The New Year FO' REALZ

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I'm sure you're all busy preparing for the New Year now.  I'm preparing to go to bed early so I can get a jump start on all those resolutions I'm probably not going to keep.  With Christmas behind us and a new year ahead I thought I'd take a few minutes to reflect a bit on life this year....

#1...What the heck is a Hatchimal and how did it get to be so popular?  The distant cousin of Tickle Me Elmo, Furby and the Cabbage Patch Kids, the Hatchimals emerged this year as the must-have toy of the season and busily ruined Christmas for millions of kids everywhere.  The big excitement is that when you buy one you don't know what you're getting until it hatches.  And then it hatches.  After that I think it solves world hunger or cures cancer or something.  No?  Apparently it's just another electronic toy.  Hmmm....

#2...Why do everyone's Christmas cards photos look like they spend so much time laughing together in the woods?  And how do you get your hair to stay so nice when you're outside?  And how can you hike in those clothes?  For all the time everyone apparently spends outdoors together Target ought to be a lot less crowded.  You're not fooling anyone, you know, but you do look good!  Sun-kissed and full of fresh air and amazing.  So keep 'em coming.

#3...Can we stop saying "tweens"?  It's the new phrase to describe the period of adolescence right before the teen years, when kids aren't old enough to be really snarky and moody yet but are too old to be spanked.  I feel like most stages in life with kids are "tween" years, waiting for one difficult phase to end so you can enter another so let's just call them all what they are.  HARD.  Delightful, but hard.  :)

#4...2016 was not a tragedy.  There I said it.  Full of ups and downs, yes.  But not a tragedy.  I believe it because I believe God reigns over all of it.  CS Lewis wrote, "We believe the sun is in the sky at midday not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else." 

My prayer for the new year ahead is that we deal with the pains of the past and the unknowns of the future with an ever-fervent trust in the Lord and an ever-fixed eye on His hand.  Our faith does not always afford us a look at the bigger picture, but we can be assured that the pieces we do see are within His control. 

"You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You." Isaiah 26:3. 

Stay the course, dear friends.  We cannot clearly see the sun at midday, but oh what a thing is its light, shining on the pieces around us!  If you're spending these final days of the year staring back into the shadows then you are missing the point.  God is everywhere. 

Happy New Year!!
xoxo....Kelly

Kevin and me, New Year's Eve 2005. 

Last New Year's without babies.

The "tween years" if you will. 

   


   

The Holidays FO' REALZ

Happy Holidays, everyone!  Ready or not, it is upon us.  :)  I sat down this afternoon to tackle Christmas cards and drafted a very lovely letter with pictures for all of our family and friends.  It's full of updates and well wishes.  The font is extraordinary and the line spacing is a true work of art.  I am sure everyone who reads it will be so blessed!  But as I look over it I chuckle a little bit.  It is indeed a very true picture of our family and a reflection on the blessings from our year, but it is oh so clean!  Part of me really wants to just send out something like this.....

Dear Family and Friends,

2016 has been a busy year for our family!  Kevin did some stuff at work that was good and important but most notably he grew a beard last fall and has now had it for an entire calendar year!  He's really settled into the role of a bearded guy quite well and we couldn't be more thrilled.

Michael plays soccer and piano and is on student council.  All this and we still can't get him to stop talking about Pokémon.  I don't know about you guys, but it's time for all that to Pokémon GO AWAY.

Blake got braces.  That was expensive.

Zachary is doing really well in school, but he's terrible at making his bed.  We keep thinking he'll notice, but actually he thinks it looks pretty good.  Maybe he needs glasses.  Those sound expensive.

We've been working on getting Parker to wipe his own bottom now for about 6 months.  He did fine with potty training, but we think he finally figured out that we're going to make him move out some day so he's digging his feet in with this one last stronghold.  It can't possibly be that hard.  Of course, no one can be good at everything.  Have you seen Zachary make a bed??

Kelly (that's me!) learned how to order groceries online.  It's awesome!  I wouldn't even care if everything they gave me was past the expiration date.  I DON'T HAVE TO GO INSIDE THE STORE!!

Thanks for being our friends this year!  You mean a lot to us 'cause without you we'd only have each other to hang out with.  To our family, well, you're stuck with us. 

Merry Christmas!
The Long's

....And the picture attached would look like this.

Oh that we might be so authentic!  Maybe it's not Christmas card material, but there is great freedom in cutting to the core of something, and I think from time to time we need to hear it from one another.  If for no other reason than to remember that we're all human.

