Simple Joys

Lately, I cannot get this one song out of my head. (And no, ArtGuy and Cookie Boy - despite the fact that you want to ingrain the Lord of the Rings theme set to vuvzelas into my brain through your incessant humming, that is not the song I am talking about!)

The song is "Little Church', by Donovan, from the 1972 movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon".  Being educated at a Franciscan university (Franciscan University of Steubenville), the song became quite familiar to me! The movie is dated, but I never get tired of the story of St. Francis. Kind of like the movie Apollo 13 - I can hear it over and over and over!

If you want your dream to be,
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings greater ends.
Heartfelt work grows purely.

If you want to live life free,
Take your time go slowly.
Do few things but do them well.
Simple joys are holy.

Day by day, stone by stone,
Build your secret slowly.
Day by day, you'll grow, too,
You'll know heaven's glory.

It's really those 2 lines that get me - "Do few things but do them well. Simple joys are holy".

As a mother of four boys, I can safely say I rarely ever "do few things" in any given day. It is always "wash this, clean that, wipe this, direct that, teach this, make that, drive this one here, drive that one there" and so on. Not that I am making a litany of complaints. It is simply a reality of mothering young children.
That tendency to be scattered as a mother often leads to scattered-ness in other things as well. I often read a little of this, then that, while writing this article, then working on that book, all the while researching this area. In the end, I do nothing slowly (except for those things I procrastinate on), and often forget to look at the simple joys.

My simple joys are: a sunset, the smell of a young child's freshly washed hair, reading a book to a cuddly toddler, holding hands with my husband, playing cards with the boys, and listening to music.

What are your simple joys?

Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival

Awesome! This is  my first time posting to Sunday Snippets, hosted by RAnn at This, That, and the Other Thing!

Well, I will link to a few posts outside of this week, for the sole reason that this is my first time here! So glad to be a part of a new group! I cannot wait to read some new blogs and make some new friends!

• This week I reflected on my skills as a mother and wife - The Domestic Goddess 
• A while back I started to write about music in the church. I hope to post a second in that series soon - Music in the Church
• The continuing saga of The Mad Toddler - The Fine Art of Discipline
• and lastly, a nice recipe for Strawberry Soup

Here is to a great new week!

Christine, texasmom

End of the Week

This week brought us a new addition - our new cat, Joshua! He is small and sweet. He likes attention, which is a good thing with so many boys to dish it out! A friend of ours had four kittens to give away. We went over Friday to pick one out, and fell in love with this guy!  His name was originally Mikey, but the boys decided to rename him. On the way home, for some inexplicable reason, they were all in agreement on the name Joshua! So, Joshua it is!

This summer is already slipping by. With the drama of the past two years, I really have forgotten how relaxing a summer can be! We have the community pool, we go bowling (thanks to KidsBowlFree), and we hang with friends. One day this week, we had seven boys in the house, playing video games and building with Legos. Sweet!

Speaking of bowling....

We were bowling a few days ago. The Young Adult has not been able to find his groove. He has consistently come in last every time we go. Until this week, that is! A few days ago, The Young Adult seemed to bowl strike after strike, decimating the competition. Cookie Boy, on the other hand, was not having a good day. He was behind, and just could not knock down more than seven pins in any turn. At one point, Cookie Boy's lips quivered, and tears spilled down his cheeks.
I called him over to me.
"Honey, it is okay," I said. "You are improving every game. Today, The Young Adult is just having an incredible game."
He nodded his head., but the tears kept coming.
"Cookie Boy, you just do your best. You will see," I ended.
Cookie Boy nodded his head, calming down.
As we were talking, the Young Adult finished another awesome turn, and then a new frame began.
Every single one of us bowled a strike that frame, except Cookie Boy!
It just wasn't his day.

The Mad Toddler has perfected a trick I like to call  "Slippery Fish". This is when I am trying to pick him up, or am already carrying him, and he goes limp and floppy, making it as hard to hold on to him as a large, mad fish. I am in desperate need of a massage and a chiropractor!

The Domestic Goddess

All my life, I have only wanted two things: to teach and to be a mom.

(Well, I wanted these things more than anything else. I also wanted a yellow Honda Prelude, to be a size 6, and of course, world peace.)

When I was little, I held play schools, and roped some area kids into being my "class". We lived way out in the country at that point, and the kid pool was low. Some of the moms finally had  pity on me, and let me have their little ones. I remember lesson planning and everything. I knew teaching was my calling all my life, even in spite of the number of my own teachers who tried to dissuade me.

My mind never wavered until college. Then, for a number of reasons, I changed my mind, and ended up with a BS in Mental Health and Human Services and a MTS in Theology (never saw that one coming!). But in the end, I teach. I teach my own children every day, I teach other kids in a variety of classes in a homeschool coop, I teach adults in different classes - I teach and I love it.

I am also a mom. Never would have guessed I would have a posse of boys, but they are my light and my joy.

The problem - well, it is all the other stuff. I guess I just always assumed that because I wanted kids and I wanted to stay home with them, I would be good at the things that go with that. You know - cooking, cleaning, home decoration, organization, creative parenting. I always imagined that I would be a domestic goddess.

Well, I am not. Good at those things, that is.

Hanging pictures? Always crooked! Painting - well, ArtGuy will not allow me to do that on my own anymore. I am good at spilling paint! Gardening? I hate bees, wasps, ants, and dirt. So, no - gardening is not for me.

