Foster Intimacy

“Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.” ~ Brene Brown

“Now we see but a poor 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.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13: 12

“The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.” ~ Mister Rogers

I took a psychology class in high school in which, among other things, we studied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Perhaps you know it? It’s illustrated as a pyramid stratifying needs for human thriving.

I’m not sure where Abraham Maslow’s work stands today in the world of psychological theory, but his pyramid makes some sense to me. At the base: physiological needs. They must be met. A starving child will die no matter how much her devastated mother loves her. A person must eat, sleep, be clothed and sheltered in order to live.

simplypsychology.org

The next level is the need for safety. In order to thrive, a person requires a measure of security and stability. We all do better with a fundamental freedom from fear.

Third is the need for love and belonging. This goes beyond mere walls and protection. This is what we hope to get from a home. 

Interestingly, the home that protects us physically, that provides shelter from the elements and a secure residence, actually opens us to vulnerability in a new way, one based on proximity. We live with each other. We know one another’s weaknesses.

And this is why Maslow’s third level, love and belonging, makes sense to me as such. Within the physical safety of the home, one is safer still if one is loved.

Vulnerability and Love

The desire to be loved is fundamental.

And, in that context, the need to be known is essential. After all, if someone says they love you but they don’t really know you, then they love a projection, an idea, a notion of you. They can’t really love you at all.

So in order to be loved, we must be known, which means we must be vulnerable.

Again, a home and a family naturally provide us with some measure of vulnerability. Mere proximity exposes us–and our weaknesses. We know whose shoes stink and who farted during the movie, who scares easily and who gags at the thought of tomatoes.

What we want and need is to be safe within that vulnerability.

Sure, we could hide our shoes and avoid tomatoes, but how much better to be welcomed into the house along with our stinky shoes because we are so much loved and wanted at home that the shoes don’t really matter?

Being known and loved for who we are: that’s what we long for.

Home, Vulnerability, Safety

And that’s what the family should provide. Because we know one another so well–stinky shoes and all–we should love one another well. We may have a front-row seat to farting, but we have that same view onto sensitivity and sense of humor, and the penchants, habits, moles and freckles we talked about here.

Where we are truly and deeply loved, we don’t have to fear our failings and weaknesses. We can live in an honest familiarity that allows us to express our joy and own our guilt. It’s healthy intimacy.

Children reared in this kind of intimacy thrive. They have open communication about their thoughts and feelings without fear of shame. They are honored and protected as individuals. Their home becomes a source of strength even when they are not physically at home. Their confidence in themselves grows, and they can more readily accept and love others.

Intimacy is one of the most powerful and important parenting tools we get. In strongly intimate parent-child relationships, parents can help, support, and guide their children invaluably. This becomes even more profoundly important in the teenage years (blog series on that upcoming). And intimacy is best and most easily established by parents during childhood.

Vulnerability and the Gospel

A beauty of the gospel is that it is built on intimacy. The wise and omniscient God, creator of all life, knows every person individually. He revels in each one’s uniqueness. He knows each one’s faults. And he loves each one relentlessly.

He knows us intimately. By giving us Jesus, he made a way for us to know him, too.

We don’t have to be ashamed of our faults, guilt, or weaknesses because he knows them already and he loves us anyway.

We are all utterly vulnerable to God. In the grace and mercy of Jesus, we are also utterly safe.

Intimacy at Home

In light of these truths, a fundamental way to teach the gospel to our children is to foster intimacy in our homes.

There are lots of ways to do this, and enjoying each other is chief among them: we all feel safer with people who like us. But a few other specific ways also come to mind.

1. Practice apology. Along with those of our children, our faults are exposed in the proximity of home. Even very young children are wise to right and wrong at some level, and an unkindness or wrong from a parent cuts more deeply than that from a peer (more on that to come). When we apologize, we honor our children, showing them that their feelings and perceptions matter. We acknowledge that we are weak, too; that all people are flawed and in need of growth. We teach them that reconciliation and healing are possible. And we underscore that life isn’t about striving for impossible standards, that everyone is just a person: imperfect and priceless, worthy of love and needing to grow. This gift of the apology is one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me. They are wonderful people, but every time they failed me–be it with impatience, a cross word, a lost temper–they apologized. Every. Time.
2. Practice forgiveness. When your children apologize to you, forgive them and say so: “I forgive you.” Of course, in the gospel truth of Jesus, forgiveness means that the fault is erased, even though consequence might linger. But for human beings, forgiving doesn’t always equal immediately released resentment. We have to practice that part, too: forgive and let go. Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally to people (me) a lot of the time. It takes practice. One of my greatest regrets in mothering Will is a sometime failure to forgive immediately. I think (hope) it only happened a handful of times, but it doesn’t matter how many: it was terrible. He would apologize for something (“I’m sorry, Mom”) and I, full of frustration, answered, “Me too.” Not meaning that I was apologizing also, but agreeing that his behavior had been regrettable. Ugh. Even now, it grieves me. I apologized to him then and I have again apologized to him as an adult, but I know my frustrated, selfish adult self wounded my little boy. I’m still getting over it.
3. Prohibit unkindness. Being a sibling is difficult, and siblings can be relentless in pointing out and rehearsing one another’s failings. As parents we might find it easy to excuse or overlook this for a variety of reasons, but we mustn’t do it, because everyone needs to be safe within the vulnerability of home. Teasing comes naturally, and children can excuse an unkindness with, “I’m only joking,” but a policy I tried to practice at our house went like this: If it isn’t funny for everyone, it isn’t funny. A seminal moment for curtailing unkindness came when our only daughter, the youngest, was trying to tell her father and brothers something. She may have been only six, which meant her oldest brother was at the edge of adolescence, and for some reason, he was impatient with her effort to express herself. He kept interrupting her, making corrections and criticizing her, when suddenly my husband had a clear view onto what was happening. He turned to our eldest and stopped him. “Nobody talks to my daughter like that,” he said. We look back on that moment as vital for shaping Emma’s place in our family and her sense of self. She was and is just as worthy as anyone (everyone) of respect.
4. Encourage the truth. In order to have real intimacy, children must feel safe to tell us the truth. If their honest revelation–no matter what it is–is met with rejection, dismay, or any of a myriad of negative emotional reactions, their honesty with us in the future will be challenged. This can be incredibly difficult because of what we said earlier: everyone is just a person. Can you help reacting strongly (and negatively) to your child’s honest (and–in your view–bad) news? But here is a place where we are the grown-ups: we have to see to the whole child here, and not just the nature of this confession. Yes, they may present with what seems to be alarming behavior. Yes, they may have done something we specifically told them not to do. But let’s not allow our personal feelings about it color our response. Our gentle, respectful, loving response to an honest admission will enable our children to tell us other, potentially more difficult things in the future. We can best be good parents–guiding and helping our children grow–when we know what’s going on with our children. And this comes best through honesty. Early on, my husband instituted a policy that surprised me at first: our children wouldn’t get punished if they told us the truth. So if we came in from outside and a lamp was broken and a child said it was because they were playing ball in the house (they were explicitly told not to play ball in the house), they weren’t punished because they told us the truth. This was hard for me sometimes: it felt like some other rules were being overlooked, that behavior-and-consequence wasn’t being established. I was wrong: those things were certainly taken care of. But what we were also fostering–very deliberately, with the real wisdom of my husband–was the value of honesty. The safety of being honest was elevated in our house, because honesty is essential to open, intimate relationships, and that’s what we valued most. 

