To the Unseen

It was April of 1992 and the Los Angeles riots were erupting in the blocks surrounding my house. Breathing in the smoke that enveloped our neighborhood, was painful to my nose and throat. My mom gave me a wet washcloth to hold over my face to act as a barrier.

When my Dad left the safety of our house armed only with a garden hose to defend his place of business from arson, the fear and intensity were overwhelming and I fled to my room. 

Although my fourth grade understanding was limited, I knew something big was happening. The only thing I could think to do in that moment was to grab my vinyl, heart- adorned journal and document. Covering my face to ease the sting, I wrote as if the whole world was going to burn down around me and all that would be left to tell the story would be my written words.

Spotted with teardrops, I can read that entry today.

Scribed in elementary handwriting, I had done my very best to bear witness to the chaos.

These days, I feel that same insatiable compulsion to document. 

I can feel the history unfolding around me. As Covid-19 seeks to burn the world down, we are each sequestered to our respective houses to do our part to slow the spread of the virus.

Grocery stores and hospitals have become ground zero for the virus. Human beings have been hurled into the impossible, and we are being overwhelmed. 

Every time we leave the house we run the risk of exposing ourselves to the virus— to contracting it ourselves, or to carrying it to someone else. 

Our faces and hands feel vulnerable to the unseen. 

We have begun to cover our nose and mouth with masks. We are reduced to wide eyes as we shuffle through our “essential” outings. Gone are the reassuring smiles of strangers.

Never before have we been less visible. Confined to our households. Faces and hands engulfed in protective coverings.

I am privileged to set up camp in a secure home with my three kids. Yes, my husband is deployed and I fly solo right now, but I am relatively untouched by the effects of the virus. 

These times feel unbelievably big, and yet my world has become quite small. Our days are rolling one into the other in seamless cohesion. 

Never before have we as a culture been more invisible. And yet, at the same time, never before have we been more— exposed. 

The tangible distractions to which I was was once drawn are now kept six feet away. That which I once relied upon to keep the rhythm of my life going has been silenced. Anything extra has been stripped away.

“… And the foundations of the Earth were laid bare.” (Psalm 18:15b)

The foundations of the Earth are being laid bare.

In the span of one month (largely over the season of Lent), the world as we have known it has been painfully uncovered and thrust into a revelation. The foundations of our lives are ruthlessly uncovered. The masks that have comfortably conformed to our features over time, are being ripped from our faces. That which has held us up, is recoiling as it squints in bright sunlight. 

The air is clearer than ever. The Earth is breathing again. It is time to take in the view. To see truth, no longer veiled by smog. To take a hard look at our foundations.

Our crutches. Our idols. Our jumbled priories. Areas in our live that we have taken for granted or advantage of. Our habits. Our privilege. Our lies. Our biases. Our corrupt systems. Our utter lack.

The unseen is being revealed and we are left— exposed. 

Our natural tendency is to kick into survival mode. We hoard. We hoard information, supplies, food— we do this so we can continue on in our gluttonous consumerism that has been our comfort. Anything to avoid feeling empty.  We go numb. We binge. We drink. We text. We scroll.

 I use the communal “we.” I have done all of these and more. 

We cling to our colorful wrapping and ignore the tearing, the intense peeling of our layers. The unwrapping. With rubber gloved knuckles we cling to what we are still yet allowed to touch. 

Because if we were to let go—if we were to stop trying to gorge the emptiness away… 

If we were to allow the buzz to fade and the emotional novocaine to wear off and begin to let the feelings loose. If we were to let the exposing happen. It is very possible that with a great jolt, would come the realization that despite the relentless consuming and clinging we are actually starving, and lacking. 

We are a ravenous people. And we have been cut off. 

It is time to think about the unseen.

If everything were to burn down around us, what would we have left? This virus is ravaging our world. We can no longer live in the pipe dream that we are untouchable, and that our actions don’t affect others.

While this planet is taking its first full breath in a long time, these are the times to think beyond humanity itself and to consider the unseen. 

Let us consider the divine. Let us consider the supernatural. Let us entertain the idea, if only for a moment, that perhaps there are parts of our foundation that are actually harmful to ourselves and others.

Because It is in the unseen, deep in the inadequacies of humanity, that foundations are made solid. Where bravado has no place. In our weakness, the divine inevitably steps in, and our inner core is stoked and strengthened by the air of revelation. Then we can rebuild. We can emerge better.

