mashed in the making (guest post by sandra heska king)

I toast a sourdough muffin golden, two halves, and slather them with butter and mounds of strawberry freezer jam.

I love the jeweled color of strawberries mashed in the making.

Red to me is the color of hope.

I steep a cup of Earl Grey Green, inhale the fragrance of bergamot, and settle at the table.

The hummingbirds have gone, I think.

And I’ve seen geese fly in V’s.

The ashen sky hangs heavy.

The soybeans are browning.

The leaves are beginning to fall and lie all wet and matted on the gravel.

Life is seeding.

Yet there’s color in the changing, in the dying.

The earth’s getting ready to pull up its blanket.

To rest and gather strength.

For the first time, I’m looking forward to winter.

I crunch and sip, and I remember ashen days.

When after months of tests and corrective surgeries, life seeded and grew.

When I stood in front of the mirror and imagined my body changing, taking on a new shape.

When I hummed and patted my tummy.

When I smiled as I caressed soft blues and pinks and bought a new flowing top.

When my heart danced with every hint of nausea.

When I ignored—denied--my doctor’s concerns.

And when I almost died as red slowly seeped into my belly.

Until one morning I was so tired.

So. Very. Tired.

******


Worried faces hover around my bed.

Someone removes the color from my toenails.

Someone else tries to start fluids in my arm.

My husband strokes my forehead.

And my pastor comes to pray.

I wake up to be told that I am forever changed.

But that my body will never change to see life grow or feel it move.

And part of me dies.

But there is color in the changing, in the dying.

There is hope.

I pull up my blanket and hide under the covers of my hospital bed.

And two days later, I curl up in the green chair with the Word.

Alone.

To rest and gather strength.




Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and

the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles . . .~2 Corinthians 1:3-4a

(NIV)


There’s a commotion in the hall.

A gurney rattles through the door accompanied by two nurses.

They help the ashen-faced teenager into the other bed.

And then they leave, and she cries.

I go to her, and she sobs. Her baby grew in her tube, and her parents don’t know she is pregnant. Was pregnant. But they’ve been called. Her boyfriend is on his way.

And red spills into her belly.

I hold her hand and stroke her forehead as they come to strip her color and start her fluids.

. . . so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive

from God. ~2 Corinthians 1:4b (NIV)

******


Months later a miracle seeded and grown in another’s womb brings life to me.

And something dies within her.

Lives forever changed.

I nibble strawberry-topped muffin and sip my tea and ponder this.

Sometimes we are mashed in the making.

But there is color in the changing, in the dying, in the growing.

Then sweet flavor uncapped.

And there is hope.


(this made me cry, dear sandra. such healing in your words. thank you)

--i so appreciate all of your imperfect prose, friends. am slow to getting to them this week; thank you for grace. love you. have a beautiful weekend.

imperfect prose on thursdays: on how to comfort your husband

i run frantic as the leaves fall yellow. i want to gather them up, this yellow, to bring home to trenton. a basketful of light, an offering of happy in the darkness of these days, but it takes more than a basket.

and how to comfort the one man you've ever known? the one whose skin your fingers have memorized? how to find the strength from babies hanging off back and front and sides and turn yourself inside out for the one who needs you come night? when all you want is to read and bath and nurture your tired soul?

yet even as he draws me close and i feel his heart through his skin, i feel his sorrow: the unexplained sadness of a mother turning sick, and him not knowing how to help, how to fix--this man who cannot bear changing carpets or brand-names--suddenly facing the biggest change: cancer, and son having to let go.

and so we hold each other beneath the sheets and i cry for the intensity of it all. for this sacred moment: him, in my arms, needing me, and me, being able to offer myself, and this a gift. our embrace, in this night, the most comfort any woman can ever offer a man, for touch speaks a thousand i love you's.

afterwards, we lie in the dark, him kissing the top of my head all matted dreads and i know this: even as the world, the seasons, the pant-sizes of our children change, even as mothers get sick and fathers age, this pulling close and needing each other, this is what polishes the wedding ring.

though we wrinkle and sag and forget and flail, if there's wrapping of arms around pounding heart, there's the prayer of facing another day. til death do us part. amen.



