imperfect prose on thursdays: the boy who cried Daddy

she was too old for her skin, all 13 years, and she stopped me in the hall and asked if we could talk.

i was the nervous one, the young life volunteer, fresh-faced from college and

it was chemistry, us going for coffee and jessica knew no love for an alcoholic mother and a father who'd died and for the next seven years i would be her biggest advocate.

i would pick her up from the police station at three in the morning and let her raid my fridge when she was high on ecstasy and take her blankets and food when she lived on the streets with her boyfriend.

and then she started doing crystal meth and i thought i'd lost her, until she found a little boy inside her, and he saved her.

joey.

and she cleaned up for him, and she sobered up, and she refused to give up when her boyfriend and her mother threatened to disown, to evict, to dump her if she didn't abort her child.

and she kept him. my god-son.

and he has a brother, now, from the same father and jessica is the best mother i know. all 21 years of her, and the boys' father beat her this summer.

and she called a u-haul, the next day, rented herself and the kids an apartment and they're safe now.

but the dad never calls, never comes around, and the one time he did little joey wouldn't let him go

and at four in the morning, he runs into jessica's room crying "Daddy!", and he's four years old and having night terrors.

and i cannot sleep for hearing him cry, two hundred miles away

and i pray, one day, this boy will know what his mother--a girl who had no one--gave up so that he could be someone.

and this, more love than most will ever know...

(begging you: pray for dear joey, too?... thank you.)

*also, i am being interviewed by beautiful kamana over here; won't you check it out?*



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 give 'em praise!

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*painting by emily wierenga. prints and original of 'Mother and Child' available here*

on falling in love

"be careful of the ice, emily," he says and he watches my step, for fear i might fall.

"it's my job to worry about you," he says when i try to smooth the wrinkles in his face.

me staring at his profile in the dark when the children are asleep and something has happened to remind him of the years when i wasn't eating, the years when love felt skinny between us.

and he doesn't normally talk but tonight, words have found him and i'm listening to him wonder why? why did i do that to myself? to us? to me?

and i see the lines in his face, etched. i see the nights in which i never came to bed. i see the days i refused to eat, colored grey beneath his eyes and the afternoon i tried to drive us into traffic in the grooves in his forehead.

i can't tell him i'm sorry enough, and i ask him what does he love about me? how can he love me, i wonder, after all of that? and he turns to me and the moon puddles his eyes.

"i don't love parts of you. i love all of you. so i can't tell you what i love about you because i just love you--the good and the bad. and that will never change."

and he keeps me from slipping but i'm falling, every day, for a man who would die just so i might live.

(shared with jen and laura)

the children that no one wants (12 causes for christmas)

we crouch by his door, trent and i, and aiden is awake and standing by his bed, and we're sneaking up on him, to surprise him with love and we count, 1, 2, 3, then open and pounce

and it's amazing grace, the sound of a child laughing

and we do family time, all the time, because it's all that matters.

but family is bigger than blood, and i look at my refrigerator, at the christmas photos people send us and their faces smiling and at the end of the day--after baths and snacks and bible story, crowded round wood-stove and climbing all over limbs and toes and guinea pig, too--it's family that makes us worth something. it's family that makes us worth anything.

and where are the children that no one wants? where are they on our fridges?

"i just turn away--i can't stand to see a child in pain," a friend tells me,

and i refuse to understand this. this turning away.

kasher crying and aiden running to him, and there is no greater mercy than a child's heart, and we are to be like this. everyone taking care of each other.

and to be like children is to hear the crying, and to come running. fast. thinking nothing but how to get there more quickly.

76,000 homeless children are crying in canada. and no one is running.

let's hear them. let's see them. and let's give them a place on our fridge.

because it's amazing grace, these children, and at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, it's all that matters.

us being family to the world.


(trent and i have gone through foster-care training, and are hoping to open our home when our boys hit the age of 10)


(joining with my dear friends at A Deeper Story to bring to you 12 Causes for Christmas... won't you join in the blog hop below?)

Info re: Fostering in Canada...
Child Welfare League of Canada
Canadian Foster Family Association
Provincial and Territorial Association Sites
The Canadian Foster Parent
Alberta Foster Parent Association
Foster Care Alberta

Some Kick-A Articles on Fostering:

Christian Week
Today's Parent
Canadian Living

Where was the Christian when the boy needed saving? (Guest post by Joann Hallum)

I was born bathed in blood.

Exposed and helpless, I don't remember the tears and sweat that brought me to this world, the waters of suffering and sacrifice. Those things are my mother's story. I only felt red cold fear.

I am from Adam's seed and with the seed comes the knowledge. Knowledge of good. Knowledge of evil.

