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#11-6: Sawdust and Buttons (Thoughts on Motherhood and the Vibrant Life)

#1 · June 19, 2008, 3:45 pm

Quote from Forum Archives on June 19, 2008, 3:45 pm
Posted by: hopechestnews <hopechestnews@...>
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The Hope Chest with Virginia Knowles

#11-6: Sawdust and Buttons

Thoughts on Motherhood and the Vibrant Life

June 19, 2008

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear friends,

For this month's Hope Chest, I would like to share three recent posts from my blog. You can visit www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com if you wish to leave a comment or subscribe to the blog by e-mail. I write there more often than I send out the Hope Chest.

I put up a blog post on intercessory prayer today which is much too long to include here, but I encourage you to read it on-line at Got Prayer? I did not include the following two links in that post, but they may be of encouragement to some mom who is praying for a prodigal child, as many of my friends are. If you aren't, please forward this to someone who is!

The Life and Ministry of James Hudson Taylor http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biotaylor2.html

Augustine Couldn't Outrun This Mother's Prayers http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps074.shtml

Virginia Knowles

www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com and www.VirginiaKnowles.com

OK, so here are the three blog posts!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Mommy Brain

After a week of tummy flu in the house and another night of fitful sleep, "fog" is about the best word to describe my brain yesterday, or really all this past week. Nonetheless, I have kept busy with house projects the past several days -- sorting papers, organizing bookcases, repairing books, cleaning out the pantry cupboards and consolidating containers of baking supplies.

In a family this size, food seems to fly off our shelves. A mom's got to do what a mom's got to do, so off to Super Wal-Mart I went after lunch yesterday. (Thad went to Sam's Club for me in the morning, but I, suffering acute cabin fever, was determined to still get out of the house and go do the main grocery shopping!)

I reckon I did well enough there, but I realized as I drove away that I had forgotten to buy soft cotton training pants for Melody. (I had tried the plastic coated ones, and even written her name on them with permanent marker because she LOVES to see her name in print, but she complained that they were too scratchy and tight. My teenagers still remember wearing that kind and told me to have mercy on her. She didn't mind the Gerber cotton ones with the thick padding, but we had only three pair left over from Ben's training days -- not enough to make it through even a single day of potty training. Indeed, she wet three pair yesterday afternoon, and scored one in the potty. But I digress! Back to my errands...)

I had frozen foods in the car, so I decided to stop off at the house, unload the groceries, and take a quick trip to the local kids' consignment store and Dollar General to see if either had any decent cloth training pants. Joanna came along. I sent her over to the Family Produce Store to pick up some fresh fruits and veggies and went on my quest for undies, to no avail. At least we found cantaloupes for 99 cents (they were $2.50 at Wal-Mart) and cherries for $2.29 a pound ($3.99 at Wal-Mart), as well as some limes, sweet Italian peppers, orange peppers, and more. I love this place, which is owned by a Syrian family.

We decided to swing on over to nearby Target, where we found some pretty pink flowery princessy Gerber undies, and I bought a diet Pepsi to keep myself awake. A few blocks away from home, Joanna spotted a blue wicker rocking chair at someone's curb on East Boulevard. We've gotten some of our best furniture this way (including my very favorite recliner chair that I'm sitting in now), so she asked me to pull over. Then she wanted me to back up so she could get a better look. I heard a crunch. I pulled forward. I saw someone's hub cap behind us and I hoped we hadn't punctured a tire backing over it. The rocker that Joanna had seen turned out to be broken, so we drove home.

We found Lydia in the kitchen starting to prepare a gourmet meal of chicken parmigiana. I took some of the younger kids for a walk to keep them out of the way. Melody hearing a dog, chirped out, "Dogs barf!" No, dogs bark, KIDS barf, I thought, recalling how many of my own sick kids I'd had to clean after up this week.

While Lydia was whipping up her gourmet meal, Andrew decided to use the limes to make limeade to serve with dinner. After using our electric juicer and adding the sugar and water, he took a taste test. Uh oh... Tasted a little salty! Um, I guess that means that when I was cleaning out the pantry cupboard a few days ago, I mistook an unlabeled plastic container of salt -- and added it to the five pound canister of sugar! Oops! Fortunately I was able to scoop off the top few saltiest inches and dump them down the sink. There was still a little salty flavor in the next layer, so I measured out two more cups of it to make an apple sauce cake. We even chopped up some fresh cherries to add a little extra zest to an old recipe. It turned out really well, although the teenagers said I added too much flour which made it crumbly to serve. In my defense, I will say it is because the sugar was still a little too salty and I was trying to counteract it.

All in all, dinner was delicious. The chicken parmigiana was particularly yummy, though I must confess I made Lydia leave the spaghetti sauce off mine. (I've told you before what a picky eater I am. I just don't like the combination of chicken and tomatoes for some odd reason.) Lydia had also concocted a new dish of pasta, Greek vinaigrette salad dressing, and cream cheese. Scrumptious! And my apple/cherry cake was "moresome" (as my old college roommate would say). Don't ask me for the recipe -- I wasn't measuring most of the ingredients! But you do know there was sugar and salt in it, don't you?

After dinner Thad pulled me aside with a little question: "Did you hit a curb today? We're missing a hubcap!"

"Oh, um, uh... You see, it's on East Boulevard!"

