good to be home

{Written last weekend... yeah, it's a week old now but it still applies... enjoying being in our own space!)

A Russian disco beat from a local party floats up the hill on the breeze, into my banana-muffin-scented kitchen.  I haven’t been able to bake in a month.  Having something slowly turning golden in my oven feels good.  The timer beeps, and I grab potholders, open the oven door with a blast of hot air in my face, pull out my blue silicon heart-shaped muffin pan.  I balance it on top of the stove, letting the muffins cool in the breeze wafting in through the open window.  My red geranium sits cheerily on the windowsill, matching the red cherries my sweet Mom helped me stencil on the walls of my kitchen, during their visit two years ago.  Has it really been two years already?  

My little son sits contentedly at the kitchen table munching pieces of yellow apple.  Autumn is here already.  It’s hard to believe.  I feel like we blinked and missed summer.  My baby girl scoots across the kitchen linoleum on the seat of her pink pants, clutching a sliver of apple in her fist.  I sit at my kitchen desk, sip Earl Grey tea in my new china mug with the blue flowers, a gift from my thoughtful husband.  

My eldest son saunters in from the fresh air, hops into a kitchen chair, begs again to play our game of Connect-4. I had put it on hold while I kneaded and set to rise some rosemary-scented Tuscan flatbread which I want to tear and eat it, hot and golden, with our Sunday supper frittata.  (I’m inspired - I’ve been reading Marlena di Blasi all afternoon.)

“What color do you want to be, Mommy?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Ok, I’m red.”  The bright yellow and red plastic counters make a peaceful clacking sound sliding down their chutes.  He beats me, fair and square.  I reach for another muffin, sip my tea.  Consolation.  My son is growing up.  

My daughter pulls herself up using Ben’s chair for support, wobbles back and forth, loudly requesting more apple.  A few shaky steps and she’s clutching my pant leg, grinning cheekily up at me with cheeks bulging.  One little hand spread-eagled on my jeans for balance, she bounces her little knees and grins at me with each chew.  I blinked, and her first year went by.  

The second game of Connect-4 we fill up the entire board except for one final empty slot in the top right-hand corner.  He beats me again.  He’ll be smarter than me soon, I think.  Not much time left.    

I shoo us all outside to catch the late afternoon sunlight, grabbing Ruby under one arm, my kitchen scissors, the camera.  Ruby holds on to her stroller to practice walking.  I snip the last of the sunflowers and zinnias, snap photos in the slanting rays of light.  

James comes home, opens the gate, drives the car in.  Ruby sinks to her bottom, scoots to Daddy, holds up her arms.  He tosses her in the air.  She squeals with delight, flashing her lopsided dimples and enchanting little teeth.  

We trail back inside together, stepping over the detritus of our first full day at home - every available floor space littered with toys, the kids getting reacquainted with all their treasures after yet another month away from home.  I fill a Mason jar with water for the zinnias, place them in the middle of the chaos on the kitchen table.  The two tallest sprigs of sunflowers I stand up in a pretty china pitcher on the windowsill.  Behind me, the boys straggle in from throwing rocks in the canal, Ben whimpering over his latest war wound.  He pulls up his shirt to show me the scratch, I kiss his forehead.  

“Can we watch something?”  The inevitable, hundred-times-a-day question.  This time I say yes, tell them to agree on a DVD, turn on the player.  I go knead my dough, divide it into two oval rounds, set it to rise on a baking sheet under a clean towel.  The boys fight and bicker over the DVD, I threaten cancellation if they can’t agree.  I can hear Ben trying to pull the “wounded soldier” card: “I got an owie!  I want to pick!”  Finally, seeing no end in sight, I choose for them, and the strains of Curious George float peacefully from the living room.  

As I scrub the muffin pan, I think back over our summer.  Three weeks of June in Turkey.  One week at home, then a visa run which turned into a 25-day marathon saga.  The month of August at home, just 30 short days (10 of which, James was away).  Then we gathered the troops for a second visa run these first three weeks of September, finally climaxing last Friday with the grant of our long-awaited 1-year visa, the culmination of months of hard work and hassles….  

