Into the Grave

Every year in the Fall, I have a really bad day. This is not a typical bad day or caused by something in particular. The world just takes on an irritating quality that grates on my nerves. The bad day stems from a severe trauma I suffered as a teenager, and out of necessity, my mind forgets about it throughout the year. Then the weather changes... the leaves begin to look different and the wind blows a bit colder. I begin to wear sweats in the morning and curl up with blankets in the evening... And my body remembers. 

I begin to feel uncomfortable in my own skin. I get irritated over nothing. I feel lost and insecure. Nothing makes me feel better for long. I wonder all day what the eff is going on with me... and then my mind catches up. The memories come flooding back... and commence the evening of heart wrenching, metaphorical bleeding where I remember what I've been progressively forgetting all year long. 

So I listen to the appropriate, melancholic music with hopeful undertones. I cry and grieve. If I lived in a society where mourning was an outward practice, I'd probably tear my clothes and rub ashes on my face, but I live in America where even our mourning behaviors are appropriate. I sink down into a place that is ugly and lonely yet at the same time safe and secluded. I'm reminded where I came from, and at the end of the day, I slip into an exhausted sleep and begin the forgetting all over again. 

What I'm forgetting is worth remembering, for if it weren't, I would not bother at all. Maybe some things are better left covered by the rest of the year except for one day though. It is therapeutic to sink down into the grave that almost swallowed me, the event that almost took my power and my voice, to reset me on my path and remind me what it is important. 

"With new lungs, I'll begin again. Lift my voice and sing my part. 

This is the sound of a living heart" 

~JJ Heller

Sweaty Baby Carrier Sleep

It's almost 12 AM. A-baby and I are on vacation and our schedule is jacked. Actually, it's worse than jacked. I threw it out the window after his rejuvenating, four hour afternoon nap was shortened to 30 minutes of restless, hot and sweaty sleep in his baby carrier. I now know why so many parents don't travel much and definitely don't travel alone. (A) I've learned there is power in numbers for parents. My husband truly is necessary for y sanity. I have mad respect for all you single parents out there. I would be a really bad single mom. (B) When you don't have your crib, rocker, or anything else you usually use to get your Bouncing Baby to go to sleep, the next best thing is your baby carrier. Unfortunately, the baby carrier is hot and sweaty. All the time baby wearers also get props here. Ever since my boo has been out of the womb, he has loathed being hot and/or sweaty. For us, hot and sweaty baby carrier sleep sucks for everyone. 

While on our mini-vacay, A-boy got to meet some cousins. First we stayed with one of my best friends and her husband where we got to hang out my friends' 2 yo. The two played so well together, and we were able to maintain some semblance of our normal schedule as nap time was still a sacred part of the day. Then we went to a hotel by my sister and brother-in-law's house. They had a sweet little girl three weeks ago and were having a baby shower this weekend to celebrate. Little Baby G is not much fun for an almost 1yo boy yet, but I sure enjoyed my time with her. She slept the whole time. Unlike my little bundle of Sweaty Baby Boy, who is currently making squeaky noises as he violently chews his pacifier, shaking his head and periodically screeching in defiance of his cloth prison. 

When I said I wanted kids, this scene never actually crossed my mind. My kid would not be the one screaming and making everyone miserable in the grocery store/airplane/car/hotel. I surely wouldn't stop wearing makeup, doing my hair, or forget to brush my teeth in the morning. 

My parenting chapters would be just as glamorous as my first 26 years. 

This chapter of my life may not look glamorous on first glance. When I became a mom almost a year ago, I began to ascribe to a different type of glamorous. The days of taking a shower alone have long been replaced by the thrill of watching my kid grow from being bathed in the kitchen sink to crawling around at my ankles as I wash my hair in the morning. The once sacred, private time of using the restroom is now a family affair as I prepare my child to use a big boy potty via gradual exposure to the wonders of his very own plastic baby potty. Once, I would spend my nights downtown with friends drinking fruity drinks and dancing both the night and my cares away. These night are filled with nighttime nursing, tangled baby legs, and a constant awareness of my infant sleeping next to me. Tonight, regenerative, restorative sleep has been replaced by slowly bouncing my Sweaty Bundle of baby to sleep in what seems to me the most unbearably humid hotel lobby in the state of Florida while listening to the cooking channel and the front desk phone ringing off the hook. 

Someone might look at me, bouncing my Cry Boy up and down, limbs flailing about and wonder "is all that worth it?"

On one hand, I'm paying through the nose in hours of sleep and the Americanized version of beauty and peace. On the other, I'm filled up to overflowing with baby smiles, hugs, and laughs and new experiences that make me remember the beauty that I once saw in this world as a young child. 

