Written Into Dust and Grime

I hold the smallest one in my arms as she lifts her little shirt to find her small tummy button again. She doesn't seem to lose the wonder over this discovery and she is determined to find the same wonder in my eyes as well.

I repeat it over and over again, as often as she wants until the dog catches her attention, 

Where's your button, Zee? Where's Zee-Zee's button?

She giggles hard and pulls back the cloth and points triumphantly, pride at having caught the hidden again.

Her laughter stands in contrast to my grief.

I think back to that moment when I tried to grip the dark to snuff out my shame - tuck the edges in neat so that the choices I had made would suffocate and rot into forgetfulness.

I wish I could take back the moment and rip back the dark so that His Light could have purified what shame had poisoned.

Instead, I waited. For years I waited for it all to decay into ash so that the winds of time would somehow blow it all away into oblivion and I could breathe deeply again.

There is Grace I don't understand and Mercy that surrounded my days, even as I walked with the stench of death permeating everything I did. 

I want to take back all those years, all those joy-filled years that were touched with the putrid, and redo them all. 

I want to point to the festering wound that marked me and say, Here! Here it is!! Here I am, here is what I have done. Forgive me.

The peeling back came, but not triumphantly. There was no joy in those moments. 

Or was there?

He sits with me on a park bench under a shade tree this morning around 10. His arm surrounded me and we've just come through a weekend marked with the wounds of two people fighting for their marriage - our words clashed strong against each other first before we dropped verbal weapons and our against you stance to stand shoulder to shoulder and protect the other.

I have not been a safe place for his heart these last several weeks - and I see that clearly now. In peeling back what all I had hidden, in those places that felt vulnerable and weak, I started to build walls. Seeing his hurt and knowing that it was me who carved those wounds there was too much. I had set about safe-guarding my soul with those stupid walls while I tried to figure out how to pay him back for all the years I had hidden the truth from him.  Once that was accomplished, I'd take down the walls.

So this morning, as I sat in the circle of his arms, walls down and desperate to be a safe place for his words, he brought his face close to mine and spoke into the hurt,

You can't pay it back. You can't undo what you have done. There is nothing you can do to balance out the scales. But Kimberley, what you can do? You can trust that you are forgiven. You can believe that I forgive and love you. You can believe that Jesus Christ sees you as forgiven and loved and move forward on from this with me. 

In the early hours of this morning, before the park bench with him, I unfolded the pages of Galatians and held that hot coffee in my hands and before the words of my husband ever reached my ears, the Truth of my Father softened the walls I had tried to build between Him and me as well. 

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.  I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law.  You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified[a] by the law; you have fallen away from grace.  For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.  For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Galatians 5:1-6

These believers were facing men who were teaching them that in order to be truly saved, they had to be circumcised. These believers knew the truth of the gospel - Paul had preached it clear: Christ paid the penalty in full, they just had to accept it by faith. From that moment on it would be their hearts that bore the marks of Jesus - not their bodies.  But sometimes, we, definitely I, feel the need to do more. To prove that I am worthy and so willing to make up for all the sin that has been done.

But clinging to the law, to the outward actions that I am convinced make me more genuine actually sever me from the grace of Christ. The very Grace that carried me while I was dying inside holds me close to Him when I offer Him nothing else than a life of faith that works out the beauty of love.

And I saw that most clearly in the love of this husband of mine. This husband I wounded. This man who holds fast to the same Jesus we both love and who is being made more and more into the image of Christ - The Ultimate Bridegroom Who chooses to love a Bride marked with grime and failings and secrets hidden and shameful.

As we left to pick up our four, he mentioned that we should take the car through the car wash for our son who loves nothing more than watching the scrubbing and whirring machines, him all smiling at the thought of Elias' joy.

But I stopped first to snap a picture before it was washed away - the message he had written into dust and mud weeks ago for me to see as I followed him home...

Because He Freely Gives {Day 11}

He's been saying it more and more these last few weeks. Really, he's been saying it since our anniversary. And I want to be careful with his words, because, they are *his* words and because I know the amazing heart behind them.

However, they are hard words.

Because they have lived hard. They have witnessed hard.


But as he held me close over our anniversary weekend, he whispered in my ear that he was thankful. Not just for us, for our marriage and this life - but he was coming to be thankful for his dad's suicide.

