At the limits of possibility

The grass is unnaturally green in that late autumn way. As if every drop of chlorophyll stored in the roots is being squeezed, rationed perhaps, out to the tips of the blades. I look from down to up, a stream of exhaled smoke like a tower above me. The tree arms bend and sway in their infinite combinations. The black of wet trunks contrasts with the bright leaves still clinging. Yellow and black, like a wasp, I think.

Why does nature resonate with the deepest parts of our souls? Why are there millions of members of the Sierra Club passionate to save our natural treasures? Why do I look up and feel peace as I watch the curvature of the tree limbs swaying in the wind?

The kids come crashing out of the house as I silently ask one last question of the tree, "Where did you come from?" They are as bright as the trees in their Halloween finery. With aunt and grandma in tow, we carouse the neighborhood snatching candy at lit doorways and running to the next light. Katy in her "Thing" costume rushes down the street, a box wrapped in black table cloths that flap sinisterly behind her.

I've heard so many arguments against Halloween in my decades at fundamentalist churchs. A pagan holiday, they say - as if Christmas is not steeped in paganism? I look around at the flushed faces and flashing eyes and the variety of the costumes. I think to myself, today is about welcoming the innocence of childhood back out into the streets and into the neighbors houses. It's about adults pausing one day a year to laugh with the next generation and celebrate their diversity and creativity and the joy they bring us.

Tears spring to my eyes. Life faltering, faith gone, this family is the last treasure I have left outside of my own brain. I feel that fierce, Mama bear guttural response as I watch them span longer and longer distances. THESE ARE MY BABIES, I want to shout to the rooftops with pride and happiness. My husband and I swirled together in four unique ways and here they are, growing up slowly, one more block trick-or-treated this year than last. They waited until dark so they could see the big kids' "scary" costumes. This year they laugh at the zombie, skeletons, vampires and ghosts.

For a moment, everything seems possible. I could stay and we could make things right in our marriage and we could keep doing just as we have. But here I stand at the junction of the possible and impossible and I find there is no line painted here in the valley of the heart that demarcates one from the other. I can only go on the instincts, that feeling of rightness when I'm planted in the possible and the immediate unrest that comes when I cross the line and my soul screams her dissent. I cannot keep the person inside me silent much longer.

I feel it, like the chlorophyll in the autumn grass blades, rising in me, this deep and private truth that ties all of my life together and explains most of the unanswered questions and illuminates the darkness of long periods of depression and self-harm. With each day, I step a little closer to myself. I makes lists of things I love. I make lists of dreams I've never vocalized. I make lists of reasons to stay and reasons to go. I make lists of beautiful things I've seen. I make lists of good thoughts to replace bad.

Though the emotions remain high, my days filled with wild swings between utter joy and complete desolation, the razor blades don't wink at me from the cupboard, the knives stay neatly in the butcher block, the pills sleep in their bottles. Something about this journey back to being me has lifted the spectre that has hovered over me for 25 year now. I ask this strange soul that has taken up occupance within me, "Where did you come from? What took you so long?" And she says back to me, "You are beautiful. You are worthy of love. You are necessary, too."

It would be an easier world if the people we are evolved earlier in life. But in truth, I've needed all of those 25 years to find my way back through the twists and thorns of the personal path of pain I journeyed down. I needed a new perspective to recognize myself, finally, at 34. It's as though the Picasso painting of my life that has perplexed for years in it's fragments is reorganizing it's parts into something I can finally see. The reflection of a face that I have missed and loved and grieved over for 25 years.

It isn't innocence returning. It's the ability to look right at the innocence lost and say that every experience of life has melted into the mosaic I admire on this day of triumph when I can open my arms to the world and announce myself unabashedly. It's moving past forgiveness to acceptance. That radical kind that knows those things shouldn't have been, but are, and it is what it is. It is the past, unchangeable, irrefutable, and I have stopped pounding my fists on the confines of time trying to shatter the glass behind me and go back and make things better the second time around.

