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It’s late and I’m having another one of those existential moments (a trademark of mine) and I can’t quit even begin to imagine how I’d share these thoughts. They swirl and burl and clang around the insides of me demanding to maybe be told and shared and yet how?

Prayer is so important because it’s that place where you step out onto a limb, and just rest there with God. While you’re there time seems to stand still, because when you leave that limb I guarantee you more time has passed in this world than in that one.

And on that limb God whispers things. He says you are of me, plucked from me when I put your spirit to flesh and made a new life. He says when you passed that threshold you became a new creation, ALL of you. You are all my people. He wants us only to receive that gift and love Him back. That’s the heart of it. He says the next threshold was birth and oh a soul is born and yes things just got kicked up another metaphysical notch. The birth threshold is so holy, such unspoken beauty takes place and sometimes (many times) that fact goes unnoticed by our callous obtuse so-cloudy human eyes.

I feel so tight from epiphanies and letting them out doesn’t help but breathing does. One deep breath for each revelation.

Not everyone is holding truth in their hands, tho many claim to.

Grace is so entirely for the purpose of justice, just as much as it supersedes it. God always makes a way.

I read bible and verses confirm and change me and the next night I can’t even remember which they were because I never wrote them down. I’m a joke of a truth-sharer because I will tell you

“I just know. That’s how.”

and expect you to either get it or not, but not be surprised if you don’t.
Because I’m so tired and I can’t really be bothered with proving myself anymore.

I have a really hard time remembering that I want to put thoughts to keys to get them out, because I’m so tired (have I mentioned that?) and really can’t there be some kind of herb or something that prevents epiphany memory loss?

Another deep breath.

***

For Just Write.

I can hardly believe he will be 10, my oldest. I’ve given birth to 5 babies in that decade, and somehow I still feel like a total newbie each morning. It’s been long enough between babies that my new wee-est one keeps me on my toes and each and every day my oldest is the first almost 10 year old I’ve ever had. How is it possible to ever feel like I can take a breath and know what I did was, yes, the right decision?

We have been gently focusing on something lately — and I hardly realized it was happening because it came so naturally to the rhythm of our home. That is = the practice of being self-aware. My kids aren’t naturally great at verbalizing what they are feeling, and giant frustrations set in. So we started talking about it.

Discussing feelings even (especially??) when they’ve gotten in trouble for something, is the most transformational aspect of learning how to be self-aware.

Here’s what I mean.

They were in trouble, all getting timeouts, getting yelled at, mum and dad were PRET-ty po’d.

We paused, took a breath.

And asked them how they were feeling.

Honoring their feelings seemed to lessen everyone’s anger.

“I was very angry, and now I feel sad but I’m not sure why.”

“I feel like I did something wrong but I don’t know what.”

Sometimes it comes out that my 4 year old doesn’t have any idea why he’s even being disciplined, and we’d really not know it if not for discussing feelings.

Once we verbalize it all, we can correct or encourage, teach how to give and ask for forgiveness with tangible things like “wouldn’t it make him feel better if…”

This may sound silly to some, but it has opened new doors for communication that I would’ve never seen coming. Perhaps most of you knew about this all along, perhaps not.

Do you talk about feelings, pointing out how to be self-aware (and therefore helping your kids understand not only themselves, but what their actions do to others)?

I’d like to hear your stories about teaching feelings, and how it points back to giving grace and love to others. It is so key, don’t you think?

Linking up with my boo today – Sarah from Emerging Mummy, on an amazing idea she had to have all us mamas share our Practices of Parenting. Click on over for some valuable teaching!

I wake to two little eyes focused on me. Little eyelashes growing long, coming to have a curl at the end. I see those eyes crinkle into the most quiet of grins, beckoning me to wake for the day. She doesn’t wake me with a cry but with a spirit-nudge. Each morning I gently open my own eyes, sure that it’s the sun and not the baby that woke me — and she’s there awake, waiting.We seem to always wake face to face, eyes focused on the future of our heart bond…

{{Click to read the rest about The Promise over at Incourage today}}

I can’t gulp her in fast enough.
Mouth wide, I try.

