when a year needs a name...

i've spent most of this past year in a state of expecting.  my body changing, my belly rounding, this small life inside of me growing and stretching and hearing the beat of my heart...

He promised at the beginning of this past year to do something new and He has...He has done so. much.

 but i enter into the last evening of 2012 still expecting,

still waiting,

and there are times and moments when it feels as though it will never, ever end.


i just want to see her face.


i want to hold her in my arms and pull her close.

i want my four children to surround me and i want my oldest to know that one more child doesn't make her any less special...

oh, a mama's heart.

it can hurt.

sometimes expectations can do that.


and it was about a week ago, as i was reading about my wild God, the One Who isn't safe and Who calls us out of the places we hide behind that the word for this year came near.


it starts with a small handful of verses, ones i've heard since the time i was small.

they were these:

where can i go from Your Spirit?

where can i flee from Your Presence?

if i go up to the heavens, You are there;

if i make my bed in the depths, You are there.

if i rise on the wings of the dawn,

if i settle on the far side of the sea,

even there Your Hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

psalm 139:7-10

in the book, practicing the presence of God, the author writes this,

brother lawrence insisted that it is necessary to always be aware of 

God's presence by talking with Him through the day. to think that you must abandon 

conversation with Him in order to deal with the world is erroneous.

instead, as we nourish our souls by seeing God in His exaltation,

we will derive a great joy at being His.

this last month has found me wrestling with fears.  fears of becoming a mama to four, fears of homeschooling with a newborn while we try and find our footing as a family of six.  fears that the house will fall apart, that i will fall apart and how will everything get done?

And Jesus is here, always here, but i can so easily forget that when i take my eyes off of Him.

i live in a state of expecting as i wait to meet my baby, i place huge expectations on myself that i have no hope of fulfilling, i live with the knowing that no matter what i do, 

i. will. fail.

but it's there, in the book of Colossians that i find my footing once again:

whatever you do, work heartily for the Lord and not for men.

colossians 3:23

and then this:

our lives should be lived with expectancy. not necessarily with expectation,

because expectation tends to dictate terms. the pharisees

lived with expectation and rejected Christ when He did not fit

the rigid narrowness of their expectations. often i wonder if we, waiting for

Christ's return do it more with expectation that expectancy. expectancy is the belief

that God will do something. expectation insists He do it just. this. way. expectation

blinds us to the God who is here right now than outright disbelief does.

but imagine a life buoyed by expectancy, by the conviction that the Lord will

show Himself. how, where, when - we don't know that. we don't dictate the terms...

but by living with biblically girded expectancy, our lives stir to vibrant wakefulness.

mark  buchanan

your God is too safe

i want to see Him in this year. my expectations that have fed into my fear is that this year ahead of me will be one of chaos and craziness and crashing...and without drawing near to His presence, it more than likely could be.


but like my belly swollen and stretched, there is life in the midst of my waiting. as i search for that day when she will show her face, i have hope that the ache and the weariness and the anxiousness will end at some point.

so this year, this year ahead is the year of expectancy - of living in a space of seeing Him.  in the mundane and in the grand. of coming to know and embrace that His presence is everywhere, and that my role, whether it be one of teacher, wife, mama, friend...it's all done under His watchful eye and becomes a catalyst to know Him more.

and oh. i want to know Him more...


join me?

earth is crammed with heaven

and every common bush afire with God;

but only he who sees takes off his shoes.

the rest sit around it and

pluck blackberries.

elizabeth barrett browning

in the quiet...

i've been told this little one could come any day...

i feel like she could come any day.


and my older three, the ones who sense that change is coming, the ones who try to snuggle as close as they can, the ones who struggle with fears of being displaced, they hover close.


and i feel quiet.

even in spaces loud and crowded, i feel quiet.

today, the doors were opened and so many children and families walked through those doors of that old school.  i awoke tired, i walked tired, i moved tired and i was worried that all that tiredness would follow me in...

i walked into a blanket of peace.

oh, i was still tired, still quiet, but the calls of merry christmas and feliz navidad and hands reaching out to rest on my belly, it was a cacophony of peace...

women with skin lovely and darker than mine, voices accented with beauty, they reach out and i see it in their eyes - the knowing.  the knowing of what it is to be a mama, to have walked tired in those long, last days, and i find myself wrapping my hands around their own and in those moments...


all those moments that have been so empty,

all those moments that silently scream with a mocking to all that this season means,

all those moments that point to empty chairs and broken hearts and shattered lives and estranged families...


