Tell Me a Story

"In Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays.”  

—C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy

• • • • •

My grandmother had a black eye. She also had a tremendous bruise on the back of her leg, vaster and more technicolored than any I'd ever seen. She was sporting the injuries of a prizefighter after a street brawl, but there was no violent tale to tell—no sweat or glory or heroic story behind those black and blue welts. They were simply the evidence of an aging body—of the falls she has taken in recent weeks while trying to perform the mundane task of walking from one room to the next. My grandmother is 92 years old, so her failing health should have come as no surprise, but during the last month her decline was sudden and precipitous. Although she has begun to improve, she remains weak, and tired, and frustrated by her inability to perform basic tasks.

My grandmother, who once spent her Saturday nights swing dancing at the Hollywood Palladium to the live music of Benny Goodman, can hardly stand without help. She, who never left the house without every strand of her thick red tresses pinned perfectly in place, now struggles to lift her arm to brush the tangles from her thin white hair. She, whose graceful fingers once speed-typed scripts for Jack Benny at NBC studios, can hardly bend her crooked knuckles to sign her own name.

Her health and strength may rebound as they have done so many times in the past, but they may not. And as I visit her and try to help her in what small ways I can, I am constantly nagged by the realization that so much of her story is unknown to me, that there must be countless episodes of her life's adventure that  will go unremembered and untold.

Here is my grandmother, living right in my own town—even in the same house for a time—for all these years, and I have hardly begun to explore the pages of her history. I feel like that person who, having lived her whole life in New York City, is now about to leave it forever and is realizing she's never visited the Statue of Liberty, never seen the view from the top of the Empire State Building, never attended a Broadway show, never strolled through Central Park. It was always there, so I could do it anytime. And now time is nearly up. I have had this tremendous and enviable array of stories and memories close at hand for nearly two decades, and I have not availed myself of it. Her life spans nearly a century, but I could not recount more than a pitiful handful of the episodes that her long story comprises.

• • • • •

Realizing that the time I will have with my grandmother is limited, I started making a point of hearing at least one story from her every time I visit. As we chat, I simply ask a few questions, and then I sit back and listen as she turns to the colorful pages of her past. These hours with my grandmother have been some of the most rewarding of my life. In one short hour I was with her recently, scene after scene unfolded before my imagination.

She told me stories of family members whose names I'd never heard. I learned that her grandfather died in a coal mine collapse, and that her grandmother, who never remarried, spent the subsequent years cooking meals for the coal miners in order to support herself and her two young sons—Grandma's father and his brother, Charlie. 

She told me how her father was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge to be the postmaster of their small Illinois town, and how the subsequent postmaster was so incompetent that her father remained on the job to perform the other man's duties. She chuckled as she suddenly remembered a huge, friendly German postal carrier named Otto who delivered the mail on horseback and who knew everybody in town.

With a wry smile, Grandma recounted her first date. A high school senior had invited her, a lowly freshman, to the Fireman's Ball, and was she ever flattered! Knowing how much she loved to dance, her parents gladly gave her permission to go, and her mother immediately set to work sewing her a new dress for the occasion. At the ball, the high school coach—a young newlywed nicknamed "Hap" who had been a friend of Grandma's older brother—was cutting the rug with his pretty wife. As they spun around, they both lost their balance, stumbled, and fell right on top of Grandma and her date, knocking them to the floor where they all fell into fits of embarrassed laughter. Grandma laughed till the tears came as she remembered it.

And tears continued to trickle down her creased and freckled cheeks as she told me about the painful years of World War II when her brother, Rock, served on a munitions ship carrying explosives across the Atlantic from New York to England, always fearing attack by the Germans. Her voice quavered as she recalled how she never knew where her youngest brother, Ken, was during those years or whether he was still alive. She frequented the movie house, partly for distraction, partly to see if she could glimpse a familiar face—his face—in the news reels at the start of every show. She did not hear a word from Ken until he came home, and he would tell only one story from his time serving in the Marines: his unit had stormed the beaches at Guadalcanal, and as they neared land, he was certain that they were all going to die. As they ran together up the tropical sand, the men on either side of him were shot and killed, but somehow Ken survived. And that was all he could bring himself to tell her.
  
One hour with my grandmother was all it took to sit and relive all these scenes, and a half dozen more, from her colorful life. One hour. And this is just the beginning. I could have made a point of doing this countless times before, so why didn't I? Even at 92, my grandmother's mind is still lucid and her memories  vivid, so I am learning as much as I can in the time that we have left.

I know that every cinematic genre is represented in the sweeping screenplay of Grandma's life—action, comedy, adventure, tragedy, romance—and at this late hour, I am realizing how much of the plot is simply mystery—at least to me. Having casually walked in near the end of the show, I am now scrambling to find out how to stop and rewind to the better scenes before the screen fades and the credits roll.

• • • • •

In revisiting the the Little House series of books this year, I have been struck by the gift that Pa had for telling stories to his girls—stories about his own life and about his family. His daughter Laura committed those stories to memory and was able to put them in writing so that generations of readers can still enjoy and learn from them. What a gift. What a legacy.

I suspect that we as a culture are losing the art of handing down family stories. We bequeath physical objects—furniture and jewelry—to our posterity, but how often do we think of stories as a valuable part of our inheritance? I have only recently begun to think of stories in that way myself. But now that my grandmother's story is nearing its final chapters, I want to hang on—and hang on to—every word of her recollections. I want to remember them and bequeath them to my own children, precious heirlooms that cannot be broken but that can be easily lost.

As I've considered what questions I should be asking my grandmother, I have also been asking myself what family stories I hope to pass on to my own children and grandchildren. What form should these stories take if I want them to be remembered? What can I do to make these stories a joy to hear? A good story well told can express powerful truths that will stay with us far longer than any abstract proposition. Good stories give shape and color and texture to ideas. Good stories put flesh on words. And family stories can also help us to understand our own lives in the context of history.

My great-great grandmother raised two sons on her own by cooking meals for men who worked in the mine that had killed her husband. As a child, my grandfather was struck on the knuckles at school for speaking Norwegian instead of English. And years later, those same knuckles were lost entirely in a logging accident involving a chainsaw. My great uncle narrowly escaped being shot to death in the South Pacific. When my great-grandmother's dear friend fell ill and came from St. Louis to live with the family until she could recover, my great-grandfather had to seek special permission from the city council to have this woman stay with them—because she was black. These family memories help me to see my own experiences from a different perspective. Their lives helped shape the story of my own life. This is part of my inheritance; those stories are my stories.

So what if we made a point to not only read to our children but to share our own stories with them? What if our children grew up with a sense of their own history, of their unique place in the greater narrative arc of time? We have a history that bears repeating. In Scripture, the people of Israel were commanded to tell the story of their Exodus from Egypt to their children (Deut 4:9-10). The people were told to take care lest they forget. And if we are able to see our own lives in the context of history—as a brief chapter in a tale that stretches back to the first "Let there be"—then we may realize that the Exodus is also a part of our own story as much as it was part of theirs. And we forget it at our peril.

But forgetting is all too easy. Remembering will take work. It will take writing and repeating and re-telling. It will involve more talking around the table, more asking, more listening, more patience. In this tweet-riddled age, we rarely produce so much as a handwritten letter to save in a box of keepsakes, let alone a book of family history to pass on to our posterity. So, as I focus on collecting my grandmother's stories, I also need to think about how to collect my own stories and how to teach my children to do the same. We may need to spend some time learning the Calormene art of storytelling if our lives' narratives are going to amount to more than a disconnected series of status updates.

