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...

in the blooming - the end of chapter 2...{the grace series}

the irises bloomed while we were gone -

tall and violet and graceful.


the girls caterpillars bloomed too - they busted out of their cocoons in the middle of the night, while it was quiet and dark and no one to witness it and their orange painted wings stretched strong in the early morning light.

they were going to release them - after the charlotte's web fair was done and after they had popcorn and snow cones and their skin turned rosy-red in the hot may sun.

they would open up that clear plastic lid and just let them flutter away...


there's one painted lady who seems to be more robust then the rest. the girls have named this one hoppy. she beats her wings and flies against the netting, bouncing off of it and landing on her back.

but she flutters and beats those wings until she is literally hopping, until she gets enough air under her so that she can flip over and once again fly.

it makes them all laugh,

but hoppy?  she makes me want to cheer.


she doesn't do it gracefully, this learning to fly and strengthening her wings. she's clumsy and seems to always been running into another butterfly or two on her way,

but she doesn't give up, and maybe that's why i watch her.


we've been away, been loved on and taken care of and hidden away in a cabin in the mountains and green.

i've held lyla's hand as she whispers it quietly,

mama, it's so quiet here - my ears really like it.


we've been away and i've watched as my older three wrestle with the slowing down, with getting used to bugs and being outside for 14 hours a day and sleeping in the unfamiliar and new.


and as i walked through that garden gate everyday for almost a week, as i stood underneath stars so bright in the blackest sky,

as i woke up to a mountain rain pounding on the roof above me,

i've realized i need to rethink grace.


it's kind of hoppy-ish, if you will.


but here's the thing, sometimes we need to keep bouncing off of what has hemmed us in before we can become strong enough to fly.

grace is something to wrestle with - simple in concept, yes, but hard to grasp in the actual living out.

tony and i, we've talked a lot in this past week - of Jesus and christianity and living radically and completely surrendered lives to Him.

we've talked of what that means to live contrary to the pull of the culture around us - to walk instead under the pull of Christ's Lordship over our lives.


and to be honest, there is that small voice that whispers...

we are going to be odd.

and that's when i find it, near the end of chapter 2 that i read these words,

character refers to who you are. reputation refers to who people think

you are. i generally care more about who people think i am than who i really am.

but Jesus was not a person trying to keep a good reputation in tact. during His life

on earth, he never tried to explain Himself for the sake of His reputation.

He breaks all social etiquette in relation to people. He

acknowledges no barriers or human divisions. there is no

category of sinners He isolates Himself from.

simply stated, Jesus is a miserable failure at

meeting religious people's expectations of Him...

...though He was without sin, there were still those who questioned His

reputation. knowing there were people who disagreed, even hated Him, didn't 

cause Him to change one thing He did. He wasn't working to maintain a good

reputation. he was walking in dependence on His Father. Jesus didn't value what people

thought; He valued people, period.

grace for the good girl (pg. 47-48)

our pastor, he spoke on the assurance of salvation this morning - how it's all curled up in 1 john; we can know that we are His through the way we love each other...

and i have failed.

deeply and horribly and in soul-shattering ways.


but i heard it as i stood folding laundry while the washing machine hummed, as elyse fitzpatrick spoke about justification and everything that it means;

it's not only as if i had never sinned...

but being justified is living as if i had always obeyed.


Christ's grace is shocking and soothing and it covers over all the places that i fail...


He valued people, not what they thought about Him or His ministry or the decisions He made. and Jesus calls me and you to live like that too.

reputation can be a carefully crafted place that keeps you safe, that makes you look good - but it keeps you unknown.

we can't love well when we are hiding, when we don't live authentically, with vulnerability - really, when we are placing the idol of self in front of those around us.

it's only when we place Jesus first, when we choose Him over a mask that keeps us safe, it's then that we find grace,

that we learn to love,

and that being good dulls in comparison of being like Christ...