Make no mistake, I do not believe that this pandemic was caused by the divine, nor is suffering ever His “will.” 

But heaven help us if we waste the devastation caused by this virus. If nothing good comes out of this. The cry of my heart is that we emerge a better people. A better church. 

One thing that I am coming to know, even as I melt down in my very literal closet is: 

I have never felt more seen.

The doorposts and windows of my house glisten with common kitchen oil made holy by my hidden prayers. I ask for protection over my home and those within its walls. As I move through my house, covering every entrance to the outside in oil and prayer, I call out to the unseen for deliverance from the unseen— a ragamuffin’s beatitudes spill out.

Seen, is the mother that cries in the darkness of the closet.

Seen, are the scientists, who diligently search the unseen for answers.

Seen, are the students. The cheated and the scrambling. 

Seen, are the deployed and those they leave behind.

Seen, are the lonely and alone.

Seen, are the unemployed and uninsured.

Seen, are the masked brave. Whose eyes do not have the luxury of turning away from death.

Seen, are those that are dying alone.

Heard, are the prayers of the fearful. 

Blessed is the repentance of the pious.

Blessed are the prayers of those that have never before prayed.

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The foundations of the earth are laid bare. 

It is in this place of the stripped. From the exposed. Where nothing is hidden.

This is me bearing witness to the fires that rage around me, and to the unseen.

Shadows

I suppose it’s inevitable.⁣

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That which was once vivid and tangible will be morphed into a soft focused shadow. The reality of today will be reduced to a flash of an image, a feeling, or a smell that you can’t quite conjure all the way.⁣

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Sometimes I wish I could lay out my collection of childhood memories in a long line. Perhaps seeing them end to end would allow me to fill in the in between. Every so often an in between is given to me, by a friend or family member. Mostly though, they are held in my mind’s eye— pieces of shadows. Many of the memories are happy, at times they are fearful or sad— rarely are they mundane. The mundane seems to have dissipated into the sands at the bottom of the hourglass.⁣

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I watch my three children in a peak of their charmed childhood. Chomping on their silver spoons. These formative years. The foundation for the rest of their lives. Gaining material for their future therapy sessions.⁣

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I watch them twirl in the sparkle of their blessings, and I wonder how they will feel about it all when they are grown. When the desire for independence loses its freedom and the responsibility has been transferred to heavy shoulders. Will it all someday turn to shadow for them too?⁣

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I suppose it’s inevitable.⁣

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It’s impossible to remember it all. I hear their frontal lobes do not fully form until around the age of 25. I was about that old when I began to realize how much I missed— home.⁣

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I learned to wish that I hadn’t been in such a hurry to leave my parents. I wish I could have stayed there longer, safely wrapped up in their covering for even a minute more.⁣

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A similar covering I now cast over my children. They play under it like that huge parachute we used to have in gym class. All at once lifting it high to catch the air as we pulled it back down again over our heads in a colorful, floating dome, filling it with our high- pitched giggles.⁣

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I feel as if my job has become to patch holes that appear in the fabric. Holes that happen just by the wearing of time, and holes that are deliberately punctured into it by the world. I mend it with my words and my prayers and threads of sheer hopes that somehow the fabric will be made whole once more and they will be safe from.. the shadows?⁣

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With wide innocent eyes they seek to make sense of the world around them. I throw my covering before them to filter what they see. Hear. Do. Say.⁣

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I suppose in doing that, I myself cast a shadow.⁣

Will it become a shadow for me too? When I remember back to these long days and short nights, will it lose all colors with the passage of time?⁣

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I want to remember these days in full color. Lit up in full brightness.⁣

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I am well aware that there can’t be shadows without light. I just see so much light these days. I chase it. Sit in it. Push my children into it as often as I can, and I dread the impending shadows.⁣

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I am also aware that I am not the one that spoke light being. Slicing the darkness with a word. The same light that bounces off of the tops of my children’s heads.⁣

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I suppose that even If it is all destined to turn to shadows, and all that is left is the muted, pale remnants of what was. I think, just maybe I will remember just how bright the light must have been.⁣

Advent 2019

Twinkle lights really aren’t competition for a sky full of stars. Really, they’re not.

I’m talking about floods of stars, far from city lights, picking out Orion’s belt, crook in your neck—- sky full of stars.

You can’t trust twinkle lights.