You may think of me as a reasonably intelligent human being (at least I hope you do!), and most of the time I can pass for one. But there are these times when Mommy Brain strikes again. Did I even stop to think that the hubcap lying on a street I saw after I heard a crunch might be mine? And what's a little salt in the sugar?

I did it again this morning... Ben was up barfing in the middle of the night and came into our room to say it was all over his bed. (I vaguely remember hearing him and then Thad jumping out of bed, but I managed to roll over and go back to sleep while Thad cleaned it up. He's a champ! Naomi also got sick in the wee hours, but took care of herself. She's a champ, too!) Anyway, this morning, Ben needed a little something mild for breakfast and asked for buttered toast, which I made for him. Several minutes later he came in and asked, "Where's my toast?" Oops! I had absentmindedly served it to Carb Queen Melody, who, accustomed as she is to eating about three breakfasts a day anyway, certainly did not complain. But at least I didn't put his toast in the sugar canister or leave it on East Boulevard!

(P.S. Update on June 19: The tummy flu actually went on for another week and I got a bad case of it. Thad had to buy a new hub cap, because the one I left on East Boulevard was too damaged. On the bright side, Melody has done really well with her potty training and she's even dry at night! Yeah!)

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Sawdust and Buttons

I had the delightful privilege of talking to my oldest daughter on the phone this evening, and she mentioned that I hadn't done a blog post in a while. (It's really only been about 5 days.) Mary is spending the summer in Princeton interning as a copy editor at the Wall Street Journal -- and missing her new husband, Ryan, who is here in Orlando working hard as an auto mechanic for the Orange County Sheriff's Office. (Our public safety depends on his excellent work!) Ryan came by today, their first month-a-versary, to show us the 905 digital wedding pictures which came back from the professional photographer.

But that's really not what this blog post is about. It's about sawdust and buttons.

Sawdust? Buttons? I shall explain.

Sometimes I, who usually have my head in the clouds, need to be reminded that the mundane things in life really do matter, things like homemaking and tending to the smallish needs of my children. (I have never been one to notice that their fingernails need to be clipped, for example.) I am trying to keep this fresh on my mind. As Proverbs 14:1 reminds me, a wise woman builds her house. Again, Titus 2:4 encourages me to love my husband and children and be busy at home. And the noble Proverbs 31 woman is the epitome of creative diligence with her household tasks. It's not just doing the stuff, but doing it with enthusiasm and imagination. In other words, I need to put my heart and brains into it.

Yesterday, while grocery shoppping at Super Wal-Mart, I noticed a little figurine of San Jose -- St. Joseph -- who seems to be the patron saint of those who are trying to sell or build houses or something. I don't know because the explanation of the legend on the side of the box was written in Spanish, of which I only understand poquito. Anyway, the little figurine is of a dude dressed in Bible clothes (a long flowing robe) working with a piece of wood at a carpenter's bench, complete with wood shavings. So it's supposed to be Joseph (husband of Mary) doing his daily work. It reminded me that Jesus, too, grew up as a carpenter for 30 years before he even started his three and a half year ministry. Doing his job well with integrity and diligence was no waste of the Savior's life. Nothing elegant or other-worldly here. Just a good honest day's work, done with a spirit of excellence. Sawdust, simple sawdust -- that's what remained for Jesus to sweep after the satisfied customers picked up their tables or stools or storage chests. After all, cleaning up is part of the project! I bought that little figurine (hey, it was 75 cents on the clearance shelf!) and perched it on the back of my stove, along with the salt and pepper. Just a reminder to do the daily stuff with zest, even if only the crumbs and dirty dishes remain after an hour of slaving in the kitchen to prepare a meal that disappears in 10 minutes. (Oh yeah, I'm really "slaving" in a fully stocked kitchen with an electric stove and a microwave and a refrigerator and even an automatic can opener. Oh, and clean running water and grocery stores to buy fresh food! No slaughtering chickens for me! Living in the lap of luxury! Why should I ever complain?)

And buttons? This morning before leaving for church, I had a few extra minutes and decided to pick up a book called Biblical Womanhood in the Home by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I happened to be reading a chapter called "Portrait of a Woman Used By God" -- which, coincidentally, was about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how she made herself available to God in the ministry of motherhood. (Remember, she had at least six other children with Joseph after Jesus was born.) Anyway, I enjoy reading in peace and quiet, and I don't always take kindly to being interrupted, but a steady stream of young visitors started approaching my rocking chair in rapid succession. Buttons! Naomi needed me to button up the back of her dress. Ben needed me to unbutton his shirt collar. (He actually buttoned the shirt himself and didn't miss any.) Melody needed me to do all of her dress buttons -- big chunky flower-shaped ones that seemed to defy my non-nimble fingers. I remembered after I finished this that I had intended to give her a bath before getting her dressed, but there was no way I was going to undo and redo that. Buttons. Little mundane things that my children needed. I am reminded that these "interruptions" are real life. They are little, practical ways to serve, to show love. They matter.

Sawdust. Buttons. Little things that really are a big deal in God's economy.

This all reminded me of a verse in my poem Corpus Christi, speaking of Jesus.

