The Coopers Came to Town!

I have been meaning to share some pictures of our fabulous visit with my sister and her family, but have been so busy, trying to get to California and then getting settled in, that I haven't really had time until just now.

My sister, Amy, her husband, Daniel (Deedee I like to call him :) ), and their boys, my adorable nephews, Carson(5) and Cameron(almost 1) came to town the week before we left for our trip. We only had a day and half with them, but the Lord graciously stretched our time so that we both felt we got a really good visit in. We did a lot in just a bit of time and Amy and I even had time to take in a good cup of coffee by ourselves, with no kids in sight.

I love my sister so much. We had a rocky relationship when we were growing up, though. Oddly enough, I think she resented the fact that I consistently felt compelled to make the "right" decisions. Okay, I was a miss goody two shoes...there's no sense sugar coating it! I can't imagine why it wasn't more appealing to her. :) Anyway, regardless of all that, we managed to forge a friendship in more recent years that only gets better with time. She is an amazing mother, a thoughtful and encouraging wife, and a woman who seeks after God. I am proud to be her little sis and was so blessed to have her in my home. There's just something special about sisters!

Here are some pictures from our visit.

Carson and Hope are only a year apart and love being silly and having adventures together!

The cousins at the Royal Gorge (minus sweet Holden, of course :( )

The Cooper Family

Amy and I

The Permanent Press

Hope has a loose tooth. It’s true. It seems really early to me, but, luckily, the husband of one of the staff ladies up here is a dentist and he assured me that there was no trauma and that her permanent tooth is just making it’s way up and pushing the baby tooth out of the way. It will probably fall out within the next two months. So, it’s all perfectly normal and yet I felt this rush of fear. Seriously, it was my first real taste of this kind of sickening fear. I have alluded to it in the past. “Oh…my children are growing up too fast.”; “I can’t believe she is already doing that. It happens so fast.”; “It seems like she was a baby such a short time ago.” etc. Yeah…this wasn’t that. This was a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach, rapid heart beat, feeling hot all over kind of fear. And then, I got mad at the permanent tooth.

I mean, how dare that little tooth get to say when my baby becomes a big girl. How dare that tooth push its way through her gums as if to say, “I’m here. I’m a grown up tooth and I don’t have any use for that baby tooth anymore. Get out of here, baby tooth.” And then, it manhandles that baby tooth right out of it’s comfy gums and shoves it right out of her mouth. How rude!

Okay, this may seem a little overdramatic, but here’s the deal. I think I resent the grown up tooth because it is such a huge symbol of all that is to come. The things that represent Hope’s childhood will soon start to slowly disappear. Not only that, they will be replaced with things that will carry her into womanhood. Permanent teeth. The teeth she will have when she starts to date and gets married and has children. And, I’m not really ready. I thought I was ready. When some of my friend’s children started loosing their baby teeth I thought, “Wow! We are next. Won’t that be fun?!?” Turns out, not so fun. At least not at the moment.

I know this is just the first of those many moments when I will feel desperate to hang on to a part of her childhood that it is time to let go of. Lord, give me the strength to let go. The teensiest part of me is excited, though. I know that moving forward means a lot of hopeful, happy things, too. There is so much that I want to teach her about life, and identity, and boys, and friends, and God. So much that I get to journey through with her.

Last night, when she discovered her loose tooth, Hope was teary at first…worried about it. Then, when we told her she was getting to be a big girl and her tooth was gonna fall out soon, she broke out in a huge grin. A little while later, she secretly confided in me, “Mom…I’m kinda nervous.” My thoughts exactly.

"After the Leaves Fall" by Nicole Baart

Wow! I just finished this debut book by Nicole Baart and I was blown away. She is such a gifted writer and I am so looking forward to reading everything she writes. If you need a good read, pick up her book. You will not be disappointed and it is worth every minute of sleep you lose while reading it. Here is an excerpt from the end of Part One of the book to tantalize you:

My life became a cautious mosaic, slowly taking the form of a shabby mixed media - shattered glass among cool, round stones and tentative, interrupted strokes of inoffensive color. I couldn't see myself as much as I could feel myself in the angles and corners and lines. I was well hidden. Unrecognizable.

