Wounded birds flock together

It seemed such an odd love to develop, given my age and work experience. Trauma and I have been in many battles together.  Between the injuries I've seen and the few I've heard or felt, it seems unlikely to want to fly in any way, shape or form. I was petrified the first time we took off on a machine to achieve that feeling - it was both petrifying and intoxicating. I learned the first day that you don't fly off a motorcycle willy nilly, and a good driver can guide you through the ride with ease and grace.

My wife got me a bike a few weeks ago. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a thing quite so much. Probably not since I was a kid, at Christmastime. I couldn't ride today, even though the afternoon was beautiful. It was Homecoming, and we had 3 kids going, so it was time to be a mom. Evening came, the long shadows of an autumn sunset, and I headed down to the garage to look at her, ending up hauling her out for a bath.

She's been through a battle, I thought as I washed the saddlebags. I found gouges in the crash bar on the back side and a little chip out of the paint. Her scars don't make me love her any less. I'm scrubbing this bike, and thinking of some old Scriptures I used to love...how God used Rahab the "harlot", Mary Magdalene, Deborah the Judge who stabbed someone through the eye with a tent stake. Scarred and battered women who couldn't be quelled by the evils they'd seen, the sins they'd committed or the men who tried to crush them. How those stories used to give me hope, used up, battered and scarred before I was old enough to make those choices for myself.

Loving something (or someone) scarred is to participate in redemption. Reclamation. It's an honor to be the one to put footprints in the dusty earth that bears the disfigurements of the war that passed through. To tend, to water, and finally, to harvest from that land. You'll never forget that the ditch there used to be a deep furrow - now covered in lush grass, your feet will still remember the gash exposed. Time - and love - heals all wounds.

My own scars have faded, from red to pink to flesh. Lines still cut across but I don't catch strangers staring at them anymore. My bike is a lot like me, scars hidden now, there only for the intimate touch, not the casual glance. I'm going to enjoy riding my bike even more, knowing those scars are there, that she carried some other rider out of a battle. May she be a part of my own Phoenix story, part of the healing.

Part of the reclamation of this battered old self.

Coming out might not mean what you think

truth sometimes settles out of dust and chaos
in unraveling and uncoupling we find deeper wells
despite of or perhaps because of
the tragedies that have swirled around us
we are driftwood strong and smooth

Remembering ourselves
can be radical self-preservation
What you see as selfish heedless foolish
might just be the last spark to my candle
It takes courage to light your own flame
in a howling wind of nay sayers
Acts and deeds over words and creeds
the proof is in the pudding
I'll show you my love - show me yours please

it has been a season of iPhone photos
my camera gathering dust on a shelf.
I am a brushless painter, voiceless poet;
fine art is eye of the beholder stuff
simplicity of routine
the gathering of warm bodies to us
in a shelter we've made a nest
is there anything finer
than growing beauty in tiny humans?
working at what makes our soul sing?
purity of a simple laugh
ringing through a lazy after school afternoon
or the perfection of an embrace that fits just right
I gather moments more than images
for moments mean more and sharing them less

feet on the frozen lake
I sink my feet into life's unadulterated facts
We've no idea still what dawn will bring
with all our devices and sensors and data
it is still a surprise - that first conscious breath
absorbing daylight as much through our noses and lungs as we do our eyes

It's not been just on lonely incense evenings
or in the leaving or the forging of new life
it is in the arms of the lover my soul wailed for
finally cradled in just the ways I need to be held
and love filling empty spaces
that have long collected only wind and rain
I whisper she and am not undone by fear

Who judges what spring will awaken the slumbering hibernation
we willingly or inexorably lull ourselves into?
For me it has been the winter of separation
feeling air all around my soul
in walking away from dogma and certainty
I've found peace bobbing about on the ocean of life's ceaseless wonder and pain
Lifting anchor was the last tether cut
In the reflection of memories forgiven, waves of losses and disappointments
If I can forgive those who twisted me
Perhaps I can even forgive myself

The color, wideness of grin coming back
a gust of wind now and then through my wings
and you can take the high road
I'll take the path through the woods
along the detours, on those dead ends
I've met healing and safety
Pain doesn't paralyze me anymore
because it is important to let yourself be alive
let your humanness breathe without analyzing every detail
get dirty in life together, perfection isn't all -
that's freedom, my soul sings,
and freedom is worth the price.

