If at first you don't succeed...

A week ago, I purposed in my heart to wake up before my children and read my Bible in peace. Lofty, right? I thought so! Years of being hauled from the depths of peaceful slumber by crying, hungry children have confirmed my suspicion that I am NOT a morning person. Despite trying to go to bed earlier, I am still crabby and my brain full of fog when I wake up every morning. So I decided to get up for devotions. Suffice it to say that I woke up early 7 days in a row, and only managed to read 2 chapters of Joshua in those 7 days. My kids internal "mom is gone" radar is apparently still functioning at full capacity, and I am joined by at least one child within 10 minutes of waking up. However, Satan apparently felt the need to haul in the big guns to thwart my morning devotions. I'll bet you never guess what I mean by "big guns"...

It wasn't the smell of roses I woke up to this morning. It was poop. The unmistakable eau de poop every mother is so very familiar with. I heard Amelia calling me from the bathroom. (this all took place around 6:30 a.m., by the way) I rouse myself to fully awake, and shuffle to the bathroom. There stands my beautiful daughter, with her beautiful golden hair streaming down. Legs are covered in poop. She is standing in a puddle of poop. And she is touching the poop with a look of horror. My vision of beautiful daughter was quickly transformed. What stood before me was not Amy, but Cousin Itt with her Poopylocks! She had pooped in a Pull-Up, a contraption invented to enthrall toddlers by impersonating underwear, and eternally frustrate mothers in it's very-underwear-like capacity to spill it's contents or fail to catch the intended contents all together. In this case, it appeared to be the latter: a mere smear was in the Pull-Up, and from the amount of poop smeared in Amy's hair and up and down her legs, I knew immediately there was missing poop somewhere in my house. Nevertheless, I hastened to plunk Amy in the tub and begin the poop elimination process - all while trying not to wake the rest of the sleeping brood or breathe in through my nostrils.

I left Amelia soaking in the tub, and went to tend to Rosalie, who had since woken up and asked for breakfast. I found her, literally trembling in horror, by the kitchen island. She had discovered a pile of poop on the chair on which she intended to sit. I sent her, still trembling and gagging, into the bathroom to watch over Amy, while I hauled said chair out to the tall grass to use a pressure sprayer on the...[gasp!]...wicker seat. This task accomplished, I returned to the house just in time to change Caleb's leaky poopy diaper, plunk him in the bath with his poopy sister, and wipe Rosalie, who had also pooped.

I dared not breathe a sigh of relief, for fear of sucking in some of the noxious fumes!

Sorrow makes joy so sweet

It was a long hard day. I had so many moments of comfort, though...two visits from friends, two from family, a long, newsy e-mail from a busy friend far away. The earth is all aflutter with birds returning home and plants just beginning to bloom. Spring is an impossible time to be sad! Add to all these blessings the fact that I had a riotous good time with my husband last night, drinking wine, watching the sunset, and listening to blues and the sounds of evening folding us in like a welcome hug. How can a girl complain?

Surely his salvation is near those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.
Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
Psalm 85:9-11

My heart slows


This is (regrettably) from a mass e-mail to my family members:

I had an appointment with a new cardiologist today, the leading local expert on my old heart condition, neurocardiogenic syncope. In case you are unaware, I began experiencing heart palpitations, dizziness, and fainting episodes again starting shortly before Memorial Day. Convinced it was my thyroid cancer medication, I hastened to the ER in search of answers. I fainted in the ER on Memorial Day, and again on a Holter monitor (24 hour heart monitor) on Wednesday. The good news is, they gathered lots of great information because I was on a heart monitor both times.

After reviewing my old chart and all the new information, the cardiologist feels my fainting episodes are related to a very low heart rate, which fell to 32 beats per minute just before I fainted both times. He feels that the time has come when the benefits of a pacemaker outweigh the risks. He does not feel that I require a defibrillator at this time. He plans to do a tilt table test and implant a loop recorder, which is about the size of 50 cent piece. The loop recorder will remain in place for one month (possibly up to 14 months if I have no symptoms - pray for that!), and is inserted just under the skin on my chest over my heart. (By increments we are lessened) It will capture my EKG and give the cardiologist more information with which to make the final treatment decision.

The tilt table test and recorder implantation are scheduled for June 23. I may get a pacemaker the same day if the results of the tilt table test end up a certain way. I would really appreciate your prayers, both for strength to get through the 23rd as a student and mother while fainting, and also for safety during the procedures on the 23rd and wisdom for the doctors treating me.

Musings in a clearing


But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard.Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 4: Sounds


The sign points to Echo Woods. There a rock cairn covers the grave of our beloved mutt dog, Echo. As we say in this family, we are monster women, with many generations of monster blood flowing through our veins! The girls and I put our inner "monsters" to work on Sunday, clearing a path up to the cairn, clearing away brush and dead trees and sticks. We built two benches using scrap lumber and aged cherry logs. Thus, our summer "classroom" was born.


The children are as eager to start as I am. The first day, we studied aspen leaves and listened to them whisper as they quaked in the clearing, which is surrounded by them. We discussed the differences between saplings and mature trees. We read "The Sound of the Trees", by Robert Frost. The second day, we began talking of construction of a lean-to, one of the many survival skills I want to begin teaching them this summer. We noted the differences between white, red and pin oak leaves, and compared them to the aspen leaves we collected the day before. I am using this wonderful online field guide to leaf identification to double-check my own knowledge, which is rusty from being shelved in my brain for about two decades.


As my children danced around me, gathering leaves and running their hands down the rough bark of the trees surrounding us, my thoughts are quaking like the aspen leaves above us. This morning, I read the words of Joshua, the spy who had faith in God's greatness and ability to overcome any earthly foe, "I am about to go the way of all the earth, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you." (Joshua 23:14) The way of all the earth. We are all on a journey that ends in the grave. Because my heart is skipping a bit, and a few of my cells have mutated to form cancer deep in my frame, it is more obvious to me than most. As I walked around this clearing the past few days, I was reminded that someday the "monster women" who carry my genes and dreams forward into the horizon of time, will be tending a clearing around my own grave.


Having faith like a child is simple, really. Dance a jig of joy in the clearing, revel in the sights and sounds. Just enjoy what is before you. None of these dark thoughts flicker through the sunshine in these emerging minds.

What I keep ever before me is the responsibilities of the moment, for sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matthew 6:34). My learning objectives for these children this summer include survival skills, identification skills, respect for the natural beauty of the woods. But all that falls under the overarching goal: teach them reverence for their Creator by showing them the glory of His creation. So I push aside the weight of my thoughts, the specter of my own grave that looms large in this clearing, to grasp with both hands the tasks for today.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, 'Thus far you shall come, but no farther; and here shall your proud waves stop'? Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail? Where is the way that the light is divided, or the east wind scattered on the earth? Who has cleft a channel for the flood, or a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land without people, on a desert without a man in it, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the seeds of grass to sprout? (from Job 38, NASB)

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea,
Creation's revealing Your majesty.
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring,
Every creature unique in the song that it sings. All exclaiming...

Indescribable, Uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing, God.
All powerful, Untameable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees and we humbly proclaim,
You are amazing, God.

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go,
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow?
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light,
Yet conceals it to give us the coolness of night?
None can fathom...
You see the depths of my heart,
and you love me the same.
You are amazing, God.

~ Indescribable, Chris Tomlin