Heart opened to hinge-breaking width, it’s  still not enough.
Her lashes grow and each day I watch them. Time stands still for those moments.
Her eyes are almond shapes that turn up at the corners.
They beckon me to a guttural, ancient response of the swooned variety.

And still, I wouldn’t be surprised if her brothers tired of her.
She does get most of the attention around here right now.
Especially when she cried every waking moment those first few months.
But they didn’t then, and they don’t now.
They can’t gulp her in fast enough either.

These boys have grace that is rooted somewhere deep within,
a trail of precious mercy that goes all the way down
where it connects with that part of them that is “other”.

They already know about their Other.

I’ve been marinating a lot lately -
in the truth that these are the years I will long for some day.

I will miss the smell of baby neck
and of sweaty boys
and of night time bubble baths.

Oh but to live and breathe that cliche – “live in the now“.

I trade trite for real, and give it a go.

***

penned this for Just Write today
take a peek for more essays <3

She died this day that year,
and on Sunday we will celebrate
the day she was born.
Again with the backwards of it all.
And it will always be backwards.

The finality of it still catches in my throat
like a lump of dirt that I still can’t swallow.

Brothers request a cake and a party and we will miss and cry
and be grateful for what is.
And we will have cake.

*

They cry today missing her,
even while holding her sister,
and I ask myself again how they could feel what I feel so strongly
when they weren’t there.

But they are of my blood and so much of me that I know.
They feel like they were there.

I can’t recall how much I’ve even shared of her special day.
(I can’t bring myself to read her birth story today, but if you’d like to it’s here.)
It isn’t anything but perfect and beautiful in my memory.

That day when, for some mystical reason I don’t fully understand,
we got time with our daughter.

Her spirit was with us.

I can’t adequately explain it to you, it’s just real.
I’m a dreamer, but I don’t make things up.
I think about how we don’t know the logistics of what exactly takes place
when a soul passes on.

When do things exactly take place? What does it look like?
We won’t know until we go through it.

And sometimes we wonder about babies that die -
do they go to be with God as a baby?
My children ask me this constantly.
What age will Mabel be when we get to see her someday?
They assume God is feeding her and she is growing, just not here with us.

But when we had that time on that glorious and terrible day that I had no idea how I’d survive but I did and we do – it was just 4 short hours.

Only 4 hours with Mabel, and we got to speak to her, tell her our dreams…but here’s the thing…

we were not talking to a baby.

It was our daughter, but it wasn’t baby talk coming out of our mouths.
I can’t tell you an “age” because there wasn’t one.
She just was.
And we told her how she was loved, already missed.
That she had changed us and we’d be better people because of her.
How she taught us how to really love.
How to really pray.

That I am her mother, that I got to birth her, it’s too honorable for words.
That she passed that threshold, the place where the veil thins
and we feel the holy ground soften beneath our toes –
birth is that threshold, as much as dying is.

Mabel crossed one before the other, but changed how we saw life forever.

My experience shaped my belief,
winnowed me
and how I see this world and the next,
but didn’t change what I know of God.

That all things are for my story, and on purpose and don’t always make sense.

This little girl, whose neck I’m smelling today
and whose eyes light up when I simply look her way.

Whose passage over the birth threshold was also a moment of the veil thin and my heart bursting and my mind blown.

She brings with her secret gifts, locked away in her soul that will slowly be revealed and unlocked and presented as she gets older.

It’s humbling having daily epiphanies about life, but I try and write them each down for her. I have secrets about the world that I wonder if only she will understand them the exact way I do. My boys are so tender and so tapped in to the beating pulse of the earth and life and they shape me in ways I never expected – but they hold special gifts only their dad will know and feel and live.

God makes children so specifically for us, each of them.

I have two daughters, one I get to raise and another who waits for us to join her.  I like to believe she doesn’t actually have the sensation of “waiting”, but rather that she simply wakes and it’s all over and we are all there and it’s all the next chapter.