My soul feels tired.  

Even though we are only renting this house, it’s full of the things we love and the pieces of ourselves that make it feel like home.  The afternoon sun bronzing the walnut leaves outside, the sound of Curious George, the scent of rising rosemary flatbread, the familiar red cherries on my kitchen walls... 

The sum of all this leaves me feeling suddenly wealthy.  

The little local boy who tends to turn up at meal times pokes his brown head politely around my kitchen door.  “Assalam aleykum,” he greets me with a grin, adding, in his frank little way, that he’s just had a muncha (shower) - probably a once-a-week experience at best.  I grin back, and motion to the living room and the Curious George watchers.  He ducks his head and disappears.  

Ruby starts her pre-dinner shriek, and I rack my brain to think of what I can feed her as an appetizer… Oh, right.  Fresh-baked banana muffin.  

She grins her cheeky, toothy grin at me and presses one little hand to her bib - sign-language for “please”.  

Aaaahhhh.  It’s good to be home.  

on the dangers of comparing... [for all those brand-new homeschool moms out there]

I read this post, the day after the day we started “real” homeschooling for the first time.  The artist in me began to ache as I scrolled down through her gorgeous images of perfect green apples, beautiful bunting, full-size world globes, “Nooks” for Science, Reading, Nature, elegant art supplies… I felt ridiculously envious, and like applauding at the same time.  Maybe by the time my eldest graduates from homeschool, my schoolroom will look like that… I caught myself thinking.  If I even have a schoolroom…

In my dreams, maybe.  But in my reality?

I look up from my computer.  I look around, take stock.  Sigh.  At this present moment, we are squatters in a small guest apartment, in a different foreign country to the one our house is in, away from our [borrowed] house in our [borrowed] country, for the third trip this summer.  It's the beginning of September, and as I was preparing for this (hopefully last) trip, I decided I can't put off starting off any longer.  After months of philosophizing, curriculum shopping, ordering books, having my sweet Mom send them thousands of miles and then trying to find time to read them, I still don’t feel ready.  But I'll have to be.  If it's even just to have stuff for them to do every day, we have to start this thing.  

I pack bags of homeschool books into the back of the car, along with a box of teabags, a canister of sugar and a half-finished carton of milk in the cooler bag.  I want to be sure I have the makings of a good cup of tea upon arrival - I’m sure I’ll need one.  

Six hours of driving plus a border crossing later, we arrive at this apartment which is God's gift to us for this trip [our second unwanted visa run in the space of two months].  Reasonably priced, owned by foreigners, meant to be a blessing, the apartment just fits our family (with all three kids in the bedroom and James and I on futons in the living room).  The building is enclosed in a gated compound, and there is a simple playground right outside the front door.  True, all the equipment is sitting on plain dirt - like most of the parks in this part of the world, if there is any grass it’s for looking at, not playing on - so my 11-month-old bottom-shuffler scoots around on a continuously filthy bottom, but I’m thankful I can send the boys outside every day for "Outside Time" without needing supervision.  

I have my cup of tea, allow a day or so to settle in, organize a tentative schedule, stick it on the mirror by the front door.  I ask my gracious husband (valiantly persevering with his work while surrounded by bickering kids) if he can have “Daddy/Ruby time” while I do school work with the boys for half an hour in the mornings.  I pray fervently.  Wrack my brain for things Ben can do while I work with Will.  

[Ok, did you click on that link yet?  Here it is again.  Go click on it.  Now, keep those beautiful photos in your mind while reading the following:]

For Will (almost 6), I have (drumroll please): the Student/Teacher books for MathUSee Alpha, a copy of Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons, a wipe-off whiteboard and a black dry-erase marker.  That’s it.  

For Ben (almost 4), I have a dry-erase Numbers workbook, a fat Alphabet workbook, and a new pack of crayons.  That’s it.  

No frills, no extras - barely the basics. 

