children – Page 3 – everything He gives

going on a tree hunt

December 15, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

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Oh the agony + joy of attempting family pictures! And all the mommas said Amen.

A few years ago, when we were living in Brevard we stumbled across this little family-run Christmas tree farm right outside of town. It sort of birthed this dream in us to have a little place like this, a big white farmhouse, quiet hills with neat lines of evergreens where it could feel like Christmas all year long. Space to raise a quiverfull of children and maybe a handful of animals, space to tend the earth. I don’t know if that dream will ever be a reality, but every year since then, we’ve headed back to this little farm that reminds of and beckons us to the way of life we hunger for. If for nothing else, it reminds us of Eden in some way or another, a haunting for that good life that was lost, the good life that will be ours again in Heaven one day. A future hope that makes us smile and remember that while we are here on this terrestrial sod we are here to work hard, our time here is temporary.

We went again a couple of weeks ago with my brother + sister-in-law and niece, took turns snapping pictures of each other, and hunted for a tree. The owners didn’t mind us taking our time, traipsing all over their property with our photo props, and they even offered our kids a fun wagon ride behind their tractor! It’s well worth it to me to pay $30 for a tree to support this little place + family.

As 2015 comes nearly to a close, my heart is full. Though it has been a year full of challenges and stress and strain, I look through these pictures and feel immeasurably blessed. When I fix my eyes on these simple but profound gifts instead of the long list of things I could complain about or worry over, joy truly floods my soul. Nothing can touch the joy I have in Jesus Christ, nothing can ever separate me from Him and all that He has won for me and secured for me by His death on the cross. Second to that, nothing can come close to comparing to the profound depths of delight and joy I have in my little family. What a crazy good and wise God we have to come up with the idea of family!

I know so many dear loved ones who long for this and struggle deeply with loneliness during the Christmas season. Know that I’m praying for you, that I long for you to experience the joy of family this season too, even in the broadest of terms, even in the arms of your spiritual brothers + sisters, mothers + fathers, children + grandchildren. Ultimately, in Jesus, we enjoy “family,” because He is Immanuel, God with us. The God who is always there, always present, among us, within us. The kindness of our God: we are not alone! Praying He satisfies you with His presence this season + always.

season of light

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 MarthaKimball1 Comment

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Our week has been sort of slow, quiet, different. We started off the week with a stomach bug which thankfully didn’t pass through the family as we thought it would, but it took a couple of days for Phoebe to be herself again. And we’ve been battling a head cold. And it rained for half the week. So we have been pretty hunkered down. As much as I hate battling sickness, it has given us some time to just be together and read books, snuggle, knit, watch movies, stay in our jammies. In the midst of it, we’ve been observing Advent together, momma reading this book in the mornings in the early + dark quiet, bent over coffee. Kids gather over this book in the evenings, freshly bathed and coloring ornaments to decorate the Jesse Tree as I read. We’ve slowly been pulling out Christmas decorations, putting things here and there as we have time. Phoebe made my bed for me this morning, and I snapped a picture of that simple grace. In all its rumpled glory, it sings of her sweet spirit, her kindness and the quiet way she serves even at her young age. I hope I can be more like her.

It’s been sweet, savoring this season of light so far. Remembering our Savior, the hope of His birth, the way it proclaims the Gospel to us: Jesus came, even in the midst of a very broken and fallen and evil world, a wicked generation. He still came. He didn’t just come to visit us, God visiting man, He came as one of us, God and man. The hope in this! The glory! That He knows our frailty in an experiential way. He knows our need. Our weakness. He offers Himself to us. I pray for you and for myself this season that above all else we open our hearts and hands to receive Him.

thankful tree

November 9, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

The holiday season is so busy for us, with Philippa’s birthday the week of Thanksgiving, and Noah + Phoebe’s birthdays the week of Christmas, along with all the other usual holiday hectic! We press in hard to some intentional habits during this busy season to keep our hearts tuned to God’s grace and to keep ourselves rooted in the soil of our simple everyday lives. We started the habit of intentional thanks during the whole month of November a couple of years ago. Our children love doing this! When they saw that I had turned a corner of our living room into a little corner of praise + thanksgiving, they were literally squealing and jumping with joy. I grab a branch from the yard (or in this case from one of our favorite picnic spots) but you can also just tape cut-out branches to your wall or draw a tree on a chalkboard (as I did last year, see pictures below) and tape your leaves to it.

