Back on the Map

I know, I know, I’ve fallen off of the blogger map.  I think I’ve climbed my way back on though!  We have had a rough month with ongoing allergies or sickness.  Nothing life threatening, but sickness means losing sleep.  Losing sleep means going crazy.  At least, in this house, none of us function well without sleep.  This is why we are crazy schedule-oriented with the kids because Jeff and I know this about ourselves – without good sleep we are one step away from jumping off the ledge.

We’ve celebrated some tremendous joys this last month like learning that three of our closest friends are expecting.  Our heart swells in rejoicing alongside these families.  We’ve also grieved some terrible losses over the last month including our beautiful friends, the Kurrles, in which the wife and little son were tragically killed in a car accident.  And we’ve taken time (often at 3am) to question our faith and what it means to us in the midst of all of these highs and lows.  Because there are no answers, no reasons we can comprehend, no clarity to the highs or lows, we are left with a couple of things – an egg game and a train set.  Are you scratching your head?  One of McBaby #1’s favorite things to do is play this memory game that involves eggs, haystacks, and animals.  She’s actually quite good at it.  I’m not a parent who thinks you should let your child win when you play a game with them – I guess I question the integrity in that.  We play games that she gets and she just honestly can beat me… not sure what that says about me…  And McBaby #2 loves the wooden train set that Uncle Stephen has loaned him for these young years.  He loves to tinker. So when we are left puzzled, confused, wondering how to live potentially a long time with so many crazy unknowns in this world and raise our children, for whom we’d give our very lives, within it, we can only do one thing.  Like Moses, we can take our shoes off knowing that our carpet itself is the Holy Ground where God Himself is dwelling among our little people.  Then, we can sit on the floor, turn off our iphones, ignore the laundry to be folded, and thank our lucky stars for moments like these where little wonder-filled eyes look back at us, little hands graze ours as we play, little hearts make big impressions, and little moments are the big stuff.