I Took a Walk Tonight....

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.

Small Joys

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.

Leadersheep in Iceland

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.

"Sit Here While You Blog, Please..."

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.

Making Peace With No 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.

Heroes Come In All Ages.....

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.

And so I wait......

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.