Heartbreak, High School Style

"He has a girlfriend now and I really think he is changing his mind about wanting this adoption to happen."

She says it frantic through static on the line, and this is what I feared, too, but couldn't—wouldn't—admit to, not with the foster babies getting ready to move out, not with having to keep my heart intact while I watch them shuffle headlong into a painful future and can do nothing to stop it. He wouldn't bring us this far in the adoption of this boy we already love—a whole year gone by—if it could unravel this easily, would He?

Would He?

The woman on the line wants me to move quickly, take action… do something, anything, to keep this from going the way it could go. 

But I can't give her anything to go on. I can't stop the world from unraveling. I can't be his mother if he won't let me, even if mere weeks ago it was all he wanted in the world.

I am held captive by the ever-important and always fluid social life of the American teenager.

The rumors come by telephone now like they did when I was 15 and I'm back in my high school bedroom somehow with Rolling Stone magazine covers and vodka advertisements littering the walls, holding my breath and willing the pieces of my fragile heart to stay put until I know the truth for sure. I am holding back breath and holding back tears and wondering how love can melt away so easy.

I'm afraid I'm being dumped by a 15-year-old boy.

Traded in for another girl because having a girlfriend is safer for injured boy hearts than having a mother. 

Mothers drink. And mothers die.

And just like the first time, when I was all ribs and elbows, I start to dial his number and pause over the last digit, unable to complete the call. What would I say? How do I ask this burning question? And if the answer is what I fear… what then? What happens next?

Who else will fight for you like I will? Who else will love you every step of the way?

A lot of adoptions don't work out and I scold myself for being so hopeful, for already being his mother.

A lot of mama heartbeats echo beneath ribcages for what should have been, and I know there were never any guarantees in this. But I am reduced, nonetheless, for the fear of what we'll never give him. I am wounded by the fear of being replaced by something temporary and where that will leave him, and I am all ribs and elbows again, all captive-aching heart and whispers to my pillow of no, this can't be happening. But this time, the pillow is his. His pillow, on his bed, in his bedroom, in what was supposed to be his house.  

I have no magazine covers on the walls these days, no room to call my own. No boyfriend troubles or stepfathers or algebra homework or raucous youth retreats to heal tender wounds with laughter. Just a house full of babies from all sorts of bodies and a mama's heart left behind.

No matter what happens, child...

                 I will love you every step of the way. 

Linking up to Imperfect Prose, back from its summer hiatus. Join us here as we revel in grace and community?



* Update: Made that call and asked the hard question. And he admitted to having second thoughts, of how hard it is to imagine a life other than his past, but...gently...that he believes his future is still here and I am grateful and relieved and a little more grown-up in my own heart again. We will proceed with the adoption plans still and pray for a heart guarding and lots of approval stamps before the wind changes. 

Olly, Olly, Oxen Free

A couple of times a day, The Little One peeks around corners and under things and wonders aloud,

"Where's God?"

She plays a cosmic hide-and-seek game all alone, turning over Matchbox cars and lifting rug corners. "God?" she says, eyebrows furled, "God?"

She glances around the room and below the dining table, between chair cushions and chair bases, under couch pillows, in clothing drawers. She traces peasant faces with her fingers on the toile tablecloth.

"Is this God, Mama?"

"God is in your heart, honey girl," I say, but her eyes droop at the answer. She wants something tangible. She believes He's here somewhere, an ant below a Matchbox car, a pale-faced shepherd in a fabric pattern on the dining table. She wants to touch, to find… to lock eyes with Him.

Me too.

I let her play the game over and over and I don't step in until she directs the question at me. I don't intervene with her hide-and-seek game because I might be surprised at what she finds. Because I'm playing my own grown-up version in my own grown-up heart.

"Where's God?"

And I look high and low, deep and hard. I look for God, for grace incarnate. I look in the dishes, in the laundry, in the tangled bedsheets and peanut butter sandwiches.

Where's God when my husband is away, when I'm overwhelmed, when the kids need more than I can give? Is He looking back at me from the toile tablecloth that I wipe down a dozen times a day? In the medicine bottles? The dirty barbeque?

I look in the pile of bills, the cat dish, the sunset. I look in the eyes of my babies and the bookshelf in the hall.

I play my own hide and seek game with God, and it is daily.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I murmur. "Olly, olly, oxen free!"

It's a cry of gratitude, a cry of trust. A cry of faith and truth and a bare naked heart.

And there He is.

Under a Matchbox car, in the laundry bin, beneath the toile tablecloth. In the eyes of all these babies and inside my own crumpled heart. He's right there, in plain sight, for those willing to look.

I have looked and I have seen. There He is, and He grips my heart again. I'm caught. 

I'm tagged. 

I'm it now, I suppose.