What remains

Elisabeth Elliot's prayer today: Lord, deliver us from smallness and self-pity. "Make us masters of ourselves that we may be the servants of others"(Sir Alexander Patterson).

I have always been a very "in the moment" sort of person. The moment is the focus: if it's good, entertaining, sweet - then I am in a good mood; if it's bad, negative, draining, tiresome - then I am in a bad mood. Living with cancer, living with a child with new disabilities, requires that I step outside the moment.

I started that process by developing a constant scale system, completely internally and inside my own head. My "inner monologue" often had to do with weighing the pros and cons - adding a pro here or a con there depending on the moment, and then evaluating the sum. A good day had more pros in it than cons. After all, that's how many decisions are made, right? It was a logical system, right?

Unfortunately, this system devolved into a very complex matrix because I soon realized that I couldn't assign the same weight to different brands of "bad" and different moments of "good". A bad seizure has to have more weight than spilled milk. A moment of unexpected silence in the house in the busy afternoon is less than getting news your cancer hasn't grown in the past two months. So I scrapped the system.

I had an epiphany moment reading I Corinthians 3 aloud to my Rosy-girl one day when she was struggling with a bad attitude. (I remember the irony of the moment - occurring, according to Murphy's Law, on one of my very worst days, a day when I was certainly laying up more wood, hay and stubble than gold, silver and precious stones.) The words are hard ones: each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

Rosy looked at me and said, "Isn't God amazing, Mama? He saves our good works forever and burns the bad ones up. I am glad my bad works are gonna be burned up."

The thud deep in my soul was ground-shaking. That's right. The bad ones will be burned up and gone in a moment, forever, and the good ones will stay for eternity, a visual reminder of what was done right. Simply weighing the bad against the good doesn't capture the whole picture. It leaves Christ out of the equation. In Isaiah 43:25, it says I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. He will not remember them. They are blotted out, gone, forgotten, burned up and destroyed forever. Is it possible that He burns up the failures so that they do not detract from the brilliance of those works done for His glory? Is it possible He does so out of mercy and tenderness to us?

This may be the key to rejoicing in everything, in everything giving thanks. If I burn up the bad immediately, if it is confessed and then blotted out and forgotten, isn't every day a "good day"?

What Christ did on the cross is inexorably shift the pendulum toward the true, honorable, lovely, commendable, just, pure, excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). By destroying the sting of death, wiping out the penalty for the wrong words, the sullenness, the anger, the questioning and the fear, He has created a new paradigm for those who choose to believe in Him.

When He looked down on us yesterday, He did not see a bittersweet picture. He saw a redeemed picture. He did not see a 31-year-old woman with cancer, exhausted from the heat and afraid of fainting, riding on a horse because in that moment she still could: He saw a 31-year-old woman riding a horse, enjoying the friends He provided. Period. He has washed away cancer, exhaustion, fainting. What will remain for all eternity is only the good - because I have accepted His washing!

Yesterday, my daughter had a horrible, violent seizure that lasted over four minutes. I was afraid it would never stop, or that she would choke on her vomit. I felt completely and utterly alone. It felt like eternity. Yesterday, on the way to the clinic in Rochester where hope for these seizures is housed, our van broke down...again...at the most inopportune moment. My first reaction? "Wow, God, you're really piling it on!" We waited for a car, we drove through the heat without air conditioning - and it felt like eternity. At the clinic, we talked about the inevitable 9-1-1 calls, the rescue medications to prevent permanent brain damage or death, the spacing of medications that will require even greater responsibility as parents. Time stretched thin, the doctor's words echoing in our heads as we drove home through the crippling humidity and heat. Eternity.

The sweet moments seemed so fleeting yesterday, in the face of all the "bad" of the day. Yet this is what will last. The fleeting moments of "right". Sunset, on horseback, cool breezes, laughter lilting, sweet fecund smell of the ranch, cool wooden floor in the old farmhouse, cricket calls and frog songs, teenage hijinks full of life, and little ones tagging along after big kids. For eternity, those things - the pure, beautiful, excellent things - will live on in glorious, indelible gold.

