This sounds awesome.

But sometimes, I am actually unable to do it. Contrary to the popular saying, God does give us more than we can handle.

Sometimes, God does allow us to get into deep water when They know we can’t swim. (Today’s grammar lesson: I believe in a triune God, consisting of three persons in one Being, in whom are manifest both male and female attributes. Since we lack a neuter personal singular pronoun — “it” is for non-persons, I like to use our genderless plural pronouns for Them instead)

I know this because I’ve been there, floundering around, swallowing water, sinking lower and lower. This is hard for me to admit, especially publicly. I am a proud and independent woman. In the words of two-year-olds everywhere, “My do it!” Maybe I’m unusual, but when I need help, I feel like a failure. I can even wrongly interpret an offer of help as someone else insinuating that I am a failure. My reaction to this perceived (but untrue) insult, in turn, hurts the feelings of those who see that I am drowning and act to help. People like my husband.

God blessed me far beyond my wildest dreams by bringing Scott into my life. (Isn’t he the handsomest guy you’ve ever seen on a playground bench?) Scott actually washes dishes. He mops and vacuums floors. He even (you might want to sit down for this one) does laundry. He is the absolute best tidy-up-the-house-for-company person I’ve ever known. He isn’t perfect, don’t get me wrong, but he’s one of those rare quality guys who follows through on commitments and takes action when something needs to be done.

Yet I have actually been insulted and angry with my husband for daring to help me with things around the house. It hurts my pride. So I lash out.

I believe that God, in Their divine all-knowing-ness, sees both my prideful independence and the way that I, in my pride, hurt the people around me. And They won’t let me stay that way. That’s grace, isn’t it? Meeting us where we are but not leaving us the way They find us? Sometimes the transformation requires drastic action. Like letting me prance cockily into the deep end, knowing full well that I cannot swim there.

God is making me face the truth that, in fact, I’m Not All That. I can’t do it myself. I actually do need help. God didn’t create us to be self-sufficient. He created us to live together, to complement each other’s weaknesses with our strengths, and allow their strengths to complement our weaknesses.

(This was me juggling a babe-in-stroller, a wheelchair-bound non-potty-trained elementary-schooler, a barely-potty-trained toddler, and an easily-distracted preschooler. You can’t see the exhaustion in my eyes… but trust me. It’s there.)

In the midst of last year’s deep-end struggle, a friend strongly urged me to list specific ways people could help me and then be very up-front about sharing this. She saw that, on my list of priorities, “food,” “school,” and “sleep” came before “vacuuming,” “yard work,” and “laundry.” And at that time, I never got past the first three by the end of the day.

Some things that ended up helping me then included a person dedicated to getting Elli dressed, fed, and on the bus on school-day mornings (while I focused on getting Big Boy ready for his school bus and cared for the Little Boy who was an infant and Little Girl who was a toddler), another person dedicated to getting Elli off the bus and cared for each afternoon, a list of people willing to be on-call as emergency babysitters, a freezer-full of meals just needing to be thawed and heated, house-cleaning, lawn-mowing, and help with the laundry.

I still can’t say that I enjoy receiving help. But I’m getting better about identifying ways people can actually help. (Sometimes being specific is part of the problem.) I’m slowly realizing that I don’t have to be embarrassed or ashamed. Instead, I must be humble, gracious, honest, and thankful. In the same that way that someone’s help can and does bless me, my giving them the opportunity to help and my gracious receipt of that help can bless them.

I’ve also discovered that there is something worse than asking for help: being turned down. When I ask for help, I’m making myself vulnerable. When they can’t, it’s very tough to hear. And when they won’t or complain about it as they help, it shames and burns to the core of my being. It says to me that whatever it is that something else is more important to them than helping a friend in need.

So when someone asks you for help, please think about what it took to get them to actually say something. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it must be to prompt them to ask. Do everything in your power to help. If you can’t do the specific thing they ask, offer an option that you can do. If you absolutely must say no, be gentle and give a really good reason why. Whatever you do, don’t tell them that it’s inconvenient and do not complain. It’s never as difficult to give help as it is to receive it.

Little Boy requested “bled pweez bled” after he finished his dinner, so I cut him a piece and buttered it. After saying “Tanksoo” (I’m sad he doesn’t say “git-doo?” anymore), he pulled the center out and left the crusts. But when I snagged one and popped it into my mouth, he protested, “MOMMY! MY bled!”

(When I gave it back, thinking maybe he’d eat it after seeing me do it, he just tossed it back onto his plate. So I took it again, and ate it despite his protests. I dislike wasting food!)

