The Monkey Barrel (Arters Blog)

Mother’s Day and I haven’t been on good terms for a while.  Maybe it’s just the commercialism and materialism that bog me down and make me dread it like pretty much all the other holidays around.  Guilt driven consumerism makes me bonkers.  Granted, if I’m honest, I can think of a gagillion things I’d actually like to have but really am to ashamed to ask for.  It feels selfish.  I have so much more than I need already, and more just seems like, well, more.

But further self examination and prying open my soul a bit leads to a deeper explanation.  I feel awkward when the kids praise me. Deep down, I know I suck. I scream and yell and slam doors and fuss and cry and get hysterical over nothing.  They’re just kids.  They mess up.  It’s part of the deal.  Sometimes though,  I’m so angry I catch myself planning to be more angry based on their responses to things expected of them.  And sometimes what’s even worse is that their tears and anger and frustration just fuel mine more and the shouting amps.  I don’t deserve praise.  I don’t deserve thanks.  And I certainly don’t deserve an entire day set aside shower me in accolades.  I’m a big fat failure.  A fraud.

I don’t have a clue how I managed to build a false image that I have things altogether or that I’m some kind of super mom amongst my friends.  I get this journey wrong on so many levels daily.  Maybe 10% of the time I actually get it right.  That figure’s probably more like .05% of the time if I’m truly honest.  I do all the things I swore I’d never do when I became a parent.  And I do them a lot.  I don’t ask the kids forgiveness nearly enough.  I don’t own up to my faults as often as I should.  And Mother’s Day comes around and it’s like a big slap in my failure.

I want to hide in the bedroom all day until it’s over.  These four precious little beings that I longed for and prayed for and treasure.  I don’t want them to ever feel they owe me anything.  I don’t want them to get older and have their only example from me be a big fat list of what not to do’s.  But right now, that’s all they’re getting and I hate it.  They deserve better.  And this self deprication train is a hard one to get off of when I’m on it.  I could literally fill blog after blog post with all the ways I feel and know I have messed up.  It could go on forever ad-nauseum.  And then God gives me a big reality check.

I know in my heart that He chose these specific kids to have us as their parents.  That in some insane crazy plan of His, I’m the one who needed to be their mom.  I cannot imagine what He is thinking in that big perfect head of His.  But I cling to the idea that there is something salvageable, even redeemable within me to make me fit to be theirs.  Maybe one day I’ll get a glimpse of the big picture and agree with Him that I wasn’t so bad after all.  But right here, right now, I’d rather “celebrate” the day appreciating that they haven’t voted me off the island yet.

A young friend of mine called a few weeks ago and asked if Fred and I would be willing to be premarital counselors for her and her fiance’.  I was really surprised and honored to be asked and told her I was all in but would double check with Fred to be sure he was on board.  He was.  We hit Amazon to review the book we’d be doing together and started going over some of the questions we’d cover in the coming weeks.  Fred joked it was good for them to get their expectations down on paper and then we could try to let them down gently.  I started thinking back to what my own expectations had been before we began our lives together.  We started talking about our own premarital counseling experience.

I’m just gonna say here and now I was SO selfish and naive back then.  When we made lists with our counselor about all kinds of things all of my lists pertained to how Fred would meet my needs and how he would take care of me and just completely random frivolous stuff.  It is a miracle that he didn’t find me an utter twit and call the whole thing off. I’m not even kidding.

I was telling my friend this and she said old married couples are so mean to young married couples with their “you know nothing” speeches.  So I expounded on what I’d been thinking when looking back at myself.   When you take those vows, you are dying to your own needs and trusting someone else to be doing the same with theirs to meet yours.  You are vowing to honor and respect and love someone more than yourself.  All that sounds fantastic on paper until you are confronted with real life situations where you have to put it into practice.  It is even harder in a society that has blurred the lines of what roles are in marriage and has made divorce such a convenience that working through the worst just looks like wasted effort when you can end it and take the easy route out.

You are vowing for better or for worse and let me say, there’s a LOT of worse.  Not necessarily between you but just life coming at you from all sides.  Job stresses, financial burdens, extended family crisis, illnesses, and all kinds of other disasters that just happen.  It is not even really about your happiness.  It’s about theirs.  I’m not saying to make yourself a slave or a doormat to their whims and fancies but it is making a concerted effort to put their needs above yours, to encourage them when life weighs heavily, to pray for them daily and sometimes hourly and minute to minute when life hangs in the balance.  It is hard work.

