Yarn Along

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-Joining Ginny today-

yarnalong

I’ve been working on a shawl based on a pattern from Tonia’s blog many, many moons ago. It’s a gift and I’m afraid I won’t finish it in time…even though the event is still two months away. It takes for-ev-er. Two rows and thirty minutes later, you’ve only gained half an inch. I think I’m beginning to understand what Ginny means. It’s made of a lovely soft bamboo yarn in gray-brown from my stash. I lost the label three years ago. (Yes, it is really taking me that long.)

I just finished The Paris Wife: A Novel. It is beautiful and devastating, telling the fictionalized story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife. One of the lines that has stayed with me actually happens in the prologue before the story begins.

He often said he’d died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place.

Somehow, writing feels a bit that way to me too. But oh, how I think most young mothers and twenty somethings can see themselves in Hadley at some point or other. I have a feeling this one will join the canon of literature That Must Be Read in College in twenty years.

I’ve also been reading through Simplicity Parenting and Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. I’m not usually one to read more than one book at a time…I usually read one straight thru cover to cover before I start in on the next one, but these two are challenging in good ways. I’m finding I need to leave one to the side and think awhile and pick up the other one. They fit together well in that respect. I have so much to learn. So much to let go of.

All in all, I am deeply grateful to be reading deep good stuff again. There was an odd time in the dregs of the dark years that I couldn’t read at all (for many reasons) and I felt the grief of that loss. Literature has always been a favorite companion and I felt the loss of it when it slipped away for a while. It is lovely to feel it all come home.

One stinkin’ good pizza: when it’s time to bust the bonds of useless definitions…

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pizza

I couldn’t even boil water.

I had set the pot on the stove, turned the burner on, and walked away. It was so simple- just some spaghetti noodles and in a few minutes, some canned sauce. No risk, no possible burnt hard-to-discernables. Except the water would not come to a boil. Twenty minutes later, and I was slowly losing hope.

He came home to me in tears.

Unbeknownst to me, the oven itself hadn’t been plugged in, just a day after we moved in. My perfectly planned dinner, simple as it was? Totally bust.

It was just one of many days in a string of long days early in our marriage. I couldn’t cook very well. I felt incredibly deficient in wifely-ness because of this; it became a melt-down trigger more times than I can count. The guilt and shame at my perceived failure as a wife (and soon, a mother) would grow exponentially over the next few years.

Not only could I not cook, I was pretty hapless as a mother. I watched as my friends delved into the mothering arts with deft grace. They breathed in the possibilties of baby blankets and sweet dresses, nursery options and natural everything, attachment this, baby wearing that. I didn’t come naturally to me at all. As a matter of fact, it still doesn’t. Discussing early childhood development might make me break out in hives. It just is not the way I am wired. I know there is some irony in this, seeing that I am the mother of six; but I don’t really enjoy being around young children. It’s not something I would have ever sought out on my own.

I was pretty isolated in the early years. My only outlet and yes, saving grace, was the community I found online and the company of books. Some of those early friendships made have blossomed into real-life, true-blue-forever relationships. What I didn’t realize then was the serious dark side to this whole virtual reality: the expectations for a young Christian mother are so unrealistic played out across the pixels and bytes. And oh, how I tried.

I couldn’t even boil water.

You see, I came at this whole thing with a shaky skill set at best. I didn’t realize that mothering and homemaking were an art; an art I could make my own. An art I could make mistakes with; a joyful thing that could be full of play.

The takeaway from all of those amazing little blogs and helpful books was a tremendously long list of do’s and dont’s, do’s or die’s, your faith and salvation is in question if you can’t do this right, your kids might end up heathens because you failed, failed, failed. You didn’t make that bread from scratch; you didn’t rise before the dawn.  Fear’s long tentacles. Pride’s bluster.

I think about it now and all I can think is- who am I that I should be blessed with these children? Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. Anything that my children become- God’s grace and favor. Any mistakes my children make? May they know God’s mercy. I am nothing outside of Christ. There is no way we can make it as parents; nay, as human beings, without leaning into the strength of Christ. I think about it now, and I think, of course I failed! Of course I couldn’t boil the water that time. I still had things to learn. I still have things to learn. This mothering thing? That boiling-water skill? This human being living and breathing thing? It’s a journey with bends and turns, Glory Be moments and Lord have mercy moments, mountaintops and valley-darks.

It’s taken me ten long years to understand that all I have to bring to mothering and homemaking is my faith in God and my own unique skill set. I don’t have to bake that bread if it doesn’t fill my cup. I’m not a horrible mother if I buy it from the store; my children will not be nutritionally screwed for life because I made chicken nuggets last night.

I can bring me to my children. Not some unachievable super-mama thing that would probably scare ‘em with her knack with glitter. I love literature. I love history. I love art. I love beauty. I love making connections in relationships with people; I love helping people find the way to their truest selves. I can share my compassion and insight skills with my kids and help them look deeper into the world around them, see beyond the packaging through to the broken-ness and need for healing that’s all around them. I’m an INFJ; the rarest of personality types in the world. I don’t need to hide who I am under some crazy expectation of an extrovert. It needs to be treasured and fostered in a world that gets more and more chaotic and broken.

