The Margins

Singing Happy Mother’s Day to Grammy, Grammaline and Lauren (who is visiting her family in Hookem, Texas) over the phone.

Preaching at Church of the Redeemer.

Letting the kids eat way too many sweets at the church brunch.

Taking a long nap with Mercy after church (well, I slept at least!)

Crunchy-lunch-dinner at California Pizza Kitchen with my wonderful husband and precious babies.

Rocking out with Aaron to Jack Johnson in front of the mirror in the girl’s bathroom at CPK.

A big cup of Starbucks Pike’s Place roast.

Mercy asking when “Daughter Day” was.

Patty-cake, knocking down towers and cuddling with Elijah before bed.

Not being pregnant.

“He sings so…..so…..so…..singing!”

From Aaron, near speechless, while catching a few moments of American Idol tonight.

Mercy has started a weekly piano class with kids from the neighborhood, taught by our good friend from church. They haven’t touched the piano yet (these are three and four year olds), but have been using songs and games to learn about notes and the staff and treble clefs and the like. One week Mercy came home talking about “space notes”, and later in the day placed a ring of stretchy car-tracks around her face and declared to all of us: “Look at me! I’m a space note!”

So yesterday, Aaron found an unopened envelope in the recycle (one of the gazillion credit card offers we get regularly), and he asked me if he could open it. I said, “Sure!”, so he excitedly went about the task of ripping and tearing.

When he finally got it open, he looked in and then slowly pulled out one of the pieces of paper inside. Looking up at us with an enormous grin he declared: “It’s a space note!”

Mercy is three and recently she has become fascinated by words and how they are spelled. She will sound out every word she sees and ask me to spell everything. This is of course very cute and sweet, and as a lover of language and words I encourage her at every step.  That is until recently.

I have noticed that when it is time to nap, there is a burning urgency to sound out every word she can find in the apartment. There is a large poster framed above the futon where she doesn’t sleep, and so every time she lays down there she simply MUST sound out and spell and read and then sound out again the handful of words printed there. And of course much of this involves asking mom numerous questions about this letter or that sound. She senses my delight in helping her learn to read and seems to know that it is an activity I will find very difficult to resist. I think you get the picture.

On a similar note, there was a time recently when Mercy got in trouble with me. She knew she had done something wrong, and looking up at my face she blurted out: “Mommy, your tummy’s getting littler!”

I smiled and told her thank you and laughed at this impulse, seen in one so young, to flatter in desperation.

I knew my brother for three years before he became my brother. I was young, he was just a kid, and those three years hold for me some of my most precious memories. Cruising around Chicago in the Urban Outreach van; making phone calls for him to the girl he liked (whose father did not permit to talk to boys on the phone); planning dances and events for the kids at APMA, David and I packed a whole lot of life together into those three years.

One of my favorite memories is from the banquet dinner at the Golf for Kids event that Mike Holmgren sponsored that helped raise money for my After Hours program at North Park. I brought David with me to the event to speak at the dinner. The event also benefited Covenant Harbor through camp scholarships for urban kids, and so a young girl who had attended camp on one of these scholarships spoke before David. Her speech was incredibly polished and sounded little like the words of someone her age. David got up next, spoke from his heart, and at the end closed with: “And my mom didn’t write this” or something to that affect. I was at once mortified and totally amused.

Today is David’s birthday, and as I walked the track at USC tonight, I marveled at how the kid who I used to drive across the state to see throw a shot put has grown into a man I respect, admire and very deeply love. And whether it is snowboarding outings with Doug or homemade Phad Thai dinners or teaching Mercy to fish, I can’t imagine our family with him not in it.

There is a recurring theme in scripture of sons being given to those least expecting it, and so often these stories are used to highlight how totally generous God is. That is true for our family. We were given a gift that we could not have imagined or planned for; a gift that has changed us all for the better; a gift that reminds me how much God loves us.

