Chaos
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. - Rumi
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recalling the midnight hour last week
When they are finally all asleep I sort the gifts and stuff the stockings. I wander to the fridge and snag a leftover deviled egg. I sit by the tree and look at its lights. I love its pretty sparkliness. And I’ll love getting it out of the living room as soon as the Christmas bells stop ringing. I place the wrapped books gently at the foot of each sleeping child. I kiss that special spot on the bridge of their noses that I’ve been kissing since birth. Touch their chins and their cheeks. Especially my big kiddos. Because I can’t caress them as much when they are awake these…
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numb and the hope of others
I think I’m going to pull my car into the parking lot labeled Numb. I think Ill just camp out here for a while. Just Numb. Recognizing that life is moving on around me, toward me, for me but I’m just not doing the same. I’m not doing the same. I’m just numb. People talk about hope. I don’t know right now. I think Hope is too prickly. It’s too dangerous. It’s too heavy. It’s too hard. When Emily Dickinson wrote her words about hope and its feathers and how it perches and when she wrote that “hope doesn’t ask a thing of me” well, I think maybe she was…
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…..
Tonight I sent my friend this text: What is happening? My life is moving so very fast. And so incredibly slow. I can’t stand the task of cleaning. Particularly bathrooms. I spent an hour cleaning our bathroom recently. And yet. Today it looks wrecked again. Wet towels on the floor. (Sure, it’s hard to hang the towels up when the hooks are so high and half of our house residents are not tall enough to reach them.) Bathroom rug needs shaking. Again. Feels pretty pointless – the cleaning up routine. I’ll awake with incredible purpose and drive and ambition. You know – all high hopes and rise and shine and…
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tuesday.
Days have been too busy to have very much sit-down writing time for me. With homeschool (and maybe all school) you not only have to fight against spring fever, you have to fight against fall fever. I think fall fever is harder to beat than spring fever. (But that’s probably only because right now it’s fall (ish) and so whatever struggle I find myself in at the moment feels like the hardest one – you know?) I want to be outside all day long – but I don’t want to be doing school all day long. Some days we compromise – we do school outside. Today we sat at the…
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rolling the dice
It’s practically feeling like autumn here. And that’s a gift that’s right on time. This weekend our family has experienced the gift of generosity and thoughtfulness and care and provision in new and humbling ways. My heart is overwhelmed and trying to keep up. (It tends to drag a few beats behind me lately.) There are a lot of days when I feel as if I am watching my life play out like a movie on someone else’s television screen. (And I desperately want to change the channel.) For all the good and bold and obvious ways that God shouts and showers His love for my family, my heart still…
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leaky tire. leaky life.
The Suburban’s back right tire has a slow leak. (As if having 258,000 miles wasn’t problem enough. Also the leather is torn right where my left leg hits every single day. There’s this weird continual dampness in the back right and I have to remind myself never to store my suitcase there on trips. And it smells like feet. Stinky stink Keen kid feet. But I should mention here – I still love that old ride.) I fill the tire with air. (You might already know how much I dislike the gas pumps. I feel pretty much the same way about the air stations.) (Why is it so hard to…
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that time at the park when the wheels came undone
We’ve never really lived in a house with a concrete driveway that leant itself to safe bike riding for children. Therefore, the kids have always been late comers to the biking world. Piper Finnian still needs training wheels. And that’s alright with me. Recently, Bergen outgrew his bike and we realized it was a good fit for Piper. I bought some training wheels. Universal, the bag side. Fits any bike, the instructions read. With the training wheels attached and the bikes painstakingly crammed in the back of the Suburban, we drove to a large parking lot to practice before trying to hit the trail together. Otto is grinning and riding…
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the forty-secondth one.
Last week (maybe the week before – who is keeping track of the days anyway?) was my birthday. I decided if there was ever a year for me to take matters into my own hands for my birthday celebrating, this was the year. When the kids asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday my answer was immediate. “I want to go find that Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and see some giant trees. And. I want all of your guys to go with me and be happy about it.” And so we did. And so they were. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is a spot I have held in my imagination…
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thriving in captivity: the story of an exile
Today this phrase – this piece of a sentence – was spoken to me. Thrive in captivity. And I can’t stop thinking about it. What does that mean? How does one do that? What does that look like? It’s a garden in prison. You know? A flower box inside a jail cell. It’s being a slave but not losing hope. It’s like being a foreigner but not being forsaken. The idea really captures me. And my language here might be a mix and a jumble of both my words and my thoughts and her prompting and her questioning and I hope that doesn’t qualify as plagarizing…
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when plans change
It was Friday afternoon. The clock was ticking away and the kids were watching it move until the 1:30 magic number was reached. Swimsuits were on. Sunscreen applied. Goggles positioned as headgear. Towels draped over shoulders. Their brains filled with thoughts of splashing and swimming strokes and rafts and diving for rings at the pool’s deepest bottom. That was the plan. An afternoon swim date. Listed on the calendar. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches scarfed down, a peach following after as an on-the-go lunch so the maximum swim time could be spent in the water and not on the water’s edge. And then. Then the text. The pool was not going…
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for all the days you feel like this
There was this morning that I spent pretty much entirely in bed. My friend delivered gallons of farm fresh milk and Otto dropped an egg on the floor and I stood in the kitchen with counters crowded with bowls for yogurt and granola that hadn’t yet happened and I cried and she said, “Can I take your kids to play with mine for the day?” and I nodded. “Thank you,” I hope I said. Maybe I forgot to say that. I’ve said it before. I will say it again. Life is hard ya’ll. Being a human is just plain hard work. And she left with my bouncing-off-the-walls-with-enthusiasm children and I…
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in the blue bag
Sometimes you just have to laugh. One night this week I tried to eat my delicious salad dinner in the car. On a pottery plate with a regular fork. That’s crazy guys. (I know my friend Hilary does it all the time. I sent her a picture and said I felt just like her.) When I arrived at my destination I wanted a mint. You know, a post-salad-eaten-in-the-car mint. In my bag I found this Altoids tin. Score! A mint for me. Oh, but no. No mints. Instead, this little red and white tin was filled with matches and cotton balls. Thanks Bergen. I can start a fire in an…
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stream of consciousness: thursday edition
It’s after midnight. I just had a conversation with my son. Apparently no one can get any routine sleep in this house. Life is just hard, ya’ll. It. Is. Hard. And I am tired. Tired of sleepless nights and tired of sad afternoons. I’m tired. Like the kind of literal tired as in – I don’t get enough sleep. And the kind of figurative tired as in – My heart hurts a lot of the day. And – can I say this? – I am tired of being tired. I am sick of being full of sorrow. I am all tired out of being all tired out. Today I cut…
