The Pastor's Pew.

She came to the door about 6 months ago,her hair coiffed and graying. She knew the family that had built this old house and her husband had hung a light fixture long gone in the entrance way near the stairs.

I just wanted to see the old house, she said, and I was wondering if the fireplace was still there.

I forgot, for a few moments, how strong memories are and how dear. 

To me, the fireplace is one of the most amazing things about this aging home, and so I threw the door wide and welcomed her in.

Only, this home isn't the home that she remembers.

The life that fills it now doesn't look the same as the lives who loved and breathed and filled these places when she was young and the shock came out in words of hurt over so much that had changed.

I wish she hadn't left so quickly. I wish I could have asked about the ones who dreamed up this space. - The ones whose faith marks it so deeply.

It's called a Pastor's Pew.

I had never heard of it, and haven't seen another like it.

But like the pew benches that held me when I was small in that quiet little church that was like a second home, I am wrapped in a feeling of familiarity when I curl up in the corner.

I am held in peace.

There is something sacred about a space used for worship.

Back when doctors still made house calls as frequently as the local pastor, this foundation was laid. And when the cold winter winds would howl and the wise would stay home, there was a fool for Christ who would brave the chill and walk up the front steps to pray with the ones who lived here.

This alcove, flanked on either side by the age old symbol of church and prayer and that one sweet gramma singing off key, it has held the voices of the ones laying their hearts down before the Risen Savior and these pews have held the tears and laughter and words of those no longer here.

The fire may have warmed chilled bodies, but there is rest to be found for weary souls here in the quiet of this space.

I received a text in the dark as I was making my way home.

Just two words with no other explanation and my heart raced in fear with all the possibilities:

Please pray.

Was it my children?

Did something bad happen?

Are you hurt?

I asked all the questions instead of just doing what the text said.

I didn't know that while I had been out, one of our older Madison House kids was in our home. This kid, angry and troubled, was breaking apart and he showed up here, on our front step, cold and undone.

My 3 older children, recognizing his pain, raced to help their daddy get hot cocoa to warm his insides while Tony fed the fire to full blaze and then invited this young man to sit on one of the pews.

And here, on wood that has been prayed over for more than a century, two souls sat opposite one another; one seeking answers, the other holding the Answer.

I walked in to hear yelling. 

To hear the broken sobbing of pain,

while my older three all snuggled together in the school room, completely at peace and unafraid.

Mama, they whispered, you need to pray. The boy in there is *really* sad.

And as the questions raged, I heard Tony's calm, sure voice speaking the Name of Jesus, inviting him to come and find Peace.

All I could do was pray. 

All I could do was stand in the kitchen, hip against counter and pray.

It was the silence that caught my attention, and it was the two of them kneeling before the fire in the space between the two pews that pulled me to the doorway as I witnessed the holy moment of a fatherless man tenderly lead a fatherless boy to the heart of the Heavenly Father Who will never turn either away.

In the past few days, this home that was ours to rent and then wasn't and then was ours again - this home that God wouldn't allow us to live in until all of my dark had come out...it has become ours officially.

I don't know why it has in the way that it has. I'm overwhelmed at all the ways this has come together, but I am so incredibly grateful at the way God has shown Himself again as Father at the beginning of a season when this word is filled with so much pain.

Our prayer since the beginning has been that this home would be a light in a dark place. That refuge would be found here; that in the middle of chaos and confusion, the clarity of Christ would be seen most clearly.

I think of that family who first saw this plot of land and drew up plans for this house and in the heart of these walls placed a refuge for their souls.

They couldn't have known that all these years later, a lost boy would be found by the One Who knew him before all of time began right in the middle of where they themselves gathered.

The world seems to be spinning out of control. News channels and social media scream fear from all sides and terror turns us wild, devouring one another with words and opinions behind the safety of a screen. Everyone wants to change the world and the views of another.

But, right there, outside my own front door is a young man who needs a Father and a homeless woman stopped with her cart across the street talking with me about Jesus over a cup of water and a granola bar.

