rachel's blog

Let's get a little messy...

2009-11-02T11:09:00.000-08:00

Away with your noisy hymns of praise
I will not listen to the music of your harps (strings)
Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice
An endless river of righteous living.
Amos 5:23-24 (parenthesis added)

The first time I saw her, I didn’t have any children of my own.

Ben and I were at the Rock Opera with his youth group from Alamo Heights Baptist church. Some people had just handed out these folders that had African kids’ pictures on them, and Rebecca St. James was on stage talking about an organization called World Vision. I wasn’t really listening.

Instead, I was staring at Kedija Juhar, the little girl a woman had passed to Ben and me. She had brown eyes and wild hair, and I knew we would sponsor her before I even read that she lived in Tanzania and was the “water bearer” for her family and that her father had died of AIDs and that she took care of her brother and sister while her mother tried to find work.

I knew even before I saw that her birthday was the day before Ben’s and my anniversary.

Those eyes…they just wouldn’t let me go.

Six years ago we signed up to send $35 each month to this precious little girl across the ocean. She was 6. Didn’t go to school. Had no drinking water within a five-mile radius. Wore no shoes.

Today, Kedija is 12. Her favorite subject is science, and she’s not so good at math but she’s excelling at her native language. Her community has a well from which they draw water now. She saves her shoes for school.

Moses Mwesige came along in 2005, after we’d signed up to become World Vision Artist Associates. He’s from Zimbabwe, a part of Africa so ravaged by AIDs that World Vision leaders compare it to an “Asian tsunami every six days.” So many places in Africa are the same.

Moses has seen the destruction of the disease. His family has buried sons, daughters, parents and grandparents in the 12 years he’s been alive, and even in a community where death is almost commonplace, it is no less damaging. In his first letter to us, Moses wrote, “Thank you for loving me so much that you would choose to sponsor me.” His words made me cry the day I opened up that dirt-streaked envelope and unfolded the paper stamped with World Vision’s Zimbabwe seal. If I’m really being honest, they still make me cry today because, though simple and sweet, they are at the same time intense and difficult. He saw our love in that paltry $35 we sent every month.

How little I knew of the love that would blister my heart like the scorching dirt in Africa blisters their feet, the same love that would make my heart dance and laugh and sting and cry every time I saw “Zimbabwe” scribbled on an envelope.

How little I knew of its addiction.

We sponsored our third child three months after Jadon was born, when I found a little boy from Peru, Juaquin, who was born the same day Jadon was born in 2006. I saw his face, and I saw my son.

Juaquin is almost 3 now. His colored pictures hang alongside Jadon’s artwork on our refrigerator (which is getting a little crowded by now), and when Jadon’s old enough to write, they’ll be pen pals. When he has his own money, Jadon will help make sure Juaquin has enough to eat.

Philani Lugogo came along a few months later. He’s from a rural community in South Africa. His first picture showed a skinny 3-year-old with melancholy eyes and dirty feet. The picture we got a few weeks ago shows a healthy 5-year-old with smiling eyes and shoes to cover his probably-still-dirty feet. He just started school.

Maureen is the last of our sponsored kids. We just began our relationship with her two months ago, so the only thing I know about Maureen is that her birthday is on the day my grandmother died. Memaw would be glad to know that a little girl’s life was changed so drastically the day she died.

You may be wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Because they are my children. And, just as Jadon and Asa have done, Kedija, Moses, Juaquin, Philani and Maureen have taught me so much over the years.

Namely this: I. Am. Still. Selfish.

It took me a while to realize this, and even longer to admit it, but it’s true.

I eat half my oversized plate at Chili’s and I buy that overpriced organic chicken at H-E-B and I drink that oversweet Starbucks hot chocolate, and I complain about how my budget doesn’t seem to be working out this month. While the millions who live on less than $2 a day eat their beans and rice and, maybe once a week, that piece of almost-rotten fruit and walk those five miles to get that clean water, and they sing “I’ve got this joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart” and they mean it.

I sit in my three-bedroom, 1,988-square-foot house, with its centralized heating and cooling system, and I turn on my wide-screen television with more channels than I’d watch in a lifetime and I grumble about how the honey-colored book shelf that sits in our gameroom will have to be replaced eventually because my sons (and probably husband) have nicked some of the wood with their rough-housing. They sit in their houses made of cardboard or fabric or see-through sheets and thank God that they have shade from the burning sun.

I try to hold on, with cramping fingers, to the bit of comfort I have here…while my children—MY children—across the ocean are starving. Hurting. Dying.

I am so selfish.

So I’ve found myself begging God to break my heart for what breaks his, to show me what else I might do in my little corner of easy living, to make the lives of those millions just a tiny bit easier.

Back in July, Ben and I attended a worship leader’s conference in Leawood, Kansas. The idea that worship cannot be separated from justice had been on our hearts for a while, and it was reaffirmed at the conference.

While there, God urged Ben and me to start working on a project, which we’ve since titled “Heart Like Your Heart Project,” that will effect change in the lives of children and orphans all over the world. Progeny plans to go into the studio in March to record a brand new worship album, with brand new original worship songs, that will release sometime in April or May.

Here’s the important thing, though: all sales of the album will go directly to World Vision. Ten percent of the profits will be distributed to Progeny’s sponsored children, to purchase goats and cows and chickens in order to raise the communities’ economic status for their own good and the good of surrounding communities. The other 90 percent of the profits will go directly to the work of World Vision—building wells, providing food and clothing and shelter and administering health care to the ones who need it most.

