enjoy today

we are getting ready to return to uganda. i purposefully took some time off between finishing work and leaving for africa to be able to be quiet and reflect a bit on this year and what it's held and what is coming and all the transitions and what God has in it and what i've learned. i hoped the weeks wouldn't be swallowed up with todo lists, which in truth, they mostly have been. today i'm trying to find some space.

when i look back to where i was 2 years ago as we were realizing that we needed to come back to the states for zoe, i can see and feel some very important changes in myself that came at the cost of me laying something down. ironically, that something was uganda.

2 years ago i was torn up inside about leaving my african home and having to return here. internally i was like a stubborn child being asked to eat her vegetables. initially i was going to God with my arms crossed and my bottom lip out saying, "i'll go, but i want you to know how much i don't want to and how much i won't like it!" i would also say things to mike like, " i NEVER wanted to end up in MASSACHUSETTS!" i could acknowledge that it was the right and good thing to do for zoe and therefore the family but it didn't feel like a choice, and in the beginning i did it willingly but not gladly, and i did it with conditions. "okay we can go back but only for 1 year!" but even as i would say that, i knew in my heart that it may be a lot longer. something inside of me couldn't speak that.

we said our goodbyes to uganda and arrived in the states and i still had a divided heart. when we started to hit roadblocks with finding the right program for zoe after all the logistics and extreme measures we'd taken, i was very annoyed at God. i mean, really? i thought. could You at least give us this break? after all, we moved all the way back here for her and now there is nothing working out? come on! 

and that was when i was called out. that was when i finally got it. i was feeling miserable and stressed out and unhappy because i had decided that what was best for me and my family was to be in uganda (serving God) and that zoe's autism was derailing this plan and we needed to just be on the fast track to get back there. but actually, i had the whole thing backwards! i wasn't asking God what His plan was for me, i wasn't trusting that my joy would be found in Him wherever that is, i was trying to dictate the where and what and how. i was giving God a todo list!  so instead,  i gave Him uganda.

i said, and i'm pretty sure it was out loud, "i'm giving You back uganda. if You don't need us there, if You have a different plan now, if that season is over for us- i'm okay with that, Your way is better than mine. You come first."  and in letting that go came freedom. and in letting it go, things started to change- out of obedience, came blessing. some of the blessing was peace. that internal battle stopped. i started seeing life more in balance. i saw my practice and my patients more as people who also had legitimate needs that i could meet, there are many types of poverty. i saw life as less black and white, that if i did live in the usa it wouldn't be the end of the world after all. my identity didn't need to be in africa, my identity is as a follower of Jesus. my work is to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with my God, where ever that is.

what's amazing is that God gave us back Uganda, at least for now. He wanted me to learn that it's best to go through life with my hands open, not clenched. and to look out for things in my life that become so important to me, that they that replace Him as first. now when i get a sense of prolonged or disturbing restlessness i go to God and ask, what am i clinging to? show me what it is that i still haven't surrendered?

what i'm working on now is letting go of needing to know what's next. of being okay with living in the season i'm in with out trying to figure out the next one. it's a daily challenge. it's a daily opening of the hands. breathing deep. and God is saying, trust Me. you get to enjoy today and trust Me with next year. celebrate where you are. where I've brought you. this is freedom.

how? grounding in the senses is a practice of mindfulness that helps bring me back to God- listening and looking at nature, walking in it, feeling the ground and the wind, smelling what is in the air. paying attention takes me out of my thoughts and brings me to my surroundings. being thankful. laughing. singing. for me, making the choice to not out-loud process can be a way of being in the moment (sometimes. sometimes, i need to do it so i can be in the moment :).

this week we celebrate thanksgiving and i am filled with gratitude - for so many things. i can't wait to pick up zoe. i can't wait to move into this season of advent, but today is enough. today is filled with sun and blue sky and bright red berries outside the window and the sound of wind in tree branches and my children.

