The Thoreau-Bred Baby

on marriage: a couple of misfits

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:02:00 +0000

click photo for source

Amber and Seth Haines
 started a Monday series on marriage, penning letters about the grit and
 the grace of it all.  this week's topic is "opposites attract."

To My Stag,

we were young in our story. on a date. when that woman came into that tiny dinner theater to ask me in a hushed voice, below the crooning on stage, if i might step outside, please.

i followed, mechanical, and stood in a rotunda that turned carousel as she frowned explanation: family had come to fetch me. had come with news that my Paw Paw, that man who’d loved me like a Daddy ought, had breathed his last. had snuck to the other side of the veil in the middle of a Frank Sinatra impersonation, for crying out loud.

and cry out loud i did – only on the inside. though my face was flat as stone, sirens wailed within as we drove to hospital in no real hurry, and they would not fall quiet even in the silence of my living room, where we sat, late and awkward, with
not enough knowing each other done yet to do the grief dance gracefully.

those stiff movements are etched into memory on my skin. how you pulled my cheek to your shoulder, expecting me to wilt. how i left it there, like a dead fish handshake, because you expected me to.

how i hated, in that moment, all that you were and were not. not the mama who’d taught me to busybody with caretaking and hurry through the hurt. not the friend who would have let me sprinkle sarcasm like pixie dust and play in neverland, unawares.

we’ve spent a lot of time in this marriage with you waiting for me to cry proper,

like a real girl.

we’ve spent an equal amount with me trying to see those man-hands of yours open to uplift,

not to crush.

born on the wrong side of the garden, we don’t know how to see each other so very naked – OPPOSITE! scribbled on every inch of anatomy, within and without – and not burn shame.

a couple of misfits.

like a new language learned through immersion, this marriage has been an exercise in forgetting the textbook things we’d learned about what Husband and Wife would be and learning instead to listen and listen and listen and finally hear -- in the click in my throat just before i really do need to cry, in the rhythm of your heartbeat when i’ve come, on my own accord, to rest there, in the crook of your arm -- the whispered vernacular that only the long-married learn to speak.

my Paw Paw, he used to say “at ‘tall,” with a tennessee T on the second word. and if he were still here, i’d straddle the recliner arm to snuggle in beside him and sigh and confess: that a handful of years and two kids who are handfuls in, i still sometimes feel like “i don’t know you at ‘tall.”

but i want to.

and oh, what grace -- that in marriage, that’s enough.

keLi

oh love that will not let me go

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:44:00 +0000

click photo for source

is it strange to spend hope, to lapse into fantasy, about a day when we won’t fight on the way to church?

we love hard, you and i. but we bite, too.

it’s coming – i feel it – the anniversary of that day and those vows, and i tingle at the thought of it. for though we won’t dine fancy or lavish gifts, we’ll be giddy all day on the adrenaline of what grace can do -- the 80s movie soundtrack climaxing into celebration that John Cusack is really, finally getting the girl. the marathon of marriage that groans and stumbles but keeps moving forward, against all odds.

but today? today is not yet. today is Sunday, and we fight.

i slam the snooze, in denial. you wear your most quiet face, the morning one. he wants something else for breakfast and she puts hers in her hair. are you serious, thinking you have time to shave? is it possible, you inquire, to just put things where they go? my shower is too long, your oatmeal baptizes the microwave, and as we drag a kid each to the car, we are a walking antithesis of Sabbath.

we drive there with a soundtrack of criticism and self-righteousness blaring in our ears.

how the devil loves a bargain: and in attacking marriage, he scores a two for one.

sigh. at least our car is headed in the right direction.

for it’s there, with the kids name-tagged and dispersed, with the lights low and the truth in our ears, that the real battle being fought on Sundays makes itself known.

we need that singing, that sermon, that silence … not to fix our marriage, but to fix our eyes on One who loves us – the always late, the ever impatient, the too much and the not enough of us – and who offers us, at the Table we approach together, a taste of Love that surpasses the love we can offer, even hard as we’re trying.

we walk the aisle to table, and i try to quiet memory of your critical words while tracing the crevices in your palm. your hand is stiff – your jaw, too, and i am thankful for just music and no words.
together, we plunge shard of bread into dark of juice and it nearly crumbles from the weight … and don’t i know this crumbling feeling, too? how the mystery of tender mercy saturates -- leaves me undone?

my jaw clenches, then releases. bitter of yeast and sweet of berry.

i take. and eat.

and as we turn, i find your hand is warm

and firm

and you hold

and He holds

and we hold

and taste death

and pray life

and walk this aisle in metaphor and mystery ... like the day we married,

and this is my body, broken for you

and this is the new covenant of my blood …

a table prepared so that we might

take.

and eat.

and find marriage, in all its bitter, to be sweet.

linking today with sweet emily, of imperfect prose, who is a treasure. do pay her a visit.

doing battle(ships) at night

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:30:00 +0000

photo credit here

Amber and Seth Haines started a Monday series on marriage, penning letters about the grit and the grace of it all. this week's topic is "nightly routine."

to rYan,

one day, we’ll come blinking out of the grad school bunker and squint in the light of the workaday world,
and i’ll beg these nights back.

sure, our checking account will be stretchier, and i won’t spend my days alternating doses of black coffee and B-12, but there is a bit of magic in survival mode, too, that i'd wager i'll miss. how the war stories and the love stories intertwine. i play Penelope to your Odyessean adventure. we are Hemingway’s revolutionaries, hunkering down in the hills.

each night, we trade off reading Narnian voices and humming lullabies over white noise, then set up camp on the couch we scored for forty bucks with a frosted glass of nightcap and a sigh. we face each other and the life we signed up for -- moving here, doing this. laptops open in tandem, i sink your battleship, then grade an essay or two. you flirt with one foot on an undercover reconnaissance mission, then resume your wrestling match with Plato.   his Complete Works are … errm, complete.

i’m exhausted. perpetually. but never alone.   we toy with the idea of knocking off early, trading in the tapping of laptop keys for salty popcorn and spooning by the light of the screen, but one of us wants Downton Abbey, the other Dukes of Hazard, so we settle for the ol’ YouTube favorites, then work some more.

that’s the thing about the work: there’s always more. we set alarms in the Google calendar to remind us to go to bed, then wink at each other in a medicine cabinet mirror strewn with ragamuffin quotes. did i tell you that i never used to floss before you? sad, but true. we dance the tiny bathroom bedtime routine: the face cream my mama still uses, a nightlight flicked on, two big toothbrushes squeezed between two little. in the dark hall, your hand on the small of my back, you whisper to me: don’t look at the clock, it’s best not to know …

oh, the life we know – right now.   how nostalgia will paint it so pretty one day.

one might think hard times would make us adversaries, but we’ve giggled our surprise that the opposite is true. the kitchen is a mess hall, indeed, and we wear our fatigues for certain, but each night, under cover of darkness, we do battle, side by side.   i pull the shrapnel of discouragement from your furrowed brow (and the comma errors from your term papers). you tiptoe landmines to rescue me, again and again, from an enemy who seeks to devour. we find His grace, even in retreat, and we learn to trust Him – and each other – in the trenches.

much love,

keLi

our pearL, in pictures

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:13:00 +0000

last week some type of swamp virus sidelined my husband, and though he wasn't fit for philosophizing,he cuddled with his laptop on the couch and finally finished the video he'd had planned for miss neLLie pearL's first birthday.

once he was on the mend, we piled the whole family on the couch for its premiere. the kids fidgeted and wiggled to the beat, i cried, and ryan exhaled a sigh of relief ... six months late, but right on time. such is the case of second kids.

since this is mostly for the grandmothers (Mom, click the box at the bottom right corner to make it BIG), i included a link back to beckham's video, too. my, my but those parents in that one look mighty young. too bad they don't know half of what we do.

