Navigating a Life Interrupted

Interruptions. They come in all sizes and shapes. All colors and shades. Good and bad. Though we wish to avoid them, every season of life seems to include a few--sometimes on either end of the same day. As we're coming up for air from the devastation of one, a fresh and exciting interruption takes our breath away, challenging us with new responsibilities, leaving us feeling inadequate and outmatched. They shock us; they shake us; they compel us to change. -Priscilla Shirer

I just finished leading an evening Bible study by Priscilla Shirer called Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted. When the morning Bible study teacher handed me the book, back in the spring, I knew it was a study I could get on board with. I was still reeling from the abrupt turn our lives had taken. We'd painted over the samples of pink with a bluish gray color. We'd started referring to "Kate's room" as the library. We'd disassembled the crib. We were muddling through each day as best we could. But sometimes, the grief was overwhelming.

I couldn't understand it. I still can't explain where all this grief came from and I felt like I wasn't entitled to it. I couldn't imagine how people ever live through the death of a child they've raised or a spouse taken too soon because, some days, I wanted to pull the covers over my head and sleep forever. My plans had changed. How would I move on? What would come of this interrupted life?

It was easy to know what life experience I'd be drawing from with my answers to the personal questions. Early on, Priscilla asked us to consider the following equation:

Insignificant Person + Insignificant Task = Interruption

Significant Person + Significant Task = Divine Intervention

I pondered this and decided that I believed it to be true. Our God asking me to walk through the loss of my child equaled a divine intervention and not an interruption. But that didn't seem to provide me with any kind of comfort. Instead, if I'm being honest with myself, it made me angry. He'd brought a situation straight to us, pulled us out of obscurity, selected us to be Kate's parents with the omnipotent foreknowledge that, once we were blissfully and joyfully all in, He would intervene and she would be taken from us. It was the hand selection that I couldn't reconcile. I asked over and over again what I was supposed to be learning and why the lesson had to hurt so much. Initially, I knew it was to bring him glory through my response but when praising Him didn't soften the blow, I struggled. I wanted the lessening of pain to be directly correlated to the amount of praise I sang out and that simply wasn't what happened.

I always complete the studies that I lead before I start teaching them. As such, the answers I give to the questions are relative to that precise moment in time. Months later, when I teach that particular section, the answers might be different. I hoped this would be the case with this Jonah study. I longed to return to each section, months after first completing them, with a new perspective. But, as the study went on, I found my frustration building. I was loving what we were all learning about Jonah but relating it to my own life was increasingly difficult. I was swimming through grief and my perspective wasn't changing. I knew in my head that our sovereign God is Lord of all and that His plan is always the right one. My heart was just struggling to accept it all. And then my eyes would become exponentially angry with my head or my heart or both and volumes of emotion would drain from them in stinging sorrow.

Through October and November, I climbed through Scripture and focused on what we learning and not on how it could effect me personally. On Tuesday, I began preparing for Wednesday's study. Closed in to a closet not more than two and a half feet deep or wide, I sat with my book on my lap and prepared the lesson. I turned, eventually, to the very last day of the very last week of the study, titled, A Fabulous Ending.

Jonah's final verses offer us a peek into the heart of God. He spoke more in this passage than He did throughout the rest of the book to share His thoughts and perspectives with the surly prophet. Whenever God's words are concentrated in a compact portion of Scripture, I sit forward to listen. -Priscilla Shirer

But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?"

"It is," he said. "And I'm so angry I wish I were dead."

But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. And should I not have concern for the great city of Ninevah..." Jonah 4:9-11a

In her commentary, Priscilla writes, "Jonah cared about a plant. God cared about people." Then she says the following. "Consider your divine intervention. What has it revealed to you about God's perspective, and what should be important to you right now?"

My answer from several months ago was simply: People. I remember writing it. I remember thinking that instead of being so inward focused on myself and my own pain, I needed to embrace the role I have within the church and the unique position I am in to pour into the lives of so many. More pouring. Less soaking. That's what I'd thought.

And that's a fine thought to have. It's a great goal and we should always be more outwardly focused than self centered. But I let the tears stream down my face in my tiny closet with the space heater and the post-it prayers on the walls. And, next to "People" I wrote her name...

Kate's mama. It was her body that held and lost Kate. It was her heart that broke. She was going to give Kate to us because she loved her and wanted the best life for her. After Kate was gone, Troy and I saw her. I fought my own grief for those brief moments and tried with all I had to minister to her. She just kept saying that she was sorry. Over and over again. I hugged her, held her, and shared Christ with her. I'm told that, in the months following Kate's death, she was lost in pain and despair and sorrow. I haven't had the opportunity to have any communication with her but I know that godly women have continued to pour into her life.

Two weeks ago, she surrendered to Christ and accepted Him as her Lord and Savior.

Thinking on this miracle in my prayer closet, it suddenly became clear. It was never about me. It was never about Jonah. It was always about the Ninevites. It was always about her. Her life has been one enormous example of why we need a heavenly Father who loves us so much bigger and better than anyone on earth ever can. I am convinced that it took the pain of losing Kate to realize how desperately she needed a Savior.

I don't know why God chose us to be involved and to walk this journey but I'd like to think He believed that we'd bring Him honor through it and that we'd help to point Kate's mama toward Him. I'm not comparing Kate to the plant in Jonah chapter 4. God loves Kate deeply and intimately. The miracle for Kate was that there is a Heaven to gain and she avoided the trials and terrors of this world completely. But she is the plant in that I have been completely focused on her and entirely consumed with what I was supposed to learn from the sudden blessing and then loss of her life. I was so busy clinging to my small space and grief and miracle given and taken that I forgot about the massive city behind me full of people--or at least a pair of them--who need the miracle maker.

God used Kate to bring her mama to Him. And maybe, in some teeny, tiny way, He used me.

On Tuesday, I sent the following message to our adoption coordinator:

"I just wanted to share something with you. Tomorrow, I will teach the final lesson in Priscilla Shirer's Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted Bible study. I started prepping for this study in June. At the beginning, we were asked to choose something in our life where we could clearly see that God had interrupted our plans. The goal was to begin seeing interruptions as divine interventions. Obviously, it was clear what situation I'd be using. What was a little harder was realizing that He brought a situation straight to us, knowing He would greatly interrupt or intervene once our hearts were all in. As I prepped for tomorrow and went over the lesson again, I realized that it's all so much bigger than me. I'd like to think He used us, in some small way, but all of this, all the hurt and pain, eventually led to the angels rejoicing in Heaven over another soul saved. Yes, I want Kate in my arms instead of the ground...but she is safe in the arms of her loving Savior...And for the soul of her mama, well, a year of pain is well worth a life saved."