And if I'm it, in this hide-and-seek game where God peeks around corners of His world, will He find me? Will I be there? Will I be about my Father's business or will I be consumed by my own? Will I be found in the eyes of these babies, in my work in this world, or will He have to search below and between for me, calling my name to find me hiding from it?

Olly, olly, oxen free. 

Inglorious Things

I feel the need to apologize for my last post. The one where I ranted a bit and complained a lot about what is really a privilege – the daily drudge of life with so many little people, the rundown of love when it gets hard…

And it does get hard.

There are days like those.

There are also other kinds of days, like ones with giggles and 2-hour naps. There are beautiful treasures like the number of times a day they all hug each other and say, "I love you," and pray in unison with miniature whisper voices. There are enough peanut butter sandwiches to go around and when he thinks I can't hear him, my boy tells Little M that she looks beautiful today. There are days like today where my broken car gets fixed by someone willing to give up their evening to help us out, where a phone conference brings our adoption one big step closer, where we hear the quiet voice of our boy in Texas on the other line and have hope that we may hold him close within 60 short days. 

If this practice has shown me anything about myself, it's the depth of selfishness I'm still learning to let go of. It's that I sometimes think I have a right to complain about the hard things just because it makes me feel better when I do. I want to tell the truth and tell it whole, and the rest of the story is that there is always, always redemption at the other side of those tearful moments. He is always only working out the kinks in my selfish heart the way a baker kneads air bubbles out of the dough.  

I can gripe and wax poetic about inglorious things, but then I am brought back to earth, where God humbles me in a visit center lobby, where a mixed-up mama with a Tattoo Jesus wraps her arm around me and tells me thank you for loving her babies, for caring for them so well, when I'd thought judgy thoughts about her moments before. A woman I'd withheld forgiveness from reaches across the divide and reminds me what love looks like and I recall what it is I'm trying to do here… just. love. And that means loving her, too, and the Texas caseworkers I've been so angry at for making the adoption harder, and my husband when he doesn't respond the way I'd like him to.

Because Love loves anyway, and not just in words.

This week, I've been stressed. I've been busy and sore and broken down on the side of the road in 102 degree weather with four babies that had to pee. I've been short with my husband and annoyed by life, and I've chosen sin out loud and over and over, knowing full well what I was doing. I appreciate your words and kindnesses, but I am not a saint. I am impatient and often irresponsible and I secretly believe I should have control over my world. He knew I would do this Christ-like-loving thing poorly some days, and He gives me an extra measure again and again so I will see how.

If the woman with the Tattoo Jesus can love like He does, maybe there's hope for me. These babies are a right step in learning, I know. And our boy in Texas, too. And the freckle-faced children of my womb, my very beating heart in three little blonde bodies. And you. And her. And them.

This is the fruit of these days that pass slow and too quickly all at once. Seeing the bruises and worms I carry and peeling them away, dissecting my heart like the carving away of soft spots on a peach to make it sweet and  imperfect…nourishing…delicious…and redeemed.

The Secret Sound of Solitude

It's an odd thing, learning to be someone you haven't been before, like substitute mama to little folks with different customs and lifestyles than yours. It's a wave-like rhythm here. Laugh, hold, feed, yawn, grump, cry, smile, love, sleep.

I don't have enough hands, enough time. I don't have enough skills to know the answer to questions like, "When will my dad get out of prison?" or "How come you have a bathroom in your house and my grandma doesn't?" Then perplexed at little folks who don't know their own last names but without prompting, fold hands and squeeze eyes tight and pray in unison, an unintelligible sort of chanting to the rest of us, at the dinner table over what sounds like poo'd (food).

I don't have enough love either, and this is a new learning…drawing it straight from the Spirit around me, pulling love out of thin air, the love poured down all around and over me, and spilling it onto them. I'm a pipe of sorts these days, a filter. God love pouring through me and spraying all over these little folks, love I don't have within me any other way.

Still, I'm the sort of woman who tries in my own strength just about all the time, tries to be understanding and patient, tries to be compassionate and selfless, and the more I hit my knees before him and plead for strength, the more I realize how I've been doing it all wrong all this time, how the coming before him in desperation needs to be first and not last ditch.

I have escaped to the front deck for a breath and a quick go at my keyboard. There is an inflatable swimming pool beside me, the kind you get for ten bucks at the superstore that lasts a few uses before deflating, and the water inside is still and even, crystal clear and at peace. I breathe the image in for a bit and practice making myself calm and cool, still and unrippled, a refreshing drink for the thirsty babes collecting at my feet. It is a practice only of channeling Love, not the love we can create in gesture and batting eyelash, but the Love that saves us when we cannot save ourselves…the love that is, the love that does.  

Soon the pool will be full of babies, splashing and pouring, smacking and drinking and the water will be an explosion of sound and movement, clear liquid fireworks, and the stillness will be gone. Soon, too, my respite on the porch will be finished and I will jump back into the fray, the seven-ring circus that makes me laugh and cry and sometimes curse when they're out of earshot. 

