Day 1

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.

French Fries Spell L O V E

Yesterday, at school, I felt that plexiglass feeling again....that thing that threatens to take me down at times for no reason.  I remembered something that quickened in my spirit as truth that I'd just heard.  All of life is a battle.  All of it.  Each small moment.  Some in the same room as me, some who heard those words, found it hard to say "yes and amen" to that?  But my bones jumped at the truth.  I get that, I wanted to say.....but I felt quiet and wanted to stir the soup in my soul and take it all in.  I didn't want to expose my plexiglass, which was already precarious at best, to be examined.  I knew it was true.  I couldn't explain it.

So yesterday, all school spirit week frenzy swirling around me, I felt the sounds and the sights go quiet, like when you're about to faint.  I followed my friend around from task to task, she and I who buoy one another up, and don't wear one another out with talk deep and tears that come and go easy. And even in the companionship, there was a haunting aloneness.  Is this meant to be this way, God?  This vague empty that plagues me?  It seems to keep me seeking, searching to fill a void I don't have a name for.  It drives us to shopping or race car fast calendars of activity or just race cars literal.  But it drives us all in some way.

For me, it's what makes me crave community, the mortar in log cabins that keeps the layers together. That wants to create homes for hearts.  So I got in my car and pounded out my prayer on the steering wheel.  I. won't. give. up. God.  I am grabbing hold of Your hem until You answer me.  Until it kills me, which, as an aside, would be fine with me because loving people till I die sounds like heaven  and it nearly kills me as it is.  I'm waiting, God.  I'm waiting for an answer.  It's only then I realize I don't know what I'm asking.  I'm asking for permission to give up.  To stop loving. Make me not care, I yelled at Him.  Because it hurts.  Because the enemy of my soul uses it against me like so many arrows to the heart.  Loving spends me.  Not loving bankrupts me.  You have no choice, He says.  I breathed it into you.

These last few months, He's taught me to love, as in love anyway.  When it's retracted.  Rejected.  Ignored.  Love.  How, God?  They don't know me.  They don't want me.  They don't care.  They don't speak to me.  How do I love when someone walks by me.  What is love??

Stop striving, He whispered.  I will show you when you need to know.  I have learned to hear my Father's voice.  I  have learned what it means to pray...and not stop.  I turn off the light at night praying myself to sleep.  Some nights I wake up and find myself whispering before I've had a chance to open my eyes.  I have learned to love the "sound" of His Spirit in my heart.  I have learned.  So I pray.  And don't stop.  And then He moved.  And strangers came in and left friends.  "Thank you," they said.  "You have encouraged me so much."   And a mama came in and told me that her daughter had come home and talked about me.  "She shines, mom."  And I cried.  Because He knew I needed to know that He lives in me still and He uses me still.

Today the boy appeared in the school store.  Like an answered prayer.  Alone.  Just he and I.  So strange, Father, I hear myself say in my heart.  To walk alongside someone and know them so well.  And then become strangers.  But here he sat, untwisting his Sprite cap and looking me right in the eye.  Not leaving.  I listen to him as he unwraps his wrist to show me his skating wound.  It pricks my heart.  I used to know when that happened.  I used to be there.  Father?  Is this You?  The boy gets up to leave, to go back to class.

"Hey.  You know what?"  I shake a little in my heart.  This is risky, God.
He turns around.  "What?"
"I really love you."
He nods his head and walks away.
He came back later.
"Um.  I have money.  Are you going to go get something to eat after school since we're all staying?"
He used to do this all the time, come to me at the end of the day.
Father?  Help me breathe.
"I'd be happy to get you something.  What would you like/"
"French fries.  And...could you get some for my friends, too?"
"That's nice of you to think of them.  Yes.  I will."


I will show you.  I will show you.  French fries spell l-o-v-e.   Who would've thought.

This

Trusting that those of you I've wounded will see this.  Trusting the raw that my friend and I talked about this morning blesses us, strengthens us to carry on. Keeps us from sinking.

Raining Introspection

I drove down the road this week playing this over and over in my car. I was so proud of my boy, soon to be gone for a year weaving dreams into coverings for hearts he's not met yet..  I glanced down at the lock screen on my phone and my granddaughter looks back at me, all baby pensive, and I marvel that I find myself a Nana.  I wear it unreal right now; because she's far away, her creation and her birth, from where I live and my head struggles to take it in.  My China girl here with me; my how she causes me to catch my breath.  She's smarter than me sometimes and I'm okay with that.  She and I, we live next to each other comfortably most days, but we're so different; one of us all logic and algebra, one of us all whimsy and thoughts on a loop in the brain.  I'll let you consider who is which.

 My Montana boy, he calls me some days and lets his deep voice roll out of the phone nice and easy and my eyes fill with tears every. single. time.  So proud I am of him.  He makes his way on his own, quiet, steady and doesn't concern himself with gathering "things".  He's seeking.  I can feel it deep in my bones.  It's like that when you give life to someone in the beginning.  Your veins still pulse with that gut knowing.  He's rethinking God but he knows that I pray for him and he's okay with that.  "Keep looking, keep looking, keep looking" my heart beats to him silently.  He'll find his way.  I've been assured by his Creator.

My girl just a mama, so wise, she stills my heart.  Her middle name is Diamond, chosen when I saw it carved into her great grandmother's tombstone, and she has worn it well.  She turns this way and that and His light bounces off of her.  Her presence makes a room bigger.  Her laugh, the pictures she takes, the fierce determination that washes over her eyes when the big thing happens that she's been afraid of.  She has plans for her girl already.  She and her man, they live intentional.  They will be strong and good parents.

