BLESSING

1 a : the act or words of one that blesses

Saturday we hosted our first small gathering in our new home.  There were fewer guests than at one of our typical parties and the focus was not to view a football game, celebrate a birthday or show off a new kitchen.  Instead, we gathered to bless our home, room by room.  The priest from our church came and brought with him an order of service that had us walk to each room, read a passage together, respond to a scripture and listen to a prayer of blessing.

Shortly before we moved, I started reading a book called To Bless The Space Between Us by John O'Donohue.  This book contains actual blessings, but also talks about how we each have the power to bless with the words we use.  This idea prompted me to write my own blessings for each of my daughters' rooms.  After our priest read the blessing for a child's room, he read the personal blessings for A, B and K.

Anna’s Room Blessing

May this room be a refuge,

a place where you do not need to do, but only to be.

As you cross the threshold,

may all the things you carry be left behind,

may all the selves you are fall away,

until you are left empty-handed, unburdened, just you.

May you rest well here,

laugh with friends,

and read great books.

I ask Father, Son and Holy Spirit

to inhabit every nook and cranny of both this room and your soul.

Amen.

Bekah’s Room Blessing

May this room be a safe place

            to rest,

            to create,

            to learn,

to be.

May it give your soul room to

            expand, enlarge and find itself whole.

May it be a place will with presence and vitality,

            a place that lets you nestle in, rest, and ultimately grow.

I ask Father, Son and Holy Spirit

            to protect you here and elsewhere,

            giving your soul a place to be its best – vulnerable, tender and bold.

Amen.

  

Kate’s Room Blessing

May this room be filled with laughter, joy and imagination.

May you entertain friends here,

            encounter new worlds

            and grow from a little girl

            to a young woman.

May this room be a place where your voice is heard.

May you find peace and rest here,

            safe and secure in the knowledge

            that you are loved by God and

            those who live with you.

Not for anything you do or don’t do, but simply for who you are.

I ask Father, Son and Holy Spirit

            to fill this room with sacred goodness

            and a sense that you can rest and let God be in charge.

Amen.

One reason I wanted to have a house blessing is that I have struggled with this move.  I've felt responsible for keeping our family stable during a time of great inconstancy.  I've been stretched thin as I tried to keep everything normal when each day was atypical.  And I've wrestled with my own feelings of unworthiness - that I don't deserve a house this nice, this large, this lovely - alongside feelings of inadequacy as I pressure myself to keep our home in the pristine condition it was in when we took possession.

So as I wrote their blessings, I tried to imagine what I hope my daughters' spaces will be for them and offer those hopes and dreams to God, who is the only one capable of actually making these hopes and dreams reality.  Do I feel like a burden was lifted by handing the house over to God through our house blessing?  Yes and no.  I think it will be a process for me to stop feeling like a snail, carrying my home around on my shoulders.  But the first step towards moving from burden to blessing was in publicly offering this home up to God and asking Him to make this home into a place to keep us safe and send us forth to do His work.
 

Three hours after our house blessing started, our house filled up again.  This time, with girls.  It was time to host the first sleepover (of many) at our new house.  Each daughter was allowed to invite two friends.  That sounds reasonable enough, but a house full of nine girls is a tad exhausting, no matter how you handle it.  Yet I am thankful.  Thankful for the friends who helped celebrate our new house.  Thankful for the laughter and energy of girls.  Thankful for a house that will accommodate blessings, games, movies, popcorn and life.

FINAL

2: coming at the end : being the last in a series, process, or progress

Some seasons in life bring more than their fair share of finality.  Moving homes certainly spurs one such season.

Thursday and Friday K and B spent their free time working on a fairy house for the front yard.  They gathered wood, berries, a pine cone and other assorted items (being sure to add nothing with iron, since everyone knows fairies don't like iron).  As they created together, I felt a twinge of nostalgia.  While this would hopefully not be the last fairy house they created together, it would be the final one to grace the yard of our home on Setliff Place.

Saturday night, our family took our last walk to Jeni's for dessert.  That morning, the movers came to finish up the packing.  They accomplished in two hours what would have taken two days (or more) of steady work for J and I.  Even so, we worked throughout the day, cleaning out closets that should have been cleaned out long before, hauling old paint to the recycling center, making more trips to Goodwill (where they now know me by sight).  I'm sure after our move we'll still make the occasional trip to Jeni's fulfill our ice cream cravings, but it will be well out of walking distance.