enjoy today.

letting go

last weekend we went to california with the three little pigs and zoe was in boston visiting with my parents who had come to town. when we got back, she was waiting for us at home and we had a couple of days together before we brought her back to her school.

i've noticed that despite how good she sounds when she is at school and how well she manages to get things done with her daily hygiene routine, on home visits it's different. it feels a lot like how it used to feel. old habits die hard. the patterns are there like old slippers. "it's normal for mom to ask 12 times for me to take a shower".

this may be very typical. may be most 20 year olds go off to college and mature but then when they come home, they regress to their early high-school version of themselves. it was still a good visit, but it reminded me of how taxing it was all the time to be such a nag.

she went back to school on monday. it's now thursday afternoon.  we usually talk everyday but she didn't call on monday evening or tuesday. then she didn't call on wednesday. we decided that we should respect her boundaries and wait for her call us when she is ready. we know she will call if things are going badly. with zoe, no news really is good news.

but today it was a blustery day- fall and rainy and windy and it reminded me so much of winnie-the-pooh that all i could think about was zoe who loves a.a. milne. so i wrote her a letter and put it in the mail. but after a few hours i was just dying to call her so i did. i just missed her so much.

there is something about zoe. her expressions. her predictability. her intonation. i just love that girl. when i called the phones weren't working properly so i couldn't speak with her but they said she'd call me back and she did.

she sounded amazing. "hey mom! i've got some great news!" and carried on with what's been happening the past few days. we got disconnected because of the blustery weather and she called her dad's cell phone and offered an unsolicited apology for how she had acted over the weekend, with needing a million reminders to do her stuff.

the whole thing was a lesson to me in the importance of letting go. again.  a lesson that God has been trying to teach me for decades. letting go of expectations. letting go of my idea of how things should be. letting go of zoe. letting her go off and be herself, with her friends and not tying her to myself even by daily phone calls. 

my gut told me over a year ago that she needed to be pushed out of the nest. but every other part of me clung to her. it has been a process of prying myself away from her, often when even she didn't want me to go, to respect what my gut knew was the right thing. i would hear these whispers, 'she's God's child' and i would see that we (mike and i) had hit a wall. we had reached a point where we were enabling her helplessness.

love can be so big and mushy and blinding.

i just re-read the post far.it reminds me that there are seasons and of how far we have come. there were many years of falling apart together. of meltdowns and tears and anger and words and rubbing backs while falling asleep. years when we needed to be with her in the intensity of what she was going through. when we needed to speak words of life to her, when we needed to be the balance that she couldn't find. this was especially important when we were in africa with her and there wasn't a lot of other support.

at the end of that post (far) i came to the conclusion that it's not about fighting what i don't want my life, our life to be and worrying about how far we've come or not come; it's about being in my life and becoming who i am supposed to be in this life, as it is, in it's perfect messy disastrous bliss. and i can see how far i've come in my acceptance of my life, in my ability to "be" in my life.

this season that we are in now is another version of that. i'm learning to be in my life in a new way. i'm seeing my beautiful daughter learn to be in her life in a new way too. i'm so incredibly proud of her. more proud of her than i could imagine. she has "flown the coop" as she says. and she's doing it. and in this bit of distance, we are learning to love each other better.

i know i have to prepare myself. this is the beginning of a lot more. i have to get ready  for being a lot farther away than an hour drive. i know i have to prepare myself to go for many months without giving her a big hug. 

this is the letting go. the amazing, once-never imagined, look- how - far- we've- all-come- letting go.

autumn

i'm just back from a family vacation. it was a wonderful amazing time with family and friends and incredible weather and memories of some of our happiest years which were spent in san francisco. it felt too short and we didn't get to visit with everyone we would have liked to see, and we didn't get to eat all the food we would have like to have tasted, or walked all the streets or revisited all the places- because we had a lot of teen / preteen opinions to accommodate so we attempted to be flexible and compromise.

