Moments of Grace: In the Fullness of TIme

I remember when we lost our second baby, Tristan, to miscarriage. It was hard to understand or accept why God would allow such a thing to happen. Yet, when Tristan's due date came and I was already pregnant with Judah, it made sense to me. Holding sweet Judah in my arms as a tiny one and whispering his name to him which means, "to praise",  I knew that in the fullness of time God had allowed such a suffering as a pregnancy loss for such a glory as Judah's beautiful life.

The moment of Judah's accident last week keeps me awake at night. The juxtaposition of the happy and delightful moments before is hard for my soul to digest. It had been an intense week, and I'd been caught up in the to-dos before we departed for Texas. On that day, with the sun shining and my children laughing and playing so delightedly, I made a conscious decision to just BE and PLAY for as long as we could.

I sat there gazing at our darlings playing and in a moment everything changed, as his little leg was broken in front of my eyes, and my whole being unable to stop it from happening. Delighted laughs to pain in an instant.

I have had to work to make peace with the fact that God allowed it to happen. Such a suffering, body and soul, for our son....and then I realized something beautiful!

Our Ezekiel is big...huge as a matter of fact. He is 100th percentile for height, 96th for weight, and wearing clothing that Judah was wearing last summer. It has been comical trying to understand 2 brothers built so differently, or even comprehend why I was given this particular challenge of an absolutely enormous baby to tote around in a season of life where the demands on me were already intense enough. My arms, legs, and back are strong by necessity because of going through the daily rigours of motherhood with a ginormous hunk of love on my hips. 

And then, a few days ago, as I was carrying Judah from one place to another and he felt like an absolute feather, I realized that in the fullness of time this beautiful grace was allowed....that I would have the strength and stamina to tend to a child who was rendered immobile by an accident. While it is a slight inconvenience to carry him everywhere, it is not in any way too difficult for me physically. This gives sweet Judah a sense of being safe, secure, held, supported, and in no way a burden for us in his brokenness.

Outside of time, and in His eternal perspective, God the Father saw fit to give me this consolation....knowing the sadness of a child with a broken limb, and knowing that it would take extra strength to help him navigate this challenge without discouraging him, I was blessed with a super huge chunky baby to build my muscles up.

Truly it may seem far fetched, but I know for a fact, with deep Faith, that this gift has been given us. I revel in this small inkling of the workings of God's grace in the midst of our human freedom,  and I say, "thank you."

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."                

Isaiah 40: 28-31

Grade 1 for Our Little Lamb

I always hope this year has a special place in the recesses of my heart, the first year that I had the privilege and the challenge of educating our daughter at home.

When she was just tiny, I always called Liliana my little lamb...tender, intuitive, slightly clumsy, daring, introverted....happy to be held close by mama always. 

My little Liliana Lamb 

Kindergarten at our nearby school was not a bad experience, but our Liliana suffered from the anxiety of an education system very much oriented to the outgoing and the extroverted. Lots of group work and a structure that is necessarily conducive to the good of the majority meant that she was very much lost in the crowd. She started biting her nails and struggled to fall asleep at night. Her sense of wonder and delight seemed to fade. She had lovely friends and an amazing teacher, but she was not thriving and our hearts were troubled!

Over the summer we saw our girl emerge again in confidence, playfulness, and peace. The thought of sending her to school for 8 hour days, when Judah would miss her terribly AS WOULD I, gently guided my heart towards another possibility. I felt so sad that the only time we would have with her would be a few precious hours at night....  I started reading, and researching, and considering the possibility of teaching her at home - which, by the way, is something I never would have imagined in my most WILD dreams! So of course we also prayed hard for wisdom and discernment. 

Ann Voskamp

Of course, this year was not without its challenges, and I had a few moments of feeling woeful for the reality of being surrounded by small children all.the.time. I had a few pity parties for "all the things I could get done" if I was not teaching Liliana. 

That being said I did have moments of respite, because she spent 2 days per week learning at a little cottage school, so beautifully devoted to instilling in children a sense of wonder and delight....and, get this, her age group was called "The Little Lambs!"

And, when I really took it to prayer, is there anything more important, more pressing, or more eternally relevant than forming our sweet one - intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually - in the heart of our home?

No, because it was obvious to me as her mama that this unique little soul needed to be learning close to home, at least for now, and so that is what we did. 

