its just good...

these last few weeks as i have started preschool with madilynn i have also started introducing her to some music as well.

i decided, of course, to sing some of the fun kids stuff like old mcdonald,one-two-three-four-five i caught a fish alive, and all those songs we sang as kids but i decided too i would expose them to some really great music.

i think that one of the greatest things that our parents did for us as kids was to give us the opportunity to learn about all kinds of music.

i think that my mother had one of the greatest records collections of anyone i know. i say had because i think that we (mainly coday) have laid claim to almost all of them over the years. but back when we were kids one of our favorite past times was to go through her albums. what fun it was to laugh at the covers and listen to the music on our fisher price record player. as we grew older we learned to appreciate the fact that the music we were listening to was greats like pink floyd, the beatles, andrae crouch, simon and garfunkle and judy collins.

i know that i was only six when it came out but i still remember paul simon's graceland. daddy had the cassette tape and we would listen to it over and over as we drove with him in the truck. i absolutely loved it when the music video for 'call me al' came on. chevy chase was so funny. that music really spoke to me as a kid, even if i didn't understand what it was that it was saying.

so far i have let my little ones listen to some of my favorites as well. i am proud to say that madilynn can identify by sight and sound both paul simon and james taylor.

one of my greatest joys in the last few weeks was the day that she and i were watching jt's jelly man kelly performance on sesame street circa 1980. he still had the long hair and that great mustache that i fell in love with on the cover of his one man dog album. as i sat there and watched him sing to the children on the steps of sesame street my little madilynn turned to me and said, "he is so pretty, isn't he?" that's my girl! she loves him almost as much as i do. my work here is done.

the next week i worried (i don't know why) that she might not be as excited about paul simon. i let her listen to 'call me al' and she loved it but the shortest version of homeless i could find was like eight minutes long. i wanted her to hear it because of the sounds that the ladysmith black mambazo and joseph shabalala make that i loved as a child, but i feared that she and ben would get bored with this long live version. we had made drums from tea cans and i reluctantly put the song on, and much to my amazement not only did they sing and dance and play their drums throughout the entire song, when it was over they begged to hear it again.

the next week we talked about singing high and low notes and watched a clip of the sound of music where maria teaches the children to sing do re mi. this, too, is a long clip, but when it was over madilynn actually clapped and shouted 'yay! can i watch it again!'

these experiences have taught me what i should have already known from my own childhood, it doesn't matter how old you are or how old the song is, when something or someone is good, its just good!

that's the power of music.

this week i continue my journey with the kids through the beautiful world of truly great music.

"these are four guys from a place called liverpool who changed the world forever, madilynn. their names are john,paul, george and ringo. yes, ringo is a funny name. he plays the drums. heh. yes. they have funny hair too. but you know, i bet your grand daddy combed his hair that way once upon a time. do you like the way that they sound, madilynn? me too, sweet girl, me too."

great expectations...

"whats become of us, how we do manage, to do so much damage, to the ones we love, when we care so much, when we fail love its hard to take, the expectations are so great, we raise our hopes, we dream our dreams, and then we do some foolish thing, but love that comes easy, will easily give up, when we fail love we've got to trust the love, that won't fail us."
--grover levy

its hard to expect certain things.
a movie is always better i think when you have really low expectations going into it. for me at least its never a good idea to build something up like that in your head. and yet, with my life, i do it all the time.

i guess this song hit me so much as a teenager growing up in texas because even back then i had dreams as big as the sky above me.

and no matter how hard i tried, it seemed...well, that they failed.

last weekend i spent with minda and coday in clinton cleaning out the house and cleaning out my own "house" as well. coday and i talked and talked. he really has become very wise over these last months with this journey he has been on.

it was good.

it was hard.

in one closet that i was going through on the bottom shelf i found pages upon pages of mary kay notes i had taken to help me with my business, i found letters i had written to daniel but never sent him, and i found memories from coday and mallory's wedding. all things that i reluctantly had to make myself throw away and let go of, because they had failed.

i understand why people on that show hoarders have such a hard time sometimes. its hard to let go of things. its hard to let go of things associated with good times, but its also even harder sometimes to let go of the bad. to let go of our failures, forgive, forget, move on, heal.

a lot of things that coday and i talked about were really good, but a lot of them were really hard to hear at the same time. some of them i can't get out of my head.

i don't mean to be a different person. i don't mean to be sad or mean or a loner. i want nothing more than for my family to know that i love them and that i want the very best for them.i want to love another and share a life time of love working together, serving the lord and eachother. i don't mean to be so in my head and contemplative all the time. i guess when there is stuff to sort out, it just happens.

what do i expect?

i don't know anymore.

maybe i have been going at life with these lord of the rings high expectations and i should be going into life with, like keanu reeves standards.

i am blessed and last weekend was so good. again, though, i guess i just expected this week that followed to be amazing because of all that i did and instead, it just sort of went by.

madilynn knows how to write her name now. she also can spot james taylor and paul simon's voices when she hears them. she has learned the sign language alphabet and how to sign i love you.
ben can almost write a b for ben. he knows all the words to the peas in the pod poem. and he is working on counting out all ten fingers. he is trying so hard to be a big boy.
nathan knows how to high five, blow kisses, clap and wave bye bye. he is so close to walking! he smiles when i come over.
i can look at these precious things and say, i did that. and i know that this is significant.
even more significant is when they know that i love them and that they can trust me.

a year ago i never would have expected to be teaching these things to these little ones that are so quickly so close to my heart.

i know that the lord says in ephesians 3:20 that he is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us.

i can defiantly see this as true in my life.

so what do i expect.

i guess i expect to get up in the morning and drive to the berg.
i expect to love on my babies.
to make that long drive home again.
and to get up the next day and do it all over again.

beyond that, i am not sure.

i thought i knew. maybe its better if i let the lord dream my dreams for me.

maybe i just need to not be so afraid of failure.