Etching

I went away and came back with words written on my arm. They're in me now, in my skin, the skin that is me, and that's how I want it. I need them close, need to see them every day, so that I can live them and breathe them until they're more a part of me than my skin.

She saw them almost as soon as she saw me. "I want you to talk about the words on your arm," she said, and so I did. Happily. (And yes, she can have some of her own someday, with my blessing.)

I told her where the words came from, how Dame Julian loved God so much that she went to live alone so she could talk to Him all the time, and how she wanted to share God with other people, too, and so she wrote. Some of what she wrote, one small part, began to etch itself on my heart the first time I read it. "All shall be well . . . "

Then I told her how T.S. Eliot borrowed the Dame's words and added to their beauty, if that's even possible. And still they called to me.

And then my season of worry, of anxiety and learning how children make me vulnerable and fighting to come to terms with that. This season of knowing, eventually, that I have so much and that I cannot live on the edge it all hangs on. And these words, they remind me . . . remind me to return to myself, to my family and the kids, that I don't need to be afraid and so I can stay here, find gratefulness, and remember my calm.

I wanted them before my eyes, wanted them closer to me than I could get with writing them on paper or putting them in my phone, and so I had them inked under my skin. Already they help me breathe, help me remember and reorient in a way that nothing else has.

She doesn't understand, not yet, but she keeps asking for the story. I tell it, like I tell her the story on my icon and read her Bible stories, because I know understanding will grow as she does. And maybe, with these words etched on my arm and etching themselves on my heart, she will grow up breathing them like she breathes air.

Sometimes the Answer is Another Question

I put my order in for this week and, like those times when you ask for an Egg McMuffin and end up with a Cheeseburger, somehow it got garbled in the process. My requests were simple, I thought: 1 baby (born, healthy); 1 mama (healthy, no longer pregnant); 1 toddler (healthy, happy, loving baby brother); 1 daddy (healthy, proud).

Instead the tally seems to be 1 baby (still inside, presumed healthy); 1 mama (sick, still pregnant); 1 toddler (sick, grumpy), 1 daddy (healthy).

I keep wondering if it would do any good to go back to the drive-thru and try yelling this time.

They're little things, the ones I didn't get this week, and yet I keep finding myself upset that I didn't get them. I want this baby out like you could not possibly believe (except you can, if you've been there), I want to be able to breathe through my nose, and I want my girl to regain the ability to deal that seems to flee when she's ill.

This week, these little things mirror larger things that I prayed for over months and years when I felt like God was ignoring me. Now that things seem to be on the upswing for us, I can look back on those times with a little more clarity. A little more, but not too much.

I thought there'd be a moment of truth, a time when I'd realize why we walked through difficulty and uncertainty, when I'd see a purpose behind it all and suddenly understand. But just like I don't understand how this week turned out so opposite what I'd hoped, I don't understand why our lives had to go all topsy-turvy for 2 years.

Maybe I never will know. Maybe I'll never be able to explain to my girl why her first impressions of the world are probably so mixed and confusing. Maybe there will never be words.

I can say that, but can I live it? Questions rise up, more and more of them every time I try to make peace with that. Not just "Why?" but more detailed questions. Did I miss something? How do I know when life is just like that and when there's some sort of method to be found? I wonder why my girl's coming into the world seemed to usher in a time of pain and confusion, and my son's looks to come alongside peace and routine and rest. And on, and on.

So right now I'm sitting with questions. They're fragile, or maybe I am, because if I think on them too hard, they'll break (or maybe I will). So they sit in my hands. I poke them a little, then I walk away and come back later, only to poke again.

Will answers come from the prodding? Peace? I don't know, but I know that, just as I can't look at them too hard, I can't leave them behind, either. They're pieces of the future, I think, even though I can't see how they all fit just now. So I'll hold, look, poke, leave until something rises from their ashes.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Lost and Found

I felt so lost after I had her. I clung to her and to Dave and I hoped that, someday, my world would stop spinning so I could find myself again.

