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? 

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.

Trials and Tattoo Jesus

They fight all the time.

ALL. The. Time.

He took this! She hit me! He said no! She broke that!

They are forever not each other's best friends, anymore.

The big one lies and talks constantly about prison and drug references. My own little guy shrieks and gasps in hypersensitive freak-out mode over everything they touch or say or do. The little one, at two, outweighs my 4-year-old and then some and my back screams from sloughing her around in my arms. She eats everything.

Everything.

Paper. Books. Photographs. Pine cones. Food wrappers. Styrofoam. Batteries. Napkins. Dirt. Rocks.

Everything.

My husband is gone again, 10 more days this time. I am cranky and tired and I miss him, and my head pounds while I struggle to admit that today, I don't want to do this. I don't want to wrestle with three car seats when it's 102 degrees and the car has no air conditioner. I don't want to jostle children between time-out and a too-hot backyard, give three baths while the other two wait for showers, slather on another round of Band-Aids and hair gel and toothpaste, wash another load of miniature underwear, sort train tracks from toy cars again.

I don't want to hear the ABC's out of tune again today, or explain for the hundredth time why it's not okay to talk about prison in front of the baby. I don't want to imagine the pre-placement life of a child who doesn't know his last name but likes to pretend-arrest the other children and recites the Miranda rights with sickening accuracy.

I will load up the whole crew in my overheating rig again this afternoon and take these babies to see their mother, praying they won't ask to call me Mom (again) in front of the lady who birthed them both. She will fill them with junk food between meal times and give them things I won't let them have when we get back home. While they're at the visit center, I will hold my own babies longer than they'd like to let me, since my time for this is scarcer now than it used to be, and we will eat ice cream in a restaurant and pretend like life is normal.

After an hour, I will go back to the visit center and the babies will run to me, and Birth Mom will cry and tell me to be careful again and again and I will fight the urge to roll my eyes, since careful hasn't really been on her agenda before now, because I'm the one treating her babies with tender hands and doing the things she ought to be doing. Because I know she has a big screen TV and wears designer jeans when I'm buying thrift store duds so I can afford to feed her babies. I will feel a mix of anger and compassion at the mixed-up woman whose kids are in my care, and she will whisper things to them in Spanish so I won't understand her.

As she passes little M back to my arms, whose bottom lip is stuck out into a pout because she doesn't understand the Mom who hands her over every time, I will see the enormous Tattoo Jesus looking back at me from her arm, shoulder to elbow, in sandaled feet with faded background glory, like the one on the candle jars at the grocery store.

I will carry the sniffling baby back to the stifling car and ask Tattoo Jesus if he ever didn't want to love, if the smell of sickness or the filth of life annoyed him as bad as it all annoys me, today. I will wonder how to be like him when my house smells like another family now, that my own babies now know about cocaine and prison and their bedrooms are inspected by ladies with clipboards and they can't have a kiddie pool in the yard anymore because the clipboard says so, because we're all just trying to love when we sometimes don't want to.

He will tell me, as he always does, that love doesn't have anything to do with wanting to, and that love doesn't come from me anyway so I'd better make more room in this equation for him to do the work. He will kiss the baby on the cheek with a breeze and wrap himself all back up across the arm of the mixed-up woman who needs him, too, to cling to her in tattoo ink on the days she can't cling to him for the power of addiction and poverty.

I will roll down the windows and we will drive away in the overheating rig and sweat off Band-Aids and hair gel, and sing our ABCs all out-of-tune, again. 

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." 

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?

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!

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.