Essays
Hymns (Beads of Notes and Words)
Both hymnals are dark burgundy, the edges of the pages
yellowed from wear. They sit in my oldest
kids’ rooms. One, I could swear, is the
exact hymnal I grew up holding heavy in my hands as we called out numbers and
pages and lifted our voices on long Sunday evenings. It has a thin, gold cross on the cover next to the words, “Baptist Hymnal.”
In the evening dim, I lose myself flipping through their
pages, looking for old favorites to share with my children. I want to pass on to them the melodies that
carried my faith as a child and as they lay in bed, my voice follows familiar notes,
sliding into them like a needle following a record’s grooves.
Singing these songs in the dark with my children, I see them
in a new light; I hear what I didn’t hear as a child or maybe heard and forgot. There’s a lot about “the blood” – a theme I’d
rather avoid at bedtime and some language that I know won’t make sense. Sin and the cross, two elements of the gospel
often skirted with young children, appear on every page.
So also does the love and mercy of God, as well as a deep
and profound awareness of nature as a source of both solace and revelation.
Returning to these songs is like finding a long-forgotten,
but cherished, string of pearls tucked in the back of a drawer. Turning the pages, I finger the words,
stringing them together into a necklace of faith.
Doing dishes together in the kitchen I hear my daughter humming – a hymn – and I’m grateful to know that she’s starting a new strand of favorites, gathering old beads of notes and words.
(The picture above shows a painting I’m working on using the words of one of my new old favorite hymns.)
The Evening Breeze (#Small-Wonder Link-up)
This giant Maple is one of many shady spots at our house.
They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze . . . Genesis 3
It’s hot,
humid, and I’m sweating just sitting in the evening shade. Crisscrossed in the green grass, my head is
bent over scissors and my hands move swift, precise, cutting out letters for a
piece of word-art. It’s been a long,
hot, day. Air settles across the world
like silt sinks to the bottom of a bowl of water.
Every few
minutes, though, there’s a breeze. The
trees lift their leaf-hands, saluting the air as it snaps and spreads like
someone shaking the wrinkles out of a crisp, white sheet.
Across the
yard I see my neighbors working slowly in their yard. A retired couple, their vegetable garden and
flowers beds are immaculate. They know when to work, I think to
myself, as they disappear around the side of their house in the early evening
cool.
These are
the moments that hide in summer time.
Small slips of cool in the dewy morning and early evening – the liminal
spaces between high heat and the still, dark, night. These are the ones I miss most often as I
press, push, and herd through each day. Children
swarm around me like insects circling a sweaty brow. The heat of the day rises and I feel myself
shutting down, retreating into a restless siesta while wide awake.
The breeze,
though, is gift. It is a gentle hand to
the brow, cool lips pressed to fevered flesh.
There is something
of God in a breeze, in air stirred like a breath and I’m learning to position myself in its pathway. Beside the
open window, under the leafy tree, you might find me. Hoping, waiting, to catch the breath of God
like a firefly in my hand, some small bright light to grace me through another day.
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
Gather (Love’s Bouquet)
Hunt out
bright blooms, big and small.
Snip.
Clutch in
one hand, while
cutting with
the other.
Feel the
prick of thorns. Inside,
grab the new
turquoise vase with an hourglass figure.
Fill it with
water – a tall, cool drink for thirsty stems.
Strip leaves.
Gather
again, first Spirea – pale pink and dusty mauve –
then small white
flowers resembling Queen Ann’s Lace.
Last,
three pale
roses almost
spent.
Sleep now as
night
falls across
yard and house and the tall, turquoise vase.
All night long, petals fall, dispersing perfectly
of their own accord.
Awaken to a
kitchen scattered with petals.
Old, wooden kitchen island
transformed into
a lover’s bed,
a wedding aisle strewn with pink.
Ah, love!
Love grew
beauty in the yard.
Love
gathered.
Love
held.
Love fell
and
spread of
its own accord.
Love woos;
love gathers the gatherer.
Strawberry Love
A sweet scent filling the produce section announces their
arrival. Not the cold, hard strawberries
on steroids that travel from distant destinations all year round, but the small
red jewels that grow local – leaf-hidden, hovering notes of delight. These are hand-picked, delicate, tender smiles that
stain fingers, teeth and tongue.
In their wafting wake comes my Grandmother’s love – also
tender, sweet and local for a time when I was little enough to ripen under her
sun. I was her strawberry girl – picking
in the long, low, leafy rows that stretched across the field beside her
house. Then watching, waiting, for the
slow ripening on the windowsill of things picked too soon.
I learned to squat over and along the rows, watching where I
put my feet, lifting green on the hunt for red. Hard, spring-green berries were left hanging and even the rubies were
checked for green tips cool in the shadows untouched by sunlight.
All was done in one swift movement – brushing, sweeping aside
leaves with one hand while the other reached, then cradled, inspecting the
fruit and – if all was ready – the fingernail of a thumb worked to cut the cord holding fruit to vine.
Berries were gathered in green cardboard quarts, small treasure chests
filled with delight. Then we washed and dried them looking for the tiny creatures, black
like seeds with legs sprouted, that lived their lives walking across the
landscape of those small, crimson orbs. (oh! to be one of them!) Clean
berries were cut, mashed, drowned in sugar and pectin and heated on the stove. Simmering slow, they were transformed into glistening jam that my grandma stored in old margarine
containers. This was doled out on top of buttered toast that did not end until you were
full.