The synthetic magic they radiate with their soft glow, may make your skin look flawless and your world look tranquil, but with the sun’s rise they will be back in their corner with the rest of the mundane.

With the to-dos and the to-buys.

With the to-bakes and the to-watches and the to-wraps.

The frenzied and the frantic….

And so, to the curator of the memories,

And those stuck in the kitchen.

To those keeping it simple, and those going all out.

To the speech givers and the children who fein to listen.

To the ungrateful, and the perfect gift finders.

To those chanting “keep Christ in Christmas,”

and the candlelit belters about silence.

To those trying to find the mythical “balance” in a world that was deliberately set at a tilt, spinning on an axis in orbit.

To you I say— it’s really not a competition.

For, how can there be competition over something that is already finished and won?

He, who is represented by that too pale baby in your manger scene, isn’t worried about Santa. Or presents. Or the indulgent, long wishlists. Or consumerism vs. minimalism, Or elves that watch your every move deciding who’s “good.”

It’s not a competition. He has no need to compete.

You see, He is aware that when all of the twinkle lights burn out in a tangle, and the Amazon boxes are heaped in a pile. When all the wishes are granted and the luster wears off. When the bustle loses its hustle and the magic is trying too hard. When the chaos of the relentless grasping at joy inevitably falls through our bumbling fingers—

Peace will be prayed for.

The same peace that came as a sword in a manger. And then thirty-three years later would declare, “it is finished.”

This peace cannot be faked, or bought, or even given away with generous intentions. The intense lacking, becomes unbearably obvious against the backdrop of the overkill.

Mark my words, peace will be prayed for.

When everything becomes both too much, and not enough, all at once.

The wonder starved, and supernatural deficient will seek out authentic fulfillment amidst a barrage of the counterfeit and manipulated.

They need only to look up.

You see, it’s no competition. It’s not even close.

Notes From the Present

I had a dream last night that we were leaving on a trip, a retreat of some kind in a remote part of the woods somewhere. We were half way there having already spent some time in the car when I realized that I had forgotten to pack shoes. My feet were in their typical flimsy flip-flops, hardly conducive for tromping through the woods. Already late for meeting the shuttle that would take us to the woods, I rushed with my three kids, to find a shoe store so I could buy some sneakers.

Awaking before I could buy shoes or make it to the shuttle in time, the feeling of unprepared panic and hurry still lingers in my spirit as I write this.

So often I feel like I’m that duck that is calmly floating above the water while underneath its feet are paddling ferociously to stay afloat. At least I hope I appear calm. It’s likely that I’m not fooling anybody.

My brain is a tangled mess of check-lists and to-dos.

The majority of it is inevitable, due to the stage of life I am in. I know many other young mothers who are in the same boat. In this boat we strain at the oars and travel against the wind. We must hold it all together because if we forget one thing, it will all fall apart.

Or so we think.

Motherhood has a tendency to turn even the most laid- back personality into a control freak.

Recently I had the glorious opportunity to escape the day to day monotony and fly to New York City to spent time with two of my oldest and dearest friends. For an entire weekend we took in the sights and tastes. We laughed until our sides hurt. We ate and ate and ate and walked and walked. Our minds and hearts were wholly in the beautiful present.

Coming home, I came to the stark realization how little of my time I spend living in the moment. I’m constantly thinking of and preparing for the next thing. Our life right now is on fast forward. We are always rushing to the next activity, checking off obligations and commitments.

Although it is mostly good things that we have integrated into our rhythm, it often leaves me living with this persistent, nagging feeling that I am late and without shoes.

On another recent trip, this time as a whole family, I stood in a quiet closet with my littlest working to get her to sleep. She was oh so tired, but refused to settle unless I stood near the unfamiliar bed. As soon as I would move away to where I wasn’t visible the crying would start again. I didn’t even need to be holding her or touching her, it was only my presence that she needed in that moment to be soothed enough for sleep to take hold.

It turns out, my presence matters.

When I’m not micromanaging the rat race that is my current life, I often visit the numb brain space, where I scroll my phone. Too often lately I catch my children’s pleading gaze as I look up from my phone. I don’t even realize I’m doing it half the time. Their gaze has become accustomed to their mother’s face being lit up in blue light. Vacant. Not present. Maybe with confession, I can break free somewhat of this technological orbit that I seem to get caught in so easily.