I got up early this morning just to hear the sound of silence for a bit, to remember what the air is like when not interrupted by toddler voices. It sounded like bird song and eager Saturday lawn-mowers, the refrigerator drip-drip-dripping into the ice maker and the house settling upon itself, inch by inch… my heart settling upon itself too, inch by inch. I am not a morning person but I am a woman who needs her solitude and, as it turns out, there is much to be said about hanging out in the silence early in the morning, before the crunch of cereal and plunk-plunk-plunk of the coffee pot, before giggles and whines, before flushing toilets and crashing plastic toys.

For me, the voice of God comes most clearly in that sort of noisy silence, the quiet that allows you to hear the sounds that are always there, just normally muffled under the din of daily life. It always feels like a breeze upon my neck and earlobes, a whisper that says many things but always, always says, "I love you, child." 

When Does Love Come?

It's the kind of love that makes me say, "I don't want to get out of bed" when it's cold outside and we're all tucked like sardines into a jumbo tent, and the kids start wriggling, but I do it anyway. I wonder when I'll grow into a person whose first instinct isn't always the selfish one, when pulling covers tighter to my chin isn't what I'd rather do than dress a chilly child for a hike to the bathroom, when I won't silently wish I could eat a meal when I'm hungry before serving six other gaping mouths like baby birds.

When does love come naturally?

My fingers are so swollen I have to retype the words over and over. Camping and cold and hours of loading and unloading boxes and children and duffel bags has angered my friend Fibromyalgia, who lingered quietly in recent months until today, when she roars and thrashes and my whole self aches under her influence. There are bananas on the table but all I can really think about is coffee, even while reading Corinthians.

Even Scripture doesn't cure my selfishness today and I don't pray that He overcome it either because I know deep that this is the sort of prayer that is answered through opportunity to practice and that annoys me at the moment. I have enough opportunities to practice. They are all here snoozing in rhythmic breath on inflatable mattresses, tucked in tight and clean after bathing all five assembly line style in the cold camp shower and making our way back in the dark. They yawn and stretch and bed head prevails, and all today's quiet moments have already been spent, but all I want is coffee still.

I'd keep them asleep a day long if I could, to ponder the lake and whisper to God, counting ripples in the water like the way these moments matter, these daily choices to wrap up littles in love when I'd rather be alone, when I'm tired and sore and wishing for peace.

When does love come naturally?

The Daily Dance

Haven't done much Five Minute Friday lately, but five minutes is about all I have these days, with the arrival of our two new foster babies, so here goes:

­--------------------------------------------------

We're in survival mode nearly all the time, eat, bathe, brush, hug, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat. Their hearts are big and mine is too, and we're getting through these days with grace and giggles, husband and I just sort of smiling each other as we pass. We'll get a rhythm, I know, but right now it is all a blur of cereal bowls and cartoon underpants, bedtime stories and child services offices and a plethora of missed phone calls and missed deadlines and deep, deep breaths. I don't know how people with three toddlers clean their house or take a shower and I'm afraid I haven't really learned yet. 

Somehow, it feels like a dance, dipping low for an embrace, a right spin through the kitchen on my tiptoes, a leap over laundry piles. I fall flat but tighten laces and get up again, spinning and spinning in concentration, spotting on the cross so I don't get dizzy. 

I pull Caleb from the bath and he stands shivering. "Wrap me and carry me?" he pleads as I wrap the towel around him. Yes... and all at once, this is my prayer. "Wrap me up, Father... cover me. Carry me. Hold me steady and take the lead in this dance. 

Linking up to Five Minute Friday at Lisa-Jo's. Today's prompt:  Dance. Join us?

Making Room - Where Love Fits In

The week started with a bang… a publisher meeting, a book acceptance, a tearful hug, a bottle of champagne…long chilled for the day this excitement came, popped and poured and savored. I didn't know that wouldn't be the most exciting thing that happened this week.

Tuesday we were notified our foster care certification was official, that our home was opened to provide care, and less than 24 hours later, our phone was ringing… would we take a 4- and 5-year-old sibling set in an hour? We had said we had no room for boys, what with three already in one bedroom, and could only accept girls for placement, and with my writing and work commitments, only school-aged children fit into our current life.

But when the call came, it was so much clearer than it had been before… we don't fit love into the rest of our life. We just walk in love, first, and let the rest fall all over and around it, soaked up and stained by the color that bleeds from what love does.

With shuffling feet they came, feet but no shoes for them to fill, only the smoky, stained clothing on their bodies, and the funds normally set aside to clothe wards of the state previously squandered by those who came before us. They both wore diapers (and it turned out, they were 2 and 4 in actuality which made three babies under age 4 in our three-bedroom rental, plus our 8 and 12 year old, plus the 15-year-old whose adoption is underway).  They came with no clean diapers to change into… no car seats, no clothing, no belongings but the dime-store teddy bears that they had selected at the child services office.  

