It Starts to Feel Like Something Big

I measure the grounds, three heaping scoopfuls because I drink my coffee like gasoline, and I get the mug ready. It looks more like a soup bowl than a coffee cup but there is much to be done today, pages-long lists of writing deadlines, emails to send, assignments to complete, calls to make.

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

Writing a book or two, going to college, giving speeches and having a blog and writing deadlines and things filling up a calendar. It’s a dream come true, after all.

I ponder the bigness of it a minute, feeling all of my 33 years for a change, like my words are taken seriously, like my foolish prose might amount to something that buds from my heart someday, something worth these eye-strained hours but just the sheer love of it.

So I pour it dark and sweet and breathe it in, and think much of me with my bowl full of coffee and my little words today. I am glad I have persisted with my tiny big thoughts, glad I have kept click-clacking the keys with contemplation and questions, challenges to those with bigger brains and bigger titles than me.

I think, today, I will have my coffee hot and strong and I will nibble the end of my glasses while I think. I will drink from my bowl over an email to my publisher and feel right distinguished with myself, for a moment.

But the thought is fleeting. 

Five plump fingers rest upon the flesh of my back thigh, just beneath the pink ruffled robe he likes to be wrapped up inside. I did not hear him coming.

“Mommy,” he cracks in his sleep-stuck voice, pulling at the robe ruffles. “I don’t want breakfast yet.”

(I hadn’t offered.)

“Mommy, I just want to snuggle.”

He rubs his eyes and drags his gray blanket across the floor, across dinner crumbs and the shabby teal rug that was new only weeks ago but already looks destined for the garbage. Twelve trampling feet will do that to a carpet. 

They will do it to a mother too, from time to time.

And even though I feel it now, the strain of this body premature for my years, it stings and groans for the hours I have not sat, the years I have not rested.

Bowl-mug in hand, we head to the couch and his head finds my belly, pushing gently into the body gone soft under the laps of three babies, tempered by the gnawing worry over all those not-born babies too, the one whose face I never got to see or kiss and all the ones who wore size 11 Nikes and called me mom just for a season. I am trampled shaggy and soft, body and heart, by those pink baby feet and those smelly boy feet, and those patent-leather-heeled feet. I have gone shaggier than the teal rug in my kitchen. 

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

Like all the mothering and loving and gnawing with worry amounts to more than all the words I could collect in a lifetime.

No title is bigger than mother, I think. None which I am after, anyhow.

So I settle into stale sleep breath and blonde bedhead and savor coffee and feel rightly distinguished, here, in this. 

Not for words, not for notice, not for anything but the elevated place of being the carpet below these precious toes, of a down-pillow belly holding up this sweaty head with its drooping blonde Mohawk.

I ponder the bigness of it, and smile.

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

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Linking up at Emily's place. Join us? 

Coming Home. Becoming Home.

The last day of the year and I have to scrape windshield ice but I don't even care. My broken laptop has been resurrected and I whisk it off to a coffee shop to warm its chips and wires, to warm my belly with fancy mocha and pumpkin bread, to warm my hands and my soul with inspiration and words, again.

It's been too long, friends, and I'm sorry. Life and hiccups have kept me away but all is well and all will be well.

Happy New Year.

Our Jacob is finally home, and we are grateful. The holidays are still lingering in a hush, woven into this creamy gray vapor that hangs around us, barely noticeable upon the cracked cement sidewalk, the aged headstones peeking out behind bare branches at the cemetery I drive past to get here. It's a fitting sort of state, as weather often is, for the end of things, this year, a little dreary but not unpleasant…a wash of whiteness and stillness like a curtain being dropped. The romantic in me will see the same sights in Technicolor tomorrow. I'm a dreamer that way, and new years always hold new promises, new adventures, and I'm game.

I declared 2012 the year of Home. I thought, perhaps, after much weariness from our nomadic years that it might have been the year of settling down, the year of tying up loose ends, the year of holding down the fort in pajamas and feeling like a normal family for a change. It sounded so healing just a year ago, so safe and warm, a year of Home, a year of family and laughter and too much good food. What I wanted, looking back, was a quiet place for my heart to nurse its wounds, a space to linger long on whatever was supposed to come next.

It was that. Sort of. In some ways.

Just not like I expected.

