I've gone and done it....this week, I purchased my own domain/website and have officially launched under the host of Wordpress as http://dippingthetoe.com/
In the words of Carol Burnett, I"m so glad we had this time together, Blogspot.....and now this girl is gonna get on her white horse and away she's gonna go, go, go!
I hope that whoever has followed me on here will follow me still. I treasure knowing you are reading my words.
Up in the early hours. Thinking about Easter. It's soon for that kind of thing, I know, but the warmth the past two days, the searching my heart, the pain and the purpose of it, points me to that hope and I love it so much. Was a time when pain caused me to question God, shook my faith, made my knees shake in despair. How could You? How could You? Something quiet has happened in my life the past three years. Now when the tears fall, when people do hurtful things, when the unexpected happens, when the inevitable comes, I turn to Him safe. I still cry. I still get lost sometimes. But He knows my name and He calls it. And I always find my way back. It's okay now that I don't understand. I don't strive to anymore. I don't need to. I wouldn't anyway, even if He told me. Because I'd always do it differently.
I curl up on this Sunday morning and reach for the Jesus Storybook Bible. I love how the author uses childlike terms to explain big thoughts; "Jesus went up into the bright air", "He came to make sad come untrue." I turn out my light and smile into the dark.
"I don't know where Jesus is," Mary said urgently. "I can't find Him."
But it was alright. Jesus knew where she was. And He had found her.
"Mary!"
Only one person said her name like that."
He has said my name like that these days. He has taught me to see the pain as level ground in this world that hurts us sometimes. Even people that hurt us? Don't really mean to, if they could see past this murky veil we live behind. He's teaching me what grace looks like. Days sometimes make me long to leave this place. But then He shows me a glimpse of it's beauty and I gasp sorry that I almost missed it.
He gives me reasons to keep going. Kaitlyn, Connor, Jamie, Amy, Naomi, Solomon, Caleb, Hannah, Noah, Rachael, Jeremy, Beatrice, Benjamin, E.T., Hannah and Madison, Julia, Erick, Melody, Rachel, Julie, Judy, Jonah, Shane, Emma, Jenna, Laurie, Tonya, Bill, Carley, Graham, Penelope, Katie, Tricia, Phoebe, Alan, Michael, Michele, Carrie, Bob, Neva, Terri, Heather, Shirley. Loretta, Dorothy, Tina......the faces go past my eyes endless as I close them and I picture the people. We are here for each other, while we are here. It's all transitory, so fragile, so temporary, save the final goal. The forever goal.
Carry things loosely, reach out quickly, use the currency of your life wisely. Fix your eyes on the prize, whether through your tears or through the "bright air". It's going to be alright, in the end. He has told us so.
Only with a better ending for the song....."Yesterday, all my troubles seemed they're here to stay, now it looks as if they're far away."
I walked into school yesterday morning quiet and still so as not to wiggle the jello in my stomach. My emotions were tender and precarious, after the day before, like the first day after the flu when you don't dare eat more than dry toast. After baring my soul, and after feeling "called" to do just that, I just wanted to sit just quietly like Ferdinand the Bull, a children's book I used to read to my kids.
As I made my way through the day, first one, then another, of the kids and teachers and parents found their way to me. "I'm praying for you." Some hadn't even read my words from the day before and had no idea of my hearts' wound. It's just because the Creator of my wounded heart wanted it held extra close and so He whispered to people around me who He knew would love me into His shadow.
The morning turned into afternoon and, it being Friday, and the weekend approaching; that time when everyone but you seems to have plans to put on Facebook; I started to feel myself sink a little with the late day sun. I went into the bathroom to be alone a minute. "God. I want to panic again. I don't know what to do with myself. Tell me what to do. Ugh. I miss my boys far away." It's funny how sad can wrap itself around lonely to compound the fracture. I sat a minute and let myself cry in a gaspy sort of way, just for a minute and then I knew. I was going to go get my girl and I something to eat and come back and watch the basketball game at school. I don't even like sports. But my "family" was there.
We walked into the gymnasium, full of hamburgers and garlic parmesean fries and found ourselves surrounded by friends; the kind that make you laugh too loud. As I threw back my head I looked up at the rafters of the ceiling. "Thank you, Father. Good, good Father, for giving me what I didn't know I'd find." We left with plans to meet for breakfast and talk life the next day.