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. philippians 3:7-11

in the messy and ugly...{the grace series}

it wasn't dismal, per say, when we first bought the house.

all i saw when we first walked through was the space and the potential.


it wasn't dismal until we got a good look at our backyard when the snow finally thawed and spring began to whisper and we saw the damage that this past summer had done.

here's the shocking news: God loves to display His mercy by wrecking "good" people.

that seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? we think that God loves to wreck bad people, to strip them of their badness, and of course, He does. but God also delights in wrecking those who 

seem good, at least outwardly.

Comforts from Romans (pg. 16)

tony, he can see the end result despite the sheer magnitude of everything that needs to be done, and he plants cherry trees and reseeds and tears out and reconfigures and waters and plans and smiles all the while.

me?

i clear off our deck, angle the picnic table just so and throw a pretty table cloth on top so that is what i can look at instead of what feels too big,

too messy,

too ugly.

it was as i was sitting at our kitchen table this morning with coffee in hand, looking at the cloth blowing in the breeze that it hit me...prettying up the situation is actually rather laughable.  it fixes nothing.

paul's primary impediment to relationship with God was not his 

irreligion, it was his religion.

Comforts from Romans (emphasis mine)

all my attempts to earn, all my settling in to the comfort of north american religion is just like that small bit of cloth trying to cover up a yard overgrown and dead. it may look pretty lovely from just the right angle, but as a whole? it's just a small patch of fake roses on a whole lot of ugly.

there isn't grace here, there's just a lot of trying to live up to the law.

and that gets overwhelming,

and that has always been the place where i throw up my hands and figure i'll never understand grace like a good christian girl should.

but i'll just keep throwing the word around like i know what i'm talking about...

...one day, just when we would assume that paul had gone too far and

really blown his chances with Jesus, Jesus knocked him off his feet,

blinded him and introduced him to grace.

...paul's story is good news for those of us who are tempted to put

our trust in ourselves...to merit God's favor. grace is so surprising!

it's surprising because while it may seem likely that a prostitute would

recognize her need for rescue, the homeschooling, bread-baking, devotion-

reading mom who attends her local church faithfully (while trusting in her

own goodness) will choke on the humiliating message of gospel rescue.

Comforts from Romans

tony, he gets such joy from working in the yard, fixing up this space under our feet that is our own. i love watching him, because when he is truly focused, he doesn't even notice me noticing him.

when he calls me down to explain his vision and thoughts and why he is doing what he's doing, i'll admit it, i get really overwhelmed. i can't see it in my head. 

but he can and i trust him.

and in another summer or two, we'll begin to see the results of what he has done.

did you catch that?

what tony has done.

that's a glimpse of grace.

if we are to embrace the message of the gospel and become free,

joyous and zealous servants of Jesus Christ, than all - and i really mean

all - the work has to be done by Him. why? so that all the glory will go to him, so 

that we boast in the work of Jesus alone. (isa. 48:11)...

through the good news of the gospel, the Lord graciously strips us of 

our slavish devotion to our reputation...He frees us from the incessant nagging

of our inner slave drive and frees us to love others without being

slavishly driven by them either. he ruins our pride in our accomplishments, 

thereby freeing us from the demand that others live up to our expectations.

Comforts from Romans

when that backyard of ours is all said and done, the only credit i will be able to take is when he asked for my thoughts i said, do whatever you want to baby, because i can't envision it.

i'll be able to enjoy it, i'll be able to rest in it and pick the cherries the birds leave behind, but as for the credit?

i can already feel it swelling up in my chest because i know, deep down know,

it will all go to my Groom.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—

(Philippians 3:8-9 ESV)

(more thoughts on monday...)

when your soul splits... {the grace series}

it started long before that rose covered journal closed tight with that brass coloured lock.

before i began to fill up those lined pages with teenage angst begging to know who i was.


looking back, twenty years later, i know now what i was so desperately questioning;

i wasn't longing to know who i was,

i was wanting to know if i could ever be good.


because when you are four years old and you pray a prayer and ask Jesus into your heart, and then the very next year your innocence is taken by a teenage boy in the nursery of a church...

you do everything you can to fix what has been shattered inside.


whispers in the dark of don't tell become dark lies in your soul and you will do anything to keep up appearances for appearances sake.


no one tells you when you are five how to navigate moments like that.



and so the good girl,

this good girl

is born.


