::: the addiction returns :::

I thought I had recovered. I didn't think I'd ever go back. I'd hidden my needles away and figured that I'd overcome my addiction. No more spending money on my habit. No more withdrawal when I couldn't get to my needles. I was cured. Done. Finished.

That's what I thought.

But, somehow, the addiction snuck back into my life. I pulled my box of needles from the top shelf where I'd stashed them away years ago and laid them all out before me, only to find that I needed more. The needles I had were not the ones I needed.

So off I went, into the heart of the big city. I unabashedly walked in and spent $43 on my addiction, right there, in broad daylight. I immediately felt guilty. But before I knew it, I was alone in my room, knitting away.

Socks. The socks made me do it.

I've been wanting to try socks for a long time. I've made a few simple projects, and I even posted them on a blog a few years ago here, but I'd stopped knitting for strange reasons that I'd rather not divulge here. The reasons were strange enough, however, for me to dispose of my large box of yarn and my gallon-sized bag of knitting needles. And after watching friend after friend knit adorable socks, I finally decided that I had to give it a shot.

It took me a little while to find my way around a ball of yarn and a set of DPNs again, but  finally got the hang of it, and I invited my friend Jill for a knit-in. We holed ourselves up in my little bedroom retreat, lit some candles, turned on the lights on the Christmas tree (Yes. It is. I know.), and knit and gabbed. Jill even solved the mystery of the long-abandoned knitting project I couldn't finish because I'd begun them at a fiber arts club to which I'd never returned and couldn't remember what the process was called.

"Look up twined knitting," she suggested, and I took a gander at the Google results on my trusty iMac. And, ohmygoodness, there it was. I'd been taught it as Tvåändsstickning and it had been the most fun I'd had with two needles in my hand.

Of course, that led me to lust after other patterns, which I will now lead you to lust over. You can turn back now, if you like. Don't say I didn't warn you.

All of these patterns can be found at the Sandra Singh website, plus many, many more. The website advertises free knitting patterns, but I didn't find any. Still, the patterns they have are quite adorable.

So now I'm chomping at the bit to finish my very first pair of socks so that I can give myself permission to move on to another fun pattern.

The addiction has indeed returned. Bring on the needles.

::: for jill :::

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I’m happy,
I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

::: it's been a hard day's night :::

This week, I have all of my kids at home. It hasn't been like this for a while, with Houdin being gone at discipleship training for the past couple of months and Bard off at college. It won't be like this again for a while. On Monday, Bard will head back to college and on Tuesday, 18-year-old Houdin will leave for an eight-month outreach placement to Africa. But while they're all here, I'm reminded of the dynamics of this family, both good and not-so-good. The changes we're experiencing are positive; we're all learning things as we move through this transition towards more permanent change. I'm taking notes, my friends. I'm taking lots of notes.

With all of the Thicket Dweller kids under one roof again, plus a couple of friends along for the ride, it's impossible to avoid a jam session. Most of the family used real instruments to belt out The Beatles, Coldplay, Muse, Leonard Cohen and Kimya Dawson, but a couple who are not as musically adept and a couple who are just plain goofy joined in on the Beatles Rock Band instruments. Can you believe that these silly people played for hours? HOURS? After serving a second dinner and a third dinner and a couple of snacks and a few desserts, this roadie headed for bed. I'm told they knocked off for the night around 3:00 A.M.

This house will be so different when they're gone.

::: i found my thrill on chili hill :::

Every year, around the third week in October, our friends Steve and Sara host a chili supper at their home and invite all of their friends (and a few people they don't even know!) to enjoy it with them. A big pot of wood-fire cooked chili, a couple of hayrides, some hot cider, and lots of friendly faces make for a delicious event that our whole family looks forward.

This year, I baked a batch of Brown Butter Toffee Blondies from a recipe I saw on one of my favorite food blogs, honey & jam. I happened to have a big bag of toffee bits that Bo had brought home from the chocolate factory and had been wondering what to do with them, so when I saw the blondie recipe that Hannah had posted, I knew that's what I'd take to Chili Hill.

