I wear a lot of t-shirts. Crewneck, layering, long (or short) sleeved t-shirts. Because (1) I don’t leave the house all that often, (2) I have a tendency to spill things on myself (just ask my brother), and (3) what I don’t spill on myself, one of my four preschoolers does.

But anyway, I wear mostly t-shirts. And I noticed, back at the end of the summer, that about half of my shirts had a hole in the front, all in the same place, all in various stages of hole-ish-ness. Weird, I thought.

Of course, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that spot, in every single shirt, was the place where the shirt rubbed across the top corner of my jeans, just above the button. That corner juts out just a bit, and as I move all day, it rubbed against my shirts. Over time…voila! Those holes.

And here, in the last week of January. Here, in the middle of the coldest winter Ohio has seen in years. Here, in the middle of a weekend snowstorm. Here, stuck inside our small temporary housing, smashed up against the smallness of the mundane and the repetitiveness of a house full of small ones. Here, I, too, am threadbare.

It’s the season: the weather, the cold, the driveway too steep to drive out of sometimes. It’s the children: their messes, their tantrums, their bickering and whining and neediness. It’s the house: its size, its lack of “dream home” appeal, its refusal to stay clean no matter how many times I pick things up. They rub against me. They jut into me, and they rub until I am threadbare, until the tiniest of holes begins to show, until the hole is a massive chasm.

And threadbare is unpleasant. Because those holes? They reveal the yuck inside me. My selfishness, anger, self-pity, discouragement — they are visible through those holes. More accurately, they escape through those holes. I am unpleasant. I nurse grudges against my husband, my kids, my mom, the world at large. I am unkind. I speak angry words. I yell at my kids. I huff and roll my eyes at yet another interruption.

I am threadbare.

And I cannot stop the rubbing. That is the season, of the year, of my life, that I am in. That is the reality of “I do” spoken almost 10 years ago. That is the cost of moving, of loneliness, of lacking clear purpose and design. The rubbing is life.

But, this week, I accepted a new reality…I can do one thing. Just ONE thing. I can choose. I cannot fix things, change the weather, change my circumstances. I cannot make myself be different. I cannot organize or control it away. I cannot lose myself far enough into Facebook or Pinterest.

But I can make a choice.

Because long ago, in a garden, God gave mankind the ability to choose. And He never took it away. Even after the sin. Even after the fall. Even after the separation and the thousands of years of human beings rubbing against each other and spilling out their mess into each other’s lives. Even after all of that, because He died, because He rose again, there is still A CHOICE.

Because of Jesus, I can choose. I can exercise my will towards a different path. I do not feel like it. Not even a little bit. I want to nurse the grudge. I want to wallow. I want to yell and complain and pick fights and blame others for…well, everything.

But instead, I will choose. Because maybe, just maybe, when I choose Him, those holes become more. I want them gone. But He has a different plan. Instead of healing them, making them disappear so that I can appear unfazed by my life, He makes them the openings through which He can pour out. Onto my family. Onto my home. Onto my life. Onto my own selfish heart.

And then, when He pours out, I will discover joy. Joy that will be my strength.

So, threadbare though I am – in winter, with small kids, in a house I don’t dream of, without clear answers or new inspirations – I will still choose. Some days, I will choose poorly. I will choose squalor and self-pity. But slowly, one choice, one day at a time, I will seek from Him the discipline to choose Him and let him change my threadbare into a thin veil from which, through which, He can change me. And through me, maybe even a whole world.

Let’s be honest, in a house filled with 4 preschoolers, most of our conversations are, um, less than deep. These days, we’re having a lot of discussions about Toy Story, poop, Ice Age, our new chore charts, Alex’s imaginary world, who-did-what-to-whom, and more poop.

So, when those rare moments of clarity hit, they tend to stand out, pleasantly surprising us that a deep thought can still slip off our tongues. But it does happen. Here are my recent favorites:

1. The other day, Eric and I were talking as we drove (almost late) to church. In the middle of the conversation, he noted, “If you let your mind go down a road long enough, you can choose to do anything.”

