail notification or anything; you just have to check back. I know this issue invites lots of feedback. I'll do my best to read and respond to individual comments. : )

Dish: Enchiladas, the Golden Globes, & Flea Market Rain Boots

2013-01-11T13:23:00.000-05:00

I haven't typed out a "Dish" post in a while so here are some quick random takes on life behind the blog.

I'm making this for dinner tonight and taking a pan of it to a friend as well.

Chicken enchiladas with sour cream sauce. I made it last week and it was way yummy {and pretty easy.}

It's rainy and gray and I plan to spend the day clomping around in these boots.

Did I ever tell you the story of these boots? Well, I'd wanted some wellies for years but could never find the right pair at the right price. I was at the flea market last spring, the crazy one I go to a few times a year, and a lady with a table full of shoes had a lone pair of brand new Hunter boots, size 7. I loved them and had never heard of the brand; I simply liked the boots. They reminded me of faded denim or French blue terra cotta pots.

I thought $30 was quite a lot for flea market boots so I deliberated for a while and finally went back for them. She told me they were over $100 new and I just smiled politely while I thought to myself, Nice try lady but I've already agreed to buy them so you can save the sales pitch. Well, I went home and looked up my boots on the internet. The shoe lady wasn't lying. For $30, mine are probably fake. But I love them still. I am prone to unwittingly buying fake stuff at the flea market.

{Sometime I'll have to tell you the story of a bunch of MAC make-up I purchased there. All fake. That was a sad day. My husband has made me promise that I will never buy name-brand anything at the flea market again. I mostly promised to heed that advice.}

I've done a couple of DIY projects around the house. Posts forthcoming. One involves a bookcase that went from beige to aqua and now sits in my foyer, holding books I just can't part with.

It took about an hour. I do not have the patience or energy for long projects these days. {Or ever.}

Another involves a 9-drawer dresser that a friend gave me. It serves as our media center. Our giant IKEA one was simply too giant for me. My neighbor bought it and it's just perfect in her house. We swap furniture and other household junk quite a lot on my street.

Anyway, I've painted it but three of the front drawers are a bit warped, despite lots of sanding, so I'm experimenting with a cover for them. That's right, I'm slipcovering drawers. Crazy. It involves burlap and mod podge. I did one drawer and then got tired so, you know, we'll see how {and if} things all come together. I have a lazy streak a mile wide.

I just started The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It's the second fiction book in a row for me that takes place in Africa. The last one was The Poisonwood Bible, a great book indeed but I'm craving something a bit lighter. And shorter. So far, so good.

My hair hasn't been touched by a professional since May. The ends look like straw and my ever-increasing gray strands are a daily reminder that 40 is only five months away. I'm thinking of taking matters into my own hands and asking my husband to just trim up the ends. Perhaps Miss Clairol can help with the rest. Is this a bad idea? Be honest.

We un-enrolled our youngest from preschool even though we dearly loved his school. I enjoy having him with me, especially because he'll begin kindergarten in just 7 months. The mere mention of it makes me weak in the knees. I reserve the right to change my mind.

Until then, I'm enjoying the messy vignettes of cardboard boxes, matchbox cars, and various costumes strewn about my house. I am desperately, hopelessly in love with the age of five.

Finally, the Golden Globes are Sunday. I giddily anticipate the Globes and the Oscars every single year. Judge all you want; I make no apologies. Two of my favorite funny ladies, Tina and Amy, are hosting and this makes me extra giddy. My sister now lives close enough to join me on the sofa this year and I'm calling it "the sofa soiree." Super pumped about this. And I'm thinking of throwing together some of Pioneer Woman's sesame noodles. Party on.

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{Epilogue...because it's my blog and sometimes a single post needs one.}

I crank out a crazy assortment of posts around here. I've realized that's because I'm a crazy assortment of a lot of things. My posts therefore reflect me, someone who enjoys dishing about everything from enchiladas and lipstick to motherhood and marriage.

My posts this week have been on the lighter side and for good reason: real life sometimes breaks our hearts. My family is just fine but our hearts break badly for dear ones who are not. Most of my thoughts and emotions these days are sober and personal ones.

