Their Bliss, My Bliss

I'm sure any parent can relate to the utter satisfaction of seeing their kids light up with passion over something.  As I grow as a parent I am seeing how often my schedule for the day can be like putting a hand over resonating strings.  Or for the less musically inclined, it is akin to a wet blanket on a flame.  Their crest fallen faces, frustration, cries of injustice over being redirected are given as evidence.

Chirpee loves to cook

Sometimes I abandon my plans to preserve their magic bubble of joy letting their passion ride its course, and sometimes life duties just must be addressed and the magic gets interrupted.

Chirpee has been in violin going on four years, it has been a struggle to get him to practice.  There have been many threats from me about quitting, but he honestly enjoys playing and learning to play.  Just not with a weekly ambition.

At first, I couldn't understand this.  He seemed like an anomaly to me - "my goodness, if he likes it isn't he just inspired to practice and play it?!"  This was my own experience as a young musician.  I don't think my parents asked me one time in all those years to practice, I just did because I loved it.  I certainly could have used more practice, but it seemed like Liam could go a whole week without thinking of playing.

Apparently he isn't too much of an anomaly, as his instructor fought back a smile when I described Liam's lack of internal drive and my frustration over his reluctance to practice.  He assured me that incentives were normal at Chirpee's age and it wouldn't be until junior high sometime that I could expect that internal drive to blossom if it ever does.

Sometimes, he just thinks about Lego all day and can't be bothered to practice.  As his mother now for ten years, I have come to know a thing or two about him.  One of them is the importance of sparking his internal motivation as opposed to just using rewards and incentive to motive him.

There are a few issues I have with incentives, but I'm not completely against such.  I have used them, but for Chirpee they have a limit in being able to drive him forward; it is a personality thing.  And perhaps it is really a strength of his.  I won't explore this idea in this post, though!   

So this year in hopes of stirring some of his internal motivation I decided to sign up for violin with him.  It had a ring of selfishness to it (as of course I would love to take them for my own satisfaction), and I have vacillated as to whether it was a wise expenditure for our family.  Deereandy and I discussed and decided we would try it for this year.

So far, it has helped keep him practicing along.  He sees me practice and often he just grabs his violin and takes over my practice session.  His teacher has noticed a difference in him as well so that gave me a little more confirmation. 

The thing that I didn't expect in this whole process was what it would do in me.  I immediately noticed with some discomfort how I deal with instruction.  I didn't like that I'm always searching for the "right" answer to every question he presents instead of just honestly giving him my impression or answer.

More significant to me, though, is the internal fire it has lit in me.  It completely blindsided me.  Music has always had a place in my life, so maybe I should have knew it would.  It is like my soul vibrates with it.  I'm nothing particularly special or lovely to listen to (no really), but the learning, the growing, the sounding board under my chin, the ring, I just can't get enough.  Except I can.  My body tires of holding the instrument up and fatigues at some point so I have to stop.

Then I switch over to piano which has been long neglected in my house for years.  It gets dust shaken off every now and then, but sits lonely day by day.  I am learning new songs on piano, reviving old ones, I'm filled up!  A little flame (oh, a fire) has been lit and I am warmed by it.  Hey, mom, I am lit up, thought you might enjoy knowing that!

And now for some pictures of my children with their many waxing and waning passions.

Late summer at the Seattle Aquarium

Taking a break from working the excavator!

Picking out flooring in pjs adventure!

First snow ice cream of the new snow season.

Applesauce!

My Jedi fighters

Author access event with Maryrose Wood!

Selecting poems for poetry tea time.

Playing in ensemble

Rory love

Cross country skiing - we love living here!

Always passionate for crepes with ice cream!

Dimple getting to play with a local legendary teacher this year :) 

They made it themselves!  Great team work :)

Manitoba Museum

Morden library

online drawing class

Gingerbread house!

Fresh snow to shovel!

In his bliss

Making a new art gallery display in our stairwell

Grabbed the dead ladybug from the bathroom to floor to explore the little world.

