& just one more

avec le coeur

2012-01-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

It is such a secret place, the land of tears.

the little prince is not a children's book. but perhaps you already knew that. am i the last to know?

which isn't to say you shouldn't read it to your children. on the contrary, luke and i just read it together, and it was wonderful and delightful and such a treat for both of us. but maybe even more for me than for him.

i can't remember the last time i read it. whenever it was, i certainly didn't understand it. i know i read it in high school french class. in french. no need to explain why i didn't understand it then. (did they really expect us to?) i suspect i've read it in english, too, especially since luke has two copies of it on his shelf. but if i did, i certainly didn't understand it. when i pulled it off the shelf to read to luke, he told me he had read it just the other day and didn't get it. so that made two of us who were ready for a rereading.

let me stop here and say that you need to read this book. if you haven't read it--or, like luke and me, didn't get it when you did--go read it. maybe before you keep reading this post. i think you can find the whole thing online, even. in english. it'll only take you an hour. because i'm going to spoil it for you, at least a little bit.

or just keep reading...but don't say i didn't warn you.

the little prince is from another planet, a tiny little planet of which he is the only human inhabitant. there he loves and cares for a vain rose whom he doesn't understand, and whom he is sure is unique in all the universe. he is just a boy, and he goes out on a mission to make friends. along the way, he meets many different people from many different planets, each with his own lesson to teach. he finally ends up on earth, where he spends a year, toward the end of which he meets the narrator and tells him his story. he is a boy of endless curiosity and deep insight, who always asks questions and never answers them. he is wise beyond his (how many?) years, and he teaches our narrator much about love and what really matters. at the end of his year on earth, he needs to return home, leaving behind his too-large and too-heavy body. his leaving looks like dying, but he reassures our narrator that he's really just headed home to his star. thus the narrator will always look at the stars--all of them, as the little prince's is too small to find--and remember his laughter and lessons about love.

a mysteriously wise little child on an inexplicable journey, with many questions to raise and much complicated wisdom to share, loved by a narrator who would never fully understand, who had to leave his heavy earthly body in order to go Home much too soon.

today is eliza's birthday.

for luke, who loved it despite the fact that the ending was "a little sad," the book was probably not about his sister at all. it was about the fallibility of the narrator (do you think he was making it all up?); the lessons the prince learned from the people he met on other planets, the snake who spoke in riddles, the fox with the wise heart (i think that man is greedy); the narrator's broken plane and how he miraculously fixed it (he said he had a wrench); the narrator's age and identity (he's not in any of the pictures!); the little prince's wardrobe (the colors of his clothes keep changing); the pronunciation of the name of the tree that is the the little prince's achilles heel at home (is it bao-BAB or bao-BOB?). he loved it, couldn't wait for anastasia to get down for a nap or for the night so we could curl up and read some more. but i'm pretty sure it wasn't about his sister at all.

which should maybe be part of the very definition of good literature.

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

magic?

2011-12-19T09:29:00.001-05:00

the magic is gone. or so i thought.

i accidentally said something to luke a couple of weeks ago about what i was going to put in anastasia's stocking. he was not really surprised: "i already knew santa wasn't real, but you just confirmed it for me." we decided it would be our little secret; after all, anastasia still has many years of santa-belief ahead of her.

despite the secret being out, luke still wanted to go visit santa at the neighborhood clubhouse nearby. (he made this decision having confirmed that yes, santa would still bring him a gift, even if he wasn't real.) i managed to scramble to get the gifts for the kids over there in time this past week (everyone knows that the mamas are the elves, of course), and this saturday, we headed over to meet the big guy.

when he got off the fire truck (that's how he arrives here in the sunny south where there is no snow for flying reindeer), luke looked at me and snickered, "that's a teenager! his beard is falling off!" yes, the magic was gone, apparently.

and then it was luke's turn to approach the not-so-big guy himself. (and anastasia's, too, of course; she wasn't sure what she thought of the beard.)

having smiled for the camera and dutifully thanked santa ("i saw his mouth under his fake beard!"), he sat down to open his (and anastasia's) gifts. first, he was shocked to discover that santa had the very same wrapping paper we had at home. "how did he know that's the kind we have?" but the biggest shock came when he opened his gift. it was a game, the very game he had just told me about the week before (fancy that). and anastasia's gift was a little toy phone, just exactly the sort of toy she loves these days. luke was flabbergasted. "how could that santa possibly have known just exactly what we both would want?" he could barely believe it.

maybe the magic isn't completely gone.

(as we discussed the strangeness of this coincidence on the way home--and i tried to convince him that maybe that shabbily-bearded teenager was actually the real santa after all--i asked luke how else he could possibly explain the wrapping paper and the perfect gifts. "i don't know, mama," he answered. "it's one of those questions like the chicken and the egg: too complicated to figure out.")

outtakes

2011-12-14T19:28:00.000-05:00

advent

2011-12-12T13:13:00.000-05:00

this is not the season for blogging for me, nor facebook nor christmas cards nor much social engagement at all. but every year, i share the entry i have written for our church's advent devotional, and today feels like the right day to share what i wrote this year. the entire devotional is available as a free download here, and it's definitely worth a look if you're the kind of person who appreciates this sort of thing.

in quiet anticipation, and wishing you and yours all the blessings of the season--

Have you ever seen a child who has fallen, maybe running onthe sidewalk, tripping and banging his chin on the concrete? Or maybemisjudging a curb on her bike and skidding knees-first onto the pavement? Orclimbing to the tippy top of the jungle gym, only to slip sweaty-handed fromthe last rung and end up eating mulch? If you’re a parent, no doubt you’ve seenyour children suffer something like this. And even if you aren’t, if you wereever a child yourself, you can certainly remember some experience along theselines. What is the look on that child’s face, there on the ground, bruised andbleeding and dirty? What is his cry from that place of disgrace and pain?

Mommy! Daddy! Help me!

But what happens when you rush in to collect the weepingvictim? Is he immediately consoled? Does she grin peacefully and settle rightback into her bike riding or jungle-gym climbing? Rarely. Even if the wound isnothing serious, even if your response is immediate and adequate, the recoverytakes time. The child may refuse to settle down, refuse to catch his breath,refuse to have her wound washed, refuse to “get back on the horse” and tryagain. Which, frustrating as it may be as a parent, says nothing about yourparenting and everything about the experience of suffering: even when we trustthe response and know the healing to come, we can be slow to accept the comfortof that certainty. And no one blames the child for wailing at his playgroundmisfortune or for hating having dirt scrubbed from her skinned knee. Pain ispain, and we are right to rail at its violence, even when we know and trust therelief to come.

In Psalm 77, the psalmist expresses our grown-up version ofthe same experience: “In the day of mytrouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out withoutwearying; my soul refuses to be comforted,” says verse two. It’s the child’scry from the sidewalk: “Daddy, Daddy!” and his continued weeping in thefather’s quick-to-respond arms. He refuses to be comforted. But here’s where welearn from that injured child, because despite the lack of immediacy to therecovery, the child does not hesitate to call out for her parent, every singletime. “Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this, to the years of the right hand ofthe Most High. I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember yourwonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.’”It may not be a conscious thing, but that sweet victim of the pavementremembers that Mom is always there to scoop her up, time and time again, andshe will call out to her this time as always, knowing that, as always, herskinned-knee-healing deeds will be mighty this time, too.

This Advent, this story is my story of longing, of the placebetween sorrow and joy. We wait all year for this, don’t we? Our hands areoutstretched without wearying for the gift we know is coming, even if we refuseto be comforted in its promise, desperate for it to finally be here. My grief and suffering seem to beconcentrated more and more each year in this season of anticipation; I can onlybelieve that’s serving to remind me to long ever more fervently for the God ofPsalm 77 who works wonders, whose might is known among the peoples. Who scoopsus up off the sidewalk every time, without fail, and comforts us until we stoprefusing to be comforted, just as He always has. This place between sorrow andjoy, between the pavement and back-on-the-bike, is the place where we learn thetrue meaning of advent, coming.

“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joycomes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5). This year, I’m glad for the challenge tobegin rejoicing in anticipation of the morning, even here in the sorrow of thenight.

because they're pure joy

2011-12-02T21:30:00.001-05:00

and because rachel said so

already!

2011-10-22T22:04:00.001-04:00

it only took me until 10:30am today to be breathtakingly grateful--never mind that it took me another twelve hours to find time to sit down and record it. i stepped out my door this morning, and the smell was the undeniable, earthy, damp, sun-streaked, crisp-aired perfection of fall. already! and i was already grateful, even at 10:30am. and it was that attentiveness to gratitude, first step out the door, that carried me through the rest of a day that was hard pressed to provide anything to be grateful for. fall in my nostrils--the promise of end, death that will bring something new. the promise of end. i'm already grateful. and eager to step out the door again tomorrow.

wagon wheels

2011-10-21T20:02:00.000-04:00

having fallen off the gratitude wagon these last ahem-many days, i guess i should be most of all grateful for grace that covers this one-among-many failures. and come to think of it, i should be most of all thankful for grace everyday, which makes me thankful for having fallen off the wagon so i could learn that lesson. grace.i am also thankful so thankful for seven-month-old baby hugs. anastasia's new post-nap greeting is an honest-to-goodness hug, arms around my neck. and even better, after about ten seconds, she leans back, smiles at me for a few seconds, and then dives back in for another good long hug. it is about The Best Thing i can imagine. luke will certainly want to stall bedtime momentarily by thinkingthinkingthinking about what he's thankful for; i suppose i can be glad for that stalling tactic among many possibilities.and i'll be thinking about why it's so easy to be impatient and frustrated and grumpy and tired and whiny and even funny...but so hard to remember the simple gift of gratitude. i'll be thinking about it.(and the title? well, wagon wheels are one of anastasia's favorite snacks these days. yes, i'm thankful to have made it to the finger food stage...but mostly that's just where my mommy-mind goes when i think of having fallen off the gratitude wagon. it goes something like this: fallen off the wagon -- wagon wheels -- snacks all over the floor -- i need to go sweep. or something like that. nothing profound, i'm afraid. not these days.)

reflected

2011-10-16T22:29:00.000-04:00

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I also am known. --1 corinthians 13:12

anastasia thoroughly enjoys looking at herself in this little mirror (or, to be honest, in any mirror, window, or other reflective surface she can find). i knew i wanted to take a picture of her admiring herself in the mirror, capturing both her sweet little pig nose and the patchy soft hair on the back of her head all at once. i knew the picture i wanted to take. this is the picture i took--which i love, and which is not exactly the picture i wanted to take. thankfully, anastasia spends quite a bit of time looking in this mirror, as it took me two sessions and over two dozen pictures to capture this moment. the moment which wasn't exactly the moment i was going for, but is just right anyhow.

and that is, in fact, the point. seeing through a glass darkly. not quite accurately. we can't quite know what we're looking for in that dark glass, can we? but it's in there. and i am certain we're supposed to look. now i know in part and not fully, as i will know and be known. but i do know in part, and that's important. i'm not sure what babies are doing when they're spending all that time admiring themselves (and, let's be honest, slobbering all over themselves, which is part of the picture i meant to capture but didn't quite). but i know there's something in there they want to understand, and they are persistent in trying to understand it. it will likely still be a few months before anastasia recognizes herself in that reflection, although she does already seem to look back and forth at the reflection when i'm holding her, looking at me and then looking back at the reflection of me. even though she doesn't understand what's in there--in fact, probably because she doesn't--she keeps looking and looking. and she delights in the learning and looking and figuring out.

we can learn a lot from a baby examining that other baby in the dark glass. just because we won't know and be known for a long time, just because we are trapped with the dark glass through which to look, it doesn't mean we don't keep looking. we keep seeking and trying to understand. and we delight in the process, even though we know it'll be long before it's complete. and when we're frustrated by the process--which babies often are--we don't cease wondering and we don't decide we're done looking. we can rest in the promise that--just like anastasia will one day (too) soon discover that she's admiring herself in there--we will one day know and be known fully, with no glass in the way at all.

but in the meantime, i'm determined to rejoice in and persist in examining the (skewed, unclear) reflection.

thinking hard

2011-10-16T22:08:00.000-04:00

that's the whole point of this exercise, right? finding things to be thankful about on the days when it's really hard to be thankful? well, i'm getting my workout, then, and it's working.

luke is thankful for so many things to be thankful for. (i think that's a copout, but i let him get away with it, primarily because it was bedtime and he'll do anything to stall...even if it is think about things to be thankful for.)

i'm thankful for chubby seven-month-old fingers that play and dance in the air, the sunshine through the window, the shadows on the wall. seven months tomorrow. thankful for every single day.

can you guess where we went today?

2011-10-15T20:28:00.003-04:00

luke is thankful for bumper cars. i'm thankful for deep fried oreos.

but i'm most of all thankful that the state fair happens only once a year. because it's really not my thing...even though, as it turns out, deep fried oreos really are my thing.

between gratitude and gripe

2011-10-14T21:18:00.000-04:00

the line is fuzzy sometimes, i think. tonight, it's a good thing i'm committed to this gratitude work. because it's work tonight, for sure.

"Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" (job 2:10)

today, i found myself thinking, how can i be so troubled by my little problems when there's so much worse going on in the world? how can i lose sleep over my losses when people are suffering so much more than i am? how can i lament my circumstances when others' are so much more dire? i have it so good, really, compared to so many.

i have answered this question for others so many times, so many friends who have followed a lament about their own lives immediately with, "oh, i'm sorry; how can i even complain to you when you've been through so much worse?" the answer i've always given is that there's no comparing griefs. your suffering, your own worst thing, is in fact your own worst thing. it doesn't matter if my worst thing is in some quantifiable way (if that even exists) worse than yours, or if someone else's worst thing is ten times worse. your suffering is pure and absolute in the midst of your own worst thing, and it does you no good to try to diminish it by comparing it with someone else's: it's bad, and it's yours, and it's suffering. that's all you can really know as you experience it, and comparison is futile. it's the same reason that, when luke says, "i'm starving!" i don't follow my no-you're-not answer with but-children-in-ethiopia-are-and-they-have-it-so-much-worse. no, luke isn't starving, and it's good to be careful with our words and make sure we mean what we say. but his own hunger is his own experience of "suffering," and to attempt to diminish that by comparison with someone else's actual starvation is something he can neither access nor profit from: he's still hungry, he's still suffering, and now perhaps he's feeling shame, too. this isn't helpful.

anyhow, as i shamed myself for my lament this morning, i was glad to remember my own answer to others: comparisons are useless. your suffering is bad, it's yours, and that's all there is to it.

but why are the gripes so much easier to come by than is gratitude? sometimes, i think, it's a fine line. sometimes, i think, there's a reason we can't decide whether to laugh or cry. sometimes, i think, the very thing that brings us the most joy can bring us equally the most pain.

today, i'm grateful for clear thinking. thinking about painful things clearly. the lines are fuzzy.

i won't open that tossed-aside card from who-knows-what joyful occasion addressed to the nickname no one knows that i found yesterday. not now. fuzzy and fine.

so many things, so bedtime

2011-10-13T21:58:00.001-04:00

my parents, and merlot, and "crazy head" (anastasia's little game), and open windows, and strollers and babies who love them, and bedtime. it's bedtime.(luke forgot to tell me his before he went to bed. he was too busy with my parents. which makes me think i know what he's thankful for.)

i was thankful yesterday, i swear

2011-10-13T08:50:00.001-04:00

this is why i don't usually take on these must-do-everyday type projects...i was thankful for jeans that were two sizes too small before i got pregnant with anastasia, which are now falling off. i'm here to tell you that stress does have a silver lining, y'all. luke was thankful for flumist (in lieu of the flu shot, of course).

eight-year-old thankfulness

2011-10-11T20:26:00.000-04:00

luke is thankful for himself today. i agree.

i am thankful for his eight-year-old self. his brilliant, stalling-at-bedtime, mastering-the-piano, adoring-his-sister, deep-eyed self. his deep-thinking, sensitive, eager, sponge-like self. his funny, adorable, deeply-feeling, teacher-adoring self. i am so thankful for that little self.

and anastasia is, too. i can speak for her on this one.

an invitation

2011-10-10T17:11:00.000-04:00

God gives me books sometimes. i'm pretty sure i've blogged about that before, but i can't seem to find the post--or the patience or time to hunt down the post. often, these book-gifts seem to come in waves: book after book after book that i pick up, usually for some very insignificant reason, and each one speaks to my heart in a way that makes me think, "why didn't someone tell me to read this before?" maybe this sounds strange to you, the idea that God might show up at the library, there between the stacks, whispering read this one, trust me. and that's okay if it sounds strange to you. it sounds strange to me, too. but all the same, i have no other explanation for how i happen upon books that speak to me so clearly, sometimes, and often all in a row.

as you might have guessed, i'm on one of those reading jags right now, having just landed on divinely-sent book #3.

(let me interject here: none of these books, divinely-sent or no, is gospel. they're not even necessarily all that well written sometimes. but each one has some lesson for me, each time. disclaimer finished.)

anyhow, #3 on this current jag is one thousand gifts, by ann voskamp. i'm only about 60 pages into it, and who knows if i'll love it by the time i reach the end, but for now, i'm learning a good lesson from it: gratitude. she says it so much more eloquently than i will be able to--so if this post piques your interest, go check it out of the library, or at least check out her blog: a holy experience--but she talks about how gratitude is a habit that must be cultivated like any other good habit. to that end, at the encouragement of a friend, she took on a challenge: making a list of one thousand gifts from God for which she's thankful. i've only gotten to about #200, but i'm already thinking about what a great exercise that would be, noticing things i'm grateful for every single day.

so i shared that with luke, and i told him that i thought i might start blogging about something i'm grateful for every day. he's eager to do it with me, perhaps more because he's excited about blogging than he is about being grateful. but whatever gets him there, i think, is worth it. i'm quite sure my--that is, our--list of things we're grateful for won't make it to one thousand; luke did the math pretty quickly and declared that we would have to keep it up for three years to get there! and wouldn't it be great if we did? but i'm going to try to jot down something i'm grateful for each and every day. some days, that might mean nothing more than a sentence--gasp, even a sentence fragment--because these days are hectic and full and distracted. and luke is going to share something with me every day, too. some days, i hope, those things we're grateful for will inspire me to have something more to say, more to write, which has always been good therapy for me, but which has been hard upon hard these difficult days. i'd rather be blogging about things i'm grateful for than hard things, anyhow. or maybe i'll be able to think about the intersection of the good things and the hard some days, too, which might be the best of all.

so luke and i will start tonight at dinner. but for right now, luke is at soccer practice and anastasia is asleep, so i have a moment to make my note for the day: today, i'm grateful for sheer curtains in open windows.

(for the record, anastasia is delighted by billowing sheer curtains in open windows, too, as they slip through her almost-seven-month-old fingers--which is a sweet, fresh reminder of how much i love them. and that's a picture i want to take now, so maybe when she wakes up from her nap, i'll see if i can capture it. or maybe by then luke will be home and it will be time to make dinner, and anyhow, the breeze has died down now...and soon it will be too cool out and i'll need to close the windows. but today has been a day of billowing sheers in chubby fingers, and i'm grateful for that.)

you're welcome to join me, if you'd like, in this journey of gratitude, either by commenting here with what you're grateful for or linking to similar posts on your blog or whatever. if i were one of those mega-bloggers, i'd probably have a special icon for these gratitude posts and some sort of system for linking and all that. but i'm not, and i don't. so be grateful with me, organically, if you'd like--as organic as a blog can be. you're invited.

(and if you have a book title to whisper to me to help me sustain my current jag, whisper away. you never know when you might have the words of life to speak to someone, even if it's just through a book recommendation. you might be one of the people who already has.)

changing channels

2011-09-12T11:56:00.000-04:00

[here's this post's soundtrack, in case you want to listen: make me a channel of your peace.]

"Be angry and do not sin," says ephesians 4:26. in the last twenty-four hours or so, i've been furiously wrangling with what that could possibly mean. righteous anger: what does that actually look like? aside from turning over the tables in the sanctuary, did Jesus demonstrate it for us? what tables in what sanctuary would i turn over, anyhow?

i have thought of people i could ask for advice. i spent my sleepless night last night (the joys of teething--not mine, of course) composing emails i would write this morning to people i thought could help me figure it out. circumstances are such for me right now that anger is one appropriate emotion among many, i know that. but to be angry without sinning? i needed some help.

then just this morning, as i rocked my angrily teething baby, i came to the end of myself. (why it always takes me so long to get there i'll never understand; it's the best place to be, always and always. why can't i remember that?) as i rocked and patted, rocked and patted, i finally remembered who the right One to ask the question was, the One who issued the command in the first place: how can i be angry without sinning?

