when it's hard to be still...

"be still, and know that I Am God,

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!"

psalm 46:10

in light of tragedies and loss and and bombs and fear and all those unknowns...


sometimes it's okay to quiet.

to slow.

i don't think you have to know the answers,

though we would like them.

sometimes restlessness rages in because there must be *something* you can do...

and there are times for that.

but sometimes,

maybe the better thing

is just to sit in His presence.

to allow Him to quiet your heart from all those fears and from all the unknowns.


and maybe it's naive -

that mama and i talked in that playground last week,

we talked of those "what ifs",

what if, as we sat there on that green, a bullet flew and one of us died,

if one our children were struck,

what then?

and she said it quiet,

i would still trust Him.  i would. because i know where we are going and i know Who is in control.  but maybe that's foolish.  a lot of my friends think so...

and i looked at her and i shared what we've lost. i shared of that horrid new year's eve and the life we lost in the softly falling snow.  i looked at her and i told her that it's faith. it's trusting in a good God when everything else falls apart.

because when it all seems good, when everything seems to be going our way, that is precisely when we need to plant those seeds of faith...

so that when it all falls apart, when everything around us explodes in chaos and all those unknowns fly in the air around us, we can rest in His presence,

maybe not knowing the whys, but knowing, so very deep down, that He is good. 

3 gifts round
2058. mug of coffee
2059. crispy apple
2060. that dimple under her lip

3 gifts white
2061. clean teeth
2062. lazy, hazy clouds
2063. apple blossoms in those orchards

3 gifts surprisingly found
2064. kindred spirits
2065. matching socks
2066. common ground

3 gifts in His Word
2067. luke 10:22 - my name is in heaven
2068. romans 1:12 It is a gift to be encouraged by another's faith
2069. acts 2:28 - He shows us the path to life - being with Him is joy

3 gifts @ 11AM, 2PM, 6PM
2070. school chaos
2071. nap snuggles with zeruiah
2072. laughter at MH

3 gifts nailed together
2073. this house
2074. the fence the  neighbour fixed
2075. my desk

3 gifts waited for
2076. that abused dog we adopted - her tail finally wagged when she saw us!
2077. vacation plans finalized
2078. those cherry trees to bloom

3 gifts raising up
2079. 8 hours of sleep uninterrupted
2080. seeing beauty in our ashes
2081. watching the sun come up in the early nursing hours

a gift hiding, held, heard
2082. elias under his blanket
2083. zeruiah snuggled up in that ergo
2084. lyla singing

3 gifts opened up
2085. yellow tulips
2086. jar of salsa
2087. a book avoided too long

3 gifts budding/blooming
2088. our japenese weeping willow
2089. hyacinths
2090. those flowers hanging over our fence

3 gifts worn
2091. that circle of gold and diamonds on my finger
2092. skin stretched, changed
2093. zeruiah's tears

3 gifts bright
2094. date night
2095. all their smiles
2096. 6 AM morning light

3 gifts found looking up
2097. dark rain clouds
2098. the cross that points to hope
2099. tony's hope beyond circumstances

and it's in the little ways,

the small thanks that keep me quiet before Him.

He is here - even when it's chaos,

even when it's scary and we don't understand.

Jesus is here and i quiet my heart before Him...

(and huge thank you to Gravrock Photography for including our little family in the pictures at Madison House...a gift treasured.)

when it's been three years...

the snow fell today, quiet and soft...

i lit a candle in my kitchen window as i turned the pages of that old and worn prayer book;

found the day marked with this day

and everything that it holds.


it's been three years since he walked out that door...

three years and we didn't even know he had walked into heaven's glory.


and those words, words penned around 400 years ago...

they still hold truth in their cry to Emmanuel - God with us - and i lifted my voice up in the quiet of the falling snow...

ah, God! Behold my grief and care. Fain would i serve Thee with a glad

and cheerful countenance, but i cannot do it.

however much i fight and struggle against my sadness, 

i am too weak for this sore conflict. help me in my weakness,

o Thou Mighty God!

and give me Thy Holy Spirit to refresh and comfort me in my sorrow.

amid all my fears and griefs i yet know that i am Thine in life and death,

and that nothing can really part me from Thee;

neither things present, nor things to come,

neither trial, nor fear, nor pain.

and therefore, o Lord, i will still trust in Thy grace.

