Once in a lifetime

Happy Thanksgivukkah!

(I figure it's the only time I'll ever get to say it, so what the heck!)

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I am thankful for the childhood I was given, being raised without want in a peaceful community. I have never suffered poverty, hunger, or fear for my life.

This year has been one of great change for me personally and for everyone in my family as well. I am thankful for the kindness and love with which my family has faced my difficult transitions. Although we see this transition very differently, everyone who loves me has made sacrifices to try to understand and support me as I go through a year of metamorphosis back to myself.

I am thankful for a family of my own that is loving, accepting, generous and witty. Living in the moment this year has allowed me to truly appreciate the beauty of the quickly passing days of my kids' childhood. The snuggles at nap time, the crazy afternoons trying to get schoolwork done, the hot chocolate messes in the kitchen and the paint all over my kitchen island - they all are a testament to enjoying this stage to the fullest. 

My son showers me with affection so much so that I often have to introduce boundaries. (otherwise I might be kissed to death, truly) He is an original, this kid. I am thankful this year for a deepening bond between us as the difficult transition from spanking and punishment to teaching and rewarding is finally in the past. Although it is hard to accept just how long it takes this boy to enter new information into his long-term memory, we are making progress. I am thankful he is my friend and I am his. I am thankful for every opportunity to teach him, play Hot Wheels with him, and watch him grow.

I am thankful to have had Amelia for 4 years longer than expected. I am thankful for all the ways her difficult life has shaped her into a resilient, stubborn, caring and compassionate person. I love her sense of humor, her wild break-dancing, the volatility of her emotions, her "heart on her sleeve" way of living. This year, I am thankful for the educational leaps and bounds she's made - learning to read, mastering her numbers, beginning math drills, and beginning to use logic to solve problems.

I am thankful for my Rosebud, whose creativity and happy-go-lucky personality expand my horizons every day. I love every tinkly little tune she composes on the piano, the piles of paper penned with lyrics to her newest song, her burgeoning love of gourmet cooking and baking exploration, our mutual enjoyment of culture, most recently the ballet. She keeps me more light-spirited and encourages me to let go and let my imagination run wild. She is constantly proving to me that more is possible than I have ever dreamed. This year, I am most thankful for her kind heart and keen sense of empathy that sends her into my room often to comfort me and cheer me up!

My Katy is definitely a tween these days. She sleeps more, occasionally gets crabby with her siblings, needs her down time alone, and is even more helpful around the house. I am thankful for our shared love of books. Reading books together or one after the other has been a highlight of this year. Her depth of understanding of the world already astounds me and blesses me. Recently, we read a historical fiction piece together and she was able to identify all the cultural themes as well as the personal struggles of each character. This year, I am most thankful for her developing readiness to begin public school, her flare for drama, her storytelling, and her interest in my work. We have spent so many happy days discussing my lectures. She is going to be bored in nursing school when she's 19!

Mostly, I am thankful for this guy. This year hasn't been easy for him. It is his ability to be unapologetically himself, to love without boundaries, to see beyond labels, to imagine a world where very little beyond love matters…this is what has given me the courage to step fully into my own identity. He has continued to love me when I don't deserve it, forgive me when necessary, and to serve our family in ways I never dreamed a man would.

The one thing outside of my family that blesses me most on a daily basis is my job - or should I say, my coworkers and students? There is nowhere else I feel totally and truly myself and can give and receive openly and honestly. It is a place where I can restore my sense of hope in humanity and the world. It keeps me young, playful and relevant. It forces me out of my comfort zone constantly. It pushes me to be the best version of myself. It motivates me to be inspiring, authentic, and fair. I am so thankful to have my dream job and to find it is, indeed, my dream job!

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?

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.

How to squeeze the most out of every day

I watch children because I am a mom. They do one thing at a time, whole-heartedly concentrating and finding bits of joy as they go along. Their inner monologues aren't well developed yet because they are in such a stage of discovery. They finger things carefully, inspect what makes it work, listen to the sounds it makes, feel the textures under their hands.

Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside - children have their own agendas and timescales.  As they find out more about their world and their place in it, they work hard not to let adults hurry them.  We need to hear their voices.  ~Cathy Nutbrown

Children are the picture of being present in the moment, and their parents are usually the antithesis. We boast about our ability to multitask but are swarmed with regret for all the moments we did not savor when we lie down in bed at the end of the day. Yet we wake the next morning and repeat the cycle. Is it because we have so much to accomplish in each day? Is it possible to load the dishwasher, cook dinner, clean the counters, mop the kitchen floor, AND attend to the inevitable 20 questions our children will come to us with?

Being mindful - present in the moment - is the art of paying attention fully to one thing at a time. It's difficult when you first start, but it is addictive because it allows us to be free from responsibility for little moments throughout the day, sharing in wonder and joy instead of the anxiety of deadlines and schedules.

When you're in the pre-dinner rush, doing 3 things at once, and you feel the tug of a little hand on your leg, STOP. Just for a moment. Crouch down, touch their shoulders, look into their eyes. Listen to the inflection of their high-pitched voice, notice their expressions. Answer their questions and smile. You may avoid 20 more questions by attending fully to that one. You have also recaptured your own joy - a type of joy cooking dinner does not usually bring.

The present moment is all we're guaranteed. The past is gone and the future uncertain. But in each moment lies the gifts of life, and if we'll only take time to stop and take the world in - it's smells, sounds, colors, sensations, tastes - how much more joy we will squeeze out of each and every day.

"Present"

Check out some free mindfulness exercises here.

Abundance

Quietly counting gifts this weekend. My cup runneth over with blessings, miraculous everyday ways that my Savior cares for me. May you find peace today as well.

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:22-32 ESV)

The road not taken

Imagine freedom - the kind of soul peace your whole body relaxes into, suddenly comfortable with itself and it's shape. It's like the laugh of an old friend as you talk on into the night: you fall under it's spell and it whispers in your ear sweet things..."you are free!"...."it is forgotten!"..."He loved you - yes, YOU - so much that He created you, He delivered you from evil and death, He died for you!"

Imagine what that freedom would look like, even if it was only going to last an hour or two. You wouldn't fret about the non-organic groceries in your cart. You might splurge on something fun for yourself. You might lavish love and generous gifts on a person you would normally try to avoid making eye contact with. 

I read a line in  Dr. Brené Brown's book, Daring Greatly: 

Vulnerability is at the core of all emotions and feelings. To feel is to be vulnerable. To believe vulnerability is weakness is to believe that feeling is weakness. To foreclose on our emotional life out of fear that the costs will be too high is to walk away from the very thing that gives purpose and meaning to living. When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.

You reach moments along the path - moments during which you make a choice between multiple options all shackled with potential problems of their own. These vastly divergent lives -- which do you choose?? My choice these days seems to be between selfish indifference or selfless times of tending to relationships.

Yellow leaf fall 

Like helicopter blades 

Come on, you words 

Come and take your places 

Everything changes, everything changes 

After the sun, the wind will come. 

And the wind will come! 

When worries gone, the wind will come. 

And the wind will come! 

Come on, you heart 

You restless child 

Open up your hands 

And wait here awhile 

Yellow leaf fall 

Sound under my feet 

Fill my sleep, fill my sleep 

When all is done, the night will come. 

Come meet me there, and the night will come!  

If I am the dreamer, then Thou art the Dream 

If I am the pebble, then Thou art the Stream 

If I am the sapling, then Thou art the Seed

Thou art the Laughter, Thou art the Dream!

~Helicopter, Branches~

Writing on "Imagine"

Blessings from the little ones

These children, whom I've laid down my life for over the past 10 years, they are blessing me beyond belief. Yesterday, Rosy brought me breakfast in bed, 8-year-old style: butterscotch pudding left over from the night before, coffee, and daisies. This morning she brought me a card, marked "Joy Full" on the envelope. Inside, her creative script full of swirls and hearts, read, "God is wonderfull, like you." She tells me it's what she thought this morning when she read her devotions. I'm not sure how the story of the Tower of Babel led to this thought, but I was blessed by it regardless.

You work for years to get your kids out of diapers, able to dress themselves, ask for things without whining. Later, there are other things to teach: keeping your room clean, talking with respect to elders, building up siblings instead of tearing them down, not rendering evil for evil. In the midst of this stage, though, I see the twinkling lights of the end of the tunnel, as my children constantly astound me with their grace, compassion, and purity.

