Dear Sister,

I've had tears in my eyes all weekend. Dumb ocean. Of course I missed the 2 am (and then the 3am) texts. Of course cell reception would be bad. Of course I wouldn't hear your voice tell me those sweet words. Of course your world would be sleeping, while mine would be rejoicing, wanting to shout from rooftops.

Of course, none of that matters.

Ella is fine wearing a dress, she wants you to know that. Matt told Jack, who came downstairs twinkling, giving his own play-by-play to the others. I sat on the couch with my coffee, blinking away the happiness, the melancholy of being separated. It's bittersweet, just a bit, but so much more sweet than I can fathom.

You will be a wife soon. A wife!

Oh, we have prayed for that man. Knowing God could only create a wonder, someone who would be good enough for you, someone who could match your creativity and your joy and still joke about your tall forehead. Only those of us who love you best could understand that, and we're all in on the joke because it shows how much he loves you. Just you. For you.

We toasted you last night. Because you are worth celebrating, not just for the engagement, but for your past and present and future. For how God made you and how He knows you. For Nathan and the adventures you will have together. For the joy and wonder (perseverance and patience, too) we know is coming. And for the little art-cultivating, music-playing, people-loving babies that may come your way.

For all of it.

So Sister, here's to you. On your engagement. Even from afar, three cheers to you and your fella. Hip Hip... 

Hooray.

Love,
Me.



I write letters to my sisters, both the God-given ones and the blood-tied ones. Letters for the regular days and for the totally-amazing-non-regular-in-every-way days. This day was one of the latter... more of both, though, are still to come.

The thing about mother's day : we are all mothers

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come. Prov 31:25

I have an amazing mother, who raised me and my sister on her own, working hard and relying on the family of church and neighbours when her own lived wide across the state. It's a testimony to faith, really, that when she was alone in a big city with two little girls, men of God came alongside her. Women of God looked after her. And we were not alone, raised by our mother, and the Church.

The Church, she is not perfect. There was a time or two when she was found terribly wanting and absent, when we were in crisis and the hand of help was withdrawn. My mother was not a widow, you see, and we were not orphans. Not in the technical sense, anyway. And though she grieved and cried, wounded, my mother held on to faith. To God. She forgave, and waited for the Church to come around.



My mother's story is the story of a million mothers. And our story, my sister's and mine, could've been told a million different ways. Runaways and lonely girls longing for a daddy's love, and now that we know better - the world knows better - we see those runaways and lonely girls for what they were: taken and abused and trafficked and worse. That could've been our story, too, for girls without fathers at home are easy targets. And who's to say that we did not have a bullseye on our backs a time or two?

But we had our mother, and the Church, and we were saved in more ways than one.

So when I think of mother's day, I think of my mother who held on, holds on still. Giver of life and love, firmly fixed on Him. My greatest champion and my oldest friend.

I think of the women in our church, who watched me walk down the aisle with tears in their eyes. I think of the men who took us mother's day shopping, helped us pick out necklaces and bouquets. I think of Matt who was prayed for by dozens of saints before my shoelaces were ever untied.

I think of my grandmothers - all still living - who mothered us from near or far, asking for strength and mercy, forgiving. I think of my aunts, who made room in their homes and hearts for two wild girls. I think of my stepmother, who is loved, adored by a mess of grandchildren. I think of Matt's mom, who filled in some of my chipped edges, still rising with the sun to hold a grandchild on her knee.

I think of all my sisters, brought together by pain or circumstance, flourishing through grace, my best friends and fellow warriors. I think of so many women, mothering me and my children in service, in teaching, in song, in prayers.

Women of valour. All of you.

That's the thing about mother's day. In one way or another, we are all mothers. We're in it together, not meant to be alone.

Naptime :: 31 days of messy parenting {day 17}

He's switched the beds, old for new, baby for toddler. The crib held all three babies born, built by their father, stained and assembled with care the night before we welcomed the first.

A gift of love.

But it's gone now, and it's ok. It did it's job. All babies deserve a comfortable, peaceful, safe place to sleep. And ours had that. Thank you, Lord.

