Lois Lyda

a birth. a death. and i am in the waiting room.  knowing not which will happen first. 

the day i was born, my dad had to call his father-in-law to let him know that he had gained a grandchild, and lost his father.  i’ve heard that story many times, and only now am beginning to comprehend that kind of double portioned serving of life’s banquet table - birth and death. 

my dad has been valiantly fighting stage 4 cancer for 18 months.  along the way, many miracles of soul and body have taken place.  now, the cancer creeps in closer still, seeping into vital organs, bones, blood.  raging, unstoppable to even the sharpest lazer, the most agressive treatment .  now my dad lies unable to resist the principles of mortality, his physical reminder that the end is near; even pain killers can’t kill this kind of pain. 

St. John of Kronstadt writes, “The life of man on earth is a gradual daily dying. . .Therefore, if our body is continually wasted, and visibly approaches its end, let us despise it as transient, and care with all our strength for the immortal soul. the body is a faithless, fleeting friend.”  if he has any strength at all, it cannot come from the security he once found in his flesh.  It can only come from vitality of soul.  and it does.  He is glorifying God in his body, though frail and slain by cancer.

Here I am now, 38 weeks pregnant and feeling it a drudgery.  I complain, I whine, I’m short tempered due to my “condition”.  It is a daily struggle for me to get out of bed, to dress myself, to move as I am used to.  I feel aged from excessive weight gain and tormented from lack of sleep.  Yet inside of me is life! how shameful for me to liken my physical suffering to my dads.  while his body is dying, he is giving glory to God.  while my body is creating life, I am dishonoring God’s goodness.  

for both my dad and I, the battle is a spiritual one.  without knowing, we can both choose to wait on the Lord for his peace and rest, come what may.  “Come to me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This is what my dad has chosen.  Now it is up to me. 

 Lord grant me the strength of soul when my body is weak. Read more…

I’ve seen this very entertaining show Clean House a handful of times, and it makes me feel good about my not-so-organized state of being, especially the “messiest home in America” special edition.  However, a friend last week brought me back to reality when she commented while looking into our tiny pantry, “Lois, you have so many things that you don’t need.”  On further examination, I realized that she was indeed correct. 

I embarked on “operation: clean week clean out.”  Here is a random list of things I have found in the house so far, that we really don’t need:

A Tagalog-English Dictionary.  Three Spanish language Bibles.  40 pairs of toddler tighty-whities.  10 outdated phonebooks - one from 2003.   Shredded coconut dated 8/2008. Baking chocolate that has been in the pantry since we moved in 2005 - oh, and I don’t bake!  A hardback manual “Guia contra el Dolor.”  3 St. Maximus library books that I was unknowingly holding hostage, and convinced the church librarian I surely must have returned.  Over 75 used grocery sacks (for Ben’s lunches, of course!).  A whole bag of miscellaneous sock singletons.  7 Baby Dolls of varying ethnicities (we only have one daughter, so I have left her with three:  one white squeezable snoring baby, one  black plastic baby - formerly a twin, and one fully clothed Native American).

 Already, just by getting rid of all my secular parenting books like “Nanny Wisdom” that I am never going to read, I have found a logical home for all the displaced shoes scattering themselves abroad in my entryway; our entryway bookshelf-bench now functions as a shoe cubby.

Far from discouraging me, this emptying of the home makes my heart feel fuller.

Lent began this week.  I sometimes get flack for fasting. “Be careful, honey,” my mum will say every year in a disaproving tone as I embark on this journey of self-denial.  As Richard Foster says, “The contstant propaganda fed to us today convinces us that if we do not have three large meals a day with several snacks in between, we are on the verge of starvation.  This coupled with the popular belief that it is a positive virture to satisfy every human appetite has made fasting seem obsolete.”

But an incident of a few years ago reminds me, as I begrudgingly surrender to the fast this year, why I “afflict” myself with fasting. 

One thing that is very important to our immediate family of four is family vacations.  It is a rare sliver of consolidated time spent exclusively together once a year.  After the birth of my second child, surrounded by an island of diapers and nursing bras and a sea of no sleep, I was dreaming of sweet vacation bliss. We booked a vacation to St. Maarten a year before our scheduled departure.

