Everyday Life: Lumps and Bumps and Steering Wheels

After we read,

after lights out,

after we pray,

after we are tucked beneath warm covers, my oldest drives into wide-awake nightmares instead of drifting into his normal peaceful slumber.

He begins to sob, asking through tears, "Mom, do kids get cancer? Or do just older people?"

And just like with most unexpected veers into darkness, I find myself swallowing my own fear at this sudden jerk of the car toward the edge of the cliff and try to calmly recover the direction of the conversation, steer it back onto the safety of the well-paved road.

I answer as simply, honestly as I can -- yes, sometimes little kids do get cancer, but that it doesn't happen very often.

He continues to weep next to me as I gently explain and whisper-pray for the right words to become my words to become his words of comfort and understanding.

His small body shakes next to mine, and I pull him close as it becomes clearer that he's not just asking hypothetically.

"Is the lump in my throat that won't go away cancer, mommy?"

I don't know how he's taken this leap from simply just telling me earlier about this lump to equating it with cancer, but I'm all too-familiar with how such leaps are made; I bridge the gap between these mountains all too often, linking symptoms and fear with disease and what ifs.

Though I gently whisper that I don't think the lump in his throat is cancer, he still can't rest, so I ask him what made him think about it and he reminds me that we've been praying for my Grandpa Filippi to be healed from cancer.

"Do people die from cancer?"

My heart flips again and sags heavy, holding his question

I steady the wheel, regain traction on solid grand and pray peace over him from the One Who knows our bodies and our hearts and thoughts; the One Who loves and protects. And the one who heals when we need to be healed.

His cries soften and fade into rhythmic breaths as he drifts to sleep.

But now I am wide awake

mopping up the soppy mess in my own heart

sad and dripping with the reality that

at just five, he would even be internalizing such heaviness


and

that at just five, there are even such heavy things to ponder.

Frustrated, I wonder aloud via Facebook at why none of the parenting books address how to explain things like cancer and such to soft and permeable five-year-old hearts.

I swerve my car toward the edge and into darkness, but she catches my hand at the wheel and she does, too,

and they calmly steer me back toward solid ground

reminding me

just as I reminded him

that we know Who really does the driving around here.

It's just that sometimes it takes those who have been on the road a little longer to remind you

to let go.

A Sabbath Experiment: Scheduling

This is part four of a series detailing our family's journey on our Sabbath experiment.

Part One: Indications of needing a rest day
Part Two: Why we need a rest day
Part Three: Simple steps for implementation
****

The house is cleaner.

The days {and stress levels} are more manageable.

The overall tone of our home has changed from rushed to {mostly} rested.

BUT.

There are still Kashi Os scattered near the dining room table floor at any given moment.

And I'm still known to rush the children out the door when they are dragging their feet.

So perfect certainly doesn't live here {and never will}.

But calm{er} does.

During the implementation process of our Sabbath Experiment and even before the that, we knew we were way too busy.

And that our busyness was sucking the joy and peace from our days, keeping us from living intentionally and with a decided heart.

So before we put our Sabbath into practice, we took a pretty detailed look at all of our commitments.

And when we did, I found my list was overflowing -- brimming with good stuff, yes, but brimming nonetheless.

My mentor suggested I make a list of commitments and tasks and narrow from there.

Seeing all of my tasks on paper made my blood pressure rise -- no wonder I'd been feeling overextended.

As I began cutting out activities and commitments {prayerfully and with the wisdom from my husband and mentor}, I began to find relief from stress.

1. Obviously, you won't be able {nor would you want} to cut out mothering your kids, being a wife to your husband and caring for your own spiritual, mental and physical well being, so those priorities remain.

2. But I started by identifying doubles -- double volunteering opportunities that other people could do just as well as I could, double Bible studies or ministries that were good but not necessary for my growth. I'm sure you get the picture.

3. Next, I affirmed that just because there is a need that needed to be filled didn't mean that I was the ONLY one who could fill it. And I found, indeed, that I wasn't the only person who could fill those spaces; others wanted and were ready to step up the plate.

4. Because, really, some of those activities weren't actually ones where I felt called anymore. Every commitment I asked myself if that's where my deep desire and the world's deepest needs collided. And I found myself answering no to quite a few things.

5. I prayed about cutting out activities and sought council before I actually made the sever.

6. And I found that wisdom from my mentor actually shed new light on my thinking and pushed me to consider where I should focus my efforts ...

7. based on my season of life.

My most important goals right now are to grow in my faith and health, support my husband and raise my boys into men of integrity.

