Thankful.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful. I am thankful for a warm house to be welcomed into, with Italian pie baking fresh in the oven and hugs awaiting. I am thankful for a boyfriend who picked me up and drove me all over, and let me rest and relax against him. I am thankful for car-ride games and colored turkeys and little notes left. I am thankful for family gathered around two big tables, and for all the hands who served and held there. I am thankful for old uncles who chatter and gravy poured over dressing. I am thankful for omelets prepared, tea bought, books discussed, pies displayed.

I am thankful for Friday mornings in the kitchen. For Mark's mom who went and printed out recipes, bought Gladware, and purchased ingredients. For our aprons tied around and our men at the table. I am thankful for flour spilled and oats strewn and mixing soda and powder. I am thankful for heart-filled conversation and words shared and raisins stirred in. I am thankful for ESPN on male laptops and M&Ms pressed to pretzel. I am thankful for a mom to hug and laughter at my side and Mark and Jerry across.

I am thankful for what was made in that kitchen. For oatmeal raisin cookies and pretzels kissed with Hershey's. For the communion and connection of women, of family, of home, of love. For that, truly, is what was made in that kitchen.

And I am thankful.

Allow Joy.

In the last few years, I have seen scars and hurt and reoccurring disappointment. The relationships I thought were covenanted, the pieces of life I thought promised, the hopes I thought secure lie aimlessly or wasted or piled like torn rags.

I prepared myself for hardship, talked my way out of dreaming, and learned to struggle well through trial. It seemed the purpose, the climate of the places I found myself in.

So joy became a small antidote to captured through little things -- pretty napkins,colored jewelry, a great dress, a cup of Starbucks. Joy became "choosing to see" the Lord in tiny collections, like Hansen and Gretel, filing my cup with good along the way.

But now, I find myself peering out of this wall of protection built around my heart. The wall purposefully created to hold back dreams, tie down balloons, and section off sunsets. It was a barrier between wanting to much, a barrier set up between me and hope, to take away the pain of the present.

But now as I peer around the wall and want to hope for more, want to choose to see the greater of good in the broader perspective, I find myself cumbersomed with fear. Fear that I'll get caught up in the hope, and it will be squashed. That I'll find my way to fullness, and it will be squandered. That I'll allow myself to care, to dream, to believe in his promise for "good things" and they will be stolen, taken, or different than I dream.

About six months ago, the Lord impressed upon me the term "allow joy," trying to teach me to allow and see these good things he's providing as the good that they are. To not take them hesitantly, in fear of what could be behind, as if God were tricking me or setting me up for disappointment too, but to allow my heart and self to embrace them fully, completely, as whole.

The whole world changed. Everything in my perspective seemed to loosen and relax, and create this beautiful life that I felt the Lord was giving me, and I was receiving. It was a time of such glory, such goodness, such relief. I felt the restoration of what was taken, and in tune, learned to embrace.

I'm in another season of looking, peering. Wanting to wish and hope and dream. To create images and imagine a good life, granted to me. Yet tangled in that, is the fear, that it will be taken. That I'll hope and dream, and find the balloons once again, pierced.

That hope will lead instead to hardship, that fulfillment will find failure, and that my heart will once again learn trial instead of grace.

I want to dream big dreams. To allow flourish. To reap harvest. To find myself surrounded in a life where the richness of God touches every piece.

To crack the wall of protection.

I want to live a life that allows joy. That accepts joy, fully and without hesitation. Without fear. Without being cautiously jaded, looking around the corner for the hurt or anger or squashing of dreams to come.

I want to life a life that captures goodness in the little things, the small graces along the way. Yet also receives the richness of God's good gifts in their vast potential. Unhindered. Accepting them as they were meant to be given.

~~

A question to follow: How does one [you] allow joy and dream big dreams, while still keeping yourself pined down to the reality of living today? While staying focused on the present and not trying to run ahead and make or plan a future?

Honor Our Limitations.

"If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials. We must honor our limitations in ways that do not distort our nature, and we must trust and use our gifts in ways that fulfill the potentials God gave us."

~Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer, p55

Thanks, Heidi, for the quote above.

I Need Time.

I need more days off than one. I need time to recover from the energy put out in the week. Time to breathe, time to think, time to pray. Time to scratch out my to-do list, or even to create it. Time to unpack from the clothing mess scattered still from the weekend. Time to buy the Christmas gift, to order the book, to wash the sink, to bag the groceries. I need time to write the email, to post the pics, to launder the sheets.

How do women do it? I feel like such a failure... I can't do it all. I need time...

The Sheep I Keep.

His chin quivered. He sat on the edge of the desk, his cowboy boots dangling and his black Stetson set aside. He had come for me, early in the morning, and I wasn't to be found. Now, he was granted permission to stay and be havened in my room.

His eyes fought back tears. Red glistened behind lashes, voice low and solemn. Letter from his girlfriend he unfolded for me, picture of his truck, stories of his heart.

But his words couldn't contain his brokeness. His defeat. His heartbreak. Moving. Kicked out. Boxes packed. Shipped off to dad, hours away because of a fight with mom. Homeless, unwanted, lost. His form held defeat and I watched him crumble.

My students come in every day with stories. The girl sleeping on a gym floor because her family walked out. The child mourning the loss that broke her family three years before. The two juniors scared yesterday, after feeling deep, spiritual conviction about their seance with a Ouija board. Their scripts remind me of the human behind the faces.

The football player stands at my desk, fighting back fear as liquid wells in his eyes, the fear of the grade going home to mom. The tall man in gray raises his hands, his immigrant story of Russia, English still not spoken at home. The darling in the middle row, notes handing in, regarding her cancer years before. A child out with mono, the brother dead of disease, the question regarding heaven, these are the least of these.

Their humanness beckons me. Their brokeness seeking my strength. These are the souls of those in my classroom. These are the sheep I keep.

Morning Minutes.

Sunday morning stretch. 8:20am. My limbs gathered under a light, white blanket, a single bed in the corner. Another still neatly tucked, quarantined on the other side of the room. There were single bookshelves behind each, with a bright bay window bringing morning in between. Books spread across the desk at the base of the window, with my laptop and materials and lesson books spread about. My frame faced the closet, opposite the window and shelves, holding my barest of materials, just what I could pack for three months in the Philippines. A few dresses, a couple of shorts, bathing suit, and teaching shoes squished into that green bag.

Morning was welcome. I yawned, smiled, and pulled the phone in my room over. Resting, waiting.

Ringing.

My smile broaded, my delight full and sleepyness faded.

"Good morning!"

"Good evening!"

My mom and I exchanged our twelve hour differences, marking our phone date and finding ourselves being loved on the Sabbath. Her voice was familiar, home, my mom.

We talked for a bit, chatting about this and that... My weekend adventures, excursions to places like Pajasan Falls or Mt. Tall or the markets flowing down the streets. Or dental missions under tents and percieving squatter villages and talking with my students. We chatted easily, aimlessly. She updated me on fall, the colors and sites and sounds of Michigan harvested under the aumtumn leaves. To family gathered by the fire and roasting dinner and sharing love at the hearth. We exchanged our stories, hours and airplane rides apart, as if Sunday morning and evening were instead met as one.

She ended with a steady voice, and I could hear her love pouring through, her ways of thinking dotting the words. "Christina, I love you and you are worth every penny. But I got my phone bill this month and our calls this month [two calls, about 20 minutes each] were five hundred one Sunday and six hundred dollars the other. You're worth every penny, and I'll call you again, but maybe we'll have consider keeping our calls a little bit shorter."

I gasped, but quietly and perceptively, hearing her words and heart and knowing, she really wasn't concerned about the eleven hundred dollars she had just spent. There was so much love in that motion.

We ended in conclusion, me recommending her to calling about the minutes and lighten the load [which worked, and minimized the bills], but me also feeling and knowing the tenderness of our love, the importance of our connection, the relationship beyond price.

