Lingering

Home to the quietness of country. Home to my swing and purring cats. Home to my husband's arms quiet through the night, and home to the clamor of children excited about everything to do with my travels and my homecoming. Quite a difference from three rather dorm-reminiscent nights with eight crazy, beautiful, creative, God-seeking roommates (and one who didn't sleep there).

 The Pilot's Wife, Sara Sophia, Dear Abby Leigh, Ashleigh from Heart and Home,
myself, Gussy Sews, Elizabeth Esther, and Joy in This Journey

Our honorary roommate, Erika, is the blond to the left.

I meet amazing people who have inspired, this time in person. Bonnie Gray finds me in the first moments of the conference, and we hug hard and long. I feel honored by that hug.

Mama Hall in front of me

We sit in sessions and soak up words, words of advice, wisdom, experience, hope, love. Words of this wounded life we live for Christ. Women break open like ripe melons and spill guts and seeds and it is a mixed up revolution of tears, torment, and triumph.

Snow falls that last day, and in between checking the status of our flights home, we laugh and process, hidden in our room, hotel running on generator power. I am from Wisconsin, and I see my first snow in Pennsylvania, and laugh at the irony. We laugh so hard we hurt the next morning, sharing stories and ideas, birthing our own secrets hashtags for Twitter, and talking about a meet-up somewhere central next year. I marvel at how I thought one person was tall (she's short) and one was small (she's an inch taller than me). How you conjure up certain images of people based on their blogs. In real life, we're much messier and less polished, and yet beautiful and rich in 3 dimensions in ways words alone can never reveal.

I am invited on stage by the effervescent Christa Wells, and play tambourine to a beautiful new song of hers. I get to share Sara Groves' Different Kinds of Happy with the last lingerers after worshiping with Shaun Groves (no relation, by the way). It is a weekend full of opportunities, blessings, heartaches and tired bones.

On Monday, I wake up to my quiet country bedroom, looking out on lavendar grass and dry maroon oaks just rustling awake in the dawn. My mind is all befuddled, my house a mess, Halloween costumes yet to complete and a 12 hour shift looming tomorrow. Back in the reality of my life, Relevant seems like a distant and dreamy memory, and I reach through the fog of one night's sleep to catch the shirttails of connections fluttering there in the mist.

Hearts spinning

Long hours at a blogging conference brings cancer crashing onto my radar. I live like sheets drying on a clothesline, long loops of cloth rising up again to the pins, then the next long loop, and on and on. Rest, participate, rest, participate, repeat. I have made the transition from the mantra of my 20's (I'll sleep when I'm dead) to the requisite realization of my 30's (I'll die if I don't sleep).

Hours are bathed in tears, and then bathed in laughter. I find out what a laughter hang-over is for the very first time in my life. The trancendant beauty of both authentic pain and hilarious joy crash together like two waves meeting to form the monster roll of blue water swirling you down a pipeline of experience, a rush like no other. I play tambourine and sing harmony on stage for one song with Christa Wells, then stand in the audience hiding my face in my hat, hands raised in praise, as her words uncover my pain.

I go to sessions and workshops and marvel at the beauty of newfound friends, souls wounded and worn and ever writing, writing. Sara Sophia is as luminescent as her name, her words like pearls on a string for a whole table full of sobbing women.

New layers of my church history find light in the words of Ashleigh, who was brought to depths of spiritual pain I have not yet endured. As her tears roll, I learn and bask in the beauty of a soul dragging dirty story into light.

I watched from afar as she became famous in the blogosphere, and adored her before I met her, but Elizabeth surprises me with her vulnerability and humanity, her beautiful smile and the mannerisms that are so like my dear friend Amy. My heart aches with missing, and aches at the same time with meeting.

The snow falls in a hurricane of white, and I laugh with some dear children from Florida. We stand in the hall watching out the window and laughing, laughing. It's beautiful.

And so I am exhausted.

Broken.

Filled.

Kept.

Thank you for your prayers.

Here I am

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come...the hymn lilts through my consciousness, floating in the pool last night alone, surrounded by the flurry of 7 hilarious roommates, during the morning devotional. I sit down alone to play on the grand piano, and I am soothed from the chaos. Surrounded by these women - high-achieving, goal-oriented, passionate, God-fearing women - feels once again like coming home.

Here is a place where Holiness and love coexist in one congruent flow from one voice to another. The rebels and the righteous, the loud and the quiet, the new friends and old friends - all band together silent, captured by the words. We are word people, a group of writers, and we hang on every one.

We meet other wounded souls, and share our stories of pain and joy through suffering. We talk churches and theology and social media. I find, once again, that I am not alone. In the velvety night, everyone in pj's, we eat chocolate and talk about the world. The strobe of a picture booth and the giddy laughter of friends echoes all the way through the thick walls of our hotel room.

This is a gathering place, an entire nation of Christian bloggers meeting together to encourage, listen, share, and grow. I hear this morning a different take on presenting the Gospel and my brain explodes into fireworks of connections suddenly made because of a single sentence. Every unsaved soul is saved already, and they just need to hear it and believe it. Not "do you want to be saved", but "you are saved already. Can you accept it?"

I struggle with the uniquely female torment over outfits and my reddened bald head, feeling like I look old, frumpy. Like I can't fit in with these women of beauty. Yet their arms are open and I call it for what it is, that old tormentor trying to whisper doubt into my ear. For He has made me beautifully and wonderfully. Even on a small blog such as this, He has given me a message. It is a message about finding joy in small moments, savoring life, fighting for it, grieving losses. It doesn't matter if that message is for a few hundred or thousand readers, like those who visit my small space on the internet, or the tens of thousands and millions the powerhouse bloggers attract.