As I said earlier, intimacy is one of the most powerful and important tools we get as parents. In every way, it underscores the fundamental beauties of the gospel. And it lays groundwork that, maintained, can be priceless in helping your children navigate adolescence.

It is also one of the greatest potential gifts of being a family: to know and love deeply, to be deeply known and deeply loved.

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Foster Intimacy, part 1 appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Grow Up.

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

“There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.” ~ Mister Rogers

“My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, LORD, I will seek.” ~Psalm 27: 8

My parents came for a week after the birth of our firstborn. Our son was born on Thursday and they arrived on Saturday, just a few hours after we got home from the hospital.

During the week of their visit, my mother took care of me and helped us with the baby. She, my father, and my husband also packed up our apartment and moved us to a townhouse, where they proceeded to unpack us again.

By the time they left the following Saturday, we were well on our way to being settled and I was recovering nicely. But I wasn’t quite ready to let them go.

That afternoon, with Bill out on an errand and my parents just departed, I stood with my newborn wailing in my arms, and I cried too.

There we were, otherwise alone in the house and both of us crying, when I realized that someone was going to have to stop crying–and that someone would have to be me.

I had to be the grown-up.

More than Maturity

We all understand that the best-case scenarios find babies born to mature adults, emotionally prepared to rear a person into maturity. Not all babies get this in their parents; not all people are equipped to be parents. And many of us (I’m raising my hand here) learn to be parents along the way.

It’s impossible, prior to the arrival of your first child, to know everything you’ll need to know. We learn as we go. And even though a firstborn schools us in ways the next child(ren) won’t have to, we learn from our children all the time. It’s not enough to be a parent: we learn to be Auggi’s mom or Piper’s dad. The uniqueness I wrote about last week demands unique attention.

I think it’s fair to say that it takes more than maturity to rear a child. What we need is wisdom.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. ~ James 1: 6-8

In light of our need for wisdom, that first sentence there is absolutely fantastic: you need wisdom? Ask God! He’ll give it to you!

But there’s more to it than that. In my isolated paraphrase (just verse 6), God dissolves into something resembling religion, a system of behavior-and-consequence. Here God is a genie or vending machine: I ask for wisdom, he dispenses it. Voila!

The difference between Christianity and religion is that Christianity is a relationship. God is a real person, and we are his beloved (unique and inimitable) children. Among the scads of virtues that make up his character, wisdom–like the rest of them–is not something he totes in a box or jacket pocket, ready to dole out like so much candy. Rather, wisdom is an aspect of who he is, imparted to us as we know him more.

The more we are changed by his love, the more we love. The more we receive his patience, the more we are patient. The more we know his grace, the less quick we are to judge. The more we know his wisdom, the wiser we become. 

The verses following James 1:6 bear this out. We ask God for wisdom, but we must believe he will give it to us. We have to trust that he’ll answer our request. In other words, we don’t sit around waiting for wisdom to hit us between the eyes. We go about our business, trusting God, because we rely on who we know him to be: good, faithful, true to his word.

And wisdom comes. Why? Because God is good, faithful, and true to his word.

If as parents we are paying any attention at all, we know we need wisdom. We also need patience and gentleness and a host of other things.

We need God.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post: parents who want to teach the gospel to their children must absolutely grow up.

Growing Up

Crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. ~ 1 Peter 2: 1-2

Peter’s words here are an admonition and encouragement to people who already have put their faith in God and in the gospel of Jesus Christ: you have tasted the goodness of God, and you know how delicious, satisfying and nourishing it is. Want more. 

We appreciate the metaphor. If I’d never had a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit from Bojangles, I would never miss one. But now that I’ve had one, well. Suffice it to say that they come to mind from time to time.

In a similar but far more challenging and satisfying way, the delights we have known through the love of Jesus should make us want more of the same. In craving him, we pursue our relationship with him, and this causes us to grow. We become mature, joy-filled, obedient, faithful servants of the living God who are sources of blessing and comfort to the people and world around us.

Including our children.

How Do We Grow?

So, how is it done? What are the actions that result from the craving Peter recommends?

I’ll be honest:

1. they’re familiar
2. they’re beautiful
3. some upcoming posts will focus on some of them.

But the simple answer is the best: spend time with God.

If you’ve been a church-goer for any time at all, you’ve heard this before: read your Bible. Pray. Spend time in honest joy and pain with people who also have put their faith in Jesus. Be taught from the Bible by people who take it seriously. Receive communion with a full heart.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This is all so familiar. And it’s also spot on because of what I said before: Christianity is not a religion. It’s a relationship.

The Relationship

I’ve been married to my husband for almost 30 years. Being with him has made me a less judgmental person because he is less apt to judge than I am. I also have a better sense of humor than I used to because he is funny and has an excellent sense of humor. I hear music differently because of how he appreciates it. I also regard money differently. And entertainment.

These changes wrought by his influence come off the top of my head, but there are other changes, deeper and more vast, that have come from years of being with him, talking with him, learning to see things from his point of view.

Spending time with a person changes you. Same with God–but far more mysteriously, richly, and abundantly than with anyone else.

I’ve known a lot of beauty in my life, but this quiet and real transformation is among the most beautiful things I’ve seen.

Two Additional Notes

1. Peter tells us to “crave pure spiritual milk.” I translate that as having a desire to know Jesus. But just like enjoyment, no one craves anything all of the time. We won’t crave Jesus all of the time. We just won’t. Here’s the thing: I don’t feel like going to the gym all the time, but I go anyway.
2. An important but less frequently made note about pursuing a relationship with God: do what he says. New understanding of him comes through obedience. I’m not exactly sure why or how, but it does. There’s this fabulous moment in John’s gospel where Jesus is once again being confronted by people who can’t figure out who he is. Jesus says, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak it on my own” (John 7: 17). In other words, Jesus says that revelation of truth comes through obedience. Mysterious and true and, once again, beautiful.

Growing Up and Teaching the Gospel to Children

I began this post by pointing out our need for wisdom. God, as the father and source of all wisdom, becomes our pursuit as we seek what we need to nurture our children.

