An Attempt to be Deep (Like the Ocean)

It occurred to me today how life in this desert house could actually be compared to living on the shore of the sea.

In my imagination I look out my window and the view of the ocean looks calm and peaceful today.  But some days I look at the world and from where I stand the water looks angry and frightening.  On those days I want to keep my family inside and protect them from the cold harsh realities that I can see rising too close to us.

Time flows like that imaginary river outside, the one that runs to the sea.  Sometimes higher up the river may freeze completely, but then it will thaw and flow again.  Even frozen moments in time cannot stop time from moving on.

I've never been sailing, so I wonder if sailing out to sea with my family would be anything like the trips we have taken away from home in the past.  Most of our travels have been short excursions to see family.  We always return home with replenished joy.  But I can't forget the journeys that took us so far from home we could no longer see the "shoreline," which I think of as a finish line we cross when we pass the sign that says "Welcome to _______" (the place I call home).  I think of how out there on the water, with no familiar landmarks (without landmarks at all), it could be so easy to become lost.  The worst thing that could happen would be to never find our way back home.  Luckily that never was a worry on our trips, for we were never without people to tell us where we were or where to go, but it is good to remember how lost we would be if we could not go home again.  Once or twice our journeys were too long and if no one had been watching, I would have kissed the dirt when I finally returned with sea legs to stand on my own ground again.  Not that I know what it is like to have sea legs, but I have known what it is like to rollerskate for so long that walking afterward felt heavy instead of flowing.  Is that what sea legs feels like?

Even the inside of my home reminds me of the sea.  Sometimes while my family sleeps I hear the sounds as they breath in and out, a pattern like the sound of waves pushing forward and pulling back on the shoreline.  Just as the tides rise and fall again, so many things follow the ebb and flow pattern day after day after day.  Children, clothes, and dishes are dirty, then clean, dirty, then clean.  My husband's shirts are ironed, then wrinkled.  The lawn is mowed, then tall, watered, then thirsty.  Sometimes we are shouting and sometimes we are kissing.  Sometimes our own spring tide rises so high we have to stay on high ground to avoid being engulfed.  Sometime hurricanes of heartache blow in floods and break the windows with their power.  And there have been sunsets so bright and beautiful they have changed the colors inside, but never for very long.

Home is the best place.  It is calming to know that all things follow a pattern and I find inexplicable joy when in it instead of the mundane I see the beauty.

Quoting the Cute: Game Page

Today I have a game for you.  If you can correctly translate the following words or phrases used by my young talkers (ages two and four), you can earn up to 1000 points!  What happens if you win 1000 points you ask?  Well, I don't know for sure, but you will have bragging rights which might make you feel happy inside for a minute.

• 10 points:  "bastick" (rhymes with plastic)
• 20 points:  "pawmus dam-uhs"
• 10 points:  "grand crappers"
• 60 points:  "e-buys"
• 400 points:  "dickwick" (you'll never get this one)
• 500 points:  "waaaah! he awna (sniffle) waaaaah abba gaw no no waaaah I uh gogimmeeeeeeeeeeee (breath hold) no no waaah I now ah uh now (wheeze) on he waaaah!"  

 Actually, I can't give you that last one because I can't understand any of it myself. Good luck!

Post Edit
Cindy is the winner!  And now for the answers:  bastick=basket, pawmus dam-uhs=Thomas (pa)jamas, grand crappers=graham crackers, e-buys=needs batteries, dickwick=bouquet, and I can't ever understand cry talk, can you?

Judge Not (Part Two)

(continued from here)

Example 2:  My girls never wore a diaper bigger than size four.  Often during those years while shopping for diapers and seeing the size sixes I'd think to myself how big that was and how anyone who had a child that size still in diapers needed to stop being lazy and get the kid potty trained.

Fast forward to the arrival of my first boy, born at nine pounds and three ounces, who was wearing size six diapers long before he turned two.  And now he has a baby brother who was ten pounds four ounces at birth and at five months was wearing nine to twelve month sizes.

