Full of light

I snapped this photo last Saturday just before Neil and I went out to dinner. I love it because it captures just how I feel these days: happy. Content. Full of light and invigorated by life.

It feels a little silly to blog when I have nothing to say other than "I am so much happier than I have been in years and years and years," but that's the truth.

Tonight I was at a flower & garden show with a friend. We had such a good time just wandering around looking at things and chatting. At one point we had stopped by a booth that was making customized orthotics, and we were talking about foot issues and she asked if I was training for anything right now, and I said I'd originally been training for a marathon but had to drop down to the half because of plantar fasciitis. We talked a little more about the time commitment involved in marathon training, and as we were talking I realized something--for the first time in years I am not using running as a method of control. I mean, I ran a marathon with a stress fracture, for crying out loud! And I am so happy and so content in my life right now that running is ancillary to my happiness, and I have not been able to say that since 2007.

Literally.

For so many years I felt like so many things in my life were out of my control--that I was suspended in limbo, unable to progress forward. And in the last five months I have felt absolutely drenched in the outpouring of heaven's blessings--literally, I have felt that there is not room enough to receive all that the Lord has given us. I am so incredibly grateful for the amazing friends that surround us here and the way I have just fallen in love with our life here.

I'm going to write that again because I can't emphasize it enough--I am so, so, so grateful for the friends we are making here. I don't think it is possible to feel more welcomed and loved than I have felt.

And my children are thriving. Really and truly thriving. We had a few very rocky months but we're coming through and things are SO good for everyone.

Neil is loving his new job. He feels valued and appreciated & that his work is measurably contributing to the company's success. Such a blessing after the last twelve years of entirely opposite treatment!!! (I really can't write much about that here but most of you probably know what I want to say.)

And I love our home here so much. Every day I just look around and I'm filled with such gratitude that we live here in this beautiful home and that we are able to do projects that make me love it even more (in the last two weeks we installed new double ovens and a Jenn-Air gas commercial-style gas cooktop and ALL THE HEART EYES).

I love our ward here. I love that my children are excited to go to church and that they are learning so much from so many good people. I love love love my calling and the chance to serve with the amazing women in the presidency and our absolutely fantastic group of Primary workers.

I love the library with its heirloom seed library and its child-sized door for storytime and its endless rows of books that make it double the size of any library I've been in before. I love the arts & design district which is always the high point of my runs and I love the trails along the river and the greenway that is full of friendly runners and the roundabouts that drove me nuts at first but now I can't live without them. I love the Christmas lights that are still up on the fountains and pine trees in the center of the roundabouts. I love that my kids can bike to school or to the playground and that there are always kids out playing tennis in the street or biking or starting up a game of baseball. I love the funny weekly paper that always gives me info about what exciting things are going on. I love the parks with their inventive play structures and free maple sugar bush tours (hello that was the best morning ever!!!). I love the schools that give my kids the opportunity to study violin and foreign languages and STEM and ceramics. I love seeing Isaac's excitement when I pick him up from programming club and Abigail's joy after rocketry club. I love that the soccer fields and baseball fields are both within biking distance from our house. I love the ponds and creeks everywhere--it seems like I can always hear the sound of water. I love the proximity to Costco and Trader Joe's and IKEA and Whole Foods and Hobby Lobby--this is the first time in more than a decade that I can be at a Target in five minutes instead of twenty-five! I love our fantastic piano teacher and all our friendly welcoming dog-walking neighbors that my kids always refer to by name & pet as they walk by: "That's Melvin with the sausage dog." "There's Elaine with the frisky black dog." I love the friends who show up at my door with soup when I have the flu and the friends who drive carpool with me and the friends who worry about class changes for next year with me and the friends who lovingly describe pie recipes while we run at 6 am and the friends who stay at my house until 11 pm and tell me we feel like family and the friends who tell my kids they can't just eat tortilla chips for dinner and the friends who drop by to chat & clean my kitchen while they're at it and the friends who invite me for movie nights and the friends who have us over for dinner because they have lots of kids too and don't mind the crazy and the friends who trade playdates with me and text me for spontaneous double date nights and the friends who just text me to see how the day is going and if I want to meet up at a park.

