Waiting pretty

“The waiting is the hardest part.

Every day you see one more card.

You take it on faith, you take it to heart.

The waiting is the hardest part.”

-Tom Petty, “The Waiting”

Waiting. I have been waiting for almost year now, and even worse, the world has joined me in waiting for the past three months. It’s been a long, tiring process. And why? In some instances, I know what I am waiting for, in others, I’m not even sure – just some kind of resolution, I guess.

Unfortunately, I haven’t waited well – it hasn’t been very pretty. I have wavered between anger and anxiety, trust and doubt. I have waited ugly. But now I know that there is a difference.

Many days during this past year, I have gotten up with a feeling in the pit of my stomach. A feeling of dread, of waiting for the other shoe to fall. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I just expected it to be bad. And many days, we did get bad news – another set back in building, being told to wait longer for a piece of the puzzle to fall into place, more indecision, or even life in a world that I didn’t know anymore.

I can look back at every one of those days, though, and know that something good happened. It could have been my kids, still hurting and displaced, laughing together in their loft bedroom. It could have been the sun shining the right way on the pine needles, making them shimmer. It could have been the way the woods smell as I walked through them. Every day, every minute, there was good, there was God, in the process of redeeming things. Over this year, I have learned how to see, how to embrace, these little pieces of joy in the midst of the hard.

To trust someone to run my life is a difficult thing for me to do, but in this waiting, my supposed control has been revealed for the thing it is – a fiction. Waiting is a continual uncurling of my grasp on my plans, my answers, my way to do things, my control of life. And that is scary, uncomfortable, and not something I ever wanted to do. But, in the absence of control, in this year of waiting, I have leaned into trust. I know there is a place, a person, where I can find a refuge and strength, and I know that He has good plans for me. I may have to remind myself over and over, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

For me, for the world, the waiting isn’t over. We’re still waiting for resolution, for answers, for something. I guess we’ll always be waiting for something. But, I hope that as the answers unfold, as the cards are revealed, that I can see the joy, even in the waiting. I hope that I can trust as I seek resolution. I hope that at the end of the waiting, it has become pretty.

Breathing in Grace

I walk through this world hard, ready to defend against it. I don’t mean physically. It’s really an emotional thing. I am ready to fend off anything that might hurt me. Some of that is just my natural makeup. Some of that is because of this last frustrating, hard, difficult year. My inclination is to fervently protect myself from more hurt.

As I have retreated more and more into that defensive stance, I have forgotten to give myself much grace, and I probably don’t offer it to anyone else the way that I should. Sometimes, grace feels scary. I can’t control grace. When I am living in and giving grace, I can’t be hard against this world. I have to connect with it, but world is full of things I don’t want – things I don’t want to see, things I don’t want to know, things I don’t want to happen.

Even though grace sometimes feels impossible to me, I do have an example of what it looks like. Jesus walked through this hard hard world, giving grace to those around him, even in the midst of watching most of them turn against him. Although I often feel that the world is turning against me, it isn’t. I know that, yet I still struggle to walk in grace, to walk in ease, to connect to the hard things and breathe the grace of Jesus into them. Jesus lived and breathed grace everywhere he went – and that breath, maybe that is the key.

As I was working out the other day, I was thinking about breathing. Even as I was working hard, straining my muscles, I had to breathe. Each time I took a breath, I softened, and in that softening, found the combination of ease and strength that I needed to continue to work hard. If I kept my muscles tight all the time, it actually hindered my workout. When I took a breath and softened, I was able to work harder and accomplish more. When I allowed some “grace” for my muscles, I got more out of the workout.

Every time I take a breath, it’s because God has given me grace – the grace to still be alive and living in his amazing creation. In essence, I am breathing in God’s grace all day long. And when I breathe in that grace, and actually think about it as I do it, I feel the softening. I feel steeped in God’s grace. I start to connect to the world. I enjoy the life I am blessed with. I feel an ease. I am more graceful to my family, my friends, and most of all, myself.

Grace is all around me. I just need to breathe it in.

Stuffed Animals

We were all in the car on the ride home from the beach. In our one week away, the world we knew changed in drastic ways. We were driving into a big unknown.

Uncertainty is a place that I have lived since June, but due to events in our lives recently and all of this going on in the world around us, I was feeling extra raw on our drive into a new, and kind of scary, world.

The kids were in the back seat, watching a movie on the fancy DVD player in our new (to us) minivan. I knew they weren’t paying any attention to us. That means uninterrupted conversation for the farmer and I. The topic of conversation was, of course, this new life that we were driving in to. The tears that had been hovering all day in the background finally started seeping out, and I couldn’t stop them anymore.

