stories. life. yet.

But Mom, it’s so hard to write, said the small girl. My words come out wrong and my tongue gets all lost and I don’t know where I am.

Ah yes, said mom, I have the same problem. I don’t ever know where to begin.

But mom, said the small girl, you can tell stories.

Tell, yes, write, um, now that is a bit harder - mom sighed - I want to write stories that catch your heart, that jerk that tear from your eye that you tried to hold onto with everything in you. I don’t know how to do that.

But you can write silly poems! The small girl huffed.

I can write silly poems and I can see the God-stuff. But I want to write it too. The achingly bare skeletons of us that he clothes with hope and his glory which is just every breath that we breathe. For today. Those are the stories I want to write, about how we find him in the sink when we are washing up or the phone call we make or just the flight of a seagull as it wheels over us in a cloudy storm-grey sky. Somehow that stuff doesn’t make it into a story. It makes it into my blog. Along with purple bottomed frogs and little girls lost. Sometimes I feel like the small boy who is so very talented with his drawing but who cries because he cannot draw the real thing into life.

What am I good at? asks the small girl hopefully.

Science and life and dancing and reading. It takes all of those things to find out that actually it’s about who you are inside, not what you do on the outside, said mom.

I’m not good at sport and I am not good at homework and I am not good at friends. The small girl drooped.

Oh yes you are, my little chicken. You are alive and you give great hugs and you can do whatever you try, if you will just try. You’ve got the gift of people and being interested and curious. Many people don’t have that gift. Just beYOUtiful. People will see that in you.

The small girl picked up her book to escape for a while. Mom does the same thing. Someone else’s writing…

With the realization that yes, I am a storyteller. But the stories are not really mine but his, aching in me. They don’t come out in the shape I look for. They often come out with tears and upside down and even downside up. My daughter is a storyteller too. She just has not found out yet. It’s hard to ache when you don’t know why. Yet. It's almost harder to ache when you do know why. But it would be harder still NOT to ache. 

If you notice I have tears...

"Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next."

Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

I'll take it and hold it close today

Seems like Tuesdays are blogdays. And rainy days. The cats are fighting in the kitchen, the kids were grumping out the door on the way to school at 7am (they should have left at 6.50) and small boy had a melt down over his lunch box. Which is not where it should be so it's his problem. "Mom, you never do anything for me!" while he was standing in front of a pile of school lunch which he did not make in clothes that he did not pay for and with hair I just helped him slick back into a man-do. "I don't want to eat that stuff!" Aha. Then start eating other stuff, like ham, cheese, tomato on bread, jam... the world could be your sandwich if you would just eat it!

It's funny how I/we have the same thoughts and opinions in an adult version. Light bulb moment. When actually there is stuff that I/we need to do ourselves to set ourselves up for success. Take small girl, for example. She would have actually eaten breakfast if she had not been reading while getting dressed (which reminds me, the cat is probably nose deep in her bowl of uneaten oats... uno momento...)

OK, saved.

Shew. "My-world" moments. Had a tough one last night. Netball is not our friend right now. More girls = less games = not in A or B team or sometimes any team. Ouch. Gr 1-3 was fun, Grade 4 has been discriminatory and unfriendly because matches are not really friendly matches any more. And more kids means less personal input. Small girl wanted to quit, was fine for not being chosen for any teams and is glad it's raining today so there might not be practice. My long-legged loves-to-be-included girl. How to keep the flame of enjoyment alive when disillusion sets in?

I think it all comes back to identity. Actually, that's what God has been quietly pointing out every time I surface, look around, look within. Knowing who you are so you are rooted.

And, as Danny Silk spoke about on Sunday (what a fab meeting to be in - such solid teaching even if his examples were not 100% scientific - er hm, Adam!), it's also about community. Being linked into a network of your people. Who love you for you. Who you love. Those 30m high redwoods have a root system that goes only 2m deep, but kilometres wide. Interlacing with the redwoods next to them, and over the next ridge, and more and more and more.

#LoveGodLovePeople and #BeLovedByGodBeLovedByPeople. They're so intertwined.

Had a Pete Greig moment on Sunday evening: "God speaks to us more about the who than He does about the what, why and when of life." Who we are in His eyes. How precious, special, loved. How much He delights in our loving Him back.

In all the rush-out-the-door today, small boy still gave me a kiss. It's a precious kiss because it was a grumpy kiss. But it was a kiss for me. In all the morass of mornings and sticking up hair and lost lunchboxes, it said "I love you." I'll take it and hold it close today.

With hands and non-judgement and with faith and with prayer

It's kind of fab. I just re-read last week's post. Only to have an "aha" moment and realise that the guy who preached on Sunday spoke on Ecclesiastes (and I quoted it last week). So many things tie up in so very many ways. Divine connecting knots. I love the fun of discovering the connections and although I can't see the pattern or whole picture, I know that one day I will.

