imperfect prose

when, and how, do you let go of your child?

2012-02-28T19:15:00.001-08:00

they were black silhouettes clinging to each other in the burial ground as the cedar casket was carried and in it, the body of their 17-month-old daughter, their shoulders shaking even as the casket lowered. and no parent should have to bury his own child. it should be outlawed. trent held me then and i wondered at me wanting to push him away.

but there was no anger in their footsteps as these parents prayed by the box, kissed the face of the box, said goodbye to the child they'd waited for, for eight years. and i remembered the mother's words to me that morning: "i just wish i could have one more kiss."

i thought then of aiden, standing in his droopy pajamas, holding his bunny, asking daddy for "more hug" before he goes off to school each morning and when do you stop hugging them? kissing them? holding them? if we knew the hour, the day, the minute we'd lose each other, would we ever let go?

the pastor spoke to a crowded church of little savanah grace, and then the eulogy was read, the one written by the parents themselves, and in it, my friend--the mother of this girl who had a rare genetic disorder--talked of not being able to breathe when the doctors gave her the final diagnosis.

savanah hadn't eaten in days, hadn't really woken in weeks, and her kidneys were shutting down and... all this mother could do was hold onto her baby girl and worry about such a tiny person going to such a big place like heaven. "i wondered if she would get lost; i wished i could be there to help her find her way around; heaven is such a big place, and she is such a little girl..."

and i couldn't find enough kleenex, for all of the faith of this beautiful woman who, while losing her child, worried solely for her well-being in the after-life. worried only about her finding her way to Jesus.

there was no anger, no rage, no banging hands against cedar casket. there was just the empty womb of a mother who'd given birth to an angel.

oh, that we might all help our children find their way to Jesus...

*linking with jen and ann*

when God dies, all over again

2012-02-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

i forget, for a moment, how angry i am at God, when i hold my new nephew, whose brown feet conduct an invisible orchestra.

babies give God a face, and when you look at them, it's so easy to believe.

but when they die, at 18 months, it's so easy to stop believing. because then God has died. all over again.

and there's heaven, where all babies go, i believe, where innocence is resurrected but we are left here on earth. the parents, left here on earth, and it's now hell.

it's cold here in calgary. my sister and i have been eating brownies and holding malachi and listening to him breathe. it sounds like a heart, pumping love and peace and everything good.

the service is on tuesday. it feels wrong to go to a cemetery for an infant. it feels wrong to think of burying new life, but where else do you go when the heart stops?

their one prayer was that she'd learn to hold her head up. this baby girl you've prayed for, for so long, this savannah. the one with the rare genetic disorder, the one this couple tried for, for eight years. i've never known a mother who loved her child more. it took hours to feed savannah. hours. only to do it over again, and this mother, she never complained.

and now she has to bury her child on tuesday.

and i think i was wrong. i don't think babies give God a face. i think mothers do.

(please pray for this couple, friends. i know you will. love you.)

linking with jen, laura and michelle.

on how to know the joy of the Lord when you're in a van full of crying kids

2012-02-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

i had to laugh, like a crazy lady, i laughed while they cried and the Joy of the Lord sang on the CD. it was one of those laugh-or-you'll-cry times, and so we made a cacophony of sound that afternoon drive home, as sweet-voiced singers crooned "i've got joy like a fountain."

and i couldn't help but think how joy is nothing the way it sounds, and love isn't either. love isn't all mush and flowery and hallmark-words and velvet kisses. no, it's pure, stubborn, determination when all you want to do is quit.

and joy isn't some beautiful feeling that percolates in your soul. no, it's the decision to laugh when the world gives you reason to cry. it's the decision to believe in peace, in spite of noise.

i am learning these things, and more. i am learning i can hurt a little boy's feelings by telling him to "shush" when all he wants is to be heard and i am learning to ask little boys for forgiveness, over and over. to admit i am wrong. i am learning that sometimes it's okay for them to throw fridge magnets if it means they're actually getting along for once, and that it won't kill me to stop and read stories when i still haven't had my coffee.

but i'm also learning that sometimes i need my coffee. that sometimes i have to pack up a van full of four squirming boys and drive all the way to coffee-break and leave them in nursery before i can get it. and that it's worth it, to sit in a room and discuss the miracles of Jesus and the taking up of cross and the dying, daily, with women whose backs hurt from bowing low to the the least of these.

today Joey made his mommy four pictures, because he's going to see her tomorrow. she's throwing him a birthday party and he's been counting down the days, and he made her four pictures because "these will make her happy," he said determinedly, stuffing them into his red backpack, the one that holds his treasures.

then he put the lids on his markers, and popped bubble wrap because "i like the sound, very much," he said, his eyes glistening with the thrill, and i thought, this too is joy.

believing in those that love you. trying to make them happy. and taking the time to pop bubble wrap because you like the sound--very much.

(i am so behind in visiting your blogs friends... you've been so good about visiting mine; thank you. i hope to find time this weekend, as i will be visiting my sister, who just had a baby, and spending moments reading and resting.... love you all. please, keep praying?? thank you... thank you. we're at your mercy.)

make me a channel of your peace

2012-02-19T19:47:00.001-08:00

"it will get harder," i heard, bending over the rails of the crib, the crucified stance of the mother who feeds life in the dead of night. but i shook my head. it couldn't. it was hard enough. and then, "there will be victory," even as my baby wept against my chest.

what does victory look like for people who walk through the valley of shadows? i'm beginning to believe that faith is everything in the hard times, and simply re-charged in the good, like a battery... what are we, if not believers during the bad? how will we ever long for heaven if we don't feel the curse of earth? how can we be light unless we live in darkness?

i'm beginning to think the monks and saints and john the baptists had it right. the desert is where we find God, in our leather thongs and long tunics and locust-lunches.

for in the desert, there's nothing but space in which to see him. the incredible expanse of him.

so this afternoon while husband and children slept, all but one who gnawed on a mum-mum in his walker and gurgled at the ceiling, i pulled out my dusty guitar. and i flipped through the old worship binder my brother made me, the pages all curled and yellow, and i found it.

the song that will be my mantra for the coming ten months. the one i will sing when these four boys pull at my last nerves and make me lean into my husband like a tree losing its roots and this song will gently replant me. root by root.

and so, along with st. francis of Assisi, i sing this on behalf of weary mothers and foster mothers and fallen mothers everywhere...

Make me a channel of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me bring your
love.
Where there is injury, your pardon, Lord
And where there's doubt, true faith in
you.

Chorus:
Oh, Master grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul.

Make me a channel of your peace
Where there's despair in life, let me bring
hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there's sadness, ever joy.

Chorus:

Make me a channel of your peace
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we're born to eternal
life.

(shared with jen, laura and michelle)

when you're close to giving up

2012-02-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

i cried, the other day, over spilled milk. it was tuesday, and two out of four boys in their high chairs and thomas the train choo-chooing across the screen.

i turned to the television, baby in arm, to adjust the sound and that's when he threw it--jin--he threw his sippy cup and it broke across the hardwood and i stared at the white, all of that white, and i broke too. baby in my arms.

and perhaps this was a mistake i muttered wiping, in the corners of four o'clock and the day one of those never-ending. then the other came up the stairs telling me he was hungry and i don't think i have enough food to fill his hollow, nor enough love and i was spent all aching and long-suffered.

but this is love. this long-suffering. and even when all four kids were sick this week and us, up multiple times with Tylenol and cold cloths and warm arms and tucking of blankets and stumbling back to bed praying for even half an hour's rest; even when i got sick and circled the toilet and said, "this is so hard," to trent, we knew. we knew, and we know, we are doing the right thing.

because of them. because of him, with his goggles and his special red bag which holds his treats and his life. because of the way he doesn't cry for mommy anymore each night, and he prays for the meal before we even sit down, and he talks all of the time about batman and robin and "i'm a soldier" he says, and we nod politely.

and because of the other, who smiles like the sun when he sees me in the morning and lifts his arms and spends hours outside toddling around in his little blue snowsuit and spiderman toque.

it is not easy. but a village is raising these children. literally.

starting this coming week, we have people from the church taking turns babysitting so i can write and hug tight my own boys and stop crying over spilled milk.

and there is an end in sight; there is november, when their mother will finish school and she's told us she thinks she can take them back then. that she'll be strong enough by then, and this is good.

i doubt sometimes, i do. when they're all four crying and me, with just two arms and a headache, but then i see birds and i've seen so many this week and i know you're praying. their wings lifting me, and i know, it's okay to feel weak.

because Jesus is all about being strong.

we never stopped holding each other (over at 'the high calling' today...)

