walkwithme413

Ah, the New Year.

Such optimism. Such naiviete. For some reason, we feel that the turning of a calendar page will be the launchpad, the propulsion that jets us into new health, new habits, new bodies, new lives.

We vow to take on a new exercise (Crossfit! Yoga! Zoomba!), a new habit (Read the Bible one hour every day! Balance the checkbook! Stop procrastinating!), a new diet (Vegan! Paleo! Raw food! Whole30!), a new outlook (Be thankful! More organized! Less tardy!).

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been as guilty as the next one.

Sigh.

I’ve been watching a show about tiny houses lately. What would it be like to condense one’s life into 300 square feet? Ever since living in a tent for six months, I have frequent daydreams of ditching all the stuff and living “deliberately,” as Thoreau did.

However, since there are still children at home and, annoyingly, they feel the need to sleep in an actual bed in a space where crouching is not required, I am still a few years out from living my tiny house dream. (Plus, where would I store the hockey gear?)

So, what I thought I’d do instead is to start the new year not by adding, but by reducing. Starting Monday, January 4 (because who starts something new on a Friday?)(thank you for that wisdom-pearl, Carla; it gave me a three-day stay of execution), I am going to literally eat myself out of house and home.

It’s ridiculous how much food I have stored in my house. Here’s just some of the evidence:

And:

Although I keep a running grocery list on the door of my fridge, before I write “mustard” or “balsamic vinegar,” I don’t ever seem to check  if there might be some downstairs, or even in the cabinet right next door.

Years of this sloppy habit has resulted in an accumulation of frozen, canned, boxed, bottled, and bagged goods that would make a doomsday prepper proud.

So, I have decided to fight back.

Here’s the plan. I will not buy any new groceries until absolutely everything I can possibly eat – within culinary reason – is gone from the house. From the freezer. From the upstairs cupboard.  From the downstairs pantry. From the counter space and refrigerator and storage bins.

I will also endeavor to use as many of the various ingredients that are stored in canisters, jars, Tupperware, and Ziplocks – in the lazy Susan or above the microwave, or under the sink – until every conceivable combination has been explored and exhausted.

No bread? Make some. No more granola? There are nuts, oats, and seeds galore; toss, toast and serve. A snack for after school?  How ’bout muffins? I think I have everything I need.

Whoops – what’s that on the grocery list? Sugar? Sugar!

Perhaps sugar is one of those items I use, ahem, so frequently that supply never seems to catch up with demand. Fortunately, mid-muffin-mixing, I remembered I had a slew of those mini-sugar packets that are usually found next to one’s hotel coffee maker. Why did I have so many, you ask? Well, I admit that those powdered creamers are a treat with my coffee when I go backpacking, so if there is ever any left after a hotel stay, I grab the rest of the bag of goodies and throw it all in the back of the tea drawer when I get home.

I’m guessing you’re sensing a trend…

Anyway, as I was cutting open the little paper packets of goodness, trying to fill a half a cup, in walks the oldest boy child.

Hey, I remark. What you’re looking at is a genius at work.

What I’m looking at is a crazy person, he replies.

So I guess not everyone appreciates the efforts I am making to not bury myself in foodstuffs. He is the only child left at home on a looooong college break, so perhaps he has more to lose, an unwilling prisoner in my noble experiment; still, I did manage to make the muffins and he managed to eat almost the entire dozen, so who’s the real crazy person?

I digress.

Week one.

Things go smoothly enough. I decide three days in, however, when the coffee cream (real, not powdered) runs out, that there is no way I can go without cream until the shelves are bare. I rewrite the rules of engagement and allow myself a $5.00/week allowance to buy whatever I want, whether luxury or necessity. This seems reasonable.

I head to Hannaford with the best intentions, excited to see how far $5.00 will carry me. I am aware of the irony – the blasphemy! – that there are people living in my community for whom a $5.00 outing holds anything but excitement. I sub in the public schools, and my heart breaks for the kids who are not learning simply because they are hungry.

How can this be?

I want to wrap these children in my arms and invite them home for muffins or my latest improvisation, PB&J on crackers (bread requires sugar). We can never solve the problem of Common Core or Sally lagging behind in math and science or any other yada yada yada problem with education today until we figure out how to fill hungry bellies.

This will be good for me, I decide. Align myself with those hungry bellies, walk a mile in their oftentimes bootless feet.

I blame my first blunder on ambiguous advertising.

