Defying the laws of physics and mathematics

Some universal laws are upheld quite regularly around here. Like gravity: We’re always dropping stuff. And the second law of thermodynamics: Yeah, entropy always increases. Always. Then too, we’ve got the fourth law of thermodynamics down pat. (Didn’t know there was a fourth law of thermodynamics? Wikipedia helpfully points out that “Murphy’s law” has been referred to as such. Heehee.)

But Newton’s third law of motion? Reach back into your high school physics memories and recite it with me now: for every reaction, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. That one, we’ve got beat. By which I mean, for every action in this house, I can nearly guarantee you that there will be multiple and disproportionate reactions. I guess that means my kids have some kind of superpower…

Also, the math problem: If there’s technically a 50% chance that a toddler will put her shoes on the wrong feet, why does it happen 89% of the time? (Mind you, I’m thrilled to have a toddler who can put on her own shoes and who does so cheerfully. But I’m just askin’.)

Trumpet needed

A friend was telling me about the disapproving glances she gets from certain older women at her church whenever her kids get a bit rambunctious in the pew. She exclaimed, I don’t want to be one of those old ladies—the fussy frowny type! I want to be the wise kind, the kind that just rolls with everything, the kind that has deep joy. She paused, and then she added, But I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there?

                                            

That, in my humble opinion, is an entirely reasonable fear.

Once upon a time, I thought (or perhaps merely hoped) that simply having a statistically above-average number of children would be a sort of automatic piety-booster for me, a jump-start to personal sanctification. I mean, how could I spend most of my waking (and some of my would-be-sleeping) hours tending to the pressing needs of others, and not end up less selfish for it? Well…quite easily, actually. Rebekah touched on the topic in this ye olde (but goode) poste.

The terrible truth that I understand more fully than I care to admit is that I can all too easily feel this crowd of children pushing me, not toward a more pious dependence on the giver and sustainer of life, not toward a life of selfless good deeds, but toward the Other Edge instead.

I should have known better, even all those years ago. Doing what has to be done, simply because it has to be done, is not a magic formula for personal piety. If I’m not careful, in fact, the hodgepodge of daily duties combined with periodic crises (of childrearing and of life in general) becomes the perfect recipe for resentment and even despair. And too often, I’m not careful.  

Yet I’m afraid—do I really want to go through what it takes to get there? goes even deeper than  the constant war that must be waged against crankiness. It goes down deep, to the basement closet of a mother-heart—the door that we daily hurry past, shuddering, never opening because we’re ashamed of the horrid things that lurk there. I’m afraid—what would happen to our family if we got another kid like the complicated one (to say nothing of the potential for more complicated complications)? I’m afraid—because after a miscarriage, there’s no such thing, ever again, as a blithely-contemplated possibility of pregnancy. I’m afraid—because as my children grow, I realize anew just how little control I have over Outcomes. I’m afraid—because I go through long dark stretches where it seems like every day, my head sinks just a bit lower under the waves, and how many times can I reasonably expect to add more ballast and go under and yet come up again? 

I’m afraid—because I forget that what it takes to get there is, after all, never anything more or less than the cross. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Perfected for all time—safe in the Shepherd’s hand; while yet being sanctified—treading this via dolorosa. To wish for an easier way is only human; even our Lord himself did mention it wistfully once.The answer, however, remains the same.

What it takes to get there may prove to be every miserable thing in that basement closet of mine. And more. But through it all, I will yet remember to sing, even shout, that greatest of triumphant rallying cries: Killed all the day long--More than conquerors!

Find me a trumpet, someone; I’m going to learn to blast out that anthem til the quivering closet slitheries cower and realize the pitiful limits of their wretched reach.

Book, recommended (particularly for those of us who are currently in a season of “little years” that may leave us short on sleep, reading time, coherent thoughts, temper…)

A dear person gave me this deceptively little book, and I am so glad that she did. Though some of its self-contained chapters don’t quite reach two pages, each one has exponential potential for unpacking through prayer, self-examination, and action (at least for those of us who are in need of a perspective check, which describes me approximately every other minute or so).

