And then I played doll house

Even with my own children, the two people in the world I am most predisposed to love, even with them I fall so incredibly short.

If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal....Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Yesterday I startled myself with the sound of my own voice, sharp and exasperated, volume rising with every word. I don't even remember what I was yelling about, only that it was maybe the fifteenth power struggle of the day and I was so over getting lip from my stubborn six year old.

After our collective meltdown, I kept hearing that passage in my head (yeah, that one, the "love chapter", the cliche wedding reading, the one I like to quote to my kids when they aren't being nice to each other). And somewhere in the hours that followed I came to a humbling conclusion.

I don't love my children. Not consistently. Not the way I should. 

Sure, I adore them and enjoy them. I find them delightful at times. I would go to any length to protect them. I'd die for them, if it came to that.

And what's ridiculous is how I say I'd give my life for them, yet I struggled to give my daughter just thirty minutes of my Sunday to play doll house. (Have I mentioned how I hate playing doll house?) I became irritable and resentful when their needs and requests conflicted with my own. And I'd rather not give examples, but suffice it to say: my heart wasn't patient, and my voice wasn't kind.

(By the way you guys, falling flat on your figurative face? So not fun. I don't recommend it.)

I can correct their behavior, even quote verses while I'm doing it, but have not love. Clangity clang clang.  I can feed, clothe, read, drive, teach, listen, speak. But if I do it resentfully, irritably, impatiently, without love at the center. Yep. Clangy McClangerton.

So I asked my little girl to forgive me. I told my son I'd messed up, that I hadn't modeled what love was supposed to look like, that I 'd been selfish and impatient.

They forgave me, like they always do.
I told them I loved them, so, so much.
And then I played doll house.

Just writing today, with Heather. 

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The doubting season

Every day the darkness creeps in earlier and earlier. And no matter how fervently I believe in a sun still out there shining--somewhere and surely bright--because I see so much less of it, well, it makes me wonder. I want to see that beautiful brilliant sun with my own eyes, but I'm not in the right place to see it. After all, this is Ohio we're talking about. So I trust it's still out there. But 95% of the time, I don't feel as if it really is.

From Sara Miles in Take this Bread:

"In large ways and small, I wrestled with Christianity: its grand promises and its petty demands, its temptations and hypocrisies and promises, its ugly history and often insufferable adherents. Faith for me didn't provide a set of easy answers or certainties: It raised more questions than I was ever comfortable with......
But this is my belief: that at the heart of Christianity is a power that continues to speak and transform us. As I found to my surprise and alarm, it could speak even to me: not in the sappy, Jesus-and-cookies tone of mild-mannered liberal Christianity, or the blustering, blaming hellfire of the religious right. What I heard, and continue to hear, is a voice that can crack religious and political convictions open, that advocates for the least qualified, least official, least likely; that upsets the established order and makes a joke of certainty. It proclaims against reason that the hungry will be fed, that those cast down will be raised up, and that all things, including my own failures, are being made new.....
Faith, for me, isn't an argument, a catechism, a philosophical "proof". It is instead a lens, a way of experiencing life, and a willingness to act."

I think about God the way I think about the winter sun. There, always. And shining brilliant. It's just that sometimes I'm in the perfectly wrong place to see even a speck of it. So I trust, and wait for summer.

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Out-twinkling the angels (Just Write)

Dani, you never met my Grandma, your Nana's mama. You were still growing in my belly when we hugged her last in the shadeless Palm Desert heat. But really, it's not accurate to say we hugged Grandma. Rather, she hugged us. She could squeeze so much love into a single embrace. There wasn't anything frail about her.

She wasn't the sort of grandma who went to the salon each week to set her hair. She was the feisty sort, the one who never wore a skirt, not even to church. (But you'd love her anyway, Dani, I know you would.) I'll picture her forever in a mid-80s puffed-sleeved sweat suit, her black hair ever short in tight wiry curls. She wore freckled skin, just like you and me; and her eyes could out-twinkle Santa's.

