Category Archives: family

The Snack Dilemma

(Photo by Lucian Alexe on Unsplash)

In the ever-expanding folder of mom-guilt is the quality of snacks my kids consume. Early in their lives this was easy. Their plates were exclusively healthy choices: fruit, vegetables, tiny bites of cheese, a handful of Cheerios. When faced with squash on their plate today, my husband and I remind them they used to love squash, among a variety of other foods they deny ever enjoying! Avocado? Yes! Sweet potatoes? Affirmative.

My oldest son loved Kashi oatmeal for breakfast. If you’ve never tried it , the taste resembled what you might imagine a woodpecker’s breakfast also tastes like. But he LOVED it. It’s all he knew.

And then his eyes were opened to all the snacks he now prefers.

Which is why every trip to the grocery store presents the dilemma of the snacks. My kids told Alexa to add Cheez-Its to the list. Now what?! There is no avocado version that might at least trick them into consuming a healthy version of Cheez-Its. But it’s the cereal aisle that deepens the dilemma. As Captain Crunch and Barney Rubble stare you down, you alone have to muster the strength to take an honest look at the grams of sugar now conveniently displayed on the front of the box. You can follow your nose or go cuckoo and come home to kids who call you Tony the Tiger’s famous line. Or, you can find 13 grams or less to be a fine cereal guide.

In the end, however, what matters more than what I buy is what my kids choose to eat. Like most of the reality of raising kids, I have very limited control. Regardless of my choices, their choices are really their own and not mine to make. Will I always be the one buying their groceries? Nope. The snack dilemma isn’t mine to solve, but rather it is mine to equip them to solve on their own.

Which should make the mom-guilt file stop expanding, right? Why doesn’t it work that way? Only the famous cereal aisle leprechaun knows. I do believe that regardless of the snacks I buy, the cookie jar should never be empty. This is wisdom from my mom. Healthy snacks are one thing; cookies keep us from worrying way too much about it.

Garden Variety Apocalypse

(Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash)

There is an impressive garden I pass by on my walks with Pippen. The couple who tend this garden have made a serious commitment to the earth. In the spring, they faithfully till and plant and then I get to witness the magical way seeds transform into food. Green, red, purple, and orange stain the growing garden until suddenly sections disappear. It is a vegetable apocalypse with raptured tomatoes! A cucumber diaspora and a scattering of green beans.

The apocalypse occurs in tandem with the first weeks of school. As vegetables disappear from gardens, kids disappear from home (or for homeschool or online students, kids disappear from their summer lives). I felt the change today, my designated day off, when I came home from the school drop off to a quiet house. Pippen greeted me with his eyes on the door in hopes that another human or two would follow me. Surely, he acknowledges the difference, too. A grown-up at home and no kids means his extensive naps will go uninterrupted.

The diaspora of vegetables and school-aged kids are clear evidence that our days are not meant to look the same for any long period of time. The rhythms of a school year and gardening might teach us to hold life lightly and expect it to change. Life is not built for white, clasping knuckles, but for loose grips.

If God is in the details, God is certainly in the plucking of cucumbers from their vines, and in the student’s march from the car or bus to the classroom. Garden apocalypses will continue as sure as your own life will change. There is a steadiness that comes when big and small changes invite you into a long conversation with God.

“God, this is different…”

“God, why can’t tomatoes taste this amazing all year long?”

“God, can you be more generous with the carrots and go easy on the zucchini? Just an idea.”

“God, this part is really nice and this part is hard…”

“God, what might change next?”

“I know, God, you will be there then, too.”

A Christian Way to Talk About the World With Kids

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Have you ever noticed how you talk about the world with kids? What age-old words or phrases do you let slip without realizing? Do you call the world “dangerous”? Or explain tragic events by concluding, “The world can be a terrible place,” or, “There are bad people in the world.”

I also wonder how you refer to decision-makers. Are all politicians awful? And lawmakers corrupt? How do your own headlines and editorials shape the way kids around you understand the function of the government?

As any teacher will tell you, kids speak of the world with the narrative they learn at home. Your family’s unique language is their first tongue to articulate an understanding of the world around them. If at home you speak of a corrupt government, your child will do the same at school. If all politicians are distrustful as you process the news at home, distrust may plant a seed that will later blossom into endless conspiracy theories.

The Buddhist are perhaps the first to point out that humankind is aptly named. Our early orientation toward strangers is most often kindness. If you smile at a toddler, that child will naturally smile back. It happens every Sunday during the sermon when people sitting near a baby will hear almost none of the sermon due to the steady, heartwarming exchange of glowing smiles.

