When It's Time to Untangle

My heart took a big tumble this week. It bounced around and hit a few sharp corners. It is bruised and bleeding today still, pulse-tender like blistered flesh burned on an electric stove. It is still on crutches today, slathering itself in ointment and retreating to quiet spaces.

And I have a lot of thoughts to work out about what's behind all the brokenness and what God has to do with any of it and what it means for my understanding of The Church at large and my voice and my place in things. I don't know quite how much of the pain is a result of my clumsy tendency to stand up for unpopular injustice with a fierce spirit and too many words, and how much is an answer to that prayer I pray in the dark… the scary, exciting, beautiful, awful one. The one that goes, "Break my heart for what breaks yours."

But it's all tied together like a knotted necklace chain and I'll have to untangle it later, after the ointment works its magic, after the wincing has stopped.

Because I'm still slipping between raging indignation and quiet tears. I'm still racing from corner to corner of my mixed-up mind, from the icy shadows to the warmth of the sun.

Somewhere in the midst of this, truth and love and healing will bring me back. They're already beginning to.

But what's saving my life this week are the soft places, like the crook of my husband's arm…the first place I want to bury myself when the hurt stings sharp and the brokenness weighs heavy and he listens, quietly, and hears. Ryan is my safest place, the corner I retreat to when nothing is sure in the world… when my thoughts about God and friendship and mothering and church and work and life bury me in fear and doubt. And then he sits with me, quiet, and I don't need to speak and he doesn't either, and it's love all the same. Ryan is all I know about love on some days, because the way he does it is really something worth taking notes on. He understands the value of presence and his short words linger long when I'm tempted to ask "Why?" What's saving my life today is gratitude for the man in my bed who taught me all I'll ever know about staying.

What's saving my life today are the tiny miracles… picking up the right book at the right time, communities so full of grace and love that I can't escape from Jesus love even when I try to retreat. What's saving me now is that slowly, hour by hour, I'm reminded that there are others standing up for the kind of love I believe in, people who aren't afraid to listen, to speak up for the marginalized and the wounded, people whose stories and lifestyles make a lot of people squirm. Fear brings out the ugly in some people, but intolerance brings out the ugly in me. I'm working on it.

What's saving me now are people like Tammy and Lindsey and Annie and Emily, praying and loving and sending me emails like grace with skin on all through my day. What's saving me, as always, is wild, extravagant grace, and a Nazarene whose love is making nothing in my world comfortable anymore and I suspect it's exactly the way it's supposed to be.

When the heart breaks open because you prayed for it to happen, because you know deep and raw that there's more than the moldable deity you see in modern American culture, it will mess you up. I'm not all that sure I even know what to make of it yet, or what it's going to mean for me, but I know this. It's time to step into quiet for a few days (a week?), to tiptoe away from social media and politics, from hot button issues and phone calls, to quiet my fired-up soul, listen to the breeze that wraps around in an embrace, and learn love from my kids again, the ones who I overhear in their bedroom in tiny voices saying, "You are beautiful," and "I love you," and "Jesus gave us to each other", because this is the love that washes over and saves us all, the love that is worth stopping and smelling and tasting and grasping with all our grip on the tender, unsure days.

So, friends, thank you for grace as I slip quietly away from this space for a few days to read and bake and pray and paint and swing and slide and laugh and sing and be still.

I promise I'm okay… really, truly. Quite full of joy and peace today after the fog of hurt is lifting and just being mindful that this is a place I need to linger for a beat, a pause to usher in Fall and learn a few things about the nature of love and experiencing God. A sorta-kinda spiritual retreat, if you will, a chance to untangle. 

Love, love, love. 

Be back soon. 

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." 

Five Minute Friday - Wild Stillness

Five Minute Friday - Join The Gypsy Mama at (in)courage today 

for just 5 minutes of writing without regard to perfection.  Today's topic:  "Still". 

GO

Photo Source

With 11 kids that live in this house, give or take a few at any given time, I have very little time to be still.  Even while I sleep, my mind makes mental lists and I gather and fret and worry about all that tomorrow will hold.  My eyes roll into the darkness and head sinks down heavy on pillow-fluff and there’s the cry of a nightmare, the need of clean sheets from a nighttime accident, the allure of another glass of water.  I rarely get to be still.

In just a few minutes, I’ll head for the airport and after this flight and that, and a bit of a drive eastward, I’ll arrive in Destin, Florida for some much needed stillness with a good friend.  There is stillness found in laughter, sometimes, did you know that?  There are friends with whom your soul settles and you are made quiet, even amidst raucous amusement and loud, long-overdue catching up.

I am desperately in need of this, and so grateful for the chance to slip out for just a few short days.  Close your eyes and slip your mental toes down into the warm sand, lean back and breathe in saline air, and be still with me. 

STOP

Be back Monday or Tuesday, friends.  Have a beautiful weekend!

Day One

Full day, today, so I thought I'd leave you with thoughts written a couple months ago -- the very first day I began counting gifts, seeking gratitude. 
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It’s supposed to be my first day seeking eucharisteo – Greek for life-filling gratitude – the practice of which is exercised in giving thanks, recording blessings, one by one.  After receiving the idea, I soared on the high all day yesterday – the very notion of the power in giving thanks filling me with joy overflowing.  Today, as it would happen, my mood is sour and serrated.  I wake up feeling achy and tired, and like my throat is full of stones.  I’m snapping my wretchedness all over the house, to anyone in my path, and I’m disgusted with myself.  It’s all grating on my last nerve – all of it.  Everyone.  Every “mom!” holler makes me cringe, every child’s slight pushing me over the edge.  I grind my molars together, tense up my neck muscles, pick up a pen and number the page. 

