I wasn't sure I liked babies

When my belly swelled with each of you, it was a burgeoning promise and a sacrifice all at once. Each time it fell slowly in 8 weeks to a soft deflated balloon, like the wrinkled skin of a swimsuit stretched one too many times, a place where you babes laid. And after Caleb, and cancer, it never deflated. It just stayed. Instead of a cave where a baby used to be, it just stayed like a pillow attached to me, even though I ate less and less and tried different diets and even had cancer for four years.

Sometimes I still pass my hand over my stomach and there is a memory there, between palm and belly, of the days you lived inside me. Five babies passed days there, swelling my frame and kicking me with "otherness" from the inside out. I thought it would freak me out. Instead, it blissed me out.

I try to deny it, especially when I am alone with your Papa, but you are always with me, the four of you I got to keep. I see things everywhere that remind me of you, and I wonder constantly what you doing or thinking or needing. I thought I would be able to shake you off like a sweater you left on a chair when you didn't need it, when I leave you with your grandmothers or a babysitter. But I carry you somewhere deep in your soul. This weekend, it was my 10th anniversary, and your Papa and I were like two kids on our honeymoon, but there were these hideous Christmas ribbon wind-catchers blowing in the hippie shop window.

Pulled away from home by my first week of professoring, and our anniversary trip, I asked your Papa if I could have you back sooner. He said yes. And so you came, slam-bam-thank-you-Ma'am, tumbling out of the Suburban, grandparents laughing with you. We all went to the shore of Lake Superior and it was wide-stretched-arm days, and rock-picking, agate-hunting, and cliff-climbing, clambering joy.

I used to wonder how I would get through life without you, back when I thought I wouldn't have kids, back when I thought men weren't made for me and I'd never marry. For I carried you in secret, deep in my belly like magic beans, and I saw you in the faces in my dolls even though I never told anyone my 5-year-old secrets. My grandma always looked into my brown eyes and said "still waters run deep". Mine ran deep with dreams of you. And now you are here, and still I dream of you. Delight in you.

You just never know.

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 the luckiest
~from The Luckiest, Ben Folds Five~

Linked to Fried Okra's synchroblog

Battle cry of the broken-hearted: GRACE!

The hornet is sleepy as he walks down the porch rail, too tired to fly in autumn's chill. Satan is growing tired as well. He shot that one fiery dart into my soul: the belief that I don't deserve my life and my husband and children deserve better. I lost sight of the fact that God set us up as a family and specifically gave me life, wants me to accomplish something with it, despite my mistakes and weaknesses. All Satan accomplished was to tear a hole in my heart with that dart, a hole for God to fill.

I picture him, battle weary and worn from beating his wings against Christ's back, as Christ kneels to wrap His covering over my wounds. The shields of other saints circle me with prayer as I lie broken on the battle field. The fire on his darts whistles and dies in a spiral of smoke because the Cross has already extinguished them - these fiery darts meant to drag us down, down to the pit of hell.

I picture Jesus, beaten and broken for me on that cross, the scarlet river of His perfect blood washing away each and every sin that Satan would accuse me of. Even that nagging belief that I am too disgraceful to stay living. Christ drank the cup for me, took the price for my sins on His back as He died for me so that I might live.

Should I then say I don't deserve to live? Who am I to determine that I am not the right mother or wife for my family? Didn't He write all the days of my life out before I was even conceived? (Psalm 119)

I drag myself up to a kneeling position. The blood pouring from my side has staunched it's flow, and I reinflate my empty lungs with the heavy breath of His grace. I look down at my armor - dropped because it was too heavy to carry with that wound in my side. That belief weighing down on me with every step: you don't deserve this, you don't deserve this, you don't deserve this. I rationalized that because all my righteousness is as filthy rags, and no one is perfect, no not one, he's right, Satan. I don't deserve this. (Isaiah 64:6 and Jeremiah 2:22)

But Grace shouts out to the contrary: UNDESERVED FAVOR. The Cross proclaims that it is ALREADY GIVEN. Who I am to take the bread of life, already baked, fresh and aromatic, and push it away, saying, You never should have given me the bread of life? He alone is sovereign and He alone is good, and it only from under His wings of salvation that I can say to Satan, This was given to me. I deserve it through Christ alone.

And so I rip it back from His lies, my life, this undeserved favor. It is mine. Not his to take. Given to me by the maker of the universe. If God wants to take me home through cancer, my heart problems, so be it. I will run the race I am given. But I will never again allow Satan to trick me into destroying my body and disappointing and grieving those who walk this sacred path with me. I will not ever again wield a weapon against myself.

I beg God that, whenever my ending comes, He will send a thousand stars of grace out into the sky for others to see. That the odor of the bread of life He so richly gave to us is mine until the last breath He grants me. That I can finish like the young warrior in the video below, and proclaim my heart will choose to say, "Lord, blessed be Your name!"

Cathedral

She dresses just for me, in yellow stripes, a 3 year old niece's way of saying, "I love you". A little sunray of joy, waltzing about my messy house, so proud her message came across clear and beloved.

