Of truth and grace and boys and blade runners

At breakfast we talk in grownup code. But Cam cracks it and says he remembers Oscar. He ran a race on the TV. Did Oscar hurt himself running too fast in a race, Cam asks. Murray explains about legs and blades and things. Cam is all wow and smiling like there’s kindred congenital defect comprehension. I say how actually Oscar is in jail because something terrible happened and he shot at his girlfriend and they are trying to find out if he did it on purpose or if it was a mistake and either way we need to pray for Oscar because either way he needs Jesus and Jesus forgives and there’s always truth and grace. Cam screws up his eyes – looks hard through the air. Because he’s into goodies and baddies and black and white and this is a tough one.

At supper there’s a lot of tomato sauce and silliness while the world stands still to hear the verdict of bail or no bail and the nation is reeling and accusations fly and support bolsters. And all I can think is but for the grace, but for the grace go I and these boys so little-innocent and so deeply afflicted with the human condition just like their mother. I’m wet-cloth wiping the supper mess and praying quite desperate that these boys of mine will live life the way they want it tweeted and that these tomato-saucey fingers will cling to truth and grace, truth and grace. 

God’s glory in thunder and burnt mince

Dusk and the sky is rumbling. Cam is all bedtime ecstasy. Scott is tears and terror: ‘Mommy! Switch off thunder!’ I say how only Jesus can switch off thunder. Murray comes home and the party moves to our bedroom. Four people, one duvet. He reads Snowstorm and it kind of matches the moment though it’s tamer than it sounds. Cam asks how long does it take in an aeroplane to Europe and can we go play in the snow? Scott hugs my head. Cam giggles – snuggles – says it feels like Christmas Eve. I’m starving and the mince is catching on the stove. We’ll eat when Jesus has switched off the thunder and Murray has switched off the light. I don’t care about burnt mince ‘cause I’m cosy-drowsy on a queen-sized patch of the planet under the covers with the three biggest landowners of the tracts of my heart.

Keep Calm and Take Courage: Cameron and Scott’s Book of Brave

Dear Cam and Scott

If I had to pick one word to sum up all the things I pray for you it would be courage.

Courage to stand up and be counted for Jesus when the rest of the world is laughing him off.

Courage to stand up for the downtrodden, the different, the teased.

Courage to stand up for yourself when you are the downtrodden, the different, the teased.

Courage to choose your attitude and your actions.

Courage to treat a lady with dignity and grace. Courage to be gentle and strong. Courage to put her needs above yours. Courage to get the hell out of there when the world is telling you to get naked. Courage to wait for her at the end of the aisle.

Courage to choose friends who honour God when the world is telling you to run with the pack.

Courage to face your potential and get busy living it. Courage to adventure and risk and dare to live fully.

Courage to drop the burdens in prayer and to worship in the storms and take up the easy yoke in a difficult world.

Courage to be like your Dad.

That’s what I pray. Courage.

Just a note – courage doesn’t mean there won’t fear. And courage doesn’t mean macho, it means moral. And also, courage is always going to be the path of most resistance.

So, we’ve started your own Book of Brave. We’ll write down the fears and we’ll pray. We’ll make memories of your braveness – all the times you chose courage above what was easy or popular or less embarrassing.

Love you my bears,

Mom

Xx

PS: I got the courage journal idea from a girl I was at school with. She’s now a super-mom and a super-blogger on the other side of the world, and I think she’s just great. 

Don’t settle for less than beautiful and delicious

Dear Cam and Scott

Bits of your childhood break off like candy floss. They float – sweet colour sticky – around the house and in the air and cling wispy gluey yum to my heart.

Cam, you say you want to be a beekeeper and a poet. You could also be a Maker-Upper of New Words. Like ‘ka-momma-late’. Which you made up. You use it facetiously and it kind of means nominate commandingly. As in, ‘Mom, I kamommalate you to go and bath now.’ Don’t ever ever stop making up words and stories and sticky fluffy imaginings that melt on the tongue. Don’t ever stop talking out your thoughts – oh, your wife will be grateful, as I am. You express your joys and frustrations like succinct slices of sweet and sour life. The other day you dawdled beneath my feet busy in the kitchen. Quietly, chuffed you said: ‘One day I’m going to be a wonderful dad to my children.’ My feet stopped rushing and stood happy still. Like father like son.