My boy given me from Korea, takes me out to lunch some Sundays and I listen to him try and find his way.  He longs to put something into this world that matters and has overcome giants in his life that threatened to take him down.  I admire him.  But I don't think he really knows that because he's hard on himself and it isolates him sometimes.  Here just recent, a man has taken hold of him and told him firm "I want to teach you what I know."  I see my boys' face illuminate.  Someone believes he can do it.  And it has made all the difference.

My girl just home from a year of learning how to walk in blind faith, so much stronger than when she left.  No job, no home, no clear plan but that she knew it was a thing that called her out onto the dock.  And she went and He showed her and she learned to see His hand.  She and I, we laugh the same and I look at her and see my faint reflection in the shape of her face and the thoughts in her head and it startles me.  She walks now next to a young man hand picked for her and it warms me to see her heart safe and sure.

My path at school is so clearly carved for me.  My boy sat with me as the kids came by.  "Mama.  This is perfect for you."  They come in droves some days and sit at my desk during breaks.  "Let me tell you what God did this morning."  They leaned in eager.  "Ooooh.  I love these stories!"  And I had to stop and clear my throat before I continued.  My greatest joy; to build their faith.  Thank you, Father.  A thousand times, thank you.

So, I hit the loop button and listen to the rain fall in the song and cry..  Because as it is, I've learned to hug the me that is hopelessly introspective, that longs to weave things together into a beautiful pattern that means something.  These past months have been plaid, with hellos and goodbyes laying tracks over one another.  I've built up and celebrated and torn down with my own hands and learned to forgive myself.  I've passed out words like gifts and stuck some in careless like daggers and grieved. I've seen impossible happen and learned to believe in it and He Who creates it.  I've learned to embrace the me that seeks to go deeper, and not apologize for it.

I've learned how to laugh and cry at the same time because blessed is He Who gives and takes and the maker of this girl raining introspection.  Come and stand beside me.  I will love you till it hurts.  But bring an umbrella.  :)

The Second Childbirth

This is my boy.  My firstborn.  This is what he's like......the dreamer of big dreams, always looking forward on the horizon for the next big adventure.  I suspect that wanderlust transferred to him through the blood that coarsed through the umbilical cord.  I so get this about him. He used to say, "I'll be the uncle that comes back from Africa with elephant tusks and tells big stories."  As it turns out, that is exactly what will happen.

He's been to Africa once.  For a year.  And came back telling big stories.  He found himself helping to birth a child in a remote village in Uganda.  He stood before people who could not speak his language and told them about God while a man stood beside him translating his words.  He spent hours learning the craft of video production and all things beyond what his mama could understand.  He came back changed and hungry for more.  But God brought him home to grow him some more.  To make him ready to go back.  Because I knew he would.

In barely a weeks' time I will stand at the airport window and watch his plane point to Cape Town.  And it will feel like giving birth all over again.  Only this time, without the epidural or the sterile environment and helpful nurses to clean up the mess of life and giving it.  I will stand in the middle of friends.  I will stand in the middle of strangers, others saying hello and goodbye, and it will hurt and make my bones creak as they resist grabbing on and not letting go.  And I will cry tears that make me tired and take stock of the tear down the front of my gut.  I will wave at him brave and say hello and good bye all in one breath; to the boy I carried and  to the man who walks away strong in front of me.

This business of loving people, of giving birth to them, of saying hello and goodbye?  It is a beautiful wound.  It is the business of living.  I take it in with a deep shaky breath.  And I will stare hard at the glint of the sun on my boys' plane.

Snow Fireworks

I snapped this picture this morning; rather I sat my phone down and the camera saw beauty and clicked it quick.  I looked at the screen and smiled inside.  Is this what snowflakes look like to God, I thought?  It's a snow day today and my girl sleeps quiet on the couch where we've set up winter camp.  Our house is big and old and drafty and so we closed the door between Antarctica in the living room and log cabin cozy in the "wooden room" as we call it, walls all cedar and homey, and the warm of space heaters creeps through our favorite rooms and we stay settled there; until spring rings our doorbell.

I woke up eager like five years old and wrapped me up in hoodies and scarves and took a silly selfie because joy bubbled up and I wanted to be outside in the lacy world and just breathe in and out.  These are times when I think about the boy and miss him, miss him slamming me to the ground and rubbing dog poop on my clothes.  I want to call him and ask him to come out and play in the snow.  To love hurt turn back into love made deeper by shared pain mended by Him.

It's funny how outside makes me so happy. It feels like God's front porch. I read a bright shiny reminder on my newsfeed from one of my favorite women of Truth, Christine Caine, and it sparkles in my head like fireworks....."You are capable of amazing things!" it crackled through the air like a telegraph sound.  You.  I'm talking to you,  says my God to me.  Tell the others. Grab their hands and take them with you.  Tell them about Me.

There is a joy in the journey.  There is.  Not from money.  Or all things going right.  Not from photoshop or importance.  Not from sexy or control top pantyhose.  Not clever or talent or humility in your cleverness or talent.  Not good manners or chic tastes.  Not healthy salads or chia seeds.  Or sparkling wine or refraining from drinking sparkling wine....all the choices we make.

There is a joy in this journey because the maker of beautiful snowflakes has His eye on you.  And He wants to do amazing things.