I love it here.

There were so many dark years in West Lafayette where I honestly did not know if I would survive. If our marriage would survive. If my faith would survive. I clung so desperately to the promises I had felt and the peace I had felt when we originally prayed about our choice to attend Purdue for graduate school. I reminded myself over and over of the words of our stake president in blessings that he gave Neil & me during our last years there--that this was where the Lord wanted us; that he was mindful of our family, and that this was all for a wise purpose in him.

And I am so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to see that purpose now. To know that had Neil not been forced to switch research topics after six years that this job would not have been possible. That had he not been delayed over and over by equipment failures, by funding losses, by research obstacles, that this field would not have been an area of extreme priority for his current employer. That had his funding continued as we had originally planned he would never have been assigned to the research opportunity that introduced him to his employer; that had his funding not completely run out and he literally worked for almost a year for no salary...this job would never have worked out in the way it did. That we would never have experienced the richness of happiness that we are enjoying now.

And I am so grateful for the fact that during all those years I was able to work. When Neil and I were married, my plan was to go to law school, and as I was proceeding with my application and preparation for the LSAT, it was very very very clear to me that law was not the Lord's plan for me, and that I was supposed to pursue a master's in English instead. I was absolutely ENRAGED by this (I vividly remember throwing everything within reach when I got up from that prayer), but my master's program gave me the training and education that has provided for our family so that we never had to take out student loans. We definitely lived on a student budget (and man did I love ordering furniture for our new home over the last few months!) but we always had enough for our needs and some of our wants. Such tremendous blessings and I can so clearly see the hand of the Lord guiding us here over the last fifteen years.

I just really hope that we get to stay put for awhile. ;-)

Last but not least, I have thought of this talk so, so, so, so, so many times over the last years. Neil and I used to listen to it a lot the first few years that we were married--we would go for a drive up in the mountains and turn this on. So frequently I would be praying and just pleading with the Lord to help me make it through another day and I would hear "I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be."

So I hope this helps someone else the way it has helped me.

"Could I tell you just a quick story out of my own experience in life? Sixty-odd years ago I was on a farm in Canada. I had purchased the farm from another who had been somewhat careless in keeping it up. I went out one morning and found a currant bush that was at least six feet high. I knew that it was going all to wood. There was no sign of blossom or of fruit. I had had some experience in pruning trees before we left Salt Lake to go to Canada, as my father had a fruit farm. So I got my pruning shears and went to work on that currant bush, and I clipped it and cut it and cut it down until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps.

And as I looked at them, I yielded to an impulse, which I often have, to talk with inanimate things and have them talk to me. It’s a ridiculous habit. It’s one I can’t overcome. As I looked at this little clump of stumps, there seemed to be a tear on each one, and I said, “What’s the matter, currant bush? What are you crying about?”

And I thought I heard that currant bush speak. It seemed to say, “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here.”

I thought I heard that from the currant bush. I thought it so much that I answered it.

I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to think back and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Ten years passed, and I found myself in Europe. I had made some progress in the First World War in the Canadian army. In fact, I was a field officer, and there was only one man between me and the rank of general, which I had cherished in my heart for years. Then he became a casualty. And the day after, I received a telegram from London from General Turner, who was in charge of all Canadian officers. The telegram said, “Be in my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

I puffed up. I called my special servant. (We called them “batmen” over there.) I said, “Polish my boots and my buttons. Make me look like a general, because I am going up tomorrow to be appointed.”

He did the best he could with what he had to work on, and I went to London. I walked into the office of the general. I saluted him smartly, and he replied to my salute as higher officers usually do to juniors—sort of a “Get out of the way, worm.” Then he said, “Sit down, Brown.”

I was deflated. I sat down. And he said, “Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations, you have had the experience, and you are entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment.”

