The Trouble I’ve Seen

April 24, 2013 By

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Eleven years ago today, a ruddy-faced doctor in a white coat took off his glasses and informed me that there was a raging tumor living inside my eyeball.  News so strange I had to ask for it to be repeated, the words cancer and melanoma all jumbling up inside my head with other strange words like success rate and surgery and I found myself sitting with my hands folded calmly asking for a tissue.

From there, I headed straight into a CT scan full of beeping red dots and IVs pumping toxins.  My wrap-around shirt landed with a soft thud on the floor while I bore my gown of misery like a soldier, trudging forward to get a mammogram before my thirties had even dawned.  My lungs and my liver and my brain and my breasts were all needled and raped, but it was all in the name of progress because melanoma’s a devil’s son.

A week later, my husband and I headed to the world-renowned expert in Philadelphia, eating cheese steak while hearing bullets zinging around in the distance.  We huddled together waiting to for what seemed like hours to see the doctor, in a room filled with foreign languages and travel-weary patients.  We earned ten precious minutes where I rapid-fired questions to the doctor that I had saved in a three-ring notebook.  Year after year we trekked back through sleet and blizzards and pouring rain, cobbling over stones and bricks toward the end of Walnut Street, crossing our fingers for the joyous refrain that life’s tentacles were still strong, holding us together in times such as these.

But radiation is a sniper that shoots to kill, taking down tissue and muscles and solid respectable youth.  I sat in the waiting room with the grey-haired diabetics waiting for lasers and four-inch needles and news that my retina was simply too weak to stand. It just needed a wheelchair like an old war hero with a slug in the shoulder, so they filled my eyeball up with oil like a slab of wood puddy in an empty, hollowed-out hole.  When I was pregnant with my son, I got a cataract so thick my eye almost exploded with pressure and I endured three hours of surgery without anesthesia, which I would never ever recommend to anyone in a million years of Sundays.  What we do for our children, and concurrently to save our own lives.  Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, I sang to the old people, and they nodded like honey child, I hear you.

I carry stress in my eye, drooping like Friday before lunch, weary of being held together with ribbons. I go back every year praying that a rogue cell won’t burst like a terrorist out of hiding, since it’s fatal and the success rates are hopeless and my oncologist tells me it’s useless for me to come see him anymore since a metastasis only buys me a year, maybe two.  He reminded me of that again today as I asked for another appointment.  What do they know, these doctors. No one wants to stare mortality down like a cobra wondering if it will strike or just slither off into the ether, and the difference between one year and two is hundreds of more days.  It matters, you doctors who count years like pebbles.

Those years, they are diamonds to me.

I think about all the happy times since then – babies and birthdays and laughter like bubbles floating large and fat over the driveway.  It’s been a lovely ride, hollowed-out and plugged, with one eye that’s crippled and propped up like the old man in Weekend at Bernie’s.  But despite it all, beauty abounds. Every day I stumble into God’s masterpiece with a depth perception so poor I can’t even thread a needle, and yet somehow I survive, and see, and have vision beyond my own present darkness.

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen, I sing to our babies, rocking and shushing and rubbing their backs until their eyes droop.  But you see, Father.  God and son and spirit and healer, master of this worn-out veteran life.  You plug up this eye and this hollowed-out heart and you never have failed me.  All these years.  All this sorrow.  Nobody but you, Jesus.

Glory Halleluiah.   

—-

If you want to hear this song sung the way I like it sung, you need to hear it by Mahalia Jackson:

—-

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/supersonicphotos/4312101907/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Health, Inspirational, My life, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

It will all end up happy

April 13, 2013 By

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My daughter’s been hurting lately.  But not in a way that needs a band aid.  She’s trying to navigate a world where things don’t make sense and friends can turn and love can end.  People who were steady are instead shifting and purple starts to just look black.  She’s entering into a world where problems loom so much larger than she can handle and there’s all this business of boundaries and obedience.  So I’m rolling up my sleeves and doing my mother’s best at fighting the heavy. As Florence + the Machine blares through my ipod speakers, it is hard to dance with a devil on your back.

So shake him off. 