Each moment, each place I put my foot has the potential to be a space to build a Pastor's Pew, a meeting place to seek Jesus and the good of another. These moments, where we drop to our knees side by side place us on level ground. There is no scrambling to find our footing here, there is only utter dependence on the graciousness of God.

The fire is burning brightly still in the early hours of this morning as the pews wait expectantly reminding me that there is no one to far gone to come to Jesus, 

inviting me to pray...

For When the Changing Seems Hard

The clouds rolled in during the quiet of the early hours yesterday. While it was still dark, the rain fell and the air that has been so filled with smoke cleared and lifted.

Zee still refuses to put on her shoes.

And that's okay.


Tony received an email this past week while the air was heavy and thick. While my eyes were burning, he sat down near me and read the words that marked and recognized his time at Madison House. August 27th marked 3 years since he stepped into his role, 3 years since he brought me with Zee all curled up in my belly and the older ones pressed close as we walked up the front steps, unsure of what to expect, but wanting to receive all that God would give.

School started this week. We pulled down our books and brought out our pencils and while the school buses drove the ones living just down the street to their classrooms, we gathered in our own small school room and we entered into this new year with new hope.

September is it's own version of New Year's I think. There isn't a counting down at midnight, or fireworks exploding over our home, but it's a new leaf full of new possibilities and for everything that we've removed from our schedules and our purposefulness in going smaller, these days ahead feel ripe with expectancy.

I sat on the front steps of Madison House at the beginning of the week, I watched as the kids started returning with backpacks slung over shoulders and fresh new haircuts and shy smiles as they walked by me into the front doors.

As faces that I've loved for three years now come into view, I feel that familiar ache press close into my chest. It's one I've been feeling all summer, I think, but as Fall quickly approaches, the ache is getting deeper and it's time to acknowledge what it all means.

From the time I was small, I wanted to be a wife and a mama. That's all. Some may think that it's a small thing to aspire to, and that's okay. I never had grand dreams of grand jobs, I just wanted to make a home cozy and warm for the hearts I would love. And when one is 10 years old, this dream and this wish seems like a lifetime away.

Now, I stand on the other side of the dreaming. It's no longer a hoping, but a fulfilling. My home is full of a good man and crazy kids, but this body that has cocooned my five babies holds no more and my breath catches at the suddenness of it all. Warm newborn skin no longer folds up into my neck as a new one breathes deeply in sleep...instead, arms and legs sprawl and clamor for space, as though my once-little-ones haven't caught up to the reality yet that our space is transitioning.

My heart is aching.


It's that deep ache that settles in as I watch these kids who have found such deep places in our hearts walk up the front steps I'm sitting on. 3 years ago, they seemed so small, so young and now I look into the faces that are changing into young men and women in front of me. There's one young man whose hair was all shaggy just a year ago, he was the first one of the MH kids to hold Zeruiah just a year and a half before that, he sits across from me all quiet as he tells me about his first day of school. This kid, who just yesterday wasn't it when he was mouthy and hurting? He looks me in the eye and says, "It was a good day. And yeah, I'm in the top grade, but that means I'm a leader this year. I'm going to be a good leader."

The moving of time is a good thing, I see and know this...I do. I just haven't been prepared for how quickly the transitioning would happen. As though the letting go of one stage and moving into the other should be more gentle, more slow.

Back during the blur of Liv's first year of life, when she was awake more than she slept, when she screamed more than she was quiet, when all I saw was the neverendingness of where I was at, Jesus gave me a verse in the dark one evening, in the dark of my emotions, and it was this:

He will tend His flock like a shepherd;

He will gather the lambs in His arms;

He will carry them in His bosom, 

and gently lead those that are with young. 

Isaiah 40:11

This past week, when I was wrestling through all that my heart was feeling, I looked out the window at the big maple that hangs low over the fence. The leaves are just starting to turn colour on the edges, just enough to let us know the air is changing and soon a new season will be here. And there was, in the hundreds of leaves spilling off that old branch, one lone leaf caught in the glow of the sun.

