Category Archives: Life Lessons

Be loved. Be strong. Just Be.

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IMG_6451I’ve been having a gradual epiphany of sorts. I know the words ‘gradual’ and ‘epiphany’ are sort of oxy-moron’s but it’s been a thought gathering strength over time. The thought ended with me staring straight into the Beatitudes in the Bible, Matthew 5.  The words Jesus said,

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I realize that each of us is on a different spiritual journey. Some live their faith out loud for all to see. Some live their faith quietly, shyly, but very, very strongly.  Those who live their lives the loudest with the most notoriety and attention are not always those living the Beatitudes the loudest.

Celebrate yourself, in your little corner of your world. Celebrate that you are living the way Jesus called you, in your own way, with your own voice.  Your voice is strength in His ears. Your joy in serving Jesus in whatever way you know how is His joy.

Be loved.  Be strong.  Just Be.

Setting Up and Stepping Back

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What happens when we set up a moment and step back and watch…

We took the girls on a walk around Notre Dame last Friday night. It was not a game weekend, so it was eerily quiet on campus, the moon was shining, the breeze was cool and everything just seemed right in the air.

I don’t think any of the girls have ever been in the Sacred Heart Basilica before. The doors were open, so we walked in. A bride and groom were just gathering in the back for a wedding rehearsal  –the wedding coordinator gave us a stern look over her glasses, but no one stopped us so we went in and grabbed a pew.

As parents, we have learned that we can’t always control what our kids retain when we try to teach them, but we have also learned that part of our responsibility as parents is setting up moments as best we can in order to help our kids receive a “moment.” After the “set up” we know our job is also to “step back” and watch as they learn something on their own.

We hope and pray that our girls will get a glimpse of holiness, of Jesus, of their Heavenly Father…and sometimes everything just snaps into place and there He is in all his glory, revealing himself to our children in a way only He could.

Friday night was one of those nights. Our girls were enraptured by the sense of wonder and holiness that comes by standing in front of a place like the Grotto at Notre Dame, seeing all those candles lit, representing prayers lifted to Heaven.

Isabelle is just eight years old, but she had a very special moment with Jesus I thought I’d share with you.

At her school, one of the rewards for especially good behavior is a purple “Live Strong” bracelet.  She was able to get two of these in the first few weeks of school, which is a pretty big deal when you’re in second grade.  She was devistated when she lost one on Thursday. She came home crying and crying, so very sad that it was gone.  She is a very tender hearted kid, and it’s hard to console her when something is just “gone” and can’t be replaced.

On Friday when we walked past the “Touchdown Jesus” muriel on the Notre Dame campus, Belle said that she “felt God move around in her heart in a special way”. Then, when we walked in the Sacred Heart Basicilla, she wanted to go over by herself on a pew to pray. She came back over to us with teary eyes, just pouring her heart out to Jesus, in awe of the beauty of that place.

When we walked over to the Grotto, she said that she wanted  a few minutes to pray. She knelt down, closed her eyes, and when she opened her eyes,  A PURPLE BRACELET WAS ON THE FENCE POST RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER!  She could not believe it. The bracelet was almost identical to the one she had lost. She wasn’t ecstatic or anything, just happy. “Look at what God gave to me”, she said with such simple child-like faith.

There was no doubt in her mind God put that bracelet there, just for her.

Moms and Dads can set up moments to teach their kids about the holiness of God, but when we step back, we stand amazed at what God does to teach our children about Himself.

I am in awe. And more in love with my Heavenly Father than ever.

Do I Need To Pull This Car Over?

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I have a question to ask.  How many of you had parents that said to you, while you were riding in the back seat of their station wagon, “Do I need to pull this car over?  Because you do not want me to pull this car over.”  My parents did!  I have used this same technique, much to my own horror, but found it extremely effective about twice.

Well, imagine you are all in the back seat of a station wagon right now, and I am in the drivers seat.  I see most of you behaving so nicely, sitting on your hands even, trying your very best to be good and do right.  But…there are SOME of you, who are doing other things. We’re pulling over, and I’m calling a time-out.

For starters, I know I have a lot of opinions about stuff.  I am always hesitant to share them in a public way for fear of imposing on other people’s opinions, angering them, making them uncomfortable, etc.  My biggest fear in expressing my rather strong opinions is that I would come across as high and mighty, or leave the impression that I have arrived at a place of perfection that I can only look down from.  The truth is that I struggle daily with a sense of self-worth, hoping that I am doing a good job as a wife, mom, and a friend.  I make mistakes all the time, usually pretty selfish ones, putting my own needs and wants above others.

