An open letter to the school of hard knocks

I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say. ~Flannery O'Connor

Dear life,

You have put ulcers in my belly but fire in my bones.

You have torn friends away but shown me who my true friends are.

You have made me doubt myself yet become myself.

You have put bumps in the road that turned out to be wonderful surprises.

You have beaten me up, so I'm stronger now.

You have thrown me out but in the dark I discovered the stars.

You have cast me down and on the ground I found rest.

You have torn me apart but the scar tissue where I healed will never tear.

You made me feel alone and I discovered I liked it.

You threatened everything so I appreciate it more.

You shipwrecked me at home with my family and I discovered they really are my favorite people.

You isolated me and I read books.

You rained on me and I jumped in puddles.

Your wind blew me off my feet but it also kissed my cheek.

You laughed in my face and I laughed back.

You made me sad, I found joy in small things.

You exhausted me, and I found out how much I love my bed.

You ravaged my body so my soul grew wings.

You tried to silence me so I found words.

You caused me pain, so I gritted my teeth and limped on.

You took my breath away but God gave it back.

You broke my heart and I discovered the courage to heal it.

You left me speechless and in the silence I heard the whisper of my own soul.

You may break me, but never bind me.

You may hurt me, but never kill my hope.

You may force me to change, and I might like it.

I am afflicted in every way, but not crushed; 

perplexed, but not driven to despair; 

persecuted, but not forsaken;

struck down, but not destroyed;

So I do not lose heart. 

Though my outer self is wasting away, my inner self is being renewed day by day*.

The contest is not over.

You haven't won yet.

You never will,

for even death has been overcome.

*2 Corinthians 4

I stopped wanting what I can't have

I step onto the sandy beach and there in front of me is a woman who used to be a best friend. It's strange to type those words "used to be a best friend". How does that happen? How do the most vibrant relationships in your life wilt in one night? Those who participated in our shunning in 2010-11 are spectres in my memory, danger signs, bright red flags painting our city. I've avoided all the old favorite haunts since 2010 because I didn't want to meet you anywhere. And now here we are, on the same beach for an afternoon. Acting like strangers. There is a gulf between us. An unbridgable gulf. A man-made expanse of uncharted territory between our old love and this new hate.

It is a sign of progress that I can stay on the beach even though you're there. I feel your eyes burning a hole in my back, and here I am talking to one of my real best friends - one of the ones who would never do something like what you've done. She's not a professed Christian, but she's doing a better job at it than you are. Caught in the tension between the old and the new, I cannot deny the joy and power of this moment. I am realizing that you don't offer anything I want now. I've been changed; you haven't. I won't ever long to talk to you again. It rings with finality, this accepting that you are forever gone from my life.

I look out at my children, and I have a message for them: sometimes the friendships you think are important turn out to be just a catalyst for your transformation. You do and always will have true friendships. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but you children know more about true and false friends than any child should. 

Blood is thicker than water. When you're in desperate need, I guarantee you will pick up the phone to call someone in your family, not a friend. We will be there for you. We will always love you, no matter what.

You will learn more from the relationships of your childhood than at any other time of  your life. Love and respect the people who you won't ever be able to get away from. Invest here.

Your cousins are the next best things to siblings. There is already an inexplicable bond between you and your cousins. You will remember how strong this childhood tie was every time you see them throughout your life - reunions, holidays. You will always love them and they will always love you, no matter how little or how often you see them, no matter who you each grow up to be.

And those few friends we have right now, the ones who feel as close as family? The love and beauty wrought in these strong friendships will never leave you. You will be strengthened by every memory and every time you spend with them from now until you are very old. They remind you that you are worth it. You are worthy of love.

...................................................

Perhaps that is exactly what I feel on the beach. For the first time, I am acknowledging within myself that I am worthy of faithful friends. I don't deserve to be discarded and beaten down by those who would call themselves "friends". That's not how true friends act. All my life I've held a verse in Proverbs tenderly: Friends can destroy one another, but a loving friend can stick closer than family. (18:24) In church, I've only known the first kind of friend. Outside it's walls, though, I have those friends - 4 in particular who will stick with me no matter what.