[an aside here: if you know me, or if you don't know me but have read this blog very long, you'll know that i'm not the i-hear-from-God type. i don't hear His voice audibly daily; i'm not regularly given life-clarifying visions. i can count on one hand the number of times those things have happened to me. which has nothing to say about God and everything to say about me, i'm sure: if only i sought those things more often, i do not doubt that He would be gracious to answer. but i digress.]

so i asked. silenty, as i rocked my poor hurting baby to the sound of the ocean, i cried out: how do i do it? immediately, i was singing:

make me a channel of your peace.
where there is hatred let me bring your love.
where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
and where there's doubt, true faith in you.

oh, Master, grant that I may never seek
so much to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
to be loved as to love with all my soul.

make me a channel of your peace
where there's despair in life, let me bringhope
where there is darkness, only light
and where there's sadness, ever joy.

make me a channel of your peace
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
in giving to all men that we receive
and in dying that we're born to eternal life.

except i could only really remember the one line: make me a channel of your peace. and i was crying, too, immediately. as the silent tears rolled down my face and the silent song sang itself in my heart, part of me was crying out, "are you kidding me, God? i asked for righteousness in my anger! you have got to be joking. that's not what this is about AT ALL!"

it's a good thing God isn't limited by what i ask for. i am reminded of a line from bird by bird, by anne lamott, which i've coincidentally (ha!) been rereading recently: "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." hmph. i suppose, then, that this God who was singing to me was the real One, not the one i hoped to create to answer the question that i had first thought to ask everyone else but Him. a channel of His peace. hmph.

the tears kept falling. at which point, i became concerned about the angrily teething baby on whom they were no doubt raining...but when i remembered to look down at her on my lap, i discovered that she had fallen asleep. peaceful, pacifier-less, painless sleep. make me a channel of Your peace.

is my anger justified? i do not doubt it. but perhaps my call is to something bigger than justified anger. (shouldn't we all hope for better, after all?) i am reminded of the woman in proverbs 31: "Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue...a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised." what is it, after all, that my family needs from me most of all: righteous anger? or strength, dignity, wisdom, kindness, God's peace? surely all have their place, but as i looked on my peaceful, no-longer-angrily teething, sleeping baby, i realized that peace was not only what she needed but what i needed to seek, too: release from the painful anger so i can find rest. and more than anything, i need to be a channel of that peace for my family.

so although i hadn't even gotten through this post before my sweet girl was awake and angrily teething again or before the source of my own anger had once again reared its head, i am listening and actively seeking to change the channel. make me a channel of Your peace, Lord.

repost: elliptical tears

2011-09-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

(here's a repost from this day two years ago. i don't think i have much new to say...but maybe you didn't read this back then.)

he brought a knife to class.

i was an early-twenties community college instructor, teaching an 8am developmental english class in a computer lab. my students were of all sorts: young people getting started on an associate degree and hoping to transfer to a four-year college, older folks getting a new degree or certification in pursuit of a career in nursing or automotive technologies, immigrants getting their feet wet in a new world. they all came through my class because they needed some extra work on college writing. i was wet behind the ears, enthusiastically green and chomping at the bit to join these students in their pursuit of a whole new life.

and then, that morning, my slightly mysterious, quietly confused, small boy in a big man's body of a student brought a knife to class. a hunting knife, big and serrated, carried casually in a pouch on his hip. i didn't notice, wrapped up as i was in the joys of proper grammar and punctuation, thesis statements and topic sentences.

halfway through the two-hour class, around 9am, we took a break. the students left the computer lab for a drink, a snack (breakfast?), a smoke. they came back atwitter. several reported to me, quietly but not so casually, that the aforementioned student had a knife. indeed, there was no mistaking it: the poor, sweet, wouldn't-harm-a-fly student was carrying a weapon. was i supposed to know what to do about this? in all my twenty-three years of life, all my nine months of teaching experience? i talked to him quietly about the knife, asked him to leave, told him to meet me in my office after class ended at 10am. i'd explain then. he was clearly clueless and harmless, but he was also confused and very concerned about missing class. i'd fill him in later, i assured him, and (as i assured myself) i'd have my boss with me, just in case.

the rest of the students were atwitter with rumors flying through the hallways: there had been a plane crash in new york city. "aren't you from new york, mrs. jackson?" a plane crash was not high on my agenda for the morning; and anyhow, it was 9am, halfway through my class, and there was much left to cover. and i was myself distracted by the knife-wielding student. we plunged back into our work.

class ended at 10am, and i headed quickly for the adjacent building, which contained my office, my dean's office, and, among other things, the president's office and the college's main conference room. as i entered the building, i found the conference room door open, which it never was, and the big-screen television on, surrounded by many colleagues and students, including my dean.

not grasping what had happened as i had spent the last two hours in grammar-induced bliss, i hurriedly filled my dean in on my situation with the armed student; my immediate boss was herself teaching a class, and could my dean accompany me to meet the student who was no doubt waiting outside my office door? she did, tearing herself away from the television and quickly filling me in on the news.

***********

there are six televisions on the wall in front of the exercise equipment of the gym where i work out. this morning, on the eighth anniversary of what we have all come to know simply as 9/11, i showed up at the gym around 9:30, climbed on my usual elliptical near the center of the room, plugged in my earbuds, and started jogging. was i aware of the date before i looked at the televisions? i'm not sure. but on the screen in front of me to my left was playing the footage from that very hour eight years ago; and on the screen in front of me to my right, the live memorial being held in the rain at ground zero.

the elliptical in the center of a gym full of people is not my usual spot of choice to break down. but as i watched, i was flooded with grief and memories.

memories of my beloved dean--she who tore herself from the footage eight years ago to come to my rescue--who passed away last spring from skin cancer.
memories of frantic attempts to find out the whereabouts of many city-dwelling college friends, including one who was just a block from ground zero and whose story from that day and those following still sends shivers up my spine.
memories of my sister-in-law's story of watching the smoke billow from the twin towers from her hoboken apartment as she wondered about her friend's husband, who worked on the top floor. he had been running late for work that morning, and hadn't arrived yet.

sure, those stories can choke me up sometimes, in a private conversation or a quiet moment. but on the elliptical? never before.

but the pump is primed, as it were, and i understand loss. that's the long and short of it. eight years ago, i had no idea what it meant to grieve. i had no idea what it meant to live in the inexplicable physical pain of tragedy. i did not understand fear or loneliness or mourning. sure, i cried along with the rest of the country as 9/11 unfolded, but i didn't know why.

today, on the elliptical, i did.

sanctuary

2011-09-09T19:40:00.001-04:00

(my posts used to always have soundtracks. here's one for this post, in case you want to listen: sanctuary.)

Lord, prepare me
to be a sanctuary,
pure and holy,
tried and true.
with thanksgiving
i'll be a living
sanctuary
for you.

each tuesday morning, our church staff gathers at 8:30 for a morning prayer service. we spend an hour or so praying together and digging into scripture, getting our hearts and minds oriented to the "why" of what we do before we sit down to our staff meeting and all the "whats" of what we do. it may be my favorite hour of the week.

we gather in the sanctuary, setting a circle of chairs just in front of the chancel, quite literally at the foot of the cross. we recite a liturgy that is centuries old, repeating words that have been repeated by generation upon generation before us. we read scriptures that have been prescribed for us by that liturgy, long before the moment we're in right then, facing the things we are facing just now. we join our voices with the heavenly hosts as we recite the jubilate or the te deum. we are not alone, we seven (or eight or six or however many we may be that week). it is when it is raining that i am most clearly reminded of that fact.

you see, at that spot in the building where we circle our chairs, there's not much between the ceiling above our heads and the roof, uninsulated and unfinished as that part of the ceiling is. and the roof, well, i'm not sure, but i'm guessing it's made of metal. because when it rains, it's something to hear sitting there. there are times--like this past week, when the remnants of a tropical storm were passing through--when we have to shout to be able to hear each other over the deluge. it's a sound something like what i remember niagara falls sounding like when you walk under it, something i haven't done since i was a child but have never forgotten. i love that when we recite the prayers together, along with that deluge, i know that our voices are not alone.
there are also those sweet moments when the rain abates, even just for a moment, at just the right place in a prayer, like when our rector prayed for peace this week, and the deluge settled abruptly--if only momentarily--to a gentle drumming. i cannot help but smile at those moments, too. and there is in all that rainy noise also a loud reminder to be grateful for that roof over our heads, surrounded as we are by people who aren't so blessed. the occasional leaks the roof springs are nothing but a small headache compared to the experience of those who have no roof whatsoever whose leaks to lament.

sanctuary: that's what we call that part of the church, the place where we gather to worship. but a sanctuary is more than just a room in a church; literally, it's a place of refuge or safety. that roof, that drumming rain, that circle of chairs, the people in those chairs, those ancient words--those things represent refuge and safety for me even more so than the roof that so loudly receives the rain. even as i am protected from the rain by the roof of that sanctuary, and even as i rejoice in God's provision of that roof, i am reminded of the sanctuary that is the sound of that rain, the reminder that my voice is joined with many in that deluge even as it is joined with the few gathered there with me at the foot of the cross.

loaded

2011-09-01T21:27:00.000-04:00

maybe i'm the only one who notices.

there are seasons to dishwasher loading, i think. tonight i was having trouble fitting in all the things i needed to. then i realized that was because the contents of the dishwasher are different now.

seasons. we are in a season now--all of a sudden--when space must be made for colorful plastic things: sippy cups and tiny spoons and little bowls. those things take up spaces that are different, leave gaps that are different. with school lunch-packing in full swing and soccer season hard upon us, water bottles are taking up spaces that had been vacant or filled with summer iced tea glasses instead. i'm not sure if it's my current cooking rut or the people around my table, but for whatever reason, there are very few plates in my dishwasher right now--those easy-to-fit-right-between-the-pegs inhabitants--and many more bowls, which take up more room than they ought to, i think. and we who are filling the dishwasher these days seem to be filling the silverware slots faster than we are the rest of the dishwasher, maybe because it's just not filling that fast these days, in this season.

it's obvious, isn't it, when you've had a dinner party--the dishwasher contents are significantly different on those nights. many wine glasses, maybe, or too many forks to fit in just one load. it fills faster on those nights, and it's obvious to anyone from the dishwasher load that the eaters and drinkers that night have been different from the usual. but as the contents are affected by seasons of life, the changes are more subtle. and it's not until a night like tonight, when suddenly nothing fits, that you realize how much the dishwasher loading has changed. just now, it seems, right between loading the dishes last night and tonight, the contents seem to have changed completely. right under my nose, and i hardly noticed until just now.

it's the sort of thing that takes your breath away, really, when you finally notice. and i hardly noticed until just now.

broken-in

2011-08-20T09:11:00.004-04:00

to my third-born, on the occasion of our first time reading that "touch, skritch, tickle" book

it doesn't squeak anymore. the pig at the end of the book with the squeaky nose doesn't squeak anymore, because, no doubt, your big brother squeaked it to death. which got me thinking about all kinds of things that will be true for you, my third-born.

you will sleep in many-times-washed blue pajamas, which might even have stains on them, despite being a little girl.

you will ride in a car seat with a twisted strap that just can't seem to be untwisted anymore. and although it is still safe, its design is oh-so out of date.

you will never have a nap schedule, even if you someday decide you want to take a real nap, because you'll be too busy along for the ride to soccer practice and piano lessons and grocery shopping and the rest of life.

you will often chew on a spoon instead of the latest-greatest developmentally appropriate teething contraption.

i could get to feeling bad for you, my third-born, for having all the broken-in-ness your life is going to have. but most of all, you have a broken-in mama, and as long as you don't mind a few gray hairs and a squishier lap, you might be the better for it.

because a broken-in mama knows that those blue pajamas, despite being blue and maybe even stained, are also many times washed...and softer for having been. so you might even sleep better in them, comfy and broken-in as they are.

a broken-in mama knows that the company you keep in the back of the car--namely, your big brother, who is infatuated with you and has learned that you'll fall asleep in the car only if he lets you hold his finger, which he does so faithfully--is far more important than the silly patterns on your car seat.

a broken-in mama knows that naps are good but the sunshine and friends on the sidelines of soccer practice might be even better. and the snooze that happens on the way home from soccer practice might just be good enough to call a nap, especially if we take a few extra laps around the block to make it last a little longer.

a broken-in mama knows that the spoon is in fact the greatest (if not latest) teething toy out there, and that one day soon, pots and pans and tupperware and cardboard boxes will be even better.

most of all, a broken-in mama knows that the hours she spends rocking you to sleep on her lap, long as they may seem now, are fleeting and gone in an instant...and neither of us will ever get them back. a broken-in mama isn't in such a rush to put you in the crib the moment your eyes close, then, because just a few more minutes rocking never hurt anyone, even if mama's eyes end up closing, too.

everyone knows that the best pair of jeans is the broken-in pair, the ones that are so soft as to be almost threadbare, just before they start to get holes worn in them. and maybe, just maybe, a broken-in mama--even with a few holes starting to wear through--is even better than a shiny new reading-all-the-parenting-books mama, who, despite looking good, is too stiff and fresh to be all that comfortable. i trust, my third-born, that this broken-in mama is soft and comfortable and just-right fitting for you, then, even with her threadbare spots. so we'll read that touch, skritch, tickle book, though maybe not as many times as your brother did because we'll be too busy doing other things. but when we do read it, we'll touch, skritch, tickle all the same--maybe better than i did with your brother--and when we get to the not-squeaky pig at the end, we'll make our own pig noises. and they'll probably be better pig noises anyhow, because any good broken-in mama knows that pigs don't squeak, after all.

storytelling

2011-07-13T20:41:00.003-04:00

so much of life is about how you tell the story. it was a charcoal gray vw beetle from hawaii that got me thinking about it. but i should probably back up.

at the church we attended when i was a kid, we always sat in the same pew. always next to the same people, always behind the same people, always in front of the same people. every single sunday. always said hello, always shared the handshake of peace, every single sunday. but never once in all the years--my entire childhood, in fact--that we attended that church did i learn any of those people's names.

(i will pause here to allow you to reflect on the strangeness of that fact. my southern friends especially will find this inscrutable. someone told me once that people have two walls around them. for southerners, the first wall is very low, which is to say that it's easy to meet them and get to know them on a superficial level; it's not hard to get over that first wall. but the second wall, the one surrounding the real inner person, is much higher. whereas for northerners, the first wall is the insurmountable one; you just can't get in easily at all. we yankees don't say hi to strangers on the street, don't even know the names of the people we sit next to every single sunday for decades in church. but once you're past the very initial introduction, getting over the second wall, the one where you get to the real person, is much easier. be that as it may or may not, now it's time to get over the strangeness of this piece of my childhood lore because the strangeness of it is not what this post is about.)

this post is about storytelling. because the fact that we didn't know anything about any of the people we worshiped with every single sunday did not at all mean that we weren't curious. so we made up stories instead. we guessed at these people's lives: who they were, how they were related to each other, what they did all of the other 167 hours in their week. and in our conversations about them, since we didn't know their names, we made up names for them, too. the mafia family, the sausage lady, the little people--these were the (mostly unflattering) ways we referred to the people we sat with as we guessed at their stories. how were all those people in the mafia family related to each other, anyhow? why wasn't the husband of the little people couple in church two weeks in a row? was it possible that the sausage lady just didn't own a mirror? (putting these thoughts in writing doesn't make me particularly proud of them, come to think of it.)

the point--other than the fact that i am suddenly wondering what moniker my family and i earned and why and what stories were imagined about us--is that we naturally make up stories to fill in the gaps in our lives. we are, whether we realize it or not, constantly trying to make sense of life and our experiences by filling in details where they're lacking. which is what happened the other day when i found myself following a newish-looking charcoal gray vw beetle with a hawaiian license plate reading "ncduke." hmmm.

i made up some stories, none of which could i quite get to make sense. there are lots of details to fill in in such a circumstance, after all, unusual as it is to see a hawaiian car in north carolina. how did the car get here, anyway? and why? a student might have such a university-centric license plate, sure, but what kind of student is going to bring a car all the way from hawaii? instead, surely it was someone who had just moved here and thus shipped the car all the way. but could s/he have known s/he'd move to north carolina when s/he registered the car in hawaii? is this some far-flung cameron crazy who finally made it to the land of the blue? and the car looked very new, which meant it couldn't have resided in hawaii for long before coming to north carolina...anyhow, i just couldn't make the story make sense.

(another aside: if you'll indulge my curiosity and leave your version of the story in the comments, i'd be greatly obliged. maybe you'll figure it out more easily than i could.)

fast forward to later that night, when i found luke, who i supposed to be getting ready for bed, on the floor in tears. he didn't want at first to talk about what was wrong, but he finally did explain: "i just want to have a normal family." when i asked him why he thought our family wasn't normal, he said, "what kind of normal family has a dead sister?"

in retrospect, i am quite sure the combination of some old family photos he saw upstairs for the first time in a while with the fact that he had earlier in the day been telling a new friend about his sisters is what led him to end up in such a state. he tells his story very matter-of-factly: i used to have a sister named eliza, but she died. now i have another sister named anastasia. no big deal, or so you'd think to hear him tell it.

but that's a crazy story for a seven-year-old to have to tell. how does he fill in the gaps in his so-young, so-brilliant mind? how does he figure out the details that he cannot remember or never understood? and how will he tell the story over the course of his life, in a year or ten years or fifty years? how will he tell the story to anastasia, who will one day see those same family photos and wonder at the sister in the picture that she'll never know?

there are different kinds of stories, after all. and different versions of the same stories. there are stories we love to tell--stories of falling in love, of discovering five dollars in an old coat pocket, of the day we got a new puppy, of an exotic vacation. but there are stories we have to tell, too, even if we don't love to tell them. stories whose details are burned into our minds and whose gaps we can't help but fill...or sometimes can't bear to fill. sometimes, we can't but stick to the facts: that's a newish charcoal gray vw beetle with a hawaiian license plate reading "ncduke" here in the middle of north carolina. and that's all there is to say.

dipped too deep

2011-07-10T19:46:00.004-04:00

(a disclaimer: i didn't write much of this post. in case it isn't familiar to you, all of the italicized text comes from the anglican book of common prayer, eucharist rite II.)

Holy and gracious Father: In your infinite love you made us for yourself, and, when we had fallen into sin and become subject to evil and death, you, in your mercy, sent Jesus Christ, your only and eternal Son, to share our human nature, to live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all.

He stretched out his arms upon the cross, and offered himself, in obedience to your will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.

seven-year-old luke returned to his seat with a grimace on his face. “i dipped my bread too deep into the wine and it tasted bad!” he struggled to swallow the wine-soaked morsel.

On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, "Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Therefore we proclaim the mystery of faith:
Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

does it leave a bad taste in my mouth? it should, i think. do i choke on the bitterness? on the night He was handed over to suffering and death. Christ has died. to suffering and death. the wine is sour before the sweetness.

We celebrate the memorial of our redemption, O Father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Recalling his death, resurrection, and ascension, we offer you these gifts.

Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him. Sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace; and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.

All this we ask through your Son Jesus Christ: By him, and with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory is yours, Almighty Father, now and forever. AMEN.

dipped too far into the wine. it tasted bad. is it possible to be dipped too far? sanctify us also. a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say,
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever. Amen.

Alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us;
Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia.

The gifts of God for the people of God: Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving.

we are bold to say.
i am bold to say, Father, that i want to be dipped deeper in the blood. bitter and sweet, the sour taste of suffering and the bold sweetness of redemption. in the blood. i cannot be dipped too deep.

in some churches, the communion drink is grape juice served in those little plastic cups. while there is nothing wrong with this, it will never be enough for me. i believe i am meant to grimace a little, to choke a little on the bitterness of dipping my bread deep in the wine. we are meant to be shocked by the sourness of it--as He spread out his arms on the cruel wood of the cross, shocking indeed--before the sweetness. our bread, our daily bread, is meant to be tainted by the memory that the very Son of God is broken for us. we take and eat, we feed on Him in our hearts by faith, only because He is the bread of life, broken for us. dipped in blood. broken.

Almighty and everliving God,
we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food
of the most precious Body and Blood
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ;
and for assuring us in these holy mysteries
that we are living members of the Body of your Son,
and heirs of your eternal kingdom.
And now, Father, send us out
to do the work you have given us to do,
to love and serve you
as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.
To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

“i dipped my bread too deep into the wine and it tasted bad.” amen, my love. this week, i am grateful for the reminder of the bitter suffering of the cross and the sweetness that only the blood can provide. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). i will drink deeply. “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood,’” (how can we but choke?) “’you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day’” (John 6:53-54). sweetness.

as we struggle through the bitterness, the sour first taste and the grimace it inspires, may we long ever more for the sweetness to come. Christ our passover, sacrificed for us. we cannot be dipped too deep.

as for what's best

2011-06-22T19:29:00.005-04:00

it seems to be the thing to do these days to write articles and blogposts and such about why you have chosen to feed your baby the way you do, and often, why that's the best way. consider this my two cents' worth, then, in a simply honest, not-going-to-be-helpful-if-you're-trying-to-choose-bottle-or-breast sort of way.

some background: luke was exclusively breastfed but for the occasional bottle of expressed milk, which he didn't really care for and so drank only of absolute necessity (thus very rarely). i took the advice to nurse for a year very literally, as any good legalist would, and nursed luke to sleep on his first birthday, kissed him goodnight, and without hesitation whispered that he had, in fact, just nursed for the last time. neither of us ever looked back. eliza, who was unable to eat by mouth, was fed expressed milk by feeding tube for four months, at which point she switched to some high-tech, medically necessary formula. she nursed only once in her life, her very first day, and never again had the opportunity to try. anastasia, now three months old, has been exclusively breastfed but for supplemental formula in her first week, necessary as it was to keep up her (substantial) weight until i could make enough milk to sustain her. i'm hopeful that she'll consent to a bottle or two of expressed milk on our upcoming 700-mile pilgrimage to the north, but i have my doubts.

but hear me on this: i am no member of the la leche league. i have lots of respect for those for whom "breast is best" is their life motto, but i can't get quite as excited as they do about it. nor have i ever been able to join the camp that touts all the benefits of bottle feeding--better sleep, more help from dad, etcetera--despite the fact that i often watch bottle-feeding parents and think, why am i not doing that right now? no, i can't get too worked up either way on this issue.

to me, breastfeeding is a relatively simple choice. the only prerequisite for milk production is childbirth, and it almost always happens without any intervention at all. it's free, it's easy (after the first few weeks), and it's healthy for mom and baby. it naturally makes babies sleepy, a good thing for everyone's bedtime (and thank you, but no, i'm not worried about breaking the nursing-to-sleep habit when the time comes. i figure God knew what was up when He made milk sleep-inducing, and i'll deal with the consequences of that opinion later. i never regretted it for one minute with luke). but nursing doesn't excite me. i'm not one of those moms who sheds tears over weaning, nor do i get those sweet, sappy feelings many moms describe when nursing. to be honest (and you know i always am), it's often uncomfortable, restricts my freedom considerably, is exhausting and isolating, and has the potential to cause all sorts of unpleasant problems--thrush, mastitis, and the like. it's a practical commitment for me and not much beyond that, but one i make willingly and readily and with very little hesitation.

so i don't really have a dog in this fight. if you're looking for advice about how to feed your baby, i'm not really the person to ask, and this isn't the blogpost to read.

but i do know what's best. there comes a day in every nursing baby's life (i assume--it has come in the life of both babies i've nursed, anyhow) when she is happily and obliviously chugging away and suddenly stops. she looks up at you and gives you a heart-breaking, tear-inducing, ear-to-ear grin, as if to say, "oh, you're here! i'm so glad to see you! i'm having some really great milk right now," and then gets right back to nursing. that, i can tell you, that moment is what's best. and for the pure joy of that moment, i'll take all the sleepless nights and discomfort and inconvenience i have to.

and now i have to go nurse that baby. again.

toes are funny like that

2011-06-14T20:56:00.007-04:00

the next thing

2011-05-27T20:20:00.004-04:00

when my mom called me this morning, she said she was worried about a man who lived a few doors down. there were multiple emergency vehicles in front of the house, and they didn't show signs of leaving. when i asked her how she knew it was the man who was unwell and not his wife, mom said she had seen the woman go out to pick up the newspaper from the front porch.

it was not two hours later that mom called back to say that the man had passed away.

it's what we do when unbearable, unspeakable things happen: we pick up the paper from the front porch. we worry about overdue library books. we get new cell phones (yup, we did that the very next day, too). we wash dishes, mow the lawn, answer emails, or make dinner when the world has suddenly been upended. and the next day, we do the next thing.

i'm not sure if it's a function of habit--we just always pick up the paper from the front porch without even thinking--or a semiconscious seeking after normalcy--at least i know how to do this thing. or are we actually unable to stop? i don't know my parents' neighbor well enough to know what drove her to pick up the paper from the front porch when the unthinkable was happening or maybe had already happened.

but i know that, on some level, it's what we all do. we do the next thing. we go to work, we get an oil change, we do the grocery shopping. even though it's still unbearable, unspeakable, we do the next thing. and the next thing we know, we're doing another next thing: we get a new job, move to a new house, get a pet. but the world is still upside down. it's not fixed, we're not saved by doing the next thing. still, on some level, we can't not. or perhaps i should speak for myself here: at least i can't not. i do the next thing. i get new curtains, get a haircut, have a baby. i try a new restaurant, clean out my closet, rearrange the furniture, find a new hobby. things aren't put right by doing the next thing, never. but it is still unthinkable, unbearable even if i don't do the next thing. so i do.

i want to tell my parents' neighbor not to listen to the people who will tell her to stop doing the next thing, to let the newspapers pile up on the front porch, forcryingoutloud, or to let someone else pick them up for her. to let the bathroom go unpainted, the flower beds go unweeded, the refrigerator go uncleaned, the laundry be forgotten. and maybe, just maybe, here's another place i need to speak for myself alone. because doing the next thing, even from my upside down place, is the only way i know to be. but maybe that's just me. is it, in fact, possible to stop doing the next thing?

the more i think about it, the more i realize how much i'm projecting. i don't know why the neighbor picked up the paper from her front porch on the morning her husband died. maybe her husband was still well when she picked up the paper, and he wanted to read it. or maybe it wasn't the paper she picked up at all, but instead a piece of medical equipment an emt dropped on the way in the door. maybe she wasn't doing the next thing, after all. i don't know.

what i do know--at least i'm pretty sure i know--is that nothing in her world is right side up tonight. and if she wants to read the paper, i hope she won't let anyone stop her.

speaking of family photos

2011-05-27T09:16:00.005-04:00

okay, these pictures are admittedly old news by now. anastasia is way bigger, and i am (thankfully) at least a little bit smaller! but they're still so sweet--not too late to share them, i think. (and if you're looking for a photographer in or near southern california, check out our old-friend-turned-photographer, who took these pictures: krista lucas photography.)

where i am and have been, in no particular order

2011-05-27T07:19:00.000-04:00

the first part of this post is nearly six weeks old. yup, six weeks ago, i started a post and never did get to finish it. i had more thinking to do, and i got interrupted (by a baby, no doubt) and i never did get back to writing it. to be honest, i can't really remember the rest of the thinking i was going to do. chalk it up to sleep deprivation, as a friend told me today when i confessed that i sometimes find myself rocking and bouncing even while i'm in the shower. (come on, mamas. you know what i mean. you rock and bounce so much that you forget you don't need to do it while you're washing your hair...*chirp chirp*...no, come on now; i know i'm not the only one.)

