A December and Even a November

Although one wouldn't know it from the quiet little number of blog posts in this space of late, there was in fact a full December around here -- complete with its Christmas and wedding anniversary and birthday celebrations (though one of the birthday boys was … in El Salvador). There was decorating and there were reindeer visits and presents and Christmas lights. All the things. (Mixed in with some miserable work obligations for Mike that made for some long days for both of us.) But! It makes me sad when I think of all the separate things that I might, had the time existed for it, have written full entries about. Little glimpses exist in letters to Abe (things like this after-Christmas paragraph from a letter to Abe):

We are currently at that post-Christmas stage of having everyone’s toys in designated spots on the kitchen table. The spots are slowly shrinking as toys find their way to bedrooms and the toy closet. Hansie got two fancy Schleich dinosaurs. Sadly he mostly feeds them play doh and it’s very difficult to fully remove from their teeth. And dad bought a big Lego Hogwarts set that he had just be “to” me and him. (Basically so no one claims it to themselves and we could let everyone build it. The three older girls mostly built it this year, but we are thinking we will take it apart in a week or so and pull it out for kids to build every Christmas. So ... plan on building Hogwarts on Christmas Day of ‘21!)

But there's much more we'd all like to remember but that I can't possibly find the time for now. But I guess that's kind of a lovely thing -- for one month to have contained SO MANY THINGS I want to remember forever. 

And December wasn't even the only month! There was a November before it! With a Thanksgiving and a TRIP to FLORIDA with just me and Mike (impossible, I know, and yet it did happen!). How is it that I have never written about that? Now I might never remember the little moment on the plane when I saw Mike reach up and hand the headphones he'd been using to a woman travelling with a very frail and elderly man who seemed confused about the lack of sound coming from their small movie screen. Except I suppose I'll remember it now. As I just wrote it. But there were other parts! Unwritten!

In any case, I can't go back now. Forward is our watchword (???). But, at least there are pictures. Like these ones from a little fun Goldie and I had with all the CHRISTMAS LIGHTS in our house! So many lights! (We had our biggest tree yet! 17-plus feet! I can't tell you how dark and empty our house feels now that we've taken Christmas down!

Or the rest of these from our visit to Santa's reindeer (who always comes, mid-December, to visit the park across the street from us:

And … more pictures. But I fear I shall crash blogger if I post them all in this one post. So. More in coming posts (accompanied by a sad lack of worthy commentary).

More Precious than Gold

Last week the curriculum of study for our church was 1 and 2 Peter in the New Testament. There are a million little gems I might have discussed with my kids in those chapters. But all we talked about was 1 Peter 1: 7. And not even the entire verse! Haha. (I do have a lot of kids and many with very short attention spans. …) Over and over I had them just repeat this bit:

"That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold …"

We talked about my gold tooth (haha): my tiny gold tooth that cost hundreds of dollars. And we then speculated what a pot of gold might be worth and what HEAPS of gold might be worth. 

But the trials of our faith! The struggles and questions and doubts and sorrows and sufferings we wade through. More precious than gold. 

I'm going to put this on my bathroom mirror. It's going to be ingrained in my heart. A mantra. Something I will keep reminding my kids in hopes of it becoming a lens by which they understand mortal experience. 

Already Jesse and I reminded ourselves of it during a late-night conversation yesterday. Jesse was feeling particularly hopeless and discouraged over various things he feels are hard for him that appear easy for "everyone else". But these struggles, the things he has to war against, they will shape his soul and fashion his understanding in ways that nothing else possibly could. They will, in the end, have been more precious to his soul than gold.

I recently read a talk by Francine R. Bennion on suffering. Here was a bit I particularly loved:

"We are here because we chose to come. We are here not just because God decided it would be a good idea and made it happen, not just because Adam and Eve fell and we automatically followed, but because we chose to come. However essential what God or Adam or Eve did to make it possible, we believe the decision to be born was our own. ...

"We wanted life, however high the cost. We suffer because we were willing to pay the cost of being and of being here with others in their ignorance and inexperience as well as our own. We suffer because we were willing to pay the costs of living with laws of nature ... whether or not we understand them or can manage them. We suffer because, like Christ in the dessert, we apparently did not say we would come only if God would change all our stones to bread in time of hunger. We were willing to know hunger. Like Christ in the desert, we did not ask God to let us try falling or being bruised only on condition that he catch us before we touch ground and save us from real hurt. We were willing to know hurt. ...

"One reason we were willing to pay the high costs of continuing to address reality and become ourselves is that God told us we can become more like himself. We can become more abundantly alive, with ultimate fulness of truth, joy, and love -- fulness impossible for souls unable to take real part in creating it, souls ignorant of good or evil, pleasure or pain, souls afraid of the unknown. ...

"[W]e are not preparing now to begin in the next life to become more like God. We are not simply waiting to get started with the process. We are in it here and now."