So is it really worth it? My youth? Freedom? Sleep? Beauty? Former glory and glamour? 

Some days I might pause before answering. Tonight, I have the clarity to see the forest through the trees, so without a hesitation, I say absolutely. When I got pregnant, an old friend said to me "have fun having no adventures for the next 18 years of your life." Well, friend, you were wrong. This is the most wonderful/painful/awesome/sweaty/rewarding "adventure" of my life. I wouldn't trade it for the world. 

Happy Living :)

Living Where I Am

Recently, a good friend of mine wrote in her blog Tattered, Torn, and Mended about how important it is for us to be usable where we are, to "commit [our] whole life to serving the King, regardless of the emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges that come with that assignment." This got me thinking of the times in my life where I have been blinded by my own emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges.

My husband and I recently moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We live up on a mesa, above the main part of the city, a little off the beaten path, and have loved almost every moment of it. Some nights, I look down at the city with such a love in my heart for the people as I gaze at the lights their lives are making and pray for their needs to be met and for their hearts to find a place to belong. Immediately after moving here, Thomas and I both noticed that a peace, that had otherwise alluded us, rushed over our lives. At this point, it really does seem like all our troubles have been left behind in the last town we hailed from.

Living there had been a painful lesson for the both of us for many different reasons. It was the first place that we moved to after a rather tumultuous year of my husband's recovery from a traumatic brain injury. We had also been recently married. We were learning how to live life together as husband and wife, attempting to become more involved in God's church, and learning to live life in a way that didn't include rehab facilities, parents' graciously donated homes, and a mass amount of family around us all the time.

The first year and a half of our marriage, I spent more time in a funk than out of a funk. Everything about this new life that I had spent the last year waiting to live fell flat within six months. I had put the core of who I was into what I was doing and had been rejected. The next seventeen months was spent putting all of my energy into maintaining composure and protecting what was left of my dignity. These were sad and lonely times. They were dark times as well, where at moments I could feel the enemy sitting on my chest as he tried to prevent me from taking another life sustaining breath. The days dragged on, but eventually God led me to good people with pure motives who wanted to know me and love me for who I was. It is only now that I see what may have happened during this time: I had finally begun to live in the present moment.

Reading my friend's blog post gave me the last section of pieces to connect two sides of a puzzle I have been working on. The first side consists of my desire to be useable by God where I am and in the second lies the truth that living in the present moment is the best way to live life for many reasons which are so numerous, I dare not broach the topic now.

I have been working on the first part of the puzzle for a long time, believing that it was complete as it was. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (1942, 1996) revealed to me the second side of the puzzle only very recently, yet until now, I thought it was the first part of a new puzzle.

***The Screwtape Letters is a satirical Christian apologetic novel... The story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter. The uncle's mentorship pertains to the nephew's responsiblity for securing the damnation of a British man known only as "the patient" (special thanks to Wikipedia, the best source for to the point information, for that three sentence synopsis).***

Through this book, the Lord has revealed to me one many purposes of the present time, which I have so much neglected in my life. Screwtape writes to his nephew, "He (God) therefore, I believe, wants them to attend cheifly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity." (p.75, emphasis mine). I had begun to feel better once I began to live in the present moment perhaps, as Screwtape purports, because it is the only time that gives a glimpse of hope because is touches the very thing my life was meant for, a perfect eternity. I had spent so much time living in the past, remembering the horrific aftermath of my husband's accident, and mulling over the future, which both "inflames hope and fear" (p.76), that I had been unable to live in the moment that I was actually living in. Going back to the original intention of this post, I was unable to be used where I was because I was not truly living where I was. The obesession of my mind over past events and future happenings created blind spots in my perception of reality. They kept me focused on the gravity of the emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges of my place rather than the blessed nature of my being here at all!

Life is full of teaching moments such as this, and surely, this "finished" puzzle will be added to in the future. The Lord continues to remind me how much I need him and to redeem me from my own inability, ignorance, and stupidity. This is one of those "aha" moments where I finally realize the key to happiness is being able to be used by him who always has my best at heart (and that there is much more that goes into being used by him than I had originally thought). I pray I never forget how much I, daily, need him and never hold myself in too high esteem to learn something from this life of which I will always be pupil.
    
To read my wise friend's blog post, check out Tattered, Torn, and Mended

Romanced

Do you know that God is romancing you?
Over the past few months, I have been meeting with the most wonderful group of young women. Every week, we all do our bests to meet together to read a chapter out of a book. We have spent a lot of time laughing, some more time crying, and this week, we spent an entire chapter learning about God's ways of romancing our hearts.

