Roar {and the beautiful music we might make together}

I hear the roar of truth lovers, those who love to proclaim and hold fast to the hard realities, when I would rather dwell in the safety of mystery, and I recognize that in the purest form, these truth dwellers roar out of a deep commitment to something greater than themselves.

And I hear too, out here in this wild wilderness, the roar of the grace givers, crying out for the sick, they themselves experiencing, even, now, the deep works of healing binding up the broken places in their sin-sick hearts.

And these roars, they need to be heard, but without the wisdom of humility, of grace that requires the kind of unconditional love that we simply are not capable of mustering up or putting on, they create chaos.  The roars that could create melodies – beautiful harmonies and chords that speak to deepest part of our broken lives – they sometimes loose sight of the music maker, who orchestrates silence and establishes rhythms.  And we all have a voice, and we all need silence, and I hear beautiful music emerging out of this cacophony.

Oh, give me ears to hear, wisdom to roar and embrace stillness in turn.

Linking up {a day late} with Lisa-Jo and so many more over at Five Minute Friday, where we just write for just five minutes.  A lazy Saturday, all piled on the couch, scrolling through old pictures on the computer, found these images of once wild beasts from a little adventure last summer.  Perfect for this week’s prompt: ROAR.  Join us?

On Resolutions in Lists and Sketches

Until this year, I don’t think I’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution in my life, and I’m pretty sure my resolution for this year might not count, as far as setting measurable, quantifiable goals.  It’s not that I have anything against resolutions, it’s just never occurred to me.  In my mind, the changes that need to happen in my life don’t seem tied to dates and calendars.  But this year, the word resolution seems to be wafting around in the bitter cold, greeting me each time I stepped outside, like the frigid smell of blazing wood on a cold night, burning in someone else’s fireplace.

And as the printables and theories and practical advice floated around, I began to wonder if I was missing out on something.  I certainly don’t have a lack of need for change.  We don’t live in chaos here (at least not everyday…) but I could certainly use some fine tuning: in our basement, our schedules, my muscles and the state of my floors, the lack of laundry system and our life goals, to name a few.

As I sat through a recent gathering where an experienced mom shared her plethora a systems and theories on organization for the home, and as I read Tsh’s advice for setting attainable goals (and the best way to achieve them) and Ann’s perspective, I wondered how much of this has to do with personality.  On the Myers Briggs’ scale (which a new friend, Kamille explains amazingly, here), I’m a raging ENFP – pretty extreme in all the categories (extroverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving). I’m no expert in personality theory, so I may be totally off here, but I would guess that some of the amazing women pumping out the practical advice and insane lists for successful resolutions are probably pretty strong in either the sensing and judging categories of the Myers Briggs personality type.

You see, when I’m thinking about goals and projects, I circle around ideas, draw them out, visually – whether in pictures of word maps.  I make ven diagrams and turn them into flowers and fill them with our schedules for the week, and draw pictures of what I’d love a finished room to look like, and then watch it become that over time, rather than making bulleted lists and checking them off.

So when it came to a New Year’s resolution(s) I spent a few weeks pondering it, and came back to a single focus that I’ve been circling around for years: learning to abide. I know, it totally flies in the face of measurable goals, and I’m processing through what it looks like, practically, to establish rhythms that make space and facilitate growth in this, and how those rhythms might influence my daily schedule and home and relationships – and I suppose that’s where it gets more practical.

But a concept like abide, this is the kind of thing I can soak into and explore.  And I may, really, I must, do some practical things to make this resolution a reality, but I have learned that my goals must be rooted in essence and intuition, more perception than practical for them to take root in my life. And I suspect this is true of others, but not all.

I’m wondering if our approach to resolutions, and possibly our effectiveness in carrying them out have a good deal to do with personality type, how we process information and goals. Maybe this is why some of us are swept up with the idea of a one word resolution, or a picture, and others by lists and planning.  And I am so thankful for the organizers and the sensors out there, the best friends and bloggers, the sisters and husband who offer a perspective and a plan completely different from my own, and for things like Pinterest that let me reap a harvest of their best ideas, tailored and filed in pictures for my visual brain.

So, today I’m soaking in the sweet smell of firewood burning out there in the crisp air, and coming home happily to enjoy the hundred year old radiators that make this drafty house warm. What a crazy, beautiful world – where we’re all so different, and we can learn and grow and stretch muscles we didn’t know existed.  How about you?  How do you make goals and resolutions? I’d love to hear!

Note: This post totally grew out of an article I read and comment I left on (in)courage Bloom Book Club, where Tsh from Simple Mom is talking about her new book, 52 Bites. This Intuitive Feeler is very much looking forward to purchasing it, and gleaning from her wisdom!