Thou wilt not send me away unheard.

sooner or later Thou wilt lift this burden from my heart, 

and put a new song in my lips;

and i will praise Thy goodness and thank and serve Thee here

and forevermore ~

amen

s. scheretz (1584-1639)

dad - for those few short years you called me daughter, thank you. i miss you. more than words can say...

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 30}

i started out to write 30 posts about letting go...

and my computer stopped a few - odd connection issues refused to connect and so i'd wait for a few minutes and then head to bed...trusting that maybe my silence was better than my words.


because in the silence, He worked in my heart.


and i don't think i've come to any earth shattering conclusions about what letting go truly means...because letting go isn't earth shattering.  we are called, as followers of Jesus, to lay down our lives, to pick up His cross and follow Him - and as my hands empty they simultaneously fill as i choose to do what He asks.

the purposeful act of letting go of what holds me back or drags me down or pulls me away is needed and continual but worth it because of the treasure i find in Him.


during this past month, i've finally joined the bandwagon and picked up this book and started to read. and it's these words that i read late last night that i keep coming back to throughout this day,

walking in genuine intimacy and full surrender to God requires great faith.

"what are you doing right now that requires faith?" that question affected me deeply because at the time i could think of nothing in my life that required faith. i probably wouldn't be living very differently if i didn't believe in God...

life is comfortable when you separate yourself from people who are different from you...that epitomizes what my life was like: characterized by comfort.

but God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through.

francis chan - crazy love

to let go -  to truly let go of my dreams, hurt, pain, anger, unforgiveness and even wishing that i knew the why of some situations - is hard. it's messy and i seem to make a mess of it even more...

but throughout this month, the one thing i have kept coming back to - that everything always seems to come back to - i keep coming back to Jesus.

i keep coming back to the freedom found in Him when the only thing i'm holding on to is His grace.

so i stand at the edge of another december.  another holiday that is missing so many.  days leading up to the days that still hold so many questions and so much hurt.  and almost three years after the fact, after the shattering and the suicide and the most unhappy of new years, i am feeling the joy again, the anticipation of celebrating that moment when Emmanuel left His heavenly home, wrapped Himself up in our fragile, dusty skin and became God With Us.

And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?

My hope is in you.

(Psalm 39:7 ESV) 

so what do i wait for? do i wait for the dark days to overwhelm and discourage again - or do i push back by looking up...to Him?

because that is the only way to be able to let go, i think.

the only way to truly let go of it all, is by lifting up my eyes to the One Who bled grace on the cross and  clinging to Hope in Jesus with everything i have...

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.

from their yard...

i hear them before i see them, that brother and sister with their hands intertwined and something clutched between all twenty fingers.

i hear their laughter before i see their smiles and as they come around that corner, their bright faces light up my own.

it takes me a moment to realize that what's held so tightly is for me.

we picked this for you. it's from our yard...

and suddenly my hands are full of bright pink petals and they are gone before i can say thank you.


i sit across from another mama and her sweet friend this afternoon - cups of hot coffee between all of us and i watch their faces soften as they share...

and this mama, she was up all night with her sick little boy and i hear her heart, see the tiredness in her eyes...

i was eighteen when she was born.

she was fourteen when her arms were filled with her small son and i look at both girls and i want to cup their faces and tell them how beautiful they are, how strong they are...

and how much Jesus loves them.


i want a cup of coffee to be strong enough to fix everything broken and wrong.

i want it to be strong enough to heal broken families and keep kids out of gangs and bring back runaway mothers and keep daddies out of jail.

an hour of time doesn't seem long enough...


and it never will be.


it never will be long enough until He is invited into each moment and i choose to be emptied...

i think of that little boy, the one with the five loaves and two fish who allowed his hands to be emptied of what would fill him, placed it all in the Hands of the Creator and watched Jesus feed over five thousand hungry bellies.

