Finding the reset moment

"Come here, baby," I whisper. He's three and not my baby anymore, but I can't shake the habit.

He comes, unsure. I have spent the morning speaking words of frustration and anger and annoyance; what do I want with him now? But I pull a blanket onto my lap and beckon him forward. A grin transforms his face and he climbs up. We sit together, snuggling, whispering, apologizing, forgiving, giggling. Reconnecting.

He wants down now, ready to go play, spirits high and sense of security reinstated. I catch the older one's questioning gaze and lift up the corner of the blanket in invitation. He, too, grins his acceptance. I kiss his hair and shift to make room for his long limbs, grateful that six isn't too old to curl up on my lap. Again, we take a few minutes for whispered reconciliation and reconnection; again, we end with giggles and a renewed sense of tenderness and camaraderie.

* * *

It had been a rough morning. Too little sleep, too many arguments, too much whining and yelling. There had been spilled milk and spilled paint and spilled tears when my own reactions were too big for the moment. Sometimes those days happen.

But there it was, a simple moment of reconnection, a deliberate choice, and our day turned around. Frustrations still arose but we handled them with more grace, connection reminding us that we're on the same team rather than working against each other. When I choose peace, they soon follow close behind. When I choose love and gentleness, they do the same. I cannot expect from them what I refuse to do myself.

And always, always, that moment is there when needed, ready to reset the course of the day. I only need to choose it.

Weekend Reading {vol. 98}

Wild Food, Wild Knowledge @ The Parent Vortex

Just as we might grow our own food or collect wild edibles from the forest, we can organically gather the knowledge and experience we need to grow and mature in the world. We can answer the question about what to do each day based on our own needs, not our expectations of what other people think we should do. We are free to decide what is really important to us, what we are able and want to eat or do. We are omnivores in many ways. And with the freedom of omnivory comes the responsibility to choose wisely. When we could eat anything, how do we choose to feed ourselves things that aren’t toxic? We should be asking often, “Can I eat this? Should I do this?”

Wherever it Rises @ A Deeper Story

I am overly compassionate to the spiritually disoriented and unfairly critical of those under the steeples. We needn’t be unanimous in the Body of Christ when we’re all redeemed by the same mercy. I might not agree with your every position, but neither must I disagree simply to mark my own territory.

Love for the truth can so easily become arrogance. It is shockingly simple to lose the thread. For times I’ve disparaged old forms without honoring the faithful Christ-followers who shouldered the church in their generation, please forgive me. Your leadership raised me to love Jesus. I will certainly get a dose of my own medicine one day, and if I am half as humble and tender as you are, it will be a miracle. Oh that your wisdom would leach down into my fiery, zealous heart.

Bad Mother @ The Loving Parent

So I must love myself unconditionally, as they love me unconditionally. There’s no point in me beating myself up about how I behaved. What’s done is done. NOW is a new moment. I can use the experience to connect to a part of myself that is normally hidden, to see it, acknowledge it and integrate it so that it no longer has the power to rear its ugly head. I’m learning that I don’t have to love all aspects of my behaviour to unconditionally love myself. I must give to myself that which I (try to) give to my children: nurturing, loving guidance and a safe space to reflect.

Momastory - A guest post from Julie @ Momastery

Now that I’m a parent, I get it. I get how you can love with your whole soul and still make mistakes.

And my kids...they keep getting bigger and more complicated. They’re growing up faster than I can deal with. I will not lower my expectations of them in terms of kindness, respect and hard work. This will cause problems sometimes. I’ll try not to yell, but I’ll probably lose my temper at some point. I will make mistakes and so will they. We’ll apologize and start over. And while I’m not always good at being their mom, I will wake up every day trying to do this job better. I will never give up and I will never stop doing that, even if we are parted.

And all I can hope is that they know, as I did, that I love them with my whole heart. No matter what.

Sunny days

There's sand in the bathtub and the hamper and little boys' pockets. I pour it out of their boots, shake it out of their socks, and sweep it off the floor only to sweep it again. On particularly good days, I even help them rinse it out of their mouths. It sounds like pop rocks candy as it crunches between their teeth.

There are pill bugs in leaf-filled jar homes, fruit flies dancing around my compost bucket, and beetles crawling across my computer screen. I'm just waiting for the day I wake up to a line of mocking ants marching across my kitchen floor. I hate those ants. And then I'll line the doorways and baseboards with cinnamon and try to ignore the twinges of guilt as we mash the remaining ants beneath our fingers. So much for my pacifist leanings. I offer my sincere apologies to our Aunt Jo, who would be absolutely horrified to hear about the mass ant murders that take place here on occasion.