They peeked cautiously around corners, suspiciously tiptoed into their new home with trepidation and I watched my biological kiddos, the ones who didn't really choose this arrangement and told me, before the others arrived, that they weren't excited about it. I prayed, I asked you all for prayer, and we were covered, abundantly.

I know because despite my own bout of insomnia, three preschoolers snooze in mismatched sets of my son's pajamas, divvied up across the crowd until we can make it out shopping for right-sized ones. I know because there were way more laughs than tears today and because my children took the lead on loving them, taking hands and leading prayers, sharing toys and whispering sweetness, breaking my heart wide open with the simple practice of love that they grasp so much easier than I do, loving wide and well even when they didn't want to.  

Little J took deep whiffs of the ill-fitting pajamas after his bath and proclaimed, "They smell so good," and I remembered how simple delight could be. Then, kissing his sweaty forehead at bedtime, he asked, since the others called me Mama, if he could call me Mama too and if he could stay forever, and my heart swelled with the ease with which he felt at home here, despite his world being ripped wide open just a few hours ago even while I fought to remember that I was not charged with forever for these children, just for now.

They said Little M wouldn't sleep without her big brother in her bed, that they'd shared a twin mattress their whole lives and I probably shouldn't try to sleep her solo, but we read about Jesus and I stroked silky hair and her eyes drifted away and I knew this tiny girl needed a bed to grow into, a spot in the world that was only hers.

Mr. Smitten had to be away this evening, so I juggled a little more than usual and uttered a holy thank-you for the frozen flautas on hand for dinner in a pinch. There were tears and fibs, spilled milk and popsicle juice in the carpet, messy pants, bumped heads, cranky moments, and for Mama, excruciating back pain that leveled me to bed before the laundry was sorted (and yet, insomnia gets up me again and to my keyboard for the telling).

But there was love… much, much love. The kind that comes raining down like invisible pearls and echoes of the whispered prayers of friends and strangers. The kind that has me choking back tears at not just the disgrace of a world where foster care is needed, but the beauty in it, too.

There is love.

----

Linking up at Emily's for the summer's last Imperfect Prose and with Jennifer at Getting Down With Jesus. Join us?

Speak Gently, Stand Firmly, Love Wildly

I already ranted about Mother's Day here, so I'll try to spare you from Bitter, Part Deux. 

For the most part though, I feel the same about Father's Day as I do about Mother's Day… that it's sort of exclusive and selective and celebrates an ideal that nobody really lives up to, making the fatherless and non-fathers somehow less honored.

But I'm a lot more torn in my affections today because despite the sea of broken hearts from broken lives left by broken daddies in so many of the people around me, there are also so many amazing men I want to honor, men who give me hope that even in the brokenness, there are moments of heaven on earth in the form of strong hands and tender hearts.

I consider my greatest gift in the world to be my front-row seat to the effect of my husband's love in my kiddos' lives. Truly. Ryan is many amazing and wonderful things, but at the top of the list, he is a daddy who drops all pretenses, sheds all expectations, and loves his children wildly and well. I don't know what my children's futures will hold but I know they will rest surely in the love of their daddy, a man who allows skeptics like me to be able to even fathom the love of a perfect and holy heavenly Papa.

He delights in his children and teaches me how to do the same. He loves me well and teaches them what marriage can and should be. He respects and honors me and my voice, and I'm so very grateful that my daughter is growing up strong and confident because her worth as a daughter is confirmed and encouraged every day in her life.

My sons see that the strength and power of a man is often on its best display in the tiny moments… a 

midnight diaper change, an ice cream date, a tickle war, a towel around the shoulders, a goodnight hug. 

They know that a strong man speaks gently but stands firmly, loves deeply, and acts rightly.

Thank you, Ryan, for being what I never even knew existed… for modeling a whole and holy love over our children and our family. Thank you, readers who are fathers and readers who are raising future fathers. 

Your work is vital and the moments matter. You are an embodiment of our heavenly Daddy and your influence is profound. 

Happy Father's Day. 

When It's All Too Much

Our church's outdoor service. <3

I grit teeth and I say it too loud, too edgy. Please, be quiet. Eat your dinner.

And I mean it but don't say it, For the love of all that is holy, stop driving me mad.

It has been a hard day. A frustrating, two-steps back kind of day with the sort of adoption news I was praying against and this just-fine-sized home feeling awfully crowded with chatter and stained clothes, today. 

Too much buzz, too much energy, too much old jelly plastered in fingerprints to the side of refrigerator like purple glue globs. I glance my own face in the mirror and my eyes won't even rise the whole way, drooping over worn skin, freckled like my mother's, tired eyes green like my boys'. There is no life in mine to speak of, no love. Somehow they look paper thin like my skin and the rest of me melts into transparency too.

