Stretching

On By LisaIn Faith, Plum, The Chef1 Comment

A puddle of black water on the counter, again, the damn coffee pot is leaking. Every day I find a stain, a mess, some amount of my morning zing waiting to be sopped up, waiting to be cleared away. Easier to buy a newer coffer maker but funds are tight, gone, thus we are blessed to even have grinds to put in the damn machine so I shouldn’t find offense at the mess. Still, I do. I hate that coffeemaker and the inability to just make a cup without knowing their will be literal fallout. Then I chide myself for the fact that this is my complaint, this?, when so much is wrong all around. So I wipe, scrub, move on. Until the next pot is brewing.

We use the invisible, underground fencing system for our beasts, a system that has worked beautifully for years until recently when our Golden chose to withstand the shock and break free. Sometimes he stands right on the line and gets a really good zap and then just goes. All of this resulted in a pretty yucky infection around his neck, an expensive trip to the vet (several new coffeemakers worth) and 10 days on antibiotics and a full shave around his neck. On the mend now, he is still breaking free. He is huge, he is fast, he is gone. He is making a mess of my free time, I can’t let him out to wander our yard without finding him in the neighbor’s now. Always on the lookout for Plum’s bus, yesterday he chose to go out into the street and try to board it. I considered asking the busdriver to trade me,  all those children for this damn dog. Apparently I need to put in a real fence with the millions of dollars I have hidden under my coffeemaker.

Several days ago Plum ran into the house and asked if it was appropriate for him to know how humans breed. Why did this question not come up when he was riding the bus to mama’s house? Some gentle probing on my part discovered this curiosity was sparked by a Pokemon discussion, I guess they are bred and they evolve and then they get really dumb names. So I somewhat dodged the question. Until he came back for another visit and asked how babies are made. Seriously, kid, you are only 6 and you have parents and I am too old to be trying to remember how much is too much to tell. Where is my coffee? Still, I broke out my best high school science and made his eyes glaze over. Whew, dodged again.  Until bedtime a couple of nights ago when he was preparing to fall asleep, we were snuggling, both in our “walls down, chatting” mode and he asked if boys could have babies. He had me captive, I couldn’t squirm away, I would be breaking our nighttime vulnerable talk rules. So we talked. I explained that it does take mommies and daddies together to make babies but mommies carry them in their bodies. (Please don’t yell at me about all the other possible combinations, I know, I do teach this child about the many ways families can look. I was tired and avoiding.)  Seeds, fertilizing,  growing, beauty, I thought we were going somewhere until he made clear his issue. “Nan, but can daddies ever have the babies?” “No, sweetie, but they get to love them always and care for them always.” “That’s crap! It isn’t fair!” he told me with gusto. I agreed. I told him it was God’s plan so maybe we should take our issue up with Him. “YES!”  So we prayed to God as we laid on the bed, him snuggled under the warm blankets and curled up with his specials.  We told God just what we thought of this situation.  I ended the lament with a request that God get back to us really soon with an answer. Plum and I looked each other, he cocked his eyebrow at me and asked what now? I told him I thought God would get back to us later, we should maybe just go to sleep. He rolled over, closed his eyes and softly said, “You are so silly, gran.”

So much seems to be leaking out right now, breaking through the barriers I have erected. Sneaking through my soul walls, spilling around the edges of my heart. I forget to cry out to God, mostly I just complain and wipe up the mess, stuff down my frustration or leak out my own anger. Remembering that God can take my questions and my wonderings is good. Knowing also that the way we grow is to by stretching, some leaking out of those walls just may be His plan. After all, coffee is still coffee if I use a straw to drink it off of the counter. About the wandering beast, I’ve got nothing.  Breaking free, willing to withstand the pain to get to the other side, all I can see is a neck full of oozing infection and some terrifed  kids on a bus. God surely will get back to me on that. Still I have coffee to drink, beasts to encourage exercise, and a Plum who challenges. Blessings that remind me I am alive, I am still growing. I don’t have answers for everything, I have to seek out the One who does. Then wait for Him to get back to us.

 

Hungry Messy Inconvenient

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef7 Comments

She looks up at me from the crook of my elbow, the perfect distance for newly developing eyesight according to some researcher. Mothers already know this. She locks eyes with me, I am looking at my granddaughter and also at God. Not the “Strong take care of everything control the world ” God but the “tiny vulnerable captivate your soul” God. My God is sometimes the Father but more often the Child, He comes to me through the children who show me grace and love unconditionally. Is it any wonder that women flock to hold a baby even in the midst of the burdens of their own family? It grows ever harder to see the God in us all as we grow: we are needy and wanting and not always very nice. We don’t smell so good and look so sweet. Yet it is ever so clear staring into the eyes of a baby, God is here.

