The Inconvenience of Family

It starts the day they are born. You've been up all night and that new little one already demands to be fed. You didn't even get a solid hour's sleep in first. But you get up. And you do it. Because you love that little girl. She is part of your family.

It continues on through their entire lives, that inconvenience: Getting up way earlier than you'd prefer so that they can make it to their school on time. Sitting in pickup lines in an old, hot car that doesn't have a/c, stopping for the third time to go to the bathroom on a, generally, one-hour drive home. Children are inconvenient.

But we don't know we're inconvenient when we are children. We are happy. We live our lives, and we're excited to be doing the fun things during our days that our family members consider inconvenient.

And then we grow up, and we begin to be inconvenienced by our other adult family members ourselves. How many newlyweds have driven hours and hours on their precious time off work to make those obligatory visits to family at the holidays? How many couples have dreaded the drive, but did it anyway because despite the hassle, they love their family and genuinely want to see them even if it means going out of their ways and sacrificing their time off work to do it?

I am so glad that I was raised by parents who did not view their children as inconveniences. My mom and dad went out of their way to spend time with us. I cannot count the hundreds of hours my dad spent with me coaching me in basketball, power-lifting, and discus. And still today, I can't count the hours of drive-time my mother has made back and forth between her house and mine. Sometimes she comes because I want to redecorate my house, and it's just more fun with your mother. Sometimes she comes so that we can go snoop around pretty churches in the area. And sometimes she comes because I'm making fajitas, and, apparently, my fajitas are worth that 2 1/2 hour round-trip drive.

And I am grateful that with my four little ones ages four and under, that that fine woman is still not inconvenienced by a one of them. Thank you, Mommy, for teaching my children some of the things that I would rather not be "inconvenienced by" doing myself. Like letting them paint rocks (what a useless thing... but it brings them SO much joy... and so it's really not useless at all.) And for teaching them to mop, and taking them to bounces houses and allowing them to hold terrible, nasty, horrible snakes. (None of them would have been allowed to do that without YOU!) Thank you for the picnics, and the creek, millions of stories, and trips to the zoo, magic house, cave, and chickens. The sacrifice of your time does not go unnoticed by me or my children.

How sad we have become when the only people worth being inconvenienced for become the people we work for who are giving us a paycheck. People who would replace us tomorrow if we were in a car crash and couldn't return. In my opinion, family are the only people worth being routinely inconvenienced for. Because they are the only family we will ever have. They are not replaceable.
And they do matter. They matter when they are hours old, and they matter when they are struggling to breathe their last breaths on this earth.

And now, I must go... and be inconvenienced by that one-hour round trip to pick up my son from school.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

With every new little baby that comes along in our family it seems like someone in our family makes that final journey of their lives and passes on to make room for the newest coming life. This newest one of ours was made space in this world by two loved ones: Grandpa Ed and Little Lucy.

Lucy was a loyal little dog to one person, and one person only... and even then, her loyalty could be questioned during key times of the year, like when there was a turkey baking in the oven. But even though she preferred only one, she was loved by all.

I remember her when she was a little puppy, dragging around a pink and white rope as long as her or a stuffed animal that was nearly as big as her own little body. She was a happy dog, a spoiled dog. And she certainly was a fat little dog.

One of her favorite games for quite a while was squeezing her little body lickity-split under this pale green footstool we had in my parents' home for a while. Like a cat, you never knew when Lucy would ferociously pop out to get you, and then high-tail it back under that footstool. She was still bald on her chest more than a decade after she had stopped playing that game from all the hair she yanked off her chest during her fun.

But Little Lucy got old and decrepit like so many of the good men, women, and animals in our world. It was and is inevitable. Why, when God cursed man, did the animals have to endure the curse as well? What did the animals do to deserve the aging, pain, and ultimate death that belonged to man?

Matthew 10:29-31 says,

"Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." 

Lucy did not fall to the ground outside our Father's care. When she was seizing for hours and did not even know that her mom was there with her crying, mourning for the little creature whom she could not help, our God was there keeping her comfort. She was not alone. And how much more comfort can the great Comforter himself offer than we can?

And when God looked down and saw her little body so frail and unable to see or hear or even walk, he had mercy and said, "Let's go home." And she left the pain and death and decay of this world and was reunited with her old, loved friends who had passed long before her. She is not in pain anymore. She awaits a reuniting with all the ones she loved who are still left on this earth, but she is happy, and she is finally able to rest.

Romans 8:18-21

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God."

And so I say farewell to our Little Lucy. Perhaps her diamond collar has turned into her diamond crown: her reward for all the nights she stood guard and kept my mother company. How many diamonds must she have earned for that? Loyal, Little Lucy in the sky with diamonds.