LEAVES

1. one of the expanded, usually green organs borne by the stem of a plant.
4. leaves collectively; foliage.

On a recent walk, A shared a fact that was new to me: When leaves change colors in the fall, the color they become is the color they really are.  When we see them all the same color (green), it's because of chlorophyll, not because that's their true color.  I gasped when she told me this.  How beautiful!  I have no idea whether this is scientifically accurate or not, but I'm going with it, if only because it's a great metaphor for life.

When I wrote in the early days of 2010 that this year's word would be change, I had no idea what I was getting myself in to.  There has been change aplenty and I see no signs that this is drawing to a close.  On the contrary, I feel like I am one of those leaves, about to be stripped of my chlorophyll.  Sounds glorious and maybe even a tad romantic, doesn't it?  Maybe, but it doesn't feel that way.  I know how to be a green leaf, one that blends in with all of the other leaves nearby.  I don't know how to be a bold gold leaf, a flaming burgundy one, a leaf being what it was made to be, not just what was required of it to blend in.

When  A told me about leaves and their real colors, I told her that's how people are, too - not just me, but all of us.  Sin is our chlorophyll and it masks who we're created to be.  It makes us all blend in with each other, unable to see one face from another, one gift from another.  I've always loved fall - for its beauty and for all that it heralds: cooler weather, the arrival of Thanksgiving and the way that holiday prepares our hearts for Advent.  Now, I'll have another thing to love - with fear and trembling - about autumn: how it reminds us all of the call to shed our masks like chlorophyll and boldly live as changed people.

All Photos: Fall Leaves at Shelby Park

REST

1. the refreshing quiet or repose of sleep.

Only one member of our family slept through the night last night.  Which one?  The male one.  K came upstairs at 3:45 because she'd had an accident and needed help finding clean underwear in her drawer in her dark bedroom.  B apparently woke up at 2:30 and was awake for a bit and A announced with much drama this morning that she'd been up since 4:30 and only fell back into semi-sleep (her term) after that.  She announced this with such flair to help account for the fact that she'd just yelled at her sister for making a request as A packed the school lunches.  We could all use a bit of rest around here - even J, who managed a full night's sleep.

Fall break starts tomorrow and it can't get here soon enough.  In a perfect world, we would start fall break as soon as school ends today.  In a perfect world, A would have next week off from her tutorial so that the entire week would be free and clear.  In a perfect world, fall break would find nothing on our schedule for eight straight days.  Instead, today we'll head straight to a dentist appointment after school for K, then across town to a dress rehearsal for A.  A will be at tutorials next Tuesday while B and K and I do something else.  And we'll still have an activity of some sort every single night next week.  Yes, that's right.  Every night.

All I really want to do is come home, eat a warm soup for dinner (accompanied by a crusty bread) and go straight to bed.  And follow that up with sleeping until 8ish tomorrow and reading books and watching movies until we're ready to take a walk and collect leaves.  Repeat seven times.  Alas, 'tis not to be.

Still, I'll take it.  I love fall break because it changes up our routine, gives us the time for some much needed rest and allows us to re-center ourselves.  Our lives are so busy that it's easy to lose sight of the things that matter most to us.  It's easy to feel like an automaton as I drive A to and from ballet, without pausing to think about all of the things she is learning from dance - discipline, goal setting, teamwork and much more.  A break from everything - however brief - let's me enjoy my girls for who they are, let's us get our minds ready for the season and let's us participate in the rhythm of our world.  Autumn should slow us down as we prepare for the quiet of winter.  We'll use the coming week to do just that.

Perhaps I shouldn't need a break to rest and re-center.  In a perfect world, I would always keep in the front of my mind the most important things - loving God well, loving J well, loving my children well, using my time and talents wisely.  But I don't always succeed in doing that.  I get swept up in the roar, hustle and bustle of daily life.  So instead of bemoaning the ways I fail to make enough time for rest - physical and spiritual - I'll just focus on taking the opportunities life hands me.  Here's to fall break!