He fills them.

quietly and simply.


tony, he was up at 4 and left at 6 and lyla crawled into bed with me at 6:15...

i listened to her breathe quiet and soft as elias banged around his room - a morning person - just like his daddy.


and as i left this evening, he said it to me quietly - i'm going to bring a few of them home with me tonight before the night game, and they all laughed at me as i worried over my messy home and it was in that moment that i realized -

it's okay that it's messy.

life is messy and love is messy and God Himself entered into the mess of a barn.


only two came home with him...

at first.

only two and i watched as elias, he crawled up beside these big, tough, intimidating guys - and all those walls, they come tumbling down in the face of an innocent child and as the door bell rang again and again and those shoes kept piling up at our door and bodies kept pouring in and finding room and once the living room was filled, the basement was used and soon there wasn't anymore room there either...

and i found him, with his sweet smile i've loved for over a decade and i found a spot beside him on the floor.


i know some of the stories that filled our walls this evening,

i know some of the brokenness that accompanies each one.

we are all broken to some extent.


and i sat with a home filled to bursting,

laughter and teasing happening all around us,

my children throwing themselves with abandon into the pure joy that a filled home brings...


i sat beside him with my hand on my belly and my family doesn't look the way i ever thought it would, i never imagined that i would find myself on this path that He has placed us on...


and how do i put into words what these last six months have done?  my heart that was so broken that week after christmas 3 years ago, that felt so fragile just 12 months ago, has stretched and grown and wrapped around these kids that seemed so very different from me, but really, truly aren't.


i wrote last year of christmas being shellacked and veneered with impossible expectations, and i still believe it to be true.  when Jesus is no longer the focus, we try and fill in that void with all things pretty and festive but which leave us emptier then before that tree began to twinkle.


the radio plays songs of silver bells and families gathering and if i can't be home for christmas, i'll be there in my dreams, but tonight? tonight, i was home.  and i was surrounded by a ragamuffin group of kids who are just as broken, if not more, and when our DNA is drenched through with the Blood of the Lamb, it doesn't matter the differences in our skin tone - we are family.

and we love.

and we tease.

and we laugh.

and we cry.

and we stand at the door to wave everyone away because no one wants to see a time with loved ones end...

my belly tightens with each contraction.

i don't know what day she'll come...


but He uses what has been knit and formed in the dark of impossible situations, in the dark of humanity, and He causes life to be born.


i'm seeing this a bit clearer these days, in the quiet and the noise.

or maybe, more accurately, it's Jesus i'm seeing a bit clearer in the mess of it all...

in the last days...

i had wanted to document these days better. they are the last ones and i don't want to forget...

i don't want to forget how different this act of carrying has been,

how much more emotional and pain-full and how so very aware i have become of each movement, each flutter...

the heaviness that has begun.


and lyla, the first one i carried through the dark of advent days, she stands in front of me in the late of this evening and asks me to come and sit with her before she sleeps.


i lay my head on the pillow next to hers and we talk.

about nothing and about everything and i remember, and maybe it's because my dark is filled again with the movements of a sweet baby girl, but i remember so strongly that first christmas where i began to understand
the agony of waiting...

 the beauty of waiting...

the desperate wanting for the waiting to end...


she says it with a wonder in her eyes,  this will be my sixth christmas! and as it sinks in, she fingers the edging on the sweater i'm wearing.

mama, why are you wearing this sweater?

~ because i was cold, baby girl.

where did you get your sweater?

