On Shifting Perspectives & Messy Houses

I thought about posting a picture of these sweet pussy willows this morning. It’s Mirror Mirror Monday, and they remind me of my mom, and the way she keeps scissors in her glove box to collect wild flowers and unexpected beauty from fields and the shoulders of country roads.
I bought them last spring at the library – a few bucks for a bunch of branches I could have cut myself, all for the love of the local library. And on this blustery April day, they look pretty nice in the entry way, and not too shabby here on the blog either.
And unless you looked close enough to see the dust (which, for the record, does not remind me of my mom and her impeccable home), you’d never know they’ve graced that telephone desk for a full year now, a little holly thrown in at Christmastime to disguise the out-of-season foible.

And if I just posted that little picture with some quote about spring and hope, well, I bet you’d never know that my dining room became an impromptu art studio two months ago, and how life piled up right on top of it, three times over, and nothing’s gone back to where it ought to be.
My husband just texted to see how my day was, how I was, and I told him I was blogging about our messy house instead of cleaning it. Everyday this mess is at the top of my to do list, every night headlining the failure monologue that runs through my head: and now I know why people fall asleep with the TV on, the numbing blue lights emanating into the dark from upstairs windows up and down the street.
And people ask when I find time to paint. Perhaps on the tag under the paintings, right under title and medium, I should list the amount of hours of sleep sacrificed, or the shameful number of mind-numbing Dora episodes consumed by my children.
And my little organizer lines up the shoes that didn’t get put away here in the hallway, and I had just those kind of good intentions when we built the counter in the laundry room, and somewhere under all this stuff there are baskets for sorting bubbles and sidewalk chalk, beads and outgoing mail. Or at least there were a few months ago.
And this is just the physical mess, the places that just need attention and discipline and hard work to be set straight. This doesn’t cover my lofty intentions for Holy Week: the butterscotch bird nests we eeeked out (and promptly consumed) instead of the labor and delight of resurrection gardens from Easters past.

And what of the beautiful Tenebrae service we attended on Good Friday, right before I ran to Target to buy chocolate bunnies and something, anything to fit this “nine-months-to-put-it-on three-years-and-counting-to-loose-it” rubenesque figure (see aforementioned butterscotch nests)? And after all that, of course, came the harsh words that sometimes follow late night shopping, mine and his; you know, the ones about the piles of laundry and the money and the hearts that haven’t been connected so much these last few weeks?
And on Friday afternoon I talked to my sister, the one who lives too far away, who mothers seven children, and she tells it like it is, almost always. And even though she knows wiping babies’ bottoms can be as much a liturgy of the sin-stench that drives us back to Christ as a beautifully crafted Easter service, her kids are sick again, and she’ll miss the Easter hymns sung in the congregation and the simple traditions that sometimes hold us together.

And I only have two kids and I can’t seem to get it together this year, either. And sometimes right now is just plain hard, and it doesn’t seem significant or worth talking about, much less writing about.
But then I think about the pussy willows, and the glimpses we pick up of each others’ lives, of having it all together, and how none of us do, really. And on Saturday I meet a woman at a baby shower, and she tells me that she reads my blog, and how much she loves it, and then she leans closer, and almost whispers words that break my heart: she tells me it makes her feel a little less than, too, and she laughs it off. She reminds me of me.

And I wish she didn’t live so far away and she could stop by to see the mess. And if she knew the way I can be so selfish and demanding to those who love me most, or how I often turn into a twelve year old version of myself when I’m around my family – awkward, insecure, sarcastic, I don’t think she’d feel the same way.

And I wonder what else is lost in translation. And at its worst, I fear all this writing and word weaving just provides an escape from the broken pipes and mundane difficulties for me, and another window of comparison for you, another heap on piles of laundry and shame for us both.
So today, I photograph the mess in my house, and there is no shortage of subject matter, with seventy three images captured in a moment’s stroll over piles of shoes and make shift forts. And to tell you the truth, when I open them on my computer, press the little button that adds light and contrast to the images, I am surprised how bright and beautiful the mess looks on screen in comparison to real life, where the auto-filters of failure and frustration often tint my view, and where the nitty-gritty of scrubbing and ordering is required.

And I would do well to remember the lens that sees most clearly is the one not bound by time and space, not altered by a harsh word or shifting hormones or the blur of comparison and ingratitude. And when we let light dispel our dark corners at the foot of the cross, and when we share our mess with those we walk alongside, share the ugly and the vulnerable, it is then that we find the comfort and courage to live in our wrinkled and stretch-marked skin, the boldness to own our stories, and to put those shoes away for the seven hundred and eleventh time.

And Easter may be over, but we’re all living life in a perpetual Holy Saturday – somewhere smack between the dark reality of this broken mess and the tomb-bursting hope of the resurrection. And some days are full of revelation and beauty unfurling, and others are for scrubbing floors and putting one foot in front of the other. And today is the latter, here, and that’s just what I intend to do right now.

