COMMODITY TRADING

Here is a big fat warning to anyone out there who is just getting started on this crazy wonderful strange perplexing path called "Parenthood." When the "old-timers" (unfortunately, I almost count!) warn you to "enjoy them; they grow up too fast," they should be wearing neon orange vests, waving giant red flags and standing by enormous LED-lit billboards flashing "CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION!"

Blame it on having an unscheduled 9 days holed up together last week, or the fact that I have only 1 semester left with a preschooler at home, but I am missing those days terribly! I have been going before God lately with a whole lot of "Why's?" Not the "I don't trust You" kind of why's that invade certain other areas of my life. These are the "this is so confusing; I thought I had THIS part figured out and then you switched it up again and I'm trying to make sense of things but now I'm befuddled all over again...." kind of why's.

Unlike most little girls I know, I did not grow up with the fairytale dream of my Prince Charming and a white dress and a tidy house with the white picket fence. (O.K., I DID dream about the tidy house.....) It's not that I thought that was bad. My mom stayed home and raised my brother and I all the way through high school without taking a job. She managed to stay active and productive and create a real HOME, somewhere I always felt safe and loved and listened to. I have always been very impressed with her for this in a world that may have been more hostile to homemakers then than it is even now. I don't know why I never invisioned myself doing the same thing; it's one of the few things I don't analyze completely into the ground. I don't know WHY to that either.

Anyway, my dream was to go to college (I LOVED schoolwork; not school, but schoolwork - I was a freak, I know.) Then I wanted to get some great job where I traveled for meetings, with great-looking, girly power suits and a sharp alligator-skin brief case. Maybe I would meet someone, and we would date forever, but probably not marry. (Don't ask about intimacy; I never bothered to factor that in to my plans. I was a teenager, O.K.? It was all going to be EASY!)

I am SO TREMENDOUSLY THANKFUL God knows this heart He made better than I do!!! He knew what He designed it for and what it would need to get there. And He turned all my best-laid (completely stupid unrealistic) plans right on their ego-pumped heads. I'll save all the details of our family development for another day, but He gave me these three great wonders of humanity and let me call them my children.

Since I was born, I have by nature been extremely diligent in whatever I set my mind to. If my mission was now Motherhood, it was never a question for me that this would be any different. The problem was, I didn't feel like I was very maternal by nature, so this became my fervent prayer. I listened to the sage advice of those who have long since left the baby-raising days. Too many of them offer it for it to not be true. "ENJOY YOUR CHILDREN" I purposed in my heart to ENJOY the cheerios on my carpet, the pudding prints on the wall, the incessant screaming to get my attention when I haven't responded within two seconds. REALLY! I went from extreme impatience to a lot more of it - all because God found it to be a worthy goal of my heart. I had to listen and obey, but HE bestowed these abilities upon me. It was a process. It took time and lots of prayer and Bible study and a purposeful retraining of my brain.

And now, just when I'm at the peak of love with this insane craziness that is my little people.....they are going to school. I relish the conversations we have every morning on the way there. And I feel an uneasy emptiness as they first leave to go to class.

I realize this could easily become co-dependence on my children for my self-worth if I am not careful. God asked me to quit homeschooling in part because that was much of my reasoning for doing it. I know I have talents and service to explore outside of being "Mommy" to my children, but why now? Why didn't I have this longing and confidence at the beginning, before making so very many mistakes? Why is it so true what "THEY" always say - that as mothers our calling is "work ourselves out of a job?" I love this job! I don't WANT to ever finish it. And I know I never really will entirely. I know because I STILL need my mother more than I bother to tell her. But TIME is such a precious, rare, priceless commodity. I wish I could take each wonderful phase my children encounter (the one RIGHT NOW is ALWAYS the best one!) and bottle them up forever and ever and ever?!

Yes, each precious passing moment is unique, special, and can never ever again be returned. No one can find it in the street and bring it to my door. Too much time is wasted in this world. Time spent on work, traded for money. Time spent on fears, traded for wimpy choices. Time spent on doubt, traded for discontent. Time spent on me, traded for the hurt of those around me. I believe this is one of the world's biggest problems. Poorly spent time. I believe it is one of life's greatest temptations and one of an individual's most difficult balancing acts. Given two or three choices of well-spent time (husband or children, church or family, personal study or fellowship), how do you choose? How much time - and when - do they each receive their due attention? Of all the commodities we are given in this life - finances, education, even wisdom and beauty, I wouldn't trade time for any one of them. God, please help me to make CONSISTENTLY wise use of my time.

Two Hearts Unite

I just haven't been sure what to write without boring anyone with yet ANOTHER story of Ice Escapades - that has been ALL that has happened around here for 9 days now! Ice and snow and rain and STUCK inside, TRYING to keep the house SOMEWHAT clean! Notice all my EMPHASIS!