I don't wear the clothes I've been told I should
I'm a patchwork quilt
A repurposed thrift store find
but for all my scratches and patches
there's eyes that see my beauty
I'll be a Breakfast Club revolutionary
bear those scars and scratches
for the world to see and scoff at

because if one person sees strength
and it catches fire in one soul
if it spares you one moment of pain
I will bear the harsh gaze
I will cut the apron ties
so your kite flies








Some thoughts today on the importance of making your own path: more on why I believe in being authentic and visible here.

Acceptance: OneWord365

"Radical acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our lives as it is.”

― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

I sing the words under my breath as the kids jam in the backseat: I'm friends with the monster that's under my bed, Get along with the voices inside of my head… I ask them about monsters, and they say they've never seen any. I wish I couldn't picture mine so clearly. It was next to my bed, not under it. Inside of my head now. I've internalized the voice of the abuser and trauma-driven self-talk rattles around on loop-repeat as my modus operandi.

New Year's Eve, and I'm thinking about the monster. Trying to get a visual. I sit down to draw, sketch a little girl walking in the darkness covered by a cape. The monster grows giant in charcoal strokes as I draw in the shadows behind her. A little girl runs away with dirty hair. A grown woman walks with head down and hands in pockets. There is another reflection, skewed, elongated. Most people can't see the cloud of thoughts I carry with me everywhere. I can feel them buzzing, like exploding sizzles of color in pastels bursting over me. A personal fireworks show whenever I am lost in thought.

Just a week ago, I got lost in the sandstorm of pain, the inevitable tide of emotion in the wake of trauma. I lost myself so completely I tried to lose myself forever. In the midst of the memory-driven panic, something inside of me must have wanted to be found. I called my therapist on her help line, and she sent someone to find me. I spent a few days recovering in the hospital.

This, then, is my one resolution for 2014: stop running - from myself, from my pain, from my past.

I once thought my goal for each day was wisdom. This is too lofty for baby steps toward healing. What I search for instead is mindfulness: the ability to stay in the present moment, whatever that moment is. Keep your mind out of the past and off the future so you can live fully in the now. Which, after all, is the only moment any of us are promised. Mindfulness helps me believe that I'm not in danger when everything in my physical body is tuned to high alert, a knee-jerk reaction that doesn't include forethought. I see other survivors, like me, who jump at sudden noises, squirm in chairs while they try to stay still, pace instead of sit, fidget, gesture, everything a big puff of smoke meant to confuse and intimidate the enemies that are no longer there.

I see my past mistakes as signs of weakness, stupidity, naiveté. What I forget is the courage it took to stand back up each time. The gritting of the teeth as I look terror in the eye and walk on. The fortitude to get out of bed and face the day when you live in fear of being maimed, torn apart, desecrated, destroyed.

This is the year I will accept the past, one memory at a time. I cannot change it; there is no hope for a better past. Acceptance, admitting the truth - that's the only way back out of the darkness that threatens to consume me. I am learning that to accept something as true does not mean you agree with it, like it, want it, or support it. It just means you are saying: this was. This happened. To me. I couldn't stop it, I hated it, it burned my very flesh and altered the development of my mind and personality. This is how I plan to cut the chains that bind me to the trauma and swallow my ability to cope, believe, trust, love, empathize, accept my self as I am now.

I always struggle to pick a word that I want to define my year. I picked Hebrew twice but my love affair with that language is definitely over. In 2012, I picked "succeed". That, more than the words before, became a solid foundation on which to build the next 365 days: my dissertation was approved; I graduated with my PhD; cancer went into remission; homeschooling blossomed; I landed the job of my dreams. It was a really good year - minus the depression and anger and all they brought with them. For 2013, I chose the word "less". I was panicking that money and status and privilege could destroy us. Ironically, I thought of less in terms of "less me, more god". Instead, I ended the year with less faith and somehow, fewer questions. Less soul clutter, less mind pollution, less bondage. Sometimes the heart knows better than the mind what is necessary: last year, it was not less of me, but more. I needed to clear my head of the absorbed misperceptions and negative beliefs. I needed to come to terms with myself, and I did. I ended the year feeling more love toward my self than ever before, a sense of adventure as I began to explore, for the very first time, who I am and what aspects of myself I liked.

