When Worry is Your Drug of Choice

I stumble into worry the way an alcoholic stumbles into a bar after a long day spent trying to keep it all together.

"I'm just here for a few minutes," I stammer ... but before I know it I've spent the entire night drinking cocktails of what ifs and mights and maybes. I leave drunk on fear, and I wallow in the certainty of death ... before waking up in the morning and realizing I've done it all over again: I've died more times than I've lived this week, and yet I'm still breathing.

It's a waste. A waste of time, a waste of breath, a waste of energy.

A waste.

And is that how I want to summarize my life?

Wasted, drunk on fear. Wallowed in and swallowed by worry.

There is a beckoning of Grace nodded in my direction each morning as I walk in the shame of another binge, a gift from Heaven waiting to be received.

And I? I eye it wearily and mistake the offerings of grace for that of disappointment and anger, wonder if I'm still so drunk that I can't even determine between the two.

When will I live like I am living instead of like I am already half-way dead?

You asked who of us by worrying could add a single second to our lives. I realize the simplicity of this truth. And I also realize something more that was written in between the lines.

Who of us by worrying could erase seconds of our lives

moments that could be spent smelling the sweetness of a preschooler's hair

or the warmth of the sun shining boldly through the cold of March winds

the embrace of strong arms around my waist

and the faint smell of winter melting into spring just outside my window.

If worrying empties today of its strength

then I want to empty my heart of worry.

I want to fast from fears, forget even taking one sip of the drink that pulls me under.

I won't swallow it any longer

because I won't allow it to swallow me whole.

In the watering holes of my mind

I empty my bottles of fear

and I drink of the grace

You've poured for me instead.

Everyday Life: Changed

He stood tall for using a cane. 

Especially when the military band pounded out the first few notes of The National Anthem beneath hazy spring sun. 

I watched him hike up his shoulders a little taller and salute the flag billowing in the warm May breeze, three of his friends all displaying badges of honor across their chests and sporting military hats over grayed hair. 

It was the first time shivers ran up and down my spine, the first time I realized what it meant to live beneath the shadow of the American flag, one I'd spent so much time being embarrassed by as I walked European streets or rocked out at punk concerts. 

After the ceremony ended, I walked my reporter-in-training self over to those men, pen in hand and asked them to share with me their stories. It was the longest, best interview of my reporting career, maybe my life so far.

We stood there together as they divulged their memories and experiences and hearts with a 21-year-old punk who raged against the man without ever really pondering that my freedom to rage was granted by the men and women who gave their lives to their country, my country.

I was probably around your age when I left the states for my tour, one of the veterans had said. I lost a lot of friends ... a lot of my friends died so young for this country ... it changed me.

I walked away from that interview changed, too,  gratitude injected into an ignorant heart. And since I've found myself with tears in my eyes when I see the flag waving and dancing in the air, hear the notes of the anthem or see the uniform-clad bodies of our service people; freedom comes with a hefty price tag, one I'd only remotely experienced through story that day.

After that, I'd always made it a point to call my grandfather, who served in World War II, on both Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, because I wanted him to know on both days I recognized his service and the service of the men and women he served beside who never came home to their families; I wanted him to know I was grateful. He always said thank you but brushed it off as having simply just done what was needed. But I know his time spent serving changed him.

My grandfather during World War II. Photo courtesy of my aunt. 

My grandfather passed away six months ago, leaving the world short of the dwindling few World War II veterans who came home after the war. I watched the flags atop of the mailboxes dance and wave this morning in the breeze and missed him. 

My mind wandered to those men I interviewed all of those years ago, too, curious if they still stand at the ceremony year after year, showing their respect and appreciation for the fallen while demonstrating what it means to stand tall in gratitude to younger watching eyes who have taken our daily lives here in the land of the free for granted. A sense of urgency took over in my heart to share with my own little ones in my house why we slow down today and remember.

There are curious eyes here in my house, wide open and watching. I wanted to take them this morning to see the faces of those who have taught us with their lives what it means to live with gratitude, but they wanted to dig in the dirt with grandma and fish in the lake.

I was frustrated at first, driving alone to the ceremony, thinking about how I wanted them to soak up even the smallest understanding, grow the tiniest bud of appreciation for the freedom they enjoy. 

