Reactions to Sadness: May 25 - 31

I rejoice in your promise like one who finds great spoil. Great peace have they who love your law, and nothing can make them stumble. 
Ps. 119:161&165

Sadness. It stacks up in our Facebook feeds. It sours our stomachs at parties when we expected to be enjoying a cheeseburger. It lurks in plastic smiles and in rooms filled with bridesmaid tulle and hairspray and makeup.

It’s the canvas our lives often seem to be painted on: Sadness. Loss. Abandonment. Disappointment. Some smudges of joy might be there too, some brushstrokes of bliss and laughter and contentment. But behind it all, don’t you feel there’s a permanently sad backdrop?

When bad news piles up, it’s easy to think this way. Families aren’t just broken, they’re completely shattered. Lives aren’t just lost, they’re taken. Sometimes, all the worst things happen at once, on every side, crowding into the edges of my own ordinary days. So when God gives me a happy toddler in a baby pool in the green grass in the shadow of a gorgeous home in the cool afternoon breeze, but gives someone else an obituary and an autopsy report or a pile of divorce paperwork and a custody battle, how should I respond?

My initial reaction is gratitude. “Thank you, Lord, for sparing me that burden.” But I once heard Larissa Murphy speak, and she cautioned against this type of thinking. When Larissa was in her early twenties, her boyfriend of ten months was injured in a car accident and left with a permanent brain injury that affected speech and motor control. His survival was a miracle, but he would never be physically the same and would need years of treatment and therapy. The couple had already been pursuing engagement, and they continued to feel that God was drawing them toward marriage. So in spite of the accident, they married four years later.

Larissa often hears from women who tell her things like “Thank you for sharing your story! You’ve made me so grateful for the life God’s blessed me with!” She’s not as encouraged by these comments as the grateful women expect her to be. “Don’t use my life as a comparison checkpoint to make you glad yours isn’t as hard as mine. How will you feel if God does call you to carry a burden like this?”

So, gratefulness is not a sturdy enough reply to the collapses of lives around me.

Perhaps a little more helpful is an attitude of compassion. Can I ever guess the wounds that are oozing under the masks people wear? I see only a tiny corner of each life that intersects with mine. I can’t know the sadnesses that keep him up at night or drive her to silently cry in a bathroom stall in the middle of the workday. Maybe there’s nothing I can do for a heart so wounded. But maybe the humility of a genuine kindness would soften the ache just a bit. Or even drain some of the sadness away.

Most of all, though, when sorrow licks at my heels or drips out of other lives into mine, my response should be fervent prayer. What’s sparing me from funeral plans or legal proceedings or watching somebody walk down the wrong aisle except the mercy of God? Do I have any chance of avoiding the breakdowns of life without His help? When broken hearts crack right in front of me, the only one who can stitch them up is the Lord. So I pray those hearts into His hands, the same place I put my own heart if I want any hope of keeping it whole.

Sad news will always come. It might even come all the way up to my own doorstep. So I’m humbled this week. I’m grateful. I’m moved to greater compassion. And I’m driven to my knees.

Grateful this week for: 
shade
a day off
reading the face of a friend, not needing words
Roku with Pete
strawberry pie
raspberry milkshake
AAA
a chance at a free roof (more on that later this week!)
garden cuttings for the table
honeysuckle in the air
slowly swelling grapes
new shelves in my pantry closet
porch swing

MidWeek Mini: Cloth Diapering for Toddlers

Henry's been in cloth diapers since he was about 8 weeks old. To be fair, he never actually wore them full-time. I always used a combination of cloth and disposable, switching to disposable while the cloth were in the laundry cycle, and always using disposable overnight. He's 16 months old now (that's almost one-and-a-half, if you're trying to calculate), and we're still using BumGenius 4.0 about half the time. 

Since we're successfully cloth-diapering on a 30-lb pre-toddler, I thought it would be helpful to give some feedback on this stage, for those who might be jumping into cloth diapering for the first time, or who are a few steps behind us in the process and worried about losing heart.   

What makes cloth-diapering a toddler possible - at least for me - is using throwaway liners which go inside the cloth diaper to catch the solids. They're about $10 for 200, or a nickel each. (Disposable diapers are between 20 and 35 cents each.) It didn't matter when he was a tiny baby and was just producing that grainy breastmilk poop. At that point, I didn't even bother to rinse out the diaper. The whole thing just went right in the washer. But once he started on solid food, especially once he moved from baby food to actual table food, the diapers got a lot messier to manage.  

