Chesed

Quotes from our house :: vol I

By Michelle February 17, 2013 Boy Quotes 14 Comments

Liam woke up one morning complaining that he was cold during the night. He snuggled his cold self up next to me and said, “I prayed to God, but I guess He was busy. He must have been talking to Jesus or His disciples ….. or maybe satan.

Later when he was sitting on my lap, he patted my cheeks and in tones of endearment said, “You’re so chubby.”

Adam’s vocabulary is still growing by leaps and bounds. One day he was talking nonstop about how lucky his friend, Cole, is and how he has all these cool hunting games and of course how much he wishes he had all the same ones. Then his voice trailed off briefly and in a much more low key voice he said, “Life is just so full of warnings.”

I snickered at the change of pace, crossing it off as another random sentence that happens when he doesn’t understand the concept of a word completely. “Oh? Why do you say that?”

A: “Because I knew you were going to say, but it’s not good to spend all your time on the computer.”

One night he and Liam were tucked into bed but I kept hearing spasms of almost uncontrollable giggles. I walked back the hall to see what was so funny. Apparently Adam was making up a song that went something like this:

Cornflakes are so yummy. Avocado is a different story. Cornflakes are so crunchy. Avocado is so mushy. That is why I hate avocado.

The funniest part about this story? He doesn’t even like cornflakes.

I was talking to Liam about his {very} bad attitude when he told me indignantly, “I’m not mad. I’m just ticked off.”

Adam has always been incredibly hard on pants. I cringe sometimes when I do laundry because a brand new pair of pants can have an almost threadbare spot at the knee after wearing them two times. He walks around with gaping holes at the knees in all but one of his every day pants and I said it was time to patch them. He looked a bit disconcerted and said quickly, “Patches don’t really look good on me.”

One rare night I served dessert at dinner. Liam and Adam were ecstatic. “Now you’re getting the camp spirit, Mommy!” :/ No wonder I’m gaining weight.

Liam has been having trouble with nightmares off and on for the past few years. I hate it and I hate it even more that I don’t know what to do about it to help him. They were so terrible about a year ago that he once had panic attacks the next day. When I explained to him what dreams are they seemed to subside somewhat. Now they’re cropping up again occasionally. One night before bed when he was worried that he might have a nightmare he asked, “When you have a bad dream, is that called fainting or it just called wiping out?”

Liam still needs a bit of assistance with toileting. One afternoon he sat in the bathroom yelling, “I’m done.” I walked in to help only to hear this bit of gratitude, “There comes slow motion.”

You know there are allergies in the house when you overhear this at the lunch table. Liam: “I wish I was gluten free on mushrooms.” Adam: “I wish mushrooms had penicillen in them.” Liam: “I wish they had dairy in them.” Another night Adam took a look at his slice of pizza and it’s loads of peppers, mushrooms, and onions. Then he looked at me and offered generously, “You can eat the fallout.”

The boys get animal shaped vitamins. Most of them are lions and rhinos and giraffes. They always, and I mean always, want the lions. I got tired of searching through the bottle so now I just dump out the first four vitamins and try to divy them up fairly. Adam looked completely disgusted with his one morning and muttered, “Liam always gets the predatory ones.”

Adam and I love to drink hot tea when we start school for the day. One rainy morning when I chose Earl Grey and he chose English Breakfast I saw him sniff the tea bags appreciatively while the water was still heating. Then he said, “This probably smells like Ireland to you, but I just think of the busy streets of England.”

Homeschooling has been a learning curve for us both. One frustrating day when he was too tired from a late night he looked at me with despair and said, “Why am I making so many mistakes when I’m so diligent (most of his mistakes happen when he starts messing around and not staying focused)? I wish I knew the answer to that in real life, frankly. Later I asked him what he thinks about homeschooling versus going to school by now. He shrugged his shoulders a bit nonchalantly and said, “Well, I like homeschooling because you get done earlier, but I miss the smells of the classroom.” Smells???? “Yeah, like the paper and pencils and lead and that screeching on the whiteboard.”

reFRESHed

By Michelle February 15, 2013 life 4 Comments

Do you ever feel exhausted all to the way to your spirit’s marrow? Although, technically, I assume spirits don’t have marrow since they’re not made of bones. Whatever it is that makes up a spirit, mine was just about dried up. Last weekend the ladies at our home church in Virginia organized a ladies retreat and gratefully, our schedule actually worked out for me to go. It was one of those times when you know you want to go and you know you need to go, but you’re so tired you don’t even want to think about the “going” part. My friend threatened to drive the three hours to pick me up because I wasn’t convinced I was going to muster the energy it took to pack suitcases aGAIN. The minute I dropped off the boys with David, weights started flying out the back van window and replacing themselves with energy.