She knew what it meant to love people exactly where they were, without demands. She didn't make them move an inch to meet her, no probationary period required. She lived with her arms wide open, reckless with compassion. I've only recently come to understand how much courage it takes to live the way she did--to give the benefit of the doubt so freely, to throw every chip in every time, to love "all in". But I doubt she would've called it courage. She would have tossed up her hands and shook her grinning head side to side and quipped, "I guess your grandma's just crazy that way!"

Speaking of crazy, I should tell you about the time she took my mom, my sister and me to Yosemite. I can't remember how old I was, maybe 10? Anyway, it was snowing up a storm that day, and there was talk of closing the park. But we were halfway from Fresno to the park entrance before we got the warning, and she wasn't the sort to turn back on account of a little precipitation. When the sign popped up requiring chains for further travel, Grandma simply put on the chains, and on we went. We made it into the park just before they closed the roads into the valley. I clutched the inside of the car door and held my breath in fear as we slid and skidded down that steep, switchback of a road. I can't imagine how she even saw the road in front of her with the snow so thick in the air.

We passed one car hanging off the side of a cliff, another wedged into the side of the mountain. When we finally (miraculously) reached the valley, we nearly fell out of the car in relief. We walked a few steps in the direction of Half Dome, stretched our arms wide, threw our heads back and looked at the sky in every direction, watched as Mother Nature sewed the thickest, most spotless quilt of snow a mountain range could wear. Never have I felt a stronger sense of awe and wonder than in that moment, on that day when Grandma and I stood in that silent valley and looked up.

For 88 years Grandma lived this way, undaunted by treacherous roads, unhindered by convention, always looking up. She died this morning, "born into glory", as we crazy Christians like to say. And I'll tell you, Dani, these are the days when I'm never so glad to believe in heaven. I picture Grandma there now--still in her 1985 jogging suit--laughing her belly laugh, hugging anyone who comes within three feet of her, out-twinkling the angels.

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On waking to endless morning hugs

He shuffled into the kitchen wearing wild morning hair on his head and a bewildered, wounded look on his face. I said good morning before I recognized his eyes were puffy not just from sleep but tears.

"Buddy, what's wrong?" I asked, pulling him in for a hug.

His shoulders started to shake and he sobbed, "I dreamed you left me all alone, and I was still just a kid."

He went on. "All I had for food was my lunchbox. And you took it away. And I asked for it back and you said no. And then I didn't have anything, and you made me go."

"And there were these clues to help me get home, but I was only four, and I didn't know how to read them..."

By now I'd picked up all fifty pounds of my seven year old, carried him to the couch as he wrapped every limb around me like a koala to a tree. "I'd never ever leave you, Buddy. Never. And I'll always take care of you. Always."

"It felt so real. It was so awful. I didn't know what to do. And I didn't understand why you made me go away all by myself." He started to cry again.

I squeezed him tighter. His little sister came closer, added herself to the morning embrace. "I dreamed that same one too, Mom, and it made me sooo sooo sad," she said. "And then I had another dream about a pirate chasing me, and that's why I didn't sleep in, and why I need extra extra morning hugs."

"Extra morning hugs!" I sang. "Step right up and get your extra morning hugs!"  This time his shoulders shook with a giggle.

We three held on tight until the sun came up, until the light of a real morning slowly replaced the dark of nightmares.

::

I intended only to write this out for my own memory sake, not to draw a conclusion or make a point. But it's hard not to draw a parallel when my son wakes up on Good Friday feeling forsaken, abandoned and alone. It of course reminds me of the nightmare Christ endured on the cross. And of the joy in that third morning when by His waking, we were offered a new reality--to escape the nightmare of defeat and despair, to awake in His enduring embrace (not just extra, but endless "morning hugs"), to live new in His limitless grace.

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Ache (Five Minute Friday)

Red and black ribbons loop around mailboxes, pillars, doors, trees. Flags wave at half mast. Church signs spell condolences and a promise to keep praying. We hear it in the halls of the YMCA, the school, the library, the post office. There is always a connection, some way the lives taken have touched ours.