Sabbath Carabiners

I woke up just now and brewed my coffee strong and grabbed my new book, broken in by smelling it, and the first few lines have me in a state of YES. AMEN. and WOW.  First of all because the author writes from a plane just ready to take off in a state where there are mountains.  I just did that , not three weeks ago.  I love mountains; literal and figurative.  Big ones, foothills..  Mountains challenge me, keep me interested, slay me with their majesty, take my breath away when I climb them, live them.  Mountains symbolic cause me to see Him.  If I could, I would live in and surrounded by mountains, with the occasional trip to the prairie to sit in the cornfields, just to catch my breath.   One of my favorite moments in life was stopping spontaneously to hike a mountain trail in Aspen, Colorado.  It was 80 degrees in town that day when we set out.  There was 3 inches of snow on the car when we got back.  

That's how I like life served.  I'm a sucker for adventure, for the one two punch that unexpected twists and turns bring.  I sign up for it willingly.  If the caveat on the form says, "do at your own risk", I write the check.  "Easy trail, no hills."  No hills?  No thanks.  The thing is, with hills come valleys.  Sometimes you walk through the shadow of death; death of dreams, death of agendas, death literal.  Valleys are the friends of hills.  It comes with the fragile tundra of life.  It makes us who we are becoming.  I hate the way they scrub me raw some days but the cost of bypassing them is too great a loss.  I don't want the luxury of being able to choose that.

The lovely thing is, the Father of my heart does this thing I marvel at.  He sends me human carabiners.  I read this in my book this morning, "Their company is a Sabbath to me.  Their lively conversation, pure inspiration......We can work through subjects at warp speed and adapt to each one with a brand new mood.  The harder the season we're going through, the funnier we tend to get to each other.  It's not that we like to be miserable.  It's that we share a deep-abiding commitment to milking the absurdity out of every holy cow of a calamity that treats itself to the grass in our pastures.  We cry hard.  We laugh hard."   (Beth Moore, Audacious)  I jumped in my spirit when I read those words, like a lighter had ignited something in me.  That is the gift my Abba gives me.  He constantly tethers my soul to people who want to invest, who hold me firm to His truth when I want to run screaming on fire.

I know I'm a bundle to deal with.  I want to curl up cozy in your world and talk and listen and not say a thing; all of it. I have been pushed away because of that and it makes me bleed from my heart.   But thanks be to the maker of quirky people like me, He knew I'd need Sabbath people in my life that keep me to my trail, that want to hike it with me.  And I am forever surprised when He sends me a new one.  Yesterday I heard my phone ding all cute and I opened a message from someone I have yet to meet, save through encounters with her kids at school and Facebook, the entity I love to hate and hate to love.   But this day it laid a gift at my door.

"I just wanted to tell you how much your new friendship has meant to me!  You have touched my children in such a special way!....Have a wonderful week and we are praying for you specifically this week as we fast."

And just like that, I felt a tug on my "belt".  Another carabiner had been added.  I love that idea....Sabbath people.  I want to be that to others.  I want to sit in the company of those who want to sit in my company and cry hard and laugh harder and make messes in each others' kitchens and make my soul pause and listen and consider and sift.  I feel myself yearn some days for my forever home.  I love it here where I am passing through.  I do.  I love sowing and gardening in the soil of others. But my soul has a tiredness to it that makes me hear the soundless trumpet and I look up and around for the source.  "I want to go home, God."

"Not yet, girl.  Not yet.  I have things for you still.  But I'll give you carabiners, I'll give you rest in the wake of waiting."

Easy......Like Sunday Morning......and Autism and Death.......

I'm enjoying my last hours of alone time, on my own grown up girl time, while my girl has been away at a weekend youth retreat.  I've heard from her off and on.  She's having a rich and wonderful time.  It makes my heart happy.  I love that she has other adults who are pouring into her, coming alongside her.  I love that she's listening.

But this morning, I sit with my wet hair drying into curls and decide that while the kitten is away, the Mama cat will visit a friends' church and see what God looks like there.  I love to walk into a body of His kids that I don't know and take the pulse.  It reminds me that I am not the center of the universe and, in fact, that God is not limited to the doors of one church, one set of people, one way of doing things.  He is a wonderful stew of sights and sounds and people and life pounding in our veins.

I drink my coffee and listen to the birds outside.  I can't stress enough to you how much I love that sound.  So I will not try.  Just know I love birds and how they sing.  I look out my kitchen window and see two deer curled up content in my back yard.  I love that they feel safe enough to lay down.  I consider a picture but decide to keep the memory in my mind and not disturb them.

  I spent time this weekend with a woman who lives right round the corner from me but life had choked us busy and we'd lost touch.  "I always wanted to get to know you better," she said "but I didn't want to push."  PUSH, I told her.  Sometimes we need that, sometimes I need that as it would not occur to me that someone other than me felt like that.  We sat four hours talking all things life, big and small.  Her son is severely autistic and I listen to her tell me what it feels like to have others see him as a disease.  I take in how selfless her choice to bring her mother in to live with her family, already full to the brim with a pilot husband and three grandchildren that she takes care of on a regular basis.  "I'm sorry if I talk too much.  Sometimes people ask how you are and they don't really want to hear your story."  I do, I tell her.  I do.

She tells me about her best friend who died and how she can picture us three sitting together in that restaurant, how she missed her.  "You're like her in a lot of ways."  And I get chills. I knew they'd known one another.  I did not know they were close.  It's her boy at my school that I've come to love.  It's the second time I've felt like I'm following in her footsteps. It makes sense to me more now.  The conversation feels appointed.  "Keep praying, keep loving.  I'll show you how,"  I hear whispered in my spirit.

