Mother's Day with My Mother

Last weekend we decided to travel over to Missouri to be with my mother for Mother's Day.

It's been years since I've spent Mother's Day with my own mother, and that was when we flew her out here for Hannah's birth seven years ago.

My mom and dad live half a mile from my sister Joella (to Mom's right in the photo),

and my youngest sister Kezia also drove down from Illinois to spend the weekend.

It was great being together with my mom and two sisters!

And also with my own youngest three daughters who came with us on this quick trip.

This is on Joella's big front porch that they added onto their home.

Little cousins playing around a pole in the front yard after Sunday dinner.

After a late Sunday dinner, the three families plus a family of friends took Grandma with us for a walk around a nearby lake. 

We three sisters!

Another one of us three going down the trail.

(Seventy-six-year-old Grandma is far ahead with all the young'uns!)

The little children loved hollering down into this big hollow thing and hearing the echo.

Grandma brought her sun hat along, just in case, 

and there was no end of banter about Grandma's orange hat which Craig began to wear 

and now has ended up on another little boy's head.

(More about that in another post, I hope!)

Rose and Susanna comparing heights.

The four girl cousins climbing the mimosa tree in the front yard.

We laughed and laughed about little Caleb's big mouth and how wide he would open it for bites of food! Caleb is Joella and Craig's youngest.

Kezia's baby Matthew, Grandma's youngest grandchild, slept most of the afternoon and is now getting acquainted with Uncle Jonathan for the first time!

He ended up picking his uncle's pocket!

Aunt Anna enjoying her youngest nephew.

Hannah holding her littlest cousin.

Grandma and pa take time to listen to Kezia's oldest girl, Elizabeth, play on the piano the piece she played at the recital Kezia has each spring for all her piano students.

Carrie enjoying dear little Laura, the curly-haired cousin!

Monday afternoon I got several children together to go up to Grandma's and pa's to help with a couple projects.

For one, we cleaned out the little old chicken pen. My brother Hoshea had built a little pen outside the coop when he was down from North Dakota to visit several weeks ago.

That's me scooping dusty stuff out of the chicken nests.

Cousins helping each other turned a nasty job into a pleasant time (sort of).
At least it was pleasant to know we were helping Grandma and pa get ready for a few chickens.

Carrie had Ethan and Hannah help her mulch this pretty flower bed with a bird bath out in the side yard.

Then we cleaned up the piles that Craig and family had raked up earlier, as they have been helping to clean up the property after Mom and Dad bought it.
I have even the littlest children helping, because I firmly believe in teaching even the youngest children to work so they don't grow up with an entitlement mentality, always expecting someone else to do the work and clean their messes up behind them (or, not expecting anything, just floating through life thoughtless of the work they create for others)
My siblings and I have much to thank my parents for in that they taught us early to work and carry our share of the household's responsibilities.

The secret to making "learning to work" work though, is working with the little children,
not expecting them to just enjoy being told what to do when they don't want to do it
and then having to work alone.
Learning to work by helping Mom and Dad, and enjoying the smiles, approval, and praise from thoughtful parents who care about the children's feelings is the big secret.
And it's also a secret to keeping a good relationship between parents and children.
Three girls and I haul the tarp of junk away.

My parents also taught us children to care about the elderly and the weak, and now they are reaping the benefits when their children and grandchildren show up to help them as they are aging and not able to do a lot anymore. 
Jonathan put together a ceiling fan,

and mounted it on the ceiling of their office room in the back of the mobile home.

Hope to have lots more pictures later!

Carrie's Birthday

Carrie turned 17 this week.

She made a Chocolate Peanut Butter Trifle instead of a cake.

 It had Reese's peanut butter cups on top and it was so rich only half of us could finish our serving!

She had invited the girls' friend Emily and the Frenches. 

 Another friend had given her 17 one-dollar bills taped together like an accordion!

Rose and I helped untape them. 

We love gifts given creatively like that.

 Carrie got lots of practical gifts.

 Rose bringing in the baby bunnies for Frenches to enjoy.

Crystal misses these occasions, so hope these pictures let you be a little part, Crystal, 

our dear daughter at Penn View!

"Success is Showing Up and Kneeling Down"--and Not Necessarily About Being Cool

"Success is showing up and kneeling down. Success is faithfulness, ...faithfully showing up,...faithful obedience."

"Success is service, success is kneeling down to serve and going lower and decreasing, so He is lifted higher and He alone increases: Success is showing up and kneeling down."

Ann Voskamp 

I loved that quote by Ann.

It includes a lot of simple, humble serving that just keeps happening day after day,

and not just the days that special things happen like home school activities and games

and planning for birthday parties for our husbands,

Sam met Carrie and Rose at Cabellos last week to pick them up after two days helping our friends the Albertsons clean and pack to move.
Carrie bought this lovely elk mug for her daddy's birthday there.
 

Then the following Sunday we spent up in Denver saying goodbye to our dear friends who are moving to Mitchell, SD, to work with public relations and maintenance at Faith Bible School.
On the wall was this poster from the place where Randy had worked as driver and dispatcher.

His coworkers had appreciated his servant spirit and how he did not get mad and how he treated people kindly.
During the children's time in the service, Elizabeth Albertson led the children's songs.
Beth is such a sweet, totally consecrated young lady.
She was talking to me recently about someone else fitting in at college because they knew how to be cool,

and how she didn't "know how to be cool."

