Stitch by Stitch

March 6, 2014 By

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I walked out of an OB/Gyn’s office today, thinking of lunch dates and meetings, deadlines and duties. I slid into a crammed elevator next to a woman clinging to a lab slip, trying so very hard to stifle her tears. I watched her struggle for breath.  Struggle to keep angst trapped inside the thin walls of her own self.  I wanted to reach out to her, past her messy ponytail and smudged mascara and trembling fingers.  Yet I stood still as stone as the lit-up numbers ticked down.  My heart was yearning to whisper in her ear that this shall pass.  Pain doesn’t linger.  After the band-aid is ripped, my sweet girl, numbness will settle. And yet the elevator door opened and we all filed out, us Busy People.  The woman turned left and I turned right, my high heels clicking along the floor like a woodpecker.

As I passed hallways I’d trod before, on carpet I’d worn down, I headed to my car praying hard.  My mind raced and my lip quivered as I saw those same lab slips before me, dripping with blood cell counts and cancer.  And yet despite that fact my soul was ripped and my own blood shared,  I bore children on this earth who will outlast me.  Fruits of my womb and outpourings of my own tender heart. As I climbed into my car balancing papers and bags and keys and all the luxuries of modern civility, I wept.  For the woman in the elevator. For my friend who lost her father.  For a life that is so rich and bountiful and for a God that is the only water who will satisfy my unquenched lack of worth.

Before a meeting began I remembered the fire that raged in my abdomen after my daughter was lifted.  I recalled the black nights of a marriage ending.  I remembered being on an elevator, stifling back my own tears and wondering if morning would come.  And yet like old photos in a box I saw my mother’s smile and the way she pulls at her shirt for no reason whatsoever.  I smelled my dog’s rotten bad breath.  I peered at onions shooting from the garden ground and the way oak limbs rub against my old metal roof.  My home, my books, my lover’s eyes that are piercing blue. They all blended together, the ugly and the good, the lab slips and valentine’s days, to form a quilt that enveloped me. Busy People showed up for the meeting and we began to talk about surveys and statistics, contract terms and deadlines.  But my mind was on the woman in the elevator.

Oh, my friends and enemies and dear sweet strangers  – I beg you to be kind to one other.  We are all part of this great journey, and this story, and this collection of people.  Some days are glorious and you dance atop clouds and other days you are sitting slumped by a dumpster wiping sweat and drool from your lips. I regret not reaching for her.  If I could take back time I’d lay my hand softly on her shoulder right there in front of everyone and say I’m sorry.  I’m so very sorry.  We are in this together.

Woven in this quilt of life is suffering and singing, weeping and guffawing, the death and the living and the love and the darkness all connected stitch by stitch.  Let’s envelop each other in the dark times, so we can remember the good, even when our own fingers are trembling.

 

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Photo:

dots as markers

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

Saddle Bags

February 21, 2014 By

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I would imagine if I were starving and placed at the forefront of a great feast, I’d be filled with angst.  How would I carry it all away and save it for when there was none? I couldn’t possibly enjoy a corn soufflé knowing it wouldn’t last and the pheasant would turn to bile and the next day it would all be empty and dry again.  Just bones in the dust.  Hungry.  So I’d sit at the head of the table smiling whilst stuffing dinner rolls in my saddle bags.  We just can’t help but to carry around the angst of our past, wondering if the good times might fade away.

I think of the last few years as a trench that I’ve been living in, just hunkered down with my provisions, escaping for food and coming back to the hole with a heavy sigh.  It’s natural when you’ve been beat down to want to protect yourself from attack and make sure you stride more watchfully into the dark night.

When my foot touched down upon a different future, naturally I was still burdened with the memories.  Nights in the hole.  Bombs dropping and shells exploding and haunting faces in my dreams, hollowed out and empty.  But when you leave a warzone, there is no identifying tattoo speed across your chest.  Separated by enough continents and time zones you just seem to have appeared from somewhere, like you went on vacation with a svelte new frame and more coy responses.

So here I am.  I look down to see jewels on my fingers.  I sit at the fancy table with shimmering lights and roses, where men ask to call and tell me I’m pretty.  And in the middle of the room as I cross it in heels toward the door my insides just rage with fire and bristle.  I remember the hole.  The ache of starvation.  The pit of my stomach is just as far to the ground as it was in the worst nights, and I find my hands clasping around a hard dinner roll. I slip it in my pocket.  Just in case.  The funny thing is that the fear of death and the fear of living have the same effect on me.  Both are filled with the unknown, and that causes my stomach pit to flare.

