when prayer changes...

it was over the noise and chaos of dinner the other night that i heard her familiar question asked around an unfamiliar table.

words were flying all over the place so i'm surprised i heard it,

but not really surprised she asked it...

if that makes sense.

our olivia?

she's bold.

her emotions, her voice, her actions, her frustrations, and even her sleep - it's all done loudly.

all of it.

i don't know how many times i have to remind her that she doesn't have to shout in my face - my ears work just fine.

or they did...

either way, if she feels strongly about something, it's done with strong emotion.

her love for Jesus?

strong.

and she has no idea how there is anyone out there beyond our four walls who doesn't love Jesus...

so she has made it her personal mission to find out just who those people are.

and why.

she could care less if it makes you uncomfortable, she wants to know the state of your heart because a heart without Jesus just doesn't make sense to an olivia that loves Him so.

so, when i heard her turn to her newest friend over hot dogs and hamburgers and ask the inevitable question, i smiled.

because when his little face beamed back at her that yes, he did know Jesus, her shoulders relaxed and her summer-bare feet kicked and she shouted right back in his face that she did too.

and her quest to know was stilled for another day,

but i was left to wonder...

i stood behind that counter on friday.

friday is ice-cream day and my hands were sticky from a melted mess and there was one guy who walked in with ear-buds blaring and cap pulled down and he leaned against the edge and wouldn't meet my eyes.

little ones i can talk to.

the older girls? there's always something to find common ground over - hair, clothes, make-up...

but a boy on the edge of being a man?

i am at a loss.

and really, i think they may be at a loss too.

i mean, i'm tony's wife and i'm a thousand years old and what do i know about what they know and so canipleasehavemyicecreamandgetthisawkwardmomentoverwithasfastaspossible?  thank you very much.

so i did what i do and made small talk about school and kept it light and laughed at my own jokes as i put that first scoop in the cone when he took out that one ear-bud and blurted out a sentence of pain.

and i set down the spoon and let the ice cream drip while it all poured out and he stood there at the end broken.

my first thought wasn't to ask him if he knew Jesus.

why did i stand there wishing that i knew how to make his pain stop when i know very well Who can bind up his brokenness?

Jesus, He is so easy to talk about with like-minded friends - with those you suspect just might know Him too. but when the faces across the counter will barely crack a smile...

i am ashamed at my lack of courage.

because why am i there if not to share the love of Jesus? why am i there if not to be His Heart to those places that are gasping for Hope?

my prayer changed this weekend.

olivia has the bold gene...

she didn't get it from me.

but the God Who can take faith, tiny and small, and move mountains with it? He can take my fear and grow deep and bold courage from it...

i just have to say yes.

and it was on a quiet weekend evening that i read these words...

scripture describes a radical, reoriented life for those who trust

Christ - one full of living for the invisible and the future. it is a life

fully surrendered to an invisible God whose agenda for my time here

is contrary to my own, a life very different from the safe, comfortable

one i was creating.

i started craving something that had never seemed acceptable to

me until that day...a reckless faith, a faith where i knew God was

real because i needed Him, a faith where i lived surrendered, obedi-

ent, a faith where i sacrificed something...comfort or safety or practicality...

something. but my heart raced faster when i thought 

of it, and something about it resonated.

stepping out wholly dependent on God to come through, step-

ping away from what is secure and comfortable exposes the holes

in our faith. and then if God comes through, it expands our faith.

something about stepping off cliffs where God leads allows God the

opportunity to move in greater ways. when we step off and He shows

up, we see Him differently than we would if we were standing safely

looking over the edge.

jennie allen - anything

my prayer changed this weekend...

and all He needed was my yes to begin moving and growing a boldness and courage that would terrify me if it wasn't for the fact that i said that yes to that risk in the first place.

and the gene that makes olivia so bold in her asking? it's in His blood that was poured out for her. 

for me.

for you.

sometimes it just takes a little longer to surface in some than in others...