The girl and I came home and piled up 3 blankets deep on the couch to watch a movie until we fell asleep. It was our plan to stay right where we fell. Sometime during the night, I woke up from a snapshot dream. My Hannah and Rachael, my older girls, were in it. "You guys! Come look! It snowed!" Hannah's voice was excited but quiet and sparkly enchanted. When we looked out the window there was a glittery light surface white shining in the moonlight. And then I woke up sleepy and groggy. I felt a lifting, a peace, from the day before. "Father," I heard myself whisper, "hear the prayers of your children, my friends, on my behalf. Renew my strength, my thoughts, my emotions, my heart, my vision. I am Your container."
I still feel tender. But I'm not sure I need to lose that feeling. It makes me aware of how fragile, how precarious, how rough the way here can be. And points me in His direction. Because, the truth is, this world is not my home. I'm just a passin through. How deeply grateful I am, though, that He's put pilgrims beside me to help me carry the load.
I washed up on shore today. Limp and ragged. Just got shot in the heart without my armor on and it took me by surprise. I feel like a carrot scraped raw and my leafy green top hangs by a thread. It's a fresh wound to a recent stab site and I wasn't expecting to feel it.
I'm now on wobbly legs. I can hear the hissing of the arrows pointed right at me. I'm batting back life long lies that feel real true right about now and my arms feel weak; the will to fight it just barely there.
The honest truth is I feel worthless. Unlovable. Unkeepable. Foolish. Replaceable. Wrong. Weak. Discarded. Picked over. I thought I'd found a home for my heart. I'd risked vulnerability. I'd invested. I'd shared honest. The favor wasn't returned. It didn't end well. It didn't really end at all; just sort of gasped till it died. Today I saw the heart icon and it killed the hope I'd denied was still there. Social media can be a battleground of the mind. I've opted out of the territory for awhile.
I shook all the way home, the emotion more than I'd bargained for. It felt like an army tank driving over me flat. And then I remembered, I'd flat out challenged the enemy of my soul just this morning. I'd gone after his ground, praying against it.
he has taken me on and hit below the belt. ( I refuse to capitalize the "he".) So I'm putting on my yoga pants and going to exercise until I'm too tired to keep going. And then I'm going to lay down and cover up with my cozy blanket and rest in my Creator's lap, commit myself to Him....and continue to do good.
What if you knew that what you were about to say was the last thing you'd say to someone; to anyone at all?
What if all the distractions in this life were keeping you from noticing the thing, the person, the small something that was the reason in the first place?
What if the attention you're paying to someone or something is less than the best one or thing? That it's sucking the liquid in your eyeballs from staring too hard and the space in your brain right dry? That it's causing you to strive for what you don't really need or want? That the virtual world is more real than real is? That you keep forgetting to look up and take stock?
What if, on the way to getting somewhere, you passed where you were supposed to be?
What if you didn't notice that someone had just told you they loved you because they did it quiet with a meal or a sentence written on a card? Or yelled it at you to get your attention and you yelled back because you thought they were mad? What if your kid needs you more than whoever just texted you or what if you missed all the status updates for a day....or four....and made the voice overs stop so your heart could think? Who or what needs your attention really?
My girl and I made this sign when the days passed eager to get to our new school this year. I wanted to pose the question to myself and to the kids I'd yet to meet. What kind of person do I want to become......because I am living out the story of redemption, either the how to or the how not to.
What if something happened that forced you to pay attention to your choices? What if that's what Love decided for you since He died for you? So that you wouldn't miss the point.
""Wake yourself, wake yourself...stand up, Oh Jerusalem! (Is. 51) Awake, awake! Put on your strength, Oh Zion! (Is. 52) I can hear it whisper in my soul as I make my way through my day, the slow and steady drumming of enticement for my attention that bites at my mind and heels. I pace the floors in the school gym calling for the dross of distraction to burn off of us all. We don't have time, we don't have time......I want to warn people......we don't have the luxury to waste our time.
Recently, I sat with friends in a coffee shop; the kind that take you deep or take you silly in one conversation. We'd made a pact to get there on a Saturday at 8:00 a.m. because we were just that hungry for connection. Ah, it's a boon to my thirsty soul to find these real women, women who want to get real and struggle or play Exploding Kittens and laugh at r i d i c u l o u s. It's been a long time coming, these friends. I had a select one or two along the journey. Perhaps though, the truth might be that I wasn't real myself and would have run hiding at this kind of transparency. Fact is, I don't have time to "play" anymore. I don't have time for surface. And I will grab hold of you eager and sloppy and look you right in the eye to know you, know you.