But nothing about God is transactional. We don’t seek him to *get the stuff we need.* We seek him, and we get him. Beauty and grace result.

As we grow in Christ, we are transformed by him. Our children might not witness that transformation. Being young, they may not track the changes and growth he is working in us. But they will see the beauty of his life in us. They will live in an atmosphere of increasing grace and mercy because of that life. And this may very well awaken in them a craving to know him, too.

I wrote a post before this one on enjoying our children. Read it here. 

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Grow Up. appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

The holiday season–that busy stretch of weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year–is often filled with Comings and Goings. Someone traveling somewhere and remaining for a while. Guests. Visitors. We had many. Did you?

Here’s the thing about Comings and Goings: some are more welcome than others. 

We definitely welcomed my parents.

They arrived the day before Christmas Eve and stayed for just over a week. In that window we took walks and ate lots, watched the third season of The Crown and then, hungry for more of England’s royal family, The Queen. We debated politics and theology; listened to Bach and Christmas carols; stayed up late and slept in; made, packaged and delivered Christmas cookies to the neighbors. My father repaired a faulty electrical socket in a bedroom and took lots of pictures. My mother did most of the laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, and played the piano.

It was lovely.

We also welcomed Shanna’s family.

Her parents and two siblings arrived December 20th and left January 2nd. They stayed with Will and Shanna, but we got to see lots of them nonetheless.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with them at Will and Shanna’s house. We celebrated Christmas Day with them at our house. And we celebrated New Year’s Eve together (plus three (most welcome) friends), eating raclette and playing games and finally ringing in 2020 outside at the firepit, where we toasted a new decade and then sang a hymn or two.

We welcomed Bill’s brother Ray, who came to us from Pittsburgh, and also his mother and brother, who live nearby.

All of these were Comings that were, as I said, Most Welcome.

But we also welcomed some Goings.

There was, for starters, the possum on our door step the night before Thanksgiving. Presumably lured by cheeses that cling to empty pizza boxes (stashed en route to the recycling bin), it was captured by my dog when I was heading out the door to borrow corn syrup from my neighbor.

Despite my dog’s having caught it in her teeth (I made her leave it); despite the possum’s proximity to a human’s front door; despite being a wild creature threatened by a dog keenly interested in catching it again, that possum remained. It played dead for hours on our top step, mostly obscured by the pile of empty boxes, but leaving exposed one tight claw and the sharp teeth that circled its open mouth.

We don’t know when it left, but were very pleased that it was gone in the morning.

The thing about Unwelcome Visitors, I’ve found, is that they don’t know when to leave– which was the case with the squirrel that, for a time, inhabited our Christmas tree.

When I awoke a few weeks before Christmas to hear it banging around in our breakfast room, I didn’t know it was a squirrel. I thought it was the cat (our cat doesn’t bang around) or the dog (who was lying on her bed). I certainly didn’t think it would be a wild animal, a squirrel caught in our many-windowed breakfast room. When I came upon it, still blurry with sleep, the squirrel was throwing itself against said windows, trying desperately to get outside.

I called the dog away from the room. And the cat. Then I called my husband. We opened doors and windows (outside it was 30-odd degrees and raining) and did all we could to usher the wild, frightened and somewhat bruised creature out of the house.

So it (logically) ran from breakfast room to living room and hid in the Christmas tree.

The sheriff wanted to carry the tree out and set it free. Durham’s answer (in this instance) to Animal Control, he wore boots and heavy gloves and had Squirrel-in-House Experience. But despite gentle prodding with our broom, the squirrel wouldn’t leave. Yes, it emerged a time or two and raced around, hiding temporarily under the sofa, threatening to go upstairs, and (always) missing the open doors that beckoned it outside. But every time it darted forth, it found its way back to the tree again.

In the end, the tree did not have to be carried out. The kindly sheriff kept at it until–in what was a third or fourth round of mayhem–we assume that it found a door.

We were Very Glad it went.

Yes, we had our share of comings and goings, of both the welcome and unwelcome variety. And we had one other: a Going-and-Coming, a Departure-and-Arrival. But it wasn’t an arrival here. It wasn’t a coming to us. It happened on Christmas Eve, but we didn’t see it.

On Christmas Eve, Emma and her team of nine left Kona, Hawaii for Athens, Greece. As we slept, as we celebrated Christmas, as we enjoyed the quiet Day After, Emma was flying halfway around the world.

She arrived in Athens on December 26th at 5 p.m., and she’ll be there for ten weeks, working with Youth With a Mission to serve refugees. These are people who know Going in ways I’ve never understood it: necessary, frightening, desperate. And their Coming to Greece, too, is likely full of fear. I’m hoping Emma and her friends can bring them some small relief.

We would have loved to have had her home for Christmas, but we’re so glad that she is where she is.

And when she gets home in March, we’ll be overjoyed to welcome her.

All photos by Richard Brewster with the exception of the above, which was sent to us: Emma playing guitar on Mars Hill in Athens.

The post Holiday Visitors appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

At a baby shower in October, I talked with a woman whose younger son had just left home. He graduated from college a few years ago, so this is not that departure. This is a son who has gone and come home and now, finally, has gone away again.

“There just aren’t any opportunities for him in our town,” she explained. So he is off to a larger city to find a job in his field. Off, as we might read from a fairy tale, “to seek his fortune.” He is on his own now, “coming of age” as it were, as he must, as this mother wants him to. What parent doesn’t want to see her child thrive in the world?

Her older son, she explained, moved away years ago. He’s in Chicago and doing very well, she is happy to say. She and her husband are grateful for and proud of both their sons.

They are also trying to become accustomed to this: life with their children grown and gone.

Her throat closed. “Would you please write about this?” she asked, her voice lowered and keen. “There just doesn’t seem to be much about it out there.”

***

I don’t know if there is much written about it or not. I haven’t looked, busy–as I have been–with sending my own children out into the world. Two weddings in two years, and these only two years (give or take) after each of the grooms graduated from high school. Their empty bedroom still holds their furniture; their posters are still on the walls.

I haven’t found time or heart to do anything different with the room yet. But Emma has a bedroom here, albeit an unoccupied one. She graduated from high school in May and in September left home for six months, two and a half of which are spent.

Not that anyone’s counting.

***

“There doesn’t seem to be much about it out there,” she said, but I don’t know if that’s true. Surely there must be books about this transition in life, the whole “empty nest” thing. So many people go through it.

In fact, I have known many people to go through it: nearly everyone who has children. Seems to me my own parents went through it years ago–not that I noticed. I was too busy in those days to wonder if they were sad or missing us. I was married, making a new home with my husband in our apartment, finishing up school and thinking about my life ahead.

If asked, I would have said that my parents were absolutely fine.