****************

"i have to get used to the idea that she's going to change."

this was sam's comment a week or so ago when we noticed anastasia's already-improving head control and almost-certainly real attempts at smiling. she's going to change.

the fact that this idea is something that takes getting used to made me realize how thoroughly screwed up (honestly, i have a stronger word i'd rather use for it, because it makes me angry) our ideas of baby care are as a result of eliza's screwed up life. one month into anastasia's life, i'm realizing i'm still undoing and unlearning all the things that became normal for the nearly-three years eliza was our never-growing-up baby.

it took me twelve days to realize that anastasia should be sleeping on her back, like all babies should, instead of on her side, like eliza had to. she was twelve days old before it occurred to me that she was not going to have a seizure and vomit and asphyxiate, so she really could sleep on her back. twelve days. screwed up.

i still cringe when anastasia is sleeping and i hear her smack her lips or sigh, because lip-smacking and sighing were always the start of a sleep-ending seizure for eliza. of course, anastasia smacks and sighs and keeps right on sleeping, just like all babies do, unlike her sister did. but four and a half weeks in, i still can't overcome what is now a reflexive cringe. screwed up.

****************

see? there was more coming. you can tell, can't you? oh well. you get the point.

****************

i think maybe there are still a few people who check in on this blog. and maybe a few of those people aren't on facebook (gasp! can it be?). so for those few among the few, i thought i'd drop by for a quick update. there's nothing profound here, really, because i spend so much time snuggling and cooing at and "torturing" (luke's word) my baby with kisses that i don't think much. or if i do, i forget what i was thinking about because she smiles at me or giggles--hot off the presses! new tonight! giggling! love love love--or gurgles or coos or...you get the point. but here's a quick update.

anastasia is ten weeks old today. she acts so much like luke and looks so much like eliza, which, if i do say so myself, is a stellar combination. she doesn't believe in naps but sleeps like champ (most of the time) at night and wakes up smiling in the morning, with a smile that is so big it takes up her whole face and she can't really keep her eyes open anymore. this is a trick of which i will not tire, not ever. we are all three more and more smitten with her daily and have had a running contest to see which of us would solicit her first giggle (i won, just today, as i think i deserve to have, thankyouverymuch). luke cannot get enough of his sister. cannot. it is amazing and wonderful and so very dear.

there's the sappy superficial stuff. are you wondering when i'll get to the rest?

*********************

who do you think she looks like? people will ask me. i can see from their faces that it's a relief when i say she looks like eliza. i don't think anyone wants to suggest it--as if i haven't noticed--because it might be hurtful or make me sad or something. for the most part, i'm really glad she looks like her beautiful big sister. it's the eyes, they'll go on to say. it's true; she has eliza's eyes. which makes it all the more amazing to me when she makes eye contact with me, her eyes full of curiosity and eagerness and searching searching for something to smile at or to recognize, so full compared to her big sister's eyes which never could quite look at you but past, somewhere else entirely, searching searching, i think, for something quite other. i do miss that gaze.

and i do miss eliza, somehow even more now than i have in a long time. anastasia was only a week old when i watched her sleep and wondered, who are you? you are a darling, sweet, beautiful imposter. i have a baby already. so who are you? it was a momentary, strange, but very real thing, this confusion of how anastasia fits into the arms of a mama, a family, that are already--were already--so very full. and in that same moment, i couldn't have been more in love with her, anastasia, someone so new and fresh and eager and darling and oh-so-mine. it's a strange thing this time around.

contrary to (popular?) opinion, i still like to talk about eliza. i still think of her all the time, miss her all the time, want to remember her all the time--which is not at all to the detriment of the joy i have in talking about and cooing at and obsessing over anastasia, nor to the pleasure i take in bragging on and loving on my increasingly brilliant and grown-up baby boy. as every mom who wonders if she'll love her second child as much as her first knows, the heart expands exponentially to make more room, doesn't it?

the thing about the family pictures still gets me. i've written about my thing about pictures at least once before, here. it really gets me that i'll never have a picture of my whole family together. i haven't changed any of the pictures hanging in my house yet. how do i do that? take down the pictures with eliza in them and replace them with pictures with anastasia? just add more and more pictures? i'm not sure i have the wall space for it. i want to cut and paste anastasia into the pictures i have hanging of our prior family of four...or cut and paste eliza into the new pictures i have of our current family of four. this is in an impossible dilemma. i expect it will get me forever. there's always going to be someone missing.

and i think, too, about what it will mean to anastasia to grow up in a family that has known and loved and been shaped by a big sister that she will never have known. what will that be like? she'll know her from stories and pictures. but she will never have known her. will she feel a distance from luke because he knew and loved the sister she never had the chance to love? will she feel left out of the memories, somehow? i think about that sometimes, and i wonder. i do think about it.

i've all but stopped accidentally calling anastasia by eliza's name. that is a strange and somehow sad feeling. in fact, i have more than once been talking about eliza and used anastasia's name instead. that i did not like.

and yes, anastasia wears some of eliza's clothes, the ones that haven't been incorporated into the quilt sam's mom made for us. that i like, seeing anastasia in things i remember so fondly from eliza's life. and why wouldn't i? she's wearing her big sister's clothes. that i like.

****************

sleep when the baby sleeps, they say, whoever they are. and as i hear the squirming through the baby monitor (i no longer cringe and expect a seizure, not most of the time anyhow), i wonder why i haven't been sleeping as the baby has been. g'night.

repost: come home

2011-04-23T10:42:00.002-04:00

(since i can't manage to complete all the half-finished posts i have piling up these days, here's a repost of something i wrote on holy saturday two years ago. if you've been reading this blog for a while, you can ignore it; but if you've only recently started reading, you can pretend it's brand new!)

mama, i just found something that used to belong to eliza, and it makes me think about her a lot. and it makes me feel sad. it makes me think, "come home."

it's Easter Saturday, that weird, i-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it day in between Eli, Eli and He is risen. yesterday, we erected our wooden cross in the backyard; buried luke's Lambie, wrapped in a towel, in a cardboard box tomb; rolled a backyard stone in front of the box's opening. luke was sad to leave Lambie out there all by herself all night. it rained and stormed; i, too, wanted to bring her in. or at least check that she wasn't getting wet. sam went out and wrapped her in a plastic bag, just to be safe.

there's someone else i'd like to bring in from the wet dirt, too.

what did the disciples do on Easter Saturday? we can dye eggs, hunt treats, and prepare for tomorrow--He is risen, Hallelujah!--because we know tomorrow comes. all the disciples knew that saturday was that their friend, the one they thought was The One, was alone in the tomb. dead. gone. on Good Friday, we reenact the Passion, reenact the horror and absolute evil of the crucifixion; on Easter Sunday, we reenact the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise of the resurrection. what do we do with In-Between Saturday?

i'm usually in too much of a rush to get to sunday to worry too much about my theology of saturday. prepare the treats, cook and bake for a big dinner, dye eggs...friday's over, after all (whew), and sunday's coming. i can safely use saturday to get all the preparation for sunday done (because there's no church today, whew again), so sunday i can rest and rejoice.

but i'm hung up on saturday this year. i'm living in the already and not-yet. every day is In-Between Saturday. eliza is in the tomb, dead, gone, and i can't wrap her up to protect her from the storm. she doesn't need protection from the storm, after all, because we're not going to bring her back inside tomorrow, back to snuggling in bed with us, like luke will with Lambie. here's the thing: it's not friday anymore for eliza, but it's not sunday yet for me. her suffering is over; she's already in the already. and i'm stuck in the not-quite-yet.

but what if i use this In-Between Saturday to prepare for Easter Sunday? that is, how do i prepare for the feast, the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise to which eliza has gone ahead of me? the disciples mourned; they didn't know that sunday was coming. i know. i know.

i'd like to think eliza and luke might be sharing the very same thought today: Come Home. so i'm going to get ready. i'm going to clean house and tidy up and prepare for the feast. The Feast. Matthew 8:11 says that "many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." praise God.

i'm using my saturday to get ready.

of children's books and nightlife

2011-04-04T10:19:00.003-04:00

our nursery is on the back of our house, with windows overlooking the backyard and woods behind it. one of my sweetest memories of the many, many hours i spent nursing luke during the night in that room is the pair of owls that lived in our woods. every night, without fail, i would hear them calling back and forth to each other, their calls absolutely distinctive and always, always the same: one a higher-pitched "who-who-who...whoo whoo" and the response a deeper "whoo...whoo-whoo." i don't know much about owls, but what i think i know is that many species mate for life. and whether each owl's call is unique or not i can't easily find out by googling (i just tried, of course), but i do not doubt that i was hearing the same two owls every night.

i imagined many things about those owls, soothed as i was by their familiar, predictable, mournful nightly conversations. i did not doubt that they were an old couple, probably living there in those woods long before luke's nocturnal feedings began coinciding with their mundane nightlife. i remember wondering whether their calls continued--i'm sure they did--long after luke and i no longer spent those quiet hours together in the rocking chair.

it was appropriate, then, that one of luke's favorite books was owl babies, by martin waddell. do you know the one?

lover of children's books that i am, i'll confess that i have many favorites, but this one is near the top of the list, perhaps as much for the happy memories i have of luke's recitation of the youngest owl's repeated line, 'I want my mommy!' said Bill, repeated enthusiastically in a silly little developing southern drawl, as i do for the sweet storyline. it's a story of three owl babies--sarah and percy and bill--who discover that their mommy owl is missing. while sarah and percy attempt to reason out where she might be or how soon she'll come back, bill can only repeat again and again that he wants his mommy. spoiler alert: of course, the mommy owl does come back (and they flapped and they danced and they bounced up and down on their branch), with food to eat--what good mommy wouldn't?--and the baby owls are delighted, perhaps most of all little bill, whose line finally changes: 'I love my mommy!' said Bill.

anastasia and i sit in that same room now, and i spend those hours gazing on the bookshelf across the room, bursting with all those books i read (and read and read and read) to luke, reciting the favorite lines in my head, chomping at the bit to begin reading them to anastasia. i can't wait to hear luke read owl babies to his sister, and i wonder if his said Bill will still have the little drawl it had when he was a toddler. just the other night, as anastasia and i rocked quietly in that chair, i heard--even through the still-closed windows--an owl call in the woods. it was the same call i listened to seven and a half years ago in that same spot, the higher-pitched, longer call. and i waited for the deeper, shorter response, but it never came. the one owl repeated its call, again and again, the night empty of its partner's answer.

and in that moment, the story changed in my head: maybe, just maybe, those two owls were not a mated pair at all, but a brother and sister. and each night since, as i've listened to that single owl's call, i've missed the answer more and more.

photographic evidence

2011-04-04T10:08:00.005-04:00

i'm still here--really! here are a few recent pictures, with the promise that i've got blogposts galore percolating, if only i can find enough waking hours with two hands free...

stream of (semi)consciousness

2011-03-26T21:01:00.004-04:00

i need to figure out a way to blog during middle-of-the-night feedings. that seems to be my best thinking time these days. for now, here's my next-day attempt to remember what i was thinking last night...er, that is, earlier this morning. much earlier.

our nursery--luke's room turned guest room turned anastasia's room--is decorated with pastel animals. in my nesting phase in the final days before luke was born, i painted a mural on the wall over his crib. it's a pastel jungle scene of sorts. and the crib bedding is a similar pastel noah's ark theme, as are the throw rug on the floor and other bits of decoration here and there in the room. as i studied that mural and bedding once again last night (this morning, whatever), seven and a half years after i first did the same with luke, it got me thinking. (you're ready for something profound, i know it. stop reading now, lest i disappoint you.) why, in such animal-themed kid stuff, is the elephant always pink? yellow giraffe, of course. blue hippo, makes sense. purple rhinoceros, a bit of a stretch, but still. but a pink elephant? whose idea was that?

and furthermore--and this question i know is not original to me--whose idea was it that noah's ark was an appropriate theme for kid stuff in the first place? and pastel? i mean, imagine what noah's ark was really like for a minute: it was a crammed-full floating zoo, for crying out loud. dirty and smelly and crowded. were there scuffles between the animals? who fed all those creatures? cleaned up after them? surely the nocturnal animals woke up the ones who tried to sleep at night and vice versa.

hmmmm...on second thought, maybe that's a pretty good description of life with kids after all. minus the pink elephant part.

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meanwhile, sam and i have laughed more during the first nine days of anastasia's life than i think we ever did during luke's newborn days (and certainly more than during eliza's, for obvious reasons). how a few years and a whole lot of life under our belts have changed our perspective! what was stressful the first time around and absent the second is pure joy this third time. when luke cried, we were panicked until we could figure out what he wanted. and then eliza didn't cry. so when anastasia cries, especially when she cried that first day or so, we were content to just listen and laugh, even, with delight. she can cry! and better even than that, she cries for good reason--she's hungry, she's tired--and we can do something about it. simple things that we took for granted, fretted over, that first time around. this time, we know full well what a gift those things are, what a miracle a healthy baby is, and we are so full of joy to experience them.

i've never been one of those people who delights in nursing. as far as i'm concerned (and read here my opinion only, and not at all an attempt to engage the bottle-vs.-breast debate), there's no question that it's the way to go: it's natural and simple and free and healthy and convenient and such a perfect design. but let's face it: it's also a pain (literally and figuratively), especially those first weeks. it's time consuming and UNcomfortable (understatement of the year) and slooooow (at least for my babies) and exclusive and restrictive and on and on and on. but this time around, i can't take any of it for granted, the positive OR the negative. where getting up during the night with luke was a responsibility that i embraced and (yes) sometimes enjoyed, at least marginally, getting up during the night (or being up all night) with eliza was a constant reminder of what was wrong. because, of course, i wasn't up nursing eliza. those first ten weeks, i was up feeding a pump; once she was home, i was up dealing with a beeping machine or medication syringes or seizures or unexplained and innumerable other miserable reminders of eliza's many challenges.

so this time, though it's still all those less-than-pleasant things i listed, nursing is yet another of those things that is a simple delight i never knew how much i should treasure before. anastasia is hungry a lot, a good and normal thing for a newborn. i can feed her and satisfy that need in a healthy and good and normal way. and then she sleeps contentedly and grows appropriately. who knew what a gift that could be?

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luke is absolutely smitten with his sister. sam can't get enough time snuggling with her. my dad spends his time videotaping her while she sleeps on his lap, and my mom seems to occupy anastasia's "quiet alert" time best of all, even while working her usual magic on her digestive system (it's uncanny--we nicknamed her "nana laxative" back when luke was a baby, and she never fails to keep my babies' digestive systems happy and clean). i'm guaranteed quality time with anastasia, about once every three hours for an hour at a time, mama-moo-cow such as i am, so i don't have to fight the crowds for my snuggles. and i couldn't be more delighted at how just the sound of my voice calms her immediately.

sam has declared anastasia a very "reasonable" baby. she cries--though not furiously--when she needs something, and she settles easily when the need is met. she tolerates a feeding interrupted for a diaper change for quite a reasonable amount of time before she puts up a fuss, and that rarely a dramatic one. she sleeps (dare i write it for fear of jinxing it?) like a champ, and wakes up quietly squirming and fussing, hardly ever crying. reasonable. we'd love her just as much if she were a drama queen, of course (and we're fully aware that she may yet be), but who wouldn't delight in such a reasonable baby?

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i have so much more to say about the intersection of memories from eliza's life and experiences of anastasia's, the likes of which have flooded my mind and heart these past nine days. but i'm oh-so-tired, and since everyone else around here is sleeping, that bit will have to wait for next time.

thinking is tiring

2011-03-25T21:17:00.003-04:00

i'm still doing it, but finding time to write about it? not so much. i'd rather be doing this:

but i'll be back, i promise. just give me a minute to nurse this baby. and then maybe a nap...

what to do when your baby doesn't seem to want to be born:

2011-03-12T20:49:00.006-05:00

focus instead on something less reluctant to bloom.

words i love

2011-02-28T06:09:00.000-05:00

and while i'm quoting The Poisonwood Bible, there's another bit i loved. (can't say if i loved the book, but i did love the writing, especially this part.)

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop.

The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both of those things it can kill. My body understood there was no safe place for me to be.

A mother's body remembers her babies--the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul...By instinct rather than will, I stayed alive. I tried to flee from the grief. It wasn't the spirit but just a body that moved me from one place to another. I watched my hands, heard my mouth give orders. Avoided corners and stillness. When I had to pause for breath I stood in the open, in the center of a room or out in the yard...Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.

doing what i can't

2011-02-27T16:26:00.004-05:00

have you ever had the feeling that someone--or Someone--planned church just for you on a particular day? the sermon today was about seeking the kingdom, i think, but that wasn't the part for me. you'll need some backstory, though, before i get to that part.

as many of you will have heard by now, anastasia has earned a new nickname: anastasia the great. here she is, in all her chubby glory, about a week ago:

luke weighed 6lbs. 9oz. when he was born at 39 weeks gestation. eliza weighed in at 6lbs. 8oz. at her 38 week birth. at this 36 week ultrasound, anastasia's estimated weight was 8lbs. 2oz. the sonographer's comment: "i hope you don't have too many newborn-size clothes!"

it was amazing and amusing for a few minutes. but of course, it would have to get more complicated than that.

in fact, anastasia is disproportionately fat around the middle. she's average sized everywhere else--head circumference, femur length, etc.--but extra large in the abdomen (something like her mother right now, as i imagine it!). it's a long story, but the gist is that babies shaped like this are at an increased risk of shoulder dystocia, that is, getting stuck halfway out during delivery.

apart from the fact that experiencing such a birth sounds horrible to me, it's also a dangerous situation for a baby. i won't go into a lot of details, but the point is, though it's a smallish risk, it's one to avoid. thus have ensued conversations about c-sections and such; i'll have to keep you posted, as nothing is decided yet.

if you know me, you'll guess i've spent the last week reading anything and everything i can about shoulder dystocia and c-sections. i know better than to just read whatever comes up on google, of course, but there's plenty of reliable information out there. and sam and i have talked and prayed and asked questions and all that jazz. i wouldn't say i've been worried, per se, but i have been preoccupied. as if i have any control at all, i'd really rather avoid any trauma this time around, thankyouverymuch. as if i have any control at all.

today at church, while our rector had plenty of good things to say to all of us about seeking the kingdom, God had some select words for me about this situation specifically. first, it was the opening hymn:

While all that borrows life from you
Is ever in your care,
And everywhere that I may be
You, God, are present there.

then it was the collect of the day:

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

and then the Gospel reading, from matthew 6, which i can't help but prefer in the king james version:

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

okay, i'm listening. i'll stop googling and start being patient. "I've done what I can, it seems, and now I have to do what I can't. Wait" (from The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver).

halvesies, or an un-traditional valentine on an un-valentine’s day

2011-02-17T15:47:00.002-05:00

for my valentine, my other half, of course

i can’t wait to see what take four on half-you/half-me is like.

our first experience of “halvesies” is now seven-and-a-half going on thirty. he is a thoughtful, brilliant, sensitive schemer who really does love giving a clever handmade gift as much as he loves receiving a shiny, purchased-for-him one. he is an excessively social extrovert who craves an hour stashed away with a book. he can’t get enough of running or playing or swimming or jumping or talkingtalkingtalking or most anything, really; he resists all limits and boundaries even as he intuitively deciphers his own. he craves attention and love even as he attempts to hide his need for it. even his appearance is sometimes all you and sometimes all me, and most often a perfect mix of a dissimilar pair. halvesies, indeed.

our second experience was the perfectly opposite combination physically of her big brother’s perfect mix of us, trading dark eyes for light, olive complexion for ivory, cowlicks and waves for ringlets, dark-but-always-getting-lighter hair for the palest of blondes, narrow chiseled face for round. her secret personality was harder to unravel, but she combined a love of physical contact with a craving for peace and quiet, even as you and i do. her brilliance was of the physical type, lighting the way as she did in more ways than one, as opposed to her brother’s verbal brand of enlightenment. among her few decipherable likes were warm water and a good snuggle. how could two versions of halvesies be both so different and yet such complete combinations of the same two elements?

our third version of half-you/half-me remains a tantalizing mystery. someday we’ll get to know this enigmatic combination in his or her fullest completeness. and i look forward to that day.

and what will our fourth experience of two-halves-make-a-whole look like? what will she sound like? what will her passions be? as the time draws near when the adventure of finding that out will begin, i find myself endlessly excited to see which of my favorite parts of you will show up this time. will she share your passions, your strength, your sensitivity? your selflessness, your fiery red-headedness, your creativity? your determination, your longings, your laugh? discovering her particular combination of us will be yet another adventure, one i can’t imagine embarking upon with anyone other than you. so here’s to the next leg of a great journey of loving each other in and through and together with an as-yet undiscovered person who we already couldn’t love more.

happy february 17, my love.

memorized

2011-02-11T16:41:00.003-05:00

this afternoon, i wanted something beautiful.

