Third Birthday

(Notes from this weekend...)

She slides close in the coming light and I bury my head in her tendrils, damp and tangled, this night halo she wears through dreamworlds. And then I remember. Today (I can hardly breathe) is the last day.

Tenderly sweeping back these gold strands from around her face, I watch her eyelashes flutter but a moment, her lips slightly open, breathdreams rising and falling softly. On this very pillow she lay the night she first breathed air of this earth, this sliver of heavenlight. That night I cupped her head in my hand, fragile moon, and slept the night us two nestled near, while lightning bugs blinked celebration at the edge of the woods. And in a blink I wake to this morning, to this, the last day of her being two.

Her and I, we’ve always only known two.

Two from the meeting, from the soundless, cosmic settling, the forever light unfurling, the knitting into me. Two from the watery womb swelling, her skin stretching mine, her heart staccatoing under mine, us two in time together.

Cutting the cord on the emerging day changed everything and nothing at all. Heads close on this pillow, we breathed into each other faces. My life flowed out, nourishing hers. Our skin now touched, melded, us two. Though two, we lived entwined, mingled, one.

But today two slips away and she, this gift child, blooms three.

The intake of breath, the realization, pierces sharp.

But He comes quick, soothes with Truth, " But hasn't Two always been Three?"

And I close eyes, nod a half smile, caress her soft cheek, and slip out of bed to bake a cake for tomorrow in the peace of always Three.

"A cord of three strands is not quickly broken" ~Ecc. 4:12

Lord, braid us, these ones near to us, our lives around You, a strong strand for these days...

(To those who sent Shalom birthday wishes, you make us smile, together we delight, and we thank you for sharing this journey with us... We'll write soon...)

How to Homeschool

“Gather and knot.” That’s all I ask them.

It’s all anyone will ever ask of them, really.

So they try.

Continue reading this month's column at Christian Women Online .... about gaps in learning, holes in relationships, and how to make connections.

A Dwelling Place

It’s the slow, heaving pant on the other end of the line that wakes me. No words in the receiver, just this heavy, exaggerated exhale of a body.

My brow crinkles. I don't open eyes, searching for a way out of dreams, to figure out who, why.

And then a voice, hardly audible:

“I think it is today.”

Today?

It registers.

My sister’s voice.

And today. The Saturday before Mother’s Day.

I know this place, familiar and worn. I been here before.

Thirteen years ago on the eve of Mother’s Day, that was my labored breathing, the muscles of my abdomen contracting taut and iron hard, me riding wave after cresting wave.

I don’t open my eyes to the grey mingling of dark and dawn, just inhale and exhale too. I remember words for this in between place.

“In Him, you can do this, sister.” I press the phone closer, wanting her to hear, get this.

“Just stay fluid, lean back into it. Let it come. The more you tense, the more it intensifies. Let it all flow through you. Channels only.”

They are close, handy, those phrases that coached through our six births. And too, I guess what is true of labor is true of the work of life. Stay fluid, let His current take you, don’t rail. Channels only.

“You think I can do this?” Her teeth are chattering now, nerves jangled, scared.

“Lay back into Him, and let it all just come. Don’t fight it. Then yes, you can definitely do this.”
She answers with long, methodical breathing. I nod, smiling into dark lighting.

“Enjoy this fullness,” I whisper. “You know not if you pass this way again.”

We both know it’s time and she has to go and I step into new day coming. I stretch covers up over sleeping places, comb out Little Girl’s dream knots, set bowls out and around for their coming in from barn and chores and early morning air. But prayers linger on lips, always prayers.

Hope-girl and I, we dress for a Mother-daughter garden tea at the chapel this morning, this Saturday before Mother’s Day. She wears flashing pink and I wear safe black and I don’t know what my mother would have wore, for now she cannot come. Mama will collect my nieces close while my sister lets go of curled child within.

At garden gathering, we choose a table draped in yellow, Hope-girl and I, finger the violet petals strewn about, and listen to this chatting, laughing, weaving of lives together, shuttle slipping back and forth. I am there, surrounded by daughters, mothers, grandmothers, but I am not there, a loose string. Talk of recipes, sipping of cups, but my thoughts are in the same hospital I was in thirteen years ago on the cusp of my first Mother’s Day.

I am with a uterus emptying.

