Prayers and Poetry, Inspired by Poop

Frustrated, impatient, and tired, I came into my room, sat on my bed and prayed in earnest, “Please, Lord, let him poop.” (You never know what you are going to be praying for as a parent, do you?)

Then just like that, a wave of inspiration flowed over me. Was it the Holy Spirit? I wish. It was poetry. About poop. Most likely inspired by the rhythmic story about the little blue truck I read to my son at least three times while he sat on the potty trying to push “it” out. Glorious, I know.

But, I thought I might just as well share my inspirational poopy poetry with you all. Enjoy .

I call it, “Please Lord, Let Him Poop.”

I’m losing my patience,

He needs a nap.

All we need is a little splat.

Or maybe a plop,

Maybe even three,

Or just as many as there needs to be.

He runs back and forth from potty to potty.

Don’t know if he’s serious,

Or being naughty.

This is taking too long.

It’s been half an hour,

And this whole pooping thing is making me sour.

Poor kid is having hard stools, I know

He needs some Miralax to let it flow.

He wants to go on the potty, that’s great!

But going at all,  I will celebrate.

So put on the diaper, kid, and do your thing,

And we can all rest–this is so tiring.

Whenever, wherever, however he goes

I will holler and shout and give a big “Woop!”

So, please Lord, just let him poop!

How Sweet the Sound

The other night I snuggled up with my son to read books before bed. He picked one of his favorites, a Bible story book with cool illustrations of Noah’s Ark and Jonah and the whale. He doesn’t quite have the attention span for the whole story, so I usually just flip the pages and say a few words about each one. We came to the resurrection story and I read the verse at the bottom of the page.

It was Isaiah 25:8: ”And the LORD God will wipe away tears from all faces.”

And like someone turned on a faucet, tears started streaming down my face.

Now, I am a woman. And a woman prone to tears at that. I cry for many different reasons, in many different ways, but I’m not sure crying has ever caught me so off guard like it did that night.

Why would a statement about God wiping tears from our eyes make me cry?

Homesickness.

There is something about doing familiar things in an unfamiliar place that reminds you just how far away from home you really are.

We went and got our Christmas tree on Saturday. As we were driving to the nondescript parking lot, I realized that the leaves were still on the trees! Yellow, orange, maroon, gold–I have never picked out a Christmas tree with the fall colors in the background.

We set our tree up in the living room, but I didn’t even feel like decorating it. I didn’t want to listen to carols or deck the halls. It didn’t feel like Christmas was coming at all.

I thought the same about Thanksgiving. The palm trees were swaying outside the window as we sat down to our Thanksgiving meal. Not the usual backdrop for our turkey feast. I am used to seeing barren twisted tree branches curling up into clear blue skies through the window as we eat our green bean casserole.

Still, we had a nice meal. We lit a fire. We watched football. We had company. We even ate Indian Pudding, which we were told was a traditional New England desert for Thanksgiving. But I missed my family, and those barren tree limbs.

All these feelings I welled up in my heart, trying to deny their existence. Then I read a verse about Jesus wiping away our tears and it all came out. I was sad. I was homesick. But it was okay. He knew I was feeling down and one day He’s going to wipe all those tears away. What a beautiful thing for the LORD to say to His children. I am so glad the Bible includes verses like that one.

When things are going well in life, I say things like, “God is so good.” I know it’s true. I believe it. God is always good, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth, God remains the same: good.

But I’ve been realizing lately, that the presence of so many good things in my life is not a result of God’s goodness. It is a result of God’s graciousness.

To say that I have these things because God is good in some way implies that He gives these things to me because I am also good. And so good people do good to other good people. But there is no way that I deserve all the wonderful the things I have been given. I am not that good.

I have these things because God is a gracious God, not because He is good.

There are so many wonderful attributes of God, but grace just may be my favorite. Undeserved merit. Kindness. Forgiveness. Grace.

It is enough to bring a grown man (and of course, a woman) to tears. It truly is amazing grace.

So what am I thankful for this Thanksgiving season? God’s overflowing, ever present, abundant, and humbling grace. Without which I would be lost and forever homesick, with no one to wipe away my tears.

Goodbye Grandma

Grandma going to a high school dance.

Well, we didn’t make it to Maine in time.

My grandma passed away on August 3, the night before we were scheduled to leave at 4 a.m. We awoke the next morning with solemn hearts and took our time eating breakfast and loading the car. There was no more need to rush. We had missed her “home going.” I wish we could have seen her, even though she wouldn’t have been the person I will always remember. She would have only been a shell of her true self.

I am definitely going to miss her.

I was fortunate enough to have known her into my adult years and she became my friend. Because of the years we had together, she will live a more complete woman in my memory.