(this post is read by amber haines of the run-a-muck here)



1. link up a post (old or new) between wednesday and friday that you feel is 'broken' or 'imperfect' or somehow redemptive
2. put the 'imperfect prose' button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other's prose, and encourage them!

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***prints and greeting cards of 'autumn leaves' available here

***
friends, i am walking for my mother in law, who has breast cancer, this sunday: would you consider supporting me by donating to breast cancer research? if so, please click here:





***
prayer request from connie of 'raising eyes':

Our family would appreciate your prayers for my new grandbaby. He was born on 9/9/11 and has Down's syndrome. In the middle of the night (Friday) he was rushed to the hospital. He has undergone a series of tests (lots of needles). Tests have ruled out some serious possibilities, which is great news. At this point, the consensus (which concurs with our observations) is that his tongue is a bit thick/long and neck muscles extra slack (normal for kiddos with trisomy 21-down's syndrome so head position/tongue keeps closing off airway. He'll stay in hospital till Monday, then have Children Hospital Down's specialists consultation. We appreciate prayer whenever you think about our grandbaby and his parents. They waited many years to have this little guy and seek the wisdom of GOD as they raise him.

when my friend came out of his closet (over at A Deeper Story today)

he sat in his closet while outside they played. the children laughed and played pretend marriage, holding each other's hands and it was okay. it was okay for boys and girls to hold hands.


(join me at A Deeper Story, today, friends?)

linking this with just write and jen.

why women need to share their stories

i bring banana loaf to her house, the red wagon behind and moon in the sky above.

i am a writer. the story is my lifeline, and me not knowing this more than as a mother. as a woman with bloody show and labour pains and the wrench of love and the laying down of life and that first cry, you’re changed forever and it’s a change a man will never understand. and so you tell your story to the women around you, and you see the light in their eyes, the light that says they understand.

(over here, at dear heather's today; will you join me?)


with ann today, too:

601. two little boys who make me laugh
602. family clinging together
603. the call of hundreds of geese flocking the skies
604. a new project to work on
605. a boy who likes to do laundry :)
606. long walks down country roads
607. a husband who likes to cook
608. movies in the afternoon with popcorn
609. answered prayer
610. friends who care

linking also with sweet laura.

this moment (a video of my boys)

linking today with soulemama...

(how much peace you bring me, friends. thank you. today i baked cookies with my boys... does life get better than this?)

Like a Tree Planted (Guest Post by Jeanne Damoff)

I remember what it felt like to be twenty-one years old, walking home from class, raising my face to the sun’s gentle kiss and almost laughing out loud for joy. We would live in unity on our knees, I was certain, receiving this gift only to pour it back out at His feet and for His kingdom.

We’d met on a crisp December night, as a crowd of friends sang Christmas carols under a starlit velvet sky, and before we parted ways for the holiday, I knew. I’d stepped inside another’s soul and found my home. I knelt beside my bed and prayed, “Lord, I can’t know this for him. You will have to tell him.”

And God did tell him, but I didn’t know it yet. We built a friendship around worship and the Word, each keeping our hope a secret, both in need of healing from the past, neither eager to hurt or be hurt again. We waded in the creek or took our guitars outside under the trees. We sang, and the harmony blended as though our voices had been meant for this. Because they had been.

He proposed on our first real date, and he kissed me for the first time right before the preacher announced us husband and wife. He was my best friend, my soul-mate, the agent of God’s healing. Our foundation was solid, and I entered marriage without fear. But not without expectations.

If you’d asked me then, I would have told you that I had no delusions. Of course marriage would have its storms, but we would weather them together. We meant our vows. And Jesus rules the winds and waves. He would keep us afloat.