We sit at the tiny rectangular table, me on one side, a boy on each end.  I pull out MathUSee and we attempt "Lesson 1: Place Value".  Will catches on quickly despite my stumbling along in the teacher's manual.  Ben gets frustrated, doesn’t want to do his workbooks, doesn’t want to do anything.  He perks up when we put "Decimal Street" on the floor and get out the manipulatives, start building 3-digit numbers.  That lasts about 2 minutes.  When he’s tired of it, I try to engage him with his new number workbook, hoping the novelty will last long enough for me to finish the lesson with Will.  It doesn’t.  He can’t figure out the directions, can’t work page by page, gets frustrated and gives up if his first tracing of a number doesn’t cover the lines exactly…

The second day is better, with Ben enjoying his workbooks a little more and both of them enjoying the number game at the end of Lesson 1…. 

And then, during a tea break on Day 2, I click on that beautiful post.  And I almost feel like giving up.  It takes me two read-throughs (with a session of serious dish-washing-thinking in between), before I catch what her post is really about.  

It’s about GRACE. 

It’s not about the apples, the globes, the books, the trappings, the paraphernalia.  Homeschool - learning at home, wherever home is - is about my. kids. learning.  

And there is grace.

Ann says it right there, halfway down:

“That’s the bottom line: Your sins aren’t enough and your strengths aren’t enough. You are not enough — for this parenting gig, this marriage relationship, this homeschooling year, this work project. 

Write it on the wall, ink it on some skin, because Christ wrote it with His blood: 

Grace is the only thing that is ever enough.”

That is the truth.  And I take a deep breath, and let it sink right in. 

I am not enough, and this life of sojourning may be challenging, but He is always enough.  He can meet every challenge.

The Holy Spirit takes this prime opportunity to replay a few scenes in my brain: 

The way Will’s face lit up when he registered how to read a 3-digit number for the first time.  

Ben’s big happy eyes when he looked up at me after successfully followed the zigzag maze to get the zebra to the zoo.  

The way they both fought over who could pick the units, tens, and hundreds cards in our number game.  

Will’s dawning realization that he. is. Really. Reading!  even after just 25 lessons in his book… 

I am teaching.  I’m actually doing it!  They are learning.  They really are!  And having fun at the same time.  Who cares where we are, or what trappings we don’t have?  Isn’t learning what homeschooling is all about?

Yes.  It is.  Much as my beauty-loving soul would thrill to a spacious schoolroom with lacquered oak furniture, wall-to-wall bookshelves, organizers galore, and fresh bouquets of school supplies, I’m realizing it isn’t where they learn, or what they use to learn, but that they learn that’s important. 

And with Christ in me, and Christ as our Home and our Constant, wherever we go, by God’s grace, they will.  

kids in motion [today in photos]

"Pearl of great price" {a vignette from our sojourning this summer}

{Thank you for grace for this long silence... we are 5 days into our third trip of over two weeks this summer.  We've been away more than we've been home, and life has been made of lots of waiting and trying to find joy in the moments, despite feeling like wanderers... }

A vignette from our first couple days in our temporary apartment, God planting us each place we go, even if it's only for a short time...

She tells me her name is Pearl.  “Pearl, like the stone, you know?”  She’s wearing a sky-blue spandex T-shirt and denim capris, her dark hair pulled into a messy bun on top of her head with a black velvet scrunchie.  I notice her pretty earrings, gold with blue stones, her matching pendant.  She doesn’t look more than 25 or 26.  She introduces me to her kids: the baby she’s swinging, a little boy 14 months old; his sister, 4 years old; and the older brother, 10 years old.  At this point I stop her, kid her.  

“Wait - you have a ten-year-old?  That can’t be possible!”  She breaks into a broad grin.  

“How old are you, anyway?”  I tease.  I offer my own age.  “I’m 31… you must be - “ 

“Thir-ty fife - no, thir-ty ayte, I’m thir-ty ayte!” she carefully corrects her English.  We’re speaking a mixture of English and Russian - she has about as much English as I have Russian.  We’re managing.  