We live in a time in the United States when deeply-rooted conspiracy theories are shaping events and nurturing distrust. In my corner of the world, generations-old distrust of the government has placed a filter over information related to the pandemic. And that makes me wonder about younger generations that continue to learn distrust as a first language. I suspect conspiracy theory is handed down and learned at home.

All that is to say, what might be the Christian way to talk about the world with kids, particularly at home. Here a few ideas:

  • Do not avoid the words “I don’t know.” We are inundated with both true and false information and we do not always know the difference. A shrug of the shoulders prevents us from thinking we are always right.
  • Check out the Bible. It blows my mind whenever I read Old Testament stories of how God used “the bad guy” to deliver his word. Jonah was sent into “enemy territory.” Jesus befriended the wrong “political parties.” The fall of the Berlin wall is a good illustration of how God responded to separating humans based on political allegiance.
  • Start a conversation. Ask kids, “How is God in the world right now?” As we watch the terror unfold in Afghanistan, how is God with the people? What does God need from us to care for the strangers we see in the news? Even a prayer for people far away makes us more than strangers. Also, asking kids a question reminds us that they know far more than we assume!
  • Scan yourself for anger. Anger can be productive, but it can also be wildly unproductive. If your anger makes you feel self-righteous, keep that in check. Your kids may learn to be angry with people only because they think differently than they do. Warning: Self-righteous kids are the most annoying friends in high school and college. Try to avoid raising those.
  • Remind kids a basic tenet of the Christian faith. Our faith does not put our absolute trust in a human leader, but only in our Lord. Only God deserves our total allegiance. Only God will save us. Only God will lead us through this life into the next one. Human leaders cannot promise salvation, so if you sense yourself buying into such a promise, back up a bit.

While it is a challenging time to raise kids, it is an excellent time to be in conversation with them. We all need help processing what we see in the news. It is easy to avoid, but we need to talk about why there are people who drive around our neighborhood with flags in their pick-up trucks for my 9-year old to read F— Biden. I wonder why that person feels so strongly? I don’t know, but I’m sure there is a reason. He/she is a child of God, too.

The Magic of the 20-Second Hug

When I was a little girl, I had a persistent light cough that was attributed to dust. Among the many tactics we tried to eliminate allergens in our house to limit the coughing was a mostly strict ban on stuffed animals. Only my two plush puppies, Rover and Scrappy, survived the ban.

While no allergy is ideal, this one had its perks. No stuffed animals were allowed to move in. Meaning, my mom could say no to any and every such request.

Thirty-years later, my mom says yes to every such request from her granddaughter, which is how I ended up with a giant, red, heart pillow with the words “100% Huggable” from a garage sale last week. Where, I ask you, does one put a giant, red, heart pillow with the words “100% Huggable” in one’s home? Oy vey.

While the pillow is not my favorite, it is cool because my daughter picked it out for me, and because the words have a ring to them. I recently learned of the 20-second hug. Perhaps I read it somewhere or caught it in a podcast. Simply put, hugging your partner for at least 20 seconds (in one continuous hug) is magical. Consider. You cannot naturally hug someone you are annoyed by for 20 seconds. Eventually in those 20 seconds, you probably decide he/she is not so bad after all.

Please test the theory and if it doesn’t work for you, I have a pillow that could be your consolation prize.

Blessed Are the Curious Children, for They May Properly Embarrass the Grown-Ups

(After a bike ride to the public library)

You have one or have met one: The child who simply oozes with questions.

If my daughter were a Nerf Dart Gun, she would fire continuously. Some darts might be soft and painless while others would be oversized and spikey. And you would never know which dart was about to fire until it hits. She once asked a woman in public whether she was a boy or girl. She has asked two people who happen to be standing next to each other whether they might get married. And of course, the usual array of uncomfortable questions: how much a person paid for a house, how much money a person makes, why a single person isn’t married, when the newly married person will have a baby, and on and on, painting my face a deeper shade of red with each and every dart.

It is in a child’s job description to embarrass parents. That way, when the child grows to be a teenager it all evens out. Any embarrassment a teenager laments is simply returning the favor.

For most parents, we deal with moments of curiosity-induced embarrassment understanding this is how kids make sense of the world. They ask their way into the moment. They wildly wonder out loud.

Today’s Nerf Dart came in the form of: “Mom, why did dad marry you?”