I would have told you I didn’t have them, but I had them. Expectations and delusions, and there wasn’t the slightest chance they would survive this crucible.

We can blame culture or Cinderella or a hundred romantic comedies that might as well be the same one, all of them painting a picture that doesn’t exist. We can blame the tendency we all have to put on our best face in public and hide our flaws, but I wonder if there’s a bride or groom on the planet who hasn’t awakened at some point (or many points) after the honeymoon, disillusioned at best.

We would live in unity on our knees, I’d thought, but words pierced and misunderstandings divided, and I found myself bruised in spirit, trying to scale impossible walls, broken-hearted, and full of self-pity.




I remember one day, about ten years into our marriage, when the fortress wall had stood between us for weeks, thick and unyielding, and I asked him a question, and he turned cold eyes on me and refused to speak. He went outside to work in the yard, and I stood at the kitchen window, fuming, praying for God to convict him, change him, make him love me the way he should, and the Lord whispered into my rant, “You’re praying against him, not for him,” and what can you do when God speaks a word like that?

Did I love my husband, or did I love the life I expected to have with him? That day I was the one convicted, changed, discovering what it means to love, and I wish I could say the violins began playing right then and the camera angle showed me in my best light, but the Lord doesn’t tie up all the loose ends in ninety minutes. He takes a lifetime to conform us to the image of His Son.

Marriage is like a symphony, with dark passages and happy dances and long sections of quiet contemplation. There are frenzies and rests, joyful surprises and loud cymbal clashes, and through it all the Conductor directs. He sets the rhythm and calls forth each instrument with purpose, and not one plays a note longer than He intends.

They say that extreme conditions make a tree’s roots go deeper and the trunk stronger, and when you look at the rings on a long-lived tree, you can see the evidence of drought, storm, fire, and blight. But those hidden stories shaped the tree, as thirsty roots grappled for deeper streams, and branches curved upward, reaching toward the sun. These mighty ones that withstand the tests of time, they form a canopy that shelters seedlings, and they offer the hollows of their hearts to nesting birds, and they simply stand, content, steadfast, trusting the wise choices of their Maker.

Marriage isn’t a fairy tale. It’s Christ loving the church and giving His life for her. It’s the Gardener pruning His vines that they might bear more fruit. It’s roots and branches, tangled, broken, mended, restored, beautified by redemption and raised in praise to the God who orders the seasons. It’s two clinging to each other through all the chiseling of rough edges required to make them one -- not sharing the load 50-50, but each giving 100% for the sheer love of the giving, and keeping no balance sheet.

And so, it proved true, but not the way I imagined it thirty-two years ago. We live on our knees. Sometimes those knees have been bloodied in battle, and we’ve come out of the wilderness, limping, leaning on our Beloved. We’ve received beautiful gifts that can only come to those who venture trust and risk vulnerability. We’ve fallen hard, and we’ve lifted each other up. We’ve been given much and we’ve forgiven much, roots going deep, love growing.

We love with expectations refined, shining, and we receive this gift, only to pour it back at His feet and for His kingdom.

And I lift my face to the sun’s gentle kiss, and I laugh out loud.






(Thank you, Jeanne--writer, musician, wife, mother, grandmother, you do the God-thing so well...)

Friends, find this beautiful woman here, at her blog, or over here at her personal website.

imperfect prose on thursdays: when bad things happen to good people

we make apple juice, 28 jars, and the pulp settles pink. it's midnight, and my mother in law is here, and she teaches me more than apples. she washes dishes and pours me a coffee and her forehead wrinkles when i cough. her three caesarean scars have long healed but she opens herself daily to love.

marge teaches me family, for "they are ministry," she tells me as she rocks her grand-babies, and there is always another plate, another chair, another minute to sit and talk and another person who could use a hug.

and this farmer's wife takes your face in her hands and she kisses your cheeks and it makes you cry.

then she tells you about the lump in her breast, a malignant lump and it's no bigger than a dime but it's big enough to change her life.

for a minute her lip trembles and i see a girl in there, a girl who once did barrel-racing, a girl now facing chemo. and she talks about how this world isn't home. about how God says he's our shepherd and she quotes psalm 23 and how we don't need to be scared of dying for it's all a part of living.

the pulp settles pink, apple juice in glass jars, and i think of life sifting: of it becoming more about God and less about us. about my mother in law and the way she is heaven on earth, and this, maybe then, why it's so hard. because who wants to watch heaven go through hell?

