start here {the beginning you need before you get to anything else}

Tags

listening, postaweek2013, spending time with God, start the day

There’s really only one place to start, only one space for the dying of seed, the breaking of ground.

I stand in her doorway–just for a breath, my hand on the door frame, watching light cast aside shadows.  She rests, still cocooned, all possibility swathed in quilted blossoms.  I whisper thanks and ask for protection, for the sculpting of her heart, for eyes that see, ears that hear.

She has an alarm, but I think the rest of us turn it off more than she does, lightly pushing the button to stop the incessant reminding: time comes, time comes, time comes.

I sing to ease her from sleep, cracking the blinds, clicking on a lamp that casts butterflies on the wall.  I watch her twist, the curve of her cheek appearing as the comforter slides away.  I collect the things she needs, the stack of books she always wants first—her journal, her Bible, her favorite devotional book, a pen.  These I put down on her bedside table before I drop kisses on her forehead, her cheeks.

Already, she has learned where to begin, how to open her eyes to the day.

An arm shoots out from beneath the covers, a wild vine that wraps around the back of my neck and pulls me close.  ”Good morning,” I say finally, and she murmurs only part of a word in response, sometimes morning, sometimes love, sometimes Mom.  I smile and squeeze her, dropping another kiss on her cheek, and then I leave her to listen.  Together, we have decided that if the day isn’t born from our listening, we may never hear.

So, I leave her to her moments alone with God, and I walk down the hall to Adam’s room, knowing that he has been awake and listening, waiting for my approach.  My good morning song is the only song he’ll let me sing to him, and I think maybe it’s that the day is new and hasn’t yet become too much.  Adam smiles sheepishly as I walk in the room, his face the only part of him yet visible.  Prayers lift my voice, my hands, the corners of my mouth.  I ask that he too will be a well-watered tree.

Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
² but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers (Psalm 1:1-3).

Parts of the day, we feel choked by weeds, and it’s good at the beginning to remember the promise of fruit and the music of leaves.  He must be the soil, the water, the power behind our growing.

His hands must be the place we root our living.

By the time Zoe emerges from the stillness of her room, the leaf green walls, the blanket of cozy flowers, I move around the kitchen, ferrying plates to the table.  Steam curls over our coffee mugs.

“Good morning,” she says brightly, the day now a bloom, her view freshly shaped.

“So, what did God say to you this morning?”

Before I turn back toward the table, I catch her smile, the light in her eyes, the way she lifts her shoulders as though remembering an embrace. “Well, He said that He is preparing a home for me.”

I sit another plate on the table, stopping still, arrested by this thing I needed, this thing she’s spoken.  I see it just then, the way God has rooted the day strong, planting us well in the same space, beneath the same sun.

She does not yet know that I began the day with Him pressing fingers into the clay of me, carving the words such a time as this (Esther 4:14).  I told Him, weary, that I’m not sure how, that I feel like such a pilgrim and ill-equipped.  I told Him what it looks like to me—like perishing in a foreign land—and He said lean not on your own understanding, and seek my wisdom because she is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed (Proverbs 3). He reminded me, in the waking hours, that I am here right now in this place at this time because He wanted to include me in what He’s doing, but that He will do it even if I’m too afraid.  And at the beginning of the day, I whispered Esther’s words right back to Him: If I perish, I perish (Esther 4: 16).

So now this, this is something more, something to root us both, for a day feeling the soreness of pilgrim feet.  He prepares home.

She hardly knows how well this fits, how the words shelter me, preparing home, the chief purpose to which I am now called.  It’s something I understand, and I tell her this, arranging napkins at each place at the table.  We love starting out like this, talking of things whispered in quiet spaces.

I tell my daughter about what it means to me to prepare a home: I anticipate my family’s needs and prepare in advance.  I stock the pantry, plan menus, wash and clean and set things straight.  I make things so they can learn, pay bills so they’ll have light and water.  I consider the guidance my children will need to finish the work of the day, to grow.  I plant love all over the path, to make them smile and laugh and dance.  I ready my arms for holding them.  But most of all, when the day is done, I want our home to be the place they come to rest.  I want the space right next to me to be the space to which they long to return.

“So, when God tells you He’s prepared a home for you, this is what He means.  He loves to think about what you need and prepare for it in advance.  He plans for your nourishment, straightens the path before you, and thinks about how to bring you joy.  He makes things so that you can learn.  He offers you light, living water, and the only food that will ever satisfy your hunger.  He knows what you’ll need to finish the work of the day, what you’ll need to grow.  He plants love everywhere you’ll set your feet.  He opens His arms for holding you.  But most of all, He wants this place where He dwells to be the place you come to rest, where you most want to be, the space to which you long to return.”

“Heaven,” she says softly, blue eyes lit deep.

“Yes, but right here, right now too. He’s prepared in advance so we can start and end right here,” I say it, planting my finger in the middle of my hand over and over, like a nail, “sitting right in the palm of His hand. And He holds us so tightly there that the shape of us leaves marks. There’s no where we will go today–no matter how mixed up or foreign it feels–that He doesn’t go with us, that He hasn’t been before us, that He won’t guard us from behind.  We get to start here, Zoe.”

“Well,” she says simply, as though the knowing comes with breathing, “it really is the only place to start.”

these hands

Tags

love, mother's day, motherhood, postaweek2013, sacrifice, the giving tree

Motherhood is an emptying.

And the pouring out, with all it’s awkward splats and splashes, really starts the day God drops the seed of a child, planting a soul in our most cavernous places, claiming the soil of us for His own harvest.  The latching on of new life breaks walls, bruises tissue, draws blood.  And this is fact:  whatever raw materials a mother’s diet fails to supply, the fetus literally leaches from her bones.  Mothers are Giving Trees, right from the first day we wear the title, well before we ever know what it will mean to touch our children with our hands.

The choice to give life is the choice to give life over, to keep nothing safe and nothing for ourselves.

The giving empties, but if the soil of us is tender enough for the lesson, the sacrifice makes us happy, even as it scoops us clean.  Motherhood teaches us love in another shade, a clinging, desperate tone.

The day hardly begins and my heart breaks.  Riley sits next to me, staring at her knees, her eyes blurry pools.  I look down and find my mother’s hands in my lap. For a moment, I stare, flexing the fingers, fingers sore from gripping life, hardly recognizing them as my own.  Veins tangle over these hands, ropy roots rising under my mother’s olive skin.  At three, Zoe traced my mom’s veins with her little fingers, her baby brow a crinkle, her voice light.  ”Grandma, you gots trees in your hands.”  I lift Mom’s hands and wipe the tears that slide down Riley’s cheeks.

She tries so hard to be strong.

Four-thirty in the morning, I had stood beside my bed feeling like a husk, reading the texts my dad had sent in the night.  Somehow, the dead tired darkness had stripped Kevin and me of hearing too.  We’d missed the rings, the alarms, the emergency.  By the time I woke up, Mom lay in a hospital bed, weak but recovering from an appendectomy.  They had taken the nasty thing quickly, before it ruptured.  I had called, sitting in the darkness talking to my parents, gathering what was left of their strength.  Mom’s voice sounded high and fading, as though it might float a way.  It’s something else she passed to me, the way our words drain, emptied out right along with our strength.

I turn Riley’s face toward me, and with Mom’s voice, I tell her that everything will be okay.  We will see them soon, when Grandma’s feeling better.  Riley’s tears fall over the word hospital, over the way it sits heavy.  ”Do you want to talk to her?  You can call her,” I say, pressing my phone into her hands, knowing she’ll not be able to move, to get dressed, to eat, until she hears for herself.  She nods, staring back at her knees, then picks up the phone and dials.

