Why every mama needs a Joan

As the day pressed on and the blistering, unexpected spring heat smothered, I began to wonder if perhaps we were, in our novice status as bonafide dairy goat farmers, making a bit more work for ourselves than was needed. We were having a good time after all. The babies had stayed in the living room about three times longer than we planned because we had such ridiculous fun having them there. Waking up and coming down the stairs to sweetest little faces and cries for snuggles and milk? Yes. It was as lovely as it sounds but yes, it was also a tremendous lot of work! The days were a bit of blur and truly much bliss as we have allowed all the rest of life to be on hold and treasured these fleeting newly born days.

In my wondering, I queried in my head “what would Joan do?”. So I wrote her mid afternoon yesterday. Joan the kind-hearted, older mama whom we had first met in the goat barn at fair a few years back. Joan, whose (now grown) children left such an impression on me when I met them the first time in their manners and kindness and gentle confidence. I described to her what we were doing with our new goats and how we were learning and getting on. This is the schedule I sent:

6 AM milk 4 goats (3 Nigerians and Genie) – clean the vacuum milker

6:30 AM feed 10 bottles divided among babies

10 AM feed newer batch of 6 babies their bottles (but only carefully rationed measured out, they would take more if they could)

12:30 feed older 4 their bottles

1:00 PM milk 4 goats again – clean milker

2:00 PM feed newer 6 babies again (again, carefully rationed, divided out bottles)

5:00 PM feed older 4 babies

6:00 PM feed younger 6 bottles

8:30 PM milk 4 goats (and clean the milker…again!)

9:-9:30 PM feed all 10 babies bottles

As I typed and asked her timidly “am I missing anything here?”, the corners of my mouth curled up and I smirked to myself how crazy it looked on the screen. Because for all that I typed there was of course the un-typed rest of life. Three meals daily for six human kids. The 2-3 loads of daily laundry. The hand washed dishes (did I mention the dishwasher broke January 3?). All the “normal” life work. A calendar of May splayed open on the counter with an array of showers, parties, end-of-year events, birthdays, dinners, outings, anniversary.

I took a deep breath and clicked “send”. Without a trace of fear or worry. Because there are some people who you know, that you know won’t judge, won’t over complicate or make your cheeks burn in embarrassment . They’ll just offer what they know, offer it in love and tell you it’s going to be okay.

After a brief and much needed date night, I got in the car to head home and read her reply. I smiled. I laughed, genuine belly-laughed out loud. Until there were tears streaming down my face as I sat alone in my car in a parking lot. “You are one overworked mama!” was how it began. Oh, so it was a little crazy? Yes. Possibly. The glory of being validated right where you are, such a powerful gift.

Then came her suggestions. Which is what led to the laughter. She told me she suggested “more sleep” at 6 AM. The very idea! In all its wisdom and simplicity! Sleep. The ever-elusive companion over these past 13 years of raising children. This was, possibly, the first time someone had literally told me I perhaps should sleep more.

It got better. From 10 am-1 pm on her proposed schedule, after kids had helped with milking (which of course they already do – but it was good to have affirmed that indeed, this ought to be a family affair) it said “be with your kids. go shopping. do your housework. eat lunch.” More smiles. Someone I respect just told me to simply “be with” my kids. Deep breath.

And better still, after getting milk to goats after lunch (and cutting out the terribly over-the-top midday milking) she proposed:

enjoy your kids, drink lemonade in the garden, watch your kids play with the baby goats

Wait? Did someone just tell me to enjoy my kids? To drink lemonade in the garden? To watch my kids play? This was too much! The wave of relief and sweetness that washed over me prompted hot tears and a most silly grin.

Permission to simplify. Permission to sleep. Permission to enjoy the blessings set before me. Permission to delight in our work together but not create an unnecessary load.

We all need a Joan. And not just for help with goats. But for so much more. We need to raise our heads up, raise our hands and ask brave, vulnerable questions of the older, wiser women in our midst. Especially in the raising of children, which is largely done outside of a tight-knit, real-life community except for a lucky few, we need the gift of their looking back, their ability to see clearly what really mattered. Things like enjoying our kids and lemonade in the garden. At times, we need to admit defeat and call in the troops of the ones who have already been there. We need fresh eyes.