This year, I tossed around words like "sophrosyne" - a Greek word often simply translated as prudence, meaning the state of a healthy mind, characterized by self-control, moderation and a deep sense of self. I landed for awhile on a related Greek word, "metanoia" - the journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life. I considered run-of-the-mill English words like change, being, healing, identity, self, understanding. There were some more heady terms like metamorphosis, transformation, equanimity, mindfulness, intuition, authenticity, unafraid, justice, diversify.

I landed again and again, in the synonyms of the words I pondered, on acceptance. I couldn't get away from it, and for good reason - whether it is accepting the past or accepting myself or accepting my limitations and mistakes, I definitely need more of it. And so I landed, for a few days, on this word. It grew on me. It seemed to encompass all the other goals for the year in one simple term. I write my list of goals from this singular perspective: that acceptance will mean more health, happiness, balance and beauty in our lives, my life.

This year, I will strive to:
1. accept myself
2. accept my past, trauma and all
3. accept the good things in my past as well
4. accept my life circumstances
5. accept my burdens, fears, and failures
6. accept my family, one member at a time, just as they are
7. accept others - students, coworkers, friends, strangers
8. accept ambiguity and uncertainty
9. accept that some answers will always elude me

Have you ever thought about selecting a word that speaks to the personality you want your year to take on? Or perhaps describes a goal you will work on, a concept you are trying to understand, or something you want to change or maintain? Join me at OneWord365 if you wish to read more stories or contribute your own…

Saving Seven

My therapist makes me think about the little girl in me all the time. It took me 30 some years to admit that she even existed. I didn't want to be "stunted" by my abuse history. I wanted to be normal.

The little girl in me is the part that comes out when I am afraid. She is a fierce protector. She has a notch in her belt for each of the brothers she saved from the filth of that woman. She has a notch in her belt for every time she laid herself down next to evil to prevent someone else from having to know that pain.

Now it is time for her to get back up. It is time for her to walk away from the dark corners she's been hiding in. It's time for her to grow up.

I've wept tears for her. There is part of me that can't imagine living without that little fierce creature within me. But it is not fair to trap her in a fear-filled 7 year old mind. I welcome her in to my own anxiety fraught brain. I imagine holding her close and the slow, tentative whimper that comes before the torrent of tears she always held in. I imagine her beating her little fists against my chest. I imagine her heart breaking right there in my arms. I know love is poor stitching for a broken heart. But it does close wounds.

I want her to know that I love her, bruises and brokenness and filth and terror and all. I want her to know it's okay to feel that way when someone does that to you. I want her to know it's not her fault.

I think she's starting to hear me when I say these things. And slowly, tentatively, she is walking toward healing.

Prompt: The Little Girl in You

If you hate the play, change the script

If I hadn't been born with a heavy dose of piss and vinegar, I'd have given up long ago. Several people have tried to break me, destroy me, discredit me. The specter of that possibility - someone exploding back into my life and pulling the thin veil off my secrets - tortured me for far too long. The only antidote is to grit your teeth, accept reality, and be honest about who you really are. The only cure for internalized shame is to air out your dirty laundry once and for all so you can get back to life the way it was supposed to be lived. After you've radically accepted your experiences, your strengths, your flaws, then - and only then - you will be free to value the person you have become in spite of all the pain. You will be able to stand tall in your own shoes and devil-may-care if the world values you as much as you do yourself.

When someone hurts you when you're small, tells you to keep it a secret or else...there's no one to blame, there's no validation of your pain, there's no healing. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of child abuse is that the disgust and the shame of it grows into that person inextricably, often saddling them with a heaping pile of steaming guilt that was never theirs to begin with. What happened can't be that bad, because you have to live with it. So you minimize the abuse and instead believe it is you that is bad. I'm bad, I deserve nothing, anything nice that happens to me is a fluke, a gift, or a mistake. My internal monologue had this sentence on constant repeat, a looped excuse for my self-hatred and self-doubt.

