FREE BOOKS if you live near(ish) me

If you like good coffee and you’re an imperfect parent and you live in Pretoria then this Celebrating Life giveaway is for you.

I’d love you to have a copy of the best parenting book I’ve read.

And I’ve read some. The problem with most of them is that they leave me feeling confused or condemned. As in, wooden spoon? No wooden spoon? Or like: What?! You mean you actually used a wooden spoon?

Jaci Mun-Gavin is a friend of a friend. We haven’t met but we’ve chatted briefly on facebook. She’s a qualified robotics engineer and fulltime mom to her six kids. (Yip. Six.)  So, she’s pretty awesome. So is her blog.

Purposeful Parenting is Jaci’s first book. I recently devoured it. It’s like having coffee and a conversation. She (quickly) covers the crucial theory then plunges into practicalities. She is real about the overwhelming challenges of parenting. She is also real about how incredibly God has equipped us. She offers hope and humour, comfort and conviction, encouragement and inspiration. You’ll find yourself affirmed, as in, ‘Cool! I thought I was the only one insisting my kids do that!’ And enthused, as in, ‘What a brilliant idea! Why didn’t we think of that?’

So, go to Bayleaf in Cliffendale Drive. Sit. Relax. Have a cappuccino. Ask for a copy of Purposeful Parenting and it’s yours for free. (Just the book. Not the coffee.) There are 15 copies available. If stocks run dry (or if you’re reading this on another continent), have a cappuccino anyway and get busy ordering it here or here (Kindle).

FYI – there’s nothing in it for me. There’s definitely something in it for you. All I ask is that you pay it forward. Read it then give it to anyone with kids under the age of 10. You’ll be doing the human race a favour.

Enjoy! 

God’s glory in rice crispies, marriage proposals and loving the homeless

I saw God’s glory a lot this week. It looked something like this:

Monday

Knowing the answer, I ask Cam anyway, ‘Do you want milk with your rice crispies?’ And he says, ‘No thanks Mom. The snapping sound sometimes annoys me.’ He only ever wants sugar. Lots of it. Every day I sprinkle a little less, hoping to wean him. There’s no fooling him. ‘Mom, is there sugar in my rice crispies? I can’t hear it crunching.’ Ah well. Praise God for heightened senses.

Angelina is the homeless-jobless-schizophrenic lady who lives in our street. Everyone knows her. Everyone accepts that she spends her time lounging on the manicured lawns of our shady suburb. She irritates me. She yells at our gate for coffee. She freaks me out because she jabbers and gesticulates madly to imaginary people. She’s dirty. Scott loves her. He’s playing on the driveway, seeing with God’s eyes. He calls to her across the street and waves and smiles, ‘Ha-wo An-geena!’ And he shames me because Jesus died for Angelina, too. I make her coffee.

Tuesday

Cam starts acting up. We’re going camping tomorrow. He’s excited at the prospect of sleeping bags and camp fires but still the tantrums erupt. We’re starting to see a pattern. This happens every time we go away. He wants to stay in his pyjamas. He asks if he can pack some of his treasures (like an alarm clock, a plastic ball and a lanyard from a conference). We ask questions and the truth tumbles out in tears. He doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t know what the place will look like. Ironically, we talk him blindly through the imminent future with Deo volente confidence.

Wednesday

We drive north for an hour or so, to a game reserve. It’s not all the internet swore it would be. The boys see this as a bonus. The long delay at the gate because there’s no credit card machine and we have no cash simply means they each get another sucker while we wait in the shade. A flat tyre means helping Dad do guy stuff. A bright green pool of algae just means more bugs to catch, more leaves to scoop. Monkeys eating rusks in our tent is just cool.

Scott wants to hug every animal we see. He’s leaning out the windows, arms open wide – ‘Hug! Hug zebra!’ I’m strangling him with his t-shirt, trying to restrain him. We drive back to our camp with the sun red and dusty over the bushveld and peace seeps slowly in with the darkness. Lying in our beds we listen to the night. Cam asks, ‘Dad what’s that bird?’ Murray says, ‘Fiery-necked nightjar.’ Cam says, ‘Oh. It sounds like Grampa’s phone.’ Which it does because my dad, keen birder that he is, has the nightjar’s call as his ringtone.

(We also forget that we are supposed to be having supper at Murray’s folks tonight. And there’s God’s glory in their subsequent forgiveness!)

Thursday

We’re busying ourselves with breakfast and morning ablutions. Scott is calling us calling us calling us. Eventually I go to him. He’s saying ‘Wino! Wino! Wino!’ And there it is. A rhino. Twenty metres away.