At the ceremony, though, as I listened and prayed and thanked God for the people who have served, I remembered that freedom affords us choices ... from the freedom of speech and religion and bearing arms ... all the way to the freedom to stay home on Memorial Day and dig in the dirt or fish in the lake when you're 5.5 and 3.5 years old. 

Their days of realization will come. There will be faces who embody the very essence of courage and freedom. What it means to walk in the shadow of the flag, just like the one of the cross, and the freedom each affords will come into the light one day for each of their hearts. 

And they, too, I pray, will walk away changed. 

Thinking, That's All: A Message

My five year old asked incredulously how I hear God's voice whisper to me.

"Does He call you on the phone?" G questioned. "How do I get Him to call me on the phone?"

I shake my head and share that hearing from God isn't like G getting a phone call from one of his grandparents, but that when I hear a message from Him, it's loud and clear and it usually comes from reading the Bible and reading the exact right verse at the exact right moment in time or having an impromptu scripture-infused conversation with someone in the perfect time and space.

I kissed G goodbye later that morning, and I headed to work before venturing off to get the first of some blood tests aimed at measuring my pregnancy hormones.

****

When I arrived at work, one of my co-workers asked me excitedly if what she'd just read on Facebook meant I was pregnant right now. I smiled and said yes as she asked if I was planning on sharing the news with our senior pastor during our meeting in just a few moments ... so I shared. He prayed for us and thanked God for our new little life, and then we began our meeting after a little more conversation about Christmas and other goodness.

Every week, I have the privilege of asking Pastor Joe what's on his mind and bringing it to our church family via our blog and facebook.

Little did Pastor Joe know, as he gathered his thoughts before our meeting, that he would be speaking to my heart a message from the Lord, as I wrestled between faith and fear in the face of our testing and waiting to see if my pregnancy would progress and bring us a long-hoped for baby come end of summer.

I just have to share it with you:

Isaiah 41:9-10
"I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

One day, when he's just a little bit older, I'll share this post with G.

And we'll revel in God's goodness

to talk to ordinary people just like us

without ever making the phone ring.

Thinking, that's All: In Which I Write My Heart Out

All week {um fall long?}, I feel like I've been writing for everyone else.

And that's left me here in these quiet moments too exhausted to write much of what's been on my heart and mind despite there being a flood of thoughts and emotions.

Writing here in this space has been a lot like taking a bucket to an overflowing river, trying to reduce the flooding one bucketful at a time; by the time I get back from emptying one bucket, the river has again spilled beyond its flooded banks and I'm just dipping into a tiny bit of it, carrying it away.

This week, especially, has been one of these overflowing weeks.

I said goodbye to my grandpa just days before he slipped from this side of eternity into the next ... and days before my late father {his son's} birthday, which is always hard because I think of how old he would be and what he's missed with the boys and what my boys have missed of him.

This weekend, we'll say a proper farewell, but I'm positive it won't hold a candle to spending an hour with him Sunday, talking to him, holding his warm hand, praying with him and voicing my appreciation for him while he was still conscious enough to hear and understand and respond.

I grieve for the loss of such a great patriarch; but I find joy in the hope that he's with his Creator ... and my dad and my grandma {his wife} experiencing fullness in the reunions. I give thanks for having had 29 years with him and for having the chance to say so and say goodbye.

I woke up this morning to my eyes washed with streaks of red across the white, and I wished that I didn't wear my heart so visibly on the outside.

It's hard to explain a week like this to the people who read the heart in your eyes, a week so wrapped up and bound in not only my own sticky grief and gratitude but that of others who are hurting or weighed down by the heaviness of life.

Selah.

No one knows exactly what that translates to but its splashed across the pages of the Psalms. Some say it means to give pregnant pause and reflect; others ponder that it means that with an infusion of praise. 

I feel like my life is a Psalm this week.

I've cried out to my God through tears of sadness, praise:

"I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies." 

Psalm 18: 1-3 

And joy.

"You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah." 

Psalm 32

Strange thing is how one can cry tears of grief and yet sing songs of praise all within almost the same breath.