Today, one of my daughter’s girlfriends came and spent the day.  We made blueberry pancakes with roasted pecans and shook powdered sugar on top from an old half-rusted sifter.  In the afternoon we had a party for no reason where six girls played dress-up and beauty shop and hop scotch.  They ate cupcakes and danced like monkeys and drew roads all up and down our driveway with chalk.  When the mothers came the girls all cried out to stay, with dirty feet and tussled hair and my daughter just beamed with pride.  At night, we watched The Jetsons episodes, with George puttering around in his space mobile.  And after bath, I heard her talking to her dolls and soothing their fears.  Rocking and loving and tucking them inside sleeping bags tight.

It’s time for bed, I said.  She smiled without argument and turned off the lights.

I came and lay beside her, that precious skin and fragile spirit that I bore and held and loved before I even saw her face.  I told her that God gave her a spirit gift of intuition that not everyone has.  I told her she could sense a good friend from a bad, and that she naturally gravitates toward honest and real.  I was proud that she sought out pure, kind hearts.  She nodded at this, because she’s wise enough to know it’s true.  I told her that good friends are lifetime treasures, and that I’ve been on-my-knees thankful for them myself.

Then this precious soul tells me with a shaky voice that sometimes good friends turn bad, and bad friends turn good, and I said that’s just about right.  And yet baby, don’t get jaded because the cream will always rise.   Keep seeking out good with your heart and it will all end up happy.  She hugged me tight and asked for butterfly nose kisses and said that she liked to snuggle in flannel sheets even in the Spring because they’re soft, and I told her that was just fine too.  I rubbed her little girl arm and smelled that baby-fine hair and wished she’d stay this way forever.

Growing up’s the pits and all it means is mortgages and heartbreak but to be young means to flutter and sing and never have to worry about ill-fitting waistbands.  Being young is joy and hope and light that conquers all.  At the end of the day, as the cicadas sing and the oak trees brush against the tin roof and momma’s always gonna be around, light does indeed win over darkness.   Cupcakes and hop scotch and blueberry pancakes soften into dreams, and fresh new mornings, and school shoes once again, and isn’t this what childhood is all about?

—

photo:

playing dress up

Filed Under: Love, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

Blogging the Bible: Jonah and the Whale

April 11, 2013 By

Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae 29 July 2010

I’ve always seen the story of Jonah and the whale as a strange and rather far-fetched consequence of running from God’s calling.  But now I see it as a beautiful lesson in forgiveness, and God’s equal bounty of love, and of what incredible lengths God will go to in order to teach his children about mercy.

Here’s the basic premise:  Jonah’s a prophet, and a good dude, but one day God asks him to travel to Nineveh to tell the wicked people to repent.  Jonah’s like “Those people?  Those rotten, stinking Gentiles that spit on our religion and hate our ways and hurt their own women and children?  No thanks.”  So he runs off to a sailboat and thinks he can hide, but the seas grow crazy wild.  Finally Jonah realizes God doesn’t do hiding places, so he tells the crew to throw him over.  They all get scared to death but end up thinking God is one big-bad motha, and Jonah ends up water-bound.  But instead of drowning, Jonah is swallowed up by a big fish-like thing, and ends up miraculously alive in a bubble of whale intestines where he can apparently breathe.  I’m not sure about the logistics of all this, but if Jesus can walk on water I’m sure people can survive in stomach-acid if God commands it.  So for three days Jonah just floats around in there, praising God for his salvation and for God’s imminent glory, I’m sure all the while stinking like cooked cabbage.

Three days later the fish spits him out on dry land, and Jonah’s response is, “Fine, Lord.  I’ll go.”  So he travels to Nineveh for a bath and a proclamation that their nation will be ruined if they don’t repent.  He’s not really serious about the repentance part.  It’s more of a “You slimeballs will someday rot in hell and I can’t wait to tell my girlfriend back home that I got to say this to you people” type of thing.  But miraculously, the people believe him.  Probably because if they do, he’ll leave, and ain’t nobody want to hang around a dude that smells like chewed up fish intestines. So they all bow down and fast and declare allegiance to God, giving up their evil ways and asking God to look upon them with compassion. And when God hears their heartfelt prayers, he did not ruin their nation and bring about destruction and ends up sparing the people.

Now at this point Jonah’s looking around at all the happy slimeballs like Wait a second. I just told these people off and now I have to eat those words?  They are terrible and evil and you’re just going to wipe them all clean like it was nothing? I like it that God asks him whether he has the right to be angry about this and Jonah’s like “heck yes I do.”  Then he goes off somewhere in the city square, sits down, and sulks.

