becoming a family of four

"this is how it works," he whispered to the one tucked in folds of blue. "when you're hurt and needing a hug, you go to mommy. and when you're wanting a good time, you come to me."

they lie on crimson sheets while i brush my teeth and our other son sleeps the bedroom next-door and it's becoming a real thing, this family of four--the kind where each of us has a child on a knee and neither has arms for the other but we're all eyes, seeing him for the dad that he is, all playing and reading stories and talking in a baby voice i never knew he had, and me being the woman who gave birth without drugs and lived to tell about it.

and it's the kind that sees older son become a living emblem of love, wrapping arms tight around brother little and saying "uh-oh" when baby cries, running to the bassinet and begging to be the one to hold, and how my prayers have been answered

"he loves so deep" i whisper to husband and we watch one so young become caregiver to another--and what if he'd never had the chance? and what does this breaking of self do to a child?

and i hear the Lord say of my older, "tender-heart," and of the younger, "lion-heart" and they share the same skin, the same chin, the same lips and long skinny toes

and when youngest is finally tucked in crib we lie there in the dark, their father and i, and he touches sacred my empty womb, silent marveling, and the world is fuller now for these stretch marks and wounds, for the lives in the beds down the hall



(begging patience, friends, as i've hardly had time to wash my face this week let alone read blogs, but i miss you and will be around shortly...)

thankful, as always, with ann:

500. our new boy, all 8 lbs and 14 oz and 21.5" of soft skin
501. neighbors' quiet gifts and congratulations
502. you readers and your warmth, your love, your goodness to me (thank you)
503. sleep-ins while husband cares for older son
504. flowers fully blooming in garden
505. quiet afternoons spent becoming family
506. reading of the psalms before bed, silencing my soul
507. gifts in the mail from you
508. time to paint in spite of everything
509. new mercies every morning, like honey on toast and coffee in a mug
510. my boy calling me "mama" for the first time, over and over

Guest Post: Jenny @ A Minute Captured

*here is a guest post from friend Jenny H... please visit her here.

"I've always wanted to deliver without an epidural, but have gotten too scared at the end. Can you help me?" I ask the nurse with Saint for her last name. "Of course I can help you," she replies. "If that's what you want." And I want.

I had grand plans going in the first time around. Then I got scared with warnings of "last call" and "once you pass a certain point, you can't get any relief." And I had no idea that when I felt like I was about to burst in two, we were becoming two.

I didn't know when I thought I was about to die, I was actually giving life.

I never regretted the relief I sought the previous two times. I did what I had to do to chaperon the little one from the inside out. I felt the pangs of childbirth up to a point and at the last minute, I cried for relief. And as quickly as the relief came, so did the child.

"I've always wanted to deliver without an epidural, but have gotten too scared at the end" I tell my spiritual father. "Can you help me?" "Of course I can," he replies. "If that's what you want." And I want.

He offers word pictures of Our Lord hanging on the cross and I embellish with scientific facts of the agony one faces being crucified. I read the words of a doctor as he discusses the crucifixion, A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ As Described by a Surgeon . I think of the distended limbs and the agonizing gasps for breath.

Let's talk now about Jesus hanging on the cross. When hanging by their arms, as a crucifixion victim's body weight sags down, their diaphragm functions like a billows. As the diaphragm drops into the abdomen it pulls in air, so someone hanging on the cross had no difficulty whatsoever pulling air into their lungs. The tough part for people hanging on the cross was breathing out. In order for a crucifixion victim to exhale, they would have to pull up against the spikes with their hands, and push up against the spikes with their feet.

Every time he took a breath, that tattered, lacerated and riddled back was drug and scraped across the splinters and the rough knobs and spikes protruding from the cross. Each time he breathed out, each time he uttered a word, he would have to pull up with his arms and push up with his legs. That's why I want to remind you just how precious Jesus' words from the cross were. That's why he couldn't say more than three or four words at a time. Because when you talk, you only talk as you breathe out, not as you breathe in. Every word Jesus spoke on the cross was spoken as he was pulling up against the nails and dragging his back across the cross.
~Dr Keith Maxwell

With each contraction I struggle, whispering the sacred name, "Jesus." I offer my breath, some 2000 years later to the One who struggled for breath, yet managed to speak.

And she comes, the smallest one, at eight pounds one ounce, and the hardest one...and I felt every glorious minute of it. I would have two more without the needle, only prayer and meditation. The last one, well, I could never find my "sweet spot" for union with God. And I begged for the pain relief only the needle could provide as I ushered another soul into the world.