And now? Well, now it's not as peaceful and a bit more explosive. Bedtime routines are less predictable now, and don't even get me started on naptime. Naptimes barely exist anymore. It's not just that he's three, but it's that he's no longer penned in. A toddler bed of pallets and an old door cannot contain him.

And it's ok. He loves this new freedom, the feel of the bounce when he runs and jumps in. How we can lay next to him and read. How he can exhaust himself from playing and land in a heap. How he can wake up, nose to nose, with the father who gave him a place to lay his head.

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?

Loved and led, in the night

today

In the night, we all get jumbled.

She comes in first. "A bad dream," she (always) says. I scooch, give her a pillow, and hug the side of the bed. Then the wee lad calls, "Mommy, I done!" It's 3 am and he's decided he's had enough sleep. Husband sighs, stumbles on feet and over legos, and tries to talk him down for just a few more hours. 

He's barely back in our (crowded) bed when the eldest comes in, holding his nose and covered in blood, "My nose is bleeding," I hear under muffled tissues. I'm up quick and with him at the sink, washing his face and changing his shirt. 

Then I hear the baby again. "Daddy.... I want in Ella's bed!" Husband tells me he kinda lied to him, promising him milk and cuddles in the girl's bed, hoping he'd fall asleep and forget. But he didn't, and in a second Daddy is up and the cries are quieted. It's just me and the girl again, in my bed, for what seems like the thousandth time in her five short years.

2009

A few months ago, I went to the doctor, told her I was feeling run down and asked her to medicate what she could do for me. She quickly recounted the ways I could perk myself up: eight glasses of water a day, endorphin release, make sure I'm in community... oh, and get enough sleep. 

Water, check. Endorphins, mostly check. Community, check check check. Sleep?! She almost had me there! Silly woman, she delivered my babies. Doesn't she know? It's the "get enough sleep" part that shuts the whole thing down!

Nearly ten years in, I keep thinking we'll grow out of this phase. I envision a crisp and sunlit morning of lazy lie-ins, just the two of us alone in our own bed, well-rested and ready to conquer the children the world. Give me another five years and maybe we'll have this whole sleep thing sorted, everyone waking up in the bed they fell asleep in, everyone happy, everyone fixed.

2004

But I'm starting to realize this is what parenting is, how it should be. We open our arms when they come to us, we jump to our feet when they cry out, we clean them up when they bleed. They don't need to be fixed, just loved and led as we go.

"It's a good thing Mom was awake at 4am," I hear the eldest say as I finally emerge from our girl-cocoon at 8am. I walk down the hall and see - not for the first time in this long week - my sweet husband curled up in hot pink zebra sheets. 

It is a good thing, I think. Being here with them is the best thing.

I would really kill for some sleep, though.

Till We Have Faces (stays with me always)

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once." CS Lewis

I've read Pride & Prejudice no fewer than five times, The Red Tent three or four times, and this week I finished Till We Have Faces for the third time.

I first read this book in college, passed down to me by husband who took a class called "Images of Christ in the Novel." When we first met, we bonded over our mutual love of Lewis and, as he was further ahead of me in school, he would slip me obscure(-to-me) titles on the side, books beyond Narnia and mostly nonfiction.

"Here, I think you'll like this," he would say.

The Great Divorce pricked my heart, and Screwtape Letters shown a light in the darkness, the first half of Surprised by Joy I've reread half a dozen times (for the life of me I cannot get to the end of it!), and Mere Christianity I was content in him having read it, so I didn't need to. But Till We Have Faces has stayed with me, on my nightstand always, with Matt's name on the inside and his post office box number written in pencil below. It is torn and taped and I won't part with it. Ever.

This book, I don't know how to describe it. It is otherwordly and dark. It is beautiful and aching. It is confusing and so hard to grasp, that when I read it I feel like I'm trying to catch up and get a glimpse of its truth. When I get to the end and the narrative stops so short I catch my breath, I want to cry because I know there must be more. Orual will tell me the secret. But she doesn't and I go back and reread, searching for the answer. 

I wish I could put my finger on it, but I think I'm actually afraid to. The truth is that I am Orual and her sin looks to me as natual as any other. Jealousy masquerading as love. Pride masquerading as sacrifice. Self-hate masquerading as humility. And the gods, she rakes questions and accusations at them, ones I know in my heart but dare not write down or utter in prayer.