but now i am hibernating in my room trying to find some quiet space away from any opinions or random intense statements (that i really struggle to not react to), because even though i don't want a time out, i need a time out.  

we are back to the beautiful but lonely fall of new england. that time of the year when things start to pull back and retreat. shrink, whither, become crispy and fall to the ground. branches become bald and gray and the sky pulls up herself in a hollow draw back. the summer that seemed to wave and breathe and move together in unison is over, and the fall has moved in with it's preparations and isolation. there is a quieting down, and a battening down of things for a long fallow season of scarcity. that season that i dread and will be leaving - winter.

this is my time of preparation. of retreating and pulling back and gathering. of separating from the life that was here for this past year and transitioning our family back to uganda, sans zoe.

this month i will finish work and shift focus fully to packing and prepping for our move back.  to purchasing the plastic bins we use at suitcases, to writing course curriculum for what i'll be teaching, and fundraising and getting the medical things figured out and zoe's schedule and appointments. those things seem like a lot- but that isn't what keeps me up at night.

my soul needs tending and preparing. quiet and time. mediation and stillness. listening to the still small voice of the One who is sending me. i am so thirsty for long walks with Jesus.  for intentional, set aside time for deeper spiritual practice. so that i can love better. listen better. feel at peace more. en-joy vacation more. not react to intense teenage opinions as much. so that i can shift into adapting a new way that becomes the way, or my way- not just a seasonal thing when i'm desperate. so that i can write more, as this for me is life giving.

living in close quarters, having a 14 year old, having a special needs child, the changing weather, relocating across the world, whatever the things are, they are opportunities for me to see that i have several areas where i am struggling internally. where i am resisting, fighting, where i am failing to observe and be curious from a place of love, but rather am coming in judgement from a place of fear. this is what i mean by seeing that i need some soul tending.

contemplative prayer.  

the process of releasing. letting go. pulling back the false sense of control we have over things and others. perhaps like the season that surrounds me. i will enter in.

the three little pigs

for a long time we called our three youngest, the three little pigs. i think that changed when one of them got bigger than we are. it was zoe and the three of them. that was the distinction because that was usually the equivalent parent ratio needed: one to one with zoe, and one to 3 with them. their introduction to life being unfair.

it was only the beginning.

now that zoe is off we get to do more one on one parenting with each of them- which is so good, so needed, so about time. we are getting to see them more clearly and hear them more loudly and part of that is because they finally have the space to allow themselves to be seen and heard after years of referencing themselves next to their eldest sister and her needs.

i think being the sibling of a child with special needs doesn't get as much credit as it deserves. more is asked of you- with out there really being a question. things are demanded- you have to learn to wait, to defer your needs (sometimes over and over), your responsibilities don't match your birth order but rather your ability. it's embarrassing sometimes. you have 'that sister'. and you see your parents as people with real limitations in ways that people whose parents don't have special needs kids, don't have to see. the glaze of childhood is removed sooner than it is for others. 'life' is hard and you know it early on.

my kids have the added benefit of having a sister with autism and being third culture kids. they have grown up most of their lives in africa but have recently been uprooted for 18 months to the USA because of their sister. last week my oldest 'little pig' started high school.

tonight his internal house was blown down by having to write 'the history of you' for his honors history class. he didn't want to do it. he struggled with how to start. his first sentence was "i spent 8 years in africa before arriving in the united states'. the assignment was to make a convincing argument about who you are. "i don't know who i am." there were tears and frustration as he vented about how hard life feels for him. how much he doesn't want to be here. how much he wants to be back in africa. how he can't ever be present in his life and doesn't feel like he can grow roots because he always feels like things are temporary and he is thinking about the next thing, and trying to prepare himself for the next place. he talked about his anxiety and how it can be consuming. he talked about how this whole time here has been a waste because we are just going to leave and it won't matter. he talked about how he worries about how he'll be received going back home- will his friends there have forgotten him. he feels like he doesn't belong anywhere. at some point along the way i said, "i know".
"no mom, you don't know."

