Just one of the many sites we will explore with our children this weekend. Looking forward to being with family and experiencing a lush and humid 75 degrees with sunny skies.

See you in a few days.

J was home sick yet again, though we now have a diagnosis of ear infection. R spent the morning with him so I could accomplish at least a few things, but they were little things. In that spirit: three little things I would like to remember today.

1. On the way home from the bus stop this afternoon, C presented me with a crocus bud that she found lying on the sidewalk.

2. J’s stubby little hand unwrapping a stick of chewing gum I gave him at the grocery store.

3. If you peel and section a clementine and then leave the pieces out for a while, the membrane gets ever-so-slightly dry, so when you bite into them, they burst in a very satisfying way.

A few interesting or surprising tidbits:

-Happiness and personal justice often conflict. She found in her research and her experience that the score-keeping that happens in marriages and other relationships (I did this, so you do that) does not add to happiness, in fact it inhibits it. There’s probably a big however to be had here about abuse and other gross inequities of power in relationships, but basically this seems right to me. One reason it doesn’t add to happiness is because of the “fundamental attribution error,” which is the tendency to overinflate our own contributions and downplay the other person’s.

-Novelty and change generally increase happiness more than routine and consistency. Again, I can see how this would be true. Good luck getting certain institutions to see it that way though (cough*congregations*cough). She doesn’t talk much about the fact that people are generally bad at predicting what will make them happy (e.g. people who buy a nice house in the exurbs that requires a three-hour commute each day)… but that idea seems to be relevant here.

She also is big on resolutions, but picked a few each month and rotated them regularly, which seems sensible. At the beginning of the project, she identified her Twelve Commandments, a longer list of Secrets of Adulthood, and Four Splendid Truths for herself. I couldn’t really define the difference between these, other than the fact that the Commandments are central, and the Secrets are a little more playful, and the Truths go a little deeper.

It got me thinking about what my Commandments/Secrets would be. Hers included things like “Be Gretchen” and “Do It Now.” Here are some of mine, including things I am good at remembering and things I’d like to be better at…

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
When in doubt, reframe it.
Process, not product.
Spend it all.
Be kinder than necessary.
Practice “yes-and.”
Do small things with great love.
Love what is.
Put on your oxygen mask first.
Eschew the generic.
Love God, love others, love yourself—
and realize that the boundaries between them are permeable.
You can choose.

…what would yours be?

I also finished reading Parenting with Love and Logic, which I’d gotten from the library, and am pretty much on board with that. In fact, I’d like to write a spinoff, Pastoring with Love and Logic, because so much of the stuff in there is applicable to the church…! The basic idea is to find a middle ground between helicopter parenting and drill sergeant parenting—to be ‘consultant parents,’ which help kids solve their problems themselves and not be subject to our rescue. This approach is big on letting kids own the problem and not blowing up about stuff but letting them feel the consequences of their decisions. I also like the approach because it comes from a place of balance between parental assertiveness (i.e. my needs as a human being matter) and kindness (empathy over anger). I have some quibbles here and there (some of the consequences would be seen by our sensitive kids as over-the-top harsh, especially with no warning beforehand). And a few of the approaches are problematic when you have kids of such different ages as ours, but it’s generally pretty solid. If there is interest from others and/or time on my part I might write a longer review/reflection on this book.

I’m also reading Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity, which is quite good and started especially strong, although the middle chapters are dragging a little. Part of the issue is that he’s mainly writing for recovering evangelicals, so some of his stuff I’m like “yeah, this part isn’t for me.”

————

The divine miss M is very reflective lately. Jerome Berryman identifies four existential questions of childhood, which deal with aloneness, the nature of freedom, death, and the meaning of life. M will sometimes withdraw to the side of the room and start tearing up. When we ask her what’s wrong, she says, “I don’t want to grow up,” or “I don’t want to have to leave home,” or “I wish I could be a baby again,” or “I will be so sad when you die.”