This year, Steve and Sara's eldest daughter, Laura, is a senior. Because this might be the last Chili Hill Laura, who has been accepted to West Point, will attend for a while, I wanted to get lots of photos. And that I did. :-)

::: da do run run run da do run run ::

A couple of years ago, my friend Kim and I did a little bit of running together. I slacked off. That amazing woman kept going.

Tomorrow, Kim will run the Columbus Marathon.

Say a prayer for Kim today as she prepares for tomorrow's run.

Blessings and Godspeed, Kim!

::: runnin' down a dream :::

Our friend Rob will be running the Chicago Marathon this coming Sunday. Running the marathon has long been one of Rob's dreams. When he found that he was unable to register for the marathon, that registration was full, God showed him a better plan than Rob could have imagined. Click on "donate" to read about God's solution and Rob's response, and then pray for Rob as he prepares for Sunday's run.

::: oh, the lord's been good to me, and so i thank the lord :::

On Thursday morning, I stomped loudly into the girls' newly painted bedroom, stopped for a second to admire my work (again) and then hollered, "It's time to get up!"

And you know what? They did it.

Because the night before, I had threatened them with the gravest of punishments. I would attempt to wake them once. Just. Once. And if they failed to haul their fannies from their beds, I would let them sleep.

Harsh, huh?

Well, yeah, there's a little more to the story.

See, they'd been looking forward to meeting a new friend. We were going to spend the day making applesauce with Jill and her almost-ten-year-old daughter Miss-E, and we were to meet them at early-o'clock in the morning. And that required going to sleep instead of giggling. And that required serious threats. If they didn't tumble out of bed on my first attempt, they would sleep, and they would miss going to the orchard to meet with Jill and Miss-E.

So when I hollered, they responded. The Baby hopped up like a Pop Tart out of a toaster, and I only had to tell her to change clothes twice, given that it was 33 degrees and she was wearing shorts and sandals.

The drive was gorgeous, with a heavy fog filling all of the nooks and crannies of this sleepy 8,000 horse town.

It was delightful to spend the day with Jill, sharing lifestories like we were long-lost sisters, listening to the contented silence of little girls engrossed in Polly Pocket play. It was such a different and pleasant experience to spend the day in the kitchen with another woman, one who was competent and self-motivated, who was not shy to dive in and do what needed done. It was forever surprising to turn from a task only to turn back and see Jill finishing it, having picked up where I left off. When it came time for us to kick it into high gear so I could get to the evening's parent/teacher conference, I was sorry that the day was ending. I wish I could have someone like Jill around to keep me company in the kitchen every day.

We stopped long enough to harvest some basil, which Jill vigilantly plucked, washed, spun and stuffed into freezer bags and to enjoy a lunch of romaine salad, fettuccine with Alfredo sauce and fresh-pressed cider from the orchard.

When all was said and done, we had thirty-tree and a half quarts of cortland/grimes golden applesauce standing proudly on the wooden butcher block. When each one popped, Jill would say, "thank you!", a trick she'd passed on from the generation before her to her own children.

You know how they say that chopping wood warms you twice? Well, the same can be said for canning with a friend; first from the steaming heat of the water-bath canner, and the second time when you enjoy that yummy food and remember the day you shared with your canning buddy.

:: love without inquiry :::

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business.
What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.

~Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

I have a stack of Thomas Merton books that I have yet to read, but this quote that I found at one of my favorite daily reads, Quiet Life, has me inching my way closer to them. I do have quite a collection of to-be-reads on my nightstand. And in my purse. And on my shelves. And on the kitchen counter. 

