Deep Thought (not by Stuart Smalley)

I'm okay with my current size.  Yes, I'd like to take off another 10-15 pounds or so, but more for my own well-being than my appearance.  It's easy to allow one's self to be dissatisfied with a post-baby body.  It's hard to have a post-baby body.  Few women I know go back to their original size after a baby ... or two ... or three ... or five.  I don't!  My tummy will always be a bit poochy and my girls, well, my "girls" will never be the same after the nursing of five children.  The "maternal stores" will probably not disappear, and the stretch marks will always be there.  I managed somehow, probably by a lucky gene, to escape the scourge of varicose veins.  I do have one long shiny scar on my abdomen that, although it faded from red to pink to white, will not shrink, will never disappear.  That's okay with me. I've got five healthy kids to show for it.  And if I'm leading those five healthy kids through the grocery store, through the zoo, or on a walk, I'd hate for someone to think that I'm their hot college-age nanny.  So I'm okay with my body the way it is.  God used it to make my children and my children are my crown jewels.

7 Quick Takes Friday

1.  Dear Noah, it was soooo hard to watch you fall and hurt yourself last week.  You are six and a half and have just taken the training wheels off your bike.  You were riding downhill, doing well, and hit a lip in the cement that sent you over the handlebars onto the pavement.  I remember watching you go through the air as if in slow motion and watched your bike land on you.  I watched your helmet hit the pavement first and remember thanking God, in that split second, that I had insisted you wear the helmet.  Then your face hit and you were scraped so badly.  There was so much blood; your nose was bleeding from the inside and on the outside, your lip was bleeding, your forehead was scraped.  I picked you up and assessed your situation.  I could find nothing broken, nothing in need of stitches, so I carried you over to the park bench and held your head in my lap while you wailed in pain and humiliation.  I smoothed your hair, remembered how I had first noticed the dark spot of hair when you were two.  I noticed the way your hair lay over your forehead, the way your swelling nose was shaped, and the shape of your blue eyes and thought how very much you look like my six year old self.  You cried and I stroked your thin shoulders, ran my hands gently over your bruised chest to feel your ribs, and pushed gently on your tummy to see if you had any hard spots.  I checked your bleeding elbows, and used a straw to hold water and gently wash away the gravel and blood.  As you calmed down, I was reminded just how much I love you and just how much I hurt when you hurt.  You were a brave boy.  On to less serious things....

 2.  My sister-in-law came to our fourth of July festivities with these firecrackers in hand.  She bought them because they were funny.  Part of the idea makes me laugh--pride in the US and its military--and part makes me want to cry (I HATE war).

3.  This guy and his girlfriend came into the parking lot behind downtown Estes Park as we were setting up Teek for his first pictures.  They got it right away, that Teek was a Flat Stanley of sorts, and asked if he was our traveling gnome.  I said that he was, excited that someone else would recognize what we were doing without an explanation.  He said that we should take a picture of him on their car, and what a funny picture it makes!

4.  I spotted this window in downtown Estes Park.  Someone needs to add a sign that says, "WILL YOU MAKE UP YOUR MIND!?"

5.  It's summer time and therefore time for swimming lessons!  Our lessons are fairly inexpensive (though still costly when you add two sessions and four children) and are held at a local pool mid-morning.  It's nice because several of my girlfriends and I signed up for the same session, so it's a big gab-date daily for two weeks.  The downside is that although lessons take only an hour in the morning, they take up the whole morning.  We can't make other plans for that two weeks.  This is a mixed blessing.

 6.  My maternal grandpa died recently, and his funeral was June 8th.  As with any large family, it is difficult to assemble all the members.  But eight of the nine of us were able to come to Grandpa's funeral, and the one who wasn't had a really good excuse: he's on an aircraft carrier.  It was nice to have (almost) everyone together for a little while.  Because Grandpa lived a long life and because of all the scares with him over the last couple of years, his death wasn't a source of grief for most of us.  Please pray for his soul and for my grandma, who is still here.

7.  I bought THESE cups at Pier1 recently.  When we have a crowd at our home, as we often do, I pull out these glasses.  As my siblings and I were getting lunch (see #6), I pulled one down for my brother Eli and wrote #8 on it, because he's 8th of the 9 of us.  The others followed suit, and I got a laugh out of the glasses all grouped on the counter later.

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Deep Thoughts by Thomas à Kempis

Our bible study is reading Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.  One night, I was frustrated and stressed out.  I grabbed my book and headed for church ... at midnight.  I let myself in and sat with Christ, reading and meditating.  The chapter I read was Chapter 16 in Book One: On Bearing with the Defects of Others.

I want to state one thing right away.  I hate to think that I actually bear the faults of others because I have so many myself that others must bear.  I want whomever is reading this to understand that I share this chapter with humility, realizing that I have faults--many faults--that others bear patiently, for which I am very grateful and of which I am very aware (and some which I am unfortunately unaware).  But the night that I was sitting in church, I needed to read this chapter.  Christ was truly speaking to me through the words of this monk, this author.  

