on raising fearless children (and why halloween is tricky)

we're drinking tea, the spicy kind that smells of autumn and outside, trent collects colors from the garden. orange pumpkins and green zucchinis and tomatoes, red with taste.

we're sipping autumn in clay mugs and talking about halloween. my friend, when she was little, handed out slips of paper for reformation day and i hid behind curtains and bobbed for apples with my siblings. because trick or treating was wrong. we're not sure how it was wrong but we stir in some sugar and the tea makes it better.

our children play on the floor, toys between them and i wonder at the fear of the Lord and what it means to live in perfect love. and how to perfectly love your neighbor, and is it by handing out slips of paper that talk about the saints, or hiding behind curtains? and is trick or treating evil, and isn't the christmas tree, also, and don't most pagan events coincide with christian holidays? and how to do the Christian life in this very gray world?

trent grew up dressing up, his mom taking them around to the elderly to cheer them up. they would sing songs and the elderly would clap and the tea is spicy and this sits right with me. this bringing cheer to others, this living in perfect love, and perfect love casting out fear.

fall fades with the sun, the harvest all picked and piled, its beauty useless unless eaten. i look at our children falling over tired, cookie crumbs on their lips and the tea, loose leaf in the bottom of our mugs and i decide to raise them fearless. to let God redeem october 31. to walk my boys door to door, dressed as dragon and chicken, to show the love that lengthens limb and loosens tongue and makes us radiate with hope.

because it's not about a holiday. it's about God. and he shines brighter than any jack-o-lantern and i have nothing to fear.

for God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 tim. 1:7)

(linking with laura, jen and michelle)

(tomorrow evening, on halloween, we will be taking our boys to the local nursing home where they'll hand out candies, and then off to Grandma's, where they'll get candy :)...)

-what about you guys? what are your thoughts on this controversial day? love to you all...

What it means to be an artist (Guest post by Farmgirl Paints)

I've never been comfortable with calling myself an artist.  When I say it I kind of mumble it beneath my breath and downplay that I could have such a title.  I feel like a fraud, that I should have my work shown in a gallery or have credentials behind my name to say it.  To me it's like using the term Olympic athlete, novelist, rock star...Academy Award winner;)  How could I possibly be an artist?  It's such a cool thing to be:)  However, I truly believe unlike the other lofty titles I threw out there that we are all artists.  If you can create a beautiful meal, pull together a lovely home, sew something, create anything with love YOU are an artist.

That's where I found myself several years ago.  Very young, with no money and a desire to create a pretty home, so I whipped out some paints and my artsy journey began.  Amazing how resourceful you can be when you have nothing.  Instead of buying that cute painting in the Pottery Barn magazine...I tried to make it.  Pretty soon my own ideas started to emerge.

Simplicity defines my style.  In the past I was really insecure thinking anyone could do this if they wanted, but then I started to realize that my style is unique to me.  God gave me this gift.  I shouldn't be insecure or uncertain about it.  I shouldn't compare my work to others because we are all different and art would be pretty boring if it all looked the same. 

When I decide to paint something I go through a mental process.  The canvas starts out empty and I have to brainstorm what I want.  I sketch out my idea and many times erase and start over again and again.  Then the first layers go on and it's often really ugly.  I have to mentally push through and not get discouraged or I would just give up.  It's not until the end when the details are in place that it actually starts looking like what I brainstormed in the beginning.  That's when the buttons pop off and I think to myself I did that.  I actually made something pretty...yay!  Ultimately I know it's not me...I have no idea what I'm doing.  That makes it even more special.

What if I would have given up during the process?  I would never have had the immense satisfaction of knowing the beauty in the end result.   So for me art inevitably means follow through.  It's having a vision of something beautiful and seeing it to the finish line.  I need to create because it brings me joy.  It makes me proud of myself.  It gives me a title that I don't feel I deserve.  It's following in my Creator's footsteps and using the gifts that He's given me.  In doing that the reward is far better than a gallery showing or credentials behind my name...it's divine purpose.




