Free...

A plethora of fuzzy critters in our yard over the past few months has led us to take extreme measures lately.  After hours spent crafting our own homemade "varmint" traps, we borrowed some legit animal traps from a neighbor and set them out to work their magic.  We did not have to wait long.  In the first 24 hours we caught a bunny and a chipmunk.  Just two days later another bunny was captured.



Seeing those little creatures in a cage, struggling to find a way of escape, is rather heart-rending.  No matter the damage they have caused in our garden, their cuteness and vulnerability always leads us to treat them humanely and make multiple trips to our local park to release them.  The kids absolutely love to let them go, watching them bolt from the cage into their newfound freedom.

 What a precious thing freedom is.  As we approach a time of year that we celebrate freedom, it gives me reason to pause and reflect about what it means in my own life.  I have no idea what I did (nothing!) to deserve the privilege of being born into a country where I can live in freedom.  So many millions of people in this world are never afforded that opportunity.  So many live in outright oppression from the time of birth.  And yet, how often do I take my precious freedom for granted?

Another aspect of freedom that I dwell on tonight is the freedom God gives me...to choose how I will live my life...what I will focus on, how I will devote my time...He gives me free reign to do as I please.  As a parent with children beginning to gain more freedom of their own, I start to balk at their desires to do more and more on their own.  The thought of God, overseeing billions of people simultaneously, giving them full freedom to make their own choices...it's incredibly mind-boggling...and yet that's exactly what He does for us.

So it is, with many prayers and great trepidation, I begin to let my children have more freedom...to live their lives as they choose...to make choices and learn the (sometimes difficult) consequences of those choices.  So it is with me...that I must learn to submit my will each day to God, that I might best use the freedom He gives me...not taking it for granted...drawing on His great wisdom to guide my steps so I am not ensnared in the traps along the way...

True Love...

"I mow the lawn tonight.  You help me."  This was uttered in my direction as the determined Lawson grabbed his little plastic Fisher Price lawnmower out of the shed, then went back in to push the real lawnmower out for me.  "OK, Lawson, I'll help you."  As I mowed, he followed right along behind me with his own little mower, keeping up quite well for at least the first 20 minutes.  Eventually though, he tired out, and disappeared into the backyard.

I had to chuckle at his adorable insistence that he, a 2-year-old, was so sure he was going to mow the entire lawn with his little toy mower.  Sure he went through the motions of mowing and made a valiant effort in the beginning, but the fact was, it was just too enormous for him to do on his own...the mower wasn't the right tool for the task, and he didn't have an understanding of how to complete the job.

 As I leaned forward to pull the curtains closed this evening, ready to put the very sleepy Lawson to bed, I saw an enormous rainbow arcing through the dark sky.  "Look, Lawson!  A big rainbow!"  He climbed out of bed to look out the window with me for a few moments, in awe of the amazing sight.  "What's that, Mama?"  "That is a rainbow.  Do you know what it means?  It means that God...Loves...Us."

I tucked him in and gave him an enormous kiss, thankful to have shared this moment of beauty and of profound realization with him.  How often have I gone to the Lord and said, "Lord, let's do this together."  I have all the right intentions...recognize my need for Him, for His strength, His wisdom...but I stubbornly try to take the reigns.  All too soon, I falter...I fall short...I recognize my intense need for Him.  And in spite of all this...and of my stubborn human nature that causes me to make the same mistakes over and over and over again...He still loves me.

I read this quote the other day:

"Look back over your own history as revealed to you by grace, and you will see on central fact growing large - God is love...In the future, when trial and difficulties await you, do not be fearful; whatever and whoever you may lose faith in, let not this faith slip from you - God is Love"

~Oswald Chambers

Excellence...

It's another typical mealtime in the Berad household.  Lawson has chosen to eat two bites of his dinner and has then migrated from the table to the toy box to drag out his xylophone and bang away on it.  Sienna is in the bathroom, because she always has to take a mid-dinner break to use the bathroom, and is belting out "Let it Go" in her best Elsa voice.  Evangeline is half crying, half growling her disapproval from her jumper, wanting to be held.




After order is restored and dinner is put away, I try to round up the three younger kids to take a walk.  I'm trying to pull on shoes with a toddler hanging on my leg and while holding the baby, who spits up for the third time today all over my shoulder.  This does get easier...someday...right!?!

I've been trying to memorize a verse for the past week that speaks about living a life of excellence.  It's Philippians 1:9-10

This I pray, that your love may abound still more and more, 

in real knowledge and all sincerity, so that you are able to approve the things that are excellent,

in order to be pure and blameless until the day of Christ.

Parenting with excellence...now there's a challenge!  On the days that things all seem to implode...no one is behaving, moods are terrible...how do I hold it together?  What kind of model am I for my children in the day to day.  How can I show them what it means to have a good work ethic, to be patient, to be a good listener, to live out my faith in very visible ways for them to see?

As I watch these tiny terrors living their days out in 0 to 60 speed...going full tilt from morning until their heads hit the pillow at night in utter exhaustion, I'm just amazed watching them learn and grow and change so quickly.  The amount of discipline and patience I have to have now just to stay sane is overwhelming at times...


Live out each day with excellence...that seems to be the message I'm supposed to hear for this week.  Whether it's chasing my kids around a mini-golf course where no one holds the club correctly, every hole is a "hole in one" for Sienna, and most shots are purposefully hit in the water...or whether it's cleaning up their messes for the 20th time today.  No matter what I'm doing...no matter how mundane it may seem, do it with excellence.

Derrick helped catch and release not one but two black rat snakes from a neighbor's garage yesterday.  Couldn't resist bringing one of them home for all the kids to see...eek!!