Blinders on so I won’t be distracted by the glitz and glamour of SO MUCH FOOD, I head to the back of the store and find something called “table cream” for $1.99. Not my usual organic brand, but we’re talking $5.00-wiggle room here. I add a dozen eggs for $2.19. Some quick math tells me I have less than a dollar left, but I spy a bag of apples for $.99. Ninety-nine cents for fresh produce that is likely to last a few weeks? Heck, yeah.

Cutting myself myself some slack for the $.17 overage (don’t be a Pharisee, I rationalize), I head to check-out.

On the way, as I have also promised the oldest boy child I will splurge on some yogurt (for HIM, not for ME…the rules seem to keep shifting)(don’t be a crazy person, I tell myself)(wait – do crazy people talk to themselves?), I throw in a container of Stonyfield vanilla for good measure.

As I smugly watch the figures adding up, one assaults me. $5.03 for the apples? What the what? Ohhhhhhh. Oh dear. It’s not $.99/bag, but $.99/pound. For 5.06 pounds. Dang it.

Reluctantly pulling the extra bills from my wallet, I vow to go back and look at that treacherous $.99 sign. When I do, I discover, hidden behind the mounds of MacIntosh, what I already know to be true. Sneaky Hannaford.

New rule: I will spend an average of $5.00/week throughout the month. This means, of course, most of next week’s $5.00 is already spent, so I will have to make do for another seven days with what I already have.

But I guess that was the point all along. Reduction is sacrifice, and if I am to benefit from this experiment at all, it’s going to have to hurt a little. Perhaps a lot.

Jesus once cautioned, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

It’s comforting to know that my treasure does not reside on my shelves, in my bank account, or even with the others that I love. My treasure is and will always be Jesus Himself.

With Jesus, there is never a $5.00 limit, as all the riches He earned for us on the cross have been paid in full and are at our disposal. With Jesus, it’s always surplus, never deficit.

My tiny house dream will have to wait, for now. Until then, I will practice reduction so that I will be ready when the time comes. Until then, I will rest in Jesus’s promise – “My Father’s house has many rooms….I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:1-3).

I will always have a place to live, with Him, whether here and now, or there and then.

As I trust Him to meet my every need, whatever this new year holds, I can be confident that it will always be “exceeding abundantly above all that (I can) ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

P.S. My BFF Aggie gives me a whole bag of sugar last night. Exceedingly abundantly.

“Martha, Martha.”

She must have frozen at His voice. Was it gentle, scolding, smiling, stern?

We’ve probably all been there. Rushing around, doing doing doing, trying to cook, trying to impress. Meanwhile, she just sits there, NOT DOING ANYTHING TO HELP.

I’ve been thinking about Martha this Thanksgiving week, the story about when Jesus pops over for dinner. Luke tells it this way:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

It’s so easy to judge Martha, 2,000 years and a Bible later. We read this story and tsk tsk her, wondering how she could ever be so clueless as to be worried about the hummus and naan when GOD’S VERY OWN SON was hanging out in her living room.

Martha was the practical one.

By the time Jesus arrived at Martha’s doorstep, His ministry was picking up speed, and there were a lot of people following Him around. In fact, just a few paragraphs earlier, Luke relates the story of the 72 disciples Jesus sent out, and how they came back rejoicing to Him that even the demons submit to us in your name. They may have been rejoicing right up to Martha’s front door, and who can blame her for looking out the window in horror, wondering how she was ever going to feed them all.

Martha, Martha.

And there was Jesus, dusty and tired, surrounded by perhaps a few dozen of His closest followers, relaxing, talking, laughing, teaching. And who is that scooched up right under His very sandals? Could it be? Is that my lazy sister Mary?

Yes, if we are honest with ourselves, we have all had our Martha moments. Moments when we feel unhelped, unnoticed, unimportant, unloved. When maybe we even feel that we’re the only ones doing the right thing, and the rest of the world is a bunch of slackers.

“Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Outrageous.

Martha spouts off at THE LORD and tells Him to tell her sister to helpoutwithdinnerforthelove. Did Jesus get angry, rebuke, scorn? All we have are the few words of Jesus that Luke records, but when I imagine the scene, I picture Jesus with a small smile teasing the corner of his mouth, His eyes dancing with love and fire.

Martha, Martha. I see you working over there. I see your heart, Martha. I know you want only to please, to bless. And, yes, we have traveled far and we are hungry and you are seeing to it that our simple needs are met. I so appreciate that.

I see you, Martha. I see you, but come over here. Come closer. I have something important to tell you.