A few lessons for me from the year...

 - we are our children's advocates, voices, ambassadors - we do not have to be swayed by convention or "the way it is always done." We can decide with boldness and confidence the best for them, without apologizing or justifying - for me, as a pleaser, this was a very important lessons. One I always knew but got to live this year

- Never say never! Gosh am I learning this humbling lesson over and over again in motherhood

- the delight of seeing the world of reading books unfold before a child is really a privilege to witness, and what an honour for me, as her mama, to be primarily instrumental in facilitating this!

- the flexibility of learning at home is unmatched! We only ever spent 3 hours maximum at school, and even then took some days or even weeks off because we were getting too far ahead!

- friendship between siblings is a precious, beautiful thing to witness. This seems so random for this blog, but my goodness am I happy that the friendship between Liliana and Judah only grew deeper this year!

I could go on and on about the gifts and challenges of this year! I am grateful to be wrapping it up, I am grateful for the break, I am grateful for a little girl who is thriving and blossoming. She is joyfilled, bouncy, messy, determined, delightful, innocent, and loves her family, Jesus, and her neighbour with sweet devotion. What a year it has been for our Little Lamb!

My sweet Liliana, I loved teaching you this year. Thank you, my darling, for the most heart-stretching time learning together on this new journey!

Moments of Grace: It's OK Daddy Can Fix It

We have a spot on our kitchen counter, by the telephone and the (dirty) windows, where there is typically a line up of broken toys waiting for Daddy's magic touch.

Saying goodbye to their hero as he heads off to  "bring home the bacon"!

It doesn't matter if the toys are worth 10 cents, or whether their injury is tiny (like when tiny figurine Ariel lost her nose!), or whether the toy has been broken 8 times before. ...it's always OK because Daddy can fix it. The part of me that hates junk and clutter always wants to get rid of broken toys. However, the children have the most staunch and everlasting conviction that their daddy will attempt to fix anything.  And so, I always tell them to put it up there and Daddy will take care of it when he has a chance.

We will finally get the children settled in bed and I'll come out to see him standing with tweezers in his hand and the handy gorilla glue meticulously restoring Ariel's nose or Thor's hammer tip. He always tries. He then has to set up some sort of crazy scenario to hold the repair in place while the glue dries. 

Most often the repair leaves the toy looking a little different than it was brand new. Sometimes, he has to tell them that he did his best but it might not last too long, and other times he has to tell them that there is really no way for him to restore life to the beloved toy.

Yet it struck me the other day that he is never ever bothered by the sweet line up of toys, or the requests for him to fix something. He stands taller knowing his children believe that he will always try, and no matter how many bigger or more important things he has on the go he will make time for their petitions.

Judah had a dream to play dress-up a kilt like Braveheart....so of course Daddy made time to cut up one of his old work shirts and even sewed a button on so it stayed up!

Wasting time with our children, such an important thing to do!

It struck me further that this must be how our Father in Heaven sees our prayers of petition. He doesn't mind, He isn't bothered, He rejoices in our hearts turned to him with our requests. I stop myself from bringing mundane or simple prayers to Him.....telling myself that there are bigger and more important things for Him to deal with. But when I think how Joe would be heartbroken if the children refrained from bringing their toys to him in their sweet clenched little hands, I can understand how our Father in Heaven desires for us to bring everything to Him and never believe that something is too mundane to bring to His throne. For He rejoices mostly in the unburdening of our hearts, the expressions of our worries, our fears, and even our requests of "Daddy will you fix this?"

Can He always fix it to make it like new? No. He knows when something is better left unfixed or slightly different than what it was before. But will He ever refuse to receive us? No. Will He ever scoff at our little needs? No. He loves our little line of broken things waiting for His magic touch.

I am so grateful for my little ones! May I treasure these days of little broken toys and sweet innocent hearts that believe a kiss can fix a bump or bruise. May my love show them the love of their Father in heaven. 

Snowy Fun

I've always thought that the key to surviving wintery weather is to have fun IN it! Budgetary constraints have meant that so far skiing is not an option, but this Christmas we had the best time learning to skate! We also tried out a sledding hill scouted by Uncle Steven that was the shortest but steepest hill the kids have ever tobagganed on. It was so steep, in fact, that Liliana only had to slide on her bum to go at warp speed. A few videos for the memory bank!

