lessons in giant pumpkins

A year ago in October, a friend was describing the process of growing giant pumpkins. Listening to her, however, I knew it was an analogy for my life. Hang with me here as I describe the process:

Giant pumpkins take a special kind of seed planted in a excellent blend of fertilized soil. They need a lot of sunshine, and a fair amount of water.

The good growing conditions are not enough. Once the vine has grown to a certain length, and the flowers have turned into a number of small round fruits, the farmer has to do some knowledgeable selection.

The farmer's role is crucial. She chooses the one best pumpkin on the vine she believes will grow to be a giant, and must pinch off all the other baby pumpkins. They all look like they could grow to be equally large, but she must choose.

If they aren't pinched, then a good number of pumpkins will grow, but none of them will be of unique size. You see, there is only a certain amount of nutrients to go around. Funneling all of the energy of the plant into one fruit is what creates the giant, prize-winning pumpkin. One vine can produce either a lot of normal sized pumpkins, or one giant pumpkin, but it cannot do both.

My friend's narration of the process confirmed that in my life it was pumpkin pinching time. Part of that, I knew immediately, was laying this little blog aside for a while - it was one thing that could be pinched.

The timing of all this fell a few months after our return to the U.S. from a season of overseas adventure. A season when nearly everything that gave me comfort had been stripped away. I didn't feel surprised that my little writing hobby here was next.

I was decidedly disappointed. Mostly in myself, realizing that I am not capable of carrying all things well (this truth always comes as a surprise to me). After all of the letting go through our year's adventures, after all the laying down of things, it was disappointing that there was still more to surrender. There always will be.

Through the disappointment, I could see a gentle INVITATION. God's ways are never forceful, they are invitational. Trust me with the gifts I gave you in the first place, He faithfully whispered into that anxious place in my heart. Another invitation to lay something down is another invitation to grow

Writing has been a great gift to me. To me. It had become a gift of allowing me a place to process in all of those years stuck at home with small children. A gift of using my brain in a season of very limited academic stimulation. A gift of encouragement when I couldn't actually be with other human beings over 3 feet tall. A gift of having a place to articulate all of the growth I was experiencing as a mother, without physically leaving my house full of babies. A gift of using a gift right from my living room at nap time.

Then this past spring, our family got out in the dirt together to begin our vegetable garden, around 6 months after the conversation with my friend. I came across an old paper bag we've had lying around the garage for years labeled "GIANT PUMPKIN SEEDS". It was surely a sign.

For fun, I investigated and discovered that the grand prize for giant pumpkins at our local county fair is $400. Exciting! This must be the year that pinching pumpkin in gardens and lives would lead to something glorious, potentially ending in a notable prize.

I planted 10 seeds. Despite being many years old, every single of one of them sprouted. The amount of green vine produced from 10 seeds soon took over the perimeter of the garden overflowing onto the driveway. Despite some loss of vines to gophers and others to poor location, very quickly my garden became a jungle of pumpkins vines (with some tomatoes, green beans and sunflowers mixed in.)

Favorite summer game: pretending to be bunnies in the overgrown garden.

Choosing a few of the Giant Pumpkin vines that looked worthy, I faithfully pinched, watered, and rolled those pumpkins regularly for roundness, doing everything I could to grow a giant prize winning pumpkin.

Despite all of my best efforts, at the end of the summer, my largest pumpkin came in a good 400 pounds below the weight of the County Fair prize-winners. They were beautiful, but not big enough to bother entering the county contest.

It seems to me that God has a very good sense of humor. While I felt certain that I was called into pinching pumpkins and funneling my energy into just a few things I am called to do well (namely, parenting children and being present in the lives of those in a few select ministries right in front of me), God's little metaphor helped me see that His intentions were never for me to end up a prize-winner.

Sometimes we are simply called to lay things down. They may be inherently good and wholesome things, gifts from God Himself. Laying one thing down may be the key to allowing something else to grow. A lot of times, the things we faithfully cultivate will not be prize-winners, and that doesn't mean they aren't worthy.

We ended up with somewhere over 50 individual pumpkins and an uncounted number of small gourds in our garden this year. Ironically, most of the vines came up as volunteers out of the compost pile, which means they didn't take any energy from me at all. I never expected the abundance of fruit I didn't plant.

Perhaps we found more joy in giving our abundance of pumpkins away to friends and family than we would have in any prize? After giving so many away, we still ended up with a porch full of pumpkins. Because I grew them myself, I loved all of their imperfections, warts, ridiculous stems and dents more than usual this year.

I share this today because, after all this time, I may pick up and write on this blog periodically, and I may not. Either way, I've learned a lot about pinching pumpkins, and a lot about what it means to lay one thing down in my life in order to let something else grow. Not a single one of us can grow all things well. Maybe you, too, need encouragement to lay something down.