This is a dart I had not seen before. I’m not sure I’d ever pondered the question! Why did he marry me 20 years ago? I had no answer. “Because we were young and didn’t really know anything” didn’t seem the appropriate response! She’ll have to ask her dad.

Isn’t it crazy that a 9-year old can pose brand new questions to a 43-year old? Age might invite wisdom, but adding years is not exclusively the formula to becoming wiser. Curiosity does that. Even if the curiosity makes you blush in front of strangers and friends! If nothing else, those who are curious are contagious with wonder and wonder might call us to see one another in a new way.

I hope to overhear my husband’s response to today’s question. It makes me curious. Perhaps I might ask it myself.

And You Thought THAT Felt Scary?

(Photo by Ivan Shemereko on Unsplash)

So many years ago for the very first time, I witnessed the pink lines on the stick. That was scary. What was happening in my body at that moment felt scary. The feeling intensified when a “helpful” co-worker told me, “Just you wait. A few weeks ago before my first child was born, I sat weeping on the steps in my house, wondering how something the size of a watermelon was going to come out of me.” “Thanks for the encouragement,” I did not say.

Outside the entrance of Mercy Hospital nine months later, Marcus and I loaded up our first born, trying to make sense of the car seat situation. We were now responsible for a human being’s survival! That felt scary.

In the next several years, we would leave our kiddo and then kids with a babysitter, then a day care provider, then a teacher. Each time, that felt scary.

We would leave them behind at a new school, a camp, a sleepover at a friend’s. Today, one of my sons walked alone into a room to take his permit test. He didn’t say it, but I knew it felt scary. Big questions, big stakes. He passed.

He left behind the part of his life in which he could not drive, only bike or walk or sit in a passenger seat. He left behind some of his dependence upon me and in doing so, he now shares some of the scary feelings with me. Moving into a new season of life is never without them. The scary feelings accompany independence.

In an audiobook I’m currently reading called Learning to Pray, James Martin, SJ, suggested talking to God about feelings such as these, and asking God what these feelings might mean. What does it mean, God, that I am scared when my kiddos gain independence. Along with that question, he offered another. Who is Jesus for me?

What do these feelings mean? Who is Jesus?

I feel scared when my kids gain independence perhaps because I worry whether Marcus and I have equipped them enough for that particular new independence. Of course, I feel scared for what might happen, scared for so many reasons. The scary feelings are simply too much for me to carry on my own.

Kids absorb some of the scary feelings when they gain independence. While I am still responsible for a human being’s survival, my kids are big enough to carry much of that responsibility, too.

Still, the scary feelings can be overwhelming. Jesus, then, is the porter who carries the heavy, scary feelings not only as far as your hotel room, but to all places at all times. He is the companion who does not leave my kids even when I leave them at a new school or a friend’s sleepover. He is the friend at camp and the passenger in the car.

Jesus is the one who reminds me the scary feelings are fine as along as they do not hinder the independence. (Easy for him to say.)

In years to come, at my child’s graduation, wedding, or who knows what, I will look back on the day of the permit and giggle at myself. “You thought THAT felt scary?” I’ll say. But I’ll say it more nicely than that co-worker. I don’t need to be a jerk myself.

Focus Beyond the Family (Part 3/3): “Kids, the world is bigger than your baseball game.”

(Photo Credit: https://www.legion.org/memorialday/photos/237598/memorial-day-border. May 29, 2017)

My kids and I spent Memorial Day in my hometown of Sherwood, North Dakota. Two miles from Canada, I grew up understanding a border to be peaceful, and international neighbors to be neighbors. Each year, roughly a week after joyfully arriving at the last day of school, students were called back to school to take part in the annual Memorial Day program. You can read more by clicking on the link in the photo caption.

In a nutshell, Memorial Day in Sherwood typically begins at the Canadian/American border, where Canadian veterans and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and American veterans and local police officers march from their respective ports to the borderline, where they exchange their nations’ flags.

People my age and older recall riding a bus from Sherwood School those freezing mornings (my memories involve freezing rain, but maybe I’m exaggerating) with our instruments and joining the march to play…something…I can’t remember…I’m sure it was “lovely”.

The program continued at the school, with a choir singing each country’s anthem as well as the songs of each branch of the military. A slideshow, which has evolved into an impressive video production, displays pictures of each of Sherwood’s veterans who are now deceased.

Next, the program moves from the north end of Main Street where the school is located, to the south end where a stone memorial at the city’s fire hall commemorates two men who died fighting an oil fire near Sherwood in 1991. The program concludes at the city cemetery, where a designated person places a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldiers.

