Friday Quick Takes

1. I'm exhausted. At first, as I blearily drove the kids to dance class this morning, I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered: 13 hours at work on Monday, sick as a dog Tuesday, ran non-stop errands Wednesday to get family ready for surgery day, surgery day Thursday requiring an early alarm clock and no nap, "slept" overnight at hospital last night resulting in Little Boy waking me early again this morning.

The boy, on the other hand, is unaffected. He may have been spotted running around the post office with no coat, mittens, or shoes this morning, despite temps in the teens. (Because he removed them himself, that is. Not because I was so tired I forgot them!)

So... a Friday Quick-Takes post it is.

2. We managed an entire calendar year without a hospital stay, but last night broke the streak. I'm slept at the luxurious accommodations (haha) of our local children's hospital last night. It's a vinyl-covered pull-out bed in a room 5 feet from the nurses' station. My youngest received ear tubes yesterday. Normally we'd have been loading him in the van to go home less than an hour after he entered the O.R. But in our case, they are keeping him overnight for observation because of his medical history.

3. Staying at the hospital is totally different with a healthy and active child. I've never had a hospital stay like this. Ellie was complicated, wheelchair-bound, and unable to do much even when she was well. We usually just camped out in her room with a pile of movies and CDs.

Little Boy is mostly typical, except for his one medical issue. He flew through the procedure without a hitch and actually recovered faster from the anesthesia than he does from the sedation medicine they use for less invasive procedures. He spent the afternoon strutting around the hospital admiring life-sized Spiderman wall stickers, finding nooks to hide in, climbing stairs, pressing buttons, playing with kids in the activity room, and eating. He loves the over-the-bed tables and room service!

4. I don't know how nurses concentrate with all the interruptions. They are one-of-a-kind. Our room, as I mentioned, is right across from the nurses' station. All night long I heard the call bell dinging. All. Night. Long. That meant I felt extra badly when Little Boy discovered the call button on his bed and pushed it five separate times. I have no idea how they actually get anything done. But they do, and they are the sweetest people.

5. We have good medical insurance, but this year the plans changed and I'm seriously concerned about the impact on our budget. Last night's little hospital stay should have fulfilled Little Boy's deductible, but we will still pay 10% after that. When an echo (ultrasound of the heart) costs $3500 a pop, I shudder to think what our 10% of last night's luxurious accommodations will be! We're tightening our belts and waiting to see how it looks when the dust settles.

6. We need health care reform, and it must include a safety net for people like us. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking that the only people in trouble financially because of medical bills are unemployed. Even people with good insurance and a job can go under after just one major medical encounter.

And don't let anyone tell you that sending our health care to the lowest bidder is the solution either. You think the headlines include a lot of medical mistake stories now.

7.  I decluttered last weekend. It's so freeing to have less crap laying around and more space in which to play. It took me two days just to sort the toy soup in the basement and find all the pieces to all their various sets.

My next step is to stash some toys away and start rotating them. We'll have fewer toys out that way, and every couple of weeks we'll bring out something "new" and hide a more familiar batch of toys. It works really well during the winter blahs. Now if only I could find a tactic like this for my winter blahs!

I also found a few more things to auction for Haiti (our kids really wanted to help so we agreed to put some of their toys on eBay and donate the proceeds to Samaritan's Purse. I won't detail the struggles they've had deciding which toys to sell and which ones they still wanted for themselves -- they are real kids after all. But, they've donated $40 so far!

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What was your week like?

Pay a Little Attention

This year we adopted a 2nd grade class at the school 2 blocks from our clean bright offices. The school is new and beautiful. It also has a fully-stocked completely-locked library. The kids have never once walked inside because they lack the funds to hire a librarian.

Before Christmas, some of our staff threw them a holiday party. At one station, the kids made cards for someone in their family.

One child wrote, "I hope you have a good Christmas in jail."

Another wrote, "Merry Christmas mom and dad. When you coming home?"

You might think that children growing up in such unstable families are rough and rude. You would think wrong.

I went yesterday to help for 50 minutes. I sat at a blob of desks with 6 children and helped them learn about forests. They read several pages to each other, wrote definitions to new words, then wrote their own sentences using those words. They made good deductions about the meanings of those new words.

"Miss Joy, sub means like when our teacher doesn't come to school, we have a sub. So does subcanopy mean a different canopy?"