Still, babies cry and want fed and have to be changed and are highly inconvenient, the backstory you forget when you are a grandma who only has visits or a young woman longing for her first child. Those God moments can be more rare in the trenches. But isn’t that the same with our God? Surely our sins bring screams of agony to our Father, cries that cannot be calmed much like a baby with colic, requiring hour after hour of pacing each evening. I can only imagine God’s pure pain at the hate rising up in our world, the violence and separation, the refusal to tend to our neighbors. God is crying, a neglected babe alone.

Can you envision God’s cries as we feed our guilty pleasures, our addictions, fill our time with social media and leave Him starving for our attention, forgetting that time with Him feeds us too? Long walks noticing creation, baking bread, real honest to God knead the dough and let it rise bread, arranging colors on canvas with intentionality, all are answers I have received when asked “How do you feel closer to God.”  The commonality in the responses is time creating and time apart, maybe from others but certainly from regular life. I believe retreating and creating is when we feed God, when He feeds us. Our souls become open to his nurturance.

Scripture reminds us that God is the same, yesterday today always. But we live in a changing world that requires our involvement. We live in a broken hurting world that demands our engagement. This world is God’s, we are His. To ignore the damage is to ignore the baby with the sopping diaper, soon to have a rashy bottom, soon to be blistered and the agony magnified. We are the ones called to do the changing, to tend to all of God’s children. The ones who have been left neglected the longest may smell badly, have the worst sores and scream loudly when we get near. They certainly don’t present as cuddly babies but imagine how long they have waited for our attention? Like a child with diaper rash, one swipe of ointment won’t fix it. We have to be attentive, we have to keep at it. Closed wounds don’t heal themselves. Homeless don’t find homes, hungry don’t grow food, slaves don’t gain freedom alone.

God is inconvenient. I know He does not make my life any easier. My list of those who have angered me and should be scorned forever, cast into the Dungeon of Non-Forgivables grows shorter as I grow closer to God. I try to bring that list to Him, asking for a smiting, a spell that would do Harry Potter proud but come away we another name crossed off as I lose my own fire. I want to stay mad sometimes. I want to hold on sometimes. Inconvenient. I have another list, a list of topics I will not address in public or mixed company so as not to offend. This one is meeting a similar fate. Rather than disappearing in resolution or forgiveness, this list burns within me and God demands that I speak up. God demands that I begin to talk for those who are not present. God demands that voices rise up to confront hate and bigotry and lies. God demands that this list grow and it is inconvenient for me to get louder.

It is inconvenient for me to follow a God who sees our broken world, my hurting home, my addicted son, my estranged daughter, my grandson who cries for his favorite aunt and wonders when he will see his dad again, how can I follow a God who doesn’t fix all these things? NOW. Then I look into the eyes of this babe and know that He gives me her, a way to see Him. A reminder that He is here, He is near, I just need to keep walking and rocking and working on my lists. With each of her cries and diaper changes, I know I am called to act on her behalf out in the wider world. She is God. Hungry, messy, inconvenient.  I pace with her in my arms, pat her bottom as she falls asleep, and thank God for visiting my soul.

Hideout

Love Whispers, Happy Tears

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, StellaLeave a comment

I carried my Sweetness, my new little bonus granddaughter, through the house yesterday, a milestone. It was her first visit to gran’s house, she will be 8 weeks old tomorrow. She certainly would have been here sooner but beasts are huge and newborns are fragile, mamas are protective. I knew the day of our first visit was approaching, it almost happened earlier in the week but last minute plans changed. We see them in their space almost daily, quick visits to drop off or pick up whatever Plum needs, whatever we have extra of, all excuses to see our Sweetness.  We all know these are lame reasons but continually saying I need some Sweetness in my morning seems a bit intrusive. Instead we say, Plum left his jacket here, may need that. Or, do you have any more dairy pills for the school? So visits there have been numerous, just not at our home. A quick call to mama, an invitation to have daddy help run the beasts with Chef before our day trip left them alone for hours, it was enough to bring mama and daddy and Sweetness to our door. Until they were here, I didn’t realize how important that visit was, how much I wanted them in our space.