Worry and disorder are not of My kingdom, Martha. Your distracted mind and troubled heart have no place in My presence. My kingdom is a peaceable one, even in the midst of strife, yes, even then. Especially then. Yes, we are many and we are hungry, but did you not hear how I fed the 5,000 with but a few loaves and fish? I AM not worried, therefore you need not worry. Don’t you trust Me?

We are constantly told as parents that we should never compare our children, so it has always surprised me that Jesus tells Martha to regard her sister Mary, sitting at His feet. Few things are needed—or indeed only one.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

My own kids love to tease each other about who is “the fave,” but of course they know there is room enough in my heart to love each of them with an abandon that sometimes hurts. So surely the Creator of the universe, Maker of hearts, knows His children well enough, knows the love between the two sisters, knows that Martha would not resent the comparison.

Only one thing is needed.

It’s a picture of the cross before the cross. That’s the whole point: Jesus isn’t asking us to perform, to work, to earn His love. He already loves us, has loved us from the beginning of time. We don’t need to rush around, to jump through spiritual hoops, to do or be anything other than ourselves.

Only one thing is needed, and, at first glance, it sure looks like the least practical thing. Sit with Me. Be with Me. Listen to Me. Choose ME.

Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

I have to say this is quite the relief as the chores begin to stack up from a day spent giving thanks. I’ll just sit here with Him. The dishes aren’t going anywhere.

Plus maybe if I wait, somebody else will do them.

I was sitting in church the other day marveling at all the wee ones bouncing, crawling, drooling, spilling, and giggling all around me. We have a remarkably fertile church – I think there’s an actual term in Christian-ese called “biological expansion of the congregation” – and watching all the littles and their beautiful mommies and daddies brings me great joy.

One never knows when a wave of nostalgia might break. Seeing all those littles called to mind the many things I miss about being the mom of littles, now that my four babies can dress themselves and load the dishwasher and roll their eyes. Here are just a few of them:

~Naps…Yep, not gonna lie, the struggle to get a house full of toddlers and infants to sleep all at the same time was a gargantuan challenge. As soon as one would drift off, sweet milk seeping from the corner of rosebud lips, another would pop his or her curious tousled head up out of the covers and ask, “Can I get up now?” Dear One, it’s only been five minutes. NO YOU MAY NOT GET UP NOW. Mommy needs at least an hour before she can cope with the afternoon. One ridiculous year, I had not only my own children, but also the daycare kids I watched to “put down” (that sounds so deliciously final, doesn’t it?) for their naps. Every day, one little, whose mom confessed, “I can never get him to nap; it’s just too hard,” protested during this most holy time with a violence totally out of proportion to what I was asking of him. (It’s a nap, Cooper, not the SAT’s). I, being the ADULT, and hence, in charge, would wait out his tearful protests until at last, with great drama, he would succumb. Hours later, he would awake in full scream, always with a diaper full of poo; I suppose he thought that made us even. But when it worked…all of us deep in REM unison, the house’s hushed ticking like the rocking of a boat, it was a marvelous and spiritual thing. Of course, I can nap now. But without the struggle, it doesn’t feel nearly as victorious.

~Nursing… Are you kidding me? Is there anything more intimate and soothing and sacred than nursing the blood of your blood, flesh of your flesh? (Well, perhaps the event that inspired the baby’s genesis, but this is a post about littles). Morning, noon, and night – and mid-morning, late morning, late afternoon, late evening, midnight, dawn, and any other time an empty belly cries – mothers are given the awesome privilege of actually feeding their human babies with the extract of their own bodies. This is a deep, deep mystery, and one that I dearly miss. Young mothers, may I suggest that never again will you be able to meet your child’s express need so precisely than when you are able to nurse them from misery to bliss? Stop, sit, cuddle, coo. With all the other crazy that comes with the territory of being a new mom, I think God really knew what He was doing with this one.

~Smaller battles… Honestly, I can remember times when the little’s decision whether to wear a sensible outfit or his Pokemon costume to a playdate was a battle to the death (and looking back, why did I even care?) Now that my littles are big, however, and can speak with real words and use sneaky logic, it is harder to know who’s actually in charge. Smaller people, smaller battles. But make no mistake: we are exhorted to train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Train, train, train with everything you’ve got because, sooner than you’d ever believe was possible, your little will be asking for the car keys or talking to (gasp) girls, and unless the seeds you have sown are faithfulness and self-control, you will be fielding phone calls from the police or your son’s school (or so I’ve heard…wink…sigh).