Our goal is to sell 10,000 CDs, which will raise $135,000 for the work of World Vision (Visit www.progenyworship for more info on the project and e-mail ben@progenyband.com if you’re interested in hosting a house party or worship concert).

I’ve never been to Zimbabwe or Tanzania or Peru or South Africa. But I have children there. Children who go to bed hungry, children who raise their brothers and sisters because disease stole their parents. Children who want to know that they are worth the sacrifice of my monthly Chili’s tab.

Listen to what Leonard Sweet says in "The Three Hardest Words in the World to Get Right:"

“Everything we do—our learning, our strivings, our dreaming and daydreaming—needs to be shaped by the one in three people who live on less than two dollars per day. We need to be shaped by the ten thousand Africans who die of AIDs, TB and malaria every day, and the fifty million people who die of hunger every year. That’s why the condition of our souls has a direct relation to the condition of our neighborhoods and our nations. Something is wrong when the wealth of some depends on the poverty of others. Something is wrong when the ascent up the ladder for some depends on the descent down the ladder for others.”

Amen, Leonard.

So I say, let us run, dance, walk, limp, whatever it looks like to us, toward God’s heart in caring for the orphan and the widow and the foreigner. Because if we want to see Jesus—and I mean really, really see him—we’ll have to crumple our perfectly-pressed pants and roll up the sleeves of our Tide-white shirts and get a little messy. Because where the dirt-smudged children, the poverty-stricken foreigners and the not-exactly-aromatic homeless are is right where Jesus loves to be.

Break our hearts for what breaks yours, oh God.

(For sneak peeks of three of Progeny’s new worship songs, visit www.progenyworship.com.)

Celebrate Recovery testimony, shared 10/13/09

2009-10-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

I’m a believer in Jesus Christ who struggles with perfectionism, a skewed body image and low self worth.

All of this…messiness…began a long, long time ago. I grew up with a small town, in a two-bedroom house with my mom, my dad, my older brother and my younger sister. We knew everybody’s secrets in that town. They knew all of ours.

The first time I remember my dad leaving home was the day after I’d sung my first solo in church. I was 4. He drove off that day on a Harley motorcycle, to “go find work” in his home state of Ohio, while we stayed behind in Texas. I watched him with dripping eyes until that motorcycle was too far away to even imagine, and I remember thinking my solo is what made him leave.

He worked out of state for a month or so. Maybe he sent home some money, maybe he didn’t. I don’t really know. I do know that he came home with a box of Jones Potato chips (a brand of chips made only in Ohio) and the clothes on his back. Seemed like he’d never left.

Short absences—a month or two—were normal after that. When friends would ask about my dad, I recited what he’d told us: that the jobs were better in Ohio. They looked at me with skeptical eyes. Maybe deep down inside I knew it was a lie, too.

The next time Daddy left for an extended trip (I knew because he took a backpack of clothes with him this time) was the same day I found out I needed glasses. I cried and cried and cried—partly because he was leaving but mostly because I needed glasses, and if I needed glasses, that meant I could no longer be perfect for him. And that meant he would stay away even longer.

He did.

He was gone for two years. At the end of those two years, my mom packed us up and drove the night through to Ohio. We rented a house in Mansfield. I could count on one hand the number of times Daddy slept in his own house while we were living in the same town. So my mom moved us back to Texas. A year later, she got a letter from her sister-in-law saying that Daddy had a 3-year-old daughter and a baby on the way with a woman he’d been fooling around with for years.

I was 11 years old when my parents split up, when I figured out I wasn’t good enough to keep my dad at home. I spent the next 10 years trying to prove I was good enough.

My mom moved us back to where we’d spent our first few years in school. I got contacts. She got debt, bought a shabby house surrounded by corn fields. Everybody in that town knew why we’d come back.

I threw myself into school, focused on my studies, played sports, joined the junior high band, did everything I possibly could to make my dad, to make others, notice what a wonderful person I was.

We visited my dad the summer between my sixth and seventh grade years. It was the first time I met my half-brother, my half-sister and the woman who’d caused my parents’ divorce. After a rough month, my dad took us shopping for school clothes—his contribution since he never sent child support. I remember moving out of the dressing room to those big mirrors outside, just to make sure the shorts I’d chosen fit right. Daddy and my stepmom were there. He said, “I thought she would have lost all her baby fat by now” in a kind of off-hand, nonchalant way.

I stopped eating lunch my seventh grade year. Told all my friends it was because our athletics class was right after lunch and my food didn’t have time to settle. I cut out breakfast my freshman year in high school because I wasn’t “hungry that early in the morning.” I’d forget my lunch, too. Only ate dinner, and that’s just because my mom was there, watching me with eyes that said she knew what I was doing.

It got easier in college because those eyes weren’t there. I would limit myself to a small smoothie every day—about 600 calories—and obsessively worked off that 600 calories—and more—by running six or seven miles and lifting some weights. I made excuses when my mom came to visit once a month or so. The Texas State marching band was really hard work, and I couldn’t keep the weight on because of it. She knew better. I know that now.

It wasn’t just the body image, either. The desire to be the best, to be perfect, pushed me to seriously focus on my studies. I graduated valedictorian of my high school class, got a full ride to college and graduated with highest honors from Texas State University in San Marcos. I still remember crying when I brought home my first B on a philosophy essay. I never let it happen again.

My sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms and into an apartment with roommates who saw my pantry shelf and the very few groceries that sat there. At the time, I was news editor of the university newspaper, and the excuse I offered to them was that my job didn’t pay much (it didn’t) and I didn’t have money for more than the can of green beans I ate every day.

