When You Can't Find a Card for Mother's Day

This "new" normal I'm in, this walking around in a new skin that feels like a daughter of the King and learning to believe it, is exhilarating most days.  I find my old fears fading.  My courage and boldness and joy are growing into strong plants with stems that feel thick as a redwood tree.  They seem to be forming a garden shield around me that makes me brave enough to step out into the water without remembering that I can't swim and not caring if I drown in the process.

For all the progress I've been graced with, though, there is one relationship in my life that I don't have down.  I don't know what to do, so I do nothing.  And Mother's Day finds me lost for much emotion or a plan.  Except for fear.  I am afraid of my mother.  It's irrational in the natural.  She's 83 years old and not a physical threat.  But in my spirit?  There's where I quake.  Broken, damaged people that haven't allowed the light in can do what feels like irreparable harm to each other.  I've forgiven her.  I think I've forgiven her.  But my heart still fears her.  I still believe her words sometimes.

I can sense in my spirit that the One who I belong to is calling me to believe His words this year.  I feel a chain wanting to break off of me.  Isn't is funny, though, how sometimes in our fear, chains can feel safer than what it takes to get free?  This though, this is my jubilee year.  I'm not going to the Hallmark store.  I will make my own card.  And I will write His words to me and give them to my mother in person rather than chicken out and mail it.  The thought makes me want to run to the bathroom, frankly.  The promise of freedom, though, makes me unclinch my stomach and grab my shield.  And possibly a bucket to throw up in.

But, uh......would anyone want to go with me??  ;)

If I Should Die Before I Wake.....

I'm gonna write this out real fast like before I swallow too hard and think too much and chicken out.  It's been in my mind for weeks.  That is how it is with me.  I feel an idea hatching itself in my mind, my spirit, and then the title comes to me and all the ideas swirl around it like birds in a Disney movie and land to rest and they form the story.  This is my story.  I've told you bits and pieces before but not all of it; not the worst of me.  Most of you, I've hidden from.  I didn't want to.  I just didn't know how not to, because the truth is, I was hiding from myself. On May 17th I will be getting baptized for the second time in my life.  If I don't tell you why, you won't fully understand.  I want you to.  Because now?  Now I'm not hiding anymore.

I was 12 the first time I got baptized. That's what "good girls" do and I was one.  I was one, not because it was necessarily the "right" thing to do.  I was one because I was afraid not to be.  I didn't want to go to hell.  And I didn't want those around me that I valued to not like me, to disapprove of me.  I needed to plug into approval to survive.  So, I did not drink, I did not smoke, I did not use drugs, I was a virgin when I got married and after I got married I scrambled to be "enough" for my husband and my children.  It's not that I didn't want to be all that I was.  It's just that it's all I had inside of me.

  I realized early on that things were not as they should be in my marriage.  None of the good girl stuff worked.  So I focused on more good things; I poured myself into home schooling all six of my children and loved every minute of it.  I ground my own grain and made bread and granola, I kept the house tidy and did "christian workout videos" so I would stay looking acceptable and I figured I should watch the  christian ones.  I did bible studies and stenciled things on my walls and read out loud to my kids every night and stayed off the phone whenever my husband got home so I could make him king of the castle and and and and.....I was so lonely.  Deep, deep inside of me.....I felt abandoned.

In order to continue though, I needed to form a plan.  I did this by keeping to the country home I enjoyed.  It was far enough out that no one would "just drop by" to discover that we were not perfect.  In fact, we not only were not perfect; we were falling apart but, boy, did we look good.  I prayed to the God that lived on the ceiling because that's as far as I felt like my prayers went.  "Rescue me, God.  I'm miserable."  And then?  Then, I'd pick myself up by my very own will power and try harder.  Because here's the thing about perfection, about protection......in order to survive, you have to build a fortress and when you lay the last stone, you turn around to realize you've bricked yourself in.  God can't help you, because you don't have time to wait on Him.  My fortress, though, was transparent.  I could see out and you could see in.  You just didn't know that what you were seeing was an illusion and I was too afraid to tell you.

So then it happened.  One day I did what I never thought I would do.  I cheated on my husband.  Those of you who know me well, who know the story of my marriage, will be inclined to defend me, to excuse my behavior, to find good reason for it.  It's true that there were many years that I experienced deeply wounding things; there's enough blame to go around,  but I want to tell my story without dishonoring anyone else.  I want to own what I did.  My bankrupt soul grabbed onto stolen honey and it turned to gravel in my mouth and I threw it back up all over myself.  I told my husband and those closest to me right away to get it off of me, out of me and put a stop to it but the explosion had already caused the damage.  I looked in the mirror and didn't know who I was anymore.  I'd lost my "good girl" mask.

