When Did We Feed You?

Something happened a while ago, that I have struggled to put into words.

How do you tell a story that was both funny and heart-wrenching? Can you tell a story without making it seem like a joke and without losing the hilarity of the situation? Can you do both/and instead of either/or?

I'm going to try, so I ask for your grace in case I err too far on one side or the other.

It was probably two years ago when I was supposed to meet my friend Denise for lunch. I was at home with the kids trying to work and be mom and probably failing at both.

Then there was a knock at the door. It was Kimberly.

Not my pastor's wife Kimberly. The other Kimberly.

When Mom Goes on Strike

This is not my first strike.

When my almost-20-year-old was young, I went on my first Mom Strike. At the time, I was a stay-at-home Mom with one 5-year-old son. One morning at breakfast, he apparently thought I was moving a little slowly.

"Mom, what's taking the eggs so long?"

"They have to cook."

"When Popo [his grandmother] makes eggs it doesn't take so long."

Strike one.

School Daze (The Exciting Conclusion...)

Notice this starts with Fourth Truth. Truths One, Two, and Three are covered 

in School Daze (Part 1). Please read it now. We will wait.

[insert humming and drumming fingers]

You're back? Great! Let's move on.

Fourth Truth: We found an option that would allow us to fix these problems. But God would have to show up in a big way.

The small, private, Christian school that both boys attended in the suburbs has a sister school on the other side of Atlanta. The principal there was the lower-elementary principal at their old school, so I reached out to her in desperation. I had spent countless hours researching options and many sleepless nights worrying over my boys' schooling. Their struggles were different, but they both had social and academic issues to address. 

She invited us to visit her school, and it felt like old home week. A familiar face greeted us. The small classes of students were well-behaved — even when the teacher walked out of the room. They were reading good books and discussing the French Revolution and — *gasp* — they talked about and loved Jesus openly. In some ways it felt like slipping into a favorite sweater after two years of scratchy sackcloth. I sat in her office and cried.

The boys visited and loved it. They begged to go. They hounded us every day to get their applications in. They were interviewed. They took placement tests. The only thing standing between them and admission is the parent interview, scheduled for today.

Oh, yes. And money.

School Daze (Part 1)

Ask me sometime what keeps me up at night when I think about our life in Avoid.

You'd probably expect me to say the unnerving frequency of the sound of gunfire.
Or the numbers of robberies in the neighborhood.
Or the prostitutes on the corner.
Or the trap houses a few blocks away.

But you'd be wrong.

What keeps me up at night is a question.

Where in the heck are my kids going to go to school?

Putting My Toes in the Water ... Again

I hate cold water.

And I don't just mean frigid water. I classify anything you wouldn't take a bath in as cold. Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to the Waterski Masters tournament at Callaway Gardens which takes place on Robin Lake. It's a great, fun time because you can get in the lake and watch the skiiers go by. How cool is that? Very cool. Very ... cold, actually.

Scores of people were happily frolicking in the water, yet I sat on the sand in my lawn chair, warm and dry. Until the kids had enough and resorted to shaming.

Dad, will you get in with us? You know Mom won't.

OK. FINE. I'll get in.

An inch at a time.

One stinking, frigid inch at a time.

Let Them Eat Cake

Not long ago, my husband asked me a question:

"Now that we've been here a while, have you thought about what ministry you want to get involved in?"

He didn't know what hit him. Not literally, of course, but almost.

You see, when we moved here, I had all these grandiose ideas of what my life would be like.

I'd have a dozen neighborhood kids coming to play in my yard in the afternoons. And we'd sit on the front porch and sip lemonade and eat assembly-line-made  peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I'd volunteer to read aloud at the devastatingly underperforming local elementary school. (Not the school my kids go to, mind you. So I'd totally be doing this out of the goodness of my heart.) And I would get companies and bookstores to donate books so that every child I read to would go home with a copy of his very own.

I'd mentor girls at the enrichment center around the corner where my boys often go after school.

I'd volunteer at the library down the street and start some sort of kids' program.

But we've been here for a year. And none of that has happened.

So when my husband asked me "What ministry do you want to get involved in?" I lost it. Because in his question I heard a veiled accusation that what I had done this year wasn't ministry. And therefore wasn't important. It wasn't what he meant, of course. But it's what I heard.

Brothers From Another Mother

We are building a house in Avoid.

Now, this poses all sorts of challenges
that I never would have considered in suburbia where new houses pop up like weeds on every spare patch of land.

For example: In Avoid, once piping an wiring and major systems are in, it is normal to pay someone trustworthy to sleep in your house to keep people from breaking in and stealing copper wiring.

Seriously. It's a thing.