Friday, August 31, 2012

7 Quick Takes: musical bedrooms! my Dad's birthday, Yogi Berra, Ernie & Bert and more!




--- 1 ---
We spent Thursday night putting out of sight the last few things my sons left in the house so we could turn their "old" room into a lovely guest room.  Good friends coming to spend Labor Day weekend!  The problem now is that Brian and I haven't yet found the new bed we wanted for our room since we moved ours into the guest room.  Thankfully we found an air mattress to borrow until we find just the right thing on Craigslist.


--- 2 ---
The whole "musical chairs" thing from room to room always reminds me of a Sesame Street sketch I loved when I was little.  Ernie's logic made perfect sense to me. (and Bert's exasperation sounds a lot like Brian's)




--- 3 ---
Today my Dad turns 65.  And tomorrow his mother -- my grandmother -- will turn 85.  I really, really wish I could be there to celebrate with them. 

By the way, my grandmother started the "honeymoon baby" tradition which Brian and I honored faithfully.  My Dad was born nine months after his parents were married, I was born nine months after my parents were married, Andrew was born nine months after we were married.  Let that be a word of caution to my kids...


--- 4 ---
I tried hard to figure out a way to use this photo I found at Listverse for some sort of clever gift for my Dad.  In the end I picked out a Joe Cool Snoopy birthday card.  I love that I know he'll love that just as well.  I think moving across the country has turned me into a sentimental sap.


Yogi Berra hugs Don Larsen after Larsen pitches a perfect game for the Yankees,
1956 World Series (via Listverse)

--- 5 ---
Which reminds me: have I ever mentioned that when I was a kid I memorized and performed that wonderful baseball epic Casey at the Bat?  It was my mother's idea and a few other of my siblings followed suit.  It was a good idea; every once in a while we break into a few stanzas while we sit around watching our own kids.  (see what I mean about the sentimental sap thing?!?)

My personal favorite stanza -- mostly because I could really dig into the last phrase and had a fondness for the word combination "a-huggin' ".

But Flynn let drive a "single," to the wonderment of all.

And the much-despised Blakey "tore the cover off the ball."
And when the dust had lifted, and they saw what had occurred,
There was Blakey safe at second, and Flynn a-huggin' third.


Here's an audio version of the poem for you to listen (and maybe memorize?):  http://www.reelyredd.com/1106caseyatbat.htm

--- 6 ---
While writing this post I looked up at the post-it note to-do list Natalie made for me.    I should have included a photo for one of the Parenting Unrehearsed posts I've written here in the past two weeks.  

to do today: forgive

--- 7 ---
By the way, I completed every single one of those items on the list.  By the end of the day even.
  


Enjoy a beauty-filled weekend!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!




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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Parenting Unrehearsed: Your Kids Are Not Fragile








un-re-hearsed
— adj.




(of a play, speech, etc) not having been practiced in advance


I might also add off-the-cuff, in no particular order, results may vary.  For the next six(ish) weeks I'll share here once a week -- off the top of my head -- a few practices we may have learned in our twenty-one years of parenting four children. 

Chapter 1:  Your Kids Were Supposed to Have Perfect Parents.

Chapter  2:  

Your Kids Are Not Fragile.  You Are Not Fragile.

 Your Worst Case Scenarios Make Room for Sturdy Grace and Steady Love.



Complex? Yes.  Unpredictable? Always. Exhausting, frustrating, harder than you ever imagined? Of course.

Fragile? No.

Marketing campaigns, political campaigns -- also, sadly -- religious campaigns make their living off our willingness to believe we are fragile.  We believe it for good reason, so many ways for humans to hurt each other, so many diseases, so much senseless tragedy, poverty, crime.  So many talk shows.


I believed  I was fragile (still do lots of days) because I was sexually abused when I was a little girl.  I believed I was fragile because I watched my mom suffer from depression even though she read her Bible and prayed for hours every single morning of my life. I believed I was fragile because I grew up in a pastor's house, internalizing every mean and nasty word church-people flung in my father's direction.