God is good, all the time - and He's showing up here in big ways through the sistership of shared faith and vision, passion and talent. I am reveling in His pleasure as I watch each interaction, join in the community and the conversation of these women. Praise God that He works through we who are broken to bring His gospel where He's called us to share it.

lord i have a heavy burden

of all i've seen and know

it's more than i can handle

but your word is burning like a fire

shut up in my bones

and i can’t let it go

and when i'm weary and overwrought

with so many battles left unfought

i think of paul and silas in the prison yard

i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

and when the Saints go marching in

i want to be one of them

lord it's all that i can't carry a

nd cannot leave behind it all

can overwhelm me

but when i think of all who've gone before

and lived a faithful life

their courage compels me

and when i'm weary and overwrought

with so many battles left unfought

i think of paul and silas in the prison yard

i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

i see the shepherd moses in the pharaohs court

i hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

i see the long quiet walk along the underground railroad

i see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

i see the young missionary and the angry spear

i see his family returning with no trace of fear

i see the long hard shadows of calcutta nights

i see the sister standing by the dying man’s side

i see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor

i see the man with a passion come kicking down that door

i see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road

i see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

~When the Saints, Sara Groves~

Being sick together

We lay in a heap on the hospital bed, her burning up with her daily fever spike, and me lifeless after a few days without my medications.

It's a sweet, sweet thing, her eyes open, her brain functioning normally, this just a scare in a long list of scares. She is spared again. All her sweetness and quirkiness and beauty and love. All there.

And so today, just like the other day in the hospital, I spend most of the day cuddled up in bed, squeezing the dickens out of my baby girl. I've decided to go to the blogging conference in Pennsylvania, but it has been a very difficult decision. I know she'll be fine in Aaron's capable hands, but it's no fun to be far away with a sick babe at home. I scan my memory, and it seems like she's been getting sick since she was born. At 9 months, she had a fever of 106 while I played for a friend's wedding. At 2, she had haemophilus B influenza meningitis and was very, very ill for her brother's 1st birthday party. Just after her 3rd birthday, diptheria encephalitis, and then for her 4th birthday, constant seizures as a result. I don't understand why. All I can do is treasure moments like the ones that filled today, cuddled up under a down comforter, comforting my sick little girl once again.

Please pray that she will be okay while I am gone. I feel this is God's will, but sometimes it is difficult to know if you're making the right choice or not. I have until 6 a.m. tomorrow, when my flight leaves, to change my mind. Hopefully by then I'll be bathed in the peace that passeth understanding and she is on a clear road to recovery.

Watching my children finding their way

thru struggles and triumphs and heartbreak

I hope the roads they take

Are making them strong

I'll still be on my knees

Long after they're gone

Love has made

Love has made

Love has made

Has made me unafraid

Love could make

Love can make

Love will make

Make you unafraid...

~Unafraid, Amy Grant~

Relevant '11

I cup warmth over my soapy face on the coldest day of autumn yet. I count on two hands the friends left after we quietly closed the doors after us on one church and opened up the doors on a new one. It's been a long year since, a year of more trials, and a year of days spent at home instead of out on playdates and coffee dates. Yet I feel so rich. Richly blessed, not friendless, content. Part of that blessing has been the rising of the online blogging community to support me and encourage me through this year. New friends, all afar, emerged from the Relevant blogging conference last October.

This year, at the last moment, the Lord opened all the doors for me to attend Relevant again. I am doing so to the tune of about $800, and our pocketbook is stretched thin with no paycheck yet from my new job. I come here humbly to ask that, if you feel so led, you might support me, too, through a donation. I've posted a link to a special Paypal account on the left. It's also included in this post. Simply click the "donate" button in either location, and enter the amount and your checking or credit card information. I have yet to pay for taxis, hotel room, or food for the four days I will be gone. I thank you in advance for anything you feel called to give. Just like warm water on a cold face will be your gifts on worries.

...comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also you do. (I Thessalonians 5:11)

Stand up, stand up for Jesus!

I wrote about the cost of survival 2 years ago.  The need to give up fighting to save our lives...even the minutiae of them - the clean house, or the finished project, or the kid's baths, or the church task.  To always keep in mind the end goal...not just the daily grind.  I think that is why I want to go to the Relevant Conference.  Because I really want to be in this fight, this battle for souls.  I take up the "armor of God", and I want to wield it as best I can in an age where 90% of communication occurs online.  I read about another give-away - a free ticket to the conference from A Million Boxes.  So far, I have received gracious, mind-blowing donations to the tune of $300, which would almost cover airfare.  I'll take a stab at the free ticket...and book my flight in faith if I get it.  I think it could be a transforming weekend.  A weekend where I better learn to communicate myself...my true self, the self that it is so tempting to hide in person and ever-so-much-easier to hide online.

Masked as the "silly spider", playing a tune in late afternoon sun.

"Consequently, I have been thinking about holiness, not so much in terms of reading my Bible more, or praying more, or doing spiritual things; rather, I have been examining the sin in my life and considering what it says about my holiness. Holiness is not an addition of Godly things to my life, or a subtraction of worldly things from my life, but rather a transformation of my life to look more like Christ." (from Beneath the Crust)

Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding. Why am I so dramatic? Is it to get my point across? Who am I trying to convince? Here's what God wants me to do: "Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. (Matthew 6:1-6 The Message)

Amy - unmasked - sleeping in the noon sun after a night of seizures.