At 3 am this morning I woke, filled with that familiar dread.  The pain that all this bounty will come crashing down.  The high will subside.  The peace broken. Pheasant always turns to bile in the end.  And yet as I lay there with my two children, huddled to my left and to my right, I heard the strangest thing.  My daughter, who appeared to be giggling.  In her sleep she was laughing, and I heard the manifestation of dreams. I held my children tight and let tears well and realized that God is to my left and to my right.  He stretches beyond me and is far behind.  What, and whom, shall I fear?

I dress for dinner in a house bathed in peace. I have a night ahead filled with laughter, with new heels just for the occasion.  In my slumber I see new life sprouting.  I take the saddle bags, the ones filled with old crusty rolls, and I leave them sitting by the garage door, leaning over just so.  A smile spreads from the ether of my former self, the one who remembered.  The one filled with fear.

I have no need for these any more, it seems.

photo:

The Problem with Vintage Equipment

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, My life, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Breaking of Bread

February 8, 2014 By

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I’m not Catholic.  And yet in church when all heads are bowed I make the sign of the cross on my chest because somehow it feels holy and special like I am a part of a secret club.  My Catholic friend Dawna invited me to attend her church once, and I gleefully knelt up and down and was practically giddy as I listened to the archaic priest-who-never-married repeat things in Latin. I proudly stand like a soldier when we repeat en masse the Doxology and the Lord’s prayer and I once sang in a baroque acapella group. So if you think this girl lives in a modern world you are SADLY MISTAKEN.  My soul is trapped somewhere in the 1800s and really only get out to drink lattes and watch Netflix and buy fun little apps on my iphone.  I love tradition, and things that are deeply rooted, and for this reason change is my adversary and I struggle breaking things apart that are long-lasting.

So when I see churches with names involving rocks and stones and new life and cafes in which people-drink-coffee-with-Jesus I get confused. Not because these are bad things.  There is no bad as far as I’m concerned when it comes to worship and love and being in community with people who are trying to row the same direction.  But I wonder how these churches will be able to build the type of roots that stretch deep through generations.  How one who is impoverished and hungry and living in a broken-down shack in Ireland where everyone shares the pisshole and living on the dole get excited about coffee with Jesus like they do about First Communion. Because there’s something holy and sacred about traditions, and relics, and stories that have been handed down from King James and wafers on tongues and the body of Jesus, broken.

Last Sunday, I thought about bolting after the last hymn.  After all, I had laundry to fold and errands to run and friends to text. The whole concept of communion is slow and old and antiquated.  It’s times like these I wish I were drinking coffee with Jesus and singing praise songs on a Jumbotron. I sat there and wondered what this must look like to the outside world.  Just a bunch of silly chaps eating bites of bread and taking grape juice shots in little plastic cups before noon.  But I waited, because it’s rude to leave and I had nowhere really important to be.  I waited while the choir sang and the little trays were passed around.  I wondered if I had a missed text or if I’d eat leftovers for dinner, and I looked at the ushers going from row to row to row like they did every first Sunday of the month.

And then the tray was passed.  The body of Jesus.  I smiled and took it, which I knew was just a loaf of Hawaiian Original Sweet Round Bread from Kroger and wasn’t the literal body of Christ, but as I tore off a hunk and put it in my mouth something happened.  It just cemented itself like a glob of peanut butter and I couldn’t choke it down.  Try as I might it wouldn’t move, and tears welled up in my eyeballs as I sat there in my new hat wondering if I had any missed texts and whether I should have bolted after the last hymn.

I could feel thousands of years crash into one. Tradition came up deep like drawing water from a well, and I remembered the times as a child I waddled up to the communion rail and sat next to my father in a suit and the nights I cried and sobbed over the fact that the son of God had to suffer on our behalf and how deeply metaphorical and beautiful and special this last supper was so many years ago.  And then the cup was before me and I drank the sweet juice and I felt small and humbled and so full of gratitude my hat couldn’t hold it all in so I held it down as I walked to my car and felt inextricably full.

I swallowed. Greedily my body devoured it.  Hungrily my heart absorbed it.  I accepted that love without feeling paralyzed by guilt or haunted by pain because it was freely given, and despite just being a loaf of Hawaiian Original Sweet Round Bread from Kroger it was the body of Christ after all, broken and torn and laid out for the redemption of sins.