A body with hands: gentle yet tough are those hands
Which created this world we call home
Hands to work hard, stuff of daily life
Built with carpenter’s nails and beams of wood
Hands to heal, stretched forth in victory over pain and decay
Hands to break the meager bread and fish
Multiply in abundance to feed the hungry multitude
Busy hands, yet not too busy to embrace a wee child
To ruffle matted hair, to wash dirty feet
Or to scribble words of pardon in the sand
For a damsel in distress: no stone thrown.

I, as a Christian in 2008, am now a part of the "Corpus Christi" -- the body of Christ on earth. My hands are some of the ones he uses to get his work done. And today, he used my hands to give hugs, put a two year old's hair in a pony tail (never mind that she had taken it out even before we made it to church), make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches -- and button lots of buttons.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Holy Wild

Dear friends,

Books find me in odd ways. At times I find one that I hadn't seen in years, one that had been squirreled away on an obscure shelf, but one that I need to read just now, lying in a conspicuous place, obviously put there by two year old hands guided by angelic ones. And sometimes new books hunt me down, too. This is the tale of just one, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God, by Mark Buchanan. It is not exactly new, but new to me at least.

But first, a flashback. Many of you have heard me tell of God's mercy on me in recent years in in calling me to a deeper place of authentic faith in Jesus and a thirst for the Scriptures. You also probably know that he has rekindled in me a treasuring of his divine beauty and how that overflows into our creativity. I wish I could write more on this right now, but you can always go poking around on my web site or this blog if you are interested in that. That is the backdrop for this post, anyway. My reading habits have taken a definite shift in that direction, hence my appreciation for what Gary Thomas writes and what Sara Groves sings. Another recent favorite is One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God by Sam Storms.

But back to The Holy Wild. A few weeks ago I was cyber-sleuthing resources for a friend and came across a church web site on which the pastor mentioned some of his favorite authors. I love this idea! It gives you an idea of the philosophical/theological well a guy is drinking from. Anyway, amidst C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buechner (both of whom I like to quote) he included Canadian pastor Mark Buchanan. I had never heard of him, and I didn't think much of it at the moment, just tucked it away in my mental files. The next day, however, when I was helping my daughter Mary pack up her bedroom prior to her wedding, she handed me a book that she didn't want anymore -- a Christian publisher's sampler of chapters from recent books. In it were two chapters from The Holy Wild. Intrigued, I devoured them with that kind of "aha!" feeling. He was saying what I have been trying to say about my own experiences of the past two years -- but much more articulately! And I thought that maybe I would order that book soon from CBD.

Then a day or so later Mary handed me a promotional gift certificate, to a local spa, that would expire that day. Someone had given it to her, and she hadn't had the chance to use it. I called the place, booked myself for a facial (a rare treat!), and jumped in the van. Afterwards, I decided to take a trip to Long's Christian Bookstore, which was just down the street (in an area of town where I rarely get to go) and find some books my son Andrew wanted for his 11th birthday. I ventured into the clearance room, and there on the shelves were several hardback copies of The Holy Wild (missing only their dust covers) for a mere $3 a piece. Sure I bought one! Just a few days later, Long's sent me a $15 frequent buyer gift card (I usually go to their other outlet location) so I went back and bought four more copies to give away. On Friday, I read a little piece of it to Thad. He liked it, and so Saturday night, he wanted me to read some more, which paved the way for some good husband and wife communication. I'm grateful for that, too. This is when reading gets practical, when it makes a real difference in key relationships. (Little did we know we would both be up in the middle of the night with little Melody, who has the tummy flu still. He is so tender with our little ones when they are sick, and so helpful getting everything cleaned up. Our life is definitely wild during these times!)

But that still doesn't tell you much about the book. Rather than me rattling on, I'm just going to pick some quotes, interspersed with my comments.

"I coined two terms in that book [Your God is Too Safe]. The first one, borderland, describes the condition of stuckness -- a conversion without regeneration, an initial encounter with Jesus that doesn't lead to a life abiding with Jesus. It's an acquaintanceship devoid of intimacy, dependency, obedience. People on borderland have grown comfortable with boredom. They have settled for a God "on call," a God available for crises and fiascos, who does a bit of juggling with weather patterns and parking stalls but who otherwise remains unobstrusive as a chambermaid, tidying things up while you're at brunch, leaving a crisp sash of tissue around the lid of the toilet bowl to let you know all is in order. The problem, obviously, is that this god--so kind, so shy, so tame--has nothing whatsoever to do with the God of the Bible. This god resembles not even remotely that God whose Spirit broods and dances, the God who topples entire empires, sometimes overnight, the God who reveals himself in the Christ who looks big men in the eye and says, "Follow me," and then walks away, not waiting for a reply. The God who calls us off borderland. The other term, the Holy Wild, describes life with the God who is. The Holy Wild is what life, drunk to the lees, lived to the hilt, is like -- the life where we walk with the God who is surprising, dangerous, mysterious, alongside us though we fail to recognize Him, then disappearing the minute we do. It is the terrain where God doesn't always make sense of our sad or bland lives, our calamities and banalities, but who keeps meeting us in the thick and thin of those lives."

