That's 6 of 8 there on the left. She was three years old at the time and we were at a wedding. She's with my precious niece KL.

I could just gush.

It sounds a little melodramatic, I suppose, but 6 of 8's toddlerhood is a bit foggy to me. She was only 10 months old when we found that we would be leaving our cozy enclave in Oklahoma, grandparents and aunts and uncles just up the road, and moving to the island. In all the emotion and details and challenge, it's those things that stand out strongest in my memory.

But then I go through some older photos like this.

And I melt.


Maybe it was somewhat of a good thing that I was so distracted when 6 of 8 was younger. Because looking at those big ol' baby blues, I'm pretty sure I would have spoiled her completely rotten all the time if I wasn't having to oversee moving trucks and housing contracts and getting all the other kids settled.

I know she's mine. But that's one cute kid....

Yes.

This is the scene outside my office. I had some phone calls to make. And the twins said they would be nice and quiet. And they were.

They quietly sent most of their stuffed animal and dirty laundry collection over the balcony onto the entry floor.

I've almost always had some kind of job that I've done throughout my kids' time at home. I've put stickers on medical folders, done voice-over work for advertising, sold educational books, run a professional photography business, done video production, done writing and research and speaking. I love being home with my kids, love homeschooling them, love running our crazy household.

And I love to work. I love working for the non-profit, Legacy of Hope Austin.

And I love working in women's ministry. And I love the time I spend up at our church offices, soaking in the adult conversation and the relative lack of chaos and the ability to get a lot done.

And I love coming home and navigating through Barbies and figurines to dig into a project. I'm productive in my home office, in a more fractured way.

But somehow, stuff still gets done.

Except for my kitchen floors. And baseboards. That kind of stuff doesn't ever seem to get done.

I've been reading up on and researching how other folks navigate working from home, how they structure their days, how they try to designate a line between home life and work life. I have some ideas. And I still have a lot to learn.

So let's hear it...do you work from home? How do you make it work? Or would you like to work at home and are trying to figure out venues for doing that? Or are you quite happy to keep your office life off site? Ask and discuss!

We bring a lot of filter to how we view Jesus. For some of us, He is soft, gentle, quiet. For others, He seems to be a good teacher, a man of compassion, but maybe not divine. Still others see Him as an agent of social change, stern toward 'The Man' but easy on the rest of us.

I bring my own filters to my portrait of Him.

This may sound odd, but I actually have a tough time with movies and film portrayals of Him. I just know how my mind works. Once I see an actor playing the role of Christ, once I see a painting or a drawing, my mind gravitates to that image. I fill in the blanks~~kindness in His eyes, determination in the set of His mouth, hard work represented in the callouses of His hands.

Except it's not Him.

It's how we've chosen to represent Him.

I've been spending a lot of time in the Gospels again, looking over His resume, watching His career highs, His quotable quotes, His moments of happy and His moments of discouragement. And taken in large portions, the Gospels show me again that Jesus is far more complex, far more layered, far more other than our human representations and small verbal portraits can encapsulate.

What strikes me most in my present studying is the hard sayings of Jesus. The tough stuff. The things that resonate with the tang of discipline and sacrifice and change. We like to think that those things were reserved for the Pharisees. But I think we sometimes miss that Jesus was speaking to the devoted church-goers of His day, the folks who were showing up for every conference and lectureship, the guys who sat on the boards of their local synagogue, the ones on the planning committees.

You know.

Us.

And He wasn't winking at the ones He healed and to whom He extended forgiveness of sins. He didn't tell them to keep sitting in their brokenness and sin. He told them to get up. And to stop sinning.

There was a passage in Mark this week that kept drawing me back, kept me scratching my head. Jesus has just entered Jerusalem. He has just ridden through the streets in the fulfillment of Scripture, the crowds shouting 'Hosanna'. And He passes a fig tree. A fig tree minding its own business. But Jesus is hungry. He approaches the tree, hoping to find some fruit. But there is none. And Mark lets us know that figs weren't even in season.

See? A fig tree minding its own business, just going about the cycle of the calendar. No harm, no foul, right?

