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."