Buying books is one of my many weaknesses. When I'm in a thrift store, used book store or yard sale, they call to me. I usually find at least one that is going to either complete or change my life, and into the shopping cart or bag or basket or under the arm it goes. Sometimes I know right off the bat that I'm not going to read it, that I just like the look or feel or smell of it. Sometimes I get very excited and I read the first three chapters before I misplace it or lose interest or another book comes along. And sometimes I do get all the way through. But if I don't even turn the first page, I don't feel badly about buying a book. First of all, I look at it this way: it's kind of like rescuing an orphaned cat; I know that I can give it a good home, adore it, parcel off a comfy place for it to rest, and that will give us both a warm feeling. Secondly, I consider books a very inexpensive decorating tool. What looks more interesting than a wall of books, a stack of books, a book in your hand? What empty shabby chic bird cage or glass urn full of white Christmas lights could I buy that would ooze with as much potential? Because, while I love antique furniture, and ironstone dishes, and porcelain tubs, and blue glass, and old lamps, and just about anything made of real wood, vintage books are fashioned of stuff which actually tells you their story, sometimes in more ways than the story itself.

For instance, when my children and nieces and nephews turn six, I try to make sure they get a copy of Now We Are Six by A.A. Milne. When Sweetheart was a turning six, I happened upon two copies of this book, one in a mediocre antique store (you can find bookish surprises everywhere, so I never assume there's nothing!). In the inside cover was lettered the inscription, "Happy Birthday, Jack! Now you are six! With love from Mother and Daddy" and it was dated 1936. So I know now that this book was purchased for Jack on his 6th birthday in 1936. Fun thing is, my nephew's name is Jack, so while he was yet a toddler, I tucked this book onto my writing desk shelf and, miracle of miracles, remembered to pull it out, add my own, "Happy Birthday, Jack!" inscription, and send it to him for his sixth birthday!

I recently became a blogger reviewer for Thomas Nelson Publishers, which is great because I get advanced copies of excellent books, but it's also a challenge because I have a deadline, and that can pose a problem for a highly distracted, slow reader like this gal. It kinda makes me break out in a sweat, but I think I can handle it.

What really makes me break out in a sweat, though, is when someone loans me a book! I gave up on borrowing books from the library long ago, because I'm pretty bad about returning things I've borrowed (remember that when you consider lending me your last copy of...well, just of anything), so when someone loans me a book, I enter into this kind of tug of war with myself. Accept the book and then just give it back a week later, unread? Accept the book and put it on my nightstand where it becomes lost in a pile of other hopeful thinking? Accept the book and lose it forever?

If I had learned anything from my nature, I would simply tell the lender kindly, "No, thank you. Being given a book to borrow is kind of like an arranged marriage for me. My heart's simply not in it, and I'm afraid it won't get the attention it deserves. It will all end in tears, to be sure."

That's why I don't post a list of what I'm currently reading. It would be a huge list, and it would rarely change. As a matter of fact, I have a friend who talked me into joining GoodReads, and I'm ashamed every time I see her name pop into my inbox with a new update. She reads circles around me! Book after book after book, fiction, non-fiction. One or two a week! And as much as I'd like to say that I have a good excuse, I have children and a husband and a busy life, even when I've been virtually childless for three weeks, I've not managed to reduce my reading pile.

Perhaps I should work harder on applying my love without inquiry to people as I do to books. It's what I've been commanded to do, right? Even those difficult people who chew me out, make me feel like poo, then drop out of my life or pretend like nothing ever happened? How hard would it be to tuck those relationships under my arm and bring them home, give them a nice, sturdy shelf on which to rest, and revisit them as I'm able, as I'm called to them? Maybe I need to crack some of the older ones, the neglected ones, open, see what kind of history they have, what stories and lessons are there to be shown to me, to marvel at their illustrations and dog-ear their pages with my attention, to make notes in their margins. Not to borrow those friendships to be returned another day, to be penalized for their loss, but to accept them for keeps, to treasure them and look at them as my life's best adornments, digesting every word, even if the endings are not how I would like them to be.

Perhaps then I would be rendered worthy.

::: we'll dress him up warmly and we'll send him to school :::

Well, here I am, going on Day 3 of having two children who've left home, Bard away at college and Houdin at training for his year-long trip to Africa. Did I really just write that? Is my son going to *live* in Africa for a year?

Wow.

