An actual conversation I overheard yesterday while out running errands.
Teenage cashier to the lady in front of me: “How are you today?”
Lady: “Fine.”
Teenage cashier: “It’s so nice outside, isn’t it?”
Lady: “It sure is.”
Teenage cashier: “Do you have any fun plans today?”
Lady: “Actually my husband and I are going to drive over to the beach, put the top down, and enjoy this beautiful weather.”
Teenage cashier: “Oh, that sounds fun. That’s great that you have a cool car that you can do that with. At least you’re not stuck, like, driving a minivan or something.”
Both respond in hearty laughter.
Can we STOP with the anti-minivan propaganda, people?!
I will have you know that I, too, can drive down the coast with my top down. That sun roof provides ample amount of fresh air, while also keeping the heads of my children protected from the elements.
And the satalite radio keeps the jams pumping. I’m fond of the ’90’s station in particular. I like to “Pump Up the Jams,” if you will.
AND I WILL!
Sloan read me a story from the local news the other day of a Lamborghini that went up in flames here in Tampa.Literally went up in flames due to engine failure. My minivan has never burst into flames on the highway.
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, EH?!
I pointed this out to Sloan after he read and he just shrugged his shoulders. “A Lamborghini is still cooler than an Odyssey, Mom.”
Maybe, but can a Lamborghini comfortably seat eight people, 15 sips cups, and stash a handful of stale fries under the seat for a rainy day?
A few weeks ago, I looked in the rear view mirror to see Landon frantically pawing at his tongue, a look of horror frozen in his eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked, slightly alarmed.
“I ate the cheese stick I found under the seat and it tasted SO BAD,” he cried, tears welling up in his eyes.
Okay, so on occasion my minivan may poison small children, but no matter. It’s practical, predictable, and the sleek, sexy black exterior doesn’t hurt, either. That’s right I said sexy.
When it was my turn to step up to the cashier, I got that same genial greeting from the teenager. “Hi there. How are you doing, today?”
“Oh I’m fine,” I said with a smile, all the while formulating my response to the minivan comment. She smiled back and continued sliding my merchandise across the table.
“”It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” I asked, and she smiled and nodded her head.
“It really is! I get off in a couple of hours and I want to just get outside and enjoy this weather!”
I nodded and grabbed my bag of groceries, the fight going out of me at the girl’s youthful, giddy grin. No reason to burst her bubble now. Her day will come soon enough. The day when she walks into a dealership, hands them the keys to her cute, sporty car, and drives home in a minivan.
And the back seat will probably be noisy and stinky, and if she’s lucky full of moldy cheese. A trip to the beach will be less relaxing, but more fun. And all of this is okay, because at the end of the day her minivan will cost less than a fraction of a Lamborghini, and it won’t spontaneously burst into flames on the highway.
Yesterday, my mom came over and picked up the big kids to take them to a movie. Then she kept them through the night. So it was just Lee and I and the baby, but Lee had to work, so I treated the day like any other, put the baby down for a nap, and broke out the bon bons.
Just kidding. WHAT THE HECK IS A BON BON?!
About midway through the morning, Lee walked in, and he was practically giddy. “Today is a mandatory holiday for my company. Mandatory! They practically ordered me to take the day off.”
Then we both stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes because it’s been a long time since we had a stretch of time before us and nothing to fill it with.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
Then I put the baby down for a nap, grabbed my computer because I’m four weeks behind on all things work related, and I snuggled up under a blanket while Lee laid out on the couch to relax.
Burying a parent is insanely draining. I had no idea. I knew it would be sad, and I knew that there would be moments when the reality of the situation would spill over us like the proverbial pile of bricks, but what I didn’t know was that the mental energy it takes to walk through that fire can suck the life right out of a person.
Add to it four weeks of hosting a teenager who doesn’t speak English, a newborn, and three wily kids and you’re bound to feel your brain begin to melt.
We took the weekend to recuperate a bit, but with little downtime it still felt like life was steamrolling ahead full force, and in the back of my mind the question spun endlessly, “Did all of that really happen?”
Then came the screeching brakes of yesterday. The quiet house that some might find boring actually covered us like a warm, fuzzy blanket on a cold day. It was slow, mundane, and it was beyond exciting. Even Annika felt the charge in the air and responded with a three hour nap and endless coo’s and giggles.
