Hero or Zero?

This year has brought a lot of changes in our lives. We’ve made some great memories and learned some hard lessons. Before Christmas break,  I received three notifications from the school about my second daughter. Anyone who knows her understands what a free spirit and determined child she is.

Unfortunately, while returning something to another department in the school, she and her cohorts stole candy from a desk. When confronted about it, most of the children fished the candy out from their hiding spot, while mine had already eaten it. All were given a talking to and told they were going to return it and apologize. Being the wise (acre) individual that she is, Tristen told the other kids that she has been in trouble for this before and it’s "just a consequence...you pay the consequence and it goes away." Fabulous. She was sent to the principal’s office for that. Her teacher said what a brilliant child she is, told her that because she’d had consequences for it before she should have been a leader and said no. 

I waited until Daddy came home to talk about it. While we talked, I realized this had to be a GOOD talk. An impressionable one. Consequences aren’t sticking. (This has been an issue at home and she has been receiving consequences for that as well.)  I told Tristen that she had a chance to be a hero or a zero. Heroes have parades thrown in their honor, are guests of honor at parties and are recognized in front of many for their bravery. Zeroes receive consequences and continue to learn the hard way.

Tristen loves attention. She’s a very entertaining individual. When her sister was getting out of hand, Tristen told her that she was being a zero, not a hero! Score! Do we do a jar? A chart? When we did the chore chart for monetary compensation, Tristen told me I could keep my 50 cents and she’d go out and play. Not surprising given her reaction to consequences today.

We sit down and eat dinner as a family, we limit the exposure they have to television and they don’t play video games all the time. It’s kind of embarrassing. It makes me wonder how I am contributing to the world around me. Am I being a hero or a zero? Every time I’ve asked Tristen how her day was, she has said it was great… gave me all of the highlights and never alluded to any of the troubles of the day. I admire her resilience, but also worry about what she is omitting. 

We lead by example. I have had to really evaluate what I am doing, am I being a hero or a zero? I think deep down, we’d all like parades and parties… but as parents, even adults, we seldom get that.  We make hard choices all the time. We love in spite of the response we think we should get, we provide in spite of the waste,  and still perform in spite of the lack of responsibility we see. 

The hardest part of introducing the Zero or Hero concept has been making the kids think before they do… something I have found challenging as an adult. When I developed the reward system for my kids, I made myself sick thinking of all the times I’ve been a zero this year.  I can’t guarantee being a hero to my family and friends, but I will definitely think about it when faced with difficult circumstances. I think this next year; I’ll try to be a hero, too.

We love Jesus, but We don’t Love Everyone Else

My oldest child came home wanting to attend the Good News Club at school. She was so excited because they shared Jesus.  She wanted to know why we don’t go to church anymore. She misses Sunday school. 

My parents are pastors. We just shut down our church and went to home groups due to lack of attendance and funds. My husband, kids and I tried attending services at another church to “try it out”. Our kids didn’t understand why we didn’t go back. To the church’s credit, they were the only body who when we closed down invited us to attend.  Unfortunately, the people that were in leadership were also people who double crossed my parents as pastors. I don’t want them leading my kids as youth pastors. 

As a church body, we encouraged working together and incorporated many local ministries to make our dreams of being an equipping place a reality. Love God, love people. Find where God is working and meet them there.  There were several bodies that were in the process of closing down and going to home groups, but couldn’t love other bodies of Christ because their doctrine wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t join us while our church was folding. They still paid hundreds of dollars to attend the same conferences or buy books from the same source. We paid the same cost, hosted the people from the ministry and lost several of our great people to them. I still can’t understand it now. Why is a doctrine that one is preaching good enough, but no one can agree and come together? Isn’t the meaning of Amen, “I agree?”