No comment on that, just something I want to recall. I don’t remember C doing this at all.

She’s also in a very sweet/empathic phase. We’ve had some pretty bad sleep in the reverendhousehold—it’s rare when we’re not visited by at least one child in the night—but three nights ago everyone slept all night long. Everyone except me, that is. I woke up at 4 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep until after 5. Grrr!!!!!!

I was telling M about this yesterday and explaining how much I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep. This morning when she came into our room the very first thing out of her mouth was, “Mommy, did you sleep well or did you wake up at 4:00 again?” Such a sweetheart.

————

Just a few notes on C: she appears to be stabilizing and is not as anxious. The Love and Logic stuff seems to help, as well as a few more minutes of sleep in the morning and the chance to do big-kid stuff.

Speaking of, she rode her bike without training wheels today. Woot!

Also, she and R are working on a model rocket. Today they painted it colors of her choosing: neon pink, neon orange and gold. She also gave it the name “Gold Nebula.” Awesome.

————

Not much to say about J. He had the croupy cough last night and has had a very high fever. He also has been requesting that we put a ponytail on top of his head. He will wear it all day long.

I, too, am sick. Just a cold, but I feel pretty wiped out. So I’m off to bed soon.

for sweet baby j

tower

a wooden square on the bottom,
two or three teetering rectangles,
and something fancy on top:
the block with the bell inside it,
or the clear plexiglass pyramid.
it doesn’t really matter,
it’s all crumbling down
as the stout wooden airplane
finds the sweet spot
every time.

i’ve rebuilt the tower three times
before i realize.
let’s make it a fourth; for him
it’s just physics.

So I’ve been preaching weekly for about four months now, and I’ve been thinking lately about how the process is different. It’s mostly been as I expected. I enjoy it. Love it, even. Sunday is relentless though, and I cope with this by borrowing that old William Stafford thing I’ve quoted so many times here—how is he able to write a poem a day? By lowering his standards.

I lower my standards.

Admittedly, they were pretty high to begin with. No more. I’m not cooking a four-course meal once a month like I used to. I’m cooking each week, which means there are some Trader Joes items mixed in with the home-cooked stuff.

That’s not to say that I’m sloppy—I hope I’m not—or that I don’t care—I do. I don’t use canned stuff, though I do poach from old sermons, papers from my clergy group, you name it. And I certainly don’t plagiarize, though I do know that others have plagiarized from me, which doesn’t bother me as much as it maybe should, but there it is. Honestly, there is nothing new under the sun, and I’m with Google: information wants to be free. Especially when you’re talking about the gospel.

So I borrow from Stafford, but I also borrow from Annie Dillard, who said to “spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the [sermon] or for another [sermon]; give it, give it all, give it now.” I used to hoard, unfortunately, but hoarding seems a luxury I cannot afford any more. And she’s right. Something new always comes along.

The final observation I have about this process has to do with one of the things I struggle with in writing, which is just getting something down and not editing and tinkering as I go. I am a major tinkerer. There really isn’t time for that with a weekly deadline—you just need to get something down. But when you’re writing a book or even an article, there is time and a mechanism for feedback and corrections; there is no outside editing process with a sermon. Once Sunday is over, that’s it. The rough draft IS the final product. That’s not to say that I don’t hone things, but there’s no wiggle room with the deadline. It’s just due, as is, that’s it. And somehow, it works.

When I first started in ministry I had this visualization thing I would do once a sermon was over. I’d think about it for a while, celebrate what was good, cringe over what didn’t work, and then I would picture the sermon as a kite that I was flying, and I would cut the string and let it float away. I am not feeling the need to evaluate and dwell on my sermons as much now. The relentlessness of Sunday is like the wind that pulls the string from my hand on its own. And that is OK.

I’ve been worried about and mystified by C lately. It’s hard to explain, but she hasn’t been herself. Or she has been herself, just more so.
C, intensified.

