“Arise, cry out in the night,
as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
for the lives of your children.”
-Lamentations 2:19
This week has been beautiful.
I’m not just talking about the weather, although that’s a part of it. I feel fresh and hopeful and energized, like I could frolic for hours through the few leaves that have touched the Texas ground (Colorado had so many of so many different colors it was unbelievably gorgeous).
But it’s only Wednesday, and the week already has been beautiful.
I don’t say that about many weeks, maybe because I’m a realist (a pessimist, my husband calls it) by nature. But we just got back from a successful tour through Colorado with Progeny (successful not because we made a whole bunch of money, but because we got nine World Vision kids sponsored—changed nine children’s lives on the other side of the world). By Saturday evening, I had all the laundry done, the clothes folded and put away, the house completely clean, groceries in the fridge, a balanced checkbook and had spent some quality time with my family, just us. It was wonderfully beautiful.
On Sunday, Ben, Jadon and I went to Riverside, our church home. We hadn’t been there in a while because of our October travels (fifth anniversary trip to Florida and then the Colorado tour), so we had to catch up with many of our friends (Jadon did this in the nursery, showing off how he can now do somersaults over the sides of playpens). I heard so much baby news I wanted to cry for the joy that bubbled up inside…baby news from couples that have been trying for years to start a family and are living their dream now. It was…overwhelming.
I sat in church, trying hard to listen to my pastor, Scott Heare. It was so hard to concentrate with all the excitement and surprise and wonder churning from my heart to my toes. But Scott still managed to make me cry, even though I blinked the tears away before anybody else could see.
He talked about stories—stories that have made us who we are, stories that people have told over us, the few (hopefully few) stories that we are better off forgetting. He told us about how stories kept his grandfather, who had died when Scott was young, alive in his family for many years. He told us how his family would tell their stories and how later, when the stories had become a part of who he was, they would say, “You’re so much like your grandfather.” He told us how that burrowed into the person he became.
So this got me thinking about the stories that have been told about me and my life and what they have made me believe about who I am. Some might call me creatively efficient. I keep the checkbook balanced for my family, even though we make significantly less than the total of our bills every month. I manage my time like a typical person with OCD to get the most accomplished in the hours I have.
I’ve accomplished things that some might call great. Valedictorian is buried in there somewhere. Summa cum laude is stamped on my college degree. Writing awards are packed in a box in my garage, along with the hundreds of newspapers and magazines in which my stories have been published.
I’ve had some wonderful experiences. Five years ago, I married a man I still love. We bought our first house in May 2006. We welcomed our first child in November of that same year.
But none of that means a thing, not right now. I thought about this for a long time. And (as much as I don’t like it) when I thought about my stories, the only ones I could really remember—really, really remember—were the ones my dad told. The dad who left my family when I was 11, the dad who had spotty contact during my adolescent and early adult years (and even now), the dad I loved then and still love now.
It was the first summer I had seen him after my parents divorced, after my sister and brother and I learned that the woman he was living with he’d been living with for years and the children she had were his children, born while he was still married to our mom. I remember so clearly the visit that summer, the summer between my fifth and sixth grade year. I remember hoping, praying that this time I would be good enough for him. But I disappointed him that summer.
It happened a few days after my brother and sister and I arrived at the two-story house in Ohio, where we were all staying. I wanted to call my mom, to let her know we had gotten to Ohio safely, and for some reason (I remember we were driving somewhere else…maybe my grandma’s), I wasn’t able to. I don’t remember why. It’s not important to the story anyway. But I remember crying because I was so afraid that she would be worried. It was our first summer away from her, and we were all she had. I knew she would be worried. My dad turned around to me, glared at me from the front seat, and said, “You’re just like your mother. Sniveling over every little thing.”
Looking back, his words, “You’re just like your mother,” were not bad in and of themselves. My mom, I believe, is one of the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, loving and caring women I know. I hope I can be like her someday. But the way my dad said it that day, the meaning that crept into my consciousness even then, cut something deep inside. He didn’t like my mother, and he didn’t like me, either.
I’ve spent my lifetime trying to prove I was good enough to like.
That same summer, Dad and Shelly (my stepmom) took us shopping. Dad had agreed to buy our school clothes because Mom couldn’t afford it on her school librarian’s salary. I remember stepping out of the dressing room to look in one of the big mirrors, to make sure the shorts I had on fit right. Dad said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now,” to my stepmom. Maybe he didn’t intend me to hear him, but I did.
I stopped eating lunch my sixth grade year. Slowly I cut other meals out until I went off to college and was away from the concern that burned in my mom’s eyes. Then I let myself have one smoothie a day and nothing else. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew I wasn’t telling the truth, but there was nothing she could do. I needed to be thin.
It’s been a lifetime struggle. I’ve never seen myself clearly when I look in a mirror. Ben used to always tell me that. When he and I first started dating, I worked as editor in chief of the Texas State newspaper. Because I was in my office so much and still had trouble eating three meals a day then, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every day, but I couldn’t ever believe it. If I’m honest, I still don’t believe it today. Because I can’t forget that story.
So, as I was thinking about all of this, I realized that I have let the bad stories, the stories that made me something, someone, I didn’t want to be, overshadow the good stories, the stories that could have made me something better. The good stories are just a faint whisper among the shouts of condemnation and destruction that I hear when I really think about all of this.
I don’t want to erase or forget those bad stories because they are part of my bigger story. But I want to use them to build good stories, to help me remember how good other stories that have been told over my life are—because I know there have been good stories. I can barely remember my mom saying, “Your grandpa was always good with money. You must have gotten that from him” and my Memaw writing in a graduation card, “I know you’ll do well because you’re you,” and my Nana saying, “Your Grandad’n used to work at a newspaper. He was really good at writing, just like you. You would make him proud.” I want to remember those stories every day. I want them to make me someone better than I am.
The verse I wrote above came to me as I was looking at a running group’s Web site today. I thought about how important it is that we tell stories over our children that will help make them the men and women God intended them to be.
Jadon will turn 2 on Nov. 19. So hard to believe. We will welcome baby number 2 in April. I’ve been—Ben and I have been—given a wonderful privilege but also a great responsibility.
Oh, God, may we be the kind of storytellers that make our kids believe they can be beautiful, brilliant, life-changing people…because I know—and believe—they can be.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I'm a daydream believer
“Until the time came to fulfill his dreams,
The LORD tested Joseph’s character.”
