Laughing at the Days

The girls will be 14 months in 4 days. I feel like lately I have said to a ton of people that this is just the best age. They are still small enough to have curl up and cuddle on your chest, but they laugh and play and show that they understand you. It's just the best stage! I am going to be using this blog now for just writing about what we are up to as a family, in particular the girls since they are the most interesting to you all ;).

The past couple of days the weather has been SO WONDERFUL. I am so thankful. It is just true across the board of life that when you want something but you don't get it whenever you want it, when you do get blessed with it, you are THANKFUL. And I am. The sun has been a blessing. I've even neglected sunscreen because I don't to miss a minute of soaking it up - and I am a freak about suntan lotion.

So since it's been sunny, we've been out more. Thursdays we usually have bible study (and the girls go to that nursery) but now that it's summer we have outdoors playdates! So fun! Thursday we went to Michelle's house in Kirkland and her backyard is really better than most parks, so we had a lot of fun there. The older kids went wild and that mamas and littler ones sat on blankets and chatted. Grace continues to cling tightly to me when brought into a group setting. Unfortunately for me I had not trimmed her nails recently so I was clawed for an hour. Kanah spent most of the time crawling up to other mamas and sitting with them, especially long haired mamas. The girls played on the baby swing and cried when I took them out. It's a new favorite. And Grace found a toy tracter (life size for little guys) and had fun exploring that, as you can see in the pics. Playdates would be hilariously unattractive to anyone not used to clipped conversations and constant distraction. But for mamas stuck indoors in the rain it's easy to chat over the screams and little voices and crawlers. It was actually relaxing ;).

It was naptime when we left but I abandoned my usual allegiance to getting the girls to their rooms for naptime and pushed the limits by driving on into Kirkland. If you've never been to Kirkland you just should. Cute little town right on the waterfront and my favorite part is that most of the waterfront is not developed, so there is a long winding boardwalk and beach park after beach park. Such a great place to walk. So I threw the girls in the stroller and cranked the seats back as low as they would go and gave them their bottles, hoping for some naptime. Kanah eventually fell asleep (see pic) but Grace managed to stay awake the whole walk (see pic). At the tail end of the walk I peeked in and Grace had relented so I sat on a park bench next to a fountain and the beach and decided to try to get some reading in. I pulled out Blue Like Jazz, which I am reading for maybe the third time, and read one paragraph. Little squirms caught the corner of my eye. Had to laugh. Kanah was wide awake and Gracie belle was finally asleep. Of course! So Kanah and I played next to the fountain. When the girls like something they can't reach or get to they put their arm up in the air and make a noise. Kanah's favorite that day (lots of noises) was the ducks. She about jumped out of my arms a few times. So exciting! I think it's time for a trip to the zoo or something.

Other updates. Grace is now going to another OT (occupational therapist) for eating. Some days she won't eat any food (and only her milk) and others she will take a few bites of this and that, but you've got to present it just right to her or she'll reject it. It's been quite a process! Another BIG NEWS UPDATE: Kanah has learned how to sign "please"!!! It's so adorable! I used to have to do it for her, holding her hand. Then I just had to do the sign and when she watched she did it and now I just say "say please" and she does it! It's blowing my mind. Grace is determined not to do it which is also cute because when we try to get her to do it she grunts and gets super impatient. Oh Grace! Oh! They also both can now get back down the stairs the right way instead of doing faceplants. I taught them like once so I have no idea how they go it but I watched them kind of experimenting with it and they've got it! And I feel a lot better about them on the stairs now (with me of course). Other new things. Hmm. We are done with formula!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yippee for mommy and daddy! Geez it feels good to just simply pour the milk and be done w/ mixing bottles. Ahh. Life is good. I guess the only other new thing is that the girls are in the nursery at church now (about the past six weeks) and it's just soo soo nice to go to church with Jason and not be distracted the whole entire time. Grace still gets upset right when she is dropped off but Kanah loves all the people and friends. I think Grace will come around too, she just loves to play by herself (Jason and I were both like that).

Well more to come! The girls are sleeping so I'm going to keep enjoying my vanilla latte and dream about what it will be like in ten days to have MIMI AND POP HERE!!!!!! Can't wait for the lake place!!!!

In one week I turn thirty. People always ask how it feels. You never know. And you make up something. Or else the question itself freaks you out into having a feeling about it. I began to wonder today how I felt about it. As I paced my kitchen and living room during the girls' naptime, usual coffee cup in hand, my prayer was that I would not feel thirty and be disappointed. With what I should have done. Should have been. Should have accomplished. Because those are the reasons that people usually feel so despairing about hitting a milestone age. Especially thirty. It's the first birthday that people buy black balloons for. That is weird to think I've hit a black balloon birthday. (Isn't it? - I'm talking to my buddies in the same boat this year.) I mean part of me does feel that teetering into the "older" category. I told my friend Joce today that a part of me that is perhaps a little too aware of time and space and eternity feels like I am thirty this year and eighty next. I feel the leanings into aging and "those were the days" type conversations and looking back on generations and sensing that I've passed by. And another me feels very connected to where I have just been, in my twenties, feeling great and young and my hopes for life so new and a little naive. Thirty is just so weird so far. Well I guess I'm still twenty nine for a week. Got a few more days to sort this teetering feeling out. Anyhow...