I was once accused of being "provincial," and, while I don't think I am, it's still pretty amazing to me when my kids leave the country, considering that the only country I've ever gone to is Canada. So, yeah, I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm also nervous.

But even more than that, I find it so strange to be without two of my arms. This week has been especially strange since I have no children in my home during the day. I know I keep saying that, but it's like, Oh. My. Gosh. This house is SO weird without kids hopping all over the place!

And I'd like to say that it's cleaner, but it's not. I've been spending so much time running around that I haven't really had any time to clean, and that was one of my top priorities. Maybe tomorrow, huh? I guess other things are just more important.

I met with Monet's math teacher, counselor and tutor today about his difficulty with math and his general assimilation into the school environment. I felt pretty good about the meeting, and I felt good about his participation in tonight's soccer game, but after having a good talk with him on the way home from soccer, I'm more frustrated with the way other kids are behaving. I had thought, naively, perhaps, that the adjustment into this school would be easier because it's a Mennonite school, and there would be a strong focus on care and compassion. Unfortunately, some of the kids, particularly some of the Mennonite kids, are pretty disappointing to me. Monet shared with me tonight that when they're on the soccer bus, he sits alone because the other kids don't want to sit with him. One kid told him he couldn't sit in the empty seat next to him, and one kid actually asked someone else to trade places with Monet so he wouldn't have to sit with him. Monet told me that he feels like he has to apologize to the other kids when there's nowhere else to sit and he has to sit next to someone. He feels like he has to *apologize* to them for them having to sit next to him! The best advice I could come up with was to tell him to find something to do that he could do alone, like reading a book or playing with his iPod. But he didn't have his iPod tonight on the soccer bus, he said, because he let one of the other kids play with it on the way home. It made me want to hug him, but it made me want to cry. He would never think of treating someone the way these kids are treating him, and he's even going so far as to share with them one of his prized possessions. I don't really understand what they find so repulsive about him. He's smart, he's talented, and he's funny. I suppose it's because he has struggled with math and soccer, and so he's one of the weak ones, the low man on the totem. I pray that he finds a friend who will accept and appreciate him for who he is. Doesn't everyone deserve that?

I guess the comfort comes in the knowledge that people make fun of what they don't understand. I guess right now, Monet isn't even human to these kids, doesn't even have feelings, because they don't know him. Part of me wants them to know him, and part of me thinks, "Wow. You don't really deserve this boy's friendship." Today, one of the kids I had thought was going to be a friend, walked by Monet's locker and called him a failure. Monet said it was a joke, that the boy was only kidding, but why kid like that? Why? And since this is a boy on Monet's soccer team, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of team sports?

And I suppose that's another reason I'm feeling frustrated. Monet *chose* to play soccer. He's only one of 32 boys in the whole school who have chosen to play soccer this season. It's been a hard adjustment for him, but he has stuck with it, and he's improving. He wanted to quit, but in the end, he chose to stick with it. He goes to every practice, every game, and sits through the varsity games, too. And yet he would be less ridiculed had he chosen not to play a sport at all. It's almost like there's a kind of humiliation and punishment that comes from putting in the effort. If you're not good enough, the message seems to be, don't even try. We don't want you.

But he's continuing on, and I'm proud of him for it.

I wish human beings would just learn to behave, to be kind to one another, and to treat other people with the same respect with which they'd like to be treated. You'd think that, in a Christian school, a school of Monet's own denomination, that wouldn't be too much to ask.

Let's hope it's not.

::: if i get there before you do, i'll cut a hole and pull you through :::

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown—
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

~Robert Louis Stevenson

This is one of the girls' favorite poems, and when we read daily from The Child's Garden of Verses, this one is almost always read. The older children sang a version of it for choir.

Isn't swinging one of those simple, lovely things that makes childhood grand? One of my favorite memories is of my dad pushing me on my little metal swingset in the back yard, me soaring, he loudly singing, "Swing lo, sweet cherry-ought. Comin' for to carry me home." I can remember how I would rush to the swingset at the school next to my aunt's house, even into my teens, when my friend and I would pump our feet to the rhythm of our own voices singing The Steve Miller Band's Fly Like an Eagle.