So, Tuesday morning blogging. Damp outside. Cold. Warm heart. Just had a quick mostly-work chat with a dear friend. Feeling richer for the moments we shared. Cup of coffee and slice of banana bread. Very rich.

This morning I watched a clip about Martyn Ashton. A guy who could do it all on a mountain bike, and then some, and then he crashed and became paralysed. Now he is back on a bike thanks to mates that believed, with him, that he could ride again. I shared the video on my FB page. It's worth watching. No legs, hectic downhill race.

So I don't have to be perfect. But I can still do the race. If I fall over, I have friends to put me back on the bike. I've had a few fall over moments recently. Thank you to those who help to put me back without just shouting corrections, but with hands and non-judgement and with faith and with prayer.

"Oh God, help me to be a friend who does the same. And a mom who doesn't just whack "issues" away, but sees and shapes the hearts of my children with kind but firm hands. As You do with me."

#TheRace

The value of a cucumber

To my dearest mommy friends, let me tell you about the value of having a cucumber in the veggie drawer in the fridge!

I woke up this morning with serious bags under my eyes and consulted Google (as one does, for everything from itches to how to stop yelling at your kids, and a few other unmentionable things which I must not share or that would be oversharing). And I learnt that I must cut out salt, alcohol, take care of allergies, remove my make up, try a Neti pot (what on earth is a Neti pot??) and stop drinking my dehydrating coffee. Nix on that one!

Oh, and I must start exercising. Which I do try to do. Bend, peg the clothes. Fetch a small child from school and circle the school 3 times looking for said small child. Push a heavily laden shopping trolley around PnP 3-4 times to find whatever is on sale that we need, and refuse the services of the car guard to load and go. Load the dishwasher. Travel around the house a million times a day to relocate items... I'm perhaps exaggerating and definitely digressing.

Cucumber! Not in the first 8 things Google listed, but an old and tried remedy. Remarkably cooling. Definite visible results. And when you are done, a healthy snack. Try it, all you moms out there. And grandparents (yes Dad, you too can try cucumber).

Now I am off to find my cup of rooibos tea for the morning in an attempt to rehydrate. Ugh. Yip, it's Tuesday.

Oh, this is meant to be a spiritual blog too. Nearly forgot in the quest for cooling cucumber. By the way, putting a cucumber behind your cat does NOT work in our house (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67WmZE4A_GI).

Ah, Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything. Today's aha moment is "there is a time to embrace and a time to refrain". So true with small people. And big ones too.

And with today being the secret ballot of (no)confidence in Mr JZ, there's also definitely a time to pray for our country and our drought. No rain, no cucumbers.

One of THOSE moments

Ha, so my challenge is to live in the moment. But what about when you have one of THOSE moments? You know, one of those PARENTING moments.

My small boy has taken to shouting at me. And when I asked him yesterday why he doesn't shout at his teacher, his confident reply (like "Duh, Mom") was "because you get into more trouble at school than you do at home if you shout at your teacher." Take that, parenting guru, aka Mom, aka me! Ouch.

I'm wondering how to up the ante at home now. Should it just be the wooden spoon, or can I come up with some sufficiently evil mom device to ram his shouting down his throat? I'm searching for some inspiration here. Huff.

On the other hand, I have skillz! Picking the small girl up yesterday meant going through school aftercare, where there was a soccer game on. And when a ball rolled in our direction, I neatly kicked it through my small boy's legs back to a couple of drop-jawed, wide-eyed boys who looked at Luke and said "Your mom's got skillz!" Mental mom high five. And of course, a chance to rub it in whenever I can. A mom's got to do what a mom's got to do and take every gap she gets to show she has skillz.

I feel taken for granted this morning. Got up, made lunches, cut hair, ironed small girls new uniform (arghghghgh - two shirts, a skirt and 2 pairs of socks were R700!!! No wonder I dreamt about paying bills all night), had to find lunchboxes, tidy kitchen and still get yelled at by small boy because, due to missing lunch box he left in the car, he didn't have a lunch box! Somehow that was my fault.

Now my nearest and dearest never takes me for granted (I'm smiling at the beautiful flowers I got this weekend, and sighing over the kiss and cup of coffee that woke me this morning from the paying bill dreams). But my smaller nearests and dearests are seriously making me want to whack them in the moment. How DO I teach them manners? Sometimes it feels like the courtesy of my man is just not rubbing off. Witness small boy shoving past his sister instead of standing back to let her get up. Or pushing past her to get to the bathroom first. Oi vey. Gentleman?

OK: need a prayer for today. Um. Dear Lord, help me to have manners too? And oh, help me to stop yelling as a default please!

#BeingReal#BeingInTheMoment#JustMom#FindingMe