Aug 14, 2013 | The Good Word, The Parenthood
She is sitting down, on a potty, right in front of me, when all the thoughts start swirling in my head again. Seven months, quickly closing in on eight, her eyes are bright, filled with wonder and interest, and I am simply lifting the tow hook of a little lego truck and letting it fall for her to see.
Gravity is not in her vocabulary, but wonder, oh how wonder is.
Gift. Gift I think — what I could have named her, and her brothers. Gifts. For the days that are long and hard, for the losses that grab a hold of your heart and squeeze so tight it’s hard to take each breath. They are gift, gift, and reward.
And the thoughts that swirl? How strange it is to see this as other than gift.
Sure, there are days. Laundry piles high. Dishes stack up. Tempers flare: He hitted me with that ball! Let go of your brother, you are not his Mommy or Daddy! How many times do I have to call your name before you will look at me? I strain my voice too often.
But stand still. Be still just a moment. Mimic the wonder you see in front of you — take it all in. Flesh of flesh, bone of bone, this child that sits here with half my DNA — absolutely desired before she arrived, though fear met me once or twice: This is quick. They will be less than two years apart. Two kids in diapers…
Still, and I see it: she cannot be seen as other-than gift.
And what of the other-thans?
They are the words of strangers: Boy, you’ve got your hands full! You know where they come from right? Aren’t you finished yet?
And the stories they tell: I could only put two through college. We just wanted one and we would be done. How can you handle more than two or three at the most? Kids are bad for the environment.
The world’s sending mixed messages, one grocery store checkout line at a time.
Post-potty bath time, she is splashing and full of wonder — water swirling with a few white suds from a little baby wash in the duck tub sitting on the island in our kitchen. She beams. Glee. HH hurries for his camera — and I tell the truth, he calls her name and she looks and poses as if she understands, with a huge grin, mouth open nearly as wide as it will go, eyes, too. She pauses the splashing to pose and lets us capture the moment.
I beam with Mama-pride at this simple moment. Thankfulness has been swelling my heart these days — I am taking it seriously. A thankful heart prepares the way for the Lord. I am taking seriously the business of being still, giving thanks.
I have wept with friends, struggling to become pregnant. Wept with friends who have experienced loss. And with research, intervention and no small amounts of effort together as a society we endeavor to put children in the arms of the childless. Through the marvels of modern medicine and the awe-inspiring beauty of adoption.
None is sad. One is great. But too many? A burden — and some might even say downright wrong — bringing too many children into the world.
A gentleman sitting next to me on a plane once genuinely questioned the sanity of a married couple who does not want to use birth control if they already have more than a couple of children. What is the difference between birth control and clipping your fingernails? he mused.
I disengaged from the conversation as quickly as possible.
You’ve got your hands full. Maybe so.
But these moments of God-wonder have not slowed. For the four-year-old who understands so much, thinks deeply, cares and cares. With the two-year-old’s milky white smile, peeking from perfect, parted pink lips, eyelashes to rival any mascara commercial — and eyes to charm any man or woman in town.
And this little one, who sat in front of me, warmest smile, toothless, yet so full — wild after-nap wispy waves encircling her head. Able to take my mind off the greatest problems, able to unfurl every knot that threatens to tighten me up to that struggling-to-breathe-state that occasionally finds me.
Who is right? What is true?
A friend and I talked about it the other day, the comments from the older ladies in the grocery store. How it is nice to hear “treasure this time” and “it goes by fast” — these reminders to slow down and take off your shoes. It is hard to hear “how many do you actually want” and “Boy, you’ve got your hands full” — which with certain tones and inflections sometimes sounds more like “Have you heard of birth control, you idiot?”
He has held her, for me to type now, and brings her in pink polka-dot pajamas, perfect hand-me-downs from her older cousin. With privilege I kiss her cheek before he takes her to bed.
God’s hand has provided riches beyond measure. I see it. I could take off my shoes if I were wearing any.
The Bible puts it this way:
Behold, children are a gift of the Lord;
The fruit of the womb is a reward. {Psalm 127:3}
With the busyness that has me doing the things I must and sometimes keeping me from things I love to do, these three little gifts are constant reminders: He is so, so good. And my answer these days to the world of other-thans, to the “Boy, you’ve got your hands full {—you dummy—}” folks?