I have a love / hate relationship with homeschooling. I love being able to see what Adam is learning and incorporating that knowledge into life as it happens. I love that he isn’t gone for eight plus hours a day like he was the last two school years. I love that our school life schedule can be a little flexible because David’s work requires traveling. But I don’t like the way I feel as though I live life in overdrive all week long. Household chores happen mostly after a late lunch and it’s not because I decided to take the morning a little slower … it probably means we’ve been working extra hard on school work. I don’t like the way that Adam gets the lion’s share of attention all morning long and Liam gets only the snippets that happen. I hate it that between all the camp activities and homeschooling I feel as though I am just barely keeping my head above water all.the.time. That slow days to regroup are pretty much nonexistent. I miss doing extra things like sewing or crafting or even calling friends, but I know those days will come again. Assuming I don’t actually fall apart like a meteor shower meanwhile. 🙂

Teaching and parenting may happen by the same person, but they are different hats. I’m slowly discovering that just because I spent four hours with Adam doing school, his mom love tank isn’t any more full than it was. He still needs time with me doing fun or normal mom things like a conversation about a book he is reading, a look at his project in the basement, coaching as he uses the hot glue gun, help studying for a test, or a game of Checkers. On days when school didn’t go well, he seems to need even more time from me. There are days when things feel like a fairy tale (not lying) and there are days when everything I do happens by conscious choice and even then it feels as though it will never be enough. And once again, I flunk the Mom-I-want-to-be-test.

The weekend was delightful. I left early enough to shop my favorite stores for a few items that are next to impossible to find here (starbucks coffee being the first thing on the list). 😉 Met my sisters-in-law for Mexican food and a fabulous few hours of catching up on each other’s lives until we got so many eyeballs from the owners we headed next door to McDonalds. We seem to have a history of that … staying somewhere so long we get kicked out by overstaying our welcome or because the store is closing. The rest of the weekend was filled with friends, conversation, laughter, talks about prayer, games, coffee, amazing food, gorgeous views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, praying together, more coffee and too little sleep. It was beautiful in that way that speaks to your soul on many levels. Toward the end, I struggled hard with the fact that we are such nomads. We’ve been here longer than we were at Koinonia … neither of which is very long at all. While I love the people in both places and am experiencing growing friendships, in some ways I still feel as though I am the new kid on the block. I crashed from finally not needing to be running on overdrive. And, probably more than I realized, I crashed a little from being back in Virginia.

I drove home amid tears of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. I desperately wanted to go home to be with my family. Maryland finally feels mostly like home … it wasn’t that. Just a deep weariness inside of me as I thought about going back to the colder cold, the dictatorial schedule, the intense spiritual warfare, the mom who was determined to pull her son from camp, and the constant grey skies. I zoned in and out to the music on the radio, but three times on my three hour drive home I heard the phrase, “the God of angel armies, is always by my side.” The first two times before it happened, I saw a flash of white outside my window and got the distinct impression that there were many angels surrounding both sides and the back of the van. Only the front was clear leaving the road to camp clear. The exact same thing happened one other time after I was grocery shopping and feeling so overwhelmed I wanted to fire myself from my role. It was dark and cold and pouring down rain and it was raining inside the van on the driver’s side when suddenly I glimpsed a white reflection outside my window and distinctly felt the presence of angels. Almost immediately those same words poured out of the speaker and cut through the layers of exhaustion and incompetence. The God of angels armies is always by my side. I have no idea if what I saw was a reflection, a mirage, or actually something ethereal, but I do know that I have never felt the presence of angels so close as I did during those seconds. They weren’t pushing or pulling, just flying alongside and behind with a clear path toward camp. Apparently God isn’t done working with people like me who are so not cut out for the job. I arrived home feeling completely spent, yet completely at peace. No matter how incompetent we feel, there is no safer place to be than the center of the will of God.

Even with that little blip at the tail end, the weekend refreshed me in so many ways. The next few days were so much easier. Laughter truly is great medicine. The sun shone for two whole days. School was so much easier after a chance to rest my mind. Between gaining a bit of perspective thanks to distance and a good talk with a friend on Sunday, I was realizing that I need to set up a few more boundaries or I’ll shoot my canoe so full of leaks we won’t be able to float. The boys are both back to taking a short nap / rest period in the afternoon including Adam who has to read in his room, not the living room. Everywhere I went on Monday, there seemed to be improvements. While I was gone, David fixed the light in the basement so that I no longer had to grope around doing laundry in the dark. He fixed the drain under the kitchen sink and got rid of the bowl collecting nasty drain water which gave me two more feet of prime real estate space. He replaced both plugs for the kitchen sink so that they actually hold water. A board member came and fixed our water situation so that we can now drink the water instead of always having a five gallon igloo of water hogging precious counter space, I can use the dishwasher again thanks to a water softener, and the hot water heater got replaced so that I shouldn’t ever have to heat water for baths again. Isn’t the only logical conclusion to all of this the theory that I should go away for a ladies retreat much more frequently? 😉

All week I’ve been trying to consciously think of little bits of refreshment. A weekend or even an evening away doesn’t happen very often for most of us, and here it happens even more rarely. But I am determined to reach out and savor moments of refreshment and let them fill me. Even if it takes work to make them happen.