 Personally, I like girls who "don't know how to be cool."

I think non-cool girls are pretty cool. 

Like Elisabeth,

and Emily,

and Joanna, who are all friends with our also uncool girls. 

These refreshingly uncool girls know how to care for ornery little brothers and sisters, 

(well, sometimes they don't know how but they try anyway!)

cook meals, wash windows, clean the house, obey their parents, care about the church's children's ministry, serve others, serve Christ,

 and, in short, 

show up and kneel down--and have all kinds of fun while doing it!

They are being good examples to the next generation of girls (like little Jewellyn) who are being taught to be more concerned about showing up and kneeling down

than being cool.

They can bake really cool cherry bundt cakes

and use their imaginations and speak up for the Lord they love.

Because it's not about being cool and mediocre.
I read in "Frontline Ambassador" last week,
"The risk-free life is a victory-free life.
It means life-long surrender to the mediocre,
and that is the worst of all possible defeats."~Jamie Buckingham

Deer Browsing in the Graveyard--and Buried in Arms of Grace

Sometimes God brings us back to the graveyard of something in our lives that we buried a long time 

 ago--in order to heal that hurt in our lives.

 Maybe it was a hurt or a grief or a personal failure or some failure of others that we had to forgive and forget--

and it got buried.

And then suddenly, there it was again. 

You were just browsing through life, like this herd of deer I saw in a cemetery on the way to church one evening, and a gravestone pops up at you.

Something that you buried. 

And there it is again.

 It happened to us at IHC this year. 

We had just opened our eyes after closing prayer after a message about loving our brethren and not having things between us, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. 

I looked up into the trimly bearded face of a young man who asked, "Do you know me?"

Of course I should have known him, I figured, but I didn't!

So he quickly told me his name, and then, before I could even respond, he threw an arm around my shoulders and gave me a hug!

I could hardly speak, as he also shook Jonathan's hand.

He was the oldest son of ones we worked with on the mission field, was 15 when both our families came home to the U.S., and I had always wondered how he felt about us after we left the mission.

It was something unknown, along with all the knowns, that we had buried

as we had come home and built a second home out on the Colorado prairie.

And here it was, staring us in the face,

and the face was friendly--and kind--and generous--and open-hearted.

That face had extended an arm of grace to someone who had wondered and hurt.

We visited for a bit, and I told him how much it meant to us for him to come greet us and how we appreciated it.

That evening, Jonathan took me in his arms and whispered, "Was that healing?"

What arm of grace is not healing??

You can shovel all day to try to get rid of cold shoulders and icy stares and shivering worries.

 But the warmth of the sun,

and the warmth of a simple hug--nothing attached,

just an extension of grace, eye contact with warmth and openness

can melt a lot very fast--

like there was no ice to begin with.

And it happened again the other day.

A disappointment and nixed plans ended up turning into a time of fellowship with ones we needed to experience grace from and show grace to.

No cold shoulders, icy stares, or turned backs.

Instead,

warmth, friendliness, eye contact, openness, laughter.

What needs to be said when it's just all buried

in arms of grace?

A Singing Flower on my 50th Birthday!

Jonathan brought me home this hanging flower basket a few days before my birthday.

"An early birthday gift," he said.

For my 50th birthday, Jonathan had asked me what I'd like, and I had asked for one day and night that weekend at a beautiful place where there were spring flowers.
Instead, there were no end of snowstorms, and
not only did we have to postpone what I had most wanted to do, but we ended up exactly the last place I wanted to be.

I don't suppose any of you have ever been there, done that.
It bugged me till it dawned on me that the change of plans was not about me.

Sometimes we have to come to understand it's not about us.
It's about Him.
It's about His plan and what He wants to do in someone's life. Maybe ours.
Maybe someone else's. 
It's easy to say on a blog that He wants to shape us, like these chocolate baskets I made.
I'd had the recipe on my fridge for months. You just melt chocolate chips with a little coconut oil. It said to use silicone cupcake liners, which I did not have. So I just smoothed the  melted chocolate chips up the sides of a white muffin tin.

I had to be really careful how I scraped them out, and some didn't turn out too well. :(

But here is a pretty good one.

And here is after I filled them with fruit.

Just a simple little dessert, so yummy.
It's easy to say:
It had to melt.
It had to be shaped.
It had to be filled.
Then it could be eaten.
It's not so easy to do the melting when the heat is on,
to let ourselves be shaped when we don't like the mold,
or to be empty enough so He can fill us. 
* * *
I love all these little cartons of flowers Jonathan got me to transplant into flower beds--
 if the blizzards will ever let up enough for spring to come!

I wouldn't have chosen snow for my birthday, but it's what I got.
And right in the middle of the snow storm, this is what I saw out the window--
a beautiful goldfinch.
It was worth the snowstorm just to receive this gift.

For me, it was a gift.
God's gift to someone who had wanted flowers and springtime and something beautiful.
It was beautiful, and it was a promise of spring,
and it was a perching, singing, yellow flower!
And so, I knew it would cheer me more than once--the first time when I saw it in the tree outside my window,
and a second time when I post it on my blog,
and again when I remember that even when I am hurting inside with many things,
God is good.