Seven haikus about a birthday

Today is the day

I first breathed two years ago:

God has plans for me.

My teacher hugs me –

There’s a big loving fuss and

We eat cupcakes – yum.

Mom’s big College boys

Sing to me but it’s too loud –

I hide my face – cry.

So many love me:

I have prezzies and cuzzies –

Smiles and warm fuzzies.

Despite drizzle they

Party! Sing! I cry (again) –

Too much attention.

We go for a spin –

Wind in my face I’m laughing –

Life has just begun.

Sunday morning sun

And my party aftermath –

I play quietly.

The turning tide of turning two

My baby,

This week you will be two.

I’m treasuring all the baby things about you even as they slip out with the tide of your infancy. Every nappy I change. Every wide-awake night because actually I love your patter down the passage with your green blankie and your back-to-back sleepy snuggling in our bed and your ‘Where’s Dad?’ when you realise he’s not in the bed anymore because your kicking has kept him awake and he has opted for the bunk bed and Eeyore (who doesn’t kick).

I treasure how you bury your face drowsy-quiet-shy in my neck because I am your safe place. I treasure how you exasperate me with your uncontrollable running-laughing-naughtiness because you are my wild freedom. I treasure how you wake up early like me and how you look at me with Dad’s eyes and how you laugh when Noddy gets knocked over by the skittles. I treasure how you hug Cammy after your sleep and how your brother-bond grows tighter every time you mimic his (questionable) table manners.

Standing on this wet metaphorical sand with less and less of your baby-ness washing over my feet I can hardly remember me before you. You’ve made me feel completely me because of how completely you are you.

You might be interested one day to know what this turning tide was washing up on the world’s shores, the week you turned two. America is two months away from a presidential election. The Pope is urging Arab leaders to work for peace in the Middle East. There’s violence on the mines around Rustenburg. Yesterday the Springboks lost to the All Blacks. Quite possibly the waves will be washing up the same stuff twenty years from now.

As for us:

This evening God made the most incredible sunset. It rained through late orange smudgy light. Then the rain stopped and the sun was dusky translucence through bright wet fresh air. We ate supper early and the candlelight matched the sky. You were grumpy because you wanted to bath but there was still pretty much perfect peace.

I’ve just started my last term at St Alban’s College and I’m up-and-down with happy-sad dreams and tears as I watch for the bright buds of a new season full of goodbyes.

Your strong brave Dad works too hard, loves you unimaginably, makes me laugh every day, feels things more deeply than most, and today finished waterproofing the roof.

Cam is the best big brother in the universe. Here are some things he asked me this week:

‘How do my words come out of my mouth in my voice?’

‘How does God make pepper?’

‘As a special treat, can I get Scott a set of jumper cables for his birthday?’

‘Can I make Scott a hot-bubblegum-and-peach pudding?’

He takes ages to finish his food because he doesn’t stop talking. The other night I said, ‘Not a word until you’ve had three more bites!’ A few silent bites later he yelled ecstatically, ‘A word!’ Then he added, ‘Actually I had four bites so now I can say lots of words!’

The tide will turn and keep turning and I don’t know what will wash up on your beaches and what will wash away. There’s so much I want to say – but there will be other birthdays. Tonight, my prayer for you, Scott Gideon Reyburn, my mighty hero, is that you will love Jesus with all your life. That you will be an arrow shot straight to claim Kingdom territory. That God will unwrap his plans for you and use you to touch countless lives. I pray that you would live the words of the song we sing in the car sometimes:

Dare to be a Daniel

Dare to stand alone

Dare to have a purpose firm

Dare to make it known.

All my love,

Mom

xx

 Stories and muffins with Lola and Heather (Aunty 'Nook)

Doctor Cam in his theatre garb. And his red galoshes.

