A Slow Summer and A Big Move

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

This summer was just what my soul desperately needed...
Slowness. Intentionality. Savoring. Just...being. We had a long and beautiful Spring with more rain than usual (more than I can remember in my whole life, really). Everything that would have normally been brown and dry was still alive and magnificently green for weeks longer than normal, and it was so enjoyable! Brad mowed lawns for our pastor's lawn care business, and the girls and I enjoyed the great outdoors in a multitude of ways. It was, as far as I can remember, the first summer in years that we weren't either traveling or madly house hunting and moving and stressed to the max. Literally, time seemed to stop most days, as the sun lingered well past ten each evening, long after little ones were tucked in to bed.




While Brad worked, we got into a groove, taking care of our pastor's gardens while they were on vacation for three weeks, and taking care of our neighbor's chickens several times while she traveled here and there. We started every morning with a quick breakfast, and then headed off to do our "chores" (though I hesitate to call feeding chickens and taking care of vegetable gardens "chores", since we so thoroughly enjoy those activities). We'd water and pull weeks and eat a handful of raspberries, and then head off to either ride bikes or take a hike before it got hot for the day. My memories of July will not soon fade! My eighth month of pregnancy was dreamy (I'm actually being serious)...I felt energized and healthy and like I could carry this little girl around forever! Having all that energy was such a blessing, as we are in a short season where my littlest, being three and a half, can actually ride her little bike for quite a ways and keep up with her sisters pretty well, and all of them can hike or take long walks without anyone needing to be carried half the time. I say a short season because it just started recently, and it's all going to end here in a few weeks, when I start all over again with another baby. And so, we took full advantage and soaked up biking and hiking, just us four girls each morning.





My other simple pleasure this summer was eating dinner on the porch each night. We had a covered porch in the front of the house, so no matter how hot it was at dinnertime, it was really quite comfortable to eat outside. I don't think we ate more than one meal inside for two solid months! Simple summer meals made without turning on the oven as much as possible, eating ALL the farmer's market bounty we could get our hands on, savoring the flavors and the sounds of summer and just slow time spent as a family around the table. After dinner the girls would get back on their bikes and ride until at last, we would have to be semi-responsible parents and call them in to get ready for bed before dark.




Popsicles and copious amounts of watermelon and Flathead cherries, live music in the park, friends splashing through sprinklers in the back yard, cold brew coffee, neighborhood chickens dropping by, plenty of time playing in the woods, miles logged walking alongside littles on bicycles, late night talks with friends on the porch, and countless wilted wildflower bouquets gifted to me by proud chubby little hands. MY HEART COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE FULL.

And then I remember one day as I stood quietly watering the raspberry patch, marveling at fact that life was so peaceful. My second thought was, "Uh-oh, what's about to happen?" It seems to be a definitive pattern in our married life, that the Lord provides us with an abundance of peace, allowing us to be rested and filled to the brim just before something difficult comes. Sure enough, within two days of me having that thought, Brad got an unexpected call from Waco, TX, three job interviews, and two offers on the table. If we said yes, we would have eleven days before we had to be on the road headed across the country. I would be 37 weeks pregnant.

We laid our options on the table. We talked pros and cons. We stayed up late into the night most nights talking, or sometimes just sitting quietly just thinking. We prayed...and prayed, and prayed some more. We asked for wise counsel. And then we made the seemingly crazy decision to say yes.

Here we are, a few extremely short weeks later, relocated thousands of miles from Montana, in a place we've joked about moving to for years. We live in Texas, Brad once again has a teaching job, the girls and I are homeschooling by morning, exploring our new city by afternoon, and acclimatizing to the heat and humidity of August in Texas! Life is strangely peaceful, and I don't think it has much to do with the details of life itself (packing, taking care of a thousand details to tie things up in one state followed by taking care of a thousand more details to get things started in another state, driving for five days, moving into an apartment, sharing one vehicle, navigating a new city with three kids, being two weeks from my due date, and starting a new homeschool year, plus learning to exist in such a small space as a family of five--soon to be six...these are not the life events that come together to create a peaceful feeling!) Rather, I can sense the Lord so deeply intertwined in every little detail of our life right now. I felt him in the midst of opposition from certain individuals as we made the decision to leave MT again. His peace sustained me in a way that is virtually unexplainable. I felt His presence on the road--not that the trip was easy, but as hard as it was, there was no anxiety (except for a momentary melt-down I had in a gas station in the middle of Kansas, where I suddenly felt we had come too far to turn back, yet we were so far from our destination I thought my poor body would never make it there!) When we got to this unfamiliar city, He provided eight of the kindest men to help Brad unload the U-Haul and a teenage girl to watch the girls while I helped direct the unloading (I'm a little bossy like that).



