Life After Miscarriage: Every Storm Runs Out of Rain

She gave me this painting back in April when I was drenched from standing in the middle of a torrential down pour that felt like it might never end.

My heart dripping and my flooded, she had prayed peace and healing over the colors and words she so lovingly spread out over the white of canvas and pages of His Word from James 1, a visual prayer layered with truth and hope.

And that painting stood as an encouragement that my suffering wouldn't be in vain

and

that every storm runs out of rain.

I kept it close day in and day out for months, reading the words from James so many times I could almost say them in my sleep. Sometime during the summer, though, I noticed that I didn't need that prayer quite like I needed it before, so I began paying more attention to some other passages of scripture that were meeting me where I'd been living -- abiding {John 15) and living a life of faith {Hebrews 11}.

A few weeks ago, one of my really good friends lost her baby, and as I sat on my bed crying for her, crying over the brokenness of our world, I looked long and hard at that painting that still sits on my nightstand.

That visual prayer  -- it was right.

Every storm does run out of rain.

It's something I can see seven months away from when we unexpectedly said goodbye to our baby and I said hello to a whole new level of anxiety for a period of time. It's something I can understand now. But when that storm was raging, it was hard to imagine any break in rain would ever occur.

And the first chapter of James was, of course, right, too; every ounce of suffering does produce perseverance and character.

Last week, as I standing in the park watching my boys laugh and play with warm October sunshine warming my face, I realized the storm storm clouds have been broken apart and cleared for awhile now.

I can feel the warmth of the sun again, my heart no longer a sopping wet mess of tears and anxiety,

and I can feel my lungs inhale the deepest of breaths without feeling like I'm exhaling the weight of the world through my mouth.

That very night, I shared while at a session with a beautiful soul whose been walking with me through the grief that has accompanied the loss of our babies that I don't feel like I'm the person I was even a year ago.

She nodded and smiled and agreed, saying that my spirit was calmer, my demeanor softer, my heart less guarded. And while I'd never choose to walk that path of hurt again, I could now appreciate what suffering has produced in my character, my spirit, my heart. All of that doesn't make the loss any less stinging, but it does grow hope in a weary heart that is so very tired of hurting.

I left that session feeling stronger, more of the woman I was created to be than I had in months, even years.

And I left that session realizing that what I thought couldn't be true is, indeed, true-- every storm runs out of rain, passes at some point. I think, perhaps that visual prayer that was an umbrella of hope over my head for so long needs to be passed along, too, a small but mighty shield from the storms of life, a traveling reminder that our hearts can hope for healing because He does heal and He is Healer.

And it will be accompanied by a journal with my story of the healing {and hopefully passed along again with another story of healing}, a traveling visual prayer of hope with stories of how the storms have passed and what He did in the midst.

For Michelle, the painter of my visual prayer, fellow hope seeker and heart-companion who keeps pointing me back to Jesus. 

Just Write: Hands

I've become very well acquainted with the couch these past two months.

It seems like longer. Between first-trimester ailments and three rounds of illness, my energy levels have been nonexistent; and so has any work that doesn't involve simply typing on the computer or keeping the children alive and sometimes fed. 

It's in these brackets of time and space, where I begin to fathom the incredible love from the people in my life and their hearts for serving. 

It's the little-big things that stop me in my tracks, have me giving thanks. 

My sister offers to cook dinner for us the day we arrive home from Florida because she knows we've been awake since 5 a.m. and our fridge is pretty much void of most food. 

Friends who've been staying at our house while they were looking for a new home during the time we were away vacuum the floors and line the beds with clean sheets topping the pillows with mints, fresh for our arrival home. 

John's dad picks us up from the airport early in the morning complete with after-flight snacks.

My grandma does our laundry and cooks dinner almost every single night we're with her and my grandpa at their condo. 

Friends whisper prayers, send cards and emails and flowers for my birthday or just to encourage my heart. Or blend juice lemon and ginger and bring it to our meetings so I can find relief from morning sickness. 

John does double duty with kids and work -- with a smile {and house and food prep}.

It just doesn't stop -- the pouring out of love and the generosity of time and the service of hands. 

And my hands in this season -- all I can do is fold them in prayer, offering thanks

and humbly receive the love that's been freely and generously given. 

Life After Miscarriage: Maybe We Shall

Essentially, I passed go. 

I don't know how the conversation began or why we were discussing fertility at all during a recent doctor's appointment, but when she finished my half-way point evaluation she'd said she wouldn't be concerned at all if I were to get pregnant tomorrow. 

Through a mustered smile, I thought to myself -- maybe she wouldn't, but I couldn't say the same. 

Her green light was unexpected. So unexpected that it left me more flabbergasted than joyful, like I would have expected. 

I'd long been dreaming of the day, the appointment when my crazyhella smart doctor would say that my body wasn't so broken that she would worry about what a pregnancy would do to me, that she wouldn't have cause to believe we'd say goodbye to another baby before we ever got to hold that new life in our arms. 

After John and I left her office, the astonishment of her words, the shock of my reaction didn't wear off. And as days have progressed into weeks, I've become a river of emotion winding wildly down stream through every twist and turn imaginable. 

