in the mind...

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

- Wallace Stevens

These words make me both squirm and nod.

Imagination plays a huge part in life. It is imagination that finds beauty in the concrete, that reveals what could be in the dust and toil and grit of what is. It is imagination that gives life to words on a page, that expands the meaning of poetry, that works and reworks our understanding of the world every day, every time we are confronted with something new.

It is imagination that helps us know and be known,

It is my imagination that helps me dream. It is my imagination that allows me to picture myself doing things. It is my imagination that allows my perfectionism, and my imagination that helps me to receive grace.

Even Scripture is full of images and descriptions that appeal to the imagination. God will use anything it takes to describe Himself to us, to get our attention and give us a picture of His love.

We live in the mind.

And sometimes, we die in the mind too.

...

Every time it happens, I hope it will be the last.

The dark closes in on me. My head starts spinning, my stomach clenches, the fear rushes in. Often, it begins with the realization that I am not who I imagine myself to be. I stare hard and honest into my life, and I begin to loathe it. Gratitude goes out the window; I can't see God.

I spiral downward into depression intensified by my physical limitations. I feel as if I must literally blow apart in all directions.

My walls are stripped; my defenses are breached. Nothing I tell myself relieves the sensation that I must be what I do not want to be.

I'd rend my garments, toss my clothes, if I weren't concerned about physical modesty. My soul has been bared.

I am exposed.

Naked.

I vomit words and honest; pretense is worthless.

There is no escape.

...

It is never the last time, because I fight. Because I am often like a cornered, wounded animal lashing out at its helper - it does not matter what compassion is meant.

I fight by trying to keep myself out of situations where I may be vulnerable. I fight by criticizing others for how far short they fall of what I have attained. I fight, justifying my position, validating my existence and work.

And I am always right.

Until I find out I am wrong.

But that is human nature.

That is not humility. Human nature leaves little room for transformation by the renewing of the mind.

We live in the mind.

...

When I was younger, I went to church looking for God.

You would think I could have found Him there.

I didn't.

By the time I figured out that all I needed to please God was Jesus - every single day - my heart had been kicked around, knocked up, beaten down, and strangled as Christians I knew attempted to make me conform to their idea of right.

The lies I swallowed about God were many.

And they don't leave easily.

The condemnation they carry for me is debilitating.

I barely trust other Christians now.

We live in the mind.

...

Perhaps I make too much of reality. Or rather, sincerity.

It is the excuse I use to dismiss others who would speak the truth. If their lives don't reflect what they are preaching, I write them off. It is safer that way.

Yet I write here at my blog things that I struggle to live every day. I write about loving my family, and I hold back the stories of the times that I deliberately choose to secret myself away from them. I tell of Pete's love for me, but I don't share how I know: he is still here, in spite of my frustrated ranting against the God I'm not so sure about as the One I share here. He knocks at my heart and tells me who I am with patience and kindness I don't deserve.

I write here about grace, but I sit in church and withhold it from others as I watch them worship and preach and pray. I am so cynical, nitpicking the things I know - and I know a lot - writing whole sections of sermons off, writing God's people off.

Because I was hurt. Because I am afraid.

If I am hard enough, perhaps I can escape.

Yet here I encounter His Spirit.

I have been in few churches where He has been so free to move. Omigoodness He is free to move here.

I cannot hold back my tears. I cannot help but be humbled.

I try to hold Him off, push Him back, but He is answering prayer, prayer that He would speak to us - to me - what He wishes to speak. It is not the words of the sermon echoing in my heart. It is His words, His Word. Jesus who is raising my eyes to His wounds and His Life. Jesus who is my justification.

Jesus who can judge me. Jesus who doesn't.

My confession comes with the tears.

I am naked before Him here. I cannot hide from Him. I must acknowledge Him.

I must reckon myself dead to my sin. Reckon myself alive to God.

I live in the mind.

...

My understanding of God is too often limited to who I imagine Him to be in relation to who I imagine I am.

Saul must have been ignoring some pretty obvious God-things before he became Paul on the road to Damascus, when God opened his eyes to behold Jesus, asking him why he was fighting Him.

He was so right - until he learned he was wrong.

God blinded him to open the eyes of his heart. How often does God blind me to open mine?

Sometimes, all I can see is two choices: endless darkness and despair, or talking to a God I am often not certain I trust.

I cannot spin past this God, obscure my face from Him, hide my fear.

His compassion for me is incredible.

It is so necessary.

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

- Micah 6:8

I learn to love His mercy. To be humbled at my need for it.

It is one thing to say it; artifice demands that I do. Being "a Christian" demands the artifice.

But the Life I live by faith in the Son of God - it requires the real.

Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy…. For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected—not in itself, but in the object…. Therefore, all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love’s kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.

- George MacDonald

It requires the naked. The rending of my heart.

...

Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

- Phil 5:1-11

Reality confronts imagination, and my own ideas of God are rearranged as I behold Jesus.

In Him I live and move and have my being.

Crucified with Christ, this is how I present myself a living sacrifice. As I am laid bare before Him, He changes my idea of Him, changes my way of understanding. How can one help but be transformed when confronted with this chastening, refining Love?

...

If you made it to the end of this post, thanks for sticking with me.

I'm slowly digging through some things that have been happening in my heart recently, in between kids and meals and health and general survival stuff. The processing is landing here - I hope you don't mind. I'm not meaning to be a wet blanket; I just have to get this stuff out.

Somebody's praying for me. I'd ask you to quit, but His work is good, if uncomfortable, right?

Shallow-ish post coming soon. I promise. ;-)





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

please pardon my dust

"Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh." (2 Cor. 5:16)

In the beginning, God
created.

He created from dust
in His image, in
His own likeness.

He breathed His Life, putting
Word in empty mouth so that

He could have conversations.

"Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer." (2 Cor. 5:16)

In the beginning, God
created.

He created from dust
One in His image, in
very nature God.

He breathed His Life, putting
Word on silent Cross so that

He could have conversations.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation." (2 Cor.17-19)

In the beginning, God
created.

He created from stone
a new soft heart, to
fill with His Spirit.

He breathed His Life, pulling
Word from empty tomb so that

He could have conversations.

Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” (Rev. 21:1-5)

In the beginning, God
created.

He created new dust for
heaven and earth to
fill with His presence.

He brought His Life, sending
Word to reap the old so that

He could dwell with man and
have conversations.

The air was heavy most of the day here. Thickened with tension, fraught with child cries and voices that I know are not in the air but in my head.

Cries that carried need. Voices that carried shame.

