Just Write: The Light Bearers

Bombs explode and with them, lives, too.

I hug the small and tall people in my house a little tighter and wonder how I can send them out day by day into a world where such darkness stretches over the sky and spills out for miles across the horizon,

a storm of hurt and pain and terror brewing in the hearts of the hurting and bubbling over into explosion

after explosion

after explosion

born from the sheer force of pain.

Here's the thing about explosions  --

it's the force that takes us by surprise, leaves us stunned and battered and wounded.

But it's the aftermath of smoke that leaves us in despair, masks the light and sends us to our knees, groping around in the dark for something to hold onto, praying for clearing.

The first time I saw an explosion, eight years old and eyes wide, glued to the screen, my heart unleashed a fury of fear coated in tears.

The tender daughter of a firefighter watching a movie about fire-starters and exploders and the rescuers that rushed to the scenes of burning darkness was too much for my heart to bear, and I sobbed and sobbed, begged by dad to quit the business of extinguishing flames and storming burning buildings.

My father wrapped me in his thick arms and shushed my tears:

"If all the firefighters quit fighting fires because it was dangerous, think of how much more dangerous life would be."

At eight, I cared little for his few words, his waxing of logic to a weeping heart, but at 30 I hold them closer; at 30, I hold them as truth.

As long as there is pain, pockets of it will continue to explode, drench the day with darkness and coat the sky with ash, smoke that threaten to blind our eyes.

And that's when the Light bearers come in, blazing through the smoke and the darkness and setting it bright with hope.

We are the Light bearers carrying on the Light that was first born into the darkness of a black-ink sky stretched out over creation.

We are the Light bearers who don't fear the darkness because we know that the Sun always overcomes.

That's how we mothers, wives, sisters, friends find the courage and strength to send our loved ones back out into a world of explosions day in and day out --

we cling to the Sun, we embed the Light in their thoughts until it soaks deep into their bones, their hearts and then we send them out as light bearers who offer bright glows of Light when the darkness seems overwhelmingly dark.

{And we pray. And oh my ... this is so hard.}

Just Write: On a Tuesday

On a Tuesday there is snow pouring down from the heavens like salt out of a shaker in the hands of a toddler

and I am eating homemade oatmeal cookies like there's been a cookie draught for the past five years.

Today's motto is something like cookies are meant to be eaten

and snow is meant to fall

today

on a day in February

where my toddler screams angrily every time I leave him on the couch

and

where my husband finds odd pleasure in navigating his way home from work in a blizzard.

On a Tuesday

my heart sort of longs for the chasm in between their two extremes.

I'm tired of the couch

but I'm also not longing for any more stretching adventures.

because I've been submerged in both simultaneously every day since we discovered God has been growing this new little life inside my ever-expanding belly.

On a Tuesday,

I live wildly

a juxtaposed life

and find grace

in thanks

and the extremes.

Just Write: Desperate

He was six weeks old, a tiny little thing with huge demands, and I was tired.

No -- exhausted.

So when he began to wail five minutes after I put him in his cradle, I crumpled to the floor and sobbed on my mother's living floor.

A desperate pile of body heaving and cracked, feeling broken beyond repair.

Tonight I remembered that scene as I drenched my own shirt with tears, driving home from my first acupuncture session.

Desperate, I told John when I arrived home, face scrunched and head in hands and his arms around my shoulders.

That's what you have to be to let someone you can barely understand poke tiny needles into your skin in the hope of relief.

Desperate.

I am thankful to carry a new life inside of me. But in the midst of thankful I am sick, too, with exhaustion and nausea like I never knew and more food and smell aversions than one would think could exist.

I live on prayer and petition, turkey and lemon aid, kindness and snuggles and gratitude.

But in the desperate moments, I wonder if I'm really living or merely surviving.

I ugly cry onto my husband's shoulder soaking his arm with salt-water tears, too, until I'm exhausted and broken before God

and finally

that's where I find the Potter

at the spinning wheel

piecing me back together

and making me something new.

Just Write: Tagless

This body has grown and birthed two full-term babies, and so I'm not surprised during week seven when it boasts proudly that it knows exactly what He made it to do.

Hips and breasts and abdomen expand even while baby is the size of a blueberry, driving me to secure my jeans with a rubber band, find refuge in my yoga pants.

But there aren't enough yoga pants for every day of the week, so yesterday I took to the aisles of Target and bought a pair of black maternity workout pants.

And I was fine, despite some of the anxiety that still boils up unexpectedly just beneath the surface all the while praying away the fears that I'll be back in my size eight jeans sooner than we're bargaining for.

This morning, laundry called my name and despite still feeling the weight of a hefty lingering cold in combination with the normal first trimester fatigue, I oblige its call

and I'm face to face with those maternity yoga pants

needing to be washed

tags still attached.

