“…children are a heritage from the Lord…”

Children are a heritage from the LORD, offspring a reward from him.  Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court. Psalm 127:3-5

Family can mean so many, many different things. Some of us, me for example, have very small families. My parents immigrated to the USA. Both of them are only children. So I have no aunts, uncles, or cousins. And I have just 1 brother. Any other relatives I have are living in other countries. My paternal grandparents came to the USA, because they did not want to be away from their only son. So for me, 6 people at the table was big. I married into a large family. My father-in-law was the eldest of 10 siblings. My mother-in-law is the eldest of 3 siblings. They are all “Germans from Russia” or “Volga Russians” and they all married within their culture. Until me. Our wedding  was filled with literally hundreds of people I did not know, and may have only seen that one time.

When we got married, we wanted a large family. We decided on 6 kids. Well, biology and God chose to make that number 2 and then we adopted, which brought us to 3 boys. My oldest son has two kids (although I think they may be thinking more might be fun) and our middle son has three girls (and we think there will be more!!). Our youngest is not married yet, so we will see on him. My sister-in-law, however, decided to keep up with her paternal grandmother (Grandma Kaiser) and is the mother of 10 children. They are vacationing with us with 9 of their 10. It has been so exhausting but has brought so much joy and laughter. I will miss them terribly when they leave. And when they leave, I leave for 10 days! LOL! Our lives are insanely crazy right now, but as my head hits the pillow each night I am so grateful for these many moments with family.

When you live so far apart, relationships have to be re-established and sometimes there can be mis-communication and missed opportunities for healthy communication. It is a tightrope and/or a tap dance. But if you work at it, you can enjoy such a wonderfully full life.

Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates. (Proverbs 31: 28-31)

The crown of marriage (quite literally in Byzantine/Orthodox weddings) is our families. Some of us have to adopt to have a family; some of us have friends who become our families. However you gain a family, it is what we pivot our lives around.

In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence,
and his children will have a refuge. (Proverbs 14:26)

I truly feel that when we surround ourselves with the love of God and instill this love in our families, we are doubly blessed. But oftentimes we worship differently and this causes issues, too. In order to keep the peace we sometimes have to be silent. And being a silent witness to your beliefs can challenge even the greatest theologians. And above all, we need love. And love translates to some of the most sublime moments we will ever experience in our lives. This week, we have had some of the most precious moments in our lives, so far. And it is through “smushing” all this family together around a single table; into a motorhome and SUV and trudging through rain and wind and enjoy the beauty of where we live, that we are forging a stronger family. We are blessed.

 

 

 

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“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

So, I did it again. LOL. I got another tattoo. At my age, with my grandma, crepe-y skin. It hurt. And it bled more than my other one. This one has colors. LOL. But it is still small. It’s on my wrist, just like my other one. I’m a tatted-up grandma. Cracks me up, just to say it, let alone be it!! LOL!  I find it so interesting how people look at you when they see tattoos. I know, because I was like that, too. Immediately judging a book by its very colorful cover. It is such a shallow view of life. Truly, it is. I had one of the best conversations on God, the Crusades, and modern faith with the man who tattooed my first one, a year ago. How people choose to decorate themselves is up to them. Some have different colors of hair, or hairstyles, each time I see them. There are those who pierce themselves (which just looks painful to me!!). Others have long, fake, fingernails in a variety of shades. Women wear all sorts of make-up. Then there is jewelry and clothing, the car you drive, the house you live in, the job you have, the church you go to. It is all adornment of some sort or another. Look at Matthew 6: 25-24 below:

“Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit unto ^[a]the measure of his life?  And why are ye anxious concerning raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:  yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?  Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?  For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.  But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.  Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

The Lord cautions us not to worry about our clothing (or any adornment) or the food on our tables, but rather, be concerned, firstly, about His kingdom and His righteousness. And don’t worry about “the morrow,” because today has all its own evils. My tattoo is an “omage”, if you will, to my family. I got a “Forget-Me-Not” flower surrounded by 4 hearts and a little swirling going on, all the size of about a quarter. The Forget-Me-Not is the state flower of Alaska. It is also the flower for Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Both of my parents suffer from them. Our nuclear family consisted of mom and dad, my brother and me. So I got the 4 hearts for us. As my brother and I were chatting the other day, he said when he and I start going dementia on our families, and people comment on it, we can say, “It’s just normal in our family.” And we laughed. As I got tattooed yesterday, I died a little bit inside. Because that is the truth of it. We are losing our parents and more than likely, our families will lose us, too.

