A tender heart

A friend reminded me today, after I told her yesterday that we had thought about cutting cable, that the new Kardashian's show was waiting for me on my DVR. Quickly the idea to lose the cable and be more noble this year flew out the window. And to think, I'm really not a trashy tv fanatic and I don't read People magazine nor do I follow any popular fashion trends. I think it is just comforting to watch a train wreck waiting to happen on tv and to think that money really doesn't buy happiness. Sure, there are happy moments on the Karsashians (buying a baby grand piano for the fun of it?) but from my perspective I hardly call a 72 day marriage and a family covering the entertainment news 24/7 a peaceful family experience. So somehow watching this show on occasion does something good for me, in our box home with more kids than the old lady in the shoe and not an item in my closet from any of the latest seasons. . .We do have happiness though and it's pretty genuine.

Anyway, I have been writing this weighty blog in my head for a few days now but really I want to go enjoy the quiet on the couch with the disastrous Kardashian sisters. But then I just received a text from a girl close to our family, a favorite babysitter. She is also a nanny for a family of 3 children under the age of 8 and after a long battle with cancer - the mother of 38 just went to be with Jesus. And my heart just broke. I think it's all the "heavy" that has been sitting on me for the last few days and this was the last straw for me to break into a puddle.

Life is just too fragile. Yes, people pass away and that in itself makes life so fragile. Children lose mothers to battles with the ferocious cancer. And then like the story I read today of a 30-something mom of two who has ow been widowed twice in her few decades here. Twice. Again, my heart just felt so full yet so so heavy at the same time. Don't worry - I am not going to share sad story after sad story because there are so many. It is so easy to see the tragedies around us and feel such a heaviness because from that perspective life does seem just so gloomy. Not to mention, the people in our immediate circles that are really hurting....and maybe not even due to cancer or another terminal sickness but because of grieving of their own...grieving human loss and even grieving the disappointment in their own life of the way they thought things should have been.

It's all just so much, especially at one time. Saturday we had the most wonderful date night out with a favorite couple friend of ours that we rarely get to see. In the future I see us being the kind of neighbors that watch each others kids when one needs to run out or having Christmas day dinner together after all of the real "family" has left. After our yummy dinner at Antico pizza on the Westside we did the craziest thing ever.....we went to the movies! I think the last movie we saw together (Brad and I) was We Are Marshall on our 2nd date. Seriously. Movies and little kids who can not yet babysit each other just don't go together one bit. Anyway, they treated us with some movie passes they had and we were off to our first movie in years. We were both so happy to actually be in a theatre, smelling real live movie popcorn and not the Orville pr Popsecret kind -that we didn't care if we were in the Winnie the Pooh movie or Pulp Fiction.

A little bit into the movie my heart just began to hurt. I am admittedly a BABY when it comes to anything over PG material. Not only do I not like it - it literally hurts my stomach. This movie, though I can say was incredibly written and had a wonderful deeper story of love and evil - was the ultimate in disturbing. I spent more than half of the movie with my head down, my ears plugged, humming any happy tune that would come to mind. I was definitely that girl. It wasn't just me - it offended us all but like I said, we were just happy to be out and so we stayed for the whole movie. Needless to say, we got in late and I spent the next 5 hours on the couch wrestling with the shots of horrific images that were bouncing in my head. I sound like such a prude and I really am not (I don't think - I mean, I am admitting to the Kardashian's)....I just somehow have inherited this ultra sensitive radar and for some reason, things that wouldn't effect other people or used to not effect me a bit really really get to me in my old age. I finally got to sleep before 4 and then woke up a few hours later and we headed to church as a family. That is where I realized just how tender my heart had become.

I blame it all on kids. I think I am mature enough to hear about or see just about anything this world could offer. Just like most people over the age of 12 I know, I have good discernment and I can tell reality from fiction easily. But when you are sitting in a movie that literally portrays something that you know happens but had never actually imagined - you just can't help but think of your kids back home, asleep, trusting at their young age that mom and dad will do whatever they can to protect them. We sang a song at church that we have sang alot recently called "this one thing," and it is talking about the one thing that remains is the enduring love of God above all other things. So I wept and sobbed and snorted and cried some more and Brad had to get me tissues and people were staring and it was just lovely I am sure. But it felt so good to let my heart be filled with beautiful words and images of true love on a cross rather than the awful images that had not left my mind since we left the theatre the night before.

The message that day was from the old testament and in short Andy spoke about "the one thing" that matters most to me. Nehemiah in the old testament was building a wall and he was asked to come down from the wall and his response was "I am doing a great work up here and I can not come down." That's just it - I am doing a great work at home with our two boys. I would do everything in my power to protect them for as long as I can from being exposed to the evil that is all over this world and all over our daily lives. I am not unrealistic. I know they will face it but right now, while they are little, it is my job to stay on my "wall", to keep my standards high, to keep the stuff that fills my mind and thus theirs - pure and lovely. I AM doing a great work up here and therefore, I realized I can not come down for anything. Not even for a little entertainment (but maybe for the Kardashian's, right, since they are just soooo far out of reality??)

As we left church I saw a friend that I used to work with who was connected to a ministry that I cant even remember much about now. I said to Brad, It's crazy how my sole purpose has become these two boys (and this little one inside). I used to care so much about such greater seeming things - things that really could impact lots of people at one time and in places all over the world. It's not that I don't care about Africa or the prevalent sex trafficking in Atlanta, I do, but all I have the capacity to do anything about right now is the shaping of the little hearts that have been entrusted to my care. I do not know, a heavier, more intricate, and difficult ministry than that high calling. So, I really just can't come down right now. For anything.

I may be put at the bottom of your blog or friend list after reading this. It certainly isn't entertaining or witty but I couldn't let the moment pass. There just seemed to be too many dark things and heavy stories floating around to let it go by. There is such darkness around us - it is obvious in much of the media that we subject ourselves to, it's in the news, and even more personal it lives and is apparent in the lives of each of us on a daily basis. But I am reminded that the light will always overcome the darkness. This Christmas our church focused on the message of that ever present, never ending, unbeatable, omnipotent light that we have in Christ. This year I pray that there is light all over our home and in our conversations and more so, in our own thoughts and minds....what a powerful place for the light to shine.