A few months later, my sister-in-law began planning her wedding.  Out of all the weekends in the calendar year, she decided that she wanted to get married on the weekend we’d be in St. Maarten, and expected that we’d be able to reschedule our trip.  However, the plane tickets were already booked - cancelling was not possible.  Ben and I, coveting our family time, felt that since we’d made our plans innocently without any knowledge of even an engagement at the time, that she’d defer to us.  We genuinely assumed she’d change the date when she found out we couldn’t change ours – but she didn’t. 

Instead, the whole extended family banded together and accused us of selfishly planning a vacation on the day of the wedding!  We were shocked at the accusation, and frustrated, and hurt. We pledged not to return for the wedding. 

Upon making this decision, my once pristine relationship with my in-laws went catapulting into the carribean.  For almost a year, there was tension, deep-seeded anger, and resentment between the two sides.  Hurtful words and emails were exchanged, doors were slammed.  Meanwhile, both the wedding date and the vacation date were set and refused to budge.

It is worth mentioning that my in-laws are also Christians.  We should have been able to work this out in a civilized, loving, Christ-honoring way.  But sin was firmly rooted in us.  Throughout this time, I was praying for God to help me.  I was praying for Him to rid me of my obsessive evil thoughts and feelings towards them that would rise up uncontrollably and surface at random, even during prayer.  But no break-throughs occurred.  We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone.  It was awful.    

Then Lent came.  And the Great 40-day Fast began. In my faith tradition, this means I ate a “Daniel Diet”, as I like to call it, abstaining from all animal products. I also cut back on entertainment factors in my life (for example, I ceased watching useless shows like “the Bachelor”). And I tried not to buy anything unnecessary, and to live a life more conducive to prayer, less busy and noisy.

With the addition of fasting, I continued in prayer about this grave family conflict.  Gradually over the course of the 40 days, my anger died, my evil thoughts were cut off. Finally and most crucially, a desire for peace and forgiveness was born.  I was humbled exceedingly.

We cut our vacation short to attend the wedding.  Our relationship has since been restored 10 fold to what it was even in it’s previous pristine condition.  I can only attribute this outcome to the fasting that I believe weakened my self-will and strengthened my prayers. 

“Fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen in any other way.” Richard Foster

I have officially made it my goal to unsubscribe to all bulk emails. John McCain’s Country First, Farouk Shami for Governor, Mom’s groups, Kid’s organic toy companies that, even with “mega sales” of a whopping 20% off, I will never afford to buy.

This unsubscribing equivocates part of my prelenten efforts to steer clear of “wanting”. The need to accumulate and buy at times attacks my psyche and, while our budget hardly budges, convinces me to buy.

Yesterday, for example, I clicked on an add for some reduced price diaper bag, and ended up purchasing four pairs of lace-free kiddie shoes (75% off MRSP, noless). While two pairs may have been legitimate, the $6.95 flat shipping rate convinced me that I’d get a better deal the more shoes I bought, which was almost the same cost as one pair of shoes.

One hour later, still deciding between the periwinkle blue gators and the orange fuzzy kitty’s, I fizzled away my evening wondering which footy friend would delight my children the most. In the end, I settled on the lightning bugs, and spent $38. All because of one failure to unsubscribe!

These emails take not just my money but my time. The irony is that while I seem to end up with time to open the email, and loose myself in online shopping, I never “have time” enough to press on the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. But this year, I’ve had enough of being prosletized and marketed to on email.

To date, I have 5425 emails in my inbox. At least half of these from bulk marketing.  From time to time I’ll go through and determine to delete , but I never make it below 5000. I have a mind to just “select all” and wipe out every trace of the past 5 years-worth of email communication, but the google search feature makes it too easy to keep things in my ever growing cyber landfill.  Imagine if those 5000 emails were paper. I wonder how much room they’d take up. One file cabinet? One garbage can? The entire garage? Who knows.  But 5000 seems excessive.