Because the year of home…the year I planned for coming home, was really about becoming home, in a million ways that were nowhere in sight on the milky gray horizon of last winter. And this next year, too, will be a series of blind-sighted developments, surprise plot turns, and new things big and small. I return to college in seven days, four days before I turn 33.

So I'm pondering today all the words that I think might mark 2013 in a way I can't even imagine from where I sit right now. Bloom. Revel. Embrace. Worship. Jubilee. Inspiration. Wonder. Explore. Listen.

I hope, no matter what, that this new year will be full of words, full of life and connection and a still sort of dwelling on the magnitude of every present moment, for me and for you, my friends.

Stay safe, tonight.  

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. 

On Excavating Earwax, Panty Raids, and Joy With Dish Gloves On

Friends, this post is long... like making-up-for-lost-time long...like more-of-a-chapter-than-a-blog-post long, and I apologize (kind of) for the length. I really feel desperately that I need to post it anyway and I ask if you'll give me the grace of getting through it because I think this message is a good one for us all this week. There are some things around here knocking my socks off... things I believe truly will rock your world, too, if you soak it in. So go get a coffee refill and stay with me in this, if you can...come back to it if you have to. Thanks for trusting me, for getting through my wordiness and letting me unravel the beautiful, terrible mysteries I'm drifting through these days.  

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I haven't been writing much lately—not here anyway, and I'm sorry for that. 

It's not for lack of trying. I've sat down at my keyboard dozens of times this week and the last one and the one before that to keep this space current and relevant and real. What happens, though, is that no matter what I set out to write, it all ends up coming out something like this:

"This is hard. This is hard. This is hard. Joy is here. God is good. He is teaching me so much. And oh, yeah… did I mention? This is hard. "

It's true of course. This is hard. God is good. And He is teaching me measure upon measure more than I ever dreamed this season would be about. I am learning dependence and how gratitude can overcome attitude. I am learning about love in action when the feeling of love is elusive. 

I am learning about what importance and success look like in the Kingdom, and how wrong I've had it all this time. I am learning about need, about nourishment, about food and laughter and organization and the power of a smile or a scowl, about volume and voices, love languages, trust, fear, home, and the wild and wonderful human spirit.

- I am learning that love is joy with its dish gloves on.

- I am learning that the words I grumble or yell or whisper or pray are longer lasting than the words I type, that tying up life lessons nice and pretty in a package works well on paper but doesn't serve me at all when there is poop in the sandbox or when I see my own forked-tongue wagging back at me from the mouth of my flesh-and-blood boy. I am learning that hot, silent tears into my pillowcase are a hallowed kind of prayer, and that I would be wise to utter less the phrase "Lord, give me strength" and utter more the phrase "Thank you, Lord. Give me joy." Also, that He always responds swiftly to "Help me, Help me, Help me," even if I whisper a curse word in the middle of that prayer somewhere.

- I am learning much, much, much about grace.

Overcoming my critical, complaining spirit in this means not running to my blog just to purge out the grime of the day every time I'm tempted to, even though you all take it so graciously and mold it into a golden gift through your comments and outreach and prayer. You all are my heroes and you are how I do most anything—all this inspiration I get from the people out there walking around on Jesus-feet, kissing with Jesus-lips, giving with Jesus-hands.

Having foster kids in our home these past few months has rocked us, not in a flip-our-world-upside-down sort of way, but in a gnaw-away-daily-at-our-false-ideals one. The temptation is to say that with each challenge, I am growing and loving them deeper and deeper because that's what the neat and pretty answer might look like, but that just isn't always true. 

What's true is this. I still don't have a maternal instinct for these babies, not completely, and though I love them as much as I can make myself love anything, this is a hard love. It's a love that acts and does, a love that wipes and kisses, a love that moves and rocks and holds and bites its tongue, but not so much a love that feels. It's different, and I am learning, too, to be okay with different, all the while praying for a bigger heart to overflow with Jesus-love when these little faces still seem so exoteric, so marvelously foreign here. 

The intimacy with which I am caring for these sort-of strangers who are also long-neglected little children means this work is mostly gross and bloody and sweaty and stinky, covered in waste that emerges from bodies I have not carried and have not watched carved by formative years of nursing and growing and living. The truth is, it often makes me wearier than I wish it did. 

