>I wanted a big family, but I only had six kids. Crazy? Big family to most? Of course…..I have always jumped in with both feet. It is important to me to have a home with tons of kids who feel totally safe. I only had six kids of my on and a few years ago I wondered to myself how I would deal with some of the time I had previously given to pregnancy, newborns and preschool age children. God knew. I have been given the amazing gift of filling my home with boys (I have only 2 boys and they are 10 year apart and 4 girls all only a couple years apart), 6 little boys a few days a week. What a sweet gift. The gift comes not just from the noise and the dirt and the plastic cups and the dirt and the noise and the dishes( you get the picture), the gift comes largely from watching my babies, my sweet little children who I have adored for so long, wondering what kind of people they would be, share their lives. This evening I watched all sorts of slides in my slide show of live over here in Berclair. I watched my 14 year old cleverly open the kitchen door window and name us Pike King and smack gum while taking orders for meatball subs and lemonade, all with a grin and giggling boys taking plates full of food. I watch my 11 year old offer to take my precious little neighbor boy home for a bath and some quiet until mom arrived home from work. I watched my nine year old play hard with 2 kindergarten age boys (only one being her actual brother) and giggle with glee with they both called for “sister, more jumping on the trampoline!” I watched with hope as my baby boy coughed and sputtered his way (recovering from sickness and allergies) to his best friend Adam after a a harsh spill was taken on his turn with the big bike. My evening ended watching my almost grown up son, who stands taller than me snuggle up on the couch for a movie with a room full of brothers and sisters, some by birth and some by spirit and delightfully pat the back of a little one who just needed a bit of extra attention. I was given the distinct opportunity to see exactly what I have hoped for, a bright and shining future, full of adults that I can call family changing lives one person at a time. I adore putting Love on the Table for my family, the neighborhood and anyone who will walk to the kitchen with a plate, but at the root of it, I am just one mean momma. Consistently inconsistent, frequently loud, often grumpy, and usually impatient with messes and noise, there is no way we could do this life the Lord has called us to without our children God has so graciously given me to learn from.
They carry love to the table, wash the dishes we serve it on and sweep the floors we spill on. These children remind me not to yell at another kid, that math isn’t as important as a smile and it doesn’t all have to be done. All six of these kids show me how to grow our family differently, hugely, and with ease in one way I hadn’t imagined, one neighbor at a time into the kingdom. My little family have made this paradise with love on the table, Pike Paradise with Love on the Table that we are grateful to share more often than not.

These are my original thoughts posted with all sorts of funnies, hurts, happies at http://www.himhimthem.blogspot.com please honor that they are owned by myself (Suzanne Pike) and don’t share them without attributing where they are found and who they came from in the material you share.

>My sweet Grandpa has had multiple strokes here recently and the doctor has decided that he MUST stick to his diabetic diet (in addition to 100 other things on a list) to keep himself healthy. I was just there a month ago, measuring, reading labels, watching FOX news and napping sitting up on the couch while hanging out with two of the most AMAZING people at a place I fondly call “412” (not an area code a street number). BUT, a year or so ago Grandpa and Grandma and my family went out and we we were living large, we ate a feast, an unbelievable Greek feast at their favorite restaurant. I was so blessed to get the kids cleaned up and dressed from a day of playing with cousins, I pulled my hair back and said a prayer of thanks. I was thankful then and now for the chance to take two people out to dinner at their favorite place who had taken me out to eat and served so many meals in my lifetime. These two people took me to a Pizza Hut when I was 17 years old and I told them that I didn’t have time or room for them in my life, that I couldn’t deal with relationship. Grandma and Grandpa sat me down at their kitchen table with leftover Gumbo Burgers when I was 15 to tell me that if I wasn’t going to behave with a certain boy I wouldn’t be leaving the house again for the summer. Throughout my elementary years I spent summers eating zuchs from the garden covered with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella, zuchs with ranch, zuchs with salt and butter and tonnnnnns of fresh tomatoes, mostly on a back slab patio that as a family we have watch evolve to a covered room with drywall and everything. All summer while eating these meals I sucked up the sunlight, the Son of God, and the sweet smell of chlorine. I have shared many, many meals with my sweet Grandparents and last summer I had the blessing of buying a meal for two people who had foot the bill for so many of meals that involved so many long talks and for that night I sat back and listened to the table while my six kids had their on talks with them. It was an incredible blessing . Last month I served food to my grandpa and sorted out more questions over meals with my grandma. The conversations were different and I was pleasantly surprised that I had become a grown up right before there eyes at the kitchen table now with coffee instead of soda and I could handle another talk at the table over a meal AND I have become profoundly aware of how grateful I am for the meal I gave them last year before our lives all changed.
Have you thought about the meals you eat with the people you love the most?
Can you take an opportunity to give a sweet, un-warranted meal to someone who has given you meals for a lifetime
It is an important moment to take.
These are my original thoughts posted with all sorts of funnies, hurts, happies
at http://www.himhimthem.blogspot.com please honor that they are owned by myself (Suzanne Pike) and don’t share them without attributing where they are found and who they came from in the material you share.