Today was my 90-day check up with my crazy-smart holistic doctor and E's eight-week check up.

Though I knew the report would likely be good because I've been feeling so.much.better these past few weeks especially, I couldn't help but let tears spill onto my cheeks when she told us both my and E's candida infections were cleared up.

After more than a year and a half of both E and I battling that infection and all of the imbalances produced during other less effective treatments and the infection itself, our bodies have been cleared of it.

Cleared. Healed.

All I could say was thank you to her for her help

thank you to God for giving her such insight into the body

and allowing our paths to cross and linger

and

Selah.

Tonight, I'm done carrying buckets of overflow.

I'm just going to wade and cry and sing and praise.

Selah.

Five-Minute Friday: Race

He stands solemnly, stills his growing body, a few paces ahead of me, traces of his breath dancing in the cool October dusk as he deeply exhales a long sigh.

"Oh, mommy," he begins, "All of my favorite leaves are almost gone."

Two straights days of swooping, sweeping strong winds have wrestled the them in all of the bursts of colorful glory from tree branches, sent them rushing down the street and crashing into open stretches of prairie.

"Why does it have to go so fast?" he laments, standing taller, broader shouldered than he was even just a few weeks ago when the green first gave way to deep orange and sunset red. "I wish the leaves would stay a little longer ... they're so pretty like this."

I nod, resisting the urge to inform him that seasons changing are inevitable, that sometimes you blink and you miss the leaves lingering bright and gloriously from the trees at the peak of fall, only catching glimpses of their beauty as they run wildly off into the distance.

We stand together, staring at barren branches, sorry to have not stood here still for longer just a few days prior. I switch my gaze to his face, sleeker and defined more monthly by sharper curves, baby fat having mostly dripped away.

And I linger long in the blazing glory of five

because soon I'll be standing here catching tiny bursts of color racing down the streets.

Thinking, that's All: A Standing Ovation

Every week on Wednesday since beginning my social media job at our church, I've had this awesome privilege of sharing with our community via Facebook what's on our senior pastor's mind.

Today as we spoke, he shared with me his heart, and ironically, he put to words what I, so far, have only been able to capture in picture this autumn.

"I love this time of year because it's as if God takes out his pain brush and begins pouring out His creativity through the colors of fall," he said. "It reminds me of Isaiah 55:12:

'You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.' 

During fall, it's like the trees are giving God a standing ovation."

After work, though I was tempted to carry on as normal in my rush-race of a Tuesday, I stopped instead, breathed in the beauty of a fantastic fall day; I couldn't help but linger in his soul-drenched words and the Perfect Word amid the loveliness of all the bright, bold, vibrant colors. And I couldn't help but marry his words and His word and this capture I managed to steal in a moment of afternoon-sunshine bliss. 

So seriously. 

Go outside right now and linger long in just a few stolen moments beneath October sunlight and take in the loveliness; there's nothing more soul-refreshing than a heart drenched in gratitude and praise. 

And I just know you will all but audibly hear the applause.

Thinking, that's All: We're not in Chicago anymore

Beneath afternoon sun and clouds, only the shadows of tree leaves and branches danced besides our own, shading tiny stretches of sidewalk beneath our feet, as we walked with purpose and precision in search of lunch.

Though shops and restaurants, boutiques and businesses lined the brick-paved walkway, almost all had signs propped in windows quietly sharing a secret that those of us from the always vibrating and lively Chicagoland didn't know:

Closed Sundays.

"I guess we're not in Chicago anymore," I'd said aloud and shrugged my shoulders, half amused, half irritated.




As we walked the beautiful yet deserted streets of downtown Kalamazoo finding only a smattering of open doors, only a few other bodies moving along the streets, I felt our pace noticeably slow.

We drifted away from the task at hand and lunch as planned as we slipped into conversation and an rogue open doorway for a tea and coffee before we headed back to the cabin to make a meal of garden veggies and turkey slices that found their way into the vacation cooler we'd packed just two days before.

And somewhere amid closed doors and that one that opened, a wave of relaxation swept over me; as the sleepy city rested and breathed, I found myself doing the same.