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation

 to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, 

“The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17, ESV)

a gift picked up, put away, put back

2187. carton of strawberries

2188. end of the day mess

2189. laundry soap for another load

3 gifts about you

2190. desire for Jesus

2191. love of baking

2192. getting to teach my little ones at home

3 gifts found in His Word

2193. He gives direction and purpose

2194. it's all full of His breath

2195. hope that changes me

a gift in a box, a bag, a book

2196. 2 pies

2197. books bundled together

2198. glimpses of grace in the gift of family come near

3 gifts unexpected

2199. a reminder for sanctuary on saturday

2200. a day turned around

2201. a kitchen done and a friend washing my floors

3 gifts from your childhood

2202. memories of puppy breath relived

2203. love of quiet sunday afternoons

2204. that chocolate chip cookie recipe

a gift sweet, sour, salty

2205. a hug from my aunt and uncle

2206. a small bowl of yogurt before bed

2207. peanut butter stuffed pretzels

3 gifts found in little people

2208. imagination

2209. arms-flung-wide hugs

2210. trust

3 gifts that made you laugh

2211. coffee with a friend

2212. tony's protective eye-wear

2213. olivia's frog dance

3 gifts found in community

2214. bob - willing to hold zeruiah

2215. gane - sittin with lyla and her schoolwork

2216. christina - the way she loves olivia

a gift in a plate, pot, package

2217. cloudy day banana bread

2218. fresh roses

2219. canadian chocolate

3 gifts hard giving thanks for

2220. little one messes - it's only for a season

2221. an unknown - He knows

2222. risk taking - isn't really a risk in His Hands

a gift worn, white, whispered

2223. mama-weariness

2224. late spring clouds

2225. lyla-secrets

3 gifts found in church

2226. children's program

2227. a re-grounding for the week

2228. receiving communion

3 gifts in today's work

2229. cleaned home

2230. completed school work

2231. midnight nursing

a gifts at 8am, 12pm, 8pm

2232. everyone fed and dressed

2233. a home ready for guests

2234. one last story before bed

3 gifts blue

2235. zeruiah's blue eyes

2236. my favorite pen found

2237. the sky at dusk

3 gifts you gave today

2238. a listening ear

2239. a hug

2240. a bedtime prayer

3 gifts orange

2241. that new book

2242. washing lyla's giraffe shirt

2243. orange slices in my water

3 gifts funny

2244. liv boxing with jake in the church foyer

2245. tony's random songs

2246. she turned 5 months old laughing...

{the grace series will continue on wednesday...}

when you begin a journey...

i still remember the naming of her all those years ago.

she was named with intention.

she was named with preconceived notions of what her names would mean for her.


i had no idea how my life was about to change with the arrival of this daughter.

i had no idea how much i didn't understand.


grace is like that.

for many years, i lived as a believer in God, but i did not live 

from God. i was a child of the God of grace, but i was looking for

life in the law.

emily p. freeman

i am a good girl and grace terrifies me. i don't understand it. I don't know how to live with it or extend it or even, to be honest, how to receive it.

i am a good girl whose mistakes and rebellions have put a smudge, or twenty, all over the word good. 

but i am a christian, shouldn't all christian girls be...good?

the word grace - it gets thrown around like i should know what it means, but i don't.

i don't.

almost 30 years since my first prayer and all i know is that this one word leaves me uncomfortable, raw and ready to run.

and yet this one word, this one that sounds like silk, that whispers rest and peace and all good things i am not - it is everywhere. it won't let me go. or maybe, more accurately, He won't let me go. and His Hand, it finds me in that book that i keep signing out at the library. the one that claims it's for the good girls and i can't get past the first page because i  know i am not. but the numerous check-outs from that library counter is becoming ridiculous and so i finally just sit down and read.

and i can't stop.

because His grace isn't for the good ones. 

they don't exist.