Just then he went into the other room to answer a phone call, and I did what most every officer and man in the army would do under those circumstances: I looked over on his desk to see what my personal history sheet showed. And I saw written on the bottom of that history sheet in large capital letters: “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.”

Now at that time we were hated heartily in Britain, and I knew why he couldn’t make the appointment. Finally he came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.”

I saluted him, less heartily than before, and went out. On my way back to Shorncliffe, 120 kilometers away, I thought every turn of the wheels that clacked across the rails was saying, “You’re a failure. You must go home and be called a coward by those who do not understand.”

And bitterness rose in my heart until I arrived, finally, in my tent, and I rather vigorously threw my cap on the cot, together with my Sam Browne belt. I clenched my fist, and I shook it at heaven, and I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I’ve done everything that I knew how to do to uphold the standards of the Church. I was making such wonderful growth, and now you’ve cut me down. How could you do it?”

And then I heard a voice. It sounded like my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. And someday, when you are ripened in life, you are going to shout back across the time and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Those words—which I recognize now as my words to the currant bush and that had become God’s word to me—drove me to my knees, where I prayed for forgiveness for my arrogance and my ambition.

As I was praying there, I heard some Mormon boys in an adjoining tent singing the closing number to an M.I.A. session, which I usually attended with them. And I recognized these words, which all of you have memorized:

It may not be on the mountain height
Or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle’s front
My Lord will have need of me;
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I’ll go where you want me to go.
. . .
So trusting my all to thy tender care,
And knowing thou lovest me,
I’ll do thy will with a heart sincere;
I’ll be what you want me to be.
[“It May Not Be on the Mountain Height,” Hymns,1948, no. 75]

My young friends and brothers and sisters, will you remember that little experience that changed my whole life? Had the Gardener not taken control and done for me what was best for me, or if I had gone the way I wanted to go, I would have returned to Canada as a senior commanding officer of western Canada. I would have raised my family in a barracks. My six daughters would have had little chance to marry in the Church. I myself would probably have gone down and down. I do not know what might have happened, but this I know, and this I say to you and to Him in your presence, looking back over sixty years: “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down.”

--Hugh B Brown, "God Is the Gardener"

Fall pictures--finally!

Matthew and I decided to do some updates tonight from the many many hundreds of photos languishing away...so we'll see how many I get through before he requires more hands-on attention. He's currently lying in my lap playing a symphony with his little backside...yikes. 

One of the things on our bucket list this fall was to visit the corn maze, so away we went! Kids, if you are reading this years later, KNOW YOU WERE LOVED BECAUSE I TOOK YOU TO A CORN MAZE TWO WEEKS AFTER HAVING A BABY. Just in case you forgot. (And I didn't punch the 20-year-old hipster girl who said, "Uh, seriously, who like brings a baby to a corn maze...")



I was actually really proud of myself that night--got everyone's homework and music practice done, fed them all dinner & cleaned it up, packed lunches and laid out clothes for the next day, then drove 30 minutes to meet Neil at the corn maze. It was quite the logistical feat on my own...this was just a couple of days after my mom left.

But they had a great time. It was worth it.

We traipsed all around collecting punches on our little maze map that were good for discounts at various local businesses--the kids were SUPER passionate about collecting punches for places we have never even heard of...

And Nate would have been content to stay here all day--haha!

 We had a great time playing with all the other stuff at the maze--you can probably tell from the hay in Luke's hair that he had a GREAT time jumping in the giant hay pile. And then we wandered the maze for an hour and finished up as the moon came out--it was a beautiful night. One thing I really like about this particular maze is that the path through the woods between the maze and the parking lot is lit up with strings of bubble lights, and there are a few campfire spots along the path, so it smells like woodsmoke and trees and crisp fall air...all lit up with bubble lights in the woods. Pretty much perfect.


And some baby photos! All mixed up at different ages.

I think these are maybe 3 weeks?

His first walk in the woods, right around 2 weeks. He slept happily in my arms as we hiked for an hour and I could barely move them afterwards. Fortunately he's now big enough for the front carrier, thank heavens!