2. Timmy’s current rate of high mobility requires one or two key gates. The most important one being across the kitchen. So, the 5+ foot doorway is now restricted to a not-even 2 foot opening. And needless to say, there’s a lot of traffic through it.

So, as I was scooting around one of the girls for the Lord-knows-how-many-th time, I said, “Move please. When there’s a narrow gate, you can’t stand in front of it. You have to get out of the way.”

See, aren’t we just profound? 🙂

Today, I finally return to a live blog. As noted by the tagline, my wonderful husband migrated all my old files, first from Xanga to our backup drive (a couple of months ago), and then from the backup to an actual website that people (like you!) can read. Not surprisingly, it’s been hard to be disciplined to write anything on a blog that wasn’t “live,” so I’m very happy to be back, sending out my musings for anyone else who wants a look into my screwy little brain!

It’s also January. Of course, the holidays were busy. And it was really, really, REALLY great to have Eric off work for almost two full weeks. But now I’m ready for a return to normal. It’s more than just being done with a crazy schedule. And it’s more than wanting to get back to a routine (we’d have to have one to return to it!).

Really, I’m trying to return to…discipline. For me and for my kids. I’ve spent months excusing my crazy because Timmy was still so small and because we’d moved and because I was (am) still looking for a sense of how I fit here. But Timmy is one and now weaning, and that’s going to allow a whole new flexibility for us. And the move is pretty well behind us now. Yes, we’re making things better (as much as possible) and we’re planning for building a new house (hopefully soon). But for now, we’re here and that’s that.

So really, I’m ready to find my way back to doing the hard work of choosing what isn’t easy simply because it is better. I’m needing to put aside my selfishness to bless my kids and husband. I’m starting to thirst, just a bit, for purpose in my use of money, my time, my things. I’m aching, just a bit, to feel less like I’m reacting to everything and more like I’m consciously asserting order (cosmos out of chaos, as Madeleine L’Engle describes). I’m no longer okay with excusing myself from exercise and Bible study and prayer time because “I don’t have time.” In truth, I do have time. I just haven’t had the discipline to intentionally re-insert those things into my days. And I need them back.

So, it’s time. Time to return. Not to earn favor (I’m trying to learn grace). Not to create a sense of control (though I to love that feeling). Not to craft some Pinterest-able life to make everyone else wish they were me (trust me…you SO do not want to be me!) No, I need the return because in drilling back down to the basics, making little choices repeatedly — knowing they will result in big differences, searching for God not somewhere and someday but right here and right now…in all those things is the only path towards Joy and Jesus and Purpose and Peace.

It’s time to return.

So, not surprisingly, I’m very late on this “birthday” post. But really, three weeks is not bad when you consider the craziness that is December around here. At least I hope not!

But either way, my wonderful twins, you are now five years old. And in honor of that exciting and very-much-looked-forward-to event, I am going to list my top 5 favorite things about you and the fabulous people you’ve grown up (so far) to be.

Alex

1. You have the most tender, compassionate heart, my Bud. You care about others. You don’t like it when someone feels bad. You share willingly (most of the time). You want those around you to feel good. I love how you help your sisters (right now, you are teaching Erin how to play your new I Spy game) and how much you care about Timmy. You are a fantastic big brother. And although I know (and greatly dislike the reality) that your tender heart will be broken, perhaps many times, as you go to Kindergarten and, from there, into the great wide world, I am so glad that God has given you such a special gift.

2. You still have the funniest way of saying things. Aunt Debbie calls it an accent. And while I know I need to start correcting your speech patterns, I still love that some of your letters are pronounced incorrectly.

3. You are a collector. You sit for hours pouring over books, pretending to pull the pictures off the page so you can store them in a container of some sort. You have piles of coins, rocks, toys, papers, and any other thing that strikes your fancy. Right now, you have a large cardboard box that you are slowly filling up. It’s so fun to watch you find and preserve your treasures (although it does fly in the face of my love of clean and organized spaces!). I cannot wait to see how this part of you will develop as you grow up even more.

