new years love

breathe.  it's the end of 2013. tomorrow we begin again.

i'm not a big new years person.  i don't like staying up late and i don't like champagne,  but i do like new beginnings.  in fact i love them.  i need them.  maybe because i mess up so much.  maybe because it gives me hope.  the sad part is, i feel like my resolution, my goal, my hope for the next year is always the same- to be still, and present and more for people.  to savor and appreciate the small moments.  to be thankful. to live into gratitude.  to practice joy and patience and love.  to really love.  to love well.  to love in the 1st corinthians 13 way:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, 
but do not have love, 
I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.   
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, 
love is kind. 
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  
It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

this year i don't want to be a gong.  i don't want to be the clatter clatter of the clanging cymbal.  i want to learn real patience and kindness.  i want to let go of what is jealous or proud.  i want to honor those i love, ahead of me.  oh i so don't want to be angry.  i want to forgive and let go.  i want to be full of the light of truth. i want to protect and trust and hope and continue- endure- proceed- keep going- hold on- improve.

the other day i came home with a giant branch and put it in my favorite vase given to me by some dear friends.  

the kids all asked what this monstrosity was and showed me how easily they could poke out their eyes on it.  but it was my "new years be thankful branch"  i wanted us to decorate it with what we are thankful for, to begin to live in a place of gratitude  because we have been given so much.  but now i think i might need to make it our "2014 love branch". i might need to fill it with what love is- all the parts- all the ways we should be for each other and care for each other- and out of that love will bloom gratitude and thanks and joy. 

zoe surprised me by writing LOVE with LPS's

living in thanks

my brother and my uncle decided that 2014 should be the year of being thankful.  that we should live in this. look for it. communicate it.  that we should reflect and share with each other what we are thankful about, and who we are thankful for. 

i agree.

so yesterday, i woke up and decided that even though it was the end of 2013- it was time to begin with thanks.  i began with being thankful that Christmas is over. because this year, Christmas was hard.  i think the third Christmas in a row on the equator, far from family, in the heat and dust of the dry season, got to me.  i missed everything.  i missed cold air that shows your breath, i missed fireplaces and the one sided hotness that goes with them. i missed cousins and games and holiday M&Ms.  i missed real eggnog and parties and Christmas oreo's.  i missed caroling and snow and sales and eating seasonal starbucks mint brownies. yes, this year, i missed america all of it, consumerism and all.  i missed old friends and tradition.  i missed our church's candle light service.  i missed the preamble and the post-amble and the get ready for new years amble. so first of all, i was thankful that Christmas is over and the new year can begin.

yesterday i walked up monkey hill and i was thankful for the morning.  that zoe had gotten up and breakfasted and showered and brushed and ready with minimal argument but still assistance.  i was thankful that i had kept my calm.  that we were done before noon.  that it was relatively smooth sailing.  i was thankful for the clarity of the sky, the brightness of the sun, the five different electric colored flowers i could see in one view.  i was thankful for lake victoria.  for the wiggling shadows of the banana leaves beckoning to me, for the perfect-even-though-not-decemmberish weather.  and i was reminded in being thankful, that life is lived in these moments, in these small spaces joy comes, we can turn things around when we stop and appreciate, when we value what is all around us, and each other. 

i get easily overwhelmed.  i look at zoe especially, and become easily discouraged that she still doesn't fully know how to wash her hair.  i look and see all the years past and all the possible years ahead of her need and her lack and her dependence and in that place, i become hopeless. i become swallowed. i become lost in my life.  but when i can see the little victories, when i remember to see the smoother bits as smooth, and the easier times as better than it could be- that is when i feel hope, and joy.  and in the hope and joy, i can behave better.  in the hope and joy, i can encourage and support and be strong and provide. in the hope i can be who i want to be for her, and for me, and for all of us.

right now it's beautiful. it's quiet except for distant thunder.  the sky is white with clouds and the yard is littered with fallen leaves that tapped along the tin roof all afternoon.  things are still. children are far. birds are always and forever in song.  there are swimming clothes drying on the line.  i am on my porch. alone. thankful for this moment.  these minutes. 4:52 on a friday afternoon, two days after Christmas, almost to the new year.

i will keep holding on to these bits.  i will keep looking to savor the sweetness- to see it and love it and appreciate what is good in my day. and i think 2014 will be full of hope and joy- because it's there- it's in the color and the air and the sound of thunder and small voices. because it's in remembering to stop and look and be thankful for these things, and for each other.

finding

sometimes God speaks to us on a bumper sticker.  on a license plate.  in a poem.  in the light at the end of the day. in a painting. a song.  the smell of the sea on a day you needed it more than anything- its salt and its calling. sometimes it's in an orchestra of things all together- the ocean, the light on the water, the feeling of the cool sand on your feet, the pungent smell of dead things and seaweed- the sound of the gulls and the crashing water- the rhythm of it's pulling and pounding.  God is everywhere- how often we miss her.

in today's reading buechner talks about needing a word in a time of great trouble and a truck driving past him with the license plate 'TRUST'.  i remember driving madly to zoe's psychiatrist once when her meds weren't working and crying and seeing on the car in front of me the bumper sticker "walk by faith, not by sight". it was a time when what i saw terrified me. when walking by sight caused me to trip and fall and cry- but everywhere i looked- all i could see was what i saw.  my faith was tucked behind, my faith was hidden behind the mess i was looking at.  then i saw that beautiful reminder and i knew how i needed to walk. i knew that i needed to close my eyes and walk.  to be bold. to let go. to stop fearing and start trusting- because faith chooses to know that someone else is in control, that we only see part of a whole- that we are small, so small and held, so held.