As I woke up this morning and saw this tattoo – after removing the bandage I wore all night – I noticed all the blue. LOL. I am not really a blue person. I tend more to greens and reds, and lately, purple. The swirling and hearts are purple. But wow, that is a lot of blue. There is even yellow in the center. LOL. Yellow. Yeah; not my color. And as I thought about seeing it all the time, I realized that it may make me uncomfortable, but Alzheimer’s and Dementia are not comfortable, at all. When my oldest son got a tattoo of the “crown of thorns” around his bicep, I cringed. It was ugly. His comment to me was, “Well, Mom, the crown of thorns was ugly. It is supposed to be ugly. If Jesus could wear it on His head and live through it, I can wear it on my bicep and remember that sacrifice.” Now, he wants to morph it into some sort of Celtic thing with his Spartan helmet for his unit in the Army. He sacrificed much for our country and he will be incorporating that crown of thorns into it. I get that. But when I first saw that gorgeous young man of mine with an inked arm, I actually cried. Because I had grown that baby in my womb and the Lord and I labored over making the perfect skin…and he inked it. LOL. I was not a happy mama! And now I have one more tattoo than he does! He was having a ball, giving me alleluia for getting a second one last night! The stinker.

We memorialize things in this world, to remind us of important events and feelings. The Islamists get this and they regularly destroy statues and memorials to history, because they want to erase it from our memories. “Out of sight, out of mind.” People in the South are tearing down memorials to the Confederacy. It seems stupid to me. The Confederacy is alive and well in all its descendants, as is all of our shared Christian history. Tearing down a memorial won’t erase those memories. For me, I have tattoos to remind me; to give me comfort. They are not for anyone else. They may assault the senses of others; they may cause others to look at me differently or perceive who I am differently…that is okay. If my new ink bothers you and you cannot see past it to see me, I am sorry. Perhaps we were not meant to be close friends, after all.

And I wept, thinking about how my parents will be forgotten themselves, as they, too, forget. Neither of them wants a gravesite. Neither wants any sort of memorial service, either. Both asked to be cremated. My dad is donating his body to a medical school in Texas and when they are done with it, they return the cremated remains to the family; my mom is donating her brain to the Alzheimer’s Association and once they remove it they will cremate the rest and return it to her family (me). So I will have no memorial to visit for my parents. And if I somehow am lucky enough to be gifted with Alzheimers and/or dementia, when my family sees my tattoos on my wrist, I hope they will remember the struggles my parents had, and I had with them, and be gentle and kind to me. That they will see my tattoo of the Cross of Jerusalem and remember how fervently I loved God and fought for my faith – to keep it and witness it to them. My personal “Crusade,” fought and lost and won, for them and for me. That when they see this little flower all wrinkled upon my body, they will recall I waited until I was 61 years old to get it, and that I got it for my parents and for them, too. So none of us will forget each other, as we wade into the uncertain future.

“…on the path unwinding…”

The world is spinning and we are all hanging on, while it tumbles in space. And every once in awhile, it seems like there is a “hitch in the get along” and things go askew. We all have those days where we want to just crawl back into bed and hit the rewind button. I had several of those days recently. Thankfully, not back-to-back, or I would be nutsy….certifiable.

 ^“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

I was talking with my hubby, who has also been very stressed out lately, and I told him that if he continues to carry everyone’s burdens on his shoulders, he will be crushed with the weight of it. He said he knew that, but then asked me, “How do you stop caring?” And he is right. We both tend to worry too much about things and people and situations we really don’t control. We take on the burdens of others because it is just part of our nature. And sometimes it can weigh you down. A lot. And those are the days we want to stay in bed, hiding under the blankets, and just not deal with it.

