What's In Your Wagon?

This isn’t my story… it’s actually from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.  But I bet there isn't one of us who doesn't need to hear it.

There was a man who met God one day. God asked him to take a wagon with three rocks to the top of a tall mountain. The man, happy to be doing God’s will, set off pulling the wagon behind him.

As the man started up the base of the mountain, a friend asked if he would mind carrying a rock for him as well.  The man agreed, and piled the small stone on top of the other three in his wagon.

As the man went along, more and more people asked him to take their rocks with him.  Since his wagon was large and he was going to the top of the mountain anyway, he continued to load more rocks.  As the wagon got fuller, it became harder to pull.  As the incline of the mountain got steeper, some of the rocks started to tumble out.  The man scrambled to keep all of the rocks balanced in the wagon and bear the weight of the load.  Eventually, the man started to get weary and grew frustrated and resentful with the pile of rocks in his wagon.   Finally, in utter despair, the man thought about just giving up and letting the wagon roll back down the hill.

The man cried out angrily to God. “You gave me a job that is too hard for me,” the man sobbed.  “I can’t do this.  It’s not fair.”  God met the man and looked into his wagon.  As the man sat nearby broken and trembling, God removed the rocks one at a time until only the three stones God had given him were left.

“Let others shoulder their own belongings,” God said gently. “I know you were trying to help, but when you are weighted down with all these cares, you cannot do what I have asked of you”.

This isn’t my story.  But it is my story.

Sometimes carrying other people’s rocks is what God has called us to do.  And sometimes it isn’t.

What’s in your wagon?

Find the entire article here:

http://www.ucg.org/christian-living/wagon-rocks-0/

It's Beginning to Feel a Little Like Christmas...

Yes, ok, I concede; it clashes directly with my previous post.  But sorry cornucopias and pumpkins, as much as I fight for your right to be displayed in my home, you have to make a teeny bit of room for me to at least prepare for Christmas.  Because Christmas is a loud-mouthed high-maintenance child that refuses to go away and play quietly.

Christmas requires being proactive.  And I’m a pro at being active.

I have already been diligently working on my yearly endeavor of making what will ultimately be heaps of Christmas candy.  The present shopping is nearly done and I have started wrapping gifts.  (Ok, this is mainly because there is no more room to hide things in my closet and my winter boots are starting to whine and fuss).  There is a Christmas quilt on my bed.  (Ok, this is because Hannah wet all over my fall quilt so I just went ahead and changed it early).  The annual family Christmas pictures have been taken, cards are ordered, and I am almost finished writing my Christmas letter (post-date goal is December 1…stay tuned!)  We are headed to Branson this weekend to see the lights at Silver Dollar City for the first time ever (season tickets are fixing to expire).  And when I get back from that? 

*gasp*

Full-fledged decorating will start because Thanksgiving celebration is not at my house this year and by the time we get back from stuffing ourselves with dressing and pecan pie it will almost be December and I will not be left unprepared!

Sorry turkeys.  Don’t feel bad.  Two and a half weeks was a pretty good run.

Be Here Now

Be Here Now by Blaine Hogan

I don't normally watch videos that people post because I don't want to make the time.  I can't concentrate on them anyway because my mind is going in too many different directions trying to plan my day and accomplish as much as inhumanly possible.  So when I saw this post on a blog I enjoy reading, I almost just checked "mark as read" and went on with my evening.

But curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to give it 30 seconds.

I had 30 seconds to spare, right?  

I was intrigued enough to let it run a full minute.  And by that point, I could barely breathe.  My eyes swam and I sat uncharacteristically still as my constant need to DO collided with my guilt of never being able to simply BE.  I let it run the full 7 minutes and 30 seconds.  God was speaking and I was listening.

The video is me.  The video is many of us.

BE HERE NOW.

Do we even know how?

We had better learn.

HE IS HERE RIGHT NOW.

Are we?

http://vimeo.com/15715921

Holiday Decorating

Everywhere I look, people are excitedly gearing up to decorate for Christmas.  Me?  I have out my Thanksgiving decorations.  Yes, turkeys and pumpkins and leaf wreaths and cornucopias.  They follow my Halloween decorations, which are preceded by my Fourth of July decorations, my Easter decorations, my St. Patrick’s Day decorations, and my Valentine’s Day decorations.  And sure, also my large array of Christmas decorations.

