Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
This week, we broke our streak of having our horrible, no-good day on Saturdays, and it came on Friday instead. We attempted to clean the house, the children and I, and let’s just say, we failed in our mission. (And in the process used all the dish soap before many of the dishes were clean and accidentally spilled water on one end of the couch, splashing the laptop in the process. If there’s any place I freak out about water being spilled, it’s near the computer because that’s where my words are kept!)
Our cleaning misadventures landed us at Chipotle for dinner because I couldn’t deal with the kitchen or our diminishing food supply. (We only have two kids who live here–where does all our food go???)
But our week wasn’t all tears and sadness. After all, it was VBS week at a local church. Daytime VBS, no less. (There was much rejoicing, yay!) So I had a few hours to myself on four mornings and it was just the break I needed. I even snuck in a breakfast date with a couple of other moms whose kids 
were at the same VBS. Our shared love of breakfast bonded us. And we had a great time just hanging out and talking about nothing and everything.
After day 1 of VBS, Phil and I had an appointment to get our travel shots for Kenya, which is happening exactly one month from today. (Commence freaking out!) I will not include that among the “fun” in our week because I hate medical stuff and spent significant time for the rest of the week wondering if I was experiencing any kind of weird reaction to these shots. (And wondering more if I was going to be paranoid about every health symptom for the next year after going to Kenya. Pray for me? I’m more than a little bit of a hyponchondriac.)
But after we got that out of the way, we took the kids to the science and nature museum here in town. We had a free family pass to use by the end of the month, so we thought a couple of hours there would do us all some good. (The only down side is we missed the dinosaur exhibit by a day! They were literally dismantling it while we were there. Sad.)
Phil and the kids dug through these explorer boxes looking at rocks and shells and antlers and skulls while I sat in front of the bee hive mesmerized by the activity. There was a ton of hands-on stuff for the kids. At one point our son yelled, “We’re doing science!” I had to laugh.
Here, Phil and the kids are looking at a map of our county trying to find our house. I think they succeeded in getting close to it. We also looked at snakes, turtles, lizards, and bugs behind glass, which is my favorite way to experience those sorts of creatures.
And speaking of creatures behind glass, the museum has a frightening-yet-fascinating collection of stuffed (taxidermy) birds. If you have any fear of birds, this would be a nightmare, but it was the kind of display Phil and I could have spent a lot more time looking at. The kids had trouble taking it all in. Also in the basement was a rock and mineral collection that astounded me. So many variations and colors inside the earth. Amazing.
Because of VBS, I didn’t plan a lot of extra activities for the kids this week, though Izzy started her summer reading program at school which was a chaotic and fun evening in a school that felt a billion degrees warm.
Our garden was a great source of entertainment this week as well. A storm knocked our jalapeno plant over so I had to frantically try to repair it as the rain ended. And one day the kids came screaming inside, “Come look! Come look!”
Our pepper plants (not pictured) have tiny peppers on them and the kids were ridiculously excited. I get it. Because our garden is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. This cucumber plant, especially, amazes me. Not long after we planted it, we thought we were going to lose it. It just wasn’t thriving. And then all of a sudden it took off and it’s a monster.
Our week was a little more low-key than some of the first weeks, but we have a super secret surprise adventure planned for the kids tomorrow. I can’t tell you yet what it is but here are some clues: water, a large rubber duckie, and sails.
Check back next week to see what we fun we had!
Occasionally on Fridays, I post stories of friendship–mine and others’. Today is a story from a former co-worker, Beth Heldebrandt. She was my boss, technically but she wasn’t bossy and we sometimes had lunch together, so she felt more like a friend. Read what Beth has to say about friendship! (And if you’d like to share your own story, send me an email: lmbartelt (at) gmail (dot) com.)
I can’t remember the day we met because my memory doesn’t go back that far, but I know that it was just after I had proudly learned how to tie my shoes. Dawn, Beth and I were three of the 10 girls in our small Catholic school kindergarten class (there were 16 kids in the class total, and three of us were named “Beth”). That was more than 40 years ago (40!), but as the saying goes, the more things (and people) change, the more they stay the same.
I was reminded of that phrase a few times recently when the three of us drove to the East Coast (and beyond) to spend a week in a beach house at Hatteras Island, N.C. I think we all had our moments of nerves in the weeks leading up to the trip. While I had spent time with each of them over the years, the three of us hadn’t spent any measurable time together since college. And now we were going to spend an entire week together? And more than 35 hours in a car?
“It’s the same old Beth,” I told Dawn when she expressed her excitement and anxiety a week or so before the trip. “It’s the same old Dawn,” I told Beth, in turn. But, I admit, I also wondered how our adult personalities would mesh on such a trip. I thought, “Am I the same old Beth, too?” I didn’t think so.
Let’s face it, a lot has happened to us in 40 years – career changes, moves, marriages, divorces, births, child rearing, deaths, and all of the joys and stresses in between.
But in the end, I was right about one thing – life had certainly changed each of us, but deep down, we were still the same.
Within a few hours of the trip I felt that our old friendships had re-formed, and the past four decades were a blur. Despite all the curveballs that life had thrown us, we were still the same people at the core. The morning person was still a morning person. The night owls were still night owls. We were (in turn) bossy, sassy, anxious and moody.
But with Dawn and Beth, there was no need to be polite – we simply called each other on our issues the way lifetime friends can (and we took advantage of plenty of alone time, too!). We bickered and debated and laughed – and by mid-week we all admitted to feeling more relaxed than we could last remember.
A trip like this is full of reminiscing, together and on our own. Dawn, Beth and I were classmates through high school graduation, and then Dawn and I were roommates for four years of college. I remember Beth coming to visit us at our college and us going to visit her.
I remember having my first sleepover at Dawn’s house and being confused when I met her mom because I’d never seen a pregnant woman before.
I remember Beth and I shopping for prom dresses and having to be careful choosing the color because we were both dating boys with red hair.
We played basketball together. We were cheerleaders together. We were in clubs together and hung out on the weekends. We double-dated, drove each other’s cars and broke plenty of rules as teenagers.
We’ll always have the shared fear of Sister Clementine (gasp!), the hours spent cruising Main Street (gas 99 cents a gallon!) and the music of Meat Loaf (“Paradise by the Dashboard Light”!).
The memories are endless, and I’m proud that we now have new ones.