A Worthy Life

eight days

Today is day 8.

Eight days of silence from our mama, the lively pillar of our family and center of our universe.

Eight days of a machine breathing life into her, eight days of bedside vigils watching this sleeping beauty, eight days of a million ways all of life hangs in a precarious balance.

It's not easy, this. Not easy or natural. The first time I saw her fragile and vulnerable I was at a loss. Ugly tears, hysterical heaving - a cerebral coaching that everything will be alright at vicious odds with a heart that is searing with pain.

There was another moment of unrestrained tears, this time when called to gather again at her side as the her heart crashed and we surrendered. We surrendered her into the arms of Jesus, not a figurative placing but a literal prelude to the moment when she would pass from unconscious in our presence to alive and restored forever in His.

I lost it then too but never again since. There's a necessary preservation that must occur if I'm to survive this.

But at first what stuns and cripples all too quickly and maddeningly becomes a new normal. While I still picture my boisterous and cheery mother in all her splendid colors in my mind, this quiet, methodical rising of this still woman's chest has become expected.

There have been hospital visits full of hand holding and singing and intercession for the supernatural interrupted with the text of a distressed daughter needing me in the waiting room or the hunger pangs that remind me we haven't eaten all day. I want to be here, I'm needed there, and I'm disappointed that I am after all only human.

There are the round table joys of being finally and fully united as an extended family - four sisters and one brother and the broods a few of us claim as our own - and the sophisticated navigation of relationships when big personalities and strong opinions meet over emotional issues and life and death decisions.

Worry about mom's feeding tube doesn't negate the necessity of keeping the rest of us fed three times of day and the shopping that must happen in between. The urgent is always pressing but so is the mundane necessary. The pain, the sorrow, the worry, the fear are constant companions but so too all the beautiful moments together and blessed memories in the making, no matter what may come.

The warning bells of an open car door picking up the last hospital visitor for the night echo the life tracking beeps of machines standing sentinel through the darkness when we can not be near her. The noises of the city, the conversations together after dinner, we can hear them all and process them deeply and unique to our perspective. Mom waits alone in silence while we wonder what she hears, what she contemplates, what visions might visit her in her sleep.

It's been eight days, mama. And life continues to pass, continues to press, and we wish you were here with us for every single second of it.

a million metaphors

Our bags were packed for a week's stay in the desert - just me, my husband, and two older girls. Swimsuits and sunscreen, hiking shoes and a zoom lens were the necessities of our vacation wardrobe. The snowsuits and jeans for the little ones were packed into bigger bags for a local stay with the grandparents.

The flights were booked, passports updated, schedules cleared, and expectations set. Luxury resorts booked in the city, lodges booked for the back country, and one last stop at the airport hotel before saying our goodbyes to the memories we'd make as an expedition team of four out on a grand adventure.

This was going to be the trip of a lifetime.

The day before I had received a call that my mom had been taken to the hospital. She was enjoying my sister's spring break and touring Texas, first to see my older sister in San Antonio and then farther south to peek in on her in-laws. We had shared our daily phone call just two days before and she had sounded fine. Tired and feeling a bit under the weather but she'd perk up again. She always did. People check in to the ER every day and loads of them walk right back out with a script in their wallets and their anxieties thwarted. That's what would happen with mom. A round of antibiotics and she'd be back in fighting condition ready to go another round with life.

We never know the rounds we'll have to go in this lifetime.

I was warming up the car in the driveway ready to load a bundle of nerves and excitement for our journey that would start in just a few minutes with a drive to the airport. Another call came in from Texas, this one an urgent plea redirected from mom's physician that her family come to gather at her side. She's on a ventilator, kidneys failing, heartbeat not stabilizing.

How does a woman whose every breath is for her family and whose heart for others so full and constant begin to stumble and stagger?

Within the hour, we had booked two more flights and averted the other four not west as we had planned but south to the border of Mexico. A few more shorts would be needed, that much I knew. The heat was inevitably going to intensify the closer we got to our destination.

But what do you pack for yourself and your kids should this be the end and a casket at the front beckons you forward past your grief? A formal black dress or gray sports coat seem hopeless but sunny yellow seems naive. Surely we wouldn't need them after all but jean cutoffs and a t-shirt wouldn't do if we did.

How do you prepare for the end of a beautiful lifetime?

The days that followed I existed as if only on heavenly life support. The first glimpse of mama fading into hospital sheets with a tube hiding her smile took my breath away. The first sobs of a grieving husband at peace with God's will but pleading for his own shattered my heart. The first thought that we, this precious woman and I, might already have shared our last words was like a pain in my side, the first incision for the cutting away of my right arm.

