Late night thoughts

I’m lying on the sofa right now. It’s 11 p.m. and the room is dark except for a night light and my computer screen.

I’m on the sofa, as I said, and between me and the dining room are four sleeping children. I can hear them breathing even over the folk music playing on Pandora. The music is playing to soothe them. It’s just too tempting for kids to try to keep each other awake at a sleepover. But I’m a grandma now, not just a mom, and I need sleep too...so I’m sleeping in the room with the kids to dampen the hijinks and hopefully get some sleep as well.

The table set for Cousins Christmas supper: Whole wheat pancakes, warm peaches sweetened and thickened, ice cream, syrup, brownies.

It has been a busy day, full of fun and activity that includes cooking together and field trips and play and a lot of fart jokes. I don’t think I ever did this kind of weekend with my cousins or my grandparents. This is only the second one we have done with the grandchildren, ranging in age from four to ten years old. Who knows how long these kids will want to spend this kind of time with us. Or how long we will have the kind of stamina it takes to keep up with them. So for now, I take it is a gift.

Tomorrow the plan is for church, but it is a loosely held plan. We will certainly have breakfast and lunch, and we want to go shopping together for relief kits to send to refugees, and for groceries for the local food pantry. And we’ll buy batteries for the joint Christmas gift that needs them.

What do I wish for these children whose lives are so precious to me?

I wish for them to have an idea of how deeply they are loved. I wish for them a sense of purpose that pushes them to do hard things, ask honest questions, make lifelong friends. I desire for them a connection with faith, with God, that will eventually stretch and inform my own faith as they move beyond the constraints by which I’m bound. I pray that the ways the world changes as they grow will be toward justice and away from oppression, and that they will be part of that change. I hope that they will know they have gifts and talents that are uniquely their own, and that they will find ways to nurture those gifts and talents.

I also hope they will understand that they have weaknesses, we all do, and that shame makes the weaknesses stronger. Rather I hope that in knowing where they are weak, they will be able to learn to live their lives thoughtfully and honestly.

I want to wish for them ease and safety and a life free from hardship or sadness, but that could also be a shallow life. I’m glad that it is not up to me to choose what things will come into their lives. I’m not wise enough for that. I hope that they have enough of an anchor that no matter what comes, they will find the anchor holding.

Such solemn thoughts for a sleepover. Maybe it is time for me to sleep as well.