~ it was a christmas gift from your daddy...3 years ago now.

i was three, wasn't i?


and it all comes flooding back, that christmas morning where we all sat together - before everything shattered and he was still here...


and this sweater i pulled from my closet in the chill of this morning, it comes from a time when so much was still whole.


and his son, the one who has captured my heart so completely, he pulls me close in the quiet of this evening and we don't have to say anything...he just sits and he holds me as he listens to the song i can't seem to let go of....


and maybe that is why i've been holding on so tightly to the tradition of advent this season, why as it comes closer to the coming of my own baby girl, i so desperately look to the fulfillment of His.

because He came. entered into our messy and the mixed up and the this-isn't-how-it-was-supposed-to turn-out world.  He wrapped Himself up in the womb of a woman and put on this skin that kept Him bound and tied to us...

and there is so much beauty wrapped around the ache...

He came. and even if everyone and everything else all falls apart and walks away...He is here. here and so very present with us.


this is my thirty-third christmas, my fourth little one nestled in my deep...this life of mine that has been planned out before i even existed, His Hand has been on me throughout all of my days.

yes, He is here.


and there is so much joy wrapped around all that i've been given and all that's been taken away...

and tonight, i can rest in that.

letting go...{day 23}

it's in the last few days leading up to the busyness of the coming season that we've been talking a lot about what it means to die to ourselves.  he and i, we aren't naive anymore about the tactics that satan takes to destroy families and marriages and friendships and testimonies.

no, we have walked through those waters.


so, it was when i came across this post that i started digging a bit deeper and began to focus on what all i needed to let go of...

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Colossians 3:5-10 ESV

...before i could be filled up with all that is from Him and Him alone.

and we get up early yesterday morning while it is still dark and little ones are buckled in while still wrapped up in blankies and jammies and sleep. and we drive through the mountains and a bit of snow and clouds and green and we talk quiet and we pray and we focus on Jesus, because only He can take what we so desperately need to let go of.

and we arrive and walk into warmth and we sit back in couches and watch football and we visit and cousins get reacquainted and daddies get sleepy and obscene amounts of pie get consumed and it's relaxed. and the ones who are missing are missed, but it feels a bit different this year, somehow.

but it's as we leave, as we wrap arms around each other and say our goodbyes and i love yous that one by one, the women who are part of this family i married into, they place their hands on my belly to feel this baby move...

 i looked down in that moment, and i'll never forget the overlapping of hands and fingers over my filling.  a silent blessing over this little one who tumbles in my dark. 

because those few minutes, where we all held our breath waiting to feel her, i felt Him move...when we reach out, with hands emptied out, Jesus fills us with life.


and i am thankful.

letting go...{day 18}

this space sits quiet over the weekend...

a bit like me, i guess.


i've breathed through the days as i've looked at the clock, timing waves of contractions that come every 5-7 minutes for hours at a time and i whisper for her to hold on, quiet myself, will my body to keep her in for the next forty days.


and they space out as i breathe slow...

as i slow.


until this morning when everything seemed to shatter under the weight of my voice and my hurt and my anger.  when i found it hard to even keep up with my breathing, let alone my thoughts and as i chose to stay home while everyone else went to church, i found myself trying to breathe through each painful wave.


all those years ago, before tony and the wedding rings and the babies, she let me box up those tea cups from scotland that her man had purchased for her on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

and it's here in this home that i finally unwrapped the last of them and placed them in that hutch in our kitchen.

and in moments uncertain and unsteady, you reach for what brings comfort and what i reached for in that moment was a left-over, fragile piece of my gramma.


and there is a stash of tea that i've made last for almost two years, given in one of the hardest times of my life and when i fail and life seems a bit shaky, i reach for this comfort and curl up around the wounds that settle heart-deep.

and she kicks.

steady and hard.


i place what i have left of my gramma against my hard and swelling belly and this baby? she presses back with a foot or an elbow or a knee...

i can't see either one of their precious faces, but Jesus formed both of them and me and whether here or there, we all sit in His presence.


and she pushes back...

we don't have to keep clutching, holding on to the anger, the hurt, the pain.

they are thorny bedfellows and the pain they drag with them only cause one to spill out a poisonous venom.


