As homeschooled students, my girls wouldn’t normally have a homecoming dance to attend, but every year their public-schooled friends from church thoughtfully invite them. They always go as a group and that  makes me feel a little better about the situation. This was Clara’s first homecoming dance. She was very excited about picking out a dress and spending the day at her friend’s house getting ready. They had dinner at her friend’s house, so I went over and took pictures. This photo of her on the way to the dance in the back seat of our car was one of my favorites. Oh, how they grow…

This is my first time participating in Multitude Monday, so please bear with me. I found a blank journal that I wasn’t using and started jotting down the blessings I discovered during this past week. I know that I missed so many, but benefited from them anyway.

The reason I decided to participate is because I remember a time when counting my blessings very nearly saved me. I know that God’s grace is the only thing that can ultimately save us, but I also know that seeking out his fingerprints in our lives goes a long way to ultimately finding him and being able to embrace that grace.

When I got married, I knew that my husband was an alcoholic. I saw the reality of the situation clearly before I ever said “I do.” But I really feel God let me see Will through his eyes. Seeing people through God’s eyes is a wonderful thing. It is a gift in itself. I saw in Will such heart and so many beautiful qualities. The reality of being married to someone who has an addiction is not easy, though. It is a very hard thing.

At the time, I was working in a Montessori school and I dearly loved working with the children there. Sometimes, though, life seemed so overwhelming and I needed to freshen my perspective. It was at that time that I started the habit. During my breaks at work, I would go outside and talk with God. I would thank him for all of my blessings. The first few times I attempted this, the list seemed dismally short. In no time, though, I found that my breaks weren’t long enough to name all of my blessings. My blessing-counting overflowed into my days and covered a multitude of hurts. Sadness no longer followed me around like a great gray cloud. I felt like my face shined with God’s glory.

My husband has been sober for twelve years now and is a Christian. We have been married for over twenty-one years. Our children are Christians. God is good.

“But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.“  Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)

“Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.“  Psalm 27:14 (KJV)

“But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.“  Romans 8:25 (ASV)

I knew that God did not promise me a sober, Christian husband, but I never gave up hope. Hope is a precious thing. It is so incredibly tenuous and, yet, it is worth every effort to protect and cultivate in one’s life. I also had to come to accept, though, that every day I had might be the best day of my life and I couldn’t afford to miss it wishing for something better. So, I took my “attitude of gratitude” very seriously. And God blessed me for it.

Today I am blessed that my husband hasn’t picked up a drink. That he knows and loves God. That our children know and love God. That, although I falter many times, God continues to lift me up. That even during the worst of times, he cradles me in the palm of his hand. What a wonderful place to be. Thank you, Father.

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A Very Nearly Wordless Wednesday

“The Shadow People”

Old lame Bridget doesn’t hear
Fairy music in the grass
When the gloaming’s on the mere
And the shadow people pass:
Never hears their slow grey feet
Coming from the village street
Just beyond the parson’s wall,
Where the clover globes are sweet
And the mushroom’s parasol
Opens in the moonlit rain.
Every night I hear them call
From their long and merry train.
Old lame Bridget says to me,
“It is just your fancy, child.”
She cannot believe I see
Laughing faces in the wild,
Hands that twinkle in the sedge
Bowing at the water’s edge
Where the finny minnows quiver,
Shaping on a blue wave’s ledge
Bubble foam to sail the river.
And the sunny hands to me
Beckon ever, beckon ever.
Oh! I would be wild and free,
And with the shadow people be.

by Francis Ledwidge

I have decided to take up Katrina’s Fall Into Reading 2009 challenge over at Callapidder Days even if I am a bit late to the game. Since I have missed the first two months of the challenge, my reading list will be kept a bit short. I really am excited, though, because I just finished The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and am starting her earlier book The House at Riverton.