and he's right. i don't. not really. not in the step in his skin kind of way. not in that 'i've walked in his shoes' kind of way. i don't. but my heart just broke for him. not in a rush in and fix it way, because i can't. just in a stand beside you and listen way, because i can.

when jude was a baby and i thought i might lose him, i gave him back to God kind of like hannah did with samuel, which is his first name anyway. in those months of waiting to see if he would be okay, i was given this supernatural peace and in that peace i was also given a strange gift of what i might describe as a healthy disentanglement. like an early awareness that he was his own. that he belonged to God. that he was really only entrusted to me for as long as i was lucky enough to have him. 

i love him fiercely and i'd given him my kidney if he needed it, but i can't save him from a lot of life's traumas. but i will walk with him through them. i will give guidance as he writes his way through them too.

and that is what he did. he started to think of the stories that made up his story. the richness of them. and we talked about how many experiences he has had culturally, including the culture of autism. he began to get excited about thinking about how these things have shaped him and grown him into the amazing person that he is.

growing up is hard. full stop. i'm so deeply thankful for this season of focused attention on my younger ones who have been waiting so patiently for their turn on center stage.

the great divide

sometimes it's just too hard to write.
sometimes it's just too hard to feel all the feelings that surround zoe. (my name means 'life' in greek). it's like a metaphor. i mircro-scape of how hard life is. and when i say hard, i mean deep and rich and intense and painstakingly beautifully hard. hard in a way that i would cut off my arm for it to be easier for her, but wouldn't change her for the world. hard in a way that i feel like i'm watching out for her life more than living my own sometimes. hard like i find moments when all my muscles are tightened and tensed and my breath is held and i have no idea why and i have to remind my self to let go.

there is just so much there. so much love. so much ache. watching so much struggle. seeing growth, yes, but also seeing the reality perhaps more acutely after a month of separation.

most of her time now is spent with her 'brain cousins'. other kids with autism and a lot of helpers who are trained to work with kids on the spectrum. this is her first weekend home after moving to the residential program at her school. in 2 weeks she'll turn 20 years old. i have patients that are 20 years old. the differences there span decades.

i picked her up on saturday (was it only yesterday?). we had big plans. we went to a big free outdoor concert where her favorite band was headlining and we were backstage with our VIP badges because we are friends with the drummer. she was with her siblings and her best friend listening to her favorite music beside the stage- it was magical.

today was different. we went to a late lunch for her cousins birthday at a loud restaurant on the water. it was overwhelming for her. i sat beside her and my time was focused on her, helping her order, rubbing her back, answering questions, asking questions, navigating her inquires to her cousins, re-assuring her of peoples where-a-bouts when they went to the restroom. i love zoe with all my heart. i didn't mind doing it, but i was reminded of how consuming it is, and while i'll never really know, it feels like she is starting to see this. to notice that she needs more than other people do.

from there we went straight to another outing. a friends open-mic night. there were a lot of people there, and her friend the drummer was there too. the expectations were perhaps misaligned, or at least her expectations were exaggerated. she wanted to sit with this guy all night long and chat one on one. but no one wants to do that at a party and she just couldn't get it and it required a lot of laying down the law from mike and me. poor zoe was in tears. i was a balled up muscle knot forgetting to breathe, and we ended up leaving early because of it all.

for all her banter and constant chatter, she never tells me how she really feels, how she really is. i don't get to venture inside of her world except what i assume from what i see. my interpretation from observation. she talks more than most people i know but says less than most people content-wise. but in the car she started crying and mumbling to herself and finally she said, "i don't belong anywhere! i feel like an alien or an ugly goblin."

my leaky bleeding heart broke open even more. too much. too hard. all the feelings.

