I Stink at Lent

I had a lofty goal for the Lenten season. I gave up shopping for anything besides groceries. 

No seasonal home decor. No new clothes for myself or the girls. No sewing supplies. No plants for the garden. The one exception was buying my daughters new Easter shoes, because last year's won't fit on their feet and as holy as I was planning to be, I was not willing that my daughters should wear sneakers on Easter Sunday. 

People's reactions were interesting. 

"What about paper towels and toilet paper?" my women's pastor asked. Yes on toilet paper, no on paper towels.

"What about my baby shower?" my friend who is pregnant with twins asked. Don't worry, dear, I already bought everything for your invitations.

"Can you still meet me at the mall, because I want to shop for shoes?" my best friend asked.

"You'll never make it," said my mother. 

And my mother, as usual, was right. I didn't make it. 

Five days into my extreme sacrifice, my husband put paper towels in our Target shopping cart. I bought the girls Easter shoes, but also bathing suits, because we had a warm spell and last season's were literally transparent when wet. And I ran out of envelopes for my friend's baby shower. I did not, however, buy any shoes with my BFF at Macy's that night. But I did buy shoes eventually.

While shopping for Easter shoes for the kids, I "popped in" to TJ Maxx/Home Goods (my dark, discounted master), where it turns out they don't even carry children's shoes. While there, I bought a dress to wear to  my husband's 20th high school reunion this summer ("It's so cheap and if I wait til summer, they won't have summer dresses left!") And I bought a pair of shoes with my husband's permission (same excuse as the above) and he said I could just wait until after Easter to wear them. 

And then, while I was in TJ Maxx returning the wrong size of said shoes, I bought my mother an entire new spring wardrobe for the tune of about $300. She came to my house and tried on all of it, kept most of it, and wrote me a check. 

And then after all these rationalizations and compromises, I just went to Joann's and bought all the supplies I "needed" and then felt really guilty.

I may have a shopping problem. 

The reason I gave up shopping for Lent, was (1) because I like the idea of sacrifice as a means to focus myself spiritually in preparation for the most important holiday as a Christian, and to remember Jesus supreme sacrifice on the cross. And (2) because I want the sacrifice to be a meaningful spiritual discipline that will change me in the long term. I spend of lot of time running errands and  returning things, and I desired a sense of freedom from that circular habit. What would it mean for my life to live with less, and to rely on God for the emotional lift that buying stuff (our national pass time!) gives me?

But I blew it. It was way too hard. However, it taught me a valuable lesson about the way I relate to God. 

This weekend, our pastor Kenton Beshore gave a wonderful sermon on practicing religion versus having a relationship with God. He said that the human default in relating to God is religion: a system of rules and rituals that tells us what to do, how to be a "good" person, and how to get closer to God through our own effort. The problem with religion, he said, is two fold. 

Problem one: If you succeed at following all the rules, you get prideful, make the whole thing about you instead of God, and start judging other people who can't work as hard or be as "holy" as you are. This was Jesus main problem with the religious leaders of his day, whom he reprimanded more than any one else he spoke to (he called them "a brood of vipers" among other nasty things). They were externally holy about following religious rites, but they lacked mercy, compassion, humility and love. 

Problem two: If you fail at following the rules, you end up rationalizing and compromise the rules until they no longer have any real value ("The law isn't 'don't lie', it's 'Only lie if you really have to, and then feel badly about it.'").  Then, you spiral into guilt and shame, and either shrink away from God because you feel unworthy, or drop religion altogether because guilt turns to anger and resentment toward God and the church. This was the problem for the "sinners" in Jesus' day; they were outside the holy community of religious people, but God's message to them was to repent and simply follow him. He called them friends.

Boy, do I see Kenton's point. If I had succeeded at the "no shopping" season, I would have felt really proud of myself, and probably would have told people about it. Like, "I'm not wearing a new dress on Easter today because I gave up shopping for Lent." There's no way I would have kept that quiet. 

But since I blew it so completely, I did not achieve spiritual and mental freedom, as I hoped, but got tangled up in a lot of rationalization. "See I bought that dress for the reunion, but I won't wear it for Easter, even though it would be perfect for Easter; so that's actually the greater sacrifice. To have it, to know it's right there in the closet, but to not be able to wear it." 

My relationship with God really suffered when I was in this kind of accounting mentality; I would pray and ask forgiveness for breaking my Lent vow, but then I would still want to make myself right with Jesus by earning my way back into His good graces. How ludicrous, that I, by some effort or negotiation, could mirror the sacrifice of Jesus' life.

And there, right there, is the great gift that my "failed" Lent ritual gave me. I don't have to earn my way into God's good graces because God's grace is good. Religion is an accounting system (and y'all know how I hate accounting), and we default to it because we know we are in God's debt. In some translations, sin = debt. "Forgive us our debts, Lord, as we forgive our debtors," we pray as Jesus taught us. But the great transaction has been made. Jesus paid the whole debt. All of it, so I could be His friend. So I could walk with him in freedom. He has balanced the spiritual checkbook for me. How grateful I am! 

During the last 30-some days, I got lost and tangled in religion. But in other ways, I walked with Jesus. Jeff and I have had some wonderful times in relationships with people we love and care about in the last month. I've heard God's voice about what He wants me to do with my life when my current ministry position is over, and I have a profound sense of purpose and peace. I brought my daughter to a prayer service and witnessed her ask for prayer to be a better big sister (the tears come again just remembering it). We've brought some new friends to church with us (how we love them!), and we've seen other new friends in our small group get baptized. None of these beautiful experiences have come from trying hard to be religious, but simply following the tug in our hearts to do what Jesus would. 

So I'm celebrating Easter with a full heart this weekend. And I'm wearing my new outfit rather than being holy and sacrificial by leaving it in my closet. I wear it in celebration: I didn't measure up this month, but my debt has been paid.

Light Bringer

Then suddenly, Harold remembered. He remembered where his bedroom window was, when there was a moon. It was always right around the moon.

~ from Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson

"Mom, the moon is following us!" cried Olivia from the back seat. A brilliant white moon was in the sky a week or so ago, and my five year old daughter watched it from the car window, certain it was racing alongside us as we drove home. I remember my eldest daughter thinking the same thing years ago. Even further back, I remember my younger brother and I believing that the moon was journeying with us. Like Harold in the classic children's book, who with his childlike perspective finds his way home by drawing his bedroom window around the moon, we had no problem thinking the moon was in the sky just for us.

