in your dreams

One of my favorite fights that Mark and I have had (can there be such a thing?) probably happened on a few occasions, but the one that sticks with me was about twelve or so years ago.  I was a junior in college, and we were in the car together driving through the hilly farmland of upstate New York.  I don’t know where we were going; I don’t know where we had been.  And I remember little else except this: “You are the woman of my dreams,” he says to me, all happy and in love, one hand on the steering wheel, one tightly clasping mine.  I have little doubt that he had no idea what was coming next.

My reaction was immediate, and forceful.  My mouth opened, and what come out was a verbal spew: you’re only going to be set up for disappointment; I’m not perfect.  I’m nobody’s dream anything.  On and on it went – not in some display of lack of self-esteem, but almost the opposite.  Couldn’t he see how not-dream-like I was?  Didn’t he know that I am a terrible procrastinator?  Didn’t he know that I bore easily?  Change my mind quickly?  Didn’t he know that I was way too stubborn?  Too self-involved?  Clearly he was learning of my sardonic realism.  Poor Mark.  He had no idea what just happened.  In a moment of contentment he had simply let his lips proclaim what he was feeling to be true.  He was telling me of his love for me.  But I didn’t hear it.

We’ve grown miles and miles since those idealistic words.  We’ve battled hard through years of growing up together, growing in together.  Step by step we’ve been living out the hyperbolic vision that Mark had for us.  Because whether in actuality he knew his dream then or not, what has happened since is we’ve been building this dream.  Life is not lived in the grand gesture, but in many, many small ones.  When I listen to that claim now, what I can see with absolute clarity, is that yes, Mark saw me as the woman of his dreams – with an endlessly stubborn streak and erudite vocabulary.

In my women’s bible study we’ve spent the past year studying the book of Philippians.  We dance around a bit, take breaks here and there, but mostly are taking the slow and deliberate march through this letter from Paul.  Philippians 2:15 says, among other things, that I am to be pure and blameless as a child of God.  When I’ve read this verse before I’ve felt inadequate and overwhelmed.  Doesn’t God know who He is dealing with here?  He knows my need for Him.  But here’s what I learned this time ’round: of course God knows me.  Of course He knows all of my inadequacies.  But He has chosen to see me as pure and blameless, because of the work of the cross.  That’s who I am now.  A child of God.  And certainly I can put up barriers between me and God, I and might not feel so pure and blameless.  When Mark calls me the woman of his dreams, he’s telling me how he sees me, not how I am in my broken reality.  (Bear with the messy connection here, I’m not attempting theology.  Mark ≠ God, clearly).

Driving through the farmland, when Mark was telling me of his dreams, we were far enough along in our relationship for him to know, with certainty, how I was not a picture in a magazine. (how could he ever be confused?!) He was, in a way, speaking a blessing to me: a vision of how he sees me.  With all of my crazy, I am the woman of his dreams.  There’s this great line in Gone Girl: “Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.)”

You see, there’s something better-than-dreams in our reality, don’t you think?  There’s something about seeing the flaws in Mark, and about him knowing mine with such intensity and honesty, but still claiming dream status for us anyway.  It’s like that Shakespeare sonnet:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

I, like the mistress in the sonnet, am much more mortal than any goddess living in dreamland.   But I don’t doubt that I’m living the dream.  And I have learned to swallow my snark, say “Thank you,” and give Mark a big ol’ kiss any time he tells me: “you’re the woman of my dreams.”

offering: real blessing

This past weekend, we all put on our Sunday best and landed in the front pew at church.  It was time to baptize our Littlest.  We worship as Episcopalians, and I am desperately in love with the liturgy of baptism in this community.  We welcome God’s smallest into this great big family of sinners, forgiven and and finding grace together.  We each are invited to revisit our own baptism, affirm for each other again how our lives have been claimed.  There is a lyrical narrative about this holy water.  The priest blesses these babes, and then with a bit of holy oil, crosses their foreheads – sealed by the Holy Spirit, marked as Christ’s own forever.  Forever.  Nothing this child can do can change that.

