My boys...my little boys, big boys, strong boys, silly boys, smart boys, loud boys, wild and crazy boys...are 9 and 6 now. I just can't believe it.

We went to a service at church the other night called The Well. It was an amazing time of worship.
I expected the kids to complain. Asa didn't disappoint. Julia tolerated it. But Ethan....Ethan surprised me.
He worshipped.
He sang.
He raised his hands in praise.
He opened his heart to God.
Then, with the music and God's presence swelling in and around him, he leaned over to Justin and whispered in his ear, "I feel like I am God's favorite kid right now".
Wow. The voice of the Almighty speaking to the heart of my child.
How could I ask for more?

An Ethan original...

What did the kind bucket say to the sick bucket?
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Are you feeling alright? You're looking PAIL...

hee hee hee

Asa: Mom, do you remember that homeless man that we saw in St Augustine last week?

Me: Yes.

Asa: Why is he homeless?

Me: I don't know. There are lots of possible reasons.

Asa: Why can't someone help him? Why doesn't someone just ask him to live with them?

Me: Umm....I don't know.

Asa: We have a big house....why didn't WE just ask him to come stay with us?

Me: Hmmm......

Asa: What I really want to know Mama, is why did we just pass him by when he needed help?

Me: I don't know how to answer that, Ace.

Asa: We could go back and find him. I would recognize him. He had white hair and a white beard, green eyes, gray teeth, black on his shirt and pants...I know I could find him. Maybe we could go back and take him some food...and money...and a Bible. Can we go, Mama, can we?

Me: *speechless*

I think my son is a born missionary...

Me: "Are you finished with those Cheetos?"

Ethan: "Not yet."
Asa: "Almost."

Me: "Well, when you're done, don't wipe your hands on my bed or your clothes, ok?"

Ethan: *eye roll*
Asa: *crunch crunch*

Me: "Seriously, wash your hands in the sink, don't wipe them on my bed."

Ethan: *big exasperated sigh* "Ok."

Me: "I just don't want Cheetos on my bed, that's all."

Ethan: *stern look* "You're trying to make us women."

Apparently, making a mess also makes you a man.

"Mommy, will I be able to fly in Heaven?"
"I don't see why not."
"Good! I can't wait to go there!"

"But before I go there I want to go to Branson.....yep...those are the two places I want to go. Branson and Heaven."

-Ethan

We went to walmart a few nights ago. We went looking for halloween decorations for Ethan's haunted house (mad scientist lab). They didn't have any. But, it wasn't a total loss. The lady who rang up our items was missing several teeth and the ones that were there were mostly black. Asa, in regular Asa fashion, looked at her, looked back at Justin, looked at her again...turned to Justin and said,
"Daddy, you know what I think? I think SHE looks like she should be in a haunted house!"
Guess he thought maybe we could hire her....

Priority for this week:
Go to Wal-mart and find a Asa a TACT filter.

Sisters

Sweet Ezra

Sweet Asa

A three minute snapshot of my life as a mom of 5:

3:46pm- 14 minutes until it's time to leave to take Astrid to dance class.
I have just stepped into the shower for the first time today.
A crying Ezra, who usually enjoys showers, is sitting at my feet with a pitiful grimace on his face, squinting as the water drops down his forehead and into his eyes.
3:47pm
I am washing my hair.
Ezra is still wailing.
Asa has somehow jiggled the door handle enough to get into the bathroom and is whining about his giant lollipop, which has broken into several pieces, which have now become cemented together with sticky saliva. He wants me to break them apart. Now.
Julia is reminding me, with a pout, that I forgot to get her a glass of apple juice before I got into the shower, as I "promised" I would.
Astrid has followed Asa in, stepped in a puddle of water, and is fussing about her wet socks and opening the shower door telling me, in desperation, that she needs to hold me.
Ethan is banging on the door, yelling that he needs help with his schoolwork. All I can interpret is something about "accented syllables" and "is it to, two, or too?"
3:48pm
I am still standing in the shower, conditioning my hair with my right hand.
Ezra is cradled in my left arm, nursing.
Asa is sitting on the bathroom floor, loudly slurping the shower water off of his separated lollipop pieces (I couldn't break them apart with one hand but the hot water magically divided them in a second).
Julia is on the counter, gulping water from the faucet.
Astrid is sitting with the shower door open, holding onto my leg. She has removed her socks and they are lying, saturated, on the shower drain.
Ethan has agreed to put a hold on his work until I get out and (as I will discover later) is snacking on chips in the kitchen. About half of them are making it into his mouth, the other half are crumbs accumulating on the kitchen floor.

I briefly consider crying. But I smile instead.

A vision flashes through my mind. Me, 20 years from now. I'm showering alone in my quiet, clean house, sans sticky lollipops, wet socks, and schoolwork. I am smiling a nostalgic smile. This time, a few tears mingle with the shower water running down my cheeks.