Sometimes I catch myself, this laying a hand on my flatness, over that still cavity, and feeling the pulse of ache’s echoing howl. A woman’s body and soul is hollowed out to create, to weave, to knit in the private spaces. And so the longings come, yearnings to fill, to carry, to deliver.

I remember where I was when Husband looked into these seeking eyes and tenderly agreed, “It is true. The barren womb never is satisfied” (Prov. 30: 15-16). If only he really knew how it can scald...

And yet, I have come to think, does the womb need a seed, an unfurling, embryonic soul? Can any soul fill the void? While not necessarily with child, perhaps we may be with abandoned, with elder, with needy. The barren and deserted may become the dwelling place, the fertile home, of souls seeking mother-care.

“The barren has borne…” (1 Sam. 2:5).

Hope-girl beside me, she brushes up against my arm, yogurt-dipped strawberry kissing her lips. She's laughing with her friends. How did that babe I once enveloped in watery womb, unfold into this long lissome dreamer? She grows and I lay fallow. And yet…

We are hardly through home’s door when the phone rings, her voice again, her breathing now undetectable.

“Already?” I glance up at the clock over the table.

“She’s here.” Her voice is light, wearily happy. “We have four.” I shake my head at the wonder of those four sisters laughing and weaving old together.

“Ana… after you.” My breath catches. Words scatter, leaving me stilled.

“Ana Jordan… Jordan cried when we told her. Who knows? Jordan may never marry or have children. And there is always this little one to love.”

The barren has borne. Both of us.

And I realize: We never cease to be with child. Those of us who have birthed, and those of us who never have. We may make spaces within us for all of humanity, for their dreams, their stories, their hurts, their lives. Do we not, over the years, line our lives with the stretchmarks of love?

The privilege of carrying a soul is always ours. We may choose to never let our wombs languish empty. Always we may open and welcome another person to find nourishment and comfort within the empty places we have made just for them.

Somewhere under this night pinned up with stars, Ana Jordan sleeps near her mother’s face, her warm breath falling, her fists clenched tight. And we of empty uteruses still swell, making ourselves homes.

It’s my last act on this Saturday before Mother’s Day. To fold a card and write a haiku of feelings for my own who loves and harbors yet:

Silver-crowned mama
Still you swell, full with child, an
Always dwelling place.

Lord, show me today how I can make space in my life to be a womb...

Related:
On Mothering
In Mama's Honor

Seed Bed

She’s laid bare, exposed and waiting. We, all of us, watch as he stands on her tilled edge, opening bags, preparing to fill soil’s barrenness. Something about the sound of ripping out stitched string, hope and promised unsealed.

The open seed bags line the tailgate, ready. The truck bed sags under the heaviness of seeds, millions of diminutive, near-weightless-in-my-hand seeds. Across the field, edging toward us, the tractor with planter behind, seems to enlarge, grow up out of the dirt. Engine drones louder, closer. That horsepower’s filling earth’s emptiness with seeds, 16 rows drilling 29,500 embryos of life into every acre of naked ground.

Farmer Husband kneels down into land already planted. Like a prayer, he scrapes back the surface, searches.



“Found one.” The wind carries his voice to us sitting in the ditch’s grass. “We’ve got the depth, the spacing. Looks good!” His grease-creased hands move slowly, carefully, folding the seed back into its dark earth slumber.

Granules, sediment, is all she looks like. Dirt. Kick a foot at her, and she flies away, a cloud of dust. But beneath her, still and hidden, lies millions of seeds about to awaken, stir, burgeon, swell with life.

Farmer Husband’s brother backs up tractor and this planter empty of seed. Time to refill. These brothers, whose blood comes from a land far across the Atlantic Ocean, heft seed bags and pour into planter hoppers.

Little Girl stands beside me watching her daddy work, her cheeks full of apple, her hair riding wind. She’s standing on dirt I stood on as a little girl, watching my own Daddy pour seed to fill this farm with.

Seeds and dirt. Isn’t that what we are, really? Seeds planted deep into loam, growing, living, dying, dust returning to dust, new seeds planted. Seeds as many as the stars in the sky.

I reach down and touch her silken hair, touch all the children within her to come, and think of Abraham and Levi before Levi even yet was… and yet he was:

“Because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor,” reads Hebrews 7:10. The New Living Translation offers,“For although Levi wasn’t born yet, the seed from which he came was in Abraham’s body...”