She responded, "I love you, Kate's mom. You bless me and so many others for living the way you do..."

The repentance of the Ninevites was never about Jonah. Jonah just got to be a part of it. May I always remember, in my grief and my pain and my frustration, that maybe my life is being interrupted so that someone else can see the glory of the Lord.

Learning to Live Without

In a lot of ways, I feel like hope was a Band-Aid. Not eternal hope which is constant and sustaining, but the hope that allowed me to grieve my lost daughter and wait for another at the same time. It might not have been my smoothest move, to wrap this pain up in a bandage. I'm only just now realizing this.

Hoping for another child meant that I could have sad days and mourn the loss of Kate, but always through the filter of the fact that I wouldn't have some future child if we hadn't experienced the having and the losing of our first daughter. I figured that when we held our still-to-come baby girl, the pain of losing Kate would all be worth it.

I'd already lived this pattern twice. When Garrett was placed in my arms, it made infertility worth it. When Matthew was placed in my arms, it again made infertility worth it. After all, neither of them would be here if I could have snapped my fingers and had a positive pregnancy test the first time. (Or the thirtieth.)

When that future daughter was placed in my arms, it would make everything we went through with Kate totally worth it. This is what I told myself when I cried silently in a bathroom stall, overcome, suddenly, by grief. This is what I tell myself when one by one, my friends' babies are born happy and healthy and alive. Of course I want them to be born alive and well, but the stark contrast between seeing a warm baby wrapped in her mama's arms and remembering the cold bag I held with my own daughter inside is emotionally jarring. This is what I tell myself when I think about the fact that all I will ever have of Kate is a grave stone and the thought of what might have been. The struggle will make it worth it.

But I am learning that hope isn't a Band-Aid. It can't be. And the struggle isn't really worth anything.

Kate is gone. And I miss her. One year ago, we were praying and hoping that this little girl might be ours. Now, she is gone to Heaven but there is a stroller in the garage that I bought after Thanksgiving. There is a Christmas stocking in a box--but it won't be filled with tiny baby things this year. There are onesies hanging in the closet. There are diapers and formula and a crib mattress under my bed.

I thought it would be God's plan to bring us another daughter right away. And I would love her and we would visit Kate's grave but the ache would be healed by the presence of the baby who needed my devotion and attention. As it turns out, that wasn't His plan. We wonder, now, if it isn't His plan at all. Initially, we agreed to wait for one year. As that year draws to a close, and as we pray for clear direction, I am confronted with the fact that this might be it. And if this is it...

If this is it, then there is just grief. If this is it, we were hand picked out of obscurity to love Kate for three blissful months and then lose her because that was the plan all along. Either way, I am no longer at liberty to compartmentalize my pain.

Future baby or not, it has taken me ten months to realize that this grief is big and deep and wide and really, really ugly. It has taken me ten months to see that I have to trudge straight through it. I can't walk around it and I can't put a Band-Aid on it. I'm sorry for that. I know it makes no sense to those who ask, "How can you have been so attached to someone you never knew?" I know it boggles the minds of those whose silence during these past many moons has screamed volumes. But I cannot pretend that it isn't there.

I still believe, with all my mind, that God's plan is better than anything I could create on my own. Like Job said in chapter 42, verse 1, "I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know."

I do trust the plan and most days, I really am alright. My laughter is real. My smile is genuine. But I just need you to know that some days, I'm pretending.

You learn to speak so calmly when/Your heart would like to scream and shout/You learn to stop and breathe and smile/You learn to live without/You learn to count the quiet winds/An hour with no unprompted tears/And not to count the deadly days/As they fade into years/You learn to hold your life inside you/And never let it out/You learn to live and die and then to live/You learn to live without
-Brian Yorkey

Let Her Go

Grief is funny.

It's not at all ha-ha funny. It's peculiar, irregular, spastic.

Grief shows up at inopportune times.

As has been well documented, I'm not much of a crier. This year, though, has maybe made up for a lifetime of little tears. I didn't cry at Kate's funeral. I knew I wouldn't. I don't think I have ever cried at any funeral. I correctly assumed that my own daughter's would be no different. But, since January, I've cried in dozens of bathroom stalls, a handful of quiet hallways, a few garages, and several stores.

There have been weeks, even months, that have gone by without tears followed by days where I feel like this heart-hurt will go on forever. I think I'm pretty good at faking it--I have a college degree in pretending--but there are times when the grief just surfaces so quickly that I don't have the time to suppress it.

When Garrett's teacher asks them to raise their hands if they have a sister and he comes home and tells me that he didn't know what to do. He has a sister. But she's in the ground. I turn quickly toward the sink, tears springing instantly to my eyes.

When Matthew prays, "Thank you that you gave us Kate even though you didn't give her to us that much."

When I'm getting ready to have a yard sale and I open a box and I'd forgotten that I'd put all the sympathy cards and the paperwork from the cemetery in it. It catches me off guard and I cry because I don't want to have paperwork from a cemetery. I want to have a five month old.

This song. Whenever I hear it.

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go
Only know you've been high when you're feelings low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go

Staring at the bottom of your glass
Hoping one day you'll make a dream last
But dreams come slow and they go so fast
You see her when you close your eyes
Maybe one day you'll understand why
Everything you touch, surely dies.

Chorus

Staring at the ceiling in the dark
Same old empty feeling in your heart
'Cause love comes slow and it goes so fast
Well you see her when you fall asleep
But never to touch and never to keep
'Cause you loved her too much and you dive too deep

Well you only need the light when it's burning low
Only miss the sun when it starts to snow
Only know you love her when you let her go
Only know you've been high when you're feeling low
Only hate the road when you're missing home
Only know you love her when you let her go
And you let her go

I never knew her. I tell myself as if that will somehow make it easier on me. But it doesn't and I pray long prayers about how I have no idea what Heaven will be like and I know that my one request won't change the order of things, but if God, in His infinite wisdom and glory, could just set aside a few minutes for me to meet my daughter, I would be much obliged. And if He could tell her just how much we wanted her and just how loved she is and just how much we miss her, I sure would be grateful.

