for this time...and the next

How does a gal put onto page just how a heart transforms during seasonal changes? I have been sitting on this post and these verses for many weeks now and I can't quite seem to gather all my heart is hearing from this view. When winter winds begin to blow warm and the blooming from recent rains have made a new something emerge beautifully from the rich ground? When time keeps changing and the scenery around us never stays one way or another for too long? So many seasons in this life, yet not one defines me more then another...or maybe one does?

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

There is truth in the seasons. Truth that tells a story to our heart of grace...and love...and joy. And sometimes pain. Truth speaks louder then anything. But sometimes we are too noisy to hear it. But over and over, I sense this need to keep giving and keep taking. Give outwardly and give to myself...time and patience and love and grace. And to take in the same way...from others...from myself.

The give and take way of life leads me through so many seasons of birth, death, healing, war, the dancing and the mourning...the keeping and the saying goodbye. And in each season I somehow want to keep my arms open to accept that moment's bread of life. When it feels beautiful to hold my new baby in my arms or open that unanimous check that came to us in the mail or hear a friend's voice on the other side when you've had a hard day. A really hard day. And also when it feels terrible...when you watch your friend's say goodbye to baby boys and your neighbor loses her mate of 50 some years and you don't know how to reach out to your child or you find yourself in a hole of sadness that you just can't climb out of or you watch life leave your body before it ever laid in your arms. Take it...eat it...let each piece feed your soul. 

My days are filled with all of these things. They blend together and each new morning is another gift to give and take away. In all the times He presents us with I know his truth is on the surface and my eyes are fixed on Him... the ultimate giver and taker of all things. Blessed is He. Blessed are those that let Him feed their soul... this time and the next.

to fully celebrate, I must first give thanks

Mother's Day is around the corner and this year I can't help but feel gracefully humbled to celebrate such a day. Not just because I have wonderful mother's all around me, whom I celebrate in my heart a little bit every day of the year...but because I am given the chance to carry such a title of my own. And at this moment I want to give thanks to two people... the One who wove this crazy life together for me and the man who have made me what I am today. For it all has started here and they see me in my most beautiful moments as a mom and at my darkest and ugliest moments in the very same role. And they choose to still love me.

In the days of nursing babies and mopping floors and washing the 6th load of laundry...of the day, and reading stories and pushing swings and airing up bikes and traveling to and from with a van full of kids and making meals and cleaning up meals and doing homework and teaching numbers and memorizing verses and baking cookies and sending cards to grandmas and pulling weeds and wiping tears and controlling...well, chaos...in all of this are two people whom met in an old church van and fell in love on the streets of Chicago in the middle of a college mission trip and decided early on to make a go at this relationship thing. They made plans for what is now today and it seems those plans have in many ways happened and in many ways been pushed to the side for new plans to be walked into.

But early on in that budding relationship between me and the man I get to call husband, I knew being a mother was a part of it. And he knew it too. And so here we are...that boy who started loving me on dark Chicago streets while we reached out to the homeless together and made me into a mother just a few years later. It's been everything and more and also nothing I knew it could be. I know I am not the same person I was for my best supporting role husband and these days it is easy to forget where we started or which way we are even going. But too often I lay my head down at night with a swelling heart of thankfulness to him for helping make me who I am today, too tired to climb back out and tell him, thank you for this place in our journey together...mother to this over-flowing house full of kids...good and bad days...messy and beautiful...exhausting and fulfilling all in the same breath.

I know we are trudging through the swampy little years with too many bills and not enough money and too many needs and not enough time and long days and short nights and a routine that feels a little boring for my spontaneous husband, yet so rewarding at the end of the day anyways. And in these muddy waters much goes unsaid...

... words like...