I got more involved in the Baptist Student Ministry during my junior year. The director there asked me to be the worship leader, and I remember thinking, “He has no idea how messed up I am.” But I did it, even while I struggled through my relationship with God. Working out, counting calories, was way more important to me than spending time with a living, able-to-heal God.

Recovery began my senior year of college, when I finally found it in me to admit I had a problem.

The summer prior to that, I’d gotten a call from my dad. He lived in Florida now. He was sober, which was unusual at that time. He told me he’d made a mistake, that he didn’t mean to do what he’d done. He apologized for leaving us high and dry, said it wasn’t my fault or my brother’s fault or my sister’s fault, that the fault was his alone. I told him I forgave everything, that I didn’t hold any of it against him because I loved him. He cried. I sobbed. Healing stretched its arms around us.

A month later, Ben and I decided to pursue a relationship together. When he and I first started dating, I’d moved up to editor in chief of the university newspaper. I spent hours and hours every day in my office—writing, editing, editing some more—and because I still had trouble eating three meals a day, Ben stuck a note on my computer that said “skinny = beautiful” with a line through the equal sign. I looked at it every single day, and maybe deep down inside I started to believe it.

Things have changed since those college days. My relationships are different—because I no longer (or at least try hard not to) compare myself to my friends or try to measure up to some impossible-to-reach bar just to prove I’m good enough to like.

My relationship with Ben is deeper than it used to be because I know he loves me even if there are 10 extra pounds on my body that weren’t there when we married. Maybe six years of telling me it doesn’t matter what I look like have finally lodged those words into my stubborn brain.

My relationship with my dad has been restored, to a certain extent. He knows where we stand. I know he’s suffered more than enough for what he’s done. Contact is still spotty, like it was when I was a kid, but I call him every other month just to let him know I’m thinking about him. I still love him as much as I did before he made his mistakes. Maybe I love him more because of his mistakes.

I still run five or six miles a day. But the eating disorder is gone. The tendency toward perfectionism is still there, but maybe I’m okay with that because it reminds me how I need God’s grace every single day to dodge the shackles that chase standards like that.

Some days I look in the mirror and don’t think that what I see is beautiful or thin enough. Those are the days I ask—maybe beg—Jesus to give me eyes to see myself the way he sees me—because the temptation is still there, curling its icy fingers around my arm. But Jesus never disappoints. Never. And some days, I do see what He sees: imperfect-but-still-beautiful me. Psalm 139:14 says, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made. You works are wonderful. I know that full well.”

It’s taken me 16 years to believe that I am one of his works.

People have asked me over the years if I would change anything about my past. My answer is no. Because my past has made me who I am, has helped me see things in a different way, has offered me an opportunity to minister to God’s people. I’ve written about my past in a book I shopped to agents last week. I’ve shared my past in the songs my band records.

No, I wouldn’t change a thing. Because God is glorified in what might look like my mess. He’s glorified in all of our messes, and that is the beauty in mistakes.

The beauty of messy love...

2009-09-29T12:38:00.000-07:00

Overwhelming.

The love that bubbles in my heart, rises to my throat and lodges there when I look at my two sons, at their gem-of-a-man father, at their hands reaching for my face, my arm, my hair.

Overwhelming.

The panic that gurgles in my veins, claws at my throat and lodges there when I look at the mountains of laundry to be done, the piles of toys to be picked up, the layer of dust lounging on the tables and the bookshelves and the books that line them…not to mention the pages I need to design for work, the queries I need to write to agents so they’ll shop my book to publishers, the chapters I still need to write for my next book.

These emotions, so completely different from each other, live under the same roof. Sometimes it’s just…overwhelming.

Maybe you should know something about me. Maybe you already know it. I’m a perfectionist. Always have been…trying hard not to be.

But it sneaks in on days like today. Days when I look at that layer of dirt and wonder how we can even breathe in this house with two weeks of dust caking the ceiling fans that spin all night and the shelves my boys touch (and sometimes gnaw on, if we’re talking about Asa) and the beds where we sleep.

On days like today, I want to drop everything and clean until my hands fall off, until my feet scream for relief, until the whole house shouts, “Thank you, God, that she finally saw fit to pick up a duster.”

But on days like today, it is nearly impossible.

Because those boys (okay, and man)—a 2-year-old who would rather walk on toys than clean them up and a five-month-old who doesn’t even comprehend the word clean and a 27-year-old who seems like he should have been trained by now—are there, staring at me with eyes that say, “Stay here with me.”

So I do. I sit and watch Jadon pull out more toys and add to the pile that’s already out of hand. And I feel it growing inside me—the frustration, the horror, the panic of seeing my carefully-put-together game room becoming a tornado-went-through-here play room. I watch Asa stare at him, learning how to make a mess, and my eye starts to twitch a little. I watch Ben leave his shoes where he took them off instead of walking them to the closet where they belong, and my throat starts to burn a little.

And then I have to make myself remember something a very wise woman—my mama—told me just a few days ago: “There is no room for perfectionism in marriage or in parenting.”

No room for perfectionism. Oh, man.

But after the initial panic—“But if I can’t be perfect, what can I be?”—stops clawing at my face and my neck, I feel my shoulders relax a little, and I start to really watch the boys. Really watch them. And listen. I listen to Asa laughing hysterically at something Jadon has done. I listen to Jadon say, “I’m not a boy. I’m a man,” and I find myself thinking that he’ll make a fine man someday. I listen to Ben do everything he can to make Asa and Jadon laugh again, and I find myself thinking what a fine man, what a beautiful example, he really is (with the exception of the cleanliness, of course).

That’s when my heart starts to swell. That’s when I find myself remembering what started it all—this beautiful, messy life we four share together.

