Water babies

Spring break arrived all at the same time for the kids and I, so we bundled into the Sub and drove up to the iced over Lake Superior with Ali along for company. There is something about water - I don't put much credence in astrology but it is noteworthy that I am a Pisces and my name means "white wave". Water speaks my language and syncs my soul with the mighty universe, tapping me back into the source of energy, peace, growth. Here I am safe and I am whole, I have limitless potential, I believe in myself and the earth and others. It is respite much needed from dangerous precipices of past and present colliding to set me off center.

The textures and colors on the shore are breathtaking. The harsh cascades of ice off the rusty cliffs, the contrast of the soft and solid ice, the pools of water melting from the brief sunlight, the sound of an underground river running...

Of course, we have adventures: I brave the icy waters below and try to edge my way along the shoreline to the caves that I've never been able to see. Sliding each foot forward tentatively, one finally pushes through the mushy top layer. I almost put weight on it, thinking it's just surface melt. But Lake Superior is unforgiving always, and deadly in winter, so I push with my toe once more, and my boot goes down into the icy water. I keep my balance, pick the slab of ice out of the hole, and look clear through to the bottom 15 feet below. Every pebble is visible in still relief through the viscous water, clear as glass but with that wintery blue hue that bathes the world up here.

We pick rocks, dig through to the underground river, slide and skip stones across the glassy ice in the cove. Facts and ideas and things to teach keep leaping to my tongue, but the hollowly silent air by the waveless expanse swallows up my intellect and we are all just awe and contentment and bliss.

Little fingers are red with cold and cheeks have angry splotches, but we press on into the twilight after sunset, skating with our boots on a small natural ice rink, eating snow, sliding on our butts down embankments and boulders covered in inches of ice.

Recharged, refreshed, rested, we drive away on a sunny Thursday with the lake sparkling like an vast field of diamonds. There are no words for the joy of seeing a once-in-a-lifetime natural event like the ice over on the big Lake this year. There are days you barely scrape your way through to bedtime and wonder how you made it, and then there are days you know you will never forget: days like these last stolen few on the wild, boundless beauty of our favorite shores.

"shine bright like a diamond"

Here comes the sun

How easily we forget the past. Five months into this season of depression, I'm finally experiencing some freedom from the oppression - by practicing skills I've known for 2 years now. I brush the dust off slowly as my therapist reminds me how to bring the sunshine back. Opposite action - throwing myself into the life God has set before me, children, messes and all. Accumulating positives - a scribbled list of gratitude in my Joy Journal. Mindfulness - ignoring my constant, self-refreshing mental to-do list and entering into the present moment completely.

Returning to these practices slants the sunlight back into our home. There are long periods of freedom from sadness and guilt throughout the day. The urge to simply leave, either temporarily or permanently, eases as life becomes less difficult. My eyes are no longer blind to the beauty that surrounds me - the dancing girl on the dandelion lawn infusing my day with yellow; the orioles glistening in the morning sun as they sing to heaven; the twin mama cats co-parenting the little brood of kittens that arrived on Monday. It soaks in, finally. All this joy!

A line from a favorite song floats in - "we went dancing in the minefields, sailing through the storms" - yes, that voyage sounds like our lives. For a season, perhaps we'll walk easy on a safe road. Perhaps the minefield is in the rearview mirror for now.

The children always feel it, the lifting of oppression. They pronounce to the sky above that I am healed! Getting better every day! I wonder if they remember that depression has repeated it's turbulant course through our lives multiple times now. Another thing I've felt guilt over: they are all too familiar with suffering, pain, anguish and torment. Is this because of my weakness and my failures? I have to lean hard into the truth that God sent these children, these specific four, to me to mother, weaknesses and failures and all. It's all been seen by Him and allowed by Him and only He knows what He is shaping these children for. As much as I would love to believe that their lives will be easy, is there such a thing? Is life ever truly easy? I know so many of the house of faith for whom life has been an aching bittersweet experience. I know no one who does not miss someone, long for somewhere or something. How can I expect that my children will be free from desires, from failures, from heartbreak?

They are marked for glory, four baby believers already on the hard path of faith. I pray their journeys are marked with the beauty and sunshine I've been blessed with. Rosy wrote to me this morning, "I had a lot of fun through my life and most of it was with you." I feel just the same - my family is the most delightful blessing I've ever been given.

May you dance freely with no fear of danger today...for He can take away the fear even when dangers still lie ahead.

...when I forget my name, remind me.

We bear the light of the Son of man,

so there's nothing left to fear.

So I'll walk with you through the shadowlands

until the shadows disappear,

Because He promised not to leave us,

and His promises are true.

So in the face of all this chaos,

baby, I can dance with you.

Let's go dancing in the minefields,

let's go sailin' in the storms.

this is harder than we dreamed

but I believe that's what the promise is for.