New Year {the Quiche & the Quiet}

Happy New Year, friends.  I wanted to share a few pictures from our weekend, which was completely uneventful – save a much anticipated family camp out in the living room for New Year’s Eve.  Complete with a documentary about turtles.  Oh, yeah, we know how to rock in a new year. Hope yours was wonderful, too. Here’s a few photos from our weekend…
Oh, yes. The kids love it on hot chocolate, but a wise woman I once knew added whipped cream and cinnamon-sugar to her coffee every day. That’s right, folks. Every. Day. We may or may not have gone through two bottles over New Years weekend.
A certain individual enjoyed many hours cutting out paper dolls. . .

. . . as did her daughter.
I’m not going to lie, I love playing with my kids.
Time seemed to move slow, and I think we needed it much more than we realized.  The kids played, I found a few hours to myself, one happy man organized his office. It was just calm and quiet, sort of a rarity for us, and very welcome.
My sister’s birthday would have been this week, and on Sunday I spent an unexpected hour visiting with my her daughter, and some of her biological family.  They needed directions to the place we laid her body, and I met them at the cemetery, because I know the way by trees and hills, not plots or numbers. And it was good to return, and see my sister’s smile in her daughter’s face, and remember and mark the time and the healing that’s happened and acknowledge the ache that’s still there. `
And these graced our island counter top all weekend. They’re cutting boards that tell a story.
A gift from my parents, they were hand-made by the farmer who lives across the street from my childhood home, on the farm whose dirt roads bore tread marks of four huffy bikes and whose barns provided playhouses as big as our imaginations, the same farm where we celebrating our wedding eight short years ago.  Now retired, one of the farmers crafts these from wood harvested from the old farm, which sold the year after our wedding.
And on Sunday, delayed and ultimately cancelled plans with friends landed us home with a quiche already made.  Growing up, my mom always had lunch timed perfectly so we could walk in the door & eat.  It’s a skill I have not inherited or cultivated, but the ease and sweetness of our serendipitous Sunday lunch this week reminded me why its worth the early morning prep.
Here’s the super-easy recipe my mom published in the church cookbook the year the first of her daughters married. Instead of writing her recipes again & again for each of us, she just submitted all of her recipes to the committee, who loved her, and published all seven million of them.  The title reads Cooking with Grace, but it would be more aptly called Cooking with Mrs. Q. Just in case you ever wonder why cookbook committees limit submissions…

Quiche

1 prepared pie crust*
4-5 eggs
1/2 c. milk
1 c. shredded cheddar cheese
2 c. ham or 2 c. broccoli**
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. baking powder***

Combine all ingredients and pour into pie shell.  Bake at 425 degrees for 35 minutes.

* My mom makes pie crust in huge batches, and freezes them.  The same person who may or may not have consumed all that whip cream may or may not have used a Pillsbury one for these lovely ones.

**I always half the ham and add all kinds of other ingredients.  This week I did one ham & spinach (quickly sauteed with onions & spices, in extra virgin olive oil) and one one vegetable- with onion, spinach, roasted red pepper, and tomatoe, all sauteed with my favorite spices. I think you could experiment with other cheeses, too.

***I don’t think I ever add this, but here it is in the original recipe.

Happy New Year, friends!

And counting thanks today with Ann and friends at A Holy Experience.  I’m grateful for….
– this quiet weekend
– a routine morning, back at homeschooling for Laura, just a normal day here
– whipped cream on coffee
– paper dolls
– the book I bought Ted for Christmas, that I’ve been devouring
– a new journal
– cutting boards & remembering & memory making
– a long conversation with a kindred friend
– the way her biological sister sounds just like my adopted sister’s did, and the gift of hearing that voice
– easy recipes I can’t mess up
– two little people who love to laugh
– 2012

A Resolution

From the attic I hear church bells ring.  A benefit of living in a small village, this may be my favorite feature of our home: its proximity to three houses of worship that pause to mark the weeks and years and holy days with long, tolling invitations to pause and be still and to come worship.  And that is exactly why I’ve come to the attic, this New Year’s Eve, redeeming the best gift I received this Christmas – an afternoon of solitude, provided by the man who knows me and loves me best of all.

And after the bells fall silent, I sip tea and sit long.  In quiet.  It’s a miracle that could be a rhythm of my days and weeks, and I am learning that even this extroverted, spontaneity-craving woman needs stillness and rhythm as much as I need roaring laughter and mystery.