It was mid-September, 2002. I had just gotten home from singing the national anthem at a college basketball game. One of the assistant coaches had asked me out. I said no. Didn’t offer a reason, even though I knew it was because I’d written off dating, asked God to hold my heart until the right person came along. I drove back to my apartment, wondering if I’d made the right decision, and my roommate and her fiancé were standing outside, talking to this boy-man I had met before, had even been friends with for a while. The guys invited my roommate and me to watch a move at a mutual friend’s house. Something pushed me to say yes.

Ben and I talked during the whole movie. Six days later, God told me He’d given my heart to Ben. On Sept. 30, Ben told me he’d had a vision from God, a vision of his future wife. My mouth got dry until he told me the girl in his vision was me.

The next few months were sweet, sweet times. I was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper and would stay up at my office (Old Main on the campus of Texas State University) until 2 or 3 a.m. Sometimes Ben would meet me after work and walk me to my car because it was dark and dangerous, or so he said. Sometimes we would walk all the way to my apartment, enjoying the quiet of the morning hours and the way our hands fit together. Sometimes, when I was too tired to see, he would sit in my office keeping me awake while I did the final edit on the paper and sent it to press.

Two months after we’d decided to pursue a relationship, Ben asked me to marry him on stage at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio. We’d just gotten done watching The Nutcracker. His hands shook. My eyes leaked. We celebrated at The Olive Garden.

Oct. 11 will mark six years of marriage for us. I can’t believe it’s been that long since I wrote my vows and read them aloud for the 150 people crammed in that little historical church. He wrote a poem for me. I remember thinking, “I’m so glad I married a poet.”

I’m still glad, even if his dirty clothes do end up on the floor in the same pile as his clean ones (at least I’m not the one who has to do the “smell test”).

So this is the love that started it all. It’s that love, my love for him, my love for his children, that keeps me thinking—even when I look at the mess my sons can make in a matter of seconds—that I’m so glad I have a mess of toys to pick up. I’m so thankful I have five loads of laundry to do every week. I’m so blessed to have a sink full of dishes every morning.

Because it means they are here, alive and well. And I’m needed. Favored. Loved. That is what the mess and the disasters and the cries in my house tell me.

And that is what drowns the perfectionism.

Thank you, God, that they are here.

Asa talking to whoever will listen

Jadon sporting a mohawk

Asa

The brothers

Stories that make us who we are...

2008-10-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

“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.

I'm a daydream believer

2008-05-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

“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.

finding room to just breathe...

2008-03-14T05:54:00.001-07:00

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.

It's so hard to say goodbye...

2008-02-14T22:07:00.000-08:00

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...

Naps are so overrated

2008-01-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

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.

Perfection is so overrated

2008-01-25T16:29:00.001-08:00

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

Tipped-over toys and dirty socks

2007-12-20T09:44:00.000-08:00

They're everywhere. Or maybe that's just all I see anymore. Jadon's toys have overtaken the house—the gameroom, the kitchen, our living room's corner. Only our bedroom escaped most of that tornado, but even when I try to retreat there for a little me-time, dirty, smelly socks run me right back out (and they're not mine—because my dirty socks don't smell).

**Disclaimer: Please don't think any of the following words reflect on my love for my family. I love my husband and my son more than any dreams or plans or pressures to have a clean house. Just know that.

I'm so tired. I feel like I'm just barely keeping my head above water. Or maybe what I feel is more like dog-paddling toward a shoreline that I still can't see, no matter how much I squint. I'm running out of stamina.

There's not enough time in my day to straighten the house that gets wrecked the moment Jadon wakes or to call my sister, who admitted she's feeling a little lonely, or to cook that semi-healthy dinner for my family or to jog a few miles to clear my head or to snuggle with my husband on our loveseat, like we used to do, or to practice the bass guitar for our concert this weekend or to write those chapters I've been sitting on for weeks or to finish designing those pages for the job that pays our bills or to even breathe.

I'm just running out of stamina.

Lately I've been looking at the lives of people I barely know, and I've been wishing for the simplicity I imagine they have. I see moms and dads picnicking with their children, and I wish I could take just one hour away from everything and let Jadon feel the park's abnormally green grass tickling the bottoms of his bare feet. I see grandmas walking behind grandchildren on bicycles, and I wish I could somehow make my grandmother mobile again. I see our neighbors and their good friends sipping hot chocolate in rocking chairs on their front porches, and I wish I had time for a friend.

And it seems like I've been meeting more and more moms who get to stay home with their children and raise them to know the Lord, and I feel a little envious that their husband's salary is enough for their family. Then every once in a while, I'll meet the woman who is checking off her list of goals as she rises up the ladder, and I feel a little envious that she wasn't asked to put her dreams on hold.

I could really let this bother me if I dwelt on it. But the thing is, I don't know their stories. They could be treading water, just like me. Some of them may even be drifting away from that shore while they try to keep their head above water.

Our pastor, Scott Heare, talked Sunday about how God really does play hide and seek. God is hiding. Sometimes we find him when we're not looking. Sometimes we find him when we're looking for him. Sometimes we look and look and look, and we don't find him anywhere.

I've been looking for God for a long time. I don't know for how long, but I do know it's been a really long time. I had stopped looking for a while. Until Scott opened my eyes to something.

He said that when we see God, it's because he wants us to see his heart. But when he's hiding from us it's because he wants us to learn something about his mind. He wants to grow us in wisdom about himself, about our circumstances, about the spiritual truths that can change our lives.

I haven't learned what I need to learn yet, so he remains hidden.

