Category: Mom Musings

All the greatest holidays have a prequel.
Mine was written in the sky last night. A cloudless expanse as black as midnight, like the puppy Brian and I walked next to, and stars more numerous than the birthday candles I’m qualified to blow out this year. There I was, a speck of sand in the sea of humanity and God gave me a personal lightshow, evidence of common grace and personal love.

My birthday list always looks the same. I write the number 1 in large print and circle it for emphasis. Next come the words, “Trip to Lake Michigan to watch the sunset.” It’s a rich family tradition, walking in the sand, waves lapping at our toes methodically, the sun kissing the past goodbye but teasing a fresh hello if we wait for it and lean in the direction it promises to rise.

I turned 50 today.
And started fresh with new adventures, mercies to set a trajectory for the next decade, inviting me into its mystery. Instead of trekking out to the beach, I went to a wedding.
Actually, I hosted a wedding, a sweet, simple ceremony, right here in our living room. My guy solemnized the event with a translator standing beside him. There were vows, a blessing, and signatures sealing the deal in the eyes of the State. Then there was kissing, so much kissing. But not between the bride and the groom. Instead, the small group of witnesses swapped cheeks, three pecks a person according to Middle East custom.
In God’s sovereignty, our lives intersected with these Kurdish friends last year when they relocated here from Syria. On my 49^th birthday, our friendship was merely a sprouting seedling but over time and shared experiences, it’s blossomed because we’ve embraced the beauty in our similarities and differences. We have eaten Kurdish food and taken dancing lessons. They’ve shared our holiday celebrations, gone fruit picking and learned to play Uno from us.

Tonight, we donned our party wear for the wedding reception and danced the night away. Literally. A menagerie of people from all over God’s great big world, immigrants needing a fresh start who found it here and lily skinned Americans who welcomed them to our community and into our hearts. I couldn’t understand a word of the music blaring over the speakers, but I grabbed the pinky of the person on either side of me and let my feet do the talking, stopping only for an occasional rest and one more bite of baklava.

For me, birthdays are fodder for reflection. My thoughts amble to deep introspective places. This year, there’s less musing about the past and more wondering at the next chapter.

I tend to dream big. Why not? I don’t always get what I’m hoping for and I expect that on the front end, but if I suffocate desire, there’s little hope I’ll ever celebrate the dreams that might actually come true.

So in my story, the next decade includes exploring cathedrals in Europe with my big girl.
Helping another one build a tiny house for she and her puppy.
Sipping Frappuccinos all day long on some exotic beach with my princess who is a water magnet.
Admiring God’s creative design for animals in the African safari with my biggest little.

My hopes are more closely tethered to reality. Our girls are growing up and mothering is morphing into something different creating new spaces in my life to direct my passions and service. I’d like to retool, to increase my knowledge and marry it to my giftings and experience in order to contribute to the Kingdom and society in meaningful, productive and profitable ways.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be loving on grandchildren before my fifties meld into sixties.

While dreams and goals may escape me as illusively as dandelion seeds, sprouting new hopes and dreams in unexpected places, reality is guaranteed.
And reality has it’s own gifts.
They aren’t all pretty packages—like achy joints and a thickening midline.
And honestly, a few of the gifts I wanted most, like relational reconstruction in broken places, I didn’t get.
But this is the story I am living in real and it’s a great story regardless.
It’s Kurdish dancing and a new puppy and my first iPhone.
And a Michigan address with a big bountiful garden.
It’s transitioning my second sweetheart into college and new friends funneling through my front door and at my dinner table.
And homeschooling my two littles.
It’s partnering with my husband as he runs this crazy professional race he’s running in order to secure place for his family.
And coming alongside our oldest as she launches into home and career.
It’s sponsoring refugees and shaping their formative experiences in my community.
And mentoring high school girls.
It’s investing my time, talent and treasure within my faith community.
And growing older with the friends, near and far, I love best.

Who would have guessed all the adventures God has in every season? Fresh, new mercies, each day, month and year. Decade after decade He continues to lengthen the story of his faithfulness written in my life, one chapter at a time. And, if today is a barometer for the future, I still have a lot to look forward to.

Epilogue:
Great stories often have an encore and my celebration didn’t end when the carriage became a pumpkin. I dragged my achy joints out of bed and into church the next morning, headache pulsing and tears swelling in my ducts.
Maybe an adrenalin crash. Maybe mixed emotions demanding expression.
I feasted on steak grilled to perfection eating with our “You Are Loved” birthday plate and a hand crafted “Happy Birthday” place card for lunch. All of my loves plus a bonus gathered around the table gifting me with words—affirming that my life touches theirs with sweetness and making space for a few of those tears, not to be explained, only experienced. Then, the buds who know almost all of my secrets, surprised me with dessert.
Hours around the kitchen table.
Easy conversation.
Bathing me in love.
What can I say but….Grateful.

