The many roads it took to get here

One day long ago I dreamed of being a travel nurse. We were just wed, two nurses, we had adoption paperwork in process and we dreamed of apartments in far away cities; burn and trauma units, children laying in beds under those city lights waiting for our hands, our hearts.

I was up in a deer stand in Minnesota when I felt the Spirit's nudge. I prayed for our first child, whoever he or she was, prayed a long list of dreams and hopes and fears. Six weeks later, I stared down at a miraculously positive pregnancy test. It was the second I'd seen this in 3 months, me with the undeveloped eggs and the atrophied Fallopian tubes and the low hormone levels. I, the infertile myrtle. My husband with the similar diagnosis. How could we conceive twice in 3 months of marriage? Would this baby disappear into the dark shadows of the ultrasound screen like the first had? I turned around to face the toilet, and vomited bile.

We chose the spot, we dug the hole

We laid the maples in the ground to have and hold

As Autumn falls to Winters sleep

We pray that somehow in the Spring

The roots grow deep

And many years from now

Long after we are gone

These trees will spread their branches out

And bless the dawn

~from Planting Trees, Andrew Peterson~

There was no disappearing, and my first baby emerged from my body 2 weeks late and shocking in her awareness and hunger. She pushed up on her tiny fists while lying on her father's chest that first night, her eyes wide and black, as if she were memorizing every detail of his features. In that instant, every dream I'd ever had disappeared into the hormonal mist and this babe became the entirety of my world.

A brief 18 months later, she was toddling and captivating everyone with her adult vocabulary, starting almost all her sentences with "Actually..." And on a cold and bright March afternoon, her sister arrived black-haired and rosy-lipped. I would look at them, sleeping together in the afternoon, their heads sweaty and covered in curls, and they were at once totally foreign and wholly familiar. 

The third and fourth came just as quickly. We had grown used to the fact that the doctors were wrong, and we would produce children by the grace of God, and our world revolved around them, the diapers, the nursing, the bonds like iron bands holding the barrel of our family tighter than any dreams could have.

But I still dreamed. The microscopic visions of motherhood burned my eyes by then, and I squeezed them shut and imagined telescopes into the universe and periscopes up from the underwater grave of home. 

I could hear the highway song

I dreamed that I was

A world traveler

Set me loose to find my way

Just get me out on the road someday

With my sails unfurled

So many mysteries

I wanted to unravel

If I could travel the world

~World Traveler, Andrew Peterson~

I was on two roads, one part of me home with my children and the other on a highway of longing for grand adventure. The distant cities still glittered in my imagination. The mystery was this tether in my heart, the tangle of four of the "least of these" planted right in the very fibers of my being.

Night is falling on a foreign sky

And distant cities are breathing out 

The lights, tangled on a long thin line

Like diamonds shattered on the ground

And the lights call out from distant cities

You come alive, like a melody

And you shine you shine, brighter than a new day

And I sing along, into the mystery

As the lights call out from distant cities

The tears, filling up my empty eyes

Pour like shadows on the ground

What found me here spreads across a million miles

Breaks the gallows, lifts the shroud

As the lights call out

~Bebo Norman~

I was looking for emotional reasons to link me to the life God had given me. But what lay before me was choices, a million tiny decisions. I learned, in that season struggling to stay home,while forcing myself, teeth gritted tight, to keep my focus square on the life God had blessed me with, was the call-and-response of living for Jesus. He calls, yes - but that call is not always an explosion of brilliance that triggers a tidal wave of love from my heart to His. Sometimes it was just a tiny whisper behind me, "This is the way. Walk in it." My response was not often a heart on fire, but simply a soul willing to put the next footstep down on the path He'd laid before me.

As I kept walking forward on what seemed like a dimly lit, poorly marked path, the emotions followed. The heart follows the mind sometimes. The tidal wave of love I heard about in worship songs and testimonies wasn't my experience. It was a soft turning, a quiet and gentle creeping up in the throat. 

Now the world turns again, and dreams and duties co-exist. I am no longer on a divided highway, pulled between east and west. As surely as I kept stepping forward, He bridged the gap between the desires of my heart and the portion of my life.

