A Road Less Travelled

On this day twenty-one years ago I was brought into the world. On this day for many of the years between then and now I would climb into bed with my mother and she would tell me my birth story. I can’t climb into bed with her anymore, but I remember my story and I thought I’d share highlights with y’all.

My birth story actually begins before I was born. Mom liked to tell me about the time when she was pregnant with me that she got stuck in the middle of the highway during a horrendous storm. There was a hurricane going on somewhere in the world and this storm was one of the results. She had moved to the passenger side because whenever a car would pass her it would throw so much water onto the car that it was starting to come in around the door. There wasn’t much she could do so she was just sitting there, in the middle of a highway, crocheting my baby blanket. A man in a blue pick-up stopped and asked if she needed any help. He pushed her off the road and went to a phone to call Dad. For reasons that I just realized were never very clear Mom was convinced this man was an angel so she always said that angels drove blue pick-up trucks.

I was supposed to be born before Christmas. I had a stocking and presents and everything. But I was a shy child and I didn’t want to be involved in all the hubbub so I waited to make my big entrance. Or maybe I wanted a spotlight all to myself and didn’t want to share importance with another celebration.

When they got to the hospital most of the people assumed my parents kinda knew what they were doing by then, this being their fifth child and all, so they mostly left them alone. My dad was working on a sermon and my mom was reading a book. She was reading either Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. The doctor who was supposed to be there wasn’t, but my parents knew the resident on call and liked him. I remember lying next to my mom, smelling her Mom-just-woke-up scent, which is a combination of coffee and Mom-just-woke-up, and listening as she told me about the little Spanish girl who was in labor across the hall. Mom said that this girl was so scared she was yelling at the top of her lungs and that if my mom had known a little bit more Spanish she could have learned some fascinating curse words that night.

A time came when my dad finished his sermon and my mom finished her book and they looked at each other and decided I could come now. I was born at 5:10 in the evening and there is a noise my mom would make to describe how I came out. I won’t try to reproduce that noise here, but it is one of my favorite parts of the story. The noise is very similar to that of a matress rolling down a hill, but that is a tale for another time.

After I was born my mom couldn’t sleep so she asked for me from the nursery and held me while she drank cold de-caf coffee and watched a snow storm over the lake. When they brought me home it was Saturday so they decided to have the people who were watching my siblings just bring them to church on Sunday. So my very first night home as the youngest of five was spent with just my dad and mom. I loved to hear Mom tell about that night. Me all wrapped up in my special blanket, sitting by the Christmas tree with my Mom and Dad. I can picture it so clearly. It looks so peaceful.

So there are some highlights from my birth story. My mom isn’t here to tell it to me anymore so I tell it to myself and remember. There’s something very special about knowing your own story. This is a tradition I want to carry on with my own kids, though I know my Mom-just-woke-up smell will be different than hers.

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Today is the third day of Christmas. As we all know, Christmas is followed by the feast of St. Stephen, which is followed by a celebration of the birth of Gabrielle Ben-Ezra. Traditional celebration includes wearing of many colors (particularly pumpkin orange), lots of music, and as much general commotion and cacophony as you can fit into a small kitchen.

 

Happy birthday, Gabrielle!!!

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This year our Chanukah falls smack dab on the regualr Chanukah. For Night 0 ( The Night of Evil) we turned off all the lights and sat in darkness while Seth talked about the darkness of the world. Jesus came as the Light of the World to heal our darkness. The big candle is to remember that Jesus came to bring light into darkness.

The first small candle is to remember that we went to the Samaritan Christmas party on Friday.

The second candle is to remember that Jesus has come to slay our dragons. The kids liked that one. Jesus the Dragon Slayer storming down out of Heaven to avenge His people.

The third small candle is to remember that Jesus came to cry with us. He stood outside His friend’s tomb and He cried. Jesus understands. He has experienced everything we struggle with except without sin. We can never say Jesus doesn’t understand what we’re dealing with. We can never say He can’t help because He hasn’t gone through it before. We say to Jesus we’re struggling with something and He says He’s done it before and He totally understands.