I've explained to both my daughters how far away the moon actually is and the concept of perspective. But neither of them understood it, just as my brother and I didn't...and as I don't really clearly understand it either.

But clearer is the memory of being a child and accepting that God had a message in nature for me specifically. As a child, it was very easy to be thankful for the natural world, and to be pointed by it to the beauty and power of God. Olivia is very much in this stage of life and faith. The grateful graces said at our table almost always include two animal species at the end. "Thank you for the bunnies and bees...the butterflies and dolphins...the sharks and birds."

I still find that God speaks to me in beauty. But at this moment in my life, my gratitude has a shadow underneath it. I don't easily say "thank you" like a child.

My back yard is the place I go to meet with God. Over the summer, I was -- literally -- religious about getting up before my kids and sneaking out to my lounge chair with a cup of coffee and a Bible study book, which I sometimes read, and sometimes didn't. My view from that chair is very precious. I am tucked back against the fence under a canopy of a bower vine that flourishes no matter how I neglect it. Though I live in a dense condo complex in a flat, flat city, I have a huge view of sky, framed by liquid amber trees. Though I can't see the sunset because of how many houses are around me, from my "happy place" I can see the trees change color under the sunset's influence. When they are yellow and red in the fall, it's particularly breathtaking. In the morning, the sunrise breaks just behind them, and it is amazing how often my suburban sky is spectacular, an explosion of pink.

This summer, looking up in that sky, I often saw Venus, so bright it overshadowed even the sun. One morning it was so vivid, I imagined the sky was a stretched canvas, and Venus a pinprick, revealing what was actually behind the sky: brilliant light.

The ancient Greeks called the planet Venus "Phosphorus" or "Light Bringer" when it appeared before sunrise, as though it was heralding the coming of morning and Helios the god of the sun. I can see why they believed this, or pretended to. This summer, up early seeking God, I felt in my heart as though He was sending Venus to me, reminding me that He is light.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is 1 John 1:5:

"This is the message we have heard from him [Jesus] and declare to you:
God is light; in him there is no darkness at all."

I cling to this verse in this dark world, where God is sovereign and yet not fully enforcing his power, for how could he be when there is so much suffering among the innocent, so much injustice. Jesus came to tell us that the kingdom of God was coming...yet not yet fully here. And he showed the disciples that God was light: the embodiment of goodness and truth, and therefore to be trusted. 

If I was sitting anywhere else in my yard, I could not see Venus. Just from that one perfect vantage point from my chair does it peak over the ugly carport roof and between the trees. My child-like heart wants to say "Thank you, God for giving me this reminder of your light, sent just for me." But then my adult brain starts to analyze. Really? God ordained the construction of your condo complex so you could see a planet? Well, maybe not, but perhaps the placement of my chair? 

And then darker, and much more dangerous, my head asks the question: why would He send this light to you? The world is in darkness! God ordains a message of light to you and sends a tornado to someone else? My compassionate nature turns to a kind of codependence with the universe. No unearned gift (even from God) can come to me unless I can make the world right for everyone. 

How I long to just receive that "star of morning." How I long to enjoy the moon following me, perfectly framed by the car window. How I long to receive light and love without having to understand the way and the why it has come to me. And after all, is not the beauty of creation everywhere, and for all people? The star of Venus was not created just for me, but that doesn't mean that God is not speaking to me specifically through it.

In the Bible, God tells us to be grateful, to say thank you in all circumstances. He tells us that every good and perfect gift comes from him the Father of Heavenly Lights (James 1:7). And he tells us to be childlike, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to children. So in all my desire to both connect with God and make sense of the universe, is it possible that being simplistically thankful is the key to living in the light, and bringing it to others? 

It's Thanksgiving season, of course, and probably the holiday our consumer culture makes the least of, sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas. But I love it, for the reminder it brings. And I would once have said,  for the opportunity it gives me to teach gratitude to my children. But lately, they are teaching it to me. I made them a Thanksgiving wreath, with paper leaves that they were to add one day a time after writing something they were thankful for. They filled that wreath in three days, with entries like "gourds," "food to eat," "Grampy," "our house" and a few things I can't read in Olivia's kindergarten spelling. They don't ask why they have these things, or how exactly God provided them. They just say "thank you."

As I get back into my morning religious ritual in my backyard, I will add my own leaves. My view of the trees. The sunrise. Our house. My husband. Our children. The morning star. And the reminders in all of them that my God is all light and the giver of good gifts.

Everywhere, Underfoot, Little Girls

Some women are dripping with diamonds
Some women are dripping with pearls
Lucky me! Lucky me!
Look at what I'm dripping with...little girls!

-- "Little Girls," From the soundtrack to Annie 

 

I don't know if I run with a hospitable group of women or what. But it seems in any conversation I have with mothers of preschoolers about their dreams for the future, they all hope (or say they hope) that their house will be the house where all the other kids want to hang out. I'm not sure what their reasons were are exactly. To keep tabs on their kids? So they can know their kids' friends? Because they just like kids? 

 

For all those reasons, I would always say that I wanted a home where many children wanted to be.

 

 Well, boys and girls, so far, I have my wish. Not that we are inundated with playdates, per se, but the multiple little girls living in my neighborhood seem to frequently be inside my house. And if we say we are not available (too tired or perhaps too crank to play), sometimes they just hang out on our pathetic concrete excuse for a porch and peer through the window. 

 

Jeff and I are mystified by all the children that suddenly are swarming our cul-de-sac. Where did they all come from? we ask ourselves. When we moved in, there were no kids in this neighborhood. And then we remember, we didn't have kids when we moved in either. But we grew them. And they grew quickly. 

 

I love all these small humans roaming our street in screechy little packs. They are up in the trees, crawling under bushes, scooting the sidewalks, biking in the street.  I remember being one of those kids, turned loose onto association-owned property, playing complex games of Spy or Hide and Seek. It was one of the best parts of my childhood, and I like thinking -- realizing, suddenly -- that I'm giving my girls the kind of childhood I had.

 

But I digress. When the kids get tired of roaming the sidewalks, they often turn up here. I have apparently earned the reputation among the small fry as a mom who lets the kids come inside and make messes. 

 

This is thrilling to my youngest, Olivia, who loves messes. In fact, last week when she was coloring and some friends showed up unexpectedly, she waved them towards the stairs and said something like, "My toys are up there. Go for it!" She considered it pure joy when she encountered the chaos they had created and dove right in.

