Broken

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We’re all broken.
We’re all a mess.
We have so much wrong in our lives.
I think about how much I have wrong.  How much I have been wronged in this life.  And I think about how much those who’ve wronged me have been wronged.  I ask God to see people as He sees them in attempt to not be angry.  In a moment of thinking that’s what He wants me to ask.  And then I do.  I do see them, maybe just a glimpse… the way He does. And I realize they are just… broken…
I think about all the people I know who have truly, truly been wronged.  I think about all of my online and real life friends who have experienced loss like I cannot imagine.  They have lost children.  I walk through the pain with them, even if they don’t know it, praying for and with them.  I pray for their other children, I pray for their quiet moments, I pray for their marriages, I pray for things I do not understand.  I pray for their faith.
And mine wavers.
I doubt.  I ask how and why.  Again.  I’ve been here before.  Doubting and asking and thinking “just rescue us, Lord.”  And those doubts lead to … “If you were good… if you were just…”  And those thoughts lead to… “are You real?  Is any of this really worth it?”
I swim in the brokenness.  I see the sinking ship everyone (e.ver.y.one) is on.  I see them sinking.  Flailing.  I feel my own limp.  And mine isn’t even inflicted as deeply as I see others.  But it’s still a limp.  I’m still not right.  I’m still… broken.  Legitimately broken.
There’s something about it being legitimate.  There’s something about the validity of my pain.  My pain being hurtful even when it doesn’t look as awful as someone else’s pain.  There’s something about looking deep at my hurt.  Looking at it head on and saying, “That hurts.  It’s real.  And I hurt.”
I look at my hurt and realize out of my hurt I do and will continue to hurt others.  I hear so many mamas say,”I hope I don’t scar my kids.”  I used to hear myself say that to my husband. And hear him say it to me.  After all these years of parenting we realize now we are going to scar them.  We are broken people.  Raising kids.  I said the other day under the crushing weight of having snapped at my kids again for being… kids… “I just wish I wouldn’t be this way with them.”  And my husband said,” What way? Yourself?”  And we laughed through my tears, but then quietly I said,”Yes, exactly.  I wish I wouldn’t be myself….” And he agreed, he said he tries all the time to be something different.  Something… better.  Not so… broken.
And we sit in silence wishing for … something … more … different.
Knowing that our brokenness will lead to the brokenness of our children.  It’s inevitable really.  Even if they don’t hold it against us, they will be as broken as we are.  Limping in their own ways.  It’s hard to watch and know that they will not dance as beautifully as we once hoped.
I had a best friend in junior high who always said she would not have children.  None.  Ever.  Because she didn’t want to bring them into such an awful world.  And she hasn’t any.  And I wonder if she’s any less broken for it.  I doubt it.
Because we’re all broken.  We’re all limping.
When I look at how many friends I have online that have experienced the pain I mentioned before of losing a child I ache.  And I think why do I know so many people that have suffered that special kind of pain.  And I realize it’s because the internet has made my world smaller.  I know more people than the few that I can see from my front porch.  As my  view and vision expand, as I see the people I’ve asked God to open my eyes to, I see also their pain.  And I groan.  I cry for them, these friends I’ve never met.
The amount of pain that I know of personally is a sea.  There is an ocean of pain in just my view.  And I consider that.  I ponder why it is.  And I realize I see more pain because I see more people.  And as I fight against being consumed by the others’ pain, my dad always said when I was kid,”You can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders, girl.”, I realize that God’s view is much much larger than mine.  He sees it all.  All of that pain.  And His words from Romans 8:26 come to mind:
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
And I doubt.
And I question.
Again.
It’s a chasing of the wind.  It’s nothing new.  There’s a reason that I love Ecclesiastes so.  Because it’s all futile.  Chasing after more wisdom, asking more questions only brings more knowledge of more pain.
But at the end of it what remains in my doubt and my striving is the decision to just trust Him.  I have to choose with all the strength of a grown man to become as small as a child. To trust and obey.  To choose a childlike faith.  To come to Him.  Choice takes great strength.
And so, at the end of it all, I have to accept that we’re all broken.  We’re all hurting.  I have to accept that the hurt is not of Him.  I have to choose the knowledge of simple faith.  I have to choose Him again.
And the biggest choice, the hardest step to take back into faith (and I’ve been taking these same back and forth steps of faith for almost 20 years now) is to trust that He loves me.  In all my brokenness.  He loves me.
He loves us.
He loves you.
With a love you don’t understand.  A love you can’t comprehend.  That you didn’t and couldn’t earn.  When I sit crushed in my own sin I have to choose again that it isn’t my goodness that draws His eyes to me.  He looks at me with love.
I am enough.
It is enough.  All that I do and don’t do.  It’s enough.
Because I choose Him.  He made me enough.
And so… we are all broken.  You and me.  We are always going to be broken.
But I choose Him.
I choose love.
Again.

Picnic in the yard! Checking off that summer fun list one activity at a time!

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Me.  And my 6 kiddos.  We make quite the crash of rhinos, no?
I’ve made a summer fun list, put each item on a popsicle stick.  We’re choosing what we’ll do with our lazy summer days (Iazy, ha!) one activity at a time.  Some activities we’ll do more than once, like this one where we had an impromptu picnic in the grass.  Others will be a one time deal like how I plan to hopefully make volcanoes and explode them.  We’ll see.
In other kinda related news, this was not as easy to take as one might guess from such a carefree looking picture. But it was more fun than one might guess, I didn’t snap at one single child to get this, however I did have to say, Hey, you need to move in closer to your siblings please!
I think tomorrow’s agenda has something marvelous on it like, go grocery shopping.  But shh, don’t tell the kids.  I wouldn’t want them to get too excited or anything.