She dropped me off in front of my house.  "So, it's okay to call sometimes, to just show up?  Jan and I used to do that.  But some people don't like that."  Yes, friend.  Yes.  Just call.  Just show up.  It's okay.  That's what life and friends are for.

Wisdom in Bean Bag Chairs

I bought bean bag chairs with some Christmas money to put in "my" school store.  Because I was having a problem with my prayer being answered and nowhere to put the blessing.  I'd asked for Him to hover there, to make the store a place He lived.  To take His peace and tuck it into every crevice, every shirt for sale, every conversation.  I wanted Him to be welcomed in so He could stand at the door and welcome in.  I wanted Him to be honored so that He could do miracles.  Quiet ones, loud ones, messy ones.  I wanted Him to stir us up so that we bumped up against one another.  So He gave me ideas and the means to do them.  They needed a place to sit, these blessings coming in the door each morning.  First it was bean bags, then it was a table and chairs, inherited from my son moving far away to Africa.  The first morning the kids discovered the table waiting for them in the store,  it warmed me inside bright to think of what it represented to me.  My boy flies off in search of God dreams and leaves a piece of himself behind and I watch others gather around with dreams of their own. I feel tears gather up ready to spill like happy bouquets.  But then, I cry easily so pay no attention to the sappy woman behind that curtain.

So, Chase sits next to me some mornings, he on one bean bag, me on the other, and slowly others come and sit on the carpet next to us and listen in.  It's that listening in that spreads seeds and welcomes others into the God dream.  He tells me he writes poetry and I perk up.  I used to do that same in high school, I tell him.  What do you write about?  Mostly life like I see it, things I think about.  I tell him I would treasure being able to read it.  If he trusted me to.  Really??  He seems surprised.  I write too, I tell him.  I know about heart on paper.  If you would let me, could I share it on my blog?  He hesitates overnight.  He needs to think about it.  "It would be an honor," he says to me the next day.  I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Shane.

Chances
By Shane Scott

Go to work every day and see the same guy.
 He always looks the same way, fire in his eyes.
His life a constant cliff hanger;
hanging off a cliff of anger

You know the word says to share the truth,
but why would he want to hear from you; yet his soul screams out,
 because it seems doubt is the only route.
He goes home that night and cries in his bed;
takes nine pills to kill the thoughts in his head
and before you know it, it's done.  He's dead.

Drive to the same place for lunch every day of your life,
see the same lady there, overwhelmed with strife.
You think her outside appearance says "leave me alone," but her inside cries, "my soul needs a home."
You don't want to talk about the One who conquered sin.
You would rather see her soul rot within.
The lady goes out that night, looks down at a text and gets hit on the left side.
She's gone, instantly dies.

You come home late, had a long day; before you go to bed and lay down,
you have a heart attack and hit the ground.
Your soul ascends up the stairs, to the judgment seat
for God sits there.
You rejoice, for you know your fate
but you see the others there that await.

God opens the door just for you;
as you walk, you look back at the other two.
They sing a symphony of cries, a horrible song;
and wonder if you knew all along.
But then they fall down those firey rings......

and suddenly, you wish you had said something.

I Don't Even Know How to Title This One!

I stepped onto the school gym floor very early this morning feeling a particular charge in the air.  A sense of urgency, really, coming from outside myself.  Like?  The Father had been waiting on me.  He wanted to talk to me.  I plugged in Chris Tomlin singing I Will Follow and reached my hand up to Him, open and eager to lay it all out there and give up my agenda.  God, what does it even mean to follow You?   Show us.  Show us where You are.  And we will go there.  I'll tell my friends and bring them along.

My word for months, the one I kept hearing in my spirit, was "abide".  I looked it up, the meaning, and grabbed hold tight and let it live in my head and my heart.  Here lately, though, the word, words, seem to have changed.  "Stop striving."  So, I opened my Bible to the Psalm numbered the same as today.  "God is present in the circle of the righteous."  It was then that I sensed He was here.  HERE.  And waiting to hear from us.  So I began praying in earnest, not for what I thought He should do?  But for Him to show us what He wanted to do.  And God?  Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, spirits eager to follow.

Later I sat in the circle of the righteous, my friends here at school, and it was good.  I found names and faces scrolling through my mind as I listened to them talking and I wrote them down.  I grabbed up my paper and went to find a quiet space to pray.  I ended up on a corner couch, sitting in the morning sun and began to pray over the name of a young lady I only know by name.  I looked up to see her coming toward me, the only person in the hallway.  I had to let her know, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the God of the Universe was thinking of her through me, a total stranger.  "Is your name _________?" I asked her.  Yes, she replied with a question mark at the end.  "You want to know something crazy?  I was just praying for you.  And I don't even know you."  It was the look on her face that told me I'd heard right.  A look that hardly has words for it.  Like He'd just said it to her Himself.....I've got you in my sights, daughter....and she'd heard Him.  "Really??  Wow.  That is wild.  Wow."  I knew He meant to change her life.

Later, the boy came by, right through the door, not hiding behind anyone, not avoiding.  Standing full front in front of me, looking me in the eye.  "Thank you for the special gum you gave me yesterday!  She gave me a bag of special gum!" he said to the other kids in the room.  I'd just asked this morning.  Father?  If you mean to restore, will you bring him to me?  I'd let him down and he ran.  When he walked out of the store, I sat with chills running down every part of me.