(Thank you, beautiful Becky... from the moment I met you, I was struck by the artist in you. The way you paint Christ through brush and word. Thank you for sharing your art with us, today)

*Becky designed the 'Follower Free' button which you see here on my blog; to view more of her work, please visit her Etsy shop here.*

imperfect prose on thursdays: on why i don't do pro-life rallies

i would stand in my Sunday leotards after church on a curb with my pastor-father and mum and my brother and sisters and we'd hold signs that declared truth in magic marker letters, and then we'd go for day-old donuts, until the next year, when we'd do it all over again. and that's all i knew about abortion. that the people who did it were evil and that holding these signs made us better somehow. good enough, anyway, to warrant day-old donuts.


(for the rest of this post, won't you follow me here, to A Deeper Story? thank you... --but first, don't forget to link up, below!! :) love you, friends.)



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 at least one other person's linked-up prose, and encourage them!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

*for prints, originals or greeting cards of e's paintings, visit here*

on laughter being prayer (and book giveaway!)

i see it in the way mum smiles as though Jesus himself has told her she's beautiful, the way she dances when she cannot walk, mum who has brain cancer.

i feel it in the leaves touching my face, my son tossing armfuls of autumn into the sky.

i hear it in my mother-in-law's voice singing worship songs while she cleans house, this woman with breast cancer.

and i read it in the life of sara, a girl whom i met after she died, a girl whose heart is scrawled online, a girl who chose joy while confined to disease and bed.

and this choosing joy is the greatest prayer, and this, a message that bestselling author and Jesuit priest James Martin proclaims in Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life and he talks of laughter being a liturgy we all should learn, of joy being a sacred rite, a passageway to Jesus, and of Christians being afraid to smile.

"human laughter is a gift from God," he says, "a spontaneous expression of delight at the world" and it's innate in children, and when did we stop exclaiming over the wonder of the day? when did earth's colors start going unnoticed, and the fresh of air get taken for granted? when did rising from bed each morning become anything less than a miracle?

people facing grave illness become like children: because life becomes incredible. each hour is a gift, a rebirth, and i believe this about laughter: it expresses faith more loudly than any prayer. faith that, in spite of pain and sadness and cancer and death, God is still good. faith that, while i surrender myself to mirth, i will in fact forget my worries for just a moment, and this, why laughter is so healing.

martin says laughter leads to poverty of spirit, a humility which in turn, is the gateway to joy, "because it enables you to recognize your ultimate reliance on God, which leads to freedom."

it's this freedom i see in the face of my son as he tosses up leaves like hundreds of birds into the sky. it's this freedom that moves my mother's feet to dance when she cannot walk, and this freedom that makes my mother in law sing.

the freedom to throw back one's head, and laugh.

*giving away a free copy of "Between Heaven and Mirth" today... just leave me a comment telling me how you feel about laughter :)

grateful, now, with ann:

616. MIL's cancer being resigned to breast, and removed successfully this week in a lumpectomy;
617. my son beginning to learn the alphabet, the gateway to a world of story;
618. a weekend spent at home, doing home-things, loving on each other;
619. kasher sitting and aiden hugging him endlessly;
620. finding love in my husband's eyes;
621. finding rest on a sunday afternoon.

(*also linking with laura, jen and michelle)

Own your art (Guest post by Michelle @ Graceful)

Once or twice a year we’d head to The Plaster Fun House on Shaker Road, select an albino figurine from the metal shelves, pick a palette and settle in to paint at a long, newspaper-covered table.

One time I chose a stately Indian chief, painted a regal scarlet and emerald headdress, a mustard robe and tawny moccasins over the white plaster and then watched warily as the lady behind the counter slid the proud warrior into the kiln. He still stands in the cellar window well in my parents’ home, presiding over my dad’s workbench.

Aside from those rare outings to The Plaster Fun House, we mostly did household projects together, my parents, my sister and I. We stained the floor of the screened porch and hammered nails into sweet-smelling two-by-fours on the back deck.

We sprayed Windex on the plate glass window until cobalt pooled on the sill.

We buffed the white walls of Goodyear tires while my dad blasted Dave Brubeck from the eight-track, the doors of the pea-green Duster wide open and ready to be toweled dry as the last of the sudsy water drained down the driveway and into the sewer.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved these practical family projects, this family time. It was how we operated, and it was just fine by me.

It wasn’t until I had kids that I reluctantly began to experience art again. I tried to persuade them to color in coloring books. And when they refused, I deep-breathed through the mess of scattered sequins, plastic cups brimming with muddy brush water and sticky patches of Elmer’s glue on the hardwood floor.