Question for you:
What means do you seek for pain relief in labor and delivery?

the day i met my son

the lilies bloomed, the orange ones by the trellis, the ones i'd been waiting for and i cried, two days overdue with my second son

and i heard his whisper, the breath of One who told me to get a lily tattooed on my wrist because He cares for the flowers of the field, i heard him say, "soon"

and it began that night until the hours of the morning and the fetal heartbeat became infant skin and despite the ring of fire and the belief my life was over with the final push it was only beginning

i had no strength to look, could only hear the gasp and curdling cry and my body rested knowing it was good, he was good, this, with all of its pain, was good

and as fragile skin touched soft my lips, his eyes turned blue upon me... his fingers wrapping round and my garden, bursting full in bloom

(who knew, love could be so 'stretchy' as my friend worded it? how it multiplies... )

Kasher Jude, born July 25, 2011, 8 lbs, 14 oz

**thank you, for all of your congratulations and prayers... imperfect prose will be taking a hiatus this week, as you can well imagine :) i love you all so much...

the colors in heaven

he points to the pictures, begs “oooo” for open, but i can’t. as much as i scratch the flat surface of the page, the book remains two-dimensional and my 20-month-son, disappointed, for he wants the image on the page to become reality. he wants to enter into the story. and i feel this way about canola fields.


(for more, please visit my brother Duane Scott, where i'm guest posting tomorrow... i'm posting this early, as i think we're going to be heading to the hospital tonight... the story itself won't be appearing at Duane's until monday morning... i hope you can visit his wonderful place and leave a comment for him there. so much love to you friends. will be in touch, soon.)

Guest Post: David @ The Screaming Kettle

One night last week while I put my daughter to bed we talked about the birth of the world. I believe the universe has been around a while, and I believe God took his time with the emergence of man, but that only raises my awe at His creativity. My daughter asked me why God had made everything in the first place.

Because He loves beauty, He loves to create. He wanted to be able to love us and for us to love Him. It is a strange truth inherent to the reality God chose to create that He could not hear my prayers for my daughter while she sleeps or draw my heart near to Him or be loved by His children unless He first envisioned atoms, planned polarity, made quarks so small we would only ever be able to describe them mathematically.

And so it is that love was wrapped up in the first act of creation. The emergence of the first bouncing particles and the new laws that governed them, breathed out into the nothing by a curious He, was a pledge of future love, a promise of fidelity. He made something dependent on Him, and so His character swore Him to love it into eternity. Is procreation not the same?

Man and woman come together in an act that, left to its own devices, brings forth life, a life that both are obligated by the image of God in them to love and nurture. If we choose to create, we are vowing at that moment to love the creation, and it is a vow we must keep. The first choice is not separable from the second.

God knew the yoke of love He was taking on when His finger stirred light into the cosmos, knew of sin and pain and the cross and neglected children and wars and the pieces of us He would have to glue back together, and yet He set the dominos in motion none the less, on down through the eons, till His love could be expressed to us. Let there be light was as good as saying I will love.

This helps me as I look at my daughter and wonder at the seemingly random circumstances that brought her into our life. I like to think love was involved in her formation, though I wasn’t there when it happened those thousands of miles away. However unplanned she may have been, her conception guaranteed her of God’s love. And as we have made her our own, we have accepted that yoke as well.

Satisfied with my simple answer to her question about why God created, my daughter moved on to How is Jesus God if He’s also Jesus?, which I could use an answer to if anyone has one handy.

Oh, the Trinity; a paradox for which only marriage serves as a working metaphor, however weakly. The Trinity’s love for their creation is bound up in their love for each other. And of course this is true for us as well.

As man and wife not every joining together in physical love is with progeny in mind. My wife and I have made the decision that for us it never will be. And so this act is a different pledge, a promise of faithfulness, a recognition that our love for each other must thrive not merely for our own sake, but for the health of our whole household. Meeting our daughter’s daily needs, celebrating her growth, delighting in her delights, seeing her into adulthood to have a family of her own, loving her, is a grafted limb of our marriage that cannot now be removed. Our love for each other is inseparable from our role as life givers, life sustainers, teachers and nurturers in our home.

God, who has loved us since we were particles in space; God, who gave us His image that we would love our children from the time they were cells in our bodies. We fail on our end of course, but our failure can only let them fall as far God’s own love, and they are cradled just the same. It is a good God who spoke matter into space that He might know and love His children.

(david has long stunned me with his poet-voice and raw faith... he honors me with this post. thank you, friend. *in other news, i am due with our second child today... it doesn't look like he'll be making an appearance for awhile, but i will keep you posted. please keep praying--thank you!)

imperfect prose on thursdays: on being pregnant forever

the sky is a pinwheel of cloud and blue and we're outside trying to be family but i'm all belly and cannot find the way out

and there's drought in africa and flooding in alberta and hailstones the size of eggs and men and children and women gone missing and this is my biggest problem? this being unable to exit child into arms? when he is safest within, but how crowded it's becoming...

the swing slows and i cry for the swelling in my soul, for at once i want to meet him and at once, keep him tucked inside, not knowing how to be a mother of two. they say the love multiplies but i'm divided and tired and wanting to crawl within my own womb and curl up fetus-like

but even as my aiden stands tall, king of his backyard-castle, hurtling balls onto grass "uh-oh" and laughing at me in his bare legs and blue shirt, i know a love deeper than sleepless nights and worn days.

and while he runs on legs so real, i still carry my eldest within. for while waiting turns into birthing turns into nursing, in many ways mothers are pregnant forever.

so for now i swing.