I'm not sure why it pulled at me the way that it did, but for just a few moments, it reflected the glory of the sun off of it's surface...the deep green no longer seen, but instead transformed into a bright dazzling gold in a sea of shadow.

I don't know how long on this earth I have...the weight of this thought has been pressing in on me harder this year, but the One Who formed the dust I am made of, He has set me here, has given me all that I have here. And for a brief span of time in light of eternity's length, He has set His gaze on me here...and I can turn my life to reflect Him here, so that it's not me that is seen, but Him.

I think of that green all transformed into gold before winter's wind comes barreling in and it is no longer...and the words of Isaiah, they burn in my heart and as September comes nearer, it's a call I want to answer for me and for our children who have grown under my heart and for those who have become a part of my heart,

O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk,

in the light of the Lord.

Isaiah 2:5

We have a Savior Who promises to lead the way...

A Letter to My Four

We've been in this house for 21 days and I think I'm the only one who has dealt with any culture shock.

I wasn't expecting it - I think I was more prepared to walk the four of you through the change, but you made up your beds that first day and you snuggled in for the night and I was the one who sat up in the dark with eyes opened wide wondering about this path that God has led us on.

It wasn't fear that kept me up, but this feeling of being caught. Caught in the middle of two very different communities who both think that your daddy and I are slightly crazy for packing up this family of six and moving us "down here".

There's a woman, she's younger then me...I met her that first day we unloaded those boxes. I was in the backyard talking chickens with Valentina when she stopped at the fence and gave me her name.

She's had a few teeth knocked out by the looks of it.

She walked by the next day too and I waved, because that's what I do, and she approached me slowly and then asked,

Ummm...are you from around here?

I never know how to answer, because when you've moved as many times as we have, I'm not really from around anywhere, but your daddy stepped in because he saw where this was going and he told her why we were here and moving on to this street.

You were all running in the front yard with the dog so I'm pretty sure you didn't hear her response, but she looked at me like I was crazy.

Why would your move down here? You have kids! There are gang shootings and drugs all around you! You have kids! 

And then she said even quieter,

I would give anything to move away from this place...

Last night, an article started circulating around Facebook. I didn't read it, but by the gist of the comments I was reading *about* it, the city that we live in is apparently one of the top ten most terrifying cities to live in the United States.

And we moved right down into the thick of it.

We moved *you* right down into the thick of it.


The week before we moved in while Olivia and your daddy were outside in the playground, 7 shots were fired into the street. Right in front of this very house we now live in.

One bullet flies wrong and my world...

I don't have the words.


And yet...


I think of Jesus. How He left the beauty and the purity and the perfection of Heaven. How He gave up all that He had to come down here - to the brokenness and the the depravity of us. He did it because He loved us. Us? The very people who would insult Him and crucify Him - question His sanity and mock and ridicule Him at the end...He left the glory He had to be covered in our dust.

Our house that we left was simple, nothing grand or opulent. Our street was quiet, mostly seniors and maybe 4 other children. But what started out last summer as a quiet pull turned into a determination that could only come from the very Spirit of God. He moved us all out of what is considered safe into a situation that to some appears foolish.

But I want to write this down so that you will see. So that I will see. So that we will know.

Even here, where the world looks and raises eyebrows at our street number, where our sanity is questioned and our motives are scrutinized, even here we are safe.

We are safe, sweet ones, because the Eternal God Who became a man - Who died and rose again, He is our refuge.

Not this house, though at 108 years old, it is solid.

Not the lights I leave on at night, though they give a pretty glow.

Not a dog who growls and barks, because really, he's just a puppy anyways.

Nothing that we surround ourselves with is what keeps us safe.  Our God does that. Because even if a bullet flies wrong and our world is shattered and broken - His Hands surrounds us. He is our shelter. Nothing, nothing can rip us out of His Hands.

Call me crazy - I don't care. We moved because His love has moved in us.

Don't call me brave, because I'm not. I'm just desperate for Jesus, desperate to be in His Will. Desperate for you to see that living for Him is worth it.

