Three, a birthday blessing

Three is so big,
So much bigger than two
And the world is so full
Of new things to do.

I wish you bubbles and markers
And a trip to the zoo,
Good books and a garden
And pretty new shoes.

I wish you sunshine
And nights of good sleep.
I wish you edamame
And other good stuff to eat.

I wish you music
And a big space to dance,
Kittens and patience
And life not left to chance.

I wish you the sweetness
You've had from the start.
I wish for Jesus
To be at home in your heart.

So many people love you--
Way more than you know--
But bigger than all that
Is how God loves you so.

He's always taken care of you,
And I trust Him to today.
I know He holds you in His hands
While you sing or sleep or play.

Oh yes, three is so big,
So much bigger than two,
And the world is so full
Of new things to do.

But God's love is biggest--
You already know.
He's already there
Wherever you go.

Easters past

So I've been thinking a bit about past Easter sunrise (or sometime after) services with our little community. It seems like we have ended up with one particular sentence that kind of summed up each. Last year was: "If you can't count on dead people staying dead, what can you count on?" I may mix the order of others a bit. One was "Christmas is about God with us (Emmanuel), but Easter is about God in us (the hope of glory)." I think that was the year Emma painted a sun for us to hang in our living room since it was snowing at the lake. Before that: "Who are you in the Easter story? Maybe you're the rock." And before that: "Our God does impossible things--let's act like it."
And this Easter . . . is still a few weeks away.

pecanning again

It is spring break, and I am blessed to get to spend at least a chunk of it harvesting pecans! Hooray! (Truly no sarcasm there.) I am realizing that perhaps one reason this seems such a right thing to do during Lent is that I spend most of the time on my knees. And I know that most people say they can't do that because of back issues or knee issues, but I think the part of us that extended time in this position most hurts is our pride. It is definitely a worker's position and one of submission. While I feel a bit achey in back and legs in the evenings, the only spot of my body that really hurts is my left wrist. This is actually quite telling. I constantly lean on my left arm in order to reach with my right hand to grab that "one more pecan" that is slightly out of reach. Regardless of the fact that I will in moments move my little boogie board forward (where they would easily be in reach), I cannot seem to stop the urge to lean and reach--just a few more.
I am reading one of Nouwen's books called "Reaching Out." The firs third is about solitude. There's something to make you say Hmmmm. ( I have sadly just revealed to a handful of you just what a big fan I was of a certain late night talk show when I was in college.) Now, I find myself surrounded by things that make me say Hmmmm. I don't think the world is more full of Hmmm-worthy stuff. I think I am more capable of Hmmmming.
I recall very clearly during those college years a single line spoken by the Holly Hunter character in Broadcast News. (Can't tell you anything else about that movie at all.) She has just made a rather strong suggestion about how to fix a problem and someone looks at her and says, "It must be nice to know better than everyone else in the world." She says, completely serious, "No, it's awful." I totally identified with that line for years.
One of the joys of getting older is knowing that you know very very little, and not being worried about that. Knowing everything is not my job. And on the days when it feels like it is, I have to admit that I'm sure it is not a task God assigned me. Which begs the questions, Who did assign me that task, and why am I taking assignments from them anyway?
Long enough inside though--back to my knees with the trees.

Ash Wednesday Again

Here we are at the beginning of Lent again. How life can change in a year.
I'm not giving up silence this year. I'm giving up the guilt about how much solitude I need at this point in my life. I'm also giving up TV for Lent, which is kind of funny since we are such non-TV people around here. I'm not against all TV as entertainment--I'm against mindless drivel, trash, time waste, and addiction. I hadn't watched much TV for quite a while before I realized that I can watch what I want to at the time that's convenient for me (i.e., when I have to be in bed resting anyway) online. A couple of years of life with toddlers destroyed my attention span for full-length movies--a gift, I'll add, that was absolutely 100% completely worth that destruction! Last year, I started watching 3 shows regularly (One has been canceled and one's fate is yet to be determined). Then as I've been sick a lot the past few months, I realized that has gone up to about 8 or 9 shows that I pretty much keep up with. Less good. But my two abstinences are connected because I realize that while I have been taking more time alone (My current tolerance for time with people seems to be a period between 2 and 3 hours these days.), I feel so guilty about choosing to be alone rather than with people that I escape by focusing my attention on something far from me--like a good story on a TV show. Thus, I still haven't been getting the actual solitude that my heart was starving for. Sounds stupid now, but that's part of the point of Lent, right?--realizing that our pacifiers aren't giving us any nourishment.