we can push back.


and maybe this is where i've wrestled the most - letting go of what has hurt deeply.

this small one, this baby-girl who will make her presence known at some point in a fast-approaching future, she needs to say wrapped up in my skin for a wee bit longer, but what i have clutched tightly to - the wounds that i have allowed to remain open - i need to let these go in to the Hands of The One Who Heals.

and the process - it's pain-full.

but letting go allows for new life to come,

allows for His Peace to course through and soften hard veins.

and so i sit, quiet - and breathe out prayers to the Only One Who can deliver me safely into the coming day where His mercies are new every. single. morning.

letting go...{day 3}

 

so we buy a home and move in officially on the very first of june and i remember how i woke up to the sound of rain on the roof while the sky was still dark that night.

it seemed like a blessing of sorts, because He knows how much i love the rain.


and then the sky seemed to dry up. didn't let go of one drop for four long months and we finally let our yard go because i couldn't keep up and he was changing jobs and this little one changing the shape of me kept me in a state of green and i'm sure whatever colour that lawn lost was somehow permanently transferred to my face.


temperatures climbing up past 100 and the lack of moisture quickly turn what was thriving and growing into something brittle and bleached and it hurt to look at.

he heard that fall is a good time to seed, just before the cold of winter comes and spring is still so far away and i stand at the kitchen window and watch as he walks around the yard scattering grass seed while the rain is coming down in sheets.

he keeps sowing while the rain keeps pouring and by the time he looks up at me and catches my eye, that hood pulled up over his head isn't really needed anymore.


our lives can look a bit like that.

or...more accurately, mine can at least.


life can seem so full of blessing until suddenly that sky above is void of any moisture, any relief from the unrelenting heat of the sun.

death sneaks in and steals someone we love...

families are broken apart and that breech lays open, aching for someone to cross over...

words are spoken that can never be taken back...

friendships drift apart and no one knows how to close that gap...

misunderstandings spark an anger that can rage for a lifetime...


and suddenly, all that is left is a shell dry and brittle with patches here and there that are worn down to dirt by feet that carelessly run over.


it can hurt to look at,

hurt to be near,

and it can seem like irreparable damage has been done and what once was green with life will always be this dark and dull and you can either rip it all up,

give up hope and accept that this is how it will always look,


or you can fill your hands with a hope barely breathing in the waiting and release it into ground parched and hardened when the heat is done scalding and the cold winds begin to blow in...


because this whole summer?  while my body has been swelling with a girl-baby that is now stretching and climbing up my ribs deep in the dark of me, i have been desperately waiting for autumn.

i  knew the rain would come back.


i knew that to walk through each hot, dry day would bring the relief of cooler weather and the beauty of jeweled leaves and cozy blankets and warm fires to sip hot cocoa by.

the last two months, He has been asking me to let go of a number of things...


my wish for family has been one of them.


that part of my heart has been dry and brittle and bleached fragile for a while.

and it seems that whenever my heart would lift up my broken to Him, the heat would come even stronger and soon, it felt that there was nothing left to do but let it all go...

let the hot winds blow and ride it all out

and keep my eyes on that sky wide and blue and void of any clouds.


and I see Him now, sowing the hope that i let go of in all those worn and dirt-filled places.


the landscape doesn't look the same,

i don't think that what will grow up in those places will look like what i expected,


but in lifting open hands to Him, and allowing Him to take what i had clenched so tightly, He is using those bruised and broken prayers to raise something beautiful up.



and the rain?

i stand with hands outstretched under clouds that are letting go and leaving me drenched...

o God, You are my God,

earnestly i seek You;

my soul thirsts for you

my body longs for you,

in a dry and weary land 

where there is no water.

i have seen You in the sanctuary

and beheld Your power

and Your glory.

because Your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify You.

psalm 63:1-3

we could all be one...

at my last appointment, she told me i had 10 weeks and 4 days left.

my heart stopped a little.


this little one, this one already named will be here before i'm ready ~
.

i find myself wondering what she looks like.


