Forgotten Baskets

God is so good at reminders. A couple of nights ago, Paul and I re-worked our budget. That is something you can picture me saying with rolling eyes and maybe a little bit of sarcastic glee inflected in my voice. It was due to be done for some time, as bills and such have a way of changing from time to time. So, at 11:00 p.m., when I desperately wanted to go to bed, I sat down on the couch next to my hubby and the computer with my worst attitude in tow.

We re-worked. It looks decent on paper. Commitments were re-made. Doors of communication that had been shut were opened again. I reminded myself several times that a budget is not shackles on our hands, but rather smart boundaries that create freedom. Freedom to know what we have to work with. Freedom to not have that "uh-oh" feeling of spending more than we meant to or should have.

Last night (again with the bad attitude!!), I waved a handful of cash in front of Paul, saying "THIS is what I'm supposed to get a week's worth of groceries on???" It seemed measly. But we HAD already bought a few groceries with it, so it wasn't the full amount of grocery budget for the week. But the amount made me angry. I wasn't even paying attention to the food that we had not yet used from last week's groceries.

I was frustrated. I went to bed and opened my Bible. And, ha ha ha, wouldn't you know it...I was ready for Mark, chapter 8. Jesus fed 4,000 men with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. Four. Thousand. Men. (not even including women and children). Seven loaves of bread. Four-thousand men. Repeat it over and over and let that sink in just a smidge.

But that isn't even the best part. In my opinion, anyway.

¹⁴ They had forgotten to take bread and had only one loaf with them in the boat. ¹⁵ Then he commanded them: "Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod."

¹⁶ They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread. ¹⁷ Aware of this, He said to them, "Why are you discussing that you do not have any bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Is your heart hardened? ¹⁸ Do you have eyes, and not see, and do you have ears, and not hear? And do you not remember? ¹⁹ When I broke the five loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of pieces of bread did you collect?"

"Twelve," they told Him.

²⁰ "When I broke the seven loaves for the 4,000, how many large baskets full of pieces of bread did you collect?"

"Seven," they said.

²¹ And He said to them, "Don't you understand yet?"

So. First of all, the disciples had seen Jesus provide for thousands of people with a few measly loaves of bread not just once, but TWICE. Thousands of people! With baskets full of food left over!! And then they get on the boat, just the small lot of them, with one loaf of bread, and start complaining and worrying about how they aren't going to have anything to eat. But Jesus was still with them!!

They had forgotten what they had seen Him do in the past. They were short-sighted, focused more on their grumbling stomachs than on their faith in the One who provides in abundance.

They are me. I am the disciples. Short-sighted. Looking at the little. Forgetting about the "much"...ALL of the abundance He has shown us in the past, time and time again. I can almost hear Him, His voice tired, yet gentle, saying to me, "Don't you understand yet?"

God is so good at reminders. That is a Word that is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. And it reminded me of what I had been missing.

She's Kind of a Big Deal

Tomorrow, our little girl starts preschool. We went to the open house today, and as far as I could see from the families in the room, she was the only one who cried (loudly) when it was time to leave. We assured her she would get to come back first thing in the morning to play and make new friends.

This girl of ours? She's ready. Ready to carry a backpack. Ready to meet new kids. Ready to show them all what she knows, and hopefully will be willing to actually learn a thing or two.

She's our Abidoo. Abidale. Abi-smell. Abigailia. Babigail. Our Turkey. Our Peaches.
Our preschooler. And we love her.

All By Myself

Today, I had the pleasure of a little time for Amy, and it got me thinking of what I do during those sweet times. Sometimes I still have Sadie around, but she is usually pretty quiet and cuddly. Paul had Abigail out swimming for a few hours. Here is the list of Amy-time happenin's:

1. Sometimes I do all kinds of necessary, boring things. Fold laundry. Balance the checkbook (got it done today.....zzzzzzzz). Catch up the dishes.
2. I make important phone calls. Health insurance claims. Medical bills. Why the heck is our cable bill so high this month? You know, those kind of calls.
3. I text my friend Angie about how much more fun it would be if we were hanging out together.
4. I grocery shop at 10:30 at night because it is easy and quiet. And I am all about the easy and the quiet.
5. When I'm in the car all alone and flipping through songs on the radio, I stop and listen to Ke$ha sing "Your Love is My Drug." Hey, I think she sounds like a drunk sorority girl, but that chorus is so stinkin' catchy. And sometimes a Mommy just needs to hear a song like that...a stupid, annoying, catchy song.