Maybe our schedule or workload feels suffocating but we don’t know how to fix it. Maybe one child struggles big and loud and we have tried everything but can’t help them. Maybe we have fought against family baggage and generations of bad patterns in relationships but we want more than bondage, we ache for freedom. Whatever the unspoken fight or darkness, sometimes we need another set of hands on deck, a new and fresh perspective in order to find our way, “to proceed to the next step” as I inquired to Joan in my letter.

If we open up our eyes and heart to the people around us in one circle or another, chances are there is a Joan or a Suzanne or an Amy or someone precious who is just waiting to see a raised hand, a white flag, a “help wanted” banner held up over the life of a younger one trying to find her way.

Hope Rises

It was just about the time the rooster crows. My alarm beckoned me out of warm flannel sheets and I headed straight for a quick shower. I’d come home at dusk from sitting at the hospital with my grandpa. My body and heart were still tired. But duty called. Rylee woke herself at the same time but headed straight out to check on the latest goat mama due. Just as I was pumping shampoo she burst into the bathroom. “Babies born in the night, mama, hurry….this one, it’s not doing good.” I grabbed a towel and shot out of the shower to find her holding a terribly limp and freezing cold tiny baby goat. It was hardly breathing. Tiny nostrils flared ever so slightly. It did not move. I wrapped it in my bath towel and ran for clothing and the heater. We rubbed its little fuzzy body and held her close.

We woke two more (human) kids and took turns rubbing and warming and hoping. Too cold to even shiver, she just laid there at our mercy. She’d been born fourth. Mama had obviously attended well to the first three babies and they were licked clean and placed proper under the heat lamp that was there for an impromptu night birth just like this one. But one hadn’t made it there. Had been left for dead by the door to the pen on the cold ground.

The morning chores were quickly stacking up, goats to milk, bottles to feed to the older babies, three more babies to check on outside, kids hungry for breakfast, coffee to be had. I’m fairly sure I offered everyone tortillas for breakfast and a kind husband made me coffee. Rylee whispered, “can we call her Hope?”. I smiled my yes and knew that even if she wouldn’t make it, she still ought to be named. We brought her downstairs and held her close and dropped milk into her weak mouth and hoped she would be strong enough to swallow.

Everyone sort of held their breath. Slowly her eyes opened. Nearly every pair of hands loved on her, quietly willing her to live. Cautious optimism brimmed. All eyes on Hope.

Hope is the stalwart strength that draws us up to face another day. Hope is believing that your invisible sacrifice of love is being poured out into something worthwhile regardless of the payoff or lack-thereof. Hope is trying again when you want to give up. Hope is living out your promises and defying all odds in the process. Hope is believing greater things than we can imagine are in progress, seen and unseen.

Hope is acknowledging what might yet be.

Her official registered farm name will be “Little Foot MM Hope Rises”. Long name for such a little thing. It’s true. But it couldn’t be more fitting.

A normal day… (updated)

The announcement goes something like this: “Finn is covered. Head to toe covered. He is completely naked and covered with tiny shards of styrofoam. It’s everywhere. All over the bathroom walls, the counter, the floor. And Finn.”

I take a deep breath. I’m sitting on the couch trying to drink coffee, recovering from a full weekend and our very long Monday. There is some magical thing about a mama who sits down. She can be hustling around fixing breakfast, filling the crockpot with dinner, doing dishes leftover from last night, switching laundry loads, wiping up unidentifiable smashed food and she is near invisible in her work. But sit that mama down and no one misses it. My backside hasn’t been on the couch ten seconds before one, two, then three sweet things are fighting for my lap. Good thing it’s a soft and plentiful lap. Everyone snugs in and about then is when oldest boy comes in with the news about Finn.

And these are the things our everydays are made of. Kids practicing self defense moves on the barn roof. Digging for bones in the forest and coming back with near intact skeletons. Hard working almost teenage Rylee traipsing out to the barn in her pajamas every single morning with a big milk bucket and bed head. Someone forgot to let the turkey out and she’s talking loud from her pen reminding us to set her free for the day. The pigs are done with breakfast but they are ready for second breakfast if anyone cares to oblige. Coyotes are closing in every morning and the three big dogs are on constant watch, sure to bark away any rustle from the forest. A dog shows up locked in the pantry after someone shut him inside to “clean up” an entire box of spilled granola.