If we all love God and are supposed to love people how come we can’t all come together to make a church that we all want? I was shocked by my own requisites for a church body. I’ve attended many services in different denominations. My parents always taught me to appreciate God where he was at. I thought that God was in each place I went, but it feels so much different when I try to find a place to worship, especially when it comes to what they are teaching my kids. 

When did a concept that no one can touch become such an issue? How did loving God and loving your neighbor start to look like the process that you choose your shoes? Is there something wrong with me that I want something more from my relationship with God, much less something more for my kids who are looking for their relationship with God? My heart hurts when I don’t feel worship like we were raised with. Apparently, God is not the same from one place to another. Otherwise, all of us would wear tennis shoes.

I can go back to my roots, sing hymns and teach my kids that they are sinners, but I hate that. It’s not good enough for me. My mom and dad taught me better. Why does salvation feel like such a complicated process, even for the people who know they are redeemed, have an identity as a child of Christ? 

While evaluating going back to church, I feel like my choice is selfish. Nothing will be good enough. We weren’t good enough to be remembered or invited to other bodies. My parents weren’t invited to minister at other churches. We just settled into the dust with the rest of the bodies who didn’t make it. And that makes the church seem like a selfish endeavor. If we all love God, how did it get so complicated? 

A Grown Up’s Guide To Life

Gloves and condoms: two things to never skip in the Grown Up’s Guide to Life. (Three kids under three, WAS a little nuts. They are fun, but it would have been nice to spread a few of them out.) That guideline is number three on the list. It follows the admonishment: Always read the instructions first. And after that, it reads: Instructions aren’t really just loose guidelines; they are there to pay attention to.

Yea, I about glued my hands and my wooden buttons together with tung oil this afternoon. I realized that it was a serious problem when I told my husband about it in our Facebook chat. Because he was at work, it was kind of a one sided conversation of me telling him about it: 

“…okay, buttons are drying... they mean it when they say to wear gloves... it's not a suggestion. Otherwise your hands stick to everything. Just a little fun fact there. Fortunately, I happen to know that baby oil helps remove hardened wax... and if that failed, hand sanitizer with alcohol in it removes pitch. My hands are not stuck to my pants or anything else (like my nose) at this point in time. I know you were worried.”

What he didn’t read was “OMG! My wedding ring is covered in this sticky stuff… is it ever going to come off?  I have to get yarn later; I could be one fuzzy handed lady!” I tried Simple Green and it didn’t work… took my ring off and stuck it in the cleaner before I had even tried the baby oil.

The instructions said to put a small amount of Tung Oil on a soft, lint free cloth and rub into the wood. For best results, apply a thin coat and work the tung oil into the wood surface, similar to the way that you wax a car. (Gotta love their detail there.) Always wear high quality rubber gloves such as (their preferred brand of gloves). This was to obtain their classic hand-rubbed beauty.

One thing that females in my family pride ourselves on is reading the instructions first. Those handy little facts don’t help when you decide to circumvent some of the instructions just for the sake of getting it done. I should know this by now, because growing up we had lessons in Redneck Git’R Done and Fixit (see examples A and B.) before being a redneck was cool and Wal-Mart started marketing the lifestyle.

Example A: Ladders Gorilla taped together! 

My mom bought a beautiful farm table when we first moved to Bend, it had three leaves and stretched out through the years to accommodate our family. When my dad built our new house, it didn’t fit in the dining room as well. So, he took the saw to it. Leaf by leaf, with every family addition, the table soon fit. My mom was always so mad that it never got finished again. Finally, years after, we all moved out and she had the chance to get a real dining set, I claimed it… after all of the times we’ve laughed about it… it was too good to give up. I have a small house and that thing can spread in any direction to give us enough room for friends and family. I always have dreams of making it perfect, but what would be the point?

Example B: The table that was sawed.