I do Bible studies called Motherhood for Every Moment, Jonah: Navigating a Life Interrupted, and Stronger: Finding Hope in Fragile Places. I find joy and truth and hope. I keep moving forward, knowing that while the grief still surprises me, the moments are fewer and there are longer spaces of laughter and smiles in between.

Songs will continue to catch me off guard when they suddenly come on in a grocery store. People will ask me if I just have the two boys and I'll nod because there isn't time to tell the story but in my head I will say, "And I have a daughter waiting for me in Heaven." My boys will struggle with what to say when someone asks them if they have a sister. Years from now, perhaps, moments will still make me cry.

Because grief is strange. And the thing about the song is that I'm not sure I quite know how to let her go.

Her Journey

Honors.

From the eighth grade on, it was always honors. You see, in the seventh grade, armed with gumption (and devoid of tact), I marched up to my Language Arts teacher and asked her to recommend me for honors English for the upcoming year. Her class, I informed her as politely as possible, wasn't challenging me. I can still remember the look that crossed her face. Amusement, more than anything. In her next breath she informed me that she'd been teaching my class at an honors level all year.

I felt kind of small. Kind of small and kind of stupid. I imagined what the rubber bottom of my shoe tasted like. But, from then on, it was honors. Officially.

In high school, that meant a summer reading list. One of those summers brought Maya Angelou into my life by way of her book, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now. I kept a large percentage of those summer reading requirements. As I skim over the pages of Dr. Angelou's book, I see my own handwriting, big and loopy. If the book had been previously owned, I wouldn't believe that the letters belonged to me. They look nothing like the way I write. A not so subtle reminder that these past 18 years have brought about some changes.

I wish I could blame the writing on someone else. That would mean that I could put the thoughts behind the penmanship on someone else as well. The ideas are remedial, at best. Pathetic, unsubstantiated drivel, at worst. But in the end, despite my banal criticism challenging the doctor to explain herself, and my sophomoric (freshmonic?), white-European commentary on racism notwithstanding, I fell in love with Maya Angelou.

Among so many other things, over the course of my own life, she taught me a little bit about why I wouldn't trade my own journey for anything. As life has happened, I have, on occasion, mumbled her very title as a sort of prayer-mantra. When I married my husband after almost marrying someone else, WOULDN'T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW. When my baby was born after infertility and so many tears and a pregnancy filled with twice weekly ultrasounds and concerns of placental insufficiency, WOULDN'T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW. When the judge signed on the dotted line and brought a fourteen month custody battle to a close, I held my youngest son close and WOULDN'T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW. 

When, by God's infinite grace and wisdom, we end up exactly where we're supposed to be. WOULDN'T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW.

On this day, I learned the sad news that the world has lost Miss Maya and I've thought of shedding a tear or two. Or perhaps a million. Because the world does not so easily replace such a phenomenal woman. Instead, I held her tattered New York Times Bestseller in my hands and I flipped through the pages.

"When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I will no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors. I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else. I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country of no return. Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake...

Also, when I sense myself filling with rage at the absence of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns and questions, my efforts and answers should be focused on what I did or can learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life?

If I employ the legacies of my late beloveds, I am certain death will take itself and me as well." -Maya Angelou Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

Death has taken her this day. But oh what a legacy was left. What literary contributions. What love. What life.She is no longer among those living in this valley of strange humors, but through her work and the lives, like mine, that she has impacted, she will not be forgotten.

Awakening

Always. Always I have loved classic novels involving a woman having a major identity crisis, walking out on her marriage, and, more often than not, killing herself in the end. Although, I suppose it could be argued that she wasn't having an identity crisis at all. Perhaps she was finally peeling off the layered mask and presenting herself as she'd always been. I devoured every word written by Tolstoy about Anna Karenina--an almost miraculous feat considering my general lack of enthusiasm for the Russian authors. I couldn't get enough of Madame Bovary by Flaubert. I considered Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie to be a real gem. None of them, however, meant as much to me as Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening.

I can't explain my affection or my attraction to these characters. I've always been a strong believer in a biblical worldview, the sanctity of marriage, and, well, not killing myself. It's not as though, as an impressionable, young college student, I found the actions of these characters to be a defining factor in my belief system. Rather, nearly everything I stood for stood in opposition to their behavior.

Still, to this very day, isolated moments from The Awakening occupy corners of my mind. They send chills up my spine. There is no explaining it because I hate Edna Pontellier. I always have. Even at a childless nineteen, I couldn't understand her reckless behavior. It furrowed my brow and made me angry--the way she just abandoned her children. Leaving her husband, my brain could wrap around that, even when my own worldview couldn't. But to abandon her children, to just keep swimming away until there was no hope of ever making it back, this makes me hate her.

But I love her, too.

I love her for acknowledging her own skin, dreams, feelings. Bold. Unpredictable. I suppose I envy her transparency. I do not share her values nor do I aspire to. But I do long to be real, open, and passionate. Seen. 

"She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world." -Kate Chopin The Awakening

I don't want to be fictitious. I no longer want to be bound by expectations unless they are placed upon me by the One who knows me without garments. I want to serve that very One with total abandonment and freedom. There will come a day when I will stand before Him in glory and more than anything I know--in the deepest recesses of my very being--that I want His words to be, "Well done MY good and faithful servant." 

I've always been open. But I've never been very good at transparency. I'm only just learning the chasm between the two. Perhaps that is what I've envied in these characters for so long. They find out who they are. And then they don't apologize.

Ripple Effect

There is a mountain in my hometown. The hike is difficult but the view from the top is stunning. Last night, in keeping with recent blog themes, I dreamed that I was climbing to the top. Except, instead of doing it the traditional way and using my fully functional legs, I was in a sitting position, balancing with my arms, using my core to hold my legs in a fashion perpendicular to my torso. My legs were suspended several inches above the ground and my arms labored under my full weight. I crept up the mountain inch by inch as I moved each hand back. I didn't climb face forward, in such a way that I could see the twists and turns of the trail. Instead I moved ahead with my back to what was coming, seeing only what had been before.

When the hike was completed, no one applauded my strange victory. In fact, it would seem that everyone pitied me. After all, why would someone with working legs and feet make hiking so much more difficult?

My dreams make no sense.

Usually.

But this one is about how to move forward. Effectively.

I don't have an answer to that question yet.

