I go to lunch each day and sit with the kids because they make the light shine bright and I get to hear how much they like math and science (what?!) and that they are just really excited that their friend gets to spend the night tomorrow night and they have popcorn in their lunchbox and did I see their new shoes. I make them laugh by being sillier than they are and they are taken by surprise that I can be sillier than they are it just never gets old to me. Never.
Today I chose to sit with some fourth graders, only one of whom I'd gotten to know well. That one turned to the girl next to her. "She's one of my best friends," she said and pointed to me.
One of my friends works here too. Her first year teaching. I got a message from her today. It was a picture one of her students drew her. "You are the best art teacher ever!" She, like me, can't get over her good fortune at being here.
Then, I got to sit and listen to what sounded to me like voices of heaven practice Pinocchio today. And I just.....and I just.....and I just can't keep finding words big enough.
When you fall in love with kids? Your heart gets bigger. :)
Today was picture day at school and well......since I don't fancy myself picture worthy, it's just so much awkward posing. Head tilted just so, hands at sides. Surely we don't really have to go through with this? But, as I stepped up to the plate, the first of the day, the lovely young girl taking my picture smiled at me. "You look so excited!", she says. "Are you?" I giggled a "yes" but added, "I've no reason really. I'm just so happy to be here."
"What do you do here?", she asked. "Love kids. But I get paid to run the student spirit store." Hours later, after all the images had been captured in her camera, she came through the doors of the store and we spent some time getting to know one another and sharing our stories. She used to go to this school several years back, she told me, but not before some struggles led her there. She's better now, she tells me, but she's still carving out her path to figure out God. I realized how much my soul felt fed full by connections like this one.
She wanted a t shirt from the school for old times but didn't have enough money so I pitched in to finish off the amount needed. "Take it and remember our talk," I told her. "Come back and see me."
I locked the doors of the store and headed off to lunch and sat with a group of sparkly little girls and stifled a laugh at the boy who "accidentally" squirted mustard down his shirt.
It began when I asked Him for the crazy wild favor that feels presumptuous. But after all, He told me that when my hands and heart are clean, I will carry away a blessing. So, I let Him wash me and then I grabbed my bucket and went down to the water to wait.
Friday, I went in to the main office at school, like I usually do in the afternoon, and let everyone know I was free to a good home. That means, I'm willing to help whoever needs any. :) By the end of the day, I had a second job added on to the one I already have in the school store and my hours increased with a shake of the administrator's wand. The day before, I'd "reminded" God that I'd been asking for that all along and would He please not forget but I will wait and trust firm that He knows what He's up to. That wait thing? Yeah. About that. He's got me in that class on the grad level these days. I mean to pass with an A plus, which means I surrender all. So not my favorite.
I left school with my girl and a boy in tow. We stopped at Wendy's and dipped our french fries in frosties and laughed a little too loudly and I pretended to be shocked when the boy pushed the envelope and we laughed some more. And I caught wind of that crazy favor again; that part of life where you shake hands with the spontaneous and learn to live just right there in that moment because that moment is a gift too easy unnoticed if you're not paying attention.
It turns out, crazy wild favor is living sold out and watching for Him on the horizon with your bag packed lightly. Just as I am......ready to jump in with both boots....because I like my boots. :)
It's in quotes, that word "almost", because to put it literally seems to me to forget that with God there are no "almosts". But this is what happened that day......
This pregnancy was precarious from the beginning. I began spotting almost immediately and I felt a certain sense of fear that I couldn't shake. I told others but no one seemed to hear; not really. At the beginning of my second month, I was confined to my bed, in an effort to help fight for the life of this child. On a Sunday evening, at 16 weeks along, my four children, the oldest 8, lined up beside the couch I was laying on to get their kiss goodnight. As I watched them walk upstairs like the kids in Sound of Music, I had a strange sense of foreboding and I wondered if I would see them again. It ran cold through my bones, that thought, and I couldn't take my eyes off my children as they disappeared from my view.
Within the hour, I began hemorrhaging; clots the size of my fist. The kids safely asleep and unaware, a nearby neighbor was called to come and sit in our living room while we rushed out into the night towards the hospital. It occurred to me that I might not come home again. I felt a deep sadness mix itself into my fear. Everything around me became strangely distant and I felt completely alone in what was happening. I was walking through a door that no one could go through with me. I don't remember arriving in the emergency room.
It's like scenes in a movie, fading in and out, one on top of the other; sounds and pictures. I woke up, having passed out from the bleeding, in a bed, the doctor by my side explaining to me that the baby was implanted dangerously low and it was a matter of time whether one of both of us died, if something wasn't done, and so an exam was performed in an effort to hasten the impending miscarriage. In the middle of that long night, a little girl was born, 16 weeks strong. She inhabited her place in this world for 20 minutes. Her name was Naomi. They told me later that she was perfectly formed, perfectly healthy. She'd have been a fighter. She made me proud.