For the longest time I thought the only way to fix myself was to see myself "clearly" as the sinner and screw-up I was, and hope that there was forgiveness enough for a 7 year old girl who did nasty things like I did. I took the pain, shame, disgust, betrayal and evil and drew it into myself, held it so close to my heart that it grafted itself in. I thought I could think away the pain. Just will it, do it, one thought at a time. I sang the Pink song loud on karaoke nights, willing myself to change, to change those words and those thoughts that pinned me down and kept the blood running fresh from old, old wounds.

You're so mean when you talk

To yourself - you are wrong

Change the voices in your head

Make them like you instead

So complicated

Look how we all made it

Filled with so much hatred

Such a tired game

So cool in lying and we tried, tried, tried

But we tried too hard, it's a waste of my time

Done looking for the critics, cause they're everywhere

They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair

Estrange ourselves and we do it all the time

Why do we do that?

Why do I do that?

You can't will those thoughts away any more than you can will the abuse away. If you keep all that despair and blame inside, afraid to expose your naked flesh to the world, no one will ever be able to tell you it was wrong and that it wasn't your fault. The first step to changing your thoughts is to invite someone into them. Then, armed with their more objective interpretation of the twisted jumble of events, you can begin to forgive yourself. Even without forgiveness, though, change is possible. You can choose to act as if you deserve love and respect long before you truly believe it.

If you are extremely miserable and you would like to feel better you may have to change your behavior despite whatever argument is going on in your head. If you could treat yourself with kindness and compassion, be understanding, and acknowledge your deepest fears and hurts- at least to yourself- why wouldn’t you? If this made your life easier, more livable, and more hopeful- why wouldn’t you do it? Arguing about deserve-ability certainly isn’t doing anything for you. In order to feel differently you have to act and behave as if self-compassion and kindness matters. You may have to tolerate some guilt, set some limits on your time, or even say no to the demands of others. The point is that you should get started on acting and behaving in ways that are worthy or deserving of you. Over time, your attitudes may change right along with your behavior. And in addition to feeling better because you are behaving as if you have more self-respect, you will have more resources for coping when other people put you in demeaning situations, take advantage or you, or assume that you are willing to be treated poorly. (Renee Hoekstra, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy counselor)

It's a magical thing, being compassionate to yourself. You can go back and love yourself when you were least lovable, when you were covered with tears and filth and confusion. Every one of those childhood moments when you felt unimportant, unnoticed or unloved? You can look back on that now, close your eyes and feel what it felt like to be that child. And you can notice. You can validate that experience, acknowledge that it hurt you. You can tell that little one the significance of that moment, how it bent you and strengthened you all at once. You can tell her that because of her - not in spite of her - your life has been amazing.

Do you believe you are worthy of your own compassion and love?

At the limits of possibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes life does go right

The memory of the "before" is as visceral as an instinct. Your baby face floats up from the soup of all the yesterdays I've saved for a rainy day. Chubby cheeks, unquenchable smile, stubborn as a mule. Your spiky blond hair that became paintbrush ends when I put it up in pigtails. From the moment you were born, I had you pegged:

Indomitable.

We named you Amelia, which means "hard working", Irene, "peace". Our last name is an old low German phrase that means "unusual amount of hair". Which is hilarious. Thousands of years later, Thuls are still sprouting copious amounts of crazy hair. And you, my third daughter - you were the girl who was peaceful, hard-working, and crowned with the craziest hair of all my kids.

People who meet you now don't understand why you're still sucking on a pacifier. They stare when you morph from intelligent, well-behaved 7 year old to the moans of a pre-verbal infant when we're out in public. And I think this is cool - the stares, the confusion on the faces.

It means you are so normal, my sweet girl, that most people can't tell anything was ever wrong.