Pictures are from last year's fall break trip to Cheekwood.

SUPERIORITY

1. greater in quality, quantity, etc
4. displaying a conscious sense of being above or better than others; supercilious

I know this couple.  This couple who has many giftings, who are blessed in many ways, who have unique talents.  But instead of using these things to define who they are, they most often define themselves via their relation to others.  Specifically, their superiority to others.  My husband and I have encountered this several times with them and it was initially frustrating that they always had to have the better car, bigger house, nicer clothing, etc.  But lately, it has quite simply saddened me. 

I don't mind that they have better "things" than I do.  J and I know that while we could have bigger, better things if I worked outside the home, our current situation is what we've chosen for our family.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to home school A without feeling like I am crippling the family budget.  And I'd rather have this extra time with her than have a newer, faster computer or a top-of-the-line kitchen gadget.  Even so, even knowing myself and my thankfulness for our marriage, our home, our children, it's difficult to not chafe against being around someone who constantly needs to demonstrate to themselves that they are above me.

How do you handle this? Are you able to easily see sly comments as being about the speaker rather than the one spoken to?  Are you able to stay present in the reality of your satisfaction with your life when presented with others who choose a different path, make different career choices or are simply blessed financially in a way different than your own?  Are you constantly - or sometimes, or rarely - comparing yourself to others?

Each one valuable...

Let's be honest: it's difficult to resist comparison.  It's hard to not look at your neighbor, your friend, your acquaintance, the stranger at the grocery store and not think, "Hmmm.  I wonder how she does that/ affords this/ lives there."  And if it's hard not to compare, it's perhaps even harder to not put others down when comparing, in an attempt to elevate yourself.  Even my 9 year old gets this. 

This weekend, B and I were walking through Vanderbilt's campus on our way to the football game when she said to me, "Why is it that when I see a group of people, I immediately notice the bad things about them?  Is that just human nature? And why is it that people are dressed nice, but they aren't really beautiful?  Just maybe cute?"  When asked a big question like this, I rarely give B a straight answer.  Because I don't have the answer.  But also because I think she's working these things through on her own.  If she weren't, she wouldn't even voice the question.  So we talked for a bit about what she thinks makes someone beautiful and she was able to articulate that she thinks beauty is about what's inside someone.  But she was on to something about comparison.  We do tend to 1) notice, 2) compare and 3) find lacking.  Now, we might find ourselves lacking or the other person lacking, but someone is going to be lacking.

Each one walking her own path

How do we get away from this?  How do we see ourselves as having value - not in relation to others, but simply because of who we are?  How do we see the value inherent in others no matter what poor or wise choices they make, no matter what clothing they wear, no matter what car they drive?  How do we escape the snare of superiority?

TENSION

4. physics a force that tends to produce an elongation of a body or structure

The girls and I enjoyed our first joint audio book so much that we decided to give another one a try.  I like audio books as a way to learn in transit without feeling like we're learning.  A book that I read before I started homeschooling described how this mom would use travel time to quiz her daughter on math or spelling or another subject.  Given A's feelings on math, I thought this would be a mistake.  I don't want homeschooling to make her feel like she is constantly quizzed or always being forced to learn.  Instead, I would love for her to see learning itself with fresh eyes and come to look for the lessons everyday life offers.  One such lesson life presented to me today while listening to our audio book on the drive to school: a lesson on living life in the tension.

I, Coriander is set in Oliver Cromwell's England - a time of recent revolution and circumstances that left citizens reeling (a beheaded king, a rise in Puritanism).  Coriander's father is newly widowed and marries a Puritan widow at the urging of a friend.  Cromwell's path to seizing power has left him suspicious that others are as devious as he and people with little link to royalty are losing their homes and more on pure speculation that they oppose the current government.  Coriander's new stepmother is nearly a caricature of Puritans at this time.  She enters her new household bent on making changes and aligning everything with her life's rules.  Coriander is learning to read and write in English and Latin?  Girls are too feeble-minded to be trusted with reading and writing.  Art work on the walls?  Only scenes from the Bible are allowed.  Beautiful furniture?  Curves in a table leg invite the devil to dine with you.  While it's easy to be critical or dismissive of a character like this, I found myself wondering how different we are today.