Wherever you are, whatever the load you carry, I hope you find refreshment, too, in whatever way speaks to you.

Favorite moments for me from this week:

Hearing “You Raise Me Up” playing on Pandora

A latte and game of Quibbler with Adam this afternoon while Liam napped

A gorgeous pink sunset

A long, hot shower

Suddenly realizing it doesn’t get dark until after 6:00 in the evening

A glass of iced tea with lemon in a pretty cup

An afternoon phone call from a friend

Making pink cupcakes

Getting an iPad almost entirely with reward cards thanks to using Best Buys credit card for my photography work

Seeing Liam grasp the concept of God wanting us to obey Him because He so very much wants for us to come to Heaven to be with Him

Sunshine streaming through the windows

A double dinner date for Valentines thanks to super willing babysitters

Getting ready to go out for dinner and feeling like Cinderella …. and the happy realization that the magic wouldn’t end in a poof at midnight

Hundreds of kisses from my very hugg-y and kiss-y boys

Reading these words from II Thesalonians 3 Wednesday morning — the day a camper’s mom came and pulled her son from camp: “the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil. And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do all the things which we command you. And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ. But ye, {Michelle}, be not weary in well doing. Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means.”

What small thing refreshes you on an ordinary {or not so ordinary} day?

Winter Love (since saying “Loving Winter” would involve prevarication)

By Michelle February 13, 2013 Boys Camp, life 7 Comments

It’s winter. It’s February. It’s drab and grey and flabby around here. Not to mention cold.

I’d really prefer using words like soil, warmth, barefoot, green, and swimming but let’s face it. Those words have gone dormant. It’s the time of year when you just have to hold on and keep walking, one coffee-sloshed, fuzzy-socked step at a time.

Sometimes a little creativity helps. I needed a wreath for the front door to replace the Christmas one that stayed up too long and then disappeared leaving only a bare, black wreath hanger in its place for an even longer time. Before Christmas, I noticed a darling play house in the Pottery Barn Kids magazine that included miniature wreaths on all the windows. They looked like mini cotton balls strung in a line and then formed in a circle and I wondered, could I do something with cotton balls on a larger scale? It turns out that gluing hundreds of cotton balls onto a wreath form is mindless handwork and, better yet, it’s quick. Mindless and quick are strong, good words that evoke happy emotions after a long morning of homeschooling when a to do list stares at your face.

Even when it’s quick, mindless, and doesn’t require skill, creating a little bit of something always feels refreshing. Maybe because it stays finished for a little bit, unlike the beds that get unmade, the floors that get dirty minutes after sweeping, and the dishes that hop back out onto the counters within hours. Maybe because there is an intense longing for beauty inside all of us and creating something that adds beauty breathes life into our spirit.

Unlike the doll house version, the grown up version didn’t look complete without a little embellishment. I didn’t have anything on hand (I thought) and I really didn’t feel like buying anything for winter when we’re on the verge of spring. But then one day I needed to put a few odds and ends away and I thought …………………….

Cha Ching! So here it is. A very simple wreath that makes our doorway feel happy. Even if the door hasn’t seen a drop of paint in all its thirty years of life.

Speaking of cold and winter, I think I’ve finally learned how to stay warm. I’d asked for advice here, and someone questioned me about my coat. Well, the truth is, my coat has seen a lot of wear and a lot of the inside of the washer and it really wasn’t very warm. I’d been eyeing a coat at the Columbia outlet, but when your income switches to a living allowance you think a lot more often about spending $159 on a coat. Don’t get me wrong. We’re doing fine and the board was very gracious in making sure our living allowance covered what we need, especially in regards to Liam’s food allergies and the way that spikes our grocery bills. But, it does make you think twice about what you need and what you can do without. Needs and wants just get defined a little differently. Well, the very next morning my email dinged when I was still in bed. I groggily stopped by the computer on my way to get a cup of coffee and nearly fell over in shock. Someone I don’t even know had sent $160 to my paypal account and told me to go get a coat. Seriously, this just about blew me away. I felt so cared for by God. Could I survive as is? Yes. But did He care about the fact that I was cold? YES.

