Happy Thanksgiving.

Rejoice in the LORD, ye righteous;

and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.

Psalm 97:12

I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live:

I will sing praise to my God while I have my being.

Psalm 104:33

Napkin notes

On Leah's first day of Kindergarten, I used a permanent marker to write a note on the napkin in her lunch.


Without intending to, I started something.

 Some mornings I have more time...

some, less.

 

I missed one day.


Leah came home bawling.


"I went through the whole day feeling like you had forgotten about me, Mom!"

I haven't forgotten since.

 

(I know it must be a good one when I find it stashed in the drawer with her socks.)

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life.  The truth is, of course, that what one calls the 'interruptions' are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.  


~ C.S. Lewis

And who is my neighbor?

Removed...out of love for my neighbor.

See instead this radio sermon by Rev. Carl Haak.

Sarah

Mama's helpers

The question comes this morning, as my husband's truck barrels east up the road, into the rising sun, and I sink into my chair at the table and open the devotional I'm reading with a sigh.  

“Why do you love me, Mama?”

Leave it to Marie to ask the hard questions.  This gamine little girl, crazy red curls in her face, she doesn’t simply ask, “Do you love me?” but “Why?”  And then she sits there in her striped pjs, the ones B.J. calls “the convict jammies,” mashing a banana peel into the breakfast table.

“Because God gave you to me to love, Marie, that’s why.  Do you love me?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause.”  

She steers the other half of the banana peel in an arc above her bowl like a speed boat.  I watch her as I take a bite of oatmeal.

“You’re my helper, Baby Girls,” I say, but even as I say the word “helper,” I cringe.

You see, it was grocery day Tuesday.  My big beginning-of-the-month, stock-up-for-a-month trip.   It's a chore, the shopping bit, with multiple small children and a pacifier left at home.  We even break halfway through Wal-Mart, choosing the check-out line with the broken conveyor belt, of course - and while I am sliding our items one by one to the cashier with spiky hair, Marie, the hard-questions girl, queries (really loudly), "Mom, is this lady a guy?" (Sigh).  We head to the van to eat turkey sandwiches and regroup before slipping back in the other door, and as we march back in, I wonder if there’s a man slouched in the back of store in front of a row of security screens, shaking his head at this harried woman who’s back so soon for more.  By the time we are finished, Nathan is slouched in his seat, nearly asleep, I’ve long quit telling Marie to stop picking her nose, and where is Willem?  When the second cashier greets us by commenting, “Look at all of Mama’s helpers!” my reply is a sarcastic one: “That depends on your definition of the word “helper.”

            And today we're baking pumpkin cake rolls and there's laundry, and beds to make yet, and Shadow wagging at me through the kitchen window, begging to be fed, and it’s nearly lunchtime.  With three helpers, pumpkin cake rolls take three times the amount of time, and we end with three times the mess...

           But in the middle of all this, I can’t shake Marie’s question.

            “Why do you love me, Mama?”

            Because, honey, you're my helper, the iron on which the Lord sharpens me when I’ve become dull and distracted (Proverbs 27:17).  One who provokes me to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), who requires of me that I follow in a puny way the example of my Lord, setting aside myself for the sake of another.  He’s freed me in principle from the law of sin, you see, and He uses you, in your convict pjs, to free me day by day in practice.  To give me opportunity to wield myself as an instrument of righteousness (Romans 6).  To be patient.  To love.  To obey (Him) with a happy heart.

           And why does He love me?  I’m no helper.  That...that is all grace (Ephesians 2:8-10).

            And as we roll up pumpkin cakes in a cloud of powdered sugar, I pray for the grace that I need to see Him refining me, sharpening me, employing even these little ones to cause me to walk in the good works which He has before ordained, that I should walk in them.

            And who are your helpers?

Quiet on the blogging front lately.

Not so much on the home front, though.

Kids that are a tad under the weather plus various committee work sprinkled on top of the regular routine.  I don't know if there will be a quiet day here between now and Thanksgiving.

My favorite moments are still ones, like this, when the house is sleeping, or moments like those below, when I slip outside and see the sky all aflame as day dawns.

It's then, when I'm going slow enough to notice, that I remember that all these ordinary days are filled with extraordinary, grace-filled moments...

 

From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same

the LORD's name is to be praised.

Psalm 113:3

MI highlights

Belated photos from our visit in mid-October...

A birthday party, courtesy of Auntie Amy  (Thank you, Amy!)

and COUSINS!

Writing is like teaching my daughter how to braid.

There are the threads –

the colors not even complimentary –

knotted in the brain,

and the work of weaving,

crisscrossing

at just the right points,

visiting this strand, then that one, again and again,

the undoing, re-plaiting

final product

and – oh, this –

the want of someone somewhere:

Will you wear this on your wrist?