A Farewell to Teens

So, here’s a little update for all of you who are following my personal saga:

The number of occupants in my dorm has shrunk once again. Malu and Anglea, my two beautiful thirteen-year-olds, have left us. They moved to the next dorm up two weeks ago, and have spent the last week since then been running around with other children their age and behaving like the litter teenagers they are with people who are equipped to deal with age group (i.e., not me). And while I’m so happy for them, because their just so much happier in that dorm and they seem so giddy about it, I’m a little sad too. So here’s a list of things I miss about having Malu and Angela in my room with me, and hopefully once I get this off my chest I’ll be able to be fully happy for them instead of partially bummed that they could leave us so easily.

1.    The quality of music played in the dorm

I don’t know how many of you have little teens, but if you do you maybe have some idea of what kind of music gets played when their around. We would listed to quite a bit of Christian hip-hop and things with thumping dance beats when Malu was around, and while I wasn’t a fan of it at the time, I’m finding I miss those tunes. They sure beat Ada’s off-key rendition of “Love is An Open Door” (I feel for you, all the other moms of the world, because my children are also completely obsessed with Frozen) being sung at the top of her lungs…

2.    Late-night Zombie chase

At the time, I was not actually a fan of this game. It all started when Angela saw this picture (which is highly amusing and the background of my ipod):

Everytime they see my
ipod, at least one of my kids asks me if those are my fingers.

For some reason, she thought it was the funniest thing she had ever saw. That night, she decided to wander around the room, acting like a zombie. Which was fine, you know, funny and whatnot-until she started chasing me. And not like, ha-ha-I’m-chasing-you type of thing. No, she launched herself at me, and every time she caught me, she would try to eat me.

I (eventually) persuaded the zombie child to go to bed. And while I don’t miss that painful game, I do miss that creative, precocious girl that played it.

3.    Impromtu stairwell dancing

I don’t think I’ve said much about Malu in this blog, mainly because she’s a pretty mellow kid and kind of does her own thing, but one of the things about her that you might guess from her musical choices is that she love to dance. And, not bragging, the kid is good. What’s more than that, is Malu was very much the captain of our little girl ship-which is a nice way of saying that the little girls did anything she told them. One of Malu’s more brilliant ideas was teaching the little girls (Evelyn, Ada, Karla and Ale) an original dance she had made up.

It was a good dance, too, by my standards anyways. However, Malu is  perfectionist, and since it was her dance, it needed to be perfect. So she made the little ones practice in the morning before school and in the afternoon after school, as well as before bed. It got to the point where anytime they didn’t have anything they needed to be doing, they were practicing that dance. Which leads to stairwell dancing.

One morning, I walked out of our dorms to find four little girls dancing in the stairwell, in perfect unison (which was rare) with Karla counting “One-two, one-two aaaaaand twist” in her high-pitched little voice.

I wish you could have seen it. It was amazing.

And all because of Malu.

4.    Angela’s Famous Ridiculous Responses

Angela is a ham. She’s hilarious, and though she sometimes gets shy with people she doesn’t know, in private she just keeps going until she has the whole room in stitches. One of the things we know Angela for is for her ability to give unexpected responses in an incredulous tones of voice. That, combined with her amazing acting talent, is a humor gold mine.

I’m going to draw up a typical Angela-related scene for you:

Alisha finishes reading the story of Rumplestiltskin of the girls.

Alisha: So, what can this story teach us?

Ada: Don’t eat straw! (she had fallen asleep and missed a big chunk of a fairy tale)

Karla: Don’t lie!

Angela: (dead pan) Learn martial arts so if some short guy comes to steal your baby you can kick him really hard and he’ll go bother someone else.

Maybe you had to be there.

I was wrong. This list didn’t make me feel better at all.

Anyways, I love those girls. I miss them a lot more than I thought I would, although I am happy that they’re happy. And if anyone’s getting anxious that my room is getting low on little girls (since Dani also left in April, we’re now down to five), a little birdie informs me that I will soon have some new little girls to tell you about.

For the time being, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet that comes from having a seven-year old, an eight-year-old, two ten-year-olds and ONLY ONE thirteen-year-old.

It’s a very busy kind of peace, and a very loud sort of quiet.

The Fast

In the Christian world, I feel like there has been a surge in the popularity of fasts lately, at least where I live (which is in the middle of a field). There are all kinds of fasts-Daniel fast, water fast, bread and water fast-and while I believe in fasting, I also think it’s easy to get caught up in the craze.

If you’re a type-A personality like me (I only recently figured out I was type-A. I can feel my mother shaking her head at me) fasting can turn in to this messed-up, spiritually fueled competition. This is my hypothetical conversation-hint: it has happened

“I fasted for 24 hours today!” (Me doing backflips at my physical and spiritual discipline)

“Oh, good for you. I’m fasting this week. Third day with no food!”

Alisha crying out to God, “Why! Why did you make me to need food so much! Why can’t I be super spiritual like (insert name here)! 

I’m actually getting away from my point, which was: There are a lot of different kind of fasts. And yesterday I ended one that was actually really rewarding for me. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know my feeling on fasting are no food=Alisha feels like she’s dying/turns into marauding ogre who feasts on the tears of children. If you haven’t read my earlier posts, you’re jumping ahead of yourself in the Saga of Alisha, and should turn back to read the earlier posts before you drown in the deep waters I’m swimming in these days.

Just kidding.