I'll bet you've got a pretty good list going, too?


Since I was convinced (with good and not-so-good reasons) of my eggshell qualities, I determined a set of boundaries that were unacceptable for my family.  The list in my head was titled "Anything But That".  As in, I can handle.  


But then the list was shot to hell.  My husband hurt me in ways I didn't think I'd survive.  I wounded him in ways I didn't think I was capable.  My four imperfect kids kept blindsiding us with their own sin skill-sets.  Friends betrayed our trust, the kind of friends we'd planned to keep for life.   Financial strain almost ruined us.  Natural disasters struck out of no where.  We lost jobs, needed handouts, battled depression.  All things my list (and my faulty beliefs) signaled almost-certain crack up.


Except, somehow, every crack made more space for grace.  And we're far from out of the woods, but we've grown sturdier -- not frailer -- from the broken things.  



"Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
in thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
our Maker, Defender, Redeemer and Friend."
                  - O Worship the King, fifth stanza, Robert Grant


When we buy into the notion that we are fragile, our ability to discern true danger from ordinary danger gets mixed up.  Out of the need to keep our sanity in what feels like a capricious and predatory world, we create a complex system of coping skills for ourselves and our children.

If your responses look anything like mine, this "how to keep my family safe because we are so fragile" list might feel familiar:

  • keep secrets, intend to take them to our grave
  • hide in shame and self-protection
  • avoid confrontation and conflict, at all cost
  • quickly resent and over-react
  • fight the wrong enemies
  • paralyze ourselves and our relationships with hyper-vigilance
  • make ourselves and our families easy prey for manipulators (marketing, political, religious or otherwise)
Most of all, when I believe we are fragile, I am not free to fully give and receive love.  



For better or for worse, no one has taught me more truth on this subject
 than my husband, Brian.


He taught me when we gave birth to four children in six years and I thought I'd earned the right to stay in bed all day.  He taught me when he broke my trust and instead of running or defending himself he chose humility.  He told his secrets to me and trusted counsellors, worked a long time to rebuild trust, gave me space and time to forgive.  He taught me when I had no margin of grace left for him, when forgiveness felt like it would crush me, when I placed his sins at the tip-top of my "Anything but that" list (while dressing up my own in super-spiritual clothes).


And then, he looked me in the eyes when I was hurting him most and protected me.


When I wriggle and writhe under the weight of my "Anything but that" list, he sits still, breathes in and out, weighs the balance of right and wrong with steady wisdom.  I make up spiritual concoctions to save our family, he tells jokes.  I hold my hands over my eyes and ears when our kids walk the tightrope between wisdom and folly.  He prays for them and then mixes me a drink.


Thank God, my kids take after him.  I watch them all and try to learn.  

Like the time Brian and Kendra signed up to take an Insanity Workout class together.  They knew they were out of shape.  They knew the entire class was made up of elite high school athletes training in the off-season.  They went anyway.  


Kendra's worst case scenario was puking in the middle of class.  I tended to agree with her.  During the middle of a few twenty-minute long ab crunch sessions, when Kendra made a beeline for the bathroom, Brian kept on working out, saving her place on the mat when she returned.  She cried during class regularly.  He hugged her and slapped her on the back.  They kept going to class - together.






When Natalie suffered daily abuse from more than one bully at school, Brian hugged her,  squared her shoulders and walked her through daily decisions.  He talked with the school administration.  He gave Natalie permission to fight back.  When the legal authorities visited with Natalie on the front porch, getting her full story, he kindly -- and firmly -- held my wringing hands in the kitchen.  Out of ear shot.  While Natalie learned lessons in some of the worst the male gender has to offer, Brian offered her the best.  


Without words he's taught each of the women in our home, that men and women together reflect the fullness of the imago dei.  That it's okay for us to be feminine and unafraid.  Tender but not fragile.







