all before 10 am

some days you wake up and you feel lucky because a little girl is grabbing your elbow and saying "mommy".  and you scoop her up and snuggle- even thought it's still dark outside.  some days you can't wait to jump up and have coffee and banana bread with lemon curd.

some days you see a link to a blog of a mom homeschooling her autistic son, and you are reminded by her, that we need to stop trying to "fix" our special kids, and love and appreciate them for who they are now. there it is again, now. to learn from them, and let them help us to know where they are now, and let that place be okay.  to work on fixing ourselves- our expectations- our ideas of where they should be.  to have serenity to accept the things we can not change. to not just have acceptance but, can i say it, thanks.  joy even- in the opportunity to share in a life so different.  some days start with that reminder - not by accident- but divinely orchestrated.

some days you hear, while you're drinking your coffee, that your sister did well with her ablation. that while your were asleep, across the world someone probed around in her heart, found the part that was misfiring and fixed it- that she is fine and you say a prayer of deep gratitude- and breath again.

some days we wake up and write letters to our friends who are sleeping, probably for ever.  we say things that we always wanted to say, but know now is our last chance.  so we write them- we speak them- we send love and prayer and traveling mercies. and we wonder about these days and hours in between lives- what they look like and sounds like and i know in my heart that Jesus, that great comforter, is holding her, that it's not void, it's love.

some days it all adds up to be a lot, like today.  the beauty and the deep ache.  the miracle and the quiet. and we don't know what else will come, or won't come.  but we are reminded that we don't know- about the near misses- and the almost's, and if we'd been one second sooner or one minute later-ness of our days.

so i'm sitting with these things. feeling my heart here and in other places.  feeling the big and the small.  holding up my hands- in thanks, and request, and awe. 

first day of summer vacation

why is that children, or at least my children, have to be worst behaved while my parents are visiting?  i mean, it's as if they know that the only two people in the world besides mike and me, who probably pay attention to how long it takes them to respond to my requests, and then do what they're asked, are watching and shaking their heads.

today, it was as if they knew that the time when i most wanted their obedience, most wanted their best behavior, when my mentors were watching, would be the perfect opportunity to disregard my requests, to continue coloring, or smacking each other, or drawing stick figures with giant private parts urinating. (what?? today?? come on!! can't you people make me look good?)


either that, or they all need their hearing checked- because i had to ask them not twice but about 30 times to do anything- while nearby grandparents feigned reading their books, but awaited my response.  and what was my response?  at first i didn't know because usually i don't have to ask 30 times- maybe 3 but not 30.  but i think my pause empowered their stance.  they knew i was caught off guard- they also knew i was way out numbered as mike was at the office and there are 4 of them, and it was the first day of summer vacation.  oh.  right.  that.

it comes with the territory- that funky transition time of 'lets test the rules and boundaries and see what's changed since the last break from school'.  good times. but not really. 


i have to say the girls, who have not been in school, were fine- even better than fine.  but the boys? they weren't doing horrible things, but it was their slow disregard, it was their disrespect for my authority, as if i were the parents in the charlie brown cartoons- "mhwa mhwa mhwa wahmah" that made me want to smack them.

 i vacillated between thinking they needed punishment, or activity;  chores, running laps, or time outs, or more structure provided by me.  truth be told, i tried.  they did chores, which led to time outs, but eventually, i ended up taking them to the pool. yup. i did.

why? well,  not because i had promised it, although i had.
because i wanted to go. 

see this falls into the catagory of not taking something obvious away, something that screams 'duh! perfect treat to be revoked', because you as parent, want to enjoy it too, or you want to enjoy the fall out of the activity- ie: peace and quiet.

believe me, i've done it before and regretted it.  i mean it can go massively awry.

"if you two don't stop arguing, than no TV for the rest of the day!" meanwhile it's pouring rain outside and their goes my afternoon.  i'm actually being punished more then they are!  now i've bought myself two hours at least of more fighting- requiring more punishments.  and you can't undo it.  then you really lose the upper hand.  once you give in and let them have TV back, because you're fully losing your mind and think your temporary sanity might be more important then consistency, and besides you can hope that they might forget you took it away? you've lost it. and don't be fooled.  they never forget.  you will have bought yourself a tomorrow afternoon full of,
"why can't we have TV back? yesterday you let us.  pllleeeaaaasssseee?"
yes- now you have to go back and regain the ground you lost.  and this will go on all week.


