More Thoughts on Mommyhood

Studying 1 Corinthians 13 this morning, applying it to mommyhood. Here's a few paragraphs off my page that I want to keep in mind today.

(this is excerpted from the KBNIV)

If I have obedient, well-behaved children and everyone tells us what good parents we are, but we have not love, it is emptiness and means nothing.

If I get everywhere on time and no children bother me while I'm checking my email, and if I have a clean house and serve great meals and get lots and lots done in a day, but I do not love my kids, then none of it matters, and I am nothing.

If I have a vast ministry that impacts many and I accomplish great things in my lifetime, but I did not love my children, then I missed my first importance and I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not wish its kids were like someone else's when they are embarrassing or take credit for how wonderful they are when they are charming and sweet. It is not condescending and it is courteous, even to small children who won't call you out on it. It does not hold the schedule or the to do list above the people they were meant to serve. It does not walk around like a grumpy martyr for all the things it has to give up for these people. It does not discipline in anger or feel a sense of retribution for itself, but rejoices when the truth is expounded to its children and God is honored and revered. Love holds up under the constant pestering, it gives its children the benefit of the doubt, it hopes great things for them and works to that end, and it withstands every offense. In every moment choose to love, and it will never let you down.

Quick Update

Well, we finished our PS MAPPS classes! We are officially deemed worthy to raise children by the state of Arizona. Now, we just wait for a call!

We are currently camping out in the basement of a wonderful couple from our church until our house in completed, so probably a month or two.

The kids are loving preschool and pre-K so far and just keep growing up so fast! Bethany turns 5 on Saturday, so we are preparing for the Big Barbie Birthday Bash. Working on this year's piñata... it's turning out really neat! I'll have to post pictures of it before Saturday. Sigh... born for destruction.

No time for much creative writing here on the ol' blog. I'm trying to channel any time and energy that I have for that sort if thing into songwriting. Besides, does anyone even read blogs anymore? Seems to me like they're on their way out. But I just saw "Julie and Julia" which was really fun and reminded me that "Oh, right! I have a blog!"

Have you ever been playing hide and seek with your kids and you're hiding and they're just not finding you? And you stay there, hardly breathing, legs cramping up, thinking what a great hiding place you've found only to eventually discover that they've long since moved on to another activity and forgotten all about you?

Fun times.

Stayin' Alive

Alright, I admit it. I'm just posting to keep a pulse, however faint, in this blog. Not a whole lot going on in the adoption realm, just working our way through the last classes we need to be totally certified. We're still very excited but it seems like the more we learn, the scarier the outlook. It's good though- kind of tests your calling.

I was reading in Philippians one this morning and came away with a cool new perspective on my family. Paul is talking to the church and he says(paraphrase) "I thank my God for you because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now... for you are all partakers with me in grace." I asked several questions as I studied the passage, one of which was "How can I apply this passage to my family?"

The Spirit totally applied it to remind me that I am not only raising my children, I am raising my future partners in the gospel. What a huge and awesome responsibility! How I raise them, treat them, talk to them, and train them should reflect that. It's so easy to settle for raising happy, healthy, safe, smart, polite children. But we've been given so much a greater a task than that. What kind of people would I want my future partners in ministry to be? What would I want them to know? What kind of example would I have wanted for them to have?

Also, everyone in my home is a fellow partaker of grace. We are all needy, weak, and messed up people who live each moment on the grace of God. I need to live with them in light of that, as one who is given copious amounts of grace each day.

The thunder is rolling outside. I love that sound when I'm snug indoors. The kids and I are off to Flagstaff tomorrow with some friends to escape the triple digits. And that's all she wrote.

Starting Our Classes and Benjamin Turning 45

We started our PSMAPPS foster care and adoption certification classes a couple of weeks ago! It feels good to finally be doing something toward the goal again. So every Thursday night a beloved friend comes over at 5:45pm and watches the kids until we return sometime around 10:00. I think the classes will be really good, and I'm looking forward to learning more about how to deal with some of the issues that our kids will be dealing with. It's funny- the point of the class is to equip you for what you will face, but from what I've heard, by the end of it you feel much less confident in your ability to handle what it coming your way. I suppose that's a good thing, though, to realize that on your own you are unable. Makes you run to Jesus all the more.

One of the things that I have found most helpful in the first couple of classes is talking about different children and different cases. The names are changed, but the situations and issues are real. It's been good to kind of put some flesh on who these kids are, what they've been through, and what they will need when they come into our home. It's crazy- kids who were physically abused, sexually abused and neglected, kids who start fires or run away, kids who were encouraged to use drugs by their parents, kids who were abandoned by their parents at supermarkets, girls who come in with children of their own- and to think: There's 10,000 of them. In Arizona alone. The need is so overwhelming. But it is encouraging to know that God fights for and loves the orphan, and there are way more then 10,000 families in his Church.

