Upside Down is now available in its entirety – complete, revised, and expanded – through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and WestBow Press. Enjoy this excerpt here. :)
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It is January and we are in a new year. Christmas came and went at our house, leaving behind new sleds and snowgear, and everything fits perfectly. In the yard, four inches of fresh snow is just waiting to be violently trampled by our six kids.
There is frantic donning of snowgear and the garage door slams repeatedly as they race outside, each hauling a plastic disk that promises to send them down the hill at warp speed.
Except for one kid. Our youngest child is sobbing and wailing in depths of despair that would make Anne Shirley proud.
“This mitten won’t fit on this hand! And this mitten is on this hand” – she thrusts it at me as evidence – “but the OTHER mitten won’t fit on my OTHER hand because ITS thumb is on THIS side!!”
We can hear the bigger kids outside, laughing, yelling, breaking a path down the sledding hill. But she is left behind, left out…and her shiny red sled surely pouts in sympathy from the lonely garage where it waits for her.
She flings both her arms out to show me. “LOOK!” Her four-year-old vocabulary is limited, but what she really means is Hey! This infidel mitten dares to defy me! Behold!
I’m beholding. The thumbs do look…funny. The mitten she’s wearing also looks funny.
Because she has it on the wrong hand. Upside down.
I take that mitten off and hold both of them in front of her so she can see what’s wrong.
“This is how you had them,” I tell her. “Now, watch this.”
I slowly flip the mitten over and switch them to the correct hands…and they fit. No sticky-outy thumbs or anything, and all is right with the world.
She’s four, and learning. But she’s not alone.
We all try to put things on in the wrong places, and then fly into despair when it doesn’t fit right.
Moms, especially, learn that the discipline, training, and schooling that worked for their first kid usually won’t be a perfect fit for the next child. Due to God’s flair for comedy, every succeeding offspring is usually the opposite of their older brother or sister. It’s a mathematical phenomenon.
Kids are designed with the irritating trait of resisting to mold perfectly to the likeness of others. They won’t be made into their older siblings, and they won’t be made into us – their parents. We may share many traits and features with them, but they were created to mold perfectly to the image of the One who made them…and He doesn’t fit into any box we can come up with.
We have differing personalities and short tempers. We have special needs and often incompetent, pat answers. We are kept on our toes and on our knees.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
-James 1:2-4
Some days we are all thumbs, and they’re sticking out in the wrong directions all over the place: This kid won’t respond to this consequence and this teaching style doesn’t work for this kid and this other kid sticks himself out like a sore thumb that is pushing my buttons…and he’s doing it on purpose.
We are stretched and grown beyond our parenting wisdom, and we cry for more.
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
– James 1:5
So, we pray because we lack wisdom for the particular crisis at hand…but also, we pray because we have the wisdom in the first place to know that He must intervene in our lives.
Because honestly, what we’re really saying is, Hey! These infidel children dare to defy me! Behold!
We thrust the situation and these children and all of the sore thumbs at Him, and He gently shows us how to put things upright again. He shows us how He made us all to fit together.
Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.
– Ephesians 4:15-16
As we pray with wisdom, for wisdom, for our kids and all of our differences, He does more than just show us how He is making our kids into His image. He makes us more into His image, too.
He says, This is how you had them. Now…watch this.
And He shows us how we are made to fit together perfectly.
We have a tree up, with lights and breakables and strands of popcorn clinging to it. We have a nativity and garland on the mantle, and many years’ worth of accumulated paper snowflakes hanging from the ceiling.
We are festive. We are merry. We are…freezing.
It’s minus 22 out there tonight. I didn’t even send the kids out to play today, and we made forts and paintings and other messes instead. The temperature doesn’t really matter, because when it’s cold outside we can still keep it warm inside.
Unless we don’t. Unless there’s bickering and bossing and snapping and strife, and I assign consequences and replay lectures all day long. The temperature drops in our connections, and it takes lots of hugs and kisses and happy conversations to warm things up again.
It was warmer last week – outside, at least – and the kids were sledding and hollering on the hill behind us. And they know – they know, I tell you – about waiting to go down until the people at the bottom of the hill have moved out of the way so they don’t slam into them.
Especially if it’s the littlest sister at the bottom of the hill.
Especially if all five of her siblings are piled into one sled and bowling into her.
But no…there’s screaming and bossing and sheepish giggling and fuming and praise God, no blood, but mine is boiling. I have told you and told you…yada, yada. I wipe tears and give severe looks to older children and send them all off to play again.
Thirty seconds later, I peek out the window to check on everyone. Big brother and little brother are thrashing each other in the snowbank next to the sledding hill.
I knock fiercely on the kitchen window to get their attention. Three kids turn to look, and in my aggressive charades I point to the eldest, who has paused the friendly pummeling of his little brother. I motion STOP á la the Pointer Sisters, and he gives me a questioning look that says he can’t hear me.
I’m about to holler “I KNOW YOU CAN UNDERSTAND ME” through the glass, but the little brother – who I couldn’t see because he was standing perfectly behind the big brother – shoves him from behind, totally knocking him over. Faceplant in the snow.
I go down, too, hiding behind the kitchen sink and laughing hysterically. Sure, whatever – go for it, boys. If you can dish it, you can take it. Just don’t involve the baby sister.
A few minutes later they are back to sledding, going down the icy hill on their bellies, on their bottoms, on their boots. Actually, they start on their boots often, but end up on their backsides.
And after some years of experience, we’ve decided this is a no no, because sliding down rough, icy hills using expensive polyurethane thermal attire as sleds is poor stewardship of snowgear. It tends to create tears and shreds in the fabric.
The preferred method of repair is not, I’m sorry to say, my superior sewing skills. It is duct tape, Alaska chic.
Every winter we take inventory to see what fits, what can be grown into, and what is beyond even the appreciable scope of duct tape and must be replaced.
And we’ve talked about it. A lot. I have told you and told you…blah, blah, blah.
They finally come in from sledding and I assign consequences, and do my best to balance them with warm hugs and kisses. Extra chores to make up for the extra money we have to spend on more snowpants if they keep using them as toboggans. And, just to keep things sweet…they each owe mama a footrub, too. Like hugs for cold feet.
Warming up over tea, we talk about patches instead of replacements. We still have Iree’s old snowpants – the ones that were duct-taped on the rear from the last two years. There’s lots of usable material on them. Nice, thick, padded…hot pink…material.
Perfect. Festive, and merry.
I inform the boys that it will be used for patches on their snowpants, should patches become necessary.
And just to remind them how much I love them…because I have told them and told them so often but sometimes they just don’t listen...
…maybe I’ll even embroider a little something on those patches as a reminder:
XOXO.