I love you. Thanks for taking out the garbage. Thanks for working your job that stresses your mind and wears out your body and never is quite done at the end of the work day. You are a great dad. No, make that a super awesome dad. Thanks for reading to our boys. I love when you pray with our family. You're looking good in those old blue jeans and white t-shirt by the way. I'm sure glad you are funny. We need that around here. Thanks for knowing when I need a minute to myself. Thanks for hugging our kids. Thanks for sitting through church with kids who barely listen, but need to see their dad worship and bow his head to pray and listen to His truth. Thanks for being a good friend. The kind that goes back to help a pal because its the right thing to do. Thanks for honoring your parents. I love watching you run super fast and impress our boys, even at 35. Thanks for taking care of us...all of us, financially...1 wife, 4 kids, 2 dogs, and 5 hens. Yup, we're a lot. I know we.are.a lot....and growing. Thanks for building tree forts and basketball courts and riding bikes and going to games and playing catch and cheering from the sides and playing peek-a-boo. Yes, you grown adult man...thank you for holding our babies. And sometimes just holding me too when it gets to be too much for me to stand alone. Thanks for fixing things around our home and washing the dishes. I know you are tired, but thanks for staying here...with us and this crazy life and being the Dad so I can be the Mom. I love being the mom to your kids. And I love that you love Jesus and have this crazy strong inner strength to do the right thing in so many places in your life. And thanks for forgiving me and moving forward when I mess up, even when I mess up real bad. You are my best friend and even though I feel like this wild life of ours right now doesn't allow much time for us to spend time together or chat together or laugh and cry together the way best friends do, I am so glad it's you who comes in and kisses me goodnight at the end of our days. You plan the best family vacations and pull off the best surprises for me and I know it's how you tell us "I love you". Thank you for being that for me. So many things each week as we flip the calendar and keep moving forward I find myself counting the blessing you are to me...the grace you pour my way. And I should tell you more...lots more...thank you. I love you and thanks for making me a mama. It fills my heart in ways I can not explain.

Happy Mother's Day to me, only thanks to you...and Him. The one we keep thanking together for this crazy life of kids and parenting and fatherhood and motherhood. I wouldn't be here without either of you in the way I am today and this Mother's Day I am celebrating being here by the grace of God and the grace shown from the love of a man I get to call husband...who has made me a mama. Thank you.

When winter is long and you just need spring

I don't think I am the only one who has said out loud a time or two..."it's just been a long winter". I found myself saying this over and over and hearing this just the same from so many. And after our last snow fall, that came in March, when spring was supposed to be here...I started to wonder about that final covering of snow all over the earth and wondered if maybe, just maybe, it was exactly what we needed?

For the days were long with little ones cooped up inside and it seemed that we were all maybe a little tired of being crammed together all day in our little cozy home and that what could we all possibly do with yet another....long...wintery...cold...day.  Doesn't the winter in our lives, the seasons of the heart, the ones where it is snowing all around us and we can't walk outside much to breathe fresh air, seem a bit too long too? Some winter seasons I have wondered myself if God would help me step into spring sooner then later. Please take away the blowing winds and the freezing temps and the hills of snow piling up on my heart. But looking back...a good hard winter is just what I need some days. Some seasons. As cold as it is and as long as the days seem and as short as the days feel with no sunlight...those winter days are just as fruitful as the ones that follow in the spring.

Winter seasons for the heart bring days of being covered by the thick, cold, wet stuff that makes us freeze where we are and requires stillness in a hard place, a place where others can't come themselves as the drifts are too big for anyone else to see over, much less step through and this wintery place seems long and cold and dark and lonely. And we wonder to ourselves...will it ever be spring again? 

While the winter seems long, it is only one season amongst many really, and perhaps we should just trust that He has us right where we need to be. That the hard winter days must come before we recognize what spring is really all about. And to deliver a spring with no melting of the snow and no gradual step down into warmer days would only make one forget those cold winter days...the ones He walked us through and the ones that are leaving a cold, but humble and knowing and grateful imprint on our heart. We need winter days. We wouldn't need spring the way we do without them.

I walked outside last week to see winter slowly moving away from us...

 The signs of a long, cold, hard freezing winter were still around and the way it slowly is melting away tells me that the earth needed that final covering of frozen water to fill itself after a long drought. And that maybe, just maybe, once again we needed a few more weeks of winter. To hydrate us. To prepare our roots for what is to grow and what is to come...

 And the winter was just long enough that in the same day I can breathe in new fresh spring air, but still feel the winter frozeness crunch under my feet and I know that the two seasons are meant to go hand in hand...a slow move to the next so that we do not forget what spring is all about and just where we are coming from after a long cold winter.

 As we see the signs of winter melt away at it's own pace and in the same day see the dirty marked cold stuff turn into clear, flowing, streams of living water for the earth, we can trust that the long winters He places us in are just as needed and glorifying as the beautiful showers of spring that always follow...and they do follow.