I skimmed it once, quickly, and it’s still all whooshing around in the churn. I plan to read it again, slowly now, to work at getting some of the cream to come together, solidify.

I needed to read a book about the “little years” again. I know that I’m still a total amateur in this parenting thing; I don’t even have a kid in the double digits yet. But after having been at it for such a seemingly long time (B.C. is but a lazy, hazy memory), a creeping frustration was beginning to darken my days—the feeling that I should surely have somehow moved beyond the “little years” by now, or at least should have become more breezily adept at coping with the daily fatigues of the preschool-toddler-infant set. I’ve got bigger fish in need of frying now; why am I still wiping bottoms and teaching people the alphabet and pretending to be patient while a two-year-old works to put on her own shoes? True: I don’t feel the weight of every decision anywhere near as heavily as I did when I had only two littles. But neither do I feel like an old pro at things like potty training and toddler discipline and babies who cry in the middle of the night. I just feel...old, and tired, and frankly sometimes just tired of it all. In short, I needed a good kick in the pants, which this book cheerfully provided. Thank you, Rachel Jankovic!

Perhaps I’ll have more to say about the book as I reread, but for the moment, I’ll leave you with an image that instantly and helpfully crystallized some of my recent musings. Jankovic uses it to describe what she calls “growth spurts” (those times when you feel like you’ve just gotten a handle on things, and then, seemingly overnight, the kids all show up with entirely new variations on crazy). The image is also quite apt for household adjustment whenever a new baby arrives:

“You know those pain scales at the hospital, where they rate your pain from one to ten? Well, pretend that you are screaming, “Thirteen, thirteen! Fifteen!” What that should tell you is that it is time to restart the whole thing, stop screaming, and just accept that this is now the new ‘one.’ Start over, and accept the new ‘normal.’ I promise that this little mental change will actually change how you feel, and by extension how your children feel. Growing is, after all, what God wants them [and us!] to do.”

So if you’re screaming “fifteen!”, or tired, or overwhelmed (Jankovic offers a helpfully convicting perspective on the “o-word” too), you just might want to spend a few minutes a day with this book, which helpfully smacked me back toward the Book whose perspective should frame my every moment.

Chewing gum: a cautionary tale

I am not a germophobe, but I do have some borderline phobic issues with public restrooms. I know, I know: statistically speaking, a kitchen is waaaay germier than a bathroom, and an average toilet seat has fewer germs than the average light switch, door knob, phone, etc. That’s the thing about a phobia, isn’t it? We’re not talking rationality here.

Now, no mother who ever leaves the house with her young children can survive their childhood if she has a public restroom phobia. Any kind of bathroom phobia, in fact, is just another of the luxuries that mothers discover they must do without. So I’ve developed coping mechanisms, and I’ve been getting along fine, thanks in part to the fact that if ever Dad’s along on an outing, bathroom duty is all his. Quality male bonding: he lines up the troops, reviews the lecture (no touching anything, no looking under stalls, no asking any questions about anything you see or hear or read until you are all out of the restroom again…), and marches them all in and out.

Until recently, that is, when I entered a new stage of motherhood, enough to make a person phobic all over again: taking a toddler girl to use public restrooms. No such thing as a non-sitting visit. Oy. So. Again, I needed to find ways to cope, and hopefully to appear nonchalant enough not to phobicize my dear daughter, who will doubtless have enough other issues of her own as a consequence of being raised by me ;P. On our post-Christmas road trip, I shored up my mental health by taking along some of those disposable toilet seat covers, the ones that are specifically designed to cover all surfaces of the seat that little hands can’t seem to keep from grabbing. And all things considered, those gas station bathroom stops (*shudder*) went pretty well. (Uh, except for that little incident with the automatic flusher, but we got through it.)