~Dancing in the Minefields, Andrew Peterson~

Linked to Heather:: Just Write

When your dreams get lost in the mist

There have been many starry-eyed beginnings on this long journey to becoming a professor, but today was not one of them. On the last eve before I face a roomful of 100 or so starry-eyed students, sophomores and juniors entering their first semester of the nursing curriculum, I found myself much less excited and much more afraid than I had dreamed. It was an eve of many tears as I realize just how ill-prepared I am for the first day of this journey.

I go out to the porch swing, my personal sanctuary, at 2 a.m., when I should be sleeping, as those students await me at 8 a.m. sharp, with their skills lab packets, ready to begin their pre-testing for which I am the somewhat clueless evaluator. Instead of sleeping, I am shaking in my boots.

And, as He has so many times before, God matches the internal pendulum of my thoughts and fears with a picture in nature to comfort me. The very trees I treasure are hidden from view as a pea-soup fog rolls over our valley and clouds the night in an impenetrable white of hidden hopes and dreams, darkened landmarks of comfort and familiarity. I take a deep breath of the humid, heavy air and I know that the fog will lift in the morning - from this landscape I love and from these dreams I hold so dear and so close.

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for me to bear the yoke while I am young. Let me sit alone in silence, for the Lord has laid it on me. Let me bury me face in the dust— there may yet be hope. Let me offer my cheek to one who would strike me, and let me be filled with disgrace. For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. (Leviticus 3:19-33)

 You have my heart

And I am Yours forever

You are my strength

God of grace and power

And everything You hold in Your hand

Still You make time for me

I can't understand

Praise You God of Earth and sky

How beautiful is Your unfailing love

Unfailing love

And You never change God You remain

The Holy One

My unfailing love

Unfailing love

You are my rock

The one I hold on to

You are my song

And I sing for You

And everything You hold in Your hand

Still You make time for me

I can't understand

Praise You God of Earth and sky

How beautiful is Your unfailing love

Unfailing love

~Chris Tomlin~

The midnight oil

Mist swirls up off the hot earth into the cool night air, as if the hurry of the day scurries up off the planet into the peace of the sky in drifts like dross.

If you steady your eyes long enough on a single point of black on the horizon, you can watch the stars blur as they fall across the velvet like comets. Shooting stars to wish upon, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you...

And so stare, up at True north, breathe in the quiet, let go the noise of the day, shake loose the dust of too many commitments and close eyes to tasks undone at day's end. Breathe deep the rich misty moist, listen long the cricket song, hold close the early August last days of summer, dream babies sleeping in beds, try to find sleep that somewhere hides elusive in the shadows of the thick night.

Sins swept away with the morning coming soon, held up to heaven by the pine bows worshiping in the moon's happy glow, the clouds gathering close like a silver mirror in a bowl across the western sky. The kittens scramble across the porch boards, learning night vision hunting tricks from mother yowling, two little bodies scurrying with feet as loud as elephants in the stillness. The swing creaks in the humid air, and I sigh a little sigh of regret and longing, thoughts drifting to tasks of the dawn: no milk for breakfast and what-shall-we-eat-tomorrow? I turn toward the dark house and the chocolate sheets where my lover slumbers and have a waking dream of a night of no insomnia. But then who would see the beauty of a mist-laden night in the moonshine when August is just beginning?

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. (Isaiah 44:22)

________________________________________

Note: Caleb is doing well! Thanks for all the prayers! His puncture wound is healing beautifully, and the symptoms we thought might be a reaction to the shot he received turned out to be a simple cold virus, just as the doctor thought they might be. In the 24 hours following our last ER visit, Rosy and I both came down with the same cold symptoms, reassuring us that Caleb did, indeed, just have a head cold. God was just asking us, once again, to lean hard and trust Him. We did, and we are through the thick of it and out the other side, just living normal life again, normal busy life, trying to keep hard shoes and socks on a little boy who is used to running barefoot. Please keep the puncture wound in your prayers as it can get badly infected for up to 3 weeks following the injury. 

Coming home

We travel seven hours to the prairie. In the cemetery, the gravestones are crooked from the heaving of the ground in winter. Stones working their way up through the black earth for birth in the spring. The men wield heavy boots against the granite, slowly pushing stone back into place, the slab that was crooked set straight again for another year.

It is a mystery how you can live in the land in so many places at once. When I go to the sea, I am home. When I arrive on the prairie, the constant wind through the shivering grass calls my name. Here is home, too. Back in the woods of Wisconsin, where I've lived since I was five, that feels like home. In central Minnesota there is a barren Indian reservation that is my home. In North Dakota, where faculty houses still stand in their neat brick roads against the lonesome prairie, where hockey rings loud every afternoon, there I lost a piece of soul, too. Here in South Dakota, my blood runs thick for 125 years of farming this prairie dirt. The colors are too bright too comprehend, the blue of the sky with green house perched in yellow grass. Here lived ancestors. Here lives a piece of my soul.

