Hi All!  

Still searching for the Joy and Hope in this world?  
Me, too.  
Look forward, look backward.  Looking all around trying to notice all the Hope and Joy I can find .
To help you out, here is a Re-Post from a very Merry June ago....




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​Merry Christmas!


Yes, there is a Christmas tree in my living room today.
Yes, I know it is June.  


Need an explanation?


We had a photo shoot at my house for a story that will be published around Christmastime.  Publishers work months ahead, in order to have the material ready by December.   So we set up Christmas a bit early, and took the pictures.  This is the first time that I have ever decorated for Christmas when it is NOT December.  And you know what?  It has been a fantastic experience!   


The kids are beside themselves with Joy.  Not kidding.  I never realized how magical this could be.   


I mean, it’s not like June is a dark and sad month or anything.  We don’t NEED Christmas tree lights in June like we need a sparkly tree up north in December.  By the third week of December, we Minnesotans are desperate for anything that twinkles like the sun.  The world is such a dark and cold place that even tiny Christmas lights and Advent candles make us happy.  Christmas gives us HOPE!  


But in June, we have sunshine and sparkling water and boats and loons crying.  And mosquitoes.  Those too.  And kids out of school, and broken arms, and trips to the orthodontist and dentist and doctor and gophers digging up the yard that I just mowed in 80% humidity with a herd of mosquitoes trailing me like flying piranhas through the woods…I don’t worry about wolves in the woods, because the mosquitoes leave so little flesh that no wolf would be interested.  Wolf spiders are more scary, anyway.  June in Minnesota is special that way.


I guess what I am trying to say, is that even though it is summer, and the kites are flying, the sparrows are hatching, and the roses are blooming, I still need Hope.  I still need a little help finding Love, Joy, and Peace.  And you know what?  It is really easy to find those things with a Christmas tree in the living room and a creche on the mantel.  


The kids’ excitement and anticipation of great Joy were contagious.  So I rummaged around the nooks and crannies of my house, and found many odds and ends for presents.  Mostly books.  And silly things like a Bonne Belle lipgloss giftpack (90% off in January!) and some Jolly Rancher shower gel.  How is that even a thing?  Who wants tasty shower gel?  These things are in my house because I can’t pass up a 90% off sale, no matter how ridiculous the items.  I also grabbed all of the individual-sized snacks out of the cupboards, like Cheetos and Sour Cream and Onion Chips.  I wrapped everything up in Christmas paper, and tucked it all under the sparkling tree.  


Then we invited friends over.   


I think they were surprised! 


And you know what?  We had a lovely, unexpected, and Joyous afternoon.   We ate popcorn, we talked, we laughed.  We played a White Elephant gift game with all the wrapped presents, and the mystery gift that everyone wanted the most turned out to be the Jolly Rancher Shower Gel.  Imagine that.  It was wrapped in the shiniest paper.  


If you are looking for Hope or Joy, I highly recommend celebrating Christmas in June!   The sparkly Christmas tree brought us excitement and Joy.  But there was more to it than that.  


Amid the decorations and presents and laughter, something else was there.  


The most powerful part of this week has been the quiet parade of plastic animals and shepherds, making their way across my mantel, looking for the small Christ Child in the manger.  Despite the drafty barn, despite the darkness of the night and the chaos in the world, the baby sleeps peacefully in the manger.  Silent night, holy night.  That is what gives us Hope.  That’s the source of our Joy.   And that is worth celebrating, any time of the year.  


Merry Christmas!

Baby, it's cold outside!
The windchill is -26. 
​Seriously.
I love the windchill.  It's not just the temperature; it's how you FEEL outside.  That can actually be measured.
My husband disagrees.  He says "Just the facts.  What's the real temperature outside?"
"But honey, scientists can actually measure how you FEEL outside."  Doesn't that validate that Feels are for Reals? 
I think it does.  
Thank you, meteorologists.
So, this is how I feel tonight.  
I'm looking for something beautiful about minus 26 windchill...
It's dark and it's cold. It's so darn cold it can kill you.
So, I did the logical thing, and filled up a water balloon, and tossed it outside in the snow.  
I didn't get the typical or the expected summery water balloon experience.  But sometimes, the unexpected turns out to be a joy, too.  When the water balloon froze, there was a small hollow spot left  inside.  

