garden ready

An early spring is a welcome blessing in my household. After months of noses pressed to glass panes, brown morphs to green. My soul lifts from winter's dank underbrush as I scoop and spread compost on the garden plot. I move with purpose when the earth warms, and I wonder how I frivolously spent winter hibernating.

It has been one of the warmest springs on record, the earliest I recall of my Midwest decades. Thanks to helping family hands, a third of the garden is planted, all seeds having sprung: peas, carrots, radishes, lettuces, spinach, broccoli. More seeds wait patiently on a shelf in the garage for their turn to be buried in the garden, once April is filed away. Still more seeds lie damp in egg carton bottoms next to a bedroom window, and I water and watch the dormant seeds daily, hoping for a fruitful experiment.

Easter Sunday would be an appropriate sighting of a first green shoot.

 Egg carton bottoms with four kinds of tomatoes, two types of peppers, rosemary, and basil.

A picture of the radishes from March 23; they were the first plants to greet us from our vegetable garden. Now they are three times as big and in desperate need of thinning.

ordinary day

As I age, birthdays are increasingly less glamorous. The days of popping a balloon with a pin taped to a pencil, landing the coveted first spot in the lunch line, and enjoying birthday wishes and treats all day are over.

Those were the good ol' days. Ah, birthday bliss.

These days I wake up forgetting it's a special day until the Accountant leans over my shoulder in bed, kisses me on the cheek, and whispers, "Happy birthday." And just in case my memory lapses again, buried in my mothering duties and household tasks, I can count on a mid-morning reminder from my nieces and nephew, belting out their high-pitched "Happ-y birth-day, Tan-te Or-pah...." Or I click on an e-mail sipping my coffee, enjoy a phone call or maybe a card in the mail if the sender timed it right.

But generally speaking, my birthdays are pretty ordinary: normal routines, everyday responsibilities. Maybe it's a sign of aging, but I'm beginning to appreciate the ordinary. I'll take the mundane laundry, dirty diapers, and soapy hands plunged deep in the sink. There's something comforting about the ordinary.

stretch marks

This morning I baked a batch of wheat bread--nothing special, just the usual household restocking. When I glanced at the loaves before sliding them in freezer bags for the coming week, I noticed something on their surface I hadn't paid much attention to before: stretch marks.

The bread's scarring matches the way I've been feeling lately: stretched thin. Taken by the arm of a two-and-a-half-year-old, pulled by the leg of an army-crawling eight-month-old, and tugged on the heart by a servant-husband. The everyday pulls.

The everyday and the extra yanks leave me burning, burdened, burned out. I know my tasks are kingdom work--relentless work--, but it doesn't prevent me from wondering how much more elasticity I have in me before I break.
 

Like the bread on the counter, I wear the scars of a work-in-progress, uneven and battered. But those flaws give the bread its character, its beauty; they are marks of the Artist, re-purposing the brokenness for his glory.

A bed-headed boy wakes hungry from his nap. Points to the scarred bread. I cut two slices, slather on crunchy peanut butter and homemade blueberry jam, and we commune together, feasting on the broken bread in the quiet afternoon.

transparency

I've been reflecting on transparency lately in the context of Christian community: how I cloak my filth in righteous clothing, hide my shadows in the light.

If I acknowledge I am fallen, why is it painful when sin seeps through my facade? When others notice that sigh of impatience, the tinge of anger in my voice. I joke, justify, or smile jovially, hoping it will mask the dirt emerged.

What I really need is a good righteous soak--let the holy water wash over Self-Sufficiency's scrapes and Pride's open sores. Allow the see-through liquid to seep through callouses, steep in my soul, stirring up love.

I was reminded of God's righteous clothes for his children last week. The boys tucked away for naps, I slipped outside in winter boots and scraped metal across driveway gray, until my shovel parted the white sea. Snow covered dreary nakedness, billowed high on dead bushes, righting all sin's wrongs.

Isaiah 1:18 - "[T]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow [...]"

christmas tradition

My beloved and I had a conversation last week trading ideas about family Christmas traditions. We haven't started any of our own yet--just continuing on our childhood ones since we still visit both families over the holidays. But with two little ones, we're starting to think seriously about what we'd like to do to celebrate Christmas with our family.

What partially spurred the discussion was watching a YouTube video of children reacting poorly to fake Christmas gifts (thanks, Leah!); however, the lion's share of the reflecting came from reading a blog post in conjunction with the video. Ann Voskamp describes a challenging tradition of gifting Christ in honor of his birthday: give to the least of these, and you give to me.

Challenging because it exposes commercialized celebrations; challenging because it mocks my selfishness; challenging because it requires personal sacrifice--a small version of the anguish Christ suffered for my sake.

Giving to the least of these is an option to celebrate a humble stable birth looking up to the blood-stained cross.

wrong question

This morning I read an op-ed article by David Brooks in the New York Times about the alleged Penn State scandal; in it Brooks unearths the hypocrisy of the public's disgust. Brooks is a thoughtful writer, but he missed the mark on his conclusion. Here's the end of his op-ed piece:

But we’re not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it—like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey. People look for laws that can be changed so it never happens again. 

Commentators ruthlessly vilify all involved from the island of their own innocence. Everyone gets to proudly ask: “How could they have let this happen?”

The proper question is: How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive. That was the proper question after Abu Ghraib, Madoff, the Wall Street follies and a thousand other scandals. But it’s a question this society has a hard time asking because the most seductive evasion is the one that leads us to deny the underside of our own nature. 

While Brooks identifies the sins of vanity and pride, and even our total depravity--yay!--, he stops short with the wrong question: "How can we ourselves overcome our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive."

We ourselves can't do diddly squat.

A better query might read: How can we be rescued from our natural tendency to evade and self-deceive." Note the passive voice. I know it's a faux pas in English grammar circles, but it sure is fitting in theological ones. We need rescuing by the Savior.

I suppose it's a little greedy of me to expect a columnist to complete the thought. I should be thankful Brooks at least exposes our sin. His assessment of human nature reminds me of a sermon I listened to yesterday by Ligon Duncan from The Gospel Coalition website. In preaching about contentment, Duncan states, "You are more likely to seek real contentment and find it than someone who is content in his/her circumstances." Hopefully Brooks' article struck a cord of discontentment with his readers; then we will be a step closer to searching for the source of true peace.

shutter fancy

I took a photography course my senior year of undergrad. It was a black and white film photography class, and I was so intimidated by an art course and its art majors that I took it pass/fail--embarrassing, I know.

It turned out to be one of my favorite non-literature courses. I enjoyed the reprieve from pending deadlines; the calming dark room process; the never-ending search to find the best angle, the best lighting, the best timing. It was a way to push myself artistically, and I've been missing that particular outlet lately.

In the last month, I've had a few opportunities to rekindle my hobby. The most recent occurred last week as a trial for cutting portrait session costs from our budget and to personalize our boys’ photos. It also served as a challenge to successfully shoot a stalwart 2-year-old who barely sits through 1 Dr. Seuss book and a tipsy 5-month-old working on trunk control.

So after nap time I schlepped both boys to the backyard with my gear and snapped away. Here are a few highlights from our “session” (Note there are no pictures of them together; I need a little help from my beloved for that task):

 J.N. - 2 yrs., 3 mos.

C. A. - 5 1/2 mos.