I will it but the chatter doesn't stop, the skinned knees, flushing toilet, flickering lights and slamming screen door. Crashing bikes. Skipping sandals. Bickering brothers. 

Loud stadium voices, train-station voices, cacophonous circus voices.

It feels like assault and all too much.

It bubbles in and up and out through my mouth. I need to get quiet. I need to hear, to listen.

I think we'll skip church tomorrow to get it, to get quiet. I need quiet before the Lord, I think, over and over and over, just quiet. Just quiet.

Be quiet.

I flip open pages and by no coincidence I happen upon it.

"Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them."

And a glance to the opposite page sings the tune of my heart.

"Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him."

It rips open and I know we will go. We will go to lift hands and sing loud and sing long and marvel barefoot at the open sky because in summer, this is the way we worship. It is the single thing I love best about church these days. We will get loud before the LORD to quiet the sounds which steal our postures of praise. We will savor wafer and wine and let it transform. We will go out weeping and return with songs of joy.

Restore our fortunes, O Lord. Indeed. 

Behaving Badly

Can I be honest? It was a disappointing Mother's Day.

I started the day plunging a clogged toilet and it went downhill from there. Sibling rivalry, laundry mountains, ant infestations, and being caught embarrassingly empty-handed when my stepmother-in-law stopped by unexpectedly to bring me a mom's day gift and I, in my absentmindedness, had nothing for her…not even a card.

I silently fumed when the History channel's war-themed programming filled the morning and there was no breakfast in bed, no sweet hugs, no happy greetings or appreciative speeches, just the usual sports and work talk I resented hearing.

I gritted my teeth when my husband asked me to rub his aching back, trying hard not to mention the state of my own agonizing aches, and again later when I woke him up from his nap with a yawn since I had been up most of the night listening to him snore.

I tore into the card he had picked up the night before, reading his haphazardly signed name and noting the absence of more names, no crayon-scrawled signatures to speak of. No wrapping paper or roses, no special dinner, foot rubs, pancakes, or heart-shaped necklaces. No thoughtful diatribe…just a few jotted words, an obligatory sentiment…an afterthought.

It was just as any other Sunday. Chaos, church, cranky kids. I cleaned up countless dog messes and we don't even own a dog (we're dog-sitting). I bandaged boo-boos and refereed bickering children, washed dishes, cooked dinner, cleaned toilets, overlooked homework, managed bath time, handled poison oak and undertook the usual onslaught of daily drudgery that is my life.

I just wanted a day. One day. One trip to the bathroom without hollering and pounding on the door. One hour of blissful napping while someone else hushed the children for a change. One meal's dishes not waiting for me in the sink. One car ride without wrestling the car seat's buckles or intercepting backseat battles. 

One day.

Instead, I got what I always get…tears and blood, body fluids and bickering, dirty dishes and mounds of laundry. I got more tired with each hour, more frustrated, more entitled. Every interruption made my disposition chip away. I waved goodbye to my husband as he headed to work for the night and continued the grind…dinner, homework, bath time, bedtime stories. I glanced again, alone in a pout, at the romantic movie that had lost its appeal. Who wants to watch a romantic movie when they're alone, ticked off, and disillusioned with romance altogether?

I'd have to watch it alone because my husband was at work. On week two without a day off, working two full-time jobs at once while he transitions into a new position. I have a laundry mountain to fold because I have healthy, happy children who play hard and dirty their clothes and a washer and dryer to clean them. I have dishes in the sink because we're nourished every day and despite our financial challenges, we have what we need.

I long for a moment in the bathroom alone, for a shower in peace. I haven't had that experience in ages because I have a boy who loves his mother, who misses me desperately when we're apart, even if just for a moment. I have older children who know I'm there for them, all the time, no matter what, even when I'm tired or cranky or wishing silently to pee in peace.

Tomorrow my hands will itch and burn from accepting the bouquet of an eager young boy, handing me handful of poison oak leaves as a beautiful gift while I recited the rhyme in my head, "Leaves of three, let them be." He was trying, in his tiny way, to honor his mama on this special day, and through the inconvenience… can I even see that? Can I see the gifts of this day through the cloud of entitlement and disappointment?

Can I see them lined up one by one, the gifts I longed to be free from for just one day? If I had gotten my wish to break away from all of this for some sought after peace, what would be better than these signs of life? A few minutes of sleep? Another necklace in my jewelry box?

How about an opportunity to kiss the little blonde head while snapping plastic buckles on the car seat, to teach my bickering children about forgiveness, to wipe tears off skinned knees, to show grace to my husband who works hard and loves well? When I'm feeling unappreciated, overwhelmed, always on…will I miss the gift of honor here, will I forget that it is pure gift to get to do these things, that I can do these things?