On the way to ballet, I drive by the cars gathering at the church for the funeral, every antennae tied with red. I ache in this unsettling realization that I am not in control. Not at all. We can choose our next home from the list of Forbes best towns to raise a family and still wind up burying a child.

A grieving mother speaks of grace and forgiveness, and I think: Yes, this is the lunacy we call the gospel; this is the grace we call amazing.

May this amazing grace find us here. And may it lead us home.

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Just breathe {and Just Write}

I hear the ringtone, Just Breathe, and it's coming closer, up the stairs. It stops just before she hands it to me. "Daddy called," she announces.

I put down the eyeliner, the brown pencil I didn't begin writing with until two months ago after the make-up artist at the wedding told me I was crazy to never wear eyeliner. I didn't want to be crazy, so I bought my first eyeliner at the ripe old age of 37. And now I'm still crazy, but with fancier makeup.

I dial him back as I walk downstairs. "Did you say you were going grocery shopping?" he asks.

I grab my coat. "Yeah, we're leaving now. Why?"

"There's been a shooting at the high school in Chardon, and it sounds like a bunch of areas are blocked off, including that shopping center."

Shocked, I pepper him with questions he doesn't have answers for, hang up and head for the computer. It's been barely more than a half hour since the shooting, and even within the major channels, rumors fly. Two shooters, no make that one. Not yet apprehended, wait--no, now he's in custody. Four students wounded. No make that five. 

I want to cry. I want to race into my son's second grade class and hug him until my arms fall off. I want to erase it, rewind, turn it into a drill, a false alarm, anything but the tragedy it's shaping up to be.

Of course I can't find a way to do any of these things, not even to cry.  I know better than to try to make sense of this sort of thing. And I know how little good it does to add my lifted fist to the thousands already shaking at the sky. So what's left, then, except to pull the ones I love closer, to write my way back from anger to gratitude, to pray my way back from fear to faith, to breathe.

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Five Minute Friday: Real

I'm a phony and a fake. It's the one line that stayed with me long after I finished Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. The line Sarah Miles writes in her diary, the words I wish didn't resonate, but do.

I want to tell this fictional Sarah that we all feel that way, maybe not always, but often. If I am honest at least with myself, I see how I walk around in an invisible bubble of pretense. I want to smile real at the PTO meeting, but I don't feel the slightest bit happy. So I force my lips to each corner and say hello. And if there's time only for a one word answer, then of course I'll say "fine" or "great" or "good." Fine is never enough to be the truth. More than half of the time, I'm not sure what the truth even is, what is buried beneath the fine, the artificial sweet, the have-it-all-togetherness.

My dearest, deepest friends tell me I'm authentic, that I don't hide the mess, that it's refreshing. And I tell them the same. This is probably why they are my dearest deepest friends. But even to them, have I ever told the whole truth? I'm afraid I haven't. I'm afraid I don't know the whole truth.

Like Sarah, the place where I feel most phony is when I talk or write of spiritual things. What business do I have acting as if I understand any of this? What business do I have to speak of grace, when I know full well how I've trampled it with covert rebellion and quiet conceit?

But I'll tell you, the only place I have ever felt like something other than a complete fraud--it is when my heart breaks in front of Him. He sees through me like the woman at the well. He tells me He is the Truth, and that this Truth is enough for the both of us. It only lasts for minutes at a time, this stillness where I feel completely seen and forgiven and loved and real. But I like to imagine it is a foretaste, that heaven is a thousand years and then more of this feeling. For real.

(Full disclosure--this started out as the write-your-heart-out-for-five-minutes drill. And then continued for about 25 minutes. So more like five times five minute Friday.) :-)

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slow thaw {just write}

There was a hardness, my heart caged heavy in ice. And I'd secretly wished for a shattering rescue, a cracking apart, an exaggerated transformation, something to startle me out of this numb, dreamless stare.

But what He's doing now, it's nothing spectacular, just a bit of warmth here and there, the breath of truth telling friends. And I feel the slow melt, the drip, drip, drip, until my heart lays bare and beating.