I've said it once, I'll say it a million times.  HE meets us where we are.  On the top of a mountain, at the bottom of a valley.  Whether your holidays are shaping up to be a veritable wonderland of Christmas magic or Cousin Eddie's out emptying his sewage line into your storm drain...

GOD WAS.

GOD IS.

GOD WILL BE.

And what more can we celebrate than that???

MERRY CHRISTMAS, FRIENDS!

XOXO.....Kelly

When you burp, but no one's listening...

This afternoon Parker told me that when he burps and I'm not around, he doesn't say excuse me.  Awesome.  This parenting thing is going well.     

I told him I appreciated his honesty, but his manners still have a ways to go.  He said you don't have to have manners around your brothers 'cause they don't have any manners either. 

He makes a valid point.

But of course that's not the way it works, really.  Our character isn't something we get to turn on and off.  It's like when your Sunday school teacher tells you that God is always watching you, even when you go to the bathroom, and you get a little terrified and stop wanting to pee.

It's a common misconception that we can be different people in different circumstances.  Like the language you use around your friends is okay as long as you don't use it around your kids.  While there are certainly different levels of appropriate disclosure (you wouldn't tell the neighbor you just met that you've developed a nasty foot fungus or tell your children that you're having trouble with your spouse) who you are and what you're about as the person God has created you to be doesn't get to change based on who's around you. 

Be. Who. You. Are. 

Or better yet, be whose you are. 

"Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates"  Deuteronomy 11:18-20

Be who you are, be whose you are, wherever you are.  Whether at home or at work or at school or at church.  At play or at rest.  Bind the truth of God to your character so that it may not be separated from it in any circumstance.  Because God does not stop walking with us, even when we try to stop walking with Him.

XOXO...Kelly

I don't quite have it all together yet this year.

Hey, remember last year, when I had it all together?  No?  Well, this school year isn't looking much better.  New teachers, a new grade level we've never been through before.  New position on the PTO board.  Do not ask me which day is library day for any of my children.  I have NO idea.  Michael says we grounded him earlier in the week, but I have no recollection of what for or from what!  About the time I start acclimating to the newness of things going on around me it will be the holidays and then God help us all...

It's a good lesson in life to know your own limits.  For example, when I wake up at 2am and can't go back to sleep because the thought pops into my head that I should re-learn Spanish.....I'm getting close.  Such evenings usually inspire me to go to the calendar first thing the next morning and see what I can thin out or reschedule.  Or, better yet, say no to before I begin.  You know, like team photos at the YMCA and exercise classes. 

But then there are the challenges we have to face, the ones there are no getting around.  Homework, illness, job responsibilities, Halloween.  For these I take comfort in knowing that God is already on the other side of them.

"For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping.  But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance." Genesis 45:6-7

These are Joseph's words of forgiveness to his brothers when they were reunited years after he had been abandoned by them.  During the years in between Joseph endured slavery, prison and loneliness.  But the Lord was with Joseph not just in his present struggles, but in the future that lay ahead of him.  His trust in God not only allowed him to make it through the years of hardship, but helped him to forgive the family that betrayed him at the start of it all.  His story is one of redemption in its greatest form. 

So bring it on, I guess.  If Joseph can handle Egypt, I can handle the 4th grade. 

Heavenly Father, you are the God of my yesterday, my today and my tomorrow.  There is not an outcome that You don't already see, not a day You don't hold in your hand.  Help me to lean on Your assurances when the going gets tough, Lord.  For You are with us, now and always.

XOXO...Kelly

Here's one of our dogs, Miss Cordelia Drexel Biddle Long.  She doesn't quite have it all together yet either.  But her attitude is good.  :) 

Keep your yeast out of my dough.

Something's missing from all my photos this summer. Oh, yes. I neglected to take a single photo of my children complaining, fighting, arguing with me, whining, etc. You know, the stuff that was going on directly before and after I snapped the pic. Fortunately this photo required no actual smiles from anyone.  In fact, frowning was encouraged.  I think it works for us.

Don't get me wrong. There were many, many good times. Soooooo many! But how do you know sweet if you don't have sour to compare it to?? Oh, we know sour around here.

As the boys get older I notice the challenges that come with parenting are shifting. And this summer the challenge was discontent. When you have four kids you know you can't make everyone happy all the time, but when the boys were a bit younger I felt like we managed that a good bit of the time. Ice cream? We're all in! Extra TV? Sure! Swimming? No one says no. But I'm not sure I pulled off a single event this summer that everyone was happy about. There was always at least one kid with a frown on his face, arms crossed in front of him. 