So I try them on to make sure they fit; they do.

But I knew they would.

I silently debate ripping off the tags and washing them clean, ready for wear ... or leaving them on for an easy return just in case ...

Before I can finish the thought, I throw up my hands to God, grab the pants off the sink, rip off the tags and say

"I trust You."

Heartracing, in the bathroom,

I find the pants aren't the only thing that are

tagless.

Just Write: I Don't Know

She's coarse in language I don't really understand.

She presses down the wand against my abdomen as I lay on my back, skin exposed, in a warm room.

"Only see the yolk sack," I think she murmurs. "Must be early."

I assure her of dates but she shakes her head as though I don't know or understand.

I shake my head at her.

But she's right about both things nonetheless:

I don't know

or understand

any of it.

I don't understand her.

I don't understand what I'm seeing on the screen as it projects grainy images from what's growing inside me.

And I don't know.

I don't know any more than when I first walked into the ultrasound room.

"All I say is you are pregnant," she says.

I lie motionless in the dark room and one thought comes to my mind over and over and over after she tries to give me the weeks and days in numbers that I should count my pregnancy.

"Nothing is impossible with God."

It's the same thought He gave me a few weeks ago when my hormone levels didn't seem to match with possible conception dates ... which were later found to be off because of a calculation error only.

God doesn't miscalculate.

"And nothing is impossible with God."

I hear the words run over and over in my mind, and I want to shoo them away because everything that I'm seeing right now seems to say impossible.

But they persist.

And those are the first words from John's lips after he greets me in the waiting room.

"Nothing is impossible, honey," he says. "We'll wait another week, and we'll see."

We will wait.

We'll wait while I don't know, while I don't understand.

Any of it.

Except.

For that He does.

And it's enough for today.

Share the Love: Melting Pot

Some days I feel days I feel like logging off and going dark for entire weekends and days at a time.

I suppose that’s what happens when one morphs something that was pleasure into business, answering questions about how to create a Facebook page and whether Facebook advertising is a worthwhile endeavor instead of just simply connecting and encouraging via all the social media platforms I’ve come to embrace.

I remember having this same sort of existential crisis about blogging when people first started offering to pay me to write; if I were to make writing on my blog a job, would that make the passion part fizzle and fade? 

Could I be true to my art and still be compensated for a skill I’ve been graciously given and have proceeded to hone since I first picked up a pencil and began penning stories in second grade?

Eventually I found my groove and decided how best to write with abandon from the heart and still accept compensation for my skill and time, but not without a whole lot of mulling and chewing and spitting out that which was bitter or didn’t match the flavors I’d spent so long cultivating.

Because, sort of like with coffee beans, you don’t want to ruin the blend you’ve been working so hard to create.

I think this is likely the same as with merging the pleasure side of social media with that of the business end. Sometimes the perfect cup of coffee doesn’t just happen. Sometimes it takes a while to blend the two together, a stirring of two really good things – like cream into coffee requires measure. And lots and lots of tasting.

All that tasting often takes remembering that when combined well, the two complement each other quite beautifully. 

And perhaps make the brew all the better.

This post was inspired by MeetSoci. I was compensated for my time, but as always, my ramblings are completely my own. 

Just Write: Pictures

John was clearing out the garage this weekend, and he set aside a box from my mother's basement that was loaded with old pictures.

The minimalist in me wanted to toss them into the the recycling bin, but I couldn't stop looking at the faces that had once been so important in my life

the wrinkled hands laced together, anchoring my small body on their laps

the smiling eyes locked onto all of the great-grand babies spread out across the couch

their full hearts apparent and full across their lips as little arms wrapped themselves around their necks.

I called my grandmother this morning to chat and to ask if she and my grandpa would come visit Friday and spend the day with the boys while John and I tended to the many things calling our names.

My kids cheered and hollered, a surge of joy and exclamation at the thought of grandma and papa coming for the day.

And I wonder if they'll look at pictures one day when they are grown and linger for just a few minutes whispering gratitude

that mere pictures can bring them to a dead halt

when they're clearing out the garage

take their hearts captive with memories

for days after.

And I hope they'll know that they've become the people they've grown to be

in part

because of those hands

those hearts

those eyes

who long held them beyond the carrying years.

Just Write: Borrowed

I hear whimpers tumble through the baby monitor from small lips.

As I climb stairs that aren't my own, I hear her voice a little clearer.

There's hesitation as I slip through the door both in my careful movements toward her small body perched sleepily atop of the crib mattress.

And in her eyes as I enter the room, a familiar enough face but one she doesn't expect.

Humbly, gently I lift her into my arms as tears pool in her eyes, confused as to why I'm here instead of her mommy or daddy.