This was my mother. This was her love. This was our miles. This was my morning minutes.

Stitches Sewn Into Scar.

It's writers club tonight. And I am out of writing. I am learning things about myself, and about myself as a writer. If I am not in the Word, or reading a book, I am lacking. I have nothing to write about. There are no thoughts, little movement of what the Spirit is teaching me.

So instead, I sit here in my own self-perception... trying to find or dig up something to think about, something to write about...

There was a book on grief, on art; tonight I recall it, a warning against dwelling in the dark, the night, to write, to art. Its words trickled back to me, a reminder as I read back tonight through old things I had written, but never "published." Stored away in private safe keeping, locked underneath the "Documents" file, subtly forgotten.

And what I found there, was pain. Agony. Cursing anger. Deep, the darkest of wounds, bleeding reds so rich and scarlet that stains seemed to reveal against the ink of paper. I found so much hurt, gnarled grief, bitter anger... I stopped. Closed the files and stored them again with quick closer. Those first two years, especially that middle year of the two drew more memory than I would ever desire to recover. Even 1% of it. I am surprised, but ever-so-thankful, at how much I have removed, the Lord has removed, from my mind and heart... like a suture...

Like time restored.

And I remember, am reminded, of how much I am thankful. Thankful that the Lord created Charlotte as my cacoon. That the Lord has created in me a new heart. That the Lord has freed me of the wounds the memories, running so deep, now stitches sewn into scar.

And so I am thankful, for the reminder of the words of the book, remarking that digging up dark places for writing for the art is tender, is to avoid.

So instead, I sit here and write, thankful. Thankful that that tenderness is there, yet so is claim over time and heart and mind and memory. That scar remains, yet scab and scarlet soothed away. Thankful that time works like restoration, like love in the remains.

Like Woven Shawls.

Charles Martin in the book The Dead Don’t Dance wrote about a journal being the places where one is most vulnerable. The deepest place of the being, of the soul. He writes about it being the only ear that will listen and hear.

My writing is very much like that. The deepest places in me, of my soul. It is the darkest and most vulnerable. It is the places that shed the most light into the greatest of me. It is the beautiful imagery of words that God produces in my spirit and weaves in to sentences like a loom. It is the beginning of a sentence that he gives me, the initial lines that starts out my prose. It is the nakedest place I can become. All clothes hidden and the skin revealed. Sometimes soft and smooth like woven shawls around myself; sometimes coarse and cutting like the hurt pained within. My writing is most delicate place I know. It is the places I am most profound and most proud of. The ones I wish everyone could read and know. And the ones I am most embarrassed of and most hidden from. Where I wish and hope the lines are never known or discovered.

~ Written December 6, 2008

A Praying Life.

The Power of a Praying Wife. A Praying Friend. A Praying Parent. A Praying Church. A Praying Life.

There are books in a series, or written by another hand, that correspond with the same lingo, the same emotion, the same distinction: The Power of Praying.

This past summer, Trish and I read A Praying Life, by Paul E. Miller. More than all the thoughts, quotes, stories, and scriptures, the book was a reminder to me of the power of prayer. The purpose of prayer. The necessity of prayer.

And then with the words, the Truth, the conviction, came the simple ability to have eyes to see... prayer. To peel away the layers of self-dependence and independence and coincidence and futility of myself, and see prayer be present.

To see God hold back a Saturday storm while our boat rocked and our skin tanned. To see God issue parking spaces by Belk while Mark drove in circles. To see God provide a Prayer Chair with money banked to me that very week. To have December weekends filled, a Handyman in my front yard, nights of sleep fulfilled, and Inklings in the corner.

I have seen the Power of Prayer. In small ways, in big ways, in miracle ways. I have seen my prayer muscles strengthened and built, muscles flexed like the Stockbridge Boiler Room, or daily divine like Son-Life Camp, or intimate like Mexico missions. But I have also seen them loose and lackadaisical, like the last week or two.

This morning as I sit here and am reminded to pray. Am reminded of the purpose and presence and power of... a praying life.