So I've been sitting around, since Sunday, thinking about what God might want to teach me by hiding. Maybe I'm supposed to enjoy the sight of tipped-over toys and dirty socks because some people don't have the joy of a family to pick up after. Maybe I'm supposed to embrace the tasks on my to-do list because some people don't have the privilege of doing for themselves.

Maybe I need to really learn what it means to surrender my pales-in-comparison life plan and exchange it for his bigger-than-any-of-my-dreams one.

So I'll keep dog-paddling toward that distant shoreline, God, until I can see you again. Really see you.

sunsets and sunrises...

2007-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:00

The house has just settled into peace again.

Jadon has been crying for an hour and a half, since I laid him down for his nap at 3:30 p.m. For the first part of that hour, I would visit his room, rub his back and gently tell him it was time to take a nap. When he chose not to listen, I just let him cry.

It’s agonizing to hear my baby cry. But I sat here, for the better part of an hour, while his scream chipped away at my heart’s resolve.

A few minutes ago, I visited his room for the last time. His eyes were swollen and puffy, his mouth twisted in a pout. I picked him up in my arms and rocked him until his heavy eyes finally closed. He whined when I put him down, but I softly stroked his cheek and back to let him know I was still there and would be as long as he needed me.

He is quiet now.

So I’m sitting here staring out our gameroom window at a sky splashed with orange and pink and blue and purple and tiny wisps of white. It’s breathtaking. Something in the beauty of a sunset has the power to move me.

I’ve been in sort of a funk lately. Haven’t wanted to go to work or participate in any extra activities or even write. I know I’m a mess when I don’t feel like writing.

I feel dry and lonely and…abandoned.

This happens every now and then, when stress and exhaustion numb me to what’s really important in life. I know it’s just a cycle that will eventually end, but it’s still a vicious cycle—because every day I look in the mirror and I see all the things I wish I could change about myself. I look at the mess piling up in my home and the son I have to leave every day when I go to work and I begin to believe that I’m not a good wife or a good mother.

I look at my life and all the dreams that seem so far out of reach, and it’s enough to make me give up trying.

It’s an awful place to be.

Maybe it all started as we got closer to Jadon’s first birthday. It’s hard to believe he’s a year old already. He’s charming and infuriating all wrapped up into one. He is beginning to get an attitude and likes to throw fits when he’s not able to get or do something he wants. He now stands 31 and a half inches tall and weighs 21 pounds. He says Mama, Daddy, Jake (for Uncle Jake), hey, hi and duck. On good days, he’ll say his own version of “Thank you.” He never says “Please.”

We celebrated his birthday on Thanksgiving Day with a Curious George themed party. Jadon enjoyed opening his (way too many) presents and enjoyed even more playing with each one—especially his drum sticks and the small guitar. He’d pluck the strings of his guitar and look at his daddy and me to make sure we’d heard him, then would smile from ear to ear when we clapped for him. He is our precious, happy boy, safe in our love, secure in our protection.

At his party, I found myself thinking about how quickly time has slipped away. A year ago, Jadon was only weeks old, and Ben and I were stumbling through this parenting thing. A year ago, I leaned on my friends and family to help me get through the emotional period that follows the birth of any child.

A year ago, my grandmother was talking and laughing and feeding herself and was able to hold a baby Jadon in her arms during his first Christmas.

How much has changed in a year.

I’ve always struggled with the passing of time and getting older. I’ve never really wanted to get older—been a little scared of it, I guess. Having a child makes it seem like time speeds even faster than it used to. I don't like that I can't remember how it felt to hold a still, tiny baby in my arms just so I could breathe his baby scent. I don't like that my life has become so busy that I no longer have time to lean on friends and family when my emotions get the better of me. I don’t like that I can’t talk to my Memaw anymore, that she won’t laugh at Ben’s cheesy jokes, that she can’t even use a fork anymore. I don't like that she won't be able to hold Jadon ever again. But I know it’s part of life.

And the sunset has reminded me of something.

Just before the night’s darkness, God shows us something beautiful—so we’ll remember it when the night seems too long. And the sunrise…well, it’s made all the more beautiful the blacker the night. I think Jesus is a lot like the sunrise.

Oh, God, show me the sunrise.

Jadon's birthday breakfast

His first cupcake

Mmmm. That was good.

The table spread

The awesome cake

Amazingly, this did not result in an injury.

Presents, presents, presents!

The family after Jadon's first birthday party.

Christmas is coming!

fall brings romance...

2007-10-19T13:21:00.001-07:00

I love this time of year.

This morning, as I walked out to my car at 6:30, I just had to stop for a brief moment and fill my lungs with the crisp, clean air. It was still dark, and I could see the stars shining clearer than they have shone in a long time, no visible humidity between them and me. Thank you, God, for fall…and all the memories that surround this time of year.

Some people say spring is the best season because of new birth and blooming flowers and budding trees. My season is fall.

So many life-changing events have happened in the fall. I met Ben in the fall of 2000, when I was a sophomore at Texas State University in San Marcos. We were kids then, 18 and 19, and still had so much to see and do and learn before God would bring us together as more than friends. I remember he showed up to the Baptist Student Ministry, where I was co-worship leader, an hour late and his hair was all disheveled, and I thought, "He's kind of a dork, but in a cute sort of way…" and how we agreed to keep things on a friendly level to lessen whatever pressure we felt from our summer get-to-know-each-other e-mails.