A ripe berry is warmth spread through and through, softness,
tenderness – sunlight transformed into scent and sweetness.
So also is love.
I carry her love in me like a ripe berry carries sunlight and water.
Linking with #TellHisStory.
Love, Joy and Freedom (#SmallWonder Link-up)
I didn’t paint this, but isn’t it beautiful?!
Pink, orange and yellow – Zinnia colors. I squirted them liberally across the top of
the old painting’s canvas then mixed them with long brush strokes.
I found a bunch of picture frames sitting along a leafy
patch of back road a few weeks ago. We have a lot of large, blank wall spaces, so I threw them into the back of the van and brought them home. Last week, as school was winding down for summer, I dove-in, mixing paint and words on top of old paintings straight
out of the seventies.
I love the
artistic alchemy of turning something old into something new. And, because I have no training in painting, I have a lot of
freedom.
//
I took a couple of classes Pass/Fail during my senior year
of seminary. I already had enough
credits and taking the classes Pass/Fail freed me from the pressure of an
“A.”
I had fun in those classes.
I wrote creatively and for the final project in one class I made a
book – hand bound with watercolor illustrations.
//
If the only standard is joy, then I will paint to my heart’s
content.
If no one’s grading me, what I would most like to do is make
a book.
//
My writing life is changing – this is something I feel intuitively,
an inner turning like the earth shifting just the slightest to make room as a
seedling emerges. In the midst of this change, I’m realizing I want to approach
writing like I do painting – to embrace freedom and practice the alchemy of weaving
stories, old and new. I want to remember
to live and write like it’s all Pass/Fail – to return to the freedom of
allowing love and joy to be my guides.
What does writing look like for you these days? Does summer impact your writing schedule and
routines? What would you do if no one
was “grading” you?
*Photo credit for Zinnia Painting
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
To the Older Brother (All that is Mine is Yours)
Now his elder son was in the field . . . Luke 15:25
“You are not a slave.”
That is what I wanted
to say to you when I saw
you standing far off
in the field.
And I ran out
to you
also.
*I really like this painting, but was unable to find the artist. Anyone have any ideas?
Growing Season (#SmallWonder Link-up)
(The field of soybeans coming in across the street from our house.)
Late, I arrived at a recent Pastoral Development Day on the tail-end of opening worship. I
slipped quietly into a single stuffed chair down low in the back of the
room, curling my legs and feet up tight beneath me. I was never once late when I returned to work
five weeks after my daughter, my oldest, was born. Waking at 4:30 in the morning I nursed, then
showered and drove the hour to work with her in the car seat, then nursed again
in a bathroom before joining the rest of the staff with my infant in tow at
8:00. That was nine years ago and I was
not late once the whole summer that I worked with her at my side.
This
Thursday, though, was her field day at school and just as the bus pulled up we
realized her lunch – the packed one she needed – was sitting still inside on
the kitchen counter. “Go,” I said, “I’ll
bring it to school.”
After the
babysitter came early so I could be on time, I gathered my things and hers and
made the out-of-the-way trip to her school.
I got there just as the buses were loading and watched her walk out with
her class.
I was late
that morning and frazzled, but happy too.
As I described it later to a friend, “My daughter forgot her lunch and I
had to drop it off at school,” then, pumping my fist in the air I added,
“Mommy, for the WIN!”
When the
singing ended a friend of mine invited me to take his seat closer to the middle of the room – he would stand. I gathered my
things and moved for a few minutes, but eventually I turned and whispered, “I need to sit in the back to unwind.” Then I got up and returned again to my single
chair way down low in the back of the room.
It’s been a
year or two since I attended a Pastoral Development day put on by my local
denominational conference and even longer since I resigned my pastoral
position. In the past I’ve felt the need
and desire – the pressure – to mingle and fit in at these gatherings, to be
both visible and vocal. But this past
Thursday I listened to my own heart, which was jangled and tired from rushing
out the door and performing the emergency lunch delivery. I needed to sit in the back and unwind and so
I did.
Seated in
the back I watched several pastors working on their phones during the
presentation or getting up and leaving the room to field phone calls. This was one of the hardest things for me to
give up when I left the pastorate – the feeling of importance. It used to be routine for me to receive
upwards of twenty emails a day and now I’m lucky to receive three or so a week
other than twitter updates and notifications from my kids’ schools.
Watching
them I heard my spirit say, “I’m so grateful to be unimportant.” It was such an unexpected thought that I wrote it
down. Having struggled so much with feeling
unimportant, I never expected to
find myself grateful for it. I thought immediately of John the Baptist’s
words, “He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30)” and understood them in a new light.
The initial
presenter shared his story of incredible success followed by a stripping of all
he valued as God called him back to his “first love,” back to the relationship
at the heart of all things. Much of what
he said resonated with me – the invitation to love, the unknowingness of God’s
leading – and the fact that he spoke from a time and place in his story that is
as yet unresolved were all encouraging.
I could have
told his story, as it is also my own, except for the great success part. God has kept me from that – a fact over which
I am often frustrated, bordering on bitter.
It’s one thing to have great success and be called away from it – it is
another altogether to never have arrived.
And yet, listening, I felt my spirit say, “God loves me very much.” This also, I wrote down.