A two year old whose sparkling blue eyes are sure to dazzle is happy to climb trees or climb onto counters using drawer knobs as a ladder. She is just as pleased to act as “baby” and get to “nap” in a suitcase. Only the pretend nap turned real and she lays there in the middle of the noisy kitchen for an hour snoozing. She has a penchant for “beddies” (berries) and the berry crisp someone accidentally left here last night ended up being her bedtime snack since she found it (and a spoon) before anyone else did. She loves to snuggle cousins and creatures of every sort.

Blisters on my hands now just healed from an evening of food prep and endless slicing and dicing. The sacrifice of a weeknight evening for the sake of precious friends seemed painfully small but the only thing I could do to communicate love. Their loss of new life at 11 weeks pregnant was all too familiar to us and besides praying our hearts out, food seems the only other way to extend compassion.

There are stacks of great books to be read, one 7 year old sits reading to me this very minute. The library hold shelf bears our name and inquiring ones want to know when we can go pick up the waiting books. Older ones have been enlisted by youngers to place holds so even the littles have books waiting for them today.

As for me, only styrofoam awaits me at the moment I’m afraid. Lots and lots of styrofoam…

***Updated 9:56 AM*** While I scoped out the styrofoam mess I came downstairs to the sound of Dad’s drill on the front porch. This is what I found:

When I inquired about what was taking place, Finn was quick to explain “I caught a moth, I put it in a ziploc and Audrey helped me poke holes so it could breath. I’m going to drill it into the front door to make sure dad can see it when he gets home.” To which I took another deep breath and commended him for his use of eye protection then I explained that while that was very sweet, it would permanently ruin the door. We searched for a big piece of wood and screwed the ziploc into it instead. It is propped up by Dad’s parking spot waiting for his return. The front door is scratched but not badly so.

While it might be very entertaining for me to write these posts every day (as this is very normal) – it would surely overwhelm. But for posterity’s sake I’d sure like to try every now and then!

Broken pieces and forgiveness

It’s a perfectly normal rainy fall Thursday. Kids plugging away at school work. Mom realizing we’re nearly out of coffee which is a pretty big crisis. At least a dozen other staples are at a near gone level as well. My efforts to stretch out Costco trips has probably been taken a bit too far. I head for the door and promise a treat for the ones who have to stay home. I bring one son with me since he’s my best muscle help, loves loading and unloading and scouting for our list items. I run back in and ask a daughter to come too, she declines and says she wants to do math instead. When I get outside, the car is one resounding sob. A precious little book that had been carefully tucked away, one with stamped pages collected from geocaching with Dad, it had been found. By an unruly four year old brother. And every page scribbled and drawn on. Deemed a total loss. Pages were ripped out in frustration and the little books pages were strewn everywhere. “It was so SPECIAL!!” he’s weeping and I tell him I’m sorry and I know we can replace it or fix it or make it better. The brother says sorry but its a four-year-old sorry and it doesn’t heal or help. At all.

We depart despite the trauma and get out to the main road. I’ve answered a call from my mother and am catching up a bit with her when I hear a loud crash in my van. I look back. The back window is missing. I’m driving down a super steep hill. I pull safely to the side. I get out and look for clues. I’m completely baffled. And more than a little scared. The not knowing what is happening. It’s an awful feeling. I look inside the hole where my window used to be. There is a harmless looking grocery sack. Nothing else. I look closer without cutting myself. There is a rock much bigger than my fist in the bag. And other various beach treasures that had been collected somewhere and left in the van. A rock big enough to shatter my window into hundreds of little pieces.

He meets my gaze. He stammers and mumbles about not knowing what was in the bag. In his feeling-deeply moment, he probably didn’t, its true. He was overwhelmed with feeling and he tossed the bag back without a second thought. I look long at him. I don’t ask why. He’s just now calculating what he has done. And a new tide of emotion rushes in. Fear. Unchecked remorse. An unbearable sense of “why in the world did I do this?”. I watch him and I silently get my keys and get back in the van. I dial our treasured car repair man, I’m more than lip quivering at this point, I tell him what happened and ask him to help me. He gives me a number of a man who does just this and I call him before we even reach the house. Of course he can fix it he tell me, and my tears cover my phone. I find Audrey and hold her so tight it hurts. The bag of rocks flew over her seat. If she’d come when I invited her to, she would have been directly in its haphazard path. The “what if…” catches in my throat and I can’t breathe or speak or cry or move.

