Bigger Picture Moments: On Your Birthday, A Gift

Dear Selah,

This morning when the wise woman talked about finding each moment of grace, each moment of gift through the easy moments and even the hard, I thought of you.

I thought of how your short life here on Earth, buried in my ever-expanding womb, was marked with moments of grace and blessing.

And how even your soul passing from body to body anew into the glory of forever, still while inside my very own, was surrounded by very good gifts, from a very good God.

I think of you today because this day, last year, was the first and last time I ever held your small body, all 10 perfect fingers and toes, in my shaking hands.

And I wept over you, a miracle, and gave thanks, my hands cradling you with palms stretched up toward the giver of good gifts, giving you back to Him.

You helped me understand how it is possible to both hold and give, to both receive and let go. You were my pregnant pause, Selah, and your life continues to give me just that. Your life was a series of moments of grace and your death, even, was a gift of pause to understand what it really means to live.

God works all things together for the good of those who are called according to His purposes, and I have heard Him call my heart, inviting me out into deeper waters still.

After you went soul from body to body renewed, I prayed a desperate prayer for God to make clear what He wanted for our family, and I really just wanted you to come back. In the midst of being heartbroken at losing you soon fast and quickly, God answered my plea in a way I didn't understand when He began to break my heart for the children who don't have parents.

I thought of the heartache of losing you, entrenched in my mother's heart, and I fell face first into grieving the reverse loss, a baby losing her mother and father.

We prayed hard, and when your due date rolled around, we knew God was inviting us to host a girl who found herself in those shoes of loss reversed. And she came, and we learned, and we loved, and we cried together because when you know loss as deep as what she knows and what my mother's heart knows, you know what empty looks like.

But I'm not empty any more. I miss you, yes, and I long for you, yes, but another mercy moment, another gift of grace from your life and from your death was understanding that empty is a space that is yet to be filled only by Fullness Himself.

It's a gift you gave me to know that, and one that I'd like to whisper to other hearts that are empty and aching with voids they just can't seem to fill.

And the girl we hosted because our hearts were broken for the children without parents after we knew the broken of being parents without the child we loved, she'll come, God willing, into the fullness of a family that was born of empty and the fullness of a Family that was born of broken. And she'll have the parents, the brothers that were first yours, but that you all now share, and I pray that she'll have the Father we all share.

We know, because of your life, that one child never replaces another, and so we also know that one mother and father never replace another mother and father that were before. She'll know your name, and we'll know the names of the ones who came before us.

So this morning.

When the wise woman spoke about recognizing moments of grace and moments of gift through the good times and the hard times

and when she told us to make dots to mark those sightings and then string them together

and when she asked what I saw in the stringing together of those moments from this past year, I breathed in awe and exhaled reverence at what was before me.

I saw the Giver of Good giving me more gifts to unfold and savor, abundant gifts gleaned from your life.

A most perfect birthday present to celebrate your life, my beautiful baby girl, on the day you were born.

My love and my heart,
Mommy

Bigger Picture Moments: On Waving the White Flag

It's one of the battles we said we'd fight to the very end that's left us raising our white flag of peace high into the sky on a cool December night.

That food is more than calories and carbs/fat/protein and taste, that it's meant to connect us to the soil and each other, to nourish, heal, sustain is a philosophy John and I wholeheartedly embrace, especially now in the aftermath of chronic illness and healing.

But here we are in the chill of almost-winter, preparing together to raise the white flag, a peace treaty for our oldest son, regarding the guidelines we've set for the way we do food in our house.

Because when we said it was a battle we'd fight until the end, we didn't really mean it; I, honestly, had forgotten what battle entails -- a forceful overtaking, a strong-hold grip that leaves slain hearts along the way. And that's what's happening with our oldest -- he's taken us to battle. Our troops -- at 3 and 5 years old-- are on the verge of declaring civil war.

We'd more envisioned standing united, going up against the normal Standard American Diet, educating, encouraging and helping our boys, who would then help others, implement change.

What we'd envisioned sounds a whole less like battle and a whole lot more like a mission rooted in love. But we got what I asked for -- we got battle instead. Worse yet, my mom had pointed out, is that it's on the verge of war within our own home.

