Love Does, our story

This is the 10th, or maybe the 11th post in the Bloom Where You're Planted series inspired by Mary Englebreit and The Nester's 31 Days series.  

Almost 13 years ago, I traveled from Tulsa, Oklahoma  to North Carolina for a wedding.  

My wedding.

Love does that kind of thing.

Sometimes love even goes out on a limb like that.

We married six days after I arrived and settled into my husband's home.  We worked together, faced trials together, made a life together.

Love does that kind of thing.

We rocked three babies together.  We reached across the dark to feel our little ones breathe.

Love does things like that day after day, long night after night.

I was in North Carolina for almost 13 years.  We made a life but every day there was a moment when I was not at home, because my heart wanted to be Home.

This summer, B applied for a position in Oklahoma so that I could be close to my family.  It was a long shot. 

Did you know that divine intervention is real?

About four weeks later, he was in Oklahoma.  I stayed another month and then he came back to get us, to move us 1,280 miles. 

Let's not pretend.  He came back to get me, to move me 1,280 miles.

Love does that kind of thing.  Love goes out on a lot of limbs.

B left his friends to bring me back to my old friends.

Love does that kind of thing.

He left his family so that I could be with mine.

Love does that sometimes.

Love talks and dreams and plans and waits.  These things are sweet and smooth and they feed the soul.  These things blow gently like a warm breeze or soothe like cool water.

But love also does.  Love takes action and wields power.  Love has the undeniable power to blow pine trees over in the night and move the seashore, little by little, like the tide.  There is power in a love that does.

Love is like that sometimes. 

Love talks and dreams and plans and waits.  These things are good.

But I am also blessed by a love that does.

Thanks B,

michele

sounds like life and living and love

"Listen-To-Me!" I must say it hundreds of times a day, begging for their attention so I can parent them.

"Hey you, listen up!" I say playfully, ready to give instructions for some new and no-doubt life changing project that will probably require a mop to clean up.

"Listen to me..." I think in my heart...wishing to be heard but truthfully, often too full of self-doubt to even speak.

He listened to me, and maybe that's why I married him.  He still listens.

Listen, I remind myself.  Listen, while they still want to talk.

Do more than listen, hear them.

Listen to what isn't said.

Listen with eyes and hands and heart.

Remember what it's like to want to be heard.

Sounds like breathing babies near me in the dark.
Sounds like a good man getting up early to make eggs and go to work in the dark while I sleep.
Sounds like angry sounds and crazy laughter because there are three of them.
Sounds like dishes and vacuums and the mundane things of life, call them boring or call them blessing.

Sounds like life and living and love.



Blogging today at the prompt of Lisa Jo Baker for Five Minute Friday.  Every Friday she invites the rest of us to share.  The only catch is that we do our writing in five minutes, share and encourage each other.


Other Traveler posts you might like...all about surviving life with kids...or maybe them surviving life with me...
My Name is Butmommy
Confessions of a Reformed Helicopter Parent
King Robert of the Wild Hair

The Truth...and I saw it right there in Sunday School

So, I live this typical, rather mundane existence where I know the names of some of the parents that watch soccer games with me, see the same cashiers at the grocery store, go to church with my makeup on most Sundays, smile, and in the rather current words of Miranda Lambert, "...hide my crazy..."  Life spins so quickly that most days I just go along with this system.

Inside I crave truth.

I have warmed more than a few pews.  I walk down the hall at church with my mind on my new sandals trying to decide if I want a soda or not and I pass exhausted mamas and worry-worn men and maybe your broken heart and I don't even know and I don't even ask.

But I crave truth.  Because, well, if we only knew, your heart and mine, they could be encouraged together, both you and me.  If we only knew.

So, a couple of months ago, our fellowship group (that's Sunday School for us old-timers) leader left the church to begin preparations to start a church in the northeast, a foreign land if there ever was one, at least from my perspective in rural North Carolina.  A member of our class stepped forward and continued the teaching with great humility and sincerity. Sincerity...truth...like medicine.  Anyway, someone came up with the idea of having people give their testimony, church talk for people telling their story about why they chose God.

I expected sweet little stories about vacation bible school and summer camps and youth pastors and prayers  and maybe a couple of wild stories about too much beer in high school and maybe a baptism in a river if things got charismatic.

What I didn't expect was the pouring out of raw reality.  Raw truth from the same people that chat over donuts and Mountain Dew on Sunday morning.

I didn't expect to see scars from old wounds and tears in grown men's eyes and husbands and wives holding each other tighter.