And so, too, I have found myself drawn to the Holy Wild in the past couple of years. I hadn't used that term, but that's what it is. You can read more about that in my article Pilgrimage and Jubilee. God has so many surprising ways of gleefully ambushing me with his presence. My funeral trip to Salt Lake City a few months ago is just one example of this. At the end of my poem Over Utah in January (written in an airplane):

Yet in the valley I see manly habitation
In patterned rows, casual curves beneath the mist
Nestled in yet beckoned to a deep and high communion
Only bold ones venture beyond certain fringes
Strive upward, breathe hard, ascending steep, behold
Some faithful cannot climb but still lift souls to see
To know and long to know
Others seem content merely to stroll in evenness beneath, below
Oblivious to wonder

I am in the sky looking down
Then gazing up in awe at Him
Who gazes down in grace on me below
On me, who sees and longs to know

I never want to be one who is "content merely to stroll in evenness beneath, below, oblivious to wonder." That's boredom in the borderland. I want to be trekking in the Holy Wild, to be "beckoned to a deep and high communion" of seeing God in all his majesty (the one who exults over us with loud singing and dancing!) and then seeing other people as ones who need to be deeply loved with his gracious, tender, compassion. He sends them onto our path, even the unlikely strangers, as we have eyes to see. (This might also be a good time to reread my poem Corpus Christi as well.)

Mark Buchanan is an extremely poetic author, even in his prose. I like that. As you probably guessed, the poetic in me has reawakened along with a renewed faith in the past two years. I have always written poetry, but it has changed in nature, taken on a more lyrical quality in free verse. It is as if my heart is singing from deep inside, with wild abandon, as I did in Rhapsody in M, of the one who "makes merry melodies in me" because of his myriad mercies. He writes (and I excerpt in snatches, with ... in between sections):

"And so it is with God. Our creativity, as least in part, comes from resting in His creativity until it seeps in. It springs from prayer. Not the busy chatty prayer we often do, but the other kind: prayer as emptiness, prayer as silence, prayer as stillness. Prayer as the absence of wanting and asking. Not the clamoring man waking his neighbor, desperate for bread, but the suckled child curled up, satisfied in the mother's arms.... I look at the holographic strangeness of water, the shifting surface, reflecting, revealing, hiding, disclosing. One minute, water will lie still and everything above it--faces, sky, mountain, trees--will imprint on its silvery surface an image as clean as a photograph. The next, the light will shift, a breeze will stir, and everything above and beneath the surface splinters and disappears. Then another shift of light, a dead calm, and the surface melts away to unveil the water's buried secrets... I let these things be, and I simply dwell in their presence... There is nothing mystical about this. This is not a slipping toward pantheism, where every rock bluff or grass tuft brims with divinity. This is simply an act of reverence for the God who makes things, and respect for all that He makes. And then sometimes, God shows up and makes the stones sing. He sidles up alongside, like an artist whose work you are admiring in a museum slipping in just behind your right shoulder and telling you one small, illuminating story about what he was thinking when he made the thing you're looking at. It's not what I bargain for, this moment when God touches and speaks anew the thing He's made. Well, it is, but I've learned that there's no use making demands here. It just happens, or it doesn't. But when it does, it is both wonderful and ordinary, a mystery suspiciously familiar."

And finally, in his chapter A Haven for Fools, on God's wisdom displayed in the "folly" of the cross...

The book of 1 Kings tells of the great wisdom of Solomon and offers one story to illustrate it. Two women come to the king, each claiming to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon says, "I can't tell who's the real mother. Bring me a sword. Cut this child in two, and give half to each woman." One woman cries, "Do it!" The other cries, "No, give the child to her." Solomon knows instantly who the real mother is: the one who would give the child away. That's wisdom, knowing that love would rather see its child alive and whole in someone else's arms than dead and dismembered in his own. The wisdom of God puts a new twist on this. God wanted to see us alive and whole in his His arms, but sin was killing us. Sin was the sword that would sever us. So the King had Himself cut in two instead. It took the Son of Man, the Son of God, dying on a cross to make us whole and to get us back into the Father's arms. With all the wisdom in the world, we never would have figured that out. But when we see it, when we grasp it, we boast in nothing else. We trust in no one else. At the cross God made a way, and you and I can rest there for all eternity."

You can find The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God on sale at CBD for $3.99 (the hardback is $9.99). To see the book and read the first chapter, you can click on the title in the previous sentence and click on "excerpt."

I hope you will be as blessed as I was, not only by the book, but also by the God of the Holy Wild!

~*~*~

Well, that's it for this issue, except for one last little thought.

Since Mary got married and moved out, we've accomplished The Great Bedroom Shift of 2008. Now that Melody is bunking with Naomi, Thad and I finally have a bedroom to ourselves! Yippee! With the extra space, I've have been looking forward to putting an extra easy chair in there so Thad and I can carry on halfway decent, somewhat quiet conversations away from the general hubbub. My friend Alice kindly treated us to a brand new bed-in-a-bag set, so I brought in an old recliner from our computer room and covered it with our old comforter. It has been such a treat to retreat with my hubby and just talk! One little snippet about spiritual life stands out in my mind. I had been sharing with Thad a little more deeply about some changes in my thinking in recent years. In the mercy of God, I have been releasing some of my "chip on the shoulder" home school mama legalism and embracing God's amazing grace and beauty. He gently commented, "So things aren't as black and white for you... Is it more like gray areas now?" And all I could say was, "No, not gray at all. More like rainbow colors!"

Grace and mercy to you, too!