All this is mere preamble to what is possibly the most horrific public restroom story I have ever heard, which came to me secondhand, but with horror all undiminished: A mother was supervising her young daughter’s bathroom visit. The girl was chewing gum, which dropped out of her mouth and down onto that middle place of the toilet seat. Before the mother could react, the girl picked up the gum and popped it back into her mouth.  (Can you hear the screaming in my head? Can you?!)

From the time of hearing that story and forevermore: never, never, ever shall a tender-yeared child of mine be found chewing gum in a public restroom.

Expert opinion

Here you may read a graciously sympathetic post from the Anchoress, who kindly takes the time to consider what the life of a mother of many young children is really like, and a vision for a program of care to such mothers. Also included is this link to a writing from a Roman Catholic mother who is upfront about a hard fact of perpetual parturition: it places extreme demands on a marriage (NFP or not), even a strong marriage, even a strong marriage between two people equally convicted about the catholic teaching on marriage. The writer told her husband,

The worst part is, I blame the Church. I blame the ban on birth control, the fact that NFP doesn’t work for us, the reality that I will never, ever have a chance to get a handle on things because I’m constantly pregnant or nursing. I can’t crawl out from under the pregnancy-and-postpartum rock because the rock follows me everywhere, just waiting to smash me again. Intellectually, I believe the Church. I understand the arguments against birth control. I agree with them, even. I just no longer think I’m a good enough person to follow the rules.

There are many reasons people use contraception, and no one understands them better than people who don't. I have no use for the faux-debaters who will bellow forever about binding consciences, the first and last refuge of the lazy Lutheran. The loyal opposition I DO respect is comprised of those who are honest enough to say: "The church might really be right about that, but we just can't do it. It's too hard." They're right. It IS too hard. :P

The Anchoress' vision is unlikely to become a systemic reality anywhere. It may happen in individual Roman Catholic parishes where someone with a "heart for that ministry" undertakes it. Much less will it happen in our Synod where anybody with more than four kids is a caricatured joke, the lowest of the evangelists and the blandest of persons. The Republican Party at Prayer will never stop secretly wanting us all to be Michele Bachmann (physically attractive, kid count in the high-reasonables, bonus good-personism, successful career, and of course "conservative"). I can only be thankful for the dear people in my parish who are kind to me and help me as they are able simply because we are sisters in Christ, not because they share an interest in my personal pious cause. Developing a fantasy about some kind of formal support system serves merely to depress; my recommendation is don't bother.

BUT--I will remember what this is like. When these years end for me, I will try to be the loving presence; the listening, understanding, forgiving ear; the willing hands for any young mother who needs them so much, who is so disrespected and alone, beginning with the mothers of any grandchildren God should see fit to grant me.

Poured from a steady hand

The other day, I sat and rocked my baby for an entire hour. My fifthborn—can you imagine? I just sat, and rocked him.

The big boys were happily occupied at school a few blocks away. The preschooler was pleased to have the play-doh all to himself. The toddler was taking a much-needed nap. And the overtired baby just couldn’t get to sleep.

The appliances were doing my work for me: clothes swished in the washer; potato soup bubbled in one crockpot while yogurt did its magical thing in the other; an oatmeal loaf was rising in the machine.

So I snuggled my nursling under a fleece blanket, and he settled, and sighed, and periodically shuddered in utter contentment. The autumn rain spattered on the panes, and the leaves swirled wetly down in clumps.

I was fighting one of those two-day headaches, which precluded reading, so I listened to the rain, I watched the leaves, I breathed the soft-sweetness of the warm weight in my arms.

And I thought,

My life is impossibly rich.

In that day, in that week, that hour was the eye of a hurricane: a temporary calm bracketed by swirling, buffeting activity that seemed certain to inundate me.

How soon I forget: the raging waters that threaten to overwhelm me spill from my overflowing cup. Sometimes, it feels as though the ludicrous Generosity that poured these blessings upon me was so rashly lavish that the sloshing will never subside. But our Lord is no careless server; His hand is steady. Once, and only once, was the water poured abundantly enough to drown me—so that forever after the waves may hold for me no ultimate fear.