It took months, not minutes.

I know it's time to lay down arms, to call an end to this subtle rebellion of seeking Him second or third or not at all. So I do, knowing full well this truce might not last till Thursday.

And I begin again to believe, not just on paper but in life. To believe that even just for one minute out of one day out of one year, He could be enough to satisfy, to temper the ache, to feed the desperate hunger.

There are puddles now where the ice was once thick enough to walk across, and a faint smell of spring. Maybe what He's doing now, maybe it's spectacular, after all.

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Confessions of an ugly juggler

The truth is, December, I was glad to see you go. Every year I tell myself to go easy on you, knowing I expect too much of you, that you're just one month. And yet every year I still find myself lost among the many milestones you mark. It usually isn't until January that I find my way home. This year is no exception.

I watched as my children--though surrounded by fun and gifts and all good things--struggled with gratitude. More than normal. The air of entitlement grew thick enough to choke, and I felt it well up within me as well--this misery of too much. Too much to do, too much stimulation, too much build-up, too much let-down. My girl whined the whole way to the Christmas hike (and through what felt like most of the holiday season). And my boy grumped every time his daily DS allotment ran out, asking (it seemed like always) about the next thing, not really savoring the now thing.

I found the auto-pilot button early in December, pushed it. Flew through the to do list. And then I crashed, inflamed in a heap of angst and ill temper. I was a fire-breathing dragon, masterfully and magically juggling pails of water, spilling not a drop. And scorching anyone who dared come close. Sometimes it is better for a bucket to fall. Water can be cleaned up. Fire destroys.

Yesterday I had the January cry. The one where I realize what an ass I've been (am). So much of the ugliness I saw in the choices my children made this past month, it started with me. Sure, I hid it better, couched it in more socially acceptable, grown up ways. But it started with me.

I am tired of juggling water and breathing fire. And I'm done with auto-pilot, because where does it get me except lost? No sooner do I confess this than the air grows clear again, purified in rushing wind; and I can breathe it now, without flame.

Never, I think, have I been so thankful for the mercies of a new morning.

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This is the gift.

The stories I tell begin and end in the same place. Call me circular, but I can't help spinning, revolving every last particle around my nuclear family. Today I've been married for exactly 16 years, and on Sunday, she'll have lived exactly five. *

Next week we'll sit by the fire and the tree and around the table, and the boy who is seven will probably get icing on his Christmas sweater. And the girl who is five will probably throw a fit over whose turn it is to open the new door in the Advent book. And the mom and the dad who have long ago given up on perfection and settled for grace, we will probably struggle to keep eyes from rolling and voices from rising.

But we won't beat ourselves up for not appearing at all times like a perfectly quaffed family in a sample Christmas card. Life in all its mess and we in all our shortcomings, this is what's real.

And this is what's beautiful--to love each other anyway. Not to airbrush the ugliness, but to forgive it. Not to hide behind a mask of perfection, but to show messy selves to each other, to be known as we are and loved anyway.  

This is when love is most like a miracle--when it's so clear how little I deserve it, and yet, there it is, relentless and unrationed. When I say I believe in the miracle of Christmas, this is what I mean. That Love came down. That He loved us first, always, and anyway. And that He showed us how, enabled us to do the same for those around us. This is the gift. This is the miracle.


::

*I began writing this last week, and in a shocking twist, was interrupted. I came back to it today to "Just Write" the rest. Thank you, Heather, for hosting today.

I'm also linking this up to Emily for her last installment of Tuesdays Unwrapped, which shall remain one of my all time favorites.

