Loss/gain

Addiction is a fascinating subject to me. How do people deal with pain? Do they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, cut themselves, find solace in other unhealthy things? I self-medicate in a lot of ways. I escape to check email or blogs, I push down feelings instead of accepting or dealing with them, I plan a night with a friend to escape loneliness, in short, I replace my losses with other things besides the Lord.

But here's the thing: earthly loss is heavenly gain.

What I lose here on earth, I gain in heaven.

If my wants are not fulfilled, if I lose a friend, if I miss my family, if I can't take one more day of disciplining five children, then my gain is running to the Lord, looking for His comfort and in the end my losses give me heavenly gain.

What do I love? What am I replacing my time with? What am I doing to make me feel in control?

It may shock us for the moment. We may feel hurt, outraged, desolate, helpless. That is our humanity. But the Lord can show us the "long view," the incalculable gain in spiritual and eternal terms, if we love Him above all. Everything that belongs to us belongs also to Him. Everything that belongs to Him belongs also to us. What, then, can we finally lose? If we lose not Christ Himself, we have finally lost nothing, for He is our treasure and He has our hearts.

~Elisabeth Elliot

Friday five

1. I installed the front facing infant seat for my baby in my car yesterday.

2. Did I say car seats almost send me to the loony bin?

3. I mean, I'm thankful for them and all, but they drive me b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

4. I said a swear word really loud when I was putting the new car seat in.

5. My daughter said--"did you just say "sit" mom?" Yes, darling, I did.

6. I am very particular about car seats.

7. I always buy a brand new one for my babies. I will reuse booster seats, but not infant seats. Don't know why.

8. I study the manual, fix the belts "just so", and don't like anyone else buckling my babies in.

9. Maybe that's why they drive me crazy.

10. Ok, so that is 10 things, not five things, about car seats. Congratulations for making it this far.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mama Monday

Today's Mama Monday is a well known mother in the blogosphere.

Surely, you must have read her at some point.

I have read her posts many-a-time, tears streaming down my face.

She writes words of beauty that seem to simply flow from her heart to her fingers,and onto her blog:

Holy Experience

She knows mama's hearts.

Ladies, I am honored to bring you Ann Voskamp:

Greatest thing about being a mom—

Love.

What would have ever taught me love like laying a vulnerable, curled human being into my arms and saying, "Here. Tend my lambs." I had known romantic love. But until that moment, I had never known primal, startling electrifying love. A love that would strip back everything, lay me bare and ashamed before myself and God, a love that would show me how little I knew about selfless, realest love.

Joy and pain are different arteries of but the same heart pumping love through our lives and these children have parented me into truest love. The kind that holds her tongue and dies to self and laughs out loud and rocks and rocks and rocks and listens to crazy boy dreams while washing the dishes and picks up the strewn shoes without saying a word and makes another meal and says yes to the glorious mess and holds on tight while letting go. Without a doubt, the six greatest days of my life were the days my skin gave way to the new skin of these half dozen.

The greatest of these really is love and they show me how everyday.

Hardest thing about being a mom—

That I am the mom. That I fail. That I'm in this skin with all of this sin and I can't snap my fingers and become the mom I want to be. The hardest thing about being a mom is that I am me and I get it wrong and the days I holler about having to pick up the strewn shoes and I do the day miserable and I am selfish and what I know in my head, may still leave my heart woefully impotent. I'm discovering that all my failures are a failure to love and that wounds these six that I love wildly.

Sometimes forgiving yourself is the hardest thing of all.

Isn't grace always the most beautiful thing? I never stop clinging to it. And I never get over it.

Favorite blogs/websites—

studyinbrown.com
writersalmanac.com
desiringgod.org


How do you find balance in your life—

Ah... can this be found? Or do we live in this teetering, tottering, perpetual state of seeking balance?
This is me --- seeking balance.

Intentionally, daily, actively fixing my eyes on Jesus, fixes everything. I reorient to what is eternal (not the mud in the mudroom) and I see what really matters (the priorities of things unseen.)

Living a life of prayer -- something I am very much still learning --- balances this fleeting life with all that is real reality and therein is balance. Because when we let go of our work to stop and pray, to hold on to God, we begin to see that we are but a vapor, our work not so important, and we die to the idol of self. And in the stopping to pray the hours, we exalt Him to His rightful place and give Him glory --- and everything again finds its rightful place.

I think this seeking of balance is why God asks us to pray without ceasing.

In that, there is equilibrium.

One word that describes you—

Seeker.

I am an insatiable seeker. Seeking for answers, seeking the right questions to find the right answers. Seeking for beauty and joy and more of Jesus. Seeking at why I stumble and why I fall and how to do it different tomorrow. Seeking the child wonder and the holy moment.


Favorite color--
Black.