In that
moment the love of God sank down from head to heart, from abstract idea to
incarnate reality as I pondered my life and the word-made-flesh love of God
within it. Who knew that the sorrow of
my own professional stuck-ness could also hold within it a revelation of such
joy – “God loves me very much.”
This all
took place on Thursday and, halfway through Friday I pulled a muscle in my back
while trying to maneuver a free coffee table into the back of the van. I knew it was bad, but I’d promised my son I
would attend his field day so, without resting, I made lunch and showered up
before carting myself and the twins over to the park.
By the time
we got home I was in excruciating pain, the likes of which I haven’t known in a
long time. I could barely get myself
onto the floor and sitting filled my core with sharp spasms. With the pain came fear – laying on the
floor, helpless, reminded me of last summer’s panic attacks and the tension
caused anxiety to rise within me until I felt close to drowning.
I loaded up
on pain medicine, ice and restricted myself to the floor. Relaxing, I felt a sense of peace and
gratitude wash over me. My back still
hurt, as it does also today, but in the midst of the pain I knew also that it
will get better. The reality of the pain
was inescapable, yet I now know that the reality of change is also
inescapable. Nothing in life is
stagnant, no one fear or hurt has the power to cancel out the possibility of
change and healing in the future.
I took joy
in meeting my daughter’s needs where once I felt such great pressure to conform
her needs to my own.
I tended to
my own need to unwind in a spacious place rather than seeking to fit in with
the expectations of others.
I felt
gratitude in my un-importance where once I envied the importance of others.
I felt the
love of God in what has not been given me, rather than resentment.
I felt pain,
but also knew peace at the possibility of its passing.
//
I read a
children’s book by Ruth Krauss not long ago called “The Growing Story.” In it, a young boy
puts away his winter clothes only to find that by next season they are too
small. Trying on the now-too-little clothes
he exclaims in wonder, “I’m growing too!”
This is the
wonder I want to share with you this week – the grace that time passes and we
change. Time away from my ministry
context formed these changes in me and in returning I am able to see them and celebrate. Like the little boy, this post
is my own shout of wonder, “I’m growing too!” and I am so very grateful.
There is one
last thing I wrote down on Thursday, which is this – “It is all gift.”
May you be
blessed, friends, with grace and wonder in each and every one of your growing
seasons.
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
Self-Care: The Simple Math of “Too”
(Laura Lynn Brown, over at Makesyoumom.com is leading a discussion this summer around self-care – you can find upcoming discussion topics here. Then add your voice to the conversation in the comments. This conversation is near and dear to my heart and I’m looking forward to following along and contributing as I am able. This post is linked with the topic: Self-Care Assess Your Situation. )
Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’ . . . Billy
Preston
If I were to
sum my self-care situation up in two phrases they would be, “too little” and
“too much.”
Too little
quiet, solitude, stillness.
Too much
laundry, loudness and scattered demands.
Too little
money, time, support.
Too much
chaos.
“Too little”
and “too much.”
Looking
closer, however, I notice these two phrases can be further reduced to one word –
“too.”
“Too” is,
like “also” and “and,” a word of addition; it is yes and inclusion and
multiplication.
Perhaps one
of the greatest challenges and rewards of welcoming two (by which I mean twins)
is learning to live in and welcome “too.”
For much of my life I’ve longed for singularity of purpose and identity and
now I find myself learning how to embrace the gifts of many and much.
Yet “too”
presupposes the existence of something prior – some thing, some one, to which “too”
is added. I can see now, in learning to
live with “too” that it is not my job to prevent “too” or even try to control
it, but to tend to the one to which “too” is always being added.
Self-care is
attention to the center, the root, the self onto which all of life is added in
varied measures.
Self-care is
not in opposition to “too” but rather presupposes “too.”
Lately, one
little line from Billy Preston’s 1974 hit, “Nothing’ from Nothing” has been
following me around in my head as I tend to all of the little “too’s” that add
up my life these days,
“Nothin’
from nothin’ leaves nothin’,
you gotta
have somethin’ if you wanna be with me.”
Sometimes it
feels like all of the “too’s” in my life leave me with nothin’. When I am at zero, which I often am, I have
nothing to give and all of those too’s just pile up, neither good nor bad, just
“too.” I’m beginning to heed the signs
that tell me I’m headed toward nothin’, to notice the moments when zero is rapidly approaching.
At
thirty-eight I’m relearning basic addition and subtraction, recalculating the cost
of “too” and working to maintain “somethin’” lest we all be left with “nothin’”. More than ever before I understand that it all begins with one.
A Spacious Place: Memorial Day and Freedom (#SmallWonder Link-Up)
O the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free! – hymn by Samuel Trevor Francis
We had a gathering of new faces here at the old farmhouse Saturday. Vans packed with kids started pulling in at six o’clock and little people unloaded and scattered across the yard faster than the chickens they chased.
The porch of a house always feels like a warm space to me and the way this one wraps around makes me think of a wide smile. We set two picnic tables out in the space of that smile and ate meals in the up-and-down shifts of young parents – standing and sitting, stopping and starting as kids ran out of, refused, or spilled food. Later, when the sun was waning and a chill settled into the air, parents gathered kids from all corners of the house and yard. One girl was found a good thirty feet up in a pine tree, just sitting on a branch refusing to come down.
Kids take to this spacious place like it’s their native home, running wide and far while the grown-ups tend to hover close to the house. Often, leaving my work for a while, I find the twins off in some far corner of the yard, running knee-deep in cut grass or playing a secret game on one of the many wood piles.