I also often find my mind drifting from the present to the past. I remember past seasons and the way things used to be. I am hopelessly nostalgic. I reminisce. I romanticize. I regret.

There’s probably a good chance that the most vivid memories that I carry are also the times in my life when I have been entirely present. Submerged in the moment. Saturated in living.

I remember before getting married, someone, although I’ve forgotten who, gave me the advice to be intentional about taking in a memory of my wedding day. They said that during the ceremony take a second to look out at the crowd of people that have gathered and really take in the moment. I forgot to un-bustle half of the train of my dress, yet somehow, I remembered to take their advice.

In my mind today, I carry a visual of the full pews basked in yellow light. My young husband’s hand in mine. My Dad fidgeting with his glasses. The candles. The flowers. The sacredness of the promises and presence of the Most-High. The rest of the day is a blur now, but I have that moment tucked away in my heart. For that handful of seconds, I was fully present.

Presence is what takes something from mundane to significant. From numb to fully felt. From brushed over, to grasped.

It isn’t often these days that I fall into the present without trying. Soon though, the present will be in the past, and I will wish that I had more of my todays on a crystal- clear mental reel.

This is my effort to be more present. To bring a few memories into sharp focus.

Because my today is so beautiful. I don’t want to forget.

The way my middle girl doesn’t know her left from right when she sets the table.

The fat, dangling feet of my littlest in my eldest’s lanky arms.

The color of twilight through our front windows.

Deep laughter over mispronounced words and Lincoln log teeter- totters.

How perfectly my lips fit on the bridge of each of their noses.

The whisper in my spirit from the one who never leaves, nudging me back to the present from my unblinking.

Illuminating the present with His presence. The colors are so vivid.

Who cares if I’m shoeless? Even these sticky floors are made holy by Presence.

This is me being present.

 

 

 

 

 

Dust Storm

Sitting in the back of a dark, quiet, theater, my daughter Lyla gasped much too loudly and grabbed my arm. “Look! Mommy, magic!”

A little startled, I looked up and behind us to where she pointed. There were the spotlights that were lighting up the performers onstage. Dust particles floated and swirled in the projected light causing my five-year-old to hyperventilate because she believed that she was witnessing actual magic!

I shushed her and told her it was just dust.

Just dust.

Why was I so quick to throw dust all over the magic?

What I want to do is to go back in time and lean into her face with my face and take it back and go crazy over the fact that we were seeing magic! Forget what I said about dust, it’s magic!

The reality is my kids do not need my help stifling the magic. Soon enough the magic of her childhood will the shrouded in dust. She will no longer see magic so easily. In fact, her world will become dustier. Difficult. Stressful. Painful even.

I already see this in her big brother. The “too cool” attitude is beginning to shroud my little boy who now refuses my kisses when the school bus is in view. I catch flashes of my future teenager in an 8-year-old’s body. I take solace in the fact that still, in the safety of our living room, he will climb into my lap and wrap his long limbs around me.

And yet already, he has learned that some words are swears. He refused to wear a tie to his Valentine dance because he was embarrassed. I see signs that he is beginning to compare his looks and smarts and talents to others. I am powerless to stop this whole growing up thing.

The other day I observed him from my post out the back window over the kitchen sink. His blonde head lit up against an evergreen background, hound dog at his side.

I watched him stoop to pick a dandelion from the lawn and blow the wishes into the wind–

A moment of pure, unaffected childhood.

I take that image of green, and blonde, and white, and save it deep in my mental motherhood time capsule.

There are so many things I never want to forget.

I never want to forget the feeling of the little spoon that climbs into bed beside me and tucks their warm back against my stomach. If only I could keep them there. Tucked in safely, as if back in the womb where I can protect them from the storm that is coming.

Don’t get me wrong, I love watching them grow. In my heart of hearts, I do want them to grow up. I want them to grow up and live beautiful, meaningful lives.

And yet, my heart aches as I watch the dust storm gathering strength in the distance, and It’s coming for them. The dust that will choke out the magic and turn the dandelions into mere weeds. Soon enough the magic of their childhood will be shrouded in the dust of memory and the heaviness of reality.

But isn’t that all each of us is? Dust?

From dust we were made, and to dust we will return.

I see it coming for my children. The dust storm.