2012-02-15T06:17:00.000-08:00

I lie in red pajamas on the living room sofa, my husband, Trenton, on the other in his comfy clothes—his green-ribbed shirt with the hole and his fuzzy pants that have no waist. “Our good times were more than our bad,” he says in a voice that aches.

“Yes, but our bad times were so bad.”

“But we never went to bed angry,” says Trenton. “We never stopped holding each other. Even on the worst nights, we would still watch shows together until finally you fell asleep in my arms. We ate pizza together, and I made you wings…”

“That was my one meal of the day,” I say. “I guess I was so focused on making it to that meal that I didn’t notice the rest.”

“But there was the other,” he says. “There was always the other. We never had a fight we couldn’t fix. I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. We had, maybe, four big fights, but the rest of the time, it was good. And we never stopped holding each other. Never.”

(will you follow me to The High Calling for the rest of this story, friends? thank you... how much you mean to me... and how i miss our imperfect prose community. i will be visiting your blogs as i am able, in between caring for the boys and writing the book... so much love. xoxo)

the boy who wants to become superman so he can save his mommy

2012-02-13T19:16:00.000-08:00

it doesn't matter how many hugs i give him. how many times i tell him he's handsome in that white sweater--the one he wore to impress the neighbor girl even though he's only four--how many home-canned peaches i serve him nor stories i read.

come night time, it's his mother he needs, and all i can do is lie beside him and put my hand on his back and feel his heart pulling at his skin.

it's only been three days and i know the first while is the hardest, like the three months after bringing home a newborn who feels like a stranger demanding your life and then one day, you wake up and he's become family.

and this morning, they felt like strangers, these toe-headed Filipino boys, the tall one who cried when he lost the stick he'd buried in the snow outside, who hunts tigers in the woods and wants to be superman when he grows up. and the short stout one who is calvin from calvin and hobbes. sticking hands in toilets in guinea pig cage in porridge in baby kasher's mouth and laughing like the way trees lose their leaves in fall, all colorful and free.

and tonight i looked around, and they'd become family.

we pray a lot right now, inside and out. we're teaching the boys how to bow, and they do it over snacks and dessert and sometimes for their mommy, too.

and we're re-learning prayer right now, the way it's kind of a desperate plea when no one's listening and you're wading through toys and dishes needing to be put away and the boys half-dressed and fighting over toys and you look out the window and see a bird in flight.

and that bird becomes your prayer. the way it rides the wind.

and so, as i lie beside him in the dark, this tall boy who wants to become superman so he can save his mommy from all of the hurt she's feeling, i remember that bird. and the way the boys couldn't stop eating pancakes and strawberries that night, and the way they crowded around "uncle trent" after bath for their bible story, all limbs in lap, and it becomes my prayer. all of it.

that this boy will know the fullness of this love and that it will become his mother, here in the dark.

{we're leaning hard on your folded hands right now friends... thank you, for propping us up... will you continue? and if you haven't already, perhaps consider adding this button to your blog, so others might pray, also? ((thank you)) *see button code in the top right-hand column}

*linking with laura, michelle, and jen...*

photos for you, of this life of ours

2012-02-12T14:33:00.003-08:00

(i've asked my brother, who's a computer-genius, to come up with a prayer-button for us; thank you, for the peace that passes when you fold your hands for us... you don't know, how we need you right now... love, e.)

on bringing our boys home

2012-02-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

their beds are ready. i bought them blankets, the fuzzy kind, the kind that make you feel like you're being hugged while you sleep. and i bought one for aiden, because he'll notice, and i need to be extra careful about that kind of thing right now. about the way he sees, with his old-soul eyes.

trent will be picking them up in an hour and then it's a two hour ride to neerlandia and i can't stop thinking about the day they first came here, over a month ago. holding each other's hands and looking so very alone.

it's been one of those weeks of wrestling with angels. working out on the elliptical while listening to hillsong and weeping, and speaking to a God who is more in love with us than i ever imagined. praying one night for these little ones coming, and the next night for my boys and wondering if we are doing the right thing.

and then i saw it.

an open-roofed fortress, around us, and trent and i holding up our boys, and our boys, holding up joey and jin, and joey and jin, gripping the hands of God.

so we're forming this staircase to heaven, one step at a time.

a friend wrote this today, to me: "i'm so happy for your book (congratulations!!) and the success of your art, but truly, i think your best work is still ahead of you."

i can't explain the love i feel for them: i feel like the shepherd who's risking the lives of his 99 sheep so he can find the one (or two in our case) and trusting, trusting, God will watch out for the rest of the flock while we bring the others home.

introducing "the emily" collection--and ANOTHER giveaway!!

2012-02-08T18:41:00.000-08:00

t.s. poetry is partnering with artists and photographers to create a new line of products... today i am so pleased and humbled to introduce to you "the emily" collection... featured here are a few samples of what you'll find at the online store, here.

we are wanting to get the word out, so i wonder, will you help us? there is a gift in it for you! share the online store (http://www.cafepress.com/tspoetry) on your facebook pages, twitter, blogs, and however else you wish... then tell me, in the comments section, how you shared, and at the end of the week i will choose a winner to get a free gift (of their choosing) from the store.

the goal of this business venture is to bring beautiful words and art to the world.

thank you for being beauty in my life. bless you, friends.

ps. it looks like we're getting the boys this friday... pleading prayer, once again, as we begin the journey... love you. xo

on raising a few good men

2012-02-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

we're driving home from playing cards with friends. the night looks as though someone has dumped tar on the world. fields of black.

and i think about the 30 people who are missing. the ones the captain abandoned, the man who ran the costa concordia into a rock then lied to passengers and saved only himself. refusing to apologize for lives lost, and what kind of man does this, i wonder?

trent at the wheel and i feel safe with him. he's a good driver. the headlights shimmering.

i look at him now, his strong profile in the outline of a soul-less moon and i know he wouldn't have, but i need to ask anyway. "you wouldn't have left them, would you? those people on the ship?" and he looks at me, and he looks fierce, like a warrior.

"no," he says, quietly, and then he pounds his fist against the wheel but it doesn't scare me. just underlines his clenched jaw. "it disgusts me," he says. "what has happened to us? where are the good men?"

i think about our boys. how little and true they are, how innocent and pure, and i know he's thinking it too: how do we parent right, in a world gone wrong?

we turn into neerlandia which has two churches back to back, a co-op and a school, and one intersection, and then down the gravel road to his parents to pick up the boys, asleep beneath feather ticks on the farm.

