Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Archives for February 2012

Carrot sticks, a cup and the cross

Lent begins this week. Did it sneak up on you like it did me? It happens every year, yet somehow, it surprised me with its arrival this year.

I’m never quite sure what to do with Lent. When I was a kid, friends who attended church always talked about what they were giving up — usually something they really liked like chocolate or pop (soda now that I live in Pennsylvania). As I got older, I noticed the increase of Friday fish fry events, and when my husband and I were in our early dating years, I caught his excitement for McDonald’s fish sandwich specials during Lent.

Even after I gave my life to Christ, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. Give stuff up? Read the Bible more? Sacrifice to the point of pain like my Savior? Pray more? Nothing special?

Since moving here and my husband being in seminary, we’ve come to appreciate the beauty of the church calendar — the seasons, the holy days, the celebrations. We’ve worn ashes on our foreheads, something I thought I’d never do, not being Catholic or mainline Protestant and all. We’ve read special devotional collections focused on the season. We’ve committed to sacrifice in different ways.

I don’t know yet what this season will hold for me. I want it to be meaningful and a time of dedication, but I’ve yet to think about it deeply. Wednesday’s coming soon.

Here’s what I do know.

One night this week, Isabelle, our 4-year-old, made a cross out of her carrot sticks at dinner. She was so excited. “Look, Mom! I made a … I made a cross!” I asked her what the cross meant, why it was important, and she said, “Because that’s where God died.”

For Lent, I want both excitement and remembrance. The season begins solemnly and ends triumphantly. I want to remember the cost and rejoice in the victory.

As I was washing dishes another night, I spent a lot of time cleaning plastic straws with cotton swabs. I’m not sure I will ever buy a cup with a plastic straw again because they’re impossible to clean. Even with the cotton swab, I found I had to close one eye and focus on the hole to pick out the junk resting inside the straw, sometimes just out of reach.

By closing one eye, I blocked out of my view the rest of the dishes, the kitchen, the kids and saw only the straw and the food particles lodged in there.

Life is full. I feel like I always have a million things to do and maybe I accomplish two or three in the course of a day. I start something, then I get interrupted or distracted, and I have to come back to it later. Sadly, my spiritual life is like this sometimes, too. Opportunities to grow in my faith are endless, and if I start something new, I’m likely to be interrupted by life or distracted by worries and fears.

Maybe what I need to do this Lenten season is to close one eye to those things — the things I can’t control or change, that seek to divert me from my purpose and mission — and focus in on the cross.

Twice in recent weeks, this passage has confronted me. I may make it my Lenten theme.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

Throw off what holds me back and trips me up. Run with perseverance on the path God has for me. Fix my eyes on Jesus.

How that manifests in my life these next weeks, I’m not sure. But it’s a start.

How about you? What does Lent mean to you? How do you commemorate the season?

May it be a time of blessing and renewal of your faith.

Saturday Smiles: Valentine edition

If you were hoping to leave Valentine’s Day on Tuesday, never to be remembered again until next year, then this post is not for you. I have a double dose of Valentine’s smiles for you this week, beginning with a kid-friendly project on Tuesday and ending with an eight-course Italian dinner on Friday. Those were definitely the highlights.

So, let’s get started.

The cuties and I took Tuesday afternoon to make Valentine’s decorations for our front window. Earlier in the week, we’d stocked up on construction paper and stickers. After taking my husband to school, we paid the scrapbook store a visit for some heart paper, which Isabelle could not live without. I hadn’t been to the store for a long time. This was the first memorable trip there with the kids, who, now that I let them cut and glue things, are attracted to all things paper. Isabelle wanted a die-cut snowglobe paper, and Corban wanted a Buzz Lightyear paper. I understand how they’re so easily distracted. I, too, could have walked out of there with a sack full of paper unrelated to our mission. We restrained ourselves, but not without a little bait-and-switch trickery on my part. “Hey, kids, look at the heart papers over there,” I said while carefully putting the non-heart papers back in their places.

We walked out of there with some free, leftover heart stickers, too. Isabelle was excited.

Here’s what we accomplished.

Isabelle artfully arranged the hearts in a circle. Later in the week, they would take marker to the paper. And the window. A small price to pay for creativity, I guess.

When we’d finished our craft project, it was time to make heart-shaped chocolate chip pancakes. For supper.

Corban didn’t get the message.

“Please, I have a Christmas tree?”

No amount of arguing could convince him that we needed to use hearts because it was Valentine’s Day. He got a Christmas tree.

Then, as I prepared the pancakes and sausage, he provided the entertainment.

Why, yes, Mom, I AM using the measuring cups as a drum set and making a terrible lot of noise.

How soon is too soon for music lessons?

Really, the smile says it all. Trouble and cuteness in one little package.

Dinner was a hit. I mean, what kid wouldn’t like chocolate, butter and syrup for supper? Moms, on the other hand, like it a little less when said kids are bouncing off the walls an hour later, nowhere near settled enough for bedtime.

Live and learn. But I’d do it all over again.

Because my husband was in class on Valentine’s Day, we postponed our couple celebration until Friday night, when he planned and (mostly) prepared a romantic dine-in meal for us.

The kids got to help and eat the first few courses.

Here’s how it looked in the kitchen that day.

I believe Isabelle is yelling “Italian!” here. She had no idea what was for supper, but she was excited for the Italian theme. And Corban’s not wearing pants in this picture. This happens a lot.

I shopped with Phil for the ingredients, but this was my first glimpse of the menu.

Wikipedia + Food Network + love. And yes, it was delicious. Every last bite.

This is how the arugula and fennel salad, and the fisherman’s stew turned out. I ate squid. And octopus. And mussels.

Yum.

It’s been our tradition since before we were married that our Valentine’s dinner is homemade and dine-in. After we had kids, we had to get a little more creative with our timing. We put them to bed as early as they’ll go and eat a little later. It’s worth the wait.

We don’t get out to restaurants, especially fancy ones, much, so to clothe the table in special decor and turn on some classical music as we eat by candlelight is a suitable substitute.

These two days alone provided a week’s worth of smiles.

But the kids — oh, the things they say. I’m going to need to start writing down their words when they say them because they’ve come up with gems lately.

One day, during lunch or snack time, I was granting one of Isabelle’s reasonable requests, when she said, “Mom, why can’t you call me ‘Frajo’?” (I have no idea how to spell this, by the way. Can’t go wrong with phonetics, right?) Seriously, where does she come up with this stuff?

And Corban, today during lunch, said “We should pray.” We told him to go ahead and he said, “Jesus. Thank you for God. Thank you for playing with blocks.”

Can you hear my heart melting?

OK, that’s enough of my gushing. I should mention that the week was not all smiles and giggles. There are some days I look ahead to this post and wonder what on earth I’m going to write. There’s always something, even in the muck of everyday.

I’m hoping you found some smiles this week, too.