I didn't expect to hear about precious babies in heaven and the strength to air your dirty laundry right there in Sunday School so that someone else can be washed clean too.

I didn't expect for that sassy chick with the red hair to look right at me and challenge me, right there in a a skirt and sandals and give me big ideas, like maybe my husband is right and maybe I do have something useful to say, so that we could both be encouraged, you and me.  If only you knew.

But when all that happened, I wasn't surprised at what happened next.  I have seen it before.  When truth is laid out there on the table, like roses, complete only WITH the thorns, well, people can't help but think it is beautiful.

Once you know truth, you can't unknow it and nothing else will do and so those people, not the ones talking, the ones listening, they wouldn't let it stop.  They laid out truth too until, heaven help us, there was simply no time for the lesson and no one cares that we are two weeks behind on our quarterly because these people are on the hunt.  They have fed on truth and now maybe there is no going back because a grown man's heart is breaking over little girls being sold across the sea and there is a woman waiting for a man of God and marriages 33 days old and marriages 33 years old and new birth growing and a man who dares to say that a husband would go to the cross for his wife and something must be done about these things because people's souls are dying.

We can't unknow these truths.
We can't unknow these hearts, yours and mine.  It's too late.  It's real and alive.  It's truth and life and who knows whose truth will change a life?  And now we begin to know truth and we can be encouraged together, you and me.

Good Days and Bad Days

Can't believe I wrote this six years ago.  I still remember those times, and honestly miss them, however I can't imagine how we made it through.  Certainly wasn't on my own strength...

Today was a bad day.  I didn’t get anything done. We had to get flu shots at the clinic at church so they had to take a nap before we go.  

They wouldn’t go to sleep.  I got one child down in my room, bounced the crying baby on my knee and repeatedly eased the other one back down on his pillow.  Just when he got drowsy, the other mobile child appeared at the door.  He wanted to sleep in his own bed where I was trying to put his brother.  He never wants to sleep in his own bed.  I got both boys into one bed while still bouncing the crying baby. 

Then, I accidentally made Superman fall behind the bed post.  I apologized while promising to get him out from under the bed when they get up from their nap. 

It wasn’t good enough. 

Robert cried because he wanted Superman, Nathan cried because Robert was crying and the baby just cried.  I put the baby down causing her to cry louder.  Then I used a plastic kitchen spoon that I found under the bed (what?) to try to reach Superman.  Either my arm or the spoon was too short. 

So, I cried.  

Then I got up, moved the mattress, returned Superman to his owner, tucked Nathan in and gave him a reassuring kiss, picked up the baby and swayed with her in my arms until they all fell asleep.  

Today was a bad day.

Today was a good day.  We went to the playground at our church getting some wonderful, fall sunshine.  We ate Chinese at a buffet and got lo mein all over the carpet requiring a generous tip to ease our guilt.  

We made cupcakes and decorated them with sprinkles.  Then we ate them.  After that it was easier to give baths than to actually clean up.  

I left all of the dishes in the sink and rocked my baby while wonder-daddy got the boys ready for bed.  

Robert, who is three, asks me, “Are you happy Momma?” 

Two glasses of spilled milk, one new clean pajama shirt and one more diaper later, they are in bed with their music playing.  Now the girl is in her daddy’s arms and we anticipate getting to watch one of our favorite shows.  They just look precious.

Today was a good day.

It was the same day…

And yes, Robert, I am happy.

Michele Simmons

October 25, 2006

Care to share how you made it through the hard days?

Blessedly Ordinary

I want to write, to have interesting things to say, maybe make a difference to someone.

But I am really, really ordinary and most of my days are not interesting at all.  My day, on paper, would not inspire.

I lie in bed thinking about how little I have to say and how ordinary I am.  I long for beautiful words to spill from my fingertips out to you.  Surely there is something of worth in my mind, right?

I have no idea about the worth of my own mind but I know where my worth is found and it has nothing to do with what I may write...or not write.  I begin to see that blessed are these ordinary days.

Blessed is the heaviness of a blanket and two quilts on a cold morning.  What I mean is…it simply feels good to wake to warmth and physical comfort.  You know, warm, heavy blankets feel good on my legs.  That’s it.  Simple.  Good.

Blessed is the sound of my sons playing quietly in the next room.

Blessed is my daughter still wrapped up, completely sideways, sleeping in the bed that belonged to my grandmother.

Blessed is the donut shop and every bite of that Boston Crème and I don’t care how many calories it is because today it made me happy to be there and it made my kids happy to start our morning like this, in a donut shop and you know what?  Judge me irresponsible but those hot chocolates with all their wonderful sugar, that was blessed too and we WILL do that again.

