because she is *still* seven...

she stands so close to me,

our forearms touching.


her hands are absentmindedly playing with her dress.


and she asks if she can sit on my lap.


she's seven and when did she become so tall?

when did she grow to the point that she no longer folds herself into me?


it's all moving so fast.


too fast.


and she laughs at me when i whisper it,

when i ask her to stop growing.

when i ask her to make time stop,

or at least put an encyclopedia on top of her head.


her gap-tooth smile stretches wide across her face,

her freckles, all sprinkled, stand out against her fair skin -

and i want to cup these moments

and find a way to dam up the spilling of seconds that just keep ticking by.


but instead, she's one more day closer to eight,

one more day lived and passed through

and i'm not going to get those moments back.


i want those moments back,

if just to live them out better.


if just to remember to kiss the tip of her nose one. more. time.


tomorrow, i want to laugh with her more,

to read just one more chapter,

to pull her onto my lap,


before she doesn't fit anymore...

to the one who hides behind *the fine*...chapter 4 {the grace series}

even in laughter the heart may ache,

and joy may end in grief.  proverbs 14:13

it's okay to not be fine.

it's okay to stand and say, i'm a mess. it's a mess...*life* is a mess.

it's okay to come out from behind the facade and sit bare and broken and bruised.

i know - it doesn't feel like it.

the last thing that anyone freely embraces is vulnerability - it's scary and open and intimate.

you have that reputation to uphold and that strength everyone seems to rely on and aren't you the one who always seems to keep the peace? make everything better?

make everyone laugh?

yeah...

that's you.

and her.

and me.

i sit surrounded most days, by the most vulnerable among us. 

my own children and other mothers children.

more often than not, there is laughter.

lots of laughter...

but there are the days when the veneer cracks just a little and you are let in to the broken places and there is nothing you can do but reach out a hand and try and cup around that hurt with the little you have and trust the God Who is big enough to be enough.

my own little girl,

her veneer cracked wide open this afternoon - the fine she was trying so bravely to hide behind wasn't strong enough anymore and she just needed to hear, needed to know that the heart she grew under would always beat strong for her - would never stop loving her. would never stop pulsing to the rhythm of her mama's love for her.

she needed to know that who she was behind her fine had worth.

i pulled her close onto my lap, wiped those tears away and she leaned her ear over this heart and she listened.

...so often, the idea that we have to keep it together no matter what is what keeps
good girls from coming out from behind our sweet, smiling exteriors. we believe 
that any amount of broken mess disqualifies us from useful activity for God, so
we determine to stay decidedly broken.  

grace for the good girl (pg. 51)

and being broken begins to take many forms,

conforming you to the ideals and ideas of the people around you until you either become hopeless or angry or both and then you spiral downward again because the good always take the middle - doesn't everyone know that leaning to the right or to the left, even just a little, is bad.

feeling scared meant i needed more faith. feeling anger

meant i needed more control. feeling confused meant i 

needed to get it together and figure things out. in theory, i knew

i was supposed to cast my fear, anger, confusion on the Lord.

but after "trusting" Him with my circumstances, i thought

it was my responsibility to change the emotions and keep

myself from experiencing them again.

gftgg (pg. 55)

around and around it goes and the cycle, it never is unbroken because the only thing truly broken

is you.

but you keep clinging to what left you broken, because that is the thing that defines you. that is what you keep coming back to, because that is tangible. and sometimes, even what is ugly can feel safe because it is what feels familiar...

it might be time to let go.

let go of the broken shards that leave you bloody and weak and instead cling tightly to the wild and unpredictable God Whose grace is pure and gentle enough to love you whole.

honesty before God is the only safe place, and i believe He is

wise enough and loving enough and intuitive enough to usher us

into honesty with people...only as i depend on and trust in and fully

disclose to the One Who knows anyway will i be able to discern when

i'm fine-ing someone who deserves genuine...

gftgg (pg. 56)

i've learned it the hard way - 

i've lived believing that in order to be truly authentic, truly vulnerable, one has to fully disclose to everyone.

i wish that i had known better sooner...

i've also learned, through the hard way, that Jesus - the One Who knit me together and ordained all my days - He is trustworthy. and as i've learned to trust Him more, He brings the safe and the trustworthy ones to love me in the middle of my mess.