[musical credits (in order of appearance):

Jon Bonham; Emily Gimble (two Indie artists who should be on your Ipod);

Willie himself; classic George; and Salt n' Pepa]

to be the phoenix

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:18:00 +0000

photo credit here

oh, little neglected Thoreau-bred. in the spasms of life as we right now know it, i’ve missed the discipline of coming to you, of weaving words on to keypad that have been fermenting within. mostly, i’ve missed the souls of those who will catch this in their Readers and pop over to say: “where have you been, sister?” how much i’d love a potluck with all those faces stretched down the table …

but this morning, the Word broke me open, left me feeling like all my nerves were exposed, and i knew if i didn’t write about it, it would become just an ashen ember and not the real fire.

so i spill.

and, as is always the case, there is backstory – a long blogging hiatus of backstory where we’ve wrestled hard with what this life is supposed to look like: where we are called to serve – that funny word, “call”; what marriage asks of you, in the desert place; how the wrinkles reflecting back at you in the mirror are really battle scars.

this season, i’m participating in a bible study of the book of Acts. i tried the same study years ago, but i was mostly distracted by the aesthetics of the group: the ladies with crocheted bible covers and suntan panty hose, the awkward, high-pitched singing before class began. i had a nose ring then -- and an attitude. their Gospel, spoken about with hands folded primly in laps, didn’t sing to me.

these days, i’m hungry. i know now that those suntan hose cover varicose veins of years spent walking, Phoenix Jackson-style, toward the hope - on the hard road - of medicine that heals. and i want to walk with them. i want to hear the clod of my cowboy boots against the click of their sensible heels and sing along to that beat, awkward and high-pitched and spirit-filled, to boot. i’m standing roadside and thumb out, searching for fellow travelers with Truth. i’m waiting, expectant.

and Acts does not disappoint.

though my cerebral nature has long relegated the Holy Spirit to an idea – one best left to scholars and such – that particular word is becoming flesh, right before my eyes. i’d call it Damascus, but i’ve read too much of Paul, and i can’t quite slander him with overreaching metaphors.

it was Paul, the guy i spent a great deal of time in grad school creating in a false image of Hemingway bravado, who gave me a glimpse of that world – “call” – that seems both simple and hard, as the Gospel tends to do.

In Acts Chapter 14, Paul is preaching, healing, and doing amazing work in the lives of people he barely knows … and for his trouble, in verse 19, he is savagely beaten -- by people he barely knows. they “suppose him dead.”

and though the language isn’t much on aesthetics, if i were the brave, tattooing type, i might get verse 20 printed somewhere permanent.

²⁰But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city, and on the next day he went on

He went on.

Near death, he grabbed the arms of those gathered about him, and he went on – not to a safe place, but back to the hard road.

Our study goes on to talk about Timothy, who Paul refers to, in 2 Timothy 1:2, as “my beloved child.”

and in the crib in the next room sleeps my own “beloved child.”

And just as Timothy’s whole ministry of missions was steeped in being a witness to Paul’s bloody determination to get up and go on … our children – and our neighbors and maybe even the people who hurl the stones in our direction – will be forever changed by our conviction to stand back up. by our faith that when we are “supposed dead,” there will yet be Spirit within us, pumping life.

i’m spilling today because i’m so encouraged that it doesn’t matter for eternity that i still haven’t posted photos of my big boy 4 year-old’s birthday … that I still haven’t given the grandparents video of my sweet Pearl’s first steps. all that condemnation is hissing serpent speak.

and Truth speaks up: my kids are video cameras set on record. and every time i feel the exhaustion and the discouragement and the injustice of it all – and still get out of bed, they’ve seen a mama missionary at work. God’s work on the hard road looks a lot more like a bloody nose than a Photoshopped family photo.

be encouraged today, friend, whatever tough road you’re being asked to walk. each feeble step you take – even if it’s sandwiched between stumbles – is seen. it matters. and even if we barely know each other, we walk it the same. then… we fly.

peneLope and the party that almost wasn’t …

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 02:44:00 +0000

what do you give a total carnivore for her birthday dessert? a choice.

oh, my little pearL.

how you fit your name.

from day one, you have stirred and spurred and stretched this mama of yours into a shape she barely recognizes.

our young diva tries to hide from the paparazzi


you talkin' to me?

peek-a-boo!

and so it came as no surprise, on the cusp of your very first birthday, that i found myself once again trying to squeeze into those Perfect Mommy pants, only to realize, before they were even knee high, that i wasn’t going to fit.

so:

i threw a fit.

[you come by it honest, as my Paw Paw would say]

i railed against a world without enough hours in its days, against the sad, sad state of our first birthday budget, against the collapsing ceiling of self-doubt that assured me you’d need therapy one day because we didn’t give the guests handmade party favors. and, though i’m not proud of it, for a moment there i crossed my arms and vowed that if i couldn’t throw you A PROPER PARTY, well then we wouldn’t throw one at all.

did i mention how lucky you are to have your daddy?

because he doesn’t throw fits.

and mine don’t phase him.

and so when he held my gaze, like that first time i laid eyes on him down in biloxi, and told me that none of it mattered … that you’d never, ever remember turning one, but you just might remember that you had a mama who sang Johnny Cash while making the breakfast, a brother who never let you out of his arms’ reach, and a daddy who loved you powerful and pure …

the fists unclenched as truth presented itself, plaintive, in my palm, as a lucky penny.

you are mine. and His. and every. single. day. of the past 365 has been a celebration, from hearts that know what a God-gift a first birthday party truly is.

you are

poetry

in motion...

please note the cutest headband EVER (hand-made by the super-talented Greta from Gremadcha)

so i sat down and scratched a 2 a.m. email giving the “y’all come!” to a small group of seriously fabulous St. Louie friends. i bought a tacky tablecloth and juice boxes and only handmade the cupcakes because i savored all that time in the kitchen with my sweet mama who (insistent, though she was, that you wear pink ) had made my heart full when she made the drive.

and though you know where this story is headed, i’ll say it anyway – for the record ...

that the very best part of giving up on the perfect party is that you actually get to enjoy the nothing-to-write-home-about-really party that ends up taking its place.

and so i got to see you ride a swing for the very first time – smiling up at the trees like they were in Narnian song. and i got to watch your big brother accost total strangers over at the sprinklers because his extroverted-ness knows no bounds. and i got to saunter around making small talk with women i feel lucky to know.

the money shot: at least it's carrot cake, right?

and with every click of the camera – all of your new little friends gettin’sugared up real good – i gave thanks for the ways that this motherhood gig renders me frazzled and helpless …

and the ways that the Creator of all our birthdays is ever faithful to step in, to slather His grace like cupcake frosting, and to model what real Paternal love is supposed to look like.

tacky tablecloth and all.