Unsubscribing to email is just one way I am trying to take control of my lack of self control, by eliminating the stimuli that convince me I need to buy things I never before thought I needed to buy.

So far so good. I haven’t bought anything since. . . well, okay, just one ltle thing . . .but it was an icon to help prepare me for the self-denial of lent!

What else in my life can I “unsubscribe” from?

My “outgoing mail” of excessive talking and my “junk mail” of overeating is next!

 When did parenting become reduced to the bare-bones task of keeping them alive?

When I first started full-time mothering, I was convinced it was “the highest calling.” I envisioned soul-profiting days of Bible memory and life skills. I was even under the illusion that I’d be implementing praying the hours with my kids at our icon corner, in between bouts of meaningful tasks in our media-free society.

My perfect parenthood world came crashing down around me on Friday (shortly after opting out of morning prayers in lieu of Blue’s Clues). I was tidying up the kids bathroom with a little Windex wipe-down, and the kids were happily playing together about five feet away in the neighboring room. Their squawks and squeels made me smile as I scrubbed the watermelon toothpaste from the counter, peeking in every few minutes to watch them scale the side of the newly assembled bunk bed with great determination and delight. “Be careful” I cautioned, and then went back to my cleaning, while happiness was still on my side.

But then I heard an unusually strained squawk & squeel. One that, had I not been mere feet away, I would have never heard. I jutted into the room, “Everything okay . . ?”

To my horror, Eden was hanging from the side of the bunk, suspended by a rope that noosed her neck. She was an inch from the ground, but dangling, caught in her descent by a four-year-old’s determined grasp. “I’m pulling you up, Eden, come on!” he was shouting excitedly, completely oblivious to her struggle for breath.

Expeditiously, I scooped her up, pulled the knot loose, and drew her to me. Coughing and sputtering, and still grasping at her raw red neck, she could barely utter a word. “Lord have mercy” I whispered, holding my daughter silently, frightfully, too tightly until I began to cry the words as the thought of near-death struck me deeper still. In the blink of an eye I could have lost my daughter. I was unnerved.

I didn’t have the stamina to spank my son, who had started bawling from the top bunk. I couldn’t let go of my daughter, who’s little body was still taut, her heart pounding, her eyes filled with fear. I studied meticulously the pink ribbon of tender skin around her neck.

Gradually, tears watered our frightened embrace with unimaginable relief.

Thanks be to God, she was alive, and how precious this fragile little life was to me.

I have always taken it for granted that my home is a safe-haven. A place protected from harm. While I am certain my “baby proofing” could be more thorough, I have never thought of my home as a danger-zone, let alone potential crime-scene. I have never thought of myself as a negligent parent, either. Fluctuating between attentive and distracted perhaps, but never negligent.

All this has now changed for me. If I ever put myself on a parenting pedestal, I’ve been completely knocked off. My so-called “agenda” has been completely stripped. To be single-minded in my effort not to multi-task is one thing. Choosing to make important what is really important, another. But if I can just keep my kids alive while they’re in my care, it will be a most blessed accomplishment. One that, in and of itself, is a very high calling!

Coffee hour duty is spiritual warfare for me. 

Those Sundays, I am like an inactive soldier reporting for boot camp.  When that one weekend a month arrives, I am in for a serious kick in the pants.

For me, cooking for 50+ people is not a delectable desire, it is a duty that usually ends with a culinary death, and leads to spiritual suicide.  Truly, coffee hour duty has been one disaster after another.  Whenever that Sunday approaches I moan, I stress, I panic.  I start cooking, boiling, steaming. . . hormonally speaking.  The night before, the verbal battery begins when I spout off all the reasons my coffee hour offering will be doomed.  For example, last time I made beans, in my dimented state of mind, the congregants had already complained about them being bland and crunchy before they’d even made it in the crock pot.  Another time, I was so fired up about getting my fruit salad to the church on time, I put the china dish on top of the roof  and drove off full speed. 

  So this time, I prayed a special “coffee hour duty” prayer as I boiled the eggs the night before.  Piece of cake, I thought, as I climbed into bed.  Just peel, scoop, and mash in the morning.