So as Jonah’s sitting there throwing a tantrum, the Lord creates a vine around him to shield him from the sun, which makes Jonah happy, but then a worm comes along and eats it, and Jonah’s generally pissy about the whole thing.  Then God basically says “you’re concerned about this vine, which sprang up quickly and died quickly, but you don’t care about the entire nation of Nineveh?”  Then Jonah doesn’t get a chance to answer because the book ends.

See? So much more than a whale.

I see myself more in Jonah than most characters in the Bible.  I am stubborn, and I don’t always want to follow God’s commands.  Like Jonah, I see myself as special – not sinful and hateful and terrible like those people over there. And if God called me to minister to those people over there, I’d be busy doing my hair and making pot roast and going on vacation and singing in church. What’s it going to take for me to listen to God’s plan for my life?  How far will God go to reach me? When will those people over there be rated as equal to me? I turn to those people over there and my heart is filled with hate.  I would never do what they do.  I would never turn from God so far.

I am not them.

And so life throws me overboard.  And I fall so very far, and so deep. But from the depths of the grave.  From the heart of the sea.  From the hurling arm of God into the deep waters, “where the currents swirled about me, all your waves and breakers swept over me. . . The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me, seaweed was wrapped around my head.  To the roots of the mountains I sank down, the earth beneath barred me in, but you brought my life up from the pit.” Jonah 2.

And I’m alive.  Somehow in this swirling mass of death I’m caught in a strange pocket of life.  Long enough to breathe.  Long enough to raise my arms in praise.  Long enough to sense a form of leveling, and realize that I am not special.  Those people over there are just as desperate for God as I am, and they are just as worthy of salvation.

Oh, Jonah.  Israel is not the only nation worth loving.  And we, as the body of Christ, are not the only people worth the resurrection.  Everyone, even those deeply rooted in sin and taken over by evil –those who are lost and broken and tired – they are worth reaching.  They are worth redeeming.  Husbands who cheat on their wives.  Executives who skim the margins.  Men who rape and women who hurt and those groups that snarl hate and venom in the name of God.  Republicans and Abortion Clinics and Liberal Media and George Bush and the whole net of us humankind – God’s healing mercy is for us all.

Sometimes it takes sinking in a deep black hole, when life seems to be ebbing way, to set our sights in the right direction. God has to literally build a vine and dry it up, cause the seas to rise and fall – forcing us to put our pride aside and realize that all people get a hall pass at grace.

But Lord, they don’t deserve it, I scream. I sit in disbelief that my life has been filled with worship and their life was filled with decay and at the end we all end up in the same place.  And instead of being gracious about it I turn up my nose and scowl.  I doubt God’s compassion is equal.  I am angry that they are welcomed into the kingdom.  I feel I’ve somehow earned it. And when God asks if I have that right, I’m honest.  “Yes, Lord.  I’m angry enough to die.”

But brothers, we are all in this together.  Those people over there and us.  We’re all trapped together in one stinking whale-belly of a life, and salvation abounds.

—

photo:

Humpback Whale, Megaptera novaeangliae 29 July 2010

Filed Under: Blog the Bible, Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

Wednesday Playlist

March 27, 2013 By

5771025070_bddb7e2ec6There are few mediums in art that invoke immediate emotion.  Pictures, whether painted in oil or shot through a lens, may or may not bring up feelings of peace, or nostalgia, or intrigue. Words can move mountains, but it takes a bit of work on behalf of the reader.  But music.  From the first moment you hear the fiddle, or the beat of the drums, or the tuning of the violins – it draws energy and sucks emotions and you’re left breathless at the end.  I honestly can’t imagine life without it, and if I were deaf I’d have to create imaginary songs in my head just to survive.  Blind I could do, but please Lord Jesus don’t take away my music.

This can cause problems for my household, since many instructions come out of my brain in song, and we often have impromptu dance parties.  And I can’t stand cheesy children’s songs, so instead of listening to Itsy Bitsy Spider we bust it down with Natasha Bedingfield.  I ain’t gonna lie.  I’ve got a pocket full of sunshine. I really do. And if I have to tolerate a Taylor Swift song now and again, who am I to pick and choose what music my daughter is attracted to?  After all, we love what we love.