Scott, you are the wunderkind of soft affection and dizzying energy. Don’t ever ever stop being amazed by clouds and breakfast muffins and your teacher and baby cows and chickens and ants and collecting stones from pathways. I love how you offer to help carry heavy things and how you relinquish a book when Cam asks you nicely. Our far-too-early morning puzzle-building and crepuscular don’t-wake-Dad coffee-making are pre-breakfast sugar to my soul.

I know candy floss is ethereal. You’ll grow out of it and into the meatier stuff of life. But you don’t have to lose your sense of wonder, not ever. Don’t settle. Not now and not when you’re older. Don’t settle for safe or beige or bland (even if safe, beige and bland are also lucrative). Reach for the kaleidoscope and the tang that explodes from your gifts.  

I’m trusting you’ll read this at a time in the future when you need it most. Because life will try to drench your candy floss – leave you soggy and dreamless and disappointed. Remember then that there’s more for you and that God ‘is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more that we might ask or think.’ (Eph. 3:20)

All my love

Mom

xx

 Scott and Kyle... up to no good at Irene Dairy...

Ctrl-Alt-Del: A letter about change, doubt, failure and faith

Dear Scott

Your first swimming lesson was an unadulterated disaster. You screamed and sobbed until I wrenched you from the terrors of the pool. In my head I was frantically going Ctrl-Z Ctrl-Z Ctrl-Z! And when that didn’t work Ctrl-Alt-Del. So you could shut down the fear and reboot your unbridled love for water (which was why we took you to swimming lessons in the first place).

I’m also praying Ctrl-Alt-Del over your first two strangely unsettling weeks back at preschool. I’m keeping you home some days – trying to get the proverbial roots-and-wings balance just right for you, my little man, but I doubt my decisions all the time. The irony is that the start of this year has been harder for you than it has been for Cam, despite the enormity and significance of his Grade 00 debut.

And then of course my system is still reconfiguring after the Ctrl-Alt-Del of my career. I’ve been intrigued by the reactions to my shut down and restart. Some people are excited for me – for Cam and you – for Dad – for this new season – and they watch expectantly for God in the newness. Some presume me into a mould I don’t easily own because I suck at the stereotype, artsy-craftsy-mom stuff. Some are worried – like, when will I start teaching again? Because I’m wasting my time and my talent and they don’t get what I’m doing. Then there are the naysayers – who say, ‘Nay! You’ll be bored. You’ll be back. You won’t have the stamina to finish with you've started.’ And then there are the dark bits in me that ooze doubt and steal my fight. The bits that say I won’t be taken seriously – won’t get to the goals – won’t pay any bills. And worst of all: the bit that says if I fail you both as a mom I won’t have the convenient excuse of a career.

But here’s where this is all landing for me.

The other night you were thundering away on Uncle Gav’s drums. Then you ran into the lounge – ‘Hello!’ – all grinning and flirty and looking, well, pleased as punch. So I said, ‘Hello! Are you pleased as punch?’ And you said, pointing to your gorgeous chubby tum-tum, ‘No Mom. Scott.’ And that’s just it. You’re you – with your custom-made hardware. Impossible-to-pirate software. I don’t ever want to damage your courage or program you into something or someone God doesn’t intend you to be. (We’ll try swimming lessons again in September.) Beneath the doubt that comes with change, and the failure that comes from trying new things, there’s always faith. Faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross – that ultimate reformatting of the human hard drive. Faith that he has programs for each of us to write. Faith that he will strengthen and restore and establish us even when things crash or freeze or the anti-virus stuff expires. Faith that he is powerful to push Ctrl-Alt-Del on preconceived ideas and hurt and imperfection. I trust this for your journey, as much as I hope that I, and others, might believe it for mine.

And don’t you ever forget, Scott Gideon, in the swimming pool and the classroom and everywhere: ‘Mighty hero, the Lord is with you! … Go with the strength you have.’ (Judges 6)

All my love to you, amazing boy,

Mom

xx

Stones from the Jordan: A day of triumph

Dear Cam

This is the altar I’m setting up to remember yesterday. Like what Joshua did when the Israelites crossed the Jordan to the plains of Jericho. Because yesterday you crossed a Jordan River that some told us you never would and I saw God’s hand on you – the same hand that stopped the water and dried the ground and is bigger than blindness.

I was meant to stay at school with you this week, to get you properly comfortable. Yesterday morning in your new stripy green t-shirt from PEP, you said, ‘Mom, I think you just need to come for one day. Just for today. And you can just stay ‘til mid-morning. Then you must go.’