I would write about it, I want to say to my friend’s friend, returning to our discussion at the October baby shower. I would write it about it, but what is there to say? One’s children growing up and moving out is the way of things. It’s how they must go. Why comment on it?

Yes, it’s a change. An ending. But it’s not a death. It’s not remotely comparable to those real tragedies abroad or close to home: not a story of horrors in a refugee camp or a school shooting, not a terrible injustice that forever upends all one holds true and good and right.

No, we anticipate the empty nest. We know it’s completely natural. Maybe it makes us sad–but it’s an ordinary sadness.

***

Life with children was an ordinary life. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, just as now. But also on those ordinary days there was school and time for play, sports practices, music lessons, games and concerts and recitals.

We developed routines to make it all run smoothly. During my children’s youngest years, I got up extra early to exercise. When I was teaching full-time, I often stole free class periods to go to the school’s gym. I knew the time with my children was short and, especially in those years, they needed me so much. I wanted to be available.

Routines shifted. We used to tuck them into bed at night. And then came the nights when I lay in bed half awake, listening for the car to pull into the driveway. There’s nothing like the sleep that comes when you know that everyone is home.

Now we have no way of knowing whether or not our children are in bed, because they don’t sleep here. We don’t need to know what they are doing because they don’t need us to know.

Which is not to say that they don’t need us. There are ways in which our children still need us–and one of these is that our children need us to thrive on our own. They need us to be stable and happy and moving along in the world. They need us to be able to proceed without those routines that were built on their needs.

This is difficult, because for twenty or so years, our thriving hinged on their thriving, on meeting their ordinary needs in ordinary ways on ordinary days.

Now we need new ways of being.

On our first night at home after Emma left, Bill and I stood together at the front door before we went up to bed. He locked the door and looked at me. “No one else is coming home,” he said.

If I were to write about the empty nest, I would say all of this. But I can’t write about it–can I?–because I have so much to be grateful for.

All of my children are still alive, of sound mind and body. They are making their way in the world. Not only that, but two out of three of my children currently live right here in my town. If I needed to, I could get to either of their homes within fifteen minutes.

Each of these facts is a gift. For any one of my children, it could have gone some other way. It still could.

In the face of such gifts, is it fair to be sad? To be sure, Bill and I are adjusting, but we are adults. We can handle this. We need to get over it already, move forward in gratitude.

Once I asked my mother how she felt about her children growing up. “Didn’t it make you sad?” I asked her. At this point, I was a mother myself, facing the specter that is now my reality, the empty nest that I can’t bring myself to write about.

My mother’s answer was so wise: she said that she was sad, but that children must grow up; it’s the only way. Any other possibility–a child somehow frozen in her development, stuck perpetually in any phase of childhood–however adorable it is–would be all wrong. “It’s like a record player with the needle stuck in a groove,” she said. Dissonance and static. Loss of (so much) purpose and meaning.

Ask any parent who has had the process interrupted. They know.

***

Yet the truth is that our children in this house framed our days. Nearly all the decisions we made were necessarily tied to them. I took them to the library because they needed books. I took them to the grocery store because they needed food. And people would comment to me as I steered my shopping cart (daughter in the baby seat, two young sons clinging to its sides), “You sure have your hands full!”

And I would answer–every time–“Happily, yes.” Because I loved having them with me in the grocery store. Even when they quarreled (and they did). Even when they asked for things they couldn’t have (and they did). Even when they did not listen to me (and they did not). I loved having them with me in the grocery store because I loved having them.

I knew that their time with me–with us–was fleeting–but it was so ordinary. It was full of frustration and exhaustion and occasional, terrifying doubt. It was full of making meals and cleaning them up again, of doling out snacks and doling out screen time and fighting back fears in the middle of the night because one or another of them had presented with something that might be a symptom of something terrible.

I knew–in this context– that the time was fleeting. But how–again, in this context– does one manage an understanding like that?

And when it all inevitably–even appropriately and beautifully–disappears, how in the world does one write about it?

At the baby shower, we sat in a circle and offered, one by one, a word of advice for the mother-to-be. And so came the perennial encouragement: “Enjoy every moment.”

How many times has a young parent been told this? A parent who hasn’t slept in weeks because of the baby’s teething or newness or stubborn resistance of sleep? A parent whose child’s terrible two’s have extended well into her four’s? A parent who feels themselves on the edge of mental or emotional frenzy because parenting is actually the most difficult thing they’ve ever done?

It is impossible to enjoy every moment of parenting, because not every moment is enjoyable.

Happily, another shower attendee, given her turn to offer advice, gently amended the earlier counsel. “Don’t feel like you have to enjoy every moment,” she said. “That is impossible.”

And yet, there it is: “Enjoy every moment.” I’ll tell you why we say this: to a person, every parent I’ve ever known will tell you that it goes by far too fast. They may very well remember how difficult it was to parent children-at-home, but so many of them nonetheless would wish to have it back.

***

Last week I made Christmas cookies with my mother-in-law, and as we worked side-by-side in the kitchen, she remembered doing this with my children, young teenagers, in this same kitchen a few years ago.

She remembered other times, too: when they were very little and would sometimes go to her house. “I would rent a movie for them and we would make cookies.” She recalled this aloud as she rolled peanut butter dough into perfect balls. “They would spend the evening with me.” And in the next breath: “I want those days back again.”

Christmas is in one week, and this is the first Christmas in twenty-three years that we will wake to a house without children.

I’m not going to write about the empty nest, but I’ll admit that this Advent has been a sad one for me. In truth, I keep forgetting that it’s Advent. I’m taking care of the Christmasy things (gifts, cards, mailing packages), but without any children here it all feels a little half-hearted.

At dusk in previous Decembers, I used to send my children scurrying around the house to turn on the Advent candles in every window. This year I do it myself, making the trek into our sons’ otherwise empty room and saying aloud, every time, as if they were there, “Hello, boys!”

I don’t wish my children home again. I do not wish them little. I’m so grateful for their lives now, for their strength and independence.

But this is how we know the world is broken: the right and natural course of things can also break our hearts.

***

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1: 5

A friend reminded me today that Advent is actually about the broken heart of the world. It’s about everything that’s ever gone wrong: crop failures and mine collapses, and the floods and eruptions that destroy homes and claim lives. It’s about the delusion and wickedness of white supremacy, the terrors of refugee camps, the horror of school shootings, birth defects and infant deaths and terminal diagnoses.

Advent is about every kind of loss, even ordinary sadness.

Because Advent is about the God who knows our need and decided to answer it with himself. The eternal and omnipotent made human and finite: newborn, cold and hungry. He lived in this world knowing perfectly what it was meant to be and how desperately far from perfect it was. Then he paid for the disparity with his life.

And so I think no loss is insignificant to him, no grief too small. He cares more deeply than we do about all of it.