As John and I plan our offer of peace, we don't abandon our conviction and belief.

Probably, it's just the opposite; we affirm what we've come to learn about nourishing our bodies versus simply eating anything edible is foundational for good health.

But we refocus -- our mission, the delivery of the message, the rallying of the partners in work because our oldest, he is angry, too angry for five years old and that red flag is what we need to reframe.

I'm bewildered, but his anger isn't lost on me or John. In times of passion or frustration at his questions and insertion of his will, we've come at this the wrong way -- information drawn like swords ready to pierce the misinformation instead of with teaching words and heart.

And in those times it's like we picked a battle with the wrong little people -- two strong-willed boys, the oldest being a leader to his core who will battle until the very end.

So now we begin the peace process, cleaning up the land mines of anger unintentionally planted, soothing the open wounds with salve of choice, putting down the swords of information and arming ourselves instead with words of love-coated explanation.

Because this actually isn't a battle I, either of us, are willing to fight until the bitter end favoring conviction over the actual heart.

But it is a mission field on which we'll stand in truth and love and enough faith to know that messages delivered in love don't often fall on deaf ears.

Link up at Melissa's!

  

Bigger Picture Moments: Sparkly

He bounds, all feet beneath a four-year-old body, out of the classroom with a huge grin spread thick across his dusting of freckles like peanut butter smeared heavy across a satisfied mouth.

An invitation to mommy night at preschool in his hand and a new song about being a mom bursting from his lips means we are counting down the days to our date night like we do Advent before Christmas.

****

"You'll need to wear a really really reaaaaaly fancy dress, mom," he says the afternoon before our big date night. "This is a serious date."

We pick out one together; luckily, he selects the black wrap dress that still fits and is gracious to fall naturally around an ever-changing body.

He then scurries to his room to dress himself in his best: his tuxedo with a white tie {NOT the red one tonight, daddy} and his fire boots.

A picture or five and we're off.

We don't want to be late.

"And, mommy, I'll carry your sparkly shoes," he says as I slip on warm wool socks and boots over nylons. "Your hands are too full."

****

He shows me his world in live, bright colors -- a world I only see glimpses of through his crafts and papers, his selective conversation and peeks during school drop off and pick up.



I marvel at my handsome, animated date, who still longs to holds my hand and presses his small fingers in between my own.



He gifts me his full attention and drinks up my undivided gaze and nodding smiles.

My heart sparkle-shimmers in adoration for the boy who made me a mother and a star of royalty for an evening.

As he shows me his magic shrinker tool, I glimpse his fire boots and my mind flutters back to a different date, long ago, years removed where I felt much like I do here in this classroom -- then a princess holding a much-larger-than-my-own hand, standing in the safe shadows of a taller, stockier, older version of my son at the fireman's picnic.



There is a blinkflutterblinkblink of my eyes and I see him moving and leading me to another space to unravel and explore together.

The night is a mixture of giggles and soaking up moments that will soon enough pass.

We end with the little ones singing us The Mom Song, and he asks me to take a picture.

I flip on the record switch but can barely keep him in focus through the lens of my phone because I'm simply too focused on capturing through my own eyes this boy -- live, in vivid, animated color -- burn here and now into my forever-memory.

The song ends and he collapses into my arms. I breathe in his soft scent and roll around in the newness of memories made, him and I together.



I whisper gratitude to God for a lost memory recovered of my late father, the man my young eyes saw as king, simply just another gift from the boy who has deemed me queen for an hour {and maybe queen of his heart, if I can manage such fortune, for a few more years}.

As my son picks up my sparkly shoes at night's end, I, too, offer thanks for too-full hands and a filled-to-the-brim heart.

 

Each Thursday {Friday for me this week!}, we come together to share the harvest of intentional living by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment.  


Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with thanksgiving in your heart. 

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

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week at Sarah'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.

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

Thinking, That's All: Generosity

I don't know what it's like to have my hometown ravashed, left in utter shambles by the powerful forces of mother nature. Or what it's like to mourn the loss of my home or worse yet, a loved one.