With love,

Christmas Joy

If you know me, you know that Christmas is one of my absolute favorite times of the year! It takes all of my discipline to hold off on Christmas-ing until the appropriate time, but I do spend time and energy planning and scheming early. As Catholics, we have the gift of Advent, a liturgical season of preparation and waiting. It is important to me to convey this to our children, that Christmas is not here until baby Jesus is born, so the rest of December is spent earnestly anticipating, preparing, and waiting. 

Because of all of this, it felt hard that Christmas this year was up in the air. My sister is stuck indefinitely in the USA awaiting her green card, but we had hoped that she would be free to leave by Christmas. Last minute, however, we realized this was not to be so and due to the generosity of dear family friends, relocated our family Christmas celebration to Montana. 

As it always seems to be, in the act of surrendering both my "perfect" plans and the security of knowing exactly what to expect, this Christmas was infused with joy, laughter, and a deep sense of the season's true meaning. 

Our children waited and counted and prayed. We attended Christmas Eve mass and sang happy birthday to Baby Jesus as we finally placed Him in the manger. It was so wonderful to see Judah and Liliana finally open their gifts on Christmas morning, gifts that they knew were theirs because Jesus loves them so much He wants them to have presents on His birthday. Their joy was palpable. The time we spent in carefree play with our children in the days sorrounding Christmas was balm for our souls. We woke up each morning to the snow quietly falling. It is incredible how quiet the world is when it is a snow globe. The deer passed peacefully past our windows or across the lake. Liliana learned to skate and her beautiful red cheeks after hours of skating each day thrilled me! Joe took several intentional days off of work, and Judah got to spend hours each day with his idol, doing "manly" things all day long until he just couldn't keep his eyes open. It was beautiful to watch. I never want to forget this Christmas. 

Christmas morning, baby boy in utero 22 weeks

All he wanted for Christmas this year was a penny whistle and a microphone. St. Nicholas delivered on both!

Christmas Eve excitement. Carrots for the reindeer and cookies with milk for Santa.

Christmas morning visitors, they could sense that this day was special among days!

Playing "hockey". Judah's face here as he plays with his daddy just melts me

Sweet rose-bud lipped cousin Sophia Rose. 

Her first day on the ice! by day 3 she was doing unassisted laps. Such a determined little girl!

Checking on the ice fishing rods. Joe is patient and devoted among fathers, he will spend all day exploring the natural world with his children and teaching them new skills

All of a sudden so slender and so grown up!

Judah and Grandad shoveling the ice, what a special memory!

I pray that your Christmas was joy-filled in it's own beautiful way!

Who Are You, Tiny Baby?

On December 5th we had our ultrasound to check on Tiny Baby's growth. I wait and yearn for these ultrasounds, as due to some personal fears about the safety of repeated exposure to ultrasound for a growing baby I do not have an initial or 12 week ultrasound. It is always such a joy to see out beautiful growing baby on that screen. I marvelled over his big toe that looked just like his daddy's, his sweet little arms and fists by his nose. His long legs that then on the report measured in millimeteres were moving and kicking. It was wonderful and so consoling to know that he is well.

Our tradition with revealing baby's gender has been to get the ultrasound tech to write it down, and then to take the sealed envelope to a special dinner in order to open it. We video tape ourselves opening it to show to the baby once they are old enough to understand. This time was especially wonderful because our children were old enough to partcipate and be excited! We shopped for and prepared a special tapas tray, some non-alchoholic wine for all, and opened the envelope together.

Liliana waiting with unbelievable excitement for daddy to be done work 

so we could find out!!

Liliana had her heart set on a sister, and we were all quite convinced that a baby girl was on the way due to the fact that I was craving eggs and candy! She took a few minutes to get over the fact that there is actually a baby brother coming, but now we can't imagine it any other way!

Now the big question is what to name him! Who are you, our tiny baby boy?

Family Vacations - Expectations vs Reality

We just arrived home from a glorious, difficult, exhilarating, exhausting, happy, dirty, budget friendly, expensive trip :) All of the above sound contradictory, which they absolutely are! I am learning, slowly but very surely, that life with little children is never as expected, straightforward, or carefree as one might hope, but always more joy and grace filled than we could have imagined in our wildest dreams.