 At 8am the peeling process wasn’t as easy as I had imagined.  The whites were gluey and stuck to the shell, making my so-called hard boiled’s look like mutilated poached eggs. 

“They don’t look cooked all the way” said my observing husband, 15 minutes before our scheduled departure, as I’m standing at the sink with my robe still on estimating my losses, and wondering how a seemingly simple task  has come to this.  So I frantically reboil them, as my hormones also begin boiling.  It doesn’t take but a few minutes, and I see that eggs have started to crack and ooze.  Subsequently,  my emotions also begin cracking and oozing.  Soon, my spirit is completely scrambled. 

For 30 minutes, I cry,  &  declare I can’t possibly go to church in this forlorn state with such forlorn looking eggs.  Then I drink a coke for consolation as I nurse my emotional battle wounds on the couch. 

But  then it occurs to me how important it is that I not let my temperamental emotions and temperamental eggs spoil my day and  my meager offering to God’s people.  So I peel myself off the couch and pull myself together.  Later than usual, we make it to church along with 50% of the eggs, paprika and all.

Silly as it may sound, as I reflect on the morning’s mahem, I am convinced that this was a war waged by the Evil One.  The battlefield,  my mind (and the kitchen);  the assailant,  my thoughts (and the devil’s eggs).  He used the culinary comotion to ruin my spiritual appetite.  In the end, did I devil the eggs, or did they bedevil me?

A while ago,  I visited a TV-free home -  my friend, a homeschooling mother of four - and left feeling a surprising, yet real sense of peace.  I didn’t immediately notice the absence of a TV.  The usual  places for a TV were occupied by a piano, a fireplace lined with pictures, a book shelf, a window.  I took note as the 8-year-old contentedly sat on the couch reading Ann of Green Gables.  The other three took charge of their own imaginations playing contentedly with a small selection of  simple toys.  I was amazed.  How does she do it without the TV?  Why would she do it?  Seeing how well she managed, how well her kids managed for that matter, I was lead inevitably to question my own reliance on TV as parenting “help”. 

When the FCC came out with cautioning remarks about the negative influence of TV on young children, mothers cried out against this measure, saying, “How will I cook dinner or clean house without the TV?” With this reaction, it’s a wonder  our culture survived before 1958 when TV became a standard household companion.  Nowadays the TV has become not only commonplace, but a necessity for most families.  It is not that we can’t live without it, it’s just that we don’t know how.   We have adapted to restless images and accustomed ourselves to background noise and call it “multitasking.” 

 Of course this “multitasking” training begins so early that we unknowingly teach our children how not to concentrate.  Children interupt their own imaginative play to stare at frenzied images on a two-dimentional screen.  It’s been dubbed the parent’s most convenient babysitter; it’s always available, and it’s cheap.  But is it quality time well spent? 

When our family grew from one child to two, I was overwhelmed.  The couch was overflowing with laundry that needed sorting and putting away.  The sink was fermenting with dirty dishes.  I felt as though my only chance at keeping afloat, was to get another couch (for more laundry seating), throw the laundry away, or turn on the TV and let my son “zone out” while I “got things done.”   I really and truly wanted to educate and enjoy my children, but the stress of managing a home wore on me and won.   I felt that Emmanuel could at least retreat to the happy place in TV-land.  Deep down, this bothered me.  After a while I realized that much of the stress I was feeling was guilt.  But it wasn’t laundry guilt (although the smell of the wild underpants rotting in the basket made me feel a little below housewife par).   

When he watched TV, his  animated, energetic, smiling demeanor changed.  All the color from his face seemed to drain into the TV the longer he sat motionless and mesmorized.  Even standing on my head and juggling could not break his trance.  His eyes lost their luster, their life, and it seemed he had been zapped or drugged by the TV.   He didn’t seem himself.  Furthermore, when the TV went off, my son would spiral into a rage.  He became arbitrarily agressive and angry.  My belief in the so-called “happy place” began to change. 