And I don't know what it's like to avoid driving the streets of my hometown in order to shield little eyes from devastating destruction, images that likely would tatoo themselves on their ever-absorbing minds.

But now?

Because of what's happened in Joplin -- one woman, one heart in a small northern suburb of Chicago has been forever changed.

Still, I wish the Joplin tornado had never happened.

But it did.

And because it did, people came together in a powerful way.

Individuals, friends, big companies, small artisian shops, community members, families, even strangers all banded together to raise money for the people who call Joplin home.

With hope that our small but heartfelt contribution could not only help restore the livlihood of a hurting city but also hope.

With ope that others would come alongside their bruised city and begin the process of healing the wounds.

With hope that others would hold their families in their hearts, lift their needs up in prayer.

And with hope that maybe those prayers for restoration might be answered in an abundance of ways by a very-personal God.

Our small way of helping extend hope has been through an online auction relief effort, and it was inspired by our desire to come along Sarah, one of the Bigger Picture Blogs founders, as well as the Joplin community in the way we feel we've been called to come along side her and her community.

Thus, after a morning of furiously circulating emails and a phone call from Melissa that started with "Maybe we could do something bigger ...", the Help4Joplin Relief Auction was born.



As of this post, we {all of us together -- you and me and people I've never had the privledge of hugging as well as some I have} have raised more than $1400 to send to Joplin.

The generosity shown during this relief effort has filled my heart with such joy, just gladness, such Light. And it's brought me to grateful tears several times.

I hope it's done the same for Sarah and her family.

Some say it's unclear whether Joplin will ever recover.

The news reports have been grim.

But as I said before, I believe in a Light that shines in the darkness, and that the darkness can never extinguish it*.

And that makes me I wonder, really wonder, if each small, meaningful effort, packed with heart and soul and love -- like ours or this one or this one or this one -- could actually help.

If each of us who felt a pang in our hearts when we heard the news reports visibly sprang to some sort of small action -- if the collective we could actually help Joplin not just recover but recover stronger, more mightily.

And if those efforts, those tiny steps of action, could actually change more than just the future of Joplin or any other place that takes the spotlight after disaster.

I wonder if it could change a whole community of hearts -- one {stay-at-home mom in a small northern suburb of Chicago} at a time.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does." - Margaret Mead

The Help4Joplin Relief Auction ends tomorrow morning at 9. If you have that stirring in your heart, please consider making a direct donation or bidding on one of the generously donated items.

Note: Jamie from Lyrical Journey is the winner of the coffee cozy from A Soft Landing and the $25 Starbucks gift card; I know, Jamie, that you {or anyone for that matter} didn't blog about the auction to win anything, but it's my way of saying thanks anyway for being the mouth that moblizes the hands and feet.

*John 1:5

Bigger Picture Moments: Soft with Hope

Amid the hectic days, it's easy to lose sight of those simple moments that lead us toward seeing the bigger picture.

Every Thursday we come together to share a small moment from our week that begs to be remembered, captured instead of simply forgotten. We hope you'll consider your week and share your moment with us, too. Feel free to link below, grab the button for your blog and then share the love by visiting others who are journeying toward living intentionally.

I feel it.

On the warmth drenching my sun-starved cheeks.

And I hear it.

In the way the birds sweetly sing back and forth in an increasingly steadfast song.

Oh, and I sense it.

In the long shadows produced by the extra light of lengthening days.

In the energy wound up, wrapped around the muscles of small legs that long to run beyond the walls of our home.

In my very soul, a feeling of newness thick in the early damp March air.



Though I don't yet see the obvious signs yet -- the gradations of green among grass blades or tiny flowers birthing through the clumps of damp farm field-- like wet soil, I am soft with the hope of new life.

Spring is coming.

And not just outside.

But in my heart, in my head, too.

"As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Genesis 8:22

**This post is also linked with Thought-Provoking Thursdays at Some Girl's Website. Visit Michelle if you'd like to read more encouraging pieces.**

Everyday Life: At 28

E. scrambles over to me just as I sit down in the big red rocking chair.

He all but flings his toddler body atop my lap while signing for milk.

I scoop his still-small body into my arms.

