We meet on Sundays with this cool group called The Gathering. We're starting a church and that's about all we know right now. We spend Sundays praying, praising and sharing what God is doing in our lives. This weekend there was a bona fide 3.0-on-the-Richter-Scale earthquake here in Roanoke. The epicenter was just underneath a Lutheran church. Is God telling us something? That was one thing we talked about.

Our conversation often circles back to battling the fears that middle-lifers have. (Middle age sounds silly to me, because we don't know how long we will live so how do we know we are in the middle of our age? But we do know we are in the middle of life by our situation. We are no longer children, but parents, yet not yet grandparents. Middle-lifers.) We'd like to go where the Lord sends us and answer His call, except....sigh! there's so much to consider! The middle-lifers are in agreement that we don't have freedom to move on a moment's notice because of all the trappings we have in our lives.

That word has stuck with me. All the trappings. I look around and see them everywhere. Like the desk I am typing on. It's gigantic...it would be hard to move even a few feet over if, for instance, we wanted to refinish the wood floor this summer. It's a trapping. So is the wood floor that needs refinishing. Another trapping is my formerly fabulous laptop. It has lost its ability to be wireless. If I have to connect it to a wire, and get stuck typing on the gigantic red desk, what's so great about having a portable computer? Trappings.

The trappings are the things around us that we worked hard to earn and now work hard to maintain. Could the whole thing be a trap? I'm starting to think it is. For instance, I love to go to a furnished apartment for a short stay. Life is so simple there. I don't have attachment to the stuff because it's not mine and I'm just passing through. This spring I fervently enjoyed staying at the William's beach home on Tybee Island, Georgia. Part of my enjoyment was it wasn't mine! Very low maintenance! It was pretty close to the simple life that I fantasize about. (I dream of being a monk...when my kids are grown, of course.) Could I actually live that way...like I'm just passing through? I want to.

Trappings. Trappings. Trappings. How can we own the stuff and not let the stuff own us? Last night Trevor told me that he accidentally knocked a ceramic chicken off the mantle. It shattered into a million pieces. I am ashamed to admit that I almost cried.

"Did you tell his brother chicken?" I choked out.

(Shattered chicken had a matching brother chicken who is now an Only Chicken.) Yet in the light of day, on the broken laptop, on the unwieldy red desk, I can see that it was just another trap. What are yours? The things that are possibly holding you back for realizing your dreams and the purpose God has for your life? Let's think about it together.

My friend Amy and I always talk about the mother we imagined we'd be. She was really, really great. She never lost her patience or for that matter, her car keys. She never yelled at the kids "Hurry up!" She didn't have to yell to hurry because she was never in a hurry. She had everything planned in advance, outfits laid out on the beds, library books all together on a shelf, and car keys on the hook. She was awesome.

She disappeared when the kids came. She was replaced with someone who had brain cells leaking out with the breast milk. She lost her job to the one who woke up crabby, locked the keys in the car, forgot the diaper bag on the day the baby's diaper exploded all up his back. She lost her job to me.

Now I realize that the mother I imagined I would be was actually a grandmother. She was patient because she was not lactating or homeschooling or having to wear her husband's jeans to Wal-Mart because they were the only clean pants in the house that would fit over her rolls. She sang songs because she was not worried about transferring money between accounts before another check bounced. She made cookies because she wanted to make a memory and she wouldn't be bothered by granulated sugar crunching underfoot in the kitchen. (Grandma also has a cleaning lady.)

I've let Imaginary Mom (or Grandma) off the hook as I realized that she was as much of a fantasy as the mom on a Hallmark commercial. I do want my kids to leave home with something that they'll treasure forever. (No, not a scrapbook, though I'll fill their car trunk with those!) The gift I want them to leave with is an abiding faith in Christ. I want them to be like Timothy in the Bible who could trace his spiritual lineage through his mother and grandmother.

"I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also." Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5. "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in your through the laying on of my hands."

The true Mother's Day gift is to see our children walking in the truth. I hope you get that...and breakfast in bed, besides!