In an incredibly valiant step towards establishing new family traditions and family culture my side of the family planned a camping reunion in Priest Lake, Idaho.  Valiant because we have not camped as a family for perhaps 20 years and because it was absolutely a step outside of comfort zones.

True to form we were relatively last minute in making our plans, for several reasons, and so ended up in a walk-up camp ground very close to Priest Lake. Our little family has always dreamed of camping but were deterred by the cost of acquiring gear, so this was a perfect impetus to start our collection and start living the dream.

13 people, 5 cars, 2 campgrounds, 4 tents, no facilities, a beautiful river, a stunning lake, a weekend of fun.

True to form, however, our two little ones returned from our glorious week on Nonna and Papa's ranch in Texas with stomach bugs. Despite the fact that we did our best to feed them only bottled water this time, their little tummies just don't seem to handle the foreign flora and so we headed into our relatively rustic camping situation with many many bouts of diarrhea daily still occurring. This really made the trip at times feel like a nightmare. This is real life, though! On social media one might only see little snapshots of the carefree moments, but in between were frantic middle of the night outhouse sprints, accidents, visits to the laundromat, the purchasing of new gear, 5:30 AM coffee on the campfire after being up all night with sick kids, and exhausted mommy and daddy at their absolute wits end.

There is something wonderful about parenthood, however, that even at your wits end the best still shines through because it is not about you. When there are other little lives relying on you somehow you find the strength. I'll never forget Joe in the middle of a chilly night in a tent, covered in poop (YES IN POOP) wiping off a hysterical child and telling them it was OK and it happens when your tummy is sick. I will never forget locking eyes over a brown bagged chelada in the laundromat as our kids licked their popsicles wondering how we were spending our long weekend in a small town laundromat with our fingers crossed that our gear would come clean. We laughed, we laughed so hard because it was either that or cry. I'll never forget falling asleep holding hands praying that this night would bring more rest than the next. I'll never forget the moments in between of carefree or ringing in our daughter's 5th birthday with campfire coffee and camp stove french toast, and playtime in the beautiful lake with doting aunts and uncles.

Despite all of the challenges we eagerly look forward to continuing the Christianson/Packard/Zohorksy/Di Lucca summer camping tradition as the years roll on. Maybe next year we will just make sure we find a place with closer bathroom facilities ;)

A few photos from our happy, dirty, hard, and carefree weekend....

My mom and dad with their 6 children and 3 grandchildren

Auntie Joc, Auntie Eve, and cousin Sophia Rose

Fun Uncles make every day better!

Sophia Rosie and Liliana Joy in matching bathing suits

Judah was obsessed with this water gun, I am obsessed with Uncle Luke's face in this photo

Birthday boy Grandad (61) and Birthday girl Liliana (5)

I loved summer mornings around the campfire and arms full of littles

6 children, oldest to youngest

My handsome men at Priest Lake

I hope your summers have been full of adventure, humour, and memory making!

Kitchen Dance Party

"Laughter, song, and dance create emotional and spiritual connection; they remind us of the one thing that truly matters when we are searching for comfort, celebration, inspiration, or healing: we are not alone." - Brene Brown The Gifts of Imperfection

Writing this down so I don't ever forget this precious moment....

Last night, Sunday, we were at Nanny and Papa's house for Sunday dinner. The ladies and most of the men were in the kitchen putting the final touches on dinner, when Judah pressed play on the music player and upbeat Jazz music started blasting out of the speakers.

He turned around in fear and surprise, his hand over his ears, and instantly his face melted into laughter and glee. For we had all started dancing. Nanny started dancing as she set dishes out, my mom and I started dancing as we made the salad, my dad and brothers grooved to the music, and Anna shook her hips like a pro, holding Liliana's hands. Papa, on his constant wanders, came back into the kitchen intrigued by the hubbub. Immediately he started moving to the rhythm. His mind is diseased and his body getting frail but the ability to sense the rhythm is still going strong. We all laughed, and dinner took a little longer to set out because we all kept dancing.

Life has been heavy lately. World news is heavy, politics is heavy, business is heavy, finances, family, health....heavy. I think, though, as long as we have the ability for kitchen dance parties the heaviness of life will not be victorious over joy.

(Just to make you smile )

May your day have at least one kitchen dance party in it!