You are my treasures, my sweet gifts, and you have been thrown into an adventure that you didn't choose, but the joy, the healing you are finding here in this place is a beautiful gift I didn't expect.

This is all a gift - one I am so grateful to have received.

I love you. So very much.

~Your Mama

When Hope Meets Grief

It's been almost 4 Christmases since that rope and his neck and that tree out in the woods. 4 Christmases since everything changed and the landscape of our lives was lost under a flood of grief.

It has been 3 Christmases since we packed up our life and our children and dreams and left in the bright sunlight of that bitterly cold morning in January.


This season has become one that is marked now by the number of years since - since grief entered in. I can still remember how it was marked by the anticipation of songs and carols and decorations, crazy snowfalls and the warmth of home...

It can all change so quickly.


This season? Underneath all that is beautiful, all that is anticipated, all that is wonderful and bright - it can be marked with an undeniable ache, a yearning for what once was, what we wish could be and the darkened days can match that hollowed out howl and the days leading up to the days of Christ's birth can be a stark pain of salt rubbed into raw wounds.


I can forget, under all that is merry and bright that the One Who came wrapped in an infant's skin and wrapped in torn cloths and placed in the brittle straw of a manger, that He came not indifferent, but as God, as One acquainted with grief. 


Each night, the four little ones and us, we sit close and read of Christ's history, of the story of His coming that stretched right back into the very beginning of Genesis. Each night we light the advent candle that shines brightly into the hushed dark.

This week has been the week of Hope. Of a wick lit and a flame burning brightly when everything else around it is dark. All week I have been reading Words woven throughout Scripture that breathe Hope back into my heart. Back into the days that have become marked with dread.

He entered in, stepped through the veil of the unseen to become fully seen and it's the question that has been echoing in my heart as I grab hold of His Hope -

Will I cling to Him too? Will I cling to the One Who is a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, rejected, despised...One not esteemed?

Will I identify my life with One Who broke through and identified with mine so that He could save and mend and heal the brokenness and clothe me with His righteousness?

This season, with the holly and the twinkling lights and the softly lit nativity scenes - they are only the opening notes that move my heart to remember why it was that Jesus came.

Grief marks my Christmas, but grief and sorrow marked my Savior and out of Him came new life and hope and He comes to redeem and make new.


So I can worship and praise and sing carols with tears on my face because He knows. And He came. And in the darkest night, Hope shines brightly...

Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called “the rejoicing of hope” (Hebrews 3:6).  William Gurnall

Adoring:

God Who is acquainted with grief, Who is acquainted with the very depths of me - I come before You in quiet adoration. Underneath the unsteady days of memories and hearts that are still broken, You hold firm and hold us fast. You are peace in the darkest of storms and the Hope that shines brightly to pierce the blackest night.

I praise and thank You for Your compassion, for not coming to us as unfeeling or too lofty, but for bending low in the dirt of us and for weeping over the wreckage of sin in us and for dying for us so our souls could be redeemed. You are so good, so amazing and this season, with all its joys and grief is itself redeemed when my eyes are fixed on the beauty of You.

When He Sees

November is breathing her last and I want to try and figure out how to prolong these dark autumn days just a little longer.

I don't know where these days have gone.


I prepare the candles for advent and our home for Christmas and their excitement is building, but I just want to be back at the beginning of the cooling-down days of Fall; to hold on to the burning fire of fading leaves for just a few more moments before each memory made swirls on the blowing wind of time ticking fast.


I look back on this year and it has been beautiful and hard and the newborn haze has quickly been replaced with pre-toddler motion and my hands feel so empty and full all at the same time.


And I have been Sarai, the one who dreams of a dream fulfilled and always the answer seems to be no, not yet. 

The waiting of it aches.

And I have been her, the woman who sees the potential in other places and demands that that is where it will be made right.

But it isn't.

It never is.

Only Jesus is Savior and anything else crumbles under the weight of rushed ambition.


I have been Hagar, not empty but desperate and wandering, searching and not sure where to go next in a place void of all answers.


I have been both.


The angel of the Lord? He found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.

Her flight was taking her in the direction of Egypt.