We get home, chuffed that the boys’ feet are filthy as they should be. We scrub them back into respectability because their much-adored Uncle Lachlan is bringing beautiful Analia for dinner. We can’t wait to meet her. The guest room is immaculate for her. (The playroom sleeper couch is a mess for him.) While she’s upstairs showering he tells us hush-hush that he’s proposing tomorrow and we do silent ecstatic screams and then pretend all evening to know nothing. Wow. God’s glory in fairy tale romances and dreams come true.

At some point over lasagne or ice-cream Lachlan reminds us that the Mandarin word for crisis is made up of the symbols for danger and opportunity. And I think, God shows his glory in language and in the curveballs of life.

Friday

Cam and I visit Eugene and his mom, Marjeanne. Eugene is also visually impaired, and a mini-superhero. Marjeanne chats to me about mainstream schooling and magnifiers and the strange magnificence that comes with disability. She puts wind in my sails.

Saturday

I get to go to a birthday breakfast and a ladies’ retreat while Murray makes tepees and totem poles in the garden with Chief Running Bear (Cam) and his sidekick White Eagle (Scott). God shows his glory in the loving sacrifice of a husband who might quite love to be out on his mountain bike but who gladly loves instead his little tribe of pretend-pretend Indians.

Tonight I’m thinking, I love that we can celebrate God in these glimpses of his goodness. But in a way it’s even more thrilling for me to think that maybe tonight somewhere over a dark ocean a storm will rage. No one but God will know or see. And he will take his glory. Maybe tonight somewhere in a dark sleeping house a tired desperate patient tender mom or dad will get up to hold a baby. No one but God will know or see. And he will take his glory.

‘God is the only being in all of existence who can be said to possess inherent glory. We don’t give it to Him; it is His by virtue of who He is. If no one ever gave God any praise, He would still be the glorious God that He is, because He was glorious before any beings were created to worship Him… His glory is His being – simply the sum of what He is, regardless of what we do or do not do in recognition of it.’ – John MacArthur

‘God’s glory is the visible splendour or moral beauty of God’s manifold perfections. The “glory” of God is the exhibition of His inherent excellence; it is the external manifestation of His internal majesty. To “glorify God” is to declare, draw attention to, or publicly announce and advertise His glory… Glory is the beauty of God unveiled! Glory is the resplendent radiance of His power and His personality. Glory is all of God that makes God, God, and shows Him to be worthy of our praise and our boasting and our trust and our hope and our confidence and our joy! Glory is the external elegance of the internal excellencies of God. Glory is what you see and experience and feel when God goes public with His beauty!’ – Sam Storms 

 (You just never know when you're going to need a good pumpkin outfit.)

Why you should totally get kids

Some people have kids they didn’t want. Some people want kids but can’t have. Some people love their kids. Some people leave their kids.

I’m not being flippant about the massive undertaking of parenthood, or about the gut-wrenching dream-shattering pain of those who ache for kids of their own. I’ve just been thinking about it because our cell group has been wading through the sometimes straightforward, mostly mysterious book of Genesis. This week we looked at the whole ‘be fruitful and multiply’ thing. Which raised the question, ‘Is God commanding us to have kids? Like, is it a sin if you don’t?’ Apparently it comes down to grammar. In the Hebrew, Genesis 2:28 is an imperative not a command. In English that’s the same thing, but apparently in Hebrew it’s not. In Hebrew it’s sort of a blessing. So choosing not to have kids is not a sin. There are compelling, godly, out-of-our-hands reasons not to have kids. Of course, there are selfish reasons too.

Here are six ways (of many) that we’ve received the be-fruitful-and-multiply blessing, which has turned me into a card-carrying advocate for welcoming small people to the world.

Kids are about relationships. We’re only four and a bit years into the parenting journey, but I am daily amazed by the power and the beauty of the baby relationships brewing under our roof. When Scott drags me into the lounge to dance it speaks to something in the deepest places of my humanity. We’re made to connect with other warm bodies. (Like, as I type this Murray is hiding behind a curtain in the lounge and the boys are looking for him. Riotous.)

I do so want Cam and Scott to unravel the strings of potential embedded in their DNA. I suppose every mom is chuffed when her kids are achievers in the traditional sense, but I really hope to shape a different world view for my boys. I hope to teach them that life is not distinctions and accolades and promotions. Life is character and rich experiences and more than anything deep, healthy relationships. If they are labelled as average in every measurable discipline but exceptional in people-loving and difference-making and life-changing then I hope that they will know the satisfaction of true success. The eternal investments we make in other people are, after all, the only thing that counts in the end.