::

**I believe it's against the law to get the entire family dressed to the nines and not take a family photo. So even though I've clearly admitted to being a mess of a family, here's our perfectly quaffed family photo. The people who did Dani's flower girl hair also did my make-up, so I'm wearing a year's supply of make-up in one evening. When my son first saw me, he asked "What happened to your face!?" And when my husband saw me, he just said "Oh. Wow." Not wow as in you look amazing, but wow as in yikes, and this was you telling them you wanted a natural look? Also? It's all fun and games until you try to get the eye make-up off. As in anyone have any paint thinner I can borrow? :-)

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When it isn't mutual

Maybe you're the meal maker--the one who can whip up a chicken-rice casserole in the time it takes to say "new baby!" And the brownies, you'd never forget the brownies. Who knows how many of your old pans and containers (though they were carefully labeled) got lost in the kitchens of those once in need? Shoved in the back of the cabinet, forgotten, unreturned.

And when it's your turn to recover from surgery or have a baby or spend a week with your eight year old in the hospital, it's hard not to wish that someone else knew that chicken-rice casserole recipe. And that someone else cared enough to bring it.

::

Maybe you're the young wife, the one hanging on to a love he says was likely never there. You want to believe you have enough love for the two of you, that he'll change his mind, that what felt at first like a fairytale wasn't just your imagination, that what feels now like a nightmare will pass, that he'd be there to say he loves you too if only you could find a way to wake up.

::

Maybe you're the middle child, the average-at-everything, never-enough-to-be-noticed daughter who wishes just once you could vault yourself toward the exceptional side of the spectrum--in something, in anything. Just enough to be admired, just enough to be seen. So many times you sat on the sidelines to cheer a brilliant goal or in the audience to applaud a beautiful solo, or off to the side at a party, wishing you had just a drop of the social confidence those gorgeous gregarious girls seemed to be swimming in.

::

You give and you love and you admire, and really, is it too much to ask to be on the receiving end every once in a while? Of a casserole dish, a kiss, a compliment?

::

Could it be that this desire to be loved, to be thought of, to be seen, that it's all by design? His design? And while we frantically hunt in every other realm but His to find it, to meet that need, He waits with arms wide, loving us long before we even acknowledge Him, let alone love Him back. With Jesus, it isn't mutual. He's been all in since the beginning, long before we noticed. And when we see the lengths He'd go--the lengths He's gone--surely we can believe it's for real when he tells us his love is enough for the two of us.

Linking up today with Emily at Imperfect Prose.

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For when you feel invisible

I know you think you're invisible, that you could disappear from the pew, and no one in that sanctuary would give a damn. That you could vanish in the produce aisle, in the carpool line, on the sidewalk in front of the post office, and no one would notice, save for the half-filled grocery cart, the driverless minivan, the toddler kicking in the stroller.

I know you think you're too small to matter, your thoughts not lofty enough to be spoken, your ideas not novel enough to be your own. Maybe you write a blog that no one reads. Or populate a database that no one uses. Or teach a room full of eighth graders who despise you as much as they do learning. Or make meal after meal that no one eats, at least not without coercion.

Maybe the only platform you get to stand on is the old stepping stool in the utility room, the one you use to reach the cabinet where you stash extra light bulbs.

But there's something I want you to know.

I see you.

I see you handing your baby into someone else's arms, your high heels dragging back to the 5-minute-drop-off-only parking spot. I see you rushing, straight from work and still in scrubs, while your six year old races from the car to the field in half-tied cleats and the toddler in your arms slumps heavy and asleep on your shoulders. I see you, the spit-up still on your shirt, the baby in your lap, the eyes that would give anything to close for more than ten minutes at a time.

I see you.

And you are anything but small. You are anything but invisible. You are anything but weak, ineffective, insignificant. Please, will you stop talking to yourself that way?

Do you know what you really are?

You're amazing, sacrificial, thoughtful. You're beautiful (yes, even without make-up, even in sweat pants and the sweater that smells like thrift store). You're giving this life of yours all you have, and all you have is going to be enough. 

You are significant. You matter because He made you, fashioned you as a work of art, mixing color and shape and capability in a pattern uniquely yours. Your ideas? They're good. And your dreams? They're not foolish.

So look up, friend. Meet my gaze. Because I want you to hear this.
You are not invisible. 
I see you.
He sees you.
You matter.
You matter so very much.

