June 6: So Long, Old Friend...

August 13, 2015

We were sitting outside on the porch enjoying the beautiful, sunny day. Eva was busy with some colors and the dog sat by my feet in the shade of the chair. We spent many a day like this in the summertime.

A friend pulled into the driveway to drop off some papers, and the dog came tearing toward her like she was the neighborhood cat. He'd tangled his leash around the chair, however, and spilled most of my coffee in the process.

As I surveyed the damage following her departure, seeing most of my precious morning coffee now splattered all over the ground, I shook my head and muttered, "damn dog."

My two year old, sitting just a few feet away but presumably out of a whisper's earshot, piped up and said, "what damn dog, mama? He's right there!" Slightly confused, she pointed to our dog, now sitting peacefully in the sun.

***************

We laid our furry friend to rest tonight. 

His little body was fighting so hard just to stay alive, and it was time. His health had unexpectedly taken a turn for the worse two days before, and we had a feeling early on that he wouldn't make it through this. 

He was as old as we were a couple, and we celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary just days before. Aside from a mere month or two after we got married, he's always been with us. 

He lived in every house, and there's been four.

He greeted every baby as we carried them through the door for the first time--all five of them.

He was there for every birthday, for every anniversary, for every family movie, and for every pizza dinner. 

Except the one tonight. 

The plates of half eaten slices on the floor that lay undisturbed, the leftover crusts in the garbage--they testify to the life that was lost. Reminders of a permanent shift in the way things are. In the way things will always be from now on.

On Sunday when we took him to the vet, the kids prayed and asked God for just one more day with our doggie. They shrieked with joy when they found out he would, in fact, be coming home, for now.

We made sure they knew it wouldn't be for long, that his heart was sick, that his little body was tired. But we ended up with exactly that: just one more day. I love that He answered their prayers.

We gave our doggie lots of snuggles, cuddles, and pets. We hugged him often, told him all the things we loved about him, and ate lunch outside in the sun. I held him in the car as we drove to get some ice cream for dinner, a last meal if you will. He hadn't wanted to eat all day, though, so I began to doubt he would even want the ice cream. I wished we hadn't waited so long.

But the kids picked strawberry with sprinkles, and he gobbled it up. Every last bite. 

When we got home, we said our final goodbyes, myself through many tears, and daddy took him to be put to sleep. 

Every memory we have as a family somehow involves him: one who was loyal to a fault and beyond patient with the children. It'll be difficult and strange adjusting to a new normal that doesn't include him... 

A normal where the bits I drop on the floor while making dinner won't be snarfed up. One where there's no one to eat the cucumber butts or sneak food from the kid's plates. A normal where we come home to a truly empty house. Where there's no one to greet us wiggling at the door. No one waiting on the mat outside the shower, no one to dart out the front door during the summer months. 

He was a good boy, that Jackson, and for better or worse, he'd been through it all right there alongside us. He may have been a damn dog at times, but he was our damn dog. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. We miss that little guy so much.

One more day is still never really enough.

So long, old friend. 

May 31: Big Families Are an Acquired Taste...and It's Okay if You Don't Like Them

My kids have been outside since a little after 8am this morning "playing in the pool."

Why would I put something so straightforward in quotations, you ask? Because things that sound simple are anything but when you have a big family.

You see, by "playing in the pool," I mean yelling at each other to stay out of the pool until it's completely filled up.

I mean blowing the damn thing up again and again due to an undetectable hole. Inflating it with a shop vac. Before breakfast.

I mean screaming, "mom, watch!" as loud as humanly possible before taking a flying leap into the pool. This is alternated with shouting, "mom!!! He splashed me!!"

And at the risk of stating the obvious, I simply respond, "it's a pool filled with water. Water makes you wet."

"Playing in the pool" means someone crying about something every five minutes the entire day we're outside because someone hurt them, they hurt themselves, someone was making fun of them, or they stepped in dog poop. Again.

Intersperse the shrieks of joy and spectator requests with all the crying, and the loudness is pretty much at a constant tempo. To top it off, the 3-year-old just started running laps around the house screaming, "ambulance! ambulance!" with a look of such determination you would think there was actually an injured human desperately awaiting her assistance.

Wailing sirens have nothing on a preschooler with a hero complex.

By "playing in the pool," I mean the storm door slamming repeatedly because someone decides they no longer want to swim in the pool, only to come back outside, now fully clothed, to find everyone else still in the pool "having fun." So they go back inside to change again.

"Having fun" is in quotations because this phrase only applies to a single party within earshot, which would be the children.

Obviously.