When we returned to the cabin, nestled against the still blue waters of a little lake tucked into rolling hills just about 20 miles beyond the little-big city, I quenched my hunger for food, but the one for that feeling of deep rest lingered long in my chest.

And it left me really ready to let go of the shoulds and needs and musts for this week of scheduled family vacation -- this upcoming week where I'd told myself I'd press the brakes and take a break from all of our normal life affairs {how lucky are we that we have good friends who babysit our garden and our house and our business?!}, including writing -- my very first intentional writing sabbatical.

No deadlines. No schedules. No memes. No edits. No publishing. No work. No feedback.

Just my pen and lots of open, empty journal pages while my family and I enjoy time together and the beautiful spread of this lovely lay of far-from-home land.



Because, no, we're not in Chicago anymore.

And, you know, that was the point all along.

*****

While I'm on my hiatus from blogging, I have the privilege of introducing you to my little sister! 

Jill's going to be here all week telling stories -- like how she was a rock-star during the home-birth delivery of her daughter and maybe also about how our mother gave us mullet hair cuts when we were younger along with an apology letter she penned her sweet baby E regarding the former hair debacle and genetics. 

 She'll probably also try to tell you about the time I was pulling her in a wagon and went around a corner too fast and tipped the wagon thus breaking her finger. And she'll probably tell you I was being a little snot when I did that, and probably, you'll believe her because she's the charming, younger sister ... and if you do, we can still be friends. Because I don't blame you; she *is* charming.

She'll be hosting Bigger Picture Moments  HERE this THURSDAY, too, so be sure to come and share life Thursday this week as she hosts her first link up!

Thinking, That's All: Sunday Morning {Solo}

Yesterday, I posted a collaborative piece from the prompt Sunday Morning by Ani DiFranco where I shared my captures and my partner's words.

Below are the words I penned for the prompt and captures.

Sunday Morning {Solo}

Head sunken into pillows, hips into the cushion of a wool-topped mattress, I used to sleep long and late into the morning, gracious husband downstairs with two little boys scrambling eggs and scrambling to find church clothes, dress two boys.

Inevitably, there was always rushing, some tears, frustration billowing freshly like just-brewed coffee. Sunday mornings groaned for restoration.

So my sleep has since been traded for early-rising, frustration for the fruit of patience and hot tempers for hot breakfasts together beneath summer sun. 

And I was reminded that before redemption could restore and penetrate my heart while sitting beneath the steeple that it had to begin in the heart of my Sunday mornings first. 

Thinking, That's All: The Flag

Every year it sneaks up on me.

I don't notice until I'm strolling around the neighborhood the night before Memorial Day, blissfully and ignorantly enjoying the long weekend, that our streets are lined with a plethora of red, white and blue, stars and stripes.

And?

We don't have a flag flying in front of our own house.

Again, I've forgotten to purchase the very symbol used for displaying our gratitude and gratefulness to the service men and women who have laid down their lives for the freedom we enjoy in this country.

It's got to be something like growing up as as the only kid on the block and not having a Christmas tree come December.

Except without the flag and its freedom, a family might not be able to celebrate Christmas or any of the other holidays we embrace during December at all.

So maybe it's a little more than not having a Christmas tree, and I've just never totally verbalized it in my own head before.

But the little things we do in our everyday life and take for granted are wrapped up in the freedom my family so much enjoys. Like just today, and I doubt we even thought about it, we dipped our toes into some of that goodness found wrapped in the freedom our flag proclaims.



We worshiped vividly, sang our hearts out and partook in communion at church ...

and I checked in publicly on Facebook  {because we're allowed Internet access to all sites}

and it wasn't against the law that we were in a place of worship

and I read Time magazine articles criticizing our government

that the United States Postal Service delivered to my mailbox

and E and I went on a walk where we spent most of the time saying aloud "Thank you, God, for ..."

and my neighbors just smiled instead of reporting us to the police.

None of that came without a price; lots, so many men and women have paid it with their lives, with the best of their years spent in service to the citizens who hold tight to this freedom even when they don't realize it.

And I don't even have a flag in front of my house, flying in gratitude because I have the right to have forgotten.

I know the spouses, the children, the mothers, the fathers, the friends of these fallen soldiers haven't had the choice of having forgotten.