There's no question of if I want to welcome a new baby into our family; I do. Honestly, we both do. 

But I'm the complicated one who was cleared to pass go but can't seem to collect her $200 and be on her merry way. 

Because now I know that positive pregnancy tests don't always mean baby in arms at the end of a nine-month journey. 

Now I know that we have to welcome all the risks that come along with the chance of welcoming another baby into our lives because another baby, whether living here on Earth or there in Heaven, will indefinitely take up more real estate of the heart and mind. 

I find myself praying, asking God if we should try again to grow our family. If we should journey into three, and I enter into theological discussions about having more kids and the whole "be fruitful and multiply" command and whether or not two miscarriages were clear indicators to let go of the dream of a bigger family. 

Over time, after discussions, in searching my heart, I know, though, that I'm not really asking theological questions anymore. I'm not really asking if having another baby is black-and-white right or wrong for our family. 

I'm asking if this time we will actually have and hold another one. 

I'm asking if a new baby will be in our arms, not just our hearts. 

I'm asking if we take the risk, will there be rich reward. 

Or will we be face to face in another seemingly dead end.

****

We're wandering a corn maze with our boys, our good friends and their boys on a bright, warm October afternoon; we're discussing such matters of the heart and such matters of theology as we keep running right into dead ends of thick corn stalks -- so many times that I joke they might have to come in with a search team and flashlights to find us. 

And that's when it stares me right in the face, bright and golden like the towering cornfields beneath soft autumn light. 

There's not really any such thing as a dead end if you can turn around. It's more a side-road detour. 

And

we didn't enter the maze just to effortlessly walk through. We went in knowing it could be a trial. We could get lost. We could be wandering aimlessly until the sun set over the fields. 

But, too, we went in trusting that we would be rescued if rescue was needed. No theological discussions about whether we should turn at this corner or that or if it's right for us to walk a path before us that we're unsure of where it leads. No desperate prayers for an answer before we even come to the fork in the road. 

We find our way through after a few long roads that led to nowhere, after lots of discussion and giggles, tears and tiredness, triumph and trial, conversation and sun soaked onto faces. 

I grab John's hand and catch his eye, our boys running off into the clear open space of prairie outside of the maze. 

And I think to myself, maybe we shall.


Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you." 
Psalm 9:10

Bigger Picture Moment: Hers was the First

Hers was the first voice to whisper loud through the darkness that my own voice -- just a mother of a toddler, 25 and lonely-hard reaching -- wasn't lost amid the autumnal heaping piles of seasoned falling leaves on the internet.

That I wasn't just the mother of a toddler with a same--sung-song as all the rest, but that I was the mother of a toddler with a voice of my own and heart that stretched far and wide into motherhood, yes, but that also was rooted deep in the other soils of life that grow the heart of a woman.

Hers were the first words that were bright beacons of promise guiding me through the last weeks of being heavy with another child, calming, reassuring that my heart wouldn't betray me when our family grew by one more and that love would rush forth like a spring newly sprung.

Hers were among the first hands to commit to building a haven for connection and creativity, designing a foundation we all build upon each week, word by word, story by story, bigger picture by bigger picture.

And hers was the first heart here in the vast open online prairie with which I felt my own trade strings, back and forth, back and forth, building thread by thread a hand-knit friendship that spans hundreds and hundreds of land-lay miles.

I have been beyond blessed; there have been many voices, many words, many hands, many hearts since hers with which I've connected because of this small space I bravely and humbly, fiercely and timidly claimed as my own almost five years ago this December -- some of whom I call my best friends.

But hers were the first, and without her first voice, her words, her hands, her heart, my own voice, my own words, my own hands and my own heart wouldn't be what they've become.

I owe her much, and yet, I know because of who she is, I owe her nothing at all.

This afternoon, in the early October sunlight her plane will land here in Chicago

And  for the first time in person, amid the tree branches dancing with vibrant golds and deep, dark reds, I will hear in person the first voice in the blogosphere that so encouraged, the first words that so healed after I cried out for comfort.

For the first time, I'll embrace the hands that have built with me

and I'll weave another few threads with the heart of a most beautiful soul.

One that I knew long before we ever met.

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Everyday Life: Lumps and Bumps and Steering Wheels

After we read,

after lights out,

after we pray,

after we are tucked beneath warm covers, my oldest drives into wide-awake nightmares instead of drifting into his normal peaceful slumber.

He begins to sob, asking through tears, "Mom, do kids get cancer? Or do just older people?"

And just like with most unexpected veers into darkness, I find myself swallowing my own fear at this sudden jerk of the car toward the edge of the cliff and try to calmly recover the direction of the conversation, steer it back onto the safety of the well-paved road.

I answer as simply, honestly as I can -- yes, sometimes little kids do get cancer, but that it doesn't happen very often.

He continues to weep next to me as I gently explain and whisper-pray for the right words to become my words to become his words of comfort and understanding.

His small body shakes next to mine, and I pull him close as it becomes clearer that he's not just asking hypothetically.

"Is the lump in my throat that won't go away cancer, mommy?"