and it is good.

and it is safe.

and He takes the fine and makes it healed.

or healing...

it depends on the day.

step out from behind the lie of the fine.

yes - there will be those that walk away, there even may be those that will make fun of your risk.

but you will find that it is good - really. it is.

you just have to take that first step...

our fluctuating humanness is there on purpose, to remind

us of our need and draw us to the One Who can meet it. we

don't have to figure out the whys and the origins of every

swinging emotion. but it is so important that we admit they

are there. to embrace the color and fullness of our emotional,

un-fine state is to open wide enough to receive compassion

and grace. only then will we be able to offer that same com-

passion and grace to others in honest and authentic ways.

gftgg (pg. 58)

His overwhelming Grace is waiting...

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...

when they walk away...

i don't think it matters.

i think i'm becoming bold enough to say those words.

i don't think it matters...

you came home this evening and fell onto the bed beside me, as though the day after turning 38 had felt the need to add some extra weight onto your shoulders.

you began saying their names quietly, one after the other. i felt overwhelmed by the number...i hadn't realized they were all related.

and then you said it,

their dad decided that he was done this weekend.  he left. up and walked away...

i don't think it matters...

whether you are six years old or edging closer to forty,

when a parent up and decides you are no longer worth being there for,

nothing compares to that ache.

i didn't hear the gunshots this evening, i only heard the sirens...i saw them all crowding on the front steps and huddled close together.

i was trying to find our three because it was time to go home and i still had one more stop to make.

i got to the door and it was repeated to me, gunshots had been fired, i needed to stay inside.

i knew you were inside,

but the last i had heard, our three were out in that playground.

my kids!! are my kids in the playground??

even i heard the desperation in my voice.


and i felt them all press in close, those children who deal with situations like these on a regular basis i'm sure, as though pressing in close presses in comfort and i was moved back into safety while another went out to search for my own...


they were inside, near you. at least, they knew where you were and they felt safe.  we got out to our van while the police lights were still flashing, while streets were blocked off and i drove away and you stayed behind.

you stayed behind and learned of one more family who has been rejected by a parent and you carry it home.

you stayed behind and listened to the brokenness and filled hands with food to get them through the next few days.

you stayed behind...

 and where can it go but at Jesus' feet?

because it can't go anywhere else. it can't. 

we can't make the parents around us fight for their children,

we can't make dead daddies come back to life,

we can't make mamas stop wandering to circle around and come back home.

you lay beside me in the bed we share and we aren't immune,

our children have experienced their own deep losses,

we wrestle with our own questions and bewilderment.

and in the silence you turn towards me and you say with an intensity i know is stamped with your integrity,

i'm not going anywhere.  do you know that?  i. am. not. going. anywhere.

and i know.  i know, tony.


because you could have walked away at any point. you asked if you could pursue me 2 weeks before you turned 26 and i know what you have faced choosing to stay with me. 

walking away would have been the easy and understandable thing to do.

you turned 38 yesterday and gunshots were fired today and i know that nothing short of death would ever cause you to leave.

and yet there is loss all around us and this is what your life is teaching me every day:  death can be walking alive among us because bitterness eats the living whole and when i begin to turn inward to what hurts, you cup my face and you turn my eyes back to Jesus and remind me that they only way i can walk as one living is to walk with my eyes focused on Him. 

 to lay what hurts down at His feet.

to press in close ~ to each other, to Jesus ~ because to press in close presses in comfort and pushes out what will kill our souls.


i could have celebrated you yesterday and lost you today and yet He gives us one more day together. one more day to walk through and work through and learn to press into.  

and so, even with the heaviness that this day has brought, with the hurt and pain that we walk into everyday, i want to say how thankful i am for the chances that He gives everyday to celebrate you.  

happy birthday, my tony.

i love you.

when eleven years pass by too quickly...

it's up there on our bedroom wall - that moment captured eleven years ago after our i do's had been said and you had kissed me for the very first time...

i looked at those two faces for a while today and was caught up in memories...

and i wondered how time could move so quickly.

your face was the only one i looked for at the top of that aisle, your smile was the one i longed for.

i'll never forget the way you looked as you waited for me...


i am caught by those two faces and while they look so very familiar, i find i don't really know them anymore...

