A Mom Like Me with a Kid Like Brooka

She’s never said it more clearly than she did today: “I think God wants me to live in Indonesia.” Not just go to Indonesia, but live there. She used the words “mission” and “preach.” In Indonesia. And she’s only seven.

We’ve always had that “one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others” feeling about our third child, Brooka. She is comfortable with everyone. She walks into a room and believes everyone there wants to be her friend. She’s freakishly confident. She requires adventure. She can’t remember ever feeling afraid. She doesn’t much care about privacy or quality of restroom facilities. She does sick better than anyone I’ve ever known. She prays passionately. (Of course she also picks her nose, runs off in parking lots, fights with her siblings, and is generally way too hyper. When she was two, all that independence and adventure caused me to consider drinking.)

The Indonesia thing started a few years ago. She was reading books about tigers, her great love, and learned about the islands of Java and Sumatra. She started talking about Indonesia, and how she thought she might live there some day. It came up at random times. My youngest daughter would say, “Mommy, I will always live next door to you and take care of you,” and Brooka would chime in, “Not me! I’ll be clear in Asia and you’ll never see me.” She also says things like, “Gee, Addison, I hope I can make it to your wedding, but you know I’ll be in Indonesia.”

I’m starting to think there’s something to this. And if there is, then I wonder how a mom like me, whose world is so small, prepares her child to live in a world so big. Or how a mom like me is supposed to develop her daughter’s natural confidence and independence when those things are so foreign to her. It seems almost laughable. I’ve barely been out of the United States, speak only English, and won’t try a new food on a bet. I had to look up Indonesia on a map! I have a strong preference for things that are familiar and comfortable, and yet this is the child I get to raise? It’s almost like God’s trying to make a point. Like this is going to happen because of His strength and skill and not my own.

So, by the grace of God, a mom like me is going to do her best to help Brooka find her calling and prepare her for it. I’ll do that with all my children, it just might look different with Brooka—like buying Indonesian language tapes or setting up meetings with missionaries or finding world travelers who can teach her the ins and outs of catching trains and exchanging currency. We’ve already stumbled upon the perfect Indonesian pen pal for her, and today she ate her first Indonesian candy, sent by the pen pal, whose mother says Brooka always has a place to stay there. She’s seven, and it seems like the wheels are sort of in motion already. I’m still teaching her to wash her face and load the dishwasher and tie her shoes, but all the while I’m preparing myself to watch her leave for good some day.

The only thing sadder than the thought of one day putting Brooka on a plane and sending her across the globe is the thought of holding her back because of my own fears. I won’t be that mom. She’s all yours, Lord.

We Are the Draw

In my last entry, I mentioned how my daughter Addison and I were in Denver this summer to celebrate her 10^th birthday a little early. It’s a big deal for me to have alone time with any of my kids, so I wanted to do this right. I made reservations at a nice hotel in downtown Denver. Our room was on the top floor. We stayed for two whole nights! With all my inherent cheapness pushed aside, I tried to create a real event for my daughter, something she would remember for the rest of her life. But it wasn’t quite what I had pictured.

I let her pick the restaurants, thinking there might be some fun new food she’d want to try. We ate fast food. (Her food highlight was getting her own Jamba Juice and not having to share it with another kid. I guess that’s a big deal when your inherently cheap mother has four children.) I asked if she wanted to get her ears pierced. She thought about it, and we made it as far as Claire’s, but instead just tried on funny glasses for a few minutes and left. “Do you want to go for a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, Addison?” I thought this might be the thing that made the trip for her. “Well, the horses look a little hot and tired,” she said. “Maybe we should just walk.” So we did, hand in hand, for a couple miles.

“Do you want to get a manicure, Addison?” This would be it! A lifelong nail-biter, she had worked hard all summer to grow out her nails, and now they were beautiful. “Hmmm,” she said. “Maybe. But maybe you could just do my nails.”

I’m stumped. What is up? I’m trying to create an event here, and she’s declining my every offer. Then I realize she’s been looking up at me with these googley eyes—the look she’ll someday give to her first love. But today, when she’s nearly 10, I’m her first love, and those googley eyes are reserved just for me. She tells me again, as she has pretty much every seven seconds since we got here, what a wonderful time she’s having. And I start to get it. I’m the draw here. I’m the event.

A friend had asked me, before our trip, if I was taking Addison to see a show or a play in Denver. I hadn’t even considered it and felt a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to do that for my daughter. But what I didn’t realize then was that walking hand in hand with her mom, eating cheeseburgers with her mom, snuggling in bed and watching TV with her mom was all she wanted. And here’s the thing: I don’t believe Addison is any different from your son or daughter. Parents everywhere need to get this. WE ARE THE DRAW for our kids.