I don't know how he's taken this leap from simply just telling me earlier about this lump to equating it with cancer, but I'm all too-familiar with how such leaps are made; I bridge the gap between these mountains all too often, linking symptoms and fear with disease and what ifs.

Though I gently whisper that I don't think the lump in his throat is cancer, he still can't rest, so I ask him what made him think about it and he reminds me that we've been praying for my Grandpa Filippi to be healed from cancer.

"Do people die from cancer?"

My heart flips again and sags heavy, holding his question

I steady the wheel, regain traction on solid grand and pray peace over him from the One Who knows our bodies and our hearts and thoughts; the One Who loves and protects. And the one who heals when we need to be healed.

His cries soften and fade into rhythmic breaths as he drifts to sleep.

But now I am wide awake

mopping up the soppy mess in my own heart

sad and dripping with the reality that

at just five, he would even be internalizing such heaviness


and

that at just five, there are even such heavy things to ponder.

Frustrated, I wonder aloud via Facebook at why none of the parenting books address how to explain things like cancer and such to soft and permeable five-year-old hearts.

I swerve my car toward the edge and into darkness, but she catches my hand at the wheel and she does, too,

and they calmly steer me back toward solid ground

reminding me

just as I reminded him

that we know Who really does the driving around here.

It's just that sometimes it takes those who have been on the road a little longer to remind you

to let go.

Hope: A Story You Should Hear

It's not my story to tell, so I'll let my words be few.

Last year, our good friends -- John's best friend from college, Jamey, and his wife, Kaila, -- excitedly stood in our kitchen as we cooked dinner and shared that they were expecting a baby.

Life, however, didn't go as planned.

We prayed for miracles.

And, though we didn't get the one for which we had hoped, for which we had pleaded, He continues to allow our fingers to unwrap unexpected ones.

This isn't just a story of grief, a story of loss, though both are interwoven into its threads.

But, rather, overarchingly, it's one of hope

and it's one of what God can do with willing hearts and resolves to trust that even when life doesn't make sense to our minds, God can redeem the seemingly senseless.

Mugford Story - Stereo Final Web from cedarcreek.tv production on Vimeo.

I hope baby Sam's life and story blesses your life in the way it's blessed ours.

Bigger Picture Moments: I Want My Freakin' Village {Part II}

It wasn't the right house or the really even the right neighborhood.

Miles from a central downtown and situated just off a crowded, two-lane thoroughfare, I almost drowned in the silence of our new neighborhood as a mom then with only one toddler.

I longed for the kind of streets in which I grew up and into my own skin while outside playing kickball or freeze tag with a dozen other kids until the streets lights would flicker on and moms everywhere began shouting names from the screen door; though those days of neighborhood play came with hard lessons and hard knocks, I knew my neighbor's names, and I knew them as ones I could call on to borrow eggs or to come and check in on my sister and me when my mother's job ran long into the night.

After a few years of living here, in this quiet neighborhood that seemed neighborless, and driving miles and miles several times weekly to friends' houses for playdates that were saturated with the promise of adult conversation, a hot cup of coffee or tea and worn out children by afternoon nap time, I began uttering begging prayers

to move

or for our friends to move closer something anything for there to be a neighborhood village because honestly?

I loved this virtual community and my friends from all over our large and sprawling county but those people are hard to call in emergency, time-sensitive binds

or over to last-minute play when we need to see faces other than the ones that live in between these four walls

and, you know, you can't borrow eggs from a blog.

Somewhere in the midst of this crying out for community and trying {and failing} to find a new house in new neighborhood teeming with little kids, little buds of green began popping through the soil, I began shifting my energy from moving to making this a place I wanted to live -- a place with blossoming relationships and entertwined vines of friendship.

I met {through Twitter, nonetheless} a friend who not only lived two minutes away by car but also my brain twin through hours spent in conversation and communion of the hearts and minds.

Then a few more buds popped through just as I was about to force John to beat a for-sale sign into the ground -- another mom I'd really only known online turned out to live down the street.

A few more new faces slowly emerged, moving into the empty house on our street and we found each other through handshakes in the midst of knee-deep snow mounds and moments of serendipity while connecting virtually via an online group as we typed on our computers only three literal blocks away from each other.

We've cultivated slowly each relationship with conversation and time, offerings of help and hand and heart, and I saw that in effort more buds of friendship began to blossom in the neighborhood that seemed to be void of neighbors.

****

It's almost 8 o'clock at night, and I find myself all out of our eggs mid-recipe.

I briefly consider running to the store, but before I even give it a second thought, my thumbs are busy messaging three faces I not only recognize and call neighbor but also call friends.

And only a few moments later, I'm out my own door and standing at hers, chatting on her front porch while her littles sleep inside as the sun begins to fade into the horizon.



Just before the street lights click on, I bid her farewell and begin to walk the path back to my own house

through a neighborhood that just didn't seem right not just because of its location or proximity but because it was lacking the basic part of the word -- neighbors.

Two eggs in hand and thankfulness heavy on my tongue, my heart, I find a village, my village, in that word's restoration.

And, I find my village, too, in the realization that in order to have a neighbor, you also have to be one.