I owe it to these - my precious family and friends - to loose the ties to yesterday and live in this moment with them. Accept it from the hand of God. Yes, He allowed the destruction of many friendships very recently, but He has also provided me a faithful few whose love is so strong it has held me up when my own two legs couldn't. These - the hands and feet of Jesus in my life - are worth forgetting the pain for.

What didn't kill me has made me stronger. And now I must accept life - participate in it, find joy in it, mine for the gold every day. Because if I am still breathing, it must be right for me to be alive.

Radical acceptance equals giving up your hope for a better past for the hope of a better future.

To taste July

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim / objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. ~Oscar Wilde

The cup overflows so fast and furious, my feet are sticky with the drips that cascade through my toes and over flip flops all the summer day long. Joy is everywhere we go, at gymnastics class where Rosy's soul expands until it fills the whole room with its radiance, and the little kids do headstands and tumble like weeds in the corner, copying the instructor's every move. In October, I caught fire from a little book and dreamed of a clutter free house, and now finally in the damp July air the seed of a dream flowers full, and our garbage can overflows with broken toys, unmatched socks, scratched cd's and chipped dishes. The wood floors gleam in expanses of emptiness we haven't seen in this house since cancer came to call in 2008. The kids and I stop by the local thrift store today with a truckload of donations, and we sit in the parking lot in fits of giggles over the antics of a blow-up balloon man they use to advertise sales, flipping over and punching himself in the face in the summer wind.

It's the time of year when the summer sun hangs forever in the evening sky, there's the constant sound of laughter on the breeze, the sprinkler sends glitter cascading through the air and the crickets sing a different, mid-summer song.

Love is all hot and sweaty and altogether real, like midnight cuddles with naked kids sticky under the thin sheets with the fan blowing full blast through air as thick as velvet.

We've long since learned to quit listening for the other shoe to drop, and to listen instead for the tinkling of laughter like a spoon clinking glass, the panting of the dog that comes with the smile on her face in the hot afternoon, the smack of a son's kiss through chocolate and vanilla ice cream after snacks on the porch.

The hay's been cut twice, and the corn is higher than any of the kids. The oats are burgeoning gold and the whole earth smells sweet. The cows' milk is like candy from summer grass, and the farmer calls us to tell us our beef will soon be at the butcher's. Summer is half gone before it's half started, but I've never been one to look back at the pages already torn from the calendar.

We are reveling in summer. Every t-ball trick taught. Every bug bite to scratch. Every lake swum. Every frog song and cricket call. Every late night sing-along and early morning walk through the dew-dripping lawn. Every bonfire and every charred hot-dog. Every firecracker, every sparkler. One marshmallow, burnt or brown, at a time.

Oh, how we give thanks, for small gifts and large ones.

Oh, if there’s only one song I can sing,

When in His beauty I see the great King,

This shall my song through eternity be,

“Oh, what a wonder that Jesus loves me!”

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me.

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves even me.

In this assurance I find sweetest rest,

Trusting in Jesus, I know I am blessed;

Satan, dismayed, from my soul now doth flee,

When I just tell him that Jesus loves me.

~Jesus Loves Even Me, Philip Bliss, 1870~

The one ingredient for wherever you are

It's funny how you can think you've failed at something before you're even half done. My children are beautiful, transcendental almost, smart as whips, hilarious, easy on the eyes, little gemstones of people. But there are days when I think I've failed them hopelessly, and a good friend of mine similarly gifted in sarcasm laughs with me over an old joke: 

They are only 8, 7, 5 and 4. There are many years to set right the chaos and the lost chances, the depression, the days I've spent wandering the floors of this house walled up in my own brain, the days spent studying for my PhD, the days spent grieving things maybe too hard, the days spent trying to be perfect and the days lost giving up on perfect and giving in to totally way less than perfect instead.

There have been many days redeemed already, but a struggling perfectionist often fails to remember those, and Satan crowds in and threatens to steal small joys all the time. There is a revolutionary out there who is beating a strange new drum, marching like the Pied Piper, singing a strange song that captivates and it truly teaches us, the recovering perfectionists, and we drop everything and climb this alien hill listening to her song with only one verse: COUNT JOY. She doesn't say, forget sorrow. She doesn't say, life will be easy. She doesn't say, you will not fail. She doesn't say, it won't matter that you fail. She just says, COUNT JOY. 