His grace is for all and He offers it, scarred Hands outstretched to the broken and sin-weary and to every good girl who hides her mess with a mask.


it's for all of us.

it's an intimate journey, this pursuing of grace - because it weaves it's way into the most public of areas and the places deep and still. but it's a pursuing of hope, because God's grace is so very rich, so very life changing and dripping with mercy and for the last month or so, i've sensed His invitation to come and discover what His grace really means.

i don't know if there is anyone who will join me, if there is anyone who needs to discover and know for themselves too, but this is what i'll be doing over the next few weeks here, with His Word and this book and stepping out from fear and into His scandalous love.

i won't be publishing these posts on facebook and i may or may not turn off comments...because this is a quiet discovery, and i feel that this space needs that stillness too.

but every journey no matter how big or how small has the great capacity to take you places where you have never been and more often than not, a journey is so much more enjoyable when you don't travel alone. so maybe you need to place your feet in the footsteps of Jesus to discover how deep His grace towards you is - and maybe you wouldn't mind if i tagged along too.

but that first step? it is one that stands on the truth of thankfulness...

and whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do everything in the 

Name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father

through Him.

colossians 3:17 esv

a gift in bag, in a box, in a book
2100. coffee
2101. all those blocks, made by his uncle
2102. grace. grace

3 hard eucharisteos
2103. nothing is wasted
2104. brokenness
2105. really seeing

3 gifts woven together
2106. confession and repentence
2107. joy and sorrow
2108. His beauty and our ashes

3 gifts inherited
2109. gramma's teacups
2110. her engagement ring on my finger
2111. his hair, just like his daddy's

3 gifts square
2112. homemade invites
2113. patch of moonlight
2114. broken prayers on paper

a gift stacked, stashed, stilled
2115. those dishes
2116. that irish pasta
2117. the 3 older ones piled on top of me just before bed

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...

a letter for my three...

it's the first of october and by now, i would have thought sweaters and socks and red noses would have been a part of our days.

i even brought out the hot cocoa to the front of the cupboard for those "just in case" moments that call for something hot to warm you up.


you all keep asking to have daddy make the wood stove work,

we even have the comfy chairs and blankets in place...

i've looked forward,

no...

i've longed for autumn to arrive and as one calendar page gives way to the next, summer wars with autumn and the hot-tempered one of the two seems to be winning.


it will come, i'm sure, when the season is ready.

but until then, we wait,


expectantly.


i sat in the quiet of a service yesterday, sat in the back with your daddy and leaned into the comfort of him.  our arms brushed and our hands intertwined and he would whisper sweet nothings at the most inopportune times, but then your baby sister began to move...the one who had been so still all morning, the kind of still that makes a mama begin to pray for a kick to the ribs.

soft movements started, like ripples in the water, as though she too needed to be still and quiet.

i understand those moments.

each one of us needs them.


and as a mama to the three of you and this one-to-be, there are times that i wait for them...

expectantly.


and it's not yet halloween and not even close to christmas but the stores have already intermingled the two and maybe it's for that reason that mary was on my mind for much of the day yesterday.  christmas will find me heavy and aching, ready for the release that your little sister will bring, but for now, i hold on to these moments...the moments that are full of just you three.  the moments that will most likely by the last of so many things...

i sometimes wonder at all the emotions that motherhood brings - the desperate need for order and space and quiet and yet,

yet...

the fear that all of it is moving too quickly and how in the world do you enjoy it all while you are barely surviving it all?

so i type it out in with this cursor that races ahead, hoping to catch the snippets that will sink deep into my heart; memories that will stay close when you have all flown away.

because you will, and my life will slow and yours will speed up and what you have lacked now i will try and provide and the foundation we lay now will become something strong for later and it is those moments that i wait for with hope...

but for now, my sweet and crazy three, i catch the quiet while i can, sit still with Jesus so that what i offer you will be full of Him and try and live fully in these moments,

expectantly.


i love you...

~mama

1537. brushing their hair in the early morning

1538. the light of a full moon

1539. feeling her foot against my ribs

1540. the way Tchaikovsky makes my heart thunder

1541. the violins moving like the waves of the ocean i crave

1542. jonah and what he reveals

1543. expecting fall

1544. expecting Him

1545. a call to place Him first...

