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...

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...

for when you stop. and for when you pick up again...

i start and stop for various reasons.

each reason ranging from the small to the large.


i am a woman who has easily been swayed and influenced by opinion, it's true. and it's been a part of me that has driven me mad.


the last time? i stopped because of comments and posts that i had read somewhere. the words, smooth as honey were written with a tone that belittled the practice of thanksgiving.


i read those words when life was pressing in tightly.  when i was already finding it hard to write out the words, let alone breathe them out to the One Who longs to hear them.

i believed, along with those who wrote them, that thanking Him for the small things isn't realistic, glosses over the ugly and the painful, throws some pollyanna-coloured paint over what causes a heart to bleed.

so i laid the pen down and began to grumble aloud.

i began to focus on what we didn't have,

what was wrong,

what caused me pain.


i may have stopped writing, but i was still keeping a list 

and it was ugly.

uglier than the the pain underneath it all.

more damaging than my heart that was hurting.



in all of this quiet, this wrestling, this working out what He is saying and what i am fighting, i've maybe come to a small conclusion or two...


i had lost the real reason why i was saying thank You.


when i began the list again, back in january, back when He gave me the promise of something new, i joined the community and the joy dare and faithfully wrote down my three gifts each day...but soon, my focus shifted. the desire changed.  instead of a heart transformed, the idea of winning the grand prize at the end of the year became what i wanted.

i no longer wanted Him.

and soon, when everything began to press in, the thanks was pressed out and a mouth void of praise becomes a heart filled with venom.


i've discovered, again - as though the first one hundred times wasn't enough - how difficult it is to change directions when you have already wandered too far down the path. how difficult it is to turn once again and fight your way back to a mindset that longs for Him, that desires to be made like His own.

i've been fighting to get there.


when i put the list away this last time, i also laid down the words i've been memorizing.  it was easy to blame the pregnancy, the brain cells diminishing and the nausea mounting, but when i laid down the list and i closed my mind to His Word, i opened my heart up to believe He isn't enough.

that thankfulness is foolishness.


that i could do more by pointing out everything wrong instead of focusing on Who is Right and True and Just.



i've been fighting to memorize again.

and the words that have struck deep and put some backbone behind my shaky resolve?

it's these ones:

so then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord,

continue to live your lives in Him: rooted and built up in Him,

being strengthened in the faith as you were taught and 

overflowing with thankfulness.

colossians 2:6-7

i read, this morning, in the commentary that i'm going through as i memorize this small book to the church in colossae, the promise again that while He is able, 

i am too:

these first three principles are in the passive voice "implying that divine action is essential in Christian growth."  paul's readers have not rooted themselves, built up themselves, or strengthened themselves; God has.  the fourth characteristic, "overflowing with thankfulness," is in the active voice and means that God's action in the lives of Christians should evoke overwhelming thanksgiving. as luxuriant green leaves are a sign of a healthy plant, profuse thanksgiving is "the unfailing mark of a healthy spiritual life". those who bubble over with gratitiude for what God has already done are not easy prey to anxiety and doubt. they have no need or desire to look for fulfillment elsewhere and cannot be taken in by false promises or shaken by bigoted detractors.  

being thankful...saying thank You, for me, has nothing to do with a brand new camera or a number on a page or making a weekly deadline. it really even has nothing to do with that journal all filled up with rows and rows of moments of beauty.

it has to do with the Creator of Beauty.

The Giver of Beauty.

it is only about Him.

yes.  life hurts. deeply and really hurts.  hearts break and relationships get messy and my laundry piles will never, ever go away.

but Jesus?

in the middle of the broken and shattered, He never leaves. He never abandons. He allows the hard for a good we may never see this side of eternity, 

but underneath it all - 

He. Is.

and because of that,

because of Him,

because of all He has done,

the thanks comes out readily again...


