Passover Dinner

There we all were, the whole Allen family sitting at our first Christian Passover dinner. I glanced lovingly at Jody as he scooped horseradish on a matzah cracker and handed it to Nick. It was all so symbolic and beautiful. Suddenly Nick was vomiting. Of course he was. They rushed to the restroom as I sighed lustily just as the five year old in my lap drug her shoe down a burn on the side of my leg and ripped the skin open. I felt a lovely rush of liquid down my ankle as all of the bubbles on my burn burst. It wasn't getting me down. No sir. We soldiered through that dinner and learned all about Passover and we had fun dammit. The next thing I knew my eldest was flailing in the floor next to my chair professing a stomach ache. I so wanted to set a chair leg on her toe and squish it but I resisted and hissed at her to get out of the floor. When I was finally home I scooped up the mermaid toy in my bathtub and mechanically shifted it to the sink, knowing after my bath I would move it back to the tub so I could brush my teeth. It's a daily ritual. I laid in the bath with my phone willing to take the risk just this once. I searched reproductive habits of rabbits and emailed my eldest an article that would basically make anyone celebrate their cat raiding a baby bunny nest... because our cat did last night and we had sobbing drama central. Then I texted my friends about a meeting that day with our super awesome youth pastor regarding the unacceptable behavior of my second daughter at both Sunday services. Apparently the other parents primarily blame my little ringleader feeling that their little darlings would never have conjured such disrespectful behavior without her. I'm frankly inclined to agree. But alas. I do hate to blame ringleaders extra because how could they ringleader without followers. I heard a chest cough from upstairs and remembered that my third daughter had been complaining of a sore throat for two days. Finally I realized my bath was too hot my socks were too loose and my heart was just plain saggy. I remembered to pray for them and went to sleep. And what should happen but a mothers worst nightmare dream. I was sobbing and screaming and woke up. I went upstairs and got my little croaky baby and brought her to my bed and snuggled her and felt so so thankful.

When the Holy Spirit Speaks

It's been awhile since I posted a random stream of consciousness. I think it's gotten a lot easier for me to hear the Holy Spirit speak to me and examine my own heart. So easy in fact that I argue with Him and then read scriptures that put me back in my place. But last night the Sprit wanted to talk to someone else and I could feel Him pressing me in. So I prayed and said what the hey, we are going to win the lottery and pay for all of our kids lifelong therapy anyway and I stood with my back to the ocean of wise counsel and fell in with total surrender because I am so so bad at advice that my faith that God can do a better job comes easy. I feel a digression coming on. Do not ask me to give a verse to back it up but God has not convicted me for swearing. I know that is probably a big indicator of what an itty bitty baby spoonfed Christian I am but He really hasn't. He has asked me to stop drinking. So I did. Well, He basically forced me. He gave me some kind of extreme alcohol sensitivity or allergy and then he told Jody to say he'd stop drinking if I stopped so then I just moped around whining to myself because let's be honest I have nobody to complain to. My friends just want to find a workaround "maybe you just need vodka" and "we just need to find the one thing you CAN drink" and "you just can't mix liquors" are real things my awesome friends have said. Elizabeth is actually synonymous with the word tipsy (for anyone who didn't know), meaning if I have a teaspoon of wine I'm tipsy and ridiculous and they laugh so hard and I love making them laugh and then I go home and retch and retch or else just tremble... anyway it gets ugly and I'm so sorry everyone, I love to make you laugh but we will just have to try bringing joke books to the pub. So anyway, thanks God. That rocked. You used Long Island two-fers to give us our darling first born, and now it's all over. I open LaCroix and inhale the aroma like a wine connoisseur and then sip and burp sip and burp. Be ready for lots of my heavy hitting philosophies like "wow, bubblegum is just like liquor, the anticipation is so much more fun than the experience." But God DOES still let me use bad language Which I love and use as unapologetically as a seventh grader. I do feel the clock ticking on my exteraneous vocabulary though and... it sucks. I know... sucks is a really bad word until something sucks then it's just necessary. So, anyway...I feel like I need to get back to my Holy Spirit moment. I was going to type that as HS but I figured most people would be like "what high school moment?". After my long prayer which might have involved some f bombs and grouchy shit storm metaphors I went to talk to this young person who I might know very well. And I asked some pretty good questions which I would never have thought of myself which just opened her heart up and she shared how judged she feels by Christian people sometimes. And God talked to her like she was a grown-up. He said "look honey, I know it's really easy to let culture tell you that Judgy Christians are worse than kids who just claim to be bad to the bone because at least the bad kids are honest about it but that's not truth. All of those people are the same to him. And you will need great wisdom to tell whether you're being judged or are being hypersensitive and just attributing a context to someone's words that they never intended. But I'll tell you this, I get the feeling I'm being judged sometimes. The hair stands up on my neck and I have to force myself not to overreact. My parenting style, my time management, my spiritual shallowness, my ill timed story that may or may not have required me to say "fuck" six times at Bible Study. (And she laughed.) As soon as she decided I was being real stories poured out about kids criticizing her tank top or her use of the word crap, things that would roll right off of a grown up but make a kiddo feel angrier and more rebellious. Which is just a crappy way to feel and I told her so. But then I told her some special truth straight from her loving father and I saw her soften. I told her that her path to a close friendship with Jesus will look different than other peoples but to trust the process. That she might wander off and get hurt then come back and then wander again until she learns how much better it is to be close to Him; but that is her journey and her choice and her friends need to let that be. I told her if I ditched my friends when they got judgy or they ditched me when I did there wouldn't be a church and nobody would have surrounded Brandon Reis' family with comfort and cookies and nobody would ask me how I'm doing on my Bible Study and nobody would encourage me with love and truth when marriage is hard or hug me when parenting is hard. And I told her what my life was like with three tiny children and a husband in the hospital for cancer surgery with no family and no church. It was bleak. And I saw the memories flood back because she remembers. And I told her that in that dark moment two Christians I barely knew reached out and babysat for me and made muffins for me and that is what the church is for. I told her I remembered being fourteen and not wanting to go all in for Jesus because I might miss some fun but what I didn't know was walking with Jesus and being close to Him is never really a done deal. It only happens when you reach out to Him and once you've had it, you feel very vulnerable when you wander too far because he becomes irreplaceably familiar and safe. My closing statement was simply that I love being loved by my church family. I love feeling imperfectly valuable to Sarah White. And that I'm going to be there for those people if they get cancer or lose a family member or feel lonely. And that though I'll never be so foolish as to believe I can force my kids to walk with Jesus I know beyond a doubt they will miss out on something far bigger and more valuable than ordinary friendships if they let Satan derail them from seeing the real truth. And then we both felt so much better. That's what the Holy Spirit does when He parents for me. He makes me feel better too. I did have to take a minute afterwards because it hurts every time I have to remind myself that I can't walk my kids straight to the throne room and keep them safe from bad choices or consequences.