i know what she means. she lives between two worlds. the last month she spent getting settled in a world surrounded by a lot of support. a world that is made for people who think more like her, who move at her speed, who get her and who are either born like her or have chosen to work with people like her. the world she has been in today and yesterday is a world that moves fast and loud and doesn't look back. it doesn't lean in to support or wait or explain, there aren't a lot of people around for help.

i think tonight under the setting sun in the cool evening air of late august at the end of her 19th year, zoe's heart broke a bit too. i think her tears were not about not getting to talk to her drummer friend longer, they were tears of longing to bridge a great divide. i think she wept because she is starting to feel in a guttural way, that fitting into the neuro-typical world is really hard and takes a lot of work and that she's not quite there yet. i think she wept because she wants so badly to belong and have it not be so hard. and because it's not fair, because it just shouldn't be so hard, because it isn't for other people and she didn't ask for this. i think those tears were from a place of knowing that she actually does like where she has been for the past month and that even if she doesn't love the food, she does fit there well for now. and it's hard to admit that.

on the car ride home i told her that she is not anything like a goblin or an alien, that she is a wonderful beautiful person and that she belongs with us, her family. that she loved and has value as she is. i told her that i thought it must be so hard to go from a place of so much support at her program, to here for the weekend with so much activity and just us. (she adamantly denied it being hard and said i was wrong).

the same things that i'm pretty sure made zoe cry, make me cry too. i long to bridge this great divide. i look at our future and i don't like the options. i want to blend our worlds. i want her to be happy in my world, but i think she's happier in hers. what if it's always that way? what if she needs that level of support?

let go. breathe.

i have to remember. this is where we are now. she has a place to be with really good support. a place where she is learning and getting out in the community and having fun and sounds so happy. this is just her first weekend home. this is a process. this is part of the hard. life is full of longing. and life is full of beautiful.

and she's off!

and just like that, she's off.

there was a time when i thought of course she'll leave home. every one leaves home. it's normal. it's what happens. what people do. they finish high school, they go to college. they start their own life.

then not-normal became our normal. and i wrote about it for years. and i wondered what our future would look like, and by future i usually meant next week because any further was terrifying. and breathing the thought of her not leaving home, not going to college, felt like giving up on my baby and i wasn't going to do that, not in a million years.

but then not-normal began to feel normal, and i wrote about that for years. it took a while to fit into new skin but it happened slowly, when i wasn't looking. what mattered shifted and looking far ahead became really important and next week became pretty predictable, and not leaving home became probable, and college faded far away and letting those things go changed from giving up on her to being okay with where she is and who she is and supporting her through her rocky life road.

in the middle of all that, i had to step way outside of myself and see that she is her own- not an extension or reflection of me. she is fearfully and absolutely wonderfully made, a perfect unique creation, like no one else i know. in the middle of all of it i began to see the complete privilege of loving her and knowing her, poking out of the pain and challenge of parenting her and her autism.

i've watched as her friends since birth have gone on to college, after years of hitting milestones that my zoe didn't reach. i've watched as her own siblings have lapped her. but zoe has her own path, her own place.

i didn't think this day would come. i really didn't.

yesterday i got her ready for dorm life.  i packed her bags and bought toiletries and a shower tote and washed new sheets and towels. today we dropped her off at her residential program. it's not college, it's not even high school. it's better. it's where she needs to be to learn the skills she needs to learn, in an environment that can support her in the ways she needs to be supported. i'm so excited for her. the  best part is, she is excited.

i've learned to be very okay with what is and with not knowing what is next. and i'm deeply grateful for the provision of where we are now. i thank God for opening doors for zoe, for making a way when there didn't seem to be a way. for hearing the literally cries of my mother heart in a bathtub in uganda a year and a half ago, wondering what we could possibly do to help her.  cries that were answered. the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God!

these past few days my mind has been full of pictures and stories of zoe's years, and my heart has been moved with tears and aches by the deep deep love of God and others who have cared for zoe and our family over the years. who have walked through the messes and the victories.

