Marci and I finished working out in the basement -- a grueling, gut-wrenching abdominal work-out -- just prior to getting the kids up for the day.? We opened their doors breathlessly and retreated to the dining room to catch our breath, while pouring bowls of breakfast cereal for the children.? As they started to emerge from their warm, tousled, sleepy stupor, the kids marveled at our hot, sweaty condition.? They could tell that we had worked ourselves especially hard.

Cor, in particular, seemed concerned.? He put his hand on Marci's leg to express his support.? Immediately, however, he lifted his hand and exclaimed, "Are you wet, Mama?!?"

Before Marci could answer, he switched to more reassuring tones.? "Dat's okay... Dat's fine, Mama."? He retrieved a nearby sponge and wiped his mother's leg, mimicking an action that he's seen performed a thousand times in his young life.? "I clean it up."

I'm woken by the soft, slanted sunlight dancing on the far wall of our bedroom.  Light the color of koffiemelk or cinnamon butter.  The walls, the ceiling, the bedcovers -- all creamy and cool.  Birds are chirping, warbling, singing outside.  Beyond the bedroom door, there is the sound of children playing and singing, and there is the sound of their mother hushing them while pouring breakfast cereal into their bowls.  But I don't have to be up yet; it's my turn to sleep in.  There is justice in my laziness, and this makes it all the more delicious.

When I finally emerge from the bedroom, I am wearing flannel pants printed with barnyard animals.  The imprint of creased sheets and pillowcases is on my face, and I smile a "good morning" to my lovelies.  A very good morning.

After a bowl of my own breakfast cereal, Cor and I shave.  He's only two and a half, with cheeks as soft as a parachute, but he takes his shaving seriously.  I dip his plastic razor into the water and hand it back to him.  I look into the mirror, Cor looks at me, and we both scrape our faces gently, using our left hands to check and make sure that we blaze smooth trails across our faces.  When he's had enough, he says "All done," and hands his razor back to me.  I finish up and then tell the children to get their socks and shoes on.  I tell them to brush their hair and find their coats.  I tell them that I'm going to take a little shower, and then we're going to take a walk together.

Shaved, showered, and shoed, we step out into the spring morning.  Brilliant blue skies stand out behind orange-tiled rooftops.  The sun is glorious, soaking into my dark jacket, giving it an almost iridescent quality, like the feathers of a blackbird.  We gasp about the glorious weather.  We talk about which parks we want to visit, which waterfowl we hope to see at the canal.  Elliot is partial to "diver-birds" (grebes).  Olivia likes the ducks.  Cor is especially fond of the coots.  I like them all, though I consider a swan to be an especially noteworthy sighting.  We all agree that seagulls are the worst:  so gangish, so greedy, so mean.  On this morning, however, there aren't many birds at all:  just a few pigeons and two mallard ducks.  We gaze at them for a few minutes, though Cor keeps asking where the coots are.  "Coot?  Coot?  Daddy, coot?"

We walk further, no hurry, no agenda.  The sun and the walk have warmed us to the point that we must unzip our coats.  Today, we decide to stop for a bottle of juice and a muffin.  Between bites, we read coffee-stained children's books:  "Tonnie in Bad" and "Teletubbies Doen Elkaar Na."  They're not such good stories, but nobody seems to mind.  After finishing our snack, we return to the cool spring air, ambling our way home by way of the butcher shop.  We're recognized as regulars by the brothers and their wives who run the shop, and before we leave they always ask, "Plakje worst?" The kids nod and say, "Ja, graag," and then they are given complimentary slices of grilled sausage (which Cor calls cookies).  We get home close to lunch time, which is blissfully close to rest time.

There is no point to this story -- just as there is no point to these mornings.  I have to say, though, that pointlessness and Saturday mornings have to be some of the loveliest things of all.

Some people have an irrational fear of public speaking.  Others are uncommonly afraid of international air travel... or germs... or enclosed spaces... But for me, it seems that I have an unnatural fear of plumbing, carpentry, and masonry.  I have no problems at all, speaking in public.  International travel is commonplace in my life.  And while I don't find germs or enclosed spaces to be particularly pleasurable things, I've come to accept them as a part of everyday life.  But when it comes to some kind of home improvement project, I become mildly panicky and obsessive.  I'm filled with a sense of dread and foreboding -- with a dozen "worst case scenarios" buzzing through my mind.  I tend to put  off such projects as long as possible.  And when I finally decide to tackle a specific project, I become freakishly obsessive.  My mind picks away at a thousand possibilities.  I sleep poorly at night.  I feel literally weak in the knees -- and my stomach feels as though it's filled with a thousand crickets.  It's just about pathological.

This is what's kept me from doing much blogging this week (in case you were wondering).  We've been renovating our old half-bathroom (WC):  tearing out the old toilet and floor (all the way down to the foundational support beams), laying a new sub-floor, tiling and grouting a new floor, and reinstalling a new toilet.  And it feels like it's consumed all of my physical, emotional, and intellectual energy outside of the basic necessities of work and family life.

But now I'm on the other side.  And man, does it feel good!  That's what's crazy about these irrational fears:  once I push through them and find out that they are, in fact, quite conquerable, I experience an incredible amount of pride and satisfaction.  Like the world is my pearl.  And even though it's a toilet (for-crying-out-loud!), I feel like a conqueror and king.

