So Many Lives and Their Happenings

One thing about having a large family is, well, I suppose this comes as no shock that this is how it would be, but! the thing about a large family is ... there are always so many significant events occurring! Hard and wonderful and ... all at once! It's just ... so many full lives growing and unfolding! I mean ... ten of them! All playing out under this umbrella of our parenthood.

And, of course, I know this will become even more astounding. After all, many of them are young yet, and their significant happenings often involve the simplest things: a wiggly tooth, beginning to note the silent e at the end of words, learning to ride a bike, adding a new turn of speech to their vocabulary (tonight, as I put Starling to bed, she, quite suddenly asked me, "Mom, could you do me a favor tomorrow?"--that's not a phrase she's ever used before--"could you do me a favor", and, even after she said it, her mind cast about, unsure of what was meant to follow such a request).

Soon they'll shift upwards in age and we will have the baptisms, driver's licenses, graduations, and mission calls of our current experience coinciding with weddings, baby announcements, moves, careers, and so on.

But we are certainly getting, and have gotten, tastes of that now. (After all, we were birthing Starling within days of Abe receiving his mission call.) And at times it feels there are sudden surges in the number of these happenings that causes me to feel more keenly the magnitude of what Mike and I have taken on and of what that taking on allows us to shape and witness. 

The pictures below aren't necessarily a proper visual representation of one of those surges. But I've felt it lately. Not only in Goldie receiving her mission call, but in birthdays, and dances, and winding up of driving hours for Penny's license, and in the discussions with and decisions of my kids. 

And here are a few recent images of this lot I'm discussing.

Penny went on her first date (Prom). Her cousin Tori lent her the beautiful dress. Here we are having my mom hem it:

And here she is all done up for the dance!

My Aunt Penny said she looked like a Shakespearean heroine in this next picture. I agree.

(Though with this small glance here we find ourselves wondering if it might be a Shakespearian comedy. Better that than a tragedy I suppose!)

And this little sprite had a birthday. Four. I don't actually believe it. She's still as much our baby as she could possibly be. "She's four," I might try to explain to someone. "But she's not like four."

Popsicles in the perpetual winter.

Starling and Hans refilling the pinata from Hans's birthday. (It's rare to be able to use a pinata twice. But, as luck would have it, someone just batted its legs off the first time. A little packing tape and it was back in business for Starling's birthday. [Though I'm sure she would have greatly preferred something more feminine and less ... green.])

Kids doing stuff before church. I'm really liking our noon church right now. 

The three days this past week that leapt from winter to summer, with all their accompanying increase in outdoor play, wore this dear boy out (and gave his forearms a rather bad sunburn to boot)!

Anders playing some silly game he'd begged me to get on my phone.

Starling requesting I take a picture of her. 

Starling asleep.

Penny took Starling on a little adventure on Saturday. Just the two of them. They walked to Lee's grocery store and bought goldfish crackers. Then went to McDonald's for ice-cream. Then to the library to choose a few books. And then (!) to the park (where they finally called me for a ride home). (Starling has no idea how wonderfully novel it is to have all of these older siblings doting on her! I didn't know it myself when I was her age. Though I experienced it just as fully!)

Mike and these four went to Logan to check on a few things one afternoon. And somehow ended up with two new, small four wheelers! I'm glad. All the small kids scrabble over riding the one little 50 we have up there. And even though our kids and their cousins are getting bigger, it's easy enough to wave off any concerns about them outgrowing these with thoughts of the years ahead of grandkids-coming-to-visit! 

Mette took this picture of Starling in the game closet on Easter and begged me to be sure to get it in one of our chatbooks. (Little printed photo books.)

Daisy got the kids making balloon animals one day and for weeks we had balloon animals and balloon swords and balloon hats piled in our living room. Even Starling became confident at twisting them into various shapes. 

One of the (many!) fun things Goldie did with the kids while we were in Hawaii was help them make rock candy suckers. I need to ask her if she took pictures of some of the other activities she did with them. (Goldie, did you take pictures of some of your other activities with the kids? :))

Abe and one of his climbing friends competed in their first indoor climbing competition. It was new to them since they primarily climb outdoors. But they had a lot of fun and, in the drawing afterwards, Abe won a new nearly-300-dollar climbing rope! Well worth the entry fee!

Also, after seeing our little "stained glass" window, Abe decided that would be a fun date idea. He and his date then promptly bested the window we had done at home with the following:

I had a cool experience not long ago that gave me some new insights to ponder. Hans was asking about my dad, and I was telling him that, even though he didn't get to know his Grandpa Gordy (as all his grandkids called him) here, that I was sure he knew him before he came to earth and that I was sure Grandpa Gordy was helping him all of the time now as well. 

But then a small part of me hesitated. I've long understood that angels are not limited by our constraints of time, and, while I don't know the particulars of their callings and missions on the other side of the veil, I have no trouble believing they are capable of being limitlessly involved in our lives. Still ... as I told my little Hans that his Grandpa Gordy, my dad was helping him, I felt a moment of hurt pause. A small stab of pain. "Is that true?" I wondered. "Is he really? Does he have time for even my littlest children?" My mind began thinking of the enormous number of grandchildren my parents have. (And now an increasingly impressive number of great grandchildren.) Many of them have enormously pressing and eternally significant struggles. "Surely," I wavered, "God must need to use my dad primarily in helping them. Where would there be energy to expend on a six-year-old boy whose troubles are rarely larger than a skinned knee or a sibling not sharing. ..."

But then, quite forcefully, an unasked for and unexpected, but clear and direct thought (and even wording) pressed into my mind. It was that my dad felt "great rejoicing in his great posterity". Those specific words were followed by an enlightened glimpse and understanding of my dad's current work and growth. The thing I, in one great swell, comprehended was that one of the ways my dad is most progressing towards godhood right now, one of the ways he is most being tutored in how to be like his savior and heavenly parents is in being able to be aware of and involved in the lives of every one of his increasing posterity. I was given to understand that he is not limited by the number of children and grandchildren he has. Nor does one new grandchild suddenly cause him to reach some tipping point where he can no longer keep up or has to slacken the aid and involvement he can extend to another; rather, his capacity and capability is expanding just as his family expands. He is loving learning this, I knew, and finding enormous joy in this unencumbered ability to have such detailed involvement with each of those coming through his line. And with many others besides!

I had one of those odd experiences of feeling my mortal "stakes and bounds" shaken and reordered. I'd been measuring God's ways of working within the constraints of my mortal limits and comprehension again. But this made such utter sense to me when I felt it. Of course it was true. We have no trouble believing that Heavenly Father and our Savior are intimately aware of each of one of us. Why would we not suppose that part of our progression towards becoming like them would involve gaining that same capacity and awareness. And what better place to start than with the ones sealed and bound to us? 

My mom used to answer, when someone would ask how her heart could hold enough love for another child (and I think this answer was from her own grandmother), that you didn't have to find room. Every child simply brought the love with them and your heart expanded with it. 

I love thinking that, even here, within our strained and limited mortal capacities, we are beginning that tutoring process as we reach and expand to care about and help our siblings, and our children, our nieces and nephews, and our stretching (and sometimes fumbling) attempts to extend that even further to take in neighbors and friends, our kids' friends, the children we teach in Primary and so on. It opens my eyes to a whole new view of the ways we progress and the things we experience to help us become more like God.