Things that have helped me along the way.

Now that we have entered this new era of parenting, I've been thinking about some things that really impacted me as a mom.  These are fairly random and come from a variety of sources. I am a parent of one child and that impacts my parenting in many ways
 Parenting has been a tremendous experience of sanctification and blessing for me.  It's not always easy but I will say that I love being a mom.

So, in no special order...

* Pray for your kids.  This seems so obvious but it's so important.  When I was pregnant with Elisabeth, I had a book called "Your Pregnancy Week by Week."  As I would read it I prayed for both her physical and spiritual development.  For example, if the book said that her eyes were developing that week, I would pray for her eyes and then for eyes that would see God.  I prayed that she would be a good sleeper and she was. As she has gotten older, my prayers have been different but very specific.  Pray for your children.

*Have strategies.  When I was a pre-school teacher, I read an article  in a professional journal about having patience with young children.  The gist of the article was that teaching young children requires strategies so that we are not only relying on our patience to make it through the day.  Having patience implies that children are somehow unpleasant and something to be endured.  I am not denying the need for patience with our children.  But having strategies that help them make such a difference.  With little ones, a five minute warning before changing activities, choices where possible, regular routines and bedtimes make a difference.
Part of strategies mean guidelines and consequences.  It makes me sad to see parents be impatient with their children as their children fall apart because they are hungry and overtired.  Get to know your children and find strategies to get their cooperation.

*  Sanctify the will.  When Elisabeth was not quite three, someone told me that I was going to need to "break her will" or we would have trouble with her later.  Fortunately I read a book about strong willed children called You Can't Make Me But I Can Be Persuaded by Cynthia Tobias.  http://www.amazon.com/You-Cant-Make-Persuaded-Strong-Willed/dp/1578561930
In this book, she talks about molding and shaping the strong willed child and how to get cooperation with out battling them to the mat.  Strong willed people who have sanctified strong wills accomplish great things for the Lord.  This book really helped me to shape, rather than break.

* Time.  Many years ago, I was gifted to hear Wally Yu speak at the Chinese Gospel church retreat.  He told a story about playing pool with his teenage son. He knew his son had something to talk about but it wasn't until they had played many hours and it was late, that his son began to talk.  As a non-late night talker, this really impacted me.  Teenagers tend to talk at night and we need to give them the time to do it.  It's so crucial to have those conversations.

* You can talk about anything.  Really.  Anything.  Gay marriage, poverty, bullies, boys, girls, shopping.  Anything.  Make your home a place where your children can ask any question, respectfully express any opinion.   Allow them to have different opinions that yours. Along those lines, if you want your children to speak respectfully to you, speak respectfully to them.  Sarcasm, cutting remarks and so on are not relationship builders.

* Enjoy the season.  When Elisabeth was a new born, my mom stayed with me for a week.  We were out walking with the stroller and I commented that I looked forward to Elisabeth being a little bit older.  My mom reminded me that this time was very special and you know, it was.  Enjoy the time that your children are in.

*  Finally, don't expect a fall harvest in the Spring.  I also read this in a book about pre-school parenting.  When your children are young, you are in the Spring. Harvests that are forced are not mature harvests.  Keep planting and watering and the harvest will come.

Celebration and Sadness.

If there is anything that I have learned in the past few years, it's that conflicting emotions are normal.  We have felt sadness and joy so many times at the same time.
Taking Elisabeth to college yesterday was one of those times.  We are thrilled for her.  Seattle Pacific is the perfect place for her.  We are excited for the things she will learn and how she will grow.  But there is still an ache in our hearts as we let her go.  We are still family, still parents...just in a different way.
We left fairly early yesterday morning with a pile of 东西。

She actually had more than this but compared to some other girls, she didn't have much!

We took her to this school.  

We piled some of her stuff into her dorm room.  She is on a floor where over five of the girls have grown up in different countries- we are pretty thrilled about that.

We met her adorable roommate who grew up in China. She is half Dutch and half Chinese-the perfect combo!

We had about a day and a half of orientations and meetings. We heard three sample lectures from professors, went to a meeting on university ministries, met the professor that will head up her University Scholars program and went to many other parent information meetings.  One thing that surprised me were the many questions about campus security.  Parents wanted their children escorted to the dorms if they came back to campus late at night...what???  When told that the easiest way to get around Seattle was by bus, one mom asked if they would be given a demonstration on how to buy bus tickets.  Maybe it's because we have just come from overseas but those questions just were odd to me.

The new students were in parallel meetings on different or similar topics.  We didn't catch up at them until the end of the second day.