I still want a nap, a massage, someone else to do the dishes for a change, but I will tear metaphorical paper off the gifts disguised as inconveniences today, rejoice in them and in the Giver, and hope I am better behaved tomorrow.

---
Linking to: www.aholyexperience.com {technical difficulties preventing me from adding the link-up graphic}

Thank You, Jesus and Up Yours, Hallmark (On Mothers and Non-Mothers and Orphaned Hearts at Mother's Day)

(Stick with me through this one, friends. It's long, but I hope it's worth it.) *All names have been changed.

It's approaching that time of year again…the day of breakfast in bed, greeting cards, and grocery store floral arrangements.

Mother's Day.

It's a day for mom to bask in the glory of the day reserved just for her, a day for acknowledging the sacrificial love of mothers and showing our appreciation.

My youngest son, Caleb, was born on Mother's Day weekend, and I couldn't have prepared myself for the absolutely spellbinding glow which surrounded us the weekend of his birth. Family came from far and wide and we passed around the baby bundle, mothers and grandmothers, in-laws and sisters, overtaken and bonded together in strength and fragility, a veritable village right there in the hospital suite. We huddled in circles and gave each other knowing glances, uttered thanks to Jesus and cried for the way perfect, tiny fingers can level a person with gratitude.

The weekend remains in my memory a sort of Ebenezer, an altar of remembrance. It's a place where the veil between natural and supernatural was so papery thin I could peer right through it. It was otherworldly and I think this must be what heaven is like. Quiet strength, a sense of absolute perfection, unrestrained awe. I wonder if the drugs had anything to do with it. The weekend of Caleb's birth was self-contained, a capsule of ethereal beauty, wistful and glorious. My own mother was there, and my mother-in-law and her mother, too, loving on our other kids and forming between our hospital room and home a bridge of matriarchal love, a family bond like I haven't experienced before or since.

I thought my skin might split open for its inability to contain the magnificence of those moments as they unfolded. The raspy whimper and rattled breaths of this new human, learning that he had lungs. The perfect, jaundiced skin that made him look like he'd been lounging on a beach in Florida for the last nine months instead of wriggling around in my guts, swimming in placenta slime. He was my only planned pregnancy of the three, and I wasn't so scared this time around, having a pretty decent grasp of what all I was in for.

Every year when Mother's Day rolls around, I am transported back to the hospital room with it's aura of wonder and gratitude. It is a gift in itself to have this memory, to commemorate my day of mom-appreciation by celebrating one of my own personal best moments of motherhood. But the truth is, I have a love-hate relationship with Mother's Day. I mean, don't return the chocolates or anything. I'll roll with the Hallmark holiday like any good consumerist, but the day is a little bittersweet for me.

I am gun-shy to celebrate motherhood as a singularly wonderful experience when I have lived in the land of unfit mothers. I was a housemom at a children's home. I am involved in the foster care system. I have seen the way a wounded child curls up on himself at the realization that the entire world goes on believing that mothers are good and careful and sacrificial. What about the mothers who aren't? What about the children of the mothers who aren't?

Last year we attended the Mother's Day service at Podunk Baptist. The kids crafted wire crosses and construction paper cards in Sunday school, then filed to the front forming a conga line in front of the baptismal. The pastor asked the mothers to stand and their prospective children honored each one of us with a single carnation and their handmade gifts. I was quite the spectacle, a mother hen surrounded by eleven little chicks, standing in substitute for the real thing. I received my carnation bouquet and gushed over hand-crafted goodies in place of the mothers who couldn't or wouldn't be there, those that were in prison or inpatient centers or graves.

It was sweet and it was beautiful, but it was gut-wrenchingly awful at the same time. We listened to Pastor go on about how wonderful mothers were and the boys sank deeper and deeper into the pew. I kept my eye on Levi, just praying he could tune out the words. It would be his first mother's day since his own Mama passed away. The kid had a reputation for explosive tendencies and I was sure we were about to experience one, right here in church. It was all just too much and tension like poisonous gas filled the sanctuary.

Minutes, then hours, dragged on with painful delay and I suddenly hated Mother's Day. I hated the whole idea of it. I hated the way well-meaning words and pink carnations stripped these kids of security in an instant, that a day on the calendar, just another Sunday, could spiral us all out of control.

After church, the day went downhill. One by one, the boys each lost their cool in a sickening domino effect. Blowups, meltdowns, slammed doors, hot tears…and that was just me. By bedtime, I never wanted to celebrate Mother's Day again.

Up yours, Hallmark.*

I don't know how to feel about things, now. I am not the mother hen anymore, and the construction paper cards I collect this year will be the happy type, the type that symbolize what motherhood is supposed to be. But I haven't forgotten what it looks like for the other half, for the children whose hearts are left aching and empty on a certain Sunday every May, and a big space for these boys is still reserved within. I have a child of my heart, this year, who is not yet where he belongs, and even in the best case (if the adoption goes through without a hitch), I will be a forever substitute for the mother that should have been, the one who lays in eternal sleep.