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In which I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up

When I grow up,
I want to be
full not of myself
but of grace.

I want to be
first
to believe the best,
to forgive,
to hope against history,
to trust against odds,
to be brave enough to be broken,
wounded, even in the over and over way.

When I grow up,
I want to be
the friend you call when you are a mess,
the one who knows how to cry along in the dark places,
the one who knows the language of light and when to speak it.

When I grow up,
I want to be
patient,
fearless,
kind,
tender-hearted,
slow to anger,
quick to laugh.

When I grow up,
I want to be
the girl who glimpses heaven in an ocean shore,
the daughter who finds the gospel forever amazing,
the mother who lives in the moment, for eternity's sake.

Today I am 7 + 30.
And I know
exactly
what I want to be
when I grow up.

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Beauty still blooms when we tend to it

I tug at the base of the crab grass, sweat trickling down the slope of my nose, and I think:  

This is grace, showing up in a neglected flower bed. Even after the fall, after all paradise lost, the curse stopped far short of our whole earth shrinking into ugly. 

Beauty still blooms when we tend to it, toil over it, and this is grace.

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Can we stop pretending?

We walked the whole length of Westminster Bridge just to see the sun set behind the Abbey, to catch Big Ben wearing pink. I want to say it was worth the walk, but I remember so little about that sunset.

What I remember is the darkness. How quickly the sun disappeared and January blew across the Thames in cruel bursts. We had argued earlier, not disagreeing so much as missing each other entirely. Five inches and a world apart, we stared across the river like this foreign city's silhouette might break the icy spell if only she'd look our way.

But we never caught her eye.

Those tears, the ones I stifled with squints and swallows, they made it only as far as my right sleeve.
I wonder whether it is worse to have warning--to see the condition of the thread by which you hang, to anticipate the free fall. I don't honestly know. But I saw the thread that night on a London bridge, and the fear, it looped itself like myelin sheath round every nerve, such that even years after the tears dried, I could still feel the fear in my fingertips.

::

Those of us who have trusted the story of the empty tomb since the age of six, the ones with dog-eared pages in our margin-scribbled bibles, our marriages aren't supposed to dangle halfway off the cliff. Our newborn babies aren't supposed to spend most of their waking hours in daycare, and our careers aren't supposed to hold the hours hostage with gray-vs-gray decisions, the only-in-it-for-the-paycheck barrel pressed hard against our temple.  We aren't supposed to fall apart from the inside out.

But we do, and to pretend otherwise is to look grace straight in the face and lie. And doesn't this constant cradling of image tire us out? Don't our arms grow heavy with the weight of holding it all together? So much of ourselves we exert just to hold up the mask so that even if we were brave enough, we'd probably be too spent to smile with our own lips or tremble with our own tears or look with our own faces.

It's been six years since I stood at the bank of the Thames and felt the edges of my perfectly scripted Christian life begin to crumble. It's easy to admit it now--to share how I used to struggle, to admit how precariously close I came several years ago to destroying my marriage, to confess a former habit of worrying more about how things appeared than about how they actually were.

But in the middle, when we need each other most, we tend to hide how bad it is. From others, from ourselves, even from our God, we hide. 

I desperately want to do away with the hiding. Can we stop pretending we're okay when we aren't? And while we're at it, let's lose the spiritual caveats we use to diminish how deeply we hurt. Let's find a way to be honest, to mean it when we say, "but for the grace of God, there go I..."

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.
Galations 6:1-3, The Message

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No explanation needed

"Why is it," he began, "I mean, why when I'm near the ocean, does it feel like I'm more closer to heaven? And then when we're just at home or in the forest or something, the clouds and the sky feel like they are higher up than before?"

"You must have read that sign at the beach house, huh Bud? The one that said, heaven's a little closer in a house by the beach?" I asked, attributing the musings of my six year old to those painted words on wood.

"Well, I did read it, but that's not it. It just got me thinking. And I think heaven does feel closer, like if I just look up, I could almost see it. And like God is just, I don't know, like when I'm at the beach, I can feel Him more in my heart. And I was just wondering about it, like how do I even explain it?"

