Dreams

Two nights ago I had a dream. That is not unusual for me. I tend to dream frequently. Typically I can't remember the dream the next day. However, this dream was very intense and I woke up crying. The dream went like this....

I was very elderly and in a nursing home. In the dream I was laying feebly in a bed and Kendra - in adult form was sitting beside me crying and holding my hand. I asked her what was troubling her and she said, "Oh Mom, don't you worry about me and my problems. There is nothing you can do to solve my problems so I don't want to burden you with them." Even in my dream, my heart was broken. I'm a mom. Even in my advanced age and diminished strength, I was still, through and through, a mom and my nature was, even then to solve my children's problems. However, my adult child was not giving me that chance. The dream then moved on to Kendra getting up and kissing me tenderly then leaving the room. However, as she left the room her adult form changed back to her present day form of a 6 yr old child looking over her shoulder at me.

As I laid there in my bed, I could feel - almost taste my own longing to go back to her childhood. To when I not only COULD solve most if not all of my children's problems but alas, was expected to solve them. I ached to hold each of them and rock them and carress their small heads as they laid against my chest. To tuck them into bed and be the center of their universe. But, instead, I was helpless and alone. Alone with my memories.

I woke up sobbing. I was heavy hearted the next day. Partially because I am well aware that the day is coming, truly RACING toward me where that scenerio will not be a dream but my reality. It is the natural course of life and nothing will reverse the aging cycle other than death.

However, the haunting fear that I awoke with was this.....When my time comes to reside in such a facility, what exactly WILL my memories be? Will they be memories of what COULD have been or what was and can never be again. In my mind I heard a little voice from just earlier that morning - "Mommy, can you come play Candyland with me?" My response? - "Oh, Alyssa, Mommy is so busy getting lunch ready. I really can't right now. How about later this afternoon?" I remembered then that "later" never happened. Another scenerio flashed past my eyes..... "Mommy! I can't make my bed! The sheets are all off, please come help me fix it!" My response? "Kendra, Mommy can't come right now. I am too busy. You can do it yourself cause you're a big girl." Shame on me!

These are just a few examples of scenerios that I am going to strive URGENTLY to avoid ever again. I do not want to have regrets when that day comes.

Next to God and Byron my children are my top most priority and will always be. I just want to go on record. I may not agree with every choice they make (when that time comes) but they will always and forever be mine to mother and I will make sure they never ever question my love, my loyalty to them and my pride in them.

This has definately been a "strange" post but I felt like I needed to post it. I had decided not to but I just felt that I was to post it.

This is a "Must Read" about Priorities

A friend of mine pointed me to this and I'm so thankful to her. This is possibly one of the most encouraging articles I've run across in a very very long time. This was written by a blogger mommy who also homeschools. Her blog is http://www.aholyexperience.com/. Her name is An Voskamp. Here is the somewhat lengthy but outstanding article:

He comes to the back door, Opa Voskamp, like they all do. Never up the cobblestone walk to the front door, there off the porch, with its wreath and welcome mat, but to the back door off the garage, the one which purposely has no walkway at all from the laneway to the doorknob, and walk into the tossed shoes, the dropped bats and balls and shovels and gloves, in through the mudroom. In through my laundry, my piles, my underwear and crusted socks.

I try to smile. He tries not to look.

His own wife smelled of bleach their fifty one years of marriage. She met her sons at the back door with fresh clothes and a hamper, ready to take clothes smelling of sweat, cows, straw directly to the washing machine. You could bounce quarters off the stacks of linens in her closet. she didn’t home educate their nine children. I do, our six. I always seem to forget this minor detail. Does he?

I try to smile. It’s weak. I catch him looking at wrinkled jeans waiting the folding.

We hug long and I love this man, hunched frame, and I just close my eyes to the trail of papers and books across the counters, and he pats my back, takes a chair, mine, and I move to the other end of the table, serve the bowl of salad, pass the bread, the pork chops, and the children chatter, the men talk.

“You got that grain dryer wired this week, did you?” Opa asks between the mouthfuls, over children laughter.

“Yes, that’s finished up,” Farmer Husband pours water into his stainless steel cup, his Dad’s too. “And we got that aeration floor laid out in the grain bin at the other farm too.”

“You get a lot done in a week, don’t you?” Father smiles at Son, glints my way, and I warm with the gratitude, and Son shrugs his shoulders, smiles in thanks for the affirmation of a Father. “Well I guess we just try everyday.”

Try everyday. I do. Really, I do. I laugh, shake my head. Who would know it, looking around here most days?

I get up to fill the pitcher at the tap, sapling child needing rewatering. Test the temperature with the fingers, then fill. Who can see the spelling lessons? The breakfast made this morning? The next chapter of The Yearling read, the last child rocked early in the morning, the prayers whispered middle of the morning? I try in a week and a lot may get done, but the right things? Like water through fingers…

I water this grove of children. The water pours and think how I want a crumbless, smudgeless, spotless house, a house with empty laundry baskets, empty sinks, empty garbage cans, with floors like mirrors and mirrors like water, and a pantry lined neat like books in the study and pies lining the counter like sweet children all in a row. I want the (seeming) perfection all day that only happens at night when the whirl slows to a still and the six children sleep, their books and their legos, their papers and their creations, all finding their resting places too. I want a father-in-law who walks in mid-spin and sees what I have done with a day, with a week, and smiles his satisfaction.

