Water babies

Spring break arrived all at the same time for the kids and I, so we bundled into the Sub and drove up to the iced over Lake Superior with Ali along for company. There is something about water - I don't put much credence in astrology but it is noteworthy that I am a Pisces and my name means "white wave". Water speaks my language and syncs my soul with the mighty universe, tapping me back into the source of energy, peace, growth. Here I am safe and I am whole, I have limitless potential, I believe in myself and the earth and others. It is respite much needed from dangerous precipices of past and present colliding to set me off center.

The textures and colors on the shore are breathtaking. The harsh cascades of ice off the rusty cliffs, the contrast of the soft and solid ice, the pools of water melting from the brief sunlight, the sound of an underground river running...

Of course, we have adventures: I brave the icy waters below and try to edge my way along the shoreline to the caves that I've never been able to see. Sliding each foot forward tentatively, one finally pushes through the mushy top layer. I almost put weight on it, thinking it's just surface melt. But Lake Superior is unforgiving always, and deadly in winter, so I push with my toe once more, and my boot goes down into the icy water. I keep my balance, pick the slab of ice out of the hole, and look clear through to the bottom 15 feet below. Every pebble is visible in still relief through the viscous water, clear as glass but with that wintery blue hue that bathes the world up here.

We pick rocks, dig through to the underground river, slide and skip stones across the glassy ice in the cove. Facts and ideas and things to teach keep leaping to my tongue, but the hollowly silent air by the waveless expanse swallows up my intellect and we are all just awe and contentment and bliss.

Little fingers are red with cold and cheeks have angry splotches, but we press on into the twilight after sunset, skating with our boots on a small natural ice rink, eating snow, sliding on our butts down embankments and boulders covered in inches of ice.

Recharged, refreshed, rested, we drive away on a sunny Thursday with the lake sparkling like an vast field of diamonds. There are no words for the joy of seeing a once-in-a-lifetime natural event like the ice over on the big Lake this year. There are days you barely scrape your way through to bedtime and wonder how you made it, and then there are days you know you will never forget: days like these last stolen few on the wild, boundless beauty of our favorite shores.

"shine bright like a diamond"

Down to the bone

On a hunt for beauty, you find just what you need to face whatever is in front of you for this day: lament if you are mourning, joy if you are celebrating; work if you have the strength for it; rest if you are weary. Beauty is like a gemstone, cut with many facets, and as you turn it in the sunlight, it reflects all of life on it's different surfaces, the good, the bad, the ugly. I play a song one day, and it is the deepest longing of my heart I hear, and it is good to be known and to hear that I am not alone on this path. The next, the burden lifted, I hear the song of my salvation, and I am glad someone dances with me.

Today I watch the farmer making hay bales, his coif of white hair blowing in the hot furnace of the summer wind, chaff whipped up by his tractor and blowing over my feet on the sun-drenched porch. He is dripping sweat and smiling, hard at work. The kids are gone to Grandma's all week, free from the little cloud of cancer we were stuck under, swimming every day and calling me exhausted and happy and brown as berries in the evening. Aaron and I, my mother, my aunts, we work, work, work to bring some organization and simplicity to this house that has been too long without a good spring cleaning. Clutter makes for difficult work and I am ready to be free of it. We haul out bag after bag of trash and donations for the local thrift store, and slowly the bones of the farmhouse emerge like the first time a girl wears a swimsuit in springtime.

The last two nights, I watched feel good movies. I'm reading an uplifting book for the first time in months. I'm reading the book of Esther and Ruth in the Bible, because I need some happy endings. To remind me to bask in this happy ending. To remind me it is okay to smile, long and wide, for this happy ending. To drink lots of iced tea and spend lots of time sitting in my swing in the summer evening sun, to bring the kids to the pool 8 extra times this summer and sign Rosy up for gymnastics and do messy crafts and work so hard my bones ache to organize and deep clean my house. We are free! He has delivered us!

Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will keep you strong right up to the end, and he will keep you free from all blame on the great day when our Lord Jesus Christ returns. God will surely do this for you, for he always does just what he says, and he is the one who invited you into this wonderful friendship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (I Corinthians 7:7-9)

On tiptoes

Taking time to sniff the flowers and give thanks for the spring rains this frigid late April Saturday. How about you? What are doing in your neck of the woods?