 

This is less than thrilling to my eldest who prefers that everything be kept in order and played with in the way the manufacturers originally intended. She doesn't particularly like impromptu games because they lack structure. In fact, when several little girls were playing Hungry, Hungry Hippos (an ill-advised choice of game for me to purchase, what with my noise sensitivity and all), and there were an odd number of players, she created a semi-complex tournament structure that none of the 5-7 year olds could understand and she eventually gave up and walked outside in chagrin. 

 

My honest feeling about all these children underfoot is on the spectrum somewhere between the feelings of my two daughters. I will almost always wave the kiddos in and point them to the best toys. I am not always thrilled with the messes and noises they make. It is much more complicated having five girls in the house rather than two . But it is also more fun. I love overhearing their conversations and observing their games. I like watching Livie play hostess, and Sophia work out  complicated negotiations. 

 

My favorite thing about these small ones in my home is that they feel good here. There is one little girl in our neighborhood whose mother is raising her in a fairly free-range approach. She is often wandering between houses and we don't always know where she is. Last week, she was frustrated in a game of hide and seek and came to my porch crying. She let me cuddle and comfort her, and ended up playing with cooking toys while I prepared dinner. When Jeff came home, our daughters were outside in the bushes, but this little one and her brother were both engaged on our floor. 

 

Some of the kids in my neighborhood have strong, loving homes. Some have absent fathers. Some have very social parents, and some very shy. Whatever their families are like, my personal belief is that every child could use as many people to love them as possible. My kids included. So if we can love our neighbor kids by making them feel welcome and wanted in our home, it's worth the mess and chaos. 

 

The lyrics at the top of this page are sung by the despicable Mrs. Hannigan, bath tub gin-imbibing head of the orphanage where Annie and friends live a hard-knock life. She hates her lot in life: overseeing all these little ones. But I often sing this chorus to myself as a mantra when I feel a little Hannigan-esque, exasperated with all the little messes, little voices, little squirmishes, little pink undies to wash, little toys to step on. I look at all these neighborhood little ones and realize I love to love them. And I love my own littles too. "Lucky me, lucky me, look at what I'm dripping with. Little girls!"

 

 

Is Gratitude the Opposite of Envy?

This week, Livie cried bitterly all the way home from a friend's house over the fact that the friend had more Star Wars toys than she did.

The most coveted object in little Cameron's collection was a storm trooper helmet and blaster. Livie was sporting both of them when I picked her up, in hilarious contrast to her fluffy pink and black dress that she had on under it.

This was her first experience of wanting something really, really badly that belonged to someone else. She sang a refrain common to all the Jealous on our homeward commute: 

"It's not fair. Why does he have it, and not me?"

I thought of so many wise, practical, spiritual and rational things to say to my small daughter in those long minutes in the car, but knowing that she wouldn't be able to hear any of them, I thought about myself instead. 

Specifically, my 22-year-old self, who once cried the whole drive home from San Francisco to Orange County (much longer than 15 minutes) because my dear friend was getting married and moving to the City on the Bay, while I, already married, was doomed to a life in suburban Orange County, where I had lived my whole life except college. (I had just been to my friend's bachelorete party in the city; so lack of sleep and excess of alcohol probably came into play here, but the emotions were still real.) 

 It wasn't fair. Why did she get the urban adventure we had both discussed and dreamed of, while I got to be living 15 minutes away from my parents and in-laws in the place I grew up?

Flash forward  12 years to today. For the next four weeks, I am co-teaching a class at my church on the book Boundaries by Drs. Cloud and Townsend. It's a difficult and fantastic book about building healthy relationships with clear-cut property lines between ourselves and others. The subhead is "When to Say Yes and How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life." Well, who doesn't want to know how to do that?

One of the most surprising things I've learned as I prepare for this study is that envy is a boundary problem. "The Law of Envy," the authors say, "defines 'good' as 'what I do not possess,' and hates the good that it has. How many times have you heard someone subtly put down the accomplishments of others, somehow robbing them of the goodness they had attained...What is so destructive about this particular sin is that it guarantees that we will not get what we want and keeps us perpetually insatiable and dissatisfied."

Boundaries are about being responsible for one's own desires and getting those desires met. If I am perpetually jealous of someone, what I ought to do is determine where the lack of something in myself is, and work on filling that lack. 

I've often heard that gratitude is the opposite of jealousy, but I don't think that's a complex enough response. To simply take a Pollyanna brush and paint "glad and grateful" over every negative emotion I have is not honest, and moreover, it doesn't allow me to change anything. A more proactive approach to envy is to see how I ended up with the situation that I no longer like and figure out how to change it.

Let's break down the Star Wars example, shall we? Why does Cameron have so much more than Livie? Cam has been "into" Star Wars for years, as have his older brothers. So his family has made a choice to buy those toys over something else. Meanwhile, Livie has wanted Barbies, My Little Ponies, and doll clothes, and Star Wars is a new fixation. 

She could choose to be grateful for the toys she has; or she could decide to sell them at a garage sale and buy a Storm Trooper mask; or she could wait until her birthday and ask for one then; or she could decide that playing with it at Cameron's is almost as good as having it herself. It's not immediate gratification, but it is a proactive solution to envy. And once Livie calmed down, it actually made sense to her.

And then let's look at the apartment in San Francisco that I really wanted (and obviously still don't have). Twelve years ago, after the tearful drive, Hubby and I discussed why we were in Orange County in the first place: our good jobs and the lower cost of living (San Francisco remains one of the only places in the country more expensive than where we live). But as knowing this practical factor didn't dispel my sense that something was missing, we decided we would seriously consider moving, and made our next year's worth of vacations fact-finding missions about other places we might like to live. 

You know what we decided? We really like living in Orange County. We love the weather, the lifestyle, our jobs, our church, and our truly wonderful friendships. We could afford our house, and we didn't pay rent for a parking place. When we decided to have a baby, we really liked living so close to our parents and adult siblings. And moreover, we felt that God had given each of us a calling in our jobs and ministries. We were accomplishing good things. We had chosen a good life.

So many years ago, Jeff and I decided we would visit other places, including that same dear friend from college, who is now living in a beautiful suburb of San Francisco, and whose home is one of my favorite vacation destinations. Having my friend live there (and letting me visit!) is almost as good as living there myself. And guess where she is coming on vacation this summer? Orange County. 