New chores

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We’re taking a summer break from school.  I’ve been working on cleaning out our school stuff, baby and puppy proofing (yes, puppy, pics to come), and revamping our chore charts again.  I wanted to add the 3 year old to the chores, add more advanced chores to the olders and at the same relieve the older 2 boys from having to clean so much of all that MyGirl and the 2 younger boys leave out.  I had to figure that out along with making sure my house was still clean enough to keep me sane.  Not an easy task, any of it.  Especially knowing that it’s going to be more chaotic during the training process.
The above picture is a very rough draft of the initial change ups.  The chores increase in challenge level for the older kids going down to the 3 year old who has responsibilities and shadowing the olders.  The responsibilities are also grouped by kind.
For instance, in the trash category TheOldest (age 11 1/2) takes the trash out each day, the 10 year old has the task of smooshing down our recycling and taking it out to its can, when the 11 yro takes out the trash he tells the 6 year old who will put in a new sack, the 8 yro girl is to gather in randomly sitting out trash from the house – tissues, papers, etc., and the 3 yro gets to dump the little lint trash can from the laundry room.
They tend to neglect all the countertops and table tops in the house, so that has it’s own category.
I made a meals category because I realized I was cooking, setting the table, and cleaning up the entire meal while they ran in, scarfed down the food with us, and ran back out.  They need to be more a part of the process so that there is more appreciation and more hanging out time during meal times.
Same with the laundry.  I’m mainly handing off the entire job of laundry to the kiddos now.  I help on days we do bedding and a few loads here and there, but for the most part we’re in the training process.  I think I will eventually switch up who starts, switches, and sorts the laundry so that they can all learn the entire process, but for a good while we’re going to master this.  There’ve already been a few hiccups (heck, there were hiccups when I did it!) we’re learning to check pockets, hang the good clothes, and to listen for when the buzzer goes off to switch.  It’s all a worthy training process.
One thing that I eventually learned in the last couple of weeks of switching up chores is to not dump our old chore areas completely.  They won’t always have to use it, we won’t do it every night, but I need a fall back when company drops in or last thing at night when I need a little order.  I use the old familiar list from below.  It’s listed from 11 yro, 10 yro, 8 yro, and 6 yro from left to right.  When I call “pick up your areas!” they will do a quick sweep of everything that needs to be put away in that area.  That includes noncomplainingly picking up other people’s belongings.  We can learn serving others and team work this way.
As with all of our chore changes through the years there will be tweaks along the way and much training.  There is always the balancing act between just needing a cleaned up, ordered house, and the bigger picture of training them along the way.

Goodbye, Hello ~ Learning Heartbreak, Patience, and Joy Through Pets

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Pitiful. Sweet. At the same time. MyGirl made this poster to hang in our neighborhood after our sweet ancient Louise ran away. The 6 yro looking at this at bedtime said,”I wish Louise was in our house tonight.”
I’ve regretted getting rid of our doggy from years ago (remember Chikezie?) ever since we did it.  I was overwhelmed at the time, but shouldn’t have reacted so quickly.  I knew Hokie Pokey that we rescued in the midst of our move was more of a rescue and move along mission.  But we’ve talked about someday getting another dog for the kiddos.  But we knew when we did it would be an all or nothing venture.  We would be all in.  The dog would be considered one of the kids and taken care of accordingly.  Consequently we waited a good while with the thought of getting one in the back of our mind.
Melissa from A Familiar Path had rescued 11 year old chihuahua Louise, but needed to move her along to a home that she would fit with better.  I jumped at it.  She was not without her problems.  She was stinky.  Her skin was rough.  She had about 5 teeth and those were wiggly.  Her tongue hung out.  But boy was she sweet.  And gentle.  And house trained.  She fit right into the Parker house.  We called her Wheezy Hospice (thank you, Matthew!)  Matt and I discussed that there was imminent heartache attached to this dog.  She was old and though there was a chance she could outlive us all, there was a much greater chance that she would leave us all too soon and we would learn the circle of life.  MyGirl especially was attached to her.  Cared for her in spite of her stink, carried her everywhere.  MyGirl and Louise showed us all what unconditional love was.
And one day Louise wandered off.  She was not a wanderer.  We looked around one afternoon that the doors had been mostly open for the nice weather and realized we didn’t know the last time we had seen her.  We drove up and down the road calling for her, we put her on Craig’s list, MyGirl made that poster.  To no avail.  I think she probably wandered off to leave this life, knowing it was over.  We were, indeed, heartbroken.
And as Matt checked Craig’s list with a tad bit of hope the next day he saw an ad offering up a puppy.  The cutest little Yorkie puppy you’ve ever seen.  He had had his first shots, he came with a crate, a pen, food, treats, a bed, two collars, a leash, tons of toys, and food dishes.  He was a great deal, adorable, and the kids had never had a puppy before.  We didn’t pass up the deal.  We surprised the kids and I prepared to figure out how to train a puppy when I have never before successfully trained a puppy.  Oh my.
After much discussion the kids named him Chewbacca.  We call him Chewy (and boy, does that name fit!) we’ve also been known to call him Chewy tobacca.  Get it?
Both babies napping in the sun in my lap.
Double the trouble, y’all!  But double the cuteness!
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