Blessed is a lunch of simple leftovers where everyone chooses what they want and we eat yet another simply boring meal…together.  Blessed is the laughter that goes with it.

Blessed is the sibling rivalry.  I am not sure how but they worked it out and perhaps taught each other lessons about doing unto others that my preaching could never accomplish.

Blessed are library books and the worlds they bring to our ordinary, slightly dingy red couch which, by the way, the dog licks when we are gone.   Seriously, he licks the edges of the couch.  I don’t know why.  Just thought I would throw in that boring little bit of reality.

Blessed are knee socks and veggie trays with ranch dip.

Blessed are the many conversations we have had today about the plot of The Magician’s Nephew and The Horse and His Boy and Legos and how Aquaman had the money to buy the elaborate mansion that Six and Seven built for him and did you know that when Anakin isn’t fighting battles he has pet snakes and a dry cleaning establishment?  I am grateful to know these things inside the minds of those I love.

Blessed are vacuum cleaners and all the dog hair that they remove from my life.  Blessed is our good dog who really does not care what his kids, my kids, do to him.

I anticipate that our ordinary dinner of hamburger stroganoff with I don’t yet know what else will be blessed because sweet daddy (my husband) will be home tonight. 

I guess ordinary can be pretty great.

Blessedly ordinary,

Michele

Happier than a pig in Mud...

In January, 10 months ago now, my husband and I decided to improve our physical fitness by creating a training and meal plan that would enable us to increase our strength and stamina while...never mind, we started counting calories and moving our backsides because we wanted to stop gaining weight and get in shape.

Being 40-something with three kids does not, in fact, doom a person to a life of going downhill...at least not coasting down at high speeds.  If I am going down, I am doing it with two parachutes open and the brakes on!

Soon after, my husband discovered a worthy motivation.

THE TOUGH MUDDER.

This is an event where you pay the organizers to let you run miles and miles stopping only to crawl through, jump over, climb under, hang from, get shocked by, or freeze in whatever obstacle they have set up.  Oh yeah, the proceeds benefit Wounded Warriors.  Your thanks for completing the course?  An orange sweatband and a beer. (Oh don't get all worked up, just don't drink the beer if you don't want to...its okay to be the salt you know...)

So, my husband trains and I walk. We write down calories, a surprisingly easy and cheap way to alter your eating for the better, and I lose a size and my husband loses 30 pounds.  *sigh*

The day arrives and we drive down, all five of us, the kids are crazy excited.  They have done lots of "training" with him (health, it's not just hereditary but contagious, yes?) and they are ready to watch some funky monkey (monkey bars) and the kiss of mud (crawling through mud under barbed wire) and other obstacles with slightly edgier names whose double meaning was lost on the kiddos.  (I just used some of the less conservative elements as a springboard to brainwash the kids with my own point of view.)

Look at the hands on the right edge of the pic above, those hands waiting to help a stranger up.  When was the last time I helped anyone up?

This is not a commercial for the Tough Mudder but a commercial for the world around you.  I had forgotten that people are not just mankind but uskind and we are loved, if not always by each other but by our Creator.

Everyone was so nice, participants, volunteers, family members, everyone.  Some of the costumes were skimpy but really, we saw the same amount of flesh in a fast food restaurant the night before.  There were signs encouraging determination, reliance on--wait for it--OTHERS, doing your best and getting back up when you fall and above all, HELPING OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE DOWN.

You see, in my insulated little world, I fear I have lost my saltiness.  I admit to you that I stand apart when I venture outside my circle of family and church.  I don't know quite how to handle the world at large because I seem to be rarely in it anymore.  And considering my faith, this makes me quite useless.  So I was really encouraged to see what potential we have to impact the world around us.

I saw people at the Tough Mudder wearing their faith, talking their faith and walking their faith and these real people and the others there who were having fun on behalf of a noble cause, these should be some of our heroes, not the folks on TV who are paid but the ones who have paid just to help someone else.  A worthy model, don't you think?

The Tough Mudder Creed

As a Tough Mudder I pledge that:
I understand that Tough Mudder is not race but a challenge.
I put teamwork and camaraderie before my course time.
I do not whine, kids whine.
I help my fellow mudders complete the course.
I overcome all fears.

Now, with your permission, I would like to editorialize...