“My heart is even more full.”
xCC
Aug 12, 2013 | Baby Photos, Quiver Tree Photography, The Parenthood
One wildly surprising thing about the journey of grief is the raw emotions you find yourself experiencing that show up out of nowhere. Don’t worry, this is actually a very happy post — I’m just starting with a sidenote/forenote of sorts. A few days ago, I had Arabella strapped in on her changing table and I was on my knees on the floor getting something from one of the lower shelves, or sorting laundry, I don’t remember. She flipped over to her belly {she was strapped in and I was right beside the table, so don’t get worried} and her teency little baby bum was in the air, and she had a gorgeous smile on her face. The thought occurred to me, though it had many times before that moment, that it will still be several months before we have the joy of introducing this little person to our family on the far side of the pond. The thought put me into tears on the nursery floor, and I was surprised by how “close to the surface” they were.
With heaps of excitement and anticipation, we are looking forward to visiting SA in March of next year for a big, important birthday. In the midst of the to-do lists involving moving, laundry, estate-settling and getting food on the table, I’m going to make extra efforts to share photos and stories in the meantime. {We miss you heaps, Goo-Goo & Gammy & Auntie Lyn!}
—
We are a little bit behind on baby photos. The good news is, we have been taking them each month. The downloading, editing, and posting of them is a bit of a different story. We left off at about three months…and we’re at eight now… so I’ve decided just to pull out a few highlights from each month and then hopefully I can get a full post for eight months up… before the Belle is nine months.
Since there’s already been plenty of ado, I’ll spare you further and jump in.
It all started with this tiny gift of a creature arriving in perfect timing…
And then her first month flew by…
Did you know every time a baby sneezes an angel gets its wings? 😉
At two months, she seemed rather unimpressed with the whole photo-taking idea. Or maybe she found it a bit… overwhelming?
At three months, she decided she loved it!
Just before four months, I lost my Dad, and discovered this little girl was a gift I never knew I needed. We took these pictures the day before his funeral, counting gifts in this life, even in the midst of loss.
At five months, it seemed the Belle decided she was not only cool with this whole monthly photo thing, she was ready to ROCK it.
At six months, we decided it was high time we got outside (HH’s favorite place to shoot!) and added some color to the mix.
I also decided an outfit change was in order. {Thanks Kathryn!!}
Getting outside = great decision!
Finally, at seven months, the Belle seemed as comfortable around the camera as she is around Cheerios : very comfortable.
This thoughtful little face gives me a heartache…
And since the boys arrived as the session was wrapping up, we decided to do something special…
And grab a new image of the whole gang! I’m so proud of these kiddos… so grateful they are in my life… and so serious when I say that as crazy as things might get when you have three sweet peas and the oldest is four, they give me daily reasons to say Thank You, Jesus. And I trust they always will.
So for one and all, near and far… but especially for the folks we miss so much way down South… that’s Zero to Seven Months in 27 photos.
With hopes I’ll grab a chance to write again soon,
With Love,
xCC
Jul 9, 2013 | In the Name of Love, The Good Word
It all started with two completely different incidents that told me the same thing. First, there was a book a friend thought I should borrow. Someone else had recommended it back when my Dad was in the hospital. It was about a doctor who had a near-death experience and spent an extended period in a coma. When, against all odds, he regained consciousness, he had a story to tell about the experience “on the other side.” Since two people had recommended it, I figured it was worth giving it a read.
A few chapters into the book, something just started to seem off to me — and with a nod at giving as much respect as possible to the experience this guy says he had, something in my gut was just going Uh-un. {Let’s also acknowledge another fact that I had to come to terms with — this guy was in a coma for seven days and had a miraculous recovery, and my Dad was in a coma for seven days, with a very different ending.} By the time I was almost midway through the book, I sensed this whisper — that quiet voice where you’re not sure why, you just know it in your knower. And the whisper said, “Stop reading this. It’s not good for you.”
Being the very sensitive and thoughtful gal that I am, I promptly reasoned out why I needed to continue reading the book in my own mind. My counterarguments included the fact that I would have to tell the truth if my friend asked what I thought: “Um, thanks but, I kinda dropped that book like a bad habit” and another thought, which I rarely live up to, “it’s good to finish things, you’ve started, right?”