I sent Mama to Plum’s room to retrieve extra clothes, to the freezer to claim some extra food. Of course she needed her arms free for all of this, my arms were empty and ready for some Sweetness.  Then an incredible thing happened. I walked throughout the house, into Plum’s room, with this child in my arms and my heart exploded. I looked into her eyes, she smiled and finally slept and I was lost in the déjà vu. Plum’s room that once was a nursery, the toy room that once was mama’s room. Looking out the front windows as birds fluttered from tree to tree, remembering the hours Plum and I sat and watched and sang our “Birdie” song which will never be heard outside our home. Carrying the second child, the sibling, brought a gush of emotion I didn’t anticipate. When I loved him throughout all those walks and rocks to sleep, I was dreaming of the possibilities. Now I have a model of what a grandchild running about the yard looks like. Now I have a real vision to attach to the dreams of pounding feet on the steps and toys scattered about the living room. My soul told Miss Sweetness that one day she too could rush about the back yard and dig in the mud, that we would do experiments in the kitchen and take so many bubble baths. My heart sang to her and she slept in my arms.

Later, as I tried to explain to Plum just how amazing it was to carry his sister around the house, how I remembered doing the same with him, I choked up and began to cry. He said, “Yeah, I know, happy tears.” Joy in the carrying, the sharing, the remembering. Joy in Sweetness sleeping as I walked and rocked and patted her tiny bottom, a rhythm so intrinsic to my body, I music that I hear only with a baby in my arms. The dance of motherhood, of long nights and anguished evenings with colicky babies, my body moves of its own accord. God brought some joy over to our home, a delightful sprinkling of baby coos and remembered dreams. One day I know this home will be filled with all of our grandchildren, Plum shepherding all the little girls about the yard and establishing rules about the toy room. He was here first, will always be the one who broke us in. He opened us so wide, destroyed any walls we tried to erect to protect our hearts, he paved the way for his little sister and his cousins and a new sister to come. He taught us to love under extreme circumstances and to forgive beyond our abilities and desires. He teaches us that he is worth every sacrifice, worth every discomfort and to keep showing up.

In the dark days I never dared even dream of this day thus I know that anything is possible through God’s grace and relentless pursuit of our hearts. I carried my granddaughter through our home and whispered love to her. I told her I carried her big brother the same way. I told her I carried her cousin Princess the same way. I pray I get the chance to know my newest granddaughter while she is still carriable.  One day I will write about Princess visiting again, filling the bird feeder on her own tree. She will introduce me to her sister. Another granddaughter due in May, so many little girls. They will come to play and make messes and I will cry, watching them all through the blur. Plum will assure everyone there is nothing to worry about, he knows my happy tears. After all, they fell on him first.
Blur

The 20% Path Towards Easter

On By LisaIn Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef5 Comments

I awoke sweaty, kicking off blankets, seeking cooler air. Groggy from the heat and deep sleep, I struggled to determine the source of my fevered state. A quick check to the left for the heating blanket controls next to my bed revealed I had been tricked again, the dial reading “H,” a setting I haven’t used in ages. Certainly not for an unseasonably warm February night. My little trickster usually reserves this move for the early mornings, his effort to wake me before our internal alarms say we can rise. But 2:00 am, way too early. A slow look right showed not only had Plum messed with my dials, he had infiltrated my bed and was sleeping soundly on my pillow, edging me out of my spot. Something happened during the night to send him into gran’s bed, seeking comfort and protection. How had I slept through this? Once I would have woken at the slightest noise, hearing everything throughout the night. Learning as a child that night time was dangerous and sleep made me vulnerable, I rarely really rested. Now a small child can seemingly climb right over me, get under the covers and scoot me aside and still I slept on. Oddly enough, this is a good thing. It signals a clear sense of safety.

Childhood sexual abuse carries into adulthood, alters reality so dramatically that merely sleeping soundly is a huge win. But what other effects have I held onto without really questioning, without deciding to address? What if I did alter that abuse DNA to live more wholly, more fully? The topic came up as I talked with my small group of friends and smugly spouted my stance on pain management, pain levels, pain awareness. Even as I spoke I knew I was sinking into the realm of the absurd, somehow I couldn’t stop myself from trying to defend the indefensible. My ears could hear how wrong I was, my practice and habits bespoke years of training. Maybe I unconsciously wanted to be chided, to be questioned on the validity of my long held beliefs. It worked, I am rethinking.