I realized this holiday weekend that big families, with their loudness, tendency to overwhelm, and expertise in stealing sanity, are an acquired taste. Especially big families with boys. And it's okay if you don't like them.

Really, it is.

I know many of you don't want to sit by us in restaurants, which, truthfully, we don't tend to frequent, because--five kids.

I know you probably wince when you see us walk through the door at a party, especially if your walls are free of fingerprints and you value your breakables.

I know you probably groan a little internally when you see us show up at church on the week you're scheduled to teach Sunday school. A little row of Roberts' that will inevitably need to be separated.

I get it. We are a presence, and usually a very loud, ornery one, at that.

Do you want to know the truth?

Some days I don't like big families, either.

As crazy as you would imagine life with five children to be, I can guarantee you that it's even crazier. It's like a three-ring circus of ongoing chaos, unless they happen to be watching TV or reading for their mandatory 20 minutes. The requests for attention are constant, the bickering is often relentless, the laundry piles quickly in the hall, and the dishes stack up even quicker in the sink.

Some days despite the best of intentions, multiple cups of coffee, and time with Jesus, I'm unable to tame the monster of stress and want to run away from them all by 9am. The only difference between you and I on those days is that you have the ability to walk away.

Unless, of course, you're my neighbor. Sorry about that.

But if you're willing to give us big families a chance, you might also be able to see what I see:

Little people who, simply because of the sheer volume of them, need to learn early on how to extend some grace to each other. How to make room in life for other perfectly imperfect people. How to share and work things out when they're mad. How to look out for one another, help each other, and do even the most mundane of tasks with laughter. How to function as a team.

They learn how to love well, and they discover that siblings are the very best of friends in the long run because they're friends for life. Solidarity in the flesh.

Please remind me of that the next time they want to play in the pool, which will probably be tomorrow morning...

May 30: Happy 12th Anniversary!

No celebration, no big plans. Just a day hanging out together as a family.

Which, let me tell you, is much better in theory than real life. Because in real life, we have five children to feed, entertain, and discipline all day. 

"No plans" was almost the death of us, but the dirty pool came to the rescue and we lived to see another day. 

On Target, School Bathrooms, and the Idol of Safety

So here I am. Posting something about Target and the whole bathroom issue.

It would be easier to just let it go since everyone is so divided and angry about all this, but in everything I've read so far, I still feel like there are some things that haven't been said. 

But let me first start with this: I'm terrified of my children being sexually abused. Always have been. With a background in social work, I have heard stories that would make you want to vomit, unable to sleep for days. I know that, although the accepted idea is that "kids are resilient; they'll be fine," there are abusive situations that damage the psyche of an undeveloped person so horrifically and so deeply that one is unable to fully recover. Before we even had children, I had my speeches about private parts rehearsed and perfected. But even still, the fear lingers. I think it always will.

On top of all this, we don't live in the safest of neighborhoods. There are over 80 registered sex offenders within a mile of our home. Teenage girls have been abducted off the these very streets and trafficked. The greater school system we are a part of had already adopted a gender-neutral bathroom situation before Obama demanded it from on high. My kids don't participate in many extracurricular activities--partly because there's so many children to shuttle around, but mostly because I'm scared to leave them alone with anyone else. 

So, there's my humanity. I can say from the core of my being that I get it. The fear of it all, at least this aspect of the debate.  

Strange men being in the bathroom with you. People potentially planting recording devices. Daughters being assaulted in locker rooms. The rates of abuse are already so high--

as many as 1 in 10 children will be abused before the age of 18

--and now, it seems the government has opened wide the doors of privacy to allow predators even easier access. I get how all of those can be scary thoughts.

Much has already been said about all this, but I want to point out the fact that 

9/10 cases of sexual abuse are perpetrated by someone the victim knows and trusts

, not some stranger in a Target bathroom.

The same applies to the Sex Offender Database. Though it is nice to be able to easily identify people in proximity who have been caught and labeled, it's the ones who are not yet on the list that you need to worry about. Because they're people you'd never suspect; people that, on the outside, look just like you and I. They teach at your child's school, they drive the bus, they attend your church and they live next door. They are even more likely to be grandparents, uncles, and cousins.

The nauseating fact is, it won't be a Target bathroom that opens the door for your child to be abused, it will be YOU.

It will be me. 

And that is the core of the issue here and the source of all the fear--that we as parents will unintentionally expose our children to the very people that will hurt them and not even know it. Perhaps for years. Abusers can get close to a child because you and I know and trust them, too. 

I can barely stomach the thought. The weight of it is crushing. Because even if we talk to our children, equip them with information, guard them, protect them, and watch them--even if we do everything right and keep them safe--it may still happen, because there are situations out of our control.