“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, “Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.” A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words.” 

I, too, am jealous of Psyche, for she knows the secret and the answer. She is content with a god she cannot see, an otherworldly home she is destined for.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” 

The men in Orual's life, within the Kingdom and the temple, trade theories and suggestions, and I am just as torn by them as Orual is. Who to believe, who has the answer? Why the riddle, and why can I not figure it? Why is there so much mystery, why all the mysticism, where can I find the cut and dry truth?

We want black and white, when everything is shrouded in grey. And when we finally see the answer, it may be too late.

"I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

Oh, this book. Nearly 15 years later and I'm still wrecked by it, learning from it, undone by its strange story. I'm sure I'll read it again, soon... closer to the truth, the dark beauty and mystery of love.

Amber and honey

I hesitate to write it down, afraid to betray it.

It is her hair that draws me in. Long strands of ribbon, layered in amber and honey along mother's shoulder. She is nestled in tight, asleep to the world, cocooned in warmth and song. Pink toes peek out from behind the chair - bare feet on a hot day - and her skin is so golden I must stop myself from reaching out to feel it's warmth.

As people stand to sing and pray, father takes his turn and mother stands, too. A tall man, he curves his body around hers, slowly, barely, swaying with eyes closed.

Music has quieted and the people reclaim their seats. The girl sleeps in her summer dress, while mother connects syringe to tube, gently feeding. She does not wake when father gives her back to the place she fits best, hidden in mother's womb.

This girl - baby - not yet two, the recipient of the deepest love I have ever seen.

Taking it in, I feel crude and crass. I am an intruder stealing secrets. I yelled this morning, replacing tenderness with nettles. I am ashamed.

But then it washes over me. Mercy rains down in gentle ribbons of amber and honey. It's that feeling when they place that tiny human in your arms, when you are gifted with something invaluable, incalculable. When you know you you're not worthy, and yet it's meant for you.

I take in the moment, so overwhelmed with honour He chose me to witness it. I think I love her, too.

Palm Sunday.

thoughts on the One who loves a sinner anyway

Sometimes I think about the woman caught in adultery, and I wonder, how did they know?

Did she stumble out of the house, or the inn, or the brothel half-naked? Were they listening in, ears to the wall? Was there a stolen sheet, or a misplaced note, or a wandering eye? Did he betray her in the end, after the love was all used up?

And then I think about Jesus, who knows it all. Who knew everything another woman ever did. Who looked her straight in the face knowing and seeing that she had lover after lover after lover. He looked in her eyes, and said, "It's me. I'm the One your soul thirsts for. I'm the One you've been looking and waiting for, never finding, until today."

He saw it all, and loved her and wanted her anyway. And when He came upon the woman caught in adultery, presumably He had seen and known it all, too. Knowing she had cheated on her first love, had lied, was unclean. But still it was the accusers He did away with, called out, questioned. For He saw them as they were, too.

"The sinless one among you, go first: Throw the stone."

He's seen it all. And still wants us anyway. Jesus knows us and still loves us enough to say, "I'm it. I'm all you need...

Now stop it and be with Me."

{ok, so it's a paraphrase, but whatever}

***

I want to love Him better, but the sacrifice and the seeing it all shakes my sinful core. How do you love Him on Good Friday?

What Peeta and Bill Self have in common

I'm a little behind this week and still dealing with a minorly sick kiddo (should I be concerned about a lingering low-grade fever 2 weeks after croup attack?) and also watching a lot of basketball (Rock Chalk, Jayhawk!), as well as seeing this little unknown indie movie called The Hunger Games. In between all that, here's what got me thinking this week:

Amy Simpson :: What The Hunger Games Taught Me (and the Church Should Have) about Men

Why was Peeta’s love so compelling? Partly because he’s a wonderful character, partly because love is always compelling, and partly because I have issues. I have a hard time believing that men have the capacity to be genuinely loving.

The Kansas City Star :: Self has shaped the Jayhawks into muscle

Bill Self took this job only after his father called him soft. There is so much of the coach in this story. Nine years ago, with Roy Williams’ shadow still very much engulfing Kansas basketball, Self was unsure he wanted to deal with all of that.