Sunday afternoon, the sweet buyer of our house came by to do a walk through with me, A and K.  I showed her the baby gate we're leaving for the stairs.  She asked about how to clean the griddle on the stove.  It was a low key, easy time.  She is excited to live in this home, which makes my heart happy and was good for our girls to see.  Near the end, A thanked her for buying our house.  Of my children, A has been the most obviously sad about the move.  She has cried on and off for two days and I have been so busy, so tired and so preoccupied that I haven't always dealt kindly with her sadness.  Last night as she went to sleep I asked her to share some of her fears about moving and encouraged her to try to stop riding the loop of thoughts playing in her head.  I think she spends a lot of time in her head and needs to do what she can to get out of her current thought patterns, so I let her stay up a bit late to read and left her with reminders that most of her fears would have subsided in just a few days' time.  One of her final comments before I left was that The Power of Habit was true.  I was thankful to hear her recognize her thinking patterns as habit - maybe that will help her choose new ones.

I have seen not only A, but B and K struggle with their emotions over the last few days.  A cries, K argues, B provokes - they all mean the same thing: we are sad and scared to move.  Sunday morning before church, I looked through my go-to book for blessings and ceremonies.  I had hoped to find a final home blessing, some words that would help my girls say good-bye to the house while offering blessing at the same time.  I paged through time and again and couldn't find the right words.  As I looked through perhaps the second or third time, I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit that we needed to write our own final blessing instead of finding one already written.  So just before bedtime, we all gathered in the living room to offer blessings.  We thought about what we've loved about this house and what we hope this home will offer its new owners.

These were our final blessings:

A: I hope you and your family have as many - if not more - memories, dreams and good times as we have had in this house.  May this house protect and watch over you and your little one.

B: I hope the piano is always loud, entertaining and in tune.  I hope the desserts made in the kitchen will taste good and not be wasted.

K: I hope this house will protect the Holcomb family and be a joyful place.  I hope their little girl will find her room comfy and fun.

J: I hope this house is filled with books, laughter and engaging in each others' small moments - like breakfast together on Saturday mornings, kicking the soccer ball in the backyard, walking to Sweet 16th and saying goodnight prayers.

My own: May this house give you space and place to learn to parent, to grow as a couple and to welcome friends and family.  May you leave your fingerprints all over it, making it into the home your family needs and craves.

We have created so many memories in this home.  It has given our family room to grow into who we are as individuals and a unit.  It's been a source of joy and tension (three girls and one downstairs bathroom).  It's held books and readers.  It has transformed from a two bedroom home with an upstairs apartment to a three bedroom home that we've used as a four bedroom one.  Through it all, it has been a safe place for us to rest, to come together and to invite others into our lives.  One thing I reminded A last night was that a house is just a thing.  A big thing, to be sure, but what makes us who we are is not the home we live in, but who we are  - collectively and individually.  We will still be who we are on Wednesday morning when we wake up in a new house.  And our God will still be our God.

Like my eldest daughter, I have some lingering sadness about leaving this home that has served us so well and been well-loved.  But as I write my final blog post from these four walls, I feel blessed.  Blessed to have lived here, blessed to be selling our house to this particular couple and blessed to know they love the same God we do and He will continue to be an invited presence here.

A few final shots of our life in this house:

 

 

Learning Together

Reading Together

Decorating Together

Celebrating Together

GOOD-BYE

2 : a taking of leave

Last night, we hosted our final party at our home on Setliff Place.  After we decided to sell our house, found a new home, readied our home to go on the market and received an offer - all far more quickly than expected - I told J that I really wanted one last party here.  It would have made me sad to leave without a final gathering.  I wanted to celebrate previous moments here, mark the occasion of our departure and be surrounded and encouraged by friends as we close this chapter in our lives.  After all, one thing I've loved about living here is filling our house with friends and family. 

A few weeks ago a good-bye party seemed like a great idea.  So I set the date, sent out the evite and carried on with life's daily tasks of packing, teaching, cleaning and cooking.  Yesterday morning, the full import of my plan hit me and I sent J the following text while he was out running errands, "Having a party tonight might be my craziest idea ever.  How am I going to get this house even somewhat ready for guests?!?  Next time, you must save me from myself. ;-)"

Moments later, a friend swung by to pick something up: 

"Doing OK?" he asked. 
"I think so," I replied somewhat uncertainly.  "There's a lot left to do before tonight."
"Are you an extrovert?"
"No!"
"I didn't think so.  It surprised me to see you were having a party this close to moving," he said.
"I know.  But some of our best moments in this house have been parties, so I wanted one more to help us say good-bye." I explained.
He nodded and headed off, leaving me to finish cleaning and readying our house one last time.

Sometime later, I was giving B instructions on getting her room clean.  "Vacuum your rug and then put the vacuum cleaner back in A's closet."  No sooner were the words out of my mouth, than I had the thought, "Won't it be nice to live in a house where the vacuum cleaner doesn't have to go in a bedroom closet?"  I'm not sure this thought was entirely my own because it, combined with a lovely dream fulfilled via our party, has helped me re-orient my thinking about our move.  The decision to see and dwell on the many blessings that await us will undoubtedly help me get through the next nine days.