That in the fullness of time He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth. (Eph. 1:10 exc.)

Links for this slow weekend:

• Memorize Scripture quickly and easily (perfect for both kids and adults) at Scripture Typer
• Check out the return-on-investment statistics of your college (or one for your child)
• Sign up for the upcoming American Cancer Society's Relay for Life
• Check out the heart-wrenching video on The Best Job in the World from P&G
• Listen to some slow soulful new music from Portland's Josh Garrels
• Read about a student expelled from BJU for demanding accountability for sex crimes
• Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary, writes here about short term missions strategy
• Watch the most beautiful baby bath ever

Red-eyed dreams

The world turns slowly when you watch through the night, red eyes burning from too long staring at a screen, sleep gnawing the edges of consciousness, tattered after 24 hours like the edges of torn paper. The inky thoughts bleed out into a dark smudge and you lift hands to curl cramped fingers away from keys. You think to yourself that you can't use words like "illusive" and "beautiful" in a paper like the one you're writing, and a brief glimpse of the worn edges of journal pages draws you in with longing. Longing for the creative elegance of pen pushing down the fibers of real paper. The curls of letters jotted by hand. 

A short season of hard labor, and finally, the "send" button depresses under a tired pointer, and the light blinks out on a night of real sleep. But the voices of worry crowd into the weary head heavy on the pillow. Voices of failure, despair, criticism. What if that life's work, culminated in a tome of statistics and stark words...what if it's not what you think it is? What if they do tear it up?

The porch swings lulls away the worry, the night wind blowing the dusty yard clean, a twinkling planet winking good wishes. You find the pillow again, and this time, rest, as heavy as a winter quilt blankets mind and body. The synapses click as they shut themselves off for the night, like the computer winding down next to you in the dark.

Voices, when I listen to the voices
Every shroud of anger is sorrow in disguise
The voices, when I believe the voices
That convince me I am worthless,
bent on my demise


 Hear, oh hear the saints’ and angels’ voices


Everything about my weakness that is strong
Everything about the heart that could go wrong
Every hope that ever lived there but has since flown
I’m finding again, finding again


 We choose to love the things that hate us most

Here I fell on impoverished floor 

And came to rest beyond the reach of light 

Though the world would not think twice of me 

You searched for me in your own peculiar fight

 Father's wait for a long, lost child 

Scanning dawn and its bright horizons

 This is the world turning upside down 

When the light that was lost is found 

Come see the dawn with the darkness refused 

Today is yesterday made new

~from Eric Peters' Voices and Lost and Found*~

thoughts after sending in the dissertation,

as real life once again surrounds

*if you haven't discovered The Rabbit Room, head over to listen to all of Eric's songs from "Birds of Relocation" on the blog.

Under the saddle

I came alive because of cancer. I remember the year before I was diagnosed, when my third daughter was just starting to toddle. I was completely, unabashedly overwhelmed as a mother of three girls three and under. I was pregnant already and I felt like someone hooked up an IV to my arm during the night and drained every last bit of energy right out of me. I told my husband I wanted to go back to work. This was too hard, cuddling children all day, trying to keep up my housework, the clinging, and the crying, and the poopy pants. It was just too much. I was stuck in a job I hated.

And when did mothering become work? Sometime after the second was born, and I could no longer give undivided attention to anyone. Worse than the actual hatred of my job as a stay at home mom was my guilt over my hatred for my job. What mom doesn't love working with her children? I felt like a complete failure, and I simply wanted out.

Then something miraculous happened. A blessing in disguise. The winter of my soul, the cancer that robbed me of my normal, dreary life, ended the season of my discontent. Years spent fighting the bit of motherhood were swept away in a torrent of lonely reflection when I left my family behind for three long weeks for radiation seeding treatment in 2008. The saddle suddenly removed, I saw the scars left by my twisting and turning, resenting the crown of motherhood as though it were a tight bridle instead.

