First Hassel-Free Beach Trip in 8 YEARS!

Ok- for those of you who enjoy chasing children around the beach and feeling pretty much like a border collie as your toddlers venture too far one way or another- you might just stop reading here. I am not the kind of person who enjoy's chasing children down. Part of this may come from the fact that instead of having children, I had a litter, and was fairly overwhelmed and outnumbered right from the get-go. That aside, I must say- the 'litter' has finally reached a turning point and this past Saturday we took a trip to the beach for the day and, lo and behold, we actually enjoyed ourselves!! Hurray!
Ryan and I spread out a blanket on the beach and sat there reading Arthur Conan Doyle (No, not kidding) while our three children built sand castles, buried each other and collected shells- all without fighting, getting ridiculously wet and sandy (not sure how that happened) or wearing us out completely. We actually had some much needed grown up time and the kids had a chance to run and dig and play without many boundaries.
We followed this remarkable trip up with a BBQ at a friend's house on Sunday during which they did it again! No fighting, no mud, no potty accidents...and so I'm thinking, Am I being Punked?? We sat around for several hours with grown up friends, enjoying their deck and the beautiful sunshine in the Hood River Valley.
There have been moments in the last 6 years when we have questioned whether or not moving to the Gorge was the best idea- however, as I contemplate our church, our "family" and friends who invite us to BBQ's and come to our family birthday parties, who babysit our children and ask us to watch theirs- the people who see us and immediately put on a pot of coffee or yell my name in Safeway across the produce section- when I consider all of this, there is no doubt in my mind that this is where we belong, that this is the home we were meant to be in and the life we were meant to lead. I'm discovering a lot about myself, living out here- and some pretty amazing things are happening with me, with all of us.
Oh yes, on that note, for those of you who know what I've been teaching about the last 4 years- I've recently resigned from the director's position. Well, I've resigned from all of it actually. A very wise friend told me to act my age and I have to say, it was so refreshing to hear someone give me permission to do that. I'm 26. I'm not 40. And as much as I want to think that the opinions of others didn't matter to me, I think, perhaps, they did- altogether too much and in all too important ways.
So I'm looking towards a summer of relaxing, gardening, coffee dates and lazy afternoons with no 'paperwork', 'planning' or confidential phone calls. Enough is enough already. And maybe, if I'm very lucky, many more afternoons at the beach with well behaved children. :)

The Calling of Voices

My pastor, at hearing about certain issues in my life- loaned me a book which I am NEVER going to return.. (Well, I probably will- maybe...)
I found this so amazing and honest and down to earth that I had to share it: Maybe some of you are wondering the same things I'm wondering, like, 'What am I doing here? How did I get here? and, Is This It???. One never knows.

From 'Secrets In The Dark' by Frederick Beuchner

" There is also the moment in the gospels where Jesus is portrayed as going into the wilderness for forty days and being tempted by the devil. And one of the ways that the devil tempts him is to wait until he is very hungry from fasting and then to suggest that he simply turn the stones into bread and eat. Jesus answers, "Man shall not live by bread alone", and this just happens to be, among other things, true, and very close to the same truth that Charlie Gray (John Marquand's novel Point Of No Return) comes to when he realizes too late that he was not made to live on status and salary alone, but that something crucially important was missing from his life, even though he was not sure what it was any more than, perhaps, Marquand himself was sure what it was.
There is nothing moralist or sentimental about this truth. It means for us simply that we must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have on this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously. Everybody knows that. We need no one to tell it to us. Yet in another way perhaps we do always need to be told, because there is always the temptation that we have all the time in the world, whereas the truth of it is that we do not. We have only one life, and the choice of how we are going to live it must be our own choice, not one that we let the world make for us. Because surely Marquand was right that for each of us there comes a point of no return, a point beyond which we no longer have enough life left to go back and start all over again.
To Isaiah, the voice said,' Go' and for each of us there are many voices that say it, but the question is which one will we obey with our lives, which of the voices that call is to be the one we answer? No one can say, of course, except each for himself, but I believe that it is possible to say at least this in general to all of us: We should go with our lives where we most need to go and where we are most needed.
... Maybe that means that the voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness. What can we do that makes us gladdest, what can we do that leaves us with the strongest sense of sailing true north and of peace, which is much of what gladness is?...I believe that if it is a thing that makes us truly glad, then it is a good thing and it is our thing and it is the calling voice that we were made to answer with our lives.
....Jesus said,'Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,' and in the end every word that proceeds from the mouth of God is the same word, and the word is Christ himself. And in the end, that is the vocation, the calling of all of us, the calling to be Christ's. To be Christ's in whatever way we are able to be. To be Christ's with whatever gladness we have and in whatever place, among whatever brothers we are called to. That is the vocation, the destiny to which we were all of us called even before the foundations of the world." F. Beuchner- Secrets in The Dark

Breaking the mold...

ok, that's it. I don't fit.
I'm not talking about my clothes here, people. I mean ME. I don't fit. And I must admit, at first, this was a very aggravating part of life.
I got married and put on the 'married hat' and behaved accordingly- I baked and cooked and learned to sew. And then when I had children I put on the 'mommy hat' and organized baby toys and tried to be like all the other moms by packing sippy cups and extra 'big boys' or 'big girls' and there was an entire 'baby arsenal' in the back of my car. NO MORE.
I'm taking the damn hats off, girls, so stand back.
Here's something interesting: Melissa hates to bake. It's a big pain in the neck and I only ever want to do it again if I'm baking for something special, like a friends birthday. It does not give me any joy unless someone else will enjoy it. That's it. I am SO going back to refrigerated cookie dough. NEXT...

Melissa's house is MESSY. I don't mean a little messy- I mean, laundry on the couch, dust on the tables and very often, a sticky kitchen floor. I refuse to care about this anymore. I mean, I'll clean up for company, but it's time to obliterate the myth that I'm tidy and homey. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

Also- Melissa is addicted to puppies. I'd like to tell you that I have 4,000,000 pictures of my kids on my computer- but alas, that would be a big fat lie. No, I have pictures of my dogs on my computer. Granted, some of them are there for advertising reasons- but not all of them. Futhermore, the dog/child picture ratio is unmistakably askew. It's something I intend to work on. I realize the dogs will not matter in a decade or so and I might very well be missing a lot of my childrens photo ops- I get it. No need to tell me. Moving on...

Melissa has retired the 'Christian hat' as well. Now, before you go into cardiac arrest- let me clarify. You should know that at least half of the person I was previously, was totally FAKE, including the "I'll pray for you" line, the "The Lord knows What He's Doing" line and the "God's Got A Plan" line. Those are Christian-isms and I refuse to say them. I want to be the kind of Christian who's honest and can still relate to the rest of the world. No more hokey one-liners to cover over the fact that I don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going or what's going to happen when I get there.
The truth is that I'm totally screwed up and I'm not sorry.

You know, I think that at some point we are all sparked by something that makes us re-evaluate what we believe and who we are. I may not fit into the mold of 'good mommy or good wife' any longer- but I have to tell you, I like myself more now than ever before and feel as if my life has finally exhaled. And the gift I hope I will be able to give my children is that of authenticity, something that no amount of my falsified perfection could have offered.
For those of you who liked my peanut butter cookies and cheesecake, sorry for any disappointment. I'll give you the recipe- and I will be enthusiastically happy to come and eat it with you ;p