And the party?  It was all I had hoped for and more.  New and old friends mixed, mingled and snacked.  Children played inside and out.  Conversations ebbed and flowed.  Football games were won and lost.  Food and drink were shared.  Stories were told.  Laughter was heard.

One friend who came last night had never been to our home, so I gave her a brief tour.  As I did, I described the various renovations to this house over the years.  It made me realize that we are leaving it a different home than it started.  We are leaving it with a far more functional kitchen, an open flow that aids parties, a master bath that is a true retreat and rooms that were filled with love, laughter and family.

There is much we will miss about these four walls.  They have not only sheltered us, but given us the chance to literally put ourselves into them.  Our daughters have grown here.  None of them even recall ever living anywhere else.  Our floors have held sleeping bags crowded with girls, spit up, toys, shoes and crackers crushed underfoot.  Each room has been a part of the story of our lives over the last decade.  And it is time for a new chapter.  A chapter that offers space for teenagers to stretch their wings, room to bring ballet into the home and even a long awaited chance to hang college mementos.

Independent of each other, two friends said to me before departing from the party, "You have the nicest friends."  As I lay in bed, recalling the night, these words came back to me.  We do have the nicest friends.  And they will go with us wherever we live, no matter the house.  It was a beautiful reminder of all we've been blessed with and all that awaits us - and that we don't have to do it alone.

FLEXIBLE

3: characterized by a ready capability to adapt to new, different, or changing requirements

August 29, 2012
This morning before I got out of bed for the day, I read Celtic Daily Prayer's morning office.  One of the verses for today was Proverbs 20:24, which says, "A person's steps are directed by the Lord.  How then can anyone understand their own way?"  Given how chaotic these last weeks have been, I found this verse comforting.  What I didn't realize was that it was prophetic as well.  Because I didn't know at 7 AM how my day would go.  At that point, I was naive enough to think it might go as imagined.

At 9, I put in a call to our pest management company.  In the 10 years we have lived here, I've generally seen them only once per year to check for termites and get the thumbs-up all clear.  But today I needed to ask about the tiny moths that were appearing with alarming frequency around the house.  The answer I got was unexpected: pantry pests.  In preparation for the noon appointment, I should empty the pantry and throw away anything not in a can, glass jar or sealed plastic.  I had thought I would spend my morning teaching K about dimes and nickels and reviewing mixed numbers and ratios with A and B.  I didn't.  I cleaned out the pantry.  Four trash bags later, we ran through our math lessons so that we could leave the house for the afternoon and avoid the post-pest control fumes.

Instead of spending the afternoon packing or reading or doing laundry, we killed time at the library, waiting for B's 3:00 piano lesson, A's 4:30 dance class and our home to air out.

I don't think of myself as a control freak.  In fact, I often find it comforting to remember that ultimately I am not the one in control.  But I am wear and over-loaded and overwhelmed.  And I am finding it increasingly difficult to recharge and rest when I don't have full access to my home - how can an introvert recharge without being able to go home to do so? Can my home serve as both a place to rejuvenate and the source of the bulk of my current workload?

I know that flexibility is key.  That's one reason I've drastically paired down our school day to hold just a few warm-up activities, a math lesson and a reading list chock full of classics.  (First up?  Great Expectations for A, Edgar Allan Poe short stories for B and The Princess and the Goblin for K.)

I am trying to be flexible - to not try so desperately to understand my own way - to accept the paradox that I am not in control but must still do the work.  Our house must still get packed up.  I am trying to bend, but not break.  If I can't manage to do so gracefully, I hope those around me will understand.

After writing this post yesterday at the library, we all prayed last night for a calm day today.  Mercifully, we have had one.  We drastically reduced our already-pared-down school plan, watched last night's So You Think You Can Dance and packed up six bookcases' worth of books.  While I don't feel exactly rested, I don't feel as out of control as I did yesterday.  So thankful to God for mercies, big and small.

CONSUMING

: deeply felt : ardent; also : engrossing

In a matter of days, our house will be on the market.  We've already had one showing and a few phone calls from friends who have friends who might be interested in buying our house.  I don't know about you, but our house doesn't normally exist in a state of show-worthiness.  It has taken hours of de-cluttering, countless trips to Goodwill, the purchase of dozens of plastic bins and cleaning from top to bottom to get our home ready for this.  And now the vigilance begins.  A sampling of my instructions to my daughters over the last 24 hours:

"B, take your markers to your room."
"K, put this doll on your bed."
"A, put this book on your bookshelf." (Followed by, "But I'm reading it."  Which led to, "Then you can put it on your bedside table, as long as it's the only book there.")