Inside the frames, the bodies, the souls of our children, reside the children still to come. And the children then still to come. Like nestled dolls, future generations dwell within the child whose eyes I now look into, whose hands I now touch.

Stars in the sky, seeds in the earth.

We parent not one child, or even a few children, but every day, we parent innumerable, countless children. When I raise my voice, frustrated with a child, I speak to generations of children. When I wipe away a tear, comfort, listen, I honor centuries of children.

When we meet our children, children we will not live to meet on this earth, are, in very real ways, met, shaped, formed. Parented.

She bites again into white apple flesh, looks up with smiling eyes.

Face of clay, she is. Made of the dust of the ground. But, oh, the seeds within.

The planter drops back down into seedbed, heads across earth, and I take her hand and whisper a prayer.

God, give grace to tend her well.

While the children run ahead, she pauses

to say good bye to

Winter all worn through,

weary and frayed about

her dingy, graying hem,

dissolving everywhere into silver pools

reflecting pewter sky.



White gulls on snow's white fringe,

those tufts on pencil-line stilts

encircle her sterling puddling,

Spring come with water to scrub earth clean,

And there in her threadbare places

Hope pokes through.

Father, use the places where I wear thin as places for Your glory to shine.

Honor

She calls me the other day, wondering if there is anything I need at the grocery store and I ask for 4 cans of blueberry pie filling, dishwasher detergent, (the gel kind not the powder), and hair conditioner for dry hair and... I stop mid-list. How audacious this is, a grown daughter asking all this of her mother. I might as well just ask her to give me the world while she is at it.

And then with startling clarity I realize that as a mother, she already has.

"Honor your father and your mother,
as the LORD your God has commanded you,
so that you may live long and that it may go well with you
in the land the LORD your God is giving you."

~Deu. 5:16

Lord, today how might I honor the woman who brought me into this world?

Related:
We's all jes Walkin'
Feathers for a Nest

Photo: My Mama with her Mama

Feathers for the Nest

(Thoughts He keeps bringing to mind daily, changing me...)

An excerpt from my column this month at Christian Women Online:

"...When will I learn that down sacrificed settles and soothes? For scraps won’t suffice. Snippets of time, leftover me, a trinket, a diversion, tossed.

Mother ducks don’t line nests with feathers, dirty and trampled, the molted and unnecessary. Why would I?

Nests need feathers fresh, warm with mother’s life...."

To read the complete article, Feathers for a Nest

(I hope you'll take a moment to pop over)

Art: The original Koester painting, "Moulting Ducks," is part of the collection at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle www.fryemuseum.org

A Mother's Empathy

The sky cries quietly on a March afternoon, sadness slipping down window panes.

I recollect her tears from last fall, when the leaves flew away sometime in the night.

Now she weeps as the snow ebbs too, a memory.

My fingertips brush the cool of the glass, comforting her,

having grieved a few of my own passing of seasons.

The Parenting Pursuit

We reject Him, sin against Him, betray Him. But He pursues relentlessly. In the face of heartache.

Our behavior drives Him deeper into relationship. He knows full well that the relationship problem is not a result of His failure to love, but the stoniness of His children’s hearts. It is not an issue of how much Father loves His children, but how much, if at all, His children love their Father. Undaunted, He gives His immediate love attention to the rash of our sin.

In hopes that His love will stir our hearts.

Read more... at this month's CWO column

The Importance of Touch

I don’t remember when I stopped touching him.

Lanky legs, stretching back were signs for me…signs to distance and retreat. Signs of Caleb emerging as a man. And, who was I to touch the skin that clothes a future man?

Perhaps it was mere self-protection, withdrawing before he, inevitably, rejected his coddling mother? Or maybe it was where I came from: cuddling babies was appropriate; embracing boys was not.

Yet on some other level, a deeper one never visited, I must have felt the absence of 12-year-old Caleb’s heart pushed up against mine, this son’s arms wrapped tightly around my neck. For I purposefully filled the emptiness with pink newborns held close, with the cheeky jowls of the irresistible toddler, with tickling and bear hugs and snuggles with preschoolers. But my stretching son? True, he and I rarely longer touched, and that whatever he grew in height, he, tragically, lost in touch. But wasn’t this the normal passage of mothering? Birthing, holding, stroking, touching, nursing…and beginning the long goodbye…letting boys become men. Little did I know that the retreat of my touch left our growing boy adrift, alone in his own skin. That the more he became a man, the more he needed my affirming touch.