I watch her talking to Mom, her voice tender, smearing the last of her tears against her own cheek with her thumb.  Sometimes she nods, forgetting that Mom can’t see her.  Or maybe she just knows Mom will hear anyway.  Mom gave Riley words when she had none, knowing her deep.  3 am every night that Mom and Dad were with us, Mom lifted her own weary body from the bed in the stillness of night, hearing the little feet on the stairs.  With those arms, ropy with roots, my mother wrapped Riley’s frustrated, unyielding body in a blanket, lifting that wordless, blonde baby up to her chest.  They sat on the porch for hours in the darkness, rocking, and Mom spoke with Riley and for her, of birds and wind, whispering in Riley’s ear, walking fingers up her baby arms.  Riley learned to laugh because my mother was not afraid to laugh for both of them.

Riley pushes the button on the phone, turning on the speaker, just as my mom says, “We need each other, you and me.”  Riley and I smile at each other in the dim, new daylight, appreciating the solid truth of it.  In the silent darkness, years past, God gave life the way He always does, taking from Mom’s words and her laughter and her fierce strength, weaving parts of my mother into her granddaughter, building a little girl.  Together, my mother and my daughter determined to press on.

And I smile, watching Riley’s eyes glitter, her head tilted toward the phone, thinking that my mother has never held back a part of herself.   My mother is a Giving Tree.  I am made of her too—my mother’s hands, her blood flowing through the tangled roots and limbs, her voice.  It’s the way God gives life, the way He builds children, taking our limbs, our trunk, our roots, the minerals in our bones.  The more of ourselves we yield, the more He uses, twisting and molding and shaping someone new, someone strong, someone planted beautiful.  Life is built on life surrendered.

Motherhood is an emptying, and love the fruit of the yielding, and the sacrifice is worthy of notice, of its own honor.

“Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her,” the wise poet wrote (Proverbs 31: 28).  So, when I stand up on Mother’s Day, when I reach for my mother, wrapping her in the arms she gave me; I promise I won’t begrudge you tears for the mother you miss or the mother you never had or the mother you wanted to be.  I know the day can ache, like every other.  But please, don’t think me insensitive for celebrating.  I don’t think I knew how much my mother had given until I became a mother myself, and now I know.  It’s proven by my bones, that motherhood is an emptying.  She held nothing sacred to herself, but demonstrates still, by her life, what God has done for me.

And God asks one thing of us in the sight of sacrifice– that we remember, that we give thanks, that we celebrate the life given that we might have life.

a prayer for spreading full blown joy

Tags

autism, dandelions, gratitude, humor, joy, laughter, postaweek2013

I love so many hurting people. And the impulse I have, because it’s God obliterating me, is to bring them joy. I want to grab the heavy shadows shrouding them and rip them apart with my hands. I want to free them from the grip of the things that steal their laughter. I want to punish the greedy thief. That’s what I live to do, but mostly, I feel like I bungle it.

I am a dreadfully awkward warrior.

In the afternoons, the wild wind dances through our open windows, lifting our hair.  Riley and I sit waiting while Adam walks toward the van after school.  The sun glows, warm on our legs, and I am full thankful, counting gifts:

Hair flying, sunglasses, warm skin, bird song, fluttering wings in the grass, dandelions.

Dandelions. This last bit of grace unwrapped makes me laugh out loud, remembering what Kevin said, smiling, when, in the half-light of morning, dandelions made Riley’s gifts list too.  ”I object,” he’d said, eyes twinkling, pointing to the word dandelion.  ”Those are weeds.  I don’t think we should be thankful for weeds.”

“Hey,” Riley said, and that was all, and the smile I wore over Kevin’s poking at her broke into laughter.  I can’t hear Hey tossed out as a statement like that without thinking of us all pressed into each other on the couch, watching Duck Dynasty.  Our kids beg to watch with us just to see Kevin and me dissolve into laughter, just to reach out and touch us, collecting the sticky sweet abandon on the tips of their fingers.  They catch the humor in their throats until contagious laughter binds all five of us together in a heap, full blown giddy with joy.  And they don’t even really understand the jokes.

I love the way our shared laughter builds, the way it echoes still in the middle of the day, in the car under the glowing sun, hours later.  Another gift, another treasure plucked up, washed in on oceans of grace.

Dandelions are weeds.  Or they’re wishing wands.  

In all our living, it’s all a matter of what we choose to see and whether we see with God’s eyes or our own.  The truth is that I’m blind, and these might as well be empty holes in my face.  Every where I look I see nothing but weeds until He touches me.  These gifts I list, they’re what I see through His eyes.  They are wishes for my joy, blown by His own breath.

Riley hears me laughing and turns, smile blooming, radiant.

Daughter next to me.  Another gift.  And laughter (yes…laughter, this gift God grants to remind me of freedom), and that smile.

It’s just a whisper, but I breathe it deep, the hopeful promise of Job’s friend.  He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy (Job 8:21).  Oh, He does.  He does.

Riley’s is the prettiest smile I’ve seen, light and free, like the laughter that follows it when I lift my hand and touch her cheek.  I absently rub her shoulder with my fingers, and this is what Adam notices, climbing in the van, popping his head between the seats.  He drinks in her laughter, thirsty.

I watch my dear friend walk down the sidewalk on her way to my open window.  Her curly hair looks wind-tossed too, fiery in places where the sunlight crowns her head.   I am still counting gifts:

Real, abiding, free-to-be-me friendship.  Light like fire.

We do little more than exchange greetings, compare notes on the day, before I feel Adam tugging at my hand.  He reaches from behind me, lifting my fingers, placing my palm on Riley’s shoulder.  He leans over, watching her face.  Riley looks serious, studying the landscape of school children walking, climbing into cars, waiting.  She’s cataloging.  I know this.  I give her a gentle squeeze and turn back to my friend, letting my hand fall. Riley’s memory. Another gift.

Before I can speak, Adam leans in on me, turning my face with his hand.  ”May I have laugh, please,” he says, looking from me to Riley and back to me.

Adam lifts my arm, holding it in his hands like a tool.  He moves my fingers back and forth in the crook of Riley’s neck, leaning over to study her expression.  He grins, bright, showing her.  ”Ha ha ha ha,” he says, the syllables deep and punctuated.  Then he dissolves into genuine giggling, trying to get his sister to catch his eyes.

“Tell her,” I say to him, smiling.  ”Tell her, ‘I like it when you laugh.’”

“Like it…you laugh,” he says hopefully, looking to Riley.

I make him look at me, insist that he say all the words.  ”I like it when you laugh.”

He looks at Riley the way he always does these days, eyes full of stars.  ”Riley, I like it when you laugh.”  The words come a little mechanically, but they’re all there.

She grins, that same beautiful smile, the one that travels all the way to her eyes.  ”I know you do, Adam,” she says.

Adam drops my hand and rubs her shoulder himself, with his own hand, in just the way I’d done moments ago, energy making his circles smaller, more rapid.  Riley smiles, but the movements are too rough, too quick.

“May I have laugh please,” he says to me again, and I can see that he means to watch, to learn.

I reach over and lightly tickle Riley’s leg with my fingers, just barely touching her, and she giggles.  Adam’s hands flap, excitement pushing its way out, starting at the beaming smile on his face.

He reaches for her, moving his hands back and forth over her leg, but again, his movements are too aggressive.  He waits, eager, but she only smiles, appreciating his attention.