I assure you, as I go about my day and the days to come, enjoying my various freedoms however big or seemingly small, I will remember.

And the flag?

It will become a permanent resident standing victoriously, billowing from the steps of our front porch.

Lest we never have the audacity to forget again. 

G., 21 months, Memorial Day Parade, 2009 

Everyday Life: Redefining Beauty by Bathroom Mirror

Size four.

I slip my hips into size four black pants, chic, designer hand-me-downs.

I don't expect them to fit, honestly, but they zip and button and latch.

Haphazardly, I decide to wear the pants, straight-legged and fitted, to my sister’s baby shower, thankful for clothes that fit without cost, grateful for a healing, healthier body and slightly awed at this drastically new shape I have yet to fully embrace.

I’d spent years wrestling with body envy in the name of fashion before I shifted the focus from two-piece swimsuits and skinny jeans to healthy heart, healthy body mass and healthy thoughts. Slowly, my mind has shifted as my body has transformed that what makes the body beautiful has less to do with clothes and more to do with how it’s been created.

That I have strong legs, a healthy heart to carry me after little boys who play escape down the neighborhood sidewalk.

That my hips can carry an extra 30 pounds of crying child, my lips can kiss away hurts.

That my arms can hold tight my husband in full embrace.

That my body has twice grown new life and nourished children and a marriage.

During the middle of the party, I sneak off to the bathroom for a quick break and am confronted by a full-length mirror next to the sink, my long-time worst enemy and truthful friend.

Normally, I look away, but today I take it all in, this new shape.

My sister steps out of the bathroom stall, all belly and beautiful and glowing and her frame, too, is now next to mine in the full-frame reflection of the mirror, and I can't help but stare at two bodies that are perfectly imperfect and capable of so much more than I ever used to appreciate.

I’m absolutely overcome with the lovely she’s radiating, how she’s simply overflowing with life, her shirt and skirt perfectly accentuating soft curves, how her size-four body has lovingly and achingly stretched to make room for another small body, has given and grown to bring forth a tiny gift to our family, our world.

From inside those long-envied size four pants, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t willingly trade them in for the flowing skirt she’s wearing at that very moment. 

Because beauty to me now is much less about the size four pants and much more about what fills them {baby bump and beyond}.

Thinking, That's All: A bump

A bump.

It's likely unworthy of any attention or special notice, my favorite nurse says as she examines the slightly stretched, raised skin on one side of my nose.

It's not hugely obvious, but it's there -- a bump that should probably be checked out.

I leave the office with each hand clasping that of a little boy, a recommendation card for a dermatologist slid into the back pocket of my jeans.

As we step outside of the office and our faces meet sunshine, my boys unlock their fingers from my own and are running wild in two seconds flat.

And so is my mind.

I scramble to capture all that has broken free.

I buckle little behinds into car seats and wish that my fleeting thoughts were as easily bound before I settle on one thought.

Could we just have a break? 

My heart and mind long for simple days spent wrapped up in the moments that spread out easily before us, free of tangled thoughts and unrest and dis-ease.

We've known these days, gifts we carelessly unwrapped and tossed aside for each new one that came perfectly wrapped in the new ribbon of each morning's sunrise.

We gobbled them up, gluttonous almost, devouring a harvest in which we'd barely toiled, just barely uttering thanks as the sun set daily behind the horizon.

What did we know then of love that came easily without sacrifice

of health that bloomed like clockwork leaves on trees

or of thankfulness for simply another day

of the Gardener's goodness.

My skin is all sorts of stretched out thin from growing and growing and growing during this time of His planting and sowing seeds of gratitude and trust into our hearts, into our minds.

Breaks don't come during the growing season, and I know, I admit, that I surely want to bear fruit come harvest. 

There is a wrestling in breaking out of the tight-wound bud. And there is stretching in growth, in maturing, in coming to full bloom.

I abandon wild-grown thoughts instead giving my attention to the wild love strapped into two car seats behind me.

We talk about everything and nothing, and I cannot remember the details beyond smiles from the tender attention of a mother to her sons.