Touching the skin of these who live and learn beside us has far-reaching, profound ramifications. Mothers and science know that massaging babe for 15 minutes reduces babe’s irritability, improves her learning and accelerates her development.

The significance of touch continues as babe grows into preschooler: massaged preschoolers showed better performance on tests for design, animal pegs and mazes compared with non-massaged peers. And touch into the upper schooling years? Studies have clearly indicated that massage and deep pressure touch aids children with attention difficulties to not only increase on-task behavior, but also results in greater relaxation, and less acting out. For after touching time, such as a massage, the hypothalamic area of the brain experiences a reduction of action, decreasing the body’s level of stress hormones, and increasing the level of endorphins, which leaves our child with a greater sense of well-being.

Dr. Virginia Satir of Wisconsin goes as far to suggest that human beings need four hugs a day to survive, eight hugs for maintenance and twelve hugs for growth.

Modern science can only concur with Biblical truth and Daniel’s experience with a touch from God: “Then the one who looked like a man touched me again, and I felt my strength returning” (Dan 10:18 NLT).

A simple touch on Joshua’s shoulder while reciting Latin paradigms, an arm pressed close around Hope during read alouds, a massage on Cale’s tense shoulder while bent over math questions, these were simple things. But a simple touch that could revive, like strength returning.

Tucking tired ones into bed after the Homeschooling Achievement Program, I stepped into Caleb’s dim room to say goodnight and again offer my congratulations on a fine recitation of Casey at the Bat.

He propped himself up on the pillow.

“You know how Kevin Smith played that piece on the guitar? And then how, afterwards, Kevin sat with his Mom and she just held him for a bit?”

I recalled the moment, and how awkward I felt. “Yeah…”

After a long, expectant moment, Caleb spoke his heart into the dark. “I wish you had held me like that.”

What was knowledge and learning and classics and Latin without love…without the unique, direct expression of love that only touch can articulate? Unintentionally, I was living Leviticus with it’s “do not touch” laws, and not embracing the vibrancy of Christ’s life-giving, healing, resurrecting touch --- a touch to bridge across the gaping chasm of being alone inside one’s skin.

I reached out and pulled Caleb close. It had been too long since I had felt the skin close of my once-baby, future-man. His warmth against mine, Caleb wasn’t alone anymore. And neither was I.

~~

A related post on touch :

Also, I would like to spend 15 minutes per day with everyone nurturing someone else. Make a row of children and Mommy, rubbing the back of the sister or brother in front. The 10-year-old rubs the 6-year-old who rubs the baby. Mommy rubs the 8-year-old who rubs the 3-year-old. My theory is that the time spent loving will reduce the time spent fighting, because you don’t want to hurt someone who is meeting your affection needs.

She quotes another study:

... research at the University of North Carolina showing that a simple hug can lower blood pressure and reduce stress. The research team is touting it as yet another health benefit of marriage.There is not only reassurance in such moments of touch, but the release of oxytocin, a human hormone associated with maternal love. This is why a simple hug can bring comfort, calm, and for a brief moment, be a shield against the world.

Lord, give me courage today to touch. Who? And remind me: often.

Photo: Shalom touching Kai
A repost from the archives

Worship Wear

A new hat for Easter, my grandmother used to say. A new spray of flowers on a hat and pristine gloves to match the crisp shine of a new dress. But if the sale of brown eggs didn’t allow for a new dress, then, at the very least, one must scrounge up for a new pillbox to don come Resurrection Sunday. It’s proper, she’d say. Symbolic of new life in the Risen Christ.

Her purse, a tapestry of roses and dark vines, lies on the upper shelf of my closet. Now and then, I take it down, unlatch the clasp of roses and run my hand along the silk lining. A regal Easter purse it once must have been, carried by gloved hands that had milked cows morning and night all week, baked daily loaves of bread, hoed the garden, mended torn pants and hearts while feeding, cleaning and mothering four children. But when those church bells rang across the valley, Grandma would be sitting in all her finery there in a wooden pew of Reverend van Bedeger’s steepled church, the one that crowned the highest hill of the village of Centerton. I can see her laying this purse on her lap, folding her gloved hands together, and listening to that Sunday sermon coming down.