 It has taken me several months first to warm up to the idea then to muster the courage to unplug.  I will continue to share my journey towards TV-free living as I go.

Considering our yard is a truncated 10 x 10 space not much bigger than our livingroom, I’m amazed at the creation capacity it has:  Snap peas, squash and spinach, raspberries and two blackberry bushes, a fruit cocktail tree, a patriotic rose of sharron, a flowering pair tree, roses, climbing jasmin, and wild flowers splashing color in unexpected places.  Gardening has always attracted me as a natural teacher to children of how life cycles work, and how things grow.  It never occured to me that our planting would attract other teachers as well. 

 A few days ago, our raspberries ready for the picking, we went out to gather our first harvest, only to discover that “someone” had beaten us to it; they were gone.  It wasn’t long before Emmanuel discovered a rabbit hopping around the wildflower jungle that is our yard. He chased after the rabbit with great excitement and curiosity; this small brown bunny was impossible to catch and excellent at hiding.  The next day, we went out to pick some spinach, only to find that this rabbit had exceptional timing.  Our garden may have been somewhat of a failure, but in many ways, provided an excellent oportunity to let nature teach us. 

 We took our son to Barnes & Noble the next day, and picked out the original authorized version of Beatrice Potter’s classic little book, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”  Encountering a wild “naughty” rabbit close to home, our son was instantly drawn to Peter.  The drawings are masterfully real, and the charaters are personified in such a way as to remain true to nature (well, besides the fact that they are partly clothed and can talk!).  We were able to sympathize with the antagonist gardener Mr. McGreggor chasing after Peter, and understand the importance of obedience;  Old Mrs. Rabbit told her bunnies to stay away for their protection, not for their punishment.    

Peter still visits our garden frequently, though he’s not too fond of the sprinklers.  We really should get a fence to protect our produce, or our blackberries will be next.  Until then, we will observe our Peter Rabbit as he interacts with our garden during the day, and read stories about him at night.

  One of the things that bothers me about Sunday worship is the break down of the family. And it’s not just parents from their children; siblings are quarantined off by narrow age margins of as little as six months.  And while the adults can enjoy the service without shushing or pointing a disciplinary finger, what are their children doing?  Certainly, they are being bred for worship.  But are they learning to be true worshipers, or are they learning to be the center of their own worship? 

Let me explain.  In most churchest I have visited, there is a multi-colored “kid zone” that alarmingly resembles a McDonalds playland. Equiped with slides, toys galore, maybe even french fries and a coke. . . does the children’s church resemble “church” in anyway? The children have fun, for sure, but do they learn anything about how to worship?  At best my son might scribble over the words “Jesus loves me” with a crayon (an activity that might take him a total of 10 seconds), but since he can’t read, did he learn anything about what worship looks like?  Instead, for two hours, with all his needs catered to, wildest fun guaranteed, he is taught how to be a consumer of stuff, a lover of pleasure, a worshiper of self. 

When our first-born was a few weeks old, we ventured out to a large church down the road.  I wasn’t about to place my newborn into the hands of a stranger in a room already teeming with helpless babes, so I brought him into the sanctuary with me.   I felt like I was sneaking him in;  we sat in the back to “hide him”, as if I was breaking the rules by wanting to worship with my new baby rather than without.  Within minutes my feelings were validated, as an announcement was made: “There is excellent child care for a reason  -  please use it.”  A thousand preying eyes pounced on me.  Embarrassed, I relocated to the nursing mom’s room, and watched the rest of the service on the TV monitor, separated from my husband and the worshipping community.  It was a very isolating experience, church sponsored motherhood aparthied.

When we first came to the Orthodox church, one of the things that attracted me was the sound of a crying baby, the shushing of a mother to her child, the sound of childrens voices mixed with mature ones. It was refreshing to see kids and parents worship together, approach the challice for communion as a family, raise  united voices in love for God.  It was heavenly. 

Even now after two years, I keep expecting kids to be discharged, but they never are.  A two hour liturgy doesn’t deter them from zealously attending church school after the service while the adults fellowship and break the fast together.  It is a suppliment, not a replacement for the worship service.  During this time, bible stories are taught, the liturgy explained, hymns practiced, bible verses memorized.  And this is why they call it “church school”; preparing, training, educating, growing children to be worshippers. 