These are his words: (emphasis added by me)

  There will always be defects in ourselves or others which we cannot correct.  These we must simply tolerate until God in His goodness sees fit to change things.  After all, this may be the best possible way to prove our patience, without which our good qualities are not worth much.
  Nevertheless, you must pray earnestly that God in His mercy will help you to bear these impediments with patience.
  2.  If once or twice you have warned someone and that person does not comply, do not contend further with such a one, but leave all in the hands of God, that His will be done and that He be glorified in all His servants, for He knows well how to turn evil into good.
  Learn how to be patient in enduring the faults of others, remembering that you yourself have many which others have to put up with.  if you cannot make yourself be what you would like, how can you expect another to be as you would like?  We wish to see perfection in others, but do not correct our own faults.
  3.  We want to have others strictly reprimanded for their offenses, but we will not be reprimanded ourselves.  We are inclined to think the other person has too much liberty, but we ourselves will not put up with any restraint.  There must be rules for everyone else, but we must be given free rein.  It is seldom that we consider our neighbor equally with ourselves.
  If everyone was perfect, what would we have to endure for the love of God?
  4.  God wills us to learn to bear one another's burdens.  No one is without faults, no one without a cross, no one self-sufficient and no one wise enough all alone.  Therefore, we must support, comfort, and assist one another, instructing and admonishing one another in all charity.
  Adversity is the best test of virtue.  The occasions of sin do not weaken anyone; on the contrary, they show that person's true worth.

It was not that I needed a reminder that I also have faults.  I know this very well.  I didn't learn anything new from #2 or #3.  I do NOT feel that I should reprimand others at all, that others should be reprimanded, or that I should not.  I'm not under the illusion that I'm perfect or that I'm better than others.  Far from it.  When I read #3, I thought that I would like to be gently reprimanded for my faults.  If someone is willing to point out my mistakes/faults/sins with charity, then I have been given the opportunity to correct them.  I really mean that.

The parts that I put in bold and italic were what I needed to hear.  For many years, I have been bearing the burden of the disorder of another person.  This person cannot help the disorder that they have been given.  They cannot help how it affects me and how deeply it affects my life.  In fact, until recently, this person was more or less unaware of just how completely it affects me (I am not at liberty to be more specific because this person has requested privacy).  The distress was too much this particular night, and it's what landed me at church in prayer.  I was seeking the calm that can only be found by sitting with Jesus.

What God was telling me was that He wasn't allowing me to bear this burden without reason.  He had given me this burden to refine my spirit in His holy fire, to test me, to increase my patience, and to make me stronger.  What a revelation!

I shared what I had learned with the person whose disorder I bear.  I explained in detail how they had borne my own faults and how much I admired them for bearing my faults with humility and patience.  I said that I would do the same.  We talked for a long time.  We were both at peace.

Thank you, Brother à Kempis!

7 Quick Takes Friday

1.  The other night, I thought to myself, "Sometimes I wish we still had cable ... I miss watching Hoarding on AMC and Hoarding: Buried Alive on TLC.  It makes me want to clean, purge, purge, and clean."  After I contemplated this for a moment, I queued it on Netflix.  Seriously.

2.  Last night, I was talking to my friend Jane on the phone, asking her a question about a certain vacuum cleaner that she has and I was considering (When I was a teenager, I NEVER thought phone calls to friends would be made with the purpose of obtaining information about domestic housekeeping).  When I said that I was going to run errands late, she asked if she could come along and I thought, "perfect ... I'm grumpy and could use the company of a girlfriend."  So I picked her up at 9:45 p.m. and we stayed out waaaay too late at Super Target and Wal-Mart.  Household shopping is so much more fun with a girlfriend.  As a teenager, I also never thought I'd stay out til closing time with a girlfriend, buying groceries.

3.  I'm thinking about a post about the devil and his title The Great Accuser because I think this is the most successful way for him to tempt me.  So ... more later.

4.  I wonder sometimes why my life is so simple (see #3) when a short distance from us, people's things and live are being buried under the Missouri River in floods.  How scary.

5.  My kids have been fighting non-stop this summer.  They're driving me nuts.  During the school year, I met with my spiritual director and told him about how the kids start fighting in the van on the way home from school and I didn't know what to do.  He suggested that I pull over and pray with them when the fighting starts.  This is actually a very effective prayer.  But now the fights are so abundant and happen as soon as I leave the room/get in the shower/step outside to the garden/use the restroom that it's driving me crazy.  Yes, I still pray with them, but I'm up for suggestions from other moms.  The fights are not about anything important.  In fact, I think that they are mostly antagonizing one another and failing to control their tempers.  I can't tell anymore who started it and who needs to be punished and who owes who an apology.  Oh, and one just broke out while I was typing this paragraph.  And don't tell me to get off the computer and watch my kids more closely.  I already do that.  Pretty soon I'm going to need a straight jacket and a padded room.  (Wouldn't that be nice?)  Help me out here.

6.  On unopened (new) children's toys, I often see the warning: CHOKE HAZARD!  NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER THREE YEARS OF AGE!  Here's what I think they should replace it with: WARNING!  You will need superhuman strength and industrial tools to get this package open.

7.  Maria is finally walking.  She's sixteen months old, chubby, and cute.  I call her fatty because she's too little to understand and I think it's funny.  (This is my blog and nobody gets to tell me not to call her fatty.  Yes, I know better.  No, you probably don't understand my sense of humor.)  I love to squeeze her fat little thighs and her tummy and cuddle her and smell her hair and kiss her chubby little cheeks.  But she's WALKING!  Part of me is relieved and part of me is mourning the loss of her babyness.  *sigh*

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P.S. Please leave me a comment or two today.  My [five beautiful healthy and wonderful] kids are driving me closer and closer to  the nuthouse.  I could use the distraction.