Somewhere along the path we call “growing up” many of us forget how to live in – by which I mean not just to own, but to enjoy to its fullest – a good and spacious place. We build walls – or life builds them for us – hemming ourselves in to little plots of work and responsibility. A small plot of life offers the advantage of perceived control and yet something within the very heart of us is lost – a soul that was meant to soar in freedom lives out its days with wings clipped.
This is not what God intends for us. God’s love is “deep and wide” as the children’s song reminds us, “vast, unmeasured, boundless, free” as the hymn declares. This love is the spacious place in which we live and move and have our being (Acts 17).
This Memorial Day I’m remembering my Grandfathers who fought in WWII to maintain some measure of freedom – to ensure that their children and grandchildren would live in both physical and intellectual freedom, un-penned-in by tyranny and oppression. As I remember, I wonder how many of us have forgotten how to live in the freedom that was and is won and maintained at such great cost? How many of us have exchanged our freedom for the yoke of some new ideology or economic stability?
Our earthly freedom, of course, is a dim shadow of the freedom we have in Christ – freedom also bought and maintained at a great cost and yet bestowed on us as a free gift. The biblical story, though, is one of a people continually giving up their freedom, handing over the keys to prisons built of law and perceived safety.
“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery,” Paul tells the Galatians (5:1).
A good many people will spend this day gathered around picnic tables discussing the state of the world and arguing on behalf of their own dimly perceived solutions – more law, more war, more walls. We are right to be concerned and yet, I want to suggest we look elsewhere for solutions today.
Maybe we could follow the lead of our children and live in freedom for a few minutes or hours. Join them splashing in the water, building moats and dams out of sand, catch a worm, build an imaginary kingdom, run yelling across a wide field or simply lay down in the grass and watch the clouds for a while as though nothing is riding on us.
We have to practice living in freedom to best know how to maintain it.
I will do my best to leave the house today, to set aside the work and venture into the far corners of our yard. Maybe I’ll climb the pine tree, maybe I’ll ride the rope swing and feel my stomach drop or catch a chicken and sit with it for a while soaking in the sun.
May you also find yourself captured by and living in the wonder of the freedom that is yours today. Happy Memorial Day, friends.
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
God is a Lover (A Winter Miracle)
(I wrote this post back when winter was still slowly fading, not long after we decided to rehome the first dog we adopted, but I’m just getting around to posting it now. Hopefully next week I’ll finish up a piece about our new dog, Coco, who’s proven to be a much better fit.)
The old snow in the yard shrank back from the
crisp coat of ice on top and the kids and I walked along tapping down lacy
caves with our feet as we waited for the bus.
We all seemed lighter, having decided to re-home our new
dog Jaxon.
After they left on the bus, Jaxon and I headed out to the back field
and I was sad. Although I framed it as a gift for my husband and kids, I
now know that I was the one who needed a dog this winter.
Having him here gave me something to focus on, some deep
joy and a reason to get outside. Without
that dog, I wouldn’t have known the birds were singing, that winter, though
posing still as fierce, was waning.
But Jaxon was scared of our older kids, scared of older kids in
general and growled and snapped at them on occasion. He needed a quieter home where he
could feel more secure, less threatened.
And we needed a dog our kids could love freely without fear. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but three weeks in we decided Jaxon should be re-homed.
While posting Jaxon on Craigslist, it occurred to me to contact his
original owners to fill them in on the situation – I didn’t want them to see
him up for adoption and wonder what had happened. We got him from a family with two young children – a
two-year-old and a newborn who was ill and in need of surgery. They were overwhelmed and needed one less
thing to manage.
That’s what struck me as I stood in the crunchy field and Jaxon sniffed all along the fence line. I was tempted to feel regret, to tell and
believe a story of impulsive decision-making on our part, a story of
failure. That’s one possible story, but
standing in that spacious place, I sensed another story too, a story running
just beneath the surface, one filled with grace and mysterious mercy.
When I texted the original owners they replied
immediately, “Bring him back, we can make it work.” It seemed they had turned a corner. “Our daughter will get better, spring will come
and we can take him out more,” they said.
//
There was a family who needed help with a dog they
loved.
There also was a family (or more clearly, a woman) who
needed something new, some loving bit of softness and joy to nurture for a
while. By the mercy of God (and Craigslist)
the two became connected and the needs and abilities matched up for a few brief
weeks.
I don’t believe God is a matchmaker – a meddling force stitching
together lives with neat precision – but I am beginning to understand God is a
lover. This is the lens through which
God sees the world – sees you. God
stitches lives together, hearts together, to multiply love (which God IS) and
thereby God multiplies God’s own presence among us.
God’s creative love knows no bounds.
This is the great God of scripture, leaning down into the
world, seeing, hearing, knowing the cries of his people. God sending.
God arriving. Leading,
loving.
This and this alone is the story that runs beneath the
surface of all our lives – God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s love.
//
God sees two weary women, two towns apart.
One has a dog she cannot bear, another needs
a dog to love.
God’s fingers twitch,
eyes twinkle and love is born and multiplied in our midst.
Every miracle, at its heart, comes down to this – God is love.
Echolocation (#SmallWonder Link-up)
ech-o-lo-ca-tion (noun)
the location of objects by reflected sound, in particular that used
by animals such as dolphins and bats.