I wondered if life would ever again seem right and good and possible.

All around us were signs of the struggle. A barbed wire fence imprisoning a field of wild sunflowers. A cactus blossom defying it's tangle of thorns to burst into bloom for one glorious day. A thicket of dried grass thirsting for rain instead softened with a violet smear of beauty. A patio of concrete punctured with the diminutive but undiminished push of life beneath. A furry interloper alive and well before an homage to the saintly deceased and gone before.

Of course, I wondered where was God in all of this. On His throne ruling the vast borders of His infinite creation, no doubt. His ways are as high as the heavens above the earth, I knew this. But what were heaven's plans, where would He be in the midst of this, what will did He decree, what eternal good would evolve from this finite battle?

I might not have seen His blueprint, not have known the end from this terrible beginning. But I heard His whisper and sensed His present breath on every wind of change that blustered and blew around us.

And even in the silent darkness, His love answered in a million metaphors.

my month with grams//a lifetime of love

She became a widow at 4:15 AM on April 2. I know this because the time is now written in her nonsensical, all caps scrawl on the same refrigerator calendar that holds the birth dates of all her eleven children, thirty-eight grandchildren, and dozens of great-grandchildren.

This notation is different from the others, a memorializing of a finish line instead of a celebration beginning at the starting gate. Yet this is another anniversary to remember, another trigger that will open the floodgates of a lifetime of memories shared with the faithful man who loved her best.

The events that drew us together were fragile at best, tragic at their worst, and a perfect storm of shared accommodations and meals and stories of the past, this present, and our glorious future.

We descended on our grandmother's house in deep Texas in early April while she was gone, back in the city where she and my grandfather spent the majority of their child-rearing years. She was there to celebrate her husband's life before laying him to rest alongside fellow veterans of the second World War. We were there in her empty home unsure of what awaited us - the final chapter of our own dear mother's life or simply another twist in her beautiful journey.

Our story there took weeks to unfold, precious weeks of almost daily dinners with my grandmother. She'd call us to see what she could cook or contribute while we'd scramble to give an answer of an easy collaboration that would leave twelve to eighteen bellies full and content.

When you are one of thirty-eight grandchildren, the number of private conversations with your grandparents who, for the majority of your life, have lived thousands of miles away from you, are few. And yet, they were present at nearly every one of my elementary grandparents' luncheons, hosted or attended dozens of family reunions, always played lifeguard at their backyard pool, gave thousands of pushes to tiny bums seated on the tire swing underneath the old treehouse, scooped just as many ice cream cones on sunny summer days, and planned sleepovers with cousins that could be tucked in deep in the basement where almost a dozen of our aunts and uncles had once bunked.

I've never celebrated a birthday without receiving a card with love from grams and gramps plus ten dollars. Neither have my own children. My grandmother has never looked at me with a blank experession wondering what my name was, a feat I continue to marvel at considering I often falter with only four children of my own. My grandfather never set the wheelbarrow done right before my turn through the bumpy garden.

They set the standard for love among our family, both in their own marriage and in their example of love extended to all those in their family tree. That lineage hangs proudly throughout their home in frames embracing their orginal family of thirteen, in a quilt pieced together with squares done by sisters and daughters and granddaughters, and in the wooden crosses of their precious Jesus who provided the ultimate example of a no greater love.

A family tree, one that blossoms and flourishes from care and attention, is a beautiful thing. One such as mine that springs from roots grounded in the work of a perfect man laying down his life on Calvary's tree, is not only beautiful - it's eternal.

Thank you, Gram, for a month of Sundays that I will not forget. For your love and the intimate conversations, especially for those whispered in long embraces, thank you. Thank you for your life's work as a wife, as a mother, as a grandmother, and as a friend and matriarch in your Texas community of winter gypsies. The world is a better place because of you and my world infinitely brighter. Looking forward to an eternity together united once again with Gramps. Think we'll still be playing cards in heaven...?

xo

letting our ish hang out

It's funny, the things that people take away from a first impression. You manage not to burn the Easter brunch egg souffle casserole and suddenly you're June Cleaver. Or because you managed to wrestle your hair into an easy updo in time for an early morning appointment, clearly you must have it all together.

Sometimes, friends, on any given good day, the hair's the only thing one wrestles with and wins.