She was heading back home.


She was moving towards the familiar. Where else could she go?


It feels that way, sometimes. When what I have planned for falls through and when what I am doing hurts and feels awkward and heavy. Why not just throw it all off and go back to what I know, what feels familiar and right and doesn't require too much of a change?


Hagar was heading back home, but she was also staying near a spring of water. She was staying near a source of life.

And it was here that the angel of the Lord stopped her, he met her, he called her by name.


She wasn't forgotten in the promise of another. She may have been discarded by the ones over her, but she was still treasured by the One Who formed her. Their eyes may have looked away as she started over that dusty plain, but His Eyes never, never left her.


He told her to go back. Back to shame and humiliation and what would be hard. He asked her to walk that path back and to submit to a woman who would despise her.

But she would go back with a promise.

And she would go back knowing that God Himself saw her.


The years and the days may whirl by in a dizzying speed,

my heart may ache at all that is changing and moving and these hands may cup small ones close because tomorrow, they won't be so small.

But as the seasons change and calendar pages are flipped and as we enter into a season of Advent and Christmas, I can know,

  always,

God sees me.

I am known.

And the One Who Sees is the One Who Provides and He will cover my days until He welcomes me home.

I can trust this.

I can trust Him.


Adoring:

Father God, You have given this day and You gave all the ones before and You hold me in the questioning and You see me in my wandering; You cover me and You know all that tomorrow holds. Like Hagar, help me to know You as the One Who sees, and like Sarai, let me know You as the God Who sustains in the waiting.

And as November fades in the quiet and crazy of Christmas, let my heart burn with a deep love that is unfading for You in the long nights that find me waiting for Your arrival.

I love you, Jesus. You are so good.

For When She Wonders (Day 21)

Mama, what happens if someday, someone calls me ugly?

She asked me that just as I was tucking the sheets under her 6 year old chin.

We are all dust and we all crumble under the pain and hurt of the brokenness around us.


And the one thing she longs for is beauty.

She searches it out and is the first one to point out the beauty of nature around us. The first one of my children to compliment a stranger, no matter how crazy or outlandish an outfit. She seeks beauty in all things and she is tender enough still to actually find it.


But what happens if...?


Somewhere along the way, over days or weeks or mere seconds, the thought crossed through her mind that the one who seeks the beauty may never have the beauty sought out in her...

And she was crushed.


Dust crumbles under the weight of worry and expectation and just like the ground we will return to, when it is dry enough, it will all just blow away...


I hold her close and recite those words long ago memorized at a bible camp when a longing for home made the tears run down my face; when I was all awkward and gangly and thought these words were never meant for me,

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.  Psalm 139:13-14

God creates beauty and that means that you are beauty in motion. You are beautiful and there are only beautiful people. The only ugliness that we see are the ugly attitudes we allow...but when God created you all wonderful, He created true beauty.

She needs to know that He has His hand on her. That there is no where she can go that He won't find her...There is a God Who sees her. That when she is lost in a sea of loneliness or when the darkness of sin sweeps over her, she is never unseen by Him. He sees her and loves her and relentlessly pursues her.

Her covering of dust may make her feel ordinary, hidden, like nothing really special at all, but the One Who knit her together in my womb lifts her up and calls her beauty His own because He sees and He pursues and He gently lifts her up.


Then He turns to her mama, to me, and I see that He says this for my dusty and broken heart too...



Adoring:
God Who raises me from the dust, You use the fears of my daughter to speak into the fears of this heart and instead of ash blowing away, You cup this heart and pour Your love into a simple, fragile jar of clay.  You are the Lifter of my head and the Lover of this soul and eyes that are lifted and filled with You, see true Beauty and lives are transformed...

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 He is Gracious {Day 7}

Failure can settle in deep and I won't want to stand at my sink to see what the days Naming will be. Instead, I become tempted to wallow in that deep sea of self-pity and wrap myself in rags of defeat instead of a heart washed white as snow.

Until I look up and see that He is Gracious - a Gracious God full of mercy.