Little Boy also discovered he likes quinoa (KEEN-wuh). That would be quinoa in the photo, all over the table. He had five helpings last night. Then today at lunch he discovered how much fun it is to sprinkle on the table and roll around.

On a more serious note, Big Boy asked why we go to church. He has also shared with Scott that he’s afraid of dying and going to the wrong place. He didn’t pursue it much further though.

Then, yesterday, he came up to me and said, “Mom? I was going to write this to talk to you about, but I’ll just talk to you now. You shouldn’t be sad about Elli. You have us! She is happy and talking and making friends. So you shouldn’t be sad about Elli. You have us.”

Big Boy has clearly been doing a lot of thinking.

This week’s Not Me! Monday theme is “Things the Dog Ate.” For I, the responsible and consistent mother that I am, did not leave brand-new, super-cute leather sandals for Little Boy out within reach of Xena Warrior Princess’s leather-loving jaws. I also did not fail to notice what exactly she was chewing until after she had actually swallowed pieces of one sandal so that it was rendered irreparable. Not me!

I did not leave our bedroom door open in a rare moment of absent-mindedness (or not so rare – I’m growing more and more concerned about my consistent forgetfulness), which Xena promptly took advantage of. She did not discover any clothes left un-put-away on the floor of our room, nor did she start slurping down a pair of underwear. And I definitely did not begin to pull it out of her mouth only to discover half of it was all the way down her throat and in her belly like a goat. Not me!

When Big Boy dropped his entire fried egg on the floor, and Xena snagged it in 1/2 second, before he had a chance to even stand up, let alone turn around and pick it up again, I did not scold him for losing the race with the dog to the egg. And I certainly did not intend for him to eat the egg that had fallen on the floor in the event that he got to it first since that would be unsanitary. And furry. Since I did not neglect the sweeping and mopping of the dining room floor.

Not Me!

I recently wrote about disturbing ways in which the U.S. society today interacts with death in the post “Death As Entertainment.” The games and horror movies tend to reinforce our desire to make death impermanent, less serious, and easier to ignore or push to the back of your mind. Many of you wrote comments sharing my distaste for this.

And then a friend wrote a very intriguing comment on my first Not Me! Monday post, in which she describes the struggle she faces in talking seriously with her children about hard things.

I think Finding Nemo was excellent but those were things far removed from us (the deep ocean) and I could explain them. But to explain the murderous heart of an insane man? I just don’t know.

How should we talk with our children about hard things, like death and cruelty and cancer and brain injuries and mental illness?

It would be very easy to say to myself that avoiding those conversations is the best thing for my children. In fact, I’ve done that in the past.

And I don’t think I’m alone. Many of us parents attempt to insulate our children from the existence of bad things. We don’t take our children to funerals or visitations. We avoid watching or listening to the news in front of them. We don’t drive through bad parts of town where our kids might see how the less fortunate really live. We have conversations about those who are sick or having surgery in private or in hushed tones.

Is insulation a good approach? It is easier, certainly, than trying to explain to a child what happened clearly but without going overboard, and then answer their questions. But is it better?

Since Elli, our firstborn daughter, died last year, we’ve had countless conversations with the kids about death. They wanted to know what happened, why it happened, where Elli is now… And that last question has been particularly confusing for them. They knew that the ambulance took Elli first to the hospital, then they saw her in the funeral home, and now she’s buried in the cemetery… but we believe in an afterlife, so her body is in the ground but her spirit is with Jesus? Shew! That’s enough to make an adult’s head spin!

But they ask really good questions. Often it’s the same question, over and over (especially with Little Girl), but I’m glad they are talking. (I ask the same questions over and over too!) And they seem to grasp at least some of our stuttering answers.

And they accept easily (at least, at the ages they are now), and more easily than I do, the answer “I don’t know.”

Several years ago we read the book “Teach Them Diligently” in a small-group Bible study about raising children. The author, Lou Priolo, talked about becoming aware of and interacting with our children in the “milieu of life” or in what happens naturally, every day. If I try to keep my children protected from the bad things in life, we won’t have those natural opportunities, those teachable moments, to have really open and honest conversations about them.

And they won’t experience the natural peeling back of the artificial that such events brings. There’s nothing like having a classmate or family member get critically injured or die to remind a person of their own mortality. And that, at least temporarily, points out how foolish it is to obsess over having the newest cell phone or prattle on and on about who dissed who in school or to fight with your parents about taking out the trash.