I stepped silent around them, breathing hard, breathing deep, swallowing cries and frustration and the internal screams not meant for air.

I planned and re-planned and worked and re-worked and accomplished absolutely nothing at all because I was too distraught to move beyond necessity today, because my back ached and my head ached and my eyes ached from the unshed tears behind them, tears held back by confused anger. Anger held in, stopped up by fear.

...

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." (Gal. 5:1)

Stand fast...

The words catch on the fear in my throat, choking me. How dare I think that I should stand fast?

I know this Gospel. I know this grace. I know what redemption is. I know what it means that I am reconciled to God.

Yet I hold Him at arm's length. Close enough to keep an eye on what He is doing, far enough to keep Him from tearing my heart open. I want to give my all to Him - really, I do - but the fear that thickens the air, that holds back the tears, the fear traps me. I utter the words on repeat, "I don't want to..." because I don't know what else to say.

Everything is "Christ, but..." in my head today. I feel that the Cross is not enough. That His coming was nothing, really.

But everything that is not of Him must be stripped away.

Even the good I mean to do.

...

The words spin and scatter and gather and fly now. They come with tears as I begin to pour my heart into the air that is heavy. They spill out and speak desire that is good, fear that is caging, wild hope that is true.

"You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?" (Gal. 5:7)

Yes. I ran well. I know I have lived this Truth, that in Christ I live and move and have my being.

My being that is too small for this great God. My being that is dying to dress up a little more, deliver a little more, surrender a little more before I come before Him. Oh, I do not want to need His mercy this time! I want to like the me I bring to Him.

So He lets me stew and watches me fall, waiting to catch my frightened heart.

"You ran well..."

"Stand fast."

I gather my courage. More words spill before Him, and before my husband who came early to hold me, to listen to me breathe hard and fast and hurt and scared. Words about prayer, about inviting God into our house, about doing only the things He has set before me now instead of preparing for China and martyrdom in thirty years when I just know He will require it of me.

...

My testimony is this: Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is the grace, the Gospel, the mercy, the Redemption I own.

Here, I am not trapped. Jesus despised the shame He bore - MY shame - and He does not impute it to me.

I am not what I want to be. I am what I am, by the grace of God.

And what I am is a mess. What I am does not take the photos I want to take. What I am does not (and cannot most times) do the housework I want to do. What I am is too often afraid to love. What I am does not stop the words when they should be stopped, does not speak them when they should be spoken.

What I am is dust. Dust, and a broken heart.

...

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor. 5:1-7)

If you read my blog and think I am something, know this the truth: I am nothing.

I have spent much of the past weeks soul-searching - as much as one can soul-search beneath the constant hue and cry of my two - and I know that what I give and what I do and what I write will not be what I am hoping to give and do and write.

Because you see, I have been patterning my nothing after others who have done what I wish to do, and in the end it comes to nothing without Jesus for me, and my yoke of bondage is my own misplaced desire to be like them and not like me who God created and re-created and called good. If we all say the same thing, we become shadows of one another, and the best and brightest shadow is still a shadow - when we are really earthen vessels filled with the weight of a glory that is not meant to be earthbound.

He is so much There, and does not seem to be here at all. Yet the things that my heart knows call me to walk into what my eyes do not see, and my mess is propelled forward by faith into a Life I dare not seek in my own strength - who am I to know what Holy and Righteous is?

"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Cor. 5:21)

...

I cannot live the future now.

God asks this of me today (and I have been afraid to listen): to draw near to Him. To look at Him. To open my heart to an intimacy to take me beyond the limits of my imagination so that I will know that whether I live or die, I will be in Him.

There is a question that has been niggling at me recently, an inane question that offers more direction than I thought I needed: "Am I a blogger who writes or a writer who blogs?"

Tonight, as the words come, I know the answer.

I am a writer who blogs, and it is time for me to step back into my place - MY place - and write again, instead of trying the "blogging" thing.

Several months ago, I went searching for a community who knows God - and I found it. I found you. And you and you and you. And I have been deepened and encouraged, and I hope it will continue.

But I may not be commenting so much on other blogs as I have. I may not reply to every email or track my stats or link up elsewhere or follow too many prompts or Tweet endless links as I have.

I suspect the nature of my posts will change a bit too - when I write, I write for me; I write what is deep; I write what is Him in my dust. I have nothing else.

The voices tell me that is "self-centered," but I am feeling stronger this evening, more ready to stand, more ready to claim the free that is mine in Jesus so I may bow at the throne of Grace - instead of ducking my head, anticipating the blow.

...

What does it mean, that God destroyed the gap between Heaven and earth when Jesus became man and died and rose again?

Death, where is your victory?

I breathe out slow now. Long, and slow. A sigh, but not a sigh. An acknowledgment. That God created me the way He meant. That He does not mean to crush me, but to guard me, to hold me safe in His love. That the being I have in Christ is so much glory and not so much dust.

My flesh and my heart fail.

The groaning is a given.

My spirit is waiting for that face-to-face conversation. The one where I see Him. The one where I become like Him.

God, that's gonna be so good...





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

a self-portrait: covered

The words were little more than a sigh.

She inhaled, exhaled, and still there was nothing, nothing but air and wishes, and not even that, if she was honest. Words don't breathe until they are said, until they are formed on the tongue, until they slip from lip and sing across empty space. And wishes, well, they need definition, and definition requires words.

So she sighed.

Her feelings were scattered, splintering in every direction but straight, focusing here, then there, trying to be everywhere at once, forgetting that omnipresence is better left to God-who-sees. The feelings were like that; they didn't remember so much as they should.

She didn't know what to say, so she couldn't write. She took pictures, and they said a great deal too much, and didn't say quite enough.

Grace is a slippery thing, she thought.

No, no it's not.

Again she sighed. Tried to focus her thoughts. Gave up. Sighed again.

Today, she didn't know who she was. Was she pastels and tulips or bright and daisies? Or was she somewhere in between? Was there a place for all of it? Why did everything seem that it needed to be compartmentalized? She felt she might blow apart with the things trapped inside.

God was so near some days; He was near now - she knew His presence. But drawing near to Him required a little bravery on her part. A little trust. A lot of truth.

She wasn't afraid of the wrathful God of Revelation; her heart thrilled at the blazing rescue executed by the fiery-eyed Son of Man from whose mouth came the Word of God that seared her soul. There was no wrath for her, no fear there.

But rejection - even the possibility - it asked faith of her. Faith that Jesus was enough. That grace was sufficient for her to come to Him and rest when she was weary. It seemed she was always weary.