I couldn't stop crying even long enough to wash the dishes so I ended up on pills to help me cope.  The ground under me felt like quicksand, threatening to pull me under.  I wasn't completely sure I wanted to fight it.  Self and outside condemnation finally won and I walked away from my marriage to try and find oxygen.  I spent the next few years in my own desert.  My older kids were devastated and wanted nothing to do with me.   I didn't blame them.  My motherhood was all I'd had before, that and my pride in who I thought I was.  Now, I had nothing.  I lay down on my friends' couch one day and couldn't speak.  "Oh God," I said in my head, "if You're more than the ceiling, I need You to do something."  It was five years before I could hear the answer.  Not that He hadn't tried.  I just wasn't listening yet.

I sat on the front row of my friends' church, tired and stressed.   "God.  I feel so invisible.  So unusable.  So mute.  I don't think anyone here sees me.  I don't even know if You do.  I don't even know if any of this matters."  It was then that a woman I didn't know walked up and stood in front of me.  "You were willing to walk out of here without hearing from God.  He wants you to know that He sees you, that He will cause you to rise and shine.  You will not go unseen.  You will not go unnoticed.  He will cause the joy of the Lord to grow within you."  It was then that I truly believed and it leveled me.

I've changed since that night.  I shook hands with Grace for the first time in my life and it wrapped itself around me and hasn't let go.  The fear of being "found out", the suspicion I had that I was unlovable, the wall I'd built around me to protect myself from people....crumbled and left me standing without my defenses.  The surprising thing was that I gave less thought to whether or not I was safe and found myself safer than ever.

Today I love people easy and meet them right where they are.  I know who I am and Who I belong to.  I still fight off the old battle clothes of fear and insecurity and cry best in the bathtub because the acoustics are better and it feels more dramatic.  I'm not always "comfortable" but growing pains never are.  I've learned to live risky and out loud.  I've learned to share my lunch and my life and take the chance it calls for.   My heart's desire is to be salt in the world, to season the lives of those around me, to be the oil of joy, to give a hand of hope where it's needed.

So, if I were to die before I wake, I wanted you to know the truth about me and what has happened.  I wanted you to know that He has made me brave and I'm walking where the air is clear.

This is What Happens When Your Palm Itches

I fell asleep easy enough.  But, I woke myself up scratching my palm and I thought to myself, "How weird is that?  I wake myself up scratching my itchy palm?  I wonder if I googled that that somewhere someone claims that means something, sort of like if your ears burn someone is talking about you?"  That made me laugh at myself in the dark.  Which then made me wake up further.  So naturally, I thought, "It makes sense that I should blog about this.  People will want to know this."  So I make my way downstairs to fetch my computer.  For the people.

Downstairs, in the dark, my foot met the brick hearth of my fireplace for the "severaleth" time in a month and I wondered why, after seven years of living here, April 2015 was when I would finally succumb to the foot/hearth meeting of the minds, were feet and hearths to have minds.  I grabbed my computer off the table and looked out at the moonlight.  I love the peace of the middle of the night.  It's like the world and I have a secret that nobody else knows.  I think about how when you're worried the night is longer than usual and full of questions that don't have an answer and you wish it would hurry up and be light so you could forget the questions a little easier.  But when you're up simply because your palm itches, it feels like a comfort and you don't care if it lasts a little longer.  It's like savoring the last of the chocolate before anyone else discovers there was chocolate to be savored.

I find my way back up to my bed and fall back flat for a minute into the pillows and look up at the light fixture on the ceiling.  I notice the light bulbs and thought about what a marvel a light bulb even is and how we go for days and days and never think about it  until one day is pops dark and we have to change it.  And what kind of mind did Thomas Edison have to think of that and did he drive his mama crazy when he was a kid wondering all the time?   And how if he hadn't have wondered, where would we all be now and one persons' wondering is millions of peoples' benefit.  And then it occurs to me that lightbulb isn't one word and I have to go back and correct the places where I made it one.

Before I start to type,  I grab a book my friend gave me on the Untold Story of the New Testament church and I open it up to read a page or two and can almost hear the sounds and feel the air around me in their world.  I do that when I read a book; wrap it around me and crawl right in and lose myself in the story.  Biblical times fascinate me.  I wish I could have been there real time.  I'm sure my head would've spun trying to make sense of what was happening around me.  Just like I do now.  And I think would I have believed Jesus, were I to have been there in person?  Or is it almost easier not to have?

