January 24, 2012

• Dreams, Whims, and Reality

    These days I do things that I never dreamed I would do.

  I sweep up dog hair in the porch. I (try to) shake dog hair off of black coats.

  I throw things in a junk drawer when I don’t know what to do with them. My mom never had one. I have about three.

  And every Sunday I sit on the un-cushioned but comfortable (to me) pews of Bay Tree Mennonite Church. My husband preaches three Sundays out of four. Children crawl over me, ask for their pencils, and unbutton my sweater buttons through the service.

  Three times a month our little church sings at the nursing homes we sang at back when I was 16. And we sing at funerals of people who die in our community. The Mennonite Choir, made up of the entire church.

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  I have been working on this post in terrible fits and starts and now it has become a monstrosity.   Read on at your own risk.

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  From our house:

  The other day The Man said to The Woman, “Honey, what would you think of us getting some chickens and a couple of pigs to eat up our scraps? The children need more chores to do and I think it would be good for us.”

  And The Woman raised her unplucked eyebrows. And she tried hard to look enthused but failed. And she said things like where would we put them and do you have time to fix a place for them and would the chickens be for eggs or meat. To which The Man shrugged and said that they’d figure something out and it wouldn’t really matter if they’d be egg or meat birds and it would be nice to just live off the land a little more.

  And The Woman knows how much of a nurturer The Man is. She who doesn’t care for animals much at all, (though she can’t stand to see them cold or ill or in pain) is married to he who loves to feed them and talk to them and see them happy and well.  Ocasionally she says hi to the horses when she walks by them, but it embarrasses her because they look at her strangely.  He’s the one who picks up the little stray dogs by the road that even she grows to like in time. And the same nurturing nature in him is what makes him such a good provider and the reason that he takes his family out for supper more often than she’s comfortable with people knowing about lest they think they’re an extravagant family. It’s the same nurturing that makes him cook breakfast almost every morning and love to invite the neighbors for a grilled steak dinner.

  So The Woman tried to be nice but she said that she really didn’t know if she could butcher chickens. And she thought in her heart of how she’d always been kind of scared of the crazy birds anyway.

  And later the boys decided that if the family was starting the hobby farm thing then they’d like to milk a cow. The family had discussed it many times before, but always left it hanging because they didn’t want to be tied down to a cow. They have 200 cattle on their farm already, but not one of them needs to be milked at a certain time. They just need to be fed and watered and checked regularly.

  And The Woman knows that a milk cow would make sense. These six children can easily drink a gallon of milk a day and at $4.50 a gallon from the grocery store that adds up to a lot in a week. But she is remembering washing milk pails and trying to use up cream and selling milk when she was a young girl still at home and she tries to be enthused but she fails.

  And then she remembers that the lady whose husband does long distance trucking and has adolescent sons lounging around the house would do almost ANYTHING for a little barn and a few goats and chickens to give her children work. And she realizes that her city friends think a milk cow would be awesome. And she knows of organic style health minded people who would be so delighted to raise their own chickens. And she feels ashamed.

  So she tries to act enthused. And if the plan works out, she will go with the flow and start straining milk and washing eggs. And maybe you can buy her butter next summer.

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  Always a dreamer, I used to dream some wild ones. Some of them were noble. Some of them were small.

  Maybe I would be a teacher. Preferably an English major. Preferably a missionary English major.

  I would marry someone intellectually stimulating. Preferably someone of exotic race.

  The exotic man and I would have a small, well-spaced brown-skinned family.

  Maybe we would adopt children.

  He would teach and I would be his intelligent sidekick once the family came along.

  I would be beautiful and gracious even if I lived in a mud hut. I would keep house just like Mom did.

  I would be the fun lady who did stuff with the village children and chalk drawings for the church and sang in the choir.

  OR I would be a slim aristocratic lady.

  Dreamy and unmarried, I would write in some lovely English cottage on the Maritimes.

  The gentlemen who came into my life made it exciting, but they were never quite right, somehow.

  Or maybe I would be a designer of signs. (This was back before web design, people.) I loved lettering and words and have a slightly artistic bent. (Or I once did. Something seems to have robbed me of it.)

  Or maybe I would just teach my days away. I always wanted to teach English as a second language in foreign places.  Inner city work also appealed to me a lot.  I dreamed of being that teacher who gave a kid the chance they’d never had.

  After a taste of choir at a short summer term at Faith Builders in Pennsylvania, singing with some famous group of Mennonites was also a hazy dream.

  Of course I usually dreamed of marrying someone extraordinary and having an extraordinary family. Because I liked boys and I liked children. Very much.

  And this one thing I knew: I didn’t want to live in the little community where I grew up. It was too small and unexciting and far away from everyone.

  　

  And then I went to Maranatha Bible School when I was 16 and again when I was 17, nearly 18.

  There I met Dan. Me the social butterfly who made it my business to learn everyone’s name the first day, agonized and delighted over my classes, played volleyball terribly, and had crushes on strange boys. He the quiet studious Wisconsin fellow with glasses who sang good bass.

  He liked me. And I liked him okay. But just that.

  He was so nicely ordinary, he didn’t cause a lot of waves, and he was a Dairy Farmer.

  A few months after Bible school was over, he wrote and told me that he’d like to learn to know me better . I wrote back and said I was sorry that I didn’t like him that way. And besides, we were pretty young.

