not quite what i expected for valentines day

i have not been sick with the flu since i don't know when...maybe when i was a teenager? but boy howdy! i got hit on sunday with some kind of horrific bug that rendered me completely powerless.

i was out for coffee with a friend, and here was the first mistake of the day...i ate chill for lunch. if i had only known that i was going to be sick i would have definitely avoided that little choice! my poor friend, there we were sitting and visiting and then i kind of knew...something is not right. so i warned her, if i pop up and leave, this is why. and sure enough in a few minutes i was more intimate with that coffee shop's bathroom than i wanted to be.

i HATE being sick. ewww it is just so gross and humiliating.

so, now two days later, six pounds lighter and a few hours of fluids in my tummy, i am getting better. i was a little worried about the two sprouts growing in me so i went to the maternity ward today to make sure all was well and the little ones survived the ordeal of the past few days.  of course, they are fine. the nurses assured me that they take what they need and leave the rest for me. now if that isn't a metaphor for parenting i don't know what is.

my poor husband. he kept looking at me like "i am not sure what to do here". he has been sick once or twice, but i have never been that sick in our eight years of marriage. so, halfway through the day yesterday he just said "don't die ok?". ok, i won't die.

here is the good thing though - when you get sick like that, you kind of have to focus on what is most important, like taking care of yourself and your family. my head had been spinning on quite a few levels for a week or so. i needed to get some clarity on some fuzzy issues, and you know, when just getting  up and walking around is an accomplishment, it makes things come into focus in a hurry.

so, between the very good coffee date with my friend - she brought some great perspective - and focusing on just getting well, sometime in the middle of that, my brain settled down and i have new clarity on the issues that were running like little hamsters in my head. (i am thinking now that i wish i didn't need to get the flu to sort all of this out, but it is what it is)

and for valentines day, i have a day to rest in my house since the girls are at grandma's and shawn is at work. and as for romance, a husband that looks at me when i have no make up on, i am a slight shade of green and says "i love you" - is quite enough for me.

so, happy valentines day all. and just a side note, i still think that valentines is a big scheme to make single people feel like they are missing out. so, if you are single be encouraged - there is much more to romance than a nice dinner out with roses - that is the least of the things you can look forward to once you find someone to love you til death do you part. hang out with your friends and enjoy the memories you have now...they are priceless too.

how is that for a very eclectic blog? here's to health and true romance!

"Mama, you have what it takes"

from the book i am reading right now (have a new kid by friday - kevin lehman):

"you don't need a PhD. you don't need to have a lot of money. you have all you need. you know the biggest secret of all: your child wants to please you. She can't stand it when you're unhappy with her. she wants to know you are a team."

"what kind of legacy are you going to leave for them? if you want them to be healthy, independent thinkers who are kind and giving to others, now if the time to start, and you can start by changing yourself"

this will sound crazy but these statements brought tears to my eyes.

why? because it is so easy to forget the i have what it takes.

i don't really love it when i blog about my insecurities, simply because it feels like i am asking for people to tell me that i am amazing etc... and trust me that is not my goal. i need to get it out of me, and this is how i do it. i write about it, i talk about it. and you get to read it, lucky you.

i read those two statements and i realize the lies i have been listening to, and the fears i have been yielding to.

it is true that comparison the doorway to all disorder in my mind and all sorts of other creepy crawly thoughts that natter at me and disable me from being the best mom i can be.

when i look at other moms and think "i should be more like that", or "i am not good at that like they are", i am opening the door to crazy thinking. who cares if i am not good at crafts? who cares if i am not the most structured mom in the world? i can work on these things, but i don't think my kids will go on Dr. Phil one day with the sob story about how their mom was completely incapable of making a butterfly with pipe cleaners.

i guess i am realizing that i have been living in fear - fear that my kids will grow up to disrespect me, disregard me, just plain dis - me. i have seen too many teenagers do it, i have heard too many stories. working with teenagers for almost 20 years will do that to a person. and i have been afraid that no matter what i do, my kids won't turn out to be responsible adults that i am happy to present to society.