If you'll step inside this great glass elevator

It'll take us up above the city lights

To where the planet curves away to the equator

I want to show you something fine

You can see the roads that we all traveled just to get here

A million minuscule decisions in a line

Why they brought us to this moment isn't clear

Could it be that the many roads

You took to get here

Were just for me to tell this story

And for you to hear this song

And your many hopes

And your many fears

Were meant to bring you here all along

How I love to watch you listen to the music

'Cause you sing to me a music of your own

As I cast out all these lines, so afraid that I will find

I am alone, all alone

Could it be that the many roads

I took to get here

Were just for you to tell that story

And for me to hear that song

And my many hopes

And my many fears

Were meant to bring me here all along

We were meant to be right here all along

~Many Roads, Andrew Peterson~

Is there a disconnect between your dreams and your reality? Do you struggle to hear and respond to God's call in your life? Have courage, and take the next step. Someday, like me, you will step into the clearing and that crooked path behind you will be but a memory, for a time.


Photos today from the irrepressible Amelia.

When dreams come true

When I was in college to become a nurse, I used to faint all the time, sometimes 20 times a day. I have a heart condition that is worsened by stress, affected by diet, and drastically influenced by the amount of sleep I get. As you can imagine, I wasn't very good at managing any of those factors as a college student. As a result, I suffered fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rates that caused me to faint all the time, and several times I nearly died because of it. From that point on, I lived life holding my dreams loosely, never knowing exactly how much time God intended me to be on this earth.

"There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off." (Proverbs 23:18)

Years passed, and I got better at living a heart-healthy lifestyle. I was also helped by advances in medical science that directed my cardiologists how best to treat my condition using medications, and finally, in 2010, a pacemaker became available that had a special function specifically designed for people with my heart problem. Life with my heart condition gets better with every passing year, and it looks like I might live a long and healthy life, as far as my heart is concerned.

One of the dreams I harbored deep in my heart, in a space surrounded by tears of grief whenever I fainted and the dream seemed to fade in the distant and perhaps unattainable future, was that of someday obtaining my PhD and teaching with my father at the very university I was a nursing student at.

 "But as for you, be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded." (2 Chronicles 15:7)

Last week, my father carried boxes of books up to office 204 in the nursing building on the campus of the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, a short 5 minute walk from the building where he has worked since 1984. The very building in which I fainted all those times, but grinned and bore it, and, by the grace of God, graduated on time in 4 years with my bachelor of science in nursing. This was one dream, one of the dearest to my heart, one that sat right next to my longing to bear children and raise them, that God did plan to help me fulfill.

My office looks out on the historic Council Oak Tree that is on the University seal, and Little Niagara creek.

Today, with a heart that felt more like bursting than giving out, I began orientation to become a full-time professor at my alma mater. I have already been welcomed warmly by some of my old teachers and mentors, along with new faculty who have arrived in the 12 years since I graduated and embarked on my career as a nurse.

I return now with something more important than any career aspirations constantly in my heart and on my mind - a husband, a home, and four beautiful souls who are dearest to me of anything I have on this earth. They have already fallen head-over-heels in love with UWEC, in a similar way as I remember falling for it as a child, entranced with everything from my papa's hands that smelled of chalk-dust to the peaceful cool of his office, and the constant trickle of youthful energy in the form of the students who came to ask questions or talk about their ongoing projects. There is something incredibly synergistic about the education process, especially at the college level, where most students have honed in on an interest all their own, and are deeply invested in their own success.

My children love my office (perhaps partially because they are allowed to watch unlimited hours of Netflix movies on my 2nd monitor while I squeeze in some work). Caleb loves to work the lock on my door and unlock and lock my file cabinet, desk drawers, and explore the inner workings of my printer. Katy has set to work reading a text on philosophy (I do mean to get a shelf of more age-appropriate books set up - but perhaps it is better for her to read the college texts??). Rosy is busy creating art to grace my corkboard. Amelia likes to arrange my textbooks largest to smallest and then redo her work in the reverse. And they all love the trips to the vending machine, simulation lab, library, and colleague's offices, where they are always greeted with smiles and pieces of candy (note to self: get a candy jar for my office!). Caleb is already a building favorite, as he doesn't differentiate yet between acquaintances, friends, family, and gives each of my colleagues a hearty hug and kiss upon leaving!