"Stop striving."

No Candy for 21 Days

The school store, where I "hold court", is a clearinghouse of all kids God ever made.  They are bouncy and shy and sparkly silly.  Some of them come in with no words and take a piece of candy silent and slink out.  Others roar the minute they hit the door.  They know I love them.  I take their candy orders and fill up the bowl to the tippy top and watch them gasp happy when they find their favorite kind.  They are rainbows, every one.

Miss Kaitlyn came in quiet at first, so quiet I barely noticed her for weeks.  She's as big as a New York minute, barely reaching my shoulder and I'm not giant.  When I take stock, I felt a poise that belied her age.  "You're only twelve??" I bellowed when I looked her right in the eye and asked her to tell me about her.  She giggled, used to the question.  She and I formed a fast friendship from that day.  She comes in and stands in front of my desk most mornings and afternoons; a start to the day and a period on the end of it.  I have come to look forward to our talks.  I try hard to speak truth into people's lives as I see it..  Sometimes it's hard truth meant to exhort, sometimes it's observation.  "I can see your Creator's hand on you, my dear," I told her.  There was an "old soulness" to her that beamed up at me.

Today the tide of kids rushed in after lunch, on their way to class and stopping for a hug and a grab into the candy bowl.  But Kaitlyn stood apart.  She had chosen to go all in with a fast at her church.  She could have picked one thing but she picked a deadly three punch combo; no candy, no social media and an eating plan that consisted of primarily fruits, veggies and lots of water.  "So, I won't be eating any candy from the bowl for the next 21 days," she said with no hint of boasting or pride.  Just a steadfast commitment she wanted to keep for reasons  between her and her God.

She came back later at the end of the day.  I told her I'd decided to take her lead and I would fast alongside her.  She nodded a quiet smile and strode out of the store.  As she did, these words in my head followed her.  "Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity."  1 Timothy 4:12

Miss Kaitlyn is just exactly that to this believer, much older than she.  I'm glad she is my friend.

Stories

 I sit at my desk at school and kids and parents and staff find their way to me.  I was hired to maintain the spirit wear store.  I've a suspicion God put me there for very different reasons.  I am quite literally the first person you see when you walk in the front door, unless I am somewhere else in the building, as I'm prone to be, sitting in on classes, doing a prayer walk, helping in the cafeteria, picking up projects here and there to help a staff member out.  I'd live there if I could.  Honest and true.  I fell in love with the family there the minute I walked in the door on that day in June when my girl and I went to take a tour and laughed at ourselves for the audacity of even doing that.  How did we think we were gonna swing this?  And yet, it felt good and right and we somehow sensed we'd just stepped onto a set of tracks we hadn't seen coming and wouldn't have even considered we'd been able to afford to get on the train.

Each day someone sits down beside me in a chair I purposely put by my desk and before I can say "tell me a story", they do.  And I love it so much.  Because I love them.  I love people.  They are the oxygen to my lungs already inflated with His spirit.  I learn from them.  I enter into their world, eager to look around.  I listen for those "me too" moments.  Today a woman told me about her deep loss, one that still brings pain all these years later, and how her wild and nonsense sort of faith has buoyed her when she expected to sink.  It stung my eyes and pricked my heart.  I know someone else like this and it made me remember what I don't really know.

The boy came in to reach into my candy bowl today, while my new friend was sharing her story.   It's been four weeks now, a long time to not speak or hug or touch or look one another in the eye.  I've prayed for a miracle.  When I saw his face in the crowd of kids that he pushed through?  I knew He'd heard.  I knew He was working.  I'd kept his favorite gum in a bag in my desk.  Ready to have my prayer answered.  I held it over his hands, fishing around in the candy and let it fall like water.  I caught his smile and tucked it in my heart.  His eyes flashed brief up at me.  And then back down again, unsure. He came over to me.  "Smarties?" he asked.  I opened my drawer and put some in his cupped hand.  Smarties.  The first word he's spoken to me in so many days.  I'll take that happy.

My new teacher friend and I sat over our chicken sandwiches today, taking turns crying and laughing.  So real, she is.  I feel myself a tree being planted by refreshing waters.  I think my roots can sink here and breathe strong.  I sense something being born.  We spent a lovely evening at her house just being.  How good it is to "be" without pretense, preparation.  It felt like home for my soul.

I walked through the halls today smiling at kids, fielding hugs from those who ran up to me, high fiving others.  I sat with a young person, listening to their struggle and praying to be a safe place that calls them to a higher place.  God?  You have ordered my steps.  You have crafted new desires for me and are delighting in giving them to me.  You have given me stories to hear and stories to write.  You have written the greatest story of them all straight onto my heart.

My Stew, My Who, Cindy Lou Who and Dimples.......

that last part was just a nod to Dr. Seuss.  But I've just had an epiphany, thank you to my friend who doesn't know me, Beth Moore.  I'm sitting in my kitchen, first discernible snow of the season falling, my girl fast asleep on the couch from waking up early in search of Advil.  I'm assuming church is out of the question so I go on a hunt for "food" for my soul.  Because I'm hungry in a way that you are when you want something and you can't figure out what it is but you know it's not in your fridge, except for the gluten free waffle I found and now eat slathered in almond butter and pepper jam.  But I digress.