Anyways, for those of you who don’t know me well, I am a book addict. Seriously, books are like heroin for me. Or maybe not, because people can kick their opiate addiction. More correctly, for me, books are like air. I can’t get by without them. I’m always reading something, and have been since I learned how to read. If we’re going to start counting how many books I’ve read-well, I doubt you could. I out grew three school libraries and two public ones, and the books that I own fit (mostly) into a fifty gallon storage bin when I moved to Mexico. Don’t even get me started on the trauma of weeding out what was going to stay and what was going to go, and worse, which of my babies was coming with me when I moved to Mexico. Words can’t describe the pain of that experience.

I started reading at a very young age...

I don’t read just any books, but the way. I read fiction. Pure fiction. Novels are my drug of choice, if you will. While the occasional non-fiction title has made it onto my to-read list(s), they rarely actually get read, and when they do, any feeling of triumph-hey, look at me, I am smart!-is soon replaced with the normalcy of the staggering amount of fiction I’m capable of reading.

So when God started challenging me to put the books down a couple of months ago, you can imagine how I took that. To say I didn’t want to is putting it lightly. I actually spent a couple of months ignoring that niggling feeling I had that I wasn’t explicitly following what I felt was God’s will for my life before I finally cracked. After all, reading is good for you. Everyone says so. What finally broke me was taking a real hard look at what I was reading. On a scale of Shakespeare and ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ equals vegetables and Dr. Seuss and ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ equals candy-well, I was eating more than my share of candy in this equation.

I quit. Cold turkey. It was awful.

Okay, I’m being a little dramatic. I didn’t quit reading-I just quit reading fiction. I went on a fast, for my spiritual wellbeing. For three weeks I read what I personally refer to as ‘God books’ (books on Christian life and spirituality, etc.) and non-fiction. As opposed to the whopping twenty-two novels and one God book I read in the month of March, during the three weeks of my fast in April I only read six books. And while I realize that that’s still a lot more than a normal person reads in a month, it’s not much for me.

During my fiction fast, I actually realized a couple of things (Alisha had a spiritual revelation during a fast! I’ll alert the media!) that I want to share with you. Take what you will from the gems of my wisdom:

1.    Your brain is a muscle, too.

I’m not in school anymore. I loved school. I miss school. But I reached the conclusion that, while I could stay in school happily forever and earn several doctorate degrees, a) that wasn’t something God was calling me to and b) I would be sent to debtor’s prison for unpaid student loans after the second doctorate. However, I’ve found (during my hiatus from fiction) that non-fiction is the perfect balm for my school-free life. With non-fiction, my crazy little hamster brain can happily read and obsess about the topics it loves to think about, like Salem Witch Trials: Mass hysteria or spiritual warfare? I read a 500-page book about the history of coffee this month, and I actually enjoyed it.

The point of this paragraph: the only way to fight the stuporificational* process of life is to keep learning, and my medium of choice is books.

2.    When you don’t spend all your time reading, you have time for other things, too.

Part of my fast was to also limit the time that I was spending reading. Instead of spending my Saturday afternoons happily consuming novels, I instead chose to spend time playing with my kids, working out, and hanging out with friends. At first I was a little lost-I have no book/ipad in my hands, what do I do?-but soon, I actually found myself lowering my antisocial protective shields out of sheer boredom. Maybe I will never be the most social person in the world, but these past few weeks went a long way towards convincing me I am more interpersonal than I thought I was.

3.    You really are what you eat (read: consume).

There’s so much media hype about eating right and exercising, people don’t realize that you become what you put in your brain, as well. The things you read, listen to, watch-they all make their way into your inner consciousness. Are you reading what you should? What are you listening to? For me, this revelation was underlined by how my perspective changed when I changed my steady diet of novels to books about parenting, teaching methods, history, and most importantly, God. 

The change was astonishing; instead of dwelling on the things about home I missed, I was thinking about a quote I had read in Mark Batterson’s ‘The Circle Maker.’ Instead of wondering when I’ll ever fall in love (seriously, I don’t know if you people know this, but novels are always about love. At least, the interesting ones. Does not always make for a happy single person, let me tell you.), I was thinking about the awesomeness of Jen Hatmaker’s book ‘Seven’ and how she challenged me to change the ways I look at excess, in both the spiritual and physical. Maybe it’s not the most profound realization, but I think it’s an important one.

So, there you have it. I survived. I know that for your lives, this probably won’t have the same impact, but I’m just going to boil everything I just said to one final point.

                 Everything in moderation.

Because I am a crazy person, with type-A tendencies and a need to try to be awesome at everything, I could go the complete wrong direction with this. I could convince myself that novels are bad, give them up completely (or more accurately, try) and only ever read non-fiction, feeling guilty anytime I read anything else. I could swing it in a spiritual direction, and try to only read books about God. Ever.

And I would be setting myself up for failure. Why? Because you need to do things in moderation.

So there’s where I’m at this week, guys. I’m still working on a plan to not read too much fiction, or even too much in general-trying to keep things in moderation, as I said. In the meantime, tonight I’m going to enjoy cracking open my first fiction title in a while-and if anyone ever needs a book recommendation, I’m here for you guys. It’s what I do.

*I think I just invented this word. I may copyright it on a basis of sheer awesomeness

Sorry for the long post, but that was some quality blogging there! In case you’re new to this blog (and you’ve made it all the way to the end of this wondering post) I’m Alisha, and this little blog is just me, writing about my kids, my dreams, and my struggles. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this and that it has touched you in some way-because that’s my main goal-and please, feel free to peruse the rest of the site. If you would like to contact me, you can always email me at alishatomsen@lovehopemercy.org. If you would like to help me out in any way, your prayers are appreciated and do more than you and I could ever know. If you would like to support me financially, please contact accounting@lovehopemercy.org or send a check to Living Hope International, P.O Box 116, West Bend, Wisconsin 53095 with my name, Alisha Tomsen, in the memo line of the check.