For those who know me well…it’s a little eerie.
Since the beginning of the year here at Casa de la Breitenstein, I’ve been heading up my own ambitious, highly uncharacteristic Project Ducks in a Row.
For those who know me well…it’s a little eerie.
Since the beginning of the year here at Casa de la Breitenstein, I’ve been heading up my own ambitious, highly uncharacteristic Project Ducks in a Row.
Question: Where did you get your mental/emotional/spiritual/social blueprints on how to build a Christian home?
A friend of mine is a first-generation Christian. Aside from a few moments in college, a week of VBS was about the extent of Christian education–there were stickers and crafts, she remembers.
Genevieve’s voice poured through the phone to me. She’s a former pastor’s wife still wading through court proceedings following a horrific, jarring divorce. That’s not to mention the affair, the pregnant mistress, the mental disorders and gaslighting. Her descriptions called to mind a life upturned, shaken violently, spilled. How do you help a friend grieving after divorce?
Some pieces of her former life had temporarily skittered beyond vision: Her ally in the world’s onslaught. Financial security. A co-parent and advocate for their boys. Her helper to pick up the kids or fix the washing machine. A calm presence after a nightmare. Someone to process the day with. A lover of her body.
After the all-too-recent my-kid-might-have-lymphoma scare? There are some things that have been going right.
For one, after a year of doing my freelance writing and marketing for my only employment, I filed for my own business. I am now the owner of Fresh Ink, LLC. So that’s pretty cool.
So I’m thinking about a peaceful home lately. Mostly because mine isn’t?
But I think it’s in a happy way. -Ish. My home is more the kind of Nerf gun-toting, “Mom, can we have a cooking contest?”-messy (and “Gross! Who dripped jam down the cupboards?”), and”Shoot! That appointment’s today!” -kind of reality. Especially with summer. Summer can be a little about survival. (Guess I could have named this post “What peace?”)
But sometimes “having peace” can be tangled up with myths I have about peace in the first place. I once pictured having peace as kind of floating around in a tranquil abode where my children answer, “Why yes, Mother! Whatever you want!”
Missed the previous posts and the ideas behind this series? Catch ’em here.
He was barely in the front door, cheeks flushed from the bike ride home. He smelled like the cold and that faintest puff of little-boy sweat. “Mom! Guess what! We’re getting a new kid and his name is Toby and the teacher wants me to show him around and tell him all about the school!” He drew a breath, those Chiclet-sized adult teeth still, charmingly, just a bit too big for his eight-year-old mouth.
Well—we did it.
We got on the plane.
After four months of playing some crazy game show of “Pack, Trash, Sell or Give?” with all our stuff ad nauseam, settling our respective work into trustworthy hands, and enough heartrending goodbyes that at the end my heart was twisted dry—we neatly quietly faithfully? closed the chapter of our lives that is Africa.
Right now, scooter wheels are rattling past my bedroom window. Ugandan kids are out of school—and once 3 PM hits, they know they’re free to knock at our metal gate. They pour in from the neighborhood, sometimes even slinging their legs over the shoulder-height brick walls to leap down in our yard. Though I admit to some sense of relief when holidays are over—there’s a part of me that loves our yard swarming with kids.
Scientist Jared Diamond’s quote remains perennially rooted in my mind:
I have heard many anecdotal stories, among my own friends, of children who were raised by difficult parents but who nevertheless became socially and cognitively competent adults, and who told me that what had saved their sanity was regular contact with a supportive adult other than their parents, even if that adult was just a piano teacher whom they saw once a week for a piano lesson. (The World Until Yesterday, p.190)
I’m already bracing myself for it, even as open duffel bags, plastic storage bins, and carry-ons line the walls of my house. Maybe the question will come at church, shaking hands as we walk in from the parking lot, or when we’re handing over a loaf of banana bread to a new neighbor (strategically timed before my kids’ Nerf wars propagate any noise violations).
“So, where are you guys from?”
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