Practice Confession


"I, with my eyes wide open, closed my eyes for years to the secret that I was looking to my children to give me more than either they had it in their power to give or could have given without somehow crippling themselves in the process. I thought that what I was afraid of more than anything else was that something awful would happen to them, but the secret I began to glimpse was that I was really less afraid for the children than I was afraid for myself. "  (Frederick Buechener, Telling Secrets)
Nothing breaks the rumors of our impending demise more powerfully than practicing regular confession with each other.  Keeping secrets exhausts our everyday ability to live with each other in healthy community.  Fear and shame keep us in a constant state of red-alert vigilance that dulls our senses to the beauty in the ordinary, everyday sorts of adventure in our lives.


Repeating an important disclaimer:

Relax. You've got time, it's going to take time

I know, I know - old ladies have stopped you in the store five trillion times to warn you that the time flies by faster than you can imagine and that you need to make the most of every single moment with your cherubs.  And that's sort of true.  

Most true, though, is that Jesus is a redeemer of time. He moves outside of time and space, He returns time and stretches it out in just the right ways so He can save you and your kids.  When you read any practical suggestions I have to offer please take your time, consider, pray, laugh, relax.

Put another way, maybe the very, very best advice I have to offer parents is this:


Reject hyper-vigilance, embrace spacious grace.

With that in mind, some of the best truths I've learned about the practice of confession I wrote as part of my ongoing Sacred Practice series:


1.  Confession, part 1:  What we can learn about the family activity of confession from the Jewish tradition of Passover preparations.


2.  Confession, part 2:  Three quotes, two stories and one cautionary tale I discovered in my learning about confession in community.


3.  It is love that motivates good confession, not our guilty consciences (aka, This is Not the Jerry Springer Show):  The act of confession in the sense of "getting something off our chest" might make us feel better but when it is not done out of love, with thoughtful care and in the context of relationship it has the potential to damage rather than heal.  For example, the practice of confession must work hand in hand with the practice of forgiveness I shared last week as well as a whole assortment of other healthy spiritual habits.  

4. Spend time with ragamuffins, those who've lived out the truth that mercy triumphs over judgement:  If your family only spends time with people who seem cleaned-up and sparkly, no grit and no edge, you'll have a harder time believing all the way to your gut that God's forgiveness and grace trumps His wrath and judgement.  Pursue community -- in your real life and your reading life --  with the sorts of people that have lived out one or two of your worst case scenarios and lived to (happily) say things like the Samaritan woman yelling in the streets:  "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did!"  


5.  I'm thinking this piece of furniture might have helped some of our late-night family confessionals.  Of course, there's still time.




   Source: designboom.com via J. on Pinterest




_________________________________________________________________

Next time on Parenting Unrehearsed:
I love to hear from you!  For example, what are some ways you've both learned and taught healthy practices of confession?  Also, please feel free to share the sorts of questions you've been asking about parenting.

Tamara 


P.S., If you'd like to receive This Sacramental Life in your inbox, enter your email address here

*Thank you to the lovely Lindsey from Lindsey Davern Photography for capturing the hilarious -- and unrehearsed -- family photo I'm using for this series.*

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

A Celtic Prayer for First Days of Important and Ordinary Things


morning prayer + morning coffee = healthy start to the day

Brian uses this particular prayer book most often - Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and REadings from the Northumbria Community.  He's the one who selected our first-day-of-school prayer for the girls yesterday.  

Thought you might find comfort and peace and new, good words to pray at the Beginning of an Important Thing.  Although, if your kids are younger you'll probably want to pick an excerpt or two.

Prayers for committing our work to God and
 for living out our Christianity in ordinary life


(*indicates a change of reader; all say together the sections in bold type)

*This day is Your gift to me;
I take it, Lord, from Your hand
and thank You for the wonder of it.

God be with me
in this Your day,
every day
and every way,
with me and for me
in this Your day;
and the love 
and affection
of heaven 
be toward me.

*All that I am, Lord,
I place into Your hands.
All that I do, Lord,
I place into Your hands.

*Everything I work for
I place into Your hands.
Everything I hope for
I place into Your hands.

*The troubles that weary me
I place into Your hands.
The thoughts that disturb me
I place into Your hands.