i've been looking back on my life. on my year. especially because i do that when one ends and another one begins and my computer was down so i picked up the words of another who was reflecting on some of her years and as i read, i began to cry because i could feel my own absence.  i could feel my lostness and my forgetting. it was God speaking those things to me through her words.  it was God getting my attention and saying- i'm here. wake up. come home.

as i read i began to remember.  i began to remember who i was and in the remembering i became so aware of things i've forgotten. some things that may seem small and unimportant but that matter.  things that were part of me- that brought joy -carnal things- like tasting peaches and really good cheese and cooking and caring for each other with good meals and the time and attention of preparing and eating.  i have lost this here- this part of life has become for me unnecessary and expensive and hard to do, but behind it, is me lost and skinny and eating whatever is easiest, just getting something on the table.  but i'm missing God in the figs and balsamic. i'm missing sharing that bit of creation with the people i love.  and it extends out -it's metaphoric-  i'm missing some of the passion, i've forgotten the joys in the small moments- in the goodness of life.

there are ways that i have lost myself this past year in the hardness.  that i have been swallowed up by what is in my sight, walking in that line of vision, not in the expanse of my faith.  and it has become narrower and narrower and suffocating and tasteless.  that is not who i am.  that is not where i want to be. so today....

today is my birthday. today i get to start anew. today i get to begin again and it started early with me breathing into the dark of my morning- help me find myself in You this year.  because that is enough.  that brings the taste- all of it.  sweetness and salt and bitter and fullness- it brings renewal and redemption- it brings life back into the corners that have collected dust.

so i will try to be here. still. today. to taste my days. to savor small things. to appreciate. to listen. to wait. to hear and see and smell and taste the goodness of God all around me. and to remember who i am, to close my eyes and walk in the wider place of faith. and to eat something besides a samosa.

in the words of another

Swimming, One Day in August

It is time now, I said,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much
I thought my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.
Except that it will be time, again,
for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

----------mary oliver

hope

one week ago lilian sat on her friends couch, with her huge pregnant belly, watching her neighbor loudly mourning her just lost son timothy. she sat there holding her stomach, her own kicking child inside. she sat there as the hope- as the future- her body full of life and promise.

yesterday she buried that life.

yesterday i rode back from another village, from another burial, with another mother who had just buried her first born son.  this son was only 2 days old when he died of complications from his delivery.  a preventable death. an unexpected and preventable death.

they carried the body from the hospital straight to the village.  i arrived to his young mother lilian in her traditional gomesi dress stained with her weeping breast milk. the baby lay covered inside the house beside the smallest coffin i'd ever seen.  women sat on mats all around the baby and the house in bright colored cloth like flowers- their faces, some young and wondering, some old and knowing. a baby is supposed to be hope and life and light and purity and future and joy and expectancy.  a baby is not supposed to be dead.

at the burial, i sat on an old cemented grave and looked away over the banana plant covered hills and i listened.  the people sang and sang in luganda. there is something about song that reaches the spirit in a way that only words can't - and that music carried me. it carried me to places of long ago and far away. places of beginning dreams and plans.  places of hope and wonder. here i am, where i always somehow thought i'd be, yet also swallowed by it. 

i love this place uganda. i do.  the red dust and the bumpy roads and the patchwork everything. the resilience. the continuing. the randomness. the always bright sun. the endless green. the intensity of color. the contrast. the quickness of laughter-- despite. the willingness.  the giving.  the ease of conversation.  the sameness of each morning.  the constancy of sunset.

but woven between the papyrus reeds and elephant grass is loss.  loss sits in the middle of all the beauty and all the mess.  it is a part of life.  it's acknowledged. it's accepted. even that part of loss that is a loss of control. this is still hard for me, and this past week i felt devoured - or at least chewed up and spit out. left in pieces. 

but like africa- your pieces get up and go on.  what is left, eats something, sleeps for a while and starts over the next day.  you suffer together, eat porridge and cry, and then you stay and sit and be.  you don't leave people alone with their loss- you band together- you feel it and hold it and share it- instead of isolating it actually unites. and that. is. beautiful.  that is what makes it bearable.

that is what makes it more than bearable but hopeful. because if there is no hope than why am i here? why are any of us anywhere, doing anything? and i do have hope- not in my ability, but in Gods love that reaches down.  hope that things can get better.  that cancer care will improve.  that babies and mothers won't die in childbirth. that roads will be fixed. that voices will be heard. that black and white won't matter. hope that i may be an instrument in those hands of love. 

because if there is one thing i've learned- it's that love is what matters- perhaps here more than anywhere.  if there is one thing i've learned it's that there are many things here i can't fix.  some illnesses are incurable, some treatments are unavailable, sometimes even the most basic things are just not. this feels really unfair and unjust and can make me really mad and i can use that to motivate me  to work for change and betterment.  but at the end of the day- what matters- is how i loved.  what matters is how we love each other.  do we turn away at the injustice of it all? or do we pull up a mat and sit?  do we just show up and be with each other when the hour is so dark- even when the darkness is unfair?  yes,  because that is love, that is what we are called into, that is what we are all capable of.  that is what brings the hope.

goodbye part 1

i am back from the village. back from burying my young friend. from throwing dirt on this coffin while holding on to his younger sister. back from weeping with his mom as she said goodbye to her only son. back from the hills of his fathers village where his mother will leave the body of her boy.  back to where? back to what?

i'm not sure.

this week has been a blur as it always is when death is involved.  death unroofs us.  it undoes time and calendar. it upside-downs our days and our priorities.  it calls us to the very important things only.  it cleans off the lens that we see our lives through.  it focuses. it slows. it quiets our madly spinning worlds. 