But a chapter or two later the whisper was unmistakable — and I finally closed the book and only opened it again to remove the business card I’d turned into a bookmark.
Over the next few days, I pondered the reason why I needed to close the book, and it became clear that the guy was describing an experience of the afterlife that doesn’t line up with Biblical Theology. In contrast, if you read Heaven is For Real, for example, the things that Colton Burpo describes about his near death experience agree with descriptions of heaven in the Bible. The encouragement about the beauty and greatness, and goodness of Jesus in that book strengthened my faith and encouraged me to dig deeper, celebrate more, remember again how great and powerful, and how kind and loving God is.
This book, instead, left this icky feeling in my gut, as if I was trying to build a brick house with sand instead of bricks — trying to pull together something that was never going to build anything, never give me a firm place to stand. And it just made me feel bummed I lost my Dad, really.
But a redemptive purpose was at hand — the bigger lesson behind the experience. The real sermon in the nutshell was:
The Holy Spirit is speaking. I might hear, but I am not listening or obeying.
A few days later, a completely different encounter seemed to whisper the same message. I am still juggling many tasks surrounding the settling of my Dad’s estate, and picking up an estate-related check at a lawyer’s office about twenty minutes away was on the list. I decided on a whim, about forty minutes before lunchtime, to throw the kiddies in the car and quickly run this errand before lunch. And — maybe I should mention — I didn’t know exactly where the lawyer’s office was.
Sometimes stupidity looks a lot like bravery.
I loaded the small people into the van with no small amount of effort, and was eventually ready to go, after running back inside to grab something and something else at least twice. Neither of those something elses were a diaper bag, by the way. I didn’t even remember that.
Finally pulling out of park and into reverse, I glanced over my shoulder to see a big red truck in the driveway. I put the swagger wagon back in park and hopped out to find out Who and What. A roofing estimate was ready and the gentleman who’d done the estimate dropped it off personally to explain a few things. I thanked him for the estimate, and after a brief chat hopped back in the car to get going.
And there was that whisper again.
This is not a good idea. Put the car back in park and take the kids back inside. Don’t.
But brave (stupid) me, being the sensitive and thoughtful gal that I am, promptly reasoned This needs to get done. And, it’ll be really quick. And, I’ll feel like thebombdotcom if I manage to cross another chore off the list with three kids in tow. And, I’ll call the hubs and he can help me navigate my way there since… look at that… Google Maps doesn’t actually know how to get me there.
An hour later, I was back where I started. In the driveway at our house. With a crying baby, two whining and hungry kids, and no check. I never found the lawyer’s office. Google Maps and Bing completely failed me. An extended detour wasted a good twenty plus minutes of my time. It. was. a. stupid. waste. of. time.
And there the message was again, a solid sermon in a nutshell:
The Holy Spirit is speaking. I might hear, but I am not listening, or obeying.
We took a trip up to the mountains a few weekends ago celebrate our anniversary. In six years of marriage, we’ve lived in three countries, had three kids, and called about six different places home. There is good cause for celebration.
I decided to “unplug” for the weekend. My laptop stayed at home, my phone was only used for the purpose of calling or texting, and I kept that to a minimum. And I learned a few things in the process.
First, if you can figure out where your heart is by observing where your mind is, my mind wonders where my phone is, and not where my heart is, no less than twenty times a day. If HH walks out of the room — even just to the loo — I immediately grab my phone to glance at how my game of Words with Friends is going, the time, maybe my email, or … you guessed it… Facebook.
And I mean what I say — if my mind immediately thinks PHONE before I sit down to nurse a baby, before I change from one room to another, anytime someone exits the room, or when I’m about to go to the bathroom — my phone is where I am devoting a heap of my time and attention.
Here’s some scary sauce for you. It’s the definition of worship:
The reverent love and devotion accorded a deity, an idol, or a sacred object.
My pattern is clearly one where I show more love and devotion to this sacred object that I constantly keep in close proximity, rather than the Deity — the Lord, my God, my Savior, the One I want to call my All in All.
If step one is diagnosing the problem, step two is finding the solution.
I started by apologizing to God. Lord, You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’ve repeatedly sold you out for an extra half hour of youtube before bed.