  Conservative Mennonite style, I went to teach school when I was just 18 at a church about 3 hours from Dan’s home. The youth groups got together often and Dan & I saw each other periodically. The second year I taught, his sister Kim was my co-teacher. We’d go north to Hayward on the weekends sometimes, where the boys could all play hockey like pros and it was fun to get together with a bigger youth group. I stayed at the farm with Kim some nights and tried to act natural around her family. Dan taught school at his home church that year and we had lots in common. He’d call to the school where I taught to borrow books or talk to his sister. As the year wore on, I felt my resolve to steer clear of the Dairy Farmer with the Kind Brown Eyes wavering. I remember wailing to my sister, “I just have this feeling that God wants me to date Dan. It’s going to turn out like the stories and it makes me so mad!” His students and their parents loved and respected him. My list of reasons NOT to date him was getting shorter as the list of his qualities got longer. He loved children, respected his mom, worked hard, sang well, knew how to make a good breakfast, and drove a nice Beretta. And he liked me. Indecisive little me of the frizzy hair and big nose and poor volleyball skills.

  We dated. And I obsessed over whether he was the right one and he never gave up and I eventually knew how much I loved this steady man. So we were married 4 years after we first met.  And I realized that I was the one getting the good end of the deal.  

   I had become resigned to the Dairy Farmer idea, but we decided together that we should move to Alberta instead. Because the church there was small and struggling. And we felt like maybe there was more work to do there than in Dan’s already well established home community. It wasn’t an easy decision, but were happy with it.

  And the years went by and Dan worked for my dad on his sawmill and bought cattle and made hay. We had three babies. Then we went to Belize where he filled in as pastor for two years and taught high school. And I cooked for company and visited my neighbors and loved the warm sunshine.

  And when our two year term was over in Belize we agonized over whether to stay there or to come home and we were so torn that we did a public lot to make the decision. And the lot fell to return. And I cried hard because I thought maybe God had a life for us down there. I had grown to love it so much.

  And then we were back in Alberta and Dan was ordained minister of our tiny little church. And he bought Dad’s sawmill and kept farming. And we had more babies than we knew our hearts could hold, but somehow they stretched wider to acommodate each one. And Dan preached and combined oats and sawed lumber. And I changed babies and battled depression and cooked for company. And we were mostly happy.

  But sometimes it feels like all the things I didn’t think I was good at doing I am now required to do.

  Like lots of cooking. And lots of nursing tiny ones. And driving to school in the cold dark winter. And keeping a household of 8 organized and efficiently run. And being a pastor’s wife. {I like the relationship part of that role. I like being involved with people and hosting the evangelist and going to minister’s meetings. But I just never quite fit the spiritual role that I feel I should fill. I don’t feel demure and strong of faith and exemplary in my love for God and submission and motherhood.}

  Sometimes I chafe.  Sometimes I have temper fits.  But I don’t usually look back and say, “Man, I wish I could start my life all over.”  Because it’s a good life.  It’s been tough in spots, but it’s rich.  I am surrounded by people I love and they love me despite my horrible faults.  And God is good, even when I don’t believe it.

  You know what else?  I got to teach school for four years and loved it.  We got to experience a taste of life in a foreign place.  And I love my six children and their dad more than I ever dreamed possible. Our little church, with its quirks and faults, is also a peaceful place where we love each other.  And Dan is really much more intelligent than I am.

  I still dream incessantly.  I hope that’s okay for someone who’s almost 38.

  Just lately I’ve got this new whim. After reading this blog, I wonder if God is calling us to adopt a couple of special needs children:

  http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2011/11/reckless-abandon.html

  I know it’s crazy. And I feel like I would be selfishly selective about what type of need we could handle. {Dear Lord, could we please have two cute little Down’s syndrome babies?}

  The day that I first got stirred up about this idea, when Dan came in for lunch I said, “What if we’d adopt a couple of special needs kids from Romania?”

  And he said, “I was just thinking when Andre and Liesl came running to meet me that I’m not sure I want these days to end.”

  But who knows? Only God does.

  Maybe someday we’ll be sitting in a cottage by the sea and Dan will be cooking and milking his cow and I’ll be writing my books. (big HA)

  On the other hand, we’ll probably be sweating it out somewhere in voluntary service work. I kind of hope so.

  Or maybe we’ll be home gathering eggs with our young adult Down’s syndrome kids.

  I hope that whatever I’m doing when I’m 65, I won’t be fighting it. I hope I’ll be embracing it and loving my husband through it. I hope that we’ll be those neighbors that people can count on when they need a hand. I hope we’ll be those pillars in the church that encourage the young and burdened.

  I had a good single friend who used to say, “All I ever wanted to do was get married and have a big family.” She later married but is now unable to have children.

  Or maybe you’re the girl with big dreams of a career who married young and you’re now at home wiping noses and battling postpartum depression.

  Maybe you’re that lady who longs for a big garden and you’re stuck in a little house in the city.

  Or maybe you love animals and your children beg for a pet but your husband can’t stand them.

  Maybe no one reads your blog

  Maybe you feel like  a prisoner in your kitchen or your church.

  Maybe you’re part of a big church and you feel like no one notices you.

  Maybe you dreamed of becoming a professional singer  but failed Voice.

  Maybe all the writing pieces you send in are rejected by the editor.

  Don’t give up your dreams.

  But don’t let them hold you back from experiencing life and purpose right where you are.

  Don’t let the loss of a dream make you ingrown and selfish.

  Hold your dreams close but let The Now flower with friendship and stretching and growth.

  (and now I’m sounding all demure and having-all-things-together when I am not and I don’t)

  I would love to hear a dream of yours that has never materialized and a wonderful reality that has taken its place.

  Now I simply MUST go brown spare ribs for supper and then go sliding with my babies.

  -The End–AT LAST-

  　

  　

  　

  　

  　

  　

  • 6:31 pm
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