Psalm 105:19
Something about this verse gnaws at me.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about God’s plans and purposes and why he might do certain things in a certain way on a certain timetable. It’s so hard to understand sometimes. And then, every now and then, it’s clear enough to make me wonder if I was swimming in a see-through ocean all this time with my eyes shut, instead of wading through the muddy lake I thought I had jumped into.
I used to have so many dreams. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I wrote all the time—poems, short stories, books. I’d written my first chapter book by the second grade. By fifth grade, I’d gotten my first story published in a magazine—a story about a girl who was paralyzed and suddenly begins to walk again. My mom still has all the manuscripts from that time, back when I really believed in the dream.
I wanted to be a singer, too. I started singing solos in church when I was 5. I sang someone else’s songs all through high school, became our school’s designated National Anthem singer. In college, I sang the National Anthem for Texas State’s baseball games and basketball games—but that was more to find the man of my dreams than anything else. And I did, too. He sat in the fifth row the third time I sang for the women’s basketball team.
My dreams seemed to fade a little as I tiptoed through each year, wondering if, hoping that this would be the year. Now their outlines are so faint I can barely see them.
I used to blame God for that. He took too long to fulfill the dreams. He made them too hard to reach. He disappointed me one too many times, made it too hard to believe. But I can see now that it’s my faith, or my lack of it, that is stealing the clarity of those dreams.
I don’t know where it all began. Maybe that’s not for me to know. Maybe knowing would give me the crutch-of-an-excuse, like all those troubled teenagers who break the law and then blame their parents for raising them poorly. I could blame my dad and the way he left when I was just on the brink of becoming a woman and how that made me feel insignificant and unloved. I could blame him for choosing another woman and the kids he had with her over the three he had with my mom and the way that made me want to be perfect so he would love me, too. I could blame him for making my mom work three jobs to raise her children while he evaded child support and the way that wounded me deep down inside.
But the thing is, it’s really up to me whether those wounds heal with or without scar tissue.
Ben and I were talking last night about the situation we’re in. Progeny has booked four solid weeks of camps in June. Ben can’t take a leave of absence from his part-time job, which provides our health benefits. He’s been told he’ll have to quit and then reapply if he wants to work after the camps in June. Which means we’ll lose our benefits.
At the same time, I’ve been asked to take over my boss’s job. The uppers told me they are “impressed” with my “work ethic” and “dedication to the job.” This after working 70 hours a week trying to keep the communication department at The United Methodist Church on its feet. I’ve got a list of 24 people who have left messages on my voicemail, but this week is a writing week, so there’s no time to call them back. Next week is my page design week, so there won’t be time then, either.
I haven’t seen my family in a month. I get home while Jadon is napping, and as soon as he wakes, we pack into the van and head up to my office until Ben picks him up at 7 p.m. I get home at 10:30, right around the time Jadon goes to bed.
So when the uppers even mentioned my “work ethic,” a red flag waved at me.
I still have a dilemma, though. I’ve been offered a promotion that would be great for my career. Progeny is moving in the direction of full-time ministry. The uppers are impressed with my 70-hour-a-week, sacrifice-time-with-my-family work ethic. Progeny offers no health benefits, no guarantee of a paycheck every week or two weeks or month.
My faith is having trouble. I keep looking back at this promotion offer and justifying my lean to accept it. It makes sense. God has gifted me with writing. I communicate well with people (even though my husband might disagree…). It has opened so many doors for Progeny.
But I can’t do both. I’ve realized that in the last few weeks. I’m so tired I feel like I might die of exhaustion. My head has been aching for days. I can’t be effective at both these jobs—and my responsibility at home as a wife and mother—because I’m just too tired, and I’m falling apart, becoming somebody I didn’t used to be, somebody I don’t even like.
So I asked God this morning to help me. I didn’t really specify why I needed help or with what exactly he should help. He sent me the verse above. And I feel like something has opened deep down inside, like the dreams and their fading outlines are being traced with a permanent marker by an invisible hand.
Progeny doesn’t make sense. Taking time away from a steady job to finish my novel doesn’t make sense, not in my practical eyes. Not when we have a baby and a mortgage and utility bills to pay.
But they are my dreams.
God never intended our journeys toward our dreams to be easy. He never meant them to make sense. I think sometimes we believe he did, and when it’s harder than we thought it would be or when people begin to look at us like we’re crazy, we chalk it up to another wrong step instigated by our fleshly nature.
God never intended it to be easy because there is no faith in easy.
So this is where my journey begins. This is where I can begin to pull out the thorn that’s been scratching me all my life, the thorn that keeps me from believing. It’s in there pretty deep, and it might take years—and many failed attempts—to get it out. But it starts here.
And when people ask me why I didn’t take that step up the ladder of my career, I want to say, “I did. I climbed off the ladder that had distracted me for a while and climbed onto the one that leads right up to the kingdom of heaven on earth.”
Thank you, God, for the hope that chases dreams and for the faith it takes to follow them.
The LORD tested Joseph’s character.”
Psalm 105:19
Something about this verse gnaws at me.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about God’s plans and purposes and why he might do certain things in a certain way on a certain timetable. It’s so hard to understand sometimes. And then, every now and then, it’s clear enough to make me wonder if I was swimming in a see-through ocean all this time with my eyes shut, instead of wading through the muddy lake I thought I had jumped into.
I used to have so many dreams. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I wrote all the time—poems, short stories, books. I’d written my first chapter book by the second grade. By fifth grade, I’d gotten my first story published in a magazine—a story about a girl who was paralyzed and suddenly begins to walk again. My mom still has all the manuscripts from that time, back when I really believed in the dream.
I wanted to be a singer, too. I started singing solos in church when I was 5. I sang someone else’s songs all through high school, became our school’s designated National Anthem singer. In college, I sang the National Anthem for Texas State’s baseball games and basketball games—but that was more to find the man of my dreams than anything else. And I did, too. He sat in the fifth row the third time I sang for the women’s basketball team.
My dreams seemed to fade a little as I tiptoed through each year, wondering if, hoping that this would be the year. Now their outlines are so faint I can barely see them.
I used to blame God for that. He took too long to fulfill the dreams. He made them too hard to reach. He disappointed me one too many times, made it too hard to believe. But I can see now that it’s my faith, or my lack of it, that is stealing the clarity of those dreams.