So here we are, spit shined and squeaky clean, doing our best to do our best, in the front pew.  The Littlest looks like a little man in his proper corduroy pants and button down shirt.  But he keeps ripping his socks off and chewing on them, and then he tires of sitting in the stroller, protesting loudly with his growing number of sounds.  The Middlest has climbed in and out and around every pew and kneeler, commando crawled her way through every pocket book and cup of coffee obstacle on the floor.  The Eldest, first enthralled with the music, has decided that he’s bored now and can’t understand why Daddy won’t play a game with him.  And that’s the thing about doing your best, right?  It’s all you’ve got, and somehow it needs to be enough.  Let me tell you, the front pew is not the right place for us, folks.

We’re called up front for the baptism part of the service, not a moment too soon. Though once in front of the crowd it becomes clear that maybe we’re not right to be up here, either.  Maybe, next time, we’ll just arrange a private thing in the bath tub, eh?  Because now the Littlest will not be still and is just about doing back flips trying to escape my grasp.  His protests are getting more extreme, and eventually I can think of nothing else but putting him down. On the ground. Where he is desperate to explore.

So I do.  I put him on the ground, kneel down with him, hold the brass pitcher of water to keep it from tipping over as he pulls himself up to it, checks out his reflection.  He taps it, smiles at the deep echo.  He crawls over to the font itself, begins to climb up the steps.  All the while, I’m following him around, kneeling on the floor of the church, murmuring the bits of call and response that I can remember, priest beside us, godparents surrounding us, family and a whole big congregation looking on.  I wear an apologetic smile.

Eventually, we get up off the floor, the Littlest and I, when it is time for the water.  I brush the dust off my legs, and hand my babe over to the priest.    The kids are mesmerized when the priest poured the water into the font.  The priest scoops handfuls of water onto the Littlest’s forehead.  Water runs down his eyebrows, follows the bridge of his nose.  The priest drags his fingers in that space between his eyes and his hair, writing the promise of grace into his life.  I am mesmerized by the magic of spirit and words, by ritual and poetry.  The symbolic becomes tangible. We pray these words: “Give him an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”  And all I can do is offer up my loudest Amen.

By the end, I think we were spread over three pews, and had left a trail of crayons and cheerios in our wake.  I doubt that any of the pictures will have us all looking at the camera. I hardly even remembered to take a picture.  It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t graceful, but it was full of grace.  Afterwards, we gathered with family and friends, to break bread, to laugh at the ordeal of it all, to rejoice in the mess of it all.

And that’s when a friend spoke into my heart: “Blessed is the mama who gets down on her knees to crawl around the floor with her little one,” she said.  She said this as I was, in my usual way, trying to make light of our embarrassing display.  I think what she meant was that in God’s eyes, this is the path to glory – this dusty position of prostration, of work and heart and honesty.  It is setting aside expectations to embrace this dynamic life, and being able to give what is needed within each moment.  That though I may have wrinkled my outfit, and that the happy squeals of the Littlest competed with the rhythm of the liturgy,  I was doing the work of mothering, which never stops, not even for a priestly blessing.  I was so caught up in the ways that we had made a spectacle of ourselves, crumpling up any church protocol and throwing it out the window that I had failed to see how my family, each of us doing our best to do our best, was there at the altar, at the place of grace.  That in letting the Littlest down and crawl around instead of scolding him to be still in my arms, I was offering him just as he is, not as he should be.  My family is real – not some prescription to fit a churchy image in my head.  My Jesus is real, too.

So when the Littlest naps straight through his own party, so when the Eldest throws a fit because he’s not the center of attention, so that when the Middlest can’t.stop.moving.her.mouth because she hasn’t had a nap and is bit manic, and when we all have scrambled eggs for dinner – this all is real, too.  And I know that God is there.  And this, too, is full of grace.  And I’m on my knees crawling hard after these babes of mine, chasing them around the altar of the One who made it all, who knows this mess better than I, and makes it all beautiful.

