My Boy Toys

On any given weekday, if you show up at my house unannounced after school, you may find any manner of blanket and chair built contraption in our living room. You may find a tent set up in the family room, or a rock city being constructed in the backyard. There could be small people running around in inexplicable combinations of costumed attire or someone in the bathtub with every spatula I own and a towering display of measuring cups, each with a different army man in them. There may be a pillowcase tied to a sword, hanging off of the trampoline net in the backyard and billowing in the breeze. Or a series of sticks stuck in the ground in a row and then tied with string and spaced with pieces of paper marked with random letters and shapes on them. There might even be a huge hole that has been dug and filled with sticks, water and inflated plastic bags. Everyone could be hiding in the closet, or someone could be guarding the laundry room door with a pair of chopsticks. You will have no idea what any of it means.

But they will.

You see, in the time they could have spent watching television or playing a video game, my two little boys were inventing a new language, or putting on a play, or playing pirates on the trampoline. They were stealing all the spoons out of the silverware drawer to dig up worms. Or singing freshly invented songs on the tire swing, and trying to build a catapult out of sticks, rocks and yarn. They were involved in a heated debate about how high the Lego tower around the tree trunk should be, which ended in someone tattling, and were instructed to work it out like gentlemen, without violence. They may or may not have followed this wise advice.

They play outside constantly. Sometimes they drive us crazy because they're not in a trance in front of the television so they require a lot more interaction. But it's worth it. Just ask a couple of poor tiny trees with a spider webbed network of ropes tied all over them in the front yard where homemade swings and child-engineered brilliance are experimented with daily. Some future genius architect of some amazing physics-defying building is probably living in my house right this minute while I write this, smearing toothpaste all over everything in the bathroom every morning as he gets ready for school, and forgetting to put his dirty laundry in the hamper every afternoon.

I grew up with boys.

I had three little brothers and our house was never quiet. In fact, in a two story house with wood floors in my brothers' rooms, if you were unfortunate enough to be meditating or trying to find inner peace on the bottom floor, it often sounded like the ceiling was about to come down. They were always wrestling, pummelling and ambushing each other.

I remember playing manhunt and capture the flag with my brothers in my teenage years in the orange groves near our house late at night with thirty or so people from school and church, everyone decked out in camouflage and war paint, armed with pocket knives, rope and flashlights. We usually had to sneak over the ditch and under the fence to get in the groves in the first place and then there was no shortage of muffled shrieks (from all the girls), blinding lights being shined into eyes and random oranges and grapefruits hurtling past one's ear as he or she crouched in a hyperventilating state, trying to avoid capture or worse, the huge spiders that lived in the orange trees.

I shudder now just thinking of those disgusting spiders.

I was always a bit of a tomboy and spent plenty of time climbing trees, exploring the woods, and building forts. I still think that kind of childhood, with tons of time spent outside, to be sacred. And rare. You just don't see lots of kids playing outside anymore.

So I think God knew what he was doing when he gave me two boys.

I realize that quite a few parents don't have the type of schedule or freedom that gives their children hours of time outdoors to learn uninhibited. And I know a lot of video games are educational.

But leaves are more educational.

And rocks. Trees. Lizards and worms. Dirt and kitchen utensils turned props. And puppy dogs.
Usually when our children ask if they can watch television, the answer is no. I believe deeply that Derek and I are doing them a huge service in this regard. Less television is more.

I have to admit, in my normal crazed goal-setting self, I'm a little bit Utopian about my children. As much as it is in my power, I am determined to see them to adulthood with every opportunity for their betterment, and have many ideas of what this finished product looks like. For my boys, my forward thinking involves qualities such as being Christ-followers, men of their word, punctual, wise, able, tender-hearted, self-controlled, articulate, comfortable with leading and following, and gentlemen. I want my boys to be well educated, both with books and the outdoors. We're trying to raise men. Men in the real definition of the word.

So Derek and I decided a few years ago that we didn't want our boys to fit in. We didn't want them to take their cues from Hollywood. We didn't want them to be addicted to video games, television, or entertainment. We wanted them to treat women with respect and honor and never to judge the value of a person by what is on the outside. We wanted them to value their time and not to be always bored without electronic forms of entertainment. We wanted our children to be able to use their ingenuity and God-given creativity to invent their own entertainment.

We wanted them to love God.

We wanted them to read good books.

And we wanted them to play outside a ton.

