Seasons

Dear Friends,

Thanks for tuning in to read the sometimes silly and sometimes wonderful stories of our family. These are good, good days and I have enjoyed the process of recording them and sharing them with you.

I've decided that my blogging season is over for now and so I thought I'd let you know that this will be my last post until I figure out how to completely shut things down.

Having gotten into the habit of writing again (since having kids) I've decided that a private journal of thoughtful, impacting and personal content would probably be a more personally helpful process than sending punchy, watered-down thoughts out into the abyss of the web.

I'm also interested in pursuing some other meaningful activities (solitude/silence, art, reading, music, creative writing) in place of blogging and other time spent on the internet. All things virtual are starting to lose their lustre to me and I'm craving more 'real time' contact, more 'present' life. And, I think, for me, one of the ways I can do this is by limiting my computer time, by using it as a helpful tool and releasing it from being a time-eating, soul waster that can distract me from the kids, or Ben, or from other valuable living that I really crave right now.

I still like the internet and am very thankful for it, I just feel like it's time for me to withdraw myself for a while.

So, I'm a little sad to close up shop, but I'm hoping it will allow me to try some other things, explore some new places in myself and with others. Thanks for joining me on this journey!

Love,
Bonnie

Crazy Ol' Van

We have one seat left to fill in the van.

And it looks as though that seat will be filled late next February, as we are expecting a little Loveday package to arrive around then.

I have been very sick for the last couple of months - nausea and sick stomach, not to mention exhausted - so that might explain my recent posts lamenting how tired I'm always feeling! We are very excited, but the reality of pregnancy tends to be a bitter pill for me.

We knew we were not complete as a family of six and so have been awaiting the right time to welcome this baby into our family. We knew we didn't want this last little bean to be separated by too many years from all the other kids, so it seemed as good a time as any to invite him/her!

I'm excited about what lies ahead and I am thankful when I make it through another day without totally breaking down. Every once and a while a thought flashes through my mind, "Are you CRAZY?" And the answer is always, "Yes. I am crazily in love with each one of these kids. I'd like to give them a gift of one more sibling." I know that each life is of great worth and value to God and that He celebrates this child more than I do.

I've really been considering those verses in John "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms." I know that when I have faced challenges God has always been faithful to meet me there and give me the strength and courage I need, when I need it.

I believe it is true that we are not ever given more than we can bear, but I also believe that it can be next to impossible to bear our pains and questions without the help of a loving God, a God who has a house full of rooms, rooms waiting for each of us to enter and unload our burdens, our heaviness, our muck, our fears. He will even meet me here in the throes of pregnancy: tired, apathetic, sick and discouraged.

In spite of feeling crummy, I thank God for the opportunity to participate in the worthy and wonderful work of Mothering.

Art of Loving

Ben and I started reading "The Art of Loving" by Erich Fromm last night. This man offers some very powerful insights about love in this little classic. I find myself still chewing over passages, recognizing the wisdom in words like these:

"the essence of love is to 'labor' for something and 'to make something grow,' that love and labor are inseparable. One loves that for which one labors, and one labors for that which one loves."

Love is not a feeling. It is something I must do, it is a decision I must make, it is an effort of my will, and it is the only way to the Heart of God.

Love is something I seem to be fumbling and tripping through, perpetually mucking up the path beneath my feet, muddying myself and those around me. I am weak in the ways of love and too mightily steeped in the ways of self-love. This is not a clean, smooth journey. This has become evident to me in many different ways recently and I feel exhausted, low, tired, discouraged... yet quietly hopeful.

I experience God's love even now as I sit here with bits of broken heart clustered in a pool at my feet. But His love is not some sort of benign, fluffy, ethereal sort of thing. It is a ferocious, strong and divinely demanding love that will not be content to let me idle here where I am, but wants only to propel me forward into new vistas of real, giving, forgiving, and freer love.