On a small scale this week: one of my best friend's is moving to a new house, and I began to envy the opportunity she had to recreate her living space. I felt badly about it for about 24 hours, and then I decided to repaint my downstairs bathroom.  My envy was just a sign that I needed a little change; a can of paint is a pretty quick fix.

I am grateful for my life, not just because God commands me to be, but because I regularly track the way both God's will and my own choices got me here. My life isn't an accident, it isn't something handed to me by an unfair twist of fate. So I don't have to want someone else's life, or worse -- criticize or demean someone else's out of envy. I can make changes any time. Even move to San Francisco. Now that's something to be grateful for.

The Soup is Being Stirred

My mom has no good cooking tools. Open her utensil drawer and find nary a wooden spoon. No ladle. No big forked spoon for spaghetti. Just an old-school carrot peeler, a waiter's-style wine opener, a scorched spatula, and a couple of metal skewers. ( I may be exaggerating slightly).

The lack of sufficient stirring implements drives me batty, for a number of reasons that I shan't share on the Internet and would only make sense to me, but they are generally related to wishing she would take good care of herself. I have hounded her about it mercilessly for years.

Last year, I was helping with our traditional split pea soup dinner for Christmas Eve, and razzing her about the fact that I was scraping the bottom of her huge stockpot with a metal soup spoon (for eating with!) instead of a sturdy wooden spoon (for cooking with!), when my youngest brother observed, "It appears that the soup is being stirred."

Where does my baby brother get the nerve, being wiser and kinder and more grace-extending than me?

His comment was delivered without a trace of sarcasm or nastiness, and therefore, it penetrated to my soul. Was not the soup being stirred, though it was not being stirred my way?

We have all kinds of little things that irk us about our relatives, don't we, especially those they've done for years or even decades? The way Grandma always shows up 15 minutes early or Papa twiddles the fringe on the rug with his bare feet. Things that in a stranger, or even a good friend, wouldn't bother us in the least.

I think part of the reason these habits or mannerisms bother us so much is we think we see through all their habits down to their motives, and then all the way down to some kind of systemic dysfunction. A daughter looks in her mother's utensil drawer and reads it like tea leaves. But I'm willing to believe that I could even be reading it wrong, to say nothing of the fact that it isn't my job or right to be "reading" it in the first place.

In our ability to see through those close to us, there is a danger of looking right past them, to cease to see them as a whole, to overemphasize small foibles that don't matter and miss the big picture of the love and sense of belonging they extend to us. It's possible, then, for a friend or a stranger to see them even clearer than we do, with fresh eyes. That is unspeakably sad.

As I've been formulating this entry in my head over the past few days, it began as a piece on how I would be giving my relatives the gift of grace this Christmas, shutting my mouth about the silly little stuff I could nag them about. But friends, it's my soup that's been stirred. And what rose to the surface is a revelation of my own pride. Grace is something we extend to people who don't deserve it, and my family deserves a lot -- a lot more than I often give them.

The gift I'd rather give them is gratitude: for all the support, generosity, togetherness, laughter, and affirmation they've given me. For the great example set for me by my immediate family: not just my parents, but my brothers as well, especially my youngest who gave me some truth that took me a year to ponder.

My dear ones could look into some of my drawers (especially my vegetable crisper or makeup drawer) and draw all kinds of conclusions of the flawed way that I live. But I hope they won't. I hope this Christmas they'll look at me and see the best, the way God did at Christmas, as the angels declared to the shepherds, "Peace on earth and good will to men, in whom He is well pleased!" I'll take the gift of grace from them and count it among the best I've ever received.

A Full House

"This house is so full of people it makes me sick. When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone! Do you hear me? I'm living alone!"
--"Kevin," Home Alone

It's December 19 at 6:40 p.m. and I am alone in my house. Hubby is at Target picking out rayon-derived-from-bamboo socks for me that will be "from Livie," and returning the last thing we forgot to return the last time we were in Target (yesterday). The Christmas lights are on. The only sound is the dishwasher's soothing hum. Bliss.

This moment is the utter opposite of the way I spent my day: in one of America's largest shopping malls, paying for my kids to ride the Santa train and the reindeer carousel. We had lunch at a diner with four other moms and a total of eight kids under the age of eight years. Then we herded them around like manic cats, receiving compliments on their beauty and then alternatively, dirty looks as they had fits over who got to push the elevator button. Chaos. But fun. Really, truly, fun. Still, the solitude is welcome.

Solitude, to a mother, is in fact, something to be fantasized about. In the [stupid] movie Date Night, Tina Fey's character says that she dreams of being alone in a room with a diet 7-up (maybe it's a Sprite). That's about right. Except in my dream, it's a Diet Coke, and there's a sewing machine. To be alone with one's thoughts, with one's hobby, with one's book, on one's toilet. Oh the joy that would be.

And yet, before children, what I dreamed of was a full house. In fact, when Jeff and I were dating, I told him I wanted four kids. He said that's because I was picturing Thanksgivings with lots of grandchildren, but the reality would be him coming home from work to four naked kids and jelly on the walls. And he was right. We have two kids, and there is jelly on the walls, and the kids are often in a state of undress or unrest or both when he comes home.

But the point is, I wanted this: noise, mess, giggling, wrestling, toys, blankies, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, stockings on the mantel, footy pajamas in the drawers.

It's not always fun though. Duh. The other day, we were driving home from somewhere (it was probably church) and the children were interrupting each other and us, complaining about being hungry/tired/bored/something mundane, and I had their junk just piled around me in the shotgun seat of my Toyota. I turned to Jeff and said, "When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone."

Jeff laughed. He recognized the quotation from Home Alone, where the eight year old is getting dumped on by his huge extended family as they all scramble to get ready for a trip to Paris at Christmastime. Sophia caught the inconsistency right away, but missed the intended irony: "Mom, if you get married, you don't live alone!" Eye roll.

How true that is, dearest. And what a good reminder when I'm up to my eyeballs in dishes and timeouts and whooping and whining that I have received my dearest wish. I have a house full of people. Kevin got his wish in the movie too, but realized in a few short days that life without family wasn't all he imagined it to be, even though he did get his very own cheese pizza and got to watch scary movies. And how empty I would feel without having these precious ones to wash and dress, love and comfort, cook for and read to. It's sacred, what I do. It's a blessed life.

So if you want to be alone when you grow up, don't get married or have children, because solitude in a family will not come cheap. But it will be blissful in those rare moments. So now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go count my blessings, remember that my full house is a winning hand, and take these last few quiet moments to listen to my dishwasher hum.

