Emancipation: A Surrender to God

You may be hearing news covering Juneteenth, yesterday’s celebration of Emancipation Day in 1865. And how about the 72 Philadelphia police officers placed on administrative duty over thousands of discriminatory social media posts? Some of them will lose their jobs. Thank you, Philly, for setting an example. And thanks to Pennsylvania's governor for designating June 19 as a state holiday. We've got so much more to do.

Two years ago I wrote a post rather apropos. In fact, it's the last one I wrote here. (It's a decree of its own sort. Please do read it.) Then this past weekend, I planned to share similar words to embolden men in particular to conduct themselves distinctively from the seeming throngs across our country. The words below come from Rule for a New Brother, first published in the UK in 1973. Let us dream, friends. That is, let’s prayerfully envision...

Human freedom is being threatened more than ever. Set yourself against everything that oppresses people. Free yourself from a world that seeks pleasures and possessions and bring others to share your freedom. Set yourself against everything that makes people slaves, politically, economically, socially. You have nothing to lose. No doubt you will have noticed that humanity’s bondage is to sin, to our short-sighted attachment to ourselves. Through your radical surrender to God you will be freed from this and become a deliverer of other people, a breath of fresh air for those you meet, a servant of all, a source of life, expectation and hope.

Read across the Scriptures and we find Jesus as the sign of Jubilee - the time of the Lord's favor, the day all of Nature is set free! He gives LIFE. As followers of his way, we will be his kind of deliverers! 

Now
In this earth
May the social, political, economic
Fathers and Mothers in our societies 

Begin again to collectively, palpably and
Humbly portray our call to FREEDOM.
We will see the great JUBILEE.

Amen.

Honoring Life

**This post was first written prior to the new year and feels more befitting now, as we remember the atrocities of the Holocaust, face the disservice and discriminatory courses being set under this new presidency, and continue to battle each other over who is really fighting for justice.

I've watched this from childhood and firsthand: honor without accountability distorts the truth. We all see it. Privilege that separates destroys us. Disgrace abounds among public figures. Life after "admired life" is cut short because the limelight burns too close. How many families of every sphere are destroyed by the abuse of power and addiction to esteem?

On Facebook today, I warned about treating our leaders like idols. I specified those in uniform because of the relativity to some of my own experiences. However, we must watch how we show respect to any leader, be they soldier, preacher, actor, teacher, politician. Whether highly visible or not, when someone is given the responsibility of a role, a title, a uniform, we must not place them on a pedestal.  Set them up on a ledge, we set them up for a fall.

These people are people. Like you, like me, with purpose and potential, they are still broken, messy, flawed, prideful people. By holding them too high, at arms length, we isolate them and leave them to their own defenses, distorting their place in the community. We dishonor them. Want to give what you believe is due them? Then, more than hollow recognition, give them your friendship. Work alongside them, to thank them, hear them, care for them, pray for them. Hold them accountable, but never out of reach. Follow, but never blindly.

Another distortion is disregard. Countless leaders (like the common person and the destitute) will never get recognition in pay or with publicity, but they're no less worthy of respect. There are those in our families, at our workplaces and on our streets whose existence we distort by our indifference. Enacting outright discrimination is a problem that goes unsaid. No, we must consider the disparity of when the only lives shown sincere regard are the ones in blue, the ones in the womb or the ones that look just like me or you. Call apathy its mother. Such an aberration ignites terror, war, genocide!

Be not a respecter of persons but respect life itself. Every life. Be mindful of yourself and open up. Fight every prejudice within. Stop drawing dividing lines with your words and attitudes. Every good cause can embolden the next. Mourn those who die alone, grieve the forgotten. Listen to the broken-hearted as well as the enraged. They're the same. Notice someone you have never noticed. I repeat, thank them, hear them, care for, support and befriend them as you do your leaders and those revered by the masses.

This kind of honor is the pedestal. In its proper place, it will serve as a foundation for all of society, all of humanity to be built on. Then, all that is living might have a chance to flourish.

Life is a gift that belongs to all. Honor it by honoring all.

Gifts from Grief

Last Friday, I spent all day decorating our house for Christmas.  Our tree had been up for a week and the kids' winter break was about to begin.  The prospect of sixteen days off sure made me merry and bright! And as I opened the boxes and bins of old decorations, they became fresh with meaning. I framed holiday cards given to us in past years and placed them around the house. Some of them represent new friendships that were painful to leave so soon. Other pieces hold memories with my family long ago yet felt different today. Pondering the gifts of the years filled me with joy.

