“Mama” the little voice came panting up to the camper door.

“MOM” I heard shouted from behind her. The kids come flying in the camper, tripping on each other, trying to tell me the news first.

“Ok, ok” I say calmly, “Dom, you go first”.

“MOM, a bird built a nest in the neck of the camper, and it’s full of baby birds”. He gasped out breathlessly.

“Yes, Mom. Lots of baby birds, we took them out and looked at them”. Sumyr stops abruptly, her lips rolling under her teeth as she realizes what she just said.

“Children, you took the birds out of the nest?” I say sternly.

They looked crestfallen.

“Yes Mom”

“Honey, you know the Mama bird won’t claim them if you touch them”.

Another child comes in and hears the conversation.

“Oh no Mom, we didn’t touch the babies, we took out the whole nest to look at it.”

I snickered involuntarily.

I am horrible like that. These are my children, what can I say? Their logic is strangely accurate.

A few days later we loaded up happily to head to Atlanta Georgia to hike, swim, and go to conference. This is a conference we have been wanting to go to for years, but it was never possible before. Usually because of the semantics of taking off work in the middle of summer. However, this year, all the stars aligned and we were able to go listen to our beloved Zac Poonen preaching the gospel as only he can. With practical wisdom, he brings it all the way down to the most simple, practical application. His messages have done us much good over the years.

None of us remembered the hapless birds in the neck of the camper. We just hitched up our buggy horse and hopped on down the road.

As happens inevitably, someones bladder became a pressing need quickly into the trip. I won’t reveal who that someone was, but I can assure you it was certainly not me. (And by that I mean, it was me)

Being on the very edges of Atlanta by then, our only recourse was to pull in a shopping mall parking lot. My husband parked longwise, while I parked directly behind him, told the children to stay strapped in, and told my teenager to lock the door. As I got out of the car, I saw my husband standing at the front of the camper looking grieved. “You aren’t going to believe this” he said.

“What has happened” I asked in alarm, my mind springing immediately to the tailgate of his truck bed that he had left open. He modified the bed to be able to hold both his welder, and install the Anderson hitch behind the welder, making that the tailgate had to be open while pulling the camper. “Did something fall out?”

“Come listen”.

A loud cheep cheep cheep came insistently from above the hitch.

My heart sank. “How could we forget?”

“Are you going to pull them out?” He asked.

“Umm, no, you are going to pull them out” I snapped back quickly.

“I don’t want to put my hand in there, it’s dark, and what if they peck me”, he says with the logic that my children clearly inherited.

“I already put my hand in there one time, its your turn” I babbled back, my voice rising.

He winced, reached into the elbow deep cavity and pulled out a loudly cheeping nest with two baby birds in it. One cowered quietly at the bottom of the nest, meekly waiting for death to find it. (I related to the feeling. Its the same feeling I get when I go to the dentist. Meek acceptance of my inevitable fate). The other baby fluttered to the ground and madly ran around, cheeping with all the rage its little bird chest could muster. I held the nest while my husband caught the bird, nestled it carefully back beside its twin, and looked for a tree.

It’s a parking lot, where are the trees?

“Hey, over here babe, look at this little tree”.

It was an anemic little tree meant only to look pretty, probably a city mandate to keep Atlanta green. We placed that nest in the only spot that could have held a nest, and forced ourselves to walk away, the loud ,accusing, cheeping following us.

Ten minutes later we checked on them just before we drove away. The fiesty one was out on a branch beating his chest with his fists and screaming for his mother. The coward was still cowering miserably, shaking and I am sure hungry.

I am not ashamed to say I prayed for them before we left, but I prayed through a feeling of derision for their foolish little mother. She must have built the nest as soon as we arrived at the campground. What made her think we would stay?

As we pulled out of that parking lot, I thought of all the foolish things we do as Mothers. Sometimes willfully.

In the daily grind of motherhood, we forget how important our job is. How our children depend on us to raise them well. Their babyhood is so sweet. For 49 days, all we do is lift our tshirts so the baby can eat, and then change the 20,678 diapers that ensue from the incessant feedings. They start to smile at us, and we eat it up like it’s the last candy on earth. They start making little cave man noises, and walking. It’s all so very exciting and fun.

But then…..

…..then that baby turns two. Now his cave man grunts have fleshed out into words. Demanding words.

“Food”

“Out'“

“Gum'“

“MINE”

“MOM, MOMMY, MOM, MOMMY, MOOOOM”.

