Repentance

"Repentance - in Greek, metanoia, a change of mind."

I read that definition of an old, familiar word and concept today and it sort of blew me away.  I guess I still had the childish (as in, simple, for children) idea: when you do wrong, you say you are sorry and then try not to do it again.

I never realized how limiting that definition is.

I had heard people say that when you are really sorry for doing it, you really do never do it again.  I inwardly scoffed at the idea, since I could personally attest to the fact that even though I was sorry, I would still probably fall in that area again.  And again.

I would try hard.  I would really mean it, this time.  But that "natural man" kept getting in the way of my spiritual desires.  Then I would brush it off as the trying tests of this mortal life.  After all, I knew I could never achieve perfection in this life, which meant that mistakes would happen.

Saying you are sorry and trying not to do it again also encamps itself in the "action" realm rather than the "mindset" realm.  Trying not "to do" something means that you are trying to control your actions, fighting off temptation, and then sometimes giving in.

It's sort of like standing in front of a shelf full of candy.  You want a candy bar, but you have no money. You know stealing is wrong.  And yet you stand there, willing your hand not to reach out and pocket one.  Again, you tell yourself that it is wrong to take it.  You let your fingers graze over the brightly coloured wrappers.  You smell the faint aromas beneath the packaging.  You wince and pull your hand back, and yet still linger.

Whether or not you actually take that candy bar is beside the point here.  This scenario is about action: do I or don't I?  If you do take it, and later feel guilty and wish to repent, you would admit fault, apologize to the store owner, restore the money for the candy, and promise not to do it again.  You might feel bad for a while, but if there is no real change of mind, then given six months, a year, you might find yourself again staring at another shelf of candy, wondering.

But, if we apply the above definition of repentance, then what you have experienced is a true change of mind.  "Repentance is a ruthless dismantling of old ways of seeing and thinking, and then a diligent and vigilant building of new ones...You turn away, stubbornly and without apology, from that which formerly entranced you." (Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God)

A child who was sorry and promising not to steal again might very well keep that promise.  But perhaps that is only driven by the fact that he knows it is wrong and shouldn't do it.  He might stand again at the candy counter, over and over again, and think about what it would be like to have that candy bar.  Even though he controls his hands (actions) and doesn't act on the impulse, he is still standing there, wishing he could have it.

On the other hand, if he dismantles the old way of seeing and thinking, then he never lingers at that candy bar without a coin in his pocket again.  He hasn't just turned away from that old temptation, but actually has changed the way he thinks about it: there is no point standing there without money to buy.  It isn't about taking or not taking the candy, because taking it isn't even an option.

I think we all have areas in which we are in one state or the other.  On a superficial level, I would never park in an illegal parking spot.  It doesn't even cross my mind that I could pull over, turn the key and get out if the sign says I can't.  On the other hand, I push my speedometer up to exactly 9km/hour over the speed limit when I drive.  If I was pulled over, I might say I was sorry to the police officer, and I might feel a bit sorry that I was breaking that law, and yet I can almost guarantee that in a couple of weeks I would be back to the old habit.  While I would be sorry, I would not be repentant.  However, let's say that suddenly I realize the impact that an extra 9km/hour would have.  For example, I have heard that school zones are exactly 40km/h because studies have shown that if a car hits a person at that speed, the person is much more likely to survive than if they are hit even at 50km/h.  When I heard this stat on the radio about 6 years ago, it changed my mindset about driving in school zones.  I dismantled the old way of thinking and built a new one.

Back to the subject at hand, and more serious areas of sin than driving and candy bars.  The reason we struggle again and again is that repentance hasn't yet fully taken place.  I don't think it's something that can be achieved on demand, because of a consequence meted out or a guilty conscience.  It must root itself more deeply in the heart in order for that lasting shift to take place.

Juliettables

Juliette has a fascination with the drawing of eyes.  Whenever we get out sketch paper and pencils, she wants to me draw eye after eye after eye.  Just one big eye, with details like eye lashes and eye brows, eye lids and flecks in the iris.  I have no idea where this came from.

***

While we do a good job to keep her away from her allergens, once or twice a month she gets something unbeknownst to us and we see the attack all over again.  Last night I think she licked an empty bowl of ice cream.  She was restless and wouldn't go to sleep come bedtime, then around 9pm she launched into an all out tirade.  She thrashed about in the room, screaming, crying, throwing herself on the bed, hitting her head on the wall.  I was in there with her, singing softly, talking gently, hugging her and then letting her go.  After thirty minutes she suddenly collapsed into a ball and fell asleep for fifteen minutes.  Then I watched as she started to writhe in her sleep, wake up, and start the process all over again.  That went on until about 2 am, when she finally collapsed next to me in my bed and slept, albeit fitfully, until 7am.  Poor baby.  Dairy is by far the worst and most immediate reaction, although she still gets patchy spots on her face if she gets any grains, beans or soy.