“May I have laugh please,” he says to me again, more urgently, glancing over at Riley, who has returned to studying people out the window.

I smile, touching his cheek with my fingers.  ”You need to be more gentle,” I say to him, and he turns back to Riley, trying again, moving his fingers more slowly, placing his hands with less pressure.  The expression on his face, as he looks back to me, says Like this? Riley allows a tiny laugh, looking back to Adam for just a moment.

“See?” I say to him, but I can tell he isn’t satisfied.  He wants deep, consuming laughter, abandon, freedom.  He wants full blown, unhindered joy.

“May I have laugh please?” He says again.  And I know then that yet another Adamism will seep into our speech, that soon we’ll all be requesting laughter like water.  Somehow we all prefer his simple, efficient, strong words to our own.

“Try again.  But more gentle, like this,” I say, reaching for Riley’s arm, walking my fingers up the underside. She guffaws, turning to me, squirming, the laughter breaking her gaze from the window.  Adam grins, sitting tall.  He looks like he might fly away, I think, watching his hands flap, if joy could carry him off. 

And then it hits me, the understanding that nothing makes him happier than her laughter, that he wants to bring her joy so much that he practices, asking me to teach, desperately studing how.

I remember when Riley first discovered that she could be the cause of a smile, that she could inspire joy and relief.  Her verbal skills were stronger, so she tried jokes.  For a while, she told the same joke every day.  But after a few days, the humor faded for everyone except her.  So, we downloaded an app that offered a new, clean joke every day, so that–mercifully—we might do away with the repeat offender.  I explained to her that variety was the key, that a worn out joke just wasn’t funny any more. Meticulously, she copied the jokes onto index cards every morning, testing them on Kevin and me for efficacy before tucking them into her book bag.  I remember being touched then by how hard she worked just to share joy, just to bring light hearted moments to other people.

Our children are wishing wands held in God’s hands, and their lives the seeds of joy, blown by the breath of the Spirit. God uses them to redefine words I thought I knew, words like important and worthwhile and sacrifice.  And He blows right through me, using my children to plant this deep:

Nothing should make me happier than bringing joy to someone else.  

Nothing is more worth my study, my time, my practice.

His planting makes me desperate, thirsty for the joy of the hurting.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stumbled through the trying, my movements too aggressive, my words worn and overused.  But God holds me in His hands and the Spirit blows, and my son teaches me what before I could not see, that the best way to be a joy-giver is to carefully watch it given by the One who knows how to do it best.  No one knows better how to cast light over darkened hearts, how to give gifts.  Without Him, we aren’t warriors at all.

So now I reach awkwardly for God’s arm, to use His fingers instead of my own.  And from my lips, as I look into His face, the strong efficient words of my son, a prayer for spreading full blown joy:

May I have laugh, please.

I don’t care what you think is impossible

Tags

autism, God's power, hope, impossible, postaweek2013, seeing, things are not as they appear

Thirteen years ago, God wrote it loud, carved it deep in the walls of our hearts:

It doesn’t matter what makes sense.

And because He knows I need things repeated, not quite two years later He traced over the words again, and the letters were block-shaped and quick.  He added this:

And it doesn’t matter how it all looks to you, because I don’t care what you think is impossible.

In the mad rush of afternoon, she sits at the bar, studying for a Social Studies test.  We are talking about da Vinci and polymaths, about the Renaissance.  Sometimes I wonder how much of this stuff will stay with her, and then she’ll read something weeks later and look up at me, repeating a word, and I’ll see recognition and delight flash across her features.  ”I know about that,” she’ll say, smiling like she does, all blooming beauty.

I move around the kitchen, posing questions as I slice through salmon, as I whisk together a few ingredients for a glaze, and in the background, I hear the rough crackle of velcro yanked apart.  In the living room, Adam sits his conversation notebook on the ottoman, leaning over it purposefully.  Sometimes his timing isn’t optimal.

“Hey Riley,” he says, standing next to her, holding a word in his hand, a talisman for jumping off.  ”Do you like to play golf on the Xbox?”

The question makes me smile for its specificity.  It doesn’t make sense that he should already be able to put together so many words at once without the help of his notebook.  Steadily, he shows me that my expectations sometimes fail him because I am so focused on what feels possible to me.

Riley pauses mid-sentence.  ”Yes, Adam.  I do like to play golf on the Xbox.  But Adam, I’m trying to concentrate.  But thank you for asking me.”  She turns back to me, collecting herself, searching her memory.  ”Umm, I think that’s scientific drawings—that tell us da Vinci tried to represent nature accurately.”

She says things like this, looking at me sensibly, and sometimes I feel the memories blowing through me.  God never stops showing me what He’s done, reminding me of what was before.  I remember her locked away in her own mind, not meeting our eyes, unable to speak and so frustrated.  I remember the early days of autism, the ones I thought would never end.  

“Who said, ‘The end justifies the means?’”  I ask her while snapping the ends off of the asparagus, as I arrange them on a baking sheet, still smiling over Adam’s inquiry and her polite response.  Again the velcro, from the living room, and Adam appears at her side.

“Hey Riley, do you like Saturday?” He says, standing on his tip toes, watching her face.  Lately the two of them have grown close, sealed together by a silent bond of understanding.  He can hardly wait for her response.  He can hardly wait.  And again I am Elisha’s servant, realizing how long I’ve been blind, gasping at the armies of God gathered on the hill (2 Kings 6).

She laughs a little, turning to him, reluctantly letting go of my question.  ”Yes, Adam.  I do like Saturday. But Adam.  I am trying to study for Social Studies, okay? But thank you for asking me, Adam.”  He shrieks, wild laughter escaping.

She looks at me, briefly lost.  I repeat the question.  ”Who said, ‘The end justifies the means?’”

“Umm, I think that’s, I think that’s,” she says, searching her mind.  And from the living room, the ripping sound of velcro, and Adam is next to her, another word sitting in his palm.  She puts her hand on her forehead.  ”I’m not so good at saying his name,” she says to me, quickly, before Adam can speak.

“Hey Riley, do you like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books?”  Already he giggles, delighted with his question.

She sighs, the hand still on her forehead.  ”Yes, Adam.  I like Diary of a Wimpy Kid books.  But Adam?  I’m trying to do my homework right now.  I really like your questions.  Thank you for asking me about it, but right now I’m trying to concentrate.”

He grins, reaching for her, touching her lips with his fingers.  He wants her to smile, to laugh with him.  He lives to make her laugh.  My children don’t seem to understand that humor is supposed to be lost on them.

“Are you getting frustrated, Riley?”  I ask her as Adam turns back to the living room to search for another word, another question.  She has taught him this, this way of relating, even the addressing by name.  When she’s feeling silly, she asks him dozens of ridiculous questions, all beginning with “Hey Adam.”  After supper sometimes, they laugh loud, all three.  Adam makes hats for Riley out of pieces of tin foil and napkins while she quizzes him.  ”Hey Adam, are you a hamburger?  Yes or no?”

She looks at me with tired eyes, her hand still on her forehead.  ”It’s just…he keeps coming over here and asking me questions and saying, ‘Hey Riley’ and ‘blah blah blah blah blah‘ over and over again.”  She glares at me, leaning across the bar on her arm.