Music combines harmony and rhythm and poetry, so in that sense I believe it’s the most brilliant of all the art mediums.  I love the fact that you can be transformed so instantly, like our bodies were designed to take it in.  Even if your limbs can’t dance your eyes will, and your fingers will twitch, and your feet will start tapping with the beat.  Because our lives are on one translucent string until death and music is what makes that string vibrate with ecstasy.  It’s brilliant and simple and classic all at the same time, and I thank God for all that joy wrapped up inside four minutes.

On that note, here is my most recent play list.

  • Red Hands, by Walk off the Earth
  • Stars, by Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
  • Merry Go Round, by Kacey Musgraves
  • 1957, by Milo Greene
  • 93 Million Miles, by Jason Mraz
  • Come on Get Higher, by Matt Nathanson
  • I Was Gonna Marry You, by Tristan Prettyman
  • Hero, by Family of the Year
  • It’s Time, by Imagine Dragons
  • Lego House, by Ed Sheeren
  • Sing Loud, by Alpha Rev
  • Mirrors, by Justin Timberlake
  • Battle Scars, by Lupe Fiasco & Guy Sebastian

What is your current favorite song that you repeat over and over and can’t get out of your head?

—

photo:

Music - an art for itself - Headphones and music notes / musical notation system

Filed Under: Music, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Pearls of death: a poem

March 24, 2013 By

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The plastic curves, they pant

in tulle and diamonds bright

For kitchens gleaming of soapstone

Buying and baking and wasting.

—

It’s a water-soaked culture

and fear is a droplet of oil

so blend and buy and lust and smile

sail on past the wrinkled lines.

—

Sleep is hard and mean and honest

It forces waking from dreams of white

Drug it where it bleeds clean

Back to fluff and saccharine.

—

Freedom’s not a pinning board

Where all is neat and robin blue

It’s standing under columns wide

with open, dripping hearts

where sprinklers click click back and forth

Soaking the stilettos.

—

We’re all equal, she and I

The one who can’t get off the lines

The one who says she’ll finally get clean

The one who prays to Jesus.

—

In the waiting room of the psyche ward

or in the house of all that’s holy

Money’s no good here, my friends

Ain’t nobody cares about expensive shoes

or breakfast at tiffany’s.

—

Be gone, ye life of privilege

You fool me with your opulence

The rusty tin of jewels

Choking my neck whilst nearest death,

 

Rip off the pearls

—

photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megyarsh/2873940330/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

The Perfume Basket

March 23, 2013 By

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A few months back, my son dropped my bottle of perfume on the bathroom floor, and rose-scented shards littered the tile.  So off I went to Nordstrom to replace it.  I stood there for hours smelling and wafting and scrunching up my nose. Finally I chose one, and as I was paying, the saleslady said she would put my name in a drawing for a gift basket.  Yes, yes.  Something with an $800 value.  Lots of designer fragrances.  I never win anything, lady, so have fun with that.

Fast forward to the following week.  I get a phone call from Nordstrom that says I won.  I stood there in the kitchen, in the middle of loading the dishwasher with a dumb look on my face, speechless.  “Come by and get it any time,” she prattled on.

That afternoon, with two kids in tow, I trudged to Nordstrom to pick it up.  For some reason, I was afraid they would think I was lying about winning, or that it wasn’t really mine.  The minute they placed that shrink-wrapped basket in my greedy little hands, I told my kids to jump into hyper speed and we bolted back to the car.  I wouldn’t even stop at the grocery store on the way home.  I’m sitting on real value here, people, and it needed to be safe on my bathroom counter.

When I got home, I took my time in unwrapping it.  Bottle after bottle was arranged inside a Jimmy Choo shoebox.  Tall and short and heavy and lacy.  Fruity and musky and spicy and soft.  Every perfume had their own emotion, and their own set of colors and meaning.  I felt so guilty, like there was no way I deserved all this value.  I’d save them for gifts, send them to friends, and select one I really loved.

But I didn’t.  I kept them all. 

At first I just sprayed some in the air, or squirted a dab on my arm before church.  But they go bad in two years, and I have all these bottles, and why not use them to their fullest?  What’s the good of saving them and not enjoying them?  So I began my perfume campaign. When friends came over, I’d march them to the bathroom and encourage them to shower themselves in Flowerbomb.  When I feel particularly down, I spray Prada on the pillows.  After my bath, Versace is liberally applied.  I use Chanel as my interior car fragrance, and when the bathroom smells particularly stale, there is always Gucci to make things right again.  You’ll never see such liberal application of Burberry in all your born days.