The road is covered with glass. I’m not the sort who can just leave it there. So I pick up a dustpan and broom and drive back to the street where it broke. He watches for cars, blazing over the hill at 40 mph and alerts me to their coming while I kneel on the asphalt and sweep one shard after another into a pan. He holds the bag as I dump load after load in. He is shaking. The rain begins. I give him my sweater and crouch on the road in a tee shirt quickly soaking. I consciously breathe in and out and I hear the truth ringing in my head, in my heart.

Jesus meets me right here. On the road. In damp jeans with my tattered heart. Picking up the mess of someone else’s wrong choice. It’s more than a whisper, it’s the clearest thing ever. This. This is what I do for you all the time. I pick up the pieces. I enter in to your mess, even if it is risky. And I love you there. I offer you forgiveness. Grace. And I never stop. You can’t outrun my unrelenting love for you. And you get to extend it. Right now. In this moment. With your own son.

He keeps saying softly, “I’m so sorry mom”. I finish sweeping and turn to him. I wrap him up in the rain. I hold him for a long time on the sidewalk. I speak life and forgiveness and love. In a season when I feel like I’m messing up a fair bit, every day, can’t get anything “just right”…I get the chance to do this. This one thing right. To respond the way God responds to my (daily) mess. To practice what it looks like to say:

Yep. You did quite a thing here. Epic poor choice. But here I am. My love for you won’t stop, won’t quit. I choose to love you in this moment. You are forgiven.

I can hardly get my body into the house when we return. My legs won’t stop shaking. My insides quiver. The kids sit quiet and make lunch for each other. I bring them to the computer, show them this video. We talk forgiveness. How God offers it. Freely. Unceasingly. In the purest, most genuine way. How this is what makes the way of Jesus a different path. A radical one. And I pray silent for another chance to show them. To forgive fully and to love well.

Grace upon grace

He left the dinner table quietly, no big to-do. Just abandoned his favorite piece of meat to sit there and get cold. When there are seven people at the table, too many of them talking at once, its easy for the easily overwhelmed to want some space. We keep trying to use the metaphor of a car and when too many cars go at once you have one giant wreck. Same sort of thing with dinner conversation – but its not sinking in too well. We’re a work in progress. I quickly cleaned my plate, not taking the time to be thankful for this beautiful roasted chicken that we raised ourselves or the crunchy cucumbers that grew just outside the back window despite my dismal lack of weeding and forgetting to water them half the time.

I run upstairs and peek inside his door. He’s laying on the floor with pillows. I ask him why he left and what’s wrong. Its been another bad day – he tells me. I fight the urge to list all the reasons why it was actually a great day…we painted the barn, we got a new goat, and so on. I listen. It’s just always another bad day. I ask what makes it not good instead of disagreeing with him. I lay down on the floor and wait. He thinks about it. Because I do what I don’t want to do and I get in trouble, again. And my heart hurts and I slowly explain that he’s not the only one. He may well be one of few boys his age who is so tremendously, keenly aware of this. I tell him that his mama laying on the carpet there struggles the very same way.

Why? He asks. He wants to know why its so hard to not get upset when things don’t go how he expects. Why its so hard to respond well. And before he gets one step further and thinks he’s the only one this is hard for, I lay it out real clear. I want to love you well, love you perfectly, never let you down, never get mad at the wrong moment in the wrong way, lead you in wisdom and lavish you with grace, I tell him. But I mess up all the time, I’m never going to get it just right and there are plenty of days where I feel exactly the same way…its another bad day and I can’t get anything right. He turns his head and looks at me and sizes me up like ten year olds sure can and he’s hearing every word. I hope beyond hope that he actually hears my heart oozing through my words and knows that I mean it.

The verse I read this week in John and got tripped up on and can’t seem to read past but can only read again, and again, is this:

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. – John 1:16

Just a few words, but honestly I can’t get to chapter 2. If the way of Jesus is grace upon grace then my way at home with these half a dozen kids is meant to reflect that. And this year here has been tough and I’m bone tired from not one solid night of sleep in just about exactly a year and I wonder where the grace went some days and how I could love so insufficiently when the love God gives is so complete and perfect and enough. He loves me well. Every single day. His patience with my imperfection and inadequacy is chock full of grace while at the same time beckoning me forward with his truth.

We talk about grace on the floor of his room and we both cry as we realize the common ground of our faults and how much we want to grow. We pray. And he sits with his head on my shoulder for a long time. Hoping, even if tenuously so, that this year will be a more gracious one.