There is the heady smell of flowers in the morning, sunshine in the afternoon, and barbecued dinners in the evening. The cherry blossoms have already fallen into pink carpets and turned brown under passing feet and strollers and wagons. Everything is bright and colourful, backed by a hundred shades of green. Every breath feels like praise - thank you, thank you, thank you.

There are picnics at parks and visits to the farm and the zoo. Bare feet delight in the cool grass and the warm pavement. There are squeals as tiny toes test cold ocean waters at the beach. The sun comes out and a whole new world of possibilities seems to open up for us.



The door opens after lunch and doesn't close again until bedtime. We've fallen into a nice routine. The babies - mine and the daycare child - lay down for their first nap mid-morning while the rest of us have a bit of quiet. The babies wake up just in time to join us for lunch, then there's a quick tidy and we all head out into the yard. It's early afternoon by then, so the baby sits in the only bit of shade there is, right in front of the Japanese maple tree and rhododendron shrubs. The boys roll down the sloped yard in oversized toy dump trucks for as long as my nerves can stand it, and then out come bubbles, sidewalk chalk, hula hoops, whatever catches their fancy that particular day. We all enjoy the sun until it's time for the sweet girl's afternoon nap. The rest of the afternoon is filled with books, crafts, and the continual coming and going of boys (and their accompanying dirt) through that ever-open door.

There are early suppers and evening walks, nightly baths to wash off the day's activities, and more laundry than seems possible. Such is almost-summer, and an easy trade-off it is for all this warm sunshine.

Notecard giveaway winners

Congratulations to Lauren and Estelle for being randomly selected as the winners of the Peace, Beauty, and Joy notecard giveaway!

Lauren and Estelle, I am unable to get in touch with either of you directly via your profiles. Please contact me to claim your prize.

It was absolutely lovely to read through all your comments about letter writing. Thank you to Peace, Beauty, and Joy for this fun giveaway, and do head over to their Etsy shop if you'd like to order some notecards of your own!

Peace, Beauty, and Joy (and a Weekend Giveaway!)

I get rather disproportionately excited each day when I slip out to check the mailbox. The air is fresh, the day is bright, the quiet is refreshing, and there's always that tiny thrill of hope that maybe the mail will contain something exciting.

It usually doesn't, of course. Bank statements and junk mail, mostly, with the occasional magazine for one of the boys.

(They always turn to the back to read the jokes first. Knock knock. Who's there? Billy. Billy who? Billy the goat, that's who!)

But sometimes there's a card or a letter just for me, all my very own, from a dear loved one, and it about makes my entire month.

I know that if I get that excited about a handwritten letter, chances are good others enjoy them too. As such, I'm always on the lookout for lovely artisan cards to keep stashed away, ready to pull out for whomever might need a little something in the mail. I'm always scooping them up at craft shows or slipping them into my cart on Etsy.

I was excited, then, to see this beautiful new Millefiori card collection from Peace, Beauty, and Joy. The notecards, featuring turtles, geckos, frogs, and chameleons, are even more striking in person than in their Etsy shop.

The professionally-printed cards are rich in colour and smooth to the touch. The detail on the Millefiori patterns is incredible. I love it.

I'm a big fan of blank cards, perfect for any occasion or no occasion at all. Personalization is available, though, for one line on the front of the card and up to ten lines on the inside. The high-quality cards are lovely to write on and come beautifully packaged.

The boy immediately asked for one of his own as soon as he saw them, eager to write a note to his grandparents. The cards held up beautifully to the marker - his chosen writing implement for the day - without bleeding or showing through the back of the card. Not that you're likely to write your own notecards in marker. Still. Good to know, right?

Peace, Beauty, and Joy would like to give two readers a set of 10 notecards with matching white envelopes! To enter, simply leave a comment below.

Giveaway will close on Sunday, May 5th at 11:59 pm PST. Two winners will be chosen via random number generator and announced the following morning. Good luck!

Contest closed; congratulations lauren and Estelle!

Dear pastor who laments church shoppers

I was at your church that Sunday when you criticized church shoppers. My husband and I were there with our three children to see if we could find a home in your community. You know. Church shopping.

I understand your concern. We're a culture that doesn't value pushing through the tough stuff, a culture that values the freedom of wings over the growing of roots. And probably we criticize too easily and leave too quickly and focus too much on what we can get instead of what we have to offer others. I get it.