Oh, how richly my Lord has blessed me! I am thrilling with excitement, waiting for the beginning of classes after labor day, when I will finally get to meet my first group of students in the four classes I will be teaching! I will still be homeschooling, as I was able (again with God's grace! and pray for me as the semesters go by, that I might be able to continue this?) to block my schedule so that I am gone from home 2 days a week, 3 days a week for one week per month.

"Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him." (Psalm 62:5)

Wake-up call

You are as purple as the winter sunset sky, and my pulse quickens as the code bell rings, signaling to the hospital that another fragile person has fallen prey for lack of oxygen and a good heartbeat. We flock around like sightseers to the sunset, but you rally and suddenly you are gray, and then pink again. You, the reason I pried little fingers off my scrub pants last night to go to work. You, whose dying day is written in His book...but it is not today. I stuff the yellow tag from the code cart into my scrub pocket, the rasp of the ziptag tugging at my fingers cracked and bleeding from hospital soap. A reminder of someone who breathes again because of quick feet of these people who live out lives in the fluorescent of the hospital lights, working through the night to watch God push up dawn for a few dozen people who lay on beds hovering between this life and the next. To me, for most of the night, you were just the patient moaning in the room next door, not my patient, not my burden. My heart was heavy for the one in my room, as that code call looms for us in that room, the patient struggling to maintain a blood pressure as two nurses scurry all night to keep the veins open and the heart pumping strong.

As the code bell rings, and I look down at my patient, still breathing, heart still beating, I run with the rest to the room that calls, and see you there, purple like death. For this I have given up sleep and a warm bed full of husband, for this I have washed my hands a million times, sat through countless classes, and worked my way through an orientation folder thick with tasks at a new job miles from my home. For this my laundry piles high and the doorway clogs with coats. For this the dishes lie undone and I rush from the door anyway, emancipated for a few hours to tend the sick.

It has been a hard transition from stay-at-home mom and scholar to working mom. Even if it is two or three shifts a week, pulling on my nurse scrubs is hard when I wake up in the afternoon red-eyed from a day of interrupted sleep against the sun and Circadian rhythm and crying children. I have questioned my sanity many times since taking this job, and suddenly it all flashes into focus as I watch you vomit and eyes open to see us all sweating over your bed.

As I drive home from your code, the day you didn't die, I am sobbing for my husband, thankful we're all together and breathing this hectic life in the same rooms. I realize afresh that He put this calling in my being because it is a job that matters to him. It is not just extra income or a night off from the house. It is saving lives and loving people and being the hands and feet of Christ in the desolation of the dying night. You cause me to see the sunrise with fresh eyes. You bring thanks to my lips anew. You open the channel I've been searching for days to find, the channel that brings me to heaven's doorstep in a way that the Word alone on paper sometimes cannot. You, with your purple skin and first new breath, fill the world with new verve and my legs with new vigor. I ran fast to bring you life through the oxygen tubing, and instead I find it is I breathing afresh, the world washed clean as all of life that doesn't matter scatters clean away in the sudden rush of thankfulness for home and hearth, kith and kin.

Thank you, stranger, for waking me up this morning to His mercies made new every dawn. Thank you, Father, for breathing life into the dust of our fragile human frames and raising us again to see that You are enough, more than enough, the richest of blessings and bringer of sweetest days.

I was on a fast curve, lost my nerve on a dead end road 

I was goin’ nowhere faster than two legs can go 

Never thought I’d slow down 

I’m glad I finally know now 

I never really noticed when he moved in next to me 

Sometimes it’s amazing just how blind a girl can be 

If I weren’t busy runnin’ I might have seen it comin’ 