So thanks for coming here to partake of whatever it is I'm serving up. Deeper, more writerly posts are certainly ahead but for now, enchiladas and superficial "news" will have to do. I guess I just wanted you to know why.

Whatever your weekend holds, take time to enjoy some yumminess. Because sad or glad, we all have to eat and we might as well make it good.

Find the Funny

2013-01-10T09:45:00.001-05:00

{Only a mom with a warped sense of humor takes pictures of her kid crying over the candy she won't let him have in the Wal-Mart checkout line. What can I say? The ridiculousness of the meltdown was just too dramatic not to capture.}

I need to write. I want to write. But the stuff churning about inside isn't the stuff I can spill. The truth is, there's tough realities up in here, occupying much of my mental space.

But I was reminded this morning that laughter is the best medicine. So here's some chuckle therapy, stuff I've come across recently that has made me howl. L to the O to the L.

I thought you might need it too.

Raise your glass to the funny, my friends. {Also? My humor tends to be slightly warped and / or slightly juvenile. I can't help it.}

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Admit it, a British accent makes everything wittier. {Just click on the picture and it will play.} I'm not usually one for animal funnies but this? Is gold.

A few of my favorite recent funny pins on Pinterest:

{via}

Caption reads, "Best security system against monsters ever." How true indeed.

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No matter how gray the clouds may look today, get some free endorphins by taking time to find the funny.

What a Difference a Year {of rest} Makes

2013-01-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

Exactly one year ago my days usually looked something like this:

Get kids out the door for school. Sit on the sofa for hours--sometimes writing, sometimes journaling, sometimes reading, sometimes dozing. I'd leave at 12:45 to pick up the youngest from preschool. I picked up the older two at 2:30. Because I'd spent most mornings doing nothing, I had a wee bit of energy to transition into mom mode, oversee the kids, and throw together something for dinner. It was not uncommon for me to doze off by 8:30, sleepily slurring words while reading Harry Potter to the kids. The bare minimum wore me out.

For months on end, my days were characterized by exhaustion and rest. My thoughts waffled between gratitude for the opportunity to just finally stop and recover, and guilt because I had nothing to show for my days. I wondered if I would ever feel normal again. I could hardly remember what normal was for me.

But here's the thing about having nothing to give: "Nothing" is void of inertia. {I'm sure there is some law of physics that puts it way better.}

No amount of bootstrap-tugging or mantra-repeating can make it happen. On my better days I knew the futility of trying to make myself different than I was. I prayed and hoped that one day things would change and in the meantime, I received the grace to simply accept who I was: a tired, emotional mess. My job was to rest and heal. And so I did, some days better than others. {See? I even measure my rest as successful or not. Surely perfectionism is an illness.}

Yesterday was a day I couldn't have executed even a few months ago. I got up early to run, came home and readied the kids for school. Then my five-year-old and I took the dog to the vet for shots. The dog peed and pooped twice in Pet Smart just like she always does. And so I cleaned it up, just like I always do, all the while laughing at the ridiculous dirty work of my everyday. I held said dog during the shots while fielding 5,269 questions from my five-year-old and making sure he didn't collapse the folding examination table on his head. After that we went to Target, stopped for lunch, visited a thrift store, and browsed an antiques shop. I made phone calls, paid bills, talked with a neighbor, picked up kids, debriefed about their school days, fixed something new for dinner, and did at least three loads of laundry. By the time we finished our read-aloud time last night, I was tired. And I should have been. I packed a lot of stuff into the day.

A day like that would not have been possible last year. I would have been lucky to fit all of those tasks into one week, maybe even one month. It's crazy how great I felt about myself when I went to bed last night. And I mean crazy in a bad way.

Because here's what I've learned. Productivity and "success" don't force one to wrestle with issues of grace and acceptance and weakness. On days like yesterday, I was my own motivator and savior. I relied on my trusty to-do list, boundless energy, and welcome creativity.

I needed Jesus less...or so it seemed.

But the "loser days" and the "winner days" are actually shouting the same message: Girl, you need Jesus every day. On the exhausting days, you need him to save you from your circumstances and your inability. On the energetic days, you need him to save you from yourself and your ability.

Both kinds of days point to my complete and utter dependance; productivity simply disguises the need a little more.