We wear our victories like a badge of honor, bragging on even our best efforts. We do it for others, to validate their successes, and others do it for us too, buoying us up over our created seas of self-doubt.

Admittedly there are struggles - we know no one is perfect. But we celebrate the high points, hoping to erase any signs of the tussle to prove that those hiccups were something of the past. And now we're relishing this fragile moment, eager to get through our acceptance speech before someone notices that the manicure done by our six year old needs a touch up.

No matter what we had to sweep under the rug to make you notice.

But for you to ever take notice and see me, just me, you're going to need to meet me right where I am.

Because honestly? What's under the rug tells a far truer story of who I am, of who I am becoming in this beautiful struggle.

I want to live honestly. I want to share the lessons gleaned from the ugly. I want you to know that there were tears, there are always tears, on the way to triumphs.

I want to testify to grace that showed up when I was least graceful. I want to deflect any temporary praise for what I managed to do in a moment to an eternal hope that keeps me plugging away in these never ending moments of life.

I'd rather disclose the ish hiding under my rug than, despite my best facade, to have the exposed realities suddenly pull the rug out from beneath me.

Which is why we've taken to celebrating the journey around our house. It's not just the peaks and A pluses that earn a place on the fridge. But the dips and detours too that prove our progress. The anonymous apology glued together from magazine clippings. The dictated story that tattles on the marital discord but testifies to the unity eventually fought for and won. The bad choices made and the ramifications that followed.

No hiding allowed. No acting accepted.

Just me and you. At our best and at our worst.

Because it's not the holy words enclosed by gilded frame on our walls or the bookshelves lined with paper spines boasting our higher learning that will speak into the lives of others.

It is our lives and our daily choices lived out in authentic transparency that show others how our stories - the good, the bad, and the ugly - are transformed into testimonies even as we ourselves are being transformed.

So, you've had a bad day. Me too. Tell me about yours and I'll let you read about mine from front and center on my refrigerator door.

//“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.” - Tim Keller

you are my wild >> week three

You were told to go to bed.

(Which these days is my new bed sized for a king. You are keeping my side of the bed warm while I get better in the one for guests.)

You went.

But not to close your eyes and dream of another day or to bicker about whose cold toes were touching who behind their kneecaps.

Instead you each grabbed notebooks from bedside tables and wrote.

You were songwriters, lost in a melody freeing itself from cranial captivity into the light of darkening night.

Hums and hmms escaped lips clenching clicking pencils.

Thoughts poured out in hymn.

And this weary mama came up to close the lights and to whisper sweet goodnights.

You welcomed me in song.

 

//you are my wild.//

weekend worthy

Studying for my Canadian citizenship test this weekend but still celebrating birthdays and new friends in this short little thing we call weekend.

And this post? Just a round up of what I found interesting this week and thought I'd share with you, my friends...

Paperman: If you saw Wreck It Ralph in theatres like we did, you've already fallen for this short animated film about love at first sight. Or, rather, first kiss. But not the kind of kiss you're thinking, guaranteed. Nominated for an Oscar, it's sure to bring a smile to your face.

SportKids of the Year: You've heard the story about the dad that runs triathalons with his disabled son, right? Amazing. Now, imagine that story but with the inspirational characters as young kids, brothers, who compete as one unit just because one of them could never do it on their own. Watch the video with your kids and see if it doesn't inspire a little more love amongst them this week.

Guys with Kids: My husband was away most of the week so on a quiet night that found me too tired to read or fold laundry, I propped up my iPad on my belly while in bed and watched this fun little show. It's a comedy with (gasp!) punchlines that aren't always in the gutter. Smart and funny while respecting marriage and parenthood. Thank you, Jimmy Fallon!

Bad Charity?: This was a sobering article detailing the trickle down effects of our White Savior mentality and good intentions when trying to save the world. It's not good. I do know a few personal exceptions to these examples but articles like this are why I have now opted to give support through organizations helping to provide micro-financing or non-profits that empower individuals to rise above poverty through the sale of goods that serve to both help them and their community as well as having a broader impact on the economic climate of their country. Some of my favorite ones are 31 Bits and Krochet Kids.

Little Princes: A friend recommended this book to me a year ago but I finally bought it last weekend when I ran away from home to get some peace and quiet and wound up at one of my favorite places - the bookstore. This is a story of one wanderer's journey from searching for his place in this world to finding his home in a foriegn land and his purpose in returning trafficked children back to their parents. I haven't read a fiction book in months - I found real life stories far more entertaining and inspirational to boot.

weekend worthy

Hello, friends! Another weekend is already on our horizon and between going to basketball games and running basketball clinics and eating Indian food prepared by my sister-in-law and praising Jesus with His Church and watching football and Beyonce, I plan on a little bit of rest. You?

bloom: Meggie Lynn is a curator of beautiful things. Quotes, photos, fashion, design...all inspiration. It is a perfect 5 minute stop during tea time (or coffee break). //photo above from bloom, originally from Maddie the Coonhound.

