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.

Book Review: I Blame Eve by Susanna Foth Aughtmon

I Blame Eve by Susanna Foth Aughtmon is a quick and easy read that had me chuckling while examining my own heart. The book exposes our Eve-like actions and sheds a humorous light on the lies we believe about ourselves and others. I particularly loved the subtitle: "Freedom from Perfectionism, Control Issues, & the Tendency to Listen to Talking Snakes."

The essential solution Susanna presents is a simple one in theory, harder in practice: Know who you are in God and run quickly from the whispers of the Enemy. I enjoyed the author's voice, finding her quite relatable. She offered enough humor to keep me giggling…

"…Adam and Eve got to sit around naked and unashamed. Naked and unashamed. Now that is an oxymoron if I have ever heard one. In my world, if you are sitting around naked, there is shame aplenty. And if you don't have the good sense to be ashamed of your naked self, I'll do it for you. We live world's apart, pre-apple Eve and I." (page 26)

"You have never known the freakish strength of a toddler until you try to loose his tiny grip on a Thomas train." (page 38)

…but also enough substance to be worth the time.

"When God beckons us with his grace, offering us hope for a new life, it is a two-fisted offer. With one hand he offers full forgiveness for all our wrongdoing, past, present, and future, so we can reconnect with him by way of Jesus's righteousness. With the other hand he offers us a chance at a new way of living in which he leads and we follow. He does not forgive our sins and then say, "Give it your best shot, kid. I hope you figure it all out." (Page 94-95)

Check out I Blame Eve, available April 2012 from your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from Baker Publishing Group in exchange for a review, but all opinions are always my own. 

The Side Effects of Fruit

Last night I cried and into the pitch-black hours where coyotes howled beyond the window I lurched and pitched, shoulders wracking with the sobs so deep they hurt my rib bones.

And I just couldn’t manage the silence another night.  Couldn’t bear to say the things, the words already tumbling out of my howling mouth, making up excuses for the God who stays silent while I thrash and demand an answer, demand a word to free me, and instead make my own way in impatience, walking barefoot on proverbial broken glass and know that I don’t want it to be this way.  No, no… this will never work, and I am forgetting what to hope will come of all this.

But I have come this far under my own influence.  I have come all this way and now, He nods in my direction.  “Go on.  Have it your way.”  

So He waits quiet to see what I will do next but of course already knows and I wait but don’t know already and I mumble-pray-weep-plead that He just have something up His sleeve.  And all the while I am Eve and I long for that fruit of selfishness and I too wonder why He is keeping good things from me, and the serpent winds between my feet while my pillow swallows tears and before I know it, I’m hissing along with the serpent’s song.  I have it in my head that what God wants for me is only hard living.  I am parched and licking lips for what I’m sure He must be keeping beyond my grasp.

And isn’t that the lie that gets us every time?

That He is keeping something good from us?  That He is the God Who Holds Back?

And the hours pass ‘til I stir with fever and the delirium hasn’t faded.  How does a girl paralyzed learn to walk in silence?  How do I move an inch without knowing the way, and I am filled with doubt and fear and all the side effects of being Eve and eating fruit.