Water and Sunshine...

 It was another windy morning as I sat on my bed, looking out the window to pray.  The force of the breeze shook the trees and blew the leaves every which way.  The sound was powerful...rushing...

We spent a morning this week visiting friends with a lake in their backyard.  The kids absolutely loved exploring this mini-ecosystem...it was truly magical.  Fish ate right from their hands.  Some baby mallards came very close for some bites of bread.  A big, green frog gave a great show of his powerful legs as he swam away from his gleeful onlookers.

The fingerprints of the Lord are all over Creation, everywhere I look.  Though we may not be able to physically see Him, just like that early morning wind, He is undeniably there, making His presence known through the complexity, the order, the dramatic beauty and creativity we see, if we only take the time to look.

 It's the moments that are most easily overlooked...the leaves blowing in the breeze...a peaceful morning at the pond...that speak to me most powerfully.  God gives me these opportunities to see Him...to recognize His involvement even in these everyday things.  He beckons for me to step away from the din and fellowship with Him.  I love a passage in 1 Kings 19 where Elijah is waiting to encounter God.  There is an earthquake...and then a fire...but God is not in either of those.  Then he hears a gentle blowing...a mere whisper....and that was where he met God.

Don't ignore those whispers...don't mistake the miraculous for merely mundane.  There are moments every single day where I am in awe by some aspect of Creation...an awe that reminds me to reflect on the love of a Savior who delights in the details.

A Vital Necessity...

How often have I experienced a vital need?  What does this even truly mean?

I've watched three swallowtail caterpillars transform from creamy white eggs the size of a period into fat, gorgeous caterpillars over the past couple of weeks.  The day my kids found the eggs on some fennel growing in our garden, they were absolutely ecstatic.  We've now enjoyed raising butterflies for the past several years and never tire of watching their incredible and dramatic transformation, over the period of just a few weeks.

Their success in reaching their glorious butterfly stage is fully dependent on just one thing when they are a caterpillar...food.  If the mother doesn't lay her eggs in the right place, they cannot flourish.  A caterpillar's entire existence is so very simple....eat and grow and molt and eat and grow and molt...and then, transform.

Oh to have that kind of focus...to know exactly what I need and seek only that...not to be swayed by any outside forces.  Oh to have that built in instinct, going through the most methodical stages until I reach full maturity.  But life is far more complex than that for you and I.  From birth we are pummeled with a myriad of forces, decisions, situations, distractions...our parents help us sort through these initially.  But as we grow we start to act on our own....

Often we can make it quite far without the thing we truly need.  Some may say they live out their entire lives with great success and contentment, entirely on their own.  But just as a diet of pure junk food would leave me devoid of so much of the nutrition I need to thrive, I believe a life lived without God leaves a human being in a place of great need...of unfulfilled longing... never able to live out their full potential.

I cling to God as my vital necessity, realizing more and more, day by day, how bad I am at making decisions on my own and how much I need Him and His direction to survive and thrive.

How quick I am to judge, to get angry, to point out faults in others while ignoring my own, to lose patience, to act selfishly...  How often I lose sight of what's truly important and instead begin to feast on things that are fleeting and foolish...

God give me the focus...the determination...the instinct to always go back to You.  Let me long for you deeply.  Let me seek You out each day as the very food for my soul to feed on.  And when we truly do search for Him, wholeheartedly....we find Him.

Jeremiah 29:13

 Then [with a deep longing] you will seek Me and require Me [as a vital necessity] 

and [you will] find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

Lots to do at the Zoo...

 The kids enjoyed an action packed 4-hour visit to the Zoo today.  I love the way we can see something new on every visit, like the playful polar bear and swimming tiger today.  Being so close to the animals is such an amazing learning opportunity for them...and it just allows for an even deeper appreciation of the complexity and order in this amazing world we live in.

Reality...

A little girl is sprawled out on her family room rug, reading a book...contentment written all over her face.  Outside the windows the sun is beating down...it is a scorching hot day.  In another scene a family is warm inside their home while brutal winter weather rages outside.  These scenes were from a commercial for a home heating and cooling system that I happened to see the other night.  The premise was simple...comfort...  You need only purchase an air conditioner and heater and you will never even be aware of the weather that rages outside your home.


If only it were that easy to tune out all of the difficulties...the trials...the problems we face.  If only we could go through life in a climate-controlled, pain-free, perfectly comfortable and worry-free little bubble.  Just as it is futile for child's sandcastle to hold back the rising tide...I must recognize and accept that this life is fleeting.  I grow older every day...loved ones depart from this world...try as we may to hold onto the past, our lives are ever changing.  The storm that rages in the world we live in can't be ignored...at least not forever.

I must face reality...and that reality beckons me to live for something more than just ME.  If not...what is the point of all of this?

This may all seem rather depressing and grim...the recognition that I am powerless to stop the progression of time and it's effects on me....but it doesn't have to be.  There is wonderful joy ahead (1 Peter 1:6)...at the end of this weary road, I have Hope.

So I focus not on the things I can't control, but on the things I can.


I can CHOOSE to live in a perpetual pity party...
or I can CHOOSE to offer support and kind words to others who are hurting.

I can CHOOSE to get angry when things don't go my way...
or I can CHOOSE to accept that there is a greater plan behind everything and accept the little (or big) bumps in the road.

I can CHOOSE to feel that the world is unfair...
or I can CHOOSE to count my blessings each day.

God didn't put me here to live in a perfect world, have the perfect marriage, have perfect children, and have perfect care-free days.  Reality is harder to accept some days than others...but accept it I must.  And yet...I still have Hope.