For the Golden Edges

Maybe it was the late arriving curriculum that put that pit right there in the center of my stomach.

I don't know.

All I know is that somehow, over the summer, my oldest daughter is now only 10 1/2 inches shorter than my 5'11".

She is all smiles about this,

but me?


Her small, downy head used to fit in the palm of my hand while her toes curled into the crook of my elbow. That's all I needed - one arm to support all 9 pounds of her and when did she unfurl into all arms and legs and emotions?  There are times when it feels like the whole of me can't be enough.

The pictures are all over Facebook and Instagram, those "first day of school" pictures with rosy cheeks and nervous smiles and brand new clothes and backpacks with zippers that are working. Even the homeschoolers join in the fun.

Only this year, I sat there shocked.

When did all of these children hit middle school? And high school? Even the sweet babies are now in kindergarten.

I'm on my porch in the early morning light this past Tuesday, putting food in the dog dish and I hear my name being called. Sleepy smiles greet me as they walk to middle school and these faces on the other side of the fence used to be so much younger. They used to be small.

When we started at Madison House just over 4 years ago this past August, the ones who spend their days in High School were the same ages as Lyla and Olivia are now.

4 years.

I'm sure I only blinked.

I used to inwardly groan when I heard the saying,

Enjoy it. It goes by so fast.

Only, a full decade plus of diapers feels slow moving in the middle of it, until the littlest one finally decides that she's a big girl who will do big girl things and while the Costco bill seems a bit lighter, I felt a certain wonder when I looked at Tony Saturday night and marveled: we bought diapers for 10 years and now we're done.

Done.

How did a decade go by that fast?


The leaves are beginning to turn golden around the edges and I find myself beginning to understand.

There is an ache in this mothering that I didn't even think of in those days of dreaming of these days before life ever lit up the dark spaces within me.

I'm sure I still don't understand it, and maybe I never will, but it's those leaves that Jesus is using to turn my eyes on to Him.

The years are growing shorter, no matter how much I long for it all to slow, but in the midst of vibrant life, it's the glowing, golden edges whispering of one season moving on to the next that is causing a tendering within me:

Let's not rush around the table,

let's linger over spelling lists and math problems and science experiments.

Let's read one more chapter in our read aloud because all of us snuggled together on the couch has us asking questions and imagining the sights and sounds of a time long passed.

Where there are struggles, let's slow and breathe and ask one another how we can give God glory right here in this moment where we want to give up, and then laugh, because the sound of someone blowing their nose really and truly is funny.

My little notebook has stayed closer than ever this past week. September comes and Fall's air already feels so different.

I don't want to miss the wonder of them, or this life that God has so graciously given to us.

I want to remember these days when only 10 1/2 inches separated my oldest girl and me.

31. Psalm 107
32. His Hope that lifts my eyes
33. Acts 14:22 ~ What my words should do
34. Slow dancing in the kitchen with Zee
35. The last of the farm fresh eggs
36. Clouds that whisper of Fall
37. 5:45am
38. Rain that fell through the night
39. A boy and his dog all curled up in sleep
40. Quiet hush before everyone wakes
41. Psalm 106
42. Isaiah 40:11
43. Apple muffins baking.

So teach us to number our days that

we may get a heart of wisdom. 

Psalm 90:12

Sunday's Sabbath {List One}

The light is shifting,

do you notice?

September begins to unfurl her colors and I just want to sit and whisper,

Welcome.

September makes me long for a slowing, even though I know acutely that with school beginning in just 2 short days the feeling to urge a rushing of small hearts will be strong and I will wrestle.

Again.


August holds days of heat and a rhythm that follows the tune of the unstructured.

It was lovely and good and needed.

And in the wild and lazy chaos of days to just be - to just paint, to just nap, to just do nothing at all, I felt the stirring of a desire for Sabbath.


Growing up, Sundays were for church and for napping and I hated the forced rest. When I fell in love with reading, I would sneak a book under my pillow and reach my fingers around those covers after the sounds of sleep filled the hallways and I would read until my eyes couldn't stay open anymore.