Slowly but surely, we are settling in. If the baby came today, it would be just fine. We are unpacked, we've met the midwife (and love her!), baby will share our room and everything is ready for her, we're a week into school, Brad's job is well underway, and amazingly enough, we have some semblance of routine going. Things are starting to feel familiar. Life in Texas has officially begun!







Refreshment

Wednesday, May 16, 2018


Burnt out.
     Insignificant.
          Aimless.
               Exhausted.
                    Frustrated.
                         Mentally fatigued.

Sadly, these have been my thoughts as a mom lately.
 
Though my winter blues are gone, I've still struggled to find my way back to joyful motherhood. I find joy in the lovely parts...the morning snuggles and taking them on little nature walks and all the fun, happy parts that encompass each day. But then there's the spills and the dirty socks on the kitchen table and the broken glass and the tantrums over who got the bigger cookie. The sass and the little one who won't comply and the attitude and my personal least favorite, the sibling fighting. These things have been monopolizing my mind, and instead of focusing on all the gifts, all that's good and beautiful about each day, all I've been able to see are the hard things, the ugly in hearts (mine and theirs), and the way the stress of long days, plus the carrying of a new life is taking a toll on my own physical body, though I don't like admitting that.



Mother's Day was a day of reflection, rest, and refreshment for me, and I'm happy to say my mind is moving in the right direction again. The day itself was hard not to love: the girls made me an amazing breakfast of avocado toast with an over-easy fried egg and bacon slices, and a strawberry smoothie. We went to church and then out for lunch at one of my favorite little cafes. After a lazy afternoon at home--them napping and me reading a new book and just laying in bed pondering motherhood and life as it is in this particular season--we went for a hike and I was surprised and thrilled to find that our little hiking spot had turned green and was at it's peak for wild flowers blooming. We ended the day with homemade shrimp cobb salads eaten on the porch. Not a bad Mother's Day!

I've known my heart towards motherhood was in the wrong place for awhile now. So many things in my screwy brain got shifted around this winter, and it's as if I've had to deal with each one separately in it's own time to get my thoughts right again. (I dread the thought of this happening every winter...one of the reasons I'm praying for the Lord to allow us an open door to TX). I've always thought that only the physical body was capable of hard "work". When I'm out of shape, like after a pregnancy, I know that I can push my body to get it strong and lean again, functioning well and feeling it's best. Well, I'm learning that I've go to do hard "work" to get my mind in a healthy state again, and that's just what I've been doing. It takes sitting in silence and thinking right thoughts instead of letting distractions take control. It takes a lot of prayer and a lot of studying/meditation on scriptures, and the discipline of preaching truth to myself the moment my thoughts start going the wrong way. It takes practicing gratitude constantly. Mother's Day afforded me lots of quiet time to really dig deep and acknowledge my sinful and skewed attitudes toward being a stay at home, homeschool mom.




Some things I'd been struggling with the past few months included...
Frustration over sibling arguments
     Annoyance at being interrupted all the time
          Disdain regarding the monotony of my days
               Discontentment as I compared my life to the lives of my working friends
                    Wishing for more purpose in my days; the lost ability to see purpose in the here & now
                         Feeling inadequate and pitying myself over my perceived lack

And then besides the wrong thoughts, were the very real aspects contributing to my unhappiness in motherhood, namely, exhaustion. Pregnancy number four has made me so tired, it seems like accomplishing the basic necessities each day is a constant struggle and my body is flat out done by eight o'clock every night. I find that cheerfulness and patience are the first things to go when I'm exhausted, so it's been a fight to have patience and joy around my girls.



THANKFULLY, I serve a God who hears my desperate pleas for help, who listens to and answers my prayers, though not always on my time table. I went to bed Saturday night pleading with him to fix my broken, pessimistic mom heart. I spent time Sunday doing the same thing, as well as taking intentional time to reflect upon all the amazing gifts I have in my children...so much to be thankful for! I sought out quotes and scripture I remembered reading in the past, whether from books, the Bible, or random Instrgram posts. I went back to a podcast from 2014 on parenting from grace, reminding me that I am, in fact, completely insufficient for the task of raising these girls, but that HE is sufficient. How freeing to remember that where I lack, God is more than enough. I CAN'T parent perfectly. Much of my frustration and irritation is rooted in not being able to control my kids: I can't control their obedience, their attitudes, their messy habits, their lack of getting along some days, or anything else! I can do my best to shape them, but only God can sanctify them and move their hearts towards Him. My frustration leads me towards behavior modification parenting, which does nothing for heart change. My job is to point them to Jesus: first and foremost, his work on the cross; then his characteristics and his commands, namely, loving him and loving others.