Days like yesterday, celebrating Benjamin's 2nd birthday, make us want to do this all the more. To provide a loving, functional, gospel-centered family to kids who may have never seen one. Matthew took Benjamin shopping for "boy toys" yesterday morning(since we still have an overwhelmingly pink-and-princess play room at this point) and as he was walking out of Wal-Mart with his little boy he was struck with emotion over how blessed he is and how blessed Benji is to be able to experience little things like that.

In the afternoon we had a great little birthday party for Benjamin at Peter Piper Pizza where he got everything he needs to literally become his hero- Bob the Builder. And for some reason, every time you ask him how old he is, he says "45". We have no idea why, but we think it's hilarious. I posted a video of his day here.

The Secrets of Songwriting Revealed! (not really)

It's been over a week since I returned from my trip to a Songwriting Retreat in Indiana, but I am just now getting around to blogging about it. It was my 3rd year there and I would say my best year. It was non-stop writing as usual, but this year I had just an extra measure of energy to make it through some late nights, some unexpected co-writes, and literally running up and down the halls to meet up with people on time. Counting songs that I finished up from last year, I came home with 6 new ones, and was apparently dubbed “The Little Writing Giant”. I wonder if I'll get my own infommerical. Anyway, it was such a good time and I wrote some really good songs and hung out with some really good people. The food was great as usual, and this year's t-shirts were great: “More ballads in a weekend then a whole season of Idol”. Yes, t-shirts. As my friend Allie puts it, it's basically songwriter nerd camp.

Nerdy as it is, a lot of people ask me about this mysterious process of writing a song. The most common question I get is “Do you write the melody first or the lyric?” I tell people it happens all different ways, but when you throw another writer or two into the mix, things get even more interesting.

The basic process, at least as I have experienced it, is you sit down in the writer's room with the other person or people and spend some time just shooting the breeze or getting to know each other if you don't already. Then you start throwing out ideas of what to write about. Both writers are ideally prepared with a few good ideas, some even partially developed, and after a little while both people can generally settle on one idea that strikes them each with enough passion and vision for the song to go ahead and “chase it”, as we say.

Every song is built around what is called the hook. The hook is usually that one line, often times the title, that just gets you when you hear it or sticks with you when the song is over. Ideally you would start with the hook and build a chorus around it, then come up with a couple of verses to explain and set up the chorus. If the song needs a bridge it's typically added after the rest has been written, and inevitably there will be some tweaking along the way. Depending on who you're writing with, the melody could be written right along with the lyric or you could end up with a completed lyric to hand over to a melody writer. Regardless of how it happens, the goal of that 3 hours or so is to birth a new song into the world.

Mysterious is a good way to describe it. It is never cut and dry. What I described was a sort of normal, standard, baseline for the process. But really, anything can happen. Sometimes it's miserable. Sometimes you laugh until your sides ache. Sometimes the Spirit is so present in the room you feel you could reach out and touch Him. I write solo most of the time, so I'm still relatively new to co-writing. But I'm so thankful that once a year for four days, I get to indulge in that mysterious melding of minds and muse.

PS- A note on those pictures... Each night we performed the songs that we'd written that day for the rest of the group, and that's what those pictures are from. So just to clarify, we do not write with microphones.

Scrapbooking and Pseudo Death

It's hard to blog after you've begun to get sparser and sparser with posts. You feel like you need to have something significant to say before you're eligible to write again. Kind of like when you haven't prayed in a while and you feel like you'd better have something good to say to God before coming before Him. But both notions are quite silly so I will post with or without significant thought.

We made the announcement last Sunday that we are going to join Luke at Second Mile Church, a plant of East Valley. Matthew will be coming on as the Associate Pastor and will also lead the music there. We are so excited! A part of our hearts have been there since the church began, so it feels really good to finally get to be a real part of it. I will continue with my single mom's group and with Women's Ministries at East Valley, but other then that I plan to fight my propensity to jump into much else with adoption on the horizon. I am guessing I will need everything I have here at home, at least for a while. Or perhaps for the next 18 years.

I just finished up a little scrapbook for our adoption. It tells the story of our family to help the state make a good match. I had so much fun doing it. I also committed not to spend much money on it, and I was able to use a lot of my leftover stuff from my previous 2 books. I love what little scrapbooking I've done, but was so difficult to try to capture our family (and our extended family) in ten 6" by 6" pages and to decide which pictures to use. I'm very happy with how it turned out, though. I hope I get it back!

So it has been an odd, at times surreal couple of months with the switch to Second Mile. We have been joking since Sunday's announcement that you'd think Matthew had died or something. Everyone has been coming up to him and saying all of the nice things that people think but don't usually say until your funeral. He's been extra careful to keep the valve on his head open lest it fill and get too big. It has been cool, though, to hear some of the fruit of your work and ministry in the lives of the people you shepherd and care about. In case I don't, I should take pictures of it. Maybe I will post them!