Post-partum depression, people say, and I nod but I don't know. So much more happened than just having a baby (which is hardly a "just"). I gained and lost more than the parts that most women gain and lose when they have a baby.

In that year, I lost my safety and security, pieces of my identity, even my home. Some of it was taken, and some of it I just gave up and walked away, the effort to hold on no longer worthwhile.

And yet I wish . . . I wish I had looked into my daughter's face and felt peace and hope, not terror. I wish those baby smiles had brought joy, and not just a temporary abeyance of fear. I wish I'd loved her as well on the inside as I did on the outside.

Now I carry another little one, a tiny soul who needs a mother who knows who she is, and I still don't know. I wonder, sometimes, what I'll see when I look in this set of eyes.

I suppose that's what love is, at this stage: wondering who this child will be and how I will respond, wondering what it will be like to hold another baby, wondering what our family will look like when another little soul joins us.

It's a weird love, complete and yet entirely uncompleted, present and yet so dependent on the future. I know myself here, even though having another child means becoming lost again. We will wander for a while, I suppose, and then we will know ourselves. Stronger, because there's strength in the wandering.

Today I Believe

It's one day at a time around here right now. We're waiting on paperwork from the state on at least two different fronts, and they say the envelopes should arrive and yet they don't. I call and call and I might as well be talking to the wall, as effective as I am. My husband can't work in his new field without some of this paperwork, and so we're in a holding pattern. Again.

Lord, you have always given bread for the coming day,

And though I am poor, today I believe.

I'm tired. Pregnancy does that, and allergies and waking up and not being able to go back to sleep. I stare at the ceiling, wondering if it's better for the baby if I take the medicine or if I don't get the rest that I need. I imagine horrible things in those dark hours, tragedy and loss and things getting worse for us and not better. And when I do sleep I dream, strange sagas that don't seem much better than lying awake. 

Lord, you have always given strength for the coming day,

And though I am weak, today I believe.

Sometimes, it's hard for me to see any life for us but this one, this constant treading water, taking several steps forward only to take other ones back and find ourselves at the starting point once again. I trust, I grip God's hands when they're offered and pray, "Please, please, please," even when I don't know if it goes beyond the walls of my room.

Lord, you have always given peace for the coming day,

And though of anxious heart, today I believe.

I forget that we're fighting an enemy, that this life is a battle and every day, even the good ones, are days when we should be ready for attack. I forget, and I get weary, for carrying a sword is hard work. It looks glamorous on TV, I suppose, but the reality, this redeeming and transforming every moment that we're called to do, is a much more serious, mundane task than it appears. 

Lord, you have always kept me safe in trials,

And now, tried as I am, today I believe.

This world is not my home. I know that now, in ways that I didn't know it before. It's not my home, and I don't want it to be. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't see the beauty, shouldn't love the stolen moments when my girlie smiles her toothy grin and he takes my hand across the table and we watch her, overcome with joy even though there's no good reason. 

Lord, you have always marked the road for the coming day,

And though the way is hidden, today I believe.

And so I hope, not that it will be easy, but that we will learn to see beauty where we stand, wherever we stand. If I give my children nothing else, I want them to know that circumstances are just that: circumstances. They're not to be ignored or brushed over, but accepted and grieved and lived in and made meaningful, but they're not the end. Never, ever the end. 

Lord, you have always lightened this darkness of mine,

And though the night is here, today I believe.

We can only embrace and transform our lives and our circumstances when we see them as part of the whole, when we remember how temporary and transitory they are. They form us, if we'll let ourselves be formed by them, but the end of the story is always the same. Joy. 

Lord, you have always spoken when time was ripe,

And though you be silent now, today I believe.*

* The prayer is from Celtic Daily Prayer, the prayer book of the Northumbria Community.

