A Worthy Life

how far a mother's love will go

I could not stop the tears last night. I could not. After struggling through reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I gave up on the book and jumped straight to the movie, hoping there I might find sense and answers to the riddling puzzle laced within it's many twisting words.

Through pictures in movement and emotions telling what words could not, I finally understood.

I understood the story being told and in the story I found my own.

A young child alone in his journey is trying to make sense of life. His struggle continually alienates him from his mother who, deep in her own loss for answers and acceptance that life just doesn't always make sense, seems to have given up on reaching out to and for him.

Until you finally realize, she was searching for him all along even while keeping her distance so he could search for answers all his own.

My tears were not the first to fall today. Tucked between school and piano/guitar practice, scrubbing toilets and shuttling Trekkies, my girls and I met with many a squirmish. Navigating young women through the emotions of life added to the common selfish nature of ourselves is a job not for the faint of heart.

With this journey, with this education there are no maps, no rulebooks. No clearly defined formulas, no simple equations that guarantee an easy life.

Hardheaded met stubborn on the battlefield untl I finally surrendured us all, bowing my head with each on my knee, asking for a miracle.

After an extended squabble between sisters and animosity only growing as they worked side by side, each tried to out outlaw the other. Wicked whispers under breath, evil eyes veiled though thinly.

Each heaped insult to injury until the pain seemed theirs alone. Finally understanding that her sin had led another to share the forbidden fruit, she was the first to cry mercy. Mercy not for herself, but for the one she had wronged and for the other who reaped the fruit of her choices.

Wondering aloud why she willingly made such wicked choices, ones that hurt others, I could only hold her and promise her that this journey of choosing would always be hers and that for a lifetime she must find a way to choose love.

Later in the evening it was her sister's turn to weep. Tears of shame when they should have been tears of joy upon the invitation of access to her sister's sleepover. Knowing the right each has to exclusive claim over their shared room when they have an overnight guest, her sister had revoked her privilege by asking her to stay and play.

Coals of ashes could not have been more painful as she remembered that only last week she had jealously coveted her own overnight guest's company and would not let her sister in. She wept for the sorrow of opportunity lost, wept for the kindness she didn't deserve, and finally, reluctantly accepted the invitation to enter in.

This role of mother, this journey through it's hood, is almost too much. The answers I don't have, the choices I can't choose for them. The guard they put up when I only want to rush in. The hurt they carry, the hurt they cause. And this... All of this while I can only stand by as witness.

Seeing the hurt, sensing their need, we cannot solve or dissolve the pain nor their agony of spirit.

But we, like the mother in the movie, can go ahead, not more than just a step ahead. Leading the way, sometimes out of sight, sometimes in plain view. But always there, no matter how far they stray, no matter how long they linger.

Because a mother's love will go there.

Sometimes after a long day's leading there is nothing left for me but tears and worries. Wondering what lies ahead for them on their journey, hopeful they will follow the road I know they should take.

Some days the rewards of mothering come before their end. Some days there seems to be nothing but disappointment.

But if I could choose, choose between the days of following only my map, figuring out what to do with a day that was fully mine and the days of helping them in theirs, fighting through my own anxious thoughts to help lead them home, I would still choose the ones that oft lead to disappointment.

Because while I may experience days of disappointment, it is supremely better than having nothing and no one to call my child and none to call me mama.

I'd like to ponder it a little longer, the lengths to which my love has gone and the lengths to which I know it could carry me. Perhaps while swinging high into the branches of that childhood tree, getting lost in the rythm. Upward, onward each new morning. Face to the heavens where the beautiful blue beckons me to believe but where too the doubts threaten to darken my days.

This mothering, this calling will take some letting go. Letting go to a Father who can carry my weight, carry me through in miracles of the moments, resting on HIs eternal love as I seek to pass it on to them.

This love, this will be the key to everything along their journey.

Easy labor. Hold loosely. Keep releasing. Alone together. Good grief. Beginnings end.

The oxymorons of motherhood. The paradoxes of it's love.

But oh! the lengths this mother will go, because my Father's love went all the way for me.

( My thoughts on motherhood, immediately following a viewing of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.)

when you're waiting on a miracle

Six years ago today I started having mild to moderate contractions, this four days after being hospitalized at 24 weeks with severe hemorrhaging.

"It's just cramping because of your blood loss. Pop a few advil hon and you'll be fine," was the nurse's cursory dismissal.

After multiple attempts to get her to take this seriously (I was, after all, extremely hi-risk after 6 months of blood loss) and her proof that my contractions didn't even show up on her nifty contract-o-meter, she reluctantly checked to see if I was dilated.

