I leave the house to go to work four evenings a week.  (More about that, some other post.  I leave a few minutes before 8, and I’m home a few minutes after 8 in the morning.)

Mostly, it works pretty well.  The little ones are either in bed, or almost ready for bed, and my husband spends time with the older kids.  Sometimes, they watch movies (with the tv guardian on…) that I really don’t want to see again, or do puzzles, or whatever it is they decide to do.

Last night, once I had tucked my 92 year old friend into bed, I settled in my own room and turned on my laptop.  I e-mailed my husband with a few questions.

In just a few minutes, he e-mailed me back telling me what he had been up to for the evening.

Hi Sweetheart!

My parents called, and I talked to them for a half hour – no big news.  They said thank you for the table cloth – Mom said it was “really neat.”
I picked the turkey meat off, and am boiling the bones.  I’ll make someone a good housewife some day…

Love you,
Jeff

I just had to laugh at that.  I told him that I already thought he was pretty wonderful.  A housewife, no, although he does many things more diligently than I do:  laundry, fixing meals when he is home, reading bedtime stories, tucking little ones into bed.  He even gets up about three times a night to let our silly cat in or out of the house, based upon her whims.  The cat thinks he’s awesome.  I do too.

We aren’t hugely about “roles” around here.  Our oldest son makes breakfast every morning, and our oldest girl cleans up the kitchen.  Sometimes the oldest ones peel potatoes for supper, sometimes the little ones do.   We all read stories to little ones, we all clean potties, we all know how to wipe faces, we all know how to feed the cat and clean out the van.  We all know how to mow the yard and weed a garden and filet  fish and clean the windows…oh, wait.  That window part never happens.   And I do wish that someone would learn to dust and sweep in the corners.   We all know, however,  how to pile into the living room to eat home-made pizza and watch old tv shows on the weekend, or to throw the water cooler, a quilt, some food and swimsuits into the back of the van in the summer to head to the swimming hole.  It is my prayer that we all learn more about hope, and joy in this coming year – along with many other lessons on how to be a closer family.  It is a constant process, it seems.

For us, it’s all about give, and take, about flexibility, about seeing a need an jumping in.  It’s not so much about authorities and who is supposed to do what – it’s just about being a family, and we work toward that end all of the time.  We love it this way.  Sometimes it is messy.  Actually, USUALLY it is messy, but that’s how families seem to be and that’s how they seem to grow.

And me?  I’m sooo glad that I didn’t have to pick the turkey meat off of that old bird.  It is one of my least favorite jobs.

Thank you, honey, for being flexibility in doing whatever it takes to make this family run, and in teaching our children to do the same.

My guy, reroofing our house

…and a little cuddle time with our littlest girl.

Hey kids.  As you grow older, we talk often about God.  Who He is, what He wants from us – different theologies and belief systems.  We talk a lot about the people (and their beliefs) that you come across online – Christian groups and Christian friends, mostly.  As you know, for you instigate most of them, we have huge and invigorating conversations about who does what, and why.

At the beginning, as you crossed the threshold from concrete to abstract thought, from childhood to adulthood, you wanted me to tie our own belief structure up in a nice and tidy package.

“What do we believe, as opposed to what “they” believe?”  You didn’t like cloudy, hard-to define corners.  I understand that – for that is where most of us stay for the majority of our lives.

And I am happy to give you the broad outlines, for on the core issues, we (your Dad and I – and you can always include him when I say “I,” for we are one heart, mind and flesh because of love) have solid structure:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried;

the third day he rose from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church, the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

*the Apostle’s Creed, updated a little bit from the Book of Common Prayer, 1662, to reflect a little John Wesley flavor.  This is per our tradition.

But the older you get, and the more you study and learn, the less easy it is to define God.

See, as a mom of many children, I get to live in a dual-age place.  I am unfolding and uncovering God, revealed through Jesus – to your little brothers and sister.  We hop onto their bed at night, get cozy, then start to read from their Jesus Story-Book Bible. Their eyes widen, they get excited at what they hear, and they ask questions.  “Is the Holy Spirit little then, that He can fit inside of us?”  “Oh, NO!  He’s HUGE.  He’s bigger than you can imagine!  He’s more powerful than you can realize, but when you love God His Spirit lives inside of you and fills you up and  He is always with you, helping you.”

It’s easy.  It’s blessed.  It is such a delight to teach them the marvelous way that God loves them and calls them to follow Him.

But you, my older ones…it is still a blessing and a delight to continue to unfold God before you, but now, you are the ones doing the unpacking.  I stand beside you, pulling on the tape and the wrapping, turning the pages and pointing out; giving you more to read and understand as you grow – but this task is truly yours.  You must seek God.  He is yours, you are His.

Let me tell you how it feels to me to try to express God to you as you mature.  You know that I speak in word pictures, so try this one on for size:

I want to hand you that same tidy box that I gave you in childhood.  It really is a pleasant package – marvelous wrapping and a beautiful, creative bow.  It’s all you needed at that time.  It’s so succinct, and clear to understand.