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*original of 'asian mother and child' done for kasher's nursery; prints available here*


*apology: in a post earlier this week, i talk about the baby of a couple we know; some of you have expressed sympathy at her passing--she is, in fact, still alive; doctors don't expect her to live long, but at this point, she's still safe in her mama's arms. prayers appreciated. thank you*

when you want to be seen

i told him i wanted to be a news anchor. i wore bell-bottoms and the day was spring and we were in bible school walking home the road that was never long enough, and trent wasn't like the others. he didn't look at me and say "you'd be great at that." the flowers in people's gardens grew while he stepped strong and slowly asked, "why?"

"i think i can speak into people's living rooms," i stumbled and he didn't say anything. "i think i can make a difference." and he looked at me. "but you can make a difference doing anything." and suddenly the road was way too long and i just wanted home, to cry, realizing it was all superficial, this dream, and what did i truly want?

it's sunday now and naptime with bunny and you haven't fallen asleep on me since you started walking, and i never became a news anchor. instead i write the news from my desk at home for christian publications that don't pay me enough and the only people who see me some days are you and your father.

but that is enough. and this is what i truly want. and he knew that, all along.

(shared with one stop poetry)

Why I believe God is good

Weak voices of a congregation singing Great is Thy Faithfulness on a Sunday, and it’s the quiet chorus of farmers and families made humble by the death of a young mother to a brain aneurism, and sometimes the stained glass seems to mock for all of its color.

(Friends, join me here, today, won't you? At lovely JoAnn's site?)

Thankful, with Ann:

485. camping in the mountains
486. pre-labor symptoms
487. the smell of laundry drying on the line
488. artwalks on whyte ave
489. ice cream and smarties
490. wiener roasts
491. potty-trained little boys
492. quiet mornings with coffee and Bible
493. evenings spent with husband toes tucked under afghan watching shows
494. a garden blooming
495. God in heaven seeming so close to earth

giving birth in a tent

i awake to the smell of forest, all spruce gum and rain-wet, to the sound of a bird's winded wing and the touch of of a man curled into a boy as he sleeps on the air mattress beside me

i awake to the blue of a tent made bright by the sun, to the way air was meant to be, all fresh and full and the warm of a sleeping bag around my extended womb kicking with a newborn near-ready

and some think me crazy to go camping at 39 weeks but how, to explain, it would have been death to stay home? to fail to remember what it's like to live before giving birth to new life? to bring another soul into a world i'd forgotten? to make a family in a space i felt folding up around me?

and so, i had to escape to mountain, to tent, to the bed beneath stars because it's so easy to forget what makes life tick when staring into the screen of a computer. so easy to think life consists of peering into the dustpan and the sink and the potty, to make existence a mere combination of hand and apron and foot, when it's all God.

and i find him in the campsite, in the flicker of a kerosene lantern, in the giggle of a boy picking sticks and stones, in the charcoal edge of a pancake and the crisp of bacon and in a husband washing my feet from enamel tub while cicadas sing and red fire dances

i find God in the melted s'more and the watery Tang and the walks by turquoise water. in the slip of wrist skipping stone, in the jagged rise of a mountain that climbs into cloud, in the swing of an outhouse door and the sound of an axe cracking wood and the boy asking 'da?' when a squirrel chatters

for these are the moments, in which we stare into the face of God, in which we tuck close to his whiskered face and feel his breath on our cheek; these are the reasons we sweep up dust and potty-train and stare into computer screen.

and these are the reasons we render ourselves helpless in order to give birth.

Guest Post: Sarah @ Emerging Mummy

My husband has decided to be obsessed with Indian food these days so chicken tikka masala simmers on my stove while I dream of spiced winds, tearing off pieces of naan and dipping it to sneak a taste.

Every time we are at the grocery store, the beautiful Indo-Canadian ladies in their bright saris gently laugh at my two-year-old Joe when he tells them with stars in his eyes that they are "so pwetty" and at four-year-old Anne who breathlessly asks if they are princesses.

Joe is playing trucks at my feet, roaring contentedly. The sun is setting outside and our big living room window is wide open. Anne is perched on the window bench, staring out.

I make a move to close the curtains in the dim and Anne pipes up, "Don't close them, Mum. Look at the sunset."

