Mornings Like This

I live for mornings like this one. 

When you get to see the sun rise.

When a car comes along once every 20 seconds instead of the normal once every 1/20 of a second.

When you wonder just how much more weight can this old tree take?

When you think, "But if we split this wood, it won't look as pretty."

When you question, "Am I shortening the life of the swing by leaving it outside?"

When the kids rush to be out with PJ's still on and breakfast not yet eaten.

It is one of the most peaceful, quiet, beautiful mornings of the year. And you don't want it to end.

But it does.

Only minutes later. You hear the motors start on the snowblowers, the traffic picks up, an ambulance screams its siren and you spot your kid making faces at the neighbor through their back door.

 Moment is gone.

Lord, I pray there are more mornings like this.

Let the Children Play

Funny how things happen. I had a conversation today with 3 other women and we discussed the abundance of toys out there. I mentioned I had recently been to Babies R Us to purchase something off a registry and I was totally overwhelmed by the floor to ceiling amount of stuff. After raising three babies, I am convinced that it really does not take that much stuff...you can get by with little or just everyday things around the house stuff to raise kids.  One person mentioned hearing an interview on NPR with the founder or CEO of Toys R Us and his defending his store items with the claim that kids need toys and fun. I agree partially. Kids have a high need for fun. I think though that a few toys can aid in their fun. Most toys are one dimensional and can't get much use because they are not designed to. Also, fun can be found in more things or opportunities.

Later today my sister in law emailed a link to this article. Give it a read. It is good and speaks to something I have thought about since my kids were very little.

I still marvel at how they can take two sticks or two pencils and turn them into people. Or take two blocks and make a table for their pencils to eat at.  And how much they can participate in the stuff/chores of home and enjoy it as well.

Time & Marriage

While plunking down way too much money at Lund's (it happens more than I care to admit with the store being close to home), I did the usual averting of my eyes from the tabloids and instead spotted the Time Magazine cover "Who Needs Marriage?"  I was immediately intrigued, but chose not to spend any more and looked up the article online to read for free.  Here it is in full and I recommend reading it all.  A few lines stuck out for me and I think there is a lot more to delve into with these in particular, but the whole thing is fascinating to me.

Excerpts I found interesting and worth thinking about:

"Promising publicly to be someone's partner for life used to be something people did to lay the foundation of their independent life. It was the demarcation of adulthood. Now it's more of a finishing touch, the last brick in the edifice, sociologists believe."

"So, people are living together because they don't have enough money to live alone, but they aren't going to get married until they have enough money. That's the catch. In fact, the less education and income people have, the Pew survey found, the more likely they are to say that to be ready for marriage, a spouse needs to be a provider."

"Indeed, 41% of babies were born to unmarried moms in 2008..."

"The basis of marriage changed in the last century," says Seth Eisenberg, president and CEO of the PAIRS Foundation, one of the biggest relationship-education operations in the country. "But very few couples have had a chance to learn really what are the new rules of love and intimacy — not because the rules are so difficult to learn, just because no one told them. To interpret that as meaning there's something broken about the institution of marriage itself would be a horrible, horrible mistake."

I think we have a lot of work to do as a society to fight for marriage. The general trend of declining interest in marriage, not knowing how to do relationships well, and feeling like you need to have a certain amount of financial well being to even think about entering into marriage is disturbing to me. I am not saying that there ought not to be conversation and much thought put into financial stability and being married and having a family. But at some point, you need to recognize that the relationship is its own entity and can be cultivated and supported with many other things that cannot be bought, sold, saved, invested or traded.

Tell Me A Story

The first song I remember my dad singing to me is

Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me a story remember what you said. 

Tell me about the birds and bees and how to make a chipmunk sneeze. 

Tell me a story and then I'll go to bed.

He would always get crazy with his voice on the last word and it was a fun and sweet way to head off to bed as a little girl.

Two days ago I got out a tub of those foam stickers (not my favorite thing), but we have them, so we'll use them. I gave Izzy a piece of blank paper and let her go at it putting stickers all over. When she was done I said, "Tell me a story about your picture."  Well, she proceeded to tell me all about Gordon the Butterfly who found two flowers and.... I am pretty sure she did not have all that in mind as she placed the stickers, but she created a long tale anyway and then asked for help with writing a title, the text to her story, and binding the whole thing with a cover.

I am telling you those stickers went a long way to open up her imagination and creativity.

Who knew she even knew the name Gordon?  No idea where that came from.

Breath of Heaven

So I had a moment today of sitting in a cluttered chaotic space and I glanced over at a shelf in our dining room. This is what I saw.

Mary. Alone. Waiting.

Today Izzy started our Advent tradition of popping out a character from a Nativity book, and each day until the 25th, the kids take turns adding a person or animal and building the Nativity scene.  Izzy had cleared off the shelf of its normal contents. She left the dust. Oh well. And for one day Mary will stand alone.

It just humbled me and moved me to see her there with no one around and yet the hope and expectation of companionship, God's fulfillment and His glory is not far off. 

It is the moments that seem so long.  

Then an Amy Grant song came to mind, Breath of Heaven. I have always loved this song.  It is beautiful.  A song of Mary.

I found it on youtube with video from the movie The Nativity Story accompanying it. 

Take a look here.