Grief has also had its place, so I've pondered it. We won't be home (in NJ) for the holidays. That's only ever happened once, the year Owen was born. Even then, he and I flew home for a visit just weeks into the new year. Today, we have no idea when we might return.  to that place and a circles of circles of family and friends that are changing now without us. "Even when you're moving for positive reasons... moving is a major grief event," says Russell Friedman (Grief Recovery Institute). "Rather than avoiding the feelings of grief, lean into them... Grief is the way out of the pain."

Most of us on Earth are either grieving or living not far from grief. Some can't be home at the holidays, some are truly alone. Others grieve secretly while some are unaware that grief is the secret they hold. Sometimes it comes by utter devastation or by sudden loss. Other times it's simply a bi-product of the natural course of life. No matter, grief is painful. Whatever the circumstance, Friedman's definition will fit:     

 "the conflicting emotions caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior."

Not long after our August move, a friend of ours kindly reopened the door to permission when she said I should take all the time I need. Change takes time to navigate. Even really good change. We already enjoy so much about our life in Colorado that people are confused sometimes when I say I'm doing well. It doesn't mean I don't have grief to walk through, that many moments are not hard. I'm just not depressed about what I don't have, about the distance, or even about the grave financial struggle that's come with relocating.

Grief doesn't exist in an emotional vacuum apart from peace, beauty, love. Likewise, there's a joy that is only found once we've known loss. It's why I'm thankful for past seasons of grief, why we can celebrate even in the midst of sorrow. On December 23, 1862, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter of condolence to the daughter of an old friend, William McCullough, who'd just been killed in the war. Lincoln wanted to assure her even in the depths of anguish: "The memory of your dear father, instead of agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer, and holier sort than you have known before." We may never be the same after mourning, but we can become more.  

Perhaps through grief we find a friendship that stands the test of turmoil. Maybe after extensive sicknesses we experience profound health for the first time. A tragedy may restart our hearts with a fresh focus on what's really important. One season of grief may uncover a former loss we were never able to process till now. These are gifts we find even as our days bring loss.

Here we are at Christmas. This season enunciates the Greatest Gift ever to come from emptying and ultimate loss.  God himself would become a child and suffer all that man could, in order to make us whole. Wholly his. Rejected, despised, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief... Jesus the Son and Light of the World knows our pain personally and always offers more of himself in the dark places. A letting go can make room. 

Rainer Maria Rilke famously spoke, "Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final." Here is a poem of his, in the same vein.

LET THIS DARKNESS BE A BELL TOWER

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

You are here. You are alive.
You and I.
Let's keep going.

I'm back

I guess I'm back on Blogger with tales to tell in a whole new place. A literal one this time.

We moved to Colorado over the summer and now live in the one of the country's richest, "safest," cleanest places.  In Boulder County, the beauty alone evokes pleasure, strength and venture with every daybreak! The receptiveness from everyone we meet is wonderful and it frees us to be ourselves. It’s nearly too much to comprehend how many facets of opportunity this culture provides to enrich our lives.  This is a season for restoration and enlargement.

Intriguing, then, are the frequent dreams at night that I have of home in NJ. With all the celebration I'm taking in, I'm not longing to go back. They’re not leftover nightmares about troubled days, either. But they do cause heartache.  Sometimes the prostitutes appear, the homeless, the drug dealers, the imprisoned.  They’re all there, with our other neighbors and friends, going about their usual business like any other day in Millville.  And I’m there with them.

As major changes go, it's natural to miss what's familiar, and our neighborhood was the thing most palpable, dynamic and affecting to me.  It wasn’t relatives nearby, our church friends, the other places I frequented or my regular escapes into nature. Life was a struggle on our troubled street, but it was home.  And it’s where I loved and found Love.

I’m paying attention to these dreams and the feelings welling up, to the grief over how much tragedy occurs and how many lives are ever-stuck in emptiness, darkness and despair.  I’m considering how it all translates into life here and the now-distant relationship to Millville.  Yet I recognize the need to let things play out as they will, in their own timing, so to enjoy the gift of the present.

Years ago, Kenn gave me Mother Teresa’s A Simple Path.  I do prefer weightier books but decided to read it another time.  It’s straightforward, like the life of Teresa and her fellow missionaries: all sincere yet most unsophisticated.  Except for their love.  To simply love, with no questions asked (or strings attached) and no judgments made, this is the most profound way of life.  It is The Way.

Almost daily, I celebrate how our NJ days rooted us deeper on that Way.  Those times enlighten these, like a preface to a book. How will this story of Love go on?  Let's let the Artist do the unveiling.

Unfold the Tapestry.