***

Spring is finally on its way, though late this year, and Juliette is proving to be an outdoorsy kid.  I took her out in rainboots and mudpants the other day and she splashed around in the spring mud for hours.  She won't remember much from last summer, but I have a feeling she will be in her element once the ground is soft enough for digging.

A book

I've started writing my book.  It's one that's been on my heart for over a year to write, but I haven't had the drive as yet to sit down and get to it.

This week, I finished watching a TV series on Netflix that had my attention over the last month.  As the credits closed on the final episode, I simply said to myself:

Well, that's it.  Now you write.

And so I opened up my laptop and jumped in.  Wish me luck.  Starting is the easy part.  It's slugging through as the pages add up and the initial excitement fades.  Writing is part passion and part perseverance.

Beautiful Mess

This morning as I lay in bed next to Juliette (finally sleeping, after being awake until 3am), I was hopping around blogs on the internet.  I happened to land on a blog called "A Beautiful Mess."  I didn't stay on it long, don't remember what it was about or who wrote it.  But the title has left an impression in my mind.

At first I thought "yeah, mess is right."  Being a mom of 4 kids in a small house means the mess is always there.  There is the pile of shoes and boots at the door, and the accumulating laundry, and the six toothbrushes and three toothpastes and the cup and the soap all teetering on the bathroom sink.  The clutter and mess bugs me and frustrates me, but I've learned to just keep on plugging at it, coming to terms with the fact that tidying the mess is just another part of my day while my children are young.

But what struck me deeper was the beautiful mess of motherhood within me.  Yesterday, as I was writing, I had tears streaming down my face as my fingers jabbed at the keyboard, capturing some of my deepest hurts, angers and frustrations I feel as a mom.  This work I am doing is harder than I ever thought, harder than I've ever witnessed in others.  (That's not to say motherhood isn't equally hard for others, it's just we are challenged by our own special set of circumstances.)  I have lately felt the urge to pack it all in and head back to work.  My occasional breaks (like playing in the community band once a week, or bible study on Thursday mornings) are no longer filling my empty tank; I return home and feel the same weight I did when I left.  I am such a mess these days.

A beautiful mess.

Because somehow, every morning, I find myself waking up next to Juliette's peaceful eyes, shut fast.  She has cried and screamed at me all day, and then slept beside me all night.  And yet I am blessed, endowed with, gifted, that one moment, every single morning, in which all of that frustration melts away.  The suns rays peak over the horizon and spill onto my cotton white pillow, bathing us girls in light and my heart overflows with love.  And as each sleepy-eyed boy stumbles from his bedroom I gather them up, stroke their hair, breathe their skin, and forgive the selfish, childish behaviours and demands they made on me the day before.  These days devolve into a mess fairly quickly, as my sleep-deprived, over-touched, maxed-out self is stripped of energy within an hour of waking.  But I look at my streaky mascara in the mirror and tell myself: this is my beautiful mess.  I am a beautiful mess.

Work ethic

Today is about venting.

I am so frustrated with the general (lack of) work ethic today.  Somehow we have created a culture that glorifies laziness, and rewarded getting the most with the least amount of effort.

James runs a business.  It's a moving company geared to seniors and retirement residences. We have trucks and employees and ten years experience.  And we can't seem to get a steady workforce.  And it boggles my mind.

An employee starts as a mover. It is a physically demanding job, much like farming would have been decades ago.  But the rewards of physical labour are great: strength, vigour, good use of the body, and a healthy tiredness at the end of the day.  I spent the last two weeks chipping away at the four foot tall ice block on our deck.  I wielded the ice chipper, broke off a big block of ice and the hefted that 50 pound block over the deck fence onto the ground.  I have never felt better.  And yet, so few people see the benefits of physical labour any longer.

We pay well above minimum wage.  We are sympathetic to home and family responsibilities. There is latitude with booking days off.  James and his brother are kind bosses, who themselves work hard, and create a pleasant and friendly atmosphere in which to work.

If someone just needed daily work at a decent wage, it's there.  But there is so much room for growth.  Anyone with a business mind or good client relations have a number of positions to which they could climb.  There is room for growth, expansion, franchising, and relocation.  We have an entire division in another city that is in need of someone to run it.  For someone with ideas, ambition, potential, it's a gold mine.  While experience in our industry must be gained first, there isn't an endless waiting and guessing period, hoping not to be passed over for a promotion.