I started, this simple, paradoxical, and yet difficult practice, first on paper and now mostly in my head. It is odd to me still, how it whips my head the opposite direction, away from the mesmerizing power of grief, shame, dirtiness, failure, imperfection, poverty, and questions without answers. A bird flits by silent, and a day full of failures is lost in the splendor of one moment. A daisy on the lawn, and I forget about the unmown long grass in the symmetry of six white petals and one yellow center. I turn my swing around, and the fingernail moon catches my eye and a dark night of depression is light again and the tentacles of a nightmare loosed and forgotten. Yet a little verse nags at me - "weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth..." (2 Timothy 3:6b) - oh, let that not be me! A love of knowledge, a women always with many pans in the fire, head easily turned by this new theory or the dozen books on the nightstand, a new way to cure poverty or another way to bring peace in this war-torn region of Africa... How do I fight this? Not with more of anything. But with less. 

I don't need more answers. I don't need more faith. I need a certain kind. Faith like a little child.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me." (Matthew 18:1-5)

I find my answer on a bookmark in the book I've been reading for months, the one in the bathroom that I can't swallow unless I read it a page at a time. It's a picture Rosy drew for me, one of hundreds she's delivered to my bedside table, and on it is my answer about how I'm parenting and my answer about how I am to live this torn and tattered life of questions without answers. On one side of an imperfectly cut paper heart, in black and white, is the word HOPE. And on the other, in a rainbow of colors, is the word LOVE. This child, at age 7, knows.

You may be a missionary far afield, holding the beauty of a fragile orphan in the palm of your hands. You may be on Wall Street, juggling millions and striving for integrity in a business plagued with character demons of all shapes and sizes. You might be a nurse trying to slog through a dozen patients and still provide loving care to that one individual that tugs at your heart strings through your overworked shift. Are you the Starbucks barista who hands desperate soccer moms love in a steaming cup with a smile and a "have a nice day"? Do you check peoples engines or sell them used cars to help them make it to their next big payday? Or are you the mom down the street who's slogging through mountains of dirty laundry, mapping out Charlotte Mason homeschool curriculum and trying to make good choices about organic food for your brood?

Wherever you are in life, you are commanded to be like a little child in faith. Close your eyes and jump. I remember two glaring details about being a child: being horribly afraid and being dangerously adventurous. I was, at the same time, plagued by fear and amazingly immune to it. I was afraid because I was small and vulnerable, but I was often unafraid because I had no idea what to be scared of. Looking back, it's a miracle any of us survive the jumping from high places, pummeling down steep hills, and racing across monkey bars, bleachers, logs over streams or anything else we dared to do in childhood. Yet in Psalms 116:6 it says, The Lord protects those of childlike faith. So squeeze your eyes shut, just like you used to do, and let go. You don't need the kind of faith that moves mountains. You don't need to be the sage that fills commentaries or writes an amazing blog filled with nuggets of knowledge, answers to poverty, or solutions to world peace. You simply need to hold one little truth, a Holy piece of truth, always in the palm of your hands, always deep in your heart, and always on your lips. The King James Bible said it this way:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think [dwell, fix your mind] on these things. (Phillipians 4:8)

Rosy Thul, at age 7, simply said, HOPE; LOVE. Ann Voskamp says, Count 1,000 gifts. An old hymn says, Count your blessings, name them one by one; count your blessings, see what God has done.

I may fail at a million things a day. Some days it feels miraculous to clothe, feed, and love my children enough by days end. To greet my husband with a smile and a kiss, and sometimes yes, I'm still in my pajamas when he walks through the door at 5:30. It's a stretch to get the cats some cream and let the dog out the door to run the woods by 9 a.m. I drink cold coffee many mornings. I don't even crack my Bible by noon on a good day. I have no idea what I'm going to do about homeschool curriculum for the fall. All my plans for kids sports, hobbies, pool dates, and our already struggling home chores are on serious hold until we find out if Amelia will be in chemo in July.