Until I look up to see my daughter crumble - her tears on her face and her head laid on her arms.

Until I look up to see the face of a friend who shows grace to the broken heart of my 7 year old and gives her a way to express her pain through art.

Until I climb those stairs in the old, creaky building and hear laughter coming out of the room closest to me.

Until I peek my head in and see her head thrown back in laughter with one who so willingly steps in as an older brother to my four.

He is Gracious and He delights to show mercy and so many days I forget. I forget that His grace is a gift and His mercy is tender and He wraps my days up in both - will I willingly open up my eyes to find them?

We carry home drawings and brownie crumbs and a sleeping baby curled up in my arms and we nestle in close at the close of the day and His Hand has never left us - His graciousness has kept us secure.

Adoring:
You wait to be Gracious and You exult to show Mercy and I am desperate for both. Tender Savior, Your eyes never leave Your children and in the dark of night or in the dark of sorrow or in the light of great joy, You wait for me to look to You, to trace Your movements throughout my days. Blessing is found when I still and wait for You, the riches of Your Grace most clearly seen when I sit with whatever You allow to come my way. Gracious God, You are so very good and Your Mercy calms my heart.

In the Suddenness of Loss {Day 5}

He is there in the corner of the small video Tony took of Elias learning to ride a bike while Geraldo held him steady.

He is sitting on his own bike grinning away at my son while Elias giggles loudly and forgets to keep his feet on the peddles.

He is sitting on his own bike and his smile doesn't give away the news that Tony waited to share with me once the little ones are sleeping and I'm curled up in my own chair.

And I hear the news and I'm frustrated that today of all days is the one where I'm sick and Zeruiah is wheezy and he sat there on his bike with that smile hiding big emotions and today was the last day that he and his 3 brothers and 1 sister would be at Madison House.

I can sit here in the dark and remind myself for the 100th time that this was what we were told - that this is a transient community and a child we would see today and for the next 30 days may one day not show up again. Sometimes ever, sometimes until the next season would come around.

So be prepared - I kept hearing this: Be prepared.

And you can prepare your mind and you can say the words over and over, but these are children and they are precious and they get under your skin and deep down into your heart and you lay awake at night praying over lives that you begin to love like your very own.

And I'm not ready to say goodbye.

I'm not ready to not have that chance and I think of the five of them and how they have played and loved and fought with my own four.

I'm not ready to not have at least one of them come quietly up beside me and just be, just to tell me about their day, just to play with Zeruiah.

I'm not ready to not see the smiles and to not hear the laughter and to not hear the jokes or the stories or the questions.

I'm not ready to not know if they are okay.

More than anything, I wish I could have said goodbye. I wish I could have reminded them how very loved they are by Jesus and by us; how amazing they are and that no matter what, God has a very specific plan for their lives.

Because you can see it - you really can. God's Hand is there and evident on lives of these kids and you can see it on these 5 as well. God sees them He knows them.

I may not be ready to let them go, but I can trust that He never will.

I have hope in the God of Hope.

I have hope that He hears and He holds the prayers that I pray for them. 

I have hope that His eyes will never leave them.

And I wonder if this is what hope does - not that it numbs and deadens the ache, but that it gives it a purpose.  That the ache and the hurt, when cupped by hope and filled with joy and peace in the believing - in the act of faith -  that it grows a soul more tender towards Christ. 

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. Romans 15:13

I don't want to become used to the transience. I don't want to become used to the goodbyes. I hope each one aches as much as the first so I can stand witness to His cupping of pain with hope and faith and trust - reminding my heart that keeps growing larger and larger to pray and to entrust each one into His faithful care.


Adoring:

You know that the words tonight are few but that the hope is desperate and tenacious. You see sparrows and know the number of hairs on each head and You see each child that comes and goes out those front doors. You know them. You love them. You aren't going to let them go. My helplessness can be be transformed into hope-full-ness and even in loss I can be filled with Your joy and peace.  Go before them. Go before us. Weave our days with hope in You.

He Hasn't Forgotten {Day 2}

I can easily forget, in the mama-ing to my four little ones, in the needing to be big, that I too am so very small.