In order to be a good victim to an adult abuser, you must learn to ignore your own body. You must learn to shutdown warning signs and your learn that pain is a choice, one you cannot afford to experience. You must learn to be quiet, very very quiet. You must learn to escape your body.  In order to be a healthy adult who has survived childhood sexual abuse, much unlearning is required. Years of therapy have gotten me about 80% there I think, on a good day. I have learned to speak up, to protect myself, to stay in my body. But that last bit, really owning my own body and caring for it, I just haven’t conquered. As I explained to my friends, I was a child who would stand outside and wet my pants, completely unaware that my bladder needed emptying. In many ways, I am still that child. Years of ignoring basic needs such as this have led to real medical bladder issues. Years of ignoring body cues to eat that for a time exhibited as anorexia, now look like missed meals and poor food choices.  Lack of awareness about my body makes reporting symptoms to doctors for routine neurological appointments a nightmare. I don’t know, I can’t remember, my standard answers. For most of my adult life this has worked for me, in the sense that I was okay with what I considered my quirks and felt no compulsion to address them.

These last several months with Chef, who has felt real pain and desolation in the stripping of his identity, have called on me to be a better person than I am. There, I said it. Like waking at every creak of the house as it settles during the night, I have old thinking that is disturbing my life now. As I tried to defend my position to my friends, I ultimately decided that maybe I am just a bitch. Wow. Angry ugly labeling to describe my adult self, still it is easier than choosing to address the core. Would I rather remain unkind than own that I am removed from my feelings for good cause? Looking at the source means resurrection of the worst kind, traveling a path that is dark and scary, enough to send the child me into granny’s bed, seeking comfort and protection. But I am the gran, I am the parent, I am the one to provide the comfort to my own broken self. Not trusting that is enough, I stay entrenched in the separation, not realizing that I am no longer hurting me, a pain I don’t feel, but hurting my Chef. I think I have finally reached a point where this is unacceptable. (I suspect Chef will raise his arms in victory at the reading of this.)

I realize that I was once so close to healing, so close to joining my body.  The estrangement with my daughter, a young woman who was guiding me into adulthood as much as I her, left me adrift, afraid. She was my realtime example of brave women who could feel things and do things and laugh out loud. Then she disappeared under the influence of a dangerous narcissistic man who turned her into her own cowering self. We have both shrunken. We have both hidden. We cannot find a way to connect and I stay separate from much of me. But what if God has brought new women along, put some women on my path to guide me back into me? Am I brave enough to accept the challenge to stop being unkind, to shed the label of bitch and finish the last 20% to fully inhabit me? I am convinced that is what God wants. I fill certain that is what Chef would love.

Self-care is just a phrase I speak, words I type, something I have never practiced. I know the importance of putting on your own oxygen mask. Lent is soon to begin and as always, I am giving a great deal of thought to what I will give up. More and more I am realizing I am being called to give up that last 20%. Thus Lent may not look like fasting for me but eating.  Really eating.  Lent may not look like solitude for me, but engaging.  Really engaging.  Giving up chocolate or Coke made the Easter celebration delightful, for sure. Inhabiting all of me may well please God beyond the 40 days.

I may ask for prayers along the way, I may wish I had given my M&M addiction up to the Lord for the season.  I hope to share with you my struggles to keep me honest and on the path. 40 days towards 20%, starting March 1. (I don’t want to get ahead of myself, I may stay a bit aloof for a few more days.)

Translate

More Than One Dress

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, Plum, Stella, The Chef, Travel1 Comment

I bought this dress on a whim while on a trip about a year ago, full of expectation and brimming with the hope that I would be the kind of person who wore that dress. It was a vacation kind of dress, bright fun colors, a bit shorter in cut. It required some sass, a bit of pizzazz to wear. I intended to have those, I wanted to have enough confidence to wear this dress. I purchased it, packed it in my suitcase, brought it home and hung it in my closet where it has stayed all this time. The dress began to mock me recently, laughing as I walked by, knowing it was not for me and I was not for it. I wanted to be that person but the dress just did not fit my vision of me. Oddly though, every time I looked at it fully, I saw not my shortcomings but a vision of my friend. I could not get her out of my head with each pass through the closet. She has sass, she has pizzazz, she routinely wears dresses.  She has been allowing her hair to go gray and has the exact right coloring for this dress. I knew this dress was not me, but surely it was her. Finally, the dress was removed from my closet and now resides in hers. I don’t know if my vision really matches her reality, this could be just a  traveling clothing item that is searching for the right home. Still, I am sure this dress was not for me, the real me. It felt good to let it go, to walk peacefully through my closet and not feel mocked at who I am not, but rather to see my big sweaters and longer, darker dresses, also to see the t-shirts from marches and issues I support sprawled around my shelves. The closet reflects me.