Minutes later, Emmanuelle Joy was presented to a room full of experts and specialists who had insisted that our swift hellos would give way to a lifetime of goodbye. Expecting the worst, they were a reluctant captive audience as Emmanuelle belted out the first notes of her lifesong.

Her cries were our joyous miracle giving birth to melody.

Emmanuelle's journey began in trial but has progressed with a steadily increasing amount of promise and joy, true to her middle name. Today her face in a million frames line the gallery of my heart's walls. Her presence daily reminds that joy does follow our times of mourning, that there is redemption past the perils of our souls' dark days.

Perhaps as we celebrate her life and journey as the gift it was presented to us as your day is starting with loss or despair or loneliness. Perhaps you wonder if joy will ever be more than a wishful longing, if it's visit will ever linger there with you.

You believe that any life change for you will take a miracle. And you've grown weary waiting for yours.

My first thoughts this morning as I woke to celebrate our miracle on her birthday was for those such as you. Six years ago seems almost like yesterday, so clearly can I remember my pain, my anxiousness, my cries that were stuck in the labor pains of desperate hope.

I remember. And I know for many, these trials remains and your song still carries only in somber, woeful notes.

Could I encourage you today to keep singing? To keep pouring out your heart of agony and longing to a God who alone can promise hope in any darkness?

When your breath is hard to hold because your heart is full to breaking, breathe out and up. Your hope is above, you are not forgotten, you are not alone.

He who has the whole world in his hands has you upon His heart. He whose eye is on the sparrow can also see you. He who can hear the thundering cries of all those who mourn can still hear you.

In Him there is peace and joy, gifts in your waiting room of hope, His covenant rainbows as token that miracles can and do come.

And the greatest miracle in any trial is a heart that is transformed through the suffering. While you are waiting on a miracle, allow His embrace and words of truth whisper hope that love has come even while the answers are still on their way.

a beautiful day

While vacationing back home with family last week, we found a secret park hidden right off a main road complete with pond and gorgeous lighting. We stopped for a quick romp but decided to linger and avoid rush hour traffic so our ordinary moments of play were captured with the beauty of the setting sun and golden backlight winking it's splendor throughout many.

 

 

a reflecting pool

While her siblings skateboarded down hills and climbed up trees, she sat here quietly, lost in a world all her own. I'm not sure what drew her, the beauty of the water or the stillness that invited her in. She sat there a long time, not fretting about what was going on around her or what she might be missing out on.

This was her moment, this was her peace, this was where she recharged and reflected.

My reflecting pool is often here, when I take the time to look up at a screen that soon fills with letters tapped in coming to life before me. I get lost in the blank page, it's bare beauty beckoning me to sit for a while, to reflect and then to write.

The thoughts that swirl, the questions that weigh, the joys that I live...they all empty themselves here at my reflecting pool. Once thoughts become words and cares become expressed they are somehow easier to carry, easier to understand.

And the joys, oh the joys! The moments and the faces that spiral together through my days become the DNA of my life. I won't forget them, they are cherished here.

Here, the place where I reflect...out loud.

In 5 Minutes, on Friday.

spooning

That's my girls and me in an impromptu photo after an afternoon lounging on the couch with our good friends Ben & Jerry. This week has been a gift: beautiful weather, escapades out into nature, and, most precious, the privilege to kick back on the couch all scrunched up in each others embrace while we read or study.

Though I've now been a homeschooling mother for 5 years (!), I'm not one of those mama/teachers who pour over curriculum catalogs or is constantly readjusting the straight-back chairs with desks for optimal cerebral absorption.

The main reason I chose to keep me kids home is for a lifestyle of constant relationship, for my sake and theirs.

A full life education isn't just academics. It is exploration and discovery, not just about the world they live in but about themselves and how they fit into the world around them. Having them home with me allows us to learn together, me to learn their hearts and them to learn the necessities of life.

When they question, I can look beyond their verbiage and discover what is at the center of their concern. As they respond to what they are experiencing, we can deeper explore the finer matters of each subject from a more personal vantage point.

I heard a friend describe what she presumed our lifestyle is as loosey-goosey. I disagree. We approach each necessary subject with discipline and expect excellence. Yet finishing each within the context of our own time-frame and framework allows us plenty of time to learn outside the lines, to discover what is at our fingertips instead of what is written within textbook pages.

More than anything, the last few weeks have taught me how privileged I am that I have the choice to follow this lifestyle for our family. Yes, it is hard work, sometimes more consuming than I would like. But it is a path of little resistance for us, one able to be journeyed because my husband is the sole breadwinner and because I have the support and encouragement of a community of like-minded mamas.