And I come back to the words that grip my heart again and again.  The words written as epilogue in my favorite childhood book, and the ones whispered during college crisis of faith, and tucked in corners of my life at crucial junctures all along the way:

And as a new year dawns, I am aware that there are plenty of places in my life that need strong resolution: my lateness and my laziness, my lack of routine and propensity to live self-focused; the list is long, and, yes, I will seek by grace to grow in these.  But these are not my resolutions. Just this one thing is the foundation that I will build my life upon, and all else must come from this place: to abide in the love of God.

And I pull out the Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, and the word for abide is defined as this: To stay (in a given place, state, relation or expectancy) abide, continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry (for)… Oh to stay in His love, to remain in the center of that relationship, to keep this heart vulnerable and wide open in expectancy.  To continue and endure in this love, to be present in it.  To stand in it and tarry for it, all at the same time.  To abide. To dwell.  These are the words I painted and hung in our dining room, the ones that I long to define this day, here in the attic, and this new year closing in, and the whole of this small life.

Abide. I think it is truly the most beautiful word I have ever heard.  This is the word I come back to, again and again, when my heart yearns for a life bigger than the one I’ve been given, and also when I long to shrink back from dreams too big for me to understand. And it is here, abiding in perfect love, that He becomes more and I become less. The lies of not good enough, not doing enough, all the enoughs and shoulds, they loose their grip – because when I remain in His love, I am reminded that my value has little to do with my performance, and much to do with grace, and I see you in that brilliant light too. And it is Love that nurtures the branch to bear fruit, and He is a faithful vine-dresser, so it is here, I resolve, by grace alone, to abide.

A Merry {Stinking} Christmas

Christmas morning has come, and we welcomed it in our quiet home, as we sat squeezed together on this old couch, us four, and read ancient words from this new book, a gift.

And our Christmas was full of wonder, because its easy to come by when you’re two and five, and these little ones brimming over with their child-faith, they draw me right in to it. I think about last Christmas, a year ago, and the healing that has transpired here, and I am hushed by His goodness in it all.

But mixed in with the wonder and the meditations, our Christmas was not without the stench that no doubt marked the stable that first holy night. Only the foul festering here was not so much malodorous, but rather a soul stench emanating from within me: the creeping up of fear and control, of pungent sarcasm and defensiveness, the stink of an old self and the ache of this broken world with its bruised relationships.

And as long as I have breath I will wrestle with this stench. But Christmas, it doesn’t hide the stink of the stable, Christmas celebrates His coming right smack into the dark ugly of it. And I am indebted to those who walk this road with me, and point me back to the One who forgives and makes new, who came to give life, and who offers it today.

And in our little church, I am discovering the beauty of liturgy and the rhythm of the church calendar, and I am surprised to learn that Advent is the beginning of the church calendar. And isn’t this how we begin a new year: with hope, full of expectation, and yes, waiting on the One who writes our stories and numbers our days? And why would I, why do I start anywhere else but here: raw anticipation, deep hope and expectation that Jesus will come right here – into the mess and frailty of this broken life, of this weary heart, of this very moment?

And this is my prayer for this new year, that a cadence and rhythm would develop in these days, that I would learn to daily quiet this heart and hear His voice, His coming in the midst of stench and wonder unfurling altogether here.

I am so thankful for each of you who journey with me and read these words and share your hearts, in email and in comments.  I pray that as you look to the new year, His peace & grace, His rest and very Presence will fill your hearts, your homes. Merry Christmas, friends, and Happy New Year!

On Empty Mangers and Finding Jesus

The first Christmas we are married, my parents give us Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.  These little unbreakable people, abiding quietly in a woodsy creche (that looks little like what historians tell us that first stable resembled), these were the playthings of my childhood Christmas memories.

Each year my parents add a piece – a shepherd, the wisemen, their camels, an angel, then the camels again when their wiry legs melt in the unbearable heat of a summer attic... (click here to continue reading)

Merry Christmas, friends! I’m guest posting over at Momma Day By Day.  Won’t you join us?

On Holly & Holy & Here Inbetween

I’m thankful for Emily’s words, and the way they really do cause me to pause, to stop and let this soul breathe.  And today, I needed to heed her advice.  To step outside, away from the doing and not done and into the quiet of the frigid air here.

And sometimes I can rest easy and just be, relying on the hope that I am fully known and loved, and in the just being, the being with the Creator in His creation, I am renewed and refreshed.  But today I find it difficult to just be.  I read these words before I wrap up in vest and scarf, an attempt to mute the incessant ramblings of my mind with something strong and still:

“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.    He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears…” Isaiah 11

And I go out with pruning sheers, because I’m afraid if I go with nothing, just the stillness and the Word alone, that I might waste my time.  And this way, I’ll at least hold holly pruned to prove the worth of my time.  It’s holly over the Holy, I value today, productivity over presence.

