On Mary’s Escape

The first week of Advent, we haul out the manger, really a creche, filled with beautifully unbreakable figures, and set low for little hands to embrace.  And as they take hold of each character in the greatest story ever told, I whisper prayers  that the story will take hold of their tender hearts.

When the novelty wears off, I notice little hands setting Mary and her baby wrapped in swaddling clothes off to the corner, behind the stable, making some scenario of her own, so I inquire as to the change in scenery.

“Mary just wants to be alone with her baby,” she tells me, her, all of five, and me now the child, eager to learn. “There were too many people stuffed in that manger.”

And I nod; this makes good sense to this mother’s heart. And solid logic to a girl of five.  And I find longing, even now, to find the quiet.  Even as they grow, little delights my heart as much as simply holding a contented child. And while I love to talk, I have a need to breathe deep in sweet silence with the man I love, to be in the company of such kindred friends that silence is a welcome melody in the song of conversation, and yes, more than all of this, my heart finds rest when I come away and simply be in stillness with the Word Made Flesh.

And these days, those quiet moments are rare, and I am learning that it is worth it to carve them out, to trade in the elusive hours that never come for the actual minutes that are right now. To still and to be.

Tell me, how do you carve out quiet? What does it look like in this season, for you?

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, right now, this Tuesday.

On Advent and Empty Days

Twas the night before advent… and the procrastinator who lives in this house was up past midnight, stapling twine to broken frame, creating something out of the random supplies that cause drawers to jam and husband eyebrows to escalate in equal parts confusion and wonder.

And the stapler that’s traveled to college and classroom and found a home now on the counter in the mudroom spits its last staple on the last piece of yarn: just enough, no more, no less.

The past few years we’ve incorporated a beautiful tradition from my husband’s family.  For each of the four Sundays preceding Christmas, we gather in the evening, light a candle and read scripture, a Christmas story, sing quiet hymns and carols that tell of the God who formed the world being formed in a womb, the Word made flesh.

As our kids grow (and perhaps, more honestly, as I grasp for something centered, quiet here in the midst of much noise) I long to make each day fixed on this beautiful story.  So this year, inspired by Tsh’s calendar, and the scripture and corresponding crafts and ideas from Amanda, I make this, out of found paper and last staples.

And the printer’s not working, and it’s late, and they only open one day at a time – so I draw the candle – a clue to today’s sweet reflection, and hang 24 empty days.

And perhaps that’s just it.  That we need have only just enough, that we move forward, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. And I’m pretty sure we won’t make all 24 crafts, but we are beginning, and today little eyes grew wide at the beauty of light coming to darkness.

And tonight, this grown-up heart, full of darkness – of fear and frustration and worry and judgement, was quieted by the light burning steady, exposing the deep dark of brokenness and selfish center of it all.  Quietly, without fancy or fanfare, the empty dark is filled by light, in this heart, this home, this world.  So I light a candle, and scribble out day 2, and move on to laundry, this first day.

five minute friday :: {On Gratitude}

Gratitude.

The discovering and the diving into the rhythms of gratitude walked into my life in a dark hour, and, you might say, provided a life line – reshaped my thinking and pointed me back to the giver of life when a life had been taken and my heart unraveled.  And learning to offer thanks in those moments of desperation was a necessity, just as learning to turn in gratitude in the abundance – hushed by the goodness of new babies or fireflies, wells up, with intention, yes, but mostly because it can’t be suppressed.

But in the daily, the litanies, there is nothing glorious or tragic to turn this heart from it’s normal course of gaze: namely, myself.  The little things that bristle me, the exhaustion of motherhood and daily routines – they usually lead this heart to self-pity, venting, gossip.  I have learned, and am learning the hard gratitude, and I have sung praises on mountaintops, but here, now, I am learning to give thanks for the mundane, to let the nothings and somethings sing of His goodness. Slowly, slowly, learning.

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 was gratitude.  Tell me, what does the word gratitude stir up in your heart?

{Thanksgiving} at Home

The fall decor has been minimal this year, both in nature — where hurricanes and October snows dictated a subdued descent into winter, rather the usual splendor, and inside, where priorities have shifted for a season. This year, pumpkins on the porch and an orange garland thrown across the mantle sufficed. Okay, and a teepee. Can’t forget the teepee.