i wanted to sit down with my blog and have something beautiful to write, some beautiful photograph to edit. but i had nothing to write except emails and childcare schedules, no photos to upload except some of luke's new dresser that i've needed to send to my parents since christmas--nothing beautiful whatsoever. i read some other people's beautiful words--an article, some blogs--but i had nothing of my own to say.

i'm no artist, but in those few spare moments while luke played outside with the neighbors, i wanted something of beauty.

something made me sit down at the piano keyboard, luke's birthday gift from last fall. once upon a time, i used to spend hours at the piano in my own house, preferring above all to play "fur elise" from memory. i realize now that i was a piano teacher's nightmare, always memorizing my music rather than reading it each time i played. thus my playing chugged along at a decent pace, but my sightreading was never more than marginal. (honestly, i didn't have much patience for the whole endeavor at all, preferring to participate in some sport that included the risk of death rather than learn to play an instrument whose biggest risk seemed to me to be a sprained finger.) i've been reminded of my laziness at sightreading as i have sung with our church choir these past few years--i can't even try to sing a piece of music until i've heard it at least once. music prodigy i was not, nor will i ever be.

anyhow, since luke got his keyboard, i have pecked away at "fur elise" and the few other songs still alive in my memory and my fingers. but huge parts of the song have been missing, and neither do i own the music nor would i likely be able to read one bit of it if i did. so i've never spent much time trying to get it back, for lack of patience most of all. but today, it struck me that if i could remember some more of it, surely "fur elise" would satisfy my craving for something of beauty.

it occurs to me that i might have been better off listing to it online or on cd...but i digress.

so i took advantage of luke's time outside with his buddies, and instead of putting away the laundry or cleaning up the kitchen or starting work on dinner, i pecked away at "fur elise." luke came inside once as i played, for a quick snack and a what are you playing, mom?, hoping that i was trying out some of his selections for the week. ms. kristin [his piano teacher] would be proud of you, he declared as he and his string cheese disappeared out the door again. my hunting and pecking for long-lost chords was hardly something to be proud of, i knew. but although the music was sorely lacking, even once i had re-found all the notes and strung them together relatively smoothly, i was discovering something of beauty.

because as i fought to find a chord, i could try all i wanted to match what my right and left hands were doing by ear, but i failed most every time. i could look at the keys and try to remember where my hands were supposed to go next, but that didn't work very often. what worked best was to start at the beginning over and over again and just play. each time i did that, i got a little farther in the song, sometimes without even realizing it. my thinking brain, no matter how hard it thought about what notes would sound right together or where it made sense for the next chord to land, had nothing on the physical memory in my fingers. if i could stop looking at my hands, stop thinking about the notes and just let my fingers move, they often knew where to go.

so i figured it out, note by note, thankful that luke and his buddies were so occupied by the trampoline. i can't say it was all that beautiful when i at last played it through, but it was satisfying if nothing else. it's a beautiful song, for certain, so even if my version sounded choppy and hacked, in my head i could hear it pretty well. but the beauty wasn't in the music.

the beauty was in the mystery of what my hands were up to. maybe it's because i've recently been reading a book about liturgy in the church, about the beauty in the mystery of it all, but i found the mystery of how my hands could know what to do when my head seemed to have no idea beautiful. (by the way, if you're at all of the liturgical persuasion--anglican, catholic, episcopal, or otherwise--or have maybe visited such a church and are curious what their liturgies are all about, i highly recommend mark galli's beyond smells and bells, which is the book i've been reading recently. it's highly accessible and enlightening, even to a nearly-lifetime liturgical worshiper like me.) it seems to me a beautiful thing our Creator did when he made our minds to work this way--that our hands (controlled by our minds, of course) can "know" something that our thinking, rational minds don't realize they know. muscle memory, it's called, or something like that. i call it nothing short of miraculous, mysterious, and beautiful.

it satisfied my craving for today, at least. maybe tomorrow i'll get my camera out.

warning: no profound thoughts here

2011-02-05T21:15:00.003-05:00

that's just not how my brain is working these days. these days, i'm lost in the practical. so that's what i'll blog about. i'm not usually an unedited stream of consciousness kind of girl, but today's that kind of day. stick around if you're curious about what's up...but not if you're looking for inspiration. don't say you haven't been warned.
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my due date is six weeks away. luke was born one week early; eliza, two. is it possible that i'm down to a month until anastasia arrives? the trick is that i am a perfect combination of procrastinator and (obsessive) deadline-meeter, which means that i always leave my work until the last possible second but never fail to get it done in time. so i'm naturally inclined to spend these last weeks procrastinating--tons of church work, plenty of housework--until the very last minute. the problem is that i have no idea when said last minute will be. (thus the fact that with both of my children, i packed my hospital bag while i was already in labor.) i've decided to set myself the artificial deadline of march 1 to be "ready," whatever that means. i'm hoping i can fool myself into believing that is a legitimate deadline. and i'm well aware that i'm setting myself up to loathe every day after march 1 that i spend still pregnant. but sometimes those are just the kind of risks you have to take, i guess. i'll let you know.
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meanwhile, we're slowly starting to get our heads around what it's going to mean to have a baby in the house again. we're realizing that luke has become pretty accustomed to life as an only child of sorts, with two parents as constant conversation partners and frequent slaves. we've decided to start helping him embrace his myriad abilities to do for himself as a nearly seven-and-a-half year old. so far, this has resulted among other things in a good deal of celebration of his newly-discovered independence, a fair amount of whining, and one burned oven mitt. i'll keep you posted on this one, too.
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there's the issue of work for me, too. i loved loved loved my job when i was pregnant with luke, couldn't imagine leaving it for anything--though i was completely committed to leaving no matter what. i remember realizing about a month into my new career as a mom that i could never have dreamt of looking back. what i was doing was so much more important, so much more fulfilling, so much more challenging, so much more wonderful. this time, i find myself yet again in a job that i love and can't imagine giving up, and due to its flexibility and much less significant time commitment, i'm not planning to. i haven't--and don't expect to--quite figured out the long-term logistics for what that means, but up until recently, i've felt completely confident that i'll be able to work that out. but then i start wondering what i'm going to feel like when anastasia is here and is suddenly renewing my whole world. speaking of keeping you posted...
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the superbowl is on today, and my boys are at a boys-only party. i couldn't be more delighted. emailing, facebooking, blogging, reading, napping...so far, soooo good. and they've only been gone an hour!
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i'm remembering now why pregnancy has to last the whole nine months. if it didn't get really miserable, there's no way you'd be ready for the logical conclusion. if it ended at six or seven months, you would in no way be prepared for labor and childbirth and newborn life. but right now, right around the last month, i'm starting to remember how to be ready for all that: i'm up for just about anything that will put an end to this. ask me in a few weeks, and that "just about anything" will be a solid "anything." bring it on.

at the same time, i'm also quite sure i don't know how to be prepared for the unknown that is to come. Lord willing, anastasia will be healthy and happy and all will go well...but i know full well that this time, that's not all there is to it. there are bound to be significant emotions wrapped up in her arrival related to eliza's birth and life that sam, luke, and i cannot anticipate. i know what i don't know: what will it be like to deliver anastasia at the very same hospital where eliza spent the first ten weeks of her life, right next door to the nicu? will she look like eliza? what will it be like to bring her home right after her birth, escaping as it were that place that eliza fought for so long to escape? what will it feel like to dress her in eliza's clothes? what will it be like to have a baby girl that grows up healthily, Lord willing, unlike the big sister she never knew?

i know that i don't know the answers to those questions and many others like them. but i also know that there's lots more i don't even know to anticipate. there are questions and emotions i can't even imagine now that will no doubt come up. how can i prepare for the unknown? it feels like yet another opportunity--no, requirement--to trust in the One who does know. Lord, i believe; help my unbelief.
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this typing pause and deep breath brought to you by braxton hicks. (wow, they're rough this third time around.) which is to say nothing about the baby enduring them, who, for the record, seems to be less busy than her big brother but way stronger than her brother or sister. wow. watch out, world.
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another thing i think about a lot is being that mom. my children--the ones you'll see me with at the park or school or soccer field, anyhow--will be seven and a half years apart. sure, you're thinking, i know other families whose kids are that far apart. but think about why. there's always a story, i think; previous marriage, child out of wedlock, death of a parent or other family member, surprise pregnancy, or something else out of the ordinary. the fact is that people don't ordinarily plan to have their first child at age 25 and their second at 32. there's always a story. i'm realizing that i'll be that mom, the mom about whom people who don't know will wonder: what's the story there? she has one in middle school and one in preschool? her oldest is in college and the next isn't even in high school yet?

of course, there is a story. and if you're reading here, no doubt you know the gist of the story anyhow. but in some ways, anastasia's arrival in our family will make our story that much more transparent. there will be fewer and fewer places where i can hide from the fact that there even is a story at all (not that i do a whole lot of that anyhow!). that mom.
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next up: reading. or napping. but first I really need to get something to eat...

of births and birthday parties

2011-01-29T20:12:00.003-05:00

we celebrated eliza's birthday and her life today. over the years of eliza's life and through the three birthdays since her death, we have developed some traditions. despite the fact that eliza never tasted any real food, much less cake, luke has never been able to comprehend a birthday without cake, so today we had our fifth cake (okay, cupcakes this time) celebrating eliza's life. for sam, a birthday warrants a party and worship, and a party warrants a crowd. today was no different. for me, i have found it meaningful to give gifts to others when giving birthday gifts to eliza is impossible, so we have historically visited the intensive care nursery at duke hospital, where eliza spent the first ten weeks of her life, with gifts for the patients' families and nurses on her birthday. today, my third-trimester exhaustion and a string of mid-winter illnesses--stomach bug, colds--prevented our continuing that tradition. i've also always taken time around eliza's birthday to send letters to people with whom i don't have regular contact but who were significant in eliza's life--nurses, doctors, etc. not sure if i'll manage to squeak those out before the day is over; i've got two hours to go...

one thing did feel different today, though. sam and i both felt it: somehow, it was easier today to separate the joy of eliza's birth from the grief of her death than it has been before. last night, as we ate dinner with friends, we were able to laugh at the memory of my being in labor but being determined to finish my mexican dinner before going home to pack my bag and head for the hospital the night before she was born--and that untainted by what the result of that labor would be. i was able to reminisce about the fact that eliza was born just hours after her baby shower, fifteen days early--and to laugh at the possibility that her little sister could do the same, as her baby shower is scheduled for just three weeks before her due date, and this without marring the anticipation of anastasia's birth.

historically, i have fought such evidence of "getting over it." i'll confess to feeling some of the same this year. part of me wants to be sadder than i am; i somehow want to dwell on the grief and have it overshadow the joy. i'm sure i've written about it before, about how clinging to the pain of loss feels like some last way of clinging to the person you've lost; i know i'm not alone in having felt that way. but as today ends, i am choosing instead to cling to the joy. i am choosing to delight in so much of what was delightful about eliza's life: in the awe of two birthday parties here with us when she was never expected to experience one, in the joy of how many people she brought closer to us and to each other, in the sweet lessons our family learned from loving her.

happy birthday, indeed. and many more.

happy birthday

2011-01-29T00:01:00.001-05:00

celebrating having my life turned upside down five years ago today--

playing with fire

2011-01-23T16:34:00.004-05:00

my husband sam was lamenting today how americans don't really know what to do with a spark.

we heard this morning about some of what folks from our church learned from a visit to our sister parish in rwanda, africa last summer. one talked about community; another, joy in suffering; yet another, prayer; and another, the huge impact of small ideas. if you know sam, you'll have guessed that the community bit struck him especially strongly, hearing how our brothers and sisters in rwanda are truly living out acts 2:44-45: "And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need." later, he commented to our small group that he finds it frustrating that we all nod in agreement, all laud our overseas brothers and sisters for their faithfulness, all agree that this is what scripture calls us to...and then never do anything about it. monday comes, sunday a distant memory, and we're back to our usual lives. do we even think of acts 2:44-45 again? probably not.

a spark is momentary, fleeting. when a spark jumps from your fireplace onto the hearth, if it doesn't meet something to ignite immediately, it dies. i know because i was always fascinated with the fireplace as a child, watching those sparks--what happens to the ones that fly up the chimney?--and how, as long as they stayed on the tiled hearth, they were of no consequence. but if they made it to the rug, or if a flammably-clothed child was sitting close enough to be the spark's recipient, the danger of that spark becoming something was real. becoming something. just that little spark could become a fire that would consume our house or me, i knew. i liked living on the edge of the hearth, as it were. i've never minded just a little playing with fire, to be honest.

i had the joy of sitting with a boy in church this morning who experienced a spark. he's in fourth grade, i think, or maybe fifth. during the same part of the service in which sam heard what seemed to him a spark worth inflaming, this boy was listening intently. the speaker was sharing the story of a woman he met in rwanda. he explained that she has not been able to return to her home since the genocide sixteen years ago because the very same people she witnessed killing her entire family live right next door. they know that she knows who they are, and so it is not safe for her to return.

upon hearing this story, the boy next to me, who had been listening quietly to the sermon and the special reports from the rwanda team members, exclaimed, "what?!" he absolutely could not understand why she couldn't go home. "why can't she just call the police and tell them the murderers live next door?" he was incredulous. "it's not safe," i whispered quietly, trying to figure out how to address this complicated question in the middle of a church service. "it's not like here." he asked one more whispered question, i think, and i gave one more feeble answer. it's a conversation i need to remember to tell his parents about so they can follow up and explain, a conversation i'd like to take up with him again soon.

and soon is the operative word. there was a spark there for a moment when this boy realized that somewhere else far away, in a place he can't quite imagine but which maybe--just maybe--became a little more real to him today, there is unimaginable suffering and injustice. that the world he lives in, where he knows the rules and has expectations that are consistently met for how things work, is only the tiniest piece of the whole big world that God made; and that the people that inhabit his predictable little world are just a few of the many created in His image. that the injustices he suffers here weekly--be they playground taunts or scuffles with his brother--are a very small thing indeed compared to what his brothers and sisters overseas live with in their weeks.

what will happen to that spark? what will be ignited in this boy's soul as a result of his momentary incredulity at what the world beyond his world holds? will that story change his life, his heart? or has he forgotten already, gone home to a fully satisfying lunch with his living, intact family, a home that will, Lord willing, always be safe, with kind neighbors and trustworthy police on call?

whether that spark ignites a passion for rwanda or a passion for law enforcement work; a yearning for reconciliation in the world or a desire for peace with his own younger brother; a calling to care for the homeless or a motivation to help make his home a haven for his family, my prayer will be that that spark manages to overshoot the safe hearth and land on something flammable. and my hope will be that i can continue to develop a role in this boy's life and in the lives of other children like him where i can wield the bellows that will keep sparks like that alive. may i be sitting close enough to the fire to be burned myself.

i would love to, if not for the baby

2011-01-20T15:22:00.005-05:00

warning: this is going to be one of those posts for which you need to hang with me for a while. ready?

it's funny, isn't it, that i changed the motif of this blog to the wine glass thing--"some of the words i might share with you over a glass of wine"--while i was pregnant. if you know me, you know that i'm pretty careful not to drink alcohol while i'm pregnant. which says nothing about those who choose to--more power to you--i'm just a legalist like that. (and oh, how i'd savor a glass of wine right about now...but i digress.)

the fact is that from day one, being a mom changes your life. completely. but back to that in a minute.

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in our church staff meeting yesterday (in case you don't keep up with my comings and goings unless they're mentioned here, i have been the children's minister at our church for about seven months now and recently left my second part-time job as the marketing editor at the local community college), we were talking about discipleship. what is it? how do we do it? what does it look like for the people in our church?

if you're a churchgoer, you've probably heard the term used. but can you define it? our church recently hosted a discipleship weekend, and when someone asked me what that was, i found myself at a loss. i can tell you about Jesus' disciples, that is, his followers. but what is discipleship for us, then, practically speaking? because to say we're being like the original disciples--following Jesus--is all well and good. but what does that mean we're actually doing?

merriam-webster online defines a disciple as "one who accepts and assists in spreading the doctrines of another." that's helpful, i guess. but more practically speaking, what does that look like? at a friend's ordination service last week, the presiding bishop described the new priest's role as looking like a sheep from the front and a shepherd from behind, both following Jesus and leading others to Him at once. there's something to that, too. but what both of those definitions miss is the overwhelming commitment of discipleship. when Jesus describes to His disciples what it means to follow Him, there's no question that it's a radical commitment. to paraphrase, take up your cross and follow me (luke 9:23), let the dead bury the dead (luke 9:60) sell all you have (mark 10:21), if anyone does not hate his family, he cannot be my disciple (luke 14:26) etcetera--this is not an easy or half-hearted calling in the least. it's no small deal to become a disciple. so as i've thought about what it means to be a modern disciple in the context of our church staff's discussion, i've had all those pieces of the puzzle in mind.

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and this is where the mom thing comes in. i know that if you've ever been a mom--and perhaps even if you've ever been married to one or even just had a mom of your own--you've guessed the connection by now. there is no other role in life that i can think to compare discipleship to in terms of the degree of commitment (and nothing sacrilegious or child-worshipy beyond that, please note) than that of being a mom. from the moment your child is conceived, your entire life revolves around that child--and it will, in many ways, forever. from making you forgo that first glass of wine to changing what you like to eat, what smells you enjoy, how you sleep, what you think about (and how clearly you are able to think), that child takes over your life immediately, even before you get to meet him or her. and then once s/he arrives? your entire life is dominated by that child's needs. all day long, and all night long. from feedings and diapers to carpools and rehearsals to relationships and decisions to long-distance phone calls and friendship, you will not sleep or wake without your child in mind ever again. even if you lose that child, the round-the-clock awareness of being his or her mother will never change.

(this is different for dads, i suspect. i don't know, i guess, and i also don't know whether i'm overstepping to apply it to all moms, either. but i suppose that since this is my blog, if i'm ever going to overstep anywhere, this is the place to do it.)

anyhow, the point is that being a mom doesn't just consume your life, and not for a little while. it becomes your life. and although there may be fleeting moments when you think you'd like to escape it, the reality is that you cannot imagine ever going back to your life before your child. and really, you don't want to.

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in my head, which is always searching for the right metaphor with which to understand and explain something, that model of absorption by a relationship--of utter abandonment to a person without any limitations whatsoever--can be the only metaphor sufficient to describe what discipleship ought to look like. there's no looking back, no questioning whether it's right, no doubt that you would without hesitation do absolutely anything for this person. and everything you do is with this person in mind, always.

as a mom, i know that to be a tall order. and perhaps, as a metaphor with all its concomitant limitations, it's not all that helpful in a practical way after all to address the question our church staff was asking: how do we do it? at least it's not practical in a programming sense--what events will we schedule, or to what will we invite people? but if we want to talk about what discipleship really ought to look like, i think it's helpful at least as an image. and maybe it is the thing to which we ought to be inviting people: total, radical, and joyful abandonment, with no strings attached.

gratitude noted

2011-01-13T09:47:00.003-05:00

(confession: this is a cross-posting from my church's blog, to which i contribute posts occasionally as a staff member [children's minister]. thus the formatting differences--i just can't bring myself to go through and get rid of all the capital letters...)

One of the beautiful things about working in ministry, I’m learning, is the frequency with which my work overlaps with what is really important in life.

It was the week before Christmas, and there was too much to do. Too much work: preparing for Christmas Eve service, two Sundays’ worth of activity preparation for the kids, year-end budgeting, nursery clean up. Too much preparation at home: hundreds of truffles to make, a monstrous scrapbook gift to finish, a day-long road trip to the frozen tundra looming two days before Christmas. Too much planning: gifts to buy, laundry and packing to start (and finish!), stockings to stuff, family outings to organize. And too much “regular” life with which to keep up: dinner to make, dishes to wash, pine needles to vacuum, family to care for, third trimester to endure.

And on Monday of this week of too much, I had ministry thank you notes to write. Nearly forty children’s ministry volunteers to thank, each with an individual note. It would take all morning. But if the notes were to get in the mail, Monday had to be the day. So I turned on some Christmas music, closed the door, and settled in to the task I envisioned to be slow and frustrating and not the best use of precious time in which I could do too much else.

And this is where my work in ministry reminded me of what my too-busy real life ought to be about. Because as I wrote each volunteer’s name, as I thanked each person for what s/he has brought to the ministry for the past year, as I really considered the sacrifices each of these people makes to care for and teach and love on our church’s youngest members, I had time to stop and pray for each one. I had time to lift up the burdens that I knew some were carrying, to give thanks for the joys some others were experiencing, to give thanks for the faithful service of each one.

On paper, all I accomplished that morning was to check off one item on my list: write thank you notes. But in reality, in the quiet moments I spent realizing how grateful I was for each volunteer I checked off my list, I accomplished something much more important, something that is a perpetual struggle for me. I was still and grateful. I was in the presence of the Lord, alone in my quiet space, and I was reminded of his many gifts to me—that day, I was specifically reminded of the gifts of all the people that come alongside me in ministering to our church’s children. And I had the time and space to thank him for that gift, on that day of all days when I had no time for stillness or quiet or gratitude.

