OK, so background: When I was a freshman in college, my mom and sis were away for a week. I was driving back to KC from school late at night when I started having car trouble. Thinking my sad car wouldn't make it to my dad's house, I stopped by my mom's to let the car rest a bit and gather some things.

At 1am, as I reached to open the back door, there was no handle to turn. The door had been kicked open by a size 9 boot, the house was ransacked, and the front door was swinging wide. Still swinging. As in, they just left, these mean robbers who stole our computer and tv and beautiful new CD player/radio my dad had just given me for graduation. Even the couch was upturned, kitchen drawers ripped out, our cat was missing, and the only thing left untouched was the baby grand piano. And that front door was still creaking in the wind.

I'm not sure I'll ever forget it, this one act of violation. A stranger coming into your home and leaving it bare. I was safe, fine, the police came and my dad rescued me.

But the memory stays.

***



Well, here we are again. Back to having Matt gone for a few days and I'm staying up way past my bedtime watching shows online waiting for bad men to come kill me and steal my macbook. I always tell him, "No it's fine, go! Have fun! Do what you do! We'll be grand!" But in the end, I scowl at him from the window as he departs, leave him with short kisses, saying, "No, really, fine. Go. Have fun. Whatever." It's the true mettle of life overseas, how well the wife and mom can do on her own for long stretches of time.

It's ok, really. I'm an adult, you know. I have birthed three children and travelled to Israel by myself at 19 and can drive on the left side of the road in bustling city centre traffic. But leave me alone overnight in a new-to-me house and WIND and creaking and three kiddos and no one to make me coffee in the morning or protect me from killers... I mean, really. It's fine. Go.

Anyway, here are the things that happen when the dad is away:

1. Invite people over for dinner and they bring their own pizza dough! Brilliant idea! Big hit with kids. New friends for life.
2. Tell man who comes to door working for UNICEF, asking for donations, "I'm sorry, I can't make a commitment right now because my husband is out of town." Well done, Karen.
3. Wait all night for nice looking (but probably totally crazy) UNICEF man to come back with his other good for nothing UNICEF friends to steal your babies.
4. Kitchen gets cleaned. Kitchen stays cleaned. I'm not naming names.
5. Kids are in bed by bedtime.
6. Watch three episodes of Doctor Who back-to-back until you pass out on your laptop. This is good for staying awake and becoming paranoid. Also, I may have an addiction.
7. Kids are up way before you are.
8. Pizza for breakfast (pretty sure this happens when the mom is away, too).
9. While you sleep in, the three year old demolishes an entire package of custard cremes, only to wake you up at 8:30 demanding more "snacks."
10. Netflix.

This is only just Day One with the dad away. I'm hoping we may actually venture out of doors, enjoy the sun (?) and build a fort or two. But I'm also counting on delivery from the chipper, diet coke in the fridge and three more seasons of Doctor Who to keep me company until Matt returns home.

At any rate, I'll return the favour next month when I'm away for almost an entire week. To France. For work. Boom.

***

Are you a home alone person, or a stay up all night waiting for robbers and/or killers person?

Dear Me (at 17)

Dear Me,

You think you love him. But you don't. On your 17th birthday he will give you a necklace and take you to a Cranberries concert. And you will break his heart.

You don't mean to. You love boys until they love you back, and then you fly away. This is how you work. Then there's another boy, and you think you are just broken enough for each other, that your traumatic childhoods and love for flannel and U2 have bound you together. You think that him loving you back will make all the black turn to light, but he won't.

And you will be ok.

I know you think value is all tied up in who favors you, who compliments you, the A you did or didn't get, the solo that went to someone else, the taste of a first kiss. You think acceptance is just out of reach, you feel on the fringes, you are self-conscious about your lack in ability in peeling an orange (don't ask me why - it was a thing). Even when you succeed in the best choir and the coveted acting troupes, you still feel a fraud, still long for approval.



I wish I could tell you to fight it. I wish I could tell you that the boys don't define you. The solos and the As don't define you. Not even your apple cheeks or your curly hair don't define you, though I do still admire those (spoiler alert: it gets curlier).

What will define you is slowly coming into view. You will lose it for awhile, but when you do catch glimpses of it - on the first crisp fall evening at 18, when you leave Kansas behind at 19, when you walk in Galilee - I want you to see, fully see, that you are worth so much more than a gold plated necklace or a hot prom date in an even hotter blue Jeep.



I'm not gonna lie, there is more breaking to be done. But the putting together, there is holy beauty in that. 

Let Him do that for you; bringing you soul sisters, weaving you songs, and taking you across the sea to a Wicklow mountaintop.

Let them do that for you; three imperfect little people who cuddle you in your sleep and slap your cheeks in fits of laughter.