this moment, this day, this is a victory for zoe!

preparing to launch

four years ago we were heading back home to uganda after our last furlough.

today i woke up in north carolina in the mountains, in another place that feels like home.  we have five more months in the states before we pack up and board the plane back home to uganda. it's been a really long furlough. in so many ways i wish we were flying today. i don't want any more time to happen here- i don't want to grow more roots. i don't want my kids to get more attached and have more things to pull up - to ripe out. i feel like we are at that tipping point and i'm afraid of what staying these 5 months will do. that's the truth of it. but zoe needs us here. for these months as she transitions.

we came to our stateside home because zoe needed us to. she was sinking in uganda. we couldn't find her the support she needed and she was miserable. there were no other options. it was the only way. we knew she needed to be re-evaluated and to get into a supportive program, an environment with (as she says) her "brain cousins", like-minded people who understand her. we thank God that she has found that place and she is happy and doing so much better.

next week she will move in to their residential program, one month before she turns 20. what a long, long road that went by in the blink of an eye.  i'm on the porch where she used to ride her plastic barney big wheel, and sit criss-cross applesaucse with her white blonde hair memerized by the sound of tree frogs or crickets playing with the inner music of her inner world. this house has been a constant in a constantly shifting world for her and our family and our missionary hearts are so thankful for it.

i've given my notice at work. i have 3 months left to wrap up my time. it feels good to be honest with my patients about who i am and what we are doing. to be able to share my plans. but it's hard to leave too.

then there will be two months between finishing work and getting on the plane. 2 very important months. necessary time. time for decompression. processing. preparation. physcially, spiritually, emotionally, intellecutally. i need this time to breathe. write. space to be. stillness. space with out. space for quiet. and reflection. i am not by nature, a planner. my number on the ennegram tends to go, go, go. always on to the next adventure, next amazing thing. busy and fun. but i've learned that if i don't build in times to sit still and almost force myself to hold hard things and wait, i miss opportunities to grow and learn. this is a part of my 'work'. healing work- that i've learned to respect and even enjoy because it changes me into a healthier version of myself.

the day before we drove down to north carolina, we moved out of our amazing rental townhouse and back in with mikes parents (God bless them!). it is the beginning of our transition home to uganda. their home is our 'pad' - our landing and launching pad. this is the beginning of the launching season.

i am getting reading to launch.

10

i remember 10. it was big. it was like having those 2 numbers instead of one gave me footing to stand on. like i had arrived into myself. an awareness, that everything up to and including 9, didn't have. 

i've watched rose arrive here too.  shirt tails flapping behind her as she wizes by on her bike. wearing her favorite birthday gift of all, prescription-less glasses. she is her own.

i've watched her arrive here. and it's been a beautiful path. a different path than my other three in some ways- because of course it would be. denying that would be weird and wrong. she's had more things to figure out, more things to interpret, more looks to navigate, more internal questions to wrestle with .

part of standing on your own 2 feet at 10 and biking away boldly in your unnecessary, by-choice glasses is knowing who you are and being okay with it. it's embracing that yeah, your family is mixed. the parents that look like you don't speak your language and live 8000 miles away and the ones that tuck you in every night and check your homework and teach you to do the dishes, don't.
and that is inherently full of loss. it just is.

it's the kind of loss that creeps up on you like fog.  the kind that hides and pokes its head out when it's not expected. the kind that lingers and when i see it, catches me off guard and stings like a slap and says, 'don't forget, don't you ever forget, she didn't ask for this, she didn't choose this.' it's a loss that needs an ear. that deserves respect and time.

i try. i try to keep an eye out for it, an ear out. i try to speak for it when i feel it's there but too shy to come out because i know that sharing that unnameable loss can be vulnerable. and i try to teach her to have an eye out for it too. to know that it's there and that it's okay. that it's normal. that it's not shameful. that complicated emotions are allowed and welcome.

