Faith To Turn Eyes Red

28 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in Dealing with Death, My Angel Baby Tags: , , , ,

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Why can’t I have faith like my sons?

Last week my 4-year-old was hunched over in one of our living room corners. His back was to me and I was certain he was up to no good.

I kept asking him what he was doing but he wouldn’t tell me. I think I asked him three times before he finally confessed – He was praying that his eyes would turn red.

Not. What. I. Expected. I think I said something like, “Why on Earth would you want red eyes?”

He shrugged me off, looked over at his older brother and said, “Are they red yet?”

He said it with such conviction and confidence that I knew he truly believed his prayer would be answered. Quietly and carefully my 6-year-old studied his brother’s eyes for a minute then happily declared, “I think I can see some orange!”

They both have amazing faith. Sometimes I take their faith for granted.

Like a month ago when my oldest lost an electronic recorder outside somewhere in our yard. We noticed it was missing right when we were supposed to be heading out the door to a family night at the elementary school. Knowing it was going to rain that night and probably ruin the recorder, we swept the yard dozens of times looking for it.

We were late for the school party and I was having a serious I-can’t-find-something anxiety/panic attack. I grabbed my 6-year-old, held onto both of his shoulders and demanded that he use his faith to find the stupid recorder. I suggested that he pray to know where it was.

Keep in mind I know my son has enough faith to do miracles, but I shouldn’t have asked that of him. I felt like Mrs. Incredible asking her daughter, Violet, to put a force field around the airplane when being shot at over the ocean. She knew Violet could do it, but the timing wasn’t right.

Despite my son’s heartfelt pleas to his Maker, he didn’t find the recorder. And because of my stupid charge that he pray to know where it was, he went to bed doubting his faith.

The next day I found the tiny black audio recorder in our garage underneath his bicycle. A place we had searched dozens of times.

Faith is a funny thing.

To this day my 4-year-old still has green eyes and my 6-year-old didn’t find his recorder when he believed he would be swiftly led directly to it.

Sometimes we have faith, but what we really want isn’t meant to be. Sometimes the timing isn’t right.

Try telling that to one of your children. Try telling that to yourself.

Sometimes no matter how much you believe something will happen, it just isn’t going to. It isn’t God’s will.

Like the night I stayed up waiting for my baby boy to move inside my full-term pregnant belly. Call it shock, call it faith, call it wishful thinking, I thought for sure that if I believed hard enough that he would come back to life, he would.

But I am left only raising three of my four sons.

It seems like every year around this time I face doubts about my faith. Those doubts make me grouchy and moody and I get stuck in a funk.

It normally happens a few weeks before April 22 – my third son’s birthday and angel day. The day he flew back Home.

I have a strong testimony of my religion. But when I stop and think about my little baby boy, buried in a cemetery 5 miles from my home, the doubts start to fly and the “what ifs?” and “will I reallys?” arise.

What if I never see my son again?
What if this life is the end?
Will I really get to kiss his chubby cheeks again?
Will I really get to raise him?

These doubts start in the corner of my mind and creep down into my heart where they paralyze my faith.

It doesn’t help that Easter – a holiday built on religion, faith, and resurrection – lands just before my baby’s angelversary. Oh how I miss him.

But sometimes the Lord doesn’t answer our prayers. Sometimes he’s trying to teach us something. Sometimes – like in the case of the missing recorder – he’s trying to teach someone else – your mother – something. Like to not stress out when things go missing. They’ll come around eventually.

And luckily so will my faith. It does every year, eventually.

I still don’t know if I will ever have faith that my eyes could change to red, but after wrestling with my mind and searching deep into my soul, I normally snap out of my funk. I remember the peace I have felt.

And although right now I’m still feeling a little off, a little agitated, a little tormented, I know I will find hope again, eventually.

Baiting A Leprechaun, Catching A Cricket

21 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in What's a mom to do?

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This should have been our year. We had 12 months since the last invasion to devise a new plan for catching leprechauns. But despite our best efforts, come St. Patty’s Day morning our traps were empty.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. My 6- and 4-year olds perfected their leprechaun traps for days as we all were forced to tiptoe gingerly throughout our living room.