To be a person
of faith, is to consent
to life lived blind as a bat,
to be a people of light
walking in darkness.
Faith will teach you
what you need to know
about soaring at night,
listening for the echo
of your own prayers
reverberating back to you.
The way forward is revealed,
always, in relation to the
place where you are.
//
I recently read an article in Presence, an international journal of Spiritual Direction, in which author Susan Phillips describes learning to listen to God and self as being similar to echolocation – the navigational technique used by bats, whales and dolphins (“Navigating the Depths: Spiritual Direction in a Shallow Culture”). I found this to be a fascinating concept to explore. This short poem is the first fruits of my exploration.
My experience of God’s leading is most often one of darkness – being led in ways I cannot see and learning to be led without sight. I wrote two poems about this last year. The first, Seeing in the Dark, came out of our experience of finding and losing (and then finding again) the house of our dreams and was inspired by the images of Billy training Little Ann and Old Dan to hunt in Where the Red Fern Grows. A second poem, Bloodhound, was born last summer after learning about Bloodhounds at the kids’ summer library program. Did you know that the folds of skin on a Bloodhound’s face serve to cover its eyes so it won’t be visually distracted while following a scent?
In our anxious culture and in my own anxious heart there’s a heightened focus on the need for certainty in order to move forward. For us, the sense of sight is a dominate image for certainty, as in “I saw it with my own two eyes.” Yet scripture describes the life of faith quite differently, as confidence and hope based in things that exist beyond out own limited sight:
So we do not lose heart . . . because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. So we are always confident . . . for we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor 4:16, 18; 5:7)
May you be blessed, friends, with occasional bouts of blindness so that walking by faith, you will learn to be led with confidence in the dark.
//
I have a few brief announcements to share today. I want to first thank each of you for your contributions to this community and to invite you to continue spreading the word about #SmallWonder and commenting on and sharing the work of other writers. My hope is that we will be a group that is deep in its connection and support.
Second, I want to let you know that Jody Ohlsen Collins has decided to step back in helping to coordinate #SmallWonder as she focuses on some new ventures of her own – including an exciting writer’s retreat offering coming this fall on the West Coast.
Thirdly, I noticed last week that Makes You Mom, a new website full of thoughtful reflections about mothering is hosting a weekly link-up this summer around habits of self-care. Follow the link to see a list of topics – the first link-up begins this Friday. I’m excited to join the conversation because of my own poor track-record and conflicted feelings about self care. Won’t you join me?
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
The School of Love
She has something to tell me and we head upstairs after
dinner, leaving the boys in our wake.
Flopping onto my soft, floral bedspread, surrounded by windows and
light, she flops too, glowing with bright beauty.
“I like ****,” she says, the words escaping like a happy
bubble, a delicious secret.
I thought we were heading upstairs to talk about chores, to
escape for a few brief minutes the din of boys.
With those words, though, the scene changes – I’m transported from the daily to a china
shop of delicate wonder, precious, and I’m cautious lest I be a bull.
We lay on the bed facing the ceiling and I ask gentle
questions about the boy in question, the one she “likes.” I’m careful to keep things light – to show
interest, but not too much – to honor and reflect her interest and joy. This is the first of what I hope will be many
conversations and I navigate it cautiously, like a young surgeon performing a delicate maneuver.
She has handed me a gift – her heart in outstretched hands
and I’m awed by her trust and my own sacred responsibility to handle with
care.
Sitting together on the porch swing a few nights later my oldest boy, who’s been more
snuggly of late, leans into my side.
“This isn’t anywhere near as romantic as I am at school,” he
boasts. Surprised, I ask him to tell me more. This boy, this lover, has always had his eye
on someone and this year is no different.
“We pinky-swore to be Valentines,” he tells me, of the girl he
likes who’s “little and blond.” A few nights later he’s at a loss to remember her name, but still swears he’s in love.
They’re young, I know and so we are practicing, as we have
always been, the sacred art of holding each other’s hearts – the intimate steps
of revelation and receiving, the holding together of dreams, hope and
longing. I am practicing, practicing
opening room for their growing, changing love; practicing the art of a gentle,
steering word, shared smiles and silence.
Of all the gifts that children bestow this one – this long, slow lesson in learning to love well – is the one that strikes me most.
God Mothers Us (#SmallWonder Link-Up)
Getting found almost always means being lost for a while. –
Anne Lamott in Small Victories
Too high. Too
great. Too marvelous.
These are the kind of things my heart was snagged on this
morning. My eyes were lifted up toward
the future, toward a time of change which I sense is coming and cannot yet
see.
We need extra income.
I need meaningful work aside from mothering. And yet I cannot seem to get the two things
to align.
//
We left in the middle of the sermon this morning after I
turned to my husband crying, worrying over past decisions and anxious for the
future. Outside the sun blazed as we sat
in its heat, unenlightened, circling again the same questions without answers. Then we went back inside the still-new-to-us
building to get our kids.
No one stands around talking at this new church, the parking
lot and Sunday school classrooms empty in seconds flat. Alarmed at having been the last kids left for
several weeks now, Isaiah made me promise this morning to come to get
him “fik” (quick) when the service was over.
Today I was the first one there and his face beamed. “That’s my Mom,” he said, buoyant with his own
unique brand of happy love.
We stopped at Home Depot on the way home and I ran into the
garden area while the rest waited in the van.