each time we move through a patch of that fog, she stands taller. her gorgeous confident self, aware that life isn't fair, that it has loss but that's okay. it also has choice. and while it is far from perfect, we are in it together and she is so deeply loved. i remember when we first got rose, people used to say how lucky she was and it always hit my stomach in a sour way because i was the one who felt lucky. and i was right. the privilege has been all mine!

i love you with all of my heart.

happy 10th birthday rose!

stone in my shoe

i've been back from home for about a week. back to america, back to my life, my kids, my job, my life, my present, my reality. but what doesn't feel like my home.

it probably shouldn't be this way.

it probably should feel completely like home. it should probably all make sense now. my family together, in our home country, the part of the country where mike and i were both raised and where we met and began our lives together.

but.

last week we were home.
last week we were 8,000 miles away, on the equator, in the dry warm heat of uganda, listening to the sounds of a thousand birds wake us, resting well beneath mosquito nets, feet on cement floors, milk in bags, dirt roads and all.

home.

every night since we've been back i wake up at 3 am and in my half asleep state i worry. i feel that everything is wrong. somehow broken. somehow not right. but i can't put my finger on it. it's very disturbing when you're half asleep.

last night, i figured it out. i'm going through life here with a stone in my shoe. i'm limping. i'm not where i'm supposed to be. i'm here and i'm happy. my days are fine. things are 'good'. there is no major drama. but i'm not in my place. i'm not really doing my thing. my kids aren't doing their thing. we are place holding. we are limping. we are doing 'fine' and all is 'well'. but this is not home for us- not for our family and mike and my trip to uganda last week confirmed that.

when we arrived we were cold and pale and wrinkled and tired and our faces told the story of our limping. of the stones in our shoes. by the time we left we were sunny and smiling and our faces were again full of the life we love and know and are called into. we had been revived. we had been breathed into by the Spirit. we had received the life-giving memories of who we are and what we are to do. 

i once wondered if when we got back to america all the ease and niceties would take over and we'd settle in and leaving would become to hard. i wondered if maybe uganda would be a season that had ended- if once out of sight, things would look and feel and become different.

no. not. at. all.

being there was like stepping back into my self. into my skin. it was like breathing real again.
running free. 
it felt like david removing the armor that saul placed on him to fight goliath and picking up his sling shot to face the giant. he came as himself. maybe less impressive. maybe more vulnerable.  but he knew all he needed was God and authenticity.

listen. can you hear it ?

darkness to light

sometimes when i'm feeling particularly bleak, or sorry for myself, or that things are absolutely taking too long to go the way i want them to, i remember the israelites. i have a vision of them wandered about in a desert for 40 years following a cloud by day and a pillar of light by night. i see them eating the bread-like substance that they found on the ground that morning and aren't allowed to save for later, but rather have to trust that more will be there the next day.  i picture their lack of permanence, their unknown, their questioning of their identity. i imagine their doubt.

because i know mine.

they lived each day in the space of that day only. their job, their goal, their purpose during that very long season was trust and obedience really -and more trust.

trust that God was who He said He was. trust that there was a promised land.

trust that they were being guided there. not led around in circles in the desert. not following random clouds or lights. trust that God's promises are real and happen in His time. even though. even if. even when it's 40 years.

gulp.

sometimes i see
darkness.
the cold and bitter air. those dry, bone-like scraping tree tops poking at the sky.  and the pale hollow sky itself. it is everything but lush. everything but green and red and light. all my longing for those opposites leave me only able to see silence and void.

in the nights i wrestle. i am often reminded that i wasn't put on this earth for the purpose of being 'happy', but to seek and know God. that process sometimes brings me through dark spots and barren places, but knowing God brings real joy, and i want to share it, where ever i am. i don't want to long and pine and be miserable and to only see the silence and the scraping branches.