"i want our boys to stand up for justice," he says now. "i want them to fight for truth. to be full of honor, to be brave, to have integrity. i want them to be like the men of old... generations gone before."

his words stir me. he sounds like a preacher but i know he's sincere, and we're turning into his parents' driveway now. parking, and he turns off the headlights.

and we sit there, holding hands, in the middle of the dark.

linking up with dear sarah at emerging mummy:

(thank you so much for cheering me on, friends... your kind notes on the last post--wow. incredible. i am going to be slowly making my way to your blogs over the next few days. love you so...)

when God says yes to your dreams

2012-02-05T22:35:00.000-08:00

my paintings are being exhibited this month at a local gallery. i had about five visitors friday afternoon, most of them members of the art club.

the rest of the time i sat in the back-room of the gallery, writing. after four hours, i leaned my head on the plastic yellow tablecloth and stared at a coffee stain.

i was so tired i couldn't even remember where i was meant to go after this: the bank? had i told trent i'd be home right away? i decided to buy a bottle of champagne. just in case, at some point, i'd have reason to celebrate.

a brazen act of faith on a dull day.

my agent had pitched a book to a publisher that week--the book i'd been trying to get published for more than two years. the one that would help families with eating disordered children.

she'd told me once about an author who'd kept a bottle of champagne sitting in his fridge for 17 years before he'd had occasion (a book contract) to pull it out and celebrate.

i hoped it wouldn't take that long.

i bought a bottle, stashed it in my car, drove home and promptly locked my keys--both sets of them, along with the champagne--in the car.

and trenton was standing in the doorway, eyebrows furrowed.

"you said you'd be home an hour ago--i was so worried, i was calling and calling--i made you eggs..."

that's when i told him i'd locked the keys in the car and i dropped my body in a chair and he told me to eat the omelet before it got cold.

"you need your strength," he said.

i ate it while checking my email and my agent had written, asking me to call her. so i did.

and as the auto service unlocked my car and trent retrieved the champagne, i heard her say: "you have a contract. they want the book."

funny how, when God says yes and your dreams come true, it never happens the way you picture it. and you never react the way you think you will. all i could do was fairly whisper hallelujah.

i hadn't even had time to chill the bottle.

(chasing silhouettes: how to help a loved one who's battling an eating disorder will be released this summer, and 'mom in the mirror: overcoming disordered eating and negative body image after pregnancy' will be released next spring. hallelujah. :))

sharing with laura, jen and michelle

*congrats to keLi of Thoreaubred Baby who won the print from last week's final imperfect prose on thursdays*

The Gyspy King (feature post from this week's imperfect link-up)

2012-02-03T07:21:00.000-08:00

My children,

Your mama loves this man named Jesus, the same name you’ll hear outside. And yet, like with a lot of things, names mean different things to different people. It doesn’t necessarily make one right, or one wrong, just different I guess. So when mama says she wants to share her faith in Jesus, this is what I mean -

Your mama finds the sky her sanctuary; I make my pulpit from the tall pines. I find communion in smoky bars, broken places, with people who don’t pretend. My rosary is each ten of your toes, and while my prayers may seem sporadic, my faith runs deep and comes out in whispers.

Your mama follows the Gypsy King.

My gypsy Jesus, he doesn’t serve on a committee, a cause, a church calendar. He roams this world just looking for people to love. And when he finds them, oh, child- how he loves them…not for their potential, but in the now. He doesn’t care if they see love between a man or a woman, he doesn’t care if they’ve signed a recall petition. He loves them through the beauty queen, the bar scene – he doesn’t want to transform them; except through love.

Never, ever for one second believe that a fictional preteen boy with a lightning bolt on his forehead is the enemy; or the scared girl with no one to turn to who runs to boys, to drugs to keep from despair. The enemy lies in each of us, that enemy named fear. That fear that tries to root out our worth, our identity, steals our name of beloved.

It’s ok to search and hold to truths, but learn that this is fluid and a bit hard to find. And if that truth don’t change a bit with the more people you connect with, seasons you live through, tears you have shed, then honey, you can bet it was never the truth to begin with.

And oh, my darling son who already wears virtue and strength - Don’t you ever stand up completely straight and tall with your ideals that turn to idolatry. I pray that your back is permanently hunched from all the bending low to pick up others, the falling prostrate, the stories you carry the weight of, that pull you deep down into the depths of humanity.

They can keep their Bible studies, their quick tips and brownie clad judgments. Not because I’m better than them, but because these things pull me in. They keep me tight, and bound, and worried, while I watch my view of Jesus slip silently away.

No sweet girl – Fight to join him. Fight to love with a passion that is scandalous. Fight that need to compete. Fight the lies that tell you you’re less than what you are. Fight the pride that tells you you’re more than just enough.

Lose everything. Let life wreak you good. Breathe deep in your living. Let your surroundings sink deep in.

Follow closely this changing figure, who slips in and out of view. When you think you catch hold of him, and confident you speak his voice, look again that you’re not clutching a mirror.

For he is a force of nature, changing with the needs of this world. He roams and wanders, healing with the dust kicked up from his feet.

For what is justice in light of mercy. Righteous in light of grace. Laws in light of love?

So keep loving. Trying. Living. Crying. Until at last it all seems too muddled, too gray, to find where the truth ends and the world begins….

Maybe then...I pray my children, oh how I pray...we’ll see a sliver of that Gypsy Kingdom.

(by Tara, of Pohlkotte Press)

the final imperfect prose on thursdays (for now)--and free print giveaway!

2012-02-01T06:44:00.000-08:00

"can we really do it?" trent says and he looks at me terrified, and it's two a.m. and kasher won't calm. "can we really take care of four boys?"

the bedroom sighs, as though turning in its sleep and i'm jealous. it's been nights, now, of kasher rising by the hour.

i cry, "don't start. don't do this," i tell trent, shaking my head. "i need you to be strong. if you start to doubt, then i will, and then..." i'm in my flannels and i go to the bathroom and sit and stare at the tiles. i like how orderly they are, how lined up and pretty, and i pray, "help."

i feel done. i'm ready for heaven now, Lord, but there's a world full of babies crying.

"i haven't called you--" a voice says, and i lean into the air, listening. "i haven't called you to be strong. i have called you to be obedient."

lamott says maybe we love God the same way babies love us, in a "yay, the chuck wagon has arrived" kind of way, but i swear sometimes i think i love him with a grown-up kind of love.

this yahweh, who speaks to me through bathroom tiles.

*i have grown so fond of all of you. do you know? this imperfect prose community has become family to me... and i hope to resume it, sooner rather than later.

the boys aren't arriving now until february 28th--giving me more time to work on my book, 'mom in the mirror,' which will be released may of 2013!--but i need to spend the next few weeks preparing my soul, my boys and our home for this transition, in addition to doing some writing. i will still be blogging, and i hope we can remain connected that way...

in the meantime, kimberly sullivan is starting a lovely meme in my absence called 'painting prose'; i believe it starts next thursday, so be sure to check that out.

i am so excited to offer a FREE 9" by 12" GICLEE PRINT (with a 2" border) today... just let me know which of the top four paintings speaks to you, and why, and i'll choose a winner at the end of the week.

i am feeling quite teary now, so must close... know that i love you. i love you. i love you.*

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on my paradoxical relationship with men

2012-01-29T19:43:00.000-08:00

i adore men.

i really do.

my husband in particular.

but sometimes they drive me crazy.

to quote one of my favorite people, anne lamott, "part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. you have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. you have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.”

he asked me to take care of him forever.

i was putting a cool cloth on his forehead, 10 years ago, and him retching a migraine into a bucket when he asked me this, and "of course, babes," i said, til death do us part.

it was so much easier to be sympathetic when we were dating.

now, he throws up and i ask him if he'll kindly clean it up, and could he please be quiet? "i'm trying to work."

why is compassion so easy when it comes to my boys, and so hard when it comes to the man who lets me stick my cold feet on him at night and makes me cheesy nachos and prays over me when i'm having a sad day?

he's been holding me extra tight lately. and me, him. we're holding onto each other like lifeboats... the world swirling around us, and this marriage, the eye of the storm.

and if i don't open my heart to him, if i don't absolutely adore and respect and feel for him what i want to represent to the world, nothing else matters.

this love-tower will crumble and our boys--all four of them, soon--will be trapped in the remains.

so i am learning, slowly, to renew my promise to take care of him, forever--to learn a tender kind of love which poets write of--and to do it with a sympathy that doesn't roll its eyes when he says he's tired (and i've been up all night nursing).