In doing church and volunteer work (or life in general!) there are plenty of happy, supportive voices, but it's the one or two disgruntled ones that tend to stand out at the end of the day.  Why do we always get hung up there?  Why do we give the negative voices the better part of our ears?  Galatians 5:7-10 says,

"You were running a good race.  Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.  'A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.' I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view.  The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be."

The right thing isn't always going to make everyone happy and the enemy is out there, knowing this, seeing this, and using this to tempt our focus away from Christ.  But do not be discouraged, because those voices do not come from the One who calls you. 

I've learned from multitudes of unhappy feedback at work, at home, at school to listen, learn, extend grace.  And sometimes to politely just say, "Please keep your yeast out of my dough."

XOXO....Kelly

When it's time to stock up on glue sticks....

And let everything be lost in the shadows
Of the light of your face.
From "Captivate Us" by Charlie Hall, Christy Nockels, Nathan Nockels

I work for our church, which is all at once a most rewarding and most challenging endeavor.  I'm surrounded by some of the most creative, intelligent, intuitive and inspirational people, truly gifted in many ways.  I love it!  But sometimes we tend to lose ourselves in all that creativity and intelligence and inspiration.  Sometimes we miss the point.  Driving to church one Sunday morning I found my mind wandering to craft supplies and snack cups when the song above came on the radio.  I've heard it a million times before, but this line spoke to me (nay....SCREAMED at me) for the first time ever.  I wanted the morning's curriculum to be successful, but I was focusing on the wrong way of going about that.  Sure, it's nice to come into a classroom of perfectly stocked glue sticks and construction paper, but if I'm doing my job the right way what I should really want those kiddos to experience has nothing to do with the supplies at all. 

It's not just in church work that we lose the forest for the trees.  We live in a Pinterest-board society that celebrates the details all over the place.  Themed birthday parties, accessorized clothing, culinary presentations.  Once I fussed at my own sister for bringing the wrong color of cupcakes to a baby shower.  (I've apologized, but she still brings it up sometimes.)  And while the details can be fun sometimes, they are never the point. 

When I make it about the details, I am in fact making it about me.  My success at pulling something off or my failure when it doesn't go right.  I am making WHAT I'm doing more important than WHY I'm doing it and I am leaving God out of it.  I am forgetting that the most rewarding part of any endeavor is what I allow Him to do through me, which doesn't have anything to do with me at all.  Or my glue sticks.

Lord, let the WHY drive me, not the WHAT.  Let the details of what I'm doing hardly stand out at all next to the glory of who You are and what You're doing.  And when details must be tended and to-do lists must be checked off, help me to do it joyfully, with patience and kindness.  Amen.  

XOXO...Kelly

They pee on you because they love you....

Our sweet Parker (almost 4) often comes down to our room in the middle of the night when something has woken him up.  I assume this is just a phase that he'll eventually grow out of and most nights I barely wake up when he climbs in between Kevin and I.  Last night he came down in his usual way and, snuggled and safe right where he wanted to be, he quickly fell back asleep.  He slept so deeply in fact that I woke up a short time later wet with urine.  And not my own.

I'd like to say this is the first time I've been peed on by a small child, but it's not.  Might not be the last.  There's also been vomit, poop, snot, ear wax and blood.  Not very glamorous, but I like to remind myself that to be so close to someone's grossness means you must also be in place of great importance to that person.  Because you don't just pee on anyone, you know.  You save that kind of stuff for the people you truly love and trust, the people you know will still love you in the morning.  (And also maybe ER personnel.)

Mark Klein spoke at our church this weekend about his near-death experiences surrounding his heart transplant a few years ago.  During his time in the hospital Mark says the Lord revealed glimpses of heaven to him on several occasions.  The most compelling, to me, was a glimpse of God himself from whom flowed "total and absolute acceptance".  Can you imagine that?  To be in the presence of someone who totally accepts you, loves you, takes pleasure in you just as you are?  It'd be enough to make me lose my bladder control all together.

Do you feel as confident in God's acceptance as that?  Because you should and so should the people around you.  If we're not witnessing in the kind of way that leads someone to anything but God's total and absolute acceptance and sovereignty then we are doing it wrong.  And if that's the message you're struggling to hear yourself, join me in prayer.  That God would continue to reveal His love for you, make His power known to you and His grace real for you.  And that you, being confident in all these things, would be changed forever. 

Love you, Parker.  Just the way you are.
   

XOXO....Kelly