Troy and Garrett and Matthew and I, we are okay. Our daily life hasn't changed. We love each other more now, perhaps, than ever before. But we find ourselves caught in the ripple effect.

The repercussions of an event or situation experienced far beyond its immediate location. And so we pray for the point of impact, the place where the rock first dropped into the glassy water. We pray for the next ripple, and the next, and the next. We find ourselves swimming toward the center, wishing, with everything we have, that we could pull the rock from the bottom, hurl it back to shore and restore the water to it's original state. But we cannot.

We find ourselves metaphorically climbing a mountain, backward, using arms instead of legs, looking only at the past. Trying to turn our heads so they are at least pointing in the right direction, but struggling against our fatigued muscles to even take the next blind step.

We find ourselves dreaming.

For in the dreaming, we can write the story differently.

9,460,800

A post that's making its way around social media recently reminded me that they'll never be this small again.

Tomorrow they will be one day older, slightly taller, and weigh just a little bit more. The youngest one might speak just a bit more clearly. One of these days, his sporadic correct pronunciation of the letter L will turn into always getting it right. Soon, he might even be able to say his R's. The oldest will, eventually, stop saying vitafin. Although, I vow not to have anything to do with telling him.

Tomorrow they will go to second grade and kindergarten.

Tomorrow they will go to the prom.

Tomorrow they will be men.

Here and now, in the daily grind of FINISH YOUR BREAKFAST and GET YOUR BACKPACK WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE and GET YOUR BASKETBALL SHOES OFF THE BATHROOM COUNTER, it seems impossibly far away.

From here, I see what seems like a lifetime of science projects, skinned knees, report cards, vomit, broken hearts, inevitable bad choices, math problems. Endless volumes of math problems stand between now and then.

But, somehow, someway, it's already been seven and a half years. They sleep through the night. They feed themselves. They don't spit up on my clothes--at least not normally. They clean their own playroom when, for years, I thought that particular goal would never, ever, in this lifetime, be accomplished. They read. They're toilet trained. How did all that happen? How was all of that accomplished?

They still want me to snuggle with them at night--a sacred moment or two that will be gone before I know it. Sometimes I just want to kiss them and take a shower. Sometimes I don't want to crawl up onto the top bunk because, one of these days, I might die trying to get back down. Not today. But maybe tomorrow. I remind myself that the oldest is full steam ahead with eight on the horizon and the little one is not so little anymore. So I climb up. I wrap my arms around that warm body--lanky with limbs and life. And sometimes I sing because they still want me to.

"525,600 minutes. 525 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter in strife."

"Mommy! Are there really that many minutes in a year? Whoa! That is so many!" he exclaimed.

How do so many go so fast? I wonder.

9,460,800. That's roughly how many minutes I get to raise these guys. Nine and a half million minutes. That's so many. What will I do with all those minutes? And why do I know, inexplicably and without a shadow of any doubt, that it will never ever be enough? 

And how many of them will I make worth remembering?

They will never be as small as they are today. Tomorrow, a little less of them will fit into my arms.

To My Husband On Our Tenth

To My Husband,

It's getting late and I'm staring at a bright but blank screen. What can I say in an essay that I'll schedule to post three days from now? Because tomorrow I'll pick you up from the airport and we'll begin a three day adventure together in celebration of this occasion. And I don't know where we'll have online access because we still don't pay for an Internet package on our old cell phones. I'm certainly not going to sit in a Starbucks and type up a blog post with you hanging over my shoulder. I can't write nice things about you while you're looking. It's easier to think them and to feel them than to say them all aloud. You know. It didn't take you long to figure out that you might have married one of the least romantic women in the history of all time. And it's not that I don't place a value on it or desire bed of roses style romance, it's just that I usually find it so uproariously funny, so hard to take seriously. Which is why you're perfect for me.

Because when I spit the fortune cookie out so that I could ask if you were serious when you popped the question on April Fool's, you didn't think I was gross. I didn't swallow it first and then wipe the corners of my mouth daintily before replying. I just spit the thing on the rocks at the harbor, asked if you were serious, and then said, "There's nothing I want more than to be your wife."

Four months later I said, "I do." And if that was just an elaborate April Fool's prank, the joke's on you. You're stuck with me.

It's a lot to be saddled with, I know.

I'm just so naggy and bossy and loud.

And you aren't. Not at all. You're like my very own character foil. You complete me.

It feels like I should say something monumental. Ten years is a long time. Especially in this world of divorce and separation and defeat. But the truth is, it doesn't feel like a big deal. It doesn't seem like the milestone that I thought it would because it's all just been...love. Thirty years. Fifty years. Those are milestones. This, though. This is just another year of loving you. This is knowing that we just got married yesterday because I feel like I can remember every detail and I know it didn't all happen an entire decade ago.

But then I hear the noisy breathing of the kid sleeping nearby. He's almost four and a half and all ours and the pain that we went through together is almost a distant memory. How can it be an old memory when ten years ago seems like yesterday? His brother is here, too. He's all limbs and loose teeth and seven. Our oldest son is seven. And after all this time, the trial that came before him produced endurance and is considered joy.

So much has changed in these ten years, but so much has stayed the same. Your smile still lights up my room. Your arms still hold me tight. Your eyes still search mine and in them is the blue depth of your love for me. It's not always easy. I'm not always easy. You're not always easy. Our children are definitely not always easy. But I love this life something fierce. I love you even more.

I'm still not sure what you were thinking when you picked me after all those years of waiting for just the right girl, but I'm so glad that you did. I know that I don't thank you enough for what you are to me, what you mean to me.

So thank you.

For all that you've been and all that you'll be. My best friend. The father of my children. My husband. Happy Anniversary.