"I have loved you with an everlasting love," Jeremiah explains (31:3).
"How beautiful you are, my darling," Song of Solomon whispers (1:15).
"Therefor I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her," Hosea promises (2:14).
"You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride," Song of Solomon confesses (4:9).

At first it was weird for me to think that God, who also loves me as his child, also wants to romance my heart. My mind has been so confused by the age in which we are living that it seemed unnatural for God to love me "as a Lover loves," as Captivating by Jon and Staci Eldredge purports. The more I think about this concept, though, the more it ministers to my soul. I have always wanted someone to love me for me and not who I pretend to be, hope to be, or have the potential to be. God is, has, and always will love me in this way though. I don't have to be anyone else, just the girl in the tattered, worn out, and comfortable jeans.

When I was a little girl, I longed to be a princess. I thought that princesses had it good. I mean, the first part of their lives usually sucked, yet they were rescued by a prince who proved his love for them and spent the rest of their existence in "happily ever after." Even though I "knew" it was not a possibility for me to live a fairy tale, my heart always longed for it. Today, however, I realize, that I do live a fairy tale, or rather, a fairy tale copied my story. I have a prince. This prince gave up his life for me before I was old enough to love him the way he deserves (Ephesians 5:25). He has since been patiently waiting for me, to love my soul, heal my heart, and to give me my "happily ever after."

Right now is the time for the princess that is hard. The evil witch (aka that jerk Satan) has cast a spell on what would have been a perfect existence, what would have been a world that would never leave her heart longing for something more, where depression, anxiety, and disappointment did not exist. These are the hard times, my sisters, times where we must persevere through our suffering. These are the times where we wait "expectantly" for our prince to show up. Why do I wait? Because I know he is coming for me.

But as for me, I will watch expectantly for the LORD; (NASB)

I wait confidently for God to save me, and my God will certainly hear me. (NLT)

Micah 7:7 (mix matched)

This message is not just for women, though. God wants to romance all of our hearts. Staci and Jon talk about the ways in which God has romanced each one of their hearts. It seems that God chooses special ways to romance each of us. God sent Jon a whale whereas he sent Staci a field of star fish (p. 116 and 117 in Captivating).

God sends me love songs. He tells me that I am enough even though this world does everything it can to tell me otherwise ("Who Will Love Me For Me" by JJ Heller). He tells me that my emotions are not too much for him and that he wants to be there for me even when I feel lost and confused, even when I question his reasonings ("Times" by Tenth Avenue North). The Love of My Soul tells me that he sees so much more in me than I see in myself ("The Truth About Me" by Mandisa), that when I forget who I am he will remind me I am his beloved ("Remind Me Who I Am" by Jason Gray), and that even though I am "Judas' kiss" that betrayed him to die, he still loves me, reagardless of performance ("You Love Me Anyway" by Waidewalk Prophets). Jesus tells me that I am more than the poor decisions I have made and the mess I have made of my life ("You Are More" by Tenth Avenue North) and that he will never give me anything that he cannot handle, although alone, I will have trouble ("Strong Enough" by Matthew West). He tells me that he is the ying to my yang ("The Boat Song" by JJ Heller), that he has never left me alone and that my past will not define my future ("7x70" by Chris August), and that despite the ugliness I have embodied, he will unveil the beauty in me ("Beautiful Things" by Gungor). Of most importance to me, though, Jesus tells me that even though my heart is often weighed down by the love I have for hurting people in the midst of their inner battles, he has already fought and won the war ("Battle" by Chris August).

For now, I survive on love songs, but they are each precious to me. Each one of these has been my "Soul Song" at one point or another over the past two years. The day will come though when the Lord will take me home and I will feel my worth and his love all the time. My heart longs for it while at the same time I also pray for more time to finish my work here on Earth.

Don't Waste It

 Aunt Sally and I in Ketchikan, Alaska

My Great Aunt Sally was an interesting woman. She was unmarried, lived her entire life in the past (the 50s to be exact), drove three miles or less per day in her '67 Cutlass S with less than 100,000 miles on it, and had stuffed animal children to replace the ones the never had. She did not like listening to music and enjoyed quiet time by herself. Everything had a place in her home. If you moved a magazine, she would know it, and heaven forbid you touch the calendars from the past seven years on the kitchen table! The last time my aunt and I say one another was when she began her slow decline. I went with her on an Alaskan cruise.