That’s life, if you open up your eyes 

You’ll find it gets better all the 

Time, time, time 

Running out of time, I’m runnin’ away 

I’m running out of ways of running away 

Got to slow down, if you don’t, you’re gonna break down 

I’m runnin’ out of time, time, time 

I was cooking dinner, heard a ring at my front door 

I opened up and saw him, never felt like that before 

The moment that our eyes met I knew I’d never forget 

Sometimes the thing you most need is right there, but you can’t see 

That’s life, if you open up your eyes 

You’ll find it gets better all the 

Time, time, time

~Sugarland, Time, Time, Time~

Missing Sissy

She was one of the neediest patients I ever took care of. Being trapped in her isolation room in the hospital for 12 hours at a time was a very good preview of motherhood, actually. Putting someone else before my own needs...real professional needs at that time - I needed to chart, to give her meds, to check her heart function. She didn't want her meds, and didn't care about her heart function. She just wanted to sing the songs from Annie and squeeze my hand while I rocked her, endlessly, for 12 hours at a time. "The sun'll come out tomorrow...bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun..."

She had hypoplastic left heart and tetralogy of Fallot, two heart defects so severe that the only thing that gave her hope was a heart transplant. She got one at age 2. But her mom wasn't very good at giving her medications, and she went into rejection and was abandoned at our hospital front doors in a high-speed drop-off so well-planned that we didn't even have a license plate number for the car. Just a tiny little 4 year old, golden curls blowing in the April breeze, big blue eyes already smiling at the staff coming out to rescue her.  

She never asked for her mother. Not once. Instead she asked for that particular song, "Tomorrow", over and over and over again. And for cuddle. "Will you cuddle me?" Any hour of the day or night, you might hear her plaintive call from the Vail bed where she lived out her days.

And so I sang to her, reluctantly and self-consciously at first. Jesus whispered constantly over my shoulder when I sat at the computer typing those long notes, so I spent a lot of time unzipping her Vail bed prison and rocking her, just because isn't that what you do to show love to a motherless child whose heart is dying inside her? I took a lot of heat from the other nursing staff, the ones who didn't care to rock children all night long. They worked in the ICU for the intensity of it - the caring for silent, paralyzed fragile bodies whose hearts beat visibly underneath Goretex patches and whose dozens of IV pumps made their tiny bodies almost invisible in the chaos and demand of the medical treatment.

She got her second heart transplant after 9 months. Every one of my shifts during those 9 long months was spent caring for her, and sometimes her roommate - usually a "breather" or "feeder" (a NICU graduate who just need to get the hang of feeding or breathing before they could be transferred out of the intensive care unit). One night I came to work and she wasn't in her bed. The evening nurse was cleaning up the various toys she had amassed, getting them ready for transfer back into the general playroom toy population. 

At first I thought she died.

But she was in surgery, getting a new heart.

She was on the heart-lung bypass machine for two months and I couldn't even go in to see her. As a float pool nurse, I didn't have the special training necessary to care for the most acute kids, the ones who came back from surgery with a silent heart, their blood going in and out of their body to a machine through giant snaking tubes taped to the floor. I peaked in one day, and I knew she wasn't doing well.  The next time I peaked in, I put my reputation on the line and sang the chorus of "Tomorrow" from the doorway. There was some giggling at the nurse's station behind me, but the little child swollen and bloody on the bed twitched just once to let me know she heard.

Two days later, she was off the heart-lung bypass, and I was her nurse again. More long months, this time with an anxious child in pain, trapped in her bed by wires, cords, feeding tubes, and ventilator tubing. I tried to sing to her, but it didn't calm her much. The only thing that really worked was stroking her head. Even better were the few shifts when I convinced another nurse to come help me untangle her and put her in my arms in the rocking chair. I would put all her syringes of nightly medications on one table, and the suction equipment and oxygen on the table on the other side of us. And rock all night long. One night I thought I was going to pee my pants. But it was the only time in all those months of healing that this little girl slept through the night, totally limp and peaceful. I was afraid to move a muscle.

They finally took the breathing tube out of her six months after her heart transplant. I applied to become her medical foster parent. I dreamed at night that she would someday really be mine.

It's a boundary nurses are warned about crossing. Taking the relationship built in stone during a patient's hospitalization outside the walls of the hospital risks harm to the nurse, her professional reputation, and the person she reaches out to. What if things don't work out? Where does that leave the patient? 

Then sometimes common sense trumps professional codes of ethics. The social worker who handled my case could see the benefits to this child, and approved my application. I was nervous...my roommate was not excited about having a high-needs child in our previously childless home. I had only talked to my parents about it briefly. So, with papers in hand, I went to the hospital to tell the only person who was going to be totally excited about my plan. 

