Gratitude

A Mother’s Day Letter to our Children (on the eve of losing their childhood home)

May 8, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Dear kids,

Sorry, but we are packing boxes and probably annoying you with photos of random pieces of art accompanied by, “Do you want this?” May 24th is coming and then we’ll stop.

We bought our little french cottage in February of 1991 and when we took your great-grandmother to see it she said, “Oh what a lovely little bungalow.” We thought it was a mansion and pretended we weren’t insulted. Every room except our bedroom (painted a disgusting shade of dark brown) was light blue so we came out to the suburbs on the weekends for two months, ate Dominoe’s pizza on the patio and fixed it up. Our first Valentine’s Day dinner was spent in an empty new house, eating asparagus pasta salad by candlelight on the floor. We tried to make a fire, but didn’t know how to open the flue. We smoked out the interior and ended up wrapping ourselves in a quilt after opening every door and window to air out. Of course, we drank champagne, but it was cheap champagne, Freixenet, which is actually a Cava.

Your dad and I count it an unbelievable blessing that we raised you on this humble and beautiful corner in a God-fearing town that hasn’t changed much. We still have the same neighbors who adore you after 28 years and ask us about you each time we cross through their Liberty Drive gate. Your “kids club” in the backyard still has the red, white and blue picnic chairs inside the center of that hollowed out trinity of trees. And now it’s time for you to make your own homes without the safety net of this faithful corner. I know a permanent displacement is hard, I still drive and walk by my house on the Fox River where I grew up at least once or twice a year. So, as you grow into life without your pastoral anchor, here’s some intangible truths that you’ve learned for safe keeping in your hearts:

Plant a garden – Two decades of spring have passed with seeds sprouting on windowsills which we hardened off and ultimately planted in your “kids garden.” Getting your hands dirty is a virtue, watching the earth embed into the cracks of your index finger so deeply that you can’t wash it out means that hard work should yield a harvest, but some things will forever be beyond your control. Don’t let those unexpected forces get you down, devilish squirrels and August storms are a part of life and the sun comes out again, a new day is made and fall Kale tastes as good a spring sugar snap peas.

Dream big, live small – Live where you can hear the floors creak, where you know when each other gets up, goes to bed, flushes the toilet, creeps downstairs in the middle of the night for a glass of water or microwave popcorn. Intimate living where the rhythm of life is shared in the sacredness of the everyday equals closeness. We know Jessie spent nights up late organizing her closet and dancing pique turns across the wood floor, so we called her the “night-stalker.” We know Nathaniel couldn’t stay up long past dinner and always went downstairs to play drums when the dinner table “conversation” became too heated and Caleb constantly stayed awake looking at his globe late into the night wondering, “Where is Afghanistan?” or, “When will I climb Mount Everest?” All of you grew up empowered by your dreams and we shared those dreams close in, with all their sorrows and joys and we will keep doing that even when this home belongs to another family.

Invite others to inhabit your world, share – Probably more than ten people lived in our home and basement: grad students, our foster daughter, aimless college grads wondering what to do with their lives, those who fell on hard times. With one bathroom upstairs this wasn’t always easy. You sacrificed your precious teenage shower time and if someone who didn’t know better flushed the downstairs toilet during your shower, screams echoed through the walls because somehow flushing the cold water meant you lost the hot, (why? I never figured this out.) You grew up in a family of extroverts so maybe that made sharing our small space easier, but now you all LOVE people. I see a burning compassion in your eyes for the person on the street with nothing. I remember recently eating lunch in an outdoor cafe on Michigan Avenue and a homeless man approached our table, leaned over the canvas barricade and asked one of you for money. You reached into your pocket and gave him everything you had, $20.00, without blinking an eye. Keep living and loving with that kind of fearless abandon and say “yes” to pets. My old friend Ed Homan from the Danada horse barn always said, “You can tell how a man is gonna treat his wife by how he takes care of his animals.” Based upon how your dad has treated our animals, that is true.