One of the twenty-somethings living with us asked me the other day: "So are you the kind of person who says little things all along out of frustration and anger, or are you the kind of person who saves it all up for one big explosion?" Uhmm, no. Raised eyebrows. I'd never really explained this side of who I am before, so it was actually good to put it into words: I'm the kind of person who believes that words matter, that words have power. So I'm the kind of person who will use all my self-control to try not to let harmful words enter the world through my mouth. That's an aspect of silence I'm not giving up.

Pecans

I just want to harvest pecans. All the time. Until it is too dark to distinguish them from the dirt and leaves. And then I can sit in the lit garage and sort them, separating what will go to the sheller from what will serve a different purpose: composting into fertile soil. I do not see a single pecan as waste, not even those still undeveloped and encased in a hard clingy black outer shell. I feel productive. I occasionally pause to savor the meat from a shell that is already cracked. And I feel fortunate. And I do not want that tender richness to lie ungathered. So I pick up another pecan. And another. I don't know how to decide, “Oh—this is where I will stop. I will put this pecan in my bucket but not that one to its left and not that one by my foot. They are fine too, but I am going to walk away now with my full bucket and have some lunch. And I will leave those fine pecans on the ground.” It feels difficult to leave them there, but not painful. I don't feel guilt for my choice. This is perhaps why I want to stay in this field doing this forever—I cannot do damage here. With their unique stripe patterns, the pecans are beautiful. Some of the lighter ones make me think of fragile bird eggs. Gratefully, they are not fragile. (Not like people.) I can do something worthwhile—by carrying the good food from the ground to the table. But I cannot do harm—If I miss a lovely pecan and leave it for the birds, if I mistakenly pile one empty old shell in the bag with all the full healthy pecans, if I step too heavily and crush a nut into bits, I will not cause harm. Moreover, the pecans, their trees, the wind—they are all comfortable with my silence, unoffended by it, unhurt by it, not even the least bit disrupted by my wordlessness. Most places that feel this safe do not offer opportunity for me to give anything at all to the world from my protective cocoon. But this is different. Here I can carry one pecan after another after a thousand from the gentle but unappreciative ground to the table where they will find their way into hungry mouths and delicious pies. Here I can feel safe and still make the world a little better as I go. No wonder harvesting pecans is addictive to my soul.
02-11

sweet

I actually had the thought this evening as I was packing up to go home after my classes: I feel so sorry for all the people who did not get to spend the last hour with my writing class. Really. I am so blessed.

true

"It is flawed and fleeting, and sometimes it is work to love it.

And maybe in the work of loving it is the greatness."
--DaMomma on life as mom

Saturday

I realized today that Saturdays are hard now. In a different way. They used to be hard because we were trying to prep for church spiritually and clean the house for church and do necessary errands and we were pretty much guaranteed to hang with a little kid or two for the day. Now, I wake up when I wake up on Saturdays, not when a little voice gets me up. I look at the day ahead and it looks comparatively empty. Not that I feel any boredom, and not that there aren't millions of things on my need-to-do list. It's just crazy different. I step into the hallway and glance toward the living room, immediately aware that only light cleaning is needed to prep it for church. The days of trying to shovel our way through toys and various other things to just find the sofas have passed. Even before cleaning, the living room looks fine. Really. Probably part of the lack of mess is due to the fact that I haven't learned how to live in those front rooms again yet. I still find myself doing almost everything in that same little spot on my bed. I have forgotten what all that space is for. The space in the house, the space in the Saturday.
One morning this week I suddenly became aware of the reason that the other half of our bedroom is piled with huge stacks of everything under the sun. The boxes and books and papers and clothes are all there for one reason: Em's crib isn't there. This is true not just in that sense that unoccupied space draws clutter like a magnet
but also because I have not been able to bear the obvious absence of the crib. Of course, we had been planning for the crib to move out for quite a while, but I realize now that all of my plans for rearranging the room still involved making a sleeping space for Em somewhere in there, just without the cumbersome crib. Thus, the piles of junk have been more comfortable to deal with than an Em-less rearrangement or worse yet--an empty space--would be. So I am no longer thinking in terms of clearing everything out of those piles or rearranging our room. I'm just going to try, a few times each day, to put five or ten things away from those piles. Baby steps.
My hope is just a habit.