15 year olds aren't supposed to die.  they just aren't.  little girls shouldn't have to lose their big brothers, parents shouldn't have to bury their children, especially the ones who aren't grown yet. it's just backwards. it's just not right.  four days ago, mugisha timothy died of the lymphoma that his been in his body for over 2 years.  the week before, he'd turned 15. 

four days ago i was writing here, waiting for mike to come home with the kids and the car, so i could go see him- he had something to say.  but just before they arrived, his mom called - "come! timoth is dying!" and he was.

when i got to his house it was crowed and hysterical and he lay in bed mouth open, and those half closed far off eyes that i've known so many times before.  he was going. his chest didn't rise.  his heart didn't beat. his body was quiet and still now- but his soul was flying. 

 "move!" the crowd shouted. "get him to the ambulance! he needs blood!"

"no. let him be. he is gone. bring his mother. send the ambulance away."  

i hated saying those words.  i hated being the one who was saying them. the finality of them.  the endness of them.  the permanence. the hopelessness in them. gone. gone. away.  but they were true and i should have been the one to say them. i, the same one who'd said, 'it's cancer.' in the first place.

this ending was what we'd been praying for.  it was a good answer- as good as you can get when you are talking about a child dying.  i had been praying that when he went, he would go quickly and with out fear. i know him.  i know he can even handle pain, but fear, he didn't want.  and those were both answered.  he was weak but walking that morning, and that afternoon, he died in the arms of his mother.

the arms that first held him when he took his first breath.  the arms that walked through life with him. arms that embraced him when he fell down, when he did well in school, when he'd had a bad day, when he'd found out he had cancer, when he could no longer make it to the bathroom alone, when he needed help to drink.  those arms held him as he left this world. perhaps that is the only blessing in the death of a child- that they might be able to die in the arms of their mother - there is not a safer place than that.

it's hard to be a doctor and a close friend to the same person.  it's hard to be a parent, and watch a child dying, it's hard to be a doctor and know there is nothing else i can do to make it stop .  it's hard to watch a friend losing their child. it's hard to know some small part of that pain that knows when the child is gone- that is when the deepest suffering begins.

the next few hours i sat as my friend poured out all the secrets of a mothers heart who just lost her first born, her only son. she screamed every bit of it- all the injustice, all the grief, even the guilt, all the anguish- but mixed with her unshakeable faith that her God knows best- that we see through the glass dimly- that His ways are above our ways.  she cried and she wailed and she beat the floor-she told God that she wasn't tired yet of caring for her boy so why had he taken him?  she buried her face in her hands and begged to know how she could go on with out him, her beautiful smart boy. and i cried and cried and felt it- all the awfulness of death- all the hardness of the last 2 years as the cancer ate at him- all the imagining of my own child lying only in body on my bed, never to hear his voice again. 

but i also watched as she climbed into those everlasting arms.  arms that can handle the weeping and the pounding and the anger and the calling out of unfair and wrong.  arms that filled that house, that carried tim home and held those of us left behind. i watched as she called out, "but God you are still good!"  i listened as this brave friend thanked God for her 15 years with her son, as she knelt beside his body.

now begins a new journey.  the journey of absence. and empty and no longer and not.  the journey of a space on the couch that wasn't there before. and of sorting clothes that still smell like the one we loved.  and reading messages from a few days before and not being able to delete them.  the journey of deciding what to hold on to, what to cling to, what to keep the same.  the journey of trying to figure out how to go on now, what to do with the time that was so full of someone who's gone.  the journey that while anticipated, was not planned for.  the one with no map filled with lapse and pause. the one with tears then slowly laughing and returning tears.  the one of remembering. the one of allowing the process.  of letting go of the grief but not the person.  of forgiving ourselves and even forgiving death itself.  a journey that will continue to ask and ask again, why?  for what?  how come?  the one that can fill us with deep sadness and longing, but can also bring us to new places of understanding and connecting.  a journey that can awaken us to the things that really matter, that can help us to let go of the small bits, to reach toward each other.  slowly we will feel the warmth again.  slowly we will see the light.

when we left the village yesterday, i hugged his mom goodbye and told her i loved her and cried into her hair. 
"someday soon we'll laugh again." i said 
"you are right- thanks for everything. i know how much you care."
"good because i do. and beas i'm praying for you."
"God is still good doctor."

that is what we are left with.  we are left with each other and the unchanging love of God. this is life. and death. real. being there for each other no matter what.  the good parts and the awful ones. pieces in each others lives. part of a plan that we may never know or understand. but carried in those everlasting arms.

i will try

sometimes you have to sit with sorrow and you don't even know why.  why you're sitting with it, or, what's worse, when you don't even know what you have to be sorrowful about. that second one is way harder.

we are all pretty good at finding reasons to be happy- or making them- that's how we get up in the morning- because generally life is good, or good enough. but... then there are those days when sadness is there.  i'll be honest, i'm realllyyy bad at this.  i'm awful at sitting with sadness. i just want to feel better- anyway- anyhow- anywhere. i want to go there, and do that - whatever there and that are. basically i just don't want to be still and hold something that doesn't feel good inside. 

i also don't want to be still and hold something that doesn't feel good for someone else inside- i want to rescue them- i want to help them to go there and do that.  today for example, rose was in a time out for taking mikes phone battery and stuffing it in her pocket (she is somehow involved in the disappearance of important things around the house). so after i had discussed with her why she was in a time out and that she needed to think about not touching other peoples stuff for the next three minutes,  i could hear her crying in her room.  my first thought was- 'go save her!! rescue her from feeling bad! don't leave that poor girl in her room feeling guilty for doing what she knew she shouldn't do!'  but the entire point of her being in her room in a time out was to feel that.  to feel it- to really feel it so that it would imprint- because our learning is highly correlated with our emotions.  i wanted her to sit with this little piece of sorrow for 3 minutes and then to know that she is forgiven and loved.  she needed to learn this- not just to stop taking peoples things, but that sitting with our sadness is okay. that feeling badly for a bit is not the end of the world- that feeling discomfort and dis-ease and that sticky feeling of bad and sad all mixed together- the feeling of unresolve- is alright sometimes.