It's simple. It goes with everything. It's an understated, quiet color. It reminds me of the simplicity of the Mennonites and Amish in our farming community here and it reflects my appreciation for all things Shaker.

It's the perfect backdrop for quilts of color, bouquets of flowers, kid's paintings... and the vibrancy of life, the shades of God.

And muted shades of green. Apparently God made the earth these hues of green because it is most calmest to the human eye. So the walls of our home are all these shades of very muted, quiet, earthy greens.

In terms of clothes -- yes, black: it simply makes things very simple. And that's me: plain Ann without the "e."

Hobbies/interests---

I guess I am a reader and I write and I snap a shutter. These are my hobbies.
But I am working at cultivating this abiding interest in laughing, letting go, laying back and enjoying. I'd like that to be what my children would say are my hobbies. I must keep remembering this.

I couldn't live without—

Keeping Company with Jesus.

The Farmer.

Gravel Roads and cornfields. (I tried living without them -- two years of university in metropolitan Toronto. Agoraphobia and anxiety just about killed me. Yep -- I need country and big open spaces.)

A camera and a pen. It's a real handicap -- I need a lens and ink to have seeing eyes, to discover what I think and feel, to understand the warp and bend of my life and the Hands holding it all.

And I am learning to live without babies. And this is hard. The very hardest.


What helps me through tough days---

I literally could not live without prayer. Without a means of communicating with Jesus... I would not be.

I have tough days. That are only tough days because my flesh is weak. I get overwhelmed and discouraged. I grow anxious and negative. I have to thrash for joy, wrestle God down and heave it out: "I won't let go until I can see how You've blessed me."

And talking aloud to Jesus, praying on the hour, retreating to a prayer bench or a peace retreat --- He is life to me in the very realest, most literal, of ways.

I need Jesus. Not only for eternal life. But, in the most literal sense, for this life. He resurrects me every day.


What the Lord has been speaking to you about lately—

He's been whispering it gently, to meditate on Him, and I am trying to slow and listen:

"Daughter... I manifest myself to you and I am here with you, the present, hidden God and if you pray for blessed eyes, you can see Me in this moment. Think on Me."

God has been talking to me about seeing Him in all things and meditating on Him in all the moments.

I can't stop thinking about this: "In his presence, a scroll of remembrance was written to record the names of those who feared him and always thought about the honor of his name." (Mal. 3:16)

Do always think about His name? Meditate upon Him, remember Him? God's writing a book of those who always think about Him --- and that is the only book writing that matters. My mind's thinking of something always, the things it loves --- am I thinking on Jesus?


What do you like best about yourself—

Ah. This. Ask me what I don't like about myself and let me wax on!

What I like best?

Perhaps... well, I don't know that I like it best because it too can be detrimental, but as a farmer's daughter, I was raised to work hard and this I can do. And do. Sometimes you need take your most difficult quality and make it into your strength, yes?


One book you would recommend to read--(besides the Bible)

John Bailie's Diary of Private Prayer

(Link: A Diary of Private Prayer)

If I could encourage a mother, I would say--

Pluck Feathers for Your Nest.

Just Guide Gently.

And Just for Today:
Live The Mother's 10 Point Manifesto for Joy

Thank you Ann! What a gift your words are today and every day to me personally and to all your readers.
Thank you for sharing the deep places of your heart with us.

Rainy Sunday

Sometimes, on a rainy Sunday

you have to skip

church potluck

and come home

eat leftover pizza for lunch

put a movie on for the kids

take a 2 hour nap with your husband

and serve frozen french fries and frozen chicken nuggets for dinner.

(on paper plates.)

I am......

1. radically cleaning out my closet
2. that means: giving things to Goodwill, selling things on ebay (yes I took that plunge!), paring down to essentials, only keeping things I really love...
3. re arranging my house--putting furniture in new places, really pondering how to have a "thoughtful home" full of things I really love, being thankful for enjoying my home.
4. cleaning out kid's clothes--giving away, paring down to what they will "really" wear, making inventory of what we have for winter gear...
5. give, give, giving STUFF away. Too much stuff.
6. Trying to be mindful of what I bring into my home. Do I really need it? Or is this an impulse buy? Or a "feel-good" buy?
I like Laurel's challenge:
"When you think you can't go another day without going to the store, go one more day. Some of my most creative meals have come from the times when I think "we have nothing in the house to eat". This week is a great example of that.
Last Sunday night, I thought that I HAD to go to the store on Monday. We only had 3 eggs in the house, no sandwich bread, almost no cheese, and were low on fruit.
Additionally, I was having friends over for various meals several times during the week. I decided to make myself wait until Wednesday to go to the store, and to get creative with what was already in the pantry and fridge/freezer. Wednesday came and I decided I could wait a few more days. Now it is Sunday afternoon, and I still haven't been to the grocery store this week."
Love that.
7. Thinking of buying "experiences" more instead of "things" : But will it make you happy?
8. Practicing contentment.
9. Savouring that Jesus is enough. How buying less can set you free
10. Thinking of doing a "buy nothing" month soon.