Life gets sticky sometimes and it feels like we’re clinging to the dream that it’s going to get better or bigger, sometime soon.  I critique my parenting on a level that seems unfair for anyone. I realized after talking with a friend the other day who struggled with the same issue, that we are creating little worlds with our kids. Their world is perfect from the beginning, because mom gives them what they need when they need it. The rest is shaped by new siblings, changes in their environment, and eventually, when they go to school. As I hung up the phone I heard my friend say, “Let’s go get your brothers.” That little kids’ world was being made whole in that small act. He had Mom and no matter what the morning included, when he went to get his brothers, his little world was made complete.  

Life is sticky, it can be hard, sometimes we scrub hard to make our mistakes disappear… but the truth is, even without all of that work, it is a whole and complete work in itself. Your love makes you work harder, judge yourself more critically than anyone else would. At the end of the day, your kids go to bed knowing how much you love them, how hard you work to create a family, because they are sleeping at peace with the security that only a family can bring. My dad is still a superhero with all of his redneck inventions. That table still brings joy to my house. It hosted game night last Friday night. Our family gathers around it and we all enjoy it. I still dream about the ways that I could, in my humanity, make it perfect; but it already is.

Reading the instructions only works so far, especially when you are dealing with different types of children. What works with one doesn’t work with the other. But what does stick is family. The panic to make everything perfect is always forefront in my mind. Perfection is already there, it started with that beautiful ring and the decision made to become the people we are today. I’d still recommend wearing gloves and rubbers! Especially if you are using tung oil!

The Cracks That Make Us Whole

Love is imperfect. It is the sharing of love that makes it whole. I’d like to say that my love for my husband is perfect, but there are many things through our history that make it feel like others are looking through shattered glass. My love for my kids also has the same appearance. Amazingly enough, when you view the big picture, it looks whole.  And for a good reason. 

Where would I be without these great people to write about? In some corporate office, ruling people’s lives, making them miserable, ordering takeout, and living alone for $50,000-75,000 a year?  Instead, I get to do it for free. My house feels crazy all the time, especially when I try to instill order. I feel like the one person in the house that no one listens to. But where would I be without them? 

I know. I’ve been there. It’s a fishing trip, where you pull in the biggest fish you’ve ever seen, with only your dog to witness it. It’s a beautifully clean house with no one to walk through and mess it up or appreciate it: the clean or the house. Yes, when I say my house is wrecked, perhaps it’s wrecked for the good of my soul. 

It’s a place where my kids are kids, learning responsibility and respect that good parents give. It’s the place that my husband comes home to enjoy the crazy after a quiet day. He loves it… God love him…. Because he truly does enjoy it and our life together. 

As a stay at home parent, I sometimes loathe the smile of bliss that comes home with my husband. Then I realize that he just loves to come home to our family, to the crazy, that I take for granted. How humbling, when I think that I am so much smarter than that. He loves to come home and be my hero every day. Who could ask for more than that? 

Is there more? I tried to take a picture of some earrings that were given to me out of love. I could not acquire the supermodel look that my friends do on their blogs. Is it enough? It is. Because the love that came from that work of art was worth displaying. My mom worked hard to make the person that I am to display that art. It may not be the Facebook quality we all want or wish to present, but it is me. It is the person my mom raised and loves and is proud of too. It's the person that my friend wished to grace with her talent.

That man of mine, who comes home to the crazy is only looking for me, for my love, for my approval, my appreciation. He doesn’t care that I’ve gained weight, or didn’t do the dishes… he just wants to come home…. to us, in our imperfect state, because together, we make it whole. 

That should be enough for me. For someone to love me so much that they don't look at the tiny cracks in the picture or the character, that make up me. I saw those cracks in the kid who resembles me the most today. It inspired me to take a different route, perhaps the same route that my mom took with me. Love is a bridge, it makes the impossible seem possible. It brings reason to an unreasonable situation. It comforts, it heals and it sustains.

It makes my relationship with my mom stronger, as I understand so much more what she went through raising me. It makes the love for my husband grow, because I'm not sure anyone could love me as much as my own parents, and appreciate the quirks that came from that, more. Love isn't perfect, it's just pieces put together.

