This song. This spontaneous worship........this is where I find myself today. God is so heavy, so present on this day I can feel Him in every hallway I walk down at school, the chapel service I sat in, the absolute appointed conversations that have already happened, the "coincidental" decision to go unlock the store that saved a little guys' dilemma of needing new school pants in the middle of the morning.....I am blown away by Him.
I am absolutely sure He wants us to cross every line to get to where He wants us. I can feel Him waiting to bless beyond measure. I just wanted to let you all know. He's here. He's HERE.
I sat in on my friends' art class yesterday and I could taste the energy in the room. They walked in trotting because you just canNOT get through life when you're that age by w a l k i n g. Because it was art, they came in all suited up for messy. And one little guy? Captured my attention, all oversized man's shirt with the sleeves flopping way past where his hands should be and that little guy just could not contain all that was in him. He's the kid who makes teaching a roomful more than a little distracting but by himself, he fascinated me. And he was by himself because he had to be separated in order for the class to pay better attention to the teacher and not so much to him. This is the one who can't sit still, who needs to talk and reacts in capital letters. He does what he "shouldn't" do? But there's a certain sense of mancubness to him that makes me think.....untamed, except by God? He's gonna be straight up awesome.
Next to mancub was a teeny little ladylike who needed me to know that yes, she in fact could write her name in cursive and proceeded to grasp her pencil in all manner of awkward to show me, lips pursed in concentration. The rough and tumble across from her laughed out loud at the discovery that he'd gotten sharpie marks on himself. When's the last time you laughed about that? Why isn't that funny anymore?
They burst with something they just have to tell me right that minute and "Oh! Oh! I know the answer to that! Like, can you imagine?? The teacher asked a question and I know the answer! What manner of wonder is that?? Isn't life grand?! " I wonder what it would be like if all the men in a conference room randomly pulled their t shirts over their heads when they were listening to the speaker. Or blew a bubble on purpose to cover your face when it pops....and you hope it pops.
I often feel like the odd crayon in the box amongst my fellow grown ups because....well, the wonder we've left behind just always feels so much more "right" and I just don't want to sit in my chair. Sometimes? Water fights and skateboards in the kitchen just seem way too fun to put a stop to.
Ramparts are defensive walls to fortify. I know this because I like words and I see one and, even when I know what it means, I look to find the next layer; to squeeze out of it all that I can to make the word picture in my mind come alive. I want to taste the word in my heart. I took my Bible out to the ballfield at school like always this morning and it held me captive, this idea of considering well. Considering something can be done well and when I do, it feeds me. I like the thought.
"Walk about Zion," Psalm 48 tells me...."go round about her." Zion is heaven, Zion is us. Zion is all things God. And He wants me to consider it. But this is why. "So that you may tell the next generation." I look again at my tamarisk tree inked on my wrist, the constant reminder of who He is and the very purpose I had for wanting it there. It reminds me to consider. If I think I don't have a reason for being? This is it. To remember and to tell those behind me. He's here. He's everywhere. He's constant. And He is so "even until death". I felt the presence of death this weekend; that it's real. It will happen. It does happen. And while we cry, we know He IS. Still.
But this. This is what really grabbed me. This line...."Consider well her ramparts....that you may tell the next generation....and cease recalling disappointments." There is the hard thing. The bittersweet thing. The best thing. The thing that sets us free to move forward and seize that He is.
I want to consider well. Because I want to be free to remember and to live in the land of the living today, waving the rampart flag.
Every few weeks, I crave solitude. The ritual of getting ready to go somewhere and then going somewhere starts to feel like a train I can't get off of. Even for good things. So. I take my ticket and exit the train for awhile. Last night I gathered all things honey and grain and yeast and turned on my music and made bread to bless with. The warm smell of wheatberries going through my grain mill brought back memories of six hungry faces waiting to eat the finished product on a summer afternoon after homeschooling was done for the day. This night, though, my girl came alongside of me and washed the dishes as I created dirty ones and asked me questions about what and how to as she watched over my shoulder. It felt good and right to have my hands in bread dough again. I kneaded and shaped and hummed happy. When the timer went off, the girl and I grabbed a loaf and cut it open right down the middle and I held a spoon up and watched the honey drizzle on top of a piece. "That'd make a pretty picture," she said, and we both sat quietly and "mmm'd" at each other as we ate.