I don’t know where it all began. Maybe that’s not for me to know. Maybe knowing would give me the crutch-of-an-excuse, like all those troubled teenagers who break the law and then blame their parents for raising them poorly. I could blame my dad and the way he left when I was just on the brink of becoming a woman and how that made me feel insignificant and unloved. I could blame him for choosing another woman and the kids he had with her over the three he had with my mom and the way that made me want to be perfect so he would love me, too. I could blame him for making my mom work three jobs to raise her children while he evaded child support and the way that wounded me deep down inside.
But the thing is, it’s really up to me whether those wounds heal with or without scar tissue.
Ben and I were talking last night about the situation we’re in. Progeny has booked four solid weeks of camps in June. Ben can’t take a leave of absence from his part-time job, which provides our health benefits. He’s been told he’ll have to quit and then reapply if he wants to work after the camps in June. Which means we’ll lose our benefits.
At the same time, I’ve been asked to take over my boss’s job. The uppers told me they are “impressed” with my “work ethic” and “dedication to the job.” This after working 70 hours a week trying to keep the communication department at The United Methodist Church on its feet. I’ve got a list of 24 people who have left messages on my voicemail, but this week is a writing week, so there’s no time to call them back. Next week is my page design week, so there won’t be time then, either.
I haven’t seen my family in a month. I get home while Jadon is napping, and as soon as he wakes, we pack into the van and head up to my office until Ben picks him up at 7 p.m. I get home at 10:30, right around the time Jadon goes to bed.
So when the uppers even mentioned my “work ethic,” a red flag waved at me.
I still have a dilemma, though. I’ve been offered a promotion that would be great for my career. Progeny is moving in the direction of full-time ministry. The uppers are impressed with my 70-hour-a-week, sacrifice-time-with-my-family work ethic. Progeny offers no health benefits, no guarantee of a paycheck every week or two weeks or month.
My faith is having trouble. I keep looking back at this promotion offer and justifying my lean to accept it. It makes sense. God has gifted me with writing. I communicate well with people (even though my husband might disagree…). It has opened so many doors for Progeny.
But I can’t do both. I’ve realized that in the last few weeks. I’m so tired I feel like I might die of exhaustion. My head has been aching for days. I can’t be effective at both these jobs—and my responsibility at home as a wife and mother—because I’m just too tired, and I’m falling apart, becoming somebody I didn’t used to be, somebody I don’t even like.
So I asked God this morning to help me. I didn’t really specify why I needed help or with what exactly he should help. He sent me the verse above. And I feel like something has opened deep down inside, like the dreams and their fading outlines are being traced with a permanent marker by an invisible hand.
Progeny doesn’t make sense. Taking time away from a steady job to finish my novel doesn’t make sense, not in my practical eyes. Not when we have a baby and a mortgage and utility bills to pay.
But they are my dreams.
God never intended our journeys toward our dreams to be easy. He never meant them to make sense. I think sometimes we believe he did, and when it’s harder than we thought it would be or when people begin to look at us like we’re crazy, we chalk it up to another wrong step instigated by our fleshly nature.
God never intended it to be easy because there is no faith in easy.
So this is where my journey begins. This is where I can begin to pull out the thorn that’s been scratching me all my life, the thorn that keeps me from believing. It’s in there pretty deep, and it might take years—and many failed attempts—to get it out. But it starts here.
And when people ask me why I didn’t take that step up the ladder of my career, I want to say, “I did. I climbed off the ladder that had distracted me for a while and climbed onto the one that leads right up to the kingdom of heaven on earth.”
Thank you, God, for the hope that chases dreams and for the faith it takes to follow them.
Friday, March 14, 2008
finding room to just breathe...
It's been a rough few weeks…months. Or maybe it's been years. All this time, however long it's been, life has waved at me like I'm some old, almost-forgotten friend who missed the bus or the train or the carpool that takes people to places where they can really live instead of just exist.
I don't know when exactly it happened, but I lost myself somewhere in the middle of all that time.
It might have started back in college, when I balanced three jobs (editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, substitute teacher and freelance writer for the San Antonio Express-News) to pay my bills, a full semester of writing-intensive classes and an out-of-control pressure to maintain my 4.0 GPA.
Or maybe it was back in high school, when I turned 16 and realized my parents couldn't afford to pay for my insurance and the gas to drive the school, back when I landed my first job. Working wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that I played volleyball and tennis and ran track and was a drum major for the high school band and an all-state clarinet player and in the running for valedictorian.
Maybe this balancing act began way back then.
I used to think, naively, that God had gifted me with some crazily awesome time-management skills (how else could I get so much done in so little time?). But last week, while Ben and I were in the studio recording the songs for Progeny's second album, I discovered something about all those accomplishments.
Every one of them had pocketed a little piece of me, and I just sat back and watched them do it.
So when the MakeShift Records guys told me they needed me to add a little "personality" to my solo songs, my first thought was that I didn't know how to do it or what it would sound like or how my personality, as uninteresting as I am, could make any difference at all.
They stopped me halfway through my song, called me back into the main studio room. I remember how the room spun as I walked toward the black leather couch, how dry my mouth was and how my nose burned with tears that I couldn't let them see (but ended up doing anyway).
They said they needed something more from me, something that showed them I believed in the song, that I wasn't "singing karaoke" behind a studio mic. I told them I didn't know how to give them more, that Ben was the creative genius behind our song melodies, the one with the "big" voice.
But they sent me back into that little vocal room, told me I was just as talented as Ben is, that I didn't need a "big" voice to sing a great song. I just needed to show who I was.
I thought about that in the short distance between the studio room and the vocal room. I thought about how I had left myself behind all those years ago when time and all its demands first started smudging my face and my heart with this gigantic eraser. I thought about who I believed I was now and how different that was from who God says I am.
I let God speak. He told me he has gifted me with the voice he needed me to have, to reach the most people. He told me to have courage in it and to embrace it and to really believe in it so it can reach out the way he intended it to. He told me I am beautiful and wonderful and precious.
And then I sang. The song happens to be amazing.
One night last week, Jadon and I drove to my parents' house after I covered an event for the newspaper. It was late. The two-lane highway that stretches its arms from Beeville, where the event was, to Victoria, where my parents live, was unfamiliar to me.