Wanting What You Have

The gratitude season is the precursor to the ingratitude season. While we count blessings in November, which feels like the shortest holiday season of the year, by December, people, particularly kids, get focused on what they don't have. Livie, age four, has just reached the stage where I really don't want to walk her through the toy aisle at Target. Suddenly everything she never knew existed is a must-have.

So today, I was very excited when she was made extremely happy by a very simple thing. We were having lunch in Carls Jr., for which she was already extremely grateful, having told me that it is her very favorite restaurant (This is hilarious to me, because I can remember her eating there maybe four times, and of all the wonderful places I've taken her to? Really? Carls? But I digress.) Even though we didn't get a kid's meal, the manager gave us the kid's meal toy, a truly hideous red, shiny, hollow plastic thing that looks vaguely like a baby triceratops breaking out of an egg.

We were going to pretend to go to the dentist when we got home, because like all younger siblings, Liv wants to emulate her big sister, who has chronic toothaches at the moment (a subject for another blog).

"When I'm at the dentist and they give me a toy," Liv said with a twinkle in her big blue eyes, "I really hope its a baby triceratops in an egg shell. And that it's red. And shiny."

Ah, the joy of something new. Wouldn't it be great, I thought as I listened to her, if she could walk around her room, look at all her toys, and be excited about them? Instead of wanting the new Barbie set complete with brown horse and plastic carrots that she saw in Khol's and now desperately wants, what if she went into her room and decided to want the 12 Barbies she already has, complete with pink horse and plastic apples?

Livie was only playing a game in Carls, pretending that what she wanted most in the world was the object already in her hand. But it hit me that she was expressing gratitude exactly how our pastor has been extolling our church to for a decade, as he gives the same sermon every Thanksgiving weekend. He says, "Grateful people want what they have, and don't want anymore." He encourages us to look at the things God has already given us and say, "I love my house (car/spouse/body/job)! It couldn't be any better!"

I'm no different than Liv. My wanting knows no bounds. Just today I almost bought a cardigan sweater that looks almost exactly like one I already have; its the brown horse versus the pink horse all over again. The only difference is I don't throw temper tantrums in Target when I see something I can't (or won't let myself) have. I said as much to her last time she was flipping out in the main aisle of the store, and another mom overheard me. We made eye contact and shared a moment as we passed one another.

I don't think showing Livie all her toys just before Christmas will necessarily make her a more grateful child now, but it is something we are working towards with both kids. As for myself, looking at all my stuff does help me want less. Jeff and I recently took a booth at the MOPS boutique, selling our vintage Christmas stuff, and when I saw all the vintage goodies we'd amassed to sell, I thought, "Well, no more flea marketing for me. I'll just shop in my own attic."

But then we went to a flea market (Jeff made me go!) this weekend and I bought another vintage ceramic tree, bringing our grand total up to 26. It was only four dollars, but still. I guess Livie and I both have a lot to learn.

A City Under Siege

I have a plaque hanging in my laundry room that I bought for a quarter at a garage sale years ago. It reads like this:

I will not have a temper tantrum, nor stomp across the floor
I will not pout, scream or shout, or kick against the door
I will not throw my food around, nor pick upon another
I'll always try to be real good, because I am the Mother.


The first time I read this, I laughed out loud. Over the years it has made me laugh lots of other times when I am hiding from my kids in the laundry room. I have cried over it too. The laundry room is my refuge (bizarely) because it is right off the kitchen (easy access) and becomes almost totally sound proof when I turn the overhead fan on. I used to hide in there when we were making Sophia "cry it out" so I couldn't hear her. I still go there when Livie is having an occasional temper tantrum or an irrational crying jag and I need to get the sound of angry child out of my ears and calm down. I take deep breaths and read my plaque and remind myself that I am the adult in this situation and better act like it.

The comfort of my plaque is the fact that some one else has felt like I often do and actually wrote it down. Kids can make me really angry -- well my kids, anyway. Last week at my MOPS group I was encouraged to hear our speaker, a marriage and family therapist and grandmother of 10, say that you never know how angry you can get until you have children. They frustrate our need for predictability, she said, and though they are very small, they are difficult to control. What makes me angry? Loud noises. Yelling and shrieking and crying that lasts a long time makes me, literally, crazy. And it doesn't matter how much I love my daughters; if there was a car alarm going off in the kitchen that would make me angry, too, probably angry enough to put a rock through its window. Obviously this impulse must be controlled when the source of the sound is a child.

This week I went to a healing prayer night at our church where women could come to be prayed over who needed emotional, physical or relational healing. I was supposed to be one of the prayers, not prayees, and open us in worship. Just before it started, I was flipping through my Bible and stopped on Psalm 31, which David wrote in distress, asking God to come to his rescue. It seemed perfect for the women who had gathered so I read it out loud. When I got to verse 21, though I almost started to giggle:

Praise be to the LORD,
for he showed me the wonders of his love
when I was in a city under siege.
In my alarm I said, "I am cut off from your sight!"
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.

I suddenly had a vision of myself, holed up in my laundry room fortress, my city under siege, with children banging on the door. How alone I feel in those moments! How outnumbered! Who sees me in this moment? Well, God does. And when I stop to listen, I hear him whisper that he still loves me even when I feel like I am failing at being the woman of the house.

I've been home for seven days in a row with a sick child. Livie was docile and loving the first few days, too sick to put up any kind of a fight and grateful for her loving mommy who let her watch DVDs in bed and made her banana sandwiches. But by yesterday, she was cranky and impossible to please. This morning she was downright hysterical. I, exhausted, bummed out at missing my MOPS this morning, lost my temper and yelled like a mental patient in the car on the way to drop Sophia off at school.

Then I looked over on the front seat and saw my plaque, which I had put in the car to read to my MOPS group this morning, to encourage them, if I had somehow been able to attend. "I'll always try to be real good, because I am the Mother." I got out of the car and apologized to my daughters, one who graciously forgave me and one who is too young to understand.

And as soon as I got home, I spent a little time in the back yard with my Father, who doesn't have to try to be real good. He is already. He graciously forgave me too, and directed me to the last verse of Psalm 31: "Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord." Maybe I should hang that in my laundry room too.

To Haiti, With Love

Last night, Sophia slept on the floor of her bedroom, and I cried myself to sleep.