My kids, I’ve noticed, are willing to own their art and define it as such.

“Hey…what’s my art doing in here? Who put this in here?” demands Rowan, pulling a motley creation of colored paper, magic marker and glued confetti from the recycle bin.

“Oh. I’m sorry, honey,” I say sheepishly. “I didn’t know that was your art.”

I cringe, wondering if resistance to art begins with this moment: the moment a parent even unintentionally redefines what is art…and what is not.

Just recently I spread newspaper over the dining room table, and the four of us – my husband, the boys and I – made art together. A rare quiet descended as we concentrated on our individual projects, heads bent low over paper and brushes. I painted a watercolor of a bird’s nest – two blue eggs suspended in twigs and twine. I doubt I’d deem the finished product art, and I certainly wouldn’t call it good. But I don’t know that any of that really matters, simply because of this: long after the boys and my husband had finished their paintings and wandered off to other activities, I still sat at the dining room table, painting by myself.

(yes, beautiful michelle... this is what it means to own your art. please check out michelle's grace-filled site here, where she uses words to paint pictures of Christ)

imperfect prose on thursdays: when being a mother is the hardest job in the world

there is no greater humility than that of being a mother.

found there in the low light of afternoon, rocking, one on each hip, while the three of you shed tears and you, muster strength to be the bigger person.

he's screamed the past 45 minutes, this 23-month-old. half an hour in nursery at coffee-break, and then the entire wagon trip home and you feel sad for him, and embarrassed by him, and angry for the way you longed for that time to yourself, that time of discussing the psalms with other mothers, and why God allows bad things to happen.

and he feels the psalms so deeply today, this child screaming even as you arrive home, and he stomps his tiny foot and you don't know whether to hug him or discipline him and how you wish he could talk. put these feelings into words, and even as he learns the words, to name his emotions.

and then your three-month-old begins. so you sit and you rock, two crying babies in the low light of the afternoon, the house undone and the world off-kilter. and you remember the days of quiet. days when you could do anything you wanted. days empty for the filling, and now, four arms and legs and two faces beg your devotion and you don't know how to keep on.

but it happens in the blue whisper of spirit, and you speak to him now, remind him of God being bigger, of Christ living in his heart and you point to his heaving chest, and you tell him he has nothing to be afraid of; this child with the bleeding soul. and he nods and says, choking, "God."

and you rock. you sit and you rock while the house needs a vacuum and the garden begs harvest and the dishes grow mold. you rock while your novel and assignments remain unwritten. you rock until their cries subside and it's humility.

it's the hardest job in the universe and the most important one, and we never stop carrying them. these babies, and their weeping makes our wombs ache.

and sometimes all we can do is hold them in the low light of an afternoon, while God sings his love over them.




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!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

*originals and prints of e's paintings available here*

kasher's first real laugh

warning: this may make you want a baby. :)

on learning to love slow

we sit huddled on the couch, this family of four, baby's fingers tangling round and aiden in his long legs and pensive face. we've eaten pizza and watched a show and now we're sitting. just. because it's all about this.

"this is our thing, emily," trent reminded me earlier when i didn't think we should watch a show with our pizza. we only ever watch a show when we eat pizza. but we're a family now, and families should have stimulating conversation over supper. "we can't lose our thing," he said. "if we lose our thing, we become no different than the animals."

and this sitting and eating pizza and watching a show cradles our our children close. and i'm learning (this writer addicted to success) that my life means no more than when i'm holding the life that grew inside. the life that burps and coos and gets peanut butter on my curtains and pummels itself at my knees when it sees me in the morning. the love that sits on the couch long after the show is over, holding each other, arms wrapped tight.