"Does Adapt means like to adopt one of those kids from Haiti who are living on the streets?"

These kids were listening and thinking. Sure, they needed encouragement to stay focused, but seven and eight-year-olds do. I know. I have one of my own.

Their teacher had excellent classroom control. But she never smiled. She ran them through the lesson fast and loud, like she was just powering through each day with the sole goal of reaching the end. She appeared to derive no pleasure from her work. She reminded me of me on days when sleep eludes and children are barriers to accomplishing the day's goals instead of the goals themselves.

Interacting with them for those few minutes today, hearing them ask us to come back and seeing their shining eyes when their teacher  handed us a stack of thank-you notes for the party, I realized just how valuable it is to a child to pay attention to them.

Who can you encourage today with a little attention?

This post is part of Chatting at the Sky's series, Tuesdays Unwrapped. Click the link to read more treasures unwrapped this past week. 

"As long as it's healthy"

Have you ever said that? I'm pretty sure I did before Elli was born. We didn't find out whether she was a boy or a girl and we'd say "I'm not hoping for either one, just so long as the baby is healthy."

What a terrible thing to say.

As if a child who is ill or disfigured or disabled is less valuable, less wantable, less human, less loveable, less yours.

When we found out that Elli's heart was critically deformed and would need multiple surgeries to correct it, and when she almost died the next morning, I discovered that I didn't care if she was healthy.

All I wanted was to bring my daughter home. Alive.

...even though that meant we carried an oxygen tank with us everywhere for the first 6 months.

...even though I couldn't breastfeed her. Instead, I pumped milk and added formula to increase the calories; then poured it into a syringe connected to a slim tube fed into her nose, down her throat, and into her stomach.

...even though she needed 25 different doses of medicine a day to keep her alive.

...even though I didn't sleep longer than 2 hours at a time for months.

...even though I nearly fell asleep at her weekly therapy sessions... and on the drives home.

Her life had value, no matter what package it came in, no matter how long she lived. She was our daughter, and we loved her no matter what.

Let's purge the phrase "as long as the baby's healthy" from our vocabulary. You don't really mean it anyway.

Morning Walk in the Cemetery

I'm reposting again this week. It's been quite hectic around here, as Little Boy is going on 4 weeks with a double-ear infection and had to be scheduled for surgery to fix it once and for all...maybe. When I read Kelly's blog, {this} restless heart, today and her request for people to share some of their favorite writing from the past, I knew immediately what I would share. (Visit her blog to read more.)

This is one of my favorite posts from the recent past, written at the end of August in what turns out to have been the beginning of some of the darkest days I've walked through. It's good to look back and see how far God has carried me since those days. I don't necessarily have any more answers, but I have hope again.

The morning air was crisp and fall-like, and the sun was just peaking over the covers. Like the day Elli died. Perhaps that's why I felt drawn there. She has been on my mind a lot lately.

Elli's cemetery is about 1 1/2 miles away on foot, as best as I can guess. Normally, I go straight to her grave. This time, I decided to wind my way through the grave sites, slowly working my way towards the back, where we laid Elli's body to rest.

Reading headstones has always intrigued me. What people choose to engrave about a person can say so much in just a few words. But being in a cemetery was a little eerie... I mean, before. I never knew for sure if I should walk on the grass over the graves or if that was somehow disrespectful. And always, shoving its way out from the back of my mind, the fearful unknown of Death.

Now the cemetery, this cemetery, is a place of comfort. It is a place of memory. It is a safe place to cry. It's a place to think about life.

And it's also a place where mowers charge back and forth, blasting headstones with grass clippings, regarding no space as sacred.

So it doesn't matter where you walk. People want their loved-one's stone to be read and their loved-one to be thought of by someone, even a total stranger in work-out clothes, with tears streaming down her face and a bag of dog poop in her hand.

So I read stones: many people blessed with long full lives, alongside some gut-wrenchers. A four-year-old snatched from her parents suddenly. A 25-year-old wife and young mother. Many veterans and soldiers.

This morning, it all hit me differently than ever before. Maybe knowing my daughter lay close by helped to crack open the facade of a tidy formal headstone and let me peak into the searing loss, agonizing separation, bone-deep pain of each person's death. I read name after name after name and thought about all the cemeteries across the world, throughout time.