As I am trying to wipe my face and carry on our conversation, a stuffed animal is gently thrown into my lap. I look down and see that my boy has decided that I need comforting and has done that the best way that he knows how – by giving me his precious stuffy to snuggle.

My first thought is, “I wish that stuffed animals still worked the way they did when I was a kid. I wish this made it all better.” When I grabbed my stuffy and hugged it tight as a little girl, I knew things would be okay. Everything just felt less hard. I yearn for that feeling again. I really wanted my boy’s stuffy to make the issues surrounding us less scary. I want to feel like everything is alright.

Then, it hit me. I realized that even though this stuffy can’t take away my fear and offer the same comfort it did when I was a kid, I could still find solace in it. This stuffy, now, reassures me that I have a family that loves me – that I am blessed beyond belief by my people. I have kids that are empathetic. It reminds me that there are good things here, in this world. It shows me that hope is not lost. So, I hug that stuffy a little tighter, and we drive into the unknown together.

Wandering Soul

My soul has been wandering, still is wandering. This summer, we lost our house to fire, but it wasn’t just our house. All the things that we carried through life were in that house – photos, family heirlooms, baby books. It was hard – so hard – to lose all of that. That shell held a lot of things, if just in our minds and hearts.

After the fire, I saw the hands and feet of God in so many beautiful people reaching out to meet our needs. There are no words to describe the love that we experienced. I knew that God was with us – in this messy, nasty place that I never wanted to be, we were not alone. We had a place to sleep, clothes on our backs, and food to eat,  and none of it by our own doing.

But even after all of that – that outpouring of God’s blessing on my family – in the weeks and months that followed, I increasingly lost my way. The blessings were harder to see the farther out we got. The grief and pain slowly made their presence more and more apparent. Instead of getting better, getting easier, things seemed to be getting harder. I lost my mooring, somehow, and began to wander around in that grief. And I began to feel alone – oh, so alone.

I went inside – inside my head, inside my heart – and I didn’t want to come out. I wanted to be kind of self-sufficient with my feelings, handling everything all by myself. I was in this place of stagnation and I didn’t want anyone there with me. I just wanted to be. But I was miserable.

Then Christmas came – my favorite time of year, but it wasn’t. I didn’t want do any Christmas. Nothing could reach me in my little cocoon. At first, I tried to feel something, to maintain all those Christmas traditions – but then I just gave up. And, I confess, I was glad when it was over.

2020 dawned, but I didn’t greet it with optimism. I wasn’t convinced that it would be any better than last year. I went to church, and as usual in my current state, felt nothing. It was so frustrating to sit there and still feel so far from God. The sermon that first Sunday of 2020 was about prayer, with a twist. It was about the prayer of thankfulness and how that is a struggle of faith sometimes – especially when things are bad.

As I sat there, listening, I felt the wall around my heart – the one I built with the bricks of grumbling and unbelief in God’s love – crumble. I realized that God wasn’t there because I had shut Him out. I hadn’t invited Him into my dark places of faithlessness and struggle. So I just asked – I asked God to come in, to be in this valley with me, and I was thankful that He was there. I know he had been there the whole time, but I had been acting as if He wasn’t.

And in that moment, it all changed. Nothing in my outside world had changed – I still had a displaced family, I still didn’t see a clear path forward – but I knew that I wasn’t in this desert by myself. And that gave me the comfort and peace that I needed to keep on walking this out.

I told everyone right after the fire that I understood what the old poem “Footprints” meant now – that God really does carry you when you can’t walk, because for a while there, I couldn’t put one foot in front of another. But now I know that even when you are barely walking, all bruised and tired and beat up, and need someone to put their arm around you to help you keep going, God shows up for that too.

So now, when my soul tries to wander, I remember that it isn’t wandering alone, and somehow, that feels like home.

 

Courage, dear heart

I have never thought of myself as courageous. My normal setting is to do what I have to do simply because it’s what I have to do. There is no courage in that. I don’t pay attention to how I feel, or what I think, or even if whatever I’m doing is how I really want to spend my time. It just has to be done, so I do it.

This past year, though, my default hasn’t been working for me. With some health issues – different issues at different times – my physical body has begun to revolt. It refuses to be ignored. These warnings came and I didn’t pay attention. But I payed for my lack of attention. And out of that, my word of the year came – present, as in being present, really paying attention to what I need and how I feel this minute, this hour, this day.