This week, we're sharing our moments at Brook's!

Thinking, That's All: Together

We've come together in thick humid air of late June, to just be.

Just be. Together.

We swing open the creaky screen door of the chalet, and it's like coming home to a place we've never before been.

A place where shoes are ditched upon entering and tight hugs follow on the tail feathers of giggling and laughter from two lovelies she and I found via friends and tweeting -- four song birds chirping from afar, finally flying toward the same landing spot for one night.

I'm starving, I exhale, after greetings are shared.

We set to work.

We feast first in meal, prepared together in the midst of multiple conversations, over the sounds of summer drifting in through patio screens.

And then we feast some more --

words meeting hearts,

toes meeting sand

photo courtesy of Melissa

waves meeting shore

glorious red streak brushed in one single stroke meeting the bluegray of water just before inky night skies stretched overhead. 



We stay up, trying to cram every last bit of conversation into the time-space we've been given together before eyes begin to heavily droop and we each give into sleep.

I wake -- hungry again -- to sunlight drenching my pillow and voices carrying up the stairs.

I whip eggs quick in a cup and throw them onto a sizzling pan

as I simply soak up more thoughts

more stories

more conversation

more of life

together.

And when the final hour draws to a close, I swallow and pause and smile.

We each reluctantly push away from the proverbial table

linger in last conversations and embraces

and fly off north and south and west.

But we fly off

full.

Full and nourished.

Bigger Picture Moment: Benevolent Pressure

"I believe in very small group of people who want what you what and are willing to commit," Anne Lamott on writing amid the benevolent pressure of other creative souls

We've come, I think, to a crowded, darkened middle school gym, sneaked in through the back door a few minutes late to hear words from a great wordsmith because we writers feast on words like a kid devours a cupcake for breakfast. 


But I don't know really what to expect from this small blonde dread-locked life-poet once I see her standing in the spotlight, rocking her weight back and forth between both legs and waxing reality about the Holy Spirit and tattoos and how everything she eventually lets go bears claw marks from her fingers clenching tight. 


Oh, me, too. 


Everything I let go of, too, boasts my imprinted fingers and hands. 


And, then, she moves thoughts toward writing because that's what writers do; she muses on about life for awhile and then it all circles back to words, words powerful words. 


Words alone. 


And words together. 

Me, Anne Lamott and Melissa, two irons in my journey 

But there's a difference, you know. 


She speaks to my heart when she talks about how writers need to give themselves permission to write ... about how writers flourish amid the "benevolent pressure" from other writers. 


"I believe in very small groups of people who want what you what and are willing to commit," Anne Lamott says. 


Oh, me too. 


I never gave words before to that belief; however, I realize I've been living it in life with my friendships and in my marriage and in my relationships. 


But have I believed this even for my creative endeavors, my passions? I feel like I've been seeking it for almost two years now as one of the co-founders of Bigger Picture Blogs. 


Only now, though, am I putting it into practice with my heart completely wrap-wound-up-around the debut of our Writing Circles forum. Finally, we've combine two things I love, two things in which I believe deeply: sharing life through painting pictures with words amid other kindreds who write life out loud. 


The Proverbs say that as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another; we need community to permeate through all aspects of our lives if we are to be stronger, sharper.


And so as it is in life, it is true also in strengthening the skill of creating and bringing to life words and stories, of writing; there is "benevolent pressure" applied in the sharpening. 

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Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.

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Link up your gleaned moment this week at Melissa's! Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog. Your post must link back here or have our button in your post or the link will be deleted.

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Bigger Picture Moment: Dust Bunnies

I didn't slam the door.

And I didn't run around the house picking up abandoned shoes and socks, hurriedly stashing them behind closed doors.

Or quickly wash the dishes that were piled next to the sink after a long morning filled with cooking.

I didn't rush to run the vacuum, pick up the clothes my boys had scattered across the hallway as they'd peeled pajamas from their small bodies mid-run to the breakfast table.

A simple impromptu play date initiated and executed first thing in the morning a few years ago would have left me breathless and stressed and scurrying to clean the lived-in spaces we call home.

Or it would have left me alone.

I simply would have deemed my home unacceptable and closed the front door to anyone wanting to walk through.

But that's not life for me anymore.

Because now -- a few years older, a few years wise, a few more miles walked -- I know that real life is a lot like my house at various points in the week.

Sometimes it's clean and lovely and tidy, but mostly, it's messy; it's lived in and imperfect with beautiful and lovely scattered through out.

Two times this week I opened the front door, largely with little notice, to women who kick aside the shoes and socks and make a path into the heart of the living room, sink into a chair and spread open their lives, ready to wade through the messy and share spread-open hearts.

They've loved me well through celebration and laughter, joy and silliness, through clean kitchens and tidy living rooms.

But, also, they've loved me through long miles and telephones, through grief and loss, through brokenness and healing and tears and hurt and the dust bunnies and cobwebs that push across the floors.

So twice this week, I simply just opened the door, thankful that there have been souls who have taught me how.

And despite the mess, I haven't regretted it for a second.