She had heard that she needed to do more, to be more than she was. The voices in her head - the loud ones that lived on her mental tickertape - they said that God required more of her or else. The "or else" was never defined. She lived in fear of that dropping ball. Sometimes the prospect was too much for her. She hunkered down, shut out the world, dived beneath the radar of God-who-sees.

Ironically, she never escaped His gaze.

His wisdom wasn't supposed to be confusing.

She couldn't live a lifetime in a moment.

She couldn't change herself.

Everything was muddled without considering Jesus. She'd never be enough.

But there He was. Jesus, her free. Her Spirit-sealed guarantee that God would not reject her if she drew near. His gaze seemed suddenly more welcoming.

Her feelings focused; she needed to hide for now, but not from Him. In Him. In that secret place of His presence where there is no need for definition or caveat or explanation. She'd be safe there. Covered.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones grew old
Through my groaning all the day long.
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah
I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You
In a time when You may be found;
Surely in a flood of great waters
They shall not come near him.
You are my hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble;
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah

I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will guide you with My eye.
Do not be like the horse or like the mule,
Which have no understanding,
Which must be harnessed with bit and bridle,
Else they will not come near you.

Many sorrows shall be to the wicked;
But he who trusts in the LORD, mercy shall surround him.
Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous;
And shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

- Psalm 32

(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

A Post About Piper

She's so serious here. Trying to figure out the camera with the sensation of mother-love that comes all too little lately. I borrowed her for my 365 project today.

I'm working in a self-portrait angle this year, and three days into it, I'm certain it's going to be a stretching experience. I view myself in pieces right now. There is writer-me, depressed-me, insecure-me, loved-me, mama-me, person-me. The feelings ram against each other; my stay is not in my mood.

But this is a post about Piper.

She has grown so much. I hardly believe she is two anymore. Her homeschool-mama sitter sat Pete down after fencing recently (my husband is teaching fencing again, and taking Piper with him) and told him that she is operating at a four-to-five-year-old level. This report made one rather bad day of mine a rather good day at its end.

With her growth comes an expanded capacity for trouble.

I have an aunt who reads this blog who will cringe at this next photo:


Piper destroyed my grandmother's chair yesterday. I inherited a few small things from Grandma, things I treasure more than I should probably treasure earthly possessions. They're right up there with my camera in emotional value. Probably more so. This was one of those.

I didn't know it until I went into the living room to take a little time with her and found the pieces scattered all over the floor.

And mama-time went out the window.

Because I had told her. And I know she is old enough and responsible enough to know that she was not supposed to tear the chair up.

So I yelled, as all good mad mamas do. And I spanked her. As most good mad mamas do. And I sent her to her room, because I was too angry with her to not keep yelling, and I needed a little help with my self-control.

I didn't know what to do. When love rams up into loss, how do you react? What course of action can you take?

By now the baby was hollering to be fed, so I pulled him out of his bed and nursed him, fuming, frustrated, trying to figure out how to fix the situation - not the chair, the broken relationship. The relationship I had just knocked over the foul line.

I was still fuming when I heard her door open. I steeled myself, determined to keep my quiet, as she padded into the kitchen, crying softly.

She laid her head on the arm of my desk chair, on my arm resting there, holding Bredon as I nursed.

"I'm sowwy, Mama. Sowwy, Mommy."

Now it was my turn to cry. My anger dissolved. How did she know?

I got to forgive her. And then I told her I was sorry too, for yelling, for my angry. I told her I loved her.

And she moved on.

Childlike, childish - it was okay now. She could play again.

I sat and watched her, amazed, stunned at her tender heart.

And something else caught me. She didn't doubt my forgiveness once she knew she was still loved. She received the mercy she'd asked of me.

I don't even do that when I ask it of God. I'm too busy kicking myself for needing the mercy in the first place.

Wow.


Talk about lessons in abundant living...





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

His Mercies Are New Every Morning...

(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Tuesdays Unwrapped - Grace for Two Little Hearts

"And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work."

- 2 Corinthians 9:8

I've been at my computer since about 6:15 this morning. I have started three or four different posts. And I am getting nowhere.

It is now nearly 8:00, and I've got this plan to spend my day mostly away from my computer. I have two little ones who need me a little more than they've been getting me over the last few days, and I need a reset.

Maybe a day off will help to clear my head. Because the words sure aren't coming right now.

So if you wonder where I am and where my writing went, I'm spending my grace unwrapping these two today.





...

My friend Emily at Chatting at the Sky hosts a weekly "noticing" party - giving us a chance to unwrap and share the little gifts (and the big ones!) God gives to us in the midst of our dailiness.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Patience to wait when there is nothing clear

The morning was unusually quiet. Purposefully scheduled. A week's intention rising from months of wishes, years of preparation - reparation, really.

It was time.

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea:
A great High Priest, whose name is Love,
Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,
My name is written on his heart;
I know that while in heaven he stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

Clothing myself in this grace, and fixing make-up, hair, and nice-ish clothes that fit my post-pregnancy frame, I climbed into the car with husband and babies, trembling a little in soul.

I'd not faced this yet. Was I ready? I had known forgiveness myself; had I forgiven yet? Could I even acknowledge the hurt that had driven me away, acknowledge its source, open my heart again to the possibility?

Yet I had gained so much from my time away. I found Jesus. I learned to speak His name, albeit quietly yet - still I am so tentative to stand fast in Him. I learned deep what the Gospel is, what it is to me.

Maybe I could just stay where I was, leave off the horizon that drew closer the longer we drove.

I shed a few tears past the lump in my throat, trying to talk, listening, strengthened, quietened by worship, by heart-vision:

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see him there
Who made an end of all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

My hunger deepened, fellowship-hunger whetted and refined over months of interaction with people who know Him, people who live in different places than I live, who receive the same grace I have come to know.

They had not inflicted the wounds I had suffered.

There were others who had not, either. We were going to meet them. There was fear, rising, falling, like heart-palpitations.

Then we were there, and there was noise and greeting and hasty introductions echoing too loud around foyer and fainting, determined heart. Piper was happy to stay and play - a change from her must-have-Mommy cries of the past - and I slipped into a seat, with my hand in Pete's, my baby at my feet.

I didn't know the songs; had I been gone too long? No, I wouldn't have chosen or remembered them - they were a bit wishy-washy for my taste. The lump in my throat was too large for singing anyway. I looked around, wishing for a familiar face.

And I encountered Jesus.

There He was, Immanuel, God come in flesh, Holy Spirit templed in the dust around me, in the dust in me. I was not the only one in the room receiving His grace. I was not the only one who knew Him. He was here.