All those before us are risen, too,
and we His people
with anticipation and joy,
cry no longer for the missings of love
and that world which we ache for.

Our true home.

For Mabel, today, I continue my daily grind because I have to.
We miss her none the lesser and watch her sister grow
with the memory of Mabel about her head like a delicate crown of perfect purpose.
The one here, the one other.
Sisters.
Rest comes from truth and leaning into it and holding it above all else.

I will sleep well tonight.

It was our first Christmas with a baby girl,

even though she spent the holiday with roseola
and the pitiful attitude to go along with it.

It was the first Christmas where vinyl was played,
the first with our new vintage tinsel tree,
the first where cornbread muffins and cupcakes were from scratch
and one where the gifts were not lavish, yet very well received.

It was a humble Christmas, and it felt just right.
Lots of exciting things coming in 2012
This weekend feels like the quiet before the storm.

Here’s to a new year of love and creativity!

Wishing so much love and goodness to you and yours. <3

***
One of these days I will post Small Style on the proper day…for now:

On River
deer t-shirt : c/o barley & birch
handmade foxy friend : c/o le petit reve
lime green jammies : grandma gift from carters
red sparkly dress : target
striped tights : goodwill
vintage red shoes : kid wonder

On the Boys
casual clothes that they wouldnt change out of for Eve openings : all goodwill
christmas morn jammies: nightlife via gilt
red tennies : quiff via gilt

Share and Enjoy:

She is the deep thinker I am.
Perplexed by the camera which turns grins into hilarious judgy baby face.

She prefers me, which is entirely new to this mama.
{swoon to the max}

She is having good nights and the evenings are still hard but I know her cries now.
I can tell when she just wants me. Or just needs sleep.
Or really just hurts.

While she sleeps most of the night in her bassinet
I can’t wait for the wakeup when I’ll bring her into bed with me
to snuggle and connect and stare at her face
{I really need to start sleeping one of these days.}.

I hear God whisper that this is temporary,
a message in a bottle that I opened weeks ago.

This River and I will be venturing together next month and the month after that.
One destination is Nashville. The Opryland to be exact.
We’ll be at the Handmade Market (swoon!)
and at sessions
and nursing
and napping in a hotel room.

Want to come see us?
The BlissDom conference has a game changer type of new format this year
and I am SO excited.

As the BlissDom Community Manager I may be biased {wink}
but BlissDom is heads and shoulders above the other conferences
for a magic combo of biz advise, networking and magic.

River gets her first blog conference, yo!

You can come too because BlissDom is allowing me to giveaway a full conference pass!

Want to win? Here’s how (8 total entries possible):

1. Leave a comment here telling me why you’d like to win. Easy peasy.
2. Like my blog on Facebook (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
3. Follow me on Twitter (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
4. Like BlissDom on Facebook (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
5. Follow BlissDom on Twitter (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
6. Sign up for the BlissDom newsletter so you don’t miss a beat!  (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
7. Share this post on Facebook  (leave a separate comment telling me you did)
8. Share this post on Twitter   (leave a separate comment telling me you did)

I will pick a winner on Monday at noon EST (Dec. 12th). Even if you already have a conference pass, please spread the word so others can attend!

***
River Style:

dress : manimina
leggings : thief & bandit kids
socks : see kai run c/o my citrus lane box

Share and Enjoy:

Sometimes it’s the epitome of that feeling of being watched. You are not your own anymore.

You have that Not You inside you, literally there in a tangible way that if we just invented the right kind of scan they’d be able to locate it.
A soul scan.
The unseen aren’t nonexistent, just viewed with special eyes.

I can tend to that place in me, or abandon it like a garden and weeds grow over the Light.
It’s my choice.
Scraggly tough roots twist and spin and threaten to squeeze that place out of me.

There’s something about sleep deprivation and colic that entirely perplexes me. They make this life so wholly impossible feeling, all the *anything* gets snuffed out and put aside and – not tended to – that I find myself asking why sleep deprivation and colic were “invented” in the first place. Why not just make them not exist?  Why does God choose to make it so hard to keep up all relationships, including the one with Him? I ask God to help her feel better and she does and then I get angry when it only lasts an hour.  Or a day.