As orioles blazed orange on the lawn this morning, Amy ran to bring me my joy journal. The antidote for despair is joy; even in small doses, it begins to staunch the flow of sorrow from the heart. I am listing, listing all the little ways I am cared for and blessed. Many of those little bullet points of thankfulness include my children.

It's ironic: the very things that drive you to the edge of sanity are also your lifeline when you get there. My children are hauling me back from the abyss with their words and deeds of love.

Traveling from pain to glory

Here is the joy. Here in this moment, this place, this space. And fear is a thief, a joy-monger, launching into the moment to devour the gifts at your feet. You may think fear is not the enemy when it's just soaring in the periphery of your vision. It only takes one glide for it to dive into the present and scare off the kids and birds and leave you alone with it's devious face, it's cackle of triumph. 

I hold a turquoise cross tight in my grip, bending it's soft form between thumb and forefinger. I do this because the ache in my hand keeps me present in the moment, instead of soaring off with fear for wings. For emotions are as fickle as the April weather here in Wisconsin, and fear could drop me from a thousand feet high and crush me on the pavement far below. Choosing this moment, with whatever it contains, sometimes isn't so attractive. Last night, in a group, I didn't want to be present. But I grabbed my cross from my purse, and the bite into my palm forced me to stay nailed to my chair, body and spirit. That cross keeps me on the ground instead of floating off into the tornado of grief above me.

I think of the Savior lugging His heavy cross up the hill at Golgatha, Place of the Skull. Did the bite of the slivers into his shoulders striped from beating keep Him on the ground, keep His mind from wandering too far into the future? Was it mindfulness of the weight of the moment that kept Him going that last day? I follow the path, with my small cross in my hand, and the snaking line His cross ground into the dust is sometimes hard to find. I only know it's on the ground, not in the sky, and so I pin myself to moments and find the path now and then, and this is how you get from one place to another. From one emotion to the next. From pain to glory.

"Here"

Get busy living

Faith is a fragile thing. I close the soft covers of a controversial book with a slam, and dust rises in the sunlight glinting off my bed. Today is not a day to study my faith. Today is a day to live it.

Sun glints through the streamers on the rainbows hung from my kitchen windows, crafts left over from a "spring" birthday party, that warm day a memory now as we are buried in another foot of snow this mid-March. As the light gleams through the transparent paper, it is my faith I see, anchored to the rock, but tenuous, translucent, thin.

I don't know how to correctly interpret the Old Testament hermeneutically. I haven't read the latest from Rob Bell. What I know is this: today, if we don't praise God, the very rocks will cry out. And so that is what I will do today. Notice the gifts before me and praise the Maker for them.

Streamers in the sunlight, fluttering in the breeze of the warm furnace blowing. Children happy at schoolbooks. My Amy, exhausted of school, finding work for her hands, the clean wash water clear and pure in the afternoon kitchen. Oh, the gifts of each day, that crowd in bittersweet and make you want to laugh and cry all at once.

Today is for worship. Today is for gratitude that changes attitude. For joy that staves off darkness.

Happy birthday is my victory song

The back of my purple Survivor t-shirt from the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life says, "Happy birthday is our victory song." Surviving cancer has forever altered how I feel about aging. I will never be one of those women who is 29 forever. Every milestone reached is celebrated, because it could have been missed if my cancer hadn't been caught early, or my surgery had gone poorly, or my cancer wasn't sensitive to the treatments I received.

Everyday miracle. A birthday. Breakfast in bed from my 4 sweet children, who parade in with bagels and coffee on a cutting board tray, and Clementine slices arranged to make the numbers "34".

My morning devotions tell me that the time of singing has come. I am practicing living in the moment, being mindful of the moment, not letting my mind drag me off into the unknown future. This allows me to experience the joy of these verses, because in THIS moment, they are True, "See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come."

Perhaps this is the way you fight depression best: one battle, one day, one moment at a time. Stake your sword in the ground and claim this moment for joy. I can do that, one moment at a time. The insurmountable future is what I cannot face, as the rest of my life disappears like a timeline in the fog. Here, in the moment I can see, it is clear and bright and beautiful. I am 34. I have made it to 5 years post-diagnosis. Today is a victory, and I'm singing my freedom song right along with those who sing Happy Birthday over me.

