Honest For a Minute.....

Took a walk in the rain, and as it misted in my eyes, this song came to mind so I plugged it in my head and listened close.....

Sometimes?  I scroll through these "freaking awesome stand on my head beside myself blessed" declarations coupled with commercial quality pictures of smiles so big and having so much fun and I wonder if it ever makes anyone feel like they need to keep up....even in the blessing department.  Like life has become a commercial to advertise loudly and larger than life and make sure everyone sees it.  I don't doubt the blessing; we all are.  I just wonder, that's all.  Sometimes it makes me tired.

The truth is, for me, that in the middle of the waking up every morning with eyes to see sunrises and legs that work to take walks and sugar to bake cakes with and phones that ding with a friend checking on me.....those things that are the every day things that don't seem quite as exciting?.......and make me look like my life is a carnival of amazing?.......those are the places where I also sift through the rainy moments, the moments where I crave the struggle to be real and honest and offer it back through teeth that chatter as a sacrifice for Him to use as His canvas.  Those are the places where I love it when my friends and I take off our shoes and sit close and talk about how the good and the bad fall together like rain and He uses it all.

Those are the times when it soothes my spirit and I don't feel worn out with life commercials.

He gives and takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.  That's what I know.

Thanksgiving on the Moon

Last night?  I sat around the table with my kids, those in town.  It's Thanksgiving today and they are going to be with their father so I took last night to celebrate.  My boys, all deep voiced and able to pick me up and carry me, all together for the first time since summer.  They aren't perfect but they're mine and I love them fierce.  My girl, China princess, is the only one of my three girls still living near and I marvel at her ladylikeness, her grace.  I look around the table and tell God silently in my head how much I love them.  How much I love Him for creating this family who've held together sometimes by cords that threatened to break.  And I am on the moon happy just to be in the same room with them, much less be their mama.  I look across the table at the boy who isn't mine, all spilled milk 13 and silly, and smile at him, love him, for his mama in heaven. He puts his hand on mine and looks at me and I am honored for it. I get up and go find our young server and ask her about the history of the building and use the time to ask her about her, to wish her a happy holiday.  To brush up, even for a minute, next to another heart and let them be seen.  That's important to me.

My heart felt pridefully sad when check time came around.  I couldn't afford to pay for them all this time.  I hated the way it felt, the way it looked.  I would give my kids every single thing I had, except that I keep breathing and so I have to eat and keep warm; except my girl has been given a chance this year with school that still makes me shake my head.  I know she's supposed to be there?  I just can't figure out how He's going to pay for the whole year.....and beyond.  And then there's Christmas and then there's my granddaughter's arrival coming soon..... did I just say granddaughter ??..... and I so want to fly there.  But I'm not sure I can.

That list of "and then's"?  I'm ok with those.  It keeps me in a "heavenly tension" of dependence on Who my Provider really is in comparison to what I see with my earthly eyes.  It causes me to let Him set my pace, create my agenda, write my adventure, hold my hand up and lay down whatever I think I need and watch him weave into me His desires for my heart.  My price of lack has given me an eternal bullseye.  You can't buy me away from that.

So when the money gets low, I look for ways to love that nurture the heart.  I speak words so there's no mistake.  I do laundry for one, send a check to another,treat one to lunch out.  I take the phone call and listen to the agony of defeat and the thrill of victory.  I pray in the middle of the night.  I jump ready to be there when I hear their voices.

There's a quote from 700 Sundays,  written by Billy Crystal.  It makes me cry harder than I can see every time I read it.  It peels back the skin on my heart.  It gets it right.

"About a year before my mom passed away, it was a Saturday night in L.A., very late, around 12:45 a.m......the phone rings and I panic because when you're a Jew and the phone rings late at night it usually means somebody is dead.  Or worse; they want money.  But it's mom calling.
"Mom?  You okay?"
"Yes.  I'm fine, dear."
"But Mom, it's 3:30 in the morning there"
"I know.  I just wanted to hear your voice.  That's all.  I woke up your brothers too, but I wanted to hear your voice."
"But...you're okay?"
"Yeah.  I just.....couldn't sleep.  I've been having trouble sleeping."
Her honesty was disarming.  "Oh.  really..."  I said softly.  "Why can't you sleep?"
"Oh, I'm listening for you boys."
I knew exactly what she meant.  The cry in the middle of the night, the nightmares, the fevers, the "pirates" in the room.  Then they get older and it's the sound of their cars pulling up in the driveway, keys jingling in the front door lock, just so that you know that they're home safe.  She was 85 years old now, alone in the house, her sons scattered across the country, but she was listening for us."