Am I kidding? Certainly not.  The house undergoes a transformation seven months of the year.

As a child, I remember my mother decorating for all the holidays.  We had ceramic glitter-frosted bunny rabbits at Easter and little green leprechauns for St. Patrick ’s Day.  I’m sure we had Halloween decorations too, but I really only remember the scary backlit-with-a-flashlight gruesome mask carefully displayed in the closet under the stairs around Christmas time.  (That was the closet where the presents were hidden, and I was sent down there to get the wits scared out of me so I would never ever open that closet for any reason ever again.  I’m not sure I ever fully recovered from that…)

When I got married, I started accumulating my own collection of decorations from mail-order catalogues and gifts of homemade crafts from my mother.  It started out pretty simple; a bowl with hearts on it with only $5.99 shipping (Amazon Prime where were you, my beloved…), a Christmas quilt from my mom, some ceramic Halloween figurines that I painted quite handily using the enclosed directions.

But then the collection grew. I used my weird and archaic love of creating things with yarn and plastic canvas to make Kleenex box covers in every holiday design (not to mention refrigerator magnets and wall hangings as well).  My mother began making quilts in other holiday designs besides Christmas.  When we moved houses a few years ago, one of the considerations was whether there was adequate storage space for my many boxes of holiday decorations.

Still not kidding.

And now, the holiday decoration frenzy continues to grow.  Each child’s room has not only a homemade Christmas quilt (with coordinating pillow cases, window valances and wall hangings) but also a quilt set for Valentine’s Day, Easter, 4^th of July and Halloween.  I am working on additional Kleenex box covers for all rooms in all of the holiday designs.  (My sister-in-law declares we are the snottiest family she has ever seen.  She also thinks it’s odd that we have a trashcan in every room.  Well duh…it’s for all of the wadded up tissues after we blow our noses!)  Every birthday and Christmas I open more holiday decorations, some bought, many hand-made and painted by my mother.  And not dorky crafts.  Really cool creations like papier-mâché-coated milk jugs to make Jack-o-lantern faces.  Or an orange-painted accordion dryer hose wrapped into a circle to make a pumpkin. 

It’s a little strange.  It’s a little excessive.  And sometimes it’s a stressful pain to get it all out and put it all away month after month.  But it’s also something really fun my kids will remember and take with them when they leave my house.  Literally.  Those mounds of quilts are theirs to keep. 

I can just see their college dorm rooms now.

Mom's Dryer-Hose Pumpkin creation

Emily's Halloween Quilt

Holiday Kleenex Box covers

Musings on a Rainy Day

Rainy days are miserable when I have to go out shopping, when I am on vacation in Branson, out camping or when one of the kids has a field trip that is going to get cancelled.

Rainy days are wonderful when I can sleep late, stay in my jammies, quietly get caught up on some work and don’t have to go anywhere .

Today has been a wonderful rainy day.

My blog has been silent as of late.  It’s because I’ve been busy with other things.   But not the kind of stressful pull-my-hair-out-jump-off-a-cliff-I-want-to-die kind of busy.  Just productively, contentedly busy doing things that I love.

A welcome change.

Ever since I visited my friend Tracey a month ago, I’ve been comparing my life to hers.  Not in an envious way.  But in a let’s-learn-something-here way.  Unlike me, she doesn’t have a cell phone plastered to her side.  Unlike me, she doesn’t compulsively check email all the time.  Unlike me, she isn’t thinking constantly about ways to help mobilize an untold number of people on missionary journeys in 2012 and how to best train the ones under my specific care going to Malawi while telling my own kids to go watch another movie because I’m working.  But she’s busy in her own way.  She homeschools.  She sits on the floor for hours and plays with toys.  She has a brilliant child that has emotional needs I have never had to consider.  She has a husband with an insanely long commute that can sometimes have long hours.  She teaches dance.  She is first to volunteer when someone in her church or community has a need.  But she has this happiness, this peaceful calm about her.

It simultaneously makes me want to either sit at her feet or pull her hair out.

After a particularly rambly email to her describing one of my most busy days of late and my difficulty in slowing down enough to breathe, here is what she said back to me.