For us, the idea is that their lifestyle as adults will be inspired by the great and the beautiful, principles from the Bible, nature and the classics, so we knew we'd have to give them the kind of childhood conducive to that.

I don't pretend to be an expert at this kind of childhood.

We make truckloads of mistakes.

And this is all still in the experimental stages. They are still small children. And we will always be a parenting work in progress. But I believe in parenting on purpose, in writing down what we hope the finished product of our children will be, and then aiming accordingly with our habits and allowances. I get excited about this kind of strategizing, about the huge influence I have in the lives of two very special someday men.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it."

With our sights set on excellence, I hope and believe that in allowing our boys hours every day in exploration of nature, promoting the reading of good books like Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels or My Side of the Mountain, and by studying and upholding the principles found in the Bible, despite our many mistakes, we are helping to make them into the finest kind of men. The kind of men that will make a difference.

The kind of man you'd want your daughter to marry.

Somewhere's A Miss

You know what I miss the most about Florida?

I bet I know what you think I miss.

The constant sunshine. Or the ocean. Disneyworld. The warm weather year-round. Wearing flip-flops all the time. The beach lifestyle. Being tan without trying. The salt air.

Nope. I miss my hometown. And my people. And my church.

I miss the feeling of not just expertly knowing my way around town, but the feeling of knowing the town. Knowing the history behind different buildings, knowing that that restaraunt was actually a Domino's before it was a Verizon. Or that the Rack Room Shoes used to be County Seat and before that it was The Gap. Knowing that the spot where the new high school auditorium is, was actually an orange grove when I was a kid. Knowing the man who actually built that auditorium - he's my friend's dad. Take this feeling of knowingness and multiply it by every street, sign, and building in town. That's what I miss. It's that feeling of belonging somewhere, of having a piece of a location that no one can ever ever take away from me because it's a part of the fabric of me. Just about every single street in Merritt Island, FL holds a memory for me. And I could draw you a map to get from one side of the island to the other with my eyes closed.

I miss my people. I miss walking into a room full of people who I know and love and share all kinds of memories with. I miss rehashing old crazy tales with my high school partners in crime. I miss being around my best friends that I've had since I was fifteen years old, and the old friends who I'd see around town sometimes, at random weddings, the beach, the mall or  El Tucan, the people I've known and went to church with since I was six or seven. I remember just in going to the mall in my hometown, you were sure to see at least one or two people you knew, no matter what. If you were Derek, you always saw ten people you knew. I miss that feeling of being safe and understood, of having the trust that even if they don't agree, these dear friends know right where you're coming from and who you are, and they value and respect you.

And I'll just be honest with you, I miss my old reputation.

I miss being casually confident in my creativity and ability to cook, because amongst old dear friends it isn't seen as show boating, it's just who I am and always have been. I miss the sewing nights my girls and I would have where we'd all cook together and then sew, and the late night talks over a glass of wine with my friend Julie. I miss seeing my bestie Kate and her two sweet babies, and going to the beach with fifteen other women and all our kids, and then spending the whole morning counting children to be sure no one has drowned or wandered too far down the shore. I miss the reunions when all the old friends that moved away were in town for a holiday and we'd all get together with our kids and catch up. Now I'm one of those out of towners. I miss double dates with awesome couples, many of whom Derek and I have known since we were in high school. And I miss being in my friend's homes. And parties. I miss throwing parties. Oh how I love to throw a good party. I miss always having a free babysitter in Derek's parents, and always being able to go on dates. I miss the family gatherings at his parent's house with all the out of town relatives throughout the year.

I miss my church. I miss the praise and worship team, and all the creative outreach events they would put on. I miss how simple they kept it, to reach more people. I miss Trunk or Treat and the Bible studies I took on Thursday mornings, the mom friends I made at the MOPS group on Tuesday mornings. I miss the preschool all three of my children went to, and all the amazing friendships that came out of that. I really miss seeing my friends in the commons after church got out on Saturday nights, and sitting with people during church. But I mostly miss my pastor, Mark Balmer. I went to that church for seven years, and really came to love and trust him. I would email him when I didn't understand something or to tell him when something great had happened in my life as a result of one of his sermons. In a church of six or seven thousand people, he always wrote me back. I even sent him poems I had written about different subject matter he was teaching on, and he always liked them and encouraged me to keep writing. I never really knew him that well because our church was so huge, but I never felt neglected. I always felt pastored and cared for. I miss his wisdom, his faith and practical sense. I have a lot of respect for him. So many times I would walk into church completely confused, anxious or even depressed, and the light and encouragement, and the Holy Spirit's use of the compelling grace Pastor Mark packed his sermons full of would have their way in my heart and mind and I would leave buoyant once again, filled and inspired to live out another week.