I love you, David. My kids will never know our family without you in it and I am so very glad for that.

The other night I went to take the trash out down the two flights of stairs behind our house to the big cans out back. The kitchen trash was very full: it should have been taken out days earlier and I could barely lift the plastic handled bag out from the trash can. As I managed awkwardly through our back porch and out the back door, I realized that the handles were stretching out so much that I was afraid the whole thing was going to pull apart.

By the time I was half-way down the first set of stairs, the handles had pulled to the point where the bag was now dragging, or bumping actually, down each stair. I had the thought that maybe this was not a good idea, but honestly in the moment I could see no other way of getting the bag to the bottom.

As I reached the last stair, directly in front of Paul’s back door, I suddenly felt the bag become strangely light. And it was then that I realized it had split on the bottom and the contents of my trash were now pouring out onto the stairs and the landing where I stood. It was totally dark outside and the sensor light had not yet been tripped, so while I could not see the mess I knew instantly that it was substantial. I am pretty sure I uttered something I would not say in front of my children.

I walked far enough down for the light to come on and then turned to address my mess. What I realized was that, while the bag was indeed overfilled, that had not actually been the problem. The issue was the broken plate that had been sitting at the bottom of the trash. Heavy and sharp, the plate had easily sliced through the already straining plastic.

As I scooped up egg shells, coffee grounds, and lots of mushy stuff I could not identify, I thought about my life. I usually think that I know what is hard about what it is I am carrying or trying to do, but it is actually quite common that there is some unknown threat, some piece of brokenness that really has the potential to create a huge mess. Relationships are certainly like this. How many times have I been surprised to find out that in the midst of the messiness of human relationships, there is a big jagged piece of something that I did not know was there doing some pretty heavy damage.

I remember in seminary we talked about the “unspoken narratives” that can exist in a congregation: stories from the past that, while they may not even be known by subsequent generations, continue to dictate what happens. These are a bit like my broken plate: hidden, heavy, powerful.

I eventually got all the trash into the trash can, and made my way in the dark to get the hose. I dragged it over to the stairs and sprayed down each stair and the landing. The whole ordeal was exhausting (it was late), and scary (I don’t like being out back when it is dark–especially with the recent driveway rapes and of course the gunman trying to evade the cops). Which is what it can be like to deal with unspoken narratives, be they in the church, in families, or in relationships.

But I can say that those back stairs are now cleaner than ever.

On Saturday, we drove down to the Long Beach Aquarium to meet up with our good friends, Steven and Jennifer and their little baby Evan. Our kids love the aquarium, and we have been members since we had Mercy.

The day was a little bit crazy. Between all of the feedings and changings and trips to the potty and time on the little playground, Jennifer summed it up well when she asked: “Did anyone see any fish?”

I confess that that is often how life feels now. For all the effort it takes to mobilize my little crew, the actual events or destinations themselves are often overshadowed by the journey. This can be exhausting and even disheartening and I am learning to accept a very different set of “results” as my definition of success.

Like the other day: it took me over an hour to get my kids changed and pottied and shod and ready to hop into the van to drive up to Pasadena to see their Dad. By the time we got to Fuller, an hour after I had planned to arrive, Doug had to run off to a meeting with our pastor. We said hello, the kids ran outside for maybe three minutes and got hugs from their pastor, we gave Daddy his cupcake and then turned around to drive back home.

Relationships are often like this too, I think. I have spent time around people for whom friendships are always productive: time spent with people is about accomplishing some set purpose. Doug and I swing to the other side a bit when it comes to relating to people: the thing that touches us the most is when people enter our little world and make themselves at home in the chaos. We rarely “entertain”, but we delight in sharing our life, with all of its rough edges, with people willing to just come and be.

