“Don’t go wild with the water,” I told them through the kitchen window, “Dinner’s almost ready and we don’t need any more messes to clean up.” Sure enough, they squeaked the faucet on, filled up every bowl and bucket and drenched the decking and themselves. Continue reading
Asparagus sizzled in the top oven. I pulled lasagna from the other and looked up. The golden girl waltzed through the door with pep in her step. She came bearing hugs and kisses and cards, and beamed as my boy told her she was “thinking really good” when she got him that balloon. Later, Grandma Hamilton would recount it all, her voice going high like helium through vocal chords.
Grandma Jean bounced her namesake, Farah Jean, on her lap and chuckled that most mornings her biggest decision is whether or not to get out of her pajamas before breakfast. I pictured her at her kitchen table, where Grandpa’s pocket calendar juts from the catch-all basket, evidence that he was here making plans and accomplishing them.
The grandmothers sat down, each in the place prepared for them. We bowed our heads together, generations holding hands, and the youngest of us prayed aloud for the meal. What took hours to prepare took mere minutes to devour, but we lingered at the table anyway, going from one subject to another, a twenty course conversation. They heaped on helpings of words, happy ones. I took it all in, the marginalized feeling their worth.
I thought of saving the clean-up until morning, leaving the wedding china paused in time under smears of salad dressing, remnants of iceberg lettuce, curls of pasta left behind. Sparkling cider pooled in concave crystal, a cupcake paper sprawled, maraschino stem tossed aside– that mess, it was evidence of time spent, joy shared. We broke bread together and left the basket empty, crumbs on the tablecloth.
Grandma Jean looked out the window into winter. “Does it get any easier?” she motioned to her fellow widow. “Growing up in a full house, then marrying George and making a full house of our own…I’ve never had to live alone.”
“It’s been one day at a time…eight years of one day at a time since my own George passed.”
“Too bad we live so far apart,” her snowy locks glinted in the light, “We need more times like this.”
I chauffeured them home through flurries. Then, back in my kitchen, I checked the menu to see what I’d planned for breakfast in the morning. I had every ingredient except the clean table. Since my husband had done the hard work of putting the kids to bed, the clean up was all mine. I pushed through my drowsiness and sentimental procrastination and made myself grab a single plate. A well-known widow said it this way, that when you’re left with piles of work and only your two hands to get it done, “Just do the next thing.”
I scraped scraps into the can and ran the fragile surface under the faucet’s stream. Then another, and another, and another until all the china was stacked and ready for a more thorough wash the next day. I crowded forks in my fist, a bouquet of silverware for the dishwasher. I shook place mats over the table, opened the door to a burst of arctic air and waved the tablecloth out into the night, crumbs floating down with snow.
I threw a prayer out there with all those tiny morsels in the air, evidence of a once upon a time feast falling to the ground. The kitchen rag warmed my hands. I circled it over espresso wood all of a sudden bare.
{Do you know someone who has loved and lost? How can you help them take heart in their mourning? How can the idea of doing the “next thing” help you when you’re experiencing your own disappointments or loss in love?}
Reposted from the archives.
Thanks for visiting Message in a Mason Jar where we’re finding the loveliest things in the most ordinary containers. To get posts delivered to your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader.
This week in our Take Heart series we’re talking about romance. We’d love to have you link up with us (before midnight tonight!) and share how God has helped you take heart in the midst of your own struggles in singleness, dating, married life or abandonment. And don’t forget to comment on yesterday’s post for your chance to win our giveaway from Amanda Lynne Designs!
My sister is a fix-it girl. At night, her bed lays empty while she undoes the dirt of day at a local coffee shop. She dusts the fixtures and sweeps away crumbs. She sanitizes tables and chairs and counter tops and remembers who sat where in the daylight when she grabbed a bottle of kombucha, rubbing her eyes. In the dark, she clears fingerprints from windows and doors, scrubs toilets, shines sinks. Sometimes she even fixes the plumbing using her best tool…woman’s intuition. She polishes the floor, blank slate for the morning. Back home by day, she mothers and sleeps mostly, no time to fix the broken things or go after what life has sucked away, except this once…. I hope you’ll enjoy this short but (bitter)sweet account written by my sister, the resilient Mandy Cross.