Though I doubt we’ll take the front pew again any time soon.

the pause

We’ve been moving through life: through spring colds, through warm spring and cool breeze, and those thunderstorms that come with it.  We’ve been marching out our footprints, through running races (like, real actual races) and hamburgers on the grill; through dirt and seeds and water; through Mother’s Day and work days and school days, and just good ol’ days.  And books, always.

Let me tell you: I’ve been reading some good stuff.  In  7: an experimental mutiny against excess, Jen Hatmaker takes on seven areas of her life over seven months, eliminating all of the “too-much,” fasting from the things that gunk up our lives and pressing into the calling of Christ on her life and family.  There is so much good stuff here, and I’m sure it’ll be oozing out of me for a while, but tonight it is this last month of hers that has held me captive.

The last excess that she ousts from her life is stress.  Now, obviously life is stressful; it just is.  We can’t actually cut out stress from our lives any more than we can cut out breathing.  It comes with the job of living.  And the flip side of stress is often beautiful and glorious: mountains and valleys.  While we can try to dial down excess stress, the stuff that only adds stress for the sake of stress, the best way to work this stress is to figure out how to cope with it  For her last month of this experiment, Jen embraces seven sacred pauses that she takes throughout the day to focus her attention: with prayer, with scripture, with an intentional pause to breath.

There is so much to glean from here.  I’m pretty sure that she was standing in my kitchen today while Mark was (blessingly) using his free time at home (he’s still on night shift) helping me to fold and organize clean laundry (I cannot begin to tell you how big this mountain of laundry – all clean! – had become).  I was moving, frenetically, setting the bigger Little Ones up at the table to paint, nursing the Littlest, back to refill paint, let the dog out, change a diaper, back to clean up paint, all the while trying to get back to the laundry.  And then those neatly organized piles of laundry were upended (by the dog? by an overly enthusiastic Little?) And those Little Ones are hungry, again!  I knew that my body was tensing, my shoulders beginning to tighten.  My breath was short, and so was my fuse. And then Jen Hatmaker whispers in my ear: time to pause.  Take it Heavenward.  And though I haven’t committed seriously enough yet to engage like she does, with some prescribed prayer and scripture to match, it was enough.  Not to slow down the demands of what swirled around me in laundry and lunches, but to recognize my place in it all, my contribution to the atmosphere of stress.  Using the regularity of my breath, it forced me to let my shoulders drop, and slow the pace of my feet through the kitchen as I reached for the mayonnaise from the fridge, the pretzels from the cabinet.

Jen writes this about the mid-morning pause (which was pretty much where I was):

This mid-morning pause has two emphases: the first is mindfulness of the Spirit’s abiding presence… This pause can redirect our morning trajectory from “efficient” to “inspired.” 

Second, the Blessing Hour is about the sacredness of our hands and work…. Kahlil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible”; what if we approached our work as an opporutnity to show love?  To our coworkers, those we serve, our children, to our students… visible love is possible if we work mindfully, as carriers of the sweet Spirit of Christ.
pgs 186-187  (emphasis mine)

Right? Right.  This just gets me.  Or me, it.  As I’m pausing to invite God’s Spirit into my stress, I am inviting Him to show me how to love.  As I’m patting dry the Middlest’s hands after washing the paint from them, I’m not just perfunctorily doing a duty: I’m loving her.  And not just me loving her but Christ loving her, too.  I’m making visible something that is so strong in my heart, so fierce in my brain and my belly.  Under His precious breath, it becomes more than my small offering: it becomes enough, more-than-enough.   Instead of moving through the blur of the day, heaping the daily chores onto my shoulders, already hunched, unable to straighten from the weight I’m bearing,  it’s bringing attention to what is in front of me.  What is it that is causing stress for me?  Is it the laundry? (Yes!) It’s being mindful in my choices, then.  What if I allowed my actions to be inspiration, instead of broken down into some energy input-output strategy of efficiency? What if I allowed God to fill those gaps?

