A Letter to My Son on Your 5th Birthday
January 30, 2016
I haven’t been keeping up with this blog, but I figured my son’s birthday was a good excuse to post. Every year since my son was born, I have written him a letter on his birthday. One day I will give them to him, and I hope they will mean as much to him as they do to me. My son turns 5 on Sunday. 5 years old. It’s hard to believe.
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Dear Son,
2009 and 2010… those were the main months and years of my Dark Night of the Soul time. I won’t easily forget the confusion, pain, sadness, and anger of that time. It has become a defining season- one of great loss that yielded great gain, one of great suffering that yielding new meaning. Not that any gain would be worth doing it again, but over a long time, meaning emerged. The scars remain, and I like to think I’ve used that time to allow my soul to expand, grow a couple sizes maybe, but that season, that time will always be the Dark Night. The very long Dark Night. The darkest season of my quickly aging life thus far.
But 2015. Last year, however, was perhaps the loneliest year I have ever faced. Not the darkest, but the loneliest. The most barren. The most desolate. Your 4th year of life was defined by exhausting schedules of therapies and medications, doctors and I am pretty sure half the seconds of every single 24 hour day were punctuated by my silent prayers- my sometimes screaming, sometimes hopeful silent prayers.
I’ve logged many hours seeing my internal self on her face in the dirt before Jesus. Or pounding on the door of what feels like an unjust authority. Or screaming with Joseph at the prison bricks. And sometimes my actual face has hit the carpet or the grass or the shower floor weeping out the desperate groans of a mama who each day becomes a warrior for her child and many night crumples into bed daring to hope once again that the morning will break open with mercy and healing for you. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Years, 2 Years, 1 Year
October 13, 2015
I know my absence here means most of my readers have fallen off. It’s expected and there are no hard feelings on my end. It’s just that sometimes life becomes this mush of chaos and internal dialogue that doesn’t have a way of expressing itself in any sort of cohesive way. And at those times, the confusion of needing to stay silent reigns.
I won’t promise to be back here as regularly as before. I would love to, but inspiration isn’t always a good friend these days. But I will write tonight, and that matters… to me at least.
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It’s been nearly 5 years. And almost 2 years. And over 1 year. Read the rest of this entry »
Saying Goodbye
May 21, 2015
I realize that most of May has gone by and I have not been visiting here. Partly because we hit the ground running from Boston and still haven’t stopped with the end of the school year and gearing up for me working more in the summer. But mostly because I haven’t had the heart to write. I’ve needed to stay turned inward for a bit.
And today makes me want to turn inward even more. Because we said goodbye to our son’s preschool teacher and I have been a weepy mess all afternoon. It seems so silly. So stupid. Because eventually we would have said goodbye to her and to preschool and moved into kindergarten. But that wasn’t supposed to happen for another year!
Yet transfers and bosses don’t care that my heart wants Miss Gail to stay. And so, she is leaving. With one more year of our son’s preschool to go. Read the rest of this entry »
In the Midst Of
May 6, 2015
I wrote this before we left the Boston area, but didn’t have a chance to publish it. So I’m publishing it late.
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There is such goodness in New England. The kind of goodness that wants to swallow you alive and you would let it… gladly. The kind of goodness that speaks peace to the soul in such a manner that you are quieted to all other sounds except the breathing of goodness surrounding you. We have been so embraced and held and kept this week in the East Coast, welcomed by love and lifted by the support of strangers turned into friends. It has been a gift- to see my son adored by our hosts, to open message after message of East Coast colleagues welcoming us to their land, to share meals with people I have known only through names in a book of Covenant ministers. There is such goodness there.
For too long we have lived alone, without this sort of gracious community. We have, of course, been given the gifts of several churches, of colleagues from other faith traditions who have loved us so well, of friends in our home city who welcome us with joy, but this lavish, radiant support- here in the East and from all over the globe through the wonder of social media- this gift is beyond it all. And so we have soaked this in and soaked this up and wondered in wordless awe how in the world do we ever repay such gifts. We cannot. We can only receive and vow to do the same for someone else who needs the support and love we have so graciously been given. Read the rest of this entry »
Weighty Stuff
April 21, 2015
I realize that I haven’t written in quite a bit. It’s been busy, and I’ve been sick… and mostly, we’ve been carrying heavy stuff lately. The kind of stuff where to get through you just have to lower your chin and push forward. The kind of stuff where if you stop to think- to reflect- you might stop altogether and melt into the ground right where you stand and never move again.
So, the grit of God has visited us, giving us the ability to carry the heavy, to lean on the muscles of heaven, and to just go. To just get it done.So I haven’t stopped. I haven’t reflected. We’ve just hit the “go” button and kept going. The stuff of perseverance and endurance is pure grit. Just because we are given the grace to endure doesn’t mean that it is easy to do. But being gifted with strength from God is a weird thing. It comes. His strength comes and though we are weary and sore and tired, that strength makes tomorrow happen. And it makes tomorrow bearable.
And so that what we do. We don’t know how, because it is only the grace of God that does it. But we get it done. We dig in. We press in. We keep pushing forward. Read the rest of this entry »
ordinary sacred 