Being cold is one of the worst things about winter for me. I am always colder than everyone else. The janitor at our church once said, “If I see Michelle shivering and Mim fanning herself, I know I’ve about got it right.” When I get cold, I get so miserable I feel like I can’t move. Some winters I feel as though I will never actually completely thaw all the way inside. Well, as it turns out, God is keeping me quite warm this year. The house we moved into has a huge wood furnace in the basement that is way too big for this tiny house. Unless it’s 10 degrees outside, it’s probably borderline too warm in here. More days than not, I’ve opened the main door just to get some air (side benefit: the glass door lets in more light) because it is so piping hot in here. David says this is the first winter he has not once heard, “I am never going to get completely warm until spring.” No wonder he laughs every time I say, “It is so hot in here.” Heat rarely bothers me; but I’ll be the first to admit, a hot house in the winter feels wierd.

{pretend it’s dark and about twenty degrees colder with a few propane lanterns for light and you’ll get a feel for vespers}

The first time I had my new coat with it’s advanced Omni Heat and Omni Shield Technology it was 14 degrees outside. We started the twenty minute layering process it takes to get all four of us ready to spend an hour and a half outside at vespers. And boy did I layer. Leggings. Insulated snow pants. Sweater. Sweatshirt. New coat. Thin gloves. Thick snow gloves (also with Omni Shield). Thick socks. Snow Boots. Hat. Hood. The end. We left for camp with coffees and hot chocolates in hand.

As always, David kept leaning over and whispering, “Are you cold?” But instead of replying, “Yes, but I’ll be okay,” I was whispering, “No, but don’t fall off the bench.” It was incredible. Instead of shivering at 26 degrees, I was pretty much comfortable at 14. So to {you know who you are}, thank you for being God’s wallet. Every time I grab that coat, I think about how much God cares about the little things that sometimes don’t feel little at all.

Boys Camp defined

By Michelle February 11, 2013 Boys Camp 6 Comments

Boys camp has taken over an enormous part of our lives and it is only fair to assume it may also take over a large part of my words. Some days, perhaps merely a casual reference; other days an entire post. Perhaps a bit of definition is in order.

Camp is a therapeutic wilderness residential camping program for boys who are emotionally and behaviorally disturbed. Currently there are nine year round camps in our association …. a boys camp in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North and South Carolina, Florida, and Ireland and a girls camp in North and South Carolina. A camp in Canada runs a similar program although only during the summer months. The boys come from families with diverse demographics financially, functionally, and geographically. But the boys themselves share two things in common.

One, they aren’t able to coexist peacefully with their families any longer because of their behavior. Sometimes it’s because of circumstances. We see boys who are suffering from the after effects of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse. We see boys who are scarred from rejection or negligence prior to their adoption. We see boys who would have been fine if their families were more functional …. if only there were security instead of drugs, divorce, and near homelessness. Sometimes it’s organic. We see boys diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, and ODD among others. Irregardless of the root cause, these families are desperate. They’ve tried everything and camp is their last resort.

Two, they are willing to work on their problems. No one can force a boy to come to camp. Not mom and dad, not grandparents, not camp staff, not even the judge (although there are boys who are ordered there by the judge because they choose camp over a detention center). Living at camp looks like a lot of fun on the surface. Who doesn’t want to hang out with other guys your age and go canoeing or hiking? Living in a tent looks like a lot of fun in the summer time. But, coming to camp isn’t just swimming and not going to school; it’s a lot of hard work physically. Most difficult of all, it’s being willing to work on your own problems in a big way. It’s learning to accept when someone else calls a problem on you and to admit you were wrong. It’s learning to respect authority. It’s learning how to talk about your emotions and finding healthy ways to cope with life instead of exploding verbally and physically every time something looks like your definition of wrong. That’s not easy.

Once a boy comes to camp, he lives with a group of boys who are similar in age and physical ability. The group lives in a campsite in the woods … sort of the outdoor version of your house only there are separate tents instead of interconnected rooms. There are sleep tents (currently the “windows” are closed in by clear plastic because it’s wintertime),

a cook tent,

a chuck tent (for eating / crafts / school work),

a personal hygiene tent,

an entrance tent

and wood corral.

Up to ten boys live here with two counsellors we call chiefs. Interestingly, the name chief has nothing to do with Indians and living in the woods, but rather is used as a term of respect that is less formal than Mister. Whether your a chief in the woods or the maintenance man, you’ll still get called chief. And if you’re a woman, your name gets prefaced with Miss whether you’re married or single, the all-important cook or simply the wife of a family worker.

The boys eat at the big central chuckwagon five days a week where Miss Esther and Miss Katie make fabulous food for them. On Wednesday and Thursday, they cook their own food over a fire in the woods. The boys take turns creating menus and being in charge of the meal. They learn about budgets and food groups and attention to detail. If someone wants eggs and sausage and they forget to order the sausage, they eat eggs without sausage. They also get to be creative and feel ownership in a meal that gets rave reviews. Other than that, their days are a mixture of splitting wood, solving problems, playing group games, learning skills like carving, solving problems, swimming, rambling through the woods, solving problems, writing plans for the next week, solving problems. Did I mention solving problems? There’s a lot of that in case you hadn’t noticed.

