March 2013 – deep fragile grace //

Five Minutes Fridays – Broken

March 30, 2013 deep fragile grace2 Comments

Here we go again–Five Minute Friday challenge, on a Saturday night. And this time, B, my husband, has even joined in on the fun. After my post is his! Yay for doing things together! Always warms my heart. Even more so when we play Jeopardy together. Yes, we perhaps are the biggest nerds you know. No, I’m not afraid to admit it.

What we did tonight-the writing-is a weekly writing “game” from my bloggy friend Lisa-Jo Baker, who blogs (and writes heart-breakingly, beautiful words and stories) at http://lisajobaker.com/

So, here’s the challenge, should you accept it: you write for 5 minutes with freedom like you have no fear or shame. And then you have to be brave (or at least pretend to be) and link up to her blog. Encouraging the writer who links up before you is part of the deal, too. This last rule is crucial, as we all need to encourage others. Why encourage another writer? Because at one point or another in our lives, we all need encouraging too.

Each week is a new word, a new thought starter, and you have 5 minutes to write….and are you ready? go-

Broken

This week has left me broken. Broken in a way that I’ve been a million times before, that isn’t anything new, or note-worthy for that matter, but broken in a way that’s mean shattered, a little bit beyond just simple disrepair.

And it’s not terrible, really, to be broken. How else, then, will you know how to be filled? How else can you reach for wholeness with an irresistable longing? Only if you’ve experienced the broken openness do you know how coming apart can very much so mean the joy of putting back together. And all through life, we do this again and again, the learning, the breaking, the repairing. It, to some degree, is how we learn to move through this world beyond just surviving.

And sitting with the brokenness—late on a Friday, a Good Friday, we call it, though it is A So Terribly Bad Friday, sitting with that knowledge and truth on a Friday night that is awful, combined with the sting of how my brokenness led him there, and with the added dream-like state of my bad mood with not enough sleep from the night before, only hurt me more. And I had to sit with it, uncomfortable and quiet, and that really is the least of all I could do, for the one who has the power and the grace, daily, to make me whole.

Broken

He pushes his way through the burnt ashes and charred wood looking and looking. Although his hands ached from searching the wails behind him kept his drive going. Where could it be? Had someone stolen it when the volunteers came through searching for survivors? … Too many questions.

He finally saw a small glint that was not black, brown and grey. The glint from the sun danced on the metal and wood. How could it have survived? He glanced back again to see if his son was still crying and then kept using what strength was left to remove the trunk from the disaster that was their home. When he had the area cleared out, the trunk had been roughed up and damaged, probably beyond repair. Like his home. Like his marriage. Like his neighborhood. Yet, the key still fit in the lock his son had put on their to keep his treasures safe. He pulled out the black, stuffed panda/grizzly/whatever bear. His smile as he turned around to his son while extending this piece of their previous safe haven to him was all he had left. Yet it appeared enough to the four year old in giveaway clothes. It brought them both home again.

Five Minute Friday – Rest

March 15, 2013 deep fragile grace1 Comment

I’m doing this 5 minute writing challenge again..and late. Again. And this time, two for one, as I’m catching up from last week too, in the post below.But hey, hey, this, doing a Five Minute Friday actually ON a Friday is being on time to the party this week. It’s the little things, really.

A reminder in case you’ve missed it, this is the Friday Five Minute writing challenge, and the details are below in case you want to play sometime…

This is a weekly writing “game” from my bloggy friend Lisa-Jo Baker, who blogs (and writes heart-breakingly, beautiful words and stories) at http://lisajobaker.com/

Each week is a new word, a new thought starter, and you have 5 minutes to write….and are you ready? go-

Rest

Rest is a pause, a step, a deep inhale of a fresh breeze before life picks up again, violent, overly dramatic and rushed in its efforts.

Rest, I keep thinking, is that elusive place-a spa in the mountains, alone, where you can breathe, eat spa food, hike through the deeply healing and intoxicating colors and smells, rejuvenating yourself. A rest, a break, a pause, maybe a massage or two before re-entering the chaos of your daily life of grind, work, laundry, chores and the other duties that just come along side of living life, real, in the moment and in the reality of a family and children.

But that spa resort, though it may happen is not real rest, nor most days is it a reality. Just like most days, my reality is far from being a princess, though my daughter believes otherwise. If princesses do dishes and cusses at the laundry pile as tall as her then I must be of regal lineage.

Rest is really, the moment-

The moment of deep breath, of lightness, before the roller coaster comes hurtling down, projecting you back, deep into gravity and your body and into chaos. Both literally and figuratively.

The moment, the last pause of your mother unusually smoothing out, calming down your long hair, laying it flat, before you walk onto the stage for graduation, a look of both deep thoughts and of last times and rest in her eyes, a look of rest before the second half of your life, her life, begins again.

The moment of the last party, the last hurrah of a place or a person or a time that you loved so much, somehow, but somehow, not really knowing how you know, is coming to an end, a sunset before the dark night, the bright stars and the unflattering reality of morning.

And rest, really is the last moments of a breath, the last big, deep push before a child is born, the last knowing moments before your life changes completely, again, and in all ways new and yet familiar again.