He weeds and waters and suns and grows through the clumps, the bumps of dirt, and there's a resignation of details on my part about what He'll use to fertilize and pull those weeds replaced with simple prayers of thank you and a begging to not leave me this way.

And He won't; because this is the kind of love that tends carefully with out break without abandon and without fail.

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. 

Everyday Life: Little Reminders

In the predawn darkness of 6 a.m. the kitchen lights leave the lillies he bought me for Valentine's Day aglow.



A week later, they've blossomed, bloomed and stretched wide open as we've gone about our everyday life, likely, from the tender care my grandparents have suggested and put forth in cutting the stems and replacing the water and clearing the decaying leaves.

As I wipe sleep from my eyes, the flowers whisper of love that transcends time zones and continents and the oceans that are in between my physical heart and my husband's.

And, too,  they remind me that love in all of it's flourishing beauty, like the lillies, doesn't always just blossom and glow; it's result of the tender care I sometimes brush to the wayside in favor of the immediate demands of life.

Today, I decide in the early morning hours of the day, I'll favor the delicate care.

Thinking, That's All: At 29

When I was younger I most looked forward to the company who would come celebrate my birthday.

And truly the people who come around us in these times of joy and celebration are gifts. 

Fittingly, as God always gives, a gift of wisdom and experience and thought came at just the right time wrapped in thoughtful, careful words and packaged in a friend who shared his experience with sequoia trees.

He explained how sequoias -- great towering trees that are hundreds of years old and a few hundred feet tall -- best grow their rings, their height, their strength only after forest fires clear out other trees and brush that choke out the small sequoia seedlings. 

Photo credit: Red321

During the fires, hot air rockets up to the tops of the tree canopy, drying the cones allowing them to open and release their seeds. 

Without the fires, the seedlings don't stand much of a chance of adding more rings to their trunks, of becoming these strong, tall, majestic, mature trees. 

At 29, I'm learning to be thankful for the first ... and for the intricacies that make up the rings that mark another year of life and everything that made up this ring of 28.

The joy.

The hurt.

The grief.

The trials.

The patience.

The giggles.

The beauty.

The hands of friendship extended.

The steadfast love of a husband.

Because through these intricacies, God has mercifully drawn me closer to Him, has shown me that his burden is light and His yoke is easy and has held me in His arms.

I grow. 

Not how I expected, but, nonetheless, there is another ring of growth marking another year.

And I am thankful for them and the ones this year will surely bring, too. 

A Call to Know: What We don't Like to Know

She doesn't even have a legal name.

Young, beautiful, with a perfect smile, she slipped right into a family dinner a few years ago without my deaf ears ever really hearing her story.

14. 15, maybe.

She was bought when she was 10 years old. Bought. Sold by her parents to a man and then sold a few more times, she finally ended up with a captor who had the means to bring her to this country.

An assault on my ears, on my mind, my heart, a child sold and owned, I didn't know her story until recently another family member explained she had essentially broken away from the man who had bought her only to be orphaned and alone in a foreign country.

Life hasn't been easy for the sweet-faced girl who doesn't even have a legal identity apart from the man who bought her and from whom she tore away to become a ward of the state and then finally placed under the care of my loving family members who fatefully befriend her.

We don't know it, but these stories permeate even our suburban landscapes, our grocery store aisles, the pews in our churches.

We don't know it, but people are being bought and sold and owned before our unsuspecting eyes.

And I just thought, hey, maybe we should know.

Maybe knowing it would ignite a passion in our hearts to become agents of change.

Maybe knowing it would inspire action to increase awareness and decrease the prevalence of human trafficking, an exploitation that generates around $32 billion dollars every year.

Maybe simply knowing it would encourage us to build bridges to rescue those who are enslaved and help eventually prevent another 27 million people from being bought.

There are some amazing organizations that tell the story much more profoundly than I can.

They are everyday, compassionate people who actually doing something about this epidemic.

{Everyday people like you and me.}

And I just thought we should all know.

{Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. And I didn't know until a friend e-mailed me. But now I do. And now I can't look away.}

For more information or to get involved visit:
Love146
Run for their Lives
The SOLD Project via Tasting Grace
Casa de Esperanza

If you suspect someone you know has been smuggled or trafficked, visit here for information on how to help.