I love being in Tulsa. I prayed for ten years to move here, and it really was a desire of my heart. I had unfinished business here from my college days, which I will write about another time, and when Derek suddenly wanted to move here too and was able to find a great job and everything else just completely fell into place, it was wonderful. Like being handed a dream on a silver platter. Like being taken seriously by my Heavenly Father, something He's great at. It was the fulfillment of what I had written off as a silly hope. So I am excited to be here, starting over, with plans to raise our kids in the midwest and to fully thrive where we feel that we are meant to be.

I'm just homesick lately. And writing about it helps.

The transplanting is going a bit harder than I thought it would. I still feel a foreigner after being here for almost a year, and find that I get my feelings hurt by new acquaintances and even perfect strangers for small, perceived, and I'm sure, unintentional slights. I am kind of shy, so it's harder for me to just throw myself out there and be friendly.

I promise I'm not ungrateful. I feel so blessed. I'm so happy to be right where I am. Tulsa is a really special place. A place that will surely become home in my heart someday. 

I just miss the old home that has always had dibs on my heart. That's all.

The Archer

Bow tightly strung, shoulders taut

I stand poised on mountains

With gravely shaking legs

A seasoned eye and mind my gain

I take note

Of lethal acrobatic height

Pluck splinters to their bitter end

And sing all manner of warbled lullabies

Stalwart grace and knees well spent

Shaping small earthen hearts toward infinite Divine

With ears that hear what is never said

I point thoroughly to places hard to find

After years of valiant deposit

And sanding down closets of doubt

My bullets form well below the sand

Their eyes and minds in route

In distances felt more than seen

Measure taken of all failed stands

Lifting hands to check the wind

Lifting wings to check for span

Through nights of brave and cautious razing

Smoothing the onset of every hope

And offering the killing of every kind of loving

But to firstly place that One withstanding grope

Carving sharp heads to bind to blazing hearts

Wringing from flint the finest work

And circling every shadowed angle

Watching imperfections or stony dirt

My muscled years of squinted eye

And little hearts of trusting shape

Sent forth with quick fast arcing flame

Sights confirmed for deadly aim

Letting great hands move me

Through positions of every honing sense

My hands holding with the ease of an archer

An arsenal to silence the largest defense

Jillian Rose

"As arrows are in the hand of a warrior,
so are the children of one's youth"
Psalm 127:4

Snapshots of Fall

I am sitting at our old kitchen table.
The thing is scarred, stained and wobbly and has been through quite a bit and every time I sit down at one of the old rickety mismatched white chairs that are pulled up around it, I think man, we need a new table. However, my attention is diverted at this moment to the backyard. It is early October and it's one of those perfect end of summer/beginning of fall mornings. I have a steaming mug of coffee in my hand and the kids are at school, the house is clean, all errands have been run, I've baked some banana nut bread for our afternoon snack and just got off the phone with my best friend Kate. I have the whole house to myself and I am in the perfect frame of mind. The sun is high and bright in the sky, a couple lazy clouds drift by, and a lackadaisical breeze shifts through the trees, the highest of whose leaves are ever so slightly beginning to fade. The air is cool and fresh in the low 70's and I have all the windows in our bay window in the kitchen open, while I sit and watch the trees. Our large backyard has quite a few hardwoods and most of them are tall and mature, so I can tell it's going to be a beautiful show when the leaves start to change. I can hardly wait.


I am in the middle of a cane maze.
It's mid-October. It's the pumpkin patch field trip for my daughter's second grade class and I'm one of the chaperones. The cane stands tall in the foggy morning air, swaying slightly to a tune that only it seems to hear. The kids are going wild in the maze, running back and forth to tell each other what they've discovered just around the corner, shrieking and pretending to be lost while they look for the exit, and forging new paths everywhere where the cane stands tall and undisturbed. The day is cool and breezy, and the fog begins to burn off as we walk, the sky emerging a bright and hopeful blue. We are walking on straw underfoot, that has been laid down on top of the wet dirt paths, muddy from rain the night before. A second grader runs by on the adjacent path, screaming Help!, chased by several other second graders, finally getting caught and tackled as they all end up in a squirming pile struggling to stand up in the close-knit stalks, giggling uncontrollably. The other moms I am walking maturely and calmly through the maze with, denying my sudden impulse to run and shout and play, chuckle indulgently and continue on.


