Doughnut Days

A year or two ago, a Saturday morning tradition evolved: around 9:30 or 10:00 a.m., the family (sometimes 2,sometimes 3, and sometimes all of us) would load up for a trip to our local doughnut store, Rise 'N' Shine. The order is always basically the same: 1/2 dozen kolaches, a pink glazed doughnut (Grace), and something in the cinnamon family for Rob.

The people at Rise 'N' Shine over the last year are also basically the same: native Korean waitstaff, who have a great deal of difficulty with spoken English, an older couple with their coffee and two glazed, a combination of mom & two kids or dad and two kids, and usually a middle-aged couple working a crossword puzzle together over coffee and cinnamon rolls.

Every once in a while, a new person comes in or is there when we arrive.

And sometimes, you wonder if you are all from the same planet.

This morning: middle-aged woman is seated in the booth next to ours. Mid-bite, she begins talking to Grace, and then starts talking to Rob: "You'll have to keep the boys off of her with a baseball bat", etc.--odd, but not other-worldly. (Rob muttered under his breath, "Not worried about the boys--worried about the strange women at doughnut store.)

When she got up to leave, she stopped at our table and started talking again--this time, so, so fast that even I--who has a medal in speed-talking--couldn't understand her. I looked over at Luke, whose eyes were getting bigger and wider by the second. Then she said, "You know, they raised minimum wage from 6.55 to 6.85, and all the businesses know it, and they haven't notified any of the employees, because that is how it has always been around here in Lubbock. That's why the FBI keeps a watch on Lubbock. They've always kept a watch on us." Etc . . .

Yowza. I never knew.

A day in the life at the doughnut store. (As she left, Luke said, "I don't know what she said, but I think she works at an auction" [talking so fast!])

Jana

Horses

I received an email from an old friend who, in writing about his fears, mentioned his life-long fear of horses.

I started thinking.

I, personally, am not afraid of horses. I don't mind patting one, brushing one, feeding one a carrot.

I am afraid of what happens when I'm on board a horse--that moment when I use super-human strength to fling myself atop.

Take as proof my last horse-riding experience. It happened in Ruidoso, New Mexico, many years ago. It was a paid ride--the kind where you dish out a large amount of money to "borrow" a horse for a few hours and ride a trail in a mountainous area with a guide and a handful of other city slickers. It started out well enough; I made it on top, positioned myself with confidence, clicked my teeth and pressed in my heels and tried to look natural.

But horses--like children and dogs--can smell your fear. They know when you don't know what you're doing. My horse got about halfway around the trail and refused.to.go.one.step.further. Folks passed me on the right, the guide hollered back some useful tips, and there we sat. He wouldn't budge, no matter how how begged, pleaded, cajoled, whistled, and made deals. Not going.

My other most vivid horse memory happened in childhood. Growing up on a farm and around a myriad of animals does not make one the least equipped for horse-riding. (I got the same instructions for riding a horse that I did the first time I went snow-skiing--"just get to the top, and you'll figure out how to get down. No lessons required." You can just imagine how well that turned out). I digress.

Once on top of the horse, because I had no idea how to guide or position it, it walked me straight into a thorn bush, where I had to be extricated by my dad. In tears.

That my friends, is the tale of two horses. Or is that tail of two horses?

Jana

Too Much To Live For

The assistant provost at LCU is also a foster mother and a clinical psychologist who travels ALL OVER the country teaching and ministering to teens and families. She is also my friend, except I never get to see her because she is traveling ALL OVER the country! She posted this today, and I just had to share. We could all use an extra dose of perspective:

"Occasionally I have the privilege of working with some of my clients for several years. Currently there is a teenager who has been on my caseload for several years. When I first started seeing her in counseling, she had all ready experienced being removed from her biological mother due to her mother’s drug use and experienced three disrupted adoptive placements and several other disrupted placements. Since she has been on my caseload, she has experienced another disrupted adoption and an additional move or two. Admittedly, she has been challenging for her caregivers to deal with. She tends to be argumentative and can be rude and oppositional when she doesn’t get her way. During the last year, it seemed as if she was finally attaching to her house parents and finding a place to belong. Of course, almost as soon as she seemed happy and well adjusted, her house parents decided to move. When they moved, she was abandoned again and then moved to another cottage. Her new house parents got to experience most of the frustration she felt about being abandoned again.

During our counseling session this past week, we were talking about a peer who threatened to kill herself because she was mad. My client told me that she had threatened to kill herself before when she was mad, but that she would never kill herself because she had too much to live for.

Too much to live for. . . that made me stop and think.