Let the one you know you love, the one who loves you back, do that for you (I promise he will come along sooner rather than later). He'll be poor and will fill your living room with sawdust, but he will cook and carry your tears in his heart, and your head will fit perfectly in the nook of his shoulder.

There's no need to fly away now.

Also, ditch the tube socks. My So-Called Life will only last one season. The red hair can stay for awhile, though. You rock red.

Love
Me, twice your age <wince>

PS - Remember this as your own girl - your tiny twin - grows. You will need to show her, and she will need to see it, too.



I like to say I don't like teens, but I think that's because I didn't really like myself as a teen. But in honour of a new book for teen girls, here I am: writing to teenaged me. It feels... painful. But redeemed. What would you say?

On the day I started a Facebook page

On the day I started a Facebook page (which was yesterday), I had almost instant buyer's remorse.

"It'll be me and 5 friends who feel sorry for me and then I'll say something off-hand about alcohol and someone will unfriend me, or call our employer, or stop supporting us (all of which has actually happened), and then I'll have to censor, and do I really want more readers, because sometimes I just complain or cry or write love letters to the lock on my bathroom door, and really, what do I have to offer about faith and motherhood and transition that wiser women haven't noted before me, so maybe I should just delete it and let it go."

But I kept it anyway, and as of this count have 13 friends who "Like" the blog, so that's like a 150% return on my initial risk assessment (that might be fuzzy math). And it's not so much about the readers, or the Likers. It's about community and accountability and maybe seeing where and how God might allow me to write, work, or serve in the future.

And rabbit holes are fun.

And so is moving outside your comfort zone.

So Outside Comfort Zone, I'm Karen. And I write. And occasionally I yell. But it's still a poem to the King, and to you. And to anyone else who has a river of words flowing from their thirsty souls, just waiting to spring forth into the wide open sea. Or in this case, Facebook.

When it's too much

Yesterday I woke up teary-eyed over a typo.
Last night I went to bed teary-eyed because my baby was still alive.

This morning I woke up breathless to see aforementioned baby's smiling face.
Tonight I'm readying for bed breathless because I'm so tired and frustrated and downright angry at how out of control all three children can be at once.

It's been a tough coupla days to be Mom.

The baby fell yesterday. Off a chair. Onto concrete. He was silent, his eyes rolled back, and he seized. And I thought he would die right there in my arms. I thought his brain would go to sleep and never awake. I thought the paramedics would take him from me and he'd never return.

But those things didn't happen. My despairing thoughts did not become realities. He was limp, he was trying to sleep, he was unresponsive, but then he came back to life. He didn't want the neck stabilizer on. He didn't want to be touched and felt and have a light pointed in his eyes. He just wanted his dad as he walked through the door, 10 short minutes later. He wanted a nappy change because he was absolutely stinky. He wanted to go home and watch the wiggles and dance and sing.

Because the fall was from a short heighth and he quickly became his old belligerent self (seizing is not uncommon with concussions, they say... as if it's the most normal thing in the world to see your child's body shake involuntarily), we decided not to expose him to hospital craziness and instead brought him home and watched him, watched him, watched him. Like hawks.

So every time we stirred in the night, we took turns checking on him. I awoke this morning ready to see him whole and normal and most definitely protected by God. We cuddled, played, ate, wrestled, sat, sang... the whole bit. Just overwhelmed with the delight that comes from feeling you've been given a second chance.

And then we went to eat and talk God stuff with our church family. And then I was not so grateful... with the water spilling, with the food throwing, with the biting, with the screaming, with the fighting, with the wetting, with the talking back... it wasn't just the baby, it was the whole lot of them. All three rebelling against me, as if they knew today I would be at my absolute weakness.

We went into the meal feeling all sorts of missional family perfection, and I left with my head hanging between my legs because I still, years and countries and lives later, so do not have it all together.

In 48 hours I can feel it all. Frustration, fear, despair, joy, gratitude, elation, anger, sadness, exhaustion. I feel it all, and it all feels too much for this mama who held a lifeless baby less than 36 hours ago.



Oh, Lord, thank you, thank you for protecting him. Please, please, guide me in how to mother them.

To write about something...

I spend a good portion of every day, looking at this rectangular little blogger post space, trying to fill it with words. There's a lot going on in my head right now, probably even more going on in my heart, and I'm having an extraordinarily difficult time trying to get it out, write it down, let it go. I try to think of a word to start with, or a thought to express... and thinking takes exceptionally long, with nothing appearing or no thought allowing expression. Then, just when I think I'm on the verge of something, just when the jumbled words start coming into focus and I think I almost might be able to form a phrase or a sentence - BOOM - a baby wakes up. Or a kettle is whistling. The phone rings, or a child needs to be fed. And the words turn fuzzy again, and disappear.

