Intentionality

My life is an exercise in living intentionally. Everyday. Making the better choice on an arduously difficult level. Every step taking the path of most resistance. Every parent works their bodies and their minds to this same extent. Some with more fervor than others. Regrettably I have not always recognized this need, often letting emotion, anger rule my heart and my home and now I find that I'm going backward in retraining little hearts to not imitate that which I once was. I cannot stand alone in this, I have covered a space in every room with God's wisdom that I might not sin against him and these precious little people. What a high and daunting responsibility it is to fill little hearts with a love of virtue over a love of self. To deliver into them cases of positive moral choice, to create a warehouse of soul defining options for daily living. Oh how my soul and body ache for some affirmation that when they arrive into adulthood they will rise up and call me blessed.

scratching

I just have a few thoughts bumbling about, scratching at the surface of my limited ability for conscious thinking in between husband, house, kids, church, playdates, blah blah blah. This idea of the redemptive love of Christ, that what he wants more than anything from anyone who claims him is love. Love for him, for our Father, love for others more than for ourselves.

We don't live this way much in America.

I want to be different.

I want to make EVERY decision based on whether or not it will show his love and mercy to my fellow man (or mostly likely, mom). I don't just want to scream and shout about how great God is through this blog or social networks, I want to prove it by being like Him to those who have never seen Him for themselves and especially now, for my children. And this is hard, this ebbing and flowing between conviction and losing track. I go weeks in patience and love with Asher, then one night of sleep deprivation and I snap, I lose control. I yell and damage his fragile heart and I wonder if a seed for the evil one isn't stored in that moment. That frightens me, those invisible seeds. Sometimes that wave of fear is more like a delicately splashed puddle, other times like the after math of tsunami.

Every day I try to remember "we can do no great things, only small things with great love."

I can send out hurt, but I can also say I'm sorry in humility, genuine and unassuming. I can hope that those smalls acts of redemption are enough to carry us all through.

i've been enamored with...

planting bulbs in the fall that will emerge, brilliant and breathtaking in the coming days of spring

celebrating birth. new cousins, birthday traditions at apple orchards. surprise 4th babies.

thrift store finds that make a home unique and fancy.

watching a big boy emerge from a baby frame: playing legos and sorting dry beans and getting covered in spontaneous morning kisses.

long awaited visits from my mommy.

reading scripture in slippers by open windows with warm home made lattes.

life, wild and precious.

can't

I came across this picture the other day. It's a long story how I saw it, and it has to do with me wasting away my time looking at Adam Lambert's twitter. Don't judge. :)

So he posted this, with the caption "*sigh* God doesn't hate" and it has struck a nerve with me since. Who ARE these people, how did they come to a place of thinking that they were obeying and honoring God by behaving in this fashion? It makes me wonder if there is any hope for those of us who desperately seek Him, who desire to fill the world with the LOVE that we know comes only from Him. Will anyone ever believe us? Maybe some "fags hate God", but I bet it's only because of the sorry light in which we've painted Him. It's not God they hate, it's religion masquerading around like an annoying know-it-all.

The God I know is wrapping his mighty arms around these people, loving them and protecting even when they do wrong, and I'm talking about the people in the picture here. I don't claim to know the mind of God when it comes to homosexuality, I believe there is a reason he asks us not to indulge in it, but I think it's so much more out of a desire to protect us than a desire to hinder us and create boundaries and rules. I'm not even sure where I wanted to go in writing this, treading in such a deep and dangerous water, except to say, more for myself than for you, that for me, for my journey and for the children who will grow up in my care, this will be the law in which we abide:

"Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man."

Showing love. Living mercifully. Opening our arms, our homes, our hearts to the hurting, the confused, those who are fundamentally different from us...THAT is true Christianity. And that is what I hope to live. God! Help me to have the strength, show me how.

Mary Oliver

I heard about this poet here and can't get enough of her.

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I will enjoy it. And lap it up in thirsty mouthfuls, even on days I never leave the house, or the laundry is piling or my children are grumpy. There is something to be treasured everyday and I will skip along in the hunt to find it.

innerds

In the recesses of my heart I know that I am meant to be exactly who I am.

I know that I am not the most beautiful woman the world has seen, but I am beautiful to those that matter.

