"My Hat Hurts"

 

 

Have you ever noticed how the little people, the ones we think we bigger people can teach things to, are often the ones to teach us stuff?

I thought about this when I met a wonderful little boy named Brayden back in January when I went with Ken to some board meetings in Reading, PA. We stayed with Brayden's family (he has wonderful parents and siblings, too) for a few days, which I mentioned in this post.

Observing Brayden made me ponder my relationship with God, and how He might view me as His daughter who is growing up (trying to, anyway) as she does life.

I found myself asking God if, to Him, I'm like Brayden in these ways:

1. I say "My hat hurts", when really it's my head being scrunched into a tight hat that is uncomfortable. I express hurt from my perspective, while He knows all things...He knows where the hurt really stems from and He's taken great pains to heal that hurt. Nonetheless, He wants me to tell Him how I'm hurting, in my own words, from my perspective. And sometimes, without saying anything, He reaches down motherly hands and gently rearranges the hat.

2. I whine and complain and demand in a loud voice and then He says, "Danette, stop and look Me in the face. Say, 'Please may I have...?'"

3. Someone - a sibling, no less - corrects me scornfully, but I don't want to take it as truth. I keep saying blue blasketball because it's easiest and I don't want anyone telling me what to do or how to change. Especially when they know perfectly well what I mean. Even if an adult says, "If we, along the same lines, call you Blayden instead of Brayden, is that okay?", I say "Sure!" - I'm that set in my own ways and wisdom. (God, do You shake Your head over me sometimes?)

4. When I carefully line up my dinkies on the carpet in two rows side by side with a narrow aisle between and a younger brother who is not feeling very well comes up to my little cars with an excited giggle and triumphant grin and tries to toddle through, stepping one foot into that aisle, I get all fearful and uptight. "He's messin' up my cars!" I shriek. And He holds me and says, "No, he's not. I'm watching him. I'll pick him up if he wrecks your lines. Come, let's sit together and watch him try to walk through the path. Here, let's make the aisle between the cars a little wider for him..."

5. My favorite song is "How Great Thou Art". At first, I want to listen to my favorite recording of that song and sing along with it on Mommy's phone while we're riding in the van, but Daddy has it on his phone and he's not with us right now so Mommy says she can't play it. Then a stranger in the van suggests we sing it all together and I protest at first, but then concede. All ages and genders and acquaintances, family and strangers sing "How Great Thou Art" and it sounds beautiful and it's fun because we're all singing about Someone and to Someone bigger than ourselves. Of course, I don't understand all of this, but I understand some of this. It brings me peace and contentment. And great delight.

So that's what Brayden taught me last month.
What have you learned from the littles in your life lately?

This Post's Quote:

My teacher daughters sometimes come home from school with funny stories or sayings originating in their classrooms. Like this one, as overheard during chat time at lunch: A student related in somewhat dramatic detail a description of a mother cat on their farm that had the nasty habit of eating her own kittens. Another student piped up, "Would that be called 'cattibalism'?"

This Post's Childhood Memory:

I remember a toy coffee perk that my sister and I loved to play with in our make-believe kitchen. The picture of it in my mind is rather indistinct, but I think it had red and clear plastic parts. It was designed in such a way that when you tipped the perk as if to pour its contents and set the pot back down again, some dark liquid inside would bubble up to make you believe you were perking coffee. (not unlike the vanishing milk toy baby bottles from the '60s) When we weren't playing with the coffee perk, we usually kept it in the little wooden cupboard that our daddy built for us, but sometimes we forgot to put it away. It was bad news the times that the perk was sitting on the living room heater and we forgot to put it away - I remember the sinking feeling of coming into the living room and seeing the prized toy with its bottom half partially melted, rendered almost useless from being on the heat too long. (It seems like we went through a couple of coffee perks this way.) I still have a partial set of dishes we used to play with long ago - a few of the red plastic cups and some of the little tin saucers and plates - but sadly, no perking coffee pot!

He Took the Waves

On Valentine's Day, I am remembering a couple that Ken & I watched in Costa Rica. Maybe we noticed couples more during our holiday because we were on an anniversary trip ourselves, or maybe it was because we had more time than usual to sit and people-watch. At any rate, we saw this vacationing pair while we were at the same beach they were.