God’s glory in grease, love days and other stories

Sticking to the theme… sort of

Like nerds we’ve been doing a weekly theme with the boys. (Because I need help. When I’ve exhausted all possible playing and climbing and riding options I panic.) It’s pretty random: we’ve had pirates, swimming, tepees, gymnastics, birds, fruit (seeded and of-the-Spirit), and this week, Greece. We mainly picked Greece as an excuse for Murray and me to bask in memories of Skiathos and Naxos, and so that I could make us souvlaki and tzatziki in pita, which the boys weren’t interested in eating. Cam said he’d rather have a fried egg. He told his OT the next day that it counted as food from Greece because the egg was, in fact, quite greasy.

Just the two of us

The boys have been at home with me for most of my August holiday. But one day this week I sent Cam to school and kept Scott home. The next day I sent Scott and kept Cam. I wanted them each to have a special-alone-love day.

Things I’ll treasure:

Scott and I ran errands, played iPad-iPad and went to the park. He picked two Namaqualand daisies. He sniffed them, enraptured. (Well, he blew on them. That’s how he sniffs things.) He clutched them ‘til they were squashed and sweaty and he wouldn’t relinquish them even at sleep time.

Cam and I built things in the playroom, had Milo at the Wimpy and read The Enchanted Wood. We got to the part where they meet Saucepan Man, who doesn’t hear very well. So like, Jo will say, ‘What is that?’ and the Saucepan Man will say, ‘Cat? I don’t see any cat! What cat?’ It goes on like this for chapters. Cam got the serious contagious giggles every time and we laughed so hard we had to stop reading to compose ourselves.

Extra miles and miles and miles

Yesterday we drove miles and miles through busy rainy streets to Prinshof School for the Blind. Two of Cam’s future HCS teachers went miles of extra miles and came with us to look, listen, learn. The people at Prinshof went miles and miles to affirm, suggest, equip. They are so excited that Cam is giving mainstream schooling a try. They want to support us, for miles of altruistic miles. My folks went miles and miles to keep Cam happy on the jungle gyms so that we could talk about the difficult things without him. We visited the preschool class. The teacher and her assistant are going miles and miles to floodlight the black or blurry worlds of the bright lives in their care so that they can go miles and miles, too.

Scott van Gogh

This morning Scott ate his Tennis biscuit into the shape of a pig and then did excellent snort-snort noises. Seriously, I think that’s amazing. It’s like Michelangelo sculpting the Pieta and then doing performance poetry. Just sayin’.

Scared

One rainy afternoon this week we were blanket-burrowing on the couch and Cam suddenly swallowed tears and said:  ‘I’m scared of dying.’ And I thought, I’m scared of messing this up because this is one of those moments he might remember forever and I’m unsuspecting and unprepared and unsophisticated. So I went with my gut which said: Hug… hug. Pray. Talk. Talk some more. Hug. Hope… that perfect love will cast out all fear. (1 John 4:18)

Four more Celebrating Life suggestions

On Friday afternoon the boys were pretending that the jungle gym was hurtling through space. I watered the garden. Cam asked me something about rocket ships and exhaust fumes. Mesmerized by the hose, I took a while to answer. He got frustrated. ‘Mom please answer me! I don’t know everything like you and Jesus!’

Which made me laugh a lot.

I’m so glad I can leave knowing everything to Jesus. Four things I do know for sure:

1.       There are still some free copies of Purposeful Parenting at Bayleaf. Quick!

2.       This is a cool post – about a dad and his daughters.

3.       This might make you cry – from a mom to her sons.

4.       If you’re a Christian woman (or if you’re not – whatever), you should check out the launch issue of Radiant Magazine. Like Esther preparing for the king it’s been a year or so in the making. Now it’s here and worth the wait! I’m honoured (and super chuffed) to be one of the feature writers. This from the editor, Nicole Cameron: ‘Radiant offers everything that traditional glossies do – from thought-provoking features and insight on relevant issues through to fashion, food and décor – with one key difference: it is written from a Christian world view.’

 OT with Aunty Manty

Story time: Scott and his Ma-mee-ra (Maria)

FREE BOOKS if you live near(ish) me

If you like good coffee and you’re an imperfect parent and you live in Pretoria then this Celebrating Life giveaway is for you.