I love you,
Your Wife

Halloween

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. -Romans 8:28

It doesn't matter how hard I try, I cannot remember the details of that day, a decade ago. It's peculiar, the way distance blurs the edges of a vivid memory until it is almost unrecognizable. If I close my eyes and focus long enough on sitting perfectly still, I can begin to feel the prickly fingers of the attack. It came quickly, not unlike the way I feel when I'm trapped in a small space, but wholly different because I was standing outside. Still, no amount of remembrance can help me place what had happened just before. Suddenly, I simply came unglued. All air caught wildly in my chest as it bucked against my thundering heart. Sucking in more before I'd released the previous gulp, I moved irrationally through a vibrant autumn afternoon. The sun broke through cloud cover and stung my eyes. Squinting, gasping, and tingling, I had the abrupt and curiously coherent thought that I was in the grips of a panic attack or, possibly, a total breakdown. Despite the transparent revelation, I could not control the persistent drumming in my ears or the numbness that was enveloping my body. Putting one foot in front of the other in automatic response proved easy enough and, in a moment of clarity, I knew that I could not--would not--do this on the main campus thoroughfare, but controlling my body had become nearly impossible. I turned, took several steps in the wrong direction, spun around, and turned again, hearing only the thump, thump of the snare, feeling only the tingly nothingness of nerves, and tasting only a warm metallic tang with a tongue that was abruptly too big for my mouth. I thought, in those few moments, that I would die right there in front of my college cafeteria if I didn't swiftly remember how to exhale.

I cannot recall where I tried to go but I know I was breathing again before I got there. Departing as quickly as it had assaulted, I was left shaking, emotional, desperate. I didn't know why it had shattered so furiously upon me, I just knew that I needed to explain this, to make sense of it. If I didn't speak it to someone, I was terrified that I'd find myself on all fours creeping around my room, focusing only on the oddly patterned yellow wallpaper.

But where, on a small Christian campus, was I to go with the newsflash that the thought of marrying my fiance had just caused an epic breakdown? Who did I tell about the streaming tears I'd shed on I-15 the previous day as I considered my future? What words would ever explain the sick twist I felt at my core when I thought about forever? What would I say? However would I say it?

In the dreary mist of a late afternoon marine layer, I found my friend. Someone I knew would go to the grave with the secret if I chose never to whisper it. We climbed the sharp, wooden steps to our theatre's musty dressing room and, with chairs facing one another, I tried to explain. Shaking, I started and stopped, unsure of how to word the severity of the situation. It was an admission that I built up so greatly she was certain I was about to tell her I was pregnant. That was, in fact, impossible and though she was good friends with both of us, she received the news calmly, rationally and with great care. She was probably relieved that I wasn't actually carrying his child. "I don't know what to do," I released. The room appeared to change dimensions around me as my eyes blurred.

Ten years on the flip side the decision doesn't seem enormously monumental. There has been a great deal of living in these passing of seasons--some of it more excruciating than the overwhelming throb that was left swelling in my chest when the attack subsided. Then, though, at 21, the choice seemed insurmountably impossible. Looking back, from this perch of early thirties, there was only one, achingly obvious, choice. Break the heart. Destroy the friendships we equally shared. Confound the professors who cared deeply about the both of us. Worry not about the anger and hurt it would bring to those forced to choose a side. And, essentially, pay no mind to the man crushed under the weight of the conclusion.

There were reasons, justifications, evidences and pieces of information that I would, in those first tender months, site to inquiring minds. Defensively, to the acquaintances who thought I'd never truly cared. Anguished, to the professor who described, in detail, the remains of the bloody heart I'd rendered useless. Apologetically, to the friends caught awkwardly between. I realize now that the explanations were irrelevant. This is not the person God has for me; I am not the person He has for him.

Then, in the wake of an onslaught of tears and irregular breathing, I'd nested on the single question. How do I know if this is who God has for me? The man had asked. The woman had said yes. The florist was booked. The dress was purchased. The lives were tangled. How then, does one decide to erase it all? How does one begin the process of untwisting herself from his arms?

The next day I found myself emancipated from classroom to hallway. As students buzzed around me, climbing steps on their way to another course, I began to feel it again, the oppression of choice. Heart crashed, head pounded. Images of a contented future rattled in my mind and were quickly replaced with visions of desolation. The two opposing pictures volleyed for space and I picked up the phone in the hallway. I have no idea who I was planning to call. Him? My parents? My friend? In the openness of a common passage all of these possibilities seem unlikely but then, I clearly wasn't firing on all cylinders.

I felt the labored breathing and I knew I couldn't break down outside again, in the middle of my whole world. By now, the hallway had emptied. I was alone with only the calm, cold walls. I leaned against the concrete, placed the phone back on its hook. Pulled it up. Set it down. And then I sunk slowly to the floor, alone, with my head between my knees. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Slowly, with the rhythm intended for breathing. I willed myself not to panic. Lifting a finger to my cradled face, I swept a tear from my cheek and stood, still staring at the ground.

"Are you alright?" asked the voice. I looked up feeling, suddenly, all imaginable horror. One person was left in this building. One person who had still to load up materials while the rest of us exited. One professor. A woman I'd only been introduced to a handful of times before taking a class from her that semester. A woman I did not know well. But I will maintain, for the rest of my life, that God orchestrated that meeting. I would never have stayed like that in the hallway if I thought a professor would happen upon me. I might have left a moment before. She might have turned left instead of right.

Flushing red, I wiped a remaining tear. Desperately, I wish that I could remember every word that God spoke through her that day--and the next. They filled me with peace and life and clarity. I told her only that I found myself needing to make a decision. I did not speak to what the choice was. A gentle smile curled kindness and her eyes filled with compassion. I was aware that she somehow knew exactly what we were dancing around. In a conversation of long moments, I recall only that she said, "This is not an easy decision. Allow yourself to think about it."

That was the trouble. I banished it from my mind when it crept in. Even after naming it in the quietness of a backstage, I found my heart angry with denial. A wedding, what a party. A fiance, what sanctuary. A lifetime, what confusion. Expel the analysis. Come what may. C'est la vie.

Think about it...

Truer words could not have been spoken.

That day I thought about it. I talked about it. I shared it with my roommate, who, whether or not she was, did not seem surprised. I spoke it to my parents. And, most importantly, I told him. That is certainly not something I wanted to do until I was absolutely sure that I was critically contemplating our future.

The revelation to him was the catalyst that started the outward turmoil, the fallout lasting, in some instances, for years. But strangely, the confession gave me an overwhelming inner peace as though I was caught in the center while the storm raged on. I spent the next day and a half discussing and praying and crying. I sat on my balcony, staring into the sparkling blue of the ocean, sun streaming down and warming my skin while my heart silently fractured within. I paced between my bedroom and the kitchen and back again, tears flowing in exhaustion through the phone line. He promised joy and I longed to believe. But more details pricked the nerves and swayed my resolve in the bitter wind that swept from the coast. Tumbling over one another the reasons raced, with alarming speed, to the end of my mind. There, in a bizarre moment of transparency, was the single thought that I did not want to break this man but that I would not decide my future based on his heart.