She is naturally a very competent and controlled person. Lately this has veered into outright anxiety. R and I have a code, “Knock-knock,” when she gets like this. It’s the beginning of a joke:
Q: Knock-knock.
A: Who’s there?
Q: Control freak—now you say “control freak who?”

For example, tonight R was planning to make enchiladas, but realized he was missing an ingredient and decided to make something else. C got very anxious about this, despite the fact that she wouldn’t have eaten the enchiladas anyway.

In fact, much of the control stuff is around food. We are huge fans of Ellyn Satter and her approach to kid nutrition and feeding. (Nutshell: parents are in charge of the what, when and where of meals; kids are in charge of whether and how much they eat.) However, I think we mistakenly believed that if we followed this plan, that kids would grow to be well-rounded eaters. Not so much. The reality is that C is a picky eater and just gets pickier by the day.

In our better moments, we realize that the Satter stuff doesn’t make someone a great eater; it just helps maintain good boundaries and minimize counterproductive battles at the dinner table. In our worse moments, we (ok, mainly I) fret that she’s gaining too much weight, that we need to encroach on her side of the equation because if left to her own devices she would only eat bread, peanut butter and apples. The stuff she likes to eat, she absolutely loves to eat. Which is not terrible—food is one of life’s great sensual pleasures, and the enjoyment of food is a gift from God, in my humble opinion. On the other hand, it’s also fuel, and too much of it isn’t healthy. And let’s face it, there isn’t exactly an abundance of ectomorphs in her family tree…

Her doctor is not concerned, and advised us to leave the whole thing alone, aside from helping to educate her on portion sizes.

She’s also gotten more aggressive with her younger siblings. She taunts and annoys them, even after they have told her to stop, as if to see what they’ll do—what will happen. It’s entertainment. Which then annoys us, so we respond from an annoyed place rather than a dispassionate/correcting one. Then I get annoyed by my annoyed response to her annoying behavior and………….

Poor C, our first born. She has always been our practice kid, the one on which we hone all our parenting theories, for better or worse. It’s no wonder she’s anxious.

Bottom line is that I don’t feel good about my parenting of her right now, because I realize we are in new territory. She is no longer a Little Kid, she is a Kid. And we’re not sure what she needs, exactly: more time with mommy, more time with daddy, more time on her own? time with kids her own age? time outside blowing off steam? introspective/introvert time? a parent who isn’t obsessing about what she needs? heh.

Part of what I feel I need to do is some basic reframing. One of C’s quirks is that she loves stuff. Things. Little trinkets, rocks, doodads. She gets VERY attached to things. Whenever we replace a piece of furniture or a fixture, she insists that we take a picture of the old item, no matter how butt-ugly it was. And she is loath to give things away. I get irritated by this, because I have few sentimental attachments to things and have been attributing her attitude to materialism and selfishness. Lately I’ve wondered what it would mean to reframe what is probably a very normal kid response more positively. To say that she has a sense of aesthetics, for example. Or that she values beauty. (Broken-record question during Olympic figure skating: Are those gems real?) Or that objects carry spiritual value for her, and to trust that as she learns how to be generous with others, she may turn out to be one of those wildly extravagant givers.

This is not to say that my children are perfect, nor that every behavior can or should be viewed positively… but this reframing has been a really incredible practice.

In the midst of all this, R believes that her primary issue is lack of sleep. She hasn’t napped for years, of course, but she goes to bed when M and J do (8-ish, though we’re reading chapter books now, which push things slightly later). Her siblings bound out of bed around 6 or 6:30, but when we wake her up for school at 7:15, we are waking her from a dead sound sleep.

So today was a really great day for her. I actually saw her smiling, which I haven’t seen much of in recent weeks. (I also have to consider that the blizzard, though fun, has been hard on her, a creature of habit.) I’m not sure what the key was, but here are some elements that may have made a difference:

1. We let her sleep as long as we could. I finally woke her at 8:15 and drove her to school rather than having her take the bus.