I'm still processing what Sabbath is to look like now as an adult with a choice, but I thought, no matter how silly it might be to put here, that Sundays could maybe be a day to slip a listing of books on screen of what I'm reading, so maybe you too might be able to still for a time - find a time of rest on this day that God has given as a gift.

Monday's Thankful List will be moved to Wednesday, because by Wednesday, my heart needs a reminder that there is joy in the very middle of the mundane and ordinary and that if I'm at the middle of the week, there is hope -Rest is coming.


It's rare for me to only read one book at a time - I tend to have 4 or 5 books going at once. I don't know if this is due to the digital age where attention span is short, or if it is the security blanket of the introverted. Regardless, I have a bag that is sagging and worn and within it's ripping seams sits a pile that weighs gloriously heavy on my shoulder.

So, without further ado, here is Sunday's Sabbath {List One}

How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare, by Ken Ludwig.
This is a book I have been wanting to read for awhile, especially as our focus in both History and English will have some Shakespearean flair this year. I'm barely a third of the way in, but I am already encouraged and greatly inspired, and John Lithgow's intro alone had me convinced that this was a *very* good choice.

Vinegar Girl, by Anne Tyler

I don't read much fiction, but when one comes highly recommended, I place it on the holds list at the library and wait impatiently to finally get the text that it is in. I really just started it this afternoon and found the first page to be perfectly charming. And the fact that it's a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew makes me feel like my ordering of the title above this one is a very happy one indeed.

Disciplines of a Godly Woman, by Barbara Hughes

I have been reading through this book slowly - I think I ordered it in May and just now only have 1 or 2 chapters to go. This is an older book, written in 2001, or 2003 and so her thoughts on the future of the church are both alarming and encouraging. I read somewhere once, that when mentors are few to find them in the pages of a book, and this is what Mrs. Hughes has been to me, a mentor of sorts who continually points my eyes and heart onto the glory and holiness of God. I highly, *highly* recommend this book.

Moments and Days, by Michelle Van Loon
I have always loved the beauty and sacredness of liturgy and the Church Calendar but feel lost in how to observe this rich heritage passed on through the millennia in the context of our North American churches that no longer observe the days that have marked our faith. This book arrived on the porch on Friday and so I haven't really had a chance to get to far into it, but Mrs. Van Loon begins by going through the Jewish Holy Days and how they have laid the foundation for the Church. She includes this quote by Pastor Tom Olson, "Learning to number our days means recognizing the unnumbered days of God".  I know already I will love this book.

ESV Single Column Journaling Bible, Crossway

I'll just say right here that this will be featured every week. For almost 2 years now I've been following the #365daysoftruth through the She Reads Truth App and I have (to be horribly cliche) fallen completely in love with God's Word. I have no other way to put it. I feel it deeply when I miss a day, not out of legalism, but because I haven't stilled my heart before Jesus. These holy words alone are foundational to everything else.

Honorable Mention:

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, by Rosaria Butterfield

There are some books that Tony and I will read to each other in the evenings once the kids are in bed and quiet is finally descending around us. This book was the latest and it was life changing for me. Everyone should read this book, no matter your views on a subject that needs to be discussed and viewed in the Light of God's Word and covered with the tenderness of His Grace and Mercy. Her second book came out this year and it should be landing on our porch later this month. I. Can. Hardly. Wait.

{None of the links listed above are affiliate links - it's just a fun sharing of what is in my book bag.} 

Going Back to What I Know

I sat down this evening to finalize lesson plans and curriculum choices and organize them all neatly and send them in.

That was the plan, but there are so many choices.

Last year we stepped back from practically everything and just focused on rebuilding small hearts, and it was a good thing and a needed thing and in the praying over this coming year, I'm sensing that we are to begin to open up again. Slowly, yes, but with intention and grace.

Ah, grace. The word I have wrestled with so much this year.

