Green means go! Red means stop!

"Green means go!  Red means stop!...Green means go!  Red means stop!..."  Like a bad tune that keeps playing through my mind--over and over and over..."Green means go!  Red means stop!"  These are the words buried somewhere in my brain, cycling again and again tonight. Thanks to Bethy's new revelation of what stop lights are all about, she has a little sing song-y way of reminding us, or just singing it to herself, on many occasions.  Like many things around here, it can be cute, or it can just be downright annoying.  It all began a couple of Wednesday's ago.  Wednesdays are our craziest day of the week.  The schedule is stacked.  After my kids have math with their math teacher at our house, we load up in the big white van for the "P.E. Exchange."  My crazy friend (I say that in the most loving way since I seem to be crazy, too!) who has 7 kids, 3 newly adopted and an 8th on the way, asked if we wanted to do P.E. this year.  Long story short, to make it work for both of us, I take my kids to P.E., a 30-minute drive from my house.  I drop off 3 of my oldest for classes.  I take her youngest with me back home for lunches, playtime, and naps.  She keeps mine during classes, feeds them lunch in her big van on the way back to our house to do another kid exchange.  It works.  However, on my 60-minute round trip P.E. excursion that particular Wednesday, we pulled out of our driveway and I heard Bethy from two rows back, "Green means go! Red means stop!...Green means go!  Red means stop!..." How cute, I think.  Well, about 15 minutes later with Bethy still chanting, the cuteness had worn off.  Seth jumps in.  "Bethy, it's not just green and red, there's a yellow!" 

Oh, the fireworks.  The three-year-old was insistent on the red and green with no yellow.  The five-year-old wouldn't budge either.  "Seth!"  I hollered, "Please leave Bethy alone.  Don't start a fight.  Yes, there is a yellow, but she doesn't understand, just let her be happy!"  Seth protests.  He doesn't get that a happy Bethy is what I was wanting, not a corrected, but madder than a hornet, Bethy.  The baby cries.  "Green means go!  Red means stop!"  The chanting continues, but now with much more volume and vigor so that the world will know that green means go, red means stop--and there will be no yellow!  Seth gets in the baby's face with an obnoxiously loud rattle to distract him.  I think I'm going to crawl out of my skin.  Surely when we add the two-year old at P.E. Bethy will be distracted.  No.  Not a chance.  Older kids out, two-year-old in.  "Green means go!  Red means stop!..."  The two-year-old chimes in with his questions about lunch, "Hot gog?  Bee-nana?"  Yes, Peter, when we get home, I assure.  "Hot gog?  Bee-nana?...Hot gog?  Bee-nana?"  "Green means go!  Red means stop!...Green means go!  Red means stop!..."  Baby cries, the rattle just about makes me want to jump out the window.  I make an executive decision.  Ten minutes from home I pull off.  "Peppermint mocha," I almost bark to the to the friendly voice coming out of the box behind the nearest Starbucks.  "The largest one, whatever that is called."  When I pull up to the window in the 12-passenger van, the voice will surely understand why I don't know the correct size names for fancy 5 dollar coffees.  She smiles at me as if she understands my desperation and calls me honey while she passes over the mocha and I hand her my 5 bucks.  I just about crawled through the window to give her a hug.  "Green means go!"  Yes, yes it does.  Time to get home for some "hot gogs" and "bee-nanas."  The van eventually comes to a stop, and on cue, the commanding voice from the 3-year-old in the back finishes with, "AND RED MEANS STOP!" I find myself breathing up a quiet prayer that I often pray these days, "Lord, please have mercy." 

And He does.

Looking back at these past several weeks are stories just like these.  Some of them take my breath away...a baby's chunky thighs, spontaneous conversations with little hearts that ask some pretty big questions, a late night Quick Trip run with my hubby for a soda and iced tea that feels like a date because we can sneak away for 10 minutes without the baby.  Some of the moments come with tears...like the texts I got on the trail this past Saturday when I got to go blading for the first time in months and months.  "Please come home!"  Well, what do you know, the dog's perimeter collar stopped working and the dog ran away, 3 kids went running in three different directions through the woods to find her, the baby's contact fell out and was lost while my husband was dog searching, and, well...it was just time to come home. 

And so it goes.  Lost contacts and potty training and runaway dogs.  But yesterday.  Yes, yesterday was a day where the clouds of the mundane and craziness parted and the sun shone through on the beauty of it all.  Yesterday Joseph was back up at Children's Hospital for another eye appointment.  They called his name.  Someone looked at his eyes.  The first doctor came in.  She examined him.  She asked us questions.  She looked surprised, relieved.  She said a bunch of big words that I don't really understand, other than I know what it means when she said they don't often see good results at this stage with many children.  She makes a big deal about the words "parental compliance" in his patching, and links it very uncomfortably to best outcomes.  She called in a student doctor and said, "Do the examination."  The student did.  The first doctor said, "Joseph had a pediatrician who caught this right away.  We did surgery as soon as we could.  They are patching, and as you can tell, his brain is responding the way we want."  She had more to add, like patch him for two hours a day (I gulp), see me again in 7 weeks, yada, yada...  She left the room and we hear her tell the student doctor out in the hallway, "See, it IS possible."  We schedule the next appointment.  We talk to billing.  Turns out our insurance had approved paying for contacts and fittings, yet doesn't seem to want to pay.  But we breathe a big sigh of relief anyway.  So far, so good.  Our baby is on his way to vision.