On the last day, there was an invocation.  The professors came in in their academic regalia (some with jeans and sandals underneath).  They were led in by a bag pipe player.  The President spoke, the pastor of the Free Methodist church that is across from SPU spoke and maybe someone else.  Then we sang the SPU song (Elisabeth and I actually sang the Shenyang International School Song "We are the tigers!"  We sang the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness" as the new students went down to the floor.  The professors were down there, circling the students and each student got an SPU pin.  It was supposed to a tissue moment but for me it really wasn't.

See Elisabeth in the crowd getting her pin?  No, I can't see her either.

After the pinning, there was a final dessert. There was a clear message that parents were to say good-bye by 4:45.  I really was okay until Elisabeth's roommate started crying.  Her dad has raised her as a single dad in China and he has just done an awesome job.  He was leaving her to go back to China and it was just so hard.  Seeing her cry made my mama's heart bleed and I started crying.  Then it was time to go and I got myself together.  We were taking another girls mother back to Vancouver with us, so we all walked to the car.  I cried a little then but no public embarrassment, I hope.

We came back to a quiet house.  We really are thrilled for her as we believe she is in the perfect place for her academic and spiritual growth.  But we miss her daily presence in our lives.

On piercings and blue herons.

The Seattle Pacific website reminded me yesterday that we only have 9 days left until we take Elisabeth to college.  I am not working this week so it's a great week to spend time with our daughter and also get to know our new community.

When we lived in Columbia, Missouri, we loved to go to a place called Eagle Bluffs.  It's a wildlife refuge on the Missouri River and a great place to bird watch or look at the river.  Paul also taught Elisabeth to drive there!  

Since we have moved to the Vancouver, WA area, I've been looking for something similar to Eagle Bluffs.  I saw something in the paper about a bird festival that will be held at a place Called Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and so we headed up highway 5 yesterday.

The refuge is a place that you drive around and then stop and walk.  It's mostly wetlands with some great walking trails.  It was really quiet, with a few birders on the trails.  We didn't see that many birds-some blue herons, harriers that we didn't get a picture of and garden variety ducks.  There were plenty of snakes and lots of rustling in the marshes.  It's a place I will definitely go back to visit.

At the beginning of the trail was this charming sign.

Elisabeth in her $6.00 designer sweater  and $10.00 skinny jeans bought at a consignment store.

The new piercing. Hey mom...they were have a piercing sale!

The deep green, the blue skies and the clouds were so lovely.

“

“

It's hard to see but there is an otter on that log...there were otters in most of the water.

A blue heron off in the distance...again the beautiful golden light.

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Wendell Berry

Images of weaving

Jessica Goudeau's blog about her life and work with the Hill Country Tribers  http://hilltribers.org/ is one of my favorites.  Here she writes at Rachel Held Evan's blog about one of the remarkable women who weaves for them. 
http://rachelheldevans.com/ra-noe-woman-valor   It's an amazing story.  I love the images of weaving beauty through the "mistake" in the pattern.  
Jessica quotes a Rainier Maria Rilke poem in that post and here is the poem in its entirety.

The Unspeaking Center

She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth—
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.

When I searched for the poem online,  I also found this poem by Rilke- again with the images of weaving.

Sing, My Heart

Sing, my heart, the gardens you never walked,

like gardens sealed in glass balls, unreachable.

Sing the waters and roses of Isfahan and Shiraz;

praise them, lush beyond compare.

Swear, my heart, that you will never give them up.

That the figs they ripened ripened for you.

That you could tell by its fragrance

each blossoming branch.

Don’t imagine you could ever let them go

once they made the daring choice: to be!

Like a silken thread, you entered the weaving.

whatever image you take within you deeply,

even for a moment in a lifetime of pain,

see how it reveals the whole — the great tapestry.

Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II, 21

I love the images of the weaving and the ill matched threads and the beauty that comes out of that.  In the second poem, the silk enters the weaving and takes the image of beauty-even if it's a moment in a "lifetime of pain."  Our weaving a new life has pain and beauty.  Our life sometimes feels like a bunch of mismatched threads.  Yet, we weave on...trusting that we will see the tapestry some day.

Here are some of the threads that we are weaving into our lives.

I am just finishing up a three week class at Portland State University.  Still no word on a permanent job.  I have resumes at two junior colleges, Portland State and a private college nearby.  I have interviewed at three schools.  All make decisions around the third week of September, based on enrollment.  Sigh.  In the meantime, I feel fortunate to have this three week teaching gig- sweet students from Japan and working on the beautiful urban campus of Portland State.

Some of my students interviewing an American about their coffee habits.