I’m not the best at slowing down. In general I like to plow through life and accomplish ALL THE THINGS before I ever really sit down and be still. Unfortunately, on any given day there are more things to accomplish than I could possibly hope, so most of the time I feel like I’m fluttering around without aim.
Yesterday was good. I accomplished some of the things, and I wrote out the other things that needed to be done. Then I just sat down. I read a little. I watched a movie with my husband. I tickled my baby, and I vacuumed the floors (don’t judge- I find that relaxing).
The mundane turned out to be just what we needed. And in the midst of the mundane, we sat and talked about Lee’s dad. We remembered the happy times, and we laughed over some of the funny memories.
Then we imagined heaven and all that Herb must be seeing and experiencing, recognizing that we couldn’t possibly grasp where he is right now.
Yesterday was good. It was slow and boring, and there may have been a little heart healing that took place.
“A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’ s love by a different name.”
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
I’m not going to lie – This baby has a very special place inside my heart. Of course, all of my kids hold their own unique place in my memories, and yes, babies are squishy and undeniably irresistible, but still.
There’s something about the last.
I’m really cherishing the moments with Annika. I don’t feel emotional or sappy about her being my last. On the contrary, I feel like I can truly delight in her knowing that she will be my last baby. Last kid forever? Meh…I don’t know. I will never count out the option of adoption for our family.
But last newborn? Last baby to cut teeth and find her voice, and offer baby giggles when you make just the right sound? Yeah, she’s it.
I’m not in a hurry with this one. I’m taking my time, loving every minute I get with her (when she’s not screaming, of course), and I’m slowly figuring her out. I can’t pinpoint her personality just yet. She’s not quite as determined as her sister was, nor is she as fun-loving and happy as Landon. She reminds me of Sloan. Serious. Studying everything and everyone.
And when she decides she wants to give you a smile of encouragement, she does so. If you aren’t really that funny, though, she can make you feel like a bit of a tool for trying.
I’m just really looking forward to watching this one grow up. I know it will go fast – history has proven that to be true. But for now, in this moment, I’m just going to enjoy her. Each stage brings memories of the last three. Each milestone brings an excitement of the fun to come.
We didn’t plan on this one, but goodness, am I glad she’s here. She is my flag of surrender, and when she looks up at me with those big, inquisitive eyes, the burst of love is about all I can handle.
In a time when life feels unpredictable, I’m infinitely thankful for this last baby hurrah. She’s brought a love that is something fierce, and oh so sweet.
I’ve had this dream since the day my first child was born. It was a prayer whispered many nights as I rocked him to sleep, and it continued through the years, more sporadic, but still always there at the surface, pushing me to pray for something I knew to be a rather lofty hope.
I prayed that all four grandparents would be at Sloan’s wedding.
I knew it was a far fetched notion. How many people are fortunate enough to have all of their grandparents still living when they walk down the aisle?
Still, it was my dream, so I held onto hope.
Last week that dream was crushed, and I’m so sad. Just so, so sad. I wish this wasn’t the new reality.
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I was 12 years old the first time I felt the sting of death. I remember the day vividly, right down to what I was wearing. I’d woken up early that day and showered, then styled my permed hair and put on a white t-shirt (sleeves rolled) and pink flowered jumper with a pleated front, which I tight rolled just above my white Keds.
I said I remembered what I wore. I didn’t say I was proud of it.
I remember walking into the kitchen and my mom bursting into tears as she told me that my aunt was in a coma. When I got off the school bus that afternoon mom was gone, and dad was home.
“She passed away,” dad told me as he enveloped me in a hug.
You don’t forget that sting. Ever.
A few months later we buried my grandfather, and the emotions of that time are equally raw. This week will be forever etched in my older three children’s minds. In some way, shape or form, they will be marked by this. It’s okay – I know that. It’s a privilege to know the reality of heaven so young.
But death will leave a mark.
Annika won’t have a memory of this. She will have no memories of her Papa. Only stories, and a precious few photos. She’ll be okay, but that’s not a reality I like.
*****************
I am going to miss my father-in-law so very deeply. It’s so strange to think of him in the past tense. Even though I knew I was saying goodbye to him when I left after Christmas, it still feels like a shock to know he’s gone.
Herb made me laugh. He was so dry, and always so even. But when he started laughing, you couldn’t help but join in because he laughed with his whole face. Sometimes, if the story was just right, tears would stream down his cheeks as he laughed.