For there is no real spring without the foundation of a good winter to prepare the earth, as He does with our hearts, and to remember that He is just as much in the winter places of our life as He is in the days of sunshine and tulips and new life. And our winters really aren't any longer then our springs... they just often times take the biggest pieces of our hearts with them. But only to melt away and grow into something beautiful...something planted long before the first snow ever even fell. I think spring is here to stay, but only as it slowly lets go of winters hand. And our roots will be thankful for that slow hand off...as will the following harvest.

Back-seat or back-yard?

As a mom, if you haven't found yourself filling the driver's seat of your van regularly as you transfer one kid or another to this or that...then count this gift as you thoroughly enjoy those days of choosing how your little one's spend their days, uninterrupted naps, eating snacks and meals at the table with you, and laying them down at night knowing you spent the best of their hours with them. That transition of having my children home every day with me and then moving towards a school schedule and slowly adding activities has been one that I have had to really walk gently into as I learn to let go, but not let our culture of "busyness" steal too much of my boy's childhood. Each year I really have to consider what we are going to participate in, how it will affect that person and ultimately the family, and what is a long term investment worth making now. It would be easy to get swept up in a sport for every season, an art class for every category, a music lesson for every instrument, a foreign language session from every country, a church activity from multiple resources, and anything that falls in between. All of these activities are wonderful, don't get me wrong. Simply great areas to plug a child into at one time or another if that is their given interest, talent, or strength. But too much of good things, can be a bad thing.

I have found myself driving down the road and as I look in the rear-view mirror I see three boys interacting. Sometimes they are laughing, sometimes they are arguing, sometimes they are eating, sometimes they are begging to stay home. And sometimes I wonder if all this running to and from is really worth it? We have stumbled upon some things that just are and have been worth it. And we have learned some things just are not. To live simply, which is one thing I want for this growing family...we say no a little more then we say yes. But our yes's are big and we make them count. Because as I look at my boy's from the driver's seat I hope they will come to learn that we each were made uniquely and we will spend some time devoted to encouraging that in each of us...but the relationship they are building right now, as young siblings, is not one I want solely created from the back-seat together. But more the back-yard kind of relationship I hope will carry them well into their old adult lives.

That back-yard relationship I hope my boys build on is one that is unstructured...loose and natural. It happens not in the back-seat of our van but out back in the yard and running through the house and down at the park and hiking through the woods and riding bikes around the block until sunset and sitting across from each other around the dinner table. Riding side by side in the back-seat will be a part of their days, but it won't over-take them. And this is a tough culture to make that happen. Some seasons I will just be in the driver's seat position as the siblings tag along... but most of my years as I play Mama to this crew I hope to make drivable from my own back porch and in my kitchen and on my living room floor just an arms lengths away from the sibling crew that I truly hope will grow up together and stay together, rather then grow away from each other.Back-seat brothers or back-yard brothers? I hope they too find the most enjoyable childhood side by side running through the grass and not side by side the back of our van.

together we are enough

Last week I sat in a room full of mama's who had each woke that day with the very best intentions to love their children and their husband with every breath they take. As I sat, I see myself in so many faces and yet I barely know many of these women. We sit and we listen and we talk and many days we laugh or cry during this time too. We are all so different, yet one thing ties us together...the children we have committed to during their little years.  I have sat amongst this circle for almost 9 years through different seasons of having my own babies and this commitment, this desire to give these little years all our heart for the purpose of bringing up God's kingdom has never changed. It rings true for many of us. As these women have gathered rooms have changed, teachers have changed, children have changed, and faces in those chairs have changed...but the hearts all beat the same and for the same Lord and his calling for these little years.

As the years have gone by many themes seem to linger year after year. Many lessons I have learned through the hearts of these gals and I have found a safe place to feel the way I feel.  And as I have brought one and then two and then three and soon to be four little ones from my womb and into this circle of similar souls doing the same thing, I have watched as we each have walked a path of trying to be just who God made us in a world that screams at us to be everything. It is in that place of trying to be everything that so many of us come each week and sit in our chairs feeling a bit like we just haven't done enough to be who God made us to be. And in the last year I have personally stared that question in the face and asked myself...just what is enough?

It was no coincidence that after weeks of sick boys and missing this weekly gathering of similar mama's that I found my way back when the teacher for the day started off with the same question...only following with the assurance that after years in her own walk as a mama that surely, we are all enough...just the way we are.  A theme my own heart has entertained for some time now.