There is ivy that is woven onto sculptures that are attached to the windows.

We have also started doing some work with the youth at our church.

Friday night worship with a cello, of course!

A fun game of chopsticks and chapstick- the goal was to build a tower of four chapsticks using chopsticks.  No one succeeded and it was really fun.

Slow food, slow church, slow reading, slow knitting.

I read this article this morning and it really struck a chord with things that I have been thinking about.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?smid=fb-share  I acknowledge that his choice (5  hours a day of writing and then leisure to see friends) is a choice of privilege and  not a choice many can make.  But his point about slowing down, being in relationship with people and just being fully present is really good.
This weekend, we went with our new church to a beautiful retreat center in the foothills of some mountains in Oregon.  It was a small group-mostly families with young children.  On our second day, we went to a park and hiked down to some waterfalls.  The trail was made so that you could actually walk behind the waterfalls.  After that hike, many people went back but we hiked around the loop to another waterfall that you could also walk behind.  I had no camera to even take pictures.  I just thought a lot about being fully in that moment-that moment of being in creation, of beauty, of nature.  Slow living allows you to do those things.
Our lives have always been very busy.  The three years in China, the year and a half of preparing to be in China, the six years of planting and watering the international church while raising a family and being a graduate student, seminary and back.  There has always been someone to see, something to do, an obligation to meet.
Now we find ourselves at a slower pace in a beautiful place. Psalm 16 says

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

(Psalm 16:6 ESV)

We have the privilege of getting to know people in our church at this pace. Our commitment is to people, not programs.  Paul spoke this weekend at our retreat about the marriage feast of the lamb.  He used the movie "Babette's Feast" as an example of people who were living good lives but without the richness and fullness that we are called to as followers of Jesus Christ.  When Babette makes the feast for them, they are determined not to enjoy it.  But slowly, their hearts and appetites succumb to the delight of the feast.  They become joyful, relaxing and forgiving those with whom they have small and petty grievances.  They truly participate in the feast.  

The Bible is full of images of feasting.  Early in our marriage, I set a priority of eating a meal together every night. Growing up, my family always ate together and I carried that into our marriage.  Before we had Elisabeth, it was often on the sofa but it was together.  We have always done that and I believe that it is important. Meals are where great conversations happen, jokes are told and family stories revealed.  Now that we are about to be empty nesters, I still believe it is important for the two of us to gather around the table for a meal.  We are family, even if only two.

Slowing down has given me time to really read.  Two great books that I have recently read are In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden and Leaving Church by Barbara Taylor Brown.  In this House of Brede is an older book of fiction, taking place in the 1950's/60's.  It is about a woman who joins a Benedictine order after suffering a great loss in her life.  The pictures of each sister are really wonderful and you really get a sense of the individuality of each one.  The story line is excellent with many quiet little twists and turns.  I may have read this when I was much younger and I'd like to read it again, as well as other Rumer Godden books.\

Leaving Church is about an Episcopalian priest who leaves her church and the priesthood.  Barbara Taylor Brown's theology is a little left of what I consider orthodoxy but she has many powerful things to say about the division of the sacred and the secular and the role of the priest/pastor.  I am also reading her book An Altar to the World and really liking it.

I am a very slow knitter. I've often thought that I should check Youtube for tips on how to knit more quickly.  But the truth is, I like the process of knitting and if it's slow, it's slow.

Feasting, relationships, reading, knitting...that is part of the picture of our life today.  Slowing down has also given me the time to grieve our losses-our sweet little foster son, our life in China.  It's important to walk through the pain of those things slowly, so that we really work them through.

Slowing down doesn't mean not being engaged or being lazy.  It means being fully present and fully aware.  It's a good place to be in right now as we weave our new life.

Yes, this is where we live now.

Well, across the river anyway.  I've started teaching a three week class at Portland State.  It's a group of students from Japan and really fun.  I take the commuter bus in because traffic in Portland plus the price of gas and parking...no thank you!

The bus cracks me up because it is super quiet, no one makes eye contact unless they have to and people do their best not to sit next to someone. People read or have head phones on.  The is no interaction whatever. In China, buses are loud and crowded and people might sit next to you even if there are other empty rows of seats.  I used to wonder why that was...but now I wonder why we as Americans are so quiet and space conscious.  Maybe tomorrow I'll sit next to someone even though there is an empty row...it might freak them  out

Paul and I went out exploring in Washington.  We wanted to go up around Mt. St. Helen's and look for some camping places.  Again, we found amazing beauty.

Mt. St. Helen's- on the East (left) side, you an still see the massive mud slides.  It would have taken us over an hour to get closer so that is a trip for another day.