Did you make it through all your appointments for that busy day you told me about??  That was certainly a lot!  No wonder you feel drained sometimes.  I will be praying for your request that you can slow down and enjoy moments amidst all the busyness.  Sounds like you are looking for a state of peacefulness.  This is very much in the forefront of my brain right now after two separate experiences recently.  The first happened when I had my roommate from college over for a visit…She and I sat up talking until 1:30 in the morning.  A bunch of our discussion was about living in the present...not the past...beating ourselves up or wishing things had been different and not about always planning the future and wishing for more.  My friend had been reading a book about living in the NOW.  Taking in the truth of what is happening and enjoying it.  Or it if it's stressful, just dealing with that situation at that time and not fretting over what might be stressful later.  Then, I joined a mom's Bible study group and they/we were having a similar discussion about how women are just really good at getting worked up over situations that usually work themselves out...that we need to be seeking a Biblical definition of peace, not a worldly one which is the absence of conflict.  Anyway, sounds like that's what you are searching for too.  I'm so good at worrying about things that are not likely to happen; lots of what ifs... that I waste time and energy on instead of living now and having a sense of peacefulness that all is well now.  Anyway, that was a lot of words to say I'll be praying.

It was what I needed to hear, and so now it is confession time.

Hi, my name is Beth, and I am looking for a state of peacefulness.  I want to live in the present, in the NOW.  I want to quit letting the PAST define who I am.  I want to quit letting the FUTURE dictate my day.  I want God’s peace, which has nothing to do with conflict, but all about trusting in HIM to work through the difficulties as they come for my good.

And on this lazy, rainy day I know I am not the only one.

Zombies v/s Army Men with a bit of Lego Star Wars: Tyler Turns 12

I honestly thought we would be done with birthday parties by middle school…that the invite-everyone-from-your-whole-grade-and-go-to-Chuck-E-Cheese celebration would morph into a buddy-or-two stay-up-all-night sleepover deal or even a just-ask-for-a-wad-of-money-from-Mom-and-Dad-and-call-it-good. And I’m sure it will eventually. It’s headed that way. But I neglected to figure in that middle-ground. That year or two of ages that simply cannot quite let go of the party.

My Tyler turned 12 last week. I remember well the day he was born. I was a few days overdue and big as a barn. My mom came up and was determined to “walk” him out of me. And she did by bedtime. Tyler was born and I braced myself. I was famous for saying (and meaning) “All babies are ugly”. And when they handed him to me, I gasped in utter astonishment. “He’s not ugly!” And I meant it. I’m sure the nurse thought there was something inherently wrong with me.

And now he’s this big man-boy, 12 years old in middle school, growing in independence, with his own ideas and way of going about things.

Hence the party.

Tyler gets along with a wide variety of people at church and school, but he asked me to invite a core of friends that had a common interest. Or that he could boss around. Anyway, the agenda was clear and the requests were precise.

I want you to make me a Lego Star Wars cake, half chocolate with red icing and half white with blue icing. And then we are going to make a zombie/army man movie so I’ll need some face paint and fake blood and camouflage clothes and cardboard guns and black paper to decorate with.

Oh, and did I mention his friends, like him, all go to Shiloh Christian?

Awesome.

Jesus would totally have had a Lego Star Wars cake and made a zombie movie, right?

But it was so much fun. Really. The boys were all so cute all dressed up and posing for pictures. Tyler took charge and rallied them around and they really did shoot a movie. Afterward they came inside, ate cake and played some sort of horrible bloody shoot-em-up game on the PS3 that all the boys his age seem to be playing. I don’t think anyone wanted to go home.

I was afraid all the boys (and parents) might think having a party for a sixth grader was somehow a little ridiculous. But nobody seemed to feel that way. And my guess is we’re not done because at the very end, I heard one of them say…

Same place, same time next year…right?

Zombie v/s Army Men part 2. Oh yeah.

Letters to a Friend

In December of my fourth grade year, my family moved us from a suburb in Baltimore, Maryland to a tiny, backwards town in Arkansas.  I was fairly outgoing and popular back then, and left many friends behind.  But, as to be expected, because of time, distance and lifestyle (and the fact we were all 9 years old), I lost contact with all of them over a period of a few short months.

All of them save one.

My mom met Tracey’s mom when our family moved to Maryland six years prior and they became fast friends.  I was three, Tracey was two, my brother Scott was six months old and Tracey’s brother David would be born a year or so later.  Our moms did everything together, as did we kids.