Coriander's stepmother lives by rules that make her feel safer.  If she knows - or creates - a strict set of rules, she can be sure to follow those rules.  This will not only give her a sense of security, but allow her to judge others who don't follow the rules.  If you're looking for (false) security in life, this is a win-win.  You get to feel good about yourself while seeing others as inferior.  We do this, too, don't we?  We probably have different rules than Coriander's stepmother, but we do it nonetheless.  Public school versus private school?  Regardless of the choice we make, we create a rule surrounding it so that we can feel better about our decision and judge others who have decided differently.  Republican or Democrat?  Same thing - if you vote differently than I do, we can't serve the same God, love the same people, believe the same truths.  In short, you must be wrong because it is essential that I see myself as right.  We do this with big and small areas of our lives because it's hard work to live in the tension.

The tension is the large area between what we know for certain and the great mysteries of life.  Tension leaves us without the safety of a strict set of rules.  Tension requires that we acknowledge what we know to be true, but also that we acknowledge the vastness of what we don't know.  Because when we acknowledge all that we don't know, we are far less likely to judge others who make different choices.  We are instead more prone to sympathize with the difficulty inherent in making many of life's tough choices.  Best of all, we are less certain of our own wisdom and so need to listen closely to the quiet, still voice inside us that gives us peace when we are the right path.  That quiet, still voice that is sure to say one thing to you and another thing to your neighbor. Because we can't all be on the exact same path - think about how crowded that would be!

As I sat down to write this post, I asked A to work on her collage notebook so that I could write for a few minutes.  (There's time enough for grammar and math once my thoughts are down.)  She asked what I was going to write about and I briefly explained.  Her response?  "I like rules.  They make me feel safe."  Spoken like a true first-born child.  So as I learn to live in the tension and embrace all that I don't know about life, I hope she will gradually do the same.  I hope she'll learn to not mistake falsehoods for absolute truth and that she'll grow into a woman who is less concerned with following the rules than with trying to navigate the tension spots - those places that inevitably stretch us beyond the limits of our own understanding.  Tension exists in life and nature for a very good reason.  Without it, we can't be stretched thin.  Without it, airplanes, birds and insects can't fly.  And neither can we.

MYSTERY

1. anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown

On a recent evening walk with B, she said, "I wish I lived in a book.  I mean, I wish my life was like in books.  If you wrote a book about my life, it would be boring.  There's no magic in my life."  Does she know how wise she is?  I think not.  What I wanted to say, but didn't get the chance to as the conversation veered in another direction, was that it's a blessing that she has books in her life to give her the magic and mystery her soul longs for.  A few minutes of imagining life without books might be enough to inspire her to write down some of the stories swirling in her mind.

Regardless of whether she realizes in her nine year old heart what a blessing books are, she is right to long for a bit more mystery and magic.  A and I have been studying Renaissance history and are learning right now about Gutenberg and the invention of the printing press.  It's amazing to think about how this one invention revolutionized our world.  People could not only obtain knowledge by reading it, but could share knowledge, so that people didn't have to keep discovering the same things over and over.  This made me think about the fact that even my nine and ten year old daughters know more about the world we live in than the most educated people of five hundred years ago.

While I don't desire a return to the days before science was common knowledge, I do think we've lost something as a society in the lack of mystery in our every day lives.  We don't create fables to explain the course of the sun or the reason for the seasons.  We aren't amazed when a virus runs its course in seven to ten days instead of claiming someone's life.  Even my six year old has a rudimentary understanding of these things. And I don't regret scientific advances.  They've improved our lives in countless ways.  But they've also given us the illusion of control in our lives because we confuse knowledge with control.  There are many things that we understand, but can't control (the weather springs to mind).