Which means, among other things, that it’s all right to miss one’s children, all grown and gone. It’s fine to be both grateful for their lives and sad that their time at home is over. There is room–during Advent and always–for both gratitude and grief.

That’s what I would say about the empty nest, if I were to write about it.

All photos by Richard Brewster

The post Ordinary Sadness appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Note 2: Not long after I posted this, my parents bought me a new violin. They understood that a new violin was not–is not–the point of this post, but they did it anyway. The photos here are pictures of the instrument I have now. It is not an antique, but it is lovely.

On Envy

It is my pleasure, in the back of the second violin section in our church orchestra, to share a music stand with Emily. Emily is my dear friend, and it was she who encouraged me, sometime during the summer of 2004, to get my violin out again and join the orchestra. And although I play badly (Badly), I will always think of that encouragement as one of her many Great Gifts to me, because I enjoy playing the violin So Much.

My parents bought my violin for me when I started taking lessons at age ten. It was a school instrument, used, not of anything like High Quality. But it served. It served for seven years, waited seventeen, and is serving again. It is a brightly lacquered thing with an orange hue and a pinched tone. Not a rich sound, not a beautiful instrument. But I am used to it, and it Works.

Emily, on the other hand, has a beautiful violin. Hers is an antique. Hers is not shiny, and the wood is grained in rich browns and yellows. And its sound? Well.

One afternoon during rehearsal, Emily had the bright idea that we switch instruments. Just for a little while, she said. Just to try it.

I did not want to. No. I knew what would happen.

But she was grinning like she does. She thought it would be such fun. Here, she said, holding out her precious and antique violin to me. Here.

We couldn’t have continued the swap for more than a minute, maybe two. I didn’t play her violin for long. But oh, I enjoyed it. A violin like hers just feels different in the hand: softer somehow, as if wants to be played, as if it intends to conform itself to the player and help one make magnificent music.

And her violin vibrated differently. The sound wasn’t just something the violin made; the sound was something the violin embodied. It bore the sound with its whole, soft self. It was wonderful. Those few minutes were proof of something I already knew: her violin is Much Better than mine.

I wish I had a violin like that.

* * *

The house I live in is not large, but it is, in many ways, charming. It is far from perfect, but I love it. It is all I want in a house, and I am vastly contented in it and deeply grateful. When we first bought it, I was ecstatic.

One afternoon I enjoyed the visit of Kathy Russell, wife of one of our pastors. She is, by gift and hobby, an interior designer, and she was delighted to let me show her our house. I showed her the closet space, I showed her the bedrooms, I showed her the bathrooms, we discussed paint chips. And I said to her– as I’ll say to most anyone– “Isn’t God good to give this to me?”

She and her husband and their five children were living in a tiny house at the time with, she told me, no storage space. But she looked at my house and admired it and was quite simply happy for me. Her answer to my delight, to my overjoyed question of God’s goodness, was simple and direct: “Yes,” she said. “And isn’t He good not to give it to me?”

* * *

I think sometimes we get it all wrong. I think sometimes we look at what we have, and at what others have, and we look too hard at the Thing Itself. We compare our homes, our violins, our bodies, our hair, our talents, our virtues, and we are quite plainly Dissatisfied.

And that is because we are looking at the wrong thing. We are looking at the Thing We Have compared to the Thing That Belongs to Someone Else.

We are not looking, as we should be, at the Hand that holds Our Thing out to us, the Hand that gives it, in absolute kindness and perfect wisdom, and declares it to be ours.

We are not looking past the Thing to the Hand itself, nor are we looking carefully into the hand– we are not seeing the Scar.

The post On Envy appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I don’t hear the jays every day. At our feeder we get chickadees and finches, a nuthatch, and a small brown bird with a dart of white behind its eye. Every time I see it, I intend to learn its name, and then I forget to follow through when I go on to everything else.

These days I awake to birdsong. One of them starts up before five a.m., and by the time seven rolls around, lots of them are going at it out there. Some are songs I know, but not all. I would like to know.

But today I heard the blue-jays. One crying, then another. It’s a distinctive song, less music than call. A conversation. I was standing in the kitchen–feeding the dog? Putting the granola away? And I heard the jays out there under the cloud-covered sky.

When I was a child in July at my grandparents’ house, the jays woke me up every morning. It’s a bird sanctuary where they lived, where my parents live now, everywhere trees until you get to beach. I knew all sorts of birds by song and sight.

The blue-jays woke us up every morning.

And they were the birds that sang in the rain. Those rare, rainy days when the world was dark with clouds and the shade of trees, when we didn’t go to the beach but sat inside and read, and heard the rain on the leaves.

I thought of that this morning, standing in the kitchen, listening to the jays. The clouds made the world darker outside this morning, and it seemed right to me that the jays should be calling to one another just off edge of our deck.

And it was right, I thought, that the jays cried in the rain at my grandparents’ house, as they cry in the rain at my parents’ house even now.

Except that, in those days when I was eleven with a book on my lap, it wasn’t right to listen to the blue-jays in the rain. It wasn’t right to listen to them in those days, and I didn’t listen, no more than I listened to the rain on the leaves. I just heard the rain. I heard the birds.

And all was right with the world.

The post Blue-Jays appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

The field guides were kept in the dining room. Not obtrusively on the kitchen table or counter, but just around the corner, accessible to a quick eye and step.

I can’t say I was raised with them, not exactly. Not any more, anyway, than I was raised with frequent dictionary consultations, which came at home year-round, during dinner and other times. The field guides were a summertime thing, a July thing, a component of that month-every-summer with my grandparents on eastern Long Island. As much a part of summertime life as the pineapple wallpaper in the bedroom.

Mostly, I think, it was the bird and wildflower guides we used, evidence of which is here and there in marker on the pages: my initials, my cousin’s, a sister’s, followed by the date. Apparently Meghan and I both discovered a Lady Slipper on 6/13/76; Meghan alone found the Trailing Arbutus on the same day. Our cousin Nathaniel found Chicory on 9/9/78. His initials appear with the date on page 75, written in ballpoint in my grandmother’s fluent script. And on page 38, where my initials (no date) also appear, my grandmother has noted (9/20/78) the Knotweed, underscoring “Smartweed” in the paragraph description, and adding the words “long bristled” in the margin.With my initials in yellow, I laid claim to discovering Crowned Vetch (p. 59); but I recorded no date, and I wonder if that was a nod at honesty, as that vining weed covered the entirety of my neighbor’s backyard hill in Pittsburgh.

My grandparents knew the names of birds and trees, of wildflowers and mollusks. Such knowledge–and an interest in it–was an extension of who they were. As important as knowing words (and their definitions); as knowing how to use “lay” and “lie” correctly. As knowing all the books of the Bible– in order, of course. It wasn’t that they ever lectured on the value of knowing; they just knew. And if they didn’t, they looked it up.