Each of the 84 years of this program has drawn a crowd, often including the governor of our state. It requires a great deal of planning and manpower, even though the number of volunteers to pull off such a program has dwindled over the years, in proportion to the shrinking of a small town like my hometown.

This year, even though the border portion of the program could not take place because of the pandemic and closed borders, I wanted my kids to spend Memorial Day in Sherwood. We sat on the bleachers, just as I had for so many of these programs, just as I had for the funerals of the two men who perished in the oil fire.

“Kids,” I try to remind my own, “The world is bigger than your baseball games, your jobs, your hobbies, your accomplishments.” When a moment arises to gather for something that is not kid-centered, I find those moments invaluable. Every kid, every grown-up, every human needs to know we are small parts of something larger than ourselves.

Not long ago, I admired the parents who spend so much of their time and money coaching kids’ sports teams. Volunteer parents receive very little gratitude for the sweat equity they have in their kids’ sports. Now, however, I am not so sure. I am starting to wonder about the danger of living in communities where we spend much of our free time and money watching our kids’ activities. Kids learned to be watched and adored or yelled at. They get to be part of a team, and that offers good life learning. But the humble act of sitting in the bleachers and hearing a story you’ve heard so many times about people whom you will never know, but whom you do know played a part in your living where you live…I suspect this is how we practice being human together.

Regardless of how I feel about war and politics and American flags, I need my kids to know they live in a community. You live in a community. Every one you know lives in some kind of community. A community functions best when we all proclaim a singular hope to make them community better for everyone.

My generation has often exchanged shared communal activities for kids’ sports, my own family included. I wonder what that means for the next generations. Who will set out the chairs for the community program? Who will organize the order of the program? Who will do the work of telling our story? It is a story that is not mine or yours or theirs, but ours. A story we may not even tell precisely the same way. (All family stories are like that; we do not remember things the same.)

I hope to raise kids who know that the responsibility of living in a community falls on them. Jesus’ call to love a neighbor is a call to them. The yearning for peaceful borders is not something to entrust to someone else.

Kids’ busy lives are not the whole world. The world is bigger as much as it is filled with possibilities for them to make it better. I only believe that because a community taught me, year after year on freezing Memorial Day mornings when I thought school was over but apparently it wasn’t because I needed to sing “O Canada” and play taps and occasionally I found it all very boring.

Now, I get it.

Focus Beyond the Family (Part 1): Erasing Easy Answers to Faith Questions

(Photo by Justyn Warner on Unsplash)

*Welcome to a three-part series called “Focus Beyond the Family”, meant to widen the lens on the wild work of raising kids in the Christian faith. In the next three posts, I hope to get you wondering: (1) what you expect from church, (2) how you might talk about Jesus at home, and (3) understanding faith as an arrow that points us beyond our own families.

If your faith orientation is Christianity, you might have hopes of raising your kiddo(s) or grandkiddo(s) in the Christian faith. This is not easy work. Perhaps your child was baptized, goes to (went to) some Sunday School or Confirmation classes, and you sit (sat) together at church. Either you chose that church or your (your spouse’s) extended family chose it for you.

If you are doing the hard work of raising kiddo(s) in the Christian faith, here is a quick tip regarding churches. There are two kinds of churches: one kind provides all the answers, and the other kind does not. One kind quotes a singular verse from the library of books that is the Bible, the other tells you the mysterious, broad-stroke story of God who loved the world so much that God slipped into skin to experience it close up. One kind preaches morality (“be good”), the other preaches that you can never be good enough, so welcome to grace. One kind talks in “this or that” language, the other relies on the two words: “and yet”.

One kind of church promises that faith will make your life better. The other kind of church will never, ever make such a promise. The former kind of church, through the voices of beautiful faces and blindingly white teeth, proclaims that having faith will make your marriage better, your kids more obedient, and will pave the way toward a better future. The latter kind of church promises that you, child of God, are both beloved and broken, and Jesus Christ will always put you back together, and yet life will not always be better. The Christian life is a series of broken roads with no easy-to-follow answer signs, and a never-ending promise of Jesus’ mercy.

What does all of this distinguishing between two kinds churches have to do with you? With your faith? With your life?

I’m enjoying the book, Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First. It is written by Laura Tremaine, who invites you into thoughtful conversation and reflection. I’ve been journaling my answers as I reflect and I’m looking forward to raising her relationship-deepening questions with friends. One question Tremaine asks is: “Where are you from?” This is a standard, yet telling question.