1502. all. those. birds. that now know there's free food near our front door just for them

1503. a tender heart for Jesus blooming inside a free-spirited olivia

1504. lyla pulling out her own tooth

1505. the changes we're making

1506. the love for him that never stops growing

1507. the song of those wind chimes outside my windows

1508. a push to be consistent

1509. a crazy group hug in the middle of a sidewalk - small arms and legs wrapped around

1510. feeling this newest one move and tumble deep inside me.  a wonder i can never get over

1511. cool evening breezes after crazy hot days

{just a small note: while i am choosing to no longer participate in the joy dare because i find that the desire to win far out weighs my desire for Him, i think it's a wonderful and powerful way to encourage the practice of thanksgiving and to turn our eyes in unexpected ways to find Him always there.}

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.

her name...

when she was nestled into the dark of me, she didn't move much.

and when she was named, her face was still unseen.

i thought her name would be fitting of the child who moved all quiet.

olivia - my peaceful one.

 

her life has been anything but.


her middle name was added in very purposefully

because i would meet her in the home of my midwife

with nothing to ease the pain to come.

and that woman, so very calm and sure, suggested the name that always seemed to bring about an easy entrance:

grace - goodwill and favor.


as i bent over and tried to draw in air with each wave of pain that brought her closer to my arms, i became convinced that all that quiet for those 9 months was just a building of energy to tear right through me.

and i was right

in a sense.


we've wrestled, she and i,

since the moment my midwife knelt in front of me, placed her hand on my belly and prayed for Jesus to protect that small one and i...

did that prayer cover us in words that have lasted until now?


four and a half years of looking into a face that mirrors my own,

battling a will that grows stronger than my own,

trying to wrap my arms around a small yet sturdy body once confined in my own that tries to break free of anything that attempts to hold that passion back.


i have felt hopeless.

i have felt scared.

scared that i'll lose her heart that burns so hot.


i have made the mistake of trying to conform her to my ideals of who she should be.

of how she should obey.

of trying to make sure she doesn't embarrass me...


oh, olivia.


i am so sorry.


he holds me in the night,

wraps his arms around me as i question everything i am doing,

everything she is doing,

everything that seems to be going wrong.


and he prays to Him Who created our sweet girl,

prays for wisdom for this mama and

protection for that little girl in the room next to us who seems to be constantly wrestling with something deep within.


and i know,

deep down,

i know...

she needs to know she's loved.

 

more than a nuisance,

more than a problem


more than a will that can't be tamed.


i read the words in the dark of the night,

as tears run down and the prayers seem weak,

A mother’s smile is the child’s sun — what can grow without the warmth of grace?

~a. voskamp

and i know,

she doesn't see the sun very often from the face of her mama.

she hears more thunder of disapproval

and the lightening that flashes my frustration

than she ever catches a rainbow of grace reflecting His Love for her from me.


it's awkward at first,

and i am ashamed to write it,

ashamed to write that it was awkward to smile at my own daughter,

but i pushed through the awkwardness and knelt down in front of her and smiled from ear to ear,

made a silly face that made that belly laugh and throw that sweet face back and she looks into my eyes and whispers,

why did you smile at me?

why?

she should never have to ask why,

but she needs to hear it.

she needs to know it deep down in her marrow 

because i don't want her left wanting.

mama smiled at you because i love you, sweet girl.  and because when mama smiles, you smile back and there is nothing more beautiful than that.

i walk into the room all breathless this morning,

trying to catch up on a class i missed how many days ago.

i sit down on the seat found for me and i listen and fill in the blanks like the word nerd that i am.

but it is in the closing of one lesson,

before the beginning of the next,

that my heart starts to pound.

that i want the one speaking to move from the first line and onto the second.

i'm desperate and i don't know why,

only that it's because i'm in love with my daughter and i see her name.

i see her name and i want to know...

and i break wide open.


because all this time i've been fighting to change who she is.

fighting to win this battle between us,

prove that i am in charge

and that she was created to bend to my standards.

what arrogance,

what stupidity.

because with that simple line filled in,

my whole view changed:

grace is...being offered what i don't deserve.

when we named her

before we even saw her,

i was, in an essence, claiming her as a gift i didn't and still don't deserve.

daily, she is an example of a Great and Loving and Merciful God Who looks at me in all my rebellion and pride,

Who holds me as i thrash against being conformed into His Likeness,

Who is Just and Good and refuses to allow me to stay where i am,

Who bends low and draws near and calls me His own,

in spite of who i am.


no, her will is a part of who she is,

i won't break it.

to break it would shatter her.

to break it would shatter us.

but to soften,

with the warmth of a small smile,

all full of the Grace of His Son...

we are made whole.