 

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photo:

The Last Supper 18

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

Before the dawn

February 3, 2014 By

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Before I wake I want to feel breezes dust my face and kisses so light they fail to touch my skin and I want to roll to my left and curl up in you.  And when I close my eyes I see bursts of blue and gold and crimson red and I will shudder at the  chill.

Before I dine I want to slow cook and rise high and marinate for a long while so you’ll see my heart poured into what is spread before you.  A feast that I created for the first look when you take a bite and nod.  Yes, my love. Fit for a king.

Before I hit midlife  I want to cry so hard for a suffocating loss that takes my breath and stomps it into concrete.  Because when redemption gallops through darkness I will admire it more like a stallion racing and sing my thanks like butterflies wings flapping, fast and quick my heart will dance as his muscles pound on racetrack sod.

Before my heart is hardened you appear like the twinkling of dawn and you take my breaths and blow them back inside of me. And as I run you run and as I dance you dance and I scream for you to leave me be because I do not deserve such pretty talk and such beauty.  But as you drive away in a cloud of dust you turn the truck back around and come back to the place where you started.

Before I sleep I want to see you resting on your left arm because I’m reading and you can’t stand it when I’m reading so you tickle and fuss and we roll together tangled in heat for your fierce jealousy of the words that capture my heart.

Before I grow too damn old I want to rest upon your strong arms and you will remind me of our summers and our winters and our glory days.  I will smile and shuffle on at the memory and the taste of you when you’re long past gone.

Before I die I want to have strength to offer praises, for as it turns out, this ain’t no middle-ground life.  I thank God for what was good in my future that I was too blind to see. For redemption that was inches from my face and yet my inveterate stubbornness prevailed.  And with wrinkled skin and a burned heart I turn to God and cry out in gratitude for the blessings so freely given.

Before I complain, instill in me gratefulness.  Before I judge, let me show mercy.  Before the dawn, grow my boldness.

Before I give up completely, allow me to persevere, for the future is coming right around the bend.

 

Photo:

http://(threew’s).flickr.com/photos/wynandbasson/11449434875/sizes/m/in/photolist-irKm6z-8Sbek8-32Re6G-cZXNW-dS2LVn-dB8JTy-jde5Tm-9epjtp-9UMsaB-dEtbXt-4yaQVV-awwtbq-9PN17E-9PMYMq-9PMYqb-9PN21G-9PN2kE-9PN1AE-9PMZDU-71cMAJ-foyNxk-9PN2GJ-ihF34z-6AbJYU-2iJ35S-7Xso5Y-cZXLN-cZXSP-cZXEG-cZXR5-cZXGz-iq6i5A-4f4Vfh-dPR9zF-jX6rc-7ipEVu-d1cqUq-8goiju-9DxCgU-3F7r2Q-7D6pQk-5YQfMp-7xzQtA-2JKNkb-7xzPME-7xzNYd-kLWHV-aNuK86-737Y7b-545aje-ab4dUT/

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

Use it or lose it

December 31, 2013 By

 

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There are times I want to write but the words freeze like cold air and what was once winsome turns rigid, just cracked brittle words falling down like chunks of ice instead of snowflakes.  Fear enters my fingers because it’s not good enough or not worthy enough so I fill my time sulking and texting girlfriends who would rather watch Modern Family but humor me out of obligation. I rattle on during the dinner hour about online dating or my love of roasted kale or the fact that some store clerk told me that my new boots weren’t going to last more than two years and I might as well just buy the six-hundred-dollar ones but I looked her straight in the face and said “I ain’t ropin cattle in these fancy things so I’m sure it will all work out.” 

My brain crescendos into a fury with words, and they must escape somehow, even at the most inopportune times.  Singers sing and trial attorneys litigate and engineers create and painters color and we all just have to do what we are built to do.  So I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize to all my best friends’ husbands who have to tolerate my incessant and time-consuming word dumps because they alone allow me to live a relatively normal life without the need of asylum.

But there are times when they jumble, my thoughts, like scattered stamps on the floor. I must gather them and press them into ink and secure them in some form of order on the page with no one around so that I can turn out the lights with a sigh that matters.  Because falling in bed at the end of the day without worthwhile word order is cheap and thin and I like my days to be thick like French bread, rich and ripping apart with a jagged edge.

But there are days I feel like a failure.  Failure at work, mothering, writing, home.  Failure to be thin and keep my perspective and to be the perfect image of who I want myself to be.  You know what I tell my kids? We are all failures. If not for that, what’s God’s love for anyway? 