For all the challenges we've met and tears we've shed over these last years, I wake full of joy and expectancy each morning because today I get to spend it with my kids close at my side. Each new dawn I am learning a little more of where this mama needs growth and ever grateful to my kids for the opportunities they provide to give me an ever continuing education in the school of patience, love, sacrifice, and wisdom.

I'll raise a spoon to that life every single day!

Embracing with Emily.

worthy women*: ashley ann

Ashley Ann had me falling for her at first sight. Somewhere, somehow I had stumbled across pictures of the most original and innovative nursery I had ever seen. The way she married vintage and modern, refurbished and re-designated pieces to new uses, and intermingled playful paper crafts into a colorful room fit for a princess whose mom didn't have a royal budget was the most jaw-dropping thing I had ever seen! It was featured on a design blog read by thousands, one I visited rarely, but on this day a certain godsend. I clicked over to her own blog and was lost for hours reading all her past posts and other diy projects. Besides the obvious knack she had for photography and crafting, I was drawn in by her humble spirit and overjoyed to find common ground as I noticed bits and pieces of her faith spilling over through her personal entries.

While you'd be hard pressed to find anyone within the photography/crafting/diy blogging community who hasn't been inspired by Ashely Ann, the one post that spoke volumes to my own heart was one relating to nothing of what she has become known for.

I remember the day vividly. I was carrying my husband's iPhone out with me to the garage to work on some project as I read her latest entry (a must read; go, now!) on the registration of her first online SnapShop course, a course designed to help beginning DSLR users in understanding their cameras and the basics of photography. In the first three days of offering the course, the combined purchases of all the "attendees" had been enough to pay for not one, but two adoptions in full. And in a moment, I learned a little of God's plans and future for one of His own daughters.

Through faithful documentation and cultivation of her interests and talents, God had given her a platform that now reached thousands. What once began as a creative outlet was now a vehicle of provision to bring an orphan from China into the arms of her new forever family and another into the lives of a friend's family. While I struggled so often with purpose and knowing God's will and direction for my life, wondering if I was squandering time and energy with the things that brought me joy and deeper meaning, here was Ashley Ann, just doing her thing until God showed up big time and allowed her to see in retrospect what He was doing all the while.

Enough about my thoughts. Here are some of Ashley's thoughts on her own journey, her answers to my questions that are emphasized in bold:

When did photography first become a passion for you?

Photography became a passion and gift in my life when I learned how to shoot manually. I've always loved the sound of the shutter, but before knowing how to use it I was often frustrated that the shots I got were not the ones in my head. Once I learned how to fully use my camera, I was able to capture in a picture the image in my head. My camera hasn't had a day off since. That probably has a lot to do with why I want to teach others how to learn to shoot manually.

 
When you first started your online presence, what was your primary intent?

I originally had a blog related to my photography business. When I 'closed' my business, I wasn't sure what to do with my blog. There were only a handful of people reading it so I changed the layout and kind of started new. I decided to just start posting about the random things I was making or the things I was doing with my family. I had no intentions of being a 'blogger', I just liked the outlet for sharing creative things. My kids were young and were not interested in hearing how I hot glued pictures to their walls. However, surprisingly there were a few people online that liked reading my randomness. My blog just kind of happened.

Even as your discipline with blogging increased, when and why did you choose to make it a daily intentional to-do on an already long lists of tasks-to-be-done?
When I started blogging (after the photography business), I challenged myself to blog every weekday for a month. Just a personal challenge, I didn't have any real motivation in it. One month turned into two and I never looked back. I quickly learned that it was a daily outlet and discipline I enjoyed. It gives me a break from laundry and helps me to celebrate little things in life. I am sure part of my daily posting now is related to habit (I feel weird not to post!), but a large part is simply because I enjoy it.

What was the moment/project/collaboration when you saw a huge spike in traffic to your blog and what was your first thought?
The first huge spike in traffic I saw was when I shared about hosting a Little Dresses for Africa party. I never expected it to be received like it did. It was the first time I shared about something related to a social justice issue on my blog. To get such great feedback was exciting and made me realize how fulfilling it is to be able to advocate for others online.