But I am not a failure. I am just a child. Loving. Learning. Counting up joys. And holding fast to the only thing I know for sure. That Jesus is God, He is my hope and my rescue, my peace and my provider, and He will keep us and help us until the end of our days, whatever comes.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will fail; where there are tongues, they will cease; where there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13 NKJV/ESV exc.)

Miraculous mundane

It's been days of sandy feet and brown skin flashing in the bleak May sun of South Carolina. Afternoons lazing around the screen porch with books and the sounds of the birds over the marsh and the wind through the palmettos. A foreign climate and culture that's begun to tarnish to the comfortable feeling of home over the 5 summers we've spent here. This place is full of romance and familiar haunts, tattooed surfers striding home in the sunset and the smell of salt on the afternoon breeze. A magical place to make memories for little people.

Today we napped together, shivering in the air conditioning as the wind howled around the corners of the house on stilts. We went down to the main street late in the morning, and came home laden with beautiful shells, shovels, and inner tubes. The kids all wanted to ride the waves on the top, after days of body surfing and boogie boarding and being pummeled to the sandy bottom by the crash of the break. I gamely blew 20 minutes of breath into the tubes and we shivered into our suits, cursing the air conditioning that a few days ago couldn't eradicate the crushing humidity.

They piled in the back of the truck, and I in front, barefoot, with the hiphop blaring. We jived our way down to the far end of the island, the side we've never been too, I feeling adventurous and they always game for my hare-brained ideas. The beach was cold and deserted, lashed with 30 mile an hour winds, and only surfers in body suits could be seen out in the waves. None of this triggered my "mommy alarm", though, and we waded into the gray seas. I quickly realized they were gray because the break was only a short way out, and the sand was being stirred up into the water by the powerful waves. We shuddered in our line of fiercely gripped hand-holds, the waves driving the children past me even though we were all still on our feet. I pulled them as hard as I could, back to shore.

The little girls were screaming with cold, but their shrieks only grew louder as we scurried out of the water and back into the cold air. They talked (or shrieked) me into taking them back out with the tubes. I gripped their taught little bodies and propelled them back to shore over the tops of the breaking waves. Katy, the cautious eldest, stood on the shore screaming at us to come back to safety. Caleb was completely disoriented, and tried to get back out through the waves to me.  Stunned by the force of nature whirling around us, I could barely gather my wits enough to herd them back to the sand. Someday they'll tell hilarious stories about the day their mother took them swimming in the hurricane (I learned from the weather station back at home that Tropical Storm Alberto is bearing down on the "Edge of America" as Folly Beach is known).

Somewhere between the shrieks and the howl of the wind, the aching beauty that is the tragedy and miracle of motherhood seeped through. The gray sandy feet pattering over the worn boards of the beach walk, the music throbbing through the speakers and four kids bopping in the rear view mirror, the goose bumps on my son's brown skin as I hold him close to warm him with my body... We know this dance of the sacred and the mundane, the beautiful and the drudgery, the sacrifice and the pay-out, we mothers. We feel it deep when words can't capture and memory can't hold the little joys of the everyday miracles. Our souls sing with the rhythm of life that plays out in detail before our eyes in the lives of our children. We live and breath hard work, yet in the cracks of life seeps that aching beauty: the blush on a baby's cheek, the smell of your young cuddled up to your neck, the 100 watt smiles of childhood happiness, the muddy feet and the bug bitten legs, the birdsong of little girls' laughter and the earthier burliness of our sons.

In our failures there is beauty...in our success there are shortcomings. Whether a failed beach trip in stormy seas that has our children shivering and shrieking, or a long lazy afternoon sitting on the dock listening to the dolphins talk to each other, it is beautiful, this dance and work of motherhood. The memories of our children will be highlight reels of the highs and lows of our family life. But I treasure a richer and fuller sense of the organic wonder of this mundane miraculous, a collection of vignettes that open the heart of the Father to my understanding, the wonder of His love and the tenacity of the hope we hold dear for those we love most.