“Thirty-eight!”  I’m incredulous.  She really looks just out of college.  I tell her I should call her my “Tye-tye” (Russian for “aunty”), and we both laugh.  I look at her beautiful children.  We talk about age gaps.  I introduce my kids, Ruby on the ground eating dirt, the boys chasing each other around the jungle gym.  She chuckles when I tell her how tired I am, pantomime pulling out my hair.  We share quiet, maternal pride.  

It’s not until later that she tells me.  This is, after all, only our first conversation.  But in this part of the world, the hard stories often come sooner rather than later.  Because everyone has them.  They are a bridge into intimacy, shared experiences spanning the gulf between strangers.  I often feel a mixture of guilt and relief that I don’t have any tragedies of my own to tell.  

We are talking about our sons, how my eldest is serious and studious, my second-born rowdy and active.  She tells me then.  “I had another son.  My first-born.  He was serious, like yours.”

I want to make sure I’ve heard her correctly.  “Another son?”

“Yes.  He died.  A… cat-a-strof.”  The Russian word is the same as the English one.  Catastrophe.  I want to know, and I don’t want to know.  I’m already bonded with this woman.  “What happened?”  I lean closer, instinctively trying to comfort her with some kind of nearness.  

“I was driving, we were going to the lake.”

“You were by yourself?”

“Yes.”  The details are few, the language barrier frustrates now more than intrigues. “My two sons were - “ she waves behind her.  I fill in, “Behind you.”  

“Yes, behind me.  My son, the oldest, he was crying about something, I don’t know what.”  At this point, her ten-year-old comes up on rollerblades, and she stops.  Asks me if my children can have ice cream, gets out money, sends her son off with a stream of instructions.  I, too, get out money and offer to pay, but she waves me off with a mock-serious frown - “No. No!”  Unthinkable, to let guests in your country pay for their own ice cream.  I give in, smile at her son as he rolls away.

When he’s out of earshot, I ask, “So, what happened?”

“I was asking my son, ‘Why? Why? Why are you crying?’  I was - “ she motions with her hand again, whacks at an invisible child “ - like this, behind the seat, trying to get him to be quiet.”  Her youngest is tugging at her T-shirt, so she  blandly whips out her breast and he begins to nurse.  She cradles him across her body, continues her story.  

“And then, the car - “ she makes a twirling motion in the air with her hand. 

“You - you rolled the car.” 

“Yes, yes, I rolled the car.  Two times.” She tells me this with an almost immovable face. Only her eyes betray her pain.

“You rolled the car twice - “ my hands are over my mouth, I can’t breathe.  I shake my head wordlessly at her.  Finally I ask, “Was he wearing his seatbelt?”

“I told him to put it on,” she says, making a helpless motion with her hand.  “I told him, but… he didn’t listen.  I was stupid.”  The English word sounds abrupt and harsh, bursting from her mouth.  Chastising herself in a foreign language.  She says it again, and again.  “I was stupid.  Stupid.  I should have stopped the car.  I should have wiped his face, cleaned his face, comforted him - “  By now, my eyes are watering.  I’m looking wordlessly at her, both hands over my mouth.  I still can’t breathe.  The noise of the playground swirls around us.  

“I should have said, ‘Quiet, quiet, my son, what’s wrong?’”  I think, if it were me telling this story, I’d be crying so hard I couldn’t get the words out.  

Finally I ask, “What happened?”

“He was sitting beside the window, he was thrown out of the car…”  Her son returns with the ice creams, hands them out.  I get out wet wipes, call the boys over, scrub the palms of Will and Ben’s hands, open the ice cream wrappers.  I do this automatically, numbly.  My mind is with Pearl, in the car, on that horrible day.  

“How long ago?  When did it happen?”

“Five years ago.  And five years have - “ she makes a stroking motion over her heart. 

I fill in. “...done a lot to heal your pain.”

“Yes.  I have two more children, a daughter, and now another son.”  She pats the baby at her breast, looks fondly at her four-year-old, pigtails bouncing as she bounds up the slide with her ice cream.  

“But…” I stop, feeble.  I want to say, But there is no one in the world like your son.  No matter how many more children you have, you can never replace him.