I want my sons to know that they are characters in a grand epic that includes all of us. I want my sons to learn and remember the best tales from their own lives, from their parents' lives, from their grandparents' lives. I want them to learn the stories from their great grandmother's life. But this means I would do well to learn them first, before her final chapter closes. It's time to look my grandmother in the eye—the one that was swollen and black and blue—and ask her to tell me a story.

Car(apace)

Even after two years of sliding gracefully through stop signs and spinning in place while attempting to exit our well-glazed parking space, my husband and I had continued to question the necessity of a new set of snow tires. Was it really worth 1000 whole dollars just to be able to stop when we wanted to stop or go when we wanted to go? Then came the first genuine snowfall in November, which sent us van-skiing down a steep hill toward a busy intersection right in the middle of rush-minute traffic. That thrilling brush with disaster ended the debate. We wanted to live through another winter. So we slimmed down our bank account, handed over a hefty chunk of our savings to the hardworking folks at Les Schwab, and drove away, accompanied by the reassuring crunchity-crunchity-crunch of metal studs against ice.

And then the snow promptly quit falling. We spent nearly all of the last two months wearing down our shiny new studs on perfectly clear roads.

I'm usually the only one around here who's dreaming of a green Christmas, but the complete cessation of snow this winter has had me wondering whether that fat wad of cash would have been better spent on something useful like, say, a lifetime supply of washable markers. But then all it took was one more good snowfall and a slippery drive up a hilly country road to convince me that those new tires were worth every last penny.

Snow tires or no snow tires, however, I was grateful to avoid any extensive traveling this winter. Three years ago, as you may recall, we flew to Phoenix for Christmas, and in the process of missing our first flight on account of impassable roads, driving back home past stranded cars to buy all new tickets, spending the night in Spokane both before and after our flights, and staying at two different houses while we were in Arizona, I both packed and unpacked suitcases for our entire family six times.

Combine that with the experience of loading and unloading the portable crib, transferring and retransferring car seats, rolling and unrolling sleeping bags, slipping and sliding around the highway in winter storm conditions, and hurrying tiny children with tinier bladders through crowded airports, and you'll understand why holiday travel has, for me, lost most of its luster.

My inner pragmatist would be more than happy to swear off all holiday traveling adventures until the entire family is old enough to not only be out of diapers and car seats, but also to pack their own suitcases—and to help push the van out of a snow bank, should the occasion arise.

• • • • •

When I was a kid I used to enjoy winter travel, usually because it meant spending Christmas with my multitudes of cousins. Long road trips were always as much a part of our holiday traditions as Grandma Kvale's roast turkey, Uncle Ken's egg nog lattes, and Aunt Marilynn's "Hyill-hyill-hyill!" laughter emanating from the kitchen. Each year my family would open our gifts early and then pile into our boxy Toyota Tercel wagon for the drive to Tacoma, to my grandparents' house on the hill.

As we neared our destination in the evening, after six hours of sharing the back seat with my little brother, I would watch expectantly through the window for the brightly lit star my grandfather always set atop the roof—high enough to be seen from the freeway.

When we finally arrived at the house, I loved to run up the spiral staircase to the guest bedroom. From there, through the age-rippled window glass, I could glimpse ten thousand red brake lights and ten thousand white headlights forming a peaceful rolling stream along the interstate below.

After experiencing the speed and intensity of city traffic, the transformation seemed  surreal. Who, seeing that view, would consider the possibility that tragedy could, at any moment, interrupt that graceful slow dance through the fog? As bright and cheerful as a string of Christmas lights, rows of cars, trucks, and buses glistened under the pink-orange glow of the sodium vapor street lamps. What danger could there be in such a lovely procession?

• • • • •

As a child, of course, I never gave the road conditions so much as a second thought. I had implicit trust in my father's driving abilities and never once suspected that there might be even the slightest hint of danger in all that winter driving—not with my dad behind the wheel. Deep in the recesses of my mind lay an early memory of our brand new car being struck by an elderly lady's land yacht, but that did not shake my firm belief that accidents were distant events that happened in other places to other people.

My first true encounter with the hazards of winter travel didn't come until I was a teenager when, due to an impassable blizzard, we were forced to spend New Year's Eve in an Ellensberg Motel 6. As we set out along an ice-encrusted Interstate 90 the next day, we found ourselves watching in tense amazement as the pickup truck immediately in front of us slid out of control, started into a slow-motion spin, ricocheted off the median, struck another car, and then slipped, missing us by what seemed like inches, into the shallow ditch next to the freeway.

That's when I began to wonder if there was, perhaps, something slightly ridiculous about that annual trek over the ice and through the mountains. I began to understand that even the best of drivers can do nothing to prevent black ice, or drunk college students, or wildlife crossings. (I once watched my brother's Suburban collide with a swooping owl.) Scary things happen on the road—things beyond our control.

Every Christmas of my childhood had sent us weaving our icy way around the Palouse hills, through the Columbia gorge, over the mountain passes (chains or snow tires required), and along roadways blasted out of the rock with countless sticks of dynamite. We zipped through snow and ice and rain at historically unprecedented speeds, passing mere feet from other vehicles that raced along at equally breathtaking speeds. One unexpected bump, one careless flick of the wrist, one brief error in judgement, and goodbye family, goodbye beating hearts.

We—all of us—have been living on the edge, and yet most of us hardly consider whether this whole wintertime travel business is a good idea. In fact, most of us hardly think about driving at all, regardless of the season. Even when conditions are at their worst, we remain largely undeterred.

• • • • •

Last Monday the "check engine" light blinked on in our van, but for an entire week neither I nor my husband had time to take the vehicle in for a checkup. What was wrong with our engine neither of us knew, and on the way to school one of the kids nervously asked me if I thought our car might explode. I laughed and said I sure hoped not. How often does that really happen anyway? In my ignorance, however, I couldn't make any guarantees. But did that stop us from going where we wanted to go? Not at all. The kids must be educated, and the groceries must be hauled from afar. Driving is a luxury that most of us really cannot live without—not even at our own peril.

And it is perilous. Not to sound panicky or anything, but, well, you could die out there, you know.

As a mom with young children, I read and hear a lot of buzz about the terrible risks we take with our kids when we vaccinate them, or don't vaccinate them, or feed them foods tainted with high fructose corn syrup, or expose them to chemical pesticides, or (perish the thought) let them catch a breath of second hand smoke. But honestly, I suspect that all of those potential dangers pale in comparison to the kind of overt danger we face just driving our little ones to the mall—let alone across hundreds of miles of frozen freeway—on a snowy January day.

Stop and think about it. If there were any other behavior-related cause of death that was comparable to traffic collisions, the national outcry would be deafening. More than 6500 American children die—and tens of thousands more are injured—every year as a direct result of motor vehicle accidents. If that grim statistic were associated with a drug or a chemical or a tainted food product, you can imagine the backlash. If we could blame a corporation or the government or some other high profile scapegoat for knowingly gambling with the lives of these innocent victims, we'd all be writing letters to congress to make them stop, demanding fines, prison time, and heads on a platter.