because life is full of these moments, and we need to learn that if nothing else, they will pass.  we need to learn that there might be some things hiding in those moments.  because maybe if we learn to sit with them- we will grow.  maybe if we stop running away and covering up, or dissecting until we have full control, maybe if we just give in and sit for maybe for a moment-  we will actually become more understanding, or more patient, or more gentle, more forgiving.

i don't know..... maybe i can or maybe i can't. but i can try.  try to squelch the craving to avoid all negative feelings.  i can try to be with what is given me in that moment. to suffer the growing pains to reach a higher place.  to hold on to my faith that i'm not alone in those moments- but watched over- guided- even sometimes held.

 i leave myself with the wise mary oliver again....

I will try.
I will step from the house to see what i see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles, 
but a woman whose love has vanished, 
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and--
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?

almost december......

the tree is trimmed. 

the little white lights are in the windows.

so are the snow-flake cut outs.

all the neighborhood kids are settled in the living room - we are watching 'home alone'.

tomorrow is december!

who are we anyway?

today i was in the tub soaking because yesterday i played thanksgiving day american football and got slammed by a 20 year old guy.  so i was soaking and thinking that i am old.  i was soaking and because it was my neck that hurt, i was under the water and i could hear it rushing from the faucet as the tub filled.  i closed my eyes and i listened and wondered who i am anyway.  i listened to the sound of the world underwater and remembered being in my tub in atlanta 3 years ago- listening to the same sounds underwater in that now far away tub.  i remembered the light from the windows of that upstairs bathroom, and the color of the candles and the rim of soot from the candles on the shelf above, and the scent of the bath salts.  i remembered the feeling of my feet on the cool metal 'hot' and 'cold' knobs when my head is under the water.  i remembered wondering who i was anyway.

it's funny how you can ask that same question whether you are living in a shi-shi neighborhood in a major metropolitan american city, or in the heart of africa with a dead black mamba outside your bathroom window. i am still me.  you are still you. other worlds or lands or across oceans - we are always with ourselves.

this summer when i was home visiting in america, my friend and i were comparing the similarities of our lives.  we'd both moved two years earlier.  we'd left each other. we'd left familiar and easy and affordable.  we'd left jobs and known and security and we'd embraced- new, unknown, and beginning.  she'd moved to marin county in northern california and i'd moved to east africa.  we both were, unavoidably in the middle of our lives, basically starting over, finding new friends and schools and jobs and grocery stores and banks and even though marin county and mukono uganda- could literally not be further apart or more different- we are both asking the same question- who are we anyway?

maybe this is what the 40's is all about.  maybe this is what the middle of life is- it's the asking and the re-asking....but i didn't expect this. 

i expected settled.  i expected known- as in- knowing myself.  i expected (actually much earlier- like by 30) to have it pretty much figured out, but why?  and how boring that would be.  i guess because we grow up with this idea that we should figure it out.  that it's about arriving somewhere.  that life is some achievable goal. that our finitude is controllable - mastered even if we set out and do what we set out to do.  

the thing about life is that it keeps happening.  it keeps changing and so do we.  i think we have the wrong interrogative pronouns.  what do you want to be when you grow up?  should be who do you want to be- and continue to be- and further grow into- because do we ever grow up? where do you want to live? should be how do you want to live? or try to live? and are you willing and able to bend those things as life happens. 

the advantage of getting older is that you see more and more how hard it all is, and how unfixed and unplanned things really are.  that things go terribly wrong and terribly right when we are least expecting it.  that life is a mist. that really there is a lot we don't know- and that's even true for people who are still pretending they do know. 

the advantage to getting older is that we can look around from where ever we are, and tread a bit lighter and be a bit more gentle with ourselves and each other.  we can try, as we wonder again who we are, to be okay with the asking.  we can teach our children that who and how we are to be and live is more important perhaps than what and where.  and we can share in this, we can be alive in the asking, in the discovery, in the ongoing process- from whatever tub we soak in.

ah another poem

A River Far Away and Long Ago

The river
of my childhood,
that tumbled
down a passage of rocks

and cut-work ferns,
came here and there
to the swirl
and slowdown

of a pool
and I saw myself--
oh, clearly--
as I knelt at one--

then I saw myself
as if carried away,
as the river moved on,
Where have I gone?

Since then
I have looked and looked
for myself,
not sure

who I am, or where,
or, more importantly, why.
It's okay--
I have had a wonderful life.

Still, I ponder
where that other is--
where I landed,
what I thought, what I did,

what small or even maybe meaningful deeds
I might have accomplished
somewhere
among strangers,

coming to them
as only a river can--
touching every life it meets--
that endlessly kind, that enduring.