2. She asked me to pick her up from school because “I just need a break from my friends on the bus.” Yay for self-aware introverts!

3. R left for work early, which means he came home early, which means he had some time with the kids before the dinner crunchtime.

4. I am reading Harriet the Spy to her. It was always one of my favorites. I loved it because Harriet is one of the great characters of children’s lit—courageous and outspoken and completely herself. I had forgotten how harsh her assessments were of the people she spied on, though. At first I felt uncomfortable reading this to C, who is a very kind and sensitive kid. Then I realized—this is the perfect thing for a Not-Little Kid to be reading! Nicey-nice can be stifling, I think. Maybe Harriet is liberating.

Tonight after dinner she was working very intently on something. Later she sidled up to me and said with a sparkle in her eye, “Can you keep a secret?” Turns out she was spying and taking notes on her family. I presented her with an extra journal I had lying around. She took to it immediately, scribbled notes while getting ready for bed, and for once I knew not to hurry her along to brush her teeth and such. I told her that a journal is a great place to write down what was annoying her—especially when it was a younger sibling. When I tucked her into bed she was actually smiling there in the dark.

Earlier today I posted these little tidbits on FB:
C, upon entering the pool for her lesson: “[breathing deeply] I just LOVE that smell!” Yep, she’s a swimmer.

I let M go to the water fountain in Costco by herself while I was checking out. She was not kidnapped, and even more amazing, nobody lectured me. I feel so Free Range Parent…

Then things sorta went downhill until tonight: Had many moments today when I felt like a waitress for the Party of Three from Hell. Tips weren’t so great, either.

After a fun morning, everything became a challenge. We all went out to ride bikes/scooters, and M got tired and cranky, so we decided to come in. So then C got upset because she and R were going to go on a short bike ride just the two of them. So then M wanted to go with them. But of course C got upset because she didn’t want M to tag along. Meanwhile J is dipping his hands in the puddles and scooping up big handfuls of sand along the curb and having a great time, oblivious to the sisterly drama. When we finally went in I wiped his hands off and the scratchy sand hurt his frozen paws and he started screaming.

Then it was on to hot chocolate. One wants marshmallows in the cocoa. One wants marshmallows on the side. One doesn’t want any marshmallows but will nag you for seconds on chocolate.

Our Girl Scout Cookies finally arrived, and M chose the lemon sandwich cookies for us to have for dessert, but C doesn’t like that kind, so she opted for a Tagalong, but then J saw it and started whining/screaming for one, even though he’d already had a lemon one.

On the upside, R opened up some of his homebrews and they taste great! He had one before dinner and one at dinner.

After J pooped in the bathtub he decided to go for a third.

Then we walked around on the big open field, which was easier. We bounced on a tree that had fallen over, found some long-thin tracks from cross-country skis, and collected some of the sweet little pine branches that were strewn about from the winds. It was so quiet. Afterward we went to McD’s.

That afternoon R completed phase II of the beer-brewing, namely the bottling. This went very smoothly and he’s already planning his next batch. I’m happy that he’s so excited about this new hobby. It definitely plays to his strengths as a cook—he’s patient and meticulous. Wild and innovative has its place, but when you’re starting out with beer, best stick to the formula.

Yesterday morning was the first Sunday of Lent, and we had a good crowd in worship. Ran out of bulletins again. (OK, I think we’re just not making enough.) We had 57 in worship yesterday, which was the first day we actually kept count. According to our stats, we averaged 35 in worship in 2008, not sure about 2009. It’s not unusual for an interim period to be depressed in energy or turnout, but with a church as small as ours, you really feel those fluctuations. So people are very energized.