This is a necklace of mine. I’ve always had faith and hope. But awhile back, love fell down the drain.
Life was so busy and demanding that I didn’t make time to look for it. But, always in the back of my mind this awareness lingered of the possibility that it could still be there, waiting to be salvaged. Or, was it flushed away forever?
Finally, not too long ago, I got the gumption to give it a go. I faced the foul sewer stink and messy puddle as I muscled through corrosion in the connections. Lo and behold, the love charm plopped out as I poured putrid water from the pipe.
It doesn’t look the same… It has lost its shine and one of the cheap, glass jewels. But it is intact.
Due to the distress, the metal has a deeper, textured patina. Truthfully, I like it better that way.
I think I’ll wear it on a string.
{What’s your story of love lost? How does the metaphor of Mandy’s love gone down the drain affect your own outlook on past hurts?}
And now for this week’s giveaway from Amanda Lynne Designs!
My blogger friend Amanda Lynne has an amazing Take Heart story of growing up in a difficult family situation, being placed into foster care and eventually being taken in by loving parents who prepared her to establish her own beautiful family. Amanda now owns a shop where she sells her unique pieces of stamped jewelry that communicate faith, hope and love. In honor of our series and this particular post about my sister’s necklace, she has generously offered to give a special “Take Heart” custom necklace to one Message in a Mason Jar reader! Simply visit Amanda Lynne Designs on Etsy and comment below about your favorite jewelry piece for your chance to win. For extra entries (include a separate comment here for each entry): subscribe to Message in a Mason Jar via email or RSS feed, like Message in a Mason Jar on Facebook, share this post on Twitter, share on Facebook, and/or share on Pinterest. This giveaway ends at midnight EST on Sunday, February 16.
Thanks for visiting Message in a Mason Jar where we’re finding the loveliest things in the most ordinary containers. To get posts delivered to your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader.
This week in our Take Heart series we’re talking about romance. We’d love to have you link up with us and share how God has helped you take heart in the midst of your own struggles in singleness, dating, married life or abandonment. The link-up is open through Friday night. And don’t forget to comment below for your chance to win our giveaway from Amanda Lynne Designs today!
When you’ve watched shooting stars and new constellations freckle the sky in another hemisphere, boiled water from a dirty creek to make your porridge and wash your hair, walked the streets of shantytowns and felt the dividing line of color, sipped the rooibos and watched birds soar with ribbons on their tails, walked among fragments of coral and sponge and feasted your eyes on Table Mountain….
When you’ve whisked by the Pyramids through hot wind on the back of an Arabian horse, climbed through the night until your legs quiver to make it for a Sinai sunrise, prayed for real freedom on Tahrir Square, hiked the ruins of a castle, taken a finger to the black soot of St. Stephen’s cathedral….
When you’ve caught your breath hiking up the steps of the Great Wall, tried the ancient art of ink on rice paper, stood in the shadow of history at Tiananmen, run your fingers through stars in the water, memorized the sound of the coqui, whispered in the arches of a Mediterranean mosque, pried a monkey off of your head at Gibraltar, tiptoed up the spirals of Gaudi’s life work yet unfinished, and strolled the tiled courtyards of Al Hambra….
When you’ve logged all these miles in your memory bank, fallen in love with countries and left them behind for home, the seat of the rocking chair can feel so small.
I found myself stuck there a few months after my daughter was born. I bordered on claustrophobic rocking a baby who wouldn’t sleep without my arms as cradle. I’d tried the cry-it-out method, but I couldn’t bear it past 45 minutes. And now I was crying it out myself many days.
A friend at church asked me how I was doing and from the look in her eye she really wanted to know. I swallowed hard and told her I didn’t feel much like myself anymore, that I missed my connection with internationals, that I felt a little landlocked.