today i justified the trip to the pool as 'needed structure', as a break for the grandparents from the whining and the absurd drawings (which had become a contest of who could draw the figure with the largest part and the longest and most fluorescent stream). and i justified it because water is good for us, and so is late afternoon sun, and getting out of the house, and a change of scenery.


here is where it went.

smiles, release of energy, but not much peace or quiet.
was it the right move?
who knows.
was their behavior markedly better when we returned home?
not so much.
but it's the first day of summer vacation- so i can try again tomorrow.

good night.

sing

sitting outside on the porch in a deafening rain storm.  loving it.   right now, i can't hear anything but rain- no one but the sky is talking.  this weather makes it easy to be still and listen, to feel small and vulnerable and somehow irrelevant.  in a good way.

i keep thinking of that line in the sing song.
some words cannot be spoken only sung.
it's such a simple line. but it's true.

the old testament psalms, the poetry and dialogue of them, were meant to be sung in hebrew- not merely spoken- because there is more in there than words can say.   because they are speaking to God, and God is musical- bigger than words- other dimensional. music, even the sounds of this rain and thunder, are deeper and layered, and transcendent.

today in church i was reminded of this during the time of african praise.  it's my favorite time, (although i only can pick out the word mukama, God), because it's poignant and uniting and joyful in a way that words alone can't be. (yet here i write silently).

imagine someone reading the words to amazing grace.
"amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,
i once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now i see."

now imagine hearing amazing grace played only on the harmonica, or bagpipes, no words, just notes. even if there never had been any words, no history to link it with- the music alone would have spoken more than perhaps the words just written. 

music is the language of the gods- the greeks said.  i'm sure.  i think our spirits were meant to sing.  we were meant to take our limited skin and bones and dance.  sometimes i think when our spirits are freed from our bodies, we'll look back and all our years will feel like how it feels in a dream when you are trying to run but you can't move.  that is how free it will feel.

music reaches soul level.  it surpasses all culture and language and time.  it brings us to tears, to heart leaping joy, to stand in pride, to remember, to imagine, to hope, dig deep into ourselves and feel things that we couldn't without it.  music has time in it.  it flies somewhere in the fourth and fifth dimensions.  music always has been and always will be. it moves us, and it makes us move.  music brings us together- it shines on the important things and it covers the things that don't matter. at. all. it can bring light to dark places, speak into hopeless seasons and bridge divisions.

we were meant to sing.  we were meant to dance. to reach and set the spirit free and see our sameness more than our separateness. like small children who sing without reason or place, just because their heart has something to say. so lets just sing.

i didn't sign up for goodbye

it was a day of hellos and goodbyes.
the arrival of my dad.  and the boys last day of school. 

it was also a day when mike and i said out loud what we both feel quietly inside- that our life these days can seem overwhelming.  that the ambiguity around rosie's exact place in our lives is tremendously stressful, that it's hard on all six of us to live in the limbo of who we all are to each other.  are we preparing to be real true forever siblings, parents and child, family of six? or are we forever fostering someone? the up-in-the-air-ness, the unknown-ness is an added complication that we didn't expect could be so hard.

it was a day when i was called by the woman who took care of her at the orphanage for 7 months, then i turned around and bumped into our lawyer in the coffee shop, a day when we realized that for all involved we need some resolve- we need clearer boundaries- we need cultural sensitivity to go both ways- we need respect and also decision. it was a day when the thought of deeper hello's or some form of goodbyes - felt needed but also enormous and scary.

i wasn't prepared for a life of goodbyes.  i'm bad at them.  don't like them.  i avoid them- internally and externally.  when we moved to uganda- we had a lot of goodbyes.  i geared up, toughened up, faced the music and did the best i could- but i still said a lot of cushiony things like- "oh, i'll see you soon!" or even, "i'm sure i'll see you one more time before we go." when i usually didn't.

once we got on that plane- i figured i was done with goodbyes.  that i'd moved into a season of 'hello's'.  how wrong i was.  the life of the expat is full of loss, and leaving, and being left and saying goodbye.  but i didn't sign up for goodbye.  and it sneaks up on you.

after our long morning of coffee and intense life discussions, with the ironic near constant interruptions by rose and zoe, we went to the end of the year assembly at the boys international school.

let me just say i was not prepared.  i was expecting light and breezy and i got heavy and torrential. because they all get it.  they know the importance of goodbye.  of ceremony.  of saying it out loud, processing it, acknowledging it,  and hugging that elephant in the room- of endings- grieving- bidding farewell.

it started with a song and it ended with a song.
it started with 'one more step' by sydney carter.