I laugh out loud, recognizing something I’ve felt written on her face, lacing her words.  She’s so happy Adam finally talks to her that she never wants to tell him to stop or not now.  She, maybe more than all the rest of us, knows the value of his attempts, how hard they come.  But just this moment, it’s almost too much to juggle.  She still has to work hard to understand.  Continually, she untangles a knot of language and social subtlety, laying it out flat, arranging meaning like the pieces of a puzzle. And still, she doesn’t want to ask him not to talk to her.  It doesn’t make sense that she should be so sensitive to him, but most of the time she seems more attentive to Adam’s needs than her own.

I can’t help but laugh at the delicious, impossible irony of it. I never would have guessed I’d ever hear her say that he keeps asking her questions and blah blah blah blah blah.  None of us would ever expect a once wordless child to talk too much, nor anticipate that another once wordless child would one day reluctantly complain about it.

How many times can I say it, for the ones still staring down impossible, the ones still stuck at can’t and probably never?  

We must not give in when the how haunts, when it sits heavy on our shoulders like a specter.  There were years when I wondered if either of my autistic children would ever speak, when I ached just to hear them say my name. I’ve listened to maybe hundreds of opinions, to the recitation of data and the results of testing.  I’ve read written lists of their weaknesses, of the things they can’t or might never do.  I’ve left evaluations feeling overwhelmed by all the reason stacked against possibility.  The suggestion has been made more than once that Adam speaks only to meet his own needs, that he might never just find pleasure in relating.  And days still come when even I try to predict what will become of my children, how their lives will be.  We make decisions now that will impact their future, and it makes me tremble because I wish I knew and somehow I still think it’s up to me.

But over and over I’ve seen that what they become in God’s hands is so much more than I could have imagined. It defies all the lists, all the weaknesses, all the reason. Bees fly anyway, they say, and so for years I’ve worn a bee pin on my lapel, especially when I can’t see how it will ever be, to remind me that it doesn’t matter what makes sense to me.  It doesn’t matter what I can see, or what I read, or what people say.

God knows I need things repeated.  So He wrote it twice, carving it deep, tracing over the lines.  He shaped these beautiful reminders for me with His own hands, building them in my body, scooping up the clay of me:

I don’t care about your data, or your evidence, or your lists.

I don’t care what you can understand, what you think you know.

 Things are not as they appear.  

Know this:  all that matters is my glory, my power, my purposes.

I love you further than you can ever see.  And it.doesn’t.matter what makes sense.  

You just watch.  Watch me show myself mighty.

Wednesday night, and we head home from Bible study, walking through the gravel parking lot.  We thundered through homework with her hand on her forehead, through supper, through shoes on and in the van.  We worked on an essay together as I drove, turning the music just loud enough for Adam to hear and Zoe to dance, just quiet enough for Riley to think.  Not once did she complain, sitting taller than me in the seat beside, thirteen years my reminder of what God does, what He alone can do. And as we head home, I hear her, talking to him behind me.  ”Adam, wait.”  I turn to see, looking back to glimpse them, God’s glory in the glow of the street lights.

And she’s on her knees in front of him, not thinking of the gravel at all, tying his shoes tighter so he won’t trip.

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible (~Bee Movie).

 The Lord said to him, ‘Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute?⁽ Who gives them sight or makes them blind? ⁾Is it not I, the Lord? Now go;⁽ I will help you speak and will teach you what to say (Exodus 4:11,12.)’

⁾

keep running {what runners do to finish strong}

Tags

boston marathon 2013, postaweek2013, running, special olympics

The minute I see the buses, my throat gets thick, before I’ve even spotted my son in the crowds of children clotting the walkways.

I’ve come to cheer him on, to acknowledge that he works hard and pushes through.  I want him to see me there waiting, watching.  ”Run, Adam.  Run!”  I will shout his name across the field as he rounds the track and not care who hears, who points to the crazy mom with her arms in the air, jumping up and down.

The metal bleachers reverberate, a hollow, tinny sound, as we parents collect to watch the opening ceremonies.  We don’t even bother to wipe off the pollen that dulls the seats and makes our eyes sting.  I swallow hard against the pride, the mother-love that fills my eyes as I spot my son moving with his class behind a banner stretched strong in front of them.  Superheroes, that’s what it says.  The kids and their teachers wear capes.

Adam spots me in the stands snapping pictures, waving to him, and he lifts his hand.  I watch him say, “Hi, Mommy,” his lips moving so clearly I can almost hear his voice.  Those words are already our victory.  It is the joy of my day, easily the best part of my week, to get to be here for him, to get to yell and call his name, to high five and hug him at the finish, to touch his cheeks with my fingers.

After all, every time I race, Adam stands at the end for me, showing himself mine, waiting to see me run through, waiting to give me a high five.  He moves back and forth on his feet with nothing to do but absorb the crowd, the music, the flapping banners, the clouds moving across the sky.  On Sunday, I pressed into the last mile of a half marathon, singing Happy Birthday to me under my breath, thinking you’ve got some left for the end, come on now, keep running, thinking, they’re waiting for me at the finish.  I passed under the black and white arch in view of my goal time, a new personal record for me, something I’d wanted to give myself as a birthday gift.  I saw Kevin first, heard him yell, “You did it,” then my girls, then my son, then my friend who says she loves to be there for me.

Kevin’s smile on Sunday–as wide and bright as my triumph when I met my goal, reminded me of how I felt watching him race through his first triathalon.  My throat was so thick, even watching him approach the start, that I could barely speak.  I had to turn away so the kids wouldn’t worry over my tears.  At the finish, we all just screamed ourselves hoarse until the deep love, the happy for him, the pride in his effort gobbled up my voice all over again.

So, I’m thinking of this as the metal bleachers vibrate beneath my feet at the Special Olympics, as I watch my son walk through with his team, as we say the athlete’s oath.  ”Let me win.  But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.” The words fall, sweet.  Let us be brave in the attempt.  The bleachers we sit on have filled with school kids who will watch the competition while they eat lunch.  They beat their feet against the metal stands, and the rolling clatter shakes like a train thundering beneath us.  And the reality rolls, trembling, like a cramp.

The bombs exploded near the bleachers.  At the finish line.  Where the thick-throated loved ones—the son waiting, the friend, the families—sat watching, warming to the triumphant call of a name.

All day, as I walk through the events with my son, as I yell “Go, go, go!  Adam, run, run, run, keep running, keep running,” from the sideline for the 100-meter dash, as I encourage him to throw hard and jump far and  then run, run, run again for the relay, it’s Monday all over again.

Monday, and I wake from a nap and there it is, the headline gripping my throat, cutting off my breath.  Bombs at the finish line.  Two dead. I sit up on the edge of my bed, moving my hand across my eyes, prayers for the hurting ones already on my lips.

I scroll through tweets and statuses, trying to resurrect from hard sleep.  The muscles in my legs, still tender from that half marathon on Sunday, seem to burn and ache more as the details coalesce.

Boston is a bucket list marathon.  Most of us will never qualify, though Kevin and I have joked about what if I did somehow someday squeak in with a qualifying time.  Only the fastest runners run Boston.  I know the training it takes to get there, what it means to finish, how we need all that yelling from the road beside.  I am a marathoner.  I know what distance runners think in the last miles, when the running hurts.  You’ve got something left for the end.  Come on, now.  Never.stop.running.  Keep running.  Keep running.

And this, too, is what I’m thinking on Monday and again today, when it’s Monday all over again and I’m yelling for my son, tears clogging up my throat:

I know those people waiting in the bleachers at the finish.  This moment, I am those people.

Immediately, I also know this:  I don’t want to see the coverage.  I know what it will look like without the seeing.  It will look like ripping pain; like sudden, unthinkable destruction.  It will look like the war that always is:  selfish, fear-dripping evil slashing at our triumph over finishing strong. I don’t want to see it.  I don’t need to see it.  Because our mourning the lost, our fighting for the finish, will mean still running.  It’s how runners handle pain.  We keep running.

