I was in high school ten years ago. Ten years ago. This seems strange to me. High school was only yesterday. College was half an hour ago. And who are these kids and why do they keep calling me Mom?

Ha. Just a little humor there. Only Mara calls me Mom… Seriously, we all know two-month-old babies can’t say Mom!

Ha, again. I’m feeling a bit “sarcastical” but not in a bitter, emo kind of way. More in a “I’m being sarcastic because the fact that I am an independent adult, let alone wife and mother of two young children, seems surreal and fabulously wonderful and overwhelming and I don’t know what to do about it” kind of way.

I think I don’t really do anything about it. I am it! And I love it. Sure, there are smelly diapers and not enough sleep, lots of responsibility and little free time, too many projects and not enough money, but the truth is this: I am living the life I want. I choose this life. I love this life. I want this life, every smelly, silly detail of it.

I am sarcastic because I am overwhelmed, but not by responsibility and negativity and general mental clutter. I am overwhelmed by those things sometimes, sure. Right now, though, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and awe that this life is mine to live with all its pain and challenge and sweetness.

Great articles and I’m happy to be included. Mainly, though, I like that organised is spelled without a z.

Go see the Carnival.

Beautiful traces of death:

This is what we are left:

The aroma of a song,

The inevitable, the longing

And the quick, sweet rush of pain,

The sounds, the empty gain

Of space we cannot fill.

The utter, awful thrill

Of death. We wring our hands,

We kneel, we weep, we stand,

We conquer darkness; we endure

And carry home this lonely cure

We found too late: The star expired.

We would go too, but we are tired.

Whenever I just don’t feel like cooking, I turn to M.F.K. Fisher. Some of her recipes are strange rather than appealing, but her descriptions get me running to the kitchen. Read these from The Art of Eating:

“It was a big round peach pie, still warm from Old Mary’s oven and the ride over the desert. It was deep, with lots of juice, and bursting with ripe peaches picked that noon. …Father cut the pie in three pieces and put them on white soup places in front of us, and then spooned out the thick cream. We ate with spoons too, blissful…” (p. 358)

“Small brown roasted chickens lay on every plate, the best ones I have ever eaten, done for me that afternoon by Madame Doellenbach of the Vieux Vivey and not chilled since but cooled in their own intangibly delicate juices. There was a salad of mountain lettuces. There was honest bread. …But what really mattered, what piped the high unforgettable tune of perfection, were the peas, which came from their hot pot onto our thick china plates in a cloud, a kind of miasma, of everything that anyone could ever want from them, even in a dream.” (p. 666)

“Breakfast, then, can be toast. It can be piles of toast, generously buttered, and a bowl of honey or jam…” (p. 193)

So simple, just describing food, and yet she makes me remember why I love food, why I own shelves full of cookbooks, why I actually like going to the grocery store and become delirious at the thought of the farmer’s market. Food is basic, and simple, and we take it for granted, and even grow weary of its three-meals-a-day monotony. Taking it a step back, viewing it from a distance, listening to the words that describe the smells and textures and tastes, we remember that it is more than necessity. It is good, a gift, a blessing on the repetition of our days, a sweet savor to lift the mundane up to miraculous.

Several ideas floating in the space inside my head. (There’s some extra room that my brain doesn’t occupy).

There’s a new ladies’ Bible study starting at church this Wednesday evening. My first thought was that I definitely don’t have time, don’t need another commitment, and don’t want to get into another evening event, especially one that take me away from my husband. Obviously, he doesn’t fit into the “ladies” category, so he is not exactly welcome…

But since that initial reaction, I’ve had second thoughts. The last few Sundays as I’ve sat in church, or looked out at the congregation during worship times, or walked the aisle before and after services, I’ve seen the glaring absence of fellowship in my life. I know these people, sure. I like them, and I think they like me. I know their basic life situations. I don’t push past the surface, though. I don’t sit down, spend time, ask the deeper questions. I don’t open up. I’m not vulnerable with them. I answer questions almost flippantly, as I would with a stranger in the grocery store.

Fellowship is sacred. I can feel the lack of it in my spirit, especially since my Mom died last summer and I am craving the warmth of the generous, feminine spirit that she was to me. A ladies’ Bible study isn’t going to replace my Mom, but it could be a first step toward building those relationships that could grow into something valuable and important.

Mom is one of those other thoughts I have been unable to avoid since the new year began. I thought Christmas would be difficult. It was different, but good. Everything since then has been difficult.

Grieving is a strange process. The first few months I was emotionally numb. I would pick up the phone to call Mom and tell her something cute Mara did, then realize… and just put the phone down and go on to the next thing, zombie-like. After that I started crying more; every few days or so I would soak Joe’s shoulder and he would comfort me, and then we would go on.