I don't really know what to do with this. I know what I've always been taught: Death wasn't part of the original plan, it is a consequence of our disobedience towards the Creator God, who set all of this up and wrote the rules. Death was overcome by Jesus when he rose from the dead, but it obviously isn't fully defeated because people still die. But followers of Jesus who die go somewhere called heaven to wait for him to create a new perfect earth and give his people new perfect bodies that will never die.

But there's something about facing death, about Elli's empty wheelchair, that makes me wonder if I can really know this. She was a child who couldn't speak, couldn't say what she believed, couldn't really even do anything to obey or disobey. How does she fit into the above picture?

For that matter, how do I fit, with all my questions? How much does what I actually believe to be true (which is invisible to other people but apparently quite visible to God) matter, and how much does what I actually say and do (which is quite visible to other people and doesn't earn me any merit with God, except that the Bible commands godly words and actions over and over...) matter? Why is it that people who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ can be so difficult to get along with, mean-spirited, judgmental, ugly? I thought the Spirit of God was supposed to transform us into godly, Christ-like people. And why is it that so much pure unadulterated wickedness has been (and is being) perpetuated on people made in God's image in God's name?

As I wander through the cemetery, as I brush the grass clippings off Elli's photo in her stone, I have only questions.

Choosing Patience

My toddler has discovered that by pushing a lever on the front of our refrigerator, he can make ice or water rain down. Every time I forget to lock out the rain, he reminds me. Aren't toddlers amazing?

Today, he filled a cup with water, then spilled half of it all over the floor leaning over to inspect the spill he made dispensing the water in the first place.

For once, by God's grace, I chose to respond kindly. Patiently. Like a mother should.

I got up from what I was doing and showed him how to mop up his spill with a towel. Then his sister and I mopped up the rest. And, I chose to be thankful for the opportunity to wet-mop the kitchen floor.

My son gave his mother a hug instead of running in fear from an impatiently snapping woman.

Today I'm unwrapping patience. Choosing to respond quietly and kindly to my children and their childishness instead of seeing them as an annoyance and an impediment to having a smooth and easy day.

Visit Chatting at the Sky for more Tuesdays Unwrapped.

Winter

Hope buried in white
Paralyzed. Waiting. Longing.
Spring breathes gentle green.



(I'm participating in a creativity challenge hosted by Penseive Robin at Incourage. Click the link to learn more, join in, and read other contributions.)

Who Will Help the Haitian Church?

We learned today about Churches Helping Churches (www.churcheshelpingchurches.com), a partnership of churches worldwide, including Mars Hill in Seattle, Harvest Bible churches everywhere, and many more. They are raising money and resources to help rebuild the churches devastated by the earthquake in Haiti.

The world will rebuild Haiti. We must help our brothers and sisters in Christ there. Please consider donating to this organization and asking your church to join as well.

Unrecognized Lasts

I've been busy this week managing a new medical crisis with one of the kids (as I suspected, our Little Boy has more secrets) and planning a secret weekend getaway for my husband, so I hope you'll forgive the lack of writing originality as we enjoy some quiet time away together. This is a repost from January 2009. This is what I was sorting through a year ago. 

All last year, I followed the story of a little boy named Coleman who was battling spine cancer. His mother is adept at word pictures, writing the way he talks (he referred to cancer as "tancer" for example), and sharing the strength that she draws from God as they watched him deteriorate over the fall and holiday weeks. Early in January, another notice hit my inbox... their Carepage had been updated. My stomach twisted as I clicked on it -- the news all through December had been very bad and he hadn't been doing well at all. My gut told me that this was "the message," and it was correct. Coleman lost his battle with cancer the night before.

His mom wrote about how they had to leave the house with half the Christmas gifts unopened, just as it was, to go to the hospice center. And how strange it was to return, without Coleman.

Her story reminded me so much of Elli's last day, and of the morning she died. My mind has returned over and over to those last couple of days, and all the last things that we didn't know were lasts.

On Friday, I drove her to school because the bus was late. That was the last time I loaded and unloaded her in her wheelchair. It was the last day I met her school bus at the foot of our driveway and saw her grin at me from the top of the lift.

