It's the Little Things

On Monday she turned and waved and got on a plane to fly 10,000 km away. 

It's not like she's not been away before. The past two years she's been living on campus at Redeemer University, only coming home for Christmas, summer, and some long weekends. But somehow knowing that this is farther away and longer without time together makes it different. 

The first days are hard, with lots of checking online to see if there's an email or a hangouts message, or even notification of a Skye call waiting to happen. In between the checking, though, there's daily life that distracts us from the vacant spot in our hearts. 

And then it hits. An accidental setting of 5 places at the dinner table instead of 4. Hearing the rain pounding during the night and wondering if she has a tin roof to sing her to sleep when the rain comes. Folding laundry and finding one last item of her clothing that got put through the washing too late to pack.

Those are the things that undo us.

::

Three months will pass quickly in the great scheme of things. This is an opportunity I wouldn't have even suggested that she pass up; it could have been made just for her, my God-loving, Missionary-loving, Missionary Kid-loving, Uruguay-loving, children-loving daughter.

But still, it's the little things that make the heart squeeze and the tears pour.

Extra joy? A family photo the day before departure. 

A year ago I thought I'd have to give it all up. I'd already seen my eldest graduate and head off to university, but now it looked like I'd have to release my younger two to the brick-and-mortar schools of our town or some neighbouring city. 

Because I just couldn't do it.

Everything in me was breaking down, from the physical to the emotional. Years of chronic debilitating headaches, steadily getting worse and more frequent, had worn me down to nothing; the culture shock and identity crisis of returning to Canada after four years on the mission field with my family left me floundering much longer than I'd expected. Facing extreme fatigue, inability to concentrate, being bed-ridden with pain three to four days a week, tears pouring down my face constantly - I was no longer able to imagine how I could continue schooling my sons who would be entering grades 9 and 6 in the fall. Panic attacks coursed over me whenever I considered what seemed to be the only way forward. But as things stood, I was not going to be doing them a service by keeping them home, as much as my heart longed to. 

Prayers. Tears. Crying out for help. Long conversations with my Dear Man. Asking God. Pleading with Him to give me the strength and health to continue.

But it was not His direction for me. Not the way I pictured it. Not the way I planned. Because God gave us two paths to follow this year, two routes unlike any I'd expected when I fell at His feet and begged for answers a year ago.

My Little Man, now 14, has entered a brick-and-mortar school in town. And it's okay. I'm not thrilled that he's there, but I'm content that this is how it must be. It's been a learning curve for him and for us, entering the school system after a family absence of 24 years! We're making it work. (And I really need a new 'name' for him, as he's not little anymore!)

And Brown-Eyed Boy, who's 11, almost 12? Through miraculous provision he has been able to continue being home schooled. The miracle of it? I didn't have to sacrifice our philosophy of education and turn to a curriculum that didn't fit who we are in order to continue. We've been gifted with the opportunity to participate in the pilot project for a Charlotte Mason curriculum which has truly been the one thing that allowed me to keep this youngest child of mine at home at least a while longer. It is God's gift. 

The loss I feel over my second child's abrupt and unexpected early departure from our daily school is waning. I see him thriving in many areas that I couldn't have served him. I see him tackling things that are causing him to grow in new ways. Daily I pray for him; daily I reaffirm God's covenant promises to him; daily I trust him to the care of the One Who knows him and loves him more than I do. It's the only way.

At the same time, I'm thankful for this year (dare I hope for 'these years'?) with my third child, for an opportunity to give him the best that I can while I still have the chance. Because I realize now that I might not have him here as long as I originally thought. 

Though I pray it won't be over soon.

I've committed to coming back to PeaceLedge, to exploring once again the writing path that the Lord has used so often to teach me, to heal me, to convict me, and to love me. He is here. He IS "The Place Called Peace". Maybe you'll join me in looking for Him on this precarious edge between safety and vulnerability, between contentment and complacency?

Canada Day with Mittens

Last week Lucas finished his Math book - early. And I had promised that if he managed to finish it by the end of June we'd get a couple of days off school. That's a big deal around here, as we don't take days off school very often, and we have been doing the 'school year round' thing the past couple of years.

Ending by the end of June had a bonus to us, since the following Monday - today - was Canada Day, and we were able to use that as an excuse to take an almost complete day off of everything and enjoy of the holiday. 

Ed did some tasks around the house - installing the fan in the woodstove, that kind of thing. The Farming Game hit the table (for the second day in a row), and we ate supper in the living room.

But the Lord was smiling on us especially today in giving us a beautiful clear sunny day which we took full advantage of. Despite the cold we packed into the car and drove the little distance to Punta del Chileno where we just passed time.

 

 For some reason the kids were really eager to climb the lookout tower first thing, saying "If we find some money, can we go for ice cream?"

And they found this! A peso! Somehow I think it was planted on a previous trip for just such a time as this!

 The boys stripped off their shoes and socks...

 And hit the sand hill with a freshly waxed board.

 

 They tried some jumps, both with...

 ...and without the board...

 ...while Emily, Ed, and I watched from the sidelines.