"the earth laughs in flowers," emerson says, and our family flowers with laughter. we laugh together on this couch and i cry to him later, cry that i'm not ready for them to leave us, and our baby, not even three months. "live more slowly," trent tells me.

and i'm learning this. to dance long songs and hold close the life that makes mine matter. "there's nowhere else in the universe that i'd rather be than here with you, right now," he says.


linking today with dear ann, laura and jen.

thankful now for this:

601. a weekend away with my husband and our baby, eating korean and playing cards in a hotel room and learning to laugh again at each other's jokes
602. my sweet aiden learning to pray and to say "i love you"
603. a novel i can't put down (sarah's key)
604. a friend who wants to talk about writing
605. the scene from my deck, of fall color and geese and my boys in the backyard
606. kasher cooing and chuckling and kicking his chubby legs
607. spicy tea and chocolate chip cookies
608. movies with friends on a tv that had to be smacked once in awhile
609. getting a columnist position with The Christian Courier
610. hearing God's whisper in my hair as i run

The love a little girl wants to feel (Guest Post by Patty @ Finding Serendipity)

She is 67 years old, and still casts her gaze downward as she smiles. It's an awkward smile that stretches her lips from cheek to cheek. She was instructed as a child to always keep her lips closed when she smiled, with her lips pressed tightly to her teeth because they were too full to be considered attractive. This way, at least they looked less fat. At five, her parents divorced, and drug her to court so that the judge could ask her with whom she wanted to live. And at five, in the presence of her usually absent father, she, of course, chose him. And when they returned home, her mother cried and guilted and asked, How could you? How could you choose him over me? So she apologized and said she didn't mean it, that really, she wanted to live with her.

And so she did.

Her mother remarried; he was an awful man. He drank heavily, and she feared him. She called him by his full name. At dinner one night, she used one too many napkins, and there was a huge fight and it ended with his hand wrapped around her mother's throat, pinning her up against the wall. And once, she left the TV on when she went to the kitchen for a drink, planning to return to the TV. But he intercepted and she was thrown to the floor and her mother was slapped. She lived with yelling and hitting and drinking and silverware being thrown.

And it was always her fault. Everything.

Her father moved across the country and remarried and made another family. She visited him in the summers. I imagine her arriving to his home full of anxiety after a year of not seeing him, wanting so much for his love and attention, and finding him lavishing it on others. No matter how much he gave to her while she was there, they got to receive it year 'round. Why wouldn't he try to keep her? How could he let her go every summer, back to a life of which he knew nothing? Didn't he love her as much as them? So she would hide from him and wait. And he would notice her missing and frantically call out her name. Where are you?! What happened to her?! And she liked it. She knew from his panic that he loved her, that he worried about her. In those moments, she sensed that he ached for her. It was in these games {and maybe only during these games} of one-sided hide-and-seek that she felt the love a little girl wants to feel from her father.

If you knew this girl, would you love her? Would you hold her hand and tell her stories to make her smile wide, so that her lips would part and her teeth would sparkle and her eyes, dance? Would you tell her she is beautiful and wonderful and wanted and made in God's love? Would you tell her that life is hard, but it is also wondrous beyond belief? Would you play two-sided games of hide-and-seek with her and dance with her and make art with her? Would you sing songs and take walks and share secrets? Would you tell her that she is unique in all the world and that she has gifts to share and that the world is better by her presence?

Summers would end and she would go back home. She went to school and she made friends, and she tried as hard as a little girl with no guidance knows how to try and she got average grades. She loved her grandmother, and spent hours with her on her porch, drinking lemonade or sweet summer tea from a hand-painted glass pitcher, that now sits on a shelf in her great-granddaughter's home. I don't know if this grandmother loved her, or if she just didn't ignore her, and that made being on her porch respite. But it did. And the memory of her is that of love.

She knew God, this little girl of inconvenience, but she doesn't know how she knew God, because her mother didn't teach her about God or Jesus or religion or unconditional love. And when she ran away from home, over and over and over again {from the age of four}, they would find her in a charismatic baptist church in a neighboring community. Something drew her there, though she cannot say what. She thinks it was the warmth and the friendliness, the songs and the embracing, and she thinks surely, the ladies must have doted on her, this small child, all alone, who walked herself into their church. I think it was God, wrapping himself around her and ushering her there.

She grew up and got married and had little girls of her own. And I have no idea how she knew how to raise these little girls so well, having never been shown. She poured affection and protection and guidance and understanding and safe discipline when needed. Her girls felt love and safety and connectedness abundantly. They were raised in church, in a family that practiced togetherness, in a humble home that felt like a castle, with homemade meals and homemade desserts and homemade curtains and homemade dresses. They were taught manners and morals and to think of others before themselves. They were made to do chores and to contribute to the keeping of their home, because they lived there. They were taken blueberry picking and snowmobile riding and camping on a river. They watched fireworks on the Fourth of July, and picked princess pine to make wreaths and garland together at Christmas time.