4. You still love your stuffed Scruffy Puppy. I love that about you.

5. You do what you do with all your heart (if you are willing to do it at all). Following Daddy. Inventing things. Telling stories. Singing songs. You are whole-hearted. Keep that spirit, Big Man. Put all that you are into everything you do. It will distinguish you from those around you in very good ways.

Erin

1. Sweet girl, I love you. In some ways, you are very, very girly. You love dressing up and being a princess and wearing a crown. You were so happy to get your very own long princess dress from Megan for your birthday. You pretend to be a ballerina. You twirl and sway in your own made-up ballet dance. You love sparkles and fancy dresses and feeling pretty. I love that about you.

2. You are still driven to learn things. Right now, you are picking up reading like a champ. You love praise. You are a pleaser, just like your momma. But you also love the thrill of getting it right (especially if you get it right before your siblings do). You and Alex both have Chicka Chicka Boom Boom memorized. I LOVE to hear you recite it as you turn the pages on the book. You are sounding out words and will, in no time at all, be reading books without me. I both love that thought and hate it. Still, you love to be read to as much as you like to read, so I don’t think I’ll be out of a job too soon, thankfully!

3.  You are a helper. You love to help your dad and grandpa do things outside. You, more than any of your siblings, will bundle up and head out to the garage or shop to assist in any way you can. You will hold things, hand them tools, drive the tractor, whatever they will let you do with them. And you are such a help to me. You love to wash dishes. You love to make beds (yours and everyone else’s – including mine!) You even help me clean the bathrooms sometimes. You do have a servant’s heart, and I hope you never outgrow that.

4. You are so great with your brothers and sister. Of course, Alex is your best friend, always. Yesterday, you two sat together and drew pictures, taking turns showing each other your work and praising each other’s efforts. I love what friends you and Megan have become. You let her play with you: dolls, pretend, dress-up. You will create stories together and laugh together (usually long after bedtime!) and it is such a special thing to have a good friend who is also your sister. You will go through phases where you won’t like Meg or will wish she didn’t want to be like you, but I love that, for right now, you are each other’s best playmate. And Timmy is your favorite little guy. You call him Baby Goo-goo (mostly because we can’t seem to stop you), and he adores you.

5. You still want to snuggle with me. We already have some fits over what clothes you’ll wear or whether you got to go first, and I’m sure we will clash as you grow – two strong-willed women who “know” just how the world should go. But for now, you still like to snuggle up against me while we read or sing songs. You are my first girl, my sweet Erin, and you have, and always will have a special place in my heart (and by my side).

Happy Birthday, my twins. God blessed me with your wonderful selves five years ago. I could not be happier with the gifts that you are. I am excited for the next year and what it holds for us all – Kindergarten is the next big adventure – but no matter what happens and where we all go from here, always know that Mommy and Daddy love you, that God loves you, and that we cannot wait to see where life will lead you.

Happy birthday, my jolly little man!

You have been such a wonderful addition to our family this year. Your smiles never end. They can be sweet, silly, mischievous, or all-out laughing, but they just keep coming. Even when Megan sits on your head or pulls you around by your shoulders or pushes you over with her feet, you jump right back to smiling (after the crying is over, of course!). Your smiles for Mommy and Daddy just melt our hearts. And your Grandmas – well, you have them pretty well wrapped around every last one of your fingers!

You are getting so big. You give high-fives. You love peek-a-boo. You like people food as often as you can get it. You’re learning to clap. And you are a mover-and-shaker of the highest order. Just this week, you started to walk with assurance. You aren’t quite running, but it’s coming. Oh, is it coming!

And the climbing…you are most definitely a climber! Daddy’s green chair has been conquered. You are quickly to the top level of anything that even looks like a set of stairs. You’ve managed to get on top of the cedar chest, the step ladder, the headboard of Alex’s bed. And if you had a little more shoulder strength, you’d already be over the baby gates! Thankfully, you can usually get down from your climbs on your own, too. But I can’t leave you for a second without finding you trying to scale some new height.