It's great fun as a child. But somewhere along the line, we decide, or someone tells us, that we're too old for it, and then, when we want to return to it, our bottoms are too big for the seats, or our feet drag on the ground. But if we can get past those parts, it's still a simple, lovely thing to do.

And swinging in sync with a friend? Ah. Magical, isn't it?

I loved watching Sweetheart, The Baby, and their friend Lydia fly through the air, giggling, trying to slow down and speed up to match each other's flight. And even the competition that took place was interesting to watch. The synchronized swinging almost became an obsession with some, and a non-issue with others, and for those some who took it seriously, the fact that no one would sync with her was a great insult to her psyche.

Life is like that. There are things I take way to seriously, and someone might be able to say to me that it's no big deal, that I should just shrug it off, that it doesn't really matter anyway. But that doesn't erase my human emotions, my desire for relationship, my confusion when someone I love, or someone I try to love, rejects me, deals with me callously, or misunderstands my intentions. Why does it matter? Why does it bother me so? Why, when people who love me, people who really know me, people I respect and admire, tell me to forget about it, shrug it off, can't I do so?

I must not be the only one. I was listening to a repeat show on This American Life, an NPR radio program that I download as a podcast each week. This week's theme was The Kindness of Strangers. In it, Brett Leveridge tells the story of his experience of standing on a subway platform. A stranger, which, of course, means someone Brett doesn't even know, probably someone that no one waiting on the subway knows, meanders along the platform, and chooses people as if choosing players for a kickball game: "You're in. You're out. You can stay. You have to leave." But it wasn't like the people who were told they had to go left. They just ignored this strange person. Not Brett, though. For some reason, as the guy approached Brett, all he could think about was how he hoped the guy would approve of him. A guy he didn't even know. A total stranger.

So if, as humans, it matters to us that a total stranger approves of us, how much more important must it be that someone we know, someone who at least in modicum knows us, rejects us?

This is why, I believe, the person of Christ is so compelling. He was, and is, what we long to be. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And we long so much for that perfection and blamelessness, for that relationship and acceptance, that it's almost unbearable when someone rejects us for reasons we can't fully understand, even if it's a person we don't particularly like. Even if it's a person we can't really stand at all.

But here was Jesus, and, yeah, like I said. Perfect. Without sin. Blameless. And still, He had enemies. He was despised and rejected. Those He loved denied Him, betrayed Him, doubted Him. What must that have felt like for Him, who didn't just feel He hadn't done anything wrong. He really hadn't done anything wrong!

And so I know that, with all of my flaws and failures, I can't expect to be unconditionally loved by anyone but God, but this feeling of swinging so high, of laughing and and feeling that weightlessness, and laughing, and then falling and scooping so low, and reaching out my hand to sync with someone who chooses to keep theirs death-gripped tightly on the chains, pumping their feet so that they can rise higher and higher and higher than I, is always a bit of a shock to me. Hey, I think, wasn't this supposed to be fun?

And on the worst of days, I just want to jump off of the swing altogether.

My son told me recently that it takes seven positive comments to counteract one negative one. Seven. For every. single. negative. So if you get totally chewed out by someone, told in every way how you've failed, what a loser and terrible person you are, just imagine how much encouraging and building up your loved ones have to do to cancel out what that one uncaring, selfish, unthinking person did.

Wow.

No wonder it's so hard to love. It takes persistence, doesn't it? We have to keep undoing all that's been done, not just by us, but by others, too.

I guess that's why I want to be the one who swings next to you, who, when you reach out your hand for someone to sync with, grabs that hand and sticks right next to you, keeping time with your rhythm, no matter how high or low you go.

Sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down
Coming for to carry me home
But still my soul feels heavenly bound
Coming for to carry me home

The brightest day that I can say
Coming for to carry me home
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.