It is inevitable. This cloud of dust. It caught up to each of us at one point or another. Some of us sooner than others. All of a sudden, we realize that there is pain in this world, and not everything is wonderful. Physical characteristics we never knew were less than functionally fine become sources of insecurity as we learn to compare. All at once there are more responsibilities and more expectations and grades and rules and consequences. Suddenly there is more to worry about. To think about. To carry.

As much as I want to shield them from the unavoidable dust blanket, I am committed to not falling into despair because of one thing I know–

Dust is the chosen medium of the Great Artist.

It was from dust that He formed his greatest work of art– a self- portrait that He gave breath and called good.

May the dust that envelopes the magic of my children’s early childhood bring with it a greater understanding of whose image each of them bears.

As they are covered in the dust of this world, it is opportunity for them to come to resemble our maker more and more.

Let them lament in a pile of dust over the pain that this world brings. May they have anguish over the things that hurt the heart of God. May they have eyes to see the injustice, the sorrow, the bondages, the corruption and may they cover their heads in the dust of lamentation.

It is through sitting in the dust and ashes of one another’s pain and struggles and acknowledging our own that we grow in understanding of what exactly our identity is intended to be, because through dust comes new creation. It is through pain and suffering that we learn to cry out to our creator.

The taking on of more dust gives more for His hands to work with.

Someday we will shake off the dust of this world from our feet. There will be no more pain. No more anxiety. No more corruption. No more injustice.

Until then, I take a breath and say a pleading prayer that my mama’s heart will eventually echo honestly the Great Artist’s review of the three, small, walking dust formations in whom I see so much of myself. However, it is not me that I ultimately want them to find their identity in.

I feel the grit in my teeth as I struggle to form the three words. Can I say them without adding a question mark? I long to believe that all the way through this storm of life and as the dust swirls around me and around those that I love, that indeed—

It is good.

The Missing and the Cross

Spring used to be my favorite season.

I loved it when winter would begin to fade away. Trees would blossom. Bulbs push up from the ground. The feeling of the warm sun on bare arms.

While the Spring is still really beautiful, it is no longer my favorite.

Sure, part of the reason for that is now living in the deep South the beginning of Spring is marked by a thick dusting of yellow pollen that blankets the entire outdoors, and gnats that fly into your eyeballs. Then after that, it’s basically Summer until late October.

Mostly though, it’s because I lost my Dad in the Spring.

March 22^nd.

Every year now, as the Lenten season approaches and people all around me are giving things up in anticipation of Easter, I remember what I had to give up now six years ago. And then I think of all the other things that I have had to subsequently give up because of what was taken.

In some ways, it feels as if I’ve found myself in some sort of twisted forced upon Lent.

These weeks leading up to March 22^nd, and subsequently Easter are heavy. The Missing, as I have named my grief, has grown in size and substance. It touches so many parts of my life that it’s hard to function some days. I just want to go live in that numb space where I don’t have to feel, think, or remember much of anything.

Then, there’s another part of me that never wants to stop remembering. I want to feel all the feelings and indulge The Missing as I become absorbed in myself and my feelings.

My Facebook memories walk me through a sort of stations of the cross and I re-live my pleas for prayer leading up to March 22, 2013. I am reminded of details that I want to forget, but don’t have the courage to delete. While I want to delete them, I also sort of want to obsess over them.  Grief has me constantly contradicting myself. I want to go numb, but I want to feel. I want to forget, but I want to remember.

My brain is in a constant state of making connections to my Dad.

The blossoms and bulbs that are making their yearly debut have me thinking of a wooden cross from my childhood. This cross my Dad constructed out of 2 x 4s and covered in chicken wire. Each year on Easter morning, we as a small, but mighty church congregation would fill that cross entirely with fresh flowers.

It was a sign of hope. That death never has the last word.

After the service was over, Dad would haul that cross outside to the front of the church building so that people driving by would see this flower adorned cross. A symbol of life. A colorful display of beauty and redemption.

The flowered cross became an Easter tradition.

I can’t think of this flower laden cross without remembering the flowers that filled my parents’ living room following my Dad’s funeral. Arrangements sent from friends and family along with their condolences.

The Missing was all consuming and violent that day. The stargazer lilies that I’d had in my own wedding bouquets, now gave off a sickening scent that brought waves of nausea along with the relentless waves of grief.

Running through my mind was the single question that Dad had posed to my young future husband asking for my hand in marriage: “Is that what Jesus is calling you to do?”

For my Dad, all things were put through that cruciform filter. It all came back to the cross.