I’d love you to have a copy of the best parenting book I’ve read.

And I’ve read some. The problem with most of them is that they leave me feeling confused or condemned. As in, wooden spoon? No wooden spoon? Or like: What?! You mean you actually used a wooden spoon?

Jaci Mun-Gavin is a friend of a friend. We haven’t met but we’ve chatted briefly on facebook. She’s a qualified robotics engineer and fulltime mom to her six kids. (Yip. Six.)  So, she’s pretty awesome. So is her blog.

Purposeful Parenting is Jaci’s first book. I recently devoured it. It’s like having coffee and a conversation. She (quickly) covers the crucial theory then plunges into practicalities. She is real about the overwhelming challenges of parenting. She is also real about how incredibly God has equipped us. She offers hope and humour, comfort and conviction, encouragement and inspiration. You’ll find yourself affirmed, as in, ‘Cool! I thought I was the only one insisting my kids do that!’ And enthused, as in, ‘What a brilliant idea! Why didn’t we think of that?’

So, go to Bayleaf in Cliffendale Drive. Sit. Relax. Have a cappuccino. Ask for a copy of Purposeful Parenting and it’s yours for free. (Just the book. Not the coffee.) There are 15 copies available. If stocks run dry (or if you’re reading this on another continent), have a cappuccino anyway and get busy ordering it here or here (Kindle).

FYI – there’s nothing in it for me. There’s definitely something in it for you. All I ask is that you pay it forward. Read it then give it to anyone with kids under the age of 10. You’ll be doing the human race a favour.

Enjoy! 

God’s glory in rice crispies, marriage proposals and loving the homeless

I saw God’s glory a lot this week. It looked something like this:

Monday

Knowing the answer, I ask Cam anyway, ‘Do you want milk with your rice crispies?’ And he says, ‘No thanks Mom. The snapping sound sometimes annoys me.’ He only ever wants sugar. Lots of it. Every day I sprinkle a little less, hoping to wean him. There’s no fooling him. ‘Mom, is there sugar in my rice crispies? I can’t hear it crunching.’ Ah well. Praise God for heightened senses.

Angelina is the homeless-jobless-schizophrenic lady who lives in our street. Everyone knows her. Everyone accepts that she spends her time lounging on the manicured lawns of our shady suburb. She irritates me. She yells at our gate for coffee. She freaks me out because she jabbers and gesticulates madly to imaginary people. She’s dirty. Scott loves her. He’s playing on the driveway, seeing with God’s eyes. He calls to her across the street and waves and smiles, ‘Ha-wo An-geena!’ And he shames me because Jesus died for Angelina, too. I make her coffee.

Tuesday

Cam starts acting up. We’re going camping tomorrow. He’s excited at the prospect of sleeping bags and camp fires but still the tantrums erupt. We’re starting to see a pattern. This happens every time we go away. He wants to stay in his pyjamas. He asks if he can pack some of his treasures (like an alarm clock, a plastic ball and a lanyard from a conference). We ask questions and the truth tumbles out in tears. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t know what the place will look like. Ironically, we talk him blindly through the imminent future with Deo volente confidence.

Wednesday

We drive north for an hour or so, to a game reserve. It’s not all the internet swore it would be. The boys see this as a bonus. The long delay at the gate because there’s no credit card machine and we have no cash simply means they each get another sucker while we wait in the shade. A flat tyre means helping Dad do guy stuff. A bright green pool of algae just means more bugs to catch, more leaves to scoop. Monkeys eating rusks in our tent is just cool.

Scott wants to hug every animal we see. He’s leaning out the windows, arms open wide – ‘Hug! Hug zebra!’ I’m strangling him with his t-shirt, trying to restrain him. We drive back to our camp with the sun red and dusty over the bushveld and peace seeps slowly in with the darkness. Lying in our beds we listen to the night. Cam asks, ‘Dad what’s that bird?’ Murray says, ‘Fiery-necked nightjar.’ Cam says, ‘Oh. It sounds like Grampa’s phone.’ Which it does because my dad, keen birder that he is, has the nightjar’s call as his ringtone.