The view from here

The sky is overcast and gray but all the sounds around me are a dead giveaway. It is spring. There are birds singing in every direction. The rooster crows every five minutes and his teenage counterpart tries to follow along but can’t get the job done just yet. There is a girl with an electric shaver trimming her goat to perfection for the dairy goat show in two weeks. There are 5 week old goat kids frolicking with two human kids at their heels. There is the constant clucking of the proud laying hens and the frantic hustling of the two dozen pullets who can’t yet lay and get a pecking every day to remind them they haven’t yet arrived to a productive adulthood. Our ten year old son is inside at the stove, he just popped over to me in my chair in the grass to ask “Can I make you an egg? Please!?”. How could I say I’d already had toast and wasn’t hungry? He is mastering the art of frying eggs. He is proud of the fact he now makes them even better than his mama does (could have something to do with the focus he brings and the constant multi-tasking of this mama!).

Our epic water emergency of last week seems, for just a moment, a distant memory and life is calm and peaceful and instead of make another list for something, I sit and watch. There are way too many weeds in the driveway. I ought to pull grass from the base of the fledgling raspberries so they can grow. The seed potatoes are still sitting in the garage. Pretty sure they aren’t going to grow me new potatoes in there. But there are peonies to watch. The splendor of those blooms of theirs is unparalleled. They have to be one of most glorious flowers in the Pacific Northwest. Staring at the peonies wins over the other tasks that practically call my name as I sit in the grass.

I should be calling the flooring people for the repairs that will need to be made inside where the water flowed down the hallway. But all I can think about is the irony of the fact that though we were without water for a spell (which felt no small thing whilst 6 kids were throwing up), we had the luxury of a friend with a truck and a big heart, who toted 5 gallon buckets of crystal clear spring water from the artisan well that flows 24/7 down the hill from us. I have no idea how it works or who put the spout there. But the water is amazing and free for the taking. In spring time it sometimes pours out over the road, it is such a plentiful source of abundance. The reality that the bulk of the world has no access to water like that and drinks daily from filthy rivers or mud-puddles seems so gravely wrong to me. I told Audrey last week, the most common cause for death for children five and under around the world stems from drinking dirty water. She said, “Wow, I’m glad I just turned six!”. But it is a painful reality. One that I can’t ever get far from my mind, especially when I drive past that water.

What are we supposed to do, us born into a life that compared to most of the world, is chock full of abundance? Take constant inventory I guess, and find ways to give more, love more, bless more. Hold loosely to things, not in a disrespectful way but it a way that reflects the truth that says people matter more than the stuff. While its tempting to bemoan the mess that waits inside for me, I’d do best to count myself incredibly blessed to have books that line shelves and boxes full of hand-me-down shoes for my kids and coats in every size (despite the fact that said items are piled in disarray at the moment). Clothing and a safe home and water and food enough to share, the things that I easily forget to be thankful for. But take one away for a day or two and I’m quickly reminded how the basics are really all we need. The continual tension is good I suppose, it is right and when it leaves, that’s when I should worry.

For now, I’ll just soak in a few more minutes of enjoying my view from the grass.

When the family tree is tipping

I glanced up while feeding the baby today at the one of only two walls in my home that bear any semblance of “home decorating” and had to smirk. Somehow in the chaos that has ensued here this past week, the tree painting on the family wall was all askew:

It seemed fitting. Saturday evening after what we thought was “a quick stomach bug” had ended, our friends came over to buy some hay. As Chris stood in the hall with his buddy Mark, he said perfectly calmly, “Hey, you’d better move over, you’re gonna get wet.” In a quick second, the craziness of what was happening clicked and he jumped into action, grabbing towels, calling for reinforcements, etc. We eventually had to turn the whole house water off to stop the flooding down the hallway. Simultaneously, I was outside, in the pasture overseeing goats and milking and such, musing about castration methods with my friend Sam. Rylee ran up to me and said “I don’t feel good” and promptly lost her dinner just shy of my boots. As I walked her inside, I heard the calls for help and towels and got wind of the “water emergency”. Um, yes, turns out the septic pump quitting and the subsequent “backing up” that happens, it indeed quite a crisis.