I watch the "before" and I cry. Everything was so....normal. So expected. Lock-step with everyone's plan. Evolving plan, yes - but planned. You were a natural extension of your two sisters, and I thought we were doing fine. I thought we were doing right. I thought it would be like this forever.

I am one who marries plans. I don't date them, I cling to them as if they are my very lifeblood. And when they change? It tears a piece of my heart out, most times.

And then there was after. There was the day you woke up and you could talk a little. You couldn't walk, you couldn't sing, you couldn't play, but you could talk. The infection that had ravaged your brain unchecked while doctors struggled to put a name to it, it stole the Amelia we knew and loved and gave us a new and very sick little girl to care for.

Vaccine-related encephalitis. Even at one of the premier hospitals in the United States, it took months for them to correctly diagnose your problem. 

And now it is 4 years later, almost to the day. World Encephalitis Day was just announced for next year: February 22nd, 2014.

You are a survivor. You are a champion in this story. So many days they said would never happen? They've come! The day you walked again. The day your partial seizures stopped and you began to grow. The day you learned your letters once again. And, at 7, just like every other little kid in the country, you learned to READ.

I love you now more than ever. I am thankful we have had these 4 years. I can't imagine my life without you.

For all the wrongs, you are one right in the universe.

Click to learn more about encephalitis

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

An eternal spring

Winter's past

and summer's come

snaking green tendrils of growth

through chilled earth;

I open to the warm sun,

sprout healing.

I remember the suspension of disbelief - 

the same thing that

keeps us turning pages -

the drama we love in short bursts

constant, eating alive

a little girl's soul.

Spring turned to summer

that 7th year

and innocence was lost

with finality

as if there was no

going back,

no do-overs

Alternate rebellion:

treating my physical body

like you did -

trash and toilet -

and my soul languished 

fear nibbling

at the corners of belief.

I couldn't hurt you

so I hurt myself

dangerous daring

cliffs jumped off of

airplanes jumped out of

mountains traversed

in mid-winter.

Adrenaline

was my new best friend.

Now I find myself

looking back through fog

at things long ago,

and I am yearning for

spring eternal

the spring of peace

binding up broken

and beauty for ashes.

Here comes the sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We bear the light of the Son of man,

so there's nothing left to fear.

So I'll walk with you through the shadowlands

until the shadows disappear,

Because He promised not to leave us,

and His promises are true.

So in the face of all this chaos,

baby, I can dance with you.

Let's go dancing in the minefields,

let's go sailin' in the storms.

this is harder than we dreamed

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

~Dancing in the Minefields, Andrew Peterson~

Linked to Heather:: Just Write

When peace is a distant memory

Photo by Ann Voskamp

Sometimes I wonder, if this is how love feels, what would His anger feel like? Life seems an insurmountable pile of trials thrown together like dirty laundry, and you will never complete it all. If suffering is to be our food for the rest of life, are we willing? Oh, to skip back to the naïveté of childhood, before I realized the weight of this life.

How do you roll the crushing boulder off your broken frame? What could possibly give me leverage in this mire? I keep counting blessings, as if to make a rope ladder up from the pit out of these gifts numbered. But it is slogging work, to push away the dross of each day to hunt for the few jewels. Life is hard, times are bad, and it seems too much to bear.

Guilt piles up heavy as well. Every time the dark thoughts collide inside, more wounds are created, in me, in these children, in my husband who so tenderly supports and comforts me. How can I keep doing this to the ones I love? If it were up to self-control, if I could fix these broken places myself, I would have, a thousand times over. The problem is, I can only rely on the One stronger than I to heal me, and instinct makes me push Him away, as He seems, too, the source of my pain. By His allowing it feels as though He gives His consent. How can He not rise as my shield and make the sun shine upon my soul for a season? Does He really think I am strong enough to survive all of this?

Today I am to be at a women's conference, but I cannot drive, I cannot think, and I cannot be in a group of women - anathema to an introvert's bleeding heart. It would be like walking back into the fire the day you get out of the hospital with your old burns still weeping. I cannot make myself participate.

Oh, how I beg for deliverance.

Grace.

Peace.

Healing.

When will my Lord hear and comfort me?

