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.

Enough

Third grade. Summer camp. To be able to access the pool, swimmers had to prove they could tread water for at least a minute (maybe two?). The only problem? I had never treaded water before in my life. Somehow, through swimming lesson after swimming lesson, no one had taught me this basic skill.

I literally threw myself into the deep end of the pool. Somehow, I managed to keep my head above water for the requisite amount of time. To this day, I'm not sure how I did it. Swimming skill combined with pure determination is the best I can come up with.

Turns out, that was good practice for . . . life, I guess.

It doesn't feel like there's enough of anything in my life right now - not enough time, not enough energy, not enough money, nor enough sleep. I feel like I can't possibly spend enough time with my kids, and yet there's so much more to be done. Dishes are a necessity and, when you find yourself trying not to swear in front of the children for the fourth time in an hour because you stepped on something pointy or yucky, vacuuming is, too.

And all of that is before the necessities of my own soul: the words I have to write because doing so helps keep order in my mind, the few minutes of quiet that I must have because I don't function well when my brain is always abuzz, the exercise that often feels like a waste of time but that keeps me positive and healthy and so much more whole.

People tell me I'm doing a lot, and I can see how that would look true, but I feel like I'm just treading water. Not drowning, not racing, just staying afloat. And I don't always know if I'm even going to do that.

Sometimes, it's that day in third grade all over again. I fling myself into life and just hope, hope, hope that I can do enough to keep us all sane. As I do this over and over and over again, though, I'm coming to trust the process, and not just what my eyes can see. When I look out over everything, it's too much. But when I narrow my focus and look at the next thing, then the next and the next and the next, I get through what needs to be done.

I'm coming to see the gift of a day, of 24 hours. It's not enough time to do everything, but it's plenty for the things that matter most, the ones I'm actually called to.

There is enough time, when I don't cram in things that aren't mine to do.

There is enough rest, when I take the opportunities for it when they come.

There is enough energy, when I choose carefully how I'll spend it.

I've been given enough of everything, but it takes faith to believe that's true when it seems so false.

Playing With Boys

Healing comes in strange places, sometimes. One little boy, a mama whose heart was injured long ago, and a sweet girlie who loves everyone the same.

My daughter makes friends wherever she goes, so it shouldn't surprise me that all the neighbors know her and love her. And I guess it doesn't; one look at her charming one-dimpled smile and most people are smitten.

But one of her friends does surprise me. I didn't expect a six-and-a-half year old boy to fall under her spell.

What I know of boys that age could fill books, but none of them would be good. When I was younger, boys were competition. They were mean, they thought they were smarter than me just because they were male, and I had to prove them wrong. I could go on and on about the boys who wronged me, teased me, made me cry and even about the one who challenged me to a playground competition (of his own design, of course) to prove that boys were better than girls.

The fact that I ever fell in love is astounding, but then again, Dave is an amazing man.

What I know of boys is to keep my distance. If they prove themselves over time, they might be worthy of my friendship. But you never know when they'll say one of the harsh things, usually in jest, that I've come to associated with men, and then my heart will break all over again. And so my inclination is to keep her away from strange boys, to hold her hand until I know they won't bowl her over. I want her to be safe and not hurt, and that's one of the ways I know to do that.

But the neighbors have boys. Two of them, and they're outside all day long, just like my girl. And they have this dog who the girl loves, especially since we don't have one of our own. Meeting them was inevitable. Friendship was not.

I didn't expect gentleness from this little boy. I didn't expect him to call my girl to the fence and help her touch his dog through the wires. I didn't expect her to come home saying his name. I didn't expect him to invite her over to his tire swing and then, when I brought her, to push her gently so she wouldn't fall out.
I didn't expect any of this for my girl, but it's what I found.

My heart still rolls over when he comes to the fence calling her name, but not because I'm worried. Now, it's because I'm amazed. There is at least one little boy with a gentle soul, who loves babies and knows how to play with little kids.

I pray for him, now, that no one takes that away from him. I pray that, no matter what the other boys say, he becomes a man who knows how to cradle and comfort. And I pray that, someday, he has a little girl of his own . . . because every gentle man needs one of those.