Up until she was in her late 60s, she smoked a lot of cigarettes. Once my mother caught me smoking as a teenager. I remember her warning: "Don't smoke or you'll end up like your Aunt Sally!" she threatened. Thank goodness I quit, yet complications from decades of unrestrained tobacco use ravaged this woman for years. I do not know the exact number of times she had been hospitalized over the past five years, but it would have rivaled at least that many years. I began to think that she was too stubborn for death because each time she left the hospital just as firey as when she went in. One of my older sisters admitted that she was beginning to think Aunt Sally would never die and that was that.

This past Christmas, though, I thought for sure Aunt Sally was in the midst of her last hospital visit. I may have just begun preparing my heart for her imminent death out of self-preservation because of how tired I was getting with the ups and downs of her health problems, or maybe something "other-worldly" clued me into the fact that eventually, her will would cease to bend and would break, leaving her with the same end that all before her also met. Once again, though, she up and left the hospital. This past week, however, she was taken unexpectedly, well as unexpectedly as she possibly could have been taken, considering the fact that some of us were beginning to think she was immortal. Pneumonia finally brought her to the hospital bed she would not climb out of. Within 48 hours of being admitted she was gone.This morning, just before 9 am, she was just gone.

I have spent the first part of this year thinking a lot about heaven; what it is like, and who will be there. Times have been hard and filled with mourning. Lives have been lost. Dreams have been shattered. Hearts have been broken. A book written by a pastor, Don Piper, called 90 Minutes in Heaven was my latest read on the topic. Don was in a horrific car accident that left him without a pulse for an hour and a half. While someone prayed over his lifeless body, still stuck in a mangled vehicle, Don claims to have been present in heaven. He did not see God and is convinced that if he did, he would not have come back to Earth to tell his story.

Don describes heaven as a place where "time had no meaning," where senses were so acute that "I felt as if I had never seen, heard, or felt anything so real before," a place where perfect love could finally be experienced. When he got to the gates of heaven, Don was met by those who had loved him here on Earth, friends, family, those who were pivotal to securing his place in heaven and encouraging him on his journey there.

I felt loved- more loved than ever before in my life. They didn't say they loved me. I don't remember what words they spoke. When they gazed at me, I knew what the Bible means by perfect love. It emanated from every person who surrounded me.

What I cling to most about Don's story of heaven is its music:

It was the most beautiful and pleasant sound I've ever heard, and it didn't stop. It was like a song that goes on forever. I felt awestruck, wanting only to listen... the most remarkable thing to me was that hundreds of songs were being sung at the same time... I heard them from every direction... Every sound blended, and each voice or instrument enhanced the others... bringing not only a deep peace but the greatest feeling of joy I've ever experienced.

As my Great Aunt lay in her death bed, and at the encouragement of one of my aunts who was by her side, I told Aunt Sally the best I could about everything that I have ever heard about heaven. I was sleep deprived and my heart was breaking, but on the off chance that she could hear me speaking and that she could feel the longing for something other than everything she had ever known on this Earth, I once again told her about Jesus, the lover of my heart. I told her to go to Him. The last few minutes of her life were filled with my voice trying desperately to put into coherent sentences meaningful combinations of the words others had spoken to me, all that I have read, and all that I long for here on Earth that I am sure exists in heaven. I had just told her about heaven's music, as per Don Piper, when she quietly drew her last breath and her heart finally stopped. The Bible says about the lives of humans, "You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14, NIV, 1984). Today, I realized just how short that little while really is. There never seems to be enough time, even when there are more than 70 years between birth and death.

Before she fell into a coma two days ago, my Aunt Sally had not accepted Jesus Christ as the lover of her soul. I'm not sure why, however, she did claim to "believe in something, but it's not what you believe." That is the best answer anyone ever got from her. I am sad and have lots of questions because I love my aunt and want nothing more than to spend eternity with her when I am called to go home. My heart breaks when I think that she may not be in my own welcoming party at the gates when I enter into a life with no more pain, suffering, or discontent, the life I was meant to have here on Earth. I find comfort in knowing that there is no man or woman who really knows what happens in those last moments of a person's life. I know that no one comes to the father expect through Jesus, yet I am still coming to grips with who God is and what he can do. I know that He is big, and right now, I pray that He is bigger than my tiny, infinitesimal brain, which uses less than 10% of what it is capable of, can wrap itself around.

The death of my aunt reminds me of a couple of things, the first of which is that I do not want to leave my family with the same questions I have of my aunt. The second was mentioned by one of my sisters after I texted them all that our aunt had passed: "Death is always a good reminder to check my priorities for this one and only life I have," she wrote back. "Don't waste it, dear sisters, don't waste it."

I will not waste it.