We began "officially" dating in the fall of 2002, my senior year of college, and were soon engaged once God's will was made unmistakably clear. I remember late nights and early, early mornings combing through wedding magazines as I sat in my Editor-in-Chief office waiting for the last pages of The University Star to print so I could go to bed, and the nights Ben would meet me at campus and walk me to my car to make sure nothing happened in the 200 feet I had to walk between the Star office and my parking spot.

We married Oct. 11, 2003, right on the cusp of fall, and moved to San Antonio that year, where I secured my first "real" job as a reporter at the San Antonio Express-News. I remember snuggling on our hand-me-down couch and reading articles together from a marriage magazine—a gift subscription from a college friend—after a long day at work, and jogging from our apartment to a local high school or detouring through neighborhoods and dreaming of our first home together.

Jadon was born Nov. 19, 2006, during our first Thanksgiving holidays spent in a house we could call our own. I remember wrapping him tightly in layers and layers of blankets to protect him from the wind's chill and driving home from the hospital on all the back roads at a maximum speed of 25 miles an hour—because we were carrying precious cargo.

So many life-changing events.

Ben and I just recently celebrated our four-year anniversary and added another memory to the storehouse we already have. A couple in our church booked three nights for us at a lakeside resort in Conroe, Texas. It was a refreshing time of reconnection—time that we haven't had since Jadon was born. While we missed our son and the smiles he brings to our days, we had a beautiful time enjoying each other.

Now I'll remember walking hand-in-hand through Old Town Spring, a place I haven't visited since I was a kid, and playing with toys with which we haven't played since we were little and sitting on a wooden porch swing with our arms around each other. I'll remember watching the sunset from a pier while we munched on roast beef sandwiches and Sunchips and eating strawberry cereal bars on a balcony overhanging the water. I'll remember battling massive tree roots on the miles of trails we biked at Huntsville National Park, and the way I laughed when Ben's wheel caught on an especially large root and sent him flying over the handlebars onto the sand.

So many beautiful moments.

I was chatting with an old college friend on myspace the other day, about purity and marriage and what we expect from the people we would "seriously" consider for marriage. He is marrying a beautiful woman in November, a woman who has forgiven his past and what he did before Christ delivered him at 19, a woman who has embraced the future promised by his new life in Christ. It made me think about Ben and me and how we talked about our mistakes as we prayed about God's will for our relationship, how we discovered that some mistakes were harder to let go of than others, how we fought hard to forgive and forget. Here is some of what I told my friend:

"We had 'the talk' early in our courtship, and I remember feeling just a little bit cheated for a very short time—until I realized that my (future) husband held my heart like it was fragile and special and beautiful, while many other men did not possess the kindness or respect to do that. It was a mistake in his past. I'd like to say it was a mistake that only happened once, but the reality is, he was caught in it for a while.

"But the fact that my (future) husband had made this mistake in the past—for which he had asked God's forgiveness—did not lower him in any way in my eyes and heart and mind. He was pure in every sense of the word, and I believe God made my heart see him that way. He loved the same God I loved. He loved people in a way I'd never seen. He loved me. He listened. He told the truth. He followed through. He had unshakable faith. He fought for me. He let me dance. He was daily reaching for and searching and seeking to live into the truths of God. That was enough for me.

"I don't believe God sees our mistakes as, 'OK, this one's dishonored his father and mother, this one doesn't carve out any Sabbath time, this one wants what his best friend has, this one's not a virgin…' He sees them as forgiven and erased."

We all bring to the table past mistakes. We could still be living in our mistakes. I struggle with mine every day. Jadon has opened our eyes to the human tendency toward making mistakes, though he is so young (11 months today). He has begun hitting us back when we tell him he can't play with something—just to see what we'll do, and his little lip will poke out when he realizes it was a mistake. When he loses his balance while walking (yes, he started walking—or running, really—a week and a half ago), or when Ben pushes him over just to have a good laugh, Jadon will throw himself on the floor, bang his head and release a frustrated scream before he realizes he's made a mistake getting angry. He falls off furniture all the time, though we have told him that climbing on and off is probably not the safest activity in which a baby could engage, and we let him so he will learn to be more careful (that's not bad parenting, is it???).

His mistakes might seem small in light of ours, but God uses simple pictures to teach us. We feel the same remorse that our son feels when we lash out at God because we feel he is holding something back from us. There is a reason Solomon speaks so often about the dangers of anger in the Proverbs. And I believe that God lets us fall sometimes when we take things into our own hands—because He wants us to learn that He's only concerned with our wellbeing and safety.

I believe that with any forgiveness comes shades of forgetting. When Jadon smacks my hand in defiance of discipline, then collapses, crying, into my arms and plants a kiss on my nose or mouth (his aim has improved a little), I know that he is sorry for what he's done. And as I hug him close, his offense fades from my memory. It's the same way with God.

If we could just forgive each other that same way.

In the four years we've been married, I can say that I've forgotten most of Ben's past mistakes—and the ones he's made since we've been married. There are some that creep back in when the enemy finds my guard down, but in times like those, I remember the reason I married Ben in the first place, the reason I would marry him all over again today.

Ben is one of the purest, most holy men in the world, or at least of the ones I know.

That is enough for me.

Jadon riding in a car at Chuck-E-Cheese's with his girlfriend.

He sneaks a kiss when he thinks no one is looking.

Keepin' it real after his sneaky kiss

The family at Evans and Esther's wedding

Group picture at the New Braunfels Children's Museum

I don't think he has a cowboy bone in him.

Visiting space with Mama.

Trials and errors

2007-10-05T06:54:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted. My eyes burn, my head aches and my heart is all knotted up inside. So much has happened in the last week, and it still weighs heavily on me.

Our hard drive decided to crash Tuesday.