Elisabeth Eliot, a missionary, wrote these words; words that I needed to hear today:

"The love of Jesus for his disciples was unsentimental. As a man, He fully entered into their experience of being men, with all the feelings that entails, yet his love for them was not a feeling. It was decisive, both as attitude and act. He honored their dignity as men by treating them with trust, speaking honestly and straightforwardly, never "tiptoeing" to spare their weaker feelings, never dissimulating. At times He hurt them in order to save them. There was no care for Himself in that kind of love. He had the courage to face their anger and misunderstanding."

So, I guess this means there is hope for me, that even in the midst of confusion God is sharpening and refining this weak little heart. I trust His process, even if I don't like it. I confess I have spent much of my life nursing my "weaker feelings". But really, my ego is not worth defending; I'm broken, hopeless, wrecked, full of every badness, but hopefully being restored by a God who loves me both tenderly and ferociously, in spite of what He sees in me.

Local Farmer

My friend Sue and I were talking yesterday about our participation in CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), which is a wonderful concept set up to help local farmer's distribute their fresh organic produce to paying members in town. Each member pays a lump sum up front, ensuring the farmer's income over the next four months and in return gets a weekly share of the crop yield, while also accepting the risks of a poor harvest, etc. It's a really, really great idea, that allows farmers to produce varied, organic crops, while cutting out any 'middle men'. This is the first year that both of our farmer's have undertaken this new challenge and so, as one might expect, a lot of learning is going on.

So far we have received some lovely produce (a lot of lettuce, snap peas, kale), but a lot of it is stuff I just don't use around our house (radishes, endives, other strange green things). I don't know if closer to fall there will be more produce that I'd make better use of... I don't really need the herbs that come, even though they're lovely, as I grow them all in my own garden. I do feel the money we spent was a lot for what we actually receive, considering what I actually end up using. I don't know if I just feel that, or if it's actually true. I know in a sense we're investing in so much more: sustaining our local environment, supporting a local farmer, etc.

These folks are working so hard to grow, harvest and sort and deliver this food that I hesitate to offer criticism, as this is really a work of love. I think what is most difficult is working with produce that I don't generally use and am not inspired to use, except out of guilt for fear of wasting anything! This is not a great motivator for me in the kitchen.

Has anyone else had experience with a CSA? What have you thought/learned? Would you do it again?

Screen Saver

I picked up Thoreau's "Walden" yesterday after having laid it down mid-read about a year ago. I lay on the couch at rest time and creaked open the covers eager for some witty and insightful inspiration. I read three full pages before I realized I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

My had brain turned on it's "screen saver" function and had just let me keep right on reading.

Duke woke up this morning at 5:23 because the dehumidifier in his room turned off and woke him up. He felt it was important to inform us of this and so woke us up at 5:24 a.m. to tell us.

Sleep is a very good thing that parents know so much - and yet so little - about.

So, in the spirit of "shootin' the breeze" and indulging the random thoughts of a sleep-deprived mind I thought I'd unload some of what I've been thinking about these days.

Blogging: Is it good? Is it evil? Is it for me? I love the blogs of strangers and friends that I can peek into at any given time and get a little taste of their life. I don't know why I like this so much, but basically it's just interesting. Often it makes me feel that I am not alone. The more widely I read though, I wonder if it's also not just fodder for all sorts of conflict and miscommunication and offense. Virtual reality can have the veneer of safety, but is it? I have really enjoyed writing little things down and this has been a lot of fun for me, I'm not sure if I would discipline myself to do this otherwise. So, yeah. I'm wondering about the benefits/costs of blogging... again.

Everything: I'm trying to figure out how to run a home, raise and teach the kids, carve out meaningful connection with friends/community, grow as an individual and still have some time left over to hang out with Ben, not to mention sleep! Ben and I played frisbee out on the street last night after the kids went to bed. It was really good to spend that time together.

Most daunting right now is household management: meals, cleaning, outdoor work, shopping/errands, fixing, laundry, etc. I find these things could easily consume all my time and some days they seem to, in spite of some good systems we've put in place. I don't want to spend all my time this way. I want to spend it with the children, with friends, in the creative process. I haven't picked a weed in the backyard gardens for months. It's an ugly, overgrown, allergic jungle back there.