I don't know how to explain it either, little man. But I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.

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I turned around this morning to see last summer

Photo by Thecleopatra

Last summer rolled into town piled high with sturdy cardboard, flimsy faith and gallons of paint. The rickety-wheeled months promised anything but a smooth ride, and I dreaded the mid-June morning when I'd have to hop on that wagon. I knew it would take me through seven weeks of single parenting, my husband 800 miles away. I knew I'd pass by a dozen goodbyes, none of them I wanted to say.  There would be nothing routine in this summer migration, no pre-dawn runs before a lazy day at the beach, no CSA, no canning and freezing for the winter, no camping, and weeks living without a single picture on the wall. Late-night packing would replace late-night writing, and I'd pack four boxes for every post I published.

But we had to get on board. So I pulled the five year old close, the three year old, too. We pressed palms together and wrapped fingers tight, and no 800-mile-wide Red Rover was going to break that grip. We jumped.

The first week in Ohio I swallowed back more anxious, Oh God what have we done? thoughts than I did calories. I lost faith, and five pounds along with it. But as the weeks edged on, His grace covered my weakness like new paint on the dingy walls of our rental house. It took no less than three coats of grace and Glad Yellow paint, but the faith, I gained it all back, and then some. The pounds, too. And the walls wore their glad layers well.

Hindsight is my favorite way to see God working, and sometimes my only way. I'm practically blind in the middle and at the start, it's true. But let me travel a year toward that same horizon, then turn around to see where He led me, and I trade dread for marvel. I shake head in wonder instead of fists in doubt.

I turned around this morning to see last summer. And I cried, this time not for the grief in leaving, but for the grace in His leading, one summer to the next.

"Looking back, you know you had to bring me through. 
All that I was 
so afraid of, 
though I questioned the sky, 
now I see why 
I had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view. 
Looking back, I see the lead of love."
-Caedmon's Call, Lead of Love

Linked today with Emily for Imperfect Prose.

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The Hours are Honest

There is not going to be time for it all, not even close. So I have to choose, and wisely. And the hours are honest. The minutes pile up around the things I care most about.  I cannot truthfully say to myself I am enthralled with literature when my minute piles congregate around watching hockey play-offs while skimming blogs. You know, just as an example.

Of course there are the things I must do--not for the love but the responsibility. The minutes pile around laundry as high as the laundry itself, and that by no means proves I value laundry above all else.

But what do I choose when I have a choice? What do I do with the hour from 5 to 6 a.m., once the coffee is made and the husband is kissed goodbye? What do I do when two glorious hours of freedom greet me on my way out of the preschool door?

I know the answers, and I don't like them.

I used to say, back in the corporate day, that my job was incompatible with who I was, who I wanted to be. I cited the contrast between my heart to serve and love the least of these with my role to manage risk and resources so a soulless company could make money. I promised myself (oh the lies I told myself!) that when that next stage came--perhaps in the leaving work to raise a young family stage--I would read and study and pray and serve and write and live the gospel.


But I have broken that promise.

I'm not saying it's wrong for me to spend several hours a week running or reading fluff or watching T.V or relearning the piano or eating cheetos while tracking brown bears. (Okay, that last one might not be wrong, but it's definitely not wise.)


I'm just saying that the way I spend my life--what I choose when I have a choice--starting with the minutes, followed by the hours, flowing into days, adding up to months and years and lifetime--that this reveals what I truly value.

And I don't want to be 72 years old before I realize there is no such thing as must-see TV, that the people around the table are vastly more important than the ones on the page, that I could run forever and get nowhere.

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What do you say you value? Does it match what you do with your "free" time (assuming you have even one drop of it)? What do you choose when you have a choice?

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Doused in Grace

"Mom, I know you said even grown-ups struggle with making bad choices, just like kids, but it seems like the only bad choice you have to keep saying sorry for is yelling. I mean, it seems like whenever you ask forgiveness it's always for yelling and stuff."