But the thing is, even after hearing all about the risks involved, we're the ones voluntarily buckling our very own children into our minivans everyday. We're too busy stressing out about the the trans-fats that the children in the back seat are absorbing from their drive-through fries to think about the death-defying means we took to arrive at the drive through in the first place. We don't even blink when a fully loaded eighteen wheeler comes hurtling toward us at 60 MPH. We fret and worry about long-term hypothetical risks and completely ignore the immediate—but apparently acceptable—risks that are racing along in the lane next to us. Have we lost our minds?

• • • • •

If I'm reading the numbers right, traffic accidents kill more children in a single year in this country than the total number of US military deaths (combat- and non-combat-related combined) in Iraq during the three years from 2003 to 2006. Just a stone's throw from our home in Dallas, a drunk driver swerved out of his lane on Highway 183 and sent a gasoline tanker plunging off of an overpass, where it burst into an white-hot inferno and transformed the stretch of road next to the IHOP into a charred mass of unstable rebar and concrete. A few too many Budweisers and one careless driver had effectively detonated what amounted to a roadside bomb.

But I, just like everybody else, was back behind the wheel—on that very highway, no less—the same day. There was no question that the fire-blasted overpass would and must be rebuilt. Most of us read the headlines, shake our heads, and then cheerfully strap our little ones back into their car seats without a second thought. It's simply a risk that we've grown so accustomed to that we rarely think of it as a risk at all.

Most of us, after all, would rather not revert to the old covered wagon routine for bringing home the weekly mountain of groceries, let alone for heading across the mountains to visit grandma—especially during the winter months.

• • • • •

Driving at any time of year, of course, is risky—particularly if you live in a college town like mine, where roughly a third of the population consists of impatient, inexperienced, and irresponsible drivers.

Just a few months ago, a speeding car ran a red light and nearly collided with me as I was on my way home from my boys' school. And while I was in college, I had not one but two cars totaled by 17-year-old drivers—one that suddenly turned left directly in front of me on a residential street and hit me almost head-on, and one who ran a red light at an intersection and slammed into my front end with her uninsured orange Ford Bronco. Neither of those accidents happened on icy roads, and they both occurred years before anyone had ever heard of texting while driving. I've been an extremely defensive (translation: tense) driver, and an obnoxiously jumpy passenger, ever since.

• • • • •

What I've come to realize is that every time we go zipping merrily along the highway toward an oncoming car, we are defying sudden and violent death. Who of us doesn't have a few dramatic car-crash (or near-miss) stories to tell about a friend or a loved one—or ourselves?

I've spent a blazing hot afternoon stranded in the middle of a fallow field in Central Washington with my radiator punctured by a rusty, half-buried tiller—and with only a 300-pound Spanish speaking junk man and his great dane to keep me company. I've had friends hospitalized after being struck by incautious and intoxicated drivers. I've attended the funeral of a young man who fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from the university. One of my college friends lost her new husband to a wintertime car crash. The lives of the sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew of one of my high school classmates were taken all at once by a drunk driver. Limbs and hearts have been broken on nearly every roadway in America.

And aside from the terrible human cost of driving, there are all kinds of animal casualties as well. Ten years ago, on a trip from New Orleans to Monroe, Louisiana, my husband and I drove past countless dead dogs, cats, possums, turtles, and even small alligators—a veritable natural history museum of roadkill. I know multiple people who have struck deer on the highway. The streets where we now live are polka-dotted with crushed squirrel carcasses—but then again, perhaps dead squirrels are an argument in favor of the deadly power of cars? In any case, as long as we persist in our driving habits, all sorts of traumatic events are likely to occur again.

So the question is, what keeps us going back for more?

• • • • •

Driving is, frequently, a mere matter of convenience. Even when walking or biking is a viable option, we choose driving as a quicker and easier way to get from point A to point B. Let's face it. Sometimes we're just lazy.

But often, driving is not a matter of convenience but of necessity. Unless you live in New York or Chicago and have nowhere to go beyond the fixed train routes, alternative forms of transportation are hard to come by. You might try to absolve yourself of fossil fuel guilt by taking the bus, but that does nothing to keep you off the busy roads. Besides, as my shocked children immediately discovered, buses do not have seat belts. Most American cities were not built for foot or bicycle traffic, much less for a horse and carriage. And for those of us with multiple kids and gallons of milk to haul across town, we need some kind of vehicle to help.

We also drive out of a sense of obligation. Because modern transportation has made it possible to visit distant friends and family, we feel that we must. Nobody with a functioning vehicle and some money for gas can legitimately say, "Sorry, Grandma. 100 miles is just too far to travel for Christmas."

And, in spite of the obvious dangers, most of the population isn't hitting the road in search of an adrenaline rush. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm not naming any names, but I know some people who  like to take a drive to relieve stress. There is, in fact, a whole genre of driving-for-the-love-of-it songs, typified by Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." And even I can be carried away by that easy, free-wheelin' feelin' of watching the yellow center stripes flick past to the rhythm of a good-mood soundtrack. You just better hope that a stray moose doesn't wander across your path while you're, in the words of Son Volt, letting the "wind take your troubles away."

That brings me to what is, perhaps, the central reason for our automobile habit: it makes us feel free. "A car in every driveway" is still very much part of the American dream, and individual autonomy is arguably the reigning American value. According to American Public Media, the city of Los Angeles is home to nearly twice as many cars as drivers. It sounds ludicrous. But for us Americans, a car is more than a tool; it is a status symbol. It is more than a status symbol; it is an extension of who we are. To own a car is to hold a sense of power, independence, and importance. We select the time of departure. We set the speed. We choose the music. We decide where to go, and when to stop, and why. We are kings and queens ruling over our own little steel-and-rubber worlds. This might explain why sweet little old ladies can turn into cussing hussies when they get behind the wheel; on the highway we are tiny independent states vying for dominance, and pity the brazen fool who attempts to invade our territory. ¡Vìvà la vehicle!

So, while we may drive for convenience, necessity, pleasure, and the grand illusion of freedom, I have to wonder if even these motivations, powerful as they are, can fully explain our decision to accept the risks involved. Why are we so overwhelmingly willing to play the odds?

• • • • •

The odds themselves are, obviously, part of the answer. Even in the wintertime, you're not statistically likely to die on the way to grandma's house. For every trip that ends in a deadly crash, there are a million more that reach their destination in perfect safety. The bet is a fairly safe one. But that doesn't change the fact that it's our lives that are on the line. Even if there are a million empty chambers in the revolver, Russian roulette is still the game we're choosing to play. (C'mon, kids! Give it a spin!)

Why not stay off the roads whenever possible? Why take the gamble when the stakes are so high? For many, ignoring the risks and trusting blind fate are the best reasons they can offer. But for me the overarching reason is probably best summed up in a quote that I've heard attributed to General Stonewall Jackson: "My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle [or behind the wheel] as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me."

In other words, the risks we take are never governed by impersonal chance. They are never automatic or meaningless. Which is to say, they are not, in the ultimate sense, risks at all; every outcome was fully planned before we were born.

The well lived life is not the one spent locked indoors, wearing a crash helmet, and popping vitamins. It is spent loving our kids, and visiting our friends, and doing our work with the confidence that comes from faith: Yea, though I drive through the turnpike of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

This naturally raises deeper questions about the unfathomable relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, but I will let the theologians and pastors expound that one more fully. I will simply say that I believe God uses indirect means, from Roman crosses to snow tires, to accomplish His ends, and that there is no contradiction between trusting God and buckling our seat belts. We are not called to express our faith by being stupidly suicidal but by living each day as we ought, in spite of the apparent danger. We can drive to school or go to battle assured that in God's hands we are as safe there—or as doomed—as in bed.

