Dad

Twelve years.

Sometimes, remembering looks like celebrating.

Today, it looked like sharing apple fritters with my children. I hope they always associate apple fritters with their Grandpa Alvin.

The master called the woman to himself.
'Child, please take this basket to the river, and return it to me.'
The woman ran to the river and dipped the woven basket into it, but when she returned to the master, it was empty, for the water had seeped through the small holes in the weave.
'I am so sorry! Please, I will go again to fill my basket with water.'
So the woman ran again to the river, dipped the basket in, and returned with an empty basket.

Over and over, this woman ran to the river and became broken-hearted as the basket was always empty on her return.

'Child, what did the basket look like when I gave it to you?'
'It was dirty.'
'And now?'

The woman gasped.
'It is clean.'

I heard a story a bit like this from a pulpit years ago, and I'm living the truth of it now. Again and again and again, I try to retain

coherent thought
self-discipline
a thriving prayer life

and again and again and again, I fail. I come back empty. My intentions are so good, but the holes in my mind, in my heart, in my soul just seem like a gaping drain.

And yet.

And yet, I am cleansed in the cycles. In my weekly returns to the Table, taking the broken Bread and the poured Wine, I am cleansed. In the daily cycles of sleep, I am afforded a bit more refreshment and strength. The seasons turn, the rhythms repeat. I am dust, lavished with mercy.

* * *

I used to think that life was pretty linear. A leads to B leads to C. Study well, get good grades: check. Meet nice man, get married, have babies: check. Learn the repertoire, make connections, make great music: check. Learn basics of the faith, grow in faith, stop making stupid mistakes .... darn.

My Sunshine

why I haven't been blogging much

Guys, I feel like I'm starting to come out of the brain fog. Really! At least in this moment, I am feeling as though there might be more to me than momhood (though momhood is pretty amazing and totally consuming most of the time). I've been inspired by a number of shockingly wonderful things recently, and I just want to live fully, spending it all. Maybe it's just because I'm on my second cup of coffee and the sun is shining today, but I'm remembering that I need to be more than a dishcloth.

Gifts for Dust

My mom gives gifts as smoke rises upwards. Some days I would come home from school to find a new shirt lying out on my bed or a stack of 'new' 50-cent thrift store pants for me to sort through. I remember when she handed me the first clue in a treasure hunt that lead to me to my very first set of eye shadow. Mom prepares for Christmas and birthdays months (and months and months) in advance. When I went away to university, I received far more care packages than anyone else I knew, and those bits of home meant the world to me, a prairie girl transplanted to the mountains and studying my bleary eyes out as I was testing my wings. And now that I am living in Seattle with her grandkids, her momentum has not waned. I mean, we even received a package to commemorate Canada Day, complete with Coffee Crisp bars (yes!) and pencils brandished with Canadian flags.

One card I received while in university contained a note pointing me towards Psalm 103, and it has been a favourite passage of mine ever since. I find immense comfort in the psalmist's painting of God's expansive power and grace, and in the shocking magnitude of my forgiveness.

I was reading this Psalm a few years ago, pregnant, weary and stretched beyond all reason, and my eyes fell on verse 14: "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

HAL.LE.LU.JAH. This has been such a consolation to me ever since, particularly in the smallness of these mothering-of-little-people years.

I am trying to be very intentional about being with my kids. I like them, and I just want to really walk with them, not simply point them towards a destination and tell them to go. But when I'm overtired, my physical body lacking some of the stabilizing abilities that my heart and mind depend on, being with the kids is emotionally exhausting. I ride all of their feelings right along side of them, vibrating in perfectly discordant harmony with their highs and lows. When all is peaceful and quiet, I am calm and grounded. When two or more are screaming, I easily become ... ahem ... slightly agitated.

'Tis bittersweet. I wouldn't trade it, and I won't regret it, but it's depleting. Hence the comfort of knowing that He knows I'm dust. When I can't connect two coherent thoughts, He knows. When I can't muster the energy to form even the simplest of prayers, I can just be. As a friend reminded me, we are more than minds; we are spirits too, and intimate friends can be together without words. What a friend we have in Jesus.

A stranger, a woman who is a generation ahead of me in the journey, wrote this to a woman who is very much in the same stage as me in the journey:

He can cope with your less than adequate communion with Him because He's the One who sees the heart, not the performance. Trust me, I battled the same thing years (and years and years) ago when I was at your stage of mummage... and now at grandma stage, I've found that He and I are still together and I love Him even more now... and I get more time to read my Bible... hang in there... this too will pass.

What a gift.