Monday morning, I woke up early, laced up my shoes, and went for a walk, asking for a fresh start. My favorite prayer when I feel like I need a complete do-over is from Psalm 51:
 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. 

I prayed for renewed joy, right thinking, patience, wisdom, endurance, selflessness, and the ability to see every difficulty as an opportunity for heart shaping in these little one's who have been entrusted to my care each day. That I wouldn't see cooking and dishes and cleaning up spills and taking out trash and cleaning toilets and wiping snotty noses as drudgery and meaningless, monotonous work, but as a high calling and an opportunity to serve my family. And guess what? My prayers and pleading were heard! I can honestly say that I feel enormously refreshed and renewed in body, mind and spirit.



This isn't to say everything is rainbows and butterflies (although there are lots of rainbows and butterflies this time of year;)). The girls still fight. The little one is at the age where, although she is an exceptionally happy and silly kid, everything seems to set her off and I never know when a meltdown is going to strike. There are still peed pants and spilled milk and broken dishes and bad attitudes. But the peace I once had in the midst of these daily events has returned. I see the tantrums as a glorious opportunity to get at eye level and speak truth into my little girl's heart. Spills and messes an opportunity to serve and/or teach responsibility. Bad attitudes an opportunity to teach life lessons. And most importantly, I'm letting the truth sink in, that I don't have to be perfect, because HE is. I don't have to get it all right. When I lose my cool, deal unfairly with one of them, or act out of selfishness (all of which I will do...repeatedly), the cross stands in the gap for me. I don't have to wallow in shame or decide I'm the worst mom ever, or stress out that I'm ruining them. I can teach my kids through my mistakes, by admitting my error and asking their forgiveness.




Maybe the point of this long winded post is to encourage you to stop when you feel something is off. Perhaps it's your marriage or some other relationship, or maybe your parenting, or it could be something altogether different. Stop and take time to acknowledge the issue, to pray, to reflect, to do battle with the enemy! Make your mind do hard work just like your body does hard work. Sure, it's easier to jump on social media and scroll your way to false bliss (numbness), but making the decision of getting right with God and asking him to do a massive work in your area of struggle is infinitely worth the work. And ultimately, when we open our hands and hearts and ask, He does the real work!



One of God's Spectacular Gifts

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

I've been married for almost eight years (seems crazy to say that!), eight years full of blessings (like three daughters and a forth on the way, plus one in heaven!), and trials alike. In movies when a character has a near-death experience, we get to see a highlight reel of all the great moments of their life flashing through their mind. I haven't had any near death experiences, but sometimes my life plays a little reel in my own mind when I'm lost in my thoughts, and I've been pondering something kind of amazing that happens in the highlight reel of mine.


 

I repurposed this blog and gave it a fresh start with a new name, Count it Joy, because over the years I've been learning to count everything as joy, as instructed to do in one of my favorite verses of all time:
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 in you so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James1:2-4
It's a choice we make and it certainly doesn't come naturally! My natural inclination is to groan and grumble and maybe throw a little pity party when life gets hard. Well, we've been through one trial after another since we got married, so learning to count it all joy has been a crucial part of my spiritual journey. It's such an important topic to me--seeing trials as a reason to be joyful--that I dedicated a blog to it!



Ok, back to the highlight reel. My last eight-years of reel goes something like this...

Meet soul mate
Get married seven months later
Have a baby girl
Move to my home state to enjoy being close to family and the mountains
Make tons of friends at an amazing church full of young families and babies galore
Move into sweet little house near trail head with gardens, a porch swing, and a little white fence
Have another baby girl
Walk everywhere with my girls and our bright blue double stroller
Story time at the library
Playdates
Picnics
Weekend hikes with the hubby
Grilling in our cute back yard while the girls eat tomatoes and raspberries from the garden
Getting involved in our community
Leading Bible studies
Lots of coffee and lunch dates with friends
Weekend "retreats" with hubby while parents watch our girls
Have another baby girl
Live in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse on seven acres and host tons of people at our huge table
Watch the kids run wild through the fields surrounding said house
Start the homeschool journey
Cross country road trips
Taking the girls to the ocean for the first time

Those are some of my favorite moments, and of course, the detail is so much more vivid in my own head, evoking so much sweet emotion when I think about each moment. That these are the things that naturally play in my mind is an absolute spectacular GIFT from God. All those beautiful memories I just listed are like pebbles that fell around some pretty big stones in our life through those years. Things like...