Now, though, I just feel this deep ache. I feel like I could cry and never stop, so I am not letting myself begin. There is simply this huge regret, this longing to have one more conversation, one more hug, one more time to sit down beside her at the piano and sing a new song together.

I know one more would never be enough.

I love typing 2008 instead of 2007. For some reason, or perhaps for many reasons, I am eager to be done with 2007 and push on into this new year. It could turn out to be the worst year of my life, but at this point the unknown possibilities are still more appealing than the all too well-known and survived past year.    It has been a year of change. The whole structure of the family business shifted with a fair share of growing pains. While my husband was dealing with those adjustments, I spent a month in Mississippi saying goodbye to my mom. In the six months since mom’s funeral, we’ve begun remodeling our basement, my sister’s divorce became final, Mara started walking, we had our second baby, Joe’s grandfather moved in with Joe’s parents after being diagnosed with liver failure, our church’s senior pastor resigned, we started designing and maintaining websites as a side venture, I started putting more time into freelance writing, my dad got engaged to a wonderful lady, we hosted out-of-town family and friends, and we just returned from an amazing trip to Colorado over Christmas vacation.

I resist change even when it is good, as most of us do, so a year of change means a year of emotional stretching way past the point of comfort. Stretching hurts sometimes but it creates growth and brings in new experiences and new life. I need to start reaching for change instead of resisting it. Growth is, after all, what I’m after.

(from Dec 31, 2007) This was my first day of the “new year 2008 schedule.” It’s not 2008 yet, and we’re still on vacation, so I thought I’d step into my resolutions with a day to spare and still in the “relax, it’s all good” vacation mentality. I got up this morning and took myself and Koda for a walk. Everything is cold, but not bitterly so. The grass is crunchy with frost and the air is sharp and invigorating. Fall is definitely my favorite season because it provides all the crisp freshness of cold without the extreme chill, but even with that extreme, winter is a close second on my favorite list. I get sluggish in the summer; I get inspired in the winter. I guess maybe there’s a little Eskimo thrown in with my Southern blood.

There is a new sports field area at the back of our current park, so I headed that way to try out the new .7 mile walking trail. I like walking trails because I know how far I am going but I don’t like the repetition of simply going around in a circle like a hamster. I’ve grown very aloof toward the current .5 mile walking loop due to hamster-like feelings, so a new spot for the new year sounded nice.

I crossed the bridge behind the park and found a soccer field but no asphalt walking trail. Oh well, no tears on my part. I prefer crunchy grass and leaf-softened paths to asphalt anyway. Koda doesn’t mind where we walk as long as we are outside of the yard and he can sniff and smell and do his doggie routine. It felt good to be moving instead of sedentary, as I have largely (no pun intended) been for the last few weeks.

We need new beginnings: a chance to forget mistakes and shortcomings, to find adventures, to approach new plans with hope, to test new ideas. New beginnings are grand events; they are the moment we conquer the world. Weekends are for coasting, but Mondays are a challenge. I thrive on the challenge of doing better, doing more, enjoying more, succeeding more than I did last Monday. “Every day is a new beginning, with no mistakes in it,” said Anne of Green Gables.

Holidays create enough of a pause from routine that going back to normal feels like a new beginning. Christmas and New Year’s, of course, are the mother load of holiday new beginnings. Extended time off, festivities, family events, special things that are only a part of this time of year. Throw in the traditional New Year’s resolutions and NEW BEGINNING seems guaranteed. Except it’s not. Sometimes new becomes a simple fall back into the rut. Exhausted, overwhelmed, undisciplined, discouraged… one way or another most of us tumble right off of New Year’s Day into the same old groove of mediocre oblivion, and feel a little bit worse for the wear.

I, for one, make far too many and too grandiose resolutions, fail miserably, and crawl back into my familiar hole while quietly resolving never to resolve anything ever again. Other people do the same thing, or make resolutions with no plan to back them up, or simply resolve nothing (that way they can’t fail) and consequently change nothing.
This year I am resolved to be smart about my resolutions. I am still making too many, and too grandiose, but I am concentrating on only a few at a time and breaking them down into smaller, less-intimidating goals. When I work my way successfully through these, I can tackle a few more. Achievement leads to more achievement. Conversely, failure tends to breed nastier versions of itself. So dream big, but start small and be consistent. “Baby steps, sir, baby steps.”