And then I apologized to my Words with Friends buddies, acknowledging that if I don’t have time for my Lord, my Bible, or prayer, then I don’t have time for Words With Friends. Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That, replied my understanding friend, Mona.
I proceeded to begin deleting apps my from my phone. And I began to feel a great weight lifting. The self-inflicted pressure of keeping up with social media fluttered away. No, Pages Manager App, I don’t care that we got new likes. Sorry, Facebook, you are no longer allowed to notify me every time anything happens. To anybody anywhere ever.
But more important than the removal of the things that are not beneficial is bringing in the things that are. This means renewing my commitment to choose a reasonable bedtime over an episode of whatever show it is at the moment we’re barreling through a season of on Amazon Prime. What a novel idea — to get up early and be with the Lord, rather than to stay up late just to be entertained!
My Dad would’ve turned 65 today. And dealing with losing him is a constant reminder that we don’t know how much time we have — and time is the one thing we can’t buy more of — so it’s in our best interest to give ourselves a good long look in the mirror to ask — what am I doing with the time I’ve been given?
Just as the bucket empties just the same whether you knock it over or it has a slow leak, I am praying for help as I slowly take baby steps toward re-focusing, re-centering, and re-committing to live a circumspect life with Jesus at the center. He will fill up the cup to overflowing again, He will show me what to do with the time that I have. Thank heavens for a God who comes near to the contrite (Psalm 34:18) — I regret allowing urgency to determine my daily course of action, and allowing entertainment to pretty much fill all the space between one urgent task and the next one.
More thoughts on this Re-centering are on the way, but in the meantime, I’d love a slice of your story. Do you feel like you’re making the most of the time that you have, or do you feel caught in a cycle of distraction?
xCC
P.S. Thanks so much for your prayers when I shared a message about my Dad on Father’s Day. If you’d like to hear it, you can download it here. I kept it together – and I know prayer had everything to do with that. Thank you.
Jun 10, 2013 | In the Name of Love
For the first time last night, I had a dream with my Dad in it, and I understood, in the dream, that he was no longer alive. But then the strangest thing happened. Somehow, in the hodgepodge blur I remember, he wasn’t alive, but I could still see him, as if he was, and we were dancing.
And strangely enough, we weren’t dancing, like I might remember as a little girl, with my feet on his, or like I might remember from my wedding day, when my fluffy dress made me feel like I was floating on a cloud, and I paused a few times in our dance to get my steps together again, with a little side to side arm action and a twist thrown in, with hopes that it didn’t look like I was a mess.
It wasn’t a classy snapshot memory at all. Instead, we were on a tennis court, but I think indoors, and I think at a party, and he was at least ten or fifteen feet away from me, and we were doing the electric slide. But that line down the middle of the tennis court was between us, and neither of us could cross it. But it was still somehow good, us both dancing.
I have absolutely no memory of my Dad doing the electric slide, ever. But I have to admit, in my dream last night, he was throwing some sweet shapes on the dance floor. And he looked younger and he had more hair, and, it’s honestly hard to believe, he did not have an ECU baseball cap on.
I suppose it’s safe to say this little snippet of my life, this snippet of a dream where I felt confused but I think happy at the same time, is a bit like grief itself.
Strange, and messy.
I’ve cried more tears than I thought I was capable of crying. I’ve laughed harder, fuller and deeper than I thought I would for a while. And somewhere in between trying to figure out the work of settling an estate and supporting my talented hubs (you need family pictures soon, right?) and loving and nurturing and raising three kiddiddles, I am walking the road of this really messy thing called grief.
‘Messy’ is as best a term as I can muster – for when you will erupt in tears at a simple question for no particular reason, when you will avoid things you know need to get done {ahem, thank you notes} because you just know they’re going to be less cathartic than you hope, and really just downright hard. For when you find yourself simultaneously wanting to cheer and to cry when you realize your two-year-old still sometimes pretends to call G-pa on his “cell-phone” {calculator} or he cheers when he sees G-pa’s picture on your Facebook profile.
Grief is just plain messy.
At this stage in it, I’m running more errands than I want to and writing a lot less than I want to. (And probably need to.) But I’m focusing on staying focused, {ironic, hey?} and trying to make sure the tasks on the estate-settling list get crossed off, and I still get wholesome meals on the table. But sometimes it’s Dominos.