And though I am immune, mind and body and spirit, to whatever is produced by my own children's bodies, there is no such lack of repugnance with these children, yet. I shouldn't admit it but that's the hard work of motherhood, what biology affords us the capacity to endure out of instinct. When biology is the missing link between these strangers and myself, the already-hard stuff gets harder, if only because it is not nature but effort that drives me.

I am shamed further by the shame I feel, by the way I cringe and curl inwardly at the hazards of motherhood, the green and brown and foul-smelling things, the yucky stuff that from my own children leaves me unscathed. Per doctor's orders, I had to go out and buy a tool last week designed to excavate impacted earwax, a tool I never knew existed and have lived peacefully without for 32 years. Then, draping wriggling half-dressed children over my lap one by one, I dug deep into their oozing orifices and hummed loud to make them still and safe but also to suppress my gag reflex, to transform repulsion into grace, to remind me to find the joy here, in earwax, somewhere…in puddles of drool and vomit, in overflowed toilets, in asthma and tantrums and middle-of-the-night toddler pantry raids (not to be confused, of course, with panty raids, but with the same sort of commotion and cunning thievery involved).

I am struck by how unnatural this love can be, how the actions of what love does can sometimes be so instinctual but other times requires intense suppression of human instinct. And yet, even this unnatural and irregular love is complete and perfect love all the same, for such a time as this. 

Foster parenting is, by nature, the role of coaxing a square peg into a round hole and making it as comfortable there as possible. It is oddly unnatural. Intentionally unnatural. And, challengingly unnatural for me.     

- It is an unnatural love that chisels impacted sludge out of a half-naked stranger's head with a miniature plastic melon-baller and sings her quiet all the while. 

- It is an unnatural love that peeks beneath peculiar habits and whispered statements to the dark underbelly of human existence and reveals the despicable truth of the trauma and turmoil which raises babies in badly broken homes.

- It is an unnatural love that attempts to explain foreskin to a puzzled preschooler who accidentally discovers anatomical differences in his same-age counterpart (a delicate and highly charged conversation to have with a boy still wearing Spiderman underpants, just a baby but already corrupted and confused by sexual abuse and body shame).

- It is an unnatural love that whispers lies to a baby for a holy purpose. Their mama won't be visiting today; she's in jail again, but their hearts can't receive the truth of this. Not yet. And sometimes, a lie can be an act of love, too. 

Love so often is the tough work of exposing joy when there doesn't seem to be any.

Love can be natural or unnatural, and the tough kinds are pulled and stretched from all corners of our body and soul and spirit.    

- It is hard physical work to excavate joy like I excavate earwax, digging and prying and scooping for it to make things better, to enhance my ability to listen more clearly. I round my posture and strain hard for the delicate sound of joy amidst the clamor, the wailing racket in the world all around. There is a din of falling ashes and abundant hopelessness, but I tune in careful and with clarity hone my senses to simply hearing. In doing this, I decipher a soft symphony of intricate miracles, joy's peaceable volume growing over the clatter with each passing second. 

This love? This hard love... this careful, deliberate, focused, slimy and grimy, exhausting love? 

It amplifies the sound of joy. 

Love always amplifies joy because love teaches the lover to listen. 

- It is hard mental work to locate joy when a food-obsessed toddler leaves a midnight trail of empty soda cans and potato chip bags strewn about in her wake like rubble after she cleans the cupboards bare and we are all oblivious, snoozing in spent slumber. But as tight fists unclench, I look closely and there it is...joy, giggling about the silliness of it all under a pile of granola bar wrappers. 

Joy finds a pathway to humor when humor is a lifeline to grace.

(Or a pathway to chocolate. Chocolate is always a lifeline, in my book.)  

- It is hard emotional work to find joy in rising anger when three sets of tiny, mighty hands demolish weeks of careful bedroom decorating in mere seconds of raucous fun. They tear curtains off walls, thrash the personalized name signs I meticulously painted for each one of them, bust closet doors, and crush the paper lanterns that once hung from the ceiling—cheerful orbs now ripped and ruined by careless, overactive play. I almost cry but I yell instead and lose my cool completely. Later, we talk about destruction and forgiveness and how wrong we each were in all of this, me especially. And we forgive.  

Joy flees when anger roars but gathers at the feet of a humble lover. 