Daddy getting all her sugar

basking in all of the attention

Big Boys being Boys

... and girls being

super sweet

girls ...

Don't Mess with Poppy (or Texas)

Lincoln awakes from a nap to the smell of cake

Penelope questions my parenting skills as I set fire before her

Jameson on his second cupcake ... this might have been the fault of my lapse in supervision (Sorry, Rebecca!)

please take a moment and absorb the cuteness here

a rare photo of Big Brother -- I needed the sports lens to capture him most of the day

Nothin' says summer like wet hair and sweet treats

these two cuties belong to my pal Susan, from Frugalouis


the best part of being the 2nd kiddo? since you have a gazillion hand-me-down basics, you get super cool toys


With a mischievous smile, my wee one crawls toward toddlerhood

Here's to celebrating the ways that our best laid plans fall to rubble around Better Ones ...

and how the party that almost wasn't?

Totally was.

[swoon]

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 04:47:00 +0000

the man at the bottom of the puppy piles around this place ...

is the very bees knees of fatherhood.

that is all.

when beauty beckons ...

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 05:00:00 +0000

sometimes beauty is a greasy chicken leg,

or a flexing pose with a sword-fighting friend.

sometimes beauty lisps a favorite childhood poem,

before collapsing into utter tomfoolery.

sometimes beauty means fresh air at any cost ...

or a third wheel to spin alongside.

{sigh}

in this life you will have trouble, we’re told, and it is so.

but if we look

and listen

we just might find

pieces of the patchwork everyday

that stir in us

something that smacks eternal.

the Creator of all this beauty – around us, within us – did not intend it to be ignored.

i'm raising my hand guilty as charged for letting the gray malaise of the everyday fog my lens

... and i'm penning words over at Banebow today

about how God plants beauty right smack dab in the dirty ugly. especially there.

five feet high and rising

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 23:17:00 +0000

photo credit here

how high’s the water, mama?
two feet high and rising …

faith ebbs and mama guilt flows and i scoop her from crib needing oven mitts, for her cheek scorches mine, purple. her eyes crinkle, pained. daddy brings cold cloth and a furrowed brow not often seen on his sturdy face, and soon the boy is floating his hand in the breeze like a bird as the car speeds to hospital, where she is poked and prodded until we are told that the fever that hit 105.6 is nothing to worry our pretty little heads about… until the bill comes, at least.

how high’s the water, papa?
three feet high and rising …

our sweet nonnie, the one whose mama made neLLie a name to be proud of, sounds so cheerful on the phone that you’d never know there have been tests and diagnoses and revised diagnoses and minor surgeries with unexpected complications – minor, again, we’re assured. but we are not assured, especially when she’s whisked back to ER again, and it’s her calm, now, her poise that i try to mimick as we scratch our heads figuring on how to get ourselves to that spot on the map, far from here, where her kitchen smells of coffee and banana cake, what with these littles in tow and gas prices high enough to make pedestrians of us all.

how high’s the water, mama?
four feet high and rising …

i crack eggs in a bowl like my aunt ruby once taught me, in the days when things were Easy Bake. i let the boy snaking hot wheels underfoot pound bananas against a bowl with a mixer beater because the wire whisk is entombed somewhere in a pile of dishes. that sweet dimpled thing in the highchair cuts a new tooth on a set of measuring spoons, cooing at her daddy as he fiddles with the radio. we heap cups of sugar on our worries and can’t help but smile stealing batter licks from bowl. we follow nonnie's handwritten recipe card and a book that tells us that come high water or fierce winds, even when we writhe and flail, we do so in the palm of His hand.

and because we don’t know what else to do … we sing.

how high’s the water, papa?
five feet high and rising …

sometimes i need a little johnny cash to wash down my daily bread.

glad to be back amongst friends at emily's place today, though the muse has been buried beneath paycheck-work as of late. do drop in and say hello to her ...

i have no spiritual life

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:00:00 +0000

photo credit here

days here have been dark,

and though my brain knows this too shall pass, i’m dragging a heavy heart

around like a gimp foot.

i feel on the inside like my house looks: sink things ready to fester and mildew from neglect, floors and countertops strewn with excess and apathy, with shiny plastic teething toys and shinier children’s smiles still peeking out pretty, amidst the brokenness.

and here is where i say plain what i would never have guessed before i became a Christian: that these are the moments when God loves most. moments when he doesn’t take pain away, but He doesn’t leave you alone in it, either.

if i’m honest, His love doesn’t always feel like love … as the strongest forms of love sometimes shape-shift into something the naked eye can’t recognize. but it’s there. and i know it, even when i don’t feel it.

i know that He loves me because i got out of bed today. i’m lame, and yet i walked.

i know that He loves me because a church friend who barely knows me heard my latest news and offered to send pizza at dinnertime. loaves and fishes, delivered.

i know that He loves me because even though i didn’t feel all pastel and pretty on Sunday’s holiday, even though i couldn’t quite “go there” in praise and worship, the fact of the Resurrection remains.

and if that tomb was empty, friends, then we don’t have to be.

those who say faith is a crutch, with all due respect, don’t get it. there is nothing warm and fuzzy about my worldview today. faith that’s only sunday-deep fails miserably on a cold, rainy wednesday. a mamby pamby, pie-in-the-sky faith is a choking hazard for a parched mouth.

and those fellow believers with the plastic smiles who talk only in platitudes about their spiritual lives?
not sure i get that, either. i have no “spiritual life.” what i know to be true about myself is that spiritually, i am dead. lifeless. on a ventilator that pumps quiet desperation, as Papa Henry famously quoted.

however, the faith that i have chosen, through powers of reason, to believe, tells me – because it loves a paradox – that one must know death before one can become fully alive. so that i’m offered not a crutch (which would satisfy my pride immensely -- to believe the problem is only a sprained ankle), but a post-mortem heart transplant.

today i am broken-hearted. hurting soul-deep. and while my faith doesn’t “fix” any of the symptoms, it totally changes the prognosis.

so that even in the low, i know that like Lazarus, i will rise.