Dad died on a Friday. The Friday that followed was Good Friday.

We filed into church as a family, as we had done so many times growing up to listen to our Dad preach the message of Easter.

Sitting there in that church in the wake of the trauma of the taking, the deep gut wrenching missing settled in.

And there was so much to miss. There was so much that he was going to miss. He was no longer in his spot at the pulpit, or on the end of our row.

I thought the death itself would be the hardest part. I see now how wrong I was.

The hardest part is carrying on with The Missing.

So, in weeks like this, The Missing saturates the lens through which I see life.

Nothing about his death makes sense, except for maybe the time of year that it happened.

The Easter message, and cruciform filter is common and ever present right now— Church signs, decorations, songs, sermons.

As was his life, his death is forever linked with the cross. As if it were his lasting way to keep the Easter sermon going. To keep reminding us in whom we should place our hope.

So, these days as I cope with the memory of my father on his death bed. I dive into The Missing to try to remember the way he smelled, or the way his voice sounded. I lament all that he is missing, and all that we have had to give up as a family.

I tuck his firstborn grandson into bed, who has begun wearing a tiny wooden cross necklace tucked under his shirt. It rests against his chest.

My Abba Father cuts through The Missing with one breath,

The message lives.

He is alive.

The cross blooms.

The Coat I Wear

I want them to remember me laughing.

My children.

When their mind replays the soundtrack of their childhood, I hope there rings the sound of my easy, unforced, laughter.

When they look back through the blur of memories that was their upbringing and picture my face, I hope that my coffee stained teeth are on full display and that the laugh lines around my eyes are etched deep.

Therefore, I MUST be free.

I am not sure why the word freedom has been bouncing around my brain lately. Perhaps it’s because the recent news is full of children in cages, and children trapped in caves, and my life right now is… children. To picture them in captivity of any kind is unbearable.

In the broadest sense of the word, I am the freest of the free.

Overall, I live my life in safety and privilege. A certain level of freedom, I was simply born into.

But at times I am bound by my own forgetfulness. I forget the unshakable, permanent, deep and complete inner freedom that is mine.

The freedom that swept around and through me in a rush of baptismal waters.

A pastor of mine once compared baptism to putting on your father’s coat as a child. It is much too big. It is something you need to grow into for it to fit.

I am very much still growing into my baptism.

I often live in captivity.

My laugh gets stifled by the grip of selfish discontentment. Of life stress. Worry.

I strap these cement blocks to my feet and try to swim.

Then I wonder why I’m sinking. Pulled under by the weight of expectations, societal pressures, other people’s opinions, busyness, jumbled priorities, sheer exhaustion…

I stretch my hand up to the surface and try to kick to where I can finally breathe.

I crave air. I crave freedom.

There are days when my wanderlust nature resents these three adorable ball ‘n chains I call my children. They scream for pancakes and I scream, “I want to see the Eiffel tower!!”

I forget to be thankful for that which others may ache for.

I become frustrated with the hamster wheel. With the kitchen countertop that is NEVER free of clutter. With my imperfect, human, children and all that comes with that. Some days my work seems futile.

“It goes fast,” many people have said to me.

True enough. There is a part of me that lives in a constant state of grief. I grieve every lost tooth, and corrected lisp. Soon enough they will be grown. They will eventually leave me.

And then when they look back on their childhood,

I hope they remember me laughing.

Not a shallow, manufactured laugh, but an effortless genuine laugh birthed of joy that comes with the deep knowledge that

I. Am. Free.

I don’t want them to first remember my furrowed brow. My blank stare at my phone. Not my hunched shoulders, or the effect that the “simple” act of getting all of us loaded up in the car can have on me.

I don’t want them to remember the times that I am too critical. Of them. Of others. Of myself.

The reality is, I hold the key to my own freedom. It was placed in my scar-free palm. On it is etched what Brennan Manning calls the “Ragamuffin’s Rumor,”

that all is grace.

Grace is all encompassing. It defies logic. It sweeps in, consumes.

It liberates.

Grace is woven through the fibers of my baptismal coat.

While I hope someday my children utter the phrase, “my mama never would have let me get away with that.” And that they remember the meals I cooked, the holidays I orchestrated, the vacation memories we made…

I mostly hope they carry with them the memory of me holding them close within my coat of grace and breathing freedom down their necks.