This morning, my girl still sleeps and I let her. I grab my Bible and crawl into my big under -the -stairs closet and sit on blankets spread on the floor and leaned against the wall. "Shalom", I sang to Him and looked at my hearts' prayers taped up haphazardly and whispered them again. I cry, for no real reason; some happy, some longing, some feeling what others' feel.....and it makes me know I'm alive and in the fight.
When the girl wakes up, maybe we'll take a walk and finish off our loaf of bread set aside for us. And maybe this time we'll take a picture of the honey drizzling as the sun hits it from the window. Getting off the train days make you take notice of those things.
I go to lunch each day and sit with the kids because they make the light shine bright and I get to hear how much they like math and science (what?!) and that they are just really excited that their friend gets to spend the night tomorrow night and they have popcorn in their lunchbox and did I see their new shoes. I make them laugh by being sillier than they are and they are taken by surprise that I can be sillier than they are it just never gets old to me. Never.
Today I chose to sit with some fourth graders, only one of whom I'd gotten to know well. That one turned to the girl next to her. "She's one of my best friends," she said and pointed to me.
One of my friends works here too. Her first year teaching. I got a message from her today. It was a picture one of her students drew her. "You are the best art teacher ever!" She, like me, can't get over her good fortune at being here.
Then, I got to sit and listen to what sounded to me like voices of heaven practice Pinocchio today. And I just.....and I just.....and I just can't keep finding words big enough.
When you fall in love with kids? Your heart gets bigger. :)
Today was picture day at school and well......since I don't fancy myself picture worthy, it's just so much awkward posing. Head tilted just so, hands at sides. Surely we don't really have to go through with this? But, as I stepped up to the plate, the first of the day, the lovely young girl taking my picture smiled at me. "You look so excited!", she says. "Are you?" I giggled a "yes" but added, "I've no reason really. I'm just so happy to be here."
"What do you do here?", she asked. "Love kids. But I get paid to run the student spirit store." Hours later, after all the images had been captured in her camera, she came through the doors of the store and we spent some time getting to know one another and sharing our stories. She used to go to this school several years back, she told me, but not before some struggles led her there. She's better now, she tells me, but she's still carving out her path to figure out God. I realized how much my soul felt fed full by connections like this one.
She wanted a t shirt from the school for old times but didn't have enough money so I pitched in to finish off the amount needed. "Take it and remember our talk," I told her. "Come back and see me."
I locked the doors of the store and headed off to lunch and sat with a group of sparkly little girls and stifled a laugh at the boy who "accidentally" squirted mustard down his shirt.
It began when I asked Him for the crazy wild favor that feels presumptuous. But after all, He told me that when my hands and heart are clean, I will carry away a blessing. So, I let Him wash me and then I grabbed my bucket and went down to the water to wait.
Friday, I went in to the main office at school, like I usually do in the afternoon, and let everyone know I was free to a good home. That means, I'm willing to help whoever needs any. :) By the end of the day, I had a second job added on to the one I already have in the school store and my hours increased with a shake of the administrator's wand. The day before, I'd "reminded" God that I'd been asking for that all along and would He please not forget but I will wait and trust firm that He knows what He's up to. That wait thing? Yeah. About that. He's got me in that class on the grad level these days. I mean to pass with an A plus, which means I surrender all. So not my favorite.
I left school with my girl and a boy in tow. We stopped at Wendy's and dipped our french fries in frosties and laughed a little too loudly and I pretended to be shocked when the boy pushed the envelope and we laughed some more. And I caught wind of that crazy favor again; that part of life where you shake hands with the spontaneous and learn to live just right there in that moment because that moment is a gift too easy unnoticed if you're not paying attention.