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for mine help. Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. (Psalm 35:1-3)

When I am Unlovely: Letters to Aaron

You curl around my back like my parentheses. Surrounding my body, my whirling thoughts, my discontent with a bracket as if this period of my life is just a passing thing, something added to the sentence for emphasis only.

You have looked into my wounded eyes and seen clear down to my soul and as you reached down there with your passionate gaze, deep, you dropped a handful of comfort into the empty places. You love me no matter what, in spite of, at all times. I cannot understand it.

You weep sometimes because I am weeping. Other times you implore me to see the beauty that you see and to turn away from brokenness. Both I love. You I love.

It's been a long season of me in hiding, me in transition, me in the metamorphosis of suffering. Sometimes I wonder if you will like who I am after this transformation. There is a magnet in the yellow kitchen that says, "I am on the second leg of a return trip to being ME." You met me before I embarked on the journey. Fell in love with me with so many unknowns. As the shroud lifts from my past and I let you into the darkness there, you show no judgment, you don't despise, you look around those rooms and you cry for what is missing and what exists - the emptiness and the pain.

You hold my hand like I am a little child and lead me through memories like an instructor, teaching me to know myself when I would rather turn away. That is brave. You, my prince, knight in shining armor. Foreshadowing of Christ the Bridegroom.

I am stronger because of you. More poetic. I dance because of you, and sing, too. I gather up life, all of it, like a heap of golden leaves in autumn, overflowing armfuls. You hunt joy with me and you hand me these gifts of moments all wrapped up and ready to open like presents. Present. You help me see the presents in the present.

What would I do without you?

I hear this song, and sometimes it is about you, and sometimes it is about God. And isn't that Ephesians 5:25-27, for you are to me as Christ is to church, and to see you similar - two Bridegrooms, one earthy, tangible, and One who waits quietly.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

I can see the pain behind your eyes

It's been there for quite a while

I just wanna be the one to remind you what it is to smile

I would like to show you what true love can really do

Girl, let me love you

And I will love you

Until you learn to love yourself

Girl, let me love you

I know your trouble

Don't be afraid, girl, let me help

Girl, let me love you

A heart of numbness, gets brought to life

I'll take you there

~Let Me Love You, Ne-Yo~

*images from Pinterest

What I forgot to ask for this Christmas

It pays to open up your heart just a crack. Christmas knocks, and you can open up and let the spirit in or ignore that something that really matters is at the door. My heart was raw this year and not ready to be knocked on. But something made me go to the door. And what I found in the cold winter air outside that door was balm. Balm for the hurting soul. Balm for the discouraged. Balm for the weary. Children laughing. Friendships forming before my very eyes. I want to shut my eyes. I don't want to see. Because I am grown-up and I know that pain follows pleasure sometimes. The post-holiday doldrums might side-swipe you if you open your heart up even a crack for Christmas. For joy. For beauty.

But I watch these people, these people who are living out Christmas, who are living out their calling. They are doing it right among my children. Can I really stop seeing, blindfold myself to these people, just because other people have smiled like this, have lived out Christ with me, have lived out their calling for my children, for me, and then walked away without a word? How do you drop your guard when it's a shield permanently affixed on your heart, riveted there by fear and pain?

Grace. It floods in the cracked door. It rips off the blindfold. It pierces a little hole in the shield riveted there on my heart. Because Christmas...it's the baby born. It's hope reborn. It's redemption, which means beauty from ashes, repurchase of the damaged goods. And if I can be redeemed, then relationships can be, too. These people could be my people. 

I look at my 7 year old daughter's Christmas list. She wants a box of bandaids. Some new pants. A note pad. But she also wants a Kindle HD. My Christmas list is the box of bandaids, the new pants, the note pad. I didn't write down the Kindle HD. Because for a minute I forgot to believe in big Grace. I don't want to ask for the impossible, the improbable, the difficult. I just ask for the littlest things I need. The bandaid for the broken heart. The clothes for my battered body. The note pad on which to scribble down gifts through tears to try and drag my sinking ship out of the dark waters of the past.