By the next morning, we realized our floors were buckling and we needed to call insurance, which we’ve never done so that was a whole new thing to figure out. They sent people out immediately to put up industrial fans to dry the floor and walls and rip out anything damaged. While I’m rinsing out throw up bowls (without running water), there are all these workers in our house. And the extra fun fact here? Though it was a weekend day, my hubby was filling in for our pastor who was on vacation….so he absolutely had to go to church. He apologetically departed and went to Safeway with a bottle of shampoo and washed his hair in the bathroom there so that he didn’t have to preach with serious bedhead. Initially, a good part of our downstairs was sequestered off with thick plastic and full of the big fans, but by this afternoon it looked like this:

Imagine fans so loud you can’t hear if someone is throwing up in the next room or calling Mom for help…seriously, they were loud. We went for a drive a few days ago to get a break and though all seemed okay, before we made it home someone was throwing up in the van. This went on for a couple days and by today, despite the continual stomach issues people were having (as in: “Mom, gross, help…Finn was playing on the deck but he just threw up all his chocolate cookies and the dog is eating it” and “Babe, I know you just got to work but I feel like I’m dying, you gotta come home right now”) we had to get out of here. We went “hiking” for a couple hours on a trail nearby and breathed deep the fresh, quiet air. It was therapeutic and wonderful even if it ended with me carrying an 8 month old on my back and a 35 pound three year old on the front.

The vintage, cutesy sign I bought for our anniversary was suddenly more than an art piece, it was us.

It was the way we shift into action in the midst of crisis and the way we both try to be gracious even though we feel like we’re about to snap. How he stayed up hours one night to do dishes and clean counters just so there was one space that didn’t look like this (after the clean up crew came and emptied out a closet into our schoolroom):

This is real life. It’s where the family tree either puts down deeper roots and survives the storm or topples over and gives up. We might have been blown around a bit this week. For sure. There were moments that left me feeling one step from crazy. But then as I’m weeding the garden and digging out the cat poo that is infiltrating my spinach, Finn says to Audrey, “Guess what? I like ants. I found an ant and I put it in my pants and its in there. Right now. I have an ant in my pull-up!”. Really, honestly? I laughed a lot. I told and retold the stories and made them seem like entertainment because the alternative, the sitting around in a puddle of tears, just doesn’t work so well.

My parents are in blistering heat halfway around the world sharing hope and love and LIFE with people who can’t imagine my fuss over losing a bathroom for a week or three. They’d be thrilled just to have a toilet. As I sweat it out in my laundry room next to the fans doing their (loud) work, I think of my mom who can’t stand hot weather, laying that down to go where God called, even if its 118 degrees. As I swish out yet another throw up bowl, I’m keenly aware that there is an incredible hospital an hour away from here chock full of children who would give anything to just have a bad bug for a week. They just want to live. Perspective is everything. It’s true.

So, for the record, we’re still standing folks. A bit bruised and weary but the fact remains:

We’re in this together.

On walking and waking together

I was just a month past my teens and freshly turned twenty, sixteen long years ago. He’d won my heart years before, when I wasn’t even old enough to drive a car. Against all odds, we were still an inseparable pair and despite the long distance of college, he asked me to share the rest of life with him. I asked him first if he’d asked my dad (he had!) and then I said yes. A few weeks later we went on a walk with a friend and her camera and she snapped this photo:

A year of planning and dreaming and anticipating what life together would look like. Quiet walks and plenty of time to talk. Coffee dates whenever we pleased and the occasional jump into the lake on a sun-setting summer night. Both with two years of university remaining, we studied hard, worked hard and served hard on staff part time at church. Money in short supply but not lacking in the burning-with-love-for-each-other- department. Oh the waiting, it felt like we would never make it to that altar!

It was easy. The saying yes. The beginning of the journey. That uncharacteristically warm summer May afternoon with 427 people sitting watching. Its the staying in yes that isn’t the easy part. No one tells you that. Years without babies with hearts full of ministry life then the years with babies, one after another. The quaint little college apartment with organized everything gave way to a cute and crowded condo by the lake which gave way to the darling rambler where we would welcome our fifth baby blessing on our bedroom floor on a cold February evening.

There were scars by then. The kind you see, that tell of a body swollen beyond capacity time and again. And the kind you don’t see, the ones that tell of losses and disappointments that rend the heart all sorts of broken. There were all the months I spent sure that no other married ones who loved Jesus this much could possibly find life this hard. Whatever of “happily ever after”?