I was looking for perennials to fill the two permanent pots out front,
but most of what they had were flashy annuals.
The perennials sat in the back, discounted and dry, so I left without
buying anything. I didn’t want a bargain
just because it was cheap and I wanted something that would last.
//
By the time we got back home, my heart had found its footing again. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened, but it had something to do with
my OneWord for the year – small – and something also to do with this Psalm, the
one I shared last week in stillness.
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore.
(Psalm 131)
I studied this Psalm in seminary with well known Old
Testament scholar, Patrick Miller. As a Psalm of Ascent, Psalm 131 is associated with the pilgrimages to
Jerusalem. From what I remember, it’s
believed that these psalms were written and sung or prayed on the journey. Miller suggested this psalm, because of its
intimate reference to “the weaned child that is with me” is one of the few we
can reliably conclude was written by a woman.
A woman walking. A
woman on a journey, praying. A woman
looking at her child and seeing in the child’s face a mirror for her own soul –
the calmness, contentment of a child trusting the one with whom it walks.
//
Earlier this week Isaiah lost his sister’s helium
balloon. His little hand opened for a
second and the balloon shot up into the air with its ribbon tail trailing behind.
“How will we get it?” he asked.
“We can’t.” I said, with finality. Then I knelt and hugged him as he raised his
hands to cover his eyes. I would’ve
given a lot to be able to reach up and grab that balloon.
The balloon was unfettered, lost.
//
That’s how my soul felt this morning. I was looking too far ahead, worrying about
decisions already made and before I knew it I was somewhere far away like that
balloon, lost. I forgot the One I am
walking with, the One who bears me on the journey, the One I trust to get me “fik”
when I am waiting.
God does not leave us lost for long, though. Like a woman sweeping, like a shepherd with
its sheep, like a father with a son – God seeks we who are forever getting
lost. God plucks us out of a wide sky of
fear and worry, out of the lofty heights of ambition and anxiety. God mothers us on the journey as we walk
together, side-by-side.
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
I Was Afraid . . . and I Hid (Genesis 3 and Matthew 25)
I was afraid . . . and I hid
(Genesis 3; Matt. 25)
The old habit dies hard,
the fear that drives one
like a hare, hunted, pursued
by God-only-knows what terror,
darkened shadow, lurking nightmare.
I was afraid, Adam said, because I was naked.
Vulnerable, exposed, like the soft clay he once was
before the great hand scooped mud from mud,
molding in intricate detail the figure of humanity.
Oh Adam, God sighed. God’s hands hung low and lifeless,
weary, at the great heaving sides, heart-broken,
heavy. Adam’s flesh tingled at
the sight of those hands,
at the thought of their touch, but he mistook his own body’s
longing for fear and later, his descendants would do the same
when God came, clothed in flesh and mud and walked among them,
the great hands hidden in human form.
I was afraid, the servant
said, his one talent held in an outstretched,
shaking hand. I knew you were a harsh man . . . so I hid.
Memory played the scene as he spoke, the anxious weight
of the coin in his hand, the feeling that it watched – the master
watched – through the coin’s cold, unblinking eye. The waiting
and absence, the dread – too much to bear. In the dark
of night, he fled carrying the coin’s shining light into darkness where
still the moon caught and glimmered on gold. Half-crazed, he dug
with bare hands, a hole. It was
not the coin he wanted to hide,
but himself. Bits of clay and
dirt clung to his hands, lodged under
his fingernails, the damp earth clung, claiming him as its own.
Rising and walking after the deed, dirt stuck to his clothes, his
knees.
Still the coin’s light shone in his mind’s eye, the pursuing light
pressing after him even in the darkness.
We are a people forever misinterpreting the light, the presence,
for we are afraid and so we hide.
Still, God pursues. The words,
Where are you? echo,
reverberating, as God, the great, love-sick lover,
with hands as gentle as they are wide, seeks we who are his own.
Still (#SmallWonder Link-up)
Friends, I waited and watched and listened yesterday but by the time I slipped between the sheets last night, I had no words to offer you. Instead, this morning, as I am recovering from a long, intense week, I want to offer you the stillness of Psalm 131. May you find yourself be blessed with some small moment of wonder this week.
“O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.
O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forever more.”
* * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
My One Super Power
Every day we battle, literally and figuratively.
“Stop arguing with me,” I say. Then, as he continues in protest, I declare,
“I’m not going to argue with you!”
Meanwhile, he points his little finger-guns at me and
“pchoo-pchoo” in my face.
“Put your fingers away,” I say and he does, but his hazel
eyes are still alight with the fire of battle.
Off he runs to man a pirate ship, kill a bear and battle
the household pets. But before long, he’s
back in the kitchen, a little gnat buzzing circles around my legs.
“Me have Super Powers!” he says, his arms raised and fists
folded like a boxer. “Me a bad guy. Me
destroy you.”
Sigh. This is
almost-four-year-old boy through and through.
He wants to “take over the world.”
He “has a plan.” I am the only
one standing in his way.
Leaning down, I scoop him up by the armpits and snuggle him
in as he wiggles and giggles.
“Me have Super Powers too!” I say.
“What’s your Super Powers?” he asks, leery.
“Me have Love Power,” I reply, triumphant. “Me have Hug
Power.” Then, with finality, I declare, “Love Power
always wins.”
He’s pretty sure that love is NOT a Super Power, but
surrenders anyway.
Linking with #TellHisStory.