I am committed to making what I say, what I write,  be honoring to who and what I write about.  I am equally committed to throwing out my tether.  I chafe at hiding, at pretending, at avoiding, at covering, at running. It feels chicken.  Dishonest.   I don't like it.  It makes me angry.  I'm angry here a lot lately and have to bundle it up in gauze that leaks bloody mess and lay it at my Father's feet, sometimes several times a day.  I say this to you because I don't want this green dress and big dimpled smile to fool you into thinking I'm any different than you are.  My writing is a slice of who I am and I use it to try and create an accurate picture of a girl growing up still into who Her Daddy intends her to be.  I open my window so you can hear my life.  I do it for hope for us both.  Because while I'm angry?  I'm still laughing real laughter and grocery shopping and washing my hair and planting seeds in kids' lives and checking the mail box and getting irritated at my girl and the point is this.  Car wrecks, emotional or otherwise,  feel purposeless and cause damage to fenders and legs and you find yourself looking up and informing God that, in fact, you disagree with what just happened and why didn't You keep it away from me??  I have this feeling I'm not alone in that.  And I wanted you to know I'm right here with you.

So back to Beth, my friend from afar who so many times cracks me over the head with that not so velvet hammer of hers, has a series on living audaciously.  This morning she tells us about a man who was exhausted and came in to demand his stew right here, right now and yes go ahead and take my birthright and give me my bowl, which, in bible times was no small thing.  Mind you, this man wasn't hungry.  He was tired.  The desperate kind.  The kind that makes you lose sight.  And here's the clincher.  My friend, Beth, looks me right in the camera's eye and asks...."Tell me.  What's your stew?"  What is is that distracts you, trips you up, makes your car tires burn rubber?  And here friends, is why I'm angry.

"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, by Whom we cry, "Abba!  Father!".  I got scared.  And scared exhausted me.  And I shackled myself to that fear.  And sold off my 'sonhood' to eat some leftover stew.  I allowed someone to steal my audacity, my audacious living that I had when I crashed into their path.  Their opinion of me, their fear, their hiddenness, their denial became my stew and it shut my mouth and I found myself cowering under their porch rather than standing on the shoulders of Who put me in front of their car to be the Him in me.  

And I am angry about it.  I'm angry at me, angry at my lost friend for treatment undeserved.  But I'm most angry at my enemy, who is the secret, scoffing, snickering, drooling author of the fear that drives this anger.  I look in the mirror at my still wet hair, no make up,  my hoodie hiding my tiny frame, making me look like a sniveling little ferret. I laugh at myself.  And then I'm angry again.  Just like that.  And I go in and snap at my girl, just woken up as I type this.  Over nothing.  Over everything I've written here, which has nothing to do with her.  I will listen ten times over, if I have to, to Beth reminding me to seize audacious living for the One Who rescued me.  Wet ferret head and all.  I will not be silenced or intimidated or punished or shunned into living less.  I will not be shackled to fear.  I am adopted, once and for all.  I will fall all over myself stupid and bumbling but I will continue to invest and risk it.  I will live;  not for my kids or my animals or good causes or what others think or don't think at all about me, not for the sake of spite.  I will live.  Because I am audaciously His. I will not rewrite my stew recipe again.  And I will keep my dimples.

Beth Moore, Living Audaciously

Pictures Don't Lie

I'm sitting on the runway in Denver. An hour late leaving the ground.  I'm. so. tired.  I'm thinking ahead to school in just a few short hours; way too short.  Not how I pictured coming home.  Picturing is a funny business. The image in our heads is like our own little feel good mirage many times.

Recently, I waited for a man to come home from being away.  We greeted him, his family of one and me.  It started out fine enough.  But then the stuff of life creeped in and within minutes father and son were at odds and walked off into the dark, angry and hurt and frustrated with each other; with life.  They left me there in the dark on the porch. Father?  Why am I here?  Why did You put me here?  So, I prayed and sang quietly while they each found what they needed to come back into the light.  I sat under on the steps.  The man sat down beside me and wept tired and sad.  I sat close, not saying words.  Words would have been luggage on his shoulders that he didn't need.  He put his hand on mine and turned to look at me.  "This wasn't what I pictured coming home."  I know, I thought.  Me either.  I hated it for him.  Eventually, I whispered for his boy to come sit between us. And he did.  A silent apology.  That night I'd been put there.  I knew it.  And I stayed.  Committed.

A few weeks later?  Another piece of life blew up.  This time the shrapnel landed in my hair, my eyes, my skin, my heart.  The boy and I exchanged words that felt hot and sharp.  We found ourselves at odds and separated, frustrated and confused.  Only this time?  There was no hand on mine.  No one waiting in the porch light.  No one stayed.  And I was asked to leave.  For good.  Not in so many words.  Just....I turned around to see their backs and the space once made for me had closed up behind them; the gap quickly filled.  "This wasn't what I pictured."  Yeah.  Tell me about it.

So, I walk into a year just inhabited a few days in, with no pictures in my head.  I don't want to be left in my own canvas.  I've layed down my brushes and paint.  I'm letting my Creator wipe my hands off. I don't want anymore "pictures of Egypt", stories of going backwards.  I don't have time for splattered paint left for me to clean up by myself.  The Artist is at work and He has wasted no time in using the brightest of colors, slopped big and broad all over my head, my heart, my feet.  I look closer and find a curious thing.  There is a pathway painted right up to where I stand.  It props my door open with a sign.  "Restoration."

"This won't be what you've pictured, love," He whispers to me.  I'm okay with that.  :)  He seems to love to surprise me.

