Category: Fridays

Perspective

On Sunday we hike to the highest point on the ridge, and venture down into the ice-caves, where glacial air keeps frozen secrets all summer long. And it wouldn’t matter if we were just walking the neighborhood, because we’re out and we’re breaking routine, and the fresh air is good for my soul.

And last night after dinner, the dinner where I slammed my silverware onto the table and said, in my least calm voice, that I need a break, I do walk the neighborhood, alone, to get some perspective and fresh air and mostly a few minutes away.
And there is only one thing that centers my heart, and it comes on mountain hikes and after hard day walks alone, in early morning coffee and quiet, and unexpected graces. And when my heart is weighed down by heaviness for those I love and the everyday heart cries, only love sets right the brokenness and the hunger.

Love is the only lens, the the only healer. Only love.

This post is inspired by Lisa-Jo, who invites me & you to write for five unedited minutes: “On Fridays over here a group of people who love to throw caution to the wind and just write gather to share what five minutes buys them. Just five minutes. Unscripted. Unedited. Real..” -Lisa-Jo  ***This week’s word: PERSPECTIVE.***

Brave :: {Five Minute Friday}

I didn’t even notice that the bagel shop had closed, but when I see construction going on, a new coat of paint, piano keys painted onto steps, I realize the music shop bought the space, and they’re turning it into a cafe. Something compels me to pop in to see if they’d be interested in hanging local art, and before I know it, I’m doing the design and decor. I’m honest that I have no experience, and we’re in it together, and it is a blast.

A few weeks later I see a beautifully bold writer asking about e-book design, and I ask a question, that leads to an email. And now I’m illustrating, come alongside to add artistic intentionality to honest, hope-filled words. And all of it is lined with grace, and I begin to dream a little.

And a local roaster had an artist cancel, and would I be interested in doing a show for the month of April, hanging art at their coffee shop, replete with a little reception? My husband smiles, and I say yes before I have time to convince myself out of it.

All these things, so unexpected, reveal something so much a part of me and totally foreign at the same time. And I finally fill in that daunting bio box on twitter, and the first word: artist. Because I am made in the image of The Creator, and I am beginning to see that this is all a beautiful act of reflecting beauty.
So, yes, if nervous and inadequate and wildly excited are descriptors of the brave, than I assure, you, friends, I am stepping out with great bravery into this artistic arena.

This post is inspired by Lisa-Jo and the community over at the Gypsy Mama, who invites me & you to write for five unedited minutes: “For fun, for love of the sound of words, for play, for delight, for joy and celebration at the art of communication. For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Unscripted and unedited. We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.” -Lisa-Jo ***This week’s word: BRAVE.***

Empty

Her naked little toes haven’t even hit the hundred year old wide-planks of her bedroom floor when her voice rings out: “My tank is empty! My tank is empty!” She beams, with a knowing smile: she’s in on a little secret that words can have double meanings. We’ve been reading Amelia Bedelia, and when you’re five, and you first unlock the secrets of wordplay and puns and idioms, you milk it for all its worth. She must have announced it nine times before breakfast.

And all week I’ve been filling up with conversation and beautiful writing, circling around my need for nourishment and avoiding it at the same time.  I read about lent and the soul work of fasting from all kinds of thirst-quenchers to let the ugly and broken rise up and be exposed, to let kindness meet my gaping needs and repentance pave the way to deeper satisfaction.

And those words and conversations can draw me back to that sweet abiding place, or just as easily inoculate me from the reality of my emptiness. And I live much of my life filling the void in a million little ways, but really, my tank is running on fumes, expending all this cheap fuel on externals and shoulds, on judgement and comparison and it’s double-edged sword of self-love and self-hate.

When I wrote about the brokenness, I said that I expected the deep, searing losses to bring deep healing and vulnerability, but it’s the everyday frustrations, and my own little repeated failures that grate against my desire to be right and do right and impress everyone with all this rightness all the time.

And all this is dizzying, and there is only one place that really fills, and I come back, all full of myself, to that word again this week: abide. And there’s little else to do than just come and lay these burdens and brokenness down, to let His kindness lead me to repentance and His presence fill my tank in all the unexpected and beautifully familiar ways He does.

And I’m not proud to admit that a mother can sometimes grow weary of laughing at five year old’s puns played on repeat for days and days on end, but I have a parent who is slow to anger, abounding in love. Seven times I find it written in ink, and so I say it again: my tank is empty.

This post is inspired by Lisa-Jo and the community over at the Gypsy Mama, who invites me & you to write for five unedited minutes: “For fun, for love of the sound of words, for play, for delight, for joy and celebration at the art of communication. For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Unscripted and unedited. We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.” -Lisa-Jo  ***This week’s word: EMPTY.***

True confession: My five minutes were interrupted by lego-wars and an important conversation and turned into much longer than five, but I’m linking up anyway, because I’m struggling to find words these days, and trying to brave with them. So here’s to fifty minute Friday!

On Shards of Brokenness and Beauty

I talk in pictures and sketch thoughts to make sense of this wild world. And life teems with metaphor so gardening and falling leaves and yeast working through dough often etch deeper than volumes of brilliant thought and study. I learn in pictures, and I’m learning to embrace these simple gifts.