Do you struggle with the mundane of the everyday, with the litany of failures as you lay your head on your pillow, or the clutches of comparison? What helps restore your perspective, helps you put one foot in front of the other and keep walking?

A Canvas and a Cross

I’ve always thought in pictures. It’s how I work out problems, make life decisions, hang shelves in the laundry room. And most of my doodles involve little pennant banners and dandelions and small beautiful wonders. But not this day.

In my mind’s eye I can still see the blue ink on faded loose leaf lines I sketched during some forgotten college lecture: a woman’s body bowed low, clinging desperately to a wooden beam – the cross of Christ.

And while it was not my typical subject, it was not an altogether startling image in the midst of my college experience. With a required minor in Bible and a campus pulsing with passionate conversation and messy spiritual experimentation, I was steeped in the language and lyrics of faith.

But this fictional woman, all crumpled and desperate, I could not get her out of my head. All day, in and out of classes, in graphite and ink, on the margins of three-ring-bound pages, and cafeteria napkins, I worked out the angles of her limbs, the severe arch of her naked feet. I could not shake her, and the more I attempted to do justice to the image blazing in my mind, the more it consumed me.

All my small life I had made blueprints and prototypes in sketches and drawings, and they were my ideas, fleshed out. But it had not occurred to me that doodles and images held the power to shape me, too.

All day she haunted me, this woman, tight fisted, her weary body wrapped right around the cross. She left me no choice.

I had no canvas, just a drawer full of acrylic paint. So I tore the bed sheet right off my lofted twin in that tiny Christie Hall single, and I duct taped it right up on the wall.

And as I wild painted that beam, I reached out my hand and touched the paint, still wet. And I shuddered at the crudeness of the cross.

And I painted His feet. Right onto the cross: it was I who painted them, it was my doing and I had confessed my guilt a million times but never felt the anguish sear my heart, not like that night in my dorm room.

When I painted the nail, I heard the thunder of a hammer.
And when I dipped my brush into crimson paint, and let it bleed down the sheet, seep right through the cotton and onto the wall, it was then that I crumpled, a heap of tears, paint stained and heart-broken.

And I don’t know how long I stayed there, but I do know that when I looked up, at that image, I saw the cross, the feet, the nail, the blood. And I saw the great space I’d left to complete the image. And a voice whispered these words straight to my soul:

Child, you are not meant to paint a woman at the foot of the cross. You are meant to be a woman at the foot of the cross.

That was a decade ago, but I come back to that sheet and those words again and again.

When I long for purpose, and my life feels small and insignificant, I come back, and remember the source of my identity as a child, bought with a price I cannot fathom.

When I long for smallness, and this pulsing life seems too much, I come home to this truth, and I find comfort hiding in the cross of Christ and His greatness.

When my heart is full of judgement, and I am confident I comprehend precisely how the rest of my family, my community, my church, this whole world should function – I come back to these words, and remember there is only one who has the right to judge, and it is certainly not me. And it’s only in the cross that I can love at all.

When I compare myself to others, when I fail, and fail again, I come here and remember that I am being made new.

And you too, friend, are offered new life, a life hid in the cross, a life infused with the hope and power and glory that burst from the tomb just three days later.

Because the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and there is space enough for all who will receive him, here on the canvas of God’s love.

Just a Flower

I wake up to birds chirping, and the other night we slept with windows open, and it was fresh air to my soul.

I have a dozen posts in my draft folder, but can’t find words to wrap them up, boldness to hit publish. And I’m not one to be shy, but I’m realizing how much I love to tell finished stories, and how much of this life is untold, in process, right now. Also, my camera battery spent a good two weeks dead, the charger lost under the mountain that has accumulated on our back counter, the out of sight one that seems to draw all inanitmate objects, the random and homeless ones, that dwell with us here.

So today, just this: a lovely little flower, blooming too early to believe its possible.

From One Tired Mom to Another

Oh, friends. I’m so excited to share one of the projects I’ve been busily working away on here! Here’s a little sneak peak:

And if that Mama in the sketch looks like she has bags under her eyes, well, you can imagine she was up half the night. And sometimes my bones ache with tired, and we have our share of crazy days around here (and even though I wrote about recovering from the crazy, there are days we don’t even come close). People, I know what it’s like to have your two year old lick a tile wall in a public restroom.

So when Lisa-Jo, the Gypsy Mama, said she was collecting her favorite posts on mothering, wrapping them up into an e-book to plumb give away, I was pretty excited. Because her words are real and raw, and they give hope and permission to embrace the beauty without pretending to have it all together. And she tells me that good chocolate late at night is the secret to creativity.  So, yeah, she’s pretty great.
I was so excited, actually, that I agreed to illustrate it, lure my super savvy web-designing husband into helping me design it. The whole process has been a blast: developing the concept, working to create a visual representation of so much passion and purpose (She looks a bit too twiggy, needs the kind of arms that can lug an infant car-seat…), and then the actual design process, the drawing a sketching and finalizing and digital coloring.