After some training from his grandpa (who lived in Ireland for 2 years and is somewhat of a leprechaun expert) my oldest went for a traditional stick-propping-up-the-bucket trap. He used my mopping pail and a slingshot he found camping.

My 4-year-old’s trap was much more complex. He crafted it by using a giant dowel, a small whicker basket, yarn, and two toy grenades tied to the tip of a string.

How those mini men made it past the pair of grenades, I will never know.

Each night for a week before St. Patrick’s Day we would set the traps in hopes of catching a leprechaun. Each trap held chocolate as bait.

But it was all in vain.

The leprechauns made off with the chocolate and left a trail of mess behind.

How do I know that it was leprechauns? Because we have proof.

Caught in each of our traps was a small, bright green leprechaun hat. The hats must have fallen off as they tried to escape.

According to my 6-year-old, those hats are our proof. We also have tiny green and gold shamrock treasures that those pesky men scattered throughout our house.

In the kitchen and bathroom they danced around barefoot, staining the floor with dark green footprints. They hopped onto our kitchen table and left a note and some golden nugget candy pieces.

More proof.

I never know how my boys will react when something evades them, but this time they were thrilled. They sat back, popped a chocolate nugget in their mouths and dreamed of what the leprechauns may have done in our home.

Then we set off for church.

Little did we know that’s where we’d all witness the catch of a lifetime.

Toward the end of our first meeting I spotted a black cricket bouncing up the aisle next to our pew. My boys love creepy, crawly bugs so I pointed it out to them.

Big mistake.

The next thing I knew my oldest jumped over my lap landed on top of the cricket and cupped it in his hands. Then he picked it up by one of its hind legs and swung it within inches of my face.

Keep in mind this all happened in what was supposed to be the most reverent meeting of the day. Oh, and I don’t love creepy, crawly things nearly as much as my boys.

Trying not to squeal, I grabbed him, held him at arm’s length and told him to get that bug far, far away from me. He stood up tall, held his head up high and walked through the congregation pinching that cricket by its leg- all the while smiling from ear to ear.

I had to fan myself with a drawing pad to keep from turning beat red. Then tears streaked down my cheeks as I tried to quietly laugh it all off.

What are the odds that a cricket will enter the chapel? That I would see it? That my son would pick it up and fling it around? Only in my life.

All in all it was an exciting, successful day. Even though my little boys were slightly deflated when they woke up to empty leprechaun traps, they were energized by their new undeniable leprechaun proof.

And what’s better than catching a leprechaun? Catching a cricket in church.

They are both lucky, right?

Don’t Go Down There

14 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in Parenting Battles, What's a mom to do? Tags: , ,

home-alone-basement-7-copyI think my kids have an unhealthy fear of the basement.

My six-year-old is horribly afraid of being down there. Let’s be honest, he’s afraid of being alone anywhere in the house. But when I ask him to go downstairs he nearly hyperventilates.

My four-year-old is OK with going downstairs – until his older brother is around. He’ll be just find playing by himself down there while my oldest is at school, but ask him to go down after they are both home and they’ll sob uncontrollably.

I can sympathize. I don’t love the basement. I too was terrified of going into the dark downstairs when I was a child.

Sometimes my mom would ask me to go downstairs to get something. That’s when I’d make my younger brother go with me. Once I had grabbed whatever my mom wanted, I would book it up the stairs leaving my brother at the bottom crying. I figured if there was something dark and scary it could snatch him up first while I dashed away.

Sometimes when I had to go downstairs alone, I would sing at the top of my lungs in my best pop-star voice hoping that the robber/kidnapper lurking in the shadows of my basement would hear my beautiful voice and think twice before hurting me.

It all sounds so stupid now, yet at the time it helped me survive a scary trip downstairs.

My boys, however, aren’t scared of being snatched by a monster. They aren’t scared of being kidnapped by a robber. They are scared of something much worse – the furnace.

I should never have let them watch Home Alone.