Through the eldest's eyes

My eldest is a deep pool. I only get glimpses below the surface, and it takes a hefty infusion of quality time to get those rare glimpses. She is most definitely not the heart on her sleeve type. When something does initiate an emotional response, I know to pay attention, because emotional response is not her normal reaction.

I enjoyed some time spent with her this morning, looking at and editing a few of her photos from her "kid camera". The little glimpse into what makes this beloved tick was a revelation, and a joy.

Papa reading morning devotions [watercolor study].

Mama's hands preparing hot chocolate and brownies on a cold winter morning.

Family movie night vignette.

Favorite kitten.

Scrollwork on Mama's piano.

Line drawing of a sunrise.

Flashlight games.

Sister's smile and rosy cheeks one frosty evening outdoors!

Cousin in playroom.

Team spirit.

Reflection

Every year, at family church camp, we take a family photo on a certain dock, with the fall colors behind us. The first year, it was just the three of us. Katy was two months old, still in that curled up, cuddlesome newborn stage.

Two years later, another daughter had joined us, and, at six months, Rosy was a bundle of energy and charisma. Katy was a beautiful, chubby-cheeked big sister. We couldn't believe our blessing. On the other hand, this was my darkest year as a mother. I struggled to juggle two children. I constantly felt like I was letting someone down or leaving one of my two precious children with unmet needs. I threatened to throw in the towel and go back to work, leaving the child-loving and the child-rearing to someone who could do a more dispassionate job of it. Aaron and I had our only angry fight of our marriage: he put his foot down and asserted his authority unequivocally. I wasn't going back to work. End of story. I was going to stay home and work through it. It was the first time I understood the passage that has become a favorite, really understood it at a visceral level, saw it as a reflection of what was truly in my heart during that season: Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. (I Timothy 2:13-15)

We came through the fire. We had two more children. I submitted both the work my body could do and the emotions of my heart to the idea of being settled at home with my children. I still wrestled with the idea of "calling" and questioned how I had felt so certain that I was called to be a nurse, only to be asked to give it up to raise children. How could I have been so wrong? I started graduate school, and felt parts of me come alive again as I learned and conversed with peers and experts in my field. I saw a ray of hope at the end of what seemed like the long dark tunnel of years in my house/cave: the possibility of teaching primarily from home, staying involved in a very meaningful way in the caring profession of nursing. That same year, when all the dust seemed to be settling, we walked through the storm of cancer, early weaning, radiation, separation from my husband and children. In hindsight, the storm of disagreement over career was preparation that forged our marriage for another time of fire, one we would have to walk through together, unified. I also finally understood what I had been given. How deep the roots of each child's soul had woven into the fiber of my heart. How much Aaron and I were grown together, inseparable in spirit and now separated in body. Fear crept in. And with it a deeper understanding and joy in Christ's provision, grace, mercy, and love.

And here I am, still. A happy mother of children. He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise be the Lord. (Psalm 113:9) Little did I know, when that first photo was snapped on the dock in northern Wisconsin in 2003, how precious each passing year would feel now, to me as a 30-year-old cancer survivor. I am thankful for the ways in which I have been tested. I am thankful that I have found freedom, whimsy, awe, contentment, peace, restoration, mourning, friendship, compassion, and honesty in the God in whom I trust. When I was 24, embarking on the miracle of motherhood and wifely pleasure and duty, I had no idea what could happen in six years. I had no idea how much deeper the rabbit hole - and the well of Christ's sacrificial love - could go. I had no idea how much deeper faith could weave itself into my life and my mind. I took so many things at face value, and left deep questions unasked, like a still pond with not a ripple disturbing the dark surface. I have found that Truth is not just a mirror in which to gaze, but a lake in which to baptize my life, immersed in the crisp coolness of quiet depths invisible in that mirrored surface.