I was unfamiliar even to those who knew me best. It wasn't that I was afraid of getting hurt, of losing more than I had already lost. I wasn't trying to hold them at arm's length or be evasive. The truth was, I didn't know who I was, and I was afraid of being defined by who I wasn't. By what I didn't have. By all the tears that I had cried and the catalog of dates that told me who I could never be. By remembering with predictable, cyclic accuracy all I had lost.

I decided I could do better than that. I could handcraft the life, the person I wanted for myself. I could be my own artist, and I surrendered myself to the creation of a Julia who was too smart to attach, too independent to want to, and so secure as to be untouchable. I wasn't interested in allowing myself to wait a single second longer for something I was convinced I could walk up and take.

My first interactive blog

Okay, so this brings up an interesting question. If you were going away for a whole month, besides the obvious things, what are some special things you would HAVE to take along?

Assignment

Okay, I am finally trying to blog, though it seems like wishful thinking cause it is the end of nap time and any minute my little girls are gonna run in here all refreshed and ready to play. And I have to be ready. I need to take time and play with them today cause I am sensing that they need it (see my friend, Becky’s beautiful blog all about this). So, here is just a bit of what has been distracting me.

In three days my whole family will leave for the great state of California for an entire month. Loren is on “assignment” for Young Life at Oakbridge. Check out the link here. Pretty nice, huh? We will be serving with around twenty Young Life staff people from all over the country. Everyone has a specific job and it is always amazing to me how efficiently the month runs. Loren’s specific job this year is to be in charge of the Work Crew and Summer Staff. These are high school and college age kids who come to camp to serve. They run the rides (skate park, climbing wall, ropes course, mountain bikes, etc.), serve and cook the meals, wash dishes, clean bathrooms, do laundry, set up and clean up every activity, and pretty much do whatever it takes to make sure campers have the best week of their lives. They serve selflessly and we are so excited to pour into them for a whole month.

Assignment is always a special blessing for our family and for me in particular. Besides the fact that someone else cooks and cleans for us, and that there is endless entertainment for me and my kids, the greater gift for me is the time to connect. I get to connect in a whole new way with my kids since there are no real pressing responsibilities. I get to spend a lot of time just playing with them and soaking up every precious moment. I also get to connect with Loren in a unique way, too, as we are out of our element and serving side by side. And, since I don’t have a lot of responsibilities, I get to think about new ways to encourage and serve him. I always seem to connect more with the Lord, too. That is probably a result of more free time plus the added bonus of incredible scenery and daily corporate worship.

Perhaps the most important reason I love assignment, though, is that I get to connect with the mission of Young Life. Everything else I could possibly do in a different setting, but there is absolutely nothing like a Young Life camp to connect you with the mission of Young Life. Some spouses don’t enjoy assignments. After all, it is a lot of work to pack up your life for a month and go somewhere else. Plus, when you get there you will be living with several other families and time with your spouse will be hit and miss. But, for me, despite the usual kinks, it is always a blessing. I like it because I get to see, first hand, why we do what we do the rest of year. I get to watch students be served and loved by adults and other students who want nothing more than to be a reflection of Jesus. I get to watch as students understand, maybe for the first time, that they are loved beyond anything they could ever know, by the Creator of the Universe. And I get to watch lives being changed. I get a front row seat to see what the love of God can do. It’s an almost unspeakable experience. (I tried my best.)

It is necessary for us to go and do this every so often. It’s necessary because I get to enter in to Loren’s world and see through his eyes for a while. And it doesn’t take long for me to understand why he HAS to do what he does. His passion for students to meet Christ always runs deep and after a month at camp, my own will rival his.

So, we are off and we are thrilled to go. Packing to get ready to go….that’s a different story.