Stuff-less

Photo Source: Pinterest.

I am living out of a suitcase.  

My three children are sharing a full-size bed and just about all of our belongings are shoved in a 10’ x 20’ storage unit, balanced dangerously and teetering hither and yon.  To make it worse, we unloaded the moving truck in the dark and several of the items that were meant to stay out of storage (um, like, checkbooks and passports, business cards and stamps, conference tickets and cute dresses and school supplies) were packed away and buried in the rubble... and no luck so far on trying to retrieve any of it without completely unpacking the darn thing.

This is unnerving, especially because, after much scramble regarding employment here in Oregon, we’ve determined that, although we are blessed beyond measure to both be gainfully employed (and for me to work at home – hallelujah!), for several reasons, we’re better off staying put at my mother-in-law’s house for awhile.

Like, staying a few months when I was really banking on (and packing for) a few weeks.

I am having a hard time rolling with the punches on this one.

Not because I don’t like being here.  Actually, I love, love, love my in-laws and couldn’t really think of any place I’d rather have to shack up like teenage parents (which, for the record, we're decades away from being).  But living in someone else's home goes against my very strong instinct to nest (no, I’m not pregnant) and putz about, fluffing this and straightening that, hanging curtains and wall decor, introducing my DIY-creations to their proper locations... and making a home.  And my guilty conscience makes it hard to feel like I'm okay here, that I'm not being a burden, or stepping on toes, or creating a hassle for anyone. 

The antidote to living in transition is, for me, to settle down and make a home.

Alas, I cannot.

This year, I will probably not get to decorate my home for Christmas.  I will not bake in my own kitchen, or set up my office to watch my kids run around the back yard while I work.  I will find, several times every day, that the outfit or nail polish or legal document I desperately need is packed away and I’ll have to live without it.

A few tears were shed when I realized that my Bible, devotional, current Bible study, and favorite commentary also managed to get (accidentally) packed away.  Six days without my Bible was remedied by six bucks at a local bookstore, and had me sniffing the pages and holding the thing close to my heart, soaking up the Scriptures even with closed covers, filling with the words inside like osmosis, gripping the paperback make-do like the precious possession that it is.

I’ll be heading to Relevant ’11 in a few weeks, and, bummer, despite my plans for a put-together-girl on display, it looks like I’ll have to head out there with just the comfy clothes I had packed for a few weeks at grandmas.  No high heels.  No cute jewelry.  Some jeans, my camera, and a pair of gray Chuck Taylor’s are about all I’ll wind up there with, I’m afraid.  You’ll love me anyway, won’t you?

I’m taking the opportunity to prove to myself all the things I can live without when I really need to, to count it blessing that we have this opportunity and that our belongings are only temporarily in storage and not incinerated in a house fire, or vandalized in a burglary.  It’s all only stuff, after all.  So I’ll rejoice in less cooking and house cleaning for the time (since I have others to share that responsibility with here).  It will be good for my soul, too, to go to Relevant without knowing anyone, and wearing no disguise – just me, myself, and my Chucks to show y’all the real Slim Shady Whimsy Smitten, in my grubby-girl finest.  Something tells me I’ll be welcomed with open arms anyway, and that, my friends, will do a girl good.

Counting, still numberless, today, all the gifts that keep on giving.  Linking up with Ann, and all the others counting, counting away. 

-          Husband, hired!

-          Starting work myself soon (later this week, probably).

-          The graciousness of my in-laws.

-          Our anniversary on Thursday, six years of marriage, ten years together.

-          Reading A Confident Heart by Renee Swope.

-          An opportunity to learn more about simplicity.

-          Conference tickets that are re-printable.

-          Being able to afford a plane ticket to Pennsylvania and a hotel room at Relevant, even while being in between jobs and during a tight financial time for us.

-          A beautiful drive this weekend, soaking up the beauty here I’ve missed for so long.

-          Discovering an omission error in my husband’s veteran’s benefits documentation that will be $150 in our favor every single month for the rest of my husband’s life.

-          My kids absolutely loving being at their new/old school.

-          Hot, middle-of-the-afternoon coffee, and weather chilly enough to enjoy it.

-          So much peace and family time, lately.

-          My kids, getting to spend time on a regular basis now with their grandparents and great-grandparents.

-          Our boys back in Texas, apparently doing okay with the transition of new houseparents.

-          Returning to our home church again yesterday.

-          Big, busy dinners, full of laughter… and lots of leftovers.  

-          Provision, in all the ways it comes. 

I Love Your Dirty Laundry

I love your dirty laundry.

And not just the skeletons-in-the-closet variety, either.

Your real-life stinky socks and sweaty sweatpants, clothing piles that turn in to mountain ranges, loads that are left in the wash too long and start to mildew.

Nothing says imperfect like dirty laundry.