“He would be thirteen,” she says this softly.  Almost apologetically.  As if she’s not supposed to allow herself to imagine him as though he were still living.  

I try to say my thought, try to express my sorrow for her loss.  She nods, only partially understanding my broken sentences.  Our eyes meet.  Impulsively, I lean in.  I reach an awkward arm around her shoulders, around the nursing baby.  I plant a quick, clumsy kiss on her broad, brown cheek.  Her skin feels moist.  My heart leaps towards hers.  I pull back, and our eyes meet again.  There seems nothing more to be said.  

We enjoy our children enjoying their ice cream.  Ruby screams for licks from Will’s stick, mouths little bits of chocolate.  She tilts her head up, gives a cheeky grin, displaying all six of her tiny teeth.  I make a joke, try to crack the sadness with mother-empathy: “With my first, I didn’t give him any sugar for two year.  With my second, I think he was maybe a year old before he had sugar.  With the third…” I trail off, and motion to Ruby sucking on the ice cream.  We both crack up laughing, she knowing exactly how the standards go out the window.  

Later, when it’s time to go, I tell her: “I prayed and asked God for a friend, for these two weeks we will be staying here...” 

“Really?” She seems surprised one would pray about that.  “Well, I’m new too,” she admits.  “We just moved in a week ago.”

“Only one week!  But you seem so natural, so at home!”  Suddenly all the pieces click: her desire to strike up a conversation with a stranger, wanting to practice her English, buying my kids ice cream, impulsively telling me her story… she needs a friend as much as I do.

She’s a sojourner too.  Even though this is her home.  

Before, she had described their house in the country, how they want to find tenants for it, and I thought it was just another property they owned.  But no, that was the home they just left behind, so their children can go to a good school in the city.  And here she is, sharing her pain, in a foreign language with a foreigner on the playground… I like this woman.  I like that she shared herself with me, risked something on a friendship that can only last two weeks at most.  It could be just callousness, that she’s numbed to her own pain.  Maybe she tells everybody her story.

I don’t think so.  

I tell her what I think.  “I think God arranged this, our meeting.”  

Light breaks over her face.  “Yes!  I think so too.”

even though it's quiet on here...

...it;s anything but quiet where I've been living!

I'm hunt-and-pecking this post with one hand, while my left arm cradles my squirming, fussing nine-month-old baby girl.  I've already headed off four typos while she chews on my face and loudly reminds me that SHE is supposed to be the center of my attention, not that black box-thing with the tappy keys.

A moment of quiet as she perches, bare toes dangling off my lap, briefly mesmerized by my flying fingers, and I quickly touch-type the rest of these words to you:

We have been traveling ceaselessly this summer: 3 weeks in Turkey for a conference, one week at home to catch our breaths, and five days ago we drove six hours in the car over the border to a neighboring country for a visa run of undetermined length... patchy internet, even patchier thought-patterns - all in all, a dried-up season for blogging.

But that doesn't mean I'm not living.  Elephant animal cracker thrown on the floor, my little girl is making her presence known, and I've realized, staring into her beautiful, mischievous, up-turned blue eyes, that it's more important to BE, really be with her than it is to stuff cookies in her mouth with one hand while making sure she doesn't put my cell phone in her mouth with the other.  It's more important that I enjoy the way her two tiny teeth stick up enchantingly from her bottom gum, and the way she gets inordinate joy out of crunching a crinkly packet of Ramen noodles, than it is to make sure my blog stays up-to-date.

So if the next few posts are sporadic, you'll forgive me... I'm giving myself permission to just live life for a little while, and not pressure myself to write about it all.

I know you understand.  :)

of weeds and hearts

It’s been a long day.

Discipline, discipline, brothers fighting, screaming fits, long time-outs… more discipline.  

And I’ve been hacking weeds out of my own heart, along with my sons’… Becoming more patient, by having my patience tested.  Becoming more loving, by having my love stretched.  Today I knew the depth of my love for my kids, felt Jesus hold me as I held my thrashing three-year-old until he finally calmed down in my arms.  

