How to write a 9th grade history paper on a Friday night

Step One - Avoid thinking about or talking about the history paper at all costs for days on end until your parents have no choice but to set a Friday night deadline ahead of the actual Monday deadline. Congratulations, you’re now grounded from electronics until the paper is completed.

Step Two - Come home from school on Friday and proceed to do the following:

1. 

   The Panic Monster

   lay in bed for 2+ hours;
2. organize binders for second semester;
3. eat dinner;
4. wander around the house;
5. prop a gorilla costume in your Dad’s office chair and try to scare your mom;
6. hang your Mom’s knit scarf on a skull and call it hair;
7. build a fort using all the sofa cushions with the sole purpose of creating a “Fortress Against Distractions”; (Mom starts keeping track of the procrastination efforts of The Instant Gratification Monkey at this point because he’s kicked it up a notch; clearly The Panic Monster is nearby and all bets are off now)...

Fortress Against Distractions

Step Three - Take your iPad, assignment instructions, and planner into the fort and get to work.  It's now 6:27pm. If you're lucky you might be done in time to play some xbox. Stay Strong! You can do this!

Step Four - Okay, it's 6:45, you probably need a bathroom break, right? Sure, go ahead, take your time, we've got all night!


....20 minutes later.... apologize to your Mom for not-so-secretly playing on your phone while in the bathoom, and get back to work!


Step Five - Finish the Language Arts paper. Remember, your Mom thinks you are working on a history paper. Dismiss this discrepancy and ask for time to play on the xbox. Mom will cave and give you 15 minutes to play as a reward for having completed something. Promise to get to work on the history paper at 8:00.



Step Six - Read assignment again, blow dust off the table, get a drink, wander around, you know the drill. Kill time until 8:25.

Step Seven - Mom will pay you a visit in your "Fortress Against Distractions" and talk to you about how you're doing. Tell her everything is fine. Have an informed chat about the topics and what you're going to do. Slip in the part about how you're probably going to have to continue to work on the paper tomorrow morning.

Step Eight - Obtain a charger for your iPad, and get a piece of gum. You have needs.

Step Nine - Git 'er done.

Okay, all kidding aside. I stopped keeping track of the antics because it got a little boring once The Panic Monster took over from The Instant Gratification Monkey. Here's the thing: he actually got both papers written by Saturday night without any parental involvement and without raising a fuss. Isn't that the end goal? It may seem silly and immature to write a paper in a blanket fort, but if that's what works for him, then who really cares? (Who are we kidding, we all know we'd prefer to write our reports for work in a blanket fort, wouldn't we? Adulting is so over-rated!)

Every kid is different, so when we let them figure out how to accomplish tasks, it helps them develop their own problem-solving skills and gives them the power to control their own destiny. Sure, they need some guidance (no electronics until...) and encountering natural consequences (writing a paper instead of enjoying the weekend) helps to build their immunity against future bad decisions.

Our long-term goal for our kids is that they grow-up to be healthy, self-sufficient, productive members of society. Getting them there looks different for each kiddo, and therein lies the challenge: being flexible enough to allow each child to learn in their own way within firm boundaries.

Long Live the Fortress Against Distractions!

One day - Two Reflections

September 11th - my generation's Pearl Harbor. That's how it was described to me last month and I think it's probably true.

Every year for the last 15 years, we all collectively mourn this day, we all say, "Never Forget," as if we ever could. I think we are not speaking to ourselves so much as we are speaking to those who have come after us. Never let us forget. Please, remember for us, after we are gone. Don't let the pain of this day diminish our collective memory and thereby dim the light of those who were lost.

Part of my mourning has been to visit the memorials, to honor and remember. Last month our family visited the Flight 93 Memorial in Somerset County, PA. It is a beautiful place, haunting and sacred. And in September of 2014, Ryan and I visited the World Trade Center Memorial. It is breath-taking in its size, beauty and sacredness; it cannot be fully described, only experienced.

But today also marks a day of celebration for our family. Chuck & I were married on September 11th, two years before the attacks. Today we celebrate 17 years of marriage, and for that I am so thankful. We were on vacation when the attacks occurred and we spent the entire day watching live coverage, wondering what our future would hold in that frightening new world. 15 years later, we celebrate two young men who are making their own way in this new world - our sons: Ryan (11) & Michael (14).

Today is always bittersweet. A day of tears of sadness and smiles of joy. Forgive us if we smile in our happiness, but celebrate the fact that out of the ashes came new life, joy and hope for the future.

Remember to mourn the loss, and also celebrate the hope that lives on.

Wishing you all Peace. ~Jen

The Container Store Revelation

Friday night we drove past a store I've been wanting to shop at for years - The Container Store. I have refrained from entering the store for so long because: 1) I just want to spend an hour wandering around the store.... but I have kids. 2) I just want to buy everything in the store.... but I don't have that much money. 3) I was just sure I would find something I couldn't live without... and then have to.

Such a quandary.

But after dinner with my in-laws to celebrate a birthday, I was feeling a little giddy. So we stopped at The Container Store on our way home. I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing when we entered the store. Not even the kids could distract me from my mission to admire all the containers. I gave the boys the task of finding the largest container they could and then set them loose in the store - good luck, fellow patrons!

Eventually, I had seen it all and found one small thing to buy - seriously overpriced decorative adhesive point tabs. Aren't they beautiful?! (I know, they're not even containers, but my second weakness is office supplies).