I saw her purse again this morning, as I slid a church dress for our two-year-old off a closet hanger. The roses of the dress seemed plucked from the same bouquet of Grandma’s purse, shades of wine and pink. I slipped the dress over Little Girl’s tiara of blonde…but the hem fell too long, cuffs dangling too.

Little girl wrinkled her button nose and wailed, “It don’t fit me! I don’t have nothing pretty to wear!”

I reassured her contorted face with a kiss. How many times had Grandma washed up after milking house chores, her hair still wet in curlers, and too rifled through her closet for something to wear to Sunday service? Something pretty. Something right.

Returning dress to closet, I wonder: What do we wear on our way to worship the King? And not just only Sunday morning, but everyday. For do we not worship him every waking moment of our lives? What is proper attire for a worshipping Christian?

Tucking Little Girl’s arms into better fitting dress, I zip her up and a story unzips somewhere in my memory and tumbles out.

Its London, England centuries ago, with muddy, unpaved streets . A young man, Walter Raleigh, a scarlet cloak draped over his shoulders, carefully picks his way along a mucky street. His face is down, eyes focused on the strategic placement of polished boots. Until he reaches an impasse: a sludge of murky waters engulfing the entire street. Striding over it an impossibility, Raleigh considers wild flinging himself. A flash of color reflects on the water. He looks across to the other side of the puddle. And into the face of the Queen of England, her train of gentlewomen and waiting maids stringing behind. Raleigh forgets himself. For it’s not about him. He tosses his scarlet coat across the puddle. And Elizabeth, Queen of England, crosses the puddle on a carpet of red.

I straighten collar of Little Girl’s red dress. And think: We are the red carpet.

Instead of laying down palm branches in worship, or parading in finery for the coming King, it is ourselves that we must spread before the King of the Universe’s feet.

We who wear Christ lay down ourselves so that our Lord may walk into hurt, broken places. We roll ourselves out over the puddles, the muck, the slop, the dirt and the wet of the world, so the King of Kings may enter into these places. Like coats, we throw our days, our time, the essence of who we are, under His feet, living sacrifices stretched out.

We who are clothed in the beauty of Christ wear mud. We wear lives laid down.

Slipping into shoes, I see Grandma again, perfectly attired for Sunday worship service, and it wasn’t her gloves or the purse of roses. But her mud-splattered, servant heart.

For doesn’t she who puts Christ on, then lay herself down before His feet?

All roses begin in the dirt.

Lord, today show me where I can spread myself across muddy places in service to You... so that You may enter into that place... Clothe me in You... and lay me down.

Photos: Grandma's purse of roses

When Lost...

and in the midst of the fray, and all seems a little off kilter (or is that me?), O heart, remember to whisper the prayer of St. Augustine's:

"I know that where I was and am and should be is

in the shadow of His wings."

Lord, remind me that I always know where I am to be. Home in You.

One-Piece Mothering....

Father, I keep tearing my life into bits, edges fraying, staining scraps with blackberries. But hear my prayer for a One-Piece Life--no seams, no fragments of secular and holy, You encompassing all.

Thank You, for these thoughts of Anne Kroeker's with Andrea at the Flourishing Mother . Grant Grace, Father, to be a One-Piece Mother.

More thoughts on Listening to God later today...

Peace Rock

It is an entirely unremarkable moment, one I repeat every day at noon, all throughout the fall and winter. I am cutting squash, chopping, scooping, dicing. But today, as I scoop out the tangly pulp, seeds scattering and falling on the countertop, I scoop deep into me and feel the wrapped tendrils of who I am.

I am startled. Scraping out that pulp, I face my own insides. I am taken aback at what twists and knots within me. I test again. Yes. Raw, messy fear. Can it be that is, right now, what snarls and writhes around my soul, strangling me? Yes, that is what I feel in this moment of time. I can feel it, as real as those squash strings between my fingers.

Funny. I never have named this feeling before. Not this name. Perhaps “wound.” Or “stressed.” But today, fleshy pulp in the palm of my hand, I can simply say it. I am afraid.

Am I enough? Loving enough, gentle enough, giving enough? Can I do, BE, enough today? Will I be able to stay ahead of the mushrooming laundry, the army of hungry stomachs, the endless waterfall of questions, the tsunami of needs today that will overwhelm? Do I have enough inner resources today to ride the pounding surf? I don’t want to fail.