Now that I have two toddlers, I faintly lament the loss of “dropping the kids off” in the morning.  It certainly would be much easier.  But I do not think it would be better, for them or for me.  It is my primary job (not the church’s) to raise my children to be worshippers of the living God; to be reverent; to be prayerful; to stand in awe of Him; to bow with humility before His throne; to be attentive to the Word of God.  As the saying goes, children “Do as I do, not as I say.”  It still remains that the best way for my children to learn how to worship is to watch me. 

What will become of our children if we let our churches spoon feed our children when they need solid food for spiritual growth?  If they spend the first seventeen years of their church life being catered to, playing games and having fun, they will never transition into “adult” worship.  Instead, they will become a generation who is disenchanted with the Church because it doesn’t meet their needs.  A generation who thinks the world revolves around them.  A generation with no respect for authority and no self-discipline.  I don’t want to see my son drinking out of a spiritual sippy cup at seventeen, do you?

A revolving conversation in our household is how we want to raise our children. One of the topics frequently discussed is schooling. While Ben and I both had positive public school experiences, after teaching in the same system of which we are products, we began to have parental doubts (I’ll save the “why’s” for another day). A few years ago, we stumbled upon a classical Christian school through a family acquaintance. We began reading up on classical Christian education, and then we attended the open house. (yes, our son is only 3, but if the next two years fly by as fast as the first three did, we thought we better get a move on in figuring out his academic future!)

 At the open house we expected to be informed; instead, we were moved to tears. This came as a surprise to both of us, since neither of us (according to Myers-Briggs) make decisions based upon emotions. Ben scribbled on the information package, “I want this (underline underline underline) for our children.” “Me too!” I tearfully mouthed back, as the 3rd grade choir sang the hymn “This is my Father’s World” from memory (all five verses, no less), and I could picture my own dad sitting proudly in the audience on grandparent’s day watching Emmanuel singing about the beauty of God’s creation. And that’s just it. That God is the author of life should be the beginning point for all learning. This is a key missing ingredient in public school.

Another option we considered is Home Schooling. Many mothers at my church do it, and I hold them in high esteem, but to be honest, I don’t think I have it in me. Most of them look frazzled, worn out, exhausted, beaten down. No doubt, it is the most demanding job in the world. But I don’t think I’m homeschooling mom potential. My sister points out that, with our teaching background and “skill set”, we’d have “an excellent home school.” I’m just not totally convinced. I already feel frazzled & worn out, and all I have to do is be here.  Perhaps, I just don’t have the desire. Or perhaps it is that Ben and I have already made our decision to invest in a classical Christian education for our children.

We hung out with our neighbors tonight.  One of them was showing off his new tatoo written in large bold print,”Fuck all ya’ll.”   With the smell of cigarette smoke and beer in the air, heavy metal music played loudly from the improv garage band.   I couldn’t help feeling somewhat “otherworldly.”  A sense that I don’t belong here with all this tension and hatred.  Meanwhile, as the lyrics to the songs raged, our son scooted playfully down the sidewalk on his tricycle, and our daughter innocently danced to the music.  I felt sad about our meager attempts to be good neighbors and good parents, and frustrated that the two goals seemed to be clashing unexpectedly.  To keep my children pure, to keep their eyes and ears from the evil in this world is more difficult than I originally thought. 

I crossed the street, and put Eden to bed, comforted this night to pray, knowing that this is the ‘one thing needed’ of parenthood.  The only parenting strategy that actually might “work.”

And so I pray:

Raise my children to be pure in heart, that they may see God.  

Raise my children to stand firmly against God-hating teaching. 

Raise my children to run from the world and the delusion of the world. 

Raise my children to turn away from evil and do good.     

Public school cannot teach my children to be pure, or to be good.  And on my own strength, neither can I.  Still, more than anything, this is my desire for them.  Purity and Goodness.  Grant this, O Lord.