A Pleasant Way to Spend the Afternoon

 

Intentional Weekend: The Free Balloon at the Grocery Store

~magic~

    

Thank God for Little Girls

Counting feminine blessings, today.

~Sweet, giggly sleepyheads ever so excited about strawberries, cream, scones and tea and a chance to watch a real live princess walk down the aisle to her prince.

 

~Sighing and smiling and countless requests to watch it again on Youtube.

~A full day of playing wedding, each of them taking turns being the princess bride.

~An evening spent with Mama's and Daddy's wedding album: Mommy looks like a princess, too. And see how Daddy is smiling at her? That's because they love each other.

~Her insistence that they show the album to Daddy when he gets home and that they make him sing all the songs from his wedding.

~Fifteen hand-painted notes for him, stacked on the office desk, awaiting his return.

~The way they refer to themselves as "the girlies." 

~And the way the littlest one refers to the others as "my girlies."

~About a million hair bows.

~The way her hair makes tight ringlets in the rain.

~The way the others love her curls (and wish they had them, too).

~Laundry separated into lights, darks, and pinks.

~Monday ballet afternoons and the outrageous noise level of fifteen giggling, dancing girls.

~And the three little ones all want to grow up to be just like the big sister.

~All five of us knitting together--and teaching Gracie and Mel to knit, too. That way, as Gracie so aptly put it, "We'll all have something to do when we're old."

~Utter delight in the first meal of the season taken out of doors.

~Them begging to go back to  the bluebells.

~Littlest one reaching over all the other pretend cupcakes so that she can have the chocolate pretend cupcake.

~An afternoon of dressing up, posing for the camera, and somehow blurring the line between props and real life, so that they are sure they just had a fancy tea party in the woods.

~The tender care they take of their rather large family of baby dolls.

~The way they don't play "House" (as I did), but they play "Babies" and the favorite game of all, "Babies and Friend Moms."

~Sweet smelling bathtimes, pink fingernails and toenails, rub-rub after the tub.

~Long, curly eyelashes on barely pink cheeks in the glow of the hall light when I kiss them goodnight one more time.

~My heart filled to the brim with my sweet girlies.

{all photos courtesy of the amazing Lori Fowlkes}

Celebrating Papa

~Because this letter, written four years ago, is on my heart as we look towards Sunday's beatification. Of course, there was a baby after this one, too. God's generosity exceeds our most fervent prayers.~

 

April 1, 2007

Dear Papa,

I had planned to write a long column this weekend, in time for tomorrow. But the baby was sick and my hands were full, so all the writing I did was in my head.  I planned to write about that sobbing prayer two years ago, when I begged you to intercede for me. And then I'd write about all the little miracles strewn like roses in the days and weeks and months that followed.

Instead, I stayed up all night, dancing with my daughter.  She was feeling poorly and whimpering to be held. I gathered her up out of my bed and swayed with her in the darkness. For hours.  I sang my full repertoire of musicals.  I moved on to old Raffi tunes. I added a little Glory and Praise. And then, I switched to "You Light up my Life."  Her tears ceased and mine fell freely. I settled into the big chair, her head heavy against my chest and I remembered.

I remembered a time two years ago that was dark and sad. I was struggling with depression and so was Mike. Together, we were fumbling in confusion. Recovery from childbirth had been difficult. Recovery from a miscarriage more difficult. A year of infertility following that miscarriage was a year of pain like none I'd ever known. No light. Only darkness.  And on that Friday night, I held an eerie vigil in front of the muted television.

Please God, I don't know what I'll do without my Papa. And yet I know, I know that he is yours; he always was. Morning dawned and the day moved forward and then you were gone. And as naturally as the sobs escaped my throat, my soul begged your intercession. Tell Him, Papa! Please tell Him how sad I am, how much I want a baby, how much Mike needs him. Tell Him, Papa--I know you can.

And you did. Within an hour of that prayer, the answers began to become so clear.  You led us to a different parish. You put people in my path who would insist that I get to know the Little Flower you loved so well, the dear Saint you called a Doctor and by whom you trusted that the fullness of faith could be taught. She and you taught me about Love--Love incarnate, a good and gentle God who understood my pain and stooped to bind my wounds. I re-read all your letters to me. I read her words. Light dawned, love flickered.

Looking back, I should not be surprised that in the months following your death, I pushed by forces greater than me to travel. You were never afraid to travel. I had not been on an airplane in fifteen years. But I flew three times that year. The first time, I went Chicago and visited the shrine of St. Therese and left my petitions there. The last time, I went to Florida at my husband's insistence. We were there for an art gallery opening but we took a day trip to St. Augustine and the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche.  I had a long talk with Our Lady that day. She already knew.I'm sure you told her.