I know this feeling. It’s the same squeezing panic that wrung me when I’d swim too far from shore and my feet couldn’t find a slippery, algae covered rock to cling to. In the murky depths, currents relentlessly tugging and dragging, I’d flail and feel about, looking for a toehold.

Like every mother, I am in way over my head. The depths plunge deep and dark, and I am a helpless cork bobbing about the smashing waves, breathlessly trying not to panic. It is like my soul cannot touch bottom.

I lay down my knife and quarter of squash. I am stunned by the naming of this tangle of feelings inside of me. I think that I multi-task. I juggle. I orchestrate, co-ordinate, manage, one eye on the clock, one eye thinking of what comes next: change over the laundry, check on Hope and grammar lesson, switch Shalom from puzzles to legos, call the butcher shop to place an order, set the table with bowls for the steaming lentil soup, mark Levi’s math exercises. But I have named the beast that lurks just below the waters, with gleaming eyes waiting to spring: fear.

Five-year-old Malakai, still learning to decipher the puzzle of phonics, wanders through the kitchen, his church kid’s club booklet in hand, pretending to read his Bible verse for the week. He lilts the words from memory, eyes fixed to the page as he walks: “Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace, be still!” (Mark 4:39.)

And directly, something within me stills. I cease to flail. I almost want to laugh at the surprising aptness of it all. (But, really, is it surprising?)

He rebukes my winds. His word, alive, relevant, sovereign, from the lips of an illiterate child, calms my waters. “Peace, be still.”

And underneath, my foot feels an anchor, a verse from my Bible reading in the dark still of coming day, a verse that I nearly skimmed over, but now revisits me, knowing it is a lifeline meant for this very moment:

“No, there is no other Rock. I know not one” (Isa. 44:8).

I pick up a spoon to finish scooping squash pulp. The tangled part of me unknots. Floats. My insides have loosened. For I have found it. When fears, even nameless, cloaked ones, sinisterly drag, there is a Rock who cries through the waters, “Here… I am your home in these seas. Place your foot here, your heart here. Stand on me. And live.” These fears diminish, cut down to size.

How to hold to the Rock in the midst of everyday storms? “Prayer is the most concrete way to make our home in God,” writes Henri Nouwen. When I pray, I intimately know the crevices of the Rock, the texture of its surface, the immensity of its steadfast character.



I lay the squash halves in to the enamel dishes, and slip them into the oven. Turning to the sink to wash the last remnants of squash strings from my hands, I hear the sea as the water runs over my fingers.

My fears are washed away with a prayer of three simple words, a lullaby on the waves.

Peace, be still.

Lord, today, always, be my Peace Rock. No matter how deep and writhing the waters.

Photos: squash from the garden to the plate, and the Peace Dove that soars in the corner kitchen light, a gift from a kind friend....

Run the River

He is five, a hooded smudge of color trudging through the deep, vast white. I watch from the window, watch the golden lab spring behind him, ahead of him, beside. Malakai turns sharp to the north, tromping out into the field’s markerless sea of white. His hood turns to see: is Boaz following? Then a sharp turn to the west, and a glance to see if canine is tracking. Together the two zigzag across winter and I am happily mesmerized, warm inside, watching my boy with his dog out in the quiet wonder of it all.

Life flushes his nose, cheeks, with flaming warmth when he slips back inside, to rub his hands by the fire. Words, fragments of stories, tumble out of him, and I nod, trying to etch him in my mind like this (do all mothers do this? Memorize moments?) For some reason, I don’t trust ink and paper, computerized sensors of cameras. I carve it down in synapses and neurons— in heart fibers-- - before he, who he is now, is gone, mellow voice turned deep, untried hands grown long and deeply lined, trenched with days.

I wrap up this flashing instant in knitted afghan, he and his little sister with her cloud of blonde, and pull them close to read Richard Scary before the flickering hearth. On illustrated page, Huckle the Cat, is dreaming of what he will be when he grows up: a pilot? A farmer? An apple-pie tester? Malakai thumps my arm, words surging, “Mom, Mom, I’d like to be an apple-pie tester when I grow up. But I can’t, because I am going to be a farmer. But I am not going to be a farmer, because know what? I am not going to get any bigger ‘cause I just want to be your little kid, and you can be the big Mama. Shalom, will you stay the baby for Mama?”