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Encourage.
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Bigger Picture Moments: On Being Noticed

There is tired written across my newly sunned cheeks and wild, wind-stricken hair swept back into a sweaty ponytail when I decide to take the leap. 

I flip open the computer, see my image reflected onto the screen from the webcam and think again -- maybe I'll record my audition for the show a different time when ...

But the kids are asleep. 

The nights are short.

And time is of the essence.

I take a deep breath, open the typed piece a friend and I had just hours before co-written and talk myself into hitting record.

As I self-argue again about perhaps freshening up a bit and putting my powdered face forward, I disregard the thought and remember why I'm doing this audition in the first place:

****

It's lonely sometimes, motherhood. 

I recall days, mostly after each of my babes were born, where I felt isolated, weary, invisible to all but little pairs of needy eyes. 

Days where loneliness stretched out across the never-ending hours until my husband would appear in the door frame, me longing for cohesive conversation after feeling enslaved in a house where sickness was bounding us to couch or naptimes were holding us hostage both morning and afternoon. 

Days where I desperately needed someone, a friend to come alongside me and remind me that babies outgrow naps and winter colds dwindle and mothers again find their voices to use for something other than reading the same story a billion times or shouting in frustration for everyone to stop whatever atrocity was being committed. 

There were days where I longed and cried and yearned for a village.

I felt so alone. My friends lived far away and schedules seemed to always conflict and there were weeks when I'd see hide nor hair of anyone outside of attending Bible study or running to the grocery store. 

So I wrote it all out -- the heartache, the pain, the loneliness that wiggles itself into the cracks of motherhood amid the beautiful and lovely and wonderful. 

Someone noticed. Actually, a lot of someones in this here blog space as well as my geographical area noticed. And they felt the same way. 

This voice of mine that spent so much time coming out as solely that of a mother began to emerge into the voice of a woman who also happened to be a mother, the me I'd not really known until a community came around me and helped me muddle through all of the life that had been thumping around inside my heart and head.

I grew and a community grew around me and I grew into community and friendship and I found my freakin' village all because someone noticed, all because someone, lots of someones heard me and said, oh yes, yes, yes, I feel that, too..

But I've never forgotten the lonely that stung my heart, left me weeping and heart sick for traveling companions, left me aching to be seen, to be noticed. 

****

I blink a few times, exhale and press record as I accept the tired eyes looking back at me, the messed hair. 

Because this -- plain and simple little old me recording my half of the audition for Listen to Your Mother in a dishelved state, not perfectly coiffed, while the children slumber and I steal moments from my evening to give space for my authentic voice to rise --  this is real motherhood. And it deserves real voice.

This production that pays tribute to mothers, gives voice to all the parts of  motherhood -- the hilarious, the messy, the lonely, the beautiful, the weary, the lovely,  the completely disheveled, the imperfect -- this show isn't just for the perfectly groomed or only professional writers or only actresses who can deliver flawless monologues; it's for real mothers with real voices and real messy hair and real tired eyes who have something very real, very important to share.

The popularity of Listen to Your Mother, as evidenced by multiple-city productions now running only three years since the inaugural Madison show, demonstrates that real motherhood not only deserves a real voice but that we mothers need a space to have real voice, hear a real voice.

Because we're all just waiting to have a voice given to the parts of our lives -- especially the complicated, messy, beautiful, impossible arena of motherhood -- that aren't often shared let alone celebrated.

We're all just waiting to be noticed, to be a little better known, to be heard. 

As my voice finds the courage and strength to speak into a microphone on a Chicago stage come May 6, giving life to the other half of a duet about the weariness and loneliness and hilarity of motherhood, I hope that another mother, somewhere, anywhere, will feel just a little more noticed, a little better known, a little more heard from her time spent in a space where motherhood is shared and celebrated. 

{Also, I promise to shower before the actual show and perhaps put on my powdered face because mothers don't just deserve to be given a real voice, they deserve {and need!} showers, too.}

Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with the beauty in the simple moments of the week.. 

Live.
Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week HERE! Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog. Your post must link back here or have our button in your post or the link will be deleted.

Encourage.
Visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.

Five-Minute Friday: Ache

Ache stretches out across my chest and floods the open spaces with longing.

In a regular time and space I don't know, there was a house vibrating with life, the very walls built with the concrete ties of love, windows and doors threatening to spill all the energy into the yard and street.

I hear the stories.

Every weekend.

Every weekend the families, they came together for the children to run and yell and play and grow and the adults to talk and enjoy and pray and grow.

I've touched these kinds of afternoons-turned-evenings in sporadic seasons of our life, sitting in the warmth of community, lives shared and hearts bared and tied together with ropes of experience and hour spent well in conversation.

I know that villages are not built on concrete slabs within the same neighborhood as often now.

I'm just now figuring out the new construction codes, and they require bricks of time, foundations of commitment and mortar of follow-through.

There's labor in the building of a home that houses community.

I've gotten my hands dirty, and now I'm ready to be coated head to toe.

Five-Minute Friday: Grit

She welcomes me to her turquoise waters, the place she prayed to land and live life when she was just a small thing. 

An answered prayer, spoken by trusting lips.

Our feet press against grains of sand as five pairs of little boy legs bound out before us across the stretch of beach, all gravitating to where the waves kiss the shore.