olivia.  the one who points me to the One Who is Peace.

grace.  the gift i never, ever deserved.

and it becomes this mama who finds herself changed...

when it's faint and fading...

i was thirteen the first time i met her.

i walked down the hallway that seemed to go on forever,

walked on wood floors that creaked with each step,

passed rooms filled with files and files and files of black notes on white paper...

as music swirled out in the air above and below me from rooms with doors closed 

and voices hushed.


her studio was at the very end of the hall.

and with an old sofa pushed up against that plaster covered wall,

i waited there for my lessons to begin.


small,

diminutive,

reserved, 

a spinster...

she terrified me.


i read of dietrich in the evenings,

in the quiet moments that appear throughout the day...

and maybe it is reading of the setting of germany,

of the beauty under all that pain that has me pulling out schumann.

his music from his Album fur die Jugend, Opus 68  fills our home and as my fingers find their way over those keys i've known most of my life,

elias races his cars

 in 

and around

and through

my moving fingers.

and it's as i look up for that next measure when i see those words in pencil;

the ones that she would lean over my shoulder to jot down,

the ones placed to remind me of how the music was supposed to sound.


and now,

even now,

she reminds me...

that woman who had dedicated her life to Jesus and her music,

the one whose piano i haven't sat at since i turned 17,

she still teaches me to play pianissimo,

to shape a piece of music that draws out the emotion behind each note,

and to count when i lose my way.

i hold the very Word of God in hands made of dust,

words jotted down by men whom He used to show us His Heart,

His Way.


He teaches me how to live in the words that i read,

that sink deep and change my heart if i let it...

through words written thousands of years ago,

He shows me how to return when i've lost my way.

and it's in the markings of a pencil,

faint and fading with time,

that she teaches me to still...

and to live out my life with the beauty of what The Composer intended...

when you wonder where He is...

He catches my attention at a red light a couple miles from home.

my mind has wandered and my ears have tuned out the chatter...

 but my eyes?

they see it.

they see the air painted all rosy and pink around me.

and it's as the day is dying that i look up

and my breath catches

and i beg Him to stop time for just 5 minutes.


long enough to grab my camera and catch the masterpiece He has created.

the sun, however, keeps sinking

despite my pleas.

but the lower it falls

the more stunning the beauty.

i race inside the house like a mad woman.

he looks up at me with a question in his eyes...

the sun!! tony! the sun!  the way it's sinking...it's beautiful!

and my incoherent rant follows me back out the door.


i stand in the driveway as neighbours pull in weary from their long day at work.

some smile.

some shake their heads.

some stop to look too.

and i turn in a circle and keep snapping.

keep trying to keep up with my God Who creates such beauty out of thin air.



they run around me, those 2 girls who glow in the fighting light.

ethereal in the fading of an aging sun, they giggle out their wonder of The One Who loves them so.

and he says it to me tonight, in the moments before he falls asleep.  

how he read of lazarus and The One who raised him from the dead and the sisters 2 who were devastated by the slowness of their Lord's timing.

when their brother lay dead in that grave and there was no hope left.

how Jesus, knowing so much more than they did, says to sweet martha, all bowed over with grief,

"...did I not tell you that if you believe

you will see the glory of God?"

john 11:40

do you find yourself facing a moment, a circumstance, that no longer breathes hope?

have you watched what you have treasured, die?

tenderly wrapped it up

and gently tucked it away?


have you wondered where He is

while knowing full well that if He had come in time,

what is dead 

could be filled with life?


as you question like martha, 

i would stand beside you as mary.


because the questions find rest on the tip of my tongue.


but with feet planted on cement on a mild january day,

my heart hears His whisper...

the Lord wraps Himself in light as with a garment;

He stretches out the heavens like a tent...

He makes the clouds His chariot

and rides on the wings of the wind.

psalm 104: 2-3

the night may be closing in around you.

circumstances may be threatening to steal your joy...

your peace...

your hope.


but He's coming, dear one.