- It is hard spiritual work for me to remember, minute by minute, that they are children and not just to find joy in that but to create and nourish it also with room for imagination, creation, amusement, and wonder in the bustle of passing days. I'm so often tempted to wish them into mature beings fully capable of order and reason, but joy knows better and sees clearly.

Joy in you begets joy in others, and where there is much joy, peacefulness abounds. 

Though it doesn't make it any easier, I am grateful in small ways for this fissure between me and my foster children, for what is lacking here. These are not my forever babies, and my soul has not given birth to them the way it has to my others, the ones I could not bear losing like I will lose these ones, someday. 

So I go about the work of stitching my heart to theirs word by word and action by action, bathtime by bedtime, meal by hug by juice cup by storybook by smile, each action another stitch in the fabric of our stories. I baste love like scar tissue over fresh wounds with wide, loose stitches. I sew loops of thread like care and clockwork with lots of open space in this tapestry of grace that covers over them, space for the tight stitches of redemption that will someday not only cover the scars but heal them also. I am leaving room for those who will come after me, the new strong embroidery of an adoptive family perhaps, or the delicate healing sutures of reformed (or, rather, reforming) biological parents.

Theirs is not a forever love within me, not a soul-birthed love like I have for my biological kids and also for our boy in Texas whose adoption is underway. His stitches are sewn short and tight and strong like my others, and with the sweaty, painful work of bearing and birthing a grown-up boy from my heart's womb with all the fight and fire and breath of bringing forth new life—new life right out of existing blood and bones, thoughts and scars and needs and dreams and fears…a partnership between redemption and creation, a partnership between an average family and a Divine and Holy God. I don't know why it was different for him than the others, why his love gets to be natural and permanent, except that it was designed to be. The story was already written. 

And just like there are different sorts of stitches—wide and long and loose, short and tight and strong—there are different sorts of mother love, too—fierce and physical and permanent, nurturing and healing and temporary, bold and beautiful, quiet, clumsy, complicated, selfless, distant, biased, graceful… And I might exhibit a different love dynamic with each little body, each big life that passes through my care. 

I see now that my work in this world, in everything, is not merely about action but first about vision, to see joy and Jesus everywhere, and then to act accordingly. 

So, I seek joy...deliberately, intentionally, increasingly, I seek joy in every. little. thing.

I don't always find it. My heart gets hard and my voice gets loud and the laundry pile grows and I give way to weariness.

But I squint hard through the goggles of grace and try to be mindful if nothing else because the thing about joy is that it's really the awareness of its presence that's elusive, not joy itself. It is sometimes just a vapor, a supernatural and hazy transformation from empty to full, heavy to light, beastly to beautiful.

Sometimes it's wide right there in the open like a spring tulip, beaming bright in a child's happy smile or whispered thanks. Often though, at least for mothers, it is buried as treasure, settled hard under dirt and germy filth or else obscured and camouflaged—an optical illusion that requires a spiritual squint to recognize it hidden from sight right there in the open. Grace goggles, like paper spy glass prizes in sugary-cereal boxes, reveal the secret message in blue beneath a blur of red squiggles, beneath the ugly and exhausting work of mothering, of sustaining life every single day, all day long, again and again and again. 

The secret revealed is always this:

This is hard. This is hard. This is hard.

Joy is here. 

And God is good. 

Coming Back to Gratitude

It's been awhile since I counted gifts one by one and letter by letter. I utter them in whispers sometimes… I grasp for them when feeling overtaken, overwhelmed, overcome. But today, I need to chronicle and count, when the month has been marked by groundhog-days, over and over the tasks that make me weary and worn, days where I wonder if I'm doing anything at all except driving my own self mad and making my own self sicker and sorer.

Rubbing swollen knuckles, I ask him why this? when I thought my work on this earth was something so different, something I was good at, something that came natural. And he whispers in the every day that all of these heaps of garbage and nothing glamorous keeps me needing and it's not about what I'm doing that matters. All that matters is that I keep needing, keep hitting my knees and crying out, because that is the only place I'll ever be right in any of my efforts. Needing, turning, receiving.  

Today I'm tempted to chronicle the hard things, to list out the ways I'm struggling with the assignment I've been given. Instead, I breathe in and squint hard through the mental fog to search for beauty, to count gifts.

-- A new kitty, Jack-Jack, who curls up beside my daughter in bed.