I read Ann‘s words in the midst of great loss, a year ago. And in the fifth chapter she writes about the sacrifice of thanksgiving in the midst of grief and pain and her story of an accident, a son nearly losing an index finger. And within an hour of reading, in our home, a lamp is knocked over. And just one porcelain finger is damaged on the whole beautiful thing. And I don’t mind so much, so still she sits still at the top of the stairs, a reminder of the hard gratitude that transfigures hearts in the midst of grief.
And when I soak long and read of awakening and a spirit alive to the mystery of God in pilgrimage, a bottle breaks in the bathroom. And whose idea is it to package bubble bath in glass bottles anyway? As I pick up shards of glass and sweep up fragments of a Christmas gift, now used up and broken, I see the label: Sleep. And the irony of reading about awakening and a bottle of slumber shattered melts frustration into knowing laughter, compels me to capture in photograph and remember in pictures what’s transpiring in my heart.

I’m more clumsy than suspicious, but in retrospect perhaps I should have been more prepared for the ripeness of illustration when we embarked on reading Life of the Beloved in my book club. And last night before they come, I shatter my phone.

I kick myself for not replacing the case and I feel exposed and adolescent, foolish. I’d feel better if someone just came out and slapped my hand, shook their head in knowing disappointment. But there is just grace this day.

This is not the kind of brokenness that I expect to make me vulnerable. I anticipate that pressing into deep grief and heartache and big pain will allow me to comfort with the very comfort I have received, and I have experienced this miracle. But frankly, I’d rather avoid the brokenness of my own folly and the annoyances and daily frustrations that constantly scratch away at the glossy varnish with which I coat the ugly and unsurrendered corners of my soul.

I am surprised to find that just as there is relief in embracing my identity as the Beloved, fully loved and valued in God’s eyes, there is also a quieting when I acknowledge my humanity: the limitations of this body and constant propensity towards the selfish and sinful desires.

As I quietly fail in a million little ways – in critical thoughts and a heart full of judgement and harsh responses, and likely in looming ways I cannnot yet perceive, there is only one place for me to run: just Jesus. In the cross of Wounded Healer, the hope of the empty tomb, His kindness leads to repentance, and I am reminded of my standing as His beloved.

I begin to see myself through this lens, and others too: strangers, family, old friends, agitators and heroes, all of us desperately broken, all of us needing Gospel truth all the time. As I perceive my brokenness and begin to peel back the charades and performances that feebly mask them from myself and others, vulnerability opens the door to embrace our belovedness together.

And I’m catching glimpses of the honest community in old friendships and family and new acquaintances. In reading books together and talking honest over coffee while kids dump buckets of Lego, we invite others to journey together in this paradox of being so broken and full of sin and also so deeply loved, forgiven.
Even this morning, my house was full of these paradoxical people – broken, beautiful, becoming. And on her way out the door, the dish a dear friend brought slips out of the bag, lugged along by helpful preschoolers. And it shatters on the one rug in our house, millions of shards of beautiful brokenness.

{For When Fair Trade is All Theory}

My husband has an aunt, so really I do too, who is known in our home for three things: a wildly compassionate, tender heart, a pulse for justice and equality, and a knack for sending sweet little packages.

The day we closed on our house, we left the bank, key in hand, to walk through the empty rooms together – all full of cobwebs and hope, trespassing on the future with the giddiness of kids at Christmas. When the doorbell rang we froze: our doorbell was ringing. We had a doorbell!

{ppssst… I’m guest posting over at Kristi Griem’s blog today! {click here to continue reading}

Note: When Kristi approached me about writing about fair trade for her Fair Trade Fridays Series, I was pretty sure I was not up for the job. I felt inadequate & even hypocritical to approach a topic that has moved my heart, but not to action. This post is demonstrates my process in taking those first steps. Won’t you join me over at Kristi’s today?

On Tenderness Being Born

There are just two kinds of tender.

The first: spring green pressing through earth, tender shoot of new life. It is the soft mush of newborn feet, uncallused, so vulnerable. Or the essence of old love letters, penned before routine and distraction and mortgage payments made commitment an act of love, when it was all flowed sweet and wild and effortless, all the time. New life is always tender.

The second tenderness is a birth story too, but one of the soul. It requires, like spring crocuses and newborn life, a passage through dark soil, a labor through perilous birth canal, but here the contractions and dark dirt that precede tenderness come in all forms: grief and disappointment, brokenness and discipline. Like a meat mallet tenderizing tough flesh, the pain of loss makes its mark, and we press into the darkness, right through it to the light, and when we emerge we are not what we once were.

And we must press through pain, right into it, if we are to emerge. The hiding and distracting, the numbing and the sugar coating and the easy answers – they leave us right there in the dark unborn. When our hearts cry “no more” and the way to the light is not clear, but we keep moving forward – keeping hope that light will come, and when we whisper it to each other in the darkest nights, and keep vigil with the slightest hope that morning must dawn – our hearts grow tender unseen.

So press on, dear friend. Press on.

Yes, linking up this Friday with Lisa-Jo and the community over at the Gypsy Mama, who invites me & you to write for five unedited minutes:
“For fun, for love of the sound of words, for play, for delight, for joy and celebration at the art of communication. For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Unscripted and unedited. We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.” -Lisa-Jo
This week’s word: TENDER.