Like I mentioned earlier, I love how God's provision came from nothing that you had conspired to do on your own; it didn't come from your own personal vision for how adoption might play out for you or where the funds might come from. It simply came in 3 days, built on the daily discipline of living and blogging real life with a creative spin. When you finally sat down to create the curriculum for an online Snap Shops, was there any buzz of anticipation or expectancy to see how God was going to work?
When I wrote the online curriculum, I was just focused on getting it written. I had gotten numerous requests from readers who lived out of state for me to offer the course online. It wasn't until after the online course was written and I shared it with friends that I began seeing how God might use it to help with our adoption. The days leading up to registration were filled with anticipation to see what God would do with it.

When you texted your friend guaranteeing funds for their adoption on Monday (the day the online course would start registration), what were you thinking?! You already had $20,000 needed for your own adoption, let alone supporting someone else!
I was thinking God is going to do this. I wish there was a more in depth answer. I can't explain it. I just knew in the deepest parts of me that God was going to do it. Not many times in my life have I felt so sure of something. I just knew. I also knew she wouldn't believe me, so I had to keep telling her in the days leading up to it...so when it did happen she would know it was a gift from God, not from me.

Looking back at your earliest intentions for your photography and blog, can you still believe what God has done?? What has been the biggest surprise and joy in this journey through blogging?
I absolutely cannot believe all that God has done through photography and blogging in my life. I get to do all the things I love, all the things that make up who I am...on this strange thing called a 'blog'. It is difficult for me to even put into words how grateful I am for the gifts God has given me through blogging and photography. There are too many joys and surprises to name. Katrina, who writes Pugly Pixel, once referred to bloggers as tourists of life. That is how I feel about photography and blogging. These two gifts God has given me have taught me to be a tourist of life in a sense...to see all the little details and special things that get overlooked when we just go through the motions of everyday life. One day people will realize I am not very cool or interesting and they will stop reading my blog...but I'll keep writing it because it is joy in my life.

Looking forward, have you learned by now that God sometimes has bigger plans for us than we dare hope for and have your dreams increased as a result?
I think I've stopped dreaming. Not in a bad sense, but in content and hopeful sense. I find that God blows even my biggest dreams out of the water. I still dream, but I dream loosely. I've learned that most of my dreams will never compare to what God has in store for me. Instead of thinking too far down the road, I want to take in every detail of each step...my days are numbered, so I want to be fully present today and not focus too much on what I want years down the road.

Thank you, Ashley Ann, for the time and heart you put into answering these questions and for a life that continually displays God's glory. I love that Little Dresses for Africa was a turning point for your blog, it was one of my favorites and a party idea I have shopped for and am awaiting hosting! Your answer to the last question was especially poignant because, in a culture that says dream big or go home, you remind us that God's plans are so above and beyond our own and infinitely more eternal, too!

(Adorable family of dolls seen in the first picture are from Passive Juice Motel and can also be found on my wish list!)

*Awhile back, years really, I had the idea to feature stories of other women here on this blog that is really the continuing story of my life. I knew so many strong and beautiful women whose stories were not being told, examples who were so busy living out life that they had little time or desire to write about it themselves, and everyday heroes that live among us that are changing their corners of the world through love, compassion, service, etc. Today marks my return to that desire of relating stories of woman who are worthy of their calling as women and mothers, not for their perfection or superiority, but because of their faithfulness to the God who they journey towards.

what matters most

Last night I unpacked suitcases for six after coming home from an almost two week trip away. Having so many of your belongings shoved into luggage and seeing it all come out again and putting it away in four different rooms made me look at all my stuff a little differently. We have SO much! and all this for a little trip away!

While I wrestled with having so much after seeing family and friends back home with so little, I vowed that all this wanting and getting has got to stop. I spent a good deal of the night thinking this way.

The rest of the night I kept kicking myself for not buying that pair of sandals I desperately needed! but didn't buy because even while I cradled them close to my chest on the way to the cashier I was hit with a sudden burst of conscience. Wants and needs, they are getting so muddled up in here!

Tonight I uploaded all 544 pictures from the few days I took out my camera. Each frame was filled with the faces of loved ones, captures of joyous moments together, and celebrations spent cheering each other on. Faces that smiled through pain, through trial, through unemployment. People who chose to share in joys they could only bear witness to though never experience for themselves.

Those rectangles of color and memories, those are what matters the most, much more than the stuff accumulated along the way. The lives and hearts represented in those megapixels, the greatest value of our lives.

This trip is one I am still mulling over, processing the lives that we entered into for just moments or days. My eyes were opened to many truths that I've denied for so long. As we shrug off our comforts and wealth as commonplace, all the while others, many others are struggling to make ends meet. While we dismiss the idea that our childhoods were somehow perfect and charmed, there are others, many others that experience childhoods with nothing but dysfunction, abuse, and neglect. When I vehemently deny that I am pampered or privileged, others, many others live without voice or opportunity to even have their basic physical and emotional needs met.

