on moving a family

by Heather

“the trouble it might drag you down,

if you get lost you can always be found…”

It’s unsettling to not recognize the news anchors, but I don’t, since I’m from Minnesota and I’m sitting in the earliest of mornings in Austin, Texas. Somehow I woke before my 5:00 a.m. alarm and I’m showered before my cell phone starts binging and bonging a “song.” It’s still dark outside.

The hotel room coffee isn’t cutting it. I look in the mirror in the bathroom with the lights that shine too bright and actually start laughing. The lines and bags, dark circles and pillow creases. Comical.

I found us a house in Austin, Texas yesterday. The whole time I was texting and calling back and forth with my husband and I had a sinking feeling in my gut about missing Asher’s preschool spring party and program. His last one. They did a skit and he was the caterpillar and how was I not there? But we close on our house in Minnesota on June 10th and one of us had to hurry down here to figure out where to live. It worked out best for me to go.

I tell everyone here that my five year old, my caterpillar, calls it Texas, Austin.

Our children, at almost 8 and almost 6 and almost 2, don’t comprehend the distance involved in this move. Maybe the oldest understands it the most and maybe that’s why he has been the most anxious about this. I get that missing-the-school-caterpillar-skit feeling in my belly when I see the look on his face when we talk about our move.

We are really doing this.

If they were older, this would be harder, I say to me. Now is the time, this is the right thing to do, I remind myself.

The reality is that I’m scared and happy and sad all at once. There is so much positive potential for Ryan’s work, for school, for community, in Austin, for us. This is good, and yet we’ll say goodbye to every comfort, even the news anchors.

And I hardly ever watch the news.

Suddenly I want Belinda Jensen to hug me.

Our realtor told me about recent times when music has been like God talking to her, just at the right time. I understand that and it made me think of a time recently when we were in our minivan, our whole family, and we were talking about our Big Move. Right then, Phillip Phillips started singing Home and I heard it differently. (That was refreshing because as much as I love that song, it’s been over-played, even on commercials and that kind of ruins it.) I told the boys to listen to the words, to think about how God loves us, while they listen.

“Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home”

We want our kids to understand what a leap of faith is. We want our kids to know adventure, with us, together. We want our kids to understand that they always belong, wherever they are. That’s a really big part of what moving means to us, as parents.

We also want them to be near our families and we won’t be, and so an incredible sadness will hover over us as we adjust. It will never feel “right” to not be close to their grandparents and aunts and uncles, their cousins and more. This is the hardest part and yet we’re going all the way to Texas, Austin and we made an offer on a house there yesterday.

If I’m not wrong, there was a lot of staying near family in the Bible. And there was a lot of leaving, too. Not just prodigal-like leaving, but more like a flying from the nest kind of thing. Like maybe it was best in the particular situation for many different reasons and there was grief and joy all at once.

Maybe I bring that up because I’m convinced this is yet another way in which we can’t get it wrong. A way to show our children that we can hold on to God as we go, in all of our choices, and then we can watch the miracles unfold around us as we build a new life. We get to see the gifts God gives us, no matter where we live if we just keep going, keep believing that He really is on our side out of a great love and maps and miles don’t really have that much to do with that.

It feels like we’ll be turning around, stopping in our tracks at everything we know, our places and our people, while it all turns to pillars of salt and piles on the ground. That’s why, in a hotel room last night, I wept on the phone with my husband after telling him every good thing about our new neighborhood and house.

My kids are going to feel that too and I hate that but I know that at the same time, we’re going to be okay and they are going to know that, if we just hold on.

“Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home”

It is a great comfort to me to believe that God’s will for our lives is not a right or wrong choice or path, but rather, staying within His will for us is a simple striving to be near Him in every small step, any step. He does not ever abandon a child that is turning toward Him as best he or she can.

We want our kids to know that peace and I’m praying they’ll feel it as we go down this unfamiliar road.

April 24, 2013 in Family with 32 Comments

Balancing Working Motherhood

by Jessica

Since I was out of town for the weekend at a conference, my sweet friend Lisa Leonard took Matthew’s place on the couch for this month’s parenting video. We are both working moms so we chatted about working motherhood, balance and being imperfect.

Are you a working parent? If so, how do you juggle work and home? If you don’t work, how does your spouse’s work impact your family’s story?