And these days, I am all about embracing imperfection.  I try to, as one of my favorite Curly Girl Design prints suggests: 

“Live imperfectly with great delight.”

And it does a heart good, in this world, to know that you have them too.  Stinky socks, I mean.  Bad days.  Dirty clothes and dirty dishes and things you mean to get to with all your heart but life just gets right on in the way and you go on living and being wildly fabulous anyway.

Because you are, you know.  Fabulous, that is.  Wildly, excruciatingly, downright God-breathed and fabulous.  

And dirty laundry is no match for fabulous you.  It’s no match for fabulous me either, as a matter of fact… and another thing about laundry… is that it waits.  Just like all the other doings that need to be did.  Some things wait.

Some things don’t.

So stop, for a moment, doing what can wait… and go do something that won’t.

Go kiss a child, make love to your husband, call your mother.  Sing a praise song at the top of your lungs, no matter who else is listening.  Send a note to a friend, shoot hoops with a teenager, take a bubble bath.  Daydream.  Make a cup of hot chocolate, or even better, make two.  {Drink one, share the other}.

{I won’t tell if you drink them both.}

 Do it.  You have permission.  The laundry will be there tomorrow.

<3

Finding Home -or- October, in General

Tap, Tap… Are You Still There?

I’ve totally abandoned you.  Forgive me.

Everything’s been a bit of a blur this past month with the cross-country move and all.  Tears, boxes, laughter, welcome home banners, and phone calls abound.  Life is beautiful and we are in Oregon now, resting comfortably in the arms and homes of family.

We arrived on Thursday, pulling the moving truck down my mother-in-law’s familiar street to spot a parade of banners and balloons, shouting relatives jumping up and down on the pavement, puddles of happy welcome-home tears.  What a way to return to our home state… like a regular prodigal party, it was.

Now we’re still up to here with the business of getting settled – kids enrolling in school, house hunting, living out of suitcases with the mess of our life crammed into a storage unit.  But in the midst of the chaos, there is total peace… a peace I haven’t experienced in quite awhile, a knowing deep that all is well and all will be well. 

But there is a happy anxiousness to it all, also.  Relevant is upon us, only 24 days left (think I should buy my plane ticket?) and lots of excitement at hosting a Southern Oregon (in)RL meetup this April.  We’re touring houses and searching Craigslist ads like wild people, trying to find home smack dab in the middle of what is all home, this big beautiful valley where our hearts have lived for a decade or more, now, even when our bodies were absent from this place.

We miss our boys and our dear friends in Texas, miss them so bad it leaves an empty space in us, but we are right where we should be now, and that feels like the best kind of gift from the God who is gracious enough to send us home.

Counting today, still numberless, but counting all the same…

-          Getting to Oregon in time for Fall, my favorite season of them all

-          Hopeful job interviews   

-          Stolen glimpses at rivers and lakes, each and every day, here

-          Confetti birthday cake

-          A weekend with mom

-          Kids starting back tomorrow in a familiar school, among friends

-          Unexpected blessings

-          Options galore

-          Ease of travel, no break-downs or crises, even across 5 days and 2500 miles

-          October, in general

-     Being home.

Five Minute Friday: On Going and Growing

I miss you around here.  Sorry I've been a bit absent, lately.

The days have been frantic in a mess of boxes, last minute to-do’s, and hugs and tears and the like.  I’m carving out a quick five minutes, though, for my favorite five-minutes of the week…the ones where I pour my heart out without concern for perfection and invite you to join us.  Linking up with the Gypsy Mama.

Today’s topic, as usual, is quite timely.  It’s about growing.

GO

This has been a year of growing.  Stretching, twisting, bending over backwards to stretch my influence just a teensy bit more… reaching higher that I might internalize every single second of this journey.

I’m a tall girl, and wrought with decades of midnight aching, legs being stretched internally with agony.  I know that the act of growing produces pain.

And, that pain produces growing.

I’ve burnt that candle at both ends around here… hurt to learn, learn to grow, learn to heal, hurt to heal, heal to learn, grow to learn.  And I’m ever amazed by just what the Lord is up to in the midst of all this, the majestic sort of unknown that requires such faith to stand in the midst of the pain it takes to grow.

Today for some and in previous days for others, I have said goodbye to the boys we’ve cared for here… the boys not of my body but of my heart… the boys that have called me Mom anyway, and meant it… the boys that don’t have to love us, but do and they love better than I’ll ever know how.  Pain is at its tipping point, today.  Would you offer up a prayer for us, if you think of it?  A prayer for them, for their too-often-hurt-already hearts that shouldn’t have to bear another leaver?  And for me, for the lump in my throat and the shards in my heart as we take one more step, out of one kind of pain and into another, for the sake of growing.  For the anguish Husband and I will put ourselves through for being more ‘leavers’ to come and go from this place?  For transparent love, for traveling mercies, for healed hearts, and mostly, for grace.