I screamed at first.

Evil is dark, frightening and linear, but I can't find the beginning, and I can't find the end. I haven't been formally introduced to it, but I know the black agony of possibility.

Some decide to pick their poison. I listen as he tells me about the places I have run from. I hear how he went to a room of booze and starving brothers. How a fight broke free and he stood to the side. Surrounded by chaos, he griped his beer like he had held his stuffed bear, so many years ago.

A baseball bat headed for his head, wielded by another kid who decided to embrace destruction. The batter tried to take the boy's brains, his body, and everything in it. The boy knew he was going to die, but the bat stopped. He was saved by his cousin, who had pulled out a knife and pressed it to the assailant's throat.

The boy tells me this story while I eat a cookie. He confesses that he would still call his cousin before he would call his church, heroine habit or no. It makes sense to me.

Christians are immortal ones, called to be fearless. So were was the Christian when the boy needed saving?
We run from the dark places because we forget the sweat and the tears, the waters of sacrifice given by the One who covered us again in blood. Jesus's blood allowed us to be born again with Adam's knowledge, but God's Spirit.

Too often we hide under our beds and curse televisions and tattoo parlors. We cover breath mints in Scripture, but ignore the needs of the children without toothbrushes, the infants without mothers, the boys without hope.

Too often I defer to my nature, returning to the place where I was born the first time, the cold place, before I met my Father. It is still so dark in this world, but I'm slowly learning to walk like the immortals do, by faith not sight. Moved by His Spirit, I can wield the double edged sword against the flaming arrows, the baseball bats, the nameless possibilities.

I remember my second birth and I fear no evil.


(joann, you write light into a dark, dark world... thank you...)

imperfect prose on thursdays: when thanksgiving is a funeral

the phone now, and trent answers.

his voice wobbles like the spinning top we bought in mexico.

and i hug our boys on the bedroom floor.

he hangs up the phone, face ashen; holds us with his eyes. "one of my students lost his dad tonight. a farming accident, tore off both of his arms and i guess the blood--"

and his eyes shift and there's nothing more to be said, just a gasping ...

(for more, please visit me here at A Deeper Story, friends... but first, won't you link up below?)

**wishing you the happiest of thanksgiving's, my american friends, and uttering deep gratitude for all of you, for the comments you left me on sunday's post; you are so very good to me...**



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 give 'em praise!

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('monarch' painting by emily wierenga; prints available here)

on why i keep on writing

"don't forget about the dandelion" my sister tells me, and i nearly cry remembering the gangly-looking thing she brought me years ago, saying God had told her to give it to me. saying it represented my writing career.

"i wanted to give you a flower, but he said, the dandelion," she says now, laughing.

i smile but my heart is sore. it's been three years since my agent took me on, after my first book got published with a small canadian press, and the CBA has rejected my memoir about mum and my non-fiction about eating disorders (they don't want to publish unknowns, my agent says), and so now, i'm writing fiction.

and it's been like birthing, this tearing of words from my soul, and i get it now, this "labor of love," because i battle through the pages. i sit at my keyboard and weep the characters into existence and i beg God through it all, don't let me waste my time.

for i have two little boys now, and a journalism career, and art... so why keep on trying?

"he told me to give you the tallest one," my sister says of the dandelion, "because the seeds will blow far."

it takes a special person to see a weed as a flower. i'm praying, now, for this kind of faith.

"did you know that everyone is writing a novel these days?" i ask my husband when the children are bathed and powdered and tucked into sleep.

"yeah, something like one in every 10 people," he says.

i sigh.

"and one in every 1,000 gets published," he continues.

i begin to curl into a fetus position.

"but babes," he says, bending down to my level and looking me in the eye, "you're one in a million. and i believe in you."



(shared with ann, jen and laura--three of many writers i greatly admire)

thankful for this:

675. wood-stove heat on -25 degree days
676. speaking to a group of church ladies this wednesday on my journey through anorexia (please pray!)
677. friends who critique my work
678. an agent who says my words are mesmerizing
679. shopping, alone, while husband takes care of the boys
680. family time after baths
681. kasher's first tooth breaking through

searching my skin for fingerprints (guest post by Claudia Schoenfeld)

i saw the potter



"i saw the potter at his wheel" says jeremiah


speeding on the highway in the wet and cold, i've
settled
between hope and loneliness with
all the songs on replay i have never finished listening