Virginia

www.VirginiaKnowles.com and www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com
-- To subscribe, send ANY message to: [email protected] To unsubscribe, send ANY message to: [email protected] Visit my web site at www.VirginiaKnowles.com  

Posted by: hopechestnews <hopechestnews@...>

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The Hope Chest with Virginia Knowles

#11-6: Sawdust and Buttons

Thoughts on Motherhood and the Vibrant Life

June 19, 2008

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear friends,

For this month's Hope Chest, I would like to share three recent posts from my blog. You can visit http://www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com if you wish to leave a comment or subscribe to the blog by e-mail. I write there more often than I send out the Hope Chest.

I put up a blog post on intercessory prayer today which is much too long to include here, but I encourage you to read it on-line at Got Prayer? I did not include the following two links in that post, but they may be of encouragement to some mom who is praying for a prodigal child, as many of my friends are. If you aren't, please forward this to someone who is!

The Life and Ministry of James Hudson Taylor http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biotaylor2.html

Augustine Couldn't Outrun This Mother's Prayers http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps074.shtml

Virginia Knowles

http://www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com and http://www.VirginiaKnowles.com

OK, so here are the three blog posts!

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Mommy Brain

After a week of tummy flu in the house and another night of fitful sleep, "fog" is about the best word to describe my brain yesterday, or really all this past week. Nonetheless, I have kept busy with house projects the past several days -- sorting papers, organizing bookcases, repairing books, cleaning out the pantry cupboards and consolidating containers of baking supplies.

In a family this size, food seems to fly off our shelves. A mom's got to do what a mom's got to do, so off to Super Wal-Mart I went after lunch yesterday. (Thad went to Sam's Club for me in the morning, but I, suffering acute cabin fever, was determined to still get out of the house and go do the main grocery shopping!)

I reckon I did well enough there, but I realized as I drove away that I had forgotten to buy soft cotton training pants for Melody. (I had tried the plastic coated ones, and even written her name on them with permanent marker because she LOVES to see her name in print, but she complained that they were too scratchy and tight. My teenagers still remember wearing that kind and told me to have mercy on her. She didn't mind the Gerber cotton ones with the thick padding, but we had only three pair left over from Ben's training days -- not enough to make it through even a single day of potty training. Indeed, she wet three pair yesterday afternoon, and scored one in the potty. But I digress! Back to my errands...)

I had frozen foods in the car, so I decided to stop off at the house, unload the groceries, and take a quick trip to the local kids' consignment store and Dollar General to see if either had any decent cloth training pants. Joanna came along. I sent her over to the Family Produce Store to pick up some fresh fruits and veggies and went on my quest for undies, to no avail. At least we found cantaloupes for 99 cents (they were $2.50 at Wal-Mart) and cherries for $2.29 a pound ($3.99 at Wal-Mart), as well as some limes, sweet Italian peppers, orange peppers, and more. I love this place, which is owned by a Syrian family.

We decided to swing on over to nearby Target, where we found some pretty pink flowery princessy Gerber undies, and I bought a diet Pepsi to keep myself awake. A few blocks away from home, Joanna spotted a blue wicker rocking chair at someone's curb on East Boulevard. We've gotten some of our best furniture this way (including my very favorite recliner chair that I'm sitting in now), so she asked me to pull over. Then she wanted me to back up so she could get a better look. I heard a crunch. I pulled forward. I saw someone's hub cap behind us and I hoped we hadn't punctured a tire backing over it. The rocker that Joanna had seen turned out to be broken, so we drove home.

We found Lydia in the kitchen starting to prepare a gourmet meal of chicken parmigiana. I took some of the younger kids for a walk to keep them out of the way. Melody hearing a dog, chirped out, "Dogs barf!" No, dogs bark, KIDS barf, I thought, recalling how many of my own sick kids I'd had to clean after up this week.

While Lydia was whipping up her gourmet meal, Andrew decided to use the limes to make limeade to serve with dinner. After using our electric juicer and adding the sugar and water, he took a taste test. Uh oh... Tasted a little salty! Um, I guess that means that when I was cleaning out the pantry cupboard a few days ago, I mistook an unlabeled plastic container of salt -- and added it to the five pound canister of sugar! Oops! Fortunately I was able to scoop off the top few saltiest inches and dump them down the sink. There was still a little salty flavor in the next layer, so I measured out two more cups of it to make an apple sauce cake. We even chopped up some fresh cherries to add a little extra zest to an old recipe. It turned out really well, although the teenagers said I added too much flour which made it crumbly to serve. In my defense, I will say it is because the sugar was still a little too salty and I was trying to counteract it.

All in all, dinner was delicious. The chicken parmigiana was particularly yummy, though I must confess I made Lydia leave the spaghetti sauce off mine. (I've told you before what a picky eater I am. I just don't like the combination of chicken and tomatoes for some odd reason.) Lydia had also concocted a new dish of pasta, Greek vinaigrette salad dressing, and cream cheese. Scrumptious! And my apple/cherry cake was "moresome" (as my old college roommate would say). Don't ask me for the recipe -- I wasn't measuring most of the ingredients! But you do know there was sugar and salt in it, don't you?

After dinner Thad pulled me aside with a little question: "Did you hit a curb today? We're missing a hubcap!"

"Oh, um, uh... You see, it's on East Boulevard!"