Living in more houses that we can count (moving over and over and over with small children)
Enduring health issue after health issue
Surgery
Chronic Pain
Depression
Buying a meth house, losing our possessions, thus more moving and financial uncertainty
Moving cross country twice in three months
Kids being sick all winter long, seemingly in a never ending rotation

Sure, not all of these seem like big deals, but in the midst of each of them, there were weeks, sometimes months of intense stress, anxiety, or physical pain. Many times, like during repeated gallbladder attacks (more painful than childbirth, and scarier because we didn't know what was wrong at the time), or during the three months we lived in Nashville trying desperately to find a house and realizing we wouldn't be able to afford to live there (amidst other major stressors), or during the weeks following us finding out we had just sunk our entire savings into a house that was uninhabitable, I remember begging God to ease up on us. Life has felt so heavy through these things.




And yet...when I look back, the hard doesn't pop into my mind. The good does. If a simplified look at life from the outside looking in is a big glass jar, and inside the jar are lots of big rocks with pebbles and sand filling in the space in between, the big rocks being the hurdles and hardships, the pebbles and sand being everything in between (the day to day moments that actually make up the majority of our lives), then my reel naturally plays through the pebbles and sand. It's not like I'm refusing to think about the hard stuff, but rather that my mind remembers SO much good in the midst of the hard. It's this very thing that motivates me to go do fun things, to get out and really live life to the fullest, even in the midst of ongoing physical pain. I just keep on making memories (for my sake and more importantly, my kid's sake), knowing that while sometimes it's hard in the moment, the payoff is infinitely worthwhile. A lifetime of memories made.



I remember my cousin telling me once (after she had had five or six kids...she now has eight!), "If I remembered the pain of labor and childbirth, I would have stopped after one. But God is gracious and let's those memories fade away so that I can be unafraid of having more." Isn't that the truth?! If I dwelled on all the hard things, I'd be paralyzed at the unknowns in our future, afraid of what tomorrow might hold. Instead, the Lord enables me to more readily remember the baby snuggles, the date nights holding hands, the seasons of health where I lead boot camps, the gardens planted and the beauty of the historic homes we've lived in. And all the hard things in between? Well, those have only served to grow me spiritually, to strengthen my relationship with my Father, and so I count it ALL joy, not just the pebbles and the sand, but the heavy stones too.

I'll end with a quote from Ann Voskamp that resonates with me so deeply...
"The trials [are] but stones on the way, and all the stones but steps higher up and deeper into God." (p. 108, The Broken Way)
That is my prayer for me and for you...that we would see the stones not as curses, but as blessings that move us closer to the heart of God. And that as we look back over our lives, no matter what we've been through, that we would see all the beauty that grew out of jagged places.

xoxo, Crystal

 

Out of the Fog: Coming to Life

Friday, April 27, 2018



 
Winter 2018: I can recall a few excruciatingly hard times over my 36 years of life, and this winter is near the top of the list. To most people, things probably looked fine from their viewpoint. We had moved back from our three month stint in Nashville, into a beautiful house on a quiet street near downtown. Brad had low paying but steady work, I was homeschooling the girls and in my first trimester of pregnancy with our forth little girl. Brad jumped back into life in Helena full force, getting more involved than ever in church, school and community. Meanwhile, I struggled with severe morning sickness, so no one ever thought twice about my lack of involvement or no-shows to Sunday services all winter. Normal first trimester stuff of course.

The reality was, I felt dead. Like the walking, talking, sometimes forced-smiling dead.

I've already posted about my bout with depression here, so I won't go into detail again, but as Spring slowly reappears and my soul with it, I look back at the past four months and my stomach hardens a bit, tightening at the mere remembrance of the difficulty I faced in trying to raise my three little loves in the midst of such darkness of mind. The memory of it is still fresh, though thankfully fading bit by bit each day that the sun shines warmer and the grass greens and new life appears both outdoors and in my very soul.