As I prayed about the disappointment thing, I felt compelled by my friend the Holy Spirit (he is so wise) to walk with the Lord in our conversation one by one through what he has done in my life these thirty years. I have great memories of childhood, so much joy and fun and love. I love my family and am so grateful for what the sewed into my life and how they loved me well. I came to know the Lord at the young age of twelve. Though school was never a safe place for me emotinally or socially the Lord provided a crazy wonderful support in the youth group at church. I made friends for life there. I found my mentor and friend there who showed me who God really was, in a very real way. I found a third dad for me in our youth pastor. I grew a heart for young women in my wake and made a little sister. I went to other countries as a teenager and was shown the heart of the Father for the nations, for every tribe and tongue and economical status. I went to an amazing college where I found out what it meant to enjoy God's creation. I met my best friend the first day of school and she's walked with me twelve years now. I went through difficult things in relationships but in the end it was used for good by the Lord to point me to my husband. I learned that I had spiritual gifts of discernment, teaching, and intercession and that when I am using these gifts I am most joyful. I learned what it meant to have a burden for people, to be drawn to people who might not be just like me. I worked with teenage girls and my heart both broke with them and felt elated for them. I married my best friend and lived life with him in what seemed to be a foreign country for a southern belle. I explored. I road tripped. I fell in love with Asia. I taught. I found out what importance there was in picking the right church. I moved to the Northwest and realized a big piece of me longed for this adventure. I grew a heart for orphans. I found the church home I've always waited for. I learned the truest most wonderful truth about my identity in Christ and who I was called to be in my roles as a woman, wife and mom - through the lense of the true dignity they were founded on. I loved a baby and lost a baby. In our waiting the Lord enlarged our hearts a hundred fold for children and parenthood and then brought us the two most amazing miracles of our lives. Baby girls. Our dream. Now I am living the dream I never knew I had in my heart until the dream arrived - being a mama to two glorious human beings living in my wake. What a thirty years. I began my prayer time w/ a hot cup of coffee and a hope to not be disappointed as I looped the downstairs. I finished with a cold, aging cup of coffee with a grateful heart and a grief for anyone my age who can't look back on their lives the way the Lord helped me to today.

At my home church in North Carolina they had a little place called the Guardhouse where people would be praying all the time over the prayers in the church. You could write your request out and put it in the plate and for weeks, faithful believers would go to this little house to take this requests before "the throne of grace." I very clearly remember writing out a request during one of my visits from college to this church. I was confused about what I was supposed to do with my life. I was very obsessed with what the meaning of "God's will" was because I wanted to understand the next steps that would direct the course of my life. Sometimes the person in the guardhouse would feel compelled to write an encouragement to the person who made the request. Someone I do not know wrote me a long note and mailed it to me. What she did so blessed me and has proven true today even though it seems so simple it's not worth writing. She encouraged me not to worry, that the Lord would show me what to do every step of the way. She said that careers would come, and perhaps go, in my life and I may do many different things along the way, and the important thing was to stay close to the Lord and understand the passions and giftings he placed in me for his purposes and to do my best to courageously follow through on the things he placed before me. This has been entirely true. My major in college I stressed about for I don't know how long turns out to not have mattered very much. I ended up in the jobs I did because of the heart the Lord gave me for language, missions, the nations, and teenagers. Then I ended up in the job I have today because...well...who wouldn't want to stay home with my gorgeous girls ;)??

The point is this. We all kind of have these identity crisis moments when we scribble onto our minds or our conversations (or prayer request index cards like I did) questions to frantically confirm that we who we are and what we have done has meant something. And the reality is Isaiah 26:12. "Lord you establish peace for us. All that we have accomplished you have done for us."  When I'm sticking close to the Holy Spirit, whose name is also Counselor, I find myself doing all he has intended to accomplish in me. So what I am responsible for is not attaining made up goals in my overacheiving mind or attaining goals you or anyone happens to have for me either. I am responsible to keep in step with Jesus and what he wants to accomplish in me. And at the end of milestones when I look back, and certainly at the end of all things, maybe I'll wonder yet again if it was all it was supposed to be. But that pressure I'm creating doesn't matter. What matters is what God thinks matters. And he can get my run around, competitive, anxiety filled mind to be at rest and get in line with that because... the Lord establishes peace for us. That's what matters. 

So black balloons or not. I'll be alright this week. Thirty is going to be okay I think. But it's only June second...so check in again with me on June ninth ;).