but the truth is, none of those other teenage stories are our story. and i can testify that without fail, every kid who knows their parents love them and care for them will come around and know that they did what they could with what they were given. and, they will disrespect me sometimes, that is part of growing up, but that doesn't mean they will be disrespectful people forever.

i cannot decide for my kids whether i am a good parent or not. i cannot bribe them or coerce them to think good thoughts about me. that is control, and it is wrong. i cannot make them love me, any more than God our Father will force me to love Him. this is the risk he took when he gave us free will. He opened Himself wide for rejection and misunderstanding. and His very first kids believed lies about Him and set the course for the rest of us for all time. that must have stunk big time.

i guess in the end i am realizing, it is ok to make mistakes, and it is prideful to think i won't.  it is ok and even good to say "i'm sorry". there is nothing bad that can come out of that. i teach my kids to have character because i have character, and that is enough. i have choices, they have choices. i cannot make my kids become "good kids" they have to choose just like the rest of us. we are all on a journey, and we get to do this together.

this all seems so obvious - i guess in my heart i know it. but i tell you...day to day, it is tough to feel like i am making progress. each day is a new adventure with screaming battles between the girls (how do i handle that one?), emma has taught alina to hit back, alina has taught emma to crawl up on to everything, emma yells "NO!" at me all the time....on and on it goes. i respond the same way every time, i am not overlooking it - i am not being permissive, but the behaviour isn't changing as quickly as i want it to. is this a mountain or a molehill??? time alone will decide.

so, i guess that is why the first statement gave me a moment to pause, look at the long road and think..."they will get through this, i will get through this. and i may not win these battles everyday, but i will die before i give up the war for their hearts"

i have what it takes. i begged God for these little souls and now i take my turn with all parents who pray daily that they give their kids what they need to survive in our hostile world. i see my inadequacies, i see my faults, but somehow, i have what it takes.

 ok. easy to believe now, because they are  napping and i have perspective.

let's try to remember that when they are awake shall we?

periphery

i have done it again.

it is the first day of the new year, and we are all assessing where we are and where we want to go. and i realized again today that i have turned secondary issues into primary issues, i have allowed the temporary to swallow the eternal. and i have let myself get all bundled up in fears and thoughts that i can do nothing about.

i have a friend who's mom is dying. things are crystal clear for her right now. the most important things remain, and the extemporaneous disappear. her mom found out just a short month ago that she had terminal cancer and given about two months to live. so now, every day, my friend watches her mother degenerate little by little.

i know this feeling.

i know it too well. these women, our moms. feisty, full of life and laughter. brilliant. sharp minded. and then one day they face their mortality and we who love them, hold them and walk to death's door with them.

psalm 23 - though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will not fear. You are with me.

death is a shadow. and yet, we never feel more alive. the air feels thicker, breathing becomes the most important issue. saying the right things at the right times. releasing, healing, blessing, nurturing, soothing...

i can promise you today that my friend is not worried about whether her house is clean. she is not worried about what next year will bring, or whether she will have enough money or not. my friend is watching her mother breathe while she sleeps and thanking God for every single one of those breaths.

the day will come when her mom will not be here. she will have taken all of her secret recipes and unspoken wisdom to the grave. and my friend will change forever. she will not quickly fight the petty battles that we all find ourselves in, she will remember when Jesus came to take her mom home. she will be grateful for life. and determined to live it.

it has been seven years now. and i must remember this. it is not about my bank account or my comfortable, immaculate home.

it is about every day, EVERY DAY, living with purpose and clarity. every day fiercely extracting the essence of our destiny and deciding to not get bogged down in the menial.

we learn in these pains. it is like backwards pregnancy. and we coach them to their final rest. naked i came from my mothers womb and naked i will return.

so it doesn't really matter does it? does it matter if i have the best clothes, the nicest house, the cutest kids?

in the end what really matters?

love.

that is it

and i need to be reminded. without love i am nothing.

not just love that comes in our western, squishy, watered down, tolerate everything sort of package.

i mean the real stuff. the stuff that sacrifices, the stuff that gets into the deepest places of peoples messes and pain and sits down to say "tell me where it hurts, and let's get you out of here".

and the love that stays even when it is hard and there is conflict. it is the love that says sorry, and means it.

and this is the love that we know when we say "turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace."