When I was younger, I wanted to heal the world. I was an activist social worker, I wanted to make a difference. I was on track but messages from childhood competed with the education I was receiving in college. I can see now that I was scared, afraid of being on my own, not married, not sure I was capable of protecting myself. My desire to be a mother erupted and overtook my personhood. My life trajectory was forever altered. I don’t regret those years, still it is only with hindsight that I see I gave all to only one aspect of me. I only ever wore one dress at a time. When my children left to begin their own lives, their own relationships and choices with consequences that severed our ability to stay connected, I was left naked. My one dress was gone. I can hear myself tell Chef repeatedly through angry hurtful tears, “But I am a mom, that is who I am.” The sound of my own voice crying out that plea to let me go back, put on my old identity, begging God to just let us all go back, it still breaks my heart as it reverberates in my mind. Like the children of Israel who followed Moses out of slavery, I didn’t understand I was being freed. I didn’t see that while walking in the wilderness, God was leading me by day with the clouds and at night in my fiery dreams. I could only complain about wanting more, what to go back to the known. Yet, God had more for me, wanted more for me, knew that I am more. I didn’t know I was shedding. I did know it was horrible and painful. I didn’t know if there was anything after, if there would be any me left when all that had been was scrapped away.

Wearing roles as my identity is much like that dress, I wanted them to fit. I wanted to be enough for them, them enough for me. Shedding those roles that once defined me has been an excruciating process, not one I would have chosen any more than giving up on this pretty dress. Pain in the peeling, the leaving behind, fear of the resulting emptiness. If I take away “mom” will I disappear?  I did for a bit. I sat in the nothingness, my skin raw as the last vestiges of who I thought I was slid away, unable to expose the fresh tender me to the sunlight. The hiding time was healing time, though. God was growing me into my new skin, from the inside out, not allowing me to don another role of caregiver as my new dress. Hindsight allows me to see that my year of seclusion looks much like a time of wrestling that old skin away, much like my beasts hurling themselves against the huge trees outside, rubbing their bodies from nose to butt against the rough bark to help remove their winter hair. Clumps fall away, get caught in the wind, beasts run with abandon feeling lighter and less itchy. Many trips to the tree, much hurling and tossing about, barks and yips breaking the quiet. Growing into the new is hard, is a process.

I am new. I am becoming more of me. The struggle to assert my personhood even causes friction in my marriage as we establish room, more space for a bigger me. Like the dress that doesn’t fit, not just a size up is needed, an entirely different style. Communication, assertiveness, determination, skills required as Chef realizes he wed one woman and is living with another. We are sweeping up the clumps of hair, wrestling with our evolving selves and how God wants us to stand together to be new and united. I can see that Chef is in the beginning stages of the peeling away, the horrible painful time of losing it all to find what is underneath, to find his more. I have cleaned out his closet to remove those clothes that mock him as well. Now he sits in the nothingness, losing clumps of himself and wondering what will remain, will anything remain. I know, I want to shout with joy, I know so surely, that God is leading him out of this wilderness and into his own time of growth and new identity that is pleasing to God and in fulfillment of His plans. It is okay that Chef doesn’t know, doesn’t always believe, I do.

My raw skin has healed, I am free and new. I am a person of God. I will always be a mom, be grandma. But I am more. My closet is a mixed mess of colors and styles, ready to take me anywhere from the back of my brother’s Harley to Sunday morning church. It takes me to meetings for all the ministries I am involved in and out to the dirt to play. There are comfy clothes for writing time and Tom’s shoes to make my statements.  I pray I never get stuck wearing one dress again, as beautiful and tempting as it may be. I am more.

 

 

 

 

Expectation
Sound

Bubbles

On By LisaIn Arrow, Faith, The ChefLeave a comment

My Plum and I love to play with bubbles, we make huge ones that float around us, giant rainbow colored orbs that shine with drippy soap as they are carried away on the breeze. Plum chases them, delights in bursting them with his stick or sword or ninja kick. Maybe he is on to something that I have forgotten: bubbles are beautiful but must be broken. I always secretly root for them to escape his reach, bypass the branches, I want them to pass freely into the sky. Sometimes bubbles enclose us, surround us in bands of bright colors reflecting the light, hiding the darkness all around.