But for today, I cautiously step out and share a few opinions about faith and family that might help someone somewhere.  If not, I know it will help me just to get the words on a page so I don’t explode with exclamation points and italics print all over the next person I see…

My Opinion on Parenting Young Children:

You are in charge.  Your baby isn’t.  Your toddler isn’t.  You are.  You are the parent for a reason.  You have a lifetime of experience behind you that helps you make wise decisions for your family and your precious children.  Your feelings are important.  Listen to your gut.  Your baby and/or toddler will cry and scream to get out of bed, eat waffles with maple syrup for every meal, and hit and bite you and others to get their way.  All of these things are primal and instinctual.  Your child wants to get their way.  It’s natural and it’s normal.  Sometimes when they’re little, it’s really cute; However, if you coddle them and tell them they CAN eat waffles and maple syrup for every meal, get out of bed whenever they want, hit and bite whomever they please, they will become exactly what their instinct tells them they need to become–self serving, self-centered, tyranical little people.

When these babies and toddlers get just a little older, some will become bus bullies, shoving smaller kids out of their way to get their own seat.  Others will become playground tyrants, bossing their minions around.  Some will become cleverly disguised little passive-aggresive girls or boys who look plesant on the outside while secretly plotting to do whatever it takes to keep the world spinning around them.  They plot ways to keep you, their parent, catering to their every whim. They say what will please you so they can keep calculating their next move to keep you distracted from their self-centered and increasingly destructive behavior.

Bottom line: “Kids these days” (and yes, I am horrified by my own use of that phrase) get a trophy for just showing up at a sport.  They are given a black belt for karate on their second lesson.  No one loses, no one is disciplined or corrected.  If a child  has never earned a “win”, they lose sight of what goals and dreams are like, and everything begins to revolve around them.  If a child has rarely been redirected  when their sweet little wills began to wander, don’t be surprised when you wake up one morning to find an eye-rolling, door-slamming teenager in your house.

I humbly, and I really mean humbly–advise you to take control now.  I’m not talking about spanking or not spanking, grounding or punishing…I’m talking about daily involvement in the little choices your precious child is making.  It’s the little things we turn away from because they are too hard to deal with in the moment that slowly progress to real problem issues that quickly get way past our own ability to control.

I know I am not too far off base and I look at Eli, a temple priest in the Bible.  He was given the enormous responsibility of raising Samuel, God’s chosen instrument to bring his grace to His people at the time.  He poured his life into his ministry and into raising Samuel.  BUT, he turned away from what was closest to his home and to his heart–the sin of his own children.  The Bible literally says,

“ And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them. 2 Samuel 3:11-13

It’s time to pull the station wagon over friends.  Eli kept driving, eyes averted from the rearview mirror.  The cost of this was tragic.  We don’t know exactly when his sons began to disobey and act shamefully.  My guess is that they didn’t start robbing the church or sleeping with prostitutes when they were 3 or 4.  It probably started with minor issues, like Eli caving in every time they asked for waffles and maple syrup, or ignoring the fact that they got out of bed for the thousandth time at night when they should have been sleeping…It’s these little things that turn into big things.  He didn’t pull the station wagon over. Not once, not ever.

If you cannot control your child’s behavior with simple redirection and discussion, ask for help! Rob and I have spent countless hours with friends just a few steps ahead of us, begging for ideas and tools that would help motivate our children toward better behavior.  When it comes to our parenting, my hope and prayer is that we will never be too proud to ask for help.

 

A Funny Thing Happened to Me On My Way To Get New Glasses…

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I got new glasses yesterday.  I don’t have a really big prescription, but things were getting fuzzy whenever I’d read or write on my computer…plus, both pairs of glasses I bough at what I will refer to as “The Cheap-o Glasses place” broke within a few months of getting them.  I super glued one pair so they would not fold in without cracking in half,and they held together for awhile.  When the lenses started popping out of my other pair of Cheap-O glasses, I caved and set up an appointment a “More Expensive”  glasses store.

After they checked my old, barely held together glasses for the prescription, the lady came back in and said, “Um…do you realize that your two pairs of glasses are different?”  She went on to say that “The left and right lenses of the second pair of glasses had been put in incorrectly.  My right eye had been seeing what my left was supposed to, and vice-versa.”  For real.  For an ENTIRE YEAR my eyes were unfocused. And I didn’t notice.

What I did notice was that I have been having a hard time both reading and writing, but seriously considered that I must have ADD or something because I could not focus on what I was trying to focus on.

Is there a lesson to be learned here?  I’d like to think so!