In the depths of our fear, when we slam the phone down and there is no centering stone and we feel lost and trapped and frozen – when we feel like peeling off our very own skin and we can’t move or breathe and just want to invert into ourselves and be invisible and we are so weary of throwing down dirty cold ice– that’s where we pray.  We cry out from our deep places and ask God to take it, bear it, and hold it.  Because Jesus, we are not enough. We are never good enough.

That, my friends, is truth.  Words stick in my throat like peanut butter and I fear what might come out, and there are times I can’t move forward because I’m afraid of where I might land. I don’t want to face a future alone and I don’t want to cry any more tears and there are times I want to fall down and rip my clothes and never write another word.  But then I hear the words of Isaiah pulse through my veins: “Be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”  And I lesson the grip of fear, and the words come out easier, and I can feel a lifting. And the gift that God gave me resonates, and penetrates deeply, and I thank Him for this ability to speak when others cannot. So I trudge upstairs and write, because what the Lord gives  is right and true and it feels good to be following the yearning of your heart.

God has given each of you a unique gift.  Use it.  Nurture it.  Support it and pray about it.  Realize that your gifts are like an oiled slide that allows you to fly sometimes, and even in the midst of winter tragedy you land like a sunny afternoon at the bottom, and for just a little while here on earth, you were free.

 

photo:

Pure Joy

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

heartbroken mondays

December 2, 2013 By

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I should be in bed by ten.  I should be at the gym.  I should be more optimistic and use more restraint and quit drinking full-calorie beer.  I have got to cut out the word “I” and perhaps not sit on the floor crying when my three-year-old tells me I’m the worst person ever while sitting in time-out attempting to slam the door closed with his feet. And when I walk out of church because my two kids can’t keep their seats and I glance over to see my daughter humming whilst making a stack of hymnals and my pants don’t fit and I can’t seem to find the energy to even grin and I read about how all these other people are cheerful and in love and snuggling up with hot chocolate and even the television dramas seem saccharine and I’m telling you I want to throw something hard out the window in order to see it shatter.

And then anger bubbles up and the devil whispers in my heart that self-pity’s a salve that will heal, but he’s a damn fool because all he causes is regret in the morning.  So I fire up the stove and stir beef stew because at least meat falls apart with enough pressure. The other day I even burned the cornbread, which is the south’s equivalent to cussing out your mother, because no Texan over the age of twelve burns cornbread, but I just muttered to myself, like well that’s just about right.

But friends, a lot can be done with time and distance.  I know this because a friend once told me that when we have set-backs, we don’t fall as hard and we don’t fall as deep and the coming back is faster.  It’s like our bodies somehow remember before the fall, and are ever striving to return to a peaceful state.

On Thanksgiving, my kids weren’t home.  I lay flat in bed for two hours staring at trees out my bedroom window, letting tears fall.  I begged God to forgive my lack of faith, and my inability to trust in bigger plans.  I regretted my undisciplined, self-centered life.  And yet I rose just the same, and with Nordstrom’s holiday bronzer I made my depression look all sparkly, and I shoved myself into skinny jeans and looped my blond hair around a curling iron and lip glossed my way to brunch with friends.  And it got better.  Mostly because of mimosas and pumpkin pancakes, but let’s not focus on details.

Time and distance.  Self-forgiveness and thankfulness, even when your feelings haven’t caught up.  These things work. So if you find yourself dragging toward Christmas, unsure why you can’t get motivated, feel something lacking in your life, or better yet you’re just flat-out angry, I feel you. Just forgive yourself for today and free up some space to breathe.

This morning, as I was driving my kids to school, I saw the most amazing sunrise.  Clouds swept across the sky like popcorn kernels and the sun spread over them like melted butter.  I pulled over on the side of the road and took my children’s hands.  Poor things – they’re used to this by now.  My daughter just tilts her head to the side, like “Oh how sweet.  Mom’s having a moment.” I told them how much I loved them, and how blessed I was to have them for a short while, and I thanked God for the new dawn.  And then this Presbyterian put her hand up high in the Chevy Tahoe and veered back on the road repeating the name El Shaddai out loud until we reached the carpool line.  My daughter asked if I had some sort of arm-itch issue or whether something was wrong with the rear-view mirror and am I speaking German?  I didn’t even know what the words meant except that I sang it in a childhood song, but the name just exploded from my mouth and was just as obvious as incense in a tomb.  And then my son asked me if God actually speaks, and I told him not in the same language as we do, but he sure can paint, and he nodded.  I watched my kid’s tussled-hair going up and down, up and down, nodding in the car seat and admiring the sky.