But then I see this tweet, something retweeted by a friend:

Asking what’s wrong with world? Watch blast vid. Notice how many run towards it. To help. That’s what’s right with world. #bostonmarathon

— Jay Menard (@JayCMenard) April 15, 2013

And I am reminded that in times like these, when we feel the how and the why like a bruise, when we wonder where God showed Himself right there at the finish line, we need not look the evil dead in the face.  I won’t find God in a pressure cooker bomb, not in the destroying things, nor in the voices of those rejoicing over suffering.  I will find Him behind and before, in the redeeming.  He is the legs of those running toward the blast to help.  He is all the brave in the attempt.  And He shows himself in our mutual tears, in millions of prayers whispered for those who grieve.  We will not soon set aside the places left gaping, empty.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to the questions that haunt.  Honestly, it haunts me too, this wishing for things finished now, for the evil finally bound.  We press into the last miles, and sometimes the running just hurts.  But there’s a reason He waits, and it’s not so more of us will be gripped by fear or torn apart or crushed by loss.  He waits to see more of us finish, that the real victory might not be stolen away.  He doesn’t want anyone to perish.

The truth is that no one watches for our coming like He does.

He runs to meet us (Luke 15:20), throat all thick, longing to say, “Well done (Matthew 25:21).”  He marked out the race Himself (Hebrews 12:1) and ran it ahead.  So too, He runs behind (Psalm 139:5), urging us on, “Run, run, run, keep running, keep running,” calling each one by name.  Surely it’s easily His great joy to see us finish strong, to be there for our race from start to finish. And His too are the great cloud of witnesses, waiting at the end, watching, calling, the ones who gave their lives anticipating victory, the finishing, the end of all we suffer.

Only one thing remains to be done as the smoke clears, as the pain seizes, as the truth clogs our throats and our mutual tears wash the roadway clean.  It’s the only thing runners know to do to finish strong when the running just hurts.

We keep running.

Fear is a very explosive emotion, but it has a short life span.  It’s the sprint.  The marathon is the hope (~Mike Huckabee).

come look

Tags

just breathe, moments, postaweek2013, seeing

Mom, come look.

She says it breathlessly, wiping sweat and wild hair from her forehead with her hand.

I stand at the sink, washing my hands with the honeysuckle soap, preparing to chop onions for our supper.

“Come look at what?” I ask, drying my hands on a towel.  I reach in the cabinet for some cups, filling them, watching the water collect.  I love the way light dances on water, even water from the faucet.  My daughter and her friend smell of the outside, of grass crushed underfoot, of running and jumping and laughter, of golden sun warming the skin.  The gift of abandon reminds me that little girls in other places don’t feel safe.  The reality grips me with prayer.

“There’s this tulip,” Zoe says, as I hand her a cup of water, before she gulps.  Her gulping makes me think of thirsty people rejoicing over wells, the clean water we take for granted.  God’s hand rests on my shoulder.  I pray for water, pouring, if necessary, from the rock.  Zoe has to catch her breath before she can finish, so I look to her friend, whose blue eyes sparkle magic.

“It’s bright orange,” her friend continues for her,  ”You have.to.see.it.“

Zoe sets down her cup and wraps her fingers through mine.  ”Mom, it’s so pretty.  The petals have opened and curled.  You just…you just need to see it.”

Her friend nods, and I reach for my phone, abandoning the package of ground beef on the counter.  Food.  Food for the hungry.  And just outside, God offers me a feast.

It’s the second time the girls have come for me.  The first time, a delicate butterfly with bright yellow wings had flattened herself against the screen on the porch.  That time, Zoe had been so urgent I forgot my camera.  She worried that the butterfly had gotten caught.  We were on a rescue mission.  There had been no time to spare.

I smile, caught up in their freedom, whispering thanks for the wisdom of their perspective.  No flight of imagination, no conversation, no agenda could be worth missing a glimpse of something beautiful.  Sometimes I don’t think I see that it is  the abundance of gifts we’ve been given that allows me to notice at all.

I step outside and the Spring breeze catches me by surprise, blowing my hair away from my ears.  The sun winks through the trees and blossoms float to the ground.  The wind-scattered petals remind me of a Dogwood I saw this morning on my run, the blossoms elegant and sculpted.  As I ran by, my breath quick, I thought, I need to come back just for a picture.  And then immediately, I wondered if I really would once the day took hold of me.  Even when the air is cold, I stand on the porch in the morning and wave Kevin off, praying for his day, and I tell myself, just breathe.  Sometimes those feel like the only breaths I take on purpose.

The grass feels good against my feet as they press into the earth, as the girls and I move together through the gate.

The girls are pointing, excited, there ahead of me.  The bloom takes my breath.  God gave her petals the color of sun setting over water.  She is a gift, and the seeing something I don’t deserve.  For a few moments, I tell myself, just breathe, just see this.  Her life will be brief, but already this simple flower has blessed three.

“It’s gorgeous,” I tell the girls, standing up to gather them under my arms, to touch their sun-warmed hair with my hands.  ”Thank you for showing me.”

Children shape the mother as much as the mother shapes the children.  My precious daughter teaches me to breathe.  She stops me in the middle of all my doing and takes me outside to see a flower, to the porch to rescue a butterfly.  She makes me stop folding clothes so that I can watch as she and Adam dance.  She tells me stories and wants to see them caught up in my eyes, my smile.  She comes to me, just as I am sweeping the bathroom floor and says, “Mom, it’s rest time.”

And I wonder where the days went when I thought the work, the meeting their needs, would wear me down to a husk.  Somehow, it seems that the scales begin to balance, that the giving comes too, with their breathing.  And time rushes on, too fast.  They grow taller and more independent.

But in the middle of all their growing, they remind me what to do to slow down, how to make the moments last.  Together, we collect all the manna God offers for the day.  We give thanks and share lists.  Riley announces hers every morning in a sweet, lilting voice, as though it’s a presentation on a guilded platter.  ”I have written some thank you’s for TO-day.”  And just as I get caught up in the urgency of work, my Zoe laces her fingers through my own, and says, “Mom, come see.”  

Her name, Zoe, means the fullness of life.

Reality grips me with prayer.  I am always asking how we do this, how we balance the living and cleaning and training and raising and loving with the wisdom of stillness.  How is there ever time for noticing?  That God daily answers my crazy, clinging, desperate prayers through my children makes me laugh, lifting my arms toward the sky.  This too, is the hand of God on my shoulder, each day the invitation new, His beauty and truth and grace prepared for me in advance.  And the seeing, the breathing, the tightening of the lens on things worth our dwelling, that’s a feast.  That’s food for the all living that has left me hungry.

Sometimes He speaks with a child’s voice.

Mom, come look.

when we say thank you

Tags

gratitude, love, motherhood, postaweek2013, the little things

Over lunch, we talk of how we first imagined ourselves as mothers, smiling down at our fingers.

I’ve always longed to be the Proverbs 31 woman.  She is clothed with strength and dignity, Word says.  She can laugh at the days to come.  I don’t know, but somehow the unmanicured edges of my fingernails seem like a comment on the situation.

“I was forever collecting ideas about how I would be amazing,”  I tell my friend, my sister, “and now I just pin things on Pinterest.”  We both laugh, reaching for each other across the table. “I love Pinterest,” I confess to her.  ”It’s this glowing treasure trove—this wealth of beautifully photographed ideas about how you can do anything if you can just find the time.”

