twelve years

Twelve years ago on the twelfth we walked an aisle, shared vows, listened to the singing of dear friends, and said "I do" to a life together.

It feels like it should be a momentous occasion to celebrate with the man who has walked beside me for the past twelve years. I have learned, however, not to let my expectations run wild on me. With three small children there are inevitable surprises and unpredictability. Celebrations will rarely live up to my expectations. I refuse to wallow in disappointment over the absence of Pomp and Circumstance for the day.
 
This anniversary arrives at the end of a very long week. A week that will be branded into my memory as one of the very most intense of my entire life. Full of emotion and friendships and company and studying for certifications and spring break and paperwork and endless cleaning and fun and stress, and thankfully no sickness. If there had been sickness it would have put me over the edge. We have had a week of Open Houses and realtors, and I have so much more to write about this as soon we will be selling our farm and home where we have lived these past 6 years. It has been a week of sadness and joy. 

And today, no, today could not be about me.

My daughter sat at the breakfast table looking at old wedding photos this morning, identifying familiar faces of friends and family among the guests, and told me, "Momma, I wish you still looked young like that!" 
 
You and me both, honey. The face I am wearing now is what 12 years of marriage with 3 children inducing 6 years of sleepless nights do to someone. It is a face with more wrinkles, now peppered with age spots, and a body with more rolls. 
 
It is also a heart filled with more love. 
It is arms filled with more hugs.
It is cheeks filled with more kisses.
It is a lap never empty.
It is bedtime full of more stories.
It is a brain invited to ever be creative.
It is a set of lungs filled with more laughter.
It is eyes that have shed more tears for the people I love.
It is more people to love, who fill my life and fill my heart.
It is death to selfishness in a way I was never capable of without this marriage, without this family.
 
Today's face sees youth passing, but you know, I wouldn't have it any other way.

P.S. We have a date set to officially celebrate our 12th anniversary later in the week. I want to make sure that no one leaves this post feeling sorry for me as I do not come anywhere close to living a deprived life. Sometimes we need to alter our perspective to get a million dollar view of all the blessings.

eggs and bunnies {repost}

The following is an Easter re-post from way back in 2010, when my first baby was one and half, and my other babies didn't exist. The connection between eggs and the resurrection story is still a little fuzzy in my head. I went hunting for this post in the archives to remember what I once knew:

The challenge as a mother is to make our holiday traditions meaningful to little children. I find that much easier at Christmas then at Easter. At least Santa was originally a saint who gave unselfishly of himself to others. What did the Easter bunny ever do for humanity, aside from gorging them with chocolate? Where do eggs fit into the Resurrection story? 

It is well-known that bunnies and eggs are a result of the merge of our Christian holiday and the pagan celebration of spring and fertility. All new life was believed to come from the egg. And rabbits, apparently, were prolific egg-layers.

I was skeptical that any legitimate link could be made between eggs and Christ. Upon researching this, however, it seems that the church made a valiant attempt at making the connection: 

• The hard shell of the egg represents the sealed Tomb of Christ.
• Cracking the eggs symbolizes Christ breaking open the Tomb, being resurrected from the dead.
• The hard-boiled egg inside of the shell is perfect, just like Christ was perfect when He exited the Tomb. (He did have scars from His piercings, so I think we can forgive ourselves if we knick the egg while trying to crack it open.)
• The egg, as mentioned above, represents new life. This life is truly found in Christ.
• The egg was a symbol of the rebirth of the earth in celebrations of spring. In the Biblical world, this translates easily as a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus.
• Traditionally, Easter eggs were dyed red to represent the blood of Christ. 

I have to say that I was surprised to realize all of the connections, because I have never been able to come up with any on my own. I find nothing wrong with the historical church attempting to be culturally relevant by using familiar symbols to teach people about what Jesus Christ did for us on the first Easter so long ago. 

My one-and-a-half year old won't understand any of this yet, so we made the connection between eggs and Jesus a different way:

Our eggs were decorated with secret messages (in white crayon) about God's love for us... things like:   

            "Jesus loves you!"   

                          "He rose again!" 

                                       "God loves Annike!"

We even got a cracked egg to say "the curtain of the temple tore in two."

Ultimately, I have decided that traditions are what we make of them. As for bunnies, I think they just come with the territory, kind of like Santa's reindeer.

Doesn't she look just like Karsten does at this age? Same shaggy white hair and blue eyes. All except for the fact that she is wearing pink. And I distinctly remember that she sat on the floor and peeled hard-boiled eggs with me for an hour. I can picture this day going very differently with Karsten: in a 60 second span my son would throw the eggs around the room and then pitch a tantrum when I took them away.