My expectations expose a deep sense of entitlement that bothers me worse than anything else. Why do I think I deserve anything?

I feel like I need to go to each and every one of you that ever thought I was a strong person and apologize. Sorry I fooled you! After all that I’ve been through I’m sitting here with weeds overgrown on my Light. I owe Jesus more letters and phone calls than all of you combined. My Trust in God has been fractured and I struggle to do the work it will take to repair it and yet sit fully aware of it all. And then I just decide I need a nap.

Like a broken bone it seems that Trust is the slowest to heal. I want instant healing. Impatience rears its ugly head again.

Our family has been through so much even just recently that I sometimes just stare off into space and wonder what to do.

Survival mode can be very lonely.

photo

You who are tiny and strong.
You who are brave.

Do you know how unique you are?

You are the generation that will never NOT know the internet.
That? Is special.

It means that since your birthed day,
you have had an epic amount of possibilities available to you.

You don’t know that making a Christmas list online is a new-ish delight.

You don’t know that doing school online is an even newer honor.

You don’t know you could, if you wanted,
learn almost anything there is to know in the entire world – online,
and that it’s something generations before you simply did not have.

When you see an horse in a picture online
and can click to hear his neigh voice?

Or click to watch what it  looks like from inside a rocket ship?
That’s just you and your people.
My people couldn’t do that from home or at school.
You won’t have to wait for the right vacation or field trip
to hear, see, experience.
It’s literally all at your fingertips.

We do school at home.
Rather, we unwrap school at home.
We use fingers and toes and fabric and paper
and yes
OH YES
we use the computer.
All tools, baby. Use them.

Feel the glee of flying a plane by watching a youngin
sitting in the tiny 2 engine
who captured it all on his dad’s phone.

Learn how to add, subtract and multiply with the computer,
because there are amazing apps and sites to teach you just that.

Study and learn and shape your soul
as well as your mind.

Be who you can and want to be,
because even though the fields and oceans and forests
are our lifeblood?

That internet and computer and all it contains
are the tools to take you to the place where your passion
and your work
AND your lifeblood
intersect.

Go learn. Go discover. Go be you.

***

Intel AppUp – have you heard of them?
They are a great source for PC apps
and have some really epic options for education.

They sponsored this post
because they want you to know about something really important –
It’s their Wired To Learn contest for schools – go have a look.

You can nominate and vote on your school
(or simply vote on a school already nominated)
and the schools that have the most votes
will win technology packages (first place wins a 25K package!!).

How amazing for a school to get the tech it needs
for the  students to have the kinds of limitless possiblities
I wrote about here today!

{pss..also there’s a chance for you to win a netbook just for downloading the Intel AppUp Center!}

So click over and nominate your school.
Spread the word for your school to get votes
and GOOD LUCK!

Friends, I have no idea where these days and weeks have gone. River turns 8 weeks old in a couple days and honestly? We cannot believe it. I haven’t blogged here mostly because I had no idea time was rushing past me (the other reason is because colic has ruled the house). Things are finally better, my head is above water now and I need you to know River’s story. This is the beginning of how she came to be. I wish you could each meet her and lock eyes and feel your spirit rumble deep inside you. For now, here is how it happened.

At one week past my due date I hit that place where you just can’t take it anymore. I remember sitting on my Grandma Pearl’s quilt and sobbing and asking God what more I was going to be asked to endure. How could I possibly wait any longer?! Related: It’s really too bad I’m not more dramatic.

Once I passed that day, I settled in to the overdue place and felt truly free. It was a really beautiful time, almost quiet as a whisper, and looking back I miss it like you miss that Christmas morning magic

before things begin, or that anticipation right before you stepped down the aisle.  It was a once in a lifetime time.

The deep places those extra days carved into my heart have been filled with baby and wonder now. I felt no need to “hurry things along” and tried none of the labor-starting tricks. I just waited.