And sweet little Timmy, we cannot wait to see what heights you will climb. You are, I know, soon going to see everything your siblings can do as a challenge to attempt. That’s good. Try out your skills. Test your strength. Learn and grow and see what God has gifted you to do and to be. We love you, sweet thing. We love you for the joy your presence has brought to our family. We love you because you balance the crazy. I love you because you have forced me to slow down, every day, and breathe during a year full of chaos and difficult choices.

Happy birthday, little one. We can’t wait to share many, many more with you!

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

Peter tells us to “humble yourselves” at the start of this verse. There are three basic sentence structures in the English language: the statement, the question, the command. We know what each sounds like of course. For example, a statement: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off….” And a question: “Have you not heard? Do you not know?”

But this one, this one is a command. A simple, clear directive for the reader/listener to DO something. And what does Peter tell us to do? Humble ourselves. I am to humble myself.

Humility is not an easy thing. It’s hard. It’s not fun. It’s the opposite in pretty much every way of the “center-of-everyone’s-attention” position where I usually prefer to reside. But I am told, commanded, ordered by the leader of the apostles himself to “Humble” myself.

Now, I haven’t looked up the word in any concordance or anything at this point. But off the top of my head, humbling myself is a willing surrender. A bowing of the head, an offering of open hands to receive whatever is to come, without attempting to control it, craft it, make it better for myself. It is a position of acceptance, of not being in charge of the decisions or the fallout. It is choosing small-ness, letting go of self-important grandeur.

(Okay, I did look it up after I wrote that paragraph. The word is tapeinoo (5013) – to make low, to assign a lower rank, to abase, to be ranked below others who are honored or rewarded. So yeah…pretty much what I thought.)

So, Peter is telling us to make ourselves low. That I, I am the one, the only one, who is responsible for my position of lowliness. I must choose it. I must accept it. I must make it the place where I live and remain, no matter the temptations to rise again, to retake control, to lift myself up. That is the command.

And I am to humble myself, therefore. Therefore, of course, always refers to what comes just before: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (v.5). In light of God’s attitude towards our heart-positions, we must choose, willingly and repeatedly, to be humble. If we want to receive God’s grace in our lives, there is only one position that will warrant it, from God’s perspective. If pride is my underlying mental position, he will resist me. But if I surrender my “rights” and my “place,” I will receive His grace. It is the only way. So, Peter says, do it. Humble myself.

But what struck me most about this verse today is the next phrase. Because the place of our humility is profoundly significant.

When I typically think on humility, the picture is not a pleasant one. Humility means being cast aside, cast down. It means that I have crumbled into a heap of failure and pathetic-ness. In my mind, humility means that I am unseen, ignored, unloved, unattended. I am unused (or at least under-used) and left out.  I huddle in the corner, dismissed by the important folks, left out with all the remnants of my plans, and surrounded by the piles of my failures and self-pity like so much soot and ashes.

And it’s no wonder that humility is not a place I actually want to be.

But this verse, this verse describes a very different place for our humility. Not in a corner, unseen and abandoned. But under the mighty hand of God. I am to put myself, not in a garbage heap of my own failures and mistakes, but under the very hand of Almighty God himself.

A hand mighty enough to work miracles.

A hand mighty enough to hand out bread to thousands when only one should have been satisfied.

A hand mighty enough to mold out of nothing the brilliant, creative, amazingly complex beauty of heaven and earth.

A hand mighty enough to protect Daniel from lions, David from giants, and Paul from just about every conceivable trouble, attack and danger.

A hand so mighty that it allowed lowly men to pierce it through with a nail so that God’s magnificent power could be worked out from death into resurrection, first for Him and then for us as well.

Under THAT mighty hand, we are to humble ourselves. Under THAT mighty hand, Peter tells us to bow, to surrender, to lower ourselves and wait.