It's perfect for a candle.

So here I am, enjoying the beauty of fire inside of ice.  It's just an imperfect, round orb of ice, frozen solid by it's harsh environment.  And yet, because of its hollowness or brokenness, the candle light can be placed inside.  
That light inside the ice is more powerful than all the darkness of this winter forest. It melts away the fear of the unknown and unseen. 

I'm having an existential crisis of the best kind here, where suddenly it all makes sense outside here in the cold.  I don't have to be anything but a broken and cold ice chunk, as long as I have God's love inside.   That is enough.  Enough to change anything.

God's light is enough to melt any darkness and fear. 

​

Oh my gosh.  
New year.  We need you.

It's 2022.  

Mask:  check.
Double mask: check.
Protective eye gear:  check.

No, I'm not headed on an airplane. 

Helmet: check.

No, not headed to the grocery store.  Or school.
​

It's 2022 and I'm sharing some joy in the form of a recent ski shot.  

For the record, I am posting only silent video.  On all the rest of the shots, I was laughing and giggling maniacally as I drifted down the slope, phone in hand.  Trying to capture the bliss and thrill of hurtling down a very small mountain at night in below zero temperatures.  

God's creation is so incredibly joyful, exciting, mysterious and beautiful!  
And there is so much adrenaline to be had!

A young snowboarder swooshed past, shaking his head.  
"Sheesh, Lady.  Put the phone away."

I think I will.  

Now that you've had your laugh of the day,
Go out and enjoy the wild ride that 2022 may bring your way. 

​Phillippians 4:13!

Emmanuel.  
God with us.  

I love the imagery and symbolism of the Holy Family in the stable.  That imperfect, ramshackle cave, the place that God came to be with us.

In this crazy world, it's good to remember that we don't have to be perfect.  
We don't.  
We can't.
It is God who brings perfection to our humble, broken, imperfect hearts.

This reminds me of my favorite poem about the Christmas Stable.
(I wish I could credit the author, but I haven't been able to discover that.)  

Here it is, surrounded by the simply lovely artwork of my second graders, who imagined they were building a shelter for the Holy Family on Christmas night.  A little cardboard, a few popsicle sticks, pebbles, glue and some grand imaginations filled a day of school with prayerful fun.  Without any pretenses of being glorious or grand, these little stables are just right, even perfect.  Here is the poem:

My heart is a stable, Dear Lord
O grant that it may be
Not great or grand or rich enough
but poor enough for Thee.

Emmanuel.
God be with you today.
May we invite Him in to our imperfect hearts and lives.

So happy to be opening this box!  I ordered my own artwork printed on greeting cards.  
You can find them at Fine Art America on my gallery page.
(https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/michelle-mahnke) 

This blog was sent out to pasture... What happened?

I went back to work when my youngest started school.   That sounds so odd, because moms don't not work!  Moms at home work hard.  

I still do Mom things but now I teach school, too.  

Summers are for kids and scribbling...  

So it's summer now, and I'm reworking this blog where I shared some of my thoughts, art and writing.  Because much of my life is working now, I am repurposing this website as a landing spot to collect all my creative scribbles.  

Like a link to my online gallery that can be found at Fine Art America.  

I'll also share a link soon for my under-construction website, e12art.com,  where teachers and families can access art projects for classroom and home.  

New focus, new name.

See you again soon at scribblemom.com

​Here is one of my favorite paint brushes.  


Well, former favorite brushes, I should say.  


It’s actually been rather irritating lately.  But in the past years, we’ve been through a lot together.  Just about a year ago, in fact, this brush was doing amazing work on a rather large project.


I completely relied upon this brush, and it lived up to the task;  responsive, soft, flexible.  I could load on the thick oil paint, and this brush always smoothed things out just how I wanted it.


But not any more.  


Time has passed, and it’s grown crusty.


Stiff.  Uncompromising.  Unhelpful. 


This brush became so irksome that I wanted to cast it aside and forget about it.  Give up on it.


But the truth is, I still need it.  I love it.