It turns out, crazy wild favor is living sold out and watching for Him on the horizon with your bag packed lightly. Just as I am......ready to jump in with both boots....because I like my boots. :)
It's in quotes, that word "almost", because to put it literally seems to me to forget that with God there are no "almosts". But this is what happened that day......
This pregnancy was precarious from the beginning. I began spotting almost immediately and I felt a certain sense of fear that I couldn't shake. I told others but no one seemed to hear; not really. At the beginning of my second month, I was confined to my bed, in an effort to help fight for the life of this child. On a Sunday evening, at 16 weeks along, my four children, the oldest 8, lined up beside the couch I was laying on to get their kiss goodnight. As I watched them walk upstairs like the kids in Sound of Music, I had a strange sense of foreboding and I wondered if I would see them again. It ran cold through my bones, that thought, and I couldn't take my eyes off my children as they disappeared from my view.
Within the hour, I began hemorrhaging; clots the size of my fist. The kids safely asleep and unaware, a nearby neighbor was called to come and sit in our living room while we rushed out into the night towards the hospital. It occurred to me that I might not come home again. I felt a deep sadness mix itself into my fear. Everything around me became strangely distant and I felt completely alone in what was happening. I was walking through a door that no one could go through with me. I don't remember arriving in the emergency room.
It's like scenes in a movie, fading in and out, one on top of the other; sounds and pictures. I woke up, having passed out from the bleeding, in a bed, the doctor by my side explaining to me that the baby was implanted dangerously low and it was a matter of time whether one of both of us died, if something wasn't done, and so an exam was performed in an effort to hasten the impending miscarriage. In the middle of that long night, a little girl was born, 16 weeks strong. She inhabited her place in this world for 20 minutes. Her name was Naomi. They told me later that she was perfectly formed, perfectly healthy. She'd have been a fighter. She made me proud.
And then began the business of saving my life. I opened my eyes in the operating room, a sense of frenetic energy all around me. I felt no pain. Faces leaned into me, silhouetted by the bright light shining in my eyes. I was in total peace and yet still, my kids were what I was thinking about. "Am I dying?", I heard myself ask out loud to no one in particular. No answer came for a long minute and then.... "No." and I didn't believe it. I saw that person run out of the room. Whoever that was had said what they had been trained to say, but in that moment, I realized a heart was breaking for me. "Father?", I remember whispering, "Into Your hands I commit my spirit....into Your hands....into Your hands." And then I was gone.
I received enough transfusions that night to fill 4 adults, the blood spilling out of me so fast they tipped the operating table I was lying on upwards in an effort to use sheer gravity to keep it in. In the end, they performed a hysterectomy and still, the bleeding did not stop. I was put on a respirator, a heart catheter was inserted and my bed was rolled into ICU. My kidneys were beginning to fail. The team of doctors did all their hands and minds knew to do and then they joined those same hands and stood around my bed and prayed on my behalf. And everyone waited. On Tuesday I woke up.
My father was the first face I saw. He had attached my favorite Bible verse to a small eagle statue and had it sitting on a tray beside me. "They shall mount up with wings like eagles," he read out loud to me. Two days later, my bladder burst and the nurses rushed into my room and wheeled me out toward the operating room. One of my friends was standing in the hallway. I will never forget the look on his face. His voice followed after me...."Hang in there, Tamara. We're praying for you." How much I wanted this not to be happening. To go back and stand beside him, to not be in any danger. That night I was back in ICU on a respirator.
In the end, it was ten days before I saw my kids again. I was pale, thin, bruised from all the needles and tubes running in and out of me, some of which followed me home. As I began to recover, nurses and doctors from all over the hospital came to see the "miracle girl." My friend made angels out of lace and passed them out to the staff. Two years later, I would come to visit my friend in that same hospital to see her new baby. I saw one of the lace angels still hanging up on the wall.
