Fierce Peace

I know too much stuff.

I know that I need to buy more hangers next time I go to Target because every time I do laundry, I can never hang up all of our clothes.

I know that we need to eat a healthy, vitamin-rich, low-fat diet for physical health and a flavor-rich, fried-in-grease, dessert-filled diet for fun health and together-times and I am constantly seeking that balance in our meals.

I know everything about seasons one through two and a half of Smallville. Only four and a half more seasons to go. (And I know that I love Lex Luthor, possibly more than I love Clark Kent – is that a problem?)

I know that it’s worth the expense to me to buy organic milk and cage free brown eggs and fair trade coffee for our family.

I know that I’ve stayed up too late watching Olympics every night this week and I also know way more than I should know about Michael Phelps’ body dimensions.

I know about things like church history and politics and theology and philosophy and I know that the subjects tumble around in my head consistently and come up in conversation frequently and lead to a working out of my salvation with fear and trembling on a daily basis.

I know that kids are dying of AIDS, working in sweatshops, being sold as sex slaves, being exploited, abused, neglected and otherwise tortured in many places around the world and maybe even just down the street every day, every day, every day.

I know that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, and is redeeming/has redeemed/will redeem all of this.

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I think because I know so much stuff, there’s just not room in there to add much more. Unfortunately, almost all the things I don’t know start with the word “Mom.” For example:

“Mom, when are you going to take me buy a binder for school?”

Um…..I don’t know.

“Mom, can we ride our bikes to school this year?”

Too much to consider in that question. Can’t think about it now. Must put it off for later.

“Mom, can I make cookies and can I cut up this blanket Grandma made me to make carpets for my dolls and can Janey stay the night and then in the morning can we all go over to Britni’s and can her grandpa take us to a movie and then can her uncle take us water-skiing and the next day can I go to Six Flags with Shelby and can I try out for American Idol when I’m sixteen?”

Aaaaaaauuuuuuuuuggggggggghhhhh

Is it possible to get rid of knowledge to make room for wisdom?

Monster Mom was here today
She really got things hoppin’
She picked up Fun Mom by the neck
And threw her on her noggin

With Fun Mom gone, the kids were doomed
They knew it in a moment
“You’ve smiled your last smile,” she roared
“Let’s get those rears in motion!”

See, Fun Mom, she just lets things be
No sense in going crazy
It’s easier to say “Who cares?”
And let them all be lazy

And then the house, it looks like crap
And no good meals get made
And everyone stays up too late
Which only paves the way…..

For Monster Mom to barrel in
In search of peace and order
And when it’s nowhere to be found
Well, that’s when things harder

For she’ll chew you up and spit you out
She’ll ride you ‘til you’re broken
She’ll bring some sense of order back
With nary a fun word spoken

And when she’s gone, and all is still
The kids will solemnly vow
To keep this place up, as they whisper this prayer:
“Oh Fun Mom, where art thou?”

We’ve been watching Family Ties with the family. The fourth season just came out on DVD. Best season ever of any show. Ever. I remember watching it in eighth grade, while Alex P. Keaton broke my heart in two, week after week, with his cute little smile that I was sure was meant just for me. I could swear that his eyes had the ability to pierce the depths of my soul right through that TV screen.

My oldest daughter is about to start eighth grade in a week and a half. I don’t know if this is appropriate or not, but I’ve started preparing myself for her graduation from high school. Her best friend’s brother graduated this year and is leaving for college in a couple weeks, all the way across the country, leaving her best friend to be the only child left at home. I’m having a very hard time absorbing this reality. In fact, it’s making me very, very sad for her parents. And I’m not sure how it will affect me to have my eldest grow up and leave home like that. And then the one after that. And the one after that. I can’t help but feel like I’ll be left there wondering what in the heck it was all about. All those years. Gone in a moment. So I’m preparing myself now. I’m looking at Callie, sitting there on the couch, laughing along with me at Alex and Mallory and I’m getting tears in my eyes thinking about how much I’m going to miss her, five years from now. And I’m trying to imagine what kind of a hole it will leave in our household when she leaves. And it’s making me very, very sad. It’s just so weird how these little human beings emerge from our own being and yet, they’re never really ours.

I think I’m going to take a break from my Olympic addiction tonight (and all of the million things floating through my brain) and find a movie to rent on iTunes. I want a good one that will make me cry. Tomorrow, I’ll think more about all that needs to be done before school starts.