Jamie the Very Worst Missionary :: Hugs for Jesus

Eventually, one of them found her way over to where we were sitting to offer a Jesus hug. Being a non-toucher, in general, I quickly declined. “No, thank you. I'm....I'm good.” And when my sweet, affection-loving friend finally relented to the poor girl's persistent (insistent?) offer to give her a hug from Jesus, I knew immediately that I had made the right decision.

The Tiny Twig :: How to Have Awesome Bangs

Oh! And, Megan said not to wear heavy bangs with a side-part…it’s just too much going on. It’s best to have your heavy bangs and then let your hair fall naturally from the crown of your head. [me: this bit of advice will change my life!]

 Rachel Held Evans :: "Will you always believe in Jesus, Mama?"

I paused, trying to decide how much of my backstory would be helpful. How could I explain that the doubts that had once made me an agnostic hadn’t completely resolved, but that I’d instead learned to embrace mystery and ambiguity? How could I tell him that sometimes it still felt to me that God wasn’t there either?

In the end, I chose a simple response. “Yes, buddy. Always. I’m in this for good. I don’t always understand everything, but I’ve chosen to follow Jesus.”

So did you see the Hunger Games? Did your favorite basketball team win or lose? What have you been reading?

The Old People

We sit on the hardwood floor, facing eachother, surrounded by half-opened wedding gifts and torn pastel tissue paper. My pen in hand, he reads aloud to me:

"Wine decanter," and who it is from.

I write it down for the thank you list.

We are on the third floor of an old Chicago brownstone. Our first apartment; our first home. The wedding was the week before and we are just now opening and reading and laughing and dreaming. We are married now, and the proof is in the cards and the bows and the matching pillows paired on the bed.

I slit open a small white envelope and take in the image of entwined hands, the typed sentiments, and the tiny signature written in the far right-hand corner of the page: the old people.

"Who are the old people?" I ask him, laughing.

He knows. "My grandparents." The only ones living, who couldn't make the journey, who I'd only met once or twice before. In all honesty, I wasn't sure they knew my name.

"Oh, the old people," I say, and smile. Old people who sign their cards the old people must have a story. And they did. A story of a farm, and a dozen children, and of loss, and of celebration. Of prodigals and companionship and the passing of time.



We give them their first great-grandchild and he meanders along the dirt rows of their farm, chasing barn cats. They meet and hold the girl - "Oh, look at that hair." - before we whisk her across the ocean. But while we are away the old man goes Home and we mourn from afar. The old woman still sees more great-grandchildren, laughing at their names (and we laugh, too, at our earnest originality in naming). And our children remember her and sigh with heavy eyes when she goes Home, too.

But she was ready, we say. She missed him. She is finally where she wants to be: with Jesus and with Grandpa.

A dozen years from the start we reminisce, sift through the wedding box and find the card with entwined hands. Inside hides a crisp $20 bill and it is signed,

the old people.

We laugh and laugh. "How did we miss this?" we ask. Because we know the time is soon, he writes the old woman to thank her and to tell her that we'll do with it what they would've done: go out for coffee, sit side by side, and talk about our story.

Heart-shaped pizza for five, please

I spent the day with my four valentines.

The first Valentine, he is all heart and soul, rising early for cuddles and carefully signing Transformers valentines for his classmates. He calls each one friend, and for this, I'm so grateful.

The second Valentine spent most of this February day in soccer shorts, with multiple watches and armbands aligning each wrist and throwing away the sweet little clips I hoped - one day, maybe just one day - would adorn her hair. She spends her quiet time practicing her hearts, bringing me her best, sealed with a kiss.

My third Valentine had a bit of a nudity problem as the night wore on, having spent most of the day in his jimmer jammers, jammin' on his guitar and wedging himself into crevices. His affection for me is carefully balanced with screams, as he follows me yelling, "HUGS!" or "MOVIE!" or "I DIDN'T DO IT!" These outbursts are quickly followed by kisses, baby snot, and the eventual stripping, streaking and bathtime.

This is how a mother spends her Valentine's Day, surrounded by these creatures of mystery, sharing a heart-shaped pizza and refilling cups of milk.