It's been awhile since my writing has been so plagued by chaos. Eight years ago now, after the boy was born. Overwhelmed was the feeling of the day/week/month, but there was a story brewing... a story that had a good chance of being published. Published not just online, but in print and with a paycheck to boot. I had had other stories published in print before then - college newspaper, internship at missions magazine - but nothing in a magazine of this caliber, nothing this relevant, (so to speak). The ideas were there, the layout, the outline... there was a purpose behind the article and I knew it and felt it and was so excited to get started. I thought my career might be about to take off, and then...

Nothing. Just nothing.

I sat down at the computer with one word: "He". Nothing came after. Only a pronoun. And that pronoun sat alone for hours, then days, then weeks, followed only by a blinking cursor taunting me. I emailed my editor and said, "I can't do it. Nothing is coming out. I'm sorry. I think it's the baby..." And that was it. The end of my short writing career. I never wrote anything else for that particular publication, online or otherwise.

The boy had invaded every part of me. Not in a terribly bad way, but in the way that babies do, and I literally had no room for anything else. My mind was invaded by ideas and words and fears and doubts, and there they stayed. I could not get them out, on paper or with voice. My mind was trapped by thoughts as much as my body was trapped by a growing, hungry baby who wanted - needed - only me.

This era of postpartum depression laster another nine months or so, till the fuzzy thoughts began to clear and my voice was able to articulate bits and pieces, till the joy of motherhood found me and I stood on two feet again. The writing, too, came back in a way, albeit as a minor player and no longer a viable career option. Slowly, patiently, the cursor began to move.

So I guess today, it's easier to write about the past, about what happened before, as opposed to what's happening now. I'm not sure I really know what's happening now. I think I've actually written about it before, here, but this is different. I'm not sure how, but it feels different this time. Or as the girl says, "super, super strange." Until the strangeness passes... I'm not sure when anything of value will appear.

Free to be you and me

Lately I've been feeling like I'm losing pieces of myself.

This has been a hard week. Really, a hard month. I distinctly remember talking to a coworker/friend (more friend, than coworker) exactly one month ago and her saying, "I think you're doing great. Do you think you're doing great?" And I replied, "I think I'm on the verge of doing not-so-great."

I wrote a post awhile back about my own self-censorship. This is almost an entirely new arena for me, who so easily and happily sticks foot in month and tongue in cheek. Lately, I've been wrestling with a lot of stuff internally (in my brain, and stuff)... things which have been brewing for a long time, that I've really only shared with the husband, the sister, and occasionally with the quasi-anarchist cousin.  Now I find myself at the point where I feel an overwhelming need to express such thoughts/ideas/opinions/questions. I also find myself at a point in time where I can't share these things publicly without repercussions (even on my own, non-ministry blog, there are consequences).

Now don't get all riled up thinking the worst (Mom). Nothing fundamentally has changed inside this brain/heart (my salvation, I'm sure, remains intact). But really, the ideas are more practical in nature, more... holistic? More of an independent experiment? I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say... it's hard having to be so cryptic.

Here's the thing: I willingly signed on for this theoretical spotlight on my life. We talked a lot in prefield training about giving up our rights. Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness (along with other unnamed and not nearly as important "rights") should be... maybe... if we can... checked at the feet of Christ if we are to be His ambassadors. Ok, sure, I can do that. No prob.

Except... I'm wondering if one of my rights that I'm expected to give up is the right to be who I fundamentally am. I guess - it could be argued - I'm just expected to give up the old, less spiritually mature me, happily assume the role of the new psuedo-Pauline me, if it lurks in there somewhere. You know, the old man/new man thing. To me, it seems I'm not only becoming the quieter, meeker Me, but also Me minus thoughts & opinions, creative license & passion. Quickly turning into the shamed Me (yes, I have felt an increasing amount of shame as the old me parts ways with the new me). Or the Me who cries a lot. 

[ick, I'm just noticing how many times I say me, me, me... perhaps that's just as telling...]

This is not necessarily a reflection of life overseas. On the contrary, my new friends here seem to really want me to be me. Rather, it may very well be just a reflection of my own self-imposed restrictions for fear of rejection and failure. Or it could be an overreaction to the awareness that I am no longer my own person. Apart from belonging to Christ (which I willingly submitted to long ago), I now belong to one country, four churches, 176 individuals/families (who I also willingly submitted to), and I speak/act on behalf of all of their opinions/desires/beliefs/politics.

In conclusion, call this Pity Party 2.0. Commence consequences.

[This is why I have my own blog and why I write. Because there ARE thoughts that must be expressed, and if they aren't, I will fade away.]