It was perfect timing. I mean, I had almost finished a 17-page query letter outlining my novel that I was going to send to publishers by the end of the month. I was editing the last 10 chapters of the book before closing it for good. Ben and I had just finished recording number 22 of the 25 songs we're considering for Progeny's next album.

Perfect timing.

I won't even mention the thousands of pictures and video clips of Jadon's milestones...or the time-consuming tax records that I started back in January...or the words to all the new songs Ben and I had written...or all the Web projects Ben has built in the last year.

Mentioning it all just makes me sick to my stomach.

I was driving home from work yesterday, listening to some songs that usually boost my spirits...and I only felt this terrible despair because we had exhausted our last hope of retrieving the files...and I couldn't stop thinking about all the time we had wasted on those projects, all the months we had lost. I couldn't hold back my angry tears or the words that tumbled from my mouth: "Why would you do it, Lord, when all of this work was for You?!!"

He didn't answer me. But with morning's light, I have found a faint glimmer of understanding.

I was reading through my 432-page novel for the last time. Maybe God wanted me to carefully comb through it again, make it the best it could be, before submitting it to publishers. Maybe the query letter wasn't quite as good as it will be now that I've had some practice writing one. Maybe God wanted to tweak some of the songs Ben and I have written for our second album, and He only wanted us to look more carefully at them. Maybe he knew Ben could build better Web sites now that he's done so many.

Maybe He wanted to show us how dependent we are on technology.

I told God that if He didn't retrieve the data on our hard drive, I was going to step away from my book--and Progeny's second recording project--for a year. But I know in my heart that's not what He intends me to do. He wants me to keep pressing on, until I have completed the task(s) He has laid out for me. Lord, let me be more diligent, more intentional, a better steward this time around.

I was telling a friend today that with all the family stuff that's been going on in Ben's and my life, the problems with my job and this on top of it all, I've had to fight not to harden my heart, a self-protection tactic I learned as a young child. I think it's only in the aching, in the really feeling the sorrow in our hearts, that we can truly experience all God intends to teach us in a trial.

And He will use technology. So be sure to back up your files.

In the meantime, I'm thankful that I have a roof over my head and a world-class husband and beautiful child with whom I can share it.

Love should be enough...

2007-09-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

This week has been bittersweet.

Most weeks are like that anymore, mostly because of Jadon and the joy and challenge he brings to my life. So I’ll start with that.

I am convinced that we have the easiest, best, sweetest baby in the world (I know you other mothers will disagree!). Our band had a last-minute gig Saturday, at this charming little restaurant in Helotes (Northwest San Antonio). Since the show was so last-minute, we hadn’t been able to arrange for anyone to watch Jadon. But the stage area had room enough for a playpen, so we set it up, put in a few toys and hoped he would do well during our first set. He never complained once! He stood holding the side of the playpen watching us play, sometimes even singing along. He never cried once. The second hour-long set was the same. After our show was over, people kept coming up to us commenting on what a great baby we had on our hands. God has blessed us with the most amazing child ever.

He even started dancing during the song, “Jadon’s Lullaby,” much to the entertainment of our crowd. He knows that one by heart. Mama sings it to him often.

So, with part of the tip money we made, we bought him a new toy that he played with for about five minutes.

Don’t get me wrong. We are still working on discipline and teaching Jadon what he can and cannot touch (computer cords) or eat (floor fuzz) or drop on the floor (papers on top of the filing cabinet). He still gets smacked—often. But he is one of the most laid back, flexible, people-loving babies I’ve ever seen. He’s visited many church nurseries in the last few months, and he will play with or be held by anyone.

My son has turned 10 months old. With each passing month, it gets harder and harder to believe that he is really that old. He is a little man, all rambunctious and rowdy and wild. Yesterday he kept climbing into this saucer chair and then spinning around to face me with this big, triumphant smile on his face, as if to say, “Look what a big boy I am.” I wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time because he’s so smart, but he’s growing so fast. I want to hold on to the baby as long as I can, but he is quickly being replaced by a little boy.

Jadon took his first few steps about two weeks ago—without holding on to anything. He still prefers holding on to something, but sometimes he’ll forget to hold on, and he’ll walk a few steps, then remember. He likes to stand by himself, and then squat to pick things up and then stand again. I tell him that’s got to be harder than walking! All those squats!

He’s finally sitting again in the bathtub. A couple of months ago, he was trying to crawl in the tub. Ben turned his back to grab something, and Jadon did a face plant in the water. I think it was a traumatic experience for him, and, since then, he hasn’t wanted to sit in the water but will stand and make us wash him as he stands. But my wild boy has finally forgotten that trauma, and he sat again for the first time this week.

We’ve been working on teaching him to feed himself. Right now he just does it with his fingers, but he’s interested in the spoon and takes it away occasionally. He’ll stick it in his mouth and then make a funny face when he realizes there’s no food on it.

He’s had a few new experiences this month. We’ve taken him bike riding. He loves it. He hates wearing the helmet, but I think it’s the cutest thing ever!

I also let him sit in the grass (previously avoided because we have a bit of a problem with scorpions out here in the Hill Country). He didn’t like the prickly feel, so he tried not to touch it with his arms or his legs. Since he was in shorts, he sat there doing a jackknife (isn’t that the ab exercise we all used to hate in athletics?) until he fell back into it. Then he just lay there looking at me, his face saying, “Please, Mama, come get me out of this weird thing.” Seriously, though, he loves being outdoors. Sometimes I just open the doors and windows and let him stare outside, and he’ll cry when I close them. So silly.