So without concentrating on writing flair, but just factual details that I can get through without crying, I share this:

The past year with my husband has finally been like the honeymoon period you're supposed to get the first couple of years of marriage before the kids come along. We'll have been married for 12 years in April. This was not an oversight on our part, or laziness in our relationship (God KNOWS it's NOT that!), but because for the first time in a DOZEN YEARS we are finally just getting to be "normal." We still have problems, but they are the garden variety. Broken pipes, molding kids' attitudes, running out of underwear with no laundry soap left. Yes, we built a house this past year. We moved and we had our identity stolen, but we also finally had time to do it all AS A TEAM. You can't imagine what a big deal this is to me!

When we met, my husband and I were both in our twenties and living on our own. We had our jobs (he worked construction with his Dad's company; I was Promotions and Technical Director at a radio station) and our hopes to meet Mr./Ms. Right. We were ready. Our first year of dating was all the fun and discovery that it should be. He found out I'm neurotic about being organized (yeah, God's let me learn the futility in THAT the past 3 years!) and I found out that he snores and well, isn't so neurotic about cleanliness. (I had to show him the vacuum had a disposable bag after he had it for 8 years!)

And soon, he would also find out just how little real adversity I had ever had to prepare me for our initiation into married life. Just two weeks before our Big Day, I was coming into my apartment carefully lugging my GORGEOUS finished wedding gown when I caught the tail end of a message playing on the answering machine. I had missed too many details to understand the context of the information being spoken, but there was panic in my church friend's voice. I laid the dress quickly across my bed and picked up the receiver. "Nikki. Oh, thank God you answered! You've got to get to the such-and-such hospital right now! Greg is there by himself and something really bad has happened to his dad." My first question to her was of course what had happened. She didn't know. Then I asked "why is he alone?" "It's a long story" she said, "and you don't have time!" I asked her how to get to this hospital. (It wasn't one of the ones in our near vicinity. He had been taken there from a job site he was working on.) She told me as well as she knew which wasn't exact at all - and I headed out immediately. God must have shown me straight there because I just remember showing up there - finally - about 30 minutes later. I ran in and rounded the corner of a long hallway to find my intended with his head hung low, staring blankly, defeated. And without ever knowing what had happened, I nevertheless knew the outcome. We didn't speak, just hugged and cried for the longest time. A brain aneurysm had taken his father's life without warning.

The funeral was held 5 days later. Then, 3 days before our wedding, which everyone insisted go on as scheduled to bring a bright spot to their healing, the Murrah Federal Building was bombed 15 miles away from our newlywed home (which was Greg's already). The majority of our out-of-town guests were already here and experienced it. I slept through it. I was supposed to be next door to the the Murrah building that morning, securing our wedding license at the court house, but I was sleeping in to recuperate from the emotional drain of the prior week's events. Our pastor preached the funeral of one of the child victims the day before we were married. On top of it all, our actual wedding day brought record low temperatures and 4 inches of rain. It was to be an outdoor garden reception.

This was the day God helped me begin to practice the art of perspective. I didn't cry at the rain. It was so insignificant in light of our loss. I didn't care that everyone was discussing the bombing. Those people who perished deserved remembrance. They had lost their lives as well. And besides, as far as I know, every single person who was invited to our wedding showed up to support us! Many pitched in to make sure the indoor reception was nothing short of spectacular.

But the one thing that haunted me that day, for years in fact, was that my betrothed never looked me in the eyes. On a day so full of emotion, ALL KINDS of emotion, I was hidden from him most of the day for the tradition of not seeing the bride before the "big moment." When the big moment finally came and I walked through the double doors, I think he glanced just long enough to know that I was THERE, alive, and then no more after that. Through the entire ceremony, he stared at a single spot on the floor, never even looking at me. He couldn't. It was all too much.

I just wish I had realized that then. I took offense instead. I NEEDED for him to be wowed, to accept me in as his wife, to relish in my comfort. He needed my understanding. To be gone for 14-16 hours a day that first year or two, trying his best to run a company and support not just a new wife, but also 10 employees, his mother and her two dependent children at home. All this at the tender age of 26. I didn't really realize then how very young he really was. I was often mad at his absence (both physically and especially emotionally) instead of proud of his AMAZING responsibility toward everyone involved. We both made so many mistakes. We never had that time, that incredible bonding that's needed to become one flesh, a team. Our circumstances gave us the worst possible start, one that's already difficult for most newly married couples and multiplied it exponentially. What is a usually a time of figuring out differences and meshing lives together was for us, a time of sharing space but not problems, heart thoughts or often when work intruded so dramatically, even the bed at night.

YEARS of difficulty followed, mostly but not all related to this very rough base of circumstances. But here's the inevitable positive spin. We are newlyweds now! Not in the sense of relishing in each and every word and deed all starry eyed and stuff. We've been together too long for that, seen each other sick and angry and generally for who we really are. But we're becoming a team. We have problems still, but we are tackling them, finally, together. We are going on dates. And most importantly (and I'm crying while I write), we are looking each other in the eyes when we say "I Love You." And we smile when we do it. For now, that's all the romance I ask.