We have these dreamy towels from Bed, Bath and Beyond. They’re the nicest ones we’ve ever owned. Big, fluffy bath sheets. I believe their official color is “linen.”
We used them for exactly one year before they went into storage for the next nearly five.
One year in our cute condo in downtown Chicago. One year of corporate law firm practice. One year of horrendously early mornings and late nights. One year of marriage strained tight from too little time spent together. One year when one friend told me, “If you don’t quit your job and go with Pete on his fellowship to Ukraine, I don’t think I’ll be able to respect you guys again.”
So, I did.
I quit my job, my condo and my towels.
Pete and I spent the next two and a half years in Kyiv, Ukraine. They were some of the most confusing and rewarding experiences we have ever shared. Bath towels were the least of our concerns. The two weeks each summer that the hot water was turned off altogether was a much more pressing issue. Speed showers in freezing cold water for fourteen days give or take, makes the kind of towel one dries off with all but irrelevant.
After Ukraine we hop-scotched to South Africa, Michigan and landed in the DC metro area. Our arrival back stateside was also the cue for our towels to emerge with the rest of our lives that had been in storage.
They were as delicious as I remembered. But for completely different reasons.
Have you ever tried to wrap a bath sheet around a toddler who stands only a few feet tall? Because we’d added two since we’d last seen our towels. And now every night I wrap those delicious boys of mine into bath sheets and turn them into human burritos.
And while I’m nibbling their toes I chuckle at the memory of the woman who bought those towels. And smile satisfied at the mama who’s emerged from them. It’s so much more than I expected to unwrap.
How adorable!
My husband calls our son his “Baby Burrito” when he wraps him up in a towel or a blanket too!
Thanks for this great post.
The hot water is turned off for us right now…and probably will be several more times before the hot weather is over. Still, it’s too cold to even imagine taking a cold shower. My evening will be about warming up some water on the stove and adding it to the cold stuff in our tub.
However, that has nothing to do with how simply lovely this post is. I love how you described your change…how you’ve come unwrapped…beautiful.
OH, how well I remember those days. One year we moved apartments right before the hot water was about to come on in our old section of town to a new neighborhood that was just entering the no hot water period. Let’s just say it was a rough 5 weeks!
What a great story! Well written. Great o tmeet you girl.
Love those burrito babies…wroteabout My own last week in the bike seat post.
beautiful post!!! i love how changed we can be when we give up the comfortable for what God might have waiting around the corner.
come over and party with me!!!
You set out thinking God is going to use you to mold children, but the surprising thing is that along the way home, you are changed too!
Love it! Do you still live in the DC metro area? ’cause if you do we don’t have to wait till Relevant to meet and that would be too cool!
The way you tell this is just beautiful! I enjoyed reading this very much, such a great post!
BTW, xmediaconcepts is me… I was logged in under my hubby by accident. lol :)
Just think, cause you up and left, you have great stories to tell, experiences you never would have had, time together and a new found appreciation for all things soft and warm!
Indeed! Soft and warm and wriggly with giggles ;)
What a beautiful post! Wonderful perspective.
You words on being a mama, always reach deep down into my heart and soul, filling me up with a quiet joy. I wholly concur with your mothering love affair, and it makes me happy!
What a fantastic post! It took a lot of courage to do that. So glad to see such a great reward.
Love how you tied that all together…simply from a bath towel! Oh, the stories our household items can tell!
Ain’t that the truth!!
Now that’s a great story. Funny how real life, living abroad, and motherhood shifts our perspective…always for the better of course. I must confess that I want to buy cushy bath towels after reading this. : )
So true. And I tell you what, those towels are a lot less cushy than they were a decade ago ;)
One of my favorite posts! What a great reminder of the silent ways of grace, preparing us for the “good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:8-10)
a change in perspective, indeed. i love the image of the boy burrito … now that mine is losing his “baby skin” smell and churning up serious boy dirt under the fingernails, the post-bath burrito cuddle is a cherished time for me.
I sure do love bath time. The girls are relaxed and giggly. It’s my special time with them to talk about their day. And then we lotion up. Ahhh…the smell of baby lotion makes my heart happy.
Lisa-Jo, you have such a gift for taking the extraordinary and making it truly beautiful and inspiring.
There is something so wonderful about seeing little babies wrapped up in a towel! My oldest two have started using their hooded towels to dress up like Mary and Joseph–they’re so silly (and cute)!
You remind me of Ann V. ~ finding God in the midst of everything! You remind me that His fingerprints make the small things extraordinary!
Love you!
This post is so fantastically written and so fantastically lived. thank you for sharing it.
What is it with everyone noticing that their babies are growing up? It’s killing me! I’m not ready!
Can’t you put CHILDREN into storage? Get them out three years later when you have the energy to properly enjoy them and have them be exactly the same sweet cuddly ticklish wonders they were long ago?
“Get them out …when you have the energy to properly enjoy them” – oh yes, yes yes – brilliant. And if only ;)
I always love your mothering posts. Truly beautiful.
Now I want to challenge you… I challenge you to write such a delicious post about… hmm… a plunger… an ice scraper for the car… and… hmm… still thinking… a gallon of milk. (What are sarcastic friends for? You can say thank you now. And yes, I’m only challenging you because I’m jealous.)
I see your plunger and raise it a post about projectile vomit… ;) http://thegypsymama.com/2010/04/07/u-turn-days/
Love it! Just simply precious. Isn’t always that it takes a famine to appreciate a feast? :)
This is great — I love the juxtaposition between your old life and the fancy towels…your life in Ukraine with the freezing water…and your life now, the towels back again, wrapping up those burrito boys. The way life unravels (and I mean unravels in a good way!) is never what we expect, but often so much better than we ever imagined.
Yes, exactly. When you’re packing up a house to go into storage it’s wild to imagine how much your life might have changed by the time you unpack them again!
Gosh! I know what that feels like and this is a lovely and inspiring thought! Someday I’ll mayhaps use the never-unpacked china, and a bunch of our other wedding gifts still 8,000 miles away! And a least one little one will be around to sit at the table with us! :) Yum!
It was seriously like unpacking wedding gifts again when we opened up those boxes after 5 years in storage. I actually cried when I saw my mattress again! I love that mattress something fierce {and I tell it so every night;) – oh yes I do!}
Oh, Lisa-Jo. This post takes me back to the days when I made the rounds at the big, Chicago law firm, informing the partners I slaved for that I was leaving. To marry a soldier and move to Germany. Oh, how crazy they thought that was. (Except for one partner who looked at me and said, “You’re doing the right thing. Marriage is fragile. If you’re going to make it work, you’re going to need to be there. And you’re going to have to work. But you’re doing the right thing.”) And so I gave up the money and the prestige and those amazing suits and heels and expensive haircuts (and most of that career, really) and I can say that it was certainly, truly, absolutely-without-a-doubt one of the best decisions of my life. I would do it again in a second. My family was worth all of it. Even if I sometimes miss the shoes.
Oh you are so fun – yes, the shoes and suits ;) But, I agree with you, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
again, beautifully written! {and love the photo}
this is the way to live life, to go with your loves, to wrap your loves in love… :)
“To wrap your loves in love” – Yes, that, exactly!
oh wow, this is a really good post! i have “those” towels and I’m a brand new mama. I’m already beginning to “get” that last paragraph you wrote in respect to towels and so many things. :) Thanks! Kelly
Those towels will also clean up all kinds of other things over the course of the years too, that are a lot less cute – if you know what I mean ;)
Perfect post!