They arrived in flip flops, about a hundred friends and our petite but precious extended family.
Summer flirted and we liked it.
It all felt so familiar, like the smell of home. Here we were again at the place where we’ve made the dearest memories over the past decade of summers.
Big sister graduated here too. Three years ago but it seemed like yesterday. And it felt like déjà vu except it was real. And beautiful.

The colored paper lanterns hanging from the tall pine trees swayed gently contributing to the festive vibe.
The sidewalk was grafittied with celebratory greetings in chalk.
Down the hall, images of Lily’s story hung with clothespins on twine.
People sat together munching on finger foods talking and laughing, the music of friendship.

Then we invited them to join us in recounting the faithfulness of God in Lily’s life.
And with the exchange of a well earned diploma and these words, one chapter of her story ended and another began.

Lily, like other young adults on the cusp of forever, you wonder what it looks like to embrace God’s calling on your life.
You’ve glimpsed yourself in the mirror and seen a young woman shaped by mission, deeply influenced by the story of Lillian Trasher, your heroine of the faith, who served God in Egypt for over 50 years as an angel of mercy to orphans, widows and the blind.
You’ve assessed your competencies in math and science and your fascination with cells and the human body.
You’ve reflected on your relational style, an excellent match for kinesthetic caregiving.
And you’ve decided that the next step in your journey is to pursue nursing.

Dan Allender answers the question “What is my calling?” with these words,
“It is to make known something about God that is bound to my unique face, name and story.”

So tonight, your dad and I gift you with a first aid kit and bless you on your own unique journey of mercy. These tools of the trade represent more than their tangible application for acute care, they symbolize instruments to tend the deeper needs of hurting people.
And, truth is, we’re all hurting people.

Let’s consider a few items in the kit together:

The Kit comes with an Instruction book.
Know the book well enough that you don’t have to stop and search it every time something comes up. But never think of yourself as beyond instruction. Read the Bible often. And also learn to read the story that God is writing in your life; for that is instructive too.

Hand cleanser and gloves. These are for your own protection. But they assume that you are getting involved in the messiness of wounds. Caring involves wise risk taking.

Antiseptic ointment cleans wounds and kills germs to prevent infection. Applying salve requires a delicate balance of resolve and gentleness. Your patient may recoil or cry, “Ouch, that hurts!” And you will need to remember that stinging often precedes healing.

Care givers need Bandages of all shapes and sizes. As physical wounds are distinct and diverse, so are spiritual and emotional ones. Some are big; some are small. Some are in awkward places – private and deeply personal. Others need butterfly closures to minimize scarring. You’ll need God’s word, the Holy Spirit’s discernment, and a commitment to prayer to help you bandage those wounds, providing protection that promotes healing.

There is an appropriate role for pain relievers and we hope that you help relieve others’ pains. While pain meds may mask symptons, they are not cures. For the soul, “we want a cure, not a medication.” To hear the soul, we can’t just “numb the pain.” We need each other’s hurt and pain. “It’s not love any other way.”

Tissues. These are not in the kit, but you remember Louie’s illustration from Matthew 7:4 where Jesus talks about the log and the speck, and Louie illustrates with the chainsaw, sword and the tissue. Stock up on tissues, preferably the kind with lotion. To gift another with a most tender act of compassion is to not just to wipe away their tears that result from physical pain, but to share tissues and tears, for you to practice empathy by giving them a safe place to hurt, to expose the soul wounds that are oozing, to sit quietly with them in it and suffer too. And perhaps harder yet, is to learn to give yourself that same tenderness when your own contusions are seeping.

Over the course of a life, you just keep washing your hands and dirtying them up again with the next person God places on your path to serve. And therein, you become an extension of the hands of Christ to a wounded world full of broken, busted up people.

It’s not glam and ultimately you won’t be able to fix them or yourself. You’ll have to reconcile with that reality and content yourself with urgent care this side of heaven.

It’s not a winner’s story– this life in a fallen world.
When you love well and serve humbly, you’ll be broken too.
It will hurt.
And you will groan.
You will grapple with the mystery of this melancholy story you are living in.
You’ll wonder about the character of a God whose sovereignty allows so much chaos on a massive scale. You’ll get tired of looking at suffering and death, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Satan will tempt you to despise your story and look for a prettier one, a cleaner one, a more Facebook worthy one. When he does, remember these words expressed as only Ann Voskamp can do.

“There’s a reason I am not writing the story of my life and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don’t. So, I will let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy’s fire. I will leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. I will bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love. And, I will whisper a surprise thanks. This the fuel for joy’s flame.”