I'm not the president of anything, the business woman with pointy shoes and blazers, the one who screams talented or beautiful?  I'm not the one who makes the men want to slay dragons or the women want to be me?   But this much I am......the daughter of a King.  And out of that place, I can love.  To the moon.  And back again.

Calendar Girl

I went to bed early because I love to rise early.  That's why I'm awake and writing now.  It's not because of angst or anything amiss.  It's just who I am and what I do.  The end of the year is now fully in sight and the proverbial light is at the end of the tunnel of 2015.  The thing is, it's just a page on the calendar.  There's no magic in changing year numbers.  We're one square away from the day before.  But somehow we hang our hopes or regrets on this manufactured sense of "new" and by mid winter we find nothing's necessarily changed.  Unless we want it to.

  And so, it becomes, not a matter of a newly packaged year, but a new will.  Change can happen on any given Tuesday in July without having to wait until January next.  Choice is the catalyst to exchange truth for a lie; first choice for second best or not at all then, thank you; honesty for hiding; risk for running; moving for stuck; clarity for muddy waters, purity for compromise; new for old.

It can be baby steps?  But forward is forward; not grinding gears.  Not plowing fallow ground over and over.  It's planting new bulbs.  It's breathing new air.  It's buying the ticket and getting on the bus.  And the good news is?  You don't have to wait until January 1st.  The other good news is, it's never too late.

Step away from the calendar.

In the words of my favorite Man....."Today is the day...."- Jesus

Keeping Company

I've used my Saturday time to visit my mama, to shop for people physically unable to get out,  to restock my own pantry shelves, fold the laundry and speak to friends experiencing life in a big way today, mulling over how to live it with them.  I'm grateful for those talks.  What they go through, I go through with them and they've been there for me as well.  It makes a difference, who we sit with in this life.  I can stand next to many people.  But those I take in and linger with?  They make my bones stronger.  And it seems God has being adding extra whipped cream these days with well placed and appointed women that I can grow with.  Women not afraid to sit across from me and challenge me and invite me into their own circle; to speak and be spoken into.  I thrive on that.

So the girl is curled up in her bed, homeworking.  And I am keeping company with Beth Moore, a favorite bible teacher, and my cup of coffee.  She and Christine Caine?  I like them.  They are strong in their faith and bold in their words when it counts.  They are my heroes.  They are women, both with a messy past, who have been put where they are by the hand of their Creator.  They live lovely, honorable lives.  They love their husbands well.  They carry themselves with dignity, dress with beauty that says "I'm worth listening to."  They are women who show the imprint of the One they follow.

These women have a voice, strong and sure, and something to say with it.  The past few weeks have been a garden tilling for me,, stepping out of a lifelong box and speaking when it pounded in my chest to do so.  He's had me in a greenhouse these past few years, teaching me how to live brave and honest.  I've felt myself begin to bloom new shoots that are unfamiliar to me.  My little plant legs wobble some days and it's easier for me to find my voice in print.  But here lately? I feel His hand on my back pushing me forward, straining for a prize I've yet to fully understand.  It fits like new shoes and I put bandaids on the blisters formed and don't trust the blister pain for truth.

She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue-Proverbs 31:26, Beth reminds me.  I stop and sprinkle that into my heart soil like fertilizer.  This is the boldness I crave.  Uncompromising; "put in" with kindness that's neither patronizing, nor does it flinch.  I pour my second cup of coffee and sit by the window to watch the rain for a few minutes.  To let the words sink in and not rush off too quick.  He's calling me to speak.  I can sense it.  I find a fingernail file to keep in my purse, to remind me to allow Him to file off fear and insecurity that wears itself ragged and covers up my beauty.  I spit that out haltingly, "my beauty".  I know what I mean.  I know what He means.  Father?  I say to the raindrops on my window.  Make my kindness, Your kindness.  My wisdom, Your wisdom.  Make it beautiful on me.

When I Wonder If It Matters What I Do

I know someone.  He's so smart.  Just about everything.  I find that shiny and interesting and I love to hear what he says.  I wonder how he KNOWS that .....he just shrugs, like it's nothing.  It makes me laugh, delighted in that.  Somehow it settles me and I feel peaceful and  safe and it stirs my curiosity to hear more.  "I wish I was that smart.  That kind of smart.  Important kind of smart," I think to myself

I'm smart.  Just in a different way.  I like words and using them to touch people's hearts.  I can understand different than me and different than me doesn't scare me.  I'm drawn to what people don't say or the small things that sometimes go unnoticed, unless you're paying attention, and I pay attention.  I notice the ignored, the struggle, the sparkle that goes beyond surface that makes a person who they are in a quiet room when they share it with you.  I realize that my own struggles have sewn themselves together to make a safe quilt that I put around others.