The busy is probably good, even though it’s hard. And the memories I’m making with my kids, cherishing them and creating opportunities for love and laughs and learning, this is where the best stuff, the most-healing stuff is happening.
God whispers gently: there is so much good still to come. He is also whispering hope and life and faith, through the voices of Sunday sermons, blog posts, His amazing Word and strong and solid teachings, like this gem by A.W. Tozer
.
The most beautiful reminder of all, in my Dad’s absence, is the constant reminder of the Lord’s presence. I’m aiming to fix the gaze of my soul on God. {Thanks, Tozer.}
Perhaps it’s a valley I’m walking through, that somehow still has some beautiful hills to climb — it’s messy to describe, but it is a place where I know there is a God who makes every path smooth by His grace.
Next Sunday I’ll be sharing about my Dad’s faith journey at the church he called home for a good while. Appropriately, it’s Father’s Day. My heart is certain there are some stories to tell, my hope is that the Lord will give me the grace to tell those stories — and communicate the greater truth behind them — well. {I’d appreciate your prayers, and if you’re local, you are welcome.}
Right now the truth I’m aiming to cling to that I offer to you as well is this: He loves us. Oh, how He loves us.
That night, in the hospital, when the end was beginning and everything was a messy blur, this was the Word, when I opened the Bible on my phone:
He was there for me, an abiding Presence, through the toughest week of my life.
Friends, He loves us. Amen.
xCC
May 22, 2013 | In the Name of Love, South Africa, The Good Word
I haven’t written lately. I suppose sometimes it’s good to start by stating the obvious.
I haven’t written lately because the thoughts seem to be swirling around in my mind, most times too quickly for me to catch them and pin them down.
I haven’t written lately because there are diapers to change and booboos to kiss and juice cups to fill, and there’s a part of me that wants to make sure I’m doing this living thing right, even after coming to grips with the dying.
I haven’t written lately because for a while I tried piling so many things on my plate we almost ran out of toilet paper.
And when that momentary clarity that death brings passes, sometimes things seem to look hazy for a while. You’re forging a new path and the way forward isn’t clear — you want to make sure some things change, you want to make sure some things stay the same — and you want to try to handle the things that are going to change whether you want them to or not, well.
I now have a gorgeous six-month-old baby girl. She was only four months old at the big goodbye. She is a daily reminder that life does go on, will go on.
And I have a four year old who is about to finish his second year of pre-school, today. And it feels like yesterday and a million years ago, the day he started the three-year-old class, fresh out the gates from South Africa, when we flew in over the weekend and he jumped in, a week late, on the Monday.
His little brother is now wearing those shorts.
The thought comes in spells, I’m sad to say fewer, but still, where I remember faces, like The Girl in the Pink Coat.
And I think about the privilege I have of raising kids and knowing we have food to eat every day and a safe place to live and a comfortable bed for every person. And reconciling these gifts with what I’ve seen — those faces, those feet — I find it hard to keep going in comfortable North Carolina sometimes. What do you say to the kid you sponsor through Compassion?
Your life is hard. My troubles pale in comparison. You are full of joy. I want to pour my life out for Jesus and the fear of comfortable almost keeps me up at night.
I cling to a few simple truths, in the midst of the haze, and perhaps they’ll be useful for you. First, a friend of mine reminded me the other day that you don’t always know what you’re doing, what it means to the people around you. Keep doing good because it’s good. Especially when your right hand doesn’t know what your left hand is doing — your Father does. I find that encouragement enough to keep loving, to keep giving, and to wholeheartedly keep seeking the kingdom first.
God is still on the throne. My parents have always felt like the two pillars that the platform of my life balanced on. Losing one has made me wobble. But we can always only ever find a firm foundation in Jesus. Keep seeking the kingdom first.
When you aren’t sure what to do, when bare feet in SA are on your heart, but dirty floors in NC are in your face, do your best to do the thing in front of you with love. And keep seeking the kingdom first, to help you know what that thing is.
If I can love the one in front of me, as Mother Theresa put it, maybe he or she will be the one to get on a plane and go back to some of the places where I’ve left pieces of my heart, and to love the people there. Or he or she will love someone who’ll love someone who’ll love someone who will. And Lord willing, we will love there again, too, and love here, in the meantime.
Catch my drift?
With Love,
xCC
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