Covered

A couple of months ago, we took the baby to the ER. There wasn't much of a choice in the matter - she'd jammed a hard straw into her soft palate and it was still bleeding after several hours. When we could finally see it, the gaping hole she'd made was, all in all, rather spectacular.

Middle of the night, doctors alternately loving on her and hurting her, hours pass because the ENT is out or asleep or something. And then stitches, holding her down because the medicine (3x the usual dose for one drug and more than 1 dose of another) wasn't working and she wouldn't just sleep and so she arched against 5 of us as he stitched away.

Two weeks later, baby healed but the bills arrived. Not so much, but more than we could factor into our meager budget right now. Cue panic, mama searching all of the accounts to find a way to pay for the care she had to have, daddy lamenting, again, the lost job and wishing he could provide.

Help asked, applications submitted and . . . bills covered. If we owe after this, we will be able to pay. But it doesn't look like we will owe anything. Nothing.

Truly, God holds the little ones, wraps them up in his big, strong arms and carries them when there's nothing else to be done. If only we could all live as little ones . . .

Thanks, today, for:
-baby hale and healthy
-doctors who know what they're doing
-the relief of knowing all is paid
-time to write this week
-husband has one class (one very important class) down
-baby curls
-little one finally growing out of clothes

Earth is A'Flutter

Aspen leaves really do flutter in the wind, like a million green butterflies with wings all a'twitter. It rolls today, down from the mountains, across the plains, and eventually through my suburban backyard. Even here, there's no hiding, no avoiding the moving air and the things it brings.

For my part, I mostly stay inside. The wind and I don't get along. I don't think I've carried this animosity from childhood, though I remember days when I leaned so far into it walking to school that I wondered what would happen if it ever stopped.

The girl, though, she loves the wind. Or, rather, she doesn't seem to notice it much. I have a theory about this: she's so low to the ground that she doesn't really feel it. But I think that's only part of it. I think her world is so interesting, so colorful and new and fun to explore, that it doesn't matter what's going on around her.

And watching her, I begin to wonder: how often do I let one unpleasant aspect of an otherwise-beautiful life get in the way of my appreciation? How often do I forget how rarely things are perfect, even for a moment, and let my frustration with the imperfect rule rather than the deep and abiding joy that good things bring? And how long will I wait for my life to be perfect, rather than embracing the cracked and tottering now, bright colors and chipping paint together?

1. Fluttering aspen
2. Watching my girl learn to make friends
3. Long naps
4. Chubby white legs after a long winter
5. One morning of sleeping in this week
6. The celebration of another year, in a world where life itself is victory
7. Dark blue eyes in her pale, pale face
8. How he's almost done, at least with this part of his new education
9. The places where Jesus meets me
10. How adding ice makes everything better

Hoping

Hope is a funny sort of thing. It springs up at you, out of nowhere sometimes, to tackle you around the waist and hold you down until you listen to what it has to say.

I wrestle with hope, most often through early morning hours. I don't want it to claim me, don't want it to grab me from behind and I don't want to listen to what it's telling me.

Hope can cost quite a bit, Disappointment stings to the core, makes me wonder if I dreamed it all up in the first place. I've followed hope before, and tasted only gall.

But learning not to hope has it's downsides, too. Without hope, life is dark, dreary. It weighs more than it should, more than it needs to. And everything becomes anticipatory of Bad Things, the kind that lurked under bed and in closets when I was a child.

When Mirren was born, I lost sight of hope. I couldn't find it, not for her or for me or for the two of us together. I knew it was there, I could feel it, smell it, taste it, but I couldn't see it and I certainly couldn't grab it.

For months, hope and I fought. We wrestled, though that dark time when I so much wanted to feel like it was a new day. Like Jacob, I couldn't see what was attacking me. I couldn't feel the thing that so badly wanted me in its grip. Instead, I just tried to keep my footing through the next round, knowing morning had to come eventually.

Also like Jacob, I emerged from that fight with a strange sort of victory. A new name, a new piece of me, more resilient and positive than the pieces I've known before. And a year of struggle, so profound in some ways that I may limp from it for the rest of my life, though in the end I think it will make me stronger, not bitter and lost and sad.