It's just.....not all that shiny.  And it pushes my invisible button some days.....the one that says...."yeah.  right. as if...."   Today, as I've done every day since school started, I walked the halls of the building in the dark of the morning praying.  I plug my ears with worship music and begin talking.....and listening.  Partly because it sets my heart in it's place.  Partly because it drowns out the doubt that causes me to feel like I can't keep up with an imaginary standard.

This day, I was alone, I thought, when I heard my name called behind me.  "Tamara," said the man, "I know you pray.  I'll be traveling later today.  If you think of it, I'd appreciate you praying for me."  It was a quiet, simple request and then he walked on.  I thanked him for asking me and stood for a minute in my spot.  Smiling.  I know you pray.  

Into the school store charged the kids, a few minutes later.  I had no candy to pass out this morning.  I'd just plain run out the night before.  "I don't want any candy.  I just came to tell you that I love you and give you a hug."  These kids.  They beat in my heart.  They know that I love them.

These things?  I know they're small, I can't take them into a board room and impress anyone.  But if today, I died?  I know you pray was enough.  Thank you, Father, for giving me my legacy.

Sending My Heart to Africa

My kitchen hums right now.  I'm home in the middle of the day, Windham Hill playing the Lucy and Linus theme song on the CD player.  The dryer is doing what it was created for.  It's my dream day, really.  I love days that are party sunny, or partly cloudy, and I don't much care which way you choose to see it.  To me, it's lovely. I'm doing the completely insignificant things in life that  bring life to me.  Folding laundry, doing dishes, putting things where things should be, creating order, creating "home".

Time was when I did it with six children swarming around me like so many bees.  Today I'm thinking about those bee children. Last year, at this very time, two of them set sail on making dreams come true out west.  They held me tight and told me goodbye and I lost it right there in their arms.  And yet I knew they had to go, should go. I set my girls' coffee cup on the window sill, the one she used when we shared our coffee together before she drove off, and told her it would stay there until she came home.

 Last night, my oldest boy, the one I practiced being a mama on for the first time, called me excited and nervous.  He's finally going back to Africa; a place he'd lived for a year and returned with it still beating in his chest.  "You'll go back," I told him then.  "Just watch.  Just wait.  You'll see."  He almost lost sight of that a few times, holding back tears of frustration and wanting to set down his flashlight and stop looking for the way.  But always, I'd tell him, I know it.....know it......in my heart.

So soon, he sets off.  God threw back the sash and pointed the way, just like that.  I listened to his voice in the phone and silently fist pumped.  My boy, wildly imperfect, unabashedly himself, Mr. Rogers creative; he'd rather make it himself with construction paper than buy it; the kid who planned his own birthday parties with a list attached to a clipboard......that boy is headed south.  In a big way.

Those mamas of you, in particular, reading this?  You can feel what I'm feeling right now.  You grab them hard and hug them close and cry proud and don't want to let go because it may be a long, long time before you see that face up close again?  But you push them away so they get a running start.

And watch them fly.

I love you, boy.  I love you.  I love you.  A thousand times.  And more.

Dying Well and Living Now

I've been reading the blog of the husband of Joey, part of the husband and wife country duo Joey and Rory that, until very recently, I was not familiar with.  It's breaking my heart, really.  This man and his wife are saying goodbye, one moment at a time.  She is dying.  They have a young child.  They had plans and things were going well in their career.  They had a concert barn right on their property where they were able to live and work together, they way they wanted it.  They loved their God.  And all was right with the world.  And then this happened.

Her friends are coming a few at a time to tell her goodbye and share memories and tears and spend earthly time with her, so fleeting now.  It's rich time, her husband writes.  Her rough cut wooden coffin with a cross on it, handmade by friends to Joey's specifications, sits in a compartment under their tour bus, waiting.  Their focus is narrowed, highly sharpened. And yet the edges are soft and wrap around them, their friends and family.  They are making a difference in people's living, even while she dies.  They're looking into each other's eyes.  Speaking words.  Taking time to notice the details of each other.  Sometimes they're at peace and sometimes they gasp crying to keep breathing.

I think about how easy it would be to panic.  To frantic grab for distraction or denial.  To waste time wringing hands.  But they seize wisely and hold firm.  I want to be like that in the land of the living; the right now.  So that when the dying comes?  I can know I didn't waste time on what didn't matter.