Jesus

He stepped out of His royal place in heaven stepped into our mess of a world and said, "i will make this right".

I betray Him every time i worry. i reject Him every time i resist and refuse His grace. and i ignore Him when i turn peripheral things into primary.

forgive me.

so, this is my confession and my resolution - to catch worry and fear when it comes crashing in, and to spend my life on love.

so help me God

dad's on the front porch

We just finished a great week of meetings with one of my favourite people: Jim Anderson, from Spokane. He was here this week to speak to our class. This man has dedicated his life to instructing a generation about God's view on sexuality and His heart for women.

He is like a floodlight in a dusty room. He begins to speak about the heart of a woman and I sit there, thinking "how on earth does he know that stuff? I can barely verbalize what is going on in the recesses of my heart and here he is pressing on all these tender spots!" He will say things like "women are wired for security, safety, permanence, and commitment."

and he is right. we may resist those old fashioned boxes, but we will all prove in time that these are indeed the greatest longings of our heart. We try to pretend that we don't need commitment, but we fight every time a relationship starts to keep from blurting out "where are we going with this? are you going to stick around?"

even if some hide it better than others, if we were really honest we would have to say we will not give our deepest selves unless we are safe.

anyway that is not really what i wanted to say. but it is important.

what i did want to say was that Jim told a story once that really left an impression on me.

He was outside one day and he heard his girls (2 of the 6 that he has) crying. He ran around the corner to hear them say "dad, those boys were throwing rocks at us". He went running after the boys and with his pointer finger out he said "WERE YOU THROWING ROCKS AT MY DAUGHTERS?"

I bet those boys wet their pants.

Then he went on to say that if dads would spend more time on their porches, their girls would be safer and boys would not be free to throw rocks at them.

and that is one of the main tragedies of our modern society. there are not enough dads protecting their daughters, and not enough men teaching young men how they should behave.

so rocks are thrown, hearts are broken a hundred times over and young people are left to figure it out on their own.

it was never meant to be that way.

God placed the older to teach the younger. to lead, guide and model what real adulthood looks like.

i have confessed my love for porches in earlier entries. so let me add this...i love porches with dad's on them, ready to chase and train the next generation.

i shudder to think that my girls would feel like an object to be used, or preyed on. and i can promise you the words that would come from my husband.... "over my dead body".

a girl without the voice of a father is left to fill her heart with the glances of a thousand men. and it will never satisfy. only love, permanence and acceptance for who we are will create an atmosphere where we can be who we were truly made to be.

it is like my little girls now. they love running around the house naked, it cracks them up. it cracks me up too, i am sure you can imagine. they are free, they are loved, they are not ashamed or afraid.

this confidence comes from their surroundings. they are safe. they are loved. they are delighted in.

and while we will not encourage that naked behaviour forever (ok, ok, we will teach them manners, i guess), i do pray that the security they feel here will cause them to run into life with the same boldness that they run around our house with now.

i wish i could stand on my roof and shout "DAD'S! GO OUTSIDE AND PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND YOU! we need you so desperately. teach your sons to honour and protect, teach your daughters to walk in purity and confidence."

i think we should all get busy building porches again. i am more and more convinced that the fall of every great civilization starts when people get rid of their front porches.

did the romans have porches? see? i rest my case. goodnight.

gratitude

the older i get, the more i am convinced. gratitude is the key to all longevity, and mental wellness.

it is the cure for familiarity, entitlement, disappointment, discouragement, self-pity, anger, jealousy, apathy and anxiety. there are more, but that should cover most of the things that ail us.

think about it.

we are robbed by ungratefulness. when we feel we deserve more, we get angry or disappointed - it a gratitude issue. maybe this why David said "it is better to be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of the wicked". (Ps. 84:10)

he was just glad to be there. so it makes me wonder...am i?

why do i hesitate to give my heart?

why do i withhold time, affection, attention because i forgot what it was like to feel like i was on the outside looking in. am i still grateful for all that He has done for me?

do i still have a heart for the lonely, now that i am not lonely?

do i still have a heart for the aching heart, now that my heart is not aching?

and to these questions i would say, it depends on how grateful i am.