There were tear-tracks in my make-up now; Pete gave me a tissue. I had forgotten my purse.

"Humble us... Show us what You want us to see today." A prayer I prayed, because my spirit knew I must, because His Spirit in me responded where I had no courage. And show me, He did.

It wasn't the sermon about money, preached by a pastor younger than me. (Oh, I felt old!)

It was this: that I could not say that "I adore" Jesus, when others were singing and saying they did, truthfully from their hearts; I still measure my love for Him - I know much; I consider myself accountable, because with me it is all or nothing. There is no in-between.

It was this: that I could not look down on them because of the grace I myself had received, in which I was that moment dwelling silent on holy ground.

It was this: that I had dismissed. (It hurts to write these words.) That I had judged. That I no longer had to judge, because I was no longer judged - not by Christ, not by the One who could judge me.

I was confronted with Love, the love that sent my Savior - their Savior - to cover me in His righteous. My reactionary fears were shattering, left as ashes in my mouth, the tears I was shedding, healing tears, welcome restoration.

Behold him there, the risen Lamb,
My perfect, spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I Am,
The King of glory and of grace!

One with Himself, I cannot die
My soul is purchased by his blood
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ, my Savior and my God!

And He had not wasted my fear-time, wasted me. Instead He had come to me, met me where I was, afraid as I was, opened me to His heart and given me brave grace to live and to give what will be my whole life one day when I wake satisfied in His likeness. He had taught me to worship, to joy in His goodness, to labor and live and deliver my work for His glory, learning to do the will of God from my heart.

He was more than a Sunday morning worship time, more than a sermon application, more than small group and potlucks and Sunday School. He is more. He is Life. He is my life.

I am not yet what I will be. How can I be less patient with others than He is with me?

We have none of us arrived, but when we see Him, when we see Him as He is, then... Then we will be like Him.

Twila Paris sings, "This is the Faith, patience to wait when there is nothing clear..."

With faith not my own, I waited on God; here He bent low to wait on me.

...

Shared in this week's "One Word at a Time" Blog Carnival at Bridget Chumbley's blog.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

When Barren is Beautiful

Thank you for this thorn embedded in my flesh;
I can feel the mystery, my spirit is made fresh.
You are sovereign still and forever wise;
I can see the miracle opening my eyes

To a proud heart so quick to judge
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges.
The veil has been torn -
And I thank you for this thorn

Thank you for this thorn, fellowship of pain
Teaching me to know you more, never to complain
Thank You for this love planted in my side,
Faithful patient miracle opening my eyes.

I never thought I'd say it without reservation,
But I am truly grateful for this piercing revelation
Of a proud heart so quick to judge,
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges -
The veil has been torn,
And I thank you for this thorn

And if You chose to take it, I will praise You
And thank You for the healing in Your name.
But if it must remain, I thank You for Your rod
Evidence of Father-love for a child of God.

I join You in the sorrow,
So much less than You have borne,
And I thank you, really I thank You...
Lord I thank You; I thank You for this thorn

- Twila Paris, This Thorn

I hever saw myself posting this song, or even echoing it from my heart until today when I found myself humming it, voicing it, singing it during a diaper change.

Yesterday's words were for me. I meant only to give voice to myself and my struggle, meant only to shovel out some of my personal winter to make room for some spring.

Today, writing from here, I am nearly wordless at the depth of the response. I look at your words poured out in yesterday's comment box, filling my email inbox - words of encouragement, affirmation, identification. Words and prayers and Scripture and hope to refresh me, to make me feel young again, to let me know that there is still life to be had, to reach for my heart with yours and wrap it up and send it heavenward.

I have said thank-you so often lately, I can't help but respond with grateful all over the place. I am still with amazement today.

Today has been a slow day, a quiet day, a sunny day with March winds in January bearing growing excitement for us. It has been a day for making room, for choosing trust, for having and holding and trying again.

His mercies are new every morning, I learned in my first round of depression, when every night I fell into bed feeling I'd failed, knowing I'd handed in my miracles. They are still new, every morning.

This is what His faithfulness is.

I can't begin to describe it for you. It is simply something I know.

Last time I walked this path, I wanted what I wanted - the assurance that I would not lose, the end of my pain for crying out loud. God Himself was not reward enough for me. I was alone because I chose my isolation from His grace.

I am not alone this time. I could not have written what I wrote without the new knowledge I have of His love for me.

When I wrote yesterday, I could not thank Him for this, but today I step gingerly into praise. I learned last time not to feel guilty for the good days.

Worship aches out in breath today, in not-so-studied bed-making and hair-doing and nursing and diaper-changing and in writing and in cooking, which I have done.

There are not words adequate for this grateful, for this sense that God cares - He really does.

I look outside, absorb the sun and the blue and the trees and the glory of the morning traveling into noon and into early evening. The smile comes deep, peace that barely curves my lips, peace that lightens my eyes.

He has borne my burdens; you have borne them with Him. He has enriched my soul; He has used your words to do it. He has given me a good day; He has given me Himself.

Should it stun me that I am not wasted after four days in the dark? Should I be so amazed that I am not destroyed?

I am.

And I am, quite frankly, humbled. It as if I am seeing the world through different eyes today. I keep blinking, trying to make sense of it all, trying to figure out what to do with this "enfolded" feeling, with this "surrounded" feeling - this safe that isn't even a feeling so much as it is a faith.

I don't understand why I should feel beautiful like this. Why I should feel cherished like this. Comforted like this. Quieted like this.

Who am I to deserve such treatment?

Slowly, I learn now to pray.

------------------------


This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Thorn

I don't want to publish this post.

I haven't wanted to write it.

Writing it would make it real.

But writing it would make me real. And I need that. I need to be real right now.

I need to write off my excuses and face the creeping deadness and bring it out into the sunlight and expose it there. I need to write it here, during my me-time, because it is all the me-time I really get.

I'm barely getting shower time lately.

I need to write it while I can write it, corral it, give it a place so it doesn't rule me, spinning round and round in my thoughts and my head and my heart like the storm that came through last night, whipping rain against window and wall and roof.

Enough is enough. I can't hide anymore by changing the subject.

...

I am a very open person, but there are two topics I don't talk about with anyone but my husband. One is the topic of my first love. The other is my depression.

It was odd to realize this yesterday while I was talking with Pete. Odd to realize that I've been deliberately avoiding writing from where I am over the last week or so.

Repost an old post. Guest posts are a good idea. Keep it clean. Keep it shallow. Your readers don't need to know what is really going on. Just cloak it here. It's not a lie.

