Soft as a Kitten

Soft as a kitten. Sweet babies. Absolutely precious. Today, as I was holding my sweet baby in my arms I buried my face into her soft hair and breathed it in. It was wonderful. Call me crazy. Go ahead. I don't care. There is something enduring about the smell and the feel of a baby. It's like holding a kitten close. From the peach pads of their feet to the feel of their velvety hair and all the cute stuff in between babies are bottles of joy ripe for cuddling. Amazing creations. So there I sat taking in my baby, holding her tight in my arms, just cuddling. Times with our children are so fleeting, we all know this. You blink and that pink and new baby starts walking, blink again and she's riding a bike, blink, blink, blink, now you're looking at her holding up neon earrings asking you when she can get her ears pierced. Blink, blink, blink some more and you start bouncing her babies off your knee and taking in their sweet scent when you hold them close to your chest. Then all of the sudden your treasure chest of baby memories open up and you snap back to all the sweet times you had with that sweet babies own mama. My grandbabies aren't here yet but I love to still imagine the times I get to hold them in my arms and watch them wrap their cute chubby fingers around my wirey grey hair and remember when their own mama wrapped her precious chunky pink hand in my smooth silky brown hair. The love will be the same, even if the face and the hair is different. And I don't stop with little babies. The other day my twelve year old buried herself into my lap and wrapped her legs around my own. We sat there for awhile, us two, breathing each other in, holding each other close. I buried my face in her thick brown hair and remembered briefly when it was soft,black and new. I ran my fingers along her own, looking at her Hello Kitty nails and started counting them like I did when she was first born. The years don't matter. I've stopped holding my eyes wide open in fear of blinking the time away. Babies are precious at any age, from newborn to ten months to 3 yrs to 12, even 80. All the years are precious. And I'm going to love taking in every moment of it.

Nothing is Everything

Too often do I open up a blog to see someone, especially myself, post of nothing going on, "no news here" but yet here I am wrapping my mind around several events of absolutely nothing that in all honesty actually mean everything. A friend of mine who is wrapped in a world of chaos tells me quite often how she prays for normal again for days filled with nothing. How full those days really are! Small events that may not be as monumental as a child's first steps or the day one has come into salvation are important nonetheless. I had five minutes to sit on my couch today and when I did I thought of the days events, the close of B's Apple Camp, housework, schoolwork, my frequent talks with God trying to figure out so many monumental little things. Now, here come my children, dancing on their miniature feet, laughing and playing with each other, "Mommy can I's?" fill my ears and again my head is no longer pondering over "nothing." A Titus 2 woman once told me to savor my time, "The days are long," She said, "but the years are short." Wise words to echo in the nautilus of an ear that experiences so much more than nothing.

Called to Be a Mother

"You mean that’s all you do?”

That’s all? As a mother, your life is given to taking care of people –
small ones, to begin with, whose wants never seem to cease. Sometimes when
your days seem to be wholly taken up with wiping things – dishes and sinks,
little runny noses and big slow tears – you wonder about what “fulfillment”
is supposed to mean for you. You wonder about being (besides the perfect
wife and mother) the hostess-with-the-mostest, creative, intellec-tually
productive, beautiful….and slowly your dreams seem to evaporate.
You’ve been listening to what they’re telling us nowadays about how
important it is to find yourself, express yourself and assert yourself.
Maybe you’re thinking that you’re nothing more than somebody’s wife and
some-body else’s mother. And what kind of life is that?
There is a tribe in the Southern Sudan called “Nuers” where a woman’s
name is changed not when she become a wife, but when she be-comes a mother.
She is “ManPuk” – “Mother of Puka.” Among the Nuers, being someone’s mother
is what makes a woman’s life meaningful. Two thousand years ago there was
another young woman, of the Jewish tribe of Judah, who understood that
truth. The world has never forgotten her – Mary, the mother of Jesus –
because she was willing to be known as, simply, Someone’s mother.
Motherhood is a calling. It is a womanly calling…..and let’s not be
cowed by those who extinguish the light and joy of sexuality by trying to
persuade us to forget words like manly and womanly. At the beginning of
time when God made the first man and the first woman in His image He put
both under the divine command to be fruitful. The woman’s obedience to that
command meant self-giving. First she gave herself to her husband – he
initiated, she responded – then she gave herself for the life of her child.
A woman knows, in the deepest regions of her being, that it is this very
self-giving for which she was made. Single or married, her level of
maturity is measured by how much she gives to others. If she’s married, she
gives herself to her husband and she receives. If she’s a mother, she loses
her life in her child and – mysteriously – she finds it.
A woman knows that no one can really say where the giving ends and the
receiving starts. It is no wonder we are confused when urged to look for
some “better” or “higher” vocation in which to “prove our personhood.” No
wonder we are distressed to be subjected to male standards, or told that the
notions of femininity and masculinity are obsolete.
Old fashioned notions they are indeed, but they weren’t our own to begin
with. They were God’s. He planned the whole system, and it’s God Himself
who calls. He calls some to be single, some married people to be childless,
but He calls most women to be mothers. There are, the Bible tells us,
“differences of gifts,” and they’re all given to us according to God’s
grace. None of the gifts of my own life – not my “career” or my work or any
other gift – is higher or more precious to me than that of being some-one’s
mother.
If our calling is to be mothers, let’s be mothers with all our hearts –
gladly, simply, and humbly – like that little peasant girl Mary who spoke
for all women for all time when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord;
be it unto me according to Thy word” (Luke 1:38).

~~~~~Elisabeth Elliot~~~~~

Moved in and My Little Guy

Ahhh, yes! We are officially moved in! Most of the boxes are unpacked, paintings are hung and we are all getting acclimated to our new surroundings. Therefore, there will be more opportunities for me to get back to blogging! Woo-hoo!
Here is a picture of my little guy. Obviously, he likes the taste of the pads of his fingers OR he's super excited about losing his second tooth! He's six so what can I say? Anyway, this handsome boy has been having migraines about twice a week for around six months. They have gone up to about one a day (they did this in December also.) After a visit to the neurologist it was determined that my son has something called pseudotumor cerebri. Basically something outside his brain is causing pressure on his brain and his eyes. Which explains why he normally holds his eyes during a migraine and tells me it feels like lava oozing out. This Friday he is scheduled for a lumbar puncture, similar to a spinal tap, where they will be removing some excess brain fluid to test and see what is causing this pressure and also to alleviate some of the brain fluid in the hopes that this might cure his migraines as well. Would you mind saying a little prayer for my handsome little guy? I have heard a few testimonies about lumbar punctures and they weren't very favorable. However, I am comforted that his MRI has pinpointed a cause for his pain and it is being treated. Praise the King!