you have maybe had your moment too - that moment when your soul split in two.

that space in time when your smile was plastered to your face while those secrets began to swirl in the dark and everything seemed off kilter because,

well...

it was.


shadow and light become muddled and foggy and you try and work harder so that you can finally make the two marry and maybe, just maybe, make God happy.

because that is what good girls do.

they make everyone happy.


did your shoulders just droop a bit under the weight of those words?


and grace?

it's a five letter word that everyone seems to pass around so freely - like those sunday morning handshakes or the promises of "i'll pray" that we never seem to keep.


and grace becomes a part of our lingo that we never know the origin of -

 we just know that it's a word that good christians say and so we do.

often.

all the while our hearts harden and our eyes glaze over and we keep putting one tired foot in front of the other, trying somehow to earn some elusive approval and finally, finally be good

deep down good.


or maybe that's just me...

i hide behind my smile and my laid-back personality.

i hide behind fine  and good. i hid behind strong and responsible. 

i hide behind busy and comfortable and working hard toward 

your expectations. and if i do not meet your expectations,

i hide behind indifferent. and though the purpose of my mask is

to fool you, don't be fooled.

the energy it takes to live for you is killing me...i want you to regard me.

please, by all means, regard me. i beg you to see me, to notice my goodness,

to ignore my failure, to be inspired by my beauty, to be captivated

by my essence. i want my loveliness to overwhelm you such

that you cannot catch your breath.

grace for the good girl (pg. 18)

i think it starts here at this place that is raw and tender underneath everything.

because when you know that God loves you, but you don't really believe He means you...

you'll do everything you can to earn that love from Him and her and him and them. 


and grace?

i just want to be liked.

grace?

i just want them to be happy with me.

grace?

oh goodness, i just want to be finally seen and noticed and applauded.


it has everything to do with keeping myself safe and you happy and nothing to do with Jesus because He is wild and unpredictable and Someone i can never control.

and so i hide,

i smile.

and i adjust my good face

once again.


until it finally isn't enough anymore.

the hollowness and emptiness of the pseudo-good life begins to suffocate and that is what this past year has been for me.


and i wonder if as zeruiah's life began to grow deep inside if that isn't when He began to stir something up in my soul and as she began to outgrow my skin, i began to outgrow my fear and it wasn't enough anymore, to live in the quiet and the good...

i wanted Jesus.

fear drives.

but Love leads.

"now to Him Who is able to do far more abundantly than all that 

we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be 

glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations,

forever and ever. amen" (ephesians 3:20-21 ESV)

that invisible good girl pushes me around. fear drives, 

pushing and shoving. Love leads, working deeply and gently within.

as i risk exposure to receive this Love, i catch a glimpse

of His goodness, i am inspired by His beauty, i am 

captivated by His essence. His loveliness overwhelms me such

that i cannot catch my breath. and before i realize it,

there has been a holy shift. my insatiable need to prove my 

own goodness to God and the world fades into the background, and

instead i receive truth and offer worship to the only One

deserving of it. 

grace for the good girl (pg. 19)

i needed Grace...



(join me again on friday?)

for when it happens... {letters to my four}

there are some things i've learned as i come to the mid point of my life,  and should i be given another 37, almost 36 years, i'm sure i will learn a lot more.

i could come to this place in my life and focus on the one thing that seems to dog my every step,

you will mess up.

not if.

not maybe.

but when.

there will be a myriad of reasons, sweet ones. there will be circumstances beyond your control and there will be details that are very much a part of you and the action you take.  

it's just how it is.

and you can take a look at your mess and feel hopeless.

like you have messed up so badly that there is no way to fix it.

i think i was there.

no, that's not true.

i know i was there.

you may know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has placed a call on your life.  made it clearer than anything and you keep taking the next step forward each day because you know, eventually, you are going to get there.

and then, you trip. 

you land flat on your face.

you drip with the mess you landed yourself in.

and the one who deceives, he comes close and he whispers those words that sink deep and your heart will sink deeper still.

failure

worthless

un-usable

and you may think that all you are good for is to be placed high up on that shelf of the broken,

the useless,

the screw-ups.

