Ashes and Hearts

Sometimes there are issues I press with my children. Things they definitely Need. To. Know.  And I become frustrated when those lessons don’t sink in, when the morals aren’t taken to heart. Then again, there are times when God beautifully dovetails circumstances to teach lessons in a way I could never manage.

Today is Valentine’s Day. You know that; it’s difficult to avoid the fact. We’ve been inundated with hearts and cupids since New Year’s Day. Today is also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten journey many Christians undertake before Easter. For weeks my children have been excited about the candy hearts and cards they would get today. They’ve been less excited as I attempted to tell them about the meaning of Ash Wednesday and Lent, the time when we reflect on our sin and mortality, to remember why Good Friday and Easter were so necessary.

This morning as I set out their homemade cards and candy hearts, I had largely given up on the idea of making this day about anything other than hearts and flowers and candy. Not this year.

Instead, I set out to talk with my daughter about something else she definitely Needed. To. Know.

Years.

We’ve covered it before, but I felt she was a little shaky on it still, so I drew a rough timeline and we again went over the concepts of B.C., A.D., centuries and years. I had added the year 2100 to the timeline, and offhandedly remarked that her daddy and I wouldn’t live to see that year, but that she might.

She burst into tears, and I was suddenly knee-deep in a discussion of mortality, grief, and our hope in the Resurrection.

The may sound like a bad thing, but it was a conversation we needed to have. We talked about pain and hope. We talked about returning to dust and being raised with Christ. We talked about the different perspectives of earth and heaven, and the fact that heaven is our home. I was able to tell her gently, for the first time, that grief over a loved one is something she will experience far sooner than she thought or I hoped. And we cried together.

It was the most beautiful Ash Wednesday encounter I could have imagined, and I had nothing to do with it. Once again, I was reminded that God knows the lessons my children—and I—need to learn, and He will do the teaching if I step aside and let Him.

 “All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return” Eccl. 3:20.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20).

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5).

“As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. … For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:8-10, 12-13).

Poop Necklaces and Good Mornings

Sometimes I wish I had hidden cameras around my house simply to capture the variety of conversations that occur within these walls. This morning, for instance, my son and oldest daughter were rough-housing in the living room. He play-kicked, she squealed, and things were getting out of hand.

“If you’re going to play like that,” I said, “you need to do it outside.”

“Okay,” my daughter agreed, then turned to her little brother and said, “Let’s go outside and pretend the grass is a bunch of houses.”

“Okay,” he agreed, “but no kicking.”

“But you just kicked me!”

“Oh, I forgot,” he said, because it was obviously the most logical explanation. “But still, no kicking.”

Then, not two minutes later, as they’re still making their way outside, my son says, “I wish I had a cross necklace.”

My daughter teases him, “I thought you had a poop necklace.”

Groan. It’s another poop conversation.

“No, I don’t have a poop necklace!”

“But if you were a dung beetle,” my eldest pursues the point, “well, boys don’t usually wear necklaces, not most boys, but dung beetles push dung around, so I think a girl dung beetle would wear a poop necklace….”

Then they’re out the door and blessed silence descends, broken only by the sound of their running footsteps across the porch, the wind chime on that same porch, and the sound of my four-year-old, seated apart from the fray, coloring and singing to herself snatches of a Mandisa song:

“Good mornin’! Wake up to a brand-new day. Good mornin’! Wake up to a brand-new day! Good mornin’….”

And I guess it is. But I still wish I had a hidden camera.

Life with Bees

Spring is in the air. Oh, I know it’s only February 3, but I can feel it…and I’m not the only one.

With the imminent arrival of spring comes the return of one aspect of our lives that’s been largely dormant the last few months—beekeeping. We’re novice beekeepers, having stumbled into this part-hobby, part-job with the purchase of a bee nucleus last May. We’ve been scrambling to figure out what we got ourselves into ever since.

Once of my biggest fears was losing the bees over the winter. Most of my research gave me no better than a 50/50 chance of making it to spring with my hive healthy and intact. So I did rigorous research on how to keep them alive October through March. On top of the two hive bodies (big boxes) in which they wintered, I put a one-inch spacer with an upper entrance drilled into it to allow air flow and give them an exit if snow blocked the lower entrance. 

On top of that I put a three-inch “quilt box,” which is not a quilt at all, but a box filled with cedar shavings. The main purpose was to wick moisture out of the hive, since moisture, even more than cold, is a bee’s enemy during the winter months. Cedar shavings, in particular, would also help deter wax moths, a bee pest I have yet to see. 

After an unseasonable cold snap in December, the temperatures reversed and became unseasonably warm, with some days reaching into the 60s during January. I was relieved to see my bees come out for a cleansing flight on a couple different days, but then I had a new problem. By February, my girls were super active, without a flower in sight on which to forage. Since their honey stores are meant to get them through a winter with low activity, I was worried that their activity would cause them to eat too much too early in the winter—and starve. So I decided to try my hand at bee fondant, a sticky semi-solid intended for winter feeding. 

I think I messed it up. That’s another topic. 

What has me all revved up as I write this is that, when I went to crack the hive lid today for the first time since October, those bees were busy. Not just flying around aimlessly looking for forage, or cleaning out their hive. They were busy packing in pollen. In Eastern Oregon. In February. 

Look at all those busy bees on a February afternoon!

Look at their back legs, and you'll see little packets of gold several of those girls are carrying--pollen.

I look around and see a pollen wasteland. Where could they be finding it? But finding it they are, and I think I need to be a little less concerned about these amazing little creatures starving to death right now. 

Yeah, I think they got this.