-- Sleeping until 8 a.m. today, a restful morning.

-- Kids coloring together on the deck.

-- Phone call from our boy, Jacob, in Texas yesterday, a quiet, teenage I Love You at the end of the call.

-- Five upcoming days "stuck" at home to catch-up and settle in, a nice break in all the constant motion of these months.

-- Positive progress with the adoption paperwork.

-- A new school year, right around the corner.

-- A restful day in bed nursing the flu while Husband held down the fort.

-- An old friend, checking in on me.

-- Animal crackers, in bulk.

-- That having "barely enough" means having "exactly enough."

-- Feeling the inner stir to write, again.

-- The anticipation of fall, of cooler weather and small luxuries like apple cider and hand-knit scarves.

-- Parenting books to keep my chin up when I'm feeling hopeless or overwhelmed.

-- Having a mailbox at the end of my driveway.

-- The sandbox, hours of entertainment for keyed-up kiddos.

-- My new sewing corner and crafting area in the bedroom – the option of cultivating creativity in my home.

-- My oldest son coming home soon from his long trip to California.

-- The gift of music, its powerful effect on my mood and my mind.

-- Submissions collected for the Soul Bare project.

-- Hand-me down furniture. 

-- Dreaming of thankfulness and humility, an inspiration to remember everything for the gift it truly is.

Once Upon a Time, Amen.

A lot of people around the blogosphere (and gah, how I hate that word) talk about "a new normal" as they learn to embrace this or that, an unexpected hand dealt them. I tried to think of a less cliché way to check in with y'all today than under the pretense of "learning to deal with our new normal" but I come up empty, so please, forgive the triteness here, as you also forgive (I hope) my absence lately.

We are learning to deal with our new normal with the foster babies and the book project, learning to morph what started out as survival-mode chaos into functional, adapted, thriving life. I am learning how this thing works and how to roll with the punches around here in the interest of not-just-getting-by.

I know now how to do dishes and take a shower every once in awhile without my house being burnt to the ground, and this alone is progress. I know that shooing them out the door after breakfast to play before the air gets thick and hot is the key to getting my daily bearings, that a bunch of stickers and safety scissors and washable markers will get little feet off the carpet just long enough to vacuum. I know which one gets diarrhea if they drink apple juice, which ones have seasonal allergies, which ones hit when no one is looking, and which items around my home are shockingly edible. 

I know that (surprise!) the 2-year-old can dress herself completely and climb up into the car seat all by herself if I can exercise the patience to let her do so. I'm working on it, and my back is grateful. I don't (apparently) know how to find time to blog or write (yet), but I'm working on that too. 

I know that teeth-brushing time is a highlight of the evening for them and for me. For them, the splash and giggle and spit business is just too fun to suppress a squeal and for me, it signals bedtime, which signals breath and Husband and I have even found time to giggle and watch a movie or two. That feels a lot like my old normal, and I'm grateful for a few small anchors like that while this ship spins and swirls, even while we're learning to "Wheeeeee!" about it all the while.  

I know, too, that the little one will say, as I close every storybook's final page, "Amen" instead of "The End" and that I won't correct her because there are days where this alone keeps me from unraveling, the tiny, squeaky reminder that every one of these stories is just a prayer out loud, just living this out loud… Once Upon a Time… Amen. 

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.

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.

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

What Lightning Has to Say

{written yesterday} 

Source

I have lived a lifetime this week and it is still only Monday.

Baby Girl (who is 9 these days) was baptized in beauty and love and living water, surrounded by family on Sunday as she said yes to Jesus. My open-aired barefoot church split at the seams with family old and young, and even the nonbelievers among us lifted hands to Him and it was the kind of beauty that is still making me weep 28 hours later.

I was asked to be a part of somethingso incredibly close to my heart, so vital to this blog community, so honest and real and out of my league that it, too, made me weep for good things.

But I am weeping today for things that don't feel good or right at all, things I don't know how to justify or make sense of, things that shouldn't be and searching to find God in it all.

A phone call with our adoption caseworker left me sobbing into the phone, as muffled by red tape as the pleas of our boy caught in the system have been, and equally as unheard, then later, louder, into the nape of my husband's neck with pounding fists at the injustice of a child whose future is reduced to manila and copy paper and black ink while his heart swells with anger and nobody hears.