aren't our hearts more ravenous than our stomachs that need to be continually filled? aren't they starved for Him?


it's as I'm sitting outside while the playground is swirling in chaos around me, as my three get lost in the bedlam and my fourth nestles in close under my heart, it's there that i open up my hand and catch the full picture of the gift i've been given ~

broken and imperfect and lovely and achingly beautiful, it's a picture of each one of us.  we can choose to remain hidden away, clutched close because of what we lack and what's missing, but i am learning that those places that are gaping and wounded deep in us are the ones He tenderly offers to those who walk gaping and wounded around us.


each petal missing, each loaf of bread that seems to be lacking, that fish that seems to be too small, those sixty minutes that fly by too quickly - He uses it all.

He uses us ~ 

miracle in and of itself...


and in the middle of it all, when i find myself up in the dark of the early morning because my heart is heavy with the knowing. when what i have carried on my thirty three year old shoulders feels like it will break me and how do fifteen year old shoulders bear up under it all? when He hears and makes sense of what i can't even voice and holds each tear that falls over children that have filled my heart with love straight from His Own - i can sense it, how in the unfurling of my fingers over wounds clenched tight to protect, He intertwines the pain and beauty and cups it all together with joy...

in everything...

it seems to come in the quiet of those late hours, those feelings that you've failed and you're too broken and all the things that you did that you wish you didn't come back to haunt and you feel broken.

wasted.

useless.


when it seems like what the future holds is too much and the resources you have are too little and how in the world are you going to make it?


he came in late and tired last night, sat down in the couch near me and rested his head on the back of that pillow.

with his eyes close, he said my name,

talk to me, kimberley.


and it comes pouring out, the pain, the fear, the shame and he listens all quiet and sure.

and he knows because he's carried his own pain, regrets, scars...

he's shouldered a lot of my own heavy as well.

he knows.


and we sit there, together, in the silence.


sometimes we need to be still so we can know He is there.

(photo credit: becky frame)

and his own burdens come out, story by story,

of the siblings whose mama walked away 3 years ago, of their daddy in prison and the oldest boy working a full time job plus taking on the responsibility of school and taking care of the younger ones...

of the children with no running water...

of the broken and shattered families who come to dinner each evening...


brokenness is everywhere.

everywhere.

and after we read through the first chapter of ezra together, he says quietly in the lamplight,

maybe everything we've been through, everything that has left a scar, has been placed there beautifully by the Hand of God so that we could be prepared for what He had been preparing for us here...


i can't get it out of my head...

that thought.

each scar, each pain-filled moment, has a purpose, a use.


a friend sat at my table this afternoon while i scooped up cookie dough onto those parchment-lined pans.  she shared from her heart as my cookies failed, again - spread out and didn't hold together.

she made a comment,

maybe my scars don't heal over completely so that He can use that pain...

can our pain be a balm for another hurting heart?


His scars, that He will carry throughout all of eternity, continually point out the life and healing He offers - should i really be surprised that my scars never, really, completely go away either?


the last few days have been filled with the reminder that the secret to joy is found in seeing Him in everything.

most especially in the pain-filled-everything.

it was in the pain-filled words of eli the priest, after the Lord came to the child named samuel and called him by name - when the message from God was anything but good...

but it's there, straight from the mouth of the man who received such horrible news,

He is the Lord; let Him do what is good in His eyes. 

1 samuel 3:18

i can come before Jesus and ask for painful situations to change, i can beg for a different outcome, i can hope for a better tomorrow, but sometimes, sometimes what He asks is for us to embrace what hurts and receive it as straight from His Hands.

He is good.

we can trust that.

and while we may not be able to understand why He allows what He allows, we can be open vessels, willing and waiting for Him to use you and me.

because He takes our broken, what should be thrown away and discarded and amazingly and for reasons i can't even comprehend, He uses it - all of it for His glory.


how can i not praise Him?

if i see God in everything, He will calm and colour everything i see! perhaps

the circumstances causing my sorrows will not be removed and my situation will remain the same,

but if Christ is brought into my grief and gloom as my Lord and Master, He will "surround me with songs of deliverance" (ps 32:7) To see Him and to be sure that His wisdom and power never fail and His love never changes, to know that even His most distressing dealings with me 

are for my deepest spiritual gain, is to be able to say in the midst of bereavement, sorrow, pain and loss, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord

be praised" (job 1:21).