And then, as the day closes, here is what Jen says about the last pause of the day, “the Great Silence”:

It begins with a gentle evaluation of the day.  The focus is on awareness, and we include not just weaknesses but the strenghts and accomplishments of the day.  The Great Silence teaches us to be healthy sinners, living in neither denial of our sin or despair because of it.

We welcome soft darkness that is exquisitly beautiful and healing. God dims the lights on our weary bodies, making the way for sleep, allowing us to see the stars. There is a beauty to the darkness, the natural rhythm of the earth that invites us to be still and rest.
pg 190. (emphasis mine)

Because to me, that’s what this is all about.  It’s my hands, palms up, loosening  my grip on the things I hold.  It’s not despairing in the mess  I’ve made today: in how I haven’t trusted fully, or served whole-heartedly. Not dwelling in  the mistakes I’ve made or the way I’ve squandered my one “precious and wild life”.  It’s recognizing the things I’ll do differently tomorrow.  It’s the mystery of Christ in me, the hope of glory.  It’s knowing that I’m loved, simply loved, and not for anything of my doing.  It’s having the perspective to know that this is just a teeny tiny part of the bigger picture.  And it’s receiving one more gift before we get the fresh start of tomorrow: the gift of rest.

It’s all in there:  all this glorious and not-glorious stuff; the bits and pieces of life. Sometimes it just takes fresh eyes.

building my nest

LORD God All-Powerful, my King and my God,
sparrows find a home near your altars;
swallows build nests there to raise their young.
Psalm 84:3

I was nursing my Littlest in a room full of wise women today as I sat in bible study.  Conversation had come around to the catastrophes of the world, the multitude of hurt and suffering that so easily overwhelms us.  We were being urged to remember these global issues in prayer.   Our discussion covered a lot of ground, and somehow we had landed here, on this verse in the middle of the Psalms. I don’t even remember how it fit with it all.  But I do know that this was a word for me to hear today, as I gathered the Littlest in my arms.

I am building a nest.  I am raising young. And we, my young and I, are welcomed to be in His presence, to make our home near his altar.  

My daily battles are fought and won, not by me, but by my God who redeems all.  To talk about the problems of the world, while completely critical, sometimes feels abstract and difficult to understand.  What I understand is that there is a four-year old wanting to “help” with dinner, a two-year old who has quietly tucked herself away someplace, probably with markers, and a newborn who cries loudly if I put him down.  These are my immediate concerns, and this takes all of my attention.  Even my prayer attention.  Especially my prayer attention.

In my best, most “spiritual” moments, for instance in college when I served  in a leadership position for our Christian fellowship group, I was sort of disciplined about using my prayer time.  I typed up a chart that listed all kinds of concerns that I wanted to lift up to God, and I rotated through it regularly.  Some things were standing prayers, others changed as needs changed.  I had big things, like famine, and war, and poverty, and small things, like a dating relationship or a big project for a class.  And I was actually pretty diligent about praying through these things.

I can’t do that now.  Nor do I suppose that is what God has intended for me now.  Of course I know that there is no formula or trick to earning God’s favor in prayer.  I don’t think if I click my heels three times after I say “amen” that my prayer will be magically granted.  But this time of mothering little ones has taught me that the form that my prayers take, the words I use (or even using words at all) is so much less important than recognizing the presence of God in all of this.  It is the stirring-the-pot prayer, the nursing-the-babe prayer.  It is the filling-the-bathtub prayer, and the driving-down-the-highway prayer.  It is the middle-of-the-night prayer, and the hold-my-tongue-prayer.  It is offering to God all those moments, and seeing Him in them all.  If my nest is at His altar, it is all prayer; it is all an act of worship.