You may think of me as a reasonably intelligent human being (at least I hope you do!), and most of the time I can pass for one. But there are these times when Mommy Brain strikes again. Did I even stop to think that the hubcap lying on a street I saw after I heard a crunch might be mine? And what's a little salt in the sugar?

I did it again this morning... Ben was up barfing in the middle of the night and came into our room to say it was all over his bed. (I vaguely remember hearing him and then Thad jumping out of bed, but I managed to roll over and go back to sleep while Thad cleaned it up. He's a champ! Naomi also got sick in the wee hours, but took care of herself. She's a champ, too!) Anyway, this morning, Ben needed a little something mild for breakfast and asked for buttered toast, which I made for him. Several minutes later he came in and asked, "Where's my toast?" Oops! I had absentmindedly served it to Carb Queen Melody, who, accustomed as she is to eating about three breakfasts a day anyway, certainly did not complain. But at least I didn't put his toast in the sugar canister or leave it on East Boulevard!

(P.S. Update on June 19: The tummy flu actually went on for another week and I got a bad case of it. Thad had to buy a new hub cap, because the one I left on East Boulevard was too damaged. On the bright side, Melody has done really well with her potty training and she's even dry at night! Yeah!)

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Sawdust and Buttons

I had the delightful privilege of talking to my oldest daughter on the phone this evening, and she mentioned that I hadn't done a blog post in a while. (It's really only been about 5 days.) Mary is spending the summer in Princeton interning as a copy editor at the Wall Street Journal -- and missing her new husband, Ryan, who is here in Orlando working hard as an auto mechanic for the Orange County Sheriff's Office. (Our public safety depends on his excellent work!) Ryan came by today, their first month-a-versary, to show us the 905 digital wedding pictures which came back from the professional photographer.

But that's really not what this blog post is about. It's about sawdust and buttons.

Sawdust? Buttons? I shall explain.

Sometimes I, who usually have my head in the clouds, need to be reminded that the mundane things in life really do matter, things like homemaking and tending to the smallish needs of my children. (I have never been one to notice that their fingernails need to be clipped, for example.) I am trying to keep this fresh on my mind. As Proverbs 14:1 reminds me, a wise woman builds her house. Again, Titus 2:4 encourages me to love my husband and children and be busy at home. And the noble Proverbs 31 woman is the epitome of creative diligence with her household tasks. It's not just doing the stuff, but doing it with enthusiasm and imagination. In other words, I need to put my heart and brains into it.

Yesterday, while grocery shoppping at Super Wal-Mart, I noticed a little figurine of San Jose -- St. Joseph -- who seems to be the patron saint of those who are trying to sell or build houses or something. I don't know because the explanation of the legend on the side of the box was written in Spanish, of which I only understand poquito. Anyway, the little figurine is of a dude dressed in Bible clothes (a long flowing robe) working with a piece of wood at a carpenter's bench, complete with wood shavings. So it's supposed to be Joseph (husband of Mary) doing his daily work. It reminded me that Jesus, too, grew up as a carpenter for 30 years before he even started his three and a half year ministry. Doing his job well with integrity and diligence was no waste of the Savior's life. Nothing elegant or other-worldly here. Just a good honest day's work, done with a spirit of excellence. Sawdust, simple sawdust -- that's what remained for Jesus to sweep after the satisfied customers picked up their tables or stools or storage chests. After all, cleaning up is part of the project! I bought that little figurine (hey, it was 75 cents on the clearance shelf!) and perched it on the back of my stove, along with the salt and pepper. Just a reminder to do the daily stuff with zest, even if only the crumbs and dirty dishes remain after an hour of slaving in the kitchen to prepare a meal that disappears in 10 minutes. (Oh yeah, I'm really "slaving" in a fully stocked kitchen with an electric stove and a microwave and a refrigerator and even an automatic can opener. Oh, and clean running water and grocery stores to buy fresh food! No slaughtering chickens for me! Living in the lap of luxury! Why should I ever complain?)

And buttons? This morning before leaving for church, I had a few extra minutes and decided to pick up a book called Biblical Womanhood in the Home by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. I happened to be reading a chapter called "Portrait of a Woman Used By God" -- which, coincidentally, was about Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how she made herself available to God in the ministry of motherhood. (Remember, she had at least six other children with Joseph after Jesus was born.) Anyway, I enjoy reading in peace and quiet, and I don't always take kindly to being interrupted, but a steady stream of young visitors started approaching my rocking chair in rapid succession. Buttons! Naomi needed me to button up the back of her dress. Ben needed me to unbutton his shirt collar. (He actually buttoned the shirt himself and didn't miss any.) Melody needed me to do all of her dress buttons -- big chunky flower-shaped ones that seemed to defy my non-nimble fingers. I remembered after I finished this that I had intended to give her a bath before getting her dressed, but there was no way I was going to undo and redo that. Buttons. Little mundane things that my children needed. I am reminded that these "interruptions" are real life. They are little, practical ways to serve, to show love. They matter.

Sawdust. Buttons. Little things that really are a big deal in God's economy.

This all reminded me of a verse in my poem Corpus Christi, speaking of Jesus.