So you might need to run.  You might need to sleep more, and eat less.  But I’ll tell you one thing – you really need to quit listening to the lies that your life is stagnant and all hope is gone.  Keep on thanking God, even when you don’t always feel it, because out of nowhere on a Monday on the way to your kid’s school you’ll feel time and distance start to set in, and you’ll crawl slowly back out of the setback hole, stronger than before, and you’ll grin.  Because of the absurdity of non-stop Christmas music (we barely escaped November and I’m only halfway through coffee and nobody cares what Mariah Carey wants for Christmas because she has seventeen pairs of red bedazzled stilettos FOR THE LOVE WHAT ELSE DO YOU NEED, WOMAN) and the fact that your daughter thought you were speaking German, and the fact that you bought bronzer with the word “holiday” in the title.  And because we love an amazing, glorious God who never leaves us abandoned.  He throws his might across the sky like a billboard as if to remind us that hope is alive.  Our lives are so worthy.  No worries, girl, if you burn that cornbread again you can always move to Wisconsin, and surely folks there could stand a bit of pep in the winter.

El Shaddai, the sustainer and the destroyer, the One Almighty. Raise your hands and embrace it. Even if it might embarrass your children.  Even if tears run down your face at a sunrise.   Because life’s glorious, my dear friends, even on heartbroken Mondays.

 

Photo:

Sunrise, Kyoto (Explored #109)

 

 

 

 

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

Busting Rocks

November 13, 2013 By

 

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In Christian circles, we hear people saying with gleaming eyes that their work is their calling: their daily chores are acts of worship. And yet to all those other people, the ones sitting in mortgage companies and DMV offices and drive-through bank windows, I dare say it’s not always beautiful.

You may feel like it’s just busting rocks, and the best part of the day is five o’clock when the whistle sounds.

We all have times like this, wondering if our lives make a difference.  Thinking we might have made a horrible wrong turn and wishing we could just jump off the hamster wheel and go live in Colorado.  Midlife pushes us down like a class bully and makes us believe the lies that our jobs don’t matter and our lives are forgettable. Work can be monotonous.  The piles of paper never end.  Thursdays make you sigh and plod along to the break room and wish Kathy from accounting would just retire already.

But then I think of Jesus.  He spent twenty-nine years in a hot carpenter shop.  And not the New Yankee Workshop variety. We all glamorize it in our minds, like handsome Hollywood Jesus was sitting in a halo-filled glow smoothing out the edges of a maple sideboard. I’m sure it was really a more mundane job involving tables and benches, having to hear one guy complain about the size or some sweaty schmuck double an order but keep the deadline the same.  I’ll bet Joseph was just constantly snickering to himself, like “Dude. You don’t know who you’re talking to.”

And I realized that there is so much to be gained by the act of work itself, regardless of what we do.  Whether we usher people toward tables or settle financial books or answer phones all day – it’s a time to grow our patience, and treat others the way we would want to be treated.  We can practice our faith by cleaning out the refrigerator and helping someone with a project that was not assigned to us.  And when someone else gets credit for our work, we just smile at pat them on the back, because we aren’t made for this world anyway.  And who freaking cares if people think Bill did it all, when Bill can’t spell his own first name and people will find out in time. Give it to him.  He’s single and hairy.  He needs this.

Work is where we can really practice our faith – not by reading about it or praying on Sunday, but by respecting our elders, and apologizing when we’re wrong. When we get angry, we own it.  When we get impatient, we fix it.  And when you see someone sitting at their desk every day for lunch because no one wants to talk to them, you can stop, and listen, and truly hear their story.

Look around your office.  There are tired, unhappy, overworked people in need of YOU.  They need joy and laughter and someone to come surprise them with a Starbucks card on a Wednesday.  And when you hollah at em at the copy machine – Hey there, Maria! – do it with a smile.  You are lucky enough to be placed in the middle of a worship field.  One ripe with opportunities to display your faith.

There was once a carpenter, years ago, who put his head down and did his job, day after day, table after table, sore backs and all.  He was likely thinking, and creating stories in his mind, and talking to God on a regular basis.  And one day he stepped away from that role and into another, and changed the world.  He needed the years to grow, and mature, and so do we.

So tomorrow, as you get up for work, act in a way you’ve been trained.  Live out what you’ve been preaching to your children.  Rise early, hug your kids, plan dinner in advance, and treasure those two hours at night you have with your family.  It’s all okay, don’t you see?  You are doing well.  When in doubt, friends, hear me loud:

God has you right where you need to be.