Not under our circumstances. Not under the criticisms or responses of people. Not under the mundane realities of a thousand days. We are not told to humble ourselves under our failures or our mistakes. We are not called to lower ourselves beneath the stifling yoke of legalism, perfectionism, or God-absent religion.

We are told, by Peter himself, to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.

And don’t forget exactly who it is that is speaking to us here. This is Peter, and he KNOWS. He once humbled himself in all the wrong ways. On the darkest night of his life, he failed so miserably that his only conceivable response was to run and hide, sobbing in the dark corner of some (he thought) God-forsaken place. He ran away to wallow in his could-not-have-been-much-worse screw-up. He was a failure. Useless, unseen, forgotten, forgettable.

But that’s not the image Peter has in mind as he writes these words. “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the might hand of God.”

Because Peter understood. Pride leads us to build ourselves up based on our service, our value, our accomplishments, our persona. We base our success on how good we can make ourselves look, on how well we can hide our flaws. But Peter’s flaws had been more than laid bare. Peter’s failures could not have been more public.

And yet…Jesus called him back. “Go tell the disciples AND PETER.” Jesus showed up, met them in a closed room, along a shoreline, on a mountaintop. And Peter, who had been crushed by his humiliation and failure, learned what it truly means to humble himself under the mighty hand of God.

The hand that reached out to Peter on an early morning by the sea and said, “Do you love me, Simon, son of Jonah? Then feed my sheep.”

The hand that, only a few weeks later, poured out a Spirit so profound on this failure of a leader of a ragtag group of scraggly backwoods hicks that he opened his mouth and talked about the Jesus whose hand had saved him and three thousand people came running to stand with Peter under those outstretched (and almighty) hands.

That’s what Peter understood. And that is what he has in mind when he tells us: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God.

Because he knows that bringing himself low under that hand brought him more than he ever imagined possible. We don’t humble ourselves so that we can revel in poverty. We bow ourselves, with Peter, so that at the proper time he may exalt you.

The hand that covers us like an umbrella when we choose to be humble before Him will, at the exactly right moment, turn to scoop us up in the palm and lift us higher than we ever thought possible. Supported by that same mighty hand that protected us while we bowed low, will lift us like a treasure, cupped in His hand, to accomplish the amazing works that we dreamed to do in our strength and on our own terms and in our own time in our pride-filled state.

And the funny thing is that our position will really look exactly the same: kneeling bowed beneath His mighty hand and kneeling safely in his uplifted, nail-pierced palm. We remain humble and he lifts us up, at just the right moment.

We are not unseen. We are not unused (or under-used). We are not unloved and ignored. He sees us. He intends to use us. He loves and attends our every need. But we cannot grasp for our rights, our needs. We must, just like Peter, accept our need to be humble and let him lift us. We must choose to bow low and wait, trusting that his mighty hand can and will save us, lift us, use us, exalt us, at the proper, perfect time.

It’s crazy how much I miss blogging sometimes. So very much has happened in the last few months, and I find myself writing posts in my head, but they never get to the blog itself. And since my current blog isn’t accesible to anyone not on my personal computer, well, it’s hard to motivate myself to put it down.

But I miss it.

So I’m back. I think…I will always be back. No matter how long the break. The writing happens, even if it doesn’t show up here. And eventually, it starts to show up here, too. So, I guess that’s a good thing.

The kids are doing well. Megan is now 3. Crazy. I was reading old posts and it’s funny how much of the days you forget in the living of them. Another good reason to keep coming back, I think. But anyway, Megan is 3. She had a Tinkerbell party, which she loved. The cake turned out better than I thought it would. She got just perfect presents…I think she (and the twins) have played regularly with every toy she received. So yay!

Like the twins before her, the arrival of her third birthday meant that her pacifiers went “poof” and that was a hard transition for her. She still misses them, I think. So her sleeping hasn’t been quite as good recently. Not that any of my kids but Erin actually sleep well. She’s a rockstar sleeper still, but the other three…yikes! One of these days I am so looking forward to an entire night’s sleep. Hours and hours. All at once. Uninterrupted.

