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.  

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

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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?

What the Calendar Remembers

Snow has dusted our little cottage on the hill and, though I am (sorry) not a big fan of snow, it sure looks cozy around here today.  And the beauty pulls me from my funk a bit, even if I'm tender-hearted, tired, and a little full-headed today.

While MLK day is historically of course a very important, impactful day to observe, in my heart's own little personal world, it tends to be a day of tragic anniversaries.  Californians may recall it as Northridge Quake day, an ominous one for my family because of our proximity to the epicenter that day, decades ago… the way our hotel buckled and shook while walls imploded and concrete bridges collapsed within earshot and we sat, only children, barefoot in a dark broken parking lot with hands over ears from the car alarms blasting, watching gas tanks firework in the distance and drinking beer from dented cans to combat the shock because it’s the only thing we knew to do when the world was crumbling beneath our feet.  But this earthquake-shy girl is tender, too, today remembering beautiful, full-of-life young friends lost to the world on this day, a few years apart, and other small slivers from MLK-Mondays past that have wedged their way inside.  I am sobered to remember how tragedy strikes hard on promise-filled days and always without warning, and deliberate to remember, too, that it's all redemptive, even the hardest parts, and that the day reflects, too, a man's Dream of a better world. 

So the sky is expansive this Monday for the snow and the way a calendar reminds.  But I aim to see today more for what it is than what it represents in a head that catalogues joys and sorrows and assigns arbitrary meaning when I am too small, really, to see what He sees here, by each thread that weaves together the whole big story, snowflake by snowflake. 

 My thoughts have lingered on small sorrows from days past and I breathe deep and break through it, snapped back to the present like the close of a flashback scene in a television drama.  Today there are no death-tears, no broken windows or broken hearts or earthquake rubble.  There is only love, and snow, and a house in the process of becoming home.

Under blankets, we nurse coughs and sniffles around the cottage, and kids in jammies look wistfully toward the thinning snow, but mom shakes her head and serves up cherry-flavored syrup that protects little throats and twists little faces into grimace.  This is what mothers do, even when my heart would rather soak up fits of snowball-fight laughter than read temperature gauges and dosing instructions, today, but love is love all the same and I'll take it as a fevered head upon my lap when that's the way it comes.

 Friday will be housewarming around here, and I will focus on what needs doing now until then, when friends and laughter fill this place because, after all, no amount of paint or picture-hanging can make a home, can it?  Only the footprints of loved ones in the carpet and the love that leaks out of mouths and brings the odd combination of plaster and wood and food and joy and fabric and words and tears and memories together to make a place home.  

First, my gratitudes today…. with Ann… and always compiling, stockpiling, yet still without numbers, since I stick them always in journals and lists, phone apps and scrap papers and have lost the composure to keep a system of numbering in place.  It is possible to count without numbers, I've discovered, and so, I do:

- Gentle snow that is tangible peace, falling like manna.

- Cough syrup, and a hacky toddler willing to drink it.

- Kids visiting grandma's yesterday, some quiet to work on my creative space.

- Kids back home now, where they belong.

- My desk space set-up, inviting and so "me".

- My laundry room to crafty space conversion, progress made.

- A husband who encourages me, some days, to leave the dishes in the sink because he sees me for who I am and not only what I do.

- The quiet cacophony of the life I wished for and got in abundant measure.

- My children that love and even like each other, most days.

- A few unexpected work transitions that have me enjoying my day job much more lately.

- A compassionate boss.

- Winter sniffles that slow our pace a bit.

- Our Compassion International sponsored child, Muhayimpundu, in Rwanda.

- My husband's old land cruiser project, a creative outlet for the man who puts us all before himself so often.

- My children having health insurance and a doctor we trust.

- Words With Friends - a tiny bit of intellectual stimulation in the midst of my brain-mush days.

- Being asked to collaborate on a totally foreign-to-me writing project that inspires creativity in new ways.

- My daughter's love and compassionate heart for cultures different than her own.

- A working vacuum cleaner.

And, as if this post isn't long enough, and because I value the accountability I find here (since it lights a fire under my butt to get things moving):  A list of things I'd like to accomplish around the house pre-housewarming/late birthday party (items in italics are things I need Mr. Smitten's help with): 

January House to Home Project List

- Whole house clean - kitchen, bedrooms, living areas, bathrooms

- Break down and repurpose or burn remaining moving boxes

- Finish setting up desk area.

- Make vinyl quote for desk/office wall

- Make/hang misc. wall art for desk/office wall.

- Hang curtains behind bed.