- mary oliver

this week is thanksgiving

i have this awful cold but i am so thankful because it has landed me home between drop off and pick up, and home alone. i love being home alone. i love the freedom and the stillness and the possibilities. maybe i just have too much internal energy to have someone else's energy in the house too - or -five other peoples energy. sometimes i just need a break.

this week is thanksgiving.  this week advent is coming. this is my favorite time of the year. i'm trying hard not to be 'bothered' by the unbelievably beautiful weather that feels nothing like the Christmas time of my earlier years.  but it is strange.  it's strange that my kids will not grow up with a white Christmas, with  icicles and snow forts and sleds under the tree and breath on the window and pink cold fingers and the smell of wet mittens.  they will have a green lush Christmas- they may even go swimming on Christmas.  they will be wearing shorts and bare feet.  but. 

at least at night it gets cold-ish and it's the same darkness and the little white lights still glow and you can pretend.  at night it can look a little bit more like how i think Christmas is supposed to feel.

lately i have not felt present in my life.  i mean i have been living in my head. i have been preoccupied with the lack of ability to "do" anything about the rose situation. i have been stuck wondering what our future would hold or not hold and now as things have somewhat settled - i am emerging from myself.  thank God because my head is not a great place to be- it's often a messy knot of kite strings. for example, today in the car zoe asked if i'd remembered some form that we were both supposed to sign and return to school.

"zoe! do you think i can possibly remember all the stuff you people bring home for me to deal with? i mean you need to have some responsibility in your lives- i can't keep track of who has PE and who has swimming and who needs what form when!"

while i'm saying this i'm thinking that really this probably is my job.....but thankfully jude piped in with...

"well i always know who has PE and swimming." 
 true dat.

you get the idea.  my head is full.  but now- i think i can crawl out and find some space- especially now- especially this week of thanks and advent.

i have a lot to be thankful for.  miracles abound. there is anticipation, and hope and there is that magnificent star that comes out early when the sky is still blue and not yet black. it's so big and so bright. i think it's venus- but it looks like the Christmas star from long ago and far away- speaking- calling- quieting.  reminding me that snow or not, green or ice, warm or cold- it's still the best time of the year.

story

this is what our lives are- what we are made up of. we all are story.  and we have stories.

i look around me.  little rosie clogs, judes camo- croc, a lollipop wrapper, a fallen flower, the tree in front of me that held kids yesterday afternoon. red and purple and yellow flowers, orange ones and every shape of leaf.  a breeze.  the sound of 5 different types of birds. distant thunder. moving branches. the washing machine in spin cycle. 

this is just one slice.  one paragraph.  the setting. the backdrop of that moment.  what is and what isn't. it is full and empty because there is presence and there is absence.

the absence of children's voices who are in school.  how quiet my story would be with out them.

both my readings today were about story- the celtic book of prayer, and buechner.  about story and song and how they reach the heart- how they connect us- because we share them. how really it is the only way to communicate- to reach each other.  Jesus told stories- pretty much all the time- because he knew that is how we get it. how we get, as buechner says, the hiddenness and the utterance that are both present in a story- and both present in Gods truth.

we are becoming. evolving. changing - our lives, our stories. we weave together- we are each others characters and context. we live beside each other, entering and exiting. we share themes and plots and places.  we share in love and suffering.  we share in longing. we share in joy and loss.  we live great stories- full of the same things but wearing different colors and countries.  some pages are so dyingly beautiful and some are excruciatingly painful and most are just a bit boring- except.

except that when we pause and listen to our lives- even those moments on the porch amidst the bird and spin cycle- we hear the mystery.  the absolute mystery, and that is perhaps, what our story is all about.

saturday poem

before i could be here i needed to be up the hill- standing - looking - having that far off space.  i needed to move and walk out kinks and think and wonder.  so i did and now am back.  it's a cloudy day, and a day to reread poems that meant different things when i first read them and change with me as my eyes are grown by my years.  somehow- the words are just as beautiful maybe even more now.

from East Coker- T.S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(the evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter. 

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

letting go to find

sometimes you must let something go completely, to find it. sometimes it's in total surrender that you are given it back.  but the letting go is so hard.  the total surrender is almost impossible.

it has been a hard week.  a week of letting go and surrendering and knowing that really, with rose, we have no control over this situation.  it is out of our hands.  it's up to others.  her life, our lives, and how her life and our lives join- will be determined by other people- people who left her on the street- people who let her get lost. 

there is a lot in that.  a lot of emotion and exhaustion and wondering and planning and 'what if's and 'if then's.' but in the end there was nothing we could do.  nothing except let go and pull off our sticky little hands and place her and all of it- the whole messy ball of it- into the everlasting arms.  thank God for those arms.  i couldn't have let go except for those arms that i knew were big enough to hold all of us.  all of us.  rose and me and mike and her birth mom and her birth dad and her uncle and our other kids- and somehow make goodness come- even though it might not look like the goodness that i wanted. 

the thing about those arms is that i know they know. i know that they are love. i know that they can see into a dimension that i don't even know exists. so really it's kind of funny that i would rather try to manage it all myself 99% of the time, and only when the situation screams at me that none of my plans are even possibly going to be of any help- only then do i forfeit. 

but those arms are creator arms- they make beautiful things with scraps and broken bits- they turn sadness into dancing and empty into full. and sometimes they let us see that pain and hard things can move us into places that we couldn't have gone in comfort and ease.  this life we live is about continuing to open our eyes.  our years are about seeing more and more the truths around us- even the ugly ones- and learning to be gentle- learning that there are many ways- learning that things we thought were fixed and glued can be bent and morphed and re-shaped.  our time together is about connection and growth and amazement- if we let it be- if we keep our eyes open- if we try.

i showed up at the meeting with rose's birth parents on thursday after crying through my cup of coffee down the street.  i almost didn't show.  i almost ran away. it was the week after our last meeting. it was the day after a week of deliberation and decision.  this was the day that i would be told if we could become rose's legal guardians.  i sat in my chair with a lump in my throat and looked up to the hills- fighting tears- 'from whence does my help come? my help comes from the Lord, who made the heavens and the earth' ran the ticker tape of childhood verse.  'where are you in this God?' i cried.  'what am i even doing here?' if i didn't have michael our karamajong friend and translator with me, i may have gotten back into my car and driven far away to the water- to lake victoria- to somewhere where i could feel as small as i felt.  'He who watches over you will neither slumber nor sleep' - hold this i thought and be brave. so i did.  'this is your child' i said to those everlasting arms. 'this is your child, i'm just part of her picture.....but i would love to be a big part of that picture.'