It's Vacation Bible School at our home church (Mariners Church, Irvine) this week, and Sophia is attending along with her friend Olivia from school (pictured above), and roughly 2,000 other children from our community. In addition to a Bible theme (this year it's the idea that God made each kid for an amazing purpose, based on Ephesians 2:10), they have a VBS missions project. The goal for the kids this week is to raise $20,000 to build an orphanage in partnership with a local church in Carrefour, Haiti.

The project has been breaking my heart. In the literature Mariners sent home on Monday, it said that even before the devastating earthquake, there were 380,000 orphans in Haiti. Our kids have been learning about the poverty, the clean water shortages, and the tents that most Haitians are now living in. Part of the VBS missions project is for the kids to try small aspects of living like the Haitians to drive the message home. Last night, they were supposed to sleep outside in a tent with no air mattress, or on the floor with only a single sheet for covering (we chose option two, since we don't really own any outdoor space).

I put Sophia to bed on the floor, handpicking the thickest sheet I have from my linen closet so she wouldn't be cold: a beautiful white-on-white brocade from Italy, given to me when I used to write a home accents column for a local magazine. Not exactly roughing it.

But when I came upstairs two hours later and checked on her lying on the floor, she looked so small and vulnerable, and for a flash I imagined what it would be like to see her sleeping on hard ground night after night with only a tarp over her head. I imagined what it would feel like to know that was the best I had to give her. And I crawled into my bed and wept.

As Sophia teaches me what it's like for the children and adults in that poor nation, I see these 2,000 Orange County children, most of them well fed, and all of them clean and dressed, running into our sanctuary each day, and think how fortunate I am to be raising my kids here. I love that my church is giving me and my kids the opportunity to make this profound comparison, and even more that they help us do something to help our less fortunate "neighbors." If each parent at VBS donated just $10, they'd reach their $20,000 goal easily, but instead, they encourage our little ones to raise the money on their own, by having car washes, lemonade stands, collecting cans.

Yesterday we had a cupcake, brownie and lemonade stand in our neighborhood and raised $34. Lots of people stopped and gave over and above what we were charging for melting cupcakes. How could they resist, with Sophia and Olivia carefully explaining that they are trying to help build an orphanage, and 3-year-old Livie chirping through their car window, "We made lemonade for Haiti! It's for the orphans!"

It's so, so little, what we've done this week in response to what we've been learning, and words fail me now as I try to wrap up this entry. There's no pithy, applicable lesson. Just the sobering thought of a staggering gap between the poor and the wealthy in this world, and the realization (yet again) that I'm in the second category. I don't deserve it, and I can't make it right.

Lord, let the lessons of this week stay with us, and may they bearfruit in our family, in our church, and in the lives of these precious, privileged 2,000 Orange County kids. And be with the children in Haiti, their parents, and all the people there trying to do them good.

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:17-19

Loss of Lipstick, Loss of Limb

A couple of weekends back, my friend Tris and I had a fabulous girls' morning out: a luxury pedicure and lunch at one of our favorite restaurants. The outing was a generous gift from the women on our MOPS leadership, and we had a pretty much perfect day. "Baby Love" nail polish on our fingers, vanilla and coffee beans scrubbed into our toes, and then just a little too much lunch followed by chocolate cake.

But then that afternoon, I chipped the "Raspberry" nail polish on my right big toe, a tragic flaw on the first professional pedicure I've had in a year. Then, on the way to my parents' house for dinner, I realized that my pink bag full of MAC lipstick that is always in my purse was not in my purse. Can I say, with shame, that at that moment I felt very strongly that we live in a fallen world in which tragedies are apt to befall us at any moment and nothing on this sad planet is ever perfect. Watching the news makes me know this. Losing my lipstick made me feel it. How embarrassing is that?

I spent 30 minutes on the phone with employees of both the nail salon and the restaurant describing my makeup bag, but to no avail. I calculated the monetary loss of my lipstick collection -- about $80 -- and realized there was no way it was getting replaced in full anytime soon. Driving home that night, I planned this blog, titled "Loss of Lipstick."

But then, I walked in the backdoor, and what should be laying like a chameleon on a dark plank of laminate flooring in my kitchen, but my lipstick bag! Immediate guilt for making the minimum wage workers search for it. And then -- joy! I was suddenly aware of what a blessed woman I am, how rich and fortunate: the owner of $80 worth of high quality lip pigment, a shade for every mood and season!

Weeks have gone by and I feel a sense of profound gratitude every time I put lipstick on, a true happiness at having what once was thought lost and now has been found. I'm trying to make this lesson in gratitude sink in deeper, hopefully transforming me into a person who can be grateful for her possessions, but who clings to them loosely, so she won't be crestfallen when they get lost.

A few days after the lipstick incident, my seven year old Sophia was walking around the back yard, observing the movement of her own limbs. "Mom," she said, "isn't it great that we can just walk without thinking about it? Wouldn't it be hard if we had to tell each body part to move, one at a time?" You should have seen the wonder on her face.

Our pastor gives a sermon each year on gratitude, and he always goes through a list of all the things we take for granted. On the list, the fact that we get out of bed in the morning, and our miraculous body moves without us even having to think about each motion. Sophia got that on her own, and, as children do, reminded me of this profound and simple spiritual truth. We take most good things we have for granted, and often don't realize how great they are until they are lost or threatened. I don't even think about having two good arms until I see someone who's lost a limb. I complain about how my legs look, until I see someone in a wheelchair and remember to be grateful that they get me where I need to go.

In his sermon, my pastor has a saying he always repeats: Grateful people want what they have and don't want any more. I want my lipstick. I want these limbs. And I'm grateful for this little, simple lesson.

Hurry Up and Say Thank You

I can feel Christmas breathing down my neck. Tomorrow, I will host Thanksgiving dinner for my parents, grandfather and brother. For the last hour I have been cubing white bread and drying it in the oven. But what I'm thinking about today is that Christmas is coming.

Jeff and I do Christmas on a crazy scale. In our attic we have at least 12 18-gallon totes of Christmas decorations, and that's not including the two dozen plastic light up characters that won't fit in the totes. It takes us so long to decorate that we do it as early as possible. Last year, we got things down before Thanksgiving, but since we're hosting this year, the totes come down on Friday.

I've considered scaling back, but the way we decorate in December has become a core part of our culture as a family. Our kids love it. Our neighbors come to check it out every year and take pictures; one neighbor we've never met even brought us candy and a thank-you note. Our homeowners association board even put us at the top of the cue to have our fences replaced so they'd be done in time for our decorations to go up.

