You Found a WHAT?!

This is a story you’re not going to believe.

In Mom to Mom, I frequently encourage young moms to focus on the things that matter most and to give up  “Supermom” expectations.   I admit that one of the things I gave up was fanatical super-clean housekeeping.  Order and organization—yes.   But obsessive cleaning in every nook and cranny—no.

Recently, however, our house has been looking better than usual because we are getting ready to put it on the market.  As part of that process, I had a cleaning team come in this week to help me out.   And you’ll never guess what they found.

Here’s how it went:

“Uh, Mrs. Anderson, do you have a bag or something where I could throw this away?”  One of the cleaners is standing before me with a strange look on his face, clutching what look like two white towels or dust rags in his hands.

“Oh, sure—just throw those rags here in my kitchen trash. “

“Um, um, Mrs. Anderson, do you have any stuffed chipmunks in your house?”

My mind scans the assortment of stuffed animals throughout our home.  A chipmunk?  I don’t think so.  But, well, maybe…

Before I can answer, one of the other cleaners approaches: “That ain’t no stuffed chipmunk!! It’s got bones and everything.”

“Yikes!  You’ve got a live chipmunk in those towels?!!”

“Oh, no,” the girl responds: “He’s not alive.  He be dead.  Very dead. Stiff, actually.”

This is the truth, I swear.  The cleaning team found a dead chipmunk in my house.  And what’s worse, guess where they found it? Under my bed!!Yes that’s right—under my bed!  It was wedged between the headboard and the wall in one of those impossible-to-get-to places that had not been cleaned, I can assure you, for a very long time.  Obviously.

How did this unfortunate little creature manage to get into our house and all the way upstairs to the master bedroom?   Here’s my theory: months ago (too many to admit!) we left for a trip just after our granddaughter, Gabriella, then 2 ½, had been visiting with us for several weeks.  There had been plenty of coming and going through our patio sliders, and I’m not sure they had always been kept closed.   Then, while we were gone, our burglar alarm was set off by a motion detector.  When we came home, we found a few mysterious droppings in odd parts of the house—including our bedroom and the tub in the adjoining bathroom.  At the time we thought it must have been a mouse, inspiring regular visits from the exterminator ever since.   Now I’m thinking it was another kind of visitor…

The moral of this story?  I don’t know.  Maybe “Don’t ever have a cleaning team  come to your house.  You never know what they might find!”

It’s very humbling to share this story.  But it’s just too funny not to.  At least it attests to my authenticity when I tell you I’m not a fanatical housekeeper.

I also think there’s more here.  How ironic that lately Woody and I have been complimenting ourselves on how great our house looks, given recent touch-ups and “staging” efforts as part of getting ready to list it.   We’ve been especially admiring of our bedroom.  Honestly—it looks really great!  On the outside, that is.

But what was it Jesus said about “whited sepulchers” and “dead men’s bones”?  I think there’s a deeper lesson here somewhere.  But that’s for another time.

For now, just laugh with me.  And take comfort in your own housekeeping struggles.  Surely none of you have dead chipmunks under your bed!

January Light

Is it January?  Really?  2012?  Really?  I feel as if I’m coming out of a giant cave—a cave where we’ve just been having a wonderful two-week party.  And I’m blinking into the light of a whole new year.  A whole new world.

Our house has just emptied out after 16 days of glorious chaos.  In overlapping visits, all our kids and grandkids were here to celebrate Christmas.  Such joy.  The house was full of Pack’n Plays and sleeping bags (there were 6 kids 6 and under), bouncers and blocks, Pampers and puzzles.  There were tunnels to crawl through in the basement, elaborate track designs on the train table, and hide and seek all over the house.  There was almost always someone hiding in the pantry.

But the last flight has taken off, the toys are put away, the tree and all the decorations are down, and the house is quiet.  Very, very quiet.  And empty.  Way too empty. It’s January.