And you come home with a little spring in your step (and try to refrain from singing "Your Love is My Drug" while feeding your baby).
Here's to a little alone time this weekend! Enjoy!

I Love These Things

I realize that I sometimes focus too much on the "tough times" of parenting. To say they have caught me a little off-guard would probably be an understatement. So from time to time, I do have to sit down and think of all the things I love about my girls, because they are plentiful.

I love having morning coffee with Abigail. It's decaf, and she asks for it every morning. I can somehow picture her as a college student, home for the summer, stumbling sleepily into the kitchen for her morning coffee. And maybe we will have great conversations, or maybe we will sit and stare for an hour while we wake up.

I love Sadie's noises. I call her a whiny puppy because that is pretty much how she sounds. When she is tired, she doesn't really cry, she just rubs her ear with her fist and whimpers. Whining doesn't sound so great when they are old enough to express themselves with words, but it is seriously cute to me when it's all they can do.

I love their involuntary foot movements. Sometimes I sit and watch Abigail's feet as she watches Blues Clues....they just move all the time, even when the rest of her is lying still. They touch toys around her, her toes curl. Sadie's tiny feet move while she nurses....she rubs one over the other, or crosses them so daintily. She kicks them when she gets excited. They don't even know what they are doing, but their feet are constantly expressing themselves.

I love their smell after a bath. I know that is an easy one, and any Mom would agree. I could inhale that scent forever.

I love that Abigail would have her Daddy never go to work and just stay home and play with her every single day if she could. They are just best buddies, and I love watching them together.

I love Abigail's enthusiasm over things like taking her vitamins or playing peek-a-boo with her sister. She gets excited about the little things.

I love that Sadie has "found her screecher". She screeches all. the. time.

I love introducing Abigail to things that Paul and I loved as children. We watched Anne of Green Gables as a family a couple of months ago, and she paid every bit of attention to Marilla and Matthew and Gilbert Blythe and Diana Spencer. Melted my heart. We took her to see Ramona and Beezus at the movies the other night, and she loved it. So yesterday we went to the library and picked out two Ramona Quimby books to read. I think I just have to break out Amelia Bedelia and she will be all set.

I could go on and on. Let's face it, even the really hard days of parenting pale in comparison to the really great ones. It's a vocation, and it is bound to have it's challenges just as any job, ministry, or calling would. But I am confident that these moments are not to be missed, because I know how fleeting they are.

This Week I Learned...

I learned a few things this week. You know, important life lessons.

1. A couple of days ago, Abigail and I were having a really ugly day between the two of us. I was ugly Mommy, she was ugly kiddo. We were the perfect storm of headbutts. She had pretty much gotten in trouble all day long (and once she got started, I may have blown a couple of things out of proportion myself). Nothing seemed to be working discipline-wise. Then before dinner, I told her that we could make chocolate chip cookies together after dinner (hoping for some redeemable time from our day). After dinner, she was once again doing the sassy, arguing, talking back, not listening, blah, blah, blah, and I told her that we would not be making cookies together that night because of the bad choices she had been making. Her response was something to this effect (through hyperventilating tears):
"But you were an ugly-acting Mommy today. And you don't just promise you're going to make chocolate chip cookies and take it away. Because I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. I want to make them and eat them. You can't take that away from me. That's such a mean thing to do."
My response? You're right! When the cookies get taken away, we ALL get punished.

2. Trying to make your home some perfect little version of homemade-land can only work in spurts. I tried hard this week, making homemade applesauce from the apples we had picked, making the cookies (finally), folding the laundry, paying the bills, etc. etc. etc. All it does is burn a Mommy out and make me feel like I can't keep up. Lesson? Pick one Susie Homemaker thing to do a day....maybe.....but don't try to do it all at once.