As I drove out of town, a thick fog made me blink my eyes to make sure my contacts had not shifted to the wrong part of my eyes. It was so hard to see anything except the orange construction cones that passed my bumper every few feet. I drove slowly and carefully and shaking with fear.
I realized after our studio time that that's how I'd been living. Slowly and carefully and shaking with fear. But I'm tired of the fog. I want to see clearly…and take risks…and really, really live. I want to find the parts of me that I traded for another plaque on the wall, no matter how long that takes. I want to learn how to breathe again.
And along the way, I'd like to sing…and maybe bust a few moves here and there, too.
Thank you, God, for the fogs that always lift, no matter how thick they've become, and for the brilliant, eye-stinging clarity that comes once they do.
I don't know when exactly it happened, but I lost myself somewhere in the middle of all that time.
It might have started back in college, when I balanced three jobs (editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, substitute teacher and freelance writer for the San Antonio Express-News) to pay my bills, a full semester of writing-intensive classes and an out-of-control pressure to maintain my 4.0 GPA.
Or maybe it was back in high school, when I turned 16 and realized my parents couldn't afford to pay for my insurance and the gas to drive the school, back when I landed my first job. Working wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that I played volleyball and tennis and ran track and was a drum major for the high school band and an all-state clarinet player and in the running for valedictorian.
Maybe this balancing act began way back then.
I used to think, naively, that God had gifted me with some crazily awesome time-management skills (how else could I get so much done in so little time?). But last week, while Ben and I were in the studio recording the songs for Progeny's second album, I discovered something about all those accomplishments.
Every one of them had pocketed a little piece of me, and I just sat back and watched them do it.
So when the MakeShift Records guys told me they needed me to add a little "personality" to my solo songs, my first thought was that I didn't know how to do it or what it would sound like or how my personality, as uninteresting as I am, could make any difference at all.
They stopped me halfway through my song, called me back into the main studio room. I remember how the room spun as I walked toward the black leather couch, how dry my mouth was and how my nose burned with tears that I couldn't let them see (but ended up doing anyway).
They said they needed something more from me, something that showed them I believed in the song, that I wasn't "singing karaoke" behind a studio mic. I told them I didn't know how to give them more, that Ben was the creative genius behind our song melodies, the one with the "big" voice.
But they sent me back into that little vocal room, told me I was just as talented as Ben is, that I didn't need a "big" voice to sing a great song. I just needed to show who I was.
I thought about that in the short distance between the studio room and the vocal room. I thought about how I had left myself behind all those years ago when time and all its demands first started smudging my face and my heart with this gigantic eraser. I thought about who I believed I was now and how different that was from who God says I am.
I let God speak. He told me he has gifted me with the voice he needed me to have, to reach the most people. He told me to have courage in it and to embrace it and to really believe in it so it can reach out the way he intended it to. He told me I am beautiful and wonderful and precious.
And then I sang. The song happens to be amazing.
One night last week, Jadon and I drove to my parents' house after I covered an event for the newspaper. It was late. The two-lane highway that stretches its arms from Beeville, where the event was, to Victoria, where my parents live, was unfamiliar to me.
As I drove out of town, a thick fog made me blink my eyes to make sure my contacts had not shifted to the wrong part of my eyes. It was so hard to see anything except the orange construction cones that passed my bumper every few feet. I drove slowly and carefully and shaking with fear.
I realized after our studio time that that's how I'd been living. Slowly and carefully and shaking with fear. But I'm tired of the fog. I want to see clearly…and take risks…and really, really live. I want to find the parts of me that I traded for another plaque on the wall, no matter how long that takes. I want to learn how to breathe again.
And along the way, I'd like to sing…and maybe bust a few moves here and there, too.
Thank you, God, for the fogs that always lift, no matter how thick they've become, and for the brilliant, eye-stinging clarity that comes once they do.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
It's so hard to say goodbye...
I had to say goodbye to my Memaw yesterday.
I think it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life…because she is everywhere in my memories. I can still see her handwriting, “I love you so much” scrawled at the bottom of my birthday cards. I can still see her face and her graying curly hair, and the way her eyes hid behind her glasses and drank in every movement that her grandkids and great-grandkids made. I can still hear her voice, calling me into the kitchen to eat dinner with her at a dining room table stacked with bills.
She is everywhere.
I’ve been a fragile mess since her memorial service yesterday. I heard the words offered by my great-uncle, a Baptist preacher, at the service, the same words the well-wishers echoed—that she’s in a better place, she’s not hurting anymore, she’s finally found the peace that eluded her here on earth. Maybe I’m selfish because it doesn’t ease my pain.
Memaw had a stroke back in August, two days before her 74th birthday. She spent her birthday in the hospital, bleeding internally without the doctors knowing. Before they figured it out, she had stopped breathing, and they scrambled to pump nine units of blood into her.
We’d already lost her back then, back when everybody was praying for a miraculous recovery that would shock the doctors. It did shock the doctors, too, because she lived. But she never really recovered, was never again the Memaw we all knew. She couldn’t walk or sit up or feed herself. She could talk, but only whispered words that were hard to understand. She lived in both the past and the present, sometimes knowing exactly where she was, sometimes thinking she was still working and living in her home by herself and waiting for the next weekend she would visit family.
I thought it might be easier once she died because it was so hard to see her trapped inside a shell of a body. I went to see her twice, and I remember praying that God would not keep her that way for long…whatever that looked like. He didn’t.
But now that she’s gone, a part of me has died, too. Ben says it’s the part of me that I gave to her. That’s easy to believe because the hole feels like it just goes on and on and on and has no end. I wonder if it ever will.
I couldn’t be there when she died. Ben and I traveled to New Mexico with our band to lead worship at a youth retreat. I debated going—because my junior year of high school, my paternal grandmother had died while I was on a mission trip. My dad had called before I left for the trip to tell me she was dying, but I thought I had time. She died the last day of that trip.
I had a feeling the same thing would happen with Memaw. But I knew her, and I knew she would have wanted me to go there and make an impact on those youth.
Mom called me the day we were driving back to Texas. She said Memaw had had a rough night but had finally surrendered at 6 in the morning Feb. 10. I felt my whole world grow dim, even after my mom told me she had passed away peacefully.
It wasn’t until the memorial service, though, that her death really hit me. It hit me hard. I thought about all the birthdays Jadon will celebrate without his Memaw. I thought about my future children and how they will never know what a wonderful grandma she was.