Unfortunately, I have been putting a good bit of my time into getting my blog up and rolling and I have neglected The House at Riverton these past few weeks. So, in taking up this challenge, I am really killing two birds with one stone. I deplore that analogy, though. Perhaps I should say I am having my cake and eating it, too. It is a far better thing to be eating cake than to be killing birds. Don’t you agree? Well, unless the birds are edible. Then I could kill two birds with one stone and eat them, too! But really…

Onto my list of books!

• The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
• The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey
• The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
• Return to the Hiding Place by Hans Poley

I told you it would be short. The Hiding Place is a reread. I read it as a teenager, so it almost counts as a brand new book for me! I wanted to read it before I read Hans Poley’s account of being the first “guest” in the ten Boom household during World War II. I will try to keep you updated on my progress!

My mother and I had a complicated relationship. I wish I could tell you what a wonderful mother she was because, in turns, she was. But then, it would feel like a half-lie. And a half-lie is almost always or usually very nearly a full lie. If I tell you of the other topsy-turvy, spinning turns of my life with my mother, I would feel like I was betraying the good in her. She was a woman living her life as best she could on this planet. How can I criticize that?

If I tell you how much I want my mommy right now, you would assume I meant my mother. I assumed I meant her. Now I am not so sure. 

I feel so lost. I want someone to hold me, rock me back and forth and softly, through my great heaving sobs, tell me that everything is going to be okay. Someone who won’t care that I am getting her shirt all wet with my tears. And I want to stay there as long as I need to stay there. Not until she tires of it all and plops me back down on the hard wooden rocker all alone. I want to be able to cry myself to sleep and wake up still in my mother’s arms. But not really my mother.

My husband wants me to get on with my life. To buck up. To be the adult. I don’t want to be the adult right now. I want to have a great, screaming meltdown in the middle of the supermarket floor just as the cart is already half full of groceries and everyone is staring and muttering that someone really should do something about this child.

My children want me to help them with their math problems. To fix their dinner. To clean the tub. I want someone to do those things, too. Someone to make sure I have fresh sheets on my bed and a clean dress laid out for tomorrow. Someone who knows where my shoes are.

Where is she? Where is this person called Mother. Who is this person called Mother? Why is everyone looking at me?

What is it?

It’s Clara’s own springtime perfume concoction.

God’s Will

I know, I know where violets blow
Upon a sweet hillside,
And very bashfully they grow
And in the grasses hide—
It is the fairest field, I trow,
In the whole world wide.

One spring I saw two lassies go,
Brown cheek and laughing eye;
They swung their aprons to and fro,
They filled them very high
With violets—then whispered low
So strange, I wondered why.

I know where violet tendrils creep
And crumbled tombstones lie,
The green churchyard is silence-deep;
The village folk go by,
And lassies laugh and women weep,
And God knows why.

Robert Louis Munger

If you could keep me in your prayers, I would really appreciate it. This has been a very long and difficult year for me. It has put a strain on all of my relationships and I am having to focus my attentions on repairing the damage as much as it is within my ability to do so. I am looking to God to supply me with what I don’t have. And I am hoping that the people I love in my life will be willing to meet me half way.

Note to Secret Sister: Thank you so much for remembering me with little surprises at my door each week. Your notes have especially uplifted me during this time. Please do not think that I have forgotten you in my prayers.

“Timidity keeps me safe and sad in a narrow room.”
Mason Cooley

“Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.”
Publius Syrus (42 B.C.), Maxim 914

The very next day I received the wonderful prayer journal and set of pens. However did you know that I can never find any pens around here anymore? We won’t even discuss the games of hide-and-go-seek we play with pencils. Thank you so much for the prayer journal. I used to keep my prayer journal in a blank book, but this is so much nicer.

Thank you for all of the lovely gifts, but I especially thank you for the unseen ones. The prayers you send up for me and thoughts you keep of me. You are always in my morning prayers and I think of you often throughout the day. God bless and keep you and your family.