They love the witty, midrange dialogue and being shocked by all the relational foibles. “Lorelai, nooooo!” is their frequent reaction.

I, of course, have to remind them that this is a show and not real life—except for the constant chatter part and the dying on every emotional hill part and…well, what do you know?

Art indeed imitates life.

My boys are incapable of minding each other’s personal space.

It’s sweet from 7:00 a.m. to exactly 7:08 a.m., at which point physical proximity results in injury. It seems a twisted natural law governs siblings: every action must produce an entirely unequal, disproportionately excessive reaction.

Variations of this law apply to stubbed toes and banged shins, though the relational component is missing. Radiators are notoriously unyielding.

The drama of our home is overwhelmingly abundant.

Jibber-jabber, conflict, everyone’s unedited soliloquies—put Shakespeare to shame.

I replay a scene in which one of my daughters, exhausted by being the age she is, melted onto the kitchen floor and indulged in silent, flowing tears. I could empathize but still had to make dinner.

I continued chopping onions and then stomped around her to throw the scraps in the garbage.

After an intensive day of parenting tweens, I often counterintuitively scroll through my camera roll.

I feel the shape of my babies’ bodies through the screen and smell their clover-fresh pink mouths. Such innocence contrasts sharply with videos of everyone crying at the same time while I console them from behind the camera.

“What’s going on, guys? Why are we so upset?”

I sound so young, burnt out, and completely sincere as I watch the grumpy two-year-old repeatedly stick her foot in the three-year-old’s face while the screeching baby provides the soundtrack.

History reveals we’ve always been a dramatic bunch.

Not to be left out, I have a tendency to spring an argument on my unsuspecting scene partner under the Friday Night Lights of our kitchen. Some people unwind after a long week; I ask for prosecco and validation of my passionate opinions.

It’s good that I married a man who will gently say, “hell naw,” and point me to Jesus.

I take household management seriously.

In my more myopic parenting moments, I find myself managing not just the tasks of the house, but the people as well. Oh, that our melodramas could be organized like a budget spreadsheet or to-do list.

But emotional conflict will seep through the cracks of any system and wear down even the most even-keeled mom until she screams,

“Cut. It. Out!”

Many years ago, I taught my kids a little song about treating others the way you want to be treated: the Golden Rule. I smile at myself now.

In reality, my son didn’t know he didn’t want to be punched in the arm until his brother did just that. I didn’t know how much I disliked being dismissed until my daughter rolled her eyes at my helpful suggestion.

This rule, it seems, will be tried, tested, and pushed to its limits.

How do you know how you want to be treated if you don’t know how you don’t want to be treated?

Right now, I’m in the presence of a lovely still life—a bowl of bright oranges against a snowy window.

The table where I type starts shaking because my son can’t eat lunch without tapping his foot incessantly. Elsewhere, conflict brews, the results of which will either be catastrophe or laughter. Who can tell?

My body bristles at the rising volume, and Managerial Mom instincts start kicking in.

Then I envision the Light of Christ slashing through our home, revealing all the mini theatricals performed within.

This Light penetrates and softens, leaving nothing hidden. I want to create an environment where He does not merely convict (“Cut it out!”) but also exhorts us to repent and be free.

This process takes time and constant repetition. Until a future glorious day, there’s no distinct arrival point where all of our emotions are sorted and harmony reigns.

So I will quiet myself like a weaned child. I will wait a beat.

This time, I will follow my Director’s lead.

To show it was late and you were done,
you scooted to my feet, your head at my knees,
and wailed.

I needed a moment too long to dry my hands
before lifting you.
I felt your devastated weight. 

It was no surprise, then, to be called “Witch”
or told you hated me. 
I was never going to be the Girl Next Door.

I had prepared instead
to be the Narrator. 
Each scene would have an Aesopian ending.

But that one time you writhed on the floor
in front of the bed, 
I restrained you in what I hoped was an embrace. 

The denouement surprised us both.
There was no lesson here. 
Just agony and the unknown. 

After that I became less afraid
because we had been to the furthest reaches
and had survived. 

Like Beatrice, you declare 
I kill you by saying “no”.
That's just how you tell me you feel safe. 

I glanced over to see Shawn’s reaction and reading panic, threw out an essential caveat, “Oh, don’t worry! It’s silly! Nothing important or life-altering!” Shawn looked instantly relieved but then I blurted out, “Well, at least not yet.”

Recognizing that I was trespassing on my husband’s patient nature, I revealed that I regularly enter the annual HGTV Dream Home Sweepstakes. Should I win, I wanted him to be prepared for an official phone call or email sometime mid-spring. “Actually, I’ve been entering this contest most years since I was 15,” I continued, with a touch of pride. “I only thought to tell you now because, well, you tend to be skeptical and would likely hang up on someone who said that your wife had just won a house.” Now I was embarrassed. But because Shawn is kind, factual and uninterested in dream homes, he replied with an “okay” and was ready to move on. I, of course, had to add, “At least I don’t have a gambling problem!”