As usual, great thoughts from David Lose at workingpreacher.com this week:
"When I was in graduate school, one of my teachers, Dr. Cleophus LaRue, would regularly address me as "Dr. Lose." Eventually it made me uncomfortable enough that I said to him, "But Dr. LaRue, I haven't earned my doctorate yet. I don't think you should call me that." "Dr. Lose," he patiently responded, "in the African-American church we are not content to call you what you are, but instead call you what we believe you will be!" Blessing. Unexpected, unsettling, nearly inconceivable, yet blessing nonetheless.
So here's the question I am left with this week, Working Preacher: What would it be like just to bless the congregation. To tell them that God loves and adores them, that God wants the very best for them, that God esteems them worthy of not just God's attention but God's blessing.
Whatever we do, we need to think hard about how to help people hear and believe that they are blessed because, as Dr. LaRue knew, we become what we are called, and calling our people blessed will over time transform them to be God's blessing in and to the world."

birds of a feather

You know how being surrounded by sleeping cats makes you think it's exactly the right thing to sleep all day? I think I have that kind of misguided connection with characters in the books I'm reading sometimes. If I'm reading about a writer who scribbles poetry down on napkins, that behavior suddenly seems so much more "normal" than usual. So I'm thinking it is not a good thing that the main character in the fluff novel I'm reading on the bus is a 16-year-old-girl who is excluding people from her life one by one (for their own safety of course). At least I wrote it down. Good news is that I'll be done with this book tonight. Maybe I need to choose the next bus fluff more carefully, given my tendency toward over-identification with characters.

1,2,3,4, Really?

I was counting out copies of a worksheet for my class and got this song stuck in my head: "1, 2, 3, 4 monsters knockin' at the door." Yes, Feist via Sesame Street. I promise we have not played that youtube clip once since Emersyn left in November. And yet . . .

What happened to the UNsilence?

I know. Looks a lot like silence around here. And I'm not making any promises to be less silent. I feel like I may be moving into a cocoon for some transformation, and cocoons are pretty quiet.
Emersyn the two-year-old who was sharing our room, moved out with her family in late November. Thus, no cute Em stories to post. I still miss her every day, but I have gotten past the point where I burst into tears every time I hear a toddler cry or have to redirect my shopping cart away from its habitual path toward the diaper aisle. Who knew NOT buying diapers could make you cry? But I know that I still walk around with a gaping hole near my heart.
I still have a full and incredibly blesses life. My 12-year old daughter is one of the most creative and open-hearted people I have ever known. As I sit silently hidden away in our room, I can hear my remarkable husband having theological conversations with whichever twentysomethings are around at the same time that he paints walls and washes dishes. My classes at El Centro Community College made and are--as usual--filled with delightful students from a huge spectrum of backgrounds. I feel so fortunate to still have both of my precious parents just a few hours' drive away. Our twentysomething guys seem to be making positive steps forward in their lives. The people who I am privileged to be church with locally are amazing.
But still, the cocoon calls.

Advent tnoughts

I am grateful to be able to be more fully present in advent this year than I was in lent. Although we are feeling a lot of joy in our lives and are so blessed by the love and support of so many people, the dominant feeling of the season is definitely longing. Longing for peace and justice and the Kingdom come on earth. Probably partly because our soundtrack this season seems to be Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God. The whole CD, which starts the Christmas story back in the Old Testament, is so rich, but we're especially moved by "Deliver Us" just now.
Our hands-on lesson in active, faith-ful waiting: We are repainting our living room. Part of the room will be deep redwood, which is a few shades more intense than the color we had there before. But when I opened the paint container and saw the paint, I almost freaked out. Really--it was fuschia. (If you don't know this, we are really not big pink fans around here.) I kept stirring and stirring it, but it was still fuschia. Brianna said, "The guy at the store said it will change to the right color as it dries." Still, covering our walls with anything that color just felt so wrong. But we kept on --doing our part of putting the paint on the walls anyway and waiting for change to come. I am wondering if we are really quite slow at getting the point of this lesson since this paint job has required a full 2 coats and in some places three. Each time we raise the fuschia-drenched brush to our wall is painful for me. But we keep painting and waiting, and our walls are now deep redwood. May we be as faithful in all the less visible ways that we are called to actively wait this season.