I've been thinking about my writing, and the life that it reflects, and I think there needs to be more yellow stripes written about here. I learned about a concept a few weeks ago that made little sense to me. So, ever the scientist, I decided to test the theory. The concept is called "mindfulness" and it means fully doing what you're doing without trying to multitask...in your brain or with your body. I know it's necessary for raising children. If you have a fussy child and you try to keep typing while comforting him, or keep stirring lunch on the stove instead of meting out consequences to the group of twisted sisters claiming the same toy, you'll do a poor job at both. However, in other areas of my life, I felt that I was a master of multitasking and that it greatly enhanced my effectiveness.

I tested it, and I was wrong. When I work on one thing at a time, I am faster, more thorough, and more joyful. I never expected the joyful part. There is something about throwing yourself 100% at a problem, at writing a paper, at preparing a meal, that enhances the pleasure in the task and the completion of it.

I realize, slowly, that I've been rushing my whole life. This realization has been dawning on my slowly over a year's time. I wrote about it last year. Rushing to the next entertainment before I hardly finish the first. Rushing from one sorrow to the next, until they pile up in such a stack that they overwhelm me as they teeter in my consciousness, threatening to tumble down. Rushing from one crisis to the next, feeling the next crisis coming long before it begins.

God gives me the weirdest trials. I spent my teenage years fainting, my college years in heart failure, almost died at 22 from a random heart event, spent the last of my 20's on cancer, 31 on more heart problems and a pacemaker, and this year on PTSD, depression, anxiety, "losing" even more weeks to the hospital. And that's just me.

My husband and children have been through all kinds of horrific infections, and always seem to react worse to them than the average person. In the midst of Amy's year of encephalitis and epilepsy, God doubled up our trials and I suffered a traumatic ectopic pregnancy loss in the two weeks she wasn't in the hospital. Then infection upon infection and surgery after surgery.

I've come to accept that my trials often aren't the average ones. I've come to accept that we all seem to have giant targets on our backs when it comes to our health. But I fear I've leaned too hard into martyrdom, leaned into the shocked reactions of others as validation for my sadness, fear, and loneliness through these trials.

God's best for me is not sadness, fear and loneliness when I face trials.

It is easy to get trapped by suffering. It is tempting to throw out half of the Bible and believe promises don't apply to you and yours. Even in the minutiae of life, it's easy to focus on the child who fussed, disrespected, and disobeyed all morning, so that your eyes are so busy seeing through the scars of the morning you are blind to the same child who is cuddly and cute in the afternoon. The memory of a grandma gone all wrapped up in a beautiful moment in the afternoon sun, boy cuddling great-aunt, their laughing like music fills the front room and I watch and I am filled with joy.

In recognizing the cathedral in the moment, the temple in the experience, the feast set out before me by my Father, Lover, Friend and King, the scales are falling off my eyes and His love is breaking through like the morning sun.

Every evening I sit in the dark, listening to the cricket song, and feeling the breeze. It soaks in for a minute, and then thoughts crowd in and I shake off the blessings like raindrops from a wet, shaggy dog, only a moment on my skin and never finding the path deep into my soul.

Today, I am shaking off martyrdom. I am sick of focusing on the trouble. Although I can't pretend my life is completely normal, I want to quit shaking off blessings to care for burdens. Doesn't He say cast ALL your cares upon Him, for He careth for you? (I Peter 5:7)

A series of verses, very dear to my troubled heart over the past 3 1/2 years of cancer, is written in permanent ink on a card on my windowsill:

Rejoice in the Lord always -delight, gladden yourselves in Him; again I say, Rejoice! Let all men know and perceive and recognize your unselfishness, your considerateness, your forbearing spirit. The Lord is near - He is coming soon. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. And God's peace shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. And my God will liberally supply - fill to the full - your every need according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (from Philippians 4 Amplified version)

I sit in my bed, typing this, looking out the window at the yellow birches among the green maples and oaks, catching sunrays, grass dripping with dew now burning off in the sunlight, ground mist casting rainbows on wheat. I am content with my earthly lot, of whatever sort that is, and peace transcends all understanding and garrisons my heart and mind.

Cancer, treatment, new depression meds and the fire red hair from a box all collide and my hair falls out in great handfuls, my scalp is raw. My hair has been my crown, truly - the only feature I really believe is beautiful. Now I wonder if it will all fall out, or if it will just be thin, if it will grow back? No one has an answer.

Instead of another calamity, I am wearing my hats and thanking God that I'd started collecting them again in the last six months, for no particular reason. God winks at me and I know there was a purpose in my hat search. I marvel at the magenta pile in my hand every morning, brushed from my pillow. But for once, instead of wondering if He'll heal me, I'm wondering what He's up to. It's a curiosity filled with joy, instead of dread.

Pray help me, Christ, to take my cup and drink it without drowning in it's dregs. Help me be a light, a beacon of one-mindedness, always focusing on your giving and leaving the taking to You to solve.

Cathedral 

Arches of reaching limbs 

Crickets sing secret hymns 

Over all of us 

Fireflies 

Tickle across our palms 

Lit up like diamonds drawn 

From the black above 

Awake my soul to live this moment 

Awake my soul, give thanks and hold it 

Dear now 

God is here now 

Awake my soul 

Day ends 

And brown eyes smile back at me 

She wipes my kiss from her cheek 

After last “Amen” 

Hush away the hurry 

Put to rest the worry 

Come to quell and quiet me 

In this moment given 

Slow and fully live it 

Drink up all the passing peace 

~Awake My Soul, Shaun Groves~