This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being but becoming; not rest but exercise; we are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished, but it is going on; this is not the end, but it is the road.

- Martin Luther

Seattle Spring

A Mentality of Abundance

Poverty vs. Abundance.

I've had this theme clanging around in my head and heart for the past few days.

I've whined often enough in this space about how I'm tired, about how I feel like I'm spinning in circles even though life is charging forward at a dizzying speed. Most of the time I don't feel like I have enough          

• time
• creativity
• patience
• love
• vision
• perspective
• gratitude
• holiness
• energy

I become a miser in my activities because I haven't had enough sleep. I become stingy with the intentional attention I give because there are so many people demanding it right now that there just might not be enough to spread around. I evaluate (judge) whether or not those around me are meeting their Duty Quotas, because the Duties can feel suffocating. I hoard my energy for the bare essentials of day-to-day life because there just isn't enough.

In sharing her struggle with sleep deprivation after her first child was born, Olive Chan writes:

I’d been operating out of a poverty mentality. Afraid that I would run dry, I became a miser, hoarding my energy and limiting my commitments like a cheapskate. My Creator was inviting me to see things differently. God was asking me to adopt a mentality of abundance. To believe God is more than enough. To dare to give generously and lavishly because God’s resources are never ending.

Why is it easier for me to trust God with my finances than my strength for the day?

I am trying to remember that there *is* enough. I worship the One who takes our meagre offerings of loaves and fishes and multiples them beyond count.

If my night was too short, I can choose to start my morning with thanks-giving for the horizontal time I *was* given and look to Him who never sleeps to sustain me. When my children appear bent on mutual destruction before 7:30 am and I can see my day stretching out before me, bleak and jagged, I actually *can* rest in Jesus - He has more than enough (love, grace, joy) for me to draw on as deeply as I need to and to then pour on those around me.


I do not want to operate out of a poverty mentality in any part of my life. I want to dance in the freedom of the truth that I am enough because He is, has, and gives more than enough.

TIred, joyful, torn, okay

So the problem is that when I have moment to think, when the joyful cacophony of my little people is paused for a rest and the kitchen isn't a total disaster and I know the next meal will be alright and we'll have some clean clothes to put on in the morning, I'm just too tired to write. The here and now takes all my strength these days, and it's so precious that I don't want to shove it aside. Sometimes creativity feels selfish (I'm pretty sure that's a lie, but most days I don't have the energy to disembowel it). I turned 33 on Sunday, and the truth is that I too am in the midst of my tired thirties. (Sarah Bessey, though a total stranger, sheds some light onto my surroundings more eloquently than I can).

I am 21 weeks pregnant, and we got to see this little person via ultrasound on Friday. It was absolutely incredible. The child is healthy and beautiful, and we give thanks in wonder. Seeing the ultrasound pictures has really made an impact on the kids too, once they came to understand that the child isn't actually gray and fuzzy.

I am tired, yet feeling really healthy. I am not yet large enough to be constantly uncomfortable, but I feel this child dancing more strongly with each passing day. Schooling is really quite fun, and I love being part of the boys' 'aha!' moments. Orion is pretty much the best.

We are all pretty healthy, and I am still grateful. Speaking of gratefulness, there had been a real grumbly attitude among the kids over the past month or so. Any special treat was met with indifference, any act of kindness met with a sense of entitlement. No matter how many times I told them to say 'thank you,' it was never spontaneous, never coming from the heart. And a 'thank you' said with rolled eyes really doesn't cut it. I was ready to throw a hissy fit at a moment's notice, reminding them of all I do for them and how I really am good at things besides cleaning up their messes and how someday they would come to see me as a person and would regret all of their childish selfishness and would extol me for all I sacrificed for them, memorializing me as a saint. So as a good, righteous mother, I started praying for their hard little hearts (because that's where it all starts, right?). I prayed for God to give them grateful hearts. And you know what He told me? It starts with you.

The nerve.

My gut reaction was 'Oh, come on!'

I am mature like that.