and that focus? the one that zeros in on the mess? 

it will keep you there.

my bible study leader, miss sue, the one who keeps placing me at her table each session, she finds me and tells me to come again for the next one. who cares that i have a newborn! didn't i know how many arms would hold her?  

so i go, and i soak it in. i soak in the message of mercy and i let God get to the tender places that fester with hurt and pain and, dare i say it, anger.

but still i believed, no matter how wrongly, that sure, He can get to those places, heal them and clean them up, but now i'll just be a cleaned up, healed up, broken and useless screw-up saint high up there on the shelf.

right?

that's how it works, isn't it?

oh - i pray that i show you differently.

i pray that you all see it differently than i ever saw it.

because He is becoming what i crave - i can't get enough of Him. this Jesus who continually takes your mama-who-messes-up every. day. and He keeps bending down in the sand and writing out that plan.  He does.  He really does. 

and this is what i learned in that study on james: 

 he was one of the Lord's brothers who mocked Him and called Him mad. 

he was the half-brother of Jesus who didn't believe, but became the head of the Early Church in Jerusalem.

he messed up.

all those years, growing up with Jesus, living life with Creator God and he didn't see. he didn't see His Savior standing shoulder to shoulder with him.

instead, he called Jesus crazy.

but even then, God had a call on his life.

even then.

it never changed.

it never wavered.

"for I know the plans I have for you", declares the Lord, "plans for welfare 

and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. then you will call upon Me 

and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you. you will seek Me and find Me 

when you seek Me with all your heart."

jeremiah 29:11-13

you aren't going to take Him by surprise when you mess up.

He already knows.

His plan covers all that.

no, it probably would have been best if you don't make the choices that you will, that maybe you should have looked a bit closer at the path before you tripped and fell, but where you can only see a bit of the road ahead,  He sees the whole world held in His Hands.

if you find yourself dusty and hidden high up on a saintly shelf, know this - Jesus didn't put you there.

you did.

so climb down - wrestle with Him if you have to, let Him work out in you what needs to be worked out. you may find yourself limping afterwards a bit, but keep walking, little one.

keep walking.

the path ahead of you is all part of His plan...

the story of a chair...

it's the story of a chair.

kind of.

it's cradled me in the cool mountain air,

held me in my excitement of that sparkly ring he placed on my finger,

became a bed when i was 5 months pregnant and so very sick.

supported me in those first few days of fresh grief.

rocked me in those dark nights while we waited to see where He was sending us, transplanting us in soil unfamiliar and strange...

his dad new i loved that chair,

knew that when i came, that's where i would plop myself and so in the last days before he wasn't anymore, i received a note in my inbox from a sister asking where i would like the chair to go that christmas. he wouldn't move it until i gave my final okay.

i haven't thought about that memory since i sat down to write...

sometimes our minds guard the most treasured memories close.

it was still in storage when i made the decision those 14 months ago - that decision to print out those cards and glue them down in that book and begin to memorize those words penned from some dark prison cell.

and when it did see daylight and was placed in our home, my discipline to memorize on schedule began to fade away on waves of nausea.  

there is another father here, one who has opened his heart to us who are fatherless and at the beginning he listened every week, and then waited patiently while i would get my feet back under me and my mind would catch up to where i should be.  my book is covered with his signature...

then little miss made her grand entrance and i missed the dead line of having the whole book memorized by the new year, but i determined, despite sleeplessness and hormones and the loss of all those brain cells, to finish.

they tell you, the experts, to put your babies on schedules and let them learn to sleep on their own, but i would pick up those pages during the afternoon quiet time that i have fingered over and over for the last passing year and then i would fill my arms with the newness of her and cradle us both in the chair his father knew i loved.

and i would rock to the rhythm of ancient words scribbled down and i would whisper them over her head.  new life in my arms and His Life on my lips and i would pass those hours being changed little by little.

it was when those last words were said, the call to remember his chains and the final benediction...when what rested on her soft downy head was his blessing of grace, it was then that the tears came.