Temporarily overwhelmed by the waves? Often, to be sure. But also—pure grace-gift in odd and unplanned moments—
unexpectedly and heart-swellingly overwhelmed by the impossible richness of this crazy, crazy life.

Mind over matter

There is a fine and often mostly mental line between joyful hubbub and dismal squalor.

Think the good thoughts, friends. Think the good thoughts.

My cloudy crystal ball

(Nothing profound. Just pep-talking myself a bit.)

I know that if it is granted unto me to live into my seventh decade of life, I will look back on these days, and I will think that every messy and exhausting and overwhelming moment was Totally Worth It. There will even be some things about these days that I will miss (a nostalgia that will, God willing, be more than adequately sated by means of the time I spend helping out with my grandchildren). I know this, because all the septuagenarians I’ve ever met can’t be wrong.

 (The tricky part, of course, is that I can’t see quite how I’m going to get from here to there…)

Also, if I make it to 70, I will in all likelihood smile with nostalgic empathy at the moms wrestling their toddlers in the pew, and I will talk crazy-talk to young mothers; i.e., “Enjoy them while you can! They don’t stay little long! It really does go fast!” I know that I will say these things, because all the septuagenarians I’ve met, even the most sensible ones, talk like that.

I just pray that I will be granted the grace to become my favorite kind of septuagenarian: the kind whose nostalgia is realistic enough to recall, even amid fond reminiscing, “I was just so tired all the time;” and “It was hard and I sometimes wondered how I’d make it through.” The kind who inquires with true empathy about Baby’s sleeping habits, who volunteers to be a warm body between the more volatile elements in your pew, who drops off chicken soup when everybody’s dragging around with a cold. What a precious, precious resource: a woman who has been there and done that, who has not forgotten that the investment required to make eternal treasures is heavy, and who is willing to continue investing herself after her intial tour of duty is done.  

(And I still totally respect the octogenarian who once told me, “I wouldn’t trade those years for a million dollars. And I wouldn’t give a dime to go back.”)

Weirdos

So if someone says to me, "You have SIX kids?" is it somehow not OK for me to respond by saying, "You got your ENTIRE leg tatted?"

It's not OK, but that's OK

I’ve felt very loose-endish lately. Waiting on a baby, especially when your last baby was early and you’re already in that territory, can do that to a body. Anyway. I insomniacally picked up a book from a pile that had recently arrived at our address (you all know about AbeBooks, right?), muttering to my longsuffering husband about the appropriateness of its subtitle: “Weary? Can’t get it right? Struggling to make life work?” Now that I’m all of 30some pages into Larry Crabb’s The Pressure’s Off, I’m not exactly positioned to write a review or a recommendation, but those introductory pages did help with the muttering a bit ;O.

(Aside: Crabb has a penchant for Capitalized Phrases, but I find myself mostly willing to construe it as idiosyncratic rather than annoying.)

Here’s how Crabb defines the main problem he’s addressing in this book:

Most evangelicals properly reject the teachings commonly known as the prosperity gospel or the health-and-wealth gospel….But sometimes we smuggle our own version of that idea into our understanding of the Christian life. Though we deplore the idea that health and wealth are available on demand, we like the idea that legitimate blessings are given to those who meet the requirements. The Bible says so….(Deut. 29:9)…We want the good life. We may define it more spiritually…..But we still maintain that the good life of legitimate blessings is a worthy goal and one that may be reached by living a faithful life of obedience to biblical principles.

Crabb refers to this more subtle sinkhole as the Law of Linearity (if I do A, then B will follow). We find ourselves trying to follow Biblical principles in order to obtain the Better Life of Blessings, when what we really should be pursuing is the New and Living Way, the Better Hope (Hebrews 7:18-19) of intimacy with God no matter our life’s circumstances. (You see what I mean about the Capitalized Phrases.)