There will be more instructions, more cleaning, more dusting over the next days and weeks until we have a contract for this house to sell to someone.

This project of getting our home ready to sell has felt all-consuming.  When I'm not actually sorting items into Goodwill, trash and yard sale piles, I'm thinking about which room needs correcting next.  I think about the things a potential buyer might like (my kitchen) and the things they might not like (the small downstairs bathroom).  I try to cast a critical eye around the space, try to see it as a buyer might.  But I've lived here for nearly a decade, so it's hard to see it with a fresh eye.

The things I've been doing over the last few weeks needed to be done.  Books needed to be purged.  Paint needed to be freshened.  Shelves needed to be reorganized.  Yet I've struggled inwardly with how much of my time and attention all of this takes.  As I said to a friend last night, "I am normally a pretty peaceful person, but right now I'm anxious.  I feel like this is all-consuming and that's not who I want to be."  My friend was sympathetic.  We talked about how hard it is to do something like buy and sell a house without it being consuming - there are things that just must be done.

But my theory is that there has to be a way for me to keep my true self available, even in the midst of stress, busy-ness and riding an emotional roller coaster.  I don't want to be a housekeeping Nazi.  I don't want to be a mom who can't clear her mind enough to teach a math lesson without snapping.  I do want to be a wife who takes time to make dinner - even if it means getting the kitchen spotless again immediately after eating said dinner.  I want to be the mom who takes her time with lessons, stopping to read about this flag and how it relates to the country's history or pulling out a book to show how far away these two countries are from each other.

So when a milestone arrived today, I shortened our lessons - even taking the nearly unprecedented move of saving today's math for tomorrow.  At 10:20 we left our house.  At 1:30 we returned home.  In between, B had her braces removed.  We celebrated with lunch out, ice cream for dessert and an afternoon free of lessons or cleaning.

There are moments every day that are worth celebrating.  Sometimes they are small moments: K telling the time from the clock more quickly than her old sisters, A completing a math lesson with not a single problem incorrect, B writing a perfect paragraph on the first attempt.  Sometimes they are bigger, like getting your braces off.

What I don't want is to be consumed by a process and miss out on those moments.  I want to find a way to do what must be done and still enjoy the fact that life is carrying on around me.  I don't want to move into a new house 8 weeks from now and look around and think, "What just happened?  How did I get here?  Was I marking time or living it?"

If I'm going to be consumed, I want it to be with the beauty of life, with the unexpected goodness that sweeps in as three girls eat ice cream cones, all of them with sparkling white teeth, not a hint of metal in sight.

RED

: the color of our dining room walls during our first eight years in this home

I finished painting our dining room today.  It was the last step in our kitchen renovation.  OK, so it wasn't directly related to our kitchen remodel.  But when we knocked out the wall between our kitchen and dining room, I found I didn't like the brick red of the dining room against the calm blue of the kitchen.  It just looked too nautical to me.  So I decided to paint it.  I picked a nice chocolate brown that would look great with the granite on the pass through between the rooms.  And I got it about halfway finished.  Until today. 

Today was the last half day of school before Christmas Break.  I had initially talked B & K into skipping today.  Their parties were both scheduled for Wednesday and I thought a half day sounded like a great excuse to sleep in, make pancakes and stay in our pajamas.  Until it snowed.  And school was canceled Monday.  Then school was canceled Tuesday.  Suddenly, I was left with almost no time without children to get the dining room painted.  I hadn't had a definitive plan, but I thought I could carve out time Monday afternoon or Wednesday afternoon after finishing school with A to get it painted.  So while I loved our snow days - complete with pancakes and PJs - I was a little worried about exactly when I was going to finish the dining room.

Why the rush all of the sudden, you might ask.  After all, the room has been halfway painted for weeks (months?) and it doesn't really bother anyone in our immediate family to have it incomplete.  Ahh, yes.  That's the problem.  On December 26th, we're having a post-Christmas open house.  This is my concession to K, who has been desperately wanting a party since the last screw was in place in the kitchen.  And I've been putting her off because I hadn't finished the dining room.  So I set a deadline by sending out invitations to a party.  I knew this would mean I would have to get the room painted.

Now the room is painted and I'll confess that what I felt as I put on the last strokes of chocolate brown over brick red was... sadness.  Not satisfaction.  Not relief.  Sadness.

The brick red that is now gone was the first color I painted in this house.  When we bought this house, I pictured that room red and decided to paint it before we even moved in.  Had I known it would take three coats of paint to get the deep, rich red I wanted, I might not have been so determined to do it pre-move.  But I didn't know how hard it would be to turn tan, boring colored walls into luscious red ones.