How is it that she had so little, and I have so much?

I began my 31 Day series on Nurturing Her Self-Esteem for my daughter. I thought that by delving into this topic, studying it and researching it, I could be sure I was doing all the right things to nurture her self-esteem. I think success and happiness stems from confidence and healthy regard for one's self. I think it's important to know our own short-comings and weaknesses and to know that being imperfect also makes us unique. It's also important to believe in yourself and your abilities and the idea of possibilities. But I think now, that I do this for my mother and any other little girls out there who don't yet know that they are worthy and valuable and unique in all the world. I hope you'll join me.


(oh Patty... thank you for this, for your heart, for the way God loves through you... friends, please stop by Patty's place, here, and read the rest of her 31 Day Series on Nurturing Her Self-Esteem)

imperfect prose on thursdays: on dating your husband

these are the best days, i tell him. i'm eating california roll and the sun is yellow in a blue sky. beside us, an older couple, all wrinkles and cardigans, and our baby rolls on the bench between.

"these are the hardest days, but the best," i say, referring to madeleine l'engle's "tired thirties", and trent is eating japanese noodles and we're dating each other. baby between but it's all we've got and it's good, this lunch in a sushi shop in the city.

later i'll ask, "why don't you kiss me the way you used to?" and he'll say, "why don't you kiss me the way you used to?" and we'll try, try again, as i urge aiden to do when he cries putting Duplo together. and we kiss, baby between, the way we used to, because we try. because this is all we've got and it's good.

there's no easy to romance, only this: try, try again and when he doesn't bring you flowers, bring him flowers, or when he doesn't hold the door for you, hold his door open and we're learning that crying gets us nowhere.

nights later, we're dating again, both boys with us now, and we're at the dinner table. and he's made us burgers and corn on the cob from the garden, and he's given me the biggest cob and i take a bite and say, "it's starchy." and he looks crestfallen and i don't get it. it's just corn. but it isn't. it's him loving me.

"i really wanted it to be tasty for you," he says and our boys are watching us, this dance, this marriage at the dinner table. and i reach over and put my hand on his. "thank you for caring so much," i whisper.

and later on, we kiss while reading our books in bed and it's not like it used to be. so we have to try, try again. but the trying is redemption. the trying is a covenant, even if it's never like it used to be. for there is God between us, and this, this is all we've got. and it is good.





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!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

(for prints or originals of e's paintings, please visit here)

the secret to being happy...

... is to look closer.










sometimes we miss happiness by looking too far for things nearby.
(anonymous)

on how to teach our children about Jesus

we’re sitting at the dinner table, his food untouched and him asking “down,” our two-year-old son, and we haven’t read the Bible yet.

he wants down from the table and we haven’t read the Bible yet but no amount of forcing him to sit on a hard wooden chair is going to make him believe, and so we let him down. we let him down to play while we read the story anyway, the story about Jesus, and all i can hope is that the beauty reaches him down where he’s playing on the hardwood floor.


for the rest of this post, won't you visit my friend david's place, here? ((thank you! and happy canadian thanksgiving!))

linking today with laura, jen and michelle.

slowing down (guest post by amanda dodson)

It’s one of those mornings, when I’ve run out of liquid creamer for coffee. There’s the powdered kind, but it’s old and clumpy and it lands into my mug of caffeine like balls of sour grapes.

And there are a set of dishes in the sink waiting to be loaded into the dishwasher. And two cabinet doors are open revealing a disheveled row of Tupperware.

I begin quietly tidying up before the morning rush. The weekend proved to be busier than normal even for our family of five. I tell myself in the still of the a.m. that life must slow down a bit.



And as I wipe in circles while the water bounces off the steel sink, I notice an odd shaped something in the crevice where the stovetop meets the counter. Inside the narrow cleft is a tiny tooth, faint dried blood still stuck to the root. It’s from the mouth of my ten year old. And I vaguely remember it coming out. It happened between packing a diaper bag and finding a matching shoe on Saturday. And I think I said, “Great … I’ll meet you in the van.” That was two days ago.