can't seem to ever grieve properly, so it comes in words and not in tears, but i've found that writers make good company in such times, so i'm linking with all of em's endearing ones today. do pay her a visit.

she was my first friend

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:00:00 +0000

photo credit here

we got in trouble, mostly.

there was the time we filled up her mama’s bathtub full to the brim, thumbing our nose at those rich kids and their suburban pools, and with makeshift bathing suits of cutoff denim, we inched our bottoms high as we could up the slanted wall of the tub and splashed our fun until my aunt Connie – madder than that proverbial wet hen – busted through the door screeching hard punishment.

then there were the days that we’d roll down the windows in that old Ford LTD of my Granny’s. and we’d sit, taking turns in the driver’s seat, and the view out the windshield of that parked car would turn to sunny California, to mountains of Colorado, to places mythical as the moon to our little girl minds. places i have now seen. places she won’t. ever. and then one day we grew bold and pulled hard on that gear shift, slid it in neutral, took turns pushing behind the car so that one of us could pretend our hair was windblown in a kerchief – and when Granny came flying out of the side door toward us, that house slipper in her hand was meant as a weapon.

there were even stories that neither of us remembered, but we still claimed them as our own, still traded the telling of them, showing off our sisterly-ness as we giggled out the story’s punch line. the way my mother had found me, willing and silent as a sheep – no more than four and sitting in a chair where she – too young still for big people scissors – had cut a triangle-shaped wedge into my front bangs. her first and to my knowledge only foray into cosmetology.

one of my pet peeves is the way we whitewash the dead with our clichés, and so i won’t pretend that she and i were close. not these days.

but she was my very first friend. the very first girl i ever begged my mama to let sleep over. and her laugh is a faded soundtrack in some of my very best memories of early childhood.

few people knew her then like i did, and so those are the stories that i’ll clear my throat and speak for … to try to render in words how that tow-headed girl with the bony knees and the squinty-eyed smile really was … her life being told and retold this weekend, amidst the awkward small talk and the cold fried chicken and the dozen or so house plants, their waxy ribbons and tiny card stands aimed at cheerfulness.

i’ll tell the ones that are mine to tell, and i’ll listen, too, as her brother Bobby -- home now from Afghanistan -- does the goofiest, greatest laugh you’ve heard. as her sister Jenny -- that same blonde hair -- chimes in, still peeved at how we always kicked her out of the big girls’ club.

32 years – all headed in the direction of a blown tire and a center-line crossed and a ridiculous yellow Hummer and a phone call that i had to hang up forty seconds into. some days it feels impossible to be a Calvinist.

and so i’m left here, grieving again and more, on how life works. and how it doesn’t. how a boy only 12 lost his mama yesterday, and how the sun rose today indifferent. and begging my God to show me that what the sun is, the Son is not.

and the only thanks i can feel –the only feelings i can feel, really -- are for those stories. how i’m grateful that life stories – even the hard ones – don’t run isolated and straight. like vines on forest floor, we grow up and out and not just alongside but looped over and tangled through. so that, even if two vines take different paths, you can grab a hold of one, pull it up, and watch as leaves snap back and the whole history of that vine’s attachments becomes visible.

today i grope for that vine and find her there, in memory. my very first friend.

headed back down South today for the very worst of reasons, friends. please pray for the family of my cousin, Brittne Marie, whose life ended in a collision yesterday morning. may God show us this weekend the power of His resurrection.

too pink

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:32:00 +0000

my sister insisted.

my mother said something along the lines of “how darling.”

i cringed, then relented, and when i checked the viewfinder, i exhaled half-hearted concession, for it did, indeed,
render her rosy, this girl-gift i never knew i wanted.

i don’t know how to do pink. there, i’ve said it.

if we were discussing it while wearing pantyhose sipping punch, pinkies-lifted at a baby shower, i’d shrug it off, pegging it all on how i was raised, wild as honeysuckle with the taste of earth in my mouth.

but the real answer?

the one that came to me in pregnant night terrors, nine months of wakeful midnights feeling her kick things loose inside me …

is that pink is a color far too delicate for my liking.

pink is oyster flesh exposed and scabs scraped loose and petals being trampled underfoot.
it’s the crayon you choose for the decorative bits.

it swirls in limbo, somewhere between those red lipstick days of college feminism and the purest white of loving God-as-patriarch.

be bold red, i want to whisper in her tiny ears. scream yellow. stand black. as if i can color the world that awaits her ... as if a life too pink might sap the strength from her steel magnolia mama. as if shiny pink lip gloss and ballet flats might slippery slope somehow into her being that girl who answers the math problem wrong so the boy one row over might grin, bemused. her cheeks blushing proud.

to mother a boy is to play counterpart.

to mother a girl is to replay again and again

every

role

you've

played

starlet
villain
victim

wondering how you might help her edit out the ugly scenes.

oh, i beg grace to know what to do with this pink little thing.
how scary, this pretty.

linking today with sweet emily, my kind of girl.

on spring and the breaking ...

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:22:00 +0000

we're on break in tennessee and still staring at her, for she is so good and so simple ... and trying to rest and more than that to trust even on days when faith feels far too fragile a thing ...

and there's barely enough prose cooking within me for one blog, let alone two, so would you mind, dear friends, reading my imperfect offering over at Banebow today?

can't wait to read your offerings this week -- how this writer's community is a balm in the dry times.

and we all just stared at her ...

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:54:00 +0000

Miss Kennedy Brooke Greer, born on March 15, her daddy's birthday

my phone was lost, so the "y'all come!" came through email.

we packed some things and forgot some things and loaded sleepy kiddos into the backseat and drove all 350 of those miles without stopping once.

and she showed up -- eight pounds and seven ounces that made ninth months all worth it.

so proud of her. of them both.

you may call me auntie, friends, for i have a new title and a whole new perspective. watching that girl come screaming into this world has saturated every thought i thought i thought about the miracle of childbirth. i'm woozy with the love of it all.

oh, Daddy-love. how it gets me every time.

so happy to introduce her to you, friends ... trailed by the list of heart-thanks she carried in her wake:

here's looking at you, kid.

how anticipation brings exclamation points to everyday prayer
seeing my mama's face again
seeing my boy see my mama's face again
prayer like a pitocin drip, moving everything along
how beautiful she was, all vulnerable like that, a side of sister i hadn't known
epidurals. (can i get an amen?)
putting my hand on sister's tummy -- praying that baby into ready
the squeal -- mine and mama's intermingled -- when prayer was answered and a C-section avoided
sister finding herself stronger than she'd known
how blood can be beautiful
brother-in-law's big paws enveloping his newest love
scrawny frog legs of new babe dangling alongside neLLie's dimpled thighs
two girl cousins loving on each other for the very first time
putting my nose right behind her tiny ear and breathing in God
how all that miracle on display shushes the most profound atheistic conjecture
how love holds its shape, even as relationships stretch and grow

she laughs at the days to come

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 20:15:00 +0000

i laughed all through my wedding.

