My Friend With an Empty Vacuum Cleaner Bag

I got a little time to myself yesterday.  My husband took the boys shooting and no one needed me for hours.  I was already out, so I took myself to lunch and went from store to store, shopping for a rug to go under a particular chair in my house, or anything else I couldn't live without that was less than five dollars.

And this is happening more and more, only subtly, here and there.  The guys all want to see this action movie or that war documentary, and I'm out.  Sitting in the other room, doing whatever girl/Mom activity I choose.

I used to be the generator, facilitator, supervisor, or recipient of every activity my boys dipped their toe in.  Every activity.  And it was exhausting.  I see parents of young children, now, and remember just how exhausting.  I admire them so much.

Overall, my thought about raising kids who are growing up and seemingly need me less and less, is one of great joy.

But, there is the occasional, and always unexpected, lump in my throat.  Like when I was on my way home from Wal-Mart the other day.  I passed the elementary school that my older boys attended and my youngest still attends.  But, only for two more years.  And in that moment, I felt like I was visiting this town from the future, where elementary school and boys who go there, are but a foggy and distant memory.  And I wanted to cry.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn captures this feeling perfectly in The Cancer Ward, as one of his cancer-stricken characters reflects on his life:  "Sometimes I wonder whether the children were real, whether I didn't just dream them.  Maybe they never existed?"

It's clear, now, that my children are real.  Their bodies are lounging around my living room (including the one who is sharing my couch cushion), Lab Rats is on TV, there are army guys by my coffee cup, a t-shirt on the floor, and dominoes are strewn all over my dining room table.  The evidence of real children is all over the place.

Among our summer sojourns, we've made a friend at the park.  He frequents it five or six times a day, because by his own admission, he doesn't have anything else to do.  He's divorced and his children are grown.  He admits that sometimes, he vacuums, just for something to do.  The bag on his vacuum cleaner stays empty, because his house never gets dirty.

Surely, this will never be us.  Right?!  

But, surely, it will.

Our friend reminds me that I'm living the American dream.  To be happily married, with young children, and time to enjoy all of it...

I'm afraid to admit it, but I need the reminder.  It is easy to miss the treasure of the dailiness - between basketball practices, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and repeating, while never, ever asking myself, "Did I really need to sweep or vacuum?!"

So, in case you don't have a wise friend at the park with an empty vacuum cleaner bag and time to enjoy your kids, I'll loan you mine.

Vacation on a Bumper Sticker

I'm happily out of the mountains and breathing easier again.  We made it home last night from our vacation to Kansas and Colorado.  For me, leaving and coming home again after a day, or nine in this case, always seems to clarify and spark a greater resolve to live life better.  

First, I love the mountains, but I love to be able to see "down the road" more. 

Secondly, I need more (and some is more) discipline in my life.  

I need to:

1.  Exercise (again)

2.  Stop drinking soda (again)

3.  Get up earlier (again)

4.  Plan better for meals (again)
 

People are running and biking up mountains.  I should be able to walk a few laps around a flat park.  People are getting up at 2:00 in.the.morning so they can summit by noon and be off the mountain again before the afternoon thunderstorms roll in.  I should be able to walk a few laps around a flat park.
 

My brother and sister-in-law work out hard 4 (sometimes 5!  Gasp!) days a week at this little-known place called Cross Fit, at 6 in.the.morning.  I should be able to walk a few laps around a flat park.  During our time in KS, they showed us their gym and some of the things they do there.  Goodness.  No wonder they look like that!  And just because they look good doesn't mean they spend a lot of time looking at themselves - it's just an awesome side effect of something called  DISCIPLINE...That big "D" word I need to shake hands with, once again.

Last summer, I did Couch to 5K, which gets you from zero to 30 minutes of non-stop jogging in 8 weeks.  I much-too-quicky dismissed my personal trainer friend when she cautioned me about persevering beyond my goal.  Me?  No way.  I worked way too hard to get there.  Ha. I never jogged for 30 minutes again.  Not even once.  My internal dialogue went something like this:
 

Day 1 (after 15 minutes of jogging):  Hey! I can walk if I want to.  I met my goal.
 

Day 2 (after 10 minutes jog-walking):  Hey!  I can jog some, walk some if I want.  It's better for you anyway - letting your heart rate come down and pushing it back up again.  It's called interval training.

 

Day 3 (walking only):  I hate running!  The important thing is to be moving.  30 minutes of walking daily really is the very best thing, and it's not so hard on your joints.

And just like that, I talked myself out of the whole exercise bit in three measly days.  I'm hoping it works just as effectively talking myself into it (again).

Then there's the idea that people who walk every day walk three miles.  You ever notice that?  Maybe three miles is to walking what eight hours is to sleeping.  But, whenever I think about walking three miles, I think about my 96-year-old friend who says, "If I would have known walking three miles every day would have made me live this long, I wouldn't have done it!"  I'm just saying, there are risks, and it's better if we acknowledge them.

In trying to do anything, we must ask for God's help.  Even when you have done so it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given.  Never mind.  After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again...It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God.  We learn on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven.  The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.  -C.S. Lewis

Finally, I'm taking a page out of the simplicity book of the people who are going before me.  They have years and they have money, and they desire less instead of more.  They're going from bigger to smaller, or to not at all.  You name it.  Campers, boats, dream homes...I think my aunt and uncle are the best example of this lately.  They have a dream place with three floors, a gorgeous yard, garden, flowers, pool, and creek running behind - all for sale - to live somewhere that isn't so much work.  He said he'd leave everything in the house, too, except for his guitars and underwear.  I'm glad for the underwear part...