She knew something of it. Alyssa was longing for Tanzania, her heart having been left behind there on account of an unexpected move back to the U.S. four years earlier.
She prayed that God would bring internationals my way, that I might see that part of my life open up again. And I prayed that God would open up just the right ministry and allow her family to go back to serving in Tanzania.
A few days later, with just enough time to make it to a dentist appointment, I eased past the white line into the intersection waiting for the car in front of me to turn left. Green turned to stale green then to yellow then red. I watched for the car to turn out of the way of cross traffic and thought I might be able to sneak through behind. But before I knew it, the brake lights ahead of me turned to reverse lights and the car smashed right into my front fender.
Now I was really going to be late. I threw my gear shift into park and rehearsed what I’d say to the novice driver. I got out a pen to take down phone numbers and insurance information, told the kids not to worry, then jogged to the front of the car to check the damage.
A woman ducked out of the driver’s seat and came my way. “So sorry. So sorry,” she said in a familiar accent, her Rs sounding more like Ds. I turned my head from a minimal scrape on the bumper to the sight of umber skin and wavy black hair tamed back into a bun. I knew the look from my days walking dusty back streets in Cairo.
“Do you speak Arabic?” I asked her and then talked between the two languages, as much as we could, about how she had come here from Egypt and how I had stayed a summer there, how there was revival in the Coptic Church back home and in her own heart here.
I pulled off the pen cap with my teeth and soon we were exchanging numbers, not for insurance purposes, but for continuing the conversation out of the line of traffic. As it turns out, just that morning she had been praying that the Lord would send her a new sister, someone to encourage her faith.
To me, the run-in meant that although my primary area of ministry has shifted to my children, God hasn’t taken me off assignment with internationals.
Since that day at the red light, the Egyptian woman and I have shared a meal and chatted over several phone conversations. I’ve had the chance to teach a few rounds of international English classes at my church and interact with young mothers who are raising their children in a whole new culture. And I’ve found other opportunities to share this passion with my family as my husband, kids and I take part in a monthly international lunch with a diverse group of refugees who live in the apartment complexes around our church. My daughter Farah, whose name means “joy” in Arabic and Persian, provides a wonderful bridge between our family and those from Middle Eastern cultures.
As for the friend who prayed for me, when she and her family were commissioned to go back to Tanzania, she shared how they had been “…like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.”
We may have the high honor of being mothers, but we are not only mothers. God shows His attention to our desires and dreams in the most interesting of ways.
My friend had cried out her dream for God to send them back to their hearts’ work in Tanzania and He had. I had cried out for a hint of my old passion to meet me here in my domestic life. The Egyptian woman had cried out for a believing friend. God worked it all together.
So what if it meant shaking up my schedule and my minivan.
{What dream or identity do you feel you left behind when you became a mother? If you are aching for that lost dream, have you brought it to God? How has He shown His care for you in response?}
And now for this week’s giveaway from Scarves with Heart!
My friend Jenni Keller hasn’t let the domestic life keep her from having a global impact. She began making and selling these exquisite T-shirt scarves to raise money for a trip to South Africa, which happens to be my first love in globe trotting (so much so that I visited twice), the very place that started my decade of international travel back in college. Jenni’s work there opened up her eyes to God’s heart for orphans, particularly those facing HIV/AIDs. Each scarf sold will help provide funds for sending her back to South Africa on short term mission to use her mothering skills to care for the sick and abandoned. Today Jenni is giving away a handmade heather gray scarf with braid detailing to one Message in a Mason Jar reader! Simply comment below or your chance to win. For extra entries (include a separate comment here for each entry): subscribe to Message in a Mason Jar via email or RSS feed, like Message in a Mason Jar on Facebook, share this post on Twitter, share on Facebook, and/or share on Pinterest. This giveaway ends at midnight EST on Sunday, February 10.
Thanks for visiting Message in a Mason Jar where we’re finding the loveliest things in the most ordinary containers. To get posts delivered to your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader.