And there it is, the greatest tool you will ever add to your first aid kit.
It is gratitude.
It’s waking up every morning, no matter what your story was yesterday and reminding yourself of the truth.
This is the truth.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

And so you get out of bed anticipating his fresh mercies, abundant for each new day.
And as you count your blessings, day after day, year after year, you find yourself a long way down life’s road a lot sooner that you expected and looking back through the rear view mirror your story is broken beautiful, and you wouldn’t trade it for a photo edited version because the real one looks a bit like Jesus who bloodied himself up cleaning the lacerations on your infected heart with His nail scarred hands.
And you realize that it’s actually your scars that make you beautiful.
And that is the essence of joy and foundation for hope.

So, on this night, Lily, your father and I bless you with these words from Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

We prayed over Lily, then circled the room and took hands.
All of us.
A beautiful menagerie of people representing the creative color palette of God.
From Syria to Haiti and Ethiopia and China and Korea to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Everybody with their own broken beautiful story connected to each other.
And God was right there in the middle of it.
Smiling.
So we sang a benediction acknowledging where all our stories ultimately start and end.
To the glory of God.
Great things He has done.

2015 morphed into 2016 in my oversized chair with the soft glow of the fireplace, listening to oldies on my Spotify playlist as I assembled a digital photo album of my 365 favorite pics of the year. After weeks of spirited partying, a quiet evening was cause to celebrate.

I hung the new calendar on the wall and there were four at the table for dinner. One waved goodbye out the window of a church bus and drove away a couple of days ago and another flew off in an airplane, a foreshadowing of family life starting in September.

This year marks a personal milestone. I’ll turn 50 and make merry with all of my fellow “ladybugs”. You know who you are.
I’ve lived long enough to know that the 366 days of this leap year will surprise me with unanticipated delights to celebrate and unpredictable injuries, bumps and bruises physically, emotionally and spiritually. Every year creates an original picture using the whole box of crayons.

We’ve already got the first scars in the making. A phone call from eight hundred miles away. An accident on an escalator, deep gashes, bruising, swelling and I can’t fix it or change it. Later this week another kid goes under the knife for dental surgery. More extractions leaving wounds to be sutured and then wait for God to heal.

Yes, I have aspirations for the new year and I am excited about them but ultimately, 2016 will be another chapter in the epic narrative of God’s incomprehensible cosmic plan for this great big world and my miniscule role in that story.
No more and no less.
And just like last year, I’ll need to talk to God in prayer and listen to Him through his Word and his people. I’ll need to walk courageously into each day mindful of His mercies, fresh and new each morning, enough–even abundant- for my need.
Sara Groves sings about it on her new project:
“Really we don’t need much,
Just strength to believe that there’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see.
These patches of joy, these stretches of sorrow.
There’s enough for today.
There’ll be enough for tomorrow.”

Hello 2016.

The path wound long through pitch black darkness leading to the secluded catholic retreat center. This would be a first for me, actually two firsts. A solitude retreat. And a catholic retreat center.
Not only do we shape our children’s spiritual journey, they also shape ours. And so as Angela’s spiritual formation converges with the liturgical church, mine brushes along its edges too.

This Pre-Advent Retreat focuses on making space for the incarnation in advance of the advent season. In the chapel with Angela for Evening Prayers, I pull down the creaky kneeler from the back of the seat in front of me. The chancel’s foci are a statue of Jesus with a slightly more petite Mary on His left. We sing, “Be Still and Know That I am God” and I am glad because the text centers my attention away from the distracting statue of Mary that seems out of place in my theological construct. When the service ends, the silence begins.

I climb the stairs to room 214 and crack open the door. My humble abode features a tile floor, a creaky bed and an old fashioned hot water radiator.
And the only wall décor? A framed picture of Mary.
There is also a comfy recliner in the corner and I cozy up in it with my soft lap blanket and Bible and talk to the only One I’m allowed to.
“God,” I vocalize. “I’m not going to ask you for anything for anybody this weekend. I’m not going to tell you my concerns because you already know them anyway. I’m here to quiet myself. I’m here to listen rather than speak. I’m always asking you all sorts of things. This weekend, I invite you to ask me something.”

I don my reading glasses and crack my Bible open to Isaiah 40 and read
A voice of one calling: 
“In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low;
the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.
And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

And that’s what I’m here to do—to make space for the Lord to reveal His glory. But I am distracted at every turn.
I wonder about my youngest sweetheart who’s tucked away at a friend’s house overnight. Is she secure in my love even in my absence?
And that next princess. Maybe she’s nauseas in the bathroom heaving over the toilet alone.
And what about lovely Lily. How is daddy-daughter bonding going on this superhero movie night?
And then there’s the girl in the room down the hall, the one with a messy chest wound. And my mind wanders to the one who was careless with her heart and I’m struggling to embrace what I know about the loving sovereignty of God to her and to him.
And I realize I am spinning again, spiraling toward the eye of the tornado, the vortex of my own personal hungry monster– anxiety.
Refocus. Breathe. Read.
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart;
He gently leads those that have young.