You're Already Amazing: Wearing Pearls Well

I read the maxim while cancer raged: Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain (Tiffany Wilson, who spoke in 2007 at the It's My Life foster care conference). As I read the Psalms, this sentiment was echoed again and again in the rejoicing suffering servant's poetry, most eloquently in one of my favorite Psalms, 46, at the end of which David exhorts us to be still and know that He is God. 

The other day, it rained in it's soft April way all day long. The flowers were coated with raindrops. As I sat in my swing looking out at the glory of it all, I noticed the very ordinary chives growing in my kitchen garden, made extraordinarily beautiful by the pearls God had placed on each spear with his laws of gravity and physics. Each water molecule is positively charged on one end, and negatively charged on the other, so opposites attract like the latch and hook of train cars, forming strings of drops, each growing larger until it is heavy enough to drop to the earth. 

As I prepared for my dissertation, I tried to pull my post-baby belly into a pair of, well, let's just call them iron shorts. I am a large raindrop. I am glued to the earth by the gravity of too much weight, and it is a source of embarrassment for me. Holley Gerth addresses this in her book:

Inside a voice whispers, you're not enough. Depending on the day, an extra word might be thrown into the sentence. You're not pretty enough. You're not outgoing enough. You're not likable enough.

I felt all of these things that day. Would they like me enough to let me pass? Was I outgoing enough to slog through a 30 minute presentation about my own work? (I didn't even wonder about pretty. I was so sure it wasn't true.) Once I stepped into the room where I would give my presentation, I was even more embarrassed by a comment made during my introduction to the small group gathered there. My mentor said I had stuck with my studies through "thick, and thick, and thick". I immediately felt my cheeks burn, and I wanted to jump up and explain I had just been following God as best I could! Receiving this compliment seemed so false. But Gerth refutes this in her book, drawing us in to a private conversation she had with God during her exasperated and exhausted prayer. The truth is, this compliment was just telling me that others could see God at work in my life. I didn't need to explain myself, because others have already seen faith at work.

"Lord," I asked, "why do women feel as if we're not enough?" It seemed I heard a whisper in response, "Because they're not." For a moment I thought I had some holy static happening. "Excuse me, God, it sounded like you said we're not enough. Could you repeat that, pretty please?" Again, gently and firmly, "You are not enough." By then I started thinking perhaps my heart had dialed the wrong number and the devil was on the line. But in that pause it seemed God finished the sentence: "You are not enough...in me you are so much more." We are much more than pretty...we are wonderfully made. We are much more than likable...we are deeply loved. We are much more than okay...we are daughters of the King. I think the enemy tricks us into believing we are not enough because he knows that if we discover the truth, we'll be unstoppable.

If you're in the rain storms of life, wear your pearls with a confident heart. Gerth asks us to go beyond Eve's sin, and uncover the other lies that slow us down and destroy our joy in the Lord. What if we said "Yes, God really did say I can do all thing through Christ" (Phil. 4:13). "Yes, God really did say he loves me with an everlasting love." (Jer. 3:13) "Yes, God really did say I am fearfully and wonderfully made." (Ps. 139:14) Everything could change forever (Gerth, p. 42). If you're like me, one of the lies that brings you down is the concern that being confident means you are prideful and selfish. But Gerth points out that insecurity is just a tool to turn us inward - away from God and the truth of our position in Christ. We focus on ourselves, our looks, our housekeeping ability, whether or not we're fully using our talents. Holley says that being confident allows us to "stop looking inward and instead focus upward and outward on Him as well as others." (p. 51)

Another truth leaps off the raindrops. Later that day, the sunshine warmed the earth, and the chives were quickly dried in the breeze. Even dry, with no pearl necklace, the chives are beautiful.

This was a good reminder for me. I think those of us who have faced suffering and trials can become addicted to walking that path. It is hard to bring yourself to look up and enjoy the sunshine. It is hard to shed the pearls of the rainstorm. It is hard because it is scary. As difficult as it is to trust God during the rainstorm, it can be even more difficult to trust that the sunshine is meant for you, that it will last more than a brief moment. You are braced for the next trial to sweep you off your feet. But as I continue into remission, into dissertation success, I've got to shed my survival mode thinking. The path stretches long and dappled with sun in front of me. I need to look up and trust I'm not going to be lashed with the cold wind and the sudden rain. If I live the rest of my life expecting to suffer, I will miss out on so much.