It's late April in western Montana, and I feel normal again, but feeling "normal" is such a stark contrast to what I felt all winter long that normal feels exhilarating. I feel so...alive! You know how we tend to appreciate each new season because we start to tire of the current one just a bit? We anticipate Fall as we grow tired of the relentless Summer heat; a glorious Fall gently ushers us into the slow and peaceful Winter; and Spring's appearance is always sweet as we grow tired of bundling up and shoveling snow. I think most of us wake up and get a little more 'pep' in our step when the snow melts and the birds start singing, when tulips start to emerge from the thawing earth and frost is replaced by dew. Well, magnify that feeling a hundred times; imagine feeling that after having felt nothing for four months, and that's how I'm feeling right now. The contrast is stark. And while I'm basking in it, trying to make up for lost time in so many areas of life, the intensity of my dark winter is still so fresh in my memory, it makes me shudder. The thought of going through it again truly scares me.



When I'm at my best (in a healthy mental state the other eight to nine months of the year), I'm social, I eat well, I feel good, and I'm motivated and energetic. Though I make plenty of parenting mistakes, I've got my A-game on in that realm, I take the girls to parks and hiking and to friend's houses, and I'm involved in serving in my community and church. When SAD hits hard, none of those things exist anymore. It's not a simple "pull myself up and out" or "get it together" or "fake it till I make it". Reading the Bible extra and dwelling on uplifting scripture and listening to praise music doesn't just fix it. It's a chemical shift that I can't control. Call it weakness, judge me, I truly don't mind. Weakness of any sort is looked down upon in our culture, but the apostle Paul says to boast in our weaknesses. I don't love doing that, ok? But I fully admit, I am weak in the winter, and nothing has been able to fix it. Do I lean on Christ? Absolutely! He sustains me; He is my everything and the only reason I make it through the dark months. Yet...

If there's a solution, you better believe I'm chasing after it! And so is my husband. I've dropped the ball big time throughout the course of my life. I've made huge, life altering mistakes. While obviously, I know I'll make mistakes as a mama, motherhood is one area I do NOT want to drop the ball. I don't want to look back after more than two decades of parenting and see that I was an absent parent for months every single year. I don't want my girls to always remember having to fend for themselves every January through March. That thought makes me sick. To the best of my ability, I need to be my best for my kids and for my husband. That is my full time job, my full time ministry, the gift that's been entrusted to me that I desperately want to be diligent with.



Today is supposed to be 70. Bikes have been dusted off, pansies planted, the patio table set up. Though still chilly in the mornings, flip flops are the shoe of choice around here, and the strawberries I bought this week actually tasted like strawberries! The long winter has finally made it's exit, and my own dark night is over. Morning has come. And I don't want to go back. I can't. Feeling so alive makes me know that so far as it depends on me, I can't go back.

Extreme as it might seem, a major move may be on the horizon. I'm not a fan of running from problems, but this is different. This is literally about my family's well being. When I'm well, the family is happy, things function as they should. Even my physical health is impacted greatly by my mental health. My back pain and headaches subside and my stomach seems to work better--not perfect, but noticeably better. The thought of another cross country move at seven months pregnant is nerve-wracking; the thought of winter after winter in MT is more nerve-wracking. As much as I hate the thought of leaving family here behind again, it seems like the best thing for us to do right now. I'm learning to separate emotions and feelings from facts. The reality is, staying in Montana, for now, is probably not the best scenario for our family. Besides the cold long winters, cost of living is crushing us and we haven't met a single one of our financial goals in seven years. I'd love to end up in Boise someday...close to family, neat city and mild weather...but they'll have to work on paying teachers a fair wage before that can happen for us.

Of course, more than anything, we want God's perfect will for us. I'm praying toward the move working out, but I'm also praying for him to give me peace and contentment and joy if we stay here. I know he works all things for good, and I know if he chooses to keep us here, I have to trust that he will get me through and that somehow, it's for my good and even for my family's good.

We find ourselves in limbo once again. Someday we will settle, but in all reality? This world is not our home anyway, which helps calm my heart when I start feeling anxious about not knowing what tomorrow holds (though even the most "stable" people don't actually know what tomorrow holds either). I don't know where my husband will get a job or where we'll be in a few months. But today? Today I'm going to pack picnic lunches and take my girls to the park and walk barefoot through the grass and dig in the dirt a little, planting a few more flowers while the girls play and get dirty and sun kissed. And if it actually reaches 70? We'll drop everything and go to our favorite local ice cream shop, as is tradition in the Knox family. It's going to be a good day. The fog has lifted and being alive never felt so real. Hope you're enjoying Spring wherever you are!