I've written about deadlines before. Today I'm staring down a big one. I feel like my house has to be prepped, a blank canvas on which Christmas can descend. I've been cleaning out closets and getting rid of old toys, dusting, vacuuming, packing up pink and yellow pottery in my kitchen cabinet to make room for my Christmas Spode. I've washed sheets and blankets, shaken out rugs, scrubbed walls. When Christmas comes down, we will barely be able to walk in a couple of rooms until all is unpacked, so I know I won't be able to do my usual chores. I'm fending off chaos by getting things clean underneath.

It's just a little bit of a bummer, because I love Thanksgiving; everything about it except indigestion. The food, the aromas, the fall leaves, but mostly the whole premise that we are saying thank you for our blessings, our families, our lives. I also love the idea that people of all faiths and even no faith do this together. And the problem is that culturally Christmas makes us feel the opposite of thankful. It can become all about wanting more, doing more. You must have more fun! You must have prettier clothes! You must update your makeup for holiday parties! You must have a wish list! You must buy things from others' wish lists! And because I am of the creative and compulsive bent, I must sew, craft and paint more than is possibly possible!

So I better hurry up and say "thank you!" Our pastor gives the same message every year the week before Thanksgiving about grounding our hearts in thankfulness before the Christmas season starts. I missed it last week, but I almost know it by heart after 11 years at the same church. I think he would be quite proud of me for paying attention. Here's my "grounding" list of thankfulness, incomplete because I can't possibly list everything.

I'm thankful for:

*my health: for clarity of mind and soundness of body; for the way my body does what I tell it to do and gets me to where I need to go every day.

*my husband, who is my playmate, my rock, my provider, my confidant, my friend, my fix-it guy, my hottie and the best roommate I ever had.

*my kids, who are healthy, beautiful, smart, exasperating and teach me every day how far I have yet to go as a person, but also -- grace upon grace! -- how far I have come in the last six years. Not having sisters myself, I'm also so grateful to have little girls and that they have each other.

*my parents, still married after 39 years, who adore our little family and support us in absolutely every way possible, giving us both space and community, comfort and freedom, a sense of security

*my husband's parents, also still married after 39 years, who instilled in him the values I cherish that make him such a trustworthy husband; they also love us and dote on our children, always making time to spend with us and play with our daughters

*our brothers and sisters, all men and women of fun and integrity who love God and strive for excellence in their lives

* all our extended family from grandparents to uncles and aunts that give us a sense of history and belonging in this big world

*our three beautiful nieces and our nephew on the way. They make us laugh! My daughters cherish them! I love watching the relationships my kids are forming with their cousins.

*my dear, dear friends who are the sisters that weren't born to my family. I am surrounded by incredibly strong, loving, truthful women, and their children and husbands are our extended family.

*my ministry in MOPS, where I get to give back and help create community with other women, who are often so lonely and isolated in our culture. I'm also grateful for all the mild and major struggles I have as a mom that equip me for this job.

* our church, my daughter's school, and our government. We are free to worship, we live in peace, our kids will be well-educated, and we have opportunities to use our gifts and make our way in the world.

And then, my more material list:
*my home
*my garden
*the trees outside my door
*my Kitchen-Aide mixer and front load washer
*my sewing machine
*my camel suede boots
*my white coat Jeff bought me last winter
*my laptop
*my turquoise cellular phone
* and lastly, those 12 totes of Christmas totes that are coming down in two days. I will see them as an opportunity to bless my kids and build memories, instead of a stressful chore to cope with.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends. I'm thankful for you!

My Thanksgiving Tree

When Jeff and I got married 11 years ago, we each picked a Bible passage to be read during our ceremony. The passage Jeff chose was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: "Rejoice always. Pray continuously. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

I found out later that Jeff's mom had taught him to say this verse by heart by the time he was three years old. He wasn't even aware of this when he chose it as our wedding verse; it was just embedded in his heart from childhood. This is not only so encouraging to me as a mother -- that I can influence my children's hearts and minds by what I teach them in these early years -- but it also blesses me as his wife, because Jeff is the most contented person that I know.

Second to my husband as the most contented man is my father, and if I had to name the Bible passage he most often quoted to me it would be this:

⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-8.

When I look at these two passages, and these two men, together, the common thread I see is offering thanksgiving. More specifically, I see the discipline of seeking out what there is to be thankful for in any circumstance, and then taking the actual step of offering thanks. Though I always admired this in my father growing up, there have been times, usually periods in which I was besieged by anxiety, that I believed this practice of his was overly simple-minded optimism, a way of pretending that bad things weren't happening, that danger didn't exist in the world. And intellectually, I have had trouble at times offering thanksgiving to God, giving him credit for all the good in the world, but not holding him accountable for the bad.

I'm 33 now, and I am a changed woman. Because in my late twenties, I followed my more complicated, and what I thought was more intellectual theology right into a pit. I'm talking a psychological pit that rendered me incapable, unmoored, broken, and scared. I went to a place where I doubted God's very existence, though I had experienced his love and care very personally from childhood. I got help. I got medicine. I got self aware. I got educated. But ultimately, what got me out was thanksgiving.

In front of my house there grows a tree. It nearly touches my bedroom window. In the spring and summer, it is full and leafy, and covered with green berries. In the fall, the berries turn bright red, and then the leaves turn golden. My whole room turns golden in the afternoon from those leaves. And then they shower down on my doorstep, and the bare branches still cling to the bright red berries. I really love that tree. And for some reason, from the bottom of my pit, I looked up at that tree and realized I had to say "thank you" for it. It was a sort of pagan spiritual experience, discovering a higher power purely through looking at my tree.

Once I started saying thank you for the tree, I started needing to say thank you for lots of other things. My children, who were beautiful and healthy and miraculous and over whose being I had no power. I couldn't take credit for them, but someone had to. I needed to say thank you for the existence of friendship, and the community at my church.

Over the last few years, I've learned a lot about how the brain works, and one of the things I've learned is a concept called neuroplasticity. I'm no scientist, so I'm going to butcher it and I hope there aren't any psychologists reading this. But essentially, our habitual thoughts form actual physical patterns and pathways in our brains. And once those paths are formed, when we take in stimuli, situations, or stress, our thoughts follow those paths like a marble being dropped down a groove. These thought paths become what we believe are true, no matter how out of whack they might be. And it's very, very hard to change them. But it's not impossible.