I lay the book down and think about people I know and the stories their lives are writing and how our paths weave in and out and around each other and their stories intersect with ours and we find ourselves cast in different parts in each others' plays.  I think about someone saying to me recently that they don't know me well yet and how if you read my words you know me because my words are my heart and soul and I lay them out plain on the page; no tricks or slight of hand.

I start to type and the words come easy because I've got you here with me, held captive unaware as you sleep, and I chatter with you cheerfully, happily, peacefully because I know you'll pick up the conversation when you wake if you care to, if you're interested and have the time to go all the way to the end to find out why my palm itches.

I ponder getting deep here, wondering if I should have some purpose higher than writing what comes to mind; writing just because I can, just because I am awake.  I decide no.  I decide that it's important enough just me writing and you sleeping and then waking up and realizing I was thinking enough about you to share with you.  Whether you knew it or not.  Because, whether you know it or not, I often share things with you in my mind just by wondering what you would think about something or whether you're having a good day or remembering something you or I said that made us laugh.  Or, the fact that somebody I've never met and never will may be reading these words and isn't that just amazing that words can travel to unknown worlds?

My palm has stopped itching, long ago now.  I consider going to the kitchen to get some coconut granola and raspberries with almond milk.  I've just about decided to do that when I realize....I ate the last of the coconut granola before I went to bed.  A major life disappointment.  Instead, I will send these words on their way and think about what you will think when you wake up and realize what I've been up to.  And whether you'll shake your head and laugh.  I hope so.  Making friends is easy when we're both laughing.  It causes our hearts to shake hands.

I'm sleepy now.  Please stop talking. I need my rest.  Turn off the lightbulb; yes I did that on purpose.  ;)

It's been a year......

In 31 days it will be a year since he's gone, my father.  It makes me shake my head to clear it when I realize that.  How could that many days have come and gone?  And so much life has already been accounted for that he's "missed".  Weddings and grandkids setting off on their own adventures. things he'd have thoroughly reveled in, had he been here.  My father knew how to live life by the barrelful.

This is who he was; He liked mourning doves and black coffee.  He took walks for miles and spoke to every. single. person. he encountered.  He laughed easily and cried easier.  His heart was tender to anyone down on his luck.  He once loaned his car to a man he'd befriended just out of prison so he could drive and see a friend.  He was a giver.  He loved music and golfing and never failed to find a four leaf clover in the yard. He loved taking pictures and graduated proudly from his polaroid to his digital camera over the years.  He learned to play the trombone in high school and could play it almost until the "end."  I can remember hearing "Stand Up for Jesus" echoing out of his room when I came to visit him at the facility where he was being cared for.

 My favorite memory, the one that says "this is my dad"....I was asleep on a Saturday morning and woke up to the sound of a radio playing just outside my door.  I got up and peered out to find my father dressed in a down jacket, straw hat, no shirt, shorts, knee socks and his dress shoes....painting a wall.  He looked at me, grinned, and kept right on painting.  My father was gloriously imperfect and my first best friend.

 Sometimes?  Sometimes I take walks in the cemetery where we put the outward part of him,  keeping company with big, craggy trees, and I follow the paths that curl around the stones that etch bare details of the lives that they stand for.  I often wish each marker had a button I could push and the voice of the person could tell me, in his own words, what life had taught them; what they would want me to know.  I struggle inside my head at times, thinking about the accomplishments they strove for and won,  the hard things they overcame, the memories they made.  When I'm telling God truthful,  I tell Him how much I trust Him, how thoroughly I know He loves us, and yet......when it comes to the end, it never seems "enough", doesn't quite seem "fair".   What was it all for, God?  And, honest?  I wish He'd taken someone else; not dad.  Not my dad.

I don't fear asking those questions of God.  And even more, I don't fear not getting an answer that pacifies me.  It makes me feel safe, though, to ask it right out loud.  Because the truth is, for me, that most of it just flat doesn't make sense.  I breathe relieved that I can say that.  I don't like pretending.  It wears me out thin and my smile starts to harden.  I feel Him more when, rather than scramble for the "why", I grab your hand and whisper "I don't understand it.  Stay here with me while I try and lay it down?"

When I consider the past year, the past lifetime with and now without my father, the things he taught me, the joy he gave me just by being my daddy, I sift through grateful for what I can tell you.  And when the questions come I remember this and hold fast.  "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be glory forever.  Amen.