My strong belief in God’s providence has prevented me from spending more than $20 on lottery tickets in my lifetime. Hand over heart, I’ve only played when the Powerball jackpot is over $1 billion and every single American also plays. It’s historic, exciting, completely illogical and would require nothing short of divine intervention.

This Dream Home sweepstakes, however, seems to have side-stepped my convictions, and every year I find myself doing the same small mental calculations. It only takes seconds to enter. The odds are way better than the lottery and it’s free! I tell myself I’m winning even if I don’t win because…well..

Nope. It doesn’t really make sense. It’s emotional. And if I’m going to spend even those fifteen seconds a day on it, I might as well own what I’m doing—and repent of the notion that any of it is within my control.

…

The only dream I had when we moved into our current home was to never move again. After three moves in as many years, I was bone-achingly tired and happy to find a rental that met the most basic criteria: in a safe neighborhood, close to our current community, possessing a roof and a single bathroom.

This 1,200 square foot home is a little impractical for the six of us—the pantry is tiny, the basement damp, and the refrigerator three-quarters-sized. Still, the odds of finding any home at such a low rent in such a great neighborhood are quite low. So, from the start, Shawn and I decided to view this bungalow as a provision. We knew that God had something for us here and we worked toward contentment–despite an initial squirrel infestation and a drop-ceiling in the kitchen.

Before long, however, we started to play pretend by imagining what we might change about this house if we could buy it from our landlord. We would remind each other of its ideal location, but criticize its lack of insulation. If this house was ours we would definitely make some changes. We’d keep its charming character intact while modernizing with energy-efficient systems. We agreed that it shouldn’t cost so much to heat and cool such a small house and that, for goodness sake, we needed another bathroom at some point!

…

This month marks the start of our eighth year in this house. I can’t believe it.

When we first moved in, our kids were six, four, three, and nearly two, and the family rhetoric was that this house worked for now, but not for long. It would be fine through the phase of early bedtimes and odd-day bath times, but surely not through adolescence.

Well. I blinked too quickly.

The Lego bins are slowly being passed up in favor of playing outside with friends, without my direct supervision. My eyes are no longer fixed on the linoleum floors where toddlers once wobbled. They don’t linger on the Formica counter tops I used to wish were soapstone. Instead, my gaze is fixed on the front door—the one my thirteen-year-old rushes out each morning, adrenaline pumping, and returns through each afternoon, heavy with stories, disappointments and questions that require more wisdom than I alone can offer.

…

In one of His many acts of grace, God has been working in the hearts of my kids despite my occasional discontent and longing for a forever home. On the heels of a fight with her sister over their small shared room, my younger daughter remarked that she guessed she wouldn’t have anything to write about as a singer-songwriter if she “had her own room and got everything she wanted without having to wait.” An easy, pretty life, she said, would make for boring songs.

Living in a home that, by Instagram standards, is considered charming but insufficient has changed me. I used to feel strongly that limitation delayed blessing. Now I see how often it delivers it. This humble house is where patience is practiced and longing is disciplined into gratitude.

I still imagine a different house sometimes. I still enter the sweepstakes. But I recognize that God is playing an entirely different game: one in which not even the smallest detail is left to chance, one based on His good and loving plan for my life and not my fleeting desire for an additional half-bath. God is far less concerned with square footage than He is with formation, and the dreams He is shaping inside these walls will last into eternity—a reality that is both solid and incomprehensible to me.

I am no detective but I did start asking questions about why this was happening regularly. Had I changed the movement with which I had been applying mascara these past 25 years? Not likely. Had my eyelashes grown?! An exciting prospect but not likely given that I’m at the age where only undesirable facial hair growth is taking place. The latter unfortunate thought led me to my final, grim conclusion:

Gravity has pulled on my face to such a degree that my eyelashes now brush my orbital bone. It follows, then, that freshly painted lashes would leave their mark after a blink or two. And because we live in a fallen world, the right side of my face appears to be responding differently than the left, the result of which is faintly Picasso-like—imperceptible to anyone but me, of course.

I once enjoyed an efficient makeup routine, applied quickly before blithely turning my back on the mirror. Now I find myself fanning my lashes dry before going on my way. It’s a small inconvenience, but the whole episode has made me more self-conscious than I’d like, which is exactly what I don’t need right now, as someone raising daughters in a world obsessed with “defying gravity” on a many levels.