Saturday morning, she woke up early and I found that she had thrown up in her bed. I gave her a shower, a rare thing for me as her daddy usually serenaded her during evening showers when I had no energy left for such things. We took our time, enjoying the suds and the warmth and just getting clean. I bundled her up in comfie clothes and we settled in on the couch for a day of snuggling my sick girl. That was her last shower, and I feel incredibly privileged to have given it to her.

That afternoon, she fell asleep on the couch. Elli never ever ever took naps unless she was sick. So I sat across from her and just drank in the beauty of her sleeping, relaxed, peaceful face.

Saturday night, I missed her last bedtime routine. I had messed up my ankle Thursday or Friday and by that evening, it was pretty stiff and swollen. I made a concious choice to stay in the family room with my feet up while Scott put the kids to bed. I remember thinking that I really should hobble down the hall and participate, but deciding not to. What a selfish decision.

Late Saturday night, I went in to check on Elli and give her some more formula and her night-time medicines. I kept the lights dim, but checked her to be sure she hadn't thrown up again. She was sleeping soundly, barely stirring as I fiddled with her g-tube. I gave her a kiss and closed the door. The last time I saw her alive.

Then Sunday morning, as I was just getting Little Boy out of his pajamas, Scott's tone and words shattered our morning routine.

"Joy, Elli is very still."

Set Little Boy down. Shoot across the hall from the kids' room to Elli's bedside. Drink in Elli's face: eyes not quite closed, body more still than even when she was under anesthesia, skin still warm and soft. Trembling fingers under quiet nostrils, desperate to feel a whisper of a breath. Nothing. Feel her chest for a heart beat. Still... for the first time since she was 4 days old. We had missed her last breath, her last heart beat.

Giant frantic footsteps toward the phone. Dial the dreaded but hopeful numbers. 9. 1. 1.

Scoop her up out of bed, rip off leg braces... all for the last time. Chest compressions counted in sobs as sirens near.

Throw on clothes and grab medicines as the EMTs do their work. Last surreal ride with her, sirens wailing my prayers through the beautiful dawn morning. "Please God, let this be clear one way or the other. Please take her or heal her. Please don't force us to make decisions about life support."

Watch the EMTs continue working on her, but know by the way they were working that she is already gone. Think, "Is this really it? I thought it would feel different somehow."

Then. It stops. Kind and sorrowful doctors and nurses tell us she is gone. We sit with her as her skin loses its life-warmth. But we know that the child we love is not there in front of us anymore. We walk out of the hospital. Without her.

We are those rare parents who experience the end of our task of raising a child. It is finished.

Despite the tears and the pain of it, I still cherish those lasts. And I look forward to the day when I meet my daughter again, in her new and able and perfect body. And we begin a whole series of firsts in the life to come.

What Heart Surgery Taught Me about Myself, Pain, and God

Two of my four children have had open heart surgery. In fact, between the two of them we've gone through six open-heart surgeries.

It's a heavy responsibility to sign papers consenting for your child's surgery, anesthesia, and blood transfusions. It's one thing to make a decision for yourself. It's quite another to have to make this decision for another human being.

Then there's the impossible task of explaining what is going to happen to the child. Our kids were always too young to understand anything. We just took them to the hospital, kissed them goodbye, and watched, hearts wringing, as the nurse carried them into the operating room.

Then after, we would sit by their bed, hold their hands, stroke their heads, and cry with them. They would thrash around, trying to pull the tubes out of their chest and throat. They would turn their eyes on us and burn their thoughts into our heads.

"Why did you let them do this to me? Why don't you do anything? Why don't you take the pain away?"

This is what I say to God when He allows things in my life that look and feel terrible. I thrash and scream and fight it and demand answers of him.


"Why did you let this happen? Why don't you do anything? Why don't you take the pain away?"

And then I think of my baby in the cardiac intensive care unit. I remember that even if I did explain it to her, she would not understand. She would still scream and cry and fight the very things that were keeping her alive and helping her heal.

I am like my infant daughter, and God is my parent, my loving Father.

I must trust him in the pain, trust that all his promises are true. That his character is good. That he truly does make all things work together for good for his children. And I must accept that some things I simply cannot understand.

The End of Myself

It's 4:40pm, and I've run out of energy before I've run out of day.

My youngest has been sick for weeks, had an allergic reaction to another medication yesterday, and is soon heading to the O.R. for a surgical solution to this problem which can no longer be treated medically.