We checked out several places to camp-these are within a hour and a half of our home.  

We took some pictures of ourselves.  We tried the camera trick of holding our camera to take one of us together..clearly our skills need improvement.

We drove down to the Columbia Gorge where we saw para-sailers and windsurfers.  The wind was up and the river was choppy. Lewis and Clark found this part of the river really difficult and lost a canoe around here.

We stopped at a vista point for this breathtaking view.

I just can not get enough of this moss!  

We are starting to feel acclimated here.  We have had amazing and sunny weather but that should change soon.  We are trying to get to know people in the church and find out their hearts and minds.  This weekend we are heading up to the mountains for a church vision casting retreat.  Paul is speaking on the marriage feast of the lamb.  We are hoping for a time of growth, learning and relationship building.

I've had several interviews but am still waiting to hear about jobs.  Universities start later here so I won't know until September.  For now, my three week job is fun and it's great to be back doing ESL work again.

Elisabeth starts college in about a month.  She is excited to get started and we are excited for her...and sad!

Five Weeks In

We have been in America for about five weeks now.  It's been good.  It's been hard.  It's been sad.  It's been wonderful.  It's been all of those things and more.
We are living in a place of exceptional beauty.  We drive down a street and see Mt. Hood reaching towards the sky with its snow covered peak. We look North East and see Mt. St. Helen's-also snow covered but a different shape because of the explosion around 30 years ago.  We drive around and across the Columbia River and see clear water flowing. and boats sailing.  It's extraordinary.
People have been kind and generous.  We are staying in the home of a church member who has moved away.  They left some furniture and supplies and other people left some of theirs. Some other Portland friends gave us their sofa and love seat and coffee table and now we have a lovely living room.  We even have a car!  That has helped us to not have to make quick decisions about where to live and what kind of car to buy.  We are thankful.
Paul has started work here.  It's good to hear him preach and teach again.  We'll be headed up to the mountains in a few weeks for a church retreat to form vision and work on community. I can't wait.

Elisabeth has been doing a lot of this.

 

She misses the easy access to transportation that she had in China-bikes, subways, taxis. She also misses her friends. She has made some friends in our church.  Three of the people from her Third Culture Kid re-entry seminar at Multnomah live in the Vancouver area so she has had plenty of social interaction.  She went to the county fair and had her most American experience ever- monster trucks!

  She is heading down to California later this week to help a friend from her international school in Shenyang settle down at UC Berkeley.  Then she will come back and leave a week later on the BOLT bus for Canada to see some other new friends.  A few weeks later, we will take her to Seattle Pacific to start college.  

We got about 100 pictures of our little guy last week.  This one is from the airport right before we left.

The tears started flowing soon after this as we got on the plane.

We are thrilled to see him doing the same things as he did with us...books are big with him!  He is doing very well but I miss him every minute of every day.

As for me, I've been taking these words pretty seriously.  

The start of the journey also coincided with my decision to curtail my use of the internet, which can have an insidious, corrosive effect.  Too much internet usage fragments the brain, and dissipates concentration so that after a while, ones ability to spend long, focused hours immersed in a single subject becomes blunted.  Information comes pre-digested in small pieces, one grazes on endless ready-meals and snack of the mind, and the result is mental malnutrition. Susan Hill Howard's End is on the Landing. 

I have a new "devotional" book called At the Still Point by Sarah Arthur.  I start each day with this unique book- a compilation of Bible reading, poetry and literature.  It's been refreshing and feeds my soul in a unique way.  

One of my goals for this new stage of my life is "more books, more knitting."  It's a joy to have access to a library again and to used bookstores.  The Goodwills here are really good and have stacks of really good used books.  Our branch library also has used books for sale every day.  It's wonderful.

In knitting, I am working on a pair of socks for me and a shawl for Elisabeth.  The socks are a broken seed stitch pattern and the shawl is this.

Woodland Shawlette by Classic Elite Yarns.

I've started and ripped it out three times...I hope I've got it now!

I started to job process before we left China and had my first interview the Monday after we got here.  I had another interview last week.   Both interviews went well and I'll have to make a hard decision at some point if I am offered both jobs.  Both are the kind of ESL that I like to teach but one is much farther away...but potentially more hours.  The other is a great atmosphere but only four hours a week...but it's in the morning so I might be able to teach at the other place in the afternoon....if they have classes then...plus it's a lot of commuting because both jobs are in Portland!  So many decisions.

In the meantime, I have been hired to teach in a three week program at Portland State for a group of Japanese students.  It's one class on American Culture and one class on spoken English.

So...that's about it in a nutshell!