As I was nearing the checkout line, Chuck pointed to the front window of the store and asked, "Have you seen the sunset?" Me: "Sunset? No. Why?" I looked  up and saw what he was talking about. Oh.My.Word. I had to get out of the store.  Viewing it through the glass wasn't good enough. Outside the store, the sunset was breathtaking. Pictures can't do it justice, they can't capture the purples and blues that were at the deep edges, nor the sense of white heat within the flaming, orange center. I stood there in the parking lot gawking at the beauty and taking pictures like I'd never seen a sunset before.

Later that night, it occurred to me that we often put God in a container (or a box). We have certain expectations or boundaries for where or when we think God will show up, or how we think we have to behave in order to experience the presence of God. Sometimes (maybe all the time) we keep a neat and tidy God in a fancy little box. Sometimes the box is big, sometimes it's small. Sometimes we show it off, other times we hide it away. The boxes we keep God in come in all different forms (just like I saw at The Container Store): transparent and in a variety of rainbow colors, opaque and decorated in various shapes and sizes, plain and practical, heavy and immovable for sitting on or storing stuff in, woven and allowing for glimpses of what is within.

But here's the rub: God cannot be contained. The boxes we keep God in cannot contain all that God is - the love, the grace, the mercy, the blessings, the justice, on and on. We think we know the limit of it and we think we have it contained in the box, but we can't possibly. In the same way that I needed to leave the container store to fully experience the sunset, we need to remove the containers we keep God in, so that we can fully experience the surprising depth and breadth of the heart of God.

Finding a moment of Peace

One day in June, after a day of scraping paint off the side of the old farm house at The Mill Pond, of caulking holes and spreading wood putty, of beginning to apply the primer to the side of the house - finally! - I was cleaning the paint brushes at the water spigot.

There are three water spigots near the farm house. I went to the one next to the garden because I knew it had a bottle of dish soap that I could use to wash the paint brushes. I opened the spigot, water began to flow and I started to clean the brushes, adding soap to the bristles and working it in. Soap a little, work it in a little, rinse a little, repeat. Soon the brushes were clean and I began to shake the water out like I remember my Dad doing when I was younger. Using big downward arm strokes, I shook the water out of the brushes onto the ground. Over and over. Swish. Swish. Swish.

And then it happened. I remember birds singing and the swish of the water leaving the brush. But that was all.

And I stopped. And time stopped. And I allowed myself to just be completely aware. And for a moment I was completely overwhelmed with Peace. Yes, Peace with a capital P. It was the kind of peace that when I talked about it later, it unexpectedly brought me to tears.

You can read more about The Mill Pond here.  Jim's posts about becoming a friend of time are particularly of interest, as this was the topic and theme during our recent visit. I think it had a significant impact on me and my relationship with time. I know that it was, in part, why my moment at the water spigot was so memorable.

May you find a moment of Peace today.

~Jen

Thinking about my teenager

Teenagers

I’ve been thinking of my teenager - the one on the right - a lot these days - he finishes middle school in a couple weeks and will be moving up to high school in the fall. How did this happen? Look how tall he is! And yet, he’s still my baby. He’s the one who changed me from who I thought I was into someone I had never met before. He made me a mom, a mother, a mama, a mommy. And now, he’s almost grown. Soon he’ll be a man, move out (God-willing) and start on his own journey into adulthood. In the meantime, the teen years loom. And so, this poem:

"One day they disappear
Into their rooms.
Doors and lips shut
and we become strangers
in our own home.
I pace the hall, hear whispers,
a code I knew but can’t remember,
mouthed by mouths I taught to speak.
Years later the door opens. I see faces I once held,
open as sunflowers in my hands. I see
familiar skin now stretched on long bodies
that move past me
glowing almost like pearls.”
~Pat Mora

"Why Do You Care?"

I was putting Ryan to bed (he's 10) a couple nights ago and I was telling him about the people I saw at the gym that evening. I had seen our church sexton there, Danny, who's African American, and also a really old woman using the elliptical machine really slowly. It sort of made me giggle but I was also very inspired by her. Planet Fitness prides itself on being a "Judgment Free" zone so I really had no business snerking; after all who am I but a 40-something soccer mom on an elliptical machine. Pfft.

But I digress.

I began to tell Ryan about the variety of people at the gym: old and young, male and female, black and white, American, Latino, Indian, and Middle Eastern, when out of the blue Ryan said, "Why do you care? They're all allowed to be there, so why do you care who's there?"  He said it with a tone, too.  A tone that implied that I was making a "thing" out of the different-ness of people (which I was). And that I was being judgmental, and perhaps noticing everyone's differences wasn't necessary.

I get it. And I'm glad he asked that question, "Why do you care?" Because it made me stop and think. Why do I care? At first I was a little put-off by his question, since he sounded sort of snippy. But then I realized that he was coming from a place that believes that lots of different people in any given place is NORMAL, and I wasn't.  I was coming from a place that saw that as an ideal, not the norm.

So I explained to him that I care because it's important to me that there be a variety of different people in the places I go.  I explained that sometimes where we live people can isolate themselves with their own kind: race, culture, religion, and never meet anyone else different from themselves.  And I explained that I didn't think that was healthy for society.

I explained that I care about the diversity of my gym, our schools, our church, my grocery store, because I think we are a better society when we appreciate each other's differences: our rich cultural heritages and histories, our different religious traditions, our different ethnic foods, music and cultures. When we are not afraid of each other we can talk to each other. Then we can learn from each other and we begin to care about each other.

Do you see what the result will be?

Grace. Peace. Love.