Down comes the mallet

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;

you were very dear to me.

Your love for me was wonderful...

II Samuel 1:27

No one can heal the hurts and brokenness of life like Jesus can. Pointing out the superficial layers only intensify the alienation and lack of love that is causing the problem in the first place. Grace gets to the root rather than excusing and ignoring the behavior. It’s a tough job being a part of a community that is tied together by love rather than by performance and appearance. Grace always comes at the cost of self-preservation. Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. (Galatians 6:1-3) from Grace Is For Sinners by Serena Woods

I love how God's lessons for me fit the seasons. Cancer treatment in the bitter cold and desolation of November. A hot summer full of frazzled brain waves and the storms of seizures for my sweet baby girl. Now a December laden with the silence of snow is full of silence...a phone that's stopped ringing, an empty e-mail in-box and a shrinking list of friends on Facebook along with a shorter than usual stack of Christmas cards. I am on the bitter end of the Christian community and it is eye-opening. I have been here before. It makes me cry out for mercy and beg God for justice and for grace. Revelations 22:20 is wrung from my heart strings and my trembling lips as I hide my breaking heart from my kids in the shower: Come, Lord Jesus, come! 

I learn afresh that the more we are alone in this world, the more we are cast on the God who longs for our friendship...finding new sweetness and fullness in the silent conversations of the heart, the quiet of the days, the stillness that is a home with four walls and your own children. He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children (Psalm 113:9). I vacillate between peaceful joy in this quietest of Christmas seasons, and heartache and brokenness as I am cast daily onto the Rock. A heart that is beaten is tender though - like the mallet to the steak, every blow breaks down the threads of these heartstrings, and Jesus binds them up in a soft soul beating quietly in His presence once all the tears have been spilled.

Engedi

A glimpse of Engedi

Engedi: a desert oasis, mentioned as a place of refuge by both David & Solomon

When dreams creep in

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, O LORD, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.
~ I Chronicles 29:11 ~

Alaska was the long-awaited dream, a travel nursing assignment in Seattle but a brief career bridge to the vast unknown. Aaron grew his hair out for a year before going. Put on the mountain man exterior, brown curls, overgrown beard, purchase after purchase of wool clothing. I remember snowboarding with him the very first time we did something together outside of work: he wore thick green wool army pants, hunting boots, red suspenders, a blue plaid wool shirt, and a dark wool watch cap with rolled brim. He looked for all the world as though he had descended on Hennepin County from the backwoods somewhere...well, very much north of Minneapolis!

I presented what was supposed to be a short detour in the plans to move - probably forever - to the wilds of our furthest state. We laid grand plans to move together shortly after our wedding. Eight weeks later, we were faced with an unexpected blip: baby on the way, and the consequent decision that we should stay closer to home until we got a handle on this parenthood thing.

I finally realized sometime this spring that he was probably waiting until we could afford for both of us to go there. He had turned down a few offers of a short trip from his dad, who frequently works there, Aaron's hallowed ground. Once I told him he should go without me this first time, plans were in motion quickly. Four days, a lodge on the Kenai peninsula, and some halibut fishing on the open sea rounded out the docket.

How do I speak love into the life of a man made for wilderness, who lives in a busy home filled with busy, noisy, and inquisitive offspring? How do I maximize this time we have together, instead of succumbing to the longing and dreaming for a different time or season that may or may not ever come? I struggle with this frequently, more so tonight as I look over the photos of this man I love beaming as he bounces along on the sunny ocean hundreds of miles from the nearest metropolis. I need to figure out how to reach him here, in this time and place. I long to see that same smile light up semi-rural Wisconsin. I don't want to wait for the day when we can finally get to the wilderness together again. I trust God is watering his soul here, too. And pray for ingenuity in serving the lumberjack man God gave me while deep in the trenches of living a busier existence.