August comes and the heat lessens and I look ahead to a school year with a knowing of all the hard work that comes with it. The temptation to rush, when small ones need to slow and absorb. The temptation to be lax, when self-discipline needs to be exercised.

This life we have been called to is one that I love, one that I'm still learning to navigate all the tensions of, one that I'm still learning to turn over to Jesus completely.

In the quiet of my Bible reading each day, there has been one phrase that has been jumping out at me over and over again to the point that I finally took note of it and realized it's what I've let go of in the rush of living.

It seemed almost cliche, you know? It all began for me in the late fall of 2010 in the middle of upheaval and deep sadness. I came across this blog and I grabbed hold onto her idea of writing down 1000 gifts. And I did it. And then I slowly stopped after the popularity started to fizzle and it seemed silly to continue when even the posts on her page slowly ended and disappeared.

I just stopped giving thanks.

And as I look back over the last 2 or 3 years, I can see a hardening in my heart - a sort of callous that I've allowed to form to protect myself from a life in ministry. 

But the truth is, giving thanks isn't a movement or a novel idea or something reserved for certain holidays and seasons.

Paul exhorts us, in the middle of his darkest moments while chained in the darkness of a prison to,

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, 

kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving

each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above

all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And 

let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one

body. And be thankful.  Colossians 3:12-15

Giving thanks is to happen in all things. Why? I'm sure there are many reasons, but the one that seems to be resonating with my heart most deeply is it's a way to remind my heart that God is faithful and good and sovereign when everything else around me feels shaky and uncertain.

Protecting my heart only hardens me and makes the situations around me more difficult. But pausing and choosing to see the goodness of God, even in the darkest moment, it keeps my heart open and it makes my faith in Jesus stronger.

So, I start again. Every Monday I'll sneak back here and add to the growing list with no goal, no end number in sight. I'll just keep building a foundation to remind my heart in the trustworthiness of the One Who created me and placed us here.

1. That sunflower *almost* ready to bloom

2. The lavender beginning to blossom

3. Those tomatoes on the vine

4. The smell of bacon frying on the stove

5. The way Lyla chooses to watch Anne of Green Gables over and over

6. Visits on the porch with the dearest of friends

7. Summer sun and finally, almost, beginning to love it

8. Hint of Fall in the air

9. Those 2 books wrapped in ribbon handed to me at church

10. The sister who holds me accountable

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...

For When Everything Changes

It keeps spinning, regardless of our circumstances. I know the truth of this. But there is a small part of me that wonders at times if there is a slight stuttering in the moments that matter, that form and change us...those moments that move us from one direction to another.

I guess the world would stop turning all together with all our many moments that bear the weight of change and notice, so I know it must keep orbit, held in the hand of the One who formed it. The weight of these moments instead lay deep in the heart, where He alone sees us most clearly.

It flashes in time with the blue and red lights filling the street just down from our house in the middle days of July, in the aftermath of bullets that fly from that rolled down window and enter the house just across the street from our front door. As officers tape off the road to block traffic and my phone rings with the number of a visiting dear friend. While she wraps her arms around me and calls out to Jesus for help as tears run down my face from not knowing if it was the house of one of our kids...from not knowing if someone we loved was hit.

In this circle of prayer, as we call out to the One who is Peace Himself, I find my footing in the anchor of His Name.

He hears us in the middle of chaos.


We leave for the unhurried craziness of camp in the hot heat of July. We leave the confines of wifi and cell service for the freedom of play and we find rest there, even as physical exhaustion sets in.

The second week that finds us in the height of trees and the cool of mountains, while the full moon was rising high and the field was full of the night game and teens, I slipped out of the lodge to walk in the fresh air. I wasn't expecting to hear the guttural scream or feel the tension of the next moments before the rushing and the call for 911. I see Tony's face and I know it's bad. Arms reach out for Zeruiah and I run with him in the dark on a dirt road so that we can direct the ambulances and emergency vehicles. I reach the field as it begins to fill with swirling lights circling around one of the most dear women I have come to know. This woman who retired just one week before coming to counsel a cabin full of teen girls and point them to Jesus was now laying on the ground with a leg twisted in all the wrong ways and there are times that tears are the only answer to the moments that don't make sense.