'Tis the season in Dallas

Generally, there is just not a much better way for me to start the day than by eating pancakes and listening to Frank Sinatra with the homeless people at the downtown Dallas McDonald's. It is one of the few places in Dallas where I really feel "at home." This morning, however, even the homeless people and security guards are in the midst of passionate (read: loud)debates about professional sports events. Sigh.
"It's autumn in New York."
A couple of guys are even getting testy with each other over the sports section from today's newspaper. But they're on their way out.
"I get along without you very well."
But since I am settled in for a while to grade papers, I am still there when these guys head out and a woman comes in, sets down her assortment of bags, smiles, and says to me, "Doesn't this music just put you in the right frame of mind?"
"Don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me."
She leaves her stuff while she goes to get some breakfast. She comes back and addresses a fashionably-dressed college student: "Are you from Texarkana?" The befuddled student looks blankly at her and finally says, "Uhm, no." "Oh, 'cuz you look like someone from Texarkana." Ah, the right frame of mind.
"Let's face the music and dance."

comic relief

A few days ago, Emersyn--the two-year-old who shares our room--came over to me and said, "Say DIH!" Because she has trained me well, I said "Dih!" She said more clearly, "Dih." i repeated what I heard. Again she said, "Dih." I said, "Dih." She said, "Dih;" I said , "Dih." The she stopped and looked at me seriously and said, "Why you saying dat?"

stories

I am feeling way too sick to join my precious daughter and my magnificent husband on today's road trip, but maybe I can use my few bits of consciousness well here. Before they departed, my husband brought me a cup of soy milk in a Christmas-y paper cup from Starbucks. The sight of the red and snowflakes caused happiness to bubble up in me inexplicably. A few minutes later, I realized the cup says:"Stories are gifts. Share." So here I am.
I woke up this morning with a memory on my mind. It was of a chilly Monday morning in New York way before I met Paul. Another English teacher, Dean, and I had recently started our own ESL school after getting frustrated with working long hours in a school that was only for Chinese and frequently didn't manage to pay its "highly esteemed teachers." Our school of course was tiny but we loved having a blend of the various cultures of the city gathering in the ballet studio we rented during weekday mornings. Dean and I had had a discussion on Friday about the fact that we really really needed to have tables for our classes. We had both gone into debt to start our little endeavor and were not going to make money anytime soon at the ridiculously low prices we were charging. There was just no way we could come up with money to buy tables. As we parted ways on Friday, I had said, "Just give me and my family and friends the weekend to pray on it." Dean, not a believer in any sense, had sweetly smiled and said okay.
So Monday morning I trudged through the snow, unlocked the ballet studio, and turned on the lights wearily. Set up neatly before me were three of what I always refer to as "fellowship-hall-tables," just waiting for our classes. The entire building was still dark at that hour (except for the little Dunkin Donuts at street level). I just kept walking around the room staring at the tables. at that point, Dean walked in the room and froze. I said, "I take it you didn't have anything to do with this?" He shook his head no and finally said, "I might have to think about all this God stuff differently if I keep working with you."
It turned out that the little Chinese newspaper office across the hall owned the tables, had used them in the ballet studio on Sunday, and had forgotten to take them down. Since we often helped them out with proofreading anything they wanted to publish in English, they were quite willing for us to use the tables whenever we wanted as long as we would take care of putting them away after our classes! To this day, I am overwhelmed to look back at all the grace pouring down over my life in moments like that.

Fish Out of Water

Fish Out of Water

You're a fish out of water, flopping on dry land.
Your lungs ache with the effort it takes just to sigh
And it seems like a chore to keep breathing all day.
There's nothing easy here, no matter what you try.
Your awkward feet and elbows are always in the way.
There's nowhere to hide from the gawkers who stare
like you're some oozing, reeking aliens stray.
Nobody looks like you or wears clothes like you wear.
If blending in could just be bought, you'd gladly pay.
Despite your discomfort, you know people don't die
Just from being out of place, but then again you may.
You can't seem to leave although you don't know why.
So, confused and uneasy, you seem destined to stay
A fish out of water, flopping on dry land.
In Honduras once--sometimes twice--a year
Hundreds of fish rain down from the sky.
They're all the same species, which doesn't live near.
Call it an unexplainable phenomenon--it's still dinner to fry.
The people say it's a miracle wrought by a saint
Who prayed three days and nights for food for the poor.
as an explanation, the story's , well, quaint,
But if it's not true, what are fish falling for?
So you're a fish out of water, flopping on dry land.
Maybe you're just a freak, more weird than rare.
You feel like an oddball, and I understand,
But you might just be a miracle, an answer to someone's prayer.