(We also forget that we are supposed to be having supper at Murray’s folks tonight. And there’s God’s glory in their subsequent forgiveness!)

Thursday

We’re busying ourselves with breakfast and morning ablutions. Scott is calling us calling us calling us. Eventually I go to him. He’s saying ‘Wino! Wino! Wino!’ And there it is. A rhino. Twenty metres away.

We get home, chuffed that the boys’ feet are filthy as they should be. We scrub them back into respectability because their much-adored Uncle Lachlan is bringing beautiful Analia for dinner. We can’t wait to meet her. The guest room is immaculate for her. (The playroom sleeper couch is a mess for him.) While she’s upstairs showering he tells us hush-hush that he’s proposing tomorrow and we do silent ecstatic screams and then pretend all evening to know nothing. Wow. God’s glory in fairy tale romances and dreams come true.

At some point over lasagne or ice-cream Lachlan reminds us that the Mandarin word for crisis is made up of the symbols for danger and opportunity. And I think, God shows his glory in language and in the curveballs of life.

Friday

Cam and I visit Eugene and his mom, Marjeanne. Eugene is also visually impaired, and a mini-superhero. Marjeanne chats to me about mainstream schooling and magnifiers and the strange magnificence that comes with disability. She puts wind in my sails.

Saturday

I get to go to a birthday breakfast and a ladies’ retreat while Murray makes tepees and totem poles in the garden with Chief Running Bear (Cam) and his sidekick White Eagle (Scott). God shows his glory in the loving sacrifice of a husband who might quite love to be out on his mountain bike but who gladly loves instead his little tribe of pretend-pretend Indians.

Tonight I’m thinking, I love that we can celebrate God in these glimpses of his goodness. But in a way it’s even more thrilling for me to think that maybe tonight somewhere over a dark ocean a storm will rage. No one but God will know or see. And he will take his glory. Maybe tonight somewhere in a dark sleeping house a tired desperate patient tender mom or dad will get up to hold a baby. No one but God will know or see. And he will take his glory.

‘God is the only being in all of existence who can be said to possess inherent glory. We don’t give it to Him; it is His by virtue of who He is. If no one ever gave God any praise, He would still be the glorious God that He is, because He was glorious before any beings were created to worship Him… His glory is His being – simply the sum of what He is, regardless of what we do or do not do in recognition of it.’ – John MacArthur

‘God’s glory is the visible splendour or moral beauty of God’s manifold perfections. The “glory” of God is the exhibition of His inherent excellence; it is the external manifestation of His internal majesty. To “glorify God” is to declare, draw attention to, or publicly announce and advertise His glory… Glory is the beauty of God unveiled! Glory is the resplendent radiance of His power and His personality. Glory is all of God that makes God, God, and shows Him to be worthy of our praise and our boasting and our trust and our hope and our confidence and our joy! Glory is the external elegance of the internal excellencies of God. Glory is what you see and experience and feel when God goes public with His beauty!’ – Sam Storms 

 (You just never know when you're going to need a good pumpkin outfit.)

Why you should totally get kids

Some people have kids they didn’t want. Some people want kids but can’t have. Some people love their kids. Some people leave their kids.

I’m not being flippant about the massive undertaking of parenthood, or about the gut-wrenching dream-shattering pain of those who ache for kids of their own. I’ve just been thinking about it because our cell group has been wading through the sometimes straightforward, mostly mysterious book of Genesis. This week we looked at the whole ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing. Which raised the question, ‘Is God commanding us to have kids? Like, is it a sin if you don’t?’ Apparently it comes down to grammar. In the Hebrew, Genesis 2:28 is an imperative not a command. In English that’s the same thing, but apparently in Hebrew it’s not. In Hebrew it’s sort of a blessing. So choosing not to have kids is not a sin. There are compelling, godly, out-of-our-hands reasons not to have kids. Of course, there are selfish reasons too.

Here are six ways (of many) that we’ve received the be-fruitful-and-multiply blessing, which has turned me into a card-carrying advocate for welcoming small people to the world.