A woman who loved talking politics and religion and above all, sharing her opinion. A woman who loved her husband just as much twelve years after his death as she did when she married him. A woman who made the best jello salad and spaghetti sauce. A woman who felt bad about all the trouble she had given her mother. A woman with many friends, and the mother of EIGHT children. A woman who did laundry every day except Thursday, when her kids were little.

Grandma with baby number one!

A prayer warrior…and a world class worrier. The wife of a WWII pilot, and the younger sister of two brothers. A believer in the LORD Jesus Christ, and a fan of the Minnesota Vikings. She was a wonderful mother, grandmother and friend.

She is a woman I can’t wait to know in Heaven.

“Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble in fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

Isaiah 40:30-31

Hop on the Bus!

A shot from our adventures "out west" in Arizona in 2008. The famous Route 66 I believe.

I’ve always dreamed of driving cross-country, but these days the closest I can get to it is reading about it.  So I did.

I read Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance; Finding God on the Open Road, by Donald Miller. It was a very enjoyable read. I love adventure, I love God. And I love the idea of forsaking the material world, though I find the application much harder. Miller’s goal was not necessarily to forsake materialism, but I suppose it’s a by product of driving cross-country in a beat up bus living on rice and beans.

The book catalogues Miller and his friend, Paul’s, journey driving from Texas to Oregon in an old Volkswagen bus. 

Miller doesn’t delve deeply into the theology of Christianity, or God Himself, but it is his search and his honesty that I like. Miller is a Christian, seeking to know God in a deeper more relational way, rather than in a head knowledge sort of way. Seeking to experience God. He reads Ecclesiastes several times.

Below is one of my favorite excerpts from the book. At this point, they are at the end of their journey and are working at a ranch in Oregon and living in the woods.

“I suppose it takes about a week to get used to sleeping outside. But once accustomed to it, a person cannot easily go back to having a roof over his head. It is no wonder that Christ had a conflict with the rich young ruler. I believe that if Christ were to come to the ranch today, and bid us follow, the folks in the woods might go, and the folks in the homes would probably stay to mow their lawns.

If a man’s senses are either sharpened or dulled by the way he rubs against time, mine have become increasingly sharp over these last three weeks. I am hungry, so I appreciate food and thank God for it whenever I find ice cream or other perishables in a condo I am cleaning. I appreciate friendship, and need no television to keep me company. I appreciate birds chirping, as there is no radio to seduce my ears. I appreciate God, because I live in the house He has made, as opposed to a house I purchased by my own means.

If I found God on the open road, I found Him the same way Solomon did: by the process of elimination. I found God because He kindly removed all the distractions.”

Now let’s go hop in a van and head West, sleep under the stars, see God’s beauty, and forsake the materialistic world we live in. Who’s with me?

Showers and Shepherds

Going to a baby shower when you have a two year old and an eight month old is kinda like going to a wedding after you’ve been married a few years.

“Congratulations!” you say in your best and most sincere tone, while thinking in your head “Good luck, hold on tight, you are in for a ride!”

Of course the congrats are sincere. Being married is awesome. Children are a blessing. They are both gifts from God. But these gifts are from IKEA. They come in boxes needing to be assembled and the only directions you are given are a few little black and white drawings. Good luck.

The baby shower came at the end of one of the longest weeks of my life and thus I found myself biting my tongue about my child’s recent illness and the never-ending demands of motherhood.

The shower was of course, wonderful. Full of women, conversation, some sort of delicious raspberry champagne, cake, and fondu. It was great to see my friend and to celebrate this happy and exciting time in her and her husband’s life. Becoming a parent is like no other change in life. Bigger than going to college, than moving out on your own, and even getting married.

Something in the universe alters when you become a parent. This alteration, I’ve recently realized, is that you are no longer the center of your world. (Okay, as Christian, “you” should have never been the center anyway, but you know what I mean.) All of the sudden, everything you thought about life and how it should operate–your dreams, your fears, your loves–all become different because this helpless little life has just been given to you. And they are yours! Yours to raise, to feed, to clothe, to change, to discipline and to screw up!

One day, a few weeks after I had Landon my mother came to help me. I sat on the couch and looked at my mom cradling Landon in her arms as Jacob played on the floor. I sat there in daze, probably just awoken from a nap, and took in the scene before me. These are my kids, I thought. That baby she’s holding…he’s mine. And that toddler on the floor? Also mine. And then I thought: who let me have these two kids? Are they sure I can handle this?

Most days I can handle it, but being a mom is hands down the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. And that’s the truth.

Then came the stomach flu. This whole  flu thing has literally catapulted me into a new phase of motherhood. The phase of “Oh my Gosh my child just threw up on the carpet, what do I do?” The worrying, the lysol, the laundry, the carpet and the sleepless nights praying to God that everyone would sleep through the night and no one (myself included) would wake up crying or making trips to the toilet.