This is all largely determined by my season of life, so these take priority.

8. And my mentor also helped me understand which commitments I needed to hold onto based on my strengths.

After taking the Clifton Strengthsfinder assessment, affirmation was given in my strength of communication -- the written word, especially, for me. My mentor saw this before I ever did, and she encouraged my meaningful writing adventures, like blogging, because while blogging I was functioning out of a natural God-given strength.

9. I made concessions by acknowledging that my deep desire and the world's greatest need did NOT meet in regard to cleaning kitchen counters and scrubbing toilets. However, that's part of my job during this season of life where I've chosen to be a mostly stay-at-home mom, so that's just part of caring for my family.

10. I made a flexible schedule to allot for my activities during the six days of the week I was available for work and activities with the end goal of Sabbath rest, relaxation, trust and celebration on Sundays.

11. I've been affording myself grace {highly encouraged by my husband} if I haven't gotten everything on my list done by Sunday, and I've allowed myself the ability to rest anyway -- an extension of God's mercy and acknowledgement from my lips that the world would continue to spin if my to-do list was not completed.

12. I've been holding myself accountable to my tasks during the week instead of spending so much time on time-sucking activities like, for me, Facebook and surfing the web.

I hope this helps encourage your hearts toward exploring Sabbath rest and embracing intentional living. Like I said, life isn't perfect now, but it's calmer. And more enjoyable and simple liveable than it was while we were engaging in the over-committed, unrested lifestyle we had.

Questions and comments encouraged! Ask anything at all!

Thanksgiving: Provision

I never realized how emotionally attached I was to things like jackets and shoes until I began giving them away.

The diligent work at clearing out the stuff in our closet{s} since my epiphany has been just as hard as clearing out the junk in my heart that's tangled up with the stuff that's piled in our closets.

In addressing the root of this stuff problem -- my lack of trust that God will provide -- I've felt so exposed.

But in my weakness, I've seen His strength.

And in my obedience of letting go of the abundance by trusting He will meet whatever need we might have in the future, I've heard His voice.

Clear as day.

Streaming through the radio.

Through the wise council of a man whose name I'll probably never figure out.

Don't just count your everyday blessings, he'd said. Count the ways God has provided for you in the small ways we often call luck.

Look for God's provision.

****

On the first day of my purging mission while cleaning out a small keepsake box in our bedroom, I found a handwritten card from John's parents, given to me only a few months after his mom and dad met me for first time.

"We've been praying for you since before John was born," it said. "Always remember God is faithful."

I tossed most of the contents as part of my organizing and purging mission, but I couldn't let that card go.

I tucked the note in between a few favorite books, hidden in the safe confines of my nightstand.

****

I always thank Him for the obvious.

Food, clean water, house, health -- all the things that make up a really good prayer of Thanksgiving, all the things I know I'm blessed to have.

But I knew in order to really get this trust thing going, I needed to see His provision in other ways.

So I went looking.

I saw His provision that very day when Stephanie from Adventures in Babywearing emailed me saying I'd won her giveaway to Tiny Prints for my choice of Christmas cards.

I recognized it when I escaped to the coffee shop the very next day to finish some work without the screeches of children in my ear when the barista asked {as I waited in a line seven people deep} if anyone wanted a free drink. And it was the very drink I was planning to order.

And I recognized it the form of an invitation to write about things I know in exchange for actual payment. {A writer's dream come true!}

All of this within the same week.

All of this when I started looking.

****

I was reading in Joshua when I came across an old story I'd read before but never really heard.

"Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. And Joshua said to them, "Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever." Joshua 4: 4-7

****

Just how many, I wondered last night, provisions God has made in my life -- the small, the medium, the large -- that I've not recognized or remembered.

****

G. and I have been searching for the perfect rocks.

I wanted to recreate the Joshua scene in a new way within our home by starting a new Thanksgiving tradition where we write a few things for which we're thankful on each rock, then carry those rocks around with us for an entire year as a remembrance of our blessings, of His perfect provisions.

We haven't found many that could hold more than a few words.

Perhaps we'll scrap the rock idea, I told him this morning. Maybe we'll use pieces of paper instead.

My mind raced immediately to the note from John's parents I'd tucked away last week.

I lingered on the thought.

A 22-year-in-the-making prayer, answered in the most unlikely of ways, with the most unlikely, imperfect person -- me.

But documented on a little note in my nightstand so that I might remember His provision.

My small stone of remembrance at the foot of the river, passed down from a generation that saw His provision and knew the value of keeping it fresh in my mind so that I might know Him more, trust Him more.