When Doug was on jury duty a couple of weeks ago, we invited people over every night for dinner (because he was able to get home early because of jury duty). It was funny to see some people hesitate over the invite, thinking that to accept would mean saying yes to a long evening with us or to some set of expectations that we held about the evening. “No, really, you can just come and eat with us and leave!” we ended up saying to a few. There were those that stayed for hours, those who left soon after eating and others who came late and sat and ate on the living room floor long after the rest of us had finished. And we enjoyed each and every one.

My close relationships right now are with those people willing to lower their expectations of what will be “accomplished” when we spend time together. But the barrier I erected in my relationship with God when I felt like my chaos was not an acceptable companion to our relationship reveals my own tendency to value myself in terms of what I can produce or give. It is funny how we can hold very different expectations for ourselves…

Driving all the way to Long Beach; shelling out a bunch of cash for admission; it is natural that we expected to see some fish. But the bottom line is that we were together and maybe the things we gained were different from what we had expected but good nonetheless. And whether I go to church longing to have some spiritual hunger met and end up instead playing with toddlers, I am trying to learn to release expectations and accept what I am given. No, not just accept but appreciate and enjoy.

Living in L.A., it is not uncommon to see people with clothing or accessories bearing logos from different film or television productions. So many people here have some connection to “the industry”, and their baseball caps and messenger bags and bomber jackets let you know it.

Yesterday the doorbell rang and I was greeted with the UPS guy and a package from Banyan Productions: inside was a black backpack with a little footprint logo and the words: “Deliver Me”, as well as a DVD and a little bib for Elijah bearing the inaccurate words: “I was delivered on Deliver Me”.

While Doug and I were filmed for this show leading up to Elijah’s birth, we were not interested in having his actual delivery filmed (a decision I was most grateful for when his complication-laden birth actually took place). As a result, the producers could not have us as one of the central story lines for the show since the birth-moment climax kind of makes the story. Regardless, it was fun to watch our footage and touching to see our three amazing OB’s in action.

And now we can proudly walk about L.A. with a logo on our backs.

This morning we were sitting watching a Thomas the Tank Engine video that Doug and Mercy checked out from the library. The narrator described one of the engines as being “cross”.

Mercy turned to me knowingly and said: “Cross is angry….in German.”

Today we went to one of our favorite little getaway spots here in L.A.: the Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. We are members and we love strolling through the Desert Garden and letting the kids run like crazy through the giant fields and talking to the lion statues that guard the entrance to the Japanese Garden. Today we visited the brand new Chinese Garden that has been under construction for quite a while. It was beautiful, and the kids especially loved all the water and bridges.

Favorite moments from the day include:

Mercy carefully laying Camelia flowers on the paws of the two lion statues that stand at the back entrance to the Chinese Gardens, and gently asking for permission to enter;

the lady who stopped and offered me her tweezers to remove the cactus spines that were stuck in my pants from walking too close to the edge of the path in the Desert Garden;

finding a “hairy” cactus and a bunch with bright red “tongues” sticking out;

Aaron demanding to be carried through the Camelia garden because he was afraid of the tigers (???);

the kids spotting the “green Valley” and running toward it with all their might;

walking past a collection of nude male statues as part of a large group of people and having neither Mercy nor Aaron make any reference to their anatomy.

And my all time favorite moment (in that “is it bad that I am totally laughing at this?” kind of way): Mercy was running downhill on the path that led to the Chinese Gardens when all of a sudden she face planted in the dirt. She cried for a second, and was mostly just upset that the flower she had been carrying had fallen from her hands when she fell. She got right up and we were about to resume walking when all of a sudden she cried out again: “Mom, help!”

She was wearing a new pair of boots today that we got as part of a set of used shoes we bought on Craigslist last week. They are brown suede with fur lining and long laces with brown furry pom-poms on the end. I looked and saw that a pom-pom from her left boot had wound around a pom-pom from the right one, and her boots were now tied together and she couldn’t walk. Her fall suddenly made a bit more sense, and I laughed hard as I unwound my daughter from her predicament.