Thank you, Lord, for today - this moment. Yes, the season of singing has come.

Joining community on the prompt, "Ordinary"

Joy vignettes

She is Esther, the beautiful brave. She walks humbly, asks her brother, playing King, to raise His scepter. I smile. The stories are seeping in.

The day is gray and bitter cold, and we pack swimsuits steaming and shorts and tennies and head to the Y. They master the climbing wall, perfect their Tarzan yells on the zip line, swim until they are too heavy to float any longer. I smile. I've done a good thing. They've been happy for hours.

It's past bedtime. It's like herding cats. Suddenly they all re-appear after a long silence in their bedroom. Apparently they weren't sleeping, they were staging a Weird Pajama Contest. Rosy wins. They trundle off to bed, and their laughter trickles down the stairs and fills the space between you and I with warmth instead of emptiness. It's been a good day. What else can you say when most days don't end this way? 

Joy comes in spurts and fleeting moments. I turn my mind into sticky tape and cling to that joy. Let the tears wash down the slippery side. 

Here's to the moments that make up "good days".

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Pr. 17:22)

Happiness and Joy are Different

I don't want to be here again. But life doesn't usually go the way you want it to. One of the main difficulties I have with depression is that I can't figure out if it's the Potter's chosen way of shaping me right now, or if it is because of my inability to stay focused on Him.

But here we are. There's no denying that. Slowly, old coping skills are coming back, and for the majority of the day, I can ignore the rain cloud hovering over my head. One of the most successful ways for me to dig out of depression, get up out of my bed, and live normally in these seasons is something called Opposite Action. All you have to do is figure out something to throw yourself into 100% that will provide positive reinforcement rather than negative. I'm a mother first, and I carry a huge load of mother guilt, so Opposite Action for me often entails doing something crazy with my kids.

I grabbed a pack of suncatchers and paint at Walmart on the way home from work. Just after breakfast yesterday, I stayed out of bed, and we opened paint pots and set to work. The table was a mess. The children were in heaven. And for an hour, I forgot to be depressed.

After we finished, we packed up, got lunch in town, and went to the Y. We spent four hours, swimming, rock climbing, zip lining, playing basketball, running on the track. Once again, depression and it's invasive thoughts had no room to take foothold as we ran around the Y. We emerged, hair steaming in the sub-zero gray day.

My day wasn't gray at all. I believe this is the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is a passing emotion dependent on all kinds of external factors. But joy is stored within, and for those of us who have placed our faith in Christ, there is a constant wellspring of joy despite external factors. Ever since Amelia's illness in 2009, I Peter 1 has been the passage that has helped me hang on to joy even when happiness is entirely absent.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-7 ESV)

Opposite Action is, in essence, what Christians have been practicing since the beginning of time. Moses was a man with a temper problem, a murderer, and someone who took flight at the first sign of danger, but he stood up to Pharoah through all the plagues and led the Israelites toward Canaan although he often felt like giving up and told God so on the mountaintops. Noah had never seen rain, but he built an ark out of obedience. Sarah had no hope left of bearing a child and her sadness over this fact is evident in her response to God's promise when she is an old woman, yet she continued to be with her husband, and a child was born from whose genetic line Jesus would eventually be born. Even Jesus, who begged His father for mercy in Gethsemane, walked out into the garden to meet the soldiers when they came to arrest Him, and endured the cross even though He could have easily saved Himself.

Why did all these people go forward despite their misgivings, their pain, their fear? Because their joy was not predicated on their circumstances, but on the salvation they knew was coming. I see it too, on the horizon of every season of depression - rescue. Someday He will wipe away every tear. And meanwhile, I can REJOICE because, despite all appearances of this life, there is an inheritance imperishable, undefiled and unfading kept in heaven for me.

Merry Christmas, baby!

From Turquoise Gates to your home, wishing you the merriest of Christmases!

Unbridled joy...

Expressions of pure love...

All the magic of the season...

Deep connections with those you love...

And a little "rockin' around the Christmas tree"!

For unto us a Child is born,

Unto us a Son is given;

And the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called

Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

~Isaiah 9:6~