There are two rules at camp. You do it as a group and you do it with a good attitude. That’s it. I find it fascinating that camp is filled with boys who will happily break every rule ever written … but it’s a place in open woods with no fences or gates and very few locks. To me, that says as much about the mentality of camp as all the brochures and explanations. Camp is about building trust. It’s about expecting a boy to do well and teaching him responsibility when he fails. Camp is also about helping families change so that a boy can be successful when he goes home. That’s why we’re here. David is involved in family work which includes doing the initial interviews to see if a boy qualifies for camp and being the line of communication between the boys and their families. The boys and their families write letters to each other and every six weeks, the boys go home for a five day home visit to help them implement what they’re learning. Other than that, it’s someone in family work who communicates by phone to keep the parents updated on what is going on via phone and in home visits.

How is that for a super brief introduction to camp? It feels as though I’ve given you the skeleton …. a tiny bit of the cold, hard framework that makes up the internal structure of camp. But it does so little to describe camp because camp gets fleshed out in less bony ways. Camp is singing. It’s enthusiasm. It’s a tiny fire at pow wow every night as the boys evaluate their day with their chiefs just before bed. Camp is walking down trail in a straight line and learning state capitols at sharing time in chuckwagon. It’s party night before home visit and jumping on an ice raft and building tents. Camp is dealing with runaways and kids who lose control when they are angry. It’s seeing a boy learn to trust adults and feel safe enough to act out and then to finally talk about what is going on inside of his heart. Most of all, camp is a lot of love and patience and showing the right way. Over and over and over again. Camp is praying and loving and redirecting and believing in and having fun. Camp is just, well, camp. You have to experience it to understand. Until you can come visit, I’ll be happy to answer any questions!

Death … the final transition

By Michelle February 6, 2013 life 10 Comments

My grandma died last Wednesday. In that moment, I said goodbye to an entire generation. She was my last living grandparent.

I like to remember the times she’d visit us in South Carolina and later in Virginia. We’d sit around the dining room table and play game after game of Rummicub. Grandma didn’t talk a lot; but when she did, her dry humor sent us into gales of laughter. When my parents spent two and a half weeks in Europe, she and my aunt, Barbara, came to stay with us. In between enduring “the chipmunks” at the loudest volume possible on the tape player and every manner of girl activity, they quilted on a huge quilt frame in the living room.

I remember visiting her in Florida one year and being enamored with her three wheeled bike.

She was fiercely independent, humble, yet slightly stubborn. But my favorite memory of her is the way she would suddenly smile in the middle of a conversation, her face creasing into a dozen more happy crinkles.

I can’t imagine how happy she must be today, finally with Jesus the way she longed to be for so many of the past months.

We spent the weekend in Ohio to celebrate her life and mourn her passing. I watched the long line of friends and family who came to offer their condolences and once again, I reflected on the beauty that is part of death. I’ve witnessed a few deaths over the years, most of them in the intensive care unit where I worked. There is something sacred and indescribable about standing witness when the death angel flings back the curtain between life and eternity for a soul. Through my tears at Grandma’s funeral, I realized beauty exists in that same hushed disguise as families go through the last rite of passage for a loved one.

It was hidden in the hundreds of friends who knew and loved grandma and who stood in line for a long time to tell her sons and daughters how much they appreciated her.

Raw beauty exuded in the eloquent words of my uncle Ervin’s tribute about Grandma’s life. It reverberated through his words about her longing to see Jesus and the way she expressed her deep, deep longing to know that all her children and grandchildren would join her there.

It whispered through the cold as tiny white snowflakes slowly decorated the hair and coats of family members in front of me as we slowly followed the pall bearers to Grandma’s final resting place.

It wrapped it’s arms around us as family members took turns hand-filling the grave with dirt, a graceful cadence of shovels handled with dignity and honor while songs of heaven and worship muffled the thud of dirt. It showed itself in friends who drove seven hours one way on snowy roads to attend a funeral service for someone they’d never met because they love and care about my mom losing hers.

It sparkled later that night in a room overflowing with family members who shared laughter, reminisced over pictures, wrote thank you notes to those who helped over the time of Grandma’s death, and celebrated the opportunity to be together. “A funeral is a person’s last gift to friends and family,” my mom has said, “the gift of being together.” What a gift grandma gave us.

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Beauty isn’t found in perfection or only in the absence of pain. Beauty is found in things that perfectly reflect the Father heart of God. What could be more beautiful than a life well-lived and well-loved?