And I do something I rarely used to do when his older brother was a toddler -- I rock him.

E. drifts to sleep nestled against my chest. As he snores softly, hums sweetly in his slumber after exhaling, I contemplate sitting here, cuddling him in my arms for his entire nap.

Just a few years ago, I would have rushed a sleeping toddler upstairs to his own bed, eager to move about the house and accomplish my ever-growing to-do lists

But at 28, I rock him, bask in the weight of his body pressed into my own. Soak up his gentle sounds. Brush my fingers against his still soft, still chubby cheeks.



I've watched one small body morph seemingly overnight into one that spans half of my own height, so I revel in the second one's smallness.

Today, my first day of 28, I stand a little awed at the differences between my newly gifted age and even 25 or 26.

I love more freely, and I'm less bound by my own fears in expressing my heart.

I play more often, less encumbered by the mounds of work piling around us.

I live more within the the realm of my children, my husband, my family and friends and less and less inside my own head.

Today, my first day of 28, I marvel at my newness yet my sameness, my growth as well as my deep-rooted beliefs, my maturing view and my youth.

I find myself no longer desiring to remain 22, but rather to love where I am -- at 28.

I embrace another year, a bigger number.

Because age doesn't just bring wrinkles or gray hair.

Its gifts a far more numerous.

And I suspect, though I've opened a few of those gifts, I can't even quite comprehend the vastness, the depth, the grandeur of the majority of those to come.

At 28.

Everyday Life: A Mommy Cocktail

He cries for me.

I can hear my 3 year old's small voice drifting down the hallway, seeping through a shut door.

"Mummmmeeeee," he calls.

My heart thumps in my chest at the sound of my name, leaps into my throat; I can see clearly in my mind's eye his red, tear-stained cheeks.

But I don't move from the bed.

My brain cannot handle one more minute of trying to respond to my children's needs and wants.

Neither can my body.

They are safe, I know, snuggled in the crevices of my husband's arms, one boy on each side of his strong, slender, solid body.

And they are loved.

He can love them better right now.

By day's end, I have nothing left to give other than reactions. My responding mechanism -- the part of my brain that filters my thoughts and catches the untruthful or unproductive ones before they spew out of my lips -- is too tired to do it's job of trapping the lies I often think or feel when my boys do or say something I don't like.

No. Actually, it's exhausted.

A few more moments of over-tired tears escape their room and wander into my ears.

Guilt, gratitude, relief, love, forgiveness mix into a cocktail I drink every night at bedtime.

Faint mumblings of "muummmmeee" echo in my mind long after both boys fall into a quiet slumber.

But when the well's dry, there's no water left to give.

My husband emerges from the shadows of bedtime, a rescue hero dressed as a strong, gentle father.

He reassures me that they know love from both my hand and his.

And that it's OK for me to tumble into our bedsheets and wrap myself up in blankets or words or prayer or whatever helps to fill me back up.

Because I'm not just raising two boys.

I'm raising myself into a mother.

And I'm not sure which requires more energy, more patience, more love or more forgiveness anymore.

{I'm reading Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort, a book intended to take the struggle out of parenting. And I find myself pleased with the mothering road by day's end but exhausted. It's a worthwhile read.}

Bigger Picture Moments: One.more.single.second

Sometimes I'm the kind of mom who sees tiny little hand prints everywhere -- walls and chairs, light switches and white cabinets -- and I feel like I just cannot live one.more.single.second without scrubbing everything clean.

So I wet a rag and begin to scour all of the surfaces in the dining room as my 3 year old gives voices to toy fishies and my 16 month old food-finger paints with ketchup at the dining room table.

They giggle and my older son beckons me to abandon my work in favor of play.

"Look at my blue fish!" he exlaims. "They are the police officers."

I marvel over the brilliance of making the blue fishies police since they are, indeed, sporting blue.

"Look at E.!" he then says, switching gears. "He's eating his paints!"




While I'm explaining that the red paint is actually ketchup, I stumble into some made love with his chubby, red-coated fingers, remembering how quickly just how much I adore those little hands.

And I think to myself, I'd rather be the mom who thinks I just cannot live one.more.single second without enjoying those small hands --both sets.