It’s been magical.

Perfume will never again have the same meaning that it does in this season in my life.  I totally get why Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with rich oils, and why the wise men brought the child of God frankincense and myrrh, both prized for their alluring fragrance.  They were all gifts fit for a King.

I’m no queen, but I have felt so rich. I’m keeping the bottles for my daughter as a testament to His glory, and to the power of our senses, and to explain that in the darkest of days, when the sun hasn’t yet risen, there is power in unexplained gifts, and reminders of beauty.  There is indeed a story woven into all things. But most importantly, the wisdom of the ages:

There ain’t nothin a little Chanel won’t fix. 

—

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lilivanili/8097442306/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Inspirational, My life Tagged With: , , ,

Odd and Curious Thoughts of the Week

March 19, 2013 By

(1) In our house, we can’t say the words stupid, dumb, or hate.  Which is why we don’t have cable television and ban Fox News. Today, however, I managed to say all three words in one sentence with regard to a jar of pesto I couldn’t open. I’m an excellent example.

(2) For a Girl Scout project, my daughter and I were looking for a quote on responsibility that was written by a woman.  I was all “Look! Here’s one by Eleanor Roosevelt!” but my daughter just shrugged like I was some old fart.  “This! This!” she said as she pointed to the computer screen.  So here we go off to girl scouts, armed with wisdom from Sandra Bullock.

(3) I ordered a salad today at lunch.  But instead of grilled chicken, I wanted tempura chicken that was offered atop a different salad.  This extraordinary and very unique change completely baffled the waitress, who whispered something to a manager in hushed tones like I had asked for cocaine-laced carrots.  The manager nodded, but the waitress kept raising her hands, like “How?  How can I possibly enter this into the computer?  Why is this woman doing this to me? What’s with all the changes?”  At this point I’m like, Oh sweet thing. If it’s this stressful I’ll just have a burger. Some people need some real challenges in their life.

(4) My trainer says that great abs are composed of 80% diet and 20% exercise, which begs the question why we are doing all this work for twenty measly percent.  We might as well forget the crunches altogether and just all go out for salads.

(5) When ordering salad, order the tempura chicken.  It’s a fun little game I now play.  It’s for her own good.  I’m like a life coach.

(6) I applied for a job online today.  One of the questions asked if I had been disciplined, disbarred, fired, murdered someone, consumed battery acid, or some other bad things I blew past and simply answered yes to.  WHAT?  I answered YES? Why isn’t this back button working?  Why is there an error message?  I then had to call the HR Department and explain my mistake to an intake specialist who found my state of panic simply hilarious.  It’s not funny if you’re the one admitting murder, lady.

(7) I was at the mall today and had thirty minutes to waste before I met a lady I didn’t know for lunch.  Since I barely did my make-up this morning, and I happened to be at the make-up counter, I asked her to do a little touch-up.  The employee at a mac counter was all “let me make your eyes pop” and I just nodded like “well that sounds fun” but then I began to ask myself all sorts of questions like “what’s with all the black?” or “dude that seems like a lot of mascara for a pale blond girl.” When I left and looked in the mirror, I looked like a cross between RuPaul and Twiggy.  I sat in my car for the remainder of aforementioned free time furiously rubbing my eyes with tissues, praying the lady I was meeting at lunch was nearsighted.

(8)  They make camouflage in pink now, I noticed.  Why?  Is it supposed to be for the ladies?  Do women run around in pink fields hunting unicorns?  And if so, they need to be disguised?  The last time I went hunting in cotton candy forests I just used my magical powers to turn into a gumdrop.

(9) My 2-year-old son pulled my daughter’s hair and she flared back in rage.  “Would YOU like it if I pulled YOUR hair?” she asked.  He sat there for a minute, like she was daring him to skip school and go get a tattoo.  “Do it,” he said with a grin.  You should have seen the look on my daughter’s face. Awesome.

(10)                 I really do want to shoot the person who developed daylight savings time.  Trying to put two kids to bed when it’s light outside is impossible, and infuriating, and time changes are so irrelevant.  But then I’d have to legitimately say yes to the online job application question regarding murder.  Unless this person happened to be in a pink forest, and I was wearing camo, and then no one would ever know. 