Like a Drum, My Heart Keeps Beating

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but as with most of my posts, sometimes there is just someone who needs it or a piece of my life that deserves mention. My family and our weekend deserves this.

Some days are picture perfect; you just want to frame them. Then a song comes along and frames it in your memory and writes a message in your heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV2yMnzWkkc

I was watching three extra kids the other day and to my dismay, two of the three were stung by bees. To make my embarrassment even worse, none of the three were mine. We have a play area for the kids. That is their part of the yard, the rest is ours. The kids are great about staying in it and playing there. We’ve never had a problem with our kids getting stung.  I felt horrible. 

After the incident, I noticed my oldest daughter asking one of them after they had been treated for it, “Does it hurt?” In my motherly frustration I told her, “Please don’t ask if it hurts, ask if it is getting better. If you ask if it hurts, it makes it hurt worse, if you ask if it’s getting better, usually, it is. If you don’t make a big deal out of it, it will disappear unless it is a big deal.” I didn’t realize what a huge lesson I was teaching myself, much less my kid and the rest of them, at the time. 

I’m a gardener… hope always springs eternal in the gardener’s world. We invest in the future through perennials and starts. We constantly say the words, “Next Year.”  I didn’t realize as I carefully transplanted my roots from Washington to Oregon, that I was planting something that would sustain me from year to year. Not in ’97 when we moved and passed a ghost town on the way, or when we’d been here for years and I offered to support a friends’ mom through marketing.  But the friendships and addition of family built in our transitional period has sustained me through all of the craziness this last year. 

I wasn’t sure what would happen when things changed as we shut down and moved church to home group, but guess what? We’re okay. We’re doing better. And no one has asked if we’re hurt. The ones who care ask if it’s getting better. My book might be on hold, but I know that when I release it, it won’t be from a position of hurt. I won’t be another pastor’s kid made into a statistic. Because my heart, my faith and my family have been carried by so many who tended my garden while I neglected it. And though I didn’t realize it, they healed my heart. 

I thought that the church held my family together, but the truth is, my family held the church together. And my friends who were like family made up the support to hold our family together while we held the church together. We all made it through this tumultuous time intact. As the dust settles, my friends and family are still there. Some still encourage us to grow our faith and the rest still get pulled with us through the momentum.

When my faith has been broken, there has always been someone there to carry it for me and direct me back to my roots. Oddly enough, they may or may not have been connected to my actual roots. They carefully tuck my heart away and carry it, like a treasure to be released later.  Family is amazing, something that reaches out and pulls you back from the edge. Family takes on many different characteristics.  It’s investing in history, because that’s what your family has always done. Though not the same way, just as valuable. And it’s what we know.

As a pastors’ kid, I always wondered what a “normal” family looked like. Day by day, I’m finding that it looks like mine. It looks like the ones that I’ve been adopted into as well. They are the people you miss, the ones you send a text message to, the ones you stop in to see, because when you don’t see each other weekly, it feels like you stop breathing. That thing that so many people want and are so hesitant to give: right in front of my face. Sometimes it feels so suffocating that it makes it hard to breathe, but so missed when it isn’t there. 

It’s the people who know that the quarter you put into that carousel out in front  of the Wal-Mart is ending and they still hold on… riding it til the end. Just for kicks, they will buck and snort, just to make it look like the thing is still moving. They are the ones that embarrass you and you realize that your life wouldn’t be the same without them. 

Don’t ever stop appreciating the kids with their finger in their nose, the ones you think are cute or the ones you think are annoying. There will always be those who you wish you could do without, because they are just plain embarrassing. And, if you are really special, there will always be the ones who will take the time to air pet you invade your space and give you awkward hugs even when they know you don’t want them. Family doesn’t always look the same as you, but the heart is still the same and beats with the same rhythm. And like a drum, it won’t stop beating for you.