Kids are about riches. If we had five bucks for every time the boys made us laugh we could probably buy a small developing country. I gave Cam timeout the other day for being cheeky. He kept talking and his trouble was growing. I advised him to keep quiet until his timeout was over and he had calmed down. I had to stifle my giggles at his swooning melodrama: ‘But Mom if I don’t talk I will be voiceless forever!’

And then there are the heavy nuggets of heart-gold, like Scott using a four-word sentence for the first time this week. Or just watching them both at the kitchen counter, mesmerized by cheese rolls after church every Sunday. And when they climb on me for random hugs in between playing cars on the carpet. Cha-CHING. Rich, I tell you.

Kids are about reaching. I hope that how we love our kids will be an image – a nebulous reminder, if nothing else – of how God loves us. As in, unconditionally despite our mess. And maybe a cynical someone watching and doubting will be drawn to Jesus. Kids are about the Kingdom.

Kids are about reality. They bring quiddity like nothing else. They are ecstasy and grief with limbs. Like, last week, Cam had a really bad day. He ran into a glass door. He smacked into two different car side-mirrors in a parking lot. He missed a step and fell. When this happens he doesn’t lash out with tantrums. He pretends he’s fine. He goes quiet and hopes no one sees. And bits of my heart just break off when his voice is sad and whispery: ‘Mom, why do I keep bumping into things?’ The next day I thought I’d make French toast for breakfast. I lumped some butter in a pan. Cam was on the other side of the house. ‘Mom!’ he shouted, ‘I smell butter melting!’ Which is just astounding. And not sad at all.

Kids are about reality, and reality is about the strange symbiosis of triumph and setback. Scott drank juice from a cup this week. Wow, I thought. Then he dunked his chips in it. Oops, I thought. He’s learned to drink from a cup because he watches his big brother. Same thing with the chips. I guess that’s how we roll.

Kids are about reliance. They keep you down to earth, and close to God. They’re born with chisels to chip off your pride. They take you quickly to the end of yourself, where you are left with two choices: strong drugs, or total dependence on God.

On Thursday I went to the post office. To cut short a long story about a long queue, I couldn’t contain Scott. The slowly snaking line of silent, polite people who avoided all eye contact and have clearly never encountered a screaming laughing running toddler wild with curiosity eventually took me to a teller. Who then disappeared. Along with what was left of my sense of humour. I now had Scott on the floor pinned between my legs, red and yelling (both of us). Cam yelled also: ‘Can someone please help my Mom!’

At supper that night Cam asked me for all the Afrikaans words for the fruit of the Spirit. (Yes. Freaky.) I felt The Nudge, gagged on some pride and asked their forgiveness for not displaying said fruit in the post office.

This week I also gave away our baby things. Sounds arbitrary, but it was kind of sad, and another opportunity to trust God to take me through the seasons. To remember that he is my everything.

Kids are about redeployment. Of self. (And sleep.) I guess sacrifice is the hardest part of the blessing. But there’s nothing more beautiful than people who forget themselves in the tender nurture of others, to God’s glory. I hope I get it right sometimes.

Celebrating snow: God’s glory when stuff falls from the sky

So we’re marking exams in Room 6. Joking and jabbering and hoping and the snow is getting closer. Jo’burg. Centurion. Newlands. I’m glad Murray convinced Scott to wear a jacket this morning. Now it’s… here! White wafting otherworldly freezing bits of happy event. We’re outside. Boys spill from the boarding house. I’m jumping and whooping and tweeting and facebooking this tiny slice of strangely surreal out-of-place African miracle while hardcore schoolboys in short sleeve shirts try to hide their delight and watch me with wry smiling nonchalance, like, she's slightly mad. We split the exams, grab red pens and run. This is too great a day for marking. I drive through familiar Faerie Glen streets with snowflakes on my windscreen and I can’t wipe the smile off my face all the way home. I burst in and drag Maria onto the stoep and we try to catch flakes on our fingers. For the first time in either of our lives we quickly bring in the washing because the snow is making it wet. I phone Murray from the lounge to describe our garden – snow in the sandpit. My folks are fetching the boys from school. I’ll meet them straightaway (like I said, marking can wait). I want to share this Big First. Lola has snow on her lashes. I leave her blanket under the carport. I’m suddenly wracked with pangs of prayer for people without blankets or carports who would curse my glee. I quickly stop to buy nappies and chat about the weather to numerous random supermarket all-walks-of-lifers and I wonder at how precipitation can rain on the parade of racism – classism – sexism – washing away watersheds. The boys romp a bit in the wind of Granny’s garden. Cam loses interest quickly. Flimsy melting invisible stuff doesn’t rock his world. Until he catches a few flakes on his face and hands and jacket and we start dreaming of a white Christmas and his imagination fills in the magical gaps. Scott won’t remember today or how his eager earnest trotting about melted my heart more quickly than the snow. It’s the first time it’s snowing in all nine provinces and the first time I’m picking jasmine in my mom’s garden with snowflakes drifting loose across my face. We head home to heaters and blanket tepees in the playroom and we order slap chips for supper because snow in our city is worth celebrating. The boys are manic with Dad-excitement but eventually they surrender to toothpaste and prayers and we marvel, quiet and grateful, that God allowed us a glimpse of the storehouses of his snow.