From seed trays...

... to planting in rows...

... to garden jungle.

Help bringing in the harvest.

Carve 'em up!

As a much better surprise at the County Fair than an award for a giant piece of fruit was Annike's fun "Best In Show" award for her collection of bird nests! We do love the County Fair!

strangers and halloween

One of the things we are learning in our time overseas is what it feels like to be a stranger.

Stranger-hood comes in all forms, like not knowing how to buy the right ingredients at the grocery store because of the language barrier, or being singled out every time we cross a border because our license plate is unfamiliar, or not having anyone to write down on the emergency contact card at school, or not knowing the answers to simple questions like "how exactly does trash collection work around here?" (and then finding that the answer is more complicated than you ever imagined), or not knowing how to celebrate basic holidays.

That's why I told my children that we weren't going to celebrate Halloween this year. We don't have costumes and we don't know what people do.

Then a family from school invited my children over to pick out some costumes from their dress up box. We also got word of a small Trunk or Treat at the local international school. Suddenly, we had something to wear and a place to go. My kids were thrilled!

On the drive to the Trunk or Treat event we were having the usual conversation in the car about expectations and how everyone should behave at the event. These conversations are especially important prefacing the arrival to any place where one Momma will be watching threes kiddos in a crowd.

Besides pleases and thank yous, the girls began discussing what would happen if one of them got more candy than the other in their baskets. The 8-year-old said:
"If I have a lot of candy and I give one piece to you, it would be nice of me. But if I only have one piece of candy and I give it to you, that is the nicest thing of all. Just like the Bible story."

Yes, like the Bible story where a widow puts only a few cents into the offering plate, and it means everything because it is all she has. Generosity is a measure of our heart, not our bank account. The Bible story told with the kid-friendly currency of candy.

In being strangers in a new place, we are learning about the deeper kinds of beauty found in generosity. Not just generosity that we read about, or think about, but the kind that we get to experience for ourselves. Even the children pick up on what it feels like to be invited in, to be welcomed, to be shared with.

We are all recipients of the sincerest kind of generosity. In turn, it is an exhortation to tangibly love the "strangers" we encounter in our own lives. Every celebration, even Halloween, is another excuse to tangibly love a stranger. What kind of stranger will you love today?

We charged the night with a cat, a princess, and a milk-drinking "fire engine man" (as he called himself). He was the most mesmerized by the evening of costumes and games, and a reminder of the magic of being 3 years old.

You can't tell how much our princess loved her costume because she was stricken by a fit-inducing "bump in her sock" at the moment of family photos. Perhaps it was a pea? 

  

The Widow's Offering

"Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything - all she had to live on" 

Mark 12:41-44 

what really happened on halloween

It seems ironic to me that my last post was all about the drama in our home when it comes to getting dressed. Enter Halloween and an adorable costume idea that my kids would just not buy into. Boo.

You see, I have these creative ideas that I feel my kids will be dying to go along with. When I came across this gnome hat with an attached beard, I felt I must have it. Could anyone resist a chubby-cheeked towhead in suspenders?

Thus was born this year's costume endeavor to get all three of my kids to go as garden gnomes.

Don't let the adorable photos fool you into thinking that our family has it all together. That my children always get along. That they do what I ask, when I ask, without pausing to exercise their own strong wills. I have carefully sorted through the bloopers.

What really happened is that I bribed my children into cooperating in a garden gnome photo session by telling them they could be anything they wanted for the evening's trick-or-treating. I had to throw in the promise of make-up to clinch the deal. You might notice that my oldest is being quite well-behaved overall. She was dead set on getting her face painted in character.

My husband was furious with me for "wasting" time and energy (and money) on costumes I wasn't going to make our kids wear. It was definitely a dilemma.

I just don't subscribe to the school of parenting that involves making kids wear costumes they don't enjoy. Halloween is supposed to be fun for them, not just me. I spend a lot of energy throughout the week making them wear things they don't want to wear. When it is important, I will win that battle. When it doesn't better society, or better them, or disturb any honor to God, then it feels wrong to insist.

In the end, my oldest went as a fox... again. Same as last year.

I don't even know what my middle child went as. Some kind of snow princess, I guess. She wore her favorite Christmas dress, that she actually wore to school every day last week as well. With a medieval flower child headdress and her favorite red shoes. A pink wand made it into the photo as well.

The little guy was the only one without a choice. He was into it as long as the hat wasn't involved. The entire night was a constant back and forth with some adult putting the hat on his head and him removing it. Over and over this played. He did keep his pants on all night, though, which is a real triumph when it comes to keeping him dressed. This little gnome rocked trick-or-treating. He walked the whole way through the neighborhood holding his little pumpkin bucket and his flashlight shouting "Tick or Teat!" He could care less about the candy.