I fill a bowl with cut-outs of colorful leaves (though you can print free thankful tags here) tied with baker’s twine, put a footstool nearby so little feet can clamber up anytime to bring their thanks. I make it a point to let them interrupt whatever I’m doing to come over and help them add a leaf to the tree when praise strikes their hearts. Yes, child, come boldly to the throne of grace! Ordinary footstools become altars of praise.

We started this a couple of years ago after reading beloved One Thousand Gifts author Ann Voskamp’s posts (look here + here for lots of ideas + free printables!) about making a thanksgiving tree a sweet family tradition, a way to focus our hearts toward Thanksgiving and to remember that this is how He tells us to enter His presence: enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise (Ps. 100:4).

We carve out a space right in our living room, the gathering room, the room where most of our life happens: the reading of books, the cuddling around the fire, the sibling fights, the teaching + disciplining, the laundry-folding + the vacuuming. Right in the mix of it all, we plant our own little tree and as the leaves are daily all falling outside our windows, this little tree is gaining leaves day by day, until the end of the month when it will be full of color + singing of all His goodness.

Don’t get me wrong. We are not a super-holy family over here. We fail a lot, daily. We argue too much. We worry about money. We lose our tempers. We are too harsh with one another. Our selfishness comes out in a million little ways. Isn’t this the strangest miracle of all, the most beautiful of all? That He beckons us, even us, to come to His table? To feast on His goodness? His mercy + forgiveness for us in Christ Jesus? This little altar isn’t for the self-righteous. It isn’t for the Sunday-best. It’s for the meek. The ones who know they are unworthy, dirty. Undeserving. The ones who know that the good things alone aren’t grace, but that all is grace. It’s for the penitent. It’s for the failing + flailing families, just like ours.

And that’s reason for the highest praise of all. God giving us the greatest gift when we are least deserving!

Our challenge for each other this year is to find new things every day to praise Him for (last year most of our tags said “cars” + “lights”), and thus teaching our kids + ourselves to hunt for His manifold grace.

It’s not too late to start your own Thanksgiving tree. It’s never too late to give thanks! Here are some pics from our “tree” last year.

Even in the midst of hard weeks, even in spite of our unholy moments, we want to remember we can come + give thanks.

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thess. 5:18)

make the best of it

October 31, 2015 MarthaKimball1 Comment

Well, this week has been full of messed up plans and interruptions. We had to nix our original plans for Halloween because of a sick little baby girl, and are opting instead to stay in tonight and do cozy things at home. I have some crafty things planned for the kiddos should boredom set in. 🙂 We did, however ~~force~~ encourage them to get their costumes on and go trick-or-treating at their grandparents house a few minutes away where gluten-free treats were sure to abound. Batman felt rather unhappy about it at first, but brightened at the prospect of candy. The dark knight descended upon their house with his usual charm, as did Elsa, who, unlike her screen personality, is always in a good mood. The ladybug stayed home with her snotty nose and her pumpkins, and snuggled with momma. Thanks to the man of the house for snapping most of the pictures above!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