For all that I couldn't find hope when things looked better than they do now, these days I find it everywhere.

Today, hope took the face of a little girl discovering balloons. Shrieks of joy echoed through the halls, and hope unfurled a tendril that played, gentle-like, through my hair. When I saw Dave go shovel snow for the sheer joy of it (he'd never done it before), the tendril began to wrap around me. And when I watched the sleepy girl giggling on her back on the floor because it was too much effort to get up, I gave in and let it hold me.

May you be held tonight, friends, no matter your struggle.

And the Wind 'Doth Blow

Today the wind gusts, and I thank God again and again that I'm in here, where I don't have to take the gusts full in the face. I grew up with the wind and all the different gifts it brings, the rains in summer and the snow in winter, and the terrible things it brought, too, hail and tornados and rushing underground to wait.

A month from now, I will be in a car heading back to that land of the winds. I'll take my daughter, my family, so that she may grow where I once grew.

I want her to know so many things: the power of the wind, and that she's protected from it. The joys of rain and snow, and why spring is such a big deal after all. I want her to have a backyard and kids to play with in the streets and trees to climb and hills for sledding.

Christmas-the-day this year may be hurried and harried, but this year we're all getting a fresh start. What better gift can I give my daughter and my husband and myself than that?

Thankful, today, with Ann.

Thankful for wind, the way it hustles and howls.

Thankful for first steps, and tentative grins when she falls.

Thankful for family and turkey and friends.

Thankful for Firefly, and the Annual Thanksgiving Rewatch.

Thankful for feeling better, after a weekend of mostly feeling crappy.

Thankful for new opportunities, for moving forward.

Thankful for renewed relationships with old friends.

Thankful for husband who loves through thick and thin.

Thankful for the way the light creeps across the wall all day.

Thankful for beauty even in the midst of chaos.

Open My Eyes, That I May See

I can't watch those commercials anymore. You know the ones I mean - the extended ones, with pictures and videos of children starving and dying, the ones with the helpful white people walking among houses filled with dark faces. The message is good and I wish I could help them all, but I can't look in their eyes anymore.

I don't turn my head because I want to deny what exists in the world, but because I cannot look at their faces without seeing my girl's face there, too.

This has been a year of softening. There's something about my girl, about giving birth and seeing fragile life become more and more robust, about suddenly knowing deep inside what it means when a child hurts, that has opened new places in my soul.

I first thought the feelings were the result of hormones run rampant, of new-mama-itis, and that it would fade over time. But as the girl inches her way toward toddlerhood, my heart is still wide open.

This Advent, I pray that Jesus will gather the little ones of the world to Him, that they will know His presence and His love even if they don't know His name. And when those commercials come on TV, I close my eyes tight and pray until they're over, for peace and justice and food, for Christmas beyond what they can even imagine.

And as I pray, I find thanks rising in my own heart, (for) . . .

 . . . the way she only lets go and walks when she's distracted and forgets that she can't do it,
 . . . writing again, words filling fingers and pages, stories that I didn't even know unfolding,
 . . . the chance to start over in our lives, and the invitation to live deliberately
 . . . the fact that, while we can't afford much, we can afford Christmas this year
 . . . that the credit card thieves didn't get away with too much
 . . . good endings and new beginnings
 . . . that family and good friends will gather, once again, to fill this Thursday with thanks
 . . . the chance to teach her about Thanks and Advent and Christmas
 . . . the rising desire in my own heart to choose things that highlight meaning this year, instead of rushing around trying to do it all
 . . . for peace and settledness of soul about our decidedly not-so-peaceful nor settled future.

Joining with Ann today.

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.

Words that Fly

I'm writing fiction again, and I feel the joy of it bubbling out of my soul into everything I do.

It's true: I'm a better person when I'm writing fiction. I'm gentler with my daughter, more giving to my husband, more willing to do tedious tasks at work without complaining. I have more energy, I don't mind being tired nearly as much, and I deal better when things don't work out right.

I'm surprised most of the people in my life don't push me to write more often.