I look out the window and the sky is ablaze. The clouds are reflecting the colours of the saris - turquoise, magenta, blood orange trimmed with gold. The sun is setting behind the pines and skeletal trees that stand around our little neighbourhood, far above the roof lines.

When we first moved home to Canada and I saw the sun set at last behind the pine trees, etching them like black lace relief against the northern sky, I cried for being home at long last, for how my soul needed that very beauty.

"God made that," she whispers.

"Yes, He did," I say.

"So, Mum, you can't close the blinds. When someone makes something for you, the right thing to do is to look at it. You can't just act like you didn't get the gift. Otherwise, they don't know that you see it. You say thanks but you also need to look at it. And God made it for us so we need to look at it and see it."

Small girl, thank you for giving me the eyes to see the gifts.

I sink down into the glider rocking chair, just behind her and say nothing. Joe comes over to sit in my lap and we all stare out the window, looking just above the dark bones of the trees at the sun setting, gliding silent in the now-dark room that smells like spices.

It feels like a sudden lavish gift, poured out like expensive perfume on my soul, like water on parched earth. They are quiet and I am quiet and then it is gone, leaving only an indigo glow.



(she's beautiful isn't she? sarah @ emerging mummy... fellow contributor at The Deeper Story and honest-hearted Christ-seeker. visit her here, friends. as for me, i'm taking a break... there will be no imperfect prose next week, as i'll be camping on and off, as much as my pregnant bones will allow. peace to you, dear ones.)

imperfect prose on thursdays: why i still go to church

The air smells of breath mints and old ladies’ perfume and the pew digs into my nine-year-old bones. I’m starving in church for more than food and my father stands up front preaching from a Book that forces us to move every few years and his white clerical collar is perfectly straight.

(will you read the rest of this post here, today, friends? and if you feel inclined, leave a comment there? below, the link for imperfect prose... how you bless me.)

**please note, there will be no imperfect prose next week; i'll be camping...



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(*prints of The Last Supper available here)

why God allows suffering

his hand rests on my arm to still the sobs and i shrug it off. i want to feel the pain, i tell him.

there are chip crumbs on his shirt and it's his turn to look hurt. we've married this moment to the Boy with the Striped Pajamas, a movie about a jewish boy in a concentration camp. it's all too awful, this history that happened, and watching it happen to a child makes me cry in a violent way.

if only hitler had responded to pain with a soft heart. instead, he became indifferent.

the bush is tall outside our window, and all i see is sky and branch and there's a city of tears just beyond, a world full of children full of emptiness, and how to help my sons see this? to help them respond to life with all of its barbed wire and gas chambers in a way that doesn't ruin them? to peel away the bush and the blinders and open up their arms?

first, by opening up mine to my husband. by letting him comfort me. by refusing to shrug off, by daring to admit i cannot change the world, by daring to be needy.

perhaps this, then, why God allows suffering? because pain is the most honest kind of prayer...

(shared with one stop poetry)

what it means to be a parent

his breath smells like breakfast sausage. i know this even as i wait at the finish line of my son's first race.

it's canada day, and i've never seen his father so excited. "first we have a pancake breakfast, with sausage and bacon," he tells me, the nights and days before, "and then there are races--a foot race, sack race, three-legged, and then, a baseball game," and he's been remembering his childhood all year.

i don't understand until i see the church ladies in their parkas and smell the pancakes frying in the old skate shed, until i step into the hall and eye tables stretched long and people of all size and shape and wrinkle elbow to elbow, the syrup sticky between them and now, here at the finish line, the children dutch and little, lined up to race.

the fathers prep their sons, trenton whispering into aiden's ear to run to mommy, beside him, uncle rob and cousin logan, and there, uncle shaun and cousin linc, and uncle phil holding the bull-horn and it's "on your marks, get set, go" and a flurry of children's legs and smiles and father's cheers and crossing the finish line into mommy's arms.

and all that matters is that he crossed the line, and isn't this parenthood? the father at one end, spurring on, challenging and equipping and excited and "go!" and the mother ready to catch, to hold, to praise...

"therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us..." (hebrews 12:1)

421. summer with its rotatilled garden and hot sun
422. berries ripening
423. fresh garden lettuce all bright and green and tender
424. a new-used washer and dryer
425. korean restaurant date with husband
426. witnessing love beneath long strings of pink and white balloons at friend's wedding
427. maternity leave and clean windows and naps on the couch
428. anticipation of camping trips and baby, new
429. little arm hugs
430. family around the table

(with ann, here...)

love smells like rain

Love smells like rain on the earth of his chest where my cheek lies, and he can barely reach me for the child bulging belly but we find a way, and love always does.


(for the rest of this mushy weekend post, find me over at michelle's beautiful place, friends... love to you.)