Tonight we lit the fourth candle and remembered that Jesus has come to give to us so that we can be generous. Recently in a post mostly about something else Seth talked about scarcity. There’s never enough time, kielbasa, money, energy, clarity of thought to go around and we feel the pinch in all sorts of different ways. And with the pinch comes the temptation to envy. But Christ has come to bring us Himself and so we lack nothing. We can be generous and we can withstand envy because we have Him and so we need nothing else.

We lit the fifth candle and talked about our hearts. The very center of who we are. In times past our hearts were hard,cold and they weighed us down. We couldn’t feel with these hearts, we couldn’t love, they didn’t work right. And these hearts hated God. But Jesus has come to give us new hearts. Our hearts of stone were removed and we were given new hearts of flesh. Now we have hearts that can love, hope, feel. We have hearts that can love God and wish to serve Him. We have new hearts that can learn. The very center of us has been radically changed. And that is why Jesus has come.

Candle number six we haven’t lit yet. We were at the Lansberry house for dinner.

Seth lit candle number seven and reminded us of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus came to bring us the Holy Spirit so He could, among other things, connect us to other people. Connect us as families and friends, as churches and communities. If Jesus had not come and given us the Holy Spirit we would be very lonely people.

Tonight we lit the eighth and final candle and remembered that Jesus came to be our king. Our king who comes and conquers this world and brings us peace.

Happy Chanukah, everyone! May this coming year be full of light and life as we live to serve the Light of the world.  

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Today for the first time in many weeks Raquel and I took a morning walk. We talked about funny stuff, I scolded her for turning left sharply instead of languidly like I’d meant, but mostly we talked about what will happen when we step onto the brick showing through a hole in the asphalt. Obviously it would take us to Victorian London and we decided that we would have to fight a werewolf there. Raquel read somewhere that to turn a werewolf un-wolfy you have to shout out his name. So this would be a research investigative adventure on the streets of Victorian London. Next time we’ll have to talk about what happens when we step on the dirt showing through the brick showing through the asphalt. I’m thinking faerys in Celtic Ireland. And sadly this means that a portion of life is getting back to normal.

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 ”I want someone to lock me up against my will.”

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 I just ran across a handy bit of information and being unsure of how to store/file/remember it I decided the logical solution was to post it here. Now it’s a nuisance to all of my readers who’ve never had an interest in corn syrup substitution, but all I have to do to find it is search through my blog archives. (Muhahaha! Mine is an evil laugh…)

“Corn syrup substitute 

For each 1 cup corn syrup called for, use 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar or firmly packed brown sugar plus 1/4 cup liquid (use liquid called for in recipe).”

 

(learned at http://www.cdkitchen.com/)

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 A few moments ago I was underneath our kitchen sink in an effort to make is less unpleasant under there. My goal was not actually to make it pleasant, you understand. I’m pretty sure there are rules against allowing the under-kitchen-sink-cabinet to be actually pleasant, and we’re already bending the rules by not having the requisite number of wadded up plastic bags down there.

 Anyhow, as I was under there I happened to come face to face with our garbage disposal. (Er, well, face to disposal…) Printed across the front in bold letters was the caption ‘Garbaway’. Garb-away. Does anyone else find this rather disconcerting? 

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I hate changing diapers. There is something about having to, well, never mind you don’t want to know. Anyway, I don’t like changing diapers. To try and make the experience a little more pleasant for all those involved I’ve tried little gimmicks to make it more fun. Sometimes I sing while I change the diaper, sometimes the child and I exchange baby pleasantries, but what has really caught on is to have the child’s pants eat him. This mostly works with Noah. I’ll change his diaper and then stick my hand up a pant leg and make roaring noises while I grab his foot and pull it in. The second leg is more fun because my hand erupt out of the top of the pants somewhere near his stomach and Noah starts screaming. It’s great fun. Well, tonight he turned the tables on me. My hand burst out of his pants roaring for all it was worth. He screamed, but then,  mastering his fear, reached into his shirt for the ever-present can of spinach while humming the Popeye theme song. My hand and I were forced to retreat.

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It was some day last week that Crystal and I were flopped on her bed trying to encourage and convince each other to start the day. We had each gotten up and gotten dressed and eaten breakfast and now we were exhausted. I just couldn’t find the energy or desire to face the day. Crystal and I ended up encouraging each by reminding each other of the new house, the house that we are waiting for. It felt slightly surreal and when I finally placed why it made me chuckle. It was like we were talking about Heaven. And it helped me understand a little bit better how to think about Heaven.