They had no idea that they were giving us a marriage object lesson, those two. They were so engrossed in their efforts that they paid no mind to the dozens of surfers on (or in) the waves nor to the loungers under colorful umbrella sunshades on the hot sand nearby. The young man and woman were building a sand castle together.

Clearly, they were enjoying themselves. And why not? There they were in the bright sunshine and warm ocean breeze, contented and delighted in their project, together. Sometimes they'd stop their creative work and stand back to admire their progress so far, together.

They had chosen to build their creation at the edge of the wet sand, knowing that water was a necessary ingredient for their castle construction. They needed the "packing sand" - the damp, wave-washed particles for fashioning the walls, turrets and bridges of their castle.

But they also knew that the castle building site had to be far enough away from the incessant, destroying waves nearby. The tide was coming in, and they knew it. Previous knowledge of the seashore told them that the waves could wreck their creation. They began to shore up the tide side of their castle.

They worked together in this shoring up, their strengthening of the castle bulwarks. They gathered stones with great care, sometimes the one hunting and the other incorporating the stones into the ramparts; sometimes the other way around. They worked faster as the waves crept closer, laying in the stones and packing in wet sand around them, mortar-like.

Finally, a wave lap reached the castle wall facing the ocean. The couple upped their courage and determination. More waves reached farther, hungrily.

 

The husband, in front of the castle, cemented in the stones with the damp sand. Then he saw the approach of a wave bigger than the rest. He lay down on the sand, stretching out full-length and curving his arms around the edifice to take the wave. The water ran around him and gushed up along the side boundaries, but the castle itself was safe.

The wave receded and the couple went back to reinforcing their building. I kept watching them, and pondering their offering a marriage illustration right before my eyes.

 And here is where I should probably step in to say that at some point, every analogy breaks down. Still, on this day that is (supposed to be) all about love and relationships, I make the comparisons:
Isn't this so much like marriage? The couple works at the creation of their marriage using the knowledge and tools God gave them. It takes time, effort, creativity and togetherness. They complement each other. They sometimes stand back and admire their progress with unabashed delight.

But they have an enemy to reckon with. They live in the world, but aren't a part of it - the enemy tide is coming in and trying to destroy their marriage by waves that surge and recede. They use the shoring-up Armor of God together, in the ways that God has designed them to contribute. The husband leads in protection. And every time he steps in and faces evil to protect the vulnerable ones in his care, he is following the example of the One who laid down and "took the wave" for us.

On this Valentine's Day, I am grateful for Ken, the one who has teamed up with me to build our marriage, and for all the times he has laid down his will for the good of me and our castle.

But today, most of all, I am in awe of the Lover of my Soul. My heart cries out, "Thank You, Jesus, for laying down Your life and 'taking the wave' for me."

"What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul?
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!"
                                                  - Anonymous

This Post's Quotable:

This Post's Childhood Memory:

I remember that every year there for awhile, when it was getting close to Valentine's Day, Dad bought Mom candy - a frilly bright pink or yellow heart-shaped box of chocolates. Mom was always so pleased with the gift from her lover, and she always shared the candy with the rest of us. After supper, she'd pass the box around the table and we each got to pore over the luscious-looking lot and pick out one chocolate for ourselves. My little brother Tim (Timmie, at the time), though, got to choose TWO pieces because it was his birthday. How lucky could one get, to be born right on Valentine's Day?

Four Seasons in Home

How I enjoy a good book. A book that swoops in and twirls me, and I, captivated and nearly breathless, can scarcely be set down.

How I enjoy a good book. A book that makes me think. One wherein I can read a sentence or two and stop, ponder a bit, read some more in the paragraph, and take my eyes off the page again – to think. To say to myself, “Hmmm, I never thought about it in quite that way before” or “Really? Could I actually change what I believe about this? Could I even articulate what I believe about it?” or “That is such a good description, I could eat it. Why can’t I write like that?” And then, even after I’ve read – and pondered – through the whole good book, I keep coming back to parts of it, revisiting it in my mind, months or even years later.

For me, “Four Seasons in Rome” was such a book. In it, author Anthony Doerr records observations he makes on his life during the one year he leaves his home in the States to live in Rome with his young family.

On the value of habit in our lives, Doerr says this: “Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us". I get that. For instance, if we would put as much into witnessing every daily creative act of God as we did regarding the solar eclipse the summer of 2017, we’d be rendered useless. We’d possibly even pass out from either fatigue or thrall, or both.