We settle into beach chairs for moments at a time to talk, to try and finish conversations began in the sun-set darkness of the night while my little ones slept.

But with little boys awake, sentences are fragments.

I've only known her through words for about a year, her face for day, a night, but I know her heart from the life details she spoke into the night about how beauty has spread out bright and vibrant across the grittiness of where her feet have tread sand and rocks, fragments of shells along the journey.

She runs after my smallest when I sink into a chair, a bee stings throbbing across the bottom of my now smoothed-by-sand feet.

I breathe in the brilliant blues of water in a moment of solitude while waves break apart at the shore, sun beats down onto water and skin, sand presses into skin.



Beauty doesn't always come gentle and easy.

And I see it clearly now.




{Written this morning in a very, very, very fragmented span of five minutes. How can five minutes be so hard to come by with a two year old?}

Five-Minute Friday: Unexpected

Knee-deep in fear and worry,

I'm trying to count blessings like stars in the sky

or 

more appropriately

flakes of snow falling to the ground

because

you know

we simply cannot be fearful and thankful

simultaneously

she's reminded me time and again. 

The two emotions run the same pathways

in the brain; 

so it simply cannot be done.

I pray:

thank you, thank you, thank you

for 

two bodies merging into one flesh

two small sets of arms that will be slung 'round my neck

beautiful souls with whom to spend a weekend

in an unexpected October snowstorm spreading up the East Coast.

And: make a way for me to return home.

The flakes dissipate by dinner,

and the forecasters promise clear skies in the dawn light,

our departure day,

and as an extra bit of grace, 

an extra gift of mercy

He sends reassurance

in the form of a creative soul

comfortable behind the wheel 

from days spent navigating a semi

to take the helm

And as she drives

we take the conversation to places

of not just when and what and where

but How and Why and Who.

We drive through snow-covered hills,

and Truth, expressed

Along the Pittsburg turnpike

and mercy, experienced

To South Bend, Indiana

and to grace, unexpected

Bigger Picture Moment: Wholeness of Truth

I wonder how many of us grieve our losses -- however varied and different-- in silence.

How many of us smile, respond with OK when asked how we are doing while we feel anything and everything but fine. 

I wonder how many, and I wonder why. 

I wonder why my first thought was to tuck away my sadness, the loss, bury it deep down inside the deepest wells of my heart ... why I thought I could, well, rather, should walk this journey alone. And the more I thought, the more I questioned. 

Don't I know yet that there is comfort in arms wrapped around my shoulder, in words spoken, in stories shared, in love given freely?

That there is nothing more scarring than letting the battles wounds of life sit in the darkness of heart wells?

That there is healing in the Light?

I wrote my hurt into the pages here, etched the words of this piece of our story into the white and shared because I thought it would somehow maybe help someone else who felt like hiding her hurts way down deep. 

I thought maybe I would be a hand in the darkness of those wells in the heart stretched out offering to pull someone else out of those depths. 

But the wholeness of truth is, and I didn't quite know it until so many friends began showing up in so many ways, that sharing would continue the work He's already started in layering salves on a healing heart. I didn't know it, but I needed some other hands to reach out, clasp mine after I emerged from that darkness, sun blinded, a little shaky and raw. 

Thanks for being His hands and feet and His arms and mouth --pulling me up and embracing me in the steadying of my own two feet and walking beside me as I take baby steps forward into the light of a new day. 

I likely won't ever forget it. 

"For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them." Matthew 18:20

Have you seen a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment? Share at Melissa's this week.

Everyday Life:{Not-so} Blind Date

Earlier this week, I shared with John that I was getting butterflies in my stomach from all the excitment surrounding my blind-esqueish date with the talented Alita of Alita Jewel Treasures.

I was mostly joking about it being a blind date and all, but there was that little twinge of nervousness mixed in with the excitement centering around our meet up, like that of what would happen before a blind date.

Turns out, Alita's house is in driving distance from where my family vacations in Michigan, so we made plans early this summer to spend an afternoon together in July; and our plans came to fruition yesterday when Alita and I met at a restaurant in Kalamazoo and drank our weight in tea and coffee.

During one of the quickest three hours of my life, we talked like we were old friends, sharing ideas and back stories, expounding on thoughts and dreams, giggling over our kids and stories about dating our hubbies.

While Alita and I were talking about the complextity of relationships built through blogging, I shared how I'd started thinking about how our meeting wasn't so much a blind-date type of one. Rather, it felt much more like meeting that far-in-the-distance but at the same time close-to-your-heart penpal you've been corresponding with about everything under the sun for seemingly ever.

Maybe, for like a split second or two, you wonder what if we just don't click when we're face to face. But then you go back to all of the written words that have interwoven your heart strings. And then, maybe for another split second {or three}, you wonder, what if I'm so completely different in person than what I come across in my blog?

But then you see each other and grin wide, hug hello and suddenly three minutes turns into three hours and those thoughts are but distant memories.

And you realize, really, it was a not-so-blind date, afterall.