While we go deep though? I need you to know that I might break out in song....loudly....in public on a happy spring day precisely because I am happy. I have a tendency to walk up to total strangers and tell them I think they're pretty, take the entire tray off of someone's hands when they offer me a sample in the grocery store and walk off with it (I eventually bring it back), I laugh too long and too loud when I get the giggles and can't seem to get myself to stop (I've been known to have to pull over in the car because I can't get ahold of myself). I can be spontaneous and free spirited when it just seems too grown up and I feel it my duty to lighten the mood. (I'm probably not the one to take in a board room).
Time was, I would need to feel safe with you to be all of that. And the burden would be on you to prove yourself safe. Now? I've gained a freedom that moves me to be the safe place for you. That's because it suddenly occurred to me that the God of the universe actually loves me. And I have nothing to lose except maybe a little sleep or some hurt feelings now and again when the investment seems to show no return. I don't have to take scraps off of others' tables anymore. My recovery time from those things has gained momentum when I bought my ticket to His love train. And as I've passed out free passes to others, I find the joy multiplies and it rains sunshine when others find the courage to open their windows and feel the wind on their face.
I will never be the prettiest or the mover and shaker in the room. I look in the mirror and notice the lines around my eyes go much more crinkly deep when I smile now. But I'm smiling (when I'm not crying or philosophizing). And I'm not lonely from building my castle high anymore. I may have days when the wind blows hollow but now I have people to go to that let me be pathetic for a minute and don't label me weak. My friend in the coffee shop that early Saturday morning was animatedly describing her dog to me. She's always just. SO. excited. to see whoever comes to our house, my friend says. She's sure they've come to see her and she jumps up and puts her paw on their arm and stares right at them barking and licking until they look at her. "Jamie. I am your dog; you just described me! Send me her picture!" And there on my phone screen, I looked into that dogs' eager, longing eyes and saw myself. Minus the beard. Fortunately.
So if you see me coming toward you, brace yourself for a welcome jump up your leg. And bring newspaper to lay down on the floor. I can get overly excited.
I spent all night last night sleeping restlessly, waking up and crying, falling back to sleep, rinse; wash; repeat. It's strange, this rise of emotion. I've known, like you know your name, that my boy would go back to Africa. It's just that I'd gotten comfortable telling him "You're going to go back one day. You watch. You wait. You'll see." And now "one day" was here. And I could scarce look it in the face.
I'm not a stranger to setting my charges free. I've had six children. Half of them have gone far, far away before. Two of them still are. One just recent came back to live here in the city. That one, my beautiful Hannah Rose, came up soft next to me today. "You okay, mama? Why are you crying?" She asked honest, her face close to mine, her arm wrapped around me. "It's hard to explain," I told her. It's hard to tell anyone else but a mama what the landscape in your heart does as you stand and watch your kid unearth your will to steel yourself and disappear out of your sight. The last thing I could see was Caleb turn and look back and wave, once, twice, three times.
Everyone else turned to leave. I couldn't move for a minute. I just couldn't. I felt arms wrap around me. His friends and my kids had gathered around and leaned in. The tears fell. The movie in my mind from little boy to man grown raced through my head. I wanted to yell "I LOVE YOU!" so it would echo all the way to South Africa. Instead, I whispered....Father, go before him, behind him, beside him. Let nothing be in vain.
We don't know, do we, not really, if we'll see one another again when any of us says goodbye. So I open my hand wide this time. I'm learning with each goodbye, whether until tomorrow or for a year, that our times are fully in His hands. This life is a transition and nothing will last forever. If I must say goodbye, I will do it bravely.
So tonight, somewhere high in the sky, my boy sits in a plane, miles spreading themselves between us as I type this. He will go from winter to summer in less than 48 hours. I will wait eagerly for that first vlog post, blessing the day of technology that we find ourselves in. I've raised him strong and failed him miserably, all at the same time. We walked out of the airport today, my Hannah coming up alongside me. "Well mama, this is what happens when you raise us to be adventurous," she smiled.
I know, my girl. I know. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