I guess Alex P. Keaton is still breaking my heart.

Ha! There’s been no laze around here. There’s been plenty of haze though. Haze without Laze. Kind of like Doctors Without Borders. I think I’m ready for some borders, to tell you the truth. I need some kind of slowness to overtake me. But you know, I say that and then I realize that it would mean missing out on so much good stuff.

Like Plunky’s birthday last week

Happy toes for a happy birthday

And my nephew eating some rice cereal

And my other nephew eating peach cobbler, made from the peaches off my tree

And our dear friends, the R’s coming to visit after being in the Philippines for four years

Mr. R with my dad

Mrs. R with Carlee, Wilmar and Itty Bitty Jacob

Vivian R and Grace

Anna R and Togo

And the littlest R, little Alli

And so many other dear friends and family and poker and ladder golf games

It sure has been fun having the R’s here. Crazy, loud fun with way too much food and coffee. I love to cook food. Now that they’re gone, there’s less than two weeks until school starts. Sometime between now and then we’ve got to get all the school shopping done that I swore I was going to do early this year. Ha! We’ve got to finish painting the girls’ Sunday School room at church, finish painting my living room (ha!), have a sleep-over with friends in Allen, TX, go the the annual church pool party this weekend, celebrate Caity’s 30th and Seth’s 2nd, watch Olympics so late every night that my eyes are red every day and somehow find time to go to some pool somewhere before the system sucks us up once again into its endless vacuum of impossiblities.

Until then, I’ll just live with the fact that my housekeeping leaves something to be desired, but my kids sure do know how to play. This is my living room. I can live with it for two more weeks.

Ha!

I know, the last two are a stretch. But trust me…they are vehemently referred to as “side bangs.”

Little Jacob José Mejía made his arrival into this world at 6:23am on Wednesday, July 30th. (His due date!) He gave his mama a little more trouble than she bargained for in making his entrance, but he’s here now and all is well. Let’s just say he put up a fight long enough for the basil on my kitchen counter to die because nobody watered it over the couple days that I was gone for the birth. I am so thankful to have been a part of the whole process. It never ceases to amaze me, this thing called childbirth. The way we work for that which we love and the way mommies never give up hope. You can bet I cried. Did I ever cry! Carlee sure worked hard and never lost hope and boy, does she love that baby. Oh, what a sweet little guy. Mommy, Daddy and baby are all doing well other than being tired and sore. They are resting and adjusting at home, where he was born.

Here’s to you, little guy. May the Lord bless you as you grow. We love you.

Sometimes it’s just easier to post pictures.

So much happened this weekend and I want to sum it up, really I do. But the summing eludes me. I guess that means I’m not really back. I’m actually more like a little tiny bit back instead of full back… Which reminds me of line back… Which reminds me of Linebarger… Which is my last name… Which reminds me of last weekend… Last weekend Josh and Jennie came to visit. It was hot, but we went camping anyway for one night. When I say “we” I mean “they”. “We” (meaning me and Sadie) went and visited them at the campground for the day. We also played the bean game and watched the girls dance the thriller dance and had some good times. Josh had a black eye. Megan graduated from high school. We sure are proud of that girl. I helped Carlee set up a big, blue spa-in-a-box in her living room. Today, our old friends the Atkins came over for the day and the girls asked if they could have the kitchen to themselves to make up a recipe. I used to do that with my friends when I was their age and the food never turned out nearly as good as we thought it would, but it was always fun making it so I let them have their fun. I wish you could have tasted what they came up with. You’ll see in the pictures how beautiful it is, but man, did it ever taste good too! Girls just aren’t what they used to be, I tell you. We devoured those cookies. Let’s see…what else? My friend Carlee almost doesn’t have a person inside her anymore. We’ve entered the waiting period. Life’s just one big waiting period, really.

There, I guess I’ve summed after all. And summing is what this blog’s all about, even if I am only a little tiny bit back. I think I’m just fine with not having any readers anymore too, so don’t feel like you have to leave a comment just to let me know you’re here. I’m enjoying not knowing who or if anybody’s reading this anymore. It lessens the pressure of the pressure cooker.

Sometimes it’s easier to just post pictures.