The night before I was to be discharged, the nurse came in to settle me in for the evening. A thunderstorm was brewing outside and I asked her to open the curtains. As I lay there alone, I watched the flashes of lightning and realized I knew what it felt like now to be in the palm of God's hand. Because no matter what the outcome would have been? I can tell you, it felt safe in His hand and I knew that I knew that all was well.
The end of things busy at the close of the day makes me feel wrapped up. I love to get on my furry rainbow house slippers and my yoga pants and brew myself a brave cup of caffeine at that hour and take my chances of sleepless later. Most nights I make my way up to my second story porch, where I feel the most "secluded", up in the tree branches, and listen. I pretend I'm somewhere in the wilderness, just me and the crickets, and tune out passing cars and neighbors' windows. I imagine myself with my hands in the dirt, breaking it up, getting ready for planting. Or sitting by a fire outside. Places and things that call for no talking, for just being with whoever you're with....or no one at all.
The truth is, life? It's joys and surprises and good talks and hugs from kids? I put my very all in it every single day. And my heart needs to lie quiet at the end of it. To call up my favorite "scenes", to tell Him truthfully how some things hit me harder than I act, to color over everything with His brush. To settle myself in His lap and remind myself why any of it matters and all of it does.
So I sit quieter than you might expect, if you see me during the day all bubbles and smiles. Because I need to come down off the ceiling and settle myself with His compass. And sip my coffee just quietly. And be....and wonder if anybody else feels this way.
I could not get to my computer fast enough. I just left a room full of people praying and I tuned my ear in to the sound in the room; all at the same time, talking to the Creator of all things good. And I need to let my heart spill out in words what I heard.
Father, there's people with everyday pain that will heal in time with surgery or medicine. And then there's those who are bracing themselves for an ending that doesn't feel or look like love at all. The truth is, God? Sometimes? Your grace isn't my definition of it. And while I stomp my foot or look at you incredulously and ask to take the wheel and "fix" things different....there's a part of my gut that is glad that I can't manipulate You. That somehow knows.... and Father please, on days when I don't know at all and accuse You of forgetting what You're supposed to have done, still teach me....that Your grace is for my good. Always. Even through gritted teeth at moments, I look at my newly inked tattoo of a "legacy" tree that serves to remind me to choose to define through Your eyes; Your truth.
Someone shared that the root word for grace called to mind that of a ship wrapped up in protective tar during a storm. I can feel my heels dig in as I consider that grace can deliver me, it can even rescue me completely and remove me from something, but it can also wrap me up tight while I walk through....preserved. This grace is the uncomfortable kind that grinds off rough places and loosens grips. It can bring you to your shaky knees. It's the kind that scares me.
Thank You for the gift of hard things, that causes our walls to fall down between each other and You, and we reach out desperate for life support. The inconvenience of others' needs, of our own limits, forces us out of our heads and we bump up next to each other in these close quarters that You've hemmed us into.
For the grace You put in our lives that we don't ask You for; the grace that teaches the hardest of truths. For the sleep we loose and the ache we feel and the tears that feel like they'll never stop; and the surprise of joy that can come out of nowhere......
I'm gonna lay it at Your feet, God. And admit I don't understand it most days. And fix my eyes still on my Faithful Creator.
And this is what I pondered during Moms in Prayer today. :)
Mostly in sepia......just because I thought it was lovely....and because the outside already looked that color anyway.
I listened to Sam and Ruby sing the Suitcase Song because it was whimsy and peaceful and made me sort of bounce along like Winnie the Pooh when I walked.
No big thoughts or words. I'm feeling quiet and at the end of talking so I'm sharing what made me happy tonight.
The girl and I, we've had a good holiday weekend. Not that we did anything "holidayish"? But we caught a movie and made a prayer room under our stairs and I later found a post it note of encouragement my girl had left for me to find. We went shopping at the mall, something we rarely do, and went to girlish stores and tried things on and bought her dress for her very first high school dance coming up. We stopped at the food court today and ate Chinese and took silly selfies and then went to help out a little old lady at her house.