So I decided to give it one last try.  After a quick soak in solvent, I turned on the warm water, and started in with the soap.  Just some hot water and a bar of regular soap.  


And an hour of my time.


Gently, patiently, I dabbed and pressed and painted on the bar of soap until the old crustiness began to melt right out of this beautiful brush.  I could not believe how much red oil paint was still stuck within the bristles!  No wonder it had been so ill-behaved!  Warm water, soap, dab, brush, rinse.  Warm water, soap, dab, brush, rinse.  Warm water, soap…


And persistent gentleness.


What if I treated other people with the same care and concern that I reserve for my paintbrushes?  What if every crusty, irritating person was gently soothed with warm water and soap?  What if I was willing to spend an hour with each grump, gently soothing away thier crustiness?  


What if?


You will be happy to know that my old brush is in perfect shape now.


No crustiness.  No stiffness, no wounds.  


It is pure and soft and gentle.  It's been restored.  

This made me smile.  Two tiny blossoms, picked by two small hands with grubby fingers.  Together, we placed them in this Lego chalice.  Art at its finest.

April 15.

Tax Day.

Groan...

For as much as I love paint and words and creating messy things,
I despise record keeping and ledgers and the monotony of orderliness.  
Calculating tax returns ranks right up there with the time I got a root canal.  

The root canal was particularly memorable because not only did it hurt like heck, but while the perky, young, blonde endodontist with red manicured nails heartily shoved medical machinery, including a running drill and what might have been a catalytic converter into my mouth, she asked 'getting to know you' questions.  

"Do you have kids?" her smile gleamed, sparkling with a million dollars of dental work.  I was flat on my back, white-knuckled, having infected tooth pulp sucked out with a vacuum hose.  I didn't feel much like small talk.

"Auhughmshix..."  I attempted to smile, and held up six fingers.
  
"Ohmygosh! Imagine, six kids!  How can you keep track!  Ohmygosh if anyone asks you how many kids you have, you can just say half a dozen!!!!!"   Her peals of laughter echoed loud enough for me to still hear today. 

Needless to say, I did not reveal to this woman that I was five months pregnant with number seven.  Better to let her imagine I swallowed a globe on my way in for the root canal.

Compared to Tax Day, which I have to endure every year, that root canal was nothing.  Just a fleeting irritation.   

But April 15 comes every year, with its infernal receipts and columns and calculations.  I am not fond of April 15.

Today my son came home from school, dumped his math homework on the table and said, "Mom, is tomorrow April 15th?"

"Yes."

"Awesome!  Will you make a cake to celebrate?"

"Are you nuts, Kid?  Who celebrates Tax Day?"  

"Mom!" he said, looking shocked with disbelief.  "April 15th is Leonardo Da Vinci's birthday!  How could you not know that?  It's important!"  

Well, who knew?  

April 15 is special!   I think I will go bake a gluten-free, sugar-free cake, after all.
​
Then we will really have something to smile about.  

Mona Lisa (public domain), Leonardo Da Vinci

This is a burnt charcoal vine.


Just ashes.


Good for nothing, you might think.  It’s the end, it’s done for.


Wrong.


I need this.  I actually went to a store and paid for it.  This small burnt vine is just what I need to begin an oil painting.


I use it to cover a page of tissue paper with blackness.  It’s a mess.  There is charcoal and ash on both my hands, on my cheek where I scratched an itch, on the floor, and all over the tissue paper.  Artists have worked the same way since the cave paintings of Lascaux.  In a mess.


I shake away the extra dust and flip the charcoal covered sheet upside down onto my new canvas.  Just a moment before, the canvas had been pure, white and clean.  But I’m not worried about smudges.  I place a traced outline of my initial sketch onto the tissue paper, and retrace my idea over the layers of tissue, and onto the canvas.  Smudges are easily cleaned up.  


What is left is a perfectly prepared canvas, with the image intact.  Iconographers for centuries called this the “cartoon”.  A simple charcoal line drawing, the beginning of  greatness.  With this humble beginning, they could paint windows to Heaven.


Some days my life feels just like a mess of charcoal and ash.  But I’ll take that.   I will embrace the ashes, let them cover me.  I’ll hold on to the faith that God has a plan.  He is the Artist, after all.  He can take care of the smudges.  And he can make something beautiful from a beginning of ashes.