Adventures: Up and Running

So in college, probably just after John and I were engaged, I was inducted into this wildly hilarious, mostly innovative, completely out-of-the-box and totally off-the-wall type of problem-solving club I mostly refer to as the Mugford Way.

My initiation revolved around transferring a hot tub from John's best friend, Jamey Mugford's parent's old house {catch that?} to their new home.

Sounds standard, right?

Well, um, not so much.

Because they didn't just want to move the hot tub to the new house; they wanted to move the hot tub onto a platform deck they built so that they could access said tub from the second floor of their home.

So with no crane or heavy machinery, essentially the Mugford family along with John, me and Jamey's then-future wife, invented some sort of system to get the hot tub on the platform.

And it worked.

I don't know how it worked because mostly I closed my eyes during the whole process, but it did.

A few months later, I experienced another moving project where my husband and the Mugford men thought it would be way smarter and easier to move Jamey's couch from his third-floor apartment by rigging up a pulley system and lowering it out of the sliding glass door.

From the balcony.

It also worked. {Although, someone forgot to account for the swinging effect of a dangling couch, and the couch almost ended up smashing through the patio door of the second-floor neighbor's. But as I've learned almost DOES NOT count against success. Therefore, it was successful.}

This whole Mugford Way of innovation and problem-solving methods when it comes to home renovation or the moving of all things within a house -- be it hot tubs, couches or even pesky walls is like something you would see on a Discovery Channel show.

You kind of want to close your eyes while it's all happening, but it's so darn entertaining and mostly there is major success involved.

Needless to say, my extremely intelligent husband has lovingly adopted this thought process; so much so he now he often devises crazy plans to get the job done.

Like he did last night at our business.

You see, we were ushered into Monday morning with surround-sound booms of thunder, bold streaks of lightening and wild winds whipping through branches and leaves, all which shredded power lines and uprooted and rehomed century-old trees through out Grayslake.

The storm sent us running to take cover in our basement; when we emerged we didn't know how grateful we would soon become for having electricity and a roof and siding on our house.

Melissa, who still doesn't have power, said her neighborhood, which is closer to our club, was littered with trees and void of power, so when the boys and I ventured over to our Curves, just about three miles away from our home, we saw the reality the of the storm for many with our own eyes: no electricity, gaping holes in homes and broken windows.

Our club, while thankfully structurally undamaged, was left without power, which basically forced us to close Monday and, I thought, probably until the power was restored.

But that hubby of mine, he put on his thinking hat and tapped into the Mugford Way of problem solving {did I mention that both my hubby and the Mugfords have mad-business smarts and engineering brains?} to creatively get us back up and running for a few hours Tuesday night so we could at least offer a few hours of workouts and our hour-long Zumba class.

And this is what he did:


After all was said and done and I looked around our only sun-lit club with the fans whirling, carrying cool outside air into our Curves while the music was pumping -- all powered by John's station wagon, all I could say, a smile beaming on my face was
"Wow, honey, I kind of feel like a Mugford right now."


As a few of our ladies happily entered the club to workout, John and I stood there grinning like idiots for a minute looking at John's master plan in action, and, I think, for the first time ever, I felt the way John has felt from the beginning of his friendship with Jamey -- like I've been fully indoctrinated into the Mugford Way and may be at the point of no return.

{Awesomely, half way through our hour-long Zumba class, the power miraculously switched back on and we are up and running, but Melissa still doesn't have any. Will you send her some love via blog or Twitter {@Pbinmyhair} today? She can see a few things via phone Internet, and it might make her day.}

Living Healthfully: Feasts

Editor's Note: After taking my journey with calorie-restricted diets and and restrictive food diets, I no longer feel that either are healthy. You can read my hard-fought-for, hard-lesson-learned food philosophy here. 

Here's the thing about dieting and living healthfully that popular culture wouldn't have us believe: we don't have to starve or leave the table unsatisfied to shed pounds or maintain a healthy weight.




In fact, you can, and you should eat filling portions of tasty, colorful, seasonal foods.


So, today, at my Curves club, we did just that: we feasted on delicious, healthy, metabolism-revving foods while celebrating our members who have logged more than 1,000 workouts during the past decade {and may I add-- that is a lot of toning, sweating and just plain working it.}


The coaches and I made dishes to pass and served our super-dedicated, super-beautiful ladies a lunch they enjoyed and feel good about indulging in. Also, the lunch was a really awesome way to share with some of our most loyal members a smattering of the recipes from the Curves Complete 90-Day Challenge {and, you guys, we only have TWENTY THREE DAYS left!} -- all recipes with which the coaches have been nourishing their bodies while shedding fat and inches and pounds.


Between the delicious, filling food and the delicious, filling conversation, our celebration of their achievements was an absolute delight. It's so heart-filling to hear about what Curves has meant to our extremely dedicated ladies. And, I have to say -- I can relate. This place, it's meant so much to me -- the beautiful faces, the warmth, the support, the encouragement, the results.