...nothing but seeing God will completely put an end to all complaining and thoughts of 

rebellion.

~hannah whitall smith

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

quiet thoughts...

i've had lots of thoughts and this space hasn't been the place to share them...moments of hard wrestling  that are tender and private and so this place has become quiet.


i read the words somewhere, penned by someone who probably would never have realized the impact of their words, that when a blog is neglected, it is akin to suicide for the keeper of said blog.

of sorts.

i don't know if i would have worded it that way personally, but in the middle of all the quiet here, i've wondered why i share my small and unrefined thoughts...why i make it public when those pages bound  and private and easily closed and shelved aren't enough.

because they are.  the words i haven't shared here have filled the pages there and yet, it's almost 11 and i find myself in front of a blank screen with that blinking cursor that flickers as it waits, as though it's a metronome keeping time to the pauses and starts. and while i try and reign in words and thoughts it holds infuriatingly steady.



i think a lot is changing, a lot has had to change. in my heart, in my parenting, in our marriage.  and maybe it took until today, maybe even yesterday, to see how i have gone from desiring to be transparent before Jesus to feeling as though i need to guard my heart and my dreams from Him. which, is so incredibly foolish on my part, but maybe there's someone out there who understands? understands what it feels like to stand in the middle of the road...that one you've been walking on for months only to realize that what started out as smooth is actually rather rocky, and it's only become rocky because you took your eyes off of Jesus and instead of keeping your eyes on the Only One Who knows how to get where you are supposed to go, you focused on everything else.  the hard things. the past things. the broken things.

and suddenly, your feet aren't even on the road anymore at all.


suddenly, you're scraping along in the gravely parts on the side of the road,


and the only way back to where He is, is done in the quiet.

it's those words that are spoken from the pulpit to the congregation, from the lips of fathers to bless their children, from the pen of jude "to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ...", it's those words that keep making their way into my heart this evening;

now to Him Who is able to keep you from stumbling

and to present you blameless before the presence 

of His glory with great joy...

jude 24

He is able to keep my feet from stumbling...

and i think when the journey becomes hard, or the way unclear or the sin that is so buried deep within my DNA breaks through, i forget that while He is able,

 i am too.

not to keep my own feet from stumbling, but to reach out, to call out, to strain to keep my eyes on Him.

and until i see that and believe it far deeper into my soul so that it changes and transforms my old into His New, i wonder if my feet will always find their default in a detour all scraped up and bloody.


maybe?

but a journey, whether loud or quiet, never stops moving for long. we may take moments to catch our breath or capture a scene or rest our bodies for a night...but the movement is constant, always taking us forward and He'll lead us there, to Himself...

just lift up your eyes and keep them on Him.

the beauty of Home...

they have been on my mind, these last few weeks...more so these last few days.

unsure why, the memory of them sweep over me as i bend down and pick up, straighten and sweep, vacuum and put away.

i've been going back and visiting, walking through rooms no longer ours and allowed the emotion of each space to fill my memory with bittersweet emotion and i wonder,

really wonder,

where is home?

in almost-eleven years of marriage, there have been 8 different addresses.

i remember, in the months before i became his missus that i said,

i don't want to stay in any one place for long. let's move every 2 years. let's be adventurous and see as much as we can...




and for the first little bit? it's what we did, kept moving, kept seeing, kept discovering together...

and then i thought i was home.


has this space heard enough of that little yellow house? the one with the saw dust insulation all settled near the foundation; the cracks in the windows that let in the -40 winds straight from the north...has my heart heard enough?

i find myself lost there and longing for there, reaching for something no longer mine.

and i grieve.

again.


and i pick up.

again.


and sit down in front of the window that looks towards the hills, the ones that lift my eyes up and remind me where my Help comes from.

because He is there...

here...


always.