One lovely second

the loveliest second

one second it was but the sound of the tock
without voices within or a whirring machine
or autos to plow the contiguous street
nor did the windswept tree take a chance
(but silently cast its silhouette dance)

one second more it'll come if i wait
for the train-blare of warning or cat whine for feed
another will come once school buses empty
traffic will slow as the children lie sleeping
devices go hushed and the mister tries dreaming

then the tock i will hear filling rooms as it may:
the loveliest second of noise in my day

Kenn left the house today with the littlest while the others were at school.  For just a moment, things were still, in the house and out.  Hearing the ticking of the clock seems a rarity in the middle of my days, so I celebrated with a poem.

It wasn't intended, but I haven't posted here in ten months.  I have no intentions of publishing more/less hereafter.  Goals like those can be helpful, but at times they just impede.  I do have a new website I'm working on, slowly.  If it ever goes public, I may not post here again.

There's something lovely in that, too.

New again

Last year was a big marker year for our family, and entering the new in 2014 brought such joy.  It was in the major transitions of 2013 that I got to feeling dizzy with LOTS of frustration and at least some fear mixed in.  We weren't just entering a new chapter, it felt like starting all over again.  This, despite the evidence that the changes were actually leading to a wonderful culmination of the last ten years.

I confess I still have days, every week it seems, where I just cannot see that evidence!

But back to the story... I was spilling to my Hub this struggle with all the newness, when he acknowledged so simply,

"It's hard to be in a new place."  

That's all I needed: the permission to say it is hard.  It is normal/acceptable/human/forgivable to struggle to believe and stay in the moment.  I wrote down my circling thoughts as a poem, including the fantastical things that happen in my head when the Now becomes uncomfortable.  Months later, I reformed it into the villanelle below.  It reads very specific to me.  I hope some of you can relate enough to find permission, and then be freed to face the disbelief.

New again is still the place
where I smile for the hope
but then run a moment later

to where it’s long been cold.
For I’d rather be there, then.
Not new again, displaced.

What if today is just mistake 
I let our yesterdays take me
running only moments later

to where I'm dizzy, unrequited,
mistaken over you, wishing
new then was still my place.

Then back again, though not far
off, I still find hope is hard and
cannot run in moment’s laughter.

I do mistake what is today
to mean our dreams are now erased,
that being new in another place
bodes us run alone hereafter.

I still believe

As our pastor taught last week from the scriptures on the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37), part of me wanted to jump up and cheer while another part ached, weary.  It was more than a year ago in the prayer room when the same verses were spoken over our community.  You shall live . . . Come O Breath . . .  know that I am Lord . . . But we've been bearing burdens of that hope much longer than a year (and baring all at times) to see what's dead here come back to life.
I still believe.

There's a young man from our town who was running from police for weeks.  He's been arraigned, accused of murder.  While he was missing I prayed ardently for him and wrote the poem/lyric below.  At some point in those petitions, my mind went to the disbelief of the sisters of Lazarus when Jesus had failed to save their brother from death.  To them, it was over.  To whom would it not be?  I imagine for some this murder case is a closed one as well.  GUILTY - no matter what the law says about maintaining innocence and not to mention the redemption and new life in which many of us claim to believe.

Jesus' reply to Mary and Martha was to share in their sorrow without leaving the loss as the final word.  He asked the question,

"Did I not tell you that if you believed

you would see the glory of God?"
(John 11:40)

And then he brought Lazarus back from death.  Mary and Martha showed disbelief but there came resurrection anyway!

It is belief in the Risen One, the Conqueror, that is my resolve.  It must be.  When nobody seems to get the Dream.  When everything around me looks a lost cause.  When I've seemed to have lost my own way in the valley.  I'll not let death have the last word.  I'm gonna tell stories of hope. 

May we see Your Glory.
 

On My Mind

Face in the news
Face on my mind
Face in my memory from days before

Of a kid on the run
Of a kid in my mind
A kid I remember who stayed next door

If you're to blame
Or whether you're blameless
Neither will tell the half of the story
The one about children still being brought up
to do nothing less and expect nothing more
Than carry on curses handed on down
in cruelty, dejection, futility, turmoil

Who will speak life
Who will keep hope
Which are the stories we choose to tell

If we breathe hope
If we speak life
We follow the call of Ezekiel

Awaken the stories of children in families
who want nothing less but expect what is more:
To break every curse and snuff out the cruelty
That all see in your face their own son or brother

Face in the news
Kid on the run
Blameless in every mind you become

Until it is time

forty each

one of them says

greeting the passerby like

he's known her before

he

just

slows

goes

while i pull

weeds and wonder not

about dirt and indiscretion

but how it is i know

yet stay

sometimes

the ones behind

the lattice weaved i must leave 
till they've grown

so
go

slow

then 

each is known

before reaching to be pulled
out of dirt and in discretion

Gardening one day last year, I overheard an exchange maybe fifty yards away between a female pedestrian and a driver.  Quickly I was conscious of its nature: the young woman and her friend were marketing.  Selling themselves.  For as long as we've lived in this dubbed-destitute place, there are still moments that stun.  The real world of the desperate is right here.  (It's everywhere, mind you.) The cruelest acts are lauded for amusement and the most innocent or vulnerable are handled with contempt.  I am thankful in these moments that I'm still disturbed.