While she asks the question more generally, I invite you to wonder from a church perspective.

~If you are (or are not) part of a church community, how did you arrive at that decision? From where have you come along your faith walk?

~How has your past experience with the Christian Church shaped what you might expect from the church?

~Do you expect easy answers or more obedient kids or a better life?

~Do you expect church to help fix your problems or to help you live with your problems?

Today, peel the layers of what you expect church to be or do for you and your family as you recollect your own church origin stories. In the next two posts, we will use what you learned to erase the easy faith answers. Then, with a blank canvas, we can create a more lasting portrait of a life of Christian faith.

The More Absurd Mom-Chores

Today I think I will clean inside the refrigerator so that tomorrow it will look like I did not clean it at all.

One month ago I washed the windows so that one month later it would look like I didn’t.

I also make our bed, re- (and then re-) organize the kitchen cupboard that provides temporary housing for snacks that quickly disappear, and on rare occasion I have been known to fold and sort clothing and accessories belonging to my daughter’s dolls (under her direction and supervision).

All of these chores can be filed together under the letter “A” for absurd. These are absurd ways to spend time. I know my work will be unnoticed by most everyone but me, and my efforts will be undone rather quickly.

Yet for a brief moment there is order where there had not been. Like God speaking into the chaos and nothingness at the start of God’s first day on the job, it all makes sense for just long enough to take it all in; to believe that order might be possible after all.

And then someone raids the refrigerator, or soaks the windows when he meant to water the grass, or confuses the drawers that belong strictly to the doll’s stockings with the drawer designated for headbands.

What order?

Like a day that does what it does instead of what you expected it to. Like kids for whom you dreamed one dream who now occupy their own quite different dream. Like you, who woke up ready for this day and now you feel as undone as the formerly-organized snack cupboard; as dis-orderly as my refrigerator will be by the time the sun tucks itself beneath the horizon.

We are meant to be both done and undone, we human creatures. To be both orderly and dis-orderly, both lost and found, both “W” for wise and “A” for absurd. You have noticed the order God once pronounced long ago for the very first time did not stick. But God stuck around; kept speaking as stubbornly as the mom who continues to do the absurd chores. Even when it doesn’t look like we did them at all. But we did. We sure did.

Week 2 of 3: The World Needs You to Pray (prayer at home)

(Photo by Hanna Balan on Unsplash)

“KITT,” I would say with authority to the invisible watch on my wrist, “I need you to come pick me.” In real life KITT did not, but in my imagination, the talking car immediately responded, like I was totally David Hasselhoff in “Knight Rider”, and away we would go.

(https://screencrush.com/knight-rider-car-for-sale/)

My eight-year old self (and yours) never imagined actual communication through a watch, but now it’s a thing! I splurged on an Apple Watch and spent too much of a Saturday talking to my watch, gazing at it, and being confused by it. I adjusted my fitness goals, set my alarm, read the news, called my dad (like Knight Rider to KITT) and checked the weather a ridiculous number of times. My watch knows me well because I taught it what matters to me, such as moving around during the day, waking up early, and determining how many layers to wear when I go outside.

Prayer is something like being obsessed with your Apple Watch. The more time you spend, the more you are known, both by God and your own self.

If you wonder what to pray about, do not look far. Look at your own body and then at the bodies who are closest to you (maybe not in terms of proximity). Start there. Pray for God to help you know yourself, to understand why you feel the way you do in regard to your own life. Pray for wisdom and imagination. Lighting a candle or three helps.

Then, pray for those who mean the most to you. Pray for your spouse, your parents, your kids, your siblings, your aunt and uncle, grandparents, and cousins. Pray for them one by one, even if it takes some time. You are not praying for something to happen to them. Remember, you are not God and God knows more than you. You are praying for wisdom and imagination for them. For their well-being, for the peace of Christ’s presence to enfold them.

“Prayer is the place where priorities are re-established,” wrote the late Eugene Peterson.

You discover when you pray for your own self and for those closest to you that your priorities shift. You find yourself closer to God. You feel closer to family members. Prayer is not complicated, but it does take time and it may reroute your plans for life. What you had been worrying about might fall away. What had never occurred to you before might appear in your brain. You might come to realize how hard you can be on yourself. God’s resounding grace reclaims its space in your soul when you pray. And you remember you are known already, without the hassle of the Apple Watch, or the Hasselhoff with KITT. You are known, you hear your heart sing whenever you pray.

A preview of next week: In the last week of this short series on prayer, we will wonder what difference your own prayers make in the wider world.