As my youngest flashes her dimple at me and tucks her face away - as I hold her close to my chest, the calendar pages still turn and 10 months fly by and my heart aches with the passing and the aging and I am not big enough to slow them all down.

Time feels constricting and aloof in the same moment and somewhere in the middle I stand, caught in the ever-changing illusions of giant needs and the stepping away smallness that comes with the territory of motherhood.

I can forget my own fragility until they begin to take that step away.

Jesus, He says, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

Peter, his pen scratched out the words, Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.

And Isaiah, pointing always to the coming Messiah, he leans in to the people of God,

He will tend His flock like a shepherd

He will gather the lambs in His arms;

He will carry them in His bosom,

and gently lead those who are with young.

I drive home in the fading light and sometimes the weight of what we carry feels too much - as though my soul is threatening to give way and my heart is one quickened beat from shattering. I grip the steering wheel as though it is a lifeline and the I-can-handle-this that I have wrapped around me begins to unravel and the very guttural lowness of who I really am cries out for Him; For the One Who gently leads, Who lends His yoke, Who takes my anxiety because He cares. For me. For the ones He has made.

My days carry responsibilities, both big and small, but there is One Who is a Tender God Who takes note. I don't have to come before Him boasting that I can handle it all on my own. In His tenderness, He welcomes me, crawling, grasping, sin-stained and broken because He knows my frame. He knows I am but dust and His compassion gathers me close and a daughter finds rest in the presence of her Father.

 

Adoring:

As a father shows compassion to his children, so You show compassion to me - to those who fear You. For You know my frame, You have never forgotten that I am but dust. In Your holiness, You remain gentle to Your children and Your faithfulness becomes a safe harbor for Your weary daughter who forgets, at times, just how very small she is.  Thank You for your mercy and grace. For Your yoke that binds me to You, for Your arms that gather this mama-heart close and for Your invitation to take my anxieties from me - all because You love. All because You see and know of what I am made.  How can I not love You in return?

{November rolls around again and again, I place a singular focus on the 30 days of this month. Seems kind of silly to choose Adoration, since I had decided to try to Adore Jesus here for the next year. But Adoration can feel unexpectedly awkward and that awkwardness can cause a pulling back. So really, this month is to relight that fire I first felt back in the heat of summer and as the coolness of fall settles in, as the days grow darker, I want to refocus my heart back on this discipline. In a way, this is a restarting and a settling back in on a journey to know Him more...)

When You Keep Looking

The muddled middle and the dusty ground scattered with leaves - have your eyes been caught there?


It's the last evening of October and our pumpkins are glowing out on the front step, the doorbell rung over and over, even after we ran out of candy. I am piled high with little ones while I read of Caspian and Lucy and Edmund. Eustace no longer whining and Reepicheep so brave. The Dawn Treader turned towards the End of the World before I closed those pages for goodnight kisses and I can hear the neighbours calling for their little girls to come inside.

The comfort of home settles in and everything that happens outside of these walls, as heavy and weight-filled as they are, lose their grip when we all come close together and the skin of those four that formed underneath my own and the hand of that man who promised his life to mine, we all press in close and for the few hours we have before we face another day, we are sure. We are safe. We are comforted.

The dark can press in close, but my eyes, they drift to find the light of home and I am anchored here to the ones I love most.


Morning can come bright and glaringly early - can shine a light on all that is uncertain and unsettled and all that is unknown can rudely invade to remind that control is but an illusion and humanity is really just fragments of fragile dust.

And the eyes drag down.


A friend, she posted all tongue-in-cheek about the weather here - how fall comes blowing in with the sun. Winter freezes white while the sun shines on. Spring and summer are rarely without the brightness of the sun and although the days are rare, my rain-loving self can't help but look for any evidence of heavy clouds building.

I keep lifting my eyes to find them pregnant with rain.


And my soul keeps longing for the One Coming on the Clouds.