Out of all of history, God chose this time for you to be on earth. He knew the exact second you would enter this world with a cry and change it forever. In between the laundry, the mundane parts of being human, we can forget we're part of a bigger story, a greater plan. And here's the thing: we only get one you. There never has been, and never will be, another you in this world. God doesn't have a backup plan or replacement policy. We don't need a copy of someone else - we need the one and only, original you. How do we live in this place, suspended between history and eternity? How do we find the courage to offer who we are in the middle of the mess? ...He is the I AM. We find God not in the future or in the past. We find Him right here with us, beside us, in us. The temptation will always be to say, "After I...." or "When this happens, then I'll...", but life doesn't work that way. Embrace this moment. Be who you are. (Gerth, p. 180-181; emphasis mine)

Take hold of the fortitude and insight to thrive in whatever season God has you. If you are in the rain, wear your pearls - don't hide them! And find hope in the fact that the sunshine always comes, sooner or later. If you're in the sun, don't be ashamed to be happy dancing in the gentle breeze! Don't wear a false garment of shame, don't let yourself be trapped in thinking this is just a moment before the next storm. God has given you this moment. Be yourself here, today. Because He can't wait to see you dancing - in your rain boots and slicker, or your shorts and tank top!

Back in the beginning of March, I was invited to review Holley Gerth's new book, You're Already Amazing. Life intervened, and although I read the book immediately, I'm just now getting to the writing of the review. This is part 2 of a 3 part series on this simply beautiful book about our position in Christ. (Read part 1 below)

A promise of snow

Autumn whirls by like a flutter of leaves emancipated from the backyard by a rake, lifted and swirling in one iridescent moment of final glory, and then gone forever into the black plastic of a lawn bag. Long night shifts caring for sick strangers, hockey practice, first flurries of snow. The week hurtles on and I don't pause to write or hardly to think. The incomparable adrenaline laced rush of joy after physical accomplishment washes over me and drowns me in happiness after hockey practice. Nine years of having babies, and I can still stop a puck and have fun out on the ice with a group of women. 

My friend from afar is in Ecuador, meeting children helped through the Compassion International program. It is a hard thing to have a missionary's heart and not bend to the constant plea of so many people. But in uncertain times, when we are making budget cuts $10 at a time, that $38 a month seems like a large commitment, especially when so important and a must every month for that one family. All kinds of things fly through my mind, my doctoral degree, so expensive - really necessary? Well, yes, if we're going to go to Central America and start a nursing school. The winter boots for kids - should I have looked longer at thrift stores in search of cheaper options? Well, no, not when the snow is already falling. What about hockey? How much money do you spend just to rediscover an old joy?

It's hard to be the bud holding promise of next spring, a handful of snowflakes to water the earth when the frozen times are done. Yet this is what young families often do, hold the snowflakes to point to the thaw. We are still growing and learning, learning this one income life, learning what it takes to be a missionary, stem frozen in time by cancer and encephalitis. We can't go yet. We will go one day, to the vast reaping fields. The fields holding the promise for the spring yet to come. They will still be there when we are ready...for the poor you'll always have with you. Perhaps that is one of God's great and incomprehensible gifts: a world where we stay in touch with our poverty. For without a visual picture of poverty, if every man were rich, would we really keep needing God? Not until the grave's doorstep, when we finally realize we can't take it with us. Money is just a dusting of snow on frozen ground...the promise of food for this life while we wait for the next. Autumn holding spring's thaw.