And today (today!) she’s releasing a free printable, an illustrated “Cheerleader for Tired Moms”, to introduce her e-book. So skip on over there to see how these sketches turned out and get your own personal cheerleader print.  And that e-book rolls out just in time for Mother’s Day, but you can sign up for your today, righ here.

And if you’re interested in all the art unfolding around here, illustrations and new paintings (even an etsy shop in the works!) you can learn more here:
:: {anniecreative.com} :: coming soon!

(Oh, and if you notice bags under my eyes today, please don’t tell me how tired I look. Just pass the chocolate!)

How to Spend a Spring Day

How many hours can two kids splash in buckets of water
on the first of spring,
doughy little wintered feet wiggling free on tender grass?
I can tell you, it is quite a lot.

And how much joy does it bring the heart of a woman,
whose memories have been stripped by Alzheimer’s,
who doesn’t even know they’re her great grandchildren,
doesn’t even know her own name?
Quite a lot.

And how much good does it do my heart to step away
from the piles of laundry and projects unfinished,
from endless chatter online and on the phone and in my own head:
to just slow down and be here, fully present for this one afternoon?

And it’s just sunshine and conversations on repeat from all parties present:
“Would you like a cup of tea?” again and again and again,
from little hands holding tin teacups of luke-warm water; and
“Look at them. Aren’t they precious?” echoed back all afternoon long.

And I have a lot to learn from these three.
Quite a lot.

Are you here, too? Learning to slow down and be present (she typed as her daughter called her back to the table for more play-dough…) What does it look like for you to unplug, to be fully present, even for a few minutes today?

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!

{Around Here}

It’s freezing outside today, and we pretend it’s summer. It all starts when the little one strips down and the older one asks for ice-cream. And all week the weather’s been oscillating between the tease of spring and full-blown winter, and to be honest, the temperature isn’t the only unstable variable around here.

In the beginning of the week we drive the long beautiful road to the children’s hospital, where we learn that Laura’s spine is doing better than we understood it could be, a revelation followed by jubilation, confusion, and eventually, acceptance of the long, hopeful road ahead. After the appointment I drop my husband off at the airport and drive home for a long week with my two girls. And it is exhausting. But all week long, friends’ names light up my phone screen and people pop over and I am grateful for truth I need to hear and the kind of conversations that stay with me for days.

When he gets home, he brings chocolate. He gets the kids riled up, more wild than they’ve been all week, and I don’t mind so much just now.

And yesterday morning, my little toe-walker gets fitted for AFO’s: ankle-foot orthoses. And she is brave and curious and compliant, and I am a worried mama, overwhelmed with inadequacy. And it’s a part of our story that we’re in the middle of, with no neat little bows to speak of. But I am learning from her bravery, fighting fear with lots of help from the listening ears and truth speaking mouths of friends and family.

So that’s been our life this past week. Thank you for your prayers, for Laura, and for my Dad, who is scheduled for heart surgery tomorrow, and for reading along with all these ramblings. As we start this new week, I’m longing to strive a little less and simply abide more, to be present and grateful in the little moments. How about you, friends? What are you looking forward to this week?

Joining Ann to write out words of gratitude:

• for late afternoon sun flooding in windows
• for Henri Nouwen’s Life of the Beloved, and the women who read it with me
• for a brave, creative, beautiful little girl
• for access to excellent medical care
• for the Charlotte’s Web audio book on a long drive
• for two girls learning to play together
• for broken glass and brokenness
• for a slow Sunday to ease into the week
• for a Lenten service and quiet meditations on the 23rd Psalm
• for long talks, the tears when she tells me about how her heart is being healed
• for eggplant and soup and comfort food
• for a rare afternoon nap
• for heavy snow
• for middle of winter ice cream antics

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.

{Relentless Love}

{I’m guest posting over at my dear friend Lindsey’s blog today. We met at a conference this fall, and quickly discovered we were kindred spirits. She’s spending the whole year percolating on the word relentless, and this month she’s invited a series of friends and writers to join her. Would you join me as I share about how I’ve experienced God’s Relentless love throughout my life, and especially in the midst of grief?}
Relentless love can mean a lot of things. There’s a deep mercy in a heart rescued, and sweet mercy, too, in the protection from the shackles in the first place.

And I grew up in sunshine and sweet places, and His love pursued me: in wind whipping straight through my soul as we raced bikes down to the farm, in soul friends who knew my heart and loved me anyway, in a million little nothings that reverberated with goodness, whose sweet music drowned out the flat notes and off keys.

And I have felt heartache and wrestled with God over injustice, His existence, and all the blurry lines that a legalist detests. And over and over, He has quieted me with His love… (click here to continue reading…)