And I find, in the quiet I hoped for – now disrupted by the steady hammering and clamoring of builders next door, I find the source of the nuisance we could not discover in the lush green of summer. And I hack off a pile of unwieldy branches so large that it almost dwarfs the holly bush itself.

And the largest branch is the hardest to prune, this one that grew ridiculously long all summer, ignored by previously owners and left to grow long till this, its dormant season, when pruning harms least and promises future growth, when the cold air is forgotten and snow not yet seen is a melted memory.

And the living fibers I find inside the cut branch remind me of a vine and its branches, and the desperate need I have to be connected with the source of life.  And out here in the unwieldy beauty and the air that toes the line between unbearably cold and deeply refreshing, I pray for a heart that’s not afraid to be still, that needs not pruning sheers and distraction to shelter me from the mixed cup of wild beauty and heartbreak this life offers.  And I offer thanks to the author of my faith, who meets me in  the still centered times, and also in the dailiness and in my failures and in the dormant beauty here.

Unwrapping Tuesday here with the community at Chatting at the Sky.  Join us?

A Giveaway

UPDATE:: This giveaway is now closed (although you’re welcome to keep telling me your favorite Christmas memories!). Congratulations to Jefuremu Njambilo!  Use the contact form to send me your address & I’ll ship it out today!  Thanks to all for your memories & traditions shared here!  So glad you all stopped by. And thanks for checking out Freeset and their beautiful work.

As we celebrate the extravagant gift of a King coming down, right into the midst of our broken world, I’m thrilled to offer this small gift, a giveaway here today, this lovely teal & parchment bag, shown here.

This fall I had the joy of meeting Kristi Griem.  Kristi works with Freeset, a fair trade business that offers employment to women trapped in Kolkata’s sex trade. If your heart beats fast for freedom and justice, or if you are just beginning to learn about the dark world of trafficking, take a minute to learn more about Freeset, the lovely products they create (that you can purchase!) and listen to their beautiful stories.
To win this beautiful bag, just leave a comment below sharing one thing you do to celebrate this sweet season, great or small, simple or extravagant. 

Giveaway ends Friday, December 16th, 2011 at midnight. A winner will be chosen at random and announced and contacted Saturday morning, and the bag sent first thing Monday, to get there just in time for gifting or enjoying!{{Giveaway is closed!}}

On Wisemen and Shepherds

Less than two weeks till Christmas and somehow we still have that teepee in our dining room, and the only tree making merry here is the Ficus we inherited from my in-laws when they moved down south.

We are usually all over the Christmasifying of our abode, but the last two months have been a little crazy here. Today I find myself unpacking from a week of travel, living with a half hung garland messily wrapped around the banister and a candle-less advent wreath, that, truthfully, we’ve only used once. And this year it hasn’t really mattered. The conversations in our home and the meditations of this heart have been centered around the manger, and I’m honestly considering just throwing a string of white lights on the Ficus and calling it done.

And I’m thinking, in the midst of this mixed up house here, where fall leaves and jingle bells linger together and bristle the lines of separate but equal seasonal decor, that sometimes we work real hard to get it all right, to celebrate correctly, to make everything count and mean something.

I grew up in a home where Christmas was celebrated lavishly. The sheer quantity of gifts and cookies (I’m talking dozens of dozens!) and people through our doors during all those merry years drove memories deep, spoke right to the heart of the beauty of lavish love, extravagant giving, warm hospitality. And I remember  the prodigal’s father, offering all he had to celebrate, and of heart of a woman who offered an extravagant gift  at Jesus’ feet, of her costly worship. I think of three wise souls, waiting and watchful for the new King coming, who searched far and labored hard and brought costly gifts, and of how in our home, our gifts (both material and those of time and energy) were expressions both costly and beautiful, to celebrate His coming.

When we visit my in-laws, I fall in love with the simple ways they gather around a tree, and the hymns and carols spring up, laughter roars, time goes slow, small gifts exchanged here and there, last year the gift of goat, given to a family whose names we’ll never know. There is intentionality and focus, a centering down. And the heart of it all reminds me of the shepherds, confronted with glory come down right in the midst of them, leaving their flocks and entering in to the very presence of the Humble King, and this is how we celebrate together.