I wouldn't say I'm back to "normal," whatever that is. But I am returning, slowly, to a place where I'm more functional. Rest looks a bit different now. Last year I rested out of complete necessity; this year rest will be more of a discipline. I am learning to practice time-outs even when my mind and body are telling me I can accomplish more.

Yesterday my running partner and I were talking about where I was a year ago. I joked about how, for months on end, I had absolutely nothing to show for my days. She said, That's not true. All those days of rest are showing up now, this year.

And that's the truth. Rest takes time. Its effects are cumulative and life-giving but it requires a patience which daily accomplishment doesn't mandate. Projects and checked-off to-do lists provide instant gratification. Rest makes you wait for it. I've learned this the hard, beautiful way and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

After two days of productivity, I'm forcing myself to bask in the quiet this morning, to stay in my pajamas, to read and meditate and write, to acknowledge my need even though I don't feel it as acutely, physically and emotionally.

Now that each and every day aren't plagued by utter inability, I oscillate between being Mary on a pensive Tuesday and Martha on a task-oriented Thursday. And though work and rest are needful rhythms in our lives, Jesus reminds us that only one thing is truly the main course: to sit at his feet, to rest in his presence, to know that his words are life-giving and that his perfect life is what gives us life.

We fill up so that we can pour out.

Sometimes we devote ourselves to rest for a season, a very long season if that's what it takes. Other times rest is a practice, a lifestyle of margin and weighing opportunity costs and tough prioritization. My husband is good to remind me that fruitfulness and productivity are often not the same thing.

Maybe this year is one dedicated to rest for you. Maybe it's one of new opportunities and exciting projects. Maybe it's one of dealing with grief and debilitating transition. Our lives change but they're tenderly held by a God who doesn't.

Whatever this next year holds, my hope for all of us is that God meets us right where we are to custom-fit each of us with exactly the kind of rest and renewal our bodies, minds and souls need, to fill us up so we can eventually pour our lives out in service to those around us.

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And now a New Year's Prayer for all of us:

May your 2013 be one of wisdom and encouragement. Say "no" to that which is not fruitful. Say "yes" to fresh possibilities and brave new paths. Rest when you need it. Work when you have to. Be encouraged that all work is sacred, whether you're at home wiping bottoms or in an office filing papers. Accept the season in which you live, glamourous or not. Know that it's divinely appointed and therefore beautiful, even if it's a mess. If you feel invisible and unimportant, know that it's a lie. God sees you and keeps track of every last hair on your head. You matter and he loves you more than you can possibly comprehend. If you belong to him, you're royalty. Realize that God sees neediness and dependence as virtues, not disabilities. May his grace give you new eyes to see that He is strongest when you are weak. Amen.

2012 Favorites

2012-12-31T10:51:00.000-05:00

Happy last day of the year! I hope that you and yours enjoyed the holidays and will be able to eek out a few more days of extended pajama wearing and movie watching.

I'm a list junkie, a complete and total sucker for tabulations of the best books, movies, news stories, and beauty products. Don't hate. It's not easy to strike a proper balance between the meaningful and the superficial but I do my best.

So in the spirit of the year's end and my love of lists, I give you a few of my own favorites from the year.

Favorite Movie(s)

{That I happened to watch in 2012. They probably released sooner...I'm just a bit behind.}

Bernie. People, I just watched this one and it is BRILLIANT. If you like quirky, dark-ish comedies and you hail from anywhere near or below the Mason-Dixon line, you will love this movie.

Wasteland. It's a documentary about art, poverty, garbage and how they all come together in a way that is redemptive, inspiring, and heart-wrenching. I've watched it twice.

Queen of Versailles. Also a documentary but this one chronicles the rags-to-riches-turned-riches-to-rags story of an extremely wealthy family currently building the largest home in America. It's riveting.

The Hunger Games. Though the cinematography made me a bit queasy, I felt the movie adaptation of the first book was really well-done. The Capital and its inhabitants were a marvel of make-up and costume genius.

Favorite Books

{Fiction} To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I've already read this book but my daughter and I went through it this summer and I fell in love all over again. It may be my favorite novel of all time.