Wednesday February 6, 2013

By Michelle February 6, 2013 Uncategorized 7 Comments

I’ve started blogging in a new place. I’ve been thinking of doing this for a long, long time, but the leap was too much work. I’m not sure I’ve changed my mind on that, but I kept locking down here for reasons you’ll see over there. I just don’t feel like the same person anymore. One of my biggest fears with moving is that other platforms are more cumbersome to leave a comment and in pure honesty, I blog as much or more for the social interaction as I do for the chance to write. So if it stays too dead over there, I may come back. The other odd issue is that, although I don’t feel like the same person and find it hard to write here, that other place feels too heavy and stifled and not really like me either. Anyone else having an early mid-life crisis?

So I’m still not really sure what is going to happen. Will that be only the “camp” blog and this will be the place I continue to dump the random spaghetti thoughts of my brain? Will that be the place I write until we move away from camp again? Or will I continue to get lost in the shuffle of homeschool and family work trips and never really get to write at all. I’m tired of trying to figure it out so why not let life declare it on it’s own? Back to teaching Math ………..

Hello, world

By Michelle February 1, 2013 life 18 Comments

Change is a positive thing, right? Even when you are navigating a new blog site and all the posts you’d like to write get stifled under the hours of learning to manipulate the new space? For a few years, I’ve written about life and our family. When we moved and lived without internet for the next four months, I took an unasked for hiatus. Yet, when we moved into a place of our own and hooked back up to the wide, wide world, I found myself feeling lost in my own space. Clicking new post on the screen shut my brain off faster than you could pour yourself a cup of coffee. Was I even the same person who wrote about a life that in many ways feels like a memory of a far more distant time? Browsing my own page made me homesick and instead of celebrating today, I found myself spending too much time reminiscing yesterday.

It was time for a change.

I don’t do well with change in the tech world. I don’t even like getting a new cell phone because then I have to figure out all over again how to set up voice mail. Now I’m trying to figure out how to make the main page own a clickable tab. To get back from the about page, you have to click on the chesed header. And if I create a page called blog, it still posts on this unidentified page. Why do they make these things so complicated (better worded as why does my brain not see into details like this??). But, if you will be patient with me, I’ll keep trying to get this figured out. Hopefully soon this place will feel like a happy home ….. just as our house at Allegany Boys Camp is slowly feeling more and more like a place of happy belonging.

I’m so glad you are here! Feel free to look around and share some love (or what would make this place better) in the comments section. If you’re an avid blogger, you already know about RSS feeds. If you’re not a blogger, but wish you could get the posts automatically, I’ve added a subscribe by email button. We’ll see if my techy facade actually works. 🙂

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. – Anatole France

Saturday January 12, 2013

By Michelle January 12, 2013 Uncategorized 14 Comments

Some days are just delicious.

We had our first and only night at home yesterday with just our little family this week. Homemade pizza, Checkers, Pick up Sticks, and a bit of read aloud time with Pippi Longstocking.

Today the sun is barely flirting with the clouds after a dark, grey yesterday. The forecast promises a high of 62. In Maryland. In January. Josh Groban tones lighten the quiet of a house devoid of boys gone with Dad to make an exchange in town. Cleaning vehicles is the most pressing demand of the day. Friends are coming over for dinner.

Nothing major happening is phenomenally underrated.

God is the Lord, which hath showed us light Psalm 118:27a

Saturday January 5, 2013

By Michelle January 5, 2013 Uncategorized 17 Comments

I hit the keyboard, fully planning to write “random” in the title bar until I noticed that was exact title of my next to last post. Really? I am THAT creative? Amazing.

Does anyone else feel as though they just got lurched forward in time? December was a month long celebration it seemed and for once, I thought I was really on top of the annual wind down and new year beginning in my head. Then I got walloped with a GI bug this week that would have left me unconscious on the bathroom floor at 3 AM had David not held onto me before I collapsed and dragged me out onto the floor of the bedroom until enough cold water woke me. The boys and I are still touch and go … mostly go stunned … and it’s left my brain loopy and slow and thinking we’re back in 2012. In an effort to clear my head, I’m trying to clear my desk. Clean desk = clear thought processes. Unquestionable correlation, right?

December was filled with

winter weather

friends

cozy moments

and

hot chocolate.

I’d be just fine with thinking about pink tulips starting tomorrow. According to the weather forecast, there’s a lot more ice-skating, steel cut oats drizzled with maple syrup and loaded with blueberries, and goosebumps predicted. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how to stay warm at Wednesday night vespers when it’s 26 degrees out and we’re sitting on split logs with ice on them. Leggings? Check. Layers and layers? Check. Scarf? Check. Hat? Check. Boots? Check. Coffee? Check. Suggestions? ______________

But back to December.