All the romantic ideals of walks on the beach and candlelit dinners and exotic getaways are lovely and beautiful and those will happen.  But your idea of romance changes as your marriage ages and you grow together.  When money is tight in the earliest years and you’re eating tuna noodle casserole for the umpteenth time cause that’s what’s in the pantry it will still seem like a gourmet meal because you’re together and you have food and electricity to cook it with.  When you can’t afford a gift for a birthday or an anniversary,your spouse sits up in the wee hours of the morning to write a letter spilling out his soul about his love for you, you will feel richer than any human on the face of the earth.  When you buy your first ramshackle of a crackhouse to renovate and make your own and he spends hours and hours by your side washing and scrubbing and sanding and hammering to make it a home, you will sit inside those walls together and marvel at what you accomplished.  When you are laboring to bring your first child into the world and you look up to see the worry etched into his face but  joy wash over him as you lay your firstborn into his arms.  When he gets up in the middle of the night to change diapers or to console the baby’s crying (or yours) or makes a bottle and takes a feeding, love fills you up from the tips of your toes and spills over your whole being.  When you’re parents become ill and each of you takes turns caring for their needs and each of you bolster the other as your realize their mortality you will feel the pieces of yourself held together in a way no other circumstance can knit.  More children grow more love and create more situations for you to lean on each other and to build each other up. You will marvel at the incredible beauty of watching your spouse being a parent and you will fall deeper and more madly in love than you could have ever imagined over dirty diapers and noise and chaos and vomit and absolute insanity. And before you know it you will wake up 15 years later stronger and more in love and more content because you made someone else’s life your own.  You will find that their happiness was the breeding ground for your own and you will roll over and wrap yourself up in their arms and pray for more years to come to continue it on.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “community” the last few months.  Between homeschooling these last couple of years and now our move away from all that is familiar and convenient it is occupying my brain a great deal lately.  More so in the last few days due to a failing attempt to change our curriculum and get involved with a group that I hoped would answer what I thought were problems.  But today while I’m watching the boys outside playing with the neighbor kids, I’m beginning to realize perhaps I am focusing on the wrong thing.  The aspect of community and socialization that society says is appropriate.

We joined our church about 7 years ago and jumped in with both feet to get involved and to become a part of their congregation.  Our kids have made friends they see week to week and they see us mingling with our own friends and they ride in the car with us to take meals and move furniture and serve nursery or sound and a multitude of other tasks that go on in the interim from Sunday to Sunday.  Is this not community??  Are they not socialized with an enormous variety of folks of all walks of life, race, and ages within the walls where Christ unites us?  Do they not see their parents willing to submit to the authorities set above us and watch us serve with what we hope are humble hearts to set an example for them of what it means to be a part of a larger spectrum than themselves?

The kids have tons of neighbors here that come and chat and play.  Just like I had when I was growing up.  A lot of those kids I’m still joyfully connected with thanks to social media like fb.  These are friendships homegrown that may last the rest of their lives and I get a front row seat to watching them develop and an amazing opportunity to be a part of them myself.  Isn’t this also community?  Socialization anyone?

And then there’s the stereotypical “unsocialized” homeschooler comments that I’ve learned to laugh off but really they irritate me.  It irritates me because I don’t make comments to my friends about their decisions to put their kids in private or public school or make them feel like less of a parent because of their choices to do so.  But I hear stories upon stories from all different angles about the kids in each system and the bullying and faculty apathy and growing violence and I wonder.  Why is society pressuring us so hard to engage our kids in this kind of madness and calling it normal??  Am I really “sheltering” my kids from learning to put their big boy/girl pants on and deal with real life issues or am I guarding the innocence of their hearts?  It definitely was not the reason nor did it have bearing on why we chose to homeschool but I am learning that it is a benefit I am holding more and more dear.

I am still struggling to hold the pieces of us together on this adventure and every year we choose to follow this path I feel stronger and weaker all at the same time.  I cannot help but feel that community as I am coming to understand it for our family is definitely outside of the norm and I am accepting that I am okay with it.  Letting go of caring what anyone else thinks about is definitely the biggest obstacle but I’m getting there.  Thanks to the help of my own community.