The summer after I turned 21, I lived with my future in-laws while I worked at their church. My intentions were not completely noble. Mostly I wanted to impress them since I had a crush on their son.
Funny thing, though. I could have relaxed because Herb knew as soon as he met me that I was going to be Lee’s wife. It was instances like that that earned him the not so official title of “Family Prophet.” The Lord gave him an extra portion of wisdom, and we all learned to listen close when he spoke.
I have so many memories of Herb that make me smile. Laughter is my favorite, and he knew that. He always made me laugh. I think the thing I will miss the most is rolling into town and finding him in the driveway waiting for us. He was always there, big smile on his face, hand waving.
Every time.
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As Christians, we often hear that we don’t mourn as the rest of the world mourns. We mourn with hope, because we know with confidence that our loved ones stand before the throne of grace. Their faith is made sight. It’s real. We quote 1 Corinthians 15:55: “Oh death, where is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
We hear these things and speak of them, but sometimes I wish that we were given more grace to mourn. I rejoice, indeed, that Herb is now living in the fullness of all God created for him, but I’m also desperately sad. I feel both emotions. And the truth is, death has no sting for the believer who has died, but for those of us left behind?
It stings.
We need time to mourn and grieve. We need to embrace the heartache and the joy. Because they are not mutually exclusive feelings. Together, they make up the roller coaster of emotions that each moment brings.
************
I wasn’t there the night Herb died. I was the only one not there, and truthfully I am struggling with that. I wish I could have been there. There was nothing that could be done about the situation. I know that. I don’t feel guilt, because I was doing what I needed to be doing in that moment.
I was shepherding the hearts of the children placed in my care.
At the very moment Herb was taking his last breaths, I was peeling back more layers of the young girl who has spent the last two Christmases with us. She was unveiling more of her story, a story filled with more heartache than I’ve ever known. I needed to be here, listening and pouring into her. Herb would have told me to stay if I’d asked.
But I do wish I had been there. I wish I could have held his hand one more time. I wish I could have whispered “I love you,” just once more while he could still hear it.
I wish…
***************
Herb and I sat and talked one afternoon over Christmas break and he told me that he was ready to see heaven. The veil between heaven and earth is so very thin in those final days. It’s truly a beautiful thing to behold.
“I’m looking forward to meeting the men who I’ve read about for so many years,” he told me. “I think it will be fascinating to hear their stories. And I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like to stand face to face with God. It’s more amazing to me with each passing day just how much God loves me. It’s hard for me to conceive.”
No more imagining and wondering what that moment will be like. He’s there. He’s free of the pain. The beauty of eternity is it’s unfathomable mystery. While we mourn what we’ve lost, we also offer applause, because he’s there.
He has heard the “Well done.”
What an honor it is to be known as Herb Stuart’s daughter-in-law. I will miss him every single day.
Several weeks ago, Discovery Channel heavily touted an upcoming special in which a man named Paul Rosolie was going to allow himself to be eaten alive by an anaconda in order to raise awareness to the plight of the monster snake, whose habitat is being destroyed by deforestation.
When I read of Rosalie’s plan, I had several questions come to mind. The first was the very obvious, Why again? It was a question without a good answer (because people are stupid was the best I could come up with), so I quickly moved on to question number two:
I wonder how it would feel to be squeezed into the belly of an anaconda.
You know, besides completely and utterly terrifying…
As the events of the last few days have unfolded, I’m beginning to understand what that type of squeeze feels like. It’s almost crushing.
We got the call we didn’t want to get today. “His breathing is labored. They’ve called in hospice. You need to get home.”
Tomorrow morning, my husband will board an airplane and he will go home to say goodbye to his dad. We knew this day was coming – we didn’t think it would come so fast.
How do you say goodbye to the man who has been the rock of the family? The man who stands in the driveway and waits for you when he knows you’re almost there every time you come to town? The man whose dry sense of humor is what makes holidays and summer visits so very much fun?
The squeeze hurts. It’s tight, and you feel like you can’t breathe. But you must – you must keep breathing because you are still here…living.
I will remain at home with the kids. There isn’t any reason for all of us to go up just yet. We said our goodbyes over Christmas, and they were sweet goodbyes. They weren’t sad, but rather joyful and peaceful. I knew it would be the last time I saw my second father, and I also knew it was going to be okay.
But I still don’t like it.