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Really quick. Close your eyes and name five close friends. People you consider to be someone you could call on for support if you needed it. Got it? Go! Let me guess, you had that done in about 3.7 seconds and could have given me another five in a heartbeat. Do you realize what an enormous gift this is? Sometimes I take my friends way too much for granted until I realize not everyone is so blessed. One night as I was telling someone we have friends coming in for the weekend she said, “So does your church try to send someone up to see you guys like one weekend a month?” I was confused … until I realized how blessed we’d been with visits from friends since we’re here. “No,” I said, “Only one family was from our church. We just have a lot of friends.” Those words just don’t leave me. “We just have a lot of friends.” On days I’m lonely and feeling far away, they’re like a hug, reminding me of how blessed I am. Other days, they echo against the words of a camper’s mom when David asked her if she has anyone she can go to for support. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure *Jim and Susan would help me out if I ever needed anything.” Two names. One couple. Suddenly the “s” in friends goes echoing against the house walls and I feel selfish. Why have we been given so much when some have been given so little?

December is a month for giving gifts. I love finding the perfect gift for someone, even if on years like this one it means shopping until almost the very last minute because I could not think of the right thing. This month, perhaps because there were more days of homesickness for old friends …. perhaps because I’ve come face to face with people who have so few friends, I’ve been thinking more about the gift of friendship. It’s one of the few gifts we get to give to someone all year long. And {most of the time} it’s one of the best received and most cherished gifts. But somehow we forget just how priceless the gift of a true friend really is.

*names changed

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Excitement was running high at our house because Ryan and Tury were coming! Tury is such a good friend of mine and one of those people I miss terribly since we’ve moved. She’d come over after work, fix herself a glass of tea, and we’d talk til she or I had to go. She was like the boys’ aunt really, and took care of them often when I needed a sitter. Now she’s just too far away to do any of it, but it was so much fun to have them here for a weekend and instead of only being together for a few hours! Adam and Liam spent the night before they came getting little notes ready for their bed. We had a blast just being together, going to see the Nutcracker, and playing games. You can’t possibly know, until you move away, how special it is to have guests from home!

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That same week I got to hang out with some Lancaster friends thanks to David needing to make a road trip to PA! An hour with Cindy at her kitchen table, sipping tea and discussing boys (funny how that sounds different when you’re a mom then it did when you were sixteen), and dreams, and life… a fantastic lunch in Thelma’s cozy house with Rachel and Andrea …. meeting the adorable new babies and watching the drama of their personal introductions …

Bentley: “Well, hello there, Miss Kate.”

“My goodness, you’re so cute, I just can’t get enough of you!”

“Oh, no. I wonder what I did wrong?”

“This is totally overwhelming.”

“OH, wait! There’s another cute chic … let me introduce myself to her”

I could do that day all over again!

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And then there were all the camp Christmas activities …

a morning spent making Christmas cookies

an evening spent caroling for the neighbors

a Christmas party with a traditional meal the night before the boys left for homevisit

a Christmas party for all the staff the next morning with a handmade craft exchange

Honestly, I think you could squeak by without any family traditions and celebrate Christmas well around here. winky By the time we’d had our own little family Christmas Day and were ready to head to Virginia to celebrate the actual day, the boys were convinced it had already happened. “I’m glad we live in Maryland because we already had Christmas,” Liam said enroute to Grammie’s house. He still doesn’t get it. And we have another year to figure out whether to squeeze in a cookie making day of our own sometime.

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And now a few favorite quotes I’ve stumbled across in the past month.

“Forgiveness, for the most part, is something you do and not something you feel. It is an act of the will, not the emotions.” — Kevin Leman in his book, Born to Win

“The most important thing she’d learned through the years was that there’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one. — Jill Churchill

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Come to think of it, my desk isn’t looking any better than it did. How was this supposed to work again?

Wednesday December 19, 2012

By Michelle December 19, 2012 Uncategorized 12 Comments

It’s been five days since most of America stayed glued to TV and internet news channels, watching in horror as yet another mass murder aftermath unfolded in Connecticut.

Parents everywhere pictured their own child caught in the volley of gunfire and grieved deeply and helplessly for those moms and dads whose lives were shattered. A frenzy of facebook posts suggested that every mom was feeling that same primal instinct to hug tightly and never let go.

Almost before the smoke cleared, the usual debates and finger pointing began. We want answers. I did the same thing … desperately checking the news the next morning. Surely they had a motive by now. What I found instead was murky water and dark, heavy questions.

Why are the same people who lobby for increased gun control the same people who lobby for abortion? Why is the same president who sheds tears over twenty children ordering masses of children (and adults) killed in other countries? Why would it help to have armed weapons for self-defense everywhere? Why is the answer to violence more violence? And why is one murder a nation-stopping tragedy and another murder is a “slightly off-color joke“?