The Sunday night book group at church is breaking my heart. I knew going into it that I would be vulnerable, that my heart would be on the line. The seriousness of the topic, how closely it fit my own reality, I knew it was dangerous. Still, I felt called, pushed, to sign my name on the clipboard, I felt prodded to buy the book and say I would join. “The New Jim Crow”  by Michelle Alexander is risky stuff, threatening our happy bubbles, perilous to our long-held beliefs. For those of us well acquainted with the criminal justice system, it is even more painful.

I finished grad school about 25 years ago, I haven’t read serious works since, not full books on social justice by intelligent authors. I read snippets, I follow news. I live life and experience events but have not stayed up on scholarly readings. This is my confessional, where I come clean about my own intelligent ignorance. Much like when my son showed signs of substance abuse but I knew that I had already covered all of those bases, I was too smart to let that happen in my own family, I missed what was in front of me. My knowledge was not sufficient to understand the greater issue, my response was not great enough to halt the problem. My bubble kept me from seeing what was really happening to/with my son, until it all burst, our life snagged on the jagged edges of addiction, destroyed by the criminal justice system once again.

Getting comfortable in our own bubbles is dangerous, as the current national situation can attest. The seriousness of the racial divide is irrefutable, once the bubble of denial is popped, the soul cleansing can begin. I don’t want to know what I am reading, I don’t want to be aware that politicians I have loved are complicit in this current divide. How much soap will it take to clean us all? Will we ever be washed free of this ugliness? I don’t have the answers to fix such a horrific systemic problem but I know the first step is breaking those bubbles, those beautiful alluring floating orbs that can calm my mind and distract me from what is true and what is real. Indeed, blisters are bubbles as well, patches of skin rubbed until the skin reacts angrily. A burn that shows the damage has occurred, attention is required. Bubbles, blisters, mass incarceration, racial caste.  My soul is aching and my memories are fresh. The first step in healing.

Seriousness

Delightful Roar

On By LisaIn Faith, Plum, Stella, The ChefLeave a comment

Two nights in a row Plum went to bed quite unhappy with me. Highly unusual, this is our snuggle time, the precious moments when his last wonderings of the day spur questions that fascinate me, when he wants to be a bit closer, when he reverts to being just a tiny bit smaller. I love bedtime, when our guards fall down under the nightlight glow and we can be our truest selves. Not so on these last couple of nights though. The first was after being at church too late, bedtime pushed far enough back that self-control was lost. Somewhere between the church front doors and ours, he morphed from my sweet boy into a horrid monster who found no delight in my presence. I was good with that, not the morphing really, but I didn’t take it personally, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with tiredness and my role as the enforcer of pajamas and brushed teeth and butt into bed.  He very nicely in his horrible monster voice told me he only wanted grandpa and that I could not snuggle with him. His precious sing-song voice roared that he wanted to put a sign on the door saying no grandmas allowed. Delightful child. I accepted the rules of engagement, sent in Chef and told them both to hush and go to sleep. The miracle of the sunrise brought my sweet boy back to me. Until bedtime the following night.

I have read that it only takes one time of doing something to create a habit with a cat, maybe Stella taught me this. I think Plum thought he was on to something, was in touch with his feline side. I declined his offer of exile and chose instead to pick up one of our love books and begin reading over the growls and hisses next to me. A weird thing happened though. He stopped. He settled in. He forgot that he was mad at me while listening to me tell him all the ways that I love him.

I get it, he is growing older. He wants his grandpa more. Trust me, I know, everyone wants grandpa more. Still, I want those precious moments as long as I can have them, those still quiet minutes before he drifts off.  Those are the times I remind him that my love will follow him anywhere. Right now he thinks those books are about him and I which is true. My love will follow him even when he turns into a horrid monster and turns me away.  But one day it will occur to him that I was whispering to him each night as he slide into slumber about God’s love. That a greater love than mine follows him. That a deeper love than mine forgives his monster morphing and knows the Sonrise will always lead him back. I am sure of this because sometimes I morph also, too tired to resist the bait, fall into temptation of anger and strong words, morphing into my own worst self. Then I rely on the love of God to bring me back, I listen for His loving words to invite me back into fellowship and grace.

