This might be one of those stories where you just had to be there…but anyway:

Last summer, I hopped a train from Brussels to Amsterdam for a day trip. In my pocket, I had a ticket, a few euros, my cell phone that was in the “off” position because I’m too cheap to pay roaming charges, and my passport, which was mostly unnecessary unless I was planning on going to the slammer.

That’s it. I didn’t even carry strawberry lip gloss in case I met a random Pierre who wanted to kiss me under a cobblestone bridge.

If I was smart, I would’ve had a multi-lingual traveling companion or at least a Dutch-English dictionary, but I’m wild about adventure. Or at least, I like to watch it on the teevee. Adventure is why I have six kids. Actually, I’m more of a big picture, concept person who likes to delegate details and worry about the particulars later. Pesky details are for the house help. (I do not have house help.)

On the way to Amsterdam, a French nun sat down next to me in the second class cabin. At the next stop, a dark-haired woman boarded the train and took the open seat on the other side of me. She was a prostitute. So there we were– one, two, three – quite the traveling parody.

My husband later asked me how I knew both of their occupations since none of us knew how to speak the others’ language ( <--subtle nuance alert), and I said, “There were both in uniform.” I was in uniform, too, with my sale-priced JC Penny pink v-neck sweater and kicky little gold hoops.

Well, this was just too dreamy. Maybe this was a movie. Irony is delicious to me. Do you ever feel caught in the middle of two extremes? I was feeling sure God had a sense of humor. That maybe the angels were teaching a lesson on superlatives -- clothed, clothed-er, clothed-est -- and they had to line us up to make the lesson easier to understand for the concrete thinkers in the group. Or maybe someone was just messing with me. Or maybe this is normal and I need to get out more.

I toured the city by foot before getting into a cab, fighting with the driver for stealing my money, and then getting dumped off in the Red Light District.

I don’t know how or why it happened. I just know that there was a nun, a housewife, and a prostitute sitting in a row on a gray train one summer in Amsterdam. As it turned out, the nun’s train ticket was for the wrong day. Since I was paying attention, I looked at us all and smiled.

One reason I avoid writing is because I only like to do things I’m good at. Fear of failure is the reason I never auditioned for music school. I was afraid to fail; I was afraid to hear from yet another person that I wasn’t good enough. That, and I needed a way to make a living that didn’t involve a street corner and a hat on the ground with quarters in it. So I got a degree in education which is basically the same thing.

Writers do well to engage one of two things: great content or a willingness to bleed a little bit in public. The best have both; the worst have neither. The problem with my own situation is this. I live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes the best thing that happens in a day is that a calf dies in a convenient spot. Plus, the kid that could be the subject of a few epic blog posts has asked not to be on the internet. Drats.

The other problem is one of vulnerability. I’m afraid of looking stupid. I hate appearing weak even though I am. So the whole writing thing is really just a huge therapuetic pain in the rear. Sometimes you dig into the deep recesses of your brain for ideas, and lo and behold, there’s nothing there. I hate those months.

When I wrote yesterday’s post, I hestitated with the story because I knew I was breaking a big rule. The rule is this: Good Christian mothers don’t put their children in daycare. (There’s probably another one about modesty and gym clothes, but whatever.) Of course, I’d argue that it was a wise decision given the circumstances, and puh-leez, there was a two hour time limit so I wasn’t exactly sipping margaritas in the jacuzzi while my children cried for me. But the internet wasn’t in full swing yet, and so all I had was the Bible and a low dose of prozac to inform my conscience.

I think this is the paragraph where I’m supposed to talk about how serious I am as a Christian, how much I want my children’s accomplishments to be known as something bigger than “Well, they don’t murder small animals.” Okay.

Sometimes God intervenes in postpartum depression with a miracle, and then other times, you just look at the options, piece together a plan, and muddle through to the other side- simply thankful to have made it there.

Real life is hard. Sin and imperfect circumstances aren’t things reserved only for the heathens and people who play Texas Hold ‘em with the rent money. Stuff finds us even when we don’t go looking for it. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Sometimes it’s because we’re stupid, and sometimes it’s because sin touches us all like a cancer.

Ten years ago, I was a fitness maniac.