I stayed for an hour. By which time it was abundantly clear that I, profoundly relieved, was utterly redundant. You played-raced-built-chattered-climbed-lined-up – brimming and smiling and quietly independent. (Super keen, you asked, ‘When can we start working?’)

You were still painting when I fetched you. The others had finished – water-colour stick-men with definite limbs and heads and stuff. You were painting the playground. One completely-green painted-wet sheet of your imaginings. You go, boy! The limbs and heads will come. I’m thrilled that you made a playground. You didn’t see me so I watched you for a bit in your big plastic apron. Intent on the green and the brush and the just-so of your enormous piece of grass – you looked so, so happy. You were glad to see me and said what a great day you’d had. ‘I did everything Teacher Karen asked me to do!’

Then last-minute we joined some other moms and kids at Zita Park. I was busy with Scott’s sun cream and you were gone. Up the hill. Down the water slide – splash – back up – down – splash – back up. Over and over. On your own. With only two tantrums: once when you couldn’t find me and needed a t-shirt. And once for a thorn you thought was a bee. I try and imagine what it’s really like for you. Your contact lenses are useless through those little misty goggles. You’re in a strange rowdy blurry splashing place. Tons of shrieking kids. Dozens of moms who could be me with dark hair or ponytails or bouncing blonde toddlers. My instinctive habitual I’m-here-Cam mantra isn’t always loud enough or close enough. Yet you were all calm courage and fun while Ben played shark-shark with me and Scott blinking ecstatic through the chlorine.

This morning while you negotiated Pronutro for the first time (because you’re building up your big-school strength and it’s Probably The Most Nutritious Cereal in the World) I asked if you were excited for Day 2. You said yes you were, then added, ‘On Day 1 I didn’t really get a chance to help anyone.’ Well, I said, maybe today’s your day. Talk about the blind leading the… Well, it’s just that you’re a miracle-paradox of the God-life. Your weakness shows his strength in you.

Fifteen years ago Aunty Coral and I crossed the (real) Jordan River on bicycles. There’s a picture of one of us – can’t remember, me or her – cycling over the bridge with arms outstretched in a kind of cheeky-euphoric ‘Look Ma no hands!’ pose. I thought of that yesterday, and you. You’re doing it, my love. You’re doing it.

All my love

Mom

So the men did as Joshua had commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River, one for each tribe, just as the LORD had told Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there… Then Joshua said to the Israelites, “In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the LORD’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the LORD your God forever.” – Joshua 4:8, 21-24

 Cam and Ben

 Teacher Karen

 Cam, Ben and Tyla

 And the three again today, building volcanoes

 Scott and the 'eep (= sheep) at the Hewitts

Of vampire frogs and fists in dough

Me, Scott and a rubber frog

Realisation dawns slowly with the half-light. There’s a presence by the bed. I convince an eye to open. He’s staring three centimetres from my face. 5h50. He’s been up for an hour already – quiet in just a nappy – playing, paging, prattling… He’s soft, polite: ‘Pees mom come me pay room?’ (= Please Mom come with me to the playroom?) I drag myself vertical. He trots ahead brisk and chuffed. I flop on the playroom couch. Sleep.

Alas.

I am brutally assaulted by a reptile.

Scott – with 911-terror – holding the frog to my neck: ‘Mom! Frog biting you!’

Me, feigning half-asleep shock and horror: ‘Oh no. Naughty frog. Don’t bite me.’

Scott removes imaginary frog fangs from their perilous position. Admonishes the guilty amphibian in severe tones: ‘No frog! Smacky frog! Don’t bite Mom!’ (Aggressive tapping on the frog’s rear parts.)

Frog crisis successively created and averted, I snooze relieved and he snuggles me and his (mini) Mini Cooper.

Me, Cam and a bowl of dough

Early evening sun comes still-hot through the kitchen door and we’re baking rusks, me and Cam. He’s on the counter with greased loaf tins and egg shells and spilt buttermilk. We’re hunched elbow-deep in dough, four fists loving the sugary-buttery raw deliciousness ‘til it all comes away from the sides the way my Mom showed me when I was little.

Me: ‘What was your favourite part of today?’

Cam: ‘Now.’

‘For in him we live and move and exist.’ – Acts 17:28

 Cam's new magnifier - a whole new world :)

Teacher Karen visiting before school starts next week - and Cam in his brand new Jacob's Ladder t-shirt!