Do You Wanna Be a Snowman?

Julia's one Christmas wish was to become a snowman. Little did she know how painful the transformation would be once it had begun...

{I couldn't even begin to count how many towels we needed to mop her up in the warm car on the way home from California. We'll sure miss that girl.}

Squirty Squirters

Spencer, in all of his brilliant boyness, has come up with a game for him and I to play in the backyard on a warm day. It's called "Squirty Squirters." It is a game in which we repeatedly fill medicine syringes ("squirters") with water and shoot them at each other. We use the various furniture and other backyard accouterments to hide behind. Sometimes I try to miss him, depending on the outside temp. Spence squints his little eye tries his hardest to hit me but usually misses. And we laugh ourselves silly. 

As I am sure you can imagine, it's good stuff. I highly recommend that you play it with your household three-year-old, should you get the chance. If you happen to be short on household three-year-olds for any reason, you can borrow mine. I am confident that he would play this game with anyone.

I'm telling you. Squirty Squirters. It's where it's at.

Lights of Christmas

We had every intention of participating in our church's "Light the World" campaign this Christmas season, in which we were meant to choose a service activity to do each day of December in order to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ and not on ourselves. We had some great ideas and really tried for a few days at least...before the busyness and bustle of the season threw us off and many of our good intentions went unrealized. I know that we don't light the world automatically each day just because we are alive in it. I know that it takes time and effort and a purposeful resolve. But I also know that in trying to follow Christ, whether it be through a specific service campaign or in the quiet and often unseen choices of our individual lives, we can indeed show a concern and a love to others that can make a difference, however small, in the light that exists in the world.

I hope that Craig and I can foster in our children a deep desire to do good for others--both within our family and without--in order to fuel the light-making effort to fight the darkness and despair that at times seem to overwhelm the earth. I hope that we can make a year-long effort and commitment to be a light, in kindness, words, and actions, to all those who cross our paths.

Seeking Him

So so so so so much to catch up on here. Life hurtles ever forward at its unrelenting pace, and my to-do list for one day gets added on exponentially to the days ahead.

Time is a weird thing. Sometimes we think it will automatically change us. That magically we will be different--better--a week, a month, or a year from now.

But it doesn't.

Not without effort. Not without work. Not without a willingness to change ourselves, or to allow the Lord in to change our hearts. Not without a million "now" moments in which we do something now--that we don't want to do, or that we find difficult, or can find a hundred reasons to put off--in order to gain more willpower and strength for the next now moment and thus for the days and weeks ahead.

Sometimes I look back and think about whatever version of myself existed several weeks or months ago. Sometimes I am tempted to think, Wow, I really didn't know anything then, did I? But I did. Today's knowledge does not render yesterday's efforts utterly useless. Today's experience does not mean that we knew nothing before. We may not have known a particular thing, but that hardly means that we knew nothing.

The key is to try. To grow. To use each day's new knowledge and experience to be even smarter and better for the next day's challenges. It isn't about knowing everything right now. It is about learning in tiny, minuscule, sometimes imperceptible steps so that in a week, or month, or year from now we have changed and progressed. Not magically. But because we have had more moments where we were willing to work and try than moments where we put the important things off once again.

Oh I how I hope that the need to seek a power and a wisdom beyond my own can be planted and buried forever in my heart. I hope that I can try and try and try and manage to not get frustrated when my trying seems in vain. I want to trust that the Lord, if I can let Him, will make so much more of me than I can make of myself. I want to receive His wisdom, love, and approval...to give myself permission to learn and to grow as He has. To allow myself time to change. To see my own potential as He does.

 Wise men still seek Him. Every day, every hour, every minute.

Oh Lord, let us be wise.

A Grateful Prayer and a Thankful Heart

This Thanksgiving, as I contemplated our rich and plentiful blessings, I couldn't help but feel grateful for one thing in particular: the power of our trials to bring us to our knees and thus closer to our Savior.

This past year has truly been one of the most difficult for me. In every way it has stretched me and tried me to limits I did not realize I was even capable of reaching. And the truth is, I, alone, was not capable of the challenges presented to me: of the love and patience and sacrifice required every minute of every day over the past 13 months; of the emotional, physical, and mental energy necessary to meet the unending, ever-present needs of six young children, two of whom had been utterly displaced from their own family, four of whom felt displaced, despite remaining in their own home, because suddenly and unwelcomely, their parents were no longer available to them--neither in person nor in emotional presence--at the level that they had always been.

I did not do it. Not by myself. Not even for one second.

As our rather secure and predictable lives changed quite dramatically from one day to the next, I got to a place, very quickly, where I was able to recognize that I needed to rely on a strength and a power beyond my own. In my need, I was compelled to my knees. I pleaded for help. I knew I could not do it all--or any of it, for that matter--on my own. 

As painful as it was to be humbled in the realization that I am utterly incapable in my own ridiculously imperfect efforts, I can see, and have seen, the tenderness and good that comes from it. Somehow there is power in becoming acquainted with our own weaknesses; there is an unexpected strength in recognizing that we cannot--and were never meant to--go through this life trying to figure things out on our own. That it's not asked or required or expected of us to simply muster, through sheer willpower, the courage and emotional fortitude to do all of the things that are asked of us each day, whatever their level of difficulty may be, however easy or manageable they may seem to someone else. There is something beautiful in knowing that even if my prescribed allotment of grit and gumption were more than they are (and let me tell you, they aren't much), I still wouldn't be required to do anything without the promise--and fulfillment--of heavenly help.

I could not count, or measure, in any way, the amount of strength that has been afforded to me in my weakness. I could never express in words, the feelings of relief when prayers were heard and answered, when the burdens of guilt and inadequacy felt physically lifted from my shoulders, when angels from this realm and the next encouraged me and wouldn't allow me to surrender to my myriad fears or worries.

The love I have experienced from my Savior, the closeness I have felt to Him as I have learned of His power to lift and to heal is truly a cherished treasure. And the way I have been taught by Him to let go, embrace my insufficiencies, and accept the help and comfort He would give me is something for which I will forever be grateful.

It's been a hard, painful, frustrating, emotionally taxing year. One in which the phrase, "taking things one day at a time" has never had more meaning. Yet, despite my fits of sadness, and discouragement, and utter inadequacy, it has been a year of blessing upon blessing upon blessing. A year of uncomfortable, necessary growth. One that I will treasure forevermore.

A million thanks, Lord, for bringing me to my knees and granting me the opportunity to know Thee better.