I’m being serious. I ran three miles every day, and then I spent another half hour lifting weights until I cried. And afterward? I would drink a spinach protein shake for lunch. I know, I know. Nobody believes me when I tell that story now. Everything jiggles when I walk nowadays, and not in a good way. So I understand their suspicion. Plus, everyone knows I won’t eat spinach anymore unless it has a glob of fried cheese on it. But trust me, I’m much more tolerable this way.

It’s just that the local gym offered childcare. The care included doing crafts with the kids– the kind of crafts from a woman’s magazine with glitter and glue and finger paint. A smiling staff equipped with a plastic knife to scrape the Play-doh out of the carpet? Sold!

Going to the gym was a perfect arrangement for our family during the preschool years. My husband worked long hours and traveled a lot. Exercising gave me the air I needed before spending the rest of the day breathing life back into three very small, needy children. This is what pulled me out of a deep postpartum depression, and as a bonus, my homeschooled children got to carry a fruity snack in a real lunchbox. It was a win-win.

I don’t think I ever saw that situation as a “problem” with a need for a smart, handy solution. When you’re in the middle of a crisis, you don’t always realize what’s going on. It’s easier to diagnose other people’s situations; solving your own problems is trickier and not nearly as entertaining as listening to the Dr. Laura program on xm in the afternoons. (Sue me.)

Sometimes I think back on those early days with nostolgia. It’s not just because I could walk up a flight of stairs without holding onto the handrails and getting winded. It’s because I saw myself as I was – tired and barely hanging on – and then I did something about it, something other than my usual complaining and excuse making. Making the decision to change my life was actually a pretty smart thing to do, even if it was a road I followed only because there was a dangling carrot disguised as preschool crafts.

I’m cognizant of these problem /solution scenerios because my oldest is a teenager, and my second oldest is about to take over the world if Goldman Sachs will let her. Now, I don’t see the teenage years as a problem, per se. I just mean that I foresee many more situations that need solving, paths that need choosing, and decisions that need praying over. I want the “Dora promotes witchcraft” mommy wars to please come baaaaack.

I want to know: What is the perfect time limit on movies and video games? How much work will grow my sons into men but not break their spirits? How can I know when to hold a hard line and when to back off and give them space? Are teenage males biologically incapable of putting a trash liner in the trash can? I just want to know.

I’ve noticed there’s not a secret, magic formula for getting it right. Sometimes we make decisions, and by surprise or sheer genius, we get it right. And then other times, we forge ahead in another direction, and egads, we realize that was not the right thing to do at all. (God, please bless all the firstborn children.) Praise Heaven for U-turns and forgiveness from the people you hurt along the way. Because I’m counting on it.

But, man, oh man. Someone please. Just give me a child who doesn’t need expensive therapy when it’s all over. Just one.

Life surprises you sometimes. Yesterday morning, for instance, I woke up and there was a newborn calf standing beside her mother. A heifer, even. My net worth went up about a hundred dollars just like that. My happiness meter went ding, ding, ding. She made pregnancy and childbirth look so easy that I had a good mind to slap her.

I love new babies on the farm. This thing about having human babies, though, was a different kind of surprise for me. None of my pregnancies went like the kind in the magazines with “Five foods to eat for a smart baby” on the cover. I didn’t glow; I didn’t nest; and I didn’t smile. Smiling was for happy people and toothpaste models, neither of which were me at the time.

Those years of pregnancy were hard. I vomited so long and so hard that I’m sure my leg muscles came out with the Phenergan. And if I had nerve to stop the laugh track and put on the creepy music, I would tell you that there were times I wanted to die so that the misery would end. Like a runner in the middle of a marathon, pain can make you feel like you’ve hit a wall and you’re not going to make it. If you keep going though, sometimes there is a second wind surprising you right around the second turn. And sometimes, you just drop.

Like I said in my last post, I got a surprise last year. One day I didn’t have a sister and the next day, I did –just like that. The shared childhoods folded into each other, and we didn’t have to try to think of something interesting to say to keep the conversation going. There she was– a friend who liked me because I’m loyal and fun and not because I made all the same lifestyle choices that she did. Pure awesomeness.