But we're not in this place because we didn't like the music at our old church. We're not looking for a new church home because our feathers were ruffled by a hard-hitting homily. We're not here because we want the church to serve us and entertain us and meet our every need.

We're church shopping because our deeply loved church home closed its doors. Our cherished friends moved back to their home country. We were, in so many ways, mourning very deep and real losses as we sat down in your church that Sunday - and all we heard was shame.

What you didn't offer, however, were any solutions for those of us thrust against our wills into this very place. You mocked the post-service question, "how was it?", but what else are we to ask each other as we leave your church and consider whether we might be able to put down roots there? You criticized any consideration of music, preaching, ambiance, congregants, really anything at all, but are you truly suggesting that we close our eyes and hearts and simply walk into the nearest church and call it home?

This process of finding a church home has been both immensely challenging and deeply painful for us. We didn't want this. We didn't choose this. But we continue our search because we value, as you do, having a community in which to live life together. Instead of extending grace and understanding to those of us on this road, you heaped more shame upon us for not easily stepping into a new community. What place, I wonder, does discernment and wisdom have in your vision of what it means to choose such a community?

These past weeks haven't been easy. Each Sunday, we have been surrounded by strangers. We have answered all the usual questions, week after week, and left exhausted from the emotional toll of this process. We have walked into each new building only to be met by someone shaking our hands and informing us that they would take our children to Sunday School. (Where else do we do this? Where else do we hand off our children to complete strangers and assume that they will be fine?) We have been to churches too large for our introverted selves to feel comfortable in, churches that our children have loved simply for the massive screens overhanging the fog-filled stage. We have been to churches with scarcely any other children at all. The service at the first church we visited began with a woman's testimony of a half-hour lecture she had given to her friend on the gift of spanking, and how by the grace of God, her friend was brought to tears and convinced of the mandatory place spanking has in the biblical raising of children. So that was awesome. And by awesome, I mean oh hell no.

And you're suggesting that in our search for a home filled with both love and truth, we should question nothing?

Maybe it's shallow to leave the church and discuss the music, the message, the atmosphere, or our general gut-level reactions, but we can't help but give at least some consideration to these things. If the baby can't even stay in the service because the band is rocking out too loudly for her comfort, well, it's just not going to work out for us. If you come on too strong, demanding that we hand over our children despite our (and their) polite refusal, well, it's going to freak us out a little bit. And if the best testimony you can give of God's work in your life is your ability to convince another mother to hit her children, well, we're going to think that's a pretty sad sort of God to worship in the first place.

It hasn't been all bad, not at all. We've met some lovely people, witnessed some lovely services, worshiped in holy places. But what we haven't yet found is a place to call home. We're certain we will, but in the meantime we're stuck in that much-maligned role of church shoppers.

Please. Extend us some grace and encouragement as we walk this road, and I promise you, we will commit ourselves wholeheartedly to our new community when we find it.

In Peace,

A Church-Shopping Family

All the reason I need

I try to slip into bed quietly, but every night she stirs anyway. She squirms over until her forehead is pressed against mine and I breathe deep, inhaling her perfect baby scent. That moment, every night, is one of the most beautiful moments of my day.

And that right there? Is all the reason I need.

In that moment, nearly overwhelmed by my love for her, it matters not why we chose to welcome her into our bed since the day she was born. I'm not thinking about breastfeeding success or healthy attachment or even just getting some extra sleep; ultimately, she's there simply because I love having her there.

Oh, I appreciate those other reasons during the less magical moments. It gives me peace to know why we decided this was the best choice for our family. I think of those reasons on the nights - because yes, they come - when I don't want to be touched. I remind myself of them when I want to shove my husband off one side of the bed and the child off the other side and do a happy dance right there in the middle of all that the gloriously empty space.

Just keepin' it real, folks.

But those more objective head-level reasons aren't the real ones. The real ones are all heart, baby. I simply love snuggling with her warm and solid little self. I love kissing her soft hair and ample cheeks as she breathes the deep breath of sleep. I love watching her Daddy quietly lean over to kiss her goodnight before turning off the lamp. I love it when she drifts off with her chubby hand resting on my arm or her pointy toes pressed into the soft skin of my thrice-stretched belly. I love hearing her giggle in her sleep and being able to comfort her without a second's delay when she cries out suddenly.

She's delightful during the day, but something about the nighttime adds a special bit of magic to her.

And I wouldn't miss it for all the extra bed space in the world.

Just writing along with The EO...