So, while purchasing expensive new tires was part of being a good steward of our family's lives, and while I may have been grateful to stay comfortably at home for the holidays, there is, perhaps, no better time than during the Christmas season to recognize that evading death is not the point of living. This life is not meant to be lived for the sole purpose of its own preservation. That momentous birth in Bethlehem was all about taking up a mortal life in order to lay it down. Because of this, we are free to take risks, even deadly ones, in order to fulfill our duties and in order to love others—which is, after all, essentially the same thing.

Why, Yes. Yes There Is a Doctor in the House.

The African elephant, I recently learned, has the longest gestation period of all mammals—22 months. That sounds painfully exhausting if you ask me. But I can tell you with certainty that the African elephant has nothing on the American PhD candidate.

Nine years ago, when we had one tiny baby (and we thought our lives were busy), we moved to Dallas, Texas, where my husband would pursue a Master’s Degree in Literature. A year later, he was enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Dallas and was on his way to earning a PhD.

I, naïve young thing that I was, truly believed that in a mere three, or at most four, years we’d be walking away from that fine institution cradling a sweet little diploma in our arms.

I, of course, ought to have known better; I have had a college student in my household for all but a few short years of my life. I have had a graduate student in my immediate family for half my life, at least. Higher education is and has always been my bread and butter. My own father, if I’m not mistaken, was a college student for fourteen years, and I was old enough to remember when he finished his PhD. (There was great rejoicing.) So why I assumed that my husband would have no trouble accomplishing such a feat in a few short years, I do not know. Looking back now, the expectation seems completely ridiculous.

“I recognize a workhorse when I see one,” said my husband’s professor as he introduced Jayson before his final public lecture two weeks ago, “and when I took one look at Dr. Grieser’s faculty description on the website of the college where he teaches, I could see that that’s exactly what he is.”

It’s true. Only a workhorse (or maybe an elephant) would do what my husband has done. But at that moment, I wanted to stand up and tell everybody present, “You don’t know the half of it.”

For the young, childless bachelor living on nothing but student loans and ramen noodles to complete a doctorate is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. But for the family man who does the same thing—while simultaneously retaining a full-time job, a social life, and a church life, as well as the love of his wife and five children—some special honor should certainly be added to the degree: PhDE, perhaps (Doctor of Philosophy, Extraordinaire.) Give that man an extra stripe on his academic robe, say I, and an extra tassel on his tam. It wouldn’t be too much, would it, if I followed him around town holding a flashing neon Applause sign over his head, would it? Surely not.

Plenty of people have asked me, “Isn’t it such a relief for him to be done?” And the answer, of course, is yes. But it is more than a relief; it is pride and gratitude and euphoria and fatigue, all rolled into one. If you have ever given birth to a child, you know exactly what I mean.

But just as with the birth of a child, when one kind of labor is finished, a new kind of labor begins. Much as I may wish we could take an extended vacation to celebrate the completion of this degree, I have to remind myself of the saying repeated every year at graduation by my husband's students: Omni cui multum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo. (To whom much is given, much is required.) Jayson, workhorse that he is, had hardly taken on the title of "doctor" before he moved on to the task of planning new classes to teach and making improvements to the classes he currently teaches. He finished his glass of champagne, and then took up his books again for the work ahead. After all (as Shelley once observed), "nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon."

Now that the dissertation is complete and successfully defended, you can only imagine how good it feels to be delivered of that 250-page burden. It took my husband nine years of graduate school to bring forth that baby. Nine years. That, if you're counting, is the gestation period of the African elephant five times over. So if you notice a new lightness in his step, you now understand why.

After all these years, I am delighted to finally report that yes, there is indeed a doctor in the house.

The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

I have done some writing in the last month. Honest. As a matter of fact, I've written more than usual during the past five weeks. But unfortunately, all those words weren't coming together into any proper shape, which is why editing was taking far too long. I felt like I was sculpting jell-o. So rather than publish the formless, strawberry flavored blob I've been chiseling away at, I thought I'd be better off sharing something a bit more concrete to ponder instead.

Here, therefore, are 2,000 "words" from my photos this week:

Holly Jolly

I Plead the Fifth

Introducing our fifth little boy, Liam Quentin:

He arrived on Friday night, November 26, his great-grandfather's birthday, and was a very healthy eight pounds, fifteen ounces and twenty-two inches long.

Meeting his brothers for the first time:

Cinnamon Rolls and Bacon: The Title Track

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips.
—Psalm 63:5

Now that this blog has been around for a while, I suppose it is high time I explained why I chose Cinnamon Rolls and Bacon as the title. As you may have discovered, if you're looking for breakfast recipes, this is not the site you need (although I will try to make up for that at the end of this post). No, it's more than just the morning meal that I'm concerned with here. Cinnamon rolls and bacon have become our traditional Sunday morning fare, and, by extension, a metaphor for Sabbath living; we commence the week with joyful table fellowship, gratitude for God's kindness, and a very tangible celebration of the resurrection—all of which should spill over into the rest of our daily lives.

Many of the families in our church community have come up with lovely and creative ways to make the Lord's day the high point of the week, and one tradition that our own family has adopted and grown to love is a copious Sunday breakfast. What better way to begin a day of rest, worship, and feasting than by weighing down the table with buttery homemade cinnamon rolls and oven-fried bacon?

But lest you think we are slowly killing ourselves with cholesterol, remember that Sunday comes but once a week. So, while some may argue that such luxuries are bad for the arteries, when taken in weekly moderation they are unquestionably good for the heart.

We want our children to grow up loving the Sabbath, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good from the moment the day begins. Before they can understand the goodness of God in almost any other way, kids can understand the rich combination of butter and sugar upon their tongues, and ours have learned to love it and look forward to it week after week.

There was a time when I was not confident enough in my baking skills to attempt making a pan of cinnamon rolls from scratch on a weekly basis, so we usually opted for the cardboard can variety instead. Those (or a box of doughnuts) will still suffice in a pinch, but now that I've found a reliable recipe, it's awfully hard to settle for anything less than homemade. I bake them the night before and pop them back into the oven on Sunday morning until they're warmed through and ready to be frosted by one of four eager volunteers who will, of course, get spatula-licking privileges when the job is done.

And then there is the bacon. I always check the little "sample slice" windows they provide on the backs of those packages at the grocery store, and if there's not a fat-to-meat ratio of at least three-to-one, I pass it by. The fat is honestly the part we want. Those little pink stripes of meat are simply there for looks—garnish in the form of pork.

But lest you think that bacon is nothing more than a greasy indulgence, let me explain its deeper significance. (No, really!) Bacon is also an edible reminder of one of the things that we, as Christians, believe—that Christ, in His death and resurrection, has fulfilled the Old Testament ceremonial laws, including the prohibition against eating unclean animals (i.e. pigs). Those animals represented the gentiles (i.e. us) who are now granted full membership with the New Covenant people of God. Ergo, bacon is, for us, a very tasty (and greasy) way to celebrate the gift of the gospel to the gentiles.

Granted, when we started our Sunday morning tradition, we simply liked the occasional rasher of bacon and hadn't considered of any of those theological points. It's not as though we set out to plumb the great metaphorical depths of all our breakfast choices. But still, having noticed some of the religious implications of bacon, we did think it seemed that much more fitting for a Sabbath meal.