The sweet pain of love wells, a smile breaking through its aching blur. How did he know how time stings a mother’s heart? How I keep reaching through its relentless current to pluck out a moment, to hold, to own, now, bringing it close to lips, to breathe life into it, to keep the now forever alive, refusing to let it become but a memory, stiff and lifeless. But all is wet, slippery, elusive….gone and carried on. Malakai and Shalom slide off the couch and chatter away into imaginary places. I catch nothing. Ever. Foaming, roaring, racing, the torrent sweeps all away, and I am left with river stones, memorials worn smooth by all that once rushed by.

Come night, embryonic man growing in little boy’s body lays head on pillow, pulling quilts tight under chin. I press lips and heart to his forehead, and Malakai whispers, “Remember, I am not going to get much bigger? Just a bit, but I am staying little, so I can be your boy. And you can be my big Mama.” He snuggles into night and dreams.

I sit in the dark, watching him breathe, and how a whorl wisps at his temple, a tendril of his initial halo of curls. Out his window, the moon bulges like a luminous woman, full with child. I wonder if I can forever stay Big Mama, netting, capturing time.

In the gray blue of next dawn, we rouse boys for barn chores, turning on lights, gently calling names. Like disoriented moths drawn to light, they stumble into the kitchen, eyes squinting, hands stuffed in jean pockets. I tousle a sleepyhead, teasing, “I think you grew an inch in the night, Levi. And your brother caught it too---look how long and lean he is.” Darryl playfully pokes Caleb, Joshua, handing them their coats for the run to the barn.

And I grab a river stone.

“Remember, Darryl? When we’d wake up those babies and prop them beside the heat register, bundle them up in snowsuits, pulling their boots and hats on? Then make that dash through the drifts and cold to the barn, to begin. And you'd set those two little boys in a feed cart, to play, while we chored?” Their figures stretch in the doorway. “Just look at them now.”

Caleb extends to Darryl’s shoulder, Joshua up to his chest. That baby and toddler are molting, emerging, growing into near men. Darryl shakes his head, chuckling dismay. I feel his worn workhand rest on my shoulder, steadying me in the rushing current.

I ease down into the water. And let go. Malakai can grow up. Big Mama can become Old Mama. God who is the spring of the river of life, He has plans, places, purposes that time’s current will carry these young persons to --- off to destinations, to new skin, to kingdom dreams. The water cycle streams: from Him, through Him and to Him are all things. If I dammed up the river, froze time solid, wouldn’t these becoming people become mortuary specimens, icy, petrified, set?

Malakai wanders sleepily from the dark hallway into the kitchen light. I embrace his slender frame, feeling ribs, warm skin, little chest pressed close. Am I dreaming or does he smell aquatic, like a newborn wrinkled from the waters?

And I whisper...

Run with the river, son. She’s flowing us Home.

Father? I let go. Flow us Home.

Poetic Parenting...

Notes to self as I parent today:

Connect…then direct.

Instruction can only thrive in the soil of authentic relationship. Before offering instruction, consider how to touch the child gently. Think on how to frame all instructions in the context of a loving, affirming relationship.

If instruction bears tensions then check out the soil: perhaps the relationship needs fertilizing. If the relationship has been well cultivated and nourished, and instruction still yields resistance, perhaps offering more opportunities to practice receiving and implementing instruction may nourish the young shoot towards a joyful attitude.

Questions to self: Am I making eye contact? Am I touching? Have I nourished this relationship? Am I connecting before directing?

Love, what did I say?……
And will you obey?

Asking the child what was said allows the child to offer feedback to ensure they did indeed hear the instructions.
Then, does the child intend to do what was asked?

By what is inspected,
They’ll know what is expected

Our children need to hear it as much as the faithful servant needed to hear it: “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

Questions to Self: Am I bringing closure to an instruction by joining with a child to inspect the task? Am I being faithful to finishing that which I began: I gave the instruction, did I inspect?

And thus a few lines for self to recite, poetic parenting:

1. Connect… then direct

2. Love, what did I say?
And will you obey?

3. By what is inspected
They’ll know what is expected.

Lord, my mothering needs You. It is that simple. Please come.

The Works of Righteousness...

The work of righteousness will be peace,

And the effect of righteousness,

quietness and assurance forever.

~Isaiah 32:17

Father, chisel me righteous, carve out peace.

Peace is a Person

Peace isn’t a place we live in.

