Excellet Eight

I can't believe Evy is eight. EIGHT!
I can't believe I am the mother of an eight-year-old.

(EIGHT!)

I CAN believe what an amazing, wonderful, complex girl she's turning into, though. So I thought I'd share eight of my favorite things about her in honor of her big day:

1. Evy is funny. She started telling knock knock jokes when she was two. Since then her humor and wit have been honed into an astute sense of timing and a unique view of the world around her. She doesn't miss a beat, this girl. I love that she's always making me laugh.

2. Evy has a wonderful sense of the Truth. She accepted Christ as her savior when she was two. Really. It's not just the ramblings of an over-proud mother of a first born. She has always been so sensitive to right and wrong. Even when she was watching a movie if the character was going to make a bad choice, she asked me to skip that part or turn it off. Sure, she stumbles and trips up like any child, but she is consistently thinking and striving towards the truth. Her honesty is one of her most remarkable qualities.

3. Evy is sensitive and caring. She's always thinking of how someone else would feel, putting herself into someone elses shoes. She notices. Among other things this is one of the qualities that makes her such a great big sister. She truly loves her brother, looks out for him, and is concerned for and about him.

4. Evy is Imaginative. No, that's an understatement. Evy is BEYOND imaginative. When she was a toddler, she had 2 imaginary friends. They were her hands. "Geabay and Geabay-Gobo" She wanted to name Henry "Chomptis Peter Pan". She named her first fish "Deedle". Her imagination isn't only confined to naming. She's constantly regaling us with plays and songs she's made up, stories she's written or things she's drawn. She's always had her own way of doing things and looking at things, and she's supremely confident in her opinions. So much so, that she once argued with a woman singing a song on the TV. the song said "you're not perfect, no your not......but I like you that way." As soon as the first line came out, little Evy sang back at the TV "I am perfect, yes I am, you don't know..."

5.Evy is beautiful. on the inside, of course, but have you LOOKED at her lately? I can't believe how she's growing and becoming such a striking little girl. Even when she was a newborn people would stop me and remark about what a beautiful baby she was. She has these amazing eyes and this smile that just beams.

6. Evy has a great sense of adventure. She rides roller coasters, and fair rides I wouldn't even go on. At two she loved lobster and shrimp. Last weekend she shelled and picked her own crab. She will try almost any food. She loves to go on adventure walks and bike rides and hikes. She loves camping and exploring. She loves reading about adventures and throws herself into the story. She jumps willy-nilly off of high diving boards and swooshes down water slides at Wisconsin Dells that I'm scared of!

7. Evy is part fish. She has always loved the water. She was convinced she could swim before she was three. It took me letting her go in the water, and even still a sputtering disbelieving child popped up saying "I sinked?" She would be in the water from sun up to sun down if she had her way, splashing and playing and pretending to be a mermaid or other creature of the deep.--And she'll make you play right along!

8. I could go on for ever and ever, but I'll end with this, Evy has gently, patiently, lovingly taught me how to be a mom. Without her I never would've gotten the greatest job in the whole world. She has taught me so very much about selfless love, and about hope and God's grace and goodness and timing in his plans for us all. Loving her showed me a kind of love I had never before known, and she took up a place in my heart I never knew was empty that is now so full of her joy and beauty and contagious Evy-ness that it's overflowing. She has showed me so much of God's glory and through her He has revealed His Father's heart in a way I wouldn't have otherwise known. She is so much of my reason for being, she is, in my life, My Blessed Mercy.

Happy Eighth Birthday, Little Mookah!

UM

That's "UM" as in Uncle Mike, not "um......"

Although, truth be told, I've been saying the later quite a bit as Libby and I attempt to sort through what remains of my Uncle's life.

It's interesting getting a chance to look at a life after someone has vacated it. His living room was filled with classic Uncle Mike things, from his art supplies, a Renaissance harp and music books, posters upon posters of faeries and wolves and women...And the swords. Yeah. That was my Uncle Mike. It's hard to look at our lives and believe I belong to the Grant family, that I belong mixed in with this motley, unsavory bunch. Looking at me and my life now you wouldn't guess I grew up around pot smoking, drinking, leftover hippies--or that I could type that sentence with a nostalgic smile. But I did. On both counts.

We used to joke that there were two Uncle Mikes. The Old One and the New One. The Old Uncle Mike was a stand-in father for both Libby and I growing up. He took us to Children's Palace to pick out a toy--any toy--for our birthdays. He took us fishing, camping, hiking. He lived with our little family for years, he was.......well, he was Uncle Mike.