But what I really want, really need, is the Kindle. The unexpected, the impossible, the expensive Grace.  Put back together this broken heart. Teach me to trust again. Not just You, Lord. People. Help me trust people. That's what's really at the top of my list. It's almost the end of the year. Year two of the guarded me. Can you help me drop my guard, loosen this shield over my heart, heal me in 2013?

Hand in hand

I sit with my newest cancer sister, overnight, catching winks when she does, our heads turned together and my hand over hers. I listen to her breath coming in and out, slowing finally as she drifts from pain to peace, and then I too can drift away to sleep. Why is it she can sleep simply because someone is holding her hand?

What is it about touch that is so magical? Can relax the child strung tight with wayward electrical activity tightening her muscles like electric shocks, straight from the core and out to the tips of her fingers and toes. Calm the fears you bury deep inside and bring the breath rushing deep into the bottoms of your lungs where air hasn't made a trespass in days, your ribs like the iron bands on your barrel, screwed tight with the anxious nagging thought.

Two passages stick out when I think about touch and how it affects us. God uses touch when His angel delivers His message to Daniel in chapter 10 of the book of Daniel:

I heard his voice. At the sound of it I fainted, fell flat on the ground, face in the dirt. A hand touched me and pulled me to my hands and knees. 'Daniel,' he said, 'man of quality, listen carefully to my message. And get up on your feet. Stand at attention. I've been sent to bring you news.' When he had said this, I stood up, but I was still shaking. Then this humanlike figure touched me again and gave me strength. He said, 'Don't be afraid, friend. Peace. Everything is going to be all right. Take courage. Be strong.' "Even as he spoke, courage surged up within me. I said, 'Go ahead, let my master speak. You've given me courage.' (verses 9-10 & 18 The Message)

And Jesus - why is it that, all through the Gospels, Jesus touches the people He heals? And the people who touch His robe are healed? Why use touch, I've always wondered, when you could just speak it and it would be so. Why not just speak it and the whole world for that decade is healed? Why not speak it and I'll be healed? How does this Savior, with all power and might, who is "deeply moved" by the plight of the people He heals, ignore the pain and suffering of the rest of the world?

Deeply moved, Jesus touched their eyes. They had their sight back that very instant, and joined the procession. (Matthew 20:34 The Message)

What about the gift of pain? How it makes the sweet so sweet, brings us to the core of our being, where we must confront our fears and grief, our shirking and our glad passing of our most difficult torches to the people we say we love. It makes us confront what is worst about us...and shrug off those weaknesses and search instead for the strength to triumph.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promises only: pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust

Pain, too, brings out the worst and best in human action. The compassion I felt as a nurse only rose to the surface when confronted with the worst of human suffering. That compassion crystallized into a calling that has still not left me. Like Jesus, pain is what deeply moved me, pushing out selfish concerns and demanding my full attention, grace, love - willingness to touch and tend the ugly, stinky, liquefying flesh of a helpless human.

A surgeon does not slip from his mother's womb with compassion smeared upon him like the drippings of his birth. It is much later that it comes. No easy shaft of grace this, but the cumulative murmuring of the numberless wounds he has dressed, the incisions he has made, all the sores and ulcers and cavities he has touched in order to heal. In the beginning it is barely audible, a whisper, as from many mouths. Slowly it gathers, rising from the steaming flesh until, at last, it is a pure calling. ~Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery

How about the pain in me? The cancer, and the physical pain it brings; the treatment and tests, and the emotional pain of separation. Well, it is the teacher that demands attention. In areas where I lacked self-control and motivation to change, this crisis of illness - and my response to it, turning to God to find the strength necessary - has transformed me. I can't sincerely demand that it be healed, because I understand that I don't understand it - why God is using cancer, why He has allowed cancer, in our lives.

Yet, if He walked by me today, I would be the woman crushed to the bottom of the crowd, reaching a shaking hand to touch the hem of His robe, the whisper on my lips, "Father, heal me."

Just then a woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years slipped in from behind and lightly touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, "If I can just put a finger on his robe, I'll get well." Jesus turned—caught her at it. Then he reassured her: "Courage, daughter. You took a risk of faith, and now you're well." (Matthew 9:20 The Message)