I actually think size sixes are getting too small for my two-year-old, but I don't see any sizes bigger than that at the store.  I'm wondering if I might have to put my boys in Depends before we're through with all of this!  Whenever I ponder the diaper dilemma I wonder if this is our fate because I once had those thoughts about other people having kids in size six.  Maybe God is trying to teach me a lesson?

Example 3:  Before I had kids, I always said I wasn't going to allow my kids (if I ever had any) to eat in the car.  The other day my daughter had an accident in her seat.  First I removed the seat from the car to reveal numerous crumbs that had gathered underneath it over the months since I last vacuumed out the car.  Then I took the cover off the seat to wash it and found in the caves and crevices of the plastic shell: half-eaten mini peanut butter cups, a petrified curly fry, little chunks of dried bread, and sticky stuff that was unrecognizable.  I winced a little, remembering my sparkly life plan and how off course I am from where I had imagined.

Example 4:  I think I actually gave housekeeping tips to a young mother when I was fourteen.  She must have though to herself, "Who does this girl think she is?"  (As it turns out, not who I had thought at all!)  And to bring it all full circle, I recently have sought the advice of that same young mother (whose children are now grown), hoping I could find out how to get on top of my mess because I'm so tired of being ON TOP of my mess...or lost in it.

Obviously, I would not change the first two examples.  I love my big boy just the way he is and I am realistic enough to know that sometimes eating in the car has to happen unless we want the children to starve or the parents to go over the edge because of all the whining.  (I have learned that if a child's mouth is eating, it whines less.)

The last example (of keeping the house clean) I would change if I could.  Every day I work on that one.  But the judging part I regret every time.  Jesus loves me and knew I would not be happy if I judge others.  That's why He warned me not to do it.

This month I listened to a talk by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf titled "The Merciful Obtain Mercy."  The entire talk is worth reading over and over, but this was my favorite part:

This topic of judging others could actually be taught in a two-word sermon. When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following:

Stop it!

It’s that simple. We simply have to stop judging others and replace judgmental thoughts and feelings with a heart full of love for God and His children. God is our Father. We are His children. We are all brothers and sisters. I don’t know exactly how to articulate this point of not judging others with sufficient eloquence, passion, and persuasion to make it stick. I can quote scripture, I can try to expound doctrine, and I will even quote a bumper sticker I recently saw. It was attached to the back of a car whose driver appeared to be a little rough around the edges, but the words on the sticker taught an insightful lesson. It read, “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”

 Amen and amen.

I hope when I stand before my Maker to be judged I will be found merciful because I already know I'm going to need so much of that mercy...

A whole heaping load of it.

Quoting the Cute: Page Thirteen

Seven-year-old:  "Sometimes I just want to run away and never come back!"  Is this something all children feel, or is it an oldest child thing (I remember feeling the same way), or am I really just a BAD MOTHER?

Three-year-old:  "Can I swipe the floor?"

Two-year-old:  For the first few days after he became a brother, he regarded the baby with complete indifference.  He pretended like there was no baby.  If he crawled onto my lap while I was holding the baby, he wouldn't touch him or even look at him.  Then one morning I was sitting on the floor trying to burp the baby.  Quickly and softly my son patted the baby twice and ran off.  A few days after that he said to me out of nowhere, "I wan hold it," pointing at the baby.  I put the baby on his lap and he gently cupped his hand on the baby's head.  It wasn't long before he was kissing the baby's head instead.  For five months now, every day he asks again to hold "it," and I have watched that baby double in size on his little lap.

Seven-year-old:  "Waaaa."  You might be able to imagine how this pretend cry makes us cringe.

Three-year-old:  "Why did you trade your hair?"  (She meant "braid.")

Two-year-old:  "He toot."  He says this several times a day about his baby brother.  It doesn't mean what you might think.

 Baby Brother:  HAPPY SQUEAL!