This Law of Linearity thing is a potentially ruinous guilt trap for Christian parents, who are well drilled in the Biblical proverbials of parenting (train up a child in the way he should go, and all that). One of the most simultaneously frustrating and freeing realizations about parenting is that beyond a certain point (which varies with each child’s personality and age), we have little to no control over our children’s actions, particularly in public. This becomes exponentially more true with each additional child, and with, shall we say, certain children.

 Because you can only get so far with a whistle.

 

How quickly I fall into the despairing cycle: It’s not working. Why can’t I get everything, or even anything, going in the right direction? What am I doing wrong? It’s! Not! Working! I have wasted too many moments second-guessing.  But…after all, if I’m doing A like the Christian parenting books say, then shouldn’t B be happening, at least some of the time?

No. B does not necessarily follow even the most diligent A-ing. There is some value in (some) parenting books. Appropriate A-ing should be pursued. But! When B does not follow, the cry of a mother’s heart should not be (or should not primarily be) for the Better Life: “Why, Lord? What am I doing wrong? Show me how to make it work!” Plead rather for the Better Hope: “Please, Lord. With this gift of your very life’s blood, pour into me the strength to continue pouring myself out. Enlarge my heart, that the life-giving transfusion may not be wasted through selfishly narrowed arteries. Teach me to live daily the difference of that cleansing flood, the difference between hard and hopeless, invisible to all but the eyes of faith. God grant me eyes of faith!”

                                 

Things might not seem to be working right now. Truly, why would we expect them to? And where better to learn to desire the Giver above the gifts, than in the place where the gifts are stripped away? And in the time when crutches are knocked out, replaced with cross?  

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Hey, I'm an American

A recurring theme in this blog, or maybe just in my head: the many and various ways that motherhood, particularly the seemingly perpetual motherhood of young children, is so very, wrenchingly, good for the soul. Our American*-steeped psyches, being as they’re also sin-sick, get to thinking that those individual rights we treasure so dearly apply universally and in family life. We do so love our rights.

And I am as slow and as sin-steeped as they come. For me, at least, it took the continual demands of motherhood to understand that looking not only to my own interests, but also to the interestsof others, might mean doing so on a schedule other than my own—not just sometimes, but every day.  Or that counting others as more significant than myself might require actual (gasp!) sacrifice! And that those others might be diaper-clad, with an astonishing amount of tyranny packed into a ridiculous stature, relentless, and thankless.

As Rebekah pointed out awhile back, there’s nothing like motherhood to make a body realize that even introversion, for instance, is a privilege, not a right.

I was just thinking of a few other privileges that I formerly assumed to be in the category of unalienable rights, e.g.:

The right to determine how a day should start. I love a peaceful morning; a new beginning; an orderly commencement of the day’s tasks. Realizing that I had to awaken with, and likely immediately feed, whichever little ‘un(s) woke at whatsoever time, was an adjustment. I got kind of used to that. I harbored no illusions about, for instance, my chances of meditating over a devotional book with an uninterrupted cup of tea to the sweet chorus of morning birds. And yet I used to think that I was at least entitled to some semblance of order in the waking and breakfast process—especially if I worked hard enough to earn a little law and order in the way things went down. As it turns out, I have a kid who wakes up like he’s been shot from a cannon into britches full of fire ants. And his morning just won’t feel complete till he’s dragged his siblings through the anthill too. So. Farewell to my “right” to order the day’s beginning and the breakfast table as I please. (Heck, I can’t even get them all to EAT the same thing for breakfast…) 

 What, your breakfast table doesn't look like this either? (Kids obviously sold separately too...)

Also: the right to three uninterrupted minutes to deal with necessary matters of personal health and hygiene. No need to elaborate here, eh?

Suffice to say that the battle I must wage against my desire to have my rights is a daily one, and the list could go on and on. And on. But I will end it here with a small pang in my heart and a tiny wistful sigh, as I remember the days in which it seemed to me that the opportunity to enjoy a piece of chocolate at whatsoever moment it pleased me was indeed as unalienable a right as if it had been John Hancocked all those 236 years ago.