I think, too, about several friends who are struggling with infertility, one of whom has fought her body for nearly a decade, trying for the precious new life she longs for and, if you ask me, so totally deserves. I want a baby for her so badly I'd extract my own uterus and give it to her if I thought it would help. Though I see her so clearly as a mother who doesn't have kids yet, but will, and though she'll be celebrating her own mother on that day, I am angry on her behalf, at the calendar and even a little at God, because surely this must be an oversight, a mistake. Surely, with so many mothers who can't and who won't, there's room in the Mommy Club for this woman who is mindful and wonderful, educated and faithful, capable and so much more worthy than me.

I struggle to find solidarity with my infertile friends under the guilt of having healthy, happy children, and two of them while actively trying to prevent pregnancy. It matters and though there is nothing I can do about it, with Mother's Day looming, I am aware for the others, the folks who are cringing from under the covers or behind mimosas in a restaurant full of beaming mothers effortlessly sporting spring fashions, telling labor stories and basking in the glow of their reward, a brunch smothered in Hollandaise sauce.

As ever, the lack of control over the whole roulette wheel of it is maddening. I celebrate the beauty and amazement of a day that brings pain to so many and know that I just don't see the whole picture. I grip tightly to that and whisper thank yous to the heavens even while crying out why? I weep with gratitude and shake my fist at the brokenness of this place, hit my knees and lift my hands, all at once.

Maybe it's all we can do in this world, lift hands, cry out. Say thank you and why and oh, wow. Wrap wings as hens around little chicks, and let the hurt transform.

(*Disclaimer: This is not a dig at Hallmark directly. I, actually, am quite fond of Hallmark, particularly of their Dayspring division, and actually hold them in high esteem as one of the most generous, authentic, compassionate companies I'm aware of. Rather, it's the "Hallmark culture" we're probably all guilty of buying into, to some degree, the way we think a holiday is supposed to make us feel, etc. Seriously, love you Hallmark folks. For real.)

Linking up to Imperfect Prose over at Emily's place... my *favorite* way to spend a Thursday-ish.

What I Could Have Missed

I'm still in my clothes.  Pajamas from yesterday, now stained with iodine and blood from the nurse's first IV attempt, when my vein blew out and stoic me welled with tears and my arm burned hot and blood rolled down.  Three nights without sleep, not even a minute, and the lights and blips and beeps of the hospital room are exhausting while I'm trying to suck thick air into these dysfunctional lungs.  

It's the same rigmarole as always -- I get sick, then I dehydrate, then my systems begin to fail, but today I'm home again and my jaw isn't locked any longer and I am full of intravenous saline solution to give my weary blood a boost. 

But the coughs keep coming violent, and my head is rattled and my throat is raw and my body hasn't made it out of bed yet.  Between doses, a break in the codeine-haze, so I pad slippered feet to the kitchen and remember what happens to homes when moms are paralyzed to bed.  Twenty-four hours without sweeping or straightening, rinsing or fussing, and this habitat is worse for the wear.  This is what life looks like when Mom goes out of order.

But I am restless in this bed and I will cough prone or I will cough prostrate so I put my weary self in the shower and rinse off the yuck.  I putz and straighten and put on purple gloves at the sink because the house smells rotten now and I marvel at how quickly all my daily work gets undone.  I dig beneath the weariness and find the joy here, while suds multiply in a stinking sink, and recall a time when the work of this home-life didn't feel like much of a gift.  When dishes and diapers and puddles on the floor felt oppressive, when I longed for success of a different variety, when childhood friends would look sideways at the grown-up and domesticated me, and they'd click their tongues and say, sadly, "You could have been so much." 

 But today, I smile, because I am out of bed despite the war my lungs are waging, and I have traded pearls and cocktail parties, briefcases and penthouses for purple dish gloves and sticky faces and I got the better end of things.  And when I glimpse, briefly, into the me they think I could have been, I don't recognize her at all and there is nothing bigger that I could have done than look into these creamy faces with tangled hairdos, click-clacking away at the work that provides with a child on my knee, sneaking a peak every so often at the man on the other side of the bed but on the same side of this life.  I can't imagine living without this daily chaos, this happy bedlam with its do-it-all-again-tomorrow comforts and too many Band-Aids and erupting fits of laughter because without them, with my pearls and my parties… 

I could have missed so much. 

Home is Where the Crumbs Are

Source

Home has been a bit of a fluid concept for me the last few years… four moves in three years, hauling belongings across the country… and back again.

But now, we're home.

And I know that home is late-night laughter and lame TV.  Christmas lights on the deck rails and buckets of toy cars.  Making lasagna and salad and bread pudding and eating it with the people I love.