that moment of awkward silence when the bride has been delivered down the aisle and everyone is still standing and holding their breath? i laughed, nervous.

the moment of “are you serious?” when my husband faked forgetting my ring, then pulled it from a cracker-jack box tucked into his sport coat pocket? i laughed, flummoxed.

no. i was not joking. a cracker-jack box. really.

and when it was all over, and we wore those bands snug round, back down the aisle, the two of us walking metaphor, leaving the presence of those who had known us our lives through, loving us well, and cleaving to each other and to unknown …
i laughed as steam valve releases, from the exhilaration of it all, the skydiver’s rush of doing something that just might land you flat as a pancake.

today marks just four years into this parachute opening wide, winds of change blowing us clear of our comfort zones and the two of us, amateurs, fumbling and flailing but still clinging, tethering tight, and falling together.

and though there have been plenty of moments that were not, to my memory, very funny at all, when i think of that day, of the white dress and the chocolate cake, i always see myself laughing.

laughing at the wonder of it all – that a fairytale that began Grimm’s could end up feeling downright Disney.

not the laugh of the bride in the magazine, mind you: the one whose eyes dance the same twinkle as the Photoshopped five-carats-worth-of-commitment on her left hand. and i didn’t laugh the laugh of the bride on the television, either: the one whose love spun her round and round with a marking gun in the Target aisle, marital bliss just one more item on her registry list.

for there had been six weeks in flux, some of the hardest in my life, when a Paw Paw had been grieved and a secret had been kept and a wedding had been called off and then on again.

and only when i broke – crumpled plans in my clenched fists – did God give me the greatest wedding gift i was to receive:

a heart that really wanted marriage,

though it knew full well that marriage would break it -- and mend it again – and break it – as His sanctifying chisel
works dust of man into mystery of marriage union.

my laughter was more like Sarah's, if i’m honest, because God’s promise to me – through that man, in those vows – was one
i could hardly believe.

and the astonishment continues, for i woke this morning with heart-laughter, again, because through the hard breaking and the slow mending, His promise is true. it is true.

i laugh on, wanting to know more marriage. wanting to be more wife.

and these words, the ones that the husband spoke to me that day, in those vows, i have kept them in my mouth,
hard candy of sweet sanctification, ever since.

“she is clothed 

in strength and dignity; 

she can laugh 

at the days to come.”

in the mirror i find her, a different bride today than when daylight dawned on that wedding morning, but one called to the same impossible task: to trust completely in my heavenly Protector and his earthly husband-provision for me, to believe that i am a bride beloved, and to laugh – carefree in free fall – at what is to come.

happy anniversary, my beloved.

trying to float

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:22:00 +0000

photo credit here

the clocks in this house all give different answers.

saturday we were in short sleeves; today it's snowing.

the dishes pile and there's work to be done on the laptop, but when that small boy finger taps a balloon -- yellow -- toward the table where we wear our game faces on a Monday morning, we watch it falling slow like the unexpected gift that it is, this way that children interrupt your best laid plans about serious adulthood whatnot.

and so we tap. together. and the tapping replaces the click of keyboard keys and gets all mingled, wrapped in giggles, and the boy is loving the power of the yellow balloon, the way his parents can't resist the urge to tap it high once more, and his smile is paycheck and applause and better than any other work i'll do all day.

and when mama hits it a good one and it smacks the wall, who could have known it would ricochet to ceiling and find some jagged snowflake imprint far too sharp? and who would have guessed a balloon so innocent could make a noise so loud that even his daddy expelled gutteral cry for the surprise of it?

and that yelp from daddy has mama all undone, laughing to the point of tee tee danger, and as the withered latex remains fall soft to the carpet, three bodies fall, too, overcome with the laughing and the tears that leak hot from corners of eyes and the way an entire Monday morning can change with a single balloon -- yellow.

then, it's back to upright and QWERTY and deadlines and a new balloon for the boy -- green -- and we go on with this life, this one where the clocks and the socks and the people don't always match.

laughter is a small good thing in a world rendered broken.

and so we try to keep it up, this continual tapping up and up and up of our happy balloon, knowing full well how fragile a thing it is.

tapping and typing and counting, with Ann:

mother and son, matching Chucks
tire swing Superman
windchimes sounding from far away
husband who trades sunshine for Saturday school schedule: how hard he works
baby grunting, sucking bottle
faux-ocean: the noise of naptime sound machine in a quiet house
the very, very bluest eyes squinting awake
clementines peeled by tiny fingers
bible verses put to the tune of Happy Birthday by his teachers
old photo of my Paw Paw in suspenders -- how the missing aches strong, in spite of time
kick in my step from cowboy boots: how they hug just right
spirit speaking through Johnny Cash gospel tunes
watching little boy feet push bicycle pedals -- all the way down our street!
Grandaddy's "hello?" (Ryan's) as speakerphone takes us to Atlanta
how one box of cake mix, a few sprinkles, can change a day
cupcake smeared on boy's face as i write. his insistence, when he sees me: "write THAT down!"
how i can't ever cry at home -- and can't ever stop at church
friend's laugh over the (oft-neglected) phone: strong medicine
tummytime, baby staring contest: making new friends with babes like us
he sings. unprompted. always ... the singing. who does that?

the evidence

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 04:46:00 +0000

you know, little man …

soon - you’ll be yanking her pigtails in earnest.

soon - her name will be used primarily as the opening word in a long string of tattle.

soon – the line drawn between big and small will open a chasm between you, and you’ll build a club with a secret password and no girls allowed.

in fact, soon – she’ll be an albatross, a sigh and an eye roll, way too metal-mouthed and unsophisticated to understand your teenage wisdom.

you’ll forget, then, how she was once the peanut butter to your jelly world, that her smallness taught you how to tend and be tender, that she adored you wide open and you basked in her sunshine smile.

and when that time comes ... i’ll need evidence.

and what’s more, little girl …

soon – you’ll grow weary of being used as a human canonball.

soon – tears will pour for the cruelty of physics when trucks and dollies collide.

soon – your skin will grow thinner, your patience shorter, and the grass outside of his shadow will look mighty green.

in fact, soon - every breath he takes will be an offense, every utterance a wound wrapped in melodrama, and your diary will name him the very proof of injustice in the world.

you’ll forget, then, how he always, always, reached back a hand for you, splashing you toward the best puddles of childhood play. that he called you his sunshine, and that under the water of his attention you bloomed trust.

and so, tucked away, i keep the evidence.

snapshots of the right now, in this time, when you were two june bugs circling dizzy and falling in tandem, your stories growing into each other like twisting vines.

and your mama looking on, proud.

proud.

playing with the kids at emily's place today ... do join in.