I click on the turning signal, then press down the brake. The soccer field is in sight.

So this must be the downside to having a sensitive and articulate six year old.

"I know, bud. It sure seems that way. I have to apologize more often than anything for my yelling."

"And you hab to say sorry to Calli too, right Mama?" Dani pipes in. "Cuz she's a snorey-yelley-doggy-doggerton."

Caed and I exchange a glance courtesy of the rearview mirror. We shake our heads and smile at Dani's bizarre and disarming contributions to the conversation.

We pile out of the car and pad carefully over the muddy patches to the field where the other blue shirts congregate. Dani dribbles in circles, lost in the moment, cackling as another girl chases. Caed watches, waiting for his turn, his team, then volunteers to be Dani's water boy.

And I want to say I get lost too--just as quickly--in these precious firsts, the soccer they've begged to play for two summers and counting. But I don't.

I'm smoldering still, the flames they just forgave not fully doused. I wonder why this anger boils, why I so easily snap.  Why, though I love them so profoundly, do I scorch over shin guard and hair band battles? Why does the whining stoke me so? And really, who is the child here?

It's me. The grown-up child. The one who preaches to my littles on self-control, "like a city without walls!", then loses it (loses it!) not even hours later.

(If you must know, I flung her cleats into the back of her closet and stomped off with a dramatic "That's IT!" Oh yes. I did.)

But I write now, far enough away that the embers are ash. The details blur. I've forgotten what made me so angry and irritated. I can feel my heart soften, breaking the good kind of broken. And when it strikes me that my children and my God are as quick to forgive as I am to anger, gratitude washes in, floods all flame. And all of my hot ugly, every last bit of it, is doused in grace.

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I like art the most of everything

One of Caed's "Mister Pieces"

"I like art the most of everything. When you see it, you just know it means stuff. And like, sometimes the pictures just remind you of things, like cool things you already learned about or maybe you saw before." - Caed, Age 6

I'm not much of a visual artist. I don't draw, paint, photograph, design, doodle or sculpt. Though thanks to a PBS Kids activity print-out (designed for a 5 year old), I did recently learn to sketch a pretty good Hundley. And Dani appreciates my crayon-cast castles. But yeah, not much of a visual artist.

And my son, though just days ago he labeled his abstract colored-pencil piece "my first mister piece",  he's not much of a visual artist either. (Please don't tell him I said that. I do think he's delightful and amazing and naturally talented in several areas. Visual artistry just isn't one of them.)

And that's okay. When it comes to the art for the eyes, we might not be the creators, but we are most definitely the appreciators. And doesn't art need both?

When I think about how we are made in His image, the Creator's image, my first thought is that of course we would find meaning in creating. Whether we create music or art or books or order or scarves or buildings or spaces or curtains or meals--of course we find meaning here. Because He made us that way, because we bear His image.

But my second thought is that He also made us to appreciate. I could be wrong, but I don't think the seagulls perch for hours on the rocky shore just to drink in the majestic beauty of the ocean. I think that's our job--the ones made in His image, the ones who are aware--unlike any other earthen creature--of the intricate beauty, of the art that surrounds us.

G. K. Chesterton said, "All we can say of this notion of reproducing things in shadow or representative shape is that it exists nowhere in nature except in man." Monkeys don't paint landscapes. Mountain goats don't stop to gaze on valley sunsets. Seagulls don't gawk in wonder at the escaping tide.

No, that's our role. We were made to create and to appreciate what has been created. Art needs both. And of all the gifts, these good and perfect gifts that rain down from the Father of Light, these might be my favorite--these abilities to create and to appreciate the creation.

Yes, I have to agree with Caed. I like art the most of everything. 

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Credit to Emily of Chatting at the Sky for getting me thinking about the subject of art. She's  written an impromptu, beautiful and thought-provoking series on art over the past few months that's so worth the read.

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Linking up for Imperfect Prose with another gorgeous writer named Emily (who happens to also be a gifted visual artist--try not to be too jealous).

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