a home weekend

October 19, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

This weekend we had our first frost, and some of our coldest temps yet. It was a “home” weekend for us, getting some projects taken care of here, like finally turning our empty raised garden bed into something useful for the kids: a sandbox. (Unfortunately at this house we have no full sun in the yard and thus didn’t attempt a little garden plot this past summer.) The little ones have really been into making mud pies lately, and we realized we don’t have a ton of things for them to do outside in the yard. Part of me wants to say I believe that gives them more “scope for the imagination” (as Anne Shirley would say), but part of me knows that is just laziness/cheapness on our part. We do want to encourage them to play outside and be creative and interact with the natural world as much as possible, so a sandbox/mud pie kitchen is a great option. Maybe it wasn’t the best weekend to make a fun play area outside, being frigid and all, but the kids loved it! First they went to Lowes with daddy + helped pick out the sand, then they helped unload it and spread it in the “sandbox.” Meanwhile it was cold enough to warrant a big pot of chili + some time spent knitting (I’m just learning!) and some hot tea. Sand can now be found in all sorts of cracks + crannies, but I guess it’s worth it. 🙂

away together

October 16, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

So, we spent the very last week of September as a family at one of our favorite getaway spots: Isle of Palms, SC. This place was where Brandon and I honeymooned over nine years ago, and we come back to it whenever we can because there’s something about the power of place. Do you know what I mean? There’s something about certain places that help us remember who we are, what we love, why we are alive. There are certain places that call us back to ourselves when we’ve lost our way, that call us back to the Lord when we’ve trailed off. You see this all over the pages of Scripture, the importance of the Promised Land as the place connected with the Israelites identity as a people. You see it in the way God had the Israelites set up monuments and stones of remembrance as they traveled through the wilderness so that when they visited these places, it would trigger for them memories and milestones in their walk with God.

What are your places? Places that for others are ordinary, but for you are profound, like balm for your soul amnesia? I think for our marriage, Isle of Palms will always be a simple but powerful place for us. It’s nothing special, really. It’s quiet, home to only a couple of hotels, boasting a tiny strip of shops and restaurants, and a destination spot for more surfers and paddle boarders than big loud vacationers. Which is precisely why we love it. It has a quieter and simpler and smaller feel, and we’d rather see bare coast line and wildlife than a cluster of resorts or attractions any day. Plus its only a four hour drive from our home in the mountains of North Carolina.

This time was special because it was our first chunk of time off together as a family in two years (and Brandon’s first week off in two years, except for the week he took when Philippa was born, which you all know is no vacation). Also, it was Philippa’s first introduction to the ocean! She absolutely loved it, crawling straight into the waves, fearless.

We also got to spend a couple of days with family, some time biking over to Sullivan’s Island and back, watching sunrises and sunsets, reading + painting alone on the beach, fishing, visiting our usual spots in Charleston, watching dolphins, running through the rain to Ted’s Butcherblock for lunch, staying up late to see the Super Blood Moon + capturing it (though fuzzy) on camera, experiencing the highest tides of the year on the island combined with the heavy rains from Hurricane Joaquin. We stayed in a little yellow house and had to leave a day or so early because of the heavy rains + flooding. We realized on this trip that it’s really not easy to go the beach with three children ages 4 and under and have the kind of relaxing vacation we were imagining. The sooner we adjusted our expectations and communicated really clearly with each other what we needed to have happen to feel rested + refreshed, we enjoyed our time more. The reality is, this season is busy and a ton of work, no matter where you are (maybe even more work when you’re not at home). But it is still good and important for us to get away to a place that reminds us of the early days when we were brand new and so in love. Somehow it always makes us fall in love all over again. It’s a fight sometimes to really r e s t, but such a thing worth fighting for.

So now, I feel I can officially say goodbye to summer + hello to the glory of fall in these beautiful mountains we call home! Yay!

apple season

September 25, 2015September 25, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

I should be packing right now for our trip to the beach (leaving in the morning!) but it’s a rainy afternoon and I just have to share these sweet pictures from last week with you before we head out of town. (I am the worst packer–always leave it until the last minute.)

It’s hard to believe we’re in the last week of September already, and that by the time we get back home from our trip, we’ll be into October! The weather has already turned here in the mountains of North Carolina as of this last week, officially. We are in apple country and we are thankful to be surrounded by a ton of awesome orchards + farms! Recently we went with some friends to a local orchard that has a great spot on the top of a mountain, with lots of play areas for kids, animals, tractor rides and of course, apples!