{Fiction} The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I know everyone has already read this one but I'm late to the game. It took me a long time to get through it but it was worth the perseverance. It's an epic, sweeping work that reads like a memoir of the various characters of the story. The writing is masterful and the historical backdrop is both tumultuous and tragic.

{Spiritual} The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I think I read it twice this year. I echo the thoughts of many when I say that it's one of the most spiritually influential books of my life, a book I will continue to read and digest for years to come.

Favorite Recipes

Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Obviously. If you're sick of me talking about this bread, I'm sorry. It really is that good and that easy.

Pecan Pie Bars. I'm not even a mega fan of pecans but I nearly ate the whole pan of this stuff by myself. Here's the recipe.

{via}

Favorite Beauty Stuff

The older I get, the more I have to splurge on foundation and concealer. Drug-store products still do the job with mascara, eye shadow, etc. but the ever-increasing lines, spots, and dryness are begging for products that do a bit more.

Clinique Even Better Foundation: Love. It lasts, isn't cakey or heavy, and blends well.

Clinique Line Smoothing Concealer: Again, it blends well, stays put, and has a shimmery dewy-ness to it. I feel like it brightens up my tired eyes.

Revlon Grow Luscious Mascara: People, this mascara is AMAZING! And at $5 a tube, it's a deal. Probably my favorite mascara ever. It doesn't smudge, doesn't clump, and makes your lashes long and lovely without looking spidery.

MAC lipstick: Twig

A friend of mine surprised me with a gift-wrapped tube of this fabulous, splurgy lipstick and I cried. Yes I did. I love surprises and I love lipstick and I cry easily so this really shouldn't surprise anyone who knows me well. She saw that I had pinned it on Pinterest and she bought me a tube! Anyway, about the lipstick...it's the perfect color for everything. It's pinky-brown and satiny, lovely alone or under gloss. I guard this lipstick with my life.

Favorite Internet Stuff

Spotify. My brother just introduced me to this. It's sort of like Pandora but you can just type in songs or artists and listen to any of their songs. You can even make playlists. I don't keep up with new music like I did in my younger years but I'm beginning to broaden my horizons a bit.

Pinterest. No explanation needed.

Favorite a la mode post

I'm often partial to different posts than the ones that get the most views but I thought it would be fun to search through my posts and see which one got the most views. And the winner is...

The Year of Simplicity: Decisions & School Daze

I chose to write about the ins and outs, pros and cons, good, bad, and ugly of our journey to place our kids in public school after years of homeschooling. Apparently it's a relevant topic; all of my posts about school get the most views. And because it's kind of therapeutic for me to share our story, you'll likely keep reading about it in 2013.

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May we all be filled with gratitude for the momentous joys and everyday gifts of the past year. May we hold our past and current sorrows with acceptance and grace, and find continued comfort. May the year ahead be one of wisdom and grace, renewal and new favorites.

Happy 2013, friends!

{What are a few of your favorite things?}

December {week 3}: "Mindful of My Humble State"

2012-12-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

{An edited and re-gifted re-post from December, 2010.}

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Recently I was at a Christmas gathering and we were all asked this question: "If you could have coffee with any person in history, who would it be?" I couldn't choose just one person but C.S. Lewis was certainly on the list. And Bono. After I thought more about it this morning, however, I decided on Mary.

I don't know why we know so little about Mary. She is, after all, the one who birthed the Savior of the world.

How long was she in labor and how badly did it hurt? Did Jesus cry that robust, red-faced, newborn wail when He left the warmth and comfort of her womb? Who tended to her after the labor and delivery? There was no mention of a mid-wife and I can't imagine that Joseph would have a clue. Did she doubt whether she'd really seen and heard the angel of the Lord? Did she wonder if she was crazy, wonder if it had perhaps all been a dream? What were all of those thoughts she "treasured up" and "pondered in her heart?"

This side of Heaven, I won't know. But today with new eyes and a needy heart, I gazed upon the few words we do have in Luke 1. Commentators call it "Mary's Song."

My soul glorifies the Lord

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has been mindful

of the humble state of his servant.

From now on all generations will call me blessed,

for the Mighty One has done great things for me—

holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him,

from generation to generation.

He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones

but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things

but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

remembering to be merciful

to Abraham and his descendants forever,

just as he promised our ancestors.