It’s like a dream.

Of course, sleeping will happen again one day. And that’s good, though it will also signal the change of another parenting season. Timmy will turn 10 months tomorrow. He’s a doll baby, still. (Except for the sleeping thing). I sold most of his baby stuff (diaper champ, changing pad, baby swing, extra pack-n-play, exersaucer, etc) at the Twin Sale at the beginning of the month. And while it feels so good not to have the extra clutter in our tiny space, I did recognize the end of the era. All those things we bought before the twins were born. When we were just starting to be the parents of babies. And now, our last baby is outgrowing all those things. And he will only get bigger and out grow more things. And we will quickly be parents of children, not babies. How fast 5 years goes by, right?

And I’m not sorry. I am done having kids. If Jesus were to open the hearts and doors for adoption or fostering, I’d be open for that. But bearing children…nope, I’m good. But that means that we are admitting the end of the era where we will bring little people into the world and that we are on the very edge of the new one where we start school and grow up and face new adventures together. It is right. It is good. And it is bittersweet. But I want to move forward well. Grateful for the years we’ve had so far and open to what the coming years hold. Yes, that will be a good thing.

Erin is quickly turning into a little lady for sure. She’s helpful and loves to be noticed. I do not notice her enough in the frenetic-ness of our days. I need to stop and look her in those giant blue eyes more often. I know I do. Still, she loves to write. She “read” her first words the other day. She’d written out, as I spelled them for her, the words “feel better soon.” Then she went back over them, sounding out the letters, her first real attempt at reading. It was so fun to watch. So very fun.

And it thrilled my very heart to see, a couple of weeks ago, Erin and Alex singing along at church to the Christ Tomlin song, Bless the Lord, O My Soul. They love that song. They know the words. They sing along. Oh, Jesus, please bless the words and lessons, the Bible and Spirit, that are seeping into their hearts. Chase them down and call them to you and let them love you, Jesus, above all things. Even above me. Especially above me.

Alex has an impressive imagination still. Whatever concerns him in “this world,” he fixes in New Alex’s world…his imaginary “brother” whose presence gives him great comfort. He’s so very easily afraid of the bad things that could happen. He can imagine out  from what you tell him to the “what could be” and he gets afraid. The other night, he was frantic because the dirt specks in the tub would be washed down the drain and he couldn’t bear the thought that they would have to suffer that. Eric did his best to catch them for and with him, but he was still upset at the ones that were escaping their reach. At one point, in absolute tears, he yelled, “I’m freaking out here!” And it was funny and heart-breaking all at once. What a heart. It’s going to be so easily broken. And watching him be bruised will be so hard for me. But Jesus, take that tender heart and keep me from squashing it and let it be consumed with you and the hurts of others that he moves on their behalf to lead them to you, the only healer of all our broken hearts.

I still have no sense of purpose here or sense of timing for building a house or when Eric might leave Lakeshore or what God intends to do with us and through use all the way out here. But I’m still here. And I’m still seeking. And still drowning in our daily-life. And learning to choose thankful and choose against complaining. And hoping that the little suffering that is this season will reap eternal glory for Him and beauty and full-blessings for us. And what is faith but the certainty of things not seen.

And so I hope, in faith.

So Timmy is now six months old. Actually, he’s almost seven months old, but hey, that’s how it goes when you’re #4.

We just had his six month check-up this week. He’s still a rock monster, so I figured he would be easily over 20 lbs. But nope. 19 lbs. 5 oz. He’s only in the 75th percentile (instead of the 90th, where’s he been since 1 month old). And I figure as he starts moving, he’ll just even it all out anyway.

Still he’s getting too big for the infant carrier (or at least for me to carry in the infant carrier), which means we’ll have to get a convertible seat, which means we’ll have 4 kids, 4 and under, in 4 convertible seats. Sheesh!

