Me and the crew (+2) headed to the park this afternoon.

"Wow, you sure have your hands full!"

If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that, I'd have at least $1.35, maybe $1.40. Not a lot of money, but it is a lot of times to hear strangers make uninvited comments about my life. Maybe this shouldn't bug me, but here are 3 reasons why it does:

1. The tone of voice is always one of pity, as in "Oh you poor thing." I don't need your pity. I am doing what I love: I am spending time with my children. OK, so maybe they just spilled a full bag of popcorn in the bottom of the cart at Target... I still don't want or need your pity, thanks.

2. When the tone is drenched in pity it makes me feel like that person is saying that this stage of family life is one that I'm expected to drudge through and just survive until the "easier" days of school-age or grown-up children. Why? This is the time in my children's lives when I get to see them the most -- when I get to eat, read, giggle, tell stories, sing songs, and play on the floor with them. Do I always feel like doing those things? No. But do I dread them or wish for this time to be over? Not for a second.

3. People say this to me when I only have my 2 boys with me (though I am often out and about with a few extra boys in tow - see above - and then I get even more strange looks and comments). This bugs me because we are planning to have at least one (or maybe two or three or...) more. What in the world will I have to put up with down the line when I am out with four or five little ones? "Yes, they're all mine... Yes, I'm serious.... Yes, we planned it that way."

I've been doing the smile and nod thing when I hear the "hands full" comment, but I think I'm going to start using a new response: Yes I do, and I am a very lucky lady! Because people are right -- I do have my hands full. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Ever since reading this book I have been listening to my kids differently, and Oh! the things I am learning.

Nate has been learning songs at preschool and singing them at home. And singing them again. And then singing them again. And again. With all that repetition, Dexter learns them too and between the two of them it can get pretty loud around here. To be completely honest, I sometimes just tune out this incessant Bible song sing-a-long. But their most recent favorite tune is one I had never heard before, which has made me listen a bit more closely. Here are the words:

My God is so great!
So strong and so mighty!
There's nothing my God cannot do.
The mountains are His,
The rivers are His,
The stars are his handiwork too.
My God is so great!
So strong and so mighty!
There's nothing my God cannot do... for you!

More than once have my children been messengers of God's grace to me by launching into a loud and joyful rendition of this song at just the right moment. My God is indeed great.

Somewhere in the course of the madness that is the life of a typical four-year-old boy, Nate got a scratch near his eye this week. I am a big believer in the placebo effect, so when he complained that it hurt I rubbed a dab of Vaseline on it and told him that would help. No dice. Plan B was to pray for God to make it feel better. (Really? Plan B? But isn't that always how it goes.) After the prayer, Nate gave me a hug and scooted off to play. God: 1, Vaseline: 0.

Today it was bothering him again, and being a slow learner I once again tried the Vaseline. He waited a moment to see if it would work. It must not have, because a second later he let out a loud, desperate, and tearful cry:

Mommy, you need to PRAY!

Oh my sweet boy.


Maybe this was how he got hurt? Who knows.

Down the street from us there is a little old couple with a big yard. For as long as anyone on our block can remember, they have grown dahlias and sold them in a roadside stand. I love seeing their yard throughout the year -- fresh green shoots in the early spring, beginnings of blooms in May and June, and brilliantly colored flowers through summer and fall.

But this day comes each year, after the leaves turn and before the first frost, when I drive by the house and it is over. No warning. I wanted a big sign in the yard last week -- "Attention: These flowers will be unceremoniously lopped off and piled along the driveway on October 24. Please say your goodbyes accordingly." But fall must come, and it does not ask permission.

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
"All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord stands forever."
And this is the word that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23-25)

Places of Light 3, Krystyna Sanderson

Throughout life there are moments - times and spaces - where the distance between the physical world and the spiritual realm is barely distinguishable, where the kingdom of heaven seems to touch the soil of earth. In Celtic spirituality these are referred to as thin places.

Yesterday a string of circumstances put me sitting in a hospital room by the bed of a dear saint - a woman who has seen a lot of suffering in her long years and who is now in severe physical pain from a broken hip. Muriel was dejected, confused, and hurting. She had an oxygen tube under her nose, bruises up and down her arms, and hospital blankets pulled around her fragile frame, but her eyes were what broke my heart.

We read Psalm 103. Her eyelids lowered.

"...who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases... who satisfies your desires with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's... the Lord has compassion on those who fear him... from everlasting to everlasting..."

Her lips moved and her brow furrowed. Tears slipped down my cheeks as I watched her soak in the words, tasting them, feeding on them out of a deep hunger. In that moment there was nowhere else on earth I would rather have been.

I want to be in those places - in the space where God meets us in our utter helplessness and satisfies us. I need to be where people are needy - I need to see my own neediness reflected there, and eat with my fellow beggars at the Table of truth and grace. In the midst of a life so easily sidetracked by selfishness, I need frequent and routine reminders of reality -- that apart from Jesus Christ I am wholly without a hope or future, and without Him absolutely nothing matters.

"When it gets to the hard part, you just have to let go."

Who said this, and what did they mean?

Was it a philosopher? teacher? author? artist? pastor?

Is it about dealing with relationships? finding direction in life? working creatively? following Jesus?

This deeply meaningful, wise, insightful, and very true statement was uttered by my four-year-old son, and he was talking about toilets. Yes, toilets. [We stayed at a hotel last weekend and apparently the toilet seat had a mechanism that prevents it from slamming down. In trying to lower it himself, Nate discovered that it was best to let go when it got hard to push it down and it would go the rest of the way by itself. Thus, the gem of wisdom above.]

I am thankful to have heard Nate say this as he was walking into the room and, having no frame of reference, I was granted a moment to interpret it as a free-standing statement. (Unlike Jon, who was with Nate in the bathroom and heard it as a statement about toilet seats from the get-go.) It is true, about mechanized toilet seats and about many other things. Thank you, Nate.