 The kids tried a pose they'd done a couple of years ago. They still look great!

And Emily practiced her photographic arts, too:

A much needed family day for all of us.

But I still can't get over wearing mittens on Canada Day. I think we'll save the ice cream reward for Christmas.

Lift Up Your Eyes

It was one of those days. A survival day. And in the early afternoon survival turned to joy. 

Perfect wind. Perfect sky. Perfect weather. 

I put everything else out of my mind and accepted the call to play. 

The boys flew that kite for close to an hour, keeping it up for stretches of 15 minutes at a time, playing with dives and recovery, switching off in flight, and enjoying the mechanics of the wind on the wings. And I just watched. And watched. Looked at their faces, the sky, the kite, the colours. There is so much beauty everywhere.

I need to lift my eyes more.

(These pictures aren't from that day. I didn't have the camera with me on that special afternoon, and I'm actually thankful for that. It let me engage and not just frame images. Dear Man took these photos a few days later when he, too, seized the moment.)

There isn't a girl on earth who I love more than this one.

 

This week she turned 17, and while there are some days that I worry that I've totally messed her up, there are other days when I see how the grace of God has worked in and through my imperfect mothering.

If you could see inside My Girl's heart you'd see

gentleness

compassion

perseverance

humility

desire to serve

independence

love immeasurable

 loyalty

tenacity

How could I not be pleased with those characteristics - parts of her Lord Jesus, reflected in her? My heart sings with thankfulness for all she is and all she is becoming.

I don't know what the future holds for her, but I know for sure that her Lord God is holding her firmly in His pocket. There's no better place for her to be!

Two Days

They've backed out of the driveway, leaving a hole in my heart. Two days is all these two will be gone, but when they're ones buried deep in the heart, days might as well be weeks.

We've made the preparations: food in the fridge for us, in the cooler for them. They have the phone, we have Skype. All they'll need for the next two days really isn't much, not in a physical sense. But do they have all they need in their hearts? Do we? Do they know how much love is traveling with them? Do they know how many prayers are going up as they drive? There's no end to the wanderings of my thoughts as I follow them through images in my mind.

Two days. I can last two days.

: :

1021. One more morning together.
1022. Plans; imperfect, incomplete plans.
1023. Arms enfolding me.
1024. A break in the heat.
1025. Brown Eyed Boy's emerging sense of humor.
1026. Skirt from my sister, sent from 10,000 km away.
1027. Matching t-shirts.
1028. Black-out curtains.
1029. Shared embraces.

Square-Foot Gardening

This year we started our first foray into "Square-Foot Gardening". (I suppose that here in South America it should be called "Square-Metre Gardening", but that just doesn't roll off the tongue as well.)

Following a good friend's suggestion, I had foregone purchasing a book (gulp) about the process and had instead visited the Square Foot Gardening website, read through all the info, and made my plan. Then I had to pull out my dictionary - the Spanish-English dictionary, that is - and look up all the words I might possibly need before making the trip to the vivero. I looked up 'peat moss', 'compost', 'soil', 'vermiculite', 'moisture-retention', 'weed-barrier', and so much more, jotting the words down in the little notebook I keep in my purse for vocabulary, braced myself with a dozen or more deep breaths, and off I went.

I walked through the entire store first, hoping to just find the things I was looking for without too much difficulty. And for the most part I was successful. I found the peat moss, compost, and garden soil, but still I needed help with choosing which variety of those would be best to purchase. The woman working the counter was helpful, allowing for my halting Spanish as I tried to explain what I needed, and guided me to the right items, telling me prices, too, since many things didn't have prices on them.

I got out my pen and turned my vocabulary list into a price list so I could report back to my Dear Man before purchasing.  Costs approved, we made our purchases a couple of days later.

My bale of peat moss - turba - We almost didn't go through with the project because of the cost of this one item.

My Dear Man had already constructed the ground-level frames we were going to use, so  now the whole family was ready to set to work.

Brown-Eyed Boy helps me lay the weed-barrier.

Two planters ready for the triple-mix.

Brown-Eyed Boy and Little Man mixing up the triple mix. (We altered the proportions slightly because of the cost of the turba, but it should be okay, don't you think?)

One planter filled with triple-mix under the approving eyes of our neighbours' dogs, Linda and Pongo.

(See the lemon on the right? A bumper crop of lemons on the tree this spring, then our landlord pruned it and it'll be a while before the new fruit is ready to pick!)

The first planter was string-divided into 9 sections, each roughly (you guessed it) one square foot in area. Each of the children was given a row of three sections to plant as they chose. All three went for plantas de frutilla (strawberry), and girasol (sunflower) for two sections, and their third sections were zanahorias (carrots), marones (peppers), and lechuga (lettuce). The seeds went in a couple of days after the planter was ready.

All of us were eager to see what would come up, and how quickly. With the exception of the frutillas, all were started from seeds, and we hoped that, living here where there are no pesky squirrels, we might have some nice results with the girasoles (unlike the attempt that My Girl and I made at 'building' a sunflower house several years ago).