Interrupted.  Stirred up.  Dismayed.

On another day on our old property, I decided - once and for all - to get at a menacing vine.  I started digging to reach the roots, pulling it foot after foot and yard lengths, only to see that the further I dug the thicker and deeper it grew.  Still, I worked: heaving, chafing hands, bent in affront.  I never did rid the root.  Somewhere in the fight I had the picture of a powerful, unseen enemy.  It symbolized perfectly certain things that we'd discerned in our midst at that time, and it has since served me repeatedly.  Whether on individual or universal scales, it's the systems of earth and sky that we battle against here.  Not people. 

Jesus used metaphors for teaching the truths of how this all holds together.  One parable depicts the kinds of soil that determine whether seeds take root and thrive and finally bring a bounty.  In another, there's a story of an enemy who's sown bad seed and the workers have asked to pull the resulting weeds.  The landowner replies, "No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.  Allow both to grow together until harvest."  Let them go.  Until it is time.

I think some weeds aren't weeds at all but life existing where it shouldn't be. 

Two weeks after the soliciting incident, I was tidying up the yard again and couldn't quite reach the saplings growing wildly under my porch.  Even though they're trees and I love trees, they're unsightly and destructive when they grow under there, behind the lattice.  I know now from experience that if I let them go, they'll grow long enough to be easily grasped and drawn out.  The metaphor returned to mind.  How often I wish I could just pluck others - neighbors, family, strangers - from the entangled messes they live in, in the dark.  I'd like to act quickly, forcefully, but my attempts to reach into those places in such a manner would and do prove futile.  (Not to mention the cuts and bruises that might ensue as when I try squeezing my arm through that lattice!)

I may feel disturbed.  I do get dismayed.  If I wait, though, wait on the Lord in supplication, I do get shaken up to hope.  I keep up with gardening, and I beckon with power in prayer for the day when seasons have proven to mature it all.  Many tomorrows may pass, but I pray that even these seeming weeds are found to be seeds that fell on good soil, longing in the end to be pulled from the dirt, from the dark.

-------------------------------------------------

And this is for
anyone feeling they're in the dark
wondering about the ground they're in.








 

Heed

When school was closed for MLK Day, we'd just been away without the kids for five days.  A nice winter's day inside was all we had planned.  Then a knock at the door.  More than a year had passed since a visit from LT, our old neighbor.  He wanted a ride into the next town and thought he'd try us.  He didn't need to get there fast, so he stayed for a while.  Over the next couple of hours, we ate together, drank tea and coffee, prayed, talked theology and played with the kids. 

I felt Grace move so freely that morning.  (Oh, when we let it do so!)  The kids were in and out of conversation and back and forth in play.  Cooking, clean-up and dishes just flowed along with the chatter and jokes and childhood stories.  Nothing out of place.  More than once in recent days had the bunch of us remarked how we'd missed LT.  He fit back in like we'd seen him just yesterday, like he's one of the family. 

I was bent down, getting some paper for A when she whispered to me in deep satisfaction, "I knew he was coming.  I thought he was coming, and he came."  I understood completely.  It happens to me and has for as long as I remember.  With joy, I whispered back something about connection, about the Spirit knowing her heart and speaking to her inside.  She smiled wide.

Not much later, LT was talking when I re-entered the kitchen.  He was saying that he'd started out that morning prepared to scrounge up change along the train tracks and out of shopping carts as he's always done.  "Something told me to stop," he noted his uncertainty.  He confessed he kept on course, ignoring it, but it kept on until pointing him to us.  He didn't want to come, not to ask for help.  But he couldn't shake it.  "I don't know what it was..." he wondered but spoke with jittery gladness for heeding.

You bet I let him know about A's encounter!  Plus I shared a thought on the Voice inside him, too.  I've no doubt both of them sensed that pull at precisely the same time that morning.  What untold prayers were answered that day, I can and do imagine.