James, he wrote those words while the Church was still so young, when the Voice of his half-Brother was still so fresh in his mind. When wearing the mantle of Christian was a risk and a gamble and life became uncertain. When death and persecution was a very real reality, he wrote to the dispersed Church around him:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds...

James 1:2

Don’t get over them. Don’t rush through them or past them. Rejoice –> IN <– them.

James tells us not to be too hasty to escape the faith-testing valleys, because it is those valleys which contain the fertile soil needed to produce steadfastness. And steadfastness – being immovable, unable to be shaken, deeply rooted  - is perhaps the true “wellness” we should be seeking. “Lacking in nothing,” as James says.... whenever you find yourself in a place of trial: do not minimize it or rush through it. And most of all, do not waste it! Instead, do it well.Let it have its full effect. This – as backwards as it may feel – THIS is the time to thank The Lord. This is a time to rejoice! Not because bad things happen. Not because this poor, fallen world is full of death and injustice and sorrow. Rejoice because the sovereign Lord calls you His own, and He loves you enough to descend with you into the dark-yet-mysteriously-fertile valleys (where even Christ Himself descended), to produce in you a steadfastness which cannot be shaken.   (#shereadstruth)

Autumn is settling in and air warmed by our lungs puffs out in frosty steam. The trees burn with the last of the season's passion and what is walked through in the valley, what is wrestled with in the quiet dark, what is held tenderly in opened hands is all meant to keep lifting these downcast eyes of mine, to remind an overwhelmed heart that those clouds I long for will one day hold The One Who will make all things right.


He is coming.

There is hope.


Just keep looking up.

Adoring:
The clouds sat on the edges of those mountains as I headed home into the glare of the setting sun and I thought of You and the moment when those clouds will hold You once again. Thoughts can rage wild at all the unknowns and the questions and my heart can become so troubled with what only my eyes can see. But You, the One Who is outside of all time and the One Who has all of time written and mapped out, You place those clouds on the edges of the mountains so that I will lift up my eyes and be reminded - You may not be coming in all of Your glory just yet, but I can lift my eyes up to the mountains and know where my Help comes from. My help come from You, Maker of heaven and earth and my soul can rest in Your sovereignty and hope for Your coming and rejoice in You in all of the ache of the in between spaces.

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...

Daily Adoring: God Who Knew Me Before I Knew Him

She's burning up with a fever tonight - cheeks flushed because that front tooth is coming in and my skin aches with the heat of her.

That first flutter of her, before I ever saw her face, before I ever felt her breath on my skin, before I ever discovered that dimple below her lower lip - God knew her; right there, underneath my heart, in the dark of me, He was forming her, knitting her together. Her heart started to beat because He called her into existence and before I ever knew her, He did.

And not just her, not just the four that surround me and the one already in His presence, He knew me in the same way. Before I ever breathed earth's air He was forming my lungs and He knew me intimately. Before I ever knew of my need for Him, He was already in pursuit.


I think of those quiet thoughts, those flutterings of dreams and what could be? The wondering of what is changing and growing inside of me, what He is birthing out of the dark of me...How He is forming beauty out of the ashes of my sin and I don't see it fully quite yet.

Dreams that are still prenatal, still being knit together and hidden below the heartbeat of who He created me to be.  I am expanding with the unknown while He knows the outcome intimately.

I don't have to be carried by the waves of restlessness, turning green over the constant tossing of contentment and fear. The One Who calms the waters and the emotions cups the timing of the birth in His Hands.

He is God and the One Who touched stars and held the sun and hovered over the empty void and made everything out of nothing - He makes something out of the nothingness of me. Why? Why would the Holy come near to the unworthy and the unholy? Because of love. Because of grace. Because I needed a Rescuer and before I even knew what He had done, He had already rescued.

He knew me before I ever was, He knows each dream that is still fluttering new and hidden. Each space is sacred that He invites me into and I enter into Holy ground because He is there. And adoration becomes more than just words prayed back to Him - it becomes the song that winds through my days, drawing my heart closer to His - closer to the One Who formed me in the dark.

For You formed my inward parts, 

You knitted me together in my mother's womb.

Psalm 139:13