Come Unto Me

Tired hangs off him like a million-pound weight, drips off him like he'd run through a summer thunderstorm. He's working and studying and daddy-ing and husbanding and it wears him thin, and I don't always know how to meet him there, how to touch that and bring him rest.

Rest is a hard word, hard for us right now because it feels like not working, and when we're not working we're not sure where the next dollar will come from or if we're striving hard enough to build a future. And it's different from falling into bed and sleeping at the end of a day spent rushing and fighting life and feeling like the best we can do in this life always falls short.

And yet rest we must. "This is a season," we say, and we both nod before we head back to work or collapse, to veg or sleep because the energy is gone. Rest . . . rest is what will keep us going, what will help us see our way through this season, what will help us see the answers and the open doors that are staring us in the face.

But it's hard to stop. It's one thing to open hands and hold plenty loosely, and quite another to hold lack, need, and unknowing. It's easier to let go of something than to open hands and realize the offering amounts to . . . nothing.

The call, though, is not to offer something of worth, for that's largely illusion anyway. The call is to offer the present, to present the present and ourselves in it as an offering. Because that's all we have, ever, even when life would have us believe something different.

Words Like Jacob

I haven't posted here in a while.

I don't tend to post when I'm fighting, when I feel like life is a series of fallings and failings, when I'm not quite sure how I am in the midst of it all.

Some people know, they just know, all the time, how they are and who they are and where God is, and I'm not one of them. I fumble for light, for truth and I question it all, because that's the way I'm made, to question and dig, deeper and deeper, until one day I hit the truth.

And I live in the moment, swept up by the feelings and the tasks and the people, when I don't know what they mean until sometime later, after I have the space to take a breath and look back on them, to connect the dots that I couldn't see when I was waking up each morning and taking steps (one, two, three).

Life to thoughts to words takes me longer than it does for some, and when I'm living it's hard to think and even harder to write, even though the writing makes it real. Words on paper - there's a fine line between forcing them and making space for them, between letting them have life and forcing it upon them. 

If Thomas Mann was right, that "a writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people," then I am a writer and this fumbling about with words is a grace. Writing is the way I follow Jacob, asking for blessing after a long night of wrestling, rolling around in the mud and the river wondering what it's all about.

Because I do wonder, in these times between words, if there's meaning in the struggle, if there's a point to it beyond getting soaking wet and so filthy I stink. Meaning is hard. Do we make it or find it? How do we know if we're imposing meaning or just finding the connections God left for us to see? 

But we must have it, we crave it, we would give up our very selves, some days, to find a coherent line we could follow. Meaning is a drug and we're all addicted, all trying to understand, especially when it feels like chaos. What, I wonder, do I give up to find meaning? And would it come to me if I waited, hands open and ready to receive? Or is the struggle part of what makes it special, part of what gives meaning its . . . um . . . meaning?

May you be blessed by the Imperfect Prose community, as I have been. 

New Life

It's a long time, I've been gone from this space. Long in days and weeks, but also long in distance from the previous life.

New job, new state, new rooms. We stuffed boxes, filled a truck, drove cross-country, had our car stolen, listened to the baby bark. Then we unstuffed the boxes, learned how to live with one car, watched it snow and felt the cold tingle up our arms and legs, and held the baby so she could sleep.

And now we're here. Down one car and some possessions we probably didn't need anyway, though my heart grieves the original art pieces we'll probably never see again. They're most likely in a dumpster somewhere, valuable only to those who could see with our eyes. But we're up a new life, a new start, a place to begin again, and I value that beyond the car and the TV and the microwave and even all of Dave's tools and his dress clothes.

There's power in beginning again.

I feel like I need to say that one more time, for me and maybe for you, too. There's power in beginning again.

I don't pretend to think that we leave everything behind, that the shadow of this last 14 months won't continue to influence how we think and feel and see and pray (or if we pray - I'm the first to tell you that it's hard to pray when God seems like a wall). But I feel like we can breathe here, like there's some space for us to heal and seek and, if we're blessed with it, to find.