He who began a good work in me, will carry it on to completion-Phillipians 1:6

Goodbyes With No Commas

There are childbirth classes, parenting classes, mothers of preschoolers groups, I found resources on sibling rivalry, setting limits, education, new baby adjustment, mannerschoresaggressionpotty traininghowtotalktoteensgraduationpartyplanning because that's what life feels like....no punctuation to catch your breath.  The thing is, I couldn't find that helpful pamphlet on how not to feel all dizzy as you put your hand in the air and wave with a brave smile that you don't altogether feel when you watch the tail lights of their car leave your driveway.

This month found me sending a daughter off to set sail in the mountains of Colorado, with no job and no definite place to live.  Her sister and brother in law live there but Hannah was still forging her own path.  I swell proud inside that my girl, my lovely soft Cinderella-like girl, caught courage by the tail and formed it into an adventure.  My heart beats steady to hear her put her adventure into the hands of her Creator and ask Him to chart her course.  She called me today, a week from when she left, joy tumbling over onto itself in her words.  She's found a job, the "perfect job for her" and she'sfoundfriendsandhadlunchwithhersister and....I catch her excitement and wrap myself up in the warmth of watching her story unfold.

Noah and Hannah

On the heels of that, my son, Noah, called.  He's just settled into his new place in Montana.  The boy who always told me he wanted to live in the mountains someday, finds himself sleeping under his western sky tonight,  quietly satisfied in knowing he made his dream come true.   His voice sounds sure and manly through the phone and his quiet confidence makes me know he will be alright.  I marvel at who he has become and his bravery inspires me to take risks in life; to savor the unexpected more.  He is a person I can admire, and all the more because he is my boy.

I'm reminded of a short story I used to read to my children;  A Christmas Memory, set in the 1930's about a boy and an elderly woman who is his distant cousin and best friend. They don't have much money so she gives him a dime to go to the picture show so he can come home and "tell her the stories".   I find myself now eagerly listening to the "stories" my children call home and tell me.  This business of raising small people to grow up and fly on their own, spins your head right round and squeezes your heart tight in your chest.  And it happensasquicklyasthis.

I savor the yesterdays and miss them for sure; but I don't live there.  I help them pack and wave brave and breathe in deep as I wipe away the pride that's spilling down my cheeks.  I cheer loudly when they find their dreams and catch my breath when they unwrap them with me on the phone.  Being a mother of these adventure seekers, these faith filled people who take hold of life leaves me standing in awe.  And now that I have more time to ponder, I've found my puctuation!

Worth Repeating....

Oswald Chambers told me this this morning.

"Once the Bible was just so many words to us; "clouds and darkness".  Then, suddenly the words become spirit and life because Jesus re-speaks them to us when our circumstances make the words new.

The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life- Jesus, John 6:63


Beth Moore taught me this.

Three times a day, Daniel got down on his knees and prayed...Daniel 6:10

Did you know, in Hebrew, the word "prayed" is translated "to limp, as if one sided"?  I found that fascinating.  She then reminded me of something.  When we pray, God doesn't always provide the sort of help we anticipate, but His method always produced the most glory.


I cherish the quiet times in the morning when the dust and false thinking and tricky emotions that may have settled on me from the day before are wiped clean with Truth.  I am reminded that Jesus words are spirit and life.  May my own words reflect that.  I am, after all an unlikely container of Him.  Trust His forgiveness and covering my sin when I fail.  I am also unnerved, challenged, at the thought of asking God to override anything, anything in me or my agenda that is contrary to His will for me.  That's a puny sacrifice when I am thinking about the choices or decisions in life on any given day.  It would be one thing were He to have said to my trip to Denver.  But, when it costs or shatters my "should be's".  What then?

On this, the third day of a new calendar year, I continue to put less stock in the date on a page, as some sort of artificial "new beginning".  I more feel Him pressing into my world, my to do lists, my every thought of what I think might happen and sense Him speaking into all of it.

"Will you 'go out' in complete surrender to Him until you are not surprised one iota by anything He does because you believe Him to be the God you have always known Him to be when you are nearest to Him?"-Oswald Chambers

I Can't Navigate A Recipe on Pintrest....and Other Misdemeanors

I want to help.  I really, really do.  It makes my heart happy and I sing when I help.  In fact, I'm probably at my happiest when I am helping.  I've always seen myself as sort of a supporting beam.  I look for ways to quietly slip into the structure and hold up it's arms; figuratively speaking, of course.  The "structures' are people that cross my path.  So, this time I have in Denver with my girl and her little just made family, I treasure as a time to mama in little ways that I think of.

Today, I was given the task of making lactation cookies.  Don't ask.  It's what they're called.  No breast milk was harmed in the making of these delectables.  However, I found myself in a kitchen I was not familiar with, using ingredients I'd never heard of with a Kitchen Aid mixer, a contraption that I've only used one other time.  To top it off,  I had to find the recipe on Pinterest.  I don't navigate internet too terribly genius.  Because I don't.  That is why.  So, to begin with, I clicked on the wrong recipe.  I was thrilled to have clicked on anything.  But it turned out to be the incorrect choice.  So, I had to start over.

By the time it was over, I'd knocked the darling little hanging measuring cups off the wall, forgot to anchor down the Kitchen Aid bowl and.....well, that didn't go well, lathered myself in gluten free flour and worked myself into a sweaty fret trying to find everything I needed.  I was frustrated and felt stupid.  Seriously.  I know how to cook.  What is my problem?  When my daughter came into the kitchen and noticed I'd made the wrong recipe I felt like I'd let her down.  And it was then that I realized, I had been trying.  Trying really hard to be good enough.  To make them glad I had been invited to come stay with them.  To help.  Trying to be valuable.