In this last year as I started to ask myself the questions of am I doing enough and how much can I do and what am I supposed to do and should I do this or should I be doing that? ...it is here where I started to let myself feel like not enough and turn to the One who says...I made you to be only who you are...to do what only you were made for and nothing more. As I started to believe this Truth that I don't have to be everything I started to feel free to be...just me. And thats all. So my list of what I should be or might be started to become a bit more balanced and it felt so good. And it was freeing. I started to believe I was enough...just the way I was.

In this place of needing to be enough I have found much peace in knowing that not everything must be done by me. I look around that room of women all bringing up their little ones and am thankful that some of them serve on the PTA and some of them head up church committees and some of them organize play-dates and some of them bake home-made goodies for their kid's classrooms and some of them plant beautiful gardens and some of them do fun art projects and some of them read 10 books a day to their kids and some of them home-school and some of them run marathons and some of them work part time and some of them memorize scripture and some of them sing in the worship band and some of them teach VBS classes and some of them play piano and some of them travel all the time with their kids  and some of them sew their kids costumes each year and so many other things too... and the beauty I have found in this last year as I keep walking along this path of motherhood is that I finally feel fine knowing I am not made to do everything. Because God made me to just do a hand full of things and do them well. Knowing He made all of us to do just a few things...not everything...gives me peace as I can sit next to these other gals knowing they were made for many of these things that I can not do while I focus on doing the things that God gave just me for this time.

So I look around this room full of mothers with little ones and smile inside knowing that together, we are enough for this world and for our Creator. I hope we can walk away to our own homes feeling His encouragement to just do what we were made for today. To not listen to each other and feel less because of what every other mother is doing, but to feel like enough as we sit together each year and know we are doing what has been put on our own hearts, our own lists...written by our Creator for each of us. And I promise everything will not be on all our lists. Find your own lists today, know it is okay to cross things off because God already made another heart to fill that role somewhere and it doesn't always have to be you. God made me for my children and to walk in these little years in a way that nobody else can. He has done the same for all of you. So let that be enough...today and everyday. As we gather, our intentions are all similar, but our assignments from Him all look very different. To be enough, we must give everything to Him and only take back what He hands to us... which in His eyes...is everything.

Come...sit with me

Another year is here. Another new beginning. I like new years. Some years I am sad to see it go, other years I can't wait to flip the calendar pages for a chance to start over, and other years I just roll right into the new one not much different from the day before. As I look back at 2012 the best word to describe my year is "stretch-marks". And not the kind left over from my post-pregnancy days. The kind that you can not see on me, but the ones you feel if you were to look into my heart. For 2012 was my year to stretch...far and wide...and it left many marks.

I spent much of my last year feeling the pull God was asking from me to teach me, mold me, make me more of His...and less of mine.  In many ways I feel like I slipped out of my old skin and into new, barely able to recognize some parts of who I had become along the way and oh so thankful for the chance to do better, to be better. I allowed myself the freedom to not be many things and in the process was freed to be just me in many ways I didn't know I was capable of.

So like many new years I look back and think forward for what is to come. I like to have places in my life that I am working on to better myself and often the month of January finds me scribbling some new goals down some where and making plans to plant those new goals into my every day life. Not your typical lose weight and eat better resolutions, but life growing goals that can affect me and the people around me. If you look back here, a year ago,  I had put in front of me a whole list of new goals. Those goals were good things and some of them I worked on and some of them I did nothing about except think about them. I made those goals in what I might call my Martha days. In my Martha days, I was much like Martha from the story of Mary and Martha in the Bible. I spent a lot of time preparing, planning, and trying to be ready. For what? Everything. My list of things to get done seemed pages thick and the Martha in me didn't take many breaks to be much like Mary.

In the last year, especially the last 6 months, I have grown more into a Mary. For when Jesus came calling, Mary stopped everything and sat at his feet, while Martha spent time preparing for His presence. Oh, how I have been Martha so many times. I've rose early with good intentions to be with Jesus and found I could get so much more done in my laundry room before the littles woke and skipped my good intentions of meeting with my Lord. I have let myself get lost in some tunes in the car while I drive instead of turning off the noise and talking to my Savior. The one who waits for me, always. I have put my Bible by my bed to read through before I close my eyes, only to have the TV call my name while I stared away more of His time. I have let my pages of "to-do's" get checked off as I told myself when it was done...then....later...when I had time...would I sit at Jesus feet. Sigh...the Martha in me has won so many times. But in the last year, the Mary in me as been so drawn to lead my days and start my ways. And if I could sit with Mary and Martha all those years ago, I am almost sure Mary would have felt more ready for her days then Martha did, even though she was the planned one.