One more step along the world I go,
one more step along the world I go;
from the old things to the new
keep me traveling along with you
 
Give me courage when the world is rough,
keep me loving though the world is tough;
leap and sing in all I do,
keep me traveling along with you





oh dear.
i could feel that full and painful feeling of mounting tears. because the world felt rough and tough and i needed courage.  i wanted to keep loving and leaping and singing and traveling. i wanted to be full and not broken by it all.  all the life of life.  all the 'hellos' and 'goodbyes'.  with all the clarity and confusion and subtext.
i sat listening to it- holding rosie on my lap- surrounded by my 11 month old community- and my 3 month new sort of child, while zoe, who will be joining this group in a few months, who i've known for lifetimes, sat in the bunny pen on the other side of the wall, playing with her furry friends, knowing in her heart that this was about more goodbyes, as last days always are, and knowing she's had enough of that. 

i bit my lip.


but then came the last song- the song that undid me.  the song called 'sing' by gary barlow and andrew lloyd webber.  and even though i'm not leaving, even though my kids will be back in a few months, it was the sum total of all the goodbyes that i never expected here- it was ongoing sense of homelessness- and the transience of life.

Some words they can’t be spoken only sung.

So hear a thousand voices shouting loud

There’s a place, there is time in this life

When you sing what you are feeling

Find your feet

Stand your ground

Don’t you see right now the world is listening to what we say.

Sing it louder and sing it clearer

Knowing everyone will hear you

Make some noise,

 find your voice tonight

Sing it stronger,

Sing together,

Make this moment last forever, old and young shouting out tonight

 

We’ve had a lifetime to wait

And see a thousand faces stand afraid

You are hope

You are light

Know it wasn’t always easy

Stood your ground

Kept your faith

Don't you see right now the world is listening to what we say

Sing it louder and sing it clearer

Knowing everyone will hear you

Make some noise,

 find your voice tonight

Sing it stronger,

Sing together,

Make this moment last forever, old and young shouting out tonight

Some words  can not be spoken only sung.

To hear a thousand voices shouting out.

And on and on.

Just sing

Just sing

Just sing

and i wanted to sing, to just sing.  but i couldn't because i couldn't stop crying- and neither could this new community around me- all of us, those staying, those going, those who've been saying many more goodbyes for many more years than i have, all of us undone.  because it's hard and poignant and deep, as soul stuff always is. 

because some words are too hard to speak, or too hard to speak over and over.  sometimes they are just said better when they aren't just words- but when they are strengthened by notes, and tones, and the sounds that speak more, that reach deeper, that the limits of our words. 

some things need to be sung.  things that hold both the beauty and the sorrow in life- the hellos and goodbyes of life.

today needed to be sung.

karamoja pictures with t.s. eliot

In my beginning is my end. 

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music 
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire 

Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn.

Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons

 

The time of the seasons and the constellations 

The time of milking and the time of harvest 

The time of the coupling of man and woman 

And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. 

Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

 
Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

 To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, 
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. 
In order to arrive at what you do not know 
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

 

  In order to possess what you do not possess 

You must go by the way of dispossession. 

In order to arrive at what you are not 

You must go through the way in which you are not. 

And what you do not know is the only thing you know 

And what you own is what you do not own 

And where you are is where you are not.

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 
  

In my end is my beginning. 

let them eat cake

when i arrived in the kitchen this morning, blurry eyed and in need of coffee, to begin a day full with the things it's full of, hoping to carve out some time to be still, i found a mass of ants. there were so many ants that i thought the counter was moving.  hundreds of ants, tiny ants everywhere, working so hard together, in constant motion, busily finding and licking and hauling whatever they could scavenge from the counter.  i think today it was mostly licking because i couldn't see any crumbs.  perhaps those had already been removed, but they were eagerly devouring the left-over spilled chicken broth, which had already been wiped up the night before. i watched for a minute, spilled some water on the counter and watched them quickly disperse. it was impressive.

the first foreign missions experience i had was in pucalpa peru when i was 15.  i remember one afternoon we went to the home of some missionaries who had been kind enough to loan out all the mans t-shirts and boxer shorts for the 17 of us kids to wear, as our luggage had been lost en route. we must have been quite a site- visions in plaid underwear and white t-shirts. 

when we arrived at their house, the wife had made a chocolate cake for us.  it was perfectly propped up on  several overturned cups that lay in a larger pan, filled with an inch of water.  that was for ant protection.  then several toothpicks had been placed in the cake and a cloth dishtowel was draped over the cake.  that was fly protection. the woman seemed thrilled with her contraption.  it was her masterpiece. her victory over the pests of her life in the tropics.  man vs. wild. 