Yesterday was also my installation as pastor of Tiny Church. I had to remind myself that many members of the church, especially the long-term ones, may have never experienced this ritual—my predecessor was there almost 30 years. It was a really wonderful service. A friend of mine from my clergy group preached, and not only was it a great sermon, I fell in love with her robe (a href=http://www.womenspirit.com/ProductDetails.aspx?CATID=1&PID=3>this one in white) and think I’ve finally picked the one that I want. (I am using a hand-me-down Geneva gown right now, and when I left Suburban Pres they told me to pick out a new one and it would be their gift to me.)

My predecessor was also a part of the service. He’s been such a great support from afar and I liked the symbolism of his being there. We did a reaffirmation of baptismal covenant, which felt very powerful to me—reaffirming our baptism connects us with our past and our future.

An elder from Suburban Pres. charged the congregation, one of my Writing Revs charged me, and I was gratified by the turnout, including Speck (another friend from Suburban), and several friends from National Crankypants. I was prepared for a very small presbytery turnout since there was a multi-hour meeting the previous day—this made people’s presence even more special.

As R put it last night, “This church really has its ‘food’ act together.” I couldn’t agree more. Yummy food and plenty of it—and it’s all that great stuff you want from a church reception. The meatballs were a huge hit, especially with my kids.

This morning I was excited to get an e-mail from my sister, who lives near Disney. One of the Tiny Church families is down there right now with Make-a-Wish, and we had given them my sister and brother-in-law’s contact information. They are great at helping people plan their visit for maximum fun. They also had offered to babysit the kids while the parents went out one night. Here is what K wrote to me:

D [BIL who works for Disney] e-mailed his managers to see if there was anything extra they could do. He was thinking maybe they would give them the photopass CD for free or something, but they really went above and beyond. His manager e-mailed a bunch of the managers at the parks to see what could be done. One of the managers met them at the Dream Along with Mickey show (which is a show on the stage in front of the castle). After the show, he took them in the castle where they got to have a private meet and greet with all of the cast of the show, including Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Donald, Goofy, Peter Pan and Wendy, Cinderella and Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Philip, and Snow White and her Prince. This freaked J out a little, but everyone else loved it I think they also gave them a special meet and greet with the Star Wars characters and gave J a signed light saber. [The mother] had already planned to do a dive at the Epcot aquarium, so they arranged to have a photographer there to photograph her experience.

It’s really cool because it took a large number of people to work together and coordinate this, not to mention all the entertainers who took the time after finishing the shows to stay and greet the family. Anyone who wonders why I love Disney so much… it’s because of things like this! D talked to one of the team on Friday night and was telling him how thankful we were, and they were saying how thankful they were to be involved.

The kids stayed with us tonight while L and B had dinner with some friends. The kids are so sweet. We had a great time.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. This is the family I’ve written about before, that lost the little boy a week after I arrived at Tiny. I am a big believer in commissioning people for mission trips, and I had had this silly idea to ‘commission’ this family for their Disney adventure in worship or during coffee hour. Because if anyone needed a week of magic, it’s them. I wanted to give them Mickey ears and stuff… then the blizzard happened. Oh well. But I am so thankful for Disney, which yes, is a multi-national corporation, but they are also a ministry. This I believe.

This morning I went to visit a woman in the hospital and I checked my mailbox and found Carrie Newcomer’s latest album! I had ordered in a gift pak along with a T-shirt and moleskine journal embossed with a CN quote. I gave the CD to the woman in the hospital, who was so tickled. I love introducing people to her music.

Time to go pick up C from the bus stop!

During the 4th year (actually this is her 5th year, but it’s a common mistake) your child:
–resents being told what to do and thinks she knows everything
–may be stubborn and more difficult than age 3
–runs around like crazy
–resists your resistance and your rules
–is bold and full of life
–craves adventure and is very loud

etc.

I didn’t get one for 7 year olds. Oh well.

The stats:
C: 49 in tall, 68%; 63 lb., 89%
M: 43 in tall, 94%; 44 lb., 91%

Each had one shot. M volunteered to go first, but said, “Ow.” C went second and braved it silently. I said that each was brave in her own particular way.