Our peacock is molting. So begins one of the more bittersweet stages of summer.
Bitter because our peacock boasts a truly glorious tail. Indigo, forest green, and royal purple blend into a fan measuring six feet long. When he struts his stuff--he earns the name peacock, rightfully.
Sweet because we gather the fallen feathers and group them in a vase for a beauteous touch inside.
I'm always a tad disappointed as we gather the feathers. Each feather has only a few strands of color. Scrawny and tattered, I wonder how they could ever have seemed so beautiful. Yet, as the vase fills, the beauty grows. When full, the vase evokes gasps from friends who visit. "Where did you get those," they beg. Few can believe we gather the feathers from our yard each year insisting instead they must have come from some boutique.
I think our family life can mimic the peacock. Individual moments can seem tattered, frail, half-done. Refuse to view each moment in isolation. A vacation that went awry. A birthday party where the cake decorations ran. A conversation that didn't quite resolve all the issues. Instead, give yourself fully to today--following God's guidance for your family. Though each moment may not seem stellar, the story you write will gather tattered moments together over a lifetime to create a life of beauty.
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"Life is messy. Clean it up." This Swifter ad may have done more to save my parenting than most books I've read.
I don't know about you, but in early parenting I so often missed the best moments because I dreaded the mess. Forts in the living room, pillow fights, toys strewn throughout the house as children's toy soldiers attacked dinosaurs while storm troopers come to the rescue. I failed to see the creativity or fun focused instead on the piles and time to make right.
I'd grump about spilled milk at dinner. Fret about ice cream running down shirts. Think twice before getting out the finger paint.
Then, came the commercial. "Life is messy. Clean it up." Sure they were selling brooms and mops, but they extolled an important truth. Life--well lived--is messy. The answer isn't, "Avoid the mess." The answer is, "Clean it up." 
Instead of worrying about messes, I invested in the tools, and the mindset, to expect a mess and simply focus on the fact that we can clean it up. When I have the tools on-hand and the expectation of mess in mind, I don't worry about the mess. I know it will get clean. Instead, I revel in being with my children. I crawl into the fort. Fling the pillow. Make my own version of purple with the paints. When we're finished, we clean it up.
The spiritual, emotional, and intellectual arenas of parenting can be messy, too. Children ask tough questions. Fall apart on the inside with messy emotions. Struggle with doubts about God's goodness or presence. The same truth rules. Life is messy.
Too often I have longed to avoid the mess in these areas. But, God still says, "The answer isn't to avoid the mess. The answer is to clean it up." I just need the right tools. A vigilant prayer life, thinking shaped by scripture, wise friends who can counsel. I need time with my children, ears to listen, and a heart filled with grace. With these tools, God can use me to clean the messes.
Too many parents, myself once in this camp, miss the best of life trying to keep it neat. The best of life is messy. Let's engage--knowing we can clean it up.

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My best parenting instructor? Often, my garden. 
I find so many parallels between nurturing the plants in my garden and the children in my home. Perhaps this relationship training is why God first gave Adam and Eve a garden to tend. Did He know that the practice of planting, watering, and weeding to nurture Eden would prove perfect for all the people-relationships they would nurture in the coming years?
Yesterday I learned another lesson. Weeds at the corner of a garden box are the dickens to get out. The roots go deeper. Tools don't reach. You skin your knuckles like crazy to pull. Quite like the weeds at the corner of my life. 
Sin out in the open--in the middle of the garden box, so to speak--I can easily remove. Blatant disregard for others, yelling rudely at my children, selfishly seeking my gain at their expense--these wide-open sins are easily spotted and easily squashed. 
Sin at the corners--not so easy. The creeping sarcasm when child's misbehavior has worn my patience thin. The desire to control my child's preferences to match mine rather than stretch myself to match his. The knee-jerk punishment which, though deserved, is perhaps a bit harsher because my own selfishness has been offended. These behaviors which grow slowly, undetected until the roots have driven deep into daily patterns, prove hardest to remove.
Yet, my garden has also taught that if I settle for getting the majority of weeds from the middle and give in on the weeds at the corners, they eventually invade and kill all the growth I so carefully cultivated. They strangle the tomatoes, rob moisture from the peppers, crowd out the cucumbers. Rather than life-giving produce, I'm left with a box of weeds.
I don't want all the time I spend nurturing my children's character, praying over their future, or investing in filling their love tank to be robbed because I allowed weeds in the corner of my character to invade, strangle or crowd out everything else in our relationship. As with my garden, I gird myself to do the hard work of removing the weeds at the edges of my parenting. As I deal with my own sinfulness, my efforts in parenting yield greater fruit with my children. 
Yes, I think God knew exactly what He was doing. Gardens make great teachers.
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Do you remember the shows that would make you cry? Nearly every episode?
The kids and I have been enjoying Little House on the Prairie as a break during school. We're studying American History, so I figure it applies. 
Yet, I forgot how often that show made me cry. Babies die. Pets get rabies. Hail storms ruin crops and fortunes. I look around the room at my children holding back the tears every fourth episode and wonder, "Is this too much?"
Then I remember the words of God. "Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." Philippians 4:8. A huge part of my job as mom is to train my children how to think. Now I don't know that God meant that we should watch certain shows. But, I do think He meant us to be strategic not only in keeping out what corrupts but to introduce what brings the noble, lovely and right to life.
God tells me I'm to train them to fill their minds with the true, noble, pure, lovely, admirable things of the world. They are to focus on the courage it takes to bring life into the world knowing a disease can snuff that life out in a moment. They are to focus on putting hard work and time into a life's calling--even if a hail storm can destroy that work at the worst possible moment. They are to focus on the difficulty of hanging together as a family through thick and thin. 
Likewise they are to focus on the joy of being part of a family through thick and thin. They are to focus on the privilege of bringing in the fruits of a labor and benefiting from the skills God has bestowed. They are to treat life as precious.
I have to say I really dislike crying. But, I miss the shows that connected so deeply you did cry in their sorrows even as you laughed in their joys. I am grateful for simple ways to meet the challenge of putting the noble, admirable, and pure in front of my children. As we explore the customs and lifestyle of the 1800's through this small lens, I pray we do far more than simply augment our history books with a living picture of that life. I pray our children gain a living picture of how to focus on the best aspects of life.
Perhaps they'll even grow up to recreate the kind of show that brought the best of life to screen nearly every episode.
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I relish the view from our front porch: the sun streaming through the clouds; the birds flying from branch to branch. A gentle breeze completes the paradise. Until I open my book.
That same gentle breeze flips pages faster than I ever think possible--ripping some completely away. The wind is just a force. I know it doesn't intentionally set out to destroy my book, yet it does. Impersonal. Unintentional. At times blessing--at times destroying. How often am I like the wind?
I wonder how often words I utter--words seemingly gentle--destroy when brushing by my children or my spouse. Though I never intend to do so. How often I have wandered into a room and spoken words that ripped chunks from a heart? Ripped because, like the wind with my book, I didn't know their vulnerabilities. My disappointed response to a sales clerk that embarrasses daughter. My inquiry regarding a friend's party that reminds son that he wasn't invited. My silly joke that hits too close to husband's fear.
I'm learning the power of my words. Impersonal words can destroy--even seemingly gentle words that, in other contexts, refresh. I need to know the people I speak to--generally and as they unfold daily--so that I can pattern my words to their situation. So the words I speak complete the paradise without ripping anything away.
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