The dippers cup stars in summer and spill them across the black in the winter. Close to the horizons, the sky is void of those specks of silver. I am a woman stretched across the heavens, arms reaching toward the trees, feet toward the moon rise. In this middle, high above the earth's orb, is perspective and peace. As a young mother, I was blinded by the lack of choice. When I am old, I will look back and long for these days. Though I am in life's winter, this season of suffering growing heavier each passing year, I can dance here, in the space of the middle, because I've known the much harder struggle of bucking motherhood.

I used to cup stars like the summer's dippers, holding my time close like a treasure to my chest. Now I am the dipper in winter, spilling stars, spilling laughter and giving time and worrying less and loving more. I revel in the giggles with my oldest daughter, sit in my messy front room cuddling my second, almost 7 and grown long and lean, just because it is her birthday party day and she wants me to. I wake up in the morning and lay still for an hour, my son digging in my armpits (don't ask! It's his comfort thing, ever since he was a baby) and my youngest daughter in that sleep stupor still, staring at the ceiling and holding my hand, a statue carved in the marble of morning. We spin together, through trials, tribulations, triumphs.

I will never fight motherhood again like I once did. And for that, I am thankful for cancer. This year of remission, I set a goal to learn to rest like Jesus did and to learn how to enter into the joy of childhood with my children. For isn't this one of the characteristics that draws us to His character? The ability to rest even when more work was left to be done, the foresight to care for His own physical and emotional needs even when the needs of others (such as those waiting for physical healing) hung in the sands of time? I don't want these years to slip by without notice. I want to burn them into my memory, fill them up with the quiet, simple moments that really matter.

Breathing

Beams of God's radiance glint off the plastic footboard of the hospital bed and send a rainbow of prismatic gold over the bleached white sheets I have pulled up to my chin. The window is cold and the draft sneaks under the blankets and cools my toes. Across the room, a roommate snores off her hangover and overdose. I stare up at the pock-marked Styrofoam ceiling tiles, lost in time.

The odd paradox of melancholy and joy has lived in my breast for a year now. I learn to name the constant ebb and wash of emotions with words like "disgust" for the acid burning, "shame" for the head-bent-low grief, "joy" for the sparkling champagne of the soul. 

The days are long and quiet here, punctuated with an all too brief hour of Eminem and painting in the middle, meals like clockwork arriving cold from the bowels of the hospital. The first day, my brain races double time through the silence of my hospital room. By the second day, everything has slowed with a deep hollow bass tone, and I start to uncurl from the fetal position I've been stuck in, glued to the plastic mattress with a cold sweat of anxiety and the cheeks flushing with shame. Third day, I laugh for the first time, again. Day four, the doctor says I can go home. Home I go, chauffeured by beautiful country blond, to the house mourning the last days of a holiday studded with pain, to the children buoyant with the homecoming of Mama.

I sleep under the moon and the down comforter, sandwiched between my two men, husband and child. I wake up breathing slower than I have in a long time, to the sunrise and the wind whispering through the rattling leaves of the woods, the spring-like air, the owls hooting their last night songs across the valley. I am thankful for this week of rest, vacation from mental hypervigilance against darkness, a blank slate of mind that has been so busy fighting through December's bog.

Tabula rasa. I start again with a clean slate. Benigno numine. By the favor of the heavens. Bendictus que venit. Blessed is she who comes in the Lord's name. Dabit Deus his quoque finem. God will bring an end to this. Deo adjuvante non timedum. With God's help, nothing should be feared.

Cruce, dum spiro, fido.

While I breathe, I will trust the Cross.

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity when we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.” -A.W. Tozer

Finding quiet amidst the chaos

As a busy homeschooling mother of four, quiet is something of a rare commodity in my life. In the struggles of winter, I have been forced find more of it, as my soul quivers anxious and the wounds bleed out into my mothering and the flow of my housework (not to mention my work as a student and freelance author).

Quiet is my morning walk to the mailbox. Rest is my prayer time up in the woods near my baby's grave while my children take their afternoon nap. Peace is the 10 minutes I spend every evening after they are in bed, while my husband tends the pets, and I sit silent under the stars, alone with God.

At first, I focused hard on prayer. I have a list of people and needs I pray for daily, and they're filed in my head, permanent stamps of impression written indelibly on a compassionate nurse's heart. But slowly, God has stilled my soul. The needs of others prayed for, yes, but moments He steals back to soothe my soul, to quiet the thrashing spirit.