But the sin, oh, the sin!

I finally hustled everybody outside, gasping for a breath of fresh air.  I was still damp with sweat from the latest tussle, and as I stepped outside and the breeze met my face I breathed a sigh of relief.  

Standing at the top of our steps, my gaze fell on the huge, spiky weed that’s been growing, well, “like a weed” in a crack in our sidewalk, right next to my herb garden.  Every time I climb to our front door I want to hack it out; there’s just never time to reach for the hoe (arms full of baby, bags, etc.).  

Today was the day.  Time for an object lesson.

I picked up the hoe and beckoned my boys close.

“See this, right here?”  I pointed at the big, ugly, spiky weed.  “What’s this?”

“A weed,” Will said promptly.

“Is it good for you?” 

“No.”

“Is it healthy?  Can you eat it?”

Ben: “NO!  It’s all spiky, and the spikes will stick in your THROAT!  Blech!”

“Right,” I said (hiding a smile).  “It’s bad for you.  It’s bad for the garden.  What should we do?”

“Get rid of it!” 

So, I picked up the hoe, and started hacking at the base of the weed.  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Will flinch.  He’s my sensitive one, and I knew the lesson was going in because we’d already talked about gardens and hearts and weeds earlier this afternoon - during our long conversation about lying.

As I hacked, I kept talking.  “See?  Your sin is like this awful weed growing in your heart.  And Jesus tells me in His Word that I’m like your gardener - I’m supposed to tend your heart by teaching you to obey.  When I discipline you, I am obeying Jesus.  If we don’t get rid of those weeds in your heart now, they’ll grow bigger and bigger until they’re so big they wreck your life.”

Silence.  Two pairs of eyes stared, motionless, as I kept hacking at the root.  The awful thing was so thick the hoe kept sticking in the core of it; the sounds were pretty graphic. 

I did the best I could, until the weed was lying in tatters on the ground, and then I drew them close.  

I laid my hand on each of their hearts, one at a time.  

“I. love. you. so. much.  I am willing to do whatever it takes to get those weeds out of your hearts.”  

They hugged me back, and we all thought the lesson was over, until...

I walked over to look at our sunflower seedlings, and noticed a new crop of tender weeds flourishing after last night’s heavy rain.  I called the boys over, pointed out the healthy green sunflower plants, and then showed them all the little weeds.

“Ok guys, let’s get rid of some of these weeds... make sure you grab down near the bottom so the roots come out too," and I held up a sturdy specimen trailing root strings.

Plucking away, Will noticed how easily the roots were coming up. 

“That’s because these weeds are still tiny,” I explained, “not like that weed-monster we just tried to kill by the front steps.”  

And then I had an epiphany.  Part two of the lesson.

“You know, Will, when you listen to the Jesus Storybook Bible in the morning and then we talk about it?  That’s like plucking little weeds from your heart.  Every day, you can ask Jesus to weed your heart and show you what to get rid of, and then those little sins won’t have time to grow any bigger.”  

A little while later, I was back at my herb garden doing some more weeding, and Will came up close.  “Mommy,” he said, “wanna know what I just prayed?”

Squatting on my haunches, I turned to look up at him.  “What, honey?”

“I prayed to Jesus, and asked Him to weed my heart every day so no weeds can grow there.  And then I asked Him to grow the fruit of the Spirit in my heart, so it can be full of beautiful things!”

Music to my ears.  Now, if only Benjamin’s heart were that soft… 

Later on, at dinner, Ben came around and gave James and I unsolicited hugs, saying, emphatically, “I’m gonna obey!  I’m gonna obey you guys!  Jesus is in my heart!  He’s helping me!”  

“Aw, Ben, that’s so great!”  We hugged him back.  “But Ben, you’ve been saying those things for a while now, but there isn’t any change when we ask you to do something you don’t feel like doing… You need to ask Jesus to help you obey even when you don’t want to.”