the meeting got started an hour late.  mike had to be at work, and i'd let rose go to school, so it was just me and michael our translator friend and rose's people and the social worker and lawyer.  i bit my lip and prepared for the news but it wasn't what i thought.  it was exactly opposite of what i thought. they gave her to me, to us, to our family.  they decided that we could legally have her with us- and commit to seeing them regularly- commit to knowing them and her village and her people- which of course we WANT for her.  that was it.  it was their answer- their answer written down in two languages and signed with thumb prints. 

what do you say then? how should your face look when you are sitting across from a woman who birthed your child and is allowing you to keep her? how do you hold the beautiful bittersweet of that moment- the joy and the almost agony?  i felt it all.  but mostly i felt thanks.  thanks to her and her family for their trust and their willingness to be so very brave- when the easier thing would have been to say 'no', to say 'leave it as it is'.  thanks to those things that spoke to her this week- that spoke to her spirit- that moved her and brought her comfort and to a place of her own letting go.  that was something we shared this week- the letting go.  she and i. housed and homeless. with much, with little.  with love and families- she and i had to let go.  i let go of what might be.  she let go of what was. 

it was those arms that held us all and will as we walk forward into what this life will bring us.  this crazy hard and beautiful life.  it is those arms who matched up people who should never have become family but have- all of us- now with our eyes much more open.  and our hearts.  it was those arms that took lost and turned it into more than found.  that took 'left' and made it right again.  that took broken and made it whole.

here i am breathing. amazed. surprised. and smiling. amazed and surprised and smiling at the joy that unfolds- at the miracles that happen when we open ourselves, when we give in, give up, let go and hold up our hands. 

wow!

rule breaking is sometimes okay

so tonight i decided to break my one rule- well my one kind of random and arbitrary rule - no Christmas anything until after thanksgiving.  the reason for this rule doesn't seem random or arbitrary to me- i love Christmas, it is absolutely my favorite time of the year, and i want it to remain special- thus the limits.  let me tell you that my kids hate this rule.  they hate it.  i continually have to remind them in july when they are dying to watch 'elf' that come the end of november, they will be thanking me- you know- for keeping it special. and i remind them that it's my one rule- which completely confuses them- and that i'm allowed, as the mom, to have one rule, well one silly, dictatorial rule anyway.

but.

then life happens.  then you have a week that kind of sucked and another one that is going to be hard too and you kind of need Christmas-time to come early this year.  you need those little white lights that bring so much joy.  and when the sunday school children's Christmas program happened yesterday and i was sitting in church singing silent night anyway, it just made sense. 

so today, after clinic, while the kids were in school, i put up the little white lights while listening to Christmas music.  it was kind of wonderful.  i also baked zoe's banana bread and when the kids came home from school the house was clean and lighted and smelled like warm baked things.  zoe walked in looking bewildered,

"mom, is that......Christmas music i hear?"

"yes it is."

"but....but it's not even thanksgiving!"

"i know.  i decided to be flexible."

"mom i'm soooo proud of you!  can we watch rudolf?"

"oh, don't get crazy now girl! rudolf can wait."

yes.  there it is.  sometimes you need to break your own rules.  sometimes you need to make it happen a week early.  sometimes you need to model flexibility when you preach it all the time.  sometimes it's okay to change it up at least a little, because life changes us up.  we get stuck living into places we didn't expect to be.  we walk into things and seasons we didn't see coming.  life requires us to be flexible and keep going because if we don't bend a little we will break.

i like yes or no.  i like definitive. i like decisions being made.  i don't like maybe, or grey, or wait, or 'i don't know'.  yet often i land here.  again and again i end up with murky and unclear and needing to live with unknowns- that's how it's been and will be with zoe.  that's how it was with jude.  and now with rose.  you think i'd be used to it by now- but i still push for answers.

the answer is the same each time.  my grace is sufficient for you.  and it's true. and it's enough.  but we only really know this grace when we are willing to accept the grayness.  to live in the discomfort of not knowing.

the grace come in our friends and family who are brave enough to walk into the murky with us.  who hold our hands and write words of encouragement and tell us we are not alone.  we are all part of the grace for each other. and it comes in the brightest star ever and the fullness of the moon. and today some of the grace came in the early hanging of sparkly white lights and pricilla ahn singing silent night.  and the words of that song.

silent night. holy night. all is calm. all is bright. 
silent night. holy night. son of God love's pure light. radiant beams from thy holy face.
with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus, Lord at thy birth, Jesus, Lord at thy birth.

because we love her

this morning i walked up monkey hill.  it was cool and had just finished raining and i could see far.  i needed that.  i needed to see far and far off and over things.  i needed to see how much life is happening around me.  that mine is one small piece.  one little part, because it was a week of big things. 

two years ago i began to fall in love with rose.  a year and a half ago she came to live with us.  i had forgotten that i knew how messy this was before she walked into our home. but i did. i knew and then i forgot.  i forgot that it might always be unclear and murky and complicated.  i forgot that she might never actually be my daughter- well- legally. i forgot that we were living in a new normal- a 'not ideal'.  i forgot that it is very broken- and that we entered that- willingly.

for the past year i've been going about my business.  i've been not focusing on the stress of having a very unresolved situation with one of my kids.  the stress of possibly never being able to take her out of this country.  the stress of having to live in a place of unsettled.  of losing the freedom of being able to just pick up and go- because going would mean leaving someone behind.

this week we heard that rosies birth mom didn't want us to have legal custody of her.  we heard that she'd changed her mind again- that we needed to meet- she wanted to see rose- the birth dad did too.  so i pulled out the reality of my life from where i'd hid it, somewhere safely out of reach.  it wasn't pretty and it didn't feel good at all- but there it was.  i went to pick up rose from school that afternoon and the moment i saw her smile i began to weep.  i picked her up and then i began to sob while hurrying to the car.