Doerr also brings out the other side of it: "But the habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic." He goes on to say that the easier or more entrenched or familiar an experience becomes, the fainter our sensation of it becomes.

He ends his discussion of the topic by saying, "Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience...become new all over again.”

Shauna Niequist, in her book Present Over Perfect, says sort of the same thing about the benefit of a getaway. “Part of the magic of the lake is that it isn’t home – it’s away, and away allows us to see rhythms and dimensions of our lives more clearly. So it doesn’t necessarily work for us to live here at the lake, but I do want the way of living that I’ve tasted here to inform and ground how I live everywhere, all year long…simple, connected to God and His world and people, uncomplicated by lots of stuff.”

Maybe this resonates more clearly with me just now because of having returned home three days ago from our anniversary trip to Costa Rica. In many ways, our time there was simple and uncomplicated. I felt connected to God and His world through the beauty that abounded in that lovely land. I want to allow that simplicity to inform the way I live back home.

But I wonder. Is there a way to leave the familiar to discover the new by not physically leaving one's country, one’s familiar, or one’s home at all? What are the ways, if it is even possible, to have Four Seasons in Home (instead of Four Seasons in Rome) and have routine become new all over again?

I have set out into this year to find out. To discover the ways, if there are any. Hence the name for this new blog: Dani’s Discoveries. In it I want to record both discoveries I make when I do physically leave the country and when I stay at home and have routine become new all over again because of viewing it from a different angle or trading a habitual perspective for a fresher one.

Maybe I can, within these four walls of routine and familiarity, learn to live as if I went away and came back to see home in a different, more appreciative light.

Perhaps a key ingredient is wonder. In Costa Rica, every day was a delight to embrace. Ordinary water lapped, thundered, surged, tumbled, roared, plunged, curled and foamed. Birds and animals showed up (or were pointed out to us by natives) in the wild, brilliant and squawking or docile and secretive. And the sun – the daily orb – was phenomenal in its strength and splendor. One morning I even set my alarm to wake up in time to watch the big orange ball climb up out of the ocean, and it was so worth it. There was always some sort of beauty to behold around the next corner; sometimes I felt like I was going about with my proverbial mouth hanging open. Wonder will do that to you.

I’m sure that fresh beauty abounds at home, in my daily routine, too.

Will I be able to see it?

I wonder.

This Post's Quotable:

Quote: Recently, a friend of ours named Dave gave us another story to add to our collection of People’s Crossing-the-Border Experiences. He and some of his family were going from the States to visit some friends in Canada. In a small border town in Minnesota, while looking for the place to cross, they got lost. By the time Dave drove up to the border crossing booth, he was considerably confused and frustrated. He got the border official on high alert when he answered the typical question, “Do you have anything to declare?” Thinking of the small token of appreciation they had brought along for their friends, Dave replied, “Nothing but a hostage gift.”

This Post's Childhood Memory:  

Memory: I remember taking off my dad’s shoes when he got home from work. It became somewhat of a ritual for us children to “help” him out of his carpenter work shoes before supper. I loved when it was my turn. (Actually, I think sometimes my twin and I did it together – Anni on one foot and me on the other.) Dad would sit down in the living room on the rocker with the comfortable creak. I’d kneel in front of one high-topped work shoe and take in the smell of leather, the lumber Dad had handled that day, and the sweat of his day’s work. Sometimes he’d help me undo the big knot in the laces at the top. Then I’d uncriss and uncross the shoestrings from their moorings on the hooks, down to the holes they were threaded through. Then the overlapping laces had to be loosened and pulled up far enough to allow Dad adequate space to pull his foot out of the shoe. I’d grab on to the shoe heel and pull and pull to get it off. Sometimes he’d pretend I hadn’t opened it wide enough for his foot to slip out, so I’d really pull and yank on it. Then it would come off and I’d almost fall over backward, giggling gleefully. Such an accomplishment! Next came the challenge of taking off the sock that seemed to be plastered to his foot. At last, when I had peeled off the damp and stinky cotton down to the bare foot, Dad would wiggle his toes satisfactorily and thank me for helping. I realize now that it should have been me doing the thanking – for a dad who took the time to create connection with his daughter; for putting love into shoe leather.

A final note: You can see a lot more of our Costa Rica pictures in several segments I posted here on Facebook.