And maybe that's enough - to live in these moments, to hold them close and let them be and just receive for a bit, where we've been struggling with what's been taken.

I think that's what we're to do this year - to live. Just live. To breathe in each day as it comes, each hour and each moment, and then move on to the next. To release everything that last year was and wasn't, and find what we have now. To let the hard, hurt places release and become soft again. To let it be what it was, without trying to make it into something it wasn't.

So here's to life, my friends, and the living of it.


I love that Imperfect Prose is back just as I'm posting again. Serendipitous.

Thinking About Quiet Days

photo © 2010 Crafty Dogma | more info (via: Wylio)

I crave silence. I want the words to cease. At night, I lay in bed and tell myself, over and over, “No words.” And I feel tense muscles relax and tired thoughts still and anxiety abate.
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To think is to use words, if you are me. Thinking is all well and good most of the time, but there’s such a thing as thinking too much. Such a thing as too many words.
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Instead of spinning, I want to be silent. I want to see and rest and be without analysis and without apology.
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I’m in the business of words, learning to string them and to strew them, loving their sound and image and intensity. But if all I’m left with are words, if I can’t make them stop, I’ve fallen off a horse of another color.
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Words make for easy answers. In a world without them, in that place between where I usually take a breath so I have the air to say more, things are complicated. Murky. Hard to hear and to hold. But beautiful.
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Words can usher people in, can offer hospitality and the warm fire of love welcoming them. But they can also put up walls, keep people and their hearts at bay. Sometimes the line between the fire and the wall isn’t so clear. You-can-come-this-far-but-not-farther is something of a mixed message.
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When my words cease, I wonder if anyone will love me. I wonder if I can make them all see who I am and why they should care I wonder if they’ll bother with the quiet girl. I wonder if they’ll remember that I stood here, that I lived and watched and tried to make sense of it all.
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God is still there, even when the words are not. I don’t feel him right now, but I know he’s there, asking me if I can look at him without thinking of him, if I can make space for him when he isn’t speaking.



I offer these imperfect words alongside the Imperfect Prose community hosted at Emily's.

Last Weekend

Words fail.

I spent a way-too-short weekend with Kirsten and Terri, remembering Ewan, grieving him, and just being together, and I cannot sum it up.

Some things are un-summable.

But I will say this: people who dismiss the Internet and electronic communication as a way of finding true community are wrong. They aren’t always wrong or wrong in everything they say, but they only need look at last weekend to know that you can find true Anne-and-Diana bosom friends online.

That is all.

Opening Our Chutes

Walking. Taking tentative steps forward, foot following foot, hoping that we don't topple at the end.

I wish I was talking about the baby. But no.

Today, and for the next several months of days, we'll be preparing our home, our lives, and our hearts for starting over. Opportunities have dried up here, dried into nothing until we can crackle them in our hands like the leaves that fall off the trees outside. And we don't want to stay, here in the land where they worship concrete, where the sun is wonderful but the green patches are too small and have too much space between them.

We want more, for ourselves and our girl and any littles who will follow her. Life, rich and clear and full, like good running river water. And so we leave a land that has dried out, as many have done before us when the sun baked their patch of earth, and head into we know not what. But we go, flinging ourselves into a faith that we're not quite ready for, hoping the stories we've heard will carry us when our own hearts fail.

We've made our final plans (or as final as they can be over two months in advance). We know where we're going and how we're getting there. We know when the truck is coming and when we'll pack our things. We know where our girl will lay her head for this next season.

Beginning anew brings hope. Some days it feels like an adventure, like standing on the edge of that cliff I jumped off of when I was 21, and we know the chute will open and we'll land somewhere fresh and new.

But we say goodbye to so much, and so much is unknown . . . so much is unknown.


Linking with Emily today.

Two Pilgrims

The world is heavy, and we pilgrims are cold and tired tonight. But we keep walking, because what is a pilgrim but one who puts foot in front of foot even when those feet ache and we're far from home.