I hope they know my laugh as the song of one who knows and walks in deep freedom. I hope it gets stuck in their heads on replay.

I hope someday they put on their own long, too big, baptismal coat and walk into this unjust, trapped world.

And I hope I see the train of their coats drag out long behind them, grazing the ground they walk with a peculiar grace, drawing people by the sound of their unaffected laughter; Leading the way to freedom.

 

Up from Frozen Ground

It is the beginning of Summer, yet I can feel the cold front approaching. I draw inward, moving slower. I focus solely on the beautiful, tiny tasks in front of me. They get the best and the worst of what I have to give.

Words swirling in the fog of a sleep-deprived brain, remain un-typed on a computer screen that was turned on, but never sat with.

It is no longer my passions or callings that keep me up at night.

Instead it is a newborn, pink bundle with rose petal cheeks and erratic bowel activity.

I take my dreams, gifts, callings and plant them deep into freezing earth with a promise of, “in time…”

There they will go dormant.

In moving to the South, I was sad to notice the absence of lilacs. What were once my favorite flower of Spring in the Midwest, can’t exist in the land of magnolias, crepe myrtles, and azaleas.

Apparently, lilacs require over two thousand hours of temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit to be healthy. A Georgia winter won’t come close to that.

There are times that things MUST go dormant in order to bloom.

They must wait for Spring.

“Lord, multiply our sleep.”

These words my Dad often prayed as he tucked me in at bedtime. My young ears were used to hearing this familiar prayer.  Perhaps praying this faithfully was one of the reasons that during his healthy years, my Dad had the energy of ten people. I find myself praying the same words over my own kids now, as well as pleading it on my own behalf.

“Multiply my sleep.”

Sleep. Quiet. Dormant.

Some things need to go dormant in order to grow and multiply.

Under frozen ground they wait.

I am learning not to resent dormancy.

My gifts and talents that lie unused. Waiting for Spring.

My dreams. Callings.

They are only gathering strength as they steep in experience, resilience, and patience.

As some of myself sinks into dormancy, other parts of me rise to the surface.

Now is the time to invest in three of my greatest dreams. I get to help them discover what gifts and talents have yet to wake up inside of each of them. Funny, so much of what is emerging from each of them emulates that which I have buried deep.

As I walk in this maternal calling, I am taught lesson upon lesson of selflessness, bravery, and prayer.  There are stretch marks on more than just my belly. My soul contains the stripes of someone who has been pushed to her limits.

My roots reach down into cold earth.

In the quiet of the nursery, I keep my post as I rock in sleepy darkness.

I have hopes for my future. Gifts I want to use. Things I want to do. Words I want to write. Callings I have heard but have yet to walk into…

Mark my words, I am not losing myself.

I am submerged in life.

Steeping in inspiration.

Do not mistake that which has gone dormant for death.

Don’t be fooled by that which appears to be sleeping.

It is multiplying.

The thaw is coming, and with it will come a flood.

In my weakness, I am gathering strength.

In my exhaustion I am revived.

The most beautiful blooms must come from a frozen place.

No, I will not resent the dormant.

For I am at rest.

Time Hover

I allowed Jude to order a particular toy he had been wanting off of the internet. The shipping was “fast and free” and the estimated day of delivery was Friday. All week he could hardly sleep, and all he could talk about was what was coming on Friday. The anticipation was palpable and constant.

Well Friday came, and the package did not.

I watched as the disappointment seeped in to his sensitive heart and poured out of his eyes.

It finally arrived the next day. His joy and loud celebration continues to resound in my memory.

We have started the countdown on the calendar to the day that Daddy will be home. What was once unknown, now has a number!

Many times in military life, the ability to really count down is not there. Departure and return dates are fluid and vague. This security measure cloaks the season in even more insecurity for those of us that are at the mercy of Uncle Sam.

To have a number circled and a smiley face drawn on the calendar is a momentous gift in and of itself, but to also know that soon my other half and best friend will be coming back to me?

God has shown me great mercy.

And yet never does the clock move more slowly than for a woman who is in her last month of pregnancy. Time seems to emulate how long it takes for me to put on pants; or walk from one end of the grocery story to the other. My life has slowed to a crawl… er, waddle.

“God’s perfect timing” is something people seem to love to bring up with me lately. To be honest, sometimes that pushes the internal red button that makes me want to throw stuff and yell, “I KNOW!!” Because hormones.