"even in darkness light dawns for the upright,
for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous...
surely the righteous will never be shaken;
they will be remembered forever.
they will have no fear of bad news;
their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the LORD." (psalm 112: 4-7)

(thank you, for prayers, for trent and his mom and this hurting... having watched my own mum battle cancer, it's even harder... you are gift, friends. truly.)


1. link up a post (old or new) between wednesday and friday that you feel is 'broken' or 'imperfect' or somehow redemptive
2. put the 'imperfect prose' button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other's prose, and encourage them!

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my mother's prayers

i think of her as i rock, the world a spindle of mothers, unraveling in house coats and tousled hair, our bodies nursing babies and the thread of life on a spit-up cloth

i think of mum and how she gave herself to me, how she gave body and midnight sleep to me and how she sat in her rocking chair as i clung to her, and she prayed

i know she prayed, for i've read her journals. the journals scrawled in faint blue by hands which always smelled of Jergen's. such kind hands, and how they would fold over my infant body as she nursed milk and spirit

and her journals speak of those nights, of those prayers, of the way her body would sway to keep her awake and the way her mouth would mumble things of the soul for it's all she knew: this young believer, and it's all i really know too... this mumbling...

for what else can a mother do in the face of the night?

and God is in these small graces, in the milky slurps and the mumbled prayers, in the hands cupping cheeks and the rocking of chair, in the blanket swaddling, diaper changing, bath drawing, fever soothing touch, he is:

for it's all we have. we cannot cure the common cold. we cannot determine who our children will marry or what job they will choose or whom they will ultimately serve.

all we can do, as the night pitches black and morning seems so far, is rock, and nurse, and pray...



(will you pray for my family tonight? our world has been rocked upside down... my husband's world especially. that God would draw nigh, in this pitch black... thank you.)


linking today with laura, l.l.barkat, jen, and just write.

Guest Post and Book Giveaway: Emily Freeman

The thing about being an artist is sometimes you're the last one to know. I spent a lot of my life making art - copying down song lyrics, taking photos of things at odd angles, making up short stories in my head – but I never called it art. I just called it foolishness.

In an email written in January of this year, my friend Annie said this: “2011. We will make art.” And those five words have begun a revolution inside me, inside the way I see my life and the way I’m choosing to live it.

I’ve grown up as a good girl and it’s difficult to be the kind of good girl I was and also be an artist at the same time. Art means risk and risk means courage. I don’t think I was a coward, but I do think I lived life too small.

I’m learning what it means to let go of the life that tries so hard. Not that I don’t try anymore, I do. But I’ve let go of the right to have to succeed. In so doing, life is taking on a new and beautiful shape. It looks like joy and it smells mint fresh and it sounds like mourning and laughter all rolled up together. Because that is what life is. When we embrace the whole of it, when we refuse to compartmentalize and simply live in this moment, worship tumbles out.

I wrote a book called Grace for the Good Girl because I was one and I needed it. I needed to know that grace was for the girls with the vanilla stories and the scandal-free life. I needed to believe that beauty and art can come from more than just trauma. I needed to put down on paper the deep truths of Scripture that have carried me to this place where I stand today.

Writing has helped me see, similar to how carrying around a camera does the same thing. I used to feel guilty about that, felt like when I had time to myself to think and reflect, I needed to sit and be still without always having to pick up a pen or grab my laptop to write something down. But as I'm learning more of Jesus and letting Him know me, He shows me how He has made me. And He has made me to write. In the beginning He created the world with words alone and he creates the same way through us today. When we embrace the beauty of our unique design, when we recognize that He has made us to be unique expressions of Himself, when we receive the gifts he has equipped us with and have the courage to pour them out, we worship. What else would it be?