The Center #SmallWonder Link-up
It’s been a rough week here.
On Wednesday my parents stopped by on their way home from wintering in Florida and by Thursday my Mom was in our local hospital having tested positive for both type A and B Influenza. They hope to move her out of the ICU today, but it will be a long road to recovery as she is a cancer survivor and transplant recipient – her health is often precarious on the best of days.
After rising to the crisis (she went into septic shock that first night), I found myself whirling and wrote to a friend, “I’m having a hard time holding on to my center.” In the writing of those words, this thought came like a love note slipped into my pocket.
Truth has a way of flipping perception on its head, revealing the inside-out of a circumstance or, if you will, the often wrongness of my thinking. Maybe you also are in need of such a reversal?
//
You do not hold
the Center,
it holds you.
Do you see
the difference?
It is not your job
to grasp and cling.
Yours is to rest,
aware.
Each sorrow,
each joy is a
passing breeze
swaying the
hammock
that holds you.
//
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
When the %$*& Hits the Fan (#SmallWonder Link-Up)
Prince Humperdinck, “First things first, to the death.”
Westley, “No, to the pain.”
– The Princess Bride
O, I believe,
fate smiled and destiny
laughed as she came to my cradle,
know this child will be able,
laughed as my body she lifted,
know this child will be gifted,
with love, with patience and with faith,
she’ll make her way.
– “Wonder” by Natalie Merchant
Last Friday
I sent up a call of distress.
Early in the
morning in the cold, dark living room I sent a message to a few friends on Facebook,
“Here’s the thing – I’ve become
discouraged. I have dreams and visions
of what it means to live where we do – ideas about Spiritual Direction,
Retreats and a life close to home filled with writing, speaking and tending
souls. But, and here I know it sounds a
little ridiculous given God’s miraculous provision of this place, for some
reason lately, I’m losing hope. We’ve
hit some very significant financial road blocks, we’re between church
communities and I am weary of piecing things together. So, will you pray for me, for us?”
//
Last
Wednesday my husband called early in the morning to tell me the timing belt
broke in his car on his way to work. Thankfully
it didn’t happen on the highway, thankfully it was within walking distance of
his office. But, really – this was just
three days after we started urgently petitioning God for financial provision. See what I mean – this was AFTER we started
praying.
one phone call and the two or three phone calls after it, it was like someone,
somewhere pulled a plug and all of our savings went “whoosh,” down the
drain. The little bit of money we had to
help us get through to the end of summer just up and disappeared.
//
The most
natural thing you can do, the worst thing you can do, when stress sets in and
life becomes laced with fear, is to seize up.
The most unnatural thing you can do is to relax, to rest, to hold your
own peace of mind and spirit. This is
how infants and young children can survive terrible accidents without being
injured – they don’t know enough to be afraid, they stay calm, relaxed and
flexible.
//
When the
%^&% hits the fan, my impulse is to “man up.”
I got out
the computer and started a resume.
I organized
a yard sale.
I took the
little seeds of my own dreams out of my pocket and buried them somewhere in a
deep, dark, place. They no longer glowed
with hope and promise – they were as good as dead to me.
//
Thursday night, I dreamed I was pregnant again – a fifth child, still tiny
showed up in an ultrasound. How did we
let this happen? I asked. That baby
filled my dream-self with dread – seven more years at home I thought. Seven more years until I can do what I
want.
In the
dream, the baby was also a tiny dragon.
But, you know, that’s how dreams often are.
//
Friday
morning I sat on the love seat by the cold, empty stove with tears streaming
down and sent up a call of distress.
“I’ve become
discourage . . . I’m losing hope.”
The
kids woke up and I built a fire, because wood is free, and we moved into the
day while I still swallowed tears down.
Around
eight, my kids started humming and buzzing with excitement. “Why’s he here?” they exclaimed. I looked out the kitchen window while my kids
ran out the door and saw my friend, one of the few added to that Facebook call
of distress, climbing out of his car.
He hugged
and toted my kids around, watched them climb the small Japanese Maple tree and
we stood in the yard talking about chickens waiting for the bus to come. After the older two climbed onto the bus, I pulled
up Cat in the Hat on Netflix for the twins and we sat in the kitchen and talked
over coffee.
“I’m losing
heart,” I said.
“I know,” he
replied.
This friend
of mine has the look and build of someone straight out of Sons of Anarchy – a
giant of a man complete with pony tail, beard and a Harley Davidson. If he was a stranger, I would be afraid at
best to see him approaching on darkened street or even in broad daylight.
This friend
has a Masters in Pain, a hard earned degree in life and loss and resilient hope.
“I could see
this coming,” he said and I believed it to be true, because this friend and I
resonate on a deep level. More than anyone else in this world he has helped me
understand myself, has given me new words and insight into my own brokenness
which often provides just enough of a tweak to set me on the road to
healing.
Here are
just a few of the things he said to me that morning that helped clear the fog
of fear, things I remembered well enough to write down in my journal a few days later,
“Provision
wouldn’t solve the problem.”
“It’s not
hard, you can do hard, you’re a hard worker – it’s painful.”
and, “Pain
is part of your gift. You have pain in
proportion to your gift and your gift is great, so you experience great pain.”
Talking
together I saw that I’m again rounding a blind corner in my journey – I’m being
asked, again, to trust.
To trust pain
can be a gift.
To trust God
cares.