The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. ~ Isaiah 32:17

I think I'll go up to Alaska, I think I'll be on that train tonight
Heard that there's work there, heard that there's six months of daylight
Heard that the train stops in Seattle, where you can get your feet back on the ground
I think I'll go up to Alaska where the heat of the summer's comin' down

Woke up this mornin' with some heavy troubles on my brain
Gotta hold your head up when every one in town knows your name
But I've got some money in my back pocket from some steady job that I been holdin' down
I think I'll go up to Alaska where the heat of the summer's comin' down

I've got a suitcase made of alligator skin
Hope that it makes it through whatever situation I get in
Boots made of leather, my coat's for the weather, and you won't find me hangin' 'round
I think I'll go up to Alaska where the heat of the summer's comin' down
I think I'll go up to Alaska where the heat of the summer's comin' down
~ Alaska, Kate McLeod

A camel out on a limb

She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
~ John Keats, 628. Ode on Melancholy

I had the rather hilarious thought today that I, in motherhood, am remarkably like a camel. Probably one with two humps (bactrian). How am I like a camel, you ask, and what does this have to do with a lovely poem by John Keats? It's simply, really: motherhood involves long stretches of time without a drink. (And no, I am not referring to alcohol!) For it is in solitude that the soul drinks...mine, at least. And solitude is lacking in busy days when even the separation of a bathroom door is insurmountable to the psyche of the young ones I tend. All this is made even more noticeable in times when my freedom is so limited. I cannot drive, and, therefore, must be in the company of another even when I am not with my children.

I remember feeling downright tortured by the lack of freedom - and solitude - as a teenager and college student, the last time I went without driving for any extended period of time. I chalked that up to youthful immaturity, but apparently I was mistaken. The velvet night, full of frog song and cricket trills, descends like Keats' melancholy at the close of each busy. The countryside is no less isolating than it was fifteen years ago. I am thankful for the foresight to commence summer school in the woods, where the dappled sunlight and the rush of breeze through tear drop tree leaves at least coats my soul with the dew of solitude. It may not be the flood of rain I'm longing for, but it suffices. After all, a camel doesn't need much to survive!

The poet speaks of the unhappy coexistence of Joy and Melancholy. I am struck often by this, never more so than in times of health crisis in the midst of the effervescent happiness of my little brood. I am balancing tenuously on the limb of health, with solid footing, at the moment, on Joy. Yet I am just a breath away from disaster. Today I realize with new perspective that out on a limb is, indeed, "where the fruit is". That with melancholy dwells joy. In busy places, in ceaselessly busy days, we realize afresh the inherent solitude of the heart.

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
~ from Psalm 139

"Quiet time"

The wind whips suddenly through the stand of pines on the southeast hill. The whir of wind through winter-dried needles grows deeper and stronger as the gust rushes past the pines and rattles the dry stick branches of the hardwoods behind the house. I am out hanging laundry, a crisp lemonade sun shining down just hard enough to warm my shoulders when the wind pauses to gather it's strength. The clothes are rough under the dry, cracked tips of my fingers, and the clothespins are brittle from three winters hanging on the line. It is stillness and wind and sun and I for twenty minutes, twice a day. It is the most gapless communion I've ever experienced, being outside in stillness with God all around me.

I remember the hectic days of the city, when the whir came from a million cars and other machines in perpetual motion. I remember how distant God seemed. That wasn't a place for natural worship for me. I needed to be in a place where other people were not. An expanse of earth to call my own, to be quiet in, to breathe in. I know not everyone is like that - that to some people, the whir of people is the same as the whir of the wind is to me. That for some people, cities mean synergy.


One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock. (Psalm 27:4-5)

In moments like these, hanging clothes, or trudging up the ravine to check cherry blossoms with the children, or rambling down the truck path in the waning sun of evening, when I feel the heaviness of God's hand resting on my shoulder and bolstering my soul. When the world is quiet around me and I am distracted by the beauty of creation, my skin wiped clean by the sun and the wind, I feel deep inside exactly how "okay" I really am. I am not falling into an abyss, I am not at the edge of a precipice, I am not crying alone in a dark room. I am walking through a field of tall grass with God whispering in the breeze, whispering of blessings innumerable and beyond the scope of this mortal imagination.

You may wonder why I almost always include photos and music in these ramblings. It is because that's how God speaks most intensely to me. It unlocks my heart, which is usually a solid rock, and pours the emotions out in a flood. I will never forget the first time this song made me really weep. It was the night I got the biopsy results back. Aaron had called me and told me the results in person, and I sobbed. Then I held it together all day, until a late night trip to Walmart with the kids just before coming home. I bought a CD by Rebecca St. James because I felt like I needed to listen to SOMETHING about God or I was going to break apart into a million pieces. When this song came on, I pulled to the side of the highway and cried and sang with my children. They understood that what was happening was BIG, and we prayed and cried and sang together. It is a sweet, sweet memory, even for all it's bitterness. Take time to click on the link and listen to the song.

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's 'all as it should be'
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in,
Still I will say
Blessed be Your name
~ Blessed Be Your Name, Matt Redman