STOP

Thank you friends.  I’ll be back around this place again soon.  We’re jaunting all through the desert landscape of this country through the next week, but my fingers will find their way back to this keyboard once the evergreens outnumber the cactuses.

‘Til then…

(LINK FIXED) - We Are What We Eat: The Sustenance of Words

As soon as I was old enough to talk, and though he was never a believer, Dad read me Bible stories as literature.  Not the kid-ified ones about Noah’s Ark and Jonah but ones out of Revelation, ones about locusts that looked like horses and fiery dragons, and a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns.

I thought Christians must be crazy...

(Read the rest over here -- honored to be posting at BibleDude.net today. )

(Note:  My apologies if you tried to access this link and it didn't work or you received a warning message.  There were some technical difficulties at hand yesterday.  The trouble has been fixed now.  Thanks for grace!)

Get {Real}.

For 5 Minute Friday, I'm gonna get {real} on ya, with The Gypsy Mama and lots of others today. 

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In real life, women are {real}.

We cry.  We wrinkle up our face and laugh open-mouthed with crooked teeth.  We smooth our hair and rub our fingers together, sometimes, in awareness of our {real} struggles and {real} fears and {real} imperfection.  But when we’re in the right company… we are free to be us.

Messy.

Loud.

Insecure.

Beautiful.

Quiet.

Imperfect.

Amazing.

Real.

And yet, too many of us spend too much time out of the company of other {real} women.  Too many of us let the busy-ness of daily living crowd the place we have for fellowship, mentoring, laughter, and good company.

This is why I love {in}courage.  This is a {real} flesh and blood place… even if it’s virtual.

But this April, {in}courage will transcend virtual-life for {real}life.  And I can’t wait.

True to the way {in}courage operates, they’re making it easy for you to be a part of it, too.  No plane tickets.  No savings jars.  No worries about travel to far away locales.

Because {in}courage {in} real life is coming straight to you.

Check it out:

Words and Cardboard Boxes

You might already know, but we’re moving.

Far.

Texas to Oregon.

                    Awesome prints like the one above, found here.

Two-thousand one-hundred thirty-eight point six seven miles, give or take.  

And this means piles of cardboard boxes and packing paper and clear plastic tape as far as the eyes can see.  It means busying myself in serious ways to avoid ruminating on the heartbreak at the end of this – which, of course, is always only just another beginning.  It means more time-outs with good friends and late night talks with stubborn teenagers and more heart-sharing from my mouth than from my fingertips, lately.

This is strange for me.

I’m not good with words.

Which is probably a contrary sort of thing for a writerish-type-person to say, but it’s the truth, and I have to wonder if I’m in good company. 

When I speak, in conversation, words fail me.  And I’m reminded of the quote: 

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.  ~Anaïs Nin”

And while Ms. Nin may not have had this in mind – I’m aware that, so often, I can pour my heart out to a blank page and post it into cyberspace with enthusiasm…

(and, by the way, I learned in my morning devotional today:                                  enthusiasm = en theos = “full of God”.
                                                                                                Love it.)

…but as I was saying… I can post my heart online for the world to see, but sometimes, I’m paralyzed by the fear of opening my lips, of pressing teeth to tongue and the power of voice saying, out loud, “Let me pray with you” or “You’re really special to me”, or even…“that really hurt.”  And I sometimes wish I could press the pause button on life and take to my keyboard for awhile, to throw all my words out there on the page, rearrange them and process all my internal reactions and copy and paste and backspace to my heart’s content.  

So often, I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling or doing at all in this life until I write it down, rearrange it, tweak and edit a bit, and click the ‘save’ button.  

And maybe this is what creativity is for, in the end.  Maybe God gives us this method to make tangible the scattered pieces of our hearts, to cut and copy and paste, paint and scratch into masterpiece, beautify and hit the save button -- commit to memory -- the creative reflection...the wellspring of our hearts mirroring the very Creator.

So I work on words… the wrong ones that often fall from my lips and those that have such a hard time coming.  The ones that uplift and the ones that spear the hearer.  The ones spoken, with the same power as the ones written.  And all the while I dance around the blank page with its black font and thank the God who gave us creativity (and roads that lead us home). 

Grateful, with Ann today (whoops, the holiday de-railed me on this one.  Totally thought it was Monday.  Counting Gifts on Tuesday, today):

-          Purging belongings, simplifying our lives

-          Much laughter over dinner with our boys last night

-          Enamelware dishes, even if I don’t have any

-          Spontaneous rain dumps

-          So much overwhelming peace, even in the vastness of the unknown

-          This giveaway, the chance for someone’s whole life to be blown wide open by God and words, and by God’s words

-          Options

-          Surprising generosity

-          Falling into new ways of be the gift, as Ann writes about