I know that even in work there are opportunities to include the children and to expand my spiritual lungs, which I do. But, sometimes I just wonder if each kid only had two pairs of clothes maybe that would lighten our laundry load. Maybe if we didn't have so much stuff I wouldn't be constantly juggling it... except that now I need to find time to sort it and get rid of it!

Reading: The boys and I are going through a reading program that Teresa inspired me to try and they are really motived! Dory read his first word last night and could hardly contain his joy - he wanted to run out and tell everybody.

I'm reading lots and always searching for that next "perfect" book. I seem to read about eight books at a time, skipping from one to the other as the mood strikes. I'm reading one called "Not For Sale" about international slavery and all it's many guises. It's a tearful, terrible reminder that though slavery may have been abolished in the law it is thriving more than ever in reality. We're reading "Heidi" as a family at lunch time and it is a beautiful, beautiful story. I'm also reading one of Madeleine L'Engle's books (not "A Wrinkle it Time" maybe it's called "A Rip in the Galaxy"?), to Duke at bedtime. He saw it on the shelf and wanted me to read it to him in spite of the fact that it wasn't written for his age. He loves it though. It's very interesting, I have no idea what's going to happen. I've never read her fiction, but I have loved her non-fiction ("A Circle of Quiet", "The Irrational Season"). I remember reading in a C.S. Lewis biography Lewis recalling that his parents never forbade him from reading anything. They must have assumed he'd be drawn to better literature if given fewer reasons to to try to rebel by reading books that were forbidden. I'm still not sure what exactly I think of that; I do cringe to think of all the crap that gets published these days.

My brain is starting to pull that old screen-saver trick again, so I'd better obey and get off the computer. The kids are swarming out of rest time and I need to set up the little pool in the back.

Siesta

The smudge of July is upon us. Everything, even the grass seems to pulse lazily in a tired sort of sweat, awaiting the next fall of rain, the next popsicle, the next turn in the shower or sprinkler. I too, seem to be waiting for something, for an answer, for an impulse to move, for a motivation.

Instead I prefer chatting with people I run in to on the street, letting the time drip past us, knowing neither of us really feels much motivation to "get moving" today, that's why we linger, chatting. "Hey, they should bring that siesta concept north" we say to each other, as we both anticipate the nap we won't be getting later that day. A nap is the ultimate impossible luxury. Forget luxury vacations, cool cars, dates and dinners out - a nap is where it's at. Oh, to lie on my bed in the middle of the day and stare at the walls therein, dreaming about everything and nothing, holding a book in my hand in case I should require it, but mostly just noting the flute of the bird out my window and the rush of breeze past the curtains... and then to fall asleep for more than five minutes.

I awoke the other morning (not from a nap, but from my night's sleep) to Duke impatiently imploring me, two inches from my face, "Mom, when are we having another kid? We still have one more seat left in the van." He said this to me before I was even remotely awake. How does one answer such questions from a semi-zombie-like state? And yet, this July I feel foggy and out-of-touch and a little bit faded, like most of my t-shirts. There's the impression of color, but really I'm feeling sort of faded and grey, which is, incidentally, not at all how the children are feeling. Duke announced last night that he's planing to "get my Ph. D. so I can find cures for deadly diseases, so that people don't have to die anymore."

Oh Really?

How does a tired mother stand a chance when faced with such nobly motivated ambitions (from a five-year-old) in the middle of the July-smudge? What happened to just being a garbage-man?

It is too much for me. I have to get dinner on and uh... take out the garbage.

That nap will have to wait.

Iron Women

Last night I went to my friend's house (the one who gave me the running shoes), as she was hosting a group of women that are into running races, triathlons, cycling, and simply running for exercise. These women get together once a month to share their personal exercise/race journeys, ambitions, pains and frustrations.

So, being something of an athlete now with 6 whole weeks of lame jogging attempts under my belt, I thought that I would check out these other local runners and maybe learn a thing or ten. I got into the van, having just freshened up, only to find, halfway to Sue's house that the entire steering wheel was covered in pink slime (which Ben later informed me was the gum-juice that had drooled down from one-year-old Tobin's mouth when he had been playing in the van earlier that day.) Gross.