I want things seen.

These can be idols.

Again, again I return to the story of Abba Paul, that desert monk who wove baskets and prayers.

While other monks lived close enough to cities to sell their handiwork in the markets, Abba Paul lived such a distance that the cost of transportation would exceed any profits from selling the baskets. Nonetheless, each day he collected palm fronds and worked as faithfully as if basket making were his primary means of support.And come the end of the year, when his cave overflowed with long months of toil, he took torch to the work of his hands and the flames devoured and rose higher and cackled long into the night. Then, come morning, the heat died away, satiated. And Abba Paul stood in the long quiet and the wind blew away the ashes of all his work.

Abba Paul had nothing to show for the work. Product made papery ash.

Too often, mostly, sadly, I want product, others to see product, so yes, they can see: I have worth. Stinking idols. This, I think this is why I struggle to stop to pray at fixed times throughout the run of a day. If I stop doing, will I have merit? Will I still exist if I stop the producing?

How do I forget that I actually exist more, fully, wholly, when I do that which I was made for? Worship. Communion. Prayer, hidden and intangible, it is the day’s true product, it’s ultimate purpose.

So Abba Paul knew. The product is secondary…. Perhaps even pointless. It’s the prayers, the relationship, the love while doing the work, that hold the meaning, the merit.

The process of prayer is the real product.

That process may not be seen when walking in the back door.

Only the eyes of a stilled, seeking heart can observe things not visible.

“Are there any more potatoes?” A young son grins, lifts his empty plate, hopeful. I pile his happiness high, scoop out the last of the mashed spuds. Morning’s work complete and gladly gone.

The bowl’s empty.

I stack the dirty plates and children joke and I catch Tall Girl’s eyes and she smiles and nods.

Again, today, I must: Slay the idol of the seen.

Today, a thousand times again today, I will: preach the truth to this soul prone to wander. I will seek the affirming smile of Father.

“Unseen. Things Unseen. Invest in Things Unseen.”

The dishes pile on the counter and we sit, read Scripture, take the hand beside us, and we pray.

....pray to your Father,who is unseen. ~Mt. 6:6

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. ~ 2 Cor. 4:18

Thankful Monday

Today, I choose to be thankful. My humanness wants to complain and whine but I am consciously choosing to be thankful and to push away the worrisome, negative thoughts that are just pounding in my head.

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my wonderful husband who took a chance on me 15 yrs ago - a geeky, immature high school girl. This man puts up with me, loves me and takes care of me. Yes, I am one of those women whose man takes care of her. I am not out to prove anything and I just happen to believe that part of mans role is to care for his wife and I am quite content and happy to let Byron fulfill that role in our relationship. And yes, I also know that if anything were to happen to him, I will be in big trouble. We'll cross that bridge if/when we get to it.

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my healthy, fun, ornery, obnoxious, lovable children. Through them I have gained a far clearer picture of my heavenly Father. Through them I see how total, unreserved acceptance works. Through them I have learned how to love without reservation and with eyes closed to imperfections and faults. Through them I have learned to prioritize and to practice patience in all things, at all times.

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my house. Yes, even that. :-) I could be in a cardboard box underneath a bridge. I am thankful that God is using this housing situation to make me a better person. Not sure how all that will work out just yet but I'm confident He has a purpose so I'm just sitting it out waiting to see what He has in store!!!

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my mother in law and father in law. I don't think anyone else is willing to crawl under our trailer and make necessary repairs. They've rescued us from more disasters than I can count. We've borrowed pretty much everything they own at least once (ok,that may be a slight exaggeration) and they've babysat our kids so much they are thinking of building on an addition just for them. Ok, that is definitely not just an exaggeration but it sounded good. The "in law" jokes are indeed always very funny and I enjoy them as much as the next person but truly, my in laws are far better to me than I deserve.

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my girlfriends because truly, I have the best friends in the entire world, hands down. I am the type of person who is a loner. I am not one to spend hours talking on the phone (to anyone) and I have a difficult carrying on lengthy conversations but God has sent into my life a handful of awesome, to the grave, friends. I may not have 100's of them but the ones I have are the best. What I lack in quantity (when it comes to number of friends) I make up for in the quality of them. Most of my friends know pretty much all their is to know about me yet they love me anyway. Girls, you know who you are. Please know that you are loved very very much.

- Today, I choose to be thankful for my church family. God called us here 6 yrs ago, with an undeniable, clear call. I am so thankful for that call and I am determined to never move ANYWHERE again without an equally clear and certain call. There is much I could say about our church family but through them I have learned that God works in mysterious ways - ways that are always, undoubtedly higher than our ways.

- Today, I choose to be thankful to be alive. God is good . Always. In the good times. In the bad times. In the "I don't know" times.