so many pretty things

This Christmas season came upon us quickly. November blew by in a blink with unusually warm days,  a weekend jaunt to Florida, Thanksgiving, another birthday, our first snow. And then December 1st.  Christmas tree hunting in t-shirts, boxes down from the attic, garlands hung over windows.
I welcomed it all.

Either Tamagn is hyponatremic or he really likes the taste of Bryce's hair gel. 

We are traveling to the mountains of North Carolina for six days of crazy fun in a house with all of my family. Ten kids and eleven adults. In great anticipation of a great week, the planning has begun. I eagerly launched myself into it last week and very quickly found an unsettling discontentment take hold. All I wanted to do was find an idea for a cute but simple Christmas tree ornament craft to make with the kids while we are down there. Instead I found hundreds of very cute, very clever, very pretty  
things people have made to make their homes look picture-perfect, warm and welcoming, merry and bright.

And all of a sudden my three precious little boys became obstacles between me and all those pretty, crafty, creative things. I've been fighting it all week. Wanting more time to write, sew, exercise creativity~ to make pretty~ and begrudging the hours spent training, disciplining, instructing, cooking.

My mom has often, and wisely, warned that the distractions available to young mothers today are so much greater than when she had little ones herself. And she's right. This internet thing is as much a curse as a blessing. We now have access to peek into the homes and lives of millions of people across the world. World wide web is an appropriate name and I've found myself caught in it this week. I've allowed myself to be distracted by all the pretty things out there and to grumble at the job God has given me for this season: training and loving my children. And I am sorry for it.

I really have no idea who reads this but if you have little children and have put aside your career and hobbies and interests to do as God has commanded and love them well, be encouraged today that you have chosen wisely. God is honored by your faithfulness. In the book I am currently reading, the one that convicts me every time I pick it up, the author breaks down the instructions from Titus 2 in which the older women are to train the younger. Good stuff. I like the order of the commands~

to love their husbands and children, 

to be self-controlled, 
pure, 

working at home, 
kind, 

and submissive to their own husbands, 

that the word of God may not be reviled.

Titus 2: 4&5, ESV

I will forsake all the pretty things I could make and all the clever things I could write and commit myself again to writing on the hearts of my three little boys. And that means I will wish you all a Merry Christmas today, this 7th day of December, because I probably will not fit another post in before that blessed day on which we celebrate the birth of the One who saved us all from our wretched selves.

My three works of art. 

Oh, and I did decorate for Christmas and to prevent myself from being yet another blog that posts so many pretty pictures that just make you feel discontent with your own self and your own home,  here are a few I snapped today. Real time. No stuffing away of toys or pillow fluffing.

Due to our lack of a mantle, this is my best solution for hanging our stockings...
and laundry to be ironed. 

Our den via the playroom. 

The Nativity, Josiah-style. I feel like the three dudes in the back... looking for something.
Looking... lost. 

All four of the males in my home think this on our tree is a very good joke. Ha. Ha. 

Note the interesting shaped snowflakes in the background. I have boys. 

Oh, if you bothered to scroll all the way down here, this is your reward. Wish I could serve you one with a cup of coffee... very yummy! Merry Christmas!

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

1 c. butter softened
1 1/2 c. sugar
2  eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 c. oats
1 c. raisins
1 c. coarsely chopped fresh or frozen cranberries
1 T. grated orange peel
12 ounces white chocolate chips

In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in separate bowl; add to creamed mixture. Stir in oats, raisins, cranberries and orange peel. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheets.

Bake 375 for 10-12 minutes. Enjoy!

the Alfie books

A couple of years back a friend pointed me in the direction of Shirley Hughes' books at our local public library. I am glad she did. We have loved Alfie and his little sister, Annie Rose, ever since.

Alfie is a very likable little boy of about three or four years of age, who is very British, like his creator, Shirley Hughes. He lives in a row house with his mom and dad and little sister, Annie Rose. He is friends with the milk man and the MacNallys across the street and has wonderfully common adventures that any three year old little person can relate to. He is kind and caring and a good big brother.

"Don't cry, Annie Rose," said Alfie. He put his hand through the bars

 of her crib and patted her gently, as he had seen Mom do sometimes.

Shirley Hughes is the author of more than a few children's books and there are various collections of stories about Alfie and Annie Rose. The books pictured here are part of a four-volume set of small picture books. Included in the set are Alfie's Feet, Alfie Gets in First, Alfie Lends a Hand, and An Evening at Alfie's. All of them are very sweet. 

Dogger is another very popular book by this author/illustrator. It is the story of a little boy named Dave who loses his favorite stuffed dog while out one day, only to find it later tagged for sale at a fund raiser event in the park, and then bought by another child before he can get back with his money. His big sister, Bella, takes his grief to heart and sets out to help him get his precious Dogger back. And that is just what is so precious about this book: the I'll-fight-for-you love between brother and sister. Sibling love on the pages of a book is hard to come by these days. 

The other thing I love about Ms. Hughes' illustrations is how real they are. Beds are unmade, milk is spilled on the breakfast table, toys strewn all over the floor. Alfie's home looks like a place I'd like to visit. Alfie is a little guy I think your little ones would like to meet. Mine sure have enjoyed getting to know him. 

cemetery musings

it is purely coincidental that these refections on death, "that most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the whole world," find their way to this corner one day post-elections.  


Casey and I had a wonderful long weekend in upstate NY. I dropped him off at the university where he was teaching at 7:30 that first morning and felt almost guilty driving away, to where I didn’t know, in our big, fancy rental car, with nothing before me but a glorious October morning, a forecasted high of 80 degrees, a stack of books and my camera.

After a good latte and an update from the home front (I needed to warn them I’d accidentally put rocks in the muffins), I found myself driving through the stately entrance of a civil war era cemetery, enchanted with the showers of leaves raining down like golden confetti in the warm morning light.

And the music!  The wind rustling the leaves, gently bidding them loose their hold from the branches that have held them since spring, to dance one last time on the wings of the wind before they settle on the ground, to die, to be returned to the earth, to enable new life in the spring. It was magical. 

 

I have always liked cemeteries. They are peaceful, mysterious places, full of names and little snippets of the stories of lives gone before. The number of stones marking the resting place of beloved babies and little children makes me thankful for the time in which we live, a time of antibiotics and sound medical procedures. My great-grandparents buried their only son at 13 months due to lack of penicillin. My grandma says her daddy never got over it, always wished that one of his three little girls had been born a boy instead. Cemeteries remind us of our humanity.

It is good to ponder death. I am thankful to have fellow pilgrims around me to remind me that true life happens only by dying, on multiple levels. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words arouse the ache in one's soul for that "final road to freedom."

“No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about.

Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him…. it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.”

As a follower of Christ, I am called to death of self daily. Been chewing recently on these words of the Apostle Paul,

"For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

To know nothing except Jesus Christ, crucified. The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. (2 Corinthians). 

I'll admit, sometimes I think, and often do I act, as though the word of the cross is foolishness. Rarely do I choose to know nothing but my Lord and his crucifixion. Because to really know him in his death on the cross means that I have to really believe that the putting to death of me is good and right and wisdom and life!, and my flesh fights hard to convince me all does not need to be crucified. If fights to convince me there are good desires in me, worthy desires, God-given even, that deserve to be fought for. 

How little I understand the Gospel, this foolishness. How often I shop the wisdom of the world for something more palatable, not quite so extreme, so harsh, as laying it all down. Of dying till I'm good and dead. 

And yet I've tasted the life that comes on the other side. I know this is truth. Throughout all of God's creation we have examples of the necessary death that paves the way for new life. Glorious life.