The transition from red to brown was much easier.  In most places, only one coat was needed.  But I felt like I was covering over dreams I had for this house, for our lives in this house, as I painted over the red.  Even more important, I felt like I was changing the one constant for what our life has been in this house.  J and I rearrange furniture with regularity.  We can't stand to leave our living room looking the same for more than twelve to eighteen months.  It's just who we are.  Our kitchen looks radically different than it did when we moved in and I've painted nearly every room at least once during our time in this home.  The only one that's always been the same was the dining room.  I felt like I was changing the heart of our house by rolling that last bit of brown onto the wall.

When I told J I was sad about finishing the paint job, he (predictably) said, "But you were the one that wanted to change it.  You wanted it chocolate brown."  And I did want it.  It looks nice.  The white trim looks great against the chocolate, it blends with the living room color and makes it feel like we actually have a color palette for our home instead of a color wheel. And let's be honest: if you're going to paint your dining room the color of a food, isn't chocolate the food you would choose?

My sadness clearly isn't about the actual color of our dining room.  It's December 16th, which makes us 350 days into a year that has brought unprecedented change to our lives.  For the most part, I am thankful and a little awed at the change we have willingly walked through this year.  It's this thankfulness and my belief that we are on the right path that has helped keep sadness at bay.  Until that last stretch of changing a dining room from red to brown.

I have recently been praying for someone who is walking through nearly unimaginable sadness.  And I found a prayer in the Celtic Book of Prayer on grief.  The prayer says, in part, not to rush through grief because rushing does not help the journey.

So I write this post not because I am likely to forget that our dining room was once a lovely brick red, but to allow my heart a bit more space to grieve.  I know that the memories we have made and will make in our home have nothing to do with the color of our walls.  I know that change has been good for our family.  But the old had good, too.  And it's not wrong to stop and grieve the good (red) in an attempt to move towards the better (chocolate).

OBITUARY

1. a notice of the death of a person, often with a biographical sketch, as in a newspaper.

 

As I cleaned my bathroom today, it occurred to me that my obituary will not read, "She kept a meticulous home."  It made me smile, which was good because cleaning doesn't generally bring a smile to my face.  I am blessed to be married to a man who has a pretty high threshold for household clutter and general messiness.  He is by no means a neat freak.  Which suits me just fine since I can almost always find something I would rather do than clean.

So while my obituary won't make reference to the floors of my home and how they sparkled or the windows and how they shined, I hope friends will remember a house that felt like a home, even when they first came here.  I hope they'll remember thinking, "You can tell a family lives here."

My children won't sit around at Christmas in the years after I'm gone and miss my dust-free bookshelves, but I hope they'll remember the books we read together.  I hope K will still love setting the table - laying out the place mats and napkins, asking if it's a "special night" and we can light candles.  I hope B will make her own tomato tart - hopefully changed up a bit from my version, to make it all her own.  I hope A will slice into a loaf of bread she's baked and remember this week - her very first bread making experience, courtesy of a kind friend.

My obituary won't reference my fabulous gardening skills, how my children were always spotlessly dressed in freshly starched dresses or how effortlessly put together I always looked.  But maybe my children will remember raking leaves as a team - not only in our yard, but all the way down our street as an offering to neighbors.  Maybe B will always remember wearing my high heeled sandals to church while I was out of town and maybe K will recall asking her dad if she could go to church with a helmet, knee pads and elbow pads adorning her (the answer to that was no).  Maybe A will smile as she puts on her button down shirt and khakis and think about how her mom was most at home in skirts and boots.

I'm only 37 (and that for only a few more weeks), so I have no idea how I will be remembered.  But I know some of the ways I don't want to be remembered:

• For the food I cooked instead of who I cooked it for
• As someone whose floors mattered more than those who walked on them
• For choosing work over play
• As someone a woman whose entire identity was wrapped up in her children
• As one whose faith was evident only on Sundays
• As a mom who was more worried about what my children wore on their bodies than what went on in their hearts
• As a wife who chose my children over my husband
• As a friend who never let her guard down
• As someone who was scared to embrace life
• As a keeper of a meticulous house - there are far more important things

ATMOSPHERE

3 : a surrounding influence or environment

I recently came across an article on a particular type of home schooling (if you don't home school, let me assure you there is a whole language out there that will sound foreign the first time it touches your ears).  The article was on the Charlotte Mason style of home schooling.  I didn't get past the title before stopping to ponder:  Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life.  I still haven't read the article because I wanted to think for myself about what these three words atmosphere, discipline and life mean. 

Atmosphere is a great word to ponder.  It's ever-present (literally, since the primary definition relates to the air we breathe), but that makes it easy to take our atmosphere for granted, to not spend any time or thought making sure our atmosphere is one that we actually want around us.  Which is sad since an atmosphere is a "surrounding influence."  Having recently had our kitchen renovated, I've given a fair amount of thought to what I want the atmosphere of our home to be.  It's been helpful to try to articulate what I want people to feel when they enter our home and what I want us to feel as we live here.