Jesus heals a blind (wo)man

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:30:00 +0000

Sunday School craft for 4-5 year-olds ... teaching them Ann's counting game, too.

thirteen pairs of eyes all squint at me, those knee-jerk facial expressions you don’t even know you’re making, attention rapt in story.

i’ve given them a hard hypothetical, and they are doing their best to imagine it: lights out, for always. having never, ever ever seen that big golden sun, the green of grass underfoot, their own mama’s face.

and so they try it out, a few of them pinching their eyes into crooked lines, others plunging the pads of their palms across bridge of nose.

they want to know how it felt, to be that man … the one Jesus found broken and left beaming miracle.

for them, the literal speaks loud, and so i don’t bother teaching them what the world someday will: that there is a darkness that pervades even with eyes wide open. that so many of the tall people they know have only enough courage to view life through a crack in the shutters. that the teacher in this very circle spent at least one full day and countless other day-making moments of this past week with spiritual cataracts, groping and stumbling over ingratitude and doubt.

but now we’re scooping play-pretend, cradling dirt in the palms of our hands, and the boys love the part where Jesus spits as much as i knew they would, and then i can’t see them at all because i’m fully engaged in my role, patting mud across my eyelids like Michelangelo puttying David, and you can hear a pin drop in that classroom when, after scrubbing eyebrows and splashing pretend water across our faces, those squinting eyes watch me blink … blink again – and – i can see!

miracle speaks in pantomime, and they don’t need to stake a claim for or against universalism or panentheism to know simple truth: that Jesus is good. that He always answers the call of the broken. that He cares.

and isn’t this the hurdle i can't jump, for all of my strivings in four-syllable knowledge?

though my bookshelf is filled with all of the right books, though i have a defense at the ready for my position on many divisive topics, it is this truth that eludes, and this that matters most.

how can it be of any import how many, in what manner, God loves, if i don’t let him really love me? what use is it, the pointing and shouting at specks in your eye, when the plank of hypocrisy is lodged so deeply into mine?

if i keep His Love, most indiscernible of mysteries, tethered in theological ropes, might i miss those hands that, even now, stretch healing mud in my direction?

i want to burn all of my books and believe like a child again.

like these children, here … for when i march round the circle and give them each a special “craft” present, when i ask them to look through paper binoculars and tell me what blessings they find, they don’t bother with over-spiritualizing their responses.

snack!

toys!

(i’ll let a greater mind than mine figure this one out): vampires!

and so they teach, with their wild singing and their coloring out of the lines and their rapture for play-doh … that joy in Him -- in what he gives -- is a right response.

and i try to learn.

"and i see you, Mama. You are blessing." Oh, this child ...

and i follow these wee ones, with my own binoculars, counting:

trees speckling bark in white and gray, like none i’d known in Tennessee
two tops, two bottoms: neLLie’s “hippo teeth”
glad tidings: sister’s baby healthy inside, sister-in-law with her own bean growing within!
awkward, high-pitched singing of BSF congregation: how it turns my giggle box over
laughter, so contagious
fingerprints on window’s view
sound of husband’s car in the drive at day’s end
fighting over who gives him SFOOCHES first
pediatrician’s diagnosis: the happiest baby i’ve seen all day
big boy who steeled himself for finger prick – how grown he’s becoming
husband’s affection for one particular houseplant: it’s a survivor. i can respect that.
scalpel of conviction: isaiah 48, last verse.
imaginary play: birds and squirrels who deliver lost things
tiny fingers, mischievous eyes peering through mail slot in door
dropping kids off with mom-friend for “work-time” swap
papers graded in quiet of house
picking them up again
syllabled humming of toddler singing when he doesn’t know the words
husband home early from school, “just because…”

when being full leaves you empty

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:38:00 +0000

beauty of whale, beached grievously

those red letter parts of the Word are filled with parables, the distilled spirit of wisdom
tonic-watered into story.

not by accident, i'm guessing.

and like those bleary-eyed audiences of old, i can't see Truth until it wears human skin, and so as I sit, craving Sabbath, bible open but mind chasing rabbits, only an image -- painted across closed lids -- can finally prick my heart to bleed.

you've seen it, too: as music played softly and a toll-free number begged you dial now, before recoiling with snap of remote. an image of orphan, wearing muddied rags, a resigned look. a babe with eyes hungry and belly distended.

a belly distended. rounded buxom, but empty as a child's balloon.

and it's this, the gorged stomach -- not from orphan's need but from entitled excess -- that keeps me from pulling up close to table where God-breathed words beacon hope. i can't see them -- the broken, the needy, the orphans -- because my plate is too full.

a life distended. inflated busy, but hollow as a broken cistern.

and so the crazy lady in jeans and house shoes on the back porch, the one with chin tucked and arms upraised, palms cupped? she is me, in spite of my Presbyterian sensibilities.

begging grace like alms, i pray:

Lord, fill my cup. 

not my belly or my schedule or my crowded mind ... but my cup, so that it can spill over.

so that this life, this little life, might ring of Spirit-truth and God-love instead of gong resounding and cymbal's clash.

for now, it's only through prayer-eyes that i glimpse it: the landscape of a life lived well ... how the empty spaces might be truly filled.

the Spirit-fruit that might be harvested ... but first the planting, disciplined and daily, of good seed.

the restored relationships that might flourish ... but first the hard, hard digging of bitterness root.

the holy grail of contentment, at last ... but first the taming, wildest of beasts, the lust of the eyes.

this practice of counting, it was her idea, not mine, but it's my life that's being changed, slowly, as the savored bits of everyday thanks give me an appetite for the only thing that can feed the soul: eucharisteo.

naming them, one by one, with Ann:

baby comb-overs
fur boots on cold days
rooftops rowed against sky curtain
birdsong like puppy's squeaky toy
squirrels performing Big Top circus stunts
noisy noisy Nature: all creation sings
shine on apple skin
grumble of belly as oven breathes chocolate chip
leaf turning cartwheels, end over end
breathing deep. on purpose.
nap-time sweat in toddler hair
heel click against sidewalk, arm laced through husband's velvet coat: dating
engagement stone winking at me as i pen words to page
scooping oatmeal with toast
the one spot under the table with all the crumbs
smile hidden behind pacifier
indian-style sitting and play-doh stars
baby snores
husband snores
sleeping so close to these loves who are mine

two coats of mascara

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:38:00 +0000

i'm leaving the kitchen dirty.

the living room isn't much better ... but it's living night, this one that waits just clock ticks away, a night we've waited for and cancelled with sick kids, shrugging our shoulders and saying this is life, yes?

but now ...

stereo breaks a quiet afternoon and i'm in the mirror, painting the eyes dark as they were all those nights two rings and two kids ago, when he was a million question marks to me ...

and on nights like this, i get to keep searching them out, two silhouettes leaning across table into spark, falling backward into laughter, typing new words on heart canvas, this love story we don't even know we're still writing.

rock a bye, little babies, with your sippy and your sitter. your daddy is mine -- God said so -- and tonight i'm putting on two coats of mascara so that when i wink he's sure to see me and know exactly what i mean.