I know that I am not brilliant, I will never see my name published with prominent medical discoveries, no one will write books about me and my many accolades, but my son thinks I know all the world has to offer.

There are many other things I know about myself, things that I can, regrettably, hinge my self worth on. It gets so tiring, living up to a too high standard of beauty, intelligence, ability, perfection. I get this, I get it that I'm not supposed be perfect, I never will be, but I find myself silently measuring myself up. Mostly against my image of perfect self, but also against the pedestal I seem to put everyone else on.

I find myself feeling simple, not as interesting as so and so who knows all the obscure words that start with the letter Q and seems to be ever reading books with deep meanings I can't even fake my way through comprehending. There is always another mom at the gym who is skinnier, with fewer wrinkles and less inner thigh. Some one always seem to keep a cleaner house, have better behaved boys, love deeper, be more thoughtful, know more scripture, pray more fervently, etc., etc.

This is exhausting.

Even as I write this I wonder what people out there are thinking, I find myself catering my words to the eyes of others. When I started this blasted space for me, created in a state of not caring what anyone thought of what I put here, but just needing to pound it out from time to time.

I think so many of these thoughts stem from this one idea I have of myself that I am not truly gifted at anything. There are several things I am pretty good at, but no real, unabashed talent. I tend to think that if there was ONE thing in which I was really really amazing, then people would think I was so good at it that they would ask me to speak on it or something. I would be satisfied then.

But I wouldn't.

When will I be?

I think it's an enduring process, a divinely designed one, that will greet me when I'm old and wise in ways I can't fathom yet.




But GEEZ I wish I could be there now.

dishonesty

Truthfulness. This is not a trait that summed up even a portion of me in past years, much less the whole. For many years after being redeemed I continued to struggle, to sit, the marinate in deceit. As I dug deeper holes and basted one falsehood after another onto my resume, my vision got darker and darker. One day, I came clean. God finally poked and prodded and convicted my spirit enough that I confessed all of those skeletons, the light penetrated and I was filled with dark no more. I still struggle of course. White lies and exaggerations to puff up a story. The difference now is that I FIGHT to come clean, to reverse the untruth, to make right what my pride aches to make wrong.

And now this, to be caught in the run around of some one else's foul play.

We started engaging in paper work for our home in April of 2009. Forms were faxed and emailed. Amended and rewritten. The shuffle of moving from Texas to Illinois was not particularly chaotic, we purged most of our belongings in a hope to simplify our new life in a new home. Some how, however, in the hub bub of signing and waiting, we must have missed a very important piece of information on a very important document that we some how can't seem to locate in our own records despite having a copy of every other form. We, according to our agent, signed a disclosure form that stated the presence of foundation braces supporting the North wall of our basement. Neither Corey nor I remember this form, and we certainly don't recall anyone verbally highlighting this point to us. We would not have bought the house had this been brought to our attention.

Cleverly, these braces were covered by brand new dry wall and rendered invisible to the naked eye. We only recently discovered them when water leaking into the basement caused a mold scare that left us ripping out walls left and right. In that process the main source of the water was discovered, one third of the North wall, the section making up the garage, is in desperate NEED of a brace. The cinder blocks are cracked, allowing water and debris to flow freely.

Now we are left feeling duped. How did we miss this? Did we really over look it? Where is this form in OUR records. I am not playing with accusations of foul play, I just wish the pieces would come together here. Currently it's looking like we have to bite the bullet and fix this problem ourselves, but it is disheartening. How could some one knowingly cover such a major problem and then "hide" their confession on one line of one document that was slipped to us during the "sign heres?"

I know how.

The same way I once covered up a major sin against the person I loved most because I feared their rejection. The same way I could lie so easily about experiences and adventures and the prices I paid for things. Because my soul was empty. Because I didn't really see the greater purpose set out for me and that I was made for something so much better. That walking in the truth and the light makes for a far grander story than anything fabricated by a feeble imagination.

And because I can now see this, I am empowered to let go of any bitterness or anger. I can sit at peace, knowing that all the details of our situation, and hers, are taken care of. There is no reason to seek vengeance, for that is the Lord's. I am only asked to hear his call, trusting that He will lead us if action should be taken to bring about justice, but that if we are asked to simply accept this hand...that's ok too.

For ALL have sinned, and fall short of the glory.