We came home hot and tired and drove the a/c down to blizzard conditions and took naps, me on my couch, her on her bed. And now we're making ready for school tomorrow. Each of us with our clothes arranged just so, our coffee pot set to make black gold so I can walk into my kitchen at 5 a.m. and not have to think past pushing the on button.
The girl and I feel happy tonight because tomorrow we get to go back where most everybody else would be happy to have another day free from. But maybe most everybody else hasn't had the miracle of school in quite the way we have been gifted and we can't quite seem to get over it. I'm looking so forward to my little guy who comes in every single morning and every single afternoon and gives me a hug and makes the sun shine right there in the room with his smile. I can't wait to watch the tiniest ones labor over which color Jolly Rancher is the best after breakfast choice on their way to class. I've grown to look forward to my prayer times out in the dugout for the kids I know and those I don't yet, whispering for the Father to be as real as the air they breathe. And as the bell rings for first block, sending them off with a "have a good morning, you guys!"....I watch my girl, all knee socks and backpack, join the crowd and disappear happy down the hall. I love you, I say, quiet inside my heart. To the moon and back.
And it occurs to me, I'm whispering it to all of them.
The pastor I listened to today told us about Sheep 101 and my little word picture mind lit up zonkers. I ate my lunch and went straightaway to my computer to find this whimsical website. I've grown up in church. I know the whole "dumb sheep" thing we humans are compared to. It always struck me, though, in my little sunday school girl heart, that if God was our shepherd there had to be more to being a sheep. He didn't think I was dumb. I know this because He whispered into my young fearful mind that felt afraid of being abandoned if I didn't wise up, that He loved me.
There are such things as "sheep researchers" who study what it means to be born a sheep. It turns out their instinct to band together, protects them from predators. They show evidence of seeking out certain kinds of plants to "cure" themselves when they're sick. They seem to show facial recognition and are nearly as good as humans in picking a face out of a crowd. They also found that female sheep had a definite opinion about what made an attractive ram. I mean, I know a handsome ram when I see one, so don't call me a dumb sheep.
What grabbed my hearts' mind was the identification. In a perfect sheep world, the tag they put on a sheeps' ear would be "permanent, resistant to loss or tearing, and easy to read from a distance." And then I found it. There's this breed, separate from any other and they live in the Land of Ice. They go by the name of Leader Sheep and they have this fabulous instinct to lead, that goes against the sheep code to follow. They've been known to herd their whole flock back to the safety of the barn when they sensed a blizzard coming.
Me...probably in the 70's :)
There goes my zonker mind again! I wanna be that sheep; a lit up, tie-dyed, bells going off, big neon arrowed sheep that has the courage to buck the timeworn system and lead rather than follow; to show the way back to the Barn. I want to have my ear tag glow warm and brave and be the color of Love so it can be seen from a distance and calls comfort. I'll raise my sheep head high and call out strong to the flock. I want them to say....we know who her Shepherd is. She bleats Truth.
My girl saw me reach for the computer and start to walk out of the room. "I like it when you're here with me," she said. So, I sit where she can see me from the next room and it's not lost on me that that is a grace for the day. To be near one another; to see one another. It isn't a given. I silently thank God as I tap out these words.
I got to sit around a table today with my boy and some of his friends. We laughed at silly things and ate delicious food and still I felt oddly like crying at times. It's a rich thing to be a mama and be included in their world after they've finished with the business of growing up. It's like sharing a meal with your reflection. I see my hand print where I've left my mark on him and I silently pray that where I've failed him, a new kind of beauty will grow from the ashes.