Trying to take a few selfies with him one day...he wasn't really into it.

At all.




And brand new baby! Brand new! Just seconds old!!

Loved the time I was able to spend one-on-one with this sweet dude in the hospital. I was holding him today telling him that I used to nap with his other siblings when they were newborns...but no time for that with my Matthew!



Funny little troll face just after coming home from the hospital...

A few more race-day photos from my half in October--I really liked this one Neil snapped of us walking back to the car.



And just post-race (I was seriously like 2 seconds from keeling over...right after we took this photo I had to sit down really fast).

While we were waiting for the kids' fun run to start I saw my friend who had just finished her first half marathon!! Such a great accomplishment!



Donuts on strings--this was my bright spot of laughter on the hardest of the days that Neil was gone.

 

Nathan didn't participate because he doesn't like donuts...just sprinkles. He was happy to watch.


Caught Isaac mid-laugh. Love this dude so much. He is really thriving in his new school & class...his teacher is absolutely awesome and he gets all kinds of time to write his stories down and read Harry Potter to his heart's content. He's currently on book 6 and he totes that giant book to and from school every day (last year we managed to get him to leave one copy of his current HP at school and use another one at home, but this year he's convinced that he's big enough to carry it...). I was looking through his writing stuff the other day and he had a great little word web about me--"lots of kids," "loves to read to me," "bakes," "likes to go to the woods," etc. Always fun to see yourself from your kid's perspective--I need to take a photo of that one. Isaac started piano this fall and he loves it so much--he's the only kid I have to say, "Okay, now STOP practicing and go do something else...it's your sister's turn to practice because you've been at the piano for an hour!"



Whenever we go to the woods the girls are obsessed with crossing ravines on fallen logs. I remember loving the same thing at their age when my dad would take us on these really long Sunday walks around our property...probably why I like to do the same thing on Sunday afternoons now!

 One of the two times we made Halloween sugar cookies...the kids love this so much! We won't win any prizes for decorating, but they are soooo darn tasty.

More Sunday walks, more tree-crossing. :-)

Luke is thriving in kindergarten--he is only there for 2 hours a day, but he's getting to be quite the little reader and I'm really glad we were able to reach an agreement with the school about having him home with me most of the day. He needs to be home to do important things like eat his food while dressed like Baba Yaga. ;-) He is super super super into Play-Doh right now (some days he thinks he might be a sculptor when he grows up) and he usually spends at least a couple hours a day coming up with really intricate creations--one of my favorites was a giant clamshell with carefully scalloped edges that opened up to reveal all sorts of little treasures inside. So I'm thrilled that he is able to be home to do hours of Play-Doh and crazy imaginative games with Nathan (yesterday he hitched himself to the booster seat and buckled Nathan in so they could play sled dog) and hours of cuddling with me reading...we finished up the Little House books and started Harry Potter.

Isaac lost his first tooth! Big milestone--he decided to seal it up in an envelope and hide it so the Tooth Fairy wouldn't nab it by accident. ;-)




More cookie decorating...

Snuggling up to read together on my bed...I was feeding Matthew in the corner and just loved rocking back and forth watching these two girlies reconnect after a long day at school. Abigail is absolutely thriving in middle school. We're adjusting to never having homework--which is CRAZY after the hours of homework in elementary school!!! After elementary school our district no longer offers the fully immersive high-ability classes, and instead students are able to test in to advanced math & advanced English, both of which she is taking, but all the other classes are now mainstream. She is doing super well in all her classes, made the "Distinguished Honor Roll" for her first nine weeks, and is making amazing progress with both clarinet and piano. Honestly, we are just really in a wonderful place with her right now--she is super responsible, always helpful, and an absolutely amazing girl. She is also a fabulous babysitter so we're really loving that. :-) She is totally hilarious too and is so perceptive--I love talking with her every day when she gets home from school. It's so nice having an hour with to focus on her before the next two get home from school. Two of her really good friends moved over the summer, but she has one really great friend still there that she does quite a bit with and then a nice little group of friends from her class last year. Starting to see a little bit of middle school drama, but I am really proud of how she's handling it. She is really good about noticing and appreciating the things I do, which is pretty darn awesome--I am totally loving that validation! So nice to have a kid say, "Hey, thanks for folding my laundry--that was really nice of you" (usually they're supposed to do it themselves) or "That was an awesome dinner--thanks for the time you put in." Basically right now Abigail is at a stage that shows me that all the hard work we're putting in with the younger kids really is worth it--hah!