Just when it seemed the heart was plum full and how could I possibly learn to love more, deeper, softer….there was always more. Room for more. Growing, changing, forgiving, learning, CHOOSING. It was always that that was hardest for me. That it wasn’t always going to feel lovely and beautiful. It was going to be a falling apart mess sometimes and I would always have to choose. Choose to be steadfast. Choose to forgive. Choose to stay present. Choose to love extravagantly. All in the midst of a culture that says marriage isn’t forever and I should do what makes me feel good, despite the cost.

I booked a babysitter days ago, chose the nicest restaurant in our country town for us to share dinner and anticipated what two hours off alone together would be like. Life is full and loud and some face time is such a rare gift. Just five hours before our to-be anniversary dinner I heard these infamous words “I think I’m going to throw up mom!” And I dropped everything, ran to the kitchen and ushered her to the bathroom. I cancelled the sitter and texted the sad news of our dashed dinner plans. An hour later as Finn joked about “choking up” as he calls it, and playing with the bowls I had put out, he turned sheet white and lost his lunch all over the kitchen floor. The hubby texted back and offered to pick up dinner and I mopped up nastiness one batch after another.

He brought take out and we sat on the back deck so we could eat sans vomit-smell. Liberty kept us company and we mused about our state of affairs while eating out of a box with plastic forks.

We exchanged gifts, which was hysterical because we both shopped at Costco for each other, obviously because the boxes were identical. We agreed on many accounts but especially this…the sharing of the journey, in all its imperfection and mess, the walking together instead of alone, the waking up in the same bed with the same person day after day after day…it is profoundly precious. It is not overrated. It is nothing less than amazing in all its “ordinary-ness”.

As I took bites of food on the deck in between rounds of running in to empty full puke-bowls, I could only smile. This is it. This is real life. This is our life. An unexpected end to our fifteenth wedding anniversary to be sure. But then most of our life together has been unexpected and beyond what I’d dreamed of. I could not ask for a better someone to share it all with. Our walks may be slower and louder these days, but they are rich and brimming with love and laughter and all sorts of sweetness we are crazy thankful for.

Finding rest in the midst of chaos

I sit across the table from her in the early morning as we drink coffee in the corner of this tiny breakfast spot that is a 45 minute drive for both of us. It’s the perfect middle meeting place. She drives south as I’m driving north. It isn’t anything pretty to look at, this little diner that seems to be full of locals who all know each other and talk farming and friendship and bureaucracy. But to me, on this rainy Saturday, it is sacred ground.

We’ve somehow managed to carve out time with none of our combined thirteen children and have two full hours of face time. Not the electronic app type, but the real kind where I can reach across my coffee cup and touch her arm. There is little time for chit chat or anything light or mindless, not today. We know our time is short and we both know too there is heartache of many varieties on each side of the table. There are twenty five years of friendship in between as well.

Our banter is quiet and though we find things to laugh about, as we exchange words and share about life, something happens that is always a bit beyond the reach of my understanding. Somehow, in the sharing, in the hearing, in the remembering together, the burdens that are pressing so heavy on my heart are lifted just a bit. We don’t answer any big questions or solve any mysteries. The process reminds me of these words that are life to me these days…

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

These two hours are rest for my soul. In the midst of the talking, the listening and the tears there is some sort of mysterious exchange. It feels like she is a stand-in for Jesus. There isn’t any better way to describe it. In daring to speak out loud my deep sadness and struggle, and listening to hers….in shouldering it alongside each other in the corner booth, it doesn’t weigh the same. It is lighter.

At certain times, I think God knows we need a physical person to represent him in our life. We need someone living, breathing, sitting right there whose own eyes well up when they see us cry. Someone who holds no judgement over our failure or mistakes. Someone who doesn’t offer an answer but extends compassion and makes sure we know they aren’t going anywhere. We can read in a book or on a blog or know God’s word by memory, all sorts of truth. But there are moments in life when things press in a little (or a lot) too hard and we need a person who looks like Jesus to hold us up, to bear with us under the weight of life, until we can stand again.

Thankful today that we don’t have to walk it alone. That one way or another, God stands near. Ever present in our pain.

It takes two

There are black mascara lines streaking downward from both my eyes. My cheeks are flushed red and my heart still beats a little too fast. It was 4H tonight and I was hell bent on making it work to go even though Chris had plans and that meant I would have to go alone with six children. I had my reasons, it only meets once a month, our oldest two have presentations to give tonight and so on. By dinner time it had already been a tough day on multiple fronts and all signs pointed to “don’t do it”. But I didn’t want to disappoint our responsible, studious oldest daughter who had her puppet show all prepared and handouts freshly printed.