Writing fiction . . . well, I'm tempted to say that it's like crack to me, but the truth is that it's better than that. It's like a million roller coaster rides, one after the other. It's like having a pile of the best chocolate chip cookies in the world and knowing that the calories will fall out as soon as I take a bite. It's like something that got knocked over inside is set right again.

It helps that I love this story. I love the complicated back story, the multiplicity of complex characters and how their complexities interact. I love the changes that need to take place and how they happen. I love the fun of it, the joy and the awkwardness (because there's nothing I like more as a writer than putting my characters in awkward situations), how writing it, even when it's hard, feels like a romp in the snow.

And so today I'm grateful for the writer's high, for Elizabeth's comp book covers, for fountain pens and colored jewel-tone Levenger ink. I'm grateful for my little MacBook and its purple case, and for words with wings, that take us places we couldn't otherwise visit. I'm grateful for stories that stand the test of time, ideas that grow as the weeks pass instead of shriveling. And I'm grateful for all the books I've read as inspiration, and that my own journey leads me here.

Adding my small stack of gifts to the pile over at Ann's place.

One Day We'll Wake

Girl giggles burble up from her middle. That little laugh is music, balm even, to a stretched mama soul. Of all the sounds, that's the one I choose night after night when he asks me which was the best moment of my day.

And then he reaches strong, warm hand to me, and we pray. Simple words, asking for rest and peace, praying that it all gets done, and that there's more rest on the other side.

I won't say that the days I'm living right now are easy ones, ones I would put on "Repeat" and play over and over and over again. But I wouldn't wish them away, either. I wouldn't wish us secure and oblivious to the larger questions that loom. I wouldn't wish that we would choose safety over possibility. I might wish a more gradual slope for our ascent (or is it a descent now?), but I wouldn't take the climb away.

After all, the night is not forever. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. The night is not forever. And afterwards, there is morning.

Thank God for morning . . .

 . . . and for baby giggles
and husband strength
and the monkey suit
and how much she loves pears (like her Daddy, this one)
and family who say, "Come and stay"
and for Julie Bee, who I will miss
and new relationships, flowering even as we plan to leave
and homemade pizza, warm and heartening
and for enduring love.


With Ann today . . .

Now That's Dedication

Baby is dedicated. In case we didn't know, she belongs to Jesus. He made her, he holds her, and one day she'll wake up and find herself in those arms once again.

It reminds me of the (made-up by mama) song that I've sung to her all these months:

I love you little Mirren,

who God made out of us . . . 

(it goes on, but I'll spare you).

We thought we were losing her when she was just weeks-old, just after we found out about her. Amongst wake-up-sobbing cramps, I prayed. "Jesus," I said, "hold my girl."

And he did. I felt, though how I can't explain, his arms around her, holding, always holding. And she lived, our blondest little one, and I've always felt her relationship with him as something separate from mine, something beautiful and good, but that I cannot ever, ever touch. Sacred, like a burning bush or a pillar of fire.

I'm grateful for her life, her little emerging personality, her solidness and stubbornness and the determination with which she faces challenges. I'm grateful for how she's beginning to see walking as a possibility, how she clamps her mouth and "mmm's" when she's done eating, how she manages to stand up in her bed with her legs still swaddled. 

And I'm grateful for time away, for 24 solid hours this weekend with Dave. We're making a lot of big decisions and change hangs on our horizon, and we need the time to rest together, and to talk. So I'm grateful for rainy days at the beach, for the way water drops on blossoms and how Earl Grey hangs on in my soul even when the cup is empty. I'm grateful for jacuzzi tubs and amazing dinners (especially when I just happen upon them) and that we can choose what's best, even when it's also hardest. And I'm grateful for him, that he doesn't have to be perfect or put-together but can just be who and where he's at.

Blessings, all. May your lives be rich this week.

(Joining with Ann to praise and pray.)

Choose Blessing

Baby smiles fast become little girl grins as biggerBiggerBIGGER hands grip mine and growing feet learn to step. My heart jumps, to proverbial throat and then threatens to exit body entirely as I look at what he made out of us.