and this baby, this unexpected little one,

she already opens doors.


i am learning, always learning, that being a mama does that.


some women feel that they have lost themselves when they are buried under mounds of dishes and laundry and clutter and chaos,

and yes.

yes

i find myself fading into the monotony at times.


as though the dreams i had dreamed and the hopes i had hoped have somehow gone the way of that second sock somewhere deep in the belly of the dryer.

but

He has drawn me out in this season as well.

becoming a mother, in many ways, has made me less afraid.  as though who i always was, who He created me to be, was waiting to be birthed out of my dark and has emerged in ways i never expected or dreamed.

and a mother?

she recognizes another and there is a connecting - even past language barriers and my inability to pronounce a name correctly...even past the busyness swirling around us,

every mother's heart needs to be spoken into.


every woman has the potential to be a mother.

each one.


and every woman needs a mother.


because it's not just a filled and emptied womb that gives this status,

i have seen with my eyes and heard with my ears the words and the love poured out from one woman onto the ears of children not her own.  her love has helped them grow.

why do we shy away from each other?

why do we overlook that sometimes the children He gives are ones not woven from our own DNA? that families are made larger, healthier, whole when we allow Jesus to form our sisters and brothers and mothers and daddies from the very core of Who He Is?

i think of the legacy that we all could leave.

us who are seemingly small,

seemingly insignificant,

the ones who have failed and should be given up on.

us.


He uses the weak to showcase His Glory and wouldn't a ragamuffin lot of us reflect His very face?

maybe.

maybe i'm just rambling in the quiet of the night while my cup of coffee steams and my older two still giggle and this baby girl dances in the dark.

but i can't help but wonder what He could do through hearts completely surrendered and open to Him and to each other...

i want to know what that looks like...

dear dad, when you need to know...

the wind has been blowing outside these windows,

the leaves are beginning to fall.


this small baby inside of me is tumbling in my dark

and you...


you are moving in the presence of God.


i woke up this morning at 4:30, unable to go back to sleep.  i fleetingly thought of you and your habit, the one that found you up and out the door at 4 am to run, no matter the weather that would blow in.

i thought of that cold february morning when the phone rang in the dark, the snow was blowing outside our window then.  i remember the sound of tony's voice as he listened to his mama.  how we heard that your heart had rebelled and you had crawled on your hands and knees on the ice and snow to make it home.  how you fought to live...

we had 10 more months with you.


the last time i had a baby in my belly, the last time i laid down and saw those tiny fingers and toes and spine up on that screen, tony was with you.

you were here.

and i wonder if that's why, when the appointment was all done and he held me in the quiet of that park, if that's why the tears came.

because last time, when your son shared with you that he was going to have a son of his own, you raised your fist and said triumphantly, yes! boys are ahead, 6 to 4!  

you were here to hear the news.

the last time i carried a child in my belly, that child was held in your arms.

all my babies have known you,

they've heard your voice,

they have fallen asleep against you.


this is the first of my four that will never know you.


but i want you to know.

i want you to know that this little one growing in the dark is a sweet baby girl who wiggles and wriggles and is already making us laugh with her stubborn streak that i'm sure you would be proud of.

she may never meet you here on earth's soil, but she will know of you. she will hear of your love for Jesus and how you allowed Him to change you into a man of humility and grace.

and someday she will hear of your struggle, how you gave up at the very end...but even in that, dad, even in that there is hope. 

it took tragedy to shake us out of our complacency and He promises that He takes the ugly of our lives and turns into beauty.  

we can trust that.

and we will teach each of our children, your grandchildren that they can trust Him for that too.


but more than anything, i just wanted to let you know that you are going to be a grandpa again...


and i'm trusting that Jesus will let you know that the girls are catching up...

i love you, dad.

and i miss you...

1511. wide awake at 4:30am
1512. quiet hours before the day starts
1513. moments with Jesus
1514. that she is a girl
1515. watching her wiggle
1516. tony's grace
1517. tears in the park
1518. that he is home for the day
1519. the community of sweet friends we found and still have even though he's moved onto a different job