1546. ...and realizing in what area He means

1547. victories, no matter how small

1548. tony

1549. that i get to experience life with-in one more time

1550. that i breathe for 2

1551. that i eat and drink for two

1552. that my heart beats for 2

1553. a fourth baby and the relationships they will all form

1554. that He orchestrates our lives

1555. none of it is out of His control

1556. i can trust Him. always and in all ways

1557. the dog hair everywhere

1558. for the calming that mercy brings

1559. for the way they are growing and maturing...

what they forgot to tell me...

he greets me, whenever we happen to be there at the same time with the same words spilling from his lips.

those words said in thickly accented and broken english that my ears struggle to decipher,  he says it slow because he knows - this white lady can barely keep up.

it is not a house. not. a. house, yes?

and he pauses because he wants me to understand.  wants it to sink deep and so i nod my head and wait for those words i already know are about to fill the space around us,

it is a palace, kimberley. a palace.  you understand?

and yes, i do. i understand that what bears the marks of tagging and the places worn and crumbling because of age and use is so much more here in the the hardened edges around us.

he laughs at my attempt to say his name; me, the canadian with no ability to roll my r's with the flair and passion of his spanish, but i try and he applauds and tells me i can say his name in english.

i want to learn how to say his name in spanish.

the children too - seem to delight in the fact that this white woman who sits in the hot sun at the playground completely and utterly butchers the beauty of their language, but they are determined it seems to teach me the basics, even if it sounds awful and makes bellies hurt from laughing so hard.

i was warned about which colours to avoid wearing when we came to spend time at this place. i made a mental note and double check us all before we walk out our door, but they forgot to warn me about the most important thing...

they never warned me that my heart would break.

i remember saying to him, in the days leading up to his final days at starbucks, i said that maybe i would stay away, not because i was scared of gangs and violence and drugs...i was scared of becoming attached again.  scared of opening up my heart. maybe, i reasoned, staying away would help his ministry if i stayed in the background.

he paused, like he always does before he says something hard but needed,

you can stay away, kimberley, and i would understand. but that would be the most selfish thing you could do.  Jesus asks us to lay down our lives and lose them for Him.  to hide in the corner would feel safer, but you'd be missing out on everything He has for you there.

i didn't know what to expect, that first day or two that we were there, but what i didn't expect was the warmth, the joy, the shy smiles. i didn't expect to fall in love with their names. 

 he was asked, in his interview, how he would point out Hope to those who came because sometimes, in the darkest places, Hope seems so hard to find...

but it's there...in the names of the children.  when those mamas first held those newborn babies and breathed out a name over brand new skin, they named with a longing for Hope.

it's all around me.

it's as they sit close at the dinner table, as they yell out, hey lady! your belly got big! it's when they ask what time they have to go and it's written all over their faces that they don't want to.

it's in the wiping down of tables together and the sitting close on the playground together and watching my three run and play with no idea whatsoever that their skin colour doesn't match those of their playmates.  of that little boy with the big chocolate brown eyes who comes up to me and throws his arms around my neck before he ever says hey.

it's the 13 year old boy, shyly sharing his poetry with me as he waits for his brothers and cousins to finish playing.

i didn't expect my heart to break wide open and find myself with tears streaming down my face as i leave that part of town for mine. which honestly, neither is really that different from the other. aren't we all broken? aren't we all hurting in some way, trying to dull the ache with whatever we can hold on to?  oh, the houses may look shabbier if you cross the tracks, or they may gleam and sparkle if you drive further up the valley road, but without Hope, without Jesus, aren't we all desperate? 

i stood in the dark this evening as i waited for our dog to finish running around the yard, finish sniffing out the last of this day when i looked up.

today had been particularly hard, for many reasons, and at the end of the day a perfect storm brewed and i spoke harsh words to a strong willed daughter and we were both left split wide open and in pain. 