For a while, we trade stories about the little things, the things we still try to do to swaddle our children’s lives, the ways we channel the deep love that once cradled their necks and moved our thumbs gently over their baby feet.  My friend and I share a life stage, a lot of common perspective.  Our children grow taller every day and stay awake later.  The conversations we have with them often dig deep.  They like to watch TV shows with us and share the blankets thrown over our feet.  We both know that time runs short.

So, we tuck notes into their lunch boxes sometimes—and we laugh because it’s a far cry from the photographs I’ve seen on Pinterest of vegetables, fruit, and lunch meat cut and arranged to look like zoo animals and sea creatures.  ”I actually saw a hotdog made to look like an octypus,” I tell her, remembering.  ”Does anyone actually have time for that?” I ask it wishing I did.  The details matter to me.  I want my children to see my love for them everywhere they look.

But I still haven’t finished packing away clothes from the colder seasons.  On the floor of the guest room I have collected boxes to fill with the last of my winter decorations.  In my office, stacks of Bible study books circle my chair, and a pile of papers on the corner of my desk waits to be filed, and a drawer crinkles when I open it with receipts that I need to record.  Laundry always waits, and dinner—hot for them at the right time.  And I want to sit with my girls and just talk while we nibble on cookies and cradle mugs in our hands.  And I stop every chance I get to hug my son and feel the angles of his broadening shoulders and lift his chin with my finger so he’ll talk to me and let me glimpse the thoughts filling up his brilliant mind, making those blue eyes shine.

So, I have to settle for the simple ways:  a favorite scripture wrapped around a sandwich I made for them, clean sheets pulled tight when they’ve run out of time to make the bed, a little help reorganizing the dresser drawer.  I ask them for requests for supper, and I put down whatever fills my hands when they come to me needing to be touched, asking to be heard.  I draw butterflies and fields of flowers on the board where I write the schedule everyday, because I know a schedule is love to the two—the ones with autism—while the other one needs reminders of things free and vivid and sweet.

I leave lunch with my friend still mulling over the conversation—the mom I am, the one I hope to be.

Most of the time, my children don’t say a lot about the little things, tiny reminders of love they’ve grown accustomed to expect.  But they laugh and they smile and their eyes dance, and they sit more on top of me than next to me.  It’s true that where ever I am, they seem happy to be there too, and for me, that’s enough.  It’s enough that they reach for me, that they want to tell me things, that mine are the arms they seek when life just hurts.

Loving me makes them want to give me things:  a vase of flowers they cut from the yard; a piece of artwork they sat to make; a bit of their time and effort surrendered to help me dry dishes.  But I think of Proverbs 31, and it’s that part about her children arise and call her blessed that I love most.  I don’t expect a thank you for things I want to do, for the little things that feel like love dripping from my fingers, but when they notice…oh, that’s life’s richness.  Their attention to these things I do, their notice, their thank you’s feel like a jewel studded robe wrapped about my shoulders.

And these days, I see that this is the way with God too.

He wants me to see His love for me everywhere I look.  Just in this room I see hundreds of little things just for me:  a photograph of my children with gold Summer sun lighting the tops of their heads; a new journal, pages blank with possibility; a candle–fragrant and flickering; a tree full of butterfly ornaments—a gift from a dear friend reminding me of redemption; a stack of books I read on a beach vacation with Kevin, some of the words soaked up into my heart; the box Riley and I wrapped in pretty paper for a project; a wall sign–just walk a day in my flipflops—my mom found for my Christmas stocking.  More than the things, it’s what they mean.  I could list these for hours, the sweet love dripping from God’s fingers, the ways He still tenderly cradles my neck in His hands.  No matter the day, He still does things to swaddle me, to gather me up in His arms, to show me He always has time to love me.  He cares about the details.

But it’s not just true for me.  It’s true for you too.  This love He offers has height and depth and reach that it takes power to understand (Ephesians 3:18).

I don’t want to miss the touches of His fingers all over my living.  So, I ask Him for eyes that see.  I ask Him to teach me to notice, to tighten the lens on my days, to see more than the hard edges.  I keep lists of His gifts, inspired to do so by a Spirit-written book.

The listing of His gifts makes me want to sit more on top of Him than next to Him.  Where ever He is, I’m happy to be there too.  His are the arms I seek when life just hurts.  Loving Him makes me want to give Him everything–the things I gather close, the things I make with my hands, my time and effort surrendered to do things with Him.

And I have to think that when I notice all these thousands of things He does to love me, when I stop to say thank you, surely those are the offerings that taste the sweetest of all.

Surely our gratitude glows, like treasures heaped at His feet.

punch today in the face {the best thing God’s taught this mom about surviving}

Tags

autism, one day at a time, postaweek2013, surviving

Source: trendingfitnessblog.com via Elysa on Pinterest

She doesn’t know me, so I say it without hesitation, handing her a tissue:

Just…punch today in the face.

Maybe it seems like an odd thing to say in an elevator, after she’s pushed the down and turned to me, tears still marking up her cheeks, after she’s crumbled a little right there in front of me.

“Could I maybe talk to you?” She asks, wearing an expression I recognize from my first days as an autism mom—the weary red eyes, swollen with grief.

She cried all through the meeting, rifling in her purse, jotting things down on a piece of paper in front of her.  I kept throwing her looks from where I sat on the panel, smiling, hoping she heard me saying, “I understand.  I remember.”

I am invited to this forum because I have not one child with autism but two, and between the two, I have experienced quite a few of the options for transitioning a special needs child from preschool to elementary.  I sit on a panel with a lot of other parents who have been there before, answering questions for preschool parents wondering what in the world to do about the next step.  Every year, I look around the room and see myself in a dozen other faces.  Some of these parents look confused, some militant, some tender.  All of them look tired and overwhelmed and not sure anything will ever be different.

I try to tell them about my children during the introductions, because I remember how desperately I collected hope in the first days, how I needed to hear that a little girl who once lined up her toys obsessively and had no words could become a preteen who laughed and loved and had friends; how I wanted to believe, needed so much to believe, that a little boy who still learns a completely different way could excel at math and find his way free of so much fear.  I needed to know joy and laughing and congratulations still lived and breathed beyond the too much, and the I don’t know how, and the what if they never of those first grieving, lonely years.  So I am honest about the way I felt at first while I’m telling them about things now.

The whole meeting, I just wanted to get up and give this mom a hug.  I wanted to pull her out in the hall and ask her to tell me her story.  But she doesn’t know me, and I knew she’d feel embarrassed by my attention, and after things finished up there were other parents with questions and parents I knew on the panel.  The group wandered out and on in murmuring knots, and I didn’t see her until just before we stepped on the elevator together.

So, she throws an abused Kleenex into her purse and starts searching helplessly for another.  And looking up, apologizing with her hand, she mentions a teacher we love, someone who ushered us through in the beginning, asking me if I remember her.  I nod.  ”Oh yes.  We love her,” I say, thinking back to conversations, to the way this teacher’s belief in my children empowered my own.  ”She’s wonderful.”

“Did she email you yet?  She thought maybe you’d be someone…Could I maybe talk to you?”  Her voice drops at the end, shattering.  I reach for the tissues in my purse.

I can see that asking me this comes hard.  She doesn’t like to reveal her vulnerability anymore than I do.  I remember how much I hated to cry back then, how I felt like everyone could see that I was falling apart, but I just couldn’t keep the emotion packed away all folded and neat.