(Emily Freeman)

***

Book Review by Emily Wierenga



I didn’t think this book applied to me. As a pastor’s daughter, I’ve always tried hard to appear bad. Everyone assumed I was good and boxed this artist-soul in. I hate boxes. So I bust free with dreads, facial piercings, stretched ears and a tattoo. But try as I might I couldn’t keep her words from gutting me, words which spoke to the little girl within, words which made me realize I wanted to appear bad for fear of never being good enough.

“… We subconsciously label ourselves as the strong ones, the responsible ones, the sweet ones or the right ones,” Emily writes. “We try to stand tall and capable… But Jesus is calling us to a deeper, truer, freer identity. All he wants is simply you… When you really believe that, you may discover that all you want is Jesus, simply Jesus. Not just to go to heaven or to help you be a good person or do the right thing, but to simply love and be loved by him.”

This invitation to “simply love and be loved” made me curl into a ball, the kind of ball my two month old becomes in the curl of my arm, the kind that begs infancy and dependency and tired.

I was tired of trying. Tired of trying to convince everyone I wasn’t the good pastor’s daughter or the capable teacher’s wife or the tough-wearing artist. Tired of pretending to God that I could handle it all, that I prayed simply because he told me to and not because I needed to, that he was an accessory on the chain around my neck and nothing more. Tired of lying to myself and to my husband and to my children and wondering why I ever felt the need to do so in the first place.

So I curled up in a ball and let go. Her words gave me the strength to let go, and in doing so, my palms opened wide and I was able to receive. The love that said it was okay to be me. The love that died on a cross so that I could be more than me. The love that made a woman like me break an alabaster jar.

“‘Jesus Saves’ is not just a religious slogan,” Emily tells me. “It is my present-day reality. He saves me from every girl-made inclination I have to make this life work and from the fleshly mask I hide behind when it doesn’t. He saves me from my failures as well as my successes. He saves me from the shame of my mistakes as well as the pride of my achievements. He saves me from trying to suck life out of the accolades this world has to offer by placing me safely in him, hiding with Christ in God.”

For none of us is good. Only God is good. And that, my friends, is grace.



*If you want a free copy of this amazing book, let me know in the comment box. Tell me why you want it, and I'll choose three people at the end of the weekend to gift it to.

imperfect prose on thursdays: when you want to forgive, but can't

beef is browning in the cast iron and kasher is fussing and aiden wanting a story and so i breathe. count the ways i love them and exhale seventy times seven. adjust kasher's soother. slip to the floor while the beef browns and read to aiden, 'i'll love you forever', but the words crumble.

i'm thinking of kienan in his scooby-doo shorts, with his three blankets. a three-year-old abducted, four days of nothing; then his parents' plea and the little boy's return. still in scooby-doo shorts, still gripping his blankets and they say he returned to normal.

the beef is burning and the story is stuck. i'm sorry, i tell him. turn down the burner... its name, so fitting in my case... and remember the pastor. kienan's pastor, whom i interviewed, and the way his voice caught and tripped and fell trying to talk about forgiveness.

about how God has a reason, but the word 'reason' should really be purpose. in the end, the pastor says, "God can take something as horrific as kienan’s abduction, something as terrible as every parents’ nightmare and sweep this awful event up into his own purpose so that good will come of it." he chokes. "it might be that a generation yet to come will look back at the events of this past week and see the reason behind them. but we can’t, we are too close to them."

i think of the song in the book, of the way the mother tip-toes across the carpet each night to rock her boy back and forth. of kienan's mother staring at her boy's empty bed.

and then, his return. police saying they haven't seen anything like it in 26 years. and the parents, thanking the suspect on TV for hearing their plea, for returning their little boy.

thanking him.

thanking. him.


i slip to the hardwood. rock my son back and forth, exhale.


seventy times seven.