Happy Easter! He is Risen, indeed!

the land of milk and honey

A case of honey was dropped off on our front porch last week. Twenty cases of bees were dropped off in the apple orchard.

The bees get a great place to live in an orchard full of blossoms. We get a plethora of tiny pollinators to boost the apple yield. And a case of honey. A sweet deal for everyone.

The rich color variations come from the different orchard blossoms. Blackberry orchards produced the darkest jars of honey. So far, I can't taste the difference.

In the Bible, honey symbolizes delight.

Can you imagine, way back in Old Testament days? Food was pretty monotonous. There were not a lot of natural sweeteners lying around. Periodically someone stumbled across honey in the cleft of a rock or an animal carcass... yum. (Maybe the bees were a bit different back then?) Even so, it must have been equivalent to liquid gold.

God's people were wandering in a desert, with the dangling promise of entering the "land of milk and honey"... a land of abundance and delight.

This is a land still promised to all of God's people. Abundance and delight... if only we will follow where He leads.

Psalm 81:10, 16
"I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt.
Open wide your mouth and I will fill it... 

But you would be fed with the finest of wheat;
with honey from the rock I would satisfy you."

Oh, to be satisfied with honey from The Rock.

This year we consider the generous spoonfuls of honey we add to our tea and oatmeal a special act of worship. A way to remember the Author of delight itself.

swimming upstream

The condition of my house is overwhelming me. Some days I am constantly moving, trying to keep on top of it all. Somehow there seems to be no visible progress made. In frustration, I tell my husband I feel like I am swimming upstream.

It is the feeling I get when I realize that in the time it took me to wash and fold three loads of laundry, three more loads were generated. In the 20 minutes it took me to make dinner, the toy box exploded in the living room and someone dumped and scattered the contents of every board game we own. When I finally carved out an hour to reorganize a disastrous mess of a closet, the rest of the house fell to pieces. There appears to be no recovery.

Four other people living in this home are working against me and my single-handed attempt to keep this place livable. I am working really hard, and getting nowhere. I am swimming upstream, against a really strong current.

Whether drowning in my own home or drowning in the inevitable onslaught of life, I can't seem to get caught up. I know it isn't me alone experiencing this. I have friends who are drowning in mortgage payments or unexpected bills. Drowning in doctor appointments and the responsibilities of home treatments. Drowning in homework and meaningless assignments. Drowning in the balance between work-life and home-life. Drowning in family dysfunction. Drowning in shame over the past, a thing which can not be changed. Drowning in guilt, bitterness, anger, unhealthy thought patterns, addictions that don't help anyone.

Life doesn't need an invitation to beat us down in discouragement. Daily routines take all of the energy we have just to stay afloat. One added accident, crisis, or heartache is enough to sink us.

When I am working really hard and making no progress, I have to ask myself, what am I striving for? Am I really in this exhausted state because I want a cleaner house? Am I drained of energy because there are more tasks to be completed than minutes in the day? The answer is usually that I am striving for the wrong things. The place where I imagine the laundry is finished, the bills are all paid, the children are healthy and sleeping well, and the toys live permanently on their respective shelves, is a place of controlled peace. The problem with controlled peace is that the moment any item in the equation changes I begin to, once again, feel that I am swimming upstream.

God does not intend for us to drown in the waters of life. Actually, most Biblical references to water are intended to be life-giving.

The image of water presented in Psalm 23, one of the most well known passages in all of Scripture, is one of refreshment and restoration. Quite contrary to the image of swimming upstream, it says that God will lead us beside quiet waters. It is a picture of God leading anxious, striving people to a calm and restorative place. A place where life still happens, but we are not using our entire supply of energy to still feel needy in the end.

The quiet waters that God promises are not dependent on my circumstances, or the condition of my house, or the lack of help I am getting from the people around me. He leads me to a place where I can take a drink, and take a breath, and take a moment in the midst of it all. Following Him doesn't change the strength of the current, it changes how much I am affected by it.

Psalm 23 (The Message)
God, my shepherd!
    I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows,
    you find me quiet pools to drink from.
True to your word,
    you let me catch my breath
    and send me in the right direction. 

Even when the way goes through
    Death Valley,
I’m not afraid
    when you walk at my side.
Your trusty shepherd’s crook
    makes me feel secure. 