And just like that, one day it was over. The baby was born and the nausea was gone. My sister was here, and then she was gone. SURPRISE!… ugh, surprise.

Sometimes I wonder about the thing inside of us that keeps us going when misery is the easier choice.

There are surprises around the corner, and I wonder if it is hope that makes us look for the good stuff, even when we don’t always know we’re looking. Is it hope that helps us pay attention, that keeps us looking forward?

Last month, I read Unbroken. It’s a story about a U.S. soldier in a Japanese torture camp. The details are horrible. Since I spend my days vacillating between being a weenie and the incredible hulk, I figured that the latter would win and I would curl up in a ball and die if I were put in that situation.

But my husband likes to remind me (when he is not busy convincing me it’s improbable I’ll die in a murder mystery and that I don’t have to roll down the windows whenever we drive over a bridge) that God sends comfort to the afflicted, not the ones playing party games on a Friday night.

After bad things happen, I think it’s hope for present and future grace that causes us to get up one day and make a pizza with feta on it, not because that makes anything better but because it means we’ve not given up. In Hebrews 11, the faithful are commended for their desire for something permanent and lasting: “But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.” (v. 16) And sometimes I think that it’s the prayers of the saints that delivers this comfort to us when we can’t reach out and grab it on our own.

Something bigger than duty causes us to fold a dishtowel in perfect thirds and give it a pat pat for good measure. We keep going. We do the next thing. And then all of a sudden, things are back to the new normal. Ordinary days creep back into your life in a slow way, as if to remind us that taking just one more step forward is the right thing to do.

My sister, Christine, lost her fight with breast cancer a few months ago. She was 40.

I want to talk about it, but it’s complicated. Every time I go down one path in my mind, it leads to another. And for a 500 word blog entry, that makes writing about it tricky. So I’ll do this in parts over time. This is the first piece.

My sister deserves a great essay, but I don’t know how to write that. I want to do something nostalgic and hopeful. But I can’t perform under pressure, and it’s easier to be “busy” than have to wrestle this stuff in my mind.

I want to tell the truth, but I know the truth is not what people want. People want the characters in a story to be either Melanie Wilkes or Hitler. Straight forward. Good or bad; definitely not a-little-bit-good and a-little-bit-bad. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if we found out Billy Graham drank himself a toddy after every crusade? We wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Recently, I read a novel, and I vowed it’d be the last in its genre. How do these stories sell? Love is uncomplicated, the boy always gets the girl, and nobody ever cusses the universe when something we love is lost forever. And definitely, nobody ever has sex unless it is a book written by Mark Driscoll.

The truth is that my sister and I were never close when we were growing up. She was older than me by five years, and we hung out in different crowds. She did hard drugs and snuck out of the house, while I found Jesus and congratulated myself for my good thinking.

So when she found Jesus after her diagnosis, I ran into her arms and we cried until dehydration set in.

Actually, that’s not what happened.

The truth is that I didn’t believe her, and I kept my distance like a self-righteous jerk, waiting for this phase of her life to pass.

But it didn’t pass. And the awkward thing was, Well, now what? Are we supposed to act like friends? Are we supposed to ignore the ugly spats we’ve had? And what do we talk about? There’s baggage here, and it’s uncomfortable.

I don’t remember who made the first step. Maybe it was both of us just doing what we could to make things easy on the other person. And that counts for something.

But one day, she called me while I was at a shopping mall. It was bad timing, but she had something to say. I plugged one ear with my finger to block out the noise from nearby tables and sat down.

She told me that God had changed her heart, and that she was sorry for something she’d done to me so many years ago.

I was so sorry too.

And this was the day — the day I sat down at a cheap, plastic table in the middle of a busy food court to answer my cell phone – that I began believing in miracles. I think I believed before, but not in a way that had grit. It was more of a cheap kind of hope, a gamble that’d I believed would work out in the end because the odds were good. But that day, I knew that if God chose not to heal her of cancer, He’d done something so much bigger. It is better to lose your body than to lose your soul. I know that now. I believe it in the dark corners of my mind.

From that day forward, we’d had almost a year to make up for the 35 years that were lost. We visited three times: she came to Kentucky once, and I went to Europe twice, the last time to be there as she passed.