And I put the dirty rag down to inspect this little piece of my middle boy. I replayed the rush of the weekend, scampering hectic to arrive and minister to a community where we serve as short term missionaries. But why didn’t I slow down for sixty seconds to hug or high five? What was more important than recognizing a simple milestone that slips in quietly before vanishing altogether?



And I can spend my days loving others and turning the other cheek and carefully placing fruits of the spirit into a worn woven basket, but if I miss ministering to the very people in my own home, I’ve simply failed this job of mothering.

And I say the words in my head, once and then twice … this is my ministry.

These are my children. These are the young who will grow to carry the torch that was lit in our home. And the songs we sing and the words we whisper will be the hum of their grown up hearts. And the responsibility is grand. And it’s worthy of pause to celebrate the little and the large of each and every day.


(thank you, dear amanda, for sharing these humble and holy words...)

imperfect prose on thursdays: the love that makes it all worth it

i painted this picture long before i wanted children.

i painted it in the hopes of wanting children. for so long i hadn’t. it was something i told Trenton on our honeymoon. on the stretch of tent and sleeping bag in halifax, nova scotia, surrounded by happy people we screamed at each other and i thought, we’ve made a big mistake. for i didn’t want them. and he did. and he'd thought i had, too.

and for three years i proved my point by starving myself until he told me i needed to choose: it was food or him. and after a moment of quiet i chose him and i started to eat. we moved to Korea where we taught English from 2-9 pm, and in the mornings before yoga (where fierce Korean ‘ajumas’ did one-armed handstands), i painted.

i painted pictures of mothers and children and i begged God through the strokes to give me maternal feelings. for i had none. i was empty, i was selfish, i loved my solitude and my guitar and my drinking wine and staying out late and sleeping in.

but the more i painted, the more i could see it. the picture evolving before me. the picture of love that withstands bloody labor and sleepless nights and spit-up on shirts, the love that makes you rock for hours on end just to hear the crying cease, the love that causes you to look across a floor strewn with toys and unfolded laundry, to find the eyes of the man it all began with, and to say “you’re worth this. you’re worth all of it. and i would do it over again in a heartbeat.”

because it is. worth it. when the rocking ceases and the spit up is cleaned off, when the laundry is folded and put away, and you stare into the face that you and your husband created--the face with his father's nose and your eyelashes and your grandfather’s jaw--you know: you needed that scream in the campground and those years of starving and that choice on the highway and those mornings, painting, to make you realize that this, this breathtaking miracle, will always be your greatest work of art.

this post, as well as an interview concerning my art, is appearing today at my friend sadee's place... please visit her and say 'hello'.



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!

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Auto-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
For best results, use HTML mode to edit this section of the post.

*originals and prints of emily's paintings available here*

**also, just wanting to shout hallelujah for the way God is good, for the lump being benign and for feeling so very, very loved by all of you and your gracious prayers. thank you. from earth's humble shores...*

Jesus loves me, this I know...

i cried in the parking lot, Kasher in the back seat and Jesus Loves Me on the stereo. and i wanted to shut it off, but i couldn't. for the Bible tells me so, tells me he loves me in spite of my doctor finding a lump in my breast just days after my mother in law found cancer in hers.

and he said it was movable and i shouldn't be worried, but to get a mammogram right away. and i picked up my two-month-old and held him harder than i've ever held any person and begged God be kind. for i am but flesh to two small children and a husband i adore, and this world is all i know.

and i cried despite knowing it is most likely nothing, because, for my mother in law and countless others, it became something, and the stereo played Jesus Loves Me. and for the Bible tells me so wasn't enough anymore.

for this mama is all my sons know. and i want to be love incarnate for my children. for my husband. as long as i am here to be it, i want to be more grace, more tender, more embracing than angry, than punishing, than busy. for it is just a lump, but what if? and so, to live each day as if...

placed around my house, words to remind myself: believe, faith, hope, love, and arriving home, i stared at them, imprinted them on my soul, that they would pray themselves through my touch, my voice, my life... for these children, these tiny beings, are eternal ones. whose souls will dance with mine long after we're gone.

and i hummed the song and i believed the song, even as my husband held me and let me cry. and these, the words: Jesus loves me this i know... for my heart, it tells me so.


linking today with laura and jen.

(thank you for prayers, friends... i go for my mammogram monday... will let you know by wednesday the results. so sorry for all of the sad posts lately; joy, to come with the morning... )