Lars and the Real Girl

I finally watched the movie Lars and The Real Girl last night.  A friend has been asking me for months if I've seen it.  I thought it looked interesting, but much of my motivation in watching it was to say yes next time he asked.  I think it was an incredibly fine film.  Full of warm emotion, not sappy, but moving and inspiring, a beautiful picture of a family, a community loving a hurting individual very, very well.  Wonderful performances by everyone in it.

Love to say much more about what a fine example of living well as a community it is, or what a great illustration it is for Arlins sermons about the purpose of the church, but I've got a 10 year old demanding a bagel, and since its 10 am I think I should feed him.  See the movie for yourself, you'll see.

Life Gets in the Way

I had hoped when I started blogging that it would become a daily habit, that abundant words and wisdom would flow out of me, a wealth of good reading.  How is it that everyday life so frequently gets in the way of this?  I guess the solution may be to get up early before anyone else, before the list of to do's needs to be started, before my mind is racing making it difficult to sit and focus on the computer screen and words that aren't quite flowing.   But its summer time, and summer time for me is staying up late and watching movies and sleeping in, in the morning.  Used to be the most urgent thing was getting up to feed the kids breakfast and to get to the pool before it got too crowded.   We have yet to go swimming this summer.  Each day I say tomorrow will be the day, and life gets in the way.  This summer has been many, many days spent at the hospital with my dad, then home trying to catch up on a months worth of things undone.  All of this is not a complaint, just an acknowledgement that the best laid plans are usually interrupted.  I am not in control of my days, thankfully the One who is is faithful and good.

So today I hope to finish a few more things for Olives room, organize my piles of stuff someplace other than the dining room table, and maybe even clean my bedroom.   Good stuff, though not very exciting.  But as I've gotten older I've learned to appreciate these simple things, things that bring a bit of order to the chaos, things that communicate to those around me that I care for them, things that slow me down and give me room to pray and ponder as I work at them.  So off I go to finally get dressed, clean off the kitchen counter, and start, maybe even finish a project or two here at home.  But its more than likely that something will pop up to interrupt, life getting in the way, and thats okay.

Lily of the Valley

I love Lily of the Valley.  I'm not quite sure why.  I remember as a young child wandering out to the shed behind our house.  The shed was full of gardening tools, and the lawn mower, and it was dark and smelled of damp earth, and to a four year old was kind of scary.  But outside of the shed there was a beautiful patch of lily of the valley, surrounding it, continuing on, running long the old wire fence line.  There was something magical and mysterious about them.  So tiny and delicate, yet such a sweet and powerful fragrance.

I believe my mom had quite an affection for them.  Maybe even wearing lily of the valley perfume.

I took this photo when I was on retreat a few weeks ago.  I want to enlarge it for Olive's room.  Her room has kind of a whimsical feel, and to me that is Lily of the Valley.  So I was sitting with my dad in his hospital room last week and was showing him some of the pictures on my computer.  We came to this one.    I was much relieved when he commented that it reminded him of the flowers by the shed behind our house in Pennsylvania.  Most of my memories from that house are vague.  We moved from their when I was five.  So I've always kind of questioned my memories, and wondered if this romantic vision of flowers by the shed was just made up.  Or if it was rooted in reality.  Maybe thats why these flowers hold a special place in my heart.  Isn't it true that somehow things from our childhood seem sweeter, more full of color, and scent and flavor?  Most of my childhood memories contain a smell or taste or vibrant color that I long to experience again.  And there was that fleeting sense of it the day I snapped this picture.  Somehow these small flowers hundreds of miles away from my childhood home, transported me back in time, for just a second, to a place where I was small and curious and delighted in the precious bloom hid among the deep cool green leaves by my shed.

Birds of a feather

Last night we had a time of prayer out on the land our church owns.   It is a beautiful 10 acre plot, quiet and serene, a whispering creek running across it, a majestic giant of a tree in the middle of it.  An absolutely beautiful, sunny, blue skied, gentle breeze kind of an evening.  A perfect place for prayer, we were awestruck from the start by the spectacular artistry of our creator.  If this is the fallen world, what will heaven be like?