So I kiss ketchupy fingers and giggle about toy fishies, taking a few more baby steps in the right direction.

Check out more Simple Moments that make up the Bigger Picture or link your own at Alita's place.

Everyday Life: Unexpected gifts

We knew the clock struck midnight when the sky lit up with bright colors while we were driving down a dark stretch of country road, on our way home after an evening of delighting in each other, good food, good drinks, good friends and good games.

Brilliant colors decorated the horizon miles apart in each direction.

Some bursts bright pink and others purple, all dancing, sparkling against the ebony.

I reached for my husband's hand and gently squeezed it as he quietly wished me a happy new year.

And I thought to myself it will be.

Here's to holding hands and exchanging soft words even after six years.

To friends who giggle at your Wii-bowling skills, but encourage you to play anyway.

To cold, little feet pressed against your legs after climbing into a big, cozy bed.

To unexpected beauty.

To recognizing gifts of brilliant light from unknowing strangers.

And here's to finding those magnificent bursts of color in the dark stretches of the drive this year.

Happy 2011, friends.

The Bigger Picture: Beyond Resolutions

I ignored God's voice last week.

{That was horrifyingly hard to admit.}

The very voice I've spent so much time trying to hear, I dismissed in a matter of minutes.

My sister had shared with me that one of the sweetest members at my Curves was going to be spending Christmas alone before venturing off to see her family after the holiday.

Though I didn't know this member well at all -- I've probably only actually seen her twice -- I felt the Spirit move my heart to invite her to Christmas Eve celebrations with John's family.

It was one of those promptings I couldn't ignore ... but I could easily reason for why I shouldn't act on it:

It wasn't my place to do the inviting because we weren't hosting.
My husband didn't seem supportive when I mentioned it.
I had only spoken to her twice ever, so why would she want to come to our celebration?

I reasoned myself right out of listening to His voice, the tug on my heart to love another person in the way Jesus would love her.

Though I reasoned myself out of it, that didn't stop His voice from resounding.

I thought about her during our festivities, wishing she were there us, wishing I hadn't talked myself out of obeying His call.

Maybe I was being too emotional, I thought; perhaps, I was feeling terribly for no reason -- that I had no responsibility to do any inviting since I wasn't hosting.

But that's a straight-up lie.

I proclaim Jesus. I say I love Him. So I have a responsibility to be His hands, to be His feet, to love His people.

"Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’" Matthew 25:45

This year, I'm going beyond the typical resolutions I usually make.

This year, I'm resolving to be rather than do.

I'm vowing to be embrace and become and live out the person He designed me to be.

It's probably not going to look like much, and that will be hard for a perfectionist who likes to see tangible results; I won't have a laundry list of accomplishments at the end of the year.

My resume probably won't grow substantially or impressively.

I may not sport a slimmer dress size.

And my house may not even become any less messy or better organized.

But I hope to have a fuller, tidier heart.

A heart that listens, hears His voice and then says yes, no reasoning involved.

{I suspect I will be making this pledge yearly for the rest of my life.}

Bigger Picture Moments: The stuff in my closet

Welcome to Bigger Picture Moments, a weekly writing meme intended to foster creativity and help busy moms actively seek every-day moments that show us a glimpse of the bigger picture.

Amid fast-paced lives, sometimes we lose sight of the grander scheme; won't you join us in consciously trying to embrace and remember these moments - however small or large?

It looked like Noah's Ark threw up animals two by two all across the living room floor and down the hallway.

I resigned myself to picking them up for the third time, grateful that they would actually find rest there now that the boys were asleep.

I began filing away the books. And then I moved onto the laundry. And then the dishes and shoes and coats.

As I collapsed on the couch, another hour had slipped through my fingers while I was maintaing all of this stuff.

It's stealing my energy.

This stuff.

It's stealing my time.

I don't know about you, but servicing the house -- the every day sorting, cleaning and organizing of toys, clothes, shoes, books, socks, pans, papers -- is cutting into more and more of my time.

And some of it, admittedly, is necessary.

Like laundry.

We need clothes.