Fish out of water

"In my mind . . .'

Last night during a big serious family discussion about changing some of our patterns, I said to Brianna, 11, "I think maybe the good mother you see in your mind doesn't discipline at all."
"Well of course not, Mom. In my mind, I never do anything that needs to be disciplined! In my mind, I never do anything wrong!"

Last week, Brianna said, "I can't wait to tell Mark that I'm learning Latin. I'm going to walk up to him and say, . . . Oh, I forgot--I don't actually know how to say anything yet."

Settling into the fall semester. I am teaching at El Centro as usual, but ended up with ESL reading and Listening/speaking and A NON-ESL class! I picked up a developmental reading class, which I am actually thoroughly enjoying. I got very lucky and have a small group of highly-motivated students with several older students. (Rather than the frequent dev. rdng. scenario of a room full of recent high-school-graduates who still act like they are in high school.)
Brianna is taking a full load at our homeschool co-op for her 6th grade year: Bible-based writing, life science, math, texas history, clay, latin, and creative writing. We may end up dropping something--we'll see how our pattern-changing goes the next 2 weeks. So she's in class from 8:30 to 3:30 on Tuesdays, then goes home with her best friend. They swim and find interesting creatures outside and do their homework for texas history and life science. They are also learning calligraphy. Their house actually has a schoolroom--quite different from our current living situation, so Brianna also gets quite a bit of other homework done there. She spends Tuesday night and wednesday night there. Then we meet up at co-op at 9;30 on Thursday. During at least one of Brianna's classes, I work with her friend one-on-one on some issues with dyslexia and dyscalculia. We head home by about 1:00 on Thursdays. Now I just need to figure out a plan to get Brie out of our house on Mondays and Fridays so that those can be at least half as productive as the middle of the week. She is so remarkable, and this is our year to correct some things we wish we had done better. Hopefully we will find our way into more and more things that work for us as we all learn the art of self-discipline and persistence and allow each experience to shape us more into His likeness.

e-mail to lgbc, our church

lgbc will gather at 1507 grantbrook this saturday evening. Snacks out at 5:30--Bring some to share if you'd like. Dancing-singing-shouting worship (Read a little loud and a lot kid-friendly) at 5:45. Worship continues (possibly calmer and quieter) at 6:00 p.m. After worship, at least some of us will head out to GirlShow which begins at 8:00 (Kelly Nygren performing on Saturday evening--along with many many other female artists. In fact, on Friday night of GirlShow, our own Cynthia Miller is one of the featured photographers! (We'll be there on Friday night too--Let us know if you'd like to meet up to go together.
See http://www.artlovemagic.com/ for more details on GirlShow.

Looking ahead: August 7th, we'll do a pot-luck dinner and catch up on stuff: For example: reports from those who've been distributors of Mercy Funds for the past year and decisions about where to go next with that experiment in corporate stewardship. Also, finalizing finally the monthly giving to Heartline ministries in Haiti. And you never know what else will come up--Pray and seek God's word for our community in decision-making. It's not just a business meeting--there will be food! And more importantly, some great stories of God at work.

The next part of this e-mail is confessional. I feel like I need to put it out there for the whole postcard readership but feel free to stop reading if it's just too much information for you!
Over the past few weeks, I have been spending more time seeking out the Holy Spirit and His purposes for us as a community. Here is the biggest thing I have been struck by: We exist to worship God. That's why we're gathering together as one little chunk of the Body. Paul and I had some great worship times during our car trips. Those hours have changed some of our daily patterns already. I was very convicted by the sudden realization of one way our community life has changed: When I used to plan/lead worship at lgbc, when someone else was doing the teaching, I would spend at least 3 or 4 hours during the week just worshiping and seeking prayerfully choosing each song, scripture, and reading. Eventually, leading worship became a responsibility (?) that was passed around. Often we figure out who's doing it the day of the service, and I know that if it falls to us, Paul usually rapidly picks some songs while I finish cleaning the living room. Wow--that's a pretty big change, but it happened by tiny degrees. So--I feel that I am being called to plan/lead worship on Saturday evenings again. I am unspeakably excited about the opportunity. So--if you are interested in playing an instrument and/or whatever else, send me an e-mail. I will plan to e-mail at least a song list to you by Friday each week--hopefully sooner in the future. At any rate, we do want to apologize to you as part of our community for letting this foundation get so shaky. God's mercy--that's all we've got.