My initial inclination with every post is to start that first sentence with "Hiding in the..." It's true: I'm hiding when I'm writing. There's a match struck and I'm off to the bedroom/office/toolshed before the fire burns out.

She's outside playing with older neighbour girls, and the sad truth is I don't even know their names. I don't think I've ever even seen their parents and all I know is they run up and down the sidewalk, from one apartment to the next, carrying reese's pieces and fingernail polish remover. The three huddle together on top of a picnic table and they all jump, hands hidden behind backs, when I call out to her for dinner. This bugs me a bit, and as she walks in the door, I ask what every mother wants to know at any given moment, every time her child walks through the door.

"What were you talking about?"

And as soon as my tongue hits the t, her big brown eyes form puddles of tears, and my heart sinks into the place she grew for nine months.

A half-hour's worth of crying and pleading hits its peek when she cries, "I'm afraid to tell you because you won't want me in your family anymore." This is when you know you've crossed a parenting threshold, the one you know will come soon enough, but you're always surprised when it does. You think to yourself, she's only five!, and it's too soon for her to know shame.

So the truth comes out and it's not super great, but it's not worst case scenario, either. You explain to her about value and violence, about privacy and respect, about her body and theirs. You hate to even bring up strange words bearing heavy weight, but it's too late now and if you don't define them, they will. And you tell her that secrets lie. You explain what it means when a friend, or a stranger, or an adult tells her not to tell. And you know it could be so much worse... but really, it feels like the door has been opened and you can't keep her from walking beyond its shallow frame.

These children, I've never seen their parents, but I wonder if I have to love thy neighbour as my child. Loving thy neighbour as myself seems like nothing in comparison.

Shameful thoughts on home

Home...

When i first saw this topic, my chest filled with angst. If you know me or have been reading this blog for any short length of time, you know nothing quite disturbs me more than thinking about, wondering about, longing for a home. I don't really want to write about it anymore. I don't really want to think about it anymore. And I've spent more than a few hours praying that God would fill me with content with or without a home and let the idea, the dream, the impossibility of a perfect long-term security leave my heart so that the empty space it reveals can be filled with other things of greater value.

Today, I wait for an email to confirm whether or not my home is in Ireland or if we should just go ahead and plant ourselves here. I'm pretty sure I know where they will point us (back overseas, where we wish to go), but the waiting is driving me crazy and they sure are taking their time and I really really want to be selfish and petty about waiting to go home...

But...

The longing for home does not belong solely to me. I can't get on my high horse and demand a "home" when there are millions of children literally without a roof over their heads, there are babies with no hopes of homes - ever. There are mothers who have no place to take their children for protection or solace or security. There is a world filled with people with this same longing, but without any of the modern conveniences that I so harshly reject because, to me, it isn't enough to call home.

I'm wracked with shame when I truly think about it, when I look around me and in my heart I say with so little care, "Nope, not good enough, sorry." This is my sin, my shame, to have more than enough and to reject it anyway.

Oh, God, replace this sin with You. Take away this pride. Remove these shameful thoughts. Don't waste these precious resources on a heart so dark. Take those babies, those children, those mothers, and give them all I forfeit. I am unworthy. And they are Yours.



confession: sometimes I edit, and sometimes I write for six minutes, but still I write furiously with gypsy mama. where does your heart say is home?