But I've got this, I reassure myself.

I've got you, I reassure her.

A few tears spill down her cheeks as we head downstairs and try to find shoes so we can join the big kids in the backyard.

But her hands, they cling to my shirt, fabric balled tightly in between fingers, and she rests her head momentarily, hesitantly on my chest before I exhale deeply, sink into a chair and just hug her as she wrestles with her emotions.

Then, she sinks into the space beneath my chin and fully surrenders to the warmth.

I watch through the screen door her older sister and the boys I once cradled as babies, my very own babies, run wildly around the backyard, no time for anything other than the hard work of play, as she lends me the sweetest of snuggles.

This little one, she normally won't hang out with me for more than just the moments it takes for me to try and bribe her with chocolate or bananas, but it's like she knows that I need a baby to borrow for just a little bit today, so she lingers in my lap.

And these few precious moments, they confirm that I again want to count down days until new life comes forth, passing time sorting and folding those soft, impossibly small newborn clothes {like these baby clothes from Polarn O. Pyret},

that I want again to snuggle another small body born from my own body

that perhaps we're ready to venture into the unknown territory of trying again

instead of simply living in the familiar land off of borrowed baby snuggles.

This post was graciously inspired and sponsored by Polarn O. Pyret. I was compensated for my time. 

Just Write: More

I know.

I know that when little ones act up and out that they need more --

More love

More attention

More patience

More time --

More.

More from me.

But I've been driving around this block for weeks on end, and the gas light is on and the kids are still screaming in the background and the radio is blaring and there's so much noise in this proverbial car and in my not-so proverbial head that I just can't isolate anything to turn it off for long enough to realize

that I've got to stop for gas, like, ten miles ago.

Because that last fill up for how long I've been driving

can't last for as long as I've been going.

I need an off ramp

with an Oasis

to refuel so much more often

now that the load is filled with

growing boy bodies

growing hearts

growing lessons

and growing miles to trek.

And sometimes, I guess, we just have to put it in park

and watch the sun rise and set*

remembering we didn't have to push the pedal a little further to the metal

for either to happen.




*Super huge thanks to Corinne for reminding me of this awesome truth. 

Just Write / 5 for 5: Words

We started the morning with sunshine, warm and perfectly pouring itself on our skin.

I had plans to continue basking in the honey-amber sunlight spreading across my body, quietly mark the two-year anniversary of my dad's death.

But I couldn't.

I couldn't let the day pass silently, unwritten and unfolded.

I couldn't help but tattoo in printed fashion how the sunshine is a glorious contrast to the sunshine I remember of two years ago today.

How not even full force rays could warm my skin from the cold, whipping wind outside the chilled grays and pinks of hospital beds and waiting rooms.

How that day was positively the coldest late-April day I could ever remember.

How I was glad for its chill so I could wrap numb myself up and wrap myself into some sort of blanket-cocoon and hibernate away what must have been a bad fading winter dream.

How it gave me a reason to keep frozen what unfolded that tumultuous week, to keep solid and packed away all these sour-sweet memories of life with him.

How I needed today's sunshine to be different than the kind that flooded that day.

And how I needed it to thaw my memories, warm the emotions that have been slowly defrosting during the past two years so it could all freely been lived and flow like sap dripping from from hard maple trunks amid the heat after a long, hard winter freeze.

I just couldn't let it pass.

I just had to let the words dripdropdrip out of my thawing fingers, thawing heart.

Just Write: In Bloom

It never happens like this here.

The wet, black soil bursting forth with vibrant greens birthing rainbows of flowers, all springing forth at the same time in the unseasonable warmth of March in the prairie of northern Illinois.

It's a beautiful site, the array of flora spread across the beds.

I wipe beads of sweat from my forehead, sitting fully in the present moment of fighting weeds from the beds I'd naively invited only flowers to spread across.

And isn't that, though, how it is always? Haven't I only invited the blooms into my gardens, the fruit of seedlings planted all while cursing the weeds that sprout up amid the perfection of color and sweet-smelling scents of tulips and lilacs.

Don't I always want my flower beds teeming with everything but weeds all at the same time -- a constant display of flowering beauty without the unsightliness of jagged-edges of green invading my garden party.

I yank at their roots, in my own strength, in my own will, my own strong-armed attempt to clear out the beds.

But can't I enjoy the beautiful even amid the weeds?

He's on my right plucking the weeds, too.

But he leaves the bright yellow of dandelion growing tall, growing high, trying to kiss the sun.

Sweetheart, those are weeds, too. I say. We pull them out, too. 

Reluctantly, he wraps his fingers around the stem and gently pulls it from the Earth.

***

That night evening, there's a bright yellow dandelion lightly submerged in the water of a glass jar atop of my plant table in the living room.