When you asked me if I would, I said yes.  My heart leaped miles and my joy raced to the moon and back at light speeds a million times over in those few tiny seconds it took to utter my reply.  That one yes felt like thousands echoing across the coming ages.  Reverberations pinging back and forth in a crazy life game of ping pong ball.  Driving down the interstate to meet you for dinner with the kids, one hit me square between the eyes.  It’s not a special day of real import.  It isn’t the anniversary of the day you asked.  It’s just a regular ordinary day.  One in which I still get to be your wife.  One in which I get to be the mother to our children.  One in which I get to wake up beside you in our home.  Just another day upon the hundreds God has gifted me with you since that resounding yes.  another day to  catch yeses shot into the future.  My heart still skips when I catch sight of you.  My yes still on the tip of my tongue 16 years later.  Never just one, but thousands.  Every minute of every day, my heart and my soul cries yes.  Yes, with every tingle and excitement from the very first time.  Yes then, yes now, and yes to come.  Yes…

My house is quiet.  That in itself could be considered a miracle.  Suddenly, here I am at a sunlit table, two small heads asleep in their beds and their two brothers shooting hoops outside.  There are fewer boxes finally.  This move has been craziness.  I am at a place in the unpacking where I can imagine the bones of this house being adorned with pictures and accessories.  All the minutia that make a house a home.  Our home.  Honestly, our dream home.

Every home I dreamed of as a girl has been given birth here.  There is land for the kids to run and stretch their legs and chase and tumble each other.  Land to play sports on and build on and swing on and hunt on and play games on and have parties on and play music on.  There is earth to dig in and plant in and grow in.  There are porches to read on and sleep on and laugh on.  There is a great big  kitchen with counters to saddle up to and tables to laden with the abundance of what we’ve grown.  We will grow love here.  Much much love here.

As I run the halls flitting to needs and chores and boxes I whisper prayers.  Prayers that God would keep us safe as we learn to adjust to a new way of life in the country and with a pool.  That pool gives me as much worry as it does delight over it’s prospects.  But also prayers that God would find a way to use this home to be light reflecting back to Him.  That all who would pass through our doors, who would linger over crusts of home baked breads and meals and steaming cups of coffee and teas, would find comfort and friendship and solace and respite within these walls and sprawled out over the land.  That they would find a reflection in our day to day of  who’s image we strive to comform to.   That we would be a harbor here for the weak and weary and broken and bruised.  I pray that what we have been given becomes a gift and a blessing for others to enjoy as much as we will

We will learn here and create here and live here and be here and laugh here and dance here and swim here and have joy here.  And we will place Christ here.  Right in the middle of here.  Because life is nothing if He is not here and we have nothing without Him at our center.  With Him, we are home.  Here.

I have long held a view of gratitude that took a soul cutting lesson to drill into my heart and soul.  If you cannot be thankful for what you have, you do not move forward to the next round.  You stagnate in your here and now.  Somehow I stumbled across a book by an author and her journey to the same lesson.  I am reminded afresh in the pages of One Thousand Gifts how crucial it is that I bend my heart into an attitude of thank-fullness.  Because it is fullness.

When I have been up a thousand times in the night with the baby and then with Noah and with my own thoughts and dreams that cause me restlessness I wake up grumpy and short of temper. No one escapes my thunder.  The screams come easy and self control is lost and our day is washed up before it has even begun.  I am overwhelmed.  I lose.  We all lose.  I never thought these four incredible blessings could spawn such an undoing of myself.  And really, I need to be undone.  I need to lose my self.  Because it is in the losing of self that I am brought up short, right into the face of God to be reminded who it all comes from.  I needed to be reminded who is really in control.  The more I assert my self, the further we plummet down the rabbit hole of chaos.  I am ungrateful.  I stagnate.