We have a house.  A beautiful house with views for miles.  A house I wouldn't have dreamed to ask for, and I'm incredibly grateful.  It's not the house that matters, of course, but permission to live inside.  Folding towels and putting away dishes feels like an incredible gift, lately.  My own coffee mugs in the cupboard, a bed big enough for us both, replacing the batteries in the smoke detectors and kissing my children goodnight in beds of their own.  It is a gift to choose your own shower curtain and eat off plates of your choosing...to wash laundry when it suits you and dry it in a dryer that doesn't shut itself off and to know in which drawer the can opener goes.  Perhaps I hadn't realized.  

And I am enjoying every minute of this extravagant gift -- toilets to clean and floors with crumbs and work to do to pay for bathroom trashcans and a few more bookshelves to make this place just. right.

Here, my heart has begun to find rest. 

Rest to unwrap the impact of the last few years.  Rest to learn again to love and trust the One who holds it all in His hands.  Rest to make a home for my family and the freedom to really live in it.  Rest to discover creativity again, to find beauty in joy and happiness, now, instead of merely striving for purpose in pain and worry.

And since coming home, I am remembering what it is to be a mother… a wife… a woman… a sister… a daughter.  I hadn't realized I'd forgotten, but I had.  And here, I am me again.

Welcome back, me.  Welcome crumbs and dirty towels.  Welcome grocery shopping and paying bills.  Welcome half-glasses of sweet red after dinner and frozen pizza now and then.  Welcome floors to sweep and windows to wash.  

Welcome, home.  

My Girl

I am bone tired.

Thirteen people need something from me right at this minute, and all I can do is sit and funnel all my energy into the simple task of keeping my upper eyelashes from falling and taking me deep into dream-sleep. 

The job is harder than you might imagine.

I feel zapped and drained, void, and I glance over and see this lovely girl… busying herself with a book, beautiful in the simple pleasure she finds in a good story.  Quiet and content, lovely with her hair mussed and bare feet sticking out crooked from the chair.  She doesn’t know I’m watching, and yet, this is the most interesting thing I’ve seen all day.  

In this instant, I am lifted.

Eight boys that call me mama, and I realize that I am so very blessed to have this one sweet girl who shares my heart, who loves from the very bottom of her toes, who is always beautiful without trying because her heart is so very pure and the beauty just seems to leaks out of her, even with cream cheese all over her face.

I am grateful, today, to a God who knows how my heart needed this girl – this girl who gave me such fits in her younger days with her feisty independent spirit, but is such an amazing inspiration to a mama’s heart as she grows… high and deep.  Without her, I would drown in a sea of sportscasts and Nerf wars, and I am just so very glad she’s my Baby Love. 

Finding Home

I am learning, very slowly, to find home here amongst the brush and young aching hearts that surround me.  It’s been an intense sort of awakening, of late.

The truth is, I have struggled against this ministry since the moment we arrived.  I wanted to love every minute of it.  I (foolishly) anticipated this whole experience to fill me with wonder, to carry me through every difficulty with a spiritual high that found me on my knees, hands lifted high, surging with joy.

No one tells you how hard you will have to fight to keep your faith when you lay it all down, for Faith. 

Of course I didn’t really think I’d soar with happiness all the time, but deep down I believed that saying a big, fat “yes” to the God of All Good Things would free me up to experience a resounding confirmation that I Can Make a Difference in These Lives. 

And friends… it’s been hard.  Soul-ripping, head-pounding, gut-aching.  Difficult.  And the world we’ve shifted to, here, has seemed so… barren… that the rusty deadness creeping through the poverty in this map-dot town has crept right into the heart of me and dulled it down to shades of brown and beige and rust.  I have been, here, as brittle as the dry grass that swallows up this place, swept harsh by wind and the pain that beckons or keeps each one of us in this place. 

I have lived decades in the last six months.  I wasn’t sure I’d make it another six.

But it occurred to me, recently, that surrendering to this ministry – to loving and serving and giving it all for these kids really means surrender.  It means vulnerability and (gulp) sacrifice.  It means embracing all that is foreign about this life and the living of it, and emptying all that I think I need in order that I might be filled.  It is only when I am filled, filled with Grace and Gratitude and Real Love that I can spill over and bless these kids, these wounded hearts that I am here to nourish. 

It is only when I fully receive the gift of God’s presence that my presence can be a gift to God.

And little by little, grace by grace, the grass is beginning to grow.  My feet are steadying, here, and my heart is sewing strong stitches to the hearts of these seven little strangers that honor me and call me Mom, though we are still new at learning each other.  And learning to love is always a wild ride.  

--------------------------------------------------------------

"The ransomed of the Lord will return.  They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.  Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.  I, even I, am he who comforts you..."/"I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadows of my hand -- I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth..."  Isaiah 51:11-12; 16