This morning the fall air is crisp.  Les is busy working on our washer, which had an unfortunate relationship with a too fussy blanket, washed by accident by a young lady in our home.  Two or three emptying later, we’re still working on unclogging the filters. It’s a big visual today of what happens when we hold on to things we were never intended to hold onto. The water is murky, unnatural, and rots.  Had the water simply been released, it would have allowed for new, fresh water to continue cleaning and making clear that which it was intended.

This week was a difficult one. Unexpected challenges and unexpected outcomes.  God is God and all is well.  It is easy to trust God when the sun is shining, but as I get older I realize trusting God makes the hard times so much easier too.  I don’t have to understand, I don’t have to logically make it make sense, I just have to know that God is God and He has a plan to use even the most painful experiences for good.

As I look outside my office window and see the leaves turning bright colors and beginning to fall from their branches I am reminded that we too need to let go of those things that no longer help us to grow. I know I too often hang on to old experiences or thoughts that no longer help bring in the energy and life to my existence.  As God made the tree to let go of that which no longer can absorb light and grow, so must I learn to let go to wither and return to the soil that which cannot help me grow.

What will you let go of this fall?

   This week as schools begin to open and children become the focus I am reminded as a former school teacher that our role as parents is to protect our children. Protect their heads and protect their hearts as vigilantly as we protect their bodies as young babes.  We live in a society that seems to think that children are “minature adults” and yet we know that it is not so.  Lucy Ann Moll wrote a beautiful post on that this morning at BasicsMatter.com.  You can read an excerpt below

At friends’ homes, I felt like I stepped into “Little House on the Prairie.” People blessed each other with words of affirmation. They hugged. They said, “I love you.”

Back at my home, dad yelled, and mom withdrew into stony silence.

I hated his yelling and her silence. It sucked the life out of me like a starfish washed up on shore unable to breathe, waiting to be noticed and brought home, a beachcomber’s treasure. I tried to be cheerful around my mom and help with chores, even finish my homework  and play quietly with my brother, Ted, but it didn’t matter. It seemed children didn’t matter.

The truth: Children do matter. Toddlers or teens, they deserve our love. Real love.

To read the rest of the post go here

Children do matter, and I am so very reminded of that as I look at our youngest two…and know that while one is 15 and one is 3 days old, we face the same challenge…how to allow them space to grow while still protecting their heads and hearts.

  Yesterday I spent a good part of the day at the #140EDU conference which was being streamed in NYC.  I was trained formally as an educator,  I specialized in the field of gifted education with emphasis on learning disorders.  My real world experience ranged from PK learners to post graduate ones over 23 years.

I have to say I love teaching and I love working with learners, parents, communities, colleges and teachers… It was part of the best of my life and continues to be today as I facilitate learning strategies with individuals, schools, and state systems at times during the year.  The day was full of encouraging and enlarging speakers.  At the end of the day however, I found that as much as I loved the #140edu Conference I found that once again I was torn.  Educational reform is a topic I am passionate about. It matters.  However, educational reform is not my primary focus at this point in my life, though it is always a favorite uncle in my energy.  The topic and path is seductive, passionate, and would be so easy to engage in full time….there’s just one problem…

God hasn’t asked me to do it…

My chosen focus at this point is not to be a liberator, a national presence, a large group gatherer, but to be a hands on, shoulder it with you resource as God puts people in front of me.  It seems to be what brings peace as I fight to remain in that space…it’s funny, the work is harder, the hours are sometimes longer, the sense of it is something I have difficulty grasping.  God doesn’t seem to mind that it doesn’t make sense to me. (and don’t you know I feel the same way when my child can’t make sense of why I asked him to do this or that)

As much as I appreciate that going in front of large groups and passionately creating attention to needed change is important, it’s not where I am led to often spend my time, despite invitations.  I do it when its necessary, when it is meaningful, when its effectively going to change something, but for the most part I prefer working with folks not follies. Too many times it becomes about the production, not the people.

It perhaps is like the child who started throwing back the sand dollars one at a time into the ocean.  When told that he couldn’t save them all, he turned and wisely said “but it made a huge difference for this one didn’t it…as he put the sand dollar back in the water”  Children’s lives are at stake, people’s businesses are at risk, families are trying to survive…. at this stage in my life I am called upon often to speak to crowds, to share my passion for topics…and I am honored to be asked…but at this time, this moment, what matters to me is that we work on focusing on the people God puts before us….even if it’s one at a time…not very glamorous, and definitely not applauded….

especially the applauded part…

obedience isn’t often glamorous…

Are you too busy?  I suspect I am 99.9% of the time.  It comes with the territory of having a heart for others and a creative mind…and sometimes simply because I do not employ the need to say no to things that truly aren’t best matched to the gifts that are me.  Yesterday I spent  a few hours working on a Saturday after making a road trip to pick up one of my friends in another town who needed transportation between events.

The drive was important to me, to her as well, it affirmed all that I seek to be for others….fully present in the days we need our friends around us. Her uncle had died tragically and we needed to get her to the family who was gathering in our town, its tough to get from some airports to another on short notice in the South, so we went and picked her up in Birmingham and brought her to Decatur…far away from her northern home.  Time to talk, to share, to catch up on the two hour drive each way.

One of the questions I have been asking myself at the end of the day is:

Did I spend this time today honoring my God, my family, my heart, and the things I value most?
ouch.  Not so much yesterday.  I fussed at my husband late in the day, I was short with myself on something I was doing as an extra for others….and I didn’t give me much grace for trying… I wasted time on something else that didn’t honor my need to rest a while after a hard week…..I simply kept going when the better choice would have been to simply stop.

I can tell you already…that the question has taken me to a place of deep contemplation the last few weeks. Thoughts and knowledge deep in my heart that will lead to change.

How are you doing on the choices before you?  What are you staying busy with these days? Do you find that you’re taking enough time for you? Saying “No” to the things that don’t honor your values? Stopping long enough to make sure the life you are living is the life you wanted to live?

What are you choosing to be busy with?
 hugs,

When I was a little girl The Secret Garden was one of my favorite stories..  I thought to myself, when I am grown up I will have a garden of my own. I will cut fresh flowers and keep them on our tables and beside our beds. I will spend time with my daughters and together we’ll share stories while working in the garden….

The garden is real, it may not be the lush lovely thing that the movies and books portray, but the time together has grown more than any bloom will ever share…we love cutting flowers from the cutting garden and planting beds around our home not because we’re good at it, or plant perfect rows in our box garden, but because in being together and watching things we tend by hand….grow….we remember that all things, especially motherhood, grow into lovely when time is simply shared with your child…and watching her grow as well!

Tomorrows get here awfully fast…..make today a someday!

Sweetie

As a child my Mom always said to make time for the important things…..life gets awfully consuming if you let it, but today we took time as a family to do some things that mattered to each child…and took time to smell the roses of life as a family….today the chores could wait…..the last picture was from early this year….and I took time to remember a special morning with friends too!