Let’s see what she has in her life . . . no parents . . . no regular contact with siblings . . . no permanent adults in her life . . . no permanent home . . . no guarantees about where she will be living tomorrow . . . no guarantee about who will be living in her house tomorrow . . . really no guarantees that most kids take for granted.

But SHE has too much to live for.

When I asked what she had to live for, she began a long list that included going to college, becoming a veterinarian, being a wife, being a mother, etc.

In a few sentences, she proved one of the concepts that research has told us about resiliency in children and adolescents. When kids perceive they have a future to look forward to they make better choices about dangerous and high risk behaviors in their lives. Because my client believes she has a future that will be good, she is making great choices now.

She does have too much to live for!"

--Beth Robinson

Here and Now

"Joy is the result of our choices . . . we always have a choice to live the moment as a cause of resentment or as a cause of joy" (27-28).

Henri Nouwen, Here and Now

I've mentioned about a trillion time before how much I love the blog antiquemommy.com. I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to create a hypertext link (yes, I'm sure it's easy, and yes, I'm just too lazy right now to do it), so I've copied and pasted a post directly here. She's not against the Wii, by the way, or anything else technological. She is opposed to not taking every opportunity to make memories with your children. Read on:

They Won’t Remember The Wii
January 15, 2009

"I once asked my mom what she remembered most from my childhood.

She said she remembered always feeling badly that we were so poor. She said she always wished that she were able to do more for us kids, that she always longed to give us more.

Her answer surprised me because that’s not what I remember at all.

I remember that she rode bikes with us all over the neighborhood, that she let me pull all the stuff out of her cabinets and play in them, that she taught me how to play jacks and how to make a necklace out of clover, that in the winter she and dad would load up the car with all the kids they could find in the neighborhood and take us ice skating, that she was the den mother for my brother’s cub scout troop, that she worked in the school office, that she once made an abusive nun stand down, that she never sent me back to my own bed when I was scared. That’s what I remember.

If there is a lesson here, it is this: Skip the Wii (whatever that is) and the expensive electronics and hang out with your kid.

Because that’s what they will remember."

What do you remember about your growing up years?

From the ages of about 4-10, I lived in a small town named Culbertson, Nebraska. A lot of my childhood is connected to this place, and my memories are vivid.
I remember the first cake I made--Trisha, don't laugh--it was a lemon bundt cake and my mom took a picture of me proudly holding it. I remember sitting between my parents on their bed and practicing my speech for a 4-H competition, a speech my Dad had typed for me on index cards. I remember a lot of sunny, summer days, played among the biggest weeping willow trees you've ever seen. I remember good food--and my mom making homemade doughnuts for us after school. I remember LONG bus rides to and from school--and treks from the school bus to our house across a big Nebraska wheat field on good weather days. I remember wading in the creek that was near our property, and in the winter, sledding down a big hill adjacent to our front door. I remember piano lessons "in town," rides on the "Joy Bus," and lots of potluck dinners at church. My parents were my Bible class teachers all those years, and I couldn't begin to tell you all the good memories of that. Mostly I remember being happy.

Jana

Movies

My friend Susan teaches this really interesting film course every semester; the class always fills up quickly with folks hanging out on the waiting list long after the semester begins, hoping someone will drop. Someone never does.

She was giving me a mini-lecture on films, then sent me a list of the "25 movies to see before Oscar night" that is published by Entertainment Weekly every year.. The Oscars are broadcast on Feb. 22nd, so if you intend to see any of these films, you better get busy. Here is the list of must-sees:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
Frost/Nixon
The Dark Night
Doubt
Revolutionary Road
Wall-E
The Wrestler
Gran Torino
The Reader
Rachel Getting Married
Changeling
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Tropic Thunder
Happy Go Lucky
The Visitor
I've Loved You So Long
Frozen River
Nothing But the Truth
Man of Wire
Synecdoche, New York
The Duchess
Defiance
Australia


Quite a list; haven't seen a single film on it. (My friend the film expert has only seen 4 of them). Have any of you seen any of these? Any favorites?

Just wondering. And procrastinating from doing the work I'm really supposed to be doing. This just seemed to be so much more fun . . .

Jana

Link

Jesus' Compassion

"Jesus is called Emmanuel, which means 'God-with-us' (Matt. 1:22-23). The great paradox of Jesus' life is that he, whose words and actions are in no way influenced by human blame or praise but are completely dependent on God's will, is more "with" us than any other human being.

Jesus' compassion, his deep feeling-with-us, is possible because his life is guided not by human respect but only by the love of his heavenly Father. Indeed, Jesus is free to love us because he is not dependent on our love."

--Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey

Firsts

We all survived the first full week back to school. It was hard to get back into the old routine, when we had adopted a much more appealing routine: going to bed late and sleeping late. We missed the alarm on two mornings, but by some miracle of fast movement and quick showers, we all made it to school/work on time. MIRACLE.

I had two "first" this week:
1. I taught "Literature for Children and Young Adults"--I think I'm really going to like, although it will be a LOT of work since it's an entirely new prep. Sarah, thanks for the Marigold suggestion--I'm using it as one of my required novels; what a fun read! Have any of you read E.L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday?

2. Yesterday, when the weather was still in the 70's, I was swinging Grace in the backyard. While swinging and visiting, I felt a "plop" on my head, instinctively reached up to touch my hair, and--ugh--discovered that a bird had just pooped on my head. As gross as this was, I'm 41 years old, and I am amazed that this is the first time this has ever happened to me, considering how many hours during those 41 years I have been outside with birds flying overhead. What a first! And let it also be a LAST. (I thought Luke would never stop laughing.)

Have a restful Saturday, friends.
Jana

O, Sabbath

"Next time a sunrise steals your breath
or a meadow of flowers
leaves you speechless,
remain that way.

Say nothing and listen
as heaven whispers,
'Did you like it?
I did it just for you'."

--The Great House of God, Max Lucado

Prayer

I read this prayer, but can't find the author to give credit. These thoughts mean something to me as I start the new year:

May Almighty God give you wisdom to be humble.
May His Goodness pierce your heart.
May He give you quiet strength to submit to His will.
May He fill you with an ache and the want to be near Him.
May the grace he has given you become a fountain of mercy.
May His love burn in your heart and purify your motives.
May His kindness to you yield a harvest of peace.
May you have hope to endure hardship and suffering.
May you have faith to be salt and light to the world.
And may you have joy in the knowledge that
He will be with you and He will keep His Word.
Amen.

And amen!
Jana

To Grace

Happy Birthday to our 3-year old blessing.

She didn't know that today was her birthday, because we didn't tell her (Are we awful?) We decided to do her bday party in a week or two, when the glitter of Christmas has faded and when I can plan something really special for her. This is girl who deserves a great party! (She wants a princess/pink puppy dog party. That will be fun!)

When Grace entered the world on a Monday morning, January 2, 2006, I became a mommy for the second time. I felt the same way I felt on the morning that Luke was born--excited out of my mind, terrified, and oh so very undeserving. Not much has changed over the years of parenting--I am still terrified, I still feel undeserving, and I love them both more than I ever thought possible.

Grace is beautiful. That fact is obvious when you look into those brown marble eyes and see her mischievously happy smile; in fact, she is one of the most beautiful little girls I have ever seen. One of my prayers for her is that God will always bless her with inner beauty, that she will be possessed by the qualities that are earned through sacrifice and service, rather than solely those qualities that are given at birth. God is already answering that prayer.

Precious Grace is a gift to our family. She has taught me about laughing out loud, about being flexible, and about embracing new things and new people, which she is very good about doing. She is loyal to her precious favorites: her bobo (brother Luke), her baby dolls, her burp cloth, her pacifiers (with whom she will have to part company this year), and her shoes.

Like her big brother, she loves, loves, loves to sing. She sings loudly and with enthusiasm, and I smile deep down inside when I hear her sing to Jesus at night before bedtime. She loves to perform, and in Shakespearean fashion, the world truly is her stage.

She likes to play "famiwee" (family); I am always the sister, and she is always the mother. When we play family, we usually have at least one tea party and one diaper change for a couple of baby dolls.

Grace loves animals, the great outdoors, and swinging for hours. She thinks reading books is great fun, and anything she can do to earn her brother's attention, she'll do. (She can hold her own with him, too. Let's just say the girl can wrestle!)

I never have enough time to spend with her, and I miss her during the hours we are apart; I wonder what she is doing, how she is doing, and when she is doing it. I wish I had a video camera to record her moments during the day; I am jealous of her babysitter. I am thankful for her babysitter.

Time goes by so quickly. I can't believe Grace is three today, and I pray that God will give us many, many, many happy days together in the coming year. Thank you, God, for this gift. You gave Grace to us, knowing our imperfections and our frailties. Blessed be your name. Thank you for this gift.

I love you, Grace.
Mommy

The New Year

My hopes for 2009:

That I would be more like Jesus.

That my willful self would starve, and my sacrificial self would grow more powerful.

That I would embrace joy and accept every good thing that comes my way.

That I would grow deep, deep roots.

That I would be flexible, open to every change, and fearless in the face of fear.

That my children would fall more deeply in love with Jesus.

That my husband would be blessed with every blessing in Christ.

That I would live in the present day only.

That in all things, God's name would be praised, even in suffering.

Jana