I heard CBC radio proclaim the puzzling news that unemployment and job creation are both on the rise.  The analyst said they haven't seen this before...unemployment rising while companies are saying they can't find workers.  This speaks to the same thing I have witnessed in our company.  All we are looking for are honest, hard working people.  But working hard is being shunned by our society more and more.  The sense of entitlement we are being raised on is poisoning the job market. Technology has given us work-saving devices (dishwasher) and time-waiting devices (television), both which feed a society that is becoming increasingly lazy.

And while I vent and complain, it also helps me to hold up a mirror to my own life, and to the ways in which I am raising my children. I hope to spend my days working hard, and learning to value how that work benefits me physically, emotionally and mentally.  And I hope I can successfully convey the importance of hard arms work to my children instead of smoothing the road to laziness for them.

Demanding children

James and I are sitting in on a family class Sunday nights, with four other couples, as we talk about the challenges of raising a family. The other couples all have children who are older than ours by 5 to 10 years. Nonetheless it is interesting to talk and share stories, ideas, challenges, successes, and everything else that goes along with parenting.

Last week we spoke at length about the old debate of nature versus nurture.  How much of our children's personality come with them, and how me much is shaped by parents, families, and their surroundings?

I think about this a lot.  A lot.  Because James and I seem to have four children who are all very demanding, challenging, headstrong. Not one is laid back.  Not one is easy going. Not one likes to just go with the flow.  They are each very different in their demands, but it is exhausting parenting  these four.

Juliette tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants. The funny thing is, we don't cater to her, we don't give in to her.  We can't, with three other children that also need us.  But the result is that I have two choices: engage directly with her as she chooses, or listen to her cry and scream.  That is both lhysically and emotionally exhausting.  It leads to lots of tears and frustration. It means that she is generally at my side 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am an introvert who needs time alone to recharge.  And while I can take it now and then, it is at the expense of my heart and ears as it means setting her down to cry.  Oh, and she has yet to cry herself out.  That girl can literally cry for hours.

Benjamin has some inner desire to defy.  Not desire, need.  A need to defy.  A need to do the opposite of what you ask.  A need to rock the boat and poke at others and test every iota of patience you've got.  Even in the simplest things.  "Benjamin, please open your mouth so we can brush your teeth," becomes a battle of wills.  It descends into threatening and yelling and tears from everyone involved. But he has no problem with the brushing of teeth, so why does he sometimes choose to make it difficult?  "Benjamin, do not go onto the road."  He looks at us, hears, and then walks nonchalantly into the road.  He has no currency in which we can work.  He simply lives to defy.

Caleb is a big ball of emotion. He is easily hurt physically and emotionally. He feels things intensely. He wants to squeeze the life out of you when he hugs because he loves you so much.  But he also might throw someone out of a moving car if he got mad.  He needs both touch and time to express and experience love, which means he delivers a constant stream of words to be heard, acknowledged and answered.

Colin needs order, but it edges a little on compulsion.  The chaos of his younger siblings is oftentimes too much for him.  A he has turned eight I see him retreating more and more into books, a desperate attempt for his little introvert self to deal with the intensity of our small home.  He is learning to deal with change, but often gets left behind as our attentions are sucked up with the others.

And so I look upon these four fireballs and wonder....is it something we have done?  Is it because James and I are both intense personalities that we have genetically created uber-intense children?  Is this why they say two first-borns should never marry?  Or is it because neither of us are laid back that we don't have a laid back environment to nurture that in our children?  Or would these lovely little souls have been much the same in any home, in any family?

Mothering is by far the hardest and at the same time most rewarding thing I've ever done.  I never knew exactly what it would require of me, would never have guessed the constant demands, the unending service, the utter lack of any sort of break.

And yet, every morning I wake completely renewed (despite the average 2 hours of sleep I get at night), more in love with these precious us kids than ever.


 

Writing, editing, publishing

Well, that happened.

This week the book Motherhood Realized was released.  I have an essay on motherhood published in it.  I haven't yet received my copy, but it's on its way.  Seeing my words, my name, in print will be really cool.

But even better was being on the email chain of the writers.  For the past two weeks I've been receiving emails from our publisher, encouraging us to promote the book and updating us on sales and success.



That #27?  That's the best seller ranking on all of Amazon.com.  Yep, we broke into the top 100.

Now, day in and day out, I'm feeling the desire to write.  The funny thing is, I don't even know what it is I want to write.  I have some really solid non-fiction ideas, plus some anthology leads, and the moreI read fiction the more I just want to write a story.  I know writers usually start with a passion for a story they want to tell, but me, I just feel like I have words bubbling up and over that need a blank page on which to land.

Of course, right now, it's not happening.  While Juliette is not sleeping at night, I'm not sleeping at night, which means my days pass in a fog.  Any free time I do have usually ends up in a mindless passage of wasted time.  I can't seem to focus my mind on being creative in the least when I'm so depleted.  But I keep telling myself that all these wonderful things I want to do don't have to be done right now.