(linking with jen and laura)

we’re lovers and biters, we are (feature post from this week's link-up)

2012-01-27T07:59:00.000-08:00

We have a biter.

My two year old, he of sky blues eyes, open-mouthed kisses and bright grins, is a biter. He bites his sister hard and my heart breaks open wide.

We don't bite. We don't hurt. We love each other.
We are gentle. We are kind. We love each other.
We listen with our ears. We help with our hands.

We. Love. Each. Other.

He's usually remorseful. Tender kisses, loving pats and baby-signed "I'm sorry"s aren't even a show. He means them, and her quick forgiveness makes my heart catch.

But he means the biting, too. Enough to draw tears and red welts.

*****

She's such a verbal processor. They scuffle over toys or paper or God-knows-what, and she prevails because she has words.

She smells weakness. If only he could argue his position satisfactorily...

When words are law, she'll always win.

(i'll always win)
(but words aren't law)

His bite is worse than his bark.
(he just wants to be heard)

We are gentle. We are kind.
We listen with our ears.

We Love Each Other.

suzannah paul lives the life bucolic at a summer camp with her young family and writes love letters to the broken, beautiful Church at so much shouting, so much laughter.

imperfect prose on thursdays: the hour of love

2012-01-25T06:46:00.000-08:00

so we live here, but also, there, straddling earth and heaven, and dr. cicely saunders calls it "the hour of love." the eternal hour in which we skin our knees in prayer and fumble with forgiveness. all the while struggling to believe that we ourselves are loved.

and then things happen. good things.

like your husband cupping your face as though you're a flower. your son, holding your hand the whole way home from the grocery store. your aunt, calling you and telling you she wants to take the boys--the ones arriving on february 10th--every monday, all day long.

there's the smell of a supper you didn't have to make, the bouquet he gives you at the end of a day that seems to never end, and the package in the mail--the unexpected one, the one that makes you clap your hands in the careless happiness of a child.

and these moments straddle time and space, these sweet nectar moments that remind you there is a God, and God is good.

you find the strength to be the kind of person that fights each day for love, so that hatred cannot win. so that fear is forced to die, and no matter the hour, no matter the trial, you learn a peace that transcends.

knowing that you exist for more.

man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow. psalm 144:4

i cannot fully express how your notes on my last post have held us up as a family over the past few days... sometimes i just go back and read them, to remind myself of why we need to do this. i wish i could hug each one of you. please forgive my slow visiting of your blogs... we have been filling out countless forms for this process, but know we are so, so grateful for your prayers and your love. xoxo

**please note, due to getting these two boys, and Emily receiving a contract for a book due May 1, this will be the SECOND LAST 'imperfect prose on thursdays' meme until further notice. next week will be the final gathering (i do hope to resume at some point down the road... this community has become so dear 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!

'sailboat' painting and prints by e.wierenga; available here

in which i beg you to pray for us

2012-01-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

these days we're weak all around. we hug each other more than usual and cry a lot, and look at our children as though they have just discovered gold. they're so beautiful, and we don't want this to end. these days of sanctuary.

soon there will be double the number of snow boots in our entrance and double the beds and double the runny noses and we grip each other, strung out on compassion. because we know what the right thing to do is, and it's just so hard.

but it wasn't hard, when she called. when she called, we knew. we had no choice but to help, for "i can't be a mother anymore," she wept, this mother of the boys who stayed here at christmas. and you know them, joey, and jin, and they will be coming to live with us soon, and we don't know when they'll be going home.

four boys under the age of four, and i only have two arms, trent away at school all day.

we fed the deer today, trent's dad knowing every antler, tenderly tracing tracks in the snow and he's set a camera up to take their portraits. sometimes he sits out there for hours, studying the deer, the way they interact, and he's built them a corral to keep the moose away.

we fed them and there was peace in the woods. in the sun and the sky and my boy stepping carefully in the snow. and he left footprints, bigger than i've ever seen him leave and i know i need to follow. for he'll lead me straight to the love i'm looking for: the love that will transcend any physical weakness.

and he watched us feed the deer and he'll watch us feed these boys and together we'll form a cross: trent, aiden, kasher and i. each of us a limb, a board, nailed to the other. and we'll bridge a gap between joey and jin and God.

we're hugging each other more than usual, these days of sanctuary. and maybe it will all be easier than we imagine.

anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. james 4:17

(pray? please? this is so, so hard... this working out of our salvation.)

(linking with jen, laura, michelle, and ann)

i am from ... (feature post from this week's imperfect link-up)

2012-01-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

I am from a little church blooming and growing in size, a blessed bunch God has bought in.

I am from scared knees knocking to stand up and sing, so I stood on Him and joined the team, worship is more than Sunday Morning it’s a life.

I am from joining the Youth team on Sunday evenings and helping in details, watching daughter grow as a youth song leader.

I am from a broken cage, like a bird I flew, away from fear to find joy was always near.

I am from would you like to serve on council, crying cause why would anyone pick me, but God said He did and I believed Him and now I speak for many.

I am from a critical heart poured out like oil, submitting and finding the grace is all over, seeing the beauty and wonder of it all, now I keep track of blessings.

I am from a smile of encouragement when I doubt, only a turn of my head and my husband is right there drumming for the heart of God.

I am from "we all need to be honored" God loves us enough to trade His Son for the flocks we each live with, so that’s why we submit one to another, and give honor where honor is due.

(Each year changes us …. How has 2011 changed me so that the who I am now is created by the where I am from. Starla (of Poet's Prose). )

thank you, beautiful starla, for this stirring piece... may you all experience beauty, this weekend. love, e.

imperfect prose on thursdays: the streets full of hungry people

2012-01-18T06:10:00.000-08:00

it seems as though winter is making up for lost time, lady frost seated in our windows, and i remember him. the man with the plastic beads around his neck, and i wonder if he is warm tonight.

his sign was crammed with black ink. it asked for spare change, but then it went on for paragraphs saying “God blessing you,” over and over, slanting sideways in squished-up letters and he sat below his sign, wearing a beaded necklace, no older than me.

i walked past and i smiled. i see you, i see you, i thought, i just don’t believe in giving money and i would raise you from the sidewalk if i could, like peter and john, for i serve the same God but for some reason i can’t do the same miracles.

and i entered the farmer’s market, just yards from where he sat, produce piled high and tubs of honey and the world full of food, and the streets full of hungry people.

(over at A Deeper Story today friends... follow me there? and pray for this man, won't you?)

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!

*"the fugitive" by emily wierenga (see my etsy shop for more paintings and prints)

when your toddler teaches you how to pray

2012-01-15T17:43:00.000-08:00

sunday morning and it's eggos and syrup and snow outside.

we don't often eat breakfast together. trent normally wolfs down peanut butter and bikes off to school, me shoving lunch at him and spooning pablum and making porridge and trying to brew some coffee while handing out vitamins. and quiet time has become something of an inner thing. a church i go to on the inside.

but today is sunday and it's quiet time all around us. we're sitting in the sabbath, here at our breakfast table. and it's a liturgy of sticky fingers and chatter.

we've long prayed over the food but suddenly, it's not enough. aiden puts down his eggo and folds his syrup hands and says, "i more pray."

so we stop and we close our eyes and he waits and we prompt, "thank you God for this food, amen." him repeating, but again, "i more pray" he says, and we smile across the table. "thank you God for this family" and it continues this way until we've run out of words and then he folds his hands tighter. "i more God."

and i'm tempted to lie prostrate upon a prayer rug like they do in eastern countries, for the holiness of my son's heart.

this, what it is, then, to pray without ceasing. when sentences end, to keep bowing, to keep waiting, to keep hoping, for more.