These liners are a lifesaver because I no longer have to carry a poop-filled diaper from the nursery to the bathroom, use a spatula to scrape poop off the diaper into the toilet, and then return to the nursery to put the diaper in my washing bag, all while managing to keep the child on the changing table and/or away from the soiled diaper. I just pull the liner out, poop and all, and toss the whole thing in the trash. The diapers are then much less messy when washing time comes. I use these liners.   

My part-time cloth-diaper routine is also a lifesaver. I could not do this if I had to keep the cloths in constant rotation. My routine usually goes like this: On Friday afternoon when I get home from work, I have the diapers clean and assembled and ready to go. I start using them then, and use them for the weekend. I have 12 and that is just about perfect for Friday evening, Saturday, and Sunday. Then I wash them, usually on Sunday night.

The entire wash process is long. I do a short (35 minute) cold cycle first, which is basically for rinsing. Then I do a long hot cycle (my machine calls it "Bright Whites"), and I add an extra rinse for a total time of 1 and a half hours. For both cycles, I use this detergent which you can find at WalMart. When they're done, I put the inserts in the dryer, and hang the covers on a drying rack. If I do this in the evening, they are dry by morning. Or I might run the wash overnight, then start the drying process when I get up in the morning and they're dry by the time I get home from work.

On most Mondays Henry goes to spend the morning with my mother-in-law, so I send disposable along with him while he's not at home and I get the cloth ones ready to start up that afternoon. Tuesday and Wednesday we're back to cloth diapers again and I usually get through most (maybe 10) of the 12 total diapers by Wednesday evening. Then I go back to disposables for a day or two, and get the cloth ones all washed and ready for the weekend again.

There are a LOT of opinions about how to wash cloth diapers. Stripping? Bleach? Vinegar? My BumGenius diapers are supposed to be washed only in BumGenius detergent. I confess that I do not buy the special detergent. I've gone with the simple wisdom from GroVia, a company that makes cloth diapers and also makes the disposable liners I use. Their recommendation is to keep the wash routine simple, use enough detergent, wash for a long enough time, and not add anything additional to the washer. The routine I describe has been effective in keeping my diapers clean. I do use bleach about once a month, since that is recommended by BumGenius for these diapers. And when possible, I let them dry in the sun, or lay out in the sun after drying. A good sun-bleach freshens them up.

From the start, one of my main considerations in choosing part-time cloth-diapering was saving money. Yes, it was also an environmental choice, and definitely a traditionalist choice, but primarily I was hoping to save some cash. The compromise we're using is definitely accomplishing that. A $25 box of diapers can go pretty fast. Using cloth part-time is a huge benefit. Surprisingly, I have not even seen any significant change in our water bill from the extra loads of laundry.

At this point, I'm planning on cloth-diapering all the way until Henry is potty-trained. We love our routine and love these diapers!

Please comment with any questions or with your cloth-diapering experience. 

Imperfect: May 18 - 24

Your compassion is great, O Lord; preserve my life according to your laws. 
Ps. 119:156

I don't tolerate mess. I can't abide disorder. I hate imperfection in its many forms and flatly refuse to allow any part of my life to fall into disarray.

But the week is hectic. The evenings are long and the dishes seem to multiply on the counter despite the endless scrubbing. The afternoon rainstorm floods the basement. I'm eating handfuls of chocolate chips because sometimes a girl just needs chocolate. The fridge is empty again and the husband and the toddler are hungry. The coffee is too strong. Or the coffee is all gone. The floor is dirty (dirty again already!?) and I'm 28 and still fighting zits. The naptimes don't coordinate with my plans. There are fruit flies all over the kitchen. I forgot deodorant and I stink. There's bad news about old friends. And I think my library books are overdue. We've spent months trying to sort out insurance money for a new roof, and we've gotten practically nowhere. My son has eczema and a heart murmur and a big swollen thigh where he got a shot this week. And when my husband turned the wrong stove knob and ended up cooking over a cold burner while a different burner glowed blue with flame, he was wrong when he said "You would never do something like that." I'd like him to be right because I'd like to be above mistakes. But I've actually done the same thing.

Water, being pumped out of the basement.

"I don't accept this," I say.

"This doesn't happen to me."

"I refuse!"