And then, he went to Corpus for the first time. It was a business assignment, so we didn't have enough time to visit the beach, but we did get some cool pictures.

I so miss the baby who used to lie in my arms, content to be with Mama, but I’m enjoying watching this remarkable boy and his daily discoveries.

Ben and I have been talking a lot lately about love. Like what did Paul mean when he said, “Love always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:6) and that faith, hope and love remain, “but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13)? What does it really mean to have no fear in love, to be made perfect in love (1 John 4:18)?

I’ve been watching my extended family fall apart. Just crumble like piles of stone stacked too high. My heart has been so heavy. I was up half the night praying for my two sets of aunts and uncles who are toeing the line of divorce.

I am far from a Christian scholar. But I have to believe that God intended love to be enough, that John Lennon (The Beatles) really did have it right. Love should be all we need.

Why else would He tell His disciples that the greatest of all the commandments was to “love the Lord your God will all your heart, soul and might, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

And what does that mean, really?

Somewhere along the way, I think we have stopped giving the kind of love God always wanted us to give—the kind of love that always perseveres, the kind of love that fosters no fear, the kind of love that’s wrapped up in faith and hope and sacrifice. We give a self-serving love, a more convenient, fair-weather love that stands in the good times but crumbles in the storms. I am guilty of this, too.

This kind of love is destroying our tradition of marriage. We are passing a new definition of love to children who will “take the easy way out,” just like we did.

It really is a slow fade down the slippery slope of destruction. That’s the way our enemy intends it, because then we don’t notice when things begin falling apart. But marriages don’t dissolve in a day. Children don’t become their parents in a day. Generations don’t make the same mistakes in a day.

But we can turn the enemy’s game around. Spin it right around on his horned-red head (that’s bad theology, but isn’t that how every kid who grew up in the Southern Baptist Church sees the devil?). If we would only choose to love more deeply.

Our pastor, Scott Heare, sort of solidified the whole heart, soul and might thing for me during a Sunday sermon weeks ago. He said God wants all our love—the emotional (heart), the spiritual (soul) and the physical (might or strength). We talked this week about strength and how our world sees strength as how much we can bench press or how many burdens we can handle without our eyes leaking. But Jesus showed us real strength in the way he submitted his life to His Father. Real strength is found on our knees.

What if we chose the kind of love that holds a husband tightly when he’s been out too late drinking too much, instead of voicing our disgust on an already-dark night while our children are listening just outside the door? What if we chose the kind of love that offers a safe place to land for a husband who’s gone astray? What if we chose the kind of love that said, “Your healing is more important than mine,” if only for a little while.

What if we chose to love with mercy?

I believe marriages would be stronger for it. God, let it be so in my marriage. For the sake of my children and the generations that follow.

seven months have passed so quickly

2007-07-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

Wow. Seven months already. It's so hard to believe.

We saw a woman in the grocery store last night, right around the time when Jadon was supposed to be asleep but was trilling and shrieking just to hear his own voice. She has an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old. She said she used to hate it when women came up to her in the grocery store and said, "You better treasure this time because it doesn't last long." She said she'd always think, "It can't pass quickly enough. I'm ready to start sleeping again." And then, she said, the time had ended, and it was much too quickly and she wanted to go back or just remember…but memories tend to fade.

Her point was that all those women were right. And she was encouraging Ben and me to treasure our time with Jadon while he is young and still somewhat dependent on us for his needs, though he is quickly losing that dependency. We assured her that we are treasuring that time.

So, this morning, when the monitor lights flashed and Jadon's voice filtered through the speaker at 1 a.m.—unusual for this baby who has slept through the night since he was two weeks old—I pulled my weary body out of bed and reminded myself that though these times can be difficult, they will be gone much too soon. Ben had beaten me to the crib and stood cradling Jadon in his arms while Jadon writhed and screamed because his gums are hurting so badly. Poor baby. We just sat there and held him, then placed him back in the crib when we were certain he'd fallen asleep.

It's the third time this week that we've gotten a patched-nights' rest. But we are remembering that those quiet moments spent in the dark of Jadon's room, kissing his soft cheeks and tracing his turned-up nose in the glow of the moon, are more precious than a few more moments of sleep.

My little boy has begun crawling. He manages slowly, though he gets across a room quickly—mostly because he'll inch forward and throw himself the rest of the way. It's a funny sight to see. He has begun eyeing things he'd like to put in his mouth and deliberately making his way toward them. Most of the time Mama has to intercede because it's something he shouldn't be playing with. And then he will scream in anger. Yep. He's got that Patton temper. Poor thing.

He's eating solid foods three times a day now, which will ready him for the three meals a day he'll eat when he's older. He's still a good eater and prefers eating from the spoon, which will be good for weaning him off the bottle. We still have not been able to convince him to hold his own bottle and cup…he figures why do it when someone else will? That's his daddy in him.

I read to him often from the Bible and some of his Dr. Seuss books. Ben is the designated story time reader for bedtime, though, because he does great voices and is really silly like that. Jadon absolutely loves it.

We're discovering he's super ticklish. I'm sure most children are, but Jadon wasn't laughing about it until now. He'll scrunch up his nose and open his mouth wide and smile. It's the most beautiful thing I've seen.

Mama is a word in his vocabulary, though I'm not sure he knows it's me yet. But he says it mostly when he's crying, so I wonder if I am not giving him enough credit. Sometimes, when he's sitting playing with his toys and I'm lying near him, he'll pull my arm toward him and bury his face in it and call for "Mama." Precious Mama's boy. I'm eating it up.

I wonder if Jesus was a Mama's boy.

Welcome

2007-07-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blogspot