Girl. Friends.

I'm going to be very vulnerable here.

When you go through a tough time in your life, you really find out who your true friends are.

You go through the fire, and what comes out is either burned up or refined beautifully.

That's a hard lesson no matter what.

I have learned what true friendship is.

I consider it to be love in action.

Because.....love IS action. It's phone calls, cards, a surprise visit, a special lunch made for especially you for your birthday, it's thoughtful words, a phone call to encourage or offer help, it's pursuing one another, making the effort towards friendship. 

It's thinking of others before yourself.

It's stopping to talk with a hurting sister who calls when your house is bursting with craziness and your kids are yelling and your kitchen is a mess and you go and hide for 10 minutes to pray with her, away from the mess and noise, (or right in the middle of it) because she is deeply hurting and you sense it in the phone call and you want to minister to her because God says that's what we do--we are part of a body and we can't do it on our own. And so we help each other and encourage each other. 

And sometimes it takes going the extra EXTRA EXTRA mile and doing what you think you simply cannot.

Like when you think: I don't have time for this, but you do it anyway knowing that it is what the Lord would have you do.

Like my sweet friend who offered to bring my family dinner, when I was struggling in my life, and she had just had her fifth child a month before, and I said, "Girl, you are NOT bringing me a meal, you just had a baby!", but I treasure(d) that gesture deep, deep, in my heart and I knew she loved me, she really loved me as a friend and a sister of the Lord. 

And it's like a busy sister of the Lord who asks how she can pray for me and faithfully does, and remembers my requests and asks me how it is going. 

It's just opening your eyes and seeing the need and trying to encourage a sister in that need.

And it's this--Ann's words from this wonderful post:

"She’s a woman like Marlene who shows up unexpected in the middle of some crazy morning with a bouquet of yellow roses in hand and she says she believes in me and God and whatever is to come and she prays before she leaves. I dry her roses and this is what I will preserve, a friendship that gives like this because there’s no currency in the world that can buy you this and this is the only treasure worth storing up, love.

She’s a woman like Megan and I open a note from her and I laugh wonder when I find this picture of her holding a square of cardboard scrawled with the words, “Run the Race, friend!” and another picture too, her holding the back side of the cardboard and the words, “You can do it!”

And we can. We can do it.

We can believe that God alone is our security and love is always worth the risk and there is no better investment than reaching out to someone and locking arms and unlocking your heart. No better investment than finding the time for friendship and the courage to be real and the humility to say we’re sorry."

Want to make a promise of friendship?

Great reads

A smorgasbord of great reads around the web I've come across in recent weeks:

Homecoming comforts
The freedom of conscience
Forgiving again and again and again
Cruiser love affair
Good food, small budget
Good food, small budget, post 1b
That thing in my right hand

We are enjoying family and food and fun at the lake this week.

I hope you all are enjoying the last bits of summer!

image from here

Things I love about this photo:

1. my baby

2. the food stain on his shoulder

3. little hands grabbing onto the table

4. chipped fingernail polish on my daughters' fingers.

5. the fact that it is summer and we are outside

6. big blue eyes looking up at me

Happy weekend!!

the fifth of august

Tostados are one of our family staple dinners. Remind me and I'll show you how to make it with step by step pictures a la Pioneer Woman. Easy peasy!!

Making dinner for my family is one of my most favorite things to do.

Sure, by the end of the day, I'm tired, frazzled, and quite often feel like a martyr (all this work I do for them!), but there's nothing like sitting down all together, getting nourished by food and connection. It's the easiest way for me to make memories with my family. (and take-out pizza every Friday night helps break up the week!)

"Failing to notice a gift dishonors it, and deflects the love of the giver. That's what's wrong with living a careless life, storing up sorrow, waking up regretful, walking unaware. But to turn the gift in your hands, to say, this is wonderful and beautiful, this is a great gift--this honors the gift and the giver of it. .......Notice the gift. Be astonished at it. Be glad for it, care about it. Keep it in mind. This is the greatest gift a person can give in return.

'This is your work,' my friend told me, 'which is work of substance and prayer and mad attentiveness, which is the real deal, which is why we are here.' "

~ Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature

by Kathleen Dean Moore

Sabbath

Ain't nothin' cuter than a baby learning to walk in the grass, on a summer evening, with a saggy/soggy diaper.

Watermelon for the masses.....

Happy Sabbath.

Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud, killing the blues.

~Allison Krauss "Killing the Blues"