After we left Maryland, our moms had me and Tracey write letters to each other.  They started out very simple and bland, something like this:

Dear Tracey, How are you doing?  I am fine.  The weather has been very hot.  School is fine.  I miss being there.  Love, Beth.

Two years after we moved, all I wanted for Christmas was to go back for a visit.  And so we did.  And Tracey and I, like our mothers, continued to write.  But of course by then, we were entering the junior high age where simply breathing becomes a major issue of angst.  Strangely, our letters had not changed much.

Dear Beth, How are you doing?  I am fine.  We had a Christmas bazaar at church and I got my parents an ornament for their present.  The weather is very cold and snowy.  Love, Tracey.

I realized I didn’t really know who Tracey was anymore.  We were worlds apart.  There came a time where I wanted to stop writing because I felt it was stupid and meaningless; but my mother insisted I continue anyway.  Apparently hers did the same.

So one day I wrote my standard letter on my standard matching stationery.  And then on a whim, I wrote another one on a piece of notebook paper and folded it up into an intricate little package.  I sent a classic junior high “note” with my letter, complete with classic junior high writing style.

Dear Tracey, We write notes like this at my school and fold them up so I wanted to write you one.  Maybe you can learn how to get it open and fold it back hahaha.  Lylas, (Love you like a sister) Beth

When Tracey’s standard letter came back to me, she had also included a note.  Her pretty matching-paper letter read the way it always did.  But the plain paper note went something like this:

Dear Beth, My mother doesn’t bother to open your notes so we can write whatever we want to.  She still reads over every letter I write so don’t ever put anything in that she can’t see.  She is getting on my nerves so badly and my dad is completely unreasonable… etc. etc.  Lylas, Tracey

And our relationship truly began.

Through our secret notes, we wrote through the good, the bad and the ugly; relationships or lack of them, school woes, ridiculous parental restrictions and rebellious moments.  Tracey and I were still writing when I went to college (but by then we are able to quit folding our letters up into little squares and triangles).  She flew down to be the maid of honor in my wedding in June 1995.  My parents and I drove up so I could be the matron of honor in her wedding in March 2001.  She and her husband drove through Arkansas on a vacation to see my family in July 2003.  Mom and I just flew up for her brother David’s wedding last weekend in October 2011.  And we are planning a summer road trip up there in a couple of years so my kids can see where I grew up, enjoy the sight of our nation’s capitol, and meet my childhood friend Tracey and her family.

Our letters have turned into infrequent yet long, rambling emails (save for the yearly Christmas and birthday cards or occasional “just because” notes that give us an excuse to mail pictures of our children). But the relationship lives on.  We are strangers in part because of time, distance and lifestyle…but that’s no different than my relationship with countless people right here in Northwest Arkansas.  We are the best of friends for the same reasons of time, distance and lifestyle…because we continue to reach out over the years with our worries, hardships, joys and victories.

If I knew I could only write one more letter to Tracey ever, it would read something like this:

Dear Tracey, I can’t believe we have made it for 34 years.  I remember swimming in your pool and thinking it was weird that you picked cherry tomatoes and ate them right off the vine.  I remember your mom cooking 4 different things for lunch every time we were over, because she always offered us 4 different choices and of course we all chose something different.  I remember bossing the boys around when we decided to play “house” or “school”.  I remember that you always chose a popsicle when I chose a fudgesicle.  I remember that you believed in Santa Clause long after I understood the reality of where Christmas presents did (or for a few years didn’t) come from.  I remember being so sad after we moved that I prayed to  God the world would end or I simply wouldn’t wake up…but I looked forward to your letters and relished that link to my past.  I remember the years you took piano but didn’t want to, and the years you took dance but your mom didn’t want you to.  I remember that your dad would only let you listen to the oldies radio station but that you would secretly listen to other stations when he wasn’t around.  I remember how relieved I was when I found out as far away as we were we were really alike in so many ways after all.  I remember how you were such a bleeding heart for animals that you took a stray cat off of my front porch in Arkansas and carried him all the way back to Maryland to live with you.  And I remember petting that cat just last weekend!  Thank you for the memories.  Thank you for being such a good friend.  For me, it’s the friendship of a lifetime.  Love you forever, Beth.

Beth and Tracey June 1995

Tracey and Beth March 2001

Tracey and Beth July 2003

Tracey and Beth October 2011