But I can’t hand you that same package, now.   You would eventually call me on it.  Things aren’t always as clear as we want them to be.  At times faith is wild and doesn’t corner the curves.   It has a strong core, a center that you can depend upon.  But to me, this thing that I am trying to hand you looks like a glorified version of an artificial heart (though there is nothing artificial about it.)  It looks like an engine, with marvelous hoses and wires and tubes and gears and pulleys that explode in so many different directions.  It is complex.  It may seem difficult to understand.  But as you probe and tug and inspect, you are going to find that this – my not-so-great and meager representation of God and of faith – is more amazing than you could have ever imagined when you held that plain, well-defined package in your hands and thought you had God so perfectly explained.

I…know.  Faith is not containable.  It’s not so “wrap-able.”  But I’d rather you be spectacularly awe-filled with the wonder of your God than to cling to that little box for most of your life.  My fear of the small box is that one day, you would dare to rip the package open, and find that there was nothing inside.  And then, you might be devastated, and disbelieve all that you have been taught by me and other well meaning people.  You might lose God.  And to me, that would be much more horrible than keeping God in His beautiful, small container.

I’d rather hand you a larger, harder to understand version now, while you are with me, so that you can ask while you probe, “what is that?”  At times, I will say, “I don’t know.  What do you think?”  And the question will linger but you will be driven to understand.  I will not, I can not, tie it all up for you – but I can assure you that in time you will begin to see that each part does indeed have relationship, connectedness, and purpose.

You must be the one to seek God, you must seek faith, on your own.  It is not something that I can impute to you.  I can live it before you, in all of my vainglorious failings and imperfections, but you already know about those.  I can say, in spite of these and in spite of the things that I do not understand, that I trust Him.  The more I seek Him, the more I am given over to faith and to trust in a God who made all and who loves all.

He is worth the study, worth the exploration, worth the uncertainty, worth the beautiful glimmers and breakthroughs that come when you finally catch a glimpse of His glory and of the love He has for humanity which drove Him to implement a plan of rescue that is available to the world.   I’ll speak for myself, but eventually it all reconciles and circles back around to a simple, childlike faith that says, “I believe,” and, “He is good.”

So, kids, here it is.  This marvelous, breath-taking, uncontainable bundle that holds the key to your faith and your belief in God.  Go on.  Open it.  I’ll tug on the tape, pull back the tissue here and there, point out something that you might not have noticed, but it’s for you!  We’ll spend our life-times unwrapping, but we’ll never be bored.  And He…He’s patient and loving while you open, discover, taste and see.  Go on!  It’s yours!

Dad and I look forward to continuing the conversation over many years.  We’re here, standing at the side, cheering you on.

Love, Mom

My friend Connie has a post up today, called Make the Kiddies Pay.

It’s a good post, it’s a good philosophy….at least I think so.  It’s how our family operates as well.

We try to provide ways for our kids to earn money, then we expect them to pay for the extra things they wish to have.  It works out well, teaching real world living practically.  I don’t think I’ll ever have to teach a formal “business” or personal finance course to my children – the subject is just incorporated into everyday life.

In her post, Connie asked her readers to let her know how they handled kids and money.  Here’s a little something extra that our working kids do, that blesses the rest of the family.

When our sons mow yards, they use our mower and weedeater.  We also pay for the gas, oil and maintenance.  Mom (that’s me) has a small amount of re-arranging of the day to haul the kid and the mower/gear to the lawn to be mown.  The other kids take on extra responsibilities while the workers are out earning their money – there might be extra supper clean-up, or more babysitting while mom delivers the workers.  After tithing (giving 10 percent back to God’s work) they put another 10 percent into an envelope called The Family Fund.  Since everyone works to help support the  young person as they gain independence and real world work experience, it is just a way that said young person can give back to the family.  This is not something that we have ever enforced – it’s not a hard-nosed rule.  It’s just something that we suggested that we thought might help us to build each other up, to make the ones at home feel thought of and to give them something to look forward to.  The sacrifice of extra work, for the benefit of the older ones, brought them blessing too.

Last year, our oldest sons saved up enough money to buy a zoo pass for the whole family, for the entire year.  That one gift has given us at least 10, wonderful outings throughout the year.  No money out of my pocket, we breeze through the gate and I always remind the youngest ones to say “thank you” to their brothers for another beautiful day.

This year, the savings doubled.  More work – more funds.  The Family Fund is set aside to help us take a family vacation, most likely at a cabin in a campground somewhere, with a lake for fishing and swimming.  Nothing extravagent, but for us it will feel like Disneyworld.

The hearts of the little ones will be turned to the older ones.  They will look up to their older brothers and sister and think they hung the moon.   I can’t imagine how great it must feel, as a teen, to know that you’ve given your family a huge gift that they would not otherwise be able to afford.

That’s how we handle kids and money.  Thanks, Connie, for asking!