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a state of being
I am altogether too often guilty of choosing Busy in my Soul (and Busy in my Life) so I can comfort myself with a bit of Numb. The distractions keep me from feeling all the stuff that threatens to drown me. (And. Some days, some moments, there is just So Much Stuff.) What is it all anyway? Why is it so easy to forget what I believe? To push aside what I know to be true? To look at the hill in front of me and to see a mountain I think I’ll never cross? To forget where I’ve been and what I’ve become? To forget that my legs…
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don’t sit in your struggle alone
Struggle. It sometimes seems like it’s the predominant characteristic of our lives. And, even when your own life isn’t full to the brim overflowing with hardship or disappointment, you still have people you know, love, care about, meet on the street, whose lives are slopping over the sides with struggle and hard and heavy. You can personally be floating along in a relative calm, a ray of sunshine across your canoe, and you just bump your oar right up against someone who has capsized, who is flailing around outside their canoe, clinging to their life jacket, head bobbing in the water next to you. It happens All The Time.…
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pause.
Pausing doubt. I don’t even know how long ago the leaders at our church taught a sermon series about doubt. The ideas from that series have rattled around in my mind for months – maybe a year. Which means that by now it’s trickled into regular thoughts and both morphed and grown from what I originally heard. In other words, I won’t be quoting anyone but myself today because my memory is not that well versed in word for word accuracy. There is this idea of saying to doubt, “Wait right here. I’ll be back later.” You know – putting this fear – this unknown – the questions I…
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never and always . . . words on parenting
In one of their songs, the Wood Brothers sing a lyric that says, “Sometimes I feel like I’m never and always alone.” In some ways, I think that’s the anthem of motherhood, particularly for the mother of young children. You’re never actually alone. Fingertips are reaching under the door of the bathroom, for the love. And yet the early years of motherhood can be some of the loneliest years of a mom’s life. You remain unconvinced that anyone else really understands how hard it is to begin (and to lose) a battle with a toddler or to negotiate snack time or to change eighty bazillion diapers or to read…
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Five Finds Friday (running on empty & a grey t-shirt)
In a way these weekly routine posts just make my days feel like they are in fast forward. But whatever. It’s Friday again. FUNNY You know – this one doesn’t rank up there as Funniest Week I’ve Ever Lived. (What would that week look like? I want to know.) But do you know who is funny? Jim Gaffigan. Jim Gaffigan is funny. And pretty much mostly he’s clean. Even better. So go listen to Jim Gaffigan if you want to laugh. That’s all. No link even. I think you know how to use the internet by now anyway. FASHIONABLE I’m cool with the fact…
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. . . when vomit drew me closer to Jesus
When I say Otto was sick this week, I mean the poor little guy was for reals sick. He counted each time he threw up. I didn’t realize he was keeping track. There he was, little silver bowl in hand, emptying his stomach contents. “Nine,” he stated. Nine times. It wiped him out. It wiped me out. And it took my sheets out too. But whatever. London was sick all night. Otto started in early early morning after I had stolen a few hours of rest. While cleaning up Otto I heard footsteps racing across the upstairs hallway. Bergen was joining the sick ranks. If you’re counting that is…
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The Tired & The Worn Out
Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlasting God, the Creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. (Isaiah 40:29, The Living Bible translation) To The Tired & The Worn Out, I see you. I watch you rise up in the morning and feed the hungry faces sitting at your table. I know you drag your worn Bible across the counter top and you…
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i’ve got you covered.
Travel weary and ready for lunch, my straggly gang and I waited in the line at Chick-fil-A. Four hours of driving behind us. Three hours of driving in front of us. An irritated older gentleman pushed right around us to reach the cashier asking who was next. His exagerated sighs told me he was probably a lot more concerned about his chicken sandwich with Polynesian sauce than I was so I ignored his line cutting. Turns out our cashier was a little less than speedy and that was alright, because we order a little less than speedy too. Another customer was to our left following Irritated Older Gentleman before all…
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abundance, grit, desperate: lessons from the flower patch farm girl
I wish I had taken better notes. There were so many stellar speakers. So many good words. And I was going from zero to eighty because it’s been quite some time since I sat in a conference-style learning environment and paid close attention to grown ups speaking. Shannan Martin, known on her blog as Flower Patch Farm Girl, taught a session I attended. Her words certainly gave me pause. She had my dreamy ideal life. A lovely farmhouse home and a little spot of land to call her own. And then she and her family left all that. To move to a city and live on the other side of…
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once upon a Sunday morning
The Sunday mornings of our present look nothing like the Sunday mornings of our past. It’s just a church. I know that. Broken people. Imperfect leaders. You know all the phrases. So do I. But every time I am there I cry. I connect. I get a glimpse of what I think church can look like. And she is beautiful. My past experiences with other churches have not been great. Little within the walls of those buildings to motivate me to haul multiple children out of a lazy morning. More dead than alive. And me too. But this place is not the same. And neither am I. Example One of…
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Wrong Again
I don’t know if you have ever noticed, but I have these little categories on the right side of this page. (You know, like a billion other bloggers.) And one of my categories is entitled “My Pursuit of God”. And I think I have just been realizing something. I have had that all wrong. Mislabeled really. This whole time it has never been about my pursuit of God. It has always been about God’s pursuit of me. There I go again – making it all about me. Because I can be such an idiot sometimes when it comes to perspective. This story, my life, has been entirely a picture of…
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Fear
I have allowed fear to rule my heart for most of my life. I don’t mean that “most of my life” in a cliche way. Or even in a “most of my adult life” way. I mean most of my life. As in since I was eight years old. Around the time I was eight I developed some hyper-fear that my mother was going to die. I became obsessed. Obsessed. As in every night I crept down to my parent’s bedroom. I hovered beside my mother’s bed. And I watched her. Two sleepy eight-year-old eyes peering just over the bed covers at my resting mother. I just stared at her.…
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Dear Control: You Have Never Really Belonged To Me
It is possible that the experiences of the past several years of my life have been occurring primarily to lead me to one conclusion – to point me to one truth. I’m not in control. (I don’t think I ever really thought I was. But I have been infatuated with pretending as if I was.) It’s like this is the conversation that has been happening above, around, near me for a few years . . . You like the way your parents make you feel secure? You have a growing reliance on your mom and her role in your life? Got that all figured out – how that should look…