I stomp my feet and shake my fists and threaten to quit life if things don't get back to perfect.

But families will never stop disappointing. Cars and houses will never stop breaking. Rooms will never stop getting dirty. As long as I shovel those imperfections into pretty jars, screw the lids on tight and hope no one notices them in my perfect little life, I poison myself. Not with the stash of disappointments, but with the refusal to face them.

I don't accept this? Me, not tolerate mess and disorder?

But what about the One who actually is perfect?

The One whose nature can't abide a single flaw?

Does He tolerate this mess?

Praise the Lord that He does. And not just my messy house, but my messy heart. He not only tolerates it; He embraces it. He reaches toward broken lives. He sacrificed everything - and brought on himself every possible imperfection - in order to welcome the rotten and the stinky and the sloppy, the heartbroken and the broken-down.

If I'm the gold standard, what a sorry world this will be. If it's my approval that matters, I dare not even accept myself. Thankfully, the Lord doesn't measure me by the perfection of my home or even by the list of sins I've 'conquered.' It's not my job to clean up. He dips me in the grace of His son and He sees me as glowingly perfect, all blemishes bleached out.

So instead of faking the ideal life, I'll just tell you the truth: It's not perfect. But it turns out that it's ok.

Grateful this week for the imperfect things: 
sweaty armpits
fruit flies
wrinkled laundry
greasy hair
dead flowers
dust
crabby baby
meal prep mess
aching neck
insurance paperwork
acne
crumbs on the floor
crumbs on the counter
oversleeping
dry eyes
itchy skin
so-annoying senior class prank
unmade bed

MidWeek Mini: Desserts to Die(t) For

Desserts were the first food I ever made. Christmas cookies with my mom and sister every Black Friday since I can remember. Then, later, pecan pies for Thanksgiving when I was still young enough to need help chopping the pecans. Over time, I branched out into other pies, cobblers, cakes, frostings, cookies, and scones, and now the Desserts section of my recipe box is twice as fat as any other section.

A few years ago, my sister bought me 101 Desserts to Eat Before You Die(t) for my birthday. I treated it like a novel, reading the recipes with mounting excitement, turning to a new chapter with palpable anticipation. Some of the recipes were wildly intimidating (Orange Creme Caramel with a real whole vanilla bean? Classic Sponge complete with warnings about not using a wooden spoon?), but some were just difficult enough to tempt me. Valentine's Day this year was the perfect excuse to be brave and check one of the 101 off my list, so I let Peter pick which recipe to try: Devil's Food Cake with Strawberry Cream.

Everything went well - the from-scratch cake, the slicing of the cake into two layers, my first ganache, the strawberry cream - until it was time for the chocolate curls. That one-sentence instruction, "Using a knife at a 45-degree angle, form long, thin curls by pushing the knife through the chocolate," was an unsolvable riddle. No matter which way I held the knife or pushed it through the thin sheet of melted and chilled chocolate, I could not get curls to roll up. It was hopeless. I had to settle for chocolate shards instead. And ultimately, when I served it, at our Brothers and Sisters Valentine's Dinner, I found the cake a bit dry. I think I baked it a bit too long. Thank goodness for that strawberry cream in the middle!

Since the cake was mostly a success, I turned to 101 Desserts again a few weeks ago, when we were hosting Pete's dad and mom for dinner. I picked a dessert from the chapter called "Sweet, Creamy, and Sticky Delights." It was Fresh Fruit Pavlova.

A pavlova is a meringue topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Whipped cream is easy for me. Two cups of heavy cream, some powdered sugar, maybe a bit of vanilla extract. Hit it with an electric beater for a few minutes, and it's heaven. For the top I chopped up bananas, strawberries, and kiwis, and swapped blueberries for the traditional passion fruit pulp

But I'd never made a meringue before.

Even worse, I didn't even know if I liked meringue.

Meringue is mostly egg whites and sugar with a bit of cornstarch and vinegar. I followed the directions, and finally, as promised, the "soft peaks formed" and the meringue was "stiff and glossy." After baking and cooling, the meringue had a large crack across the top, but it was "pale and crisp." Perfect, according to the recipe.

After we had our dinner, I topped it with the cream and fruit, hoping for the best. I sliced it into big wedges, served it up, poured coffees, and then - finally - we tasted it.