There are plenty of ways in this life to squash a child's spirit by enforcing things. I don't feel right contributing to it by forcing them to wear costumes. Being flexible about this is one more way that I can teach them the difference between the things that matter in life and the things that don't.

In the meantime, I got my photos, so I guess I am happy. I can only feel sincere about them by telling the real story of what happened on Halloween. All those of you out there who have children who also rebelled against conformity in some manor or another regarding a costume can sleep a little bit better tonight knowing that the photos of your friends on facebook or instagram whose children are all dressed in a set of cleverly matching disguises, smiling, getting along... well, they might not be telling the entire picture.

costumes

I don't remember Halloween being so much work as a kid. Oh, yes. That is because it is only a lot of work for the parents.

My mother will say it is payback for me because I once asked her to make me into a pink flamingo. She spent hours on a costume complete with a beak made from a recycled pinata and a tail stuffed with balloons to give it shape.

I bought ears and tails on Amazon for my little zebra and Dalmatian and still found it a lot of work.

By the way, whoever thinks that pumpkin carving is an activity for children is wrong. They can't draw well on pumpkins. They can't use knives without carving off their fingers. And my kids can't even help scoop out the pumpkin guts because they aren't strong enough. They sure enjoyed watching Daddy and I do all of the work for their kitty pumpkins, however.

The challenge with impressionable little people at Halloween is to have fun but avoid all of the scary. We are still figuring out this balance. This year we joined a group of Annike's friends from kindergarten and trick-or-treated around the staff housing at the local Christian high school. No creepy dark porches. No weird people walking around. No scary masks. No cars flying down the road we needed avoid. It was perfect for us.

I also appreciated Annike's school's choice to celebrate Reformation Day in lieu of Halloween. They invited all of the students to dress up in Medieval or Renaissance type costumes to commemorate the day. I found it refreshing to be given a healthy suggestion for how Christians can participate in this holiday. Instead of being given a list of "what not to wear" on this day known for its dark costumes, kids were given direction and a positive outlet for how to be a part of the fun.

Annike was a little Renaissance maiden in this beautiful period dress borrowed from a friend whose mother handmade it. She complains whenever I want to put her hair back, but this time I insisted. After all, if the parents are doing all of the work putting costumes together, then don't we get to insist on some of that parts that bring us pleasure?

Oh yes, and Baby Karsten, you ask? What was he doing during all of this on Halloween? Sleeping, of course. Like the sweet little glowworm that he is. In fact, he slept so much that I didn't actually get a picture of him in his costume until a few days later.

We will end this post with another comparison photo of my little children who have all worn this very same costume for their first Halloween, somewhere between 5 and 6 weeks old. Just so you know, my husband had trouble telling the babies below apart.

Top to bottom: Annike, Sommer, and Karsten. Love these little buggars!

garden goods

Our garden hasn't done quite as well as it did last year. I suppose we have been focusing on growing little people this year, instead of vegetables.

Still, we got a large crop of tomatoes, quite a few handfuls of peas, many ears of corn and some delicious carrots. Tip for other parents of a super-picky non-eating toddler:  have a garden. There is nothing like pulling something out of the dirt to make a 2-year-old want to eat it.

We lost a lot of our plants to mold, or birds, or a family of 6 baby turkeys that discovered the raised bed. The one crop that seemed to be immune to the animals were the pumpkins.

If you want to plant one thing for the fun of watching it grow with kids, I highly recommend pumpkins. These grew like Jack's magic beanstalk. We could practically see the vines stretching out over the earth with each passing day, the gourds getting bigger, turning green, then orange.

I've been seeing pictures on facebook of everyone with their cute kids at the pumpkin patch. Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch too. Except that we didn't have to get in the car. We walked out the front door to harvest our pumpkins from our very own side yard!

I admit our little patch is not quite as artistically displayed as the professional lots, but the kids had just as much fun in this one. In fact, they have been having fun in it all summer long. The girls each "claimed" their pumpkin months ago while they were still green. They watched them grow, and were excited to finally pick and place them on the porch.

I always love the idea of having a large pile of pumpkins on my doorstep, but at $10-$15 dollars each it can really add up! Is anyone else shocked at the price of pumpkins these days? Someone is making a lot of money on this Halloween commodity. We can now tell you from experience that they don't cost a lot to grow. The $3 spent on the packet of seeds was well spent.

The little guy even got in on some of the action!

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Another great joy we find in our garden is the opportunity to give of our abundance. My husband teaches me a lot about this, and I guess I have a lot to learn.

Every time one of our little friends comes over, he suggests that we let them pick a pumpkin to take home. I was selfishly excited about putting all 15 of the pumpkins we grew on our porch for the fall. But it is such a good feeling to share the joy with others. So much better than feeling pride in an overly decorated porch. Seriously, who needs 15 pumpkins on the porch?

Especially when the things that matter most are already there.