She heard, though. She heard me when I said I will fight for him, lady, and keep fighting and sucked breath sharp and mean and bit my lip to keep the rest of it inside.

Brokenhearted people have to clean their floors too, it turns out, so I mop the floors with tears and soap and scrub like I can lift the dirt off the world with elbow grease, taking out anger on the tile while polishing it with apple-scented solution and somewhere in here is a Garden of Eden metaphor but I'm too tired to find it.

I nauseate and the sky tumbles dark and green too and bolts of lightning flash in the distance, sky all sad and angry and it's Him to my heart saying, "Yes, I know, dear One. Me too."

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Linking to Imperfect Prose, a sacred space where our souls can breathe... so, so blessed to be a part of this. Join us over there, will you, and be blessed?

Not One but FOUR Book Reviews!

Heaven in Her Arms by Catherine Hickem

The tagline on the cover reads, "Why God Chose Mary to Raise His Son and What It Means for You." It is never a bad idea to get parenting advice from the mother who had it better than all other mothers and the mother who had it harder than all other mothers, Mary. Mary is the mother from whom we can learn about selfless love, fostering independence, managing joy and grief. The book unfolds all the appearances of Mary in Scripture, the circumstances surrounding them, and what we can learn. Written by a licensed psychotherapist (Catherine Hickem), the book deals with many of our greatest fears and failures as mothers, and how we can learn to overcome them by Mary's example.

The book was overall very helpful and informative. As an advocate for foster care and adoption, though, I found a real damper on the wisdom here to be the author's approach/attitude toward adoption. The author is an adoptive parent and admires God's faithfulness in providing her with an adoptive child that "met all the criteria on her requirement list" (must be born from older, married, Christian parents, medium-high level of intelligence, and no drug history in the family, pg. 30-31) and her suggestion that God wishes adoptive children to resemble their adoptive families (pg. 38).

To be frank, that spoiled the book for me. What about all the other children out there? What about the kids who don't fit on the list of "desirable" qualities? What about the abundance of minority children in foster care needing families with a prevalence of Caucasian adoptive parents? I don't personally believe that God creates each child to physically "favor the very family that will raise him or her as their own" (pg. 38). I think it's a narrow-minded approach that suggests we can pick and choose our preferences regarding our responsibility to care for these children, and it sours my stomach to think of this presented as a holy perspective. I do believe God hand-picks each family for each child, but not that we can put superficial parameters like hair color or IQ score on our willingness to help kids in need.   

Disclaimer: The publisher provided me a free copy of this book through BookSneeze.com in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

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God Gave Us You by Lisa Tawn Bergren, art by Laura J. Bryant

This is an 18-page kids book for children ages 0-3 by WaterBrook Press. It tells and illustrates the story of Mama Bear and Little Cub, a fuzzy little girl bear, tucked in her bed, asking, "Mama, where did I come from?" Mama Bear recounts the story of many little bears and babies everywhere, two praying parents, growing tummies, doctor's visits and the birth of a healthy, whole baby Little Cub, a gift from God.

My 4-year-old son nuzzled down and enjoyed the story, particularly the playful illustrations. I felt it was a good book to help answer young children's questions about pregnancy/birth, but I would recommend that you skip this one for any child who isn't born under the parameters above. The way it's written could cause some discomfort for the child not born to two praying parents, in a healthy pregnancy with a doctor-assisted delivery, and a healthy, normal birth. It's a cute, heart-warming book but doesn't make exceptions or leave room for other family circumstances such as adoption, foster, disabilities, home births, NICU, non-traditional families, etc., unless perhaps you'd like to use it as a catalyst to engage in discussion about what's different in your family than in Little Cub's.  

Find more info about the book here.

Disclaimer:  I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. All opinions are my own.

Crap. It's Almost Summer. or What Cheap Decor Really Looks Like

I have a bone to pick with you décor bloggers. When I'm sitting here, sipping my coffee and drooling over beautiful room makeovers and one of you prefaces your recent remodel with "Check out this nearly free room re-do!" I'm totally hooked. I drool a little. And then I click on through and read that the new doors cost $600 and you got a steal on the new rug for only $350, and the sofa was a mindboggling steal at $800 but those custom curtains cost just about that much.

Dude. That's like mega-millions in my world. That is the farthest thing in the world from nearly free.

