mother's day reflections

if you know me, you know that i do not go around chirping about how wonderful motherhood is. you are, unfortunately, more likely to hear me griping about how my kids are driving me crazy. i love and adore my boys and would give my life for them in a heartbeat, but let's be honest. motherhood is a real stretch for me much of the time. so it was a bit surprising to me today when i realized what i was feeling in the midst of the sunday morning chaos: profoundly grateful--grateful for the experience that mothering is, how it has stretched and softened me and made me more me, and grateful for these two remarkable, astounding, miraculous lives in my care.

being a mother has turned out to be extraordinarily different from what i'd imagined. as wendy wright says in her book seasons of a family's life, "motherhood has been the most formative experience of my life." it's the best thing i've ever done, and also the absolute hardest. i've been covered with every imaginable bodily fluid. i've experienced the torture of sleep deprivation. i've had my body stretched beyond recognition. i've given up any claim to personal space and time. i've had two little people grabbing at me, saying my name over and over a thousand times a day, asking for everything and anything constantly for years now. but what is most awful [awe-full] about this whole parenting thing is that whether we know it or not, as parents we image God's heart to our children. (this, incidentally, is why so many of us have terribly distorted ideas about God. . .)

what a responsibility! the sheer effort alone to keep my boys physically alive is exhausting, and now i'm on display 24/7 as a picture of almighty God?! what kind of set-up is this?

but here's the thing. i'm going to screw up anyway--and have--so i might as well relax and love my boys as well as i can and trust and pray that God will be doing his restorative work along the way.

here's another thing. i teach them, but they teach me, too. an example: just last week, i yelled at seth for something (he has been downright fractious lately). i hate it when i lose my temper. i hate seeing how my angry words dim that light in my boys' eyes. so, a couple minutes later, i went over to him, sat down, and said, "seth, i'm really sorry for yelling at you." he looked at me, smiled that smile of his and answered, "i forgive you! i forgive you a thousand times." if that's not a picture of Christ's heart, then i don't know what is.

here are some of the other things wyatt and seth are teaching me:

• RELAX, for God's sake.
• if you see water in any form--lake, ocean, creek, mud puddle--by all means, get in it.
• candy and popsicles are some of life's greatest pleasures.
• it's okay to get messy.
• play your drums as loudly as possible, and even open the window just so the neighbors can hear.
• sing at the top of your lungs.
• dance anywhere and everywhere.
• sleep is over-rated.
• play, play, play.
• dream.
• say what you think.
• cry when it hurts.
• band aids make you feel better--even if you don't have a boo boo.
• skipping is fun.
• yell "look at me!" when you're doing something noteworthy.
• savor every moment.

so, this is happy mother's day to me. my heart is full.

recent conversations about God

wyatt at bedtime several weeks ago: "i don't care what God looks like [a serious concern of his at times]; i love him, and i'm going to obey him. and [said with some serious attitude] i don't care what the devil looks like; i don't love him, and i'm not going to obey him!"

seth: "church is important. . .school, too. it's where we learn great things about God."

wyatt, looking out the car window at the sky: "the sun is like a little fire where God can warm himself."

a conversation seth and i had on a swing at the park this week:

seth: "i love God. . .but i don't know what he looks like."

me: "well, what do you see in your imagination when you think about him?"

seth: "he has a mustache."

me: "does he have a smile on his face?"

seth: "no, but he's laughing. kinda like 'ho ho ho.'"

one more. on the way to a t-ball game on monday, wyatt was asking me a question about God. i didn't understand his question and probably wouldn't have known how to answer it anyway. he finally gave up trying to explain and said, "nevermind. i'll just ask God when i get to heaven. Seth piped up and said something about the trinitarian nature of God, three in one, or something like that. . .

me: "that's right. there's God the father--

wyatt and seth together: "God the son, and God the holy spirit."

seth: "God the holy ghost."

wyatt: "ooooooh, you said a bad word! mommy, seth called God the holy ghost!"

me: "that's okay. that's just another name for the holy spirit."

silence for a moment. . .

seth in a very small voice: "holy cow."

wyatt: "ooooooh, you'd better not call God a holy cow! Mommy--"

impromptu haircut

this afternoon wyatt and seth were happily playing with water guns on our deck when i came in the house just for a minute or so to check my email. it may have taken more than a minute, and i may have tootled around on the computer more than i'd planned. when i went back out to check on them, i discovered this little sight:

wyatt had "shampooed" seth's hair with bubble solution, drenched his clothes in the process, and had proceeded to give seth a haircut. and not just a little trim, either. this is the approximate length he cut off of seth's hair (and there was quite a bit of it on the deck):

i don't quite know yet what seth is going to look like with his new haircut. his hair was plastered to his head, and i sent him up to his room for Rest Time before it had time to dry. nevertheless, wyatt assured me that he made it look "really cool in the back."

we'll see.

g.k. chesterton is my homeboy

i've just joined a facebook group with the above name.

i am so in love with g.k. right now. i've decided to affectionately refer to him as gil (the g. stands for gilbert). i read some of his father brown stories years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them, but several months ago picked up his book the man who was thursday. he had me at hello. well, it was actually the, but you know what i mean. then a couple of weeks ago, i read orthodoxy, probably his most well-known work. oh. my. gosh. i need to re-read it (and probably will many times over the years--there's so much to take in) because i sped through it for the sheer joy of reading what he was going to say next.

after that, i spied a little treasure at our library--appreciations and criticisms on the works of charles dickens by g.k. chesterton. one of my favorite writers talking about another one of my favorite writers? oh, bliss! i didn't read the whole thing (i mean, c'mon), but i did read several chapters and thought his comments on david copperfield were rich, beautiful, enlightening, and enlivening.

now, i'm making my way through heretics and love it almost as much as i love orthodoxy. he is a poet and a mystic and an intellectual and a romantic in the truest sense of the word. i feel this undercurrent in his writings like he's enjoying his own--and the universe's--private, good-natured joke. chesterton, as he says of one of his characters in the innocence of father brown, "was, one felt, the most seriously merry of all the sons of men."

here are just some of my favorite quotes:

fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. it is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth; so for me at least it was not earth that criticised elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. i knew the magic beanstalk before i had tasted beans; i was sure of the man in the moon before i was certain of the moon. this was at one with all popular tradition. modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of the old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush. that is what the moderns mean when they say that the ancients did not 'appreciate nature,' because they said that nature was divine. old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old greeks could not see the trees for the dryads. --orthodoxy

and my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from crusoe's ship--even that had been the wild whisper of something originially wise, for, according to christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world. --orthodoxy

joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the christian. . .there was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth; and i have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth. --orthodoxy

the whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. --criticisms and appreciations of the work of charles dickens

in this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. the supreme adventure is being born. there we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. --heretics

romance is the deepest thing in life; romance is deeper even than reality. --heretics

people wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. the reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy, as a book of metaphysics. but life is always a novel. --heretics

for romance consists in thinking a thing more delightful because it is dangerous; it is a christian idea. --heretics

every face in the street has the incredible unexpectedness of a fairy-tale. --heretics

if we wish to understand [a place] it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. --heretics

the whole secret of the practical success of christendom lies in the christian humility, however imperfectly fulfilled. for with the removal of all question of merit or payment, the soul is suddenly released for incredible voyages. --heretics

and at the high altar of christianity there stands another figure, in whose hand is also a cup of the vine. 'drink' he says 'for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. drink, for this is my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. drink, for i know of whence you come and why. drink, for i know of when you go and where.' --heretics