Believe it or not, I think I'm gonna miss this.

BECOMING

It was eight years ago that I first held my very own little bundle of 6 pound humanity. His big, watery blue eyes stared up at me from under a tiny hospital cap, with wonder, potential, and hope as big as any ocean. So many things became real to me at that moment. I knew he would be beautiful. I knew he would be intelligent. I knew he would be amazing. I knew he would someday become a man. I knew that some day I would have to let him go. Someday he wouldn't need me so much. Someday he would have to figure out who he was going to be. Someday I would have to hold him not quite so tightly, and let him...be...let him...become.

Someday has a way of sneaking up on us.

A couple of days ago, after finishing his schoolwork, Ethan asked permission to go outside and see if his friends could play. There are two new boys near his age living across the street from us and he has developed a friendship with the younger of the two. I watched out the window as he hopped on his scooter and raced down our driveway over to theirs. I could see him in their garage at the doorway to their house, talking to someone. I stepped outside to make sure it was ok for him to be there and he sped back over to me, his face flushed from the crisp air and alight with excitement.
"Mom! Mom! Wilson and Grant are going to the old barn in the field, can I go with them?" he asked hopefully.
"What old barn?" I asked, confused.
"That one," he replied, pointing to an old dilapidated structure adjacent to our neighbors house, in the middle of an overgrown cow pasture.
I eyed the decrepit skeleton suspiciously. The barn was far enough away that I had never even noticed it before. The thought of allowing my dear son to venture that far, much less enter it, caused my stomach to tighten.
"Oohhhh...I don't know, buddy. I've never been out there. I don't know what's in it," I said slowly.
"Wilson and Grant and Grant's friend Ross are going. It will be fine!" he assured me.
All kinds of scenarios flashed into my mind at that moment. Visions I don't even want to mention for fear of speaking them into existence. I became even more hesitant to answer his request. Just then, Wilson and Grant's mom appeared in her driveway and sensed my reluctance.
"We all walked over there yesterday," she explained, "there's nothing in there, it's really neat for the boys. I'm going to let mine go for a little while. I understand how you feel, though. If I hadn't been there myself I probably wouldn't let them go, either."
I looked at my son's hopeful expression and pleading eyes. A huge part of my heart said "Bring him inside! Protect him! Don't let him do it!!!" But something else told me quietly, "This is important for him. He can't be your baby forever."
I could see that the seconds I was taking to debate myself were turning into an eternity for Ethan. I took a quick breath and exhaled loudly, in a subconscious effort to blow my worries away and said, "Alright. Let's go inside so you can change into some old shoes, in case it's muddy out there." From the expression on his face you would have thought that he had just been handed his own set of keys to the City of Real Men. He sprinted into the house, changed shoes, and skipped back out, ready for his adventure.
I watched the 4 boys run into the field. They were partially hidden by the weeds that reached to their shoulders. I watched until I could no longer see his little dirty blond head bouncing up and down through the brush. And I prayed. For the longest 38 minutes of my life, I prayed. I thought of him as a baby, sleeping contentedly in my arms. As a toddler, needing my hand as he learned to find his balance. As a preschooler, knocking me down with his enthusiastic hugs.
For the first time, i realized something..having your children close to you all the time can be hard. But watching them walk away is even harder.
My heart was in my throat when he arrived back home. I was standing in the front yard watching him jog back. He had a spring in his step. He held his head a little higher. Did he even look a little taller? I couldn't resist opening my arms to embrace him. I held him tightly for one brief moment and took a deep breath. I could smell it....the scent of change. The intoxicating scent of joy. The fragrance of a child with a song in his heart, pride in his puffed out chest, and the realization of who he was becoming.
I lifted his chin to look into his eyes. "How was it buddy?"
"It was awesome Momma!" he exclaimed. He began talking so fast that all I could catch were snippets having to do with "indians", "poking the fur with a stick", "something moving in the woods...but we weren't afraid!", and "it sounded like a jaguar".
"So you're glad you went?" I asked.
"So glad, Momma! I was so happy. So happy that I felt like I wanted to cry from being happy. But I didn't want to cry in front of the guys just for being happy. And they said I'm in their group now! I'm one of the guys now!"
I hid a few tears behind a smile and tousled his sweaty hair, "That's great! I'm glad you had so much fun!"
He ran off to tell Asa of his adventures.
I stood alone and thought about the changes coming.
The path we started down when he was born is more dynamic every day. It began as one narrow way. So narrow that I had to hold him against me for us both to fit on it together. As time goes by, it has widened enough for me to put him down to walk beside me. At times, he has run ahead, excited to be finding the path getting even broader, while I have lingered behind, trying to savor just a few more steps on the tighter way. But I pick up my pace, not wanting to let him out of my sight. I have accepted that the path will change. And now I have seen where it begins to fork. His path to becoming a young man runs parallel to my path to becoming the mother of a young man. Right now, I can still see him through the thin row of scattered trees. I can still reach out and touch him between the branches. But I must let him stay on his path, and I on mine. I will run when he jogs. I will rest when he sits. And, though he may never know it, I will cry when he falls. And I will trust that, in the times that the forest grows too thick for me to touch him, he is protected.
And I will find joy for him...joy for me...in our intertwined but separate paths...to becoming.