But Jesus, the One we like to see as cashmere to the roughness of life, curses the fig tree. Lets it have it. Verbal wales on it. And then moves on to drive the money-changers out of the Temple.

Hm.

I was puzzled. And a little bothered. Because it just doesn't seem fair to curse a fig tree.

I ran through my commentaries, looking for some insight, some explanation that would allow me to continue to see Jesus as the snuggly purveyor of grace I prefer Him to be. Various commentators had all manner of clarification. The fig tree showed signs that it had never yielded fruit and never would. There's this one genus of fig trees that doesn't bloom when it should or is somewhat deceptive in its blossoms or was anemic in what it was producing.

Blah, blah, blah. You would think that Mark would have mentioned those factors if it was germane to the story.

We just can't let Jesus perplex us, can we? We just can't let Him push His foot over the line of our comfort.

He came as a revolutionary, a true patriot of the Eternal Kingdom.

He came to bring a sword.

And left us with the Holy Spirit to give comfort and counsel.

Ultimately, as I turned this passage over in my heart, I felt that I got to see a closer glimpse of this warrior Savior. He is into grace, but not excuses. He is into transparency but not apathy. He is into surrender but not fruitlessness.

That fig tree. It's potentially us. We'll be fruitful when....we'll produce for the Kingdom when....we'll show signs of life when....

And all the while there's a Carpenter striding across the hills of our hearts who has called us to more than the confines of our natures and bents and genetics. He calls us to be in fruit in every season of our lives. Bearing fruit. Always. Not just when conditions are right and the season is calibrated.

Always.

Always ripe.

A big expectation on His part in a world that segments and excuses and justifies.

I'm getting to know Him a little better.

And He is fascinating.

Selah.

Have you ever noticed?

Some of the best parenting techniques show up when you're least expecting it.

Case in point....

The twins have rarely had to wait on much in their lives. They were born into a household with lots and lots of arms to hold them, older sisters who have been like mamas to them, older brothers who have wagged them around like favorite uncles. Because they've had so many people in the house, they've not really known what it is to wait for a bottle or a sippy cup, wait to have a story read to them, wait for a snack.

Heck, they don't even know how to wait for Dora the Explorer to come on television. Because they were born into an age of DVRs and on-demand technology.

As a result, they don't wait well.

At all.

Back in the days when my oldest kids were young, Mike was often gone building a business and there was just me. My older kids knew how to take turns, knew how to be patient while I tended to one of their siblings. They had to. They might have outnumbered me, but I was the only person who could reach the top shelf of the pantry where the Goldfish crackers were kept.

Not so for the younger set. They are well aware that there are any number of people who can reach all manner of snack items and can do so with immediacy.

And then there's this...my tolerance level for whining and wailing has dropped as my age has increased. I'm willing to placate like an indulgent grandma just to keep the noise level in the house somewhere below 'piercing shriek'. And if that means we older members of the household have become the personal assistants to the preschool population, then so be it.

Except....

The preschoolers aren't having to use their patience muscle. They don't know this crazy word 'wait'.

Admittedly, I need to work on it with them. Except I just tremble at the fit throwing that I know will ensue.

Here's where the unintended parenting technique came into play yesterday.

I was running some errands yesterday and returning some phone calls. While I was out, cell phone glued to my ear, I picked up Valentine's candy to give to the kids next week when we hit the heart holiday. I made my way home, ready to unload groceries and supplies and the Valentine's candy, fully intending to secret the said candy away from kid eyes until next week.

But...

I was in the midst of an important portion of a phone conversation as I came in the door to the house. I focused on the conversation at hand, absently pulling Target bags in the door with me, draping them across the dining room table and entryway. I was intently listening, schlepping shopping bags, giving the majority of my attention to the person on the other end of the line.

And behind my distracted back, Target bags were being pillaged. And surprises were being discovered. Early. Days before Valentine's Day.


The twins emerged from the Target bag forest victorious. You would have thought they'd found rare truffles on the forest floor. They came running up to me, jumping up and down in glee, Valentine's candy boxes in their hands, begging to open the boxes, begging to eat the candy, begging, begging, begging.