Next day dawned. I spent the morning vacillating between crushing pain and numbness. I went to class but learned nothing. Suddenly, education paled in comparison to the weight of life. Sitting, as professors lectured on, I evaluated every mildewed corner of my relationship. I trudged, with heavy feet, toward the cafe. I'd arranged to meet my roommate there, where she had a class with the same professor. I needed to exchange gratitude for care.

Again, I want to know the details of that conversation but am left with strikingly few. I know I thanked her for her perception and advice. I'm aware that at some point she spoke the words that eventually led me to here, ten years later. "You have already decided what you are going to do. You need only to give yourself permission to do it." My world spun with this realization, this declaration, this truth.

I knew.

Delaying the inevitable wasn't going to change the state of my heart. I knew and failing to take action was crippling, blinding, suffocating. Fear held  me captive and the enemy spoke taunting lies into my ear but God was there, ushering me toward the rest of my life. "Take good care of her," the professor told my roommate.

"I will," my friend answered.

That is all I remember of the tender words spoken but I remain ever grateful for the kindness shown me by a woman who knew little of my present, less of my past and none of my future. When, in utter brokenness, I didn't know which direction to turn, He put wisdom in my path. I am not entirely sure what literature she taught me that semester, a vague idea and an affinity for Elizabeth Barrett Browning are all I am left with. But she poured life truth into me and nothing is what it would have been. All has been gained.

On Halloween day I met my fiance in a parking lot at the water's edge and told him I couldn't do it. He wasn't the one God had chosen. I wasn't the one for him. Someday, when he stared into the face of his bride, he would be glad for this broken heart. Someday, when he listened long to the laugh of his new child, he would appreciate my conclusion.

The aftermath was devastating and ugly. It was suddenly clear that I had known for a very long time that I couldn't marry him. The knowledge was locked in a deep recess of my mind and I existed as though this truth was not reality. Once I granted consent to twist that rusty key and unlock the secret, it was finished. The letting go had happened slowly, over the course of a season or two. Mourning was hard and heavy but it was quick, like the tearing of a bandage. For him, though, it was acute, slow and festering so that even years later I was told stories by friends, conversations that made my heart hurt. He couldn't let go when, for me, it had been as easy (and as inconceivably difficult) as giving myself permission to pry my fingers loose.

God validated my decision swiftly. A good friend turned boyfriend turned fiance turned husband each tumbling on the heels of the prior with great speed. My husband's is a story of waiting many years for a wife. The opposite of my chronicle. I am convinced that God prepared my heart to move quickly because of how long my husband's had been still and steady. I know because, as I drove away from that parking lot on Halloween, I promised to spend the foreseeable future alone. If I know anything it's that God has a way of shaking our expectations.

A decade has passed. I know very little of what became of him but, because of social media, I know of his wife and have seen pictures of his wedding day. I knew him well enough to recognize the authenticity of his smile. I know of his two tiny sons, beautiful children, their existence hinged, however slightly, on my decision.

Two people who spent time together, who thought, at one point, that a joined future was part of God's plan were nothing more than two people meant for other things. I curl into the familiar curve of my husband's arm and sigh contentment into the space above our bed. My boys whisper together in the room across the hall. My heart spills joy. You have already decided what you are going to do. You need only to give yourself permission to do it. Permission to find this man. Permission to hold these children. Permission to live this life.

This is the gift given to me that excruciating week ten years ago; a week where I narrowly avoided losing myself completely. This is the future that I could not see as I gasped for breath in the center of my college campus. This is the life I didn't know as I wiped away hot tears in a hallway. This is life. This is it.

Fairy Tale

"I'm glad we don't have daughters," I said into my cell phone as I put the car in drive.

"Why," came the response?

There is a shop next to my son's preschool that sells blankets, among other things. Blankets with sports logos. Jolly Roger blankets. Princess blankets. On this particular day, flapping in the hideous wind that I will never get used to but which Utah insists on flaunting, was a fuzzy Tangled blanket. Rapunzel stared at me and a quote drifted lazily around her impressive load of hair. "The path to your destiny lies within the magic of your heart."

Say what now? I asked my husband what that could possibly even mean. If someone has an answer I'd really love to hear it because, frankly, I don't understand the bit about the magic in your heart. And I really don't get how I might conjure up this magic to get my feet on the path to my appropriate destiny.

So while I'm certain that, on occasion, I will miss having tea parties and playing Barbies and while I know that I'll miss pedicures and wedding dress shopping, I am incredibly thankful that I won't have to deal with the whole "princess" hullabaloo. I'm glad I won't have to explain that there isn't deep magic dwelling inside the hearts of any royalty deprived daughters of mine.

Cartoon fairy tales paint a picture of love that is insanely artificial. They idealize courtship and end with an, "And they lived happily ever after." Don't get me wrong, I love a good cartoon romance, I just don't think they prepare our children (especially our little girls) for marriage. The romance is great. The wedding, stunning. The ending, abrupt. And they sail/ride/frolic into the sunset to live in wedded bliss. Fairy tales certainly don't teach our kids to beware of sobering divorce statistics. They don't fast forward twelve years and depict a haggard mom chasing three filthy children around in a pair of old, white, Hanes Her Way underwear because someone just spilled grape juice on her only clean pair of pants. They don't show Prince Charming wary from years of public appearances and attempts at cutting through all the governmental red tape so that he can finally get something accomplished in the kingdom. We don't teach our children that marriage is only wonderful and amazing and unicorns dancing on gumdrops when we work at it. We teach them, instead, that their glorious destiny can be unlocked by using the magic in their hearts. We teach them that when the going gets tough, it's time to seek a new future. We teach them that anything short of a fairytale is unworthy.

And I certainly don't need any help from all the fake, cartoon Prince Charmings out there with their sparking teeth, their shiny black hair and their excellent equestrian skills. I'm going to have enough trouble teaching my sons to actually be the real thing. The real Prince Charming.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” -Ephesians 5:25-31

Deep down, I think we all want the fairytale. It's why I'd dreamed myself into Kate's place so many years ago. It's why I longed for the dresses, the tiaras, the grandeur. It's why I watched pieces of footage from the royal wedding this afternoon and thought about how very, very lovely she is...

