Growing Family

Note to House

Dear 100 Year Old House,

Did you get the memo about spring? Now that things are warming up you can release the accumulated chill of winter. 

Thanks,

Kohana with clattering teeth

Sarah

Right now we're enjoying school holidays before starting the fourth and final term of the year. This will be Small Sun's last term of preschool. After summer holidays (and Christmas!), he will start kindergarten and The Sprout will go to (a new) preschool three days a week. I might not know myself! Times are a changin'!

I can see the end of the year out in front of me. It is a little wobbly, like heat rising off the tarmac distorts the lines on the road, but I can see it there, finite, limited.

I'm planning a lazy summer. The last summer they're all here together before Small Sun becomes a school boy. We'll fill up the kiddy pool, do the slip 'n slide, and eat popsicles every day. We'll go to the beach and get permanent tan lines. We'll listen to the cicadas hum in the trees and eat boxes of peaches, mangoes, and cherries. We'll go barefoot all summer long, except when the ground is too hot to stand on. We'll love and laugh and fight and play.

I can see it all, out in front of me.

But when the year started I heard God say "big changes" and "a right hand turn you can't anticipate" and "build up your courage, you'll need bravery this year."

I'm standing looking at the end of the year, and looking at those words I wrote down from the Lord, and scratching my head a little. No, make that, scratching my head A LOT. 

Imagine a rope bridge across a rushing river. Actually it is just two ropes for the feet, and two for the hands. When you try to cross it there is nothing to hold the two sides together so you end up in some kind of crazy splits before you crash into the water. That's how I feel right now.

We've heard two distinct and clear things that we are supposed to be doing with our lives. But those two things don't seem to be connected. We're supposed to be diligent with both, holding onto both, making place in our hearts and heaven for both, engaging both. But both things don't seem to go together. I'm losing my balance trying to be two places at once. Inside I'm doing some crazy gymnastics trying to hold both those lines. You might not see it on the outside, but inside I am stretched so thin!

I keep trying to find a way to make the two come together and what I keep hearing in my head is "don't pull a Sarah". You know Abraham and Sarah in the Bible? Well God gave them a promise. God told them that He was going to give them a son and make their offspring like the stars of the heavens. Problem was, that was pretty much impossible because Sarah had already gone through "the change" and I guess once you change over, you can't change back. 

So Sarah took that promise from God and did some gymnastics of her own to make it work. She got Hagar, her servant, and Abraham to shack up to make God's promise happen for her. She took God's promise, and when she didn't see how it could happen, because it didn't line up with her circumstances, she manipulated the circumstances to produce a result that looked like God's promise, but wasn't God's promise at all. 

"Don't pull a Sarah." "Don't be a Sarah." It is the word of caution that is living in my heart these days.

Because, like Sarah, God has spoken to my heart that I am the mother of many children. But my current circumstances aren't backing it up. I am living in a place where I'm holding on to the promises of God, and being faithful with where He has placed me, even though the two cannot currently co-exist in my understanding.

As itchy as I feel, as frustrated as I am, as much as my heart is fighting for Belief, I will. not. move. until I see the cloud moving, and I will. not. be Sarah, God help me. 

Mulberry Magic

Life needs magic. Children need it in great heaping doses, and so it is good that they are more able to access it than we grown people are. 

Today I loaded my three children up in my new garden wagon and pulled them to the park near our house. Each one had their hands around the next one's waist, their little arms acting as a series of seat belts as I huffed and puffed them up the hill. 

The playground equipment sits on the top of a rise, and the park slopes down to a great Mulberry tree whose branches sweep the ground.

"There's a cubby house in the tree!" Small Sun and his friend yelled in excitement.

They took off at a run.

And indeed, there was.

There was magic in the Mulberry Tree.

 

Sometimes magic starts off looking like a bunch of clutter, or things out of place. Feet and debris under the skirt of a tree, for instance.

 

 But push through the branches and you're there, in another world. Old sofa cushions, plant pots, a drum and pram litter the ground, a skateboard and record player are wedged into the branches of the tree.

A place like that can transform two regular boys into wild things just as they push through the green.

 

   

  

 

Is there anything more amazing? More splendid?   

A New Day

The day starts brightly, behind the curtains. The sun heralds spring after days of rain. Perfumed winds carry the scent of jasmine through the house.

On the ABC, playing in the kitchen, a soprano tells a languid tale. Outside the kitchen door, tomato shoots pierce the earth.

On the end of our big fluffy bed a ballerina dances, and a proud son displays his handmade book mark presi. Oblivious to celebration, the baby wanders round in fleecy, footed, dinosaur pajamas, his blond hair a halo in the morning sun.

The center of the jubilation sits up in bed, surrounded by wrapping paper and proud children. His hair is askew, as usual, and he is wonderful, as usual.

The print on the Toblerone box says it all: SUPER DAD.

It's a Happy Father's Day here in Australia.