You serve me a six-course dinner
    right in front of my enemies.
You revive my drooping head;
    my cup brims with blessing. 

Your beauty and love chase after me
    every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God
for the rest of my life.

   
Find God, and you have found a quiet pool to drink from. You have found a moment to collect. Beauty and love are the only things chasing after you. And I like to imagine that when I am home in the house of God, the cooking and cleaning is somebody else's responsibility.

for the sleep-deprived mother

For the past six and a half years, since I very first became a mother, it seems that issues related to sleep have consumed our household.

A tiny fraction of my sleepless nights have been due to my own sleep issues related to pregnancy and weird nursing hormones and the odd night filled with anxiety here and there. A tiny fraction, mind you, belongs to adults in the house.

The vast majority of the sleep issues are entirely the fault of one or more children who live under this roof. The child who decides that sleep is simply not something he feels like doing at midnight, or 3am, or some number of horrid hours in between. The child who feels that crying for insane amounts of time is preferable. The child who incorrectly assumes that throwing an angry fit will give me some compassion and allow her to stay awake. Or perhaps the child who finds that coming into my bed to talk to me and poke me all night and play with my hair is a much more entertaining option.

Besides creating a general state of exhaustion, it creates a persona of self-doubt. A sentiment perpetuated by other mothers who love to talk about how well their own child is sleeping.  As if getting a baby to sleep through the night by 6-weeks, or 12-weeks, or even 20-weeks-old has somehow granted them a pass into the Excellent Mother Club.

What am I doing wrong? And why is it that other people's children are the same ones who sleep through the night AND take long 4 hour naps every afternoon? Isn't there some kind of sleep fairness rule that says if the child (and mother) doesn't get enough sleep at night that he should make up for it during the day?

Let me tell you that I have read a LOT of books on getting children to sleep and I have tried a lot of different methods. I have even gone to such desperate measures as climbing into my child's crib to get him to go back to sleep. You might think that is part of the problem, and you might be right. But when everything else has been tried to no avail then climbing into the crib actually seems like a great option. I will spare you the trial, however, because it doesn't work either.

Whether the problem is middle of the night wakings, or dreadfully short naps, or a child who loves dawn patrol, my children have never been great sleepers. In issues related to parenting, I have probably cried out to God more times asking for sleep than I have for anything else. Lord please let the baby sleep for more than 45 minutes this time! I don't think I will make it through my day if I don't get some rest!

He rarely answers the way I want Him to.

In one of my sleep-desperate days, I stumbled upon Psalm 127 which says:

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat - 

for the Lord grants sleep to those He loves. 
Psalm 127:2

To whom will He grant sleep? 
To those He loves. Me. You. Sleep-deprived mothers everywhere. Especially the ones who have been awake at odd hours of the night caring for the precious children that have been entrusted to them.

He will grant sleep to the mother who spent the majority of the night rocking a sick baby. The mother who held her daughter's hair back while she vomited over and over again until the virus passed. The mother who can't bear to let her child "cry-it-out". The mother who is so consumed with love for her child that she must arise to check on him. The mother who returns throughout the night to quell a cough, or a fever, or a simple lonely cry. The mother who knows she is the earthly caretaker of this little love and puts his needs above her own.

The Lord grants sleep to those He loves. When I cry out to God for the gift of sleep, He often answers me not with more hours of rest, but with more ounces of strength.

I have learned that God made women incredibly capable. Somehow all of that laboring children into the world and spending months of sleepless nights with newborns only makes us stronger. As we lean on Him, we are stronger still.

In that, comes the knowledge that He will always give us the strength to do what He asks us to do.

He asked me to raise three children who have some kind of terrible sleeping gene. In turn, He gives me the strength to do it.

The strength is given one tiny miracle at a time. Sometimes the miracle is in the minutes of sleep. Sometimes it is in the husband who says "Go take a nap while I watch them." Sometimes the miracle is a show on television.

I will always feel that this psalm was written specifically for the generations of mothers plagued by sleep issues. The next verse says it all:

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat -
for the Lord grants sleep to those He loves.

Children are a heritage from the Lord, 

offspring a reward from Him.

Psalm 127:2,3

Besides being an ever-present source of enervation, children are a heritage, a reward, a gift.  In sleeplessness, we are challenged to depend more upon God for our strength.  All of the ways that we grow to be a little more Christ-like end up being part of the reward.

Take heart, exhausted friend! You are not alone in this journey. The Lord knows exactly what you need to make it through today. Indeed, He grants sleep to those He loves.

love and adventure

Yosemite National Park must be one of my very favorite places on earth.