This is a good thing for me to reflect on.  Twenty-five years down the road, I could be off-loading everything I'm tempted to acquire now.  And for what?  More and bigger isn't better.  It isn't.  It's just bigger and more.  More stuff, less room.  Bigger houses, bigger campers, bigger headaches.  And this is one of the reasons I left the cute Colorado hoodie in the overpriced gift shop; the other reason is I'm cheap.  Instead, I brought home lots of pictures and memories, and none of them will end up in an estate sale.     

So, here are my vacation epiphanies on a bumper sticker... I'm a hills and plains girl.  I need to get moving - in the morning, outside, and in the kitchen.  And less is more.

What does yours say?

Dear God of Mountains, Hills, and Plains,

Thank you for the majesty of Your mountains and the comfort of Your plains.  Thank you for my family and their "Yes" to You, which allows my boys to live in a world where gathering is joy, aided by unseen forgiveness, offered and received.  Thank you for living reminders that laziness needs to be thwarted by discipline.

Please bless all who can't fathom leaving the city or state they live in for lack of time, transportation, desire, money, or health.  Please bless all who leave with a safe return, contented hearts, and a greater desire to reflect Your Glory.  Amen. 


 

Living Someone Else's Dream

It's the first full day of summer, and I need to capture the feeling that it holds for me, before it changes.  It reminds me of when I was pregnant with my first child and everyone kept telling me I wouldn't remember what life before children was like, after I had children.  They were right.  It would never be the same again.

For the first time, a summer stretched out before me seems like a tremendous gift.  I've always looked forward to summers and all that they hold, but saw them less as a gift and something that simply was.  But, things are different now.  I'm standing at the brink of starting a new career and becoming a student again after fifteen years.  I may not have many or even one more non-working summer ahead.  I've also spent two days a week for the last nine weeks in the hospital doing my chaplain internship, mostly in the ER and day surgery, and I'm looking through a new set of glasses.

These glasses reveal the gifts of my life more than ever before.  My family has our health and we have time to spend together.  We get to choose what we want to do next.  Our only limitations are money and a lack of imagination.  Our biggest cross is boredom.  We did not just lose a baby who died in the middle of the night.  We are not bound by a chemotherapy or dialysis schedule.  We do not have to scour labels for gluten, or fear diabetic coma because we had cake and ice cream at a birthday party.  We do not struggle with chronic pain or anxiety.  We are not suffering from homelessness, hunger, loneliness, or addiction.  We don't have gall stones, kidney stones, or infections of any kind.  We aren't burdened by the sadness that comes from watching someone you love fight to live.  We have everything we want, and nothing that we don't want.  Who can say that?

We were at my niece's high school graduation a couple of nights ago, and one of the students said he wanted to join the Marines and have a family when he got out.  I leaned over to my husband and whispered, "You are living someone else's dream."  He half-jokingly said, "That's a big responsibility."  But, I've been thinking about that.  Our whole life is someone else's dream.  Other people dream about when all of their children were young.  When everyone was healthy.  When everyone was alive.  When everyone was happy.  When everyone had time to spend together.  These days of mine are the "good 'ol days" of their's.

Living someone else's dream is a big responsibility.  It is quite possible that other people would die (or give anything) to have what we have.  Our responsibility is to appreciate what we have, and try to stay present.    In the midst of chaos, fighting, ingratitude, and boredom, I am tempted to wish these moments away.  To look forward to another, more peaceful time.  To escape.  Is it just me, or is it funny to think that we may be escaping back to these very moments that we feel so desperate to leave?

We have the privilege of knowing a 93-year-old woman.  We took her to church for a couple of years, but her health is failing, so I've been looking in on her a little more often.  She appreciates my visits tremendously, but gently chastises me about needing to be home with my family.  The last time, she told me that "Families don't last forever" and I need to be spending my time with them.  When she said that, she caught me off-guard; I felt a little shock wave go out from my heart through the rest of my body.  Is it possible my family won't last forever, or at least until I die?  Is it possible that something could happen that would change the way we relate to each other forever?   Yes.  It is possible.  And I am a better woman, wife, sister, daughter, and mother when I force myself to sit in the uncomfortable place where this question lives.  Just for a little while. 

My 93-year-old friend knows this.  She is the last living among her siblings, and many of them were younger than her.  For a long time, she has wondered why the Lord allowed her to survive them all.  She raised six children whom she did not bear.  Her husband's first wife died in a plane accident.  The youngest child was 3-years-old when their Mom died.    Her memories of living in a family like mine are but a distant memory, so she urges me to be present and live family life well, while I still can.

*If we bump into each other this summer, and I seem to have lost the wonder and appreciation of the gifts of time and family, please gently remind me and I'll do the same for you.

Dear God of the Summertime,

Thank you.  Thank you for days upon days on the calendar that are wide open to encounter your love through creatures and creation.  Thank you for the gift of health.  Thank you for the gift of time.  Thank you for the gift of family.  Lord, please be very near to those whose only experience of these gifts is their desire for them.  For us, whom you've blessed beyond measure, give us the grace to give from the abundance you've bestowed.  Help us to live in a way that honors the responsibility we have, while we're living someone else's dream.  Please bless and accompany all who are suffering in body, mind, or spirit.  Amen.