Oh, wow. We fell hard for this dessert. Even Pete, who doesn't even like dessert, loved it. The meringue had a crispy shell and a soft, marshmallowy, ultra-sweet center. It was rich, but not sickeningly so, airy enough and fresh enough to keep from being heavy. A dessert that's 50% whipped cream? Count me in!

I am no kind of fancy chef. But making a pavlova sure made me feel like one. The leftover meringue even stayed crispy in the fridge!

And so, success. 101 Desserts, you've got me hooked. Two down. Ninety-nine more to go.

Household - and Heart - Management: May 11 - 17

Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever. 
Ps. 119:152

I'm home from school and Henry is down for his nap. It might be 12:30 or 1:15; his naps are a little more flexible these days depending on his morning. So my afternoons are flexible too. I'm at the table with my lunch of choice this week: grilled ham and swiss sandwich and crunchy green grapes. It's my little oasis before deciding how to spend nap time. Lately my life tasks are divided into two categories: things I can do when Henry is awake, and things I can't. I try to mentally pare my list down to things I can only do when he's sleeping.

Vacuum the floors upstairs? Nope. That will wake him. 
Start prepping for dinner? No, that's easy enough to do while he's awake. 
Put all that stuff away in the attic? No, those creaky stairs are right beside his room.
Cut some greens and blooms for a fresh bouquet? Nah, he'd love to run around outside with me. 
Fold the laundry? Oops. I already did that yesterday. 

And so I find, to my disappointment, that all those chores piling up are actually doable when Henry's awake. And that what I actually can't do while he's awake is the restful things: reading a book, paging through a magazine, working on a blog post, browsing the internet for recipes. So I push the chores off until later, grab a book, cozy up in the den and try not to feel guilty while I wait for my boy to wake up.

A schedule-lover since my earliest memories (I even made myself schedules for summer vacation as a little girl, hating the thought of completely unstructured time), I'm watching motherhood pull me away from my most ingrained tendencies. I still put all of Henry's toys in their baskets... most evenings. But sometimes there are wooden puzzle pieces under the couch cushions in the morning. I still list the week's meals on the marker board in the kitchen. But sometimes we just scramble up eggs for dinner instead. I still try to keep my house clean and the laundry washed and the closets organized. But occasionally I'll wonder when the last time was that I washed the towels or cleaned the toilets (ok, most of the time I can't remember when I last cleaned the toilets).

What I discover most immediately, when I'm wondering how I could have spent the last 25 minutes on pinterest, is that my default emotion is guilt. Self-bashing for shirking my duties. "Why weren't you washing those dishes? Aren't there clothes to fold? Didn't you notice the living room needs dusting?" And I don't think that household management should be driven by guilt. In fact, the only thing that should be driven by guilt is the eliminating of hateful attitudes and hurtful actions. Very little of my guilt is legitimate in that sense. I don't usually feel guilty about those things.

Duty rouses guilt. What the heart prioritizes, it is ashamed to neglect. Whatever's been made most important moves to the top of the to-do list and becomes a life-guiding task. The heart will be satisfied when those duties are completed and will wallow in discontent while they remain undone. So as I sit at the table feeling guilty about wasting an hour with a grilled cheese and Real Simple, I'm revealing my heart's truest priorities. I don't often feel guilty about avoiding people or justifying an angry comment. I feel guilty about avoiding a sinkful of dishes and defending an unvacuumed rug.

So instead of worrying so much about household management, maybe my time would be better spent in heart management, rewriting my priorities to align with what really matters. I've got plenty of afternoon naptimes to devote to cleaning up my list of most important duties. We all know I'm not getting much else done in those free times anyway.

Grateful this week for: 
crayons
direct deposit
This Old House
dirty baby feet
kettle corn
the smell of rain-soaked forest in the morning
baby nap on my lap
old buildings
grassy fields
Small Group
oatmeal pancakes
garden trowel
front row seats

Weak: May 4 - 10

You are righteous, Lord, and your laws are right. The statutes you have laid down are righteous; they are fully trustworthy.
Ps. 119:137-138

Some weeks whiz by in a blur. Others plod along for so long that you actually feel older by the end. This week was the plodding type.