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah (pause and think about it). Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah (pause and think about it). (from Psalm 46)

He is teaching me slowly - this stubborn mind of mine, this heart that doesn't soak in His water easily - that He is here for me, pursuing me, desiring time with me. I've learned to tip my head back and close my eyes, feel the sun on my face, and simply be. With Him. Without words. Without an agenda. Just be still, and know He is my God.

Rest in the exhaustion

It's one of those mornings when night gives way to dawn too soon, and we drag ourselves out of bed tired, pull the sleeping arms of children off our necks, and slide woolen stockinged feet over to the devotion chairs, our own private retreat in a bedroom too small. Crack spines on Bibles and open homework for our recovery group, and pray together. Interrupted as usual, half-way through, by the pitter-patter of feet coming to claim breakfast for growling tummies, the toddler-baby clamoring for a few more minutes cuddling under down with Mama.

The moon meets the rising sun across the cobalt sky, the stars shut out by the glistening dawn on newfallen stone. The big crater there feels like the hole in my heart, hungry always for more time with my lover and more time with the Lover of my soul. 

The juxtaposition of night and day a poignant reminder that time is short and redemption of it in short supply as well. We walk our days like prisoners, often, to routine, to schedule, to tasks. I am  the Taskmaster. The laundry folder, dish washer, floor scrubber, diaper changer, child tender. 

There must be more than this,

O breath of God come breathe within,

There must be more than this,

Spirit of God we wait for You.

Fill us anew we pray,

Fill us anew we pray.

Consuming fire fan into flame,

A passion for Your Name,

Spirit of God fall in this place,

Lord have Your way,

Lord have Your way with us,

Come like a rushing wind,

Clothe us with power from on high,

Now set the captives free,

Leave us abandoned to Your praise.

Lord let Your glory fall,

Lord let Your glory fall.

~Tim Hughes, as sung by Hillsong, Consuming Fire~

The craters on the moon like craters in my heart, always wanting more. Always wanting healing. Peace. Happiness. Injected with the culture from birth, inoculated against true joy and forever searching for pleasure instead. Yet in those empty places where I see the emptiness, He begins to fill. Little by little, the cup fills, and runs over.

To wake up early seems antithetical to rest. Indeed He says, It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. (Psalm 127:2) Then, too, in the consummate book of love, Song of Solomon, the lover tells his beloved, Let us rise early and go to the vineyards; Let us see whether the vine has budded And its blossoms have opened, And whether the pomegranates have bloomed. There I will give you my love. (7:12) And the Psalmist brings his petition early to the Lord: I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words. (Psalm 119:147)

So I rise early (most days). And find sleep, blessed or tormented, every night. And wonder at the miracle of rest He bestowed upon us, that renews us and finds us ready to face the next day. I have a history of sleep deprivation: working night shift, pulling all-nighters sometimes several times in a row in college, and I know that it is a spiral downward to sickness of body and soul.

And in the slow, incremental dance toward habit, my husband and I dance closer to together in the flickering pink light of dawn, and souls knit over the Word, and we come to peace with our journey together. God is good, always. Especially in this, this rising early, this going to bed at an ungodly hour (10 o'clock, people! My husband wants his night owl wife in bed at 10 o'clock! I often think it is a travesty...)

And in the between times, the night wakings, the nightmares, the torments in the darkness, I sit on the front steps in the cold and watch the stars in wonder, pinholes in the velvet blanket of the sky, and He heals my soul in the whisper of the wind and the blessed quietness.

Emotional rest is giving soul over to the hands of one in control, giving over exhaustion, confusion, chaos and pain to a God who understands and cries out with me. The God who nudges me out of bed in the  morning for devotions with my husband. The God who wakes me in the night to pray for those I love. The God who is slowly breaking down demons of my past, and shattering the walls self-built that only He can shatter, the walls that hedge me alone. He is bringing me out into the open for the first time in my life.

Blessed quietness, holy quietness,

what assurance in my soul,

on the stormy sea, He speaks peace to me,

and the billows cease to roll.