Linked up to Joy's life: unmasked writing project

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~

That same smile

Honeymoon, September 2002


ooh, baby, baby
Something’s just a little bit different in your eyes tonight

They look twice as bright

Oooh, baby, baby

Something’s changed that I can’t quite put my finger on

Well I’ve been rackin’ my brain

Wait just a minute

Hold on, now

While I get it

Love, love, loves lookin’ good, good, good on you

Well can you feel it, oh everybody sees it

How your sweet smile has a way of lighting up a room

Yeah you shine like diamonds in everything you do

Oh love, love, loves lookin’ good, good, good on you

Oooh, baby, baby

Isn’t it funny how we don’t need any money

Just a little luck

To look like a million bucks

Oooh, baby, baby

It kind of makes you think

That the stars were in sync on the night we met

There oughtta be a red carpet

Everywhere you go

Roll it on out

Hey don’t you know that

I knew right away from the very first kiss

That it doesn’t get much better than this

We fit just like a favorite pair of jeans

We just keep coming back for more

Like two kids in a candy store

Now I know what everybody means

When they say
Love, love, loves lookin' good, good, good on you
~Love's Lookin' Good on You, Lady Antebellum~

August 2011

Not much has changed in 9 years. Except that I love you, shy boy, ever so much more than I ever thought possible. You have made my dreams come true and your love and smile are so sweet to me.

Simply thankful

I get so sick of being depressed, I decided to do a yellow post.

Nothing dark, nothing dreary, no cries for help.

The truth is there have been more and more good days lately.

(minus the pneumonia)

Today I began a new medication regimen nicknamed the "California Rocket Bomb" by psychiatrists who have see the synergistic effect of these two particular drugs together.

While the word "bomb" related to my health care does not endear me to the treatment, I am hoping it does just what it is supposed and depression really gets under control.

Thank God for yellow houses with blue shutters and sea spray crust.

Praise Him for every bit of yellow that peppers my melancholy days.

Praise Him for waking up happy some mornings.

Praise Him for friends that really last.

Praise Him for life.

Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying

There is a song by Tim McGraw that is enormously popular. I sing it every time I go out for karaoke. There are two possible viewpoints on this song: either it's Hedonist or compelling. You've probably heard it, and it may or may not catch your attention. Here are the lyrics and video:

He said: "I was in my early forties,

"With a lot of life before me,

"An' a moment came that stopped me on a dime.

"I spent most of the next days,

"Looking at the x-rays,

"An' talking 'bout the options an' talkin’ ‘bout sweet time."

I asked him when it sank in,

That this might really be the real end?

How’s it hit you when you get that kind of news?

Man whatcha do?

He said "I was finally the husband,

"That most the time I wasn’t.

"An' I became a friend a friend would like to have.

"And all of a sudden goin' fishin’,

"Wasn’t such an imposition,

"And I went three times that year I lost my Dad.

"Well, I finally read the Good Book,

"And I took a good long hard look,

"At what I'd do if I could do it all again,

"And then:

"I went sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,

"I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.

"And I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,

"And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying."

An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,

"To live like you were dyin'."

Like tomorrow was a gift,

And you got eternity,

To think about what you’d do with it.

An' what did you do with it?

An' what can I do with it?

An' what would I do with it?

"Sky diving, I went rocky mountain climbing,

"I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu.

"And then I loved deeper and I spoke sweeter,

"And I watched Blue Eagle as it was flyin'."

An' he said: "Some day, I hope you get the chance,

"To live like you were dyin'."

Some of the lines of this song sound hedonistic. You could focus on the fact that this man, given a fatal diagnosis, spent his remaining time fulfilling his "bucket list", traveling, taking chances. On the other hand, his diagnosis make him a better husband, a person who loves deeper and speaks sweeter because he knows his time is short.

That's me.

Cancer has reminded me what is important in life. While it may not be sky-diving, bull-riding, or other risk taking activities, it is instead surging on a boogie board, being sucked down shore by the rip time. It's laughing long and hard because God set a whole conch shell at my feet (I've been praying for one sing I was 11). It's running into friends in the surf. It's traveling to do two week of research. It's doing the things you've always contemplated but didn't find time for. It's living an extraordinary life, a life of joy and freedom.

May you find what lights you up, before you face the brevity of life. God gave us life to enjoy it and learn from it. What will you do with tomorrow?

In God's house

Historic home in Chippewa

In God's house, I am loved for my weakness;

In God's house, humility my only repose;

In God's house, the halls are filled with singing,

and the streets are paved with gold.

In God's house, my burdens are lifted;

my sins burned forever away;

and the peace of Christ brings rest to my soul -

How to live like that today?