(linking with jen, laura, michelle, and ann)

it rained today (feature post from this week's link-up)

2012-01-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

It rained today and was about 39 degrees or so and cloudy. I can tell because I looked out the window and stepped outside. It generally helps, to step outside and look out the window.

'I knew she was dead when you hung up the phone and began to cry,' my little brother said. He’s six years of boy-sympathy, six years of watching, six years of seeing that the pensive bluntness he has can help.

I couldn’t watch them put her down, I couldn’t watch her die; my sort of love isn’t strong enough for that. So I stayed home and played piano through a headache and waited for my mom to call and tell me.

It rained today, did I tell you? It was about 39 degrees or so and cloudy. The Germans would say ‘bedeckt.’ I like that better, ‘bedeckt.’

It’s hard to cry, to really cry. I couldn’t cry on the phone because I don’t cry over the phone. I’m afraid of phones. You can’t cry when you’re afraid; it’s just too hard to be sad and crying and afraid and talking on the phone all at once.

There was really only a ten per cent chance of rain, really, only ten per cent, but it rained all day. I guess ten per cent is certainty. Aren’t numbers funny things? Ten per cent is certainty.

And then my mom came home and said that Saphira went as peacefully as she could and that the vet said I had done it right and that I was strong, that I had done it right by Saphira. And I knew I couldn’t have been there, not while all that was happening, because look at me now and do I look like I could have handled it? No, I’m not strong. Ten per cent chance I’m not.

It’s raining out the window right now; I might have told you. Raining like old fingers brushing against taut canvas.

And then I’m thinking again and wondering if some of learning to love is learning to let leave, and then I wonder how many different sorts of love did God need? How many? He needed to let leave so many things, things like a rebellious Israel and a broken creation and of course His Son, too, and then He needed to hold so much, and He needed to crack open the grave like an egg and let death drizzle out and turn into scrambled eggs.

Scrambled eggs are good for broken creations. They have lots of protein. Everybody knows that.

And now He gives, sometimes giving words and sometimes scrambled eggs, and I’m here listening to the rain, stumblingly learning to love, to almost love, just figuring out the beginning of the letting leave sort.

I can’t give all of my heart to Saphira, but I’ll give her ten per cent. The certain part of it.

I’ll give God all of it, even the part I gave to Saphira, because she won’t mind sharing. She really never has, and I don’t think now changes that. She’ll probably help God tease out some of the snarls, probably watch Him as He makes me all ten per cent-ly like Him.

It rained today.

(thank you, beautiful rose, for this stunning prose... every friday i will be highlighting a piece from the imperfect prose link-up. and thank you everyone for all of your kind words on my dread-lock post, and for loving me, so. i love you, too.)

*painting by e.wierenga; 'trees in winter' found at my etsy shop

imperfect prose on thursdays: the day i cut my dreadlocks

2012-01-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

i always pictured myself an old woman with dreads.

now i'm a young girl with dull-chopped hair and the dreads in the basket on the back-deck where a cold wind blows, because he asked me to.

my husband, he asked if i would cut my hair when he shaves his when she loses hers, his mom, who's going through chemo, and i don't think so, i said. i love my dreads too much.

but he rarely asks, and it's his mom. and it's only hair. yet for her, it's everything, because she has no choice and i do. and so i chose love in the form of dull scissors and a tuesday evening and our sons watching and laughing in shock as the hair fell. his and mine.

and she'd asked him to shave her head when she woke up one morning and her hair remained on the pillow.

so we piled in the car, all toques and pajamas, and we pulled up the drive, and pulled off the hats as if to say, "see how much? this is how much... we love you" and trent's mom gasped.

and i can feel the contours of my head again, and the short strands smooth. and this is what love feels like. all clean and soft, and always growing.

and it feels 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 at least one other person's linked-up prose, and give 'em praise!

When fear gives birth to faith

2012-01-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

The birds’ wings sound like corduroy pants, swishing, and I’m nursing Kasher on a log and there’s snow in my dreads. We’re on a trail in Jasper, and there’s no end in sight and Aiden’s eyes beg me to know the answer. He’s crying and hungry. We’ve been walking for two hours. Trent tries to keep us happy, tries to help us see what only hindsight can, that one day this will be a fond memory, but my son’s sobs tell me I’ve failed.And I consider my options. I could be frustrated, or I could sing. And so we sing Jesus Loves Me even with Aiden sobbing and Trent and I praying silently, and the birds’ wings swish. And I could berate Trenton for not checking the map better, but the children are learning love for us, learning God who is love from us. So I press my palm into his when he chokes, “I’m so sorry, Emily.”“It’s okay,” I say. And it feels better than a thousand angry words.We’ve come here for the mountains, for the smell of unadulterated Christmas in the spruce and pine, for the crisp of snow beneath shoe but it all melts away in Aiden's tears and he senses our fear. And fear gives birth to faith, for it recognizes the end of humanity and desperation for the divine.And I begin to make plans for life in the woods, the need of a mother to plan, and I prepare a hut in my mind and send Trent out to get firewood and I’ll gather roots and berries and Trent can make a bow and arrow. I’m carrying Aiden now, Kasher in the sled and Trent pulling, and the trail winding. And it’s hallelujah all around when we glimpse the car and we laugh hoarsely and it’s still too early for nostalgia. But I know it will come.In the hotel room we crawl into pajamas and watch cable and fall asleep in each other’s arms, a family collapsed. And life matters: all of it. I decide this as I tear up bread into a bowl of warm milk and feed it to my boy. It matters more than knowing when or how our problems, our trails, our journeys, will end.(linking with jen, laura and ann)

on revealing a fathomless God to finite children

2012-01-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

madeleine l'engle says she found God as a baby when her parents woke her one night and took her outside to see the stars.

she remembers the swirling mass of galaxy, how it spoke of a God bigger than the sky and how her parents said nothing, just held her, while she witnessed the creator.

and this is what i want. to hold my children while they witness the creator.

do this, with me, this weekend, friends? (so good to be back among you...)

i am a mother (and it matters)

2012-01-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

so here i am, again, and you haven't forgotten me, dear friends? and i, you... and this morning i scraped a bowl of porridge from a one year old's lap.

and his hand from the toilet bowl and it's been a week of four boys under the age of four. one of them, joey, the little boy you've been praying for, and he wept tonight for his mama who's taking a break, and we, his godparents, and so we put on dora the explorer and held him close and tried to promise him the love only a mother's embrace can give.

and joey and his brother are going home in two days, and we're a full house, and there's toys, and boots and mud and tomato soup-stains and sparing the guinea pig from sticky hands and saving baby from a fall down the stairs and trying to be God when we've had no sleep.

and trent and i look at each other across a mess of tousled heads and we see the person we want to be: the one deep beneath the grime of the day to day, the one that weeps for all of the children with no love, and we don't want to be hypocrites.

so we open our doors and this is hard for me. i am a selfish girl who likes her space and her art and her writing and wants to be someone some day.

but today, when we were doing crafts and i was painstakingly gluing joey's hundredth fuzzy ball to his creation, this three-year-old looked at me and he said, "emily, you're doing a good job."

and this tells me i am someone.

for i am a mother.