It’s particularly at times like these that I think of my mother and end up calling her every day to tell her all the details she doesn’t want to hear and ask for advice that I already know. I just want to hear her voice to be reassured that I still have a mother. Someone who loves me and sometimes still takes care of me.

I remember as a kid I always wondered how she didn’t get sick as often as we did. Now, I am the mother bringing in the juice, cleaning the mess, and drinking ginger ale hoping and praying that I’m not next. Because who would take care of the kids? There are no sick days for moms, I’ve discovered.

So it’s no wonder I felt the way I did at my friend’s shower. Are you ready for this Becca? Ready for the worrying, the sleepless nights, the responsibility, the fears, the questions? And the sicknesses that will infest your household every year until they go to college?

But the other night, as I lay there aching and not being able to sleep I began to pray. I prayed for strength, for rest, and for no one else to get sick. And for some reason, Psalm 23 came to mind:

The LORD is my Shepherd

I shall not want

He makes me lie down in green pastures

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

And even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil

For You are with me.

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies

You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. *

It was exactly what I needed to hear. Funny how the LORD knows these things. I needed to hear that He is my shepherd and I am just a sheep. I’m not expected to have all the answers or be the strong one. He is. And He gives me strength—and rest and “restores my soul.” Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (aka the stomach flu) He is with me. And He comforts me. Thank you LORD!

The omnipotence, the presence, of God is something truly amazing. His love is wonderful, but unfathomable. His presence, however, is not. I can understand that. I don’t know how He is present everywhere all the time, but I know what it means to be near someone, to be present. I don’t know what it is like to love as God loves me. Remembering God’s presence gave me peace. A peace that surpasses understanding. It was an awesome thing.

I know there will be many more colds, flus, and sicknesses over the next 18 plus years, but I will try to remember the LORD is with us through it all, comforting, protecting, and looking for a green pasture where we can lie down.

That’s a nice thought.

*I wrote it from memory as I said it in my head that night, so it’s not an exact quote from the Bible.

Why get a flu shot when there’s the church nursery?

Maybe it was our trip to Wal-Mart. On second thought, I’m pretty sure it was the church nursery. Yep, the church nursery gave my child the stomach flu.

It seems like literally every time we drop him off at the nursery during the winter months he comes back with a sniffle or a cough that occasionally turns into an ear infection. This was the first stomach bug to come home with him. I’m not necessarily blaming the people who run the place. Maybe it’s the parents who bring their kids to share their germs. Or maybe it’s bad luck.

But whatever the cause, I’m in a bit of a conundrum. Does this mean I need to bring Jacob to the nursery more often so his immune system will become stronger? Or shall I behave like I normally do and stay away for a few weeks afraid of what germ might be lurking on some plastic toy that Jacob will stick in his mouth?

For the brief time we were in Pittsburgh we attended a small church that we really enjoyed. They had just built a brand new nursery. They made kids take their shoes off and whenever an adult entered the room he or she had to do the same or wear those blue booties over their shoes. Amazing. They had a huge window through which you could see your children play as you came to pick them up or drop them off. Jacob never came back sick from church while we were there. Could it be because we were there in October and November, not the prime flu season? Or was that nursery cleaner? Or was it because there were fewer children?

How many children are in the nursery at our church? Does our nursery make our children take off their shoes? I have no idea because I’ve never seen the place. It’s kinda strange but at our church, after waiting in a roped off line with half a dozen other parents, you exchange your child for a beeper over a counter. You never get to see the room. I guess that’s life at a big church.

The first time I dropped Jacob off as a six month old, I asked to see the room where he would be. It was a quiet room filled with rocking chairs and middle aged women waiting to hold babies. How sweet. They did just that. They held him and loved him and he didn’t get sick. But Jacob has long since outgrown that room and now I have no idea of the mass chaos that surrounds the “walkers” room where I can only imagine a dozen snotty nosed criers. That may sound rude, but quite frequently when I pick him up that’s what I see–snotty nosed criers.

I guess it’s unavoidable. It’s winter time and kids are going to get sick. I don’t mean to harp so much on the church nursery. I have a friend that works there and I’m sure they do a good job. Still, it doesn’t make me all that enthused about getting up and going to church in the morning. And now there’s Landon to think about.

Jacob getting in on home church.

So, if I tell you that this past Sunday was our first day back at church since we’ve been back, you’d understand right? Good. Because this past Sunday was our first day back at church since coming home from Pittsburgh.

Shameful, I know. Thankfully, we don’t get into heaven based on church attendance. For the record, I do think going to church is important for fellowship and teaching, but lately when we go there is little, if any, fellowshipping involved. Some of it’s us, some of it’s the church. It’s a big church and it’s hard to feel involved if you are not really plugged in. We’ve tried, not the old college try, but we have tried. Anyway, this is a topic for another post. But some church shopping may be in our future.