i remember saying, when we first moved here, that home isn't the space that we put our feet on, it's the hearts that surround me, no matter where we are.


so we move, once again, this time into a home that bears our name, the one that as we first pulled up to, i looked at and laughed and said,

well, that's easy. we can cross this one off the list before we ever go inside.


but then we go inside and all i want to do is hug these walls and make it our own, cozy down in front of the woodstove with a good book and a blanket and a hot cup of coffee.  i want to bake bread here and grow friendships here and encourage dreams here and i want to live.


i want to live here and make it home.


i want to live again.

i buy flowers and plant them and watch them wither and die in the heat of this valley, despite the water and the hope i keep pouring over them, except for that dahlia right there in the corner.  she grows strong.

and i place markers of His Presence, right there on our home.  the one that shelters the ones i love most and i plunk it right there by the plant that smells of jasmine, stake a claim, an anchor of belief in Him that everything beautiful, begins with God.

and i read it, in the dark and with tears streaming down, of bonhoeffer, the man who found deep joy in the darkest of prisons,

bonhoeffer...{was} all humility and sweetness, he always seemed to diffuse an atmosphere

of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere

fact that he was alive...he was one of the very few men that i have ever met

to whom his God was real and ever close to him.

~p. best

and the truth of it is, the very base truth is found in those words nailed right there near that red door of mine that welcomes you in,

in His presence is fullness of joy,

and His presence is everywhere.

no matter how long these walls are our own, it will always be temporary...

home is waiting for me,

being prepared for me...

home is where Jesus is and all this waiting, all this life is just the road that leads me there.

but until then, until that moment when i finally see His Face,

i will mark us as His Own here, i'll surround us with the truth that we are His,

and we will find joy in these moments because every one of them, no matter how held-together or broken,

each one can find beauty in Him..

disclaimer: 

i received these beautiful products from dayspring free of charge in exchange for my honest review...all photos, thoughts and opinions are my own.

when it's fading...

he stops the van and opens the doors in the shade of those trees that stand tall in the heat of the afternoon and i lean my head back as the bedlam pours outside into the quiet of the space around us.

he looks at me with a question in his eyes and a hand outstretched and i pause for a moment before putting my feet on the ground.


he knows me - stopping here shows this.


i watch the girls run and elias try to keep up while falling down on the soft grass.  i listen to them call out for us to read names to them - to give word to the ones who used to be here but are now long forgotten.

the lack of flowers shows this.

words like pioneer and gettysburg and lynchburg and other places where great wars were fought and dates like 1881 etched in stone grounds me somehow.  as though this new life growing inside of me and life long gone underneath my feet reminds me of how small i am and how unfathomable He is.


he brings me to a cemetery in the midst of a period of waiting and i can breathe deeply again.


his dad, reduced to ash and scattered over an ocean and on the top of a mountain, and there is no place to go and lay down flowers...i've been longing for this lately.  for some place to go.

instead, we walk through stone faded by sun and rain...dates that are worn down and barely discernible and i read aloud names i don't recognize and wonder when the last time someone knelt down beside their final resting place and truly remembered who they were.


we give them their final warning...the oldest and youngest get 5 mintues, olivia gets 4. but really, they all get 5 mintues, liv is just convinced that 4 is the best number in the world and with a longer time frame than any other number we can call out.

and it's as we turn left that i notice that tree and we walk towards it and i say to him that something looks funny, out of place and we come closer when i see,

and i stop, can't really move. not because i recognize the name;  the tree has already begun to swallow it up. i stop because i recognize something and i'm not sure what. and so i wait.

the last date, the only date that i can read, is 1912.  100 years ago this man was mourned and could this tree have been planted then?  i wonder who loved him and who came faithfully to lay down bits of colour to as a tribute to loss?

did they see the trunk grow closer, the bark open up and start to grow around?



it's not until later, when the three are finally quiet and tony is sleeping beside me that i realized what i had recognized in the cool of the tree that was swallowing up a memory.


you, me? we are all dead men and women walking, sin is eating us alive and because of how it is woven in and around our very dna, we don't always see how it is slowly killing us.

but Jesus.

and here is what my soul responded to...