He did this for you!

One day can change everything.  Hope.

Today I almost stepped in this puddle: 

 Just mud.  When I look down, that's what I see.  ​Always mud.  
​But then I stopped and got down on my knees, and really looked at the mud puddle....

And there was a little bit of Heaven, right in front of me.

Did you ever watch ice melt on a river?

​As it recedes, sometimes you can discover crystals that have been hidden, compressed deep within the ice.

I feel like our problems and suffering are the same as this ice;  they are just a heavy burden that we carry, they weigh us down and paralyze us for a time.  

But when Spring comes round again, as it always does, sometimes we catch a glimpse of the great value of our troubles.  Even the beauty of our burdens. 

After all, the ice feeds the river.  

​Ice is a source of its strength.

"With Mary for your guide, you will never go astray; while invoking her, you will never lose heart; so long as she is in your mind, you will not be deceived; while she holds your hand, you will not fall; under her protection, you have nothing to fear; if she walks before you, you will not grow weary; if she shows you favor, you will reach the goal."

- St. Bernard of Clairvaux_, Doctor of the Church, 1090-1153

Early Sunday morning, before the crowds of kids woke up, I went for a walk.  Before French toast and dirty dishes and washing kids' hair before church...before wardrobe checks to make sure no one still has their pajamas on under their coat (yes this has happened)...before checking fingernails for mud (Someone always manages to pass me by on this)... Before the frenzy of the day, I went for a walk.   

And I found this.

In the Mud.  Just frozen mud.

I like mud.  It reminds me of clay and sculpting and big messes with creative children and I love that.  

It also reminds me of mud puddle stomping in the half-frozen springtime with my friend Joy.  We each had a tall pair of rubber boots, perfect for stomping through frigid, crystallized mud lakes down the hill from her house.  But my boots had leaky zippers on the sides.  So we shared our boots;  each taking one waterproof boot, and pushing our stockinged feet into two long plastic bread bags, then into the leaky boots, then into an old five-gallon bucket.  We'd wrap an arm around each other and three-legged race it through puddles and ponds, cold, splashing, wet, and gloriously happy.   

We always fell.  

Our moms never complained about the mess. 

This Sunday morning, when I found these crystal jewels of frozen snowflakes in the mud, I smiled.    It was just a muddy, dirt road.  That's all.  But that's life.  We're all stuck in it together, muddy fingernails, leaky boots, and all.  Glorious, messy life.
 
I hope you can find the crystal jewels of perfection in your muddy life today.  And if you have leaky boots,  I hope you have a friend with a five gallon bucket.  

Yesterday, after supper, I flopped down in exhaustion.  Right on the armchair like Raggedy Ann.  It had been one heck of a day.  Not that it was unique or anything.   I am 49 years old, and I have a lot of kids.  Exhaustion is my middle name.


“Mom!” a teenager comments,  “I didn’t know you could sit like that!”


I was too tired to care.  Yes, even old moms flop on chairs and put their feet up.  Within seconds, I had dozed off.  


“Michelle?”  I hear a small voice.  “Michelle?”  


I open my eyes just a crack, and see Small One standing near me.  She is holding a clipboard, and wearing glasses and her sister’s long, white, button-down sweater.  This can only mean one thing.  


“Michelle?  Are you ready for your doctor’s appointment?”  


Oh dear.  


It’s my fault.  I could have been promoting her possible future career as a hair stylist or masseuse.  If I had done that, maybe she would be standing by my chair, wanting to rub my feet.  But no.  This kid’s been told her whole life that if she wants to, she can be a doctor. 


So she’s here to draw my blood.


With a pencil.


I smile wanly as she takes my arm and pushes up my sleeve.


“See, that didn’t hurt much!” she says, taping a bandage to the inside of my elbow.  She begins to question me, writing notes furiously on her clipboard.  She confers with her sister, who is playing the nurse.  They whisper back and forth about my being tired and having sore feet.  She examines the pencil, holding it up to the light and peering intently.  


“O.K. The blood test results are in,”  the little doctor says.  “and I have great news:  


You’re pregnant!”
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