And just so you don’t think we are complete heathens, we’ve listened to some online sermons and had “home church” with my family the Sunday after Christmas. Home church is code for stay home and drink coffee in your pajamas on the couch. My family’s been having home church for years. And yes, it’s more that drinking coffee. And yes, my parents do go to church. But every now and then when we’re feeling lazy (or running so far behind that even we would be embarrassed walking in that late) we have home church, and it is always a great time.

Home church starts off with hymns, usually. With my mom at the piano we gather ’round and sing hymns like “How Firm A Foundation” or “Fairest Lord Jesus” or as in our case last month, Christmas carols. Since we are an unrehearsed “worship team,” my mom occasionally stumbles her way through a song while my dad keeps on singing in his beautiful clear tenor voice. My mom adds in her lovely soprano or perhaps if she knows it, sings the harmony. I never know the harmony, although I sometimes try, so I usually end up singing the melody, voice cracking on the high notes and all. Darrell stands next to me quietly singing the words in his deep voice. He’s off key for almost the entire song, save a few notes here and there. Then there’s my brother, whose recently taken to singing the songs with us. I mean really singing the songs. These days that’s about it. My other two sisters and their husbands are sometimes there, particularly around the holidays. This past home church experience, even Jacob got in on the action.

After singing several hymns until our voices are sore and mom’s run out of songs she knows, we sit down and share about what we’ve been learning. It may be a verse God has shown us, a lesson He is teaching us, something our eyes have been opened to, or a difficulty we’ve encountered. My dad will usually read a passage relating to something he is learning and then we take prayer requests and pray. All the while sipping coffee in our pjs and taking bathroom breaks. It’s pretty awesome.

But as amazing as home church is, going to real church is important too. So, a few weeks from now, when Jacob is finally better and we are ready to handle another illness, we’ll be back. Until then, I’ll be on the couch sipping coffee in my pajamas listening to sermons online.

CHRISTmas letters…

Every year I write a Christmas letter. It’s becoming a tradition. A tradition I enjoy. It’s fun to write and reflect on the past year of our life and on the celebration of Jesus’ birth. It’s something I’d like to continue to do, so when our kids are 30 and have families of their own I can look back and see our life and thoughts in Christmas letters.  Maybe one day I’ll even make a scrapbook of them.

But this year, my task is being threatened. I don’t know what to write. (So I figured I’d write about not knowing what to write…makes sense, right?)

A few days ago, I excitedly opened a little brown box containing 50 glossy 5×7 Christmas cards. I was quite proud of my little card. There are twelve photos on it; one for each month. It’s our year in pictures and it’s pretty neat.

That night, with Christmas carols playing in the background, I sat on the floor to stuff, stamp, and address my little Christmas card.

As I was stamping my Christmas cards and wondering about the proper etiquette of placing stamps, I got nostalgic. Not for a time I ever knew, but for a time when people knew the proper placement of a stamp on an envelope. For a time when Christmas cards were special and nearly all correspondence was written in ink. Before inboxes and even mailboxes. A time when hand delivered messages were second only to a “call” from your neighbor.

When photos were called photographs and they were treasured and few. A time when communication was delayed, difficult, and cherished.

So unlike the days we live in. Now, I can upload 50 photos of our recent adventures to Facebook, while chatting with my sister online. Correspondence is cheap and photos are in abundance.

It isn’t any wonder then that I am having a hard time writing a Christmas letter.  A second glance at my cute little Christmas card and I realize that everyone has already seen all these photos…on Facebook. And if they’ve seen our photos then they know what’s happening in our lives. So why, then, am I sending out a Christmas card?

For this very reason I assume that in the not so distant future, despite all the clever marketing campaigns and promotions, Christmas cards will become obsolete. Instead, people will insert their Christmas greeting into their Facebook status. The thought only serves to strengthen my resolve to write a letter and keep the tradition alive. I don’t want a Facebook Christmas!

But Christmas, I now remember, isn’t about tradition. It isn’t about us or our pictures or our updates or my refelctions. It isn’t about letters or stamps or Christmas cards. And it doesn’t really matter when, where, or how it is celebrated or remembered. Whether in chat rooms or in parlors, Christmas is about Christ.

With that in mind, I will attempt to write a letter. Maybe it will be a short one this year.

Godliness

I’m really enjoying Donald Miller’s book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagon Maintenance. Here’s a good snippet.

“When I begin by asking what godliness looks like, I have the wrong end in mind. It is the process that is godliness, not so much the end result. A godly man will involve himself in the process of being godly. For godliness is not so much a place we are going as it is the going itself.”

What a relief. While it seems impossible to be godly, it does not seem impossible to be in the process of being godly. That’s good news for me!

But then again, if cleanliness is godliness, then maybe I’m not doing so bad. Just kidding, my house is a mess today!