The girl is a triumph, our triumph in this difficult year. She promises victory, reminds us that no matter what, no matter how all of the uncertainty and difficulty fall out, life triumphs over darkness and death.

God wins, as a friend of mine once said.

God wins, and we are struggling right now, he and I standing together to fight things mundane and yet wrenching. God wins, and we are making decisions that involve drawing back, drawing in, making a move that seems for all the world like going way, way backwards. God wins, and I know my love's heart is aching with the choices he can't make right now, and mine aches for him, that the choices he wants aren't among the offered options.

But we take her with us as we go, our spring-hope flower, the little one who smiles and grows in spite of rocks in the soil and whose pixie-face brings sunshine to the socked-in soul.

Our promise, our blessing as we Jacob-wrestle through the night. Even though we walk away limping, we have been blessed.


Joining Em, at my home-away-from-here-on-Thursdays.

Now and Forever

Today is a gift and the future isn't a given.

I've been mulling on that phrase since I thought of it sometime this week, somewhere in the midst of sending my heart to Issaquah a million times a day, praying mercy grace rest peace presence hope tears family community bread strength and more for Kirsten and James, and in the midst of holding together the million or so threads that seem to comprise my life right now.

When sleep doesn't come and the baby babbles across the monitor way too early, I remember: today is a gift and the future isn't a given. 

When I'm juggling two jobs and motherhood (which is so much more than a job), on top of being a wife and a friend, my mind turns it over: today is a gift and the future isn't a given. 

When I find myself saying goodbye, unexpectedly because time passed so much faster than I counted it, to yet more friends, more people who've wound themselves into my heartstrings, I hold the truth: today is a gift and the future isn't a given.

It's an uneasy truth in my mind, simple and beautiful, but with the ability to tear me to shreds if I let it run rampant inside. So I touch it, the spiky bits and the soft bits, and try to find a home for it in my soul, a way to bring it in and a place to bring it in to that will change without destroying. I want to hold it and make peace with it, but without fear and without anger. I want to give it a home so it doesn't have to wedge itself in someplace hurtful and hard.

As I walk with this new place in my soul, I'm thankful:

• watching him, working harder than he's ever worked to make life work for us
• the prospect of rest, of space for us to make some decisions and find life again
• we're holding body and soul together in spite of . . . in spite of a lot
• sweet Julie and her Brandon, moving out into their future
• 18 pounds of climbing, teething, hold-me-mama bundle
• online friends, and knowing I have proof that these relationships are real, despite what skeptics say
• a full night's sleep
• knowing fall is happening somewhere, even if it's not where I am
• morning quiet, even when I have to come to work to find it
• a growing glow of excitement about the future, uncertain though it may be

Linking with Ann today.

I Wonder About Flight

Trying to figure out what to write for Chapter 5 of God in the Yard has been like trying to describe music in terms of colors - I can do it, but I don't always feel like I'm talking about something real. 

Gratefulness is hard for me, but not for the same reasons that it's hard for Barkat. It's not that I don't trust the sky. It wasn't until I put my thoughts from GitY  together with a quote from Kathleen Norris's Acedia and Me. Norris says, "being rejected, I learned to reject." 

I knew childhood rejection, and I resonate with the idea of learning there not to let the good things in. And so I stopped trusting, stopped thinking I could make friends and people would like me, stopped believing that I saw what was real. I became suspicious of people and scared of them, scared that they would pretend one thing and then become something else, scared that they would seem to like me but really wouldn't. And gradually I became suspicious of all good things, came to touch and embrace them tentatively, wondering if they would really be there when I needed them, wondering if they were really good, or if they would turn and bare their teeth when I needed to lean into them the most. I pushed away good because it hurt too much to have it turn into something else.

But there's more than that: I also pushed the good away because it wasn't, not even ever once, perfect. It was a lot of things, good things, even great things, but it wasn't perfect. And I was taught high ideals for experiences. I was brought into a world where things were supposed to go right, where it was normal to have high expectations and be disappointed, where ideals were extolled and everyone, including myself, felt like they fell short all the time, felt like they ruined otherwise "perfect" moments with their self and their mess.