(begging patience as i pack these boys home and then catch up on your blogs... loving you... and next week, imperfect prose will start again.)

how to eat during the holidays (advice from trenton wierenga)

2011-12-23T13:26:00.000-08:00

(i was asked by a reader at my chasing silhouettes blog how to eat during the holidays; this is my husband's advice, as found here... merry christmas everyone. :))

God Himself tucked inside a poor girl's arms (by Bethany Ann)

2011-12-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

December evenings linger long past dusk:
the streetlights have been trading their watch since before suppertime.
below them, a man pulls cars off a transport and into the dealership lot.
snow falls upon the toque his girlfriend bought him,
filters through tree house rafters across the street.
within the house, three brothers are fighting for bathtub space;
their mother has baby oil and pajamas at the ready.

over on the first concession,
a farmer stretches his toes inside a fresh pair of woollen socks,
rakes calloused hands through hair in need of a barber.
his wife's fingers undo the bow at the back of her apron
as they have every evening the same;
punch faded numbers onto a telephone keypad;
reach toward a jar of balm and the music of a daughter's voice.

it's a night just like any other in December: cold, dark, wintry.
yet each moment -- every place -- is teeming with humanity:
scarred by the day, brimming with hope for the morrow;
loving and wanting and resting and toiling,
all conflicted and radiant.
each person is writing a new story.
every person is working toward a goal.

but what does it matter if the car guy saves to buy his girlfriend a ring?
does anyone care if some farmer's daughter gets to chat with her mom?
old tree houses and fresh haircuts and warm socks and wet bathroom floors --
they don't amount to much. everything we know is so small.
(even those shiny new cars getting snowed upon.)
...carved into a hillside, long ago and far away,
stood a stable where a baby was born.

because his mother was rejected and his father was acquainted with grief,
he had no better place to lay than a feeding trough filled with hay.
yet every star in heaven held its breath as angels shrieked their amazement
at God Himself, tucked inside a poor girl's arms.
His life would show us the power of the Spirit;
His death, the depths of evil;
His resurrection, the height of glory.

but in that little hillside stable, the soul felt its worth.

(i chose this piece of incredibly powerful prose to highlight from this week's link-up... its words teeming with the very humanity that bethany ann writes of... merry christmas friends. taking a break now for two weeks... all my love. e. xo)

*painting by e. wierenga

imperfect prose on thursdays: the hum of something holy (over at The High Calling today)

2011-12-21T06:39:00.000-08:00

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re shopping, piling rolls of paper and chocolates and candy canes, stopping now to let Mum rest, and then on to the rows of Pillsbury dough and eggnog. She’s getting that look, the one that says we need to go home so she can sleep, but we haven’t even started on main gifts, let alone dinner.

She laughs as we pull her to the rusted van, sister and I caring for 53-year-old mother who home-schooled us long and made us homemade bread, now confined to a seven-year brain tumor. The snow is falling. Mum reaches out, shaky. The flakes melt fast to her skin, making her sparkle. We sing carols in the car on the way home and Mum’s cheeks are red as Rudolph, her eyes like a robin’s egg.

Mum’s got a glazed look now, and I know it will be hard to get her out of the car and into bed. At home we pull covers tight, pray angels be near and dreams be kind, and may she wake to attend the candlelight service – the same service we attended as children with our other siblings, dressed in outfits Mum had sewn herself, too poor to buy anything new. I’ll never forget my red velvet dress with the white lace collar and how fancy I felt in my eight-year-old skin.

The front door shuts, Dad shakes snow from the hat he’s worn for 20 years and we watch him as he climbs stairs, tired. He looks at us and we say, “She’s down for a nap,” and he swallows.

“How is she?”

“A bit fuzzy,” I say, and he nods. Maybe we should decorate the tree.

But Allison insists on waiting for our sister and brother to arrive. I call up my husband and he brings the turkey. I baste it and stuff it and prep it for tomorrow’s feast, for as much as Mum is fuzzy, tomorrow’s Christmas, and I’m hoping for a miracle.

(won't you follow me, here, for the rest of this story, a re-post which originally appeared in Focus on the Family magazine last year? merry christmas, my beautiful friends... see you in a couple of weeks!!)

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!

on why i'm giving gifts to my children this christmas

2011-12-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

his eyes are the eyes of a thousand sleepless nights and i've never seen such shadows on a four-year-old boy.

"who is that?" i whisper to trent while the children's choir sings and the church is decked out in holly and ivy and Jesus in a manger.

"that's one of the *Fritz boys," he tells me, and i turn back to the boy with the tired eyes and i'm crying. for he and his brothers and sisters lost their mama recently, and mothers make christmas, and i want to run up front and pick them up and rock them happy. forever.

so instead i turn to my boys and kiss their fat cheeks harder than i've ever kissed them and hold them until they squirm.

and i will wrap presents when i get home. for the boy with the tired eyes. eyes that never close for searching for her, eyes that will never stop looking for his mother this side of heaven.

and then i will wrap gifts for my boys, too.

for i don't know how long i have with them. and while i'm with them, i want to give them everything i can.

we give to others year-round. we do the world vision thing every december, and the operation christmas child boxes, but why would i give to a child overseas if i'm not going to give to the two in my own home?

why would i deprive my children the joy of opening a gift on christmas morning?

i've been reading blog posts by women i respect, about the concept of giving up gifts for christmas, and i truly believe these women have noble intentions.

yet i fear we're turning infants into martyrs. i fear we're over-spiritualizing christmas and missing the simple joy of tearing into paper and seeing the knowledge of being loved spread across a child's face.

yes, it is Jesus' birthday. but Jesus is alive and well and living in our children, so by giving gifts to them, we are in fact, gifting Him, and he is the one who says, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (luke 11:13)

we need not give many. we need only give a few, but in giving those few, we are delighting our children and teaching them the joy of receiving. so they, in turn, can be cheerful givers.

and so, i wrap. with trembling fingers. for the boy with the tired eyes, and for the boys God has given me.

for, come Christmas, we are all children in need of the greatest gift. grace.

(*name changed for privacy reasons)

photos by my dear friend, justina gibson

*shared today with ann, jen, michelle and laura

Breakfast with Divinity (by Waystation One)

2011-12-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

The local news, this morning, featured the inventor
of the Jesus toaster, which may or may not be a
great Christmas gift but at least

This way you can have breakfast with Him
any time you want, look him in his slightly charred eyes
as you give thanks, before biting His left ear off,

Or let Him know you will butter His toast if and when
He butters yours, but I wonder how He feels
with jam smeared all over His face, does it
have to be sweet Concord grape
for a proper communion.

Being fond of black raspberry, i am
hoping for grace and

Having seen the ones that burn NFL logos
on your bread, perhaps He was jealous
seeing as they already get 9 hours on Sunday
to His one.

Then again, I won't speak too loud considering
the gas station carries 12 inch buck knives,
one inch for each disciple, with His brand
and 'GOD is love' down the handle
for when you need to clean your kill

Honestly, I changed the channel,
I can only take so much news,
before it gets depressing.

(i'm sure most of you have read this brilliant piece by brian by now, but in case you missed it, i'm highlighting it from this week's imperfect link-up... bless you friends, for all you do and for who you are, and for being broken with me.)

imperfect prose on thursdays: when mothers get sick (and first-ever christmas giveaway!)

2011-12-14T06:37:00.000-08:00

it's been hours of arms circling the cylinder of the toilet, its white waist rising and i've got a baby in my arms. and i kneel there as if in prayer and puke in my hair and my baby laughs. because he doesn't understand mommy being sick.

and this afternoon, curled up on the living room floor, and both boys just staring, at this prostrate mama. and it wasn't okay, their round eyes told me. heroes can't get sick.

but we're all sick. the question is, how to not let our sickness infect our children.

my arms hug the toilet and i wonder, how to let them know i am human, while still rising to meet their needs each day?

and i turn to the Jesus long ago born and always alive and forever will be, and i weep prayers into the bathroom tile, begging him to save us from ourselves.

(on a side note, i have created an Etsy shop... only a very few of my pieces are displayed right now, but over the next couple of weeks i plan to update it. love you.)

today i would like to give away an award winning digital scrapbook software that is extremely easy and fun to use. My Memories Suite is rated #1 by Amazon and TopTen Reviews. using this software, anyone can create digital scrapbooks, photo-books, cards, calendars and gifts without having to buy expensive and complicated software programs.

let me know why you want this software program worth over $40 (a wedding? a new baby?) and in seven days i will select a winner. thank you!