Rest is preparation, legs, patience even, that God gives us, that we need to take before life happens again before we are ready for it.

Five Minute Friday – Home

March 15, 2013 deep fragile graceLeave a comment

I’m doing this 5 minute writing challenge again..and late. About a week late, this one is.

Same old song and dance, just sort of new move in the dance each week. And this one, in my opinion, is not my best writing not my best dance moves, but it’s the practice of it all that makes me come back for more each time. More practice, more hope at getting to be a better writer. So hence this, only about a week late.

And a reminder in case you’ve missed it, this is the Friday Five Minute writing challenge, and the details are below in case you want to play sometime…

This is a weekly writing “game” from my bloggy friend Lisa-Jo Baker, who blogs (and writes heart-breakingly, beautiful words and stories) at http://lisajobaker.com/

Each week is a new word, a new thought starter, and you have 5 minutes to write….and are you ready? go-

Home

thanks to Witthaya Phonsawat for the image.

Home is the place you come back to, time after time, in a place and in your soul.

It’s the place, the one place you finally exhale for the day, leave the bags at the door all askew and messy and whisper a silent thank you to God for, a retreat, a place away, a literal and figurative closed-door on the other sometimes loud and rude pieces of the day.

Home is comforting, loving, trying. Just like family. It’s the place you run to, the place you run away from, the odd place you just want to be, even if that means trying to figure out the logic of a toddler, and how she’s determined that in fact, her doll’s own home is not in her room or the doll’s bed but indeed in the drawer, laying cozy with the shorts.

Home is at once a place of rest and peace, and a place where our soul is on fire; a place of endless frustration and in dire need of organization, and yet one where all of life uncoordinated rhythms and mistakes are loved, welcomed, and of course, at home.

On motherhood and bravery

March 2, 2013 deep fragile grace6 Comments

I want to tell her.

I want to tell her to keep that grace, that bravery, that ROAR-ing she does, at the entrance of a dark room, the one she does at this small, tender age, in order to scare out all of the supposed monsters in her room.

I want to tell her to keep it, the independence, this solving-your-own-problems, while not forgetting about the beauty in growing in God, in leaning in Him and on others.

That’s no small indignity, to ask for help when you need it.

That you can’t always depend on just yourself, I want to whisper in her ear.

But then again I want to tell here that there are some days that life is all about pulling up your own bootstraps, corralling your own painted pony instead of waiting on a prince on a white horse to come rescue you, that some days, it’s all up to you to get something done or taken care of.

But most days, it’s about the leaning in, the community.

There are so many things I want to warn her about with this as well.

That community and people are a double-edged sword; that the one who loves you the most can also be the one that hurts you the most, cuts the deepest.

That the one you don’t like or haven’t too high an opinion of is the one that you actually ending up trying to impress, for no real reason at all, except for your own ego.

I want to tell her that sometimes, people are mean, hurtful, unkind and uncaring.

I want to warn her of this, to humble her easy-going nature, lest someone takes advantage of her and her kindness.

But I don’t, not yet.

I give parent-y warnings, motherly advice because although I know all of these things to be true about humankind, I also know humankind to be kind, caring, accepting, peaceful, and full of grace and mercy when you least expect it.

That some days, it seems as if the kindness of humanity even surprises the most cynical of all of us.

So, then, how do you explain this tug of war with humanity, this handling of a knife that cuts on both ends? How on earth to try to explain to someone how exactly to hold that, I wonder.

Sometimes, you don’t have to. Some days the knife falls unaware, from some side kitchen cabinet you never saw there, razor-sharp and maims everything in its fall.

And some days that knife cuts into the darkness, pierces into the tenderness of you, the light, so much so that you feel it’s saved your own soul from becoming too dark and crowded. And you wonder how on earth you could be so defensive and full of self-safety when you’ve just witness an action so deep, so transforming, so kind? Just how?

How do you explain that to your child?

So I sit here and wonder and ponder in the quiet, hands running far too many times over the roundness of the coffee mug to count, way too many times to justify this confusing piece of writing, of advice I’m trying to give.

So, I try to explain, to teach the way I know how, the way I handle most things in life: Stumble through. Be truthful, don’t try and protect too much, because in the end, that’s more of a disservice to her and her generation than believing in fairy tales.

She needs tools, not tales. Sound advice and authentic stories, not outlandish fantasy or cold, bitter, hard truths that give no hope for the future.

So I fervently, quietly and consciously tell her real truths and authentic stories and all the while, pray.

I pray fervently, passionately that she continues to be the one, the strong one, the one that maybe, leads the other afraid ones to yell at the monsters in the dark, hold hands, clasped tightly and woven close to each other and to God.

I pray for her eyes to see and her ears to hear, eyes that are not clouded by hurt or pain or ego, but eyes that can see straight to the heart of things, with compassion and grace and what takes a little bit of bravery to see people as they are.

I pray she hears clearly, the ills of the world, and tries to help, instead of turning up the comfort, the activities and the iTunes louder so as to drown out the suffering of the world.

Mostly, I pray, I pray, I pray.

And some days, I pray for my bravery too, in leading her.