I think about things that hurt me, scare me, disappoint me.  This living, it's not for the faint hearted.  Not to live well, at least.  I struggle some days to keep my face to the wind.  Times are, honestly, when living is not all it's cracked up to be and you reach to find the meaning of the dailies.  But I dare myself to not give up.  To grab hold of others and whisper brave for them to do the same.  To look for the sweet Providence in the bitterest of roots.

To not waste time.

What I Want to Stay....

I'm awake in the middle of the night.  Again.  I feel small tonight in the big dark.  But not in the small way that makes me want to disappear.  At least, not disappear from sight.  I'm picturing being swallowed up by Someone greater than I am.

Yesterday I worked quiet in my kitchen, the afternoon belonging just to me.  I washed dishes and hummed whatever came to my mind.  Sometimes it was Christmas songs.  Sometimes it was an old hymn from sunday school days.  Sometimes?  I was just quiet.  I felt peaceful and safe.  I've had a hard week.  My heart felt outside without a coat on it.  I felt exposed and vulnerable.  I felt called to be there.  I didn't like it much.

I need to be real.  Achy real.  I'm not quite sure why but I sense Him telling me.  There's a boy?  Not my "real" boy, in that he's not "mine".  I've had experience with that before, yes?  I've adopted two children and they are "mine".  This though.  This is different.  This boy seems almost delivered to me.  His path before I met him has been a word I can't find to fit. But he was given a fight inside.  So that he could survive.  The thing is.  Sometimes his fight hits me in the gut and I stumble back, feeling childish and shocked.  Wordless.  There's something about his struggle, though, that seems to be grabbing into me and pulling out slop that needed to be pulled out.  It's causing me to love in a way that feels bigger than what I'm afraid of.  That forces me to forget me.  It won't let me go.

Last night I had a choice to make.  All week, this boy I've grown into love with, lashed out at me.  I felt angry and selfish and petty.  He was dishing it out and I had no bowl to put it in so I carried it in my stomach and wanted to throw it up but it wouldn't come.  "Don't come see me," he'd said.  "I don't want you there."  Anger settled itself in the back of my throat.  After all I'd........."LOVE HIM."  It didn't feel like yelling.  Just like an urgent directive.  But......"LOVE HIM."  There it was again.  What if...."LOVE HIM."  I'll not go, then.  It's too risky. I can't love like this.  Not like this.  I'll just stay home....."LOVE HIM."

I put on my dress.  I put on my makeup.  I looked in the mirror.  "I will love him.  Regardless."  And so I went.   Afterwards:  This.  "Tamara?"  I turned and looked at him full on.  "Will you come over and watch a movie?"  I didn't.  It was late and it seemed a good thing to let him go home and get quiet.  But I leaned in and kissed him on the top of his head like I do; like he hadn't let me do all week.  His fight was gone.  He let me back in.

I will love him.  I will stay.

Longing for More Than Granola......

Sitting in the quiet.......a hungry feeling in my gut.  No granola and raspberries can touch this.  God has walked through the rooms of my heart these past three years, wiping off thick layers of blindness and heavy.  He meant to make me a woman of His, set apart holy and pure.  He did that for me.  He did that.  He created and restored.  He did it by breaking me.

My appetite changed.  I finally understood "and He will give you the desires of your heart." He did that. Not in a pious, churchy way. Not a mystical, "looking for signs" way.  Not a rule book way.  He loved me to His truth plus nothing else.  He changed what I was hungry for.

I sift through His word to me each day, some days more desperately than others.  Some days I know He's there?  But I don't go looking.  I'm prone to wander.  To grab panic instead.  Or cheaper, easier distraction.  He costs me.  He costs me everything I have to get Him.  And He sends me other travelers who banked it all on Him to set me right.

I sing this in my heart today.  Create in me......God?  Create in me....a heart that can't tolerate anything but stained glass truth.....truth that reflects Your color without deceit, Your love without agenda.

Create in me, a pure heart.

The Value of My Village

I hung up the phone this morning from talking with "Ant", a play on words from years ago that my kids named her.  And a feeling of being soul connected, grounded, nurtured swept over me warm.  Ant has known me since before me was.  She has watched me grow up from deep in the south, via Christmas cards and phone calls from my parents.  There was the occasional visit over the years when I was a teenager.  One time in particular, an offhand comment by Ant that I overheard, laid itself in my heart.  "When we go to Alabama.....well, if the Lord wills that we go...."  That small thing struck me important.  This woman knew where her times lay, knew Who her times lay with.  