Something new

The house quiets because the children are in bed.  I consider going myself, as I get dreamy watching the shadows of snowflakes bounce and fly on the wall.  One seemed to come descend inside, and then they all fall faster and fatter, and distorted through window glass they look more like a fifty Nerf gun attack. 

Every year when we get our first real snow, to me it's like the first time all over again.  Something new.  Something saved, too, because it's all enveloped in white.  That's especially the feeling when it comes on days like today, as I recover from the previous evening's too many loads of laundry and floors to wash in too many rooms after the littlest one puked everywhere.

It's like the new door on the house on our block.  Currently, empty apartments and boarded up homes number more than those that are not.  One house has been under major renovations on the inside but you cannot tell from first glance.  You couldn't until today.  I cannot believe the difference a door can make.  It isn't my taste, but it also isn't quite the piece of junk landlords will slap on only when it's absolutely imperative for their own sake that a door be replaced.  Is something new really happening?

Though I'm always dreaming about what's to come, no matter the time of year, I'm also no stranger to despair.  I need pictures like the snow cover to mirror my heavy prayers and then quiet me with hope.  I know the snow will melt away, and not before it's soppy and sullied!  Winter only lasts so long, and even spring has rain.  Still, I ache for a sweeping in to cover, cover.  Recover.  Whiten, lighten, hush. 

And make new.

Taking stock

Today the world ponders the life and passing of Nelson Mandela.  And this holiday season as a whole can bend one toward reflection.  As well as burden.  In my life, it's been November where I've taken special notice since it holds for me powerful firsts and lasts, deaths and births, redemptions and travails.  Yet there's no wonder, with winter on its way (at least in our hemisphere), that anyone would take this time to take stock, store up.

I was remembering our car wreck of 1995 when I started this poem last month, already thinking on the mysteries of dying and living, when I learned of another unexpected death.  A dear soul left this world at the age of 38.  Just as his impact and that of Mandela do not end here, today, this poem could conceivably keep on going, no matter the number of Novembers I have to come. . .



Not very often now it'll flash in my brain I could have died that night but I was carried through
the force through dusk through the trauma through to dawn and I have not tried to count
the dawns I have been carried into since since I don't think it's a debt I could carry

Why am I given what others are not or do I not have what's theirs and is it better than life life
is so strange I said when she told me of some betrayal - or payback - maybe order made of
something and I beg again if I might see into what seems disorder but then catch myself

Are they really caught up into immunity, purity, ceasing of insanity insanity that's knowing
they are in fact more sane than this whole damned existence of dawns and dusks and force
is it that will carry them through trauma to something better than any could calculate

November you've had such darkness I have very often thought was dispelling through what's
been given me since that night but today you are carrying a richness of neither dark nor light
alone but of both and all all things made vivid, palpable, if only in flash, invigorated dusk

In my cup

In My Cup

Earl Grey and later ginger breakfast

but neither was first choice

I only think I have to drink my habit
because it's habit to think it

So I told myself: you'll have the tea

and poured it in a cup of no import

Except my breaking from a norm might be
important as making coffee essential to my morn

Then I let myself think on more
than drink: on death and life because of death

and when it will touch me closer with time
or even too close regardless of time 

How death does not come and go

it's all around and through and
how we might never choose to free
death if it was ours to choose

So I think to myself: I'll make the choosing
into habit when the cup is mine to fill
and I'll choose to drink what's in the cup
when the filling can't be mine

--------------------

I wrote this poem a week ago, when our local community had seen two tragic car accidents in a matter of days.  Dying was on my mind, as well as what we do with our freedom, even in the mundane.  My uncle had also been admitted to the hospital two days before and then lost his fight with cancer the following day.  Three others have died in accidents since.

Noah, me and 40

Reaching this age used to be embarrassing.  At least that's how adults seemed to celebrate turning forty.  I'd like to think I witnessed in them some kind of maturing into humility.  It felt more like fatalism.  Be sure, I've got the wrinkles and grays and "such" but those changes chisel away at pride in a different way.  They don't usually leave one grateful or in wonder.

One way I've celebrated reaching forty is recognizing it's come at this other juncture in my life - during a sabbatical and transition in work.  I get to enjoy all the changes, all together.  No sarcasm.  In this time of rest, I get to remember how truly abundant my life has been, and becoming forty becomes an honor.  I'm also left deeply grateful when I remember I cannot give this life nor take it away. . . .

Which brings me to Noah.  And wonder.  God decides he'll do away with an overwhelming majority of his own creation.  And Noah?  He gets to ride out the catastrophe in a boat.  Why? He walked with God. Go back about 500 years, when Noah is given his name, which means he will comfort.  Sure enough, he was found to be a comfort: to the grieving heart of God.