That’s me, I remind myself. I’m that lamb He’s carrying. And I’m snuggled up to His chest. I’ve got young and He’s ever so gently leading them too.
And I feel my eyelids growing heavy. Soon, sleep will prevail.
The next thing I know, I wake up in the recliner and stagger over to my extra firm bed. I guess the Catholics consider discomfort virtuous. When the heat comes on, the radiator talks—loudly- and I awaken. Several times.

It’s morning now. Time to greet a new day that holds yet to be discovered fresh, new mercies.
I default to my familiar ritual and open the shade.
Wouldn’t you know? There’s a larger than life size statue of Mary in the courtyard straight out my window.
Seriously. She’s everywhere.

What to do with Mary? I ponder L—O—N—G.
And in that pause, God speaks. “There she is. The handmaiden of the Lord.”

So I consider her story. It’s littered with snapshots of open handed living recorded over decades of life.
So many fresh, new mornings when she might have pulled the covers over her head paralyzed by her calling, she got up instead and faced her day with courage and confidence in His mercies—even the severe ones.

Informed by an angel of her immaculate conception, I wonder how Mary broke the news to her parents.
“Mom and Dad, I’m pregnant but I’m still a virgin.”
I’ve been a teenage girl– and I now parent them. That explanation would not fly in our family.
And what about the neighbors with their shaming glares and gossiping whispers? She might as well have worn a scarlet letter on her breast.
Imagine the conversation with Joseph, her fiancee. Awkward….

And then there was the road trip on the back of a donkey at full term pregnancy climaxing with a home birth delivery minus a home.
And she laid her baby, God with skin, in a feed trough in a barn.

And if that wasn’t enough drama, shortly thereafter she packed up and relocated internationally on moments notice all because of her husband’s bad dream.

And then she  yielded her aspirations for her first born son, deferring to his counter intuitive strategy for kingdom building. He chose singleness and homelessness, hung with a crowd of outcasts and established a reputation as a religious agitator.

And what mother can stomach the cross, looking on helplessly, suffering vicariously while her son groans to his Father asking for a pass.

And then God never gives us the end of her story.

Who but God would think up a story like this? It’s as paradoxical as creating people for His delight and knowing they’d reject Him.
And who could He ask to participate in His madness?
Mary.

I pause in my musings and God queries gently and kindly,
“Will you do that too?” “Will you invite me to write your story today… and tomorrow…. and each fresh, new day I gift you with?”

It’s time for Morning prayers so I walk thoughtfully downstairs to the chapel and recite these words: “O God our Creator, Your kindness has brought us the gift of a new morning. Help us to leave yesterday and not to covet tomorrow but to accept the uniqueness of today.”
And like the figure positioned beside the altar I say “Yes Lord. Today I will accept what You give.”

After chapel, I take a nap because rest is worship too. Then I walk for hours around the Lake of St. Mary. The trails meander through woods where the echo of my feet crunching leaves reverberates off the naked trees.
A trio of deer eye me naievely unafraid.
A formation of Canada geese honk overhead.
The wind howls across the water.
Ahead, a set of fallen trees block the walkway, obstructions on the path. Up and over the barriers I climb.
I repeat the route once, twice, three times because worshipping God in his creation is like listening to a text rich hymn or replaying a powerful sermon, each repetition illumines a new facet worthy of my consideration.

Before Evening Prayers I knock quietly on Angela’s door and whisper an invitation to make one last pass with me. Silently. We walk separately, our steps in tandem. Just as we overtake the dead tree barricade, an owl hoots in the distance. And we are suddenly characters in Owl Moon remembering that “When you go owling , you have to be quiet. You have to be brave. You don’t need words or warm or anything but hope. “

A red fox scampers out in front of us, discovers our presence in his territory and beelines for the woods.
A deer stands still as a statue watching us inquisitively, cautiously and we reciprocate.
Dusk is settling over the woods.
We stop at a bridge. Angela picks up a leaf, grins girlish and tosses it out onto the lake. The breeze cradles it gently as it floats downward and settles into the water. One leaf after another she throws them over the edge of the bridge and each travels it’s own unique path to the river below. She hands a leaf to me invitationally and suddenly we are playing Pooh-sticks using leaves and the innocence of childhood is recaptured for a moment.
But all good things must come to an end so we stop, turn and walk back to the retreat center. I wonder if God has anything else to say to me. I’m listening. But there are no more words from the Father. God isn’t verbose.
He gives manna for each day. No more and no less. Just enough.
Today he’s asked me to consider Mary.

The retreat concludes with Evening Prayers and the Holy Eucharist.
My 24 hours of solitude finishes. I pack my bag, strip my bed and flip off the lights in my little room. It’s dark as we exit and walk past the statue of Mary.

Silence has done its work.
I am prepared to enter the season of Advent, to wait and see what God will do.