With love,

Nothing's New

I tiptoe out of our children's bedroom, wincing as the ever squeaking doors break the silence,  I am half asleep thanks to the lulling effect of prayer time and snuggle time. I trip over a dump-truck in the hall way and sigh as I collect odds and sods from Liliana's creative play draped here there and everywhere. Depending on the night I settle next to Joe to watch the news or maybe The Voice and fold copious amounts of laundry, leaving it for the next day to put away. Chances are it will wait 2 or 3 days.

...

I stare out of our window as I watch our children shriek and play, my hands immersed in the soapy dishwater, a perfect vantage point. I wince as one of them falls or one of them screams at the other, pausing a moment to see if I have to make my way to them or if they can dust themselves off. My heart thrills to watch them, their sweet little bodies and blonde heads. My mind wanders to more babies and maybe a trampoline for the backyard if we can find an affordable one.

...

I find something new that is desperately in need of a clean. The inside of the microwave, the baseboards, the fridge, the bathroom. It never ends. I think how nice it would be if the day came that for just one hour everything was perfectly clean and I did not feel constant pressure for one more thing and one more thing. I know undoubtedly that if I prioritize an at-home workout the dust bunnies will taunt me from underneath the furniture.
...

Joe and I are busy and tired, we kiss each other softly as we wake to the quiet of the morning and sit beside each other as we say our prayers or do some reading. Each of our days has a rhythm and rhyme that is it's own and yet intertwined with the other, and every so often the day is capped off with a date. We love each other deeply and flirt through the day, and every so often we feel a little annoyed with each other. Yet we never ever go to bed angry, and I always find deep peace as we fall asleep, reaching over and putting my hand in his.

It was fun being the coaches wife! Busy, but truly fun!

...

I chip way at bad habits. Sometimes I stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night trying to make peace with the moments I lost my temper and berated a child, or gave Joe the cold shoulder, or should have denied myself that extra glass of wine and did not, or was lazy.

Truly, how could I ever be angry at these two goofs, right? I have no idea what game they were playing here!

...

We make lists, we dream, we scheme for simple family vacations. We peel back our layers and expose our wounds and faults, we work together for growth. Our children grow and thrive, 3/4 of the time we marvel at just how amazing they are and 1/4 of the time we wonder if our little blessings will send us to the loony bin and I feverishly seek out a parenting book for advice. 100 percent of the time, though, we cannot imagine our life without them. We pay bills, chip away at debt, do house repairs, pray cars last but a little longer, go to church, teach, clean, feed, kiss,  stress, learn, pray REPEAT.

Tender daily moments, sometimes a little one
just needs to be snuggled to sleep!

Daddy helping Liliana soar!

Important life lessons being learned every day :)

Nothing's new, the weeks and days blend into each other, each scenario I just described is a scenario on repeat in our house.

In the past I've felt odd when someone asks me , "how are things with you?" or "what's new?" and I have absolutely nothing to report other than, "things are really good, busy but happy, nothing new to report!"

Until it occurred to me that nothing new is a blessed reality. It seems we are conditioned to think that life is more meaningful when it is dramatic, so much so that we go out of our way to create drama for ourselves. At least for me, social media is a contributor to this because I see bits and pieces of everybody's charmed life without seeing any of the messy bits. I am guilty of this myself.

And yet, all around me there are families met by tragedy....sick children, sick mamas, daddy's with out work, deceased spouses, natural disaster, mental illness, marital problems....the list goes on and on. For these people there is lots of drama, and I'm sure they would give almost anything to have it turn back to the boring old of nothing new.

Mysteriously and beautifully, when I resign myself to the fact that nothing new is a blessed reality, my eyes opened to see the little miracles that make each day new and each moment fresh. Sure, we play in our back yard every day but my children's minds are growing and expanding so rapidly that they are always discovering something magical.  The mess is steady but seasons have changed and now instead of muddy bootprints we have dirty hand prints on the wall from digging in the garden in search of lady bugs.

Seeking little gratitudes and little miracles opens my eyes to the two little robins flirting in the yard, the books my husband is finishing that are contributing so greatly to his maturation and manly strength, a new workout conquered each day that helps me feel stronger and more confident, a new vocabulary word for one of our children. Each day, in all of its mundane, is filled with new miracles, little miracles, miracles entirely lacking drama yet contributing beautifully to our family's story.

And so nothing is new, and yet everything is.

May your day be full of little miracles,

xoxo