Can we imagine it? The One who can and did release all the waters of existence to destroy mankind: could he have found rest in one man? The waters recede, life starts new.  God finds pleasure in Noah once more and decides to make a covenant with all people, for all time, declaring:

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

 

It's as though God himself found a new reverence for life.

This poem could be about life, about the ark and flood, or any time, any man.  It's also about me and my forty.

forty days 

forty nights
forty years 

forty gifts

one today
for every day
forever rain pouring down

pouring out pouring in 

from the depths bursting forth opened gates 

flooding up to the heights lifted high

on we walk with our God

favor found above the ground

Firestarters

There's fire in us all.  How and when do we let it burn?

I began to write about my daughter's own in my last post. It's more often hers that stirs up the strongest response in me.  Perhaps it's the depth to which I relate to it, being myself a daughter, a sister... a female.

Naturally, we parents are quick to extinguish fires.  It feels safer.  We seem to have control by the looks of it, but our fear-filled force may very well leave a barren land after the flame's stamped out. Or it turns the fire into fury. Be it a slow, steady burn, one day it just blows and consumes anything in its path.  By forcing our way we only damage what God intended for beautiful purpose. 

I have a picture of backburning. It's a calculated method and likely implemented this week to help rescue Australia from dozens of bushfires burning there. Using any natural or man-made gaps in vegetation such as a river or road, fires ignited purposefully at such "firebreaks" will run back toward the wildfire and consume any potential fuel threatening to increase that fire's power. A positive force is applied.

What if we parents start little fires?  Clearly,  not the kind that would mean "exasperating" our children.  What about starting fires along the pure and good bounds of God's ways?  Our kids' passions that are specifically turning toward the dangerous might stay confined and find no more to consume. Instead, we direct their steps in order to usher in God's holy design for them by accompanying the work he's already begun. We're fanning the flames he ignited in the first.  As servants chosen for this purpose, we act in humility. And we must pray.

I have friends who began an online community centered around a short-term, concentrated prayer effort for their own kids.  It has stirred up my desire to pray more consistently to this end: to keep discovering and subsequently celebrating the passions in my kids in ways that won't bring hindrance but will fuel what our Father intended for Glory. And as I write, I am reminded that prayer brings the Fire that consumes the offering and fills the place with Glory! (See 2 Chronicles! I may have to pick that up in another post....)

I'll share a sort of backburning I've seen bring good things to my home. Kids desire boundaries. In fact, when they act out of control, it may be their way of crying out to understand the boundaries we've created or why we've neglected to set others. When my firstborn was an older infant, he'd fight diaper changes because it interrupted his play.  That was expected.  He'd get quite mad, though, and that seemed out of character to me.  He was so determined and strong that I'd physically struggle to hold him in place. The more force I used, mainly to avoid a nasty mess, the more power he seemed to gain. I guess it became a battle I was willing to fight, because it kept on until one day I smacked his thigh in the middle of an episode. Did he cry and submit and look longingly for an embrace of reassurance? Oh, no, he hit me back - with the fire burning hot.

That was that. It all came back to me - but not all at once - how gentleness covers mistakes and turns away wrath. A firebreak. I started to practice lowering my voice and upping the patience when my son raised his voice along with his temper. The response was amazing.  In the months to follow and years since, we've learned that our boy is full of his own fire - for what is just.  He's particularly sensitive to aggression, such as pushiness in people or unrest in his surroundings.  My choice to show him kindness in the midst of his own resistance toward me would snuff out the flames of hostility nine times out of ten.  It still does, and he's twelve.

Yesterday, I approached our daughter the same. Her older brothers and I have been lying around the house with the flu this week. Not a party, but she seems to think it so. She woke, insisting she wasn't going to school because she was too tired.  I'll use some force at times to get her going, usually coupled with silliness that eventually turns her mood around.  I didn't have strength for that yesterday, so I picked her up and held her in my lap.  I simply acknowledged her cry.  After five minutes of cuddles, she was chatting and pleased to get on with her day, that wildfire of innocent delight flickering inside and out!

Life as a fledgling

My four-year-old decided to mimic my journal writing (in my journal).  It was cute, until I told her she had to stop to get ready for school and she threw a fit.  Her desire to be grown up is sometimes so endearing but other times it's maddening.  I have lost count of the moments she's insisted she could do something without help and has hurt herself trying.  I'm glad I am there to pick her up again.

I've realized this is my story, even as an adult.  Now and then, I'll wander just far enough by myself and start to get this idea that I've gained enough insight, strength in the wings, that now I'm ready to fly.  Solo. To handle it all alone and suddenly soar.  Never to return?