…

(I rarely give specific parenting advice. I’m not an authority on anyone’s kids and I’m on a steep learning curve with my own dear children. However, there is one tip that I feel a near compulsion to share with everyone I meet and it’s this: walk regularly in a local cemetery. Go by yourself when you’re too fixated on your middle-agedness. Go with your teen when they want to talk…and when they don’t. Take your spouse along and have a moment to reflect on how hard life was for those in past generations. Teach young kids how to respect a hallowed space. Personally, these regular walks remind me that I am not the judge of anyone’s eternal soul and that a good and gracious God is).

On a recent walk in a cemetery that is the resting place of many of the Gilded Age names of the streets in our town, my oldest daughter and I stopped at a humble marker, ingrown into a mossy hill. Her name was Clara, a beloved wife who was born in 1806 and passed away at 22 years old. She didn’t appear to have been buried in a larger family plot and the lettering on the stone was worn so that her last name was difficult to make out. I wish that the etching had been deeper and the inscription more detailed. In a moment of projecting my own desires on the past, I also wished that Clara had been afforded more time for her fresh face to develop the deep lines and soft, tired eyes that come with a long earthly life. Oh, that she could have experienced the effects of gravity on her 38-year-old face! As we left her grave site, I hopefully envisioned Clara living in a glorified body with her Maker and concluded that she, being with Him, is not concerned that her time on this side of heaven passed too quickly.

Between the realization that my face is sinking toward the earth and my fondness for graveyards, I think I can say my midlife crisis has come early. But, thanks be to God, through Christ I am assured that though my “outer nature is wasting away, [my] inner nature is being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16). And I feel it! Do I want to leave this world early? Absolutely not. Sweet Clara’s grave marker is a warning that to be frozen in history as an ingénue is not to be desired. But do I also long for the day when I can be recognized as myself by Jesus Himself? With all of my being.

…

In one of the more romantic home school moments in our house, my eight-year-old paused a task to come caress my face with his sweaty hand. When I asked him what he was thinking he replied, “I don’t know really. You just look like…you.” He also noted, factually, that I had some red blotches on my cheeks.

While I do wonder what features of my physical appearance will be recognized by others in heaven, I am thinking more and more that we will ultimately see each other as my son saw me. I will behold my Savior and though I’ll notice His wounds I will just know that it’s Him. And I think His people will look at each other and deliver a line of poetry and truth without artifice, “Oh, it’s you—I see now. It’s you.”

Subscribe now

In my particular season of life, hot dogs are an attractive food. I have four growing kids whose caloric intake is impressive, costly and time consuming to manage. I attempt to maintain a degree of dignity in our kitchen by squeezing in fresh produce and stretching our family palette with new recipes, but ultimately the economy of tubular meat can’t be beat. Slice open the package, preferably over the sink to avoid “dog juice” getting on the floor, pinch and pull out one, two, three hot dogs and fling them into a pan to fry for 5 minutes. If you are really pressed for time, a minute in the microwave is just the ticket. Not 2 minutes though! Hot dogs can be explosive and having to clean a greasy mess would outweigh the goal of the whole thing: maximum calories for minimal effort.

Another sign I had seen for years while driving my main route around town is one that offers half price large pizzas, Monday through Thursday. My subconscious filed this offer away for just the right time about eight months ago when a shocking bill from another favorite pizza spot forced me to swap Pizza Fridays, an institution in our neck of the East Coast, for Pizza Whichever Day Is Half Price. Now, twice a month, I confidently pick up three large pies and feel like I’ve not only saved money but have practically been given food. I have written a handful of online reviews in my life (I wish I could write more but…time!) and one of them was a creepily effusive review for Primo Pizza. May they feel the love and never cease to save a busy mom both time and money, amen.

As a newly-minted mom of a teen I am realizing that the power of fast food is not just in its efficiency but in its capacity to foster connection. Occasionally, I’ll surprise one of my kids with a frivolous pink treat from the drive through or a spontaneous pit stop at McDonald’s and I instantly become both hero and confidante. The pent up observations start pouring forth and I discipline myself to smile and nod so as not to break the spell. Forever ago and yesterday, I had four car seats in the back of my van and would set everyone up with those little rubber-topped snack cups of whole grain Goldfish so as to buy myself a moment of peace. These days I relish the opportunity to nonchalantly deliver a line that will break the silence: “Want a Spicy Chicken Sandwich?” How the times have changed!

…

Oddly, one of the very, very few things I’ve written in recent years is a poem about a hot dog. It fits here solely because it is about a hot dog.

Hot dog

How abundant a life we lead

that a healthy

strong

increasingly broad

t-shirt clad

eleven-year-old boy

can rush through the house

with his LOUD

thumping gait

and forget a hot dog in the pan

and burn it just past the point of edibility

and fling it in the garbage

before anyone has time to think.

Maybe someone would have wanted it?

What abundance!

What a blessing in disguise…

in the trash can.