I paid to have a small tamarisk tree tattooed onto my wrist today. It is a "very graceful tree, with long feathery branches and tufts closely clad with the minutest of leaves, and surmounted in spring with spikes of beautiful pink blossoms, which seem to envelop the whole tree in one gauzy sheet of color," says my Bible dictionary. " Some varieties flourish not infrequently in salty soil unsuited to any ordinary vegetation." I like the idea of being graceful, a sheet of color and not just any old ordinary vegetation. It says it's a symbol of legacy and commitment and I want it to ink it's way into my actions and words, a mark that makes me His for all the world to see.
We, the girl and I, watched The War Room in a dark theatre today and I came home wearing the movie in my soul and decided my Harry Potter under-the-stairs closet would do just fine as my own war room. I have the walls papered with little yellow post it notes with things I've put into the battle and I sat on the floor in the closet suited up in my armor. Some of your names have their place there on my wall that only God and I see. Some of them have whispered hearts' desires that I've dared to put in writing, taking the risk to ask the wild impossible.
I'm feeling sleepy and glance back into the room behind me. There sits my girl, writing in her journal all that she's taken in today, content in knowing I'm here. I eat one last chip dipped in red pepper hummus and decide to call this a day. I put a song in my ears that He put in my head all day today. It comforts the places that still have question marks in them. He lives. I know it. I trust Him. And go to sleep.
There's this thing I do. Think too much. And sometimes? I wake myself up thinking. How is this possible? It used to be a thing I arm wrestled. But now, it feels like a gift. Because I get to sit quiet and unwrap the time, just me and Him. And sometimes He whispers things to me about you. And I pray them for you.
Today/tonight....He reminded me of this song. This is a song about me and what He did for me. I was a cowering tenement girl who carried shame just for being. And then later, shame for doing. And I almost died from the fear of all of it.
Today I walk through life still smiling out of little girl eyes. It makes me act younger than I am and feel Christmas excitement some days for no real reason. Other times, it makes me sit down hard out of breath at how big I feel something and how much it hurts and I can't fix it. I think that's why I love kids so much. They be what they are and what they feel and say what they mean. I feel safe with them, knowing I'll get truth, knowing they'll understand my language. I climb into their world and feel at home noticing them and helping them to notice others.
But, as this song says, when I was grown, grown up on the inside, He carried me out of that tenement room and did a new thing in me. Because He loved me completely. So my broken child girl inside can feel and cry and not sleep and smile and come alongside others knowing it will hurt and wear me out and I may end up with a snotty nose from crying.
So, I'm up in the middle of the night, keeping company with my coffee cup because it feels reckless to drink caffeine at 3:41 a.m. and I can because I don't have to get up and because I'm just fine with not being asleep.
Besides that? I want chocolate covered cashews in a bad way right now.
My friend just sent this picture of my girl at her first high school retreat. She woke up this morning with snot dripping mightily down her throat and barely able to talk. When I was her at 15? I'd have looked for a way out of this retreat because it would have screamed intimidating to me. But I marveled at her this morning, all scratchy voice and stopped up nose. "Mama. I'll be fine. I want to go. I'm excited!" Man, she grabs my admiration sometimes. I love how I learn from her.
So, I sit here at school, the sounds of learning roll out of doors down the hall from the younger students left behind. And I look at this picture with tears on the edge of spilling. My girl is happy. And blessed. And I am flat out grateful on the ceiling.
I have a special little guy who brings me doughnuts each morning. I get hugs and pass them out to ones who are still not entirely sure the candy on my desk is free and they're "allowed" to take some. I sit in on a class now and again.
Sometimes blessing takes us by surprise. And I love how it takes my breath away.
Truly. .the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him; who wait for His faithful care--Psalm 33
That wait thing....that's what grabbed me this morning as I sat out alone on the farthermost point of the school ball field, praying. I read it again. And then again. In my head and then out loud. I got up and snapped this picture and sat back down. "Wait." For what, God?? Could we at least talk about that part? "Wait."
It's a curious stillness I carry inside today. Like I'm in the woods listening for something.
And waiting.... and I realize, I've learned to obey because I've learned to love Love. So if I seem quiet today? I'm "waiting" because my Creator told me to.