Tonight we are off to see "Star Trek", which Matthew consistently calls "Star Wars" which drives me crazy. Right now he's sleeping off a morning at the zoo, but in an hour and a half I will get him all to myself for the rest of the day. :)

Here's the book:

Nashville in a Nutshell. (A Really Long Nutshell)

Okay, so Matthew says I have to post about my trip to Nashville even though I think it will be Dullsville to everyone except songwriters. So, as my writer-friend Allie says on her blog: Warning- Songwriter nerd talk ahead! Anyone not interested feel free to check out now.

I flew into Nashville Thursday afternoon. It was only my second trip, so I still got a kick out of the stages set up with live music throughout the airport. Nothing like a little Willie Nelson cover tune while you wait for your baggage. The Avis people informed me that the coupon I had booked the reservation with required that I also rent a GPS unit. This is exactly the kind of thing that I would end up throwing out the window on the freeway but I took it anyway so that I could use my coupon. The woman said I could choose between a 4 door sedan or a PT Cruiser. Obvious choice for someone who normally drives a minivan.

I called my first co-writer Kevin and told him I was on my way. I punched in the address on the GPS and followed the prompts. Once I was sure I was in the wrong place I called Kevin back. "You're where?!?" he asked incredulously. Strike one on the GPS. He talked me through as I backtracked 20 minutes of freeway miles and finally arrived at my publisher Randy's studio. Kevin, Randy and I worked on a song that we had already started, so work was quick and successful. We finished up a Christmas invitational song to fill the slot at the end of a musical. It turned out very nice and I'm looking forward to hearing the finished product.


I grabbed some good southern grub and headed to my friend Ericka's house where I was staying. Her neighborhood was so beautiful- rolling green hills, brick and stone houses, and dogwoods blooming everywhere. I found her house just fine without the GPS, using my preprinted mapqwest directions. I met her family and her 7 year old daughter that I had displaced from her room for 3 nights, who showed me no animosity in spite of it. We hung out in the living room and watched Nanny 911 until we felt really good about ourselves as parents and I retired to my room.

Friday morning I headed to a co-write that had been set up by a friend with Caleb, a writer I'd never met. He was a very talented piano player and melody writer and we wrote well together while his cat, called Mouse, sat indifferently on the window sill. Two and a half hours later we had a song that we both really liked about trusting the sovereignty of God and not always needing to understand what He is doing in times of trial in our lives. Yet another song about suffering from someone who has yet to know it firsthand. But it is coming, I'm sure.

Straight from there I went to my friend Dennis' studio and gave him a country lyric that he put a melody to. We had a good time and came away with a completed work tape which is always a wonderful thing. Then it was off to Randy's studio again for a Writer's Night which is basically where we eat dinner together and then go around and each play a song. I love those things. I had some great food and heard some great songs and came away feeling creatively energized. Stayed up way too late that night forgetting that I was two hours later then Arizona, but once I did go to bed I slept great.

This is getting sooooo long, but I don't want to have two posts on this so I'll just push on through for whoever is still awake. Saturday was a writers workshop at Randy's studio where we had breakfast and several very talented and insightful men imparted creative wisdom to us. Then we ate lunch, then some more wisdom, then on to one more co-write before the end of the day. I met up with my friend Phil and we chased a Mary song forever but really didn't end up getting anywhere. But I had a great time talking with him and it was good to stretch the creative muscles for a while. I tried the GPS again to find my way home. I was on Commerce between 7th ave and 9th ave. It told me to turn on 8th ave. So I turned on 9th. "Re-cal-cu-la-ting...." I cruise past Church Street waiting for my next instructions and it pipes up. "Turn left on Church street". Needless to say, the unit spent the remainder of the trip in the glove box.

Sunday morning I woke up to rain tapping on the window pane and tried chasing Mary again. This time I think I caught her. At 11:00am I met my publisher and his wife at their church which is the oldest church in Franklin. It is a super old-school Episcopal church that was used during the civil war as a hospital and a horse stable. You could see the marks on the walls where the horse troughs were hammered in. It was a beautiful church and, as I expected, the service was quite different from what I'm accustomed to at home. All the clergy wore robes and people carried stuff on golden poles down the aisle and we sang from a hymnal and read from a liturgy and there was a secret code that I never figured out when at random times everyone but me would cross themselves simultaneously. I felt rather out of place, but it was cool to see a church that worships differently, especially seeing all that they do to reach out to their surrounding world.

After church they took me out as promised for my authentic southern fried chicken. It was great. Even the corn was battered and fried. We finished up with plenty of time for me to get to the airport. I said goodbye to them and went back to Ericka's house to send a few more emails and stuff everything into my backpack. At the airport I grabbed a sandwich for the flight (no onions out of consideration for my fellow passengers) and a stuffed screaming monkey wearing a Nashville t-shirt for the kids. I spent the majority of the flight working on a song based off of a series a pastor friend of mine is preaching and made quite a bit of progress. We landed 10 minutes early and my dad drove me back to home sweet home.

Trip Totals
Days in Nashville: 3 1/2
Co-writes: 4
Songs Completed: 4 1/2
Pounds Gained: Yet to be Determined