But does Baby E. need 10 pairs of overalls in size 18 months, half of which don't actually fit over his cloth-diapered butt?

Why am I putting energy and thought into maintaining -- cleaning, sorting and housing -- all of those overalls?

And, surely, you know, it's not just overalls, right?

I exhaled and sunk further into my thoughts about all.of.this.stuff, unable to write or carry on with my evening plans.

****
The next morning I was blessed to happen upon a post at Sorta Crunchy in which Megan asked her readers to get real.

She asked us to trust her with our deep holiday anxieties.

So I confessed.

I said I was feeling a bit like Scrooge this year at just the thought of the presents that likely will make their way through our door.

Already overwhelmed by the amount of things we have, I couldn't imagine the thought of more stuff without gettin a little anxious.

That's not like me.

I love giving presents.

I love putting thought and effort and time into picking out or making a gift someone will enjoy.

But I feel like we're bursting at the seems.

I don't want to be the grinch.

I don't want to be the one who asks our family to NOT give gifts when so many of our family members find the same joy I do in giving. After all, giving is a love language, and I don't want to stiffle any expressions of love.

But how do I get out from under these mounds of things?

Poor Megan. All this in her comments section.

Apparently my house wasn't the only thing bursting at the seams.

****
Do you know Jan Silvious?

Our Wednesday morning class had the pleasure of asking her some burning questions about mentoring relationships or just life in general yesterday morning.

I unloaded all of thse thoughts I'd been pondering about stuff right there.

And, simply, she gave me some perspective:

Don't stymie love languages and put restrictions on gifts -- it's part of the joy of our season of celebration.

But, she said, for every thing that comes in, something goes out.

Including toys.

Even if the boys still play with and enjoy those toys.

And clothes.

Even if I think I might wear that black sweater sometime this year, though I haven't worn it in about four years.

But, I stammered, aren't I being a good steward of our resources by saving all of this stuff so that if we need it in the future we don't have to buy it, thus saving us money that we could send to missionaries in Africa?

No, she'd said. You're being a good steward by giving those things to people who need them NOW.
***
I packed at least three boxes worth of stuff last night after G. and I had a conversation about Christmas and giving and sharing.

"So you know, bud," I'd said. "Our family loves us, and they like to show us how much they love us through giving us gifts we'll like."

"Like toys?" he asked.

"Like toys," I said. "But you know, we have a lot of toys, don't we?"

"Yes," he agreed.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we gave some of our toys to kids who would like to play with them when we get new toys?" I ventured.

He pondered it.

"Yes," he finally agreed. "If I get more toys, we should give some away."

I smiled.

"Some kids don't have toys, mom," he said.

I could tell some of our prior conversations had actually found a home in his brain.

"You're right," I said.

"So it'd be good to give some away," he replied. "We can always get new toys."

And with his simple words, the lights came on.

This stuff issue?

This is MY issue, my very own heart problem.

I've been trying to put restrictions on my generous family members when it comes to gift giving because if the stuff doesn't come in the house, I don't have to deal with it.

That's wrong.

I've been trying to put responsibility on shoulders it doesn't belong.

Their love language of giving is something to be embraced.

I need to get a hold of my own issue with stuff and why I keep it and why I let it sit in boxes in the basement.

I need to break free from this depression-era mentality of holding onto so many things because God is meeting our needs.

In fact, He not only provides the needs, He also provides the wants.

So, no, the issue isn't that others are being too generous {don't you love how I can turn my own heart issue around like that?}; it's that there's some sort of fear in my heart that we won't have what we need.

And I need to get a handle on that.

****
I thought a box of Matchbox cars weighed only a pound or two.

I was wrong.

It weighs tenfold.

It's not motherhood that's imprisioning me.

It's the matchbox cars.

The dozen overalls stacked in E.'s closet cubby.

The handfuls of magnets I find strewn across the wooden floors.

And it's my job, in this realization, to squash my heart issue here -- to make giving and recieving and donating all constant practices so that for me and for my boys a box of Matchbox cars weighs what it should -- a pound or two -- instead of the ton it's come to feel like on my shoulders.

Read more Bigger Picture Moments or link your own at Sarah's this week.