To me, it's still not beautiful -- this weed he's deemed worthy of flower status. And I still don't want it overcrowding my flowers.

But when he ran to me, with it captured inside the make-shift vase to show me the weed, his eyes glowing with love stemming from the gift he was about to give, I declared thankfulness in the face of ugly-weed yellow.

Not so much for the actual weed, but for what came from it -- a cultivation of gift-giving spirit in my oldest.

And a realization in my own mind that I can give thanks for the unexpected gifts, the growth that comes from the weeds tucked in the beds among the feast of flowers that have sprung forth in this rich season of my life.

Just Write: Too Much

He told me he wanted to walk around the block just us --

no stroller, no bikes, no dad and no brother --

just the two of us walking, holding hands.

We ventured into warm afternoon sun, such a perfect gift during March in Chicago, and we walked the sidewalk lining our neighborhood and talked, his small hand in my own.

How was school?

Eh. I hate learning about the skeletons, mom. They are scary. 


Totally hear you on that one, bud. 



We walked a few more steps and he asked if he could show me something cool he found a day ago while at the park with grandma. He led me down the path to the park, past the slides and swings and over to the trees near the back part of our backyard fence.

A huge limb draped itself atop other smaller trees, making a ramp up to the sky.

He scaled the huge trunk, climbing deftly up to the point where he was higher than my own head and overlooking the surrounding park.

It's like a secret place to see everything you can't see when you're walking, he said.

I asked him what he saw.

Trees, ants, flowers, snakes, grass, people, sun ...

There's too much to name it all, he finally concluded.

We eventually are lured back home by rumbling stomachs.


 What was the best part of your day? I asked


Right now, he said.

And then, for maybe the second time ever, he asked, what's your favorite part of today?


Right now, I agreed.

But somedays, really, there's just to much to name.

Just Write: Target

It's in the middle of Target

   the baby aisle

that it hits me hard

square in the gut

as I'm touching the  pink

soft cotton ruffles

of a tiny short-sleeved dress.

Warmer weather will bring the gifts of sun

and a beautiful, anticipated baby niece

who will wear the purple and pink garb.

It will bring songbirds that sing of spring

and long, hazy lake days with two sets

of little footprints embed in the sand.

But my arms won't cradle

new fruit from my womb

like I'd twice hoped during a long fall.

I remind myself that ripe fruit

tastes just as sweet as that

freshly picked from the vine,

cup E's smooth cheeks in my hands,

thankful.

But there

in the baby aisle of Target

my stomach somehow feels

all the flatter,

and the months I thought

that separated me from the grief

of releasing two small gifts

seem merely like

elongated minutes.

Just Write: Obsessive Brain

It just keeps running.

This brain of mine.

It's like a sink overflowing and I can't figure out for the life of me where knob is.

I thought all of this anxiety of mine began right after the miscarriages, but the more I ponder it and life and where my feet have tread as my brain has tried to keep up with them, the more I see that anxiety has been a constant drip of water spilling from the tap from the time I was small and worrying about what would happen if the tornado sirens sounded and I was babysitting at a house without a basement.

Like her, I've mistaken anxiety for responsibility, tried to dress it up into something beautiful like an ocean instead of just a leaky faucet.

And I write to her about how few nights ago while talking to my grandma about what she thought the Word was whispering to me in relationship to fearing the Lord in the awe-stricken sort of way, we fell face first down the rabbit hole conversation of anxiety.

My grandma, though, she said something that really struck me -- when we grow so quickly in our faith sometimes we have those extra-anxiety moments where it really comes into focus because we realize how not in control we actually are. 

How that awesome love-wrapped-fear of His power actually sends the leak into a full-fledge stream overflowing the sink that's all stopped up and clogged with these thoughts we don't even want.

And I knew suddenly what all those verses about fearing and revering the Lord meant to my heart -- He was telling me He could be trusted to turn off  the leaky faucet, dripping or streaming and to unclog the stopped up sink of my mind that won't let the thoughts run through but rather just remain stuck while the water's just flowing, flowing, flowing.

It was like He was telling me He's not just someone who comes in and finds the faucet knob.

But also that He's the greatest Plumber ever, too. 

Just Write: Constant

A constant state of healing.

That's what these past few weeks have been.

I used to think there was this spectrum, spanning from happiness to grief, and that I could settle somewhere along it each day or week or even month.

But the longer I live, the more I realize joy and pain are this interwoven web of threads that don't easily separate, and that my life is less about walking a spectrum line and more about navigating the weave.

So I heal, neck-deep in gratitude while I wipe both laughter-and-pain-provoked tears from my eyes, while I kiss little owies and the lips of the man I love, while my hands scrub bubbly dishes and soapy kids in the bath tub.

And I rest in the constantness of where living and grace merge.