*Each day that I pray for.
I place into Your hands.
Each that I care for
I place into Your hands.

*I place into Your hands, Lord,
the choices that I face.
Guard me from choosing 
the way perilous
of which the end is heart-pain
and the secret tear.

*Rich in counsel,
show us the way
that is plain and safe.

*May I feel Your presence
at the heart of my desire,
and so know it for Your desire for me.
Thus shall I prosper,
thus see that my purpose is from You,
thus have power to do the good which endures.

*Show me what blessing it is
that I have work to do.
And sometimes,
and most of all
when the day is overcast
and my courage faints,
let me hear Your voice, saying,
'You are my beloved one
in whom I am well pleased.'

*Stand at the crossroads and look,
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is,
and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

*In the name of Christ we stand,
and in His name
move out across the land
in fearfulness and blessing.

*To gather the Kingdom to the King
and claim this land for God:
a task indeed.

*Give us to see Your will,
and power to walk in its path;
and lo! the night is routed and gone.

*Lord, hasten the day
when those who fear You in ever nation
will come form the east and the west,
from north and south,
and sit at table in Your Kingdom.
And, Lord,
let Your glory be seen in our land.

*He has shown you, O man, what is right;
and what does the Lord require of you,
but to do justly, and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God?

*Keep me close to You, Lord.
Keep me close to You.
I lift my hands to You, Lord,
I lift them up to You.

Hands, Lord, Your gift to us,
we stretch them up to You.
Always You hold them.

*Help me to find my happiness
in my acceptance
of what is Your purpose for me:
in friendly eyes, in work well done,
in quietness born of trust,
and, most of all,
in the awareness of Your presence
in my spirit.

(we add The Gloria to close the prayer together)
Glory be to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end.
Alleluia. Amen.


Brian praying a first-day-of-school blessing over the girls


I'd love to hear from you.  What prayers and/or Scriptures do you rehearse as you set out on the Beginnings of Things?

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Monday, August 27, 2012

7 Quick Takes: First Day(s) of School! annual cookie baking! newest article at Think Christian!



--- 1 ---
Just about every year at this time I write a blog post entitled "Feeling Septemberish". I guess each year the nostalgia of back to school feels new again.  I also manage to mention just about every year how the first day of school is the one day annually (out of 365 possiblities) that I most feel like a mom.  I think it's the whole range of emotions:  pride, joy in a new milestone, fear.  The whole rhythm of giving up control over these human beings recycles itself from the moment we release the kid from our womb into this bright, scary world in the first place.


my girls walking to school together

I'm pretty sure I'm beginning to sound like a broken record but this whole gig we have parenting other humans is just plain shocking.  Can I get an amen?


--- 2 ---
 Five of our six family members study in four different schools this year.  The girls enter a new high school in Austin.  After our first attempt last fall, we're referring to this year as Austin Independent Schools, take 2:


my junior and freshman

--- 3 ---
Alex began classes at Rice University last week.  I don't have a picture from his first day but I do have this cute OAK backpack photo shoot pic he and his girlfriend as back-to-school models. Pretty cute, right?


the model students


--- 4 ---
I don't have a back to school photo for Andrew, either.  He starts classes this week at Austin Community College, on track for University of Texas next fall.  I do, however, have a photo of his first class in pub drinking on the night of his 21st birthday last week.  Will that do?


the Murphy family (minus Alex) at Fado Irish Pub, Austin


--- 5 ---
It's hard to pin down Brian's first day of classes, since he's a seminary student pretty much year 'round.  Here's what a typical Monday morning (and Saturday morning and Thursday night and Sunday afternoon and...) looks like for him:


theology reading + bowl of granola + mac = Brian's classroom


--- 6 ---
Me?  I just keep up the tradition of making cookies one time a year.  The infamous first-day-of-school pumpkin chip cookies:


photo credit

--- 7 ---
I guess you could say I've been attending the school of "how the heck do I write for publication?".  Today Think Christian.net. posted another of my articles:  Drought Christians.  (which feels a bit ironic timing since Hurricane Isaac is racing toward the Gulf Coast as I write this.)