you have white in your hair now, that rich black unmarred when i first saw you...


you walked into that classroom and pulled that toque down over your head, but i caught a glimpse of you and you captured me.

those four years between that moment and the moment you asked to pursue me were filled with so much pain and yet they were worth all of it because when His moment was right for us, i knew i would be safe with you.

your beard is becoming more salt than pepper and there are crows feet by your eyes and those lines carry the truth that you find Hope in every situation, you find something to laugh about no matter how dark the moment and i want to hold the snapshots i have of you now because someday, this day will be a distant memory and i don't want to take you for granted.


she looks so happy, but i know what the next few years would bring for her...for you. those first years weren't easy and you were so patient with her...with me.  your love for her made her stronger...do you know that?  can you even fathom the gift that you are? that girl in the picture - she wears the same skin as me, but i'm not her any longer and there are not enough words to tell you how grateful i am to Jesus and to you for your choice to stay faithful to the one so very timid.

i started praying for you when i was twelve.  i remember the moment.  i remember the coolness of the basement and which wall i was facing when it hit me, i needed to pray for my future husband now. i love that i have been praying for you for 21 years and i love that i have been your wife for 11 and that you are the answer to so much of what i prayed to Jesus for.

i remember the years that we fought with each other, how painful those years were.  i was always trying to run, wild with fear that i was going to fail, trying to prove to you that i would.  you fought for me long before i ever fought for us and your steadiness humbles me, because you could have walked away so very long ago and it makes me love you even more because your love is so very sure and where would i ever want to go but straight into your arms?

the longer we are married, the more i realize how short these days are...each day with you is one less with you and the more i gain the more i lose and time keeps moving us closer to that moment when we will see Jesus face to face and i want to love you well each moment we are given.  i want to find the treasure that is hidden in the light and in the dark and i want to discover all that is priceless in you.

i want to love you well, tony baker.


each year that i write on our anniversary, i include a photo from our wedding day...but today, i am deciding not to. today, i want to capture who we are now...because He has brought us so very far from those vows said with trembling and with hope...

He has brought us here, to a love and a trust and a relationship deeper and truer than i ever dreamed was possible.  He has brought us here in all our brokenness and humanity and allowed us to experience life and all of its ups and downs together...

the faces in our pictures from then and now may bear identical similarities, but the story that He has written on our hearts make us so very different.

so to you, i want to wish a very happy anniversary.

you have my heart and the rest of my days, always.

i love you, so very, very much.

all my love...

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

what to expect...

He spoke it in the quiet of the new year.  that promise of a new thing;

of a way in the wilderness and rivers in a desert.


i thought He was referencing my circumstances.

i should have known He was looking at my heart.

and it came after those 10 long months of wondering,

those 2 months of deciding it was all done,

finished,

complete.


it came in the form of that unexpected extra pink line and i sat down,

hushed,

overwhelmed,

and a tiny bit scared.


because that day had been filled with all of my failures as a mother,

frustrations and impatience coming to a head and they saw the worst of me, those 3 that want to be so close,

and that smallest one, the one whose body is deep within but whose presence i can't feel except for the green tinged moments and the overwhelming cravings for salt,

and i don't want to mess them up.

all week i've been carrying the burden of that recording playing over and over and over,

you're a failure. you're a failure as a mama. 

over and over it played until He stopped it in the dark of last night.


i walked out of the sanctuary of our church and straight into moments only He could have orchestrated ~ five women who reached out and spoke life and hope into a heart that felt as dry and wasted as it has ever felt.  and in those words, as the tears started falling and the hope started filling, i felt it ~ i felt those rivers start rushing into the places parched and dying.


when we love Him,we carry Life within us, whether we are mothers or not.  we carry the ability to speak Life into the heart of another and who knows if that is the moment that the river is released, if that new thing sparks into being.



this mother's day holds more than i expected or dreamed,

but it is filled with Life, no matter how small.

and no matter how tiny,

hope is dancing in the dark...

happy mother's day...