But I know it is a lie. I know because I care too much about what you think. Because I've suddenly found myself checking my statcounter and comparing numbers and trying to come up with ways to promote my blog so I get more traffic because I want to be just. like. somebody. else. And it's no one in particular. Just those somebodies I've run across who get a million comments or a thousand visitors a day.

I got about a thousand visitors one day two weeks ago.

So I've been putting my make-up on here. Covering up my blemishes, making me pretty, dressing up and putting conclusions on this barely-dressed me that is really shell-shocked, struggling, staring, weeping, working, waking.

I am trying to believe that what I am presenting is the real me and it is wanted, while I am hiding away the mess that I am, sweeping up my dust, creating myself one more place to hide.

I cannot do that here.

...

Four days of clouds will do it to me. And they did this last week. It doesn't matter what I do.

The first day, I will turn all the lamps on in the house to warm it, drink tea, cuddle in blankets with babies, write poetry.

The second day, it gets harder. I try to have a good attitude. The crying grates more. I start losing patience with Piper. I grasp at grace.

On the third day, the fog sets in. Doing anything requires herculean effort. Focusing my thoughts beyond putting one foot in front of another is almost impossible. I start to feel fat. Ugly. Lazy. I start to notice that I'm not seeing my kids. The condemnation-whispers intensify.

By the fourth day, I'm almost non-functional. I spend long periods of time staring into space, trying to figure out what I need to do to stand up, put my clothes on, get food, take care of babies. I feel wooden, frozen. The guilt is overwhelming; condemnation roars at me. I have no energy to answer it. I pray for sun.

Additional factors worsen the freeze. The new diet I have to figure out for my gallbladder. Tailoring that diet even further for the baby's thrush. Curling up inside because I know his sick is my fault, and why can't I just get this right. Raising garlic and B dosages and setting off a deeper herxheimer - for both Lyme and Candida.

And every time I herx, the depression deepens for a week until my body adjusts to the new treatment levels.

I can't cry.

...

I register things internally that I can't express. I photograph the light so I can see it on cloudy days. I write my rememberies while they are fresh so that I have them in words, etched in my mind so I can look back and remember what was on the other side of these closing walls.

I try to see Piper, try to see Bredon, try not to look at Pete because I know it is happening again and I am so, so sorry that I can't fight it away every day. Ignoring it doesn't work.

It must be engaged.

I read others' stories of their struggle with it, and I acknowledge it deep but I don't admit.

It must be engaged.

I write about everything else in my life, because I don't want my readers to think it is so hard here, because it's not so hard here every day and this is not the sum of who I am.

But it must be engaged.

And so I am writing it here. I am bringing out my unmade face with the circles under my eyes, the slack expression, my thrown-up hair, frumpy clothing, my post-baby-squared body. I'm writing out the unmade bed, the toddler-toys all over the house, the dishes that I don't do, the laundry I barely notice until I realize how much Pete is doing for me, for us.

I'm opening the door, because I can't keep it closed any longer. This needs to be real. I need to leave my denial behind and spill out the dark the same way I need to spill out the fun and the light and the shallow.

I didn't start this blog for the whole world. I started it to write what I couldn't say. My goal here is not to cloak me or present someone I am not. What good is Jesus to you or to me if I write outside my humanity? What merit does my grace-description hold if I don't share my need of it?

...

I suppose I could journal it, instead of putting me out here for examination and suggestion and judgment. But as long as I can hide from it, I don't have to acknowledge it, and for me the writing of it makes it real. The saying of it, the sharing of it clears my head. It takes the swirling, toxic phrases that play on repeat and turns the light on them, revealing them for the lies they are.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians of a thorn in his flesh that God didn't remove.

I know the depression is my thorn.

I am struggling to understand how God's grace is sufficient. I know it is for me. But I need it to be sufficient for Pete and for Piper and for Bredon.

This is not the way I pictured my life.

But it is what it is, and part of living my life means living this too.

I hope, as always, that you will pardon my dust.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

About Dad: How God Fathers Me

I've been thinking about my dad this week. Trying to remember what I know of him that I haven't been told. Wondering what relationship do I have with him, really?

I've always been pretty independent. As a child, I had my own ideas about life. My own decided way of doing things. It was usually the hard way, my dad would say.

But I remember needing him. He was the only one who could take out the splinters I got in my fingers and toes. "Pop's Splinter Shop," he called it, teasing me every time that he was gonna charge me a nickel I didn't have for his services. As if I would have paid him for doing something he was supposed to do. I knew he was joking, but part of me always wondered...

When I got older, Dad tried teaching me to let my teenage emotions roll, "like water off a duck's back." It never really worked with me. I was determined to have my emotions. I learned instead to control them when needed, then process and deal later. I'm a venter, a rambler, and once I get stuff out, I don't feel it anymore.

But I was talking about Dad.

...

In college, I called Dad a lot. So much so that Mom thought I just didn't care about her. I just didn't have much to say to anyone in college. There was so much going on internally. Most of the time I already knew what I needed to do to fix the thing I was calling about. I just needed Dad to validate my decisions.

I have realized in recent years that I was a pretty decent manipulator. I could talk Dad into just about anything - or he simply let me have my head, figuring he couldn't tell me what to do. He and Mom tell me they never really could.

Relating to my dad on any sort of emotional level is difficult. My dad is so pragmatic. It's the Langner in him. I know it, because I have the same pragmatism. I learned it from my grandma, his mom. There are places he reserves for Mom, feelings he just can't find a place for, things he just doesn't feel at all.

Just before he walked me down the aisle at my wedding, he leaned in and offered, "this is your last chance to back out." It wasn't what I wanted to hear. But it was definitely what Dad had to say. He wouldn't have been Dad otherwise and that would have been weird.

When I was in labor with Piper, Dad was cracking jokes that I wanted to hear, but you can NOT laugh in labor. Ask anyone who has done it. You need those laugh-muscles to end the pain. I asked him afterward what he'd been feeling. He said he was fine. He'd done it eight times with my mom. I found out from my mom recently that he loves babies.

I look at pictures of Dad and me when I was a baby. I see things in his eyes, in his smile that I don't recognize. Things that Mom said she saw again after Pete called to ask permission to date me, court me, marry me. She said he was walking around the house, happy.

I had a hard time picturing it.

...

Bonnie at Faith Barista wrote yesterday of "Looking for My Real Father." She shared excerpts from a book she has been reading about how children tend to view God through the lens of what they have known from their parents, from their dad.