I heard the ache behind his words and the longing of a son for his father because no matter how clear a gift becomes in the unwrapping - loss of any kind still stings even as time begins to soothe.

He said those words because he sees how his loss has opened up places in him that God is using. That the broken places are becoming healing places and the loss of a father has cultivated a father's-love in his own heart for the father-less around us.

What would happen if we opened our eyes more to see the working and weaving of good around us that God the Father does for those who love Him?

Really - what would happen? I want to know.

I drove in the dark on the freeway this evening, over to a neighbouring town just to sit and be with a tea and a book and on the way back, as I took each exit I began to wonder at the absurdity of where I am.

I had a plan.

I had a plan and it was a good plan. Well thought out and safe, it would have kept us in a quiet neighbourhood in a quiet little town in the middle of nowhere and we would have lived out our days and we would have grown old and quiet together there and in the end, been buried together under piles of snow and ice in the winter and harvest dust come fall.

Then God stepped in and shook things up a little. Or a lot.

It all depends on how you look on things like that.


And I found myself driving home on a freeway, debating whether to take the exit into downtown or the taking the long circuitous route instead and choosing the former I entered into the city that I'm still trying to stretch into feeling like home.

I asked Tony tonight when the shock would wear off - when the surprise of *here* would no longer be surprising.

He didn't really have an answer.

And the thing is - I am grateful. I am so very grateful to be found here. To be given all that we have been given here. That it is here where we have been able to heal. Where we have found the footing we lost and been thrown back together. It is here that we have jumped back into ministry and where we have found our calling, where we have sought God and His Will like we have never done before.

We have been found desperate for Jesus here in the place and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Which seems wrong to type, given what we have lost in the living we have done. But it's true. Jesus said that to follow Him we need to lay down our lives, take up our cross and follow Him. To love Him above family and friends and houses and cities and those lives we long to protect.  He is to be longed for above everything else and in all of that losing,

we will find the greatest Gift.

When we give of ourselves freely to Him,

we find the One Who Freely Gives.


Because more than quiet, safe lives; more than fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, more than comfort and ease and the right clothes and neighbours, He longs to give us life - abundant and full. But that life comes with a cost: His Life. And when we allow that to sink in, deep down into the very depth of us - we'll begin too see, each hard loss that feels like it's going to kill us, each blow to our bodies, our wallets and status quo, each question that is sobbed into feathered pillows each night - it all finds it's answer in Jesus.

No, what He asks isn't easy, but what He gives carries great worth. When we offer up to Him, what we would rather freely hold back onto, He freely gives His strength, love, faith and peace and He will lead us through the hard things He allows, opening our eyes to see past the circumstances that are paved in sorrow to find the incredible gift of incredible Life with Him.

All because He freely Gives.

Adoring:

You did not spare Your Own Son but gave Him up for us all and because of the weight of that, I can trust that each gift You offer and each promise You make and each provision you give - You graciously give because it is in Your nature. You give because You love. You discipline because You love. You provide for the desperate because Your love is desperate that all should come to repentance. I can trust You - even when it seems impossible and crazy. I can trust that as I walk in Your leading that You will lead me to a place where I can hear You - where I can see Your glory at work.

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?  Romans 8:32

When You Walk into the Dark {A Birthday Post - that really is Happy}

I was born the month after my mom turned 30 and 10 years later, much to her horror, I announced to everyone we knew that she was about to turn 40.

Ages have fascinated me for as long as I can remember. Not the concrete number, per se, but the age in relation to where a person is in their life.


He turned 39 this past Tuesday. The sun rose warm on the late October day and I crept quietly out of the house to bring him home a coffee - because a decade is almost over and the ending of something always needs to be held gently, celebrated quietly, thought on long.

And that's what I did as I stood line, dressed all in black and my hair hidden under the green of my cap. I thought of him and how that very first year - before he held my hand and before he lifted the veil...before he whispered he loved me back...he turned 26.

I boxed up a small, blue tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies and even though I didn't know if I would ever know - I wondered what he would look like at 40.

And now we stand on the cusp of it.

And he is breathtakingly handsome.


I stand here now, thinking back on the man that he was already and realizing with shocking reality that 11 years will fly and he will be 50.

Lyla will be 18.

I'll be 45.

We'll be past the stage of babies and diapers and toys strewn everywhere...


It makes me catch my breath a little bit.