A friend of mine, unlike my own stinks-at-the-basics-stuff, absolutely lives to cook. It’s a vision to watch him in the kitchen. He brings delight in his own joy at what he’s doing. You can’t help but be swept up in it a little bit. He plays music, sings along. It’s like watching a dance. And he glows. I was watching him the other night, and all I could think of was, I want to glow like that. I remember what that felt like, when freedom informed my joy, before the dark chains of ridiculous expectations snapped in place. I’m working my way back to that center.

I’m never going to be an excellent cook like him; I’ll never be as wonderful a mama as some of the women I patently adore. But over the years, I’ve learned to make a stinkin’ good pizza. I’ve learned to lean in and listen close to the hearts around me. I may flunk on the whole early childhood development thing (please, keep the finger paints far away!) but I dearly hope that those closest to me will know in their marrow-bones how much I loved them, that I saw them, that I heard them. That I gave them the umpfh they needed to find their truest selves. That I created the space for them to soar. That’s a job description I can always sign up for.

In the tilt-shift…

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rechargepier

It’s never obvious at first. Things shift one way, then the other, kaleidoscope spin. Starburst. Glory be. Something within you shifts too, the shards of glass you thought could only be broken always, made new.

I’ve been having a lot of kaleidoscope moments.

I’m sorry I’ve been quiet here. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you that I was going to slip out for a while. It just happened. The sunshine beckoned. The smell of the sea air begged to be noticed.

I’d forgotten how to do that. Pay attention.

I think I thought I had that skill down pat. But the reality? Things were spinning too fast.

I don’t want to miss this.

I’ve had a chance to really evaluate what I want from myself, from my life…I’ve gone back and forth on this blog. I felt for a while that there was too large a dichotomy between my life and what I felt comfortable with writing about here. Posts got further and farther between. My writing here stopped coming from the center of who I was; it often was edited and pushed. So much of what I read back through feels so strained to me because I was walking a line between what I wanted to say and what I “should” say. I can’t do that anymore. Maybe that means I’ll lose whatever readers I did have- you patient friends, you. I pray not. But at the same time, I’ve got to dance and be me in this space.

There are some things I want to tell you. Things that are important to the story. Blanks that need to be filled in. It’s my story and I need to tell it. I feel the freedom now to color things in, and I will in the coming weeks. It’s time.

I freely acknowledge that the only reason I feel safe enough now is thanks in large part to my tribe- the close-knit group of people I have come home to here who are woven into my heart and the fabric of my life. I felt at loose ends without them these many years, though they all were just phone calls away. It’s also with love and bittersweetness that I think of a family I left behind, closer than blood, bound by our Christ in siblingship- without whom, I just can’t imagine life without and yet I have to do that everyday now…who helped me to safe harbor and helped me to find my breath again. This is the thing, you see. Without community, without fellowship, it’s so difficult. I know that to the marrow of my bones now. I would not be who I am today without each of them.

I know that there’s so much to be worried about, loves. I think of the Gosnell trials and my heart cries out. I think of a dearest friend, struggling with a reality that none of us wants to bear, and all I can do is cry with her. There aren’t words to wrap around it.  At the same time, another friend expectantly waits for a wee princess girl to make her arrival. Another dear heart is struggling with months of illness for her and her family. Still another is balancing the reality of chronic illness and a pregnancy. It’s all wrapped up together, death and life, horror and hope. It’s in this that I want to keep reaching out to beauty.

Ann shared this video over the weekend, and it’s just made me laugh and smile long….these are the things I want to remember in the retrospect, the long jeweled days. The children dancing, the laughter, the music. It’s the beauty that keeps me dancing. Glory be.

Forging a new path…

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tangles I’ve been feeling a bit introspective the last few days. The honeymoon feeling has worn off and the still left-unpacked boxes are starting to make me feel a bit squirrel-y and a teensy frazzled. It was enough to move in. The kitchen, especially, needs more organization. While it was one of the first things to be unpacked, the cabinet space is strange and tall and narrow, and every time you open a cabinet there is a very real fear that something will come crashing down on your head.

If I was totally honest, my life feels a bit like that kitchen.

The move was an answer to a desperate prayer, a laying out of fleece, a begging for direction. Our life had begun to feel like suspension bridge spinning in a hurricane. The tension was so fraught that the tiniest thing could have sent our little cars of life flying hard into the ether. Spun up, strung tight. Trapped. Beleaguered. Stuck. These are the words that ring true to me as I consider how things felt before the new job and move became a reality.

We had struggled for ten years to form a community around us. James loved the people he worked with and what he did in his job, but the pay and benefits were locking us into continual poverty, with no chance of pay increases or advancement. It was dead end. Our housing situation felt similarly dead-ended. We were barely making ends meet in a house that, while large, couldn’t provide for our needs properly and was falling apart around our ears with a landlord that wasn’t listening. But where else were we to go? We had looked and looked for a place that would work for us within the area and would return back to our current rental with dejected mein, realizing that this was it. Our locked-in finances barely covered the basics like groceries and gas; there was no way we were ever going to be able to save enough to buy a house again.  The reality of it all was very difficult to deal with.  Dejection courted us in the shadows. The marriage began to show the cracks and strain of all we were trying to hold together.