~Manie Ferguson, 1897~

The baby is not so "baby" anymore

His birth was fast and crazy and downright shocking.

I remember my friend crying on the phone because we had a boy at last.

They came to get me for my tubal just 2 hours after he was born.

I just couldn't leave him, and there was a niggling doubt somewhere,

deep in my subconscious: was he meant to be our last?

Six weeks later, I had the surgery anyway.

A month after that, I was diagnosed with cancer.

And we praised God for His direction 

as I couldn't get pregnant while in treatment.

After my first clean cancer scan in March, 2009, Aaron came to me with an adoption dream. From what I read, it's unusual for the husband to be the one dreaming of adoption instead of the wife. We started paperwork and announced our plans to our friends and family.

But cancer came back, and paperwork stalled, and adoption 

is a far distant dream instead of one that will be realized quickly.

And in the autumn of 2009, I prayed for that next baby, 

Caleb's little brother or sister,and God answered in crazy ways, 

and I got pregnant, even after the sterilization.

I gave in, heart and soul, to the dream of another baby. 

It didn't feel like a dream at all, because it was so God-sent.

But it withered, and died, and I had 3 surgeries, and no baby to hold.

My abdomen filled with blood and my heart filled with grief.

We buried our baby, all 14 weeks of him, on the hillside in a silver urn.

The kids still count Theodore when people ask them how many siblings they have. I feel embarrassed. Who grieves a baby one never met? Yet another thing in my life I should "just get over".

Two more years pass, and I still have cancer.

No adoption.

And I don't have any more babies.

He is still my "baby".

Our family is growing up, and new vistas open before us.

An overnight date this weekend with my husband

(can't do that with a nursling).

Trips are easier to take.

Little hands learn chores and daily life gets easier.

We revel in new stages, having little readers,

children who play outside for hours.

Happy birthday, my sweet baby boy.

(February 21st, I'm a little late with this)

I don't know what the future holds,

whether or not you will ever have a baby brother,

but for this moment, I love whispering in your ear,

"You are my favorite boy in the whole world."

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;

those who seek him shall praise the Lord.

Psalm 22:26

Mountains in moonlight

Eight years ago, he was a mountain man and I a curly-headed dreamer hovering between idealism and conservatism.  He kissed me when he got off the plane, in a desolate airport tunnel just outside the gate, the gray carpeted walls dulling the senses as my lips buzzed and my vision blurred.  We hiked through the rough-cut stubble of summer ski runs, legs on fire from the dry weeds, and lungs burning on the relentless climb upward.  That day is the most alive I'd ever felt, to that point.  At the top of Mount Washington, the wind cut a trough through the rustle of grass and we tread doggedly up the wooden planks to the ski lift platform, bare in the summer sun, just a stack of two-by-fours nailed down to make a ramp.  He put his arm around my waist and a shiver down my spine and I knew, again - this man I will marry, if ever he gives me the chance.

I drive through this same expanse of mountain ranges tonight.  Their tree-topped peaks roll like the giant humps of a camel in the blue light of the full moon.  In the valleys, the reservoirs and rivers are lit a glittering silver and snake away under the bridges like a necklace dropped hastily onto the bedstand at night.  A deer stands stock still, parallel with the lines of the road, penned in by the concrete walls erected to keep the cars from hurtling off into the night ravines while the road is rebuilt.  I can't swerve, and just clip his legs with the loaned little black car that has carried us from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania and now carries us haltingly home.  My heart races up, and the pacemaker catches and it slows again, and my vision swims as the blood drops down, down into my shoes while my heart leaps into my throat in a strangled exclamation.  I pull off, survey the damage, drag the cold night air deep into my lungs as I bend over and let the blood ascend again to my brain that screams for oxygen.

We reach the hotel in the wee morning hours, and I know immediately, through two cigarette-burn-holes for eyes, that I will not sleep easy tonight.  Too much suffering in the past years has destroyed that last thing I took for granted...the closing of the eyes, and the numbing wave that comes, and the little wake-dreams flitting like shadows through the hallways of your brain, and then finally, the anesthesia of deep sleep.  It alludes me now, after smashing head against porcelain and leaving the iron deposits of blood in the precious lobular gray of my mind.