Fortunately our morphings are pretty rare, we mostly delight in nighttime book reading and quiet questions. Maybe a new habit has begun though, one in which I am banished from his room and Chef is the hero. A new stage in our journey, perhaps. Like sneaky cats that seek out a new solution to any problem, I just have to find new ways to show him God’s love endures. Awareness of our changing relationship requires that I give him the space to push me away and know that I will never go too far. I can morph into that.

Aware

Wanna Race?

On By LisaIn Faith, Plum, The Chef6 Comments

Plum’s shoes had grown holes in the toes, a bit of a slash in the tread. Back to school shoes that survived into second semester were now screaming to retire. I picked up a new shiny pair while out running errands, hoping the amount of green on them would be acceptable. There always has to be green. I left them in Chef’s car while I went on to church to begin the Wednesday evening meal. Then it began to snow, a really good snow that quickly covered the sidewalks and silenced my worries as the world grew quiet. I prepped and cooked in peace until a little boy crashed into my kitchen cocoon carrying his new box of shoes. Hat, mittens, coat and boots went flying as he rushed to open the box, a new pair of shoes!  I tried to slow the process, remind him to hang up what he had tossed but new shoes awaited. Scissors were located, tags and that elastic string cut. Tissue paper form holders removed, the shoes made contact with his feet.  The magic happened.

Children with new shoes know, just know that they are suddenly faster. They have amazing abilities that either come with the clean tread or are enhanced by the fresh fit. They can jump higher, are able to win all the races, have limitless potential. Favorite color only seems to enhance their magic. The laces were barely tied and he was off. The still vacant hallways provided the needed outlet, he challenged Chef to a race. Laughter and taunts mixed with the aromas of dinner almost ready. New shoes, new perspective.

That night, he dreamt about those shoes, about racing with his friend from church. He and J share dinner each week under the supervision of J’s mom, I can’t watch over Plum while managing the food line. This week they decided they were grown enough to sit all by themselves, sent adults to the adjoining table. I love this friendship, I love that as soon as they see each other, they hug. I am not surprised that Plum spent his sleeping time with both his good friend and his new shoes, following the directive I give him each night as I kiss his forehead, “Have sweet sweet sugar boy dreams.”  He dreamt that he had green shoes and J had blue shoes and they raced around the church hallways, each winning some of the races. He laughed again in the retelling of his dream, the joy of the race as real as If it were true. He delighted in his time with J, with his new shoes, they BOTH had new shoes.

It is not lost on me that in Plum’s dream, he substituted in his best buddy for his grandpa. Interchangable. What a testimony to the love they share, the connection that has never been broken, the trust established. Chef is the fun grandparent and also the one who gets those extra snuggles when things are rocky. Chef has taught this child how to have friends, how to be a friend. He is teaching him how to be a man. One day Plum will buy new shoes for a child and accept the challenge of a race. I know he will remember all the times his grandpa paid for his shoes and then lost out to him at the finish line, with a good natured high five and a request for another chance. I know he will look back and rejoice in his grandpa who has been with him from the beginning and lets him sometimes lose because that makes him stronger, gives him character. Plum knows I am the disciplinarian but still an easy mark. I  more often than not let him win, haunted by all that he has already lost. One day Plum will buy his own shoes and begin of running fast, I pray towards his goals and all that God has planned for him.

On days that are hard, I want to remember that feeling, that new shoe freedom and confidence that I can run faster, climb higher, go the distance. God gives me that, everyday. Sometimes all I can see are scuffed up broken down holey old sneakers, my life in tatters and my self-esteem shot. New shoes, just out-of-the-box super powers are awaiting in the form of prayer and devotion. Favorite psalms and lines of scripture to speed my pace and reset my perspective, prophets to remind me of what can be, what is. Centering myself in my faith is where the “magic” happens. My wakeful dreams are of a world where I have that feeling to spur me on but also, my friends and my not-yet friends have it as well, we all have “new shoes.”    Let’s pretend just for today the magic has happened, the box is waiting for us to open. What would you achieve ? How high could you climb? Let’s open our faith box and find our new shoes. Mine will of course be blue or maybe teal. What color will yours be? Wanna race?

 

I Do Not Deserve This

On By LisaIn Faith2 Comments

I know I don’t deserve this. I haven’t earned it, it isn’t fair. More, more, when I think I have taken all there is to give, more appears. Where is the end, when will it stop? This grace just keeps flowing like birdseed out of the feeder, rushing to the ground for those who prefer to snack there. I don’t understand it, am overwhelmed with it. I barely start to grasp the beauty of what has been given and then more, more still more.

