Unexpected blessings...

 

It was a beautiful morning for watering flowers.  Children were busy all around.  Two in the hammock giggling, one strategically building roads in the sandbox, and one on the deck beside me, plucking the last bit of color off of my favorite rhododendron bush.  Just as I was considering suggesting that the dying flowers stay on the plant so we could enjoy them just one more day, my newly-turned six year old placed another petal into his bowl and said, "I'm making a salad for Mrs. Robertson."


Now, young imaginations are hard at work most days at my house, so hearing make-believe lines peppered into daily conversation is nothing unusual around here.  But this comment was different.

Chase and I had just visited the Robertson house together.  They're a couple from our church in their mid-eighties, and Mrs. Robertson is sick.  She has been battling cancer for some time, and is quickly running out of treatment options.

Two weeks earlier...

It had  been awhile since I'd talked to her.  I'm a busy lady at church, you know.   There are children to deliver to classrooms (and you'd better believe, if we're running even slightly late, someone will surely need to use the potty!), nursery duty to tend to, and if I don't speed walk through the foyer, someone might occupy our favorite pew before we can get to it first.  I'm a mom on a mission to sit down before the music starts, and I remind myself that if I make eye contact for too long, I might just get stuck in a conversation that I didn't have penciled into my agenda for the morning.

So I snuck - or so I thought - through the back, less traveled  halls of the church to retrieve the boys for the service that was about to begin.  And there she stood, reaching out for my arm as I began to pass.  Her body was frail, but her eyes - bright and hopeful - drew me in.  In an instant, the Lord refocused my agenda, and we talked until my children were the last ones to be picked up.  I left the conversation blessed by her quick wit, optimistic spirit, and full trust in a good God.  Before we parted, I leaned into her face until our noses almost touched, and made her promise me that if she needed something, that she'd be sure to call.

A week and a half later the phone rang.  I didn't think she'd do it, but it was Mrs. Robertson on the other end.  She hated to be a bother, but I had insisted that she call.  It had been a rough week.  Chemo was taking it's toll on her tired body, and she was devastated over the fact that she wasn't able to muster up a good meal for her husband in days.  "Tell me his favorites," I said, "and I'll be there tomorrow."

Little did I know what a treat Chase and I were in for!  While the women talked about food and children, Chase toured their home with Mr. Robertson, admiring trinkets that they had collected over the years.  Chase was especially fond of a little wooden snake, a souvenir from a visit with their missionary daughter.  We listened to their stories from years ago, intrigued by their many adventures, laughing often.  I shared that baseball season was in full swing for our boys, and found a common connection from their child-raising years.  If Mrs. Robertson was feeling up to it, they would try to make a game.

Our visit ended much too soon, but with a full heart, I promised that we'd be back.  I left with the same feeling you get when you go on a mission trip with the best intentions of blessing others, and you return only to realize...

... you instead are the one being blessed.

I try not to take those back hallways any more on Sunday mornings.  And now, I allow a little extra time for some intentional eye contact, praying that God would help my eyes to connect with just the one that He has planned for me that day.

Because you never know when you're about to be blessed.

"She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy."

~Proverbs 31:20

Beginning Well to Finish Well...

It's officially summer break around here.

How do I know? Because the fourth grade class science experiment (also known as Maisy, the friendliest albino rat you'll ever wanna meet) has now taken up permanent residence in our home. Tyler may or may not have reassured me just a couple of nights ago that really, there was no one breaking into our house at 2am. Apparently when you're half asleep, an excitable rat (who, in my groggy half-slumber, I had forgotten really does now live in our upstairs... and on purpose, no less) sounds an awful lot like a burglar when she creatively redecorates her cage in the middle of the night.

And here I thought we had agreed to stick to raising children. Ha.

I also know it's summertime because after spending much of the day on Monday clearing fallen sticks from our back yard, I peered out my kitchen window on Tuesday morning to find three imaginative boys dragging every last stick back into our yard so they could build their first fort of the season.

Of course they did. And it's a great one, at that. (For the record, I have an engineer, a laborer, a narrator and a clear Miss bossy pants on my hands. A well rounded crew, I tell ya.)

By Wednesday morning, the four had barely swallowed the last bites of their breakfasts before collaborating in the kitchen for a family science experiment. While I really don't wish for their little minds to shut off completely during summer break, I would settle for a couple of hours each morning so I can catch up with their growing intellects. Call me crazy, but I can't seem to effectively answer physics questions about momentum, vortexes and inertia before 7:00am. Go brush your teeth, please, and let me Google it think about it for a second.

One boy needs me upstairs while another pair needs an intervention downstairs, and the girl needs me in the same room as her always, don't you know. The phone rings, ironically always at the exact same moment that someone needs me in the potty. And while it would be a whole lot faster to sort the laundry myself, teaching is absolutely more necessary than efficiency. The gaps are filled in with everything from neighbor kids to baby dolls, important Lego repairs to grocery store runs, baseball games galore and questions of all kinds, with barely a down moment from the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning until I sink into bed each night.

In my own strength, I'm always a step behind. It's four to one after all, and clearly they won't be sleeping in anytime soon. While the surface things may (or may not) get accomplished, if I'm not careful, their impressionable hearts might not be any more nourished by the end of the day than when we started. 

Join me over at Good Morning Girls today, where I finish this story and share how I'll be starting my days this summer...