Come, gratitude.  Come.

Thank You, God.  Thank you for… number one:  Morning sunlight in the kitchen window.

It’s forced and awkward.

For orange juice.  For Scotch tape.  For my toddler… who never, ever, ever listens and I just don’t know how much more I can take of this.  I turn inside of myself.

Yesterday, eucharisteo was a revelation, a world-crashing-in sentiment.  Today, though, I’m not sure this can be the answer.  This is the crudest, the rawest I’ve ever felt.  I’m a wounded animal – agitated and dangerous, and I just want to warn everyone, even God, to stay away.  Far away.  Out of my reach, out of my capacity to claw and bite into them.

The washing machine has been filling and, like me, its function switches and it begins to agitate.  Thank you.  For… a working washing machine.

The little one has his hands all over me.  He whines.  “Get my booger, Mommeeeeeee!”

Sigh.  For Kleenex.  For nap time still to come, today.

I am trying hard not to be consumed by Little One’s defiance.  This is important, and he’s distracting me.  I ask him to sit on the couch.  He comes closer and grabs on.  Whines.  Digs his fingernails into my arm and flops his body on me, kicking his legs behind him, spilling the glass of orange juice.  The fire rises in me.  This can’t be the time for this.  I will come to eucharisteo later.

Later, when life is quiet and I can be thankful.

And I feel even more wretched because I know that eucharisteo is not real until it happens in these moments.  This is exactly the idea.  Gratitude for all the gifts.  Even these.  Even boogers.  Even spilled orange juice and defiant toddlers.

“Sit down, now.”  I say it tense between clenched teeth, with clenched fingers.

He does.

And I am grateful.  More grateful than I’ve authentically been for anything yet today.

Thank you.

“Thank you for listening,” I say.  He is pleased with himself, and he grins, lowers his eyelashes, satisfied.

“Long, black baby boy eyelashes,” I write.  Number eight.  I think about writing “boogers” but don’t.  I’m not really thankful for them.  Not yet.  That’s the destination of this journey, perhaps… but I’m only on number eight, and there is much work to be done within me, still.

“Mama!  I need help with this question.”  Girl Child bounds into the room, glasses lying crooked on her face, and she twirls toward me as if on stage.  I start to feel annoyed, sure that I will never, in all my life, be able to gather several minutes in a row for myself, sure that I will never sit in peace long enough to even warm the seat, sure that the children will never get their lessons done without my nagging.  But I watch her spin and twirl, for a moment, and say nothing.  She sees me watching and pauses – awaiting a chastisement, sure I am going to tell her to stop and get back to her schoolwork.  The moment slows and I walk myself through it, deliberately.  I keep my mouth closed and move my pen down a line:  Number nine:  Twirling.

It is slight, but I feel it already.  The choice.  And I already begin to understand this to be something more than simply counting my blessings.  It’s making a choice.  A choice to change my perspective.  My reaction.  My experience.  Eucharisteo is the difference between wretchedness and beauty.  It’s what Christ did to prepare for His own death.  Gave thanks.  Broke bread.  Chose joy in the experience.  Even in the ugliness of that experience.  And it feels, ever so slightly, like growth.

Thank you for twirling.  For Girl Child.  For joy.

The phone rings, and a caseworker from the office is on the other end.  There’s this boy… he’s hurting and angry and not at all coping well.  Lashing out at others, acting ugly.  His mom died several months ago and he has learned, quickly, how to use anger to manipulate and control.  He can’t stay where he is, but its up to us.  Will we take him?

Fear rises.  I don't want to make this decision.  I don't want the extra weight in my head right now.

I think about the boy and see myself similarly, today.  Ugly and lashing out.  Not at all okay with the way things are going.  And I wonder where gratitude falls in, here.  I want to say no.  Our plate is full.  But this business of eucharisteo has slowed me down to the moment, if nothing else.  I slow to listen more and learn more about him, before I decide.  Stories, frustrations, worries… none of them sound promising, but I don’t know what else to do.  I say yes, send him.  I’ll prepare a bed.  And there is peace.  And I breathe in thanks…real, pure thanks for my children and that they still have a mother and father.  And for whatever we can do for this boy.

I begin to understand.  Trust.  Eucharisteo is also Trust.  Gratitude for what God gives means trusting Him for His best.  Gratitude comes before Provision.  Christ gave thanks before partaking of the bread, before He broke His body.  And I am asked, also, to give thanks not after, but before.  To be grateful for what I don’t yet understand, as an act of trust.  This is hard… this was not on my agenda for today.  And it was hard enough for me to find gratitude for sunshine, today.  Now, I’m looking for it amongst death and rebellion and boogers.

But you know what?  It’s there.  I find it.  And I learn that the looking for eucharisteo is the very practice of eucharisteo. 


Thank you, God, for the exact measure of what I need, exactly when I need it.  For being trustworthy.  For the provision that I am certain will come.  For grace.  For eyes that can see all this… and ears and noses, and… boogers within them.

This time, that’s for real, and I start to feel a little enlightened and a little lightened – the weight of my foul mood is decidedly less jagged than it was an hour ago, and it feels like progress.  I pen a few more and I mean them… warm chamomile tea and candlelight and old books.

Right on cue, Little One chimes in with a whine.  “More boogers, Mama!  Moooore booogers!!”

Number twenty-one.  Thank you God… for your sense of humor.

(Photos are of the new DaySpring cards I found this weekend -- aren't they darling?)