We Skyped for hours. When we ran out of gossip and ideas and Bible verses (we never really agreed on doctrine…), I gave her cooking lessons from my laptop. I would put my computer on the counter, and do a little show for her. I knew she’d never need to know how to make a white sauce, but I didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes I think we try to act normal, as if in doing that, maybe things will really be normal.

My sister loved my blog. (Don’t hold that against her.) I know she wouldn’t mind sharing this letter:

Hey Amy,

I just wanted to tell you again how much I enjoyed your visit. I wish I felt better the last few days you were here but am happy that I felt well for most of the time.

My heart is so elated over our newfound relationship and I find myself regretting all the time lost because of stupid things in the past. I realize that God had to bring us down different roads to finally reconcile us and I am so happy.

I feel like I have made a new best friend in getting to know you better and it brings me tears of joy to say “I love you” to you for the first time after a lifetime of not being able to. As we come from the same stock, it is much easier to express ourselves in writing sometimes than to actually say things in person.

This does not change the intensity of how I feel. I guess the biggest problem with saying things in person is the fact I probably will cry and blubber incoherently rather than get my point across and this could be awkward. I am just tickled pink by getting to really know you as a person and I find that you are really wonderful, fun, sweet, and just lovely. I am surprised and delighted that we have so many things in common and my heart just wants to bless you in every way possible.

Before you left I wanted to pray a blessing over you but the opportunity didn’t come up. I wanted also to tell you how I feel but every time I thought about it it made a lump in my throat instead of words. In my prayer time I pray a blessing for you and your family and I really look forward to spending more time with you.

One day, we will. We’ll definitely find each other again. In the meantime, there is one less person in this world rooting for me, and the afternoons in the kitchen right before dinner are a little more quiet.

Sometimes I think I’m doing this all wrong.

There’s the sock drawer, for instance. Okay, okay. There are FOUR miscellaneous sock drawers in our house, probably more. That’s just what I know about in the laundry room. I’ve never seen the inside of my teenager’s dresser; I pretty sure there’s stale Doritoes under socks that he wore when he was seven.

It’s true. The kids’ socks don’t have matches. If you look on my kindergartener’s feet, you will see that he has on two socks, but I can guarantee you that they are not two socks from the same white tube sock Hanes package. I count on the fact that nobody goes around checking my kids’ ankles. I figure that everyone has their own lives to live. And except for the lady in the produce section at Wal-Mart last week, I’ve been basically right about that.

There are bigger fish to fry. Like the time my fourth grader was learning how to write a step-by-step paragraph. The assignment was to describe her morning. The teacher pointed out that she forgot to include getting dressed. “Oh,” my daughter says, “That’s because we get dressed the night before so we can make it here on time. We all sleep in our school uniforms.”

Yeah.

At least, she is the child who religiously brushes her teeth, so that saved what was left of my reputation. It could’ve been another child (who will not be named) who was assigned to write about his or her grooming habits, and if that happened, I’d be in jail right now for neglect. You have to look on the bright side of things.

There’s also all the stuff I can’t write about on the internet because when it’s all said and done, I don’t want to embarrass myself or my family. (I’m being serious.) I think you should let four years pass first, and then you can talk about it. Yes, I think four is the magic number. That sounds about right to me.

I remember being 18-years-old and walking through a fancy neighborhood. There was this house, and it had climbing roses all over it. There, I thought. Those people are happy. They have to be happy. Who wouldn’t be happy with climbing roses greeting them with a fragrant perfume as the breeze wafts into the breakfast room while bacon sizzles in the backdrop of life?

Fast forward a bunch of years. Greg planted a climbing rose by our breakfast room. (Our breakfast room happens to be the lunch and dinner room, too.) The climbing rose is still alive, but there’s no dreamy smell to the two cream colored roses it coughed up in the last three years. I’m going to Miracle Grow that baby in the spring, and then I’ll sit by the window to wait for that to make me happy.