Tuesday was our school's annual Serve-a-Thon in which the entire school body fans out over the local community, completing service projects along with teachers and parent volunteers. We went with Pete's homeroom class, the seventh grade, to a local camp grove to help with outdoor cleanup. It was tiring work, raking leaves that had piled up since October, matted down with earthworms and spiders, on a day with the highest pollen count of the spring. We scooped them onto big tarps, heaved the tarps into the back of a pickup truck, then watched the camp's grounds manager drive them off into the woods for dumping while we started on the next round of raking. Some of our students were excellent workers, barely stopping to take a break. Others were less accustomed to hard work and became easily exhausted. I tried to set a good example by avoiding the temptation to stand idle and lean on my rake when there was work to be done, but I'm embarrassed to admit how wearied I felt at the end of the day. Two days later I still ached from head to toe.

The hard work must have flipped the power button on my immune system because then I came down with a nasty cold and could barely keep my eyes open at work as the week ever so slowly dwindled down. I told my boss on Thursday, "Have a great weekend!" Oops.

Spending a day with kids who are still figuring out who they are led us to discuss our own seventh-grade selves on the drive home Tuesday afternoon. "Don't you think you're really the same person you were in seventh grade?" asked Pete. "Oh, I think I've matured quite a bit," I said. But as I thought back on my middle school career - the shifting friendships, the bitternesses I hoarded, the selfish motives behind every smile, the social tiers I constantly stacked and restacked in my mind - I blushed with the realization that much of that is still rooted in my heart. "As we grow up we just learn to hide our bad tendencies," Pete said. And I think he's right. In my heart, I'm not much different than I was fifteen years ago. A bit more mature, I hope. A bit more aware when I'm thinking or acting wrongly. But the tendrilling vines of the exact same faults still creep along the edges of my heart, thriving even when I think I've already uprooted them. Do they ever get completely yanked out?

While I was whining about my sore and achey body, macho husband moved right along to his next service project: our own front walkway. Thursday evening he dug out one of the edge beams, deepened the trench it rests in, and reset it. Love this tough man.

The weekend brought a long sweet rest after a long wearying week. We stayed up late on Friday, after a dinner with Pete's parents. Teriyaki chicken, curry couscous, salad, and a fancy fruit pavlova for dessert made our patio feel like a five-star restaurant. On Saturday's chilly morning we walked into town to have breakfast at a little cafe we'd never tried before. We were delighted with coffee, omelet, french toast, and silver dollar pancakes and walked home in a drizzly rain with full and happy tummies. With no agenda for the rest of the day, we let the hours roll past, unburdened by the stress of long lists. A big bowl of popcorn and an episode of PBS's Nature about Ireland's Shannon River lulled us to sleep at the close of the day. After church on Sunday, Pete and Henry surprised me with lunch at our local Italian restaurant. Henry was a gem, playing with straw wrappers while we waited for our food, sitting patiently on my lap for the entire meal, licking ketchup off fries, sharing bites of my cheesesteak, and smiling at passers-by. He went right to sleep for his nap when we got home while Pete and I sat on the floor in the den, windows open on both sides of the room, fresh spring air sighing through as he graded papers and I worked on this post. These are the days that give weekends a good reputation.

Since I'm finishing out today's post on Mother's Day, I'm thinking more than usual about my Mom and my Mom-in-Law and the way they help sustain our family. Both have very busy schedules, richly packed lives full of responsibilities and duties across many settings. Both have raised kids of their own and still have husbands who need them and homes to care for and aging parents who need attention. But both make time several days each week to help me. They watch Henry while I'm at work, making it possible for me to keep my job without placing Henry in expensive daycare. I'd rather not need help. I'd rather do it all myself - be a full-time mom, keep up my work at the school, manage the household, prepare three healthy meals a day, complete the occasional crafty project - and not need to rely on anybody else. But to keep my pride in check, God has given me a life that I can't juggle alone. I need help. And I could not do the life I'm doing without these two women. They remind me every single day that we are not meant to walk life alone, particularly not motherhood. I'm not always grateful. Often I'm so frazzled by everything I'm trying to keep afloat that I don't realize how much they're helping. But if I try to imagine walking this journey without them, I'm humbled to recognize the weight of what they do each week. They make my life possible.

Thank you, Moms. You model Christ's love and sacrifice consistently and faithfully. My whole family is blessed daily by your sweet love.

A year ago, Mother's Day, 2014. Henry's baptism day.

Grateful this week for:
bandaids
fresh breezes
sidewalks
Henry's "woofwoof"
a vase of garden greens
meuringe
whipped cream
a needed nap
local eateries
online library catalog