Juliet is also adjusting really well to her new school--as with Abigail, the leap from the 2/3 HA class to the 4/5 HA class definitely took some work, patience, and prayers. One of the big challenges for her was that at her old school they learn the multiplication tables in grade 4, and in this school it's grade 2. So that was pretty rough for awhile there, but she buckled down and worked SO hard...I was really proud of her! She had all those tables down inside of a week, thanks to her little homemade flashcards that she carried in her pocket and ran through whenever she had a free moment (I think most of those got memorized on the bus!). She also worked really hard to learn to consistently slow down and double-check her work, and while it was pretty rocky for awhile there she has been doing so much better and I love seeing her grin of happiness when she looks over all her graded work at the end of the week. She's worked hard for it and she's developing such good life skills and study habits. Her teacher also told me at PT conferences that Juliet is friends with everyone and endlessly energetic--a pretty perfect descriptor of my bouncy girl! We've started to see more emotional volatility this past year but she is learning to control her emotions and calm herself down. Again...great life skills. :-)

Nathan is soooo sweet with Matthew. So, so, so sweet. He told me tonight he couldn't decide whether he loved me more or Matthew more, which is a pretty big deal. He is totally rocking the big brother thing!

One night everyone thought it would be funny to join Matthew for some floor time...

These are posted by permission and make me laugh SO much!!! Outtakes from one Sunday when we were looking right into the sun and the kids were trying SO hard to still smile with eyes open! (Luke gave up.)

And the photo I texted Neil the first night he was gone...

Luke had this huge list of Halloween food he wanted to make, thanks to a holiday cookbook we checked out of the library. He was super happy to make "mummy dogs," the other kids were super happy to try them, and then pretty much we decided...eh, we would rather eat crescent rolls separately rather than wrapping them around hot dogs. Oh well!

Nathan showing me EXACTLY the kind of face he wanted his jack-o-lantern to have ("with a big scary mouth like DIS!")


And more woods walks. I love that beautiful little face. He is such a doll.

Juliet had an overnight field trip last week to Lake Michigan. They played in the sand, went on hike after hike, roasted marshmallows, and came home filthy, exhausted, and bursting with stories!! We missed her SO much but she had a wonderful time with her best friend and other classmates. She was sure careful about stocking up on hugs and kisses in the 24 hours before she left, and I stuck a note in her pajamas with a few more just in case she needed them to tide her over. ;-)



Nathan is just as into construction equipment as ever and was pleased as punch when some new shirts came in the mail from Grandma--we've designed the route we take to pick Luke up every day so it routes around Nathan's favorite construction sites, and he gives me a running narration on what equipment is out that day!! My parents visited a few weeks ago and my dad took Nathan and Luke to get donuts (with sprinkles!) and then they sat by a construction site for an hour and watched...Nathan was in heaven!

 He has expanded his outside goings-on from digging underneath the swings to swinging on the swings, sailing high into the sky on his tummy while he belts out his favorite John Denver songs at the top of his lungs..."I am dah EAGLE I live in high country, in rocky cathedrals dat reach to dah SKYYYYYY..."

 And sweet Matthew, or Matt the Wajax, as we sometimes call him (matthewajax)...he is pretty darn awesome. Still not sleeping as well as I'd like at night--he's in a stage where his big awake period comes after the other kids are asleep and lasts until about 1, which is pretty hard, but he sleeps beautifully after that and goes back to sleep every time he wakes up to nurse.

We'll keep him. :-)