{emphasis mine}

That Mary's words find resonance with a 21st-century mama just struggling through the everyday with her own baggage...well, God's word is so faithful. Today I have been especially mindful of my own humble, servant-like state. I cried when my husband left for work this morning, overwhelmed by the mess and the children but mostly overwhelmed by my own inadequate self.

The inadequacy. It waxes and wanes depending on the day but oh, there are times when I am simply swallowed up by it and it seems there's no way out, no glimpse of grace. The tears have flowed freely and the frustration has shot my nerves to pieces and it is in my swallowed-up state that I long to be rescued.

Still in pajamas, still recovering from tantrum-throwing toddler, still staring at heaped-up clothes in every room of the house, the older two and I, we finally sit at the oak table to gather ourselves in so many ways. And we sit 'round our first-ever Jesse Tree, our very own family's "shoot" pointing to the Savior, despite days of feeling stunted and broken and stump-like.

More than a few days behind, I read and I read, story after story, as tears burned and heart ached and children stared at me...crazy, crying mama. We read of destitute Naomi and desperate Ruth and Rahab the prostitute {my favorite,} all broken-down women who only God could make great and who humbly took their places in the line that would eventually bring Jesus into the world.

Is it any wonder that He felt so at home among the lowly and the beaten-down? He came out of them and He also came unto them. Only God would do such a crazy, wonderful, upside-down and inside-out thing.

Sometimes I simply need to know that I am in good company and maybe you need to know it too. I need to know that the Savior of the world is also the Savior of this weary housewife and the Redeemer of rotten days. I need to know, like Mary and her inadequate sisters in the faith, that He is mindful of my humble state, that his mercy extends to me and that the only greatness that matters is that which the Lord raises up out of nothing.

Mary's song is for all of us.

I pray that grace and strength and fresh hope will be yours and mine during this third week of Advent.

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Schooliversary

2012-12-11T09:06:00.002-05:00

Last week he reminded me that December 9th would be their 1-year anniversary. I can't believe he remembered the date. He's only in third grade.

December 9th was the day he and his sister began public school.

I've written about our journey from homeschool to public school quite a bit. I am less emotional now than I was at the beginning, more sure that this is right. For us. For now.

Nothing about school, whether you do it under your roof, your church's roof, or the state's roof, is perfect. Convictions, values, the child's needs, the parents' needs, lifestyle, safety, academic excellence, money, and goals--they all play a part in what can be a grueling decision.

My hope has always been that we could make a decision and that I would be able to rest in it. I don't arrive at decisions easily and once they're made, I tend to second-guess them. It's a torturous thing for all involved.

But this week I realized the sweetest thing. My kids have been in public school for a year and I have found rest in this reality.

I no longer cry. I rarely fret, not about school anyway. I am at peace with a reality that I didn't think I could feel peaceful about.

There are difficult days and things I don't like. I really miss the flexibility and downtime. Homework can be a waste of time. Grades are often too important. Standardized testing creates too much pressure and stress, something young kids shouldn't have to deal with. Books, lunches, instruments, and homework assignments have all been left behind on one day or another, stresses I didn't know when we homeschooled.

But then there are the gifts:

Devoted teachers who really care and guidance counselors who go to bat; new friendships that are so very sweet and old friendships that have been rekindled; read-aloud time in special needs classrooms; an invitation to bring my grandfather to a Veterans Day lunch; pajama mornings and parties and plays.

"Tougher and rougher" kids have taught my relatively sheltered children that not every child enjoys a life wrapped in love, provision, and needful boundaries. To and from commutes allow precious time for dialogue, debriefing, and even prayer. And this mom? She's less depleted and has more energy to just be a mom.

One year in, amid the good days and the rough ones, my soul is at a place of rest. And this? Is no small gift.

..........................................

Today, we're unwrapping the gifts of the everyday over at Emily's {Chatting at the Sky.} And we'll be doing it each Tuesday of December.

What can you unwrap?

{from Emily} Anything that causes you to pause and celebrate the moment. Not what will be or what is to come, but what is real and true this day: the messy, the lovely, and the unexpected. Share a photo, a story, or anything that offers a glimpse into your own journey of discovering the gifts in the midst of the ordinary.

Join us?