All of a sudden, this ain’t cute no more. (Don’t pretend that you don’t think in peasant when you are upset)

You ignore them when they say “MOM MOM MOMMOMMOM” for the first fifty four times, but on number fifty five you loose your cool and you shout in their face “STOP SAYING MOM, WHAT DO YOU NEED?”

Oh boy, sister, oh boy oh boy oh boy. You needa pull up your underwear take a breath and teach your child.

So far you have done nothing except coddle and cuddle your baby. You haven’t actually spent any time actively teaching them how to live. You may even have a dog that you spent more time training than your child.

I see you, that person recoiling in horror at the idea of training a child. Especially you that call yourself Christians, you guys are the worse!

Go ahead and gasp. I am ok with you hating me for this particular advice.

“How can you sleep at night knowing how many people hate your advice”, you ask. I sleep with the fan on, thats how. (this one isn’t my original thought, but its so clever I intend to use it every way possible)

Ninety five percent *ish of Christians have become the most soft, ineffective, insecure, unproductive, fruitless, ineffectual, futile, cottonpicken…….

“Now now El, now you are just swearing in christian”.

……child trainers ever. You just yell at your children and spank them if they make you angry enough. You then feel horrible guilt for the spanking, and you should. You spanked a child because you lost your temper. Thats not their fault. That is all your fault.

Your child has never been trained, they don’t actually know how to do the right thing, at the right time.

They have to be taught everything.

They even have to be taught that you don’t throw food around in the kitchen. Believe it or not, all those mature teenagers that you think their parents are so lucky to have, they used to sit in a high chair with food smeared from stem to stern, throwing food at their siblings, the dog, the floor, everywhere really.

They don’t just inherently know anything. Not ANYTHING. Yes, that is a note of hysteria in my voice.

They don’t know that when you are told you may have one cookie, that you do not stack three cookies together and say “Mom, I am eating my one cookie”. And yes that happened.

I had to show him how one cookie is ONE cookie.

Although to be honest, I have often wished I could put 3 pieces of pie one on top of the other and call it one piece. Sadly, my waistline would indicate the lie that I would be so willing to believe.

A child has to be taught that his Mom’s brand new eyeshadow is not actually meant to be sidewalk chalk for his fat little belly. I know, who knew?

Did you know a child has to be taught that you don’t go outside, select a big stick, and then run after their older siblings and try to hit them with it?

I know you didn’t know that.

Except for you Moms that have raised humans that know how to aim into the middle of the toilet, and that don’t hit other humans with big, carefully selected, sticks. You knew this and could have told us, but we weren’t listening. We were too busy attending an online Tupperware party so our strawberries won’t go bad so quickly.

Our children are going bad, but please not our strawberries.

When I was a young teenager, my parents let me pick out a little chow puppy from our friends who’s dog had a whole litter. I picked out a fluffy little black puppy that became my very best friend. We lived very close to the road, and had lost dogs to the road before, so I set out to indoctrinate my puppy to not go on the road ever. My methods were extremely effective, if perhaps a big unorthodox. I would roll up a newspaper loosely so that it was quite noisy when I whacked it against my hand. I would then carry my hapless puppy down to the road, look deep in its eyes as I told it in German, and in peasant why it may not go on the road. I would set it down and shout “NO NO” and other German, peasant words as I chased it back up to the house, my newspaper making loud scary noises behind it. That dog grew up and never ever went on the road. I would periodically test her by going across the road and calling to her. She would sit under the tree and quiver with longing, but she would not come anywhere close to the road.

She grew up to be a very good little mother that would have massive litters of puppies, after which all her hair would fall out. Yes, exactly like me.

This wasn’t something I expected when I became a mother. The sheer mind-boggling amount of direction I would have to give, and how often I would have to repeat it per week.

My husband told me in frustration one day, “I told him how to do it, why isn’t he doing it like that”.

I nodded sagely, “How often have you told him this?” I asked, rubbing my beard.

“I explained it to him about 6 months ago”.

I placed a pitying hand on his shoulder, “Darling, that was just once, you need to repeat it every morning for the next 365 days before you can expect him to remember your direction”.

I am joking of course. You don’t need to repeat it 365 times. 364 times will do nicely. This is why big families thrive on lists and chore charts. You can say it once, and the child can read the chart 363 times.

I must leave my blog to give Sunday morning direction to my 250 sheep that will soon be milling around my feet, but first I will leave you with a nugget of wisdom that I found yesterday in the home of some friends who have 10 children, 6 of them boys. The wisdom was written on a piece of paper behind the toilet.

On the way home I told my husband, the grasshopper will learn from “Mom”.

The grasshopper is listening.

Bet she doesn’t have to harangue anyone to put the seat down.

Respect sister, respect.