Year: 2013 (Page 13 of 37)

That’s it. I’m telling.

September 26, 2013 / Michele Minehart

I’ve mentioned before – prayer is not my strong suit. It says somewhere (1 Corinthians, I would venture to guess) that prayer is one of the spiritual gifts. That makes me feel better about things and I totally justify my lackluster prayer life with the notion that I was instead given the gift of telling other people what to do. (And, humility. Lots of it. Clearly.)

However, prayer still remains a vital way to connect with God, so I put my best foot forward. One day I began composing my prayer list for the morning – people and issues (which is usually about people) that came to mind that I felt I should lift up to God. Sometimes the sheer act of listing them out becomes my prayer. I know, it’s probably the cheaters way of prayer. This particular day, after I composed my list, I actually paused to move through it and pray it.

Then, as nearly all non-prayer-gifted people do, my mind got stuck on other things. Namely, prayer. Why was I spending my time in this manner? Didn’t God already know? Why didn’t my listing of people count? Wasn’t God listening to my heart as I wrote these things down? So then, what is required for a prayer to “take”? Is there a requisite minute-count before a thought becomes a prayer? How does prayer fit into the quality/quantity struggle?

Though God is not human and exists beyond what our pretty little minds can understand, I posed the question to myself in light of the parent-chlid relationship in which I currently live. I have some familiarity, being both a) a child and b) a parent. I tried out a few situations to see which might be the best fit and how prayer would fall into the mix. (Note: looking at the subject this way will cast a bit of pettiness to your prayer list. I think this can be both a positive and a negative.)

The Same Room

Kids are running around, playing “chase” while Parent sits presently in the same room, fully paying attention while only slightly passing time on Facebook. Someone runs the wrong way and BAM knocks into the youngest. Kids come crying. Parent saw the whole thing, but really couldn’t do anything to prevent the accident unless the Parent mandated everyone sit down and quietly read books, which no one thought was a good idea.

In this case, prayer is not required for God to know what happened – He saw the whole thing. But prayer is a means to be heard. It’s an act that comforts and helps us to recognize God’s presence. I like this situation because I have difficulty with the notion that God isn’t fully present right here. But if God is fully present right here, why do I feel the need to pray? Prayer becomes about me rather than about God.

The Other Room

Kids are downstairs, playing, mostly nicely with the occasional outbreak of discord. Parent is upstairs, trying to change out the summer clothes for the winter clothes while entertaining the baby. So when moments erupt that shake the equilibrium of peace in the other room, cries come forth requesting a judgement call. Now, the parent is fully aware that the peace will likely never remain constant, not until Daddy comes home. Intervention will likely be required. But, being in the other room, parent is not fully aware of the details of the situation (though the yells and stomping provide ample information). While knowing, s/he does not know. The parent listens to the requests of both parties and tries to rule for the general good of the home.

In this case, prayer is required to bring full understanding to God. It’s not that God’s dumb, or even not present – He’s just turned is present attention to hunger in Africa and chemical warfare in Syria. And it’s not that He doesn’t care. He does care. He cares about how his children treat one another and when issues arise, He takes time to teach them how to interact and to love. But really, complete undivided attention shouldn’t be required in order to practice writing letters or play house.

I kind of like this scenario. God is present, but perhaps we’re not in the spotlight 100% of the time. We have access to God’s attention without being the constant apple of His eye. Prayer serves as a way to keep God in the loop for even the small things, for which he wants to be involved. Pray-ers feel that God cares about the small stuff (because He does), but prayer is a way of turning things over when we’re not as practiced at being good Brothers & Sisters or when things simply don’t go the way we wanted them to.

Neither of these scenarios are perfect nor completely grasp the God-Human relationship. It’s simply the only way my mind can begin to comprehend.

So, what say you, fellow pray-er? In which room is God? Or is there another way of looking through the parent-child window that sees it differently? (Perhaps for you God is out in the garage drinking a beer and doesn’t know anything until we come crying?)

The Classics & New Releases

September 25, 2013 / Michele Minehart

I met with my New Book Club for the first time. Super nice women, teetering on the edge of hilarity. Delicious eats. Did you know there’s such thing as Salty ‘n Sweet Caramel dip? Oh, yes, there is. If you use it to dip apples it would be “healthy”. Apparently using a spoon is frowned upon by the tummy gods. And the book? We read The Fault in Our Stars, an up-and-coming favorite and reportedly the quickest book-turned-movie in history. (Spoiler alert: it’s a book about teenagers with cancer. Well, not too spoiled – you learn about it in the first few pages. But be prepared to cry.)

So all these elements mark New Book Club into the win column. But I drove home feeling like a rain cloud hovered above me while everyone else’s atmosphere yielded sunshine and ice cream cones.

It wasn’t the same.

I didn’t hear Sarah’s voice tattering on about who would play the lead roles in the coming movie. I missed Kristy’s avid agreement with lead character Hazel Grace when she said “funerals are for the living.” I’m sure April would chime in about her time with teenagers and some introspect if one of them would have suffered the same fate. And Kristin would give a brilliant character analysis, mentioning something I hadn’t thought of before.