As we move into Thanksgiving, we added this sweet leaf garland, inspired by Pinterest. Just felt and embroidery floss, a perfect first stitching project, one commenter noted. She was right. My five year old’s first needlework. And no eyes poked out, either.

And these. Just Hershey’s Kisses and mini Nilla Wafers and peanut butter chips, “glued” together with peanut butter. And there are lots of other ideas pinned on my Thanksgiving board, and I had hopes for more than felt and Nilla wafers, but life has been full, and sometimes I have to let go of the ideals to embrace the simple sweetness of the ordinary.  So, we’re just taking it all one day at a time.  Just counting the gifts, and thanking the Giver, one day at a time.

Offering thanks today with this sweet community:

… for a morning at home, with no agenda

… for the litanies of life: laundry and dishes and multiple puzzles poured out all over these dirty floors, and the opportunity to make all things new today

… for affordable airfare to visit family

… for the gritty long talks, where truth prevails and I remember again how much I love this man I married, and his passion and perseverance

… for a new life, a nephew, 3lb and 5 ounces, reminding us that life is a gift, each breath  (Will you pray for this sweet baby’s lungs to grow strong and for his development in the neonatal intensive care unit, both for him and his parents, my sister and her husband?)

May your hearts be full of thanks this weekend,
in the quiet moments,
in the midst of the hurry,
in the laughter
and in the pain,
in all things.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

Five Minute Friday :: {grow}

I passed by two landscapers, huddled over cold earth, mesh bag in hand, planting bulbs that will lay silent all this cold winter long.  And gardeners know that the silence and the stillness hold value, and that roots must grow deep, and germinating has no appearance of glory at all.

And I watch and listen, over coffee and by phone, as my friend waits in silence – not actual silence – for life is full, and distractions are anything but quiet, but in the silence for the one voice she longs to hear, the one that says, this is the way, walk in it.  And I doubt she feels the roots deepening, or the glory in the everyday putting one foot in front of the other.  But to me, where I sit, I can imagine crocuses, now but a dream, and smell the bouquets, gathered from a garden of plenty.  But we don’t talk of this, because sometimes it doesn’t help to know it will come someday. We talk of dirt and grubs, and look for beauty in the present, and let hope grow quiet.

Linking up again, this week, with Lisa-Jo and the sweet community at Gypsy Mama.  Join us, writing for just five minutes, unrehearsed & unedited, or enjoy reading other’s responses to the prompt “growing.”

(in)couragement:: {to dwell in this beautiful, messy tension}

photo credit: Darcy of my3boybarians.com

I laugh today, when I see my face here.  And I own that I am likely the one fussing with glasses, which are fitted poorly and keep sloping to the left – not an altogether inaccurate portrait of the off-kilter balance of my life in this particular season. And I laugh at the title, How to Give Thanks Like an Artist, because artist is a word much more familiar than writer or blogger – the terms of use most common that weekend.

It was three weeks ago now, that I had the unexpected privilege of attending a conference called Relevant, and the writing group emily p. freeman talks about in her post, those thirty minutes were, as she says, indeed a gift.  And the slices of stories shared, in that sweet circle, and all that weekend, and on blogs all over and in grocery lines and at the library – these stories do liberate and lead and encourage us further up, further in.

Somehow, though, in the midst of such sweetness and the thunder of sisters applauding the stories- really the Author (although, admittedly, we do sometimes get a bit confused)… and even after the emphasis on the value of each narrative, each piece of art, even after all that I hang here, in the tension of sharing free and unhindered, and the desire to create in the secret, for the audience of one, and letting it seep out, slow and natural, into the organic places in my very down to earth life in a little neighborhood, with strangers and family and friends right here, in real life.  It’s a mystery to me.

And so I clamor out words when they can’t be contained, but truly, I revel all the more in processing over coffee, with a person who can mirror back and challenge and refine, oh, so much more than I’ve discovered through a screen.  Perhaps it’s the season of life, where little ones pressing needs seem to enrapture and demand my attention and presence fully, or moving to a new neighborhood and desiring community that can stop by unexpected, when words aren’t planned and edited.  Or, perhaps its the raging extrovert in me, or the fact that verbal processing requires two, at least, or maybe being raised in a bustling house of sisters trained me to crave the real life contact.