April 22, 2013 in Family with 1 Comment

It’s What You Do For Family

by JenL

My Race Buddy and Me

The first half marathon I ran was the Oklahoma City Memorial race. Oklahomans are painfully cognizant of the bombing that the race commemorates. Eighteen years ago tomorrow, domestic terror ripped through the city, killing 168 people, including 19 children under six years of age.

My running partner, Ellen, and I awoke to a thunderous chorus from the skies and a near torrential downpour. We had awoken early enough to eat and dress and wake up but instead we checked the Twitter feed for the race, expecting it to be cancelled. We may or may not have crossed our fingers.

Finally, we threw garbage bags over our heads and stepped out into the rain. It was the coldest May 1st in Oklahoma history, replete with sleet storms. But we arrived at the starting corrals all bluster, swagger and good cheer. We are not very smart sometimes.

Before the race began, thousands of garbage-bag clad runners, and thousands more volunteers and spectators grew quiet for the National Anthem. Then, one hundred sixty eight seconds of silence, one for each victim. If you think that’s eery and painful, you are right.

Despite the rain, despite the frigid temperatures, despite being soaked to the very core of my person, I had a truly delightful experience. Why? Because runners are lovers, and spectators are life-giving.

At every stage of the race, pockets of die-hard fans crowded under makeshift tents or in garages. They blasted out music, and offered high fives and cold water. They held up signs whose lettering ran to liquid messes:

Run Faster!

It’s not Sweat, It’s Liquid Awesome!

Start Slow And Taper!

Troops of firefighters, veterans, police officers and other servicepeople ran in thick knots. We moved out of the way, stopped to cheer and pat their backs and shout our thanks. At one point, or maybe it was two, I told my running buddy, “I’m done. This is stupid. I’m going home.”

She slowed down, gliding beside me, telling me naughty jokes and giving me half a banana to keep me going. Coinciding with my whiny outbursts, a runner wearing a list of names on a bib passed us. The names? Victims of the bombing, people with whom she had worked. I kept running.

With the finish line in view, and the promise of my mylar blanket, chocolate milk and dry clothes, we stepped up our cadence, crested a few small rises and ran into the finisher’s shoot. The dwindling crowd—and who could blame them, it was rotten out—roared for us. They clamored and hooted and hollered. They rained praises down on us that would last far longer than the sting of ice-cold rain.

*****

I could dismiss it. I could tell myself it was a one time thing. First timers ebullience and naivete. I could say that it was pleasant because I was too dumb to know it wasn’t supposed to be that miserable. But a variety of races and a variety of distances have taught me one thing I know for sure.

Runners are lovers.

I’ve run 5k fun runs and mountainous seeming marathons (looking at you, Pittsburgh). The running community is more than that. It is a family. Spectators care for each other, as we saw on Monday, and runners suppot one another.

It did not surprise me to hear of the Herculean efforts of runners and fans on Monday. Running is one of most inclusive and organic groups to which I am proud to belong. When a runner falters, she is hoisted up and propelled. When I begin to cry during marathons, something that embarrasses and emboldens me, I am met with a double portion of cheers. To finish a marathon is one thing; to keep running to the local blood donation center is quite another entirely. But that’s what you do for your family.

Of course, we feel attacked, as polite, peaceful humans. Runners feel like our family has been assaulted. We now worry for our safety whereas prior to Monday, that was the least of our concerns. Chub rub and the location of the portapots were our chief anxieties.

Each of us can picture our family in that crowd of onlookers who took the brunt of the blasts. Many of us have looked anxiously for family at race’s end, to be joyfully reunited. Now we are haunted by the families who did not find their loved ones. We can imagine the grim reality of losing a limb, or a child, and being robbed of a joy in our lives.

The London Marathon is scheduled for this Sunday. Oklahoma City is in two weeks. It’s marathon season, and the family won’t stop running. My friends will run OKC with a nod toward Boston. We will fly in the face of evil, because that is what you do for your family. We will hurl ourselves headlong into the Oklahoma wind, declaring this tiny spot a fear-free zone. This worldwide family will run, unwilling to bend in fear.

Because that’s what you do for family.

April 18, 2013 in Family with 7 Comments

love, its leaving and infinite sadness.

by Guy

Give sorrow words;
the grief that does not speak
knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Maybe, William, but maybe a heart broken isn’t all bad.

I’m one of three given to my parents. Two of us remain and one lives forever.