Be faithful and find space to take deep breaths – Life gets hard, tax bills increase, pneumonia threatens our Nutcracker ballet performances, cramps shut down our State Cross County meet winning aspirations, flu attempts to overtake our final season in the high school musical pit orchestra, (another evening wrapped up in blankets and gutting it out:), but God is faithful. Keep trusting in Him and his boundless love. You are never alone. His plan for your earthly home may change, but his eternal definition will always stay the same; “Jesus answered him, ‘If a man loves me, he will keep my word. My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him.’”John 14:23. Wherever you live, find the space that is your go-to for recharge. A forest preserve, a river, a prairie view from a bridge, a tall sand dune— nothing fancy, but a vista that’s real, set apart, and imprinted on your mind. Breathe in this place and know that home resides there as well.

You are grown up and the world desperately needs your gifts, your light, your spark. No longer do you exist on “blue box” mac-n-cheese. Today, you are literally calling me on the phone asking how to cook ratatouille for a gathering of ten, (say —what?) We’ll keep making home together, but now you’re equipped with everything needed to create your own. Store up in your hearts what you’ve learned on our cozy corner and if you don’t, well, count on me to write it down for you:)

Peace and always, love…

Mom

Nathaniel’s fifth grade Mother’s Day present, a tissue paper covered bottle vase.

p.s. While typing this, our neighbor kids are practicing their marching band competition routine in Nick’s backyard to the BLASTING strains of “God Bless America.” Despite all the swirling, twittering fury that is America today, kids still play baseball in the street and parents do tuck their kids into bed at night. Never lose hope, because this country is your home too.

Believing in New Shoots

April 4, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

Something new is springing up; we’re moving to a new state, getting to know a new town, rooting into a new community and while it’s exciting there is a bittersweetness. We’ve spent 29 years walking these creaky, oak floors and sharing one shower upstairs, boiling glass baby bottles and drying them overnight on these counters, watching each child come around the upstairs hall corner in footsie pajamas, just a little bit taller with each passing year.

We removed the corkscrew willow tree (which was dying) and put in a gigantic perennial garden marking each plant with an identifying stake. Our kids grew their first tomatoes and basil while the squirrels traversed the fence and ate all our corn. Even in their twenties, our sons climbed to the top of the gigantic Norway Spruce trees and cut out the branches so they could take in the view of our entire town. One summer afternoon, the boys coaxed me up there and what did I see? Nothing but a green canopy. Everything, even the houses and streets disappeared from view, except for the trees. With a mere seventy foot climb my entire perspective changed. All concrete and cars, gone. I’d spent over two decades taking in a myopic, street level view. Little did I know the freedom lying in wait at the top of those trees for those willing to take the risk. I’m thankful for people who push me to reach “further up and further in” and that gets at the heart of what’s hard about digging up roots, it means saying goodbye to the other plants in our garden, our people.

There are a handful who’ve brought out the best in us and sat beside us in our worst. They challenged us to live with meaning and purpose. They gave us their loyalty and love, their already overextended hearts. Our next- door neighbors came over the day we arrived home from the hospital and held and admired each precious new addition to our family. Our pastor and his wife were the first people we called when my husband lost his job. Our wine drinking friends commiserated with us and celebrated teenage trials and triumphs. Our travel buddies loved our daughter and even came to see her dance in her new city with her first dance company, who does that? We’ve laughed until we cried about summer camp experiences, our kids getting lost together and backpacking their way through homesickness and swarms of mosquitos. These are people you actually want to spend your summer vacation time with. Why would we leave them?

The answer lies in trusting the underground work and the above the treeline vista. We’ve lived many springs and we know that the hyacinth and daffodil do not fail. We know that snowdrops bloom the last week of February, regardless of the weather and we hear the first cardinal summoning his mate right around Valentine’s Day each year. We can trust the unseen worker for new friends, a new job, our new place in this world because “He is making all things new.”