entwined in small and quiet ways are the gift of a father, the patience of a father and the Words of my Heavenly Father in that corner that old chair rests, and beth moore is right, "Never — NOT ONCE — have I ever known anyone to get to the end of a Scripture memory commitment and say that it didn’t make any real difference. Not a single time.”

so i start again with paul at pen, but on letters to the romans and we rock, her and i, to the rhythm of His mercy...

to know...{letters to my four}

it all fell apart that canadian winter - you knew it deep down too.  fractured something in us all like that -26 air did to those snapping metal posts buried quiet in the frozen snow.

it's been a long, slow thaw.


there are four of you now, but then, it was just the older three and there are times and moments i wish your minds were just as newborn-free as hers.

and yet, i think remembering the hard has maybe been the most freeing gift of all.


we dedicated zeruiah at the front of our church, the pastor held her in his arms and i became overwhelmed by the weight of it all.

he had asked us three simple questions and i almost fell apart.  she only weighed a mere eight pounds and yet the weight of her very life...

my arms aren't strong enough for that.

nothing about me is strong enough for that.

she was only eighteen days old and suddenly the length of her life stretched out before me and how can the broken lead?

olivia, you sat down next to me in the warmth of a sunlit window, brought our your bible and asked me to read.  you have your favorite stories - the ones we keep coming back to.  there's adam and eve and that snake you love to hate. noah and the animals and that rain that fell for days on days and seemed as though it would never end.  you love to hear how Jesus walked on water and how peter tried. the 5000 that were filled on the small amount of bread and fish and then you asked to hear another...

i turned to 1 kings - to one of your daddy's favorite stories. the one of elijah and the fire God sent from heaven. the one where he stood up against the false and faith watched flames lick up the last drop of water. you sat confused over the fact that there were some who didn't believe in God.


i thought back to what broke in the ice and the snow two years ago now.

there's still shards of that life still lying around us - sharp edges that still leave wounds. but what has busted isn't all bad - because what i had clung to for so many years was just as broken as me.  my faith was in a god who i tried to shape in my own image...

and Jesus allowed it to break open, and in the long years since canada, He's taken this heart and opened it back up.

how can the broken lead?

i look at the four of you and become so scared of failure, scared of the world around us and the skeptics and false teachings and wonder how you will ever see Him in the middle of it all...

i can easily forget that He is the One Who does all the searching, He is the One Who draws you close.


but as your mama, He chose me to talk to you about Him, to teach you and to live out an example...

so we'll start here - at the beginning...

because that is Who He is.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

(John 1:1-5 ESV)


you need to know that before anything, God was. God spoke and it all came to be. you can trust this. you can trust that His life was given so that you can live.

so let's take it one step at a time in the coming days and months ahead.

but before we can move forward, we need to camp here and know, to your very marrow, that He. Is.

love,
mama

in the quiet...

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

i feel like she could come any day.


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


and i feel quiet.

even in spaces loud and crowded, i feel quiet.

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

i walked into a blanket of peace.

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

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


all those moments that have been so empty,

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

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


He fills them.

quietly and simply.


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

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


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

it's okay that it's messy.

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


only two came home with him...

at first.

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

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


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

i know some of the brokenness that accompanies each one.

we are all broken to some extent.


and i sat with a home filled to bursting,

laughter and teasing happening all around us,

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


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


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


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


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

and we love.

and we tease.

and we laugh.

and we cry.

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

my belly tightens with each contraction.

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


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


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

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

in the last days...

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

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

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

the heaviness that has begun.


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


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

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

 the beauty of waiting...

the desperate wanting for the waiting to end...


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

mama, why are you wearing this sweater?

~ because i was cold, baby girl.

where did you get your sweater?

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

i was three, wasn't i?


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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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

yes, He is here.


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

and tonight, i can rest in that.

letting go...{day 23}

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

no, we have walked through those waters.