So I also learned to reject the good because it wasn't the perfect, to not be grateful for what I had because it wasn't the best I could imagine and it wasn't what I wanted it to be. I learned to be disappointed with the good because it wasn't the best. I learned to be picky instead of happy, frustrated and disappointed instead of satisfied and full.

Between the two, it's hard to overcome. It's hard to trust the good, to trust that God is good and that the things he puts into my hands aren't going to bite me. And then it's hard for gratefulness to not feel stifled or stilted, because I'm trying to be grateful for things that still don't seem good enough to me.

The first of these is the most painful. It's hard to trust, hard to believe that things can be different than they once were, that it's ok for me to wonder and wonder and wander and wonder some more. It's hard for me to want to reach out and embrace something when I'm afraid it has spines on the bottom instead of a tender underbelly.

But the other is the most damaging, I think. It takes them joy out of even good things, things that I love. And it's always there, sitting at the back of my mind, wondering why things couldn't be just a little different, wondering what would make this better, wondering if I'll ever by as happy as I want to be, wondering why I have to make do with these small goods in my hand when I see so many other, bigger goods that could be.

The first makes it hard to embrace good things, but the second makes it hard to WANT to, and that seems more harmful and dangerous in the long run. It's one thing to reject out of fear, and another to reject out of pride, to say, "That's all well and good, but it's not good enough for me." The second brings on the feeling that good is never going to come the way I want it to, so I may as well just reject it and be done, and then resign myself to never having anything as good as I want it. I may as well just decide that I'm never going to be happy, that things will never be the way I want them to be, and live anyway,

But that allows me to nurse my pride, to nurse a dissatisfaction with the world that means joy can't come in, that's self-watchful instead of self-giving, and I don't want that, either.

And so I end this chapter feeling stuck. Not hopelessly stuck, but at least momentarily so. I suppose that's the good thing about envisioning life as a journey: you just keep walking, even when you don't know where to go next. And eventually, God leads you to victory, whether in this life or the next.

Starting Again

I pulled my novel out of the drawer yesterday. It's sad, feeling intimidated by a 3" high stack of paper, but there you go.

Don't get me wrong - I love this novel. I love the story and the characters, and I love where it goes and what they do and how they handle themselves. But I've written two full drafts, now, and a bunch of other false starts, and I just haven't been able to solve some of the problems inherent in the story.

After getting entirely fed up with contradictory critiques, I put it away. At that point, I didn't know if I'd ever take it out again. Solving the problems seemed impossible without compromising either the story or the characters, and I felt confused about the better direction giving the feedback I got.

Also, I don't like starting over.

I'm also beginning again when it comes to art. Several years back, I had a ton of creative energy and picked up painting for the first time in my life. I painted consistently for a year or so, but got fed up with my lack of knowledge about technique and the fact that I'm SO SLOW at it.

But something in me calls to making lines on a page, and so I'm dipping my feet back in, remembering how color soothes and how even painting a background can ease the soul.

It's ok to start over, no matter how many times it takes.

I keep telling myself that, in my creative pursuits as well as in daily life. Because normal tasks involve starting over all the time. Take laundry, for example. As soon as you get a load done, there are more dirty clothes. It can seem never-ending, a long, long cycle of starting over, over and over again.

We have to make peace with the starting over, or life will always feel like a failure and a drag and we won't be able to embrace it. We have to open ourselves to seasons, to the ebbs and flows of work and energy that mean sometimes we'll be able to conquer the world, and other times we'll barely keep our mouths open above the rising waves.

It helps me to remember that I serve the God who offers us all a second chance, and a third and a fourth and so on. If I'm not willing to start over, then I won't move back into relationship with him when I need to.

So a'starting over I go. Wish me luck.

Thankful today for:

• new beginnings
• baby Ewan's miracle early Friday morning (and praying for more as we speak)
• solutions to some of the novel's problems
• my wee, climbing monkey of a baby
• air conditioning (it's 114 degrees here today - yuck!)
• green, growing things, especially indoors
• getting to be on the news last Friday
• entering a slower season
• getting to pray for people close to me, and hold them when they cry
• the lightness of knowing I'm not alone

I thank you God . . .