I have this image in my mind of the way things are supposed to be. That maybe if I got my act together once and for all — maybe if my house was organized enough to find some socks around here (clearly, not a lofty goal) and my garden wasn’t embarrassing — I’d be happy. Maybe if my marriage was sparky and romantic and my friends always remembered to invite me to parties. Maybe if my health was better. Maybe if my kids wrote dazzling thank you notes and were the epitome of gratefulness. Maybe if I didn’t wrestle addictions and lose. Maybe I’d be happy if my sister was still alive.

Maybe.

—–

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 26)

I didn’t intend to take an internet break this summer, but the power supply on my Mac broke. I’ve been waiting on the cord to make its way over on the slow boat from China and then through the U.S. government mail system. I live only forty minutes from Amazon dot com, but they do not have a drive-thru window.

I imagine in some marriages, one spouse could just borrow the computer of the other spouse, but that is not the way my marriage works. Greg is PC because he is a programmer. I am Mac because I like stuff to actually work when you push a button. We stay in our separate corners. There is a lot of trash talking in our house.

School starts for us in exactly one week, so it’s been a good time to take a break from writing and linking. Whether our kids were in school or we were homeschooling, I’ve always looked forward to the start of the school year. The rhythm suits us. But for the first time, I’m not ready. I don’t want it to happen. I want life to slow down. We have not had a proper summer.

What is a proper summer? Summer is sleeping in, watermelon, and fireflies on the porch. Summer is hooking up the hose on the trampoline and then telling your little boy to “use the bushes” because you don’t want him running through the house dripping wet. Summer is gooey homemade popsicles that somebody named “nobody” knocked over in the freezer. There is no stomach flu in summer…. the season in which God’s common grace smiles on us all.

You know that summer is allowed to be over when you’ve lost too many Uno cards to have a proper game. We’ve lost three quarters of the deck, but I’m not done yet. I want to draw two.

We had our calf last week. I’m not sure what her name is. We’ve called her a lot of things but nothing sticks. She’s a Guernsey x Jersey. Here are some pictures of the birth. They’re graphic.

The birth is beautiful; it’s the flies that are gross. I did not take the time to photo shop out the flies. It’s all I can do to put pictures in a folder and then find them again.

That’s not a calf. That’s a picture of Greg. He’s cringing from embarrassment because I don’t know how to organize things on my desktop. He bought me a Mac so I would stop calling him to fix my computer. (I’m not sure how to take that.)

It sorta worked and sorta didn’t.

He says my computer is “not a real computer” so that’s why he doesn’t know how to help me with all my problems.

I’m stalling so that if you are easily grossed out, you can click away.

Still here?

Here are the pictures….enjoy.

This Sunday I leave for Brussels to visit my sister for two weeks. The reason she does not live in Mississippi or Oklahoma or a little town in the Keys is because she married a French dude and left the states ten years ago. Belgium is far away, but it’s a whole lot better than living in, say, Mississippi. I’ve never been to Mississippi, so I’m extrapolating based on tourism revenue.

Maybe I will walk around a little village in Germany or eat lunch in Paris, too. All I need is a backpack and another destination and I will be free. Maybe I will find myself.

Maybe I should take a map and not get lost. I’m taking a train to my sister’s house, and after that, I’ll eat a lot of food and cuss about my diet. I’ll practice my three French phrases with my four-year-old niece and smile to men on the street named Pierre or Jacques.

My sister Chris is in bed. She’s doing fantastic and she is doing awful. It depends who you ask and what day it is. Her cancer is spread everywhere and the doctors have given up hope. But what do they know? They told her she’d be gone last January, but last week she went to the movies. On morphine, sure, but you’d need morphine too if you had to watch European movies. Bunk the doctors.

You really want her on your prayer team. Now I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in God-as-a-vending-machine. I’m just going to tell you how it happened.

Last week, we needed our cow to calve so we could leave for a family reunion in Tennessee. Small dilemma in the scheme of things (and I mention it at the risk of being punched out by people with real problems), but I prayed. Nothing happened. I asked the kids to pray. Nothing happened. I told my sister about our dilemma on Skype. She agreed to pray. We hung up, and then I walked out to the pasture. The calf’s front legs poked out. And? It was a GIRL.

I’m just saying that’s exactly how it happened. We pray for my sister, but she prays too.