Today, here, he would have aged to 39. I was 5 years old when he left this life, three years his younger. I often speculate life uninterrupted; to be fully sandwiched between siblings, not just in thought, dream and memory but in aging days shared. Heated arguments burning selfish, fights against each other proving strength and stubbornness, fights alongside each other ending those set to prove themselves against one of us, long days lost in the woods, dares given and challenges accepted, our younger sister’s boyfriends enduring the intimidation of both not one of us; in life together, pocketed and adorned jointly.

A sadness crawls still aging in his stead. Hearts broken, mended and torn open again in days aging.

I know my family still grieves today in every one of its passings.
And now so do my daughters in their own terrible way of losing their mother.

It’s been nearly 3 years since she died. Their little hearts broke bad only to rise slowly braver, more valiant marked deeply by love, its leaving and infinite sadness.

Some days along the way, I’ve thought grief knows me well. Losing my brother opened dark clouds shrouding and staying present through my life unfolding. Grief wasn’t something that I dwelt upon daily, but its presence shaped me as I looked on in death’s aftermath. My parents moved through treacherous times where I know now, all too well, their hearts felt like stopping rather than beating hurt.

A memory stays with me, one immortalized disruptive yet sacred. The first day I felt love leave me and the sadness that ensured.

I was really young and did not remember much about his illness. I remember Leukemia being the equivalent of a cuss word in my mind. I have three lasting thoughts about my brother, Colby: repeated trips to St. Jude’s in Memphis, playing with our Star Wars figurines in our bedroom closet and playing in the back yard on a wood stack. That’s it. I do have a final thought different from the others: standing next to the hearse as they put his body into it. My dad’s heavy, able hand resting on my chest as I stood as tall as I could in front of him. I was five years old and did not fully understand why I was crying, but I do remember a deep loss settle within my heart.

When I think of the losses marking my life and my family, I wonder if sadness has and will always define me. Could it be that sadness‘ infinite whisper molds those who expend themselves bendable …that somehow sadness knits us tighter to God’s heart broken in Jesus to immerse us in a world of empathy and eternity?

Deeper still I drift into the thought of whether sadness is such a bad companion and if a broken heart is truly a bad happening?

You may have your own thoughts resolved in life experiences come and gone, but mine, as far as I imagine and anticipate now, holds yet to be determined. My prayer rests in the hope of my daughters’ slighted by death and lightened by love’s leaving and the lineage of loss kept well by my family.

April 17, 2013 in Family with 7 Comments

Chasing Home

by Luke

The movers had just left with virtually all of our earthly possessions. The cars were both packed up with what and who was left, and we were ready to hit the road. The only problem was, we had 1000 miles to go, and it was 9:30PM, but we couldn’t be bothered with such details. Some friends offered to let us stay the night at their place so we could get an early start in the morning, but we were just so ready to leave and so sure that the place we were going would be better than the place we were leaving, we got on the road right then.

My protestations aside, we only made it about 90 miles before we had to stop at a hotel for the night. The only place we could find that accepted pets was a non-chain joint with a bar in the front where they were hosting a (really bad) metal show. As we hurried up the wrought iron staircase toward our room, with sleeping toddler in hand and dog in tow, for a moment it felt like we were a family on the run.

The truth is, I think we were.

We were running away from a place that [we thought] didn’t make us happy, and running toward a place where we thought we might have a chance to find at least some semblance, some fragment or scrap of that thing we all seem to spend a good portion of our lives looking for:

Home.

But what we think and feel when we talk about home isn’t the same for all of us. For some of us, it’s the technicolor version of our childhood, where the idyllic scenes of family dinners around a table and holiday memories play out like a sitcom from the 50′s. For others, it’s a kind of negation of everything we experienced growing up. Where we lacked a sense of family and community, where there was no table, no fond memories to hold on to, we long for something, some feeling, some transcendent notion of place that we call home to make the journey worth while.

So we just keep running, and we just keep looking.

For our family, it took a job transfer, a cross-country move, a total house-flip (you know, because we were going to “live there forever”), a new baby, an existential crisis (or four) and a year and a half of wandering in the proverbial desert to figure out that we might just be running in circles. So we took advantage of the loneliness of that desert, we embraced those crises and found God there in ways we had never imagined. We sold the forever house, took a transfer back across the country, packed up the moving trucks again and got on the road, this time plus one baby and sans the dog, and headed back toward the place we were so ready to leave such a short time before, the only place where we’d ever even come close to finding anything close to home.