I never call God Father. Not in relation to myself anyway. Jesus is God's Son, God is Jesus' Father. I simply don't consider the fact that I figure into that equation.

But I do, whether I realize it or not.

For years, I lived believing God loved me on a purely intellectual level. My response to this love was duty, and the sense that if I performed well, He would give me what I wanted. It was a rather detailed system I had worked out to manipulate the God of the universe into being what I thought He should be.

It wasn't that coherent. But it was how I lived.

God shattered my illusions with the reality of His deep, consuming love, love that wouldn't let me live in my misunderstanding of Him, love that required me to accept Him on His terms, the Truth of Him, the all of Him that spoke out of the whirlwind to Job and asked him if he really knew who God was, the God who came to Job as a man to show him the man wasn't enough to comprehend God's ways.

I can't yet call this God Abba.

...

When I go home, I know my dad is happy to see me. He holds my children, asks for hugs once in a while, and his eyes smile when he looks at me. If I dare to look into them, I see a question that is never asked, a little bit of awe, a deep affection that is never voiced.

I see my "Daddy."

But I'm grown up now. I'm not supposed to need a Daddy when I'm grown up.

And I'm good at being grown up. Most of the time anyway.

But sometimes when I cry, I miss knowing that things were okay because Daddy said they were okay. Because he was home or he was at work and things were normal and under control and Mom could call him and make things better during the day and he could help when he was home at night.

Suddenly, I realize that this is what I can't release when I think about God. This childlike understanding and trust of His sovereignty. The hope beneath my tears that everything is okay because He is God and He is at work and I can call Him and He will come for my heart.

He'll dig my splinters out free of charge, and put a band-aid on it to help me feel better. He'll whisper His words to me when I wished for something else. And because they come from Him, they will come to mean more to me than I could have known when He said them.

...

I pulled Dad out onto the dance floor with me at my wedding. Dad doesn't dance. I knew he felt awkward. But he came with me and went around a few times and smiled and cracked a few jokes I don't remember, in his way.

He offered me himself with that gracious acquiescence to my heart.

This is why grace means so much to me.

...

God loves me and gives to me and fills me with good things in spite of me, in spite of my frequent, childish misunderstanding of His Person.

This is why Jesus' life and death and resurrection is so vitally important. His condescension of God into flesh was driven by an incredible love, a deep Father-affection revealed in the setting aside of His God-glory to become like me, to dance with me where I am. This is grace, His Father-waiting and teaching and helping me to comprehend what I will never fully know until I meet Him face to face - when I will see Him as He is.

I get only glimpses of my dad that I can know as an adult. As a grown-up, I am learning to relate to him on an adult level. But my child-heart still thinks of him as "Daddy." I wonder if I will ever grow up.

With God it is backward. The growing-up means becoming more childlike, becoming like Jesus, the Son of Man who deeply trusted His Abba, Father.

"Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

- Mark 14:36

Greater love...

...

I watch Pete forming a relationship with Piper now, listen to her "Daddy!", laugh at the giggles and excitement only he can produce from her, and I wonder what questions she will have about him someday. I wonder how she will be disappointed by him. I wonder what she will learn of God through her relationship with him.

I hope she will know how much they love her.

------------------------


This post also linked at Holy Experience for Walk With Him Wednesday.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Jesus for My Children

He makes my small hands look large with his tiny.

Sometimes he looks up at me when I'm doing something or saying something, and I look down and catch his wide-eyed wonder.

And he smiles. Just for me right now. Goofy smiles for giggling. Happy smiles for flying. "I want to stay up smiles" that come by night-light late when I'd much rather be sleeping than rocking. Smiles that make me feel so loved when he meets my eyes as if he is talking to me, sharing his little happy heart.

I think he likes me.

This amazes me.

Already he is growing. Already his skin is losing that new-baby softness. Already his weak is stronger, his eyes are brighter, his voice is louder.

My heart is planting dreams, hoping stories for my children, for our family, praying laughter and conversation and silliness and dancing and happy and together-growth. I picture my children talking to each other, saying one another's names.

Names that we chose for them...

I imagine Piper's first crush, Bredon's first ballgame, girls' night out, boys' time...

I think we should get a dog. A family needs a dog. That would really annoy our house cats. They would so deserve it.

How will I talk about Jesus with my children? I am only beginning to learn. If you ask Piper who made her, half the time her answer is "Mickey Mouse."

She is a silly.

We read to them before we go to bed. We go to bed at the same time right now, with Piper needing her normal and Bredon up late with evening colic.

I want them to know about God. To know how He makes me who I am, who I don't realize I am until I think about it.

I realize it takes courage to stand in Jesus and say "I am human; I am justified. I am dead to sin and alive to God now." I have been gaining that courage to live so free.

I feel so very young sometimes. So unready to be the mother that I am now.

I notice my hands as I hold my children.

They don't know how small I feel. They don't know that I am only me for them because of Jesus loving me.

I think sharing that love with them doesn't have to frighten me. It is just His bigger hand on my tiny.

Every day I pray for grace.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Rescued

We came to the sea, and tears blurred vision, word-echoes muffled wave-sound on sand as more of me fell away. As if the wind moving the surf could sweep me into the water for washing.

Had I done enough, surrendered enough, opened myself enough to Him?

Wrapping arms around myself, I tried to breathe.

I felt utterly alone.

Had God abandoned me? Was He holding Him back from me because I had failed Him?

------------------------

I'm at (in)Courage today. Click over for the rest of the story.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

God Unchanging

January fourth.

Four days into the new year.

I started a post this morning. Got interrupted by my two. Hated the post when I came back to read it.

It was just another post about the new year and what I want to do in it. Vastly unoriginal at this point, and not very much of me in it to make it more original.

I'm setting too many rules for myself again.

Right now, I don't need rules.

I need grace.

The kind of grace that means I don't have to measure up to the person I'm trying to be right now, the person I feel I have to be. The kind of grace that reminds me that even though it's a new year, I am still the same person, and God is still the same Person - yesterday, today, forever.

I cleaned up our bedroom this morning, with Bredon on the bed, setting up a holler. Piper, not to be outdone, came up with ten different issues that Mommy had to fix, now. With both kids screaming at me, I found myself staring at the ceiling as the "inadequate" rushed over me in waves that brought sudden tears.

Inadequate to mother two. I made repeated vows to stop having kids now. But oh, Bredon is so precious, so tiny. How can I close my heart to it again?

Inadequate to give my heart to a photography project that has come my way this year. I can never be so spiritual as I need to be to be the person God really wants for this job. What was I thinking to accept?