I love you, dad.

I trust You, God

<3

Loving the Velveteen Rabbits

I notice them.  Almost every time.  I feel them before I see them.  And I start looking in corners.  There's a Velveteen Rabbit in here somewhere.  I know that.  Because I am one.  We Velveteen's, once we've been made free, always want to go back and find the others.

When you're still in your corner, though, your nose wiggles nervous and your eyes peer out with question marks.  "Is it safe out there?", you ask and you don't trust any answers you get.  The Velveteen Rabbit Maker has given me a heart that beats strong for mending the skin of my fellow rabbits.  But I have this thing that I do wrong.  I'm too honest.  Not harsh honest.  Not wounding honest, at least not intentionally.  But when I see their skin is thin and burns, I forget and touch too soon to help sometimes.  Then the rabbit shrinks back and I realize, he thought my hand was there to pull more hair off his skin instead of rub him with salve.  I scramble to step back and hold up my hands to show them clean and safe.  It makes me feel badly to know it was misunderstood.

I'm learning that sometimes it's better to leave a carrot and a bowl of water outside the door and let the rabbit grow new skin.


“Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.” 
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Cindy

I'm sitting here in my big green chair where God holds me close, watching my fake fire glow in my electric heater and unable to get myself to stop crying.  Today hit me hard in the heart.  I sat close up to a woman tonight I'd never met and she let me into her world, whether I'd proved myself to her or not, whether I deserved to be trusted or not.  She didn't know me.  Didn't have time to.  And she'd right near been scraped clean of anything to hang onto in this world.   But she laid herself bare open because I told her I wanted to know.  It's not like I could do anything to change it.

"You and I.  We both started out as little girls.  How did this happen?  Where did this turn course for you?"

"I was 16 years old.  My dad abused me and I had his baby.  My mom took it from me."  She said it with no trace of sadness or shame.  She said it right out loud.  Like reading the news.  And she shrugged.  Oh well.  Those things happen.  "My man.  We've been together 13 years.  I did whatever he wanted to make him happy.  And now he's gone.  I feel....(she searches for the word)....abandoned.  This is hard.  Being on my own?  This is harder than I thought it'd be."  Her look is blank, her eyes go off in the distance somewhere.  "I miss my dog"  And there it was.  There were the tears.  That, she could risk crying for.  That was the one thing that hadn't hurt her, abandoned her.  She could cry for that.  And my eyes filled with tears too.

She wiped away the give away to her pain and smiled at me.  "I bet I'm way older than you," she said playful.  I played back and grabbed a pen.  "Let's write our ages on our hands.  That way we'll trust each other to be telling the truth."  She liked that idea.  1, 2, 3....our hands open to each other.  Turns out, she's a decade younger than I.  And I am shocked.  Harsh wears old on a woman's face.

She turns to go get ready to eat.  What's your name?  I want to remember you.  "Cindy."  I hesitate to find some way to give her something.  Something to leave with her; to put a period on the end of the conversation.  I reach out careful and lay my hand softly on her arm.  "I speak life over you, Cindy.  I speak life into you."  It feels a pitiful thing and yet I sense God heard me and took it up with Him into His heart.  She turned and walked away.

I will never know what happens; how this story plays itself out.  Two women, two complete strangers,  encountered one another today.   Two women who, in different ways, understand the yearning to be loved and cherished, the feeling of having been abandoned.

Her name is Cindy.  And she let me in tonight.  I won't squander that trust.  Remember her with me.

It's 1:42 a.m.......

I fell asleep this Friday night on my couch with my girl, faithfully choosing to keep me company, laying on the other couch nearby. Couches, in the plural, are nice to have.  They're like rectangle friends scattered throughout the house.  I used to have one in my kitchen because I liked the idea of collecting people on them while I cooked, just to have them near in case I needed someone to lick the spoon; or to remind me I cooked for them to love them.

But, at 1:42 I woke up with an alertness that felt like Someone shaking me awake.   This will sound crazy.  I realize that.  I'm willing to be misunderstood.  But as I've "woken up" in my life to God, there are times when this happens.  This whispering in my spirit.  Tonight there is an urgency that says..."I hear you pondering what doesn't make sense to you.  Lean on, trust in and be confident in Me with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.  In all your ways know, recognize and acknowledge Me and I will direct and make straight and plain your paths."

Tonight, in the quiet, I hear Him talking.  I sense strings trying to be unraveled,  He wants you to know His hands are on yours as you sort them out.  He woke me up to tell you that.  Isn't that a miracle?