I love Scripture, because it confirms this science. God designed our brains. And I believe his repeated call in the Bible to offer thanks is one of his many good rules that protect us from ourselves. Habitual thanksgiving protects our mental health. It keeps us out of psychological pits. And it helps us see the goodness of our eternal God. Giving thanks in all circumstances doesn't mean we believe all circumstances are good; this world is fraught with pain, sorrow, trouble, and Scripture is very clear to warn us of that. But we believe good can come from all experiences in the form of character, perseverance, community, and bonding with God.

I need to get back to the idea of giving God credit for the good and no blame for the bad. I don't have an answer for the second part. Of course I don't! Philosophers and theologians have been wondering about the origin of evil for thousands of years. And I also don't understand what it means when we say that God is sovereign; the mystery of how he moves in history and people's hearts while preserving our free will is just that -- an unfathomable mystery. It used to make it hard for me to say thank you for some reason. But it doesn't anymore. Here's why:

In James1 it says: "¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

To me, this means that everything good I have comes from God because God is the author of all good things. All the most significant goodness are his inventions: love, marriage, parenthood, the terrifying and awesome act of childbirth, beauty, nature, friendship, community, sex, creativity, food, our intricate bodies, our five senses. There is no good convention of human beings of which God has not been the origin or enabler.

So I meditate on these good things. I am still not even in the top 10 of the most contented people I know and I still struggle with anxiety; that marble run in my brain was pretty deep. But I am now free to thank God for all the goodness in my life, and doing so is what keeps me sane.

Not Cranky Any More, a Gratitude List

Is it any fun to read what someone is thankful for? I can't make it funny like I can my complaints. But just home from an evening swimming with Aunt Kari and Uncle Cody, and remembering what summer fun is supposed to feel like. After two days of serious crankiness, I'd like to reboot with my gratitude list for this evening.

1. Thank you to the community planners of my neighborhood, who, back in the 1970s, built this beautiful swimming lagoon -- water slides and all -- where I can take my kids.



2. Thank you to same for including a very close parking lot, warm showers, and a bathroom.

3. Thanks to Ralphs grocery for putting graham crackers, Hershey bars, and juice boxes all on sale on the same day.

4. Thanks be to God for our wonderful siblings, all of whom are stand-up kind of people and two of whom married stand-up kind of spouses. (Just to be clear, the others aren't married yet but I'm sure will chose well when the time comes.)

5. Thanks be to God for my two beautiful nieces and one more on the way.

6. Thanks to our parents, who raised us to love each other and never compete with one another. These beautiful relationships mean our kids have the priceless gift of cousins, plus aunts and uncles who spoil and love on them.

7. Thanks to our neighbor for a bundle of really old, really dry firewood that made a righteous bonfire.

8. And finally, thanks to the inventor of the s'more. I love you, whoever, wherever you are.

Living Off the Land

Recently, my six year old daughter and I sat down at the kitchen table with a project. We were each going to design our dream tree house, in Crayola. Hers was a typical kid's idea of heaven: rope swing, toys, ladder to pull up and keep out neighborhood boys. Mine was kind of a Mommy fantasy: turquoise accent walls and built-in cabinets for craft supply and book storage, an espresso maker and wine fridge, a cozy armchair in the kind of girlie colors my husband would never agree to, and a quilting desk with a view.

When we had finished our drawings, Daughter and I looked at each other and sighed. There they were on paper. Our dream homes: perfect, pretty, unattainable. I could see in her eyes the yearning I remember from when I first drew my dream house back in 3rd grade, and found today, at 32, that the desire in myself hadn't gone away.

Here's my real dream home scenario: a beautifully restored farmhouse with wraparound porch surrounded by oak trees in the rich wine country of the Central Coast's Edna Valley. It has a farm-style kitchen table and red curtains, a nice selection of locally made wine in the fridge. Out the window is my kitchen garden, complete with a Meyer lemon tree, herb garden, and lots of veggies. In the back, I have a chicken coup with some beautiful roosters. There is a goat or two. And the piece de resistance is my converted red barn, now a quilting studio where I keep my long-arm quilting machine, my fabric, and my laptop with wi-fi.

Now here's my real house: 1100 square feet of nondescript condo. I have a patio in the back (no room for goats, plus the association rules actually ban farm animals), and a green belt in the front. We can't build a tree house, because we don't own a tree. From the outside, it doesn't look a bit like "me," nor does it reflect the taste of my husband, who's actually an architect. Cream stucco and aluminum windows ain't his dream home either.

The other night, over dinner with friends, I was sharing my Edna Valley scenario. Midway through, Husband interrupts to tell the story of a time when we actually stayed in my dream house on vacation (Suite Edna Bed and Breakfast), and were awoken by the resident peacock at dawn. That same day I was savagely attacked by the gorgeously plumed chickens who strutted freely on the grounds. Husband had to rescue me.

This story led to other animal tales: Like how when we first moved to our condo, we were woken at dawn by the flocks of crows that nest in the 100-year-old eucalyptus windbreaks outside our window, remnants of the days when our community was actually farmland. And more recently, when a couple of nesting mallards wandered into our open front door and followed my daughter's trail of cereal into the kitchen. And currently, how we have a family of field mice living somewhere in our kitchen walls and occasionally in our pantry (more on this in upcoming blogs).

"It sounds like you already live on a farm," our friend said.

Hmm. That's a thought. Every afternoon, I open my front door and step out under a canopy of deciduous trees. I often see bunnies. My kids are a five minute walk away from feeding our community ducks. In the fall, I am kept supplied with a harvest of pomegranates from my neighbor three doors down, who also keeps me in lemons and herbs from her back yard. And five minutes ago, I went outside to check on my girls, who were scaling an association-owned birch tree, and another neighbor -- I kid you not -- asked if I'd like some fresh figs off his tree!

I'm living off the land, people! It's just that it's not my land. Except the barn and the red curtains, I already have everything in the dream scenario. And hey, I can make red curtains anytime I want. Meanwhile, I don't even have to own a lawn mower for my daughters to enjoy a lawn.

So really, it's only pride that makes me yearn for my farmhouse. I have everything I need. And if you want to see an expression of who Husband and I are aesthetically, well just squint past the stucco and come on in to the home that we've made our own -- all 1100 feet of it. But first, join me on my little concrete porch. I'll pour you a juice glass full of red wine, maybe even an Edna Valley Syrah, and let's watch the kids try to climb that tree.