I am standing in my backyard.
The day is overcast and kind of gray and the air is humid, but still cool. I'm lounging in an adirondack chair underneath a huge oak, in the exact place where I will put a hammock next spring, and the kids are jumping on their trampoline. It is surrounded by a huge net with posts, giving the entire humongous contraption a birdcage look. Occasional leaves float lazily on the cool, hazy air and drift quietly down into this net-contained space. They are jumping and diving and the boys have recently figured out how to do front flips. They're front flipping with complete abandon, and asking me every ten seconds did you see that? Did you see that one? What about that one? And watch this Mommy! It is the end of October. It seems almost like it might rain today. I hope so. I've heard that the more fall rain there is, the better the colors are when the leaves change.


I am standing on my front patio in my socks and flip flops.
It's kind of cold on this afternoon early in November, but in that perfectly crisp way that you don't mind if you have a good sweatshirt on. The sun is shining down on me and all three kids are taking turns with the water hose, washing off the gourds and pumpkins we have just bought at the hardware store. We are decorating our front patio for fall. They soap up each tiny nubby gourd I've purchased, misshapen and blazing with all sorts of wildly splotched colors - green, yellow, orange, magenta, brown - and rinse them (and each other) off before moving on to the large green speckled swan gourd and then finally, the several orange pumpkins we have in varying sizes. Meanwhile, I plant yellow mums in a huge terracotta pot, and then a small cheerful hosta in a little one. I separate and re-pot my fern, getting it ready for colder weather and making it easy to bring inside if I need to. All up and down the street the leaves on the trees are changing, half-yellow and brown, many of them a bright scarlet color. There's an especially beautiful tree at the end of the street in a blaze of glory. It has lost almost all of it's flame-tipped leaves, and they lay discarded in a wide circle all around the base of it's trunk, like a molten pool of fragmented shards. 


I am standing in Woodward Park.
I hear Derek suck in his breath as we pull into a parking slot and the kids and we start to climb out of the van. The trees alone are enough to render him and me speechless, and I am standing under a massive oak that stretches out over the parking lot, and must have been here for a hundred years or more. I let my eyes stretch all the way down to the end of the park, as the grassy knoll dips and rises and tree after tree, hundreds of them, and all huge, stretch their branches wide and drop their leaves, humbly acquiescing to that brilliant death. We walk toward the lower end of the park, wading through thousands of leaves on the ground, in all shapes and hues. I stop frequently, trying to capture the breathtaking beauty with my camera, though I know it's futile. There are photographers and small parties of people everywhere. The leaves are almost at peak and everyone is getting their Christmas photos done. It is mid-November and the world is aflame. This is my first real fall as a resident in Tulsa. I think I'm in love.


I am jogging down Riverside Avenue
It's cold, in the high 40's, being only nine o'clock in the morning and when I dropped the kids off at school a little while ago I made sure they had their coats for recess. I run lightly, with the Arkansas River winding it's way on my left, wearing my sweatpants and a long sleeve shirt, starting at 41st and heading north, to run the two miles to 21st and then back. I am listening to the sounds of the wind, birdsong, and the traffic that zooms by a couple hundred yards away. It is toward the end of November, but not yet the week of Thanksgiving. I can see my breath as I run and after a rusty start, my stiff muscles start to warm up and loosen. The trees are right about at peak, and a few of them have lost most of their leaves. As I run down shaded parts of the path, the sun filters through the remaining golden, burnt orange and red leaves, rendering the path below my feet in a strangely dappled pattern, each leaf's silhouette quivering and spinning. My feet are crunching through leaves on the ground and I am like a child at Christmas, looking all around me, taking it all in, thirsty for all the color and meaning this season holds.