My scrapbook didn’t get finished in time (and it’s still not finished). My laundry didn’t get done. My packing was disorganized and insufficient. I didn’t get nearly enough sleep. But my soul was rejoicing in God’s great gifts, and in a world of too-much-all-the-time, it is yet another good gift when my job reminds me to be still and revel in those gifts. And what better way to prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus—God’s very best gift—than to do just that?

home again, home again, jiggity jog

2011-01-04T19:33:00.004-05:00

"You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame…back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time--back home to the escapes of Time and Memory" --thomas wolfe, you can't go home again.

our annual christmas trip to the frozen tundra (we make an annual summer trip there, too, when it's unfrozen) got me wondering: can you, in fact, go home again?

there is no doubt in my mind that there are things about syracuse, new york that are more home to me than any other place ever will be. from the people, of course--my parents, my sister and her husband, my in-laws, brothers- and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews, as well as old family friends who may as well be actual family--to the places that were significant throughout my life, to the tastes and smells and sounds that are unique to that place--all of those things define "home" in one sense that will never be redefined.

my parents live in the house we moved into when i was in sixth grade, and though the paint colors may change and the furniture may be rearranged, there are many things that are so familiar in that house, more familiar than anything in any other house may ever be. i know the scraping sound of someone sliding a chair out from under the kitchen table, for example, even when overheard from the upstairs bathroom clear across on the other side of the house, through a closed door. i know which of the identical kitchen cabinets latch magnetically shut correctly and which require the firm nudge of a knee to open or close. i still remember never to flush the toilet before starting the shower--or even worse, while someone is in the shower--for fear of scalding. my heart still beats faster than normal when i back out of the driveway for fear of repeating the removal of two porch column panels from behind the wheel of my high school oldsmobile tank.

there are things about that place, that city, too, that could never be more familiar than they are now. i know the smell of worms washed from the rich, dark soil--so many worms!--and the precise look of a sky before the snow. i remain unsurprised by the black squirrels that show up all over that city, even though i've never seen black squirrels in any other city before. i know which streets to drive on during a snowstorm and which ones to avoid because they probably won't be plowed. just like the driveway at my parents' house, one traffic light gets my heart beating faster even to this day for the memory of having received a ticket for running a red light there as a high school senior. i know how to get to places--the apple orchard in the country, the nature center, the hair salon--despite the fact that i know none of the street names and could never give you directions. except that i'm remembering just now that the hair salon has moved...

despite all that, though, it matters how you define "home." while all of those things are in fact evidence of how much syracuse is still home to me, it is undeniable that durham, north carolina has become very much my home, too. i realized it when i was checking out in a store at the outlet mall near syracuse; the cashier asked for my zip code and then went on to describe to me how to make a return "back home"--that is, in my north carolina zip code. do i sound like i'm from north carolina? i wondered. i think, to my southern friends, i've always sounded like a yankee; but my northern sister, in particular, likes to point out whenever she visits that i've acquired some sort of southern accent. i have lived in north carolina for going on eleven years now--and those all of my adult years, moving here as i did less than a month after graduating from college. and i've lived in my current house nearly eight years, longer than the number of full-time years i spent living in my parents' house. and i realize that i know this "home" and this city in many ways as well as i know my "home" in syracuse.

i know the spots where the faux painting i did on the bathroom walls is less-than-thorough because i was doing it after dark, in a tiny room lit only by a lamp, in order to find toddler-free work time. i know the one spot in the whole house where the floor creaks and how to avoid stepping on it for fear of waking a slumbering child (or husband). i know how to pull the front door closed and turn the key all at once with only one hand in order to make sure it locks. i know the rhythm of the dueling ticking clocks in the living room, the smell of the heat when it's first turned on for the winter, the sound the refrigerator makes when it's making ice--even when heard from all the way upstairs. i know the places where the carpet is wrinkled from too much furniture moving and poor installation, and i know the sound of the mail truck from even a block away.

and this city? here, too, i can get places without thinking though i can't give you directions. i know the smell of the humid wall that descends in the summer, into which you must walk as you exit the door of the house in a mad dash to your skin-scaldingly-hot car. i know what kinds of birds to expect at the birdfeeders and in what seasons, and i know when to expect to hear the pair of owls that live in the woods behind our house. i know the sound of a female fox in the spring--finally identified as decidedly not a pterodactyl as we and some of our neighbors had feared. i know which playgrounds to go to on a too-sunny day, which attractions to avoid in the last weeks of school, which checkout lanes to choose in which grocery store. and the people? while they're not blood family, so many have become so close that they may as well be.

are those the things that make a place home, then? the very-familiars? the things i know as well as i know the patterns on the palms of my hands? and if so, can one have two "homes"? right now, when i leave durham to go to syracuse, i tell people i'm going "home" for christmas; when i leave syracuse to come back to durham, i tell people i'm going "home" now that the holidays are over. but which is it? am i talking out of both sides of my mouth, or can both statements really be true?

or does the dichotomy represent something deeper, a longing for "home" that neither city--nor any other--will ever fulfill completely? i try to imagine the home for which i am made, a place where i can't list the things that are familiar because there is nothing unfamiliar at all. the home where all the smells and sights and sounds are not only completely known but perfect as well. the home where there is no need for directions or air conditioning or snowplows or bird identification books. the home for which i'm created. better than my two "homes" here? it's hard to imagine a place that makes these places look like foreign lands. but philippians 3:20 tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. if my two earthly "homes" can be as good as they are, i can't wait to find out what that home is like.

what you can learn from stories you have never liked

2010-12-24T22:33:00.006-05:00

over the past several years, it has become our tradition to give luke the gift of a special family outing for christmas. i'm not sure how it started, really. probably accidentally. but it is meaningful in so many ways to us now. for one thing, it's hard to compete with what awaits luke on our annual christmas pilgrimage to our "homeland," aka syracuse, new york: mountains of snow, all of his grandparents and all their requisite indulgences, dozens of cousins, doting aunts and uncles galore, big black poodles...what more could a boy ask for, really? his same-old, same-old parents--with their limited budget, inability to conjure up snow on demand, and dog-less-and-local-family-less life--can hardly compete. and so, instead of trying, we decided several years ago to invent something new.

we celebrate what we call our "family christmas" in north carolina the day before we pack up the car and head north. luke looks forward to finding out first thing in the morning what the day holds; this year, it was tickets to see the voyage of the dawn treader in 3d, followed by dinner out at an italian restaurant. it was, as is always the case with our family christmas outings, a fun time together and a special treat.

the movie choice this year was all sam, though. while luke and sam love the chronicles of narnia (along with the rest of the world, as far as i can tell), i have never been able to get into them. (insert here the collective gasp of most everyone reading this post, for whom the narnia books have either been life-changing or childhood favorites or both or something else ridiculously significant.) i like to read most anything, but fantasy has never been a category i've been able to get into. i'll confess that i have started the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe more than once and have never finished it. if you know me and my ocd-ish inability to leave a book unfinished, you'll know how significant that is. anyhow, i had no argument with sam's choice: of course, this would be a perfect choice for luke. and i'd be glad to tag along despite my shameful lack of knowledge of narnia.

anyhow, that's an unnecessary amount of rambling to get to the point. the movie was great fun, although my boys tell me that it departed from the book in lots of really significant ways. for my part, i'm almost convinced to pick the books up again and give them another try. although i'm not all that good at entering into the fantasy, the allegory intrigues me enough that i think i'll give it go. but all this background is to lead up to this, perhaps my favorite line from the movie (which luke and sam tell me is not from the book, unfortunately): "i spent too long wanting what was taken from me and not what was given." it's king caspian who says this, and it doesn't really matter why, not insofar as this blogpost is concerned, anyhow. but the line was striking to me in many ways.

i won't go into all of them here, but suffice it to say that sam and i spend (and have spent recently) a significant amount of time wanting what was taken from us. but how much do we focus on what is given to us? i think of luke and my recent ramblings about my wishes for my mothering of him; of anastasia and her busy life inside me, soon to be outside; of my family and friends; of my work and the people i am privileged to serve and serve with there...i could go on and on. caspian goes on to say that he has been given people and that's what he must focus on as their king. similarly, i have been given people whom i am meant to serve--my family, my community--and i cannot be so wrapped up in wanting what i have lost that i fail to focus on what i have been given to do.

caspian won't forget his father, of course, nor do i plan to forget wishing eliza were still here. but the line stuck with me, is all, and made me eager to adjust my focus, at least sometimes. what amazing gifts and callings i have been given, and i'm glad for the reminder not to lose sight of them.

(and now that christmas eve has nearly become christmas morning, i'll quote another favorite movie line, this from forrest gump: "and that's all i have to say about that." at least for tonight.)

"we got no troubles..."

2010-12-21T20:39:00.005-05:00

"life is the bubbles under the sea," sang sebastian (you knew it was sebastian, right? from the little mermaid, of course. my favorite disney movie of all time, in case you were wondering.)

i have always loved the water, for at least as long as i can remember, and probably longer. pool, ocean, lake, river, whatever. if i can swim in it, i'm happy. really big bathtub? great. in fact, i remember when we moved when i was in sixth grade and our new house had this really fantastic huge old fashioned tub...anyhow, i digress.

my wallpaper on my computer at work (that would be the computer at the editing job i just quit, thankyouverymuch, which is a story for another time) caught my eye the other day. actually, to be honest, it was my last day there, and i was staring at the screen trying to get motivated to edit one more flier before i could punch my proverbial card for the last time. anyhow, i was staring at the screen, mesmerized by the picture there and completely ignoring the flier, since i'm being honest, and it got me thinking about how and when we learn about the sharks.

the wallpaper was this picture of paradise:

amazingly crystal clear blue water. dreamy. it made me think of what the water used to look like when i was a kid--the first glimpse of a pool below as we flew over florida en route to nana and papa's house, of green lakes in the summer when we went there to swim, of the rivers and hot springs we swam in and jumped off cliffs into on our trip to yellowstone. you can't see it in that picture as well as i could when it filled my desktop, but that water is perfectly clear. no seaweed, no rocks, nothing swimming as far as the eye can see.

but i know those things aren't true. after all, that's a picture of the ocean or some sea somewhere (and oh, how i'd like to know where because i'd really like to live there). and i know full well what lives in oceans and seas: fish and crabs and other relatively harmless (and yummy) things, plus other things of varying harmfulness, like the jellyfish that stung me a few years back or the sharks whose attacks make the news every summer. so what i wondered as i daydreamed in that desktop was when i realized those waters weren't completely clear after all.

there comes a moment, doesn't there, when we lose our innocent joy? when what we've learned in school about sealife collides with our family vacation and we realize that things live under that beautiful playground in which we swim? there are sharks in those waters.

it's the proverbial sharks i was thinking about, of course, in our proverbial waters. like when we realize our parents aren't always right. or that doctors can't make everything better. or that some things that hurt can't be fixed. or that there isn't always a happy ending like in disney world. it's a gradual process, i guess; we don't realize those things all at once. i'm sad that, at age seven, luke has already learned some of those things. it makes me cringe to think of it, really, because i want his waters always to be the crystal clear playground in that photograph, with nothing lurking underneath. can we regret growing up? or, at least, regret that others have to?

because i'm not a one-trick pony

2010-12-11T19:56:00.004-05:00

(here's the proof that i think blog-worthy thoughts about things other than grief sometimes, too.)

we finally decorated our christmas tree today. it has become a tradition for us to get our tree on the first sunday of advent--which was two weeks ago, mind you--but somehow this year it took us those two weeks to finally drag the boxes out of the attic. it was those boxes that got me thinking.

most every ornament on our tree has a story, as does most every ornament on most every christmas tree, i'd wager to guess. and there are ornaments not on our tree that have stories, too, like the ones given to us for christmas in 2000, the first year we were married. before we headed home for christmas that year, we put up a sad little fake tabletop tree and discovered we had basically no ornaments with which to decorate it. that christmas was a year of practical gifts, things our budding life together needed--a shiny new metal toolbox for sam, and, among other things, quite a few very delicate, beautiful ornaments for the next year's tree. without my knowledge, my dear new husband packed all my beautiful ornaments in his shiny metal toolbox--"packed" in the sense of just putting them in there--and checked that toolbox with our luggage on our flight home. needless to say, those ornaments never made it on our next year's tree.

but i digress. (you should know that we can--and often do--laugh about those ornaments now. but in january of 2001...well, they really had been beautiful.)

what i was struck with as we decorated the tree this year, though, was not the stories behind the ornaments. i enjoyed those stories as much as always, of course. but as i unpacked the boxes, i was struck with their familiarity. the boxes! a few years ago, i bought some of those fancy rubbermaid ornament storage boxes, as our now-overwhelming collection had outgrown the few random boxes in which the ornaments were packed--"packed" in the sense of wrapped carefully and individually in bubble wrap or tissue paper, of course. but some of the old, un-fancy boxes have retained their contents, too. i was amazed at the stories those boxes could tell.

they're random shipping-type boxes, these are. at least one was from gifts shipped to us that same first christmas and bears our first address together--that ghetto apartment in durham that not many of you who are reading this have known us long enough to remember. several boxes have years' worth of scribbled out labels on them. one bears the now-obliterated words "for luke's eyes only"; it was used the first year he was in preschool as he brought home things he had made for us over the course of december. he needed somewhere secret that he knew was safe to stash these treasured projects (or he needed somewhere for me to stash them for him after i unpacked them from his backpack, somewhere safe where i was sure not to see them), and so he used this box, which he kept under his bed, labeled to ensure its safety.

the wrappings for those ornaments are also strangely familiar, like the perfectly-square pieces of bubble wrap, leftover--it must be--from our move from the ghetto apartment to the middle-of-nowhere-but-in-the-middle-of-everything townhouse that, again, few of you will remember. (we wrapped pretty much everything very carefully in bubble wrap for that move, traumatized as i still was from the only-six-month-old memory of my lost ornaments.) i think some of that bubble wrap is in those boxes, still protecting ornaments from our second christmas. there was--until this year, and i wonder what happened to it--in one of those boxes a yellow plastic bag from fay's drugs, our drugstore throughout my childhood until it was taken over by eckerd in 1997 (so says wikipedia, since my memory is not that specific), also protecting some ornament with a story of its own.

protection, containers, vessels...i'm pretty sure that on most nights i'd have something more profound with which to connect my thoughts about boxes of stories and ornaments. earthen vessels? hmmm. perhaps not tonight. i think maybe it's enough to just enjoy the stories in those boxes.

(maybe i am a one-trick pony after all. at least maybe this week.)

label-maker

2010-12-10T20:19:00.002-05:00

don't let this define you, he said.

i think i may have mentioned here before (darned if i can find where) that, as has anyone who has been through a significant loss, i heard some comments that were less than helpful after eliza died. i knew that all of them were shared with the best of intentions, and so for the most part in each case i was able to receive the good intention and ignore the foolish vehicle for its delivery. but these words didn't roll off my back so easily. don't let this define you. thankfully, they were offered in the context of a conversation in which it was appropriate for me to push back--and so i did. i had completely forgotten that conversation until i recently heard the same words offered to a friend who had just been diagnosed with cancer: don't let this define you.

before i explain my pushback, i should explain that i understand the good intention behind the words. for my friend with cancer and for me in my loss, the intention (i believe) was the same: don't cease living because of suffering, don't give up on all you know and are because a bad thing has happened, don't lose your identity because of this new label you wear: cancer patient, grieving mother. i am grateful for those good intentions.

but what i said to the friend who offered me these words was this: i believe that losing eliza is intended to define me. not in the sense that i should always and ever be only a grieving mother; those of you who know me well know that was never a risk for me. but in the sense that in some inexplicable, providential way, this was intended for me and is meant to change me. death is evil--don't get me wrong--and was never what God intended for us. but "we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose" (romans 8:28). even evil things He can and does use for our good.

i know that losing eliza has changed me, which is not to say that i wouldn't give it all back if i didn't have to lose her after all. but since that is not mine to decide, i will decide what i can, which in this case is to be grateful for those changes and the way that her life and death were intended to define me. if i believe in a God who is God of the whole universe and of every single hair on eliza's head, a God who is all good and wants the best for me and eliza always, a God who is completely in control, then somehow or another, God is in everything i experience, be it joyful or painful. He allows the painful things...or something equally hard to swallow: one way or another, He is in them. and they are meant to define me. what has resulted from the trial of losing eliza was meant for me, and God is all over it. He has defined (in the sense of creating) me through losing eliza, and that is--somehow, and the Lord only knows how--good. in one sense, my friend was right: i shouldn't be defined by losing eliza in the sense that i might become nothing but a grieving mother. but in quite another and perhaps more important sense, i know that i needed to let losing eliza define me. this suffering is mine and i am God's, and through this as through everything i experience, He is making me into what he has intended for me from the beginning of time.

let Him define you--that's my advice, i guess--even when the vehicle for the defining feels more like painful re-fining.

turn, turn, turn

2010-12-09T21:53:00.003-05:00

it's time to be sad again, he said, kneeling by the bed in the dark. we had been arguing, i think--and who knows about what, as is almost always the case with those things--and i suppose i had gone to bed, seeing no other way to put an end to it. it's time to be sad again, here in the dark.

it seems to me that for the most part, we resist cycles. we artificially heat and light the annual dark, cold seasons; we medicate monthly bad moods; we travel to warm places when it's cold and cool places when it's hot; we starve and exercise and surgically rearrange bodies that mature into sagging or stretching or drooping. we strive for equilibrium in our emotions, our environments, our habits. we don't want change, cyclical or otherwise.

but resist as we may, we live in a world dominated by cycles. if you go to school with luke, you'll probably learn about the water cycle. there's the cycle of time: resist as we may, whether we get out of bed or not, morning will follow night, every night, for as long as the Lord sees fit to perpetuate that cycle. the seasons are cyclical, of course, as are the holidays that appear in them. for many people, emotions are cyclical, affected by light or weather or hormones or other indeterminate factors. this is part of why i appreciate the liturgical church year, as i think i've mentioned before. ordinary time is always followed by something extra-ordinary, green followed by purple, red leading to white. (if that's all foreign to you, here's a decent, brief explanation of what i'm talking about.) try as we may to celebrate christmas in july, like luke with his interminable whistling this summer, that's not the time for it, and christmas will not come then.

i'd prefer to resist the cycle of sadness, too. i'd prefer to call out in the dark, no! it's not the time to be sad. i won't be told when to be sad! i won't let the calendar dictate what this sunday will look like for me--or any other day, for that matter. last year, as december 12 approached, sam and i were convinced that it would be a day like any other. it was clear when 9:15am arrived that day that we were completely wrong.

i'd prefer it if this were not "the time to be sad." i'd prefer to preserve advent and christmas as times of joyful waiting and leave the sad for some more convenient time--or never. but the fact is that i have no choice but to submit to the darkness when it arrives. unlike in my modern, electrified house--in which i can flip a few switches and pretend that this cold, dark night is in fact a warm, sunny day--i cannot turn a dark emotional season into a bright one. there are dark seasons that cannot so easily be turned on or off. and maybe there are times to be sad.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. (ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

(go ahead, sing it. you know you want to. i am. turn, turn, turn.)

what ecclesiastes 3 goes on to say is that God "has made everything beautiful in its time" (v11). the fact that everything has its season--birth and death, planting and reaping, weeping and laughing, casting away and gathering in, seeking and losing--is no accident. the cycle of seasons is made beautiful in its time. i have to believe that we're built for submitting to those cycles (inasmuch as they're healthy, of course, in which i do not at all mean to ignore the fact that in our brokenness, those cycles can be broken, too). put simply, if it is time to be sad, i'd do well to listen to that, to submit to it, to learn in it, to grow through it.

and in kneeling in the dark, recognizing that it is time to be sad again, i will all the more appreciate the light, the morning that follows night every time in its turn.

grieving gratefully

2010-12-08T20:30:00.003-05:00

grief doesn't go away. and today i figured out another reason i'm glad it doesn't.

in the past, i've been glad it doesn't go away for some reasons about which i have some questions regarding their health value. i've been glad to hang onto it as a last remaining tangible bit of eliza. i've been loathe to let it go because it felt like all i had left. like losing my pain about eliza's death is somehow "getting over it" in a way that means having lost her more completely than before. that's real and true and far from unique to me, i know. i'm not sure, however, how healthy it is. but today i figured out another reason i'm glad to still grieve having lost eliza, and i think this one is much healthier.

last night, sam and i were talking about what we have done with our grief--or perhaps more accurately, what it has done to and for us. i had a few thoughts on the spot. i think i've developed a different type of compassion. i've learned something about how to show up for people. i understand myself and my own needs better. i know suffering in a way i never knew before, and i'm able to share that with others. i have become more transparent for sure, as evidenced by some of what i post here. none of this is meant to sound like i have it all nailed, of course. but God has used my grief to teach me some things, is all, and i think those things have clarified for me who i am and what He has for me to do.

but the part of that conversation that really broke me was when i talked about what i wish my grief had done for me. this is the really raw, hard part: i wish it had made me a better mother. if anything, i'm afraid it has done the opposite. i wish that in losing eliza i had learned to be more grateful for luke. i wish my selfish impatience with his seven-year-old-ness--his slowness to make his bed in the morning, his lies about whether or not he has brushed his teeth, his failure to unpack his backpack after school despite repeated requests, his constant arguing with any parental directive at all--i wish my grief could cause me to see past my impatience with these childish failures and allow me to be grateful that he is here, and he is seven, and he is healthy, and he will someday (deo volente) be eight. why is all my eternal perspective and compassion for others and yadda yadda yadda completely lost on my child? why is it that while most of my life seems to benefit from the good parts of my grief, luke gets only the exhausted, impatient, fragile part?

it was as i sat waiting for luke in the carpool line today that i realized this is the great mercy in the persistence of grief: it is not finished changing me. if it were gone, if i were over it, then its failure to make me a better mother would be over and done with. but the fact that i still grieve, the fact that this week is painful and life-changing still and all over again, means that my grief is not done with me. it means that i can still look forward to the changes it is effecting and will effect in my life. and i can pray that growth as a mother will be one of those changes.

sufficient unto the day

2010-12-05T20:35:00.004-05:00

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (matthew 6:34).

a nearly-crash landing on our flight today should produce in me some deep thoughts, no? while my head was as near my lap as it can get (not very near thanks to anastasia, i'm afraid), while my arms were braced against the seat in front of me and sam was holding luke's head down by the back of his neck (read your seatback emergency instructions--who knew that's what you were supposed to do?), while the flight attendant was ensuring everyone knew where the closest exits were--while all of that was happening, i should have had some sort of life-flashing-before-my-eyes moment, shouldn't i have?

not so much, as it turns out.

don't get me wrong: it was scary. but honestly, until after we landed and found out the whole story of what had happened--pilot's panels out, cockpit filled with smoke--we didn't have the time or information to realize how scary it should have been. the pilot and flight attendants did an amazing job of making sure we knew how important it was that we did what we were told without causing anyone to panic, despite the fact that they gave us very little information.

this is what surprises me the most. as i was just sharing with a friend who has been diagnosed with cancer and is about to undergo a major surgery, i'm the type of person who wants all the information. throughout eliza's life, i was so frustrated by doctors who wouldn't explain it all to me--all the possibilities, all the ramifications, all the possible treatments. even if none of it proved to be true, i wanted to understand everything i could so i would be prepared. i felt that way about God, too; i could handle whatever was going to happen with eliza, just as long as He prepared me for it.

despite the fact that many of eliza's doctors learned that i could in fact handle whatever information they had, that i would persist in asking questions until they told me what they could, they very often had few if any answers to give me. the same was true with God: although He has all the answers, obviously, He did not frequently give me lots of information in preparation for all of the many important moments in eliza's life. the lack of information i had throughout eliza's life and since then has always frustrated me. if only i knew! and i have for a very long time been convinced that since this was how i was wired, it must be right and good.

our near-crash landing (which ended completely safely, by the way) today is a good real-live metaphor for what i apparently refuse to learn: just enough information--and not all of it--can be a protection and a gift. had the flight crew answered all of our questions in the moment, had they given us all the information we thought we wanted--what was going on? what was going to happen? what were all the possibilities for landing scenarios?--not that there was time to answer any of those questions...but if they had, would that have helped us? would we have been safer or calmer or better prepared? no. we were given what we needed for the moment, and that was it. i'm pretty sure i've read that God works the same way.