Hence the field guides on the bookcase in the dining room.

I have inherited these field guides, and Birds: a Guide to the Most Familiar American Birds often lives on (rather than in) our home school cabinet in the breakfast room.  (On December 29, 1960, my grandfather spotted a Bobwhite; on the seventh of that same month, my grandmother saw a Yellow-Shafted Flicker.) This recent winter, Emma and I worked at keeping our window bird feeder filled, hoping that we’d learn something (someone?) new. But mostly it was the regulars: cardinal, chickadee, tufted titmouse, bluejay. Birds my children already know because I taught them, because my grandparents (and parents) taught me.

What is the value in knowing these names? There are few people we are likely to impress. But there is yet something satisfying in it. Something of Adam, maybe, or Aristotle: to name is to know? To love?

When my sons were very young, I called out names of vehicles in answer to their questions (even now, sitting alone and idle at a traffic light, I have to suppress an instinct to share recognition with an otherwise empty car: “Excavator!” “Cherry-picker!”). And regardless of whether they were interested, all three of my children throughout their childhoods were regularly notified of remarkable vegetation we passed: Forsythia! Pyracantha! Wisteria, its purple blossoms festooning the roadside and trees with “grapes.”

But why do I want to know? Why do I want my children to know? With all that is necessary in life, all that is going on both here and abroad, what is the value in alleviating this (small and insignificant) ignorance? They–the world–can get along quite nicely, thank you, amid unknown flora and fauna.

So many people live in cities, in high-rises, surrounded by concrete and macadam. Squirrel. Pigeon…. Pigeon.

Nonetheless, the interest grows. In these recent weeks, the effort to name has taken on new dimension for me. This year, watching the greening of the spring world, I have been attending anew to the trees. While throughout the winter their identity, distinguishable (somewhat?) by dun trunk and branch, seems (to me) unknowable and even irrelevant, their leaves’ emergence exposes them for what they are. Lately I am trying to name them–and the color of their green.

 “Green,” a word that covers but can’t epitomize what I’m seeing. Because the color of the newborn locust leaves is not the same as the crabapple. And the Bradford pears have been, by comparison, a dark green for the better part of the month. Meanwhile, the pendant seeds of the pin oak make that tree’s leaves look almost white. The leaves of the backyard maple are fair. And the distant tulip tree, whose uppermost branches I watch all summer from my kitchen sink window, might be that Crayola spring green I’ve known since I was six.

I find myself reaching for more names. Is there a field guide for green? Celadon, chartreuse, the silver tint of sage. The rich depth of emerald, the blue-bordered jade, the pale and honest shock of peridot. It’s a new and not entirely safe enterprise, this effort to claim names for tree and leaf color together as I’m driving down the road. I think I’ve got it: lime! loden! in what I know is birch; but by the time I name it, the tree and its color are gone, replaced by maple, by white oak, by pin oak, by … oak. All of them turning green.

I imagine I can do a better job staring out my bedroom window. I–and the trees–are standing still now, but it’s nonetheless difficult to bring them into focus. The trees appear in layers, this one and that one closer to or further from the house, strata of leaves in stages of emergence, layers playing tricks on my eyes.

What is it with naming anyway? To identify, to classify, to pin it down in construct of consonant and vowel. The leaves and their color come on without me, they will emerge and expand, and it will matter little or not at all that this afternoon at 3:46 that leaf was the shade of an avocado. The inside of an avocado, to be specific. Guacamole green.

The morning light is coming through the kitchen window above the sink. It catches and hangs on the leaves of the forsythia branch I brought in some weeks ago. The golden yellow blossoms have dropped away, but there is the green of the serrated leaves, all lit up with the sun. This illumination catches my eye and I hang there for a moment, studying blade and vein, the faint polygonal structure of its surface. Words rise and cluster in my brain: photosynthesis, chlorophyll, chloroplast.

And then, just beyond the window sill, the wind hits and the newborn leaves answer. The sun strikes them. They are diaphanous, incandescent, a shifting, glowing mass of light-bearing green. All words leave me, save some chorused by an organ, sung by the congregation-choir of my grandparents’ church there on the eastern end of Long Island, so many summers, every summer of my life.

Let all things their Creator bless
And worship Him in humbleness
O, praise Him
Alleluia!

There is something to naming that opens the eyes. That’s what it is. It’s when we know it that we see it–and not the other way round. Was this what my grandparents knew? Teaching me–so early–to open my eyes. Helping me to see things seen and unseen. To love. And then, so naturally, to praise.

Praise, praise the Father, praise the Son
And praise the Spirit–Three in One!
Oh praise Him!
Alleluia!

Oh, praise Him!

The post The Color Green appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

I had a happy childhood.

That small fact is likely adequate to spoil my hopes of ever being a *good* writer, but there it is. The actual truth is that I had a very happy childhood.

That said, I did not own a pair of Nike’s until well into the sixth grade, maybe later, and certainly well after Everyone Else was wearing them. Moreover, when I did get them, they came from Sears and not from Athlete’s Foot–which was where the cool people bought them. And they cost only $20–which I’m pretty sure was the largest amount of money my mother had ever spent on a pair of shoes for me or anyone else at that point in our family history.

In fact, I got almost all of my clothes from Sears in those days. Unless, of course, my mother made them. Which she sometimes did.

My father had a good job. We lived in a plain but nice neighborhood. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford store-bought clothes–things from The Gap, The Limited, from Limited Express.  It was that we didn’t buy things there because it was less expensive at Sears, and cheaper still if you made it yourself.

We also went to church three times a week. Sunday morning: Sunday school and the worship service. Sunday night: evening service. And Wednesday evening for prayer meeting, choir practice, youth group, whathaveyou. We were there every time the doors were open.

From time to time, we would complain, my sisters and I: Why do we have to go to church All The Time? And why can’t we just buy everything at The Gap? And don’t you understand that I need the collared shirt to be an Izod?

But my parents were deaf to these concerns. They loved us. They provided and cared for us. But they were motivated by things other than the meager reputation one might manufacture based on clothing or the right pair of shoes.

They were motivated by love and miracle, by committed belief in the resurrection of Jesus. By the idea that their lives had–in a very real way–been purchased by blood, and that of God’s Son. Very simply, they did not believe that their lives were their own: for entirely their own satisfaction, their own pleasure, and a concomitant accumulation of stuff.

***

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Luke 6: 28-34

***

And so it was no surprise that–after we had all left the house–my parents did not quietly retire. No. They joined Mercy Ships and soon enough were off to West Africa for months at a time: Benin, Togo, Liberia, the Gambia, Sierra Leone. From May of ’99 to January of ’09, it seemed my parents were perpetually gearing up to join the ship or just returning from an outreach, or looking ahead to where the ship would be the next year and determining where (and when) they could join her.