His death on that tree conquered the sin that was destroying me - the moment i whispered those words that i believed that He was the Son of God, i became His.


and those words i have heard over and over throughout my life took on a whole new meaning when i stood there at the grave of a man i didn't know,

for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

colossians 3:3

someday, when my body has been laid beneath the ground and i am standing fully alive in the presence of my Savior, my life that was hidden in Him will no longer show any markings of the sin that died when i trusted in Him.

someday, it will all be swallowed up and i will be whole and complete

with Him.

when it's dark you can hear it...

the house was silent and everyone sleeping, except me and this keyboard sitting on top of my lap.  the tapping of keys pressed down rings out loud and i'm sure someone, someone small, will awaken to all the quiet noise echoing out in that 1AM dark. but they sleep - all three of them and that man beside me.

they breathe deeply of the cool night air from a window cracked open and it's a quiet i don't want to let go of.

because when something changes, turns, shifts or breaks, the slightest movement only seems to emphasize the shock.

i wasn't ready.


so i sat typing words in the quiet of the dark.

there is comfort there in the repetition of verses where only the fingers dance while a soul fights to still.


because it's on the grass outside that school where she finally broke down.

where she screamed low and guttural and all the pain and hope and anguish and dreams collided into one another when she realized,

we weren't going back.

that here really did mean home and roots and there was a chapter closed.

i think she thought, when that offer was put on that house clear across town that those four yellow walls complete with that white trim that used to bear the name home would actually be ours again.

the air was crisp that night too - and her face was flushed with grief.


and each night since then, sleep has been hard to come by.

and i sit up, after each one is finally breathing slow and soft and listen to the silence that only the dark can bring.

until two nights ago.

frogs, crickets, even those dogs all howling like crazy - they were quiet and the air seemed heavy with silence only broken by the soft click of my lamp being turned off for the night.

cocooned in my blankets i waited for sleep when i heard it soft and sweet.

starting out as though timid, the notes were stilted and slow until she picked up a tune, a rhythm, and that lonely bird warbled out a  lullaby wrapped up in the black of a midnight sky.

He wasn't lost on me, in that moment small yet holy ~ 

everything else can give way: the comfort, the light, the hope we cling to so tightly.  it can vanish in the blink of an eye and we are left stunned.  shocked.  unable to really even think.

He says that we are the light of the world, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden - that in the darkest moments we are to shine most brightly for Him because He, The Very Light of this World we find ourselves in, dwells in our very own darkness that He has redeemed.

the darkness, though heavy and confusing is the most beautiful contrast to the Life giving Light that He is because He cannot be hidden, regardless of the circumstances.  There is hope - always there is hope - our eyes just need to be opened to see.


and this i am learning, that the ones that can move my heart the most and lift my eyes to Jesus, are the notes that hover suspended in the pitch of the night.

so sing, even if what comes out of your mouth is broken, bathed in tears and cracking with pain.


He hears it - that love song of the brokenhearted that refuse to let go of His Hand.

dear dad,

it's on the days that decisions loom large and life throws us a curve ball.

when i stand on a floor not my own and my eyes fill as i look into the ones of my husband,

your son,

and watch him step up

and in

to the shoes that your feet should be here to fill.


it's on days like today when we need you


and you are no longer at the other end of that phone.


days like today when more than anything,

i wish i could say the words to you that i miss saying so desperately ~

i love you, dad.


and so i whisper them out loud,

to the air that is empty around me and trust that Jesus will let you know.

it's on days like today when grief blindsides

and i feel like i can't breathe

because i want to scream at something,

someone,

and beg you to come back.


because we weren't done needing you.


we weren't.


you would have been so proud today,

so proud of that son of yours.


proud of his mind,

his desire to make the right decision,

proud of who he is becoming.


i think you would have smiled at the way he wondered at what you would have done,

and i think you would have nodded when his decisions mirrored your own.


i think you would have laughed

at the three who bear your name.

the way they tumbled and yelled and drove their mama crazy.


you would have told me stories of the loudness of your own six,

you would have put your arms around him and i,

and you would have told us you were praying for us.