^"The LORD said to Moses, 'I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, "At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God."'
That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, 'What is it?' For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, 'It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: "Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent."'
The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
Then Moses said to them, 'No one is to keep any of it until morning.'
However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, 'This is what the LORD commanded: "Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning."'
So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 'Eat it today,' Moses said, 'because today is a sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.'
Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. Then the LORD said to Moses, 'How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.' So the people rested on the seventh day (exodus 16:11-30).

the alpha and omega

2010-12-01T17:05:00.003-05:00

this week, as our church staff sat down together for morning prayer, one of the other staff members mentioned how satisfying it was to begin on page one. if you've ever used the book of common prayer, you'll know that the scriptures with which morning prayer open are determined by the season; and if you pay attention to the liturgical calendar, you'll know that advent is the beginning of the year. thus the opening scriptures for advent are on the first page of the morning prayer rite.

i had just been thinking the same thing when the other staff member mentioned his appreciation for starting on page one. i had chalked my page-one satisfaction up to my ocd-ish need to have things complete, start to finish, and added it to my list of obsessions with patterns; my absolute inability to leave a book unfinished, even a bad one; and my refusal to start watching a movie from anywhere but the beginning, even one i've seen before. but i got to thinking, of course, about advent being the start of the year.

i have heard one friend of mine quote another mutual friend (though i've never heard him say it directly) as having said in defense of liturgy that if the church doesn't tell us what time it is, the world will. (having acquired this brilliant quotation by hearsay, i'll feel free to interpret it at will.) if the church doesn't tell us that christmas comes at the end of four weeks of waiting, the world will tell us it begins on halloween. if the church doesn't tell us that easter comes only after long weeks of penitence and self-examination, the world will send us bunnies and colorful eggs right on the heels of our valentines.

but do i really think of advent as the start of the year?

for me, advent feels more like it's about endings than beginnings. this next couple of weeks is a time of waiting to recognize for a second year the anniversary of eliza's death, this year smack on gaudete sunday (more on that here). then i wait a couple more weeks for yet another christmas when i won't hang her stocking along with the rest of ours (or will i? i can't remember what i decided last year). then after christmas, i'm yet again waiting, this time for eliza's birthday, just a few short weeks after epiphany.

that seems all wrong. i'm supposed to start the year in this waiting anticipating beginnings, not dwelling on endings. or am i?

the thing is that beginnings and endings don't need to be all that different after all. (here i'm tempted to bust into singing "the circle of life." but of course i won't.) because what is the point of an ending but to begin something new? of course, the prime example here for me is the knowledge that the end of eliza's broken, painful, earthly life was the beginning of her eternal, heavenly, whole one. the advent of her real life, so to speak. then there's the whole seed analogy--that something has to die in order for something new to grow--repeated in too many trite sympathy expressions for me to bear repeating it. but how is it for me that this season of waiting to remember endings can be about starting the year afresh?

because in my pain, which i will not deny at this time of year any more than any other, i can be brought to my knees afresh. i can bathe in fresh gratitude for the gift that is christmas--and the many, many other gifts in my life for which i forget to be thankful. i can start over precisely because of my brokenness and suffering, because i've already been driven to my knees in my wrestling with endings. what better place to start the year than on my knees, keenly aware of my need for what is offered to me anew yet again?

(and here i'll rejoice in living in the south where i can avoid yet another requisite trite image of a world that is a clean slate, bathed in snow just in time for starting over at christmas. but do with that what you will.)

and as for that photo update

2010-11-30T21:30:00.000-05:00

recently, when i wasn't busy sleeping (because building a person is really exhausting)...

(wait, that's sam...no fair!...)

or working as the editor for a community college marketing department or the children's minister at our church (i don't take pictures of this stuff)... or watching luke perform with the african children's choir (okay, this video is funny--rhythm, not so much, i'm afraid)...

or rooting for the syracuse chiefs...wait, i mean the durham bulls...

or sending luke off to his first day of second grade...

or watching him play soccer for team ireland... or trying (not very successfully) to capture a hint of fall, which was very long in coming this year... or climbing a mountain with my parents and luke (at hanging rock state park right here in north carolina--beautiful!)... or visiting with nephew alex (who was maybe luke's age last time he visited)... or trick-or-treating with my handsome little skeleton and his buddies (i promise he's handsome in there)... or celebrating my parents' 60th birthdays at the beach... or watching luke sing a duet in the thanksgiving assembly...

i was...ummmm...mostly sleeping. because, really, building a person is exhausting.

spoiler alert

2010-11-28T00:33:00.002-05:00

if you're reading along in the all saints advent devotional daily, don't read this post--you'll get to it on december 6. (if you're not reading the devotional, you can! and should, i might add. you can download it free right here.)

for the past several years, i've written a short reflection for our church's advent devotional and have then shared that reflection here. on this first sunday of advent, here's my contribution from this year.

An Advent reflection about suffering?

In a recent conversation with some friends about the question of suffering—why? whence? and those sorts of things—I started thinking about the suffering of the younger son in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. Superficially, we understand what happened to him, and we’re right there with Jesus: the son makes a bad choice, and so he suffers humiliation and starvation as consequences. That’s tidy, and it fits with our sense of justice just fine. Right on, Jesus. A good lesson for children, even: respect your parents or else. See what happened to him? Jesus said so! But is the prodigal son’s suffering really about judgment? Plenty of people make bad choices and don’t suffer for them. So why does the son in Jesus’ parable suffer?

I suspect the answer is in the result. Until the prodigal son suffers and is overwhelmed by his circumstances, he does not realize what he has forsaken, what he is lacking. His suffering illuminates for him his need and sends him searching for the only thing he knows that can meet that need.

It’s a terrible thing to say to someone who is suffering, so please don’t. But all the same, I think it’s true: God allows us to suffer because he wants us to recognize our need. If someone had said that to me in certain painful periods of my life, I would have been tempted to hit him. But now, outside that suffering, I can recognize its truth. When we suffer, really suffer, we are driven to desperation. And sometimes it’s only in our desperation that we can recognize what we’re really desperate for. Unless our situation is really bad, we’re pretty sure we can handle it ourselves, solve it ourselves, recover from it ourselves. But when things are really bad? We recognize what we are not, and what we need most of all: God.

I’m sorry, you’re probably thinking, but what does this have to do with Advent?

For me, the joyful waiting of Advent is inextricably linked with the suffering-filled waiting for death. In Advent 2008, two days before Gaudete (joy? really?) Sunday, my nearly three-year-old daughter Eliza died. She had spent her life evading a death sentence of an illness, had spent the weeks since Thanksgiving (thanks? really?) waiting to lose her life-long battle. On December 12, 2008, I experienced an unbearable weight of suffering that could drive me nowhere else but to my Father, the one whose birth into a world of suffering I was to celebrate in only a matter of days. Christmas that year was not about gifts—I barely managed to purchase any and have no idea what I received—or carols or feasts or family. It was about a baby I had lost and a Baby who had come to Earth to be my only hope in that loss. It was about being driven by my overwhelming suffering to the only One who could meet my need, from starvation home to my Father. My Father who was about to become the Son, the Answer to a question I was only just being forced to realize I needed to ask.

Last Advent and this, too, remain inextricably linked with pain and sorrow and suffering and grief for me. The challenge is whether or not I’ll remember to let that suffering drive me Home into the arms of the long-awaited Baby whose birth—and certain return—is the antidote to all that pain. Will I be reminded in my need, like the prodigal son, that the only cure for my starvation is found in my Father’s house? Will I be driven Home?

the best laid plans, part 2

2010-11-27T00:06:00.000-05:00

the questionnaire the nurse handed me read something like this:

is this your first pregnancy? no
if no, what number? four
how many living children do you have? one

(listen here.)
This is not how it should be
This is not how it could be
But this is how it is
And our God is in control

This is not how it will be
When we finally will see
We'll see with our own eyes
He was always in control

And we'll sing holy, holy, holy is our God
And we will finally really understand what it means
So we'll sing holy, holy, holy is our God
While we're waiting for that day

This is not where we planned to be
When we started this journey
But this is where we are
And our God is in control

Though this first taste is bitter
There will be sweetness forever
When we finally taste and see
That our God is in control

this is not how i would have planned it. if you had told me ten years ago that i would, in 2010, be pregnant for the fourth time, i would probably have told you that i wasn’t sure i wanted that many children. how small our minds are.

i don’t like being pregnant. not one minute of it. i am not a particularly sick pregnant person; i don’t gain record amounts of weight or experience dramatic swelling or unbearable back pain or any of the other stories people tell. but i dislike it all the same.

i think what i dislike most about it is the sense that something—quite literally, someone—else is in control of my body. don’t usually eat breakfast? too bad. you’ll now wake up ravenous even before sunrise. like to keep busy? too bad. you’ll now be forced to pause for a nap every afternoon, no matter how uneventful your morning has been. enjoy chicken or avocadoes? too bad. you will now be repulsed by them or any number of other quite ordinary things—and will develop equally extraordinary cravings. and if none of these things that will happen in just the first few weeks is enough to turn you off to the whole experiment, just wait until junior gets to swimming around in there. alien possession? i think so.

i don’t like to be out of control. and if i live with any kind of illusion that i am in control, pregnancy provides ample reminders that i am, in fact, almost entirely out of my own control most of the time. i’m just not always as aware of it. when i am pregnant, i take prenatal vitamins. i eat healthfully, as much as i can stand it, and i stay away from alcohol and even over-the-counter drugs. every time, that’s what i do. the first time, this resulted in a healthy, brilliant little boy. the second time, a little girl with more congenital defects than one body could handle—including a brain full of holes—who wouldn’t live to be three years old. the third time, a miscarriage at 7 weeks gestation. and this fourth time? well, that’s just it: though i will follow all the same healthy pregnancy rules yet again, i have no control over what that will mean for my child.

have i mentioned how much i dislike being pregnant? but even as i am frustrated yet again this time around at the lack of control, i am learning to be grateful. because despite what i may imagine, i really don’t have any more control over the rest of my life than i do over this period of my life or over the little life growing inside me, either. just as i would never have planned four pregnancies and their varied outcomes or lemonade-cravings or waffle aversions, so would i never have planned so many other things in my life, either. work in a church? live in the south? be a minivan-driving soccer mom? be overweight, out of shape, and completely disconnected from any athletic activity? have a yard full of weeds? never.

it's funny, though; despite the fact that i'd much rather it be otherwise, the struggle isn't to find a way to gain more control. take more vitamins? eat fewer food additives? drink more water? not really. the struggle is to give up more, to rest more in being out of control. “These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world”--john 16:33. overcome the whole world? really? since i can't do that, i figure i'm better off in the hands of Someone who already has done it. and i'll take joy in the promise that there will be sweetness forever.

the best laid plans

2010-11-26T11:31:00.005-05:00

you know how it goes. i had some ideas about what i'd blog about when i finally got around to it, a grand scheme for a photojournalistic-style post about what i've been doing these months i've been absent. today was to be the day. the day after thanksgiving, luke and sam off running around doing who-knows-what sport, trying to burn off the stir craziness that comes with a day off from school. after hosting the big meal last night, i was promised this day off to catch up on photo editing and writing and to reinvent this space. things conspire, don't they, to set awry those best laid plans? as my ancient desktop computer--which hasn't been turned on in a month, probably--seems to be suffering from the lingering tryptophan in the air, the photos just aren't happening today despite the hour i've already spent just to download them from my memory card. another day...

*********************************

for today, though, i do have a story. i want to tell you about a little girl with whom i have fallen in love.

her name is anastasia. i haven't ever met her. (have you never fallen in love with someone you've never met?) so i can't tell you what she looks like, really, since i don't know. what color her hair is, what color her eyes are, whether she's chubby or skinny--i don't know. i don't know much about her personality, either, whether she's funny or spunky or shy or precocious or mischievious. i don't know her favorite color (but mustn't it be purple or pink, like most every little girl?) or her favorite animal or what she likes to eat or what she likes to play.

how do you fall in love with a stranger? well, this little girl is hardly a stranger to me. i do have a couple of photographs of her, of which this is the best, i think:

here's hoping my computer is feeling up to the task of sharing lots more pictures sometime around st. patrick's day.

**********************************

there's a story, of course. isn't there always? (here's the backstory, in case you haven't read it or heard it before, to the saga that is baby-naming for sam and me.) what i didn't relate in that post, but which those of you have known me for a while already know, is that not only can't sam and i agree on names, but we also can't agree on when to agree on a name. sam has a thing about waiting until the baby has already arrived. suffice it to say i don't have that same thing.

ahem. to the story.

since our in-utero moniker for our previous children, zeph, had died along with the baby whose ex-utero name we would never know, we needed a new nickname immediately for our newest addition once we found out about his/her existence. it so happened that we started this conversation one evening after having hosted a high school bible study in which the mysterious character of melchizedek showed up. so there it was, of course: melchizidek, or mel for short, since we didn't yet know whether we were having a boy or a girl.

meanwhile, nearly two years ago (!), not long after eliza died, sam had a dream that we had another baby girl. her name was anastasia. (he'll tell you he doesn't remember this dream, mind you, but he's very glad i do.) it seemed an appropriate dream for a greek-speaking father who had just lost his daughter, as the name anastasia comes from the greek word for "resurrection." and anastasia was a name we had considered for eliza but had scrapped since we didn't really like any of the nicknames associated with it.

a couple of months ago, then, when we found out this baby was a girl--having gladly called our baby mel in order to stall until the ultrasound to even begin the doomed-to-be-difficult conversation of finding a name for our newest addition--i made a passing joke about how we could just skip the name books altogether and name the baby anastasia. sam replied astonishingly in the affirmative: you don't ignore a vision like that (even one you don't remember). yes. she is anastasia.

i waited a week or so, certain he would have had second thoughts or another idea, and then asked him whether he was ready to start pulling out the name books.

oh, no. i've already been telling people: she's anastasia.

and so it was done. at 18 weeks gestation, our little girl had a name. our little person--a person's a person, no matter how small--was no longer mel.

**************************************

but luke, my first tiny love, has to show up in this naming story, too, of course:

luke came with us to the ultrasound during which we found out the baby was a girl. he was absolutely mesmerized by all that he got to see--a tiny beating heart, tiny kidneys, tiny perfect spine. when the sonographer announced that the baby was a girl, as you can imagine (and which is a whole 'nother story for a whole 'nother day), sam and i had some difficult mixed reactions. enter luke to save the moment. his immediate reaction: "well, i guess melchizidek is out, then!" and thank goodness for that.

meanwhile, sam has been insisting that anastasia will not have a nickname. we each have reasons we're not fond of the usual choices: stacy, anna, annie. (a friend told me that anya is a common russian diminutive for anastasia, and i love it. so i'm working on sam.) luke, of course, has overheard all these conversations. recently, he declared to me suddenly, "but she has to have a nickname!" when i inquired as to why, he responded, "i can't even spell anastasia!"

so we rectified that problem.

on comebacks

2010-11-24T20:56:00.003-05:00

winston churchill is credited with having said, "If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack."

i have more to say, more of the same new thoughts all over again at which to whack away. i'll be back friday. for real. to stay.

when i'm not working...

2010-07-26T19:58:00.005-04:00

...which i usually am, i'm not blogging either. so what am i doing? not taking many pictures, i'm afraid. but here's a taste:

day trip to the coast, for four hours of nonstop swimming

a fan divided: durham bulls vs. syracuse chiefs. he decided to dress for both (bulls hat, chiefs shirt) but was secretly rooting for the bulls, who shut out the chiefs 5-0--and rightly so, on wool e. bull's birthday!

and that was just this weekend! can't beat summer.

merry, merry

2010-07-16T13:49:00.002-04:00

christmas in july. it’s a phrase usually reserved for advertisements for cars or mattresses, i know. consider this my pitch to make it a reality for all of us.

six-and-a-half-year-old luke has mastered the art of whistling. and for what reason i’ll never understand, he has taken to whistling christmas songs. sometimes hymns, sometimes “jingle bells,” always repetitive. it’s july, mind you, and no one has heard a christmas song in months—-except on those “christmas in july” advertisements, of course. how luke—-who watches no commercial television, for the record—-got christmas songs in his head i have no idea. but they’re in there, which means they’re out here, too, of course, and in my head right along with his.

i’ve been thinking about those “christmas in july” advertisements as i’ve hummed along with luke’s renditions of “hark the herald angels sing” and “deck the halls” this summer. why is it that car salesmen want you to think about christmas as you consider buying a car, even as the thermometer pushes one hundred degrees? because christmas, of course, is the time when we anticipate the best and most extravagant gifts. if you can consider your mattress purchase as exciting as presents stacked under the lighted tree, you just might take the leap and go for the deluxe model. it’s christmas, after all.

and, of course, we know that christmas is in fact the time we set aside to remember our best and most extravagant gift: Jesus. john 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” don’t get me wrong: i’m all for setting aside a day to celebrate what an amazing statement that is. but what if we didn’t wait until christmas eve to anticipate that very best gift? what if we woke up every morning—-in december and july and every other month, too-—thrilling at the prospect of the most exciting gift of all, just as we did when we were children anticipating the shiny wrappings and the twinkling lights on that one particular morning? what if the summer sunlight streaming through the blinds in the early morning hours reminded us just as readily of God’s great gift to us as the hanging of wreaths and the singing of carols? what if a crackling thunderstorm was christmas to us just as much as a gentle snowstorm? i think that would be Good.

the fact is that Jesus is no better gift to us on december 25 than on july 25 or any other day. i would, however, like to reserve luke’s untuned-guitar version of “jingle bells” that is my soundtrack right now for just one day a year…

college makes you think

2010-07-08T21:42:00.004-04:00

that's what it's supposed to do, right? good news, mom and dad: not only have i finally used my ten years of french study, but i am now thinking things directly related to college. your gazillion-dollar investment has in fact paid off, so you can rest easier now.

last week, sam and i took luke to visit our alma mater, hamilton college (that's the chapel up there in that photograph, incidentally, worth noting for being the location of sam's and my wedding; for being a historically significant building, built in 1827 and thought to be the only remaining example of an early three-story church in america; and for having a quill atop its cupola, symbolizing the college's commitment to teaching the art of communication, which will matter to my story in a little bit, if you'll stick with me). we introduced luke to coaches and professors, showed him dorms and dining halls, told him stories (only the ones appropriate for six-year-olds, mind you!) and highlights. when i pointed out the building where most of my english classes were held, luke was incredulous. "you didn't learn english until college?" i explained that studying english in college meant reading lots of good books and talking about them. to which explanation he even more incredulously declared, "i want to go to a college where all you do is read books all day!"

which got me thinking--you knew it would--about the power of retrospection. luke is right, after all. it is pretty amazing, when i think about it, that i spent four years of my life consumed by nothing other than reading books and diving. that's it. those were my jobs. reading, writing, and being in the water. don't i consider those my hobbies now, hobbies i struggle to cram in between so many other jobs, hobbies i would choose to do above all else? i vaguely remember college being stressful, but i can't for the life of me figure out how it could have been, looking at it from here.

and if you're a mom of more than one child, you've likely thought similar things in retrospect about life with your first baby. when luke was born, i quit work and stayed home. as a newborn, luke slept, ate, cried, slept, ate, and slept some more. my job was to do those things with him. and that was it. i vaguely remember thinking that his newborn weeks were most certainly the hardest i had ever endured. two years later, when eliza was born, i looked back at luke's newborn life and wondered what on earth was so hard about it.

hindsight is 20/20, or so they say.

this train of thinking can take me in two different directions, the first of which is somewhat dangerous, i think. if i can look back at all these different phases of my life and say that if i knew then what i know now, i would never have thought they were hard, then looking forward can be very intimidating. for if what seems hard now will soon seem easy in comparison to what i will be experiencing, what can possibly be to come? it's a fearful thought. i do not think i would have liked to have known, when i was stressed out by an english paper, that i ought to just appreciate how simple life really was because in a few years i would have to endure the loss of my daughter. similarly, i would not have wanted someone to tell me, when i sat up at night grudgingly nursing luke, that i would soon spend three years straight sitting up at night "nursing" his dying little sister. hindsight is 20/20, maybe, but foresight is not always desirable.

but the other direction i can go with these thoughts is toward gratitude. if i can look back at college and be grateful for having spent four years doing things i now know to be among my greatest loves, if i can look back at luke's newborn weeks and be thankful for the hours i spent as his one-and-only and he mine, why can't i start thinking now about the things i'll look back on about today and be grateful for them now, instead of waiting for hindsight to kick in? wouldn't i have enjoyed college even more if i had remembered to be thankful for the gift of four years of nourishment of mind and body? wouldn't i have loved luke's newborn weeks much more if i had remembered to be grateful for his healthy needs and my ability to meet them?

this is my challenge to myself, then, and i invite you to join me, too. what will i one day thank God for about my life right now? i'm going to thank Him for it today instead.

mais bien sur!