The smallest of things has been a reminder of Gods beautiful creation this last week.  We have a new, actually 2, new bird feeders on our back deck.  Without a doubt this is the most entertaining addition to our home in a long time.  The whole family, even a too cool, jaded teenager,  can be found sitting looking out the back window watching the birds come and go.  The first bird to visit was a morning dove that has been a fixture at our house for years.  She would come and walk along the deck rail each morning even without the promise of a meal.  She was incredibly interested in the feeders from the moment she caught site (or smell) of them.  I watched as she paced up and down the rail, not quite sure how to get to them.  (We have them hanging on hooks extended off the side of the deck).  She finally kind of leaped to the roof of one, turning around and around trying to figure out how to get to the food below her.  She bounced back and forth from one feeder to the other completely perplexed.  She hopped back to the deck rail, tentatively perched on the edge, trying to talk herself into trying it again.  Apparently the little bar on the side intended for the birds to stand on while eating was too small or too close to the feeder for her.  I couldn't watch her anxious attempts any longer.  I went out to the deck took the feeder off the hook and set it on the corner of the deck rail itself.  As soon as I was back inside, she flew back, curiously looked at the now accessible feeder and skipped up and started breakfast.  She spent so long there eating I was afraid she would be so stuffed her little wings wouldn't be able to lift her back to the trees.

My ingenious husband has made the feeder easier to get to by attaching a copper pipe to the bottom for her and her friends to perch on while they eat.  We now have many daily visitors, cardinals and finches, blackbirds and blue jays, even the huge red headed wood pecker that visits our chimney every morning.  We watch them eat, we observe their flight paths from tree to deck, to feeder.  Sometimes if we are out on the deck, they'll swoop in for a meal, realize at the last minute that there is danger (us), and abort the landing and fly under the deck and back around to a neighboring tree.  One night as we sat on the deck eating dinner, our friendly wood pecker planted himself on a tree across the way and played peek a boo with us.  We could see his body, and he would back his head around, peek at us from behind the tree, then hide himself again for a few seconds, before starting all over again.  This went on for about five hilarious minutes before he finally gave up and flew away until later when we were safely back inside.

Who would have thought that a little cedar bird feeder would have provided such a hypnotizing show and brought us all together, away from our video games and computer screens and cell phones?  And in the process reminded us how amazing is the beauty of Gods creation around us.

Grateful

Wow, its been sooooo long since I've sat down to do this.  So much running through my head and heart I'm not quite sure where to start.  Its been a crazy month filled with lots of work.  Work of the paying kind is done for now.  So its been time to refocus on my family, and house, and friends.

I was vacuuming this morning and noticed a book I have propped up on my piano.  In large letters it says GRATEFUL.  Its title is Grateful, voices from our Katrina Kids.  I keep it sitting their mainly because I often walk by there and see the word grateful and it reminds me that I should daily feel that for the life I've been given.

I'm being reminded again by a book I'm reading for our church book club.  It's "All Over but the Shoutin" by Rick Bragg.  Written over 10 years ago I'm sorry its taken me this long to pick it up.  It is his memoir, the story of growing up in the south.  Not the romantic, entitled south.  But the dirt poor, struggle to stay alive south.  But alive it is.  Ricks Mama gives every bit of her being for her children.  She works her fingers to the bone and does without, so that they can have something to eat, and clothes on their backs.  His Mamas extended family is their safety net, there to pitch in when his mothers efforts just couldn't be enough, though they themselves didn't have much more.

Rick says " There is a notion, a badly mistaken one among comfortable people, that you do not miss what you never had.  I have written that line myself, which is shameful to me now.  I, of all people, should know better, should know that being poor does not make you blind to the riches around you; that living in other folks' houses for a lifetime does not mean a person does not dream of a house of his or her own, even if it is just a little one.  My mother ached for a house, for a patch of ground, for something.  When I was a young man and we would take drives through town, she stared at the home of others with a longing so strong you could feel it.  She stared and she hoped and she dreamed until she finally just got too tired of wanting.