A body with hands: gentle yet tough are those hands
Which created this world we call home
Hands to work hard, stuff of daily life
Built with carpenter’s nails and beams of wood
Hands to heal, stretched forth in victory over pain and decay
Hands to break the meager bread and fish
Multiply in abundance to feed the hungry multitude
Busy hands, yet not too busy to embrace a wee child
To ruffle matted hair, to wash dirty feet
Or to scribble words of pardon in the sand
For a damsel in distress: no stone thrown.

I, as a Christian in 2008, am now a part of the "Corpus Christi" -- the body of Christ on earth. My hands are some of the ones he uses to get his work done. And today, he used my hands to give hugs, put a two year old's hair in a pony tail (never mind that she had taken it out even before we made it to church), make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches -- and button lots of buttons.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

The Holy Wild

Dear friends,

Books find me in odd ways. At times I find one that I hadn't seen in years, one that had been squirreled away on an obscure shelf, but one that I need to read just now, lying in a conspicuous place, obviously put there by two year old hands guided by angelic ones. And sometimes new books hunt me down, too. This is the tale of just one, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God, by Mark Buchanan. It is not exactly new, but new to me at least.

But first, a flashback. Many of you have heard me tell of God's mercy on me in recent years in in calling me to a deeper place of authentic faith in Jesus and a thirst for the Scriptures. You also probably know that he has rekindled in me a treasuring of his divine beauty and how that overflows into our creativity. I wish I could write more on this right now, but you can always go poking around on my web site or this blog if you are interested in that. That is the backdrop for this post, anyway. My reading habits have taken a definite shift in that direction, hence my appreciation for what Gary Thomas writes and what Sara Groves sings. Another recent favorite is One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God by Sam Storms.

But back to The Holy Wild. A few weeks ago I was cyber-sleuthing resources for a friend and came across a church web site on which the pastor mentioned some of his favorite authors. I love this idea! It gives you an idea of the philosophical/theological well a guy is drinking from. Anyway, amidst C.S. Lewis and Frederick Buechner (both of whom I like to quote) he included Canadian pastor Mark Buchanan. I had never heard of him, and I didn't think much of it at the moment, just tucked it away in my mental files. The next day, however, when I was helping my daughter Mary pack up her bedroom prior to her wedding, she handed me a book that she didn't want anymore -- a Christian publisher's sampler of chapters from recent books. In it were two chapters from The Holy Wild. Intrigued, I devoured them with that kind of "aha!" feeling. He was saying what I have been trying to say about my own experiences of the past two years -- but much more articulately! And I thought that maybe I would order that book soon from CBD.

Then a day or so later Mary handed me a promotional gift certificate, to a local spa, that would expire that day. Someone had given it to her, and she hadn't had the chance to use it. I called the place, booked myself for a facial (a rare treat!), and jumped in the van. Afterwards, I decided to take a trip to Long's Christian Bookstore, which was just down the street (in an area of town where I rarely get to go) and find some books my son Andrew wanted for his 11th birthday. I ventured into the clearance room, and there on the shelves were several hardback copies of The Holy Wild (missing only their dust covers) for a mere $3 a piece. Sure I bought one! Just a few days later, Long's sent me a $15 frequent buyer gift card (I usually go to their other outlet location) so I went back and bought four more copies to give away. On Friday, I read a little piece of it to Thad. He liked it, and so Saturday night, he wanted me to read some more, which paved the way for some good husband and wife communication. I'm grateful for that, too. This is when reading gets practical, when it makes a real difference in key relationships. (Little did we know we would both be up in the middle of the night with little Melody, who has the tummy flu still. He is so tender with our little ones when they are sick, and so helpful getting everything cleaned up. Our life is definitely wild during these times!)

But that still doesn't tell you much about the book. Rather than me rattling on, I'm just going to pick some quotes, interspersed with my comments.

"I coined two terms in that book [Your God is Too Safe]. The first one, borderland, describes the condition of stuckness -- a conversion without regeneration, an initial encounter with Jesus that doesn't lead to a life abiding with Jesus. It's an acquaintanceship devoid of intimacy, dependency, obedience. People on borderland have grown comfortable with boredom. They have settled for a God "on call," a God available for crises and fiascos, who does a bit of juggling with weather patterns and parking stalls but who otherwise remains unobstrusive as a chambermaid, tidying things up while you're at brunch, leaving a crisp sash of tissue around the lid of the toilet bowl to let you know all is in order. The problem, obviously, is that this god--so kind, so shy, so tame--has nothing whatsoever to do with the God of the Bible. This god resembles not even remotely that God whose Spirit broods and dances, the God who topples entire empires, sometimes overnight, the God who reveals himself in the Christ who looks big men in the eye and says, "Follow me," and then walks away, not waiting for a reply. The God who calls us off borderland. The other term, the Holy Wild, describes life with the God who is. The Holy Wild is what life, drunk to the lees, lived to the hilt, is like -- the life where we walk with the God who is surprising, dangerous, mysterious, alongside us though we fail to recognize Him, then disappearing the minute we do. It is the terrain where God doesn't always make sense of our sad or bland lives, our calamities and banalities, but who keeps meeting us in the thick and thin of those lives."