He is coming.

just keep your eyes on the clouds...

when you find yourself breaking open...

it's first thing,

while everyone is waking up with heads and hair all fuzzy.

when we bump into each other unintentionally and some laugh

and some snarl.


it's in that moment, one of the first of our day, that i look up and see...

the way the morning light catches me off guard and sends me searching.


and i find it's starting point

and watch it wrap around this kitchen...

from a high place up on that wall

right down to the the quiet edges laid low.

and i think how He wraps my days in His Light.

how His beauty catches me off guard...


and then i find myself breaking open.


first in humiliation as i find myself holding a thrashing child caught up in a tantrum nothing can tame.

she roils wildly against me, screams so loud and i feel so exposed, as though all my parenting sins are laid bare for all to see.

i want to crawl under the nearest rock,

anything to get me away from the embarrassing spotlight i find myself caught in.


later, i strap us all in as the moon paints the air all blue.

when emotions have settled and a bit of motion is needed to ease the tension that has settled around us all day.

and it's when i hear their sweet voices singing behind me,

singing praises to Jesus that i find myself breaking open again...


because from the time she was tiny, we have been broken, she and i.

broken in ways i have never known how to heal.

she was born into arms limp and heavy with depression and she has been fighting for my heart ever since.


this, i realize, as we drive down that road,

as she sings out that we are the light of the world...


and all she is fighting for is my love.


i read it, somewhere this evening, as i desperately combed through articles and pages and blogs on parenting a child whose will is oh-so-strong.

i read the words that sink deep and break me open just a little bit further...

a child wasn't made for a parent, but a parent is made for a child...to love and to serve and to guide.




where did i forget this along the way?

when did i begin to think that my children were for me?


when did the beginnings; the feedings, the changings, the burpings, the coo-ings...when did those change from delights to drudgeries?

when did i lose the wonder and instead begin to shatter?


we've been broken, she and i.

she has my heart, but does she truly know it?

her actions, when i enter into them instead of trying to quiet them, might reveal what my eyes don't want to see.


my spit-fire child, the one so loud and crazy...is our relationship, all healed up and whole, worth fighting for?

could something new be birthed from out of the ashes of the old?

yes.  oh yes.  a hundred million times yes.

and even here,

even now...

He so gently starts at the highest point and wraps around to the broken hearts laid low.


He wraps us both up in His Light that reveals,

holds us both close with His beautiful Love that heals.

the month of here {day27}...sunday evenings

i sit at the table surrounded by books and papers and notes.

i prepare for a new school week and her.

if we had never packed up our life and moved it all south, i never would have found myself here.


and while it's not for everyone and our school days are far from perfect,

liv and elias wrestle for cars and shout loud at each other,

random questions are asked that have nothing to do with the subject at hand,

and sometimes this mama feels slightly out of her league.


but she has such a quick mind that grasps so much,

and a memory that rivals her father's.

i smile because we learn the same

and so far love the same subjects.


we snuggle on the couch with our read-alouds and sit at the table with the flash cards and math.

she laughs at the silly science experiments and ponders those vikings and cave men and henry VIII.

and quiet sunday evenings find me at the kitchen table preparing for another week of learning ahead, preparing to invest even more into her life.


i am so proud of my lyla and her determined spirit.  her joy and love of learning...

of the way she teaches me to be more patient and compassionate.


we're doing okay, her and i and i wouldn't trade these days for anything.

and i give thanks on this twenty-seventh day of this month that finds us here...and that every moment has the possibility to teach.

the month of here {day14}...3,646

i kind of like books.

i have a few i'm reading right now,

not including the two in my purse and the three in the van and the five on order at the library.


i love the words inside.

the characters, the places, the thoughts and ideas that find themselves buried within pages of text.


they pile up beside our bed.


there always seems to be one open somewhere.

and since becoming a mama, i tend to flip back and forth between any number of books at one time.


and then that doorbell had to ring.


and that deliveryman just had to drop off 3,646 pages of unexpected sheer delight right here on our front step.



and it doesn't seem to matter where one moves to, where they have come from...


if one carries timeless words with them, they are never really that far from wherever here finds you.

and i give thanks on this fourteenth day of this month that finds me here...and for the gift of 3,646 new pages to get lost in.

here and there...

while we were here,

they were there,

while we slept and rested and walked the beach for hours, you held them close and loved them and brought out the best that is in each one.

you gave so much of yourselves...

and they soaked it all in.


thank you.

thank you for loving us the way you do.

for being a safe place for our hearts when we are weary.


i hope gracie has recovered...

all photos from there were taken by my sweet sister and brother-in-law.