Before we started our renovation, I met with a kitchen planner who helped us plan the lay-out to move our kitchen from one with five doors and no cabinet space to one with two doors and far more functionality.  As I talked with the planner, she asked lots of questions about what I envisioned for the kitchen.  One thing that came up was that I didn't want our kitchen to feel formal.  I wanted lots of light.  I wanted comfort.  This translated into light cabinets instead of dark ones, honed counter tops instead of polished ones.  This was especially important with our kitchen since it is, in my opinion, the heart of our home.  It's literally the room where our nourishment originates, so I wanted the kitchen's design to reflect our heart for the atmosphere of our home.

An Atmosphere Where Caterpillars Can Live on the Kitchen Counter

Like our kitchen, I want our home to feel welcoming, inviting, comfortable. I want people to feel like they can kick their shoes off or keep them off, stand or sit, talk or listen.  I want our home to be a place where people can be themselves.  I've been to homes - and you probably have, too - that are beautifully decorated, but so put together that I immediately feel like I need to be on my best behavior.  (And I won't even go into how I feel in these homes when my children are with me!)  I don't want people to be on their best behavior in my house - I want them to be their normal, everyday selves.

A relaxed breakfast atmosphere...

It's not terribly surprising that I would want our home to be a place where people can be themselves since that's one of my primary goals for our family - that A, B and K would be exactly who they are meant to be, with no outsider, including me, telling them who to be.

So when I think about how atmosphere relates to home schooling A, it seems clear that one goal should be educating her in a way that encourages her to be who she is and who she is becoming.  This is an encouraging thought because it has been central to my idea of home schooling all along.  In fact, our entire history plan has been created and centered around A's love of dance.  Ballet was invented in the renaissance, so that seems like a good place to start our history studies.  When I worked last weekend on planning for the year, this idea came through loud and clear.  My mission said, in part, "To equip A to fulfill her personal mission in life."  My vision includes, "A confident A who knows academics, but more importantly know her heart..."

How can I foster an atmosphere that enables these things?  I don't think the answer has much to do with improving my decorating skills or keeping a cleaner kitchen floor.  It has everything to do with balance: balancing a neat home and a family who enjoys being together, balancing school work and time connecting, balancing learning from books and learning from life.  Now to live in a way that is consistent with the atmosphere I want.  A bit harder than writing about it...

TEAM

4 : a number of persons associated together in work or activity

Yesterday on our drive back from the lake, we were listening to a song from Glee.  It was a song from the second half of the season and as I sang along with it, I started thinking about one thing that made me enjoy this show:  its use of all cast members, not just the stars.  At the start of the season, there was a lot of focus on Finn, Rachel and Mr. Schuester.  But those characters simply laid the foundation for what was to come during the second half of the season:  solos by Quinn, Artie, Mercedes, Puck and other cast members that we had come to know.

The girls were talking in the back of the van and munching on snacks to satisfy their post-lake swimming, so I had some time to think about this.  I love that Glee isn't just about showcasing the great vocal talents of one or two actors.  Instead, it uses the strengths of the entire cast.  In fact, this was a key part of the plot from the first season: making a group of misfits more than a collection of individuals.  Making them into a team.

Great, but how can I apply this to my own life?  The most obvious "team" that I am a part of is my family and listening to Kurt hit the high notes in a Madonna song made me wonder how to help our family function better as a team.  For good or ill, my daughters are growing up.  They are developing their own preferences, their own interests, their own strengths.  So how do I help them use the skills, interest and gifts that they have to make our family work better as a team?

J and I are already a pretty good team.  There are things he's good at (managing the family finances) and things I'm good at (feeding our family), so we split those tasks according to our gifts.  Then there are things that neither of us are very good at (housecleaning, yard work), so we try to split those undesirable tasks fairly evenly.  We've done a good job of fulfilling the first half of the season:  we've laid the ground work for a family that works together, supports each other and has fun reaching a common goal.  But we don't want to be the stars who hog the spotlight in our family.

The second half of the season is fast approaching - and in some ways is already here.  What specific gifts do A, B and K have that can and should be used in the running of our family?  What gifts do they want to use in our family and what gifts are more appropriately used to serve those outside our family?  What family chores are J and I carrying that should be handed over to one of the girls - maybe not a chore that they will love to do, but one that needs to be done?  Because part of being on a team is doing not just what you're best at, but what needs most to be done.