To complete the morning feast, in addition to the cinnamon rolls and bacon, our kids are also treated to their weekly glass of chocolate milk, and we each have an egg or two fried in (what else?) a bit of bacon grease. We also grace the table with a bowl piled with whatever fruit may be at its seasonal peak. Right now it's peaches and nectarines that leave sweet juice dripping down our chins and forearms with the first bite.

The Sunday table is no place for fasting. Nor is it a place for half-hearted feasting weighed down by guilt. If it helps, leave off the first syllable when you say, "Cinnamon Rolls," for there is no sin in them at all. They are instead a reason for joy and gratitude, and one small way that we set this day apart from the rest—this day that points us toward the great wedding feast at the consummation of all things. Therefore, as Nehemiah exhorted God's people long ago, "go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”  (Nehemiah 8:10)

                                                                                                   

Sabbatarian Cinnamon Rolls

1 packet of yeast (2 1/4 tsp.)
1 1/2 c. warm water (I normally use half milk, half water.)
1/3 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt (or 3/4 tsp. table salt)
1 egg
1/3 c. unsalted butter, softened (Crisco works in a pinch.)
1/2 tsp. vanilla (real, if you have it)
3 1/2-4 c. white bread flour (All purpose flour works fine)

In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast, sugar and salt in water. Wait about five minutes until foamy. Stir in remaining ingredients. Knead in flour when stirring becomes too difficult. (I use the flat beater on my KitchenAid for everything and skip the kneading hook altogether.) This dough will be nice and squashy, not stiff. Resist the temptation to add more than 4 cups of flour to the dough.

Let rise until double in a greased bowl covered with oiled plastic wrap. At this point you can punch it down and refrigerate it until Saturday night. (I find the dough easier to work with when cold.) Otherwise, dump the dough out on to a very generously floured board. Roll (or pat with well-floured hands) into a rectangle about 16" x 20".

Filling:
1 stick (1/2 c.) butter (Absolutely no substitutions!)
1 c. brown sugar (or up to half white sugar)
2 T. (yes, tablespoons) cinnamon

Melt the butter and spread evenly over the rectangle of dough. Mix together sugar and cinnamon and spread evenly over the butter. Roll it all up, pulling the dough toward you to stretch it a bit as you roll. (This results in lots of nice, thin layers to unroll as you eat and keeps the butter and sugar from melting out and forming a caramelly ooze on the bottom of your pan. If you like the caramelly ooze, then, by all means, roll these more loosely.) Slice into 20 even slices. (Again, this is easier to do if the dough is chilled.) Arrange rolls in a 4 x 5 pattern in a well buttered 9 x 13 pan. (I have always had best results with glass.) Let rise until almost doubled, and bake at 375° for 25 minutes. (Longer if the dough is cold to start with, a bit less if it's been a hot day in the kitchen. See note below.) Cool.

Icing:
This recipe is up to you. Some people like cream cheese or buttercream frosting, and I can't argue. But my normal recipe is simply:
1-2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp real vanilla
Enough heavy cream to reach desired consistency—spreadable or drizzlable, depending on what you like.

Mix sugar, cream and vanilla thoroughly. Frost cinnamon rolls. (If you baked them the night before, save this step for after you have rewarmed them in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Otherwise the icing may scorch or melt away into sticky nothingness.)

Additional Notes:

1. Sometimes these have a tendency to rise skyward into little cinnamon roll mountain peaks. Check them half way through baking, and if they are forming something of a topographic map of the Rockies, then take a flat spatula and gently press them back down into a surface more reminiscent of the Iowa landscape.
2. You can double the dough recipe and, after letting it rise the first time, freeze half of the dough in an oiled gallon sized Ziploc bag for next week's cinnamon rolls.
3. If there are too many rolls for your family, share the joy, or else bake the rolls in two 9" round cake pans. Carefully wrap (foil inside a plastic bag) one of the two pans after they are baked and cooled, and freeze until next week. They keep surprisingly well. Then just thaw overnight, and warm in the oven before frosting.
4. Bonus: If you leave the vanilla out of the dough recipe and omit the cinnamon and sugar from the filling, this recipe makes fabulous crescent rolls suitable for Thanksgiving dinner. Just roll the dough into two dinner plate-sized circles instead of one big rectangle, and butter each circle with half a stick.  Slice each circle like a pizza into 12 or 16 equal wedges and roll up starting with the wider end, firmly adhering the pointed end to keep from unrolling. Let rise on two greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets, and bake at 375° for 15-20 minutes, until golden.

Reunion

Way back in the distant past, when I worked as a full-time designer, our magazine staff would hold a weekly meeting to discuss projects and coordinate our schedules. At one of these meetings, I mentioned that I would be taking some time off for a family reunion, to which my coworker responded by offering me her condolences. "I'm so sorry!" she said, "Family reunions can be such an annoying waste of vacation time."

I remember being taken aback by that comment. It had honestly never occurred to me that family reunions are, for many people, a real drag—an endless week of sidestepping touchy subjects, of reviving ancient grudges, of navigating through a web of gossipy whispers and hurt feelings and bitter misunderstandings. Blood may be thicker than water, but after a week like that, I can understand why water would sound a lot more refreshing—and why condolences would be the proper response.

"No, no! It's not like that," I answered, "I actually like these people!"

We recently returned from our annual Kvale family reunion in western Washington, and I would like to take this opportunity to amend my response; I don't just like these people. I love them. This reunion is not an obligation. It's a privilege.

For twenty-five years now, my mom and her eight brothers and sisters and their families have spent three days vacationing together, a tradition begun by my grandparents when I was young and continued for these many years since they've been gone. And now that I have kids of my own, it makes me happy just to see how my boys can hardly contain their excitement as they anticipate the days spent with aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins by the lake—and how they can hardly contain their disappointment as we drive back home, leaving all of that fun and camaraderie behind.

Like most families, we're a quirky, varied bunch of people, and the memories I have are quirky and varied, too. I remember the time my uncle fell asleep on the lawn, and the brothers-in-law surrounded him with empty beer bottles pulled from the recycling bin. I remember the time my cousin organized all of us kids into a grand performance of a Belinda Carlisle pop ballad, using ping-pong paddles as "guitars." I remember the time my grandmother woke up early (as usual) and decided that 5:30 a.m. would be a great time to empty the dishwasher—with all the clinking and clanging and banging echoing throughout the lodge. I remember singing cheesy Sunday School songs by the campfire—in full, four-part harmony heavily weighted toward the alto section. I remember knock-down, drag-out games of Scrabble in the wee hours of the morning.


We've done hiking, and swimming, and line dancing, and foosball, and softball, and golf. And I'm sure that for every memory I have, there are hundreds more that stand out in the minds of my relatives.  But one activity has remained constant despite the changing venues and the growing numbers; each of the three days of our reunion is brought to a close by a time of singing and prayer. There are 70 of us (give or take) in one room, thanking God together for His faithfulness to our family, and asking Him to meet one another's needs. The older I get, the more I see how remarkable it is to have these opportunities every evening. And if my coworker's comment is any indication, we enjoy a peace between us that, it seems, is extremely rare.

I'm not saying that our family relationships are never painful—even heartbreaking—at times. Like every extended family, we're part of Adam's fallen race. But unlike many extended families, we are also part of the Second Adam's race. A spirit of patience and forgiveness pervades our interactions, and in spite of our differences we share a unity that cannot be explained by family ties alone. Blood may be thicker than water. But what flows between us is thicker still.