Speaking of moving, though, Timmy is making good progress. He’s sitting like a champ, getting very good at balancing. He has all the correct positions that will lead to pushing himself with his toe, pushing up onto his knees, and scooting. He’s not quite there, but I can clearly see it in the near future. He does manage to roll himself to various places when he’s on the ground. And he is getting very good at standing when you hold him up. Of course, with legs the size of tree trunks, like he has, balance is a piece of cake. So I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t spend much time on his knees and heads straight to pulling up.

Timmy loves to eat from a spoon. LOVES it. He likes fruit and peas and oatmeal. He hated beans. Hated them. And the way he watches us eat and drink, he seems pretty certain we are holding out on giving him the really good stuff. And, of course, we are. 😉

Unfortunately, he is still not sleeping through the night. Sad for me. I have no good idea why. Even Dr. LaMonte couldn’t figure out any obvious things that would cause it. So maybe it’s just the non-air conditioned sleeping arrangements. Or maybe he just likes hanging with me at 3 am. But either way, we are still working on that one.

Timmy is still just the happiest little dude ever. He is just a smiler. His super-grin made this little old lady’s day at WalMart this week. She talked to him, he just grinned back at her, and she was so pleased. It was very sweet. He jabbers at us a lot, too, but with all of us talking around him, I think he’s just practicing trying to be heard.

He loves to have is back rubbed, long strokes from neck to tailbone. And swinging. He LOVES the infant swing Eric hung up for him. Both of those things will put him to sleep, too.  He enjoys snuggling and his siblings and sitting on our bed (no idea why, but it’s his favorite place in the house). He plays in his exersaucer, on the floor, in his high chair. And he’s pretty much done with his bouncy seat and swing. Putting those away will mark the end of an era here…strange, but also cool because it will mark the beginning of an era, too.

It was bound to happen sometime.

With all the stress of selling our house, moving, unpacking, and everything else that goes along with all of that, the arrival of a seriously major meltdown was just a matter of time.

And it finally happened. Saturday, July 6. I had The Fit.

Mostly, things have been moving along. We have been getting a lot of little things finished up, managed, taken care of. The bigger things are coming more slowly, but they aren’t too far behind.  But it’s also been stressful, tiring, lonely, and taxing my creative resources at just about every turn.

Add to that the busy week we’d had, and matters were even more ripe for craziness.

On Thursday, we hosted our first “event” — a party for the Fourth for my family. So we spent the week getting ready. I finished a manuscript I was working on. We cleaned. Emptied a few remaining boxes. Stuffed the rest of them away. Made room. Fixed food. Got everything ready. And then my family showed up and we had a good day of hanging out, talking, and eating.

Then, suddenly, it was the weekend. We were caught up on our cleaning. On unpacking. We were open. We could actually dedicate an entire weekend to some major project we hadn’t been able to tackle theretofore. So Eric and his dad and brother decided it was time to burn stuff. Now, you have to understand that Eric’s dad is a closet pyromaniac. That man can make anything burn. ANYTHING. So the fact that it had rained every day for the entire month of June was not going to dissuade anyone from burning some of the old barn. It needs to come down. Everyone had a day off. Let’s burn stuff, people!

And since the garage is right next to the barn they’d be tearing down, I decided it was also a good day to try to organize that particular pit of despair.

The garage is a good distance from the doublewide. So getting there to work with 4 kids hanging on me just isn’t going to happen normally (thankfully, my MIL volunteered to come watch kids for me that day). More importantly, the garage is where things have been dumped for almost 9 months. When we de-cluttered the house to make it show-ready, we dumped the boxes in the doublewide or the garage. When we moved in, a bunch more stuff got dumped in the garage. And as we unpacked and started settling into the doublewide, even more stuff got dumped into the garage. But that day, I decided was the end of all dumping. It was time to start organizing, no matter how painful.

And until that moment, we thought the garage was fine. Turns out…it wasn’t.

As I began to pull things out, organize, sort, and generally deal with the stuff dumped into the garage, I noticed it. The big wet spot on the exact middle of the floor. It hadn’t been there long. The garage had been dry with good drainage for months. But, as I began to move more stuff and shift more boxes, I realized the wet spot was surprisingly big, some important stuff was sitting in the middle of it, and worst of all, there was mold and mildew growing everywhere.