Mystery does exist in our lives if we'll let it.  Who can explain why the heart soars to see beauty in art or nature?  Why does one person fall in love with another?  Why can one person make a meal that delights with every bite? another a song that articulates one of life's truths?  Perhaps you get my point.  Maybe there are other things that resonate with you, but the broader point is this: are you looking for and embracing the mystery in life?  Are you opening yourself to things that delight, surprise and perhaps scare you?

My family clearly finds a good deal of mystery in literature.  We delight in worlds others have imagined.  We live between the pages and come away looking at this world with new eyes.  So how can we add a little mystery to the lives of those around us?  How can we bring those invented worlds into our own and make the world a more beautiful place?  That is the real mystery and one worth contemplating.

Photos of - and by - a girl who likes some mystery in life: B, age 9

BOUNDARY

1. something that indicates bounds or limits

J and I had a tough conversation with A on Friday.  It was slow in coming.  Tuesday evening, as I drove home from K's soccer practice, I was feeling completely overwhelmed.  We were only two days into the week and I was exhausted (thanks in part to a weekend that provided very little time for rest).  And as I thought ahead to the rest of our week, the rest of our month, the rest of this year, I could see no relief in sight.  Soccer was only a few weeks longer, but K would continue to dance two nights weekly, B would continue with weekly choir and A would not only have three weeks of overlapping productions, but add two hours of weekly classes (bringing the total to nine weekly) while adding Nutcracker rehearsals.  And that's just time for the girls - you'll notice I didn't mention a single activity for J or I.  This was not good.

I spent some time during the week mentally and literally reviewing our calendar.  What could be cut?  K could drop her Friday afternoon dance class for a few months.  J and I could wait six months to take the Anglicanism 101 class on Wednesday evenings.  Or... I could bite the bullet and tell A I had made a mistake letting her audition for The Nutcracker.  This was the single biggest commitment looming on the horizon for any member of our family.  It started this weekend and would consume at least part of every weekend between now and Christmas.  Nothing else I could remove from the calendar would create the breathing room of removing this one commitment.

2008 Nutcracker

So why did I let her audition in the first place?  I can give you lots of reasons, but here's the long and short of it:  because she loves it.  In the weeks leading up to the audition, I tried to get A to decide not to audition this year.  I talked with her about how her production of The Little Engine that Could would overlap with The Nutcracker.  I reminded her that it was a huge time commitment for our entire family.  But I should have known that she would never turn down an opportunity to dance (especially an opportunity to dance in a professional production).  Never.

And that is why God gives children parents.  Because at ten years old A doesn't understand that while the dancing gives her all that her soul needs to more than make up for the hours spent in rehearsals, it was going to leave this mother with an empty tank.  I knew in my heart that I could not continue with the schedule we had and have any modicum of sanity.

When J and I told A about our decision, she took it well.  God had arranged the circumstances to make this easier for all of us - A got additional audition experience by auditioning this year, she was cast in the same role she played last year, she had participated the last two years, she was emotionally equipped to deal with a bit of disappointment, and she still has one more year of eligibility for the youth cast next year..  In fact, as we told her about it, my eyes filled with tears while hers stayed dry.

2009 Nutcracker

It's not easy for me to set healthy boundaries, especially when doing so means keeping my children from taking advantage of a great opportunity.  An opportunity that would nourish her passion, give her experience and delight her soul.  But A is not the only member of our family.  And sometimes the better portion is the one that leaves us all refreshed and delighted by the joys of autumn.  Sometimes having a Saturday with nothing at all on the calendar is pure bliss for the whole family.

It may sound trite, but I am oddly proud of myself for taking this step.  It let me see that it wouldn't crush my daughter to miss out on something.  It reminded me that I am an important part of this family.  It set a good example for my daughters of identifying and respecting their own boundaries. 

Remind me of this when A is sad to be merely an audience member this December, OK?