So in this new year, 2013, I am not making a list of new goals. I have laid before me the only thing I want to stay with me for all the years to come. To be with Jesus.  Not just first thing in the morning or in my mom van by myself or as I lay my head down on my pillow. I want to open His word, as I have this last year, and drink in His living water. I want to be more like Mary and ignore the preparations around me enough to give Jesus my undivided attention. I want to let His word feed my soul and lead my life...in a way I never have before. For my eyes see clearer when I have let His truth write the ways of this world to me. This year, as I turn the pages of my calendar, I leave all the lists that should be done...and in time will be...but I am telling my heart one thing...Be with Him. Sit at His feet. Drink in His living water. Let truth shine light on my ways of this new year. And so here I go... into a new year with no plans other then to find Him along the way each day and make Him wait no more while I work away. For I have been weary and it is not only time to sit, but it is time to let Him show me just what is so important to get done each day. I will sit at His feet... I will open my eyes... I will be willing when He says He is ready for me. This year and every year, I hope. Won't you join me?

my gift of grace

I am not sure where to start this story, as I'm not sure where the beginning is. But somewhere between green leaves budding out of the trees and those very same leaves falling to the ground, my heart was forever changing.  To feel the seasons of life leave its imprint on my heart has been one of my greatest gifts. The sense that what has been and what is to come all has been linked through the simple truth of the Lord's steadfast presence along the way, no matter how near or far I have been. As I turn around and look back, I see what He has done...what He might be doing and what He can do.

To carry life again this time around feels like a huge blanket of grace has been laid over me.  I slowly stepped out of a season of life leaving me very frail, broken, and tired. I wasn't sure who I had become through the process, but knew I was walking away from that season into a newer season...a different gal, a better version of myself with a heart open to anything He set before me. Willing hands ready to serve and feet ready to walk anywhere, filled with his grace as I found His joy through the things often unseen by the naked eye.  

I can't really explain what I spent much of my time doing in the midst of leaves growing and falling, but along that time frame, I knew I was preparing for something. My home, my body, my heart.  I could feel Him calling me to be still and know He was God as I found peace in that stillness.  I was cautiously going forward, a bit fearful of what may lay ahead and yet thankful to be walking again at all. 

As I prepared and followed, I knew that there was something more to come... and then it happened. After years of off and on infertility and lost babies and while I was breastfeeding, the smallest miracle happened... God breathed life into me. Not just the form of life through a baby...but the kind that speaks to my heart each day telling me I was made for more and that I was worthy and that He was not done with me yet.  While I spent time close to Him he prepared not only my home, my heart, and my body...but He prepared my ways for me so that all I could do was simply follow with no looking back. To be honest, at one moment in all my blind preparing I thought He was getting me ready to make some changes within our home. I thought he was leading me to homeschooling full time and was mentally letting my head be encouraged by me heart's nudges that something bigger was coming. 

The day I learned I was carrying new life was a day of a little bit of shock, but mostly a day of humble, humble knowing. This was it. This is what was next, even when I thought I was barely doing God any glory with the first blessings He had given me.  Where I had been did not define who I could become. And this new little life forming fearfully and wonderfully in my womb was proof that God gives and God takes away and even in both places, He shows us His grace through his gifts. His gifts. They are always here...if you can't see them...you are not looking close enough.

I am beyond humbled and grateful to be carrying this little life. When I learned I was carrying a daughter, I was all alone. And in my time by myself I carried this secret and found God again. Steadfast, always. I decided to keep this secret until Christmas morning and surprise my husband and boys. I spent a few weeks with my secret knowing this time with just me and baby girl was not timeless. But I dreamed about her and talked to God about her and thanked her for already making me more of who God wants me to be. For she has come into my life when I have learned that my purpose is only as valuable as I let God make it.  It is always valuable in His eyes...it is my own that I must not lose sight of. So I will wait for this little girl to arrive knowing I was made for such a time as this. And when she comes and I first hold her, I will know that He gives and takes away and no matter where I am that day or the days following...I was made for Him. And as a mother, I was made for her. And all of them who have grown in the same womb before her. Always and forever with a purpose just for Him. And always and forever receiving his grace. She is my grace gift...my first little girl.