Hello to the vast amount of people who still check this blog! It’s been a while. And I know you’re thinking about me all the time, wondering what’s going on with me. I don’t know if this means anything, but I feel like writing something right now. I’m going to go with that feeling. I’m not going to put much stock in it though because my feelings have definitely been known to run away with me in the past. I make no guesses on what my future feelings will be. All I know is that right now I feel like catching up. And hoo boy, do I have a lot to catch you guys up on. I’ll list everything now in order of significance with bullet points, for your reading pleasure:

• I had a dream the other night that I was in a contest for my life to write a song. Yes, that’s right, I said for my life. Everyone who lost got killed. And the name of my song had to be “Half-n-Half Will Save the World.” I don’t know if I won or not because I woke up before the contest was over, but not before I wrote the song. I can still remember the tune.

• When we were driving on our trip to Colorado last month, I could not stop thinking about my passenger door opening and me falling out and hitting the ground running and how bad that would hurt in my bare feet. It consumed me so much that I was in a constant state of cringe, much like the way that I feel when I imagine scissors cutting my teeth in half. I found that if I kept socks on my feet, I didn’t think about it so much. Because we all know that socks would save your life if you happened to fall out of a moving vehicle at 80 mph.

• The other day I cut my face with my conditioner tube. You know…conditioner. The wonderfully creamy substance that smells so good and makes your hair soft and luscious. The tube to this particular conditioner was not at all soft, creamy or luscious like the product inside. It scratched me just like a cat. A soft, luscious cat. And now I have a scar.

• Me and Chris got tickets to go see Coldplay in November. That deserves a big woo hoo.

• I still haven’t painted the other half of my living room but I can finally say that the kitchen is done. And I can also say for the first time in our four years of living here that I love my kitchen. It’s exactly the way that I want it, from the colors on the walls and cabinets to the curtains on the windows, to the cookware on the metal shelf to the food I love to make in it.

• I had a breakdown the other day over the state of my dumb feet. I think I can safely call them dumb feet. It’s late July in Dallas, the temperature is now over 100 every day, no rain in the forecast, our air conditioning works non-stop just to keep the inside of our house hovering somewhere around the 80 degree range and my feet are like ice cubes. Why? Why, I say? I’m not kidding when I say I got so mad at how miserably cold my feet always are that I almost started crying. It’s not like a nice little internal cooling machine that helps cool me off in the hot months, people. It’s like my whole body is uncomfortably warm just like the rest of Dallas and my feet feel like they are submerged in icy water. It’s painful. Then I remembered that I bought cozy flip-flop slippers a few months ago. I dug them out of my closet and have been wearing them ever since. Finally I have found relief.

I could probably think of more things to tell you but I don’t want to overwhelm you. I’ve given you enough to think about here as it is.

I need to take a break from Fierce Peace for a while. I’m feeling overwhelmed and understood. Can a person be overstood? Because I might be that too. At the beginning of this blog relationship, I found great freedom in this new way of communicating. But I have entered a new phase of life and I only know that the freedom I once sought is calling to me again. And this time the wind is blowing in a new direction. So, in the interest of self-preservation AND protection of those I love, I am going to disappear for a while. I honestly don’t know when or if I’ll be back. Maybe in the next phase. But the river phase ended in the ocean and I drank of it deeply. Now I’m in the blowing phase. And the blowing phase might just blow this blog off the face of the internet entirely in about a week or so. Or I might be back later when my phase is over. Who knows? In the meantime, I’ll say goodbye just in time for my husband to get his blog up and running once again. I know. We have issues. Multiplied. Funny that my name is Fierce Peace. Peace always seems so elusive. Like I’m desperately grasping at something that’s always out of reach. Whimpering, staggering and falling. Not very fierce-sounding, I know. I’d rather be a warrior, on a mighty stallion, galloping with my long hair flying behind me and my many-layered satin dress whipping in the wind. But I’m really not. I’m just here, in all my ordinariness, looking for truth and beauty and willing it to wash over me. In the washing, I feel God’s love. In the event of a flood, I may understand more fully His peace.

The only thing I’m not sure about is how I’m going to stay in touch with you that I love that live far away. I appreciate each of your blogs. They’re like lifelines to me and just seeing pictures means so much. If you join Flickr and add me as a contact, you can keep seeing pictures of our family too.

See you soon.

Leslie

P.S. I know I promised to put more pictures up from our trip to Galveston. You can see them all here on my Flickr page, if you’re interested.