 

 

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photo:

Arbeid i Steinbruddet ved Høvringen / Work in the Quarry at Høvringen (ca. 1915)

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

Art without Ego

October 20, 2013 By


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If an author is passionate about sharing words to motivate or inspire, he writes.  He hides in an upstairs guest room converted to an office with computer cords and plastic cups of water and a few used Kleenex wadded up and thrown down by his feet. And he writes – when his kids are asleep and his wife is asleep and the whole world seems to be asleep but his own overactive mind – accelerating past words like a stallion.  Because it’s not about being sexy, it’s about the story that is escaping him soon enough.

And if a singer wants pull at heartstrings, she starts to strum on her guitar and raises an arm and pours our her soul into the microphone like she’s praying out loud.  Nobody knows she wrote that song after her mom died and that was the only way she could stop drinking and pick herself up off the pavement.  And she didn’t care if she looked too religious or not religious or just plain silly perched on a stool with her eyes closed singing about a man named Jesus, but through her mascara she drug it out anyway, weeping and exhausted from the energy it took to retrieve.

I’ve seen artists sit by water and in damp dark studios wishing for a better place to paint, but there’s no luxury for more than the canvas they re-purposed from Goodwill.  Their hands are moving to the imaginary sound of wings that are beating from doves that are landing on a fence that has yet to be formed in oil.  And as they draw the brush they think of money they don’t have and laundry they need to fold and a life that was only half-lived, but this fence and these birds, they are liberating.

And God is sewn through these artists, a tapestry woven and stitched.  It’s the outpouring of love, blanketed around the world like a slow burn.

But then the author gets a book deal, and a media page, and begins to focus on the reality of publishing.  There are hits and strategies and followers and clubs. They are campaigns and tours and the advance for another manuscript.  And all of a sudden the writer is not creating, but churning, and expecting, and beginning to think of himself as One Who Writes that needs to be on a podium with a microphone.

And the singer gets discovered. After the tears of joy, she gets a label and an agent and a manager and a road crew.  And she starts to care what her hair looks like and what her friends look like and feels the naked skin of the roadie.  She can’t make it for Christmas or Mother’s Day either because she’s got a gig in Nashville and what’s more important, really?

Ego ruins art.  It’s the quickest way for our ministry to become our biggest liability.  We start to falsely believe we’ve earned the right, and earned the fame, and begin to tell others how to do things instead of praying that we are doing them well.  When the urge to create is overshadowed with the urge to be successful, we’ve lost it.  It’s the moment when the spirit leaves and we’re left focusing on ourselves, and a void grows in our heart where love used to live.

Let’s not become Martha Stewart, who runs an entire empire based on hospitality and craft but might lose sight of being hospitable.  Let us instead find our inner-Julia Child, captivated by the wonder and joy of it all.  Let’s undo the shackles and focus less on publishing, recording, speaking, and signing.  Let’s create for the sheer pleasure of worship, and using our talents for a higher purpose, for when we write well and we sing well and we paint a masterpiece on paper, we are lifting up and pushing out and sending beauty into the world.  That’s an honor, and a privilege, and one to be taken seriously.

Go out and create, artists of the world.  With messy hair and messy hearts and shaking fingers.  It’s not for your glory, because you didn’t create it to begin with.  It just so happened to be found within you, and you are simply releasing it back into the kingdom from which it came.

 

Filed Under: Creativity, Inspirational, Love, Music Tagged With: , , , , ,

Confessions of a Messy Housekeeper

October 2, 2013 By

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I have always wanted to be a good housekeeper.  I visit friends whose houses are clean and clutter-free and envy them, like a far-reaching star that I just admire.  My pattern is typically this: a super-clean house for a day, then three days of “oh dear, I really need to get to that,” then a total nightmare where I don’t want neighbors stopping by for muffins.  At that point I drop off my children at school, roll up my sleeves, and clean it like we all just might be licking icing off the travertine.  We go in three-day cycles of sparkling and disaster around here, and when it gets too much I just call in the professionals.  My lovely housekeeper, Esther, doesn’t speak much English and no matter how many jugs of Meyers cleaning spray I set on the counter I still get notes that say “buy more Tilex!!” and “pick up before, maybe?”  I honestly don’t know why she even deals with me anymore.