I heard the code blue alarms all the way from the entrance to the hospital. But it wasn't until I heard them again while walking onto the pediatric ICU that I realized it was one of our kids. I asked at the desk who it was, in street clothes, wondering if I should try to help.

They told me it was her. She'd been down for over 30 minutes.

I sat at the nurse's station and waited. For another hour. An hour and a half before they "called it". I showed the charge nurse the papers in my hand. She was genuinely sorry, tears and all. She held my hand as we walked over to the now-quiet room that had just been vacated by a full team of respiratory therapists, doctors, surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists. There were needles, clamps, and surgical drapes littering the floor. One of the defibrillator paddles hug askew off the edge of the crash cart. The crash cart stood open, syringes emptied, paperwork in piles. The nurses would be back in a few minutes to clean up. Transport had already been called, to zip my little girl up in a rubber bag, cover her in a sheet and take her down to the morgue.

She looked just the same. Except she'd been carved now out of marble, a blue-veined  beautiful marble that Michelangelo might have chosen for his next sculpture. Her lips were bright scarlet red, the color they turn when someone dies that way. Parted over teeth, two of which were broken when they tried to put a breathing tube down her throat with the metal introducer.

I hugged her and I cried like I never cried as a nurse. I cried for a dream and I cried for the futility of it and I cried because I felt so alone and lost and without Jesus that afternoon when I held a little girl I thought I might adopt someday.

The next few days were numb. She was buried in the prairie grass of South Dakota. Her grandmother came to drive her home. Her mother never attended any of the services. I dream of her still. My Antonia on the prairie, prairie hair in prairie grass. I understood slowly what she meant to me. Someone who could smile with a heart that pumped sludgy dark blood through stiff veins, someone who laughed and cuddled when death was slowly creeping up the limbs and squeezing everything vibrant out of her, inch by inch. She loved me from the first day I walked into her room,  simply because I would sing when no one else even heard her request.

I learned I can't predict this Consuming Fire I serve. He taught me sunset is a beautiful view...if you enjoy it just for the view. If the beauty of sunset is only enjoyed because of the promise of sunrise, you will lose so much. It doesn't matter where sunrise occurs, on earth or in heaven, the sun does come up Tomorrow.

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There'll be sun.

Just thinkin' about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
'Til there's none.

When I'm stuck in a day
That's gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh!

The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya Tomorrow!
You're only
A day
Away!

I hope Jesus lets me be her Mama in heaven. I've got a whole mansion there I'd love to share with Sissy.

An instant bedroom make-over

This is the only spot in my house that always stays clean. Two chairs. Sentinels amongst the piles, silently proclaiming that there is something sacred in this home. And that it's not any surface or spot or place or thing.

It's people.

The view from the chairs is pretty depressing. Every morning (well, almost every morning) since a fateful day in January, my husband and I have sat in these chairs to read our devotions together. We read the Word, we share the Word, and we pray. And are largely able to ignore the mess that we see from our two chairs.

Why is it, that two chairs buried in laundry and unpacked suitcases can be such a magical haven? Why is the view from there somehow less depressing than the view elsewhere in our house? Is there some potion in the aged sometimes yellow-sometimes green of the velveteen of this chair that makes the messes that nearly engulf it disappear?

There is. It's the view. (not the mess and not the laundry and not the unpacked suitcases and spiderwebs.)

The view from these chairs is the place where our beloved sleeps. His beloved. My beloved.

His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. 
This is my beloved and this is my friend.
(Song of Solomon 5:16)

When our house was cleaner, and the laundry never piled up, and the meals were more on time, and more imaginative...that is how I defined myself as wife and mother. In terms of what I was able to accomplish. In terms of how good I was at being a wife and mom. I was a good cook. I kept things sanitary and clean. The laundry was never piled up in a mess of wrinkles. I ironed occasionally. The sheets were washed every week. The kids were bathed every other day. My husband came home to a wife in relatively clean clothes who tried her best to be flirty and fun. There was music on. Home-school was going like clock-work.