My dear Jesse. I laughed and cried at once -- when I told him that he likely knew of, chose and prepared for the very struggles he is facing here -- and his response suggested that he may have made a terrible judgement error in agreeing to any such things. Because ohhh I've felt that! I've often thought that I must not have understood! I must have assumed "hard" meant … something less hard. Hahah. And I've pushed and kicked with all my might against being pulled from ease and simplicity to challenges that demand I, spiritually speaking, develop my muscles by lifting weights rather than feathers. 

But then, I guess that proves how necessary and precious all of this is. We clearly never could have understood it by theoretically discussing being imapcted by evil or the agency of others, or by simply imagining temptation or illness or mental and emotional fatigue. We never could have just guessed or assured ourselves of what we might have done in response to pain and tragedy in the lives of those we are expected to help. 

And in the end I guess it isn't only that these experiences in the arena of a fallen, mortal world are more necessary and precious than gold, but that they will allow us to become gold ourselves. "But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10)

(An unrelated picture of everyone out shoveling last weekend. :) The end.)

A Little of November

Friday, November 8th babiest girl (“babiest” because there are lots of babies around here, but she’s the babiest of them all) officially began crawling. The “crawl date” was never quite so exact with her siblings — whose crawls developed gradually from dragging, pushing and pulling; but Starling (whose prior movements resulted primarily from rolling) had spent weeks putting herself into the crawl position ... and then just sort of staying there — unsure how to proceed. Occasionally she’d give a mighty shove with her hands — only to find herself back on her tummy and a foot further away from whatever was in front of her. But then, all at once, right arm and left leg forward followed left arm and right leg forward, and she was crawling! Just like that! With unquestioning confidence, no hesitation and no looking back. In a day’s time she went from always being right where I last left her to being practically anywhere in the house! And within another two weeks she’d even figured how to take herself up a full flight of stairs. (Though I will say, somewhat smugly, that most of her crawling is used to ... follow after me as she calls, “Maa! Maa!” like a little lost goat. [It’s the dearest thing imaginable.])

Speaking of aging: Five-year-old Summer seems quite mature lately. “Mom,” she recently told me, “I learned a new word today. It’s ‘proactive’. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. It just means you just like handle it yourself.”

And then, as we watched The Grinch, this: 

“The Grinch is so dumb!” Then, before I could comment she rushed out a loudly defensive stream of, “And I know I shouldn’t say that, but he’s really mean!”

And Mette. Does she seem any older? No, not necessarily. But she did utter a rather perfect truth about life in her little world full of siblings the other day:

Mette: Daisy, are we in a movie?

Daisy: No. But if we were in a movie what would it be called?

Mette: Friends. ... And sometimes not friends.

A recent example? Mette was sitting in a time out after hurting Summer. As she sat there she sobbed, “I wish I didn’t do that!” And then, before I could mistake her wail for penitence, added, “I wish Summer did! So SHE’D be in a time out!”

Also, I recently found this while cleaning out a kitchen drawer. The beginning of what looked to be a marvelous tale Anders was conceiving. (If only he’d made it beyond the first page):

What else? Perhaps just pictures.

Here are a few kids:

And a typical Sunday evening sight:

This particular Sunday my mom joined us for dinner. I love when we have my mom or Mike’s parents over and our kids get to hear more of their stories than they typically do at big family gatherings.

Did I mention Goldie’s play finished up? (And it’s a good thing because I was near to forgetting I even had a third child with how much she was gone!)

Christmas Village. We went every Christmas growing up. At least it seems we did. And I intend to take my kids every year. But the cold and crowds and busyness of December usually mean my intentions fall flat. But these three were JUST as excited to run around to the small houses before their inner displays were even set up when we were running errands and saw them all being pulled out a few weeks ago.

Dear little Summer. She wanted desperately to create her own magic Christmas Village house when we returned home. She wanted it life sized just like the ones she’d seen that day, but eventually resigned herself to a shoe-box-sized house. Here she is: pondering how to make her vision a reality.

Jesse got his Arrow of Light (his final, big Cub Scout award) during the last ever pack meeting our church would be having:

Speaking of Jesse. Here he is. Not going to bed long after being sent there. :)

Ah. This. Hansie’s big black eye. (The old running fall into the corner of the coffee table.)

And for those of you not keeping up with Abe’s letters on his blog, here is a picture I love of him with a violin and guitar maker he has gotten to know in El Salvador. And this little paragraph from a recent letter:

“My name is Abraham Harris.

I live in El Salvador, where I walk through the jungle and on dirt roads and drink my water out of bags. I wake up every morning and go talk to strangers all day in a language I didn't speak until four months ago. I talk about the Gospel of Jesus Christ all day. I think about it all day. I live and breathe it. From 6:30 AM until 10:30 PM it is all I do. And I love it.”

And here the kids are making “Thankful Turkey Bags” to fill with little notes to be opened on Thanksgiving:

Oh, and snow! We had our first big snow today. And it is supposed to keep going for the next three days! I imagine I won’t be getting in my usual Thanksgiving run tomorrow morning (and many Turkey Bowls have, I am sure, been ruined), but I love snow when the kids are home and it’s a holiday (even if I was a little terrified to let Daisy drive to her new little seasonal job at Seagull Book this afternoon).

And that’s it for now!