We praise God that our kids are healthy. That we have a house to live in. That Justin has a good job. And so many other blessings.

But please pray for us. We lost quite a bit of money on our house in New Jersey. Bump in the road...we'll pay it off eventually, right? Well, last week we got a notice that we were being sued. The builder of our brand new home that we just moved into 5 months ago failed to pay several of the contractors who did work to build this house. They are suing us for the amount due to them, which totals (right now...who knows who else will come forward with debts) about $30,000. We have spoken with an attorney and it doesn't seem that there is much we can do to fix this. It looks as though we may actually have to pay this debt that is not ours. We have no way to do that.

To be honest, this move has brought us nothing but one challenge and crisis after another. Sometimes I wonder if we should have just stayed in New Jersey.

Thanks for praying.

Astrid is freshly potty trained. Last night we went out to dinner to celebrate.

Okay, we really went out because this ice storm has had us stuck in the house for 4 days and I've cooked dinner at home three nights in a row and that surpasses my cooking quota for the month. But don't tell Astrid that. She thought it was all about her.

As soon as the, ahem, "celebratory meal" was complete, Astrid stood up in her high chair and declared that she needed to go potty. Justin gathered the rest of the children and herded them out to the car while I hurriedly accompanied Miss Big Girl Panties to the restroom.

I wipe the toilet off (please, ladies, for the sake of all mother's of 2 year olds whose hands just seem to itch to carress every toilet seat they encounter...be a sweetie and wipe the seatie!), help her with her pants and plop her hiney down on the toilet. Then I wait.
She giggles.
Touches the seat.
"Astrid, don't touch the seat," I scold.
She sings a song.
Pokes her fingers in the space under the seat.
"Astrid, don't touch the seat. It's yucky."
She counts the mysterious brown stains on the door, skipping number 12, as usual.
Pats the seat.
"Don't. Touch. The. Seat."
She giggles.
"Um, sweetie, are you going to go potty?" I ask.
"Yes, I needa go Mama."
*waiting...waiting...waiting...*
"Ok, Astrid, let's do this at home."
"NO Mama! I needa go potty!"
Grunting.
Red face.
More giggles.
"Astrid, everyone is waiting for us in the car. Can you wait until we get home and just go there?"
Trying to lift her off the seat-
"NO NO NO NO! I needa go peepee Mama!"
I plop her back down.
She giggles.
I sigh.
She touches the seat.
*waiting...waiting...waiting...*
Her red face and bear down stance stop me from asking again if we can just save this for home. She beats me to it...
"Mama, I can just use our potty at home."
"Yeah?"
"Yep, " she says with a shrug, "this potty isn't workin'!"

Yesterday during our history lesson the discussion turned to slavery. No matter what the subject, the kids always have questions and always want to know more. This was no exception. They wanted to know about the slaves living conditions, what they ate, how they learned, what life was like for the children.

Even though they are still quite young, I think it's important to tell my kids the truth about things like this. I tread carefully, though, in an effort to convey an accurate depiction of history while also trying to shelter their innocence about the harsh realities of life and humanity. Asa, especially, wanted to know about the lives of slave children. I told him that sometimes, when a slave owner had too many, or needed some extra money, or had a problem with a persistent runaway, he would sell a child to another owner and the children would likely never see their family again. I told him that, yes, even the children were sometimes on the mean end of a whip.

With this information, Asa's tender heart ached. He turned to me, his eyes full of tears, and collapsed into me, sobbing.
"What is it, buddy?" I asked, as the other kids looked on, unsure how to respond.
"What you just said, mama, about the children. It's so sad. I didn't want that to happen to those children." he cried.

I held him for awhile and told him about everything that has happened since. I shared with them about all of the people who felt just like he does and worked so hard to change things. And succeeded. Relieved that slavery no longer exists in America, but still concerned, they wanted to know if it happens anywhere else in the world. Our conversation eventually led to the crisis and tragedies in Sudan. Again, Asa was especially moved. He wanted to know what we could do. How could we stop this? How can we save these children?

I realized then how much I don't know. How unconcerned I seem based on the amount of action I have taken to find out what I can do about the crisis in the lives of suffering people everywhere. I have committed to Asa that I will find out. If there's a way that he can make a difference for someone who is hurting, I will find out how to help him do it.

This kid amazes me. I can't wait to see what world changing things God calls him to accomplish.