Soon the waiting is what got to us. Because we didn’t know the baby’s gender, we felt suspended in a place where we had no idea what our lives would look like or what kind of people we’d be after we met the baby. Would we be parents to four boys? Or would we finally get to raise a baby girl? I have been known to have an existential crisis on a regular basis, especially while pregnant with a baby girl, so my identity as a person felt wholly wrapped up in these potential paths of life.  Obviously most of this is because of Mabel. We wondered what this next chapter would look like in the context of the daughter we lost, and I continued to surrender fears as I remembered my last labor – with Mabel – had been so very different.  The unknown seemed to strangle me at night and kept me tossing and turning. I knew the time was near.

From Sunday (Oct 2nd) to Wednesday morning contractions increased in frequency and length, but never got painful. I basically had no idea what my body was really doing, because I’d never had a pain-free early labor. Things were slow, but so lovely. My kids were with my dad and my husband, my mom and I took walks in the sunshine and enjoyed the peaceful slowness that this baby was giving us. Little did I know how fast things would go later on! We were planning a home birth (it would be my 4th time at home) so we didn’t even have a worry about when to go or not go anywhere. We just stayed. We ate. We slept. We watched movies. I labored effortlessly.

It was around 8:30am on Wednesday Oct 5th (13 days past due date) when my contractions became more intense and painful and I woke up to a big painful contraction,and just thought “wow, finally active labor has kicked in!“. We called my midwife to come over and we started filling the birth pool. A couple hours later I felt the baby burrow down lower into a very decisive “ready to be born” position and it was the first time I’ve ever felt such a thing. I think because usually I’m in a lot of pain when that baby burrowing happens, I’ve never noticed it before! It was cool and weird (sortof felt like the baby would just burrow her way on out!) and was the beginning of me feeling every single thing that was happening inside my body.  It was a perfect parallel to what my mind is like and how I am – so completely aware and always rolling thoughts around in my mind over and over and over.

By around 1:30pm I hadn’t had any obvious progress so we decided to have the midwife check me and I was 4.5 cm dilated but she didn’t feel like I was in active labor yet. I tended to agree, since even though contractions were still going, and were slightly painful, it wasn’t anything like “real” labor just yet. I could still chat in between contractions and I just knew in my spirit active labor was still eluding me. My midwife said I was about as close to active labor as one could get without *actually* being in active labor. So we decided to try and give things a little nudge. I rubbed castor oil on my belly just before 2:30pm and what seemed like 5 min later, contractions were intense, 4 min apart and a minute long and I was in the birth pool and not talking to anyone anymore.  I had crossed another threshold.

Before I knew it, contractions became 2 min apart and 1+ min long. They were extremely intense and I would go to my happy place mentally and surrender and just try and let go and not resist the pain. For some reason staying in that surrendered place was a lot harder for me this time around than any other labor. I was so aware of everything I was feeling, I knew I was having some extraordinary ligament pain in front and I kept feeling like I wasn’t completely letting go. I would later come to find out that there was a reason I felt this way!

I started to feel a little pushy at the end of contractions, like my body was wanting to push…but intuitively I didn’t feel like it was time to push yet. This conflict bothered me enough that again, I felt like I wasn’t letting go completely. At this point things were hurting A LOT and I felt confused and a little panicky. My midwife swooped in and said she was checking me and I discovered that I was 8-10cm because I had a cervical lip. If not for the lip I would have been at 10cm. Aha! This explains that feeling like I wasn’t completely letting go – the lip was the manifestation of that.  This also explained why I felt pushy but wasn’t ready (a cervical lip hurts pretty badly, and pushing against it hurts epic bad). My midwife said “find the place that hurts the worst, surrender to that spot“. That little direction was all I needed to stop being wild of heart and just focus.