As we age, we forget everyone else is aging, too. Sometimes it hits you when a friend’s kid all of a sudden is older and doing adult things, and you still think of them as a little child. Those years when my kids were young seemed to drag, but as they hit high school, life began to race by us. And somehow I related to my parents and other family members the same way – I forgot that as we aged, they aged, too. After speaking with my mom this morning, I was relating how my youngest son’s girlfriend’s grandma is my age. Ha-Ha. And my mom said she remembers turning my age 20+ years ago. And I stopped and realized she is 87 years old. I remember my great-grandma being 87. I remember my great-grandpa, at 90, saying he was just flat-out tired and dying a few days later. My dad (his grandson) is pushing 91 years old. My dad has Parkinson’s dementia, Alzheimer’s, and a host of other ailments. My step-sister (stepmom’s daughter) and I had a two hour discussion about our parents (they have been married more than 35 years now) and how their aging is not going well. I remember babysitting her when she was in junior high school. People thought her younger sister was my daughter. And now we are discussing our parents’ death wishes and we realized they probably won’t last the year. When did all this happen? When did she become a grandma, too?? I am used to the fact that I am older, but when did everyone else get older?

“Listen to your father; without him you would not exist. When your mother is old, show her your appreciation.” Proverbs 23:22

And we are trying to listen to our parents. We are trying to appreciate them and honor them. Dementia and Alzheimer’s make caring for them so very difficult. And it makes these last days we share with them very stressful. I kept thinking my parents would always be there. But they will not be. “None of us is guaranteed our next breath” (Thank you, Abouna Justin, for the quote). We all should be prepared to “meet our maker.” I’m not sure what state my parents’ faith is in, but that is not my business. I will share with them as I able to, from the place in which I find myself spiritually, and try to meet them where they are. However, what I am tasked with in the immediate future is respecting my parents for who they are and what they have done for me in my life, and ensuring their comfort as they experience the end of their days. I want them to know they are loved and appreciated. I want to keep them fed and warm and comfortable, and occasionally share a laugh together.

And I am doing this while still parenting a teenager; while being a grandma to 5 gorgeous grand babies, and still trying to enjoy the move to a new home. In a few days, my sister-in-law will arrive in their motorhome with 9 of their 10 children. I am looking forward to it so very much. But at the same time, I realized this is my last free Saturday. Because after this, I will have company at my home, and then I will be flying to get my mom and moving her in with me. My life is going to completely change. So is hers.

But I want to embrace it all with joy and hope and a love of God, sharing that love with others. Some days I know I will want to crawl back into bed and hide. But I won’t be allowed to do that. I will be guiding my teen towards adulthood, my grandchildren into childhood, and my mom and dad to “meeting their maker.” And in my head, I keep singing that Disney song from the Lion King….

Circle Of Life

Elton John

From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the Sun
There’s more to be seen than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done

Some say eat or be eaten
Some say live and let live
But all are agreed as they join the stampede
You should never take more than you give

In the circle of life
It’s the wheel of fortune
It’s the leap of faith
It’s the band of hope
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life

Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with the scars

There’s far too much to take in here
More to find than can ever be found
But the Sun rolling high through the sapphire sky
Keeps great and small on the endless round

In the circle of life
It’s the wheel of fortune
It’s the leap of faith
It’s the band of hope
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life

It’s the wheel of fortune
It’s the leap of faith
It’s the band of hope
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life

On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life.

And we are all spiraling along on our own circle of life. Things happen, days pass, the world keeps spinning on its axis. As each day morphs into night and we face another day spent, I hope we reflect on how we have moved through our own circle of life that day. How we have embraced these responsibilities we have been given, and how we celebrate all the joys we have experienced. Life is a blessing. Life is to be cherished. Each day of it. As I was struggling with anger towards my husband recently (cleaning out a garage is NEVER fun) I kept telling myself how grateful I was for our many blessings, and how incredibly blessed we were to have all this stuff we needed to deal with and put into its proper setting and place. The opposite – being homeless and having nothing – would indeed be frightening. And as I have learned through keeping a gratitude journal, there is something in every day and in every thing to be grateful for. Truly. So, I am grateful for this latest spin on the circle of my life. My Lord is with me every step of this life. I am grateful and I am blessed.