_____

“There’s our home!” the oldest said as we rounded the corner toward the garage of our townhouse. It caught me off guard, because I’d never actually heard him refer to it as “our home.” The funny thing is, he’s not really a huge fan of this townhouse, but the lesson we’re finally learning, that’s finally sinking in, is that home isn’t about a house or a city. It’s about belonging and hospitality and trust and all of those things that require us to put ourselves out there. Home is what we carry along with us when we open ourselves up and are willing to be vulnerable with other human beings. It’s the love of a family, the wisdom and grace of good friends, the acceptance of authentic community. Perhaps most importantly though, home is not something we find, it’s something we cultivate.

We chased it (or at least what we thought “it” was) our whole lives, but it wasn’t until we were willing to stop, to open up, and to be willing to put our hands in to the soil of our family and our community, that we were ever able to find it.

April 15, 2013 in Family with 10 Comments

On Passing Down Faith: An Unofficial Guide

by Amanda

We got Easter all wrong this year. No services, no family readings of the crucifixion or resurrection story, no Big Spiritual Moment with any of the kids (or adults, for that matter). I’d nearly forgotten about Good Friday altogether until Seth tweeted a video of Patty Griffin singing “Mary.” It had been so long since I’d heard those lyrics, that melody; I was entranced. But even then all I could think of was my daddy and I spent my five minutes of stay-at-home-mama quiet staring out the window at the rain, remembering him and hiding tears from the five year old waiting for me to join the tea party in her room.

The Good Church Girl in me tried to whisper guilt in my ear for spending my Good Friday thoughts on the wrong man, but I knew Jesus wouldn’t mind. I guess some of those old chains are finally wearing thin.

In the wee hours of Easter Sunday morning my son stood crying at his bedroom door while his twin brother slept soundly, unaware. As soon as he was down his sister was up. She’d had a nightmare and so I curled up next to her to fall asleep. We weren’t there long before the sickness came and we spent the next hour in the bathroom. I held back her short, light brown hair and stroked her forehead and we waited.

She’s such a big girl now, only five but so brave in the moments that demand it. She takes life as it comes; I’m not sure it ever occurs to her to run the other way.

She let me take care of her there, our bare feet on the cold, tile floor, and my heart sank and soared at the thought: she’s not a baby anymore. I sat sleepily on the white step stool; she leaned back on me as she crouched over, still waiting. I rubbed her back and stroked her hair some more, told her it would all be over soon. And I knew, This. This is holy.

My mind ran ahead like a highlight reel and I felt a pang of longing, a wish that I could forever be the one to hold back her thick, wavy hair. She has my hair but she has her father’s everything else. I look at my own hair with kinder eyes now that I know I share it with her.

I think back to my childhood as that good church girl, back to Easter Sundays in lacy dresses and hats. I didn’t know it then, but a foundation was being poured for my own house of faith. It is cracked and imperfect but it’s still there, still solid enough to hold me up, to help me find my footing when the earth around me heaves and shakes.

I want my children to have that same foundation, the same delicate combination of freedom and assurance. A strong tether and stronger wings. I want it for my boys and I want it for my girl and I know it all starts now.

It starts with the Jesus Storybook Bible covered over in school papers on the kitchen island, the palm branches bought from Kroger drying out before the story of the Savior riding into Jerusalem gets read aloud as planned. It starts with Easter mornings spent waiting out fevers and tummy aches, with a boy in a Spider-man shirt at Easter lunch because he dressed himself for the first time and that is a very big deal. It starts with mealtime prayers where eloquence is replaced with a childlike luster and the occasional inappropriate noise.

The passing down of this faith I cling to, the very rope that pulled me out of the pit, it has already started. It is happening here, in our one wild and precious life (thank you, Mary Oliver). It is the resurrection trusted and believed, not just on the Day but on all the other days, imperfect and in-between.

This is my Christ - the One who delights in us as we are. This is my faith - that we are free to get it wrong because it was never about getting it right in the first place.

If it’s true, if this is it, then everyday moments hold the meaning. Even the simplest acts are sacred. Tea parties and tutus meet tears of grief. Plans and good intentions meet sickness and mistakes. It is unglamorous – learning to love and practicing forgiveness and living right here in the mess that is ours – but God is here. He is in all this, throwing down that endless rope that always has room for me and for my children.

All we have to do is breathe another thank you and hold on.