1. link up a post (old or new) that you feel is 'broken' or 'imperfect' or somehow redemptive
2. put the 'imperfect prose' button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other's prose, and encourage them!




***

*'sheltered' was a commission for my friend, duane scott. prints are available here*

***

and let me urge you to visit my friend steph forster, here, at the nehemiah arts foundation ... her passion for haiti and the hurting... oh, it's beautiful.

when there are too many unpaid bills

lighter shades of eyes let in more light, she tells me, and i smile, my eyes green-blue. that's good, i whisper.

and there it is, in the outline of the leaves falling and aiden and i are chasing it, this light, in the woods by our house. aiden, babbling to the bush and swinging his arms and pointing, as if to tell me the names for things and i open my eyes wider and try to see.

sometimes shadows get in the way of the light. sometimes there are too many unpaid bills. too many items on the list and too many unanswered messages and you just need to go for a walk. with a basket, the one that normally holds your slippers which now lay scattered across the living room floor.

the handle is coming un-twined but he swings it as he walks and he looks older than he should.

we are young in the leaves, throwing them high over our heads and staring into the sky where the light is born. and if we stare long enough and then blink the light takes flight like moths. hundreds of white moths.

aiden's eyes are hazel. we're walking home now, and i hold his hand. i hope that somehow we can hold hands forever and i can share my light with him. the candle that is in me, that is God. the candle which attracts the moths when i open my eyes wide then blink.



linking today with laura, l.l.barkat, and jen.

On how I know God hates suffering

It was university and we were in chapel, singing, when the hymn broke in two with the towers and the news camera, all shaky as my knees and the other students standing as I folded and cried. This Canadian girl.

(Won't you join me here for the rest of this story, friends? May you know his peace on this tragic anniversary...)

Thanking God today...

591. for little Kienan being found
592. for warm blankets on cool fall nights
593. for the smell of sweet peas climbing the fence
594. for aiden and trenton playing soccer in the hallway
595. for banana bread all warm
596. for being told i'm beautiful by my love
597. for the way we lay beneath the stars as though we were dating
598. for the sound of baby laughter
599. for the sound of silence
600. for rain on a sunday when all the combines stand still

On why the planes flew into the towers (Guest Post)

(Thank you, dear Jo from Mylestones, for these words on 9/11, and the God who hates suffering...)

He asked if I knew about the towers falling down, did I remember and was I there. I slid the sliced apples onto his plate, prepared for snack time, but not for this. How had second grade social studies beat me to the telling?

"And the planes," he said, "the planes flew into them and also the--I can't remember how you say it--the petagron?"

"The Pentagon. Yes. That building was close to our old house. I remember, there were people from mommy's work in the towers, and we spent the day trying to make sure they were all safe."

"Were they?"

"They were. But not everyone was safe. Many people died. And even though I didn't know most of the people, it made me very sad."

"I don't know why the guys in the plane did that. My teacher said it was because they didn't like how powerful America is and the towers rep'esented the powerfulness. But it still doesn't really make sense."

I opened my mouth to reply, racing ahead in thought to prepare a canned, scripturally backed answer about evil and the evil one, an answer I didn't actually have. Perhaps now was the time to tell him how the towers prompted the war that took his daddy to Afghanistan, how it still wages on today?

"Vincent has a ton of Pokemon cards. More than you could even imagine. He brought them on the bus today and I was like 'Whooaa'!"

Never (ever) have I been glad to hear the conversation shift to Pokemon. But there's a first for everything.

::

It's not that I didn't want to talk to my son about the towers, the terrorists, the war. It's that I didn't know what to say, how to explain such senseless evil to a grown person, much less a seven year old. But isn't evil in its very nature senseless, a piece in this fallen world's puzzle that will never and should never fit within our human understanding?