                                                                       Source: shibbo.tumblr.com via Tamara on Pinterest



Enjoy a beauty-filled week!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!




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Friday, August 24, 2012

Parenting Unrehearsed: Your kids were supposed to have perfect parents.




un-re-hearsed
— adj


(of a play, speech, etc) not having been practiced in advance


I might also add off-the-cuff, in no particular order, results may vary. For the next six(ish) weeks I'll share here once a week -- off the top of my head -- a few practices we may have learned in our twenty-one years of parenting four children.

Here's Chapter 1:

Your Kids Were Supposed to Have Perfect Parents. 
You Were Supposed to Have Perfect kids.
You're All Plain Out of Luck



Allow us to laugh often at ourselves

There's a photo I keep tucked in a small scrapbook, three kids ages 6 months, three, five. My husband and two of the children sport elastic diaper pants on their heads, The proud owner of the nightime diapers gives a thumbs-up. The kindergartner is cracking up so hard he can't bring himself to pose for the camera, tumbling out of the frame. The baby looks completely clueless. Doesn't every family wear diapers on their heads before bedtime?


The photo is bent, nearly ripped from all the times little hands have held it, giggling the story "remember when"? On the page opposite the photo, I tacked a handwritten journal entry-turned-prayer for us all:
Father, please let the Murphy family live lives soaked in prayer and centered in Jesus. Let us always keep in mind that we are flawed and allow us to laugh often and easily at ourselves and any creeping pretensions of 'holiness'. Please help us to trust always in letting ourselves be loved by God as more important than loving God in some kind of mechanical way. Please help our family to never distort the face of a beautiful God.  (excerpted from Brennan Manning)
I don't typically archive photos of the moments I'd rather forget in my life.  I do have one stashed away from the morning -- a few years after the diaper-on-head party -- of my two-year-old daughter, four-year-old son standing on the front stoop of our rental house.  Little girl's face smeared with hot-red lipstick, little boy scowling at the camera.  Both sporting autumn jackets haphazardly slapped over saggy pajamas.

They are clearly posing as hostile witnesses to a morning where everything that could have gone wrong, did. Beginning with that lipstick and ending with a dash to get oldest son to school after he missed the bus, baby on hip, grumpy preschoolers tossed into the mini-van protesting their hurried lot in this world.  



Mama said there'd be days like this.

It was one of those rare times I chose humor when I didn't know whether to laugh or check myself into an institution.


I did not have the insight to photograph  all the times I'd yelled at my kids when they dumped breakfast cereal on the floor or the times I'd dragged them kicking and screaming to their bed because it was nap time, dammit, and they were going to sleep.  I certainly would not have taken photographs of us all lined up in our church row, my husband and me with our four children ages 6 and under, me too proud to take our wriggling toddlers to childcare because I wanted so badly to look like the other rows of well-groomed families in our congregation who sat together for the entire service.  (I swear I saw their four-year-olds taking sermon notes!)


In those years I thought the terms "mother" and "pretensions of holiness" were synonymous.  I thought I was supposed to be straight-laced, spit-spot.  I might have gotten away with it, too.  Except for Alex.  He was born fighting my determination to parent-by-technique.  He was the newborn hollering at me to feed him whenever he wanted, to hell with the schedule I'd used for his older brother.  He was the kid I couldn't drag out of the sanctuary fast enough, before he pleaded his case with the rest of the congregation, "Don't spaaaannnnkkkkk me!"  


He was the teenager sitting on his bedroom floor yelling at me that I was not a good mom.  That I'd never been a good mom. 


That's the day, after crumpling on the floor with my son, both of us heaving snotty sobs, hugging each other in our intense pain, that's the day I learned probably my most important parenting lesson.  

My kids want -- no, demand -- perfection.  Not only that, but they were designed to have perfect parents.  And, frankly, I'm pretty disappointed to not get perfect kids.  