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , ,

Freefall

March 17, 2013 By

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I had a dream a few months back that I was dangling on a roller coaster, my hands gripping the sides of a drop-off that went straight down into blackness.  I was in my car with my children, for heaven’s sakes.  I couldn’t risk their lives letting my clunky Chevy Tahoe loose on these metal tracks.  What kind of mother would let go? I couldn’t tell if my car was strapped in or if I would fly off into the cold air.  Where would I land?  Who would provide for them?  What would I do?  Help, Lord!

I shrieked in fear as I sat up straight in bed in a hot, panicked sweat. I have given my life in service for you, Lord, and this is the payback I get?  This is my reward for all those youth mission trips and church services and solos?  Is this really happening? It felt like I just got kicked in the gut, and yet when I curled over to seek some relief, the blows just kept coming.  All I could feel was hurt.  A deep and immense and crazy hurt that I’ve never before experienced.  Worse than cancer.  Worse than my abdominal infection. Worse than death itself. It was as if all the darkness in the world was hurling toward me at once, and it entered my bloodstream like a bad drug.  I was swept under at the sheer the weight of it and was so extremely uncomfortable that I wanted to peel off my own skin.  But I couldn’t, so I just curled up and clenched my teeth, and begged for mercy, and made no coherent sense for months.  And now I’m dangling off a cliff with white-knuckles and I’m a little pissed about it, if you want to know the truth, because I so don’t deserve this.

I’ve lived my whole life professing my faith in God, that he is the ruler and owner and molder of my soul.  I’ve nodded in response to picking up the cross and following Jesus and felt in all earnestness that I was a good believer.  Kind of like most people do on Sundays, before they go home and continue their natural and sinful natures.  And yet here I am, and now it’s happening, and I’m finally tested.   The stability on earth that I clung to with my bare hands shattered and I was dangling on the edge in fear, not trusting God would catch me.  And not only did I lack faith, but I had the audacity to challenge God’s plan, like I put my payments in the God vending machine all these years but all I got out was this crappy mess.  I was such a damn fool.  Or rather, I was blind to what God was really trying to show me.

Now I see more clearly.   What’s so beautiful is that this is precisely my payback for years of loving Him. A realization that I had it wrong, and I wasn’t fully submitting, and all I have on this earth is a cartoon mirage.   Jesus was holding out a hand in my personal crisis to say “Follow me. ”  I could have just said don’t-mind-if-I-do, or thanks, man, or even Cool. My life on this earth is one empty vessel of saggy skin that will rot into the earth, but my soul exists for Your glory, and this is a chance to live into it.  I could have said all sorts of lofty things, but I didn’t.  Instead, I screamed like a girl and asked God to somehow put my Tahoe in reverse.  I basically said to Jesus, “You’re a great teacher, and I’ll take what I think applies to me, but this total submission thing?  This fall-off-a-cliff dependence?  That’s a good one, dude.  Now let’s quit with all the crazy-talk.  I want my old life back.”

I see now what I could not before.  That my old life wasn’t life-giving.  It was full of decay, and stagnant water, and salt that had lost its flavor.  I was saying all the right words about faith and thinking I was in the right camp, like I could fit God within the walls of my upper-middle class lifestyle and would give God my budget surplus.  I liked to go to bible study and talk about Godly things and sit on the front row to be entertained, but the real lesson of Christ?  The die to self part?  Well I’d find time for that later, after dinner and bathtime and lunches and writing and friends and phone calls and facebook and photo sessions and, well, me.  I’d find time for that after me.

But God doesn’t do surplus. He won’t accept lukewarm, or dependence when it’s easy, or prayers only on Sundays.  He doesn’t believe all religions are created equal or we can just slide by unnoticed or half-ass our way to salvation by putting ourselves first.

We have to let it all go.  Not because our palms are sweaty and we just can’t hold on any longer, but because we want to.  And friends, there is joy in submission.  Joy that envelops fear, and pain, and deep, dark wounds.  Joy that frees us from the beating and torture and darkness that penetrates.  It’s in these moments where you have nothing else to hold onto but God himself, when you see His amazing grace mostly clearly. A smile starts to crack, and then it widens, and joy enters in.