And then began the business of saving my life. I opened my eyes in the operating room, a sense of frenetic energy all around me. I felt no pain. Faces leaned into me, silhouetted by the bright light shining in my eyes. I was in total peace and yet still, my kids were what I was thinking about. "Am I dying?", I heard myself ask out loud to no one in particular. No answer came for a long minute and then.... "No." and I didn't believe it. I saw that person run out of the room. Whoever that was had said what they had been trained to say, but in that moment, I realized a heart was breaking for me. "Father?", I remember whispering, "Into Your hands I commit my spirit....into Your hands....into Your hands." And then I was gone.
I received enough transfusions that night to fill 4 adults, the blood spilling out of me so fast they tipped the operating table I was lying on upwards in an effort to use sheer gravity to keep it in. In the end, they performed a hysterectomy and still, the bleeding did not stop. I was put on a respirator, a heart catheter was inserted and my bed was rolled into ICU. My kidneys were beginning to fail. The team of doctors did all their hands and minds knew to do and then they joined those same hands and stood around my bed and prayed on my behalf. And everyone waited. On Tuesday I woke up.
My father was the first face I saw. He had attached my favorite Bible verse to a small eagle statue and had it sitting on a tray beside me. "They shall mount up with wings like eagles," he read out loud to me. Two days later, my bladder burst and the nurses rushed into my room and wheeled me out toward the operating room. One of my friends was standing in the hallway. I will never forget the look on his face. His voice followed after me...."Hang in there, Tamara. We're praying for you." How much I wanted this not to be happening. To go back and stand beside him, to not be in any danger. That night I was back in ICU on a respirator.
In the end, it was ten days before I saw my kids again. I was pale, thin, bruised from all the needles and tubes running in and out of me, some of which followed me home. As I began to recover, nurses and doctors from all over the hospital came to see the "miracle girl." My friend made angels out of lace and passed them out to the staff. Two years later, I would come to visit my friend in that same hospital to see her new baby. I saw one of the lace angels still hanging up on the wall.
The night before I was to be discharged, the nurse came in to settle me in for the evening. A thunderstorm was brewing outside and I asked her to open the curtains. As I lay there alone, I watched the flashes of lightning and realized I knew what it felt like now to be in the palm of God's hand. Because no matter what the outcome would have been? I can tell you, it felt safe in His hand and I knew that I knew that all was well.
The end of things busy at the close of the day makes me feel wrapped up. I love to get on my furry rainbow house slippers and my yoga pants and brew myself a brave cup of caffeine at that hour and take my chances of sleepless later. Most nights I make my way up to my second story porch, where I feel the most "secluded", up in the tree branches, and listen. I pretend I'm somewhere in the wilderness, just me and the crickets, and tune out passing cars and neighbors' windows. I imagine myself with my hands in the dirt, breaking it up, getting ready for planting. Or sitting by a fire outside. Places and things that call for no talking, for just being with whoever you're with....or no one at all.
The truth is, life? It's joys and surprises and good talks and hugs from kids? I put my very all in it every single day. And my heart needs to lie quiet at the end of it. To call up my favorite "scenes", to tell Him truthfully how some things hit me harder than I act, to color over everything with His brush. To settle myself in His lap and remind myself why any of it matters and all of it does.
So I sit quieter than you might expect, if you see me during the day all bubbles and smiles. Because I need to come down off the ceiling and settle myself with His compass. And sip my coffee just quietly. And be....and wonder if anybody else feels this way.
I could not get to my computer fast enough. I just left a room full of people praying and I tuned my ear in to the sound in the room; all at the same time, talking to the Creator of all things good. And I need to let my heart spill out in words what I heard.
Father, there's people with everyday pain that will heal in time with surgery or medicine. And then there's those who are bracing themselves for an ending that doesn't feel or look like love at all. The truth is, God? Sometimes? Your grace isn't my definition of it. And while I stomp my foot or look at you incredulously and ask to take the wheel and "fix" things different....there's a part of my gut that is glad that I can't manipulate You. That somehow knows.... and Father please, on days when I don't know at all and accuse You of forgetting what You're supposed to have done, still teach me....that Your grace is for my good. Always. Even through gritted teeth at moments, I look at my newly inked tattoo of a "legacy" tree that serves to remind me to choose to define through Your eyes; Your truth.
Someone shared that the root word for grace called to mind that of a ship wrapped up in protective tar during a storm. I can feel my heels dig in as I consider that grace can deliver me, it can even rescue me completely and remove me from something, but it can also wrap me up tight while I walk through....preserved. This grace is the uncomfortable kind that grinds off rough places and loosens grips. It can bring you to your shaky knees. It's the kind that scares me.
Thank You for the gift of hard things, that causes our walls to fall down between each other and You, and we reach out desperate for life support. The inconvenience of others' needs, of our own limits, forces us out of our heads and we bump up next to each other in these close quarters that You've hemmed us into.
For the grace You put in our lives that we don't ask You for; the grace that teaches the hardest of truths. For the sleep we loose and the ache we feel and the tears that feel like they'll never stop; and the surprise of joy that can come out of nowhere......
I'm gonna lay it at Your feet, God. And admit I don't understand it most days. And fix my eyes still on my Faithful Creator.
And this is what I pondered during Moms in Prayer today. :)