I am lucky my gang tends towards rather plebeian tastes, as far as food goes, because I am no Julia Child, or even Rachel Ray! After a day of teaching and boy wrangling, I rather dread having to get a meal on the table. I often forget a step, or misjudge the time, or forget a course. My sister-in-law, Sarah, is a great cook. She just seems to have that flair. Everything I have ever eaten of her's is rather great, even the simple stuff. She makes homemade breads and chili, for goodness sake! If a green thumb means you are a successful gardener, what kind of thumb does a good cook have? Not red, 'cause that would be gross. Well, whatever color thumb good cooks have, Sarah has it.

Cleaning? Hah! There is always a load of laundry in the washing machine, and please! Do not look at my kitchen floor! A neighbor told me that she has been religious about keeping shoes off her carpet and she has to have a spotless kitchen floor.  My kids build their immune systems based solely on the variety of germs and dirt that inhabit my flooring. Not to paint myself as a slob, because I do clean them all! I sweep about 1,000 times a day. But as soon as I turn my head, there are cereal pieces under the table or a crushed Goldfish crunching under my heel!

In my head, I am a fun, accomplished wife and mother. In reality, I am more Valkyrie than domestic goddess. Thank goodness my husband is impressed with me. He sees me rather through the eyes of love, for which I am truly grateful.

I was lamenting to him only last week that I was really and truly trying to get the living room clean. ArtGuy gestured towards the room littered with toddler toys and a layer of dust that gave everything a nice, pearly sheen, and said, "But honey! To me this IS clean!"

Bless his heart!

Over the years I have learned to let go of that domestic goddess image I always held in my head. To (mis)quote a variety of wise women (The Little Flower, Mother Teresa, and FlyLady), no matter how imperfectly I serve my family, by truly serving them from my heart, with love, each imperfect chore becomes a blessing to each and every person in the home.

Love can transform anything. Love can even make a mere weak mortal woman into a very, very minor domestic goddess - at least to her own family!

He's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Toddler

So, my afternoon was spent with a mad toddler. He was grouchy all afternoon! Most friends cannot believe I call him the Mad Toddler, because he seems so sweet in public. He is fiesty though!

Happy Independence Day

 The Mad Toddler is sick or teething. Either way he is running a fever and not feeling well. Poor baby. Looks like a quiet 4th for me!

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. One of the beauties of our country is our freedom - freedom to not even like our country. There are so many things about the US that make me frustrated or angry, but so much I love, too.

We have freedom. Freedom like many places in the world have never known, or have only known for a short time.
I have been privileged to travel to countries where freedom was not the same. Paraguay in 1986, which was under the regime of Streossner. Crossing military checkpoints as we traveled around Paraguay. Witnessing the poverty of the majority of the population, watching those who did not carry their national id get taken off of the bus when the military stopped to check. Glimpses of life in Argentina and Bolivia. And again in 1993, a trip to Slovakia, which had gained its independence only in January of that year. My host family served me white flour buns for breakfast. I was told this was a treat that they could not afford for the family, but gave me as the honored guest.
Not that all these places are necessarily the same today, but the point is I have known freedom my whole life. I can, and do, criticize my government. I can and do, exercise my right to vote (never forgetting that women were once denied this freedom). I can, and do teach my children the rights and duties of being a citizen of this nation.


Here, on the eve of the celebration of our country's ideals, are some of the words of that precious document, the Declaration of Independence.


When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Lost

Like many others authors, I have tried my hand at poetry from time to time. And like most writers, I write mediocre poetry. And since it will never see the light of day otherwise, I can at least put it on my blog!

I forgot about this one until I found it hidden among some other papers today. I wrote this in the year following my sister's passing.
 

Lost

I am seeking,

I am searching, 

I am stumbling,

I am lost.

I thought I knew

where I was going

and I did not

mind the cost.

But, to my disappointment,

my faith was built on sand.

A strong wind blew 

and knocked me over;

I fell and dropped Your hand.

Now I struggle through the twilight

of doubt and of fear.

I search to see Your purpose,

Your voice I try to hear. 

I think of those who went before me,

whose tales are well known.

I walk their well-worn footsteps

and now their stories are my own.

I am the beggar

who is begging,

I, the blind man

who cannot see.

I am Lazarus

in the grave

waiting for You

to set me free.

I am the deer

yearning for the stream

so thirsty, almost fainting.

I am the watchman

on the tower

in hopeful darkness waiting.

I am Mary  at the tomb

longing for Your face.

I am the children

who hear Your voice

and want to run

to Your embrace.

I am the woman 

who has sinned

and now falls at Your feet.

I am the parent 

whose child is ill

and seeks Your healing

in the street.

I am dry,

I am broken,

so weak

I cannot move.

I am frail,

I am empty,

my tears 

my only food.

This dark night of the soul,

I know it cannot last

Though I may never understand

why these things have come to pass.

Every day is a struggle

to stand on solid ground,

to hold on in spite of

a faith turned upside-down.

I have made a choice

and on this I stake my faith,

Though I no longer hear Your voice,

Though I cannot see Your face.

To love in spite of loss,

to keep going, though I can't move 

And to hold with all my might

to a Savior I can't prove. 

I will sing the song of faith

with my voice, wan and weak.

A song so full of grace

with music pure and sweet.

Using lyrics that are true

for Your strength is in the weak.

I believe with all I can.

Now Lord, help my unbelief!

copyright C Alcott 2006