Who could ask for a better inheritance? My grandparents didn't leave us all with yachts and Caribbean condos and stacks of cash. Sure, none of us would mind boating around the Bahamas with an unlimited budget. But we'd never take it in exchange for the kind of family we have been given. Each summer, we have a living, breathing reminder of what kind of long-term equity we are working to build. Raising nine children on the kind of money my grandfather made by milking cows, felling trees, and pumping gas might, by many, have been deemed fiscally irresponsible, but who, looking around at one of our reunions, could argue with his rate of return or the generational worth of his assets? We are rich beyond all calculation, regardless of what our mutual funds say.

From my grandparents, I inherited a red cast iron gum ball machine. In terms of material possessions, that's all I got. But the true inheritance that they passed on to me—and to my children—is a crowd of cousins, countless happy memories, a delightful summer tradition, and a confident hope in the reunion that will include not only my grandmother and grandfather, but all the faithful who have gone before them. No condolences necessary.

'Til Death Do Us Part

Ten years ago today, as I slipped into my new white shoes, I already knew that I was about to take the most important walk of my life. It was not the longest walk. It wasn't the most strenuous. It wasn't even the most scenic. It was, to put it bluntly, a walk into certain death.  Before I took my first nervous step through those double doors, I knew that this short stroll would be the end of me. When it was all over, I would be somebody new. I would have a new name. I would have a new identity, a new title, a new head, a new walking companion. That brief trip from the church foyer to the end of the aisle is the walk that overthrew my existence without even causing me to break a sweat—twelve deceptively easy steps to a total transformation. With the mere exchange of hands, of words, of rings, my life as I had known it was ending. Before God and hundreds of witnesses we made those solemn vows—'til death do us part.

Death? Must we bring up that subject at such a happy occasion? As it turns out, we must. Weak vows bring weak joy. Ours is a bond that only death may sever.

Nevertheless, we had anything but death on our minds as we drove off into the sunset after the reception, and death seemed a lifetime away as we set up house in the afterglow of our honeymoon. But at some point during the weeks and months that followed, "married life" began. In the midst of our newlywed euphoria, it was a shock to wake up one morning and realize how human the two of us still were. While so much changes—truly changes—in the course of a half-hour wedding, a good deal remains unchanged. We are new people now, right? So why do all our old sins and habits and selfish desires keep resurfacing? Although I knew that we were giving up our former lives to begin our new life together, it had not fully sunk in that I would have to die to myself again and again and again in everyday life once the ceremony had ended. Giving up our lives for one another did not end at the altar.

I had never fully considered how much of me was going to carry over into this new life. And nobody told me what a self-centered little pig I had always been. I didn't like letting go of my comfortable little routines. I was irritated that my plans might have to take a back seat to his plans. I wanted to make the decisions about how we spent my paycheck. This marriage business was not as blissfully painless as I had expected, and we weren't even talking about the big decisions yet—changing jobs, having kids, moving across the country. Living with roommates had been a cakewalk compared to this. I didn't make any 'til-death-do-us-part promises to them.

And that's precisely the point. Death alone may part us. But death, paradoxically, is also required to bind us together. It's death that makes all the difference.  

Death. It's a dark little word. But over the past ten years, we've grown to see more clearly how essential to a happy marriage death truly is. Many deaths. Daily death. Death in the little things. As my children have memorized, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Love means a willingness to die. And die, am I thankful to say, we frequently did.

But if I was tempted to think I'd really died quite enough (thank you very much) for the sake of our happy marriage, I had no idea how much more I would be required to die to myself when the kids came along. The first weeks home with a newborn were, to put it mildly, a misery. If somebody had walked into my home and offered to take my firstborn child off my hands for the rest of my life, I would gladly have handed him over (and good riddance.) My busy job with regular hours, regular paychecks, plenty of positive feedback, and a fair dose of almost-instant gratification was hardly the best preparation for the full-time care of a newborn. Everything I'd enjoyed about my previous job was missing from this new one. The hours were wretched, the pay was nil, the feedback came in the form of screaming and disgusting messes, and I felt like I had nothing whatsoever to show for my hours of thankless toil at the end of each lonely day. I cried everyday for two weeks. And almost daily for some time after that. I'd never died like this before, and I couldn't imagine ever willingly doing it again.

But I was forgetting the end of the story: death is never the final sum in God's economy. When I lay down my desires, my needs, my hopes, my habits, my life for someone else, resurrection follows. And the resurrected life is, without fail, more glorious than the life that was laid down.

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." It's so simple that even my children understand the concept after a season of backyard gardening. And yet, how many times have I buried a seed in the ground only to stand there staring at the lifeless dirt and thinking, "Well, that was a waste!" The first show of green always seems to appear at exactly the moment when I've given up checking for signs of new life.

Those women who hurried to the tomb in the early morning were not marching triumphantly with "Welcome Back" banners. They were quietly bearing spices to anoint the dead.

Resurrection is a simple truth I still don't always easily grasp. But in sacrificing so much that is valuable to me—my time, my sleep, my comfort, my career goals, my belongings—to my husband or my children (or anyone else, for that matter) I will and do receive far more than I have given. Every sacrifice is like a seed planted; in laying each one down, in every little death I die, I am declaring my belief in resurrection. In the Resurrection. And after each burial, while I may be staring blankly at what looks uncannily like mud—like dust and ashes—the eyes of faith can see the trees that will spring from that earth, their branches weighed down by the fruit they will bear. Tending a household is very much like tending a garden.

And now, as I wait for the birth of our fifth child, I am, once again, waiting for resurrection. (Is it merely coincidence that the words tomb and womb are so similar?) In times past, bearing children could literally have meant laying down my earthly life. But even today, there is no escaping the lesser sacrifices involved: health, comfort, sleep, looks, strength are given over for the sake of my children. This is my body broken, this is my blood shed for the life of another. The suffering of childbirth is a small reflection of the cross itself. But, as Christ on the cross, we endure it not for its own sake, but for the joy set before us. In laying down our lives, we take them up again, more blessed than ever before. Greater love has no man than this.

In taking that walk down the aisle ten years ago in my new white shoes, I was approaching the altar to lay down my life. But that life was raised up new and glorified. It was a death and resurrection that would begin a lifetime of deaths and resurrections. All that I gave up "before God and these witnesses" has been replaced by greater and richer gifts. Beauty for ashes. And so it has been with every death that my husband and I have died for each other, and then for our children, throughout the past ten years. And so it will be in the years to come—'til death do us part.

Hey, ho, the wind and the rain

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

This year, winter and spring seem to have shaken hands and reached some sort of compromise, granting each other the authority to intermittently take charge over one another's appointed months. Winter was unusually mild and green, but this week, spring is doing its best to pose as winter.

Freezing temperatures and a forecast of "possible snow flurries" greeted us this morning as an unwelcome finale to yesterday's trunk-snapping, flower-stripping winds—winds that turned the sky a sickly brown for most of the afternoon. Our yard is littered with the debris of Monday's gales, and the tulips are staring pathetically up at me with a uniform expression of exhaustion and defeat. In the glass of the living room window, I can see that my own expression reflects theirs.

Only in recent years have I discovered how much the weather affects my mood. It's hard to put a spring in my step when there is no spring in the air. If I let them, these blustery days can turn me into a real Eeyore— Eeyore living in a house full of Tiggers.