The Giving Lens: This.is.my.dream. An overseas adventure combining photography and philanthropy! They are going to India later this year and while it looks near impossible for me to go, I'm conspiring to get involved someway or another. Stay tuned. Also, coming soon: an interview with Katie Siobhan Havercroft, Chief Operations Manager for TGL...

Very Jane: An online boutique offering serious discounts on some seriously adorable items ranging from jewelry to home goods to accessories. I've gotten some very Anthro-ish necklaces for myself and as gifts for next to nothing. Definitely something to keep your eye on.

balter: If you're my friend on facebook, you've already seen this. Thank goodness, there is finally a word for what I do! And to add more balter-istic fuel to my already stellar dance moves, this video:

Call Your Girlfriend: Go, ahead. Watch it. I dare you to not start to move and want to watch it and re-watch it until you have perfected all her moves. And practice them in the car and keep on practicing even when you notice people giggling at you at every stoplight. It can't just be me, right?

And to all, a happy weekend!

afraid

What do I tell the daughter who lies awake afraid that death might visit while she sleeps?

That death never visits little girls?

Do I tell her this one little lie that will help her sleep even while my mother attends the funeral of a 3 year old whose afternoon nap was his gateway to heaven?

What do I tell my girl who thinks every tiny ache and growing pain might be indicative of some greater disease?

That cancers and tumors and severe maladies can be kept at bay with just the right concoction of vitamins, exercise, and sunshine?

Do I assuage her fears by assuring her that those things can't and won't touch her, not while God and I are standing guard?

What do I tell the boy whose spelling words stop him cold, frozen in the certainty that he is dumb and stupid and none of his dreams will come true?

Do I tell him that he is the smartest boy ever and that nothing can thwart his future ambitions, that the sky is the limits and that, yes, you can be an NBA player and preacher and engineer and more?

That he is the master of his fate and captain of his soul and nothing can touch you as long as you persevere hard enough and long enough?

Do I sugarcoat their fears with a extra dusting of denial and shallow faith that says good people never suffer long?

Or, do I share the truth?

The truth that says our days are numbered, that God alone knows the length of them. That yes, He stands guard and He sees and knows even the pain and frustration.

But that the presence of pain and trials of life doesn't equate to the absence of God.

Whatever comes, He knows and He is here, He will be there.

Yes, this and more:

"When I am afraid, I will trust in You."

In 5 minutes, with Lisa Jo.

you are my wild >> week two

Reading hasn't come easy to you. The sounds of letters, that was child"s play.

But string a few letters together and you were fit to be tied.

Until something clicked in your head and heart late last year.

The words in your daily bible reading became more than a puzzle, they became bits of stories with characters you wanted to know more about. Soon you were geting lost in the words, God Holy Word. The required reading completed you kept on, ever eager to know all the story, more of the truth.

This new year you set a new goal: to read this book from cover to cover.

So far Genesis has been an adventure, lots of familiar history mixed with fun tidbits you have never yet heard in Sunday School. You'd call me from the other room when you realized the same people we are studying in history are mentioned in His Story, eyes alight with wonder as mysteries are unfolded right before you.

There are other books, heck even verses, that might be more of a challenge for you, heart and mind.

But I pray that this insatiable desire for God's word never dies out. That even now as a child of sensitivity and conviction and big, godly dreams you are hiding these words deep and that this child's exercise of sounding out words lays an unshakeable foundation for a grown man's calling.

// loving this.

you are my wild >> week one

It has long been my sanctuary and one she has come to borrow for herself. Cocooned between three walls, solitude beckons as it ushers her in to the watery folds of its embrace.  The warmth melts away every chill, the water washing away the worries and salty tear-stains on rosy cheeks.

This is a brave new world, one malleable to the limits of imagination. Never before sung melodies echo here, her normal identity morphs into new ones in cadence with the flickering reflections above wrinkled tips.

Imaginary friends take on realistic form in bubbles and shaped cloths. She is alone but never lonely.

And the world becomes as it should be, if just for moments.

//a new weekly challenge for tuesdays, to capture your children as you see them.