It’s not that my Old Book Club ladies are better at book clubbing than New Book Club. They’re just comfortable. We’ve already lived through the congealing process of a group, comfortable enough to hand out warning napkins when someone starts to slip in her dedication. We know which cupboard keeps the drinking glasses and when we sit at the table with a plateful of food, we start conversing with whomever sits beside us because there’s no “that girl” in the group. (Well, unless it was ME. Which runs a pretty good chance…)

While I’m so glad to have New Book Club in my life – because if first meetings are any indication, it’ll be fantastic – it also points to the large hole I’m trying to fill. It’s not until you’re shoveling in dirt that you realize just how deep the crevice actually is.

Unfortunately, this is the work of transplanting. I can’t expect New Book Club to pick up where Old Book Club left off. That was a solid 6 years together. We experienced first babies together, new marriages together. We faced cancer scares and post-baby issues. We vacationed together and cooked for one another and watched each others’ kids for free while we ran to the doctor.

Now these roots are trying to plant themselves in new soil and it’s not quite as comfortable. Surely when you uproot and replant a tree it takes time before it starts growing – let alone flourishing – again.

Everywhere I turn, and on nearly every night of the week, it seems, I find myself in a group hope-filled for meaningful, comfortable relationships. Yet my patience to allow these to form naturally – as opposed to forcing them to fit within the patterns that worked for me in the past – lags far, far behind. I’m only 2 years in to what took a solid 6-10 to form. Unfair comparison. But equally desirable. I know what can exists so I run for it even harder. Which, btw, is quite intimidating if you’re on the receiving end of my mad dash.

All I can do is impatiently enjoy what currently transpires. Laugh and chat with New Book Club and look forward to next month. Continue engaging the small talk while relationships begin to form. Fill my calendar with opportunities, expecting baby steps over leaps and bounds. Live expectantly, knowing good things – amazing people – do exist and will be slowly woven into the tapestry of my life here.

For a mere 2 years here, I do keep a good company. I’ve come into contact with some quality people. I simply need to stay the course and make myself open to developing these friendships. Turning around and running back isn’t an option (especially since we’re selling the house!). I must submit myself to the process – and maybe even enjoy getting to know this whole new landscape of persons.

Scribbles to stories

September 23, 2013 / Michele Minehart

We crossed over a huge milestone in my book. My baby boy learned to write.

Now, I know many preschoolers have been etching letters for a while now – he is nearly 5. But I’ve purposefully taken a more hands-off approach when it comes to most things academic. We do lots of reading and talking about things like numbers and letters and colors, but nary a worksheet comes in the door, mostly because I figure we have years and years of those ahead.

But my boy’s got tunnel vision when it comes to letters. We practiced our H’s and M’s so we can begin to recognize our names and we even practiced drawing some of those letters here and there. But all of a sudden, he wants to put all the letters together to make words – specifically, names.

Out of the blue he asked how to write Baby M’s name and I told him (with 3 letters we had an easy win). But he came home from school today with a pile of papers with his name on it. I asked him (several times) if his teacher had helped him and he said no. He had remembered all the letters to his name, even in the correct order, for the most part.

So he sat at the kitchen table during lunch today and practiced and practiced. He tried doing it without looking at his name on something else, memorizing the order, without even realizing he was memorizing. Then he asked to spell his sisters’ names.

He’s filling pages with letters and names and knowing exactly which letter when I tell him what is next. I’ve had to reverse a J, but that’s it. He’s making all these brain connections and working intently at getting his hands to do what his eyes want them to do.

This is not the same boy who I once held with one arm or nursed in the middle of the night, right? Tell me that my current baby boy won’t take such large leaps into personhood as quickly as this one did. All the growing up and the becoming his own self. I can’t take it.

JJ and I have a motto for this crazy period of our life with so many littles… “life will look different in 5 years.” It’s more true than I care to think about. Today’s steps took us that much closer to “life in 5 years” when I don’t have all the diapers and strollers and naps. I’ll be trading these in for new challenges: spelling tests, homework folders and gym shoes. In the flash of an eye my littlest won’t be nursing and I’ll retire all the little white circles that litter my bedroom floor. My laundry will be filled with stinky socks and soccer uniforms instead.

This period of my life when I keep my kids close, when I am their primary and sometimes only guide through the day, will end. They will all learn letters and words. They’ll write stories and books and make me cry. They’ll get on a bus and they’ll experience the world and develop into these tiny little people.

It’s slipping, people. Slipping right through my fingers. That elusive thing of time, precious moments, falling right out of my hands if I’m not careful to pay attention. One day, I’ll look at scribbles hanging on my fridge and remember this day, the day it smacked me in the face that I get to do this thing called life one time and I’d better be fully present for it all. Those scribbles won’t be squiggly forever… they’ll round out and his hands will grow steady.

Year: 2013 (Page 13 of 37)

That’s it. I’m telling.

The Classics & New Releases

Scribbles to stories

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