God knows that my own little world in so all encompassing to me now that it is hard to see the World.  I know that if I can’t form the words to pray eloquently asking for relief of famine in the African horn, God isn’t going to be disappointed in my love for His people.  I’m loving His people.  He has called me to build my nest at His altar.  If me and my Little Ones are hanging out at His altar, in our nest of blocks and crayons, school and storybooks, temper tantrums and sleepless nights, than we are constantly in His presence.  If I am welcomed to raise my young at the foot of His dwelling, than it is a Holy place, and Holy work.

This all just makes sense to me.  That my prayers now are different, that my needs now are different, that my life now is different.  In many ways it is so much more real. How can I hang out at His altar and not be transformed by His Grace?  My need is too great.

The Psalm continues to talk about His blessings: to those who sing Him praise, to those who depend on Him for strength, to be water in the dry places.  He makes His people grow stronger, protecting His people.  He blesses those who trust Him.  When my nest is in His presence, it is easy to see His hand and receive His blessings.

Our LORD and our God, you are like the sun and also like a shield. You treat us with kindness and with honor, never denying any good thing to those who live right. -Psalm 84:11

there you go

There you go, working good from my bad
There you go, making robes from my rags
There you go, melting crowns from my calves
There you go, working good of all I have
Till all I have is not that bad.
-Caedmon’s Call, “There You Go” 

I am bone tired.  This work of caring for the Little Ones is hard work.  It is all consuming, and refining.  At this point my daily task is triage: managing whatever need is most pressing.  It is delicate, often, to understand priority.

Today went something like this:  home from the grocery store, the drive a bit long for all, Littlest wanting to nurse and punctuating our drive with cries to let us know.  Into the house we go, arms full of Little Ones and cold groceries.  Get the salmon and yogurt in the fridge – all else can wait.  Scoop up the Littlest, new diaper and then to the breast.  Another new diaper.  Feuding bigger kids, screams demanding intervention.  Half dressed Littlest goes into the swing to deal with the escalating tantrum of the Eldest:  show down.  Finish up that diaper change.  Middlest in potty crisis necessitating new underwear.  Back to the breast.  Burp, burp — uh oh!  Spit up everywhere: couch, my shirt, my pants, soaked through to my underwear; new outfits for Littlest and me.  Gather the laundry, scoop the detergent, lid closed on the machine. Did I mention it’s lunchtime?  Hungry Little Ones, and the rest of the groceries are still in the car.  On it goes, a full hour since we’ve been home, and I’m finally putting the last box of rice away.

The needs are pressing and persistent.  Somewhere in there I find time to slather a piece of french bread with peanut butter, and pee.

We’ve been stuck together, in this space, for some time as we’ve battled sickness in the midst of life with a newborn.  My mom suggested a few fun ideas that might freshen up our playtime: an indoor beach picnic,  for instance.  I nodded, loving the thought of it all, but knowing deep in my body that I do not have what it takes right now to orchestrate even that.  So we stick with the old favorites: we read, we color, we breath and we move on.

This season for me is about offering up what little I have, in faith.  Faith that my love is communicated in the daily chores of mothering.  Faith that these seeds are being planted, to sprout with fullness in due time.  Faith that this work is forming beauty and rightness and tender love deep in my heart, in their hearts. My offering is this tired body, it is my less-than-enthusiastic make believe games.  It is my voice reading to the Little Ones, less dramatically than it was last week.  It is days in pajamas, and one too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I offer it all, giving more fully than I knew I was capable.  It is received, and redeemed.  I know it is made better, more full.  I am certain that my Little Ones will know this desperate love that I carry for them, as they will know the burning love of the One who redeems it all.

This work is refining.  This work is humbling.  This work is revealing.  It is beautifying, and mystifying.  I give it all as my prayer, my living sacrifice.