Oh, and while I'm mentioning results, can I tell you something super exciting? Probably more exciting than fitting into single-digit shorts?? I met a second goal today: my BMI jumped into the fair category -- And it's just ONE POINT away from the good zone. {I am almost just speechless at the overwhelming gratitude I have for Curves International and its amazing research of the eating and exercise plans; I cannot even fully express.}

Goosebumps. I keep catching glimpses of myself in mirrors or photographs and blinkblinkblinking while asking is that girl really me? This whole health journey has been incredible.

So I am full -- in so many ways after today. Between the conversation and the sharing of our lives and having met another goal -- our feast-- for both the body and soul -- was the best way ever to begin my trek into year three as a Curves owner.

Bigger Picture Moment: Confirmation

A swift current of yearning flows like electricity through my body at the thought of welcoming another tiny person into our family.

I've struggled with this deep-seeded desire, questioning if I'll forever ache to smell the sweetness of a newborn freshly birthed, if I'll always want to bring a babe against my skin, welcoming another round of nursin, if I'll ever pine for the view of tiny hands resting against John's chest.

Will that ache persist regardless of how many little ones we have?

And, samely, I've contemplated, questioned if this is the time we should venture into adoption, welcome a child from another mother's womb into our home, blend ourselves into the perfect brew of family beyond bloodlines.

Do I have to bear another child to fully satisfy this feeling of feeling like we've yet to meet another child?

I've been wrestling.

Then the whole three-negative-pregnancy-tests-amid-surges-of-nausea-and-days-and-days-sans-period thing happened, and I thought with an almost-certainty that my body was again home to another little life ... only for a period to emerge so late in the game, I could nearly keep the look of shock off my face upon its arrival.

That same week, we suffered a hard loss at church, and those feelings of grief overshadowed the sadness and dissappointment and almost betrayl I felt, so much so that I never dealt with this emotions that were so deeply seeded embedded into my heart.

Until -- during an unplanned, impromtu Skype converation -- a friend asked about it all, going to places sometimes we don't go -- into the depths of the heart, the soul.

At first, I was taken aback; I'd already dismissed the non-pregnancy ordeal as not being in God's time. But she took me to a place I never bothered to tread when she asked:

"Do you think maybe that was God's way of whispering to your heart that maybe you really honestly desire to be pregnant again? Maybe this is clarification about adopting versus bearing another child naturally?"

As her words soaked into ears that could hear, I realized a confirmation embed itself into my heart: there's a deeply rooted desire to swell again with the fullness of another baby, to grow another baby, to birth and nurse another baby -- one I cannot explain, as it mightily overpower all of doubts.

Sometimes I hear God speak to my heart in small whispers -- through the soft beauty of a flower that weathers a brutal storm and still is standing tall the next day.

Sometimes I hear His voice through the burning bushes of life - the unexplained sheer forces of power and the amazing events that unfold surrounding them.

And sometimes I hear Him speak through those who love Him and seek to find the Bigger Picture in the everydayness of life.

In the flicker of conversation between friends, often in my life I've found phenomenal truth and insight shared either in passing or embedded in the depth of heavy conversation that I might otherwise have missed altogether had someone not been brave enough to venture into the depths ... had I been too busy to have the conversation.

{So I realize there are, like, several bigger picture moments in this one post ... but sometimes revelation comes in bursts.}



Join us at Sarah's to share the harvest of your intentional living this past week!

Thinking, that's all: Afloat

We'd been playing phone tag for a week solid, coming almost to the point where I normally give up on the old phone conversation hopes and defer instead to e-mail.

But in a moment of serendipity and in a moment of grace, we connect.

Voices only, at first, just giving play by plays and catching up on each other's husbands and boys, but there is goodness in it nonetheless.

Though we haven't seen each other in a year, the conversation rolls right along, smoothly, comfortably and it's almost like she's actually walking next to me on the sidewalk, enjoying the same splashes of color streaking across the expansive blues of the dusky midwestern sky.

And like so many conversations we've had in the past, so many dialogues we've shared over the years, the talk of current events morphs into actual conversation of how said current events of life are settling and digging into our hearts.

I share that I've had some emotionally exhausting weeks, and though my husband had thrown me life line of grace just about a week ago, hauling me back to His feet, honestly, I admit, I'm still finding myself treading water to stay afloat more often than not.

She says she's had the same kind of previous week, too, one in which her church community also suffered an extremely soul-wrenching loss of a young life here on Earth.

Instead of just glossing over the hurt, she dives right into it with me -- into the depths of where those losses leave our reeling hearts and minds.

She goes there with me.

To the place of "why."

To the "I don't get it."

And to the "Where is He right now?"

Those places we don't normally don't tread water together, the places we try to swim alone in the deepness, in the vastness of our own oceans of thoughts.

So I grab onto the Lifeline she's clutching, too.

Again.

I grab onto His word, the Promises of grace and love and restoration that's she's reminding me of, reminding herself of by saying them aloud.

Even though it's deep and it's choppy and it's kind of scary, I finally stop kicking and thrashing and just hold onto those Promises for dear life, trusting that it will keep me afloat, thankful that He's sent another person to weather the waters with me.

Thankful that maybe, finally, I have come to the end of trying to swim it all by myself.

{And all of this after another friend poured some truth right into my ears -- but that's my Bigger Picture Moment for Thursday and an entirely new post.}