I thought about how little time I took to visit with her and just enjoy the simple moments, how few times I called her just to chat, how lonely she looked and sounded when we finally did visit or call. There’s so much I wish I could change.
I gave her a book a few years ago that asked questions about her life growing up and her marriage and her children. I wish she had filled it out, just so I could keep it on my bookshelf and let my children and their children read it and memorize her handwriting, too.
There is some comfort in knowing that the one thing Memaw always wanted, more than anything else, was for her family to be all together in one place. We haven’t been in years because of differing work schedules and the craziness of our lives. But we were yesterday. All of us, to say goodbye to a woman who had shaped all of our lives in ways that we can never forget.
If she could see it from heaven, I’m sure she smiled.
I love you, Memaw. You will always be here in my heart, even when it hurts like it does today. You will always be a part of me.
Remember
©2008 Progeny
Lyrics by Rachel Toalson
Summer nights, our first visits from home
Birthdays spent with you on the phone
Peeking in jars for hidden candy treats
Powder staining bathroom sinks
Christmas Eve such a long time ago
Trivial Pursuit asking things we don’t know
A wave that hid tears as you stood at your door
That ache when we couldn’t see you anymore
There’s too much to let go…
So I’ll remember
I’ll remember
I’ll remember you
Talking ‘bout work over home-cooked dinner
All those late nights watching Marvin Zindler
Weekend mornings you’d read the paper
While we clipped coupons to save for later
Piles and piles of bills on the table
Battling remotes that controlled the cable
Crossword puzzles and midnight Dr. Peppers
Shuffling to bed in your purple slippers
There’s too much to let go…
So I'll remember
I'll remember
I'll remember you
Love in your eyes as you rocked them to sleep
A new generation to protect and keep
Machines and tubes that took all you could give
Your whispered words, your battle to live
There’s too much to let go…
So I'll remember
I'll remember
I'll remember you
Talking and laughing and fighting and crying
I’ll remember you
Walking and breathing, your living, your dying
I’ll remember you
One of Nana's birthday parties. Memaw loved her mama.
Memaw, me and Ben after one of Ashley's choir recitals
Mom, Memaw and me after Ben's surprise 21st birthday party. Memaw told me my cake was awesome, even though it fell apart in the Texas humidity.
The family after my college graduation. Memaw was so proud.
Memaw, me, Ashley and Mom after eating at Jason's Deli in San Marcos to celebrate my college graduation.
My wedding, when we had four generations of women living. Memaw, Nana, Mom and me.
Christmas 2004, one of the last Christmases we were all together.
Christmas 2004
Memaw loved Jadon. This was the first time she got to see him, and she couldn't put him down. He loved her, too.
Memaw, eating lunch with us after Jadon's dedication to the Lord at Riverside Community, April 15, 2007. It was the last time I saw her well.
It's so hard to remember her this way. This was the last time we saw her...she couldn't take her eyes off Jadon. I know she would have loved to watch him grow...
I think it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life…because she is everywhere in my memories. I can still see her handwriting, “I love you so much” scrawled at the bottom of my birthday cards. I can still see her face and her graying curly hair, and the way her eyes hid behind her glasses and drank in every movement that her grandkids and great-grandkids made. I can still hear her voice, calling me into the kitchen to eat dinner with her at a dining room table stacked with bills.
She is everywhere.
I’ve been a fragile mess since her memorial service yesterday. I heard the words offered by my great-uncle, a Baptist preacher, at the service, the same words the well-wishers echoed—that she’s in a better place, she’s not hurting anymore, she’s finally found the peace that eluded her here on earth. Maybe I’m selfish because it doesn’t ease my pain.
Memaw had a stroke back in August, two days before her 74th birthday. She spent her birthday in the hospital, bleeding internally without the doctors knowing. Before they figured it out, she had stopped breathing, and they scrambled to pump nine units of blood into her.
We’d already lost her back then, back when everybody was praying for a miraculous recovery that would shock the doctors. It did shock the doctors, too, because she lived. But she never really recovered, was never again the Memaw we all knew. She couldn’t walk or sit up or feed herself. She could talk, but only whispered words that were hard to understand. She lived in both the past and the present, sometimes knowing exactly where she was, sometimes thinking she was still working and living in her home by herself and waiting for the next weekend she would visit family.
I thought it might be easier once she died because it was so hard to see her trapped inside a shell of a body. I went to see her twice, and I remember praying that God would not keep her that way for long…whatever that looked like. He didn’t.
But now that she’s gone, a part of me has died, too. Ben says it’s the part of me that I gave to her. That’s easy to believe because the hole feels like it just goes on and on and on and has no end. I wonder if it ever will.
I couldn’t be there when she died. Ben and I traveled to New Mexico with our band to lead worship at a youth retreat. I debated going—because my junior year of high school, my paternal grandmother had died while I was on a mission trip. My dad had called before I left for the trip to tell me she was dying, but I thought I had time. She died the last day of that trip.
I had a feeling the same thing would happen with Memaw. But I knew her, and I knew she would have wanted me to go there and make an impact on those youth.
Mom called me the day we were driving back to Texas. She said Memaw had had a rough night but had finally surrendered at 6 in the morning Feb. 10. I felt my whole world grow dim, even after my mom told me she had passed away peacefully.
It wasn’t until the memorial service, though, that her death really hit me. It hit me hard. I thought about all the birthdays Jadon will celebrate without his Memaw. I thought about my future children and how they will never know what a wonderful grandma she was.
I thought about how little time I took to visit with her and just enjoy the simple moments, how few times I called her just to chat, how lonely she looked and sounded when we finally did visit or call. There’s so much I wish I could change.
I gave her a book a few years ago that asked questions about her life growing up and her marriage and her children. I wish she had filled it out, just so I could keep it on my bookshelf and let my children and their children read it and memorize her handwriting, too.
There is some comfort in knowing that the one thing Memaw always wanted, more than anything else, was for her family to be all together in one place. We haven’t been in years because of differing work schedules and the craziness of our lives. But we were yesterday. All of us, to say goodbye to a woman who had shaped all of our lives in ways that we can never forget.
If she could see it from heaven, I’m sure she smiled.
I love you, Memaw. You will always be here in my heart, even when it hurts like it does today. You will always be a part of me.