I’ve seen His perfect timing. I have. I have lived it.

But I am so incurably human.

As I write this, tiny feet push my ribs out of their cage, and I am impatient.

In these unavoidable seasons of limbo, the clock seems to either not move forward at all or it constantly hops time zones. This disorients me and sends me craving the seasons of life where a minute is a consistent 60 seconds instead of an unsteady arrhythmia of unpredictable events.

In my impatience, I am reminded that as much as C.J.’s return home will bring with it a sense of relief and safety, he is not my Savior. The one who knows me completely. He holds time in His universe- sized palm.

“Just give it to the Lord.” — Another phrase Christians love to throw out there as a punctuation mark.

A dear voice from my past once told me to picture my “burden” as a large, cumbersome, gelatinous mass (I picture something akin to Jabba the Hutt). As I hoist this fluid thing up on God’s altar and attempt to leave it there, it slowly oozes down the sides so I have to keep pushing it back up there.

I keep that picture in my mind as I continue to learn trust. It turns out that trust isn’t easily contained or held onto. It is more liquid than solid, and slips out of grasp easily.

In the meantime, I am doing my best to live in the moment and not resent time’s crawl as I await my package.

Because it’s in the sluggish, at times tedious minute, that I have room to notice new freckles on tiny noses.

I can sit on my porch swing with empty arms and rock slow and steady.

Slowness gives space for marvel.

Marvel gives way to worship.

And worship renders time obsolete.

Fear

I remember as a child how long the route to my parents’ room was in the middle of the night. Darkness seemed to expand the hallway to three times its usual size. I imagine it’s the same way for my kids when they break into a dead sprint with my door as their goal. I sleep with one ear listening for the sound of a doorknob, pitter-patter, quickly I find I am the big spoon with tiny cold feet jammed between my calves and a sharp reminder to keep up on the toenail trimming.

There are many reasons they come to me at night, but the most common culprit that pulls them out of bed to flee to the safety of my arms is

Fear.

Shadows. Unfamiliar noises. They each went through a phase where they were afraid of their ceiling fan because “it has eyes.” They are currently going through a fear of bees, making getting them outside to enjoy these beautiful Spring days an exercise in hostage negotiation (in which I am the hostage).

Sometimes their imaginations take over as they lie in their beds, launching them into hysterics. This can usually be remedied by a quick flashlight search of their rooms and turning on the hallway light.

The hardest are the vivid nightmares that seemingly come from nowhere. For these I hold the little spoon tight and pray until the trembling subsides.

Can we talk about fear?

To be called fearless would be the highest compliment I could receive and yet I know that I could never genuinely accept it because the truth is I am far from fearless.

I am afraid of so many things.

Fear is a shape shifter and takes many forms. Sometimes I don’t even realize that tugging the strings of my emotion marionettes of anxiety, stress, control, anger, insomnia— is that gleeful puppeteer: fear.

My imagination can spin out of control as I play out scenario after scenario of what possibly could potentially be my future should certain things happen. Anxiety rises up to my neck. I reach my hands up and out grasping for something solid. Real. Predictable. Planned.

I find myself attempting to author my own life, slipping into micromanagement just to feel like I can be in control of… something. Anything.

Because, fear.

I remember a former coworker of mine. She has since gained the heavenly crown I always envisioned on her regal head. Her memory continues to mentor me.

I hear her voice so clearly in my mind.

“I fear nothing and no one, but God Himself.”

And I knew that to be true for her, without a doubt. Her chin was set in the perfect balance between pride and humility.

Fear of God is not debilitating, controlling, or paralyzing. To fear solely God brings freedom.

When I am particularly fearful (which has happened a few times lately), I seek to emulate that perfect chin. I declare,

“I fear no one but God!” I proclaim it into being.

Sometimes I blurt it out it and shuffle forward while covering my eyes with my hands.

I sprint through the darkness to my Father’s door.

Then I get to be the little spoon surrounded by that perfect love. The perfect love that casts out all fear.

The perfect love that lights up my swollen feet as I put one foot in front of the other.

I plod onward, and watch as he opens his hands and makes my path smooth. Shadows of irrational fears are lit up with His presence. Fears that I have given the strength of giants through my imagination, shrink and cower.

And the things that are real? That are in fact my adversaries–

I find I am no longer that afraid, because have you seen my God with his sword?

He is fearsome.