Inadequate to be His, to name His name, to speak of Him at all. I almost vow to give Him up; the words catch in my throat. Is He not enough for this too?

I'm out of control. Everything I know is in transition, overhauled in this new life we have now. The space I've gained for myself is no longer there to depend on. My schedule is shot. Yearly goals are impossible to make in moments driven by the immediate.

I'm still the person I was; I am not so afraid of losing that as I was - but I must be changed through this. It is the nature of growth, of God-work.

My responsibilities are simple now: eat, nourish, clean as I can, love my babies - keep my head above water. It is not much. It is not grand. I am not impassioned in doing these things.

I remember how used to spend time, and tears come again, unbidden, because I miss being 16 years old with nothing more to do than read one book after another after another. Life was so dream-full then.

And now I am living my dreams deferred, and they are not what I thought they would be; with these gifts, there is a reminder of God, a need to acknowledge Him. I am no longer able to use the gifts without gratitude, to live my own dreams without His strength.

The night before I went into labor with Bredon, He spoke reassurance; that He would be God on this side of the gift as He was before I knew who He was. I could count on that, rest in His unchanging heart, His Godness that I still don't comprehend. That I still don't need to comprehend for His grace to overshadow me, for His Son to be my righteousness, my adequate, my exceeding abundant above.

And I know where my heart will be this year, learning deep about this Son of Man, God-with-us who revealed the Father, who became sin for me, who was and is and always will be Alpha Omega, my enough.

Not Yet Ready, But Love...

Having a little driving time is good for me. I think better as the world passes by, with the movement of car on pavement, with music and lyrics of God-songs telling and retelling about Him, about life, about me.

On my way from my midwife appointment yesterday (at which I discovered that all the contractions I've had haven't been for nothing - I was 4cm dilated!), I was listening again to Vicky Beeching's song, Captivated.

"May my life be one unbroken gaze fixed upon the beauty of Your face..."

Her lyric got caught in the web that is my pregnant brain and took a rabbit trail into the video I shared in the link above.

Instead of seeing myself gazing at Jesus, I saw Him living His life, engaging with others, pursuing and treasuring relationship. I saw how much He valued the ones He loved.

I'm not one to rush out and do things for the sake of doing them. Most of the time, I simply don't have the resources to pour me out the way I often feel that I must. But sometimes, I hold myself back from giving of myself, unready in my heart or in my sense of the proper timing, unwilling to be a hypocrite for the sake of appearances, willing to sacrifice my image for authenticity.

As I looked at Jesus' interactions with those in His life, I couldn't help but acknowledge how little I look like Him sometimes. He poured Himself out ALL the time, it seemed. I am lucky if I can admit to doing it at all for my family.

Mentally, I was ready to check out from this train of thought. There was too much room for guilt, for inadequacy, for failure, for condemnation.

But in His way (God is so gentle with me, it's astounding...), He brought my vision to Cana, in view of Jesus' face when His mother brought the wine situation to Him. I heard His voice, a little strained, unready and uncalled to display Himself in the ministry that would soon consume His whole life.

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Now both Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

Now there were set there six waterpots of stone, according to the manner of purification of the Jews, containing twenty or thirty gallons apiece. Jesus said to them, “Fill the waterpots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, “Draw some out now, and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it.

When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom. And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!”

- John 2:1-10

"My hour has not yet come." It is not yet time... I'm not ready...

Yet for love of her, for her trust in His provision, He gave of Himself in spite of it.

I am too often afraid of Jesus until I look into His love.

I may not have much to give right now; I may be unsure of timing, uncertain of my own heart, of the depth of my love for God and for my family.

But I have been given an earthen-vessel Treasure that He means to pour out - how do I know it won't be the best wine at the wedding?





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

A Long Comment - The Cost of the Gift

Katdish, one of my new blog friends, guest-posted over on Peter Pollock's blog today, and I started to leave a comment that grew into a book, so I thought I'd post my thoughts on her post here, instead of filling their writing space with all my hot air.

--------------------------

I told my sister yesterday that one of the most incredible things I have gained in this last year of waiting for God is a deep understanding of my own need for a Savior. Every day.

When I began seeking Him, I wanted to do it "right," to understand and surrender to Him daily, constantly engaging and remembering the magnitude of what He'd done for me. But it got old. Really old.

You see, the Gospel has no value to you until you yourself have need of good news. It's not about doing right. It's about hope. It's about a Savior who came to clothe us in His own God-holy so that we are not destroyed.

You know how it goes, though. The more I tried to grow and change to be like Him, the less I saw of Him, the harder I fought against what I believed to be His will for me.

It wasn't until He brought an end to my own efforts to please Him - and still loved me! - that I saw what I had been doing. I realized I wasn't just lukewarm - I wasn't even ever burning for Him! My "passion" for Him was wrapped up in my own idea of right and righteous and holy - and from my own perspective, I was better than you all!

I tumbled off my own god-stool and hit the ground, HARD.

Once I realized I could not shape or drive my own passion, could not justify myself, could not sanctify myself, I found myself looking up at God, going, "now what?"

"Wait on the Lord," He said. "I will complete the work I have begun in you." There was a whole lotta "I love you" in there too. The kind of "I love you" that said, "I have shown you my love in this, that I sent My beloved Son into your flesh and let Him die your death."

It no longer works for me to write or think or approach anyone with the perspective that I am anything. I can't get around the incredible heart-aching daily understanding that I have absolutely nothing to offer God or anybody else if Jesus didn't live and die and arise. I have SUCH need. Sometimes it seems that all I am is need.

It is not remembering the cost that has changed me. It is the recognition of my own desperate need for redemption - and His loving desperation to redeem me. This everyday remembrance of grace both humbles and ignites.

I wrote once that real love means entering into the life of another, looking through his eyes, feeling with his heart, walking in his shoes, dying his death. This, Jesus did for me. This, I am only beginning to learn to do for Him.

At this point in my life, it's not the "cost of the purse" that makes the difference to me. It's how much I need the thing. That, and the fact that the need has been met.

I can't believe His incredible grace.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Considering Grace

Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

- Jn. 6:28-29

I consider what He does not demand, remembering words shared in nighttime with one who does not yet grasp this faith, and I am awed. Who am I that I should understand? What have I done that He should bestow such grace so freely upon me that I should do this work He ordained for me?