And for me, little old me, the greatest disappointment that marked the last two weeks in my life was a missed opportunity on a great sale for a beautiful pair of sandals. 

Surrounded by much, my life has become about something so little.

By giving from my much, I sacrifice so little.

Living for me, finding the means for my ends, leaves me with little concern for the lives and hearts and souls of others.

I am wrestling, still wrestling, always wrestling. Some of the fights are old, contemplations continually pondered. Many, so many are new, seeds of thought planted in the last two weeks.

Those, the new ones, I hope to share here over the next little while. So that in recording, there is a remembering, and in the remembering a refusal to get sucked once again into my own little world.

sew ten

In January, the girl who turned me mother turned ten. A huge milestone for both of us. For me it was the sober realization that I have less years while she is still under my roof than when I first brought her home; for her it was the jubliant realization that she has less years while she is still under my roof than when she first entered.

Her gift this year was a big one, an iPod that she contributed part of the funds towards. But she insisted too on a party since she has chosen quieter celebrations in years past and I couldn't refuse a girl on the brink of double digits.

On one condition: that she celebrate without expectation of getting and that she consider giving her getting away.

She agreed, though somewhat reluctantly. On each of the invitations sent to friends, there was one special request. In leiu of presents, would they please consider instead a donation to a charity of Eliana's choosing?

We went over three charitable causes together: infant onesies for our friends aboard Mercy Ships in Africa, food for our friend's orphanage in Vietnam, or Clean Water for Haiti. Having already been involved in the first two, she opted for the third, excited by a new project to learn about in a country whose name was familiar because of last year's earthquake.

Earlier in the week, she read aloud to me from Kisses from Katie while I folded laundry. Reading about parents so desperate to quiet the hungry cries of their children that they would feed them mud pies to fill their rumbling tummies, her heart continued to soften towards those without the same comforts and provisions as herself.

The day of her much anticipated party finally came and with it $145 given from among her six friends. Recognizing that instead of an assortment of soon forgotten toys lost among the abundance of things already owned that she had instead used her anniversary of life to sustain the life of others, she was fully content to enjoy the moments celebrating with her friends for who they were to her and not for what they could give to her.

As I watched my little girl fade into the blossoming maturity of a young woman, my mama's heart swelled with pride. It's challenging to raise children that buck the consumerist norm, to teach contentment with less than all that they say you need to be happy. My husband and I, we can give so much more to our own children than what our parents could provide for us.

But one thing both our childhoods taught us is that stuff never conveys love nor the lack of stuff the doubt of love.

Just because we have the means doesn't mean it's all for us. I want my children to learn at a young age what I still struggle with at mine - to hold our resources loosely, allowing God to have back what He has given so that others may live, that others may have, that others may know that because God so loved the world He is raising up a people who love and serve Him by loving and serving others.

This is the heart I so desperately want to have, this is the heart that my daughter is so beautifully learning and modelling for her still growing mama.

Eliana's Sew Ten theme was inspired by this lovely party found here.

ache

Upon my pillow, the ache overflows it's banks and pours unhindered down my cheeks. The day, all of it, was too much as now perceived in the fatigue of the evening.

This mama heart feels too much, fears too many, and, in the moments of weakness and weariness, trusts too little.

For the hearts and souls under my tutelage, how will I win them? What words, what masterful plan can break through the stubbornness in theirs to trust the love in mine? How can I prove that all that I do, all that I ask of them is but momentary ache for the sake of forever joy and eternal peace?

I remember how my own father, tortured in the moment, would tell me that giving the consequence as means of instruction often hurt him as much, if not more, than it did me. I never believed it then, doubting that this imposition to what I wanted, this punishment that prevented me from continuing in my own way, could ever hurt another as much as it was ruining my young life.

Today I believe him, a belief forged from steps walked in this parenthood way. Words I believe but never use when correcting my own children.

How could they ever know the brokenness of a mother's heart when they are yet only child? How could they see the future the way that I have lived it and swallowed the bitter end of the choices I once made?

Their innocence blinds them to the cost of their rebellion, it is my love that must gently and patiently open their eyes to the reward of obedience.

This task is heavy, the consequence and reward life-altering. It is too much for them to know now all that I do, too much for me to try it alone.

Tears remained but for the night and sweet joy came in the morning. Opening my eyes to see what my God had for me, I found this truth...

"the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich enough for the need of all who invoke Him" (Rom 10:12)

Rich salve for the anguish of a mother's heart.

Joining (late) here.