The American advertising machine has done its best to convince parents we must buy more, spend more, eat more, travel more in order to have children who will remember their childhoods fondly and treat us decently during their teen years. It’s a lie! We know it’s a lie, way down deep, but do we live like it? Do we live like it at the end of the day, when we’re tired and just want to crawl into bed, but are cornered by a 10-year-old who just wants to talk about life now that the house is quiet?

Let’s not miss out on this, parents! We are the draw. They want us more than they want stuff, no matter how many messages we get to the contrary. It’s us they want—our time, and even better, our focused attention—more than anything else. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m going to try to make the most of every minute. For right now, those googley eyes are all mine.

What Needs to Be Done Here?

Time to start writing again. I enjoyed the break, and needed it, but my mind is filled with new ideas to explore and thoughts to process, and this is how I do that best. I pick back up with a reminder to myself of why I started this blog. It’s not my personal soapbox, not my forum in which to convince others of my beliefs or to share my great knowledge on life, God, parenting, or how to attractively wear sweatpants. I write because this is how I process what God is teaching me. He’s teaching me every day, and if I’ll just slow down and pay attention, I’ll grow. By making this public, maybe someone else can grow alongside me. That’s why I write. Simple as that.

So with that ground covered, I will launch into some of the things I’ve been thinking about this summer. But first, I have to applaud President Obama for his “speech” at Ground Zero yesterday. They were the perfect words at the perfect time. Just a few days ago, I saw the stupidest bumper sticker I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying something): “He’s not MY president.” See? Stupid, huh? You don’t get to substitute your own reality about something as cut-and-dried as who the president is. He is your president, foolish driver, and he’s mine, too. That’s a fact. And I have never been more impressed with our president as I was yesterday morning.

OK, moving on.

I’ve been reading a book called Spiritual Parenting by Michelle Anthony. It would be more accurate to say I’ve been “whooped upside the head” by this book. It falls along the lines of Crazy Love and Radical but within the context of parenting. Plenty to feel missing-the-boat-worthy about here, but it’s also got some very practical take-aways. One of the things she writes about that I’ve been practicing with my kids is to walk through life asking, “What needs to be done here?” Is there a breakfast plate I could take in, even though it belonged to my sister? Is there a door that needs opened for a mom pushing a stroller? Is there some trash in a parking lot that needs picked up? Is there someone who needs some encouragement? What needs to be done here?

Of course the idea is that these little acts of service will become a way of life in our children, so that in a decade or two they are asking, “What needs to be done about poverty in my community?” Or “What needs to be done about AIDS in Africa?” It makes sense that children who think this way and become adults who think this way are the key to changing the world.

So I’ve been working on introducing “What needs to be done here?” into our children’s thinking. But more than anything, I’ve been wondering about this question in my own life. Am I myself willing to be a person who goes through life with this mindset? I think I am, but then I consider the evidence to the contrary.

This summer, my daughter and I were walking down the 16^th Street Mall in Denver eating Dairy Queen Blizzards. I took one bite of mine and realized I had only gotten it because she wanted ice cream. I didn’t want ice cream, yet here I was, preparing to slurp down 16 ounces of it. At the same time, we walked by a man rifling through the trashcan for something to eat. He was filthy, stinky, scary looking. My heart went out to him. My ice cream did not. It actually didn’t even cross my mind until I was about a block down the street. Why had I not given him my Blizzard? Instant justifications came to my mind. Well I had already taken a bite—and licked off my spoon. It was second-hand ice cream! How pathetically middle class of me. A man digging through trash for food is probably not real concerned about germs. I felt horrible. My ice cream melted, uneaten, as we continued to walk and I frantically searched for someone else to give it to. But we didn’t see anyone. We saw only people like us, happily eating their own ice cream and hot dogs and coffee, unaware that six blocks away, someone was pulling his dinner from the trash.

Am I willing to do what needs to be done? I wan to be. Am I aware of what needs to be done—at the moment it needs to be done? That’s where I’ve got so far to go.

Life Changing?

Years ago, my three-year-old son stumbled upon an unwrapped Christmas gift, and I heard him whisper, “This is going to change my life,” of his new Spiderman costume. Funny how even a preschooler would utter those words. “Life changing” is a phrase tossed around casually in our society. As someone who cares about words and their meaning, I try to use it carefully. Still, there are weeks in my life that have stood the test of time and have earned the name “life changing”: the week my dad died, the week I left for college, the week I started my first job, my first week of marriage, my first week with my first baby.

I think it’s likely that June 19-25, 2011, will join that short list.

Family camp was a blast. It also felt life changing. High in the mountains, away from anything that required a power cord, surrounded by a small group of like-minded families—and with delicious meals that appeared like magic—it felt a little like heaven. The challenge now, as with any “mountain-top experience” is to bring the experience off the mountain and to make it part of real life. Only then can it be life changing.