Remember
©2008 Progeny
Lyrics by Rachel Toalson
Summer nights, our first visits from home
Birthdays spent with you on the phone
Peeking in jars for hidden candy treats
Powder staining bathroom sinks
Christmas Eve such a long time ago
Trivial Pursuit asking things we don’t know
A wave that hid tears as you stood at your door
That ache when we couldn’t see you anymore
There’s too much to let go…
So I’ll remember
I’ll remember
I’ll remember you
Talking ‘bout work over home-cooked dinner
All those late nights watching Marvin Zindler
Weekend mornings you’d read the paper
While we clipped coupons to save for later
Piles and piles of bills on the table
Battling remotes that controlled the cable
Crossword puzzles and midnight Dr. Peppers
Shuffling to bed in your purple slippers
There’s too much to let go…
So I'll remember
I'll remember
I'll remember you
Love in your eyes as you rocked them to sleep
A new generation to protect and keep
Machines and tubes that took all you could give
Your whispered words, your battle to live
There’s too much to let go…
So I'll remember
I'll remember
I'll remember you
Talking and laughing and fighting and crying
I’ll remember you
Walking and breathing, your living, your dying
I’ll remember you
One of Nana's birthday parties. Memaw loved her mama.
Memaw, me and Ben after one of Ashley's choir recitals
Mom, Memaw and me after Ben's surprise 21st birthday party. Memaw told me my cake was awesome, even though it fell apart in the Texas humidity.
The family after my college graduation. Memaw was so proud.
Memaw, me, Ashley and Mom after eating at Jason's Deli in San Marcos to celebrate my college graduation.
My wedding, when we had four generations of women living. Memaw, Nana, Mom and me.
Christmas 2004, one of the last Christmases we were all together.
Christmas 2004
Memaw loved Jadon. This was the first time she got to see him, and she couldn't put him down. He loved her, too.
Memaw, eating lunch with us after Jadon's dedication to the Lord at Riverside Community, April 15, 2007. It was the last time I saw her well.
It's so hard to remember her this way. This was the last time we saw her...she couldn't take her eyes off Jadon. I know she would have loved to watch him grow...
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Naps are so overrated
I know, I know. Two blogs in one month. One week, even. I wasn’t really planning to write this.
But I was trying to take a nap yesterday while Jadon slept (because it was my birthday and I decided to give myself a break). God decided I didn’t really need a break. His voice started as this breath-of-a-whisper, but, as I laid there arguing about how I really just needed a little sleep because the week’s been so busy and I had already written three stories for the newspaper and I would be hosting and cooking dinner for my home group tomorrow and it was my birthday, God’s voice became the shriek of Hill Country winds that rattle our windows on days like today.
So I decided I should probably do what he said, share what’s on my heart. I hope what follows is worth a missed nap.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to imagine a great big God sitting on a great big throne, watching every tiny person in the universe melt into little puddles of people as the chaos of our lives and the lies we’ve been told—are still being told—nibbles away at who we were created to be.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to believe he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
I feel doubt sometimes, too, when I think of my friends Ben and Katrina.
Their story is difficult to tell. They’ve been married for more than five years and have been trying to have children since the day they said their vows. It hasn’t happened yet.
So, for the last year, they’ve been traveling to San Antonio for fertility treatments and some really painful procedures that they had hoped might make a difference.
They were here just last week for some tests that would determine whether they could proceed with a costly fertility treatment they had already tried once before. My Ben and I joined them for lunch before they followed me back to our home to wait for the 2 p.m. doctor’s call.
He was late calling. I laid Jadon down for his afternoon nap, and Ben and Katrina and I sat at our dining room table chatting and joking and laughing, trying not to think about the reason they were there. Katrina glanced at her watch every now and then as the minutes slid into an hour.
When her phone finally buzzed, Katrina answered it with this vulnerability that knotted my heart. Ben (her Ben) couldn’t even look at her. Fear sucked all the air from the room, so my spirit began to pray words that settled my stomach, words that I can’t even remember now.
I do remember Katrina’s feet, crossed at the ankles, and the way her heels tapped the floor in a rhythm that seemed to hold her together and the way the tips of her fingernails turned white from her grip on the phone and the way her face crumpled like a flimsy piece of notebook paper when her composure fractured.
Every one of her tears burned my face.
She ended the call and just stared at her husband for what seemed like forever, her tears pooling on the neck of her T-shirt. The pain made it so hard to breathe.
I had to leave the room.
I didn’t say a word before I walked up our stairs. I didn’t know what to say. I only knew that I could feel it inside, way down deep, a sickening pain that blazed its way through my mind and heart and soul. I watched it drink my hope like hope had never reached solidity.
Then Jadon began to cry.
I slid into his room and cradled him in my arms, trying to rock him back to sleep before his wail bruised Ben’s and Katrina’s hearts even more. I thought about a lot in those moments before he closed his eyes. I thought about how he was a gift we didn’t deserve, about how (my) Ben and I take so much of God’s favor for granted, about how he could turn it all around in a second.
I thought about what I could possibly say to keep Ben and Katrina believing. God is on his throne. He is all-powerful, even though he hasn’t opened Katrina’s womb, and loving, even though he hasn’t answered her most repeated prayer, and fair, even though millions of abortions happen every day while couples like Ben and Katrina ache for a child. He has plans to prosper us, works all things out for our good, gives us the desires of our hearts when rest in him. They were just words, and I couldn’t make them anything more.
I prayed over them before they left, told them (my) Ben and I would believe for them when they couldn’t believe anymore. They left with vacant eyes. The enemy’s lies were sneaking back in, convincing them they are broken and defective.
I’ve prayed for them all week, right around my 14th lap on the treadmill we keep in our garage. I’ve prayed that God would show them he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
The thing is—what God wedged into my heart as I dozed yesterday—sometimes, he’s not a great big God sitting on a great big throne.
I don’t mean that to say that he’s not always I AM. I mean it to say that sometimes, when death or disappointment or those splintered dreams creep into our lives, he is a small God, close enough to touch and hear and see. Sometimes, he’s right here, stroking our hair as we try to figure out what to do with so much pain, his heart throbbing right along with ours. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
Oh, God, be small enough for Ben and Katrina. Be small enough for all of us.