This post is part of our Take Heart series. This week we’re talking about everything from infertility to parenting woes. We’d love to hear about how God has helped you take heart in the midst of your own struggles in growing a family. Click over to Tuesday’s post to link up your story. The link-up is open through Friday night. And don’t forget to comment below for your chance to win our giveaway from Scarves with Heart today!
It had been so long since it had surfaced, that I almost wondered if it were still there. Without our difficult dog around to test my patience and with the kids moving well-beyond the tough days of toddlerhood to become more cooperative and self-sufficient, the waters of home life have been relatively calm. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d screamed at the kids, squeezed an arm or let out an angry growl.
And then, my husband left on a week-long business trip…just in time for Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year.
In the morning, with the school boy home for MLK Jr. Day, there were the toppled tea sets and angry airborne vegetables between the siblings in the play kitchen, the blank stares when I told them to put on their shoes to go, the seat belt buckles that wouldn’t give in to little fingers insisting they could do it themselves, the doors creaking open and slamming shut during Mom-mandated nap time, and the backtalk and yelling when I said there was no time to read a book before basketball practice.
I tried my softer voice maybe 100 times that day, but now I felt my secret sin darting up like a jagged dorsal fin, cutting through breakers, circling. Adrenaline pumped through my veins. Muscles constricted. I clamped my teeth together and growled my ultimatums through them. Force is the battle hymn of the shark mother.
The guilt moved in just as fast as the rage. I scolded myself: “You should be able to handle this on your own for a few days. Other mothers could get their kids to obey without scaring them. They’re going to grow up remembering you as a crazy mess of a mom.” Salt water rushed. I gulped for breath before the next doubt.
When my daughter clung to my leg asking if I was okay and when she ran to get a towel from the kitchen drawer to blot my tears, I went at myself again: “You shouldn’t be putting your kids in position to have to take care of you.”
The minutes rolled on and I had to pull myself together, go numb really, and get us to basketball. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye for fear of a deluge, but it did me good to walk the wood floor of the church gym, to let the bounce of the basketball echo louder than my self-talk.
My son’s team recited the week’s verse in unison: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry.” I shook my head at the irony and at my lack of self-control, then rubbed the puffy eyes hiding behind my glasses.
I thought of how “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger….” and how “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” I felt the grace soothing, pointing my sin into the depths of the sea, “because He delights in unchanging love.”
At bedtime, with a whole new round of kid defiance, I kept calm, letting grace be my battle hymn. When at last my son lay down to sink into dreams, I told him how sad it makes me when we don’t get along. Back from numbness, I apologized for all of the ways I overreacted that day. He pulled me close whispering, “I will always forgive you.”
Half an hour later, I heard the creak of wood at the top of the stairs. There he stood in a tentative pose, maybe afraid I’d yell again. Seems we both come at each other expecting the worst.
“It’s something nice.” I gave him a nod and he bounded down the steps. “I want to give you this…” he said, holding out his cuddly stuffed shark, “…for you to sleep with tonight.”
There was a tingle in my chest where the tightness was, warmth in my veins where the shiver of adrenaline had just a few hours ago flowed through. I pictured him laying in bed all those minutes, brimming with grace and thinking of how to show it.
I held the shark close, then pulled it back to the sight of felt teeth sticking out from a knowing smile. That would-be ominous dorsal fin looked instead like an arrow pointing skyward. I was tamed.
{There is nothing like receiving forgiveness and grace to make a mother want to give it again and again. How have you felt God’s mercy in moments when you’ve lost control of yourself? How does that impact the way you interact with your kids when they misbehave or resist your authority?}
Thanks for visiting Message in a Mason Jar where we’re finding the loveliest things in the most ordinary containers. To get posts delivered to your email box or blog reader, enter your email address on the homepage sidebar or enter http://messageinamasonjar.com/feed/ in your reader.
This post is part of the Take Heart series. This week we’re talking about everything from infertility to parenting woes. We’d love to hear about how God has helped you take heart in the midst of your own struggles in growing a family. Click over to yesterday’s post to link up your story!