Sadly, however, the leaf-cutter ants quickly discovered this new food source, and completely wiped out the leaves and buds from the frutillas as well as the early sprouts of the girasol in Brown-Eyed Boy's center square.

Early sprouts

Frutilla - a great harvest crop... for the leaf-cutter ants

See how those nasty ants have completely removed the leaves from the ends of the stalks, not to mention chewing away some of the stalks themselves? Nasty ants.

We decided that we weren't going to take the ant-attack lying down and went to the store to find ant killer of any kind, as long as it was POWERFUL! The single treatment we gave did the trick, and we haven't had such an attack since.

The frutillas made a come-back, and the later girasol sprouts not only survived, but thrived, although only in two sections; My Girl's girasol square is still completely empty as a continual reminder of the sad day when the ants were discovered.

All the initial prep and planting was done September 10 and 11, with the early sprouts and ant attack occurring in early October. Since then I've also planted my own planter with peppers, carrots, tomatoes, and lettuce, and the kids have added peppers, carrots, and lettuce (I think!) to theirs, filling in open sections where plants didn't come up.

Here's the progress so far:

Two tall sunflowers - the one on the left is Little Man's, the one in the centre section is Brown-Eyed Boy's. Behind them you can see the strawberry plants filling out nicely - all three of them!

My planter

 

A couple of pale berries that will be candidates for picking very soon!

Brown-Eyed Boy has been the most diligent of all three children in terms of watering, although even his efforts have been sporadic. We don't have a watering can, so we're using one of the plastic pots with holes in the bottom that the flowers from our front garden came in, which involves making multiple trips to the tap in order to water both planters. 

We hope to see some nice growth from the new sprouts (photos to come later) in the other crops, and to be able to pull fresh carrots, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes from the garden soon.

My Best Isn't What I Want It To Be

Every time one of my children has a birthday, I imagine the birthday cake I'm going to make, and it's lovely.

Then I make it, and it isn't.

Oh, the cakes are usually okay, but they aren't lovely. Sometimes they aren't even special. They're just cakes.

This year I stepped toward My Girl's 15th, I knew my weakness. I wasn't going to make anything special, just a cake.

And slowly I got sucked into the same spiral: I started looking for a recipe (because my traditional carrot cake with cream cheese icing doesn't work quite as well here as it does in Canada). And I found one. And it was more than a recipe. It was inspiration.

Six layers of rich dark chocolate filled with luscious Swiss meringue butter cream icing, and covered, top and sides, with thick ruffles of the same icing. Beautiful.

I knew there was no way I was going to make it look like the picture, but I thought I could still make it good.

So I started baking. Borrowing pans to make all those layers. Googling icing recipes, since the Swiss meringue buttercream wasn't really an option.

And the layers were beautiful, but there was no way there were going to be six of them.  All my baking resulted in four layers, but at the time of assembly, one suffered a sad fate, and I was left with three. Still, three layers of wonderfully moist rich dark chocolate cake? Not too bad.

And then, once the icing was over the cake, it didn't look nearly as wonderful as it was meant to.  And I was, once again, disappointed.

Why do I set myself up for this? Every year I think it will be different. And every year it's the same: high hopes which, like my fourth layer of cake, suffer a sad fate.

This cake was supposed to be different. I wanted it to be different. My Girl's 15th was going to be special, even if it wasn't a traditional South American 15th. And I'd hung my hopes on the cake.

A bit of consulting with my friends started me thinking about chocolate ganache. One of my friends came over and walked me through the surprisingly simple process of making the exotic-sounding ganache, and the transformation had begun. A bit more advice, four women in my kitchen, all embellishments considered, and the transformation was complete.

No longer a sad, slightly lumpily iced cake.

This was now a treasure.

This was the cake I'd waited my whole life to make.

Sure there were imperfections. Lumps beneath the ganache don't simply disappear. Slightly slanted layers from a slightly non-level oven can't be magically made symmetrical.  

But that's okay. I don't even mind. 

I love this cake. 

I love it for what it represents:

My Girl; team-work; restoration; hope; beauty out of what was considered lost; my imperfect-best made more lovely by those in my life.

Happy Birthday!

I am a mother.  And the child who gave me that role is a young woman, blossoming and stretching to fill the place the Lord has given her.

How does a mother describe her first born child? What words would capture that one's place in a mother-heart and still be believable to those who listen?

This woman-child, this gift from Above, this precious life-filled daughter of mine turns 15 today. Fifteen. Can it be? So soon? And at the same time, only fifteen? Her influence on me has permeated all of who I am, and to realize that it has really only been fifteen years, just over a third of my life, that I've shared with her fills me with amazement.

I was challenged in choosing how to address this, her birthday, in writing. Because it is about her. But it's also about me. Our lives are intertwined in a precious way, and as she grows and matures and prepares for adulthood, our lives will continue to twine together. The twining will just look different than it did as a child.

She is My Girl, the one who brought me a new identity fifteen years ago, who continues to shape my life and my dreams, who is becoming a friend and companion. More than that, though, she is His girl, and He is the One shaping her life.