and maybe,

maybe we weren't done needing you.

and we will never be done missing you,

but He is near in these moments that are blinded with tears,

He is so very close when we feel lost in the vastness of decisions and choices.


and as i breathe out in the quiet of this evening that feels so heavy,

breathe out air laced with tears and grief and pain...

i breathe in the promise of His Presence ~

because when we are broken,

He is here...

in the sun...

i stay wrapped up in blankets this morning;

the sun pours in and i open up those curtains.


while the little ones sleep, i sneak into the kitchen and grab those plants that sit by the sink...

i carry that green in my hands and sit them in the sun.

and i watch them.

for an hour, maybe a little bit more, i watch them strain and straighten,

reach for the light beyond the glass.


i think of two cemeteries visited today ~

two different cities,

for two different reasons.


one grave filled,

the other being filled,


both surrounded by ones who love.



he talked of his dad on the way home from getting food for the fridge,

talked of what he learned from the one who raised him

and i got quiet sitting beside him.


he turned to me when i didn't respond,

asked me what i was thinking

and the words quivered out,


sometimes i wish he had made a different choice.



and it's those plants i think of for most of the day,

as graves and memories and tears run all together,

that it's here in the waiting,

in all of this waiting ~

we are striving,

straining,

reaching

for the Light Who is Home.


the tears that fall, fall because our hearts have loved.

they still love.


but i am learning, in small and simple ways,

that the way to find hope and joy in grief

is to turn my face towards the Son...


and someday,

some glorious, wonderful, amazing day,

there will be no more separation between Him and i.


all the striving and straining and reaching and turning that fills up this life,

this life that longs for Him but seems to always hit hard against the immovable unseen,


the barrier will be lifted and this path that leads up to that moment,

the one paved with tears and confusion and questions,


it will become the altar that i offer my thanksgiving on,

because all of this that this life is,

is leading me Home to Him...


and that which separates the seen from the unseen,

what allows these eyes to catch fleeting glimpses of His glory?

it only builds the anticipation...

they may think you are silly. even if you ask for proof...

i find that space in the very back of the sanctuary,

that chair lost in the corner and place myself there.


i sit beside the one who calls me daughter while my husband grieves another loss,

another passing that changes the landscape of this family that has become my own.


i sit quiet,

lost in thoughts and memories...


but it's that blonde haired little one who has caught my attention,

all snuggled up between her parents.


my eyes keep drifting to them,

to the adoration on that daddy's face.


and it's as the last song is sung,

as she is caught up in her mama's arms that i notice her daddy reach over and take her hand...

and hold it.


mama keeps swaying with the tempo of the notes

but that daddy just doesn't let go.

can't take his eyes off of his little girl...

and it aches.



that's when i feel it,

that gentle pressure on half of my head,

as though someone has laid their hand on top of me.

and i sit confused because there is only a wall behind me,

no reason for what i'm feeling...


that sermon, those songs, that scene in front of me -

are all woven with the words that speak of a Father's Love for His Son and His children and i feel a soft warmth surrounding me and i wonder...

could He have His Hand on me right now?


and it's preposterous.

and i feel stupid for even entertaining the thought,

even though i can't help but wonder...


i feel foolish asking,

in the quiet of the song,

but i ask it anyways...


is it You?

and if it is, could you maybe move a finger or two?  You know, just to show me i'm not being silly?




i sit perfectly still,


and breathe...


and wait...


and in the quiet of that corner i sit in,

i feel the unmistakable movement of

one,


two,


three,


four,


five


fingers lifting and coming back down to rest gentle on my head.


the day ahead of me?

it was still hard.

tired and emotional, i blundered many moments and things.

still felt weighed down and heavy by everything swirling around us.

and yet, the thought stayed with me all day when i would begin to feel overwhelmed ~


because that corner that i felt a tad lost in?

He found me there.


He laid His Hand on top of me 

and i am a daughter found.

i am a daughter who can't help but say, thank You...