i think while wandering in the desert, the manna was much more than food. it was hope. it revealed that his promises are good, they are new every morning. there is still hope in that promised land - we can believe.

maybe the manna was enough.

today my manna was reflecting with a friend on how far zoe has come. because she asked and so i paused and really answered and in that i could hear all the things that she is doing now that one year ago weren't on the table.

today my manna was in the words of my dear friend beatrice from across the world who shared her reading about living our life where we are, being obedient in whatever desert we are wandering in.

hope. sustenance. enough. enough for today. 

not forever

i'm just sitting. quietly. not doing a thing. not thinking a thing.
just listening to the sounds of my life.
the beautiful stillness of  this day.
the quiet of 2 kids on the couch playing on a computer.
the strumming of my older sons guitar upstairs.
water running. 
my husband in the kitchen.

it's sunday morning.

the sun is coming on to the porch outside slowly lighting the day.
i'm wondering when things will bud, knowing it will be longer off than i want.
i'm noticing how the light moves.
and the wind.
so much goes on, all the time, that we don't even see, right in front of us.

i can be so focused on the wrong things. the small things. the things that directly affect me.
there is so much world out there.

i wake up through out the night with someone, something on my mind and pray it out and me back to sleep. my nights feel like conversations with God.

we are getting ready for church now. to sing and celebrate. to be called to remember the bigger things. the most important things. the deep deep love God has for each of us. giving and receiving forgiveness. to seek justice. to show mercy. to make peace. to practice stillness.   

yesterday i was reminded through a cousin, who was reminded through a friend,

no matter what.  whatever is happening. even in the hardest of seasons (and this one hasn't been easy). even when the answer to whatever the question is, is no. even when the door is shut. God is still God and He is still good. there seem to be so few constants anymore. this one i'm sure of.

how do i know? what is "good"? to me, good is presence. good is non-abandonment. good is faithfully giving peace and hope when there is no reason to have those things in a given situation, and no other explanation other than they are God given. 

i want the spring to come. i want the hot sun. i want this whole long hard season to end. i want the equator. i want my old life back now. red dirt. green everywhere. extremes. burning things. diesel fumes. surrounded by where i thought i always would be. where i felt most me in my skin.

sometimes i wake up in the morning from my conversations with God, and i'm crying because i'm not where i thought i would be when my eyes open.

so i go back to the light shifting. the wind moving. to the people on the couch folding laundry. the permanent truths- He is still good. justice still needs to be fought for, and peace practiced, love lived, forgiveness granted and stillness sought. 

this is not forever.

happy new year

 it has begun. 2019. windy and 'warm'-ish. we went for a walk.



looking for beauty where i was. knowing it was not what i wanted it to be. knowing it didn't match my image. i told myself it was there.

in the way the ice lay just below the water and held onto itself. in the way someone had cared to build that boardwalk through the swamp. in the way that many things lived there together, in a system, one i couldn't see, but if i were quiet enough i could hear. in my kids who ran and skipped ahead- some bigger than me now, but still young enough to enjoy this family walk.

when things feel giant and overwhelming, i often have to break them down into small bits and pieces. moments. like chewing your food so you don't choke.

it's never my first instinct, to slow down. when i encounter something i don't like but have to deal with, i'd rather gulp it down all at once with my nose pinched and chase it with a glass of milk. i'd rather close my eyes and run right on through - not slowly observe.

but.

these days i'm working on being in my life no matter what that looks like. whether it feels good or bad, fun or painful, my plans or not what i'd have picked- being in it, as it is, for what it is. not avoiding it, not denying it, not picking and choosing which parts to experience and which parts to ignore. and the best way for me to be in my life is to break it down, slow it down, hold the moments and savor them.

this is where i encounter God. where i remember not to worry because the sparrows are fed and the lilies are dressed. i am small but important.

the bog freezes, and it thaws. i can do hard things. and find softness.