  1. Don’t fall for the talking glasses commercial and go to the Cheap-o Glasses Place.
  2. There might be an actual reason for your focus problem. Someone smarter than you needs to help you see.
  3. Stay humble.  And have a good sense of humor.  :)

Missional Family

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“Missional” is a fairly new term that has been thrown around in Christian circles for the past few years.  If you understand what Missional is, you’ll know what I’m talking about, but if you have no clue what Missional means, here goes: “Missional living” is a Christian term that describes a missionary lifestyle; adopting the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others with thegospel message. That definition is from Wikipedia.  Here’s how we’re living it out around our house:

We love Jesus.  We know He has enormous love for us and the people He sends our way every day.  We are intentional about being God’s representitives of His love wherever we are.  At this phase of my life, I’m not travelling a lot to places like Africa, India, Mexico, etc. to spread God’s love.  But I am travelling to my kitchen, and my living room, and my back yard.  Here’s why:

We’ve made our home a Missional Outpost.  We pray that every person that comes through our doors will know and understand the love of Jesus because of the love we have for one another and the love we share with them.  The other day we had a new little friend over who was not following the rules and called one child a bad name.  I gently pulled her aside, looked into her precious round blue eyes and said, “Sweetheart, this is a house of love. We don’t call eachother bad names here.”  Another little guy that is always over here piped in and said, “She’s right! We love people here!” It made me so happy to hear him say that.

Here are some of the very easy and practical things we do to make our home “Missional”:

  •  We have an open door policy.  Any kid can come over to our house.  Good kids.  Bad kids.  We take them all.
  • Everyone follows the rules.  We are a house of love, so no name calling, fighting, stealing, or back talking.
  • Everyone helps each other.  If a kid eats over for dinner, they help out.  They are usually the ones more eager to help than my own children.
  • We talk. We swap stories at the dinner table about our day. Each kid shares at least one “high” and one “low” from their day.  Once everyone has shared one story, the talkers can have their turn to share more.
  • We pray. We pray before we eat dinner, or before the kids go to bed at a sleep over.  Not once has a guest been freaked out by this.  They love it. The past few nights one of our regular “guests” could not wait to ask if he could pray.

Our little buddy found his way to Jesus at our dinner table.  Missional living is not difficult. We love and serve Jesus as a family, and we just ask others to join in along the way.

I’d love to hear your Missional Living stories!  I bet you are already doing it and don’t even know it.  :)

 

Chicago Ice Skating

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Two weekends ago we loaded up the family and headed to Chicago for our 2nd Instagram meet up. (Where you go and hang out with other crazy people who like to take pictures on their iPhones). We met at Millenium Park for some fabulous ice skating (I only fell once!).  It was great fun.  Rob, being the true gentleman that he is, dropped us off so we didn’t have to walk so far once he found a parking spot.  He came back in a bit to join us, saying that he found a great spot.  We skated awhile, had a great time, then went to get some dinner.  We were freezing cold, but were having a great time.  After dinner, Rob went to put a little more money in the meter since our time was almost up.

A few minutes later while the girls and I were admiring Luminous Field, he called and said our van had been towed. My cell phone battery was almost dead, and I told him to stop kidding me.  He apparently wasn’t, so he said he’d call once he found where they’d towed our van.  Then my cell phone died.  For real. I had no idea where to find him. The girls and I started walking toward where we had originally parked, by this time we were really, really cold. We snuck into a parking garage to get out of the cold for a minute. Impulsively, I prayed out loud that Jesus wold help us find Daddy and he’d know where we were.  The people around us looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care.  :)

After a few minutes of waiting, I took the cell phone in my hands and prayed that Jesus would do a miracle and let my phone turn on.  It did. The phone rang, and it was Rob saying he was just a block away after paying an enormous towing  bill to get our van out.

It’s times like those that I know God is smiling, knowing that it was a tough lesson, but the girls got to see His hand at work, making sure they were safe.  It’s little miracles like a cell phone battery coming back to life that we celebrate in our family as “God at Work,” and don’t pass them off as coincidences.

I’d love to hear your “God at Work” stories! Please share one in the comments…we’d all love to hear!

Timeless Gifts…Or Seasonal Dish Towels (?)

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For the December issue of Family magazine, I wrote about a few traditions Rob and I share as a family at Christmastime. Warning…it gets a little mushy. Enjoy!

Timeless Gifts

…OR Seasonal Dish Towels

Everyone has someone on their Christmas list who has everything they could ever possibly need or want. Maybe their Christmas wish list is so extravagant you know you could never possibly afford to buy them a pony, a new iPhone 4S and the new flat screen TV they have been leaving you hints about – hints taped as notes to the flickering TV you inherited from your in-laws newly refurbished basement.