So we shuffle forward, not even seeing the world around us because we're focused on the ruts and the dust and wondering how we'll ever wash the dirt off our feet.

Step after step on this dark and weary night, with little hope of reaching hot food, warm fire, and soft bed. Those aren't the tools of our trade, as they say. They aren't things we much hope for anymore.

We have a secret, you and I, one that's been lost in this shuffle of days and feet. If we bring it to mind, now and then, the bringing is not our own but something that is done to us, something that swoops in and captures our thoughts for a moment.

And then it flits away, like the white moths we paused to watch by the river that day, the ones that darted around us so long, we wondered if they'd been sent. Messengers of a sort, to remind us that we are all beautiful and we are all frail.

Tonight, somewhere amidst the shuffling and the longing, we remember again. I can tell you see it, too, because you're looking at me when I remember it, and not at your feet.

The meeting of eyes is enough. Words might take too much effort and we could run out of energy and stop where we stand simply because we cannot continue any longer. It is enough that we remembered for a moment: this world is not the end.


SDG.




Linking with Emily, a fellow walker on this pilgrim-path.

. . . even if he does not . . .

 . . . even if he does not . . . 

A little over two years ago, three beautiful women and I spent a beautiful, heart-searching, restful, exciting time together. I'd seen all of them before, in college, but we didn't know each other until we met blogging.

When we came together, we were all at crucible times in our lives. There were big decisions, daily struggles, important questions, and we came together not to find answers or to make it better, but to figure out, together, how to live in the pain, the crunch, the stress of that place.

We found community. We found rest and forgiveness and a place where we could each be ourselves in the fullness of what that means. We found that a community God had joined together could be strong, even if it didn't make sense, even though some of us hadn't been sure we should really get on that plane, go, and reach out.

Kirsten was one of those women. It was her home we invaded, her food we ate, her wine we drank, her town we explored and came to love.

Eleven days ago, I stayed up late to pray for her son. Ewan was born beautiful, and with a broken heart. Eleven days ago, so many around the world gave up sleep and work and prayed him through a surgery even the doctors weren't sure he'd survive.

Over the last eleven days, I have cried great tears. I've prayed, beseeched, sent love and peace and rest and clarity and strength. I've spoken words and simply told God that he has to pray for me because I can't find the right language to say anything at all.

Last night, we prayed again. I fell asleep with Ewan's name on my lips and woke with it in the same place. But he was gone by the time I rose, safe in Jesus' arms, knowing love the rest of us only imagine.

I've looked at pictures of him off and on all day. I love his spirit, how he knows his mama and the baby wisdom in his eyes. I've focused on the photo above, where he sees her eyes and grips her finger. This was a precious baby, a loved baby, a little one who knew who held him and how secure that hold was. When I remember Ewan, I'll remember that.

And I'm left with a phrase that came from that special weekend two years ago. Three men, about to be thrown into a fiery furnace because they wouldn't worship falsely, asked if they were really that committed to their God. Could he save them?

They replied that he could, that he was great and worthy and he could do it. But even if he did not, they would choose to follow him. Even if he let them die in the heat and the flames, the would choose him every time. Even if he didn't show up, even if they looked like fools, even if he let the situation play out without any intervention, they had made their choice.

Eleven nights ago, God intervened. He made a miracle. Last night, he did not. But even here, even when he did not, my friend is choosing hope. That's no small statement. That's a huge, world-shattering statement, and a precious, tender one, too. What a legacy for the tiny one they love so much!

Pray for Kirsten and for James, as they bear this burden, as they bear pain and emptiness and the weight of questions I cannot imagine. I wish I could hold her tonight.

These last two weeks, walking alongside in my small way, following from afar a story that had taken up residence in my heart, has changed me. I don't know how yet. But I know this: my friend has a heart that can say even if he does not . . . and I aspire to have that heart, too.