Unburying love's song

Down in the human heart,

Crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving heart, Wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken will vibrate once more.
~ Rescue the Perishing, Fanny Crosby, 1869

There was a song in my heart I never once heard an echo of until I met him. I was trying to explain this phenomenon to a single girl: the incredulity, longing, hunger you feel when you begin to know the person God intended you for all along. All the failed dances between you and every other man you tried to love are swept away like seeds in the whistle of the hot summer wind that heralds the storm of true passion. Loving Aaron has never been labor yet. Not work the way other relationships were. True, it takes effort and pain and debate at times. But he draws from me that "chord that was broken" into miraculous, tender, overwhelming vibration once more.

Trust me, I have not earned your dear rebuke -
I love, as you would have me, God the most;
Would lose not Him, but you, must one be lost,
Nor with Lot's wife cast back a faithless look,
Unready to forego what I forsook;
This say I, having counted up the cost,
This, though I be the feeblest of God's host,
The sorriest sheep Christ shepherds with His crook,
Yet while I love my God the most, I deem
That I can never love you over-much;
I love Him more, so let me love you too;
Yea, as I apprehend it, love is such
I cannot love you if I love not Him,
I cannot love Him, if I love not you.
~ Christina Rossetti

Ode to my beloved

Keep askin' ourselves are we really
Strong enough
There's so many things that we got
Too proud of
We're too proud of
We're too proud of

I wanna take the preconceived
Out from underneath your feet
We could shake it off
Instead we'll plant some seeds
We'll watch em' as they grow
And with each new beat
From your heart the roots grow deeper
The branches will they reach for what
Nobody really knows
But underneath it all
There's this heart all alone

What about is gone
And it really won't be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart is no place to be singin' from at all

There's a world we've never seen
There's still hope between the dreams
The weight of it all
Could blow away with a breeze
If your waiting on the wind
Don't forget to breathe
Cause as the darkness gets deeper
We'll be sinkin' as we reach for love
At least somethin' we could hold
But I'll reach to you from where time just can't go
~ All at Once, Jack Johnson


A beauty observed pales in comparison to a beauty shared. This one I married, this man I crave...I miss him most deeply in these long days on my own. How thankful I am that singleness usually precedes togetherness, and that this is but a season of separation. It is so much harder to travel backward on this trajectory, and to lose the little joys that have been so tightly woven they are part of the very fabric of my being after just six years. Someone to warm my toes on...someone to cry my most bitter tears with...someone who understands my wordless wonder over all things outdoors and all things truly beautiful...someone who shares completely my idea of beauty and goodness...who enjoys the same art, who considers the same cottonwood tree "art", who thinks of dry grass prairies as "art", and the wind blowing through them "music". Someone who wakes hours before dawn to show me fields I've never seen, to teach me bird calls I've always longed to know, to watch me experience the thrill of the hunt, and takes time to teach me the dark profiles of a myriad of different birds as they fly against the gray-green of a predawn skyline. The tender curve of a man's back bent beneath the weight of our shared child; the quiet shuffle of his feet across the cold wood floors in winter, up to care for a crying child while I stay tucked in bed with the delicious baby.

It goes beyond all the little human connections and years of small kindnesses and momentary regrets, and shared experiences. It is being one in soul. I am less than half of what I should be without him. I am scared, and lonely, and dull. I was designed for him, and him for me, and it is irrefutable. He is all of my best songs, and my most tender moments; he is my truest mirror and yet takes care to cast back only my most flattering reflection. He is the greatest part of my peace, he is the most vibrant part of my thoughts, he is the most winnowed and honed part of my wit. He is my protector, he is my critic, he is my enigma, he is my joy. We are so grown together, in such a short time, that it is difficult to spend 17 days without his touch, and his thoughts, and his laughter. I miss the curious little crinkles around his eyelids, the way he closes his eyes when I compliment him, the way he "pshaws" at me when I admire him. Yet it is so beyond compliments and admiration, even adoration. It is need and longing and fulfillment and passion and desire and acquiescence and...betterness. He is my call to goodness and my will for perseverance and my desire for God. He lights my flames and tends them with me. He is the granite shore on which my soul stands, he is the swell in my wave, he is the dance in my days, the lilt in my monotony.


I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here
And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know
That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you
Next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away
I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know
That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest
~ The Luckiest, Ben Folds