So here I am, starting over.  It’s liberating, in a way, to see how God works.  To see how He uses people and circumstances and turns bad into good for the sake of His glory.  And the fact that I can be of some service in the great commission is fascinating and humbling and makes me want to fall down in reverence with tears streaming down these saggy human cheeks.

Lord, thank you for this pain.  With every fiber of my being I scream to the heavens a resounding and echoing thank you, for I have finally let go, and I trust you’ve got this, and I am finally free.   If my luck holds out, I won’t get bugs in my teeth on the way down.

—-

photo:

Millenium Force

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Religion, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , ,

Fan Mail

March 12, 2013 By

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So the big important news this week was that Taylor Swift’s fan mail was found unopened in a dumpster.  All those glittery heart raspberry letters wasted, dumped by the used syringes and old saggy diapers.  Someone found them, and THANK HEAVENS alerted the appropriate authorities.  It just really makes me teary-eyed that we Americans [that haven’t a clue about starvation or submission or selflessness or hunger or political issues] stand up for what’s right. Because these letters were found, ya’ll. It’s a miracle. 

So it made me think about what it would be like to get a bunch of fan mail from 14-year-old girls that include pictures of their grandmothers and boyfriends and are sprayed eerily with Bath & Body Works perfume.   I mean, who really likes the smell of sun-ripened raspberry? I say no one.  In an imaginary world, letters to me would go something like this:

Yeah so Amanda:

I like it when you write about your kids throwing up, so if you could tone it down with the Jesus references that’d be cool.  K?

My Dearest Amanda,

Get over yourself.  My kids were killed in a horrific accident and here you go rambling about how you can’t find concealer to cover up your dark under-eye circles and how whiny-bad your cute little life is.  Are your children alive?  Okay then. Find some priorities.  Included with this letter is a bottle of Raspberry room spray to remind you to be freaking happy about your life.

Manda Panda,

I’m 13 years old and live in Nebraska and I just don’t understand all these references to macaroni and cheese, peas, baking bread, and Neimans.  One minute you’re all fun and bubbly and then you’re all “let’s rise from the ashes” and “oh, the suffering.”  And OMG did you really include a recipe for bran muffins? How old are you? Can you have a theme or something? Because I’m getting confused.  #hillpenblog #randomnthoughtsareboring #macaronirocks #ilovehashtags #callme #sunripenedraspberry #Gohuskies!

Amanda:

I think your photo is manufactured and you’re really a robot. Can you meet me Friday in person so we can pick berries together and I can see if you have real teeth?  I’ll borrow a car and we can eat at ihop after.

For the record, I’d be so happy to get these letters to I could personally respond.  After wading through the glitter, I’d write this:

My dear friend:

I hate raspberries.  I don’t like the way they taste or the way they feel in my mouth and if I’m forced to smell one more sun-ripened raspberry I’m going postal on you and writing about squirrels for the rest of eternity.  You’ll have to go through some sort of unsubscribing process, which would take you like 2-3 long minutes.  You want that?  Huh?

And about Jesus.  Well, he’s a dear friend and rules my life and carries me on days I can’t stand, or bake bread, or cover up the circles.  So it’s hard not to talk about Jesus, or God the Father, or how the holy spirit fills up my empty spaces.

But now all I feel is bad because I went crazy on you about raspberries.  And you were so nice to send me the scratch-and-sniff stickers.  Just for being so hateful I’m eating a handful of them right now as my penance, and spraying my 7-year-old’s room with some sort of [insanely awful] spray sent to me from a grief-stricken woman, and hoping that the smell of cinnamon buns comes back into favor. #cinnamonbun2014

So go huskies.  And grief counseling.  And perspective.  Go Jesus and letters and kids throwing up and even raspberries.  It makes up the big basket of life, and that’s good no matter what it smells like.

Love and kisses,

Me.

P.S.  I’m not a robot.  Hence the dark circles.

P.P.S.  I only ate one raspberry, because I accidentally spilled the carton on the floor and I couldn’t stand to pick up their hairy, spiny, squishy little bodies.  So I swept them up and smeared red all over the travertine like blood and now I’m angry again.  But I ate one, so let’s just stick with that.