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.

the making of a home, a family...

they came back this spring, as slowly as this season appeared.

one by one they began buzzing circles around small bodies and little ones would cry and i watched those wasps to see where they would go...

and they returned.

they returned to that crack in the eave of the garage...just below the peak i watched them hover around that opening.

the one that opens up into a nest so large it cracked the beams of the joists in the framing of the roof.

the exterminator had been called last fall,

he had sprayed them all dead,

and now it's all buzzing with life again.


they are a nuisance.

they are aggressive.

but they are making a home.


and maybe it's because we are waiting for that closing date, waiting to unfold boxes and fill them up full.  pack up that moving van one last time, put down roots, claim our space and make a home.

maybe it's for a million reasons that i feel slightly lost in the middle.


for all those months before we left what was, i begged Him to let us put down roots there. begged Him to change the course that seemed to be heading in only one direction and when i finally surrendered, submitted to His will, i began to ask if He would allow us to put down roots somewhere else...

and i find myself trying to reconcile the loss of one dream and the realization of another while at the same time trying to figure out where home for us is...


it hits me, as i drive in the heat of summer that has decided to arrive in april - hits me that his home and mine are no longer ours to go to...home is where we will make it, where we will choose to dig deep and grow them all up...and it ached, that thought; as families travel towards each other, plans realized and memories made and lyla sobs before bedtime prayers and i feel helpless because it all fell apart before she turned 5 and i am her mother and aren't mamas supposed to fix everything and make it all better?

where are those wounds that can be eased with a kiss?


but it's in the middle of all that chaos that has graced our home for the last 3 days, chaos of 7 children 6 years old and under.  as we open that door and welcome them in - the friend that stood beside him at our wedding 10 years ago, the friend who was his best friend before me and willingly gave up that place.  his amazing wife who has become more than his wife, but a sister to me and an aunty to my three...

and when the air here becomes a little too noisy and we all pile in and drive across town and spill out into a yard of the house that has become a home all because of the one who cares for us like a father would,

this home that has become a place to land...

it's there, when i can barely hear myself think that i hear it,

i hear the sound of family.

it doesn't look like the landscape of what we left behind at all,

barely recognizable, i can understand why i would feel lost at times...

because this?  it isn't what i had planned out for my life.


could that be the point?


my life isn't my own - it's His, fully.  completely.

and it's His journey i'm following,

what i see as detours, He sees as part of His perfect plan for my life He established since before the foundation of the world was set in place.

and this journey is just that - a moving forward towards where my real Home will be.

it's a moving towards Jesus.


that house with the closing dates and the mortgage payments and the lawn to mow?  it's a place to rest until i'm done here...i can't lose sight of that, because that is what will keep a restless heart settled.  we are always moving towards something - so let me be moving towards Him.


11 years ago today, he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. me - the canadian girl used to the wide and open of the prairies, and there, with him, surrounded by the mountains of idaho with snow still on the ground and us all still intact ~

i looked into his eyes and said yes.


i didn't know what He had mapped out,

i didn't know how how deeply entwined joy and pain would become.


but i did know that i would love him until i drew my last breath and follow him anywhere

and He led us both to here.


here where the air is hot in april,

here where i feel lost and found,


here where He provides the family,

and here where we are finally home.

when they fly...

unexpected, it is placed in the dark and the quiet of that space and it sits there.

and it waits.


and i don't even know it's there.


like them, all three of them.

unexpected.

placed and knit together by the Hand of God deep within me,

they waited in my dark...


and now they fly.

He gives them for just a few short years,

years that feel long and never ending.

years that hold days and hours and minutes that feel stretched long,

when really,

they fly.



i sense it,

i do.

on days where i sit on the grass out front of our door,

chat with a friend while all the children whir by;

while the sun leaves it's red mark on this skin,

i sense the quickness as their independence grows and my breath is caught in the dizzying speed of time.


and it's that small little package ~

the one he hands me as i sit in the van,

as he waits as i tear into the dark

and light comes flooding in.


and i hold it up and let it spin in the sun and i wear the truth of us around my neck.


time will move.

and they will move on.


someday,

someday soon,

my walls will be clean.

my floors, uncluttered.

the air around me, quiet.


but wrapped up in the love of their mama,

they can always,

always

find home.


so the gift, from the sweetest of friends from far away,

made by talented hands of a sister's friend,

placed in that mailbox halfway down the street...

it slowed the pace for a moment or two,

and i held it,

and it graced me...


all that beauty in this time that is spinning away.