I love the book, Are You My Mother?.  That baby bird is  pretty cute. He's determined to find his mother.  I will! he says. I WILL!  He jumps (and falls) out of the tree, wanders among strangers, gets a little confused, and doesn't find his mother.  Something scary swoops in and that scary thing takes him home.  His mother returns and the baby bird thinks he's the one who's found her.  How endearing.  She humors him.  Can beaks smirk? They do in children's stories because I can hear her thoughts, Mm hmm, you sure are smart, little one! You've figured it out all by yourself. Look how far you've come!

In actuality, the bird still hasn't learned to fly.  He's a fledgling.  He may be strong enough to try to fly, even leave the nest for a bit, but his mother's job is not done.

It usually takes something of the scary sort to help me find my way home again.  To remember, even if I know how to fly, that the soaring only comes in surrender.  I yield again to the reality that I can't do it alone, and flying with wings like the eagle only happens when I trust the Wind alone.

No matter how far I have come, I need to let the Wind carry me... and lift me again when I jump and fall. 

Spirit, teach me how to really fly.  Teach me long. 



*Second photo image taken from illustration by P. D. Eastman ©1960

A can of beans

Oh, summer... You and your beach days and swimming pools and bronzed skin and getaways.  You have barbecues and church camps and lightning bugs and late nights, lazy chillin' on a porch.  Nice is the break from the schooling pace and I welcome the shift that work takes.

But oh, summer... When your heat can mean a very dry land, why cast that same spell in our pocket each year?

Kenn's been our food shopper since summer came.  I take care of the menus and grocery lists and have been extra frugal and simple in planning, knowing our income is stretched very lean again. (Or is it "still"?) This week, I picked a recipe for an easy sweet and sour chicken that called for one can of green beans. I can do better than that, I thought. We've got 'em growing fresh in our backyard... but the plants have barely yielded two servings a week... maybe it'd be wise to put a can on the shopping list.  To run after it at last minute would be a bother, not to mention wasteful... 

I left it off the list anyway. It'll work out, I concluded. And I handed the post-it to Kenn. (I wonder, do you find that attitude a little too easygoing? I know we're talking beans, but maybe you think it's careless? Reckless, to leave things hanging so?)

Today, on the day that ends up being the best to make that sweet and sour chicken, guess what I found in our little garden:

 

Our biggest yield yet.
More than a can of beans. Or a hill, for that matter.

I'm worth
more than a can of beans.
Kenn and the kids are worth
more than a can of beans.
When God says he'll provide, he will.
And trusting him, I get so much more than my pocket can hold.

Crying

It goes without saying, I've not blogged in some time.  I have written poems because they just come when they like, if I let them.  When today was proving quite difficult, I recalled a poem that I wrote last May when I was feeling hurt and vulnerable and cried floods. Confession: this day really looks no better from my present angle.  Nonetheless, I got a little gift again. In the rain.

bursting cloud

pouring out

what heart

would dare 

to spill if voices didn't

say the fault was mine

every drop of rain

tells truth from lies

wound seen

hole filled

showers ease

ache relieved

for finding ally

in the sky

~ c. l. atkinson

i have always liked roller coasters

we held a third day of prayer at our community college last month.  like the previous spring and fall, we set up a tent in the middle of campus and invited anyone who desired to join in the 12 hours of nonstop prayer.  to see our communities turned upside down by the love of Jesus, we know it'll start with our praying.  so we gather people to seek the Father's heart.

this journey in prayer has been surprising, like our fourth child coming.  at first it seemed the sound rhythm of bed rest had continued after his arrival, especially since my recovery took longer than expected.  however, the demands of a newborn (in an already full house) drained away any sense of rest.  most days i felt over-stretched, incapable.  i had hoped for a steady, straightforward climb toward wholeness and "normalcy" but a roller coaster ride describes it better.  he's four months old now and it's still up, down, and all around.

like me and prayer.

weeks back, God showed me how i forget prayer in the times when desperation nags and haunts and leeches.  somehow i forget why i pray and to Whom i call.  when i reach helpless or hopeless, i have quit prayer because there's a crooked belief that if i'm not "enough" my petitions won't be received.  i think i should be stronger.  i'm ashamed when i get ugly.  i compare myself to other moms or the mom i was before.  i believe i must first brush myself off, correct my attitude or remember the bright side, and i miss my Father's heart.  i believe my composure will grant me acceptance in his presence and he just might answer, even rescue.  

then i read Spurgeon's words, depicting a different posture and making me remember:

"oftentimes a poor broken-hearted one bends his knee, but can only utter his wailing in the language of sighs and tears; yet that groan has made all the harps of heaven thrill with music; that tear has been caught by God and treasured... think not that your prayer, however weak or trembling, will be unregarded."