There are people desperately looking for better gun control and just as many people loudly demanding more guns so they can be armed and ready. There are people who insist this is a mental health issue citing insufficient funding and lack of proper therapy while others take a different twist and mention the sometimes violent side effects of Ritalin. Some people claim government conspiracy is at the core and that the issue goes much deeper than the lobbying for gun control. Others attack Hollywood and violent video games.

For me, the emotional aftermath was deeply personal. After the initial I-am-feeling-guilty-that-I-got-soooo-irriatated-with-Adam’s-dawdling-around-in-school-today-when-I-should-just-be-grateful-I’m-not-burying-him emotions ebbed, I felt such an intense call to action. Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been warring a hard internal battle with living here at camp. I’ve fought this battle off and on since we’re here, but it’s been particularly intense since then. When we were in our home area over Thanksgiving we drove in to see our old place just because we finally had time. I shopped places I’d shopped when I was home, enjoyed a nice breakfast out with friends and family, devoured wings and pizza that got ordered in just because, and in a dozen ways experienced startling personal reminders of how comfortable our life really was. Is it fun to downsize significantly, haul drinking water, heat bath water, and deal with typical thirty year old house issues like a furnace giving up the ghost in the middle of the night and sink cabinets that are rotted out and closets that smell bad? Not particularly. Have we really learned what it means to sacrifice since we live here? No. A thousand times no.

The inconveniences are just that … inconveniences that mostly surface when the bigger problem shows up. Isolation. Loneliness. Lack of purpose. There is no conscious purpose, as far as I can tell, for my being here. Even the tiny ways that used to feel like they were part of my ministry to the larger world look like something compared to living here and doing nothing. I’ve never been the person who did well with keeping the sidewalks swept outside during a conference inside. Yet, here I am. Sweeping sidewalks so David can work at camp.

It was high time for revival in my heart and the events on Friday began not only an emotional catharsis, but a spiritual cleansing. Finally, it really felt okay. Just because it feels like the desert, doesn’t mean God isn’t here. Just because it feels like my life doesn’t have much of any real purpose right now, doesn’t mean this is wasted time. I was finally ready to say yes to God again. To believe Him when it meant that this part of my journey was purely a walk of faith.

As the fingers pointed on Friday and we lamented the terrible anguish twenty-six families will suffer this Christmas season, one unspoken message danced across every news page, every blog, every facebook status.

We must live intentionally. What if instead of saying, “THEY need to ______________”, we’d buck up and start saying “I need to __________________.” It doesn’t matter if you’re a mental health nurse or the person who gently but firmly brings your friend to the reality that her kid needs professional help (being with someone dysfunctional for a long time can blur your reality of normal more than you realize). It doesn’t matter if you’re writing research papers about the harmful effects of playing violent video games or a stay at home mom teaching your children that life is sacred and because it is, we never shoot anyone … not with a real gun, not with a video game, not even with a stick.

It doesn’t matter half so much what the driving force was behind the school shootings as it matters how we live our lives from here on out. What really matters is how I parent two little boys who can simultaneously frustrate my last nerve and turn me into a liquid mush of prejudiced adoration. Whether I only settle squabbles or teach them the ways of Jesus is a big deal. It matters when I see glazed pain in someone’s eyes and I choose to ignore it or gossip my own conclusions about her instead of reaching out to help. It matters whether or not I pray for the safety of our children and the spiritual depravity of our nation.

We can’t change the history of Christmas Season 2012; but what we do with today could change the destiny of 26 people some Christmas Season future.

A few hours later I ran across this blog and my stomach literally churned and I felt muscle after muscle inside my body contract in one desperate silent yell. I know that mental illness is real. I am not in the least trying to downplay that fact. I am not saying that her child definitely does not have a mental illness or that she is wrong in pursuing psychiatric treatment. I’m only crying inside because her description of him is like a composite of five boys in our tiny camp right now. ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Autism spectrum … those are not strangers to our applications. A slew of antipsychotic and mood altering drugs? They are not strangers to the applications, but they become strangers to the boys after they live here. Eyes that change color? Happens with the kid David interviewed this morning. Families being threatened with knives and needing to lock up every sharp object in the house? Even that is familiar territory. I want to cry. Not because I am convinced camp would change Michael, but because he looks like a perfect candidate and instead, he’s being locked into a mental institution and drugged. I wish I could talk to his Mom. Not in a thousand years do I think she is making a bad choice. You can hear her love and anguish in every word. I just wish every mom knew they had this option … just in case she wanted to pursue it.

Meanwhile, if sweeping sidewalks means one more kid is less at risk for swiping twenty-six lives right off the map, then I’ll keep right on sweeping sidewalks. Even when the leaves are falling. How did December 14, 2012 change you?