My ex-husband was very neat.  His sink never had toothpaste residue, his counters clean.  He put his clothes in the hamper and rinsed out his dishes. It just never occurred to him that if you get something out of a certain place that it would be returned anywhere but there.  That is really admirable, if you ask me. And when I stood there smiling and shining with a roast chicken and root vegetables on a platter in my hands, he would glance behind me and see the gravity of what was left behind.  Pans and open containers and a stickiness abounding.  But I made a homemade gravy! And there’s apple pie for dessert! It’s like I couldn’t ever really see it, or was too focused to pay attention, and when I feel the call to write or read or garden or make a care package for a friend on a random Wednesday, picking up the house was just not on my radar.  This life is so short, and making beds seems like an incredible waste of time when there’s mantles to be arranged with pumpkins.

So I sigh and look around me now, piles of papers and cereal bowls in the sink.  There is laundry to be done and things to be folded and I just wish for a moment that I put more of a priority on the business of housekeeping.  That I made a few less banana muffins and a few more runs with a mop over the kitchen floor.  The truth is that I don’t want to be this way.  I wish there was a course at the local community college about how to maintain your house more efficiently, or put as much priority on laundry as one does on reading books, because I am a living example to my children, who see me singing and dancing and writing chalkboard sayings in the kitchen with seven pairs of shoes strung around the floor. And if there’s a dinner party to be had, I’m focused on the table décor without much thought given to the state of the countertops.

When I quit my job a while back, I tried to improve upon this.  I did somewhat.  I had more time during the day to load and wash and sterilize and scrub.  But now that I’m looking to go back to work it’s going to be up to poor Esther again, sighing and telling me to buy more Tilex.

We are all born with certain talents.  Some motivate and others encourage.  Some are good listeners and others lead.  And as women we have this feeling of worth that’s connected with an orderly home, as if we must succeed at this or we are failures in our God-given roles.  Well I’m born with many talents, but keeping a perfect home isn’t one of them. I can barely get my kid’s t-shirts run through the wash, and we are often searching for keys and lost shoes.  But what I have come to accept is that my worth is not tied to the state of my bathroom sink, although it does get gross and seriously, can I not just bust out a washcloth from time to time, or learn to put my make-up in a drawer?

So I’ve started to give my daughter simple chores, and we try to have clean races and sweeping parties, and I’m going to wake up every new day trying to be a better example to my children as a housekeeper.  But I’m going to fail at times, and that’s okay.  Because pretty soon I’m going downstairs to make that kitchen sparkle.  Just as soon as I finish writing, editing, calling my bestie, and drinking coffee.  Immediately after I read a few more chapters, pay some bills, check on how my carrots are coming up, and take a hot shower. Then, really.  You’d be so proud.  It will smell like Pine-Sol and Fall harvest up in here.

Deficiencies are just areas to improve upon with every day, the way I see it.  They are not flaws that eat us alive.  So loosen the grip on guilt at whatever you’re not perfect at, and realize that you make up for it in other ways.  Then roll up your sleeves and get to work, whether it be practicing the violin or making beds or writing or cooking dinner, because there is always some bit of sparkle at the end of the rainbow.  And that holds us over for a while — the constant struggle to improve, the glory of overcoming, and the feeling that you’ve put yourself back together, one dish and folded towel at a time.

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Photo:

Clean house with Sapolio. [back]

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

Battle Cry

September 25, 2013 By

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This morning at 2 am, I rose.  My neck was sore and my chest was tight.  There is a weariness that comes from living this life and bearing so many crosses, and our age overpowers us.  And yet the fog was clearing, and the time was near. I heard the bugle sound, which signaled not the respite of taps but the call for war, and I knew.  I knew it was time, and I stumbled onto the field next to warriors also fractured and spent.  We nodded in mutual assent, and I lifted up my arms to clasp the handle of the sword, resting in the sheath strapped with buckles to my back.  I heard the metal sing against the leather as my triceps pulled it free, its weight as much as my child with a core of steel.  I am not a man and do not have the strength of an ox, so I hold it with shaking arms.  I look to my left and slowly to my right and see the warm comforting breath of others, weapons raised, ready.  There is war paint on some, other cheeks streaked with tears.  All are waiting the call from our commander to invade, for the time is now and sleeping is done.

 

And all of a sudden I charge, not with a whisper or a bowed head.  I do not glance at the ceiling or stare aimlessly forward, but with sweat dripping from my forehead I look toward the face of God and let out a cry so piercing and deep that I surprise myself.  I stab and cut apart and I do not let one man survive. Because evil is not to just be fought valiantly, but it is to be won.  It’s hard when evil lies beside you, or is in the heart of your own clan, and worse when in your own flesh, but you cut it out and eliminate its tendrils from racing toward your soul.  Sometimes the soldiers I slay disappear on the field, fading into the rising fog, which makes it hard to see the living from the dead.