Relevant threw this brewing conflict into my face. As I listened to Tsh talk about the pleasure of God, and serving in the places that our passions and skills intersect, I heard a collective “Amen, sister” in the air, a resounding “yes” to having found that sweet spot in writing and blogging. The fact that it isn’t so much, for me, in this season, sat uneasy.  Yet as the weekend unfolded, and friends listened deep and processed late into the night, I found some relief in the midst of the tension.

The voice I heard in the silence the weekend afforded, and echoed over and over again from microphones and across dinner tables and from those two a.m. conversations with new friends, that voice spoke a message that has been burned into this heart, again and again.

I don’t know how else to put it, than to simply say I came away from the weekend hushed by the love of God.  I was reminded that above all, I am called to abide, to dwell, to make my home in Christ.  It wasn’t just the weekend, it was the mercy of God unfurling all around, the weeks and conversations leading up to it, the abounding grace in how it all worked out for me to go last minute – the timing I couldn’t have planned.  It was an intersection of hunger and anointed women, sharing their stories, pointing me back to the Artist, the Author of all life, the perfecter of my faith.

I heard the same message reverberating all around: this isn’t about you, just share your story with humility and honesty. Let the emptiness sing, let the full places bubble over, and stop trying to figure it all out and control it. And something loosened up in me.  This fear that I had to perfectly represent my faith, or the Author of my faith, this idea that things needed to be tied up in neat little packages to be of worth, somehow the delusion lost its strength in the face of so many women living in the tension of the beautiful mess that is life this side of heaven.

And while I may not know where this writing is going or if blogging will become a sweet spot or fizzle out for other passions to grow in other arenas of my life, I am feeling pretty good about living in the “Who Knows?” because, really I know the One who does, and being fully known draws me into desire to simply be with Him, fully present, and follow one foot in front of the other.  To abide.  To dwell.

Tell me, do you struggle in the tension between real life and this online reality?  How have you made peace with it?

Apple Pie & Embracing the Unexpected

I have a wise friend who says none of us have control issues: we have illusion of control issues.  Ask the woman whose baby has been torn from her womb, or the one who lives in a place and time where healthy children are miracles, not assumptions. And I have felt its sting these days, the white-knuckled panic of stepping into things unknown: MRI’s and teaching hospitals and diagnoses with names I’m still learning to pronounce, uninvited reminders that I do not know what the future holds.

And I have espoused trust on the outside, and striven hard to make this trust work.  I remember when I labored, swollen nine months full with my eldest daughter– this eldest, the one who skips into waiting rooms and rolls her eyes when I ask if her back hurts and tells me, with a slight hint of annoyance that forecasts teenage years a decade away, she answers, “Mom,” (as if it’s a two syllable word) “this is just the way God made me.” And when I was in labor with this child, I knew that I must relax my muscles to dilate, and I had studied up and read the book and taken the classes, and I knew in my brain how to relax, and I worked hard at it, and I down right stressed out over relaxing for many a painful hour that long night. And I could not do it.

And that long night was all I could think about last week, as I worked so hard to trust.  But trust, I am learning, is not something I can produce.  It has more to do with unclenching fists than careful crafting, more leaning into than laboring to construct.

And I snapped last Thursday night, and admitted I’m afraid, sore afraid.  I put voice to the reality that I am willing to trust up to a certain point, and when asked to even consider the possibility that that point could appear on the horizon, I revolt, and none of this belief or understanding – the books I’ve read and classes I’ve taken, none of it means anything in the moment when fear rushes in.  And I am discovering that hiding that fear under a veneer of the appearance of trust keeps me trapped there, just fear and I, alone, running circles around the what-ifs and worst-cases.

I expected the world to fall apart, when I said it, that I was afraid, and was struggling to trust God with the unknowns and the tomorrows. But it didn’t.  Grace caught me, all unexpected.  In the listening ears of a weary, steady husband, grace caught me.   In friends who care and ask and listen, grace caught me. And in family who know how to minister deep with their prayer and apple pies, with text messages and coffee and listening presence, near and from across the country.  And the comfort I receive reminds me that grace abounds, is always pulsing through this broken world, offered free and deep.

Today, I’m wondering why in the world does trouble and heartache and the weakness of my faith surprise me, and when did I become so healthy and fine… just fine, thank you, that I was not desperate for grace and living water?  It is the sick who need a doctor, and this day, I am the one who is needing treatment.