Dreams of a green, sprouting vegetable garden are not going to be realized anytime this week. Or next, judging by the forecast. The seed packets sitting on my counter all say, in their matter-of-fact way, "Plant in the ground after all danger of frost is past." All danger? That would give us, let's see, the last two weeks in August. Maybe. If it's a good year. I've seen frost on the Fourth of July.

So here I sit near a bright window, warming my hands against a mug of very hot tea, letting the steam rise into my face to clear my stuffy head and ease the disappointment of hope deferred.

The truth is that, living in northern Idaho, gardening is really a matter of playing the odds. It takes a gaming spirit and a sense of humor. What are the chances of snow in May? Are you willing to bet your crop on it? Ante up. And keep a spare ace up your sleeve. Wear your poker face. Don't let the sunshine fool you.

Sunny skies may have replaced yesterday's brown, but the cheery blue, like a squirting trick corsage, is nothing but a cheap practical joke; it lures us with all the illusion of springtime friendliness and then douses the unsuspecting optimist with a blast of chilly reality. Haha. Very funny. Where's my coat?

Truthfully, I do know that spring is already here and that these cold days are nothing extraordinary. I have no doubt that warmer weather will be on its way here again soon. And in the meantime, I have a fire. And a warm mug. And guileless sunny faces all around me. The tulips are even beginning to look like they'll recover.

Oh, and we haven't had an earthquake lately.

Architectural (in)Digest(ion)

As I entered the house with three of my boys in tow, I had one of those rare moments of shock when I see my home (and, by extension, my life) with the eyes of an outsider—or rather with the eyes I possessed in a former life. With aesthetic disapproval, I surveyed the scene that greeted me when I opened the front door. What kind of woman lives in the midst of this designer faux pas? This, quite honestly, is not the home I thought I would inhabit, back in the days when I fancied myself to be some sort of aesthete. I have an art degree, after all. La-dee-dah.

Ten happy years ago, I recall tripping lightly through the halls of commerce, scanner gun in hand, and registering for sets of crystal stemware and high-thread-count sateen sheets, all the while imagining how they would grace our brightly lit neoclassical house on a hill. The one with the 14-foot ceilings and the gorgeous, dust-free crown molding; the one with the carefully selected paint colors and the matching sets of furniture in every room. I've done what I can to make ours a lovely home, but my time and resources are limited, and my talents do not extend to reupholstering sofas. Just to repaint the dining room seems, right now, to be an unattainable goal. My home beautification efforts are normally limited to what you might call "damage control." I'm hardly the hip, design-savvy housewife I once assumed I'd be. Not even close.

When I was in high school, my mom worked as a secretary in the Department of Architecture at the local university, and every few months, she would bring home a new stack of back issues of Architectural Digest and other home design magazines. I loved to sit on the couch to peruse their pages; they were full of ingenious injection-molded furniture and glitzy, custom-printed wallpaper. As I flipped through, I would take mental notes, soaking up all the decorating possibilities of the "someday" house I would inhabit.

But as I look back from the vantage of motherhood and nearly ten years of marriage, certain characteristics of those picture-perfect residences become clear. Sure, there were lots of homes that still strike me as downright lovely. But the rest were owned by childless couples (usually "partners") who stay there for only a few months of each year—and with good reason. In retrospect, I can see that those designer homes were utterly ridiculous—not just because of their bank-draining price tags, but also because of their life-draining aesthetics. If there's one thing that can be said about the pages of those journals, it is that they represented, by and large, an entirely sterile way of life. They were made to accomodate ideas, not human beings. And, let's face it, human beings are what constitute a family.

It's impossible to imagine raising flesh-and-blood children (though, judging by the photos, some have tried) in a cantilevered concrete box filled with polished stainless steel and right angles and glass tables and suspended, rail-less stairs.*  Nor is it possible to imagine bringing up a family in the midst of a palatial Rococo explosion of gilt statuary and mismatched brocade and silk-upholstered ottomans and crystal candelabras. In either case, the environment is hostile to basic family life—in the first instance by setting up hard edges, cold surfaces, and dangerous angles, and in the second by scattering priceless art and irreplaceable fabrics and fragile collectables in every conceivable corner. These designers have shoved aside the business of living in order to make way for the business of showing off their refined tastes. Now that I think about it, my family could hardly be comfortable in many of these magazine estates for a single weekend, let alone for the rest of our lives. Who are these people kidding?

Themselves, if you ask me. And I, too, am kidding myself to think I'd be happier in the pages of a magazine.

Sure, the magazine couples are the ones with the maids and the polished marble floors. I'm the one with the messes and the stained, unraveling carpets. But, although it's far from perfect, my home at least looks like it's meant to be lived in. It has been lived in. Boy, has it ever. There will soon be seven of us in this 3-bedroom house. And I grant that it's a little tight. When bad weather keeps us all indoors, this home can feel very small and chaotic indeed. And it's times like that when it's easy to cast side-long glances—easy to flip through a catalog and long for something bigger, better, more.

Not only do my living room chairs and couches not match; they are also bespeckled with ten thousand sippie cup drips. A shiny streak on a throw pillow is evidence that one child has decided the cushions were more convenient than a Kleenex. The rug is fraying around the edges and is littered with random toys and lonely socks. There's no rhyme or reason to the furniture choices. No matching bedroom sets. No thematically decorated nursery. And (ACK!) would you just LOOK at the kitchen floor! My former self would have thought, "This woman doesn't just need a maid; she needs an HGTV team of home stylists to come to the rescue." And moments do come when I almost agree with myself.

But I don't have a maid. Or a personal stylist. Or an interior decorator. Or anyone else to breeze through my messy life and wrap it up in glamor and sparkle. A broom and a bottle of Windex (and, on a really great day, a vase of daffodils) are the only design team I am able to employ, and they don't do much to produce stunning "Before" and "After" shots.

It's not that I'm longing to set up house in Kubla Khan's stately pleasure-dome. At least, not anymore. But a couple of rooms from a Restoration Hardware catalog would be all right with me. It's a good thing I no longer get that rag in the mail; it would too easily leave me sighing over out-of-reach armoires and tastefully coordinated drapes and upholstery. Better not to know what new wares they're peddling and be spared many a covetous hour. Even in a catalog-worthy house, the envious soul could find new ways to want more, and if I can't be content here, what makes me think I'll be content in a Pottery Barn showroom?  A spirit of discontent has a way of staying with a person regardless of location, location, location. "Wherever you go," as they say, "there you are."

In this blessed existence, days will come (and have come) when I descend the stairs—in all my disheveled, pre-caffeine glory—to discover that my boys have emptied all their drawers in search of a certain shirt; dumped the entire contents of our 84 bins of Legos onto the carpet; pulled approximately 397 books off the shelves in an effort to locate a missing school folder; and decided it would be a good idea to pour their own drinks...into water bottles with an opening the diameter of a pencil. And I had, in my foolishness, gone to bed with a clean house expecting to find the same when I awoke. Haha. Those are the days when an army of servants would be quite welcome.

And those are also the days when it can be hard to take the long view. I could be giving my hours to a full-time job, clicking away at a computer for 40 hours a week in order to help finance the house I used to dream about. I could spend the hours God's given me in order to live the DINK dream, in a pristine home with beautiful, unspotted sofas and real wool rugs and windows entirely free of nose prints. I could set giant bouquets in crystal vases on the coffee table, and carry a little clutch purse on my way to dinner at eight. I could give the best years of my life to appearing in the pages of Architectural Digest.