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!

christmas is about rediscovering wonder (guest post by melissa feddersen @ one thing blog)

2011-12-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

It was the whole point wasn't it?

His coming? To restore, redeem, mend all that is so very broken in us; in this old world.

Christmas, if we cut everything else away isn't it only about REDEMPTION?

I am wondering, what does it mean to join in this work? How do we settle into the plan He has for this family, the good He intends for our lives to bring to the world?

Last week I looked at my calendar, then promptly went to the corner where I huddled in the fetal position and wept. Introverts like me get overwhelmed by the very thought of too many people, too many expectations.

I will tell you in advance, I am not going to meet them for you. Then, as I cuddled and cried I remembered that this, this busy? This burden? This is the opposite of what HE has for me this season as I wait for him.

This month? Is only about redemption.

If it doesn't mend or heal or join His great work, I am turning it down. If it is more about busy than being a blessing? I am walking away.

For me, this month will be about weak relationships pulled back together to strong.

It will be about a tired husband inspired to rest.

It will be about a little family in the woods that needs stronger bonds, slower days.

It will be about memories, but not pressure.

I will bake when my kids want to bake with me, and when I don't feel like cleaning the kitchen for the 20th time? I will buy things, instead of thinking I am letting someone down by not making it from scratch.

My husband? Will cheer.

I am not going to plan our two weeks off as an opportunity to 'catch up on things around here'. The only thing that needs to be 'caught' is life well spent.

I am not going to get stressed out when you come over. I am going to enjoy the gift of your company and look forward to contemplating what God has in store for us as he draws us together.

I will sit quiet and not rush into the next ‘big thing’. Even as I prepare for our trip to Kenya with World Vision I will spend more time contemplating how He can use us for redemptive purposes then making to do lists.

I will ask Him, where is your heart for these days? How can I join you in it?

I will rediscover Wonder, because that is how I want my children to remember mom at Christmas.

Wonder-bound and doing everything I can to bring tiny bits of Peace on Earth. That tree that sits crooked (and huge) in my living room, with bottom heavy ornaments?

I'm leaving it just as it is and each day when my boy runs in gasping, asking to add more?

I will let him and we will lay down under it and look up and think about all the beauty we can find, even in the broken.

(i know, i said i would only choose one post from the imperfect prose link-up last week, but this one from melissa @ one thing blog was too good to pass up... so here is another guest post, and i look forward to featuring more in the weeks to come. in the meantime, join me here, wednesday, for the weekly link-up and a CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY :) love you all. e.)

on how to live a merciful life (guest post by kath @ listening space)

2011-12-09T08:53:00.000-08:00

Irritation makes her bark and bristle, so I lean closer. I speak softer and I skirt raw spots as we trace her story. She lived a childhood unprotected, and has lived it over and over again. She's not the only one who teeters on the edge of shouting or shaking. They are here, drowning in a welter of loss. Everyone seems to have lost. A husband, a childhood, peace of mind, safety. Gone where?

His polished smile and prepped answers draw me in. It's a performance he's perfected. He's saying its all OK now, but is it? Does gut-tearing shame heal like changing the TV channel, or from reading inspiration in the Women's Weekly? He almost convices me that it does. But when he speaks real, honest words, I can see he's on the edge, too. Of tears. Of giving up. Of seeking real change.

This place of pain and of struggle and the wrestle between life and death. The mingling of despair and hope, where all I can add is my pittance that 'it will be OK'. And this says nothing substantial, or solid, to cling to.

I can listen, too. Especially to the feelings and thoughts that we're not supposed to have. Like being angry at your husband who just died, leaving you to mop up his life. Or that you wish you were dead because the hole you are in feels endless, and dark, and crushing.

So many rules about how we should feel, how we should act, how we should live. I think about religious men questioning why Jesus didn't follow certain customs or rituals, and his answer I'm reading over and over. Puzzling how to absorb it and live it.

I desire mercy not sacrifice.
It's not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.

What does it mean to live a merciful life, and then also know that I'm one of the sick, too? A merciful life, but not a proud one.

Remembering that I'm welcomed in the same way - embraced with my messy heart and unruly feelings - needing mercy too. Us and them just doesn't work. It needs to be me among all of us. All of us sinners who need mercy. All of us lost, needing to be found. Everyone sick and needing a doctor.

(over the next few fridays, i plan to choose a post from the weekly imperfect prose link-up to highlight through a "guest post" .... this one is by kath at listening space; make sure you stop by her beautiful place, friends. love you.)

imperfect prose on thursdays: the virgin mary's drug-free birth

2011-12-07T06:21:00.000-08:00

on occasion, when i'm feeling too lazy to get up from the couch to get myself a snack, i remind my husband, quietly, of the drug-free labor i went through four months ago with our second son, Kasher.

it's losing its effect. perhaps once a day is too often, but trust me: after 19 hours of contractions, screaming "just pull him out!", and second-degree tearing, the respect was there, scrawled all across Trent's features and he couldn't bring me enough ice chips.

and Mary had no ice chips.

(will you join me, here, at A Deeper Story, for the rest of this post? and please, feel free to link up 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 give 'em praise!

on why i'm slowing down blogging this Christmas

2011-12-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

i caught a glimpse of myself in the window today as i rocked my baby and i looked older than i've ever looked, hair tied back, glasses, apron for the baking and all of me, mother. i looked like a mother. and i liked it.

i've been missing them lately. my children. and i'm always with them.

but part of me is always somewhere else. and that part of me will never have this time back. these holy moments at home when it's mama and boys and toys and stories and sometimes, the days seem too long--but never after the fact.

after the fact, i wish for it back, for longer dances and more kisses and soon, they'll be in school and all i'll see is their tiny back-packs as they bike with daddy down the road to kindergarten.

and so i'm slowing. in the spirit of the season, i'm pausing, waiting, coaxing the seed out of its shell, the miracle that i so desperately long for: the truth behind the tree and the tinsel and the turkey.

i'm no longer content with nostalgia. i want Christ. and i find him most clearly in the eyes of my children--pupils fresh from heaven.

so i'm spending more time this month looking into their faces. seeing him.

i will still be doing imperfect prose on thursdays once a week until december 21, when i'll be breaking for two weeks.

i love you friends. but i love my kids more. :) i'll see you here, wednesday, for imperfect prose. rest hard tonight. e.

I salute you! There is nothing I can give you which you have not, but there is much, that, while I cannot give, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take Heaven. No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instant. Take Peace. The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet, within our reach, is joy. Take Joy. And so, at this Christmas time, I greet you, with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away. (Fra Giovanni)

finding Jesus as we decorate the tree

2011-12-04T18:49:00.000-08:00

snow, falling like the ideal christmas all fat and gentle and aiden clapping hands and us clamoring into hat and mitt and jacket.

the first saturday in december, and it’s time to get the tree, and christmas isn’t christmas without a real tree.

and we drive to oma and opa’s and get the old blue and red farm truck, the one no one would steal for its color and oma brings hot chocolate and we drive down the road and park, pile into the bush and aiden drinks hot chocolate with opa while trent and i find a tree.

and it’s standing apart from the others, waiting for us. a spruce, and it’s the perfect height.

trent uses his grandpa’s saw to cut it down and we stare at the initials on the handle, “G. N.,” and remember the towering silent man who used to run the ferry. and it’s a fast memorial and soon we’re in the truck again and driving home and watering tree and tying it to the wall and finding lights that work.

and trent finds christmas music on the radio, and i un-wrap the nativity, eager to show aiden baby Jesus and he’s nowhere to be found.