1. Make a list of the “big goals” - as many as you can think of in 5 to 10 minutes. Don’t strain yourself, but don’t limit yourself.
2. Pick 1 or 2 to focus on for the next month.
3. Downsize and simplify those 1 or 2 big goals into a few baby steps you can take in the right direction.
4. Commit to being faithful in those baby steps for the next month.
5. Those are your resolutions! Write them down and keep them handy - on your bathroom mirror, in your wallet, by your bed.
6. When you reach the deadline (January 31st), having been faithful in those baby steps, you can choose to continue working on them or start working on a couple more.

If you use this method, you have the potential to create successfully, in one year, around 40 new habits that will be consistently moving you toward your “big goals.”

The last couple of weeks have given me a good bit of time to do some reading. Newborns aren’t particularly fast eaters; sitting down every 3 hours for 45 minutes or so to feed Robbie has gotten me through a fat stack of library books in the last two weeks. (It has also gotten me through multiple readings of “The Promise Rainbow and Noah’s Ark” and “Dr. Seuss’s ABC Book,” two of Mara’s favorites. I bet you didn’t know that Z is for Zizzer-Zazzer-Zezzer, did you?) One of the books I’ve kept contemplating is Charlotte M. Mason’s Home Education: Training and Education Children Under Nine . I have skimmed through this book but this time a couple of topics really stood out: first, her discussion of the power of habits, and second, her overview of the training of children.

The Power of Habits: “Habit Is Ten Natures”
Mason’s basic premise is that education is the formation of habits. First, we must understand that “the effort of decision is the most exhausting effort of life” and even moreso for the child than for the adult, because they lack a fully developed strength of will. “It is the business of education,” Mason says, “to find some way of supplementing that weakness of will which is the bane of most of us as well as of the children.”

Our human natures provide us with natural tendencies, desires, affections, emotions universal to mankind as well as the particular quirks of personality unique to each individual. Mason points out that leaving the child to develop “unhindered according to the elements of character and disposition” results in very little progress in the child, if any at all, because “…it is unchangeably true that the child who is not being constantly raised to a higher and a higher platform will sink to a lower and a lower.”

Human Nature vs. Habit
But habit, to be the lever to lift the child, must work contrary to nature, or at any rate, independently of her. …exactly anything may be accomplished by training, that is, the cultivation of persistent habits.

What Mason calls the extraordinary power of habit is the tool of the parent and the educator in leading a child to full physical, moral, and intellectual development, for “it is easier for the child to follow lines of habit carefully laid down than to run off these lines at his peril.” Children, like adults, are creatures of habits and as such will walk in the way of their habits whether they have been consciously or unconsciously formed. What parents tend to view as distinct preferences in their very young children are, most often, merely the expression of the power of habit. The preferences can be diverted by replacing an old habit with a new one. Certainly, there is a struggle against letting go of the old habit at the beginning; but once a new habit has become sufficiently ingrained in the child’s life, it will be as preferred as the old one ever was.

Overcoming Human Nature Through Habit
It follows that this business of laying down lines towards the unexplored country of the child’s future is a very serious and responsible one for the parent. It rests with him to consider well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and pleasure; and, along these tracks, to lay down lines so invitingly smooth and easy that the little traveller is going upon them at full speed without stopping to consider whether or no he chooses to go that way.

A child who is in the habit of eating only carrots and chicken nuggets will develop into an adult unable to enjoy most of the flavors and textures of food; conversely, a child who is taught the habit of eating what is given without complaint will grow into an adult who consistently tries, and finds that he enjoys, many kinds of food.

The forming of the habit is the most difficult part; once the habit is in place, it will develop in strength with only a little oversight from the parent. During the forming process the continual help of the parent is needed, to remind the little person of what is expected and to let no diversion from the new habit go unchecked. So, to lteach the child to try all new food, the parent must be willing to spend as much time as necessary for those first meals. Perhaps only a bite or two of something unfamiliar is given with the rest of the meal. The parent will point out, at the beginning of the meal, in a conversational way, that there is something new and the child is expected to eat it. Will the child resist? Guaranteed, if the new habit of eating all food usurps an old habit of eating only what is familiar and accepted. At this point the parent must remember that the resistance is not of pain, deprivation, or even preference on the part of the child. Rather, the child is merely rebelling at the idea of jumping from an old, familiar track into a new one. Jumping tracks requires effort and does not appeal to a creature of habit. But the parent knows the child’s life will be richer and better from forming this new habit, so the parent must the all-wise ruler in the situation and persist despite resistance.

The child sits in the chair until he takes the two bites. At the new meal, two bites of something else are introduced. There is no need to repeat the instructions; the child will remember. Again, the parent must persist despite resistance no matter how long it takes. Consistence is the only way a habit can be formed, and if the child sees just once that the new behavior is truly only optional, it will take ten times as long and a hundred times as much effort to instill the new habit.

