8/24/2009

The Best Memories are Home-made







Sometimes we get the idea that family vacations have to include lots of money, travel or exotic places. I don’t think so. Let me tell you about my very favorite vacation this year. We had a family camp-out in our back yard.
Our family camp-out included tin-foil dinners made with vegetables from our own garden. The grandchildren picked apples and plums off our fruit trees. We had a camp –fire in the pines from trees we planted years ago when they were just two-inch starts. Our back acre was the perfect place for wagon rides. A trip to the Pioneer Cemetery gave us a chance to tell stories about our ancestors. We roasted marshmallows over the fire and had skits to keep up laughing. There was good conversation, good food and good fun. A club house, tent and a pop-up trailer bedded us down for the night. Under the stars you could hear grandparents, children and grandchildren whispering in the dark along with a chorus of crickets.
We don’t have to look far and wide for joy and fulfillment. The best memories are home-made . . . and a family who loves each other is heaven on earth.









8/17/2009

Nursery Heroes



The other Sunday I watched a young father in our church group walk to the front of the chapel to bear his testimony. He was a bright smiling kind of a guy. During one part of his testimony he told the congregation he had accepted an assignment recently to be a nursery leader with his wife.
“I feel bad, like I don’t really do much to help my wife and the other lady in there,” he said. “They teach the kids lessons and sing songs and stuff like that. Mostly I just watch them doing everything.”
Boy did this guy have it wrong! You see I substituted in the nursery just two weeks before and I absolutely knew this young man was my personal nursery hero. Why?
Well to start with, everyone who has ever worked in the nursery with a large group of two-year-olds every Sunday knows there is always one particular child who is the designated . . . how do you put this nicely . . . bully. Sometimes the bully is a girl but usually it is a boy.
This is the child who waits to see what toy another child chooses to play with then dashes over and yanks it away or hits them over the head. This is also the child who finds the most frightened fellow nursery-mate then storms up to them and shoves them into the wall or metal chair. This is the child who eats everything he is not suppose to eat like play dough and boogers, drinks what he is not suppose to drink like bubble soap and glue and throws what he is not suppose to throw like red punch all over the carpet. He also likes to yell and scream a lot.
Well, I watched this young man with the apologetic testimony single-handedly save us all from the bully. In magnificent single bounds, he was able to intercept the bully before he struck again and again. I watched this young man swoop over large objects and scoop this child up in his arms many times over right before the little rascal did another unkindly deed. Not only that but I watched this male nursery worker magically distract the curly haired little bully into thinking he was playing a game with him or tossing balls. Nobody cried. Nobody got murdered. I witnessed no blood, melt-downs or screaming fits.
Why? This young man knew this child wasn’t a bully at all – he was just an average normal active bright little two-year-old boy who was still learning the social rules of his clan. He needed another male to see his awesomeness and keep him busy with boy stuff.

Nursery workers don’t think they are important. They are. These patient people give very young children their first impressions of what is feels like to be at church outside their parent’s arms. When these little tots open that door and wave good-bye to their parents for the first time, who will they find? Hopefully they find someone who responds to them just like this young man. For every nursery needs a hero . . . someone who relates to and appreciates the individual personality of each child and also super-humanly keeps them from killing each other for one more blessed Sabbath day.

8/12/2009

Boy Scout Adventures






I've been imagining lately . . . what would happen to the scouting program if mothers were in charge? Why am I wondering about that? Well take the other night for example.
About 10:30 I was brushing my teeth in my pajamas.
Someone came into the bathroom behind me and said, "I just got the worst wound award at Scouts tonight."
Not exactly what you want to hear right before you crawl in bed. I took one look at my son's deep leg wound along with cuts and scratches all over his legs and arms and knew I had to get him medical help. My husband was still gone doing church stuff and my teenage daughter had all her friends over playing night games - running all over the yard and in and out of our bathroom. Just as John and I were getting in the van, Ross pulled up and came along for the ride.

John had to get fifteen stitches but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was getting twenty-seven little shots to deaden the area all around the wound so they could do the stitches. We finally left the emergency room rubbing our eyes way after midnight.

It took a while to get the whole story out of my son but it went something like this . . . John went end over end on his bike on a mountain trail and crashed into a tree. His scout leaders didn't think it was anything to worry about and told him to get back on the bike and go faster. So he did and biffed it again. Then after fifteen miles of more of the same they all sat around the camp fire and roasted hot-dogs and marsh-mellows for another hour.

Finally they dropped John off at my house covered in dirt and blood then sped off.

Now . . . if mothers were in charge . . .

8/04/2009

Follow the Leader



Most of us pay attention to what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. There is another sense most adults have forgotten . . . our sense of wonder. We notice the form of an object we’re looking at but neglect to observe the shapes, colors and shadows around the form that create the space the form makes. We hear the notes of music being played but neglect to listen for the spaces between the notes – the lingering resonance or the silences that makes the melody unique.

Children, on the other hand, live in the spaces between the notes. They do not experience the world the way we do. They see the world upside down and inside out. They feel things with their soul not just their fingers. Every sight, sound, touch and smell awakens a new dance with their senses. They display a sense of amazement and delight at common experiences like taking a bath, licking a peppermint sucker, stroking a kitten, or skipping to school. They haven’t yet learned what deserves careful attention and what to ignore through repetition – so they pay careful heed to everything. They display a sense of curiosity at fingers and toes, doorbells and frost lace. They see the ant on the sidewalk, hear the rushing wind in the pines, smell the lilacs before they bloom and feel the tickle in their tummies.

Life for children is a musical dance. The world they crawl or run through is only anchored with a nebulous staff. The air they fly through arches past the lines and spaces. They listen closely to the intricacies of sound – the cadences and inflections of expression or the intonation, tone and pitch before they learn to express intelligible language. They mimic the phrasing of voice before they experiment with the specific sounds of words.
Even adults intrinsically sense a child’s internal music as we feel drawn to rock or sway our babies. Singing a lullaby is a universal response to calm a fussy child. Children return us to the music of living – the rhythm of time’s movement. When we hold our children with love we soon match each other’s breathing and heart rates forming a soothing duet of one.

Children have not yet learned the theory of major and minor chords or mastered the placement of sharps or flats. Yet they know the pure melody of love. They wrap their entire beings around our hearts and bring us back to wonder and awe. As they delight in rocks, sticks and mud in our back yard, they teach us to see again. As they notice details like earlobes and icicles, we re-experience the wonder of our own lives. As they rush to rescue wounded birds we learn to feel again with gentler hearts. As they are overcome with fear, we re-experience the majesty and awe of thunderstorms and lightening.

There is a pattern to living, a tempo, time and beat. Children hear their own cadence. If we want to keep pace we need to look ahead to where they are going and follow. Like the first, second and third movements of a symphony, we can return to where we began if we allow a child to lead us. In the stillness of the night we will hear the melody we once knew. If we listen with our hearts, a child’s song of innocence will take us back to where we began.