Sounds nice, doesn't it?

I miss it, all the time.

But does it sound redeemed?

Who was accomplishing things around the Thul household in the picture I just painted you? God? Or Genevieve? Who was taking the credit? Whose ego was being massaged with compliments? Who felt like she had it all together?

I have wondered, at times, whether it would have fallen apart so drastically, if I'd been more humble. If I'd learned quicker how to integrate God and His glory into a life that was running smoothly. I cannot extricate cancer and suffering from my life any longer. I can't figure out if I would ever have arrived here without it.

If my house had never fallen apart, if the wheels hadn't come off the family bus this badly, marooning us in our messy home with stresses beyond what we imagined threatening to crack the very foundation of our marriage, we would not know this love.

I could have always assumed that Aaron loves me because I keep his house clean, his meals cooked, his needs satisfied, and his bed warm.

Now I know for sure that is not the way he loves me.

I know he loves me because he sees my soul, because God brought us together, because he has allowed 36 years of seeking God to shape him into an amazing man who looks past the little things and the big things that distract him from seeing deep inside me - the woman I want to be, perhaps the woman I will never even become.

Do you think the woman in Song of Solomon was really the most beautiful woman in the world?

Does Jesus love us because of our perfection, or our brokenness?

By allowing me to suffer a messy, disorganized home in the wake of cancer and encephalitis, God has allowed me to experience Christ-like love flowing from my husband. Love that loves anyway. Love that loves with service. Love that heals brokenness.  Redeeming love.

That is the potential in your marriage. The potential in your messy house. The potential in you as failure.

When you feel entirely alone, lost, broken, bruised, battered, useless, weak, imperfect, sinful, abandoned...don't forget to close your eyes and turn your face upward, toward the One who is always silently present. He will redeem it. He will renew it. He will use your situation to bless you far beyond what you can imagine or desire.

The best preparation you'll ever receive for your most agonizing trials will be when you are the only student in class. In the midst of you deepest difficulties, have you ever looked around and thought, Where is everybody? Sometimes God reserves the right to withhold others, to pull you aside with Him, so that you can experience what David did in I Samuel, "David found strength in the Lord his God." ~ Living Beyond Yourself online Bible study by Beth Moore

Linked to Ann's 2011 pre-Valentine's series on marriage at:

A conversation in the morning

I have a 4 year old who drinks a bottle at bedtime and naptime.

Sometimes I want to scream when I wash them.

Because I am afraid that she will never grow up.

I have a 5 year old and a 7 year old who haven't learned to make their beds.
Without prompting.
And I am afraid they are going to turn out just like me.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow:
for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. 
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof.
(Matthew 6:34)
I will still be with you when Amy is 30.
Whether or not she is still using a bottle to keep from seizing.
You know it's not your responsibility to keep her safe, right?
And you know I like you just the way you are?
That your daughter's failures when they're 30 will just bring them to me?

The diaper pail stands cracked open. 

The fumes fill the room.

I kick myself for not dumping it yesterday when it started to grow stale.

I have a four year old who wears a diaper at night.

If she can take it off herself, and put it IN the diaper pail,

shouldn't she be old enough to quit peeing in it?

Just shut the pail, Gen.

Why do you ask these questions?

Do you really think you're a failure because poop stinks 
and the child with the brain infection still pees at night? 


Really?

Blessed is the woman who remains steadfast under trial, 
for when she has stood the test she will receive the crown of life 
(even if Amelia pees at night for the next 45 years), 
which God has promised to those who love him. 
(James 1:12; gender switch mine)

Okay, leaving the bathroom.

I hear the kids in the kitchen.

The oldest served breakfast, praise God.

One less thing for me to do.

Or perhaps several extra things to do.

Don't cry over spilled milk.

What about the Cheerio spackle on my cupboards, Lord? Can I cry about that?

Sure, you can cry about it.

But don't wound your children with your words 
when they're just being children. You may not do that.

I tell you the truth, whatever you did 
for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. 
I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, 
you did not do for me.
(Matthew 25:40 & 45)

Do you remember breaking this door frame?

Sending the door flying against frame so fast sparks almost flew with it?

And the sparks came off your tongue and burned your children?