Oh, the suffering that has washed over us, big giant 5 foot rollers of surf on this sea of life, relentless, like the waves of wind whipping Mount Washington as we smiled for the camera in 2002.  How much my mountain man has changed, how much have I changed!

A man spoke halting tonight about his deepest wounds as a child, and there was the just-swallowed salad stuck in my throat and suddenly washed in bile as I heard his anguish and the visceral memory of my own flooded over me.  His voice pleading as he spoke of sleeping every night with his rosary, and begging those familiar words from the Lord's prayer - "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".  I wanted him to know that he can be washed forever clean, forever lavished with the Holy Spirit.  So I hugged the steel of his shoulders and washed his black shirt with my tears, and read Titus 3:3-7 in his shamed, grieving, red-hot ear...

At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Another version says that the Holy Spirit is lavished upon us.  All today is redeemed, because I look to the author and finisher of my faith, who for the joy set before endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God (Hebrews 12:2).   The tears shed are redeemed, the vomiting up of salad in shock and pain is redeemed, the quivering hands as I passed a gift on to a friend now still dearer in person than on screen.  The driving through the ghostly moonlit mountains, and the soul conversation with a God who confounds me, leaving my knees weak and my eyes damp and my soul roiling in turmoil.

I asked, back on that mountain in Vermont eight years ago, to be stirred up.

I whispered then, if this man I'm standing next to, God - this mountain man who lights my flames and tends them sweetly - if he is husband, stir me up and keep me with him.

If this life I'm living, God - if this pain that sears deep and scars soul and tearing, surgically changes the heart and keeps me up and typing at 5 a.m., body wracked with exhaustion - if this life is your path, God, stir me up and keep me on it.

Grant me the peace to bury this soul chaos as I close eyes again for sorely needed rest, Lord.  Give me journey mercies tomorrow.  Bring me home safe to keep on living like I'm dying.  Awake me fresh tomorrow to the purpose you've kept me alive another day to fulfill.

Relentless

A refreshing thought from Ann Voskamp today, as I whirl in this week of work.  She hears Jesus calling her: Rest is a gift and you can because I gave myself. The world has its work and it is relentless, but you, you are the one who can rest because you believe what I said: “It is finished.” Smile, Child, and come to Me.

Nothing says "you're special" like...

...a heart-shaped pancake smothered in home-made maple syrup on the Bluebird of Happiness plate on the morning of your 4th birthday! This visual dose of daily joy begged to be shared.

The house, belying the beautiful breakfast, is a disaster. Yesterday, as a sense of normalcy began to seep back into the edges of my aching body, I looked around at the left-overs of the clean house I had possession of just two days prior. Two days in bed for Mama means lots of work for everyone else. Dishes dirty, floor covered in the baby's crumbs (and chunks), loads of laundry unattended, toys scattered, and - thanks to the warm spell - Asian beetle shells littering the window sills. In the midst of this, the baby sat laughing next to his father, reading a board book. The girls were off playing cheerfully in their messy bedroom, unpacking box after box of doll clothes in search of the right outfit for whatever occasion they were collectively imagining. Dear husband, seemingly oblivious to the chaos, sat on the edge of the couch, strumming the new strings he had placed on his guitar a day earlier.

I need to copy the page from their minds that allows rest in disarray, unlikely joy bursting through untidiness. That doesn't come easy to my female brain...or is it the cultural norms I have allowed myself to absorb? For certainly I remember the homes of those with little ones, messy, chaotic, sticky floors, dirty dishes, mounds of laundry and all. Even dirty bathrooms! Those were homes were I spent my happiest hours as a child. Why the sudden urge to bleach the entire interior shell of my dwelling place when it reaches this level of disaster?

So I am leaving the crumbs, the dishes, and the laundry. Closing the computer, and going to the couch for a much-needed nap. The mess will still be there when I wake up - and I might tend to it then!

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

"Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well." (Luke 12:22-31)

And no, I don't think my house will be clean just because I am smiling as I walk away from the mess! A good friend gave me a kitchen towel that captures my attitude about the whole issue quite well: "God blesses this kitchen, He doesn't clean it!"