We are lost in time, my children and I. We forage through farmhouses abandoned with the last generation. We drive through sections of cropland that bear our family names. Bahr. Grieben. Baumgartner. Ernestine. August. Bernhard.

He picks up earth to finger blackness, a frozen clod like frozen time. It crumbles under his grip, and dust flows sooty across the lonely acres.

I can see Grandma's ghost in a gingham dress, shoeless, black hair flowing in the mournful wind. Her song still sings on this prairie. Her life was built here. It will forever be her haunting home.

Two days in the wind, and my mind is tossed but full. My heart capsized again to the stanzas of My Ántonia. It is a beautiful, lonesome welcome home. I rest in the peace that my children have seen it now, this land where my blood still flows. A place called home for generations of my family. It's been 14 years since I've been here last, and everything on the horizon rises familiar, the grain elevators, section lines, windrows, red barns 100 years old still standing against the forces of nature. It is good to be home, even for a short time.

I remember when I was a lad 

Times were hard and things were bad 

But there's a silver linin' behind ev'ry cloud 

Just four people that 's all we were 

Tryin' to make a livin' out of black-land dirt 

But we'd get together in a family circle singin' loud

Daddy sang bass (mama sang tenor) 

Me and little brother would join right in there 

Singin' seems to help a troubled soul 

One of these days and it won't be long 

I'll rejoin them in a song 

I'm gonna join the family circle at the throne 

Though the circle won't be broken 

By and by, Lord, by and by 

Daddy sang bass (mama sang tenor) 

Me and little brother would join right in there 

In the sky, Lord, in the sky 

~Daddy Sang Bass, Johnny Cash~

Now I remember after work mama would call in all of us

You could hear us singin' for a country mile

Now little brother has done gone on

But I'll rejoin him in a song

We'll be together again up yonder in a little while

My gratitude list, counting up from 1,911:
1911 kids who travel well with books and views
1917 watching a woman sign the gospel, face fluid, hands racing
1923 a pool and swimsuits - sweet surprise
1924 sleep, dreams
1927 farms I love still standing
1932 black earth
1938 a aunt, Charlotte, a figurehead always for my imagination, home now

A discovered symphony

My heart pounds all night, 160 beats a minute, and the instinct to run, hide, is high up in my throat. I can't slow my heart, and I begin to panic. A prayer, a pill, a liter of electrolytes. Another movie to watch, a distraction. I don't understand why these nights of the racing heart. Psychological? Physical? Who knows anymore, with PTSD knocking on my door although it knows it's been shut out. My cancer rearing it's ugly head (literally) as I lose my hair and my body changes shape, and I fight off pneumonia and then Lyme's disease. I lose track of where the trials are coming from, and so I just rest, instead of running, and pray that God lifts the racing heart so I can sleep. At four a.m., it finally slows to a tolerable 120 beats per minute and I sleep deep and restless.

I wake, though, listening to the song of the world with different ears because of this video (if you can't watch the whole thing, watch from 42:00-50:00. It will blow your mind). The trees are aflame in the valley and the crickets still sing their high percussion. A bluebird lands and lends his whistle to the symphony. The buck grunting in rut, the moose's high trumpeting call, the caw of the hawks and the wind through the trees...all part of the way that rocks cry out His name.

I sit and listen, and add my voice,

"Holy is the Lord, God Almighty,

the earth is filled with His glory.

Holy is the Lord, God Almighty,

the earth is filled with His glory.

It's rising up, all around,

the anthem of the Lord's renown.

It's rising up, all around,

the anthem of the Lord's renown."

I am struck with the vastness of God's creation and the constant praise it sings - the pulsing stars with their chords of melancholy, the percussion of handdrums from the larger stars, the animals in the deep singing to each other, and the whole firmament constantly aflutter with noise and beauty. He whispers a verse I memorized as a child, For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10)

I listen again to the music of the pulsing stars, the whale song. I think of the rushing sound of the wind blowing snow, and the thud of hail on the wet grass in summer. The fireplace in the living room crackles alive with sound, and the waves rush in from the ocean, caught in my miraculous conch shell.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! (Psalm 148)

What more is there to say? I breathe the words of the Psalm to my God, whose praise is rising all around like mist from the cold earth. Tonight I get to join the symphony as I play in worship for a whole group of His wounded warriors. Praise God, indeed! For voice to sing, fingers to play, harmonica breathing it's vibratto over a chorus of wonder. For a spirit of peace instead of a spirit of fear. I am buoyed up on the earth's song and in wonder that I can join in again, my spirit set free from the chains that bound just a year ago. 

God is good, and He is with us, in every cricket song and sunrise, in every note played and every word written. God is with us.