“Yes, I’d love to talk to you,” I tell her, smiling, thanking God that this is how He is, that He let’s me share what He’s given me so freely over so many years.  It’s this verse He whispers deep, standing with us in that elevator, and this is the praise I offer then, the thanks I offer now: Praise be…to the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts me in my troubles so that I can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort I myself receive from God (2 Corinthians 1: 3,4).  He brings me through, that I might share with others the things He’s gently sculpted in me.

“I don’t know what to do,” she says.  ”It’s all just…too much.  The IEP is, I don’t know, like twenty pages thick.  It’s been a year, but I feel like we just started.  And I don’t feel like he’s made any progress.  He just seems…stuck.  My son, he’s really severe…He won’t look at me.  He doesn’t even like us to touch him.  He gets angry—I mean, tantrum angry…about everything.”  She pauses, just long enough to check my face for surprise, for shock.  Finding none, she plunges on, looking down at the tissue in her hand.  ”Is there something I should read?  What did you read in the beginning?”

I reach for the notepad in the bottom of my bag, the one a friend gave me just because, the one always buried somewhere below all of my emergency supplies for low blood sugars and the emergency seizure medication we hope we never have to use. I write down my name, my email address, my phone number, the names of a few books that helped.

I don’t have a lot of advice, but I think maybe I can listen and understand, maybe share her frustration, maybe offer her some hope for her collection.  I know that she will look back on this conversation and find it hard to contact me.  She will remember her naked vulnerability and somehow feel embarrassed about being real with someone she barely knows.  She will forget that I understand, that I have told her how I grieved too, how I felt overwhelmed.  So, I hand her the piece of paper and another tissue and offer her the best thing God has taught me for surviving all the I don’t know how:

Just punch today in the face.

I say it emphasizing the word today.  It’s a clever mantra I found on the internet, nothing original with me.  It’s an odd thing to say, I know, but it makes me laugh and it seems to put brackets around some hard truth, truth God planted our very first day with autism,truth that has since taken root and helped me press through.

I sat holding Kevin’s hand that day, in a blue plastic chair with metal legs, looking at watercolors of school busses on a far wall, the word autism hanging in the air, awkward.  I looked at two ladies smiling gently, trying to wrap cotton around my fear, and I said, “What will this mean for her future?  Will she marry?  Will she be able to live on her own?” She, just three years old and far away from me, lost and alone while right beside us.

And the ladies looked at each other and pressed their smiling lips together, and one of them finally said, “We can’t say.  We just don’t know.”  She looked at Riley, gesturing with her eyes.  ”It’s all up to her.”

But in my heart, this resonated, something planted already, and I thought, “No.  It isn’t up to her.  It’s up to God.  And this is faith, the walking on when I don’t know where I’m going.”

This autism mom, the one in the elevator, the one reminding me of me, she laughs, a little shakily, as I press my information into her hand.

“It doesn’t do to worry about tomorrow,” I tell her.  ”And not the twenty pages of the IEP.  Not the potty training or the what if he or the how will I ever.  Just punch today in the face.  Take it one step at a time, one goal at a time, one new thing.  Make a schedule today.  Do today.  Do your best, your hardest work today.  And tomorrow, you’ll get up, and you’ll do it again.”

I have given up on living life like it’s a chess game.  I am not three moves ahead. Not anymore.

God said it this way, the therefore heavy with all that He wrote before it, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:34).” And since that first day, He has been hard at work, carving the knowing into my heart—that only He knows, that today is all I have, that today suffers the moment I start worrying over tomorrow.  He gave His people enough manna for the day (Exodus 16:4), and then showed us to pray for this daily bread (Luke 11:3), and the whole point has always been not that we need the bread but that we need Him and what He provides and that our need for Him is renewed every day (Deuteronomy 8:3).

And so seeking Him is how I punch this day in the face, it’s how I remain present right here, it’s how I do today.  And He gives me enough for today.

I laughed out loud the day He embossed this right over my marathon training, weaving it still further into the folds of all my living.  Somewhere in the last third of a tempo run, coming down from my fastest sprint, I felt the tired clenched tight and burning in my thighs, and an old habit resurrected.  I tried to catch my breath and found myself thinking about tomorrow’s miles.  An ache throbbing in my ankles and toes mocked the thought of another significant effort.  Just how do you think you’ll do that, exactly?

And right then, I saw that mom and me in the elevator, on our way down from a meeting, and this is what He whispered:

Today’s workout today.  Tomorrow’s workout tomorrow.

And I laughed out loud, because it’s seems I need the teaching in every layer.  I’m still learning to speak the wisdom and trust it, to growl it out between clenched teeth, if necessary.

Tomorrow never comes.  It’s always just today.

So, just punch today in the face.

she will not be alone {the promises sisters make}

Tags

friendship, postaweek2013, sisterhood, strength of women

In the morning, this is on my daughter’s gifts list:

83. the ladies coming over,

and I look around the room, and in the half-light I can almost still see my sisters sitting in the chairs and cross-legged on the floor, never really leaving me.

The friendships of women are no light, temporary thing.

I hear the clink of our forks against the every day plates, the murmuring we do as we listen and savor sweet crumbs.  We gather close, easy, leaning into and around each other.  Our laughter wraps us tight.  The history we share fashions us strong and formidable.

I lay my hand flat against the Bible open in my lap.  Exodus 17. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning the battle.  But His hands grew tired, so Aaron and Hur brought a stone so that Moses could sit down, and they held up Moses’ worn out arms until sunset.  And the Israelite army overcame its enemy.  It’s funny to me how I read that passage and still just see Moses sitting on that hill, hands held high.  I can’t see Aaron and Hur, and I wonder why, until I think of my sisters gathered, somehow still warming this room.

I can’t see Aaron and Hur because they have become Moses’ arms.  And these, my sisters, have been my arms too, when I just felt too empty to move.

The pages crinkle as I flip fast.  Luke 5:19.  I can’t help but think of this man, another living paralyzed, another who couldn’t move.  I smile at the thought:  his friends carry him on a mat, trying to get him to Jesus.  And when they encounter the crowd and discover that they can’t get through, there’s no giving up on him.  No, he will not be left alone and unmoving.  His friends literally tear apart the roof to lower him down in front of the Lord.

It is a gift worth listing, these sisters gathered.

For all our walking together, I know this: They would tear apart the roof to get my unmoving soul to Jesus.

Sitting in the first light of morning, I think of my grandmother too weak to move, of my mother and her sister lifting. I think of the women who, loving my mother, loved and rooted me too.  I remember their laughter, how I stood under my mother’s arms absorbing their voices, their strength together.  They sheltered and mentored me as they pressed on, as they meandered through the doorways together.

And suddenly, I’m full glad my daughter can see, that she feels this too, that she knows it’s a God-perfect gift,

83. the ladies coming over.

The relationships of women are no light, temporary thing.

It’s been rightly said that families scatter too far these days, that we’ve lost something by not living anymore in multi-generational groups.  Sometimes I wish it really were as easy as wandering across a field to sit across the table from my mother and help her knead the bread, that if I missed my children I could follow their footprints to my sister-in-law’s back door and find cousins climbing trees together in the back yard.  Would that every day, the wiser ones among us would lay their hands over our own and teach us what they know.

I look around the room,seeing them still, and suddenly I know why God made Family to be more than skin and bone, why He has yet forged greater bonds than genetics.

The night before, just in this room, and some not even present, sat three women who have survived breast cancer.  I remember the year one lost her hair to chemotherapy and her husband shaved his head, promising his arms to lift her weary body.  And we, her sisters, gave her hats of every shape and color—scarf-wrapped, flower-pinned, plain.  And every time we saw each other, all our covered sister-heads said:

She will not be alone.