This last week has proved better.  The first in practically 8 or so months where the corners seemed straight and life was wrinkled but was not my unraveling.  I gave it away. I gave over the control.  Every morning before my feet hit the floor, I whispered to Him beneath the white sheets.  Whispers of my brokenness, my frustration, my selfishness, my weakness.  I begged God to take back the helm through clenched teeth and drowning soul.  And He did.  He always does.  He is so patient.  He is merciful.  And His heart whispered back into mine the reminders of a thankful spirit.    I am so apt to forget.  My self charges in and takes over, wreaking havoc and devastation, where His whispers peace and healing.  I am still learning.  But He is I am.  And where I end, He begins.  So we begin, fresh, new, every day, every morning.

These are my thanks.  There are so many, and yet still too few:

Thank you that I wake every morning to the warmth in the curve of his back.  Thank you for his hands that find mine in the dark. Thank you for the fifteen years that he has not tired of me.  Thank you that he works so diligently to provide for us.  Not just for our needs, but for our wants.  Thank you that he strives so hard to be an image of you to us.  Thank You, that he stays.  That he is all present and all in with never a though or glance to being anywhere else.

Thank you for the precipice of 12 years that made this heart a mother heart.  Thank you for the journey.  Thank you for his gentle spirit.  Thank you for his diligence.  Thank you for his music and his heart that understands the song as he plays.  Thank you a thousand times over for the gift of his life.

Thank you for 6 years of his tender spirit.  Thank you for the soul in his eyes and for the seeing in his heart that understands others. Thank you for his gentleness.  Thank you for the way his soul grasps language in the written and the unspoken words.  Thank you for blessing us twice so tremendously.

Thank you for 3 years of out right audacity.  Thank you for his exuberance.  Thank you for his kindness.  Thank you for the loving spirit emerging under the tumult of a fiery temper.  Thank you for three times trusting us with another life to guide and shape and bring up in your admonition.

Thank you for 6 months of bubbling joy.  Thank you for her eyes that shine bright in smiles and smiles wreathed in dimples.   Thank you for her happiness and contentment.  Thank you for the fourth untold blessing and the first of girlish things.

Thank you for standing beside me every day.  Thank you for encouraging my heart when my spirit lags, for strength when I weary, for truth when I doubt, for wisdom when I seek, and mercy when I am undeserving.  Thank you for your faithfulness.  Thank you for all the things I will discover to be grateful for when I am willing to pull off the blinders of selfishness and look to find Your heart.

For a glimpse of One Thousand Gifts, you can find Ann Voskamp here  http://www.aholyexperience.com/category/1000gifts/

As a baby my brother dubbed him Da and the name stuck, carrying on through the rest of us grandchildren. I have a million and a half memories of my Da coursing through my brain as I reflect on his life as I was blessed to see it. I remember walking through his gardens and picking pole beans and squash and harvesting lettuces and planting seeds and dribbling sun ripened tomatoes down my chin. I remember feeding the fish in his koi pond and sticking little fingers in the surface to poke at them and make my reflection wiggle. I remember the stilts he made with plastic cups and whirlygigs he’d make from crepe paper, a bit of cardboard, and some string for us to trail in the wind as we ran. I remember his voice in song and in whispers goodnight and all the thousands of I love you’s called across yards and rooms and parties and Christmases. I remember the smell of Old Spice and Brut lingering in my hair after his hugs. I remember spending the night at their house and the phone calls that came in the early evening hours as he manned a prayer line. I remember the sweet and loving tone of his voice as he prayed with broken and desperate folks, seeking answers, seeking love, seeking salvation, seeking compassion.
Da just oozed joy out of every fiber of his being right up to the crinkles in his eyes from the wideness of his smile and let me tell you it was contagious. So much so that people often asked him what made him so happy and he would pipe right in about his Savior. His Jesus. Da talked about Jesus constantly as though He were right present in the room at all times. Rarely was an opportunity missed to tell us that as much as he loved us, Jesus loved us more and He was always the most important thing. And with every telling to us or to anyone else, the end was always followed with a question, “Do you know Jesus?”. Da was never ashamed of his Lord. And his easy and pleasant demeanor put others at ease so that the question he was determined to ask would never sound accusatory or shaming, just simple. I love Jesus. Do you know Him?
I can’t even comprehend their meeting in heaven but the picture I have in my head is much like one that happened when I was a little girl in first grade. (This was always his favorite story to tell me.) Da had come to the school to pick up my cousin and walked by my classroom. I was glancing at the door just as he strolled by. I hurled my little girl frame out of my chair and across the room and threw myself around his legs yelling DA! DA! DA! at the top of lungs. He grinned his big wide grin as he stooped to grab me and hug me as I clung to his neck. I can just see him walking through the gates of heaven and catching his first glimpse of Jesus and racing for His throne and yelling Jesus’s name over and over and over at the top of his lungs as Jesus gathered him up to welcome him home.