To live
loosely, to lean in to the bend in the road, to believe seeds buried in
darkness and fear can sprout and live again and the life that follows death is
always greater than the loss.
//
Not much has
changed. Everything has changed.
We had a
great yard sale. There’s the dim
prospect of overtime work for my husband.
I put my resume on hold. We told
the kids we would have to pray about a vacation for the summer.
In the midst
of the pain, faith is sprouting again, the tiniest speck of green.
Later that
day one red tulip opened in the garden and the rest of those friends on Facebook sent their own thoughtful, compassionate replies, most of which
consisted of some gentle version of, “Me too.”
I’m not writing this to garner sympathy. I’m writing because maybe you also have been gifted with pain. Maybe you too are rounding another blind corner in your journey. I won’t tell you it’s going to be ok, but for now, I will pull back the curtain long enough to give you a glimpse of my own pain. I will give you my pain, my life as I know it, in hopes that it will help you in some small whisper of a way.
* * * *
Welcome to the #SmallWonder link-up.
What if we chose to deliberately look for the small moments of wonder, the small sparks of presence, of delight or sorrow, of true humanity in which we meet God?
That’s my proposal – that we gather here each week to share one moment of Wonder from each of our days.
You’re invited to link-up a brief post about a small moment of wonder. Don’t worry if your post is too long, too short, or not just right – you’re welcome to come as you are.
While you’re here, please do take a look around and encourage at least one other blogger with a comment.
Two is Greater Than One (A Bike, A Stroller and the Things We Think We Know)
Bare chested, my three-year-old twins ride, stacked, in the low-rider bike. Isaiah can’t pedal and Levi’s legs are too
short to reach, so they tag-team. Isaiah sits in the back – a place-holder, and Levi
in front – the engine pulling them forward.
Flesh pressed against flesh, they zip around the driveway, giddy with
speed, shouting their little-boy slogans, planning to take over the world.
I pulled out the double jogging stroller this morning,
preparing to sell it. They climbed in
and begged me to push them around. I
walked them up and down the driveway, flat tire and all, remembering the feel
of the handle on my hand and the presence of my older son as we walked all over
town in the early days and years of their lives. Day after day they sat facing the world
together in that stroller, side-by-side, a binky-toting, onesie wearing,
unified front.
This is back when the two of them were small enough to share one single shoulder. They often slept tangled together in a cozy knot.
Pretty quickly they graduated into the double stroller. Look at those sweet little bundles!
There they are – a “binky-toting, onesie-wearing, unified front.”
//
Yesterday, rolling through the grocery store, side-by-side
again in a giant cart, they made a joint decision to move their birthday to Spring. “You can’t do that,” I said, “your birthday
is what it is. It’s the day you were
born.”
Passing customers grinned as they often do – these boys talk
with their volume set on LOUD all. the. time.
I remember sitting at a lunch table once, discussing twins with friends. A kind-hearted
soul bemoaned how difficult it would be to never have a birthday of your very
own – to always have to share that day with someone else.
This is how we see it in our culture, isn’t it, a loss to
have to share something? But I wonder if
we aren’t the ones missing out. Maybe
these boys are the lucky ones, always having someone to share with, someone to
pedal when you can’t.
//
Yesterday was the last day of their first year of preschool and they arrived home, oblivious of the brief evaluation tucked into each of their little backpacks. They don’t know their letters or numbers, cannot identify common colors or shapes – apparently, they’re behind.
But I am learning from them still – the way they know instinctively, two is greater than one.
//
Earlier this week I purchased a fifty pound bag of chicken
feed. After trying, unsuccessfully, to
hoist it over my shoulder, I walked to the car with it wrapped precariously in
front of me, a bulging sack cradled in my spindly arms. I remembered then, as I often do, how I
gained about sixty pounds when I was carrying the twins and the mere thought,
the mere memory, of walking under all of that weight was enough to cause my
pelvic floor to groan.
I carried those boys, tangled together, Isaiah holding his
place at the bottom and Levi riding on top. For nine months, they led me, bulging out in
front, their flesh pressed together, growing in their knowing. And they lead me still.
I Hear a Voice
When fear creeps in, clinging,
I hear a voice say, “Open.”
When I leave, by well-worn mental paths,
the time, the place, the space I’m in,
I hear a voice say, “Return.”
When I watch the boys on bikes
chasing round and round the van
in the driveway, when I see my daughter
smile secretly at the dog in the yard,
I hear a voice say, “This is good.”
When tears rise at the mere thought
of an act, when my heart
in my chest and the muscles of my legs
clench tight, I hear a voice say, “Pay attention.”
This is the voice of knowing,
the voice that leans whispering
Truth. “This is light. This is darkness,”
the voice says, “It matters not where
you are, for I am with you, always.
Books
Between Heaven and Earth (poems)
Prayer can easily become an afterthought, a hasty sentence, a laundry list of all the things we want. But what if prayer is a time to find out what God wants for us–and for our world? What does it mean to pray that the kingdom would come here and now as it is in heaven? Explore these questions in this study, and learn prayer practices that nurture intimacy with God and sensitivity to God’s dream for the world.
Follow this writer, spiritual director, and mother of four as she dives into the deep end of chicken farming and wrestles with the risks and rewards of living a life she loves. At turns hilarious, thoughtful, and always compassionate, Chicken Scratch will change the way you see the mess and chaos involved in living life to its fullest.