The listing comes easier today:

*51: Today, I know who I am in Him

*52: I am not afraid

*53: Rose-gold light and

*54: Autumn-Christmas leaves afire with glory

*55: Baby-growth in-womb waiting

*56: Quiet to rest for God-timing

*57: Sun when it was supposed to be cloudy

*58: Tears - not all are bad

*59: Snow to make a younger brother's dream come true

*60: A younger sister's horse-dream realized

*61: Onesies and stocking-stuffers come by mail

*62: Conversations and prayers with loved ones waiting

*63: Community who cares where I did not know

*64: Three more projects finished and

*65: An unexpected toddler nap

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This post also linked at Holy Experience, sharing with the Gratitude Community in listing my own One Thousand Gifts.






(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Breathing Through

The night passes in five, ten-minute intervals.

I am conscious that I am resting, drifting in and out of dreams and silly head-stuck songs, aware of baby-movement, of womb-tightening that has not stopped for hours.

It is an almost-normal night. There is a full moon. Pete wants to rest early; Piper napped at five, so she is awake. She plays with my hair, sticks her fingers up his nose. She giggles when my fingers find her chin in the dark, and I giggle too, and she giggles again, and we both have the giggles. Pete is grumpy. I cuddle her close.

Soon.

The midwife has been called. She is resting too. I am glad not to disturb her tonight, worried that each contraction will be the last, that I will be embarrassed because I did not know - again.

But I know. It will be soon.

Morning breaks quiet, and still they come.

I eat. I drink. I remember another morning like this, so nervous. Mom and Dad came in the thunderstorm the night before. We slept and woke and waited almost all the next day. And then Piper came, and I was a Mama.

I am not less nervous now.

Pete has left for work early, to take care of some pressing things, while Piper sleeps and labor comes slow. I breathe through as I sit, willing the baby to drop a bit, hoping to hold him soon. He was busy last night.

The pain comes low, insistent, then eases. I surrender to it, last night's shock-shivers lifted. I consider how this pain - of all pains - begs me to my knees; I wonder how I will meet God there today.

I hope it will be today. This can go on for days, they say.

I open my hands, mutely asking His nearness, His entrance into this journey of mine. The tears aren't from the labor. They are longing welling up, vulnerable seeking sufficient.

And I can ask this, for the labor of another mother brought God human into our life. Into our death. To bring Life that is God with us.

The full moon sets; the sun rises through clouds.

I wait for Him.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

Repost: Crazy Grief, Wild Joy

There are days, I hardly dare whisper, when this mothering almost feels like a death watch; watching the slow death of now and you here. New-You continually rebirths and I laugh, marvel, awe... and finger the beauty of all these husks left behind. Is mothering this endless coupling of crazy grief, wild joy? Mourning the child who is no more and never again will be and embracing this new and wondrous child just now becoming.

~Ann Voskamp, Heart Beats, the Past Goes Nowhere

Mothering began for me one early evening in July 2007, when the baby who had been moving in my womb emerged from my body with a tiny, "where am I?" cry that brought an answer from a place in my heart I didn't know existed, an "oh baby, Mama's here; it's okay" that quelled my own tears even as I set my feelings aside to soothe her. I remember the physical aspects of Piper's birth, the emotion of the labor, but I don't often dwell on that amazing, vulnerable moment when I became a mother. I don't often want to; it always makes me cry. It threatens my pragmatic approach to letting her grow, challenges my parenting with the reminder that she is a little, vulnerable person who needs my intense love.

In the days and months after she was born, we crossed each other often, testing boundaries, learning who we were in this new relationship, who we weren't. I found I couldn't do the things I'd thought mothers did; I couldn't do the things I'd done before, not without taking her heart into account. I learned that every moment is a new moment in which I can try again to love if I didn't love in the last moment. I found mercy I hadn't known I needed. I discovered depths to myself and my ability to give I never knew I had.

And my heart began to change. Things that were important to me before became less important. I learned to prioritize my rest, my time with her, my time with Pete, so that everything I planned didn't have to be done before I loved. A new desire germinated in me, something that must have come from God, a desire to deliberately love this little one, to set my own goals aside and see what His are for her.

It is not hard to tell people now that I will be taking a sabbatical from my photography for a few years. I am almost surprised at this, more at the idea that I am more interested in investing in my child - now children - than in pursuing a dream that requires so much of my heart. I am a little afraid of this new direction, because I it asks me to live from that place in my heart that so willingly answered the cry of my daughter to calm her with my self, poured out for her.

The pain that comes to us in childbirth is more than just physical pain. Even as we bring forth life, we know that death has begun. I often ponder Mary's emotions, holding her firstborn Son, wondering that He was her Savior and her baby at the very same time, watching Him live and die and with all her mother's heart wishing she could turn back the clock and do something, anything differently so as not to lose Him.

Whether we lose our children in the womb, or face their loss at birth or at 2 months of age, or at 21 or older, we are brought face to face with a pain that wrenches our invested hearts from us, that leaves us crying out to God for the reasons, that keeps us inextricably connected with our desperate need for something more than the death that is here, robbing the life He created us to give.

I cannot give the life of one of my children for the life of these others whose mothers have loved them and watched them die, but I know the heart of God, the One who could give His Son to die in our place and bring life to us and our children through His Life. As I open my heart and my hands and my children to Him for whatever He knows that I don't, I am praying that the "crazy grief, wild joy" I experience and share with them will bring about more than their physical birth, more than the letting go as I do what I can to prepare them to live in this world that frightens even me at times with its bleakness.

Can my mothering somehow open a path for them into God's love that is far deeper than mine, if I may some how bring forth life in them that is His life, something that is more than responsible and right, something that will give them a passion to lay down their own lives for the love of Him?

It is always here, this sense of loss we bear as mothers, whether our child has died or grown beyond infancy or left our homes. Piper is a little girl now, not a baby. Button is four inches long now, but will be much bigger at birth. I will watch as perfect, womb-protected skin absorbs the atmosphere, and cry and gag a little as the newborn scent fades away into the malevolent diaper-changing. New words will become sentences and paragraphs and chatter that I can't turn off, and cooing will become insistent crying and squealing. And one day I'll watch my babies walk out the door, ready for life, not realizing how much I have watched them live already, how much they have given me.

I hope through the tears that come already that I won't have spent my life on myself and my dreams for fulfillment in motherhood. Because when they walk out that door, the only One who will be with them is the One who has been with me, who sustains me, who gives me life even as my own mother watches me grow further from that first baby she wanted so much that I was.

It is an endless coupling, this simultaneous grief and joy, passed from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, this legacy of death and life and what it means to walk with the God of the universe.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.

And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak, knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

~2 Cor. 4:7-18

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Re-Posted for sharing in the blog carnival hosted at Peter Pollock's Rediscovering the Church today.





(Image © Informal Moments Photography)