Before He calls me home to a mansion,

Before He seals my wounds with His kiss,

I want to live even though I'm broken,

for I know the peace that alone is His.

Through grayest moods and loudest weeping

He speaks from His house how He loves,

and my fear slowly ebbs and my cry gives way

to the praise He compels there above.

~God's House, Genevieve Thul~

Repetitious light

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another... I Thessalonians 5:11a

Courthouse stairwell

Few have mastered it: not only leaving their spiritual life as a light on a lampstand, but lighting other souls with the fire burning in that lamp. In public especially, it is hard to know how much to fit in, and how much to allow yourself to be different because of Jesus' transforming power.

Let me be the mirror, a reflection of Jesus as I walk through the world in another culture these next two weeks. Although the reflection is darkened and defused by all the corners it goes around in my soul before emerging for the world to see, let me be marked by my stalwart faith in my Maker rather than a dispassionate faith.

If there’s a man with a vision to recognize beauty
in places and faces the rest have passed by
If there’s a man who can meet with the queen
and stay warm with a beggar the very same night

a man who would pour himself out for a stranger for years for no kind of pay
let me know his name

I wanna know that man
I wanna know that man

If there’s a man without a wallet or looks to explain
why these masses of people wanna follow him around
if there is something compelling if he’s saying
something they know they’ve gotta know more about

a man who could love like a mother
and die for a world instead of saving himself

I wanna know his name

Oh, I’d be a fool to go on acting like it’s unimportant
it might take a little more faith to imagine him away
to walk the other way…….Oh Oh

If he came
if he lived
If he died
if he lived
If he IS

If there’s a God who would enter humanity
to capture the love of a rebel like me
I want to know his name
I wanna know that man

~Christa Wells' I Want to Know That Man~

Top 10 things I wish I'd never said...and what I should have said instead

From the perspective of chronic cancer patient coupled with the debilitating depression and anxiety that have stolen from my joy for the past 3 months, it comes out in relief. Almost like looking at a negative instead of the printed photograph. My mistakes glare bright when I am forced to be apart from my family. I admit it is a daily difficulty for me to hand over these mistakes which are past, confessed, and paid for to a God I know cares. I know He wants me to show humility and weakness so that my faith stands out as the anchor to which everything in my life is lashed.

I wish I had known how much I would regret saying these 10 phrases. Maybe there is a young mom out there who can lock her lips easier than I, and because of reading this, make a pact not to say these things?

1. Not tonight, honey.

Solution: Open your eyes and roll over.

2. No more kisses, it's time for nap.

Solution: Keep letting that little one kiss you over and over and over again. He'll fall asleep eventually.

3. No, I can't rock you to sleep. I need time alone.

Solution: Plan plenty of cuddling time throughout the day, especially at bedtime.

4. I'm not kissing that dirty face!

Solution: Kiss the chocolate off!

5. Go to your father, for heaven's sake.

Solution: Praise God these kids still love battered old Mama.

6. No, you can't be naked.

Solution: How about when we get home?

7. {teeth gritted} How can I be expected to clean up these repetitive messes??

Solution: Pray while you're in the grossness of clean-up,

then realize that they'll eventually all poop in the pot,

take their shoes off at the door, and put their clothes in the hamper.

8. I'm busy on the computer, can you ask me later?

Solution: Turn away from computer and answer the question.

Teach your children to answer their own questions while you're at it.

Caleb's very last nursing session in 2008

9. No nursing now, Mama's busy.

Solution: Nurse. Every chance you get. They'll grow up.

Way too fast.

10. Wipe that look off your face right now.

Solution: Show compassion. "Can you tell me why you're crying?"

Although anxiety is limiting my ability to touch and be touched right now, I love being the mom the kids won't climb off of, the mid-day story reader, the anytime comforter, the kisser of bruises and bandager of scrapes. The aunt whose niece runs to her for a kiss the very first thing when she arrives. The mom at the campground who hands out organic apples and glow sticks. Who lets her kids throw Black Cat Pops anywhere they would like. The sparklers-before-bed mom. The who-cares-if-the-toilets-have-a-ring-in-them mom.

Be that mom. Don't be the mom I started out as. Be the mom that I have learned to be.