How very, very normal they seemed despite the very, very abnormal pageantry surrounding their union. How Harry turned to watch her coming down the aisle and the look crossed his face that screamed, "My sister-in-law is straight up hot!" and then he mumbled something to that effect in the general direction of his brother and how I really would have expected nothing less. How William stared into her eyes and, for a moment, looked nothing like a Prince and everything like a smitten groom about to bumble his way through ever after. Sometimes happily. Sometimes tragically. Sometimes routinely.

We can get the fairytale. It just doesn't exist in the courting. It doesn't exist in the wedding. It's in the bumbling through. It's the way you look at the prince and know exactly what he's thinking. It's in the forging of a life together. It is in oneness, in open and honest love that withstands the storms, in communication and forgiveness. While the fairytale often begins with the white dress, the fireworks, the first kiss, it thrives on the comfort of the arms that hold it in a continued embrace. And I think, perhaps, the fairytale gets up in the morning and puts on a pair of old, white underwear.

And I simply wouldn't know where to start if I had to teach that to a daughter. Boys, I suspect, care less about the royalty in the first place. But what a challenge it will be to teach them to lead. What a challenge it will be to teach them how to bumble through.

Sometimes

"Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies?" — Erich Fromm

I needed to stumble upon this quote today. Not because I've ever truly suffered. I haven't. I've never lost a child, battled a horrible disease, or lived in great pain.

I needed it because sometimes the effort of life is just a little more than I feel like I can handle. Sometimes the tightrope between grace and preservation is covered in muck. Though we're called to forgive, sometimes I wrestle with how to live in the gray area of being unable to forget. Sometimes the answer to the prayer is not to yield and it takes a great deal of discipline to remain firm.

Sometimes I need to take more time to bask in the sweet smell of a freshly bathed child. Sometimes I need to drink the rays from a warm spot of sun. Sometimes I need to remind myself that it just takes one happy moment of love to make the challenges of life tolerable.

Sometimes I have to repeat, a little more frequently, "This. Is. Worth. It."

Interview: Part 2

Tara asked...

What has been the biggest lesson or lessons you've learned through your journey through infertility and adoption?

Truthfully, I don't really have to think about this one. While the lessons were some of the most painful I've endured, they have shaped me in incredible ways. Really, each day of learning, growing, failing, and succeeding boil down to one word. Surrender. Complete and total relinquishment of control to the Lord, to the One who always has my very best interest at heart. Infertility was Total Surrender 101. Contested adoption was Total Surrender 201. I am quite sure that third and fourth year classes and tests will challenge me in the future. While submission is challenging, submission to a holy and blameless Lord is an amazing process. All that molding hurts, but it is so very worth it.

What made you decide to pursue adoption? What made you decide to adopt interracially? What has God taught you through your adoption of Matthew?

Troy and I had always been drawn to adoption. We both love children and felt that we could provide a stable and loving environment to a child that needed one. Our plan, back when we thought we had some control over that, was to have two biological children and then adopt. As we struggled through infertility we decided to stop spending our money on expensive treatment and turn to adoption instead. We were very interested in a Chinese adoption but I was far from old enough for their program. Initially, we pursued a Ukranian adoption. The program's immense cost (of course, less than The Little Buddy's ended up being) and the fact that the country was on the verge of closing international adoptions led us to reconsider. We'd heard of a program in Georgia that cost much less for African-American and mixed race babies than for Caucasian ones simply because everyone was waiting for one that looked like them. The minority children were being adopted out to other countries. It broke our hearts that so many couples here were only willing to adopt within their own race and culture. That is when we began to consider adopting a child of African decent. We didn't end up pursuing it at that point because I found out that I was pregnant with The Rock Star.

When we began to look into adoption again, interracial adoption was never actually something that we decided to pursue. We had not yet chosen an agency or organization and my husband ended up on the phone with a representative from our insurance agency. As their conversation turned this way and that it came out that this woman had adopted children through an organization in southern California. She gave us the name. God opened door after door and within a few months we were listed with them. We could have specified gender and ethnicity. We chose not to. We'd learned enough about surrendering to the Lord's will during infertility that we didn't want to limit the blessing He had for us. Our file became available to mothers of all races. And we waited.

Truthfully, I had an image of a white teenage mother, college bound, not ready to be a mom. I didn't think an African-American mother would choose to place her child with a white family in Utah. Matthew's mother prayed over countless couple's profiles. In the end, she chose us for many reasons, the least of which was color.

God has taught us countless things through our adoption of Matthew and it hasn't even been 21 months yet. As I said yesterday, He's taught us what it really means to be adopted into His family. He's taught us that while the majority of the world embraces the concept of family as a tight nuclear unit, He's called us to a family that will struggle through racial issues. We will not look like the societal standard. Our transracial family will include biological parents, adoptive parents, biological siblings, siblings through adoption, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles some adoptive, some biological. It isn't easy. It won't be easy. But it is what He has blessed us with.

And for that, I am glad.

To Be Continued...

Interview

Last week I received a request for an interview. I have to admit that for a split second I thought it was a joke because, well, for one thing, I'm just me and there's nothing very exciting about that. And for another thing I was recently invited to London to speak to an audience of 3500. While I never really thought that was an actual invitation for me--and, rather, assumed that someone's wires had gotten mighty erroneously crossed--I also didn't immediately recognize it as a scam. Thankfully my mom did.

However, after corresponding a few times with the interview requester, I felt pretty confident that she wasn't going to ask me to wire her money. (Note: I was never asked to wire the scammer any money but after researching the situation for awhile on the Internet I came to find out that would have been the next step. Which, obviously, I wouldn't have done. I mean, I certainly wouldn't go wiring money to total strangers simply because they said something about needing a UK visa. Especially when the grammar in the invitation sounded more like I was corresponding with someone from Asia and less like I was talking to a Brit.) She wanted to ask me some questions so that she could complete an assignment for a women's leadership program at her church. The purpose was to talk to someone she didn't already know and hopefully gain wisdom from that person's story. She blogs here. We've walked a little bit of the same journey. And she said my story has encouraged her.

So yesterday I spoke to her.


She provided me, ahead of time, with the questions that she'd use as a jumping off point. I thought about them before our conversation. Some of them were easy. Tell me a little bit of your story (your family, how you met your husband, etc.) and When did you start blogging and what made you decide to share your story online? and When did you first start speaking in public about your story? What made you decide to do so? Those didn't require a lot of thought. Some of them were harder. They demanded more reflection. We didn't get to every question. We talked about things that weren't on the initial list, things like infertility treatment and privacy. But I hope she won't mind that I'd like to address some of the more thought provoking questions she'd originally written out. I'd like to be able to expand on some of the things I said to her, in the event that any of you are wondering.