And as everything is tilting from the weight of pain and confusion, as her broken body is lifted up in pain onto a stretcher, the rest of us lean into the presence of each other as we hold the hands of the ones beside us and lift our voices up in prayer.

In this tender place, as we call on His Name, we find Him and He sets our feet on the truth of His presence. And He is there as the moon climbs higher and the smallness of us is deeply known.


It's here on this night, this night filled with so much brokenness and confusion, that a girl who knocks on my door back home and draws maps of imaginary places for my girls, who smiles shyly when I point out her creativity...it's on this night that she hears the beauty of Jesus and how He makes the broken beautiful and she says yes and makes the decision to give her life to Him alone. She gives Jesus her yes in the hours before her counselor gets rushed to the hospital and we could see how God uses all things, good and bad, for His glory.

For whatever reason, I think of the story of the Good Samaritan and the brokenness he embraced. How Jesus used the unlikely to open our eyes to the beauty of mercy and calls us to a life that comes near to the hurting and tender places in another.

That's the key, I think. We may be afraid and uncertain, trying to feel our way through the dark and unseen, unsure of how it is all supposed to look. We can choose to stay back from what we don't understand, feel ill-equipped to handle, or even of what we are afraid of. We could, and it would be understandable. But Jesus pointed out the beauty of the most unlikely to a lawyer who looked the most likely in order to reach his heart.  The Samaritan, who was considered "Bad" by the ones who hated him most, came the closest to the wounds of  the broken in front of him. He didn't just come close, he gave of his time, his comfort, his resources - he gave of what he had and God called him "good".

Tony and I sit in the aftermath of these weeks at camp in our coffee shop chairs that still smell of caffeine and pastries and we ask the hard questions of each other that we had been praying over and seeking direction for to find that sometimes the greatest gain in our lives means the giving up of what feels safe and familiar. Realizing the small ways that I've been relying on things or "this is the way we have always done it" rather than on the faithfulness of Jesus.

I've been afraid to go smaller and simpler, afraid of what it would mean for our family and schooling and ministry. But if I look at the model of what Jesus put forward, I see a man who let go of what he had in order to add to the care and benefit of another.

The hearts of my children matter no less, the beauty of our family demands that Jesus and what He is asking come first. Letting go of the known for a season opens our hands to receive the gift of the unknown, trusting that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights. Letting go of the much allows us to give even more to the ones that He brings into our lives - we give from a place of trust and find that the stuttering moments have only just changed the orbit of our lives. Where we once focused on what was we now find our lives lined up next to the I AM and there is rest here.


Only half of the moon showed her face last night, she orbits and her face shows less then it did in the dark of a field surrounded by towering trees just one short week ago, but I'm not afraid of seeing the smaller picture anymore because I know that we are all seen by the One who spoke our days into existence and we are safe here, for we are always under the watchful eye of our good God.

  

Daily Adoring: God Who Lives in Me.

There are some days when the loudness and the friction between personalities in this house make me want to run for those hills that surround us and try and hide somewhere on  the other side.

It's those days that find me sitting before our school day begins with my Bible open to Ephesians 4 and desperately praying that they hear the truth of verse 32...

and while those very words are leaving my mouth, 

they are already back to bickering and fighting.

Hiding under the table is acceptable for a mama to do, right?

Zeruiah burns hot with a fever and Elias decides his school book needs a bath and Olivia sneaks that picture book onto her lap and Lyla alerts me to the fact and I tell you, I could just lose my mind and I really don't think they would even notice.

And we are half way through our school work when I stop it all and just look at them as I pull out a story book I had been saving for just the right moment when work was all done and they were playing all quietly. But it just wasn't going to happen so I might as well make the moment right and instead of drilling the 18th subtraction problem that she already understood, we piled on top of each other in that Starbucks chair that still smells like coffee and I begin to read of the Gnome from Nome.

