A Boy Without a Tooth

This is the last picture of my boy with all his teeth.


Yesterday afternoon as I sat nursing my baby and talking to Noah, he fell forward off my bed and caught the corner of the footstool with his left front baby tooth. After an afternoon at urgent care, we found that there was no major damage to his incredibly swollen upper lip and bruised gums and bloody nose. I'm thankful for that. But it bothers me that my little boy will have to spend the next 4 or 5 years without his front tooth. I feel like I should have prevented it from happening. That I'm a bad mom for what happened to him.


I, of course, realize that there is no way to prevent this sort of thing, especially with an extremely active little boy. It's just that these children God put in my care started out with such a clean slate. I didn't want them to mar the beautiful little bodies God gave them. More than that, I wish I could protect their minds and hearts from evil. The older I get, the more I see how this life has broken the people around me. How long can I protect them from the realities of a world full of sin?


I'm also amazed that I was so protected, so sheltered in a cocoon of grace. I was born into a family with a mom and dad who loved Christ more than anything else, who loved each other unconditionally, who sacrificed and labored to send me to a school that taught me about Jesus and gave me friends who were also part of Christian families. I grew to adulthood in a tiny Midwest town in a country where we had absolute freedom to worship God in our little Baptist church. I am aware that I was blessed by God.


Now I am the parent who must depend on prayer, who must do my best to provide these little ones with a shelter as you would shelter a tiny seedling until it is grown into a strong and healthy plant. It is my husband's and my own responsibility to protect them from evil. I don't exactly know how to do that, other than teach them the way and pray without ceasing that they will follow it. So far, they have followed wholeheartedly and without question. It is my deepest prayer and highest goal for them to love Jesus as much and even more when they are grown than they do now with the precious faith of a child.


May we not be weary in well doing. May our country continue to provide a haven of freedom to worship God. (Please, Lord!)


But I also pray that I would be willing to enter the stickiness and the heartache of those I love that were not given such an easy path to the Lord. Who still lack the courage to follow him with their whole heart. May I love as Jesus loved, not only when it is easy, but when it is difficult to do so. Because what would I be, and where would I have ended up if not for his grace in my life? How can I then not be an instrument of that grace in the lives of the people he has placed around me that I might reflect the face of Christ in all his brightness, shining into the darkness of the prisons of despair around me?

I am nothing without Christ. May I never attempt to be.


I wish I was more of a man
Have you ever felt that way
And if I had to tell you the truth
I'm afraid I'd have to say
That after all I've done and failed to do
I feel like less than I was meant to be

And what if I could fix myself
Maybe then I could get free
I could try to be somebody else
Whose much better off than me
But I need to remember this
That it's when I'm at my weakest
I can clearly see

He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While His heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me

What if you could see yourself
Through another pair of eyes
What if you could hear the truth
Instead of old familiar lies
And what if you could feel inside
The power of the hand
that made the universe
You realize

He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While this heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me

All our hearts they burn with hate in us
All our lives we've longed for more
So let us lay our lives before the one
Who gave His life for us

He made the lame walk
And the dumb talk
He opened blinded eyes to see
That the sun rises on His time
Yet He knows our deepest desperate need
And the world waits
While this heart aches
To realize the dream
I wonder what life would be like
If we let Jesus live through you and me

-Big Daddy Weave "What Life Would be Like"

9 on the 9th - Things I didn't expect from motherhood

I'm once again participating in fellow blogger Angela Nazworth's "9 on the 9th." (Read hers, "Becoming Me" link to the left, very funny!)

I have chosen to relay 9 things about motherhood I did not in my wildest dreams expect.

1. The way your stomach looks after having a baby. Never the same. Enjoy your pre-baby tummy while you have it, if you still do. (Or maybe it's just the size of my son that did it.)

2. Peanut butter smudges on the light switches. All of them.

3. The illusive clean carpet or floor. Even if I clean them, as soon as I'm done, the crumbs and debris return. Actually, the same goes for 5 sets of clothes, the dishes, the bathrooms, etc....

4. The complete absence of boredom. I have not been bored for the past 5 years. I kind of miss it.

5. I've forgotten what "quiet" is.

6. Who knew "The Upside Down Show" could be so philosophically stimulating?

7. The boundless and unrelenting energy of a 2 year old boy. It defies nature. There is no explanation.

8. Instead of a chorus of gratitude and appreciation for my slaving over a hot stove, I get to hear things like "I don't like this" "I'm not eating this" or the ever popular and heartfelt "We're having this AGAIN?"

9. Who knew that sacrificing your life, your body, your time, your energy and just about everything else you once held dear could be so undeniably rewarding?

Have something to share? Come up with your own 9 on the 9th and link to Angela's site.

Where the Music Came From

With the notes of August's rhapsody still ringing in my mind, I come to write, because it is my release.

I just saw the movie, August Rush, finally. I've been wanting to see it since the first time I saw it advertised, but life was the obstacle and I missed it. I'm not sure why it didn't do well. I wasn't prepared for it, because I had thought it must not be that good. No one else seemed to notice it.

I'm not sure why the things that resonate so explicitly in my brain seem to bore everyone else. But whatever the reason, I found the story of August Rush to be an exhilarating adventure, played as a symphony from the first word to the final scene, building and deepening and rising and falling with perfect rhythm and sequence so that I felt as if I had heard a work of art in music, not seen a forgotten movie from months ago.

But then, the music is in me too. I knew what August was talking about. I am not the prodigy, but I know the power and the language of music. I can feel music in the wind, on a busy street, in the laughter of my children, in the cadence of the rain and thunder and the chorus of the crickets on a summer night. When I listen to music, whatever its form, I can hear the heart of the composer.

I suppose I should explain the picture. If you look closely, you'll notice that I am standing to the right of a conductor. That is my college professor, Dr. Stewart, whom we all called "Doc." He was leading our college chorale in an impromptu concert in a busy Roman restaurant during our concert tour to Italy in 1995. I don't know how I came to be in possession of this photo. But I love it. It reminds me of a time when the music was alive in me. Not just alive. On fire within me. Burning with a passion to communicate the hope and the life I had found in knowing Christ. I could have taken a different route, and followed that music to the ends of the earth, just like August, as he was looking for his parents.

Life intervened, and I fell in love. Got married, had children. Music is still a part of my life. I'm trying to teach my five year old the basics, and nagging her to practice. I sing in the choir every week. Once in awhile I even sing a solo in church. But this movie reminded me that I miss the music being alive within me, giving music to my fingers on the piano or my soul echoing through my vocal chords to sing what had previously not existed in all of music.

My old out of tune piano will have to suffice, though I'd give almost anything at this moment for the soft, cool keys of a baby grand in a concert hall, with that sharp tone of perfect pitch in each strike of the keys. I'd certainly love to regain that voice I was working on back in college before life stepped in and distracted me.

Maybe it's not about losing the music when life begins. Maybe it's about passing the music on. And maybe, if I try hard enough and long enough, I can ignite that fire again within me, and set aflame my children with the sound of their own song that lays buried within their being.

After all, wasn't my own song coaxed out by my Grammy, who gave me her ear for music, passed along through my dad, and my mom, who made me practice and take music seriously, and good old Doc, who gave me a voice in a land across the sea where my heart changed forever?
And how could I not mention my Creator, who placed in my soul each note, every song I've ever had the privilege of singing? For that's truly where the music came from.

May my praise echo back to Him in some form that may give Him glory, for He is the author and conductor of my symphony.