April 12, 2013 in Family with 18 Comments

The Stories I Read to My Children

by Katherine Willis Pershey

My faith is a messy amalgam of feisty conviction and quiet doubt, liberal tendencies and orthodox leanings. I believe and don’t believe in the same things at the same time. I don’t pray nearly as often as I should, and nowhere near ceaselessly. I don’t walk the walk; I fumble the fumble.

I love to talk theology, but I don’t always know how to talk to my children about God. I don’t want to indoctrinate them; I couldn’t if I tried. And yet I want them to know and love Jesus.

So I read them stories. I am insufferably picky about the Christian books I read for myself, and am even more picky about the Christian books I read to my girls. These are the books with broken bindings and worn edges in our house. They spark questions without providing easy answers, and give us a shared vocabulary of faith.

These are the books that teach me how to talk to my children about God.

What Is God’s Name? by Sally Eisenberg Sasso

Give Me Grace by Cynthia Rylant

Images of God for Young Children by Marie-Helene Delval

I Wanted to Know All About God by Virginia Kroll

The Golden Book About God by Jane Werner Watson

Big Momma Makes the World by Phyllis Root

The Clown of God by Tomie de Paola

God’s Dream by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Jesus, the Word by Mark Francisco Bozzuti-Jones

What stories do you read to your children?

April 11, 2013 in Family with 6 Comments

When Peace Is A Burned Bridge

by JessicaB

Forgiveness doesn't always equal reconcilation.

I’ve lived with it for so long, this awkwardness of estrangement. It’s in the sting of missed birthday parties and baby showers. It’s in the eyes of family friends, bumped into casually. It’s in both the questions and support of cousins and aunts and grandmas.

This is the reality of one who travels the world, raises children . . . and doesn’t talk to her mother.

***

I have been mostly estranged from my mother and brothers since I moved away from home thirteen years ago. In the beginning it was from a combination of anger and fear. (Insert stereotypical dysfunctional childhood stories here) But over time the rage and bitterness faded away and in it’s place was born a wary, protective distance.

The hardest part of the separation was abandoning my little brothers, who I had a great hand in raising up until I hit the door running at 17. It was impossibly painful having to make that clean-cut of no contact, knowing they wouldn’t understand. And in my absence the truth was bent and twisted. The lines were manipulated, the colors mixed and blended until a new picture was painted with me emerging as the bad guy.

And I could do little to defend my own name, my own memory in the lives of those I loved from a distance. I had no choice but to lean heavily on the only weapon in my armory – silence.

***

I’ve often wondered if I did the right thing. I’ve preached forgiveness and love from my bloggy pulpit when I don’t even have a relationship with my own mother. But over the years I’ve let go of that false guilt. I’ve had a lot of time to analyze, mature, to grow in love and grace and there’s one thing I’m certain of – I don’t harbor bitterness or unforgiveness toward my mother.

The transgressions of the past are water under the bridge yet the bridge remains burned despite the charred timbers having long cooled.

And people don’t understand. How you can not have a relationship with your mother, especially if you’re not even upset with her? I’m from the south where there is a very “It don’t matter what she’ done, that is your MAMA”, mentality.

Forgiveness does not always equal reconciliation.

I can sit here today and hold no anger towards her, wishing her only a bucket full of grace and peace. But if I rebuild that bridge (as I have a time or two) I will sit here a month from now fuming, choking on the smoke that billows from a pile of new transgressions, with my bucket of grace all but emptied in trying to put out the flames.

***

I feel it keenly every time Jesus says “Who is my mother?” And then he points around the room at his closest companions and says “These are my mother and my brothers.”

Jesus, for all his talk of peace and love, once again plays a confusing, culturally unacceptable card.

But I get it. Jesus had a bucket full of purpose. And he knew when he had used enough of it on one place or person. He knew when someones heart was hard and unwilling to accept the softening that repentance plays before grace can be absorbed. He knew when to the shake the dust from his feet and move onto the next town. He knew when well meaning people, as well as those with ill-intentions, would hinder what was best.

So even though I am certain that my mother loves me to her core, in her own way, I also know that we must stand on separate shores for now. It is what it is. And I’ve long ago made peace with it. Sometimes peace looks different than we expect. This is peace, this place here on the other side of the burned bridge with my bucket full of grace and my adoptive Jesus family.

And I’m okay with that.

April 10, 2013 in Family with 24 Comments

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