Do you feel God has used your blog to bless you and your readers? Did you expect this when you started writing?


I have been immeasurably blessed through my blog. I can reflect on what I was doing this time last year or what funny thing Garrett said when he was learning to talk. But above that, we have been blessed financially and certainly spiritually through this little corner of the Internet. We had people across the nation praying for our family and contributing to Matthew's adoption fund. If you were one of the people who supported us through prayer or giving during our journey please understand that we couldn't have done it without you. The Lord provided all of you to us when we needed you most and our family has been blessed beyond measure.

I hope that my blog blesses most of my readers. Certainly there are readers that disagree entirely with our decision to support Matthew's mother's choice. There are readers who think we're horrible people. There are readers who got mad at me because I was disturbed by that creepy Halloween store. First and foremost, my blog is for me. A place for me to remember. A place for me to reflect and grow. But when I started getting the negative comments a few months before the trial was set to start, I had a few people tell me to just make it private. I never could bring myself to do that, even though the comments were tearing me apart inside, even though all I wanted to do was set the haters straight and explain every tiny detail of our case. I didn't because I'd promised myself and Matthew that I'd never throw the personal details--the information that made our case pretty rock solid--around the Internet. But I just couldn't bring myself to go private because I was also receiving emails and comments telling me that someone related.

I post about infertility because I long to reach out across space and say, "You, there. I get it. 90% of the population doesn't get it--can't get it--but I do." I post about our adoption journey to say to someone who is wondering whether or not to pursue it that, yeah, it's an incredible choice and one of the biggest blessings I've ever received and I wish more people chose to do it. I never understood the fullness of our adoption into God's family until I experienced it in my own. So I hope my blog blesses more people than it infuriates. I know that it has blessed a few--and for that I am thankful.

But no. I never saw that part coming. I thought my blog would be for me. And my family. And some friends. I didn't think I'd ever have people across the country reading it. I certainly never thought it would encourage someone in Georgia.

To Be Continued...

journey

My brother's Heather gave this frame to Troy and me for Christmas. (And hey, note to Jon and Heather, it would be totally awesome if you'd get engaged so I could say, "My brother's fiancee" or, even better, married, so that I could say, "My sister-in-law." But, whatever. I'll just keep referring to She-Who-Will-In-All-Probability-One-Day-Be-My-Sister-in-Law as My Brother's Heather.) Anyway, back to the frame. I love it. I got this particular image off of the Internet. Was anyone else wondering if Troy already got a second wife? Well he didn't. Not yet. Not ever, are you kidding me? I am more than enough wife for Troy to handle. So, no, we don't know that girl. But I want her jeans.

My in-laws had this verse hanging on their bathroom wall. During the time that I so desperately wanted a baby, each of Troy's three sisters birthed cuddly, cooing, offspring. Sometimes I think the only thing that got me through family gatherings was the fact that if I excused myself to the restroom, this verse would greet me.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

I clung to that verse during those long months of waiting. And I cling to it now. I find it so incredibly appropriate that it was the verse chosen to accompany the word journey. Right there, smack in the middle of the Word is the promise not only that He knows the plans but that they are plans of prosperity, plans of hope, plans of future. It doesn't say, "You know the plans and they really stink," and I find comfort in that.

When Troy opened it I informed my brother's Heather that I was going to put a picture of a U-Haul in it. I didn't. I used this one instead.

We took this picture at my parents house on Thanksgiving Day. We moved five days later. I love this picture because we are sitting on the brink of our journey. We're staring out into the darkness and, far off, we see just a glimmer of light, a lamp to our feet. In the picture there is one person who is excited about the journey, one who is not, and one who has no idea that anything is about to happen. I like that the one who is less than thrilled is the one who is smiling the biggest. Maybe she's learned enough in this life to understand that God knows the plans He has for her. Maybe she's learned that in those plans she has hope. Maybe she's learned that it's really all about the journey.

So thanks, Heather. It was the perfect gift.

The Wind Is Howling In My Soul

My husband took my son to Target. The house is dead quiet and I should be cleaning because I only got about half of it finished yesterday. I tried, really I did. But there was a walk to the park. There were cars that needed to be driven around the house and up the walls. There was lunch to be eaten and, when the nap was finally taken, there was a Christmas scrapbook that needed this year's page finished so that it could be put away. So I should be cleaning. Instead, (shock!) I'm blogging.


I think I'm finally starting to realize that I don't get to go home. Oh sure, I get to visit but IT IS NOT THE SAME! I don't think you can find yourself, permanently, in a completely different world and not feel changed, not feel shaken to your core, not feel, a little like hitting something. I'm not homesick the way I was at sixth grade camp where there were about 45 students for every one adult and I got the brilliant idea that since I only got one three-minute shower during the entire week I would put the shampoo in my hair before getting in, to save time, and consequently had greasy and disgusting hair for the rest of the week and the cold wind howled all night and I just wanted to go home. It's not like that. I cried at sixth grade camp, silently, in my bunk--and I'd been to camp before, I wasn't a weenie. I don't cry here. Here, I just feel, kind of, hollow. I know that cars are whizzing down Main Street and I can see them so clearly it's almost as if I'm there, running some errand. I know that women are walking up and down the aisles of my grocery store, stopping to chat when they see a friend. I know that world is spinning with a life that I am no longer a part of. This is the world I live in now. It's a world where I literally live for Sunday to come so that I can see a familiar face, so that I can soak up knowledge of my relationship with the Lord. I'm sure that is a very good thing. I am positive that there will be spiritual growth born of this journey.


Last night the wind whistled mournfully across the valley. It was cold and biting and, as I looked out the window, my street was asleep with the solitude that I feel, momentarily, when I throw a party laden with pity and invite...myself. I was suddenly sinfully jealous of people who, through circumstance, have security in the roots that have grown under them when I, myself, have been severed from mine. But how often do I mistake my own happiness for God's blessing? And how many times has God's reward shaken me to my very core? And how often is He right? Always. So if I could just push through this feeling that my feet are walking on uncomfortably foreign ground, maybe I would find that this is one of those times that He is carrying me. Maybe, upon further examination, I will discover only one set of footprints in the sand.