sin permeates both sides of the tracks.

but it was that wordless prayer that groped and grasped for words i couldn't seem to form that He answered on that back porch in the inky black...

because when i looked up in desperation He had already pasted it there at eye level, perfectly level and still...

the big dipper.

i can love and i can fail within moments of each other and i can mess up in a hundred thousand different ways, but His love is always sure, always steady and it cups around my failings and He offers that perfect love for me to dip from, to immerse myself in so that i can become a channel that He can flow through.

and i wonder, does He allow our hearts to break, to shatter, not so that we will hurt and experience pain, but so that His Perfect Love pours out freely from the broken...

to the broken.

in the water...

it's the sound of that splash that keeps haunting me.

the one that made us both pause and look at one another before he sprang into action and raced around that pool.

it's that splash that pulled me from my chair as i watched her struggle to stay above water that was too deep, clothes that were too heavy and reach for something, anything only to find thin air.


it's the picture of that struggle, as short as it was...before his strong arms reached in and pulled her out and held her close.  it's watching my girl struggle and begin to go under that leaves me cold with how short, how fragile, it all is.

and my mind goes to that moment, the one calm and serene, dressed in a white robe and stepping down into the water and waiting for the moment to die.

i was 12 and i wanted to be identified as His and with my arms crossed and my eyes closed, i was laid under that cold, clear water and lifted back up to a life called to be different.


i wish i had understood more all those years ago, what all of that meant.

i wonder if it would have saved me a world of trouble and grief.



because no one tells you, once you've been plunged beneath baptisms water that the real struggle, the thrashing and the fight, happens as soon as the water begins to evaporate.


as though that old nature, the one that so easily entangles and snares tries to drown a person standing on dry ground...


it comes in all shapes and sizes, the memories of wrongs done can come flooding back and that pain can sneak in, try and wrap it's ugliness around a heart made new and a life marked as His.

it becomes hard to breathe.


when choices are made beyond your control and everything falls apart and suddenly you are told that you no longer look good,

it becomes hard to breathe.


when your soul is already weary from what you are carrying and you find yourself at odds with your daughters all day and your tongue is filled with words that will silence them but will break their hearts,

it becomes hard to breathe...



and the smallest one?

the one nestled deep inside of me...

this one dances.


this one dances in water and gives into the warmth, the dark that surrounds him or her without knowing the day we will meet face to face, without having any knowledge of anything outside the sound of my heartbeat and the woosh of my blood.

this one has no fear held secure in my body and dances with trust in a moment marked with oblivion. and while everything else is going on around this sweet baby, the only thing he or she is really learning, the one thing that is truly leaving an imprint, is the sound of this heart.


and He teaches me gently, reaching into my mess and pulls me, thrashing and desperate, close to His Heartbeat that pulses out a rhythm that i am coming to know, learning to trust.


reminding me that the life i took on, when i became His own, isn't one that will always make me look right or religious or good.

if that has become my focus, then my master is no longer my Lord.


but will i trust Him enough to take whatever He allows, and live a life of faith that grabs hold of His Goodness and believe that He works it all out for our good when we love Him?


that can mean surrender in Him when everything else seems dark.

because sometimes when it's the darkest,

we can hear His Love the loudest...

dear olivia: for when you turn five...

william blake penned it, i don't know how many years ago...

i read it curled up in a chair so many miles from home.

i read it and wrote it down in that journal with pages all crinkled and worn.

i wrote it down because those words, all three of them, reminded me of you.

exuberance is beauty.

your name is written beside it, encased in brackets and completed with an exclamation mark.  because it's true, olivia. it really is.

your exuberance that left me flabbergasted and tired and worn out at the end of the day has finally worn through this guarded heart of mine.

and i wonder why i ever guarded it in the first place?

how did i miss the beauty that surrounds each moment with you?

because it does.

you love strong.

you feel passionately.

you live loud.

exuberance should be defined solely by your name,

because you live out beauty.

i watched you last weekend, clutching tightly to that tire swing as you yelled for your cousins and your uncle to push you higher...

you always want to go higher,

to reach out and fly,

and to not just watch life go by,

you want to experience life to the fullest.

i don't always understand that.

me, your mama who would rather sit quietly and read or knit or play scrabble or observe from somewhere safe and still...

you grab my hands and pull hard.