My children had finished their snack, moved on to constructing a maze out of matchbox cars, when I picked up my copy of Christopher J.H. Wright's The God I Don't Understand. I thumbed back to the underlined places and read again.

"Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled. Evil was and remains an intruder, an alien presence that has made itself almost (but not finally) inextricably 'at home'. Evil is beyond our understanding because it is not part of the ultimate reality that God in his perfect wisdom and utter truthfulness intends us to understand."

Yes. I say it audibly, nod my head. I continue to read.

"So I am willing to live with the understanding that the God I don't understand has chosen not to explain the origin of evil, but rather wants to concentrate my attention on what he has done to defeat and destroy it."

And there it is, the answer I will tuck away for the next round of stump-mommy-at-snack-time.

The answer is that none of the evil, none of the suffering makes sense; and none of it ever should.

The answer is that all of it, all of the evil and all of the suffering will come to an end, destroyed forever.

And the final answer, the only answer that matters, the only answer that will ever make sense, is Jesus. It's Jesus.

imperfect prose on thursdays: when you want to adopt the world

summer is falling golden and the combines cutting crops into cash. steel aluminum pots boil apples and the oven afire with crisp and pie, and you can smell the cinnamon as you walk the road strewn with autumn. everywhere children in school, their shoes squeaky new and the bus blending yellow with the leaves. and the wives have on aprons and the husbands, overalls, everywhere, the face of harvest.

until sunday when pews sink beneath skirts and tie, their faces wrinkled tired and brown. and eyes turn to the girls doing a presentation, girls who've gone to an orphanage. and i'm in the back with my baby in my arms and i can't turn away. from the babies on the overhead screen, babies without mamas, babies whose mamas dropped them off because they just couldn't, and babies who at 12 will be forced to leave.

"God's littlest angels", they call them, and they seem so happy in spite of wearing no shoes and their eyes are round and shiny, but where do orphans go when it's time to go home?

kasher's jeans are tight around fat thighs and the children on the screen, so thin, i wish to hold them and tell them they are so, so beautiful and my eyes burn hot. what is a child without a family? "they must be born with an extra ounce of grace," my mother in law tells me. oh, that this grace would know no bounds.

i'm staring now at the back of my husband's head. he's wearing the blue collared shirt i love and i want to kiss his cheek for i know he's hurting too. but what do you do when you want to adopt the world, and you know you'll break for the love? "where do they go when they turn 12?" he whispers as i slide back beside him. kasher is asleep and i have no answers and we sit quiet, as the combines in the field, while the pastor prays.




1. link up a post (old or new) that you feel is 'broken' or 'imperfect' or somehow redemptive
2. put the 'imperfect prose' button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog)
3. read other's prose, and encourage them!




*prints of African paintings available here*

*today i am pleased to offer you a beautiful resource by my friend Donna Schultz, an e-book which speaks to the homelessness in each of us, the longing to know that we belong.*


Lessons from Ruth: Discovering Your Destiny
By Donna Schultz
Buy Now!

"Lessons From Ruth: Discovering Your Destiny" is an inspirational journey taken from the pages of the Old Testament Book of Ruth. Chapter by chapter, you will be encouraged to walk with Ruth, Naomi and Boaz through great loss, tragedy and ultimately on to triumph! As you move through this story, with your Bible in hand, you will be convinced that one decision can change your entire life and destiny. You will begin to see your circumstances as set-ups, not set-backs. You will grow closer to Christ by looking at Boaz, Ruth’s kinsman-redeemer, who was a type and shadow of our Kinsman-Redeemer, Jesus. You will come to realize that God has been in your life and situations all along. He has had a plan and a purpose and there is no such thing as happenstance or coincidence. Instead you will hear God say, "I see. I know. I’m in it. I’m all over it. You are not alone."

art with aiden: finger-painting on the lawn

i don't have the patience for knitting and i'm not big on playing. but give me a wound and i'll kiss it better, and give me a canvas and i'll paint you a picture. and so i give aiden what i know, this tender vision which arts the world. this need to create. and i'll do this each week, share a bit of me with him and then share us with you... it won't be anything big. but it's the small steps which climb the mountain.