Here's what a "nearly free" room makeover looks like for me, and my other poor frugal friends. Steal curtains from the next bedroom over. Dig through boxes in the garage and come up with a few trinkets. Spray paint them to match the look you're going for. Bust out some scrapbook paper, craft paint, canvases, and exacto knives for wall art, or just paint over some thrift store ugly that you discovered. If you're really lucky, dig around in the bargain bins at Big Box Discount Store for a new comforter. Nevermind that it feels like sleeping on cellophane. Drool over adorable baskets and bins, but balk at the $30 a pop you'd have to shell out for them and instead opt for gift-wrap and cardboard boxes for a custom look. Super glue the wheel-tracks back on the dresser that is falling apart (that should buy you another year with the thing) and replace the knobs with the ones you found for $1 a the thrift store.

{That little trinket was free, just for you. You're welcome.}

One of these days I'll get around to hosting that virtual open house I've been promising…the one where I show you my real life, totally imperfect, thrift-store decorated abode and you laugh hysterically at me. Hopefully soon, since decorating is back on the brain.

I am lacking adventure in my life at this particular moment. Whenever I lack adventure, decorating takes stage front and center. It's bad when decorating takes over my brain, especially in the state of financial affairs known affectionately as broke as a joke or too broke to pay attention. Honestly though, I find this the best time to revamp a room or liven up the place a bit. When money's not in the picture, decorating requires a serious level of creative problem solving and it feels like a challenge. You can't just run to the store and buy what you like—you have to figure out more interesting ways to get the look you're after. I'm all about the challenge.

Our adventure-less life won't last for long, though. Tomorrow we get our foster care certification and our out-of-state adoption is moving right along at the same time. In the next few months, we'll probably have anywhere from 4-6 kiddos living in our (did I mention humble?) little one-story house with three bedrooms, including ours. I am excited. I am also sweating with nervousness. Oh, did I mention my 15-year-old brother-in-law is also coming to stay the month while my in-laws renew their vows in Israel? And he's a drummer?

{Take that noisy neighbors who just acquired pet roosters!}

The three kids I already have are on top of each other every single second and sibling rivalry is beginning to come up against homelessness and starvation in my mind as one of the world's most insurmountable obstacles. Okay, not really, but you get the point. The 4-year-old is in the 12-year-old's stuff constantly. The 9-year-old is a total slob  organizationally challenged. The walls are closing in and this house is beginning to feel very small…and we're not even full up yet. Eek. This is particularly distressing because summer is just around the bend, which means 4 to 6 7 kids, age 4-15 in each other's space 24 hours a day and I'm starting to wonder… Oh crap. What in the world am I going to do to keep these kids from killing each other every day? (Especially on those days I'm tempted to let them).

What are your favorite keep-em-busy summer activities to maintain peace in your home? Restrictions include budget and time (I work full-time from home), and the challenge of activities that appeal to the various ages. We are blessed with plenty of outdoor space (2 acres) and a flexible schedule, though. Lay it on me—I'm desperate, and there are only so many $2 movies a mommy can take!

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.

I'm Baaaaack -and- Who Are You Looking For?

Source

He is risen.

And we begin again with a sense of a "new year" at all the rebirth that Spring will bring.

I'm glad to be back.

The Lenten experiment of quieting the social media voices in my life was redemptive, and in retrospect, I see that it was less about my giving up and more about my giving in, preparing my heart for what is upon me yet. In the quiet, I drew closer, I fell in love with words again without being a slave to them, and I also longed for the community of people that has become my extended family here.

I didn't miss the blogging business as much as I thought I would – I missed hearing from all of you, reading and keeping caught up on your lives, but the break was needed and I'm grateful that I heeded the call to quiet. There is much in the air as I come to life with the reminder of resurrection, my soul is stirred and I am always impatient for more.

Our home will be increasing, not with a baby of my belly but an adolescent or maybe three. We are both in the process of (God willing) adopting a teenage boy that we cared for in Texas and finishing up our foster care certification and we are braced and we are ready, as much as you can ever be ready for something like that. We may double the number of children in our home within the next few months, but this is not the first time we've been on this adventure, so it isn't as daunting or scary as it could be. 