I have been sitting with my word since January, not really knowing how to be present in my everyday. Because I just do what needs doing, I am always trying to figure out that next thing in my head. I live constantly in some time that is coming, just going through the motions of now.

As I was working through my online yoga practice yesterday, the instructor talked about how it takes courage to move slowly through the poses – you can move fast and get there, or you can move slow and really rely on your balance and muscles to take you to the next shape gracefully. I have been doing yoga for close to 20 years now, and I, as per my normal speed, move from pose to pose without thinking about the process. I just have to get through to the next thing.

But I tried it. Moving with attention and grace was eye opening for me. Through the slowing down, I found I could focus on being present – I didn’t have to worry about the next thing. I could just be where I was. Maybe I could work this into my life somehow.

Later in the afternoon, I got the opportunity to try. (Isn’t it funny how God works?) We heard some hard news – not devastating, but frustrating – that made me fall into questioning whether God really cares about my little prayers (which is it’s own blog post in itself). It put me into the spin – into worrying and planning for a future months down the road. I jumped into figuring out what to do next so that I could just do it and move on.

As I took a walk around the farm to clear my head, God spoke to me in the way he does – not audibly, but in a way I just know. He reminded me of my time on the yoga mat that morning. He called me to have the courage to just be present in this day, this opportunity. To move slowly through this because He has given me all I need today. And He will do that tomorrow too – I don’t have to worry about that next thing, that next step. I’ll have everything I need there too. He will provide it. I just have to be here in the present. Noticing what He provides today. Courageously being present today.

 

31 Days: Rest

Those sunny fall days. I couldn’t help it. I had to skip class, get out of the dorm room, leave the library. Find a place to lay out a blanket, and just lay down. All I wanted to do was to breathe in the sweet smell of autumn, watch the clouds float along in the cerulean sky, and just be. Pure, sweet rest. No thoughts in my head, no worries to drag me down, just peaceful being.

It’s not that easy to get away now. I have more responsibilities, I have more interruptions, I have more to juggle. But sometimes I still catch a glance of those clouds floating along lazily in the blue autumn sky, and I take a deep breath, and I have a moment of rest in the busy tide of my life.

31 Days: Refine

The little ballerinas were all chatty, getting ready for their teacher to call them to attention. It was observation day, the day when parents get to sneak in and see what their pink-clad girls have been doing for the past 12 weeks. They are called to the barre, they line up and stand in first position, and the teacher begins their exercises.

“A little bit more turned out with that left foot,” she says to one student. “Be sure to keep those knees straight when you move in from tendu.” The correction given to each student is minor, but it makes a great difference in the final outcome of a dance. Now, in their first level of ballet, they are refining their movements – working on the little things to make the whole better. Getting the foundation right so that what’s built upon it will stand strong.

31 Days: Follow

They are riding their bikes. I am following behind. I hear their laughter. They race each other, weave bikes between one another. When someone’s training wheels get stuck in a rut, another of them is there to help out. When someone gets tired, another one cheers them on.

This is what it means to be siblings. This love, this care, this laughter, this fun. They are a herd, a group. No matter if they fight all day long, we eventually come to this – having fun, loving each other, playing together. It may not be like this always, but right now, they are best friends, and I treasure that. And as I follow, it warms my heart.

31 Days: Connect

Inspiration. I have been reading a book by one of my favorite mama authors, and she inspired me to be intentional about spending one on one time with each of my little people. As a homeschooling mama, I am always with them, but that doesn’t mean that I am always WITH them, if you know what I mean.

It is so easy to zone out – think about the next thing to do, the next place to go, the next meal to make. And in doing that, I miss out on the little things – the funny sayings, the thoughtful questions, the inner workings of their little hearts. And I am done missing out on those things. All that I have to do, all that I have on my list, is nothing compared to being privy, connecting, to what is in their hearts.

31 Days: Overcome

I knew it would be a long hike. I had just gotten the cast off my newly healed wrist – the wrist I broke while on another hike in these New England mountains – and I was a little bit wary of hiking over rocky terrain again. But the lure of the perfect blue sky, my friends, and the first autumn leaves won me over and I went.

Using hiking poles – which were new to me, but seemed necessary to prevent more potentially broken wrists – I started up the trail. It was seemingly benign at the bottom, but as we climbed higher, the rocks grew in size, and eventually we were hiking up what felt like cliffs.

That day, it was my mountain – I would overcome. And, with a little help from my friends – and my trusty hiking poles – I did. The reward was a view all the way to the ocean. The journey was well worth it.

Definitely not the hike I wrote about, but a beautiful view nonetheless.