~They stay put… When you put a baby down, say, on the floor or in a jog stroller, as a general rule, that’s where you will find them when you look for them again. Teenagers have way too many moving parts and are unwilling to be tied down to anything as tedious as an agenda. I’m heading out to hang with the boys, Ma, I’ll see ya later is the most specific information I can expect from my 19-year-old on any given Friday night. Which boys? Out where? Define “later.” It’s constantly in flux, and for this reason, I am grateful for the iPhone. On the other hand, that astonished look on a baby’s face when you pop yours back into their field of vision after a short hiatus is as comical as it is dear. Wait! You were back there the whole time? Nobody told me! I miss that.

~ Bedtime… Don’t get me wrong. Spending the day with a little, or a herd of them, can be wild and unpredictable and exhilarating. I loved every waking moment I spent with my wiggly littles. But no matter how you may feel, you’ve gotta put your game face on every morning, especially when it involves a trip to the grocery store or your in-laws. Days with littles are looooong. At the end of the day, though, when all the tears have been kissed away and they’re bathed and jammied and tucked in tight, the most magical thing happens. You open their favorite book and even though they’ve heard goodnight comb, and goodnight brush, goodnight nobody, goodnight mush a million and one times before, and even though you might still be harboring a wee bit of resentment over the jelly incident at lunch, the warmth and the stillness close in until the universe compacts into just the two of you. Your breathing slows as a chubby hand reaches out to twirl a strand of your hair. Your cheeks touch. You whisper prayers. Soon, your little’s tiny body is curled up like a comma and you wonder if it’s even worth it to get up and move to your own bed. These days, I’m lucky if I outwit, outlast, or outplay my bigs’ bedtimes. More often than not, I’m poking my head into their room on the way to making the next day’s coffee and smiling at the bulky heap of their cusp-of-adulthood bodies, so reassuringly there, a shadow of what once-was. I suppose this, too, is magical, but not at all in the same way.

My biggest little is married now. And though I miss her once babyfine curls and small sweet voice, I am comforted by this profound truth found in the book of Ecclesiastes: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…

One day, she and her brothers might have littles of their own, and what joy will fill my heart then!

The apostle Paul reminds us that it is not God’s way to leave us in one place for too long. He writes: When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Our wise God has given us seasons to enjoy, and it’s good to revel in the now-ness of them as well as to look back and treasure.

As much as we would love to linger, He moves us ever-on, growing and learning and becoming, so that one day, we will stand before Him in all our Christ-likeness, no longer in-part but, at last, complete.  

So I was subbing in a biology classroom this week.

First, let me offer how grateful I am to have a job, a steady job, in my field (sort of), that pays reasonably well, keeps my mind animated, and gets me out of the house so that I may interact with other people besides my cats. I’m blessed and I know it.

One of the wonderful things about substitute teaching is that every day is different. (This can also be its curse, but let’s not go there today.) A sub can be coloring zoo-phonic animals with chatty kindergarteners one day (G-Gordo-Gorilla! Guh-Guh-Guh!), or solving algebraic equations with squirrelly sophomores the next.

Quickly one discovers the culture of each school, which is, unfortunately, disproportionately dependent upon Those In Power – the principal, the deans, anyone responsible for maintaining order: The Ones Who Have Your Back. This is important for a sub, for as every student knows, it is open season to misbehave when Mrs. Peterson is out sick. It is a lot more fun to sub at a place where discipline is not a naughty word and Those In Power have firmed established a culture of kindness, trust, and earnest expectation.

The particular high school where I found myself subbing in this bio class was one of those coveted kind places. I’m happy when I get called to go there, and I was happy when, after handing out the reading on volcanos, the students were immediately productive, each finding a quiet place in the lab or hallway to digest the information.

This left me with nothing to do. Typically, I might catch up on the news, check my email, or subversively snack, periodically taking a tour around to make sure students are on task. Anything more invasive is seen as hovering, and teenagers are not huge fans of hovering.

I also like to learn. Since these students were being quiet – in a non-suspicious way – I grabbed the volcano handout and started to read.

The first paragraph transported me back to August 27, 1883, to the island of Krakatau where, at 10:02 AM, an explosion likened to the force of a nuclear bomb blew the tiny island to smithereens, producing 135 foot tsumanis, a column of ash and debris 3 miles high, and an airborne sound that traveled half way across the globe, the longest distance ever in recorded history. All that was left of poor Krakatau were two small, denuded humps they had to rename Anak Krakatau and Rakata.