some weeks we may smell flowers-really smell them, pollen on our noses-and other weeks we may bake cookies in the shapes of stars and circles and squares but today, we finger painted. aiden in an old t-shirt of trent's so long it became a dress and me in black tights. we sat in the grass with dollar-store canvas and we splattered paint and we laughed like children. we laughed in shock at the brightness of color, then we felt it wet between our fingers and smeared it fast against the white.

and the colors bled and our clothes became canvas too. and i looked in my son's eyes and i saw the way the art had made him humble. the way it had stolen his attention, the way it had asked of him and the way he had surrendered. we made hand-prints and footprints, leaving bits of our body in the color.

the painting was nothing really, in the end, just a tie-dyed piece of canvas, but even as we scrubbed off in sink and changed stained clothes for clean my son's eyes shone, for he'd touched God with a painted finger. and this, what i can give him...


linking today with laura, l.l.barkat, and jen.

let them know they are worth it

aiden wanders down trails strewn with corn husks and i wonder what i'm missing. i wish my shadow was as long as his, stretching across people's paths stopping to kiss them and squealing over them as if nothing else, no one else, for he is Jesus that way. he makes you feel a million even when you're wearing your pajamas and dribbling coffee down your chin and wishing for espresso. and i cannot lose him in this maze, this corn maze, for then i'd lose my heart and so i run and we run together, my oldest boy and i, and we find each other amidst the green of stem. and i'll never forget the day he was born and i hope i always remember, how i felt when they lay his pulsing body long with muscle on my mama-heart. the way it felt when he drew milk from me and the way it feels now when he sits on my lap and i read him stories. and i wish i could stop doing and start drifting as he does, across paths, his shadow stretching long as his arms around anything with a pulse and squealing hard over them because life is worth getting excited about. so drift, friends. dare to wander the trails and kiss the faces of the people you love even if you've seen them all day long, let them know: they are worth it. every last bit of it. and you'd do it all over again, the labor of this love again, in a second.


with ann, now...

571. corn-maze visits and petting zoo lingering
572. tiger ice cream dripping delicious
573. the blue of sky, so very blue
574. an agent who refuses to stop believing ((thank you, sandra))
575. prayer, returned to lips
576. peach pie and apple crisp and the smell of cinnamon
577. a husband who helps me make applesauce
578. the 'laugh your way to a better marriage' series
579. madeleine l'engle
580. sleeping babe, five hours in a row

i was grumpy in my red-checkered shirt

he holds me, tells me he's sorry and he smells of chalk and speed stick. and i think, 'he shouldn't be sorry. he did nothing wrong.'

i'd pulled potatoes from ground and carrots from stem and aiden and i, we'd made footprints in the garden that morning. i'd cooked the garden in a crock pot with a roast and then trent had said, 'we should invite grandma.'

and i didn't want to. i was grumpy in my red-checkered shirt and blue jeans. i'd been painting. i'd smeared paint on the boys while hugging them, and now their clothes were stained.

i wanted to hug my painted boys close and be quiet. madeleine l'engle speaks of a circle of quiet but this isn't what she meant and i know this.

so he'd invited grandma anyway. he'd asked me, and i'd said i'd rather not, and he'd invited her anyway.

he's better, that way and i know this, and i'm becoming better for knowing him. and even as my head hurts, there's a circle of quiet, and we find it in the space between us. and i think of my parents, married 33 years and the way they laugh at each other's jokes.

we sit, grandma in her pink striped pants and her glasses and her white curls and aiden twirls in his painted jersey for the love of her, and our wine glasses make a clinking sound.

and this is the picture i'm painting with my life, smeared on my children, and i want it full: of color and life and guests, for the quiet will always return. the noise is in the living.


happy weekending friends... go, make footprints in the garden and smear paint on life and be noisy....