Difficult questions.  I'm not sure I have a lot of answers.  I think homeschooling A next year will help me see and identify a few of her gifts that can be used within our family unit.  We plan to do a lot of cooking and baking together (practical math, my friends), so we may find this is something she wants more ownership of.  B is a great problem solver.  She's not bound by conventional thinking, so she can see new ways to get to a desired outcome.  What decisions does our family need to make where it might be helpful to hear B's ideas?  And K?  She's the youngest, at just six years old.  But her excitement about finishing our kitchen in order to have a party has made it clear that she is a natural hostess.  So I'll definitely incorporate her ideas and give her jobs relating to the "We Have a Kitchen!" Party (tentatively planned for Labor Day weekend, mark your calendars).

These are just my initial ideas, but I do want my daughters to begin to use their gifts in the safety of our family, so that they know how to best use their gifts.  I want them to use their voices in our family, so that they see the difference their voices can make.  I want them to feel equipped to excel in their positions on teams.  I want them to leave our home and enter the world seeing themselves not just as a part of the team that is our family, but the team that is the community, the church, the world at large.  No small task.

PIECE

1 : a part of a whole: as a : fragment

My life, even more than usual, seems to be more about the pieces than the whole. A major renovation of our kitchen starts one week from today and while it is my belief (hope?) that the finished kitchen will look like a kitchen, we have spent many hours choosing many, many pieces that will assemble the whole.

This focus on the pieces has left me feeling a bit fragmented myself. When your life is filled with minutiae, it's hard to take a step back and see the whole picture. It's not that I don't try. Even tonight, as I was heating dinner, I tried to envision how I will execute those same steps in our new kitchen.

The pot will come from a drawer beside the stove, not a pot rack above it.
I will have countertops on either side of the stove, for stacking plates to fill with food for my family.
I'll be able to get ingredients from one pantry instead of nearly standing on my head to get something from shallow cabinets under a bar counter.
And, perhaps most exciting, I'll be able to do all of this while walking, standing and cooking on a cork floor instead of a black and white linoleum one that shows every speck of dirt that touches it.

But I am still a long way from standing in that completed kitchen and there are many more pieces to find, sort and fit into place to get there. Perhaps even more important, I must sort my fragmented self into some semblance of a whole person in order to get through the chaos that stands between now and a renovated kitchen.

I know the kitchen efforts are taking a toll on me as a mom. K is participating in a Vacation Bible School this week and on our way to drop her off this morning, I was already frustrated with my daughters before 8:30 AM. Should they quick the bickering? Yes. Should I let it get to me as I did this morning? Absolutely not. I knew in my head that I was being irrational. I even reminded myself that they were just being kids. But that didn't help calm my racing mind. It didn't help me stop making a list of all of the things that needed doing today. I hate that even when I'm aware of my irrationality and the fact that I am letting the pressure of all of the moving parts get to me, I don't have a reset button I can hit. Or do I?

For several weeks, I've been thinking that I'd like to study the Beatitudes this summer. Not in a group, but by myself, just as a way to consistently be studying the Bible. While I enjoyed doing a Beth Moore study in the spring, I missed digging in deep to specific scriptures, reading the Greek definitions, developing my own understanding on the passage. The Beatitudes are short, so they seemed like a good summer attempt at a solo inductive study.

This afternoon after VBS, the plumber, the flooring delivery, a quick drive through lunch, a trip to the dentist and a restocking of the book supply at the library, I sat for a few minutes. And while my daughters were upstairs watching a movie, I tried to let go of all of the pieces that need mending. I tried instead to ponder the phrase, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." And I think maybe that was exactly what I needed to hear: that I'll be blessed when I know just how little I know, when I see just how little I can do on my own. Here's hoping the lesson sits on my heart, marinates overnight and results in a fresh me tomorrow.

Photos are some of the pieces of my life.

SIMPLICITY

1 : the state of being simple, uncomplicated, or uncompounded

I am currently reading Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Another book I read this summer referenced it and a dear friend read and loved it. I've only read about a chapter and a half of this slim volume, but Lindbergh's words are rich and her thoughts resonate with my heart.

In the second chapter, Lindbergh talks about finding a simple, beautiful shell formerly occupied by a whelk. This shell bore the mark of its creator in its beauty and simple utility. Unlike the shell, the author feels she is barnacle encrusted, dragging around unnecessary junk, instead of carrying only what she needs. She goes on to say that this is common for women, especially American women. We take on too much.

One reason my sabbatical this summer has been cleansing is that I took time to purge our home of unnecessary items. My youngest child starts kindergarten in less than a week and it was joyous to sell the crib that our three daughters nestled in, each in her turn. I was glad to shred papers from the first year of our marriage, when it cost less than $50 to heat and cool our small apartment. It was freeing to scrape off the barnacles of clutter in our basement and elsewhere in our home.

So how do I do this in our daily lives? How do I nurture A's love of dance through classes and make sure we have dinner as a family? How do I expose B to art, music and theater - how do I feed her creative soul - and still nourish our family with home cooked meals? How do I help K transition to kindergarten and thrive socially through dance and sports while protecting her need for rest and unstructured play?