We spent a lot of time at camp talking about the tactics of the Enemy, how one of his best strategies is to keep us busy and distracted. Perhaps his most tactical lie is to tell us we’ve got all the time in the world; we don’t need to be in any hurry to work on the hard issues in our lives. Maybe they’ll just work themselves out. We’ve got plenty of time to be intentional with our kids. They’re still so young. We’ve got all the time in the world.

Last week, we drew a line in the sand. We said we wouldn’t believe the lie, that we would start dealing with our hard stuff, that we would strive for oneness in our marriage, that we would not let a day go by without being intentional about making disciples of Christ of our children, that we would look for new ways to push back the darkness together and in community with others. We decided to change our lives.

And now we’re home, down off the mountain, where the test of time begins. Will our week at Sonrise Mountain Ranch truly be life changing? Or will it be just a great memory accompanied by some vague sense of guilt and remorse for lack of implementation? Ask me about it in six months or a year, will you? Ask me if it was a really fun week where we played hard with our kids—or a week that changed our lives. I think I’ll say it was both.

Hiatus (of some sort)

School got out Wednesday. Today is the first day in a long time we’ve awakened to a bright, blue sky with no clouds or rain. Flip-flops are on sale everywhere, and I bought my first watermelon of the season yesterday. Summer is in the air.

This will be our first full summer in the Shome, our odd little living space above our business. It’s also the first summer in a long time that holds so much work for me. I didn’t work at all last summer; now I’m in the midst of one of the biggest book projects of my life. It’s pure joy, but it’s also tricky to manage with four kids who can’t even go outside without my supervision and transportation.

We do have many fun outings planned, and I’m most looking forward to Family Camp in a few weeks. I’ve never been to a family camp—or any outdoor camp at all—but I’ve heard great things. My five favorite people will be there, we sleep in a cabin, not a tent, and we’ll be in the most beautiful part of the state. Can’t be all bad, right?

I don’t plan to write much this summer, at least not here. As God puts burning thoughts in my mind that my fingers feel they just must type up, I will write. But I’m looking forward to being still. To quieting my heart. To slowing my pace. To doing some good listening.

Off I go.

Have a joy-filled summer.

On Hard Work

I am so glad God came up with the idea of the two-parent family. I know it doesn’t work out that way for everyone, but in the case of my children, it is a very good thing. My husband fills in my gaps in a million ways, but one of the things I’m most thankful for is his work ethic. By third grade, he was an independent business owner. He delivered newspapers in the dark, in the snow. (It used to snow in Colorado.) The hardworking man he is today was cultivated in those dark, early mornings schlepping heavy papers in the wind and rain and snow.

My childhood was very different. My dad required hard work when it came to sports, and I did help my mom clean toilets and peel potatoes. (If I had a buck for every potato I peeled growing up, my hardworking husband and I would be living off interest right now.) But that kind of rolling-up-your-sleeves-breaking-a-sweat-and-getting-filthy physical labor? Not part of my childhood. I was more likely to break a sweat tanning in the backyard.

Everyone talks about how today’s kids lack the work ethic of generations past. I see it in my own kids, and that’s when I’m so grateful for my husband. And for living at the shop, too. He has them mopping the shop floor and hauling out scrap metal. He recently had Braden help build his own bed using Kevin’s childhood trampoline as the frame. How many 11-year-olds get to make their own bed? Out of 30-year-old material? I just think that’s cool. I think Kevin’s cool. And a rare breed. He’s Norweigan more than anything else, and I can picture him following in the footsteps of his Viking ancestors—resilient, rugged, courageous, strong, masculine.

In an age in which men get pedicures and carry man-purses—I’m not judging, I’m just saying—I’m so thankful my kids have the dad that they do.

Sportsmanship

I know you don’t need to hear my two cents on Osama bin Laden. Every blogger on the planet, I’m sure, has weighed in with their comments, not to mention every TV and radio personality and the guy at the water cooler. But what I have on my mind is sportsmanship.

The first images I saw, after I heard the news, were of celebrations. Somber, touching images of firemen at Ground Zero mixed with crazy ones of college students running through the streets with beer. I saw people singing “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye!” and tattooed girls in sports bras making celebratory peace signs. These images were zinged around the world at lightening speed. And I couldn’t help but think of the Muslims watching.

I wonder how many Muslims there are in the world whose disdain for Osama bin Laden is matched only by their disdain for “heathen, immoral, arrogant Americans”? Then we send them images that only confirm and strengthen their beliefs about us and wonder why they don’t like us.

Times are hard. Our nation needs reason to celebrate. We need some good news. I get that. We should celebrate and we should exuberantly express our gratitude to our military men and women. I just wish we showed good sportsmanship in the process, especially when the world is watching. We parents try to teach our kids to be humble winners, not to flaunt their achievements and sing their own praises. Celebrate, absolutely. But celebrate with humility and dignity. And please wear more than a sports bra.