 

There are times I want to charge this hill and God says another, telling me that the plan is more intricate than I realize and that we are fighting a long, bloody war.  And there are times I lose a battle, wrestling hard for what I think is best, but it is not to be.  There is a longer road ahead, soldiers whisper at night as we regain our strength.  And I don’t understand those moments, the mystery of why.  I look around and it seems like I’m fighting all alone.  My sword grows to heavy to bear, my eyes are sore, and my ankles bow from running on rocks and gravel.

 

So I slow, and bend to put my hands on my knees.  I just need a breather.  I am so tired of courage.  And yet I soak oxygen into lungs and stand tall again, ready for another bugle call.  I’ve learned through the many years that death really isn’t the great fear: living with a chasm established between self and God is the real terror.  Prayer is a tool to root out our inner demons, and commune with God in a way only soldiers can relate.  I listen and obey, whatever way He orders.  Sometimes my prayers aren’t answered and I don’t know why, and other times they are answered in abundance.  But I charge the hill in front of me, because that’s the battle plan.

 

I don’t see Jesus as meek or mild, just a man who spoke gently with crows feet and soft, pretty eyes.  A lion is not less fierce because he’s lying in the noonday sun yawning and licking his paws.  A man who faced persecution he did not deserve, resisted the urge to prove his earthly status, had the power to move mountains, repelled the devil face-to-face, and hung on nails for what he did not do – this is power of a kind that I can only serve.  This is leadership for which I can only follow.  This is a commander for whom I lay down my very life, and fight when called.  There’s no way around the pain.  You can’t run around it or sidestep it or numb it.  You have to run right through it with swords raised.

 

This is prayer.  It is bold.  It is strong.  My fellow warriors, we have no other option but to slay evil, fight for good, and win this long war.

 

I’m not a big fan of “I’ll be praying for you.”  Mostly because I don’t believe it when people casually throw it around, and I feel it’s somehow watering down the practice by sprinkling it into most all conversations, just squeezing it between let’s go to lunch and I love your boots. And I don’t think we should all be out there praying to find the perfect red dress at Macy’s because it’s our lunch hour and we need this thing to happen.

 

But I wholeheartedly believe in the power of prayer.  I dated a Catholic once. He went to confession because that’s what a good Catholic does, like brushing one’s teeth or unloading the dishwasher.  And then there are the dinnertime prayers, sometimes out of obligation or guilt or habit or routine, thanking God for enchiladas and buttered corn. I had a talk with a girlfriend recently who said she didn’t believe God really answered prayers of substance.  Now she mostly just asks for wisdom without getting too specific.

 

I don’t have a field guide for prayer.  And in some way I think God hears them all, buttered corn and red dresses alike, chuckling at times and forgiving our immaturity. But “when I was a child, I talked like a child.  I thought like a child.  I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11.

 

I grew up somewhere between school girl and mother.  And when I pray, I take it seriously.  I yell and cry out and beg and plead very specific things, sometimes muttering the only words that come to mind.  Other times I just sit and repeat the name of Jesus like a balm to my battle wounds.   I might raise a name of a friend, or a situation that’s unresolved, and other times I write it all down and just save it in anger, like God can darn well read it for himself.  I don’t think there’s a right way to pray.  But don’t deceive yourself that it’s just empty words floating toward the night sky. Prayer is power, and answers will come.  My brothers, it’s the lion sleeping in the night.  When it charges forth with teeth baring, it slays.

 

See you on the battlefield. 

 

photo:

(three w’s)thenflickr.com/photos/ranh/270486400/sizes/m/in/photolist-pUjbC-pUjeF-pUj6j-cMzAJ1-3aJfRU-5jYhFi-vYHvP-apPf2R-6Bz3A7-4pNsMx-8S5W1d-5p6SKH-bRWztz-bD2Rvj-bUp84p-bUzjiG-bUzjnL-bUzjzs-bUziSb-bUzjvb-bUziBo-bUziL9-bUzitU-bUziVQ-bUzjCN-bUzj1u-bUzj8E-4MxcfG-bUzjHo-bUzjQ3-bUzjdN-e8xyDM-9h3LW8-93GFFe-7GYTuP-97qsCn-97qq9D-46Bmup-4iJR6Q-7FaSJz-47xnaK-pUj2t-bumETh-pUk7M-pUk4U-pUjXT-pUkaf-pUkcT-bmKeHQ-74hUTE-74dZPD/

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

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