I am wearied by surviving by my own sufficiency and the false comfort of all the little securities in this world. The cracking open and breaking down of all these illusions of control plunges me back into the grace, and I am thankful for the brokenness that reveals His grace.  And I am grateful for the grace-givers who lead me there.

Counting Thanks Today with Ann & this sweet community:
–  For my Mom’s apple pie, and the comfort of family
–  For long distance prayer
–  For sisters who listen
–  Teaching hospitals and compassionate doctors
–  Sunny afternoons jumping in leaves
–  Happy play dates
–  A favorite stuffed animal, dearly missed and now found
–  A pumpkin chai and long talk with a new friend on a windy day
–  The intersection of Operation Christmas Child and Compassion’s Ecquador Trip and the passion it’s stirring here

Five Minute Friday :: {Remember}

Remember.

It’s a word woven throughout the Israelites long journey through the desert, the thing I find hardest in weeks like this.  When I long to take all the scattered pieces and unknowns, and collect them all into little packages, tied up with grossgrain ribbon -neat and tame. I am remembering that I am not  in control.

It’s in the forgetting, be it with busyness or distraction, that leaves me empty.  It’s in the forgetting who I am, and forgetting who you are, really, and at the core of it forgetting who He is.

But the remembering, it takes my eyes off of me, off of the circumstances around me, off the unknowns that I desparately try to piece together, and back on the One Who knows, Who remembers.  Remembers always Himself. Remembers always His promises. Remembers always who I am, and who I am becoming.

Lord, give me grace to remember, and live in that sweet spot.

I’m linking up with the Gypsy Mama for Five Minute Friday, an invitation to write, unscripted & unedited, for five minutes flat.

Dripping Doorways

When the wind blows fierce, cold air screams out of cracks in those beautiful wide-plank floors, and rain falls steady from an interior door frame in our kitchen in this centennial house.  And I bet people pay good money for a zen waterfall in their doorways somewhere, but their water probably leaks clear, and not with the stain of wood that was harvested when my great grandmother was learning to walk. For a hundred years women have dusted this banister and looked out the window, here above the sink.  And this old house is beautiful, but it creaks with age, and groans for repair.

And the groans of this house aren’t anything compared to the groaning outside its walls, all creation, if you listen, crying out for renewal.  I’ve heard of these groanings, and think of them when snow unexpectedly blankets all autumn’s glory.  And I used to think that when Paul penned the words, the groaning had little to do with this small life, and more to do with just waiting quietly for resurrection.

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Romans 8.18-25

Because the freedom creation’s longing for is one we’ve already got, that we’re still waiting for.  It’s another beautiful paradox in a life ripe with tension: the here now and the not yet, the waiting for redemption and the reality of heaven crying out to be lived here and now.

And to think, creation is groaning for what I’ve already been gifted: sonship, the gift of belonging and resting as a beloved, the reality of redemption.  Snow’s dancing in late October and wind whipping through the halls of this cold house, reminding me that creation is groaning, longing to see the sons and daughters dance and rest and live fully alive in the promise, and that one day we will do so effortlessly. And the pit of me groans with longing for that day, and leans into belonging and grace for today, and the tension dances in my soul and drips from these doorways.

Counting gifts with Ann today, and thankful today for…

– a weekend full of rest for my soul
– so many sweet serendipitous and providential conversations this weekend
– sweet new friends
– encouragement from old friends
– my husband and family, who weathered storms and power outages while I was away
– long naps for sick kids
– the gift of God’s Word
– power’s back on and the house is warm now

Five Minute Friday :: {Relevant}

Relevant…

I am learning that all of this mess is relevant.  That our stories are worth sharing, and they’re usually not neat little packages, tied up with bows.  And that is beautiful.  The broken, the ugly, the messy: there is grace here in the dirt and the grime, and I need it, and I need to know that you need it. I am thankful to be, this weekend, in amongst a gathering of women, here to share these stories, thankful that they’re relevant to me, full of grace.

I’m linking up with Lisa-Jo, from the Gypsy Mama, for 5 Minute Friday, an exercise in uninhibited, unedited creative writing.  Thanks for the encouragement to do so, Jacque and Lindsey!