on making little disciples

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:30:00 +0000

"do

i’m down the hall nursing, but i’m eavesdropping, too.

the boy is trying to squeeze five more minutes from his daddy before he heads downstairs to basement to philosophize in what we deem THE OFFICE in air quotes.

he’s a clever one, he is, because he’s asked, eyes wide and innocent, can we read my Bible? and i know, though i can’t see it, that he’s being pulled into lap, the ruffled feathers of bed-head tickling his daddy’s chin as they flip pages.

and i’ll confess it, prodigal who never wins at bible trivia, that when they say “John 13,” i don’t immediately know what the story is.

but i know it now.

as

i’ve read it again and again, for what i heard through that wall -- murmured lines punctuated by the toddler staple WHY? … then, creak of old wood beneath feet, squeak of faucet, dance of water against basin – is both a blessing counted and a cold gust of soul-truth whipping against my cheek.

so that when i turned the corner, babe on hip playing piano keys with strands of my hair, i saw only metaphor standing in front of that tiny sink. for there, next to the Spiderman toothbrush, below the mirror spotted hazy, i saw this:

I

rough hands on the soft skin of tiny feet, the same ones that used to thump against my tummy from within, dancing restless and finally settling in under rib cage. this boy, he is wide-eyed at this break from tub routine, as his father nuzzles words into his ear, hoping some will catch.

and i’ve snapped the camera’s shutter thoughtlessly, knowing that i can’t really capture what i’m seeing through its viewfinder, but wanting to have a blurry reminder anyway.

and i pray that i might be washed clean, too, from the mess of parenting, this daily disciple-making that we do, ready or not. oh Lord, let it be THIS that gets written on his heart – not the shouted words during the tantrum, not the clipped responses to yesterday’s endless parade of WHY? … but this, right now, the Jesus-love that funnels through even broken cisterns.

for when he questions his Daddy, begging explanation for this water, these hands on dirty feet, all of the words fall short of really telling the WHY. how can we explain it? that we clumsily mimick a Lord who kneeled from on high to touch the dirtiest places in our souls. that the WHY is grace, it is mystery, it is everything you will need, son, to walk in this world.


have

the boy nods solemnly, like he understands, and he’s quiet through the patting with towel, the gentle replacing of superhero socks and frog slippers. i turn to leave, but don’t make it two steps before i’m floored again – and grateful, so very grateful for boy, for husband, for story that leapt off page and into human skin.

done

“Daddy,” says the frog-slippered one. “but now ... can I wash your feet?”

for

and my heart cries: Amen.

you."

and on i go, with the counting, with Ann:

windows down – elixir of spring – in February
sound of cars swooshing puddles
wrinkled feet peeking from baby legwarmers
the person who invented the Johnny Jumper
pastry bites with feta cheese and carmelized onions
a break from the beans and rice budget – from my Valentine
Pandora’s 80s love song mix
son’s pronunciation of Edamame
damask dessert plates, secondhand
dessert
second helpings
neighbor’s dog doing tricks
little pants put on, inside out: “all by mysewf!”
vintage baby pajamas – saved all those years by my mother-in-love
thump of popcorn against pan lid
playdate after playdate: basking in Vitamin D
husband’s call: “i’ll pick up dinner”
baby who thinks she’s a motorboat
exercise adrenaline rush
sharing a PBJ and a juicebox
this practice of counting

someday

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:30:00 +0000

someday you’ll shrug off my smooches
instead of holding both of my cheeks so that you can plant one straight on my lips

someday you’ll demand your own personal space
instead of bringing toys to my feet to play while my fingers prune in dishwater

someday i’ll have back the free time
and the phone conversations
and the bathroom privacy
and the sleep-in Saturdays
and all of the other things i waved goodbye to when we carried you, mewling, into our lives …

but yesterday you halted to a stop at the West Town mall

and you let go my hand to point and clasp pudgy fingers across your mouth smiling wide

and you told me those store mannequins DIDN’T HAVE HEADS with a thousand
exclamation points in your voice before collapsing to the ground in uproarious laughter

and you have no idea what it meant to me, the way i shuffled off the old lady stoop of burdens carried for that one moment to look at you – and them –
and laughed my agreement into your ears …

the way, now and again, I get to be as three as you are

is a gift, a lesson, a miracle of choosing the now over the

someday.

and for this: i say thank you.

our love story: out of the rubble

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:52:00 +0000

Hurricane Relief Team -- Biloxi, Mississippi, October 2005

in the movies, they earn it.

the boy and the girl, they spend nearly two hours riding opposite sides of the see-saw, pushing and falling until we’re dizzy from the watching and finally happy when our popcorn is gone and they have found it: true love.

silly actors. to find true love, i just got on the bus.

i was grad school weary and slack-jawed watching photos of Hurricane Katrina, of coastline strewn like soggy cereal, and I wanted to do something more important for humanity than explicating obscure poems in the formalist, Marxist, post-Feminist-twice-removed style.

replanted in Nashville soil, a church that i’d visited a few times said they were taking a bus and it just so happened (if you believe in just so happened) to be on my fall break from teaching, so I packed a duffle and hopped on, not knowing a soul.

Hugged up to my future mother-in-law, before I knew her only child was God's gift to me.

the not-yet-husband was on fall break, too, and though he and his parents had planned on vacationing somewhere, their heart strings pulled south to Biloxi … and hundreds of miles later wearing dust masks and sweeping up yellow clouds laced with mold, our eyes first smiled at each other.

and we lie beside one another, eyes still smiling, and as my fingers trace the lines at his temples we trace back through all of the what-ifs that would have kept us from meeting there, in the rubble. how it took a hurricane to make our love. how it would take something infinitely stronger to ever pull a gift like that from our grasps.

and in the daily rubble of two broken people walking marriage, we thank the Author of serendipity for the stories he writes – for they are all love stories, from the view of the birds.

still reading Ann’s book and linking there and learning to see the tiny love notes written in the ordinary:

getting mail: the best part of moving away
watching Bex hold a new friend’s hand
bulky comfort of husband’s sweater on my shoulders
tears matting sweet baby eyelashes
[from Bex]: “that medicine we have for Nell Nell’s teeth” Amen, brother.
sign that top two are breaking through
stitched handprints on a pillow, handmade
steam of shower, clink of ice in glass
unplanned, much-needed afternoon nap
green bean puree on baby’s ear
HAWT CHWOCKAWATE (wiff maeshmawows)
floor picked clean of toys … if only for a moment
first tracks of new galoshes
friend’s voice on my voicemail (the missing means it’s good)
Look, Mama! bunny prints!
rocking horse dance of sweet Penelope
shiny new laptop with processor speed above that of old hamster on wheel
husband’s valentine’s gift idea: let’s write letters.
the 30-Day Shred, family style. [both kiddos used as weights for bicep curls]
music of two children laughing in tandem

the blessing of being un-loved

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:38:00 +0000

that holiday of the pink and the hearts is coming, and my husband won’t be crossing the threshold of any jewelry store in the meantime.