Remember slamming the door with all your might,

and the trim came loose?

I remember it because a drop of my blood paid for it.

I know, too, why you did it - I'm there with you, I see all your thoughts.

You slammed the door so you wouldn't slam them.

Yes, Lord. I will never forget it.

You don't do it anymore.

That's how faith is the victory.

Your house is still messy.

You still hate that your house is messy,

and half the tears you cry to me are about your messes.

But I taught you with messes. I taught you not to scream at your children.

I am still teaching you to be a servant.

Being a servant means you can't only serve as long as everyone agrees to keep it clean.

And not to make certain messes.

Being a servant means being on your knees,

scrubbing Cheerios off the cupboards.

Cleaning up the milk.

Dumping the diaper pail, however stinky.

Washing bottles for as long as I tell you to wash bottles.

...many who are first will be last, and the last first. 

(Matthew 19:30)

Truly, truly, I say to you, 

unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, 

it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 

(John 12:24)

A buried appliance speaks

I crack you open like a ripe melon

and the paintings strip off your face

like dead leaves rustling down, down to the floor

Lost in the color

a boy from somewhere East of here

mother with the risqué hair
she smiles
he opens
they all remind

the verses like banners

are there if you care to find them

in the harried moments

when voices rise sharp

sometimes banners cover the ever-ready sin

of mid-day tongues

and the last year's daughter

glowers

a harbinger above another banner

a landmark reminder of praise

prayer

dreams are buried on your once-white skin

like a wrinkled old woman's 

collecting dirt in the roadmap of life's waste

in the curled paper dripping from the waves of clutter

stands a round Queen Genevieve

Queen Mama

"proud" purveyor of your contents

"overseer" of this mess

Ah.

I envision the crown on head

my hair not risqué

and bend again

to pick them up,

precious paintings

...even if there are thousands....

and fasten them with dreams and banners

because I cannot seem to find my garbage can.

Amy joins the Teletubbies {Mayo Hospital Stay Day 1}

If you are new here, you may not have heard about my daughter Amelia, who survived a life-threatening brain infection at age 3. After her infection, she suffered a second assault on her tiny body...an auto-immune reaction to the infection stripped her brain of it's protective fatty myelin coating that insulates all the nerves. After completely losing the ability to walk or sit unassisted, feed herself, swallow and chew, and suffering severe speech, hearing, and vision losses, she made a dramatic recovery that can only be credited to God (with help from a hefty dose of steroids for 6 months straight). To read more about Amelia's original illness, click the tab at the top of the page above my blog name.

Amelia was hospitalized today to investigate her one remaining issue: a severe seizure disorder that continues despite high doses of life-altering anti-seizure medications. Amelia is doing great in the hospital. God granted us a delightful 2 full hours playing in their amazing play room before Amelia had to be confined to her room.

What a set-up for a kid trapped in the medical world! Every piece of medical equipment you can imagine - down at her level to see, touch, and try!

Then the hard part - getting "wired up" to the machine that reads her brain waves! This involves scratching the scalp, scrubbing with rubbing alcohol (ouch!), attaching electrodes with an alcohol based glue, and then taping them to the scalp. Quite a challenge with this kid, who falls into the "hair gifted" category!

She had about enough by the time they were finished, but remained her sweet self, much to the amazement of the technicians attaching the leads to her head. What a difference child training makes in the happiness of the child, no matter what the circumstances! I have recently discovered the timely and sweet mothering blog of experienced mom Juana Mikels.  Take a look - great resource on gentle but Biblical discipline. Although I disagree with her stance on infant schedules - as I am a staunch and out-spoken advocate of feed-on-demand and attachment parenting of newborns - she lends a voice of experience that gives many great practical tips about things like time-outs, quiet time in bedrooms even for small children, and organizing your home (from my series this week, you are probably getting the sense that I need all the organizational tips I can get!!).

All done, simply sweet, even though she had a seizure while they were "wiring her up". I think she looks like a delightfully girly and beautiful version of a Teletubby. Her sisters were pretty smitten with her sweet new hat as well! We ask for your prayers. Amelia will be in the hospital for 3-5 days unless we miraculously get enough seizures captured sooner. We are confined to a 10x10 room in the hospital - and connected to wires. Quite a challenge for this active 4-year-old and her mother!