What's a distracted mom to do? That's what I get for planning ahead...and multi-tasking.

Ultimately, I decided upon a little social experiment. I told them that the heart-shaped boxes were not to be opened until Valentine's Day....but...

...they could hold them and look at them and carry them around as much as they liked...as long as they did not open the boxes or eat any of the candy.

Guess what?

So far, so good.

They've stepped up. They visit their boxes. They decided their boxes should live under my desk in my office. They crawl under my feet, skirting the various wires and plugs of my computer equipment. They hold their boxes. They talk about how excited they are to get to open the boxes in a few days.

And then they move on.

Accidental parenting. It can be a good thing.

Particularly when one is learning the rules of the waiting game.

Here's another thing I've learned about twins.

When they're cute, they're cute.

And when they whine, it's usually together, in tandem, one after the other, often.

Yes. It's been one of those days.

Even after almost twenty-two years of mothering, these tail-end twins still surprise me. It's double, double, double. The giggly, happy days are twice as fun.

And the difficult, whiny days are twice as tough.

And I'm twice the age I was when I started this mothering journey.

With half the patience...and energy.

And I still need to keep some patience in reserve for dealing with the teenagers in my house.

You see how the math plays out.

Back to today.

It began with a throw-down over toothbrushes and toothpaste application. It's wrapping up with a hissy fit over which cup milk has been served in.

Here's the beauty in the thing.

These are the days that absolutely remind me that, no matter how much experience, no matter how many parenting tricks and tips, no matter the number of kids I've babied and raised and bathed and fed, I still need all the help I can get from the Ultimate Parent. I still need all the wisdom the Spirit can provide.

And a nice cup of chamomile tea wouldn't hurt either. Maybe a double, in the whole twin analogy thing....

There was this moment Friday night.

A moment that you sometimes dream about. But you don't always get.

Friday night, at Immerse Austin, we had one of our ballerinas from the 2dance2dream program of Legacy of Hope Austin perform. She was dressed in a pink leotard and a hot pink tutu, a pink rose in her hair. She wheeled out onto stage with her lime green walker and she and 2 of 8 moved through their routine, showing the crowd the positions of ballet and a few counts of choreography.

The place erupted.

Women cheered for our precious ballerina. They wiped tears from their cheeks. They clapped. They roared.

Our ballerina beamed.

And as the tumult continued, I found myself scanning the crowd. For me, it almost became silent. And then in my heart, I heard, "This is why."

It's been a 'why' eleven years in the making.

It was eleven years ago this month that we discovered 4 of 8's hearing loss. It was four years ago this month that Mike and I began to have some conversations about the concerns we had about 7 of 8's motor development.

Hearing loss for 4 of 8.

A stroke for 7 of 8.

Waiting rooms. Tests. Therapies. Co-pays. Expenses. Neurologists, audiologists, speech pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists. Hearing aids. Orthopedic braces. Tears. Questions. Decisions. Sitting alongside broken-hearted parents facing far more difficult challenges than the ones we have faced.

And all the while, trying to quiet a resounding question of 'why?'.



Friday night, as the crowd cheered, that stage for me became holy ground. I realized I was standing in a place where we don't always get to stand, in the center of the Why.

But there I was.

And there was His voice.


We raised an amazing sum Friday night to continue the work of Legacy of Hope Austin. We will be able to grow and expand our programs, allowing more children with special needs to participate in the arts, allowing more children to receive specialized tutoring, allowing more moms and dads to go on date night with their children professionally cared for. I am humbled and grateful.  It is a need I would not have known about, a dream I would not have had, a mission I would have missed, an experience for our family that would not have materialized if....

the diagnosis of eleven years ago....

and the diagnosis of four years ago...

had not come across our threshold.

Why.

Our ballerina's dance ended. I needed to speak to the audience again. I wrestled through impending tears. I steadied my voice. It was only after I left the stage that I wept and trembled at the mystery and preciousness of being allowed to see the hem of a bigger plan.

It's not too often we get to hear the 'why'.

But.

Sometimes.

We do.

And it is holy ground.