How do I nourish my soul as I tend the seeds God has planted in the hearts of my daughters?

I don't know the answers to these questions, beyond the fact that I must consistently seek and pursue simplicity. I must model for my daughters the necessity of choosing the thing that makes their heart sing over the thing that clamors the loudest for attention.

It isn't simple to choose simplicity, but how can we hear the quiet, still voice in our souls if we are never quiet nor still?

SABBATICAL

1often capitalized S : a year of rest for the land observed every seventh year in ancient Judea
2: a leave often with pay granted usually every seventh year (as to a college professor) for rest, travel, or research

I've been on "sabbatical" for a month now. At the end of June, I decided it would be mutually beneficial for Rejoice, my family and me if I took the months of July and August off of work. For Rejoice, it helped stretch tight finances further. For my family, it made the month of July wide open for summer time fun. For me, it eliminated dividing my attention between a job that I love and children that I love even more.

I've spent a good portion of this sabbatical month de-cluttering. I started by clearing a section of our basement to make a rec room for the girls. As they are getting older, I think it's good for them to have a space that is their own. Our small home doesn't have a lot of space, so it required some creativity and a total lack of sentimentality to clear room for a futon, TV and reading area. But it was well worth it. They love playing down there and have already added a dart board (never fear, soft tips), magazines, blankets, books, etc. I've also cleared bookcases, shelves and other areas in every room on the first floor of our home.

Clearly, cleaning is not my favorite thing. If it were, I wouldn't need an entire month to get my house in order. But the beautiful thing is that I had this month to do just that. And it's been good for my soul to get rid of so many things. It has made me feel lighter to be able to straighten up each room and know that everything really does have a place (for now).

I'm trying to be realistic. I know myself. I know my family. It is highly unlikely that we will maintain this leve of organization long-term. I'll get tired. We'll all get lazy. And things will begin to pile up again.

But if nothing else, I've learned it's good for me to take the time to rid our home of excess. Until I looked up the definition of sabbatical, I had no idea it was linked to giving the land a rest in Biblical times or that it was related to sabbath rest (perhaps that shouldn't be surprising if I stopped to think about the word...). That is fitting because my sabbatical has been much more than I thought it would, but I've not spent it doing what I would have guess beforehand.

I've written little during this last month. Instead, I've cleaned and read. I like the idea that a sabbatical is for "rest, travel and research." Perhaps what I needed was to nourish my soul with words and clear out the clutter so that when school starts in two weeks, I feel free to write. Free (and compelled) to write a book proposal for that book I started in May. Free (and compelled) to spend some more time getting to know a character created last spring. Free (and compelled) to see where the journey takes me.

That's the beauty of a simple sabbath or a generous sabbatical. The rest gives you strength for what's to come.

STUFF

1: materials, supplies, or equipment used in various activities: as aobsolete : military baggage b: personal property

A few days ago, I proposed to the girls that we clean out the basement in order to make a playroom for them down there. The entry to our basement is not, and sadly, will not ever, be attractive. The stairs are very steep and it would be prohibitively expensive to have them re-done. I've always let this keep us from using the basement for anything more than storage (and laundry). However, J recently saved up and bought a new, flat screen (very large) television, so we now have a spare TV and there is already a futon sofa being stored in the basement. I thought these things could form the backbone of a kid-friendly zone in the depths of our home.

The girls were excited and motivated. A immediately said, "Yeah, Mom. We can move our toys down there and then you can use the back room to write." Sweet child. On Thursday, we cleared a large area, filled our recycling containers to the brim and hauled a van full of boxes to Goodwill. Saturday we made two trips to the recycling dumpsters and another Goodwill haul. Progress is being made.

As I drove to Goodwill on Saturday, with the van weighed down with stuff, I thought about how light it made me feel to get rid of these personal possessions. We don't need the vast majority of the items in our basement. If we needed them, we would be using them. There are a few exceptions like the Christmas decorations and the washer and dryer, but by and large, the basement had become a repository of obsolete supplies, equipment and clothing.

And it felt really good to get rid of it. Some of it might not be of much use to others. But my personal style has evolved a lot in the last five years and much of the clothing I gave away is still wearable, just not by me. I like imagining someone walking into Goodwill on a treasure hunting expedition to find just the right shirt that used to be mine. I like thinking that it will make someone happy to have it for a reasonable price. And I like that it is not sitting in my basement, doing no one any good.

There is still work to be done and we still have far too much stuff for a family of five. Only in this country would this type of material accumulation occur, and it saddens me that I am not a better steward to purge our possessions more regularly. But I will give credit where credit is due and say that five van loads in two days are steps in the right direction... pictures to follow (eventually) of the finished space.