Everyone knows someone it’s impossible to shop for. My husband’s arms are too long. Well, they are just right for him, but they are too long for any shirt that I have ever bought him. I really can’t buy him clothes. He returns them. Always. Then instead he buys himself a do-it-yourself soda pop maker with 17 varieties of pop you can make yourself.

My mother-in-law sees my need for domestic assistance whenever she comes for a visit, so I get an annual array of festive dish towels for our kitchen. My father-in-law has received about a thousand golf balls over the years, with socks to match.

After the thousandth golf ball purchase, Rob and I stepped back to think for a minute. While on the golfing green, did he feel our love for him radiating from the golden glow of the golf ball as it captured the light of the sunset? Did he feel the warmth we have for him as he snuggled into his new argyle socks? We had to admit to ourselves that he probably didn’t.

We decided to make gift giving personal. We gathered all of the pictures we could find from Rob’s childhood and pieced together a three minute DVD video. The song we chose to go with the photos was “You Are My Sunshine.” Rob’s mom used to sing that to him when he was little.

I was 9 months pregnant with our third daughter at the time, so the family graciously offered to visit our way instead of us having to trudge to Chicago, hopefully avoiding a “No room at the Inn, birth-by-stable situation.”

None of us will ever forget the look of astonishment on Mom and Dad’s faces when we started the DVD for them. They wept, they cried, they sobbed uncontrollably – major score for us and our talent for gift giving. Now, I don’t think they have watched that video since because they can’t quite figure out how to use the DVD menu, but I am sure it is locked away in their memory as the best gift they have ever received (aside from the argyle socks, of course).

That same year, I uploaded, edited and scrapbooked the twenty or so pictures we used in the video for them, so they would have easy access to the pictures and memories if they couldn’t figure out the DVD. They cried at this, too, which led to me spraining my arm from patting myself on the back.

We have really tried to be unconventional in our gift giving. A special tradition between Rob and me is the annual “Christmas Letter.” No, we don’t send it out to a 150 people from our address book. We send one to each other. We began the tradition in 1994, our first Christmas together. The letters are usually pretty mushy. Here are a few bits and pieces from our 18 years together so far. (Warning, serious mush.)

1994

Rob, you are a dreamer. Your dreams inspire me to live life wildly and freely. You have magic inside of you that draws the magic out of me. You inspire me to live radically and on the edge. What more could I ever ask for in a husband …

1997

Michelle, I want to help make your dreams a reality. I want to tell you the truth even when it’s hard. I want to build our family together. I want to always be inseparable. I want to be faithful to you in word, thought, and deed.

We had a lot of time for mush in our five years of marriage before babies. The letters from then till now all have a pervading theme of tiredness, but lots of love and great memories.

1998

Little did we know Christmas last year what would lay ahead of us. We didn’t know we could be stretched so much, hurt so much, or how tired a person could possibly be. Little did we know our hearts would be completely transformed as we watched our precious baby girl be born and turn into a great big smiley face right before our eyes.

And more recently, as we have seen our family develop its own little personality with all the quirks and kinks, uniqueness and joy.

2008

We see our three little girls growing into young women before our eyes. It is a wonderful thing, and suddenly I feel like we are in a new phase with them. No more baby stuff. They can walk on their own, get dressed on their own, I feel like my hands are free for the first time in 10 years!

With this new phase come new blessings and new problems. I’m sure we will learn more than we ever thought possible about raising three young ladies.

It means so much for us to read back through these old letters and reminisce about our lives together way back then up till the present. Quite honestly, I will treasure these letters more than any material gift, except maybe an iPhone 4s, but it’s a close call.

It is easier than ever to throw together a timeless gift that the special people in your life will treasure.  Here are just a few ideas to get you started:

DVD that will inspire elderly family members.

If you don’t know how, ask someone under 18. They could probably teach you in fifty seconds.

Make scrapbooks out of old photos.

Stores like Hobby Lobby are full of scrapbook materials, and there are endless websites that will help you get lots of ideas for really neat scrapbook pages.

Write meaningful letters that are timeless.

Print them on fancy paper and keep them in a special folder. Maybe even handwrite them in cursive, although now that Indiana doesn’t require kids to learn cursive anymore, they might not be able to read it fifty years from now. Maybe add a sidebar translation with block letters and all caps.

Have fun this Christmas. Be creative, thoughtful and timeless with your gifts. You and your loved ones will be so, so glad you did

R.I.P. Good Buddy

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Our buddy got tired. This isn’t a really great picture, but I took it last Friday night when we were having our regular Friday pizza/movie night.  I thought Winston looked so cute, but so worn out.  He would have turned 14 on November 6.

