She Will Surprise You

Oh.

This One.

Sometimes she is such a mystery.

Last week at the entrance to my least favorite store a lady representing the Salvation Army was ringing her little holiday bell.

I gave all of the kids whatever change I had and they all trotted off to dump their coins in the red kettle.

Much later, inside the store, I heard loose change hit the floor near my feet.

And there was Mosely, scrambling after it. I knew right away where that little kid had gotten her quarter.

Instead of dropping her money into the kettle, Mosely had dropped her quarter into her pocket.

(Yes, I made her go back outside and give the volunteer the quarter.)

After several conversations over the next few days, Mosely and I came to some sort of terms.

She felt as if she never had the opportunity to earn money to purchase things that she would want.

"Like what?" I queried.

"A piggy bank," was the quick response.

Okay.

Mosely volunteered to do extra chores and asked to be paid for them. I agreed to her entrepreneurial schemes.

One afternoon, she cleaned the sun room above and beyond the normal methods. (She did a remarkably good job too. Hmmm. Now I have a new standard for five-year-old labor. That one might just back-fire on her.) One quarter earned.

The next day she accomplished another task. Another quarter dropped into her makeshift piggy bank - the classic plastic container with a thin slice cut out of the lid.

More chores done. At this point, Mosely has earned three shiny quarters.

She continually opens her container and looks adoringly at her coins. She shakes them in her tiny hands. She stores the container on a high shelf, just in case Piper tries to take it, she tells me.

Mosely is making plans for tomorrow - what she can do to earn more money, to collect more coins, to see her empire stretch even farther.

Fast forward to right now . . .

Bergen and Kevin are about to embark on a little father-son jaunt to the store for some necessary items - such as milk and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

London complains that she is not able to attend this exciting adventure.

Mosely, however, does not speak a word of complaint.

She jumps up and races into her bedroom.

Her fist is tightly clenched as she returns to the living room.

Still without a word, she approaches her younger brother. She stretches out her closed fist to Bergen.

Wordlessly, he opens his hand, palm up.

And into that palm, Mosely places the entire contents of her piggy bank fund into Berg's sweaty little hand.

All three coins.

Nothing held back.

Oh.

This one.

Sometimes she will just surprise you.

Otto Fox Wilder

If you want to see how absolutely gorgeous this little Mr. Fox is ..... please check out my ultra talented friend Emma's website - Odd Dog Design & Photography.

It's linked on my sidebar.

I cannot even believe my gene pool helped create this guy!

Life Is Wonderful

We took a little hike around the lake today.

I heard Bergen singing this ... "life is wonderful".

It is.


Kevin is back in America. Fall seems to be loafing nearby. We're all healthy. There is food in our refrigerator. Our kids are laughing. And walking on trails holding hands without being prompted. Ice cube trays and reusable ice cubes are written on my weekly grocery list. Wilder has learned how to chuckle and to grin in response to your grin. We enjoyed a delicious Mexican meal last night at a new-to-us restaurant.

Life is wonderful.

And I think it is probably all the more wonderful because it hasn't always been wonderful.

Do you know what I mean?

It is only because we know the dark that we so appreciate the light. When we have experienced the bad, we just love the good. When you've been without, you are so grateful to be with. If it has been raining for days, you better believe you will smile when you see the sun.

Being in the dark has reminded me of how good the light is. And I am confident that the God of these good times has been my God of the dark times too.

So while we are here, I think I will sing with Berg - life is wonderful.

Divine

We all have long days and lonely moments and scary dreams and busy lives and self-absorbed episodes and exhausting schedules, right?

And we sometimes feel as if we give and give and give and these people (in my case, very short people) to whom we are giving and giving and giving just never seem to notice anything except their desire to take more.

But then sometimes we get to experience these little moments where we are lifted from our circumstances. We are pulled up, supported, loved in some unexpected, extraordinary in its simplicity kind of moment.

God uses people to meet these unspoken needs so often. And I just love that people say "yes" to His every day ideas. I just love the people that He uses.

Being the sole everything at this house while Kevin is in Israel is hard. It is. Not impossible - but not my favorite either.