But He who is Truth was right, and He is slowly changing my heart. And as I remember to be thankful in the kids' hearing, things are slowly changing.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies
No sudden rending of the veil of clay
No angel vision, no opening skies
But take the dimness of my soul away

The softening of my own heart can be the biggest miracle of all.

...must...keep...trying...

Hiya.

You know how sometimes you get all inspired and are all, like, 'Hey, I'm going to start a blog!' and things are going along alright and you keep going despite your lack of creative genius and then suddenly life gets too much in the way and your family is sick non-stop for two months and you are dealing with the first trimester of your fourth pregnancy on top of all the never-ending house renovations and the adjusting to a new city and all of a sudden it has been two months since your last post?!?

Ya, I didn't think you'd understand. But there you have it. That's what it's been like.

But I'm happy to report that I'm comfortably in my second trimester now (no longer feeling like I'm constantly gagging, and not yet large enough to be uncomfortable in all my swollen glory). Also, we are so so so thankful that our entire family has been healthy, non-stop, for a solid two weeks now. It has been wonderful.

So we are plugging along, and I am determined (again) to write. I don't aim to write because I have delusions that the world needs to hear my voice. I just want to write because I want to. I need to, too, I think.

Here is one anecdote before I go to play some Brahms. Orion and I went to a performance of the Seattle Symphony on Saturday night. I was preparing the boys ahead of time for the fact that Daddy and I would be at the concert, and their eyes grew big and sad as they said 'I want to go to the symphony too.' (Be still, my heart!) I told them that on a special Saturday morning in March, they were going to get to hear the Seattle Symphony play Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf' (which they love). A smile spread across their faces in a flash, but then Son #1 grew concerned and said 'Maybe just Peter will be there.'

It took a few moments of calm explanation to convince him that there would not, in fact, be a live wolf at the concert.

My Joyful One is two

Orion and I were too sick to make a cake, but my Annalyn Joy turned two today anyway. Little ice cream cones, lacking candles, sufficed as celebration enough for our droopy eyes and slimy noses, systems racked with fever and chills. She didn't complain once, my little girl, but instead I got a lot of extra cuddles. They won't last long enough.

I remember sitting in church on this morning two years ago. It was then, as now, Advent, and I was waiting for the birth of a child. Glorious music was sung from Handel's Messiah, and I smiled secretly to myself.

He shall feed His flock like a shepherd,
and He shall gather the lambs with His arm,
and carry them in His bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.

Come unto Him all ye that labour,
come unto Him that are heavy laden,
and He will give you rest.

Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him,
for He is meek and lowly of heart,
and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

I was given new access into this truth that day, and a few hours later she was born. And what a joyful, blessed birth it was.

Happy birthday, Annalyn Joy. You make my life better.

I often feel my world is small. My vision is short, my concerns are domestic. When I occasionally wipe the sleep from my eyes, I think about the possibilities of being in a new city and  how I would like to live intentionally. I want to have meaningful relationships with my neighbours; I would like our home to be a place of peace in our community, a place of God's justice and a place of encountering the Spirit. And then a child needs my attention and it is once again diverted from the world outside my door.

It seems I just don't have the strength or the attention span to tackle more than the task in front of me, which feels pretty monumental most of the time. Sometimes I shudder at the thought of how much influence I'm having in these little lives.

I read this passage in Jesus Rediscovered a few days ago, and figured it might make a good launching point for a blog post.

"Public benevolence can never be a substitute for private virtue; it is more important, and more difficult, to check one outburst of temper, however trivial, than to engage in any number of public demonstrations against collective brutality and injustice."

-Malcolm Muggeridge

But today was not a good day. As a friend put it, "Today I failed at being a mommy." When the darkness in my own heart gets pushed and yanked and brought into the light for those I love most to see, I realize again that for God to change my own heart really is nothing short of earth-shatteringly miraculous.

So I hope that the Prince of Peace, born into the smallest and humblest of circumstances, might also make His dwelling in me. It is Advent, and I am waiting.