Yesterday while we were sleeping, he kept on coming into our room, trying to get my attention. I finally got up to let him outside and realized he had gotten sick pretty much all over the house. By morning, he was not responding to me and just wanted to be left alone. I took him to the vet and they said, “It’s time”.  I’ve known for awhile that he was in the end of his days, and didn’t want him to linger in pain every day from sore knees and other dog old age problems.  But it was hard, very hard.

Winston was our first kid. Rob and I got him a year before we had Maddie, so he lived long enough as our only kid for a long time, fully boding with us, learning to trust us and love us. He was just a little white fur ball when we got him. He rode under the front seat of the car when we brought him home, quivering in fright.  I remember the first day we had him home, he layed on Rob’s chest and fell asleep for a long, long time.

He was very docile and compliant….until we had Maddie.  He was afraid of her little baby cries at first, but a switch flipped in him once he realized this was a “Puppy” the three of us were supposed to protect with our ferocious barks. From that day on, any time anyone would come to our door or walk into our yard, he would bark and bark, terrifying the on-commer with his less than one foot tall ferocity.

As soon as the stranger walked through our door, knowing they must be one of the good guys,  he would nuzzle against them waiting to be petted and loved.  One of the things we will always laugh about when we remember Winston is how he would love to take care of the girls when they were babies. If I laid them on the carpet for just a minute and left the room, I would come back to the room to find Winston hurridley licking their faces and hands to get that icky soap smell off them so they would smell “clean” like his dog breath.

He did have the worst breath of any dog ever in the history of the world.

When Maddie was about 18 months old, we used to take her, Winston and baby Whitney over to a field by our house we nicknamed “The Running Field”. He’d run and run in circles, getting his puppy energy out. Maddie would yell at the top of her lungs, “WEESAAWW!” because she couldn’t say Winston. I still refered to him as Weesaw till the day he died.

He was such a good buddy to our girls.

In one year, he got mauled by a neighbors dog, had two surgeries, got hit by a truck, but miraculously he survived it all.  When we brought Ellie our Golden Retriever with a cleft pallet that drools, coughs, hacks and sputters, Winston thought we were the most evil dog parents ever. He hated her. She would nip at his tail playfully. He would growl at her. She’d nip playfully again, bowing her head down in front of him. He’d growl, she’d nip, until he finally gave in and they became best friends.

When I came home from the vet yesterday, Ellie sniffed me and gave me the saddest eyes ever. She looked at the van, hoping her little buddy would hop right out and give her her daily “dog lick bath” from Winston, but he didn’t come out. She’s been walking to the laundry room, looking for him, circling around the house, then laying on the floor pouting. It. Breaks. My Heart. She knew her buddy was sick yesterday. I could tell she was very worried about him.  She’s never been an only dog child, so it will be interesting to see how she responds in the next few days.  The girls are already clamoring for another puppy, but I won’t be ready for that for a long, long time.

The girls are all handling their grief in different ways. Belle went right to her room when she found out, wrote and illustrated an entire book dedicated to her best buddy. She took it pretty well.  Maddie and Whit took it very hard. He’s been their one connection to their early childhood days that bring them so many fun memories. They have each other, but Winston was their other best buddy.

I could not watch the movie Marly and Me because I knew Winston’s day was coming.  I finally got tricked into watching it a few months back and sobbed through the whole thing. I’ll never watch it again because it will just make me too sad. I’ll miss our little buddy.

Standing Alone

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 When you stand alone, it feels lonely at first. When you grow up and out and up and down with no one to hear your aches and groans, it feels desperate. After years of solitude, you can start to see how living the way you have in the harsh wind, soft rains, cloudy mornings and pinkish sunsets makes you know the earth and its creator. 

Standing alone and standing still has taught you a lot.

The morning breeze becomes your friend–the one to carry your voice to the edges of Heaven. The ancient ears of the grass let your words fall on it with grief, lifting them back to you with joy from its green beauty.

The stillness of the night wraps you up and tucks you in with the stars. The moon blankets you with light and you can see for miles in its glow.

Standing alone has taught you to see in the dark.  You don’t really feel afraid after awhile, knowing the morning is just on the edge of the horizon, just around the bend and through the patch of fog.

Standing alone, you see and know and feel what comfort is when it comes in the warm breeze, the star speckled nights and the orangey glow of the sunrise. You know your creator is the voice gently humming around it all, hands at work, holding you, guiding you, and watching you grow.

Standing alone, you learn you never really are.