But I was trying to take a nap yesterday while Jadon slept (because it was my birthday and I decided to give myself a break). God decided I didn’t really need a break. His voice started as this breath-of-a-whisper, but, as I laid there arguing about how I really just needed a little sleep because the week’s been so busy and I had already written three stories for the newspaper and I would be hosting and cooking dinner for my home group tomorrow and it was my birthday, God’s voice became the shriek of Hill Country winds that rattle our windows on days like today.
So I decided I should probably do what he said, share what’s on my heart. I hope what follows is worth a missed nap.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to imagine a great big God sitting on a great big throne, watching every tiny person in the universe melt into little puddles of people as the chaos of our lives and the lies we’ve been told—are still being told—nibbles away at who we were created to be.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to believe he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
I feel doubt sometimes, too, when I think of my friends Ben and Katrina.
Their story is difficult to tell. They’ve been married for more than five years and have been trying to have children since the day they said their vows. It hasn’t happened yet.
So, for the last year, they’ve been traveling to San Antonio for fertility treatments and some really painful procedures that they had hoped might make a difference.
They were here just last week for some tests that would determine whether they could proceed with a costly fertility treatment they had already tried once before. My Ben and I joined them for lunch before they followed me back to our home to wait for the 2 p.m. doctor’s call.
He was late calling. I laid Jadon down for his afternoon nap, and Ben and Katrina and I sat at our dining room table chatting and joking and laughing, trying not to think about the reason they were there. Katrina glanced at her watch every now and then as the minutes slid into an hour.
When her phone finally buzzed, Katrina answered it with this vulnerability that knotted my heart. Ben (her Ben) couldn’t even look at her. Fear sucked all the air from the room, so my spirit began to pray words that settled my stomach, words that I can’t even remember now.
I do remember Katrina’s feet, crossed at the ankles, and the way her heels tapped the floor in a rhythm that seemed to hold her together and the way the tips of her fingernails turned white from her grip on the phone and the way her face crumpled like a flimsy piece of notebook paper when her composure fractured.
Every one of her tears burned my face.
She ended the call and just stared at her husband for what seemed like forever, her tears pooling on the neck of her T-shirt. The pain made it so hard to breathe.
I had to leave the room.
I didn’t say a word before I walked up our stairs. I didn’t know what to say. I only knew that I could feel it inside, way down deep, a sickening pain that blazed its way through my mind and heart and soul. I watched it drink my hope like hope had never reached solidity.
Then Jadon began to cry.
I slid into his room and cradled him in my arms, trying to rock him back to sleep before his wail bruised Ben’s and Katrina’s hearts even more. I thought about a lot in those moments before he closed his eyes. I thought about how he was a gift we didn’t deserve, about how (my) Ben and I take so much of God’s favor for granted, about how he could turn it all around in a second.
I thought about what I could possibly say to keep Ben and Katrina believing. God is on his throne. He is all-powerful, even though he hasn’t opened Katrina’s womb, and loving, even though he hasn’t answered her most repeated prayer, and fair, even though millions of abortions happen every day while couples like Ben and Katrina ache for a child. He has plans to prosper us, works all things out for our good, gives us the desires of our hearts when rest in him. They were just words, and I couldn’t make them anything more.
I prayed over them before they left, told them (my) Ben and I would believe for them when they couldn’t believe anymore. They left with vacant eyes. The enemy’s lies were sneaking back in, convincing them they are broken and defective.
I’ve prayed for them all week, right around my 14th lap on the treadmill we keep in our garage. I’ve prayed that God would show them he’s a mighty, merciful, got-everything-under-control God.
The thing is—what God wedged into my heart as I dozed yesterday—sometimes, he’s not a great big God sitting on a great big throne.
I don’t mean that to say that he’s not always I AM. I mean it to say that sometimes, when death or disappointment or those splintered dreams creep into our lives, he is a small God, close enough to touch and hear and see. Sometimes, he’s right here, stroking our hair as we try to figure out what to do with so much pain, his heart throbbing right along with ours. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
Oh, God, be small enough for Ben and Katrina. Be small enough for all of us.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Perfection is so overrated
I’ve wanted to be perfect for so long.
It started 11 years ago when my mom sat us all down in the bedroom I shared with my sister and, as the shame and fear and haunting disappointment in her eyes chafed us raw, told us that my father had a 3-year-old child and another baby on the way and wouldn’t be coming back like he’d promised us.
I wanted to be perfect then, to bring him back.
I began the sixth grade rejected and wounded—a lanky kid taller than all the boys and dorkier than all the girls. I remember keeping my distance from friends, excusing myself from sleepovers and birthday parties, always afraid that people would snub me when they saw the tiny, shabby house I lived in or opened the cheap gifts my mom couldn’t afford. I needed to convince them that I was perfect—because if they believed the mirage that hid who I was deep down inside, then maybe Daddy would believe it, too.
In high school, I turned in every homework assignment and studied for every test to hold my place at the top of my class because Daddy would have to be impressed if I graduated valedictorian. I did, too. Daddy didn’t even come to the ceremony that launched me into adulthood, where I delivered my first public speech and sang a song dedicated to hundreds of happily married parents…and my mom.
So in college, I starved myself, thinking maybe if I were skinnier or prettier, Daddy might take an interest in my life. I ran six miles and limited myself to 600 calories a day the same year Daddy stopped calling.
I never, ever dreamed it would slither into my marriage and my parenting and all the years between, when I thought I’d left it behind. But here it is, gaping at me like I should have known.
Maybe I should have known.
A few weeks ago, I asked Ben to clean out the air filter in our house. The cooling/heating system had a slight rattle in its throat, and I was concerned that pipes may be getting clogged that shouldn’t be getting clogged and that we might pay for that later when the whole system quit. Knowing we couldn’t afford something like that if it happened, I used my nagging voice.
Still, he sat on that thorn for weeks, like it didn’t even bother him.
Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe it just wasn’t as important to him as it was to me.
So I listed in my journal one night all the reasons why I shouldn’t have to clean our air filter myself. I already do the dishes and wash the laundry and dust the furniture and vacuum the floors and make up the bed—even though I’m the first one up—and straighten the clutter and take out the trash when Ben forgets or oversleeps and pay the bills and take care of the baby and organize the songs for our concert and keep track of our tax records and balance our checkbook and schedule Jadon’s 15-month appointment and collect business contacts for Progeny and still manage to throw 110-percent into a more than 40-hour-a-week job.
I remember feeling a little annoyed that he could pin so much on me, that he could believe I was anything close to Super Wife or Super Mom or Super Helper.