So you can boycott Target if you want to, but at the end of the day, it's not going to make the world much safer for your little one. A predator won't stop to consider a sign on a restroom, anyways.

So what is a parent to do?

One of the best things you can do for your children, as with any vulnerable population group in the world, is educate them and give them a voice. 

At a very young age in our home, we start talking about body parts. We tell them that they are in charge of their own body, and if someone is doing anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or scared, that they can say NO, and they won't be in trouble. It doesn't matter if it's an adult and adults are in charge--there are things even adults aren't allowed to do, regardless of what they say or threaten. But if something scary ever did happen to them, that 

it's not their fault.

But we go even further then that. We don't just warn them about the strange cars by the park or the adult who approaches them and talks about a lost puppy, but we discuss situations that would signal that something may be wrong involving someone they know. A person picking them up from school that usually doesn't. A teacher bringing them into a room alone and closing a door. A coach who is paying more attention to them then the rest of the team.

This isn't just a one-time conversation. It's often and it's ongoing. 

Parents, it's not Target's job to keep your kids safe. It never was. And while you can accompany them into the restroom at the store or use the Family bathroom (that's what we do), you most likely can't do the same thing at school. So please, please teach them appropriate boundaries and give them a voice! Empower them so they will know the right thing to do when you are not there to hold their hand. Lord willing it will be enough.

But you

 cannot impart what you do not possess. So parents, the absolute best thing you can do for your children is to get healthy yourself. 

Talk to somebody, get therapy, take some medication. Practice and model appropriate boundaries. Deal with your past junk. Show them how to have a voice and respectfully stick up for themselves. Hold people accountable when they cross the line and cause bodily harm in any way.

Aside from first and foremost the power of Jesus Christ, YOU are your child's single biggest weapon against the evil of this world. Don't take that responsibility lightly.

As parents, we should certainly do everything within our power to make sure our kids are safe, but we have a tendency in America to make an idol out of Safety. As a culture, we live in constant fear. Fear of our kids being hurt or abducted, falling on the playground, failing a class. Smearing dirt on our perfect reputation as parents by just being kids.

But there's probably a reason it says more than a hundred times in the Bible, 

"do not be afraid."

NOT, do not do things that make you afraid. 

NOT, do not be around people who make you afraid. 

NOT, do not go places that are scary.

Do not BE afraid.

But that IS our state of being these days, isn't it? As a people, as a country, and most embarrassingly, as a FAITH. And, I'll just be frank here, since we're all friends--that is not what we are called to, my dear Christian brothers and sisters.

Rather, we are called to LOVE one another.

We also know that perfect love casts out all fear. You see, fear is the enemy of love. Fear begins with a label--we name someone, or even an entire group of people, "other." 

These labels come with all sorts of misperceptions and stereotypes, and we boil down a beautiful, colorful, human being made in the image of God into a category: weird, different, strange, wrong, SINFUL...

And we get scared. Because we don't understand. And we don't know what to do. And we worry that they may hurt us or our children, or make it easier for other bad people to hurt our children, because they're different. Or strange. And because we are always trying to make sense out of our existence, we put them into the category of OTHER, and suddenly it's okay to not value them as a person loved by God. They become the enemy, which justifies our fear.

We hold up our idol of safety, and fear makes us not even want to touch anyone different than us with a 39.5 foot pole, let alone LOVE them.

The fact is, truly LOVING one another is dangerous. It will cost you, maybe everything. Just like it did Jesus.

"This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." John 3:16-17, MSG

A son who would be threatened, plotted against, scorned, beaten...and finally hung on a cross.

For YOU.

For ME.

All because of God's embarrassing, audacious, unconditional, unfathomable LOVE for the world and all the messed up,sinful people in it.

How different things would've turned out if God's top priority had been keeping His Son SAFE.

Please, take a moment and chew on that one, because it took everything in me not to scream it in all caps.

Safety is important, but we turn it into an idol when we make it more important than people. We bow down to Safety when we make it more important than 

loving

 people or doing the hard, scary things God sometimes calls people to do. Obedience trumps safety every time. Just ask Ananias, Moses, Esther, or Jonah, to name a few.

So safety, yes. But don't hide behind it as an excuse not to love. As a reason to put down and hurl insults. As a justification to boycott and walk away, to not engage in difficult things. Love will cost you, and if it doesn't, you're not doing it right. Love in real life is messy, uncomfortable, and hard.

Safety, yes. But not at the expense of people. Not at the expense of loving well. Not at the expense of obedience.