Kids are about relationships. We’re only four and a bit years into the parenting journey, but I am daily amazed by the power and the beauty of the baby relationships brewing under our roof. When Scott drags me into the lounge to dance it speaks to something in the deepest places of my humanity. We’re made to connect with other warm bodies. (Like, as I type this Murray is hiding behind a curtain in the lounge and the boys are looking for him. Riotous.)

I do so want Cam and Scott to unravel the strings of potential embedded in their DNA. I suppose every mom is chuffed when her kids are achievers in the traditional sense, but I really hope to shape a different world view for my boys. I hope to teach them that life is not distinctions and accolades and promotions. Life is character and rich experiences and more than anything deep, healthy relationships. If they are labelled as average in every measurable discipline but exceptional in people-loving and difference-making and life-changing then I hope that they will know the satisfaction of true success. The eternal investments we make in other people are, after all, the only thing that counts in the end.

Kids are about riches. If we had five bucks for every time the boys made us laugh we could probably buy a small developing country. I gave Cam timeout the other day for being cheeky. He kept talking and his trouble was growing. I advised him to keep quiet until his timeout was over and he had calmed down. I had to stifle my giggles at his swooning melodrama: ‘But Mom if I don’t talk I will be voiceless forever!’

And then there are the heavy nuggets of heart-gold, like Scott using a four-word sentence for the first time this week. Or just watching them both at the kitchen counter, mesmerized by cheese rolls after church every Sunday. And when they climb on me for random hugs in between playing cars on the carpet. Cha-CHING. Rich, I tell you.

Kids are about reaching. I hope that how we love our kids will be an image – a nebulous reminder, if nothing else – of how God loves us. As in, unconditionally despite our mess. And maybe a cynical someone watching and doubting will be drawn to Jesus. Kids are about the Kingdom.

Kids are about reality. They bring quiddity like nothing else. They are ecstasy and grief with limbs. Like, last week, Cam had a really bad day. He ran into a glass door. He smacked into two different car side-mirrors in a parking lot. He missed a step and fell. When this happens he doesn’t lash out with tantrums. He pretends he’s fine. He goes quiet and hopes no one sees. And bits of my heart just break off when his voice is sad and whispery: ‘Mom, why do I keep bumping into things?’ The next day I thought I’d make French toast for breakfast. I lumped some butter in a pan. Cam was on the other side of the house. ‘Mom!’ he shouted, ‘I smell butter melting!’ Which is just astounding. And not sad at all.

Kids are about reality, and reality is about the strange symbiosis of triumph and setback. Scott drank juice from a cup this week. Wow, I thought. Then he dunked his chips in it. Oops, I thought. He’s learned to drink from a cup because he watches his big brother. Same thing with the chips. I guess that’s how we roll.

Kids are about reliance. They keep you down to earth, and close to God. They’re born with chisels to chip off your pride. They take you quickly to the end of yourself, where you are left with two choices: strong drugs, or total dependence on God.

On Thursday I went to the post office. To cut short a long story about a long queue, I couldn’t contain Scott. The slowly snaking line of silent, polite people who avoided all eye contact and have clearly never encountered a screaming laughing running toddler wild with curiosity eventually took me to a teller. Who then disappeared. Along with what was left of my sense of humour. I now had Scott on the floor pinned between my legs, red and yelling (both of us). Cam yelled also: ‘Can someone please help my Mom!’

At supper that night Cam asked me for all the Afrikaans words for the fruit of the Spirit. (Yes. Freaky.) I felt The Nudge, gagged on some pride and asked their forgiveness for not displaying said fruit in the post office.

This week I also gave away our baby things. Sounds arbitrary, but it was kind of sad, and another opportunity to trust God to take me through the seasons. To remember that he is my everything.

Kids are about redeployment. Of self. (And sleep.) I guess sacrifice is the hardest part of the blessing. But there’s nothing more beautiful than people who forget themselves in the tender nurture of others, to God’s glory. I hope I get it right sometimes.