That man in the last picture above was giving us the low-down and handing out buckets, and I have to say he was a true artist. He was super kind and sweet and genuinely interested in chatting with our kiddos and being helpful to our little crew of three mommas (one pregnant!) with seven little ones between us. Things didn’t go 100% smoothly, with all of us having disaster mornings as we attempted to get out the door (at my house, the washing machine was flooding the basement and a glass fell off the counter shattering glass everywhere near my crawling baby girl), and a few melt-downs and tears from the kids. You know, all the usual things. Not to mention, we actually couldn’t find any apples to pick off of the trees because of a late frost and children who weren’t willing to keep hunting down rows of trees. But it was still such a fun time, Phoebe loved hunting for apples to pick, and Noah was both terrified and fascinated by the tractors making rounds of the orchard. We plan to go back in October, get an earlier start and actually pick some apples this time!

(I’m so bummed that my camera decided to focus on the dirt behind this cute little man because he posed so nicely and smiled so sweetly for me!)

We had a picnic in the shade of this big pine tree and it was the perfect end to the busy morning, where my friend Kim and I could actually talk for a bit while our kids refueled and then ran off to play on the swings and playgrounds.

We only came home with one peck of apples, using half for a yummy gluten-free crisp to share with our small group last night, and my kids actually ate it (which is a victory, if you knew them!) We hope to put up some jars of apples for the winter, so we’ll be back!

(ps. here’s the crisp recipe I used, subbing apples for blueberries and adding about 1/3 c. of shredded unsweetened coconut flakes + a dash of cinnamon. i’ve made this recipe ever so many times, usually with blueberries, since reading her book a few years ago and it’s delicious every time!)

saying goodbye to the house

September 4, 2015September 4, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

A couple of weeks ago we made a last-minute weekend trip home to my in-laws home in South Carolina. They’ve recently decided to chase a dream of theirs and move to the beach, leaving behind this house they raised their kids in for the past twenty something years. My husband, who is not really the sentimental sort, wanted to go see them and “say goodbye to the house.”

A house lived in this long holds a lot of life. It is the bones of the family, in a way, holding, bearing weight, giving structure. Most of my husband’s memories and biggest moments happened in these walls. The Christmas mornings spent sitting with his brother + sister at the top of the stairs waiting for mom and dad to say they could come down. The timeouts in their bedrooms. His first love. His first broken heart. All the big moments, all the ordinary + mundane moments, too, that make up a life. I remember vividly my first visit to his home, this, his world. I remember playing guitar on the deck of the pool, laying down on his arm, feeling him counting on his fingers behind my head, counting the months until he would propose. I remember coming to surprise his parents, driving the 2 hours from North Carolina where we live to tell them about their first grand baby growing in my womb. It’s a special thing to bring your children home to the house you were raised in, seeing them toddling on the floors so familiar to your own shaping.

It was good that we were able to make it back for a visit one last time, make some more sweet memories together, see the youngest grand baby bond with her Baba for the first time. So long, yellow house!

evening walks

August 28, 2015August 28, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

So this weekend last year I believe was the weekend we moved into this home + this side of town. There’s something about being in a place for a year. Seeing it in all its seasons. There’s something about growing up and changing in a place that seems to mostly stay the same. We live on the backside of a retreat center, in the residential section. It’s sort of an odd arrangement but we love living in a little hidden cove of quiet in the city. It was our first summer experiencing this place with campers coming and going every week, our usual walks interrupted with camp activity and hustle. Now kids are back in school, camps close up for the off season, and we are back to our evening walks all over the deserted retreat campus. The little ones love visiting the lake and “fishing,” looking for the moon and watching the bats in the evening sky darting back and forth. My heart felt full and melancholy at the same time. Seasons come and seasons go.