I did get there eventually, sticky fingers and all. The women were friendly and warm, although, as in any new encounter one can't help but feel like a ninth wheel for a while. I always feel shy in new situations, but slowly I eased into the lively conversation and the evening just flew by.

What a pack of women were gathered in that living room! It was so fun and inspiring to listen to the stories and the victories and the questions of each of these women as they unpacked their journeys with each other. Each woman has developed a real passion for physical activity, for tuning her body in to the remarkable benefits of an active life (better health, more energy, better attitude, setting new challenges, enjoying the freedom and the rush found in an active lifestyle).

There was so much laughter and encouragement passed between women, as all other concerns (family, vocation, life-stresses) were left at the door, in order to leave room to engage in time to talk about what it is to be a woman who is living in a body that wants to be alive and feel alive. Of course, there is a time for all those other things to be shared too, but this unique evening was meant for this topic alone. Each woman there plays many other roles, wears many other hats, but last night it was all about the shoes.

There were no power bars, power drinks or strange trail mix combinations at this affair. Instead, on the menu was tea, coffee, cookies, brownies and a nice fruit platter. This made me feel right at home. I can respect a woman who can enjoy her run and then enjoy her brownie too.

I was inspired by the training some do, by the way they push themselves into stressful and exhausting race or training situations that open them up to new vistas of self-mastery that were formerly unknown, untested, untried. I was inspired by the honesty, the fears, the discipline and the drive to partner with their bodies in a quest for greater freedom and vitality, instead of giving in to fears of aging, or the easy apathy of inactivity. But I was also inspired by how normal they were, how they too could be frustrated trying to fit in time for exercise, how their bodies where also sore and their minds sometimes seem to resist the challenges of exercise - no one had completely "arrived".

I used to love watching the Iron-man races on t.v. as a young teenager. The physical stamina and discipline exhibited by these athletes deeply inspired me. I always tinkered with the thought that one day I might like to indulge that part of me, although I never officially made it a goal for my life, because then I would actually have to do it, and that thought was always sort of deliciously terrifying. But, as I drove home last night, hands stuck to the wheel, I thought that next summer, maybe, just maybe I might sign up for a race.

Christine

This weekend we attended the wedding of Ben’s cousin Matt. The evening after the ceremony Ben was putting Dorian to bed when Dory asked, “Why was Christine dressed like that?”

Ben: What do you mean?

Dory: Why was she wearing one of those? (He points to a mosquito net-like canopy hanging in the bedroom).

Ben: Well, she was dressing up for the special day.

Dory: Oh.

A few minutes later, as Ben is preparing to leave the sleeping boy to his dreams he hears a slumbering Dorian whisper quietly to himself, “Christine… is… so… beautiful...” He then rolls over to sleep.

--

Today at lunch Dorian asked why Christine married Matt and not him. I said that they loved each other and wanted to share their lives with each other, and besides, she was much older than Dory.

Dory: Can Christine have two husbands, me and Matt?

Mom: No, only one husband and one wife.

Dory: Well, why did she choose Matt and not me?

Mom: She didn’t know you and she knows Matt and she loves him.

Dory: Yeah, but I love her. I wanted to marry her. And now I know I’ll never marry anyone else. What if the person I marry beats me up and has to go to jail? Then I’ll be alone again. (A few weeks ago we had discussed the reasons that people may have to go to jail. Spousal abuse had made it onto our list, although I had been assuming it would be the male doing the abusing.)

As sweetly comical as this conversation was, Dory was actually really sad that this love of his had slipped through his fingers just like that, without even consulting him. As we prayed together at bedtime tonight I asked God to look after his future wife and be growing within her a kind and gentle, loving and generous spirit. This seemed to soothe Dory’s broken little heart and he fell asleep quickly, as though a burden had been lifted.

Mountain Side

I love this quotation I read yesterday in Eugene Peterson's "The Way of Jesus". It made me think about the mountain I wake up and climb each day: What mountain is it? Am I accepting the stumbles and slow progress of this trek or merely holding my breath till I reach the top? I am inspired to live in the journey and not just fantasize about the peak.


"To live only for some future goals is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have the sides. It's the top that defines the sides."

-Robert Pirsig