Vows

Spoken on March 4, 2006 to my beloved Andrew, the day of our wedding:

Andrew, As I've told you before, there are no words to adequately describe what it is I feel for you, or how I've come to love you.

My hope, my prayer, my commitment to you - to spend the rest of my life showing you.

Apart from God, I am weak and poor.  Thankfully, He has equipped me through His Spirit to be able to honor you, build you up, encourage you, and give you the respect and love that you deserve as His child.  I am so blessed and honored that you are committing to walk hand in hand with me through the joyful times and times of suffering and sorrow.

Andrew, there is none that compares to you.  Your kind love to me has reached to the very depths of my heart and soul.  I rejoice to know that God has made and prepared us one for the other in His timing - divine and perfect.

My vow, above all things, is to seek and love our Lord as He gives me ability to do.  For He is the source and foundation of our love.  He called me His before you called me yours, and so I will always be - His, then yours.  And so these things - my heart, my love, my strengths, virtues, weakness, foibles, my life do I commit to you without reservation, my beloved and my friend.

Spoken by Andrew to me as his vows the same day:

When it comes to love there are no words fit to describe its grandeur or assay its value.  Yet, as men have done since Eden, I will try, and in so doing must use some words that have already met my pen.  You will recognize some of them from a poem of the same title I wrote for you last May, before I had even laid eyes upon you.  They are only more true now.

CORD OF LOVE

Their sound is music to my ears

Words so simple, yet profound.

"I love you" spilling from pen or tongue:

Naught to compare can be found.

Your heart is like a looking glass

Reflecting my love for you,

For though your words so thrill my soul,

Your heart shows me that they're true.

What love is this?  Oh! Glorious truth!

A love to last forever!

For since our God has brought us here, 

Our parting will be never.

A love that transcends time and space,

Because of all God's favour.

The cord of love in Christ our lord

Will bind us fast together.

I cannot love you as I should

Apart form my blest Saviour,

So as I pledge my life to you

I ask him for His savour.

A savour of love through it all,

Whatever our life may bring

I pledge my all to you today,

To you my only lover.

If life be rich, or if it's poor,

You are my constant treasure

Sickness or health, joy or sorrow,

I'll love you beyond measure.

Taking a Breather

Facebook turned off last night with a my resolve to ignore it for at least a month.  I took the app off my phone.  It seems like I get to a point every now and then when I feel like a pressure cooker is maxing out in me and I have to shut things down to let me depressurize.  The scrolling, seeing tragedy from news agencies constantly flickering, the heated political environment the past many months, so much anger and vitriol.

I actually am supposed to be helping with the launch of Sally and Nathan Clarkson's new book on social media, but my facebook activity there will be stopping.  I have done some promotion already at this point. This is the big launch week with podcasts, interviews and blogs, but I can't take it anymore.  I'm shutting off.  I'm very excited about this book and what it can mean for families, tho, so you should check it out.  

I shut facebook off for many months (a year?) last time I exited and promised to resurrect this blog, but having learned from experience I am making no promises.  

Well we have a few tasks of education to accomplish this morning so I'm signing off!  

Outside

There is something that happened as I leapt into marriage and children at 30.  It was subtle, I didn't see it for a long time, but after awhile it began to wear and show.  In my mood, my claustrophobia, my pulling my hair, my short breaths I realized there was something lacking.  Something that always has been a part of me - outside.

I was spending (and still do) most of my days all wrapped up in walls, breathing this recycled air.

Then there would be a moment, driving home from running errands where the sunset might take my breath away, and I would pull over on the edge of the road to take a picture.  Unsatisfied.  I realize that those sunset moments are just for a moment.  Not always to be captured in a photograph that sits stale in the digital annals of my phone.  Sometimes the Lord has a pretty sunset he just wants to share, with me, with you.

Two evenings ago there was another one of those amazing nights where the sunset was showing off as only a prairie sky can do.  Something beautiful in every direction.  I was driving home and kept looking in every direction as each corner of the sky was just spectacular.  In fact, I was a little concerned that I was being a bad driver with my mind so full of enraptured distraction.