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

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

Colossians 3:5-10 ESV

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

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

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

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

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

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


and i am thankful.

letting go...{day 14}

how do you write about a moment holy?

a moment miraculous and stunning?


they were just a small handful of women who showed up with a dinner to share.  they had prepped and planned and cooked for the set number given and they lined up behind that counter and lifted lids and took saran wrap off of pans and they waited for the prayer to be said.


the room was packed, each table crammed full and from where i could see, even more kids lining the hallway.  i didn't even think, i just bowed my head with everyone else and waited for our table to be called.


i watched these women as i waited - how their faces were warm with smiles and joy;  how each plate was filled and each child was loved on and how good the food smelled.

it wasn't until i was out in the hallway, waiting in the back of the line that i noticed - two extra rooms had been opened up so that everyone there could be filled.


i still didn't think much of it, as i tried to balance two plates in one hand and guide my girls down the line making sure they didn't drop their own.  thanked the sweet girl who took elias' plate balanced awkwardly against mine and made sure my three were sitting and eating when i was told what had just happened.

and it was in that moment, when seconds were being called that i found out...

these women had prepared enough for 50 people.

we had 74 walk through our doors.


and there was enough.

more than enough.

enough for some to have seconds.


and these women - they kept serving and as more children passed by, they kept trusting and when the food should have run out, they had enough and Jesus was in our midst and chicken alfredo became holy and ants-on-a-log were touched by His Hand and that rice krispie square sweetened our mouths with His Joy and how could such a simple meal ever be mundane?


i can become so sidetracked by what little i have to offer.

Jesus has allowed me to walk through hard moments, but this culture i find myself in everyday is foreign...what i have to give can seem so small.


i keep coming back to that small boy with his small offering of 5 loaves and 2 small fish...

that widow with only a small amount of flour, a small amount of oil...


it all seems to begin with something small.

and something small let go into the Hands of God can suddenly feed multitudes, can keep pouring out as long as is needed.


when we let go of our little,

He can do the miraculous.

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...

bending low...

i grew up in a small baptist church where all the grey-haired ones became my aunties and uncles and where i would sneak a pickle or two from the fridge down in the basement near where my sunday school class was.

it's where i met flannel-graph-Jesus and met my first friends,

it's where i was baptized and spent my first year in youth group,

and it's where i acquired my love of hymns.

those old hymns - you know the ones. where my piano teacher sat up to that organ and bobbed her head up and down as she counted out the rhythm soundlessly and pounded out, o for a thousand tongues.

where blessed assurance comforted and i tried to sing all the words to great is Your faithfulness  without ever looking down at the words.


hymns have always pulled me in and comforted when my heart has felt heavy.

there are deep truths about a Deeper God buried within those lines.


and it was on tuesday of this week when i sat in the playground with a heavy heart and watched my three play with a little girl who speaks english in only the faintest of whispers; as that one little boy kept standing on top of the monkey bars because my reaction made him almost fall off laughing.

it's in that playground that i hear a cacophony of noises, ones that tend to clash as the laughter tries to drown out the sirens or the yelling of the couple down the street.

and my husband, because he loves me, because he knows me, had asked me to do something hard, something out of my comfort zone - he had asked me to share from my heart; not in the writing down of words, but in the speaking them out...with my voice and i wrestled in the moments leading up to it all.

the noise in my head, maybe the most clashing of all the noises around me...


when above it all, for the first and only time, since we've first started showing up on the steps of this old schoolhouse, the sound in the air around me was of the Holy bending near...

because from some church steeple around us, there came the ringing of bells and in the middle of the notes moving and weaving in the air around me, i heard His call...

and His promise:

praise to the Lord, the Almighty

the King of Creation

o my soul praise Him for

He is thy help and salvation

all ye who hear, now to His temple draw near

praise Him in glad adoration

praise to the Lord 

Who o'er all things so wonderfully reigneth

shelters thee under His wings

yea, so gladly sustaineth

hast thou not seen how thy desires e'er have been

granted in what He ordaineth

praise to the Lord 

Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee

surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee

ponder anew what the Almighty can do

if with His love He befriend thee

praise to the Lord, o let all that is in me adore Him

all that have life and breath

come now with praises before Him

let thy 'amen' sound from His people again

gladly for aye we adore Him

hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah

i haven't heard the bells sing out again, the air is silent save for the laughter and the sirens and the yelling, but He, the God Who Sees took notice, bent low to remind this heart that i'm not forgotten.

yes, o my soul, praise Him.