For a moment, let’s not focus on the enormity of the cataclysmic event, the 40,000 people who died, or the geological re-ordering that occurred when the displaced sea flooded back into the newly formed subterranean caldera. Let’s just say it was big.

What truly amazed me was reading about the re-colonization of Rakata. Nine months after Krakatau blew herself apart, French scientists were combing the sterile surface of Rakata for evidence of life when they discovered one microscopic spider. It was the first living organism to appear, so they were puzzled. How had it come to be on the now-naked island?

As childhood readers of Charlotte’s Web may remember, newly hatched spiders spin a thread of silk from their tiny posteriors; when this filament catches a passing wind, the baby spider soars up and away, joining (and here’s the amazing part) an entire microscopic universe of creatures called aeolian plankton. I was familiar with your garden variety sea plankton, the huge masses of algae and protozoa that course through the ocean on currents, like a mobile delicatessen for the more ambulatory critters of the deep; but AIR plankton? Who knew?

Do we breathe in these planktonic bacteria, these fungus spores, these small seeds and aphids and insects and the myriad other invisible creatures that blow around us waiting for their BIG CHANCE to land somewhere hospitable and begin terrestrial life? Apparently, we do.

More incredible facts about the re-life-ing of Rakata emerged as I kept one eye on my students and the other on Southeast Asia. As the invasion of the aeolian plankton began to green the barren surface of Rakata, other players began to arrive. Lizards negotiated the straight between Rakata and the nearby islands of Java and Sumatra, dining on sea crabs along the way. Birds flew over, and bats, butterflies, and dragonflies. One reticulated python, a serpentine version of Michael Phelps, took to the water and slithered up one day. Lazier species hitched rides on log rafts or buoyant pumice stones, so that decades after the eruption, frogs, rodents, and other small animals once again began to hop and crawl and glide over the island, defecating and dying and decaying, leaving a trail of rich soil behind them for more flora to take root.

Species surged and waned, advanced and retreated, checked in and checked out, until at last, after about a century, the island ecosystem reached an equilibrium.

It made me wonder.

Do we ever reach anything like equilibrium in our own lives? And what would that look like?

I know for a fact that there are times when we ourselves are scoured clean, Krakatau-style, by what the apostle James calls “trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). I don’t think James was talking about the I-didn’t-get-a-parking-spot-at-the-mall or there’s-no-milk-for-my-muesli trials, annoying though they be, but the BIG ONES. The death of a loved one. Job termination. Loss of relationship. The inability to conceive. Sickness. These kinds of trials grab us by the throat, cut off the oxygen, force us blue-faced to the throne of grace where we plead and rant and demand that God TAKE IT AWAY.

Instead, we are met with silence. Or worse, His unmistakable answer: wait. What advice does James have for us then?

The answer may be as surprising as aeolian plankton:  “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” (James 1:2-5).

Perhaps for God to repopulate the weedy islands of our hearts with all of the good, fertile things that should be growing there – “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22) – He must first create an environment of disorder, even chaos: a soul-slate wiped clean of hatred, pride, jealousy, unforgiveness, lust, bitterness – all the uglies that take root and try to choke out the “Christ-in” us.

When the volcano blows, instead of hiding under the dust, perhaps we need to be open to all of the re-ordering God must do in us and through us. Instead of heading back to the mainland of our old comfort zone, we must, like the reticulated python, persevere to the new landscape of hope up ahead, even when we can’t see anything that looks even remotely hopeful. Instead of desperately trying to squirm out of the discomfort and pain, or try manipulate and scheme it away, we can, like the baby spider, abandon all notion of control. Trust in the One With All The Power, who is always good all the time because He is only one who can see the big picture and because He has our backs.

Maybe there isn’t any such thing as true equilibrium. Looking back on my own life, there have been seasons of violent erasure followed by seasons of slow but gentle growth. Much as I wish God could teach me some other way, He knows my stubborn heart. Knows I can only be truly His when complete surrender to His hand is my default setting, when my desire to be “mature and complete, not lacking anything” overrides my desire to have my own way.

Yep. It’s a battle every day.

This side of heaven, we will never completely be all that we were created to be. I’d like to think, however, that the more we cooperate with the Father, the more we will come to resemble Him. We are His beloved children, after all.

May I ever be able to declare like my big brother Jesus: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. Yet not my will but yours be done.”