most of my memories of those three weeks were of impressive poverty.  the filth of it, the stench of it, trash and dirt and ripped t-shirts over protruding bellies, and bare feet. or the intense relational issues that arose between our group of 14 teenage boys and 3 teenage girls- dealing with hormones and internal conflict over true disparity.  but this memory of the cake stuck with me as well. i think because as i tried to process the incredible differences of my american upper-middle class teenage life, and the level of poverty in rural peru in 1986, it was surprising to me that something as irrelevant as a cake, could matter so much to this woman. that her victory was over insects.  there was so much there to fight against- to strive for.  there were so many big things to put energy into- why take the time to bake a cake and protect it so thoroughly?



but i kind of get it now.  not just because of this mornings ant fiasco, or because of my sincere love of chocolate cake.  i get it because sometimes life is best lived in the small things, maybe always.  i get it because the big victories, the 'solving' of the worlds problems, the issues that scream at us, the injustice and the wrongness and the disparity, - achieving those things and fighting those things are what lifetimes are made of- sometimes even many lifetimes. many generations.  improving health, educating people, building self-efficacy, sharing the love of God in spite of the distrust religion has created,  connecting with a very different culture-  those things take much time.  those things can suck energy- can bring seasons of great discouragement- or, in their success, can bring pride and arrogance.


but cake is cake.  it takes less than an hour, and it tastes good.  it revives.  for her, it was 'home'.  her making it and protecting it was living out hospitality, and generosity, and teaching us that it's okay to have small victories.  it showed her acceptance of her reality- there will always be ants and flies- but we do what we can.  there will always be poverty and injustice too, but we do what we can. 


i saw one sliver of her life.  one afternoon.  i'm sure she didn't bake cakes every day- or draft plans for their protection.  i'm sure most of her days were out in that filth and stench.

maybe she didn't even like cake- maybe she is not a baker- maybe she just listened to a still small voice that told her that morning to get up and bake a cake for a bunch of impressionable teenagers.

maybe she fought it for a while. maybe she argued with it and said she should show us instead all the big things she was doing. maybe she thought she'd even be judged for being a missionary who eats chocolate cake when there are more important things to be doing. but maybe she was obedient and baked a cake anyway because her years of big things had taught her to listen to that voice, even when it made no sense. 


maybe she made that cake because twenty five years later one of those impressionable teenagers would be living across the globe in the tropics too- with ants and poverty- with small annoyances and big tragedies,  and would need to know that sometimes, you need to bake a cake.  that sometimes the lessons come in the baking of it, or the eating of it, or the protecting of it, or even in the ants themselves. that sometimes it's about obedience, or tasting sweetness, or accepting our realities, or innovating, or learning from our challenges- even the very small ones. that sometimes big things happen because of the small things. that life is lived in our little moments.


a few months after arriving in uganda, a college student group came through lead by my second cousin, and they wanted to meet with us and learn about our life here- about what we did and thought as missionaries.  i knew they would come with lots of questions, and i thought of what we should say- about what would be most important to share.  but instead of preparing, i baked chocolate chip cookies.

i wanted them to enjoy their hour with us, to feel revived and cared for as we talked about the big issues.  i wanted them to know it's okay to be surrounded by poverty- and allow yourself to still taste sweetness. that life here should be lived in the gray- not in black or white- not in stark contrast to life in the US, when you'd never think twice about baking a cake.  i wanted them to know that there are times for fasting and times for dessert.  that Jesus cared for the poor, but allowed perfume to be poured on his feet.  that our years are made of our days and our hours, great movement requires stillness, action requires rest. 

i wonder if that missionary lady in peru is still alive.  if she's still there- fighting the big and the small things.  i wonder what she did in her life, what she's most proud of and most humbled by. and i wonder if she knows the value of her chocolate cake, baked that august in 1986.

amazing poem

this poem, shared yesterday by a friend, says it so well (thank you AEH).

all the things we should stay open to, and search for, and allow. how we should try to respond. to live simply, to value all that comes to us, learn from what is in our path, move toward and not away.  experience, experience, experience.  seek to tread lightly, to speak more softly, yet boldly, to venture and return.


Please Bring Strange Things


Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
And the ways you go be the lines of your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
And your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well-loved one,
Walk mindfully, well-loved one,
Walk fearlessly, well-loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
Be always coming home.

- Ursula K. Le Guin