::: son, can you play me a memory? :::

As June approached, swinging her green skirts over these hills and valleys, my heart was confused. My eldest son, Houdin, would be turning eighteen. As such, he would no longer be subject to any formal teaching from his parents. How to commemorate? How to mark this occasion? What I wanted was to cut apron strings, yet allow love to remain intact. This boy, who has been the source of so much frustration, self-doubt, with whom interaction has caused me so much regret for my lack of patience and angry nature, has also impressed me with his strength, creative thinking and varied interests.

Remember those games we used to play as children? They're the ones my daughters still play now, like cutie catchers, and M.A.S.H., where a group of giggling girls determine your lifelong fate. On a ripped-out sheet of notebook paper, they ask you to list different boys' names, and types of dwellings (mansion, apartment, shack or house, which is where the game gets its name), and numbers, and states, and then you choose a number, which is written very blackly in the center of the page. And then, the counting begins. One by one, your choices are narrowed, until your lies future scrawled out on the wide-ruled looseleaf before you--you will marry Victor and live in an apartment in Tahiti, tooling around in an AMC Gremlin. And you will have kids, unless you chose a "zero" for one of the numbers. You'll have six kids, or fourteen kids, or two kids. If make the mistake of thinking the number means how much money you're going to make per year, you may end up with 120,000 kids.

I don't remember a lot about my preferences for children when I was a child. I thought more about where I would live, what I would grow, what animals I would have and what kinds of clothes I would wear than if or how many children I would love.

But along came Bo, and I loved him, and, more importantly at the time and to the plot of this essay, I was attracted to him, and children were part of that equation. And I knew just a few things about these arriving beings. Here's what I knew:

• They would love and follow God and emulate Christ;
• They would be stunningly beautiful;
• They would be dressed in trendy clothes from The Gap and Banana Republic and, more importantly, they would love vintage thrift clothes;
• They would want for nothing;
• They would love nature, hiking, swimming, canoeing, and gardening;
  
• They would love the folk music;
• They would be incredible musicians, maybe even virtuosos;
• They would be brilliant, obedient and respectful;
• My daughters would be my closest confidantes;
• My sons would be my fiercest defenders.

I'm not attesting to the rightness or wrongness of any of these things, I'm just reporting the facts that were rattling around in that little curly-topped two-decade-old head. Some of these thoughts were acknowledged plans, with roads to the outcome mapped out neatly in journals and file folders, some were pursued with vigor and they either succeeded or were reluctantly abandoned. Some of these things just happened naturally, with little or no input from me. And, of course, it varied from child to child, from day to day.

One child, however, decided pretty much from day one that he wasn't all that thrilled with my plan. He arrived later than the doctor had estimated, took longer to be born, had a true knot in his umbilical cord, weighed more and measured longer than anyone had imagined.

As he grew, his first words were "shub up!" and "I can doooo it!" and "yeave me a-yone!" He wanted to be fiercely independent, yet didn't quite have the tools to achieve that independence. Lessons at home proved frustrating for everyone involved. Anything that could be taken apart was. Anything that could be broken was. Including, many times, my mother heart.

And while I tried to push my plans on him, he pushed right back. My plan was for a son who was naturally kind and respectful, good-natured and loving, well-dressed and tidy. He wore wrinkled t-shirts and stained jeans to church, was mouthy to me and other family members, wasn't affectionate or kindhearted. And he certainly wasn't my fiercest defender. To engage him in learning, we tried placing him in private school for a year, pulling him back out, moving to the country, giving him animal projects, encouraging his interests, increasing the household structure, loosening the household structure, abandoning the household structure. I spent evenings pouring over parenting books, on my knees in prayer, and beside his bed trying to reason him into doing his lessons or clean his room or help around the house or stick with his current interest, even if it wasn't my current interest.

Because what I wanted? I wanted him to play an instrument. And what I really wanted was for him to play piano. So as soon as we could find a piano teacher we could afford, I signed all the kids up, and we would make a weekly trek, every Monday, to spend two hours at the piano teacher's house. And every week, he would show great promise. And every week, as soon as we would leave the piano teacher's house, the lesson would be forgotten and little or no practice would ensue, regardless of the reminders, motivators or bribes I handed out.