*America is great. I love this country. Happy Fourth, everyone! I’m just noting that, like any other culture, America’s has its own particularly soul-endangering notions and tendencies.

More mysteries

Why is it that appearing in public with five children while pregnant is so much more embarrassing than appearing in public with six children while not pregnant?

(Un)Common Sense

I grew up placing a high premium on common sense, even if I wasn’t always sure what it was. I remember overhearing my mother and grandmother, both admirably commonsensical people, shake their heads regretfully and say of someone or other, “That poor girl just doesn’t have any common sense.” It seemed clear that someone without common sense was crippled, doomed to eke out an inferior existence as best she could. Whatever common sense was, I hoped that I’d been granted a measure of it, or that at the least I could somehow grow into it, or beg, borrow, or buy some. I certainly never wanted to be on the receiving end of that pitying headshake.

One of the hardest things about the CSPP life in our culture today, even (alas!) in our church culture, is that it looks like a self-imposed martyrdom. It just seems so…un-commonsensical. Can’t quite see how you’ll afford music lessons and education (to say nothing of diapers and nutrition) for all those kids? Want to make a reasonable budget that includes getting back to work once the kids are all in school? Going crazy with all those kids in the house? Get sick (physically/emotionally) every time you’re pregnant or postpartum? Well, show a little common sense already! Choose a reasonable quitting point and be Done having babies! [Cue pitying headshakes of rational, commonsensical people…]

Even worse: so insidious and pervasive is the choice-mindset, that CSPP sometimes feels like a self-imposed martyrdom, even to those of us who ought to know better. Tell me again, why am I having all these kids?! Why are we choosing to make ourselves crazy like this, and what right have I even to groan under the cross of my vocation, when I could stop the seeming madness by any one of the various methods so glibly recommended by nearly everyone of my acquaintance?

                                                                                                     

Thankfully, the common sense that my familial matriarchs endeavored to pass along to me is extra-ordinary. Having a devout, commonsensical mother and grandmother helped me to see beyond what seems normal and obvious: sometimes, for those of us who are trying (fumbling along as we may be) to walk by faith and not by sight, common sense is anything but common. Being CSPP doesn’t make financial sense. It doesn’t make physical or emotional sense. To most people (including me in the darker moments), it makes no sense whatsoever. But! Submitting to God’s plan for marriage and children does make eternal sense, and in the End, the foolishness to the eyes of the world will be revealed as the most marvelously, magically rational sense that it actually, already is.

"Thin and separate. There should be two."

One piece of advice I got from a seasoned mom when I was just starting out was that it wasn't worth the energy and grief to worry about how irreparably scraggly I looked all the time. Instead, she counseled, I should pick one small thing about my appearance that was always well controlled. Hers was her nails. Even when she had a toddler and infant twins, she worked hard to make that sure her nails were done to her liking all the time.

I am very low maintenance in terms of personal grooming, which you know if you've seen me, but this still struck me as good advice. Nails aren't a huge concern to me, but eyebrows are. Or, more accurately, eyebrow is. Maintaining my eyebrow (hereinafter  "eyebrows") is not just a matter of personal dignity, but public courtesy. I have pallid skin and dark hair which is committed to concentrating its growth efforts just behind my glasses. If there were an eyebrow subsidiary to Locks of Love, I'd be their star donor. To give my eyebrows free rein is simply antisocial. So whenever I've got a crew in the bath, I clean the bathroom and then get those caterpillars under control. Voila! I've taken time for my appearance like an actual woman and made the world a better place.

Find a thing, girls. If it can help even a trainwreck of feminine aspect like me, it will surely be of value to you.

It just doesn't work for all of us.

Fakest thou until makest thou

Every time we add a new one, I am afflicted for a while with a subliminal panic. It's the same feeling I remember from stepping up to speak in front of a big room jammed with people, or being handed a test on which the only English words are "translate" and "parse." If it could talk, it would say, "Oh no. I can't do this! HELP HELP HELP!"