The house—and me—spins: laundry, school lessons, library books, basketball games, bills, phone calls, meals, dishes, women’s Bible Studies, diapers. Too often, I am dizzy: Anyone know how to get off? In the whirl of it all, I crave retreat, sanctuary, monastery.

On the milestone of my thirtieth birthday a few years ago, my sister-in-law presented me with a journal embossed with one simple word: PEACE. I cried. It was all I wanted. Just that one simple, frustratingly elusive word: PEACE. The homeschooling mother of (then) five young children, eight years of age and under, I was desperate, at a breaking point, for some place of serenity. I held the journal in my hands, lip trembling, tears streaming. PEACE. How could I find it? I had to find it.

I went for walks down through the woods, sat by the pond, journalled, prayed. Peace was short-lived, the angst tightening its relentless grip as I walked home: How could I fold art study into our school days? How could I make weekly, even monthly, date times with each of the children? How might I persuade the baby to sleep through the night so I could be a more attentive wife?

I went a way to a cottage for a few days, read Gift from the Sea and soaked in the Psalms. Peace pooled around my toes, wetting me, quenching me…and then ebbed away again, lost at sea, as waves of worries flooded in: How could I balance my own creative, intellectual pursuits, my own spiritual growth, in the midst of the paramount endeavor of discipling these little people for the Lord’s glory?

I had thought somewhere quiet would ensure peace. It didn’t. I was still in my skin. Peace wasn’t a place I could find on a map, or even a place that I could create. Peace wasn’t a place to live in.

I came home to the noise, embraced the kids, and laughed loud and long. Peace wasn’t “out there.” He was here. Peace was a Person I could listen to.

No matter how boisterous and chaotic it gets in here, the Prince of Peace has moved in too, living here in the midst of this rambunctious, exuberant family.

In the rush and the roar of it all, I have to bend my ear to catch it:

“Listen carefully to what God the Lord is saying, for he speaks peace to His faithful people” (Ps. 85:8).

He leans down low and if I choose to listen carefully, over the cry of the baby, the scream of the toddler, the stomp of the disgruntled student, and the beep of the stove timer, I hear His voice, low and soft: Peace… Peace…Peace.

I crawl out of bed, ready to get dressed and head out, not to some rustic respite in the mountains somewhere, but into the fray of family living. For “the Lord of Peace Himself gives [me] His peace at all times, and in every situation” (2 Thess. 3:16).

How to find Peace in the crush of motherhood? Peace may come fleetingly as a reviving, necessary place, but, like a fog burning off in the heat of the day, peace as a place will dissipate. For enduring Peace, look for a Person whispering the word softly to your anxious heart: Peace, peace, peace. Seek a Person, the very Lord of Peace, who is willing to give you his very own abiding, unwavering peace.

Places come and go; tokens and pictures tucked in scrapbooks. Tickets and reservations are expensive, the cost of coffee adds up.

This Person, though? He will never leave you nor forsake you, and is close as breath upon your cheek. Peace is a Person with whom we live, keep company with, commune with.

Hear Him now, above the din? Peace. Peace.

Lord, I find Peace, wherever, whatever, when I live in You. Please, Lord. Today, let Your peace fall softly, come what may.

Originally posted in April but a truth I need to regularly revisit....

Heart Habits

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness,

a tender look which becomes a habit.”

~Peter Ustinov

Father? Would my family say that a tender look is a habit of mine? Make me like You, Lord: endlessly forgiving, always embracing with eyes of love. I pray, Lord, for habits after Your heart.

Smile...

A note that made its way to the inbox this week:

"I am trying during these busy, busy days to be conscious of what my face looks like. Do I remember to smile? My kids don’t see me smile often enough. So I’m trying to smile around them, near them, at them. Truly, I have much to smile about.

My face tells my children so much."

Sarah Sumner:

"[My Mother's] love and protection shone so brightly on me that I could see God's goodness through her.

I can truthfully say that every time I looked at her, she gave me another loving smile.

Year after year the warmth in her eyes would greet me anew in almost every passing glance that I had the privilege to receive. She was always so glad to see me, even though she saw me every day.

I have countless childhood memories of looking up to find assurance from my mother's loving gaze manufactured just for me over and over again."

(HT: Tonia)

"When they were discouraged, I smiled at them.
My look of approval was precious to them."

Job 29:24

Lord, I slow. I smile. Be my face, Father. "May the Lord smile upon you, and be gracious to you."