but i also learned in those seasons of loneliness, and aching that i needed to be grateful - not for what i had, but because of who He is. His love never fails, it never gives up. even when i didn't see my circumstances changing, it was still my job to be grateful. and if i couldn't thank Him for the things i couldn't see, there is no way i would have been grateful when i could see them.

there were days that it was so hard, that i literally just said "thank you that i have feet".

i couldn't think of anything else, but i KNEW  i needed to be grateful. so, sometimes it was feet. and even still - some people don't even have feet, and they still have to be grateful. that is what makes them heroes to the rest of us who have everything and we are still unhappy.

the worst thing is, try to tell a room full of 18-25 year olds that this is truth, but if they are not grateful to receive the truth, it cannot set them free.

i feel my own conviction kicking in here...i have been overwhelmed this week. of course i am grateful to be pregnant, but i am starting to imagine trying to wrangle four children under 3 when these little bundles arrive sometime in the late spring. and i am telling myself, as i am writing to the big blogging world, that He will not give us more than we can handle and i have to fight to stay in a place of gratitude and away from anxiety and fear.

i am thankful tonight, not just for my feet, but for the other 5 sets of feet that now make up the Harvey family.

overtaken

i laugh a bit when i see the title of my last post. and forgive me for not writing sooner, you see, a few days after i posted about being overtaken by blessings, i found out that i am pregnant....with twins.

i just can't stop laughing.

i am totally overwhelmed, overtaken, over my head, over the top. just over all over.

if you read my blog, or know me at all, you must know that there were many days that i didn't think that we would ever know what it was to have one child. and now! we are going to have FOUR!

i was praying one day and asking for new strength in our waiting season - and the Lord told me "i don't waste money". that may sound a little too earthly for the Lord of the universe to say - but listen. we didn't pay ONE DIME for our in vitro process. we were given every cent - and let me tell you it is expensive. so when He said that he doesn't waste money, i think what He meant was - "lots of people trusted me, and believed that I would do this for you, so i am not going to let that investment go to waste"

so if you gave us any money, or prayed for us even once - you can just join in the laugh and the blessing - we have all of you to thank.

our brains are exploding with logistics and planning. but our dreams are coming true - and we have a new mini-van to prove it.

i will resume more blogging when i am not so blooming tired. all this blooming is exhausting.

goodnight.

come upon and overtake you

i used to claim this promise...in deuteronomy 28:1-2 

¹ “Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. ² All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God"


and now...my goodness, it has happened. 


I am overtaken with toys and noise and a bustling house. and there is not a day that goes by that i don't remember the emptiness, the hollow sound of loneliness. The crying, the hoping, wishing and dreaming.

it is the simple things: I used to have cold feet in my little single bed, all night long. and now, i have a warm husband to tuck my cold feet under - and he is even a willing victim!

and my kiddo's...they want me, they need me, they delight in me. and they are the delight of my heart. we were so grateful to be married, but we missed little footsteps in fuzzy jammies running all over our house.

and now, every morning, i hear the "da, da, da, whooooo" from alina, and the "mommy, come and get-choo" from emma. (this is what we taught her to do as an alternative to crying until we came for her in the morning. we actually told her to say "mommy, daddy, come and get me" but she came up with her own version)

it is so hard to wait, so, so hard to wait. but what happened? He made it all beautiful in His time.

nothing is the same.

car rides are not the same. alina has "joy spasms" which means that out of no where she just yells until she  gags herself. she is not mad, or crying, she is just "singing". emma doesn't appreciate it, so she joins in with her own blood curdling scream - and we drive, somewhat helpless because alina doesn't understand Shhhh. and Emma doesn't really understand that alina does things that she is not allowed to do.

so we just have to laugh. it is our blessing, coming upon us and overtaking us. and making us deaf.

and i might as well tell you that we have another one coming.

yes, that means three under three by next summer.

My God, help me. running after these promises is a lot of work!

and now i am running with morning sickness and a crazy kind of tiredness.

but i wouldn't trade it for the world, no i wouldn't.

my tsunami of promises, that is how i see it. it is abundant and beautiful. and again, i am so grateful.

(if you are waiting for your promises - hang in there - and in the meantime...sleep. because when they come you may never sleep again!)