My childhood was packed with memories in this special place... climbing to the top of Half Dome... getting lost while rafting down the Merced River... staring at the shadow of a bear on my tent while I listened to him eat a pineapple upside down cake inches away from me... spending life-changing weeks at summer camp in Wawona... hiking and walking and bike riding and star gazing and rock climbing... adventure. A God-carved, awe-inspiring glimpse of heaven on earth.

On Valentine's weekend I visited with all the loves of my life. These people have been my Valentines for anywhere between 1 and 13 years!

The littlest loves began the weekend's childhood adventures with a wade in the snow-melt.

It was a uniquely warm February day. Apparently all of California was similarly inspired to visit Yosemite for the special weekend. This translated to parking our car really far away from every destination, which meant a lot of walking. In our family, a lot of walking also means a lot of carrying children. I filled my exercise quota for the week. It led to some necessary ice cream breaks to keep the smiles coming.

We were joined by members of my family for a wonderful weekend all around. All my loves in a lovely place. A set of grandparents and some extra adults around is an excellent idea when traveling anywhere with three young kids.

Annike, my mother, Sommer, my sister, and myself. All of the ladies in the family.

Karsten and my mother on the Wawona covered bridge.

Sommer fishing for the first time with my dad.

pinterest fail

It's the second week of February and I am having nightmares of last year's Valentine's Day when I got a crazy notion that I should send a snack into the kindergarten Valentine's party that was both healthy AND cute. Yes, I do know that no child willingly chooses a healthy option at a class party. Still, we have our motherly ambitions.

Enter Pinterest, with its eye candy photos and links to the unimaginable. Pinterest and its simple inspirations for every occasion. HA! I settled on yogurt parfaits with blueberry and strawberry toppings in a waffle cone. The picture was adorable. All of the ingredients were readied the night before and I woke up early on the day of the party to be sure I had enough time to assemble the treats.

Friends, Pinterest is not mother-tested. I knew we were in trouble as my husband was carrying the parfaits out the front door in my clever egg carton carrying case. It was too late. We were already committed. I tried to ignore the wavering waffle cones, slightly losing their shape as the moisture began to soak through. I wanted to hope for the best. Let's just push them lower down into the carrier, I suggested as I ushered my husband out the door with the treats and my daughter, Can't be late for school drop-off on a special day like today!

After the ten minute car ride only half of the waffle cones looked edible. By the time the party rolled around mid-day, the entire tray of soggy mess had to be tossed. My contribution to the class festivities went directly into the trash can. Nowhere, I repeat NOWHERE, did the Pinterest-popular recipe mention that these treats must be eaten within 5 minutes of assembly lest they collapse and taste like a leftover bowl of cereal. That kind of information is apparently not Pinterest-worthy.

I had a similar experience making cake pops for my daughter's birthday. I will spare you the details, but if you want to know what happened just try making your own cake pops. If I ever want cake pops again, I WILL BUY THEM. They are worth every penny. (In defense of the cake pops, they at least still tasted good after falling apart.)

All this striving to impress 5 and 6-year-olds. The same 5 and 6-year-olds who have glue dripping off of every project and who don't always feel like coloring in the lines. The ones who are still learning to make their letters all the same size. The ones who think that when it comes to glitter or sprinkles, more is always better. Or was it really to impress them?

The worst part of these experiences was the way the word "failure" played on repeat in my head. There was the failure to create what I intended to create. There was also the failure to create the perception of perfection.

Pinterest gets a lot of slack for causing feelings of inadequacy in those of us who are less-than-perfect. For example, me. Pinterest itself is not doing anything inherently wrong. Pinterest only represents the ideology of women in my generation:  appear creative, original, trendy, or a perfect blend of healthy and cute, in order to give the illusion that we have it all together.

I am here to tell you that the perfect blend of healthy and cute does not exist. I do not, and will never, have it all together. I am admittedly far less-than-perfect. As proof, I will stand proudly behind my Pinterest failures and hope it sparks change in the ideology women subscribe to. There should be no more sleep lost or wrinkles gained over achieving an illusion. Failed crafts and projects do not define me, and neither do successful ones. I would much rather be known at school as the mother who would never judge others for their lack of presentation. The mother who would laugh at and learn from mistakes made, full of grace for all, especially herself.

For Valentine's Day this year, instead of Pinterest-perfect try something tested by time... like candy hearts and a paper Valentine. It just might be the most original thing the kids at school have ever seen.