Theodore

Theodore: divine gift
Alvin (my dad's name): friend

You are here, and you are perfect. Two weeks, and our worlds are completely upside down while being completely right and overflowing. You did not emerge to breathe the free air when expected, or as expected, and your labour was not what I expected (silly me, to think I knew what labour would look like, or to think that by the fourth time around I could have some control over it). You were born at home, and we know that the Lord was good to us.

Your dad has been taking incredible care of all of us, of me, so I can take care of you. And you are thriving. These are days of bleary eyes and unfinished sentences, of tears and quiet. There are moments when I am rubbed raw and figuring out how to meet 17 simultaneous needs (melt downs), and there are moments of deep peace and fierce gratitude.

I love you, little man. I am so glad to be your mommy.

Pea soup, a double-edged sword, and reflection

The double-edged sword of pregnancy, particularly when full term, is this: brain fog + increased hormones.

On the spectrum that places thinkers and feelers on opposite ends, I naturally lean towards the thinkers side. But pregnancy has robbed me of my ally. My brain is drowning in a pea soup fog; clear, coherent thought is a distant memory. I don't have my reliable filter to help me sift through my normal emotions, let alone the increased emotions that are raging through me. I wish they were pleasant emotions of elation and gratitude, but the thing I feel the most is agitation. I have constant agitation bubbling right below the surface, and I have three children whom, I swear, are thriving on pushing my buttons right now. I would be such a nice person if no one would test my character.

And that's the thing: my character is being constantly tested, and I don't like what I see. Enter: Guilt.

But I also know that failures bring humility. My failures are throwing me to my knees, and I can not deny my need for grace. I am not a nice enough person to be a parent. I do not have enough patience or creative energy. When I yell at my kids before breakfast (because they're fighting, screaming, and attempting to rip a chunk of flesh from a brother's shoulder with ferocious teeth as the only tool of torture), I can not deny our fallen nature. It is a fact, and it is ugly.

So as brain fog combines with the constant confronting of my inner junk and the constant testing of my character, I have not been drawn to blog. But I gained a little courage when I read this:

Writing is not about creating tidy paragraphs that sound lovely or choosing the 'right' words. It's just about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. - Glennon Melton

And I gained a little more courage when I read this:

...trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability - and that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God... - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I am so impatient for God's refining work in me to be done, but it is, in fact, a slow work. I am not an easy subject for Him to work upon, yet the failures and instabilities along the way enlarge me, just as the (unavoidable) practice of waiting for this child to emerge enlarges me. The waiting, the process, enlarge us, making us more than we were before.

And while my own frailty is a very real and constant presence, so is beauty.

There is still much laughter filling our days, and there are nature walks in the evening when golden hair is backlit by the setting sun and we delight in finding a caterpillar and a perfect reflection in a pond.

So this is what my life looks like right now. I am noticing it; I am showing up; I am owning it and begging Jesus for mercy. I am eager to hold this little one in my arms, and I am enlarged by the slow work of God.

***

A rare shot of the five (six!) of us

Stretching

It had been two weeks since many had seen me, so this morning in church I was on the receiving end of a lot of wide grins and "So when are you due again? How much longer?" queries. I guess Baby and I grew.

This is my fourth pregnancy, and I've outgrown some of the pre-natal wide-eyed wonders and novelty. I'm not in the posting-baby-bump-profile-pictures-every-month stage (I don't think I even did that with my first). I'm excited to meet this new little person, to find out who s/he is and wonder at how we ever felt complete without this new life in our lives. I anticipate the person who is coming; I'm not gaga over the pregnancy.

Don't get me wrong: it has been a healthy pregnancy, and I think I've been the most energetic and least uncomfortable this time around (nothing short of miraculous). I love feeling the kicks and stretches, and I rejoice and grin at each one. And really, as far as pregnant women go, I'm pretty cute. But I also feel the real, physical strain, the toll of being a vessel of another's life. It's just not glamourous. I won't go into details, but believe me when I say that it's just.not.glamourous.

I don't know her, but I read some breathtaking words by Jordyn Osburn the other day that I knew I wanted to steal share.

Maybe some of our scars won’t follow us into resurrection, I don’t know. But Jesus had scars on his resurrected body. On his hands, on his feet, on his sides. Scars that proved that he lived, and that he loved. Scars that remind me of who he is and how he loves. He let Thomas touch them. Maybe someday he’ll let me touch them.  

Is it possible that the beautiful, spotless bride of Christ looks like a body that has lived? A body with wrinkles and scars and calluses? A body that has loved beyond herself in a way that stopped caring about what she thought was perfection and fixed her gaze on the one and only Perfect One? A body even willing to groan and bleed for love the way her Maker and Savior did? I think it’s possible. I think I want to be that kind of bride.  - Jordyn Osburn

Here are tangible, beautiful ways I've been stretched.