And the fourth Valentine? He cleaned the kitchen and kissed me long as he headed out the door for a meeting. Those two gifts were equally amazing.



How did you spend your Valentine's Day?

On practicing motherhood, until it comes naturally

It does not come naturally to me, this motherhood. To get up at 3am to the sound of a cry, to stand in a dirty kitchen haphazardly feeding little warriors with bottomless bellies, to teach and to humble and to repent and to forgive... this all does not sync easily with my haughty heart.

And there have been tears in the dark of the bathroom, and unanswerable questions whispered to the heavens, and shameful wonderings that this can't possibly be all there is: to wipe bottoms and press play on the DVD player. Because some days, this is in fact all there is. Poop and the Wiggles.

Then some days, there is so much more. With the tying of shoelaces, he is independent. With her picking out her own clothes, she expresses creativity. With toilet paper in my face in my most vulnerable moment, he asks, "I help you?" They are my partners in this. We are learning together. And it is me that they want to become, who they are trying to impress, who - with hearts full - they are actually trying to serve.

It does not come naturally to me, but they seem born for it: to help their mom discover who she is. They teach me how to ask for help, and how to rejoice in each small success. It is mostly not fairytales, and very rarely are there roses, and more than I'd like to admit there is frustration, and yelling, and stomping feet down the hall.

But then, we stand in that very same hallway as the eldest calls out, "Three cheers for Asher! Hip, Hip..." for he has peed on the potty and it is not just his success, but all of ours to claim.

"Hip, Hip..."

"Hooray!"

"Hip, Hip..."

"Hooray!"

"Hip, Hip..."

"Hooray!"

I think every day that they still love me and want to learn something new with me is victory. We are practicing motherhood together. Until it comes naturally.

Wordless Wednesday

(with respect to my sister in law, who says posting pictures alone does not a blogger make. :))

I help you.

"I want your mom to be able to lock herself in the bathroom."

Because he knows I'm growing weary of the toddler joining me in on the toilet, smashing the door open against the wall with his chubby bare hand, fumbling for scraps of toilet paper.

"I hep oo." I help you.

The changing of locks and the switching of knobs, the hope of privacy is fresh. This apartment with the parking lot for a front garden isn't our home, but it is. Or, at least he's making it that way. With the locks. And the curtains. And the makeshift kitchen table made from old, cherished workbench.

It is not perfect. The door still bounces off the frame. Cold air leaks in cheap windows. The kitchen table is not beautiful. But it makes living here easier. And I am able to lock myself in the bathroom if I need to. 

And occasionally, I need to.

Forgotten girl, the sequel

In browsing our flickr account today, I ran across a video of the girl. I watched it through silly tears streaming into my eyes and down my cheeks. I miss her so, even though she lives in my house. This sweet child, who always was a mystery, who writes on walls and on her tongue without any fear, who wants to be a cowgirl - no a knight -- no a mom, who's teeth used to not touch due to too much pacifier, who was born into our craziness and makes it so much crazier.

Oh I miss her so, though we've never ever been apart.

then

now

31 days of LIVING in transition :: the books {day 3}

The main reason I picked this topic (living in transition) for this project is because we, as a family, have been living in transition for 18 months or so. Or probably, maybe 2 years. Actually, it could be 4 years. Well, now that I think about it, more likely to be 7 years.

Yep, I'm stopping there.

Seven years of living in transition. That's when we joined our organization and began working towards moving overseas, and yada yada yada... It's only taken this long to even want to embrace living in transition, let alone just surviving in it. But as we walk towards the next stop in our winding journey, we are intentionally trying to swim with the tide, witness the blessings, grieve the sacrifices, and move right along.

Which brings me to the books. With every other move, we've left boxes and boxes of books behind. For some reason, it's the books that we really struggle with letting go of. Their pages tell their stories, but they also tell our stories. We fell in love in the library. And the books - the Lewis, the Browning, the Eliot, the theologies, the commentaries, the Bibles - breathe love.



They're just books. Just paper and words and broken spines. I know this. I do know this! I'm no sap! I can give these books away, no problem. We've got a nook. We'll be fine!

But, oh, the Lewis. I just can't bear to let go of this one. Oh wait, the Browning volume. You inscribed it! We'll just put it to the side. No, wait, wait, not *that* one!