& he wets the clay, hands dripping with my tears,
face close to mine,
but he is gentle—


this is
what i love him for & what he does exactly,
i don't know


in another life,
i cook spaghetti in the kitchen, the evening
blends into me,
salty steam between the dark and i
search my skin for fingerprints—


they’re everywhere



(claudia takes the world and puts it into a poem... she weaves the divine into words, and i always walk away from her prose feeling like i've just struck gold. please visit her here, friends)

imperfect prose on thursdays: when you're desperate to know you're alive

he stumbled down the street in his pajamas and cardigan, cars swerving around this old man who wore desperation on his face and

if we truly knew the weight of the world, we would never rise from our knees.

he didn't see the cars, the way his face was twisted in anguish as if he felt so lonely that he'd up and left his bed just to know he was alive

and i drove and the world blurred tears and i didn't know his story, all i knew is i wanted to stop the car and give him a hug and what was it like to feel that alone?

a boy on a bike, then, a boy with a face so long and haggard he rivaled the old man in the sweater and i wondered if they'd bump into each other and if that jarring, that human contact would give them enough faith to make it through tomorrow

and i wished i could empty the casinos and the parks and the nursing homes and the alleyways and carry the lonely home and they could sit there in their pajamas and their cardigans, their faces haggard from no one seeing them and they could sit there and see each other...

and then maybe they wouldn't have to run into the street and feel the rush of death just to know they were alive



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 give 'em praise!

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*e's paintings and prints can be found here*

on teaching our children the art of dying

we walk, and we remember: trent's papa, the man who did magic tricks and made gun powder in his kitchen and ate fried chicken every sunday, we remember his life and the lives of the saints, here in the snow.

flags placed by the stones of the veterans, souls dug deep and we walk where they rest, their bodies holding up the world.


(for more, won't you follow me here, dear people, to michelle's lovely place? thank you... you mean the world to me.)



(linking with laura and jen)

a hymn by my sister and i, for you, this sunday morning

... visiting with allison, one of my younger sisters this weekend, celebrating life and aiden's birthday and our first snowfall and overall delighting in the circle of all things God. love you all...

War and Peace (Guest post by Brian Miller)

An elderly woman in the waiting room
at the doctors office won't stop staring
at me, except when something drastic
happens on the corner TV.

It's the afternoon stories, which all have
the same characters, just younger actors,
they had when my aunt used to keep me
after school as a child, stuck in the same
story lines, their lives moving much slower
than ours

and she is still staring at me

yet seems so much more complicated,
as if the writers can't figure out what's
next---and this is really about that, war
and peace, because killing others seems
to be the only way we know to solve
our problems, but don't get wrong there
are always reasons why we do it

her eyes crawl the reaches of my face

This world is a scary place and if we run
they will follow and if we fight, someone
will die---because we are afraid or they
hit us first or they have something we don't
so what is next? and when God calls for 'just'
war in Samuel, yet much later says not one
should be hurt, where does that leave us?

i offer her a smile and somewhere between
the crinkles she brightens, the weight of what
is next for her lifts just a bit because
she is no longer alone in her-own-story

all i know is this, what is next

and along the
way as we give what is given to us,
peace becomes a virus we pass
with each touch---


(Brian blows my mind and heart wide open with his poetry... he is one of the most compassionate people I have ever met. I asked him to post here for Remembrance Day, knowing just that... Brian sees beyond. He sees with God eyes. Please visit him here.... and thank you, friends, for your wonderful, imperfect prose. I'm making my way slowly through your links... Love to you all. e.)

imperfect prose on thursdays: what happens in the face of beauty

We’re covered in paint, and the lawn is too, fenced in brown, the geese calling autumn and trees dropping leaves. Everywhere, color. Color is music for the eyes.

We’re finger-painting in the grass, my son and I. He’s one-and-a-half and he’s never done this before. Neither have I.

Everything is new to him, fresh and thrilling and this newness is the mystery behind a heart of worship. It’s a mystery I’ve been cultivating since I was old enough to understand that the world isn’t what I need it to be.

(Friends... I'm over at The High Calling today; will you join me there for the rest of this post? And please, feel free to link up your imperfect prose, below... Love e.)



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!

*i want you to know how very much i appreciate this imperfect community and i pray every week that God use it for his glory and for your encouragement.... bless you*

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When God doesn't heal

The wind blows and dry grass rustles, and I run, to the applause of a thousand feeble hands. They’re clapping in the wind. And it’s the applause of the saints.

And I think of my mother in law, bowing low on her parent’s farm as a healer from Africa prayed over her, that God would take the cancer. And one week later it was still there, doctors said, and now, precancerous cells too, and chemo, and I run fast down the asphalt, cold wind blowing.