*********

This morning I spent several hours fluffing my porch plants in preparation for my trip. It won’t matter, though. I’m trying to give the flowers support care – a little spraying, a little pruning, a little fertilizer – before I leave. I can pretty much guarantee that even though I leave detailed instructions on their care, they’ll all be dead or on life support when I get back.

Plants are finicky things. They need me. There are nuances you can’t write down for a nine-year-old, but I’ll try:

• Don’t forget they are there.
• Don’t use the “jet spray” setting on the hose unless they are on fire.
• Don’t let the cats sleep on them.

It won’t matter.

I remember the last time I left the house. I went to the hospital to deliver my sixth child. When I got home, the family mistakenly led me up the front walkway where I saw that my beloved impatiens were all dead. Not just wilted or in need of some spritzing, but dead.

I was gone for three days.

This was NOT the walkway to our house in 2008.

The family should’ve charted an obstacle course through the garage, over the stack of jumbled bikes and broken lawnmowers and pool noodles, through the back door. I would’ve broken my leg, but it would’ve been less painful.

I cried. My husband dug in my purse for pills, for the pills that would make the flowers come back and his wife stop crying.  I cried so hard and so long and so bad that all the kids went to bed without being told. My flowers were dead, and I had six kids that needed waffles and milk in the morning now.

My husband had a job and left the state. I had a job, too. It was to get out of bed and walk by the flowerbed every day and stop crying. Greg replanted the walkway in a jiffy (because he is not stupid), but for the next two years, they’d always be dead no matter how hard I tried.

********

Yesterday I watched my son ride his bike through the front pasture. He was chasing a cow. At times like these, I’m not sure why I gave him siblings or a dog. We don’t have sidewalks here or else I’m positive he would’ve chosen to ride on that.

I’m glad he didn’t run over the cow. Puzzle, the nice milk cow, is about the only animal on this place who earns her keep. We get almost three gallons of milk from Puzzle on once-a-day (everyday, of course) milking. Even for greedy guts like us, that’s a lot of milkshakes and alfredo sauce. So last night, I called up the dairy across the street to see if they had any bottle calves for sale. They did.

I hung up the phone and yelled for the masses. My kids found a dog collar and leash (actually, they stole one off the calf born last week) and came back home twenty minutes later with a little Jersey bull calf. He’s one week old. Sure, I can’t get a latte where I live, but I can always scrounge up a bottle calf or a moonshiner lickity split. Bonus points if either can stand up.

While my oldest kid peddled after a cow and my younger son took turns walking the new baby calf on a dog leash, Greg and I sat on the porch, and I talked about the sporty convertible I planned to drive one day. Greg swatted a fly.

The car will have leather seats. When I reach for the seat belt buckle, there won’t be any gum wrappers hidden underneath it. There won’t be dog pee on the front right tire. When I open the car door, a bucket of baseballs won’t spill out and I won’t get a ticket for littering for simply wanting to get into my car on a windy day. The tape deck will work.

By then, my kids will have learned not to eat, drink, throw up, or breathe in the car I have to drive. In this universe, my hair won’t be frizzy anymore, and the bank teller won’t be snotty with me. It’ll all be great. I can see it now.

This morning, I had someone tell me that my life was perfect. I appreciated her letting me know. (She hadn’t heard about the goats yet, and for decorum purposes, I decided against sharing any labor and delivery stories.) I’ve got six kids, a farm, and I make my own butter. So obviously.

I know what it feels like to find out everyone else is having a good time while you’re just paying bills and trying to get the kids to brush their teeth and show some respect around here. I know that everyone else is happy because last year I signed up for Facebook and now I have friends.

We’re all reaching, trying to tweak that thing that if we could “just get right” will magically make our lives perfect, or at least….happy. When it’s late and quiet and dark, sometimes we are just thinking about how to hold our marriage together. I think about the perfect formula for happiness all the time, though I’m too theologically snooty to call it that. If I could just lose weight, if I could just control my temper, if I could just remember what I wore yesterday but forget about that thing someone said last month, if I could just be open and vulnerable to the people I love — then everything would be okay. Wouldn’t it?

For tonight, I sit on my porch and stop talking. I watch. It is summer, God’s favorite season, and incidentally, mine as well. There are cows frolicking in my pasture. And little boys too.