Instead, it feels a bit like breaking in a pair of new shoes, this house we've made into a home bursting at the seems with life and chatter and happy chaos and the hard days that mean we're doing something worthwhile in this wonky little life. I want to ramble on and on about this, but it is something I need to tuck close to my heart just now until we have more to share, until there is more certainty. 

There are harder things too about me now – my brother overcome by the throes of addiction and us being powerless to stop what ravages and destroys. My family feeling the pang and sting of all the lies addiction brings like a smothering vacuum void where there is no oxygen. Grateful to have the source of life now and always all around, to be lifted up by holy breath and the learning of what comes supernatural in the midst of surrender. Celebrating beauty in all of this.

One more thought to leave you with today, as we settle into the reality of resurrection, move forward with what new life will mean to us now. The angels that visited Mary in the empty tomb asked her, "Woman…Why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?" (John 20:15).

So I ask you and I ask me… in light of the empty tomb, who is it you are looking for?

A lover? A spouse? A person to recognize your talents? A baby in your womb? A prodigal son to return? A person to validate your efforts? An individual to save you from yourself? Are you waiting for you to be who you want to be before you surrender? Are you looking for flesh and blood? Or are you looking for Jesus, who has risen?

Why are you crying, today? Who are you looking for?

Five-Minute Friday: How to Trust When You're Ready for Battle

Trust

This boy… this boy who I've written about, the one you've prayed for, and how our hearts entangle and he is mine even though he isn't… he's lost in the world about now, in need of a set of arms to claim him, a name on a case load, a blond-haired kid in a sea of them.  And I am on the other side of a state line, arms opened and screaming to be heard, fighting for this child who everyone's forgotten to fight for.

I have left messages and scrawled out frantic e-mails, I have come farther by the grace of God in this man-hunt…this teenage-boy-hunt… than I thought I would.  I have names, I have phone numbers, I have laws and code numbers and certifications to back my fight, and I am ready for battle. 

But now, Friday afternoon and the sun going dark in his time zone, there is nothing to do but wait.

And trust.

Because it is not my battle.  It is His.

Because no one fights for the blond-haired boy like the one who he belongs to -- The Daddy that does not die and does not leave and does not kick him to the curb.   

And I wonder.

If this is a culmination of everything that hasn't made sense for all these years.  If God has been prepping me for such a time as this. 

I do not fight with swords, I fight with words and research and a love that's stronger than state lines. 

I fight for love with love.

And I see the swirl of this whole wide life and all the rusty weapons I've collected without even meaning to, the way He equips.  The way He is orchestrating this.  The way He makes me trust in the darkest middle of uncertainty, and the way I can, which surprises me.  The way having no control at all will make you trust in ways you never thought you could. 

I fight for love with love.

-- linking to Gypsy Mama's Five-Minute Friday, on the topicof trust.

Pray with me, please, for my boy, for the one whom I'm trusting God to provide for, for the one I'm fighting the system to reunite with, for the one I'm asking God for the privilege to care for again.  Pray that He is in the right hands, that this all unfolds the best way. 

Being the Blessing

Have you heard of Reece’s Rainbow?  No? 

Me either, until today, when I stumbled upon this delightful project – a family bringing their boy home across miles, despite disability and financial uncertainties… arms and hearts waiting to hold their precious boy, raising the money to bless a child, to bless the world.  Visit here to dream big along with this family and make a donation (and to be awed by the many giveaways being offered to those donating).  Of course, the greatest giveaway is what we take from blessing others, but if you’re longing for an iPad or some eye candy of the most swoon-worthy variety, here’s your chance for a win-win). 

Be the blessing, today, friend.  J

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Counting, with Ann… Multitudes on Mondays:

333.    God not always giving us what we ask for – His wisdom to insist on better for us.

334.    Sleeping until 7 and drinking coffee, in bed, on Saturday.

335.    Paper plates.

336.    A time-out and tantrum free toddler playdate.

337.    Fresh bread, purchased from the joyful Amish woman we met in town this weekend.

338.    Watching my children scribbling gifts in their own gratitude journals.

339.    An uneventful surgery undergone by a friend, now home resting.

340.    Being able to contribute, to be the blessing, for people I don’t know, toward a worthy cause.

341.    A fruitful morning quiet time.

342.    Dinner with colleague-friends last night.

343.    Holy Week.

344.    Answered prayer…

345.    …even when the answer is “no"...

346.    …or, “wait”.