“K” is with us for another week and a half,and the squeeze gets tighter still. It’s been different this year in ways we didn’t quite predict. But tonight she and I sat beneath the stars and enjoyed the balmy Florida winter air. She drank her coffee and I drank my tea, and we just talked. We shared life in broken, simple Russian sentences.
This morning when I woke up, I prayed that the Lord would help me to truly and deeply love her. I didn’t want to just say it – I wanted to feel it, and tonight I did. As she shared more of her story with me, I felt a surge of love flood through me. It wasn’t emotional, but it was very poignant and real.
As I looked at her, I felt the same wave of love that I feel when I look at any of my children.
I don’t know how the next week and a half will play out for us. When I think through the potentials and the possibilities, I feel squeezed so tight I can hardly breathe. There’s a grieving family 16 hours away who I long to be near, and there are the children in the rooms down the hall who need me here.
I’m being swallowed.
As I’ve prayed over our current circumstances, I’ve asked that the Lord would give me the strength and the grace to walk this path well. He is answering that prayer, and of course He would.
I only feel the tightening at night when the sun goes down and the house gets still, and I run through the logistics of every decision that needs to be made, of the heartache and loss that the young woman down the hall has already experienced, of the sting that my children will feel as they experience death for the first time, and I have to slow down, relax, and take deep breaths.
Tonight Tia asked me if her Papa was going to die soon and I told her yes.
“So he’s going to get to see Jesus in a few days?” she asked.
I nodded, because sometimes speaking hurts.
“He’s lucky,” she said. “He won’t have to ever be sick again, and he will get to be with God.”
The squeeze hurts, and it isn’t comfortable. I’d rather not be in this place. But the squeeze is also good. It breaks us down and folds us into the lap of a child with innocent, unwavering faith.
I’ve never been very good at stepping away. Perhaps one of my greatest flaws is my constant fear that I’m missing something. I’ve been this way my entire life. And, lucky me, I produced a child who is exactly the same.
We don’t like to miss a good time.
This week I stepped away. I unplugged as much as I could, and I just entered life fully and completely, and a crazy thing happened when I did this:
Life went on.
I don’t think I missed anything of great significance, and as far as I know not a single person really missed my online presence. Funny thing, this online realm. You feel like what you do is so important, and if you’re not doing it you’re somehow letting people down.
The pressure is something else.
We had a sweet week as a family. Cancer changes everything, which means our time was spent truly relishing the little moments – those precious down times when you just sit and enjoy one another’s company. There were things I could have said, but not many things I needed to say.
I just needed to be.
We are hosting “K” again this year, and it’s totally different the second time around. The first year was spent doing every fun thing ever imagined to give her an experience she’d never forget. This year is real life, and real life is a lot less exciting. That’s produced more stress than I thought it would, but this is the part of ministry that we often forget about.
The hard part – the part that requires you to love in the quiet, not with experiences or things, but with words and time. Cooking in the kitchen, reading books, watching movies. Loving someone in the quiet is actually much harder to do. The constant pouring out is more exhausting than I imagined it would be.
Plus there’s that baby we all have to deal with.
And by deal with, I mean snuggle. Oh the snuggles – they’re simply the best at this age.
As I head into the New Year, I’m looking over some of the posts from this past year that have impacted me. The benefit of blogging is you have a record of the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s always fun for me to go through each month and try to pick one or two posts that I particularly enjoyed writing, and then share them with you all who have so faithfully taken this journey with me.
Happy New Year, everyone! Praying a full and blessed 2015 over each of you right now as I type.
Without further ado, I hereby give you 2014 at a glance.
January: At the beginning of 2014, I was still blogging at Minivans Are Hot. We also went camping with friends right after the New Year, and this post from that experience still makes me laugh. My husband, man. He is always good blogging fodder.
March: I finally moved here to my new site, and this post was one of my favorites from that month as I began to better understand my realistic child, so different from dreamy, creative me.
May: There are also two posts from this month that seemed to resonate more than others. The first was when I shared my reasons for not putting my son’s first solo on Facebook. That pesky quest for fame seems to be something we’re all cautious of. The second was when I shared my own adventures in risk taking (sometimes foolish adventures), and my hope that someday my children will be risk takers, too.
June: This was the month we found to about my father-in-law’s cancer. We’re still learning this lesson as we walk this unwelcome path.
So there you have it! Another year of blogging under my belt. I’m looking forward to the New Year as I continue to grow and learn as a writer, as a mom, and as a wanderer in this big, scary world.
