Day One

Day One: Introductions.  This is my family:

This is my husband, Ben.   Yes, he is wearing a pink towel.  Hence, the reason he actually had a picture taken of just him (with no children in the picture... that's kind of unheard of right now.)  We've been married 8 years (minus 8 days).  We met when he was a senior in college and I a junior when we both volunteered at our church's youth group... the kids matched us up.  :)  He's a pastor, lover of coffee and golf, and any sport you can imagine (unless you count figure skating.)

This little goober is Micah, who turns 5 in October.  His favorite things are tractors, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the words "poopy", "underpants" and "actually" (the later of which he inserts into alomst any sentence, usually while snapping his fingers and pointing at the intended recipient of the conversation.)  He inherited the talkativeness I displayed as a child, although very rarely does it come out in any form other than question-asking....which is especially unfortunate on car rides that last longer than  5 seconds.  Overall, though, he's a great kid, and makes me laugh (almost) as many times a day as he makes me want to pull my hair out.

And then there's this guy... Caleb.  Turning two in just 18 days.  Don't let the cuteness fool you.  He's got an ornery streak that he inherited from my Dad (I think it skipped a generation.) ;)  He's the kid that, when you ask him to come to you, runs the other way, laughing over his shoulder.  He hates all things related to sleep and always has.  Since Micah hated to cuddle as a baby, I prayed for a snuggler when I was pregnant with Caleb... and that is one prayer I think God answered with a smirk, because being held is Caleb's speciality.  (I'm not praying for a cuddler this time around; I learned my lesson.)  And yet, come on... you just can't get much cuter than that.  We get an awful lot of joy out of this one.

Okay, I'll admit it... we've actually been dabbling in cloning.

And there's me (with the hubby, obviously.)  This picture dates back about a year, but I realized that as the token photo-taker of the family, I don't actually have any recent pictures of me.  I would tell you about myself, but you'll be getting an entire blog about that... so nevermind. 

So there's the whole clan... until January when Abby makes her debut.  Until then, all I know about her is that she likes to jump on my bladder at night.

In today's "glorious mundane" report... I dropped my phone in the toilet.  Not such a glorious moment. 

Just so you know, I am NOT one of those people.  In fact, when we bought these phones a month ago, we told the salesman we didn't need insurance on them because we're not the "kind of people" who carelessly leave their phones by the sink or lock their keys in their car or misplace much of anything... we're pretty organized and structured and low-maintenance.  And yet today, all that natural responsible-ness that gives me such ease-of-mind stared back at me from the bottom of the toilet bowl.  Let me just say nothing feels more hopeless than seeing your new cell phone creating ripples in a kamode.  Fortunately, it was pre-urination.  Unfortunately, it was a public restroom.  And what does one do after fishing a phone out of a toilet with your bare hands?  (Besides washing your hands, I mean?)  It's not like you stick your phone under running water and lather it with soap.   I figured germs can't live forever, right?  So I stuck it in a bag of rice and I'm praying that tomorrow the screen will work again. 

One thing I noticed with the whole phone/potty situation... it's uncanny how one negative thing can suddenly make everything else turn a few shades darker as well.  Just the night before, I had been feeling pretty positve about life, and was excited about the thought of giving some of our finances away to kids in Africa.  BUT now my phone falls in the toilet, and suddenly, the Moby Wrap I just won on e-bay doesn't seem like such a great deal after all, and the fact that I need to take the van to the shop this week to get a seatbelt fixed becomes an overwhelming task to fit into my to-do list (not to mention one more bill to plop on the "miscellaneous category" in our budget), and that bug Ben killed in the kitchen this morning?  It's probably some new form of cockroach that is going to take over the entire house.  Who can worry about the dying kids in Africa when we have such momentous troubles here?  I mean I MIGHT HAVE TO PAY EIGHTY BUCKS TO FIX MY PHONE!  (insert exaggerated sigh here.) 

Well, hello, Satan... you sure do know just the right "sweet nothings" to whisper in my ear, don't you?  Maybe it's a good thing I just started this blog last night, because after about half an hour of pouting, I remembered to invite God into the situation.  I'm still bummed about the inconvenience of the phone, but I guess it hasn't thrown off any major global plan for my existence, right?  Is it weird to say that before the creation of the world, God knew that on this day, at that time, my phone would slide off the back of the kamode and slip perfectly through the space between me and the porcelain?  He wasn't all that surprised.  And in the light of things, I guess the kids in Africa still have bigger problems... even while God cares about my much littler issues. 

Life is so much brighter and better and calmer when there's just a little bit of "glorious" shining in.

And so it begins...

There.  I did it... it is official.  I have a blog; I am a blogger. 


Oh, how I have fought this moment.  I used to be like, Seriously?  Who has time to blog?  People without kids, maybe.  Or people without MY kids.  Not me. 


Then I was like, What's the point?  I don't craft.  I don't coupon (yet.)  I don't know what I'm making for dinner tonight.  More than likely a blog would result in just one more incident of me getting frustrated with my two-year-old for trying to sit on the keyboard while I type.


And THEN my sister-in-law pointed something out to me... a blog for her is an online scrapbook.  She wanted to remember all the stuff her kids said and did.  And I thought, Well, I DO have cute kids.  And my days of scrapbooking ended with my wedding album.  And ten years from now I probably won't remember the fact that I made my kid puke all over the couch while I was checking to see if he had any new molars coming in... such precious memories, these are.


But tonight did it.  Tonight I was at Barnes and Noble talking to my husband while the kids happily chugged the choo-choos along, and I realized something... a couple of somethings actually:


1) I miss being creative.  I used to love to write.  I actually ENJOYED it.  Now my creative writing boils down to updating my facebook status every other week.  


2) More than anything, I want to experience Jesus in everyday life.  I need to experience Jesus in everyday life... and my kids and husband REALLY need for me to experience Him!  A friend sent me an article years ago about a Mom who had like a million kids and when someone asked her how she managed not to go insane,  her answer was, "You have to invite the glorious into the mundane."  That one stuck with me.  A diaper change is just a diaper change until somehow the presence of the Holy Spirit makes it more than that. 


But... boy, is that hard to remember in the moment.  So in that discussion with my husband tonight I realized that maybe a blog would help me to be more purposeful about inviting God in... because if I know I'm going to write about it for the whole world to see, I'll more consciously remember to look for those times when the Holy breaks through.  (Disclaimer: I'm not planning on the whole world seeing this.  Uggggh.  No thank you.  Me no likey pressure.    The day that this blog becomes something I have to do instead of something I want to do, I'm out of here.  I may write as if I'm talking to somebody, but this whole thing is pretty selfishly motivated.  If anyone else happens to see it - okey dokey.)


So here it is... this is going to be my adventure in finding the presence of God in the mundane-ness of life.  With one husband, one almost-five-year old boy, one almost-two year-old boy, and one baby girl half-cooked in my belly, there's plenty of mundane... so bring on the glorious!