With every meal, a few bites of some new, unfamiliar food are introduced and the unalterable expectation is maintained. The child will initially resist, but less and less as the habit of eating what is new becomes more familiar than the habit of refusing. As acceptance replaces resistance, larger amounts of new food can be introduced, always with the same quiet, unflinching expectation. Soon enough a new habit is formed and once formed requires only that the parent be alert enough to see that it is maintained in new places and situations just as steadily as it is at home.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

Lately our major project has been the basement: a huge, unfinished area full of all the stuff we didn’t know what to do with. There’s a floor-to-ceiling stack of servers and processors, a row of old computer monitors, multiple boxes of smaller computer parts, and stacks of computer books. That’s just my husband’s stuff. Then there’s mine: two sets of dishes that I have no room for in my kitchen, fondue sets, vases, material scraps, old files and notebooks and papers, boxed-up baby clothes from 0-3 months to 3 years, my “before the first pregnancy” clothes, maternity clothes, and “in between the first and second pregnancy” clothes, and stacks of other, non-computer books. Then there is all the stuff we have accumulated for and from ongoing projects, such as countertop remnants, scrap lumber, unused 2×4s, dismantled shelving, a roll of insulation, a half-used bucket of drywall plaster, and many small drywall pieces.

I never pondered the idea of inanimate objects procreating until we had this basement. It - and all the stuff in it - has a life of its own. We’ve given away clothes and books, had a garage sale and donated the leftovers, sold furniture and household stuff online, and hauled away many loads of trash. Still the stuff just fills the space. Everytime I walked down the stairs to do laundry I just tried to overlook it. It has been so overwhelming to think about clearing out this space into something usable… until now.

I had to get frustrated enough with the mess and the waste before I was willing to take on the scary beast of a basement. It seemed such an enormous project that I felt like I needed to schedule hours and hours to it, and it is hard to find lots of excess hours just sitting around. Finally, driven by frustration to action of any kind, I just started tackling one small pile at a time. Joe set up some cabinets on one end of the largest room, and one by one I hauled out boxes, sorted through them, took out the nasty, worthless stuff, organized and arranged the good stuff, and put it all away in a cabinet or a nicely labeled box. Slowly I cleared out the storage space off the bedroom and returned my sorted and labeled boxes to it. Slowly I worked my way through the piles of stuff in the bedroom itself until I could see almost the entire floor again. Everyday a little more order appeared, a little more space, a little more progress.

Two days ago, with the help of a friend, I attacked the last of the bedroom to get it completely emptied and ready for use as an actual bedroom. It took us twenty minutes to clear out the rest of the clutter, remove the lumber remnants, hang a curtain over the storage area entrance, wipe down the walls, hang a curtain over the window, and sweep the floor. Twenty minutes!

Yesterday Joe was off work all day so we decided to set up the bed in the newly emptied bedroom. It morphed into an afternoon-long workaholic’s dream, but after five hours of hard work we had the bedroom ready for a guest, moved Joe’s workspace over close to mine so we have a dual office, and transformed our previously cluttered and junked office/extra room into a clean and cozy library/lounge. One afternoon!

I started seriously working on the basement, one box at a time, only about three weeks ago. There’s still a lot to do. The floors are rough, unfinished concrete. The walls need to be sanded and painted. The light fixtures are an eyesore. The piles of lumber and building materials are still there. Our half-installed bathroom is still half-installed as we get the necessary time and money (and a plumber!) to finish installing it. But progress is beautiful and inspires more progress. Overcoming a box or two that first day led to overcoming two or three boxes the next day, and from there we have made these giant leaps into two habitable rooms and a working office. No, not perfect, but better. Much better.

“Desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” A tree bears fruit; it produces something beautiful and useful. Seeing our desires fulfilled, even in small pieces, is the push, the fertilization and water and nutrients and sunshine necessary to get that tree bearing good fruit. The more we let projects and goals sit around, untouched and overwhelming, the sicker and sicker our hearts become over them.

Make a move toward a big goal or project, just one small move. If you want to organize that dreaded clutter beast in your home, just get one empty box - a small one, maybe - and fill it up and throw it out. If you want to schedule your days and use your time better, get a notebook and start making a list of things to do and appointments to keep. If you want to be a better friend, pick up the phone and call, even if you only leave a message. Start. It can be a small start, it can seem insignificant, but the energy it provides from even the small amount of progress you see will push you on toward the next step and more progress. The wonderful thing about making progress is that it is cumulative: each day’s progress builds on the progress of the day before, and you get to look back at that valley of hope deferred from a higher and higher distance.