Perhaps it's not all that fascinating for anyone else to see pictures of our modest little renovation project (which is still far from being totally completed or really all that pretty to look at, yet) -- still, I feel like I need to share the photographic progression of the project, as a sort of personal little Ebenezer.

I've noticed that God teaches me a lot during these times when I'm forced to push through fear and doubt.  Last spring, this was definitely the case when we remodelled our kitchen.  And the same circumstances seem to come into play in other similar situations as well.  I learn patience, joy, and self-control.  I learn to fight against doubts with faith.  And I learn to stay humble -- realizing that one man's "no problem" is another man's impossible mountain.

These are good things.

I've had a number of people ask me what I did for New Year's Eve this year, and the truth is that I have absolutely no idea what I was doing at the moment the calendar changed from 2009 to 2010.  This is not, however, because I was asleep or drunk or anything like that.  It's because I was in an airplane racing across seven time zones to meet the dawn of the new day, the new year, and the new decade.  And though we left just before seven o'clock in the evening (Central Standard Time) and arrived in Europe at 10:35 the following morning (Central European Time), it was never announced when the hour struck -- because time is a very fluid concept in trans-Atlantic aviation... So I don't really know where I was, what I was doing, or precisely when 2010 began.  I suspect it was somewhere between Newfoundland and Greenland, while I was watching some crappy movie on the in-flight entertainment... but I guess we'll never really know.

What I do know is that we had a great couple of weeks in Ohio at Christmastime.  It didn't feel like we had nearly enough time -- but then again, it never does.  And as much as I could bemoan the shortness of the vacation, I have to admit that we actually managed to fit quite a bit into the time period.

We rode an antique train to the North Pole (surprisingly accessible from Connersville, Indiana!).

We enjoyed snowball fights and sledding and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

We baked cookies and went carrolling from house to house in the country.

My brothers and I made lefse (traditional Norwegian potato-based flatbread).

We played basketball and American football, and we watched basketball and American football on television.  My Dad, my son, and I got to go to our first professional basketball game together -- watching LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers trounce the Houston Rockets.

We re-enacted the biblical account of Jesus's birth on Christmas Day.

And we just spent a lot of good quality time together with family who don't often have the privilege of gathering together any more.

It was really everything we could have hoped for.  Of course, it wasn't without its stresses either -- driving in heavy snowfall, coordinating schedules with a lot of families who each have their own priorities, sharing one bathroom with 16 people (when the water heater went out for a couple of days!), and traveling through busy airports... But so is life.  We made the most of the experience, and for that I am very grateful.

Time passes so quickly, doesn't it?  Some of the family we only get to see in parking lots and every five Christmases.  Some members of the family are quite advanced in age (Marci's grandpa, for example, turns 93 later this month).  It's difficult to project life's trajectory.   And even with all other things being equal, there's nothing to say that someone won't get cancer or some other sickness (over the holidays, I happened to hear about two particularly tragic discoveries of cancer, plus a suicide and a teenage car crash).  It can be terrifying to think of all the possibilities that a new year could hold.

But we can only take it one day at a time.  One city at a time.  One conversation at a time.  There are a lot of anxieties for the coming year, but there is a lot of hope and opportunity as well.  It'll be interesting to see what 2010 will hold.  Happy New Year to all of you...

I got this from my friend?Brooke, who got it from her sister, who got it from?George Ella Lyon. ?But since I'm spending some time back in Ohio for the holidays, together with our families, I figured this might be a good time to try it for myself. ?It's a poem -- adapted from Lyon's original poem, then made into a first-grade writing exercise called "I am from..."

These are the instructions for the exercise that I got from?Brooke's blog:?

Here's the idea:

1. Write down sensory memories from childhood/life. ?smell, touch, sight, hearing, taste

2. Think about sayings you heard often / lyrics from songs, like... "don't let the bed bugs bite"... "safely in his bosom gather"

3. Think about things you smelled, food, mom's perfume, or the feeling of a family blanket

4. Write the senses down, don't explain them, but be detailed. Don't just say, "I am from dad saying " I love you more than the stars" say instead "I am from "I love you more than the stars."

5. Put "I am from" before your memories (or, in our case, we did "We are from"). List some together.?

So see what you think of my own work-in-progress here below:

We are from spontaneous four-part harmony.

We are from It's Soooooooooouuuup!

We are from full, soft, feathery-needled white pine Christmas trees.

We are from basketball with sprained ankles and broken noses.

We are from coffee with dessert while Dad abstains (insisting that he doesn't even drink whiskey).?

We are from Ya sure ya betcha.

We are from duck-colored Carhartt jackets and sports caps.?

We are from Wonderful the Matchless Grace of Jesus.?

We are from porridgey grip on Saturday afternoons and blueberry muffins on Sunday mornings.

We are from dinner table theology, ecclesiology, and homiletical analysis.?

We are from stacks of Readers Digest on the shelf next to the toilet.?

We are from Big Ten football on Saturday afternoons.

We are from big bowls of buttered popcorn on the couch at the end of the day.?

It's still a work in progress. ?In fact, I'm hoping to round out the poem over the Christmas holiday, together with other family members who could contribute memories to the mix. ?Maybe you'd want to try something similar for your family, too.

At any rate, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!?