2010-06-20T20:39:00.004-04:00

it's funny, is all.

once upon a time, i decided to take french. in seventh grade. i'm pretty sure my parents would have preferred i take spanish--more useful, of course--and then in high school, maybe i should have taken latin--good for those sat scores and so much more, don't you know, and oh how helpful it was for sam in our years of dealing with medical terminology--but i took french. six years in junior high and high school, and i always loved it. so i went off to college, determined to major in english--which i did, despite advice to the contrary from all around--but decided to stick with the french, too. four years later and i opted not to write a french senior project along with my english senior project, knowing full well it wasn't of any use anyhow, and i left with a french minor. my ten years of study came in handy when i hopped around to france and a handful of other francophone countries while i was studying in london, and i occasionally used it in communication with students when i taught at the community college (but oh, how much more useful spanish would have been here in north carolina!). it's been most useful, to be honest, in communication with sam; since luke learned to spell so young, we had to find another way to discuss things we didn't want him to hear, and since sam took plenty of french, too, it has served us well. well enough, actually, that i had to stop teaching luke french a few years ago because it was starting to interfere with our ability to keep secrets (de la glace àpres diner? mais oui!). anyhow, that's been the extent of the usefulness of my french in the ten years since i graduated. not much of a validation for my minor, but oh well. i loved it anyhow.

meanwhile, i sort of used my english degree for a few years as the writing specialist at a local community college; though it was a degree in english lit and i was teaching developmental english, i occasionally had use for my literary skills in tutoring more advanced students, and i certainly had use for the skills i picked up as a writing tutor in the writing center where i worked as an undergrad. but for the most part, i'd say, i did the typical liberal arts grad thing: i learned to communicate well and make a generally good impression, and i went on to find a job based on those skills and not some specific technical skills i had acquired because of my major. later, once i'd left the writing specialist job and spent several years at home full time, i got called back to the community college to work as an editor in the marketing and communications department. again, not something my english lit degree qualifies me for, specifically, but a fine fit for a liberal arts grad. i've been happily editing away for about a year now.

fast forward to this past week, my second week at my new job as children's minister at our church. (my qualification for this job, by the way? certainly not my college education. though i'm pretty sure i mentioned here in a post once upon a time that i've learned more from my kids than i ever did in any class...so i guess that, plus a passion for what i'm doing, qualifies me as much as any liberal arts degree!) anyhow, this past week i set to work on a pen pal project to connect the kids in our church to the kids at our sister church in butare, rwanda. as i prepared the materials for our kids to fill out--little booklets introducing themselves and sharing a little bit about their lives here in north carolina--i had a good chuckle. because i realized that in order for the rwandan kids to have a better chance of understanding the notes from our kids, they would need to be translated...into french.

ten years later, in my job as a children's minister--for which i have absolutely no educational qualification--i found a use for my useless ten-year-old french degree. i think God is funny that way. just another little reminder how much bigger His plans are than ours. thank God.

you're all my favorites

2010-06-20T15:47:00.007-04:00

if it weren't the sad truth that all but a scarce few of my children's books are packed away in the (too too hot) attic, i'd have a very appropriate quotation from this book for you.

but alas, mid-june in north carolina feels more like mid-july this year...so you'll have to imagine the quotation.

i love you, my three favorites. happy father's day, bayba.

read-aloud

2010-06-13T14:21:00.005-04:00

no, that title is not an encouragement to read this post aloud. as much as my husband is always trying to get me to engage in family read-alouds (insert gagging noise here), and as much as i am known to love to read aloud to children (ask my little friend e.k., bringer of many books to my lap)--as much as all of that is true, i will never encourage you to read this stuff aloud. disclaimer complete.

when is the last time you read something aloud with a group of people? if you're the churchgoing type, you've probably read plenty of prayers aloud. but in a large group, the effect i'm going for is kind of lost. so when is the last time you read something aloud in a small group? have you ever noticed how people emphasize different words?

recently, i read some scripture aloud with three friends. i've forgotten now what the passage was that we were reading, but i remember well the effect. i noticed that each of us emphasized a different word. for example, had the sentence been this one from psalm 37--"Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday"--one of my friends would have emphasized the verb "commit," another the subject "he."

i find that when i read passages like that i emphasize the word "will." i think it's something about claiming the promise embedded in that sentence. the Lord will keep his word, and we can rest in that. for me, the emphasis isn't on who will be doing the thing or what the thing is to be done or to whom it will be done; rather, for me, the focus is on the certainty: it will be done.

which says something about me, i'm sure, and about God, too. but it also highlights something that i love about the body of Christ. we're all looking in the same direction--upward, presumably--but we're all doing it with a different focus, a different perspective. when you put four people together to read a scripture passage and each person emphasizes a different word, the result is a collective emphasis on all the words. and that is Good stuff. we can't see all the glory of God at once, each individually, but we can each focus on the piece we can see, and together we can work to reflect it all.

it makes me want to read this passage from psalm 57 aloud with a small group of friends, too, because i think it's as important to emphasize our commitment as it is to focus on God's promises: "My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my glory! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!" (emphases mine. how about yours?)

where i am today

2010-06-11T15:59:00.003-04:00

(this is a repost from a couple of years ago. it's still true. and it's where i'm spending my weekend--and so not doing any new blogging. the original title was "raw.")

there are lots of things that aren't much good until you get past the outside. pistachios. eggs. tootsie pops. corn on the cob.

but i'm thinking more of a watermelon.

to have a husband with whom i am completely honest, completely open, and completely raw all the time is an amazing blessing. i could never think to ask for more. but to have a friend who searches out the raw--splits me open to the get to the inside--is an incredible bonus gift.

like a watermelon.

there's good, sweet, juicy stuff inside. and some hard seeds, too, not good for much, except maybe enjoying the spitting them out. but a watermelon has a thick skin. it requires a sharp knife, a strong arm, to get through to the raw insides. which have a sweetness that compares to nothing else.

i have a beautiful, strong friend who, with the delicacy, precision, and confidence of a surgeon, splits me open.

i can count on her, whether i like it or not, to split me open. a sharp knife, applied in just the right spot with just the right amount of pressure. the juice begins to spill almost immediately. it's sticky. but she's in it all the way to the sweet center, laughing as we spit out the hard seeds and endure all the messy stickiness that comes with getting to the raw sweetness.

my skin is thick. it means nothing to her. just like a watermelon rind is good only for what is secreted away inside, so my thick skin is only what hides away what she loves about me. and she'll get it, no matter what knife she has to use.

come to think of it, those seeds we spit away probably have their purpose, too. probably.

(she'll laugh at my comparing myself to a watermelon, too. and i'll love her for it.)

for my mama, her favorite

2010-06-02T21:04:00.006-04:00

beauty.

attempting to drink it up.

(oh, but i wish you could smell it!)

of helium

2010-06-01T18:21:00.004-04:00

it was another moment when i wished i was a painter. or a photograph would have done fine, but it's not the sort of moment when you happen to have a camera. and anyhow, you can't take a picture while driving 45 miles per hour. not a good one, anyhow.

i was driving down the four-lane road and came to a place where there was a break in the median for cars entering from the cross street. as i looked to see if there were any cars coming, i saw a balloon. it was bright yellow with some sort of red design, and trailing behind it was a red string. it was the big round kind, delightful.

what was striking about that balloon was that it was rising straight up, from just a few feet off the ground, as if just released. the surprising thing: there was no one there. no car with an open window, no child crossing the street, no parking lot or group of people or store or anything anywhere nearby. that is to say there was nowhere for that balloon to be coming from. but it was rising and continued to rise, straight up. it wasn't floating, like an old balloon long ago released, rising and sinking rising and sinking. it was clearly on its way up, still full of air, as if it had just slipped from a child's hand that very moment.

anyhow, i'd like to have a painting of that. or a photograph, all the cars and trees and median and whatnot in black and white. all shades of gray but for that bright, round balloon.

how many different metaphors are there for a balloon rising? balloons have come to symbolize so many things. they are released in celebration and in mourning, in joy and in desperation. they represent childhood, festivals, birthdays, and graduations. they show up at memorial services and cemeteries. and, if you're a kindergartener learning about the ocean, a balloon released outside represents a threat to ocean life, not to mention birds and other creatures nearer to home.

some people think of balloons floating to heaven, delivering messages to loved ones who have gone before. if you know me, you know i don't tend to think that way. i was tempted to imagine the invisible child who released that balloon, to imagine some ghost (?) of eliza playing. but that sort of thing doesn't resonate with me, either. instead, i'll just file that untaken photograph, that unpainted painting away in my mind somewhere for when i need a bright spot in a gray world, a colorful reminder that there is something rising above the colorlessness that surrounds me.

a love letter in lyrics (with links--click the asterisks should you prefer a soundtrack) because i always have a song in my head

2010-05-29T00:01:00.002-04:00

lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.*

it all started sometime in 1995 when we went to see rouge*, a french film, together. it was an extra credit project for french class, and we were two brown-nosing students looking for our a+ grades. or so i thought. i was at the time--i kid you not--actually jesse's girl.

jesse is a friend, yeah, i know he's been a good friend of mine.
but lately something's changed that ain't hard to define.
jesse's got himself a girl and I want to make her mine.*

once upon a time, quite literally half my life ago, i fell in love with a boy. it wasn't at that film that day, which i left still thinking we were just two friends looking for our a+ grades. it may have been on that long walk with jack the black lab to the football field very close by. it may have been over phyllo chicken with my family on my sixteenth birthday, my gift those black leather string necklaces with the one colorful bead--remember? it may have been on the screened porch, when all our plans for surviving the fall of the globe light overhead failed. was it on the walk to westcott theater with the jaxon co. to see il postino*? i'm not sure.

the only boy who could ever reach me was the son of a preacher man. *

sometime between rides in the tank and prom night, between college applications and a gym class drowning, between freshman orientation and 4:30 dinners, between diner equivalency and slices from tony's (or roma's?), between hot pot ramen and junior spring across the pond, i knew i would marry the brilliant, pensive, handsome boy with the strawberry blond curls.

i was a baby then, i know. am i grown up now? somewhere along the way, we grew up together.

it's been a long, hard road to hell and back. your love meant trouble from the day we met.*

i know now that loving someone fully and completely, wholeheartedly and forever does in fact mean trouble from the start. i know that marriage is asking for a challenge. doesn't paul warn against it? but God is after our sanctification, and how better to sanctify us than to create us with the desire to be one with another, to give our whole selves and lives to each other even as He invites us to wield the chisel in sculpting each other to look more like Him?

we have--and i daresay i do not exaggerate here--been to hell and back over the last ten years. we have grown up together in ways no one ought to have to grow. we have been chiselled together and by each other, and even as a sculpture emerges only as much of the raw material is destroyed, we have emerged--are emerging--through and because of much pain.

but of course, that block of marble is better for having been chiselled, is more beautiful for having its original form destroyed.

my sam-mule, my bayba, my hus, my love: you have always been beautiful. today, ten years after we made it official and fifteen years after we knew we would, you are more beautiful for all the santification you have endured. you are more brilliant, more thoughtful, more intense, more passionate, more tender, more loving, and far deeper than the boy i loved for all his depth and passion, his brilliance and intensity half a lifetime ago. your curls are blond-er than they are red now; is that a symptom of sanctification? you are being washed white as snow even as we continue to slog through the mud together. i would have it no other way. that is to say, of course i would prefer another method of sanctification to chisels and mud...but in this world in which those are the only Way, i would endure it and fight through it with no other than you.

why does the past always seem safer?
maybe because at least we know we made it.
and why do we worry about the future when every day will come just the way the Lord ordained it? *

so i'm excited to rush into tomorrow with you. the past sometimes does seem safer, the future scarier. but our past is anything but safe--and we know we've made it. so let's celebrate half a lifetime of yesterdays, my love, but let's celebrate a lifetime of tomorrows even more. let's delight in what's to come, safe or otherwise. i cannot wait to wake up with you again tomorrow.

and every time i ask you assure you're doing fine,
but your heart looks good by smiling.
you couldn't fool mine.
and by the end of the night your pillow sits to dry.
in a crowded room you're singing, but on the inside you sigh.

and i'll still love you beyond what words can say.
ill take your every suffering moment and bring a better day.
i'll still love you more than what i hope to be.
let me wrap my arms around you.
let me take your breath away. *

to you who know my heart, smiling or otherwise; my pillow, dry or otherwise; my every suffering moment: thank you for taking my breath away. happy anniversary, my love.

love is the answer, at least for most of the questions in my heart,
like why are we here? and where do we go? and how come it's so hard?
it's not always easy and sometimes life can be deceiving.
i'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together.*

i love you more...than anyone else. ;) jinx fizzy fizzy fizzy.

(the pictures, a somewhat random selection of favorites, in case you're curious, clockwise from top left corner: high school prom, 1996; Greyledge on Lake Ontario, 1998; wedding, 2000; same; two weeks ago, in Baltimore at friend's wedding; summer 2000, our first in NC. and yes, i'm sure some photograph-worthy stuff happened between 2000 and 2010, but pretty much all of those pictures include children. which was not the point of this collage.)

overdue

2010-05-24T22:35:00.008-04:00

maybe it's because i've got the library on my mind.

our nearest library branch closed a year and a half ago for major renovations, and it reopened today. library-loving nerd though i am, i avoided the crowds and fanfare (a mariachi band, even!) of today's reopening celebration. but you can bet i'll be there before the week is out. and anyhow, i've been talking about it with my friends with much anticipation. so i've got the library on my mind. and overdue books, too, which never ever ever happened to me until a year and a half ago. never mind that i can renew online; somehow, i've always got books overdue now. i just renewed some today, in fact, two days before they were again overdue. whew.

so maybe that's it. or maybe it's this article, written by my friend who, unfortunately, knows the pain of losing a child. she recently reposted it on her blog, and i read it again and found it to be very true, indeed. you should read it, too.

or maybe it's the book i'm reading, jayber crow, and the part i've just read tonight about sons going off to war and not coming home. and how their fathers are changed, made somehow inaccessible and distant, as a result.

whatever it is, it got me thinking.

**************************************

the day eliza died, i had some library books that were overdue. returning library books--or even just renewing them online--wasn't much of a priority for me in that last week of eliza's life, so the books were overdue. this was, mind you, the first time this had ever happened to me. ever. (legalist, yes. i know.) i'm always on time, early usually, and my library books are no exception. they are never overdue. i remember gathering them up from their various locations around luke's room and stacking them on the bookcase by the front door, ready to be returned. but by the time i finally returned them, they were way overdue.

after eliza died, and even as she was dying (heck, throughout her whole life!), we were amazingly well cared for. if you've read any of her story, you know about the endless meals, the house cleaning and painting, the gifts, the childcare, the financial support...our great big, worldwide family grew and grew and grew over the years she lived and after she died, and we could not be more grateful. friends and family and even strangers were endlessly creative, astoundingly selfless, and absurdly generous to our family in ways unimaginable. they met so many needs, lavished on us so much love, opened their hearts in so many ways. so many people knew well not to ask, "what can i do?" but just did what they knew and what came naturally, and it was so very, very Good. i cannot even describe how well loved we felt, and even now it brings tears to my eyes to try.

but here's the thing, the thing my friend's article explains, the thing this book i'm reading describes of the families whose sons have been lost at war: my library books were overdue. i seem to remember mentioning to someone that they needed to be returned--no doubt someone who was already busy caring for us in so many ways--asking if someone might return them for me. even as i was surrounded by people asking what they could do, by people doing so many amazing things for me and my family, no one knew that my library books were overdue. no one knew how troubled i was that they weren't being returned.

it sounds foolish, i know. and really it's what the library books represent that i mean to point to. but you knew that, right? no one--not even sam--could know that what i needed was for my library books not to be overdue. because no one--not even sam--was experiencing what i was experiencing in those days and weeks. this is the isolation of grief, that not even your child's other parent experiences what you do in the loss of your child. no one knew that maintaining that little bit of order, of returning my library books on time, meant so much to me.

which is not to say you shouldn't follow the advice in my friend's article and love on grieving people in any and every way you can think to do. but know even as you do that you will not understand. you will not meet every need. you cannot go there with them, wherever there may be. no one knew that there for me was the library, and no one could have known. physically, emotionally, i couldn't communicate that to anyone, nor could anyone have found out by asking, "what can i do?" that what i needed was for my library books to be returned.

****************************************

i returned the books and paid the late fee, of course, and did it within the few days between eliza's funeral and our christmas trip up north. i probably could have explained away their lateness and had the fine excused, but there was no way i was subjecting the poor librarian to that (literal) sob story. and perhaps i was cured--just a little bit--of my obsessive tendencies concerning library books, as i have paid quite a few more late fees since then. (or maybe it's just because our local branch has been closed and returning the books has been such a pain. yes, i think i'll go with that answer.)

words i love

2010-05-23T15:50:00.003-04:00

appropriate, in a pentecost sort of way, that i would come across these words in my book this afternoon:

As soon as I shut my eyes, I could see the river again, only now I seemed to see it up and down its whole length. Where just a little while before people had been breathing and eating and going about their old everyday lives, now I could see the currents come riding in, at first picking up straws and dead leaves and little sticks, and then boards and pieces of firewood and whole logs, and then maybe the henhouse or the barn or the house itself. As if the mountains had melted and were flowing to the sea, the water rose and filled all the airy spaces of rooms and stalls and fields and woods, carrying away everything that would float, casting up the people and scattering them, scattering or drowning their animals and poultry flocks. The whole world, it seemed, was cast adrift, riding the currents, whirled about in eddies, the old life submerged and gone, the new not yet come.

And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that had made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.
--from Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

the scriptures describe the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire. but the Holy Spirit is so often associated with water, too, as in the words of the baptismal rite prayed in church just this morning:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water. Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, in joyful obedience to your Son, we bring into this fellowship those who come to him in faith, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Now sanctify this water, we pray you, by the power of your Holy Spirit, that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again through faith in Jesus Christ may continue forever in the power of his risen life. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

what do fire and water--generally regarded, it think, as opposites--have in common? power. it's no accident that, in that fiery sunset photo up there, it's difficult to tell whether you're looking at the sky or the water. the apparent chaos the character j. crow describes as he describes the flooding river, the strength of that water and the human lack of control of it--that's power. i imagine the situation at pentecost may have been similarly overwhelming: tongues of fire, people speaking in foreign languages, the multitudes rushing to hear. clearly, Someone other than the disciples or any new wine was in control. and it was powerful. "And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting" (Acts 2:2). like a flooding river, the sound of such a mighty wind from heaven must have been powerful and awe-ful. and beyond control.

"As if the mountains had melted and were flowing to the sea." awe-some. it is Good to be swept away.

(and yes, twosquare, i'm finally reading it! finally reading...)

as for what's up there

2010-05-22T13:45:00.004-04:00

it's pentecost sunday tomorrow, the end of the easter season and the start of ordinary (as in "ordinal" or counted) time. thus the new blog header. (i never did intend for my blog headers to keep up with the church calendar, by the way, but i take a lot of pictures, and so it doubles as an excuse to use them somewhere!)

i will perhaps have some thoughts on pentecost, i imagine. but for now, that's what the header's about.

compelled

2010-05-18T18:01:00.003-04:00

my boys are out to dinner, having some "man time." to the gym, said my mental checklist of things-i-should-do-today. to the gym was not checked off yet. but i'm tired, and it's chilly and rainy, and i haven't read a book in weeks. so after seeing the boys off, i headed upstairs to change into sweats, get my favorite fuzzy blanket, and curl up on the porch with a book.

forty minutes later, i haven't changed into my sweats, and i haven't made it back downstairs to the waiting book and chilly porch. because, as i passed the computer, i realized that this was my perfect opportunity to get a little work done that has been waiting, waiting. so forty minutes later, i have finished that work...and checked in on facebook, a couple of blogs, and four email accounts. i have not changed into my sweats, i have not gotten my fuzzy blanket, i have not started my book. and my boys will be home soon. there's laundry to do. there's glitter on the rug in the living room, evidence of the earlier project that distracted me from checking off to the gym, which needs vacuuming before we host a soccer team party tomorrow night. there are dishes that need washing from the girls' night i hosted last night. there are school papers to put/throw away, legos to clean up, bathrooms that need scrubbing, sheets that need changing. there is mail to be sorted, clutter to be--what? how does one ever finish doing clutter?--dealt with, and on and on and on.

if i know who you are, faithful reader, and i think i do, this is not news to you. this is your life, too. so why am i compelled to sit down at the computer and work when i could be reading or resting or making my home the pleasant place it ought to be?

i have a dear friend who grieves my inability to rest. even as i am excitedly telling her about my latest doings and plans and schemes, she is tearing up at the lack of space in my life. why, she wants to know, am i compelled to be busy all the time? am i afraid to slow down? am i afraid to be quiet and listen? what will i hear if i'm still?

but, i have argued to my friend, i am a failure at stillness. i believe--i really do think i do--that my type-a-ness is innate, that the restlessness i feel if i try to rest is natural and truly something of who i am.

but, she argues--and here she's arguing in my head, and i can hear her voice in there--didn't i learn anything from eliza? didn't i learn the value of slowing down? because--and she's right--i spent so much time with eliza just sitting, just being still. that was all i could do for her, for the most part. didn't i learn to delight in that stillness?

although i do not grieve one minute of that stillness with eliza and in fact would take any more of it that i could get, even still, a year and a half later, i feel like i'm rediscovering part of me that was temporarily and unnaturally stilled by life with her. there was a busy type-a person buried under enforced stillness for three years and then some. did i learn to embrace that stillness? absolutely. but does that mean that my compulsion was eradicated? no. and, i think, naturally so.

but now my boys have just gotten home. and there's still laundry to put in. and a few emails that have arrived while i've been here blogging. i guess that book stays put until another day.

seven quick bits...& just one more

2010-05-11T14:34:00.004-04:00

(alternatively titled, "quotations that, though they may contradict one another, all describe why i haven't been blogging lately...and why unread books are piling up on my coffee table")

1. "May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion." - thomas jefferson

2. "A lot of our 'busy ness' is a way for us to avoid thinking about what is most important. There's a difference between being busy and being productive." - kristen lippincott

3. "It's not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised; the mosquito is swatted." - marie o'conner

4. "In a word, I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well." - elizabeth cady stanton

5. "Who begins too much accomplishes little." - german proverb

6. "If you are too busy to develop your talents, you are too busy." - julia cameron

7. "Busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest." - stephen king

& just one more: confucius say, "No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."

(amen, confucius.)

words i love

2010-05-01T08:10:00.003-04:00

(from the devotional Come Away My Beloved by frances j. roberts, happened upon randomly--if you believe in that sort of thing)

"Write those things I say to you. Write and hold back nothing of all I shall say to you. For I shall speak to you in the darkness and shall make your way a path of light. I will cry to you out of the confusion round about, and you shall hear My voice and shall know that which I do. For My way is hidden from the rebellious, and from the disobedient, and from those who seek to walk in their own wisdom.

But look to Me, and I will be your beacon in the night, and you will not stumble over the hidden things. You will walk in a way of victory though turmoil is on either hand, even as Israel marched through the Red Sea on a path My hand hewed out for them. Yes, it shall be a path of deliverance, and My Spirit shall go with you, and you shall carry the glad tidings of deliverance to people who sit in darkness and captivity."

when the good is the enemy of the best

2010-04-30T14:04:00.004-04:00

ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are seasons in life. different priorities occupy us at different times; different things are important in different phases.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace" (ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

(the byrds, anyone? turn, turn, turn...yeah.)

ahem.

but what are we to do about those times when what we're called to do--whether it is to mourn or to tear or to give up--is just exactly what we feel sure we cannot bring ourselves to do? certainly, there are times when we have no choice: there was no question whether i would mourn the loss of eliza or zeph, as i had no power to make that decision. but what about when a choice itself, one over which we do have power, promises to lead to tearing or killing or war or searching in ways that we feel certain we cannot bear?

and what of the voices that say, it can't really be what you're called to do if it's so painful! God can't expect you to do that! ? what of the voices that say, trust your gut! or this can't be a bad thing!? what of the voices that say, don't worry about all those other voices; this is good!?

voltaire is credited with having said, "the best is the enemy of the good." but you've probably equally often heard it said that the good is the enemy of the best. the question of the day--of the year, of my life--is how to discern what is best. there is a lot of good to be had, a lot of good to be done. but can it be true that there are times when pursuing something that is good may in fact be to the detriment of what is best?

i have watched (and coveted in the watching, okay, i'll admit it) my neighbor cultivate a beautiful lawn over the past couple of years. in order to do it, though, in order to acheive the best lawn he could, he did not start by planting. he started by uprooting, by killing. you see, he had a yard full of things that were not the best, like crabgrass and weeds and dandelions and clover. (since i still have just those things, i'm going to label them "good" or at least "good enough"; otherwise, i might be driven to even more covetousness.) he used tools and chemicals and lots of elbow grease to kill and uproot what was good in order to plant what was best. and in the process, there was dryness and sparsity and death. (okay, i know; it's just a lawn. but it was brown and dead-looking and stuff. hang with me.) but after he had killed the good, he was able to cultivate the best. as a result, he has a lush, green lawn with beautiful grass and very little else. there was, in the rescue of his yard, a time to kill and uproot before there was a time to plant and build. the good(enough) had to be eradicated in favor of the best.

but that's a lawn. what does that look like in a life? what does it look like to choose to kill what is good--to uproot what is familiar and okay and good enough--in favor of what is best?

and how can we be sure what is best?

there's the rub that's rubbing me, if i'm honest. if we always knew what was best--like my neighbor, who knew full well that a carpet of real grass was absolutely far superior to the assorted stuff he was replacing--we would not have so much trouble eliminating what is good in favor of it. he had no qualms about dousing those weeds with poison, even though it meant he'd have a season of brown in his yard, in anticipation of growing something far better. but it's not always as clear as uprooting and planting, so how do we know what is best to pursue? how do we know what to tear in order to mend? what to keep and what to throw away? when to be silent and when to speak? and where do we find the courage to know when to search and when to give up?

i'm still pursuing that one Voice over and above all the rest. but it can be so hard to drown out the many voices, not the least of which live in my head, in favor of the One i must pursue. i need quiet and patience and rest to really listen, all the things i have learned to avoid so well. the more i fill my time with people and places and voices the more i kill the stillness i cannot afford to lose. is it fear? sometimes i think it is. do i really want to listen well enough to hear what may be a call to mourn or tear down? is it not easier to wrestle with the voices i can locate with a simple phone call or email or sleepless night of writing than to wait--and wait and wait--on a Voice i am told only to wait for?