I bought a bouquet at Christmas with corkscrew willow branches as an accent. After the amaryllis flowers died I went outside to throw the bouquet away, but noticed that one of the branches generated roots. All that work going on inside the vase as we opened our presents and entertained our guests with Door County Cherry Bounce cocktails. Long after Christmas returned to basement boxes, I planted the new tree in a pot and here on the cusp of spring I own a new tree. A piece of home to carry to our new home. We cut down a corkscrew willow over 25 years ago and now we leave with a new one. New life, new adventures, new hope in what we may find out there on the lake…

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!” ― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

“It All Goes Back in the Box” for a New Adventure

January 11, 2019 by Margaret Philbrick Leave a Comment

John Ortberg tells this story of playing a board game with his grandma and at the end of the game she waxes poetically about this truth, “It all goes back in the box.”* As our kids returned to their respective post- holiday lives, we sat amidst piles of dry pine needles and a coffee table covered with ornaments and packed up Christmas. We’ve all done it. Gone are those carefree, clueless days when we obliviously trotted back to school while someone else at home put Christmas away. It’s a bummer reality of January, dragging the tree out to the curb and staring at its lost glory, accentuated by all the other forlorn friends waiting for the mulch maker.

But this is 2019, the year of throwing things out and packing treasures back in the box for a new adventure, we are moving! Yes, we are leaving debt-dripping, tax-crippling Illinois for the pristine Wisconsin lakes. The main reason for this uprooting after 27 years in our french country cottage? The church which we’ve been nourished in for 21 of those years is planting a new church and we get to be a part of it! We’re already investing in flannel shirts and wool skirts, the ones they wear with patterned leggings and heavy tread construction boots. How does one describe this outward bound, earthy look? Our kids are calling our new home 221b Baker street because they say it looks like where Sherlock Holmes and Watson live, and a condo means — no more weeding!

Most people stare in shock and say, “How can you leave?” as if our corner of the world is paradise found. In many ways this green tree corridor of Dupage County is a paradise of a place to raise kids, but we’re nearly done with that process (you’re never really done), and the parents are longing for a new challenge and the joy of seeing God work in wondrous ways in new lands. There’s a cool pilgrim-explorer ethos about it, leaving the beloved and familiar for unchartered territory. Our hope is that we’ll love the one who’s leading us even more deeply and the people he puts around us with abandon. If we’re lucky we’ll also write some compelling stories, songs, poems and maybe even a mystery in 221b Baker Street. Stay tuned and if you’re dying for a French Country cottage with a red tile roof it goes on the market in March. Happy New Year!

Found in John Ortberg’s book, When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

Letting Go of Billy Graham

February 21, 2018 by Margaret Philbrick 2 Comments

It’s not easy to imagine life in America without Billy Graham. He served as a comforting blanket of trustworthiness and faith in the highest corridors of power and some of the least visible places on earth. He moved through doors freely and as long as he walked the planet we knew someone important must be encountering God in a potentially life changing way which would hopefully trickle down and impact all of us for the better. President Obama visited him in North Carolina only eight years ago, the last of our Presidents to actually see him. I never met him, but he changed my life.

While sitting on my Grandma’s gold velour sofa, eating a hot fudge sundae at the age of seven, I watched his crusade on t.v. Grandma always let me stay up later than my parents and never guilted me into thinking I watched too much t.v. Like parents today who admonish their kids for wasting precious time on video games, my parents did the same with t.v. But on that night, no time was wasted. Mr. Graham spelled it out so simply, “You are a sinner, but you don’t need to die a sinner. Come to Jesus and he will change your life.” He didn’t try to impress me with quotes from commentators or other erudite sources, just the gospel pure and simple. In listening to his message and watching the endless stream of people walking forward to “make a decision for Christ,” I knew I wanted that hope. I didn’t tell my Grandma or anyone else, but when she tucked me in and turned out the light on her rose colored nightstand I did as Mr. Graham said, I asked Jesus into my life. To this day I remember that feeling of security and peace, falling asleep new beneath Grandma’s starched white sheets.

About thirty years later I was on a call with an evangelist, John Guest and he asked me, “How did you come to faith?” I shared my story of Billy Graham and he startlingly said on the phone, “Let’s pray for Mr. Graham and your grandma right now and thank God for the way he used them in your life.” Never before had someone requested that we pray together on the phone. I felt shy and insecure doing it, but as the memory of that night came back accompanied by the smell of Grandma’s rose scented hand lotion and the rattling of her newspaper while I pretended to be asleep, my heart filled with gratitude. Millions came to faith or were exposed to the truth of the gospel through Billy Graham’s ministry and they are welcoming him into heaven today with a big crown and a choir singing something even better than Handel’s Messiah, but for me on that night in a single bed in River Forest, Illinois it was just me, Billy and Jesus.

Forever grateful.