“Ok, I will!” Big smile.  Kisses.  He is so affectionate.  Rambunctious.  Enthusiastic.  Lovable.   Sincere and emphatic in everything he says, but changeable, oh, so changeable!  One minute he’s hugging and kissing me, and the next minute he’s flailing and screaming in my face.  

Please, Lord, work deep into his heart-soil these seeds of discipline and wisdom we’re faithfully sowing every day, so that soon, we start to see fruit...

a quiet heart is a humble heart {how to keep a quiet heart: Part 2}

Lately, I’ve been exploring how to keep a quiet heart.  

I’ve been trying to protect pockets of quiet in my day.  Early mornings.  Naptime.  An hour in the evening.  Strategically trying to use those pockets of quiet to connect with Jesus, instead of scrambling to get one more post online or finish downloading the latest episode of Survivor.  

I’ve been practicing awareness of the presence of Jesus, trying to stay mindful of the fact that He really is with me every moment.  I’ve been trying to weigh down the moment with being all here, instead of letting my mind flee ahead into my to-do lists or stacked-up agendas.

It’s really hard.  It takes a discipline I don’t have yet to consistently choose Jesus and quietness over scramble and flurry.  A lot of days, I don’t succeed.  (And I’m noticing those are the days I feel scattered, frustrated and discouraged by bedtime.)

This afternoon, I’m teetering on the edge of resentment that my precocious five-year-old couldn’t doze just a little longer so I could have some uninterrupted writing time.  He woke up at the slightest rustle of noise, right as I was lighting a candle and sinking down into my writing chair, to come and ask me the inevitable, pleading question: “Will you play with me?” 

I had just sat down to write this post.  I wanted to explore this quote I found a while ago by Andrew Murray:

“Humility is perfect quietness of heart.  It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.  It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised.  It is to have a blessed home in the Lord, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Father in secret, and am at peace as in a sea of deep calmness, when all around and above is trouble.” 

-Andrew Murray, Humility

Humility means to expect nothing.

When I start expecting things to go my way, my quietness of heart is ruffled.  Inevitably, my demands aren’t met.  My expectations are shattered.  It’s actually unrealistic and selfish to demand that I have my cake and eat it too: that I should get to rest on my bed for half an hour, and then have some uninterrupted time to write as well.  

Murray defines “humility” as “perfect quietness of heart.”  Does that mean that perfect quietness of heart requires humility?  

Could I reverse that definition to discover a humble heart is one of the roads to a quiet heart?

It’s Sunday, which means Daddy is home and theoretically available.  Feeling slightly guilty (for sending my interruption on to my husband), and also slightly justified (since Daddy wants to spend more time with the boys on the weekends anyway), I send Will out to the veranda where Daddy is relaxing,...

A little uneasy, but doggedly determined to hang on to my expectations for the afternoon, I make myself a cup of tea and sit back down at the computer to keep writing.  I pick up this little book of Andrew Murray’s again, its pages chock-full of sentences that cut straight past all my fluffed-up reasons and excuses.  Like this one, which my eyes fall on:

“Pride must die in you, 

or nothing of heaven can live in you.”   

Andrew Murray, Humility

Bam.

I can hear Will resignedly playing with Ruby out on the veranda.  My hubby is goodnaturedly downloading another game for Will’s Leappad, and Will has momentarily let go of his desire to play with me...  

Suddenly, it hits me.  It’s my loss.  I lose, by not accepting his invitation to play.  I lose time with him that I can never get back again.  These words I’m so committed to writing down can be written another day, and if they’re no longer in my mind maybe they weren’t worth writing anyway.  

Regardless, writing down words cannot be more important than time with my son.

It’s my arrogance that thinks my agenda for the afternoon is more important, more valuable, more worthwhile than God’s agenda for me: which includes time with my son.

Without another word, I quietly click Save and close my computer.  I make my husband a cup of tea like mine and carry both mugs out to the veranda with a tin of snacks and a pack of UNO cards.  I sit down on the floor with Will and Ruby, and I spread out the UNO cards.  

Will’s face lights up.

My heart’s a little humbler.  And a little quieter.  It feels good.