that day, the day i read how "God not only hears prayer but also loves to hear it," i began again to practice this kind.  a fever came on me, for no known reason.  for several hours in the evening i was home alone with all four kids and physically feeble.  emotionally so frail, i simply said, "i cannot do it." and he carried me through.  climbing into bed later on, i dreaded facing the overnight.  i only asked, "heal me," and before dawn my fever broke.

yet i have forgotten again.  i've struggled a lot before and through the holidays and i am back to dismissing this simple prayer.  another lesson i have failed to learn.  i recall sitting in our first prayer tent a year ago.  distracted and disappointed, my hopes for a stretch of quiet had been dashed.  not as i planned, i had my toddler with me and she needed my attention and had her own plans.  i remember tasting the irony.  even then, God was showing me my ignorance, how i limit prayer and limit him and me.  he had started me on a new journey of rest.  it's one that i'm still on, a ride that hasn't halted, where he's teaching me to just and always be with him and to know how much he longs for me.

i don't know whether yours is like a roller coaster, but this is one ride i pray won't stop.  even if it's up, down, or all around.  i want to let him gather me toward his heart and my prayers are where it starts.  would you ask with me, that i'd begin again and not forget so quickly?

will Grace suffice?

Hazaiah Kenneth

arrived on Thursday evening

August 18, 2011

weighing a surprising nine pounds and an ounce

measuring twenty-one inches long

God decided.  our family would grow this year.  God decided.  my pregnancy would bring new challenges, new blessings.  God decided.  i would carry this baby full term and he'd be healthy, the biggest yet.

God decided...

ultimately, Only God decides.  and that's the meaning of Hazaiah's name:  the Lord has seen and he decides.  also this: seeing the Lord and believing his decisions.  Hazaiah means to see what Sovereign God has done, to see what he is doing, and to trust it all.  the Good of it all.

this is what God keeps teaching and deeper and deeper goes our trust.  it's not because we're becoming greater and greater, only that he's decided to take us deeper.  into his Grace.  and by his Grace alone we are learning.  with every year we live, every child we're given, every endeavor he leads us into, we find there's more and more we've got to learn.  that's where Grace deepens, as deeper goes the awareness of our need for it.

grace, in fact, is not the first word i'd use to describe our recent days.  more of the waiting combines with postpartum challenges.  recovery is taking longer and the house is getting messier.  even though i can do little homemaking, school's in and kenn is working more outside our home.  too often, sleep deprivation means short tempers and exaggerated emotions.  most often, i am wishing i could get up and get to work: clean the dirt, implement order, corral the kids (and us adults) back to peaceful...

but God decides i am still here 

still needing to say no

  still needing to let go

  still needing Strength 

that from me will never come

  and still needing Grace 

to pardon

i like to read C. H. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening.  today's reflection is taken from Leviticus 13:13, where the law states that a man is declared clean only when his body is found entirely covered with leprosy, head to toe.  here's part of Spurgeon's thoughts on the verse:

"we, too, are lepers, and may read the law of leper as applicable to ourselves.  when a man sees himself to be altogether lost and ruined, covered all over with the defilement of sin, and no part free from pollution, when he disclaims all righteousness of his own, and pleads guilty before the Lord, then he is clean through the blood of Jesus, and the grace of God." 

i needed Jesus to save my life and now i need him in order to live it.  you may have read in previous blogs about God calling me to rest long before my time on bed rest.  it's been close to a year that this particular season of slow has been upon me.  and i've been questioning the Good.  defeat overcomes in this time of feeling hands are tied and of crying, "how long?". but it's the feeling of defeat that ties my hands and it's admitting i really am helpless that sets me free. it frees me to trust in God's decisions and to trust the Good in it all.  only then am i free to act, even when (perhaps especially when) such acting feels like inaction.

"...he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."  (2 Corinthians 12:9,10)

so be it.

ch-ch-changes

now we are six, no longer five. 

we're a different family than we were last month.  

all of a sudden, 

kenn and i became parents to 

a newborn

a kindergartner

a three-year old

&

a fifth-grader

this newest change of seasons explains some things, 

like the exhaustion kenn feels or how affected i am with my continued need to be still and heal.  

yet it's just a season, 

and these are days that will practically fly away from us.  

these are the days, the moments i could miss 

and one day 

i probably will. 

before school began this week, we took some time to list 

the good memories we have from our summer together.  

these times change us.  

what a great way 

to welcome the change 

while celebrating what's been.  

today i'd like to celebrate what is, 

before another change begs a welcome.