The New Uncle Mike was a tortured soul. Although he always had that signature "Grant" temper, in later years it seemed to become much more of a fixture. Grumpy, secluded, bitter. They're not fun descriptors, but they were accurate.

Old Uncle Mike taught me my love for and understanding of nature. He showed me my first glimpse of the North Shore and the BWCA. He brought me to church for the first time. He was a practical joker. He understood me in a way my mom and sister didn't. He gave me a place to fit within my Grant heritage. I saw him through that innocent lens of youth.

In my adulthood I often wondered whatever became of "Old Uncle Mike" the one attached to so many memories. And then, yesterday, going through the bits and pieces he left behind, Libby and I found his journal.

I opened the pages.....

......and there he was. The dreamer, the nature lover, the hidden optimist. Sure, it was mixed in between lots of talk of "his business" and who owed who, who'd stolen from him this week, who was cut down to X amount of ounces and would "just have to make do." Failed businesses, and how many more chances he'd give DR before letting him have it. We read the pages through tears and laughter, and when I closed the little worn brown leather cover I'd found him. He continually wrote about getting out of "that life", of a new beginning. He wrote he was tired of it all and of what he'd become. The undercurrent was sad--HE was sad, but somehow always optimistic, ready to "keep on keeping on." Ready to get Up North soon and go for a ride. He wrote how he felt he'd lost himself, lost happiness, lost everything. But it wasn't until reading those pages I found that the Uncle I thought I'd lost had still been there all along.

And so I say good-bye here. You often wondered whether people really were your friends, really loved you...

I love you, Uncle Mike. I'm glad you finally found peace.

Not so Ordinary

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
--quoted from Marianne Williamson by Nelson Mandela


I've been thinking about this quote this evening. And I know I should read it and feel inspired and in awe of my own God-given worth--I used to read it that way...but the truth is, lately, I just feel.....ordinary.
I don't feel "brilliant" or "gorgeous" or "fabulous". I don't feel like I'm shrinking, but neither am I "manifesting the glory of God that is within [me]."
It's kind of like the mirror I have stashed in the corner of our garage right now. It's in the back behind a jumble of wood scraps and sawdust and several outside toys that have seen better days. It was formerly attached to a highboy I stripped and repainted for our bedroom. I was able to "swankify" the dresser, but the mirror no longer looked right, so I unscrewed it and schlepped it out to the garage until I could figure out what to do with it. See, the thing about the mirror is; it looks bad. It's kinda cloudy. I am sure it used to be great, but as it's aged its starting to flake, to bubble a bit. I can't throw it away. The dresser is an antique, and the mirror belongs with it; but while the dresser fits in, the mirror is tucked away: It just doesn't reflect right anymore.

When I look at Mandela's quote, I don't really see myself reflecting; shining like he supposes I'm intended to. I feel more like the mirror in my garage. Maybe I used to reflect something wonderful, but now, well, I've tucked that part of me away. It doesn't seem to reflect right anymore. Maybe I'm just getting old.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I haven't taken very good care of the mirror stashing it in the garage like that. And maybe I haven't taken very good care to see what I'm reflecting lately. I mean, we're all mirrors of a sort, right? "We were born to make manifest the glory of God"--to reflect Him--to reflect something.
I want to be better at reflecting Him, not displaying whatever distorted thing that happens to be flashing through my little mind at any given moment, not my selfish thoughts or small ambitions. I want to take the mirror back out and start reflecting properly again...I think maybe I need to dig that mirror out of the garage too, and remind myself to take care so I don't end up destorting what I'm meant to reflect.

a snapshot

I just thought I'd post some pics for all of you out-of-staters. Summer would be MUCH more fun in MN! (or WI, or NC or CO, or India--well, it might be a little hot there....) This is quintessential Henry. Always scheming. I love this boy!!!

Evy and her BFF Niamh playing on the water slide and eating watermelon.

This is seriously the only picture I have of me and the kids so far this summer, and it's not even a good one!!!

Me and Jay. We'll have been married 11 years this August. I can't imagine a life without this wonderful man. :)

This was Evy at her Navigator Graduation. (proud maybe??? :) I can't believe she's going to be a THIRD grader!


That's all for now. I'll be posting an album to my facebook when I get a minute, and I'll try and type an update on Jayson when I get another minute. .......minutes are a bit scarce around here lately.