But Architectural Digest is here today and tomorrow is cast into the fire. Instead, my hours—messy and unglamorous as they may be—are being spent on something eternal. Five somethings, to be more precise. Silk upholstery will tear and fade. Walnut armoires will scratch and crack. Colors schemes and design fads will fall from favor. But my children have spirits that will last forever—spirits that are being shaped and nurtured here. Here, on these fraying rugs. Here on these sticky floors. Here on the mismatched chairs. Here are souls that cannot go out of fashion. Here is a "Before" and "After" project worth giving my life for.
__________

*Visit archdaily.com for a look at life in just this sort of modernist architectural Hell.

The mountains tremble

The size of a mustard seed. That's how big my fifth baby is right now—one itty-bitty millimeter. Doesn't seem like much, does it? But, come to think of it, Abraham was once that size. And the Queen of Sheba. And Alexander the Great. And Caesar. And Saint Augustine. And Charlemagne. And Joan of Arc. And Martin Luther. And Rembrandt. And Shakespeare. And J.S. Bach. And Jane Austen. And Winston Churchill. And You.

There was a time when every celebrated character in history was invisible to the naked eye. 

A tiny mustard seed. Not even enough to add some zing to a sandwich. But great and terrifying things are happening under the microscope. The womb is a fearful and wonderful workshop—secret and dark and mysterious—where, out of the formless void, a "let there be..." calls forth something that once was not and now is.

Only a mustard seed. But a mighty tree is in the making, in whose branches the birds of the air will come to build their nests.

Just a mustard seed. But I can feel the mountains tremble. The mountains, after all, know something we do not; they know what moves them.

Too shy shy

An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends; he defies all sound judgment.
—Proverbs 18:1

Yesterday at church, two of my boys walked right up to some adult members of the congregation to shake hands and greet them with a friendly hello. It's a seemingly insignificant gesture of kindness, but around here it's a big deal. It's worthy of a sticker on the reward sheet when we get home. Going out of their way to be friendly is not easy for my kids, but we work on it. A lot. That it takes practice is something their mother knows all too well.

When I mentioned in a previous post that I have a tendency toward being a recluse, I wasn't kidding; it's a predilection I've had to fight hard against. I relish moments of "alone time." But these days, alone time tends to be pushed aside by "kid time," and "husband time," and "church time," and "school time," and "sports time," and all the other "times" that come with having a growing family. And that's as it should be. But sometimes the level of noise and activity involved with having four little boys—who spend a significant part of each day thundering through the house making martial sound effects—can be rather overwhelming and exhausting.

Even social events as joyous as weddings have left me feeling so drained afterward that I've been tempted to sit in a quiet corner with a mug of tea and a book for the rest of the day. I recall being sent to my room as a child (after having a spat with my brother) and feeling like I'd just been handed a free pass to solitary bliss. I used to dread my own birthday parties.

Yep. Introvert. That's me. Recognizing my introverted personality type was easy. Recognizing that this personality type came with some serious pitfalls was another thing.

It may seem obvious, but somebody else had to give me a (metaphorical) kick in the head before I discovered that my "shy girl" demeanor had ethical ramifications. I never wanted to be lonely, but putting myself forward in a social setting was, for me, the emotional equivalent of running blindfolded along the edge of cliff—not a risk I was willing to take. Right up through high school, I was under the impression that shy is "just who I am."  

But then one day, shortly before starting college, I had a conversation that utterly shook my "shy girl" self-perception.

I was at some sort of informal event at my pastor's home, and I ended up chatting with my pastor's wife during the course of the evening. I don't recall the preceding dialog, but as we talked, I mentioned, only in passing, that I'm "just shy," and that "I don't like introducing myself to strangers," which, to me, seemed like a fairly neutral statement of fact. I guess I expected this good woman to nod sympathetically and let the comment slide past. But she didn't. She stopped me before I could go on.

Now, here's the inspirational, Hallmark card bit of this story: With a calm smile, she told me, "Well, Hannah, maybe you just need to get over yourself."

That was it. And then our talk proceeded to some other topic.

But ouch. What was that supposed to mean? Those may not have been her exact words, but it was something very close. And what she had said cut me—like a surgeon's knife.

She wasn't being rude. Far from it; this was love at its boldest. She clearly knew me better than I knew myself and was simply throwing aside the "personality" lingo and exposing the heart of my "shyness" problem—a problem that I had not particularly wanted to see. Of course my parents had encouraged me for years to be more friendly. But hearing someone else tell me so was a shock. Perhaps this was a real issue that I needed to deal with.

"Well, Hannah, maybe you just need to get over yourself." Maybe... All right, more than maybe.

Why wasn't I willing to go out of my way to introduce myself? Before, I would have said that it was simply "because I'm shy." Nothing wrong with that, right? But as soon as my pastor's wife said what she did, I realized, to my chagrin, that there was, as a matter of fact, something very wrong with that. The truth is, that my unwillingness to shake hands and start a conversation was not just a personality quirk. It was a failure to love my neighbor. The sad fact was that I cared more about my own comfort zone than about making other people comfortable; I was more concerned about protecting myself from seeming foolish than about risking a (very minor) embarrassment in order to show love to those around me. If I didn't feel like being sociable, then I thought I was justified in ignoring my duty to love other people. I guess I was just too important to look out for the interests of others.

I wasn't being "shy." I was being selfish. I needed, in short, to get over myself.

Those words had hurt. A lot. They wounded my pride. But "faithful are the wounds of a friend." She knew exactly what I needed to hear. And, as I was about to begin college with a bunch of total strangers, the timing could not have been better.

I'd like to say that ever since that day I've been a willing handshaker to anyone in need of a friend. But, even after 14 years, I'm still working on it. Getting over myself is probably going to be a lifelong pursuit. But that it is a pursuit at all is something I can be very thankful for. Discovering that my shyness might be a temptation to fight was a huge revelation, like seeing myself in the mirror for the first time. And now that I have four children, friendliness—love in the little things—is a trait we are constantly encouraging in them as well: Smile! Shake hands! Say thank you! Tell the nice lady your name!

I realize, of course, that one's personality is not infinitely malleable and that for an introvert to suddenly attempt to become the life of the party is going to be an uncomfortable scene for pretty much everyone. But insofar as one's personality—introvert or extrovert—comes with a certain set of temptations, those temptations must be resisted; personality type is never a valid excuse for sin. Blabbling thoughtlessly to strangers is not an urge I've ever had to resist. My temptation is, rather, to lose patience with the constant noise and clamor of the children God's blessed me with. My tendency is to pretend not to see the unfamiliar and unattractive face of the lonely-looking lady over in the corner. That, for me, is the struggle—to overcome my own discomfort in order to bestow love.

That unexpected word of advice from my pastor's wife didn't magically turn me into an extrovert, nor will it ever. I'm definitely still an introvert—a home body. I may not feel like saying hello. But, over the years, those tendencies have lessened. By God's grace, I enjoy large social gatherings far more than I used to.  I do like my own birthday parties these days—now that I'm too old to have them every year. However, I'm far from turning into a party animal. And to this day, going out of my way to meet new people gives me a case of the butterflies. But thank God that I had a friend and teacher wise enough to show me that doing what I feel and doing what is right can be two very different things. And I'm thankful to be able to pass on that stark bit of wisdom to my kids: Maybe you just need to get over yourself.