As we drive away, the weight of the appointment was hitting my husband.  Patching is hard.  They never told us before this visit the gravity of the lack of positive outcomes.  I can understand why parents fudge or delay or get frustrated.  To say it's not Joseph's favorite thing would be an understatement.  When the patch is on, even the other kids say, "Oh, no!  Not the patch!"  It requires full time attention and often a three-ring circus to keep our patched baby happy.  Add to that a contact that falls out and gets lost.  I would give up if I didn't have my husband's help.  The last time Joseph's contact fell out?  Yeah, that was Saturday while I was on the trail.  Dan found it on his cell phone when he pulled it out of his pocket.  It went from the baby's eye to somehow stuck on Dan's phone while big sister was playing a game on the phone next to him.  Then the phone went in the pocket, and by the sheer grace of God, stayed stuck to the phone rather than the inside of the pocket.  Dan searched the house for an hour, but never would've thought to look inside his pocket!  Oh my, I get chills just thinking about the jeans that go in the laundry and the contact that just disappears.   And knowing my husband's tenacity, he would still be on his hands and knees, how many days later, with a flashlight and a magnifying glass.  Yes, the Lord had mercy!

But, oh yeah, the clouds parting thing.  Well, that was when I realized coming home from Children's that in the daily mundane things, and in the feelings of not being enough and not doing enough for the 7 little souls that live in my house, and in the loneliness that has been a large part of my last several months of containment for fear of a tiny contact getting lost or blown off in the wind, all of it...it was worth something.  No, it doesn't win any prizes or get the attention of the masses.  But sight!  It is helping my son see.  And it seems to be working!  Suddenly, the guilt over the trips to the Magic House or the zoo that aren't happening right now, the absent dates with friends and even Sunday's sitting in my room with my little guy rather than in a pew at church, all of the guilt...it just lifts.  Because THIS is the important thing.  My little guy needs a mommy, and quite frankly a daddy and 6 siblings to love him for who he is, despite of some of the limitations he brings to the table.  And I see that it is those limitations that have helped us grow deeper in so many ways, and depend on Jesus more and more.  And I realize, it is out of the limitations that new blessings have come.  There are beautiful things that have come out of this stretching time in loving another adorable little baby in our family.  My children have grown in compassion, in responsibility, in independence, and in mercy--thank goodness in mercy towards me, and towards each other.  Yes, the Lord is merciful.  It has come in so quietly, so tenderly, and it finds its home here.  Despite the craziness, despite the seemingly mundane day-to-day living--and yes, despite me and my inadequacies. 

So green means go.  Lots of things are a go around here.  My oldest has his driver's permit--oh my!  But he's doing great, and honestly, I have too many other things on my mind to be stressed out about it.  He got to put that he is 6-feet tall on his permit.  Like I said--oh my!  My next in line took a little R&R with his grandparents in Iowa.  Went hunting with Grandpa for the first time--oh my! 
Got a turkey.  If you know my dad, you probably have already seen the pictures.  Proud Grandpa, what can I say?  And on and on it goes, school work, house work...heart work.  Yes, green means go, Bethy.  So we'll just keep on going.

And red means stop.  Lots of things are a "stop" right now.  But I'm learning that certain stops allow for the more important go's in life.  So tonight I will rest content in the stops, as well. The stops of potty training for now, the stories of the pooping issues around here are enough to fill a whole blog post in and of itself.  So we decided last week to put the diapers back on a certain darling and strong-willed little 3-year-old I know.  And that is just one of many stops these days. So yes, Bethy, red means stop.

But as you know, Seth is right.  There is a yellow light.  And yellow means slow down.  So I slowed down today--on a Wednesday, none-the-less--after the "hot gogs" and "bee-nanas" were eaten, when the baby was napping and the other littles were in the toy room playing, and I read. Easter!  I forgot, this week is Easter!  It couldn't have been a better reminder that the chapter I was reading was on the Humility of Jesus. The Son of God who had all the "go's" of heaven, yet emptied himself to become the Son of Man.  He became fully human--with life's limitations and "stop's", even in the ultimate "stop" of death, so that we might be restored to a relationship of freedom and "go's" with God.  That's what Easter is about, and I have been so busy that I hadn't stopped my going to remember, even in this Holy week.  And I fell in love, again, with this Jesus.  Yes, the Jesus who performed miracles and cast out demons and rose from the dead.  But before all that, He was born into an imperfect family--with lots of siblings, I might add.  He experienced first-hand the noise-levels and chaos, the endless laundry and drooling babies.  Yes, he knows the daily mundane just as well as the glories of heaven.  And if I pay attention, He shows me where to find the love, the forgiveness, the hope, and the peace that I'm often craving...it is in Him.  It always has been.

And so, for one last time--because there is no other way to end this tonight as all my kids are coming home and needing their mama to tuck them in...Green means go.  Yes, it does.  And red means stop, doesn't it?  Green means go.  Red means stop.  Green means go.  Red means...shhhhh...