3 gifts in the kitchen...
1339. family
1340. friends who have become family
1341.that pink kitchen-aid

3 gifts loud...
1342. lyla
1343. olivia
1344. elias

3 gifts carved...
1345. my hope chest
1346. that picture frame his dad made
1347. the memories of now on my heart

3 gifts in Christ...
1348. i am a new creation
1349. i have been redeemed
1350. i am forgiven

3 gifts read...
1351. 2 corinthians 3-4
1352. dietrich bonhoeffer
1353. the gift of words place in my inbox each day

a gift in wind, in water, in white...
1354. the memories of where home was in the whipping of the air here
1355. the raindrops rolling down
1356. the snow that swirled first

home...

it's almost midnight and if i don't crawl beneath those covers in the  next 10  minutes that second wind is going to hit and i'll be awake until 2...

and i was going to let today pass because sometimes i feel like my words here are too many...and it's another post and another date and another milestone for this family and who really wants to hear about that?


tonight, my heart is heavy.


again.


this past week has seemed filled with tears that i can't seem to explain to a husband who wants to understand, to children who kiss away the wet on this face...


tonight, the emotions feel quiet but need to get out and that's okay.


there is a family member who is passing away,

over that pass.

i don't know her well,

but i love the ones who do.


and i have been here one year today.

one year.


and it's never ending,

this losing and filling;


this feeling of being completely lost

and completely found.


and i don't know how to grasp what is contrasted this evening in the quiet of the dark

as elias tosses and olivia whispers out sleep-nonsense and lyla breathes heavy.


i look at them,

listen to them,

and wonder...


we all end up losing everything here,

everything that's under our feet.


but when we know Him,

we gain everything.


but it's those in between spaces that ache,

when who and where you are is Known,

but not.


tonight, instead of my oldest, it's me who grieves and celebrates,

because i miss what was

but wouldn't trade anything for where we are now.


that town, those friends...

i miss them.

this town, these friends...

are home.




but it's all laced with a hurt i can't place...


i know The One Who led us here.

The One Who knows how to define what i can't.


He sees what i can't,

He stills this soul when i can't sit down...



and maybe...

He allows this ache in the in between

to keep us longing for Him...


longing for Home...

when you wait for the blooming...

he hung himself on that tree and died there.

but it wasn't just him who died...

so many other things died too.


i have thought, however naively,

that time and distance could ease and heal,

but instead, i find myself barely able to breathe as the clock climbs nearer to midnight.


i stood outside this evening, in the dark.

i threw that trash in the bin and closed the lid

and looked up...


i felt so small and alone as i looked into the milky white of a moon half dark...


tonight, grief sinks deep.


and in the moments that breathing hurts so deeply that the tears run freely,

i find myself asking why?.


i brought out the amaryllis bulb late,

planted it in the dirt even later and the single shoot stubbornly pushing through was pale and anemic.

 i wondered if it would survive.


it sits by my sink, close to that window and that stem grows higher, gets greener, tilts towards the source of light it desperately tries to get closer to.

so i turn the dirt-filled-ceramic so that what is growing grows strong and straight and i wait to see the bloom that has been promised...


and i wonder, as i look closer at the ugliness of that seed -

because i can see where it split, where life pushed through to escape the confines of death and dark and i wonder if in the cracking open, if it hurt.


i wonder about a plant with no brain, no nerve endings and worry that it feels pain?

but maybe it's because the ugly of that morning,

where more than just a man died;

love died,

dreams died,

plans died,

hope died,

a father died,

who we were died,


and it hurt.




and moving on,

watching the old split open to let the new come through

is painful.




and yet...


He uses even the pain-full to turn us to Him.

not content to allow us to grow bent over and bitter

He allows that which leaves us feeling dizzy

and confused

and lost

and grieving

so that we find He is the Only stability in a world so crooked and broken.


how He loves!

my world can be shaken,

but rooted in Him, i am not moved.

life can spin and dance and warble and swim with tears,

but it is His Life that breaks through what is dead and pulls me closer to Him.


grief was birthed the morning he hung himself on that tree,

but so was something new.

and while it appears ugly at times,

He has promised life,

abundant and full.


and soon, i'll see it bloom...

 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being,so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love,may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.


 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

ephesians 3:16-21