But there’s still that “certain slant of light” I wrote about earlier.  Each morning as I have my quiet time (very, very quiet time), I see it slanting in across the mantle where the manger scene was.  (Full disclosure: I don’t actually see sunshine every morning in Wisconsin.  Today it is gray and snowy, and the sun didn’t quite make it through.  But still, I know it’s there.)

A while back I wrote about being mesmerized by the light of Christmas.  Well, it turns out it’s still here to light our way into the new year.  It may not appear quite as glamorous after Christmas.  But it seems I need it all the more in January.

And that’s the great news.  The Light that came with Christmas shines right on into January—and way beyond.  The Babe born in the manger didn’t stay there, waiting to be safely tucked away with the nativity set until next Christmas.  That was only the beginning for the story.  Thanks to our redemptive God, the Light that came into the world at Christmas became our Light for all the days and weeks and months of the year.

Maybe especially for January, with all of its newness and uncertainty and unknowns.  The little chalkboard in our kitchen still bears its Advent message: He is coming! I need to update it.  He has come, “that true Light that gives Light to everyone.” (John 1:9)  And now He calls us to walk in that light : “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  Live as children of light.” (Ephesians 5:8)

Even in January.

A “Mary Christmas” to You!

I felt it coming on early this morning: I was shifting into “Martha mode.”   So far I’ve been very reflective about Advent this year, wanting to be like two Marys in the Bible—the one who sat at Jesus’ feet and listened, and the one who was His mother, with much to treasure and ponder in her heart.

But this morning was different.  I awoke with shopping lists and baby equipment on the mind, and visions of menu planning and baking, Pack’n Plays and car seats, dancing in my head.  I felt like Martha, “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made” (Luke 10:40).

We are extra-excited about Christmas this year.  In just one week they begin to arrive for overlapping visits: all 6 of our adult kids (each of our 3 and spouses) and all 6 of our grandkids.  We are very geographically scattered, from Wisconsin to Florida to New Hampshire and on to Ireland, so it’s a rare event that we will all be together for four whole days—for the first time in a year and a half.

We can’t wait!  But there’s a lot to do. And this morning, the length of my lists hit me full force.  Then I remembered wise words from the poet Mary Oliver (written in a different context) that a friend had sent me recently as a reminder of how to celebrate Advent: “Walk slowly.  Bow often.”  Is there any better time than Advent to be reminded of this?

“Walk slowly.  Bow often.”  I forwarded these words to our kids, with a brief note acknowledging how impossible that must seem amidst their busy lives with babies and toddlers and preschoolers.

My daughter-in-law Abby wrote back with a very interesting perspective (which I share with her permission):

“We were convinced that we couldn’t walk slower than we did with Soren (now 5 and a very fast runner!)…but Nils (22 months) has him beat!  The sun rises and falls before Nils can get himself from the car to the back door.  He greets every puddle, squirrel, and leaf with a glorious pause and ‘hi!’ It’s a long obedience…Now I’ll just have to think about bowing often as I stand holding the door open wishing I had a cattle prod.  Thanks, Mom!”

“Walk slowly.  Bow often.”  If you can do it while waiting for a wonder-filled but dawdling toddler, maybe you can do it while waiting in line at Walmart, or while on hold trying to place an order.  Or maybe even in a few moments of quiet before tackling the day’s List.

So I sat quietly for a few moments this morning pondering our nativity set and thinking of Mary—and me, and you.  “How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given…”   I prayed that I would not miss the wonder and mystery of it all even amidst the flurry of joyful family reunions.  I pray the same prayer for you—whether you walk the floor with a crying baby, or wait on slow-moving toddlers, or get ready for a houseful, or even prepare for a quieter Christmas this year.   May you find—or make—in this season a few “Mary moments” to welcome Him into your heart and life above all others.

“O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!”  Merry Christmas (and a “Mary” Christmas) to you all!