Being in the hospital somehow makes me long for the much easier days I lived as a single woman and nurse. Every beep, every smell, sound, the lay-out of the rooms...it's all still as familiar as a comfortable pair of jeans. It is hard to be on the other side of the coin...the patient, handcuffed - even though I usually know what to do - to help with the actual "work" here. It certainly is a different life God has called me to these days. I have learned so much about Him being in these shoes...like one of my favorite Sarabeth Geoghegan songs says: "I don't want to go back to where I was/I want to stay right here/with You" (Opening, from the album Tired of Singing Sad Songs).

What leaks through

There they are - all over every window under 5 feet high. The handprints older moms tell me to cherish because they will soon be gone.

Problem is, I had difficulty finding even one handprint to photograph. Because the kids love to leave other marks on my windows, too: they write their names with their spit, they slide their hands up and down, leaving tracks and letters and smears instead of cute little fingerprints.

Some days it feels like the sun can barely shine through these track-marked window panes. I'm lucky to wash these windows once a year, the vinegar pungent, sharp, clean, billowing up from my bucket of hot water as I scrub with blue rags, discards from the hospital's surgical ward.  These days, I use them to scrub windows instead of wounds.

And one ran and filled a sponge full of vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink (Mark 15:36a).

I clean windows with the liquid offered Jesus to soothe his blood-crusted lips as he took his last few breaths while saving me. The smell rises and stings my eyes. The tears flush out the burn and the sting settles deep in my chest. Is this my cross, Lord - this messy home? These rowdy kids who drive me crazy half the time? These small burdens that seem to always be breaking my back?

Forgive me, Lord, when I am petty.

I see the children twirl in the room I just swept, twirl in front of the filmy windows, twirl in the sun that still streaks through. Praise God for this short moment of the day when there's nothing there to trip over.

She twirls here, too, in front of the table that is always piled with laundry. For over a month now, I've been sorting the summer and winter clothes. I sometimes wonder if I'll be doing this still the day I leave God's green earth.

But her twirling in front, like one of Degas' ballerinas, soothes my eyes, and the wrinkle between them fades, worry line of motherhood always failing, always with a mess to keep on cleaning.

The dishes never seem to be done either, and my husband tells me we need to buy more kid cups because we're always running short.  But we have 50! We don't need MORE, I protest, and slam dishes into dishwasher and wish for a magic wand. We just need to work harder. Or something like that. I realize I am muttering to myself now, and he is working, harder than I who have stopped to complain instead.

He rarely did the dishes, before I got cancer. Perhaps that's the silver lining in the messes that surround. Without them, I'd have never discovered how deep love speaks when my husband's hands do me a service, take up a humble chore of housework and lift it, silently and tenderly, from the load I am carrying around with me every day. Even more, those eyes of his that never speak shame and his voice that never says why aren't you better at this? Why can't you keep up? What's wrong with you? That voice is my own, the one coming from within. Never the voice of my lover, or the Lover of my soul either.

Would my husband have learned to bless me this way, had I not been tripped up by these disasters? If I'd had the energy to keep trying to be perfect, would I have ever discovered that what he really loved was me, not our clean house or our gourmet, on-time dinners, or the fresh outfit I always rushed into just before he came home?

I saw it, through the camera lens...the dirty milk bottles, and the pile of junk in the foreground, the random bottles in between the dishes that bore the food of that evening's dinner. Clutter. Failure.

But what leaks through, around the clutter and through the mess and in spite of the dust and the dirt and the chores undone, is love. Love is here. Love is now. Love is in the twirling girl, love is flowing from the husband's hands, it speaks loud in our dinner prayers and the laughter, even though we're eating at the island (again).

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. (I John 4:16-18)

Linked up for Valentine's 2011

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Prayer request from November: I beg for your prayers today as my daughter Amelia is admitted to the hospital at the esteemed Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She is 4 and will be having a 72-hour electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure her brain waves during various activities throughout her days and her sleep at night. We are hoping this points her physicians there in the right direction for treatment of what appears to be persistent, violent, and frequent seizures.