instead, he shuffles in at the end of a long day, whisker-kisses a hello, leaves Kant on the bookshelf and places Aquinas next to the bread, stealing a bite before dinner is ready, and sneaks some quietly to the boy who has attached himself like a leg brace on his daddy.

then he goes to her, the fussy teething thing scratching at yesterday’s smears on highchair tray, stoops to put his face where her pudgy fingers can reach, and she pats across the surface of stubbled chin, of nose, of strong jaw carefully, as if checking to see that all is in its proper place.

their eyes meet – and she comes alive.

and me, too. me, too.

and we sparkle, the likes of which no jewelry store has seen.

like so many women, i came into marriage bruised – the apple you’d pick first off the stack of produce, only to find its underside spotted purple. raised by a Father who’d been raised by an alcoholic, i spent my childhood tap-dancing for compliments and was given instead: stability, discipline, self-reliance. my room was filled with material things bought with the earnest sweat of a man who i now see, in rearview’s gaze, wasn’t built with the right machinery to tender-love a little girl. vulnerability was too steep a price, affection too foreign a country, and i might have spent a whole lifetime in the tap-dancing, soles aching …
but no more.

for i have been swept off my feet …

and the most beautiful gift of wedding vows, to me, has been my husband’s patient and persistent endeavor to un-love me - for the un-loving must always come first.

it’s a tricky task, this un-loving … the path is strewn with trip wires and scattered with spent ammunition. the prisoners, sick with Stockholm syndrome, won’t inch from their prisons.

but he won’t let me stay there – in the place where i can’t fully believe what he said, with those vows – so he labors long, and it’s progress and regress and might just take a lifetime --this teaching what it isn't so i'll know what it is … but if your aim is the impossible with the old dog, you can’t start with the new tricks.

and so, daily, i am un-loved.

and in this, loved.

and my daughter is loved, fresh and pure and out loud, and the watching of it makes me burn to receive it as she does: wide-eyed, panting, unashamed.

and with the dance in her eyes – and his – i unwrap, at long last,
the gift of Father love.

linking with ann and with emily, two of my favorite writers and women who know of this love, of its power.

on hiring a ghostwriter …

noreply@blogger.com (keLi) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:22:00 +0000

no words pinned to this wall for days and weeks and more, and can i just say
“it’s a long story”   as i did to a friend, and leave it there?

these weeks have been for study, mostly.   for living in life’s mess and trying to figure out how to keep staring at the sky, knowing what nobody sees.

and in these weeks i’ve had a teacher (a couple of them, actually), and today he cured my writer’s block.

for i was sitting, cereal bowl empty, cradling laptop while the wee one slept in, trying to trick my fingers into writing here, about this life, again.

and the image that kept coming to my mind was one of my three year-old, just yesterday, at a party. a party for new baby – my sister’s – who is due to visit us next month. where this boy, the one who had pouted the whole way in the car, the one who’d had a cranky, sick mama to deal with all day, the one who’d had no nap – he sang.

sang the only way a three year-old knows how: to the heavens.

loud and pure, for the women – those dear friends who have loved him since the first whisper of his presence in my womb – had requested one of his favorites. and when his tiny little voice had crescendoed its last, these women, why their eyes were wet with tears for this singing with his whole body was exactly what it should be.

he takes his Jesus literally, this one, and he doesn’t know how to sing “this is the day that the Lord has made” with a clenched jaw, a modest heart-praise, a churchy sway side to side. he sings and his little chicken bone arms raise for the word REJOICE! and once again his mama wonders who’s doing the real parenting here.

and so this morning, when he crawled up on to the bed just as I’d stolen time away with laptop, I didn’t push him away – didn’t plop him with juice cup in front of a movie. i thought: hey, if he can teach himself theology, perhaps he can write a bit, too.   maybe give his mama a shot of typing adrenaline, cure that dreaded perfectionism virus.

so i told him that i was writing a story about him at the party … and without blinking, he launched into—what else?—a spontaneous gratitude list for all the ways that party had made him so happy. and i started typing. and didn’t edit.

teary-eyed today and thankful to be joining ann in counting blessings via an extra special ghost-writer, the boy who was built from scratch in my womb space … one of the boldest numbers on my daily list.

[and because gratitude is always contagious, i’ve sprinkled in my own thanks, via photo captions from the past few weeks]

without further adieu, may I present to you, a bulleted list of Beckham's thanks ...

“I’m happy for getting to open up that storybook that Jenny and Angie gave to Gigi.” (a gift for grandma at sister’s shower, apparently)

for the bright eyes of a babe who has finally mastered through-the-night sleeping

“I’m happy to sing songs!”


for 31 candles counted on a cake hand-crafted by one who knows his business

“I’m happy to eat that snack at that party.”

for daily bearing witness to this love: it is a superpower

“I’m happy you typed all those things on the computer.” (and thus, with the joy of being published, a young writer is born …)

for taking part in the work that God is doing over here. He is so very good.

“I’m happy for drinking that punch that Gigi wanted to give me.”

for this book: a salve and a surgery for broken eyes

“I’m happy that everybody give me some cake when they decorated that cake.”

for the joy of finding new favorite foods (squash for this one, if you please)

“I’m happy to eat those ribs that they put in the cake (apparently here, he means fondant ribbons) and those little decorate balls that they put in the cake, too.”

and the joy of seeing old favorite faces ...

“I’m happy for mama being in St. Wouis and daddy being in St. Wouis and peneWope and Beckham being in St. Wouis.”

for the daily conviction -- the whisper of Spirit -- that true happiness is not somewhere out there. It must always be scooped up and devoured -- before it melts -- from right where you are standing.

and did you catch it – the string that all of his above gratitudes hang on? they were gathered, wiggling fish on a trot line, from that same party – the one i probably spent fidgeting over the snow forecast and the long drive home or stink gazing my profile in that dress, my hair looking sad sad sad.

and it hits me then, why he’s so good at this counting and i’m so lousy.

to find grace in the moment, you have to BE in the moment. not fixating on the snide comment you heard the moment before. not furrowing brow over how you’ll pay next moment’s bills … and not, icy spine of conviction, framing the moment in camera’s lens or blogging the moment in your head.

a belated new years resolution: that the next time i’m on hiatus here at the blog, it will be because i am fully living in the moment somewhere else.

insistent, now, he interrupts: “and now yett’s sing dat song!”

he has remembered – and the tears brim for this – a “counting blessings” song that I totally made up one day in the car to pass time on a trip, never imagining that it would do more than quiet backseat chaos – much less that it would be re-taught to me … right when i most needed to count, to sing.

“When I look, God, I can see … all the blessings you give to me …”

i have missed you, bloggy friends. looking forward to a cup of coffee and your posts in my reader in the very near nap-time future.