And that's all we needed.  All we needed to begin again.

I read this morning of the Jesus who welcomed small children despite the disciples protests, of the Man who gathered them close regularly to bless them. I thought of their mamas who brought them near to the One Who delighted in the small ones He had thought of before they ever were.

This same Jesus - His Spirit lives in me and it fills me with His love and His joy for the children He's given. And so when I'm weary and I'm ready to run away and hide-away, He reminds me - He is here with me and through my loving, they will, I pray, come to know His Love is true.

So when the moments are hard and when I feel like I'm fighting against a current that is dragging me down, that's dragging us all down, I take a page from the notes of Charles Spurgeon,

I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.

~~

When the day becomes stormy and I feel like I have nothing left to give, no energy to do the next thing needed, let me remember, Lord Jesus, that You are in me. That my soul is now Your home - that my body is Your Temple and You, Who took on dusty skin for 33 years, has made the deepest places in me holy.

You live in me and Your Life is now my own and You ask me to die so that I can find Life and it's in the dying that I really do begin to live.

You are holy and good and Your love transforms - let it transform these lives within our four walls as we learn to love like You.

Amen.

Being a Village

It was in the middle of her sitting in front of the book with that paragraph full of sentences and that one little word.

It was at that moment that she decided that it was time to exercise that strong will and claim that she had never seen it before, nor would she ever know what it said.

We sat there, her will meeting mine and after a round or 15 of trying to find a middle ground I gave her the only option she had - to come get me when she had sounded out the word. I picked up the cranky, sleepy baby, slipped her into the ergo and closed the library door and began to pace the hallway with those old plank floors...

Each foot step, each lap, each creak escaping below my feet held a prayer for help. For guidance.


And then, unexpectedly, from my right came the question,

"Can I be your village?"

A little girl fell yesterday, riding circles with her bike and somehow in whatever way, the tires slipped out beneath her. I was coming down the stairs as she was being led up and that sweet little face - trying so hard to be brave.

Trying so hard not to cry.

Maybe that is what breaks my heart the most - the bravery that is worn by the very youngest of them all.

I got her into the kitchen, Zeruiah was distracted, and I found the band-aids and the peroxide to help clean up the bloody wound and even when it hurt and the one tear rolled down, she never. cried. once.


By the end I had her giggling and soon her eyes were clear and the smile was back on and I've only met her mama through smiles exchanged in the picking up of her children, but in the small and simple ways of cleaning up scrapes and asking about school I'm being part of a village needed.


You are needed.

You. are. needed.


Wherever you are, you are needed.

And those needed places will probably call you outside any comfort zone you may want to hide behind.

That first step is always the hardest - because sometimes the places you go may seem to be the hardest, may not always seem to be the safest, and in our North American culture, building a life of safety and comfort is the highest end goal.

But for those who love Jesus,

as those who have made the decision to follow Him and to love Him and to give the rest of our lives to Him, that also means to follow Him to the dark places, to love Him through loving those who may resist at first, and to give our lives to Him - whatever that means.  

It means giving up comfort, letting go of safety and letting Him be glorified through your emptied out life.


It is not an easy life we are called to. The comfort we build here will vanish like the mist that we are.

We are called to be radical and to be different and to give of ourselves the way that Jesus gave all for us.


You are needed to be a mama's voice when a mama can't be there.

You are called to be a daddy's voice of wisdom when a father has chosen to walk away.

You are called to be a sister, a brother, a friend, an ear to the ones across the tracks or the ones across the street who are broken and hurting and in desperate need for the Light to give hope in the dark.


You are needed.

You are needed to be a living sacrifice - to offer your whole self to Jesus and to go where He leads - and where He leads may be to the very heart of a child who needs to see Christ's love for them in your actions and words; and by offering up your life, you may be a saving grace in their own.


Wherever you are, you are needed.

Wherever you are, He can use you.