Abba Father,

I understand that life is not a race but a challenge and the goal is a race worthy of a "well done" from you, and certainly NOT to finish first!
I put love of you and love of my neighbors before MY chosen course.
I do not whine but try to be thankful in all circumstances because You are God and I am not.
I help my fellow mudders complete the course, enough said.
I overcome all fears only through You who strengthen me.

And another thing, this event was physically and mentally challenging.  We need more of that in general.  Let our men and boys, many of whom were made to be warriors, let them have challenges and do hard things and fail and try again.  Let them test and exert themselves. Spiritually, can you imagine how salty they could make an event like this if they were to come in droves?

And for your girls, what an inspiration.  My daughter watched a beautiful young woman cross the monkey bars (these bars, about 20 of them, followed the inclined roof line going upward, peaking and coming down), with the guys in her group cheering her on.  We were so impressed because those fitness nut guys cheering, they had fallen from the bars into the muddy water before that girl crossed.

Events like this are springing up all over now.  Test them to make sure the cause is worthy but we are inspired to action.  The boy, 9, watched his daddy cross "the monkey"and said out of the side of his mouth, "How old do you have to be to do this?"

Trying to be worth my salt,
Michele

Superman's Secret Identity Revealed

Let me let you in on a little secret, Superman is real and I know who he is.  I married him 12 years ago.  I know he has super powers because a friend who lent us a mower once said my husband could break an anvil.  Maybe that isn't what he meant...

He can hit baseballs out of the park, coach for days in freezing February weather or 102 degree sun, if you put oranges in your water cooler it makes a difference, you know.  But let him go too long without sugar and, lets just say hunger is his kryptonite.

As crazy as I was about him, I didn't even know his secret identity.

But then something happened, a miracle actually (but that is for another post) and we found out we were expecting.  A baby shoe with an apple seed to show the size of our child the day we learned he existed and a poppy seed to show the size of his already beating heart.   Twenty-one days wonderfully made and our child's heart was beating.

Superman became Mr. Safety, spending two hours in the car seat aisle before actually making a purchase.  I am not kidding.  He did the finger sticks to test the sugar in my blood and worked in his gymnasium office while I walked that sugar off at 10:00 PM.  While I lay in a hospital bed recovering from a c-section, he changed tar-filled diapers, eventually becoming such an expert by our third child that he made a list of the supplies he wanted, forget cotton balls, you need industrial wipes for that stuff.  I began to suspect that he was not to be taken for granted.

He is the "master swaddler" who kept vigil over me and the new ones every minute we were in the hospital.  He came in the door from work, kissed me (is that how all this got started?) and says, "Give me that baby, he needs Daddy-time."  He is the daddy who took the boy to daycare the whole first week because I couldn't stand to do it and then hurried there to get him first.  He always has room on his chest for a sleepy little one.  I reach out to the little one who can't lay down while he sleeps, strapped in a seat to keep his milk down, and I touch him to feel him breathe but his daddy's hand is already there.  These are the things you do when you are a daddy.  These are the ordinary things that turn men into heroes.

He is learning to live on kid-time and how to eat with a person on his lap.  The man of steel drives slower now.  He has used words like "onesie" and "exersaucer" and he says, "Sorry, not today, I am with my kids."  He learned to appreciate the sounds of babies breathing, squirming and talking to their toes while we tried to sleep because that means they are there and they are healthy.  These are the changes you make when you are a daddy.  These are the ordinary changes that change you.

He likes to be with the kids and misses us when he can't be home with us.  He tells me, his wife, that I take good care of our children when it is 5:00 AM and one of them is up again.  He says I did the right thing when an emergency room visit spawns a $1,500 bill because our son shook strangely without cause when he was nursing.  He bundles our children for the trip to church.  He worked long and hard to get his National Boards and principals' degree because he looks to the future and wants to take care of us.  The man of steel has made a commitment of steel.  Commitments of steel make it possible for ordinary men to leap tall buildings.

He loves me, the mother of his children, chooses to love me every day.  He works hard so that I can raise our children and it matters.  They wait for the lights of his van (major sacrifice there!) and run when they see him. They still cry sometimes when he has to work too many nights in a row.  They don't miss TV heroes but they need him and he is there.  Above all, these kids know, day after day, minute after minute that he loves them.

He endures an ever-lengthening bedtime routine and says daddy prayers over them.  These are the things that teach your children what a daddy does, what a hero is.  These are battles fought  with hard choices and adventures lived in wee hours and a legacy well worth leaving and I know that his power doesn't come from the planet Krypton but from a holy place that is not fiction.  He knows it too and that is why he is more than a man, but a hero to four of us whose day really gets started when daddy comes home.

Love always,
M