"why are you crying mommy?"
"because i love you so much."

because i love her so much.  that is the same messy truth from two years ago.  that is what seemed and still seems to matter most.  sometimes we enter into things that might even appear foolish - but i think when we do them out of love- out of trying for betterment- out of 'it's not perfect but it's something'- then it has goodness.  it has beauty.  it has beautiful brokenness.

we went to the meeting. we dressed nicely and we went to the babies home and rose saw her old 'aunties' and where she slept and ate and bathed and everyone oohhed and ahhed over how big and healthy she was.  then we waited.  we waited for two hours for her birth parents to arrive.  we waited for those moments when the giant bag of emotions - the ones that had been conveniently and possibly necessarily stuffed away- to leap into the present and sit in my heart so much so that i wonder if i can breathe.

when they finally arrived and rose's birth mom carried her to our meeting room and sat her on her again pregnant lap- i bit my lip and i looked hard out the window.  i really didn't want to cry but how could i not? i looked around the room and i listened as the greetings started and the translations began english to luganda to karamajong and back again.  if only there could be a translator for the great cultural divide.  if only our words weren't the only barrier.  if only we could not sit across from each other looking so very black and so very white and the color of our skin being only second to our words. if only we could exchange our years, the things we've seen or not seen or felt or heard or known or not know.

we sat for over an hour of discussion, debate, attempting to cross that great gap- to bridge our worlds- to reach some understanding of what is best for this little girl sitting in the middle of it all.  it felt like one of those bad after-school specials that i would have cried through- but i was sitting in it- desperately wanting to know the outcome. but.  there was no outcome.  the space between was too great.  we split to regather next week- for an answer, a decision.  who will be the legal guardians for rose? 

this is huge.  this is life changing.  we've all agreed that mike and i should and will raise rose but whether she'll ever be 'our' daughter- our legal child- share our name- or even travel with us- that is up in the air.  and i felt this- all of it. 

then i remembered.  we walked down this path knowing that it was full of holes and darkness.  we walked down this path despite all that.  we walked down this path because what mattered most was that we loved her- even though- we loved her. 

i've come to know that God likes to keep me in places of waiting- places where there is nothing to hold on to except Her hand. places where my little grappling hands can't get around the situation because it's too big.  places where i have to lean on others.  places where i have to be vulnerable and see-through and naked.  God likes to give me seasons of 'not yet'.  of 'do you trust me?' of 'you have no idea what i'm doing- but i do.  God likes for me to remember that i am but a sheep. 

the grace is that we are held in this- all of us.  the grace is that i can only see a few feet ahead of me,  too far might be too hard.  the grace is in knowing that Gods love and provision for rose are way better than mine.  that light is promised in darkness. 

every day we are reborn into a new day. and that is hope.

this week i will stay in the place of knowing and i will pray for patience and for being okay with the unknown and for gray and for trust.  i will pray for rose's birth mom to trust us and that i will forgive her quickly if she doesn't.  i will pray that what is best for rose will happen and that we will all be given the grace to walk whatever that path may be.   small steps.  small breaths.  and joy.  i will pray for joy and to never forget that all our stories are complicated and complicated things are amazing.  that God is in the business of amazing- of miracle- of huge and tremendous and that no matter what- it will be okay- because we love her.

jewel the sheep

it's raining and so cold and i'm outside on the porch loving it- hoping it will stay for a little a while.  because it helps. because it feels like many other mid-novembers in my life, and sometimes you need to feel your past and hold on to it.  sometimes you need to remember. you need to be quiet and hear only the rain falling and know that it brings life and newness. 

i've been thinking about restoration.  restoration and sheep.

jewel the sheep

there is a sheep named jewel who lives at my friend zoe's place.  i love jewel.  jewel makes me happy.  there is something about sheep, and jewel is everything a sheep should be.  she is fluffy and cute.  she appears calm cool and complacent when you are far - but she is suspicious and jittery at approach. she seems both in her place, but lost and wondering.  i think jewel might be wondering where the other sheep are because she is the only one at zoe's.  i think she is puzzled, so in response she has befriended the rabbits who seem to enjoy her company.  but despite her possible confusion, there is something peaceful about jewel the sheep. there is something about her that i resonate with.

tonight i'm hosting our womens fellowship.  we have been talking on the different names for God.  God is many things and has many names but two of my favorites are Jehovah Rohe, God as our shepherd,  and Jehovah Rapha, God as our healer.  i'm really only supposed to share about one name- but i think i'm going to talk about both- because they seem related to me.

i love this from anne lamott: If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.

the last part is the sheep part- in charge of so little. 

i am wandering through this life.  sheep- like really.  i may think i have it together. i may fool you into thinking i have it together- but i don't.  i am pretty much in constant need of guiding and prodding.  i'm often in need of being yanked out of a ditch, or found when i have become lost. i need to be led.  i need to be known by name and loved despite.  i need this Shepherd.  this One who gathers.  this One who holds together.  this One who seeks for the strays.  this One who is committed and present.  this One who knows me and loves me anyway- this One who welcomes my limitations and dependence.

the first part is about the healing: so ruined.

