family camp 2013

This marks year three? Four? Six? of our now-traditional "Family Week" (a.k.a. staycation), in which my Farmer takes a week of vacation and we camp out in the backyard.

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

I guess you could say it really started on Friday, this year.  My mother came to watch the children for my (almost-) monthly day off, and I roamed the Southern End in the minivan, from library to river overlook, at my leisure.  Saturday, my Farmer took the children (all four!) to work with him while I stayed home to read, nap, and take a nice long walk in the sun.

Sunday after church we attended a feast of locally-grown goodies at my Farmer's farm, a fund-raiser to which we were given complimentary tickets.  From the smoked potatoes and fried green tomatoes to the cheese trays and mini-burgers on freshly-baked buns to the peach cobbler and molasses ice cream, it was a palate-pleasing experience we will not soon forget.

After the respite of Sunday naps all around, we gathered up the firewood and started the first of what we hope are many campfires this week.  We roasted apples, fresh bread, and marshmallows.  And then ...

... we had a drop-in!!  Family from California, in for a funeral, stopped in to hug, chat, admire, and share dreams.  Acquaintances were refreshed, photos were snapped, farming methods were swapped, and walnuts were juggled.  As night fell, Lil' Snip - accustomed to daylight bedtimes still - came to me, enraptured with the sunset:  "the sky looks different, Mommy!"  We tucked him in and waved them off ...

sacrifice of praise

Though the fig tree should not blossom

And there be no fruit on the vines,

Though the yield of the olive should fail

And the fields produce no food,

Though the flock should be cut off from the fold

And there be no cattle in the stalls,

Yet I will exult in the LORD,

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

The Lord GOD is my strength,

And He has made my feet like hinds' feet,

And makes me walk on my high places.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

metamorphosis (2)

At the pottery studio, I prefer the wheel.

But there are other ways to shape the clay.  By a bank of windows looking out onto the parking lot, there is a slab roller (picture an old wringer-washer with just one roller bar on a table) for making flat sheets of clay for tiles or handbuilt items.  Just outside the studio, affixed to the wall at the edge of the showroom, is an extruder (imagine a sort of giant pasta- or playdough!- machine) for squishing out clay tubes of various shapes - smooth cylinders, long square boxes, star-shaped hollows, and more.  It looks kind of magical, really:  ball of clay in the top, pull down, tidy shape emerges at the bottom.

I never stopped to think about how the process affects the clay.

On the wheel, the clay is centered, bathed with water, and firmly but gently, slowly - often in three (or more) pulls - coaxed by fingers into a final shape.

Much different from being quickly forced from one shape to another by the strength of unyielding metal.

I'm thinking about the clay, now, feeling the forces of change on my heart.

"O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? 

As the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand.

Jeremiah 18:6

Am I - will I be - malleable?

Months ago, a woman I trust told me that God is getting ready to shake up my friendships.  She didn't know that some of my friends were then planning moves, both into and out of my life, physically and emotionally.

Sometimes it feels like betrayal, this change, and sometimes like grace.  Sometimes both.  But always, there is pain.  More the extruder than the wheel, is this process.

I've never been a fan of change - at least not change initiated by another.  It's unsettling to me, like someone else pushing my rocking chair into motion, or a child swinging the hammock I'm resting on.

Maybe the liquidating stage of the chrysalis is over, now, and the formation of the butterfly is beginning ... I hope.  I hope there will be something to show for the squeezing of my heart.

No, not hope.  I trust.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

Hebrews 11:1

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, 
since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

snippets

Lil' Snip, awhile back eating his first french fry, asked: "Are there mashed potatoes in these?"

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

A homeschooling mother's victory: daughter pulling the wrapping off of a frozen pizza to exclaim "dendritic crystals!!" and sending an excited sister to find her magnifying glass.

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

Lil' Snip (the only son among three daughters) looking adoringly at his colored pencil, which he has just discovered can be extended by twisting the end, cooing "cuuuute!" in an exact replica of our expressions over him.

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

Spice one morning told me about a dream she'd had [my thoughts in brackets]:  "I had a dream last night about a monster [oh, no!] that I was chasing [you GO girl!] that turned into Truffle [(a beloved cat) - that's my girl, turning monsters into playmates!!]"

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

Isaiah was showing me, rather vigorously, how he pats his head. "Be nice to your head," I told him, "because it's your head!"

"And," he reminded me, "my face is on it!"

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

Spice asks me if she's a pessimist or an optimist. Trying to avoid labels, I tell her that she's just her. She counters with: "Does that mean that I'm a pessimist and you just don't want to tell me?"

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

... and one from my Farmer:  My elliptical and I had started getting reacquainted (slowly), so I was disappointed to see that the bathroom scales hadn't moved in the direction that I had hoped. My husband, quick-witted, quipped "Boy, you must put on muscle fast!"

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

"wasted" morning

So, it's a little after eleven a.m. and I'm looking about, laptop warming my knees, wondering what I have to show for my morning.

At first glance, not much.

It took me most of the morning to make my grocery list, thanks to getting breakfast into my son and playing TinkerToys and plunging the toilet and bantering with friends on facebook and demonstrating touch-typing without looking at the keyboard for my dubious daughters and catching up on a cousin's blog and adjusting the food processor for the bread-crumb-maker and doing a ponytail and giving emotional counsel ... and of course, my own natural distractedness.

Unseen, though, is the necessary-to-the-introvert recovery from a lovely and very social day yesterday, when my favorite little Sister came with her three little ones.  We loved being with them, and now today we are regaining our equilibrium.  Like it or not, convenient or not, on the to-do list or not, this is as vital to us as sleep and whole food.

And so we "waste" the morning.

Ahhhh ..... that's better.