—

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/7162961683/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Filed Under: Humor, My life, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Let them eat toast

March 5, 2013 By

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I’m always annoyed when the host of a cooking show tastes her food at the end of the episode, rolling her eyes back in ecstasy.  Not only does she magically create beef rolls, arugula salad, and a pear tart in under twenty minutes, but then she brags on herself.  “Oh my gosh,” she says into the camera.  “This is so good.  Seriously.”  Her hair is all blown out and she wears a size two but she takes a glorious bite of something with a face full of Chanel make-up.  Honestly, it does look amazing, and if she says it’s the best pizza ever it must be.  But I am at home at 4 pm staring into my refrigerator, wearing sweatpants and my daughter’s vanilla cupcake lip smackers with not a stitch of real adult make-up on.  I glance back at the television and see this beautiful person still standing, doing all kinds of lovely dicing and chopping, and I watch in a trance as her curls are still in place.  The cabinets are white and all the dishes are white and she never seems to run out of spoons.

But meanwhile, back in real life, dinner happens.  While I desire to produce homemade chicken stock on a Tuesday afternoon, or make stuffed peppers with a side of beet salad, serving it to grateful children who ask for a double helping of roasted squash, I end up making scrambled eggs with cheese. The little song I made up about it being breakfast for dinner! (it comes with a dance) is so overused and nobody likes wheat toast anyway.  So it’s milk with no chocolate, eggs before ice cream, and please sit down at the table because we aren’t wild animals eating our kill.  Which ends up in a rendition of accurate wolf howling and a discussion of how much we all hate eggs and me bemoaning the fact that I could only find two spoons.  My daughter shrugs like she is completely unaware that there is Lenox silverware hidden in the garden being used as tiny shovels for the dirt-fairy nymphs.

Where is my make-up artist? Where is my blow-out? Why are my children so resistant to toast, I’d just like to know?

One of these days, someone will create a real cooking show, where the chef runs out of time and keeps getting interrupted by a toddler trying to climb the cabinets to get into the shelf for old Valentine’s Candy.  You’ll see her start to sweat because she’s embarrassed about her child’s behavior and ends up using baking soda instead of cornstarch or throws in way too much salt.  Then at the end of the show, when she can’t quite make it to the pear tart because her son keeps trying to grab power bars from the pantry to curb his imminent starvation, she tries to cover for herself and says that you can just eat a whole piece of fruit for dessert like she planned it all along.  But no one believes her because come on.  No one wants a stupid pear.

At the end, she’s supposed to taste what she made. While she’s lifting the spoon to her mouth she slips on the dog’s water (who sloshed it all over the tile? I swear) and her daughter walks in and grabs a bruschetta from the presentation dish.  “Oh my gosh,” her daughter says into the camera.  “This is the nastiest thing I’ve ever had.  Seriously.  Don’t ever make this again.  I’m going to Shelly’s to eat macaroni and cheese.”  Then the poor little chef cries and gives her toddler an old piece of candy after all and we see her sneaking a beer in a red Dixie cup.

I’d be like YES!  I love this show!  I’m a huge fan!  You managed to make a crappy version of stir fry, sure.  But look at that salad! That’s good!  And you tried so hard, and you didn’t totally lose it with that dog water spillage thing, which is so impressive and shows how calm you were under pressure.  So what that your daughter didn’t like bruschetta?  She wears hot pink shirts and eats macaroni with powder sauce, so her credibility is nil.   It’s cool.  I’ll send you a recipe using a can of soup, some Ro-Tel, and some crumbled up chips and we can all feel like normal people.  Then I’ll go skipping off to the garden to find all my spoons and thank the stars that I’m not alone.

NBC, take note.   One of these days, just allow the chef to say what’s she’s actually thinking, which is “please don’t eat this.  I just tasted it, and honestly it tastes exactly like cardboard because it’s only pasta and peas with unsalted butter.  Next time I’ll find a sauce or a cream or something.  Really.  Trust me on this.”   I would.  I so totally would.

Let’s face it.  Despite our best intentions, you just sometimes have to eat toast.  Put butter and salt on it if you wish and call it garlic bread.  Add a song about how toast rhymes with roast and how the ghost gets the most.  Then forgive yourself for having breakfast for dinner, or the fact that you gave your kid candy, and that you have been wearing work-out gear for three days with no Chanel in sight.   Honestly, your kids don’t care.  They’re too busy eating to notice.

photo:

Scrambled Egg with Toast

Filed Under: Cooking, Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Motherhood, My life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,

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