He also didn't take a nap today. Not an official one, anyway. He slept in the van on the way to the doctor.

There's a mountain of laundry in the basement that I haven't had time to scale til today. It's huge. Sickness generates even more laundry than our normally-productive family of five.

Dinner is barely started. The kids are starving (or so they say).

Big Boy has a class tonight, so I need to load and unload the family two more times today. I've lost count of how many times I've loaded and unloaded already today.

I haven't been to the gym in a couple of weeks because of my sick boy.

Not even time for a shower today.

The kids are having ridiculous fights, stealing toys from each other, screaming, and snotting all over things.

But...

I learned on Sunday that God can't work on me until I get out of the way. "True righteousness only ever begins when I come to the end of myself." (quote from Paul Tripp)

I'm at the end of myself today, God. Work your magic.

Books Are Like Stepping Stones

I just went back over the books I read last year. It's like retracing the steps of my spiritual journey over the past year. It has been a tough few years for me, and I can see myself sorting through things in the books I chose to read.

I love reading, always have. Right now I'm reading about amillenialism, the wives of King Henry VIII, a pastor's wife whose son died at age 17, and a theology of heaven and the resurrection. But having that many books going at once is relatively new for me. When Elli was born in 2000, I was too tired to read. I'd sit down with a book and drift off. I barely finished one book a year.

In 2009, after she died and I got past the initial exhaustion of grieving, that all changed. It has been a pleasure to return to my love of reading. Books allow me to explore answers to questions I have, challenges I'm facing, and interests I want to expand. I'm working on my to-read list for 2010 and have found some great ideas from other people's lists of books read in 2009. So I thought I'd share the love and list mine as well.

Here are my stepping stones from 2009, in no particular order.


Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God by Francis Chan
This book became available as a free audio book early this summer. I listened while I ran this summer, except when tears blurred my vision enough to force me to walk. Walking the difficult road that we've been on for so long had led me to begin to question God's love. This book is deep without being hard to read. Chan explains how the creation and more importantly, Christ's life, death, and resurrection demonstrate just how much God loves His people. What I loved the most is how he ended the book with practical ways for us to sacrificially live out God's love to others.

and
Thorn in My Heart  and Fair Is the Rose by Liz Curtis Higgs
I have always enjoyed historical fiction. These books are the first two in a series set in Scotland a few hundred years ago. I haven't read fiction in years, partly because I haven't read much of anything in years and partly because I "fall into books" and will actually not hear anything going on around me. Since that is rather anti-social and not conducive to good mothering, I choose my fiction-reading times carefully. I enjoyed these books and look forward to the next time I can squeeze one in -- I think there are two more in this series.

and
Happy Kids, Happy Dogs by Barbara Shumannfang, and Raising Puppies and Kids Together by Pia Silvani
These two books were very similar, so I didn't actually finish the second one. They had practical and helpful suggestions for families looking to add a dog to a household with young children. We adopted a dog last summer, and she's done very well with us.


Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns
Excellent book for those who are trying to make sense of the apparently-haphazard manner in which the Bible was written and compiled, in a way that honors God and values his words.


Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert
This was an interesting story of one woman's spiritual journey. She is self-indulgent and therefore not very likeable as a person, but the stories she tells about her travels are fascinating.


The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
This is the first book of fiction I have read in several years. It's a tragedy written about a family who goes to Africa as missionaries, and what happens to them. The husband was arrogant, closed-minded, and completely unprepared to live, let alone make converts, in the jungle.


Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
Hilarious stories by a woman who isn't afraid to laugh at herself as she shares her spiritual journey.


The Red Tent: A Novel by Anita Diamant
I brought this and The Poisonwood Bible on our vacation last summer. It's set in ancient Israel at the time of Jacob, when he was serving Laban, but written from the women's perspective. The picture of life in that time in history was eye-opening, and the story was fantastic.


The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine by Sue Monk Kidd
A very bizarre spiritual journey, though she makes some telling observations about women's spiritual lives in modern conservative western Christianity.


From Grief to Glory: Spiritual Journeys of Mourning Parents by James W Bruce III
I think I started reading this book too soon after the death of our daughter. It was good, but too heavy for me at the time. I plan to go back to it. 


Heaven by Randy C Alcorn
I enjoyed the first third of this book, but then discovered Randy Alcorn is in love with words. He repeats himself often and uses many words when few would be better. I didn't finish it. 


Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstof
Very short - much better for me in the initial grieving period last year. Nicholas shares journey entries after his son dies in a mountain-climbing accident. It is a beautiful tribute to his son, and an amazing book to read as a grieving parent.


Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller
Don's self-deprecating humor, scathing critique of some of today's religious caricature, and honest search for genuine Christianity combine into a very appealing book.


The Shack by William P Young
Parts of this book really resonated with me as a parent who lost a daughter, but it was very weird in a lot of places and poorly-written.


Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Clairborne
Unique format that I wondered might be distracting from the very interesting, thought-provoking writing. Shane is a pacifist, so I enjoyed reading his perspective and how he defends it from the Bible. I remember one instance in which I disagreed with his interpretation of the Bible, but for the most part, it was a good read. I highly recommend reading books like this that challenge some of your assumptions about life and faith.

What do you recommend for my reading list this year?

Seven Quick-Takes & Recipe Exchange!

1. It's cold and snowy. My kids love it. They love snow angels, snow ball fights, snow sledding, and they want to try skiing.
   
   On the other hand, my body wants to curl up on the couch with a pile of books, an endless supply of hot coffee, and a blanket, and hibernate all winter. Instead, yesterday we all bundled up in snow pants, snow boots, coats, hats, mittens, and scarves (it's quite a production for anyone who has never done this before) and went to a little "hill" near our house. The kids played for two whole hours, though the youngest got cold after about an hour. I took him home and started soup for the rest of the crew. It was beautiful being out there as the snow sprinkled, the lights from the houses sparkled, and the kids' laughter rolled across the hill.
   
   
2. Snow mean my entire house is a drying rack. All that snow gear from five bodies is hanging up everywhere drying off so it's ready for the next sledding adventure. Which will NOT be this weekend, when we're expecting single-digit temps and no amount of layering can keep a body warm.
   
   
3. I found out yesterday that the appointment I thought we had for my son next Tuesday is actually not until February. Boy am I glad I found out before I made him fast for 8 hours and then showed up. So those of you who have been praying for that appointment, we have another month to pray things resolve on their own. We're hoping to avoid a procedure requiring general anesthesia and a hospital stay.
   
   
4. Hibernating is easier with comfort food! We enjoy steaming bowls of soup to warm up our insides last night. This morning I whipped up a big batch of homemade waffles for the crew. It wasn't enough to bribe my husband to stay home from work, but oh well!
   
   
5. If you were on Facebook yesterday, you saw a lot of random colors in people's statuses. I never got the misguided message to show my support of breast cancer research by sharing my bra color. I'm really not sure how that did any good for breast cancer, but it sure gave the men an interesting day. Here's a tip, ladies. When you tell men your bra color, the one thing they are NOT thinking about is cancer.
   
   
6. I love cooking soup when it's snowy out. Last night we had Nordic Potato Soup with  Ham, a recipe from a church cookbook I got many years ago. It's super-scrumptious and my kids all had seconds. That's unusual at our house. A friend asked me on Twitter if we could do a soup exchange, which I think is a fantabulous idea! I'll post my recipe below. Please either share your favorite soup recipe in the comments or post yours to your blog (if you have one) and put the link in the Mr. Linky below. This will be fun!
   
   
7. Nordic Potato Soup with Ham
   1 1/2 lbs or 3-4 med-sized potatoes, skinned and sliced
   1 lg onion, finely chopped
   1 lb smoked ham hock (or leftover ham from the holidays!)
   1 T dry dill weed
   2 tsp grated lemon peel (I've substituted 2 tsp lemon juice before)
   1/4 tsp white pepper
   3 c chicken broth (I double broth and add more potatoes for larger pot of soup)
   1 T cornstarch
   1/2 c whipping cream (I've substituted 2 T sour cream and 1/3 c milk)
   
   In 3-qt or larger crockpot, combine potatoes, onion, ham, dill, lemon, pepper, and broth. Cover and cook at low setting until ham and potatoes are tender (usually takes 7-8 hours). (If doing on stove, bring broth to boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.) Lift out ham hock and let stand til cool. Meanwhile, remove about 1 cup potatoes with a little broth. Puree in blender or food processor with cornstarch and whipping cream. Blend back into soup. Remove fat and bone from ham, dice and return to soup. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes (or for about 5 minutes on stove top), stirring occasionally. Yields 4-6 servings.