John 13:35 says,

y

our love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.

But love involves speaking the truth, though, right? 

The thing about love is that it's hard to do on Facebook, where we do a lot of our living and preaching these days. It's hard to throw tangible love out into the internet whitespace. And truth--proclaimed at a deafening vibrato on the internet these days--though

still true

when carelessly flung out into the world of pixels,

is 

just not effective.

I don't know about you, but I can't think of a single person who's come to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ as a result of a moral internet debate or a bible verse posted in a comment section drawing attention to their transgressions.

Because the only way to speak the truth in love involves a human.

A human person to look at in the face, eye to eye. A human with feelings, convictions, and experiences, just like you. A person who, even on their worst day, is so much more like you than different. 

To speak the truth in love is a conversation, a relationship--not a status update. When the truth is haphazardly thrown out into the ether, it's often received like a heavy metal station. Just a bunch of loud, annoying noise. We've gotten in a bad habit of screaming from the rooftops what was meant to be communicated in a one-on-one or small group discipleship relationship. And it's just not working.

God doesn't need us to judge. That's His job.

God doesn't need us to convict. That's the Holy Spirit's job.

I think it's fair to say that He's plenty capable of doing His jobs without our help.

We tend to get our role confused, but the bible clearly says that the world will know we are His disciples by our LOVE for one another

.

The world will know we are different by our love. They're supposed to want what we have, and we're supposed to be ready with a reason for the hope that sets us apart. The hope that keeps us joyful amidst cultural chaos and gives us reason to remain faithful when it makes absolutely no sense. 

They will know we are Christians by our love.

So, I have to ask... do they?

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May 15: Hope is a Rainbow and a Promise

"I don't know where to look for the rainbow, mom!"

We had been watching the front blow in for a while now.

From our perch atop a hill, we saw the clouds rolling in long before we heard the pitter patter of any droplets. Eager to leave the sanctuary inside at the first sight of sun peeping through, we rushed out onto the porch in search of the bow of many colors.

The clouds pulled back like a blanket and beams of gold shone on the ground below, but there wasn't a rainbow to be found in the air of excitement.

"I can't find it, mom! It has to be here somewhere, though right?"

From our wraparound porch growing up, we had seen many a rainbow over the years, and I knew that when the sun came out during a rainstorm there was sure to be one.

The trick is to turn your back to the sun, momma said, and you'll be sure to find it then.

***************

The kids were crazy in the car and we couldn't get home fast enough. The quiet game had been a flop and no one had any more craps to give about being a team player, including us. 

The sky had looked ominous for a while now, and we were less then ten minutes from home when the big, fat raindrops began to pound our windshield. 

Great. I thought. We made it this whole time without any rain and it arrives just in time for us to unload at home in a downpour.

There's a special clause in the hell that is Murphy's Law that applies specifically to parents who are already having a bad day. I'm convinced of this. 

The rain came fast and fierce, but after just a few minutes the black clouds parted and brilliant, unmistakable rays of sun pierced through, lighting the road in front of us. The rain had slowed but was still falling, and a light mist rose from the grass around us. 

"The sun's out now, so that means there should be a rainbow somewhere," I said to my husband. I started looking around but didn't see anything yet. Maybe it's too soon, I thought. 

"No, there it is," he replied, pointing. "I can see it in the rear view mirror."

And as I turned my back to the sun and peered over my shoulder, sure enough, there it was. Clear as day, an entire bow. Double even. 

I'm sure there were better photos to be had in Cleveland today, but we didn't pull over and get one. It was beautiful, though. The kids loved it and squealed with joy until it disappeared from sight. And as we drove over the valley, the curtain of grey rain still visible in the distance, I quietly marveled at a promise made long ago by an eternally faithful God.

Because a rainbow is only visible when we turn our back to the Son.

When life is a storm and we feel like we're overwhelmed by the torrents blowing our way

When we're drowning in the accumulation of our tears 

When we look around us and fateful circumstance is all we can see

When we're discouraged by the wickedness of the world

The very moment we begin to doubt, slowly turning our back to the Son

He reminds us with a bow of many colors that there's always hope. Because He never breaks a promise. 

Never again will he destroy the earth with the salty ocean of his tears. Never again will he give up on us. Never again could we become so wicked, so selfish, so violent or destructive that He would turn His wrath on us.

For although we will turn our back on the Son time and time again, never again will He turn His back on us.

Though we turn our back on Him, His mercy and faithfulness will forever be displayed in a rainbow on the darkest of days to remind us. Because we so easily forget.

No matter how bad things get, there's always hope.

He promised.

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” Genesis 9:12-16