A Certain Slant of Light

I am mesmerized by the lights of Christmas.  I guess I always have been.

My mom loved to tell how I got her up in the middle of the night the Christmas I was two, begging to have the Christmas tree turned on.  I always loved the tiny white lights that outline the shops in the center of the charming New England town which was home to our family.  And when I think of Christmas Eve celebrations over the years, I see the faces around our table in the glow of the individual Swedish candle in front of each place.

Lately God seems to be pursuing me with Light, morning and evening.  In beauty, in joyful anticipation, in reflection, in uncertainty, and in grieving (yes, I still miss my mom every day, though December 19 will be the 4-year anniversary of her homegoing).

Early this week, Woody put up the single candles that we light in each window for Advent.  Even as he did the harder work of getting cords untwisted and finding outlets and extension cords, I heard Jesus’ voice: “I am the Light of the world . . . You are the light of the world.”  This is a yearly ritual.

But then there was the light incident of two mornings ago.  It’s very dark in Wisconsin when I get up.  I was sitting in my favorite place, having my morning “Come to Jesus” conversation about worry.  I need the reminder to start every day: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything.” (Philippians 4:6 NLT)  I looked toward the darkened family room and wished I had thought to turn on the light above our nativity set.  Because our conversation wasn’t finished (Jesus’ and mine), I didn’t get up and turn on the light.  But then suddenly, there it was—a tiny flicker of a light illuminating the nativity figures.  It seemed that for some reason a small electric candle on the mantle had turned itself on.

I got up and turned it off by loosening the bulb, only because these candles are particularly unpredictable and I didn’t want to burn out the battery.  Back to my seat.  The candle was back on.  Oh, that crazy candle!  I unscrewed it a little more.  I sat down again.  And the light was back on!  I’m not sure how many times this happened.  But I did feel a little like Samuel: how many piercings of the night does it take for God to get my attention?  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.”  (John 1:5 NLT)

The following morning, the bulb was still out of the candle.  But as I was sitting in my familiar place, the sun came up.  Cause for celebration in itself, as we don’t see the sun all that much in Wisconsin these days.  But there it was—a very distinct beam of sunshine slanting across our mantle to the nativity set.  Mostly it was still dark—except for the light slanting its way toward Bethlehem.  “A certain slant of light,” as Emily Dickinson put it (albeit in very different context).  A reminder, for me, of the True Light that came with Christmas.

Then there was my drive home yesterday in the darkness, much later than I’d expected to be.  One of those “routine medical tests” had turned out to be not so routine, and I was facing further testing and uncertainty.  Also, a recalibration of “Linda’s agenda” for getting ready to have everyone home for Christmas this year.   It was cold and dark as I drove home.   I wished we had our window candles on a timer, so I wouldn’t go home to a dark house.

But there they were, five candles radiant in the upstairs bay window.  I’m really not sure why they were on—most likely because I had unwittingly flipped a switch in that room and hadn’t noticed the bulbs lit in the daylight.  But it really felt like God getting my attention with” the Light of His presence”—again.   What did the ancient prophet say? “When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a Light for me.”  (Micah 7:8 NKJV)

May God surprise you with His Light this Advent.

Outrageous Praise

“Out of the mouths of babes…you have perfected praise.” (Matthew 21:16 NKJV)

Don’t you love seeing exuberant outbursts of praise and thanks from children?  Having just returned from a visit with two of our grandchildren, I have fresh memories of Hannah’s chubby little hands raised in praise as she sang the doxology with gusto before a meal.  At two and a half years, Hannah embraces life with uncomplicated enthusiasm.  Why not praise God the same way?

Older brother Bengt is often a bit more thoughtful.  He’s beginning to be more aware of Who we praise, and what kind of God He is.  We got a glimpse into his 6-year-old mind  when we heard this observation, seemingly out of the blue, from the car seat in the back of the van: “I don’t know if you know this, Dad.  But God is all the light we ever really need.”