Add your recipe to your blog and link up below, or add it to the comments!

Chicken Tortilla Soup

A friend reminded me of this recipe, so I thought I'd post it for the recipe exchange. My husband and I love its robust flavor, but I have to admit that my kids can't quite get past all the veggies. I'm going to try chopping them into smaller pieces and/or pureeing the squash to see if they'll eat more. 

1 1/2 lbs chicken, boiled and shredded or diced 9 (to make vegetarian, leave out chicken and use veggie stock instead.)
3-4 celery stalks, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 T oil
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1-2 zuccini and/or yellow squash, sliced and quartered
1 carrot, sliced
1-2 waxy potatoes, sliced (more for veggie version)
1/4 small cabbage, diced
2 14-oz cans diced tomatoes
4 c chicken or veggie stock (or combo)
3 oz (1/2 cup) canned or frozen corn
1 can black beans, drained
1/4-1/2 tsp cumin (this adds heat)
2-3 tsp chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
2 limes, halved, or equivalent lime juice
4-6 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Garnish with tortilla chips, grated cheese, avocado, and sour cream.

Saute onion, and celery in oil for 2-3 min in large stockpot. Add garlic, zuccini, and carrot and saute 2-3 min more, being careful not to burn garlic. Add potatoes, chicken, tomatoes, and broth. Bring to boil, then add cabbage, beans, spices, and lime juice. Add water if needed to bring to desired consistency. Simmer for 30-60 minutes. Add corn and simmer another 5 minutes before serving.

U.G.L.Y. I Ain't Got No Alibi.

Despite being a mom for ten years, I still can't kick my obsession with efficiency. I do things as quickly as I can, arranging things and schedules to get the most done with the least effort.

Kids don't get that. They see the pile of shoes waiting for feet by the garage door and think, "I bet these will look really cool bouncing down the stairs!"

Then I come racing along, ready to drop kids into shoes and throw them into the van, and find all the shoes in a pile at the bottom of the stairs. And I grumble and complain the whole way down the stairs because their completely-appropriate childish experiments with gravity added a whole 2 minutes to my exit time.

Spouses don't get it either. I use the same glass for water all day long, so I don't have to wash a new glass for every new drink of water I take. I attempt to force the kids to use the same cup all day as well, though that means I spend my entire life hunting for the 2-year-old's cup. But my spouse is a declutterer (which is a good thing). He sees cups laying around, swipes them, and plops them in the dishwasher. (Also a good thing.) But sometimes I get really peeved by that.

I have actually caught myself stomping down the hall after something like this and thinking "These people really screw up my systems. My life would be so much simpler without them."

U. G. L. Y. I ain't got an alibi. I'm ugly.

There's nothing wrong with being efficient, being on time, not wasting time or energy or dish soap. But being willing to sacrifice relationships with my family for the sake of efficiency and my systems, is flat-out wrong. It's selfishness, self-worship, self-centeredness.

My prayer these days is "God help me get my priorities right and keep them there!" I seem to err too far towards laziness/irresponsibility or too far towards inflexibility/task focus. I'd love any suggestions you have for finding the balance in the middle.

Five Ways to Match Expectations to Real Life

What did you expect from life when you were young? How did it affect you when life didn't turn out that way?

I had all sorts of ideas and fantasies, and pretty much all of them have deviated from reality by at least a little. Like that my children would be healthy. That praying and making the best decisions we could would avoid criticism. That there will always be enough money. That everyone is comfortable with being vulnerable and honest.

Each time when one of those ideas proves false, I wrestle with embarrassment, cynicism, wounded pride, discouragement, depression, anger. Sometimes those things win, at least for awhile. Sometimes for a long while.

Maybe false expectations are part of being human. I don't know. But I do know that I respond a lot better to less-than-ideal things when I know ahead of time that things might be less-than-ideal. I really dislike bad surprises.

So at risk of sounding like a pessimist claiming to be a realist, I want to burst some of the bubbles that were most shocking or difficult for me. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. People lie. People say one thing to one person, and then turn around and say the opposite to someone else. They play games, manipulate, and back-stab. There's nothing you can do about it. Even when you do your best to remain honest, straightforward, and loyal, you're going to get hurt one day by someone else's deceit.
   