Words tumble, some days freely, some days rhythmically, other times pell-mell over rocks and around pebbles until they finally come to their resting place. They can communicate, share, give, take and move. Saying something or putting it on paper makes it real and, sometimes, articulates thoughts I wouldn't have known I had if they hadn't gotten said, irreversibly, in an awkward moment over coffee.

Today is my 100th day in a row writing and journaling over at 750 words, one of my favorite sites on the entire Internet. I thought I wouldn't find time to journal after the babe was born and I grieved it, but this site has given me back that time and space. And so today I'm thankful for words, for their power and hope, for the joy of language.

• the ability to write and speak and thus to love the people around me
• rediscovering poetry as snippets of bliss
• conversations that resolve and heal and love
• baby babbles, incessantly telling me about a world I almost remember
• God's words, written in the Bible and spoken by the tongues of those around me
• books, full of words that note ideas, adventures, and dreams
• letters, the too-little-had nowadays experience of words on paper from loved ones
• handwriting, how forming a word says a lot about a person
• how writing, the act of it, makes me human, completes my existence here in a way little else does
• how writing is prayer, is joy and peace and being with God
• how putting words on paper means I no longer have to store them in my head and so create space
• spoken-word poetry, and the rhythms I could listen to all day 
• this poem, specifically, a recent discovery that helps me find the riches in everyday life

Joining with Ann to create a cacophony of praise today.

Better Late than Never

Labor Day we spent in the sun, soaking it and each other in. We walked by the sea, and by homes so large we realized we wouldn't even want them, and we were thankful for our small lives, for normal and daily and little and good.

I'm also thankful for these:

• the amazing little personality emerging in the baby
• how he always thinks I can do it, even when I'm ready to walk away
• how she sleeps on her tummy now, knees curled under like she's about to crawl away (and sometimes she does, across her crib and in her sleep)
• the clouds that didn't burn off today
• the joys of "hot" in the fall: hot tea, hot coffee, hot soup
• that we're finally all sleeping through the night
• finding new "favorite places" even after I've lived here more than 10 years
• anticipating a move to "I know not where"
• new connections and meanings for my daughter's name (Mirren = Mary)
• Thai yellow curry with potatoes
• little turtle faces poking out
• my soft pillow every night

The Lived-in Life

There is a peace and a rhythm that comes with choosing to live in today's moments without trying to escape them or make them into something they're not. It's a slow, settled feeling, more akin to earth than heaven, that creeps up so slowly I don't realize it's there until I feel a golden, heavy feeling in my middle.

Compassion comes, for the drippy-nosed babe who doesn't understand why she can't breathe. Love comes, for he who holds my hands and doesn't fail even when we forget that walking on quicksand isn't normal. Contentment comes, between one folded shirt and the next.

The fruit of a life lived-in, not lived-around or lived-near, mirrors the fruits of our Savior-God himself. And those fruits fill the soul from the center out. I imagine, eventually, it will overflow, sending rivulets and then streams and rivers of fullness to all who come to partake.

All this, from a life I would change so much about if it were up to me. Truly, all's grace.



The prose may be imperfect, but you may find your heart there anyway.

Days Like Today

Day like today, I don't know what to write. 

Day after weekend overwhelming, crying because babe won't eat, our tears mingling, hers and mine, over a spattered plastic tray. Day after night awake because she's awake, teeth hurting and time-to-play, Mama. Again our tears, hers in her bed and mine in mine, praying that we both would rest. Day after beach party long, where we left before it was over because the wind came cold and little feet froze.

Day where back-to-work feels weary and I long, again, to make our house a home and not wilt behind this desk. 

Day where answering "how are you?" feels like a litany of what-went-wrong and I'm tired of living in that place. 

Day like today, I'm thankful for:

Air conditioning

Trinkets on my desk that remind me of friends who send love

Baby, curled and sleeping, when I left this morning

Finally beginning to settle into our fall schedule

Good conversations with new friends

Remembering to laugh with him

Fish tacos

Prayer that's like breath

How he calls to check up on me

This, because it made me laugh this morning