3. God is always good, even when His timing seems different than ours. I had waited forever for an insurance claim to be reviewed from when I had Sadie. I kept getting the automatically-generated bills and was thinking if this claim didn't get straightened out soon, I would be getting a collection notice (but didn't want to pay a huge sum of money on a bill that I knew was incorrect). Literally, as I sat down yesterday with the insurance company's number in hand to call them and figure out what the status was, I opened up our mail and there was a notice saying it had been completely taken care of. Boo.Yah. God is awesome.

4. Give me 45 minutes without kids at home and I am one. productive. mama. And I felt GOOD for it.

5. My husband's love for me just gets better and better. I had a hard day this week (the one with the cookie incident) and just felt like a failing, flailing Mommy. He listened, he loved, he hugged, he cut Abigail off at the pass when I needed a break, he bought me a card saying thank you for all I do, he wrote me a poem. Sigh. Flutter. Heart. I love him.

See? Lessons in the everyday. Sometimes I love them. Sometimes I wish I had learned them enough already. :)

Healed

The other day, Paul and I were talking about a friend of ours that we had not seen in a while. She had been due one day apart from me when we had our second miscarriage. Every once in a while, I see pictures of her cute little guy on Facebook. I told Paul, "The funny thing is, when I look at his pictures, I don't really think about how we would have had a baby the same age as him." We have another friend who had a baby within a few days of that same due date. I said, "When I look at Kayla, I just look at Kayla. I'm not comparing her to what our baby would have been at this stage."

Then he said, "Sadie healed you."

And even though there are always scars from experiences like that.....I know there must be because I have talked to women who lost babies through miscarriage 30 or 40 years ago who still get teared up in the conversation....I realized that scars are not open wounds. They are areas where wounds once were, but they are healed. God leaves those marks, though not always physical, as reminders of His goodness through those times, of the ways that He healed the hurt. I know God healed the painful wounds. And He did it through this....

We Needed Them

Tomorrow will be one month since Jean passed. What a fast month it was....there was definitely a period of grieving, but things have seemed pretty "normal" since we got back from Florida. This is the post that I have been wanting to write all month, as the thoughts gradually formed in my head. I've wanted to write it a lot of times in the last three years.

This month also marks three years since our move here. God gradually drew us to Marshall over about a six-month period of Paul filling in preaching after the church's pastor retired. We were very content to be working with the college ministry at Ball State. We had only been there four years, and were not seeking any new ventures in ministry or life in general. We were fine where we were. Yet God drew us....slowly.....affirming each step as we made it (mostly in great hesitation).

As I got to know the ladies in our church (who are now some of my closest friends), I met several who had had two miscarriages. And before I had even had one, there was a little piece of my mind that thought, I am meeting these ladies because this is going to happen to me. Maybe it was a morbid thought, but somehow I knew it would. And it did. Within six months, I had two.

Also during this time, we found out that Jean had stage four breast cancer. At age 29, Paul and I were facing the first parent to get sick. The first parent to be in the hospital. To move to a nursing home. To be given a life expectancy.

During this time, I had a successful pregnancy. One that added beautiful Sadie to our family.

There are times when God moves you to a new place in life that makes you wonder what your purpose will be there. It makes you think that you must have something to offer that these people need. Some gift....ability....talent....something. You don't think it in a prideful way, but more of a questioning one...."Okay, God, how are You going to use me here? What is the reason you uprooted my life there to bring me here?" And yes, there are reasons, ones we are still figuring out. Ways He chooses to use us that we weren't looking for.

But one of the biggest reasons I feel He brought us here, for such a time as this, is not that they needed us, but that we needed them. We needed this to be our church family. Through our celebrations, and through our grief, we needed them to be the hands and feet and heart of Jesus. To share their experiences. To comfort us as they had been comforted. To care for our physical needs as well as our emotional ones. To love us in the dark so that God could shine His light. To be more than friends, but family. The family of God.

Paul and I have faced more as a couple in our time here than all the combined years before it. And we will face more, I have no doubt of that. I know that God will care for us wherever He has us, but for this season of our lives, we needed here. We needed now. We needed them.