5 years ago at this very moment, i was waiting to meet you,

breathing through the hard,

pushing through the ache,

straining to get through each agonizing minute that was bringing me closer to you...

tonight i placed a crown on your place at our table and you'll find it as you come upstairs in the morning - 

i can already hear your shout.

because it doesn't really matter how sparkly it is,

what matters is that you know that someone has seen your beauty and named it.

mr. blake may have penned those words, sweet olivia grace,

but i live them,

everyday...

with you.

happy birthday, baby girl.  i love you so very, very much.

all my love,
mama

when it's fading...

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

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


he knows me - stopping here shows this.


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

the lack of flowers shows this.

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


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


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

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


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

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

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

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

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



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


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

but Jesus.

and here is what my soul responded to...

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


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

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

colossians 3:3

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

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

with Him.

in the morning...

it's in the early hours that she crawls in under the covers and presses her warm little body up next to me.

i often wake up pressed on both sides by two sleepy bodies wrestling this third one for a space in this bed and i lay there fighting to breathe but not daring to move because i don't want to wake either one up.

(though, i suspect, with his body half on and half off his edge of the mattress, that husband of mine isn't sleeping too well either.)

and while i feel the darkness and heat and lack of personal space press in, olivia sleeps on in peace...she's found what she was missing and slumber comes easy.

either the darkness presses in and we find hope fading, or we press in close to Jesus and find ourselves wrapped up in peace.


i thought of this as the sun flickered across my eyes in the early morning hours and she still slept.


two of my youngest robbed me of my sleep in those late and early hours as i laboured through the night.  those pangs that started slow and easy, ones that i could breathe through and nap through suddenly raged and it was all i could do to barely catch onto my next breath.

i remember the sunrises of both of those mornings - as a new day emerged and i held new life in my arms.  there was relief from those dark hours that i thought would kill me.


this morning's sunrise was no different as her sleepy breath brushed across my cheek.


i think, sometimes, He lets the darkness press in close...

allows it to build in intensity in order to break through the complacency that can so easily hold us rapt until the need to fill our lungs with oxygen forces us to push back and cry out for Him.


worst-case scenarios and all those what-ifs can make a mind spin all crazy.  can oh-so-subtly take eyes trained on Jesus and turn them inward.

and without Him, there's nothing good to focus on in these inward parts.


and it's only Jesus Who can bring relief to a soul dragged through a season, no matter how small, meant to birth new life in her.


it's in the middle of all the questioning and wondering and all the circles my mind would go, spiraling lower and lower until my worry had taken on a frenzied dance of its own...it's when His Truth - the very first one i had ever planted deep - began to whisper Its way in and around and through the lies that were screaming loud and i heard Him:

trust in the Lord 

with all your heart

and lean not

on your own understanding.

proverbs 3:5

fourteen sunrises have blazed by that window by my bed...thirteen of them have seemed glaringly cruel, even on the most rainy of days.

this morning, though, with her sturdy little body nestled against my own, her eyelids closed over those chocolate depths i find mesmerizing, i felt the weary relief of new life wrestled and birthed...

and hope.

because always, always, always, our days and the moments that fill them and the worries and joys that seep into those spaces - they are all about Jesus.

without Him as the One my eyes, my heart, my soul anchors to, i'm so easily distracted, tossed about by every thought and whim.

but that second Truth i planted deep when i was still so small, before the innocence i can't remember was taken away?

it stakes His claim on my life He's never let go of and my heart is a bell that Unrelenting Love rings loud...

in all your ways

acknowledge Him

and He will make your paths straight.

proverbs 3:6

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.

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...