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.

it's in my heart...

yesterday, my little boy turned 5 months.

5 months.

i remember a month before he was born, thinking about christmas and how my baby would be six months old, his personality would be coming to the surface, i would be getting comfortable in the motions of becoming a mom of three...

but those 6 months felt like they would be a lifetime away.

my experiences were based on my previous two *first 6 months* in full blown post partum depression. where every moment, every cry, every feeding, every changing seemed to be too much.  where i would sit on the floor with a little one on either side of me and weep as i wished to be anywhere but where i was.

i loathed the day i ever dreamed of becoming a mom.

i loathed myself.

i loathed my children.

i loathed the God who gave me my precious gifts.

i remember sitting in my doctor's office with tears streaming down my face, full of shame as i confessed that while i *loved* my children, i didn't really feel anything for them other than they were 2 little bodies who i needed to take care of.

my heart breaks now just writing that down.

as much as i tried to force myself to *feel* something, as much as i desparately longed to love my daughters completely, there was something in the way...something that was bigger than me and my will.

i joke now that all i needed was zoloft and Jesus - but really, it's true.

it's taken me time to be *okay* with needing help...to admit that i have needed the help i've been given.  to be okay with being a statistic - especially when the thought that needing something alongside Jesus can be very taboo in some circles of Christian thought...

and so, when i had sweet elias, i was prepared for the endless days and nights.  the feelings of drowning, the staring at a wall for an hour as my babies cried around me...

i'll be flipping my calendar in just a few short days.  another month will have passed and i'll wonder where it went.  it hasn't been all sunshine and roses.  i still have my moments of sitting on the floor, wondering what i did with my life, but they are very few and very far between...

this post has taken a very different turn than i meant it too...kind of like my blog, so i hope that you can bear with my thoughts a little bit longer...

3 1/2 years ago i started this blog as a pictorial journey.  3 years ago, this blog turned into something more...something more than just smiling pictures of strained carrots and bright green poop.  it turned into a record of my journey with tony, my children and my faith.

at first, i was worried.  so worried that if i began writing about Jesus, i would offend someone.  or i would be seen as some odd fanatic whose thoughts about Jesus were a little...too much. 

but did i worry about writing about the crazy antics of my children?  the mundane daily things that seem to fill my life?  did i feel ashamed to write about my sweet, amazing husband?  did the pictures i post cause me to wonder who would be offended or bored or think i was an over-the-top mom?

of course not.

why?

because my heart is full.

of them.

and a heart that is full can't help but spill over onto whoever happens to walk...or browse...by.

unashamed

so should i be surprised when my heart is desparately full of love for Jesus that it spills into my writing, into my conversations, weaving itself into the simple stories that He then turns into amazing moments that speak directly to my heart, wooing me and drawing me in?

again, of course not.

i heard something profound today.  maybe not so profound to some of you, but it hit me like a cleated foot connects with soccer ball.

sometimes we let our fears of not knowing enough, not being smart enough, not being eloquent enough stop us from sharing Jesus with those around us.  we (and i have been SO guilty of this) feel that unless we have the magical formation of words down perfectly, there's no point in sharing our faith because we'll probably screw it up anyway.

i smile, because when i present lyla with something new and she doesn't know how to do it, she immediately sits down on the floor and yells that she "gives up" and "it's hopeless".  and i have to kneel down, get close to her face and ask her to take a deep breath and assure her that she can do it, because we'll do it together.

and i can't help but wonder if He does the same for us.  if He leans down near and whispers to our terrified souls, "lean on Me. rely on Me."

because i know i'm not smart enough.  i know i'm not eloquent enough.  i don't have the ph.d in theology that would give me the answers to the theological questions that have loomed out there long before i was born.

but i do know what i have.

i have a heart that is falling in love with Jesus.  a heart that longs to share what He has and is doing in my life.  a heart that longs for others to know the same Love that mine does.

and so i share.  timidly at times, more boldly at others.  but i can't not share about the One Who is Love Incarnate. Who turned my broken, unfeeling heart into one that can't contain what He has poured in.

so i willingly spill over what's in my heart...

for Him.

he makes me laugh...

i'm unsure how to put the words down that i want to in this post, so please, bear with me.

i've known of tony for almost 12 years. i've known him personally for almost 8. (almost 2 weeks to the day until that first conversation that started it all.) i've loved practically every moment. seriously. well...except maybe the 6 hours in labour...but even then, tony has memories from that experience that still have me laughing. tony has an amazing gift in finding the humor in pretty much every situation. he has incredible wit and the ability to make me believe anything.

i love that there is laughter in our house. i love that he loves me enough to try practically anything just to see a smile cross my face.

you see, for 2 1/2 of the past 8 years, it took a lot to make me laugh. not because i was keeping a straight face to see how much crazier my husband could get, but because i had sunk into a place that was so low, i just couldn't.

while i was pregnant with olivia i walked for three miles a day as long as i could to help manage my sadness. i remember feeling glimmers of true, knock your socks off, joy, but it was fleeting. before i knew it, i had sunk back down into a darkness so intense that i thought i was going to suffocate.

major life changes don't help i've heard...and lived. 2 babies in less then 2 years, 2 major moves in less time then it took for us to make said babies, re-adjusting to life in small, small town alberta, leaving dear friends behind and having to start over again and make new ones.

and tony held us all together as i was crumbling apart.

and he encouraged me as i made the phone call for help.

and he supported me when i was given the diagnosis of postpartum depression.

2 1/2 years. as i'm coming out from this side of it all, i'm amazed at tony's determination to find joy despite the heavy haze that was hanging over our family. while i was desparately trying and failing miserably to hold it all together, he became stronger. not just because he had too, but because he loved me.

i still have my days, my moments where i feel myself sinking, and i can see a look in his eyes of concern because it mirrors the worry in my own. but we are getting there, even if we take a couple steps back sometimes, we really are getting there. and not only are we taking these steps together, we're taking them with the One who designed us for each other long before we ever knew. i'm so thankful. so thankful, Jesus, that You choose me for tony.

and i'm thankful to you tony, for loving me the way you have, for truly living out *for better or for worse, in sickness and in health*. you are my greatest treasure.

i love you.