I’ve made this connection before, the link between our new house and Heaven. We don’t fit into this house and it works well enough, but it isn’t what we want. We are packed in so tight it is impossible to go anywhere (and I mean that literally) in the house and not be able to hear what most of the other people are doing. We are constantly on top of each other so it is very easy to get frustrated and angry. It’s hard to be gracious because we are nearly constantly rubbing each other the wrong way. Even good things, good events, are marred by our crampedness. We have a lovely, elaborate dinner that everybody enjoys together and then we trip over each other when we clear the table. It’s difficult to function because nothing works quite how we want it to. We get frustrated because the roof is leaking into my room and onto the stairs and because things keep breaking and just simply because we’re still here. Life here is hard for us. And the hope we cling to is that soon we will be able to leave this place and go live someplace better.

Life here in this fallen world is hard. We trip over our sins and we trip over each other. We accidentally hurt everyone around us and it is impossible to get away from the evil of sin. If we run away to a desert island we take ourselves with us. Nothing works quite right and even happy times are marred by sadness. Someone isn’t there or soon someone will have to leave. The meal didn’t come out right or the present wasn’t how you wanted it to be. A plane flies through your sunset while you sit there all alonely. Everything hurts somehow and nothing ever fills that longing we carry. We just want to nosh and there’s nothing that tastes right.

So we lie on a bed and we talk about Heaven. Crystal said she thought it might be more encouraging if she could see how it would be. But it’s so far beyond our experiences that imagining it is nearly impossible. When I remind myself of Heaven I think of it the same way I sometimes think of God. I start listing everything it is not. There’s that hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’. We sing about what God is not because we can’t grasp what He is. It’s too big for us. And since Heaven is where we will be with God with no sin between us it is as difficult to grasp as its Creator.

So what isn’t it? For one, Heaven is the place of no goodbyes. The gathering of friends will end and no one has to say goodbye. The conversation starts and pauses here or there, but never has to end. Raquel and I have had conversation stretch over months. Imagine a conversation stretching over years, decades, eternity. It won’t have to end because no one says goodbye. No one leaves. No one fades. No one dies.

Heaven fills that longing inside us that nothing here can. There’s a Yiddish word that works so well here. The word is nosh. Sometimes there’s that one thing that you are hungry for. You go to the refrigerator and it’s right there and you take three bites and, yep, that is just what you were hungry for. But what happens when it’s not in the refrigerator? What then? We have this longing to nosh on something we have never had before and we come close on this earth, but nothing here fully fills that desire. We just want to nosh and the refrigerator is empty. Heaven is full of what fills that longing because it is full of God.

Life has been very difficult around here lately. Getting up and going has been challenging. Well, more challenging than normal. I’ve been telling myself to keep going and to hold on because soon, soon we will move into the new house and the current difficulties that are being so difficult will be gone. Now I know that sometime in the future the roof on the new house could start leaking and maybe the sink will break and Seth, Crystal, the children and I will still all be sinners. But in Heaven we won’t be. In Heaven we will get there and it will be exactly what we were looking for. And that’s why we keep going and that’s the reason we hold on because soon, soon we will be there.

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Hooray! Our computer is mostly up and running. It’s sort of up and jogging. Or maybe power walking. Seth and Crystal bought two new hard drives so that we can regularly back up our hard drive just in case our computer tries to do this again. I have several posts trying to come out at once, but they are all far too serious for such a mood as mine. So I will leave you with this pleasant scene.

Tonight we decorated our Christmas tree. Crystal sat with the ornament box and the older four clustered around her while Justice poked Seth in the eyes. I helped Noah put some of the soft ornaments on the tree and it was such a joy. One by one we decorated our tree with stuffed bells, funny pom pom creatures, wooden soldiers and nutcrackers, a drum Seth made when he was in kindergarten, gingerbread men made by my sister, sparkly stars, a clown and so many more. I took Justice from Seth so he could put the tree topper in his place of glory. That’s right, a plaid, stuffed Cthulhu. We stood back and looked at our handiwork. I think Seth’s comment says it all. “Yep, that’s a Ben-Ezra tree.”

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