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

Ready. Set. Go.

Sometimes when God moves, He does it slowly.  And we frantic people run around anxiously, buzzing here and there, spitting out hasty prayers and all the while saying hurryuphurryuphurryuphurryuphurryupGodpleasewon’tyouhurryup?!

And sometimes, even after we’ve lingered awhile in that fretful pace of waiting, He moves with such gusto and solidarity that we’re about knocked clean over while we sit there with our jaws hanging open, silenced in awe at the way love and power and grace and wisdom can manifest in tangible reminders that God is who He says He is.

Last time I posted here, I said I was in a waiting place.

I had been there awhile, and I was getting restless.

And boy… was I bowled over this week when He swept me right out of that waiting place and into a moving place, a go ahead place, a tie-on-your-tennis-shoes-and-let’s-do-this-thing place.  And I struggled to get in gear because I’d sat on my laurels awhile already and stuttered and stumbled a bit when my feet hit the pavement.  My legs are a little wobbly yet, proverbially speaking.  

This is also a goodbye place, and it will be crushingly hard.  And it will be good.

For awhile now, my identity has been a little wrapped up in my one-word job description.  I am a houseparent.  I do residential child care for abused and neglected teenagers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and I wear a fat bracelet to cover over the other one-word identity that is branded across my wrist…the word in black under-skin ink, the reminder, directive, and command to my heart and hands:  “write”.  

I wear the bracelet because covering tattoos is a dress code policy and I wear the bracelet because covering and quieting my fervor for writing is the way I’ve managed to fill my time with anything else.

It is scary to call yourself a writer, isn’t it? 

This will be my last month as a housemom.  This will also be my last month as a Texan.  Come October, I’ll be back in Oregon – back in the land of pine trees and evergreens, lakes and rivers and cold northwestern air, and I will drink apple cider and wear a scarf again this fall while the leaves change before my eyes and the icy wintering air sucks the breath right out of my body. 

God willing.

And the life that is before me now will have less sweet tea and less southern phraseology and less laundry and (much) less high school football and hopefully less tears, but more of our families and more of the church I love and more camping and more laughing and maybe a glass of wine every now and then.  And more writing.  Much more writing.

I happened to stumble across this yesterday, and let my heart dance a bit with possibility while my stomach flip-flopped in all the possibility already before me on this new journey.  The High Calling is giving away one spot to the Laity Lodge Writer’s Retreat this fall.  I have been drooling unceremoniously over the creative non-fiction workshop by Gregory Wolfe for weeks already, but just haven't been able to make the dollars materialize so I could attend the retreat.  Laity Lodge happens to be a short drive from here, in my favorite part of Texas, and the retreat also happens to be during the last weekend I’ll live in this state.  It falls smack-dab on the days I’ll make my maybe-only-mental transition from Fumbling Southern Housemom to Fumbling Northwestern Writer, and… well… I really can’t imagine a better way to end my Texas journey to begin another one.  Consider me, High Calling, would you?  Would it help if I begged?  

And so, while I wait for the retreat winner to be announced and I wait for the pieces of my new stage of life to come together, and I pack up a house while thirteen people still live in it, I’ll have my hands full a bit these next few weeks.  Thanks in advance, readers and friends, for your grace if my presence around this place is a little spotty over the next few weeks.  Thank you, too, if you should happen to offer up a prayer on behalf of my family, especially the children of my body and the children of my heart as we all make a big transition this October, with many tears and many hopes and many sweet memories of the time we've had in this place.  May God be glorified, despite the fumbling.  

Congrats, Jessica!

CONGRATULATIONS, JESSICA!

You won the My Memories Suite Giveaway! 

For everyone that didn't win (and even those of you that didn't get around to entering), My Memories Suite is still giving ALL Whimsy Smitten readers a $10 discount off the purchase of the software AND a $10 coupon for the MyMemories.com store.  What a deal, right?  Just visit www.mymemories.com and enter coupon code: STMMMS75704 for your discount.

Light in a Waiting Place

I’m in a waiting place.

Contentment in the waiting is the least strongest of my virtues.  Or, should I say, a virtue that I don’t really have at all.

I am eternally wrought with impatience.  I am restless.  I am ever-in-a-hurry for changing landscapes and new news.

I usually hate that about myself, but… there it is. 

I got up early this morning, for no other reason than the bed was too stiff and my back was too sore and the ticking clock on the nightstand was digging into my brain until I could take no more.  My feet shuffled to the kitchen and I grabbed coffee and listened to a little silence and sat in the living room, where my big windows let in all the light.

I leave my blinds open all. the. time.  And not just open like the slats are horizontal, but open like the cord is pulled down to the floor and every bit of window is exposed to the outside world.

This drives my husband bonkers (Do you want the whole world to see in here?!), but I can’t help it. 

I just need me some light up in here.  As much of it as I can get, really. 

I want sunlight to spill across the teal carpet that I hate and bounce off the tarnished brass corners on the ugly coffee table.  I want the warm yellow light to flood across the already-yellow linoleum, cracks glinting in exposure, and all our window streaks revealed. I want to be reminded, in the dark and blah of this home that’s not my own, that we’re really just a part of the big, wide expanse beyond these walls.  I want the light to cover over all this darkness, to wash away the ugly and give life to the old and the dark and the hopeless.

The sunlight warms my face, even behind the glass, and everything looks fresh and new in the dawn.  I am grateful for the light that I can nearly taste today, the big bright deluge that pours inside and covers all.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. – John 1:4

Counting blessings, still numberless, for now:

-          Relief from a difficult situation

-          Memories of home

-          Polka dots

-          Lazy days off that still held plenty of productivity

-          The first day of school today – Connections Academy for us this year

-     A freshened up school room that's also a dining room, with pencils sharpened and books at the ready

-          Laugh lines around my husband’s eyes

-          My biggest baby boy, turning 12 tomorrow

-          Sweet anticipation of the unknown

-          Sixty-six days ‘til this

-          To-die-for Mexican food, for a mere couple-a bucks

-          Beauty, in unlikely places

Don't forget to visit my last post to enter the My Memories Suite giveaway!