(Incidentally, I asked Big Boy to carry a bag of laundry from the bottom of the stairs to the washing machine, a distance of oh about 50 feet. As he dramatically dropped the bag to the floor, with a sigh far beyond his years, he declared, “So that’s what it feels like to be a slave.” I took advantage of the “milieu moment” to properly define the words “slave” and “help.” I am not sure if I avoided lecturing and engaged in an actual give-and-take though — turns out actually conversing with a child instead of preaching to them take a lot of practice.)

So I’m trying to find a balance between the two extremes: treating bad things flippantly, like they’re not so bad; and pretending they don’t exist at all. I’d love to hear from you on this. How do you approach the tough things in life with your children? What has worked and what, if you don’t mind sharing, has not?

Did I mention silliness?

I love how easily the kids make us laugh!

However, I seriously underestimated how much time it would take to keep a puppy from devouring everything located less than 36 inches from the floor.

I underestimated how exhausting it would be to make sure bedroom doors are always closed so the kids’ clothes and shoes and toys don’t get shredded.

I underestimated how much vigilance it would take to catch or prevent piddling and pooping in the living room.

And I underestimated how directly and actively I’d need to supervise all child-dog interactions to keep things from getting out of hand.

My new hobby is finding non-destructive yet time-consuming hobbies for Xena. And picking everything off the floor fifteen times a day.

It just doesn’t leave much time for writing. As I get a spare second here and there, I’ll try to share some here. Hopefully we’ll be back to regular blog programming when school resumes.

When painting Little Girl’s finger- and toe-nails bright pink, Little Boy became very interested in proceedings. To the point of begging, pleading, then insisting on having his toes painted too.

I most certainly did NOT paint my young son’s toenails a (nearly) invisible shade of pink. Not me!

When Little Girl forgot to use the bathroom at home before I took the kids swimming, I did not over-react when she had to go as soon as we got to the pool because of my irrational disgust with pool restrooms (Is this sentence long enough yet?). (Or maybe it isn’t so irrational – I did work as a lifeguard one summer and probably know too much for my own mental health.)

And then I definitely did not start ranting when Little Boy splashed his hands in the water on the floor in front of the toilet Little Girl was using, and then smeared the nasty water all over his face! That crazed-looking mother frantically scrubbing her toddler’s already-sun-screened face with soap while scolding the Little Girl about obeying mommy and germy bathrooms? Absolutely not me. No way.

(And Little Boy did not catch a summer cold within two days of the aforesaid pool incident. No sir-ee. No connection whatsoever.)

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

On the one hand, I think that Americans try our best to avoid serious, real discussions about it. We’d like to pretend that death is not an inevitable part of life. Trying to look and stay young and healthy has become a religion in itself. And I suppose the reason is that we’re uncomfortable with the uncertainty of what lies Beyond, and with what the ramifications are of whatever lies Beyond.

For all the dogmatic positions on it out there, both religious and non-religious, no-one living actually knows, empirically or experientially, what happens when you die, or afterward. Many say they know, but it’s always a matter of faith. It’s one of those things you can’t prove scientifically. You can’t send scouts ahead to collect stories, photos, and artifacts to bring back.

But on the other hand, death is everywhere. It’s depicted in increasing detail and gore in movies and on TV. It’s celebrated on Halloween. It’s trivialized in the many games we play, especially in online and electronic gaming. How is it that we are so uncomfortable talking about death as a real event in a person’s life, but yet we will play at it all day long?
(Image from the Playstation 2 game “Death by Degrees”)

I was taken aback when my 6-year-old returned from playing at the neighbors’ and reported his 8-year-old friend created him a character named “Death” for some wizard PlayStation game.

Our family has faced death. For real. In our home. It is final and it is serious. A person who was an integral part of you and your life just disappears one day. Never ever to return. It’s actually nearly impossible to wrap your brain around.

Maybe I’m totally off-base. Maybe playing games and making up wild and gory stories about death is our society’s only comfortable way of actually acknowledging it. Maybe I should just chill out and stop analyzing the effects on my kids, especially since they have experienced the actual death of a sibling.

But no. I don’t want my kids to play in such a cavalier way with the concepts and words surrounding death. While I want them to be familiar with the real thing and not intimidated by visitations, funerals, and the cemetery, I think there’s such a thing as too familiar, too casual.

I want my children to be sobered by death, grasp it’s permanence, and accept the reality that we only have a limited amount of time in this life. If they shoot dozens of characters on a video game every day and watch movies in which people are slaughtered in myriad creative ways, won’t they loose that important soberness and seriousness? In a game and in the movies, people “miraculously” resurrect. You can always start over. Not so in real life. Once you’re dead, you’re dead. There’s no restarting the game or replaying the movie. If you can at least begin to grasp that, I think you will be equipped to live well.