so broken. so in need of mending. and there is God- naming herself the healer- the restorer of broken things.  if there is one thing i know about life- it's that it breaks you, and if it hasn't then it will.  but then there is this amazing incredible beautiful thing- God is in the business of putting us back together again.  this is Her great joy.  making things new. making beauty from disaster.  turning it around for good.  wow.  the story of God is full of stories of people who mess. it. up. big-time. but experience the grace.  but know forgiveness. but are healed and restored and used to do great things.  things that go on to bless other people. and that is hope, because we are never given up on. we don't run out of chances.  because we are healed- renewed- brought back.

the middle part is what links them together: so loved.

it's because we are so loved- that we are led, and attended to, and guided, watched over- and healed.  it is because we are so deeply loved that we are not abandoned, not left in bits, not even stuck trying to do any of it on our own.  out of this healing shepherd love comes the hope that gets me up in the morning- even when. even if.  even despite.  even though.  even feeling whole or in parts or together or scrambled.  it is because of this great love.

now, it is still raining and green and i only wish that i had jewel the sheep at my house right now milling around and reminding me of who i really am and who i'm not, and keeping me thankful for the shepherd, the restorer of broken things.

 













we need a theology of brokenness.  we need a theology which teaches us that even though we cannot unscramble an egg, God's grace lets us live happily and with renewed innocence far beyond any egg we may have scrambled. 


ronald rolheiser.

why i might be able to be still

there are somethings that should just be read out loud- they sound different to the ears than to the eyes. today mike read the 46th psalm as part of our morning prayer. i've read it before. a lot. but hearing it was different.  hearing it today was powerful.

God is our refuge and strength,
an ever present help in trouble.
therefore we will not fear,

though the earth give way,
and though the mountains fall into the
heart of the sea;

though its waters roar and foam,
and the mountains quake with their surging.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her,
she will not fall;
God will help her, at the
break of day.

The nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
He lifts his voice, the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us;
The God of Jacob is our fortress.

Come and see the works of the Lord,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
He burns the shields with fire.

Be still, and know that I am God

i put my favorite parts in italics.  the parts that spoke the most- and it's the parts about non-abandonment. about the Everlasting Arms in the midst of chaos. about Presence in trauma.  about help and holding and not needing to worry. 

my favorite favorite part, is this..... 

the nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts His voice, the earth melts.

because nations are in uproar- real nations, and real people, and real families, and parts of me and parts of you.  because kingdoms fall, all around us. and people fall.  we fall sick and we fall down and we fall far and we fall away.  He lifts his voice. that is all.  He speaks. even in a whisper, even in the wind, the earth melts.  everything that 'matters', everything that is so huge and magnificently bad and overwhelming, melts away.  it makes me feel so small and so safe and so silly and so thankful all at once. it's all held in those arms.  we are held in those arms.

i had a moment.  i had the 30,000 foot view. i had this awareness that when you boil it all down, when you distill life, when everything is awful or completely wonderful or almost destroyed or being rebuilt- we are loved. i am loved. we have a fortress, a safe place.  the one who just lifts His voice. and so in that, only in that, can i perhaps finally, be still.

in the knowing. in the trusting. in the remembering. 

happy halloween!!

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again...the grace

there are seasons, there are times, there are places.  things are never easy. things are never impossible either- in all things there is grace. you know i love the words and wisdom of frederick buechner.  he is able to find the absolute mystery of God, the power of God, in the gentleness and the brokenness of the world and he shares it simply and boldly and humbly with words that reach me. 

words like this....

a good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. most tears are grace.  the smell of rain is grace. somebody loving you is grace. loving somebody is grace.

the list could go on and on- because we find it in different ways and in different places. but it abounds. 

yesterday was a day of my kids, all four of them, having issues in some form or fashion. 

yesterday started with an email from zoe's wonderful school aide entitled "expressions of concern over recent events with zoe".  the grace was her words of praise over how zoe was handling the 'teenage drama' with other girls at school, her concern was about the other girls being mean.  the grace was in the meeting i had at the end of the day with the school special ed teacher and hearing how well zoe is doing over all.  the grace is in zoe's smile when i put her to bed and her giant hug. 

yesterday jude destroyed his halloween toy sword because he was upset about something unrelated and he chose that self-destructive path to manage his anger- he chose to express it by wrecking something he loved.  the grace was in the long talk we had while walking the dog about the acceptability and  beauty of our range of emotions but our need to control our actions around those emotions.  the grace was in hearing him share what's hard about being eight. about being in the middle of the family. about having responsibilities he didn't ask for with zoe for a sister. about sometimes feeling lost.  the grace was in those moments as the sun set of just being with him- listening to his world- letting it just be about him with no one else.

yesterday bryn was crying at pick up because he'd been given a big role in the class production which prompted teasing from his classmates and caused him to refuse the part.  the grace was in walking through it with him. in helping him understand that he needs to chose what he wants to do and how he wants his world to go- and not listen to others teasing. 

yesterday rose's birthmom met with the babies home social worker to hopefully solidify our case so we could go to court for guardianship.  yesterday her mom said she never agreed to let us even take rose out of the country to visit america (a complete turn around from where we've been).  yesterday i sat in the car after hearing that from the lawyer and tried to imagine my life with out our rose which of course i couldn't.  the grace was in knowing that God loves her more even than i do.  the grace was in trusting that. the grace was in knowing that somehow, goodness will come from this. the grace was in remembering that the world is very broken and things are so messy and we do the best we can, and we do it in love.  the grace was in mike and i being on the same page about it.

the grace of God means something like: here is your life. you might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  here is the world. beautiful and terrible things will happen. don't be afraid. I am with you. nothing can ever separate us. it's for you I created the universe.  I love you. 
there is only one catch. like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.  maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

today, what ever comes, may i reach out and take the grace.  may i see it and feel it and smell it and hold it and know it.  may you as well.