Thinking, that's all: Strange isn't all that Strange

It starts with my sister and I half joking about how other families seem so normal.

Until they don't.

Like mine, for instance.

At first glance, we're stereotypical suburbanites with our two parents, two kids, golden retriever, house with a fenced-in backyard.

But then upon closer inspection you find these oddities -- these unique-to-us traits

like how E wants, no, needs someone to rub his toes every night before he goes to sleep.

Or, G, how he still will reach up to touch our ears when he feels out of his element.

And John's sock length guidelines for jean-wearing versus shorts-wearing.

Oh, me, too. With my inner deep desire to be keeper of the chickens.

Maybe those oddities are laughable, all of them.

But there's the ones I don't normally wear on my sleeve, too.  Like my brain-eating amoeba fears. The ones that are strange and deep-seeded and not readily understood or mentioned.

There's those pieces of strangeness, the ostracizing and lonely kind that leave us tight-lipped, letting the thoughts meander or stomp around the romping grounds of our minds in solitude. The kind you don't really want to share with your family or best friend or even your husband because it doesn't just dance in the room of unusual or quirky ... the isolating kind of strange that binds our tongues and keeps us standing in the quiet of our thoughts.

We walk into the church building, smiling and saying hello to families we've known for years and some for just minutes. I catch another mom's eye in the mirror in the bathroom; we exchange pleasantries. The conversation ends with wishes for a great weekend.

She seems to have it all together together -- hair brushed, clean clothes, smiles abounding and words shared easily. We both seem to have it all together.

We both seem so normal.

Until we're not.

We've all got those deep pockets of fear, these wells of uncertainty that keep us lingering in isolation, keep us captives in the darkness because we think we're too far gone.

But the lonely of strange or abnormal can only be isolating if we keep it to ourselves and everyone else does, too.

I wonder, as a community, as a church, as people who seek to walk in His footsteps, what it would take to go past the places of polite conversation and smiles and normal and venture into quirky so can begin to walk into the halls of the lonely, the strangeness together and get real about what normal really means.

Because normal redefined would make these places so many of us struggle to get a grip on far less lonely and far more easy to tackle.

Five-Minute Friday: Open

You are stretched out and wide open,
sprawling with days yet untouched
by my own clumsy hands
and I want to fall
without abandon
into You.

You are time and no time
and newness and old
and fresh starts and rich history
and I want to live like
I've been invited into Your eternity

Where new years and old years and
no years
blend together
and my only resolution
is to love You
without abandon.

Starting here.

Thinking {that's all}: The Space to Burn

The more I feel the lure of busyness wooing my heart, the more I want to sharp turn left and veer into radical unbusyness.

Because since starting the journey toward uncluttering our calendars and seeking to live intentionally in the moment about a year and some months ago, I've found at times what it means to live in the wide open space of air and light.

Last summer, I read this for the first time. {TOTALLY worth your 60 seconds to read}

What makes a fire burn is space between the logs, a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surley as a pail of water.
So building fires requires attention to the spaces in between, as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build open spaces in the same way we have learned to pile on logs,
then we come to see how it is fuel, and the absence of fuel together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log lightly from time to time.
A fire grows simply because the space is there,
with openings in which the flame that knows
just how it wants to burn can find its way.  

Fire, by Judy Brown  

I've taken the deep breath of virgin air, held it in my lungs, cold and burning and let it clear out my mind, while soaking up the oxygen in the depths of my spirit.

Ignition.

It's been good. So good that when I slip back into over committment and over booking, I sort of feel like I'm that over-logged fire -- suffocating, the passion burning inside me dwindling into just a flicker from a flame.

Says the girl who used to have something scheduled every morning and afternoon each day of the week.

And so I ponder, as we head into 2012, how to keep this sacred space for burning free of another log on the burn pile when so many logs seem like they'll be magnificent additions.

Thinking, That's All: On Black Friday

My sister and I drove narrow paved roads lining sun-soaked fields in the middle of nowhere Illinois, just about 25 miles south of where we grew up and a few miles of east of where our mom now calls home.

On our way to Indiana to meet a friend, she remarked about how our road was winding us toward Hopkins Park, IL, the most economically depressed community in the Midwest.