Outside opens my lungs, it opens my eyes, it can pry open my inner life.  Inside, I bumble around doing things, laundry, dishes, kids, school work, etc..

I have said it a million times to myself, but not recently.  God didn't make us to keep us inside four walls.  He made us for outside.  There are times we need shelter, but we are made for outside.

On Writing Life

You can read that however you want.  Two meanings could be teased out, and I suppose those two meanings are what I mean.  There is a breeze that blows through my heart on occasion these days.  It whispers a promise of hope to me.  Like a little stirring up of sugar in coffee.  Something sweet.  There is something working in a deeper part of me than I am aware of.  What kind of creatures swim in that long neglected sea?

It is like a re-awaking of my writer.  The girl who loved to sit by the water; the edge of the river in the woods and write poetry in cold shadows while she skipped out on class.  The young woman who chased sunsets down Chuckanut Drive and sat on boulders to watch the last sliver of sun striking the sky, making the islands turn black in shadow and the Madrona's tree bark turn red with a celestial glow.

I have thought my writing life over in many ways the past few years.  Social media takes up my words, puts them in pictures, requires little shaping for the mind to imagine a scene.  I just give it out.  I take the risk of being misunderstood in gross ways; gross aka large.  I am too distracted by a million things I can't be bothered to take the time to pen on paper.  My hand can cramp writing out a list, so out of practice.  The keyboard offers an easy solution, but I can't sit still.  I can't get quiet in my mind and heart.

The quiet.  That is why I used to write.  To quiet my mind and heart that got so full of life, the details, the living.  Things clamored in my mind banging around until I wrote.    Gave them life on paper.  They lined up like soldiers in neat little rows.  Made it seem like my crazy wasn't so crazy.

Six Years Have Run Away!

Six years ago our family got bigger and better.

I wish I had taken more pictures of your sweet newborn phase.

You and Liam have been the best of friends.  The relationship got strained once you learned to walk and take toys away.  Best of friends, tho.

This joyful face.  Love.

My dapper lad with a rain coat.

That was probably chocolate on your face.

The "make your food at your table" restaurant.  So fun to take you there for the first time!

You had to have one of every party favor around your neck.  You loved the hula hoops during the dance.

You wouldn't let me keep you five so I woke up this morning and had a six year old.  I am eager to see the man you become.  God has gifted you with such sensitivity and personality.  On the otherhand, this whole childhood thing breezes by and it takes your mama's life by storm.  So I was thankful and counting the minutes last night as I lay next to you.  That was my last night of a five year old (sigh).  You are a wonderful young man.  The blessing you bring to me is beyond words.  And since women seem to replay birth stories over and over, here is yours!

How Is Life On the Flipside?

Well, true, it has been over a week since I have departed from the Facebook interface.  I can't say that it has been missed much.  I do feel the reality of being out of the loop of world news, so I shall have to remedy that with some news app on my phone I suppose.  The difficulty is finding a media group without an agenda.  Oh well, that is really an impossible task so I shall just have to find one that has a spin on things the way I like. 

I also have missed the messenger once.  But otherwise, I think things have been good.

We were sick here last week with a cheery stomach bug.  All four of us succumbed at different times.  Needless to say, my toilet is fabulously clean.  I think I cleaned the bowl every other day for over a week and the seat was wiped down daily with Lysol wipes. 

That unpleasantness done with, Deereandy went back to work today and I took the kids out of the house on a little fun excursion to the indoor play area in Morden and out to lunch and ice cream. 

Winter is showing no sign of letting up, but the calendar tells me it should be vanquished within a month.  No telling in Manitoba, but I am still hopeful that dirt may show in April and shortly after buds on trees. 

Tic season will then be in swing and as I am completely repulsed by them, I am not looking forward to living here in the country with them.  I am sure I will be an expert at removal and killing by the end of June. 

But - I love being here; in the country.  It still is a dream come true even if I complain about tics and other pests in the coming days.  Bear with me.