How many babies do we have now? How can I possibly keep track of them all? HELP HELP HELP!

But the task is at hand. Start the speech; I know what I have to say. Answer the easiest question; then do the one before and the one after. Settle this one down, pull that one up, ask the next to bring me the book, start reading like nothing has changed. They'll never know. Ignore the panic as well as I can, and before long my part will be just like last time when the room was small and nearly empty, or when the questions were about the alphabet. But--if I nail it--there will be more laughter and clapping, and more satisfaction in a hard-earned good performance.

(And as we all know, the only way to nail it is to crash 9000 times during practice. :P )

I will hope

As a certain husband of mine has had occasion to remind me, there is a difference between Hard and Hopeless.

Are God’s promises true? Of course that husband is right. Hope is always ours, objectively. And yet, and yet... As I have had occasion to remind a certain husband, things can sure get to feeling Hopeless.

Hard is when one knows the right path, and must press through the wearying chances and changes along the way. Hard is when Mom has to be cool and consistent in disciplining, in discipling, when the infraction is egregious and repeated and what she really really desperately needs is a nap, or just five minutes with no one clamoring about her knees. Hard is when everyone’s fighting and crying and the baby won’t nap and there’s nothing in the freezer for supper. Hard is when everyone’s sick but the laundry still has to be done and someone has to get to the pharmacy and the grocery store. That is Hard, and every person who’s found her way here can supply a zillion everyday examples. (Every day is a large part of why Hard is Hard.)

Hopeless is when everything has been tried, repeatedly, and nothing seems to be working—even accounting for the long-range perspective of results in this grand childrearing project not being immediate. Hopeless is when one can’t seem to get the household, the education, the discipline, into anything resembling functional order, and not for lack of trying. Hopeless is when it seems that solutions simply don’t exist, no matter how much effort is expended. From Hopeless, Hard looks easy (though it is not). Hard is Hard, but solutions can be found and applied, through gritted teeth and various degrees of travailing.

There are many roads to Hopeless, and I’ve been down a couple of them myself. I daresay that most of us have traveled at least partway there, however briefly, at some point. What do you do when you are gifted with a Challenging Child? What do you do when all the crises—health, family, church—crash in at once? When you try to squash the sadness and the lostness into a corner of your throat because you feel like there’s no point in talk-treading over and over the same ground, when there are no new solutions in sight? When it gets to the point that you dread going to bed because there’s no peace in sleep, only—at best—a temporary oblivion overlaid with the crushing burden of having to get up in the morning and face everything all over again?

More’s the victory for the enemy, if he can get us to dread the bright dawn, to believe that its fresh rays can never illumine dark Hopeless. Recognize this attack for what it is, and remember: What do I know, even when I do not feel it? The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 

No, everything may not look brighter in the morning, but “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him." It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

So eager am I to depart Hopeless that I forget: It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
So eager am I to deaden the pain, to protect myself from the anguish of Hopeless, that I forget: what is such self-protection, after all, but the hardening of my heart against the only One can rescue me, who even now is at work in my life? For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief—though He cause grief!—he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love. 

The enemy hisses that Hopeless is Reality. That dawn brings only drear. That hardening your heart against hope is your only protection, so shove your feelings back down your gut, because numb is the best you can hope for.

Hearken to a different voice: Today, as you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. Oh! How many rebellions have there been, in this foolish little shriveled-raisin heart of mine! Thrice in short span, the writer to the Hebrews echoes this exhortation, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” Today, today, today—this very moment! Thrice-repudiated is the insidious accusation of never and too little and too late. Even amid the darkness, this is the moment of grace—of the shockingly free grace whose dreadfully priceless purchase makes all the difference, now and forevermore, between Hard and Hopeless.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Though he slay me with blessings beyond what I can bear, I will hope in Him.

Inertia

No announcements here. Just something I worked up to amuse myself the last time I was hyperemetic. 