I don't handle letting people down well.  When I sense that I have, it wells up in me like a panic volcano.  I start to tremor and look around for somewhere to run and hide.  I want to help.  I want to matter.  I want to be good.  And I didn't do it right. I wipe my hands on my dishrag and look around close to tears.  And then feel stupid for the tears.  Why can't I ever grow up in this one?  I take a deep breath and start over, pulling out the Kitchen Aid of Fear and strange ingredients.  I have to reach out and take grace for myself, whether it's offered or not.  I have to run to Grace Himself and give Him all my failed cookies, my scary Kitchen Aids, my unfamiliar places and bumbling efforts.  When I can hold that grace in my hands?  Then I have some to give away.

In the end, we have two sets of cookies now.  One lactating, one non lactating.  The kitchen is clean and the evening lamps are glowing as the sun sets.  It's my last night here.  Helping.  I've wrapped my head around being a Nana.  I've slow danced with her and talked about cutting and cooking and pasting construction paper one day.  And when she feels like she's let someone down.  I'll hug her close  and tell her I know exactly how she feels.  And give her a cookie I made from Pinterest.  I'll call it the Grace Cookie.

Observations From Zone 4, Seat 8 F

I'm on my way to Denver, to meet the new love of my life; Beatrice Haven Hollinger.  I'm taking an airplane. I haven't been on an airplane in over a year and I can taste excitement like an egg sandwich on sourdough with mustard.  In other words, it's a pungent and savory feeling.  It'd be easier, I think to myself in line , if public nudity was legal in the airport.  Then we could all dress after security.  Oh.  Wait.  We do that now. A young man told me I was beautiful.  He was operating the full body scan so he may have meant internal beauty.  I don't know.  I grab my things and head to the large waiting area and settle in.

 It always strikes me to look around and notice the others nearby, getting ready to board the same plane as me.  It occurs to me, if something happened, how quickly we would go from total strangers to dependence on one another.  Adversity does that.  I grab my pen and reach for paper to capture these thoughts writing themselves in my head.  I smile when a "love note" from my girl stayed at home falls out of my book.  Gosh, I love her.

People flying to Denver have a look about them, all woodsy and hiking bootish.  Like they'll live off the land even in the plane.  Men with graying pony tails and stubbly beards.  I check to see if the women have stubble also.  No.  But there is a certain rusticity to them.  It's like a people patina.  The clothing 20 somethings can wear and still look good, I note wryly, is very different than a 50 something. That screaming baby is off to a good start, I think.  Please don't sit by me, please don't sit by me.  Please don't. Cute guys never sit by me on an airplane.  Never.  That baby does though.  How old is that kid anyway?  Can you give birth at the airport and then just get right on a plane??

The airport voice begins over the loudspeaker.  Two observations concerning announcements; "It'll be just another ten minutes."  That is a lie.  They mean 20.  It's like football game time.  "There's an additional charge for that."  They could be referring to anything from a carry on bag to the air that you plan on breathing while in flight.

As I board the plane, I notice a sign above our heads. "Uneven Surface".  I think how that should be posted at the end of every birth canal.  Sort of airport speak for "In this world you will have tribulation."  I think it'd be fair warning.  I settle into the land of Seat 8F and the pilot begins giving us our life saving instructions at the monotone speed similar to the disclaimer on an infomercial.  I did manage to make out that our cabin "will be pressurized this morning", said in a tone that indicated there may have been other arrangements.

Let's visit the topic of airplane etiquette.   Me being me, usually assume in any situation, that my breathing alone may be enough to bother you.  So, on a plane?  I find myself in my window seat sequestered next to a man who hit the snooze button on seat impact.  I want desperately to read but it's dark and I don't want to turn on the overhead light which is, conveniently, located over his head.  No problem, I think.  It'll be light soon.  Until I remember that we are traveling west and it won't be light until we land.  So, I try and read People magazine through the braille method.  Don't judge.  Don't you even judge.  I also brought my bible and a Beth Moore devotional.  So, I'm entitled to brain dribble.  A bell rings in the cabin, sounding suspiciously like a door bell.  I so want to yell out into the dark cabin, "Will someone answer the door?"

Along comes the flight attendant with the beverage cart.  I ask for coffee and trail mix, thinking right highly of myself for my healthy choice.  It's spicy, she warns me.  So, here is where I find myself trying to ease a rice crispy treat out of a wrapper it's clinging to like a baby refusing to be born and the wrapper?  It's making sounds louder than a plane engine as I paw at it panicked to make it stop and not wake sleeping man.  I consider waking him to apologize.  I swallow the last drop of my coffee and suddenly remember my bathroom anxiety on a plane.  I begin praying fervently for a one time miracle where the liquid in my bladder will just miraculously disappear.  I silently curse sleeping man's slumber skills and the large smoothie I drank this morning.

The world is a glittering map from the air and I think what a privilege it is to be viewing it from God's footstool.  I think about how, at the first blush of my girls' pregnancy I reminded God that if He wanted me there in Denver, He'd have to do His thing.  I had no money for the likes of such an adventure.  I look look out the plane window.  "You did this, Father," I whisper.  "My times are in Your hands."  What a thing to have on the first day of a new year.  He has, indeed, made me glad