One night, nine months after you died, my husband lit a candle in a church where you once celebrated Mass, in the presence of your relics. And then, our wait for a baby was over and yet it had begun. For nine more months, I was still, love growing inside of me.  I learned to love your favorite prayer and I prayed the rosary with St. Therese, sometimes twenty decades a day, including the five new decades that were your gift to me. All the time, I was almost afraid to believe, almost afraid to think that the light had returned and darkness was dispelled.

Then she was here.  A glorious, beautiful, darling little girl. We call her Karoline Rose. She is a shower of roses, a basket of blessings. She is sweetness and she is light.  As she grows, I will tell her.  I will tell her about her Papa. She will know you and she will be grateful to share your name.

But now, she calls again. Enough remembering. I am living in the present, embracing every moment. I know you're here. I know you see her dear, dimpled chin. I know you watch me kiss her fat little cheeks and I know you smile.

Thank you!

How does He love me? Let me count the ways...

I sat with Karoline in the early morning light, cuddled up together, candle lit, for our beloved "story time." Karoline has learned that if she forces her eyes awake as soon as she hears me stirring in the morning, she will have me all to herself. And I will read and read and read any book of her very own choosing. Often, almost every day, one of those books is Abraham's Search for God, a book from our family collection of Old Testament picture books.

The story is a legend of young Abraham, who instinctively knows that the idols and statues worshipped by his ancestors are not the true God. So, he looks to sun and moon, to thunder and rainbow, and finds them all lacking. Finally, the little boy Abraham recognizes the one true God in the beauty of the created world around him. He doesn't worship creation, but Creator.

On that morning not long ago, I asked Karoline if she could see God in her world. Could she search like Abraham did? Where was He? She eagerly shared that He was on nature walks, in knitting lessons, in the atrium (the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd), in her little sister, and on Skype with her brother. She chattered on and on, naming and listing with all the sincerity and enthusiasm a four-year-old can muster. I remembered some magnetic list paper I'd recently grabbed from the dollar bin at the craft store. And I began to record her list.

When she took a breath, I said to her, "You know you are really good at seeing God in your everyday life. Look at all these things! These things are the way He tells you that He loves you."

Karoline glowed at the thought.

"And when we make this list, we can think harder about these things and about God and we can stop and thank Him for every one of them."

And she did. She kept searching. I kept writing for her.

I let the idea bubble in my brain for a few days. Each of my children brings a different temperament and personality to his or her relationship with God and then I bring yet another to my own. I wondered if we couldn't all encourage one another to be aware of the gifts. Katie noticed Karoline's list hanging on the refrigerator and wanted one of her own. So I helped her begin. Sarah noticed both lists and crawled up on the counter, drew on them and tore the front page away from the pad. Sigh. Need a new plan.

Could I dare my children--all of them--and inspire them to count the gifts? Could we begin right now, at the start of Lent, and count together as a family, gathering all that awareness into individual books of praise to be filled by Easter morning? I don't know. Maybe. It was worth a try. I gathered them all in one place (something very rare in and of itself) and I told them the plan. I tried to explain the concept of One Thousand Gifts in a way that made sense to them. And then I gave them each a blank book and a dare: Can you count one thousand ways God loves you?

With one exception, they have all taken eagerly to the challenge. Their notebooks are private, but a few glances I've had when they've shared their thoughts have been amazing insights into their souls. And an interesting aside: their lists very much reflect their love languages. It's remarkable how God speaks differently to each them.

For myself, I have a journal on the kitchen counter and another in the diaper bag. Still, I find myself noticng gifts without pen and paper at hand-- at ballgames, at the park, at the grocery store. Sunday morning, as I was leaving home for church, I saw a robin in the rain. I need to remember to write "robin in the rain." I tell myself these things, but often, I do forget. I recalled that Patrick had sent a text to my phone, from my phone, back when my phone wasn't working. Could I text my gratitude notes to myself and then record them later? I almost always have my phone with me. I could and I did.  That phone still isn't working well. Sometimes it takes hours, even days, to receive texts. So, when my phone chimed twenty minutes later and I read, "robins in the rain" I smiled at the unepected joy of it. God messages on my cell phone!

The acoustics in our church are not good and I often have trouble hearing. Given my morning, perhaps it's no surprise that, just an hour later,  I heard our priest say  "May God bless and text you" instead of "May God bless and protect you." Yes, I giggled a little, please, God, keep texting me.

a list:

~robins in the rain

~all nine children home for a grace-filled, peaceful week

~basketball

~hard rain

~safe flights

~a good cry

~late night emails

~yarn that doesn't untwist

~people who will spin such yarn for me

~pay cuts

~child who cleans without being asked

~the man who cooks dinner on an afternoon that begs me to write and write and write, steady rain as my rhythm

~stacks of freshly folded laundry

~old friends

~the boy whose eyes light up when he recognizes grace and he suddenly runs to find his gratitude journal

~the Facebook wall of an old friend and neighbor on the day her father dies--it's like a block party on a summer evening in my childhood; they're all there, all remembering, all loving her.

~four versions of the Bible strewn about my bed and three of us searching, looking for meaning, for Him