I’ll admit, our old metal venting does crack and pop when the heat is on. And the furnace does roar when it is getting ready to blow hot air. But I don’t think it’s enough to terrify my two oldest children.

Recently, I was rushing to get ready for church while my 8-month-old was taking a quick morning nap. My two oldest were running around out of control (I think it has something to do with church clothes. I put them into church clothes and immediately they’re out of control).

Anyway, I told the oldest two to go downstairs. They wouldn’t. I yelled at them to go downstairs. They wouldn’t. Next thing I knew my baby was awake screaming and I had to tuck him onto my hip as I tried to slap on some make-up and twist a curling iron through a few locks of my hair.

I was furious. I knew that if my boys took their rowdy selves downstairs, I would have had much more time to get ready in peace and quiet while their baby brother slept.

When their dad got home he came up with a solution to getting them to spend more time acclimatizing to the basement. Now we have a new rule at our house – the boys can’t play or watch the Kindle unless they use it downstairs. If you read my recent post about my Electrical Breakdown, you could guess that I think this plan is brilliant.

I’m torn now, there is a lot less Kindle using going on at our house these days, but that also means my two little boys aren’t spending very much time in the basement.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to freak my kids out. I would never make them do anything to harm themselves or make themselves really uncomfortable. But I want them to spend more time down in the dungeon so they can realize nothing is going to get them – especially not the furnace.

Is that too much to ask? How can I help them not be so scared?

Swiped

07 Mar 2013 Leave a comment

by Natalie in Parenting Battles, What's a mom to do?

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I’ve never understood why people say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Because money is printed on paper, and paper comes from trees. So therefore money really is made or “grown” on trees. Right?

My kids don’t understand the saying either. Because for them money isn’t even made out of paper. It comes from plastic – a small rectangular thin piece of hand-held plastic to be precise.

They know exactly how the magic plastic card works. Just swipe it next to the checkout stand and viola! You’ve just paid.

They aren’t stupid. They’ve seen me do it a thousand times.

I put most of our family’s purchases on my credit card. Not because we can’t pay for what we buy, but because I have big plans to take my little family to Italy next year and am hoping to purchase our airfare with credit card miles. So I charge everything I can then pay my card off every two weeks.

I guess my children have been watching me closer than I realized. Last week I lost my credit card and if it weren’t for the “help” of my 4-year-old I never would have found it.

Now I have written multiple times about my stressed-out-OCD-I-can’t-lose-anything personality. So you can imagine my anxiety when my platinum card went missing. I was certain someone had taken it and was racking up my bill, skyrocketing past my spending limit.

Luckily I checked my account online and no new charges had been made, but I still couldn’t find the card.

I ripped through the house searching every coat, pant and jacket pocket that I own. I tore through my diaper bag and wallet praying I would find it shoved in the wrong spot.

After church on Sunday I stuck my head under each and every seat, nook and cranny in my van, hoping the card had slipped through a crack.

That’s when my 4-year-old spoke up.

“What are you doing mom?” he said.

“Looking for my credit card,” I replied.

“Have you checked my mission jar,” he said.

No. I had not checked his mission jar. Why would I check his mission jar? I never touch that jar – the glass-tile piggy bank he stores coins in. (He’s saving his coins to go on an LDS mission.)

I raced inside and snatched the jar. Sure enough, my shiny plastic card was tucked inside. I was so happy.

Despite my relief in finding my charge card, I still can’t believe he took it. And that he remembered where he put it.

But what I really can’t believe is how smart he is.

He told me he took my card and put it in his mission jar so he would have a way to pay for his “bills.”  You know as well as I that he doesn’t have any “bills.” But I guess it’s better to be prepared. Even if your emergency mission fund is a piece of plastic that comes with a 19 percent interest rate.

He’s as smart as the average American. When you need to pay for something expensive – like a mission – pull out the plastic.

It looks like we need to have a lesson on saving, and then another one on stealing.

I guess my card really was stolen. Luckily, it was taken by someone who isn’t quite old enough to use it – yet.

Out of curiosity I did some online research and found out that United States “paper” money is made of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. I guess money really doesn’t grow on trees.