Advent: When Something's Gotta Give

When he quietly sneaks down the stairs at quarter 'til nine in the still of evening and crawls into my lap while I'm working away the dark hours and says right before he drifts off to sleep in my arms, "Mommy, I miss you," I know that something's gotta give.

When I ask my oldest son how his day is going, and he asks me if I'm done working for the day so I can really listen, my stomach jumps into my throat and sits there choking me up, and I pray that something's gonna give.

When the conversation turns from what we can do to make the load lighter {jobs and businesses and work} to who put the final straw on the camel's aching back, I find myself staring at the man with whom I yoked wondering what the difference is anyway, since we're both under the same weight and what's ultimately gonna give isn't going to be what we want to give if we just wait for something to break.

A few weeks back, a wise woman told me that sheep were never meant to bear loads.

They weren't made for it.

And neither were we.

I understand this now like I wouldn't have before.

And so we cry out --

we wait for the Shepherd to hear our cries

because something's gotta give.

****

Busy days turn into heavy weeks, and we pass into the season of Advent as easily as the days sneak into nights and back into days again. I am the spinning hand on the clock, and I go until one day when I come home from church and retire to my bedroom because I'm suddenly not feeling well, the third in my family to be out for the count in less than 24 hours.

I sleep the morning into afternoon and wake only to pull my weary body from bed and join the family on the couch for a few brief hours.

I have plans. There are things to do, action items screaming for my attention during the three days I'm down and out myself and the span during which my boys are all suffering, too. There are staff meetings and business meetings and preparations to make before our host child arrives in just mere days and business to manage and posts to tend to and people to feed and bodies to bathe and clothes to launder and food to prepare.

But it all halts on a Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent, where we talk in church that morning about the surprising way Love came down to meet us here on Earth in a nowhere town, inside a nowhere stable, through a bunch of nobody people after 400 years of everyone thinking, you know, something's gotta give.

My husband picks up the food ropes and the rest of what isn't urgent all sits dormant while the urgent keeps on spinning with the rest of the world … without me.

The boys and I exist in spaces between the bed and the couch for two whole days.

On the third day, I find myself trapped beneath a four year old's body nearly every hour of day, and I start giving some serious thought to what it means to break and what it means to give.

At first it doesn't seem like catching the flu is anything akin to catching a break but when you're at the point where you feel like you can't bend with the pressure anymore, it suddenly and surprisingly. It's the break you knew you needed but never expected.

The give isn't what we wanted or planned, but when I look and I really see, I see that the give wasn't the ability to bend a little more without snapping, the give was a gift unexpected of slowing down enough to remember that the sun rises and sets each day without our help, without my help.

And isn't that the break I've been begging for and the give I've been praying to see?

He gives me a break, He slows me steady into the season of Advent, the season of preparing my heart for what's been given

again, in the most surprising of ways.

Everyday Life: Writing Books

"Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."
-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

A small, newly-found voice emerges from the top of the stairs at 7:52 p.m., 30 minutes past bedtime. He jabbers away as he one-foot-two-foots down the stairs, mixing up his conversation with words we recognize as well as ones we don't yet know.

His feet runrunthumpthumprunthump across the wooden floor until he reaches the space in which I'm perched trying to write away the day and the thoughts and the growth I've been feeling stretch out across my bones.

Maaameeee! he exclaims and throws his body atop of the couch cushions like a surfer mounts his board. In seconds, I am the wave beneath his body.

He presses his forehead against my own and gently smooshes my cheeks in between his toddler hands.

"Oh, hello," I say. "Isn't it bedtime?"

I silently think about everything that's left to be done, including a book chapter that needs to be written, before I can go to bed and am tempted to scoot him right back to my husband.

He kisses my mouth and says, "O, halllo!" before snuggling his little rear next to my own and finally pressing his body into the curves of my own all while making the time that was my own into ours.

I only try to type for about 30 seconds before I abandon writing my life out loud and shut the lid to my computer instead choosing to write a few words on his heart.

I snuggle him as we talk, deeply converse about the pressing issues of the moment.

No, we're not having a snack.

Sack, he echoes as he shakes his head no.

But we can read a book.

Book, he says crisp, staccato like a short note struck against keys.

We talk a bit more until he begins rubbing his eyes; it's then that I send him back to daddy for good-night snuggles.

He won't remember what we talked about tonight; he is only two and a half.

I probably won't either, and I'm 29.

But I hope that those few sentences translated themselves into the message that I'm trying {oh, God, help me to write well} to continually etch onto his and his brother and his father's hearts --

that they -- these eternal souls -- are the most worthy recipients of my time, my love, my care

and

that the story of this family

is the most important book I'll ever write* during this assignment from the Great Editor and Chief.

*Sally Clarkson gave these words to a roomful of hungry ears during a conference breakout session at Relevant '11, and her words have deeply impressed my heart.

Bigger Picture Moment: Pretty Sure

I'm pretty sure that by this time next year

there still will be dishes in the sink waiting to be washed

there still will be an ever-growing pile of laundry lurking behind the closed door of our pantry

books still will be waiting on my nightstand, unread, beckoning me to devour words like ice cream {or carrots, these days}

weeds will be poking their heads up through wet soil, begging to be pulled

the internet still will be bursting with conversation and articles I want to read

hours in the day will still add up to 24

and I'll go to sleep at night wishing for maybe just one or two more

But this little guy? He won't be four any more. He'll be ever-evolving, just like always.

All the days of his fourness will have been lived and imprinted in my mind as a memory, if I've so chosen to live my days well

soaking in who he was and who he is

and remembering that the one thing he'll always be beside himself is changing -- he's ever-morphing into newness within the stretched skin of

my first born baby who grew into a toddler



a toddler who morphed into a preschooler



a preschooler who is rapidly transitioning into a boy



who will one day become a man

who will have been built by many one-day-at-a-times of skipping out on dishes to cuddle on the couch while reading about dinosaurs, ignoring laundry piles to romp around the house as pirates in full costume and delaying bedtime to go see how God's painted the sky each new summer night.

And so the dishes, the laundry and the bedtimes will always be.

But he won't always be who he is in this skin, in this now, in this way, so I will make the effort to remember each step of his ever-changing journey from boyness into manhood.



Happy fourth birthday, G!