I don't want to play piano, he would say. That's something you want me to do. It's not something I'm interested in. And we'd have a discussion about how many adults wish they could play, how you never meet an adult who plays piano and says, "Man, I've always regretted sticking with my lessons." But that didn't help. He wanted to play computer games or set up his army men or strap CO2 cartridges to the girls' dolls and set them on fire, delighting in the ensuing explosion.

I don't understand this creature.

But somehow, he still has my heart firmly in his grasp.

This boy, who has been the source of so much frustration, self-doubt, with whom interaction has caused me so much regret for my lack of patience and angry nature, has also impressed me with his strength, creative thinking and varied interests.

Finally, we decided on a graduation party, and he expressed his strong preference for having it here, at our home. He did a lot of work to get ready for it, including building a stone stairway up our front hill.

We had a small ceremony on the hillside that is our little apple orchard, blankets and quilts laid out for people to sit upon. Bo said a few words and opened us with a song, the Doxology, and then our pastor gave a short teaching to Zach--to all of us--about the lack of wisdom in most commencement speeches. Bo shared his thoughts, his memories of Houdin as a newborn baby, long and red, and the weight that came with realizing that he was the father of a son. Before he had finished his first sentence, I knew that there was nothing I could say; I was too emotional to speak. And then, Houdin spoke. He hadn't shared with me what he was going to say, hadn't written it down.

What he shared was an answer to my many years of prayer. He gave a short history of his life, how he arrived at the point where he is today. He talked about our other house, our tiny cape cod on a busy street with a little postage-stamp-sized yard, and how, there, he was given the freedom to learn, how he could choose any subject, and we would delve fully into it, exhausting all possibilities for further information before moving on to the next subject.

And he talked about the move to where we are now, this house in the country. He talked about the learning opportunities he was given, how he was allowed to be a part of the building process of this new home, climbing on the roof, pulling wiring, installing hurricane clips in the attic, nailing down shingles, carrying cement blocks. He talked about the things we let him do, and the things we made him do, and he said that he was grateful for us. He was grateful, he said, that his mother gave him the freedom to learn, and his father gave him the discipline.

I wish I could convey the feelings I had at that moment, and how glad I was that we'd decided to have that ceremony, even though there were times when I was so overwhelmed and discouraged that we came close to calling it all off.

We closed by singing a family favorite, Rich Mullins' Step by Step, a song I taught the older kids when they were just toddlers, when they would stand on step stools beside me in our old house, washing and drying dishes, and singing and singing and singing. Now here we were, surrounded by wonderful friends and family, cutting the apron strings that were tied to this boy who has done a fairly good job of driving me mad.

A few days ago, when I had some errands to run, Houdin asked me if he could stay at the church while I did my running around. See, there's a piano there, and over the past few months, he has taken to looking up the chords to his favorite songs and banging them out daily.

And there I was, watching it all, smitten by this young man who has so many times frustrated my spirit.

In just two weeks, we will load up a car full of stuff and kids, and we will attend another ceremony, this one a commissioning to send Houdin to Africa for a ten-month venture into voluntary service.

Day by day, as the time to send him comes closer, I become more aware of what this means, of how far away he'll be and how much can happen over the course of ten months. My mother heart needs prayer, comfort and healing before I can offer the same to my boy. While I know that this trip is a good thing, that it's has been orchestrated by God and that much good will come of it, my nature is to hold on, to change my mind, so panic, to worry about all of the terrible things that could possibly happen. Ten months away. Ten months. On the other side of the world.

A short time ago, we welcomed a young man named Rejoice into our lives. Six months before, his mother had stood in Africa and said goodbye to him as he ventured to the other side of the world for a year. We did our best to give him a home here, to welcome him as one of us, to make him a part of our family. I pray that Houdin, too, will find a family on African soil who will look after him while he's away from us.

And I pray that there's a piano there for him to play.

::: scenes from a graduation party :::