"The Lord said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.'
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper" (1Kings 19:11-13).

i have been brought back again and again to these verses. Lord, please silence the wind and the earthquake and the fire; may they be still and quiet so that i may listen for the whisper, for the call to what is best.

words i love

2010-04-21T19:15:00.003-04:00

"Bunny ran up to the house, thumb and forefinger pinched together.
'Aunt, the sky is the biggest thing in the world. Guess what's the littlest?'
'I don't know, my dear. What?'
'This.' And extended her finger to show a minute grain of sand.
'I want to see.' Sunshine charged up and the particle of sand was lost in a hurricane of breath.
'No, no, no,' said the aunt, seizing Bunny's balled fist. 'There's more without number. There's enough sand for everybody.'" --from The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

(yes, still the same book. i'm reading very slowly these days.)

"How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand." --Psalm 139:17-18

hearing voices, or it just so happens

2010-04-20T15:19:00.001-04:00

i have been listening to lots of voices lately. and i've had a song stuck in my head.

(these two things will come together--i promise--if you'll stick with me for a minute. have i ever failed to deliver on these promises?)

i have found myself seeking the right voice to speak into a specific situation in my life recently. two roads are diverging in a wood, so to speak, and i...well, i keep thinking if i can just talk to the right person about it--someone familiar with the metaphorical roads, someone who has been in the same metaphorical wood, someone who knows me and knows what's best for me (in a decidedly non-metaphorical way)--i'll be able to figure out which road to take. it's a delicate thing, and not something i can share in a lot of detail right now. but suffice it to say, it's been weighing on me. there are so many good people to ask, so many good voices to seek, so many wise pieces of advice to be gleaned! and inasmuch as i have been able to, i just keep looking for the right voice.

i spent this morning with a friend whom i trust implicitly to speak into my life. i poured my story out to her, asking her for something, i don't know what: advice? support? wisdom? i wasn't sure. what i knew she'd give me was love and prayer.

it just so happened (if you believe that things just so happen) that we were walking in the woods as i told her my story. and it just so happened that we had taken some time to sit down on a bridge over a little creek. and as she prayed for me, she prayed that Jesus would take my hand in this process as i make these decisions. it just so happened.

as for the song that's been stuck in my head, that was trickling through my thoughts even as i listened to the creek trickling underneath us as she prayed (which was, by the way, not in her head at all, as she'd never even heard it, which i know because of course i asked her later)--well, i can never seem to remember the words to the verses, so it's the chorus (in italics below) that has been the "coincidental" (if you believe things just so happen, of course) soundtrack to my weeks recently:

to the river i am going,
bringing sins i cannot bear.
come and cleanse me, come forgive me.
Lord, i need to meet you there.

in these waters healing mercy
flows with freedom from despair.
i am going to that river,
Lord, i need to meet you there.

precious Jesus, i am ready to surrender every care.
take my hand now, lead me closer,
Lord, i need to meet you there.

come and join us in the river.
come find life beyond compare.
He is calling, He is waiting.
Jesus longs to meet you there.
(listen here, if you're curious)

it just so happens sometimes. surrendering cares at the river with Jesus holding my hand sounds pretty good. i'm glad for the reminder of the Voice i ought to be seeking among all the others, the Wisdom i ought to be after. and i'm especially glad for the promise that He'll meet me there, wherever there happens to be.

the secret life...

2010-04-17T13:29:00.013-04:00

if you know me, you know i love the wral azalea gardens. i made what has become my annual pilgrimage there today, just my camera and me. it was, as usual, a weighty delight.

(more here on the weighty part, if you're curious.)

as for the secret life promised in the title...

...of pistils and stamens (yes, i pay attention to my daily kindergarten recaps)...

...of birds (who mostly succeeded in remaining secretive)...

...of bees (of course--surely you anticipated this book reference, no?)...

...of trees.

having not grown up with them, i'm not sure i'll ever be unsurpised by the beauty of azaleas. the pure, overwhelming display of beauty...i like to think of them as a gift from God, delivered with a little smile: "you have no idea what I can do. here's just a glimpse of Glory, a hint. you have no idea."

the world of transportation

2010-04-15T18:22:00.004-04:00

i'm sitting in the church nursery (yes, there's a reason, and no, it's not important) and thinking about cars. (no, not the plastic ones with which i'm surrounded. the real ones. i know, i know: just hang on and keep reading.)

as i walked out of work the other day, en route to the carpool line at luke's school, i was struck by what i saw in the parking lot. leaving the building, i was faced by a row of silver and gold (oddly enough, perfectly alternating, which is probably why it struck me) compact cars. the pattern was only interrupted by my big blue minivan, which stuck out like a sore thumb. i had only ten minutes and a few miles to go before my big blue minivan would be just one of many big blue (or silver or gray or red or black) minivans. but here in this office parking lot, i was far and away the only one. or should i say my van was far and away the only one? no, it was i who was the only one.

what i got to thinking about was how obvious it is sometimes what world we inhabit. for those whose primary place in the world is work, like most--if not all--of my marketing colleagues, a silver or gold compact car is the tool for the the to-and-fro. but just a few miles away were the people who drive the same tool i do, filled, just like mine, with car seats and scooters and soccer balls and picture books, not to mention a healthy assortment of empty juice boxes and granola bar wrappers and fast food napkins (gasp! never!) as well.

add to that the fact that i sit in the church nursery right now, blogging and answering emails. it gets a girl thinking about her place is all.

what am i doing driving a minivan full of mommy debris to work? dragging editing work around in my carpool-mobile? am i trying to live two separate lives at once? and as for the netbook in the church nursery?

i have prematurely (and hopefully not permanently) graduated from the absorbed-by-minivan phase of life to the drives-a-compact-car phase. i don't have any kids at home to keep me in touch with the playgroup set, but i'm also not yet ready to jump into the now-that-all-my-kids-are-in-school world. my friends are either absorbed by potty training and sleepless nights or kids learning to drive and heading off to college. i am neither.

which is just one more way i inhabit a space that is very sparsely populated.

even as my friends cannot, in many significant ways, meet me in my grief, solely (and thankfully) for not having experienced it themselves, so they cannot meet me in my compact-car-versus-minivan conundrum. they live in one world or the other, not somewhere in between like i do. grief can be isolating, the books tell you. but no one mentioned the loneliness of an empty minivan or the conspicuousness of not driving a four-door.

music and Creation, in which i struggle to decide what to capitalize (if you must know)

2010-04-15T16:39:00.000-04:00

have you ever watched a musician perform? i mean really watched?

i had the privilege to take part in a benefit concert and art auction put on by our church last weekend in support of our sister parish partnership with st. paul's church in butare, rwanda. many remarkably talented musicians performed, artists contributed their work, and behind-the-scenes volunteers worked endless hours to make it happen. the experience was striking for so many reasons, some of which will have to wait for another post, maybe. but what i couldn't help writing about on a scrap of paper i found in my choir notebook even as i sat and watched a trio of friends perform was the beauty of the act of creation.

sure, playing an instrument involves a fair amount of body involvement--fingers for the piano keys, feet for the harp pedals, hands for the flute. but have you ever watched a harpist's shoulders? a pianist's jaw? a floutist's eyes? as i watched my friends perform, i was startled by the full-body nature of creation. each musician's whole being was consumed by the beauty s/he was creating. which made me think about Creation (with a capital C): what did it look like for God to pour His entire Self into Creation?

and then, as i watched this trio some more, i got to thinking about the Trinity, too. because as i watched, i wondered who was leading. at times, i could see the harpist and pianist looking to the floutist's nod or foot-tap to help keep tempo. but at other times, the floutist and harpist waited on a flash of the eyes from the pianist; and sometimes, the harpist signalled almost imperceptibly that the pianist and floutist should slow down. and always the three communicated: a smile, a nod, a glance. had they not kept perfectly in touch with each other, the beauty would have been incomplete, the creation imperfect.

which must be how it was with the Trinity at the time of Creation. the Godhead Three-in-One. what an amazing picture. now i was not only trying to imagine God pouring His whole Self into Creation; now i was trying to imagine all three Persons of the Trinity pouring Themselves into each Other and into what They were creating. i'll confess that the shack flashed through my mind once or twice, william p. young's intriguing but unsatisfying stab at a portrayal of the Trinity. (don't get me wrong: there's definitely some good stuff in there. but it's not quite it.) and as i watched these imperfect humans create stunningly beautiful but imperfect music, my breath was quite literally taken away by the thought of the Perfect God--the Perfect Trinity--creating something in His--Their--own image. what beautiful music it must have made, the music of the spheres.

a promise

2010-04-15T15:15:00.001-04:00

i've got blogposts in my head. just no time to get them out. they're coming; will you accept this picture as a promise and not abandon my blog just yet?

(thanks.)

yesterdays

2010-04-10T08:35:00.004-04:00

"If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday."

--Pearl S. Buck

homecoming. four years ago yesterday:

words i love

2010-04-05T21:55:00.003-04:00

(i think i need to start a regular series of posts of favorite quotations from things i'm reading. this will be the first official installment, then.)

"After six months of copy desk fixes Quoyle didn't recognize news, had no aptitude for detail. He was afraid of all but twelve or fifteen verbs. Had a fatal flair for the false passive. 'Governor Murchie was handed a bouquet by first grader Kimberley Plud,' he wrote and Edna, the crusty rewrite woman, stood up and bellowed at Quoyle, 'You lobotomized moron. How the hell can you hand a governor?' Quoyle another sample of the semi-illiterates who practiced journalism nowadays. Line them up against the wall!" --from The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx

(i'm afraid i might be the "crusty rewrite woman" of my department at work. maybe i'll have to try the "lobotomized moron" line on a particularly bad day...)

repost: come home

2010-04-03T09:22:00.001-04:00

(i wrote this last year on holy saturday, and since i don't have anything new to say this year, i thought i'd post it again in case you didn't read it before.)

mama, i just found something that used to belong to eliza, and it makes me think about her a lot. and it makes me feel sad. it makes me think, "come home."

it's Easter Saturday, that weird, i-don't-know-what-to-do-with-it day in between Eli, Eli and He is risen. yesterday, we erected our wooden cross in the backyard; buried luke's Lambie, wrapped in a towel, in a cardboard box tomb; rolled a backyard stone in front of the box's opening. luke was sad to leave Lambie out there all by herself all night. it rained and stormed; i, too, wanted to bring her in. or at least check that she wasn't getting wet. sam went out and wrapped her in a plastic bag, just to be safe.

there's someone else i'd like to bring in from the wet dirt, too.

what did the disciples do on Easter Saturday? we can dye eggs, hunt treats, and prepare for tomorrow--He is risen, Hallelujah!--because we know tomorrow comes. all the disciples knew that saturday was that their friend, the one they thought was The One, was alone in the tomb. dead. gone. on Good Friday, we reenact the Passion, reenact the horror and absolute evil of the crucifixion; on Easter Sunday, we reenact the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise of the resurrection. what do we do with In-Between Saturday?

i'm usually in too much of a rush to get to sunday to worry too much about my theology of saturday. prepare the treats, cook and bake for a big dinner, dye eggs...friday's over, after all (whew), and sunday's coming. i can safely use saturday to get all the preparation for sunday done (because there's no church today, whew again), so sunday i can rest and rejoice.

but i'm hung up on saturday this year. i'm living in the already and not-yet. every day is In-Between Saturday. eliza is in the tomb, dead, gone, and i can't wrap her up to protect her from the storm. she doesn't need protection from the storm, after all, because we're not going to bring her back inside tomorrow, back to snuggling in bed with us, like luke will with Lambie. here's the thing: it's not friday anymore for eliza, but it's not sunday yet for me. her suffering is over; she's already in the already. and i'm stuck in the not-quite-yet.

but what if i use this In-Between Saturday to prepare for Easter Sunday? that is, how do i prepare for the feast, the rejoicing and celebration and blissful surprise to which eliza has gone ahead of me? the disciples mourned; they didn't know that sunday was coming. i know. i know.

i'd like to think eliza and luke might be sharing the very same thought today: Come Home. so i'm going to get ready. i'm going to clean house and tidy up and prepare for the feast. The Feast. Matthew 8:11 says that "many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." praise God.

i'm using my saturday to get ready.

jumping the gun

2010-04-02T21:40:00.005-04:00

yup, my blog's got an easter look. and yes, i do know that it's only 9:40 on good friday night. but i don't plan to be around here much the next couple of days, so i got a head start. and anyhow, i am--as always--in a rush to get to sunday. He is risen, indeed. alleluia!

last-ing

2010-04-01T21:16:00.003-04:00

at our maundy thursday footwashing service tonight, our rector began his sermon by encouraging us to consider what we would do with our time if we knew, as Jesus did that thursday night, that it was to be our last on earth. with whom would we share our last meal? who would receive our last phone calls or emails? what would our last facebook status update be? (luke turned to me at this point and repeated the question to me directly. oh dear. time for a facebook hiatus, i wonder?) our rector also raised the question of what would be left undone: work incomplete, relationships undeveloped, plans left behind.

(what would my last blogpost be? i have no idea. but you can bet i was thinking about it.)

what the sermon did get me thinking about, though, was how eliza spent her last night. (disclaimer here: this was not at all what the sermon was about. sorry, dear rector. i did get the message, and it was a really good one. but i was thinking about this, too. and it's my blog, so...) it was a thursday, eliza's last night was, and although we didn't know it would be her last, we knew she didn't have many more ahead of her. and so, after luke went to bed that night, friends surrounded us and prayed. lots of friends visited eliza upstairs, where she labored through each breath in her heavily sedated sleep. i don't remember thinking it would be the last time these friends would see her, but i know now that many of them did realize it would be.

my house was not clean; my bedroom in which eliza slept was filled with visitors who no doubt had to step around piles of unwashed laundry just to get to her crib. i remember sitting on the end of my unmade bed explaining eliza's medical situation to people i could never have imagined inviting into my mess that way. i'm pretty sure i never even offered anyone anything to drink, and my guess is my kitchen was filled with dirty dishes. luke's toys almost certainly remained strewn around the living room.

but on that last night of her life, eliza was surrounded by people who loved her. sam and luke and eliza and i were all drenched in love and prayers, both from those around us in our home and those who couldn't be there but joined in our vigil from all over the world. as for what eliza was leaving undone--what was left undone all around her--it didn't matter. what was certain and true and good and important was Love. and that's all. i'm pretty sure i know how i'd answer my rector's question, then, because i'm pretty sure i experienced it that night. but for family and friends who couldn't physically be there--a regrettable and unfortunate consequence of distance and of the rapid nature of her decline--i think that eliza's last night had just about everything important in order. i'm not sure i could ask for more. and i am so grateful for that.

prelapsarian poetry, or why i write what i cannot

2010-03-30T14:11:00.004-04:00

i wrote this last night, a few hours after hearing about a former student of sam's, finishing his senior year in high school, who has passed away. he lost a baby sister when he was in elementary school and leaves behind two other younger siblings. Lord, have mercy.

what i want to write about is what it was like to wake up last saturday morning. but i can't.

(i read somewhere recently where a grieving person was explaining that, in many ways, the first year is not the hardest after all.)

the other day, as i awoke slowly in a leisurely-saturday-ish way, i thought, "eliza is dead and i cannot breathe." that thought, that feeling--the certainty of both of those statements--is what i want to write about tonight. but i can't. because here's the thing (i often think i should rename this blog that: "here's the thing")--here's the thing: if you yourself know the grief that i do (and i know there are a few of you who are reading this who do), then i don't need to try to explain that certainty to you because you already know it for yourself. but if you don't know this grief of your own (and i'm so glad you don't), then i cannot describe it to you. i cannot explain how, fifteen long months after the fact, the realization that eliza is dead and the simultaneous certainty that, as a result, i cannot breathe would strike me upon awakening on an insignificant saturday morning, even as i drew breath after breath. i cannot write that for you.

which makes me think that is what this blog is often about (another re-name for this blog i ought to consider, i think: "which makes me think")--it's about writing around and around and around that which i cannot quite nail down. is that what all this writing is about? is that why i cannot go to bed without my journal and pen nearby, such that, as soon as i slow down and think quietly--listen, even, to that still small voice that i will not allow to catch me all day--is that why it is then that i suddenly have to get back up again and write? am i constantly amassing more and more writing, circling around and around that which is impossible to write simply because it is impossible? because, were it possible for me to explain why i was so certain upon awakening last saturday morning that "eliza is dead and i cannnot breathe" even as i drew breath after breath, i wouldn't need to write anymore.

but i can't, so i will.

which makes me think (there it is again) that this is part of what it means to be fallen. to know and be unable to communicate. to have and be unable to share. what did adam and eve's prelapsarian poetry sound like? with no pain to inform it, no distance from Perfection to try to bridge--what was perfect prose, perfect music like? because they must have existed there in the garden, surely. who can imagine paradise without those elements of beauty? but what did they sound like, not driven by angst or seeking or wrestling or writhing?

i can't wait to find out.

the game that's got it all:

2010-03-29T16:58:00.003-04:00

concentration (how much does he look like sam here? wow!)...

... teamwork (and the coolest coach)...

... drama!...

...nail-biting tension (yes, now he looks like me, i know)...

...and my favorite green ghost!

saying no to ice cream and other delicious things

2010-03-29T04:06:00.000-04:00

i swear i've learned more from being a mom than anything else i've ever done. (and yes, as for this lesson--and all the rest of them here, too--i know that i'm no doubt the millionth person to have drawn this comparison. but it's my blog, so...)

if you have a child or know one who has reached the age of rationality, of being able to communicate with intention and purpose, you have no doubt had--or at least overheard--some version of this conversation:

sweet, thoughtful, careful child: "mom, can i please have [insert ridiculous thing here, e.g. ice cream for breakfast, a dog, a sleepover at the fire station, etc]?" (n.b. dog-lover that i am, i in no way intend to imply that a dog is a ridiculous thing. ridiculous request from the backseat of the car when passing the pet store on the way home from school, though, i think we can agree.)

mother, with a chuckle: "no, honey, you may not."

incredulous child: "but i said 'please'!"

the implication in the retort: i have carefully done as you have taught me. i have asked politely. and now there is no reason i should not get what i want.

what the parent knows: the request is ridiculous/unhealthy/not good for the child in the long run/impossible/not in the parent's plan. please or no please, the child is not going to get what he has requested.

this conversation and its result is likely not a surprise to you. no good parent would let her child have ice cream for breakfast, unhealthy as it would be for him. no good parent would make the decision to get a dog without careful consideration of the effect it would have on the entire family and without conversation among the family members about whether or not it's a good idea. being a good parent, in fact, certainly requires that you say "no" to some requests that are not in the best interests of the child.

agreed? easy.

so why, then, do we not expect our Perfect Father to do the same on our behalf? "but i said please," we cry out again and again, indignant that a polite, properly submitted request could be denied. how could He possibly say "no" to this clearly-wonderful thing for which i've asked so nicely?

insert the ice-cream-for-breakfast for the clearly-wonderful-thing and you'll begin to understand.

why is it that we say no to the ice cream request? myriad reasons. it's not healthy. it won't serve the child well to start the day with sugar and nothing nutritious. it sets the child up to expect treats at odd times, which could start a bad habit. it's bad for his teeth, his healthy weight, his energy levels. you have something better--cereal or toast or eggs or pancakes--to offer. you know he'll have ice cream after dinner and want to save the treat for an appropriate time.

no matter how many sermons i hear about what it means when God says "no", i'm not sure i'll ever understand. (here's a link to a really good one, if you're curious: click on November 8, 2009.)

but whether or not i understand doesn't matter.

because, as you'll know if you've ever tried to explain the no-ice-cream-for-breakfast answer, you'll remember that the child's response is rarely thoughtful or helpful, and even more importantly, rarely matters. neither whining nor rational questioning nor debating is going to convince you that ice cream is the best thing you can give your child for breakfast. so, as you may have experienced with your own child, sometimes the best answer (as much as you detest sounding like your mother and everyone else's when you say it) is "because i said so." the child is not going to like it or understand it, but that doesn't change the fact that you know best, you love the child, and you're going to stick to what you know to be best for him. end of story.

so what are we to do with God's "no"? because certainly we are called to ask and seek and knock (matthew 7:7). but when the answer is clearly "no," we are not to whine, "but i said please! but i asked three times!"

what is it we want from our children? trust that we know what is best and cheerful obedience to what we expect.

when we whine and protest, certain that we know best and surely God has done us wrong, we do not trust in His perfect will. if we do not believe that even His "no" is in our best interest, we fail to believe that we have a Perfect Father who wants what's best for us--always. when we choose not to obey, we choose to disbelieve, even as the child who throws a tantrum when you offer cereal in place of the ice cream chooses to disrespect and disbelieve that you know what is best for him.

do you fault your child for being sad at being denied ice cream for breakfast? no. you understand--yes, that would taste delicious; and yes, it would be a special treat; and yes, it has been a long time since you've had ice cream; and yes, i wish i could have some, too; and yes, i know you feel sad. but none of that changes the answer, and none of that changes the fact that you expect the child to obey and trust that you want what's best for him and wouldn't do anything to hurt him.

said Jesus, "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (luke 11:11-13). will heaven, then, look like ice cream for breakfast every morning? i don't think so. i like to hope that by the time i get there my will will be more in line with His and i'll be too busy understanding and desiring what's best to be thinking about ice cream at all.

(in the meantime, is it possible to teach a child to seek his parent's will? if only.)

why i love books

2010-03-24T20:43:00.003-04:00

"I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil. I have known so intimately the way that demon works in my imagination. No statement that Sarah ever made was proof against his cunning doubts, though he would usually wait till she had gone to utter them. He would prompt our quarrels long before they occurred: he was not Sarah's enemy so much as the enemy of love, and isn't that what the devil is supposed to be? I can imagine that if there existed a God who loved, the devil would be driven to destroy even the weakest, the most faulty imitation of that love. Wouldn't he be afraid that the habit of love might grow, and wouldn't he try to trap us all into being traitors, into helping him extinguish love? If there is a God who uses us and makes us his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself, even poor Parkis, into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it." --Graham Greene, The End of the Affair