   I'm finally finding a balance between hating humanity for being liars and blindly believing everything everyone says. Jesus calls us to be both wise and innocent. I believe that means we should live authentically and honestly but at the same time to know and expect people to be dishonest and to hurt us even when our lives are above reproach.
    
2. Bringing a baby (tiny) into the family quintuples the volume of dirty clothes in the hamper. I thought we'd add a few tiny little baby things. Not so. I discovered immediately that my husband and I often had to change our clothes two or three times a day because of all the spit-up, blow-outs, and sticky-handed-hugs from our kids.
   
   These days, I've lowered my standards and don't change unless I get covered with vomit or blood, or I have to go out in public. Sometimes I even forget to do that. Like last week when I took Little Boy to the doctor with salad dressing dribbled all down my front.
   
   
3. Being the mom does not mean I rule the world. As a child, I always looked at my parents with envy because they got to decide the day's activities. They had the power to make or break my day, depending on whether we were house-cleaning or field-tripping.
   
   Now that I'm the decision-maker, I've discovered that most of those decisions are actually made for me. Because I love my family and I don't want to live in squalor, I have no choice but to grocery-shop, wash dishes, mop/vacuum floors, clean bathrooms, and tackle laundry.
   
   When I actually do have choices, the way I make those choices usually gets determined by everyone else. What would they like to do? What do they need to do? What is best for the whole family? Is spending money on this really the best choice right now?
   
   It is stunningly rare for me to get to decide to do what I want to do most. I suspect that this is one of the biggest shocks for people who marry late in life and thus have to overcome years of living alone and doing whatever they want... but it was still a surprise to me (and I  married/had children relatively young). And it remains a struggle.
   
   
4. Adulthood is not about having fun. As the manager of day-to-day operations in our home, most of my days are filled with the dull, endless repetition of tasks which are speedily undone and with the brain-teaser of matching our finite quantity of time and cash to our infinite number of ideas, dreams, and projects.
   
   For sure, things like picking the food we eat, planning trips, visiting friends and family, and decorating our home are happy tasks. But I've learned that I'm a poor warrior in my battle for contentment in the drudgery and chronic shortfall of time and money.
   
   
5. Being a parent means being interrupted. Family members (both spouse and children) interrupt my sleep, my meals, my projects, my conversations, my errands, my plans.
   
   But did you notice how many times I wrote "my?" Being part of a family means thinking about others more than myself. I have to beat down my voracious self-love and discover that serving others actually satisfied me more than pursuing my own interests to the exclusion of others.
   
   And I have to model what I am trying to teach my children: that showing respect and love for others means that I break my habit of interrupting others because interrupting shows that I think what I have to say is more important that what you have to say. And showing respect and love also means learning to be patient because your time is just as important as mine.
   

 What has surprised you the most about life so far? How have you worked through that disappointment?

Saturday Evening Blog Post: Best of 2009

Each month, Elizabeth Esther, of "Kids, Twins, & Laundry Bins," hosts a blog carnival, The Saturday Evening Blog Post. Bloggers can feature their favorite post from the previous month, and find tons of great new writers. Visit her site, link to your best post of 2009, and check out the other amazing posts!

This Saturday, she's asked us to highlight our favorite post from 2009. I'm going to do both my favorite from December and from the year.

For December, I decided to highlight "How NOT To Handle the Hard Stuff: 6 More Tips", which really seemed to touch a chord with people. I shared some of the hard lessons I've learned through responding poorly to difficult or painful circumstances in hopes that you won't make the same mistakes. It's part two of a two-part series.

My most controversial post of 2009 (based on both the number and passion of comments) was "Is 'Me-Time' a Lie?" which was a response to a previous, nearly-as-controversial post, "A Call for Simplicity and Service-Mindedness at Church." The spiritual health of mothers of young children remains a concern of mine.

The controversy of those two posts prompted me to state more clearly for myself and readers the purpose of this blog, a place to rip off the facade and be brutally honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly of walking through valleys as a daughter of God.

But the post I decided to highlight for 2009 is "One Year Ago", thoughts a year after losing our daughter suddenly (but not unexpectedly). It captures some of the changes in our lives since Elli left our home, and some of the lasting lessons she taught us.

What was your favorite post of 2009 (your own or someone else's)?