As we seek to raise our children now, to sojourn through this life with grace and integrity, the pendulum has swung back and forth in my heart. And I have held high the ideals of simplicity and scoffed at lavish expressions like a grace grinch, not recognizing the way those very gifts have shaped me. And I have longed for a formula, some simple solution to take all the magnitude of the Word Made Flesh and translate it flawlessly into Pinterest-worthy crafts and activities, that drive home the fullness of God into gingerbread and Advent readings. And it sounds ridiculous when I write it out here, but, really this is what I’ve wanted.

And something cracks open in me when my sister says it: when she tells me they’re going big this Christmas, letting go of the limiting of gifts and attempts to make small something that bursts big with celebration in their hearts. I sense that lavish love longing to pour out, to make memories and teach truth by living it out well, full of joy.

And its a beautiful thing that there is no formula to celebrate a perfect Christmas.  My sister, she tells me straight, that there was a time when high holy days were laid out in stone, and directions were clear, and not one could keep that law perfectly.  And that is why we celebrate the God made Flesh coming to fulfill what we couldn’t.

And you can make fourteen dozen cookies and welcome neighbors and family and strangers into your well-prepared homes, and it can be all for your glory or desperately, beautifully for His. And you can buy all the fair trade gifts or give only to those in grave need, and store up judgement and anger in your heart at those who fail to see the need, or you can do the same in humility and forbearance, moved by compassion and the leading of His Spirit. And the externals, the giving gifts and making ready, it can all be an act of pride or it can all be graceful whisper of humble worship.

Because the Word Made Flesh looks at the heart, and meets us in our mangers and messy stables. And we can worship with extravagance and we can worship in hidden humility, and the Spirit who divides bone and marrow will quiet us with His love, bring us to repentance, and offer us the gift of coming before Him this Christmas, just as we are, when we come.

This Christmas, I am comforted that I serve this Humble King who came down low in a manger, who gave both wise men and shepherds value, and welcomed them into His presence.  O, come, let us adore Him.

The Quieting in the Coming

We rise through the clouds and my heart takes flight.  Soaring at 30,000 feet, and I am relieved at our departure: life has been crazy here.  Tiny fingers wrap around mine, and we sit together, quiet.  This little one, she has thoughts, and there are days when they pound out like firecrackers, erupting steadily, each bang and burst somehow still surprising.  And then there are days like this, quiet ones, hold-my-hand-mama ones, where she just is, and we just are together.

And I am amazed at how these children grow, how this life that once formed inside my womb now grows out here in the wild, utterly unpredictable and outside my control.  And to this heart, it causes wild wonder and ferocious fear, deep comfort some days, and harrowing trepidation others.  And my children, they are not even old enough to tie their shoes, but I have seen the weary wonder on the faces of mothers of teenagers, and I have seen my own parents and my husband’s, and I know this is an endurance race, and these tensions will only grow larger.

And this is the wild place we live – in the story of a kingdom coming, the hope of a promise, and the sin and brokenness tearing and deceiving all that is good and pure and lovely- this is the backdrop of our story, the setting of our lives.

And there are days that I live shouting aloud, and days that I simply lean in and quiet.  And as my baby’s lashes fall heavy and rest overcomes her tired little body, I remember another mother holding another baby, and I think of the way that baby, grown and living in the tension of this broken world, thundering out the kingdom come and retreating to be still and listen, how that baby expressed the Father’s heart for His Holy City.

And I think of David, and wonder if he held a sleeping toddler when he penned these lyrics.

And as we wait for Christmas and celebrate, with expectancy, the coming this advent, as we join in the waiting and hoping, may our hearts be stilled and quieted, before the King who came, small and vulnerable in a manger, and who comes to us today, in our flights and messes, in the midst of laundry and grocery stores, heartache and deep joy, firecrackery diapered wonders bouncing on dining room chairs and all.

Joining Emily P. Freeman, at Chatting at the Sky, to look close into a little moment, and unwrap the gift of the wild beauty all around, this Tuesday. Join us?

And linking up a day late to count thanks with Ann & others today.  Join us!

– For a week with Mimi and Papa, our first visit to their beautiful new home, and the sweetness of being together
– For lunch and later tea with a dear friend, who lives out thanks-living and challenges me
– For the compassionate airline representatives who saw a sick baby and put us on a direct flight, free of charge
– For a car waiting, already warmed up when we landed last night, in the middle of the night
– For neighbors who check mail and turn the heat on, thank you!
– For a four pound nephew breathing strong and learning to take a tiny bottle, and my sister and brother in law getting to hold their tiny baby now.
– For a house barely ready for Christmas, filled with little hearts full of hope and wonder
– For friends and sisters who make me laugh and keep me grounded