Sigh. This will be hard. But it will be good. Because as we look through the books, and flip through the familiar pages, we find notes and drawings and the ocassional sonogram. Things we would not want to let go of. Things that speak of the children and our future. Things that weigh nothing and will hide just fine in my suitcase.

So I sent the man off with two boxes of books this morning to give away to friends who are in the stage we once were. There will still be boxes and boxes to go yet, but with the one empty shelf, my heart feels a little freer and a bit steadier.

I'm still keeping Till We Have Faces, though. I'll just leave behind an extra pair of shoes.

wordless wednesday

Is it bad that the majority of my posts from the last three weeks are wordless wednesdays? No? Ok.

Love from Philippians

So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover's life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.

Phil 1v9-11

A good thing to read and pray, on this rainy day

Sleive Binian, 2009

For father's day and everything after

I've told this story so many times, it's become classic and renowned and certainly an ironic way to begin a marriage.

He untied my shoelaces and that was it. I knew then and he knew it, too.

When I tell the story, I remember the details. The way my head laid against the dorm room wall, cradling the phone, as I smiled and tried to remember the real name of the boy we called Tico. The girls across the hall, behind their own door, stifling giggles with hand-covered mouths. The MASH games (girls in Bible college play this best, because there is no harm, no sin in it) that had us living in Vegas, driving a blue Honda with four children and an apartment.

Part of that came true. There were four children, though only three are here with us. There was a Honda, though it was red and lived in Oak Park, IL where our love first creaked and groaned under the strain of imperfect unity and immature lovers. There have been apartments, and houses, and more apartments, yet still no Vegas. There was Chicago, and Kansas City, and Dublin instead, even more unexpected than Vegas could ever be.

But I digress. The details are this: He had a side part and I had uncombed curls (the image above is a rarity: I presume I combed it just because I knew I'd see him). He wore ties and I wore plaid flannel. His were creased khakis and mine were combat boots and a skirt with poppies. He'd had no heartbreak and the sutures on mine were just beginning to heal.

In chapel, my feet were on his chair, before I knew his name. He untied the shoelaces and I looked at him and thought without thinking, "Surely not him. He has no idea." When the giggles and the whispers hushed and I sat down beside him on that next day, he looked at me, called me his future wife, and in that moment it was us
against the world,
the school,
the giggling girls,
the frowning boys,
the painful past,
the unsure future,
the parents who no doubt would be doubtful,
against all odds.

It wasn't angry unity, but a united front. Thick and thin. Through my pain and his arrogance, to think it would be easy but to know for certainty that it would not.

And here it is: together we are nearly 12... still children, with growing pains and changing voices. His is stronger now and mine is singing new songs. We don't yet know who we will be or where we will go or how long it'll take us to get there. But between the two of us and the children we try to lead and protect as the divine gifts they are, we make no mistake:

He is the father here, following the Father of our future, and I am the mother who sings the songs that point us Home.

The hard love

It's Friday.
I've got five minutes... I think.
Go.

The hard love...

Hard and good. Hard and good. I've said a lot that these go hand-in-hand. So many moments of love that lead us to the hard, but good places. Moving overseas with a young family to do God-only-knows-what was so, so hard, but became (and is) so, so good. The boy growing and going to school on that first day in that first uniform was so hard, but seeing who he's becoming and how he's learning to love and have faith is so good. Giving birth... oh.... so, so, so hard (I could go on and on... the two boys came in typically hard-fought fashion), but afterwards a baby who came directly from God and is ours to love and nurture and protect and teach.... oh, so, so good. Waiting and trembling in hope sprinkled with fear, I've always thought that to be one of the hardest of all. But here in that waiting, I'm seeing how good it really is. The hard, but good ways we wrestle, we learn, we grow, we fall, we get back up, we rejoice, we mourn, we wait.

There's only one reason we do this, we put up with this, and we try again. It's because we love. The only way I can do it is because Someone first loved me. If it weren't for the hard love, I would've given up awhile ago.

Stop.

Yep, that's it. Hard to get that one down for some reason. Think it was the extraordinarily late sleep-in that's making me feel all fuzzy. Back to reality for this mama. Your turn now.