- Buy curtain rod and hang curtains across slider in master bedroom

- Buy curtain rod for master bathroom and hang curtains

- Hang 'love' banner in master bedroom

- Bring white chair in from garage for master bathroom dressing area

- Bring extension cords into master bath for heater

- Hang towels that match master bath (label)

- Empty hall closet, set up mail/bill pay/filing area inside

- Move desk from boys' room into master; move mirror from garage onto desk in master

- Clean/unpack entry way boxes/misc., mop tile floor

- Empty black hutch

- Bring vintage stove into dining room; move black computer hutch into boys' room.

- Bring big filing cabinet into garage

- Bring smaller filing cabinet inside and swap out files from big one

- Clean K's room and consolidate stuffed animals/toys, take box to garage or donate.

- Bring remaining books in from garage, put away in hallway bookshelves.

- Find/replace missing knobs on coffee table drawers.

- Take legs (and doors?) off sideboard and make entry table by back door

- Hang hooks over sideboard for coat hanger

- Bring in antique radio

- Hang some wall décor in master bathroom.

- Unpack boxes in hallway

- Hang hallway photo gallery

- Empty laundry room, bring black dresser and cubby bookshelf inside

- Decorate laundry space

- Set-up and organize craft supplies/creative space

- Wrap cardboard boxes & label them for decorative craft storage

- Clean living room and entry hall overflow piles

May love find you today, dear friend.  Thanks for reading.  

Sticky Sleeves, A Timely Word

It is blue dawn now, and a layer of ice glistens from atop the deck railing, wispy fog streaking the landscape like pulled-apart cotton balls.  Quiet settles out there and in here, and I lay my arm in a drizzle of pancake syrup and pronounce it good.  After all, this is home.

So that seems to be my word, this year, having never done the word-for-a-year trend before, but heavy on my heart this January that life, this go 'round, needs a bit of definition, some pronouncement upon it for the next few hundred days.  I asked Him for a word, to settle something into my heart, and he gave me one.

Home.

Source

And yet, I fought it.  It wasn't very profound.  Shouldn't this be the year of Giving or of Grace or Faith?  The year of Prayer or Simplify or Grow or Fly?  I wanted to Dream, to Create, to experience the depth of Peace this year.

You can, He said.

At Home.

So even as my friends erase my address book entry for the 21st time in 15 years, I settle into a season of home.  Of learning that of all the things I strive to be, the who I am at home is the who I was most created to be. 

And while this sounds so warm and fuzzy, it's more of a difficult concept for me than for most, I suspect.  I am rather domestically disabled, at times, but heap upon the expectation that my home be perfect…warm and inviting and filled with creativity and love and delicately hung window treatments that perfectly frame the world beyond.  The world where I can be somebody and I want to make a difference for all those people out there, in the world, and my sights can grow long and distant and far too grand, sometimes, with the idea that if I could only be good and perfect, I might earn peace and grace. 

But I am somebody already, nearly everything to a few little hearts and a big one here and there are walls that contain all I really need to do or be in this wide world, and it starts, I know, right here, at home.

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Linking to:

Home is Where the Crumbs Are

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

But now, we're home.

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

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

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

Here, my heart has begun to find rest. 

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

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

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

Welcome, home.  

Five Minute Friday (A Day Late) -- On Distance

I missed Five Minute Friday yesterday, so it's a Five Minute Saturday Morning, if ya don't mind.  Linking up to Gypsy Mama, to just write for five minutes and not worry about whether it is just right.  Grace. 

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It is too far.  I am too far.  And I wonder if it will ever feel like home.

Home that is 2200 miles away and then some.  Home in the hearts, too, that are so far from here.  Home because I fit there and it is like me and I am like it.  Home because my heart-seeds are scattered there and heart-songs sing there like the fog and sunshine and the very day.  

And I am far removed.

This distant place… this new landscape… is many things but it hurts to call it home.  It feels like treason to find home here… yet.  Here, where April scorches hot and flowers wither from lack of rain and salty ground-water thick with chlorine.  Here, where today we will splash in pools while those at home will re-wrap neck scarves and breathe into hands to warm icy fingertips.  Home is cold and ice now and most days I feel the chill, even here in this searing sun.

And yet, what is home?  Really?  Don’t I have all the proper makings of it, here?  Aren’t my children hugged and husband kissed and prayers whispered and bed made and coffee drank here?  Isn’t home simply that:  Being wherever you are?

I used to think I could bring home along with me, pack it up tight and carry it around inside, but some days I’m not sure.  Some days I forget that April sun is a gift and I long for pine trees and lakes and an end to the miles between me and home, when my strength crumples and I forget what it means to be home.