Until my son called me on the carpet (literally),  I was pretty sure I was doing the best I could.  I was pretty sure I was doing better than my mother had done and definitely sure I was doing better than her mother had done.  In that moment, I saw clearly that Alex' heart could really care less what sort of mother I'd imagined for myself. His crushing pain announced I wasn't even close. All he felt was the absence of what was supposed to be real and good and perfect in his life and the gap was too wide. For both of us.


Brian and I often share this statement from author David Seamands.  We know it is true from our own childhood, we're learning it is true for our children also.
"Children are the best recorders, but the worst interpreters."
When the sobbing subsided in my son's bedroom that day, we talked through the stories he'd recorded, the conclusions he'd interpreted. The stories we'd told over and over, never realizing each telling added another layer of painful misinterpretation over his heart.   

Before that day I'd have told you success as a mother meant to never hear those words come out of the mouths of my children.  After that day I'd say that the best moments of parenting come when we fell into the cracks of my holy pretensions.




In our family, the gap between Brian's and my best parenting efforts and our childrens' needs is the place Jesus saves us.  It is the aching space of our unmet needs that His cross fills and His resurrection restores.  

Since that day (and many others like them) I am less afraid to fail.  That was the day the awareness of my inability brought peace instead of condemnation.  Not in the first moment,  In the first moment hearing my son's anger I wanted to scream back, "Do you know how hard I'm trying?  Do you know how hard it is to be your mom? How dare you criticize me?!?"  But in the next moment -- immediately after I chose not to say those words -- I heard the quieter voice, "My kids need more than I can ever give them.  I can not fix this. Jesus, save us now."



Practice Forgiveness
I can think of no better practice than giving and receiving forgiveness to thwart our tendency to take ourselves too  seriously.  For all the gifts our kids bring to us when they enter the world, bursting our pretension bubble might be the best they have to offer.  We do strive for holiness, yes, but we strive with one part sober mind and one part kickass sense of humor.


A word of disclaimer:

Relax. You've got time, it's going to take time

I know, I know - old ladies have stopped you in the store five trillion times to warn you that the time flies by faster than you can imagine and that you need to make the most of every single moment with your cherubs.  And that's sort of true.  


Most true, though, is that Jesus is a redeemer of time. He moves outside of time and space, He returns time and stretches it out in just the right ways so He can save you and your kids.  When you read any practical suggestions I have to offer please take your time, consider, pray, laugh, relax.


Put another way, maybe the very, very best advice I have to offer parents is this:



Reject hyper-vigilance, embrace spacious grace.

With that in mind, here are three forgiveness practices we've learned so far: 

1.  Let confession be normal and start with yours. Whether you are asking forgiveness from your children or from someone else in front of them, let them hear authentic, well-spoken apologies from you often.  Let it be normal for them to hear you say "I was wrong. I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

2.  Give each other time and space to forgive. We tried to give our kids plenty of space to fight with each other and plenty of time to forgive each other.  We tried not to shut down squabbles or force reconciliation too quickly.  One of the statements we taught them to say -- when they were ready:  "What you did to me is not okay, but I do forgive you."


3.  Let your family stories reflect the clean slate. My kids have taught me how to be aware that the stories I tell about us and to us might, unintentionally, communicate unforgiveness and shame.  The family story that acted as an inciting incident between Alex and me was a story we had told countless times to friends and strangers.  It was a great conversation piece, but it rehearsed too many of the wrong details.  Ask the Holy Spirit to give you discernment about how you tell the story of your family to yourselves and to others.


4.  When all else fails...


__________________________________________________________________

Next time on Parenting Unrehearsed:
I love to hear from you!  For example, what are some ways you've both learned and taught healthy practices of forgiveness?  Also, please feel free to share the sorts of questions you've been asking about parenting.

Tamara



P.S., If you'd like to receive This Sacramental Life in your inbox, enter your email address here

*Thank you to the lovely Lindsey from Lindsey Davern Photography for capturing the hilarious -- and unrehearsed -- family photo I'm using for this series.*

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