Thanks and praise seem to come easier in childhood, when life is less complicated.  But what about the kind of praise called for this Thanksgiving from all of us grown-ups?  Yes, all of us.  Not just those for whom life seems to be flowing along smoothly (Let me know who you are out there!)  Or those rejoicing in recent breakthrough answers to prayer.  Also those still waiting for answers, struggling with the answers you seem to be getting, or wondering where God is in all this.  How many months can a family go without jobs?  How much life is left after a lung cancer diagnosis?  Will the husband’s depression ever lift, the wayward child ever come home, the special needs child ever get what he needs?  How long will the business hold out in this economy?  I’m sure you can quickly fill in your own blanks.  It’s a tough world we live in.

That’s where outrageous praise comes in.  It’s the real deal, I’m convinced.  Not just the “things are going just great in my world for now, God.  Thank you—and please may it last” kind of praise.  But the no-matter-what kind of praise.

It’s the praise I wake up in the night thinking about lately.  It’s the praise that comes only from a clear understanding of Whom we praise and why.  It’s the praise born of the daily conviction of the Presence of God in every circumstance of our lives.  Every day.  Every hour.  Every minute.  It’s the praise of the Psalmist in Psalm 34.

I’ve shared from a favorite paraphrase of this Psalm before.  It’s the one Woody’s parents read together almost daily in Dad Anderson’s last week of life before he died at age 52.  It’s the one that hangs on the wall in our family room and in the walls of my heart.  It’s the best example of outrageous praise I know:

I feel at times as if I can never cease praising God.  Come and rejoice with me over His goodness.

I reached to Him out of my inner conflicts, and He was there to give me strength and courage.  I wept in utter frustration over my troubles, and He was near to help and support me.  What He has done for me he can do for you.  Turn to Him; He will not turn away from you.  His loving presence encompasses those who yield to Him.  He is with them even in the midst of their troubles and conflicts. He meets their emptiness with His abundance and shores up their weakness with His divine power.

Listen to me.  I know whereof I speak.  I have learned from experience that this is the way to happiness.  God is ever alert to the cries of His children.  He feels and bears with them their pain and problems.  He is very near to those who suffer and reaches down to help those who are battered down with despair.

Even the children of God must experience affliction.

But they have a loving God to keep them and watch over them.

The godless suffer in loneliness and without hope.

The servant of God finds meaning and purpose even in the midst of his suffering and conflict.

(from Psalms Now! by Leslie F. Brandt)

I hope you’ll join me in outrageous praise—Happy Thanksgiving 2011!

Morning Prayers for Mamas

My morning prayers (and all-day prayers, really) are filled with mamas today.  That’s not unusual.  Many, many mamas are on my prayer list regularly—both close personal friends and Mom to Mom groups around the country.

But today my heart is especially heavy with recent conversations.  My memory is filled with God-moments from last weekend at the wonderful Hearts at Home Northeast Convention in Rochester, Minnesota.   Later this week I spent a few precious hours around a warm, cozy table on a gloomy November afternoon with mom-friends sharing deeply from their hearts.  And then there have been texts and phone calls and emails from near and far.

The stories swirl around my mind and fill my heart.  Young mamas struggle with multiple miscarriages, contested adoptions, tiny babies fighting mightily in NICU’s, and post-partum depression.   A 7-year-old is pushing a mama to the edge, and a 17-year-old makes one mother of 6 say to me, “If I’d had a 17-year-old first, I’d have had only one child!”

Mamas of young adult children are on their knees everywhere.  A daughter makes one terrible choice after another to pursue what looks like the life of her dreams but what may very well turn out to be a nightmare.   Another runs from God down “the labyrinthine paths of her own mind” (to borrow from Francis Thompson’s poem “The Hound of Heaven”).  How long will it take them to come to their senses?   Another fights the constant specter of past drug addiction, while a son battles alcoholism. Are they really “clean” and sober now?  Sons and daughters move home as marriages fall apart. Why is this happening to so many marriages?