Jesus is missing.

we set it up anyway and joke about it being a commentary on christmas, but it’s the nativity trent bought me when we were dating and we’re both searching desperately for the missing baby.

aiden is hanging bulbs, tens of them, from the same branch at the bottom of the tree and i leave them there, clustered like grapes. kasher gnaws on something on the couch and Joy to the World on the radio and trent insists we each hang our own ‘baby’s first’ ornament.

and an angel steals me away. i sit on the couch staring at her pink wings remembering the friend who gave it to me in elementary school.

then we turn off the lights and the tree is wrapped in memory and garland and it’s Silent Night now. trent and i finding each other’s hand in it all.

and Jesus isn’t missing; he’s right here, among us, and we bow over burgers and wine, our communion dinner, and give thanks.

(linking with ann, jen and laura)

676. novel completed and sent in, and waiting now... :)
677. family christmas and gifts and kasher in a santa suit
678. family time in bed in the morning, reading psalms
679. trent's wildberry wine
680. the taste of food that i didn't have to cook
681. your love, you people--all of you, i am so grateful for your friendship. (thank you)

Life as Art (Guest Post by Erika Morrison)

2011-12-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

"Listen to your life, see it for the fathomless mystery it is." ~ Frederick Buechner

It's raining grey drops on the outside, peppering the asphalt and earth-dirt with heaven's impartial, christening water.

It smells like creation's church and my imagination is pressed close to cold panes of windowed glass and I can almost feel the taste of liquid silver on my tongue and this absurd little human-heart inside a chest-of-flesh flips over and oh dear God, the sound of it on the roof?

Makes me school-girl giddy; if my spirit were to rise any higher, it would be away and gone from it's body-home. There is the fog descending, too, to join nature's tryst, offering his filmy, floating-fluctuation and dewy-dimension to autumn's canvas.

God-painted leaves dance their colors under the wet in a lover's waltz with the subliminal brush of a wandering by, hands-in-his-trouser-pockets-with-a-whistle kind of breeze. They know it is their highest praise just to be and I am noticing, my eyes eating elements and landscape like soul-food. It is my own high worship, the watchfulness and mindfulness. The listening.

::::

The kitchen clocks turns 10:32 pm and we've scrubbed our teeth clean and checked on the kids and turned off all the lights but one. It's early-to-sleep for these usual midnighters, but in the midst of this going-to-bed routine, something about the soft glow of the last-on 40-watt bulb; something about how the kitchen air hung so quiet and weighted like a stone . . . hooked my attention and slow-motioned my spirit. I knew I was being seduced by Someone to go deep into this ordinary moment and these words were invoked from my heart as I turned un-hurried to my husband, "Hey hon, do you know what we've never done before?" He angles his head out the bathroom door and says "what?" with a smile and his fingers sliding the contact from his left deep-brown eye. "We've never sat at this table, at this time of night, with just this light on." My lips, they curve at the corners, soliciting him with a silent invitation and this 11-year-spouse of mine, he knows that I want to make a memory, make some magic out of what seems like thin-air-nothing.

We bend our tired bones in the kitchen-table chairs and stay there in a mysterious time warp of uncharted minutes and let The Mystic unfurl around our skin, He whispered His presence in the space between us and never has our life-sharing or soul-connecting been better then that hour and a half of unexpected, unplanned intertwining.

::::

It started with morning meditation when I announced to my 3 little guys that today, today we were going on a grand adventure, with Jesus, in our imaginations. "You can go anywhere in the world, the universe even, with Jesus . . . Anywhere . . . Where is He taking you? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? What do you feel? What is He saying? Take the next ten minutes of silence and have fun on your journey!"

And they look at me with the eyes that twinkle like far-out unblemished stars and their little bodies threaten to explode with energy, as their excitement escalates into a series of barbaric WHOOOO HOOOOO'S!!!! - even though they know it's time to dial down, some things just cannot be contained and their belief in Impossible Goodness is pure and uninfected-still-and what could be better for the guileless heart then partaking of His presence?

The hollering is out of their systems and silence falls like grace on our heads and the four of us sitting motionless on the living room rug go long beyond the realm of physical parameters . . .

"Boys, where did you go, what did you do with Jesus?" I ask when the silence-time is finished. We sit together in a circle, knee to knee, my heart leaning into their stories.

Jude tells me that Jesus took him to Panera Bread for lunch and bought him a cinnamon roll. "Oh, Jude, that sounds AMAZING! I would LOVE to go to Panera Bread with Jesus!" He's beaming and I bend forward to kiss the soft spot of his cheek and whisper, "That is SO special Jude, Jesus sure does love you . . . and He knows how much you love cinnamon rolls!"

Gabe's turn to share and he tells me all sensitive in his voice that Jesus took him to a battle scene between good and evil and said this to his heart: "He told me not to show aggression and to love my enemies and fight for Love!" My mama-words affirm strong, "That is SO beautiful, Gabe." My oldest son, who is so fascinated with all historical war, is being reminded that love is always the first response of Christ's heart.

I turned my eyes to Seth to find his face looking at the floor and my palm cups his chin to lift his head towards my searching vision, "What about you, Seth? Where did you go with Jesus?" And the son who looks like me has tender puddles of salty-water spilling down his 7-year-old features and barely past the clog in his throat, he manages to say this: "I went to Mount Everest to see Jesus and I found Him praying and when He was done praying, He said to me, 'I must go.' Then I said, 'Goodbye.' And Jesus said to me, 'It is not goodbye forever . . . when I go to see God, you pray, then Love will spread throughout the air.' And when He left, I prayed."

And I can not breathe for being a witness to my boy-child crying because he had had a union experience with the Spirit that left him undone in his young heart. He was crying because he had been with God and my whole body wept with joy that I had created the space for this to happen between him and God.

::::

This is Life Art: I believe, when we intimately witness and thoughtfully compose every moment of living--that we humanly can--into a story of unspeakable depth, with the Spirit of the living God being the medium by which we craft ordinary-life-components into fine art . . . Just a little brush of the fingertips against the velvet veil.

"Take any day and be alive in it. The world is to open. You are alive. It needn't have been so. It wasn't so once and it will not be so forever. But it is so now." ~ Frederick Buechner

Are you a life artist too?

(friends... if you were as moved as I was when reading this, please, let Erika know, by visiting her blog, here... thank you.)

imperfect prose on thursdays: the boy who cried Daddy

2011-11-30T07:03:00.000-08:00

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!

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

on falling in love

2011-11-28T18:58:00.000-08:00

"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)

2011-11-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

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)

2011-11-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-23T06:21:00.000-08:00

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!

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

on why i keep on writing

2011-11-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

"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)

2011-11-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

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!

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

on teaching our children the art of dying

2011-11-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

... 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)

2011-11-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-09T06:29:00.000-08:00

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*

When God doesn't heal

2011-11-08T06:06:00.002-08:00

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

2011-11-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

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)

2011-11-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

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

2011-11-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

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!

*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

2011-11-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

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.

on raising fearless children (and why halloween is tricky)

2011-10-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-10-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-26T06:23:00.001-07:00

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!

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

on laughter being prayer (and book giveaway!)

2011-10-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-10-21T07:41:00.001-07:00

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

2011-10-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

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!

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

kasher's first real laugh

2011-10-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

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

on learning to love slow

2011-10-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-10-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-12T07:02:00.000-07:00

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!

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

the secret to being happy...

2011-10-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

... is to look closer.

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

on how to teach our children about Jesus

2011-10-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-10-07T07:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-10-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

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!

*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...

2011-10-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

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... )

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

2011-09-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

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!

***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)

2011-09-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-26T07:04:00.001-07:00

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)

2011-09-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

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!

my mother's prayers

2011-09-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-09-09T06:59:00.000-07:00

(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

2011-09-07T07:50:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

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....