It began with a whisper, maybe first the readiness to hear the whisper. A chance taken, following that nudge, next reaching out with the tiniest spark across the darkness, a connection established until a fire grew so bright we all can see. That was grace enough for me. I could have lived off of  just that much, breathing in that grace, exhaling new faith, deep restoration. More, though, more still came. Why, why is there more? Nudges that push me into holy places, nudges that awaken me to gifts that heal, nudges that rein me in and nurture me, Spirit prods that love with grace and show me more IS. Not just what can be but what IS right now, inside of me.

I don’t deserve this friendship, this one who gives more than I can ever return. I don’t deserve her family, her parents who send me messages and emails and take photos to further my craft. It isn’t fair that her mother spends the afternoon sewing breast pads for Mama, a young woman she has never met, it just is grace. Who does that? This grace rich family, they have so much it overflows, they must be unable to contain it. Unaware of it, oblivious to the glory of their gifts, they humbly carry on sprinking grace like seeds from feed sacks, they either don’t know or don’t care a hole is leaving a trail wherever they have been, a trail that leads straight to God. Their bag never seems to empty. Like little birds, those of us in their wake are fed, we find unexpected nurturance when we are most hungry. Some seeds find the rich soil and grow into ministries. Remember the parable of the seeds?  This family lives out the sprinkling.

I ate vegetable soup, homemade rich hot hearty soup as they sewed. Grace enough in that bowl, but there was more. We laughed and chatted, swapped light stories and deeper concerns.  I wondered if they had any idea of how deeply they heal me? We may not get the mother we want, I may not be the one I long to be, but sitting with them I was included in a relationship that is so beautiful I ache from just being near. I watched as grace raised the needle up down up down again and again with the ease of years behind the machine. I watched as grace cut circles and considered thickness of pads, easy conversations between them as the daughter’s expertise joined with the mother’s. I sat at the table and ate the seeds of relationship and prayed that somewhere my Stella has a mother-friend to love on her this way. She deserves this much grace. She has earned that second chance of hot soup and nurtured gifts.

We don’t get what we deserve, praise God for that. We can’t earn our way into heaven. If we are truly blessed, we find grace here, now, in a friend who speaks the Holy Spirit and an extended family who cares little for a formal tree and more about feeding the birds who gather on its branches. I know I am more, I have worth, by virtue of the grace they have shown me. I cannot deny the magnitude of their gifts, shall I squander those or spread grace of my own? Because that is what happens, when you begin to feed the birds, first maybe a chore or just an afterthought, you soon notice the birds show up with songs and beauty and bring friends who enrich your environment. More seeds spread and sunflowers grow in unexpected places, delights for all. I will never be really good at grace spreading like this family but I have an example of Jesus with each interaction. A work in progress, they see that I am redeemable, I trust them that I am worthy, a little bird still learning to fly.

I don’t deserve them, it isn’t fair that I receive their grace. Thank you God for sharing them with me. I truly understand the gift.

 

What Would Sarah Say?

On By LisaIn Faith, StellaLeave a comment

I sang you THIS LULLABY, a silly song every night as you drifted off to DREAMLAND. I can’t really sing but you didn’t know that then, you didn’t judge back then. My voice spoke God to you, brought love to you, in the midst of baby tears and scuffed up knees. Later, when I was kept under LOCK AND KEY, you had my voice on tape, I sang through my own tears and recorded my songs to send you to sleep with my love still close. How I wish I still had those tapes to send you, to remind you that I would give the MOON AND MORE to you, have given my everything to you, if you would JUST LISTEN. Now it feels like you are the one under LOCK AND KEY, you are KEEPING THE MOON, I am alone in the dark. The TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER is that SOMEONE LIKE YOU can only remember THAT SUMMER, not the years of singing before. ALONG FOR THE RIDE, forever connected even if apart, I sing quietly alone and wait for you to remember. I have never been a SAINT ANYTHING, I sing badly and make so many mistakes but my God how I would love to hear you sing to your babies. WHAT HAPPENED TO GOODBYE, where is our hello? All of our favorite stories include resolution, redemption. What would Sarah say about all of this? Wouldn’t she write the next chapter soon, where we come back together in a new way? Remember how we anxiously awaited the next book, bought the hardback as soon as it hit the store? I would pay anything for our next book to begin.  What would the it be called? CAST AWAY is already taken. I love you sis.

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