the sparrow and a giveaway... {updated}

{winner of giveaway is named at the bottom of the post...}


we sit out in the sun once school is done and lunch is hot,

the three of them and me soaking up all that light.


they pretend we are at a beach and dig through the rock bed to find those sea shells left behind.


and i think back to this very day one year ago,

the one where he got here first and unlocked that front door and waited for us to join him.


it's been a year since this address became our own.


and i felt so very lost.

but like that sparrow that He has His eye on,

He had His eye on me,

on us...


i think back to that journey that led me here...

the one that really started way back when i first said yes to His call on my heart.

the path that has so many twists and turns,

detours

and brokenness...


but i have never been out of His sight.


there are moments when that thought is hard to grasp,

when i wonder if at times, one sparrow can be harder to love than others...

or easier to overlook...


when you find yourself completely alone and unknown, it can feel that way...

and it's in those weeks before He opens those doors,

before we find ourselves walking into that warmth of that church,

before i find myself at a table,

a park,

around our dinner table,

and see Him open my heart and theirs.


it's in the quiet of those days that find us learning how to live this new life out that i come to know how deeply i am Loved,

by Him.

i'm not just another timid heart perched on a branch of fear ~

i am cherished,

provided for,

known,

seen.

every once in a while, those feelings still surface...

when circumstances overwhelm,

or loss threatens to topple new found confidence in Him.


but it's true, regardless...

He loves because i am His.


and it's on one of those days that the box is delivered,

filled with the reminders that it has nothing to do with anything i've done,

but everything to do with what He has done...

and a heart that has been given much


can't help but overflow.




Dayspring has graciously sent me a copy of holley gerth's new book, You're Already Amazing, as well as the reminder that i am loved to hang on my wall and a mug that holds more than coffee in my hands...

i would love to pass onto you, in a small way, a big reminder of how deeply you are loved by Almighty God.

an extra mug was placed in that brown box that landed on my door step...perhaps it is for you?

if you would like to be entered in to receive both the mug and the book, please leave a comment (or two or three...) in the  box below?  i'll draw out a sweet name on the 27th of march and send both to find themselves at your front door...


and maybe, if you find yourself overwhelmed and drowning in what is swirling around you right now, You will find Him and His deep love for you at the bottom of it all...

*********

 


disclosure: i received all the products mentioned above from Dayspring in return for my blog review. all opinions are completely mine and true.


and now...very belatedly...the reveal:

becky - random.org has chosen *you* as the winner of the sweet mug and book and i will send them off in the mail to you in the next day or two.  so happy.  thank you to everyone else for entering in your names in my little giveaway - wish i could send something to each of you...

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

when He woos a heart already His own...

He woos me on valentines day.


He doesn't have to.

He has already won my heart.

this heart that has a tendency to burn so hot and freeze ice cold.


maybe that is a reason He keeps drawing me to Himself,

closer to the heat of His Love,

so that i'll burn with the wonder of Him again.


it happens after i repeat the words from memory that i have been planting deep.

speak them out loud to the one who calls me daughter while my 3 little ones listen close.

six weeks in and twelve verses rolling with a rhythm off of this tongue,

i turn that page to the thirteenth one as the house settles and quiets

and i look at the words held in these hands.


i can't help but stare at this valentine He has given.

because no matter how one looks at it, it is exactly what it is.


it's no i choo-choo-choose you written on red and placed on a school-girl's desk.

no.

it's been written in red and offered up to anyone who will receive.

for He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness

and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves,

in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

colossions 1:13-14

i lay my head next to tony's in the quiet.

look into his eyes and see him for who he really is.

i reach out my fingers and trace his lips.

this man who gave up everything for me, for our family.

this man who gave up job, reputation, income, home...

gave it all up so that we could live out from under the shadow of death and brokenness.


he gave it all up for the love of the ones under this roof over our heads.


and He woos me,

through the love of my husband that reflects His Own so powerfully;

through His Words printed on paper and planted deep in my heart.


and it was those fairy tales and stories that i stopped believing in so long ago,

but it is the truth and beauty of His Love that quickens my heart and catches my breath now.


and it's through both:

the shadow of dreams and tales juxtaposed next to

the Truth of His Love,

that i have learned...


a heart caught in the stranglehold of distress need never fear.

can your spirit hear it? 


The One named Faithful and True is fighting for you...