I think of these stories and pray for these mamas and their children, no matter what age they are.  As I pray, God brings to mind words of encouragement.  Words from somewhat random sources.  Words which strengthen me as I pray and which I hope will encourage my friends—and every one of you who may need “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow” (as the great old hymn puts it):

• From an old prayer quoted in the September 12 reading from Streams in the Desert:  “O Lord, support us!  Yes, support us on every leaning side.”
• From Psalm 94:18-19: “When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your love, O Lord, supported me.  When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.”
• From a Facebook posting my daughter tells me comes from Ann Voskamp’s wonderful blog: “One foot in front of the other and one murmured thanks after another and underneath the Everlasting Arms will hold.”

I pray for every one of my mama-friends with leaning sides and slipping feet—including me!  And I wonder how it is that Sarah Young, in her amazing devotional Jesus Calling, always seems to make God’s Words speak directly into my life.  Just in case these words from her November 9 entry might describe you as they did me:

“. . . some fears surface over and over again, especially fear of the future.  You tend to project yourself into the next day, week, month, year, decade; and you visualize yourself coping badly in those times.  What you are seeing is a false image, because it doesn’t include Me.  These gloomy times that you imagine will not come to pass, since my Presence will be with you at all times.   When a future-oriented worry assails you, capture it and disarm it by suffusing the Light of My Presence into that mental image.  Say to yourself, “Jesus will be with me there and then.  With His help, I can cope!”  Then come home to the present moment, where you can enjoy peace in My Presence.”  ( Jesus Calling, p. 328)

My prayer for all of us, sisters of the leaning sides and slipping feet.

Mommies: Heroes and Best Friends

Mamas are everywhere in my world. They always are. That’s just the way I like it.  But especially this time of year.  I spent a weekend recently with some 1400 mommies at LifeWay's .Mom conference in Birmingham.  Then I came home to a season of speaking to Mom to Mom groups every few days.  I love it! One of the things I love most about being with moms is hearing their stories.  You already know this, but let me remind you: moms are heroes.  Their stories stay with me.  Stories of traumatic births, difficult pregnancies, unexpected pregnancies, long periods of infertility, miracle adoptions, foster-mom God-moments.  And stories of life with 8 kids (or more!) as well as magnificent testimonies to single-mom survival—even joy.

One of my favorite moments at the .Mom conference was meeting the recipients of our blog give-away—Lauren and Carrie.  Lauren, I’m sorry we didn’t get a picture.  But I got to spend a few precious moments with Carrie as she shared about her life as a single mom.  Moms as heroes—yes.  God’s grace poured out on these heroes—you bet!

Recently I’ve been reminded of  heroic everyday mom lives in my own family.  One daughter-in-law spends hours each day in the car to get her son to a good school.  Another daughter-in-law recently took on painting a room in the basement after the kids went to bed each night during a weekend with Daddy gone for three days—only to have the tape rip off the paint when the project was done.  Yikes!

Then there’s my sleep-deprived daughter Erika with 6-week-old Judah.   He is adorable (you knew I’d say that!)—and gifted, of course . :-)   The problem is that his gifts seem to be eating and growing—but not sleeping!  His parents are working on that.  He has a ways to go.  In the meantime, you all know the drill:  Mama’s gift becomes surviving—somehow—amidst the kind of sleep deprivation that would make most terrorists spill their guts!  You remember these days—yes?

But then there are other moments: mom-moments that make all the difference.  Moments that keep mom-heroes going even in the toughest places.  Erika had one of those moments recently.  One afternoon, on a very long day, Judah’s big sister, Gabriella, came down from her “rest time,” rushed into the living room, threw her arms around Erika, and said “Mommy, you’re my very best friend!”

Just a reminder for all of you in case your kids haven’t told you lately: not only are you a hero, but you are building precious relationships with these kids even amidst the toughest times.