It’s true that at our best we prefer together for even the simplest things.  Some of the women in the the room have stood by talking while I folded towels, leaned on the bar with crossed arms while I cooked supper, grabbed the broom to sweep.  One of them gave up hours to help me plant tulips and daffodils in my flower beds.  The days came, early on, when these sisters showed up at my door and ordered me to put them to work.  And it didn’t so much matter that it meant tires against gravel instead of feet pressing down the grass.

Last night, just a question, and something happened: we spoke of our daughters and how we’re going to help each other raise them.  Just something offered—one mother’s heart breaking over a daughter’s fear, that she has to suffer that worry at all, and it swept the room, this vulnerable wish to see our daughters strong.  We spread it all out in front of us—their sadness, their anxiety, their brokenness, and with it our own shattered pieces, all out in the open.  I don’t know what to do, someone said.

Most of us have come too far to think we have any wisdom of our own.  So we reached for each other and we prayed and we asked, Lord, how?  And all our clasped hands and our bowed sister-heads said:

She will not be alone.

I see now that I cross the fields all day long, every day, to stand at the sink with my sisters, to sit solid in the chair beside.  We talk, we laugh, we pray, meandering in and out of the room, pausing at the great King’s table with our coffee, opening our hands in front of us.  We bring each other treasures there—some weighty in the palm, some deeply felt.  At least, that’s how it feels to me, as our emails of prayer and thanksgiving—some of us count gifts together, three or more a day–dissolve in thousands of ones and zeroes and fly across cables and through the air, as our spirits touch when our fingers cannot.  And all our sister-fingers, clicking at the keys, picking up pens, holding the phone, pulling back the chairs at the table, all our given sister-hands say:

She will not be alone.  

We will become her arms.  

We will tear apart the roof.  

We will speak as one strong, formidable.

Every time the door opens, my daughters stand on the stairs, peeking down to see.  I hear them calling names, names precious, the names of my sisters, and sometimes they can’t stop their bare feet from walking down, quick, to fly into a hug, wrapped in arms offered.

And this is how we will teach them, with our doors opened wide to each other, with the chairs around our tables pulled out and filled, with our arms in the dish water and carrying plates and helping each other with the folding and the stirring and the loving.

And so, this is the promise we must make:

She will not be alone.

Could we, as sisters, covenant this together?  That in place of criticism, we will offer strength?  In place of judgement, we will offer grace.  In place of degredation and ruthless, insecure comparison, we will offer love.  We will offer loyalty.  We will set our selfishness aside, asking God to burn it away.  Our relationships will be  steadfast.  No longer will our daughters hear us tear each other apart with words vile, words ripping, words bitter.  They will hear us celebrating each other.

And if need be, when you, our sister, feel too empty, too weary to move:

We’ll become your arms.

We’ll carry you on our shoulders.

No, we will not give up on you.  We’ll rip apart the roof.

what every dad can do for his daughters {and teach his sons}

Tags

daughters, husbands, love, marriage, postaweek2013

In the afternoons, his daughters run to him.

They hear his keys jingle in the lock, and nothing matters except that he’s home.  Words hang in the air between us.  Pencils roll off the table where they’ve been carelessly tossed down.  I lift my hands out of the dishwater and dry them on a towel.

He opens the door, and they stand waiting, his beautiful ones, the ones he calls princess–the title preceeding their names, especially when he’s teaching them something difficult.

But no one gets a hug before I do.

“Let me hug your mom first,” he sometimes says as they reach for him.  He walks to where I stand with his daughters following, and his eyes speak only to me, his arms reserving space all mine.

And they stand watching, absorbing love and husband.  The moments they witness teach, drawing full-color signposts on the years they’ll walk through.

He puts down his things and sweeps me up in an embrace, sometimes slipping back just to offer me a smile, sweet with deep love, spreading all the way into his eyes.

“Welcome home,” I say, returning the Love, telling him I’ve missed him.  And I have.  His is a presence that builds.

“Thanks,” he says, speaking so much more just in the looking.  Thanks for the work you do here.  Thanks for teaching, for loving, for serving, for raising.  Thanks for supper, and a home made—it smells good, feels good in here, and all your trying–I see your trying.  Thanks for tired feet and wading through weary and still being mine.

And then Zoe clears her throat and says, “Um, hello you guys,” and I realize Riley’s hand sits on his arm, waiting patiently.

And I know that they have seen, that this has worked its way deep: that he loves me still; that he’s loved me through things so hard and in every shape and the best and worst of me; through impatience and tired and confused and sad; in good rest and with none; through pregnancy and babies and diapers and spit up and potty training and hair hanging in my face.  He’s loved me on my knees scrubbing floors and with kid prints all over my shirt, and he’s been right by my side, doing it all with me, sometimes instead of me.  So many years so much fuller than we could’ve imagined, and he loves me still, with passion that hangs in the air around us.  And his loving me well says things words cannot, precious truth that roots itself in little girl hearts and wraps itself right around their bones:

You were made to be loved like this.

And this is love.  And it commits.  And it perseveres.  And it serves.  And it’s soul-deep and body strong.

And it remains when all else fails.

And.you.don’t.need.to.settle.for.less.

Only fathers loving mothers, and fathers making sons open doors for their sisters, and fathers serving and honoring and letting them see can plant these precious seeds.  These are the truths that will save our daughters from insecurity and explotation and so many deep, cavernous, empty places.  God uses fathers living love to save our daughters from too little too soon, from giving their bodies away when it’s not really love because they don’t know the face of the love they seek.

My husband smiles at me, and then turns to each of his girls, opening up his arms, listening to their chatter.  They always have so much to tell him.  I always have so much to tell him.  And somehow, he makes us all feel that it matters to him to hear, even tired and poured out and weary from a day away, a day working.

“Dad, I made a good grade on my project,” Riley says, unfolding a piece of paper I haven’t even seen, a story she’s written for Social Studies.  I realize that she has saved this just for him, for his approval.  He stops to admire her work, pointing out details in the way that only he can, the way that makes her laugh with eyes that sparkle just for him.

He makes me laugh too, at least once a day, sometimes so hard I can’t quite catch my breath.

“Dad, guess what I heard today?” Zoe cuts in, excitement making her dance around him in circles.

So, he starts guessing the most ridiculous things, until she giggles and puts her hand on his arm.

“Dad, Dad, Dad, stop guessing.  It’s something good.  Well, you won’t like it, but I think it’s good.”

And then she tells him about a crush she has at school.  Someone told her that he likes her likes her.  ”But I haven’t said that to him.  Well, not yet.”

“Well.  Sounds like it’s getting serious,” Kevin says, turning to shoot me a grin she can’t see.  He doesn’t laugh at what she says.  He knows this bruises her, makes her wall up her heart.  I move about the kitchen, listening to them, thinking about how wonderful it is that he has communicated his protectiveness so well without making her afraid to confess the things she feels.  He teaches her so gently that sometimes she doesn’t even see it as training.  ”Dad doesn’t really give me advice,” she told me once.  ”He just listens.”  And so she places her heart in his hands, wide open, and trusts him to keep it safe, and with those gentle hands still unashamed to reach for mine, he shapes a daughter’s heart.

God wrote it solid so long ago:  Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Ephesians 5:25).  Husbands, love your wives as your own bodies (Ephesians 5:28).  Because your daughters and sons are watching, and what they see wraps deep.