falling asleep is very dangerous in our house

We are so busy in the making of our life that there’s rarely a time to record it of late. Some days I despair that there will ever be any regularity to write here again. So I’m resigning myself to be content with the snippets I can toss on and look forward to the day when life settles in a bit and I can share fragments of the moments that make us laugh and love and live.

We’ve enjoyed an enormous summer of welcoming not only our sweet girl, but loads of visitors. I am loving all the company! God has outdone Himself with the range of guests we’ve had the joy to host, and it seems the fall is determined not to be outdone. Friends old and new are pouring in and out of doors with a speed that normally would make my head spin but it just seems par for the course at this point.

I’ve been up to my elbows and eyeballs organizing closets and bedrooms. Changing over clothes and bedding, packing up the summer, unpacking the cooler weather gear. This year I’m hoping to get family pictures done in the beauty of this fall as an early Christmas gift to myself. We haven’t had one done since John was born! We’ve had loads of pictures of the kids taken through the years and Lizzies are the most recent. In fact, they’re due any day and I am on pins and needles to see how they turned out.

I hear the natives getting restless and I better go break it up before something or someone gets broken or pee’d on. Ah the life of potty training. Added that to the never ending list of to do’s!!! So I’m off and I’ll leave you with a few pics of the star of the show of late that I snapped this afternoon. She’s just amazing that kid!

p.s. (by the time I finished posting this, someone’s face hit the wall and there was a bloody nose. geesh)

On July 2, 2011, my 35th birthday, I recieved the greatest gift you could possibly imagine. Elisabeth Frances joined our family after about 2 1/2 hours of hard labor although some might say it was really 3 weeks of labor given I held on at 5 cm for about that long! She weighed in at 8lbs. 5 oz and 21 inches long.

I can’t even begin to describe the joy this sweet little girl had brought just in the anticipation of her arrival. Her physical presence is even more of a delight. She’s a good sleeper, a voracious eater and from day one she has been strong and bright and alert. Her eyes smile with crinkles around the corners and wrinkles on her nose. The boys are all head over heals in love with her.

I’m still trying to organize the words and thoughts in my head to describe just what her presence has meant to me. How it has changed me. The words won’t congeal or meld together to form one thought. It is a million emotions yet only one. Gratefulness.

Grateful to be given the chance to mother a daughter. Grateful to share the experiences that I had growing up as female. Grateful that God chose to entrust her to our care. Grateful for the clothes and colors on the spectrum I couldn’t even dream of for myself before. Grateful for the promise of long hair, bows, dolls, and tomboy romps with her brothers in muddied ruffles and ribbons.

She is the fulfilled dream tucked away in a momma’s heart that had been placed in a box she thought would never be opened. She is so many wishes, murmured prayers, tears shed. She is God’s promise, God’s oath. Elisabeth. Our sweet baby girl.

Yesterday I was watching Noah run around and I had a distinct flashback to when he’d just come home from the hospital. We’ve been watching old family videos of each of the kids births to give them an idea of what it will be like when Elisabeth comes. So Noah’s first few days were fresh in my mind. But I remember sitting in the glider rocker when he was just 3 days old or so and thinking, “I need to soak this all in as long as possible, as much as possible, because I”m going to blink and you’ll be a year and then two, and then three. Pretty soon you’ll be all grown up and I’ll wonder if I held you long enough when you were tiny, cuddled you often enough, or told you how much I love you as many times as humanly possible.” Yesterday I blinked open and sure enough he’s two and a half years old and all the time in between seems to have folded into a tiny envelope of minutes and memories that flew by too swiftly. I know I’ll feel the same when Elisabeth comes. I am both anxious to meet her but grateful for the time that she is still safe inside my belly. We have these moments that only she and I share while we are entangled together this way. I’m trying not to wish it all away in my discomfort. Before I know, I’ll blink and she too will be 2 1/2 when I open my eyes again.