My father, the electrical engineer, quickly became the head electronics technician on board, doing everything from replacing light bulbs and installing air conditioning to repairing medical equipment, the ship’s sound system, even her gyrocompass.

And my mother, a nurse by education and training, went from being the crew nurse to patient admission and then to caring for eye patients and those on the ward, before and after surgery. She spent weekends teaching health care practice in the Displaced Persons Camps, holding babies, comforting mothers, laughing with children.

Neither my parents nor any of the crew was paid for this, of course. Commonly in the developing world today, there is no health care system for the least of these– for people living out in some lonesome wild of West Africa, where unenlightened belief systems credit evil spirits for cataracts, fistulas, benign and grotesque tumors.

All of the ship’s crew–from the captain to surgeons, from the engineers to the kitchen’s cook–pay their own way to be there.

***

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust 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

***

Every year, Mercy Ships plans a destination and then, months and weeks ahead of the ship’s arrival, sends a small team into the countryside, looking to spread the word: a hospital ship is coming, and perhaps the doctors can help you.

By the time the ship arrives in port, the pier is lined with hopefuls: people who have walked for weeks in the name of possibility. They are young men escorting blind fathers, parents cradling infants starved by cleft palates, the unnumbered rejected from nameless villages who have tumors occluding their sight, blocking their breathing, slowly but certainly taking their lives.

The screening lasts for days as expert doctors and nurses talk to, examine, evaluate patients. There are some whom they must turn away: the ship is not equipped to do the long-term care required for cancer. But benign tumors and cataracts, these can come out. This jaw can be reconstructed, that palate made whole. This life restored.

Sometimes my father’s favorite task was to visit those waiting for evaluation. They stood or sat in the hot African sun, and he brought them cups of cold water.

Remarkable what work like that can do, how readily it can galvanize the beliefs one clung to while in the comforts of an American suburb: that there is far more to life than what we see here, more than our car, our career, the number of bedrooms or baths in the house.

***

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours:
We give our hearts away, a sordid boon!

William Wordsworth

***

I was a literature major. I’ve read Wordsworth’s Preludes and I know what that poem means. The poet wasn’t decrying materialism for the sake of Jesus and the world he died for– but his opening lines are appropriate, aren’t they?

Getting and spending, we give our hearts away.

I do, anyway. Despite the way I was raised, despite the example set by my parents, I am enamored of the Pottery Barn catalogue, the J.Crew catalogue, the possibility represented by a paint chip. I am as materialistic as the next person–no. I am the most materialistic person I know, because I know what I’m like, and what I want, and what I’m lured by.

And what I’m lured by numbs me, lies to me, makes me believe that if I can just get That Thing, or get these things to look That Way, then I will finally be happy. I give my heart away–a heart bled for and died for, a life paid for–so that (somehow, temporarily, in this instant after which all of it will readily be forgotten) I can look (and feel?) good.

***

Is not life more important than food (or my house, or my car, or my blog/facebook/instagram projections) and the body more important than clothes? Matthew 6:25b

Yet these matter (sometimes) too much to me. And here, O Reader, I will make– in this very blog that has never been a journal or open book on my life–a very real confession:  God has been merciful to me in my materialism. I do not mean that He has turned a blind eye to my selfishness or has overlooked my tendency to judge people by their exteriors, although even in these things He has been merciful.

But His greatest mercy in my materialism has been expressed by withholding:  by simply not enabling me to indulge my greed. Yes, I live in a charming but simple neighborhood, in a charming but simple house. I enjoy, like most Americans, living in the top one percent of the world’s population–a fact I have always been keenly aware of due to my husband and my parents, who think about these things.

But in comparison with that of most of my peers, the population among whom I live out the dailiness of my life, my ability to be a middle class consumer has been radically curtailed. My husband, due to the vicissitudes of our economy in the last decade or so, has twice lost his job. And while he has always worked hard and has never once spent a day on the couch, we have spent some years living on an income below the poverty level.

It is a miracle that we still live in our house. It has been grace to put gas in the car and groceries in the refrigerator (and that we own a refrigerator). Needless to say, our home is in want of repairs. Some of our furniture is Old. We simply do not order things from J. Crew. Or Pottery Barn.

And all of this is mercy.

***

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  Matthew 5: 13-16

***

I imagine that God, whose own Son bled and died for me, understands the way I am made–and that, were I able to get my hands on all the beautiful stuff (and it is so beautiful) this world has to offer, I would lose that saltiness in the interest of my own self. I would pull the bowl of my possessions right over my head and gaze at it all in the small light of my small life, and so, eventually, the light of my life would be extinguished.

Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

I don’t think Jesus is saying that we shouldn’t care about food and drink, that we should completely disregard clothes. I think he delights in my husband’s skill in the kitchen, and he is pleased by the ingenuity of design and the creativity of fashion.

But it’s amazing, isn’t it?, how readily we are distracted by these things, how utterly consuming they–and things like them–can be. Well, I’m amazed by that impulse in me, anyway. I can’t honestly speak for anyone else.

Anyway, I think Jesus said all of that about *not* worrying over our food, drink, and clothing so that we could let go of that stuff and instead find out His provision for us, so that we would be free to serve Him and thus find out His life and His joy. I believe and, to some extent, have known, that there are treasures–vast, exquisite, shining–that cannot be listed on the pages of a clothing catalogue, and there are spaces–holy, pure, beautiful–that will never be photographed for a magazine.

There is much more life, sometimes, in a cup of cold water.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.  I Peter 1:8-9

***

In June 2007, Bill and I took our children to visit Beacon of Hope in Nairobi, Kenya. This indigenous organization supports, educates, and helps women and their families who are infected with or impacted by HIV/AIDS. From 2005-2009, my husband produced a music festival here in North Carolina to support Beacon, and he wanted our children to see first-hand what all the fuss was about–why he spent hours putting the festival together, why it was so important.

To some extent, I think, we were not surprised by what we experienced there. The team leading our group was compassionate and expert, seasoned in what we would see. And of course there were the many experiences related by my parents, trips to the opposite side of the continent, but very much exposing them to similar need.

We are so glad we went.

I won’t say that that trip hasn’t come up again, when–confronted by our children with requests for this or that, things enjoyed by their well-heeled peers at the school where I taught–we remind them of what it really means to be in want.

But we do live in America, after all. My husband has started a business that (God be praised!) is thriving. And while our trip to Kenya still feels fairly recent to Bill and to me, for our children it is a distant speck in the rear-view. We want them to remember what they were exposed to in the Kware slum. When pulled by the noisy allure of material things, we want them to know that there is so much more to life than what we own, and that what we own can readily and absolutely and almost always get in the way.