Not because I'm sad, though, I am feeling a tad nostalgic - but because the weight of time is heavy on the waiting end and a mere whisper of the moments already lived.


He is 39 and the pure black of his hair is becoming more peppered with grey - his beard touched with the soft shades of white. I know that the lines that are forming on his face give grief and laughter equal weight because I have held him through both.


I came across random words this evening, ones that brought Tony to mind because in the 13 years I have known him, in the four years that have been marked with deep sorrow, in the 1 year of finding ourselves in ministry again;  in the midst of it all, I have watched him enter into whatever God has allowed:

“The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise. I discovered in that moment that I had the power to choose the direction my life would head, even if the only choice open to me, at least initially, was either to run from the loss or to face it as best I could. Since I knew that darkness was inevitable and unavoidable, I decided from that point on to walk into the darkness rather than try to outrun it, to let my experience of loss take me on a journey wherever it would lead, and to allow myself to be transformed by my suffering rather than to think I could somehow avoid it. I chose to turn toward the pain, however falteringly, and to yield to the loss, though I had no idea at the time what that would mean.”

jerry sittser

And he didn't - he didn't know what it would mean. The whispered words of grief and pain - of a commitment to trusting and pursuing hard after God in the face of hard and broken trauma; to refuse to fight the pain of loss and bewilderment of a shattered life meant that he would come out stronger on the other side - that when the sunrise was finally burning the edges of the horizon, when the darkness was no longer consuming the air around us, he would be him, but more like Him. 

He's 39 and I love him and his crazy antics and deep soul strength. I love his heart for Jesus and his hope that never seems to fade.


This birthday post is late, but not really, because I'm savoring these first days of the last days in his thirties.  And they are good ones.  Because he is a good one. Because he trusts so strongly in the Only One Who is Good.


Happy birthday, sweet husband. I love you.

Always.

When My Eyes Close - An Anniversary Post

I closed my eyes and opened them and I became his wife that fall afternoon and I promised and pledged my life to his own.

He cupped my face and my life with the sureness of his hands and his dad pronounced us husband and wife and that aisle wasn't the end point of our marriage...it was only the beginning.


I closed my eyes and I opened them and I watched him become a daddy - I watched him cup his newborn daughter in his hands and the wonder on his face only deepened what I knew about his heart.


I closed my eyes and I opened them as he caught his second born daughter, my ears only catching the tail end of the words he prayed softly over the vernix covered skin that barely contains the wildness of her. He loved strong when I was lost in a world of depression - he loved strong enough for the both of us.


I closed my eyes and I opened them as he became the father of a son. As he wrapped his arms around the both of us and held me when I began to bleed out and he kept me focused on his breath when mine became faint.


I closed my eyes and I opened them and I can remember his voice, but not his face. I can't remember his face, but I remember his arms as he pulled me close to his chest - as he supported his wife and his sister-in-law after finding his father dead.

I closed my eyes and I opened them as we drove away from a home and a life shattered and broken - as the air froze our breath in misty clouds and -21 degree weather.  He held my hand as my tears fell and he whispered again the promise we had made,

No matter what, we will trust and praise God and we will get through this...together.

I closed my eyes and I opened them as he left coffee behind and began a new ministry and because of his trust, our lives and our family has grown.


I closed my eyes and I opened them and he told a joke and I laughed and our third daughter was born and he holds her swaddled form against the checkered shirt on his chest and my heart - it feels whole. It feels full.

I closed my eyes and this morning I opened them twelve years later to find him sleeping next to me in a city far away and the fireplace still glowing...

And so much has changed and so much hasn't and he has more grey in his hair but that same handsome face; more laugh lines around his eyes, but the same pull toward my heart.

Twelve years have flown by and will only fly faster and each time around the sun will etch those lines on faces deeper and I want to love well. I want to love my husband with Christ's love at the center and when Josva read those words of Paul's over us all those years ago, I had no idea. No idea how desperate I would become to live those words out. How desperate I would need Jesus to form my heart to His own.

I close my eyes and each morning they open to the new day we are given and the new year we have. And one day, my eyes will close and no longer open on this side of eternity, and for all the years I've been given here and all the timelessness that will be before me there, I want this to be my legacy. I want our life together to be marked by Love.

Twelve years and I long for more. Long for more time and more moments and for his hand on my face. I long for time to slow down just a little so I can savor this love we've been given just a little longer...