“Will you walk a little faster?” said the brain unto the feet,
“I can feel the stomach turning and the outcome won’t be neat.
Sense how nearabout our precious gastric system is divested
Of the paltry bit of breakfast we so wantonly ingested!
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?

“You already have a notion how revolting it will be
If the mouth falls short of target and deposits all our scree
On the floor. Your lovely kingdom will be mucked all up with gluten!”
But the feet replied, “Too far!” and missed a beat in the cotillion—

Said they thanked the brain quite kindly, but they would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.

“You’ll be sorry,” warned the wiser part. “You know the score by now.
What does miss that rounded rim will be our problem anyhow.
The further from the bathroom, the nearer then to Couch—
You obdurate heel! Beat it! While you might yet stand a chance!
‘Cause there ain’t no way you’re gonna sit out this round of the dance.
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?”

"Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?"

It was befuddling to see Madonna working the crowd with her trademark methods during this year's big halftime show, and not because she has clearly purchased a sort of youth. It is befuddling to think why anyone Madonna's age would still WANT to shake her skirt like that.

I turn 35 this year. It is evident that in my body I have passed my solstice and will soon begin slouching through my dog days. My pride doesn't like it, but my more reasonable side finds some comfort in the idea that there is coming a day when my flesh will have proved itself, and the heat of summer will come to an end.

When the North Wind blows through my life and carries all my birds to the warmth of their own summers, there will still be sunshine enough, God willing, for all the days of autumn. To think of fighting that wind, of gathering up my falling leaves in taut, synthetic bags, and working to confuse eyes with my brittling branches . . . No. No running, or painting, or afflicting myself for growing old. What must be, will be.

Besides, autumn is an enchanting season: she has gained so much from the sun that she more fully reflects its colors; she blesses her people with unexpected bursts of warmth; she shelters the time of harvest and prepares the soil for generations of life to come. Sing to the Lord, for autumn is at hand! There is still much, very much, to do! And not a second to waste groping after a spent spring. An honest Spring is coming, and soon, and it will appear in the sky without our doing a thing. In the meantime, dignity as we await the snow.

I think I'll go for a walk!

Homesick

I hate missing church. It is a unique pang which strikes when the bell rings across the street and I'm still over here in my smelly pajamas wiping up whatever revolting muck is erupting out of some kid's body*. Somebody brings home a bulletin and I look at it and see the hymns and think, "You guys sang this without me?"

Nothing drives home the worth of the exhausting effort, the niggling anxieties, the unavoidable embarrassments, the absurd and bewildering expectations, like having them taken away.

*Today, so far, it is only complaints. I am suspicious and very crabby.

Cloudy with a 100% chance of meatballs somewhere they shouldn't be

Occasionally someone offers me an encouraging word about "seasons." I get the impression that this is Evangelicalspeak, although I don't know the origin. Apparently its essential meaning is, "Someday you'll be doing something else. This is OK for now."

Here's where I'm going to speak freely and if it's going to make you disgusted with my various personal failures and/or my failure to represent whatever cause you think I am or should be representing you may be excused . . . .

Our family doesn't have baby years and little kid years and school years and teen years. Or rather, we do, but they all occur at the same time instead of in the nice organized increments everyone else does their best to get them. Where I live, it's Pregnant/Baby season for a lot longer than most of these climatological well-wishers have ever had it. My older children travel through their lives while I tag along, dragging the two youngest as well as I can. Pregnant/Baby season is always working to trump everything else that is going on. I can bust my tail trying to beat it, but I don't always beat it, and sometimes I feel so bad for that droopy old tail I don't even try to bust it.

Blessed as Pregnant/Baby season is, I'm no more keen on it from a certain perspective than all the people who gave it up after two or three weather cycles. When one lives in a temperate zone the end is always in sight; the seasons are manageable and kind of charming. But this zone I'm in just isn't temperate. It's all monsoons here, and I've been cowering in my hut for a lot longer than a lovely Midwest fall.

A really, really, really long time to cast away stones.