Job 38

If I had a super power

Dear Cam and Scott

This has been some week. In London, the super powers of the human race have been on display. Muscles stretching and bulging and throwing and rowing and fencing and jumping. Riveted, the world is watching on couches – fingers flexing as channels are flipped. You two were even inspired to try some intriguing gymnastics sequences in Granny’s lounge. Cam, you were wearing a dress at the time. Quite memorable.

Looking at these athletes you get the sense that they have it all. For sure, you are growing up in a world where you’ll be told you can have it all. And be good at it. It's not true. No one can have it all. Not men, not women, not Olympic athletes. And if we’re trying to have it all we’re certainly not going to be good at much of it. No one has super powers, really. But the world promises us a bunch of impossible opportunities and then raises disparaging eyebrows when reality pans out differently.

You might find that Christians also have unspoken super power expectations of what our lives should look like. I’m not talking about wanting to honour God with a life of obedience – having a heart for holiness. I’m talking about an unreal picture of perfection that doesn’t necessarily translate into warm-bodied lives and isn’t necessarily, well, necessary.

As a mom I sometimes see this phenomenon. It’s like, if your kids are at the ER so often they contact the social workers, or potty training has become a series of wet disasters in shopping malls, or your twenty-two month old is waking up nine times a night (can’t think where I came up with that last example) then you might not feel free to share that. Because other moms (and their kids) seem perfect. And so you end up perpetuating the super power pretence when some honesty might be just the thing to crack open the compassion and accountability and loving advice. Some honesty might also be just the thing to make Christians more approachable, and more believable.

I want you guys always to have the courage to be honest. Never let fear of people’s disapproval force you into an unrealistic super power mould. Moulds are very uncomfortable if you don’t fit into them. Courage will cost you: you’ll be vulnerable. But vulnerability earns you permission to enter people’s lives and make a difference; pride and pretence slam doors in your face. Also, have the courage always to receive other people’s honesty with supernatural grace.

So I wrote this poem for you. I was kind of experimenting with performance poetry. So picture some prancing about and stuff. Do the actions. Whatever J

If I had a super power

If I had a super power

It wouldn’t be

Web-spinning flame-flinging shape-shifting.

If I had a super power

It would be

(To climb out of time.)

The world wouldn’t miss me: frozen in one

Tick

Of the clock while faster than thought I could

Get Stuff Done.

Then I would slide smiling back into tick-tock time –

To-do list

Ticked.

If I had a super power

It would be

To see myself through God’s eyes

And be horrified and humbled –

O happy day – Jesus washed my sins away!

If I had a super power

It would be

Perfect discernment

To speak hope into every come-and-go heart I might momentarily

Hold

In my hands

If I had a super power

It would be

To ask of everything I chase with time – tears – tension:

Really? Is this life?

And then abandon these for super-pursuits

If I had a super power

I wouldn’t be a super-mom

But I would fling wide my super cape

To cover from condemnation tired-moms trying hard

With superiority raining down in snide remarks

I don’t have a super power.

But I’m filled with the Spirit of Power

Who speaks galaxies into light

Holds the lambs tight

Hushes the waves

Loves with unblinking gaze

Leads where the water parts

Breathes life and softens stone hearts

‘All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.’ – 1 Corinthians 9:25-27

Cam the engineer

Dad came up with the brilliant idea that we should have a theme every week. So this week’s theme was pirates. You said ‘Aaarh!’ a lot.

The pirate ship – sleeping quarters.

(Another) pirate ship, rowing to land and frying the catch of the day

Amber visited this week with Amani, Thomas and Maia. Cam, Scott and Amani were playing on my iPad – too quietly. I said to Amber, ‘Let me just check what they’re doing…’ Cam – exasperated – countered, ‘Mom I’m not buying apps!’

Craig’s 5^th birthday party