And so, too, I have found myself drawn to the Holy Wild in the past couple of years. I hadn't used that term, but that's what it is. You can read more about that in my article Pilgrimage and Jubilee. God has so many surprising ways of gleefully ambushing me with his presence. My funeral trip to Salt Lake City a few months ago is just one example of this. At the end of my poem Over Utah in January (written in an airplane):

Yet in the valley I see manly habitation
In patterned rows, casual curves beneath the mist
Nestled in yet beckoned to a deep and high communion
Only bold ones venture beyond certain fringes
Strive upward, breathe hard, ascending steep, behold
Some faithful cannot climb but still lift souls to see
To know and long to know
Others seem content merely to stroll in evenness beneath, below
Oblivious to wonder

I am in the sky looking down
Then gazing up in awe at Him
Who gazes down in grace on me below
On me, who sees and longs to know

I never want to be one who is "content merely to stroll in evenness beneath, below, oblivious to wonder." That's boredom in the borderland. I want to be trekking in the Holy Wild, to be "beckoned to a deep and high communion" of seeing God in all his majesty (the one who exults over us with loud singing and dancing!) and then seeing other people as ones who need to be deeply loved with his gracious, tender, compassion. He sends them onto our path, even the unlikely strangers, as we have eyes to see. (This might also be a good time to reread my poem Corpus Christi as well.)

Mark Buchanan is an extremely poetic author, even in his prose. I like that. As you probably guessed, the poetic in me has reawakened along with a renewed faith in the past two years. I have always written poetry, but it has changed in nature, taken on a more lyrical quality in free verse. It is as if my heart is singing from deep inside, with wild abandon, as I did in Rhapsody in M, of the one who "makes merry melodies in me" because of his myriad mercies. He writes (and I excerpt in snatches, with ... in between sections):

"And so it is with God. Our creativity, as least in part, comes from resting in His creativity until it seeps in. It springs from prayer. Not the busy chatty prayer we often do, but the other kind: prayer as emptiness, prayer as silence, prayer as stillness. Prayer as the absence of wanting and asking. Not the clamoring man waking his neighbor, desperate for bread, but the suckled child curled up, satisfied in the mother's arms.... I look at the holographic strangeness of water, the shifting surface, reflecting, revealing, hiding, disclosing. One minute, water will lie still and everything above it--faces, sky, mountain, trees--will imprint on its silvery surface an image as clean as a photograph. The next, the light will shift, a breeze will stir, and everything above and beneath the surface splinters and disappears. Then another shift of light, a dead calm, and the surface melts away to unveil the water's buried secrets... I let these things be, and I simply dwell in their presence... There is nothing mystical about this. This is not a slipping toward pantheism, where every rock bluff or grass tuft brims with divinity. This is simply an act of reverence for the God who makes things, and respect for all that He makes. And then sometimes, God shows up and makes the stones sing. He sidles up alongside, like an artist whose work you are admiring in a museum slipping in just behind your right shoulder and telling you one small, illuminating story about what he was thinking when he made the thing you're looking at. It's not what I bargain for, this moment when God touches and speaks anew the thing He's made. Well, it is, but I've learned that there's no use making demands here. It just happens, or it doesn't. But when it does, it is both wonderful and ordinary, a mystery suspiciously familiar."

And finally, in his chapter A Haven for Fools, on God's wisdom displayed in the "folly" of the cross...

The book of 1 Kings tells of the great wisdom of Solomon and offers one story to illustrate it. Two women come to the king, each claiming to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon says, "I can't tell who's the real mother. Bring me a sword. Cut this child in two, and give half to each woman." One woman cries, "Do it!" The other cries, "No, give the child to her." Solomon knows instantly who the real mother is: the one who would give the child away. That's wisdom, knowing that love would rather see its child alive and whole in someone else's arms than dead and dismembered in his own. The wisdom of God puts a new twist on this. God wanted to see us alive and whole in his His arms, but sin was killing us. Sin was the sword that would sever us. So the King had Himself cut in two instead. It took the Son of Man, the Son of God, dying on a cross to make us whole and to get us back into the Father's arms. With all the wisdom in the world, we never would have figured that out. But when we see it, when we grasp it, we boast in nothing else. We trust in no one else. At the cross God made a way, and you and I can rest there for all eternity."

You can find The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God on sale at CBD for $3.99 (the hardback is $9.99). To see the book and read the first chapter, you can click on the title in the previous sentence and click on "excerpt."

I hope you will be as blessed as I was, not only by the book, but also by the God of the Holy Wild!

~*~*~

Well, that's it for this issue, except for one last little thought.

Since Mary got married and moved out, we've accomplished The Great Bedroom Shift of 2008. Now that Melody is bunking with Naomi, Thad and I finally have a bedroom to ourselves! Yippee! With the extra space, I've have been looking forward to putting an extra easy chair in there so Thad and I can carry on halfway decent, somewhat quiet conversations away from the general hubbub. My friend Alice kindly treated us to a brand new bed-in-a-bag set, so I brought in an old recliner from our computer room and covered it with our old comforter. It has been such a treat to retreat with my hubby and just talk! One little snippet about spiritual life stands out in my mind. I had been sharing with Thad a little more deeply about some changes in my thinking in recent years. In the mercy of God, I have been releasing some of my "chip on the shoulder" home school mama legalism and embracing God's amazing grace and beauty. He gently commented, "So things aren't as black and white for you... Is it more like gray areas now?" And all I could say was, "No, not gray at all. More like rainbow colors!"

Grace and mercy to you, too!

Virginia

http://www.VirginiaKnowles.com and http://www.VirginiaKnowles.blogspot.com

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