The only thing poverty does is grind down your nerve endings to a point that you can work harder and stoop lower than most people are willing to do.  It chips away a person's dreams to the point that the hopelessness shows through, and the dreamer accepts that hard work and borrowed houses are all this life will ever be.  While my mother will stare you  dead in the eye and say she never thought of herself as poor, do not believe for one second that she did not see the rest of the world, the better world, spinning around her, out of reach."

And reading that makes me grateful.  Grateful that his words open up to me a world I've not lived in, helped me to understand more of the culture I now call home.  Grateful that even in the depths of poverty he and his family were provided for.  Grateful that somehow his mother believed in Jesus even with year after year of adversity.  I'm not sure my faith is that strong.  Grateful that I am not left in my comfortable life, thinking my biggest problem is what TV will we use in the living room if we move the one thats there to the bonus room so the boys and all their friends can hang out there.  Aaaaargh and that is the place I so easily go to, taking what I have for granted and even wanting more.  Grateful when I'm reminded that I have more than enough and I see the opportunity to share it with others.  Grateful that I am so incredibly blessed  in so many wonderful ways.

Women's work

I was sitting here getting ready to write and looked out my front window.  My neighbor was getting into her car with her daughter, leaving at 6:50 am to drop her off at the school childcare program before she heads on to work.  A scene being repeated all over Spring Hill, all over our country this morning.

I am feeling a mix of sadness and guilt.  Sadness cause that little girl could have been in her own bed for another 30 minutes yet before she had to get up to catch the bus.  Sadness cause Moms going off to work all day, mean they're not here in the neighborhood, making it more difficult to get to know each other.  Sad cause I think the mom really would like to be at home, but feels the financial pressure to add another income.

Guilty cause I'm sitting here in my pajamas, with 20 minutes before I have to get my youngest up and an hour and a half before I have to leave the house.  Leaving the house meaning, meeting a friend in Franklin for coffee, before I head to work (the first day in a month) to work for several hours, then come home.  Guilty cause if I knew the family better, was consistently home in the morning ( some mornings I have to actually be to work at 7 am), the daughter could come here in the morning relax, eat breakfast, catch the bus with L.  Guilty cause as much as I am home during the day, I really don't know the other moms who are home in my neighborhood very well.

And I guess I ponder this cause at 50 I'm still trying to figure out my role.  I have been blessed to be an at home mom most of my life.  As much as I loved being with my kids, and even like cleaning and doing house stuff, I felt like something was missing.  Given the opportunity to do some fun work the last 10 or 12 years I've wondered if work is what I missed.  But the cost is so great to my family, to relationships with friends and neighbors.  So I'm rethinking this all.  Talking to friends, reading books, most importantly reading the Word.  I havn't figured it all out by a longshot, but I am seeing that much that is important, that is clearly spoken of in the Word, I don't have time for when I work.

It's pretty clear in Titus 2:  Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

So what will my daily life look like if this is my priority.  Probably a lot different than it has for a while.  And the reality is, if I'm a good manager of my household, we probably don't need my income.  And the creativity and fellowship I experience at work are easily found right here at home, right here in my church and neighborhood.

So I will pray some more, and maybe even talk about it with my husband : )  And see where this will lead...   But for now I'm going to get L up and off to school and get dressed go to work.

Spring

It has turned into a rainy afternoon.  The green of new life bursting from every tree, every blade of grass looks all the brighter against the backdrop of a gray sky.  It is a quiet rain unlike the downpour that woke up my youngest very early this morning.

I love rainy days.  It's as though it gives me permission to stay in bed a little longer in the morning.  To stay cuddled up in pajamas reading, instead of starting on the long list to be accomplished today.  To slow down my pace a bit, to be quiet.

I know tomorrow when the sun breaks through, the shrubs and trees that drank in todays rain will appear to open up before my very eyes.  Celebrating the sunlight, the warm air, spring.

I am awestruck at the beauty of God's creation.  I wonder at the possibility of a world more beautiful more perfect, as it must have been before the fall.  Perhaps that is the virtue of spring, it gives us hope, it reminds us of redemption, of resurrection.