It was a dangerous path that crept right past reality.
I thought about this for a long time. Ben and I are reading a book called Breaking the Cycle of Divorce because we both come from generations of broken marriages and affairs that caused them. So much is heaped on the shoulders of the kids who watch a parent walk out the door and never come back.
The chapter we read yesterday explained four of the 12 manifestations of divorce’s curse. One of the most destructive of those manifestations is isolation. I mentioned in my last blog that I hadn’t heard from God in a while, so it startled me a little when he spoke. His words were clear and beautiful and heart-stopping.
Here’s what he said.
“Ben never expected or will expect you to be the perfect wife. Jadon never expected or will expect you to be the perfect mom. I never expected you to be a perfect helper. Open your eyes and let go of that bar that your hands control and continue to raise every day that slips by because it is pushing you into yourself and away from all the people I have brought into your life who love you so much.”
Every word is true, and I know it now, deep down inside. I’m ready to be real and transparent and...the broken mess-of-a-woman I’ve tried to hide for so long.
I’m not perfect. I never have been. I argue with my husband. I take low shots. I sometimes forget that he carries the laundry up the stairs so I don’t slip and crack my tailbone again and that he scrubs the bathrooms until they shine because toilets make me queasy and that he carries me through the painful memories when I can’t walk through them myself.
There’ll be days when I’ll spend hours with God and days when I won’t be able to sacrifice a minute. I will be detached and mean and frighteningly selfish sometimes. I will always see 10 more pounds that I could lose.
I think sometimes I need to be reminded that I fall short of God’s glory because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t really need a Savior. I wouldn’t believe I needed one, anyway. And his strength could never sweep through my life if I didn’t have a weakness.
Thank you, Jesus, that I have never reached perfection.
Our little musician
Happy on Christmas morning
He actually did this himself
He'll never use this in his lifetime, but he sure loved playing with it
Yep. Already knows how to brush his teeth.
Somebody needs a bath
It started 11 years ago when my mom sat us all down in the bedroom I shared with my sister and, as the shame and fear and haunting disappointment in her eyes chafed us raw, told us that my father had a 3-year-old child and another baby on the way and wouldn’t be coming back like he’d promised us.
I wanted to be perfect then, to bring him back.
I began the sixth grade rejected and wounded—a lanky kid taller than all the boys and dorkier than all the girls. I remember keeping my distance from friends, excusing myself from sleepovers and birthday parties, always afraid that people would snub me when they saw the tiny, shabby house I lived in or opened the cheap gifts my mom couldn’t afford. I needed to convince them that I was perfect—because if they believed the mirage that hid who I was deep down inside, then maybe Daddy would believe it, too.
In high school, I turned in every homework assignment and studied for every test to hold my place at the top of my class because Daddy would have to be impressed if I graduated valedictorian. I did, too. Daddy didn’t even come to the ceremony that launched me into adulthood, where I delivered my first public speech and sang a song dedicated to hundreds of happily married parents…and my mom.
So in college, I starved myself, thinking maybe if I were skinnier or prettier, Daddy might take an interest in my life. I ran six miles and limited myself to 600 calories a day the same year Daddy stopped calling.
I never, ever dreamed it would slither into my marriage and my parenting and all the years between, when I thought I’d left it behind. But here it is, gaping at me like I should have known.
Maybe I should have known.
A few weeks ago, I asked Ben to clean out the air filter in our house. The cooling/heating system had a slight rattle in its throat, and I was concerned that pipes may be getting clogged that shouldn’t be getting clogged and that we might pay for that later when the whole system quit. Knowing we couldn’t afford something like that if it happened, I used my nagging voice.
Still, he sat on that thorn for weeks, like it didn’t even bother him.
Maybe it slipped his mind. Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe it just wasn’t as important to him as it was to me.
So I listed in my journal one night all the reasons why I shouldn’t have to clean our air filter myself. I already do the dishes and wash the laundry and dust the furniture and vacuum the floors and make up the bed—even though I’m the first one up—and straighten the clutter and take out the trash when Ben forgets or oversleeps and pay the bills and take care of the baby and organize the songs for our concert and keep track of our tax records and balance our checkbook and schedule Jadon’s 15-month appointment and collect business contacts for Progeny and still manage to throw 110-percent into a more than 40-hour-a-week job.
I remember feeling a little annoyed that he could pin so much on me, that he could believe I was anything close to Super Wife or Super Mom or Super Helper.
It was a dangerous path that crept right past reality.
I thought about this for a long time. Ben and I are reading a book called Breaking the Cycle of Divorce because we both come from generations of broken marriages and affairs that caused them. So much is heaped on the shoulders of the kids who watch a parent walk out the door and never come back.
The chapter we read yesterday explained four of the 12 manifestations of divorce’s curse. One of the most destructive of those manifestations is isolation. I mentioned in my last blog that I hadn’t heard from God in a while, so it startled me a little when he spoke. His words were clear and beautiful and heart-stopping.
Here’s what he said.
“Ben never expected or will expect you to be the perfect wife. Jadon never expected or will expect you to be the perfect mom. I never expected you to be a perfect helper. Open your eyes and let go of that bar that your hands control and continue to raise every day that slips by because it is pushing you into yourself and away from all the people I have brought into your life who love you so much.”
Every word is true, and I know it now, deep down inside. I’m ready to be real and transparent and...the broken mess-of-a-woman I’ve tried to hide for so long.
I’m not perfect. I never have been. I argue with my husband. I take low shots. I sometimes forget that he carries the laundry up the stairs so I don’t slip and crack my tailbone again and that he scrubs the bathrooms until they shine because toilets make me queasy and that he carries me through the painful memories when I can’t walk through them myself.
There’ll be days when I’ll spend hours with God and days when I won’t be able to sacrifice a minute. I will be detached and mean and frighteningly selfish sometimes. I will always see 10 more pounds that I could lose.
I think sometimes I need to be reminded that I fall short of God’s glory because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t really need a Savior. I wouldn’t believe I needed one, anyway. And his strength could never sweep through my life if I didn’t have a weakness.
Thank you, Jesus, that I have never reached perfection.
Our little musician
Happy on Christmas morning
He actually did this himself
He'll never use this in his lifetime, but he sure loved playing with it
Yep. Already knows how to brush his teeth.
Somebody needs a bath
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
