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. 

When You Realize Your Greatest Dream Has Already Come True

Several afternoons ago I sat the baby on the carpet and took my sweet husband by the hands. As the children played around us I looked into his eyes and said, "I need you to know that in this beautiful life of ours, everything good and hard that has happened....our children, our adventures, our life, YOU are my greatest dream come true. I don't know what is going to happen or where we will end up but it doesn't matter, because the deepest dream of my heart is already a reality."

He needed to hear it, I needed to say it....

He is my greatest dream come true.

The night he proposed to me, what joy!

It came to me in my early morning prayer time. I was reflecting on Hannah and her prayer of grief and torment as she begged to be blessed with a son. The writer of the reflection commented that hope transforms prayer from pleading to worship. It brought me back to my broken anxious prayers for someone who would see me, love me, and want me as I am with all my quirks. Broken and fragile from a previous relationship with a man who didn't care enough to be faithful, and who liked to use words like "pathetic" to describe me, I wondered if my heart's shape had become too disfigured to fit another's.

Then this boy came along, not really a man yet, and he wore his nobility of heart on his sleeve. He truly was so captivated by me, my mind, my face, my heart, my dreams that he sometimes was lost for words. I brought him to his knees, and he brought me to mine, and together we prayed a prayer of praise for this love that seemed like a fairy tale. I was so captivated by his eager search for truth and his determined virtue, and his big dreams! We were going to conquer the world together.

Fast forward all of these years in our love story and we are tired. We have three beautiful exhausting children, and to top it all of he has been without steady income for a half a year. Most days it feels like we are just keeping our heads above water, and we fall asleep holding pinkies or touching feet with a nursing baby hogging the space in between us.

Our little Ezekiel's baptism day

I became disillusioned because with his previous steady income came a flood of exciting possibilities. Perhaps we could buy a home, take a warm vacation, start putting some money away for retirement, renew our wedding vows in Italy, buy Joe the truck of his dreams, educate our children how and where we want, etc etc etc. It sort of went away overnight when the company he was working for had to be put on the shelf in the midst of our struggling economy.

And so it feels like we have been in the trenches, and as I am keeping the home and educating our children, he is doing battle to bring in enough to live off of. He feels like he is letting us down, and he feels responsible for any struggles we might have, even though he is not! And we both are tempted to feel like our dreams are becoming farther away. 

Until I realized my dream is standing right beside me each day, through thick and thin. Those other "dreams" would be nice, but they are fluff and he is the real deal.

...in the midst of the grief, the cross, or the exhaustion, he is patient, devoted, determined, hard working, tender, and funny. He loves our children magnificently and witnesses to them what it looks like when a husband loves his wife with all his heart and will. Who knows if he will change the world as a career man, but he is absolutely changing the world through how he loves his family. 

All is grace. "When all is grace we can wait out our pain and longing in hope. When all is grace, we can give God back our answered prayers in faith. When all is grace, we can see salvation coming in glimpses and flashes, and take up our place in its story. When all is grace, we can be drunk with grief and bold with hope all at once. Because this is just what salvation is: the cradle and the cross, the grace and the stone rolled away, the dark days before a savior and the lit up skies of 'Hosanna in the highest.'"

All glory to God! How fortunate I am. 

In Which a Little Boy Becomes Big Brother

I wrote this over three months ago but after reading it through it is still something I want to post, so that I don't forget and so that the children always know my love for them.

I wanted to capture here the experience, as I've witnessed it, for our sweet lilttle Judah the Lion as he became big brother.

Early days postpartum, trying to make sure both boys got their snuggles

I can now say, after having experiencing it twice, the transition for the (former) baby when new baby comes is one of the most painful realities for me. It struck me to the heart when Judah was born, and struck me just as hard with Ezekiel's birth.

One random day after Ezekiel was born that Judah wanted to wear his suit, just because

This super sweet-natured little boy broke his arm in the early summer, he is just so darling!

I remember being 3 or 4 days postpartum and sitting on Judah's bed over his sleeping frame. He had been begging and crying for me to cuddle him to sleep, but I was nursing the baby. By the time I finally got there he was asleep. I could not stop it as the hot wet tears poured down my face and onto his pj clad little body. I wanted to lay there with him forever, holding him close, so that he would wake up with me there and know I had not replaced him. It was incredibly painful.

Yet as painful as he found the transition, and as many times as he looked at me with his big beautiful eyes and said "It's HARD being a big brother, I'm only 3 and a half," he so adores Ezekiel. The moment he met him he exclaimed with delight, "Oh Tiny, oh Tiny your so cute, Oh Tiny I love you!"

He has called him Tiny ever since.

He loves to just play around where I am as I nurse or snuggle Ezekiel, but he always makes a little pit stop for a kiss on the head or a head rub. Admittedly, he has said odd things like, "Oh Tiny I love you so much I could squish your head!" But I understand the sentiment of wanting to absolutely crush someone with the weight of my love. I can empathize.

Beautifully, Judah and Liliana have grown even closer in friendship! It makes my heart soar to hear them playing and laughing together. They are two goof-balls and can make me crazy with the immensity of their creative mess, but they so adore each other. 

Judah has also become a bit of a clown, he loves to make us laugh and has figured out funny moves and faces that always have us chuckling. He has grown in tenacity and independence, and very quickly adapted to getting himself dressed and cleaning up after himself.

Now, 10 weeks out I can very peacefully say that I was not wrong in my conviction that another baby would be a gift to our family. Admittedly, that night after I sat crying over sleeping Judah, I walked out to Joe and told him I wasn't sure I could do this again, it was too hard seeing the other children suffer as they adapted. However do know that it makes no sense, nor is it even fair, to try and protect a child from life's natural sufferings.....those sufferings in which they become more generous and less self centered. I suppose it is a good lesson to learn early that life is not always about feeling good and that sometimes love is a choice even when it doesn't feel good.

xoxo