The longer I worked, the worse things looked. And I lost it. I sobbed. Literally. Tears. Snot. The occasional stamped foot. It was not pretty.

Thankfully, I was alone for the initial ugliness. The guys arrived to work on the barn (they’d been working to steer a bull calf), and Eric noticed (surprisingly fast) that all was not well. He came over to see what was up. I showed him. I cried some more. He started to help.

I will be forever grateful that no one thought I was overreacting. Eric was totally understanding and helpful and concerned, too. My MIL gave me a huge hug and let me cry a bit on her shoulder. Everyone else stayed out of my way. Because I cried when I saw my card table mildewed. I cried for fear that the bins and bins of kids clothes might be ruined. I cried to see our Christmas tree box sitting in the worst of the wet and the advent calendar box on the bottom of the pile, right at the edge of the water. I cried a lot.

I kept telling myself (and everyone else) that it was just stuff. So what? If it was ruined, it wasn’t the end of the world. But I was heartbroken. And it wasn’t really about the stuff. It was the first time that the entire burden of the move was more than my cup could hold. All the stress, the sadness, the frustrations, the sifting and packing and sorting and repacking to fit our family into a house suddenly 2/3 the size of the house we’d had. All the disappointment of leaving my friends, my family, my sister, our church, a decade of my life. All the nerves about moving to a new place, the loneliness, the frustrations of starting over, the sense of being outside, of being an outsider. It all came together in a puddle exactly the size and shape of the wet spot on the floor of the garage.

And I cried.

To be fair, it was not as bad as things at first appeared. The fit subsided. My MIL took my kids to nap at her house. Eric stayed and helped me until there was nothing else we could do. I cleaned and scrubbed and unloaded and threw a few things away, and in the end, we lost…almost nothing.

The tubs of clothes were fine (and are now in my MIL’s basement). The furniture that mattered cleaned up beautifully, and the furniture that didn’t matter either cleaned up or burned up. The advent calendar could be washed. The stuff was still just stuff.

As far as we could tell, the driving rains for days on end had simply beaten sheets of water under the garage door, creating the puddle. And the wet, humid weather and air-tight garage kept everything so moist that the mold formed. But it hadn’t been there long or things would have been much worse. And we found it and dealt with it and can guard against it now.

But for all my “putting on a good face” about the move, The Fit was a pretty clear indicator that the last few months have been much harder than I imagined. It’s a definite struggle to live as we are living…and to choose to LIVE here. I know I could rant and rave, and I have struggled not to keep a running list of all the things I miss or dislike or wish were different.

But I am adamant that the Fit won’t be repeated too many times. Sometimes, the state of affairs surprises you, and you react. The reaction, in my opinion, is fine. It’s normal. But what you do after that initial shock…that is what really matters.

And I’ve decided…

I will not waste these days. These months. However long. I will not waste them, wishing them away and telling myself “I’ll be happy when…” Because I won’t be happy then. I have to find happy now. I have to find Jesus now. Right here, where I am…where we are.

And that is hard. That costs something. Sometimes, it costs tears.

But at least The Fit is now behind us. There will probably be another one or two along the way. Humility is not my normal. I’m not good at it. I’m not used to it. I’m quick to excuse myself from being made low. And yet, for the first time in a long time, or maybe ever, I have only that road to follow. Accepting humility with open hands and letting God change me, mold me, break me open. The only other option is to harden my heart – against God, my family, and life in general. And that is not the way I want to go.

So I threw my Fit. And we moved on. And we moved some stuff. And when we build a house, we’ll move it all again. And in all of it, I just want to find more of Him and less of me, more of beauty and less of ugly, more of love and less of pride.

Because I cannot stop the rains from coming, but I can choose to let them push me closer to the only One who can protect me from the storm. The One who is never turned away by my Fits, but who can use them to bring me closer to His heart.

Which is the goal, anyway.