Now I sit and type all of this, looking back in my mind's eye at all of these moments of autumn that I have recorded. Thanksgiving is this week, and as I watched the landscape change over the last six weeks, something inside of me changed too. I found fall in my own heart. Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose." As the irresistible green and growing season gave way to a restless display of spinning leaves, with cooler nights and shorter days, and then switched to a soulful and melancholy settling in for the colder winter months, I found in my soul the same settling, the same tucking away of this year's greener memories, the same surrender and gratitude for all the growth. Like the trees, I find myself able to now digest experiences that have stretched me, in a hibernation of sorts. I feel the closure that was sure to come from watching the trees cathartically release all of their life and growth to the stillness of winter, and I feel the hope that starts to grow, even now, in anticipation of the buds of spring.

It is with a truly thankful heart for the faithfulness and mystery of God that I find living in the beauty and order of seasons, that I render these snapshots of fall.

I'm Looking for a Bunch of Rejects

Writing is harder than it looks.

Here I am, with my little blog, attempting, by describing my life, to impact the world for better, and I often doubt the value of anything I might have experienced or have to say regarding what other people are doing.

After every post, I find myself filled with self-doubt and fear of rejection. While I understand the importance of writing honestly and being transparent, in order to be fully effective in my gift, it is with fear and trembling that I traverse the country of vulnerability.

At least in my poetry, I can hide from most people, with cryptic messages that will hopefully reach the right kindred spirits, those who don't misunderstand me. Why do I feel the need to be so understood? Why do I place my value in how well I can do something? They aren't related, worth and ability.

It's hard to transfer this from my head to my heart. I hold back from using my abilities out of fear of my inabilities. Maybe it is this kind of author who never arrives at the glowing destination they dream of, be it getting published, or arriving on a bestseller list, or better yet (and seemingly so unattainable), joining those hallowed souls on the classics lists. Oh to be not just a writer, not just a good writer, but to be a great writer. It is one of the most layered, for better and worse, and intentioned prayers of my soul.

Maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe I should be content right where I am, in so-so world, where I haven't worked hard or achieved that English degree that I know will help me immensely, and I haven't been published, and I almost always have a hard time hitting "publish post", and just having the respect of family, fellow moms, friends and other Christians usually suffices to satisfy.

Well, if I squint my eyes and let it get blurry it satisfies.

I often wonder if this goal is completely wrong. I want to be the kind of writer who adds to the world, who contributes to the great conversation, who asks and is willing to answer hard questions that polarize most people into two groups. My personality is kind of polarizing, so it seems like I would write the issues I am pondering, but I don't. I often steer away from them in fear. Fear of rejection.

I need strength and courage to be alone on the stand. I need to give myself grace to be exactly what I was meant to be, especially if it has nothing to do with greatness. How hard to lower my expectations. I know some of us struggle with not expecting enough of ourselves, but I struggle with expecting too much. Typical Type A who can not, will not, must not, under threat of failure, go easy on myself. I expect excellence. I crave it in everything I encounter, be it friendships, food, music, nature, child-rearing, fiction, organization, marriage...

I recently started forcing myself to write a few times a week, about whatever I'm thinking of. Having never done it before, I wasn't sure, after all these lofty ambitions, if I could actually do it. If I could actually find subject matter that was intriguing enough to spend my time and energy on that frequently. I found it was possible. I had it in me. I found it required tons of hard work. And sometimes I find myself being lazy, not really reaching for that excellent way of putting something or that well-placed sentence or better word that hits the nail on the head. Laziness. Hmm, I didn't really expect to find that in there with all my wannabe over-achiever goals. So that's definitely something I'll be working on. I want to want to work. It can't all be a pizza party, this writing thing.

I started wanting to write a book when I turned 30 last year. But about what? I tend to skip over the small, necessary steps in pursuit of the large gold medal moments. Derek, wise as he is, recently suggested doing some short stories and seeing if that takes me anywhere. Start small, he said. So I think that's what I'll do.

But it's submitting my work that freaks me out most of all. Putting yourself out there like that, in such a look at me way, with the hugely probable chance of getting a rejection slip back in the mail, is simply terrifying. I'm scared to death of that kind of "professional" rejection. But most published authors get tons of rejection slips before getting published. I know one of my favorite childhood authors, Madeleine L'Engle, writes in her journals about getting turned down over and over for A Wrinkle in Time, the book that went on to win a Newberry Medal, and other awards too. So getting rejected is good, right?

 

Whatever the case may be, I'm striving for growth on this blog. I'm striving to become a better writer, a more honest communicator, and trying to set some goals toward getting my work out there. I'm looking to work harder, be lazy less.

 

And I guess I'm looking for a bunch of rejects.