(Join me here, won't you, for the rest of this post? Thank you dear friends...)

when Jesus smells like apple pie

he tells me i have a pretty nose and i blush as though we haven't been married eight and a half years and i hear Jesus in his voice
and when i swear and yell, so tired of being good, he just holds me, and there is Jesus in his arms
and sometimes Jesus smells like apple pie, all cinnamon and crust and warm, the kind of smell that makes you want to buy a house because it makes you believe you belong

and sometimes he smells like the old man in the grocery store, the one in the sweats and the long beard staring at the rows of bread for too long
and sometimes he smells like the inside of a trailer, one that hasn't been opened in weeks because the family in it is scared, and
sometimes he smells like baby powder.

he is in the wind that moves my son's hair as he tosses twigs in the woodpile
he is in the knots in a homeless man's hands, in the span of a sparrow's wing and in the tears on my grandfather's cheek, the tears my grandfather cried thinking of my grandmother's home-made biscuits. and missing her desperately.

there is no limit to his love and we are lovely because he loves us and he is here. among us.

all of us.

emmanuel.


(linking with laura, jen and michelle)

The right way to be a mommy (Guest post by Deidra Riggs)

She said she wanted me to write something that would help her be a better mom and I was paralyzed. My children are adults, and I'm still looking for someone who will write those words for me. I'm still amazed to think somehow my offspring made it to grown-up. In spite of me and all my, well...trying...

Last week I spent four days with 224 other women, many of them whose children are young. They wear their little ones across their chests, or roll them in strollers, or chase after them as they run down the hallway - free spirited toddlers with heads thrown back and mouths wide open in that silly "catch me if you can" laugh that sounds like music to a mother whose children are all grown up. And I can feel it in the air. I can feel the way they want to know they're doing this thing right. (As if there really is just one right way to be a mommy.)

I remembered years ago, when a friend and I were raising children at the same time, in the same town. Even then I felt the pressure. The competition. I'd watch the way my friend loved on her kids, or disciplined them, or what she packed in their zip-loc bags when we spent an afternoon together at the beach. And I'd check myself to see if I was measuring up. If I was keeping up. If I was doing it right.

Last week, I watched the mommies. The ones who home school, and the ones who drive their children to the public school around the block. The ones who stay at home and the ones who work a 9-5 or more. The ones who feed their children organic food that's been canned in their kitchens at home, and the ones who just hope for a fast-food drive-thru window nearby. The ones whose children sleep in the bed with them, and the ones whose children don't.

I watched them and I prayed they wouldn't compare themselves. I prayed they wouldn't feel the pressure to do this thing a certain way. I prayed they'd find their sweet spot - the place where they can settle in and just enjoy their children and lavish them with love. And I prayed they'd cheer each other on.

There's really only one right thing we all can do as mommies. We can love our children well.

All the other stuff will fall into place. The children will learn, and they will remember the times we focus in on them, and they will eat, and they will sleep, and they will dream magnificent dreams. They will. But only we can love them in the way that makes them know they have a place here, and that they matter, and that they are perfect - just exactly the way they are.

--

(what wisdom, sweet Deidra. thank you. please visit my gifted friend here, at her beautiful blog)

imperfect prose on thursdays: in which my son teaches me love

i grip it like a kite, the patch of blue outside my window, and it's the same kite i flew when i was in labor and now, the birthing pains sear, both children teething and sick with colds and no one sleeping.

i stand by the window all cry-eyed and bone-tired and i wonder at the bigness required of a mother. the strength needed to turn self inside out, minute by hour, in search of wisdom, empathy, Kleenex and a lap, and when is it my turn?

my 23-month-old has broken another DVD unintentionally and it broke me and i cried in front of him and now he's sobbing in the living room and me, here, by the window when kasher begins to weep from the swing.

and it's the same story of lost perspective and then i hear it. the hard patter of little feet, running, pausing, running, pausing, and i let go of my kite to find my baby with a soother in his mouth, toys piled 'round and blankets, so many blankets and aiden's patting kasher's stomach because he can't find his back. and kasher's quiet now.

and i find it. the love that gives perspective. i find it in the heart of my son. a boy who, sobbing, heard the cries of another, and ran. a boy who brought blanket after blanket and i need not be bigger. i need not be a giant of strength. i need only be a child.



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, greeting cards and originals of e's paintings, please visit here*

(also linking up with ann today for 'walk with him wednesdays')

when marriage is a picnic in bed

sometimes all you have is currant tarts and a shared glass of milk, and he gives me the last sip.

us sitting in our pajamas in bed, giggling over our midnight snack and crumbs in the sheets and we don't care.

days are crowded with little boy babble and baby dribble and peanut-butter kisses and veggie tales and dr. seuss, but come evening, we tuck them tight with their bunnies and we turn to each other and remember.

the love that makes us family.