It snapped.

Someone caught us.

We were caught up into safe refuge and harbor by steadied arms who pulled us in. Even thinking of it now, I try not to sob outright. Someone cared about us so much that he fought for us when we could not fight for ourselves, prayed over us and for us, and helped us back to our feet in ways both spiritual and practical.

It was during this time of renewal and repair that we realized that, as much as we loved the area, we needed to cast our nets farther afield. Three cities were chosen, each for different reasons, and applications were filed. The prayerful waiting began. I don’t think we were particularly hoping for one outcome over the other- more than anything, I think we both had a very real fear that nothing would return. Nearly a month and a half passed, and we both began to struggle with doubt. A week to the day after we had a particularly rough day and given it all up for lost, things began to happen rapidly. First one interview, and then another, a phone call, inquiries made. Just like that, a job. Less than twenty four hours later, and at the head of a list that included three other families, a house.

You will believe me when I say that everything fit together in ways we could not have even begun to conceive of. It practically seems made to order. The thing is? I think it was. We had to let go of everything before it could happen, surrender everything we are and wanted, to come to the end of ourselves and let it all go, release it. Here is the truth, paraphrased by Eugene Peterson in the Message: “Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing.” (Luke 6:38) The delight will overwhelm you at times like drinking from a fire-hose, and yet you couldn’t realize how very thirsty you were till someone turned the thing on.

All that said, there’s still a lot of things to unpack. There were patterns and choices that let to the virtual prison we had made for ourselves. There was a reason things felt so spun-tight. We must, must, must forge a new path here, with the Lord’s help. What that is and what the looks like, what new choices and rhythms must be made- these are the things filling my thoughts these days. I snapped this picture yesterday, of the boys untangling math problems and my knitting ball that had become hopelessly entwined…it took me most of the day that day to straighten it all out, but this is the thing that I love- it was able to be untangled. The light bulb comes on in the math lesson and we stretch forward to the next idea. I treasure the photograph because it reminds me that life moves forward, even when it all looks messy.

New pathways…

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glh-house~one of the beautiful houses a street up from ours. I love the picket fence!~

I’ve jumped on this move as an opportunity to renew and reboot the rhythms and practices that help me keep a peaceful home. Some things have to shift entirely because the systems that were in place no longer apply.

The care of the laundry is definitely a new rhythm all together. Every house we’ve lived in before basically had a laundry room that I could shut the door to when needed. In this new house, it’s right off the kitchen and there is no extra room for piles of laundry to be laying around. There’s not even really a proper place to fold or hang clothes at the moment (that will hopefully change soon)- perhaps at most a load could rest there after being cleaned. Definitely rethinking how I approach this constant need in our house. The clothing ‘clutter’ has to stay to a minimum- we’ll definitely continue to keep a tight rein on the amount of clothing each person has.

I’ve noticed already how a well-constructed, well-cared for house is already making my cleaning easier. It’s not something you think about exactly, but take the bathrooms, for instance- there are clawfoot tubs. There is no mold-attracting grout to deal with. There are real tile floors, not the strange laminate stuff (which seems to be an affliction in modern houses). I’m looking at a ten minute cleaning routine in there versus nearly half an hour or more in every house we’ve lived in before. Those minutes really add up! The entire house is very old (and heavily polyurethaned) wood floors, which are much easier to keep clean. So I’m shifting around what gets cleaned and when…it already seems much more manageable in our busy household.

We also used the excuse of the move to continue to pare down the children’s toys. This is such a big thing. The only toys that made it into the new house were useful, creative (and often beautiful), open ended toys. I will be ruthless about this from now on. I am beyond tired of throwing away cheap plastic toys that lasted less than a week with my rough and tumble toddler boys and girls!

Where and how we homeschool has shifted again. We’re back to the kitchen table on the main floor, with some low shelving units to help keep everything contained (and a little space for a nature table). I’ll share more of it soon. This means how we school has shifted again…Ben works almost entirely independently and often slips off to his room as needed to complete work in quiet. Lorelei and Isaiah need me most of the school day; Isaiah really struggles with the noise the younger ones generate. It means that I spend our first hour at the table getting everyone started and then Ben and Lorelei move into most of their work. Isaiah does what he can handle, and then we regroup after lunch (when the littles are down for naps) and he does the bulk of his needs-more-quiet tasks (like math work).

I’ll be interested to see how this all settles in. It already feels more peaceful and manageable to me, and I swear that has much to do with gaining back missing minutes from hard-to-care for houses. I don’t know how to say this kindly, but this nearly hundred year old house is strong and sturdy. It is so worth it to use materials that last. I’m not as worried and stressed out by what my rough and tumble family might do to the house- this house has held multiple families like ours over the years, and is hardly the worse for the wear. Why we continue to buy and live in horribly constructed cheap houses really makes me wonder.

 

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