I was talking with a couple momma friends earlier in the day yesterday about how we feel that nagging sense of being behind sometimes, always behind. In a culture that is always pressing ahead to the “next thing” and the “next stage” it can be awfully hard and terribly counter-cultural to just slow and linger where you are. My daughter will be 5 in December and we’ve gone back and forth about whether or not to start preschool with her this year. But if I’m honest, the only real reason I’m feeling that niggling worry is because I don’t want her to be behind and because so many of her peers are already in school. The reality is, she’s my first. She’s my oldest. And this is probably the last year we will ever have like this, just us at home, days full of errands, play dates, adventures outside, books piled high, dress-up and coloring and cookie baking in the middle of the day. Once she starts school, even homeschool, our minds and schedules will begin to revolve around school. Our freedoms will change a bit, our family dynamic will change. So, as eager as I am to dig into school and embrace that new season ahead, I’ve decided to just linger over this little season right here, with my three little ones at home and the sweet freedom of unscheduled learning. My plan is simple: read a lot, play outside a lot. Probably my number one goal “educationally” this year is to increase and stimulate wonder over their world. To give them a lot of time and attention, play and surprise. To excite them about learning. To learn as we go, but not to worry about it or stress over it. I don’t think “my” way is better than anyone else’s. I’m so thankful for the freedom we have in our own families to choose what works best for our own family dynamic. I’ve thought over these words many times in the past few weeks, taken from Jean Fleming’s book A Mother’s Heart:

Now is the time to get things done. . .
wade in the water,
sit in the sun,
squish my toes
in the mud by the door,
explore the world in a boy just four.

Now is the time to study books,
flowers,
snails,
how a cloud looks;
to ponder “up,”
where God sleeps nights,
why mosquitoes take such big bites.

Later there’ll be time
to sew and clean,
paint the hall
that soft new green,
to make new drapes,
refinish the floor–
Later on. . .when he’s not just four.

Irene Foster, “Time is of the Essence”

Sunday adventures

August 20, 2015August 20, 2015 MarthaKimball2 Comments

We have sort of unintentionally made a little family habit of drawing away on Sundays after worship, pulling away from our ordinary and escaping to the wild places nearby. I love revisiting the same familiar haunts, but my husband is best energized in exploring. So, we’ve sort of made a loose rule to get out somewhere new most Sundays. We pack a bag of easy snacks + quick bites for lunch/dinner (think cold cuts, cheese, crackers, dried fruit, nuts, cold pasta salad, veggies + hummus) and usually skip naps and hit the road after church. The kids love our adventures. We don’t do it primarily for them, to be honest. We do it because it refreshes and quiets and reenergizes us + our marriage in the best way. We do it because we need the shift in perspective. But we definitely do it for them as well. Children are so full of wonder, awe, and a natural ability to enjoy and to go slow. Familiar black swallowtails, bumblebees and wild mountain blueberries become brand new again through their eyes. We love (and sometimes hate) how they continually force us to slow our pace to keep in step with them rather than our usual habit of hurrying them to keep up with us. It’s good for us. Being with them reminds me almost daily of Jesus’ words:

“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).

What is it about children that Jesus found so essential? I wonder if it isn’t their simplicity. Their easy joy over the simplest of wonders. Their unhurried ways. Their bright hopefulness and trust, their dependency without worry. I want to be more like that. When I watch them running and laughing I find myself thinking, they really are the best of us, the best of humanity.

These pictures are from a couple weeks ago. We went back up to Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi. We used to be in the Mitchell area a ton during our college days (Outdoor Ed majors) and I think the last time I was up there was when my husband and I led a 21-day wilderness backpacking course together in our early years of marriage. Pretty awesome to be back there with kiddos in tow, showing them this beautiful place so special to our hearts + story. It was actually up on commissary where our story together really began.

Afterward we had a little picnic at a nearby overlook, staying long and soaking in the quiet and the evening light. I think these will be some of my favorite snapshots from the summer.