***

Will graduated from high school in May. He turned eighteen last month, and I am grateful that, in a few weeks, he’ll join the Africa Mercy, part of the Mercy Ships fleet, in Madagascar. He is to be with the ship for six months, serving as a cook and otherwise being part of the community that is a floating hospital. Through my parents’ experience on the Anastasis, I can guess at what he’ll see. From my own experience in Christian community, I can guess what he’ll discover.

But it’s my deepest prayer that, in this year of forestalling college, he’ll be even more infected than his mother by the vibrant hope that Christ offers. It’s my hope that these six months color the rest of his life–all of the decisions he makes, whether it’s buying a house or a car, or deciding where to invest his valuable time.

I won’t say that this is easy for me, this sending my first-born to what feels like the other side of the world. And it’s not just until Thanksgiving, or until Christmas, which is what, I imagine, most mothers of first-year college students have to wait for. It’s until April.

But, as Owen Meany once said, “Faith takes practice.” In letting Will go off on this adventure, I am practicing in the keenest of ways what it is I’ve been trying to learn: where to put my treasures. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

My children are most decidedly treasures to me, and always, when confronting that verse, I have counted on “storing them up in heaven.” They belong to God, not to me. If He is their Absolute Treasure, as He is mine, then physical separation–especially in the name of Christ–really shouldn’t be such a big deal. Right?

Durham to Madagascar: 8,946 miles. 7 hours worth of time zones. And through God’s mercy, Will and I will be working side-by-side, despite the distance, to build the Kingdom of Heaven.

We have all of eternity–invisible and more real than anything I’ve known–to look forward to. Six months, in light of that, is nothing.

For more on Mercy Ships, watch this.
If you are interested in supporting our son Will financially as he embarks on this adventure, we are sincerely grateful. Go here to do so. And thank you.

The post Materialism, Mercy and Madagascar appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

It was meals at favorite restaurants, and being sung the Happy Birthday song, and a new coat.

It was homemade potato chips with gorgonzola dip, German five-grain bread and cheese for breakfast and Asian fusion for dinner, and on Thursday a pork loin with buttered cider sauce that could also be (and was) served over vanilla ice cream for dessert.

It was Everett’s last cross-country meet and fall break. It was a visit to Duke Gardens. It was a threat of rain that never delivered.

It was the late-afternoon departure of Emma for her first-ever youth group retreat. It was the mid-afternoon departure of the boys for a birthday slumber party. It was the late-night arrival of Janke and Betsy, poets.

It was long-standing project-completion and conversations on theology. It was pruning roses and rebuildling the stone wall. It was a walk with my father. It was my mother playing the piano. It was discussion on the sometimes harrowing project that means being published.

It was people sleeping in every conceivable place. It was trying to figure out what to do next based on what everyone else was doing and what absolutely had to happen. It fell short of frenzied, but sometimes not by much, and everybody glad to be here anyway. I’m so grateful for that.

And then it was a poetry reading at The Morning Times that meant words falling each after the other, so quick and deft and sounding that, sitting there, listening, I had no reason to move.

And then everybody went home, and the children came home, and everything is back to normal. I have the folded laundry my mother left me, and the package of photos my father left me, and Betsy’s book.

So this.

After the Party,
There is a Lonely Sound.

Sound of a rowboat knocking emptily
against the dock. Sound of smooth oars banging
loosely against sideboards. Sound of night.
Sound of stars. Sound of blinds zipped down
against the sleeping country. Sound
of lovely. Sound of we’re all going home,
what about you? Sound of thinness
of dimes and the hard snap of butterscotch.
The sound of lapping water makes me want to stay all night long.
Sound of a piano being played upstairs and a small boy’s
blanket of sheet music. Sound of the ceiling
as some sort of possibility. Sound
of I’ll always write to you. Sound of letters
stolen from mailboxes. Sound of waiting.
Sound of eyes wide open. Sound the cello makes.
Sound of the grass in the yard taking on the dew.
Sound of that’s it.
Sound of yes and yes and yes. — Betsy Wheeler

The post After the Party appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Witness my daughter’s walk-in closet. Beautifully reorganized. The baby toys that I still can’t bear to give away are sorted and removed to higher shelves; the puzzles stacked Just So, the blankets neatly folded. Now all of Emma’s toys are readily apparent and accessible and Look! there is the floor!

Meanwhile, in Emma’s room proper, behold if you will the holes in the window trim…. Ah ha! You can’t!! And this is because they’ve been All Filled In with wood-filler, and sanded down, and painted.

Painted, you say? Why yes, painted. Along with all the trim in Emma’s room: painted. Newly, freshly, in a white that goes oh-so-much-more-nicely than the previous white did with the blush pink of her bedroom walls.

I’m good, huh?

Also accomplished: innumerable spackle-issues that, over the years, have made themselves Evident in the living areas of our house. Spackled they are now, I say, and painted over, too. So that it all looks Ever So Much Better.

And this, I will not hesitate to remind you, O Reader, during a School Week.

The bragging can (and will) continue:

I also had the laundry done All The Time. Not a child asking for socks at negatitve-three-minutes-before-we-absolutely-have-to-leave-the house. Not a reckless and disheartened searching for clean underwear. Never a shirt yanked from the middle of the clean, folded clothes in the laundry basket. No. All the clothes. Clean. Folded. Sorted. Away.

And meals! Served on time, on a table beautifully set (with the new dishes I received for Christmas), and candles lit in the dining room. And this ready and (practically) waiting when we got home from school!

Yes, in all the above ways, last week was Truly Exemplary. And while I’d like to say that it is all the result of a new leaf that I have recently overturned, That Would Be A Lie.

No, such efficient productivity is over for now, because today my mother Went Home.

She arrived here just two days before Christmas and stayed for three weeks: weeks during which I never did laundry and I never washed dishes and I never (not really ever) made a meal. But thanks to her my pantry and kitchen cupboards are beautifully reorganized, my dining room is repainted, and some of my pretty things are rearranged. She’s done it again, what she always does: she’s made me love my home More.

She also made me cups of tea and encouraged me to rest; praised me, my husband, my children; redirected (and redirected and redirected) my gaze to my Father; and told me what is True: that I am (we are all) So Deeply Loved, So Very Safe.

The house felt a wee bit colder without her in it when we came home this afternoon, but signs of her visit are everywhere. She left a birthday card for Bill (his day is tomorrow) on the dining room table and a catalogue for me, dishes clean in the drainer and laundry (of course) underway.

When we sat down to dinner, Everett thought to call her to come to the table, and then he remembered.

*sigh*

Some women worry about turning into their mothers and, from their descriptions, I think this is a reasonable concern. But I will tell you, with the Most Sincere Gratitude, that this is one problem I Do Not Have.

I am not at all worried that I will “turn into my mother.” No. I am counting on it.

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