"Grammy" to my kids and I, Nancy was a rock planted in my life garden several years ago.  She had the courage to speak hard words to me when I needed to hear truth untarnished.  She nourished me back to health when I was laid flat with divorce and my world rocked violent by making me grilled cheese sandwiches burnt to just the right degree for my taste and packing me care packages of chocolate to take with me to work and giving me a place to sleep at night; sitting on the edge of my bed and praying over my heart that laid sad and heavy in my chest.  

Grandma Judy.  She has come along more recent.  A bright flower that believes in us and showers us with her time and gifts especially picked out because she pays attention.  She is who God used to put us in the middle of God's plan for us at school and she did it unaware at the time.  She moves in quiet and unobserved most times, a solid sure smile, a wink of "that's my girl" that my spirit so misses from my daddy gone to heaven.  

I type these words crying grateful, deep tears.  These women are Him to me.  There is value in leaving the door of your heart open to the wise, allowing them to speak and to pray.  To instruct and encourage.  To shoot holes in your faulty thinking.  They have guarded my heart when I was careless with it.  They've seen danger and called it off quicker than I did.  They have invested in me, in my kids, and sharpened me because of it.  

I am a wealthy woman because of the gold of these women.  

Psalm 95.....Leech Control

I pick up His love letter to me each morning and sometimes, like when a lover says that one thing your heart longs to hear and nothing else after that much matters?  A word, a phrase, a sentence slips into my soul like a velvet dagger and I'm slayed again before Him.

This morning, early in the quiet of my house and my mind, I meandered through His words and stopped short.  Most times, many times, I tell Him what's on my mind before I read....and ask Him to put His hand on the pulse of what's beating and pumping inside of me at the moment. I long to "regard His ways"  So easy, it dismays me, do my fears, my fears that make me want to run full force away from where He's told me to abide, sneer at me.  They trick me into thinking they're my friends. And I start to believe them.  "Surely," they slime into my mind, "....surely God did not say abide?"  It feels and lays heavy and dirty on my spirit.  I want to take a frantic shower and get them off of me, like so many leeches.  There's blood on my skin where I pick them off.  Blood on my hands.  I look closer.  It's His blood.

"In His hand are the deep places of the earth; the heights and strength of the hills......The sea is His, for He made it; and His hands formed the dry land.....Let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker.  For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.  Today......today.....if you will hear His voice?  Harden not your heart."

God?  I'm standing here, Your blood running down over me.  Abiding.

With a Sound Like Thunder

So shall the word of the Lord be......I'm silenced by His word.  I abide........with only His words in my soul.  I believe.

Listening for Wildflowers......

I love to do that.  Listen.  I looked it up in Hebrew.....to listen, with the added words "earnestly, attentively, closely"....even "obediently".  I find myself awake in the middle of the night.  It used to frustrate my insides and I'd fight hard for my right to go back to sleep.  These days, I've grabbed hold of the gift like a warm hug and hold it close.  It's my listening time.  I search for it like I'm in a fog looking for a beacon.  It warms me and restores me, these listening hours.  It resets my compass.

I found this in my Love Letter from my Maker this morning.  "No more will anyone call you Rejected, and your country will no more be called Ruined.  You'll be called Hephzibah (My Delight) and your land Beulah (Married) because God delights in you and your land will be like a wedding celebration.  For as a young man marries his virgin bride, so your builder marries you; and as a bridegroom is happy in his bride, so your God is happy with you." I believe Him and put it on like a wedding dress and look in the mirror at myself and giggle.  My hair's a mess, my leftover mascara under my eyes.  Only He could love me like that.  I decide to be all whimsy today and buy myself a wedding bouquet of wildflowers because wildflowers seem most unabashedly from Him and they will remind me all week that He has chosen me.   I feel beautiful in His sight. ....because I listened to His heart for me?  It changes the way I see out at the world.

I love to hear someone talk to me.  I grab a pillow if one is close and curl up quiet and sink into their stories; their words become movies in my mind.  It makes me feel invited in and I walk through slowly and turn over what they say like leaves to see what else is under them.  When someone gives me words, I open them, each one, like the tiny presents I used to wrap careful and put in my kids stockings at Christmas.  Listening to others feeds me, teaches me, delights me, entertains me, connects me.  I lean into the time like a campfire glow.  To listen close is to trust and be trusted.  It changes the landscape between two people.  It's passing on what God planted in me.....

when I listened.

This song has nothing to do with listening, necessarily.  I just like it and I'd think the open road would be a good place to listen.  :)

"The best way to show someone you love them, is to listen to them."-Michael Card