Oh, I am learning plenty. About waiting on God. About being still. About not being afraid. About God and the manner in which He is choosing to craft my story. About relying on one God for my comfort and not one Man.

But the days have grown long. I know my voice has grown sharp and my responses have grown snappy. I stay up too late at night rearranging the living room furniture into eight varying options and pushing all together too heavy bookshelves across our bedroom.

So when our friend Nate called me one day and told me to clear my schedule (ha!) for the next night, I was certainly intrigued. He instructed me not to plan anything, not even to prepare a meal for the kids. At this point, I didn't care what the plans were - no meal planning or preparation is a gift all in itself.

The next day Jane and Walter and Nate appeared at the house with a meal in hand for the kids. Babysitting had been arranged with sweet Riley and I was whisked away in Walter's black chariot.

The evening was lovely. And totally unexpected. And completely taken care of. In every way. Jane did all the thinking so I didn't have to. The dinner was delicious. After the meal we walked around downtown Greenville and searched for the hidden mice on Main Street. (I found a few without help, okay.) Then we had dessert at Coffee Underground. Adult conversation abounded. (I might have been out of my element after so much alone time with the kids, but I think my sentences mostly made sense.)

I am pretty sure that those three Saints in Civilian Clothing had no idea how important, and actually divine, that evening was for me. And I don't mean "divine" as in how you describe a piece of your grandma's pecan pie. I mean "divine" as in ordained by God. If that sounds too heavy for a Tuesday night out then you haven't been where I have been this week.

Honestly, it was so humbling to think that my friends chose to think about me, to plan an evening for me when they could have been doing anything else in their lives. That's amazing.

God is so good to provide laughter when nothing seems funny and joy when we want to mourn and friends when we feel alone. I think the problem is we forget to look for these things in the people around us. We forget to trust that God knows our hearts. And He loves us. More and better than anyone else.

Bang Up Job

Guess who cut her own hair?

And did a remarkably decent job.

(With only a few minor adjustments by our in-house hair stylist Kevin.)

This is the same five year old who recently approached her nickname-loving father and respectfully inquired, "Daddy, I don't care for being called Mo-Town any longer. Will you please only call me Mosely?"

This Body

Some days I survey my own body and I am not exactly pleased with what I see. I begin to play the ultra-damaging Compare Game. Particularly when I find myself on a sandy beach surrounded by bodies. Barely clothed, flesh-in-excess bodies.

So I find myself playing The Game. I pick apart body parts, compare my untanned self to the perfectly tanned supermodel splashing near me. I realize I am too short and too flabby. I think I am not toned enough, my hair is the wrong color. Are my ears even aligned correctly? Why can't I have a little more here and a little less there?

When I surrender to this slippery slope of self-pity, I pretty much am ready to volunteer for the kids to bury me neck-deep in the sand and just leave me there.

I know I need a reality check and I know I cannot rely on anyone else to pull me from this sand pit I volunteered for, so I try to remind myself of some truths.

These are not in order of importance.

Guess whose image I am made in? And I can basically guarantee that the point of that copycat image is not the outside covering. It's not all about the way I look in my mirror. Thank you God that there is a holier standard than that.

My beauty should not come from the stuff I drape across my body. I believe the exact words are your beauty should be "that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight." So the tan will fade, the body will sag, the ears may indeed be wrongly aligned, but the gentle and quiet spirit will not fade. Oh, I like that. A beauty that lasts. And doesn't change from season to season like the whims of fashion.

And there's another one too. This body, this God-designed, ear misaligned, shorter than I would like, body has done some incredibly amazing things. It has been remarkably healthy for thirty-six years. It has navigated me through years of highs and lows and neutrals. And, most impressive of all, this body that I continually take for granted and disparage at will, has supported the very life of four magnificent little humans. They could not exist without it. What's more, this body has sustained those four little lives for the better part of four years in total as those tiny humans grew and thrived from this body's nourishment.

It's not just a body, really. It's a miracle.

I guess it all depends on how you define beautiful.

Now that's the kind of truth I need to drag my sorry self out of the sand pit I dug and to embrace this body and all its features, good and bad, saggy or toned, big and small.