Being a mother means sometimes having the responsibility of doing things alone with your kids. It’s just part of the gig. Depending on work schedules and kids activities there might be lots of things you manage to do by yourself. We rock Costco every two weeks or so, the kids and I, because we need to. Same with the dentist, the orthodontist, choir and co-op classes. We either figure it out or we stay home. And then there are a few things that require two parents for success. Those include church, the aquarium, any place that involves jumping or bouncing and 4H meetings.

We were 4H bound. We managed to leave early so we could score a good parking place. There may have been crying about jackets but all in all, we departed. The meeting went off without a hitch and the presentation was stellar. Their audience laughed and smiled while they acted out the life story of a sea turtle. I watched while I nursed the baby. Meanwhile, Phineas was dismantling a part of the piano, shutting himself in the dog crate and barking, abusing his ice machine privileges or trying to find a way into the sealed cookies that were for snack time later. While I tried to keep tabs on him, Liberty was busy spitting up all over their carpet. Still, in general we were surviving. Then Finn took the closet off its hinges with his brute two year old force. All the kids were in an uproar and found it exceedingly hilarious, which led him to believe likewise. He brought me by the hand to show me what he’d done and then promptly said he was sorry. I may have laughed and then said “we need to leave before we break anything else!”.

My heart had wanted, earlier, to either stay home or put enough pressure on the hubby that he would give up his plans and come with us. But I didn’t like that feeling. I wanted the best of both worlds, he could go out with friends and I could be supermom and tackle 4H with grace and charisma. Perhaps that’s called pride? Or ignorance? I’m not sure. I am sure of one thing, I should have listened to myself.

After I sent three kids out the door with express instructions to go to the van, which was just outside said door, I ran back inside for Liberty who was in the arms of a friend. When I opened the front door, my boys were running up the driveway hill toward their younger sister who was standing in the dark nearly on the white line of the country road (read: no sidewalk, barrier or bright streetlights). They were laughing and bursting with energy. And I startled the poor baby in my arms as I screamed for them to come back. They hightailed it to the van, knowing instantly from my tone that they’d made a very bad judgement call.

I cried all the way home. For so many reasons. Mainly two. I was terrified. Seeing my little girl standing at the road far beyond my arms reach made my heart stop. That kind of fear has to be the worst kind. And second, I knew it was too much but I went anyway. There are things I can do and things I can’t. But I’m less than okay with the “can’t” list. I don’t like it. I want to be able to manage without my husband for most any task. I’ve been pining away for spring and summer projects, dreaming big dreams that are giving glimmers life and light to a heart that is heavy with challenges we’re facing with one of our kids. Trying to find ways to do them on my own and do it most efficiently, so that I don’t add to his already significant workload, thinking I’m helping and doing right by doing it myself.

The reality is we are meant to figure out how to do it together. All of it. When the need for independence and being able to ‘get the job done’ trumps the cohesive nature of marriage, no one wins. As I tried to drive home tonight, unable at times to see the headlights clearly through my tears, I slowed down and called Chris. I had to. I couldn’t keep driving without hearing his voice. I tried to tell him what had happened, that everyone was okay but that it was so scary, that I should have stayed home, that it was too much for me to go alone. And then I said what my heart really felt, really feels if I’m honest…

I need you. I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me it’s going to be okay. That we are okay.

My independent-prone self wants to not say that, wants to feel like I can make it work, sort things through, find an answer to any dilemma, tough it out, hang in there, muster up the grit to keep on….and I usually do. There are great strengths to being that sort of person. But just ask my husband, there is great weakness too. The partnership that marriage was designed to be doesn’t work as smoothly as it could when one party or both act like they don’t need the other. It isn’t the “helpful gesture” that I think I thought it was. I think dreaming my garden dreams or debating the necessary size of meat bird pens or designing kidding pens for our pregnant goats might be better thought through and hold more value for both of us if I wasn’t doing it by myself.

Taking some deep breaths here and vowing to make sure my (amazing) husband knows how much he’s needed and allowing myself the space to say “I can’t” when I need to. Want to see my favorite picture of him from last year? It was the Easter parade and he toted 5 goats in the back of our van in a tarp (and five of our children as well…not in tarps), wrangled goats and children all the way down Main Street for hundreds of onlookers and always with a smile.

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A Place for Little Feet

a blog.