CALLOUS

1. made hard; hardened.
2. insensitive; indifferent; unsympathetic

I recently read a fabulous book that grabbed my attention, entertained me and, best of all, made me think.  The book is Blackout by Connie Willis and it combines time travel, history and fiction.  It's set in 2060, when historians are able to travel back in time via "the net" and observe history, but never change it.  Three historians separately travel back to WWII scenes:  one as a servant in a manor home housing evacuated London children, another as a reporter to observe heroes during the Battle of Dunkirk and a third as a shopgirl to observe Londoners during the Blitz.  While I could spend time here telling you about what a good book this is and why you should read it, instead I'd like to write about how this book made me feel and one of the ugly things it made me realize about myself: I have a callous heart

I came to this realization as I read a scene in the book when Mike, the reporter at Dunkirk, hops off his boat, which is anchored offshore to take trapped British soldiers back across the English Channel to safety.  He dives below the boat to free the propeller, which is entangled with something.  Mike initially thinks a soldier's discarded coat has floated into the propeller's arms.  The channel is, at this point, full of debris ranging from clothing to shrapnel to far more disturbing things: like the body that Mike extracts from under the boat.  The body of a young soldier, one of many who died at Dunkirk.  A fictional soldier to stand in for thousands of real ones who fought bravely - or fought through sheer terror.  A fictional soldier who made me cry real tears as I stopped to think about the fact that these people were not just numbers.   They were people.

I know WWII history only in the broadest terms.  When my husband and I visited Germany eight years ago, we went to a WWII museum in Nuremberg.  I remember asking him questions about the war and our involvement in it.  He helped fill in some gaps, but I've never been interested enough in wars to spend much time dwelling there.  Reading this book made me realize that one reason for that is probably that it's just flat-out painful to dwell there.  So I keep this hardened, insensitive heart well away from images of fresh faced young men who died before their prime.  I keep my mind safe and secure in ignorance of the fact that the average length of service for an RAF pilot during WWII was three weeks.  Yes, three weeks.  Not because they moved on to other duties, but because that's how long they survived.  Doesn't that break your heart?

Now, horrible as this may sound, had Blackout dealt only with the loss of the lives of soldiers, it might not have penetrated my heart quite the way it did.  But the one-two punch of Dunkirk and the London Blitz kneaded my heart into greater sensitivity.  It seemed impossible to read about a young mother who nightly took her three daughters to shelters and read them fairy tales over the thundering bombs and not be touched.  The book's time travel element heightened my experience of the scene because Polly, the historian posing as shopgirl knew which tube stations would be bombed when, but didn't know who among her friends and acquaintances would live and who would die.  This left her nearly as shell shocked as the Londoners, despite her additional knowledge of the ultimate outcome of events.  Reading about the reality of an entire city being bombed with such regularity was staggering.  They slept in shelters every single night.  Their lives were surrounded by noise.  And not tame noise, but noises that were threatening - sirens, thuds, shrieks, even the all-clear siren.  It horrifies me and terrifies me to think about living that way.  Yet an entire city endured that rather than cave to Hitler.

It shouldn't take a novel to make me realize my heart is callous, but perhaps that's one function of good fiction: to make us look at things differently and see them in a new way.  Several days have elapsed since I read the scene from Dunkirk and began formulating this post in my mind.  Life (and a headache or two) intervened and kept me from writing.  But that was a good thing.  Because it gave me cause to realize that I choose to harden my heart often in order to protect it - it is not in any way limited to a tendency to avoid the harder passages in world history.  Daily, it seems the easier path to toughen myself up a bit in order to spare myself some pain.  But what joys are passing me by as I walk through life safely cocooned from life's lows - but also from life's highs?

Do I allow myself to celebrate life's little gifts like a new friend for K who plays so sweetly with her?  Or the season's first pot of chili, which is simmering on the stove as I write?  Do I allow myself to feel A's sadness as I share with her our decision to not let her dance in the Nutcracker this year?  Do I grieve alongside B for a mistake made at school?  Or do I take these things in stride and swiftly pull my heart away so that they are all viewed from a safe distance?

I don't want a callous heart.  I want to learn to carry life's bumps and bruises on my heart like badges of honor.  I want to likewise have a heart that glows bright with the beauty, the goodness, the blessings of everyday life.