Really? I'd asked, squinting into the farm fields stretched out for miles before our eyes.

The lay of the land looked strikingly similar to the lush farm soil where we'd grown up.


Looks are deceiving.

She divulged that many of the people in these small communities of Pembroke and Hopkins Park walk dirt floors inside their homes. And a lot of that dirt is actually sand-saturated and not all that great for growing food.

The towns have no central line for gas, no sewers, no drainage systems, no schools, no police department, no stores. But they do have a lot of heart, hope and great need.

We traveled down a long stretch of asphalt and passed by weather-and-time beaten buildings, tarped-roofing covering wide spaces atop of homes, trailers sporting broken windows -- scattered toys in the driveway all signs of life living within these now-chilled spaces inundated with late November air.

My mind, spinning, my stomach still full from yesterday's turkey dinner, turning, I remembered the world we just lived in less than 30 minutes before.

A world where shoppers were lining up before midnight outside of buildings to score door-buster deals.

A city where the stores were packed before the dawn even broke this Friday morning.

Houses, ours included, where no one walked away from the dinner table hungry.

How could the faces of poverty live so close to the places I've called home and I've never known it, I asked my sister.

Surprised, she said, well, I'm glad I could teach you something today {because you know the baby of the family doesn't always get to do such teaching.}

I nodded my head, glad to know and samely dismayed to know that kind of poverty even exists in places where my feet have tread and my hands have done nothing to meet the great need ... in places just a short drive away from where door busters and day-only deals are the hallmark of the day after Thanksgiving ...

I caught her eyes, my own watering.

The need is just so great, I barely voiced.

{Black Friday, indeed.}

Thinking, that's all: So We Dance and Sing

My baby sister is getting married in two days, and it's all starting to become very real.



These past few months we've all trying to make sorts of what that means for her and for our family and for us, I think, too.

Because after having her live here for the better part of a year, she kind of has become part of everyday life in an ever-decreasing way, and, of course, that's as it should be when a woman grows up and out and into new skin, combining her life with the man she loves.

It's as it should be, I remind myself when she's not here for dinner or whatever else.

And maybe because I'm not great with big changes, and maybe because I cling to memories with the grip of a kid grasping a beloved doll, I've been focusing more on plans and preparations for her bachlorette party and the details -- the outfits and the gifts and the speech {Oh MY WORD THE SPEECH!} and the mustaches on a stick than the actual feelings that swirl and swell in my heart when I think of my little sister getting married.

And it's very unlike all three of the weddings I officiated for her in the backyard when she was four and dolled up in the fancy, ruffled dress she wore to our dad's wedding reception saying I do to the little red-headed neighbor boy we all adored.

Like, really getting married ... to a grown man and in that union she gains a business and a home of her own and a car and babies {someday, no rush}.

And these thoughts here -- the newness of what's to be coupled with the nostalgia of a childhood that's been and a year of togetherness as adults living life in the same house, well, it's enough to leave me a little breathless, forgetting to actually soak in this moment, this here, this now.

Because just as busyness steals away the days, so, too, does living in yesterday and tomorrow.

There's a snap back to reality when G, who has been focusing his energy on the practical, too, by intently practicing his sweet dance moves every chance he gets, begs me to turn on some "boy music" {code for male singing voices} that's good for dancing.

Like Ice Ice Baby {introduced to him by a certain sister of mine}.

Thankfully, he willing rocks out when Jimmy Eat World rocks the house and sways melodically along to Death Cab for Cutie and the like .

And it's good -- this rocking, this swaying of the house by song and lyric and melody because it means that the TV is off. {Did I mention that E now sneaks off while G and I are playing or cleaning or cooking and turns on not just the TV but also Netflix? Yeah -- kid is smart.}

But, also, there's goodness because it means that we're immersed in the present enjoying the music, the movements, the beauty of right here and right now, which is where I really I want to be.



I want stand strong in all of this and soak it up -- her wedding and these long days but short years of the boys' smallness -- while it's happening instead of reliving it in fractured pieces of memories.

So we dance and sing right here, right now not just as practice for the wedding, but as practice in really living within the actual moments of both the ordinary and extraordinary days.