What keeps you going amidst long days and short nights?  I’d love to hear your stories!

The #1 Thing Every Child Needs Most

I’ve been working on a new talk.  It’s called “In the Middle of the Muddle: What Matters and What Doesn’t.”   I’ve been thinking about the endless “to do” lists we moms have.  And I’ve been struck with how important it is for each of us to sort out what really really matters, and what doesn’t.

One of the things I loved most about Shauna Niequist’s book Bittersweet was her chapter entitled “Things I Don’t Do.”  It was a great reminder that in order to do the things we believe really do matter, we absolutely must let go of things that don’t matter as much.

It got me to thinking about what is truly the #1 thing I believe every child needs most.  Of course there are lots of candidates for this #1 spot.  But I chose my #1 because of its eternal power.  It’s the one thing that we never stop giving our kids: PRAYER.

A mother’s prayers.  For every day of her life—and, I believe, right on into eternity.

I was reminded of the power of a mother’s prayers recently when I had the privilege of speaking at a memorial service for my aunt.  Aunt Sue was a remarkable woman—especially for her times.  A seminary librarian for many years, she served as a librarian at a Native American school after she retired, married for the first time at age 75, and then traveled the world for many years setting up libraries at various mission seminaries and Bible schools while her retired-seminary-professor husband preached and taught.   She died just months short of her 100^th birthday and 25^th anniversary.

As I reflected on her life, I kept thinking of the little hard-scrabble farm in Minnesota where she was raised.  And immediately I thought of my grandma, a German farm wife with a first-grade education who learned English for the first time in her forties and raised six children who all had college degree—and, several of them, masters degrees or doctorates.

More importantly, I thought of Grandma’s prayers for her children.  Her deepest desire was to raise them in the Lord.  I came across a long-ago letter (written in 1950) in which Grandma commented that “the desire to have you safe in the arms of Jesus has never left me and will never leave me as long as we live.”  She went on to say, “I know we both have failed many times in giving you the right training, but God in His great mercy has made it so that you all have had the chance to experience the new birth which is the most important thing in life and our prayer is that after our earthly life is finished we will be able to say, Lord, here are those which Thou hast entrusted to us. (underlining hers) That will be heaven, first to see Christ who has redeemed us and to praise Him for bringing us safely home.”

A pretty good prayer, if you ask me.    Yes, we fail many times as parents—Grandma sure had that right.  But then come the pivotal words: “But God in His great mercy...”

And we keep on praying.  As I watch our children focus very intentionally on training their children in Godly ways, I think of the generational impact of mama-prayers—for our children, and their children, and their children’s children, as the Bible so often says.

Deathless prayers, as E. M. Bounds observes: “God shapes the world by prayers.  Prayer are deathless—they outlive the lives of those who utter them.”

So just in case you might be making your own list of Things I Do and Things I Don’t Do, here’s my recommendation for #1 on your “To Do” list: Pray for your kids—today, tomorrow, and always.

Welcome to a new grandson

He's here!   Praise God with us for a new grandson!  Judah Anderson Cronin was born in Dublin, Ireland, at 12:33 am on Saturday August 27, just 33 minutes into his due date.  Mommy, Daddy, and big sister Gabriella are doing well.  And Nana is loving getting acquainted with Judah as well as playing with Gigi (Gabriella's nickname)  while mommy is busy with the new baby. His name means "I will praise the Lord," and that's just what we're doing.  Please join us!

Blog Giveaway: We Have Two Winners!

Congratulations to the two names we drew from those who commented on my past two blog posts!  Lauren Barrow of Milton, FL, and Carrie Deering of Brenham, TX, we hope to see you at .MOM in Birmingham in September! To all the rest of you who commented, thank you so much for your thoughtful insights, suggestions, and words of encouragement for all of us moms.  Keep the comments coming.  We love hearing from you!