Here’s where I feel like things begin and are over with all at the same time. The amount of emotions and thoughts that raced through my mind I can hardly begin to put down into words. The following all occurred within 8 minutes:

Suddenly my water broke and BOOM contractions back to back without a pause. I immediately began pushing her out, and out came her head. My midwife said “ok let’s take it easy now, baby’s coming pretty fast, you can take your time” and asked me if I wanted to reach down (to feel the head). I said “NO!” and my body kept pushing! I was on my knees in the pool, and I felt the rest of the baby be born and heard my midwife say “Look down, here’s your baby!” and I looked down to see the baby somersaulting through my legs in the water. I brought the baby up, started to pull her to my chest and then paused. I had an epic “Lion King” moment where I held her up in the air and said “IT’S A GIRL!!” and then brought her to my chest and relaxed into the water in a whirlwind of what-in-the-world-just-happened.

That was it. In 8 minutes, I went from 8cm to birth. Boom.
I will spare you certain details, but let’s just say stitches were involved and I couldn’t walk for weeks. Ouch.

I can just tell you snippits of thoughts I had in those first moments, because coherent thought eludes me still. It all plays out like a montage, and I feel like there’s an Adele song in the background as the soundtrack.  Looking at her face.  Relief that she was healthy and in my arms. Amazement that she was a SHE. I sobbed with the reality of just those first two things. Then the relief of being done hit me, and WOW. To be done with that labor!! Cut to a scene of us weighing her and seeing she was my biggest baby by a landslide. Cut to scenes of me up all night alone with her as she couldn’t sleep. Cut to weeks of colic screaming and trying everything in the book, slow recovery on my part, and the past two months being sucked into a time vortex where I have no idea how these days have gotten away from me.  Cut to now, with her sleeping longer stretches at night, no more colic episodes and me having my spirit rocked again and again by this little wonder babe.

You need to know she smiled the first day she was born. This is significant, because every other baby of mine took many weeks or months to smile (my oldest didn’t smile until he was 4 months old).  You need to know she was awake for over 4 hours right after she was born, just looking around at people. Taking in everything. We looked at each other and locked eyes many times. I feel butterflies when we connect like this still today.

I gave birth to my soul. Do you know what that is like? It hurts sometimes when she cries. Not the normal mama-oh-no-my-newborn-needs-me kindof hurt. But the kind of hurt where I feel the emotions of her, Mabel, myself, all us girls.  It’s a good kind of hurt.  It makes me feel eternal and remember my God and my life and the big picture. Her eyes are where it’s at.

I get why she seems so serious sometimes. I practically faint with glee when she gives me big gummy grins. I see her eyes soften from a perplexed frown into a knowing look because I’m her mama and she just spotted me across the way. I still, at almost 8 weeks old, cannot believe I get to hold a daughter.

Her brothers are so madly in love with her, I fear I’ll never be able to justly write about it. They kiss her, walk her around, sing to her. I feel her energy ease when she looks at them. She is special, and all of us know it. Her brothers know it. They feel it too. They love her so deeply it feels unbearable and I drown in it and dog paddle my way to a piece of something floating in the water so I can get air, just to have their love drown me all over again. It’s like that.

River Promise is our miracle baby. Our diamond in the pitch.  Sometime in 2010 through many moments and minutes and hours of prayer, God promised her to me. He promised when I found out I was pregnant that this baby would be ok. That any time I got scared I could simply fall back on that Promise. When I had bleeding in my pregnancy, I looked to that Promise and breathed. When I decided not to have any ultrasounds I remembered the Promise and I breathed. When I got scared yet again because she was overdue, I remembered the Promise and I breathed. When the anxiety and fear of labor wanted to linger in my mind, I remembered the Promise and again, I breathed.

The bible talks about rivers of Living Water flowing from our bellies. That Living Water is the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. Breathing. I knew when I was pregnant that this baby was my Spirit baby. We changed our name choices from more old fashioned (granny) names because they didn’t fit – we needed something ethereal. Something spirit.

This baby was going to be named River whether boy or girl. Since we got a girl (of course we got a girl!) her name is River Promise. Our Promise baby, our Spirit baby. Breath of life. She is all of it. She is here.